STOP THE PRESSES SOMEONE WANTS TO CAST JENNIFER LAWRENCE AND CHRIS PRATT IN SOMETHING
Image sourced from The Wrap.
When you’re a Hollywood producer, you have good days and bad days. Some days your email gets hacked and it causes an international incident with the North Koreans, and some days you’re given the task of who to cast in a movie, you pick the two hottest stars in Hollywood right now and drive home in your fancy car made of gold, diamonds and other fancy cars, safe in the knowledge that you made the right call.
To be fair, the original sci-fi film Passengers has had a few problems with casting. Keanu Reeves and Reese Witherspoon were originally attached to be the stars, then Witherspoon had to drop out and was replaced with Rachel McAdams, then McAdams left, which halted production, things spiralled out of control and now the film is being released by a different company, with a different director, and Keanu been dropped as well. He’s probably gone back to that sad bench.
Now Sony have picked it up, and both Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt are in negotiations to appear in the film. An original science fiction film with those two charmers sounds like it would be fun, so what is Passengers about? Well, according to the official synopsis from back when Keanu was involved:
“Passengers, hoping to tap into the same success that Gravity enjoyed, stars Reeves as a colonist aboard a spacecraft carrying 5000 sleeping passengers to a new world. After accidentally awakening and becoming lonely, he rouses Aurora. Falling in love, they eventually realise it is up to them to save everyone on the journey.”
Huh. Let’s hope Pratt and Lawrence can make it less creepy than it sounds.
SONY SAYS FINE ALREADY, GIVES MARVEL SPIDER-MAN
Now Marvel just need El Santo and they’re all set
Well, that didn’t take long. As you may have heard from the twitter account of everybody you know, Marvel announced that Sony was “bringing them into the amazing world of Spider-Man”, that is to say; that Marvel will be using Spider-Man in one of their upcoming films before co-producing the next Spider-Man film along with Sony. The companies are also exploring ideas about incorporating characters from the Marvel’s film universe into future Spider-Man films.
The thing about this news is that it’s had something of a domino effect. Marvel’s carefully laid out release schedule for films has been changed, the collaboration with Sony on a Spider-Man film is planned for July 27th 2017, which pushes the release Thor: Ragnarok back directly into the originally planned release date for Black Panther, Nov 3rd 2017, which in turn has pushed Black Panther into Captain Marvel’s spot on July 6th 2018, Captain Marvel into Inhumans spot on Nov 2nd 2018 and Inhumans back to July of 2019. Still with me? The collaboration has also thrown Andrew Garfield’s role as Spider-Man into doubt, as by all accounts Marvel has never been a fan. It’s a shame because while I’ve never been a fan of the latest batch of Spider-Man movies, I think he’s been pretty good with what he’s been given. On the other hand, time to get #donald4spiderman trending again, I guess.
N.W.A. BIOPIC TRAILER IS N.S.F.W., OBVIOUSLY
Since police everywhere have been on their best behaviour recently and everythingsfinestopaskingyouretheonebeingweird, I’m not sure people are going to be able to relate to the struggles depicted in Straight Outta Compton, the N.W.A. biopic…
Just reminding you again, this trailer is N.S.F.W.
Biopics can of course go either way, and it isn’t always interesting to watch a series of bullet points about the successes and failures of the famous, some of which can be seen in this trailer. On the other hand, there are enough interesting aspects of this trailer to catch the eye and it looks to be placing the impact of the N.W.A. into a wider cultural context, which could make for a good film. Also worth noting is that Straight Outta Compton will be directed by F. Gary Gray, who worked with Ice Cube on Friday and a number of his music videos. It looks like a film worth keeping an eye on.
If you’d like to mumble, rumble or mix me and cook me in a pot like gumbo or if you’d like to ask me a question in 140 characters or less, you can contact me on Twitter. Big Screen Scoop will be up again on Friday. Who knows what will be going on with Spider-Man by then?