Tag: Adam Wingard

Posted on in Film News

Adam Wingard & Robert Kirkman Team For Universal’s Feature Film Adaptation of Sci-Fi Comic Book ‘Hardcore’

Director Adam Wingard’s profile has risen thanks to the box office success of Godzilla Vs. Kong, the crossover film set in Legendary’s Monsterverse has become the biggest box office earner since the pandemic began as it crossed $400 million globally and is inching towards reaching $100 million domestically.

Another genre project has arrived.

Universal is also trying to get on team Wingard as there are reports via The Hollywood Reporter that the filmmaker will co-write and direct a feature film based on the comic book Hardcore with co-creator Robert Kirkman (The Walking Dead, Invincible) writing the film’s story and producing. The script will be worked on by Wingard and Will Simmon, which is based on the comic created by Kirkman and Marc Marc Silvestri.

The Hardcore Program can turn anyone—your neighbor, your co-worker, your spouse—into a human drone to get to targets normal soldiers can’t. Agent Drake is the best soldier Hardcore has to offer, until he’s stranded in a body with only 72 hours to discover who’s hijacked the Program. But who can he trust when his enemy can change their appearance as easily as you change your shirt?

It’s unknown where Hardcore lands on the project pecking order as Adam Wingard has other movies he’s attached to. The filmmaker has since been reportedly linked to another Monsterverse film, possibly Son of Kong, and is making a hybrid animated/CGI feature film for Warner Bros. based on the cult hit cartoon ThunderCats.

SOURCE: THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

Posted on in Film News

Legendary Reportedly In Talks With ‘Godzilla Vs. Kong’ Director Adam Wingard For Another MonsterVerse Film – Could End Up ‘Son of Kong’

Legendary might not be winding-down plans for their MonsterVerse after all. After Godzilla Vs. Kong crossed $400 million globally at the box office over the weekend, there is talk that the studio might be already looking to secure Adam Wingard for another future MonsterVerse movie.

The Hollywood Reporter claims that Wingard is currently in talks with Legendary to direct another film in the MonsterVerse for them, potentially with the title of Son of Kong. This could make sense as the ending of Godzilla Vs. Kong seemed to hint there were further adventures for Kong in his new home in the Hollow Earth.

I have to believe that audiences would be a little more inclined to support a second solo Kong film given how well both Kong: Skull Island and Godzilla Vs. Kong have done in comparison to Godzilla: King of The Monsters. Also, that Kong seems to have a little bit more of a personality than Godzilla which goes a long way for a CGI performance from a towering monster and now that he can communicate with humans makes another film even more appealing.

Son of Kong would likely mean that there is female of Kong’s species somewhere in the Hollow Earth, but we still don’t know if that is the project they’ll end up making since they don’t even have a screenwriter attached at this point and the Son of Kong is only a rumbling of a title.

Adam is a little busy at the moment working on a sequel to John Woo’s Face/Off for Paramount Pictures and is going to make a big screen adaptation of the cult cartoon ThunderCats mixing animation with CGI for Warner Bros. as well. It’s unclear when this new MonsterVerse is expected to shoot or even be released. Normally, Legendary announces their plans on these projects way in advance and seemed like they could attempt to pause the release of them entirely.

If Adam Wingard closes a deal with Legendary it would make him the first MonsterVerse director to make two films.

SOURCE: THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

Posted on in Film News

‘ThunderCats’ Movie Coming From ‘Godzilla vs Kong’ Director Adam Wingard & Warner Bros.

Coming off a massive international debut of Godzilla vs Kong earning an impressive $123 million, director Adam Wingard is attached to direct another huge IP project.

Warner Bros. has spent ages trying to figure out how to turn the ThunderCats franchise into a movie and Deadline reports that Wingard will be developing a feature film with his writing partner Simon Barrett. They’ll rewrite a previous script from David Coggeshall and Adam is attached to direct the hybrid project a combination of CGI and animation.

The project had been developed by Rideback’s Dan Lin and Vertigo’s Roy Lee (they were producers on the Wingard-directed Death Note), with an early script by David Coggeshall. Wingard will rewrite a script with Simon Barrett, and will turn all this into a hybrid of CGI and animation.

Adam Wingard also spoke with Deadline about ThunderCats being his dream project and how he approached Warner Bros. about making it after they loved Godzilla vs Kong. It’s looking like a good move after the Monsterverse movie might end up being one of the highest grossing films of 2021 and the pandemic era.

WINGARD: “I’m in a place where Godzilla vs. Kong has gone well with Warner Bros. They love the movie, as we were wrapping it. I heard there was a ThunderCats script out there and it happened to be set up with some of my producers on Death Note. I asked them, I want to rewrite this script with my friend Simon Barrett. This is a huge passion thing for me. Nobody on this planet knows or has thought as much about ThunderCats as I have. They gave me the reins. I saw this as an opportunity to do a new type of fantasy sci-fi spectacle film that people have never seen before. It’s got a rich mythology; the characters are fantastic. The colors. I want to do a ThunderCats film that takes you back to that ‘80s aesthetic. I don’t want to reinvent the way they look; I want them to look like ThunderCats. I don’t want to do it live action, either. I don’t want it to look like Cats, I don’t want those kinds of issues — no disrespect to that director, whom I don’t mean to throw under the bus any more than everyone else has. I want to do a movie you’ve never seen before. A hybrid CGI film that has a hyper real look and somehow bridges the gap between cartoon and CGI. That’s the starting point, and Simon Barrett and I are getting into the script now.”

The filmmaker is about to launch the domestic release of Godzilla vs Kong this week and is attached to make a sequel to Face/Off.

SOURCE: DEADLINE

Posted on in Film News

UPDATE: ‘Godzilla vs Kong’ Earns Estimated $70M In China & $122M Internationally

Despite multiple countries still reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic, with a handful staring down the barrel of a fourth wave because of the increased variants (alongside folks ignoring medical recommendations), the international box office seems to be returning in some markets.

Legendary’s Godzilla vs Kong made a big splash when it’s first trailer dropped and the marketing campaign has seemingly resonated with audiences that had been previously lukewarm about previous installments like Kong: Skull Island and Godzilla: King of The Monsters.

Will this equate into a huge box office hit?

Well, internationally that seems to be the case and is becoming the biggest debut since the pandemic started. Deadline is reporting that after the film had a spectacular Friday opening of $21.1 million in China it seems to be lumbering towards an estimated haul of $70.4 million in the Middle Kingdom. This means the kaiju showdown is expected to cross $100+ million opening weekend internationally and has surpassed the Chinese opening of Godzilla: King of The Monsters. It’s worth mentioning that foreign movies don’t tend to stick around very long in the Chinese market compared to their local releases and the studio hopes to make hay as long as they can.

UPDATE: The Hollywood Reporter adds that the intentional estimate is now $121.8 million.

Godzilla vs Kong won’t be debuting domestically until March 31.

However, WarnerMedia is offering the film free for a month on HBO Max which will certainly have an impact on domestic box office earnings. While there has been positive estimates, we’ll have to wait and see if folks will be piling into indoor theaters as a fourth wave of COVID-19 looms or will opt for the free alternative available on HBO Max with a subscription.

Bob Odenkirk’s action flick Nobody took the top spot this weekend domestically with $6.7 million which is good for a movie budgeted at $16 million. This isn’t exactly the sign of box office strength you want to see with Godzilla vs Kong’s release on the horizon later in the week.

With a budget of $165 million, Godzilla vs Kong will need to continue to be successful overseas to turn a profit when movies like Wonder Woman 1984 were reportedly said to take $100 million loss. The hybrid release model from WarnerMedia has yet to be seen as box office benefit to the Warner Bros. division, but we’ll see if this changes with films such as Godzilla vs Kong.

SOURCE: DEADLINE

Posted on in Film News

‘Godzilla vs. Kong’ Director Adam Wingard & ‘The Guest’ Screenwriter Simon Barrett Reuniting For A Direct Sequel To John Woo’s ‘Face/Off’

Deadline broke the news yesterday that Paramount Pictures has hired Adam Wingard (Godzilla vs. Kong) and screenwriter Simon Barrett to rework a Face/Off film that had been in development at the studio. The project is based on the 1997 film directed by Hong Kong action director John Woo that had actors John Travolta and Nicolas Cage in the main roles.

FACE/OFF – Obsessed with bringing terrorist Castor Troy (Nicolas Cage) to justice, FBI agent Sean Archer (John Travolta) tracks down Troy, who has boarded a plane in Los Angeles. After the plane crashes and Troy is severely injured, possibly dead, Archer undergoes surgery to remove his face and replace it with Troy’s. As Archer tries to use his disguise to elicit information about a bomb from Troy’s brother, Troy awakes from a coma and forces the doctor who performed the surgery to give him Archer’s face.

Adam and Simon previously worked together on the underrated Dan Stevens action-thriller The Guest.

Wingard’s latest film Godzilla vs. Kong broke records for online views for it’s first-look trailer and debuts on March 31.

However, while the reports claimed that the project was a remake, Adam Wingard took to Instagram to clarify that the film they are writing is actually a direct sequel and not a remake/reboot.

You can see that post below.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CLK_-uUFVqY/

SOURCE: DEADLINE & ADAM WINGARD

Posted on in Film News

‘Godzilla vs. Kong’ Trailer Teases Mechagodzilla – Pulls In 21M+ Views

It seems like people have been starving for a new blockbuster trailer, Legendary’s latest entry in the Monsterverse, Godzilla vs. Kong, has feed that need becoming quite the online hit because of the lack of big trailer releases over the last couple of months. 

How big of a hit?

Within the first 20 hours, the Godzilla vs. Kong trailer saw an impressive 13 million views from the Warner Bros. YouTube channel and then another 8 million from various official Twitter accounts connected to the film (HBO Max, Legendary, and Godzilla vs. Kong) that posted the trailer. 

I have to say the visual effects on display here are a huge improvement from the previous two Godzilla movies where the filmmakers and effects department made the shots so dark you couldn’t even figure out what was going on, which sort of makes these expensive VFX (kind of the point of the whole film) useless if they’re obscured too much by poor lighting or muddy textures on the creatures. So, a big thumbs up from me for that.

There is also a huge tease towards the inclusion of Mechagodzilla, a giant robotic version of the King of Monsters seen in the screenshot below. 

The film will be released in theaters and HBO Max (for a month) on March 26th. 

GODZILLA VS. KONG – Legends collide in Godzilla vs. Kong as these mythic adversaries meet in a spectacular battle for the ages, with the fate of the world hanging in the balance. Kong and his protectors undertake a perilous journey to find his true home, and with them is Jia, a young orphaned girl with whom he has formed a unique and powerful bond. But they unexpectedly find themselves in the path of an enraged Godzilla, cutting a swath of destruction across the globe. The epic clash between the two titans—instigated by unseen forces—is only the beginning of the mystery that lies deep within the core of the Earth. 

The film stars Alexander Skarsgård (“Big Little Lies,” “The Little Drummer Girl”), Millie Bobby Brown (“Stranger Things”), Rebecca Hall (“Christine,” “Professor Marston and the Wonder Women”), Brian Tyree Henry (“Joker,” “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse”), Shun Oguri (“Weathering with You”), Eiza González (“Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw”), Julian Dennison (“Deadpool 2”), with Kyle Chandler (“Godzilla: King of the Monsters”) and Demián Bichir (“The Nun,” “The Hateful Eight”).