NEWS

Back in 1991 Disney massively hyped up their mega-budget comic book movie, The Rocketeer, but unfortunately the movie landed with a thud at the box office. While director Joe Johnston has talked about a sequel ever since, it never seemed likely to happen.

However, now Vulture reports that the House Of Mouse is now mulling over rebooting the character, hoping that in these more comic friendly times – and with Iron Man and Captain America having proved popular – it may be time to bring The Rocketeer back to the big screen.

Based on Dave Stevens’ 1982 comic, The Rocketeer featured Bill Campbell as Cliff Secord, a daredevil racing pilot in the late 1930s who comes across an experimental rocket jetpack stolen from Howard Hughes. He uses the pack to become a masked hero, which brings him into conflict with the gangsters who stole it in the first place and eventually sees him battling Nazis. Jennifer Connelly, Alan Arkin and Timothy Dalton co-starred.

At the minute any reboot is in the very early stages, with Disney soliciting ideas from writers for a new take on the character, so there’s a good chance it may never happen, especially with so much comic-book cash being funnelled from Disney to Marvel for their movies, but it might be fun if it did.

Earlier this month, Jeff Daniels revealed that Dumb and Dumber 2 is still alive and kicking, debunking a report from June that indicated Jim Carrey had dropped out of the comedy sequel.

Director Bobby Farrelly has now confirmed that he and his brother Peter Farrelly still plan to direct this sequel sometime next year, and revealed a few tidbits about the story. He told Digital Spy, “I can tell you that there is no growth out of either one of them and it’s 20 years later. What is funny about the original is that they’re grown men who are complete losers and when the studio came to us about a sequel, we were like, ‘Loads of kids are losers and they’re dumb.’ We didn’t see any value in the sequel so we backed out of it, but now these guys are in regular life and they’re still basically children at heart. The story revolves around the fact that one of them may have sired a child. They want to go and find the child because he’s having a kidney problem and he wants to ask him for one of his kidneys.”

The filmmaker also said they originally hoped to start shooting this autumn, although that isn’t possible now that Jeff Daniels’ HBO show The Newsroom will be in production at that time. He revealed that the new plan is to get production started next spring. “We were hoping to shoot it very soon – this fall – but that didn’t come to pass because of scheduling conflicts. Jeff has a successful TV show over here now so we have to work around that. We are planning on shooting it this coming spring and hopefully it will be out by next fall. That’s the plan and that will be our next movie, we’ve already written the script. We’re very anxious to get back in business with those two guys.”

Following a wave of interest in movies based on bible characters in Hollywood, Warner Bros. has picked up Pontius Pilate, a screenplay by Vera Blasi (Woman On Top, Tortilla Soup), which puts a fresh spin on this rather difficult Biblical figure.

The script follows the entire life of Lucius Pontius Pilate, the son of a Roman knight and a cunning warrior in his own right. He is assigned to become the prefect of Judea, where his arrogance clouds his judgement and causes the public to despise him. This leads to his decision on the fate of Jesus Christ, a man claiming to be the King of the Jews.

Other Biblical figures such as John the Baptist, Salome, and Mary Magdalene are also featured in this drama, which slightly oddly has been described as, “a Biblical era Twilight Zone episode,” although quite what’s meant by that isn’t clear.

Here’s what the screenwriter had to say about this story that mixes historical fact with creative elements:”You have the available facts from Roman and Jewish history books and the four gospels, and then you are left to speculate, to interpret the character of Pilate and give him a dilemma. He seemed a great way to offer context to this very famous event, and if you look at it from the perspective of the Roman governor of that time, it allows for an investigation of the politics of Judea at the time, and what it was like to be occupied by Rome.” (Source: Deadline)