Yes, believe it or not there were a few bits of movie news to drop this weekend that had nothing to do with yesterday’s Super Bowl 2016. In today’s Movie Morsels, we’ve got the latest on Ghost in the Shell, Fifty Shades Darker, the MacGyver movie, and more!
Ghost in the Shell
Director Rupert Sanders’ live-action adaptation of perennially popular anime and manga Ghost in the Shell has nabbed its villainous Laughing Man. Boardwalk Empire star Michael Pitt will play the robotic hacker, opposite Scarlett Johansson’s cyborg heroine. Shooting is expected to begin later this month in New Zealand, for a March 31, 2017 release date. Pitt’s always had a chilling screen presence, and with his cold, creepy voice and penetrating stare I’m thinking he’ll make for a perfect cyberpunk baddie.
MacGyver
It was recently announced that Furious 7 helmer James Wan would direct the pilot of CBS’ MacGyver reboot TV series. Well MacGyver fans have even more cause for celebration these days, since we now hear the MacGyver movie is still a thing that is happening. 21 Jump Street producer Neal Moritz and MacGyver creator Lee David Zlotoff will produce the film for Lionsgate. Is this MacGyver overkill? Since we’ve had no new MacGyver (just a MacGruber) since the Richard Dean Anderson-starring series went off the air in 1992, I say thee nay!
Fifty Shades Darker
A badass Bella Heathcote arrived in movie theaters this weekend as the undead-slaying Jane Bennet in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. It sounds like Heathcote will be getting further in touch with her bad self in the sequel to Fifty Shades of Grey. Heathcote will play Leila, the physically scarred ex-girlfriend of Jamie Dornan’s Christian Grey in Fifty Shades Darker. Dakota Johnson returns as Anastasia Steele, joined by newcomer Kim Basinger (a veteran of overwrought sadomasochism melodrama, having starred in 9 1/2 Weeks). James Foley directs the resulting mess, er, movie, due out on February 10, 2017.
[Deadline]
One Crazy Summer 2
Believe it or not, “Savage” Steve Holland is thinking about making a sequel to his 1980s cult favorite One Crazy Summer, one of two films the director made with John Cusack (the other, better one is Better Off Dead). Here’s what Holland tells Fast Company about the possible film…
“I’m doodling with Bobcat Goldthwait on a semi-sequel to One Crazy Summer. Our lives are just really different but I still love him and we say we gotta do this thing. So we are working on One Epic Fall. Of course, Joel [Murray] is gonna be in it. The question is, how do we make it a sequel when Cusack’s not gonna be in it? But we have so many bad, dumb, great jokes we’re piecing together to see if we can pull it off. I don’t think Demi [Moore] would be on board, but with Joel [Murray], Bobcat [Goldthwait] and Curtis [Armstrong], you’ve already got a trifecta of genius there.â€
Tricked
Finally today, master film satirist Paul Verhoeven’s long overdue latest film Elle isn’t due out in theaters until later this year. But in the meantime we have his crowdsourced fifty-two minute Tricked, a film for which Verhoeven wrote a mere four pages, the rest written by a variety of contributors. Here’s the trailer for Tricked, which looks to be somewhat in the tradition of his Basic Instinct, opening February 26th at the Cinema Village in New York…
Images: Lionsgate, Warner Brothers
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