Over thirty years since the original took flight, Disney’s The Rocketeer is getting another shot at finding success. Deadline reveals that a new film titled The Return of the Rocketeer is in the works that will stream on Disney+ rather than getting a theatrical release.
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The film is set to be produced by the husband and wife duo of David and Jessica Oyelowo under their Yoruba Saxon banner with David potentially starring in the film as well. The script for The Return of the Rocketeer is being written by Ed Ricourt and is said to focus on “a retired Tuskegee airman who takes up the mantle of the Rocketeer.” This is the first film under Yoruba Saxon’s first-look deal with Disney.
The original film was released in 1991 and has a cult following despite not finding huge success at the box office. The Rocketeer was directed by Joe Johnston and was an adaptation of the graphic novel of the same name. It sees a pilot that becomes a superhero after finding a prototype jetpack.
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This comes after David Oyelowo made his directorial debut with The Water Man, a film he got involved with since he wanted to make family films with themes that resonated.
“It was the fact that I had loved films of this nature growing up and find myself scratching my head as to why we weren’t making them anymore. Why were there no more E.T.s and The Goonies, Stand By Me, Gremlins, Willow, and The Neverending Story?” Oyelowo told ComingSoon. “You know, the truth is we do have them, but they’re only being made by Pixar. You know, I would say Up and The Incredibles and now Soul, you know, there are some that have a little bit of that tone whereby you have both magic and meaning, reality and fantasy. You have heavier themes, but they can somehow be palatable to young kids and then relatable to grownups as well. But we just weren’t making them in a way that I sort of had enough of them to show my kids and not have to go back to the 80s to kind of show my kids these kinds of movies.”
