Jenna Ortega: what’s in the pipeline?
(A follow-up post is here: New projects by Jenna Ortega (update))
While Jenna Ortega is creating magic in Romania, filming the series Wednesday where she is the lead Wednesday Addams, I’d like to make a list of projects of hers I’m looking forward to as a fan.
The Fallout
The Fallout is the major thing I am excited for to get to see soon. It is a film where Jenna plays the lead. It was shown at this year’s SXSW festival where it won the main price which also means that it is eligible for an Oscar.
It looks like this is a project where Jenna gets to display her acting talent in full, being a deep emotional portrayal focusing on her character.
The film will be released soon on HBO Max wherever HBO Max exists. In one source they mentioned early 2022. Unfortunately, HBO Max does not yet exist in my country and the contract my cable provider (Ziggo) has with HBO expires end of 2021. There is mention of HBO Max starting in my country somewhere in 2022, but no dates are mentioned. It looks like I’ll have to wait longer than most people to see this one.
In countries where HBO Max is not available, this film will be released in cinemas. But whether it is at the same time, and whether cinema’s will even be open, is not known.
IMDb has a release date for this film, but note that it is user-edited like Wikipedia, so as long as there is no official date we can ignore that.
Scream
Recently the trailer for the fifth instalment of Scream was released, mainly showcasing the scene where Jenna’s character was hunted by ‘ghostface’, mirroring a similar scene in the first film of the franchise. It was brilliantly acted, to the level that it was difficult to watch a girl being hunted when it looks so realistic.
It leaves me with double feelings. It is great to see Jenna in such a major franchise, where so many people will be able to enjoy seeing her acting talent. But at the same time the trailer suggests that this is Jenna’s only scene in the film and that instead of going to the cinema we could just play the trailer on repeat. I hope this is not the case and that a surprise will be in store.
The film has an official release date of 14 January 2022 when it will be shown in cinemas. Let’s hope that’s worldwide and that cinemas are safe to go to at that time.
Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous (season 4)
I much enjoyed watching the animated series Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous on Netflix. Three seasons are already there and season four comes 3 December 2021.
Jenna voices the character Brooklynn (the pink-haired one), who is more complex than her description of ‘social media obsessed content creator’ suggests. Brave, kind and smart are better descriptions.
IMDb.
Studio 666
Jenna will play a role, I don’t know how big, in a horror comedy with the Foo Fighters. Not much is known, except it has a release date already: 25 February 2022.
IMDb.
Wednesday
This is going to be a Netflix series around Wednesday Addams. Jenna is the lead. The character is of course iconic (I love Christina Ricci’s performance) and it looks like they found in Jenna the right person to give it the layered performance that is both true to the originals and complex enough to lead the multiple stories of a series.
For the series Jenna studied playing the cello with the Angeles Academy of Music, who were quite taken by her talent and posted on their social media about it (here and here).
Since I think Jenna should be the lead in everything, this is going to be the next big thing to be excited about after The Fallout.
IMDb.
The New Zealand project: X
During the corona pandemic Jenna filmed a film in New Zealand, which required her to stay in quarantine for a while. Other than some beautiful photos of New Zealand’s epic nature that Jenna posted on her Instagram, not much is known about it. It may be called X and it is a horror film.
IMDb.
The UK project
Jenna spent some time in quarantine in London as well, which she reported on her social media. We can only assume this was to film something, but it has not been mentioned which film. Rumours were circulated that it was for another major franchise, but I like to go by official sources.
The Spanish project
Even before the pandemic, Jenna has filmed in Spain, around Madrid. She posted some things from the set and later visited other European places like Paris with her parents. Nothing much has been heard of this project since. One of her co-stars referred to the film as “American Carnage“, but it is unclear whether this was the title or his description of what a bunch of Americans were doing in Spain.
IMDb.
Other things
So what happened to Songbird? Jenna filmed for this, which is a film about the pandemic and the first to film during the pandemic. However it has since been released on DVD, without any of Jenna’s scenes. Also the deleted scenes on the DVD (there are many, enough to make a full other film) do not contain her.
At some point an Instagram post showed Jenna being fitted for a head cast. So you’d assume some horror film somewhere will contain a severed head; I haven’t seen such a scene yet. Either that, or she just wanted a cast of her head iCarly‘s Gibby-style.
If you haven’t seen Yes Day (a comedy) or The Babysitter: Killer Queen (a horror comedy) yet, please do so. They are both on Netflix. As always, Jenna makes her character more complex, more memorable and more touching than you would expect from reading the film description alone. I’m hoping for DVD releases of these as well.
Will Jenna be in any new season of You? She was in season 2 and made quite the impact with her character of Ellie. Ellie was not in season 3, but mentioned many times. The writers have already mentioned that they think Ellie is a really important character in the story and for that reason mentioned her repeatedly in season 3. That Jenna was not in season 3 was just because she’s so busy (I think she was filming Scream at the same time You S3 was filming and the pandemic would require people to stay in one bubble). So there is much hope for season 4, which is currently being written. BTW You S2 is released on DVD, though with US region coding only.
