Wow, what a world we live in today… Paramount will use Simon Pegg’s ideas for Star Trek 3, Disney won’t use George Lucas’ ideas for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, a second star has said no to Suicide Squad, Pirates of the Caribbean‘s next leading lady could be twenty-nine years younger than Johnny Depp, and Milla Jovovich is still making Resident Evil movies. All this and more astonishment in today’s Movie Morsels!
Star Trek 3
Simon Pegg has written plenty of comedy scripts over the years — including Edgar Wright’s “Cornetto Trilogy” — but the fan-favorite star really will go where he’s never gone before when he pens the screenplay for the third installment in Bad Robot’s reboot of Paramount’s venerable Star Trek film franchise. Pegg will co-write Star Trek 3 with Doug Jung (best known for co-creating the TV cop show Dark Blue),  for director Justin Lin, who was hired to helm the project in the wake of Roberto Orci’s departure. Though some may find Pegg an offbeat choice, I honestly can’t think of anyone else involved with the new Trek who is such a diehard fan of the original adventures of the U.S.S. Enterprise. So may the threequel live long and prosper!
[Nerdist]
Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens
Still promoting his newest production, the animated musical Strange Magic, George Lucas has revealed that although he sold Disney some of his ideas for the upcoming seventh Star Wars film when the company purchased the franchise from him, the film’s producers elected not to use any of them. “The ones that I sold to Disney,” says Lucas, “they came up to the decision that they didn’t really want to do those. So they made up their own. So it’s not the ones that I originally wrote [on screen in Star Wars: The Force Awakens].”
Suicide Squad
After Tom Hardy dropped out of Warner Bros.’ upcoming Suicide Squad, we reported that Jake Gyllenhaal was targeted to replace him as the super-team’s leader Rick Flag. Unfortunately, Gyllenhaal (pictured above in last year’s Nightcrawler) has also decided to pass on the project. With Will Smith, Margot Robbie, Jared Leto, Jai Courtney and Cara Delevingne still on board for director David Ayer’s DC comic adaptation, Flag remains the one missing puzzle piece before shooting begins in April for an August 5, 2016 release.
[Variety]
Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales
The fifth Pirates of the Caribbean may have found its leading lady. Kayla Scodelario — the twenty-two year-old star of The Maze Runner (pictured above) and its upcoming sequel Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials — is in talks to join the returning Johnny Depp for Jack Sparrow’s next ocean voyage, Dead Men Tell No Tales. The film, due out on July 7, 2017, will be directed by Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg (the duo responsible for Kon-Tiki) and co-star Javier Bardem, Geoffrey Rush and Orlando Bloom.
[Deadline]
Resident Evil: The Final Chapter
Milla Jovovich has confirmed via Facebook that she will begin shooting Resident Evil: The Final Chapter — the follow-up to 2012’s Resident Evil: Retribution (above) — in August after giving birth to her second child…
“I’m really proud of myself for not gaining the same amount of weight that I did with our first child (75 lbs.) because I have to be ready to start filming Resident Evil- The Final Chapter in August of this year and I will also be nursing an infant simultaneously.”
Jovovich’s husband, Paul W.S. Anderson, will also return — to write and direct his fourth Resident Evil film and the series’ sixth installment.
Antarctica
Animator Don Hertzfeldt is best known for his award-winning short films, his latest of which, World of Tomorrow (pictured above), opens this week’s 2015 Sundance Film Festival. But the thirty-eight-year-old iconoclast’s next project will be a feature-length work, Antarctica, exploring the Earth’s coldest continent. Snoot Entertainment has just optioned the film. Hertzfeldt remarks, “After twenty years of animating alone, this will also mark the first time I’ll have the opportunity to work with a talented team of animators, and I’m looking forward to being able to walk into a room of hard-working artists every day and telling them that everything they’re doing is wrong.”
[Snoot Entertainment]
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What do you think of today’s top stories? Let us know below!
I love that Disney bought George Lucas’s ideas and didn’t use them. Kind of like J. Peterman buying Kramer’s stories and not using them on Seifeld.
jackie chan was a zombie in resident evil retribution?
Pegg writes Star Trek 3, great. Lucas’ Star Wars ideas out, also great.
I dunno, its not that Lucas’ ideas are bad, its when he has total creative control that it all starts to fall apart.
But yea, I’m kinda excited for the new Star Trek now. He’s a big fan, and I’m sure it’ll show. That’s why I’m behind Batfleck. Of all the actors who’ve ever played the part, Affleck is no doubt the biggest fan of the character. It irritates me when an actor gets cast for a big role that they’ve pretty much never heard of before then.
Some would say they dislike Affleck for being Batman because he dropped hero interests after doing Hollywoodland. He had already done DareDevil before playing the role of the original actor that played Superman. When he was shooting the movie he began to dislike being a superhero actor and didn’t want to do it anymore.
Fast Forward a decade to present and he forgot he dissed comic book hero actors, because Batman is the most popular one for decades and money is a tasteful form of amnesia.