J.K. Simmons (‘Terminator Genisys’,’Spider-Man’) and Michael Keaton (‘Birdman’,’Batman’) have both just exited the production of ‘Kong: Skull Island‘ due to scheduling conflicts. The conflict came up when the original shooting which was set to begin early this Fall was delayed a few weeks. This means that two of the three draws for the film have bowed out though at this time Tom Hiddleston (‘The Avengers’,’Crimson Peak‘) is still attached to star. There is still plenty of time before production begins for Legendary Pictures and Universal to find replacements though one has to worry if they’ll find actors of this caliber.
Much like ‘King Kong’ the entire movie won’t be taking place on Skull Island and Simmons had previously told us where else we’d be seeing. The location stateside isn’t going to be either coast, however, and will actually be set in Detroit in 1971. No details as to why we’ll be in Detroit or what the motivating factor to head to Skull Island is but I’m sure we’ll learn more soon when new casting announcements begin.
The film will be directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts (‘The Kings of Summer,”Death Valley’) who is working off of a script by John Gatins and Max Borenstein. Thomas Tull and Jon Jashni are producing with Alex Garcia executive producing. We had originally heard that the film would be a prequel film to ‘King Kong’ though now that it seems to be in the 70s which makes me think that either they’ve turned this into a sequel or are fully rebooting things with a new timeline.
What are your thoughts on ‘Kong: Skull Island’ losing two of its bigger stars? Does the idea of a giant Kong film set in the 70’s sound good? Share your thoughts below!
‘Kong: Skull Island’ is set to smash into theaturs on March 10th, 2017.
Source: Coming Soon
