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 Furby, Rambo: New Blood, Snow White, and Sonic the Hedgehog.
Johnny Depp is known for many types of films, including true-story-based crime movies (Blow, Donnie Brasco, Public Enemies, Black Mass), theme-park-attraction-based movies (Pirates of the Caribbean), and Tim Burton movies (where does one even start?), but if there’s one general theme to Depp’s oeuvre, it’s that he specializes in playing wacky characters in movies with at least some separation from reality. Obviously, that includes the aforementioned Pirates and Burton movies, but there’s also Rango, Into the Woods, Yoga Hosers, and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (and that’s just from the last ten years). What we’re getting at is that Johnny Depp sure does like starring in movies featuring magic and/or the fantastic. This week, with the release of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them just two weeks away, we discovered that Depp has a small role in that film, and will have a lead role in the next one as well (release date: 11/16/18). Although Johnny Depp will “star” in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them 2 (or whatever it ends up being called), that doesn’t mean that he will be completely replacing Eddie Redmayne, as Redmayne will still also be reprising his role as Newt Scamander. Director David Yates (who also directed the last four Harry Potter movies) will also be returning for the second movie (and possibly all four sequels, stretching out until 2022). No details are known yet about what Johnny Depp’s character will be like, such as whether he will be sporting wacky hair and/or makeup and/or eyes and/or voice.
Walt Disney Pictures has actually been working on a live action return to Snow White since way before their whole “live action reboot” thing started (with either 2010’s Alice in Wonderland or 2014’s Maleficent movie, depending upon how you define them). The project that Disney was working on for many years was called Snow and the Seven, and that movie (get this) would have applied a kung fu angle to the fairy tale, with the “seven dwarfs” also being martial arts experts. That movie (also called Order of the Seven) was shelved in 2012, but that didn’t mean Disney was never going to commit to a live action remake of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. This week, that development was confirmed with news that Disney is now actively developing a live action movie musical of Snow White (which may be called just that to separate it from the classic 1937 animated film, their first). The musical is expected to use both new original songs (by the songwriters behind this December’s La La Land), and songs from the original film (by which they probably mean “Heigh Ho,” “Whistle While You Work,” and “Some Day My Prince Will Come”). The screenwriter working on the Snow White musical is Erin Cressida Wilson, whose credits include the S&M drama Secretary and last month’s The Girl on the Train. This Snow White musical joins the increasingly-hard-to-keep-track-of list of Disney remakes which also includes Cruella, Dumbo, The Little Mermaid, The Lion King, Mulan (11/2/18), Peter Pan, and next year’s Beauty and the Beast (3/17/17).
The Bible really does have a surprising number of stories in it that could be adapted as action movies, if you know where to look. There’s Daniel and that pesky lion, Jonah and the whale, and so many battles of “Biblical proportions.” This writer isn’t sure that Noah’s grandfather Methuselah is really known for his action-packed adventures, but apparently, there are at least a few people in Hollywood who think he’s an action star over 969 years in the making. Tom Cruise is now attached to star in Warner Bros’ Methuselah, an action-packed epic based on the Biblical character you may have read about in the previous sentence. For Methuselah, Warner Bros has recruited director Joachim Rønning, who has directed next year’s Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (5/26/17), and who also previously co-directed 2006’s Bandidas and 2012’s Kon-Tiki. It’s not yet known if Rønning’s involvement means that Methuselah might soon get fast tracked, or if it will take so long that Tom Cruise won’t need any “old guy” makeup.
Author Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time (and its sequels) have been popular with young readers for decades now. One thing that separated the series from other fantasy franchises for kids (such as, notably, J.R.R. Tolkien’s novels) is that they very prominently feature a largely female cast of characters, including the three Mrs. (Who, Which, and Whatsit), Aunt Beast, and the Happy Medium. Until this week, Selma director Ava DuVernay has kept to that by casting Oprah Winfrey (Mrs. Which), Reese Witherspoon (Mrs. Whatsit), Mindy Kaling (Mrs. Who), and Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Dr. Kate Murry). For the Happy Medium (who is referred to as “she” in the book), DuVernay (and Disney) are switching things up a bit. That’s because it’s very obviously male (that beard!) Zach Galifianakis who has been cast as the Happy Medium. Galifianakis is joined by Andre Holland, Levi Miller, and last week’s addition Chris Pine. The film has now started filming but it doesn’t currently have a confirmed release date, though it’s expected to be sometime in the year 2018.
Last week was sort of dominated by the news (and three related stories) of director Tim Miller’s departure from the Deadpool sequel (which might be directed by one of the John Wick directors instead). Well, we didn’t have to wait much longer to find what Tim Miller wants to do instead, and the movie in question makes total sense, given the reports that Miller left Deadpool 2 because he wanted to make it a much bigger, more expensive production than the relatively cheap first Deadpool. Tim Miller is now attached to direct Sony Pictures’s adaptation of the popular and long-running video game franchise Sonic the Hedgehog. If you’re familiar with the bright blue, spikey-haired character, it should come as no surprise that Sonic the Hedgehog will be a CGI/live-action hybrid. (The villain Dr. Eggman seems like an obvious candidate to be one of the live action “human” characters.) That, however, was not the only story this week to result from Tim Miller leaving Deadpool 2, as composer Tom Holkenborg (AKA Junkie XL) has also left Deadpool 2, offering Miller’s departure as his direct reason for doing so.
Some movie stars have never appeared in a sequel (like say, Leonardo DiCaprio, Russell Crowe, and Meryl Streep), and then there are actors like Sylvester Stallone, whose careers are pretty much defined by exactly how many franchises they have to their name. Stallone has Rocky, Rambo, The Expendables, and this week, he added another one to his list. But let’s start with this week’s Rambo news. Nu Image/Millennium Films have hired director Ariel Vromen (The Iceman, Criminal) to work on their reboot of the “John Rambo” franchise, which will start with a film called Rambo: New Blood, which is a play on the very first Stallone “Rambo” movie, First Blood. Rambo: New Blood will feature a new (not yet cast) actor as John Rambo, and Stallone is not expected to appear in the movie (unless he decides to take a cameo role, etc). Having said that, Sylvester Stallone is expected to reprise his role in the sequel Escape Plan 2 that was announced this week, although in a supporting role. It’s not yet known if other Escape Plan stars (such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sam Neill, or rapper 50 Cent) might also appear in the sequel.
Producer Bob Weinstein and his label TWC-Dimension (which is more devoted to genre movies than Harvey’s TWC) used the American Film Market this week to announce a five movie slate for 2017 (and beyond) that is aiming to get the distributor another hit. (Their last successful film was 2015’s Paddington.) The biggest revelation of the group was that TWC-Dimension is developing a Furby movie, based on the toy line which was very popular in 1998 and 1999. The Furby is a furry ovoid toy creature with big, creepy eyes which speaks in babyspeak and can slowly be taught to speak (some) English. The other four movies on Dimension’s active slate include The Six Billion Dollar Man (the TV show adaptation starring Mark Wahlberg), The War with Grandpa (starring Robert De Niro and Christopher Walken), a horror movie trying to make Polaroid cameras nostalgically scary, and a murder mystery called Murder Mystery.
Let’s get something out in the open right away. If you make another version of a movie that was based on a book, even if your new version is a little closer to the book, it’s still basically a remake. The only way that would not be true is if your new movie touched upon completely different material than the first movie did (for example, Stand By Me and The Shawshank Redemption adapted two different parts of the same book). Okay, on with the news that Columbia Pictures is now working on a new adaptation of Robert Heinlein’s 1959 science fiction novel Starship Troopers, which the studio swears is absolutely not a remake or a reboot of Starship Troopers (ie, the 1997 movie or any of its direct-to-video sequels). For this new Starship Troopers, Sony/Columbia has hired the screenwriting team of Damian Shannon and Mark Swift, who previously worked on the 2009 reboot of Friday the 13th, and next year’s wacky comedy reboot of TV’s Baywatch. Meanwhile, fans of Starship Troopers took to the Internet this week to express their sometimes extreme displeasure with the idea of Sony/Columbia making a new Starship Troopers, some of which you can see recapped here.
People love The CW’s The Flash, and part of what people love about The Flash is Grant Gustin. All that being true, Warner Bros decided that, for their movies (which are way, way, way more expensive, and therefore more of a risk), it made more sense to cast Ezra Miller (We Need to Talk About Kevin) as The Flash (which looks like this). The first director attached to The Flash was Pride and Prejudice and Zombies creator Seth Grahame-Smith, who eventually departed, and was then replaced by Dope director Rick Famuyiwa. Famuyiwa seemed very committed to directing The Flash, which included going so far as casting his Dope star Kiersey Clemons as future Mrs. The Flash Iris Allen. And that leads us to this week’s news that Rick Famuyiwa has departed The Flash due to that old familiar chestnut, “creative differences.” This is especially bad news for Kiersey Clemons (who doesn’t get to abandon her Flash contract just because Famuyiwa is leaving), who was quoted as saying that the news of Famuyiwa’s departure is “very upsetting.” Warner Bros has scheduled The Flash for March 16, 2018, but if they can’t find a directorial replacement very soon, it’s highly likely that the studio will have to push that release date back some.
2015 was not a good year for director Josh Trank, who not only “departed” one of the Star Wars spinoff prequels (it’s still unclear which one he was attached to, Han Solo’s, or another), and saw his Fantastic Four become a critical and box office bomb. 2016 might be almost over, but it appears that it might end slightly better for Trank, because this week, we learned that he is still able to get work as a director. Josh Trank has convinced Tom Hardy to sign on for a movie called Fonzo which will not, as the title (or our totally fakeout headline) suggests, have anything to do with Arthur “The Fonz” Fonzarelli. Instead, it will be about the last year in the life of Chicago mobster Al Capone (we know this because it’s about Capone at age 47, and he died in prison at age 48). As you might have gathered by putting the previous two sentences together, Tom Hardy will play Al Capone in Fonzo, which means, as an image like this suggests, Tom Hardy is either going to have to gain weight for the role, or wear a lot of makeup.
