Director Quentin Tarantino is on a book tour meeting and speaking with multiple outlets, this means he’s talking-up a bunch of hypothetical projects and ideas that normally he’d keep to himself or wait until there was a film to promote.
While chatting with The Big Picture Podcast (via The Playlist), the filmmaker brought up the idea of making a more commercial viable film by doing a faithful adaptation of the David Morrell novel First Blood, the book published in 1972 was developed into a starring vehicle for Sly Stallone in 1982 and led to four sequels.
“I would do the novel. And Kurt Russell would play the sheriff, and [Adam Driver] would play Rambo. Every time I read [the novel], the dialogue is so fantastic…[The film] would be so good,” Tarantino told the podcast about his ideas for a remake and who should take lead roles.
First came the man: a young wanderer in a fatigue coat and long hair. Then came the legend, as John Rambo sprang from the pages of FIRST BLOOD to take his place in the American cultural landscape. This remarkable novel pits a young Vietnam veteran against a small-town cop who doesn’t know whom he’s dealing with — or how far Rambo will take him into a life-and-death struggle through the woods, hills, and caves of rural Kentucky.
The idea is based on if he hadn’t planned on retiring after making his 10th feature film, so even if it’s neat idea, it’s unlikely going to happen. First Blood is considered the best of the Rambo movies as it the most coherent film, but wasn’t as faithful as some might imagine.
It’s a little curious why he’s bringing up First Blood, as there is indeed a Rambo remake in the works called Rambo: New Blood from Millennium Films. The remake reportedly had Brooks McLaren attached to pen the script and Ariel Vromen (The Iceman, Criminal) to direct, but there hasn’t been much of an update since 2016, so it’s unlikely that incarnation is going to happen.
Back in 2015, Stallone suggested in an interview during the press rounds for Creed that Canadian actor Ryan Gosling take the John Rambo mantle.
During the interview they asked who what actors would replace characters with pic.twitter.com/7bMf3iUsJq
Author/creator David Morrell took to Twitter during the release of the critically panned Rambo: Last Blood and said he was embarrassed by it. Stallone had announced his retirement of the character not too long ago and it’s not like a remake would be stepping on his toes with a remake.
Warner Bros. has been trying since 1980s to make a feature film based on the WWII era DC Comics hero Sgt. Rock, producer Joel Silver famously tried to get an incarnation starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and if you look closely at the end credits of Predator, you can see cast members like Shane Black holding copies of Sgt. Rock.
Well, it sounds like one incarnation almost had a script from screenwriter David Webb Peoples (Blade Runner, Unforgiving, 12 Monkeys, Leviathan, Soldier) and his “magnificent” script almost convinced Quentin Tarantino get involved as he was offered it by the studio. Tarantino briefly mentioned the potential comic book film during a chat on The Big Picture podcast (via The Playlist).
“There’s a really good script that David Webb Peoples wrote for Sgt. Rock that I still think about doing that from time to time. I don’t think I will, but I think it’s a really magnificent script and I would do a good job with,” Tarantino told The Big Picture.
It’s been well established that the director is a huge comic book guy.
Quentin Tarantino has mulled over the idea of making a comic book project over the years, in the 1990s, he wanted to make a Luke Cage movie starring Laurence Fishburne and had been once offered another DC Comics property Green Lantern.
He was previously upfront that Marvel’s Sgt. Fury & His Howling Commandos was a huge influence on the Oscar-winning film Inglourious Basterds and there were a handful of Marvel Comics homages in Reservoir Dogs.
“A big influence on the Basterds was Marvel Comics’ Sgt. Fury & His Howling Commandos. That was definitely an influence on that flick,” the filmmaker told MTV News back in 2009.
There seems to be further nods in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood with Rick Dalton’s WWII action film The 14 Fists of McCluskey, as his character wore an eye-patch a possible wink to Nick Fury and there were Sgt. Fury/Kid Colt comics in Cliff Booth’s trailer.
In December, FX confirmed they were indeed moving forward with an original series set within the Alien universe with Noah Hawley (Fargo, Legion) and producer Ridley Scott. However, the project wasn’t going to be a continuation of the David or Ripley stories, as it would be taking place on Earth.
During a new interview with Vanity Fair, Noah Hawley is giving tiny tidbits about the project and reaffirming his plans to take more of human angle with the show. Something that sort has got lost with Scott’s wishy-washy prequels and the horrible cash-grab Alien vs. Predator films.
“Those are great monster movies, but they’re not just monster movies. They’re about humanity trapped between our primordial, parasitic past and our artificial intelligence future—and they’re both trying to kill us. Here you have human beings and they can’t go forward and they can’t go back. So I find that really interesting…It’s a story that’s set on Earth also. The alien stories are always trapped… Trapped in a prison, trapped in a space ship. I thought it would be interesting to open it up a little bit so that the stakes of ‘What happens if you can’t contain it?’ are more immediate,” Hawley told Vanity Fair.
He also brought-up returning to the franchise’s main dynamic between the greedy corporation (Weyland-Yutani) exploiting it’s workforce, something that was a key element of the first three Alien movies.
Hawley states the show will focus on the human dynamics, “On some level it’s also a story about inequality. You know, one of the things that I love about the first movie is how ’70s a movie it is, and how it’s really this blue collar space-trucker world in which Yaphet Kotto and Harry Dean Stanton are basically Waiting for Godot. They’re like Samuel Beckett characters, ordered to go to a place by a faceless nameless corporation. The second movie is such an ’80s movie, but it’s still about grunts. Paul Reiser is middle management at best. So, it is the story of the people you send to do the dirty work…In mine, you’re also going to see the people who are sending them. So you will see what happens when the inequality we’re struggling with now isn’t resolved. If we as a society can’t figure out how to prop each other up and spread the wealth, then what’s going to happen to us? There’s that great Sigourney Weaver line to Paul Reiser where she says, ‘I don’t know which species is worse. At least they don’t fuck each other over for a percentage.'”
Folks seem to be losing their minds about these comments, however, I have to question if they have actually watched the Ellen Ripley movies that mainly focused on the rich exploiting the poor workforce to get their hands on the xenomorph to make billions off it by turning it into a bio-weapon.
The original film saw the company secretly install a robot (Ash) and direct the Nostromo crew to the derelict ship, Ripley discovers the company sees the crew is expendable (seen as glorified space truckers) and Ash tries to kill her when she discovers the company is willing to sacrifice them all to get their hands on the alien. Walter Hill and David Giler (did rewrites on Alien and co-wrote Aliens with James Cameron) seemingly took elements directly from the Joseph Conrad (his book Heart of Darkness inspired Vietnam War film Apocalypse Now) novel Nostromo, that was about human greed connected to a fictional silver operation in South America.
Parallels of greed from Nostromo was doubled-down in Aliens (Sulaco name came from the book too), as seen when Ellen Ripley tries to explain what happened to the ship and crew they simply dismiss her story. Carter Burke, a Weyland-Yutani suit, pretends to be concerned about Ripley as a manipulation tactic and it’s discovered that he personally got all the colonists on LV-426 killed (colonists and Newt’s parents shown in the director’s cut) without warning them about the alien. Not only that, he also was willing to kill the Marines (sabotaging their freezers on the trip home) alongside turning Ripley and Newt into hosts to bring back the xenomorph back to Earth for the company’s weapons program. Silver being replaced with the promise of a perfect bio-weapon. When he was caught by Ripley, he tries to rationalize his greed and when that doesn’t work he unleashes facehuggers upon her.
In David Fncher’s Alien 3, Ripley crash lands on a prison colony planet and the Warden blindly is following orders from the company only for her to warn them that they might kill everyone in the installation just for witnessing the xenomorph to keep it a secret as the previous two movies backed-up that conclusion.
Lastly, Alien Resurrection saw a black site military operating trying to clone an alien queen, then hiring space pirates to hijack a transport full of innocent workers kidnapping them to become hosts (essentially killing them) for soldier aliens before everything hits the fan. Yet, another attempt to get a bio-weapons program going.
To say the Alien franchise isn’t about politics is complete ignorance.
While Oscar-winner Charlize Theron is fully embracing her era as an action star, she won’t be reprising the Furiosa role in George Miller’s prequel film that will begin shooting next month in Australia with Anya Taylor-Joy (The Witch, The Queen’s Gambit, Last Night In Soho) playing a younger incarnation of the character. However, Theron will have plenty of things on her plate for the foreseeable future.
Variety’s Mark Malkin has dished some interesting updates on Charlize Theron projects such as The Older Guard sequel that will begin shooting in the first quarter of 2022 and even development on a Cipher movie focused on her character from the recent Fast & Furious movies, according to franchise star Vin Diesel.
Charlize Theron tells me that the script is done for the sequel to The Old Guard, her Netflix film adaptation of the graphic novel of the same name. Cameras will start rolling in the first quarter of 2022. The gay couple, played by Marwan Kenzari and Luca Marinelli, will be back, too. “Oh, yeah!” Theron says. “They’re definitely there.” Meanwhile, Vin Diesel tells me that he has writers working on a Fast & Furious spinoff for Theron’s character, Cipher.
The Old Guard is a Netflix action movie based on the Greg Rucka (also wrote the script) comic book about a diverse group of immortals and was directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood (Love & Basketball). According to Netflix, it was one of their most popular original feature films and a sequel felt like a given.
Given the box office successes of The Fate of The Furious and F9: The Fast Saga along with Hobbs & Shaw it feels like an obvious thing to give Theron her own film, but you’d hope that someone hires a better hairstylist for the actress. Other projects in the works at Universal Pictures is a Hobbs & Shaw sequel and a female-led film focused on Michelle Rodriguez’s character Letty Ortiz.
I’ll patiently wait for director David Leitch (Bullet Train, John Wick, Deadpool 2, Hobbs & Shaw) and Theron to reunite for an Atomic Blonde sequel.
Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Partners have started filming their long-gestating horror film The Last Voyage of The Demeter, the project has been in the works for twenty years and is based on the brief excerpt from Bram Stoker’s original Dracula novel covering the iconic vampire’s bloody journey to London.
Zak Olkewicz (Bullet Train, Fear Street) has written the script, which is based on a single chapter, “The Captain’s Log,” from Bram Stoker’s classic 1897 novel Dracula, which tells the story of the Russian schooner, Demeter, which was charted to carry private cargo (twenty four unmarked wooden creates) from Carpathia to London. The film will detail the strange events that befell the doomed crew as they attempt to survive the ocean voyage, stalked each night by a terrifying presence onboard the ship. When it finally arrived near Whitby Harbour, it was a derelict. There was no trace of the crew.
Director Andre Ovredal (Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark) announced on Twitter that filming on the horror flick began shooting on June 26 at Babelsberg Studio just outside of Berlin, Germany. The studio is currently being used for John Wick: Chapter 4 alongside recently high-profile studio projects such as The Matrix 4 and Tom Holland’s Uncharted film.
The film’s cast has grown with a wave of new additions mentioned by The Hollywood Reporter yesterday. Those new names joining Corey Hawkins (Straight Outta Compton, Kong: Skull Island, The Walking Dead) include Game of Thrones alums Liam Cunningham (Clash of The Titans, The Guard) as the Demeter’s captain and Aisling Franciosi (The Nightingale, Black Narcissus), David Dastmalchian (Ant-Man, The Suicide Squad, Blade Runner 2049), longtime creature actor Javier Botet (It, Game of Thrones, Slender Man, Alien: Covenant, Crimson Peak, The Conjuring 2) is set to play Dracula, Jon Jon Briones (Ratched), Stefan Kapicic (Deadpool, Deadpool 2), Nikolai Nikolaeff, Woody Norman, Martin Furulund and Chris Walley.
The Last Voyage of The Demeter has been around for ages with previous directors such as David Slade (Hard Candy, 30 Days of Night, Hannibal, American Gods, Black Mirror) and Neil Marshall (Game of Thrones, Westworld, Hellboy, Lost In Space) attaching themselves to only exit. Viggo Mortensen, Noomi Rapace, Jude Law, and Ben Kingsley were reportedly once involved at various stages.
It’s unknown when the film will debut as Amblin recently made a deal with Netflix to fund and distribute original films. There is a good shot that Demeter ends up landing at Netflix.
James Gunn is wrapping on his HBO Max series Peacemaker next month and is already gearing up to shoot both Guardians of The Galaxy Vol.3. and a Disney+ holiday special as well.
Production Weekly has listed the working title of Guardians of The Galaxy Holiday Special will be Buzzcut, the working title for the third film has been Hot Christmas (confirmed).
UPDATE: James Gunn has debunked Production Weekly’s new info via Twitter, which is another reason to be cautious about their information.
A reminder that working titles are mainly used during filming and then are discarded once the project is locked.
There is an assumption the projects will see the return of Chris Pratt as Peter Quill aka Star-Lord, Karen Gillan as Nebula, Dave Bautista as Drax The Destroyer, Pom Klementieff as Mantis, Sean Gunn as Kraglin, and Vin Diesel as the voice of Groot. It’s still questionable if we’ll see Zoe Saldana as Gamora in both.
Filming on Guardians of The Galaxy Vol.3 was revealed to be set for November to April, this news comes after Star-Lord actor Chris Pratt mentioned the production schedule during a visit to Jimmy Kimmel! after he was asked when they would be making the sequel. It will mainly be taking place in the United Kingdom, a location that is already being used for for Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania and The Marvels.
Other recent working titles for Marvel projects include the following.
LOKI – ARCHITECT
BLACK WIDOW = BLUE BAYOU
ETERNALS = SACK LUNCH
SHANG-CHI & THE LEGEND OF THE TEN RINGS = STEAMBOAT
DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS = STELLAR VORTEX
SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME = THE NOVEMBER PROJECT
THOR: LOVE & THUNDER = THE BIG SALAD
SHE-HULK = CLOVER
MOON KNIGHT = GOOD FAITH
THE MARVELS = GOAT RODEO
BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER = SUMMER BREAK
ANT-MAN & THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA = DUST BUNNY
SECRET INVASION = JAMBALAYA
Guardians of The Galaxy Vol.3 has a release date of May 5, 2023 and we have to assume the Guardians of The Galaxy Holiday Special will air on Disney+ around December 2022. However, we’ll see the Guardians next in Taika Waititi’s Thor: Love & Thunder on May 6, 2022 as they shot scenes during the production in Australia earlier this year.
Interestingly enough, Loki cinematographer Autumn Durlad Arkapaw has posted a video on Instagram of director Ryan Coogler playing basketball on a court. This seemingly confirms she’s working on the film as Black Panther’s cinematographer Rachel Morrison is busy on her own project.
Morrison adding fuel herself by sending her love with a reply on the post from June 18 and further confirming that Autumn is working on the Black Panther sequel. Auntumn Durald Arkapaw was recently in Atlanta working on their DIsney+ series Loki and has a fantastic eye as the show is one of the best looking projects to date.
Director Edgar Wright (Scott Pilgrim, Baby Driver) has made a career making comedic projects from his British series Spaced to the Cornetto Trilogy (Shaun of The Dead, Hot Fuzz, The World’s End), but he’ll be attempting something much serious with his psychological thriller Last Night In Soho.
However, we’ll going to have to wait a little longer than expected to see it.
Having the film open during the weekend of Halloween isn’t the worst idea given the creepy elements.
Wright’s cast for Last Night In Soho consists of Anya Taylor-Joy (The Witch, The Queen’s Gambit, The Northman), Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie (Jojo Rabbit), Matt Smith (Doctor Who), Terence Stamp (Superman II), Diana Rigg, Rita Tushingham, Michael Ajao, and Synnøve Karlsen.
Last Night In Soho’s lead Anya Taylor-Joy is a busy lady, as she is set to begin shooting George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road prequel Furiosa at Fox Studios Australia in August and will be seen in Robert Eggers’ Viking epic that will hit theaters on April 8, 2022.
Edgar Wright is working on a bunch of projects including a remake of the Arnold Schwarzenegger dystopian sci-fi flick The Running Man, the new version at Paramount Pictures is expected to be more faithful to original source material and will be adapted from the Stephen King novel written under his pen name Richard Bachman. Before The Running Man, the filmmaker was developing a sci-fi about robots in 2054 with the Simon Stephenson adaption Set My Heart To Five at Working Title Films.
LAST NIGHT IN SOHO – A young woman, passionate in fashion design, is mysteriously able to enter the 1960s, where she encounters her idol, a dazzling wannabe singer. However, 1960s London is not what it appears, and time seems to fall apart with shady consequences.
Quentin Tarantino is doing a bunch of interviews to help promote the publishing of a novelization of his Oscar-winning film Once Upon A Time Hollywood, expanding upon those characters and events from the film. However, Tarantino might not stop there as he revealed to The Big Picture podcast (via Slash Film) that he started out writing two chapters of a Reservoir Dogs novel before pivoting to Once Upon A Time In Hollywood instead.
“I thought to myself, ‘Well shit, I ought to do one of these for one of my movies. So my first thought was Reservoir Dogs, because there’s a mystery/crime section in the bookstore…I mean, it’s right there. And I even wrote, like, two chapters of a Reservoir Dogs novelization. But then I thought, ‘Wait a minute. What the fuck am I doing? The last movie I did was Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I have tons of material that never saw the light of day – material that I never even typed up because it’s not going to be in the movie, it was just edification for me. And people seem to like it.’ So it just seemed like this could do really well,” Tarantino said about the creative process of how he wrote his novelization of Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.
The filmmaker mused about doing more writing and even finishing his Reservoir Dogs novel, “Hopefully, I’ll do this quite a bit. I can see myself – I don’t know if I’m going to do every movie I’ve ever done, but I can definitely see the idea of a Reservoir Dogs novel. That could be really cool. And then [I’m working on] an original. It’s kinda pulpy. I’ve got a western idea, and I’ve written about two chapters of an original western novel.”
Maybe, we’ll find out what happened to Steve Buscemi’s Mr. Pink, as he believes the character became the Buddy Holly waiter in Pulp Fiction.
RESERVOIR DOGS – Six criminals with pseudonyms, and each strangers to one another, are hired to carry out a robbery. The heist is ambushed by police and the gang are forced to shoot their way out. At their warehouse rendezvous, the survivors, realizing that they were set up, try to find the traitor in their midst.
While we’re still in the dark about Wes Anderson’s next feature film project, we finally know when it’ll begin shooting and that it will have actress Tilda Swinton among the cast.
Tilda Swinton spoke with Variety for an interview and confirmed her involvement.
Tilda Swinton revealed that she will star in the project, specific details of which are being kept closely under wraps. Though the film is shooting in Spain, “it’s not about Spain,” Swinton hinted. Meanwhile, speaking to Variety from England, Anderson said he’s “not ready to share any details” about the new film.
Filming on the untitled movie will begin this September in Chinchón, Spain.
There most recent collaboration was on Anderson’s The French Dispatch.
THE FRENCH DISPATCH – A love letter to journalists set in an outpost of an American newspaper in a fictional twentieth century French city that brings to life a collection of stories published in “The French Dispatch Magazine.”It stars Benicio del Toro, Adrien Brody, Tilda Swinton, Léa Seydoux, Frances McDormand, Timothée Chalamet, Lyna Khoudri, Jeffrey Wright, Mathieu Amalric, Stephen Park, Bill Murray and Owen Wilson.
THE RONIN 