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WIRE Buzz: Millie Bobby Brown lines up 'Damsel' at Netflix; Taika Waititi's Coke ad; and Spawn movie update
It seems Millie Bobby Brown is a big fan of her adopted production home at Netflix. After Stranger Things and Enola Holmes, the young actress is once again teaming up with the streaming giant for a fantasy film project entitled Damsel. Brown will star in and executive produce the film, which is set to be helmed by 28 Weeks Later director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, Deadline has confirmed.
Named after the "damsel in distress" trope, the movie centers around Princess Elodie (Brown) who is led to believe that she is going to marry Prince Henry. That couldn't be farther from the truth because she's about to be sacrificed to a hungry dragon.
Dan Mazeau (Wrath of the Titans) penned the screenplay and will executive produce the feature alongside Brown, Joe Roth, Jeff Kirschenbaum, Zack Roth, and Chris Castaldi.
While he was waiting for the green-light to shoot Thor: Love and Thunder for Marvel Studios, Taika Waititi secretly directed a holiday-themed Coca-Cola ad. The two-and-a-half-minute commercial (titled "The Letter") involves a father going the extra mile to deliver a Christmas letter to Santa on behalf of his young daughter. We won't spoil the ending, but be warned: it will leave you with tears in your eyes by the end.
“It’s no secret that 2020 has been a difficult year on so many levels,” Walter Susini, SVP of marketing for Coca-Cola Europe, said in a statement. "Christmas is traditionally a time when people spend quality time with loved ones. However, given the year we’ve all had, spending dedicated time and being present in the moment with loved ones will be the priority above all else."
Watch now:
The spot was filmed over a period of five days in Waititi's home country of New Zealand with a local production crew and local actors. This mean there was no need for the strict COVID safety measures that are now the norm for live-action film shoots around the world. Thanks to its small size and remote location, New Zealand is one of the few nations on the planet that has completely contained the spread of the novel coronavirus.
“Physical distance doesn’t mean we can’t be present,” Susini added. “With the pandemic, we’ve seen how we are able to use technology to great effect to connect with those we love. We have opened our eyes this year to the fact that time is the most precious thing of all, no matter what form that may be in."
You can learn more about the commercial (made in partnership with Wieden+Kennedy London) right here.
Still waiting for that cinematic Spawn reboot to enter production? Yeah, so are we. Join the club, pal. In what feels like the umpteenth time he's done something like this, Jason Blum offered up yet another update on the long-gestating adaptation of Todd McFarlane's demonic antihero.
"It’s gonna be very different, it’s gonna be very edgy. What excited me about it is that Spawn is kind of the last great unexploited comic. So that seemed like an amazing opportunity," the prolific Blumhouse founder/producer recently told Inverse. "It’s taken longer than I hoped it would have to get the story right, but we’re still working on it."
As of right now, Jamie Foxx is attached to play Al Simmons, but that could change if the development process continues to drag on like this. The same can be said for Jeremy Renner, who is supposed to play Detective Twitch Williams. No writer or director has been announced yet. For his part, McFarlane wants to keep Spawn for a good chunk of the runtime, which makes potential studios naturally hesitant.
"I keep wanting to maybe be a little too cute with how I introduce Spawn," he told SYFY WIRE last year. "A lot of people reading [the script] go, ‘I need to see more of him.’ I keep saying, ‘He’s just my boogeyman in this movie, and then once we get to Part II, then he’ll come full flight into the afternoon light. But [in] the first one, he’s hiding in the shadows until it’s the right time to come out.’"
