Well, this is a bit messy.
After Legendary Pictures parted from Warner Bros after Godzilla and The Seventh Son to set up shop at Universal pictures where they’re working on Kong: Skull Island, it now looks like things are shifting back in the other direction, at least with this particular property.
Legendary is now moving Kong: Skull Island to Warner Bros. and it’s unclear what Universal’s place in all of this will be. The reason for the move is that Legendary is working with Warner for the next Godzilla film and with a plan to bring the two giant icons of film together for a modern day team-up film. This, according to Deadline, is moving very quickly and is all the way to Toho in order to try and seal all the deals and make it a reality. Cross-studio moves like this aren’t common but we’ve seen them done before, notably with Marvel. Here, Legendary’s working with what’s being called a public domain property like King Kong while Toho is certainly going to have an iron grip on Godzilla.
Frankly, there’s a lot of conflicting things about these early reports from Deadline and who owns what and how it’s all being arranged, so we expect this to kind of blow up along the way before settling into its final form, if anything at all comes of it.
Kong: Skull Island is set for a March 10th, 2017 release and is currently set with Jordan Vogt-Roberts directing based n the script by John Gatins and Max Borenstein. It’s locked in Brie Larson, Tom Hiddleston and Corey Hawkins to star while Samuel L. Jackson and Tom Wilkinson are in various stages of negotiations along with John C. Reilly.
