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 The Lion King, Nightwing, The Purge 4, and Shazam, and new roles for Angelina Jolie and Charlize Theron.
We may never get a full feature film of Dwayne Johnson playing Bambi, but that doesn’t mean Disney won’t be applying their live action remake formula to other animated animal classics, like say, Tim Burton’s remake of Dumbo (in which, by the way, Will Smith is no longer in talks to costar). Another beloved classic that Disney has been developing as a remake for a while now is The Lion King, to be directed by Jon Favreau (The Jungle Book, Iron Man). Late last Friday afternoon, just as the Weekly Ketchup was going live, the news broke about the two actors who were the first to be cast as voices in the next version of The Lion King. Together, they represent both Disney’s (and The Lion King’s) past and its (corporate) future. That’s because James Earl Jones will reprise his role from the first movie as Lion King #1 (Mufasa), and Donald Glover will voice Lion King #2 (Simba), the latter of which continues Glover’s relationship with Disney following his supporting role in this summer’s Spider-Man: Homecoming and his very plum role as the new Lando Calrissian in next May’s Han Solo (with Alden Ehrenreich from Hail, Caesar! taking over the role from Harrison Ford).
The biggest changes in Hollywood generally happen in a series of steps more so than a single big event. Examples of that are the “talkies,” the shift towards color, the fall of the Hays Code, and changes in aspect ratio, just to name a few. This weekend’s Academy Awards shed light on two more trends in production at the traditional studios, namely the increase in big budget franchise films and the corresponding decrease in smaller budget films (especially those that might attract awards attention). Now, streaming companies like Amazon and Netflix are progressively stepping up their presence, working with big names like Matt Damon, Woody Allen, and Guillermo Del Toro, but this week’s news concerns possibly the biggest online “get” yet, and it’s not just the “who” of it, but also the size of the budget. Netflix has scooped up the rights to director Martin Scorsese’s $100 million budget gangster drama The Irishman, his ninth film with Robert De Niro. The Irishman is dripping with prestige, with a screenplay by Steven Zaillian (Schindler’s List, American Gangster), who is adapting the non-fiction book I Heard You Paint Houses, and both Al Pacino and Joe Pesci long mentioned as potential stars. This deal comes as Paramount Pictures hesitated to pull the trigger on The Irishman, but STX Entertainment, a former partner on The Irishman, is reportedly considering legal options about the move to Netflix. It’s also worth noting that the move is also considered by many to be a result of another shift at Paramount, as we also learned this week that longtime CEO Brad Grey was in talks with Viacom to depart his post at Paramount Pictures, which has also already been officially confirmed.
Though there have been many characters who have donned the colorful mask and tights as Batman sidekick Robin, there are a lot of fans for whom there will only be one: orphaned circus acrobat Dick Grayson. Dick Grayson’s superhero career did not end, however, when other younger crimefighters took over the Robin mantle, as he went on to become Nightwing, first as a member of New Teen Titans, and also as a solo crimefighter. Although Chris O’Donnell’s costume in Batman & Robin was designed to resemble Nightwing’s black-and-blue outfit in the comics, he still went by “Robin,” so we haven’t yet seen a live action Nightwing. It appears that’s about to change, however, with the news that Warner Bros is now developing a live action Nightwing solo movie. To that end, Warner Bros has recruited the services of director Chris McKay, who made his feature film directorial debut with the recent The LEGO Batman Movie (which featured Michael Cera as the voice of Robin, incidentally). It’s unknown if Nightwing might make his debut in Cyborg (which is rumored to be a “back door” Teen Titans movie). As for Nightwing’s former mentor, the news about the solo movie The Batman did another U-turn this week, with Matt Reeves officially back on as director after news just recently that talks had fallen apart. There’s no release date for The Batman yet, but there is much speculation that Warner Bros might be aiming for the summer of 2019, since May of that year will be Batman’s 80th anniversary.
This week, Charlize Theron’s name came up in stories about two (very) different movie projects. One of them is a comedy called Flarsky, in which Theron will costar with Seth Rogen, who will play “an unemployed journalist, battered by his own misfortune and self-destructive ways, who endeavors to pursue Theron’s character — who was his childhood crush and babysitter and now happens to be one of the most powerful and unattainable women on earth.” Flarsky will be directed by Jonathan Levine, who previously worked with Seth Rogen on 50/50 and also directed Warm Bodies and All the Boys Love Mandy Lane. The other new project for Charlize Theron this week was a spy thriller called Need to Know (based on an upcoming novel by Karen Cleveland). Theron is already attached to star in Need to Know as a CIA analyst whose life is shaken up when she accidentally uncovers secrets while “while digitally searching files in hopes of unmasking a Russian sleeper cell in the U.S.” Theron will next be seen in The Fate of the Furious (4/14/17), distributed by Universal Pictures, the same studio developing Need to Know.
This week, The Hollywood Reporter ran a lengthy review of the current projects that Angelina Jolie is currently considering, and her development slate includes known projects like Maleficent 2 and a potential starring role in Universal Pictures’ reboot of Bride of Frankenstein. One of the new possibilities for the actress who once was attached to a Cleopatra biopic is a historical epic about another monarch, the Russian ruler Catherine the Great, based on the book Catherine the Great and Potemkin: The Imperial Love Affair. Other possibilities include a World War II spy drama called The Spy Who Loved (which is curious, considering ex-husband Brad Pitt recently starred in his own World War II spy drama, Allied) and Shoot Like a Girl, which would tell “the true story of Mary Jennings Hegar, an American Air Force major and helicopter pilot who served three tours in Afghanistan before challenging the military’s combat policy, which excluded women.”
One of the biggest sleeper hits (at least, in relation to budget) of last summer was The Shallows, in which Blake Lively spent most of the movie trying to survive on a rock surrounded by a hungry shark. Although sharks aren’t specifically mentioned, another movie about a woman (and others) fighting to survive an aquatic threat made the news this week. This time around, the potential female star is Kristen Stewart, who is apparently ready to return to Hollywood after a few years of mostly focusing on indie projects. Stewart is now in talks with 20th Century Fox to star in a survival adventure thriller called Underwater. If she signs on, she will play “a jaded and hardened crew member of an underwater scientific crew that, after facing an earthquake, are forced to go on a dangerous journey for survival.” Production is scheduled to start on Underwater next month in Louisiana, and it will be directed by Will Eubank (The Signal).
The superhero Shazam (previously known as Captain Marvel, before Marvel’s Captain Marvel) has been around for over 75 years. Through most of that time, the adventures of young Billy Batson’s superhero alter ego were depicted as more colorful and lighter in theme than, say, even Superman, much less the rest of the DC Universe. Even when Shazam/Batson appeared in a darker story like Kingdom Come, the character’s dark turn was more poignant because of how squeaky clean he was normally portrayed. With that in mind, it came as a bit of a surprise when it was announced this week that Warner Bros had hired director David F. Sandberg (Lights Out) to direct their long-in-development Shazam movie. Lights Out was a Certified Fresh sleeper hit last summer, but it was far from “light” or “colorful,” which, as we mentioned, is sort of how Shazam has historically been portrayed. So, despite the Tomatometer score for Lights Out, it seems an odd choice for Sandberg to direct the bright reds and brighter yellows of Shazam.
20th Century Fox’s X-Men franchise seems to have some promising days ahead, coming off last year’s Certified Fresh Deadpool, Logan earning rave reviews just a week away from release, and all the news surrounding the The New Mutants spinoff sounding… pretty cool. All that being true, the weakest part of the franchise right now seems to be the X-Men movies themselves, at least based on last summer’s X-Men: Apocalypse. We’ve been hearing for while now (admittedly) that the next X-Men movie was most likely going to be a retelling of the Dark Phoenix story that was already adapted as X-Men: The Final Stand, and we’ve been hoping that Fox would see the mistake in that, but the news this week basically confirmed they’re still going that direction. The movie (which may be called X-Men: Supernova) appears to be getting ready to start filming this year — possibly in June — at least according to Sophie Turner (Game of Thrones), the new Jean Grey. That news was quickly followed by the news that the film will mark the directorial debut of longtime X-Men producer and screenwriter Simon Kinberg.
The Purge horror/thriller franchise started with 2013’s The Purge (37 percent on the Tomatometer) and continued with sequels in 2014 and 2016 which came close to being Fresh but didn’t quite get there (56 percent and 54 percent, respectively). Last year’s entry, The Purge: Election Year, as the title subtly suggests, took advantage of a political atmosphere (including running commercials during debate coverage!), and one of those candidates won the White House. Ostensibly, there will still be a White House and a democratic process next summer, and it appears Blumhouse and Universal Pictures plan on continuing to use ongoing political heat as fuel for their Purge franchise, seeing as how Universal Pictures has scheduled The Purge 4 (which will probably get a different title) for release on Independence Day, July 4th, 2018. That’s actually a Wednesday, but it’s common for movies to be released in the middle of the week during the summer, so it actually works. If this date holds, The Purge 4 will be released the week after Barbie and the seventh X-Men movie (6/29/18), and two days before Marvel’s Ant-Man and the Wasp (7/6/18).
Sometimes, it just doesn’t pay, completely, to be too ahead of a trend. Consider, for example, the superhero genre. We all take it for granted in 2017 that superhero and comic book adaptations are frequently code for “printing money,” but it really wasn’t that long ago that they were about just a little more reliable than, say, video game movies. It was during those earlier years that Guillermo Del Toro directed his versions of a superhero franchise in the form of 2004’s Hellboy and its 2008 sequel Hellboy: The Golden Army (both certified fresh with over 80 percent). In nine years since Hellboy: The Golden Army opened, del Toro has occasionally talked up the possibility of finishing his Hellboy trilogy with a third film. Of course, anyone who’s followed GDT’s career knows — as evidenced by projects like H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5, his own version of Frankenstein, or the Pacific Rim sequel — luck is frequently not on the guy’s side. So maybe we shouldn’t be too surprised at GDT’s confirmation this week that, after checking with various sources, he can now report that Hellboy 3 is now, officially, “100% dead.” (Not surprised maybe, but sad, yes.)
