5. Child’s Play
The Child’s Play franchise has survived for 30 years thanks to two things, Brad Dourif and Don Mancini, and now in the upcoming remake, the absence of those two men will most likely lead to its downfall.
Don Mancini is of course the guy who created Chucky; he came up with the story and wrote every single one of the seven films in the Child’s Play franchise. He even directed three of them, and even though the franchise has had its ups and downs, the quality has been overall pretty consistent.
For 30 years he has been the guiding force behind Chucky’s storyline, and he will be continuing that role as he’s hard at work on an eight-part mini-series about Chucky and is still more than willing to make more films in the future.
Which makes the decision to remove him completely from the reboot and instead give it over to two newcomers with next to nothing (two short films and an upcoming movie that nobody has heard of) to their names quite baffling.
In an interview on the upcoming reboot, Mancini had this to say: “We said no thank you, because we have our ongoing thriving business with Chucky. Obviously, my feelings were hurt … And I did create the character and nurture the franchise for three decades. So, when someone says, ‘Oh yeah, we would love to have your name on the film’… it was hard not to feel like I was being patronized. They just wanted our approval. Which I strenuously denied them.”
The idea of replacing the creator and the main star for a bunch of unknowns when the creator and main star are still more than happy to make more Chucky films is pretty dumb and we will most likely end up with another “Annabelle.”
4. The Lion King
The original Disney animated film “The Lion King” is a classic that is still beloved by generations of audiences for its great characters, memorable songs, amazing story, and heartbreaking moments.
Of course, it needed to be remade into an ultra-realistic and ugly CGI monstrosity from the director of that god-awful Jungle Book remake.
Jon Favreau is a good filmmaker: the first two Iron Man films are pretty solid; “Cowboys & Aliens” is highly underrated; Zathura: A Space Adventure; is all kinds of family-friendly awesomeness; and “Chef” was a sweet little indie dramedy. But his live-action Disney remake period looks like it’s going to be the nadir of his otherwise pretty solid career.
3. Hellboy
In an alternate timeline, we are all getting excited to finally see Guillermo del Toro’s epic masterpiece “Hellboy III” on the big screen, but in the timeline we’re stuck in, the producers have decided to skip that one and go straight to the cheap shitty reboot that will leave everyone disappointed and unsatisfied.
The trailers for “Hellboy” promise a movie full of forced unfunny jokes, unimaginative creature design, piss-poor makeup effects, dull action scenes, and terrible acting, and that is exactly what we’re going to get.
Even if we ignore the existence of the two great del Toro films, this still looks like it’s going to be god-awful, and when looking at it as an adaptation of the great comic book (and the incredible The Storm & The Fury storyline) it looks even worse.
Hellboy will also mark director Neil Marshall’s return to cinema after a nine-year stay in TV after the terrible box office bomb “Centurion,” which isn’t really a relief because out of his four feature films, only one of them is good and the other three range from awful to watchable. Which means that “Hellboy” is pretty much destined to suck.
2. Aladdin
“Aladdin” looks like it might be the worst thing Guy Ritchie has directed since “Swept Away,” which is ironic because “Aladdin” is Ritchie’s first straight-up remake since “Swept Away” (there is a case to be made about “Sherlock Holmes” and “King Arthur” being classified as remakes, but as they only loosely follow the original stories, the term doesn’t quite fit).
Every single one of the live-action Disney remakes have been lifeless, soulless, dull piles of shit and out of the three that will be released this year, the only one that looks like it could be watchable is “Dumbo,” and out of those three, this one looks like it’s going to be the absolute worst of the bunch.
Watching the trailer, it becomes way too obvious that this thing only exists to make money from our nostalgia and that no one involved really cared about it, and if they did really care about making it, then it doesn’t show.
“Aladdin” looks like it’s going to be awful, but it also looks like it’s not going to be awful enough to be entertaining or worth watching ironically. Frankly, it just looks so dull that its awfulness isn’t even funny.
1. Sonic the Hedgehog
Hollywood has been making films based on video games for 26 years, and in all that time they have only made six good ones (“Mortal Kombat,” “Resident Evil,” “Silent Hill,” “Doom,” “Warcraft,” “Postal”), which puts the odds highly against this film.
Also, out of all the video games you could adapt into a movie, “Sonic the Hedgehog” is probably one of the worst you could pick; you could just as well try to make a trilogy out of Tetris and still have more to work with both narratively and thematically.
We haven’t seen much from this film – they haven’t even dropped a trailer – but based on the few posters and other stills we have seen, this looks like it’s going to be this year’s “The Emoji Movie” (or “Angry Birds” movie).
There is no reality where this film looks like a good idea and if this film ends up being watchable, then we have witnessed a miracle. Out of all the films being released in 2019, not a single one is looks more doomed to fail than “Sonic the Hedgehog.” But hopefully they won’t try to turn this into yet another cinematic universe.