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WIRE Buzz: Cate Blanchett in talks for Borderlands; Bright 2 shines on Louis Leterrier
Eli Roth's Borderlands movie at Lionsgate is nearing its first bit of casting in the form of Cate Blanchett. According to Variety, the Lord of the Rings and Thor: Ragnarok actress is in serious talks to play Lilith, the red-haired member of the first game's "siren class," who benefits from "incredible, superhuman powers."
"We are out to make a new classic, one which the fans of the game will love, but also one which will find new audiences globally," Roth said when he was first named director in February.
Craig Mazin (creator of HBO's Chernobyl miniseries) is credited with writing the latest draft of the project's screenplay. Avi Arad (of Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy) is executive producing.
Developed by Gearbox Software and published by 2K Games, the Borderlands video game series is set in a distant future, where greedy corporations suck other planets dry for resources. However, the story is really about the lawlessness that crops up on these worlds when the corporations leave. What follows is a madcap mixture of treasure hunts, alien tech, sci-fi monsters — all of these elements wrapped up in a neat little bow of pitch black humor.
Netflix may have found a new director to helm the sequel to 2017's Bright.
As Deadline reports, filmmaker Louis Leterrier (the man behind the acclaimed Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance) is in serious talks to board the follow-up film, which was first announced in January 2018.
Bright director David Ayer (Suicide Squad) was originally going to return for the sequel, but that obviously doesn't seem to be the case any longer. A script by Evan Spiliotopoulos (co-scribe of 2017's Beauty and the Beast remake) was picked up by Netflix in May 2018.
Will Smith and Joel Edgerton are both locked in to reprise their roles as the human-orc cop duo of Daryl Ward and Nick Jakoby. Similar to Pixar's Onward, Bright is set in a modern world that naturally developed alongside fantasy beings like elves and dragons. Despite its strong premise, the first movie debuted to less than ecstatic reviews, but audiences still responded to the film in a big way.
Per Deadline, the sequel will place Ward and Jakoby "on an international stage."
Leterrier's other onscreen credits include: The Incredible Hulk (2008), Clash of the Titans (2010), and Now You See Me (2013).
