This week’s Ketchup includes ten top stories from the realm of movie news, including the video game adaptations Angry Birds and Tetris, sequels to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Now You See Me, and potential new roles for Ben Affleck (twice), and Adam Sandler (four times).
The world is still waiting for the inevitable Knight Rider movie, but this week, we heard news that puts the second movie version of a David Hasselhoff TV character closer to happening (the first being Nick Fury). Paramount Pictures is moving forward with their movie version of Baywatch, and the studio has attached Dwayne Johnson as the male lead. The screenwriting team of Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant (of the Night at the Museum franchise) had previously worked on a Baywatch script, but they are now being replaced by Justin Malen, who doesn’t yet have a produced credit (but he has worked on a Bad Teacher sequel). The Baywatch movie will be directed by Sean Anders (That’s My Boy, Horrible Bosses 2), along with his frequent comedy writing partner John Morris. Like the first several seasons of the TV series, the Baywatch movie will depict the adventures of a team of lifeguards “along the perilous shores of Santa Monica.” In other Dwayne Johnson news, the wrestler-turned-actor updated his Twitter account this week with the news that the adaptation of Robert Ludlum’s The Janson Directive (which Johnson will star in) will be adapted by Akiva Goldsman (Lost in Space, Batman & Robin).
Timing the announcement fairly precisely with the opening of Gone Girl this weekend, Warner Bros is now in talks with Ben Affleck to star in the “action thriller” The Accountant, which the studio had picked up out of turnaround from Sony Pictures. If Affleck signs on for this film, it will continue a deep relationship between the actor and studio which has included Argo, The Town, and the upcoming Live by Night, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and Justice League. Although no deal is in place yet, Warner Bros is reportedly hoping to hire director Gavin O’Connor (Warrior, Pride and Glory, and the upcoming Jane Got a Gun) to direct The Accountant. As the title and the genre suggest, The Accountant is about “a mild-mannered accountant who moonlights as a lethal assassin.” When the project was at Sony Pictures, Will Smith had at one time been attached to star.
What exactly DreamWorks Animation had in the works for their March 18, 2016 slot has been a quasi-mystery for a while, but we learned a whole lot more this week, starting with the two actors who will be voicing the lead characters. Alec Baldwin and Kevin Spacey will star in Boss Baby, an adaptation of a children’s book by Maria Frazee. The animated movie will follow the adventures of a 7-year-old boy who becomes jealous of his new baby brother (Alec Baldwin), who is a “corporate shark” embroiled in the secret plots and dastardly schemes (their words) of the CEO (Kevin Spacey) of a company called Puppy Co. Boss Baby will be directed by Tom McGrath (MegaMind; codirector of Madagascar) from a script by Michael McCullers (Baby Mama; cowriter of Austin Powers in Goldmember). Alec Baldwin and Kevin Spacey previously costarred together in Glengarry Glen Ross.
Perhaps it’s because of the sheer number of actors who can claim to be “stars” of the series, but it’s been a regular thing lately that there’s more than one story in a week about a new movie for someone from HBO’s Game of Thrones. First off, there’s Peter Dinklage, who seems to land a new job weekly (this time, it was a voice role in Angry Birds). Aiden Gillen, who plays Littlefinger, also landed a choice role, as the villain “Rat-Man” in Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials, which is the sequel to last month’s The Maze Runner. Giancarlo Esposito, who has costarred in such TV shows as Breaking Bad and Revolution, also landed a role in the sequel as the leader of a “group of survivors known as the Cranks.” 20th Century Fox has already scheduled Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials for release on September 18, 2015. Finally this week, we have the news that Richard Madden, aka Robb Stark on Game of Thrones, has joined Idris Elba in the spy action thriller Bastile Day.
For as much attention usually goes to a new report about a given actor starring in a new movie, when that actor eventually decides not to actually do it, there’s usually less attention given. (That’s only true this week for one of these stories.) First up, as your Facebook feed is probably still telling you repeatedly, Joaquin Phoenix is now officially, completely, out of the running to star as Marvel’s Doctor Strange (which is expected to be released in 2016). Another actor who made the news this week (in what turned out to be a quote from two months ago in July) is Ethan Hawke, who previously worked with Doctor Strange director Scott Derrickson on 2012’s Sinister. Basically, the gist was that someone at MTV.com asked Ethan Hawke if he would do it, and he replied, “sure.” Another reversed casting decision came this week from Leonardo DiCaprio, who has dropped out of Sony’s Steve Jobs biopic, though director Danny Boyle is still attached. Sony is now sifting through a new wish list which reportedly includes Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Bradley Cooper, and Christian Bale, who had been David Fincher’s top choice back when he was attached to direct. (Note: This is not so much a “Fresh” development, as a “we-don’t-know-how-to-classify-this” development.)
We’re still not in a new golden age of Hollywood filmmaking centered around video game adaptations, but that doesn’t stop new projects from being greenlit in the hopes that they can succeed where Super Mario Bros and Prince of Persia failed. One such attempt is Sony Pictures’ adaptation of the mobile app franchise Angry Birds, which this week unveiled the first image and the main cast of voice actors. First off, there’s the three main characters: Jason Sudeikis as Red (the red bird), Josh Gad as Chuck (the yellow bird), and Danny McBride as Bomb (the large bomb-shaped bird). Supporting roles will be voiced by Danielle Brooks (Orange is the New Black), Peter Dinklage, Tony Hale (Veep), Maya Rudolph, Keegan-Michael Key (of Key & Peele), and several others. Animators Clay Kaytis and Fergal Reilly will make their directorial debuts with Angry Birds, which Sony Pictures has scheduled for release on July 1, 2016.
Michael Caine revealed this week a new addition to the sequel to Now You See Me, which is already scheduled for June 10, 2016. Let’s just go ahead and quote him, “There’s a sequel to Now You See Me and we’re shooting in London. I shoot in December, the whole of December in London, and my son is Harry Potter. I thought it’d be funny, me and Daniel Radcliffe as father and son.” As surprisingly successful as the first movie was, it also scored just 50% on the RT Tomatometer, and that’s pretty much the sole reason this is Rotten. We can agree with Michael Caine that “Harry Potter” could play his son… just not in this movie. We also have yet to reach the point where Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson stories aren’t included together, because she and Daniel Bruhl are going to be in a Chile-set drama called Colonia, and we just did it.
Richard Matheson’s revisionist vampire novel I Am Legend was first published in 1954, but it wasn’t for another fifty years that it was adapted as a movie with that title. Which is not to say that it wasn’t adapted as a movie. First, there was The Last Man on Earth (in 1964, starring Vincent Price), and then there was The Omega Man (in 1971, starring Charlton Heston). This week, after years of development as both a prequel and/or a sequel, Warner Bros’ plans for following up on the Will Smith I Am Legend took a new turn. The studio has decided to turn a spec script called A Garden at the End of the World by former Apple Store employee Gary Graham into a new adaptation of Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend. That alone is not such a crazy idea, because that most recent movie already made several changes to Matheson’s basic story. As for why we’re calling this a Rotten Idea, it’s pretty simple: why can’t Gary Graham’s script just be adapted for what he clearly intended it to be (an original idea)? When Warner Bros first acquired it, A Garden at the End of the World was described as being a “a sci-fi version of John Wayne’s The Searchers.”
This was a very big week for Netflix, and their inevitable plans to branch from “TV shows” to “movies.” First, there was the announcement for the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon sequel, which now has the full title of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: The Green Legend. We’ve known for a while that the sequel was being produced by The Weinstein Company, but what was much less expected was that the sequel will premiere exclusively on Netflix (and in selected IMAX theaters). This is also something of a big deal for the Weekly Ketchup, because our rule has always been not to (knowingly) cover “direct to video” movies, but where does “direct to Netflix” fall in that definition? This announcement was also closely followed by news of a boycott from AMC, Regal, and Cinemark, which account for the majority of IMAX theaters in the USA. You can (figuratively) smell the tension in a quote like this one: “No one has approached us to license this made-for-video sequel in the U.S. or China, so one must assume the screens IMAX committed are in science centers and aquariums.” Truthfully, this isn’t the Rotten part of this story. No, that came later in the week, when Netflix also announced the online streaming service has signed a four movie deal with Adam Sandler. If Sandler (and his contemporaries) start making deals with services like Netflix to bypass theaters, what does that mean for the future of movies? Will there even be certain genres at the cineplex ten years from now? Or… was Adam Sandler inevitably going to start making “direct to video” movies soon anyway, and this is just how it happens?
You know how we remarked earlier about Hollywood’s continued attempts at “making video game movies happen” (not in those exact words, admittedly, which we saved… for this story)? Well, this one is sort of the example that defines the trend. Threshold Entertainment, the company that had early success back in the 1990s with the video game adaptation Mortal Kombat, is now trying to repeat it with, of all things, Tetris. Apparently well aware of how dumb — no, stupid — no, let’s go with… “ridiculous” a Tetris movie sounds, Threshold CEO Larry Kasanoff remarked, “This isn’t a movie with a bunch of lines running around the page. We’re not giving feet to the geometric shapes.” Instead, the Tetris movie will be “a very big, epic sci-fi movie,” because that worked so well the last time that approach was applied to an adaptation of a non-narrative game. To be clear, it’s possible to be entertained by Tetris: The Movie, but… only as the already existing fan-made spoof trailer.
For more Weekly Ketchup columns by Greg Dean Schmitz, check out the WK archive, and you can contact GDS via Facebook.
