How did we get to another full week of happenings in film news? Oh yeah, the passage of time. That happens.
In this week’s “A bummer with a twist” story,The Hollywood Reporter reports that director Zack Snyder and his wife and producer Deborah Snyder are taking a break from the post-production process of Justice League to spend time with their family in the face of a devastating personal tragedy. The trade reveals that the Snyder’s daughter, Autumn Snyder, committed suicide in March, and while they both attempted to solider on with Justice League, they realized they needed to really step back and spend time with their family.
Joss Whedon will be tapped in to help guide post-production in Snyder’s place. The director who will be helming the upcoming Batgirl for DC Films also wrote additional scenes for Justice League, and will be directing them as well, with lensing to take place in England. But if you think this means a major tonal or creative shift away from what Snyder has been planning, guess again, because Whedon won’t be deviating from Snyder’s playbook.
“The directing is minimal and it has to adhere to the style and tone and the template that Zack set,” Warner Bros. president Toby Emmerich said. “We’re not introducing any new characters. It’s the same characters in some new scenes. He’s handing a baton to Joss but the course has really been set by Zack. I still believe that despite this tragedy, we’ll still end up with a great movie.”
Active on social media, Zack Snyder is more than aware of the kind of story that some might try to manipulate out of this terrible event, and it’s why he’s tried to keep things within his inner circle until now.
“Here’s the thing, I never planned to make this public,” he said. “I thought it would just be in the family, a private matter, our private sorrow that we would deal with. When it became obvious that I need to take break, I knew there would be narratives created on the internet. They’ll do what they do. The truth …I’m past caring about that kind of thing now.”
Justice League is still expected to be released on November 17th. We here at CFN will keep the Snyder family in our thoughts. No, really. C’mon people, we may not be happy with how he’s handling the DC films, but we aren’t monsters.
In this week’s “Why wait? story, more details are leaking out on the Resident Evil franchise reboot. James Wan has come aboard to produce the first of the Resident Evil reboots from a script by Greg Russo, and we’re hearing and it will have an entirely new cast. Russo wrote Mortal Kombat and Wan is known for producing the box office coups Lights Out, Annabelle and Saw, to name a few.
The Wan brand name is a strong one and should give a boost to the reboot. Also producing are Constantin Film and Michael Clear for Atomic Monster. It has no director aboard as yet.
Wan and Russo worked previously together on Mortal Kombat, which is getting its own reboot through New Line. They also worked together on Robotech for Sony.
Wan, who is currently directing Aquaman for Warner Bros, will produce the Resident Evil reboot pic (the first of six, as reported by our sister publication Variety) for Constatin Films and Screen Gems. They have been in business for the previous wave of films in the franchise.
The most recent film, which was announced as the last one, came out this year. Resident Evil: The Final Chapter bowed in January and has since made $312.2M. Given that it made so much money in China ($160M+), it’s no wonder they aren’t stopping the IP based on the Capcom video game now.
The Resident Evil movie franchise itself has earned $1.2B worldwide to date and is also known as the highest-grossing film series based on a video game and the second-biggest horror franchise of all time behind the Alien movies.
In this week’s “In like Flynn” story, after signing Jordan Peele to a first-look deal following the success of his directorial debut, Get Out, Universal has dated his next film for March 15, 2019.
Currently untitled, the movie’s plot details are being kept under wraps. Peele will write, direct, and produce the social thriller based on his original idea.
The pic will face stiff competition from Brie Larson’s Captain Marvel, which opens the week before, and Millie Bobby Brown’s Godzilla: King of the Monsters, which launches the following week.
Get Out opened at the top of the domestic box office in February, and the thriller has since become both a commercial and critical success, grossing almost $230 million worldwide. Under his new deal, Peele will also produce a wide range of movies for the studio through his Monkeypaw Productions, including several micro-budget projects with Jason Blum, as he did with Get Out.
Peele also recently announced plans to develop Lovecraft Country, a new HBO event series with Bad Robot’s J.J. Abrams and Ben Stephenson, and Underground co-creator and showrunner Misha Green. Peele broke out — along with Keegan-Michael Key — on the Comedy Central sketch series “Key & Peele.”
In this week’s “Still most disappointing loss of a last chapter” story, as we all mourn the knowledge that we will never get a third part of the Guillermo del Toro and Ron Pearlman Hellboy story, I suppose we can take a little solace in knowing that Neil Marshall will direct a darker, R-rated reboot of Hellboy starring David Harbour. I guess.
Ron Perlman has weighed in on the new casting, given Harbour his blessing, and described the scope and intentions of the abandoned capper of his would-be trilogy.
Perlman recently showed up at Motor City Comic Con (via DreadCentral) and graciously passed the torch to Harbour for the Hellboy reboot:
“David Harbour is a good dude, man. I have nothing but love for that dude. I wish him nothing but the best when it comes to the retooling of HB.”
He also spoke to the crowd there about what del Toro’s version of Hellboy 3 would have felt like:
“The third one was meant to be epic and conclusive and a resolve for all these, almost, Greek oracle promises of the destiny of Hellboy. It would’ve made for a really good movie, I think.”
Producers are aiming to begin filming the Hellboy reboot this fall in the hopes of releasing the finished movie next year. I’m sure they don’t want us fans to be stewing too long without it. If they know what’s good for ’em.
In this week’s “After the Room” story, FOCUS Features has acquired worldwide rights to Lenny Abrahamson’s The Little Stranger.
The new film from the Oscar-nominated director of Room is a ghost story that will star Charlotte Rampling, Domhnall Gleeson, Ruth Wilson and Will Poulter. It BEGINS shooting this summer in the U.K. for release in 2018. Lucinda Coxon, who wrote the screenplay adaptation of Focus’ The Danish Girl, has adapted The Little Stranger from Sarah Waters’ 2009 novel of the same name. Set in a remote English village after World War II, the film revolves around an aged estate that is believed to be haunted.
“We’re thrilled to be working with Lenny, a filmmaker who has proven to redefine every genre he takes on,” Focus chairman Peter Kujawski said. “We are excited to be partnering ONCE again with our good friends at Pathé and Film4 on The Little Stranger, a classic ghost story to chill moviegoers.”
In this week’s “Silver and Black” story, Sony’s contained Marvel Universe is getting bigger. Gina Prince-Bythewood is in talks to direct Silver and Black, the second announced standalone film in Sony’s Marvel Universe.
If the deal goes through, she would become first African-American woman to direct a movie based on Marvel characters.
The film will be based on the characters Silver Sable and Black Cat (aka Felicia Hardy), who are known for their connections with Spider-Man. Silver Sable is a mercenary who runs a company that hunts criminals. She hasn’t been introduced in a previous film. Meanwhile, Hardy made her debut in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, played by Felicity Jones.
Prince-Bythewood recently directed the pilot for Marvel’s upcoming series Cloak & Dagger on Freeform. She also recently co-created the show Shots Fired on Fox with her husband Reggie Rock Bythewood. The show aired its season finale Wednesday.
Prince-Bythewood will also rewrite the script by Christopher Yost, who wrote the screenplay for Thor: The Dark World.
Sony is sure milking their Marvel Spider-Man properties that they have rights to. They won’t be in the Marvel Studios Universe, though, so every one will be a guessing game as to how good they’ll be.
In this week’s “Marvel: Locked In” story, awesoem actress Rosario Dawson, while still playing Claire Temple on Daredevil, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist – and the upcoming Defenders show on Netflix, is now in talks to play Dr. Cecilia Reyes in the New Mutants film. Her character in the film acts as a mentor for the young adult ensemble cast that already includes Games of Thrones star Maisie Williams and Split star Anya Taylor-Joy.
The movie is on track to begin production in July and has a release date of April 13, 2018. Josh Boone, the director, and Knate Lee are writers and Simon Kinberg and Karen Rosenfelt are producing the superhero film.
Good for Dawson. I love her.
In this week’s “Naysayers be damned” story, Boss Baby 2 is coming spring of 2021.
Alec Baldwin is reuniting with DreamWorks Animation to reprise his voice duties.
Universal and DWA announced the news Thursday. The animated movie will hit theaters on March 26, 2021.
The Boss Baby, about an power-obsessed infant voiced by Baldwin, has been a sleeper hit at the global box office, earning $468.4 million to date. The North American haul is $167 million, while Boss Baby has earned $301.4 million overseas.
The budding Boss Baby film franchise is based on Marla Frazee’s picture-book series about the Templeton family’s newest addition, who masquerades as an adorable, drooling infant who craves glory, wants a golden toilet and imagines his portrait hanging on the walls for eternity.
Well, if you didn’t care about this film, you are apparently in the movie-going minority.
In this week’s “George, and Jane, his wife, do WHAT?” story, Warner Bros. has hired Sausage Party co-director, Conrad Vernon to develop its animated feature The Jetsons with an eye to direct.
Vernon’s credits include co-directing Shrek 2, Monsters vs. Aliens and Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted, in addition to the raunchy Sausage Party with Greg Tiernan. Sausage Party grossed $140 million worldwide on a $19 million budget. Vernon also voiced the Gingerbread Man in the Shrek movies.
Warner Bros. has been trying for several years to move forward on The Jetsons, hiring Matt Lieberman to write the script in 2015.
The Hanna-Barbera original animated show aired in primetime on ABC in 1962-63. It was set in 2062 and centered on George, Jane, Judy, and Elroy Jetson along with Rosie the Robot. The series was a Space Age counterpart to Hanna-Barbera’s The Flintstones.
“Stop this crazy thing!” Ok, moving on.
In this week’s “Bateman goes dark” story, Jason Bateman has a new Netflix series coming this summer called Ozark.
In the 10-episode first season of the hour-long drama Bateman stars as a financial planner and father named Marty who, along with his family, relocates from Chicago to a summer resort community in the Missouri Ozarks. Laura Linney plays his wife Wendy.
The teaser insinuates that Marty upends his life in order to “disappear.” But things don’t go as planned.
“Look around,” Wendy tells Marty. “This place is death.”
As Netflix describes it, “Ozark explores capitalism, family dynamics, and survival through the eyes of (anything but) ordinary Americans.” The tagline reads “welcome to the last resort”. You can see the teaser trailer online now.
I’m going to check it out.
In this week’s “This oughta be interesting” story, IFC Films have acquired the U.S. rights to Lars Von Trier’s new serial killer film, The House That Jack Built.
The film stars Matt Dillon as a highly intelligent serial killer named Jack who views each murder as an artwork even though his dysfunction gives him problems in the outside world. The film follows five incidents from Jack’s point of view as law enforcement closes in on him.
Bruno Ganz, Uma Thurman, Riley Keough and Siobhan Fallon Hogan also star.
IFC Films also released Von Trier’s 2009 film Antichrist, and if you saw that, well, you know you could be in for some substantial moments of discomfort while watching the film. But I’ll still probably see it because I like that kinda shit. And Matt Dillon is a cool actor so I’m in.
In this week’s “Never too late for Early Man” story, Lionsgate has acquired the U.S. rights to Aardman Studios’ upcoming prehistoric comedy adventure Early Man, starring Eddie Redmayne.
Directed by Nick Park, the stop-motion movie is co-financed by the U.K.’s Aardman and France’s Studiocanal. It’s a re-team of the companies following 2015’s Shaun the Sheep. Lionsgate also handled the domestic distribution for Shaun the Sheep.
Redmayne was the first cast member who boarded the toon, set at the dawn of time when prehistoric creatures and woolly mammoths roamed the earth. Tom Hiddleston is playing his adversary, Lord Nooth. Maisie Williams and Timothy Spall round out the cast.
The movie marks Park’s first feature film since 2005’s Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, which won the Academy Award for best animated film. Park also won three Oscars for his animated shorts Creature Comforts, The Wrong Trousers, and A Close Shave.
A great cast, and I always love a Nick Park animated film.
In this week’s “Sequel notes” story, yes, we now know there will be a Top Gun 2. Joseph Kosinski (Oblivion) is rumored to be directing. And of course, Tom Cruise is on board.
Also, John Wick 3 is in development. Director of John Wick 2, Chad Stahelski, is “super involved” in the third installment, but its’ not known whether he will direct.
In this week’s “Men are asshats” story, when the Alamo Drafthouse movie theater announced they were going to have a “women only” screening of Wonder Woman, men got their panties in a bunch and started to cry and whine about it.
This week, an Alamo Drafthouse movie theater in Austin, Texas announced that they would hold a special women-only screening of Wonder Woman — a movie about an iconic female superhero who may hold some importance to women of all ages. But that doesn’t matter to the men of the Internet, because they raised a ruckus about being excluded from something for once. And their cries of “discrimination!” were only met with a sold out first screening, an announced second screening, and an expansion to other Alamo Drafthouse theaters across the country.
Here’s how the Alamo Drafthouse described the event:
“Apologies, gentlemen, but we’re embracing our girl power and saying ‘No Guys Allowed’ for one special night at the Alamo Ritz. And when we say ‘Women (and People Who Identify As Women) Only,’ we mean it. Everyone working at this screening — venue staff, projectionist, and culinary team — will be female.”
Naturally, the angry comments started flowing in, with men on Facebook and Twitter accusing Alamo Drafthouse of everything from “reverse sexism” to “misandry.” One Twitter user even claimed that this “gimmick” would never fill seats. Of course, he was wrong.
Fucking men. Most days, I’m embarrassed to be one.
In this week’s “Tom Repellant” story, Universal has cancelled the London premiere of The Mummy in light of the Manchester attack.
“All of us at Universal have been devastated by the terror attack in Manchester and continue to stand with the community and country as it recovers,” the studio said Thursday. “Out of respect to those affected by this tragedy we have decided not to move forward with the London premiere for The Mummy scheduled to take place next week.”
On Wednesday, Warner Bros. canceled its Wonder Woman premiere in London, which had been scheduled for May 31.
Gee, seems like an extreme way of getting Tom Cruise to stay out of your city.
…Too soon? Too callous? It’s meant to be directed at Cruise, not the tragedy. I know some of you think I’m too mean to Tom Cruise, but c’mon, he believes in Xenu and Thetans and shit. He represents a cult that is dangerous to humans. So there.
In this week’s “The true director has spoken” story, actor Joseph Fiennes was once in the running against another actor to play a certain old Jedi…yes, he auditioned with Ewan McGregor for the role of young Obi Wan Kenobi.
He even made it to the next level audition in front of casting director Robin Gurland, AND director George Lucas himself. After the audition he walked over to them.
Fiennes met somebody’s daughter at that time, “a lovely, delightful child,” he said. “Must’ve been around age five — and he introduced me, ‘this is Joe and he’s quite possibly Obi-Wan Kenobi.”
At first, Fiennes said he was honored. Little did he know who’s daughter that was…
“His daughter turned around and said ‘I don’t like this guy. He’s weird. I don’t like him.’ And that’s how my audition went,” Fiennes recalled.
And Joseph Fiennes Star Wars dreams came crashing down. Little brat. I mean, I love Ewan McGregor and all, but it’s like the whole I-III trilogy was governed by that kind of arbitrary decision making of a five year old. No wonder they suck.
In this week’s “BONK!” story, have you seen that clip from the original Star Wars where the Stormtrooper bumps his head on the blast door? Most of us have, but if you haven’t, I’m sure you could find it online. Well, it seems the mystery of that is resolved.
So the scene is where one Stormtrooper hits their head on a blast door as they enter a room in the Death Star while looking for the droids R2-D2 and C-3PO. It’s quite the blooper, and now we finally have an explanation as to why it happened from the clumsy Stormtrooper himself.
The actor who played the Stormtrooper, a man from the United Kingdom by the name of Laurie Goode, has explained just what happened to The Hollywood Reporter:
“On the second day of filming, I developed an upset stomach. By mid-morning I had paid three to four visits to the loo/bathroom. Having re-dressed myself and returned to the set, I felt the need to rush back to the gents’ toilets, but I was placed in [the] shot. On about the fourth take, as I shuffled along, I felt my stomach rumbling, and “bang,” I hit my head! As I wasn’t moving too fast, it was more of a scuffed bash, so it didn’t hurt, but as no one shouted “cut,” I thought the shot wasn’t wide enough for me to be in frame.”
You’d think there would be another take of that scene they could’ve used, but alas, Goode explains this, too:
“I remember after the first two takes, we were told to hold our guns in our left hands as opposed to our right. So I believe the head bang happened on the fourth take — whatever number of takes we did, the head bang happened on the last take. When it first happened, that day I told my fellow actor on the film, Mark Kirby, that I hit my head, but we didn’t go for another take.”
Well, I, for one, am kinda happy it’s in there. These make for great anecdotal stories down the road. We’re still talking about it, right?
In this week’s “Talk about hair” story, amid a retreat from the spotlight, the 55-year-old actor, Jim Carrey, visited the set of Jimmy Kimmel Live last Monday night to dish on his new outlook on life and the facial hair that comes with it.
To start, he’s someone outside of Jim Carrey, the star. “Don’t get me wrong—Jim Carrey is a great character and I was lucky to get the part,” he told Kimmel. “But, I don’t think of that as me anymore.”
For a blockbuster star that has been in two films in two years, it’s clear there’s been a shift in his life. “I used to be a guy who was experiencing the world and now I feel like the world and the universe experiencing a guy.”
Carrey is now executive producing executive producing and writing for a new Showtime series, I’m Dying Up Here. And while doing that, a new star has soaked up his spotlight—his beard.
“Everywhere I go, people talk about the beard,” he pointed out. “They cant really think about anything else.”
“Wherever I show up, it becomes this story. It’s a bigger star than me. It has its own Twitter.”
While he didn’t explain the motivation behind his look, underneath the new mane, it was still the same Carrey.
“The question is not, ‘Why are you growing a beard?’ The question is, ‘Why am I growing a beard and still shaving my balls?” he quipped. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
Ok, well, thanks for that Jim.
And thank YOU for stopping by this week for all the what’s what. See ya next week!