This week’s Ketchup covers seven days of movie development news for such movies as King Arthur, Playmobil, Wonder Woman, the next James Bond movie, and new roles for Robert De Niro, Dwayne Johnson, and Julia Roberts.
This was a big week for casting news for Warner Bros’ DC Comics adaptation Suicide Squad, with the last seven days seeing the release of three different casting stories for that movie about super villains brought together as a team. The first story of the week also involved the most famous character and the biggest star of the three. Jared Leto is being “eyed” to star as Batman’s archenemy The Joker in Suicide Squad for director David Ayer (Training Day, Fury, End of Watch). Directly related to that news is the report this week that Margot Robbie (The Wolf of Wall Street) has signed to costar as Harley Quinn, the Joker’s psychiatrist-turned-girlfriend. And finally, for a character that has nothing to do with either, there’s the assassin Deadshot, who might be played by Jai Courtney (Divergent, A Good Day to Die Hard). Suicide Squad is expected to feature an ensemble cast of various super villains, with Tom Hardy and Will Smith also in talks for unknown roles (although they might be Rick Flag and Captain Boomerang). Jesse Eisenberg may also reprise his role as Lex Luthor from Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, which will be released on March 25, 2016 before Suicide Squad is released later that summer on August 5, 2016.
There was a time when a way to write, in code, that a movie was a potential train wreck was to combine the phrase “feature film debut” with “previously has only directed television.” Well, as you may have heard, we are in a new golden age of television, and that math no longer necessarily adds up. Take, for example, the news this week that TV producer/director Michelle McCLaren is now in talks with Warner Bros to make her feature film debut with Wonder Woman. That’s one way to tell the story, but another would be to say that Michelle McClaren was the director of such recent hours of television as four episodes of Game of Thrones, three episodes of The Walking Dead (including the S2 episode where Rick “killed” [SPOILER]), and a whopping 11 episodes of Breaking Bad (including four from S5 with some of the most important plot beats). For her work on Breaking Bad, Michelle McClaren has been Emmy-nominated twice as director, and won two Emmys as producer. Instead, most of the press has focused on McClaren’s gender (if she signs on, McClaren will be the second female director of a major comic book adaptation, after Lexi Alexander on Punisher: War Zone). Gal Gadot will star as Wonder Woman when the solo movie is released on June 23, 2017, after first appearing as the character in 2016 in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
Or just a totally awesome and nice guy who just happens to be German (that *would* be a twist)? The news comes from Daily Mail columnist Baz Bamigboye (names are just plain cooler in the U.K.), who attempted to get an answer as to the nature of Waltz’s character (bad guy? good guy? somewhere-in-between?), and the answers he seemed to get varied between each (unidentified) source. Whatever the nature of his character, Christoph Waltz joins a growing cast which already includes Ralph Fiennes, Naomie Harris, Ben Whishaw, Lea Seydoux, Rory Kinnear, and Dave Bautista. Hopefully soon, we’ll get a title for “James Bond 24”, which will be directed by Sam Mendes, who made his Bond debut with Skyfall.
Director David O. Russell has definitely established by now that he is believes in using a “production posse,” with Amy Adams, Christian Bale, Bradley Cooper, and Mark Wahlberg all having appeared in at least two of his films. If there’s one actress that most obviously represents this for Russell, it’s Jennifer Lawrence, who starred in his two most recent films (Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle), and who will be starring in his next film, Joy, based on the true story of Joy Mangano, creator of the Miracle Mop (yes, there’s really going to be a “Miracle Mop” movie). This week, another acclaimed actor started talks which will bump him up to working with David O. Russell three times (in a row), and it’s Robert De Niro. If De Niro signs the deal, he will be playing the father of Jennifer Lawrence’s character, who started inventing gadgets when she was a teenager, and eventually became a HSN star by appearing on the network to pitch her own products.
Warner Bros and director Guy Ritchie are preparing for production on what has long been planned as the first of a six movie King Arthur epic, and this week, we found out who is in talks to play the villain in that film. Having said that, that’s about all we know about Jude Law’s character, including whether this particular villain will just be in the first movie, appear in several, or all six. Another detail also came with this news, which is that Idris Elba has dropped out of the franchise, with other actors now being considered for the “mentor” role, which had been described as “Merlin-esque” (an odd distinction when the character could just be called “Merlin”). If he signs on, Jude Law will join a cast which already includes Charlie Hunnam as Arthur and Astrid Berges-Frisbey as Guinevere. This will also be the third time that Jude Law and Guy Ritchie have worked together, after their two Sherlock Holmes movies together.
This was a big week for actors reuniting after previously working together on other movies. Another example of that involved George Clooney, who previously worked with Julia Roberts on Ocean’s Eleven, Ocean’s Twelve, and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. Roberts and Unbroken star Jack O’Connell are both now in talks to join George Clooney in the movie Money Monster, which will be directed by Jodie Foster (Little Man Tate, The Beaver). Money Monster will be a “financial thriller” about the star (George Clooney) of a financial advice TV show (also called Money Monster, produced by Roberts’ character) who is held hostage on the air by a blue collar worker (O’Connell) in an effort to increase a stock’s value and save his family’s finances. Jack O’Connell also made the Weekly Ketchup last week for signing to star in Terry Gilliam’s long-awaited Don Quixote.
The success of the two Jump Street movies is reportedly leading other studios to start moving forward with their own comedies that revive the “buddy action comedy” subgenre. The latest example of this happening is New Line Cinema’s Central Intelligence, which is also a “class reunion” comedy about a high school athlete who is approached by a classmate who was bullied back in the day. The “twist” is that the former jock will be played by Kevin Hart, and the bullied kid is now an assassin for the CIA, as played by Dwayne Johnson. Central Intelligence will be directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber, whose first film was well received (Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story), but whose second and third movies (The Mysteries of Pittsburgh and We’re the Millers) both have Rotten Tomatometer scores.
This writer doesn’t think that he ever gave it much thought, but apparently, within certain toy company circles, companies like LEGO and Playmobil are seen as direct competitors. Forced to consider it, there are similarities — one is Danish, one is German, and they both use little “people toys.” You can also often find both in highly used condition at garage sales and thrift stores. Anyway, presuming that the Playmobil people really see LEGO as their decades-long corporate competition, it’s easy to imagine lots of German exclamations (“Verdammt! Schweinhund! Fahrvergnügen!”) at the Playmobil board room as the box office figures came in each week earlier this year for The LEGO Movie. Even if that’s not true (regardless of how much fun this writer had imagining that scene), a Playmobil movie is still now in development. The $80 million animated feature will be a partnership between three French companies: Wild Bunch, Pathé, and ON Entertainment, which is also the animation house currently working on an adaptation of The Little Prince. The executive in charge of development on the Playmobil movie previously worked as head of story at DreamWorks on such movies as Shrek 2, Puss in Boots, and Monsters vs Aliens. Although the movie doesn’t currently have any sort of distribution in the USA, it’s being aimed at release in late 2017.
When his publicist is promoting his new movies, director Bruce Beresford is almost always mentioned in the same sentence as Driving Miss Daisy, the movie that won the Best Picture Academy Award which did not go to Field of Dreams, My Left Foot, Dead Poets Society, or Born on the Fourth of July. Of Bruce Beresford’s last ten films as director, only 2002’s Evelyn has earned a Fresh Tomatometer score. For his next film, Bruce Beresford will be directing Cook, which has a premise that sounds a lot like Driving Miss Daisy. Eddie Murphy will be playing a cook hired by a dying man to work for his girlfriend and his daughter for a few months after his death, in a working relationship that ends up lasting for 15 years. The character of the daughter will be played by Britt Robertson, who will be seen next year as the star of Tomorrowland, along with George Clooney.
It’s been going on since Garbo was gabby, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t remain worthy of notice: a very successful movie inspires imitators (people who say it’s flattering are probably the ones doing the flattering). 20th Century Fox is now developing a movie called Forty Thieves, which is described as “being in the vein of Guardians of the Galaxy and Pirates of the Caribbean,” but it’s more directly an adaptation of the folk tale “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves”, as commonly found in the collection of stories called One Thousand and One Nights (AKA Arabian Nights). Forty Thieves will be directed by Shawn Levy, whose filmography as director includes the three Night at the Museum movies, Real Steel, The Internship, and This is Where I Leave You. 20th Century Fox is currently meeting with various young actors (including Liam Hemsworth and Evan Peters) for the lead role of “Allen”, who is believed to be the Forty Thieves stand-in for the character of “Ali Baba.” Nothing much else is yet known about Forty Thieves, including the setting, but the name “Allen” sort of tells us that it’s probably not set in Medieval Arabia.
For more Weekly Ketchup columns by Greg Dean Schmitz, check out the WK archive, and you can contact GDS via Facebook.
