Today, Warner Bros. has announced that their upcoming sci-fi drama Reminiscence has landed a late summer release as it will drop on September 3rd in theaters and on HBO Max.
The project is part of WarnerMedia’s controversial day-and-date release model.
Directed by Westworld’s Lisa Joy, the film stars X-Men actor Hugh Jackman, who plays a private eye who deals in recapturing vivid cherished memories for clients. He becomes vexed by one of those clients played by Mission: Impossible’s Rebecca Ferguson. The setting takes place slightly in the future as Miami has been transformed by climate change as much of the city submerged underwater.
Other actors in the film include Thandie Newton and Cliff Curtis.
A trailer is likely just around the corner as we’ve seen a glimpse of footage from a recent HBO Max promo. I’m curious if Reminiscence will skew more in the realm of Inception.
While promoting their upcoming film Cherry, directors Joe and Anthony Russo spoke with the Lights Camera Barstool podcast (spotted and transcribed by The Playlist) and revealed they’d still love to get their hands on Marvel’s reboot of Wolverine. The pair continually brings up Wolverine and Secret Wars as things that could draw them back to Marvel Studios.
JOE RUSSO: “Wolverine has always been such a special character for me. To realize him on screen, it’s very hard because Hugh Jackman‘s performance is definitive. It’s like Batman; you have to really think of a way to, you have to really find the right actor to come in and give a really different take to that character. But I would really love to see him on screen.”
However, Joe advises that the studio give the franchise some time before jumping into a reboot.
JOE RUSSO: “I think the best thing is to take a break, without question. You need a [palate cleanser], you need to rinse the towel a little bit, let everyone enjoy what was, and then come up with something new. But I’d love to take a crack at Wolverine at some point.”
We already got some signs from Marvel’s Kevin Feige they’re not in any rush to reboot as they’ve chosen to go with Fantastic Four first. It’s still unknown what they ultimately plan to do with Wolverine and the X-Men reboots. Even though, they’ve introduced things like S.W.O.R.D. and Madripoor that are directly connected to the X-Men comics.
There is a good chance they could be able to convince Marvel Studios to allow them direct a Wolverine or X-Men project if they’re that persistent about being able to play with the characters. They were able to bring new blood to both the Captain America and Avengers franchises, with the latter Marvel now hold the box office record for the highest grossing film as Avengers: Endgame toppled James Cameron’s Avatar.
Given their experience working with large groups of heroes and villains, The Russo Brothers could be alongside screenwriters Stephen McFeely and Christopher Markus might be the team to reboot the X-Men. We’ve already seen Marvel look at their existing directing bench for the Fantastic Four reboot as they announced in December that Spider-Man 3 director Jon Watts would be tackling it.
Wolverine certain could deserve to have his origin retold for the Marvel Cinematic Universe either connected to Alpha Flight or the Weapon X Program. I also believe that a project set during WWII giving them an excuse to have Wolverine in a period action-film. A solo project could give a new actor a great entry point and give the main X-Men reboot some space, as one of the big gripes that fans had with the Fox franchise is that Wolverine was the predominate character when he isn’t supposed to be.
Ryan Reynolds revealed on Twitter last month that one of the ideas they had for Deadpool 3 before the merger was convincing Hugh Jackman to end his retirement as they wanted Logan and Wade to do a road trip movie. They could also eventually meet up in an X-Force film.
It’s critical to have open, honest and healthy discussions around mental health. By retweeting #BellLetsTalk you can make a difference. In case that’s not enough, before Disney bought Fox, Deadpool 3 was gonna be a road trip between Deadpool and Logan. Rashomon style. For real.
A new report from outlet Yonhap News (spotted by The Playlist) is suggesting that South Korean director ImSang-Soo is about to make is English-langague debut with SoHo Sins, a thriller that takes place within the art scene in New York City, with actors Brad Pitt and Hugh Jackman being eyes for the lead roles.
They claim this information comes from Yeolmae Entertainment and it’s budget is $30 million.
Hollywood stars Hugh Jackman and Brad Pitt are being considered for lead roles in the 33 billion won (US$30 million) project, it added.
After the massive success of Best Picture winner Parasite, it feels like general western audiences are truly getting on board for more films coming from South Korean filmmakers, something that has been a trend within the film community for decades now.
The project is an adaptation of the Richard Vine novel.
They were the New York art scene’s golden couple until Amanda Oliver was found murdered, and her husband Philip confessed to shooting her. But was he a continent away when she died? Art dealer Jackson Wyeth sets out to learn the truth, and uncovers the secrets of Manhattan’s galleries and wild parties, a world of beautiful girls growing up too fast and men losing their minds. But even the worst the art world can imagine will seem tame when the final sin is revealed.
Pitt recently won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor after co-starring in Quentin Tarantino‘s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood and is currently shooting the Sony action film Bullet Train based the Japanese novel Maria Beetle by Kotaro Isaka.
Jackman recently worked on the Warner Bros. sci-fi thriller Reminiscence, the feature film directorial debut of Westworld series creator Lisa Joy. He’s also attached to lead MichaelMann‘s Enzo Ferrari.
Pre-production on SoHo Sins is said to begin sometime in July.
The Ronin has uncovered a bunch of previously unseen concept artwork from the unmade Fantastic Voyage that was in development by Lightstorm Entertainment and 20th Century Fox. The project was a futuristic remake of the 1966 film based on the novel by science-fiction author Isaac Asimov (Foundation).
Fantastic Voyage (1966)
FANTASTIC VOYAGE – The brilliant scientist Jan Benes (Jean Del Val) develops a way to shrink humans, and other objects, for brief periods of time. Benes, who is working in communist Russia, is transported by the CIA to America, but is attacked en route. In order to save the scientist, who has developed a blood clot in his brain, a team of Americans in a nuclear submarine is shrunk and injected into Benes’ body. They have a finite period of time to fix the clot and get out before the miniaturization wears off.
Directors such as James Cameron (Aliens, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Avatar), Roland Emmerich (Stargate, Universal Soldier, Independence Day), Paul Greengrass (Bourne Identity), and Shawn Levy (Free Guy, Real Steel, Stranger Things) had once been in the mix at different points of development. Cameron and Jon Landau would end up producing the film via Lightstorm Entertainment.
In 2010, screenwriter Laeta Kalogridis (Avatar, Alita: Battle Angel, Ghost In The Shell, Altered Carbon) was hired to do rewrites after director Roland Emmerich trashed the previous script in interviews.
In 2016, it was announced that Guillermo del Toro would be attached to direct with a script from Terminator: Dark Fate screenwriters David S. Goyer (Batman Begins, Blade, Blade II, Green Lantern Corps) and Justin Rhodes (RoboCop Returns, Green Lantern Corps) before he pivoted to passion projects like The Shape of Water and his current film Nightmare Alley.
There had been plans on shooting Guillermo’s version in Toronto, Ontario, Canada when had been assembling his production team development/pre-production stages.
While speaking with Screen Rant in the fall of 2017, del Toro suggested he was still keen on the project before moving on to Nightmare Alley.
DEL TORO: “That was on the calendar already. I announced the year in September, and if everything goes well and it happens, it would happen next September. We’d start prepping again. We had already delayed it. It is a very difficult movie, technically, and I needed to figure out a bunch of stuff. We’ve been doing R&D and we’ve been building stuff. I never know whether they’re going to happen or not. I’ve learned that, in 25 years. But, we’re still working on it.”
It remains to be seen if he’ll return to Fantastic Voyage in the future.
A batch of artwork from Shawn Levy’s incarnation (before Guillermo got involved) posted by production designer Tom Meyer (Real Steel, Spectral, BIOS) in a concept reel we spotted for the project features a bunch of concept artwork for the futuristic setting, animations, and storyboard animatics. Some plot details are also revealed in the video.
“Scaling” is the process of nano-sizing bio-technology hardware mechanisms. All illness has been eradicated through a vaccine of networked nano-implants. Hacking of the implant network is now our body’s primary threat.
Killing a pilot by hacking his implants with a “smart virus”, terrorists crash a jet into Washington D.C.’s icy Potomac.
One piece of artwork suggests that X-Men franchise actor Hugh Jackman was indeed wanted for a lead role as his likeness was used for one of the characters. It wouldn’t have been surprising given Shawn having worked with Hugh on Real Steel.
Deadline first connected him to the project back in 2011 and this artwork would support that reporting.
Here are the rest of images we captured from Tom’s concept reel.
Scaling Operating RoomPatient “0”New Langley, N.S.A. – Implant Tracking CenterIs that William Fichtner on the right?Main Ship Called Proteus During Scaling Ignition
Below is the reel posted by the film’s production designer Tom Meyer.
After Disney/21st Century Fox merger a handful of high-profile and expensive film projects were killed including Wes Ball’s Mouse Guard. There is a good chance that Disney might have squashed Fantastic Voyage as well.
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.
THE RONIN 