Helloooo! Time for another installment of film news! This week is full of more information that is new or similar to last week! But different! And early! Yeah, sorry, I will be attending the Turner Classic Film Festival starting tomorrow (Friday), so you get the film news a day early! Huzzah!
In this week’s “It’s DEFINITELY an Alien movie” story, people seem to be excited that they’ve released a photo from the new Ridley Scott’s Alien: Covenant film, but it’s just a photo of a uniform patch with the Weyland-Yutani Corp name and the name of the ship, the Covenant. Seems like you’d want to wait a bit before getting all spazzed out about anything.
The premise? Bound for a remote planet on the far side of the galaxy, the crew members of the colony ship Covenant discover what they think is an uncharted paradise, but is actually a dark, dangerous world — whose sole inhabitant is the “synthetic” David (Fassbender), survivor of the doomed Prometheus expedition.
Alien: Covenant stars Fassbender, Danny McBride, Katherine Waterston and Demian Bichir. Jack Paglen and Michael Green wrote the script. 20th Century Fox plans to release the film on August 4 of next year.
In this week’s “Hey, that’s convenient” story, actor Keanu Reeves will be voicing the titular cat in this weekend’s release of Key and Peele’s Keanu, about two guys whose kitten is stolen by gangsters and they try to track him down. turns out, Keanu Reeves’ sister showed Reeves the trailer to the film after his reps declined to consider his involvement. But, Keanu being the cool dude he is, said he’d be on board.
So he recorded some dialog for about an hour in a studio in Italy (where he was shooting John Wick 2) for an extended scene written where the kitten guides Peele’s character through a drug trip. Included are some vague references to various Keanu Reeve’s movies.
I may have to see this movie next week. 🙂
In this week’s “Well, I don’t think WE need to review this now” story, Variety has this to say about Garry Marshal’s new comedy, Mother’s Day: “Atrociously written, begrudgingly acted, haphazardly assembled and never more backward than when it thinks it’s being progressive, Mother’s Day should at least be able to count on Mother’s Day traffic to boost its box office — or at least it could have, were it not opening 10 days prior.”
Ok, there’s one trip to the movie theater I don’t have to make.
In this week’s “Is this not Ok?” story, Will Farrell is to star as Ronald Reagan in the comedy Reagan, in which he will play the Republican President as his second term began and was showing signs of Alzheimer’s disease. I the film, an intern is tasked with convincing Ronald Reagan that he is an actor in a film playing the President.
Well, this could be a funny premise, depending on how you feel about satire and whether the subject of Alzheimer’s is Ok to be a part of the comedy. Clearly Ronald Reagan’s son, Michael, is none too pleased. In fact, he tweeted that he is outraged. There is no distributor – or director – yet, so we’ll see if there’s enough uproar from other people to keep this movie from even happening. Me? I think it has solid potential.
In this week’s “Variety is the spice of life” story, director Kevin MacDonald has made all sorts of films from documentaries (One Day In September, Life In A Day), to narrative features (Last King of Scotland, The Eagle, Black Sea, State of Play), and their subject matter is all over the map. Well, keeping with this pattern, he will direct an officially authorized documentary about Whitney Houston. “Folks who were involved with Searching For Sugar Man and Amy will be backing the project, which promises not to sugarcoat the legendary singer’s life, which had more than it’s fair share of controversy and tabloid worthy headlines. And crucially, Clive Davis, who discovered Houston and propelled her to fame, will be part of those interviewed for the movie.”
And THEN, MacDonald will direct a sci-fi series (ok, it’s not film, but it’s REALLY interesting) for Amazon called Strange New Things, based on the novel “The Book of Strange New Things” by Michal Faber (Under The Skin). The premise is very intriguing: A pastor goes on a galactic missionary assignment, only to discover that his wife begins losing her faith back on Earth as a series of terrible events occur.
Matt Charman (Bridge Of Spies, Suite Francaise) is writing the script, and even better, Brian Eno (WHAT?!) will be scoring the series. Ten episode first season is expected to go into production at the end of the year. I’m VERY interested in this series.
Hey, they found a new Lara Croft! Ex Machina and The Danish Girl actress, Alicia Vikander, has scored the much coveted role for the new MGM and GK Films Tomb Raider reboot.It will be directed by Norwegian Roar Uthaug (The Wave).
The Office alum, Stephen Merchant, has joined Hugh Jackman in the cast of Wolverine 3. In addition, Boyd Holbrook will play the villain, Richard E. Grant will play a mad scientist (fun!), and Patrick Stewart will make a reprisal as Professor X. James Mangold will direct this last appearance of Hugh Jackman as Wolverine.
In this week’s “Well, you should make better movies, then” story, it turns out Sony’s Film unit took a 34 % drop in 2015. This is mostly due to unimpressive tickets sales for movies like The Walk and The Brothers Grimsby. But have no fear, everyone – Sony still made a bunch of money on their other stuff, like Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, The Blacklist, and music like Adele, One Direction, and David Bowie. Whew! For a second there I thought we might have to start a GoFundMe for Sony…Can I get a rimshot, please? Thanks.
In this week’s “Isn’t this just Very Bad Things with women?” story, Zoe Kravitz has joined Scarlett Johansson in the Sony Pictures comedy Move That Body. The premise: a group of women renting a beach house for a bachelorette party in Miami end up accidentally killing a male stripper. Surprisingly, this script, by Lucia Aniello and Paul W. Downs with Aniello directing, was among those in The Black List, the annual list of “most liked” scripts not yet produced. Apparently Sony acquired it last year after a big bidding war.
And Sony wonders why their film unit lost so much money last year? *SMH*
In this week’s “What, you don’t own enough entertainment stuff, already?” story, Comcast CEO Brian “Moneybags” Roberts, just paid $ 3.8 BILLION to add Dreamworks Animation to his already massive NBCUniversal empire.
Oh, rich people.
And in this week’s “Sure, I could use another 20 million dollars ” story, Robert Downey, Jr. has now said “I feel like I could do one more” in regards to doing Iron Man 4. If you offer enough money, anything is possible, right? 🙂
~ Neil T Weakley, you average movie-goer, printing all the news that I feel like printing! Deal with it!