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 Beverly Hills Cop 4, Fast 8, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Wicked, and the Conjuring 2 spinoff The Nun.
Although it has now been forty years since Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson starred in A Star is Born, that film was itself the second remake of the movie which was first released in 1937, and also remade in 1954. Warner Bros has been trying to get a fourth A Star is Born movie made since the 1990s. In the early 2000s, the possible stars were Will Smith and Jennifer Lopez. More recently, Clint Eastwood was attached to direct for a while, with the younger female star possibly being Beyonce. During that time, Eastwood’s American Sniper star Bradley Cooper came on board to both star and direct (in his directorial debut). Beyonce eventually dropped out completely, and over the last few months, there have been online rumors that Cooper was spending a lot of time with Lady Gaga. After what Variety is calling a “lengthy courtship,” Lady Gaga is now in the midst of the obligatory negotiations with Warner Bros to indeed be Bradley Cooper’s female costar in A Star is Born. Like the previous three films, this will be the story of an aging star (Cooper) who helps a younger star (Gaga) whose career is on the way up while his is on the way down. (And yes, the ages do match up, as Lady Gaga is 30, and Bradley Cooper is 41.) Cooper is expected to start filming his directorial debut in February, 2017, with Warner Bros possibly eyeing a holiday season release date in late 2017 (Warner Bros does not currently have a release in 2017 after Justice League on 11/17/17).
CNN and other 24/7 news have been around long enough now (since 1980) that it might be difficult to imagine that there was a time when most people got their news on TV just once a day, and it was from news shows only 30 minutes long. From 1962 to 1981, Walter Cronkite was the “most trusted man in America,” delivering the news on CBS Evening News. Cronkite became directly connected to the public memory of major events in American history, including the assassination of JFK, the first manned mission to the Moon, Watergate, and the Iran Hostage Crisis. One of the most famous quotes about Cronkite, however, came from President Lyndon Johnson, who reportedly said about the war in Vietnam, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost America” (or a variation thereof). Having said all that, seven years after Cronkite’s death in 2009, there still has not yet been a major Hollywood film about hiss life or many achievements in journalism. Enter Steven Spielberg, who is now working with his Bridge of Spies screenwriter Matt Charman on a film about Walter Cronkite’s reporting from the warzones in Vietnam. The film doesn’t yet have a title, and Spielberg is currently only producing, but it’s certainly a film that he may eventually direct. Currently, Spielberg is preparing to direct the sci-fi adventure Ready Player One, with the religious drama The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara expected to be next. This possible Cronkite drama joins his longer term slate, which includes the fifth Indiana Jones movie, a Hernan Cortes epic, and It’s What I Do, which has Jennifer Lawrence attached to star as photojournalist Lynsey Addario. Walt Disney Pictures will be releasing his latest film as director, The BFG, on July 1st, 2016.
Last year marked the 20th anniversary of Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (based on characters from L. Frank Baum’s Oz books), and eight years after its debut, Universal’s stage production premiered on Broadway in October, 2003. Through much of that time, Universal has also been developing a film musical adaptation of Wicked, though development slowed down for a few years, possibly to avoid direct competition with Disney’s similarly-themed Oz the Great and Powerful in 2013. In 2012, Universal put Wicked back into development under the direction of Stephen Daldry (Billy Elliot, The Hours, The Reader). This week, we finally learned when we’ll actually see the long-in-development adaptation, and the answer is December 20, 2019, some three and a half years from now. There aren’t many films scheduled for 2019 yet, but Wicked is already joined on that date by one of Disney’s “live action fairy tale” movies (which one is anyone’s guess, as Disney has over a dozen such films in development). It’s not yet known who will star in Universal’s Wicked, but the original Broadway stars were Joel Grey (as the Wizard), Kristin Chenoweth (as Glinda), and Frozen star Idina Menzel (as Elphaba, the future Wicked Witch of the West). With a December 20th, 2019 release date, Wicked looks to also have the trivia distinction of being one of the last films to be released in the 2010s.
Tom Holland made his debut as Marvel’s new Spider-Man last month in Captain America: Civil War, and we’re now just over a year from Holland’s own solo movie, Spider-Man: Homecoming, on July 7, 2017. Formerly indie director Jon Watts (Clown, Cop Car) is quickly assembling what is becoming quite an ensemble cast, which already includes Tom Holland, Marisa Tomei (Aunt May), Robert Downey Jr (Tony Stark), Kenneth Choi (as Peter’s principal), Zendaya, Michael Barbieri, Laura Harrier, and Tony Revolori (those last four are expected to be classmates), and three more were announced this week. The first was Community star Donald Glover, who quite famously had once been the focus of an online campaign to get him cast as Spider-Man himself (back in 2010 before Andrew Garfield was cast in his two movies). It’s not yet known who Glover will be playing, but some possibilities include Daily Bugle editor Robbie Robertson (or his son, Randy), fellow superhero Hobie Brown (AKA the Prowler, who has also subbed as Spider-Man himself in the comics), Miles Morales (AKA Ultimate Spider-Man), or any number of other supporting characters. Glover’s announcement was followed two days later by two more: Martin Starr, better known as one of the “geeks” in Freaks and Geeks and Gilfoyle on HBO’s Silicon Valley), has also joined Spider-Man: Homecoming. His role is also unknown, though if he was cast as The Tinkerer, he’d would be playing rather precisely to his “type.” Finally, it was reported that talks are ongoing for Logan Marshall-Green (Prometheus) to appear as one of the film’s villains. That makes him the second actor in talks specifically to play a villain, in addition to Michael Keaton, who may be in talks to play the Vulture (although that has not yet been actually confirmed by Marvel Studios).
The big casting news for Fast 8 (also sometimes listed online as Fast and Furious 8) thus far has been Charlize Theron, who is joining the franchise reportedly as the eighth film’s main villain. Scott Eastwood was also announced, and he and Theron will be joined by returning Fast and Furious stars Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson, Tyrese Gibson, Ludacris, Kurt Russell, and Jason Statham. In the past, new cast members have basically fit a certain “action star” mold. This week, however, the Fast and Furious franchise signed another Academy Award winner in Dame Helen Mirren. There aren’t any character details about who she might be playing yet, but since they’re both debuting in the same movie… maybe Helen Mirren is playing Charlize Theron’s mom? F. Gary Gray (Straight Outta Compton), who previously directed Theron in The Italian Job, is directing Fast 8, which is currently in production at locations in Atlanta, Cuba, and Cleveland. Universal Pictures has scheduled Fast 8 for April 14, 2017.
Now that the rather ambitious TV series Downton Abbey has aired its last episode, we can expect the series’ actors, actresses and directors to pop up in the occasional news story this year. This week’s news, however, shows that the folks behind the British drama aren’t looking to be pigeonholed. Take, for example, Andy Goddard, who directed five episodes of Downton Abbey (two in S2, three in S3). Goddard is now attached to direct an adaptation of the book Exile on Main Street: A Season in Hell with the Rolling Stones by Robert Greenfield. As the title says and suggests, the movie will depict the ambitious recording of the Rolling Stones’ 1972 double album Exile on Main St, which is now considered by many music critics to be one of the “greatest albums of all time.” The film will be a British production, with filming expected to start in the winter of 2016-2017, and the search for the actors to play Mick Jagger and Keith Richards is starting now. Andy Goddard has also directed episodes of Netflix’s Daredevil, and is expected to direct episodes of The Punisher when that Netflix series gets started (possibly filming in 2017 after Exile on Main Street wraps).
It wasn’t widely reported, but last month (5/18/16) marked the 15th anniversary of the release of the DreamWorks animated hit Shrek, which was followed by three sequels, and most recently (5 years ago), the spinoff Puss in Boots. DreamWorks Animation had been developing a Puss in Boots sequel, but when DreamWorks was acquired recently by NBCUniversal, that sequel was not immediately one of the projects that seemed to be still in development. Many of the stories about this deal featured artwork for either Shrek (or Kung Fu Panda), but what was lacking at that point was actual confirmation that the new DreamWorks was actually going to continue making, specifically, more Shrek movies. Although it didn’t come in the form of a big official announcement, NBCU executive Steve Burke was quoted as saying that Illumination Entertainment’s Chris Meledandri “is creatively going to try to help us figure out how to resurrect Shrek.” One has to wonder whether part of that “figuring out” process might, for example, include the decision about whether Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz, and Antonio Banderas continue as the stars of Shrek, or whether the future movies feature different voice stars. Although both Shrek and Shrek 2 were Certified Fresh with identical scores of 88 percent, Shrek the Third and Shrek Forever After both received Rotten Tomatometer scores. So, the reason this news lands in the “Rotten Idea” column is that it’s unclear whether critics and moviegoers will fondly receive a fifth Shrek.
Although there is much written about Hollywood’s various efforts to replicate Marvel’s success with a “cinematic universe,” it is looking more and more like New Line Cinema has quietly developed one of their own in a more organic process over the last few years. We’re talking here about the horror movies that started with The Conjuring in 2013, and most recently, gave us The Conjuring 2 last week. Both of those films were Certified Fresh, but when New Line Cinema attempted to spinoff from The Conjuring with Annabelle last year, the result was a Rotten Tomatometer score of just 29 percent, and the Audience Score wasn’t much higher, at just 37 percent. That last part is what leads us to this week’s news that New Line Cinema is now developing another Conjuring spinoff, this time focusing on The Nun which was the demonic force behind all the supernatural highjinks in The Conjuring 2. Like The Conjuring, this most recent sequel was inspired by the “true stories” of supernatural investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren (played by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga), namely “the Enfield Poltergeist” case that occurred in England from 1977 to 1979. As with the Annabelle spinoff (which is itself getting a sequel in 2017), The Nun is not expected to feature the Warrens, but will instead tell another story of the demonic nun terrifying someone else. In addition to The Nun and Annabelle 2 (scheduled for May 19, 2017), New Line is also continuing to develop future Conjuring stories inspired by Ed and Lorraine Warren’s case files.
Some franchises are what you might call “critic proof.” Consider, for example, the gonzo “Nazi colonists living on the Moon” action comedy Iron Sky, which, despite its Rotten score of just 36 percent, has inspired producers to release a sequel, Iron Sky: The Coming Race. It hasn’t received an official release date in the USA yet, but work is already starting on a third film, Iron Sky 3: The Ark, for which its Finnish producers are aligning with Chinese production companies to secure it a much larger budget than either of the first two films. Filming of Iron Sky 3: The Ark is expected to start in 2017, aiming for a release in 2018. What’s particularly interesting about this news is that it comes just a week after the pundit-befuddling success of Warcraft in China, which opened there to box office returns six times what Warcraft earned in the USA. Many writers are interpreting the Warcraft release as a potentially pivotal moment in the way certain genre movies (like the Iron Sky franchise) are funded and released, regardless of what the box office reaction is in the United States. There have obviously been plenty of international box office successes in other nations in the past (like Godzilla in Japan, for example), but what’s going on in China might be something much bigger, given the size and growth of theatrical film in China in recent years.
There are some movie projects — frequently sequels or reboots — that seem to hover on the edge of film development for years, or even decades. One particularly notable example is the notion of a Beverly Hills Cop 4, which would presumably resurrect the Eddie Murphy “cop comedy” franchise after its two Rotten sequels. The last major news about the would-be sequel came last year when a release date of March 25th, 2016 was pulled by Paramount Pictures. At the time, there had also been a Beverly Hills Cop TV series that CBS was developing but dropped in 2013. Well, Paramount Pictures is in need of one or two more big franchises (really, Transformers is their biggest thing going), so they’re still developing Beverly Hills Cop 4. This week, the Eddie Murphy sequel made the news fairly loudly (if one gauges these things by social media) with the news that Belgian directors Ardil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah are now attached to direct Beverly Hills Cop 4 for producer Jerry Bruckheimer. Their first film, Black, won film festival awards in 2015, and currently has a (barely) Fresh Tomatometer score of 60 percent, based on just five reviews. It’s tricky to judge a Tomatometer with just five reactions, but we can’t help but notice some of the strong language in the Rotten reviews (ouch). Can these indie directors turn the Beverly Hills Cop franchise around, especially considering Eddie Murphy’s recent efforts?
