The week right before Christmas is supposed to be a joyous one, but Hollywood was an industry rocked by surprising decisions about the comedy The Interview that set scary precedents. The Weekly Ketchup covers those events, and seven other of our usual, more entertaining and less controversial news stories, like who will direct Star Trek 3 and casting news for Suicide Squad and Doctor Strange.
Right in the middle of December, we’re supposed to be in a festive spirit, with Christmas a week away. It’s a time for family movies, big epic films, and awards contenders. Although there were the usual Hollywood announcements this week, which you can read about below, the biggest news involved Sony Pictures and their decision not to release The Interview. The comedy stars James Franco and Seth Rogen and tells the story of an American media personality invited to interview North Korean leader Kim Jong Un (which the CIA sees as a chance to “take him out”). The events happened quickly over just a few days, and when the dust settled, Hollywood and the United States realized a scary precedent might have been set. It’s more than we can detail in this single column, but this timeline at Deadline might help fill in the details. The escalation began on Tuesday when the cyber-terrorists calling themselves the “Guardians of Peace” sent out an email threatening any screening of The Interview with language such as, “The world will be full of fear. Remember the 11th of September 2001. We recommend you to keep yourself distant from the places at that time.” The next day, the top five exhibitors (AMC, Regal, Cinemark, Cineplex, and Carmike) all announced that they would not screen The Interview, and within a few hours, Sony Pictures completely scrapped its Christmas day theatrical release. Speculation then began online that perhaps Sony would release The Interview as a VOD exclusive, but a Sony representative told Deadline, “Sony Pictures has no further release plans for the film” (including VOD). It’s not as if Hollywood has never attempted material like this before. Charlie Chaplin was able to produce The Great Dictator, the South Park guys were able to make Team America: World Police (more about that below), and the 2012 remake of Red Dawn reimagined one of the invading armies as North Koreans (instead of Cubans). For the rest of the story, please continue reading the Rotten Idea of the Week.
Switching now to our usual pop culture obsessions, we thought we’d get some big news early this week when Roberto Orci departed as director of Star Trek 3 (he will stay on as producer) and Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) was rumored to take his place. Such a hiring would have allowed Wright to work with frequent collaborator Simon Pegg, who plays Scotty. A new shortlist was revealed this week, and the first surprise is that Edgar Wright isn’t on the list, at all. Instead, the front runner is now said to be Rupert Wyatt, who delivered an effective reboot with Rise of the Planet of the Apes and also directed the new Mark Wahlberg drama, The Gambler. Three other names on the list are Morten Tyldum (The Imitation Game, Headhunters), Daniel Espinosa (Safe House, Easy Money), and Justin Lin (Fast & Furious, Fast Five, Fast & Furious 6). The fifth director listed was Duncan Jones (Moon, Source Code), who quickly replied that, following his upcoming Warcraft movie, he “absolutely MUST make my own thing next, or I’ll die of old age!” Looking at the work of the directors Paramount is considering, we can detect an emphasis on either dramas or action films, but none of them are particularly humorous in the style of Edgar Wright. Having noted that, there was a rumor this week that Paramount might be trying to sculpt Star Trek 3 into something more like Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy.
The third and final film in director Peter Jackson’s eight hour adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit was released this week, and so as one would expect, he was out doing press for the film. After such an ambitious project, Jackson said, “We really feel a bigger urge now to not continue with another Hollywood blockbuster for a while, but to go back and tell some New Zealand stories.” To that end, he and writing partner Fran Walsh are now considering several true stories set in New Zealand “similar in tone and scope” to his 1994 film, Heavenly Creatures. We don’t know what New Zealand true stories Jackson and Walsh might be working on. Asked about whether he would ever return for more Tolkien stories (such as the many legends Tolkien concocted for The Simarillion), Jackson said, “ask me in two or three years, and I’d probably say yes.” What is missing in the article completely is any mention of Jackson’s previously announced intention to direct the second Tintin movie (Steven Spielberg directed the first film) after wrapping up The Hobbit. Does this mean the Tintin franchise is on hold, or will another director take over? We don’t know.
David Oyelowo, who is Golden Globe nominated for portraying Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma, is now attached to star in a romantic drama with Lupita Nyong’o, the young actress who earned last year’s Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for 12 Years a Slave. Oyelowo and Nyong’o will star in Americanah (based on a novel by Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie) as “young Nigerian immigrants who face a lifetime of struggle while their relationship endures.” David Oyelowo is a British actor of Nigerian extraction, and Lupita Nyong’o was born in Mexico City to parents of Kenyan extraction, so one can speculate that this story resonates strongly for both actors. With two stars attached, Brad Pitt’s Plan B production company is now seeking both a screenwriter and director to bring Americanah to the big screen.
Amidst all of the craziness in Hollywood this week, Tom Hanks and his Playtone production company made the rounds this week, shopping to the studios their adaptation of the novel The Circle by David Eggers (A Heartbreaking Story of Staggering Genius). Tom Hanks will star in The Circle, which will be his second adaptation of a David Eggers novel, with the adaptation of Hologram for the King expected to be released in 2015. The Circle will focus on a young woman who is hired by an Internet company with a monopoly on the new industry of connecting all personal information into one global network, with the story eventually becoming a thriller. It’s not known which role Tom Hanks will be playing. James Ponsoldt (The Spectacular Now) will both write and direct The Circle.
After previous stories that Oprah Winfrey and Octavia Spencer were also in the running, it was announced this week that Viola Davis (The Help, TV’s How to Get Away with Murder) has landed a key role in the new DC Comics cinematic universe. Davis will costar in Suicide Squad (8/5/16) as Amanda Waller, the government agent who works as the handler to the team of criminals and super villains. In many ways, Amanda Waller much like Suicide Squad‘s version of Marvel’s Nick Fury. Therefore, it’s expected that Viola Davis could appear in multiple films for Warner Bros and DC Comics, but this week, no multi-picture deal was mentioned (“yet,” we’re going to speculate). Amanda Waller was also one of the DC characters to receive the most drastic renovation as part of “The New 52” in 2011, with the character appearing to have lost at least 100 pounds. The “New 52” Amanda Waller therefore resembles Viola Davis much more than she would have a few years ago.
A key figure in the origin story of Marvel’s Doctor Strange is the Ancient One, who in the comics was originally depicted as an elderly Asian mystic hidden away in a sanctuary in the Himalayan Mountains. Based on the three actors Marvel is reportedly considering for the role, the studio may be looking at a variety of ways to portray the Ancient One in their Doctor Strange movie. Those actors are: Morgan Freeman, Ken Watanabe (The Last Samurai, Godzilla), and Bill Nighy (Love Actually, Underworld: Evolution). The search is also on for an actor to play another student of the Ancient One, Baron Mordo, who becomes one of Doctor Strange’s most dangerous foes. This news follows the recent confirmation that Benedict Cumberbatch will star as Doctor Strange (11/4/16).
In preparing their upcoming prequel/reboot of the 1933 monster movie classic King Kong, Universal Pictures and Legendary Pictures are thus far choosing exclusively from the pool of actors who have appeared in multiple adaptations of Marvel characters. This week, J.K. Simmons, who is currently “hot” in Hollywood because of Whiplash, joined the already cast Tom Hiddleston in the newly titled film, Kong: Skull Island. We also learned this week that Legendary has bumped Kong: Skull Island back three months from November, 2016 to March 10, 2017. This move helps make way for director Zhang Yimou’s (Hero) Untitled Great Wall Project, which is now scheduled for release on November 23, 2016.
Continuing our Top Story, as Hollywood recoiled from what was happening to The Interview, the “Twittersphere” was particularly aflutter with comments. Possibly the most noteworthy response to the news came from New Regency, a major production company housed on the 20th Century Fox lot. New Regency has pulled the plug on their their project called Pyongyang, based on a graphic novel (and true story) about a French-Canadian artist who worked in North Korea for a year. Steve Carell was attached to star in Pyongyang, with Gore Verbinski (the Pirates of the Caribbean films, The Ring, The Lone Ranger) directing. As one can guess, the graphic novel portrays life in the capital city and the rest of North Korea harshly. This is a movie that was in the works, and now it isn’t. The implications are stunning and scary.
Faced with the economic reality that a week before Christmas day, they would have one less film to show, exhibitors across the nation began exploring possible alternatives (other than just giving Annie or Exodus: Gods and Kings another screen). Several, including the Alamo Drafthouse chain, decided that an appropriate response would be to show the marionette political satire Team America: World Police instead. Paramount Pictures, however, denied permission for theaters to screen the film on Christmas Day instead of The Interview. In that film, Kim Jong Un’s father is portrayed as the main villain, and (spoiler from 2004!), he dies (sort of) graphically in the film. In this story, we now have two major exhibitors who have backed down because of the threats. We soon learned that George Clooney led an effort to rally all of the major studios in support of Sony… and no one signed on. Some of the latest news is that the F.B.I. has released a report concluding that “the North Korean government is responsible for these actions.” Finally, President Barack Obama addressed Sony’s decision to cancel the release of The Interview thusly: “It says something interesting about North Korea that they decided to have the state launch an all-out assault on a movie studio because of a satirical movie starring Seth Rogen and James Franco. I love Seth and I love James, but the notion that that was a threat to them, I think, gives you some sense of the kind of regime we’re talking about here.” Finally, on Friday afternoon, we received a news story from Sony Pictures which can be seen as something of a reaction to all of this. Sony’s next big franchise might be Robert Rodriguez’s long-in-development adaptation of Frank Frazetta’s animated fantasy film Fire and Ice. The nice thing about portraying prehistoric troglodytes as your movie’s villains is that they have horrible wireless access, apparently.
For more Weekly Ketchup columns by Greg Dean Schmitz, check out the WK archive, and you can contact GDS via Facebook.
