Movie News, June 2012

Welcome to another installment of Movie News. This time we have some remake and sequel announcements, casting tidbits, and some rumors about things we won't see for at least a year.

Remake/Sequel News:

There's going to be a Robocop remake. Sam Jackson was just cast as some kind of powerful media mogul named Pat Novack. Joel Kinnamen (The Killing) has already been announced to be playing Robocop. And Gary Oldman was also cast as Bob Norton, which is a substantially different casting choice for the character previously played by Miguel Ferrer. At least Gary Oldman dies really well, assuming he makes a mistake and has to be erased. Very little has been released about this movie, but the rumors say that they are going in a new direction from the original. Including changing the iconic Robocop suit.

X-Men First Class 2 production is well underway. Not much is known about this sequel, but there has been at least one actor speaking out about which new characters they want to see show up. Lucas Till (Alex Summers/Havoc), would like his character's long time girlfriend Lorna Dane/Polaris in the film. I read X-Factor for a long time and the idea of adding this character makes me smile. The powers that be also announced that the Rise of the Planet of the Apes sequel is now in production. We also got word last week that Snow White and the Huntsman 2 is being tossed around as a real possibility.

Ben Kingsley was cast in Iron Man 3 in a yet undisclosed role. The rumor is that he'll be playing the Mandarin, a magic-wielding mastermind and Tony Stark's number 1 nemesis. I personally think changing up the formula would be a good idea. But I have a feeling that the studio will want to stick to what they know works and not use this gamechanging character.

Klingons will definitely make an appearance in Star Trek 2. Unfortunately the cast and crew have all denied that Benedict Cumberbatch is going to be Khan. Is this intentional misdirection so we are thrown off the scent? From this point on I'll take every piece of information about this movie with a grain of salt, at least until we have a trailer.

The Blade Runner sequel is gaining some production momentum, and it looks like Ridley Scott has reached out to Harrison Ford to reprise his role as Decker in some way, shape, or form.

Relatively unknown directors Joe and Anthony Russo just got the gig to make the sequel to the pretty impressive Captain America. As long as they don't mess with the heart of the character, it should be okay.

Anything Original?:

Writer/Diector Clive Barker is set to rewrite the script for the absurd-sounding project Zombies vs. Gladiators. Personally, I think this concept sounds really awesome. Plus Clive Barker is the Godfather of horror (Romero is the Grandfather) and as silly as it sounds, it could be a lot of fun. Oddly enough, it's being produced by Amazon.com studios.

Django Unchained is Quentin Tarantino's next movie set in the South (it's technically not a western because it's set in Mississippi). It's about a slave (Jamie Foxx) who is freed by a wisecracking bounty hunter played by Christoph Waltz. If that name sounds familiar, he played the wonderfully evil Hans Landa in Inglorious Basterds. The trailer looks interesting and really gory, but I wasn't blown away.

Not Quite Movie news:

Star Wars 1313 is a new video game being produced by Lucas Arts and it will be a mature and gritty take on Star Wars with extremely high fidelity graphics (I've seen the trailer and it looks phenomenal).

Speaking of trying to make Star Wars appeal to the adult demographic (finally), it looks like part of the reason for the delay in the long talked about Star Wars television series is because of the adult oriented content and extreme budget requirements. Apparently this news comes from Rick McCallum, so unless they are just trying to generate positive press, it's about as confirmed as it gets. They have boasted that they have 50 scripts in second draft form, and each episode is estimated to cost about 4-5 million. I want this project to succeed, but at this point I think it's a pipe dream.

Random Bits:

Warner Bros. says they are going to try to do a Justice League movie again (the last attempt a few years ago never got off the ground). Sounds like they must have Avenger fever. There isn't any word on exactly what they're planning, but the vibe is that they want to do something similar to what Marvel is doing. The good news, Warner Bros. holds the rights to pretty much every DC character. The bad, they have no framework yet for making a team movie. Batman is an entity unto itself right now. Man of Steel (the new Superman movie) could be the right launchpad for the whole project when it releases next year, but it really needs to deliver. That or they could just do a Justice League movie as a standalone feature.

Marvel has a pretty solid release slate, and the mystery movie that fills the 2014 slot could be The Black Panther. He's one of the rotating cast of characters that have been on the Avengers roster at one point or another. Along with a proposed Ant Man movie which I imagine would feature the Wasp, the sheer number of characters in the next Avengers is starting to seem a little unwieldy. I really hope they bring back Joss Whedon, because he's the only writer/director I can think of that can interweave that many important pieces into one coherent narrative.

Finally, Prometheus came out on Friday and I had some mixed feelings about it. You can find my review of it here.
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Samantha M. Quinn spends most of her time in front of a computer typing away at one thing or another; when she has free time, she enjoys pretty much anything science fiction or fantasy-related.