Comicon is getting closer! But tings are still happening in the world of film so let’s have a look!
In this week’s “Will it be Liam Neeson vs Suicide Squad?” story, Warner Bros. seems to have a frontrunner for directing Suicide Squad 2. Director Jaume Collet-Serra is the one to beat for the job at the moment.
Collet-Serra directed The Shallows, and Non-Stop, as well as other Liam Neeson actioners like Unknown, Run All Night, and the upcoming The Commuter. that would certainly put an interesting style to it.
David Ayer was soon known to not be attached to direct the sequel likely because he has a busy schedule, but also perhaps because of all the backlash regarding reshoots of the first Suicide Squad film. Either way, i’m fine with a new director. Maybe new creative blood with give the sequel a better chance.
Or it will be worse than the first Suicide Squad movie. That would just continue Warner Bros. poor choices in their comic book movies.
In this week’s “What’s Quentin Doing?” story, Quentin Tarantino is developing a new film about the Manson family murders.
Why doesn’t that surprise me?
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Tarantino will write and direct the as-yet untitled film, which concerns the notorious killings of five people, including pregnant actor Sharon Tate – wife of director Roman Polanski – carried out by followers of Charles Manson in 1969. Manson and four followers later received life imprisonment – and his group were also responsible for a number of other killings during the 1960s.
Details on the plot of the film remain unknown, but Deadline reports that Margot Robbie has been approached to play Tate, while the Hollywood Reporter suggests that Jennifer Lawrence is also being considered for the part. Brad Pitt and Samuel L Jackson are also being linked with roles in the film, which will begin shooting next year.
Great cast choices. We’ll see if they sign on.
In this week’s “It’ll be fine” story, if you’re worried about the director shake-up on the Han Solo spin-off film, Woody Harrelson thinks you should relax.
Asked last week how he felt the director replacement would impact the film, he added: “I think I read some stuff where people were worried about the fate of this movie. I wouldn’t worry. The Force is still very much with it.”
Well, ok, Woody, whatever you say. But I’m still going to be wary.
In this week’s “Next Regeneration” story, there will be a new Doctor in the house soon. Peter Capaldi, the current Doctor (you know, on Doctor Who), is leaving after three years of filling the role. BBC America will be making the big announcement of who will replace him for the next season.
In this week’s “Does this movie make my butt look fat?” story, Amy Schumer will star in I Feel Pretty for STX Films for a June 29, 2018 release. This will be the directorial debut of Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein.
The movie is scheduled to begin shooting in Boston this month. Schumer is portraying an ordinary woman who struggles with feelings of insecurity and inadequacy on a daily basis who wakes from a fall believing she is suddenly the most beautiful and capable woman on the planet.
Michelle Williams, Rafe Spall and Emily Ratajkowski have also been cast in I Feel Pretty.
In this week’s “On my Must-See List” story, Guillermo del Toro’s film, The Shape of Water, comes out December 8, 2017.
Set in Cold War–era America circa 1963, the film stars Sally Hawkins as “Elisa,” a mute cleaning lady in a government lab who develops a kinship with Jones’ amphibious-looking creature.
The folks over at Indiewire got to see a sneak peak of the teaser trailer. (Lucky!)
Scientists are studying Jones’ character as part of a classified experiment, but the creature’s life seems to be in danger. “We need to take it apart and learn how it works,” Michael Shannon’s Strickland says in the trailer, despite opposition from at least one of his colleagues. “This may very well be the most sensitive asset to ever be housed in this facility,” a man says. “I don’t want an intricate, beautiful thing destroyed.”
Elisa’s interactions with the creature are much more personal. “When he looks at me, he doesn’t know how I am incomplete,” she says through sign language translated by Richard Jenkins. “He sees me as I am.”
Also in the casst are Octavia Spencer as one of Elisa’s co-workers, Michael Stuhlbarg, Lauren Lee Smith and as previously mentioned, the awesome Michael Shannon.
REALLY want to see this!
In this week’s “Here comes Fear Street” story, for all you R. L. Stine fans, and I believe there are a lot of you out there, 20th Century Fox has no less than THREE Fear Street stories by R. L. Stine in the works as movie adaptations.
Leigh Janiak has signed on to direct and will oversee the development of the scripts. Kyle Killen, Zak Olkewicz, and Silka Luisa have each been hired to write a Fear Street script.
The “Fear Street” books are set in the fictional city of Shadyside, Oh. The first book, “The New Girl,” was published in 1989 and centered on a high school student falling in love with the new girl at school … despite not being able to tell if she was even real. The student eventually goes to her home — conveniently located on Fear Street — only to be told by her brother that she’s in fact dead.
Spooooky….
Stine has written more than 100 Fear Street books. He also wrote the Goosebumps series, which was adapted into the 2015 movie of the same name, starring Jack Black.
In this week’s “Scorsese and DiCaprio, together again” story, a new collaboration is afoot with director Martin Scorsese and actor Leonardo DeCaprio. They are developing a film adaptation of true-crime thriller Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI as the director’s next project after The Irishman.
Scorsese’s longtime production designer, Dante Ferretti, told Variety that Scorsese hoped to start shooting Flower Moon in the spring of next year. The project is based on the bestselling book by David Grann, a staff writer for the New Yorker and author of The Lost City of Z.
Rights to Flower Moon were snapped up by Imperative last year for a reported $5 million, and a script has reportedly been drafted by veteran Oscar-winning scribe Eric Roth (Forrest Gump, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button).
The story, set in the 1920s, focuses on a string of murders of members of the Osage nation in Oklahoma after oil was discovered beneath their land. The chilling series of slayings was one of the fledgling FBI’s first major homicide investigations.
Sounds like a project these guys would do. Sounds like potential future Oscar bait, too.
In this week’s “Are two heads better than one?”story, Lionsgate has hired Alice Through the Looking Glass director James Bobin to helm it’s science fiction film The Punch Escrow.
The studio won the movie rights to Tal M. Klein’s upcoming debut novel in April. The Punch Escrow will be published on July 25 by Inkshares.
The story — set in the year 2147 — centers on a man who trains artificial-intelligence engines to act more human-like, and is accidentally duplicated while teleporting. He’s forced to deal with the dubious organization that controls teleportation in a world that now has two of him.
Fascinating; the book isn’t even published yet and they’re making a film out if it already. AND, what a concept. It’s like a Star Trek transporter accident. The premise also sounds a little like something Terry Gilliam might make. I just keep thinking of corporate red tape while this guy has a double hanging around.
But I like it. I want to see it.
Bobin was one of the creators of the TV series Flight of the Conchords and made his feature directorial debut on Disney’s The Muppets. He also wrote and directed the 2014 sequel, Muppets Most Wanted.
In this week’s “Will work for…Scorsese” story, it seems that Joe Pesci has truly come out of retirement for Martin Scorsese’s next film, The Irishman.
The film, Netflix’s highest profile project to date, also stars favorites Robert DeNiro and Harvey Keitel, as well as Al Pacino and Bobby Cannavale.
The Irishman a drama that will explore the life of Frank Sheeran, a high-ranking officer in the International Brotherhood of Teamsters with rumored ties to the deaths of President Kennedy and Jimmy Hoffa. The film is based on the book “I Heard You Paint Houses” by Charles Brandt, and will feature CGI technology to de-age De Niro for certain scenes and sequences. Rodrigo Prieto (Silence, The Wolf Of Wall Street) will be the cinematographer on the movie, while Steve Zaillian (The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, The Night Of) has penned the script.
De Niro is portraying Sheeran, the tough Irishman hitman who is said to have carried out over 25 mob murders, including that of legendary Teamster head Hoffa (Pacino).
Filming will begin next month in New York and continue through December. But It is expected that they will set a theatrical release for The Irishman for Oscar consideration.
UPDATE: Actor Ray Romano has joined the cast of The Irishman. Romano will play Bill Bufalino, a Teamster lawyer with ties to the mob.
The movie, budgeted at over $100 million as it covers several decades of the characters’ lives, is due to begin lensing in August.
In this week’s “Thor shake-up” story, word has it that Thor: Ragnarok will significantly alter things in the Marvel Comic Cinematic Universe.
Marvel is preparing to wrap up their Phase 3 of their Universe in film, and Kevin Feige revealed that the upcoming Thor movie is not just a Taika Waititi lark, but will reverberate into future movies.
“I think that we are finding ourselves as we complete Phase 3 and finish this 22-movie narrative that [Ragnaork is the end of a trilogy]. We did three Iron Man films, three Captain America films, three Thor films. Things change drastically in Ragnarok and then build directly into Infinity War,” he teased.
Oh, I’m so excited! Thor: Ragnarok hits theaters on November 3, 2017. Woo hoo!
In this week’s “See ya later!” story, her at CFN I had reported previously that David Ayer was signed on to direct the remake of Scarface over at Universal. Well, it seems that Ayer has left that Scarface remake.
Ayer had taken over for Antoine Fuqua who had to leave due to scheduling issues with his sequel to the Equalizer.
Sources say Ayer’s schedule with his upcoming release of Netflix’s Bright, which stars Will Smith, and the studio’s aggressive schedule to get the film off the ground forced the split.
The studio still has Diego Luna on board to star, and are currently working fast to find a director who can take over the project, and hopefully get it up and running by this fall.
Dylan Clark is producing through his Dylan Clark Production banner along with Martin Bregman, who produced the 1983 original. The studio first bought rights to Scarface in 1932.
The film is still set to open August 10, 2018.
In this week’s “Kids need to stop going to parties” story, If you were wondering what actor Michael C. Hall (Dexter) is up to, he’s now shooting a Netflix limited series called Safe, along with Amanda Abbington.
Safe is set in a picturesque gated community with Hall playing Tom, a pediatric surgeon raising his two teenage daughters after the death of his wife. Against the odds, everything seems to be going well with everyone. They seem to be dealing with the loss and moving on, until one night. One daughter, Jenny, sneaks out to go to a party. That night there is a murder, a disappearance, and buried secrets come to the surface.
Sounds intriguing. I’ll probably be watching that on Netflix.
In this week’s “Congrats!” story, John Cleese will receive the Honorary Heart of Sarajevo Award at the 23rd Sarajevo Film Festival (August 11-18).
The prize is awarded for an extraordinary contribution to the art of film.
After the awards ceremony, the festival will screen Cleese’s comedy A Fish Called Wanda as part of its open air programme.
Monty Python member Cleese appeared in Monty Python And The Holy Grail, Monty Python’s Life Of Brian and The World Is Not Enough.
Last year’s recipient of the honorary award was director Stephen Frears. Robert De Niro was given a separate lifetime achievement award.
In this week’s “Is he dead inside?” story, Christopher Nolan makes some really amazing films. But people say they lack emotion. Well, Nolan is finally responding to that claim:
“I try not to be obvious about it. That gives people a little more freedom to interpret the movies their way, bring what they want to it. I’ve had people write about my films as being emotionless, yet I have screened those same movies and people have been in floods of tears at the end. It’s an impossible contradiction for a filmmaker to resolve. In truth, it’s one of the things that is really exciting about filmmaking though. I seem to be making films that serve as Rorschach tests,” he said in a recent Playboy interview.
Ok, take that as you will. I was just hoping he’d respond with something like ” F-ck off!” Ha. I still love his films.
In this week’s “She’s a badass” story, Universal seems to be looking at Charlize Theron’s new film Atomic Blonde as a potential franchise.
Atomic Blonde is one that idea Universal swooped in on, essentially taking it off the hands of their arthouse division Focus Features, with a keen eye to turn it into a franchise.
“It does look like a big movie,” Universal Pictures chairman Donna Langley said. “It’s a phenomenal character that she’s created, and I see deploying that character in many different adventures and scenarios.”
I am REALLY looking forward to Atomic Blonde.
In this week’s “Related” story, Charlize Theron says a script for a Furiosa prequel is ready to be made.
I know I want more Mad Max and Furiosa ever since Fury Road. Damn I love that film. And director George Miller has said that writing went so well on Fury Road, he wound up with three scripts, with one focusing solely on the backstory of Charlize Theron‘s Furiosa. Initially, Miller had planned to make Furiosa as an anime companion film to Fury Road, but things never came together. However, if and when Miller is ready to return to the world of Mad Max’ Theron is ready.
In an interview with Variety, the actress revealed she’s game to reprise her role as Furiosa, and even admits the scripts are there just waiting to be made.
“I’d love to. There were three scripts. They were written as backstories to Max’s character and to Furiosa’s character. But at the end of the day, this thing lives and breathes with [director] George [Miller]. I think Warner Bros. knows that. We are all waiting for him to show us the way,” she said.
Yes, please!
In this week’s “SPOON!” story, the new Amazon show coming in August is The Tick, based on the comic books by creator genius Ben Edlund.
The Tick is a large man, from who knows where, wearing a blue costume with antenna, and he is nigh invulnerable. And possibly not all mentally there.
Edlund will be writing most of this series as well. The man squeezing into the blue leotard is “Spaced” and “Spy” actor Peter Serafinowicz, with rising comedy actor Griffin Newman as sidekick Arthur and Jackie Earle Haley as the villain The Terror. The pilot, which aired last year and was directed by Christopher Nolan‘s DP Wally Pfister, wasn’t bad, and you can get another look at the show in the full trailer for the first season online now.
The first season will be airing in two blocks, with the first six landing on August 25th, and the second half following in 2018. I’m certainly interested, but damn I hate when they separate one season like that.
Thanks for stopping by this week! Next stop, San Diego Comicon! Yay!