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 Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul, Jekyll, Lights Out 2, Mary Poppins Returns, and A Wrinkle in Time.
This summer, some of the movies with big box office results (Warcraft with $433 million global, The Legend of Tarzan with $119 million domestic) are still described as “disappointments,” largely due to their budgets ($160 million and $180 million, respectively). Basically, when Hollywood studios swing for the fences, they sometimes pop out instead. One genre capable of success on a relative pittance of a budget is horror, which has already yielded summer hits in The Shallows, The Purge: Election Year, and The Conjuring 2. Most recently, Lights Out opened just last Friday, and by Wednesday, it already earned enough ($27 million in 5 days on a budget of $5 million) for its studio, New Line Cinema, to start development on a sequel. The film starred Teresa Palmer as a frightened sister who failed to stock up on spotlights and track lighting to battle a supernatural being only powerful in the dark. Director David F. Sandberg made his debut with Lights Out, based on a 3 minute YouTube short starring his wife, and will start work immediately on ideas for the sequel. It’s not yet known if any of the original cast will return, but the premise is such that really, it could revolve around a completely different family, dealing with a completely different “SBoPitD.” Lights Out 2 won’t, however, be David F. Sandberg’s next film as director, because he is currently directing Annabelle 2 (scheduled for May 19, 2017) for New Line Cinema. Speaking of Annabelle, the first film’s director, John Leonetti, also made the news this week for signing on to direct Wish Upon, a supernatural horror/thriller movie about a magic “wish box.”
One of the costars of director Ava Duvernay’s third feature film Selma (and also one of its producers) was former talk show host (and acclaimed actress) Oprah Winfrey, and Duvernay is enlisting Winfrey’s talents again for her second Hollywood film (and fourth feature). The costar of The Color Purple and The Butler is in final talks with Walt Disney Pictures to costar in their adaptation of Madeleine L’Engle’s fantasy novel A Wrinkle in Time, which is the first in a series of four books (which Disney undoubtedly hopes will be four movies) about children who travel through time looking for their lost scientist father. The screenwriter responsible for adapting A Wrinkle in Time was Jennifer Lee, who cowrote Disney’s Frozen. Oprah Winfrey will be costarring as Ms. Which, who along with (the not-yet-cast) Ms. Who and Ms. Whatsit, helps guide the children through their journeys. Walt Disney Pictures has not yet announced a release date for A Wrinkle in Time, but at this point, it’s probably most likely going to be in 2018.
Various Hollywood producers have been trying for years (decades?) to get a movie about the “current wars” between Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla (indeed, one of the projects is called just that, The Current Wars). Aside from a brief supporting appearance by Tesla (as portrayed by David Bowie, no less) in The Prestige, it’s looking like the next time we see either of them on the big screen will be in a completely different film. That movie will be called The Last Days of Night, and it will depict instead the legal conflicts between Edison and competitor George Westinghouse (whose company’s technology was based on Tesla’s). Based on this week’s casting, however, it sounds like Edison and Westinghouse might be supporting characters, with Edison’s lawyer instead the focus. Eddie Redmayne is now signed to star as young attorney Paul Cravath in The Last Days of Night. The film will be the third feature film for director Morten Tyldum, who made his debut with Headhunters and most recently directed The Imitation Game, another period piece film about a true story involving technological innovation (ie, one of the first modern computers).
Back in the Golden Age of Hollywood, it was quite common for major figures in American literature to be hired to work on screenplays. Truman Capote, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and John Steinbeck: they all did it. Maybe it’s just a different time, but you really don’t hear about today’s most acclaimed writers working for Hollywood as often. You certainly wouldn’t expect to hear this happening for something like a (undeniably cheesy) 1970s TV series adaptation, but that’s exactly what’s happening, because Pulitzer Prize winning playwright David Auburn is in talks with Sony Pictures to work on their Charlie’s Angels reboot. Auburn earned the prestigious distinction in 2001 for his play Proof, which was then adapted into a movie in 2005 starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Sir Anthony Hopkins. If he signs on, David Auburn will be joining Elizabeth Banks (Pitch Perfect 2), who will be directing the film. It’s not yet known if any new spin will be put on Charlie’s Angels (such as maybe the Angels being all men?), if it will be a complete reboot, or if it will be a sequel to the movies starring Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz, and Lucy Liu. We also don’t know if Elizabeth Banks might be costarring in Charlie’s Angels as well as directing.
As one might expect from a movie adapting a single book in a series comprising several stories (eight, to be exact), many of the finer details of P.L. Travers’ Mary Poppins books didn’t make the cut the first time around (though that did make room for the musical numbers!). Having said that, this week’s news involves a character that actually didn’t debut until the second book, Mary Poppins Comes Back. Anyway, the big Mary Poppins Returns news this week is that Meryl Streep is in talks to join Emily Blunt as her character’s (much) older cousin Topsy. Like the first movie, Mary Poppins Returns will be also be a musical (hence the casting of Lin Manuel-Miranda), and Streep will also be singing in this movie, like she did in Into the Woods. Streep’s casting also makes Mary Poppins Returns (at least) a three-way reunion project, as it will be directed by Rob Marshall (Chicago, Memoirs of a Geisha), who also directed Into the Woods (which also featured Emily Blunt). Walt Disney Pictures has scheduled Mary Poppins Returns for Christmas Day, 2018.
Some movies are just way ahead of their time. Consider, for example, the case of Disney’s The Rocketeer, which was a superhero movie paying misty-eyed homage to classic comic book heroes (though it was based on a graphic novel only a few years old at that point). If The Rocketeer were released now, it might have a very good chance at being a major blockbuster, but in 1991, it was considered a box office flop, earning just $46 million from a budget of $40 million. Director Joe Johnston would eventually have superhero success with Captain America: The First Avenger — a retro superhero tale in its own right — but he had to wait 20 years. Walt Disney Pictures apparently never forgot about The Rocketeer, though, because 25 years later, the studio is working on a sequel (which is also effectively a reboot). The new project has a working title of The Rocketeers, and it’s set six years after the first film (which was set during World War II). For the reboot, the lead character will be a female African American pilot who “takes up the mantle of Rocketeer in an attempt to stop an ambitious and corrupt rocket scientist from stealing jetpack technology in what could prove to be a turning point in the Cold War.” The Rocketeers is being adapted by the screenwriting team of Matthew Spicer and Max Winkler (son of TV’s The Fonz, AKA Henry Winkler).
Although Jessica Chastain was obviously one of the “above the credits” stars of Interstellar (along with Matthew McConaughey), much of her character’s story was actually portrayed by preteen actress Mackenzie Foy (who’s now 15). That movie is now almost two years old, but this week, Foy’s agents landed her the role which might just be her first real chance to get her own name “above the credits.” Mackenzie Foy has landed the lead role of “Clara” in Disney’s adaptation of The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, based upon the 1816 fairy tale The Nutcracker and the Mouse King by E.T.A. Hoffman. Like the other films in Disney’s ongoing “live action fairy tales” series, this movie is at least inspired (if not directly based upon) one of their classic animated movies, namely the “Nutcracker Suite” segement of the first Fantasia movie from 1940 (Disney is also developing a live action movie based on that same film’s closing segment, Night on Bald Mountain). Morgan Freeman also joined the cast this week as Drosselmeyer, the mysterious eyepatch-wearing godfather of Clara who gives her the magic Nutcracker toy. Foy and Freeman are joining ballet star Misty Copeland, who was recently cast as the star of the film’s main musical dance number. The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, directed by Lasse Hallstrom (What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, The Cider House Rules), doesn’t have a release date yet (but it’s likely to be in November/December, 2017).
If you were a fan of the 2007 BBC series JEKYLL and were excited to hear about Jekyll being adapted into a new movie, we might have bad news for you (particularly if your excitement involved star James Nesbitt). That’s because Chris Evans (AKA Marvel’s Captain America), who admittedly has a lot of fans himself, is now in talks with Lionsgate to star in their adaptation of the BBC One series Jekyll. If Evans does indeed sign on, he will be playing Tom Jackman, “a modern-day descendant of Jekyll who is beginning to exhibit the trademark split personality.” Lionsgate appears to be greenlighting Jekyll at least partially as competition to Universal Pictures’ own plans to include a “Dr. Jekyll”-style character (to be played by Russell Crowe, starting in next summer’s The Mummy) in their new “cinematic universe” starring their classic Universal monsters.
The argument could be made that the problem with some “video game movies” is that they are produced too late, after the game’s popularity has faded (and the reason for this is usually that movies take so long to work their way through development). For that reason, the recent announcement that Ubisoft (via their new branch, Ubisoft Pictures) is fast tracking an adaptation of Tom Clancy’s The Division, which was just released four months ago, is welcome news. Eventually, a major video game movie is bound to be both a box office and critical success, and Ubisoft Pictures appears to chasing that dragon’s tail (they also have Assassin’s Creed coming soon), at least if their recent cast announcements are any indication. We first heard about this movie when it was announced that Jake Gyllenhaal was in talks for a lead role, and it was also recently announce that the second talent now in talks with Ubisoft Pictures to star is two-time Academy Award nominee Jessica Chastain (The Help, Zero Dark Thirty). In Tom Clancy’s The Division, the player is an agent tasked with rebuilding a base of operations in a dystopian future Manhattan in the aftermath of a smallpox pandemic, while also investigating the outbreak and its cause. Ubisoft Pictures is also actively developing an adaptation of another Tom Clancy game, Splinter Cell, with Tom Hardy attached to star. We’re calling this only a “borderline” Fresh Development, because the Tomatometer history of video game adaptations isn’t particularly promising.
Earlier in the column, we discussed the box office potential of the horror genre, relative to their cost. Another type of movie that can be produced on “the cheap” (relatively) are kids movies (if they’re not fantasy, sci-fi, etc). Unfortunately, it’s a genre that has sort of faded from (theatrical) popularity in the last ten years. One movie that bucked the trend and became a franchise was 2010’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid (adapted from the popular children’s book by Jeff Kinney), with sequels in 2011 and 2012. Fox moved quickly on producing all three of those movies, since their star Zachary Gordon (and his costars) inevitably aged every year, and so the studio had a short window with which to work (and you know, maybe that’s why so few franchises like this exist). Fox knew they had a relatively good thing, however, and so this week brought us news that the studio is now developing a fourth Diary of a Wimpy Kid movie. To replace Zachary Gordon (who is now 18), Fox has instead cast 10-year-old Jason Ian Drucker, who should be good for at least three more movies (good luck in 2021, though, Jason!). The fourth movie will be an adaptation of Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul, and it will be directed by franchise veteran David Bowers, who also directed the second and third movies. We’re calling this the week’s Rotten Idea, because none of the previous three films in the franchise earned above a Rotten Tomatometer score of 53 percent, so there’s a very good chance that critics will assign this fourth film a similar score.
