The Stephen Kingaissance continues! After the wild $700M success of Stephen King’s It, we’ve seen the author’s adapted at a rate like never before, and that’s saying something because his novels have always been among Hollywood’s favorites. The next one that looks like it could do for family pets what Pennywise does for a fear of clowns is Pet Sematary, and a creepy first trailer has finally arrived.
Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer are behind this second adaptation of the 1983 novel, following the 1989 film considered one of the better King movies on the big screen. The story remains pretty much intact, centering on the Creed family who move from the city into the Derry, Maine where they discover a nearby burial ground where things have a nasty habit of not staying buried. Jason Clarke, Amy Seimetz, and John Lithgow are the biggest names involved, but the real star of any King adaptation if Stephen King himself. This version of the story is leaning hard on the horror and folklore aspects, which, at least to me, has it feeling a little bit like The Witch and that’s a very good thing.
Here’s the official synopsis: Based on the seminal horror novel by Stephen King, Pet Sematary follows Dr. Louis Creed, who, after relocating with his wife Rachel and their two young children from Boston to rural Maine, discovers a mysterious burial ground hidden deep in the woods near the family’s new home. When tragedy strikes, Louis turns to his unusual neighbor, Jud Crandall, setting off a perilous chain reaction that unleashes an unfathomable evil with horrific consequences.
Well, we had to see this coming, right? Given that Guardians of the Galaxy‘s Dave Bautista has made it his life to get himself fired from the franchise because of the way Disney fired James Gunn, the actor has taken the logical next step. With Gunn moving on to Marvel’s rival Warner Bros. to write and possibly direct a Suicide Squad “sequel”, Bautista is making it clear where he’d much rather be. Hint: it’s not with Disney.
While sharing a tweet about James Gunn’s new gig as part of the DCEU, Bautista had a simple reply, “Where do I sign up!”
Well, Bautista’s not a man to mince words, is he? How Marvel plans to react is anybody’s guess but we have to assume they are getting pretty tired of Bautista constantly sticking a thumb in their eye. We’ve heard rumors of big changes to Avengers 4 that could affect his character, but he’s still under contract and Marvel doesn’t have to do anything. And we have to imagine that Gunn and Warner Bros. would kill to have someone as popular as Bautista on board. This whole situation has actually made him and Gunn more of a hit with fans, not the other way around.
Where do I sign up! James Gunn Boards ‘Suicide Squad 2’ To Write And Possibly Direct – Deadline https://t.co/OwdDbAm1Ks
Nobody makes heart-pounding, gut-wrenching dramas that you never want to watch twice quite like Paul Greengrass. While his Bourne movies are an obvious exception, Greengrass’ fact-based projects are often nightmarish accounts of horrific tragedies. His latest, 22 July, is another visceral, terrifying experience that recounts a devastating terrorist attack, this one the July 22nd Norway assault by Anders Behring Breivik that left 78 people dead and more than 300 injured.
As with United 93, Captain Phillips, and Bloody Sunday, Greengrass shows a fierce commitment to authenticity that is appreciated, but also makes his movies tough to endure. For anyone who remembers the 9/11 attacks it’s doubtful you’ve had the urge to pop United 93 into the Bluray player. The opening act of 22 July creates an atmosphere of chaos and tragedy that is tough to shake. The attacks by Breivik (played with Lecter-eque intensity by Anders Danielsen Lie) were meticulous in their precision. It began with a bomb planted near the offices of the prime minister, killing 8 and injuring more than 200. This was his opening shot against the government, but also a means of distraction. While first responders arrived Breivik sped over to the island of Utoya, posing as a police officer sent to protect the occupants, a group of kids attending a summer youth camp. Breivik opened fire on them, killing 69 while chasing them all around the island shouting insults about their status as liberal elites.
The attack itself is brutal, unflinching, just as we expect from Greengrass. It will be especially jarring for anyone who has seen our news and the many shootings of our school-aged children. But also Breivik’s rhetoric is scarily familiar to some of the extremists who act as talking heads on cable news and talk radio. The hatred Breivik has for these kids he doesn’t even know, simply because of a presumed ideology, is palpable. A few of the victims are singled out as characters to follow, in particular the popular future politician Viljar (Jonas Strand Gravlik) and his little brother Torje (Isak Bakli Aglen). When the bombing occurs it’s them, along with others on the island, who called to their parents to make sure they were okay. But within moments it’s the kids themselves who find themselves in danger from Breivik’s assault. While Torje escapes with only emotional wounds, Viljar is shot five times and barely survives.
The vast majority of the film deals with the aftermath, as a captured Breivik starts making demands in hopes of spreading his manifesto to the world. Greengrass attempts to match the severity of the attack with an all-encompassing look at the people affected by it, but nothing he does shows the same level of depth. Mostly we follow Viljar as he tries to recover from his injuries and reclaim the hopefulness Breivik stole from him. In stark contrast to the other movie released this year on the same subject, Erik Poppe’s U-July 22, Greengrass doesn’t want the focus to solely be on the loss of life. He makes an attempt to understand it, and to offer the real-life victims a voice in opposition to Breivik’s hatred. That’s definitely commendable, and Viljar’s journey to an inevitable confrontation with Breivik is inspiring in spurts. But so many other storylines are glossed over, like that of Breivik’s court-mandated attorney Geir Lippestad (Jon Øigarden), who is torn over disgust for his client and his belief that everyone deserves a credible defense. Lippestad’s family received threats over his defense of Breivik, but that is a plot point barely discussed. Greengrass also shows us the political response to the attack as prime minister Jens Stoltenberg (Ola G. Furuseth) copes with the fallout from a lapse in national security, and the rise of far-right extremism.
Greengrass took a similarly expansive approach with United 93 but that was in capturing the chaotic response in real-time, while 22 July is about people and their response to trauma. By dividing his attentions to such a degree, Greengrass limits the emotional resonance of the survivors he wishes to celebrate, and clouds the film’s strongest message. We are seeing fear and hatred spread across the world because of monsters like Breivik and others who think like him, and it’s important to stand up to these people; to show them that they can’t win.
Last year the CW gave us its first true and blue, black superhero in the form of Jefferson Pierce AKA Black Lightning. A former superhero who comes out of retirement to save his daughters from harm and then comes to the realization that his city still needs him. Everything from a corrupt police department, drug lords running amok, and even a shadowy government organization flooding the streets with drugs, Black Lightning had an impressive first season. In a world where we already have the likes of Black Panther and Luke Cage, Black Lightning continued the trend of telling authentically and unapologetically black stories for the superhero genre.
Right off the top, the show continues to push the envelope. The opening consists of a news report of police choking a young black man to death, something we all remember from real life victim of police brutality Eric Garner’s tragic death (among countless others). Here in Freeland, the drug Green Light has started to cause some users to manifest metahuman abilities. In a great allegory of the “crack baby” scare of the 1980’s the police in Freeland now see these young men of color as literal weapons (echoing real life) as the show continues to push the envelope as much as it can.
Even though Jefferson stopped the ASA and revealed that they have been trying to harness metahuman abilities by flooding the streets with a drug that gives people powers, the attack at his school got him in some serious trouble. Being the principal of the school during Khalil’s attack, “Jefferson” was missing in action, even though he was really there as Black Lightning. On top of that, he and his family had to go into hiding from the ASA afterward, the schools been closed and he’s facing disciplinary charges from the school board. Later on, Jefferson decides to resign as principal for the good of the school. His wife Lynne is also having her own issues as she’s being questioned by a new ASA representative, who denies her access to the kidnapped children experimented on, because he knows she’s lying. The new bad guy is none other than legendary director/actor Bill Duke.
Speaking of Bill Duke, it looks like Black Lightning is the go-to place for all famous black actors. Like Black Panther, if you are black and in Hollywood and not on this show, you kinda need to fire your agent, and all the heavy hitters are showing up on this show. Robert Townsend, Bill Duke, Clifton Powell, even political commentator Angela Rye shows up to give the history of the government experimenting on people of color as a fictitious political commentator. And the soundtrack once again is on point!
Back to the episode. In addition to Jefferson and Lynn having problems of their own, so do their children. Jennifer AKA Thunder wants to do more for the Green Light victims as the government won’t let them be released from custody as they need to be studied. Jefferson tells his daughter that they need to devote their time to Tobias Whale as he’s still at large. She takes it upon herself to “raise” money for a local church to sue the government by stealing the money from a drug den. This gives her the chance to go in and kick some serious ass as she takes on about 20 people on her own. Their younger daughter Jennifer is having problems of her own as well. She’s more powerful than her father and sister combined, yet she is unable to control her powers. She floats in her bed Exorcist-style while she sleeps, and her getting agitated makes her lose control of her powers. Jefferson and Lynn fight on what to do about it. She wants her to get therapy, he wants to train her.
Jefferson’s vice-principal (who was secretly an ASA mole) wants out of the life of the ASA and tracks down Gambi for help. In doing so, she agrees to get the ASA briefcase from Tobias for him. She first faces off against Tobias’ enforcer Cyanide to stop her. Surprisingly, she kills Cyanide when they face off, thanks to her high heels which have daggers on the end of them. This angers Tobias who uses his famed speargun on her when she tries to take him down. Although she survives and escapes, Tobias is now intent on getting his justice!
Last season on The Flash, Barry had a season-long battle against The Thinker, a metahuman who had the gift of extreme intelligence (unlike all the other past seasons’ big baddies who were speedsters) and was able to literally out-think Barry and Team Flash to carry out his sinister plans. In the season finale, the Thinker was thwarted when Barry was able to prevent the apocalypse by destroying a satellite repurposed to send mankind intellectually back to the stone ages. Barry was able to destroy the satellite with the help of another speedster. Throughout the season, the “Mystery Girl” would visit Barry on several occasions. The cliffhanger happened when the Mystery Girl reveals herself as Nora, Barry and Iris’ daughter from the future, and she made a mistake with timeline-damaging ramifications.
The season premiere begins, not with the “My Name is Barry Allen” intro we have been used to for the past 4 seasons. Instead, it begins with a new narrator, Barry and Iris’ daughter Nora. She begins the episode saying she’s the “fastest woman” alive. However, she’s not “The Flash,” she’s “XS” as he mother told her she was ecstatic growing up, and in the future, she’s the hero of Central City.
Continuing from where last season ended, Nora confronts Team Flash and Joe’s house explaining who she is and where she’s from. This being Team Flash, this isn’t completely out of the norm. The only person who really reacts is Cisco, who decides, it’s time to get loaded. Ralph, ever the clueless one realizes that time travel and multiverses (“manyverses”) exist, even though he literally was working with Harry from Earth-2 all last year. Nora remarks that since she helped Barry stop the Thinker, she has altered the timeline, something her father already has experience with. Unfortunately, now, she cannot travel “back to the future.”
Barry is no determined to get her back to her own timeline so that she doesn’t damage this current time. Of course, she can’t stop blabbing about future events (since they technically are her past). She tells them about the Flash Museum, King Shark and Gorilla Grodd are going to have a fight, and new metahuman adversaries as well. Newcomer Jessica Parker Kennedy plays Nora with an infectious sense of happiness and is already a welcome addition to Team Flash.
It wouldn’t be The Flash without a metahuman of the week. This week, we meet a bad guy who can absorb kinetic energy making himself stronger (and impossible to hurt as well) names Gridlock. Barry goes to try and stop him, but gets distracted when Nora tries to tag along to stop him. She’s already altering the timeline as she even told Team Flash that Gridlock is a minor villain who Team Flash only met one time and stopped him with ease.
It’s revealed that Nora is unable to run back to the future because of tachyons in her bloodstream that prevent her from entering the Speed Force. No matter how much Barry tries to find a way to get her sent back to her own timeline, she’s here to stay. Iris, intrigued with the idea of a full-grown daughter attempts to bond with Nora. They go to Jitters as Iris tries to get Nora to open up, but she’s hesitant. Nora seems more interested in spending time with her father. This is something that Barry picks up on as well. Barry confronts her later on and she reveals the truth, she traveled back to the past to get a chance to see her father. Remember that newspaper clip in Gideon’s vault saying that the Flash went missing in the crisis? Well, that future is still intact, and in Nora’s timeline, her father has been missing for 25 years. She actually has no memories of her father as a result. She could have traveled back to her own timeline anytime she wanted to. Her traveling to the past was all about wanting to meet her father. This softened Barry to the idea of sending her back as he knows this will be the only time he has with his daughter.
Just then, Team Flash discovers Gridlock is going to try to down a commercial airplane to absorb the kinetic energy and become even stronger. The only way the day can be saved is f Cisco teleports Barry, Wally, and Nora to the airplane when it’s about to crash (as the zero-g will remove all kinetic force and they can stop Gridlock) and then phase the entire plane so that it doesn’t crash through buildings on its way down. Nora is a new speedster and doesn’t know how to phase. Barry does his best Obi-Wan/Morpheus and talks her through it when they get on the plane. Remembering what Eobard Thawne taught him, Barry is now the wise mentor as he coaches his daughter into using her powers to help phase the airplane and save everyone.
With the day saved and Gridlock in custody, Barry decides that they don’t need to send Nora back to her own timeline just yet. She then decides to stay in an unknown lounge at STAR Labs. Caitlin, who’s still missing her Killer Frost persona gets some help from Ralph (as both of them didn’t have much to do this episode since we focused on Barry and Nora) who reveals to her that he father didn’t in fact die. However, not all is good and we now have a new bad guy on the horizon. As Gridlock is being escorted to prison, his police escort is attacked by Season 5 main villain Cicada, who seems to have an ax to grind with metahumans, as he kills Gridlock.
Apparently a World War Z sequel is still a thing that’s happening. Paramount has been trying to get the film off the ground ever since the 2013 zombie flick overcame epic production problems on the way to $540M worldwide. Brad Pitt was coming back to star and David Fincher was the surprising addition as director, but the whole thing has sorta faded from memory. Now the sequel’s producers Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner tell Variety everything is fine, and that production is surprisingly close at hand…
“We’re starting to shoot in June,” Gardner said. “What more do you need to know? Brad Pitt is Gerry Lane. He’s back. David Fincher is directing.”
Yeah, okay. We’ll see about that. World War Z 2 has been delayed so many times it’s tough to take seriously. Fincher has been a big part of the issue as he has repeatedly put other projects in front of it, like two seasons of Netflix’s Mindhunter series. Despite his close association with Pitt and screenwriter Brad Kelly (of Fincher’s failed Utopia series), does this seem like the kind of movie Fincher would jump into?
Okay, so this was not just your ordinary Tuesday over at Annapurna Pictures. The taste-making studio made headlines by dropping two of its biggest upcoming projects, not to mention ditching Chelsea Barnard, their President of Film who oversaw those projects. So what’s up? Let’s take a look at what was dropped and where it looks like they’ll end up.
The biggest surprise came as Annapurna cut ties with the upcoming Fox News film about Roger Ailes and the sexual misconduct charges that ended his career. This is the star-studded movie that had Nicole Kidman, Margot Robbie, Charlize Theron, John Lithgow, Allison Janney, Macolm McDowell, and Kate McKinnon with Jay Roach (Game Change) directing. Production was set to begin in just a couple of weeks. While reasons for the decision vary, Variety says that a ballooning budget are a big part of the reason. Fortunately, it appears that Focus Features will come to the film’s rescue. No way a movie with that much talent would languish for long.
Meanwhile, Variety also has news on The Hustlers at Scores, a film by Lorene Scafaria (The Meddler) with Jennifer Lopez attached as a former stripper turned criminal mastermind. Crazy Rich Asians‘ Constance Wu is also on board. We just learned about that film in August and already it has been dumped by Annapurna over what is being called “creative differences”. It looks like STX will swoop in to claim the rights and keep things moving.
Annapurna CEO Megan Ellison has taken over to right the ship, and I’m sure they’ll continue on as if nothing has changed. The good news is both of these high-profile films have found new homes and, at least for now, they have not been delayed by much.
In the latest power move by Netflix, they’ve put all of their boatloads of cash into securing a brand new original film by the most popular actor in the world, Dwayne Johnson. Variety reports Netflix will be the home for John Henry and the Statesmen, which reunite Johnson with Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle director Jake Kasdan.
Netflix apparently won a fierce bidding war with other major studios for the rights to the film, an original pitch by The Lego Ninjago Movie writer Tom Wheeler. Variety doesn’t offer any plot details, but it likely centers on John Henry, the African-American folk hero so good at driving railroad spikes that he faced a steam-powered rock drilling machine and won, although the victory cost him his life. It’s a classic man vs. machine tale, but has been adopted by many cultural movements, especially the labor and civil rights movements. A contemporary version makes a lot of sense, and Johnson has slammed enough steel to probably compete with John Henry. Deadline adds that Johnson will “lead an ensemble cast of the most popular figures from folklore and legend from all around the world.”
Johnson says about the news, “Netflix is the perfect partner and platform for us to continue entertaining our global audience in a disruptive way. These diverse characters speak to a legacy of storytelling that is more relevant than ever and span across a worldwide audience regardless of age, gender, race, or geography.”
Just like his buddy Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone has a real problem letting go of his most iconic roles. He’s kept coming back as Rocky Balboa even though the Creed franchise clearly belongs to Michael B. Jordan, and he has repeatedly returned as the , John Rambo. Currently he is shooting Rambo 5, which we now know will be titled Rambo 5: Last Blood and feature Paz Vega in a supporting role.
Vega, best known for her roles in Sex and Lucia and Spanglish, is joining Stallone in the film which finds the PTSD-afflicted John Rambo in Arizona battling a Mexican drug cartel. She’ll play a reporter covering the cartels who joins with Rambo after her half-sister is kidnapped. The film will be directed by Adrian Grunberg with a script co-written by Stallone and Matt Cirulnick.
Stallone has released his share of photos from the set, including the below one which shows Rambo in full cowboy gear, far from the camo and bandana we’re used to. But it makes sense as he was last seen visiting his father’s Arizona ranch at the end of 2008’s Rambo, and presumably that’s where he stayed.
The buzz has died down finally on Amazon’s massive $1B Lord of the Rings TV series. For a while there was nothing but speculation about the involvement of Peter Jackson, mostly because it’s just so damn hard to fathom the franchise without him having any kind of role. Well, now we know for sure that he has nothing to do with it. Nada. But in a conversation with Comicbook.com we do know that he’s looking forward to seeing it and another person’s vision of Tolkien’s world…
“I’m kind of looking forward to it. I was a guy who didn’t get to see the ‘Lord of the Rings’ like everybody else because I had to make it, so I’m looking forward to seeing somebody else’s take on the Tolkien world.”
I don’t know what anybody else thinks, but I agree with Jackson. Remember when Guillermo Del Toro was briefly involved with The Hobbit movies? That was an exciting time and I was always disappointed we ended up with Jackson again, who obviously failed to live up to his prior standard.
So now Amazon can move forward on what is expected to be a huge undertaking, with JD Payne and Patrick McKay in charge of things. Here’s a brief synopsis for what the series has planned:
“Set in Middle Earth, the television adaptation will explore new storylines preceding J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring.”
