DEVELOPMENT HELL

Your monthly glimpse into Hollywood’s hoped-for future

Some movies that will never get made, others that will... All of them united via the medium of wonderful, wonderful words.

They shoT firsT! HAN SOLO

Directors Chris Miller and Phil Lord have exited the Han Solo prequel, three-quarters of the way through principal photography. The official word is creative differences but by all accounts that’s like calling the battle of Rorke’s Drift a creative difference. Sources say Lucasfilm baulked at the screwball vibe Lord and Miller were creating, concerned that their irreverent impulses were warping the traditional Star Wars tone. The pair’s freewheeling, improvisional style was also said to have clashed with the company’s more premeditated production methods. Now Ron Howard will complete the movie, which has been granted an extra two months of filming to complete reshoots. “We have a great cast, we have a great script and we have a great director,” insists Disney CEO Bob Iger. “It’s gonna be fine.” Wait, what’s that breaking through the static? It sounds like, “We’re fine. We’re all fine here now, thank you. How are you?”

Biff! Pow! PoV! THE BATMAN

Matt Reeves wants to put you behind the mask when the Dark Knight returns to the screen. “In all of my films, what I try to do, in an almost Hitchcockian sense, is use the camera and use the storytelling so that you become the character, and you empathise with that point of view,” the director tells New Trailer Buzz. “I think there’s a chance to do an almost noir-driven, detective version of Batman that is point

of view driven in a very, very powerful way, that is hopefully going to connect you to what’s going on inside of his head, and inside of his heart.” Yes, you too can experience destiny-shaping childhood trauma as you settle down with your nachos and chunky salsa. If it’s IMAX you may even end up punching out some diseased goon for checking their WhatsApp. Filming on Ben

Affleck’s solo Bat-flick is scheduled to begin early next year.

whaT’s The Buzz? BUMBLEBEE

The first spin-off from the senses-stamping Transformers franchise aims to be a breather from all that Bayhem – not to mention a fashionable hit of ’80s nostalgia. “[It’s] a very distinctive departure from what you’ve been seeing so far,” producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura tells Collider. “The objective is to develop more time with less robots [we like to imagine this crucial ratio is plotted as a graph on Lorenzo’s wall] and to go back to 1985, to the original heritage of the Transformers.” Starring The Edge Of Seventeen’s Hailee Steinfeld, this June 2018 release marks the live action directorial debut of Travis Knight, the man behind animated fantasy Kubo And The Two Strings. “You can’t compete with Michael [Bay] – you’re gonna lose,” says di Bonaventura. “Also I think the audience wants something different all the time, let’s keep them interested. They’re gonna get a very emotionally complex story, a very tight story in terms of its location and in terms of its storytelling.”

超能敢死队 GHOSTBUSTERS

Who you gonna call? Well, whoever it is, best make sure you have some international dialling codes handy. Ghostbusters supremo Ivan Reitman reveals the spook-chasers may be going global. “What we’ve been doing a lot of is thinking about the franchise rights for Ghostbusters,” he shares with Super News Live. “Because Ghostbusters, that idea, doesn’t have to just take place in New York. It can happen over the world. I think it would be really cool to see Korean ghosts or Chinese ghosts. All those great traditions in the world have all these tales and things those people are afraid of. To have a sort of local group of Ghostbusters that tie in with the head office in New York would be fun.” Reitman maintains the Busterverse remains a viable box office proposition in spite of the mixed reception to Paul Feig’s 2016 reboot: “We’re doing a lot of work about where do we go next with Ghostbusters.” Someone’s doubtlessly reworking that Euro-Ghostbusters screenplay post-Brexit…

Bloody hell! HELLBOY

Expect Neil Marshall’s Hellboy reboot to bring a touch of reality to the world of the stump-headed demonic ’tec. “It’s definitely going to be as practical as we can possibly make it,” the helmer tells the Post Mortem podcast. “I love to do stuff in camera whenever I possibly can, and use CG as the amazing tool that it is, to enhance or expand upon the world, but not to use it to replace reality, when you can do it real.” Marshall’s also aiming to deliver a harder-edged adaptation of Mike Mignola’s comic. “We’ve been granted permission to do it R-rated, which for me is just like taking the cuffs off. It’s like okay, so now we can just make the movie we want to make… Obviously, the success of things like Deadpool and Logan have not hurt that cause. But also, when you go back to the original material, it is kind of bloody. So I’m going to embrace that.”

The admiraBle CriChTon! JURASSIC WORLD 2

So now we know. The next instalment of the Spielbergs-pawned dino-franchise will be Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. Our money was on Day Of The Trumposaur, but apparently that didn’t fly in focus groups. Producer Colin Trevorrow says the sequel is significantly meatier than its predecessor, and not just in the sense of human-based snack treats. “It’s deeper, more character-based, and it definitely leans into suspense,” he tells the Happy Sad Confused podcast. It’s also set to ramp up the scares, courtesy of director JA Bayona. “There are things that he’ll just do with a shadow, or a rustling curtain on a wall,” Trevorrow reveals to Cinema Blend. “He’s so tapped into that kind of fear, especially fear through the eyes of a child.” Trevorrow’s also revealed that he’s mined Michael Crichton’s original 1990 novel to provide dialogue for Jeff Goldblum’s Dr Ian Malcolm, finding lines that didn’t make it into the original movie adaptation.

amazon and on! WONDER WOMAN 2

Patty Jenkins smashed Hollywood’s glass ceiling. Now she’s dancing among the shards. Barefoot, naturally, because she’s a badass. Yes, the woman behind Wonder Woman wants to come back for more. “You want to do a movie like this because you believe in it,” the director shares. “Then I had this revelation in the middle of the night: this is your dream cast, you’ve created a character that you love and you can say anything you want in the world right now. Then I realised that Wonder Woman 2 is its own great movie. I made Wonder Woman. Now I want to make Wonder Woman 2. It’s a beautiful story to tell, an important time to tell it and with people that I love.” DC Films co-head Geoff Johns reveals he and Jenkins are currently writing a treatment for the sequel. “We’ve got a cool idea for the second one,” is all he’ll say. Hey, anyone kept the warranty for this lasso of truth?

There’s a chance to do a noir-driven, detective version of Batman