Category: Film News

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‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ Actress Zoe Kravitz Gives Her Opinion On ‘Furiosa’ Recasting

It was confirmed recently that Charlize Theron wouldn’t be reprising the Furiosa role in George Miller’s upcoming prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road as the writer/director wasn’t sold on the current de-aging CGI effects and their limitations. Leading to him now seeking a younger actress to play the role with Anya Taylor-Joy (The Witch, The New Mutants) and Jodie Comer (Killing Eve, The Last Duel) reportedly among the many ladies auditioning.  

Theron’s co-star Zoe Kravitz has now commented about the sitution while being interviewed on the podcast Happy Sad Confused, giving Miller the benefit of the doubt. 

KRAVITZ: “If I recall correctly, he always spoke about wanting to do a Furiosa prequel. I didn’t know he was going to recast her. If I learned anything from being in Fury Road, it’s shut up and trust George Miller. I’m just gonna shut my mouth and say go to work maestro because I don’t know what else I can say to that, man.”

I don’t think the door is nesscarily closed concerning Charlize returning to the Furiosa role down the road as Miller also wanted to make a direct sequel to Fury Road which would allow Theron to appear as the badass character once more.

When filming on Furiosa will begin is a little unclear as Miller was in the middle to starting up Three Thousand Years of Longing when his star Idris Elba contracted the coronavirus and the country-wide outbreak led to the industry to pause all productions in Australia including Marvel’s Shang-Chi & The Legend of The Ten Rings. 

George has suggested in previous interviews that he hopes to shoot the Fury Road prequel once Three Thousand Years of Longing is completed.There had been rumors of Furiosa beginning this fall or sometime in 2021, neither projected start seems realistic at this point given delays on Miller’s current film. 

Zoe has had production woes too as she was recently cast as Selina Kyle aka Catwoman in Matt Reeves’ new Batman film. Matt had revealed a while back that they had only completed a quarter of filming before the pandemic paused production in the United Kingdom. 

Jurassic World: Dominion is reportedly aiming to be the first major production to resume in the UK at Pinewood Studios UK sometime between early to mid-July. Despite false online rumors, The Batman isn’t cancelled nor is Robert Pattinson being fired. Instead, the DC Comics movie will resume filming shortly as soon as the studio feels it’s safe to do so. 

SOURCE: HAPPY SAD CONFUSED

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Netflix Acquiring Domestic Rights To Aaron Sorkin Drama ‘The Trial of The Chicago 7’

Variety reports that Netflix is about to buy another high-profile awards contender with Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of The Chicago Seven. The streaming service is negotiating to secure the domestic rights from Paramount Pictures and Cross Creek Productions.

The Chicago Seven, a group of seven activists who were charged by the federal government with conspiracy, inciting to riot and other charges stemming from anti-Vietnam War protests that broke out during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. It’s a hot-button story, one that is sure to resonate in a presidential election year and at a time when protests over racial injustice are breaking out across the country.

Aaron Sorkin previously made his directorial debut with the Jessica Chastain film Molly’s Game. His screenwriting credits includes A Few Good Men, Charlie Wilson’s War, The Social Network, Moneyball, and Steve Jobs.

The film’s impressive cast includes Sacha Baron Cohen, Eddie Redmayne, Jeremy Strong, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Frank Langella, William Hurt, Michael Keaton, and Mark Rylance. 

They had luckily wrapped production on The Chicago 7 before the pandemic hit and was originally set to be released on October 16th, 2020. It’s said to be aiming to get a release before the election in November.

SOURCE: VARIETY

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Michael Mann’s ‘Ferrari’ Speeding Forward With Hugh Jackman Playing Enzo Ferrari

Reporting out of the Cannes Virtual Market via Deadline has revealed that Michael Mann’s upcoming film Ferrari is now seeking distribution partners next week.

They’re also expected to begin shooting Ferrari by next spring.

The film will chart the summer of 1957 when all the forces in Ferrari’s life – which were often as combustible and volatile as the iconic race cars he built – collided. The now legendary car company he and his wife Laura built was at the time going broke. Their tempestuous marriage had already suffered the death of their son, Dino, and Ferrari’s other son, 12-year old Piero, the product of a wartime romance, was struggling to find his place in the world.

The entrepreneur rolled the dice for all their futures on one race – 1,000 miles across Italy, the brutal and infamous 1957 Mille Miglia. The film will be framed so that during the highly dangerous race, Laura discovers long kept secrets, we see opportunities rise and fade, and drivers, who are like surrogate sons, are pushed beyond the edge.

X-Men actor Hugh Jackman is currently in discussions to play the Enzo Ferrari role, but there isn’t word about who will play Laura.

They also reveal that Mann has reworked the script that was originally penned by Italian Job and Kelly’s Heroes screenwriter Troy Kennedy Martin, who passed in 2009. Michael has been trying to get the film made for almost two decades.

Ferrari’s resurgence certainly comes at the right time after James Mangold’s own racing biopic Ford v Ferrari from 2019 did okay at the box office and earned a handful of Oscar nominations including Best Picture. I’m sure both Mann and Jackman see the film as potential awards contender.

STX will distribute Ferrari in the UK and Ireland.

STX is now handling international sales and will directly distribute the film in the UK and Ireland. We understand Amazon is tying up a deal to bolster international with STX and has been integral in the process. CAA Media Finance arranged the financing and is repping domestic.

Mann was in the middle of shooting the pilot episode of HBO Max’s Tokyo Vice in Japan before the Coronavirus pandemic paused filming. Hugh Jackman most recently starred in the HBO film Bad Education and had wrapped on the Warner Bros. sci-fi thriller Reminiscence directed by Westworld’s Lisa Joy.

SOURCE: DEADLINE

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‘The Martian’ Screenwriter Drew Goddard Joins Lord and Miller’s Sci-Fi Film ‘Project Hail Mary’ – Ryan Gosling Stars

Screenwriter Drew Goddard is reportedly returning to the world of novelist Andy Weir, previously landing an Oscar-nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay after adapting the novel The Martian for director Ridley Scott.

The Hollywood Reporter has learned that Goddard will be tackling a second Weir adaptation with Project Hail Mary. MGM recently spent an impressive $3 million to secure a deal for the science fiction film that has Ryan Gosling attached for the lead role with Chris Miller and Phil Lord directing.

Centers on an astronaut who wakes up to find himself millions of miles away from home, in a tiny craft with two dead crewmates for company, with no recollection of his mission or even his name. But this man will soon discover he is humanity’s only hope for survival from an extinction-level threat.

Goddard is a director himself as he made The Cabin In The Woods and Bad Times At The El Royale. He had been previously attached to direct Marvel projects such as Sony’s Spider-Man spinoff Sinister Six and X-Men/Deadpool spinoff X-Force, those projects have since fell into development limbo.

Project Hail Mary seems like a perfect paring of creatives and I think it could end up extremely special.

SOURCE: THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

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Edgar Wright and Jane Goldman Teaming On Kidnap Thriller ‘The Chain’ For Universal

Deadline has revealed that Universal Pictures has optioned the film rights to the Adrian McKinty novel The Chain with Edgar Wright set to direct and Jane Goldman hired to adapt the book into a script. 

The Chain tells the story of Rachel, who learns that her 11-year-old daughter has been kidnapped. The only way to get her back is to kidnap another child. Her daughter will be released only when that next victim’s parents kidnap another child. If Rachel doesn’t kidnap another child, or if that child’s parents don’t kidnap a child, her daughter will be murdered. She is now part of The Chain, a terrifying and meticulous chain letter-like kidnapping scheme that turns parents from victims into criminals.

Wright is set to release his psychological horror film Last Night In Soho starring Anya Taylor-Joy on April 23rd, 2021, and is also developing the sci-fi film based on the novel Set Heart To Five from Simon Stephenson. 

Jane is best known for films such as Stardust, X-Men: First Class, Kick-Ass, Kingsman: The Secret Service, Kingsman: The Golden Circle, The King’s Man, and had been hired as the showrunner for the first Game of Thrones prequel spinoff series that didn’t move forward beyond a pilot episode. 

It’ll be interesting to see if Edgar ever gets around to making his Baby Driver sequel because he keeps signing on for other projects in the meantime. 

SOURCE: DEADLINE

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‘Dune’ Officially Returning To Budapest For Additional Photography In August

Deadline has revealed that Denis Villeneuve’s Dune will be returning to Budapest, Hungary to film an unknown amount of additional photography. The film is the latest adaptation of the sci-fi novels written by Frank Herbert.

Filming had previously taken place at Origo Film Studios in Budapest along with exterior shoots in Norway and Jordan.

DUNE – A mythic and emotionally charged hero’s journey, “Dune” tells the story of Paul Atreides, a brilliant and gifted young man born into a great destiny beyond his understanding, who must travel to the most dangerous planet in the universe to ensure the future of his family and his people. As malevolent forces explode into conflict over the planet’s exclusive supply of the most precious resource in existence—a commodity capable of unlocking humanity’s greatest potential—only those who can conquer their fear will survive.

It’s cast includes Timothee Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Dave Bautista, Stellan Skarsgard, Charlotte Rampling, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Jason Momoa, Zendaya, and David Dastmalchian.

Legendary is already developing a sequel will act as Part 2 of the first novel with screenwriter Jon Spaihts currently working on the script. There is also an HBO Max series in the works titled Dune: The Sisterhood.

The release date has been set for December 18th, but with all the various shifting dates for Warner Bros. movies, it’s hard to assume that they’ll ultimately stick to that holiday spot.

SOURCE: DEADLINE

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Lily James Starring In Thriller ‘The Paris Trap’ – Production Eyeing Start In Early 2021

Another project announced at the Cannes Virtual Market via Deadline is a Paris-set thriller titled The Paris Trap from director Pablo Trapero (ZeroZeroZero, The Chain) with British actress Lily James (Baby Driver, Cinderella, Rebecca) set to take the lead role.

The Paris Trap has a script penned by Daniel Taplitz with rewrites from Michael Lesslie.

The Hitchcockian thriller revolves around a young American woman on a visit to Paris who becomes the victim of mistaken identity. Caught up in a secret international government operation, she must play the part to save her own life. James will play the young woman whose character is thrust to the center of the operation and must find her way out of the “trap,” helped by her handler. That role, the co-lead of the film, will be cast shortly.

Pablo’s current work includes the Amazon series ZeroZeroZero and Spanish-language thriller The Clan.

Lily’s most recent projects include Baby Driver, Darkest Hour, Yesterday, and Ben Wheatley’s Rebecca for Netflix. James had just signed-on for Phillip Noyce’s bank robbery film Peggy Jo, where she’ll be playing a female criminal that disguised herself as a man to commit crimes.

Filming on The Paris Trap is expected to begin sometime early next year in Paris, France.

SOURCE: DEADLINE

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Joe Cornish Says He’s Met With John Boyega About An ‘Attack The Block’ Sequel

It sounds like John Boyega might be returning to the world of science fiction in the near future.

While on the Script Apart Podcast (via Empire), writer/director Joe Cornish (Attack The Block) has revealed that he has met with Star Wars actor John Boyega about potentially returning for a sequel to his breakout British sci-fi comedy Attack The Block.

CORNISH: “We’ve got ideas. I met with John a couple of months ago to talk about it. We’ve always had ideas after the first one. But obviously we’ve both been busy doing different things. In a way, the longer you leave it, the more interesting it is. So, that’s all I’ll say.”

Boyega got noticed thanks to his leading role in the R-rated film which led to big franchise roles in Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Pacific Rim: Uprising. This comes after John felt he might see some career backlash from speaking out at UK protests supporting Black Lives Matter, which saw a bunch of directors stating publicly they are keen to work with the actor after his impassioned speech went viral on social media.

Next May will see the film’s 10th Anniversary.

ATTACK THE BLOCK – From the producers of Shaun of the Dead, ATTACK THE BLOCK is a fast, funny, frightening action adventure movie that pits a teen street gang against an invasion of savage alien monsters. It turns a London housing project into a sci-fi battleground, the low-income apartment complex into a fortress under siege. And it turns a crazy mix of tough street kids into a team of kick ass heroes. It’s inner city versus outer space and it’s going to explode.



SOURCE: SCRIPT APART PODCAST

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Walter Hill Reveals ‘Alien V’ Script Co-Written With David Giler Is From March 2020 – Teases Retconning ‘Alien 3-4’?

Last week, it was revealed by Alien franchise actress Sigourney Weaver that producer Walter Hill penned a draft for Alien 5 over a year ago. Weaver didn’t sound terribly enthusiastic about reprising the Ripley role.

Hill has now reached out to SyFy Wire and has added some new information including images of the script titled “Alien V” is dated March 13th, 2020 and is co-written by fellow franchise producer/screenwriter David Giler. The pair did rewrites on the original Alien script, worked on Aliens with James Cameron, and were behind the final version of Alien 3.

HILL: “Sigourney, as she has from the very beginning, is being too modest about her proven ability to pull off the idea — which is to tell a story that scares the pants off your date, kicks the ass of a new Xenomorph, and conducts a meditation on both the universe of the Alien franchise and the destiny of the character of Lt. Ellen Ripley.”

This would establish the pair have been more recently working on the project since Neill Blomkamp exited to purse other films and might be something they’ve been doing on their own, rather than something guided by Disney or 20th Century Studios.

Meaning that Alien V hasn’t been greenlit.

“In space nobody can hear you dream” is mentioned on the tagline, which might suggest their version could attempt to retcon both Alien 3 and Alien: Resurrection via cryosleep. Blomkamp wanted to have Alien 5 a direct sequel to Aliens with bringing back characters like Hicks, Newt, and even Bishop.

I sort of get vibes from when Ridley Scott’s production company Scott Free was originally tasked to develop the Alien: Origins script with Jon Spaihts before it became the version of Prometheus we know today.

SOURCE: SYFY WIRE

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TRAILER: New Footage From ‘Train To Busan’ Sequel ‘Peninsula’ Proves The Zombie Flick Is Seriously Action-Packed

South Korean action-horror film Train To Busan has to be one of the better foreign zombie movies out there and they’re about to release a sequel that is certainly cranking-up both the budget and action set pieces.

Studio Canal UK has released a brand new trailer showing up the action of the film along with a little bit of the plot, it certain gives the impression they’re aiming to be the Aliens or Mad Max: Fury Road of zombie movies.

Check out the new trailer below.

PENINSULA – When the zombie outbreak swept the entire nation, Jung-seok (Gang Dong-won) barely escaped South Korea alive. While living a life of despair in Hong Kong, he receives an enticing offer to return to the quarantined peninsula. His mission is to retrieve an abandoned truck in the middle of Seoul within a time limit and escape the peninsula silently. But his operation goes haywire when a mysterious militia known as Unit 631 ambushes Jung-seok’s small team, as well as even more vicious hordes of zombies. In his most desperate moment, Min-jung’s (Lee Jung-hyun) family saves him and he plans one last chance to escape the peninsula once and for all. The prodigal son, the Survivor and the Deranged. Their violent struggle for survival begins!

SOURCE: STUDIO CANAL UK