Disney is going hard when it comes to their upcoming streaming service, as we found out earlier this week when CEO Bob Iger revealed multiple Star Wars series would be developed for it. It’s not surprising Disney would lean on their most popular brands, including Marvel and Pixar, to provide content they know will draw big subscriber numbers. And now we’re learning more about the launch titles that will be available when this thing hits in 2019.
Deadline reports the first wave of titles will include the aforementioned Star Wars show, a live-action Marvel series, a series based on High School Musical, and Monsters Inc. will get an animated program, as well. On the feature side you have Magic Camp with Gillian Jacobs and Adam Devine, live-action Sword and the Stone and Lady and the Tramp, plus musical Noelle starring Anna Kendrick, all projects we’ve heard about in the past.
There’s more, too, and it’s good news for Netflix as Disney will allow them to keep their Marvel shows like Daredevil, Luke Cage, and Jessica Jones. The network had been openly lobbying for that decision, and it looks like Disney is keen on keeping the relationship as it currently stands. Finally, there won’t be any R-rated content on Disney’s service, so anything that’s more adult oriented will be shifted over to Hulu, which I guess makes sense to capture the widest possible audience.
While DC Films’ standalone Joker movie has always sounded like a sketchy idea, when Leonardo DiCaprio’s name was floated to star we at least knew the aims were going to be high. DiCaprio may have been an attempt to shoot the moon but the second option is pretty damned sweet, too, and he actually said yes. Joaquin Phoenix, go ahead and scratch that comic book itch, buddy.
That’s right, Joaquin Phoenix is in talks to play the Joker in Todd Phillips movie that will center on Batman’s iconic nemesis. This will be something of an origin story, a gritty crime drama set in the 1980s. It all sounds like some sort of Martin Scorsese movie, which may be why Scorsese was sought to produce at one point. That’s not happening, though, and the story will come from a script co-written by Phillips and Scott Silver that will fall into a new banner of DC Comics movies disconnected from the Justice League cinematic universe.
This slams the door shut on Jared Leto reprising the role for Phillips, although the actor is still expected to don the makeup for Suicide Squad once that gets going. [Variety]
Beauty is only skin deep, right? Many a comedy has been built around the idea that true beauty comes from within. Shallow Hal, that’s a good one, right? She’s All That? Awesome. Clearly, it’s an idea that is full of potential potholes to step in, and hopefully the new Amy Schumer comedy I Feel Pretty will avoid them.
Schumer has built her career destroying traditional notions of what makes a woman sexy, so I feel like she’d be good for a film like this. She plays a regular, average woman (I balk at the notion Schumer is average) who takes a severe knock on the head and wakes up with a newfound confidence, seeing herself as drop dead gorgeous.
Joining Schumer is an entire cast of not-so-average ladies including Michelle Williams, Emily Ratajkowski, Naomi Campbell, Aidy Bryant, Lauren Hutton, and Busy Phillips. Here’s the unnecessarily lengthy synopsis:
Renee Bennett (Amy Schumer) knows what it feels like to be average looking in New York city – a city of the genetically and financially blessed. After falling off her bike and banging her head during a spin class, she stumbles in the locker room and it is there that she first sees what has happened – her legs are toned, her hair is silky, her chin is defined – she is GORGEOUS. Except that, to everyone else, she looks EXACTLY THE SAME.
Even though her appearance hasn’t changed AT ALL – Renee’s new belief in herself sees her climbing the ranks at the cosmetics company she works for, getting the respect of her impossibly beautiful boss AVERY LECLAIR (Michelle Williams), bagging a cute boyfriend in ETHAN and getting invited to rooftop parties.
With her new confidence comes overconfidence, and even the tendency to treat the ‘less genetically fortunate’ in the same dismissive way that people used to treat her. Eventually Renee believes the spell has been lifted – and finally realizes that when she thought she was ugly, she may have been the most beautiful, and when she believed she was beautiful, she had started to turn a bit ugly. She learns that true beauty is not skin deep.
Written and directed by Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein, I Feel Pretty opens June 29th.
Sony really hopes Venom will be their Deadpool. They’ve got at least some history to back them up, at least. The two characters were part of a popular wave of antiheroes that hit Marvel in the ’90s and probably went on for longer than it needed. But as Deadpool really took off at that point, Venom got kinda lost in a bunch of bad storylines, new characters joining with the symbiote, and he was always in Spider-Man’s shadow.
That really needs not to be the case as Sony launches their new cinematic universe, and this teaser trailer for Venom is a strong start. Tom Hardy takes on the role of Eddie Brock, who in the comics was a rival of Peter Parker’s. He gained super powers when he bonded with the same alien symbiote that gave Spidey his black costume, and they forged an unholy pact against the wallcrawler for a while before becoming good guys.
You won’t see any of that in this footage, though, and I was surprised by how much it resembled a horror movie. If that’s the way director Ruben Fleischer steers it then I think it’s a good idea to get some separation from the expectations this will be just an R-rated Spider-Man movie without Spider-Man. Sony has been trying to make Venom for years and trying something a little different is a good way to go about it.
Also starring Riz Ahmed, Michelle Williams, Woody Harrelson (He’s in EVERYTHING!!!) and Jenny Slate, Venom opens October 5th.
Right now we are in the zenith of the Superhero movie era, with Marvel in the lead at the top of the mountain. With much of the Marvel Superheroes, a lot of the credit is given to Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, and deservingly so as those two along with Steve Ditko and a few others built the Marvel Universe. Now over time some of the characters have had other creators who were actually more impactful and you can say important to the core and popularity of character or team than Lee & Kirby. One of those creators is Chris Claremont and he is the writer that made the X-Men what we think of today, his storylines and style of characterization took the X-Men from a lower place to the top of the charts in comics. The film Chris Claremont’s X-men takes the time to show the beginnings of the writer to the point of his exit from the franchise in the early 90s.
The film is a pretty standard type of TV-style documentary with interview segments and photomontages. For a long time fan, especially a diehard X-men one there’s not much new here other than it being nice to see these interviews with these great creators. For those that haven’t been multiple decade-long readers or just not deep X-Men fans, there is a lot here. The film gives a great historical timeline of the comic franchise of its first 30 years of existence. Since this is about Claremont it doesn’t go too far in depth about some of the previous runs of the book before his tenure on the title. A surprising and welcome focus was also shown on two of Claremont’s editors and later fellow writers and collaborators, Lousie Simonson and Ann Nocenti. Two women who have had a great impact on the X-Men franchise (and Marvel in general) and bring great insight to the film on the process of working with Claremont and how he builds a story or how he decides to change a character. They also don’t flinch on bringing up what they feel are his flaws as well.
The film also has some great parts with Jim Shooter, the editor-in-chief at the time of Claremont’s run on the title. And also great bits with the late, great Len Wein, creator of Wolverine and previous writer on the title (Also, a great on the franchise who saved it and important to comics period). The film does a good job of also explaining who these other people are and their place in the history of Marvel and what they brought to the X-Men. There are two things that really didn’t work in this film though; one is the random cosplayers as the characters dispersed throughout the film. It leaves you with questions like why am I seeing this and wouldn’t it have been better to just put more art on the screen? The second one is that it really glosses over the reasons why Claremont left the X-Men, almost like he really didn’t want to go into it. At the time Claremont had a disagreement with the editorial direction with Marvel on the book as Jim Lee, the title’s superstar artist, wanted more input on the stories he was drawing. While it’s good to see a filmed version of Claremont’s side there is none on Lee’s side or Marvel editorial at the time. If you want to see more about Lee and his issues with Marvel there is plenty of stuff about that you can find. That being said this was a really entertaining documentary about an unsung creator in the history of comics to the mainstream that more people should know about.
I’m going to start with something that will shock you as much as it shocks me:
Fifty Shades Freed isn’t terrible.
The least incompetent of the adaptations of E.L. James’s mommy porn wish fulfillment novels ties up the kink-heavy romance of Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) and her billionaire lover/dominant Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan) tighter than a zip knot in his infamous Red Room. While still wildly improbable and unintentionally funny more often than not, this third chapter finally gives Ana a voice in this relationship other than to call out her safe word.
There still isn’t much of a plot to speak of, but the over-arching question is whether or not Ana and Christian can keep things spicy in the bedroom now that they are husband and wife. Will domestic bliss dull the edge off of their passion? Those concerns do pop up occasionally in-between 100+ minutes of them jet setting around the world, apparently so Christian can be a scary control freak on as many continents as possible.
In Nice on a nude beach Ana dares to remove her top. Christian freaks out.
Ana dares to stay a little too long at work? Christian freaks out.
Ana puts the needs of one of her book clients (Tyler Hoechlin, random) ahead of Christian? Guess what? Freak out.
And of course, her “punishment” is a trip to the Red Room where Christian can reassert his dominance. But things are a little bit different now. Ana uses her new position as his wife to subtly take control, teasing him more and having more fun while doing so. The result is more equality in the bedroom not the one-sided domination of the previous movies. I hesitate to call any of this stuff sexy, particularly a scene involving a pint of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, but at least it looks pleasurable and not like a trip to the torture chamber.
The biggest laughs still come at Ana’s random cluelessness. After the exchanging of wedding vows Christian whisks her away on his private plane, but not before she stops to incredulously ask, “You own this?”
After an entire movie in which they came under attack from her deranged former boss (Eric Johnson, back for seconds) and his crazy ex-lover, Ana has the nerve to question the need for personal security.
Hello Anastasia, welcome to the third Fifty Shades of Grey movie. Where the Hell have you been?
There are intentional laughs for once, too. When an attacker is caught by that previously-thought unnecessary security, they have nothing to tie the guy up with.
“Um, we have some”, chirps Ana embarrassingly.
Yeah, we bet you do.
Unintentionally hilarious is Christian suddenly proving what a sensitive soul he can be at the piano. Not buying it. Still kinda creepy and possessive.
Fifty Shades Freed does set out to prove that marital sex can be hot as long as money is involved. There’s sex everywhere that’s expensive. In expensive cars, after a car chase (!!!). On expensive kitchen tables. In very expensive-looking showers. They may have joined the Mile High Club aboard his private jet. Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan famously did not get along while shooting these movies but they seem to be having a good time. She’s an actress who is much better than this material affords her (The Kristen Stewart/Twilight analogy applies), while he has very impressive facial hair. Most of the time.
Even at its best Fifty Shades Freed is still dopey, but you won’t be embarrassed for giving this one a pass.
Julianne Moore is set to star in a remake of Susanne Bier’s Oscar-nominated Danish film, After the Wedding. The original film starred Mads Mikkelsen as an orphanage manager in India who travels to Denmark at the behest of a wealthy benefactor who happens to be married to the manager’s greatest love. This updated version will be written and directed by Moore’s husband, Bart Freundlich, and will be reimagined with two women as the leads. [Variety]
Fresh off his Best Supporting Actor Academy Award nomination for The Florida Project, Willem Dafoe is in talks to star in The Lighthouse, a thriller from The Witch director Robert Eggers. Details are slim, but we know it will be set at the start of the 20th century and follow Maine lighthouse keepers. [Deadline]
Meanwhile, Dafoe is also part of Edward Norton’s growing ensemble for Motherless Brooklyn. Norton will write and direct the picture that will feature Bruce Willis, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Alec Baldwin, Leslie Mann, Michael K. Williams, Ethan Suplee, Cherry Jones, Robert Wisdom, Fisher Stevens, and Josh Pais. Set in 1950s New York, the story follows Lionel Essrog (Norton), a lonely private detective afflicted with Tourette’s Syndrome, as he ventures to solve the murder of his mentor and only friend, Frank Minna (Willis). Armed only with a few clues and the powerful engine of his obsessive mind, Lionel unravels closely-guarded secrets that hold the fate of the whole city in the balance. [Deadline]
Between the $1B+ of Jurassic World and the $850M by Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, we may start seeing a wave of legacy sequels. Of these two I would say Jumanji is definitely the bigger surprise, quickly becoming one of the most successful movies in Sony’s history. So of course they’re going to do a sequel, and they aren’t going to try and fix what isn’t broken.
According to Deadline, Jumanji 3 is happening and it will reunite the previous film’s writers Scott Rosenberg and Jeff Pinkner. Also expected to return are star Dwayne Johnson, Jack Black, Kevin Hart, Karen Gillan, “and the rest of the ensemble”. Presumably that means Alex Wolff, Nick Jonas, and the rest of the teenaged crew. Director Jake Kasdan will also likely return.
It’s too early to know about a plot, of course. We’ve seen the Jumanji board game enter reality, while Welcome to the Jungle brought people into the video game. So what’s next? Got ideas? Let us know.
Now is David Leitch’s moment and he’s not letting a second of it go to waste. It seems like every high-profile project has his name attached in some way, and that’s been the case since co-directing John Wick, then moving on to Atomic Blonde and the upcoming Deadpool 2. Now Leitch is eyeing a brand new potential blockbuster as part of the wildly popular Fast & Furious franchise.
Leitch is the apparent frontrunner to direct the Fast & Furious spinoff featuring Dwayne Johnson as Agent Hobbs and Jason Statham as Deckard Shaw. The untitled film has a script by Chris Morgan, who has written every F&F movie since Tokyo Drift. Otherwise we don’t know jack about the plot other than Hobbs and Shaw will likely bicker and threaten one another while beating up entire rooms of bad guys. Johnson will be unnaturally sweaty, and Statham’s perpetual five o’clock shadow will be a character unto itself. As for potential villains, Charlize Theron’s baddie from Fate of the Furious was in the mix but that’s not happening, possibly because that movie was a creative low.
The spinoff caused a rift within the F&F fam when co-star Tyrese Gibson complained about Fast & Furious 9 being bumped an entire year to make room for it. He’ll just have to deal because Hobbs/Shaw is still set to open on July 26th 2019. [Variety]
Spinning Man sounds like the name of a really terrible superhero on The Tick, but it’s actually the title of a new psychological thriller with an impressive lineup of stars. Pierce Brosnan, Guy Pearce, Minnie Driver, Odeya Rush, Alexandra Shipp, and Freya Tingley lead the adaptation of George Harrar’s book directed by Simon Kaijser. Here’s the synopsis: Evan Birch (Guy Pearce) is a family man and esteemed professor at a distinguished college, where his charm and reputation have made his philosophy class very popular. When a female student named Joyce goes missing, Evan’s previous off-campus dalliances make his wife (Minnie Driver) question his alibi. Gruff police Detective Malloy (Pierce Brosnan) has even more reason to be suspicious when crucial evidence makes Evan the prime suspect in Joyce’s disappearance. Suddenly, the questions Evan faces aren’t merely academic – they’re a matter of life or death.
