Briefly: We haven’t even seen Red 2, but Summit is confident enough in the film that writers Jon and Erich Hoeber have been signed to write a third. The brothers wrote the first two films, so they’re as familiar as it is possible to be with the material. Not a bad outcome for the original film based on the comic by Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner that focused on aging black ops characters being drawn back into action.
Red 2, directed by Dean Parisot (Galaxy Quest), opens on July 19, at which point we’ll see if augmenting the original cast (Bruce Willis, Helen Mirren, John Malkovich and Mary-Louise Parker) with Anthony Hopkins and Catherine Zeta-Jones worked out. Based on the fact that test screenings have led to Summit hiring writers for a third, perhaps it’s all coming together a bit better than the first film did.
There’s no cast in place for a third Red film at this point, but if things turn out well for the second film when it hits this summer, production on the third could kick off as early as January 2014. [THR]
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Briefly: We don’t know what Mission: Impossible 5 will be about, but we know who will write: Drew Pearce, who scripted Iron Man 3 with director Shane Black, has been hired to write the film. Tom Cruise returns to star, and the sequel will reportedly shoot in the fall of this year, after Cruise finishes The Man From U.N.C.L.E.
Will Pearce again work with a director who is also known as a screenwriter? Christopher McQuarrie, who directed Cruise in Jack Reacher, has been linked to the film. And while he hasn’t signed on, THR reports that he is “in discussions” to direct M:I 5, even as he has already been set to direct a remake of Ice Station Zebra.
Pearce also did some work on the Pacific Rim script, and is writing another film that he’ll direct as well; details on that are thin right now.
When a movie can gross $625 million internationally and be largely forgotten, it must have been a hell of a summer. Last year, Sony released the third film in their hit Men in Black franchise, MIB 3. The Will Smith/Tommy Lee Jones/Josh Brolin sci-fi comedy was generally well-liked and did well for the studio, but thanks to films like The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises, very few people have gone on to discuss it since.
They’ve been discussing it at Sony, though, and today it was revealed the studio has hired a writer to pen the fourth film. Oren Uziel, who wrote next year’s release The Kitchen Sink, has been hired to write Men in Black 4. He’s also been brought in to rewrite 21 Jump Street 2, which already has a release date of June 6, 2014. Read more below. Read More »
Shane Black is best known as a screenwriter of many R-rated action comedies released in the 1980s and 1990s. So when Black came face to face with writing a superhero film for kids, how much of a struggle was it to keep Iron Man 3 from an R rating?
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Going into the junket for Iron Man 3, one of the things I wanted to talk to writer/director Shane Black about is the film’s Christmas setting. Many of the films Black has been involved with have been set during Christmas: Lethal Weapon, The Last Boy Scout, The Long Kiss Goodnight and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Someone beat me to the punch at the press conference, and as it turns out, setting the movie during Christmas wasn’t even Black’s idea.
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The fifth Die Hard film, A Good Day To Die Hard, got terrible reviews and was a medium-sized success in the United States. It seemed like American audiences didn’t really care about the Russian exploits of John McClane (Bruce Willis) his son, played by Jai Courtney. Or it was just a bad movie. Either way, that was not the case everywhere else in the world. The film was a success overseas, grossing almost $250 million internationally and pushing 20th Century Fox to move ahead with another installment.
We now have some news on the next installment of the Die Hard franchise. Its working title is Die Hardest and the current idea takes place primarily in Tokyo. The first script is being written by British writer Ben Trebilcook, who admitted Bruce Willis and other members of the team have yet to sign off, so all of this might go away. Read more below.
Update: Screen Crush reports that this is untrue through various sources within Fox; one says “there is no truth to this whatsoever.”
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Michael Bay might be the man getting all the ink when it comes to this week’s true crime film Pain & Gain, but really Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely were initially responsible for its birth. It was the screenwriting pair, who wrote the three Chronicles of Narnia adaptations, Captain America: The First Avenger, and the upcoming Thor: The Dark World and Captain America: The Winter Soldier, that found the original Miami New Times articles by Pete Collins and shopped them around Hollywood. That was in 2000.
Granted, it was Bay’s attachment that actually got the film made, but Markus and McFeely were essential in the development of the film. Below, we spoke to the pair about that process, what Bay brought to the table, using voice over and what it means to adapt a true story. Read More »
The Shining has had quite the resurgence in the past few months. Rodney Ascher’s Room 237 is certainly one factor. Another, bigger motivator is Stephen King himself, who is currently working on a Shining sequel novel called Doctor Sleep. Warner Bros., which owns the rights to the Stanley Kubrick film, surely sees this as a perfect time to dust off last year’s idea for a prequel to the Kubrick film, giving it a title and going out to a big time writer.
The proposed prequel is called The Overlook Hotel, and Glen Mazzara, who was the showrunner on The Walking Dead for the last two years, is in talks to write it. Read More »
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