This Week’s Ketchup includes news about movies based upon Micronauts, Arabian Nights and The Berenstain Bears, as well as casting news for Sir Anthony Hopkins, Johnny Depp, George Clooney and Owen Wilson; and a new movie for the director of Slumdog Millionaire.
Hot off the success of his reimagining of Star Trek, J.J. Abrams is in negotiations to produce a movie based upon the popular 1970s-1980s Japanese toy franchise Micronauts, which was also a long-running Marvel Comics series. Micronauts was a series of interchangeable science fiction heroes, robots and vehicles (sort of imagine a cross between action figures and LEGO) that collectively told the story of alien warriors in the grip of an intergalactic war. The best part was that they have crashed on the strange world of Earth where they find themselves just the size of little toys. Among the most popular Micronauts figures were Biotron, Microtron, Acroyear and Baron Karza. There’s no writer or word yet on how J.J. Abrams might interpret Micronauts for a new audience. Hasbro recently acquired the rights to Micronauts, and has had success with the Transformers and G.I. Joe movies at Paramount (where Abrams also made Star Trek), so it’s likely that Micronauts would also be a Paramount release. For the kids of the late 1970s (like me) who would find themselves too old to play with Transformers several years later, Micronauts were one of the hottest toys going, even if the lack of a popular cartoon TV show sort of has hindered their lasting legacy. J.J. Abrams is of a similar age, so it is no surprise that he has an interest in working with Hasbro to help popularize the toys for the next century’s kids.
Director Chuck Russell (The Scorpion King, The Mask) has signed on to helm a $70 million 3D adaptation of Arabian Nights, the classic collection of Middle Eastern folk tales. Russell also cowrote with newcomer screenwriter Barry P. Ambrose the script. In a new spin, the story will follow a young commander who joins forces with Sinbad, Aladdin and his genie to rescue Scheherazade (the girl who offered to tell a king a story that she never ends for 1,001 nights) and her kingdom from dark forces. Production is scheduled to start on this independent project (which doesn’t currently have U.S. distribution) in April, 2010.
Director Shawn Levy (Night at the Museum, The Pink Panther) has signed with Walden Media (The Chronicles of Narnia) to produce a feature film based upon The Berenstain Bears, the popular series of 300+ children’s books by Stan and Jan Berenstain that started in 1962 with The Big Honey Hunt. The Berenstain Bears is centered around a family of five anthropomorphic bears (bears that talk, wear clothes, etc) that live in the larger bear community of Bear Country. There is not yet a writer for the movie, but Levy says that The Berenstain Bears will be a mix of live action and computer animation. About the tone of the movie, Levy told USA Today, “I’d like the film to be un-ironic about its family connections but have a wry comedic sensibility that isn’t oblivious to the fact that they’re bears,” although the bears will get “a slight makeover” to give them a “slightly modern spin” on their look. The project is on the fast track, with preproduction expected to start in late 2010, aiming for a possible release in late 2011. Walden Media has a distribution deal with 20th Century Fox, so that is likely to be the studio for this movie as well. The Berenstain Bears join a few other similar ursine kids movies that are targeting releases in the next two years, along with Yogi Bear and the new Winnie the Pooh movie.
Just a week after landing the role of Odin in Marvel’s Thor, Sir Anthony Hopkins has signed on to star in Hemingway and Fuentes, a drama about the American author’s time in Cuba in the 1940s and 1950s that inspired Hemingway to write The Old Man and the Sea. Hemingway and Fuentes has long been a passion project for Andy Garcia, who will costar as Gregorio Fuentes, Hemingway’s best friend during these years. Garcia will also produce and direct from a script that he cowrote with Hilary Heminway, granddaughter of Ernest. Annette Bening will also costar as the writer’s third wife, Mary Welsh Hemingway. Andy Garcia has wanted to make Hemingway and Fuentes since the 1970s, when he spent time as an offshore fisherman with some of the men who had known Hemingway. Hopkins has committed to star in Hemingway and Fuentes after he finishes his role in Thor, which means filming is likely to start in the summer of 2010 at locations in the Caribbean, and at a Northern location to set scenes in Ketchum, Idaho where Hemingway eventually committed suicide.
Director Danny Boyle (28 Days Later, Trainspotting), looking for his next project after last year’s Slumdog Millionaire, will reunite with Fox Searchlight, the studio that has distributed four of his previous films, on a project called 127 Hours. 127 Hours is based upon the true story of mountaineer Aron Ralston who in 2003 in Utah had to amputate his own arm with a dull knife after he was trapped under a boulder. Ralston then scaled a sheer 65 foot cliff wall and hiked until he was discovered by a famly who gave him water and food and helped him towards eventual rescue. Boyle wrote the treatment for 127 Hours, with his frequent collaborator Simon Beaufoy in talks to write the script. Danny Boyle expects to start filming in early 2010, aiming for a release in late 2010. The next step for 127 Hours is for Boyle to find his lead actor, which is particularly important as he spends most of the movie alone, such as Tom Hanks did in Cast Away.
Johnny Depp is in talks to star in The Tourist, a project which has seen an unusual number of cast changes, as Depp becomes the third actor in the lead role, following Tom Cruise and then Sam Worthington (Terminator: Salvation). The female lead will be played by Angelina Jolie, who was also a replacement for Charlize Theron, who had long been attached to star. Finally, there is the directing job, which was first going to be handled by Bharat Nalluri (The Crow: Salvation), and then Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (The Lives of Others), and now Alfonso Cuaron (Children of Men, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban) is in negotiations for the job. That looks to this writer like a steady progression upwards in terms of the directors’ reputations. The Tourist is an English-language remake of the 2005 French thriller Anthony Zimmer, and is the story of a female Interpol agent (Jolie) who recruits an American tourist (Depp) in Paris into being bait in her hunt for a criminal who is also her former lover. Production of The Tourist, which Sony will distribute, is expected to start in early 2010.
George Clooney is in talks with Fox Searchlight to star in The Descendants, the next movie for director Alexander Payne (Election, Sideways). This will be Payne’s first film in five years. Based upon a novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings, The Descendants is the story of a “wealthy landowner (Clooney) who takes his two daughters on a search for his wife’s lover in the hopes of keeping his family together.” Filming is scheduled to start in February in Hawaii, which puts the movie on track for a possible late 2010 release so that it has a chance of being one of next year’s big Oscar hopefuls.
Dan Aykroyd, Justin Timberlake and Anna Faris are in talks to star in Warner Bros’ live action/CGI adaptation of the classic Hanna-Barbera cartoon Yogi Bear. Aykroyd and Timberlake are being eyed to be the voices of the talking bears Yogi Bear and Boo Boo, and Faris would be playing a nature documentary filmmaker who has come to Jellystone Park to follow the comic misadventures of Yogi and Boo Boo. Eric Brevig, the director of last year’s Journey to the Center of the Earth will be making this his second feature film, from a script draft (that has had a few different writers) that has most recently been written by Brad Copeland (Wild Hogs). Warner Bros is expecting to start filming of Yogi Bear in New Zealand in December. Yogi Bear, however isn’t the only live-action/CGI kids movie to get casting news this week, as Owen Wilson has signed on with 20th Century Fox to provide the voice of the Great Dane Marmaduke, based upon the newspaper comic strip character that’s been published since 1954. Marmaduke will tell the story of a family moving from Kansas to Orange County, California, with Marmaduke creating chaos everywhere they go. The humans will be played by William H. Macy, Judy Greer and Lee Pace, with the many animal character voices being done by a cast that includes Fergie, Emma Stone, George Lopez, Steve Coogan, Damon Wayans and Marlon Wayans. Tom Dey (Shanghai Noon, Failure to Launch) is directing Marmaduke, which Fox is aiming for a June, 2010 release. The voice casting for both Yogi Bear and Marmaduke tie for this week’s Rotten Ideas because I think many of these actors should sort of be “above” the sort of kiddie fluff movies that these will likely end up being. I guess there’s something to be said for getting big, juicy kiddie movie paychecks, but I’m just thinking that these movies could end up being for Dan Aykroyd and William H. Macy, for example, what the Garfield movies ended up being for Bill Murray: embarrasing detours that take up time that they could be spending doing much more interesting movies.
Sony Pictures has acquired the rights from Hasbro to make a movie based upon the classic board game of global domination, Risk. The premise of Risk is that the board is a map of the world, using familiar geographic names and boundaries, that players attempt to dominate by eliminating the armies of the other players from the world. How exactly this concept would translate to a movie is a bit of a mystery, except that it could be a story of a new World War of some sort. There’s no word yet as to what Sony expects to do with the Risk movie, or who might write or direct the project. This story is one of this week’s Rotten Ideas because Risk just seems like such a generic concept around which to build a movie, with no inherent story to build characters upon. It’s not far from saying a movie studio wants to make a story based upon checkers, and chess actually has more to build a story around than Risk. Board games are one of the hot new concepts that studios are latching onto, however, with movies based upon Monopoly, Ouija, Battleship and Candyland also in development.
Morgan Freeman is set to star in and executive produce a comedy project formerly known as Dirty Old Men for Warner Bros. The studio is also hoping that Jack Nicholson will sign on to reunite with his costar from The Bucket List. Another connection to Nicholson is director Peter Segal (50 First Dates, Get Smart), who directed the star in 2003’s Anger Management. The untitled project got its start at Warner Bros as a spec script by writers Josh Cagan (cowriter of Bandslam) and Greg Coolidge (cowriter of Sorority Boys, Employee of the Month). The story revolves around the friendship between an aging playboy who’s finally met the love of his life and his lifelong wingman (Freeman) who does everything he can to try to break up the couple. Despite individually having had many great performances, Freeman and Nicholson showed with The Bucket List that they’re perfectly capable of sucking as a team, and the writers’ credits are nothing but low grade comedy crap, and that’s why this is one of this week’s Rotten Ideas.
For more Weekly Ketchup columns by Greg Dean Schmitz, check out the WK archive, and you can contact GDS through his MySpace page or via a RT forum message.
