It was only yesterday that we got the insane first trailer for Sony’s Venom: Let There Be Carnage, giving us our best look at Woody Harrelson as the villainous rival to Tom Hardy’s Venom. Funko, always on the ball, are quick to follow that up with the release of the Pop! Vinyl figures for the anticipated sequel.
So far there are only two figures, one of the lethal protector himself, Venom. The other offers a closer look at Cletus Kasady aka Carnage, and the slight variations in the movie version compared to the comics.
Venom and Carnage are two of the characters Funko has recreated most (Deadpool is reigning champ, for sure), so it makes sense for them to have a movie accurate take on them.
These are available for preorder right now, and will ship around summertime. We highly recommend Entertainment Earth for your Funko Pop! buying needs! Any commission that we earn from purchases through our affiliate links goes back into the site. We are a small group and every little bit helps. Thank you so much for all of your support!
The #RestoreTheSnyderverse movement isn’t going anywhere, two months after the release of Zack Snyder’s Justice League. Look, Snyder knew what he was doing. He didn’t have to use the rope afforded to him by Warner Bros. to hint at future sequels, but he did, knowing that fans would raise an uproar.
And so they have. Unfortunately, the film wasn’t the huge mover of subscriptions on HBO Max that WB wanted. The chances of seeing Justice League sequels? Pretty slim. That we’ve always known, but in a recent interview Snyder says that WB’s stance has been the same all along, and suggests that it’s become personal…
“Warner Bros. has been aggressively anti-Snyder if you will. What can I say? Clearly, they’re not interested in my take. But I would also say that they certainly weren’t interested in – I would have said originally – in my take on Justice League. They certainly made decisions about that.”
“I love the characters, and I love the worlds, and I think it’s an amazing place to make a movie. It’s glorious IP. So there’s that. I don’t know what could be done as you go forward other than I think the fan movement is so strong, and the fan community, [their] intention is so pure, and I really have this huge respect for it. I would hope that cooler heads would prevail with [the studio] and they would see that there’s this massive fandom that wants more of that…Who knows what they’ll do?”
What they’ll do is more forward on films such as The Flash, Aquaman 2, The Batman, and others that have little connection to the Snyderverse. Fortunately for Snyder, he’s come out of this pretty well. Fans loved ZSJL and so did critics for the most part, and his zombie film Army of the Dead is getting pretty solid reviews (including from me) ahead of its release on Netflix next week.
Although they’ve been involved with many different projects, almost all of them incredible such as Into the Spider-Verse and The Mitchells vs. the Machines, Phil Lord and Chris Miller haven’t actually directed a film since 2014’s 22 Jump Street. There was that whole Solo: A Star Wars Story thing but, uh, nah, that ended up not happening. Well, now they’re getting back behind the camera on an adaptation of a book by Moneyball author Michael Lewis.
Variety reports Lord and Miller will direct The Premonition: A Pandemic Story, based on the non-fiction book by Michael Lewis which follows the early days of COVID-19 from three people working inside the ill-prepared Trump administration.
Lewis is known for his books which have been adapted into acclaimed films, including Moneyball, The Blind Side, and The Big Short.
So you’re tired of pandemic movies, you say? I get it, and I am, too. But the combination of Lewis, Lord, and Miller promises this will be something different and probably an awards contender. It’s quite a change of pace for the duo, though, so we’ll have to see how they handle shifting gears from comedy and animation to such a sobering topic.
Next up for Lord and Miller is Project Hail Mary, a Ryan Gosling-led adaptation of The Martian author Andy Weir’s sci-fi novel.
Stephen King has and always will be prominent in the realm of horror, but it has never meant more than right now in TV and the big screen, especially in the age of streaming. Apple has gotten into the King business with a series adaptation of Lisey’s Story, which the author will adapt and write every episode of himself.
Starring Oscar winner Julianne Moore, along with Clive Owen, Joan Allen, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Sung Kang, Ron Cephas Jones, and Dane DeHaan, the series is a deeply personal one for King as it drew inspiration from a particularly trying time in his life and marriage.
SYNOPSIS: “Lisey’s Story” is a deeply personal, pensive thriller that follows Lisey Landon (played by Moore) two years after the death of her husband, famous novelist Scott Landon (played by Owen). A series of unsettling events causes Lisey to face memories of her marriage to Scott that she has deliberately blocked out of her mind. Joan Allen, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Dane DeHaan, Ron Cephas Jones, and Sung Kang also star alongside Moore and Owen.
The talent on this one extends behind the camera, as well, with director Pablo Larrain (No, Jackie, Spencer) at the helm and JJ Abrams’ Bad Robot producing. Lisey’s Story hits Apple TV+ on June 4th, with new episodes airing each Friday.
“I would do anything for my kids”, something every parent says but thankfully few of us are every put in a position to test what the definition of “anything” could be. Matt Damon’s new thriller, from Oscar Winner Tom McCarthy, Stillwater seems to show what lengths an Oklahoma oil-rig worker will go to for his daughter, after she’s falsely accused of murder in France. Damon and McCarthy are both ringers in their respective fields and based on the footage included in the trailer below, Damon is most definitely not phoning it in. It’s an intriguing premise to be sure. A father set on proving his daughter’s innocence is one thing, but adding the foreign aspect brings it to a whole new level…not only are all the rules and systems we know different but, as the trailer shows, you’re an outsider who isn’t going to be taken in well by the locals.
Official Synopsis:
A dramatic thriller directed by Academy Award® winner Tom McCarthy and starring Matt Damon, Stillwater follows an American oil-rig roughneck from Oklahoma who travels to Marseille to visit his estranged daughter, in prison for a murder she claims she did not commit. Confronted with language barriers, cultural differences, and a complicated legal system, Bill builds a new life for himself in France as he makes it his personal mission to exonerate his daughter.
Zombie Elvis, undead showgirls, a mutated tiger Joe Exotic would kill for, and an impossible heist mission. What the f**k is there not to love about Army of the Dead?? Zack Snyder’s return to the genre after 2004’s Dawn of the Dead, still considered by many to be his most successful film, is an exhilarating, hilarious, genre-flipping thrill that will be an easy one to revisit over and over.
Not only is Army of the Dead a great showcase for Snyder, but it gives Dave Bautista one of the richest roles he’s had yet. For all that he’s accomplished for Marvel and elsewhere, true lead roles for him have been rare. I would liken his performance here as mercenary-turned-burger flipper Scott Ward to his role in the little-seen action flick, Bushwick. It’s a performance that leans on his physicality, humor, and ability to show a bit of vulnerability when called for.
The opening montage is straight bonkers, set to a soaring rendition of “Viva Las Vegas” as Scott and his team survive a full-on assault by a zombie horde, rescuing as many people as they can along the way. Imagine the avalanche of walkers in World War Z, only in much more colorful dress (this is the glitz and glam of Vegas, baby!) and you get the idea. Snyder, who also acts as DP and co-writer on the film, just has an eye for the sheer campiness that comes with zombies as a whole. The danger of them is only trumped by how much campy fun can be had with them, and Snyder gets it. There are no end of visual sight gags, but the most enjoyment you’ll get out of it comes from the characters themselves. He captures the crazy over-the-top gore and violence with such enthusiasm it practically leaps off the screen.
A veritable suicide squad of offbeat and colorful misfits, the cast includes Ella Purnell as Scott’s estranged daughter, a volunteer helping refugees on the border; Theo Rossi as an abusive border patrol agent; Omari Hardwick as Vanderohe, a soldier with a philosophical streak; Ana de la Reguera as Cruz, one of Scott’s closest friends; Nora Arnezeder as a tracker and guide known as The Coyote; Tig Notaro as the mouthy pilot; and Matthias Schweighöfer as the breakout character by far, Ludwig Dieter, a German safecracker who really isn’t built for the sort of mission they’re about to go on. The always-reliable Hiroyuki Sanada (who can be seen right now as Scorpion in Mortal Kombat) plays the mysterious benefactor who comes to them with a job to break into a vault underneath a Vegas casino to secure $200M that was left behind.
What’s the catch? Oh, nothing…just that the government is going to nuke Las Vegas off the map as a means of ending the outbreak once and for all. So the clock is winding down before that missile hits and money will be the last thing on anybody’s mind.
With that much money on the line it’s a given that everybody has their own agenda, which is all part of the fun. Some have altruistic motives, while others considerably less so, and how these goals intersect heightens the already-thick tension among the crew. But in the middle of it all there’s one friendship that forms which had me wanting a spinoff just following them. I couldn’t get enough of the odd bond that grew between the flimsy, histrionic Dieter and the gruff, dismissive Vanderohe, but as his guard drops he shows more of his intellectual side. The two are just a perfect mismatched pair and I’d pay to see more of them.
Even the zombies are pretty cool, and yeah, most of them are just shambling wrecks but others are faster, more agile, and have a heightened level of intelligence. In what could be seen as laying the groundwork for future movies, there’s a whole hierarchy among them that’s pretty interesting if expanded upon. Snyder, who co-wrote the script with Joby Harold and Shay Hatten, are clearly planning for a potential franchise. If that happens, he might want to think about trimming the hefty 2 1/2-hour runtime. As much of a blast Army of the Dead may be, it can’t sustain the energy for that amount of time and it really hits you just at the time when you should be most pumped up for the big getaway.
We talk often about Zack Snyder’s love of comic books and the superhero genre. Whatever you think of him and his DC Comics stuff, his appreciation for those characters shines through. I think we can start heaping the same praise on him for zombie films, as well. If Army of the Dead is the start of Snyder’s career rising up from the grave, I’m all for it.
Army of the Dead will open in select theaters on May 14th, then exclusively on Netflix beginning May 21st.
The wait has been a long one for David Lowery’s The Green Knight. Like everything else, it got delayed a considerable amount by the pandemic, pushing off a film that has many eager to see Dev Patel back in a leading role, this time an epic fantasy based on the Arthurian tale of Sir Gawain and his quest to confront the titular giant who he has made an ill-fated bargain with.
Joining Patel in the film are Alicia Vikander, Joel Edgerton, Sarita Choudhury, Sean Harris, Kate Dickie, Barry Keoghan, and Ralph Ineson. A24 was going to give the film a world premiere at SXSW, only to have it canceled when the festival shut down.
I know a few people who have already seen it as they were going to do interviews, and they’ve all got good things to say, in particular about Patel’s performance.
The Green Knight will finally open in theaters on July 30th. This one might be a sleeper for the summer, as it has the gigantic scale of a blockbuster, but also the indie chops of a filmmaker like Lowery, who is best known for Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, Pete’s Dragon, and A Ghost Story.
An epic fantasy adventure based on the timeless Arthurian legend, The Green Knight tells the story of Sir Gawain (Dev Patel), King Arthur’s reckless and headstrong nephew, who embarks on a daring quest to confront the eponymous Green Knight, a gigantic emerald-skinned stranger, and tester of men. Gawain contends with ghosts, giants, thieves, and schemers in what becomes a deeper journey to define his character and prove his worth in the eyes of his family and kingdom by facing the ultimate challenger. From visionary filmmaker David Lowery comes a fresh and bold spin on a classic tale from the knights of the round table.
If you’re seeing ALOT of Seth Rogen lately and wondering, “What’s the new movie?”, don’t worry you aren’t alone. Truth is, there is no movie, Rogen is on a publicity tour for his new memoir Year Book which becomes available tomorrow, May 11th. Generally speaking publicity tours are pretty tame, with the same tired questions and answers bouncing back and forth. It seems that, with a memoir, the truths become more readily available. The biggest nugget comes in the arena of one of comedies greatest bromances, Seth’s string of hits with long-time buddy James Franco. During the endless interviews and appearances there’s been a lot of questions surrounding how he feels about the films that made him famous. Rogen worked in the raunchy R-rated comedy department, and in the past 10 years many of the jokes that made him famous would now get him razed on Twitter. The guy with the most famous laugh in the world seemed to regret that his career was tied to this kind of comedy (something I don’t think he should apologize for), these conversations culminated in THE question…what was his relationship with James Franco like following the allegations of sexual misconduct aimed at the actor.
Rogen had the following to say:
“I also look back to that interview in 2018 where I comment that I would keep working with James, and the truth is that I have not and I do not plan to right now,”
Considering that Rogen once backed his buddy publicly I have to imagine that some facts came to light privately causing Rogen to back away. Honestly, Rogen doesn’t seem like the type to worry about being “cancelled”, but he does seem like a guy who wouldn’t support someone he KNEW was doing something wrong.
It’s going to be a Spectre reunion on Rian Johnson’s Knives Out sequel! Deadline reports Dave Bautista will join Daniel Craig in the anticipated film, a followup to Johnson’s hit 2019 whodunnit which Netflix recently paid a whopping sum to acquire, along with the third film.
Details on Bautista’s role are unclear, of course, as we know little about the sequel’s plot. I would advise against assuming him to be a villain, despite his role as a baddie in the James Bond film. He’s extremely funny and could play a comedic character, while his roles in Blade Runner 2049 and My Spy showed a sensitive side, as well.
It’s a busy time for Bautista, as he’s got Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead coming up this week. He’ll also be seen in the Dune remake, and will reprise his role as Drax in Thor: Love & Thunder and Guardians of the Galaxy 3.
The Golden Globes are going to be in need of a new home, and I’m not sure they’re going to find one. Today, NBCUniversal announced it will not air the 2022 Golden Globes ceremony after a weekend in which the Hollywood Foreign Press Association was really raked over the coals by celebrities (Tom Cruise returned his damn Globes!) and studios alike, with Netflix, Warner Bros., and Amazon among those who have refused to be associated with them until significant reforms are made. All of this springs from an investigation into the HFPA membership, which is over 100 strong, and yet has no Black people as members.
“We continue to believe that the HFPA is committed to meaningful reform. However, change of this magnitude takes time and work, and we feel strongly that the HFPA needs time to do it right. As such, NBC will not air the 2022 Golden Globes. Assuming the organization executes on its plan, we are hopeful we will be in a position to air the show in January 2023.”
So this is short-term for now, but if the HFPA doesn’t get its shit together this could be a lasting situation. The timing for this is good, anyway, because ratings for awards shows have been in the toilet. My curiosity for this extends to whether another awards show, like maybe the Critics Choice, steps up to take its place?
