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 Aladdin, Bad Dads, Don Quixote, and Ride Along 3.
A few years ago, when Warner Bros first announced their plans to spinoff J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter franchise with Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, the plan (as the world knew it) was for there to be three movies, forming a new trilogy. Along the way, we also learned the release dates for those three films, which are for the first movie (next month, on November 18, 2016), the second (11/16/18), and the third (11/20/20). Well, just as Disney is planning on producing Marvel and Star Wars movies for the indefinite future, it is now looking like Warner Bros definitely has long-term plans for the “Potterverse” as well. This week, at a fan event in London, Warner Bros revealed that instead of just three Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, there will now be five. Warner Bros did not reveal the release dates for the 4th and 5th films, but following the pattern of the first three films, it looks like they might be released in November of the years 2022 and 2024, just before Thanksgiving each of those years. Director David Yates also revealed that the second film, which will start production soon, will be set in “another global capital city” after the first film was set in New York City. (Though we should point out, New York City is not… a capital city. The capital of New York is Albany!) Eddie Redmayne will star in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them as wizard author Newt Scamander, and he is expected to also star in the four sequels.
Most of us never see both, but there are actually two (or arguably, multiple) Internets: one is the widely public Internet, and then there are the networks known as “Darknets,” which are mostly used by criminals or other nefarious types (terrorists, racist groups, hackers, etc). One such network was called Silk Road, which was a platform for the sale of illegal drugs. All of this does indeed sound like the material for an intriguing movie, but what one might not imagine is that it would be something that would attract the interest of renowned screenwriters and directors Joel and Ethan Coen, AKA the Coen Brothers (Fargo, The Big Lebowski, Hail, Caesar!). That, however, is exactly what’s happening, because Joel and Ethan Coen have signed on with 20th Century Fox to adapt the true story of the Silk Road black market network. The Coens will be adapting this true story as a screenplay called Dark Web, based on the two part story in Wired which you can read right here. It is not known at this point whether the Coens might also end up directing Dark Web (they don’t always, as they did not direct Bridge of Spies, Unbroken, or the upcoming Suburbicon).
In his career as director, Clint Eastwood is now four movies into what is becoming a steady stream of biopics (or, at least, true story dramas): J. Edgar, Jersey Boys, American Sniper, and last month’s Sully. If the project in this week’s news ends up indeed being Clint Eastwood’s next film as director, that stretch will expand to five. Reportedly, Eastwood is now eyeing an adaptation of the book Impossible Odds, the autobiography cowritten by humanitarian aid worker Jessica Buchanan. In 2012, Jessica Buchanan was kidnapped by Somali militants, and eventually, she was rescued by Navy SEALs. The film rights to Impossible Odds have been optioned by Warner Bros, Clint Eastwood’s decades-long home studio.
As Disney continues to delve deep into their catalog to develop more and more of their animated properites as live action remakes, we have already seen some bold directorial choices, such as Kenneth Branagh on Cinderella, the indie director of Pete’s Dragon, and Jon Favreau’s work on both The Jungle Book and the upcoming The Lion King. This week, however, we learned of what is arguably the most surprising director choice yet. Guy Ritchie, probably best known for his British gangster movies and the two Sherlock Holmes movies starring Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law, is in talks with Walt Disney Pictures to direct their live action remake of Aladdin. It’s easy to guess that Ritchie gained Disney’s attention because they are hoping for a “street level” approach to the story of life in their magical fantasy city of Agrabah. What’s unknown is how many of the original 1992 version‘s songs will be incorporated in Ritchie’s film.
We have in the last couple of years been hearing about so many live-action adaptations of Disney’s animated movies that, outside of Star Wars and the Marvel Studios movies, one couldn’t be blamed for assuming that Disney’s live action output might one day consist solely of those adaptations. Well, at least for 2017, Disney does still have one other major franchise, which is Pirates of the Caribbean, which will continue on May 26, 2017 with Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. But what happens after Pirates is completely done and over with? Disney apparently has some ideas: Walt Disney Pictures is now developing a live-action adaptation of Cervantes’ Don Quixote, reportedly in the style of Pirates of the Caribbean. Set in the early 17th century, Don Quixote tells the story of an aging aristocrat who has lost his mind and sets off an adventure to defeat the forces that only exist within his own fractured mind. There is no word yet as to who might star in Don Quixote, but if one reads between the lines, it’s possible that Disney might intend Don Quixote to be a future vehicle for their Pirates of the Caribbean star Johnny Depp (who nearly starred in Terry Gilliam’s The Man Who Killed Don Quixote). Depp will be turning 60 in 2023, but even so, we already knew through his Jack Sparrow character that he could easily take on very different appearances. (And besides, it might not be until the early 2020s that the steam fully runs out on Pirates of the Caribbean.)
Various (and multiple) interests in Hollywood have been trying to get a biopic about 1960s pop singer Janis Joplin since the 1990s. Some of the possible stars during the last twenty years mentioned or attached to play Janis Joplin have included Zooey Deschanel, Melissa Etheridge, Renee Zellweger, and the late Brittany Murphy. As of this week, it appears that the pieces are finally coming together for one of those projects to become a movie that we can all see within the next year or so. Michelle Williams, who played Marilyn Monroe in My Week with Marilyn, is now in talks to star as Janis Joplin in an independent drama called Janis, about the last six months of her life, before her drug overdose death in 1970 at the age of 27. Janis will be directed by Sean Durkin, who currently has the distinction of having four movies as either director or producer on his Tomatometer which are all Certified Fresh, including his directorial debut, the 2011 indie hit Martha Marcy May Marlene. It appears that one of the factors ultimately helping Janis win the race to production over the other possible biopics is that producer Peter Newman secured the film rights to over twenty of Janis Joplin songs (as a solo act), and the entire catalog of Big Brother and the Holding Company, the group with which Joplin also had major hits.
Although it opened in the #3 spot (behind Jason Bourne and Star Trek Beyond), this summer’s comedy Bad Moms sort of stealthily bubbled along through the summer, eventually earning over $112 million in domestic box office. That can be considered a solid hit for the stars of the film, namely Christina Applegate, Kristen Bell, Kathryn Hahn, Mila Kunis, and Jada Pinkett Smith. One could reasonably expect a sequel to follow, but what STX Entertainment announced this week instead was a spinoff called Bad Dads. The film doesn’t have an announced cast or premise yet, but we do know that it will be released on July 14, 2017, which puts it directly up against War for the Planet of the Apes (and one week after Spider-Man: Homecoming). STX Entertainment also revealed that they intend on “extending the Bad Moms” brand with “a reality television show” and spinoffs (plural, as in possibly something like Bad Kids?). Bad Moms earned a (just barely) Fresh Tomatometer score of 60 percent.
Just about a month ago, one of the biggest stories of the week was the news that Benicio Del Toro was in talks to star in The Predator. As the title suggests, The Predator will a reboot of the Predator franchise from director Shane Black (Iron Man 3, The Nice Guys). This week, however, it was revealed that Del Toro dropped out of the reboot due to “scheduling issues.” Instead, his lead role will now go to Boyd Holbrook, who is arguably much less of a household name. 20th Century Fox might, however, know something that we don’t, such as whether Boyd Holbrook might be more famous when The Predator is released on February 9, 2018. The possible reason for that speculation is that it was also revealed this week that Holbrook will be costarring in the next Wolverine movie, Logan, when it’s released on March 3, 2017. An Instagram this week revealed his character’s name to be Pierce, which most fans are interpreting to mean that he will be playing Donald Pierce, a long-running X-Men villain (and member of the Hellfire Club).
As of this week, we are now ten months away from the August 11, 2017 release date for Sony Animation’s attempt at emulating the success of Warner Bros’ The LEGO Movie. That movie will be called Emojimovie: Express Yourself, and it will be an animated adventure into the world of “emojis,” featuring such characters as Smiley Face, High Five Emoji, and Poop Emoji. We’re not entirely sure all of those will be the actual character names, but the first poster this week pretty much confirmed that they look like that. We’ve known for a while that T.J. Miller (Deadpool, HBO’s Silicon Valley) will be voicing the main Emoji character (a “smiley face” named Gene), and this week, two more voice actors were announced. James Corden (of TV’s The Late Late Show with James Corden) will voice “Hi-5” (the “high five character, obviously), and Ilana Glazer (TV’s Broad City) will voice a female computer programmer Emoji named Jailbreak (who, as Gizmodo points out, looks a bit like Wyldstyle from The LEGO Movie). Emojimovie: Express Yourself will be directed by Anthony Leondis, whose previous films were Igor (Rotten at 36 percent) and the direct-to-video Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch (also Rotten at 40 percent).
Decades of blockbuster-chasing on the part of Hollywood’s studios has steadily decreased the number of star-driven, relatively cheaply produced action-comedies that make it to our theaters each year. One that was a confirmed hit was 2014’s Ride Along ($134 million domestic), which was followed earlier this year by Ride Along 2 ($90.8 million domestic). Both movies starred Ice Cube as a police detective and Kevin Hart as his sister’s overly/easily excited boyfriend (who is a police academy cadet in the first movie). Both were considered hits because they were produced in the $25 million (Ride Along) to $40 million (Ride Along 2) range, even if the budget went up and the box office returns down for the second movie. However, Universal Pictures appears to remain committed to making more movies with Kevin Hart, because the studio has now begun development on Ride Along 3. To that end, Universal Pictures has hired the screenwriting team of Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi to start working on the script. In addition to working on the first two Ride Along movies, Hay and Manfredi also worked on such films as R.I.P.D., Aeon Flux, and the Clash of the Titans remake. Neither previous Ride Along movie was able to earn Tomatometer scores above 19 percent, which is why we’re calling Ride Along 3 the (most) Rotten Idea of the Week.
