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 Aquaman, Gotham City Sirens, and new roles for Will Ferrell, Jonah Hill, and Rachel Weisz
Warner Bros and their DC Extended Universe (DCEU) movies are off to a much slower start than Marvel’s MCU (Doctor Strange was MCU #14, Suicide Squad was DC’s #3). DC Comics does have Marvel “beat” in one aspect, however, and that’s in representation of female leads, with their fourth film being next year’s Wonder Woman (6/2/17), while Marvel won’t have a solo female lead until their 21st movie, Captain Marvel (3/8/19) (#20 if you count Ant-Man and the Wasp on 7/6/18). That commitment to female lead characters was confirmed earlier this year when it was revealed that Margot Robbie was going to produce a spinoff movie for her Suicide Squadi character Harley Quinn. This week, we learned the title of that spinoff, and it’s more than just the expected “Harley Quinn solo movie.” That’s because it’s called Gotham City Sirens, which means there will be two other DC Comics villains in lead roles: Catwoman and Poison Ivy. Neither character has appeared in the new DCEU, but then, there have only been three movies thus far, and only one which had any Batman supervillains (Suicide Squad). Of course, Anne Hathaway did play Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises, and that was only four years ago, and we’re already getting a new Catwoman in a few years (just like we “already” got a new Batman this year). Gotham City Sirens will be a reunion project for Margot Robbie and her Suicide Squad director David Ayer (which has led some blogs to question why a mostly-female supervillain movie has a male director). There’s also the question of whether Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy will be portrayed as a romantic couple, as they currently are in their DC Comics. As for who might join Margot Robbie in Gotham City Sirens, a rumor quickly sprouted online this week based on Megan Fox’s earlier statements that she wants to play the next Poison Ivy. It should be noted that Warner Bros is still developing a Suicide Squad sequel, and is considering a spinoff movie for Will Smith’s Deadshot. In other Margot Robbie news, filming of her Tonya Harding movie is getting closer to production, with the news this week that Sebastian Stan (Marvel’s “Winter Soldier”) has been cast as Harding’s ex-husband Jeff Gillolly (and the one who hired the knee-attacker). On top of that, Moms star Alison Janney has been cast as Harding’s own… mom. It’s not yet known who will be playing Nancy Kerrigan.
Following the success of Hamilton on Broadway, Lin-Manuel Miranda is definitely making sure the accolades don’t go to waste. In addition to his role as one of the Moana songwriters, Miranda’s In the Heights is back in development as a movie, and he’s going to be the male lead in Disney’s Mary Poppins Returns (12/25/18). This week’s news sees Miranda signing on with a studio that’s not Disney, however, as he will now be writing songs for an animated movie for Sony as well. Sony Animation is now planning a 2020 release for an animated musical called Vivo, featuring 11 songs written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, which will tell the story of a singing monkey in Cuba who dreams of making his way across the Caribbean to Miami, Florida (like, unfortunately, a lot of non-monkey Cubans in the last 50 years). Sony Animation has scheduled Vivo for release on December 18, 2020.
We still don’t have a really great idea of what an entire movie of underwater Aquaman adventures is going to look like (especially since you could tell Jason Momoa was holding his breath in his first appearance). Regardless, the Aquaman movie is now less than two years away (October 5, 2018), so we’re hearing more casting news, as filming starts relatively soon. We still don’t know who might play Black Manta (or indeed, if he will be in the movie for certain), but this week, we did hear who will play Orm, Aquaman’s brother, AKA the villain called Ocean Master. That role will go to Watchmen star Patrick Wilson, and if Wilson seems like an odd choice to play an underwater super villain, there is indeed a very good explanation. Patrick Wilson and director James Wan have worked on four movies together: The Conjuring, Insidious, and the two direct sequels to Insidious. (Add in Aquaman and of course, the inevitable The Conjuring 3, and pretty soon the duo might have made over half a dozens movies together.)
Some sequels are just sort of obviously going to happen, but even so, it’s still news when their development is confirmed by their respective studios. This week, we got the obligatory and completely unsurprising news that Marvel Studios and Sony Pictures have announced a release date for their second Spider-Man movie together, which is now scheduled for July 5, 2019 (effectively a four day holiday weekend). The only element that might be sort of funny/curious is that the movie is being called Spider-Man: Homecoming 2, but you can pretty much depend upon the eventual film to have a different title (something like Spider-Man: Graduation Day, maybe). Sony has also moved Bad Boys 4 from that weekend up two months to May 24, 2019. And if you’re wondering “What’s all this talk about Bad Boys 4 when there’s only two movies?”, well, Sony is also releasing Bad Boys For Life (the 3rd movie) just over a year from now, on January 12, 2018. Bad Boys 4 is now competing against Minecraft: The Movie on 5/24/19, and the Spider-Man sequel’s competition on the Fourth of July weekend is a mystery animated title from Illumination (which might be the sequel to this month’s Sing).
In that now nostalgically remembered moment some call “mid-century,” America and pop culture in general tried lots of new concepts, some of which just didn’t stick (similarly, some of our contemporary “hot new ideas” won’t age that well, either). This week, we learned that Saturday Night Live alumni Will Ferrell and Kristen Wiig now have plans to collaborate on a movie musical celebrating one such 1950s trend. That movie will be based on the non-fiction book Everything is Coming Up Profits: The Golden Age of Industrial Musicals, and that book title tells you exactly what it’s about. Producer Marc Platt (La La Land) and the songwriting team of Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman (Broadway’s Hairspray) are on board to produce and create the music. The subject and the period in general ranges from the 1950s to the 1980s, when various companies sought the help of often major Broadway talents to create musical presentations for sales people, factory workers, mid-level managers, — you-name-it — to drum up excitement about their otherwise “boring” subjects. If you still don’t quite get what we’re talking about, you can start here with 1969’s “My Bathroom“and follow the links from there. (It really is a very special room.)
It happens pretty much every year. Around December, right when we’re getting a good idea of which movies are going to get all the awards season love, we start to hear about casting news for movies going into production just time to maybe get such attention in say, December, 2017. This week, one of the surprising Golden Globes nominations (behind the two for Deadpool) was Jonah Hill’s nomination for War Dogs, and to go along with it, he’s now in talks to join a possible “Oscar bait” movie (not that those are bad things; it’s just a shorthand term). Jonah Hill and Rooney Mara (The Social Network) are now both in talks to join Joaquin Phoenix in the true story drama Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot, to be directed by Gus Van Sant (Good Will Hunting, Drugstore Cowboy). As you might guess based on the tongue-in-cheek title, Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot will tell the life story of a man who became a famous comic strip artist after losing the use of his arms and legs in a horrible car accident (answer: the pen was held by his toes, which he guided with his mouth). (Hopefully, Joaquin Phoenix won’t put his own foot in his mouth while promoting this movie upon its eventual release.)
Gener issues have provided a wealth of material for films seeking awards consideration, ranging from matters of sexual discrimination to voting rights to transgender oppression. This week, we learned that the latest actress to sign on for a movie somewhere along that spectrum is Rachel Weisz (The Mummy franchise, this year’s Denial), who is now attached to star in an adaptation of the non-fiction book, The Secret Life of Dr. James Miranda Barry: Victorian England’s Most Eminent Surgeon. It tells the story of a a 19th century woman who took on a male identity so that she could study to become a medical physician during an era when that was pretty much impossible for a woman. As to whether a figure like Barry can or should be considered “trans” (in our modern sense), here’s an article that considers the subject.
Now that’s it’s been around several years, the annual ranking called “The Black List of Unproduced Screenplays” has had both critical hits (Juno, Spotlight, American Hustle, The Revenant) and some movies that were less so, but it’s still an interesting source of possible new movies anyway. This year’s list delivers to us yet another colorful class of interesting biopics and/or clever ideas. Some of the top-voted films (note: there is a difference between films being top-voted and just “being on the list”) this year include #1 choice Blond Ambition (about struggling musician Madonna Ciccone in the early 1980s), Voyagers (a love story about Carl Sagan, a la The Theory of Everything), and Linda and Monica (about the “friendship” between Linda Tripp and Monica Lewinsky). Finally, the movie you may have seen the most about on your social media this week (if you follow the right “entertainment feeds”) is Lax Mandis, which is an “inside Hollywood” comedy spoofing a certain famous/infamous screenwriter and “son of a famous director.”
Although there have thus been only three movies in the DC Extended Universe, two of them were directed by Zack Snyder, and he’s also directing the fifth film, Justice League. So, with 60 percent of the first five to either his credit or his fault, the future of the DCEU and possibly Snyder’s legacy are pretty much intertwined. It might be for that reason that Snyder confirmed this week that his next film after Justice League will not be Justice League 2 (or any other DCEU movie), but instead a smaller film called The Last Photograph. That movie has actually been in development for over 10 years, and it’s about a war photographer covering the Afghanistan War who is one of the only survivors of an attack on U.S. forces, who must team up with a soldier to escape alive (and to deliver the story of his career). We’re calling The Last Photograph one of the week’s “Rotten Ideas” because all six of the last movies that Zack Snyder has been credited on have earned Rotten Tomatometer scores, ranging from 23 percent (Sucker Punch) to 55 percent (Man of Steel). In other related news, Justice League 2 (or whatever it ends up being called) has been bumped back from 2018 to 2019, possibly to make room for Ben Affleck’s Batman in 2018 (although that hasn’t been officially confirmed as of yet).
Unfortunately, with some casting news, the nature of the movie in question means that we call a story a “Rotten Idea” even if we think the actor in question is otherwise, you know, sort of awesome. One example is Ben Mendelsohn, who can currently be seen as one of the villains in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (and who will also be the main villain in Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One). There’s just something about Mendelsohn which lends him to being a natural choice as a villain in big budget Hollywood movies, which sort of puts him in the distinguished company of actors like Gary Oldman, Javier Bardem, etc. The latest such film to do so is the “prequel” project Robin Hood: Origins, which inspires “eye rolls” from this writer just because if there’s one character in 2016 (besides Peter Pan) who doesn’t really need an origin story, it’s Robin Hood. Anyway, Ben Mendelsohn has been cast as the Sheriff of Nottingham, who will be working to defeat the Merry Men of Sherwood Forest, as led by Taron Egerton (Kingsman: The Secret Service, Eddie the Eagle). Lionsgate has scheduled Robin Hood: Origins for release on March 23, 2018, up against Sony Animation’s Peter Rabbit, featuring the voices of James Corden and Daisy Ridley.
