While Marvel is still basking in their own success, it seems that every other damn film company is following suit, I mean when you think about it in terms of dollars, it’s a no brainer. Get your most favourite or beloved franchises and expand them either by giving individual characters their own movies or make different films based within the same universe. Such attempts did happen in the past, remember the god-awful Catwoman? Anyone? Good. But they didn’t really work out too well. As far as I can recall, the main successful spin offs happened on TV, Perfect Strangers brought us Family Matters, Star Trek spawned many spinoffs, CSI and so on. Now though, cinema is picking up this trend and making it work. So, this month and blimey it’s only March, we have been given two new franchises with the intent to expand.
Lately, the buzz was that Sony and Marvel had finally reached an agreement and we will see Spider Man team up with The Avengers in Captain America 3: Civil War. Good call on Sony but I can’t help but feel that in the end, it’s Garfield that ended up paying the price. My opinion, he was great as Spiderman. But that’s yesterday’s news.
Speaking of yesterday’s news, a few months ago it was reported that the new Ghostbusters movie will be directed by Paul Feig and starring a female cast. As expected this generated a huge backlash by even Ernie (Winston) Hudson himself. Personally, that boat has sailed, I’ve grown up and Ghostbusters is long gone. Sony on the other hand have come up with the brilliant (?) idea to adopt the Marvel method and give us two new Ghostbuster movies. One with an all female cast and the other all male, most likely to be led by Channing Tatum who is also producing. Rumours have it that Chris Pratt is also in the talks to star. Captain America: The Winter Soldier directors Joe and Anthony Russo are in charge of directing duties. Oh and the films will share the main title of Ghost Corp. So, should we be worried? I say not.
First, we have Ivan Reitman and Dan Aykroyd writing and producing. Going further back in time for those who don’t know, Aykroyd’s initial idea of Ghostbusters and their sequels was that there would be different GB franchises all over the world and every movie would focus on each one. Plus there’s the whole travelling to different dimensions and stuff. Since those movies were too expensive to make at the time, the idea was scrapped, Ramis came on board and the rest is cinematic comedy history. Now though it seems that Aykroyd will finally have his vision come to light. So, with that said and done, I say go for it man.
Second franchise to be given the all mighty reboot is the Alien series. No doubt many of you saw Neil Blomkamp’s (District 9) concept images of Ripley wearing Alien armour and Hicks doing his best Harvey Twoface impression. The internet went nuts and even the two cast members started talking about it again. Then in no time it turns out that Fox has given Blomkamp the go ahead. So is this a reboot, or spin off? Right now, no one knows. There was speculation that it would be a direct sequel to Prometheus but the farthest anyone or anything stays from that train wreck, the better. Next as most commonly thought it would be the long awaited Alien 5. Problem is though that in Alien 3 Hicks be dead. So, Blomkamp himself more or less said that this will be the essential third movie, while forgetting the third and fourth movies all together. As a hard-core Alien nut, I can’t say I hate the third and fourth ones but I would like to see a proper sequel which would do the first two movies justice. Until then, we will have to wait and see, in the meantime Blomkamp is busy with promoting his latest sci-fi offering Chappie.
As for GB, the all female reboot will begin filming soon. Check back soon for updates.
New Hotel Transylvania 2 Trailer Released
New Chappie Featurette Released
