Weekly Ketchup: Mountains of Madness for Tom Cruise?

Plus new projects for George Clooney and Ryan Reynolds

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As Hollywood types take off this last week of the summer season and possibly prepare for festival trips to Venice, Telluride and Toronto, movie news was particularly slow and sparse. The stories that did emerge include casting rumors for Guillermo del Toro's next movie and the Fantastic Four reboot, a new World War II epic to be filmed in 3D (of course!), and new roles for Bradley Cooper, Paul Giamatti, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Dwayne Johnson, Chris Pine and Ryan Reynolds. There's also quite a bit of sequel news for titles like Clash of the Titans 2, Skyline 2 (already!), Unbreakable 2 (though not what you might think) and X-Men Origins: Wolverine 2.

WILL TOM CRUISE POPULARIZE "LOVECRAFTIAN HORROR" OR IS SOMEONE ELSE WANTED?

The phrase "Lovecraftian horror" is used to describe movies with bizarre and creepy monsters, usually with a sense of doom and dread so intense that it causes psychological damage to those involved. Or when done poorly, they're really just monster movies. The irony is that although there have been tons of horror movies/games/etc that build upon the formula created by early 20th century pulp writer H.P. Lovecraft, there has never been a major studio movie directly based upon one of his actual stories. Earlier this summer, we learned that Guillermo del Toro is using all this extra time that he won't be using to direct The Hobbit movies to correct that with an adaptation of At the Mountains of Madness. Lovecraft's novella described a scientific expedition into the mountains of Antartica. The explorers discover a lost city that was apparently built by terrifying ancient creatures (Elder Things and Shoggoths) that may not necessarily be quite extinct yet. James Cameron is also producing At the Mountains of Madness for Universal, and filming in 3D is expected to start in May, 2011. And so that leads us finally to this week's news, which is the question of who will be starring, and who wants whom. Universal Pictures reportedly wants James McAvoy, who starred in one of the studio's biggest hits in recent years, Wanted. Guillermo del Toro, on the other hand, is said to be more excited about working with the star with whom he briefly was considering rebooting the Van Helsing franchise: Tom Cruise. This writer has admittedly knocked Tom Cruise around in print a bit in previous columns, but I think Tom Cruise as the star to help bring the Lovecraft/Cthulhu mythos to the mainstream is particularly intriguing. Cruise may have had box office bumps in recent years (most recently Knight and Day), but he remains a much bigger name with most people than James McAvoy. Just imagine Tom Cruise going on a day time talk show and hopping around with excitement as he's trying to explain what a Shoggoth is. Universal, please make that happen.

#1 REQUIEM FOR A MUTANT?

Two weeks ago, news broke that 20th Century Fox's search for the director of X-Men Origins: Wolverine 2 had narrowed down to either Robert Schwentke (next month's Red) or David Slade (The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, 30 Days of Night). Schwentke was considered the likely choice at the time, but now he has apparently dropped out, as another director has joined Slade in the running. And that director is surely a surprise, as Hugh Jackman (in his duty as producer) recently talked to Darren Aronofsky (The Wrestler, Requiem for a Dream) about directing the Wolverine sequel, which will depict Logan's romantic ninja-fighting adventures in Japan. Aronofsky's produced movies might make him seem like an odd choice for a Wolverine sequel, but a look at the movies he's been formerly attached to (Batman: Year One and the Robocop reboot) show that Aronofsky has long wanted to do his own version of a superhero movie. Considering how disappointing X-Men Origins: Wolverine was, the involvement of someone like Darren Aronofsky might be the best way for the character's new franchise to redeem itself. If Aronofsky does sign, however, the next question would be whether 20th Century Fox would allow the director to make the movie his way, or whether they would interfere, demand changes and generally leave us in the end with a messed up pile of cinematic trash. The last time Aronofsky worked with a studio (The Fountain), that's sort of exactly what happened. In the meantime, Darren Aronofsky's next film Black Swan premiered at Venice this week, and the critics are sort of going crazy over it with praise. So, that's also good news, at least.

#2 THE 3D TREND FLIES INTO THE BATTLE OF MIDWAY

The HBO miniseries The Pacific was nominated for an amazing 23 Emmy Awards, and won eight awards, including Outstanding Miniseries on Sunday night. The day before, the news broke that Warner Bros (corporate cousin to HBO) had picked up a pitch from The Pacific co-executive producer Bruce C. McKenna for a $200 million 3D action epic about The Battle of Midway. From June 4 to June 7, 1942, the United States Navy achieved a massive victory against the Japan, defending an attack against the Midway Atoll, a mere six months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Japan lost four aircraft carriers and a heavy cruiser in the Battle of Midway, which seriously weakened the Imperial Navy's strength in the Pacific. The battle was previously brought to the big screen in 1976 as Midway, which had an all-star cast including Charlton Heston, Henry Fonda, James Coburn, Glenn Ford, Hal Holbrook, Robert Mitchum, Toshiro Mifune and Pat Morita. John Ford also directed a 1942 documentary called The Battle of Midway, which was quickly compiled by Ford and released to help muster morale at home for the war efforts in the Pacific. Warner Bros is fast tracking The Battle of Midway, and screenwriter Robert Schenkkan (cowriter of The Quiet American), who also cowrote four episodes of The Pacific, is expected to turn in the first draft within eight weeks. Akiva Goldsman (Jonah Hex, The Losers, I Am Legend) is producing The Battle of Midway for Warner Bros.

#3 DEADPOOL AND FACEMAN TEAMING UP FOR A BUDDY COP MOVIE

Two of the most wanted and busiest actors in Hollywood are Ryan Reynolds and Bradley Cooper, and now they are attached to costar together in an untitled buddy cop action movie. The project got its start five years under the title of Blowback as a potential starring vehicle for Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. The story follows two friends who are San Francisco cops whose fathers were also partners in the department, and who are forced out of retirement to help their sons crack a particularly tough case. There's no word yet as to who will play their dads. The action comedy is said to have "an updated Lethal Weapon flavor that plays into edgier R-rated territory." The new post-Dwayne-Johnson script was written by screenwriter Sheldon Turner, whose three produced movies couldn't be much different from each other: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, the remake of The Longest Yard and (with Jason Reitman) Up in the Air. There's no director for this project yet. There's also no distributor yet, but it is being co-produced by Benderspink (A History of Violence, The Ruins) and Original Film (I Am Legend, the Fast and the Furious franchise), which has a first look deal at Columbia Pictures. In other Bradley Cooper news, the actor was also replaced this week in the next movie (The Grey) to be directed by Joe Carnahan (The A-Team, Smokin' Aces) by his much older A-Team costar, Liam Neeson. The Grey is a survival drama about a leader (Liam Neeson) of an oil drilling team whose plane crashes in Alaska, forcing them to fight for their lives against a pack of vicious wolves.

#4 GEORGE CLOONEY CASTS UP HIS NEXT MOVIE AS DIRECTOR

In addition to being a charming actor and a human rights activist, George Clooney also has a side career as a director (Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Good Night and Good Luck, Leatherheads). Clooney's fourth movie as director will be Farragut North, an adaptation of an off-Broadway play about a fictional presidential campaign during the period leading up to the Iowa Democratic caucuses. The central character of Farragut North is a 20-something campaign worker who at one time Leonardo DiCaprio was attached to play. The word now is that Clooney plans to offer the role to Chris Pine (Star Trek). Brad Pitt had once wanted to play that character's boss, but Philip Seymour Hoffman is now up for the role instead. Paul Giamatti has also been cast as their opponent's campaign manager. Evan Rachel Wood and Marisa Tomei are also reportedly being offered roles (Wood as a teen staffer who has an affair with Pine's character). George Clooney is planning on starting filming Farragut North in February, 2011.

#5 TWO MONTHS BEFORE SKYLINE, SKYLINE 2 ALREADY ON THE HORIZON?

Universal Pictures isn't releasing their alien invasion movie Skyline until November 12, but the producers are already trying to sell the world on a sequel. IM Global, an international distribution company, is seeking to sell Skyline 2 to foreign film distributors next week at the Toronto International Film Festival's film market. This news comes only three weeks after the trailer first debuted in theaters (with Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World), revealing the premise of alien vessels appearing over Los Angeles, sucking people up into the sky in images that are very similar to the concept of The Rapture. There's no word yet as to who is writing or would direct Skyline 2, or what the sequel might be about (though it's probably a good bet that it would possibly involve people being sucked up by alien ships?). The first Skyline was directed by the Brothers Strause (Colin and Greg) (Aliens vs Predator: Requiem) from a script by newcomer screenwriters Liam O'Donnell and Joshua Cordes, who also has had a prolific recent career as an animation and visual effects supervisor on movies like Avatar, Iron Man 2, the two Fantastic Four movies and The Day After Tomorrow. When considering whether Skyline 2 is a "fresh" or "rotten" idea, one has to see the irony that the first trailer was attached to Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, a movie that unfortunately failed at the box office after over a year of high anticipation. Skyline might be a great science fiction movie (or not), and may or may not do well at the box office, and so it seems a bit premature to already be talking about Skyline 2. Skyline 2 is this week's borderline Rotten Idea only for that reason.

#4 CLASH OF THE TITANS SEQUEL MOVES CLOSER TO BATTLE

Despite receiving mostly negative reviews, this year's remake of Clash of the Titans was a huge international hit ($491 million) for Warner Bros, and so the studio is moving ahead with plans for a sequel. One improvement Warner Bros hopes to make with Clash of the Titans 2 is to film the movie in 3D rather than using the postproduction conversion which was a big part (though not the entirety) of why the movie was criticized. The director that Warner Bros has signed for the sequel is Jonathan Liebesman (Darkness Falls, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning), whose next film will be 2011's Battle: Los Angeles. Sam Worthington and Gemma Atherton are among the actors from the first movie who are expected to return for Clash of the Titans 2. For the sequel, Warner Bros has hired three different screenwriters that the studio considers to be among their current top talent. Dan Mazeau (a new writer whose development credits include The Flash and Jonny Quest) and David Leslie Johnson (Orphan and 2011's Red Riding Hood) will write the script, and Greg Berlanti (cowriter of Green Lantern) collaborated with the other two writers on the treatment. This story is one of this week's Rotten Ideas both because of Liebesman's lackluster resume (especially for a big budget mythological epic) and because the Clash of the Titans sequel seems to be getting a greenlight only because the first movie made a lot of money, and not because, you know... anyone actually loved it.

#3 WHAT WOULD HAVE BEEN UNBREAKABLE 2 IS NOW NIGHT CHRONICLES 3 INSTEAD

Whatever most movie fans might think of the majority of M. Night Shyamalan's films, the movie that is probably most often singled out as being his most narratively successful is Unbreakable. That film of course starred Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson in a reinvention of the superhero genre, years before that same thing was done (arguably not as well) repeatedly in shows/movies like Heroes, Hancock and Kick-Ass. At the time, M. Night said that he envisioned Unbreakable as the first part of a trilogy following Willis' character, and for the last nine years, fans have been wondering when we might see Unbreakable 2. In the meantime, M. Night Shyamalan has made movies like Lady in the Water, The Happening and The Last Airbender, and started producing The Night Chronicles in which he gives story ideas to new directors for them to make instead (this month's The Night Chronicles: Devil being the first). Now, M. Night has revealed that he has actually taken the villain and idea for what would have been Unbreakable 2 and rewritten it to instead be the third Night Chronicles movie. The second Night Chronicles movie will be called Twelve Strangers and will be about a jury dealing with a case involving the supernatural. M. Night went on to say that originally this villain was supposed to be in Unbreakable, but he removed the character to avoid having too many villains in one movie (that old Batman/X-Men problem). This is one of this week's Rotten Ideas because it means Unbreakable 2, which might still have a chance of being a great movie, is now even further from happening. M. Night himself now says that he has to now come up with a different idea for the sequel. Although it's possible the third Night Chronicles movie might turn out to be good, I'm not sure many fans will be as excited about it as they would have been about finally seeing a real sequel to Unbreakable.

#2 DWAYNE JOHNSON IS NOT QUITE DONE WITH KIDS MOVIES YET

The news that Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson was returning to action movies with Faster and Fast Five (the fifth movie in the Fast and the Furious franchise) was well received by movie fans who yearn to see Johnson stop making so many silly kids movies (Tooth Fairy being the latest one). This week, Dwayne Johnson signed on with New Line Cinema to star in Journey 2: The Mysterious Island, effectively replacing Brendan Fraser (although as a different character). Like Journey to the Center of the Earth, this sequel is adapting and modernizing another novel by Jules Verne, The Mysterious Island, which is often cited as a primary influence on the hit TV show LOST. Mysterious Island has been adapted a few times before, most notably as a 1961 movie. In Journey 2, Josh Hutcherson's character from the first movie will be the star, as he goes to a "mythical and monstrous island" searching for his lost grandfather, and taking his mom's boyfriend (Johnson) along on the ride. Journey 2: The Mysterious Island will be directed by Brad Peyton (Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore) from a script by Richard Outten (Pet Sematary II) and brothers Brian and Mark Gunn (cowriters of the direct-to-video Bring It On Again). Filming of Journey 2: The Mysterious Island is scheduled to start in late October at locations in North Carolina and Hawaii (perhaps not coincidentally also where LOST was filmed). This is one of this week's Rotten Ideas because it feels like a step backwards for Dwayne Johnson, but also because all of the creative people involved are best known for inferior sequels (Cats and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore, seriously?).

#1 MORE THAN FOUR RUMORS ABOUT A MOVIE THAT PROBABLY WON'T BE FANTASTIC

When this writer got started in the online movie news business in 1997 with Upcomingmovies.com, there were only a handful of sites out there, but today, there are dozens, and they're all scrapping for their piece of buzz that will drive traffic to their URL. One such site is called ComicBookMovie.com, and recently that site has been publishing a constant barrage (ten in the last 16 days) about 20th Century Fox's planned reboot of Fantastic Four. None of them have been confirmed by another news source yet, and at least one of them (the casting of Stephen Moyer as Doctor Doom) has been debunked. What is most likely happening here is that ComicBookMovie.com does indeed have some sort of inside source, although whether that source is reliable or not might be questionable. Within the studio system, there is often talk about dream casting, and an individual employee might know what names are being thrown around, but that doesn't always translate into actual signed contracts and the actor eventually starring in the movie. Anyway, here's the names that are being thrown out there: Adrien Brody or Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Reed Richards, Alice Eve or Amber Heard as Sue Storm, Kevin Pennington (90210) as Johnny Storm and Bruce Willis or Kiefer Sutherland as the voice of the CGI version of The Thing. CBM is also reporting that the directors possibly being considered for the Fantastic Four reboot are Joe Carnahan (The A-Team, Smokin' Aces), James McTeigue (V for Vendetta, Ninja Assassin) and David Yates (the last four Harry Potter movies). The problem with all three is that they are all known to be either currently busy or soon to be busy with other projects (The Grey, The Raven and postproduction on the last two Harry Potter movies, respectively). This is the week's most Rotten Idea for two reasons. First, this is yet another case of a big-budget sequel receiving a large number of stories that are basically rumors for the moment (quite common with the Batman franchise, for example). Secondly, there is the very concept of 20th Century Fox making another Fantastic Four movie. As long as the studio continues using these characters every few years, that only delays the possibility of Marvel Studios sometimes regaining the movie rights to characters that arguably deserve to be integrated in with the rest of the Marvel movie universe. That sentiment also of course applies to the Daredevil and X-Men rights at Fox and Spider-Man and Ghost Rider at Sony/Columbia.

For more Weekly Ketchup columns by Greg Dean Schmitz, check out the WK archive, and you can contact GDS via a RT forum message.