Today’s Ketchup brings you another ten headlines from the world of film development news, covering such titles as Captain Marvel, Deathstroke, Dora the Explorer, and the Logan spinoff Laura.
(Photo by Ben Rothstein/20th Century Fox Film Corp.)
Marvel Comics has had pretty great success with the female Wolverine clone X-23, including two mini-series and two ongoing series. To movie fans, however, that same character, who debuted earlier this year in Logan, is known only as “Laura.” Logan was both a box office and a critical success, and its ending left room for a sequel focusing on Laura’s further adventures, so this week’s news is not really that surprising. That’s especially true, given the warm reception fans and critics alike gave to Hugh Jackman’s 11-year-old costar, Spanish-British actress Dafne Keen. Logan director James Mangold is now working with screenwriter Craig Kyle (who first created X-23 for the X-Men: Evolution animated series) on a treatment for a spinoff movie that they’re calling Laura. 20th Century Fox is now planning on three X-Men movies a year, starting in 2018 with The New Mutants (4/13/18), Deadpool 2 (6/1/18), and X-Men: Dark Phoenix (11/2/18).
(Photo by Claudette Barius/Warner Bros. Pictures)
With two major publishers dominating the nearly 80 year history of superhero comics, there are many examples of DC and Marvel having similar characters, such as Green Arrow/Hawkeye, The Flash/Quicksilver, and The Atom/Ant-Man. In some situations (as with Aquaman and Sub-Mariner), it’s actually the character introduced second who somehow becomes more popular. Especially after last year’s movie, Deadpool is arguably way, way more famous now than DC’s Deathstroke (incidentally, their street names are Wade Wilson and Slade Wilson, respectively). For a while, it seemed like Deathstroke would be the main villain in the upcoming Batman solo movie, but more recent reports have suggested he won’t be. Instead, we learned this week that Warner Bros is developing a solo movie for Deathstroke instead. Joe Manganiello remains attached to play Deathstroke in the film to be directed by Gareth Evans (The Raid: Redemption, The Raid 2). Slade Wilson originally called himself Deathstroke the Terminator, but the second half was dropped by DC Comics after the success of James Cameron’s The Terminator.
(Photo by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)
Some casting announcements make so much in retrospect that they can inspire forehead-slapping “oh right” reactions. When Marvel announced in April that Captain Marvel (3/8/19) will be directed by the team of Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck (It’s King of a Funny Story, Mississippi Grind), the answer to “who will they cast as the villain?” was right there for anyone who thought to look. We say that because Ryan Reynolds’ costar in Mississippi Grind was Australian actor Ben Mendelsohn, who played a villain in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and will do the same in two films in 2018: Ready Player One and Robin Hood (as the Sheriff of Nottingham). Mendelsohn is now in talks with Marvel Studios to costar in Captain Marvel as the film’s main villain, which TheWrap is reporting will be the leader of the shapeshifting alien race, the Skrulls. There was also recently a rumor that Fox may be introducing the Skrulls to their own Marvel franchise in X-Men: Dark Phoenix, which is scheduled for four months earlier (11/2/18).
(Photo by Giles Keyte/Universal Pictures)
Earlier this month, Fast & Furious franchise costar Tyrese Gibson took to Instagram seemingly to complain about the delay of the 9th film (from 2019 to April 10, 2020) because Dwayne Johnson’s spinoff with Jason Statham will be released in 2019 instead. It took a few weeks, but Vin Diesel took to his Facebook profile Wednesday to make two announcements about the future of the franchise. Director Justin Lin, who Diesel called the “forefather of Fast,” and who directed a string of four movies (Tokyo Drift to Fast & Furious 6), will return to the franchise to direct the final Fast & Furious films (#9 and #10). Other films Justin Lin reportedly has in development include Hot Wheels, Space Jam 2, and The Bourne Legacy 2.
(Photo by Zade Rosenthal/Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)
The thing about early “spoilers” in this day and age is that such revelations often show up in the trailers anyway. Regardless, if you don’t want to know anything else about the yet-untitled Avengers 4 (5/3/19), which comes after Avengers: Infinity War (5/4/18), this would be an excellent place to stop reading. Last month, rumors started showing up online that Jeremy Renner’s Clint Barton (AKA Hawkeye) might be taking on a new identity, namely Ronin. This week, images of Renner walking to the Avengers 4 set in costume revealed that he is wearing the Ronin boots and pants. In the comics, the Ronin identity has been used not just by Hawkeye, but also Echo, Red Guardian, Blade, and Ultimate Moon Knight. As for what Hawkeye taking on the Ronin identity will actually mean within the context of Avengers 4, we still have no clue.
(Photo by Warner Bros.)
One of the most jarring concepts in the 2012 science fiction film Cloud Atlas was the decision to cast “America’s Sweetheart” Tom Hanks as a post-apocalyptic primitive (though something similar was done with Cast Away). Well, the mastermind behind David S. Pumpkins isn’t done with the post-apocalypse quite yet, because Tom Hanks will star in a science fiction drama called Bios as a dying inventor who creates a robot to look after his beloved dog after his death. Bios will be the second feature film (after 2010’s Repo Men) directed by Miguel Sapochnik, who may be best known for his work on four episodes of TV’s Game of Thrones. Although he didn’t work on Season 7, Sapochnik directed back-to-back episodes in both Season 5 (The Gift, Hardhome) and Season 6 (Battle of the Bastards, for which he won an Emmy, and The Winds of Winter). Tom Hanks’ next film role will be as Ben Bradlee in Steven Spielberg’s The Post (12/22/17), about the Pentagon Papers.
(Photo by Jessica Miglio/Warner Bros.)
Before Samuel L. Jackson first played Mace Windu in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, he had already appeared in four Spike Lee “joints” (School Daze, Do the Right Thing, Mo’ Better Blues, Jungle Fever). Now, another Star Wars star is getting ready to make the opposite transition. The actor in question is Adam Driver, who plays Kylo Ren in Star Wars: The Force Awakens and December’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Driver will co-star in Spike Lee’s next film as director, Black Klansman, which is based on the true story of Colorado Springs police detective Ron Stallworth, an African-American who posed as a member of the Ku Klux Klan as part of a sting operation, eventually rising to a leadership position. Adam Driver will play a fellow police officer, with Stallworth himself being played by John David Washington (of HBO’s Ballers). Laura Harrier, who played Liz in this summer’s Spider-Man: Homecoming, was also recently cast in Black Klansman.
(Photo by Nickelodeon)
In 2011, screenwriter Nicholas Stoller adapted Generation X favorites The Muppets for their return to the big screen. Now, Stoller (who’s also directed such films as Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Neighbors) is working on a screenplay adaptation of animated TV series Dora the Explorer (2000-2015), which is now in development to be adapted by Paramount as a live-action movie for release in 2019. Although Dora was a young child and then a “tween” in her animated series, she will be portrayed as a teenager for the live-action movie. She is expected to have her talking pet monkey Boots, as well as her backpack and map, which are also able to talk to her. Dora the Explorer will be produced by Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes production company, but Bay himself is not directly producing.
(Photo by Daniel McFadden/Universal)
All three of the entries in Universal’s horror/thriller franchise that started with The Purge have received Rotten Tomatometer scores (and comparable RT Audience scores). That said, they have had fairly consistent box office results on relatively small budgets, so you can probably guess whether there’s going to be a fourth movie. The answer is “yes,” and it’s going to be a prequel called The Purge: The Island (set on NYC’s Staten Island) that will depict the circumstances that led to the annual event in which all crimes are legal for 12 hours. Perhaps inspired by Universal’s success earlier this year with Get Out, six of the eight announced cast members are black or African-American, with the film’s director saying recently that the cast is “90% black.” The Purge: The Island is already scheduled for July 4, 2018 (just a few days before Marvel’s Ant-Man and the Wasp), but it’s a Rotten Idea based on the franchise’s Tomatometer record.
(Photo by Warner Bros.)
Although we keep getting remakes that fall “flat” (like last month’s Flatliners), attempts to translate that into an anti-remake narrative are deflated by remakes like IT. There are also the “remake TV shows” like The Handmaid’s Tale, Westworld, The Exorcist, and Lethal Weapon to consider. Both of those types of reboots have led the newly rebranded Morgan Creek Entertainment Group (the company behind The Exorcist) to announce their plans to revive their catalog of titles as either movie remakes, new TV shows, or possibly both. The three multi-film franchises that were mentioned are Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, the baseball comedy Major League, and the western Young Guns. The other films are mostly thrillers (Dead Ringers, Diabolique, Pacific Heights), plus one horror film (Clive Barker’s Nightbreed). Ace Ventura and Young Guns are being eyed as both movie reboots and TV shows, with Dead Ringers and Nightbreed being developed as TV shows.
