New news keeps pouring in on a daily basis, faster than I can discuss it here. Doesn't stop me from trying though:
http://www.moviescene.nl/p/154509/sofia_coppola_regisseert_mogelijk_the_little_mermaid_
http://www.moviescene.nl/p/154508/disney_maakt_cars_3_en_incredibles_2
http://www.moviescene.nl/p/154488/mangold_terug_voor_wolverine_2
People who think Coppola might not be suited for directing a fairy tale are overlooking the fact that the basic contents of The Little Mermaid are much like some of Coppola's earlier work, they're just packaged differently. Stories about teenage girls living in a fantasy world all their own and trying to have things their way which backfires on them doesn't sound so different thematicaly from the likes of The Bling Ring, Marie Antoinette or The Virgin Suicides to my mind. They just appear dissimilar on the surface. That said, the notion of doing a "kid-friendly" family film is probably what deters most people who prefer to see Coppola tackling more (young) adult oriented material, as she hasn't done a project like this yet. However, that's not to say she is not capable of making such a movie. Let's face it: Coppola's career as a director of feature length films spans nearly two decades but has only spawned five movies in total. That's not enough of an output to judge a director's capacities on, it's only an indication of what type of films he/she is particularly drawn to. As I have stated before, directors need change, and I'd say here's a chance for Coppola to prove her directorial versatility. She has two young kids of her own, for crying out loud; why wouldn't she be interested in a fun movie for the whole family, that still allows her to incorporate her signature themes to some extent? Even though I'm personally not all that stoked for this project - which definitely has something to do with the fact the Disney version of The Little Mermaid is the first movie I ever saw in theaters, and the second too - I think the studio might just have made the perfect choice with Coppola.
Speaking of Disney, they're steering Pixar, formerly known for their sublime creativity, into a rampant case of suffering severe sequelitis. Currently, the studio is working on only a single original project, The Good Dinosaur, which was already put on hold for a whole year. Other than that, it's all sequels for the next few years: Planes 2, an alleged Toy Story 4, Finding Dory, Cars 3, The Incredibles 2. People used to praise Pixar for doing something new every time, while their competitor DreamWorks was maligned for milking itself dry completely. They won't be doing that anymore, as by now the situation seems to have reversed entirely. It appears Disney decides to play it safe by counting on established multi-billion dollar franchises instead of letting original ideas take precedence. And if those sequels weren't enough, there's a few more 3D re-releases slated too, making the studio more money by pushing the same stuff on us again, just at higher admission prices. That said, I prefer a re-release, so we can all enjoy those classic Pixar movies again before they're totally spoiled by their unneccessary and undesirable sequels. However, Pixar proved with Toy Story 2 and 3 that they can do justice to the originals be making sequels that manage to actually surpass the quality of their predecessors, but ever since Cars 2 and the terribly uninspired spin-off Planes - at a point when Disney had taken over the company - the odds of that happening again are not in our favour. Let's hope The Good Dinosaur will at least live up to its name.
And the X-universe just keeps on Xpanding cinematically (see what I did there?). Ever since the mind boggling success of Marvel's The Avengers, rival studios that own a piece of the Marvel Universe have taken a hint as to how they ought to approach handling their properties to achieve similar success. Unlike Sony, which only manages a single big name and its various supporting characters, Fox has the luck of owning a big name tentpole franchise, X-Men, that consists of a lot more characters and therefore a lot more possibilities for sequels, spin-offs and such, making for an easily growing cinematic legacy. Apparently the 'Avengers approach' is already applied in full swing with X-Men: Days of Future Past, a storyline which will continue into X-Men: Apocalypse (2016), the latter of which might actually deal with the infamous Age of Apocalypse mirror universe, or else with a variation on the established cinematic X-routine. Days of Future Past might end with its broken time line fixed or not, and still able to pave the way for coherently branching off into multiple temporal directions. X-Force (2016 or 2017) for eXample will certainly pick up where Apocalypse left off, as it deals with Apocalypse's primary nemesis Cable and his merry band of young mutant acolytes, but it can still take place alongside the regular X-storyline that we last saw in last year's The Wolverine, either being interwoven with characters we already know, in various possible iterations (future/present/alternate universe) no less. And now The Wolverine is getting a sequel too (2017/2018?), which most likely will continue on the events of Days of Future Past - as those were already foreshadowed in its mid-credits bonus scene - but could skip over Apocalypse altogether, while still relating to X-Force in a minor capacity. And if things aren't complicated enough by all these Xses being thrown around, Fox still has to think of how on Earth they're going to incorporate their other Marvel franchise, the Fantastic Four, into all this too, as they have stated to be their intention. Because of all the time travelling and alternate reality possibilities, directors working on this corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe might face a tougher job that those who work on Marvel's own, which is served more straightforwardly on a narrative level. James Mangold might just have his job cut out for him. Or he may ignore Days of Future Past, Apocalypse and X-Force completely and just have The Wolverine 2 follow his previous movie directly, focusing only on its titular character. For Sony, such a reliance on a single character is kind of a curse, but for Mangold it just might be a luXury.
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