Welcome to another week of important, world-altering stories form the film industry! These are sure to astound, Vex, and defy all logic!
In this week’s “dissing Disney” story, Disney is aggressively seeking great talent to make their upcoming live-action version of Mulan. they’re looking for a director and asked Ang Lee to step in. Well, apparently not everyone wants to jump into the Disney pool, because Lee said ‘no’. Ang Lee has other things to do, so he is not interested in directing your Mulan movie, Disney. Move along.
Speaking of Mulan, all your whitewashing concerns are for naught, as Disney intends to cast Asian actors in the roles.
In this week’s “Fuck you Johnny Depp, I’m getting Justice League money” story, actress Amber Heard has been cast in Zack Snyder’s Justice League movie as Mera, Queen of Atlantis. Of course, sharing screen time with characters like Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Cyborg, and Aquaman, plus a villain, I can’t imagine she’s going to get much more than supporting status, so let’s not let it get to her head. And let’s face it, the pressure is totally on Warner Bros. to make this watchable. She might even regret it later, just like us.
In this week’s “Who’s really the star here, anyway” story, Benecio Del Toro has stepped out of the lead role in Shane Black’s reboot of The Predator, and Narcos star Boyd Holbrook has replaced him. Not to worry, it’s all happening either way, and frankly 20th Century Fox is marketing this on the brand rather than star power. Let’s face it, the real star is The Predator anyway.
No reason for Del Toro’s departure, though he does have the Sicario sequel, Soldado, to do, so scheduling is probably part of it. The Predator reboot is slated for a February 6, 2018 release.
In this week’s “Piece of My Heart” story, the much talked about Janis Joplin biopic that has been bouncing around Hollywood may have it’s star. Michele Williams is currently in talks with director Sean Durkin to star in his film Janis. The film will depict the last six months of the musician’s life.
How far along these discussions are is unclear, but if Williams does sign on, she’ll replace Tony-winning stage actress Nina Arianda. When Durkin, who made a fantastic debut film with Martha Marcy May Marlene, signed up for the biopic, Arianda became attached to star. The film was going to move forward with Durkin and Arianda with a price tag of $20 million and an early 2013 start date, but for whatever reason, Janis was put on hold.
In this week’s “Harry Potter and the super rich author” story, the new film set in the Harry Potter universe, Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them will be a whopping FIVE movies, because mere trilogies are SO last decade.
In this week’s “Franchise THIS!” story, Disney is looking to milk something else along with all of it’s own catalog of animated films and Pirates of the Caribbean stuff. Turns out they’re looking to make an adaptation of the book Don Quixote, and they’ve hired “Hunger Games” and “Captain Phillips” scribe Billy Ray to develop and write it.
Sources tell Variety the plan is to give the film a “Pirates of the Caribbean” vibe with the possibly of creating a franchise. This, of course, is some of the worst news ever.
In this week’s “Most awesome director” story, James Gunn, director of the Guardians of the Universe, says that the sequel will have strong female characters. James Gunn states:
“I am sick of stories where there are a bunch of fully realized male characters and one female character, whose primary characteristic is simply being ‘the girl’ or the personality-less object of some man’s affections,” Gunn wrote in a Facebook post on Tuesday.
“I’m not sick of this because I’m politically correct — those of you who know me know I am far from that — but because it’s boring, and it’s b.s. Likewise, I don’t think only making female characters ‘strong’ is a fix either – you see her all the time these days, the perfect female warrior, who is a reaction to the stories of the past, but who is equally as boring and one-dimensional.”
Gunn added that strong male characters like Han Solo or Marty McFly are never “one-dimensional” but always “reflect the fullness of the world around us” — which is not the case with female characters, he said.
The post was shared in honor of International Day of the Girl, with Gunn adding, “Women all over the world have been pushed to the sidelines in the interests of men, and their personhood is often forgotten or delegitimized.”
I love this guy. He is an awesome film maker.
In this week’s “Getting the Coen treatment” story, Joel and Ethan Coen have signed on to write the script for the tech thriller, Dark Web. Author Dennis Lehane wrote the original screenplay, but the Coen kid were brought in to take a crack at some rewrites.
The project is based on a two-part Wired magazine article by Joshua Bearman. It concerns the true story of how Ross William Ulbricht, a 29-year-old who built an Amazon-like online market for illegal goods (called the Silk Road), slowly morphed into an alleged murderous kingpin. The Hollywood Reporter teases that the story’s many twists call to mind the structure of the Coen brothers’ own Fargo.
Ulbricht, who US authorities identified as Dread Pirate Roberts, is currently serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for selling narcotics and money laundering.
No director is set yet, but this sounds like a compelling film.
In this week’s “Will it never end?” story, it seems there will be a Ride Along 3, with Kevin Hart and Ice Cube. Apparently the decline in box office numbers hasn’t deterred Universal from putting yet a third film in this franchise into development.
Screenwriters Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi, and director Tim Story, who all worked together on the first two movies, have rehired again for the third, though it’s too early to talk about plot details.
Well, fine. Just keep perpetuating this trend, film industry. No need to go out and find some fresh, new, film maker with original ideas. Might as well just keep churning out the same dreck year after year.
In this week’s “Just when you thought it was safe to go to the movies” story, I just thought I’d remind you all of the crazy shark movie, Meg, based on Steve Alten’s 1997 novel, Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror. Yes, Meg is a giant prehistoric shark that terrorizes, well, just about everything. This project has been in and out of development for something like 20 years. Various directors and actors have been attached ot it but then it sat in development Hell for a while.
Finally, Jon Turtletaub got on board to direct, then somehow Jason Staham signed on to star, and the film project got some Chinese financing to make it more palatable for Warner Bros. Now there is even a photo or two you can find online for it. Boy, putting Jason Staham in a turtleneck sure gives him that intellectual look we’re looking for as a guy that plays a deep-sea rescue diver. Meg also stars Li Bingbing, and a lot of other Chinese supporting actors.
Check out this synopsis: A deep-sea submersible—part of an international undersea observation program—has been attacked by a massive creature, previously thought to be extinct, and now lies disabled at the bottom of the deepest trench in the Pacific…with its crew trapped inside. With time running out, expert deep sea rescue diver Jonas Taylor (Statham) is recruited by a visionary Chinese oceanographer (Winston Chao), against the wishes of his daughter Suyin (Li Bingbing), to save the crew—and the ocean itself—from this unstoppable threat: a pre-historic 75-foot-long shark known as the Megalodon. What no one could have imagined is that, years before, Taylor had encountered this same terrifying creature. Now, teamed with Suyin, he must confront his fears and risk his own life to save everyone trapped below…bringing him face to face once more with the greatest and largest predator of all time.
Wow. Jaws on steroids. Sadly, I will totally go see this. Statham vs giant prehistoric shark? It’s go time!
In this week’s “More DC filmverse tomfoolery” story, it seems that Zack Snyder originally wanted actor Jeffrey Dean Morgan to play Batman/Bruce Wayne – and it could still happen.
Ok, so Snyder casts Morgan as Thomas Wayne, Bruce’s father, in that Batman vs Superman movie. The way they could make it happen, potentially, is that in a major DC comic universe story arc (which happens to be going on in the Flash TV show right now), called Flashpoint, The Flash goes back in time to stop his mother from being killed. His actions set off a chain of events that have a huge impact on the rest of the DC Comics universe, one of which being that young Bruce Wayne has died instead of his parents, inspiring Thomas Wayne to take up the mantle of Batman instead.
Ok, I suppose this could happen, but it obviously wouldn’t be for a number of years, and I think Jeffrey Dean Morgan will be too old to pull it off. I mean, he’s 50 now. If they ever choose to make it, it would have to be in about 5 years…I don’t know. There’s no telling what the Hell Zack Snyder might do.
And in this week’s “Corey does it again” story, Corey Feldman, who took a social media beating last month after his weird dance moves while singing a new song on the Today Show, came back to the show to perform another song, Take A Stand, and this time dropped a little American flag he was holding on the ground after finishing the number. Once again, people on social media gave him a bunch of shit about it. He was forced to apologize…
“Once I was on stage, my brain reverted to my choreography, which was to throw my hands up in the air with a peace sign. As a dancer, my instinct is to drop anything in my hands.”
Feldman concluded: “In that live moment, it came off as wrong and for that I’m deeply sorry. It was the exact opposite of my intention.”
My biggest complaint here is that he refers to himself as “a dancer”. Oh, Corey…
~ Neil T Weakley, your average movie-goer, thanking you for tuning in YET again for a bunch of potential nonsense. Stop by next week for more!