The Mandalorian Star Lands Role In Captain Marvel Directors' New Movie
Freaky Tales, a new movie from Captain Marvel directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, has just announced a star-studded cast including The Mandalorian star Pedro Pascal. The 1980s-set movie will also star Ben Mendelsohn, Jay Ellis, Jack Champion, Angus Cloud, Dominique Thorne, Keir Gilchrist and Michelle Farrah Huang, and will bring on a number of notable Oakland locals to drive home the environment it's trying to recapture.
Per Deadline, who broke the news, here's the movie's synopsis: "Set in Oakland in 1987, Freaky Tales is a wholly original, immersive film inspired by Ryan's experience growing up in the bay. The film is comprised of four interconnected stories each featuring distinct characters, real life locations and noteworthy historical events (some real, some imagined)."
This comes amid a busy period for Pascal, who not only appears in The Mandalorian, but The Last of Us and showed up in tis year's The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. Mendelsohn is equally busy, being one of the biggest "smarmy villain" character actors of the current era, with roles in movies like Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and Ready Player One.
Boden and Fleck have been attached to a number of TV and film projects since Captain Marvel, but this is the first one to really get moving. They were previously reported to be in talks for a Disney+ series, likely one of the Marvel shows, but that has not materialized yet.
Freaky Tales feels like another chapter in the '80s and '90s nostalgia wave kicked off by Stranger Things. Kevin Smith's next film, The 4:30 Movie, is also set in the 1980s, and centers on teens theater hopping. That one has extra nostalgia value, because it will be filmed in Smith's childhood movie theater, which he recently purchased.
Given the title, and the split narrative, it's also likely that Freaky Tales will conjure up some comparisons to Southland Tales, the cult classic (and box office bomb) from Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly.
Deadline's story also reports that Freaky Tales will be financed by eOne, with Jillian Share, Jen Gorton, and Chanel Vidal overseeing the film's production for the studio, and Share and Gorton executive producing. MACRO Film Studios' Jelani Johnson and Poppy Hanks will serve as producers with Charles D. King and James F. Lopez as executive producers. Too $hort and his manager David Weintraub will also produce, with Raphael Saadiq tackling the film's music.