News of the Week: Chris Evans & Dwayne Johnson To Star In Holiday Action-Comedy

February 2022 is just around the corner, and Hollywood is charging into awards season with tons of big news for your eyeballs. Exciting projects are on the horizon this week, with the headlines bringing big casting announcements, fun sequel treatments, and updates on two huge TV shows. As always, Atom Insider brings you a few hand-picked stories we think you’ll like. Ready? Let’s dive in.

Chris Evans and Dwayne Johnson To Star In Holiday Action-Comedy ‘Red One’

Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson just seems to be racking up projects with his buddies, and this week brings news of what might be his most exciting team-up yet. Deadline broke the news that he’s set to star opposite Chris Evans in Red One for Amazon Studios. Veteran Jake Kasdan (the Jumanji movies, Walk Hard) is set to direct. The movie is described as a holiday-set action-adventure comedy that spans the globe, however, specific plot details are being kept under wraps. The story was apparently pitched by Johnson’s Seven Bucks partner Hiram Garcia. Frequent Seven Bucks collaborator Chris Morgan (the Fast & Furious franchise) is penning the script. Reportedly, it landed with Amazon after a huge bidding war last year. Red One will mark the first time Evans and Johnson have ever starred in a film together and it will be fun to see the chemistry they bring to the table. Currently, it’s set for a holiday 2023 release. Both Evans and Johnson are incredibly busy, but if they want that release date to hold, they’ll have to carve out a few months in their schedule this year to shoot.

‘Godzilla’ TV Show In The Works

Legendary’s Monsterverse is expanding and heading to the small screen, with a Godzilla spinoff TV show reportedly in the works. Legendary Television and AppleTV+ are partnering on the project, which is set to explore the Titans, other creatures, and the secret scientific organization Monarch, which tracks them all. Two exciting names are behind the project, as well. Award-winning comic book writer Matt Fraction (Hawkeye, Sex Criminals) and sci-fi veteran Chris Black (Outcast, Star Trek Enterprise) are serving as executive producers and co-creators, with Black set as showrunner. In Apple’s announcement, the series was described as “following the thunderous battle between Godzilla and the Titans that leveled San Francisco and the shocking new reality that monsters are real,” and will explore “one family’s journey to uncover its buried secrets and a legacy linking them to the secret organization known as Monarch.” Considering how successful the Monsterverse has been for Legendary, it seems likely this is a project Apple will move on quickly. We can expect to hear more news about this project sooner rather than later.

Holiday Classic ‘A Christmas Story’ Is Getting A Sequel

Speaking of Legendary, they recently made news in another way. They and Warner Bros. are teaming up for a sequel to the classic holiday movie A Christmas Story. Reportedly, it’s set to be one of Hollywood’s ubiquitous legacy sequels, with the story this time involving a grown-up Ralphie and Peter Billingsley set to reprise his iconic role. The sequel will be set in the 1970s, 30 years after the original 1940s-set movie, and will find Ralphie bringing his own kids to his small hometown in Indiana to give them the same kind of idyllic Christmas he had when growing up. Sadly, it will also deal with Ralphie grappling with the passing of his “old man,” brilliantly played in the 1983 movie by Darren McGavin. The script will be written by Nick Schenk (Cry Macho, Gran Torino) and directed by Clay Kaytis (The Christmas Chronicles). Billingsley will produce alongside his creative partner Vince Vaughn. Surprisingly, this isn’t being developed for HBO Max or another streaming service, but is set for a theatrical release. Production will begin this February in Hungary.

Live-Action ‘The Aristocats’ Movie In Development At Disney

The Disney live-action remake train continues to roll down the tracks. Deadline revealed that the studio is currently in development on a live-action remake of its 1970 animated feature The Aristocats. The project is still in the early stages of development, with Will Gluck (Annie, the Peter Rabbit movies) and Keith Bunin (Horns, Onward) currently working on the first draft of the script. The animated original follows a family of cats–mama cat Duchess, and her kittens Berlioz, Marie and Toulouse–living a pampered life in Paris. But when their owner’s scheming butler learns that the cats are set to inherit a huge fortune, he kidnaps them and dumps them off in the countryside far away from their home. In an unfamiliar world, they team up with savvy, cunning stray cat Thomas O’Malley, who promises to help them find their way home again. It’s unclear if the new story will make considerable changes to the original, but the style is reportedly going to be less like 2019’s all-CGI The Lion King and more like that same year’s Lady and the Tramp, which used a mix of real animals with computer animation.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead Joins Live-Action Star Wars Series ‘Ahsoka’

Just because the Star Wars universe is in something of a lull on the movie side of things doesn’t mean Lucasfilm isn’t expanding the universe in a big way on the small screen. One of the most anticipated upcoming Star Wars shows on Disney+ is Ahsoka, with Rosario Dawson set to reprise the role of the titular character, who made her first live-action appearance in The Mandalorian season 2. Now, Ahsoka‘s cast is growing by one: Mary Elizabeth Winstead has joined the cast in an undisclosed role. She joins a cast that already includes Hayden Christensen returning to his role of young Anakin Skywalker, Ahsoka Tano’s Jedi mentor before his turn to the dark side and rebirth as Darth Vader. Natasha Liu Bordizzo has also recently been cast as Sabine Wren, one of Ahsoka’s close compatriots in their original animated series Star Wars Rebels, as has Ukrainian actress Ivanna Sakhno, whose role is unknown. It’s not yet known what Ahsoka‘s story involves. But, considering Ahsoka‘s time period (five years after Return of the Jedi) and how Rebels left off, it’s possible and even likely that it will find Ahsoka and Sabine traveling the galaxy searching for their companion Ezra Bridger, who disappeared into the deep space of the Unknown Regions at the end of Rebels. Rumors have circulated for some time that Aladdin actor Mena Massoud was set to appear as Ezra Bridger in one of the Star Wars live-action series; if that rumor is true, it’s likely that Ahsoka will be it.

‘Moon Knight’ Writer Tapped To Pen ‘Mortal Kombat 2’ For Warner Bros.

Moon Knight head writer Jeremy Slater already has his next project lined up and it’s another action-packed story: New Line has hired him to pen the script for Mortal Kombat 2. The first Mortal Kombat movie, directed by Simon McQuoid, received mixed reviews for its lackluster story but proved a hit in pandemic times. It simultaneously debuted in April 2021 in theaters and on HBO Max, becoming the #1 movie in theaters and enjoying huge success on the streaming platform since its release. Despite the success of the first movie, New Line clearly aims to punch up the script for the sequel, and it’s made a good choice in Slater, who is one of the hottest writers in Hollywood right now. Along with Marvel’s Moon Knight, he’s also writing Thread for Sony, which is being described as a cross between Aliens and Back to the Future. He also recently penned the adaptation of Stephen King’s Tommyknockers and Netflix film Uprising, and was also the creator of Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy adaptation, and creator and co-showrunner on Fox’s The Exorcist series. No other details for Mortal Kombat 2 are confirmed yet, but it can be expected that every actor and character who survived the first movie will return for the sequel. It can also be safely assumed that fan-favorite character Johnny Cage, who was teased at the end of the first movie, will be introduced in the follow-up.