Walt Disney studios is developing a sequel-reboot of the 1991 action-adventure movie, The Rocketeer. They’re hiring Max Winkler and Matt Spicer to pen the script; Brigham Taylor, who produced The Jungle Book with Jon Favreau, is producing along with Los Angeles Clippers star Blake Griffin and Ryan Kalil of the Carolina Panthers. The project titled The Rocketeers , is in the early development stages, but it will have a modern-day twist, and will be headlined by a black female character.
Rocketeer was based on the popular 1980s indie comic by Dave Stevens; it was a loving homage to the serials of the 1930s and 1940s. The story followed Cliff Secord, a stunt pilot who discovers a rocket pack and suit to die for and become embroiled with mobsters and Nazis, as well as Howard Hughes and the FBI.
It only grossed only $46.6 million and came in fourth in its opening weekend, but it eventually got a massive following and became a bit of a cult classic. When Disney hosted a 20th anniversary screening of the movie in Hollywood’s El Capitan Theatre in 2011, fans, many in Rocketeer costume, lined up for blocks. That is when the studio began thinking about a reboot of the movie but sought a way to differentiate it from another rocket-propelled flying hero, Iron Man.
The new take keeps the story in a period setting and offers a fresh view on the characters. Set six years after the original Rocketeer and after Secord has vanished while fighting the Nazis, an unlikely new hero emerges: a young African–American female pilot, who takes up the mantle of Rocketeer in an attempt to stop an ambitious and corrupt rocket scientist from stealing jetpack technology in what could prove to be a turning point in the Cold War.
Tendo Nagenda and Chaz Salembier are overseeing the project for Disney.
