Last year we learned
Ice Cube and Cedric the Entertainer were being sought to pick up their clippers for Barbershop 3, a sequel to the franchise that began way back in 2002. Now
Deadline is reporting that
The Best Man and
The Best Man Holiday director Malcolm D. Lee will direct the film. No word on any plot details at this stage, but did the first two movies have a plot? Mostly it was folks sitting around the barbershop cracking jokes, which is fine since the first two movies combined for over $130M on shoestring budgets.
Uh, let's be generous and say that Spike Lee's narrative ventures have not lived up to his past glories, okay? His latest film, the Kickstarter-funded
Da Sweet Blood of Jesus,
was a complete disaster that nobody but his diehard fans knew was coming out. Lee's documentary work has been on-point, though, and after directing the amazing Michael Jackson doc
Bad 25, he's following it up with a look at Jackson's 1979 disco/pop album, "Off the Wall". He's already got the approval from Sony and the Michael Jackson estate, which is no surprise given the success of Bad 25. And hopefully since all are on board for this, they'll come to some kind of agreement on
Brooklyn Loves MJ, which was Lee's music-heavy film set in the period just after Jackson's death in 2009. It has stalled due to the music rights but maybe that can all be rectified now? Pretty please? [
Thompson on Hollywood]
The
Filth duo of Scottish author Irvine Welsh (
Trainspotting) and director Jon S. Baird are working on a "bold" adaptation of
Ivanhoe, the iconic 1820 novel by Walter Scott that ushered in the "knights in shining armor" genre. The book has been adapted many times, including a 1952 film starring Elizabeth Taylor, but this version will head in a new direction by showing the knights suffering from PTSD from their battles during the Crusades. Hopefully there will be room to introduce a version of Robin Hood, who debuted in Scott's novel as "Locksley". [
Deadline]
