Hollywood has mostly taken the week off for Thanksgiving, so that they can all enjoy their vegan turduckens down by the pool, no doubt. Nature abhors a vacuum however (even Hollywood follows MOST of the laws of physics), and so even in a light week there’s still news to report, such as franchise news for Zombieland, Kull and The Howling, and casting news for The A-Team, UFO and Thor.
Talking to Ruben Fleischer, the director of Zombieland, Moviehole reported this week that Fleischer is expecting that Zombieland 2 will not only happen for sure sometime in the next few years, but that it will be filmed in 3D, following the latest cinematic trend. Sony is reportedly “very interested” in doing a sequel and the cast are already all on board (although they’re going to have to explain Abigail Breslin’s likely growth spurt). Part of what is holding back the sequel, however, is that Fleischer apparently hasn’t yet decided exactly what Zombieland 2 will actually be about. Woody Harrelson apparently was quoted as saying he’d like to see it set either in Paris or on Broadway, but there’s a very strong chance he was just kidding about both ideas. Both ideas do boggle the mind, however. Would the rules appear on screen in Francais in the sequel, or perhaps would each one be accompanied by a little song and dance number?
A few weeks ago, the news broke that Dwight Schultz, who played Murdock in the original A-Team TV series, would be filming a cameo role in next summer’s movie version. Now, Dirk Benedict, who also costarred in the series as “Face” Peck, has also let the Internet know that he’s also heading to Vancouver to film a cameo role. This is a nice bone to throw to Dirk Benedict, who is probably still stinging from seeing himself turned into a girl in the Sci-Fi remake of Battlestar Galactica. Dying in 1994 rules out a cameo role for George Peppard (well, that probably rules him out, unless Fox wants to CGI his archived face onto some extra’s body), and so that just leaves Mr. T as the only remaining living member of the original cast whose cameo status is currently unknown. If Fox can entice he of the many gold necklaces to stop filming World of Warcraft commercials for a few minutes, it would be nice to see entire living cast represented, since otherwise, it’s just going to seem a little weird not having the one actor that people most identify with the show not participating.
Joshua Jackson has found post-Dawson’s work on Fox’s we-swear-we’re-not-The X-Files science fiction procedural show Fringe, and he’s now signed on to star in a movie version of another science fiction show. It’s likely one that most of you have never heard of (which I say because I only know about it through writing the Weekly Ketchup). According to Variety, UFO was a “cult hit in the 1970s,” but apparently only in the UK, because I don’t remember it ever being on in the USA. Anyway, the setting of the show was a near future (1980) when Earth is being attacked by aliens from a dying planet, and so a secret international agency called SHADO (Supreme Headquarters Alien Defence Organisation) has been formed to deal with the situation. (You know the show is British because of the way they spell that last “Organisation”!) The clever conceit of the show is that SHADO uses a British film studio as its cover, and that film studio was actually the place that went on to become known as Pinewood Studios (where Star Wars was later filmed), so their own film studio doubled as the fictional film studio in the show. Anyway, Joshua Jackson will star as Paul Foster, a test pilot who joins SHADO. Matthew Gratzner, a visual effects supervisor who has worked on movies like Iron Man and Martin Scorsese’s upcoming Shutter Island, will make his directorial debut on UFO, which is looking to start filming this spring in the U.K. (possibly at Pinewood Studios?).
Kat Dennings, the star of Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist, has joined the castof Thor, although unlike most of the other recent cast announcements, this one isn’t likely to bother any comics fans about departures from the source material. The reason for that is that Dennings will be playing Darcy, a coworker of Jane Foster (to be played by Natalie Portman), and since there is no Darcy character (that I know of), there’s no reason for anyone to worry about anything. Unless you just don’t like Kat Dennings, I guess. The other bit of news that comes from this announcement is that in this movie version, Thor’s human alter ego of Donald Blake has been demoted from being a doctor to being just a medical student. This is probably a response to Chris Hemsworth age of 26, although apparently 26 is old enough to captain a spaceship in the future (albeit briefly) in Star Trek, but not old enough to be a doctor. I’ve also seen fan speculation that Kat Dennings might be playing Sif, but that part was actually already cast a while ago; Sif will be played by Jaimie Alexander (Kyle XY). Thor starts filming in January, 2010 and will be in theaters on May 20, 2011.
Paradox Entertainment, the production company that has the film rights to most of the works of Robert E. Howard is hard at work at getting the pulp author’s stuff in development, with Solomon Kane already wrapped, the Conan movie possibly filming in 2010 and Bran Mak Morn also in development. Now, the company has Conan’s fellow sword and sorcery hero Kull of Atlantis (AKA Kull the Conqueror) is in development as well. Actually predating the first published Conan story by three years, Kull’s adventures were also set (much) earlier than Conan’s, in the land of Atlantis that by Conan’s time had been under the sea for tens of thousands of years. Like Conan, Kull was a man who went through a series of different occupations that required a good sword hand a sense of adventure before eventually taking the throne of a powerful nation. In addition to comics published by both Marvel and Dark Horse, Kull the Conqueror was also the subject of a 1997 movie starring Kevin Sorbo and Tia Carrere, but this new movie will be a relaunch, and not a sequel starring Mr. Sorbo.
With The Twilight Saga: New Moon opening to $140 kazillion this past weekend, director Chris Weitz has a bit of an advantage at Summit Entertainment. So they have announced that they will be producing and releasing his next movie, although it won’t be featuring any vampires, werewolves or probably much in the way of young teen romance. The Gardener, which Weitz will direct from a script by Eric Eason (Manito), is the tale of “a hard-working immigrant who lives in Los Angeles and his efforts to protect his son.” Ah, but his VAMPIRE son, right? “There are no werewolves or vampires, just a Mexican gardener in Los Angeles,” Weitz said (ah, well, I thought I’d ask a second time just in case… sorry, Twilight fans!) Filming of The Gardener is scheduled to begin in March or April of 2010 in Los Angeles.
Judd Apatow, wearing his producer hat, and Universal Pictures have picked up three comedy pitches by Aziz Ansari, one of the stars of NBC’s Parks and Recreation. One of them is actually a spinoff of this summer’s Funny People, and is based on Ansari’s standup comic character of “Raaaaaaaandy” in that movie. Funny or Die also has clips of Ansari as Raaaaaaaandy for you to enjoy, but they are as “randy” as his name, so consider this a parental advisory for that link. The other two pitches were Let’s Do This, “a road movie about two guys who work for a motivational speaking company,” and an untitled project about a disgraced cosmonaut (to be played by Ansari) who is forced to return to space to clear his name. The pitches were made to Apatow and Universal by Ansari with his writing partner Jason Woliner, who will also direct all three movies. Woliner has no feature film experience, but he did direct most episodes of the Human Giant TV series, which also costarred Aziz Ansari.
IGN sat down this week with director Spike Lee about the many projects he’s known to have had in development, and the news on most of them is not particularly great. First there’s Inside Man 2, which Spike Lee says is ready to go whenever Universal gives the project a green light, but that hasn’t happened yet, “Denzel’s ready. Clive Owen’s ready. I’m ready. Jodie’s ready. Everyone’s ready. It’s like, ‘Coach, put us in!” That’s the most promising of the movies discussed in the piece. Next up is Save Us, Joe Louis, Lee’s long-in-development movie project about boxer Joe Louis, which was written by Budd Schulberg (On the Waterfront), who died recently at the age of 95. Spike Lee had promised Schulberg that the movie would get made, but Lee says, “I’ve been unable to get the financing.” Financing is also what’s holding back Lee’s plans for biopics about both singer James Brown and baseball star Jackie Robinson. Finally, yet another project that Spike Lee has had to scrap is his plan to direct a documentary about basketball great Michael Jordan. Spike Lee’s a talented director who has taken a lot of chances in the past, and so the news that so many of his projects have been either scrapped or effectively scrapped because of a lack of financing earns this story the tag of a “Rotten Idea,” on behalf of all the producers who have turned Lee down.
This weekend as the amazing box office numbers for The Twilight Saga: New Moon rolled in, Variety broke the news that the executive producers of the classic werewolf franchise that started with 1981’s The Howling have signed a deal with independent producers to develop a relaunch for the series in the form of The Howling: Reborn. Based upon a novel by Gary Brandner, the premise of The Howling was that a psychiatrist’s country “colony” for his patients was actually the home of a group of werewolves, some of which were quite sexy too. The Howling was a hit with horror fans and inspired six sequels, although most of them were nowhere near as great as Joe Dante’s original film. The Howling: Reborn will be mark the feature directorial debut of Joe Nimziki, whose background is as a studio marketing executive for MGM, Sony and New Line Cinema, and Nimziki will be directing from his own script. Filming will start in February, and the producers are aiming for a release in time for Halloween, 2010. However, what isn’t known is what the movie will actually be about. The Howling: Reborn makes the Rotten Idea list this week because it just seems like an attempt to quickly cash in on whatever new interest there might be in werewolves because of New Moon. And worse yet, it’s from producers who have already shown with the many previous Howling movies that living up to the genuine quality of Joe Dante’s original film isn’t necessarily a high priority.
The video game Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune has a lot of goodwill among fans, and so when it was announced that Sony was moving fast on a movie adaptation, the reaction and anticipation was generally quite favorable. This week’s news might be a lesson, however, about not hoping something happens too quickly. The writer that they originally hired, Kyle Ward (writer of the upcoming Kane & Lynch movie), apparently told Sony that he would need a year to turn in his draft due to his commitments to Hitman 2, so Sony has instead hired the writing team of Thomas Dean Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer. This is where the news gets rotten, as two of the three movies that they have written are A Sound of Thunder and Sahara, both of which were considered critical flops (this writer remembers the time when Sahara was seen as a potential franchise starter for the Dirk Pitt character). Another upcoming movie that Donnelly and Oppenheimer has written is the reboot of Conan the Barbarian, which doesn’t bode too well for that potential franchise either. Anyway, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune is the story of Nathan Drake, a descendant of explorer Sir Francis Drake, who has learned the whereabouts of the famed golden city of El Dorado. And because Sony’s decision to rush into production has led them to hiring writers with a spotty record, it’s this Week’s most Rotten Idea.
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.
