This week’s Ketchup brings you another 10 headlines from the world of film development news (the stories about what movies Hollywood is working on for you next), covering titles like The Dirty Dozen, Jackass 4, and Christopher Nolan’s Tenet.
(Photo by Warner Bros. Pictures)
Earlier this year, Warner Bros and director Christopher Nolan started the promotion of next year’s Tenet (7/17/2020) in surprisingly old-school fashion, by releasing a 45-second teaser only to theaters, attached to Hobbs & Shaw advance screenings. The last two weeks have obviously seen the online debuts of many 2020 films since they’re attached in theaters to either Cats or Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, but one film that was not expected this week was indeed Christopher Nolan’s Tenet. Previously thought to be something like a spy movie, Tenet now appears to be much more of a trippy Inception-style science-fiction thriller with time-manipulation elements, which also brings to mind The Matrix (also a Warner Bros. franchise that will return to theaters with The Matrix 4 on 5/21/2021). Warner Bros. has also attached a six-minute Tenet prologue to IMAX screenings of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, which you can read about right here. The stars of Tenet include John David Washington (BlacKkKlansman) and Robert Pattinson, who is also currently filming another big movie for Warner Bros., The Batman (6/25/2021).
(Photo by Jason Smith/Everett Collection)
Not counting the recent rerelease of his 2005 film Kinetta, Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos is in the midst of a run of critically acclaimed films including The Lobster (Certified Fresh at 88%) and last year’s The Favourite (Certified Fresh at 93%). Next up, Lanthimos is expected to direct a long-in-development crime drama based on the Jim Thompson novel Pop. 1280, but this week, he also boarded another project that dates back to the 1970s. Yorgos Lanthimos is now in talks to direct The Hawkline Monster, an adaptation of a novel by Richard Brautigan that combines elements of cowboy westerns and the gothic horror genre as two gunslingers investigate strange goings-on. The Hawkline Monster was a long-time project for director Hal Ashby (Being There, Harold and Maude) until his death in 1988, and the actors he hoped to direct as the gunslingers included Jack Nicholson, Dustin Hoffman, and brothers Beau and Jeff Bridges. It’s not yet known whom Yorgos Lanthimos might cast, but one of his (relatively) frequent collaborators is Colin Farrell (The Lobster, The Killing of a Sacred Deer).
(Photo by @kumailn/Instagram)
When Kumail Nanjiani was first announced as being cast in Marvel’s The Eternals (11/6/2020), a safe assumption may have been that he would basically look a lot like we’ve seen him in other projects like The Big Sick, Stuber, and HBO’s Silicon Valley. After all, most previous Marvel Cinematic Universe stars look basically the same as they do in other previous movies (we’re looking at you, Paul Rudd). This week, Nanjiani took to Instagram to show off exactly what a year’s worth of Marvel-backed personal training and nutrition have done for him. (You can read about his training and diet here.) Nanjiani’s co-stars in The Eternals also include Angelina Jolie (Thena), Salma Hayek (Ajak), and Game of Thrones stars Richard Madden (Ikaris) and Kit Harrington (The Black Knight), but we haven’t heard yet about whether they’re that buff yet. [Ed. note: This story erroneously first reported that Kumail Nanjiani was playing Makkari in The Eternals. The mistake has been corrected.]
(Photo by Dee Cercone/Everett Collection)
Although it can sometimes feel like reboots, sequels, and superhero movies dominate the upper realms of studio output, the indie scene is still going, producing movies that are both original and based on other source material. For example, sometimes articles provide inspiration, as recently happened with Hustlers, which started as a New York Magazine piece. Just a year after her spectacular 2018 breakout (with Ocean’s Eight and Crazy Rich Asians), Awkwafina is already working on guiding her own path by producing new roles for herself, as she is now attached to produce and star in an untitled adaptation of this Topic.com article, titled, “How Chinese Food Fueled the Rise of California Punk.” The film will tell the true stories of how early Los Angeles punk bands in the 1970s were able to find unlikely allies in Chinese restaurants in cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco (for example, bands like Fear, The Bags, and X played at L.A.’s Hong Kong Cafe in June, 1979). It’s not yet known if Awkwafina will be playing one of the punk rockers, or one of the young promoters who connected these two otherwise disparate communities.
(Photo by Sean Cliver/©Paramount Pictures courtesy Everett Collection)
(Photo by Warner Bros. Pictures)
Despite the surprise worldwide box office success in 2014 of The LEGO Movie ($468 million), Warner Bros.’ subsequent attempts at LEGO movies were all relative disappointments, including this year’s The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part (despite being Certified Fresh at 85%). In the last several months, there has been little news from Warner Bros. about future LEGO movie plans (including a release date for the planned spinoff The Billion Brick Race), and now we know why. The LEGO Group has signed a new production deal with Universal Pictures to revive the franchise at a new studio, but with Warner Bros.-based producer Dan Lin still in charge. No titles have been announced for the new LEGO movie franchise, but one speculated premise involves Universal’s Jurassic World, which has also been a successful toy line for LEGO.
Whether it’s a straight up two-movie reboot of IT, the Shining sequel Doctor Sleep, or the rebooted CBS All Access mini-series version of The Stand, Hollywood is very much in the business these days of dusting off old properties based on Stephen King novels. King’s influence can also be felt in movies like Get Out and Netflix’s Stranger Things, the first season of which bore some narrative resemblance to King’s Firestarter. Drew Barrymore, then nine years old, starred in the 1984 movie version of Firestarter, but the movie was both a box office flop ($17 million from a budget of $12 million) and critically rejected (Rotten at 35%). The horror/thriller production company Blumhouse is moving forward with plans for a Firestarter reboot with the hire this week of director Keith Thomas whose first film was this year’s The Vigil (Fresh at 75%). Thomas will be working from a screenplay adapted from King’s original novel by screenwriter Scott Teems, who is currently working on next year’s horror sequel Halloween Kills (10/16/2020).
(Photo by Francois Duhamel/©Weinstein Company courtesy Everett Collection)
Just over two years ago, director Quentin Tarantino revealed one of the most surprising new projects of his career, which was that he had an idea for at least writing (if not himself directing) an R-rated Star Trek movie. At the same time, however, Tarantino has made it clear for a while now that he plans to retire from directing feature films with his tenth movie (which may or may not be Kill Bill Vol. 3). This week, Tarantino spoke to Consequence of Sound about his future plans and dropped something of a photon torpedo-sized news nugget, saying, “I think I’m steering away from Star Trek, but I haven’t had an official conversation with those guys yet.” Of course, we shouldn’t necessarily know what to read out of that statement, as Tarantino’s Star Trek project could possibly move forward under a different director, if what Tarantino actually meant is that he is stepping away from directing.
(Photo by Clay Enos / © Warner Bros.)
Although the original DC Comics team called Suicide Squad was actually introduced in 1959, the “reformed supervillains” concept we now know was first published in 1987, and from that very beginning, it was always pretty clear that the concept was inspired by the 1967 World War II movie The Dirty Dozen, as both The Dirty Dozen and Suicide Squad involved convicts given a second chance. This week, that throughline was cemented, as David Ayer (Suicide Squad, Bright, Training Day) has signed with Warner Bros. to write and direct a “contemporized remake” of The Dirty Dozen. The exact setting hasn’t been revealed for the remake, except that it will “be contemporary with a multi-cultural diverse cast.” It’s also worth noting that Ayer’s replacement on The Suicide Squad (8/6/2021), James Gunn, himself came to A-list fame by directing Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, which had something of a Dirty Dozen premise as well (Star-Lord, Rocket, and friends all first met in a cosmic prison). Although David Ayer has a few Fresh Tomatometer scores (four), he has twice as many Rotten scores.
(Photo by © Lionsgate)
At any given point in time, it always feels like the top target for nostalgia-driven reboots is somewhere between 20 and 30 years in the past, which should mean that the 1990s should be getting the most attention (though the 1980s sequels Ghostbusters: Afterlife and Top Gun: Maverick are both coming out next summer). Part of the reason why Hollywood is not committing as much to the 1990s just yet is that some of the recent 1990s retreads just didn’t “stick their landings.” One such example was 2017’s Power Rangers (Rotten at 51%), which earned just $85 million domestically from a $100 million budget. Paramount Pictures isn’t ready to give up on the notion of a Power Rangers franchise, however, as they are now already developing a new reboot. Paramount has enlisted the aid of director Jonathan Entwistle, who is currently best known as the showrunner of Netflix’s The End of the F—ing World. Despite that show’s Fresh Tomatometer (93%), Power Rangers, “Mighty Morphin” or otherwise, just aren’t beloved by critics, so this is going to be a tricky proposition.
