New Adaptation of AND THEN THERE WERE NONE in Development

And Then There Were None

With murder mystery movies seeing a surge in popularity over the past couple of years, now comes word that a new take on Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None is on the way.

Via Deadline, 20th Century Studios is developing a new movie adaptation of Christie’s famed 1939 novel. That tale centres on ten strangers who are invited to an isolated island by a mysterious, unknown host. Each of these strangers has skeletons in their respective closets, and things soon begin to take a turn for the worse when they start to be offed one by one.

Seberg’s Anna Waterhouse and Joe Shrapnel are writing the film, with the hunt currently on to find a director.

And Then There Were None is the best-selling mystery novel in history, selling over 100 million copies across the globe since first being published over 80 years ago. To date, the story has already been adapted for ten movies and eight TV series.

As ever, expect more on this new take on a truly classic old favourite as we get it.

Jennifer Kaytin Robinson to Co-Write THOR: LOVE AND THUNDER

Jennifer Kaytin Robinson

With Taika Waititi fresh off nabbing the Best Adapted Screenplay gong at this past Sunday’s Academy Awards, now comes an update on the director’s impending return to the MCU.

Via The Wrap, the Waititi-helmed Thor: Love and Thunder has brought in Jennifer Kaytin Robinson to co-write the film’s screenplay alongside Taika. Robinson is best known for writing and directing Someone Great for Netflix.

What we know so far about Thor: Love and Thunder, is that Natalie Portman’s Jane Foster will be taking over the mantle of the Thunder God from Chris Hemsworth’s Odinson. Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie will also be a part of the picture, while Christian Bale is to play the sequel’s to-be-revealed ‘big bad’.

Plot-wise, it’s expected that this Ragnarok follow-up will pull inspiration from Jason Aaron’s time on The Mighty Thor comic book title. In that run, a cancer-riddled Jane takes on the powers of Thor.

At present, Thor: Love and Thunder is set for a November 5th, 2021 release.

Josh Peck to Headline Disney+’s TURNER & HOOCH

Josh Peck

This past December brought word that, just when you thought Disney may finally be running out of existing properties to revisit, Turner & Hooch was to get a do-over for Disney+. And now comes word that Josh Peck is in the frame to headline this project.

Courtesy of Deadline, the Drake & Josh and Ice Age actor has signed on to star in the Scott Turner role played by Tom Hanks in the 1989 Turner & Hooch movie.

In addition to this, it’s now known that Disney+ has given a 12-episode series order for the small screen take on an old favourite of yesteryear. The Gifted’s Matt Nix is on board to pen and executive produce the show.

For those unfamiliar with Turner & Hooch, the buddy cop film saw Hanks’ stressed detective tasked with teaming up with a dog who just so happened to be the sole witness to his owner’s murder.

Where this new Turner & Hooch is concerned, Peck’s Turner will be a stuffy US Marshall who inherits a big dog as his new partner.

Turner & Hooch is just one of several familiar properties being redone for Disney+ – with Home Alone, Night at the Museum, and Diary of a Wimpy Kid other similar movies being reimagined for the on-demand streaming service.

Mark Ruffalo Eyed for HBO’s PARASITE Series

Mark Ruffalo Parasite

While Parasite is rightfully in the news right now for nabbing a whopping four Academy Awards this past Sunday, last month saw it being reported that a TV take on Bong Joon-ho’s movie was in development at HBO. And now, there’s an update on who may be headlining said TV series.

Via Collider, Mark Ruffalo is currently being lined up to spearhead this Parasite show. While genre fave Ruffalo has yet to be officially confirmed for the series, it’s believed that Joon-ho himself has reached out directly to the Avengers star. These same reports indicate that Ruffalo likewise has interest in boarding the project.

Bong will be developing this Parasite series with Vice’s Adam McKay, although there’s no word just yet on whether the show will operate as a follow-up to the Oscar-winning movie or whether this small screen offering will be an English language redo of that picture.

Where the Parasite film is concerned, the official blurb on that reads:

Greed and class discrimination threaten the newly formed symbiotic relationship between the wealthy Park family and the destitute Kim clan.

As ever, expect more on HBO’s Parasite as we get it.

Sylvester Stallone to Star in LITTLE AMERICA

Sylvester Stallone

Sylvester Stallone in an Escape from New York-esque action-thriller? Consider us intrigued.

Via Deadline, Stallone has signed on to star in Platinum Dunes’ Little America. The movie will be a dystopian future-set offering which is being compared to John Carpenter’s iconic 1981 picture.

Sly is set to play a former Army Ranger who’s hired to find a billionaire’s daughter in a murky wasteland city that’s been walled-off from the rest of Hong Kong.

Strange but True’s Roman Athale is writing and directing Little America.

THE FRIGHTENERS Heading to TV?

The Frighteners

In some great news, it looks as if a Frighteners TV series is on the away. And in some slightly-concerning news, said TV series might well drop some of the charm and humour of the original 1996 movie.

Via Bloody Disgusting, Charlize Theron’s Denver and Delilah Productions have plans to deliver The Frighteners as a straight-up serious TV show. While that is definitely an eyebrow-raising notion, there is the small fact that Denver and Delilah are responsible for Netflix’s stunning Mindhunter – meaning they’ve clearly proven how they’ve got chilling tension mastered.

From Peter Jackson, The Frighteners saw Michael J. Fox as Frank Bannister, a fella who could communicate with ghosts. Following the death of his wife, Frank ends up making a business deal with three ghosts where he pretends to exorcise these spirits as part of a scam. It doesn’t take long before Bannister is forced to explore the death of his wife, as he has to clear his name of her murder.

The Frighteners took a modest $16 million at the box office upon its release, yet the movie has gone on to become a major cult favourite in the ensuing years – and so much of that is down to the humour and light-heartedness displayed throughout so much of the film.

Whether The Frighteners could work with a more serious approach remains to be seen, but Theron’s Denver and Delilah are as good as any production banner to attempt such a move.

For now, this series is far from official or anywhere close to being green-lit – although expect more on any such The Frighteners action as and when we hear more on all of this.

Work Already Underway on LOCKE & KEY’s Second Season

Locke & Key

With the first season of Locke & Key having now landed on Netflix and already impressed many a genre fan, it looks as if a second season of the show could well be happening.

While Netflix has yet to officially confirm a second year for the adaptation of Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez’s Locke & Key, showrunners Carlton Cuse and Meredith Averill have already begun writing said Season Two.

Speaking to Collider, Cuse explained, “Although Netflix has not picked up Season Two, and their policy is not to do that until they have 30 days of date on the show, they have paid for a writers’ room. We’re in the middle of Season Two, so we’re optimistic and hopeful that we’re gonna get a chance to make Season Two. We very much know what it is, because Meredith and I are in the middle of overseeing the writers’ room and we’re working on that right now.”

Additionally, Meredith Averill has also teased how the show’s second year may veer in its own unique direction rather than that rigidly follow the comic book source material.

If you’ve yet to check out Locke & Key, we’d certainly recommend giving the series a watch.

BIRDS OF PREY Undergoes Title Change

Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)

Despite receiving a largely positive response from those who have seen the movie, Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) has so far stuttered at the box office. And as such, Warner Brothers has swiftly made a move to try and bring more eyes to the Cathy Yan-helmed picture.

In an interesting marketing move, the title of the film has now been changed to Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey.

Globally, Birds of Prey’s opening weekend took around $85 million. That is far from a disaster, yet it is also far from what The WB were expecting. Birds of Prey cost a reported $100 million, and the hope from Warners was that the movie would strike hard at the box office, particularly given the popularity of Margot Robbie’s Maid of Mischief.

Regardless of your thoughts on Suicide Squad, Robbie’s Harleen was one of the undeniable home runs of that picture. As such, Quinn has been given a major boost in popularity over the past couple of years – to the point where you can’t go to any sort of convention without seeing every third person dressed as some variation of Harley Quinn.

Seemingly, Warners thought that having Harley at the centre of Birds of Prey would be enough to bring in some strong box office numbers, that that has so far not been the case for the film. It’s purely guesswork on our part, but you’d have to imagine that Warner Brothers were expecting the R-rated, erratic, vibrant tale to garner the huge sort of numbers achieved by Deadpool – a film which took a jaw-dropping $782 million from a budget of just $58 million.

Whether it’s the stink of Suicide Squad, whether it’s the general (often unfair) perception of recent DC movies, whether it’s the result of a broader oversaturation of comic book movies over the past decade, or whether it’s simply that casual moviegoers don’t have any interest in Birds of Prey’s characters, the film isn’t doing anywhere near as well as Warner Bros. Pictures was hoping.

Will changing the title from Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) to Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey magically change the movie’s appeal and box office pulling power? We’ll have to wait and see.

Either way, we had an absolute hoot with the film – as you can find in our 9/10 review for the picture.

Colin Minihan to Helm New URBAN LEGEND

Urban Legend

We’re not going to lie, this is news that’s put a huge smile on the face of many of us here at Moonbase Alpha. Yes, as the headline suggests, a new Urban Legend movie is on the way.

Courtesy of Deadline, Screen Gems is pushing forward with the project as a priority picture, with What Keeps You Alive and Grave Encounters’ Colin Minihan having been brought in to write and direct the film – a massively promising writer/director who could prove to be quite the inspired choice.

Using social media as its driving force, the early word on this new Urban Legend reads:

Urban Legend will introduce an iconic new slasher for the digital age in a world where internet urban legends are born and move at a terrifying pace. The movie will centre on a diverse cast of college students as they navigate a series of bizarre deaths that resemble urban legends linked to the darkest corners of social media.

At this stage, it’s not yet known whether the movie – which is seemingly just titled Urban Legend – will be a reboot, remake, or even some sort of sequel which exists within the same world as the three Urban Legend films that already exist.

For those not familiar with this franchise, the first Urban Legend was released by Sony TriStar back in 1998. Starring a who’s who of hot young things of the time, the movie featured the likes of Alicia Witt, Rebecca Gayheart, Michael Rosenbaum, Tara Reid, Joshua Jackson, Danielle Harris, and Jared Leto as a group of college students who find themselves in the crosshairs of a parka-adorned killer who is offing people in a way akin to certain familiar urban legends – complete with supporting turns from genre faves Robert Englund and Brad Dourif.

That original film came at a time when the world of horror had been given a shot in the arm thanks largely to Wes Craven’s Scream. After a strange few years for the genre, Craven’s 1996 film made horror cool again – and that film, its approach, its cast, and its new spin on the slasher movie saw a slew of similar pictures follow over the next few years. And one such picture was indeed Urban Legend.

It wasn’t just one-and-done for Urban Legend, of course, and the so-so Urban Legends: Final Cut arrived in 2000, before the utterly awful Urban Legends: Bloody Mary went straight-to-video in 2005.

As ever, expect more on Urban Legend as we get it.

STARBURST Int Film Festival Announces More Shorts

film festival

The last wave of short films has been announced for the STARBURST International Film Festival, which takes place at Social7 at the Landing, MediaCityUK in March.

Joining the already stellar line-up are the following fantastic shorts:

Alexander Osman’s The Knowledge, starring Stephen Beckett (The Bill); the Tarrantino-esque Bitch, Popcorn and Blood, written and directed by Fabio Soares and starring Jane Badler from the classic V TV series; Robert Husted’s fantastical Lost Treasure of the Valley; Seechers, written and directed by Natalie Kavanagh; The Ghost of Me and You, written and directed by Ben Thompson and starring Kirsty Strain (Anna and the Apocalypse); Ben Griffins’ romantic sci-fi actioner Ji; House of Lexi, written and directed by Martin Daniels and starring 2018 STARBURST Fantasy Award winner for Best Director, Emma Dark; Yuichi Kondo’s AI romance Ryoko’s Qubit Summer; Nepenthes, in which director Ariel Hansen warns of sticky, nightmarish dates; and Choke, the latest short from Helen Lyons-Curran (Ends Meat).

Watch this space as we’ll be announcing more feature films and news about the STARBURST Fantasy Awards soon.

The STARBURST International Film Festival takes place on March 13th and 14th at Social7 at MediaCityUK, Salford, Manchester. For more information on the films, and to book tickets for the STARBURST International Film Festival, head over to starburstfilmfest.co.uk. Early Bird tickets will go off sale soon!