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 Baby Driver 2, Captain Marvel, Gemini Man, Swan Lake, and the reboot of The Grudge.
(Photo by Columbia Pictures)
In 2018, there will be a total of eight movies based on Marvel Comics, released by three different studios. Marvel Studios proper will open Black Panther (2/16/18), Avengers: Infinity War (5/4/18), and Ant-Man and the Wasp (7/6/18); Sony will have Venom (10/5/18) and their animated Spider-Man (Miles Morales) movie (12/14/18); and Fox will have The New Mutants (4/13/18), Deadpool 2 (6/1/18), and X-Men: Dark Phoenix (11/2/18). Only the first three will be part of the “MCU“, which will expand to include 22 total movies by 2019. Earlier this week, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige revealed that 2019’s Avengers 4 (5/4/19) (the title of which is still a secret) will be the end of a 22-movie arc, and that the sequel to this week’s Spider-Man: Homecoming will be the start of the next arc when it opens two months later on July 3, 2019. Of course, we can only guess what exactly that means, but some of it is probably related to the expiring contracts of many of the original MCU stars, including Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Scarlett Johansson, and Jeremy Renner, among others.
(Photo by Simon Mein/Sony Classics courtesy Everett Collection)
The list of acclaimed directors who were nominated for multiple Academy Awards but never actually won one includes such luminaries as Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Sidney Lumet, Federico Fellini, and Sergio Leone. English writer-director Mike Leigh, who has thus far been nominated seven times (twice for directing, five for writing), also belongs to that distinguished group, and his next film sounds like prime awards season material. Leigh’s next project will be a drama called Peterloo, about the “Peterloo Massacre” in 1819 in which the British cavalry charged into a crowd of 60,000+ protestors near Manchester who were demanding parliamentary reform. Peterloo is also a production of Amazon Studios, which is currently securing a large ensemble cast. To date, Mike Leigh has directed seven Certified Fresh feature films, and none of his films have scored lower than 83 percent on the Tomatometer.
(Photo by Wilson Webb/TriStar)
When people talk about movies being “hits” or “flops,” one of the most important factors to consider is the the budget. When a movie like Baby Driver is made for just $34 million, but earns more than that in its first week, it looks like a genuine box office bonanza. All of that (plus its 97 percent Tomatometer score) helps explain why Sony Pictures, according to director Edgar Wright, has already asked him to start working on a Baby Driver sequel screenplay. If Edgar Wright does indeed write and direct a Baby Driver 2, it will be his first sequel, because none of his Three Flavours Cornetto films (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, The World’s End) haven’t gotten the sequel treatment… yet.
(Photo by Zack Snyder/Warner Bros.)
Though we don’t yet have our first solo Batman movie starring Ben Affleck, it’s safe to assume Warner Bros. has franchise aspirations for the character. This week, while doing press for next week’s War for the Planet of the Apes, director Matt Reeves (Cloverfield, Let Me In) mentioned that he has “ideas about an arc” for a Batman trilogy — but of course, he has to get the first one done first. Even if WB does want a new trilogy, Ben Affleck may not. Earlier this year, after Affleck dropped out of directing the solo Batman, rumors suggested that he might not sign on again, though there was this piece that suggested that was all hearsay. There is no release date yet for Affleck’s first solo Batman, but if production starts in the next several months, it could still make a date in 2019 or 2020.
(Photo by Warner Bros.)
Filming is scheduled to start this month at Warner Bros.’ Leavesden studios in southeast England on Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, the tenth movie set in J.K. Rowling’s Wizarding World. We found out earlier this year that Jude Law would be joining the franchise as the younger version of Albus Dumbledore, but we knew precious little about what the sequel’s story would be… until this week’s announcement. Earlier this week, Warner Bros. revealed that the second Fantastic Beasts movie will start with the escape of Johnny Depp’s Gellert Grindelwald character, leading Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) to team up with Albus Dumbledore as the chase leads them to Paris, circa 1927. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them 2 is scheduled for release on November 16th, 2018, and it will be the sixth Rowling film directed by David Yates.
(Photo by Barry Wetcher/Warner Bros.)
Director Ang Lee had a bit of a box office and critical stumble last year with Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, which earned him only his second Rotten Tomatometer score (and an even less impressive box office take, at just under $1.8 million domestically). Put bluntly, Ang Lee needs a hit right now. As it happens, so does Paramount Pictures, which has had a bad couple of years, with even their traditionally most reliable franchise, Transformers, earning disappointing box office numbers recently. With that in mind, Lee and Paramount are teaming up with Will Smith, who will star in the science fiction action film Gemini Man, which has been in development (at various companies) for 20 years now, starting at Walt Disney Pictures. Smith will play an aging NSA agent who discovers that he’s been targeted by an assassin who turns out to be a younger version of himself — it’s not yet known how Lee plans on depicting the young Will Smith. Paramount has scheduled Gemini Man for release on October 4, 2019.
(Photo by Zade Rosenthal/Walt Disney Studios)
One of the signature tricks Marvel has used to build its cinematic universe is to cross-pollinate its films with current and future standalone stars. We see that this week with Iron Man appearing in Spider-Man: Homecoming, and later this year, Hulk will co-star in Thor: Ragnarok. We have yet to see Brie Larson’s Captain Marvel make an appearance in any MCU film, but Captain Marvel (3/8/19) will see the return of Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, who has been absent from the last few Marvel movies after playing a major part in uniting the first several MCU heroes. We still don’t know exactly what Captain Marvel will be about, including who the villain will be or how it connects to next year’s Avengers: Infinity War (which is when we may see Brie Larson’s debut).
(Photo by Jonathan Olley/Walt Disney Studios)
Although he’s far from a household name in the USA right now, Italian director Luca Guadagnino is certainly doing some of the right things to get there someday. His first major film with mostly English-speaking actors was 2015’s Certified Fresh A Bigger Splash, and this November, Guadagnino has another film, Call Me by Your Name, with the English-language remake of Suspiria coming in 2018. For his latest film, Guadagnino will work with Felicity Jones (Rogue One, The Theory of Everything), who is Felicity Jones is attached to star in an untitled film inspired by Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s famous ballet Swan Lake. Tchaikovsky’s ballet was based upon Russian folk tales, but it’s unclear if Guadagnino’s adaptation will be that “literal,” or if the Swan Lake basis is more figurative. Whatever the case, he’s attracted the interest of such studios as Universal, Paramount, and Sony’s TriStar (with the auction for the rights still ongoing).
Although The Mummy didn’t open to the numbers Universal Pictures probably hoped it would, Tom Cruise himself still has plenty of reasons to be optimistic about his near future. He has Mission: Impossible 6 coming next year, and he’s also been talking a lot about the Top Gun sequel which he recently revealed will be called Top Gun: Maverick (after his pilot character’s callsign). This week, the sequel got a little closer to being “real” as Paramount Pictures announced a release date of July 12th, 2019. That date is indeed quite ambitious, as Paramount is now the first studio to claim that weekend, with three very big movies before and after it — Universal Pictures has chosen Wednesday, July 3rd for their Secret Life of Pets sequel, Sony has scheduled their Spider-Man: Homecoming sequel for July 5th, and Disney has their remake of The Lion King scheduled for July 19th, 2019. Although he hasn’t officially been announced yet, it’s expected that the Top Gun sequel’s director will be Joseph Kosinski (TRON: Legacy), who previously directed Tom Cruise in 2013’s Oblivion.
(Photo by Columbia Pictures courtesy Everett Collection)
Just enough critics liked the original 2000 Japanese horror film Ju-On: The Grudge to give it a Fresh Tomatometer score, but the 2004 English-language remake starring Sarah Michelle Gellar, its 2006 sequel, and the Japanese sequel all received Rotten scores (the most recent of which scored just 16 percent). Despite all of that (and that’s not even counting all of the other films), producer Sam Raimi and his Ghost House Pictures are continuing with plans to reboot the film again. The director of the reboot of The Grudge will be Nicolas Pesce, who made his feature film debut last year with another horror film, The Eyes of My Mother. That film was indeed Certified Fresh at 75 percent, but we’re still a little skeptical that the world is still clamoring for another iteration of The Grudge.
