This week’s Ketchup brings you another ten headlines from the world of film development news (the stories about what movies Hollywood is working on for you next). Included in the mix this time around are stories about such titles as MacGyver, Magic Tree House, Power Rangers, and the 9th and 10th movies in the Fast and Furious franchise.
(Photo by Carlo Allegri / Getty Images)
In the history of theater and film, there are some truly great roles for men. Even in 2016, the argument can still be made that female actresses don’t necessarily have the same options, quality wise, that their male counterparts do. Of course, it’s all relative. Will any male actor ever get to play Rita Repulsa from Power Rangers? (No, we’re not serious, though that’s sort of the point here.) Even for this role, the Power Rangers producers were not only able to cast a “name actress,” but someone who is arguably one of the hottest and most demanded working today. That’s because it’s Elizabeth Banks who has signed with Lionsgate to play villain Rita Repulsa in next year’s Power Rangers (3/24/17). The huge hair-horns of Rita Repulsa were originally worn by Japanese actress Machiko Soga in the 1990s Japanese footage, and by Carla Perez and Julia Cortez in the American segments and the 1995 live action movie. Elizabeth Banks will have the distinction of being the first Caucasian actress to play Rita Repulsa (not counting the voice dubbing done by Barbara Goodson and Susan Brady), and she joins the already announced cast of five Power Rangers, who are all considerably less famous than her. Power Rangers will be directed by Dean Israelite (Project Almanac) from a script by the screenwriting team of Ashley Edward Miller and Zack Stentz (cowriters of Thor, X-Men: First Class, and Agent Cody Banks).
In 2013, director Steven Soderbergh (50 years old at the time) announced his retirement from directing feature films, declaring, “movies don’t matter any more.” Which, of course, didn’t mean he fully retired. In the last three years, Soderbergh has produced Citizenfour, edited and filmed (as cinematographer) Magic Mike XXL, and directed every episode of the Cinemax series The Knick. This week, in what was a series of confusing and frequently conflicting stories, we started to hear that maybe Steven Soderbergh will indeed return to directing feature films, and relatively soon. When the fact-checking dust settled, it appeared that the news we could more safely proclaim was that Steven Soderbergh is indeed attached to direct a film called Lucky Logan. Channing Tatum is reportedly attached to star, with Michael Shannon possibly also involved. (Some of the week’s stories were about a film called Hillbilly Heist, and mentioned Matt Damon, but as of this writing, those stories may have been debunked.) The premise of Lucky Logan (sometimes called Logan Lucky this week) is not yet known, except that like Steven Soderbergh’s three Ocean’s movies, it will also be a “heist movie.”
Most film franchises eventually come to an end before ever getting beyond a certain number of films. Until December, for example, there had “only” been 6 Star Wars movies, and there were “only” eight Harry Potter movies. It is far rarer that a single franchise keeps going with (mostly) the same cast into the double digits. Vin Diesel confirmed this week via Instagram that he and Universal Pictures plan on doing exactly that with the Fast and Furious franchise. Declaring “2 decades 10 films 1 saga,” Diesel posted release dates for Fast 8 (4/14/17), the 9th movie (4/19/19), and the 10th movie (4/2/21). That last film’s date is particularly worth noting because it comes just two months before what will be the 20th anniversary of the release date of the franchise’s first film, The Fast and the Furious, which was released on June 22, 2001. We still don’t know much else about the 9th and 10th movies, except that when the last film comes out, Vin Diesel will be 53 years old.
In this year’s awards season, there were the usual number of films based on real people, but many of the “biopics” that were expected to have good chances have ended up either not being recognized, or not as well as they might have been expected. (Specifically, biopics that didn’t receive Best Picture nominations at the Academy Awards include The Danish Girl, Joy, Steve Jobs, Straight Outta Compton, Trumbo, and Truth). That isn’t stopping producers from continuing to make such movies, of course. This week, there were three different film development stories about actresses being in some stage of negotiations for roles based on real people. First, there is Jessica Chastain, who is in talks to star in Woman Walks Ahead as Catherine Weldon, a Brooklyn artist who in 1889 traveled to the Dakota Territory to “help Sitting Bull hold onto land that the government was trying to wrest from his people.” Woman Walks Ahead will be directed by Generation Kill director Susanna White. It’s not yet known who will play Sitting Bull. Another historical figure in the news this week is Mary Magdalene, who if deals work out, might be played in an upcoming film by Rooney Mara. Finally, there is the French author known under the pen name Colette, whose famous works include the novels Gigi and Cheri. Keira Knightley is now in talks to play Colette, in a film to be directed by Wash Westmoreland (Still Alice).
A few years ago, there was a story about Channing Tatum and Joseph Gordon-Levitt possibly starring in a new adaptation of the gangster musical Guys and Dolls. It’s possible that might still happen someday, but there’s also been no real news about that project since 2013. Instead, it’s sounding now like the two actors and friends might instead collaborate on a completely different (and original) musical. Universal Pictures has picked up the rights to an untitled new R-rated musical comedy in which both Channing Tatum and Joseph Gordon-Levitt are attached to star. The untitled comedy will be produced by Marc Platt, whose credits also include Ricki and the Flash, the long-in-development Wicked movie, and this summer’s La La Land, which is also an original musical film. The premise is not yet known, except that it involves a pair of pilots who go off on an adventure, and that it is expected to earn an R rating. This Tatum/JGL musical comedy is now being written by screenwriter Michael Bacall, who previously worked with Channing Tatum on the two 21 Jump Street movies (Bacall also cowrote Scott Pilgrim vs the World with Edgar Wright). Channing Tatum and Joseph Gordon-Levitt previously costarred together in Havoc, Stop-Loss, and they both danced (though not with each other) three years ago at the Oscars. And of course, you can see Channing Tatum dance this weekend in The Coen Brothers’ Hail, Caesar!
Back in the 1950s and 1960s heyday of NASA and the Mercury/Apollo missions, astronauts were depicted as the best of the best (see: The Right Stuff). Oh, how the mighty have fallen, as Universal Pictures has cast a new trio of astronauts who cut a very different figure. Seth Rogen, Bill Hader, and Zach Galifianakis are all now signed to star in the outer space comedy The Something. The three comedians will play astronauts who have been stuck on their ship for years when they finally come across another ship. And then, ostensibly, hilarity and hijinks ensue. The Something will be directed in his feature film debut by screenwriter Rodney Rothman, who cowrote both 22 Jump Street and Grudge Match. Rose Byrne, who plays Rogen’s wife in the Neighbors movies, was reportedly in talks for a role in The Something last summer, but she was not mentioned in this week’s news.
Lionsgate, the studio behind both The Hunger Games and the Divergent films (via Summit), braced for bad news this week as their quarterly finals were lower than expected, at least partially because The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 failed to meet expectations. Still, the studio expects to increase their number of wide releases in 2017 from 13 to 17 films, and part of the challenge is to find new franchises for the future. One effort in that direction was revealed this week, as Lionsgate has acquired the film rights to all 54 books in author Mary Pope Osborne’s Magic Tree House book series. Magic Tree House is a children’s fantasy book series which started in 1992, about two children who use a magic tree house to go on a series of quests throughout history (first for Morgan Le Fay, and then after book #29, for Merlin). The first movie to be adapted will indeed be that 29th book, Christmas in Camelot, which, as the title suggests, features King Arthur, Camelot, and the magic of Christmas. The author’s husband Will Osborne is adapting Christmas in Camelot with Chicago-based playwright Jenny Laird.
This was a big week for fans of the 1985-1992 ABC adventure TV series MacGyver. First, there was the news that CBS has ordered a new pilot for a MacGyver reboot series from producer/director James Wan, of the Saw and Insidious franchises. A few days later, it was revealed that Lionsgate is also developing a feature film adaptation of the show, which originally featured Richard Dean Anderson in the lead role. It’s not yet known if the MacGyver movie will use the same actor as the CBS TV series (which will cast the character as 10 years younger than Richard Dean Anderson was when the show started). We can speculate, however, that the two MacGyver reboots will be separate from each other, because right now, they have different producers. Lionsgate’s MacGyver is being coproduced by Neal Moritz, of the Fast and the Furious franchise. As with the Magic Tree House news above, Lionsgate’s movement on MacGyver is seen as a direct reaction to the studio’s recent disappointing quarterly results.
As Hollywood and the moviegoing public at large continue to respond to #OscarsSoWhite, it has drawn renewed attention to the decades-long phenomenon known as “whitewashing.” You can see a list of roles where this has been done in the past (and recently) here, and see a video montage of some examples here. With some films, it can be more difficult to define whether or not the casting is whitewashing. Take, for example, DreamWorks’ live-action adaptation of the manga and anime cyberpunk epic Ghost in the Shell. Scarlett Johansson has been cast for over a year as the film’s lead, known in the original sources as Major Motoko Kusanagi. It’s unclear what Johansson’s character will be called in this new movie, so the role may not be Japanese (though arguably, that’s still a form of whitewashing). Anyway, the film is still getting made, with the news this week that Michael Pitt has been cast as “the villain” The Laughing Man. That’s also another problematic element, as it sounds like this movie might be changing who exactly is the film’s primary villain (the premise making no mention of The Puppet Master). Ghost in the Shell will be the second feature film from director Rupert Sanders (Snow White and the Huntsman).
China’s influence on the box office continues to grow, with some movies doing better there than they do in the USA. One very relevant example of this was the 2014 racing/car movie Need for Speed, which earned $66 million in China, but only $43 million domestically. It’s arguably for that reason that this week’s most Rotten Idea is getting made. Keanu Reeves is attached to star in Rally Car, a racing movie to be produced and filmed in China later this year. Reeves (who is of partial Chinese descent) will play a former NASCAR champion who seeks “to prove he’s still the badass racer he thinks he is” by participating in a high-stakes international race across China, with a young Chinese girl as his co-driver. Rally Car will be directed by Harald Zwart, whose Tomatometer is the reason this is the week’s most Rotten Idea. Of the films Zwart is credited as director, only the 2010 remake of The Karate Kid (which also has a Chinese setting) has a Fresh score. Zwart’s other films are all hovering between 12 percent (Pink Panther 2 and The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones) and 39 percent (Agent Cody Banks, the second time that movie was referenced in this Week’s Ketchup).
