Movie Muser

Arrow’s Stephen Amell has just got something to keep him busy over his show’s summer break, as Variety reports that he’s signed up to star in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2. He’ll be playing a character many thought should have been in the first movie, Casey Jones.

It won’t be too much of a stretch for him, as again he’ll be playing a vigilante, but instead of a hood and a bow, he’ll have a hockey mask and a baseball bat. Assuming they stick with the how the character was in the comics, he’ll end up helping the turtles as well as being a bit of a love interest for April O’Neill.

There are no details about the story, but Josh Appelbaum and André Nemec are once again writing the script, with Earth To Echo’s Dave Green directing.

The movie will start shooting in a couple of months, for release June 2016.

Proud Bostonian Mark Wahlberg is going home for a movie that’s bound to have a bit of resonance for him, as Patriot’s Day is all about the Boston Marathon Bombings. Deadline reports Wahlberg will produce and star, and also mentions that it will be in a race to screens against Boston Strong, starring Casey Affleck.

However they are slightly different film, as while Boston Strong concentrates on the effect the bombings had on the city in the week between the event and the capture of the bombers, Patriot’s Day is based around Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis (Mark Wahlberg) and his account of what happened during the hunt for the murderers, with the movie also using research and footage shot on the scene by news magazine programme 60 Minutes.

It’s suggested it will be made as an ‘intense thriller’ looking at the investigation into the bombing and the manhunt for Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s.

It’s a bit of corporate synergy, as 60 Minutes is a CBS programme, while the film will be backed by CBS Films.

Both movies hope to shoot this year for a 2016 release.

Disney seems determine to work its way through every animated movie it’s ever made and turn it into a live-action movie. They’ve done it with the likes of Cinderella, Alice In Wonderland and Maleficent, and they’ve got The Jungle Book, Dumbo and Beauty & The Beast in the works.

And now they’ve added another, as THR reports that Disney has just picked up a script about Mulan by Elizabeth Martin and Lauren Hynek, which centres on the Chinese legend of Hua Mulan, the female warrior who was the main character in Disney’s 1998 animated film.

There aren’t any more details than that, but the fact that Disney picked up a spec script suggests it won’t be straight adaptation of the 1998 movie, and may stay closer to the original legends.

It’s a smart move on Disney’s part, as all of Hollywood is chasing after the money that can be made in the fast-growing Chinese market, and with Mulan it has something with in-built Asian appear but it also known to Western audiences too.

Mulan is about a young woman who disguises herself as a man in order to join the military in the place of her conscripted elderly father. Pretending to be a man she becomes a hero, but inevitably her secret can’t stay hidden forever.