This week’s Ketchup brings you another ten headlines from the world of film development news (those stories about what movies Hollywood is working on for you next). Included in the mix this time around are stories about such titles as Gears of War, Han Solo: A Star Wars Story, and Mulan.
With Marvel Studios, Pixar, and Star Wars all on their slate now, Walt Disney Pictures could probably be the #1 studio in some years even if they didn’t release any other films. Looking forward to the year 2018, it’s now almost a certainty, because that year will give us Wreck-It Ralph 2 (3/9/18), Toy Story 4 (6/15/18), the “Jack and the Beanstalk” adaptation Gigantic (11/21/18), and Mary Poppins Returns (12/25/18). Before this week, there were also three mystery films (including ones on 4/6/18 and 8/3/18), but we now know what the film scheduled for November 2, 2018 is going to be. It’s a surprise, too, because it’s one of the films that, until this week, wasn’t known to be on Disney’s “fast track.” Specifically, we’re talking about a live-action remake of Mulan, based on the Chinese legend of Hua Mulan, a warrior heiress who takes her father’s place in the army before a great war, and we can make a couple of guesses as to why it’s been scheduled. One is that the year 2018 marks the 20th anniversary of the film, which debuted in 1998. Secondly, Sony Pictures announced last month that they are also developing a live action Mulan movie. Walt Disney Pictures is now beginning an international casting search to find an actress to star as Mulan. In the meantime, the screenwriting team of Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver (Rise of the Planet of the Apes; cowriters of Jurassic World) have been rehired to rewrite the Mulan screenplay to get it ready for filming to start in 2017 in time for its release in late 2018. Jaffa and Silver are also working with James Cameron on his Avatar sequels (the first of which is also scheduled for late 2018). In other Disney news for late 2018, Emily Mortimer was cast this week as the adult Jane Banks in Mary Poppins Returns, joining Ben Whishaw (as her brother Michael), Lin-Manuel Miranda (as a lamplighter), and Emily Blunt as the title character.
One of the consequences of Disney’s acquisition of Lucasfilm was that in April, 2014, it was revealed that the extensive Star Wars Expanded Universe of stories and characters from hundreds of games and novels was no longer considered “canon.” That did, however, pave the way for a new Star Wars line of stories (and new characters) which already numbers in the dozens. One of those new characters was revealed in late 2015, as comic book readers learned that Han Solo may have had a wife, many years before Princess Leia, named Sana Starros. Sana Starros is also depicted in the comics as being a “person of color,” which leads us to this week’s big Star Wars news. Now that Alden Ehrenreich (Hail, Caesar!) has been cast as the young Han Solo, Lucasfilm is testing actresses for the female lead in his prequel spinoff. There may be others, but three of the actresses who have tested for the role are Tessa Thompson (Selma, Valkyrie in next year’s Thor: Ragnarok), Zoe Kravitz (Angel Salvadore in X-Men: First Class), and Naomi Scott (the Pink Ranger in next year’s Power Rangers). Lucasfilm is also looking for the new Lando Calrissian, who might be Donald Glover (from TV’s Community), but Disney wants to complete “a second round of tests to be certain on their decision.” Whomever the female lead actually is (and what character she’s playing), Walt Disney Pictures and Lucasfilm have scheduled the Han Solo spinoff prequel for May 25, 2018 (the week after How to Train Your Dragon 3 on May 18, 2018, and two weeks before Transformers: Bumblebee and Ocean’s Eight). Han Solo: A Star Wars Story (tentative title) will be directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the directors responsible for 21 Jump Street and The LEGO Movie.
There have been various efforts in the last several years to somehow tell the story of inventors Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla, their conflict as both employer/employee, and later as the brainiacs on either side of the famous dispute over what sort of electrical current would become the worldwide standard (direct or alternating). Nikola Tesla’s alternating current patents were purchased by George Westinghouse, and with that, it became Westinghouse who took on Edison “directly.” Benedict Cumberbatch (Doctor Strange) has been attached for a while to star in The Current War as Thomas Edison, and last week, Michael Shannon began negotiations to costar as his competitor George Westinghouse. Now, just a week later, we can report that Nicholas Hoult (Mad Max: Fury Road, Beast in the newer X-Men movies) is officially in talks to play Nikola Tesla. Hoult’s involvement effectively means that the three stars represent the three biggest ongoing super hero concerns (Hoult from Fox’s X-Men movies; Cumberbatch being Marvel’s Doctor Strange; and Michael Shannon being DC’s General Zod from Man of Steel). The Current War will be directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon (Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, The Town That Dreaded Sundown), and as the Weinstein Company’s take on the Edison/Tesla competition, it should not be confused with The Last Days of Night, a similar film that has Eddie Redmayne attached to star as Westinghouse’s lawyer.
The Golden Age of Superhero Comics (roughly 1938 to 1945) has plenty of fascinating true stories, but one of the standout figures is Wonder Woman creator William Moulton Marston. In addition to creating DC Comics’ most famous female superhero, Marston was also a psychologist and the inventor of one of the earliest “lie detector” devices. On top of all that, Marston also lived with both his wife and his mistress at the same time for several years. If the thought bubble above your head currently reads, “Gee, that sounds like the basis for a movie,” Sony Pictures is way ahead of you, with a film to be called Professor Marston and the Wonder Woman. Luke Evans (Dracula Untold) has been cast as William Moulton Marston, with his wife (and fellow inventor) Elizabeth Marston to be played by Rebecca Hall, and young mistress Olive to be played by Bella Heathcote. (You can read more about their three-way relationship in this piece by The Atlantic.) Sony Pictures has not yet announced a release date for Professor Marston and the Wonder Woman, but it sounds feasible that the studio hopes to release it next year, when Wonder Woman itself will also be released (on 6/2/17).
Angelina Jolie has been making the news aplenty lately, but there was actually a story this week that has much less to do with her costar from Mr. and Mrs. Smith. It’s also one of two items this week about movies set during the war in Afghanistan. Angelina Jolie is now in talks with Sony Pictures to star in an adaptation of the upcoming memoir Shoot Like a Girl: One Woman’s Dramatic Fight in Afghanistan and on the Home Front. The film will tell the true story of Major Mary Jennings Hegar, who served multiple tours as a helicopter pilot, received a Purple Heart, and helped eliminate the military’s “ground combat exclusion policy” which prevented female members from serving in combat duties. There is no director or screenwriter attached yet to Shoot Like a Girl (and it’s not known if Angelina Jolie herself might end up directing as well as starring).
Angelina Jolie’s Shoot Like a Girl was actually the second movie announced this week based on a true story of the Afghanistan War. The first came with the news that Chris Hemsworth (Marvel’s Thor) and Michael Shannon (DC’s General Zod) are now both attached to star in Horse Soldiers, an adaptation of a book by Nicolai Fuglsig. Horse Soldiers will tell the true story of “a U.S. Special Forces team and their captain, who are sent to a rugged, mountainous region of Afghanistan in the weeks immediately following 9/11.”
Chloë Grace Moretz is probably most famous for playing Hit-Girl in the two Kick-Ass movies, but she has another distinction, which is that she has starred now in three different horror movie remakes. First, there was the 2005 remake of The Amityville Horror, and that was followed by 2010’s Let Me In (remaking Let the Right One In), and finally 2013’s Carrie. Now, Moretz has signed on for yet another one, namely the remake of Dario Argento’s Suspiria. Moretz is joining three actresses who’ve already been announced: Dakota Johnson (the film’s lead), Tilda Swinton (the film’s villain), and Mia Goth. Like Dario Argento’s original film, Suspiria will tell the story of a ballet dancer who joins a famous dance academy in Europe, where she discovers that it is a front for an evil cult and the scene of a series of grisly murders. The Suspiria remake will be directed by Luca Guadagnino, who previously directed I Am Love and A Bigger Splash (in which Tilda Swinton and Dakota Johnson also starred).
This week, three different high profile movies received official titles. The first was the most obvious, because many sources have been calling Ben Affleck’s solo Batman movie The Batman by that title for a few months now anyway. The Batman (which Affleck is directing, writing, and starring in) doesn’t yet have a release date, but there’s still a chance it might debut in 2018. We also now know that the Blade Runner sequel will be called Blade Runner 2049, suggesting that it is set 30 years after the original (which took place in a fictional sci-fi version of 2019). Blade Runner 2049 will be released in one year (from yesterday), on October 6, 2017. Finally, Hugh Jackman revealed an image of the first poster for the movie we previously knew as The Wolverine 3, which will now be called just Logan, when it is released on March 3, 2017.
Back in 2007, Walt Disney Pictures had a live action fairy tale hit ($340 million in global box office) years before they started succeeding consistently with their “live action fairy tale remakes.” Soon after, we started hearing fairly regularly about Disney’s plans for an Enchanted sequel, but next year will mark the first film’s tenth anniversary, and we still don’t have one. This week, however, that sequel, which will be called Disenchanted, got a little bit closer to happening, with the announcement of a director. Director Adam Shankman (Rock of Ages, Hairspray) is now in talks with Disney to direct Disenchanted, though we still don’t know if Amy Adams will be returning. We’re calling this one of the week’s Rotten Ideas because Shankman’s Tomatometer has only one Fresh score in the last 12 years (for Hairspray) and over a dozen Rotten ones.
We here at RT hope for every movie to be great, but it’s difficult not to be concerned about one of the most reliable genre trends when it comes to Tomatometer scores. Specifically, we’re talking about video game adapations, which Hollywood seems insistent upon making the next big trend. Indeed, the highest Tomatometer score any video game adaptation has ever received was the 44 percent for Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, and even that was still 16 percent shy of being Fresh. Of course, Hollywood tends to pay more attention to box office numbers, and the recent success of The Angry Birds Movie suggests that it’s feasible to make a profitable — if not particularly memorable — adaptation. (Although, for many films, next December’s Assassin’s Creed will probably be a closer test case.) The latest best-selling videogame to be put into development as a film project is Gears of War, the popular XBox/PC third-person shooter franchise. Gears of War will be a collaboration between Universal Pictures (also the studio behind Warcraft) and Microsoft, but it’s not yet known if it will be a direct adaptation of the first game, a later game, or if it will be its own entity merely inspired by the series.
