Today’s Ketchup brings you another ten headlines from the world of film development news including stories about Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, the Han Solo prequel, and Star Wars: The Last Jedi.
(Photo by Warner Bros. courtesy Everett Collection)
DC Comics has been publishing comics since before World War II, and in those 75+ years, it has introduced over 10,000 characters. Yet, it feels Warner Bros. continue to adapt the same characters over and over in their live-action films. The sentiment was echoed this week in two stories about the same character: the Joker (including a Rotten Idea presented below). Martin Scorsese will be producing his first comic book movie ever, with an origin story about the character to be directed by Todd Phillips, best known for The Hangover trilogy. The Joker origin movie also won’t be set in the DCEU (and he won’t be played by Jared Leto), but will instead be part of a new DC Comics banner/franchise.
(Photo by Jay Maidment/Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)
We don’t know yet what sort of narrative upset will result from Avengers 4 (5/3/19), but the Reality Stone was introduced in Thor: The Dark World, so who knows? With a rumored release date in 2020, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 might be the second post-Avengers 4 movie (after the Spider-Man: Homecoming sequel, 7/5/19) in the MCU, and in a Facebook Live session this week, GotG director James Gunn promised it will indeed have long-term ramifications. Said Gunn of GotG 3, “It will take place after the next two Avengers movies, and it will help to set up the next 10, 20 years of Marvel movies. It’s going to really expand the cosmic universe. We’re going to be setting up new characters.” Any cosmic favorites you want, readers?
(Photo by Lucasfilm)
Although the aliens and droids probably get talked about the most, the Star Wars movies have also featured some pretty cool spaceships and other types of vehicles. This week, Lucasfilm’s The Star Wars Show on YouTube revealed two of the new First Order vehicles that will be introduced in this year’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi (12/15/17). One of them is the (previously rumored) AT-M6, which is similar to the AT-AT (The Empire Strikes Back), except that it walks more like a gorilla (and is able to pounce). SW: TLJ will also introduce the First Order Dreadnought, which similarly evolves the classic Star Destroyer into something even bigger, more powerful, and frankly, more pizza-slice-looking.
(Photo by Jay Maidment/Walt Disney Pictures, Magnolia Pictures courtesy Everett Collection)
Director Drew Goddard’s The Cabin in the Woods (Certified Fresh at 92 percent) only came out 5 years ago, but in some ways, it feels much longer ago. For example, Chris Hemsworth was still two months away from signing to play Marvel’s Thor when he filmed The Cabin in the Woods. Now, Hemsworth and Iron Man costar Jeff Bridges are in talks to star in Goddard’s second film as director, a violent thriller called Bad Times at the El Royale (10/5/18). Premise details are few and far between; we only know that it’s set at a rundown Lake Tahoe hotel in the 1960s.
(Photo by Columbia courtesy Everett Collection)
It’s been nearly ten years since director Michael Bay and stars Will Smith and Martin Lawrence began talking about a third Bad Boys movie called Bad Boys for Life. Just as it looked like it might finally happen, Sony yanked the planned sequel from its November 9, 2018 release date last week. Following up on that, Lawrence now says, “I don’t think we’re going to get one, not the way everything’s turning out… Will is off doing another movie.” That other movie is Disney’s live-action Aladdin, in which Smith plays the Genie. The buddy cop franchise started in 1995 with Bad Boys (Rotten at 43 percent), and continued in 2003 with Bad Boys II (also Rotten at 23 percent). At one point, there was even talk about a Bad Boys 4 to be released in 2019.
(Photo by Warner Bros. Pictures)
There is a long tradition in Hollywood of actors playing well above their age (even if the makeup isn’t always effective). Some examples include Dustin Hoffman in Little Big Man, Michael J. Fox in Back to the Future II, and Johnny Knoxville in Bad Grandpa. The next star to age up will be Will Ferrell, who this week signed on to The 100 Year-Old Man, an adaptation of a Swedish movie and novel. Ferrell will play an elderly man whose escape from a retirement home leads to revelations of his connections to various 20th century events (a la Forrest Gump, Zelig, etc.).
(Photo by Patti Perret/Paramount Pictures)
Last week, Emma Stone replaced Jennifer Lawrence as Hollywood’s top-paid actress, and this week taught us something similar about the top-paid male actor. Thanks to his earnings from this summer’s Transformers: The Last Knight and this November’s upcoming Daddy’s Home 2, Mark Wahlberg earned over $68 million in the last year, knocking Dwayne Johnson ($65 million) off the top of the list. Johnson’s Fast and Furious co-star Vin Diesel took #3, and Adam Sandler took #4 due to his lucrative Netflix deal. The rest of the top 20 is dominated by Marvel stars, but the #8-#10 spots all go to Bollywood actors. It’s also a little depressing that the $26 million that made Emma Stone the #1 actress would’ve only landed her at #15 on the male list.
(Photo by 20th Century Fox Film Corporation)
First off, we should stress exactly how much of a rumor this story is. Recent Deadpool 2 (6/1/18) set photos and reports suggest that Jack Kesy (or his stunt double) is wearing some sort of CGI headgear, and the speculation is that Kesy might be playing the popular X-Men villain Juggernaut. The reason I’m calling this news a “Rotten Idea” is that the Juggernaut is a major villain who could arguably carry an entire movie as the primary antagonist. If Jack Kesy is playing the Juggernaut, there’s concern this it could turn out like X-Men: The Last Stand, which underutilized Juggernaut as a secondary villain. Previously, there was speculation that Kesy could be playing Black Tom Cassidy, who, in the comics, is… Juggernaut’s frequent partner.
(Photo by Claire Folger/Paramount Pictures)
It had been previously reported that Michael K. Williams (HBO’s The Wire, The Night Of) would be co-starring in next year’s Han Solo prequel (5/25/18) as a human/animal hybrid alien, but this week, Williams revealed that his character has been completely removed from the film. After Ron Howard took over for the directors of The LEGO Movie, the production required lots of re-shoots, and Williams was unfortunately unable to make the schedule work with his filming of the spy drama The Red Sea Diving Resort, starring Chris Evans and Sir Ben Kingsley.
(Photo by Clay Enos/Warner Bros.)
To date, we’ve had four actors play the Joker in live-action movies (Cesar Romero, Jack Nicholson, Heath Ledger, and Jared Leto), and the origin version mentioned above will be #5. In addition to that, Leto and Margot Robbie are now also attached to star in a Suicide Squad spinoff centering on the relationship between the Joker and Harley Quinn. The spinoff sequel will be written and directed by John Requa and Glenn Ficarra, the team behind Crazy Stupid Love and the NBC TV series This is Us. We’re calling this the Rotten Idea of the Week because we don’t need multiple Joker movies, not when DC has countless other characters they could adapt instead.
