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Paramount has picked up a sci-fi action comedy pitch from Mortal Media, the banner of the NBA's Blake Griffin and the NFL's Ryan Kalil.

The untitled feature hails from duo Aaron Buchsbaum and Teddy Riley, who penned MGM's proposed Shanghai Noon sequel, Shanghai Dawn, and put together the pitch with Detroit Pistons forward Griffin and Carolina Panthers center Kalil.

Plot details are being kept under wraps, but the project is shaping up to be the first original feature being developed by the shingle. Mortal is developing a reboot of Disney's The Rocketeer (1991) that will be headlined by ...

Paramount has picked up a sci-fi action comedy pitch from Mortal Media, the banner of the NBA's Blake Griffin and the NFL's Ryan Kalil.

The untitled feature hails from duo Aaron Buchsbaum and Teddy Riley, who penned MGM's proposed Shanghai Noon sequel, Shanghai Dawn, and put together the pitch with Detroit Pistons forward Griffin and Carolina Panthers center Kalil.

Plot details are being kept under wraps, but the project is shaping up to be the first original feature being developed by the shingle. Mortal is developing a reboot of Disney's The Rocketeer (1991) that will be headlined by ...

Joseph Baxter Dec 7, 2016

Joe Carnahan’s ensemble action movie Five Against a Bullet nabs Jackie Chan as its first star.

It appears that Joe Carnahan’s next film is about rev its engines. While the helmer of Narc, Smokin’ Aces, The A-Team and The Grey hasn't been helming a new film this past year or two (he's instead been working on the writing and development of many others), he did sign up to direct and re-write an action ensemble piece called Five Against A Bullet back in 2014. Now, the reinvigorated project has procured one of its lead actors in an international superstar.

According to Variety, cinematic martial arts icon Jackie Chan has jumped aboard Five Against A Bullet as its star. The film – based on Carnahan’s re-write of a script by Predators scribe Alex Litvak – is set in a small Mexican town, depicting five bodyguards who are tasked with...

Gotta love a good old-fashioned Western. It’s a genre that’s been an American staple for decades. The image of the lone gunslinger is one that’s inspired countless novels, films, comics, and TV shows — and it’s one that’s bound to continue to do so for countless years. Though while as kids the genre may have been synonymous with fun adventure, the reality is that the majority of these flicks are slow, meditative character studies.

That’s all well and good, but I’m gonna chuck every one of those movies out the window today. You won’t find me talking about The Assassination of Jesse James, Once Upon A Time In The West, or The Unforgiven here. Granted, I acknowledge the quality of those films, but today, I wanted to highlight a handful of flicks that may be more in line with what we’ll be...

In 2000, we saw martial arts legend Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson team up in the old west homage Shanghai Noon, a film that gave a lighthearted update to the Western genre and remixed it with a Jackie Chan action flick. The result was pretty great stuff. As a fan of the Western genre, I found a lot to love in some of the nods they made to Spaghetti Western classics (such as the character Nathan Van Cleef), and it's difficult to go wrong with a Jackie Chan action scene. What's more, I thought Chan and Wilson had great chemistry.

A few years later, in 2003, we saw a sequel in Shanghai Knights, which took Chan and Wilson across the sea to Great Britain, where they fought against the power-hungry swordmaster Littlefinger -- I mean, Lord Rathbone. The movie itself, to me, was a step down from the original. No longer did...

Soon after the one-two punch of Shanghai Noon and middling sequel Shanghai Knights in 2000 and 2003, respectively, talk of a third entry into MGM’s cult action series faded and faded fast – that is, until now.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the studio is firmly committed to getting the long-in-development threequel back on track, courting both Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson to saddle up for another crowd-pleasing blend of Western and kung fu action. It’s still early days, of course, but we now understand Napoleon Dynamite helmer Jared Hess has agreed to terms to direct the Shanghai Noon sequel, which is currently tethered with the title Shanghai Dawn over at MGM.

Hess knows a thing or two about prolonged production cycles, too, after guiding Masterminds to the finish line, only to have the crime caper delayed by a full year as a result of Relativity’s financial woes. As for Shanghai Dawn,...

We Do Not Forget: Daniel Radcliffe and Zachary Quinto will star in We Do Not Forget, inspired by a real-life battle between a group of activist hackers and a Mexican drug cartel. Zach Helm  (Stranger Than Fiction) wrote the script and will direct. Antoine Fuqua (The Magnificent Seven) is one of the producers. [Deadline]   Shanghai Dawn: Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson are in talks to star in Shanghai Dawn, to be directed by Jared Hess (Napoleon Dynamite). If things work out,...

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Well, finally. After 13 years of talk, rumor has it Owen Wilson and Jackie Chan will finally be reprising their roles in the third installment of MGM’s “Shanghai Noon” comedy series, “Shanghai Dawn,” but this time, it will be helmed by “Napoleon Dynamite” director Jared Hess.

Read More: Jared Hess’s ‘Peluca’ Short Film: Watch The Early Blueprint for ‘Napoleon Dynamite’

If you aren’t familiar, the “Shanghai” films are a modern, buddy-pic combo plate of Western meets Kung-Fu movie; in the first, Chon Wang (Jackie Chan), an Imperial guard, trails the captors of a Chinese princess to Nevada with the intention to save her, there meeting his cowboy outlaw partner Roy O’Bannon, (Owen Wilson) who helps him do just that. In the second installment, 2003’s “Shanghai Knights,” the duo bring their shenanigans to London to seek revenge for the murder of Chon’s estranged father.

Read More: Watch: Kristen Wiig,...

Jackie Chan quickly rose to fame in the United States in the late 1990s thanks to his co-starring turn alongside Chris Tucker in the action comedy Rush Hour, which turned into a franchise. But let’s not forget about the other buddy comedy that Hollywood brought Jackie Chan into alongside Owen Wilson. Shanghai Noon followed Jackie […]

The post Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson Are Returning for ‘Shanghai Dawn’ appeared first on /Film.

Perhaps I’ll lose some Film Twitter cred, but I also don’t care, so here goes: “Shanghai Noon” and (in particular) “Shanghai Knights” are total guilty pleasures for me. Say what you will, but I think the pairing and chemistry of Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson works quite well in those movies, and have a good […]

The post Jackie Chan & Owen Wilson Reteam For ‘Shanghai Dawn’ appeared first on The Playlist.

Over a year ago, we wrote about the possibility of a sequel to Shanghai Noon and Shanghai Knights called Shanghai Dawn, which would bring back stars Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson more than a decade after the last movie in this series came out. We hadn't heard much else about the project in the meantime, but THR has just announced that Jared Hess, the director of Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre, has been hired to direct it for MGM.

Miles Millar and Alfred Gough, the Smallville scribes who also wrote the screenplays for the first two movies in this franchise, came up with the story for this sequel, and Theodore Riley and Aaron Buchsbaum handled the actual writing duties. The plot details for this upcoming installment are unknown at this time, but if Chan and Wilson end up signing on (they're currently in negotiations to return), it'll involve the continuing...