New Projects is a weekly round up of movies and TV shows recently announced and currently in development for the near future.
Who’s that bad remake? (Shut your mouth!) New Line Cinema has reportedly acquired the rights to the Shaft franchise and intends to remake the ’70s blaxploitation classic yet again, following the 2000 remake starring Samuel L. Jackson. The Wrap reports that John Davis (Predator) is producing the remake, apparently forgetting that no one understands Shaft but his woman.
Perhaps someone at Bad Robot had a lightbulb (get it?) go if in their head, as The Wrap has reported that J.J. Abrams’s production studio is developing a movie on Thomas Edison as a “rugged, eccentric genius”. Abrams is currently working on a series for Hulu based on one of Stephen King’s novels around the Kennedy Assassination.
If you thought a Monopoly movie was ridiculous, it doesn’t get much nerdier than this (okay, this is nerdier): the rights to the board game Settlers of Catan have been picked up by Gail Katz, whose producing credits include The Perfect Storm and Air Force One. No plans are yet in stone (ore, perhaps?) to actually produce a film, but should the right script and director arise, they’ll know who to call. The game involves collecting and trading resources in order to build a civilization before your opponents. And with so many combinations of ways to set up the board, there are endless possibilities for where the story can go! Although you’ll have to pay an extra $20 if you want to see the movie with five or six people.
Fashion designer Tom Ford made a splash back in 2009 with the stylish, melancholic, ’60s drama A Single Man, featuring an Oscar nominated performance by Colin Firth. But since then, this promising new filmmaker hasn’t been able to return, teasing various projects for the last few years. His new film though, after speaking with Women’s Wear Daily, appears to be a two-part thriller based on a book he’s refused to name. He hopes to shoot the film in the fall of this year, but may push it back should the fashion schedule get too hectic.
The Ralph Fiennes and Tilda Swinton starring movie A Bigger Splash by Italian director Luca Guadagnino (I Am Love) is coming to the States after being acquired for American distribution in 2015 by Fox Searchlight. Deadline describes the project as the story of a rock star and a filmmaker (Matthias Schoenaerts and Swinton) vacationing in Italy when an old friend and his daughter (Fiennes and Dakota Johnson) show up and begin creating tension, jealousy, passion, and danger.
Deadline reported Tuesday that the Jon Ronson book The Psychopath Test, a non-fiction “journey through the madness industry”, is being adapted into a movie with Scarlett Johansson set to star. She’ll join Director Jay Roach (Meet the Parents) and screenwriter Kristin Gore. According to the report, the film will be a psychological thriller, but the book considers how most successful individuals, be they politicians or CEOs, are to some degree insane, digging into the mental health industry as a way to make his case.