Need a quick recap of the past week in movie news? Here are the highlights:
The next Star Wars script: While the Star Wars franchise has been limited to streaming television series lately, the next feature film installment is fueling up. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Lucasfilm has hired Love and Monsters and Dora and the Lost City of Gold co-writer Matthew Robinson, to handle script duties on Star Wars: Rogue Squadron. Patty Jenkins (Wonder Woman) will be at the helm as the first woman director of a Star Wars movie. This will be the first theatrical release set in the galaxy far, far away since 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker, and it is currently due to arrive on the big screen on December 22, 2023.
Keri Russell to star in Cocaine Bear: Speaking of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Keri Russell, who played Zorii Bliss in that movie, has been cast in the thriller Cocaine Bear. And, as reported by Deadline, she will be joined in the ensemble cast by Solo: A Star Wars Story lead Alden Ehrenreich and actor O’Shea Jackson Jr., who has a part in the upcoming Star Wars series Obi-Wan Kenobi. Ray Liotta and Jesse Tyler Ferguson, neither of whom has ever been involved with Star Wars, will also appear in the movie, which Elizabeth Banks is directing based on a true story about a bear who tragically consumed a large bag of drugs.
Danny McBride and Gemma Chan find True Love: Gareth Edwards, who last directed the Star Wars movie Rogue One five years ago, continues to add cast members to his next effort. According to Deadline, Danny McBride (Alien: Covenant), Gemma Chan (Captain Marvel) and Benedict Wong (Doctor Strange) are in talks to join True Love, which will additionally star John David Washington. Edwards, who also helmed the 2014 Godzilla reboot, wrote the original script for the upcoming sci-fi movie, which he will direct. Nothing is known about its plot except for the fact that it will be set in the future, and so far there is no release date set.
Wes Anderson casts Tilda Swinton again: Oscar-winning actress Tilda Swinton has worked on the last four consecutive Wes Anderson features, including his latest movie, The French Dispatch, and now she’s adding a fifth collaboration to the bunch. Variety reports she has been cast in Anderson’s next project, which begins shooting in Spain, on a desert landscape set constructed near Madrid, this fall. No other details have been revealed about the production, not even its title, though Swinton hinted that it’s not about Spain. In the meantime, The French Dispatch is set to hit theaters this October after being delayed for more than a year.
Ron Perlman is a Transformer: Hellboy and Pacific Rim star Ron Perlman, who co-stars with Swinton in Guillermo del Toro’s upcoming animated Pinocchio feature, is joining the Transformers movie franchise. Collider reports that the actor will be voicing the role of Optimus Primal (not to be confused with Optimus Prime) in the next live-action installment, titled Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. Perlman previously voiced the character, who takes the shape of a gorilla and leads the group known as the Maximals, in the animated series Transformers: Power of the Primes, released online in 2018. The movie is due in theaters on June 24, 2022.
Scott Weiland gets a biopic: The latest music artist to receive the biopic treatment will make you nostalgic for the 1990s. According to The Hollywood Reporter, rocker Scott Weiland, who sang lead vocals for the bands Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver, will have his life story depicted in a movie called Paper Heart. Diehard STP fan Jennifer Erwin is writing the screenplay, based on Weiland’s 2011 autobiography Not Dead & Not for Sale, and will oversee the project with Orian Williams, who produced the 2007 music biopic Control about Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis. Weiland died in 2015 of an accidental drug overdose.
