This week’s Ketchup brings you more headlines from the world of film development news, covering such titles as Freaky Friday and Lord of War sequels, Stephen King movies, and more.
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Back in October, months before she won her Academy Award for Everything, Everywhere All at Once (Certified Fresh at 93%), Jamie Lee Curtis revealed during an appearance on ABC’s The View that she had personally written a letter to Disney with a pitch for a sequel to her 2003 comedy hit, Freaky Friday (Certified Fresh at 88%). That film, which was a body-swap comedy with Lindsay Lohan playing Curtis’ teenage daughter, was a remake of Disney’s original Freaky Friday (Fresh at 70% ), starring a teenage Jodie Foster. Sounds like Curtis is getting her wish with this week’s announcement that Disney is indeed developing a sequel, sounding like the premise would once again involve a body swap between Curtis and Lohan.
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Yep, we’re hearing about two 2000s films receiving sequels: 2 Freaky 2 Friday, and now Nicolas Cage’s arms-dealin’ Lord of War (Fresh at 61%). It will again be written and directed by Andrew Niccol, whose other credits include Gattaca (Certified Fresh at 82%) and (as screenwriter) The Truman Show (Certified Fresh at 95%). Cage’s co-star this time will be Bill Skarsgard, playing Cage’s son in competition with his father.
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Horror and suspense author Stephen King has written over 60 novels and over 200 short stories, and it continually seems like Hollywood is collectively intent on adapting every one of them into a movie (and in some cases, more than once). This week, adaptations of two different Stephen King short stories were announced. First, The Life of Chuck, which first appeared as a short story in the 2020 anthology If It Bleeds. Mark Hamill and Tom Hiddleston (Marvel’s Loki) will star in Chuck, a reverse-chronology tale that begins with title character’s death and into a haunted house childhood. Chuck will be directed by Mike Flanagan, who previously adapted King’s Gerald’s Game (Certified Fresh at 91%) and Doctor Sleep (Certified Fresh at 78%). The other Stephen King adaptation announced this week is The Monkey, which will be directed by James Wan and will star Theo James, currently starring in Season 2 of HBO’s The White Lotus (Fresh at 91%).
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The sign that a director is extremely highly sought after is when they reach that point when they clearly are attached to way more movies than they can actually direct. Taika Waititi has definitely reached that point, with his in-development list including a Star Wars project, Flash Gordon, and an adaptation of Klara and the Sun. Waititi’s latest annoucnement: Tower of Terror, based on the Disney ride, with Jojo Rabbit’s Scarlett Johansson set to produce and star.
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Following the surprise success of last year’s Barbarian (Certified Fresh at 93%), there was a heated auction in January for director Zach Creggor’s next film Weapons, eventually going to New Line Cinema. Weapons is described as being “an interrelated, multistory horror epic that tonally is in the vein of Magnolia” (yes, that Magnolia, Certified Fresh at 83%). The comparison to Magnolia suggests that Weapons may eventually have a large ensemble cast, with the first actor already announced: Pedro Pascal, who is having a great 2022 and 2023, starring in both The Mandalorian and The Last of Us. Pascal also recently joined Ridley Scott’s Gladiator sequel.
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Nicholas Hoult and a trio of Hollywood’s current it gals are now attached to star in a movie called The One, which is variably called either a horror film or an erotic thriller. The premise of The One revolves around a romance-themed reality show, centered on “the romantic and psychological warfare waged by our beloved popular entertainment.” Hoult’s costars will include Melissa Barrera (Scream VI), Lana Condor (To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before), and Riley Keough (Daisy Jones & The Six).
