There’s a lot of breaking news in Hollywood happening every minute. In the age of the blockbuster, it’s easy for some smaller movie and television news to slip through the crack. Last Week in Hollywood is our new weekly series highlighting all the interesting news from the last week that we thought didn’t warrant its own post, but was still worth mentioning. It’s less personal opinions and more a hearty roundup of what you might have missed.
The Gentlemen TV Series in the Works
Guy Ritchie is developing a TV show based on his 2020 movie The Gentlemen. Deadline states Miramax TV has set Ritchie to write and direct a companion series. No details yet on whether this will be a sequel to the movie, or a standalone work set in the universe, or its own thing.
Fun fact: Ritchie originally pitched The Gentlemen as a TV series before it evolved into a film. So it looks like he’s now returning to his original idea.
Warner Bros. Launching Dr. Seuss Movie Franchise
Warner Bros. Animation is working with Bad Robot and Dr. Seuss Enterprises to bring a trio of beloved Dr. Seuss books to the big screen. Vanity Fair reports Cat in the Hat will be the first of three Seuss-iverse movies. It will release in 2024 followed by Thing One and Thing Two in 2026, and Oh, the Places You’ll Go in 2027. Directors Erica Rivinoja (South Park) and Art Hernandez (Planes) have been hired to direct Cat in the Hat.
On the news, Dr. Seuss Enterprises president Susan Brandt said:
“For the first time we’re not just doing one film for one book. We’re going to franchise-build beyond the initial story of these books and find out what happens next. I call it stretching the fabric. How far can it go, to go a little bit deeper with our characters. The Cat in the Hat will not meet the boy in Oh, the Places You’ll Go, nor would the Things go visit the Lorax. While it will all feel like part of the Seuss universe, they live in their worlds, and they’re not necessarily going to interact in the same films.”
Personally, I’m all for a new adaptation of Cat in the Hat. However, I wouldn’t be opposed to Mike Myers returning to voice the Cat, or if they got Tim Allen, who was originally signed on before Myers took over.
Black Adaptation in the Works
Warner Bros. is adapting Black, a comic series set in a world where only Black people have superpowers. Studio 8 has been developing the project since 2018. Bryan Edward Hill wrote the script.
The plot will reportedly follow “one young man who survives a violent event and realizes that he is part of these extraordinary people, but a secret consortium wants to control these abilities and those who possess them, and he soon finds himself at the center of a war over the future of mankind itself.”
The Wizard of Oz Will Be Retold From Toto’s POV
Deadline reports Alex Timbers (Mozart in the Jungle) will direct Toto: The Dog-Gone Amazing Story of the Wizard of Oz, an adaptation of the book by Michael Morpurgo. The project is set up at Warner Bros. Animation. John August (Big Fish) is writing the script. I’m not sure if the L. Frank Baum’s 1900 classic The Wizard of Oz needs a reimagining from the perspective of Toto, but oh well.
David Yarovesky to Direct Night Books
David Yarovesky (Brightburn) is set to direct Night Books, a film adaptation of author J.A. White’s children’s fantasy story, for Netflix. Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert are producing, and Krysten Ritter, Winslow Fegley, and Lidya Jewett are lined up to star.
The film will follow “Alex (Fegley), a boy obsessed with scary stories, who is imprisoned by an evil young witch (Ritter) in her contemporary New York City apartment. He meets Yasmin (Jewett), who is also trapped there, and learns he must tell a new scary story every night in order to stay alive.”
Cobra Kai Renewed for Season 4
Netflix has officially renewed Cobra Kai for a fourth season. The service is set to release the third season on January 8, 2021. YouTube released the first two seasons on their service before deciding to shift their focus away from scripted content.
Clint Eastwood to Direct & Star in Cry Macho
Clint Eastwood is ready to make another picture. The veteran filmmaker is set to direct and act in Cry Macho, an adaptation of N. Richard Nash’s novel of the same name. Eastwood is currently scouting locations for the film which is set up at Warner Bros. (big shock). The script is actually already written. Before he died in 2000, Nash adapted his own novel with Nick Schenk.
First published in 1975, Cry Macho follows “a washed-up horse trainer and former rodeo star named Mike Milo who schemes to make $50,000 by snatching a streetwise Mexican boy from his alcoholic mother in Mexico City and delivering him to his father, Milo’s ex-boss, in Texas. As they make an unexpectedly challenging trek back across rural Mexico, the cowboy comes to find a bit of redemption as he ends up teaching the young boy some lessons about what it means to be a good man.”
Robert Downey Jr. Wants to Expand Sherlock Holmes Franchise
From 2008 to 2012, Robert Downey Jr. was an unstoppable presence at the box office helping to launch not only the MCU, but also a new cinematic interpretation of Sherlock Holmes. He would do an Iron Man and then a Sherlock Holmes. At the time it looked like we might get two successful franchises from RDJ at the same time, but then Sherlock Holmes 3 got stuck in development hell and the MCU required his full attention.
But now, after trying to launch a Dolittle franchise, Downey is focusing solely on expanding the Sherlock Holmes series.IndieWire reported that when Robert Downey Jr. and his producing partner/wife Susan Downey virtually appeared at Fast Company’s Innovation Festival, they revealed they wanted to launch a “mystery-verse” akin to the Marvel Cinematic Universe:
“Doing a one-off third movie, we could do, but we do think there’s opportunity to build it out more, to spin off some characters from the third movie, to see what’s going on in the television landscape, to see how Warner Media is starting to build things out with HBO and HBOMax. We definitely have kind of grand schemes and plans and all that, but it takes a lot. It takes a lot of coordination because again, Marvel wasn’t built in a day. It took several wins and things that worked very well to then be able to connect them, to then be able to branch out.”
RDJ continued:
“At this point, we really feel there’s not a mystery-verse built out anywhere, and Conan Doyle is the definitive voice in that arena to this day, so to me, why do a third movie if you’re not going to be able to spin off into some real gems of diversity, and other times and elements? We’re not repeaters, we don’t want to just try to do what’s been done somewhere else. But I think the model itself has become much more dimensionalized than it was before.”
I’m all for more murder mysteries, but will any of them be good without Downey’s Sherlock in them? I guess we’ll have to find out.
Live-Action Tintin Movie in Development
It’s been nine years and fans are still waiting for a sequel to Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin. Peter Jackson is supposed to direct the sequel, but he’s been too busy doing documentaries. The fans demand a sequel! Well, French director Patrice Leconte says he’s developing a live-action Tintin movie, but doesn’t have the film rights to the character just yet.
According to Figaro (via The Playlist), Leconte is hoping to make a live-action Tintin movie based on the story “The Castafiore Emerald”, set at Marlinspike Hall, where “an incapacitated Captain Haddock is being nursed back to health by an unwelcome visitor in the form of Bianca Castafiore, the ‘Milanese Nightingale’ who then suffers a devastating loss.” However, the director says negotiations with Paramount France have stalled, so who knows if we’ll ever actually see his version. All I know is that I want more Tintin in my life.
Alice in Wonderland Modern Day Musical in the Works
Sabrina Carpenter (Girl Meets World) is teaming up with Netflix to produce and star in a movie musical version of Alice in Wonderland. Ross Evans is writing the screenplay which will be a musical set in modern times that is set at a music festival called Wonderland. I’m expecting characters like the Mad Hatter and the White Rabbit to be EDM costumes.
Russo Bros’ Mosul to Stream on Netflix
Mosul, a new action flick produced by the Russo Brothers, is set to stream on Netflix this November. Matthew Michael Carnahan (Deepwater Horizon, 21 Bridges) wrote and directed the movie. Waleed Elgadi, Hayat Kamille, Ben Affan, Suhail Dabbach, Adam Bessa, and Is’haq Elias all star.
It follows “a group of Iraqi men who fought ISIS when the terrorist group took their homes, families, and city” and “focuses on the Nineveh SWAT team, a renegade police unit who waged a guerrilla operation against ISIS in a desperate struggle to save their home city, located in northern Iraq and site of major battled in the mid-2010s.”
Tom DeLonge to Direct Monsters of California
Former Blink-182 frontman Tom DeLonge is set to make his feature directorial debut with Monsters of California. The film, a coming of age science fiction story about a group of kids who investigate paranormal events in Southern California, is currently in production.
DeLonge wrote the screenplay with Ian Miller. The film will follow “teenager Dallas Edwards and his derelict friends on a quest for the meaning behind a series of mysterious, paranormal events in Southern California. The truths they uncover begin to unravel extraordinary secrets held tightly within the deepest levels of the Government.”
The film will star Jack Samson, Jared Scott, Jack Lancaster, Richard Kind, Casper Van Dien, Arianne Zucker, Gabrielle Haugh, and Camille Kostek. DeLonge will also write and perform original music for the film’s score.
Dexter Returning for Limited Series
THR reports that Showtime is bringing Dexter back for a 10-episode revival series. The series will be a continuation picking up seven years after the finale. Michael C. Hall and showrunner Clyde Phillips are both returning. For the unfamiliar, the series ended with “Hall’s Dexter Morgan going on self-imposed exile as a lumberjack and living a solitary life.” The revival is set to air sometime in Fall 2021.
Disney Developing Space Mountain Movie
Disney has hired Joby Harold (King Arthur: The Legend of the Sword) to write and produce a feature-length film based on its theme park ride Space Mountain. The Hollywood Reporter describes the film as a “family adventure” with “the ride acting as inspiration.” No director is attached yet. Let’s hope Space Mountain turns out better than The Country Bears, The Haunted Mansion, and Tomorrowland.
Whoopi Goldberg Confirms Sister Act 3
Whoopi Goldberg has confirmed that Sister Act 3 is currently in development. During a recent interview on The Late Late Show With James Corden, Goldberg stated:
“For a long time they kept saying no one wanted to see it. And then, quite recently, it turns out that that may not be true – people might want to see it. So, we’re working diligently to try to figure out how to get every…get the gang together and come back. Listen, it’s a really fun movie. It’s fun and it feels good and you know, nobody’s mad, you know, it’s just like, listen: bad singing, great singing, okay singing and then nuns. What is better than that? Nothing.”
James Patterson Signs First-Look Deal with eOne
Author James Patterson has inked a first-look deal with studio eOne and has set an adaptation of his upcoming novel The Noise as the first project through the deal. The deal will include television and new media, including scripted and unscripted with eOne managing worldwide rights and serving as the studio on all projects under the partnership.
His upcoming book The Noise is a thriller “told through the eyes of two young sisters living in the Oregon wilderness and the brilliant doctor trying to save them. The mystery deepens when a destructive force begins to threaten humanity as we know it.” Patterson is one of the world’s bestselling authors and has written around 150 books.
Coming 2 America Sold to Amazon
Paramount has sold Coming 2 America, the sequel to Eddie Murphy‘s 1988 classic Coming to America, to Amazon Studios. The deal was worth roughly $125 million, and will include “two complex consumer marketing tie-ins with McDonalds and whiskey brand Crown Royal.”
The movie will begin streaming on Prime Video on December 18, 2020. This is the third big movie that Paramount has sold off this year alone, following The Lovebirds and The Trial of the Chicago 7 going to Netflix.
I Know What You Did Last Summer TV Series in Development
I Know What You Did Last Summer, the 1990s teen slasher franchise, is being turned into a TV series over at Amazon. Entertainment Weekly reports that the I Know What You Did Last Summer has been officially greenlight. James Wan and Neal H. Moritz are on board as producers. Sara Goodman (Preacher) is set to write the scripts. Amazon Studios Co-Head of Television Albert Cheng says the series will be “a perfectly twisted update to the iconic slasher movie.”
Jonathan Betuel Offers a Last Starfighter 2 Update
Jonathan Betuel, who co-wrote the 1984 science fiction adventure film The Last Starfighter, has given an update on a potential sequel. He is still working on a follow-up with Gary Whitta (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story), and in a new interview with Moviehole revealed:
“It looks like we’ll be making the deal to get it going. Gary’s a gifted collaborator, we’ll be writing the script together but it’s taken a long time. I had to go through a process that took years to recapture the rights, but that was recently completed and although nothing is ever clear sailing, it looks like we have a really good opportunity now. So I’m really looking forward to taking it up.”
Betuel added that the film will be “a movie with all the bells and whistles, and it won’t presuppose that you’ve seen the original film. There’ll be references here and there, but it’ll carry the saga forward.” He also offered some story details, explaining that “the leads are now parents and time has passed. It’s not a remake, it’s going to continue the story. What’s changed is time itself, certainly as the video world and the alien world have continued to tick away. It’s not a time capsule of the ’80s by any means, we’re taking it to the next level. Passing the torch…or the joystick.”
That’s it for last few weeks. What projects mentioned are you interested in seeing once completed? Tell us down in the comments!
