TAGGED AS: Film, films, movie, movies, news
This week’s Ketchup brings you more headlines from the world of film development news, covering such titles as Beverly Hills Cop 4, The Crow, and Fast 10.
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The 1994 goth comic book adaptation The Crow (Certified Fresh at 85%) was a pop culture sensation at the time, partly because the on-set death of its star Brandon Lee cast a shadow over the film similar to the one left by Heath Ledger over The Dark Knight. Attempts at sequels with other actors were made in 2000 (Rotten at 20%) and 2005 (Rotten at 0%) with less than desirable results. Various producers have been trying to reboot The Crow since 2005, including a period when Jason Momoa was reportedly being considered. Now, 28 years after the first film and 17 years after the third, we finally have a new actor enlisted to reboot The Crow, and all signs suggest that this time the reboot will actually happen. The new actor cast as Eric Draven, aka the Crow, is Bill Skarsgard, who is probably best known for his portrayal of Pennywise the Clown in IT (Certified Fresh at 86%) and IT Chapter Two (Fresh at 62%). The Crow reboot will be directed by Rupert Sanders, whose filmography includes the fairy tale retelling Snow White and the Huntsman (Rotten at 49%) and the live-action adaptation of the anime classic Ghost in the Shell (Rotten 43%). The fiancee character that drives much of the motivation behind The Crow will be portrayed by British singer FKA Twigs in a role that is reportedly being upgraded to more of a “co-lead” alongside Skarsgard.
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On one hand, there are certain casting reveals that trailers are almost certainly going to confirm (one recent example was the reveal of Alfred Molina as Doc Ock returning in the Spider-Man: No Way Home trailers), but sometimes, actors will reveal things in interviews that could arguably be considered spoilers. We’re going to guess that this week’s reveal by Jason Momoa about Fast 10 (5/19/2023) is in the former category. Talking about joining the Fast and the Furious franchise as a new villain to Entertainment Tonight, Momoa said, “He’s amazing. He’s ornery. He’s misunderstood… I get to shoot with some really cool people that I have never… I get to work with Charlize [Theron] first up, which I’m really excited about… She’s amazing.” The reveal here, of course, is that Charlize Theron is apparently returning for Fast 10 after appearing in the two previous films as Cipher in The Fate of the Furious (Fresh at 67%) and F9 (Rotten at 59%). It wasn’t too big of a surprise, considering her character survived the last film and escaped, but her role hadn’t been officially confirmed yet. The other known new cast member in Fast 10 will be Daneila Melchior, who is probably best known for playing Ratcatcher 2 in The Suicide Squad (Certified Fresh at 90%) last year.
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It’s now been about two and a half years since we first heard that Netflix was developing Beverly Hills Cop 4 with Eddie Murphy expected to return. At the time, the directors of Bad Boys for Life (Certified Fresh at 76%) were expected to direct Beverly Hills Cop 4. What changed in that period, however, is that those directors, Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, have since switched instead to the Disney+ series Ms. Marvel and the DC Comics Batgirl movie for HBO Max. We now know that the director that Netflix has recruited to replace them is Mark Molloy, a director of commercials for companies like Apple, who will be making his feature film debut with Beverly Hills Cop 4. It is not yet known if anyone else from the franchise might join Eddie Murphy in the fourth film, nor do we know who will make up the new cast members.
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A24 has established something of a following based on both its various horror films (The Witch, Hereditary, Midsommar) and its prestige awards-friendly films like The Tragedy of Macbeth, Uncut Gems, and The Farewell. One new film project that we can probably add to the latter category is The Governesses, the second film from writer/director Joe Talbot, who made his debut in 2019 with The Last Black Man in San Francisco (Certified Fresh at 92%). To play the three title characters, A24 and Talbot have enlisted three young actresses who have all starred or co-starred in recent much-talked-about projects: HoYeon Jung of Netflix’s Squid Game (and The Weeknd’s just-released music video for “Out of Time”), Renate Reinsve of the recent Norwegian Academy Award nominee The Worst Person in the World (Certified Fresh at 96%), and Lily-Rose Depp (Johnny Depp’s daughter and the co-star of films like Tusk, Yoga Hosers, Wolf, and the upcoming HBO series The Idol). Based upon a novel by Anne Serre, The Governesses will revolve around “three rebellious governesses who upend the household they work in – inspiriting the minds of the boys in their care, igniting the imaginations of the bohemian couple who employ them and abandoning their charges for erotic adventures.” Hoo boy. The Governesses will be filmed in Spain and was co-written by Talbot with poet and novelist Olivia Gatwood, who is best known for her book of feminist poems called The Life of the Party.
(Photo by Emiley Schweich/Everett Collection)
The cast of Christopher Nolan’s nuclear bomb biopic Oppenheimer continues to expand (not unlike a nuclear reaction), and we may be reaching the point where it’s easier to say who isn’t in the movie. To just give you a top ten, the cast so far includes Cillian Murphy (as J. Robert Oppenheimer himself), Emily Blunt, Kenneth Branagh, Matt Damon, David Dastmalchian, Dane DeHaan, Robert Downey Jr, Rami Malek, Florence Pugh, and Benny Safdie. We can now also add to that list Gary Oldman, who is reportedly only in one scene and “a page and a half” of screenplay, and also two young actors in Christopher Denham (Being the Ricardos) and Josh Zuckerman (The Offer). Oppenheimer is currently scheduled for release on July 21, 2023 by Universal Pictures.
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Every once in a while, an action star will figure out how to mix their physical gifts with a sense of humor about both themselves and the films in which they’re starring. As evidenced most recently by his work in The Suicide Squad (Certified Fresh at 90%) and its HBO spinoff series Peacemaker (Fresh at 94%), WWE-wrestler-turned-movie star John Cena has firmly established himself as one of those muscle-bound action stars with a sense of humor. For his next project, Cena will get another opportunity to showcase his comedy chops, as he will star in a police action comedy called Officer Exchange for Amazon Studios and Prime Video, in which he will play a “wrecking ball of a cop” named Shep who ends up in India where he must help a fellow Indian police officer “go up against a diamond-smuggling ring.” It’s not yet known whether or not Officer Exchange will actually be filmed in India, though it certainly sounds like it should be.
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When the film Finestkind was first announced in 2018, the stars were to have been Jake Gyllenhaal, Ansel Elgort, and Zendaya. Four years later, the project has now been picked up by Paramount+, and the stars are to be Tommy Lee Jones, Ben Foster (Hell or High Water), Toby Wallace, and Jenna Ortega (star of the recent horror films Scream and X). Trying to match up the cast, it appears likely that Tommy Lee Jones’ role wasn’t cast yet in 2018, and that the other three line up as Jake Gyllenhaal to Ben Foster, Ansel Elgort to Toby Wallace, and Zendaya to Jenna Ortega. Finestkind will be directed by writer-director Brian Helgeland (A Knight’s Tale, 42) when it starts filming later this month on location at the fish ports of Massachusetts. Initially described as a crime drama in 2018, the emphasis now appears to be more on a story of commercial fishermen (a la recent Best Picture winner CODA), though the premise still has crime elements, as it revolves around two brothers who strike a deal with a Boston crime syndicate that involves a young woman (Ortega) who gets caught in the middle. Finestkind is expected to debut on Paramount+ in late 2022, possibly as part of this year’s “awards season.”
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It’s not yet clear if the film in question is a May-December romance, but Liam Hemsworth (age 32) and Laura Dern (age 55) are now attached to star in romantic drama for Netflix called Lonely Planet. It’s also unknown if the title refers to the Lonely Planet series of travel books (both it and Hemsworth are Australian, incidentally), but the project being filmed and set in Morocco suggests that might be the case. Not much else is known right now about the film’s premise, except that it will be directed by Susannah Grant, who directed two episodes of Unbelievable, and who also wrote such films as Steven Soderbergh’s Erin Brockovich (Certified Fresh at 85%) and the Sandra Bullock romance 28 Days (Rotten at 33%), and co-wrote the 2006 Charlotte’s Web (Certified Fresh at 78%) and Disney’s Pocahontas (Rotten at 55%).
(Photo by Karwai Tang, Matthias Nareyek/Getty Images)
French actor Omar Sy has appeared in several Hollywood productions like X-Men: Days of Future Past (Certified Fresh at 90%) and Jurassic World (Fresh at 71%), but he’s probably still best known for his 2011 French comedy hit The Intouchables (Certified Fresh at 75%), which was remade six years later as The Upside (Rotten at 43%). Sy’s profile may rise higher with his latest project, which will be an action thriller called Shadow Force, starring alongside Kerry Washington. Shadow Force will be directed by Joe Carnahan (Narc, Boss Level) for Lionsgate and will tell the story of “an estranged couple with a bounty on their heads who must go on the run with their son to avoid their former employer, a shadow ops unit that has been sent to kill them.”
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We won’t get into the over-reported details about what happened during the Best Documentary Feature presentation at the Academy Awards (you probably already know anyway). Our focus instead will be a quick rundown of what effects “Slapgate” appear to be having on Will Smith’s future film projects. One of those projects is Fast and Loose, which was to have been an action thriller for Netflix with director David Leitch (Deadpool 2, Atomic Blonde). Reportedly before Slapgate even happened, Leitch had dropped out, and now Netflix has put the project on the “back burner” altogether, and Sony has also put Bad Boys 4 on pause as well. As for what Leitch will do next, the director is reportedly now preparing to film Fall Guy, starring Ryan Gosling, this fall, instead. Jojo Siwa has also exited the Will Smith-produced YA movie Bounce, although again, this is also being described as a decision that was made before Slapgate. As it currently stands, the one movie that Will Smith definitely still has coming (at some point) is the “runaway slave” true story Emancipation, which is already filmed and had been expected to be streamed on Apple+ this fall as part of awards season. Emancipation will also be the first film to test the Academy’s just-announced 10-year ban on Will Smith attending their events, because he remains eligible for Academy Award nominations (and wins) throughout that period.
