Movie News After Dark
More Ghostbusters on the Horizon, Doctor Strange Smashes MCU Record, and the Westworld Finale Trailer
The day’s top headlines in bite-size portions.
Original director and now-franchise producer Ivan Reitman says despite the underperforming Ghostbusters reboot this year, there’s more bustin’ in our future, though maybe not the way you’re thinking. While a sequel to Paul Feig’s film is all but out of the picture, Reitman dropped word that such a film might not be the only iron in the fire. Speaking to the Mr. Wavvy podcast (which we heard about from ComicBook.com), Reitman said:
There’s going to be many other Ghostbusters movies, they’re just in development right now.
There have been rumblings of other films for a couple years now ‐ presumably going under the Ghost Corp banner that Sony registered when all this rebooting began ‐ including another male-centric version starring Channing Tatum and Chris Pratt, and a big-screen feature-length animated film ‐ so while this news isn’t necessarily new, the fact that there are films in active development is. This makes a sad kind of sense to me. Though it performed below expectations, you shouldn’t call Feig’s Ghostbusters a failure. The only failure there was a social one, and it wasn’t perpetrated by the film but rather by a select population of the fans who felt the original too pure to be befouled by women. Those people are obviously idiots, but they’re idiots who buy ‐ or in this case don’t buy ‐ movie tickets, and naturally the studio is going to give more weight to cash registers over their conscience, so for them to find any and every way to keep the franchise alive shouldn’t come as a shock. There’s nothing more to this story than speculation, but let’s hope there’s still a shot Feig can get a sequel to his version off the ground, because it would be a terrible shame to reboot a reboot simply on account of sexist decriers.
There’s a new king in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and he’s a doctor. As of this past weekend, Scott Derrickson’s Doctor Strange has become the highest-grossing solo film in the MCU, eclipsing the first Iron Man movie with its staggering $616 million take at the global box office. James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy holds the overall record with $773 million, but as the good Doctor has only been out a few weeks here and hasn’t even opened in Japan yet, that could be another bar that’s about to get raised. The film has helped Disney have its biggest year at the box office ever, and with Rogue One yet to be released, don’t be surprised if the studio’s final gross tops an unbelievable $6 billion for the year.
Next up on the Marvel schedule is GotG2, which opens May 5th, 2017, followed by Spider-Man: Homecoming on July 7th and Thor: Rangnarok on November 3rd.
Following a lawsuit filed last week by MGM legal against original director Walter Richter and writer Earl Mac Rauch, it looks like the Buckaroo Banzai TV adaptation has hit a major snag and lost it’s driving force. Kevin Smith declared today in a Facebook post that he has left the project he was developing, and furthermore makes it sound like the series itself ‐ which was slated to appear on Amazon ‐ will be swimming in limbo until the issues are resolved.
“I’m no longer involved. I don’t wish anybody harm; I wish all parties well. I hope these dudes come to an agreement, and if they do and they still want me involved down the road, I’ll be here. But why would they?”
The lawsuit has to do with who owns the rights to the original property, the studio or Richter and Rauch. It’s a pretty complicated suit and you can read the gritty details at THR, but basically MGM wanted to make the series without the input of the creators, something they aren’t cool with. Smith explained:
“Let’s say one day that the people that own Miramax now [said], ‘Hey, we want to make Clerks,’ and I’m like, ‘Well, I don’t want you to make Clerks ‐ not while I’m alive.’ And then they sue me to make sure that they can make Clerks without me being involved. Well, what goes around comes around in life. I’m not saying anybody is wrong in this situation, but what I’m saying is ‐ respectfully to all parties involved ‐ I’m out.”
Sound like a shitty end to a promising project, but never say never, I guess. As for Smith, he’s got a number of projects in various stages of production, including another series, Mallbrats, based on his film Mallrats. Deadline broke the story.
And finally, I’m not caught up myself, but in case you’re one of the millions of viewers chomping at the bit for next Sunday’s Westworld finale to air, allow me to make your wait that much more unbearable by sharing this trailer for the episode, which has been augmented to 90 minutes. I can’t watch this, but from a few of the headlines I’ve peeked at through my fingers, I know a) producers are promising the finale will answer most if not all viewers’ most common questions and b) it’s going to be bloody as hell. Check it out if you’re up to date and if not, try to get that way before this weekend, because guaranteed come Monday morning this is all the internet is going to be talking about.
