Emmy Raver-Lampman and Jemma Redgrave are among the returning cast for ‘The Beekeeper 2’.
Star Jason Statham will also be back as the skilled operative.
‘Nobody 2’s Timo Tjahjanto is in the director’s chair.
While 2024’s Jason Statham-led action thriller ‘The Beekeeper’ saw a somewhat mixed reaction from critics, there’s no denying audience embraced the star’s latest chunk of clash-happy chaos, to the tune of $162 million worldwide.
There is a change behind the camera, however, as ‘Nobody 2’ director Timo Tjahjanto will take over calling the shots for David Ayer, who handled the original.
The 2024 original, scripted by Kurt Wimmer, saw Statham as Adam Clay, a former operative of a clandestine organization called “Beekeepers”.
After his friend and neighbor (Phylicia Rashad) dies by suicide after falling for a phishing scam, Clay sets out to exact revenge against the company responsible.
Raver-Lampman played Verona Parker, an FBI agent hot on Adam’s trail while Naderi was Parker’s partner, Agent Matt Wiley.
Redgrave appeared as Jessica Danforth, the President of the United States, entangled in the deadly scheme. She was also the mother to Josh Hutcherson’s Derek Danforth, the main antagonist of the first film. Irons, meanwhile, was Wallace Westwyld, a former CIA director serving as the head of security for Danforth Enterprises.
Wimmer has returned to write the script for the new movie, but the story is being kept in the hive for now. Mostly we’re guessing it’ll be a fresh excuse for Statham to kick a lot of butt.
And ‘Grown-ish’s Yara Shahidi will also be part of the cast for the new movie in an unknown role.
When will ‘The Beekeeper 2’ be on screens?
With Miramax producing and financing and Amazon MGM Studios once more aboard to distribute worldwide, the new movie is now in production.
We don’t have an official release date just yet, but we could see this one targeting an early-mid 2026 slot.
On Disney+ now, ‘Peter Pan & Wendy’ is the latest attempt by the studio to transform one of its animated classics into live action. And thankfully, despite being pushed straight to streaming, this reveals itself to be far better than the much-maligned ‘Pinocchio’ conversion job that (dis)graced screens last year, even that had Robert Zemeckis directing and Tom Hanks starring.
And that’s largely thanks to director David Lowery, who finds a lyrical, visually lush approach and ups the emotional ante to give the story more meaning.
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What’s the story of ‘Peter Pan & Wendy?’
Given that author J.M. Barrie’s original play premiered back in 1904 and it, and the novel spawned from it have been adapted many, many times through the years, it’s hard to imagine anyone doesn’t know the narrative for this one. But just in case…
‘Peter Pan & Wendy’ introduces us to Wendy Darling (Ever Anderson), a young girl on the verge of leaving her family and childhood home behind to attend boarding school. One night, Wendy and brothers Michael (Jacobi Jupe –– yes, the younger brother of ‘A Quiet Place’s Noah) and John (Joshua Pickering) meet Peter Pan (Alexander Molony), a boy who refuses to grow up.
Alongside her brothers and a tiny fairy, Tinker Bell (Yara Shahidi), she travels with Peter to the magical world of Never Land. There, she encounters an evil pirate captain, Captain Hook (Jude Law), and embarks on a thrilling and dangerous adventure that will change her life forever.
Even with a seemingly failsafe story, Peter Pan has offered mixed blessings to filmmakers through the years. Disney famously made a successful animated version way back in 1953, but in more recent times, it has become something of a third rail for directors who dare to go near it.
It has provided flops for ‘Muriel’s Wedding’ filmmaker P.J. Hogan, whose 2003 traditional ‘Peter Pan’ boasted Jason Isaacs as Captain Hook but could only wrangle $121 million worldwide from a $100 million budget (not counting advertising etc.) ‘Atonement’s Joe Wright tried a punkier, revised version in 2015 with Hugh Jackman playing Hook. That did even worse, losing money. And even more recently, ‘Beasts of the Southern Wild’s Benh Zeitlin turned the focus to Wendy Darling with, well, ‘Wendy’, which was made for $6 million and has so far returned less than $300,000 on limited, pandemic-impacted release after it landed in 2020.
Yet Lowery has pulled off something that feels like it both channels Barrie’s original story and does interesting things with it that make it feel fresh.
This is, of course, not Lowery’s first ride on the Disney rodeo either –– he previously brought the world a fine adaptation of ‘Pete’s Dragon’. With that movie there was a lot more scope for change, the director swapping the live action/cartoon musical story for a more grounded (aside from the whole dragon thing), story of a lost boy who finds solace in a giant winged creature.
Lost boys –– and girls –– are, of course a big part of the ‘Pan’ story (Peter has a group he’s collected through the years), and in finding his young cast, Lowery has tracked down some authentic (and authentically diverse) actors to bring the roles to life.
Ever Anderson, daughter of Milla Jovovich and director Paul W.S. Anderson, brings charm and a soulful quality to Wendy and also does well on the stunt front when called upon (the apple not falling far from the tree there). As her brothers, Pickering and Jupe aren’t called upon to handle too much, but what they bring is kids who are appealing and never precociously annoying.
Molony as Peter initially feels smug and arrogant, but those are a slightly in keeping with his base character. And as the movie probes deeply into his reasons for being the way he is, he warms up.
Law as Hook is a fantastically preening villain at first, but the actor is also talented enough to handle the deeper origin story that Lowery and co-writer Toby Halbrooks hand him. And he’s ably supported by Smee (Jim Gaffigan, who unveils a solid British accent), who is also handed more of a character than the usual comedy sidekick.
Lowery kicks off with a very theatrical feel, upping the fantasy levels and, if there’s a problem to be found, the earlier scenes (which take place at night) are a little muddy with the digital filming. And Molony, for one, sometimes looks like he’s been crafted with CGI, even more so than Shahidi’s Tink.
But once the movie gets to Neverland, sunshine arrives and the canvas expands, the movie becomes much more watchable. And the effects –– such Hook’s ship going flying and the infamous ticking-belly crocodile (to whom Peter fed Hook’s hand once he cut it off years ago) –– are effective, even if they sometimes stretch the more limited budget offered by a movie produced for the streaming service as opposed to ‘Pete’s Dragon’s lush theatrical look.
The music, meanwhile, both in score form from musicians Daniel Hart and Oliver Wallace (who channels John Williams at times) and the pirate songs from the original animated movie given fresh treatment, really help to enhance the experience.
This is Lowery bringing his carefully crafted indie sensibility to the film, once again putting his stamp on it rather than feeling like it rattled off of a construction conveyor belt. It might not appeal to fans of his more esoteric work such as ‘A Ghost Story’, but it’s a perfectly fun story for family audiences, especially with young children who have yet to see their first ‘Pan’ adaptation.
You won’t feel like a codfish for catching this one.
If you think “The Sun is Also a Star” is just your average teen movie (and, to be fair, you can’t really be blamed for that, especially given the photo of its moony, perfectly-cheek-boned stars Yara Shahidi and Charles Melton gazing up at the ceiling of Grand Central Terminal), you are very, very wrong. Part of a trend of socially conscious dramas for young adults, the movie is profound and absolutely stunning (both in terms of its visuals and its emotionality). In other words, this story of a young woman who finds out her family is being deported on the same day she falls in love with a handsome stranger, is anything but average.
So we were incredibly thrilled to talk to the movie’s incredibly talented young director Ry Russo-Young. She was in New York for the movie’s junket, which is perfect given how huge a role New York plays in this movie (and, yes, they do go to Grand Central Terminal). We talked with Ry about how she developed the look of the movie, if she felt any pressure given the movie’s social consciousness, and what it was like working with two young stars this talented and cute.
Moviefone: What were some of our reference points or inspirations were for the movie, both in terms of the look of the movie and the feel of it?
Ry Russo-Young: In terms of like my research, I was watching “Splendor in the Grass” and “Romeo and Juliet” (both versions), “Rebel Without a Cause.” There was sort of a New Hollywood meets Old Hollywood thing happening in terms of certain elements of the story that were very iconic and familiar. But then I wanted it to also, because of the book and because of the story, the contemporariness of the story, it felt very modern. So I wanted to have a bit of both of those things — the old and the new. And I would say that one of the places that the new came about was in the cinematography and the music and maybe the feeling of it. It’s a hybrid in that way. It’s the meeting of those two things.
Can you talk about your approach to the visuals? It reminded me of Wong-Kar Wai.
Yeah, for sure. It’s funny. I am a big Wong-Kar Wai fan. And I showed Charles “In the Mood for Love.” Looking at his face, he reminds me a lot of the main character of that film.
What were your guiding principles in terms of the look of the film?
It’s interesting because Wong Kar-Wai was definitely an influence. But there was so much of what I didn’t want to do. Of course I had a bunch of filmic references and stills and all that. But there’s also a really specific kind of studio movie look that’s very like over lit and very scrubbed clean and sanitized, with a lack of handheld and grit. So in a way I wanted to take some of my independent film sensibilities and the feeling of really being with the characters into how this movie was filmed. I wanted it to be intimate.
It’s very interesting that between this and “Love, Simon” and “The Hate U Give,” what would have been classified as teen movies really are dealing with topics that are a much more difficult and more modern than most studio movies. Did you feel any responsibility in that regard?
I loved “The Hate U Give.” I sobbed my eyes out during that movie. I think we’re in a really exciting time where the studios and movies are trying to reflect the world that we live in, and the humanity of it and the struggle of it and the politics of it. That’s one of the reasons I was really drawn to this book and to this film specifically is because I felt like there was an urgency there that spoke to our time. I think it’s absolutely necessary. They would be stupid not to because they would be completely out of whack with what’s going on in our culture. And this is happening in our world.
It’s exciting. And I do have a lot of faith in our young audience. I mean it’s something that I was trying to do on “Before I Fall,” which is not talk down to young people and not assume that they need everything super clean and buttoned up. They’re a really political generation that’s super smart and savvy and they can handle this. That’s also with the look and the feel and the subject matter, that all those things could come together to create something that isn’t it too young and was contemporary.
Was it hard to sort of thread that needle? I mean, was there any, was there any pushback in terms of toning down the political stuff?
We found in the script development that a little immigration goes a long way. I think at the end of the day, the truth is it’s a love story, it’s not an issue-based immigrant movie. It’s not a movie where we’re coming to really talk about immigration. It’s a movie about love overcoming all, love triumphs overall. So I think just knowing that [helped]. There was something in script about how strong and how detailed were we going to get with the immigration? That was a line that we were always walking. We consulted with an immigration lawyer to make sure that those details were real and he was reading drafts of the script and just finding how much we’re going to dive into that and what the hunger was of the audience for that. It was definitely something to like thread the needle of.
Warner Bros.
There’s always stories of what it’s like to shoot in New York. Do you have a particularly memorable day or experience, either good or bad?
Shooting in New York, of course only the horror stories come to mind. You only remember when we’re on Roosevelt Island trying to shoot this like romantic morning scene and there’s just helicopters. It was in the summer, so there’s all those helicopters take off from like the peer and go to the Hamptons. All those rich people going to the Hamptons for the weekend. It was probably a Friday at four o’clock or something. So it was like every two seconds we’d be like stopping because of the helicopters, while we’re losing light. I guess all my gripes are with sound. We had to change a shooting day because for some reason that we’re supposed to shoot something on a Sunday where the construction was not going to happen and then it has to change to a Saturday.
We shot all that stuff that takes place outside the immigration office on one day. It was like a nine-page day, which was just insane. Kudos to Yara and Charles for being able to do that. It was so hard for everyone. And the even harder thing was there was a construction site literally on the same block drilling holes, that we couldn’t get to stop. So that was a bee in my bonnet.
Can you talk about working with this amazingly talented young cast?
They’re super delightful and super talented. She wasn’t going to Harvard when we were shooting. We shot over the summer before Harvard. But I will say Harvard is indicative of how impressive and incredible Yara is as a human being. It was so much fun to really collaborate with both of them on their characters. And Charles is a person who has such a big heart in real life. He shares that with Daniel where they’re both so sweet and filled with love and want to spread the love. He really fell into the role and just was such a delight to work with. I just love collaborating with actors and they each brought so much of themselves to the role and were really generous with sharing who they are and putting it into the character.
“The Sun is Also a Star” is out everywhere on Friday. Prepare to swoon.
