This week’s Ketchup includes casting news for Christian Bale, Russell Crowe, Tom Cruise and Hugh Jackman, and movies based upon Ben 10 and Hot Wheels.
This summer marks the 10th anniversary of the release of the dinosaur sequel Jurassic Park III (and 18 years since the first Jurassic Park). In that decade since, the idea of a Jurassic Park IV remained popular with online fans, with the occasional rumor floating around to keep hopes up, including remarks from Jurassic Park III director Joe Johnston (whose next film will be Captain America: The First Avenger). The 2008 death of Michael Crichton, author of the two Jurassic Park novels, however, was seen as a major setback. Now, the director who got the whole franchise going, Steven Spielberg, is reportedly considering a return to Jurassic Park. Spielberg has been meeting with screenwriter Mark Protosevich (The Cell, Poseidon; cowriter of I Am Legend) to brainstorm ideas about how to revive the franchise with Jurassic Park IV. Universal Pictures is quick to stress that this doesn’t yet mean any deals are in place, but that Steven Spielberg is even considering Jurassic Park IV is the news here. Although the franchise had dwindling worldwide box office returns ($915 million, $619 million and $369 million), there is now a whole new audience who may have never seen a Jurassic Park movie in a theater. CGI has also come a long way since Jurassic Park in 1993 arguably was the first movie with CGI photorealistic animals. Of course, Dr. Ian Malcolm may have also given us a line in Jurassic Park that could also apply here, “Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”
When the original Superman was casting up in 1977, it was the role of Jor-El, father of Kal-El, that went to one of the biggest movie stars in the world at that point, Marlon Brando. So, for the reboot to be called Man of Steel, Warner Bros has likewise cast the role of Jor-El to an actor who is arguably the most famous star so far attached to the film, Russell Crowe. Crowe is younger (47) than Brando was at the time (53), and Henry Cavill (28) is older than Christopher Reeve was (25), but there’s still a 19 year difference between Cavill and Crowe. Besides, there’s the whole thing about Jor-El dying (probably not a spoiler) when Kal-El was an infant, anyway. The role of Lara, Kal-El’s mother, is also reportedly being cast, with Connie Nielsen (Russell Crowe’s Gladiator costar) possibly in talks. Harry Lennix, who played Commander Lock in the Matrix sequels, is also reportedly in talks for an unknown role. The Superman mythos is light on African American men, so there’s really no hint as to who Lennox might be playing (unless it’s someone like Perry White?). The other actors who have already been cast are Amy Adams as Lois Lane, Kevin Costner as Jonathan Kent, Diane Lane as Martha Kent, Michael Shannon as General Zod and Antje Traue as Faora. Director Zack Snyder (300, Watchmen) will begin filming Man of Steel this summer in Chicago and Vancouver from a script by David S. Goyer (Blade; cowriter of The Dark Knight). Warner Bros has scheduled Man of Steel for release sometime in December, 2012.
Director Tom Hooper’s next film after The King’s Speech will be an adaptation of the Claude-Michel Schönberg musical Les Miserables, based on the 1862 novel by Victor Hugo about the French Revolution. Although no deals or talks have officially begun yet, Hooper’s choice to play Valjean, a former prisoner who tries to reform his life, has been revealed to be Hugh Jackman. In addition to his film career which includes playing Wolverine in the X-Men movies, Hugh Jackman has performed in a number of musicals, including The Boy from Oz, for which he won a Tony. For the role of Javert, the relentless policeman who pursues Valjean, Hooper and Universal Pictures are reportedly in negotiations with Paul Bettany, who has already read for the role and sang songs from the musical hit. If casting goes well, the expectation is for filming to start somewhere in Europe by the end of 2011. Another factor that may need to be considered during Jackman’s talks with Universal also made the news this week. Following the departure of director Darren Aronofsky, the new director expected to sign on for The Wolverine is James Mangold. 20th Century Fox had been looking for another director with critical hits under his belt, and Mangold’s filmography which includes 3:10 to Yuma, Walk the Line and Girl, Interrupted seems to fit the bill.
After dropping out of The Wolverine, director Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan, The Wrestler) is now attempting to get one of his longtime dream projects about the Biblical story of Noah’s Ark going. Noah will be Aronofsky’s most expensive movie ever, with an estimated budget of $130 million. 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures and Summit Entertainment are the three studios currently considering Noah, but until this week, that $130 million budget didn’t include an actual movie star to sweeten the deal. So, Darren Aronofsky has started talks with Christian Bale about taking on the role of Noah. Noah is, of course, the story of a man who receives a mission from God to build an Ark in advance of an oncoming Great Flood, so that some humans and members of all types of animals (except unicorns and dragons, etc) may survive the catastrophe. Darren Aronofsky cowrote Noah with his frequent executive producer Ari Handel.
Peter Jackson and crew have been filming the two movies of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit in New Zealand for a while now. This week, we finally found out who will be playing two of the major non-Hobbit/Dwarf characters. English actor Luke Evans, who played Apollo in Clash of the Titans, has been cast as Bard the Bowman, who shares a few traits with Aragorn from Lord of the Rings. Bard the Bowman is there when Bilbo and the Dwarves take on Smaug the Dragon, who will be voiced by English actor Benedict Cumberbatch. Benedict Cumberbatch is best known for starring in the BBC reboot series Sherlock, and the actor who plays his Watson is Martin Freeman, who plays Bilbo in The Hobbit. Warner Bros will release The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey on December 14, 2012 and The Hobbit: There and Back Again on December 13, 2013.
With the Star Trek sequel now expected not to make its original summer, 2012 target date, Paramount Pictures has lately been working on other movies to take its place. One of those is World War Z, which at $125 million, is expected to be the first ever big budget zombie apocalypse movie (not counting I Am Legend, which didn’t spend much time on the actual outbreak). With filming starting this month in Scotland (posing as Philadelphia), casting is well underway. Matthew Fox (LOST, Speed Racer), Ed Harris (Apollo 13, The Truman Show), James Badge Dale (HBO’s The Pacific), and French actress Julia Levy-Boeken have all been cast, although in unspecified roles. They join the already cast Brad Pitt and Mereille Enos (The Killing, Big Love). World War Z is based upon the novel by Max Brooks, and tells a flashback heavy story from the perspective of the survivors of a zombie outbreak that resulted in billions of deaths and the destruction of the world’s governments. World War Z will be directed by Marc Forster (Quantum of Solace, Finding Neverland) from a script by Matthew Michael Carnahan (The Kingdom, Lions for Lambs) and J. Michael Straczynski (Changeling; cowriter of Ninja Assassin).
Cartoon Network and Warner Bros-based producer Joel Silver have signed an agreement to develop a live-action movie based upon the popular animated TV series Ben 10. The TV series is about a young boy with a watch called the Omnitrix created by an alien race that allows him to turn into ten different forms (ala DC Comics’ Dial H for Heroes), which he uses to become a superhero. The Ben 10 concept has also been adapted as a series of video games, a line of toys and two live action made-for-TV movies. In announcing the deal, the press release mentioned Joel Silver’s past successes with such films (and film franchises) as Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, The Matrix, Sherlock Holmes and (of all things) The Book of Eli. There’s no word yet as to who will be brought in to adapt the screenplay, direct or eventually star in Ben 10. This story is listed under Fresh Developments mostly because it is currently a borderline concept that could go either way.
Director Andrew Adamson’s four films to date were the first two movies each in the Shrek and The Chronicles of Narnia franchises. Now, Adamson is looking to return to CGI animation by producing an adaptation of the Dark Horse Comics title Beasts of Burden. In that comic, when their town is threatened by supernatural forces, a group of talking dogs team up with a talking cat to protect their town’s humans. Here are some sample pages from the comic. There’s no word yet as to who will be adapting the Beasts of Burden script. This is the part where a joke was going to be made about dogs and cats not being beasts of burden, but apparently, they sometimes are, depending upon how you define the term.
We’re now at the point where three Transformers movies have been made, but there’s another popular toy brand that’s been trying to get adapted for nearly 10 years now: Hot Wheels. This week, it was revealed that Warner Bros-based Legendary Pictures, the company behind The Dark Knight, Watchmen and The Hangover, is in negotiations with Mattel to adapt Hot Wheels as a movie. Hot Wheels is of course a line of toy cars (often based on real models) that started in 1968 and is possibly best known for the plastic tracks that allow kids to create 360 degree loops. Director McG and producer Joel Silver are among those who have tried to get a Hot Wheels movie going in the past. The success of the Fast and the Furious movies has also long been cited as a driving force behind the idea of a Hot Wheels movie. The continuing success of that Universal Pictures franchise with Fast Five has done nothing but keep Hot Wheels active and viable as a possible new franchise for Warner Bros. That studio (and producer Joel Silver) did try another racing movie a few years ago with Speed Racer. However, with Hot Wheels, Legendary Pictures is now reportedly looking to make a “dark and edgy” movie that seems to conflict with it being based on kids’ toys. Of course, the kids who have played with Hot Wheels for the last 40+ years are now adults. This is one of the Rotten Ideas of the week because, unlike Transformers or G.I. Joe, Hot Wheels is a toy that does not have an inherent story that would seem to make it a likely source for a narrative movie. Hot Wheels is literally just about kids racing little toy cars around plastic tracks.
Jack Reacher is a fictional former U.S. Army Military Police Major who has appeared in a series of novels by British author Jim Grant under the pen name of Lee Child. On the Wikipedia page for Jack Reacher, he is described as “a giant, standing at 6’5″ tall (1.96m) with a 50-inch chest, and weighing between 220 and 250 pounds (100?115 kg).” So, of course, when Paramount Pictures decided to make a movie based upon the novel One Shot, the star that naturally came to mind to play Jack Reacher was… Tom Cruise (who’s 5′ 7″). There’s no word yet if the idea is to employ any fancy camera tricks (ala the Hobbits in Lord of the Rings) to make Cruise appear on film to be a “giant” with an intimidating physicality, or if that element will just be dropped entirely. The latter appears most likely to be the case, as Lee Child has said this: “Reacher’s size in the books is a metaphor for an unstoppable force, which Cruise portrays in his own way.” One Shot will be directed by Christopher McQuarrie (The Way of the Gun) from his own script. McQuarrie’s credits as screenwriter include The Usual Suspects and cowriting Valkyrie (which starred Tom Cruise), and McQuarrie also has Jack the Giant Killer and The Wolverine coming soon. One Shot will introduce Jack Reacher, a professional drifter who gets in a series of misadventures as he investigates the case of a sniper who has murdered five victims before eventually being captured, in what Reacher soon discovers is not as simple a case it first appears. Filming is expected to start on One Shot sometime this year in Philadelphia before Tom Cruise goes on to star in the Universal Pictures science fiction film Oblivion with director Joseph Kosinski (TRON: Legacy). This is the week’s most Rotten Idea based almost entirely on the 10 inches that separate 5′ 7″ and 6′ 5″.
For more Weekly Ketchup columns by Greg Dean Schmitz, check out the WK archive, and you can contact GDS via Facebook or a RT forum message.
