After being away from it for more than two decades, Hayden Christensen is now fully back into the Star Wars universe. Not only will he return as Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader in the upcoming Obi-Wan Kenobi series alongside Ewan McGregor, but will now appear in the Ahsoka Tano series opposite Rosario Dawson.
THR confirms the news, and it was almost a given that Christensen HAD to be in this show. The relationship between Anakin and his former padawan Ahsoka was crucial to The Clone Wars series and one of the most interesting dynamics in all of Star Wars.
Considering Ahsoka takes place five years after Vader’s death, it’s likely he’ll appear mainly in flashback or possibly as a Force ghost? He and Ahsoka definitely have some business left unfinished, some things left unsaid.
Sony’s Spider-Verse is growing, and that’s even with Venom: Let There Be Carnage doing…well, okay at $287M worldwide. Next up is a Morbius film led by Jared Leto, and a Kraven the Hunter film led by Aaron Taylor-Johnson will follow in January 2023. But now we know there will be two more Spidey-related films coming out that year, so let the speculation begin as to what they’ll be.
According to a tweet from THR writer Aaron Crouch, Sony has set June 23rd 2023 and October 6th 2023 for a pair of mystery Marvel projects. Best guess? Venom 3 is likely for October, following on the success of the first two films. Considering how the latest one ended, it’ll be VERY interesting to learn more about that one.
As for the June date? Well, it could be anything but the frontrunner has to be Olivia Wilde’s Spider-Woman movie which is the only project confirmed. It’s possible they’ve got something else in mind, but I doubt it. Certainly, they aren’t betting enough on Morbius to plan a sequel for that so soon.
Sony also has a Silkseries coming up at Amazon, and there’s also a Madame Webfilm in the works from the writers of Morbius. Lots in the pipeline, for sure, and we can’t forget that a Sinister Six movie seems to be something Sony is building to eventually. Will Tom Holland be a part of any of this? My gut tells me yes, but that they’ll also find a way to bring in someone to play Miles Morales who could take up the mantle.
While some might have been inclined to be all contemporary and diversify the casting of a live-action Barbiemovie, in the case of Greta Gerwig’s that ain’t happening. You’ve already got Margot Robbie set to play the iconic doll, and she’s about as perfect physically for the role as possible. And as for who will play her Ken? Why, Ryan Gosling, of course.
Deadline reports Gosling is in final talks to play Ken in Gerwig’s live-action Barbie movie. Ken is Barbie’s longtime boyfriend, and basically, he exists to be window dressing which should make this a pretty funny part for Gosling to play.
Gerwig will direct and co-write the script with her partner Noah Baumbach, and they’re bound to try something a little bit different with this idea. The project has been in the works for years, once with Amy Schumer on board to star, and later with Anne Hathaway. Diablo Cody (Juno) took a shot at writing and directing it, but dropped out.
We’re happy to offer our DC readers the chance to attend a free advance screening of Antlers, a new horror from director Scott Cooper (Out of the Furnace) and produced by Guillermo Del Toro!
SYNOPSIS: From the visionary world of acclaimed director Scott Cooper and horror maestro Guillermo del Toro comes ANTLERS. In an isolated Oregon town, a middle-school teacher and her sheriff brother become embroiled with her enigmatic student whose dark secrets lead to terrifying encounters with a legendary ancestral creature who came before them. Based on the short story The Quiet Boy by Nick Antosca.
The screening takes place on Monday, October 25th at 7:00pm at Landmark E Street. If you’d like to attend, simply go to the Searchlight Pictures ticketing site here. Please remember all screenings are first come first served and you’ll need to arrive early to ensure seating. Enjoy the show!
What kind of person does it take to scale some of the world’s tallest mountain peaks? It’s a question that has been explored in numerous movies, from Free Solo to Touching the Void, my all-time favorite North Face, and others, many about the same mountain challenge. The Summit of the Gods is something different, though. The animated film, an adaptation of the Japanese manga, itself based on a novel by Baku Yumemakura, it follows a photographer who discovers a legendary camera. His find leads him on a dangerous mountain-climbing adventure with his mysterious friend.
The film is directed by Patrick Imbert in his directorial debut after spending years as an animator. The style employed here is very similar to other animated films that either explore real events or capture human drama, such as the acclaimed documentary Flee or Waltz with Bashir. Producers Didier and Damien Brunner worked on The Triplets of Belleville, which earned two Oscar nominations including Best Animated Feature.
The Summit of the Gods hits Netflix on November 30th, preceded by a select theatrical run on November 24th.
A breathtaking adaptation of the manga series by renowned manga artist Jirô Taniguchi and writer Baku Yumemakura, THE SUMMIT OF THE GODS follows a young Japanese photojournalist, Fukamachi, who finds a camera that could change the history of mountaineering. It leads him to the mysterious Habu, an outcast climber believed missing for years. Fukamachi enters a world of obsessive mountaineers hungry for impossible conquests on a journey that leads him, step by step, towards the summit of the gods.
The Ike Perlmutter era at Marvel Studios may have been financially successful, but creatively? That’s a different story. Ironically, it was the “Creative Committee” established by Perlmutter which caused the most problems, leading to the homogenized feel so many Marvel movies had during that time. The group, which included comics writer Brian Michael Bendis, publisher Dan Buckley, Marvel E-I-C Joe Quesada, and other insiders, was broken up in 2015, and later Kevin Feige convinced Disney to make Marvel Studios a separate entity similar to Pixar and Lucasfilm.
We’re still hearing about the bad ideas that flowed like muddy water from the Creative Committee, though. One has to do with Captain America: Civil War, a film that really flipped the MCU on its head with a conflict that broke up the Avengers. And it was that turbulence that terrified the Committee, which sought to remove the final battle between Iron Man and Captain America. What the fuck would this movie have been without it?
“We had to do a draft where they had a fight in a submarine base with five super soldiers,” co-writer Stephen McFeely explains in the pages of The Story of Marvel Studios (via Slash Film).
Co-director Joe Russo added, “We kept saying, ‘There’s nothing interesting about that film. We’re not here to make that movie. We’re not interested in telling another superhero story.'”
The group wanted to do just another generic superhero movie, and faced pushback from the filmmakers and Feige, who had finally had enough…
Russo said, “Civil War started a civil war in Marvel. But when we drew the line in the sand, it became a moment where that company was either going to slowly bend back toward where it had come from, or it was gonna slowly start to bend toward new territory.”
The rest is Marvel history. I look at Civil War as the moment when the MCU really started to evolve. Prior to that, I had always said the Marvel films were good but not much blew me away. Now I count some of them as my favorites ever and expect there will be plenty more. If Perlmutter and his Creative Committee were still around things would be very different and not for the better.
Tragic news coming from the set of the Western film, Rust. Last night we learned cinematographer Halyna Hutchins had been killed and director Joel Souza injured when a prop gun was fired that contained a live round.
It was later reported in a statement that star Alec Baldwin was the one who fired the gun. Souza has since been released from the hospital, but a lot of questions remain about exactly what happened.
Hutchins was probably best known for her work on last year’s film Archenemy alongside director Adam Egypt Mortimer, who was devastated by the news…
I’m so sad about losing Halyna. And so infuriated that this could happen on a set. She was a brilliant talent who was absolutely committed to art and to film. ❤️ pic.twitter.com/vcdFqHsGA0
Here is what a Rust spokesperson had to say to THR about the production’s status…
“The entire cast and crew has been absolutely devastated by today’s tragedy, and we send our deepest condolences to Halyna’s family and loved ones. We have halted production on the film for an undetermined period of time and are fully cooperating with the Santa Fe Police Department’s investigation. We will be providing counseling services to everyone connected to the film as we work to process this awful event.”
I’m getting eerie Brandon Lee vibes here. Lee, the son of legendary martial artist Bruce Lee, was killed in 1993 on the set of The Crow by an improperly loaded prop gun.
You can bet there will be a lot that springs from this incident, including the possibility of new safety laws for film productions. To the best of my knowledge, we have yet to hear from Baldwin about what happened and if he’s still being questioned by police it’s understandable why not.
Since 2015, Kate Winslet has been attached to a film about model-turned-WWII war photographer Lee Miller. That project is finally starting to come together seriously, with Winslet reuniting with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind cinematographer Ellen Kuras, who will direct, and now a stellar cast of co-stars joining her.
Deadline reports Marion Cotillard, Jude Law, Andrea Risborough, and Josh O’Connor are joining the cast as the film gets packaged up for the American Film Market. A group such as this should make it an easy sell. The film will also have a script by Liz Hannah, Golden Globe-nominated writer of The Post.
This won’t be a birth-to-life biopic of Miller. In fact, Winslet says it won’t be a biopic at all…
“This is absolutely not a biopic. To make a story about Lee’s whole life, that’s a series worth for HBO. What we wanted to do was find the most interesting decade in her life, the one that defined who she was and what she became because of what she went through. It was the period from 1938-1948 that took her right through the war and her most defining time. That is the story we want people to know about Lee more than the many other parts of her life.”
Miller worked for Vogue magazine and was key in documenting atrocities committed by the Nazis during the Holocaust.
Cotillard is playing French Vogue fashion designer Solange D’Ayen, a close friend of Miller’s who was taken by the Nazis in 1942. Riseborough is powerful British Vogue editor Audrey Withers, another of Miller’s close friends but also one who refused to publish some of her photos for fear of how the country would react. Law plays artist Roland Penrose, the love of Miller’s life. And O’Connor, fresh off his Emmy win for The Crown, is Miller’s son Arthur Penrose, whose research was used to help Hannah with the script.
Shooting could begin next summer or early fall, with Alexandre Desplat on board as composer. This has awards season written all over it.
Apple TV+ has been on quite a roll. While not having the quantity of the other streamers, they make up for in quality as almost all of their Original Series have been absolute hits. I mean if you watched the Emmys, you know how much Ted Lasso is a force of nature. Another bonus from the house that Jobs built is that they aren’t afraid to dig deep into genre territory. With See giving us our fix for post-apocalyptic programming, as well as For All Mankind and most recently Foundation, Apple TV + has no problem delving into science fiction. Their newest series digs even deeper as we are now tackling aliens in Invasion.
Right off the top, Invasion operates a bit differently than most “alien invasion” movies or TV shows. Instead of relying on the spectacle of little green men coming to earth and scorching everything Independence Day-style, Invasion operates more like a globe-trotting drama like Babel or Traffic… that just happens to also have aliens in it here and there. This is both a criticism as well as a plus. The entire first episode introduces you to a half-dozen unrelated characters just going about their normal lives, unaware of just how royally screwed up the planet is going to be by tomorrow.
We have Aneesha Malik (Golshifteh Farahani) and her husband Ahmed (Firas Nassar) living a quaint suburban life in Long Island. They seem like a normal happily married couple, until we see that Ahmed isn’t as devoted to his wife as she would like. In addition, their children have been sent home from school as all the children at school have been sent home due to uncontrollable nose bleeds. Now would you want to try and brave an apocalypse with your adulterous spouse? There’s also Sheriff John Bell Tyson (Sam Neill), who is about to retire as a small-town sheriff, and on his last day just has to find two missing teens. Unfortunately, he ends up finding way more than that as the locusts are acting weird in a cornfield, and you know about aliens and crop circles!
But Invasion just isn’t an American story. After all, aliens come to planet earth, not just the USA. Over in Japan the Japanese Aeronautics and Space Administration (JASA) is about to do a launch into outer space and astronaut Hinata Murai (Rinko Kikuchi) is going up. She is secretly dating communications expert Mitsuki (Shioli Kutsuna), who has a vested interest in the invasion when things go awry after the launch. Mitsuki becomes passionately dedicated to figuring out what’s going on in outer space, as she wants to try and find her girlfriend. Also across the pond is a group of young British kids who are out on a trip to and from school. The main kid is Caspar Morrow (Billy Barratt), who suffers from epilepsy, but there’s more to his story than that as the season unfolds. He is joined also by school bully Monty (Paddy Holland), who he really should have punched before the end of the first episode, and his secret crush Jamila (India Brown). By the end of the day, the three of them as well as others on their school bus are forever intertwined by the events of the alien attack. The last character we focus on is Trevante (Shamier Anderson), a US soldier in Afghanistan (this show now seems outdated as we have pulled out of that conflict: thanks a lot Biden!) who is having issues with his wife as well. He’s spent too much time in the desert and communicating with her via Zoom isn’t being healthy for their marriage.
Invasion takes its sweet time establishing these characters, almost to a fault, before anything hits the fan. While we get to know each of them intimately, we really want to see the dang invasion! While the first episode ends with the chaos of the initial attack from the aliens, it’s actually by about episode 6 that we actually get to see these big bads. To be fair, Invasion does a great job showcasing the confusion that would really happen if an alien attack started. And by showcasing a diverse group of different people from all over the world, it gives a great idea of how different people would react to a global event like this happening. Some people would think the events are terrorism. Some would think it’s a hoax. Some wouldn’t believe it’s aliens until they get impaled by these monsters!
Speaking of the aliens, hats off to the production crew as they made a very unique creature that at first, looks too stupid to be a threat, but when we see them in action one-on-one, they are absolutely terrifying. There may be some people ready to tap out of the show early on, but by episode 6, there’s a “hunted house” feel to it that’s genuinely terrifying as an alien stalks the Malik family as they are holed up in a farmhouse in a very tense episode. From there on, the show picks up steam and shows just how real the stakes are for the show. And yes, the stakes are real. Some people will not make it as these aliens are BRUTAL!
While the first three episodes will be available on the first day Invasion is released, Apple might want to allow this to be one of the shows that’s completely bingeable instead of being week-to-week, as it takes a while to really get things going. My fear is that some people may tap out when they realize this is a show about people and not really about spectacle. In fact, there will probably be a significant number of naysayers that won’t appreciate the melodrama going on during an apocalypse. One of the best-acted character arcs is also one of the most frustrating as an unhappily married couple has to stay together to survive while dealing with aliens and the breakdown of society and in a real-world scenario probably would have left each other to fend for themselves.
That said, Invasion is a worthy experiment. By making the focus on what’s happening across the globe, it makes the show feel grand in its scope. The production, score, directing, and especially the acting are all top-notch. There’s a reason your iPhone cost $1,000: it seems as though they took all your money and put it into this show. Simon Kinberg (of the X-Men franchise fame), as well as head writer David Weil (Amazon’s Hunters and Solo), really put their foot into telling a grand story about how we may realistically react to the end of the world. It’s just a tad bit too overdramatic at some times.
In the high-octane action flick Dangerous, you’ve got two veterans of the Fast & Furious movies, two veterans of the X-Men franchise, and Braveheart himself. What’s not to like? Scott Eastwood, Tyrese Gibson, Kevin Durand, Famke Janssen, and Mel Gibson star in the film from Saw V director David Hackl, and the trailer promises edge-of-your-seat thrills. The film is written by Christopher Borrelli (The Marine 2).
Here’s the synopsis: Ex-con and reformed sociopath Dylan Forrester (Scott Eastwood) is trying to quietly serve out his parole — with the help of a steady supply of antidepressants and his eccentric psychiatrist (Mel Gibson). But when his brother dies under mysterious circumstances, Dylan breaks parole and, with a dogged FBI agent (Famke Janssen) on his trail, goes to uncover the truth. A band of heavily armed mercenaries wants something Dylan’s brother was hiding, and Dylan will need all his guile and tactical skills to survive in this action-packed thriller costarring Kevin Durand and Tyrese Gibson.
Dangerous opens in theaters and VOD on November 5th.
