Grey, Little Monsters, Gray: Weekly Round Up

20th July 2020

Grey, Little Monsters, Gray: Weekly Round Up – I don’t know about you guys, but one of the main things I’ve missed during this period of lockdown is going to the cinema. Sure, I like to complain about the lack of options multiplexes tend to have these days, and the fact that most of our mainstream studios seem hellbent on funneling all their money into generic, over-the-top tentpole blockbusters and that the cinematic experience has, by and large, lost the fun of going to see those mid-budget movies that so many of us know and love, but the act of sitting in that darkened room with other movie-goers, ready to be whisked away to another world has always been one of my favorite things to do.

And, while I do complain about the overabundance of big-budget action movies, I also have to be honest as say that nothing makes a cinema experience quite like spectacle, and while it’s certainly a shame that we get so few smaller movies released via the cinema model, at least there’s always Netflix, and their supply of more unusual, less mainstream offerings.

Which brings me to this week’s first bit of movie news. Does anyone else find the entire concept of a Netflix blockbuster slightly odd? Because to me it seems like the home streaming service is the wrong place for big budget action spectacle of the kind we’d usually see up on the big screen with Bond or The Avengers.

That doesn’t seem to bother the suits at Netflix though, as this week we learned that the online platform has plans for their very own big-budget action blockbuster with The Gray Man.

The Irishman, Martin Scorsese’s gangster opus, cost around $100 million to make, and while that was certainly a lot of money for the streaming service to put in, it still had that feel of an old school, mid-budget movie that put more stock on character and theme than it did on action set-pieces. The Gray Man, though, is reported to cost double The Irishman, with a budget north of $200 million. The film is a spy-thriller, supposedly in the vein of James Bond, is apparently supposed to kickstart a Bondian franchise.

The film will star Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans, and is adapted from the novel of the same name by Joe Russo and will be directed by Antony Russo, both of whom are best known for their Marvel Movies, including Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Avengers: Infinity War, and, of course, the record breaking Avengers: Endgame.

The Gray Man will focus on the titular assassin, played by Gosling, who “is hunted down across the world by another agent (Chris Evans)”. This the technically the Russo’s second Netflix blockbuster, with the Chris Hemsworth starring Extraction, which was released in April of this year, having been written by Joe Russo.

I’m not against the idea of Netflix blockbusters, just to be clear, it’s just that the concept seems odd to me. It’s possible this film might also get a theatrical release, although Netflix have famously been reluctant to follow this model, and even the aforementioned The Irishman only had a very limited run.

For those of you who read this roundup regularly, you’ll note that this is the second week in a row we’ve had Ryan Gosling related news, with last week’s top story being that The Invisible Man and Upgrade director, Leigh Whannell, will be helming Blumhouse’s upcoming The Wolf Man reboot, starring Mr Gosling.

Well, we have more Classic Monster news for you this week too, as Universal continue to figure out what they want to do with their rolodex of iconic characters post-Dark Universe. Luckily for us horror fans out there, most of what they want to do seems to be allowing horror production company Blumhouse take on the projects, and this worked wonders with The Invisible Man earlier this year.

But out and out horror doesn’t seem to be the only avenue the studio is taking, with Elizabeth Banks’ rumored The Invisible Woman being a comedy, as well as Paul Feig’s The Monster Squad style mashup Dark Army.

Well, we can now add family-friendly content to the list of things Universal Studios are exploring with these characters, as this week we learned that the Toy Story 4 director will be helming a film called Little Monsters, which will reportedly feature various characters from the catalogue. Of course, this isn’t an especially new concept, what with The Monster Squad and Hotel Transylvania already treading that ground, but this will be the first time the studio that started it all will be getting in on the action.

Our final story this week also relates to old icons being brought out of retirement, although this one is entirely rumor and nothing yet has been confirmed.

As reported by Variety this week, actress Jennifer Grey is partnering with the studio Lionsgate to produce a “unique dance movie”. Quite what that means, I don’t know, but the rumor mill began to spin, since the film will apparently take place in the 1990s, so it doesn’t seem entirely outside the realms of possibility that this might very well turn out to be a sequel to the 80s smash hit Dirty Dancing.

We do know that Grey will both star in and produce the film, so it could very well to out to be what people suspect it is. What the film will be about though, even if it does turn out to be a stealth sequel, is anyone’s guess. What is Baby up to 30 years on? Hopefully, we will find out soon in 2 Dance 2 Dirty. Or Dirty Dancing 2: Dancing Dirtier. Or Fate of the Dirty Dancers. Or… – Grey, Little Monsters, Gray: Weekly Round Up

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