Freaky director Christopher Landon has secured a high-profile project at Netflix with We Have a Ghost, which is based on the short story Ernest from Geoff Manaugh.
We Have A Ghost follows Kevin and his family, who find a ghost named Ernest haunting their new home and get turned into overnight social media sensations. But when Kevin and Ernest go rogue to investigate the mystery of Ernest’s past, they become a target of the CIA.
The news coming from The Hollywood Reporter adds that the fantastic cast consists of Anthony Mackie (Outside The Wire, The Falcon & The Winter Soldier), David Harbour (Stranger Things, Black Widow), Tig Nataro (Army of The Dead, Star Trek: Discovery), Jennifer Coolidge (Legally Blonde), Erica Ash (Survivor’s Remorse, Uncle Drew), Isabella Russo (School of Rock the Musical, Crashing), Niles Fitch (This Is Us), Faith Ford (Murphy Brown, Hope & Faith) and Steve Coulter (Shotgun Wedding, The Conjuring).
It’s not mentioned in the report, but Landon’s previous work has skewed more comedic/tongue-in-cheek and I guess we’ll have to assume that is the case with We Have A Ghost, given that Harbour and Mackie have done humorous roles in the past.
Christopher Landon took to Twitter to announced that film had officially started on Monday and confirmed that cinematographer Marc Spicer (Escape Room, Escape Room 2) will be behind the camera. Spicer has a wonderful eye and those Escape Room movies have an extremely slick look which should mean that We Have A Ghost will really have a strong visual edge to it.
The pairing of Mackie and Harbour is interesting as Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige suggested on Twitter (during a Black Widow watch party) recently he’d like to see Sam Wilson’s Captain America and Alexei’s Red Guardian come to blows at some point. It’ll be interesting if the two actors could reunite for an MCU project like Captain America 4.
The Electric State has new directors after Deadline reports that Andy Muschietti (IT, The Flash) has stepped aside as the film’s potential director due to scheduling conflicts with his upcoming Flash movie starring Ezra Miller. However, Andy and sister Barbara Muschietti will stay on as producers.
Producers Joe Russo and Anthony Russo will instead take up the role of directors on the sci-fi film that has been picked-up by Universal Pictures. The pair are best known for the directing a bunch of films for Marvel Studios such as the highest-grossing film Avengers: Endgame.
Adapting the graphic novel from Simon Stalenhag into a feature film script will be Marvel screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, who are also working with the directing duo’s massive Netflix film The Gray Man.
Set in an alternative future, it tells the story of a teenage girl (Millie Bobby Brown) who realizes that a strange but sweet robot who comes to her has actually been sent by her missing brother. She and the robot set out to find the brother in an imaginative world of humans mixing with all manner of robots, uncovering a grand conspiracy in the process.
Looking at the artwork from the graphic novel it’ll certainly have a unique visual style.
It’s unclear when The Electric State will begin shooting given that the Russo Brothers begin shooting The Gray Man next month in Long Beach, California and Millie is busy with the fourth season of Stranger Things.
Free Guy director Shawn Levy and star Ryan Reynolds will be reuniting for a time-travel feature film project once titled Our Name Is Adam that is coming from Skydance Media.
It’s based on a spec-script penned by T.S. Nowlin that later saw screenwriter Jonathan Tropper attached to rework it.
Reynolds will star as a man who must travel back in time to get help from his 13-year-old self. Together, they encounter their late father, who is now the same age as Reynolds.
Ryan has quickly turned into one of Skydance’s most visible actors after working on Michael Bay’s 6 Underground and is expected to resume filming on Red Notice very soon in Atlanta. Both projects being distributed by Netflix and there is a good shot this new one will end up at Netflix as well.
The Canadian actor is also attached for Netflix’s Dragon’s Lair, a fantasy adventure film based on the famous arcade game. Considering Ryan’s busy schedule it’s unclear when this could begin filming.
Other upcoming projects from Skydance Media include The Tomorrow War, G.I. Joe Origins: Snake Eyes, Without Remorse, and Top Gun: Maverick.
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.
THE RONIN 