Judd Apatow directs, Steven Spielberg produces, as Sony moves ahead with Cola Wars, a movie about Coca Cola and Pepsi’s battle.
Just recently, we covered a report which looked at how Judd Apatow, the one-time king of Hollywood comedies, was struggling to get original projects off the ground. It’s been a few years since Apatow’s period as a director and ‘super-producer’, during which he shepherded lots of popular comedies through the studio system.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Sony has selected Apatow to direct Cola Wars. It’s a drama that will recount the fierce battle between industry titan Coca Cola and upstart Pepsi in the 1980s.
We first learned of the project back in February, along with the claim that Sony had paid more than a million dollars for a pitch. Not the script mind, just the pitch. Jason Shuman and Ben Queen will be drafting the screenplay. Shuman is the writer and co-creator of Apple’s Acapulco whilst Queen wrote Cars 2 and Cars 3 for Pixar.
While we maintain that it’s healthy to retain a little skepticism when it comes to the sudden proliferation of ‘product movies’ that are currently flooding Hollywood and venerating corporate America. It has brought us some good films, such as Tetris or Blackberry.
And of course, this particular battle between two giant corporations does have some memorable moments such as Michael Jackson, then the world’s most famous person, getting set ablaze while making a Pepsi ad. Then there’s Coca Cola’s disastrous attempt to rebrand to ‘New Coke’, still an easy punchline all these years later.
Apatow is best known for having directed The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Funny People and Trainwreck. His most recent directorial effort was The Bubble, the 2022 Netflix comedy that didn’t make too many waves.
Last month we reported that he was partnering with Universal to make a ‘time travel comedy’ but now this deal with Sony is in place, we’re not sure where that leaves that particular project. Apatow does have a Mel Brooks documentary feature coming up that we’re looking forward to, but we don’t yet know when that’s coming out.
We’ll let you know more about Cola Wars as we hear it.
