One of last year’s biggest announcements at the San Diego Comic-Con was that Universal was planning to reboot the King Kong franchise with an origin movie that was supposed to come out early 2017. The release date still stands, although the Film has already lost legendary actors, Michael Keaton, and recent Academy Award-winner, J.K. Simmons, due to scheduling conflicts.
After the moderate financial success of Pacific Rim (2013) and Godzilla (2014), which both featured giant monsters, it was just a matter of time until studios ventured back to film history’s most famous gorilla, King Kong.
Peter Jackson’s movie back in 2005 was a nice remake that still holds an average score of 7.3 at imdb.com, but the truth is it’s already a 10 years old film. With the recent trends of remakes and reboots in Hollywood it was about time for another remake anyways, which will be reportedly an origin story – that would leave the door open for a possible sequel.
Kong: Skull Island will tell the story of a team of explorers that stumble upon the island that is King Kong’s home. Universal teamed up with Legendary Pictures to make the movie, and executives of the latter have stressed that the plot will honour the foundations that the original created back in 1933. The script is written by John Gatins (Flight) and Max Borenstein (Godzilla).
Hopefully, Borenstein learned his lesson with Godzilla, and we’ll see more footage of the actual main hero, King Kong than we saw Godzilla in his first try at the genre.
Even after the departure of Michael Keaton and J.K. Simmons the film, which is expected to start shooting later this year, will still have the firepower as Tom Hiddleston, a.k.a.
everyone’s favourite Loki will play a significant role, with Jordan Vogt-Roberts directing. Vogt-Roberts mostly directed episodes for TV shows like You’re The Worst, Mash Up, Death Valley or Single Dads, but he also made The Kings of Summer (2013), a teenage drama with positive feedbacks from the audience and the critics alike. Whether he can handle a blockbuster movie as well as a low-budget one, that’s a question that will be answered on March 10,
