Some weeks, it feels like the “huge news” floodgates have been flung open. Other weeks, you try to keep busy strumming the air guitar to Wyld Stallyns songs while hoping for a big story to drop. This, friends, is one of those weeks. Here are a few things to know about though…
Station
Planet of the Idiots
As part of Disney’s booty plundering of Fox, the House of Mouse picked up the rights to Planet of the Apes. Earlier this week, reports circulated that a new movie was in the works and that it would be a “reboot.” With predictable simian rage and absolutely no confirmed details to fuel that rage, some people erupted over the assumption that Disney was wiping the slate clean and moving on from the recent Rupert Wyatt/Matt Reeves trilogy. But as we all know, reboot is one of Satan’s personal additions to the English lexicon. It means nothing more than “something is happening with this property.” It’s an utterly useless word that shouldn’t be covered under the protections of free speech. According to the new film’s director, Wes Ball, people should have checked with him first because the project will be some sort of continuation — which, to clarify, could mean prequel, sequel, or spin-off! America would be far less polarized if we simply avoided vague language when talking about movies.
And can I just keep venting, since this is my post and I can do whatever I want? It drives me nuts that “journalists” cite random Twitter users as evidence of anything substantive. One of the angry people that Movieweb quoted — who so eloquently said, “Oh wow so orginal and creative NOT” — only has 16 Twitter followers. So orginal and creative NOT, Movieweb.
Let’s kick the tires and light the fires, big daddy!
Teeny Tiny Tidbits
Awesome News
- Speaking of apocalyptic movies, Adam McKay is set to direct Jennifer Lawrence in a movie about two minor astronomers who have to go on a PR tour revealing the end of the world when they discover an asteroid heading towards us.
- Omar Sy and Jake Johnson, who played two of the three best characters in Jurassic World, are returning for the final (yeah right) outing after being so rudely omitted from Fallen Kingdom. The third best character, if you absolutely must know, was Irrfan Khan’s Masrani, the John Hammond heir who jumped into a helicopter like a total bad ass to save the day. And then crashed and died immediately. So, he’s not coming back. Spoiler alert.
- Trey Parker and Matt Stone, who have the distinction of being two of the funniest humans alive, are making a new non-South Park movie! While I might have hoped for Baseketball 2, the movie apparently will be called Alma Junction (perhaps a secret Cloverfield 4). Fun fact: Baseketball was directed by David Zucker, creator of the Airplane and Naked Gun.
- In a television interview, with two shirt buttons undone, once-and-future heartthrob Harrison Ford gave me butterflies when he said that Indy 5 starts filming in just two months! Closer and closer, my friends.
- Three Billboards director Martin McDonagh is about to start production on his latest movie, The Banshees Of Inisheer, which is mostly likely a dramatization of the noises I made the first time I saw Harrison Ford in public (filming Random Hearts in my neighborhood a long time ago). The film will star Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleason. I guess that means Farrell is playing Ford and Gleason is playing me? Weird casting.
Dumb News
- We have our first look at the new Batman costume, courtesy of director Matt Reeves. Look, that guy made one of my favorite movies and has been nothing short of excellent in everything else he’s done. So, of all the DCEU movies I’m not excited about, I’m the least not-excited about this one. But this quick tease looks suspiciously like Daredevil, even down to the red lighting. I’ll reserve judgement until I see more. Just kidding, I reserve nothing.
- I’m not sure why I’m spending any time thinking about this, but Vin Diesel’s new movie Bloodshot tanks at the box office on March 13. It’s about a soldier who keeps getting resurrected by nanobots or something. Anyway, the tagline is apparently, You don’t need a past to have a future. And to demonstrate that this is an exceptionally special trait for Diesel’s character, I’ll just say that it’s only also been true for 7,794,798,739 living humans who didn’t have a past before they were born.