11 September, 2000

Men In Black 2 & Batman 5 on hold?

Bad news if you were anxiously awaiting a sequel to Men in Black or the fifth Batman movie. According to Entertainment Weekly, the serious threat of an actors and writers strike next year has quite possibly put these two projects on the shelf for the time being.

Despite recent rumblings that the two projects might be finally moving forward after years of stalled development, it seems unlikely that these will begin production for the forseeable future. With Men in Black 2, Sony knew it would be impossible to get the movie in gear soon enough to avoid possibly lengthy delays in production should a strike occur. They hope that the project can be put into motion after the issue with the Screen Actors Guild and Writer's Guild of America is resolved.

The general feeling in Hollywood right now is that it isn't worth wasting time on projects that could suffer long delays due to the pending strike. Projects like Jumanji 2 and James Cameron's next film, possibly True Lies 2, are going to be temporarily shelved. If a production cannot begin by March first they won't be started at all. If a strike occured it would begin with a WGA walkout on May 1, 2001.

This doesn't necessarily mean these projects are dead. It does mean they could face a very long wait to get started though.

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