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 Emily the Strange, Little Shop of Horrors, Puff the Magic Dragon, and new roles for Will Ferrell, Kate McKinnon, and Shailene Woodley.
The tricky thing about following film development news on any sort of regular basis is that it opens you up to possible spoilers. For the most part, the Internet in 2016 has actually been sort of good at acting as a spoiler filter (that is, it used to be worse). Just by their nature, however, some stories are basically spoilers. We say all that to say this: if you don’t want a future Marvel Studios movie to be spoiled, stop reading now. Still here? Okay, here we go. This week, while at the Brazil Comic Con, Vin Diesel revealed two details about his character Groot in (most likely) two different movies. Let’s start with probably the biggest news (also the least spoilerish), which is that director James Gunn would like to someday direct a Guardians of the Galaxy spinoff following the continued adventures of Rocket and Groot (just our guess at the title for such a film). If a Rocket and Groot movie did happen, it would be after Avengers: Infinity War (5/4/18), according to Vin Diesel. Vin Diesel also revealed that he knows that, “somewhere in the universe, you’re going to see Groot and Hulk battle.” Now, there’s two possible places that could happen (soon), and that’s in next year’s Thor: Ragnarok (which Hulk is a big part of), and in the aforementioned Avengers: Infinity War, which seems likely to have both the Guardians and Hulk in it. Presuming that guess is accurate, perhaps a Groot vs Hulk fight was likely any way, but Vin Diesel may have also just confirmed it. And that confirmation is therefore possibly a spoiler… if Marvel actually didn’t put that scene in the eventual trailer (and that itself, is probably not that likely). All of that is also spoils the fact that you will eventually see Groot grow up enough to fight Hulk (unless of course, Hulk himself gets shrunk!). You will next be able to see (Baby) Groot in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 (5/5/17).
Shailene Woodley is now 25 years old, which means she’s probably done playing teenagers, and will focus more on “adult” roles (age-wise, not porn!). For example, as of this week, Woodley is now attached to star in Adrift, a true story drama about a young woman who finds herself on a shipwreck alone at sea. The screenplay was adapted by the non-fiction book by Tami Oldham Ashcraft, Red Sky in Mourning: A True Story of Love, Loss, and Survival at Sea (a title which probably tells you what happens to whichever actor eventually signs on to costar with Shailene Woodley). Although some of director Baltasar Kormakur’s earlier films received Rotten Tomatometer scores, his last three films as director have been Fresh, so we’re calling this one of the week’s Fresh Developments as well. (Those three films were 2013’s 2 Guns and The Deep, and 2015’s Everest.) Kormakur’s The Deep was also about someone stuck alone at sea, except that Adrift is set in the tropics, instead of near Iceland.
This week, the world received its first confirmation that at least some non-bird dinosaurs did indeed have feathers like birds, sort of messing up the Jurassic Park franchise. Almost certainly coincidentally, one of the week’s big casting stories also involved a story about a bird. That’s because Naomi Watts (The Ring, The Impossible) and Reese Witherspoon (Cruel Intentions, Election) are now attached to star in an Australian family drama called Penguin Bloom. Based on the title, you might think the bird in question was a penguin, but it’s actually about the true story of a magpie chick who helped a family cope after one of them suffers a handicapping injury (a high fall from a hotel in Thailand, ouch!). You can read more about the true story right here. Penguin Bloom will be filmed on location in Australia, but the project doesn’t currently have a director or even a screenwriter (they might be looking for both in the same person).
Yes, that’s right, Baby Boomers, we can now refer to pop cultural artifacts from your signature decade as half a century old. In this case, we’re going to be talking about the folk song and pop hit, “Puff the Magic Dragon,” which Peter, Paul & Mary have long sworn up and down has absolutely nothing to do with smoking any sort of, well, anything. Which is probably a good thing for this week’s news, because it sounds like the Puff the Magic Dragon is absolutely being planned as a “kids’ movie.” Having said that, it’s also coming to us via one of the producers of the recent (arguably) psychedelic color bonanza, DreamWorks’ Trolls. This Puff the Magic Dragon movie — planned by Fox Animation as an animation/live action hybrid– will be the first theatrically released feature film adaptation, following a 1978 short film and a 1979 TV movie. Producer Mike Mitchell’s credits as director also include Sky High, Shrek Forever After, and Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked.
The idea of a feature film based on the Dark Horse Comics (and clothing brand) character Emily the Strange has been kicking around Hollywood for several years now, dating back at least to 2010. Back then, it sounded like Chloe Moretz might have starred in a live action adaptation, but as Moretz is now just two months from her 20th birthday, she may have since aged out of the target range. Well, the Emily the Strange movie is still in the works, but pretty much every thing else about it now different. Universal Pictures has since departed the film, which is now set up at Amazon Studios, which is planning on Emily the Strange now being a fully animated film. That’s certainly one way to get the movie produced and released without worrying about their star looking young enough or, for that matter, “goth” enough.
If you haven’t already been exposed to this phenomenon in your life, there is now such a thing out in the real world as “eSports.” Or as it might otherwise be known, “playing video games professionally and being followed in the same way that people follow professional athletes.” Since you don’t have to be a (physical) “athlete” to be an eSports star, it may have been inevitable that someone in Hollywood would hit upon the idea of making a comedy about it. Will Ferrell has previously starred in a few different sports comedies in the past, including Semi-Pro, Blades of Glory, Kicking and Screaming, and of course, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. So, of course it’s Ferrell who is now attached to star in Legendary Pictures’ untitled comedy about eSports. Ferrell will play an online sports competitor who is not only not a “physical athlete,” but who is also much older than the other gamers (some of whom are teenagers).
Sometimes, a single movie can become the source of several related films that spawn from it, and not for the usual reasons (sequels, remakes, etc). What we’re talking about is a film that establishes a certain sentiment, and then the director, the writers, producers, etc go off and make more movies like that. In this case, we’re talking about last year’s The Big Short, in which comedy director Adam McKay made an abrupt career change to topical movies about true stories (in that case, the housing bubble crisis). Since its release, we’ve already seen McKay take on two more similar projects, about the Theranos scandal and about the life of Vice President Dick Cheney. Well, now, we have another movie based on that sort of topical recent event, and boy, this one is a doozie. The Big Short screenwriter Charles Randolph (also of Love & Other Drugs) has sold a pitch to Megan Ellison’s Annapurna Pictures based on the sex scandal at Fox News involving Roger Ailes and female personalities there, including Megyn Kelly and Gretchen Carlson. Until the movie comes out to really educate us all, here’s the Wikipedia entry for the events the film will likely cover. Until then, who would you cast as the bigger-than-life personalities involved here, such as Roger Ailes, Megyn Kelly, and Gretchen Carlson?
It’s been a while now since we last heard news about the reboot of the video game franchise Tomb Raider, which will feature Alicia Vikander (Ex Machina) as explorer Lara Croft. Filming is scheduled to start in early 2017 to get ready for a release on March 16, 2018, so it’s not surprising that we are now starting to hear more about it. This week’s news is that fan favorite Walton Goggins (TV’s Justified, Vice Principals, Sons of Anarchy, The Hateful Eight) has been cast as the movie’s main villain… but we don’t really know much more than that right now. The Tomb Raider reboot’s current competition on the March 25, 2018 weekend is Warner Bros’ own The Flash, which really just suggests that The Flash will probably be moved to another date soon (following the recent departure of director Rick Famuyiwa).
The verdict is still out on whether this weekend’s Office Christmas Party will be a box office hit, but one of its stars landed a deal in front of it anyway. Kate McKinnon, star of both Saturday Night Live and this summer’s Ghostbusters, has signed to star in Amblin Entertainment’s adaptation of the YA series The Lunch Witch. The first book tells the story of a witch named Grunnhilda, whose family has “stirred up trouble in a big, black pot… for generations and generations.” The Lunch Witch is usually portrayed as being much more heavyset than Kate McKinnon is, but it’s not yet known if Kate McKinnon will be gaining weight for the role, if she will use a “fat suit,” or if some sort of motion-capture animation will be utilized to bring the character to (larger than) life. The Lunch Witch will mark the live action debut of director Clay Kaytis, who made his directorial debut earlier this by codirecting The Angry Birds Movie, which received a Rotten score of just 43 percent on the Tomatometer.
On stage, film, and TV these days, we sort of take it for granted that a lot of musicals are adaptations of old movies (that often were not themselves musical, such as Evil Dead: The Musical). An early example of this, however was the 1982 musical Little Shop of Horrors, which in 1986 became a movie musical starring Rick Moranis, Steve Martin, and Levi Stubbs as the voice of Audrey II, the plant monster. Certified Fresh with a score of 90 percent, you might assume that film would be relatively safe from being remade. Then again, you’re not a Warner Bros executive. That’s because Warner Bros is indeed now developing a new movie musical remake of Little Shop of Horrors. To that end, the studio has hired TV producer Greg Berlanti, who is known for his work on the four shows on The CW adapting DC Comics properties: Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, and Legends of Tomorrow. Those shows are popular among fans and often do well critically, but Berlanti’s previous credits in film are quite different, with his last three credits all designated Rotten. Those films are: Life As We Know It (28 percent), Green Lantern (26 percent), and last year’s (Peter Pan remake) Pan (27 percent).
