And the beat goes. If you want a glimpse into the tight business arrangement between Marvel and Sony when it comes to this superhero stuff, look no further than the latest release date delays. With Marvel moving Doctor Strange 2 from its November 2021 spot and into 2022, Sony has slid right into the open territory with their next Spider-Man film. That ain’t a coincidence. It’s all synergy, baby.
Sony’s untitled Spider-Man 3 will take over the November 5th 2021 spot vacated by Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Tom Holland, of course, returns as Peter Parker along with Jon Watts as director. The move gets it completely out of the way of Venom: Let There Be Carnage, which opens that summer and has some predicting a Spider-Man cameo. Tom Hardy is doing his best to egg on those rumors.
Sticking with the world of Spidey, Sony has also pushed back Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse 2, moving it from April 8th 2022 to October 7th 2022.
That other flick Tom Holland is doing for Sony, the long-delayed video game flick Uncharted, has some good news for once. It’s actually been moved up (!!!) to July 16th 2021, a change from the previous October slot.
Marvel has not been immune from delays caused by COVID-19. On the contrary, they’ve been affected more than many other studios, as a single change causes a ripple effect up and down the entire line. And that continues with Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which will see the Sorcerer Supreme’s sequel head into 2022.
Doctor Strange 2 will leave its original November 5th 2021 spot and move to March 25th 2022. The film will see the return of Benedict Cumberbatch as Doctor Strange, the most powerful mystic in the entire MCU, and a major player in the defeat of Thanos in Avengers: Endgame. Sam Raimi recently took over as director, and we know that Elizabeth Olsen will be part of the cast as Wanda Maximoff aka Scarlet Witch.
Speaking of Scarlet Witch, this move likely means we’ll see some sort of shift in the release of Disney+ series WandaVision, which ties into the movie pretty closely. Don’t be surprised if it slides into 2021, rather than fall 2020 where it is now.
Another move finds Thor: Love and Thunder releasing a week earlier, on February 11th 2022. If you’re thinking that’s awfully close to Doctor Strange, well, you’re right. Just six weeks separate the two sequels.
The IMF has overcome numerous “impossible” missions in the last six installments of the TV adaptation franchise, Mission: Impossible. It looks like the one mission that truly was impossible was sticking to it’s original release date in the wake of Coronavirus. Paramount announced that a slew of upcoming releases are officially being pushed back, the most high-profile of which are next two installments of the franchise that proves Tom Cruise is immortal, Mission: Impossible 7 and 8, which are pushed back to Nov. 19, 2021 and Aug. 5, 2022 respectively. Also getting hit is Chris Pratt’s upcoming end of the world film The Tomorrow World (uly 23, 2021), lastly the kids around the world are going to be distraught to know that Paw Patrol (August 20, 2021). Of course, these dates are really just temporary at this point as there’s still no clear look at when production will be allowed to resume. Hollywood’s done amazing things transitioning to remote production and work but there’s some things you just can’t do from the comfort of your couch, like most of the things Tom Cruise has been doing lately. Worry not, dear reader, we will keep you up to date on all of the news as soon as it comes.
There are some pretty big changes coming to the Disney+ Star Wars series spinoff, Cassian Andor. They should be good news for fans of Rogue One, because the man largely credited with helping that film through troubled reshoots is taking over, joined by a pair of new cast members.
THR reports Tony Gilroy, one of the Rogue One writers and shepherd of the film’s reshoots, has taken over as showrunner of the series. He comes in to replace Stephen Schiff (The Americans), who is out for reasons unknown. Gilroy, who will also direct the pilot, was already part of the show’s writing team alongside his brother Dan Gilroy (Nightcrawler), Schiff, and Beau Willimon (House of Cards).
With the news also comes word that Genevieve O’Reilly will be reprising her role as Rebel Alliance leader Mon Motha. It’s a part she has been playing since Revenge of the Sith having taken over for original actress Caroline Blakiston.
Denise Gough, who was most recently seen in The Other Lamb and in last year’s adventure film The Kid Who Would Be King, has joined the cast in an unknown role. Gough and O’Reilly join a cast that includes Diego Luna, Alan Tudyk, Kyle Soller, and Stellan Skarsgard.
Cassian Andor will be a Rogue One prequel following the Rebel Alliance intelligence officer and spy as he rises to prominence.
Olivia Wilde’s directorial debut Booksmart may have gotten shafted at the Oscars, but it was one of the most critically-acclaimed movies of 2019. It’s bought her a ton of cred which she’s put to use in lining up a handful of projects. The first one she’s tackling is psychological thriller Don’t Worry Darling, and that cred has helped her secure an incredible cast.
Florence Pugh, Shia LaBeouf, and Chris Pine are all set to join Wilde’s next film, Don’t Worry Darling, according to Variety. Damn. The film will reunite Wilde with Booksmart writer Katie Silberman who is rewriting a script by Shane and Carey Van Dyke.
The story was originally described as following an unhappy 1950s housewife, but now we know it will also take place in a utopian society.
Pugh is said to have the lead role. She’s quickly become, arguably, the hottest actress working today with roles in Fighting with My Family, Little Women, Midsommar, and Marvel’s Black Widow. LaBeouf is coming off a praised performance in The Peanut Butter Falcon, as well as in Honey Boy, a film based on his own childhood. Pine is…well, look, I’m not a fan but the guy is a huge star and will be seen next in Wonder Woman 1984.
In large part due to having Guillermo Del Toro’s name attached, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark proved to be a big hit last year. The adaptation of the popular YA horror novels by Alvin Schwartz crossed the $100M mark with no big stars attached. That’s a formula for success that producers hope to replicate with a sequel.
Deadline reports a sequel to Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is in the works, with original director André Øvredal and writers Dan Hageman and Kevin Hageman all returning. Del Toro is once again back as a producer and will come up with the story himself.
No plot details at this point, but Schwartz concocted a number of gruesome short stories to choose from. The film wrapped a selection of those tales around events in 1960s Pennsylvania, where a group of teens discovers a book of scary stories in a haunted house. As the truth of the book unfolds, the stories within its pages take deadly shape in reality.
There’s nobody in the world who wants Gareth Evans to make The Raid 3 more than me. I’ve said more than a few times here that those films are the best pure action movies ever made, and I stick by that. Unfortunately, Evans has moved on to other things, but he spoke with Empire about what the plot of a sequel would’ve been. Actually, he gives away the entire thing.
Evans admits that fans of the first two films might’ve been unhappy with his idea for The Raid 3, primarily because it wouldn’t center on Iko Uwais’ character, Rama, who chose to walk away from violence at the end of The Raid 2…
“I couldn’t fathom of another fucking reason why he would put his life at risk and separate himself from his fucking wife and kid again. I was like, it can’t be about Rama,” Evans said.
So I would’ve been okay with that. The Raid 2 greatly expanded the scope of the movies so that Rama wasn’t the sole focus. Moving away from him in a sequel would’ve made some sense. If no Rama, where would the story have gone? Here’s the entire layout from start-to-finish…
“The story was going to go back in time to the moment in The Raid 2 when the Goto Gang, the Japanese gang, are having a meeting, and Goto tells his right-hand man to take care of it, wipe out every corrupt cop and politician that they have on the books and start fresh. The Raid 3 would begin with Rama coming out of that building after having killed everybody and saying ‘No, I’m done’. He walks away to [police officer] Bunawar, who’ll be waiting for him in his car, he gets in and drives away.
“And you stay with the Japanese gang, who are like, ‘What the fuck do we do now? Everyone’s dead, we’ve got no-one to kill.’ They get into their car, and as they’re driving along all of a sudden this other car rocks up alongside them and just blitzes them, and the cars crash. Goto, his son, and his right-hand man are the only remaining survivors from that attack, and it cuts to credits and says ‘The Raid 3.’
“Then it would jump back in time. The idea was that the right-hand man, after being told to kill off all the politicians and cops and wipe the clean slate, would call back to Tokyo to the big huge boss, and be like, ‘Goto’s going f–king nuts. This is fucking crazy, what do I do?’ The call from HQ is, ‘Keep him still, keep him close, we’ll send people to take care of it, and if you do that for us, you can take over his turf.’ The attack goes wrong – it’s a kill squad from Japan who have turned up and taken out the Gotos. Goto has no idea that this right-hand man has betrayed him and set him up for the ambush.
“They go off into hiding, all the way to the jungles of West Java. Goto arranges to meet up with this old mafia boss (played by Christine Hakim) who has trained killers in her jungle retreat. She’s providing protection for Goto because they go way back, she’s the one who introduced him to Jakarta in the first place. The idea is this Japanese kill squad that’s used to the streets of Tokyo suddenly have to deal with the terrain of a jungle-hunt, a bit like Predator in a way.
“Christine’s militia, these guerrilla kids, would be taking care of this Japanese intrusion on their land. I didn’t work out the whole thing, but at some point, Goto’s son would have got killed, he would have realized that it was the right-hand man who betrayed him all along, and they’d have some real gnarly tribal way of dealing with him. And Goto and this guerrilla gang of Indonesian killers would then go back to Tokyo in order to fucking take care of the people that ordered to kill him.”
Honestly, it doesn’t sound great, but we have to imagine the insanely brutal violence that Evans would’ve spruced it up with. No matter what, I still wish he would change his mind. Or start a new franchise with a similar style.
One might guess, and would probably be correct, that a flurry of contagion/bioterrorism movies are being written right now as screenwriters are stuck in their houses. Well, Jurassic Park and Indiana Jones 4 writer David Koepp has beaten them to the punch. His novel Cold Storage hit shelves last year and Paramount swooped in to acquire it before he was even finished. And now they’re moving forward on a film adaptation with a director ready to go.
Variety reports Jonny Campbell will direct Cold Storage, with Koepp providing the screenplay. Campbell’s credits are mostly in TV, including episodes of Westworld and Doctor Who. That makes the decision not to have Koepp direct it himself a bit unusual. While Koepp has directed films such as Premium Rush and Ghost Town, perhaps he’s still burned by his last movie, the dismal Johnny Depp “comedy” Mortdecai. Remember that? Yeah, not good.
Here’s the Cold Storage book synopsis, which takes on a whole new meaning given our current global situation:
They thought it was contained. They were wrong.
When Pentagon bioterror operative Roberto Diaz was sent to investigate a suspected biochemical attack, he found something far worse: a highly mutative organism capable of extinction-level destruction. He contained it and buried it in cold storage deep beneath a little-used military repository.
Now, after decades of festering in a forgotten sub-basement, the specimen has found its way out and is on a lethal feeding frenzy. Only Diaz knows how to stop it.
He races across the country to help two unwitting security guards—one an ex-con, the other a single mother. Over one harrowing night, the unlikely trio must figure out how to quarantine this horror again. All they have is luck, fearlessness, and a mordant sense of humor. Will that be enough to save all of humanity?
When there’s a call for authorized biopics the first name to be called has to be Anthony McCarten. The writer of Darkest Hour, The Theory of Everything, and Bohemian Rhapsody has helped lead multiple actors to Oscar wins. He very nearly did the same recently with the quite unofficial drama The Two Popes. Now McCarten will attempt to take us through the tragic ups and downs in the life of Whitney Houston.
The Whitney Houston estate, working with legendary Grammy-winning producer Clive Davis (who discovered Houston at the age of 19), have green lit a biopic on the late R&B star. Tentatively-titled I Wanna Dance with Somebody, the film will be written by McCarten and directed by Stella Meghie, who recently helmed romance The Photograph.
McCarten, who will also act as a producer, has promised a “no holds barred, musically rich screenplay that finally reveals the whole Whitney”. At least, that’s what Davis claims in a new statement given to Deadline. It’s hard to believe the Houston estate would be okay with such a thing, but we shall see. Authorized films based on real-life celebs tend to be sanitized to the point of nothingness, a complaint many saw with McCarten’s Bohemian Rhapsody script.
As for casting, there’s nothing yet on who will play the songstress, but consider McCarten’s track record of creating Oscar contenders. One has to believe actresses will be lining up to try and hit those notes few other than Whitney Houston could achieve.
Considering it’s still raging through the world it seems odd to see a movie taking place at the start of the opiod epidemic, but here we are. Though, I supposed if you’re going to set a movie in this time period about something so serious there’s no one better to lead it up then Imogene Poots who’s talents seem to few bounds. Given that it’s a trailer we only get a few minutes to look at here but the direction by Joey Klein seems to really hammer home the themes and feels of what I imagine the films going to tackle. Ana and Henry are two young people who become embroiled in drugs and addiction, after stealing a stash they are on the run for their lives. That plot line seems more like the plot for something like Go (calling back to the 90’s folks), but the serious take they are going here seems like it could end up with something deep and meaningful. Follow all of our coverage here, and check out the trailer below!
Castle In The Groundhits digital on May 15th, 2020
