Former 20th Century Fox executive Emma Watts has been previously named the successor to Stacey Snider as the president of production at 20th Century Studios, while Disney took reigns of the legendary film studio. In January, Watts resigned her position at 20th Century and according to Deadline has found a new home at Paramount.
Emma has taken the role of president at Paramount Motion Pictures group starting on July 20th and will directly report to Paramount Pictures Chairman/CEO Jim Gianopulos.
Wyck Godfrey, the current president, will be returning to produce film and television.
This is exciting news for both Watts and Paramount, as she has an excellent eye for projects having produced films such as The Martian, Deadpool, Logan, Avatar and Ford v. Ferrari.
The next big project at Paramount will be Martin Scorsese’s $200 million-plus budgeted crime thriller Killers of The Flower Moon starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro, which will be co-financed by Apple.
Paramount has been in a rut for the last couple of years after losing the distribution on the Marvel Studios films to Disney. Along with having a tough time competing with other studios despite their success with franchises like Transformers and Mission: Impossible. Not to mention expensive action projects like Ghost In The Shell, Gemini Man, and Terminator: Dark Fate losing them a lot of money when they didn’t perform at the global box office as expected.
Hopefully, Emma Watts can attract directors and high-end projects to the studio that will get audiences excited.
It looks like Disney is putting a lot of energy into their Pirates of The Caribbean franchise.
The Hollywood Reporter has revealed Disney is now developing a second film alongside the reboot they’re working on. This second project would star Suicide Squad and Birds of Prey actress Margot Robbie in an undisclosed leading role with screenwriter Christina Hodson writing this new film.
Hodson is likely best known for her work on the DC Comics films such as Birds of Prey, Batgirl, and most recently with rewrites on The Flash.
Robbie being Australian might be a good excuse to shoot at the various sea-side locations and studios down under. I’m also curious if they’re planning on giving her the role of Redd, the updated attraction character from the parks that is now a female pirate.
This female project is said to be featuring new/original characters. Also, would separate from the Pirates reboot that writers Ted Elliott and Craig Mazin (Chernobyl, The Last of Us) had been working on recently for Disney.
It certainly sounds like the studio is planning on expanding on the franchise without Jack Sparrow as both the films aren’t being pegged as sequels or a continuation of the previous installments.
Today, it was announced by Hulu via the Solar Opposites Instagram account that their mature animation series has been given two more seasons. Which means we can expect the show to become important in attracting new audiences at the streaming service.
SOLAR OPPOSITES – Co-created by Justin Roiland (Rick & Morty) and Mike McMahan (ex-writer’s assistant on Rick & Morty), Solar Opposites centers around a team of four aliens who escape their exploding homeworld only to crash land into a move-in ready home in suburban America. They are evenly split on whether Earth is awful or awesome. Korvo (Justin Roiland) and Yumyulack (Sean Giambrone) only see the pollution, crass consumerism, and human frailty while Terry (Thomas Middleditch) and Jesse (Mary Mack) love humans and all their TV, junk food and fun stuff. Their mission: protect the Pupa, a living supercomputer that will one day evolve into its true form, consume them, and terraform the Earth.
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.
Ewan McGregor earlier in the year revealed on the Birds of Prey red carpet that the Kenobi series would be pushing it’s start date from the summer to January 2021. This was due to script issues and Lucasfilm ended up hiring Joby Harold (King Arthur: Legend of The Sword, Army of The Dead) to do rewrites for the Star Wars series that will be directed by Deborah Chow.
Ace Universe was able to speak with Ewan McGregor, where he revealed that they’re expected to be using the StageCraft visual effects on the untitled Kenobi series that were employed in Season 1-2 of The Mandalorian.
MCGREGOR: “[The prequels] were all blue screen and green screen and it was hard to imagine, but nowadays I think things have moved on so much, and I think a lot of what you see is gonna be what we see on the set. I don’t know if you’ve seen the behind-the-scenes of The Mandalorian series, but they employ that incredible screen…it’s pretty amazing. It makes you feel like you’re in the place, it’s going to feel realer for us, as actors. And I think we’ll be using some of that technology on our show.”
You can check out the entire interview conducted by ACE host Angélique Roché below.
Hopefully, they’ll be able to be able to begin shooting in January as planned and if that happens there is a good chance that we’ll end up seeing the Kenobi series ready to air on Disney+ sometime between late 2021 and early/mid-2022.
Yesterday, producer Jon Landau announced via his Instagram account (has oddly removed all his previous tweets) that the Avatar sequels have now resumed the live-action portion of the filming in Wellington, New Zealand.
Production is taking place at the Stone Street Studios facility.
Jon posted this image from the set.
LANDAU: “Used my iPhone to snap a picture of our first shot back in production on the Avatar sequels.”
This comes after their 14-day mandatory isolation as per government regulations.
The Avatar sequels are seemingly the first major productions to resume after the pandemic first broke out, worth noting that New Zealand has only had two new cases of COVID-19 over the last 24 days. The remote island nation is certainly in much better position to resume filming than the United States or even the United Kingdom.
It’s unknown if the production delays from back in March will directly impact the release date of December 17th, 2021.
After next month’s San Diego Comic-Con was cancelled because of the current risk of holding an international event during the COVID-19 pandemic. Star Wars Celebration 2020 in Anaheim, California has been cancelled as well for similar reasons.
However, it will return to the Anaheim Convention Center in August 2022.
Here is the official press release about the announcement.
At Star Wars Celebration, the health and safety of our fans, attendees, exhibitors, guests and staff is always our number one priority. Due to the global impact of the COVID-19 virus and in speaking with local and state authorities on the latest public health guidelines related to indoor conventions, we have made the decision to cancel Star Wars Celebration for 2020.
While this news is disappointing, we are happy to announce that Star Wars Celebration will return to the Anaheim Convention Center on August 18-21, 2022.
Tickets Transfers and Refunds: Fans who were planning to attend Star Wars Celebration Anaheim this year may either transfer their current ticket purchase to the new event dates, receive a refund or receive a credit for Star Wars Celebration merchandise. As a token of our appreciation and to thank all Star Wars Celebration 2020 fans who choose to transfer their tickets to the 2022 show, we are excited to offer a free exclusive Star Wars Celebration stormtrooper character pin for all transferred tickets. All information about transferring your tickets or requesting a refund can be found at starwarscelebration.com and all ticket holders will receive an e-mail with detailed instructions on how to submit your request.
We’ve been waiting to hear some update concerning the Alien franchise and while there has been some teases from Ridley Scott that his third prequel Alien: Awakening is still in development phases. A fifth Alien film starring Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley might be still in the cards despite the Neill Blomkamp incarnation of the project being placed on ice.
While speaking with Empire, Weaver revealed that she received a 50-page Alien 5 treatment 18 months ago from franchise producer and screenwriter Walter Hill. Hill has been part of the franchise since the original 1979 film and worked on scripts (including rewrites and treatments) for Alien, Aliens, and Alien 3.
She doesn’t sound as enthusiastic about Ripley’s return it as she was when Blomkamp was attached for Alien 5 as it sounds like Ridley Scott could be calling the shots.
WEAVER: “I don’t know. Ridley has gone in a different direction. Maybe Ripley has done her bit. She deserves a rest.”
I think Alien 5 is still the best way to go. Neill Blomkamp wanted to make a film that directly connected to Aliens with the return of characters such as Newt, Hicks, and Bishop after being killed-off in Alien 3, which was co-written by Walter Hill.
There is a good chance that Hill’s version might have been a continuation from Alien: Resurrection following a clone version of Ripley. Something that had been the original intention of Alien 5 when Ridley Scott and James Cameron teamed-up for their own incarnation before the studio passed to make Alien vs Predator instead.
At one point, James Cameron was able to read Neill’s script and called it “gangbusters” during an Aliens Anniversary panel at San Diego Comic-Con back in 2016.
Ridley Scott has seemingly been the main reason Alien 5 hasn’t come together as he pulled his weight at Fox to have Alien: Covenant made instead of Blomkamp’s film, essentially killing it in the process.
Jon Favreau recently spoke to Vanity Fair’s Anthony Breznican, who was moderating the virtual panel for the ATX Television Festival (via The Hollywood Reporter) where Favreau gave a brief update on the status of The Mandalorian Season 2.
It sounds like things in the post-production phase are indeed moving along nicely and they’ll be able to hit that targeted drop date in October.
FAVREAU: “We were lucky enough to have finished photography before the lockdown. Thanks to how technology-forward Lucasfilm and ILM are, we have been able to do all of our visual effects and editing and post-production remotely through systems that had been set up by those companies for us.”
Luckily for The Mandalorian, they wrapped photography back in March giving them a slight edge over their fellow Disney+ shows from Marvel Studios that still need to finish filming.
Directing episodes in Season 2 include Jon, Carl Weathers, Dave Filoni, Alita: Battle Angel’s Robert Rodriguez, and Ant-Man’s Peyton Reed.
The new additions to the upcoming second season reportedly include Rosario Dawson, Timothy Olyphant, Temuera Morrison, and Michael Biehn. There is a good chance we could see these Season 2 characters getting a spinoff series as previously telegraphed by Bob Iger not too long ago.
We already know that Season 3 of The Mandalorian is in the works with Diego Luna’s Cassian Andor and Ewan McGregor’s Kenobi series expected to begin shooting by next year.
I’m slightly curious when Lucasfilm and Disney will announce plans for future live-action shows.
Despite original reports that Wes Ball’s new Planet of The Apes film would be a hard reboot of the franchise, the director has come out publicly to debunk that the film will be ignoring or undoing the work of the last three films.
While speaking with Discussing Film, Wes dropped an interesting tidbit about the creative team working on the new Apes film that includes Avatar 2 and Terminator: Dark Fate screenwriter Josh Friedman tackling the script.
BALL: “We were using the same material, the same kind of technology, we were using a lot of the same people involved – I had asked Andy Serkis to join Mouse Guard. So it was kind of natural fit. I understand where it came from and my big thing was: what do you do for a Planet of the Apes sequel? One, those last three movies are one of the great trilogies we have in modern movie history. They are just so well done. They honored the original movies they sprang from, the Charlton Heston movies, but they grounded it in a modern sensibility and it just worked. Caesar is one of the great movie characters that we’ll have throughout time. So what do you do to follow that up, right? At the same time, I wasn’t interested in doing a part four either. We want to also do our own thing.”
“We have a take. We have a way of staying in the universe that was created before us, but we’re also opening ourselves up in being able to do some really cool new stuff. Again, I’m trying to be careful here. I’ll say this, for fans of the original three don’t worry – you’re in good hands. The original writers and producers that came up with Rise and Dawn, Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, they’re also on board with this. Josh Friedman is writing this thing, a lot of the same crew is kind of involved. We will feel like we’re part of that original trilogy, but at the same time we’re able to do some really cool new stuff. It will be really exciting to see on the biggest screen possible.”
It sounds like that “technology” tidbit would infer that Weta Digital will be making a return for his incarnation. Weta had previously worked on all three of the recent films.
Interestingly enough, Wes worked closely with Weta Digital in the past on his Maze Runner sequels Mazer Runner: The Scorch Trials and Maze Runner: The Death Cure.
He was also set to work again with Weta for his fantasy film Mouse Guard before Disney and 20th Century Studios pulled the plug on it post-merger. The graphic novel adaptation was going to be produced by Matt Reeves with Andy Serkis taking a lead role as the villain.
The director also mentions they’re still in the scripting and production design phase of the film but could begin “virtual production” soon.
BALL: “Well, Planet of the Apes is moving forward and we have a giant art team cranking away on some incredible concept art. We’ve got the screenplay continuing to move forward, that will take the time that it takes and so that’s all good. Planet of the Apes is moving forward baby! Not only that, but we could actually be in virtual production relatively soon because it’s largely a CG movie.”
I’m really curious if they’re going to push the franchise deep into the future side of things. As the recent trilogy only covered the settings of the final films in the franchise that took cues from the final two installments, Conquest and Battle.
I think it’ll be interesting to see what the ape society looks like in two thousand years or at the very least a couple of hundred years. Wes can surely honor the look and legacy of the first three films while pushing the franchise in a new direction to give it new life along with showcasing what ape cities could like in the future. It also allows them to bring back Andy Serkis to play another chimpanzee character, not unlike how Roddy McDowall played Cornelius and then later on his son Caesar.
THE RONIN 