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Andrew Lincoln May Be Leaving ‘The Walking Dead’

By
John Nolan
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Since its inception in both the comic book and TV show The Walking Dead has had Rick Grimes as the main character.  After waking up to the zombie apocalypse after an officer-involved shooting induced coma, Rick Grimes has been our audience avatar for the entirety of both the comics and TV show.  Rick has endured a lot.  Waking up to the end of the world, his wife’s death, his daughter’s death (comic), and his son’s death (TV show), Rick’s been through the ringer on many occasions and still managed to come through triumphant.  Well, it looks like Season 9 of The Walking Dead may be the end of Rick Grimes.

According to Collider (verified via Comicbook.com) Season 9 is going to be actor Andrew Lincoln’s last season on the show. Even worse news for the show is that he may only appear in six episodes. The season is currently in production in Atlanta now, but the news has confirmed through multiple sources that Lincoln will be stepping away from the show.  Lincoln has been wanting to return back to the UK to spend more time with his family, away from the Atlanta-based set of The Walking Dead.  AMC has yet to confirm or announce the new just yet, so take it with a grain of salt until we truly find out.

This means that many of the main “Atlanta Originals” are gone.  After Carl’s death last season (a big departure from the comics), Rick and Darryl (Norman Reedus) are the only remaining members of the original cast.  In addition to Rick possibly leaving the show, Maggie’s (Lauren Cohan) role on the show next season will be significantly reduced as her current contract is only for six episodes.

While the show could continue without Rick (creator Robert Kirkman has always said that everyone’s expendable, even Rick), his shoes would be very hard to fill.  Who would become the defacto leader or Alexandria?  Darryl?  Jesus?  Maybe a reformed Negan?  And can The Walking Dead survive without Rick?  We’ll just have to find out when The Walking Dead returns this fall.

Rumor: Paul Rudd Racing To Paramount’s ‘Sonic The Hedgehog’ Movie

By
John Nolan
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A Sonic the Hedgehog movie is racing to the big screen, and Paramount may have found their first star. While there’s still nobody set to voice the speedy video game icon, Paul Rudd is reportedly being eyed for one of the lead live-action roles. Take this with a grain of salt as the story comes from That Hashtag Show, although to be fair they’ve been on a roll of late.

Rudd would be playing one of the film’s human characters, which kills my dreams he would voice a CGI Tails.  The Ant-Man and the Wasp star would play Tom, “a cop who befriends Sonic and will likely team up to defeat the evil Robotnik.” No surprised there since Robotnik, aka Dr. Eggman, is usually the villain in the many Sonic video games published by SEGA. 
The film will mark the feature directorial debut of Jeff Fowler, Oscar nominee for his animated short film Gopher Broke. He’ll work from a script by writers Patrick Casey and Josh Miller. Sonic the Hedgehog is currently set to open on November 15th 2019.  
Rudd will be seen next in WWII film The Catcher was a Spy, followed of course by Ant-Man and the Wasp.

Punch Drunk DVDs: ‘Annihilation’, And More!

By
John Nolan
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NEW THIS WEEK
Annihilation

Based on the best selling series of novels, this heady sci-fi
thriller stars Natalie Portman as a biologist who, after the mysterious
reappearance of her missing husband (Oscar Isaac), signs up for a dangerous, top
secret expedition into the supernatural realm he was last seen exploring. Adapted
and directed by Alex Garland (Ex Machina, 28 Days Later), Annihilation is hands
down the year’s most hauntingly beautiful film.

We Said: “The film is simply plotted; the women need to reach their destination and then return home, but its the complexities within them that are fascinating. […] Gorgeous, unnerving, and utterly brilliant, Annihilation will scare the crap out of you just as much as it will make you think.” Rating: 4 out of 5

BUY NOW

Also Available: Haunted: The Complete Series

Colin Trevorrow Opens Up About His ‘Star Wars: Episode 9’ Exit

By
John Nolan
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Colin Trevorrow’s rapid ascent to blockbuster filmmaking began after only one feature, the terrific indie film Safety Not Guaranteed. That led him to directing Jurassic World in 2015 which surprised everybody to the tune of $1.6B. He was riding high, and was then hired by Lucasfilm to direct and write Star Wars: Episode 9. Then the bottom fell out. He directed Book of Henry which was panned by critics and ignored at the box office, then shortly thereafter he was replaced on Episode 9 by a returning J.J. Abrams. Trevorrow hasn’t said much about his dismissal, but he has opened up a little bit to Empire, and he’s of pretty good spirits over it…

“I don’t want to talk too much about it because I don’t want to affect the way that fans get to see these films. When we were kids, these movies came to us from far away. They were a gift. And the more we talk about how they’re made, the more it reveals that they’re just movies. But they’re not just movies, they’re more than that. Beyond that, I got the opportunity to tell a story that is a celebration of everything I believe in, I got to tell it to George Lucas and I got to tell it to Luke Skywalker, and those are experiences I will cherish for the rest of my life.”

I can appreciate where Trevorrow is coming from here. If he said anything about his exit, ANYTHING, it would be splashed all over headlines for months. Everything Abrams does with his movie will be compared to what Trevorrow said, and we would all be talking about how troubled the production was even if there’s no trouble at all. If you want to know how that kind of bad buzz can hurt a movie, look no further than Solo. Not even Star Wars is immune.
Besides, things are looking up for Trevorrow now. He’s coming back to co-write and direct the third Jurassic World movie in June 2021.  Star Wars: Episode 9 moves on without him, opening December 20th 2019. 

Jamie Foxx Will Suit Up As Todd McFarlane’s ‘Spawn’

By
John Nolan
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It’s official, Jamie Foxx is suiting up as Todd McFarlane’s Spawn. Foxx has been top of the list to play the character for years, but with the film recently finding a home at Blumhouse the rumors began running wild that it would finally happen, and now McFarlane has his guy.

McFarlane has been promising an R-rated Spawn movie for so long I don’t think anybody thought it would be a reality, but this really move really hits the accelerator. Foxx will take on the role of Al Simmons, a soldier who is betrayed, killed, and reborn as a Hellspawn. Rather than serving the forces of Hell he instead becomes an antihero, while also pining for the woman that he loves. The character was immensely popular during the scorching hot creator-focused ’90s, even rivaling the X-Men. That popularity is long gone but the character still has a cult following who could turn out to see him on the big screen again. The PG-13 movie released in 1997 was a joke, and the gold standard for adaptations remains HBO’s animated TV series. You should go find it and watch it sometime to get a feel for Spawn the dark edges that are so much a part of his world.

References to Jaws and A Quiet Place have given us a view into McFarlane’s approach to the movie, which will have a reported $10M budget. Basically, keep actual appearances by Spawn few and far between. McFarlane told Deadline…

“The scariest movies, from Jaws to John Carpenter’s The Thing, or The Grudge and The Ring, the boogeyman doesn’t talk. It confuses people because of the comic book industry, and because they all default into their Captain America mindset and I keep saying, no, get into John Carpenter’s mindset or Hitchcock. This is not a man in a rubber suit, it’s not a hero that’s going to come and save the damsel. It’s none of that. At the end of the movie, I’m hoping that the audience will say either, is this a ghost that turns into a man, or is it a man that turns into a ghost? I’ve got a trilogy in mind here, and I’m not inclined in this first movie to do an origin story. I’m mentally exhausted from origin stories. Luckily, there’s a movie that just came out that helps my cause. In A Quiet Place, the first thing on screen is a card in black and white letters that says Day 89. It doesn’t care about what happened in those first 88 days. There are a couple headlines, but then we are on day 450. That movie doesn’t worry about explaining and giving all the answers. What it said in that case was, if you can hang on for a story of survival of this family, this movie will make complete sense for you.”


So far there’s no Spawn release date but I have to expect that to change soon.

‘Deadpool 2’ And ‘Infinity War’ Get Blamed For Disappointing ‘Solo’ Box Office

By
John Nolan
-

Well, it’s finger pointing time. You don’t disappoint the way Solo: A Star Wars Story did over the Memorial Day weekend and not have people making excuses. In this case I think this excuse is close to being on the money. Disney exec Dave Hollis blames a crowded summer movie season, specifically having to contend with Avengers: Infinity War and Deadpool 2. He tells THR…

“There’s a question of frequency, and how many times people will go to the movies. Is this too much and too soon for a third time in a five-week period?” 
Yes, that is definitely a part of it. Anybody who says different is bullshitting. But it’s not like Disney couldn’t have foreseen this, especially since they were competing with themselves in the case of Infinity War.  They could have taken steps to fix this, like maybe pushing Solo down further into the summer when it’s less stuffy. 
But that is just one of many factors that played into it. Another is Solo‘s dismal showing overseas, especially in China where Star Wars has long had trouble gaining a foothold. The film only earned $65M internationally with just $10M of that from China. When you’re talking about a movie with a $300M budget, the domestic returns simply aren’t going to be enough.
“We have a lot of work to do in trying to understand this,” Hollis continued. “We are all over it and will spend a lot of time digging into why things happened the way they did in various markets. We have a year and a half before ‘Episode IX’ comes out.”

Yo, he’s all over it. And when Episode IX does gangbusters he’ll probably think the problem is solved. I’m of the mind that this disappointment is unique to Solo, and won’t have any effect on the core trilogy. While some are rejecting the “Star Wars fatigue” theory, I think it’s at least partially true. Unlike Marvel, which has been dropping two or three films a year for quite a while, Star Wars was always presented as a special event that arrives once in a blue moon. That feeling is gone, and Solo, which never presented itself as being an important cog in the machine, fell victim to people deciding to wait. Maybe they’ll see it this week with so little else coming out? We’ll find out when the numbers for week two hit. 

‘Ocean’s 8’ Trailer: Meet Sandra Bullock’s New Team Of Thieving Ladies

By
John Nolan
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The timing on this new trailer for Ocean’s 8 couldn’t be more perfect. We’ve just come off a month with two muscular Marvel movies and a Star Wars spinoff featuring the most dashing rogue in the galaxy. That’s a lot of dude energy audiences have been hit with, so how about a dose of girl power to even things out?

Sandra Bullock, Cate Blanchett, Anne Hathaway, Rihanna, Awkwafina, Mindy Kaling, Sarah Paulson, and Helena Bonham Carter steal the heist franchise away from the guys, but the formula remains the same. An all-star cast play a ragtag group of thieves to steal something incredibly valuable, in this case a $150M necklace from the Met Gala.

Honestly, they don’t need to put out anymore trailers for this. The cast sells itself, and I think after so many gigantic blockbusters it’ll be nice to settle down with something breezy.

Directed by Gary Ross, Ocean’s 8 opens June 8th.

‘Ant-Man And The Wasp’ TV Spot Unleashes Ghost On The MCU

By
John Nolan
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Ant-Man and the Wasp doesn’t get a megavillain the size and scope of Thanos, but their foe is just right for the diminutive crime fighting duo. Hannah John-Kamen plays the technologically-gifted Ghost in the Marvel sequel, and now she’s got a TV spot that’s basically all about her.

Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly), and Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) team up to stop Ghost, whose power to phase through solid objects make her extremely tough to handle. We see her kicking Scott’s butt pretty easily in this 30-second teaser because, let’s face it, he can’t really fight. He’s just big.

“We’ve unleashed something powerful, we have to stop her,” Hope says, alluding to Ghost’s theft of Pym Particles which may also grant her access to the Quantum Realm, the place where Hope’s mother Janet (Michelle Pfeiffer) was lost years earlier. We’ve seen very little of Janet Van Dyne or that particular plotline, which tells me it must hold some pretty big secrets.

Directed by Peyton Reed, Ant-Man and the Wasp opens July 6th.

Zack Snyder Finally Moving Forward On Ayn Rand’s ‘The Fountainhead’

By
John Nolan
-

We haven’t seen a ton from Zack Snyder since he dropped out of Justice League to deal with a personal tragedy. He’s continued to have a small social media presence, occasionally dropping behind-the-scenes bits about his vision for the failed superhero film, and has been doing commercials for the various causes he supports.  But we hadn’t heard much about his making a comeback, and certainly not on anything related to DC Comics. Now it looks as if Snyder is ready to return, and it will be on his long-developing adaptation of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead.

Snyder began developing the film a couple of years ago, as it’s set up over at Warner Bros. where he does most of his work. It was through Vero that Snyder confirmed the news while answering a series of fan questions…

Published in 1943, The Fountainhead is a cornerstone of Rand’s works preaching the virtues of individualism and objectivism, or rational self-interest.  It follows an architect named Howard Rourke who battles against societal conventions in an effort to succeed strictly on his own terms. Rand adapted the book for King Vidor’s 1949 film starring Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal.

Frankly, it’s a troublesome book to adapt, especially in light of the terrible recent adaptations of Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. However, I’m convinced Snyder doesn’t care about Rand’s politics, or at least he doesn’t care enough to make them prominent in a movie. Instead I think he’ll boil the story down to being about an architect and his devotion to the creative process. How Snyder plans to integrate slo-mo and jump cuts into the designing of buildings is beyond me, but I know that he will! [Polygon]

*UPDATE* Box Office: ‘Solo’ Shoots And Misses With $168M Through Memorial Day

By
John Nolan
-

*UPDATE*- Okay, some good news. Solo: A Star Wars Story managed to pull out $103M through the Memorial Day holiday, a bit more than projected. That is the best Memorial Day launch on record since 2014’s X-Men: Days of Future Past, which I guess is a nice feather in Disney’s cap. That said, its debut is still very disappointing in light of the $140M+ record-breaking projections from just days ago, and the film’s $300M+ price tag. This is still a low for the franchise, and that’s even if you include the Special Edition re-releases from the ’90s. It remains a huge disappointment overseas, as well, with just $65M making for a worldwide haul of $168M.

1. Solo: A Star Wars Story (review)- $83.3M
Uh oh. There have been a surprisingly vocal group of folks waiting anxiously for Star Wars to have its first true box office dud, and that time may be here. Solo: A Star Wars Story opened with just $83.3M domestically, with a projected $101M through to Memorial Day. That’s after a decent $14M on Thursday previews added into $35M on Friday, but the numbers stayed soft into the weekend. Star Wars has never found a home internationally and that continued with just $65M internationally for a $148M haul worldwide. Ouch.  So what does this mean? Hard to tell right now, but the next two weeks will be key. It’s fairly open over that stretch so we could see those who spent their movie money on Deadpool 2‘s second weekend take the time to finally catch up with Solo. If that happens it could easily recover, but even so these numbers are going to be way below the Star Wars standard. The question becomes whether putting out a new Star Wars film annually is the right way to go, especially in this case. Only six months have passed since The Last Jedi and we may be seeing audience fatigue mounting at a rapid rate. Disney is miscalculating if they think Star Wars is the same as Marvel. They can’t be treated the same way.
2. Deadpool 2– $47.2M/$207.4M
Deadpool 2 took a $47.2M bite out of the box office in its second weekend, and I think it’s safe to say a lot of those were potential Solo fans. The 66% drop is steep, but the  The R-rated flick has $487M worldwide after just two weeks, and cost roughly $110M to produce. I say it all of the time but it remains true.  Budget is everything, and Fox has been smart about keeping the Deadpool films lean enough that one or two weekends is enough to make them a hit and a smart investment. Solo, which may have cost north of $300M after reshoots, is going to struggle to break even.
3. Avengers: Infinity War– $16.4M/$621.6M
$1.9B worldwide and counting for Avengers: Infinity War. I’m curious to see if numbers this massive will rub off on Ant-Man & the Wasp.
4. Book Club– $9.4M/$31.8M
5. Life of the Party– $5.1M/$39.1M
6. Breaking In– $4M/$35.6M
7. Show Dogs– $3.07M/$10.6M
8. Overboard– $3M/$41.4M
9. A Quiet Place– $2.2M/$179.9M
10. RBG– $1.1M/$5.6M

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