Leonardo DiCaprio officially joins Tarantino's next
film, Chadwick Boseman teams up with Barry Jenkins, Natalie Portman
shoots into space, and New Mutants is pushed to 2019.
2018 marks the 10th anniversary of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and eight years since Scarlett Johansson joined the MCU in
Iron Man 2 as Natasha Romanoff, a.k.a.
Black Widow. In the years since, we haven’t heard firm news of a
Black Widow movie being actively developed, even as films with similar premises like last year’s
Atomic Blonde and this year’s
Red Sparrow (3/2/18) were both developed and produced. In the meantime, Black Widow’s backstory was developed further in
Avengers: Age of Ultron, and she had her largest role yet in in
Captain America: The Winter Soldier. With all of that in mind, Marvel Studios has
officially begun development of a
Black Widow movie by hiring female screenwriter
Jac Schaeffer, who wrote and directed the 2010 romantic comedy
TiMER (62% on the Tomatometer). Jac Schaeffer also wrote the upcoming
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels remake called
Nasty Women (starring Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson) and an original screenplay called
The Shower. Anne Hathaway
is also attached to produce and star in
The Shower, which is about an alien invasion that occurs during a baby shower.
Fresh Developments
1. LEONARDO DICAPRIO CONFIRMED FOR QUENTIN TARANTINO’S NEXT FILM
Ever since we first heard about Quentin Tarantino’s plans for his 9th
film as director, an untitled drama set in Hollywood against the
backdrop of the Manson Family murders in the summer of 1969, several big
name actors have been mentioned. Friday afternoon, the news broke that
the first such star
to officially sign on with Sony Pictures is Leonardo DiCaprio, who previously worked with Tarantino on
Django Unchained.
Leonardo DiCaprio is taking the lead role, which is an aging television
actor who is hoping to break more into being a big movie star, along
with his longtime stuntman and friend. Tom Cruise remains one of the
other stars who might be cast, but Brad Pitt wasn’t mentioned in today’s
news. Margot Robbie is still in the running to play murder victim
Sharon Tate (and Samuel L. Jackson is also still very much a
possibility). The new name in today’s news is Al Pacino, for whom
Tarantino may be specifically writing a role. Sony Pictures has
scheduled the film for August 9, 2019, the 50th anniversary of the 1969
Tate murders (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tate_murders ).
2. BLACK PANTHER STAR CHADWICK BOSEMAN IS ALSO AN EXPATRIATE
We’re just under a month away from the release of Marvel’s next big superhero movie,
Black Panther, and already, its star Chadwick Boseman has
set up a new project with one of Hollywood’s most-demanded directors.
Moonlight director Barry Jenkins is now attached to Universal Pictures’
Expatriate, which Boseman co-wrote and in which he will star.
Expatriate is described as an international thriller set around a 1970s airliner highjacking. This
Expatriate news comes as Ridley Scott’s
All the Money in the World is still in theaters, telling another 1970s crime story (though it appears
Expatriate is probably fictional). Yet another 1970s-set project suffered
worse news this week, as 20th Century Fox has scrapped
American Heiress, the Patricia “Patty” Hearst biopic. The news came within hours of Patricia Hearst
denouncing American Heiress and an upcoming CNN miniseries.
3. DEADPOOL DIRECTOR UN-“PHASED” BY KITTY PRYDE OPPORTUNITY
As of this writing, there have been only three superhero movies featuring solo female leads:
Catwoman,
Elektra, and last year’s
Wonder Woman, with
Captain Marvel (3/8/19) to be #4. (Sony Pictures’
Silver & Black (2/8/19), about Marvel’s Silver Sable and Black Cat, will be the first superhero movie to feature
two female leads.) With movies like
X-Men: Dark Phoenix and
The New Mutants coming soon, Fox is clearly focusing on female superheroes. This week,
we learned which might be the first female
X-Men member to go solo, as director Tim Miller (
Deadpool) is now developing a solo movie for
Kitty Pryde (most commonly AKA
Shadowcat).
Kitty Pryde,
who was played by Ellen Page in two films (after being played by other
actresses in the first two), possesses the ability to “phase” through
solid objects (like walls). In the comics,
Kitty Pryde
has had a long, on-again-off-again romantic relationship with Colossus
(and also dated Star-Lord for a while), learned martial arts from
Wolverine, and is currently the leader of one of the
X-Men teams. Director Tim Miller is also developing the next
Terminator reboot.
4. NATALIE PORTMAN TO LAUNCH INTO ASTRONAUT DRAMA PALE BLUE DOT
After Sandra Bullock’s success with
Gravity, Reese Witherspoon also became attached to star in an astronaut drama called
Pale Blue Dot. Witherspoon is still producing
Pale Blue Dot, but it is now Natalie Portman who
is in talks with Fox Searchlight to star. Incidentally, it’s worth noting that, at one time, Natalie Portman had been attached to star in
Gravity before Sandra Bullock eventually was cast.
Pale Blue Dot
tells the (fictional) story of a married female astronaut who has an
affair with a fellow astronaut after an extended stay in space and must
deal with the repercussions when her lover becomes involved with a young
astronaut trainee. Reportedly loosely based on the 2007 case of
astronaut
Lisa Nowak,
Pale Blue Dot will mark the feature film directorial debut of Noah Hawley, the creator of the acclaimed FX TV series
Fargo and
Legion. Hawley
is also developing a
Doctor Doom solo movie.
5. MILLIE BOBBY BROWN TO INVESTIGATE ENOLA HOLMES MYSTERIES
Since they’re on such a phenomenally popular Netflix series, the young stars of
Stranger Things
are obviously going to be sought after for other projects. However, due
to their ages and the specific ages of their characters, their careers
are, for the time being, largely and necessarily tied to the show.
Millie Bobby Brown, who plays Eleven, did fit next year’s
Godzilla: King of Monsters
(3/22/19) in between S1 and S2, and now we know what might fit in
between S3 (which starts filming soon) and S4. Millie Bobby Brown
is now signed with Legendary Entertainment (the company behind
Godzilla: King of Monsters) to star in a series of films based on the
Enola Holmes Mysteries
by author Nancy Springer. As the title suggests, Enola is the (much)
younger sister of Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes who has been featured in
six young adult novels since 2006.
6. TARAJI P. HENSON TO STAR AS EMMETT TILL’S MOTHER
One of the new movies opening this weekend is
Proud Mary
(currently 33% on the Tomatometer), starring Taraji P. Henson, and so
we heard this week about one of Henson’s next new projects. We now know
that Henson
will produce and star in an untitled biopic about the life and death of Emmett Till.
Emmett Till was a 14-year-old boy who was lynched in Mississippi in 1955 after being accused of whistling at a white woman (who has since
recanted her story).
Henson will play Emmett’s mother Mamie Till-Mobley, whose decision to
demand an open casket for her son is credited as a key moment in the
civil rights struggle. We also learned this week about
another new biopic based on the life of
Hattie McDaniel, the first African-American to be nominated or win an acting
Academy Award, for her role as the slave “Mammy” in
Gone with the Wind.
7. VIN DIESEL TAKES AIM AT VALIANT COMICS’ BLOODSHOT
Even people who don’t follow comic books probably know by this point
that the two biggest companies are Marvel and DC, and that they have
competing “cinematic universes.” Since 2015, however, another publisher,
Valiant Comics,
has also been developing movies based on some of
their comic book series, including
Archer & Armstrong,
Harbinger, and
X-O Manowar. The first of Valiant’s movies to actually receive any sort of casting news is
Bloodshot, for which Vin Diesel
is now in talks with Sony Pictures. (Last year, Jared Leto had also
reportedly been considered).
Bloodshot
is about “a mortally wounded soldier resurrected with cutting-edge
nanotechnology and tasked with rounding up superpowered outcasts known
as ‘harbingers.'”
Bloodshot will mark the directorial debut of Dave Wilson (a producing partner of
Deadpool director Tim Miller), and is expected to be an R-rated action movie. If Vin Diesel signs on,
Bloodshot will be his second comic book adaptation after voicing Groot in Marvel’s
Guardians of the Galaxy movies.
8. THIS WEEK IN DC COMICS MOVIES: SHAZAM! RELEASE DATE; TEEN TITANS GO! TO THE MOVIES TRAILER
The next three DC Comics superhero movies will be
Teen Titans Go! to the Movies (7/27/18),
Aquaman (12/21/18), and
Shazam!
(4/5/19). This week, two of them were in the news (and the third was
mentioned as well). If you’ve not been following recent developments,
you might be surprised by that first title, which is a big screen
animated adaptation of the popular
TV series on the Cartoon Network. The first teaser trailer
debuted online this week, and it featured the
Teen Titans both commenting on the popularity of
Wonder Woman and offering a friendly jab at the idea of the necessity of an
Aquaman movie. Warner Bros. also confirmed this week that the “Untitled DC Comics” title that had been scheduled for April 5, 2019
will indeed be Shazam! (as one could have guessed, based on its being the next movie in production after
Aquaman).
src-rottentomatoes.com
