This week’s Ketchup includes movie development news stories for the almost requisite (these days) superhero movies like Justice League, Doctor Strange, and Ant-Man, as well as new roles for Anna Kendrick, Jared Leto, and Keanu Reeves.
This Week’s Top Story actually started over six months ago, when Jason Momoa was announced as being in talks to costar in the Batman/Superman movie. At that time, the expectation was that he was playing a villain of some sort, or maybe Martian Manhunter. Lots of guesses were made. What makes movie news from December news now is that it wasn’t until this week that we found out what role Jason Momoa is actually playing (both in that movie and future films, like 2017’s Justice League). First off, keep in mind that we’re talking about the muscular actor who played Khal Drogo on Game of Thrones, and was also starred in the reboot of Conan the Barbarian. Okay, got that in mind? Now picture that guy as Aquaman. Born in Hawaii, Momoa is a well-known surfing enthusiast, so we at least know he likes to be in the water a lot. Lingering in the background as a reason why Warner Bros might want to snag a muscular, brunette, surf-loving actor like Jason Momoa is the rumor that Universal Pictures might be stealth planning on releasing Namor: The Sub-Mariner on November 4, 2016. First published in 1939, Sub-Mariner was a popular comic book character that predated the 1941 introduction of Aquaman by two years. Both Aquaman and Namor are Atlantean-human hybrid rulers of the underwater Kingdom of Atlantis. One reason Aquaman is more famous 70 years later, is probably because of Super Friends, and other TV shows like Smallville (Sub-Mariner was one of the stars of the short-lived 1966 Marvel Super Heroes animated TV series). Namor: The Sub-Mariner, like Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, and X-Men, is one of those Marvel characters whose rights are still held by a studio other than Marvel/Disney. In other WB/DC rumors, there was also one this week about Ben Affleck starring in a solo movie called The Batman to be scheduled for 2019 after Affleck wraps his next directorial effort, Live By Night, scheduled for October 7, 2016.
Lucasfilm and Walt Disney Pictures have been busy of late, landing young “rising star” directors for two of their Star Wars spin off projects (namely, Gareth Edwards and Josh Trank). This week, another such director joined their ranks by landing the job on Star Wars Episode VIII. That writing and directing job, as well as an initial treatment, for Star Wars Episode IX, has gone to Rian Johnson, the director of Looper. Initial reports had Rian Johnson also directing Star Wars Episode IX, but that was quickly debunked (like, within a few minutes). The rather ambitious release schedule appears, for now, to have the “Episode” movies released in Decembers of odd years, and the “spin offs” in Decembers of even years. In other words, Star Wars Episode VIII is scheduled for December of 2017 and Star Wars Episode IX is scheduled for December of 2019. Of course, that’s also six years from now, and things could easily change (a lot) by then.
This week, there were a few different news items we can string together by their relation to Marvel’s Doctor Strange. First off, there is that film’s director, Scott Derrickson (Sinister, The Exorcism of Emily Rose), who has signed with MGM to cowrite their long-in-development adaptation of the 1960s science fiction anthology TV series The Outer Limits. Derrickson and Sinister cowriter Robert Cargill will be adapting the classic short story “Demon with a Glass Hand” by Harlan Ellison, which was adapted as one of the episodes of the original TV series. Going back to Doctor Strange directly, we also learned this week that Marvel Studios is negotiating with Prometheus cowriter Jon Spaihts to work on a new draft Doctor Strange, post-Derrickson’s-hiring. Finally, here’s the most tangentially related of the three, and that’s only because Jared Leto is one of several actors reportedly in the running for the role (along with Benedict Cumberbatch and Tom Hardy). Jared Leto is now in talks with Legendary Pictures to star in the science fiction film Brilliance, following the recent departure of Will Smith, who had previously been attached to star in the film. Smith left Brilliance so that he could star in a “NFL concussion” drama for director Ridley Scott, who is also producing Brilliance.
When Edgar Wright departed Marvel’s Ant-Man, and Adam McKay came aboard to write a new draft, one thing that may have changed is the film’s villain. Right now, we don’t know for sure if such a thing did or didn’t happen. But, we do know that this week, there were a couple of different online stories purporting to know details about the Ant-Man villain. The earliest Ant-Man (and Giant-Man) stories featured the introductions of several villains who went on to become fairly classic Marvel villains (like Black Knight, Whirlwind, and the Porcupine… okay, maybe not *that* classic). However, most of them went on to become villains for the Avengers, or other superheroes, and eventually, Ant-Man wasn’t left with much of a rogue’s gallery at all, unless you count Egghead. We already knew that Corey Stoll and Patrick Wilson had been cast in the film in unknown roles, and if this week’s reports are correct, we now know who they will be playing. Reportedly, Stoll has been cast as industrialist Darren Cross, and Patrick Wilson will play his cousin William Cross, who is also known in the comics as the assassin Crossfire. There was also a rumor this week that the “real” villain of Ant-Man will be Yellowjacket, which leads to even more questions, as Yellowjacket was one of the alter-egos of Hank Pym (ie, Michael Douglas) (in particular, Yellowjacket was the costume Hank was wearing when this happened). What complicates things is that Yellowjacket has also been the identity of other characters, so the movie might have a completely different Yellowjacket (like maybe Darren Cross wears the suit, to shrink down and fight Ant-Man on his own level?).
Another movie to get more than one news story this week was Universal Pictures’ Straight Outta Compton, the true story of rap group N.W.A. First off, there was the casting of the group’s most famous members, with Marcus Callendar playing Dr. Dre, Jason Mitchell playing Eazy E, and Ice Cube’s son O’Shea Jackson Jr. playing Ice Cube himself. This news was soon followed by the announcement of a release date of August 14, 2015. And that’s the point at which this story gets highjacked by another Universal project, because that was formerly the release date for the fifth Bourne movie, which has now been moved to July 15, 2016. And that led to a new, late-breaking rumor just as we went to press that the movie was held back a year to help entice Matt Damon to return to the franchise.
Anna Kendrick, costar of Pitch Perfect and the upcoming sequel Pitch Perfect 2, has been cast as the lead character in DreamWorks Animation’s adaptation of the long-running doll franchise Trolls (yes, those Trolls). Anna Kendrick will voice “Poppy,” a “relentlessly upbeat princess” who goes off on a wacky adventure to discover the secrets of why trolls have “gravity-defying hair.” Yes, really. Right now is where you ask why this is a Fresh Development. Well, we’re grouping stories together in a busy week, and the second half of DreamWorks’ week concerned Steven Spielberg. Namely, that we now know the release dates of his next two films as director: The untitled U2 spy plane drama will be released on October 16, 2015; the children’s book adaptation The BFG will be released on July 1, 2016; and Trolls will be released on November 4, 2016.
This week, Keanu Reeves replaced Daniel Craig as the star of the courtroom drama The Whole Truth for the director of the indie hit Frozen River, Courtney Hunt. The project was previously scheduled to start filming in April, but Daniel Craig pulled out of the project just four days before the first day of filming. Keanu Reeves joins Renee Zellweger, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, and Gabriel Bosso in the story of an attorney fighting to get his teenage client “acquitted of murdering his wealthy father.” There’s a very good chance that the indie producers are hoping to get The Whole Truth wrapped in time for a premiere at Sundance in January of 2015.
This movie actually could have been covered back in March when the Weinstein Company acquired the rights, but at that time, this writer was unsure if the movie would get a theatrical release. Now, we know, and the choice of January 16, 2015 (when a lot of Rotten movies are released) doesn’t instill much more confidence. The movie we’re talking about is the animated foosball comedy Underdogs, which now has a trailer that you can “enjoy.”
Something that sometimes happens when much-ballyhooed projects get delayed is that a while later, another studio starts developing their own similar movie. So, now that it looks like David Fincher’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea for Walt Disney Pictures is delated indefinitely, hey, here’s a completely different Captain Nemo movie! This one came to Sony Pictures as a pitch from the team of Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, who are best known for their years on TV’s Smallville, but they also worked on such Rotten films as Herbie: Fully Loaded, Hannah Montana: The Movie, and most recently, I Am Number Four. Speaking of movies about the same subject, this week, we found out there are are now two movies about “drug subs” (the practice in which drug smuggling cartels use submarines to get to the USA). Antoine Fuqua’s Narco Sub was joined in competition this week by Hyperbaric, from Tomorrow Never Dies director Roger Spottiswoode. Neither film has started filming yet, so this race is definitely just beginning.
Back in August of 2013, the news broke that Warner Bros was planning on rebooting the classic 1970s cartoon Scooby-Doo as an animated film, and we called it a Fresh Development because of, well, mostly nostalgia, probably. With this week’s news that the Scooby-Doo reboot will just be another live action film (after we already had two of those in 2002 and 2004). It also didn’t help the Fresh or Rotten nature of this story much that it broke on June 17, two days after the passing of Casey Kasem, AKA the voice of Shaggy in the cartoons. Rest in Peace, Casey.
For more Weekly Ketchup columns by Greg Dean Schmitz, check out the WK archive, and you can contact GDS via Facebook.
