The new Ghostbusters has been a success on its own merits, but its popularity has probably helped studios decide to speed up another high-profile female-led project – are you ready for Ocean’s 8?
Though we’d heard very little about any significant movement on the project in advance, it seems that there is suddenly real momentum behind a female-led dream-team of Hollywood stars headlining a popular franchise spin-off… but. no… not the long-gestating ‘Expendabelles‘.
Industry site Deadline broke the story that Warner Bros.‘ Ocean’s 8 is likely to go before the cameras in October and will feature A-List names such as Sandra Bullock and Cate Blanchett. Further news indicates that the likes of Anne Hathaway, Helena Bonham Carter, Rihanna, Mindy Kaling and Awkwafina (aka rapper and actress Nora Lum) are also close to making deals to help make up the titular team number. (Though one key role remains casting). Given the number of Academy Awards and nominations the cast have accumulated, it’s clear the production is being taken very seriously by the studio.
It’s actually a project that has been quietly mulled over for several years and there’s little doubt that the recent success of Ghostbusters will have made those studio demographic-watchers believe that a strong female cast is a perfectly reasonable way to go as long as the material matches the talent (something audiences worked out a long time ago) The new film will be produced by Steven Soderbergh, who directed the original entry in the modern take on the franchise Ocean’s 11. It is presumed, given the title that George Clooney’s Danny Ocean could also appear and there’s certainly scope for cameos by other members of the 11, 12 and 13 cast. Bullock worked with Clooney on 2013’s Oscar-winning Gravity.
Those films were, in turn, inspired by the original 1960 film which also featured the combined talents of major talents such as Frank Sinatra (as Ocean), Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford and Joey Bishop and Angie Dickinson.
