Apple TV+ is revving up its engines for a new live-action televised take on Tatsuo Yoshida’s 1960s manga IP, Speed Racer. Multiple trade sources are discussing the series and there’s word that J.J. Abrams will exec produce the series via his Bad Robot banner, with Hiram Martinez (Snowpiercer, Get Shorty) co-writing and serving as showrunner.
I haven’t seen the original anime from 2016 (I want to and actually hope to soon as possible), but I’m keen on the kind of harrowing love story that Webb may be able to achieve here with a plot that centers on two distant high schoolers who are drawn closer while mysteriously switching bodies ahead of a disastrous event. Screenwriter Eric Heiserrer (Arrival) is penning Webb’s vision that centers instead on a young Native American woman living in a rural area, and a young man from Chicago.
THR‘s coverage this week on upcoming independent thriller, Lou, is being said to tonally span the likes of Thelma and Louise and Taken. Just the mention of those particular titles strike a chord as we learn more about the project hailing from J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, formerly in the hands of Paramount.
Borys Kit over at The Hollywood Reporter has an exclusive update officially announcing James Avery and J.J. Abrams for what’s been described as none other than a subversive take on the superhero genre. The Heavy is the name and sounds like an original, inviting concept on which Abrams will produce with Avery at the helm.
News of the film comes following last week’s festive appeal to attendees during Paramount’s panel at CinemaCon in Vegas for the Son Of A Gun director’s latest period WWII horror sci-fi, Overlord. That film, penned by Billy Ray and Mark L. Smith and telling of American paratroopers on D-Day who discover Nazis’ hidden experiments with the undead, opens on October 26.
Obviously something like this will hit a sour note for anyone who’s paid attention to the dialogue on the treatment of Asian IPs and films like Ghost In The Shell and Death Note are all recent examples of this. The choice to do an adaptation of this nature does bring some interest, however, and so one can only hope that the film will acquire all the right ingredients needed to make it work. I still need to see Shinkai’s film and I’ll be sure to do that before long.
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