Hello, everyone! It’s One Of Us’ weekly article series, “The Weekly Wrap-Up.” Covering everything from film announcements to comic books, “The Weekly Wrap-Up” ensures that the biggest stories of the week are analyzed and discussed by our team of writers. This week we talk about the trailer for Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele’s new film, Keanu, and Fox’s television adaptation of The Exorcist.
Keanu Trailer
Though 2015 marked the end of Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele’s critically acclaimed Comedy Central sketch series, Key & Peele, fans will be happy to know that the comedy duo will soon return in 2016 with their first feature-length film, Keanu. A comedic take on the action thriller John Wick, Keanu is not the brooding assassin played by Keanu Reeves, but an adorable kitten adopted and named by Peele’s character in the new film. When his feline friend is stolen from his home, Peele and his best (human) friend, played by Key, must go undercover as gangsters to rescue the doo-rag wearing kitty. Like their critically acclaimed series, the film seems to feature much of Key and Peele’s trademark humor and love of genre filmmaking.
As an obsessive fan of Key & Peele, I’m ridiculously excited by this new trailer. Keanu seems to be an amalgamation of everything that made Key and Peele’s comedy sketch series so successful in the first place, featuring not only the show’s trademark humor and social commentary, but also the duo’s love of the action genre. It also helps knowing that the people behind the camera are equally as talented as the film’s stars. Alex Rubens, who is credited as a writer for 54 episodes of Key & Peele, co-wrote the screenplay with Peele, and the film’s director, Peter Atencio, also directed 54 episodes of the series.
If I have any concerns at this point, it’s that film may feel like an overly long comedy sketch, and while that may not necessarily be a bad thing, I’m hopeful that Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele’s style and humor translates well to a longer running time.
Keanu will be released in theaters April 29, 2016.
The Exorcist Television Series
In an announcement that has already earned the ire of horror fans everywhere, Fox has ordered a one pilot episode adaptation of William Peter Blatty’s book The Exorcist. Produced and written by Jeremy Slater (Fant4stic), the show is described as “a propulsive, serialized psychological thriller following two very different men tackling one family’s case of horrifying demonic possession, and confronting the face of true evil.”
Looking past the obvious difficulties of centering an entire series on the exorcism of a single person, I can somewhat understand why Fox would be interested in making an Exorcist television series. Not only is The Exorcist an extremely well known horror film and book, but it’s also reasonable to guess that Fox is seeing the value of adapting movies to the small screen. Fox’s sister channel FX has found great critical and commercial success with its small screen adaptation of Fargo, and based on the success of Fargo alone, it’s not hard to guess why Fox is looking to adapt a film, or at least a property widely known for its cinematic adaption, to television. However, Fox is most definitely not FX in terms of content and quality, and you only need to look at their recent television adaptation of Minority Report to see just how little effort they can put into these types of shows.
It’s also important to keep in mind that The Exorcist only has a one episode order right now, and if it fails to impress network executives or test audiences, it’s unlikely we’ll be seeing any possessed, vomit-spewing children grace our television screens in the near future.
