This week’s Ketchup includes new movies based upon Japanese imports Godzilla and Shogun Warriors, new roles for Angelina Jolie and Leonardo DiCaprio, and new movies for the directors of Wanted and Kick-Ass.
Harrison Ford became famous for playing Han Solo, and became even more famous for playing Indiana Jones. However, outside of those seven movies, Ford’s career has been pretty much devoid of science fiction (or fantasy) elements. Next summer, that will change as Harrison Ford has been cast in DreamWorks’ Cowboys & Aliens. Ford is joining the already cast Daniel Craig (Quantum of Solace) and Olivia Wilde (Year One, TRON: Legacy) in an unknown role, but it’s probably a good bet that he’s more of a cowboy than an alien. Cowboys & Aliens has been in development since at least 2002, but because Platinum Studios published a comic book version of the story in 2006, it’s now called a comic book adaptation. Cowboys & Aliens will be the first movie directed by Jon Favreau since he rocked to a new level of fame with Iron Man and next month’s Iron Man 2. Many screenwriters have worked on Cowboys & Aliens over the last 8+ years, but the current draft is by the team of Damon Lindelof (ABC’s LOST), Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci (the writing team of Star Trek and Transformers). Lindelof, Kurtzman and Orci are also working together on Star Trek 2. Cowboys & Aliens is starting filming this month in California, and is scheduled for release on July 29, 2011.
Damon Lindelof is not the only executive producer and writer of LOST to already be working on post-Island movie projects. Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz are a writing and producing team responsible for 20 episodes including several of the Hurley-centric stories (and next week’s episode). Hurley is the obligatory fanboy character on LOST (minor spoiler: when he ended up in 1977, Hurley tried to rewrite The Empire Strikes Back!). So it makes sense that Kitsis and Horowitz’s latest project for Disney is the third movie in the planned TRON trilogy (presuming TRON: Legacy is not a massive flop when it is released this December). Like the original 1982 film, TRON 3 will most likely be another adventure set within the world of video games, where human players fight alongside computer programs in games to the digital death. No details have been revealed yet about what Kitsis and Horowitz have planned for TRON 3, but they are expected to be crafting a story that will wrap up the TRON saga as a movie trilogy. TRON 3 is unlikely to get a greenlight until after the release of TRON: Legacy, but if that movie is indeed a hit, it’s possible that TRON 3 could be put into production in time for a release in 2012.
Marvel Studios made big deal making news last year when the comic book company was acquired by Disney. However, as part of the deal, a few of the existing properties that were already in development at Paramount (like Thor, The First Avenger: Captain America and Ant-Man) were not part of the deal (at least as far as them being distributed by Disney). One such high priority project is the adaptation of Brian K. Vaughn’s Runaways (not to be confused with The Runaways, about the 1970s all girl rock band). Brian K. Vaughn is yet another LOST writer/producer who made the news this week, having cowritten seven episodes, including a couple that are fan favorites. This week, Marvel entered into negotiations with Peter Sollett (Raising Victor Vargas, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist) to direct Runaways. Runaways was one of Marvel’s biggest original concept comic book hits of the 2000s, telling the story of six teenagers who are all the children of super villains. Each Runaway and their parents represent a different stereotype: a mad scientist, a mob boss, an alien, an evil wizard, a telepathic mutant and a time traveler (complete with a pet dinosaur). As a movie, The Runaways is being described as “The Breakfast Club with superheroes,” which is basically a fair way of describing it, as both share the idea of teens from different backgrounds becoming friends.
Walt Disney Pictures and ImageMovers (Monster House) are teaming up to coproduce an adaptation of an upcoming young adult novel called Dark Life by Kat Falls. ImageMovers boss Robert Zemeckis (Beowulf, Back to the Future) will be directing Dark Life, but it is currently unknown whether the movie will be CGI, live action or a combination of the two. This news comes just a few weeks after Disney announced plans to close ImageMovers Digital, the performance-capture studio where Zemeckis worked on movies like The Polar Express and A Christmas Carol. The last ImageMovers project will be Disney’s Mars Needs Moms, and the studio’s closure will apparently not impact Zemeckis’ CGI remake of Yellow Submarine. Dark Life is set in a near future Earth in which water levels have risen to the point where many people now live on the ocean floor. The result is that children manifest superpowers, and the story focuses on an underwater boy who teams up with a surface girl to take on a government conspiracy. Disney is hoping Dark Life will lead to a new family-friendly franchise.
Director Ruben Fleischer had one of 2009’s most memorable debuts with Zombieland, a zombie action comedy that sort of felt like an American Shaun of the Dead. Zombieland wasn’t perfect, but it was fun and displayed a nice visual flair, and whatever faults the film may have had (which were few) were probably more in the script than in Fleischer’s direction. In other words, he’s sort of the new anti-Kevin Smith. Fleischer was one of the younger directors mentioned recently as being considered for Mission: Impossible IV, but Fleischer instead is choosing to stay with material that sounds a little closer to his first film. 30 Minutes or Less is an action comedy about a pizza delivery guy (Danny McBride) who is forced to team up with a junior high history teacher (Aziz Ansari of NBC’s Parks and Recreation) in a bank heist when one of them (probably Ansari, I would guess) is strapped to a bomb vest. The 30 Minutes or Less script has the distinction of being one of last year’s Black List top unproduced scripts chosen by movie industry insiders (although it only came in at #71, so take that with a grain of salt). The writers of 30 Minutes or Less are Michael Diliberti and Matthew Sullivan, who are also working on the upcoming Brewster’s Millions remake. Filming of 30 Minutes or Less is scheduled to start this July in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
When Rowan Atkinson (Blackadder, Mr. Bean) starred in the James Bond spoof Johnny English in 2003, the box office reaction in the United States ($28 million total) basically would leave one to think that it was a massive flop. However, worldwide, Johnny English was much better received, earning a global sum of $160+ million (from a budget of $40 million). And so, even though the American audience might still have little interest in the concept, Universal Pictures and Working Title Films (Hot Fuzz, Smokin’Aces) are now developing Johnny English 2. Oliver Parker (An Ideal Husband, The Importance of Being Earnest) will direct Johnny English 2 from a script by Hamish McColl (cowriter of Mr. Bean’s Holiday). Rowan Atkinson will once again star as the title character, and filming is expected to start in the United Kingdom in August, 2010. One thing that has significantly changed since 2003 is that in 2006 James Bond was given a reboot, with Daniel Craig taking over the role in Casino Royale, ditching many of old cliches that Johnny English spoofed. The reason Johnny English 2 is one of this week’s Rotten Ideas has nothing to do with the box office performance of the original film in the USA. Instead, this is a Rotten Idea because Johnny English scored an average RT score of 33% from a pool of critics that includes dozens of international sources. So, the chances are that another Johnny English will probably repeat the same sort of lame slapstick jokes that go on for much too long, and likewise end up being just as Rotten of a movie as the first.
Taylor Kitsch first entered most moviegoers’ field of vision last year by playing Gambit in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and his first big starring role will be in the title role of Disney’s John Carter of Mars. And now, Kitsch has signed on for another big budget action movie, but this time around, he’s likely going to have to get a haircut. Or maybe not, since this is Battleship we’re talking about, and if you’re going to believe a movie based on a Milton Bradley boardgame, I suppose a male navy officer with long flowing locks could probably be part of the “movie magic” too. Battleship is part of Universal’s deal to make movies based upon Hasbro properties which also includes Candyland, Monopoly, Ouija Board and Stretch Armstrong. Battleship was adapted into a movie about an alien invasion at sea by brothers Jon and Erich Hoeber, who also wrote the comic book adaptations Whiteout and this fall’s Red. Taylor Kitsch landed the lead role as a “wildly spirited” U.S. Navy commander after Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker) dropped out so that he could instead costar in The Master, the new movie directed by Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights, There Will Be Blood). Tom Arnold has also landed an unknown role in Battleship, but he probably doesn’t play one of the alien invaders. Peter Berg (Hancock, Friday Night Lights) is directing, and Universal plans to start filming this summer in Australia, aiming for a release on May 25, 2012. This is one of this week’s Rotten Ideas because it is still an alien invasion movie based upon Battleship. It’s really just that simple.
One of the most famous examples of ultra-low budget “schlock” filmmaking is 1984’s The Toxic Avenger. The character went on to star in three sequels, an animated kids show, an Off-Broadway musical and become the mascot of sorts of Lloyd Kaufman’s Troma Entertainment. And now, The Toxic Avenger is being rebooted in an unexpected way, with big Hollywood money and producers to bring “Toxie” to theaters in a much bigger way. The Toxic Avenger is the story of a nerdy and scrawny janitor who falls into a vat of hazardous waste, transforming him into a grotesque monster who uses his new strength to fight evil, usually resulting in violent and over the top death scenes. Stylistically, The Toxic Avenger is sort of like what might have happened if the young John Waters had been more of a comic book and horror movie fan. In addition to Troma, the reboot’s producers include Akiva Goldsman (Hancock, Constantine) and Richard Saperstein (Se7en, The Mist). The reboot is aiming to transform The Toxic Avenger into an environmentally conscious, family friendly PG-13 action comedy similar to The Mask, which Saperstein worked on as an executive at New Line Cinema. The next step for the project is to find a screenwriter who can adapt The Toxic Avenger to match this new vision. The reason this reboot is one of this week’s Rotten Ideas is that the concept is a complete 180 degree turn from pretty every thing that The Toxic Avenger has ever been about: super cheap production values, exploitation-style violence and gore, gratuitious sexuality and political incorrectness. Of course, in addition to all of that, the Toxic Avenger movies are also mostly very rotten themselves, which means that even if this reboot was completely faithful to the original films, it would probably still be a Rotten Idea.
Although Avatar did quite well and was available in 3D, the movie that seems to be having the most immediate influence on the 3D explosion is 1983’s Jaws 3D. Piranha 3-D has already been filmed and will be released on August 27, 2010, and now a movie called Shark Night 3D is also prepping up to follow the trendsetting dorsal fin waves of Jaws 3D. Shark Night 3D will be directed by David R. Ellis, who has worked with animal casts before in Homeward Bound II and Snakes on a Plane. Ellis also has experience with 3D horror films, having directed last year’s The Final Destination (he also directed Final Destination 2). The premise of Shark Night 3D isn’t known yet, but it probably involves sharks swimming around at night in 3D (just a hunch). Shark Night 3D starts filming in Louisiana this summer, and it’s still being written by Jesse Studenberg (no credits yet) and Will Hayes, whose credits include writing episodes of Best Week Ever and Assy McGee. The animatronic sharks are being designed by Walt Conti, whose previous work includes the sharks in Deep Blue Sea and the giant snake in Anaconda. This is one of this week’s Rotten Ideas because it just smacks of being a relatively cheap ($28 million) cash in on the current fascination with the 3D fad. There’s also that very generic title and the non-existent premise that doesn’t even mention whether there will be any humans in Shark Night 3D, or if it will just be 90 minutes of sharks swimming around menacingly but not actually doing anything.
The rabid Internet fanbase of young female Taylor Lautner fans who loved The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D helped make his latest movie franchise a big hit. With Lautner added to the mix, The Twilight Saga: New Moon brought in $142 million its first weekend (the third highest opening weekend ever), and went on to bring in a global total of $706 million. The Twilight Saga did all that with a story of a girl who is romantically torn between a bloodthirsty zombie and a guy who transforms into a big furry dog monster (but it surely helps that Lautner is the one with all the creepy body hair). The third movie, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, has already been filmed and will be released on June 30, 2010, with Sharkboy once again starring to help ensure that fans of the water-breathing superhero will come back for this one too. And now, Summit Entertainment is preparing to begin production of the final two Twilight Saga films, adapting Stephenie Meyer’s Breaking Dawn into two movies that will be filmed back-to-back. In recent weeks, several high profile names have emerged as candidates to direct, and the director that is now in negotiations is Bill Condon. In addition to directing Dreamgirls, Condon has also directed the biopics Kinsey and Gods and Monsters (about James Whale, the director of Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein). Condon also got his start, perhaps most significantly to Breaking Dawn, by directing 1995’s Candyman 2: Farewell to the Flesh. Condon will need those horror movie chops, as the story of Breaking Dawn involves the heroine becoming pregnant with the spooky zombie’s love child, which then starts tearing her body apart from the inside, while also forming a telepath romance with the furry dog monster guy from within the girl’s womb. And people thought the premise of The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D was far-fetched. Anyway, the reason this is a Rotten Idea should be obvious, as it means that if Condon does sign on, we’ll have to wait a bit longer to see other movies from him. One project people have expressed anticipation for is Richard Pryor: Is It Something I Said?, a biopic about the 1970s comedian that will star Marlon Wayans. And of course, there’s always the possibility that Bill Condon might do another Candyman movie, which would probably be sort of Rotten as well, but at least it probably wouldn’t involve psychic half-zombie fetuses falling in love with furry dog boys.
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.
