This week’s Ketchup includes movie development news stories for such projects as the sequels Fifty Shades Darker, X-Men: Apocalypse, a new Alien movie, new roles for Scarlett Johansson and Will Smith, and a potential new movie for director Steven Spielberg.
If you’ve been to the movies lately (and if you’re reading this column, you probably have), there’s a good chance you’ve seen the trailer for the robot movie Chappie, which comes across as an homage of sorts to the 1980s movie Short Circuit. After a few months of online stories about a possible Alien movie, this week director Neill Blomkamp confirmed that his next film will indeed be an entry in the Alien franchise for 20th Century Fox. The concept art raised some interesting questions, considering it showed two franchise characters, including Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) in situations that seemed to conflict with what we think we know (we won’t get into details to avoid spoilers). This new Alien film is also described as being set after the events of the upcoming Ridley Scott-directed sequel Prometheus 2. That sequel was previously scheduled for March 4, 2016 (which was later delayed); it’s unknown if Blomkamp’s film might now take its release on the 2017-ish calendar (being set after Prometheus 2 doesn’t necessarily mean it couldn’t be released first, considering the timey-wimey way the Alien franchise has basically been given to us over the years).
Two of the biggest movies of 2014 (Interstellar and American Sniper) were, once upon a time, nearly directed by Steven Spielberg. These false starts are part of why we’re now three years out from Spielberg’s last film (Lincoln in 2012), but it’s starting to look like a new flare of activity might lead to us seeing three new movies from the director by the end of 2016. We already knew about the Cold War legal drama St. James Place (reuniting Spielberg with Tom Hanks) (10/16/15), and the fantasy adaptation The BFG (7/1/16). If this week’s story comes true quickly enough, the awards season of late 2016 might include Thank You for Your Service, a non-fiction adaptation about “the true life struggles of soldiers returning from service from Iraq and Afghanistan, and chronicles their struggle to adapt back into regular life as they battle PTSD and other disorders.” Filming might start later this year. Spielberg’s interest in Thank You for Your Service is particularly interesting considering what we mentioned above, which is that he nearly directed another movie about Iraq soldiers, the recent hit film American Sniper.
Scarlett Johansson has signed with Imagine Entertainment and Universal Pictures to star in an adaptation of the non-fiction book The Psychopath Test, about how members of the medical community work together to identify the “one out of every hundred people is a psychopath, devoid of empathy, manipulative, deceitful, charming, seductive, and delusional” before they harm themselves others or themselves. The Psychopath Test will be directed by Jay Roach, whose filmography includes both comedies like Meet the Parents and the Austin Powers trilogy, and HBO dramas like Recount and Game Change. The Psychopath Test is being adapted by screenwriter Kristin Gore, who also happens to be the daughter of former Vice President Al Gore.
With three of the other young mutants cast in X-Men: Apocalypse (Tye Sheridan as Cyclops, Sophie Turner as Jean Grey, and Alexandra Shipp as Storm), this week, director Bryan Singer turned his attention to the German teleporter Nightcrawler. It was somewhat surprising, as it hadn’t been previously known for sure if the character would even have a substantial role in the movie, but the choice of Kodi Smit-McPhee to play Kurt Wagner suggests this won’t be one of those “mutant #23 in the background” type of situations. Kodi Smit-McPhee’s filmography includes the lead roles in Let Me In and ParaNorman, and also a central role as one of the humans in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. In other Marvel news (at 20th Century Fox), Morena Baccarin also this week landed the female lead as Wade Wilson’s (Ryan Reynolds) romantic interest in Deadpool. Actor Daniel Cudmore also took to Twitter to confirm that he won’t be the actor who plays Colossus in Deadpool, and a casting call was leaked online to give hints at what supporting characters might be appearing in both Deadpool and possible sequels.
Will Smith is now attached to star in an action thriller for Paramount Pictures called Bounty, which has a premise that sounds a lot like a throwback to such action movies as The Fugitive. Smith will play a Boston man who is wrongly convicted of murder who then escapes from prison to prove his innocence, leading to a $10 million “dead or alive” bounty to be placed on his head while he’s on the run. Bounty will be produced after other upcoming Will Smith movies, such as Focus (2/27/15), Concussion (12/25/15), and the super villain movie Suicide Squad (8/5/16).
If you’re of a certain age, and you want to feel a little older, this news of a remake of a movie that’s already been remade is just what you need. First, consider the “recent” remake of Shaft that starred Samuel L. Jackson as the character first played by Richard Roundtree in the 1971 movie. Here is where I remind you that the remake actually came out in 2000, which is 15 years ago, and you are officially old for thinking that was just a few years ago. Since any new project announced now probably won’t get released until 2017, might it indeed be time for yet another attempt to revive the “the black private dick that’s a sex machine to all the chicks?” That’s apparently one of the questions being considered at New Line Cinema, the studio that this week acquired the rights to the Shaft franchise. Samuel L. Jackson’s Shaft was actually closer to a sequel (though it’s usually called a remake), because his character was the nephew of Roundtree’s character. It’s unknown if the new film will continue in that vein, or if it will be a reboot completely from scratch.
Director J.J. Abrams and his Bad Robot production company are now developing a Thomas Edison biopic for Paramount Pictures which will depict the 19th century inventor as a “rugged eccentric genius,” responsible for such inventions as the light bulb, the phonograph, and the birth of cinema and filmmaking. Of course, it’s probably an understatement to say that there are people out there who think that Edison adulation is… misplaced. This Bad Robot/Paramount project will now be competing with another project in development at the Weinstein Company, The Current War, about the competition between Edison and George Westinghouse (who aligned with Nikola Tesla) over whether electricity would be provided using DC (Edison) or AC (Westinhouse/Tesla). (Is it a spoiler to say which form of electricity is actually used by your home today?) Bad Robot and Paramount also extended their first-look agreement this week until at least July, 2018, even as J.J. Abrams continues to prepare Star Wars: The Force Awakens for Walt Disney Pictures (12/18/15).
Every once in a while, disparate groups like sports fans and gaming nerds find themselves somehow colliding in a story that makes the national press. That’s what happened last month, when sports journalists were challenged to figure out exactly what this board game The Settlers of Catan was that the Green Bay Packers were playing in their locker room. And just around the time that a story like that breaks, it probably isn’t a huge jump to guess that someone in Hollywood started looking into what exactly The Settlers of Catan was, and how it could be licensed for… something. Producer Gail Katz, whose filmography has included Air Force One, Outbreak, and The Perfect Storm, has acquired both the film and television rights to The Settlers of Katan from its German game design company. It sounds at this point that Katz is open to any sort of adaptation, and that her interest predates the Packers story, with Katz saying, “I’ve been wanting to see an adaptation of the game for years, ever since my Catan-obsessed college-aged kids introduced me to it.”
One of the casualties of the hacking scandal over the release of The Interview was a film called Pyongyang, which would have featured Steve Carell as the star, and would have been directed by Gore Verbinski (The Lone Ranger, and the first three Pirates of the Caribbean movies). With that film no longer a possibility, Verbinski is progressing on another film he had in development (which is probably a project previously called Passengers). This untitled comedy is set up at Sony Pictures, and it sounds a lot like a modern revisionist take on It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, World. Quoting Deadline, “It’s a large scale action adventure comedy that’s best described as a transcontinental car race with autonomous vehicles. The race originates as a beta test to vet competing software companies that would take the lead on futuristic driver-less vehicles, but it all takes an It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World-like comedic turn when the trial run devolves into major road race after the competitive nature of the start-ups trumps their altruistic intentions. The subjects, normal people who are passengers in these cars, eventually try to take control of the experiment. A simple trek from Paris to Beijing, goes awry as vehicles head off the road and off the grid, getting into all kinds of trouble.” Gore Verbinski has been quoted as saying he wants to work with the “funniest comedic actors of this generation,” which has some sources guessing that this will be another opportunity to work with Johnny Depp, who has starred in five of Verbinski’s last six films as director.
A week after the film’s release, Fifty Shades of Grey now has a Rotten Tomatometer score of just 25%, but it also scored $81 million in its first weekend. So, yes, of course, Universal Pictures is moving forward for plans to adapt the sequels Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Free. As part of the negotiations for the sequel, we learned this week that author E.L. James is demanding more control over the sequel, after well-documented tussles with director Sam Taylor-Johnson over the first film. This time around, James wants to personally write the sequel’s script, and as part of that, studio sources are saying that director Sam Taylor-Johnson and screenwriter Kelly Marcel are unlikely to return for the sequel. The aftermath includes stories like this, where Taylor-Johnson was quoted as saying, “I feel like I never want to make a movie again.” The prolonged negotiations with E.L. James and the implied required search for a new director might mean that filming of the sequel won’t be able to start this year, so we might not see Fifty Shades Darker released until at least 2017.
