Ben Stiller in ‘Night at the Museum’. Photo: 20th Century Fox.
Preview:
Tripper Clancy is writing a re-imagining of the ‘Night at the Museum’ movies.
Original director Shawn Levy is aboard to produce.
There is no cast attached yet.
We’ve gotten used to reboots, remakes and re-imaginings of older movies. But apparently “older” now also means 2006. Pardon us while we crumble to dust.
Yet it’s true: 20th Century Studios, the Disney arm that represents all the titles inherited when the Mouse House merged with/swallowed up 20th Century Fox, is now putting a ‘Night at the Museum’ update into development, hiring writer Tripper Clancy to start work on a script.
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Per Deadline, Shawn Levy, who directed and produced the three original ‘Museum’ movies (more on them below) is attached to produce this new one via his 21 Laps company, but we have a feeling he’ll hand the directing duties over to someone else now, since he’s currently busy putting a ‘Star Wars’ movie together in addition to the many other projects he has bubbling away in development.
Ben Stiller in ‘Night at the Museum’. Photo: 20th Century Fox.
The original franchise had writers Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon adapting the 1993 children’s book by Milan Trenc, where a night watchman at a natural history museum sees his job descend into chaos when exhibits come to life after dark.
Following Disney’s acquisition of Fox in 2019, the studio moved to expand the franchise with ‘Night at the Museum: Kahmunrah Rises Again’, an animated movie produced by Levy for Disney+, which premiered in 2022.
What will the new ‘Night at the Museum’ be about?
(L to R) Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller in ‘Night at the Museum’. Photo: 20th Century Fox.
There are zero details about what the new movie will feature, beyond Deadline reporting that it’ll be set at a museum with all-new characters. So unless he cameos, Stiller seems unlikely to be on the cast roster.
Clancy has worked with 21 Laps and Netflix as co-executive producer of the series ‘I Am Not Okay With This’, as well as in developing ‘Bolivar’, a TV series based on the beloved children’s book alongside Kumail Nanjiani and Emily Gordon.
Shawn Levy attends the UK Fan Event of Marvel Studios’ ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ at Eventim Apollo, London on July 11th, 2024. Photo by StillMoving.Net for The Walt Disney Company Limited.
Director Shawn Levy‘s string of consecutive hits has made him one of the most popular filmmakers working today.
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While Disney is busy axing in-the-works projects from newly acquired 20th Century Fox, it’s going full steam ahead on rebooting some of Fox’s most popular films.
“We’re also focused on leveraging Fox’s vast library of great titles to further enrich the content mix on our [direct to consumer] platforms,” said Iger.
Whether those films will be reborn as feature films or TV series, we don’t yet know.
In addition to Disney’s “vault” offerings, new original “Star Wars” and Marvel series, there will be 300 hours of classic Fox content when Disney+ launches November 12.
