Marvel is going to need to conjure up a new director for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Scott Derrickson has exited as director of the anticipated Marvel sequel due to “creative differences.” The news was first delivered by Variety, then confirmed by Derrickson on Twitter…
Marvel and I have mutually agreed to part ways on Doctor Strange: In the Multiverse of Madness due to creative differences. I am thankful for our collaboration and will remain on as EP.
— N O S ⋊ Ɔ I ᴚ ᴚ Ǝ ᗡ ⊥ ⊥ O Ɔ S (@scottderrickson) January 10, 2020
Derrickson directed the first Doctor Strange film in 2016, and has been attached to the sequel since 2018, although he’s been teasing possible story details the entire time. He and star Benedict Cumberbatch’s return was confirmed at last summer’s Comic-Con, along with the movie’s May 7th 2021 release date.
The film is poised to be extremely important to the future of the MCU. Elizabeth Olsen’s Scarlet Witch is part of the cast, with this being the first movie to directly tie into a Disney+ series, WandaVision. Basically, if Marvel wants to hold on to the release date they’re going to need to find Derrickson’s replacement pretty quick.
While it’s not confirmed or anything, this tweet from Derrickson may have something to do with his departure. Just speculatin’.
Studio release dates are the enemy of art.
— N O S ⋊ Ɔ I ᴚ ᴚ Ǝ ᗡ ⊥ ⊥ O Ɔ S (@scottderrickson) December 16, 2019
Here’s all I, and probably most people, need to know about the upcoming FX series, Devs. All eight episodes are written and directed by Alex Garland, who found critical acclaim with sci-fi films Ex Machina and Annihilation. That’s it. That it stars Nick Offerman and looks pretty great is why it’s one of the most anticipated shows of 2020.
Devs skews closer to Ex Machina in that it’s a tech-based series, centered on computer engineer Lily Chan (played by Ex Machina‘s Sonoya Mizuno) as she investigates a a quantum computing company called Amaya and its possible ties to her boyfriend’s disappearance. Offerman plays Forest, Amaya’s CEO. Also in the cast are Zach Grenier, Alison Pill, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Cailee Spaeny, and Jin Ha.
Personally, I could’ve done without anybody making a series about controversial conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly, but if she’s going to be played by Cate Blanchett then I’m all for it. The FX series Mrs. America finds Blanchett as Schlafly, who stood opposed to the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s, which would have given women the same legal rights as men. Schlafly would go on to champion other causes that denied rights to others. She opposed same-sex marriage, immigration reforms, questioned the existence of marital rape, and more, fighting the “good” fight all the way until her death in 2016.
The series is developed by Dahvi Waller, who worked previously on Mad Men, Desperate Housewives, and Halt and Catch Fire. Blanchett is joined in the cast by Uzo Aduba as Shirley Chisholm, Rose Byrne as Gloria Steinem, plus Elizabeth Banks, Kayli Carter, Ari Graynor, John Slattery, Melanie Lynskey, Margo Martindale, Tracey Ullman, James Marsden, Jeanne Tripplehorn, and Niecy Nash…basically everyone I love all in one place. Damn.
SYNOPSIS: Mrs. America tells the story of the movement to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), and the unexpected backlash led by a conservative woman named Phyllis Schlafly, played by Blanchett. Through the eyes of the women of that era – both Schlafly and second-wave feminists Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, Shirley Chisholm, Bella Abzug and Jill Ruckelshaus – the series explores how one of the toughest battlegrounds in the culture wars of the 70s helped give rise to the Moral Majority and forever shifted our political landscape.
Well, this is a twist only the director of Parasite could be proud of. Deadline reports that South Korean director Bong Joon-ho and The Big Short‘s Adam McKay are in talks to team up and produce a limited series for HBO based on Parasite.
This is interesting because it was only days ago as Parasite won a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language film that he encouraged audiences to get over their fear of subtitles and embrace international cinema. I guess that doesn’t apply to American TV, though?
There aren’t any details about what a series based on Parasite would look like, but the plot is easily expandable beyond the big screen. The film, which you should go in knowing as little about as possible, follows a poor family of grifters who get deeply involved in the lives of a wealthy family, with unexpected results. It’s possible the series could be a series remake, or maybe some kind of continuation. Perhaps, and this is highly unlikely but y’never know, the show won’t be entirely in English?
Then again, it’s always possible this turns out like the series adaptation of Bong Joon-ho’s previous movie, Snowpiercer, which I think has been “on the way” for about a thousand years. Then again, Parasite is expected to reap a ton of Oscar nominations in a few days and that has the potential of speeding any related projects along pretty quickly.
Just as each Mission: Impossible film has bigger stunts for Tom Cruise to nearly kill himself attempting, so does the star power keep getting better. With the seventh film already boasting the new additions of Hayley Atwell, Pom Klementieff, and Shea Whigham, the cast gets even more impressive with the arrival of Nicholas Hoult.
No stranger to franchises thanks to his role as Beast in the X-Men franchise, and of course his role in Mad Max: Fury Road, Hoult joins the returning Tom Cruise, Rebecca Ferguson, Simon Pegg, and Ving Rhames in the next Mission: Impossible movie. Christopher McQuarrie, who made the casting announcement on Instagram, is directing the next two movies back-to-back after taking Fallout to box office heights. Will Hoult’s character survive them both? Good question!
Of course, we don’t know what role he’s taking, but he seems like the perfect candidate to stick around for the long haul, right? I’m not going to throw out any conspiracy theories about Cruise possibly passing the torch because we’ve been down that road with Jeremy Renner already. But the franchise could use a youth injection and Hoult fits the bill. He had a busy 2019 with roles in Tolkien, Dark Phoenix, The True Story of the Kelly Gang, and The Current War.
The next two Mission: Impossible films arrive on July 23rd 2021 and August 5th 2022.
While most of the Justice League cast have had their own solo movies (Sorry, Cyborg, it ain’t happenin’), Ezra Miller has been in limbo hoping The Flash might happen someday. Fortunately, the hiring of It director Andy Muschietti seems to have the film on a solid path with a release date in 2022 and everything. And now we’re even getting an idea of the plot, which confirms a rumor from a couple of years ago.
Muschietti recently moderated a Q&A event with the cast of Underwater, and it’s there that he revealed an upcoming remake of The Howling, which would take place after he completes work on The Flash. He then offered details on the long-awaited superhero movie and said rumors the story will be a version of “Flashpoint’ were true, but a “different version of ‘Flashpoint’ than you’re expecting.”
An important storyline in pages of the Flash comic, Flashpoint finds Barry Allen using his powers to race back in time and prevent his mother’s murder, causing ripple effects throughout the timestream that changed the entire DC Universe. The storyline has been adapted in animated form, and elements of it are used frequently in The Flash TV series.
Another part of that old rumor was that Flashpoint would be used to explain the disappearance of Ben Affleck’s version of Batman and other changes to the DCEU. Doubtful it stretches that far, but then why use Flashpoint and not go all the way with it?
The Flash is expected to race into theaters on July 1st 2022.
Is this a trailer for Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, or a music video? Either way, I’m in. I fell in love with the devilishly campy Netflix series in-between parts one and two (the show doesn’t use traditional seasons) after a meet-and-greet event where the pilot was shown. The first chapter was terrific teenage angst mixed with the supernatural, very much like an early Buffy the Vampire Slayer, while the second failed to mature in the way it needed to.
And it’s pretty hard to tell what to expect from chapter three based on this trailer, which finds star Kiernan Shipka performing a cheesy, retro track titled “Straight to Hell”. The title is a clue, as upcoming episodes find Sabrina venturing to Hell to rescue her boyfriend Nick Scratch who sacrificed himself to stop the threat of Lucifer, who happens to be her father.
SYNOPSIS: Part Three finds Sabrina reeling from the harrowing events of Part Two. Though she defeated her father Lucifer, the Dark Lord remains trapped within the human prison of her beloved boyfriend, Nicholas Scratch. Sabrina can’t live with herself, knowing that Nick made the ultimate sacrifice and is suffering, burning in Hell under Madam Satan’s watchful eye. So with an assist from her mortal friends, “The Fright Club” (consisting of Harvey, Rosalind, and Theo), Sabrina makes it her mission to free him from eternal damnation and bring him back into her arms. However, the Dark Lord’s unseating has sent shockwaves through the realms—and, with no one on the throne, Sabrina must assume the title of “Queen” to defend it against a challenger, the handsome Prince of Hell Caliban. Meanwhile, in Greendale, a mysterious carnival rolls into town, bringing with it a threat to the Spellmans and the coven: A tribe of pagans looking to resurrect an ancient evil…
I’m not super pumped for the next chapter, but I’ll definitely be there watching when Chilling Adventures of Sabrina returns on January 24th.
Warner Bros. has put in the work to move past the unsuccessful Zack Snyder era of DC Comics films, so that guys like me stop beginning every post reminding everyone how their movies sucked hard. Following on the $1B+ of Joker, they hope the next huge hit will be Birds of Prey, which finds Margot Robbie reprising her role as Joker’s former squeeze, Harley Quinn.
Of course, the Joker she’s breaking away from in Birds of Prey has nothing to do with the Joaquin Phoenix version, but it’s still pretty interesting to see two straight films focused on the psychotic couple. The film finds Harley Quinn teaming up with a team of badass ladies including Black Canary (Jurnee Smollett-Bell), Huntress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Basco), and Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez) against the sadistic Black Mask, played with relish by Ewan McGregor, and Victor Szasz, played by Chris Messina.
The best thing about this is how much it deviates from Suicide Squad, which is not to say that film wasn’t 75% decent. But Harley Quinn should be in the loopiest, most insane film possible and that’s what Birds of Prey looks like. Here’s hoping that continues when she turns up again in James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad.
SYNOPSIS: After splitting with the Joker, Harley Quinn joins superheroes Black Canary, Huntress and Renee Montoya to save a young girl from an evil crime lord, Black Mask in Gotham City.
Going into Underwater, the deep sea horror from director William Eubank (The Signal), you kinda know what to expect. It’s going to take a little piece from Alien, a bit from Leviathan, maybe a dash of Event Horizon and The Abyss, rinse, repeat. Being familiar isn’t a detriment this time around, and for those who are fans of this particular style of creature feature there’s quite a lot to enjoy, starting with Kristen Stewart as the Ripley-esque lead heroine.
Stewart, with hair chopped shorter than it ever was during her role as a military grunt in Camp X-Ray, is by far the biggest draw for Underwater, a film that has had a belated path to the screen. Completed back in 2017 (!!!), this is technically Stewart’s first stab at a major studio comeback, preceding the recent Charlie’s Angels reboot. The Disney acquisition by Fox threw a wrench in the works, which is why it’s coming out after that movie’s box office failure and will make for an ugly 1-2 punch if this bombs, too. But you can tell this one has been sitting idle for a while just by the presence of Deadpool actor and Hollywood persona non grata, T.J. Miller. But that’s all background stuff that only matters if you feel very strongly about the film, one way or another.
There’s never a moment that doesn’t take place miles beneath the sea, with Eubank’s murky camera sometimes creating suspense, other times just making it impossible to tell what’s going on. Fortunately, Stewart carries the film on her shoulders as Norah Price, a mechanical engineer on an oil-drilling rig miles below the Mariana Trench. Establishing quickly that Norah is a peaceful soul, Eubank literally opens the floodgates in an incredible water-breaching sequence that sends her racing through the facility’s collapsing hull, pinballed from side-to-side by successive explosions, all in a race to find safety and rescue others. In the quick escalation of events, Norah is forced to make a decision that will haunt her for the rest of the movie, but also steels her for the monstrous ordeal to come.
This is all in about the first 5 or 10 minutes, as Eubank ditches the dull setup that usually precedes these movies, thrusting the characters (and us) right into the waterworks. Norah eventually gathers around her a hodge-podge of horror archetypes so common we can practically write their stories ourselves. The aforementioned Miller plays *shocker* the irritating jokester Paul; Iron Fist standout Jessica Henwick goes against-type as the timid Emily, who has a thing for the tough military guy Smith, played by John Gallagher Jr.; and Mamadou Athie is Rodrigo who…well, he seems like a nice dude.
While we don’t think of Stewart as the classically tough action star, she’s never less than believable as the glue that tries to hold the survivors together, and later as the one who could be their savior. Despite some canned, message-heavy narration to work through, Stewart lends credibility to Norah’s evolution into a monster fighter. The film’s other ace-in-the-hole is Vincent Cassel as the Captain, who, after seeing his entire rig basically obliterated, still wants to know on the scale of 1-to-10 how bad things are. Well, it’s a damn 10, dumbass. Cap’s dialogue is some of the movie’s funniest and corniest, which makes Cassel perfect for it. He’s such a talented actor that he jumps at scene-chewing stuff like this, which is always a blast to watch. If Cap tells a character they’re going to get home safely, start counting down the seconds until something awful happens.
That “something awful” finds the crew escaping from the facility in deep sea diving suits, and forced to walk the ocean floor to what they hope is a safer rig. But what they thought were underwater earthquakes turns out to be something far worse, and it isn’t long before they become a very slow-moving seafood buffet. The frights, especially early on, are pretty legit as Eubank and cinematographer Bojan Bazelli make effective use of tight crawlspaces to create a claustrophobic atmosphere, made more nerve-racking by the sea’s inky darkness, which obscures the monsters just enough to shock. The effect does eventually wear off and it just becomes a hard movie to look at and understand what’s going on.
Fortunately, at only 95-minutes it isn’t a problem that lingers for long. Underwater gets in and gets out, giving Stewart and Cassel a chance to battle sea monsters in their underwear and have fun while doing it. You could do far worse than diving in for this one.
Last summer, It and It: Chapter Two director Andy Muschietti expressed a desire to do a remake of Joe Dante’s 1981 horror classic, The Howling. Well, having the success of two hit horror films under his belt might’ve helped his case, because Muschietti now says his remake is happening thanks to the folks at Netflix.
The news comes from That Hashtag Show, who were in attendance for Muschietti’s moderation of a panel with the Underwater cast. It was there that he revealed the news, but failed to give any details other than it will likely happen after his work on The Flash is completed.
The Howling was part of a number of werewolf-themed movies that came out in the early ’80s. It was based on Gary Brandner’s book about a television newswoman who, after being stalked by a serial killer, suffers amnesia and is sent to a mysterious health resort to recover, only to learn the other patients are werewolves. That film is only marginally similar to Brandner’s novel, a fact that he hated and led to his contributing to the first sequel. There were seven sequels in total, the most recent one in 2011, and are pretty terrible. This leaves the door open for Muschietti to deliver a faithful, truly scary werewolf movie.
