GOOD NEWS FOR DISNEY ACCOUNTANTS, CHEEKBONE ENTHUSIASTS
So as I have decided to understand it, some time around 3 or 4 years ago, higher-ups at Disney finally saw Wicked for the first time. As the audience around them clapped their hands in glee at all the gravity defying and drama, so Disney came to understand that there was gold in them thar classic-story-re-imagining hills, which led to Maleficent. The winning formula and perfect casting of Angelina Jolie worked well with movie audiences, and Maleficent made somewhere near $750 million worldwide, prompting Disney to frantically order live-action versions of everything they had, which it now seems has brought them around to Sleeping Beauty. You know, again.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, Disney is going ahead with a Maleficent sequel, with writer of the original (and frequent Disney collaborator) Linda Woolverton hired to write the script. Angelina Jolie is expected to return, but that is not a signed and sealed deal as of yet. It’ll be interesting to see what exactly a sequel to Maleficent would entail. Since the first film was all about revealing that the terrifying and heartless villain who hated Princess Aurora in Sleeping Beauty was actually a misunderstood and sensitive heroine who loved Princess Aurora, maybe the sequel can reveal that the misunderstood and sensitive heroine who loved Princess Aurora is in fact a terrfying and heartless villain who hates Princess Aurora! Then in Mal3fic3nt, it can be revealed that….
DEEPEST, BLUEST, ELI ROTH’S NEW PROJECT IS LIKE A SHARK’S FIN
Eli Roth, really likes sharks apparently. Not only is he hosting the upcoming Discovery Channel show Shark After Dark (a talk show…about sharks?) as well as hosting the entirety of ‘Shark Week’, of which Shark After Dark is part, it also looks like he’ll be directing a film adaptation of Meg, a book about the Californian coast being threatened by the return of a Megalodon (which is a shark but cooler, because it’s old and giant like a dinosaur and has ‘mega’ in the name).
A film adaptation of the best-selling book has been attempted for some time, but the failure of Deep Blue Sea turned then-rights owners Disney off. And yet nobody was put off allowing LL Cool J to act. Things look to be moving forward now though (a good thing for sharks as you know) with Roth in talks with Warner Bros to direct. Though the book was set in America, it is reported that the film will move things to waters around China, since Chinese company Gravity Pictures is co-financing the film (a hard company to look up by the way, without just finding images of Sandra Bullock in space). Now Eli Roth can live every week like it’s Shark Week, just as Tracy Jordan always advised.
CROW NO-GO FO’ JACK HUSTON…O
It’s time for fans of The Crow to retreat to the rafters and start listening to some appropriately sad songs by The Cure, because the remake of the 90s broodtacular has suffered a setback. You see, an actor has dropped out of starring as the Crow, which is basically the only thing that has been happening with the property for years now.
Scheduling conflicts led to Bradley Cooper dropping out of the project as long ago as four years ago. After a number of similarly odd choices were strongly linked to the role, including Channing Tatum and Mark Wahlberg (perhaps somebody had mishear and thought it was called ‘The Bro’), things then shifted in favour of more spindley actors, with Tom Hiddleston and Luke Evans vaguely mooted, before the grim spectre of death landed on Boardwalk Empire star Jack Huston, who officially signed on.
Unfortunately the dreaded “scheduling conflict” has taken hold of Huston as well, so he’s out. Reports have it that fellow Brits Jack O’Connell (who’s been shopped around for a franchise role for a while) and Nicholas Hoult (who Mad Max has shown us would look alright in the makeup at least) are the frontrunners to step in to play the Crow now. If either of them ends up with a scheduling conflict, I think we can all agree that “scheduling conflict” is just code for “being pecked by a murder of crows who want these movies to stay in the 90s where they belong until you agree to quit”.