by Conan Simmons – October 14, 2020 – 6:35 pm
Director Ridley Scott, who helmed ‘Gladiator’ and ‘Alien’, is making an epic about Napoleon Bonaparte titled ‘Kitbag’. Joaquin Phoenix, whose career got a major boost when he worked with Scott on ‘Gladiator’, is now cast as the famed French general-turned-emperor.
As Ridley Scott just wrapped filming on ‘The Last Duel’ and about to start filming ‘Gucci’, there is no word yet as to when ‘Kitbag’ will start cameras rolling.
‘Kitbag’ is produced by Ridley Scott and Kevin Walsh from a script by David Scarpa, who previously worked with Scott on ‘All the Money in the World’. The film is set up at Disney’s 20th Century Studios. The studio was acquired by Disney last year. (Wouldn’t it be funny if they used this banner to only produce historical movies?)
As the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic keeps theaters mostly shuttered and films yet to get full swing back to filming, there is a lot of development and pre-production going on. A good and much needed sign for the movie industry to get back to fully functioning.
‘Moonfall’, a science-fiction disaster movie about the Moon crashing into Earth is rounding out its cast with Halle Berry (‘X-Men’), Patrick Wilson (‘The Conjuring’), Stanley Tucci (‘Captain America: The First Avenger’), Charlie Plummer (‘All the Money in the World’) and John Bradley (‘Game of Thrones’), who is replacing Josh Gad due to scheduling conflicts.
‘Moonfall’ is being directed by Roland Emmerich, which means we can expect a film along the lines of ‘2012’. Roland Emmerich is this generation’s Irwin Allen. If you don’t know Irwin Allen, he was the Master of Disaster in the 1970’s with films ‘The Poseidon Adventure’, ‘The Towering Inferno’ and ‘The Swarm’ as well as hit television series ‘Lost in Space’, ‘Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea’ and ‘The Time Tunnel’.
In other production news, director Cary Fukunaga, fresh off the still delayed 007 thriller ‘No Time to Die’, is making progress on another film he has been attached to since February 2017. An adaptation of Stephen Walker’s book “Shockwave: Countdown to Hiroshima” about the dropping of the H-bomb in 1945. Screenwriter Tom Stoppard is now set to write the screenplay for the historical drama. Stoppard is a quality screenwriter whose previous credits include ‘Shakespeare in Love’ and ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead’.