Weekly Ketchup: Liam Neeson Joins A-Team, Nispel Takes On Conan

Plus, will Jaime King play Brigitte Bardot?

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This Week's Ketchup includes the requisite remake news (The Incredible Mr. Limpet, The Funhouse and... Saturday Night Fever?), casting news for The A-Team, director news for Conan and Heavy Metal and three different biopic projects.

#1 LIAM NEESON LIKES IT WHEN PLANS FOR THE A-TEAM COME TOGETHER

The casting of next summer's The A-Team is well underway with the stars of two of this year's surprise hits in talks with 20th Century Fox: Liam Neeson (Taken) as "Hannibal" Smith and Bradley Cooper (The Hangover) as "Face" Peck. Yet to be cast are "Howling Mad" Murdock and B.A. Baracus. The film's director, Joe Carnahan (Narc, Smokin' Aces) teamed up with video game voice actor Brian Bloom to "polish" the script by Skip Woods (Swordfish; cowriter of X-Men Origins: Wolverine), which was of course based upon the popular 1980s TV show about four escapees from a military prison who become a band of altruistic mercenaries. The studio hype about this movie version of The A-Team is that it is not going to be "campy" like the show, but is aiming more for a feel like the Mission: Impossible and Ocean's Eleven movies, which seems to overlook the fact that the Ocean's Eleven movies were, you know, sort of campy. The A-Team starts filming in August, and has a June 11th, 2010 release date.

#2 CHAINSAWS, MACHETES AND NOW THE SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN

Marcus Nispel, who has made a career out of remaking old slasher franchises (Friday the 13th, Texas Chainsaw Massacre) will next work on a reboot of a different type of hack and slash anti-hero: Lionsgate and Nu Image/Millennium's Conan. In addition to the works of the character's creator, Robert E. Howard, Nispel (who also directed the viking movie Pathfinder) is reportedly finding inspiration for Conan from the artwork of Frank Frazetta (right) and "viscerally violent period films" like Mel Gibson's Apocalypto. The two movies that the writing team of Thomas Dean Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer currently have to their credit, Sahara and A Sound of Thunder, were both critical and box office flops. Can they do better with Conan? Filming is expected to start in late 2009 in Bulgaria and South Africa, so expect casting of the title character to happen soon.

#3 CAMERON, SNYDER, VERBINSKI AND JACK BLACK TO TAKE THAT RIDE ON HEAVY METAL

Talking to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles co-creator Kevin Eastman, who is also the current owner and publisher of Heavy Metal (the magazine), Film School Rejects this week landed the scoop of four of the big, Big, BIG name directors who will be contributing segments of the upcoming $50 million third movie in the Heavy Metal franchise. For the uninitiated, Heavy Metal is an adult-themed comic book magazine that got its movie start in 1981 with a sex 'n violence-drenched anthology of science fiction and fantasy shorts, all set to a soundtrack of classic rock and roll. First up: we already knew that David Fincher (Fight Club, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) was producing and likely to direct, but Eastman reveals that another producer is none other than James freakin' Cameron (Aliens, Terminator 2: Judgment Day), who will also direct a story. In addition to Fincher and Cameron, Eastman has also recruited Zack Snyder (300, Watchmen), Gore Verbinski (the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise) and Mark Osborne (Kung Fu Panda), who will direct a comedy segment starring Jack Black (Eastman name-drops Tenacious D, so there might be a connection there). Finally, Eastman teases that there are three other directors who "have agreed, but we haven't signed them, but they're equally as jaw-dropping."

#4 ELI ROTH WANTS TO TRAP YOU IN HIS REMAKE OF THE FUNHOUSE

Talking to horror magazine Fangoria, director Eli Roth has revealed that he's talking to Universal about plans to remake the 1981 Tobe Hooper movie The Funhouse, about a group of pot-smoking teens who are trapped in a darkride house of horrors and are stalked by a grotesque mutant killer. Roth, however, plans not so much on remaking the entire movie, but wants to build upon the film's first half, which introduces a cast of carnival characters, and then show how the teens all get killed in creative ways by traps in the funhouse. "It should be about the kids getting killed in horrible ways, put in different contraptions in the funhouse and the final girl being strapped into the ride and sent into the tunnels to be confronted by terrifying tableaux of her dead friends. A smart remake could be so much fun. Kill the kids in fabulous ways and continually reuse the bodies by making them freaks in the freak museum, sew their eyes shut, waxworks... That's the stuff I want to do in a remake of The Funhouse." In the same interview, Roth also talks up another horror project, Psycho Killer, which is a slasher movie from the perspective of the maniac being written by Andrew Kevin Walker (Seven, Sleepy Hollow) and which Roth says MGM wants to release.

#5 MARK MILLAR ALREADY PLANNING TO KICK MORE ASS

Sure, the deconstructionist teen super hero movie Kick-Ass might not even have a distributor yet, but that's not stopping its creator, comic book writer Mark Millar (Wanted, American Jesus) from already working on... Kick-Ass 2. "Kick-Ass 2 is already being plotted out," Millar told Sci Fi Wire. "We're planning it, because all the actors are quite young and we have to make it relatively quickly. So we'll definitely do that inside the next 18 to 24 months. Wanted made a fortune. It made a ton of money, and it was a property nobody had ever heard of. And I think Kick-Ass is going to be even bigger. Everybody who's seen bits of it were rubbing their hands together with excitement because they think they've stumbled onto something very big." Kick-Ass is the story of a teenage loser who is inspired by his love of comics to actually make a costume and go out fighting crime, to often disastrous results.

#6 LANCE ARMSTRONG BIOPIC: RACING LIKE SEABISCUIT TO THE SCREEN?

Columbia Pictures' plans to make a biopic about bicyclist Lance Armstrong and his seven consecutive Tour de France wins are moving forward after years of development. This week we heard news that the studio has hired director and screenwriter Gary Ross (Seabiscuit, Pleasantville) to work on adapting Armstrong's first book, It's Not About the Bike. That book (which he co-wrote) "traces his story from his difficult Texas upbringing, his cancer diagnosis in 1996, his relationship to first wife Kristin, the birth of their child and his remarkable comeback from illness that saw him first win the Tour de France in 1999." At one point, Jake Gyllenhaal was interested in starring as Armstrong, and spent time hanging out with Lance as research before ultimately dropping out. Now, Matt Damon is a possibility, but there is not yet any "official casting." Coincidentally, this news of a Lance Armstrong movie comes the week after Universal greenlit the Stretch Armstrong movie. Maybe the two studios should team up and make a movie about a super flexible bike riding superhero.

#7 THREE DIFFERENT PROJECTS IN DEVELOPMENT ABOUT THE LIFE OF CAR MOGUL JOHN DELOREAN?

Just months after the first film was announced, there are now three different biopic projects in development about the life of the late John DeLorean, the former GM executive who is credited with designing the Pontiac GTO and who later launched his own car company (which made only 9,000 cars, one of which was immortalized in the Back to the Future movies). (DeLorean was also arrested in 1982 by the F.B.I. on drug charges for which he was later found not guilty due to entrapment.) The first film is from producer David Permut (Captain Ron, Face/Off) and is actually based on the life rights to DeLorean's attorney. Then there's director Brett Ratner (who's also developing a Hugh Hefner biopic), who is co-producing with Robert Evans and has hired James Toback (Bugsy, The Pick-Up Artist) to write a DeLorean script. Finally, there's Time, Inc. and XYZ Films, which has the most legit-sounding rights to materials that include articles from both TIME and Fortune, the DeLorean biography Grand Delusions, and an unpublished autobiography by DeLorean himself. Even if none of these movies actually happen, we will get at least one DeLorean movie, however, because there is also a fourth movie -- a documentary -- also in the works. So, why all the sudden rush for DeLorean attention? Perhaps it's because in the time when GM has filed for bankruptcy, the DeLorean era can be looked at fondly, as he helped usher in the era of the muscle car back when American car manufacturers dominated the industry. Ah, sweet, sweet nostalgia.

#8 IS JAIME KING'S HUSBAND A BRIGITTE BARDOT FANBOY?

From the not-always-reliable world of Australian newspapers comes the unconfirmed news that Kyle Newman, director of Fanboys and the upcoming War Monkeys, may also be developing a Brigitte Bardot biopic that would star his wife, Jaime King (Sin City). Now 74, Bardot is the French actress and singer who has appeared in over 80 films, including ...And God Created Woman, and has also in recent years been convicted five times in France for "inciting racial hatred" for her anti-Islam statements. If the news of the project is true (and King can pull off a French accent), this is certainly one of the most interesting biopic projects I've heard of lately, and Jaime King does indeed look a bit like the young Brigette Bardot. A bit of trivia to consider also is that "I love Jaime" in French is... "J'aime Jaime."

#9 THE INCREDIBLE MR. LIMPET REMAKE GETS ENCHANTED

Warner Bros has been trying to remake the 1964 animated/live action hybrid The Incredible Mr. Limpet for well over a decade now, and this week the project got new life in the news that the studio has hired frequent Disney director Kevin Lima (Enchanted, 102 Dalmatians). The original Incredible Mr. Limpet starred Don Knotts as a mild-mannered schlub who is transformed into a talking fish and uses his newfound form to help the United States Navy fight Nazi U-Boat submarines. There's no word yet as to how (or whether) the premise of this remake will be updated. In the long development process, two stars that were once in talks to star were Robin Williams, and then Jim Carrey. Like the original movie, The Incredible Mr. Limpet is expected to be a combination of live action and (CGI this time) animation.

#10 MASI OKA'S BIG NERDY MMORPG MOVIE: THE DEFENDERS

Masi Oka, star of NBC's Heroes, has sold to DreamWorks a story idea called The Defenders, about a group of teenagers from around the world who are all friends in a MMORPG (massively multiplayer online... ah, you probably know the rest) video game and come together in real life for an adventure that forces them to live up to the expectations of the characters they play in the game. Oka came up with the idea for The Defenders with his friend Gary Whitta (writer of the upcoming The Book of Eli and the live-action Akira remake), who is also one of his friends in World of Warcraft. D.J. Caruso (Disturbia, Eagle Eye) is in talks to direct The Defenders, a project that's being compared to a modern day version of The Goonies -- which makes sense, in a way, given today's video game generation (presuming one buys into stereotypes about who plays MMORPGs). Now, this would all get very interesting if Marvel decided next week that they would like to make a movie based on The Defenders, their long-running superhero team that features characters like the Incredible Hulk, the Silver Surfer, Doctor Strange and the Sub-Mariner...

ROTTEN IDEA OF THE WEEK: SIMON COWELL THREATENING TO REMAKE SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER?

First off, I should note that this particular story comes from the British tabloid, The Sun, which means that it might be completely bogus. That paper, for example, enjoys publishing every once in a while fake stories about Batman casting that are completely and intentionally ridiculous. However, even The Sun occasionally stumbles into real news, so I'm taking this one with that requisite bit of salt.

The story this week is that British TV and music producer Simon Cowell (American Idol) is reportedly in talks to secure the rights to a remake of the iconic 1977 disco film, Saturday Night Fever, with Timbaland remixing the Bee Gee songs and Zac Efron starring as Tony Manero -- the role that helped make John Travolta a movie star. Something to consider is that Efron recently dropped out of the Footloose remake, supposedly to separate his career from High School Musical stereotyping, so it seems unlikely he'd sign on for a different remake. However, that doesn't necessarily mean it might not be true that Cowell wants Efron to star; just that it might be unlikely that Efron actually would. Anyway, although Saturday Night Fever is not a particularly great movie, it certainly doesn't need to be remade either. Saturday Night Fever was a perfectly timed phenomenon of the disco era, and not something that needs to be revisited.

For more Weekly Ketchup columns by Greg Dean Schmitz, check out the WK archive, and you can contact GDS through his MySpace page or via a RT forum message. Greg also blogs about the TV show Lost at TwoLosties.Blogspot.com.