MGM, Favreau, Joker: Weekly Round Up. There’s a trend at the moment for reboots of long running franchises to drop the remake aspect and instead ignore all previous entries in the series bar the ones considered classics, aligning themselves as direct sequels. It worked for Halloween, in 2018, which has two sequels in the works. That film ignored every sequel to the John Carpenter directed original and did big numbers at the box office.
In similar timeline skewing fashion, this years Terminator: Dark Fate took a similar approach, dropping all continuity of the franchise outside of James Cameron’s iconic original and its own direct sequel, also by Camera, Terminator 2: Judgement Day. It seems, however, that this approach is not bulletproof, nor a sure thing, since Terminator: Dark Fate bombed hard.
The original RoboCop, directed by Paul Verhoeven and released in 1987, has become recognized as a cult classic, while its first direct sequel is often cited by fans as underappreciated. None the less, it would seem MGM are ignoring everything but Verhoeven’s movie with RoboCop Returns.
Quite what this movie will be about, or how it will work at all, remains to be seen, but it certainly appears to be distancing itself from the remake, which came out in 2014, and didn’t exactly set the world on fire. That’s probably a smart move, although, if the MGM rumours are to be believed, why they’re ignoring the first sequel remains a mystery… I love the movie.
The new RoboCop will be directed by Abe Forsythe, whose most recent film is this years Little Monsters. Little Monsters starred Lupita Nyong’o, but there’s no confirmation on who will be appearing in this new take on the cinematic icon. I’m hoping this will be good and will aim for a tone closer to the Verhoeven original. God knows the world is in a place where that kind of vicious satire coupled with ultra-violence wouldn’t be out of place.
Another classic property being reworked for a big screen return takes the form of Star Trek. After Paramount rebooted the series with 2009’s Star Trek, which J J Abrams turning the franchise away from its roots and using it as a pitch for Star Wars (seriously, I don’t think I’ll ever get over that, Abrams!), and then totally screwing the pooch with the sequel Into Darkness (I definitely won’t ever get over that, Abrams!), Justin Lin, of Fast and Furious fame, somehow managed to turn Beyond into both a fun, action blockbuster, and something that closer resembled the original series’ charm and ethos.
Since then, though, follow-ups in the “Kelvin” Timeline have seemed unlikely, with the most recent entry being canned back in January when S J Clarkson was at the helm.
The reboot cast, however, may very well return again, with news this week coming in that Noah Hawley, the creator of the Fargo TV series, being brought in to write and direct the next movie. Hawley is an interesting choice here – his previous work hardly screams Star Trek, but his sensibilities when it came to moving the Coen Brothers beloved cult classic to the small screen is at least promising.
If he takes as much care with Star Trek as he did with Fargo, following through on themes and ideas present in the original series but bringing news and interesting stories to the fore, then we could be in for something special. Or maybe it’ll suck. Who knows? At this point it’s pretty much impossible to tell.
And while we’re off in space, Disney’s next Star Wars film after The Rise of Skywalker debuts next month remains a mystery.
After the news broke that Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D B Weiss had left the project (a continuous trend over at the House of Mouse), Disney insisted that the date scheduled for that movie – December, 2020 – was still being kept open. But what will it be?
Well, we know it won’t be a part of Rian Johnson’s upcoming trilogy, assuming that’s even still a thing, and nor will it be the project Kevin Feige is reportedly taking onboard, which is rather interesting, but we do know that the studio will announce the person set to take Star Wars forward after this trilogy has ended at some point early next year.
My guess is that it’ll be John Favreau, who’s responsibilities at Lucasfilm have been increased after the warm critical response to his Disney+ show The Mandalorian. I watched the first episode of The Mandalorian and couldn’t quite figure out what I thought, but I will say I’m keen to see more.
Oh, and Joker might not be getting a sequel, now. I don’t know. It’s a mess.
MGM, Favreau, Joker: Weekly Round Up
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