EXCLUSIVE: Fox/Disney has attached
Thor: Ragnarok director
Taika Waititi to “crack”
Flash Gordon, as an animated feature film.
I had heard that the inventive filmmaker Waititi was signing on to write and direct, but his camp indicates it’s too early to gauge exactly what his role would be. The director is in post on
Jojo Rabbit, his scripted adaptation of the Christine Leunens novel, a satire in which a young boy in Hitler’s army discovers that his mother is hiding a Jewish girl from the Nazis. Despite the ruthless nationalism in the air, the youth is torn and one of this voices guiding him is his idiot imaginary friend, Adolf Hitler — Waititi plays him.
Waititi recently extricated himself from another animated film,
Bubbles, the Netflix stop motion project. Even though the film went in a
$20 million package after ferocious bidding during the 2017 Cannes market for a Black List script by Isaac Adamson, the project was challenged once HBO aired
Leaving Neverland, an HBO documentary about two former child companions of Jackson whose parents inexplicably allowed them to take part in sleepovers with the singer. Now grown, tormented men, the duo alleged that Jackson engaged in pedophile sexual relationships with each of them. The Jackson estate has denied this, but as inventive as Waititi is as a filmmaker, how do you make any movie about Jackson’s life, as seen through the eyes of his pet chimp? The official reason for Waititi’s withdrawal was
“scheduling.”
Flash Gordon has been in development for what seems like ages —
Kingsman‘s Matthew Vaughn and
Overlord director Julius Avery are the most recent filmmakers to align with the project — but an animated film is an intriguing way to tackle an iconic property that slipped into the cheesy category thanks to a 1980 film that starred Sam Jones and Max Von Sydow and had a memorable theme song and soundtrack by Freddie Mercury and Queen.
Flash Gordon returns to its origins here. It began in 1934 as a science-fiction comic strip created by and originally drawn by Alex Raymond to compete with
Buck Rogers. Earth is threatened by a collision with the planet Mongo, and Flash is sent off in a rocket ship in an attempt to stop the disaster. He’s pitted against Mongo’s tyrannical ruler Ming the Merciless. The comic strip led to a serial starring
Buster Crabbe and multiple movies and television series. The 1980 film got some hero worship by Seth MacFarlane’s live action/animation hybrid,
Ted. After
Bohemian Rhapsody, is there any reason not to bring back the music?
waititi is at it again...