This week’s Ketchup covers the week that (basically) started with the Academy Awards, and ended with the death of Leonard Nimoy. In between, there were film development stories about such films as Blade Runner 2, Boyhood 2, The Huntsman, The LEGO Movie Sequel, and Pee-Wee’s Big Holiday.
This was, as you will see below, a week in which a few of the biggest news stories in Hollywood were not strictly about things we normally cover in this column (ie, “film development”), and one of the biggest stories wasn’t even a story about something that is “for sure” happening. Specifically, we’re talking about the frequently repeated news this week that Steven Spielberg “hopes to direct” the revival of the Indiana Jones franchise that Walt Disney Pictures hopes to recruit Chris Pratt (Guardians of the Galaxy) to star in. This is a story chock full of ifs and maybes (but such is so often the case with film development stories). IF Chris Pratt agrees to star in a new Indiana Jones movie, and IF the script is good, then MAYBE Steven Spielberg will direct… etc. But, hey, people just hope for a return to greatness, right? That was just one of three different ways in which Chris Pratt made the news this week. One of the others was the Parks and Recreation finale, which isn’t strictly under this column’s focus, but Rotten Tomatoes has that covered right here. Finally, there’s Chris Pratt’s other big 2014 movie, which was The LEGO Movie (he voiced the film’s lead). We learned this week that the LEGO Movie sequel will have the creative title of The LEGO Movie Sequel, and it will be directed by TV director Rob Schrab, who directed several episodes of Community, and the “camping” episode of… Parks and Recreation.
Since this is Friday, and the Academy Awards were five nights ago, most of what’s going to be written and read about the honorees has already happened, but since it was technically in the past seven days, here’s our obligatory Academy Awards coverage, albeit in brief. First off, if you want to just quickly browse the winners, that list is right here. The night’s biggest winning film was Birdman (or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), which won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Cinematography, and Best Original Screenplay. Another film to receive four prizes was The Grand Budapest Hotel, which won many of the “technical” prizes, such as Production Design, Costume Design, Makeup and Hairstyling, and Original Score. The independent film Whiplash also scored multiple prizes for Best Supporting Actor (J.K. Simmons), Editing, and Sound Mixing (those two prizes were directly connected, since Whiplash was a movie about drumming). No other films won multiple awards, including such multiple nominees as The Imitation Game (8 nominations, one award for Adapted Screenplay), Boyhood (6 nominations, one award for Supporting Actress), and American Sniper (6 nominations, one award for Sound Editing).
Although his 2013 film Prisoners was a mid-ranged fall season hit with $61 million, and he has yet to earn a Rotten Tomatometer score, director Denis Villeneuve is not yet a household name, even among most film buffs. This week’s news may, however, be the start of changing that, as Villeneuve (Prisoners, Incendies) is now in talks to direct the Blade Runner sequel. Harrison Ford, who starred in the original 1982 film was also confirmed this week to be appearing “in a small but critical role with his character appearing in the third act of the film.” Ridley Scott, who directed the first film, is still attached to produce this sequel, which will start filming in the summer of 2016.
In 2014, when director Richard Linklater was asked about the possibility of a Boyhood sequel, he answered with a fairly direct “no.” Now that some more time has passed, however, Linklater is apparently reconsidering the possibility. Specifically, he spoke this week about the idea of continuing to follow his lead character’s life as he proceeds through college and his 20s. That doesn’t necessarily mean, however, that a Boyhood 2 would be filmed over 10 years (though it may be), as the stated reason for the 12 year span of Boyhood was to cover the progress from 1st grade to senior year of high school. Given the implied shorter amount of time it takes to earn a college degree, Boyhood 2 might only take four years (unless of course he becomes the sort of “professional student” that has been featured in such Linklater films as Slacker and Waking Life). In other Linklater news, the director is also now in talks to direct an adaptation of the 2012 novel Where’d You Go, Bernadette, about a 15 year old girl’s search for her missing mother.
Comedian Paul Reubens has been trying to get a third Pee-Wee Herman movie produced and distributed since the 1990s (unfortunately, an event in 2002 set his efforts back considerably). Something that works towards Pee-Wee Herman’s benefit is the inevitability of the passing of time, with the children that were his fans in the 1980s now being adults and parents themselves. Judd Apatow and Paul Reubens have reached a deal with Netflix for a new movie called Pee-Wee’s Big Holiday, which will start filming in three weeks. Reubens also cowrote the movie along with Arrested Development cowriter Paul Rust, and the film will mark the feature length debut of director John Lee, whose previous experience includes the shows Inside Amy Schumer and Adult Swim’s The Heart, She Holler. Netflix hasn’t revealed a premiere date yet for Pee-Wee’s Big Holiday, but online speculation has suggested a date in early 2016.
Will Ferrell may not be a director himself, but as a producer, he perpetually keeps a full slate of potential movies in development for him to eventually star in. The latest such project to join his impending slate is called The House, and this week, the comedy project landed at New Line Cinema after a “heated auction.” The House was written by Brendan O’Brien and Andrew J. Cohen, the team responsible for writing last year’s comedy hit Neighbors. The House also has a premise that makes the Neighbors connection less surprising, as Will Ferrell will play a father who blows through his daughter’s college fund and turns his house in the suburbs into an illegal casino (hence the title). New Line Cinema has budgeted $40 million for The House, which the studio hopes to start filming this August to get it ready for release sometime in the summer of 2016.
Over five years ago, this column reported that the family of martial arts legend Bruce Lee was developing an official biopic which would try to achieve what previous efforts (like 1993’s Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, starring Jason Scott Lee, no relation) did not. That movie (produced by Lee’s siblings) did get made (Bruce Lee, My Brother), but as an intended start of a sequel, the movie about Bruce Lee as a teenager pretty much ended there. Now, five years later, Lee’s family is again trying to get the definitive Bruce Lee biopic produced, and this time, it’s his daughter Shannon Lee who is leading the effort. The production is now seeking “a world class filmmaker and writer” to take on the biopic film, which will join a media franchise that includes a series of novels (based on Lee’s writings), a mobile game, a reality TV show in China, and a TV series to be produced by Justin Lin of the Fast & Furious franchise.
Normally, the Weekly Ketchup covers ten stories from the world of film development, but this week, three big stories happened that sort of squeezed out some of the stories that would have otherwise received their own headline space. Actually, there were a lot more such stories than three, but three stories that we felt really bad about not focusing our attention on all share the distinction of being about three actresses whose stars are rising (and two of which were in films that received a lot of attention during this most recent “awards season”). First up, there’s Jessica Chastain (Interstellar, Miss Julie, A Most Violent Year) has landed one of the lead roles in the (Snow White-less) fantasy sequel The Huntsman, opposite Chris Hemsworth, which Universal Picturs has scheduled for April 22, 2016. Next up is Gone Girl star Rosamund Pike, who may not have won Best Actress, but has won the female lead in The Deep Blue Goodbye, opposite Christian Bale, who is already signed to play author John D. MacDonald’s most famous fictional character, Travis McGee. Finally, Blake Lively (Green Lantern, The Age of Adaline) and Jason Clarke have been cast by director Marc Forster (World War Z, Quantum of Solace) to star in his next film called All I See is You. Lively will play a blind woman (and Clarke, her husband) who regains her sight only to find that her newly gained vision includes “previously unseen and disturbing details about themselves.” (This writer’s best guess? He lied to his wife about stuff.)
A few weeks ago, the Weekly Ketchup attracted some negative feedback in the Comments section for the way we covered the search for a replacement following Amy Pascal’s hacking-scandal-related departure from Sony Pictures. This week, we learned that one of those expected candidates has indeed landed the job, and the news sent something of a shockwave through Twitter and other social media, as former coworkers expressed their opinions. But, first, let’s actually say who it is: Tom Rothman may be a familiar name to those who have regularly followed film development news since the 1990s, as Rothman was the founder of Fox Searchlight, and also served for 12 years as the CEO of Fox Filmed Entertainment (which includes 20th Century Fox, Fox Searchlight, Blue Sky Animation, and FOX Television). Tom Rothman, in particular, was a (arguably, “the”) central figure in Fox’s handling of their Marvel license characters, which during his tenure included Daredevil, Elektra, both Fantastic Four movies, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and all of the X-Men movies before X-Men: Days of Future Past. Deadpool creator Rob Liefeld, for example, remarked on Twitter, “Tom Rothman single handedly kept Deadpool from getting made at Fox. Not a fan. Scratches Sony off the list…” Of course, there were plenty of bright spots to Rothman’s tenure at Fox, including Titanic and Avatar with James Cameron, various Fox Searchlight films such as Black Swan, Juno, and The Descendants, and box office hits like Cast Away, the Ice Age franchise, the Night at the Museum franchise, the Alvin and the Chipmunks franchise, and Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. Under Tom Rothman, 20th Century Fox also distributed two of the three Star Wars prequels (which were produced by Lucasfilm). The news of Rothman’s promotion comes just two weeks after the news that Sony and Marvel are partnering for future film depictions of Spider-Man, which will include an active participation by Marvel Studios, and Kevin Feige.
Since we first learned, a little over a year ago, that actor, writer, and director Leonard Nimoy had been diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), many people familiar with the disease’s effects, especially on people in their 80s, sadly knew a day like today probably wasn’t too far off. Nimoy died today at the age of 83 due to his end-stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Nimoy obviously became famous first as an actor on television, but his career truly spanned multiple titles, genres, and media. On television, he wasn’t just Mr. Spock on Star Trek, but he was also the long-time host of both In Search Of… and Ancient Mysteries, and ended his television career with several episodes of Fringe. In film, again, Leonard Nimoy is best known for his appearances in multiple Star Trek films (including the 2009 reboot), but there’s plenty more that he achieved. He also directed two of the movies (III and IV, a favorite for many fans), and in 1987, he directed the year’s #1 box office hit, Three Men and a Baby. As an actor, Leonard Nimoy also transcended Spock, with a memorable costarring role in the 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and frequent animation voice roles in movies like The Pagemaster, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, and Transformers: The Movie (Nimoy also voiced Sentinel Prime in Transfomers: Dark of the Moon). And all of that is without even mentioning his multiple albums as a “Golden Throats”-style musician, and his two autobiographies. Leonard Nimoy was one of those performers who left an indelible imprint on generations, and will cast a longer shadow.
