With the coronavirus causing cancellations all around the world, and the move of No Time to Die all the way to November, some have been waiting for the other shoe to drop. But the major studios have largely stuck to their guns, other than Peter Rabbit 2 and My Spy moving back a few weeks. One of the big films we’ve been waiting to hear more about was F9, and with Vin Diesel on tour doing press for Bloodshot he was in a position to give a predictably Toretto-esque answer about the movie’s future.
Speaking with USAToday, Diesel basically says there’s no way F9 will move from its May 22nd release date. At the same time he managed to hype up his superhero film which hits theaters this weekend…
“Let me put it to you this way: ‘Bloodshot‘ at the end of the day is a soldier and a soldier doesn’t decide or pick when or where he’s deployed. We’re going to go in.”
Um, sure. Thanks, Vin. I’m sure your muscles can stop a virus dead in its tracks??? To his credit, Diesel acknowledges that his brazenness is pretty unique to him, and gets it that others might think he’s a little bit nuts.
Continuing to frame his responses through the Bloodshot mindset, Diesel said he “won’t fault anyone in the world for saying, ‘You guys are stupid for releasing this movie right now.’ but “we need movies now more than ever. We’re already in a very interesting time where cinema and the cinematic experience is so threatened. So, yes, put it on record we’re going to show up.”
He continued, “I love to show up for the audience and for the fans because God knows how much they’ve showed up for me. I’m crazy. I’m begging Sony to let me go to China, even now. And you should see everyone’s faces like, ‘You’re going alone, buddy!’”
While Diesel is a producer and a driving creative force on the Fast & Furious franchise, the decision isn’t entirely his. But for now, look for F9 to skid into theaters just when it’s supposed to.
Harrelson will co-star with Hart in the action-comedy The Man from Toronto, which is due to kickoff production in just six weeks. The move was necessary after Statham dropped out due to creative conflicts, most notably a desire to see the film be R-rated. He was apparently okay with the general premise, though, which centers on a regular nobody who is mistaken for an elite assassin after an Airbnb mixup.
We’ve seen Hart in so many of these roles that the jokes practically write themselves, however, this is a bit different for Harrelson. While he’s done his share of action-comedies, including last year’s Zombieland: Double Tap, buddy comedy is something he’s mostly stayed away from since the days of White Men Can’t Jump and Money Train. He’ll be seen next as the villain Carnage in Venom 2.
The Man from Toronto hits theaters on November 20th, directed by Patrick Hughes.
Just a few years ago it’s doubtful anybody would’ve thought of Richard E. Grant as a studio blockbuster actor. But after roles in Logan and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, a switch has clearly been flipped. Grant is now headed to the MCU as part of the stacked cast of Marvel’s Loki series, headed to Disney+.
The Oscar-nominated Grant (for Can You Ever Forgive Me?) is the latest to join the Loki series, which brings Tom Hiddleston back as the thorn in Thor and the Avengers’ sides. As is par for the course, there are no details on Grant’s role but we do know he’ll only be in one episode. He joins a cast that includes Owen Wilson, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, and Sophia Di Martino.
If trying to launch a brand new superhero cinematic universe, Sony could’ve done worse than Bloodshot, a character whose origin story is basically a ripoff of Robocop and Wolverine. The Valiant Comics hero with the nanite-powered healing factor, superhuman strength, and superhuman bout of amnesia gets a surprisingly enjoyable B-level sci-fi actioner led by Vin Diesel, who finally gets to appear on screen and not simply voice a talking tree for Marvel. Whether Bloodshot is powerful enough to launch a franchise…well, not even his sturdy muscles are quite that durable.
Bloodshot has a familiar story of revenge, pumped up with cool sci-fi visuals by director Dave Wilson in his feature debut. There are also a bunch of wildly exaggerated performances, keeping the film firmly rooted in trash cinema territory right where it belongs. Screenwriters Jeff Wadlow (of Kick-Ass 2 and Fantasy Island “fame”) and Eric Heisserer (Arrival) don’t even bother to put up a front; the entire first leg of the movie is one ridiculous cliche after another. Vin Diesel plays Vin Diesel…er, Ray Garrison, a U.S. soldier on a rescue mission in Cambodia. He’s a one-man-show gunning down the enemy like something out of a video game. He saves the day, and just wants to come home to spend an Italian vacay with his beautiful wife Gina (Talulah Riley). Only she winds up being kidnapped by goofy serial killer Martin Axe (Toby Kebbell), who dances to the beat of “Psycho Killer” before offing his victims. Ray is captured, too, and can only watch while Gina is murdered in front of his eyes. Axe then turns and finishes off Ray, as well.
The end? Hardly. Keeping up with the Robocop theme, Ray wakes up in a top secret facility led by Dr. Emil Harding (Guy Pearce, hamming it up), who tells him he’s been souped up with nanobots. The little buggers give Ray enhanced sealing, super-strength and durability. He’s just one of a few other cyber-goons in the facility, former soldiers equipped with advance tech. Only one, KT (Eiza Gonzalez), seems to have much of a soft spot. That’s because she knows the truth; that Ray, whose tragic memories keep forcing him to hunt down his wife’s killer, is being used by a much deeper conspiracy.
If Bloodshot played it grim and straight, it would be pretty unbearable. Fortunately, the whole thing is rooted in fun and some slick visuals, the best of which finds Ray tracking Axe down in the middle of an empty tunnel in Hungary. After causing a huge wreck involving a flour truck, the landscape takes on the pallor of a blood-red snowstorm. While the laser scopes track and the bullets fly, we also get a look at the full extent of Ray’s newfound powers. A shotgun blast literally tears his face from the skull, but the nanobots rip the flying skin right back into place. Ray barely misses a beat before taking the shot that kills his target.
Unfortunately, there aren’t enough scenes done so well. A climactic battle that sees Ray battling his cybernetic bros while falling down an elevator shaft is rendered in cartoonish CGI. The character models generally look pretty good, but are hardly anything to write home about. Again, they seem to be pulling from the Robocop playbook…the recent remake, that is, in terms of the visual feel of Bloodshot‘s world.
Diesel basically gets to play himself here, as Ray isn’t so much a character as a means for Vin to punch holes in walls and shout his feelings. There isn’t much to Ray that we are given reason to care about, and no amount of twisted mind-fu**ery can change that. Fortunately, Bloodshot doesn’t demand a lot from Diesel other than to hit and shoot stuff, and there are others who help to keep it interesting. Pearce is an old hat in exactly this kind of sci-fi lunacy (remember Lockout?), while Lamorne Morris is a riot as the chatty tech genius with the comic book name, Wilfred Wigans. Gonzalez also does more with the KT role than the script affords her, giving us one of the few characters with a sympathetic angle.
Chances are Bloodshot will come, go, and be celebrated only by Diesel’s hardcore fans. Interestingly, for all of Sony’s desire for a cinematic universe, there is virtually no world-building. Larger aspirations would be too much to put on this movie’s shoulders, anyway. While hardly as entertaining as when Diesel lives his life a quarter-mile at a time, Bloodshot is brawny and silly enough to avoid being a wreck.
“Liberal Hollywood is Racist at the highest level, and with great Anger and Hate! They like to call themselves ‘Elite,’ but they are not Elite. In fact, it is often the people that they so strongly oppose that are actually the Elite. The movie coming out is made in order … to inflame and cause chaos. They create their own violence, and then try to blame others. They are the true Racists, and are very bad for our Country!”
The above tweet was by, you guessed it, Donald Trump when he first learned of the controversial film The Hunt. As is typical for him, he knew nothing of what he spoke but used the country’s political polarization as a weapon for his own benefit. It was largely due to his inflammatory rhetoric, and that of others deliberately misunderstanding the film, that saw it pulled from release until now. Well, what was true then is true now. The Hunt is snarky, provocative, offensive, super-violent, and takes out its politically-incorrect anger on both sides of the ideological spectrum. Right wing, left wing, everybody gets skewered in Craig Zobel and Damon Lindelof’s The Hunger Games-style murder spree.
For angry conservatives bent on hating The Hunt as some sort of liberal wet dream, you’re not even half right. The initial premise is true that it centers on a group of liberal elites who hunt down “deplorables”, even using that term explicitly in the opening minutes, as a means of getting payback against the Trumpers out there. But it’s also clear soon after who the real villains are, although it’s hard to say anybody can be considered a hero. The progressives are a snobbish bunch, flaunting their cultured bonafides with arrogance while arguing over the right terminology to use when describing their quarry. They are everything those on the extreme right want to believe liberals to be and worse.
On the other hand, the prey are Hannity-watching, Alex Jones-citing conspiracy nuts who will anything they want to believe is true into reality. They’re the types who think Pizza Gate is real, but climate change is a hoax perpetrated by angry scientists or something. The Hunt lives in the extremes when, for the most part, reality exists somewhere in the middle. Figure that out and you’ll have a good time watching both sides slaughter one another, and feel free to pick a side if you wish. I sure did, and you most definitely will, too. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t enjoyable to watch one soon-to-be victim, a gun nut spouting about the seven guns he owns, has his entire belief system (Second Amendment! God-given right!) shattered before meeting his grisly fate. Meanwhile, a polar bear treads a melting glacier in the climate change video playing in the background. The man’s killers argue about whether it’s okay to call African-Americans “black” yet, and who makes that determination. It’s all silly, wildly over-the-top, and indicative of our hyper-polarized culture that it sounds so legit.
The Hunt makes some interesting choices narratively, as well. Initial promos leaned heavy on the dystopian aspects, but also on the star power. Emma Roberts, Ike Barinholtz, Hilary Swank, and Justin Hartley were featured extensively, but the movie doesn’t belong to them. Hell, some of them don’t survive the first five minutes. The film is owned by GLOW star Betty Gilpin as Crystal, who is interesting because she doesn’t exist in the extremes…unless you count the extreme violence she inflicts on her progressive foes. Crystal is unusually good at killing people, and only part of the reason is the complete ineptitude of her victims. From the moment the first head is blown off in a spray of crimson, The Hunt wears its gore proudly and everybody has an equal opportunity to die.
Ultimately, the best thing about The Hunt is that it dares to tread dangerous political territory and do it in a way that is entertaining, fun, and will piss off both Democrats and Republicans. They must be doing something right.
Following on their Oscar-winning documentary American Factory, exec-producers Barack and Michelle Obama have returned with another award winner. Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution premiered at Sundance and became an instant sensation. The crowd-pleasing film came away with the prestigious Audience Award for U.S. Documentary.
Directed by Nicole Newnham and former camper Jim LeBrecht, the film centers on a trailblazing summer camp that helped galvanize a disabled teens. The timing of the film couldn’t be better as it arrives on the 30th anniversary of the landmark Americans With Disabilities Act.
SYNOPSIS: In the early 1970s, teenagers with disabilities faced a future shaped by isolation, discrimination, and institutionalization. Camp Jened, a ramshackle camp ‘for the handicapped,’ in the Catskills, exploded those confines. Jened was their freewheeling Utopia, a place with summertime sports, smoking and makeout sessions awaiting everyone, where campers felt fulfilled as human beings. Their bonds endured as they migrated West to Berkeley, California — a promised land for a growing and diverse disability community — where friends from Camp Jened realized that disruption and Unity might secure life-changing accessibility for millions.
Crip Camp comes to Netflix on March 25th and will play theatrically in New York and Los Angeles.
Every day seems to bring a new idea for a Universal horror flick, and now we have word of another classic monster movie from Blumhouse. According to THR, Blumhouse will followup their hit The Invisible Man with a new take on lord of vampires, Dracula, and it’ll come from Destroyer and The Invitation director Karyn Kusama.
Kusama will direct a new, contemporary Dracula movie, reuniting with The Invitation screenwriters Matt Manfredi and Phil Hay. Blumhouse is set to produce, although it’s not officially set up at Universal yet and could end up elsewhere since Dracula is a public domain character. However, Jason Blum has a first-look exclusive deal with Universal and that’s likely where it’s headed.
Like The Invisible Man, this version of Dracula will be contemporary with modern themes. What that means for the king of all vampires we’ll just have to wait and see, but don’t expect the usual from Kusama. In the past she has made some interesting choices, directing the cult horror film Jennifer’s Body, Aeon Flux, the acclaimed indie Girlfight, and the aforementioned Destroyer and The Invitation. Maybe we’ll get a female version of Dracula?
Not even the MCU is strong enough to withstand the coronavirus outbreak. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is the latest to be hit with delays due to the virus, as an upcoming shoot in Prague has been halted.
According to Deadline, Marvel’s upcoming Disney+ series was due to spend about a week in Prague, shifting away from the Atlanta set. However, with Prague shut down due to the coronavirus spread in the Czech Republic, the decision was made to call off filming. Everyone has been called back to Atlanta and it’s unclear what will happen next.
Obviously, this isn’t the first major production to be affected by the coronavirus, and won’t be the last. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier arrives in August 2020 and stars Anthony Mackie, Sebastian Stan, Emily VanCamp, Daniel Bruhl, Wyatt Russell, and Carl Lumbly.
With the success of Venom and Into the Spider-Verse, and a renewed partnership with Marvel that has breathed some life into their Morbius movie, Sony is feeling pretty bold. They’re going back and basically reviving everything their failed Amazing Spider-Man franchise didn’t let them do, and using the same people to do it. According to TheWrap, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 co-writer Roberto Orci has been set to pen an untitled Spidey spinoff.
It’s unclear what character will be put in Orci’s hands, but we do know it will be set within Sony’s newly-created cinematic universe and not the MCU. Right now, Sony has Silver Sable, Black Cat, Nightwatch, Kraven the Hunter, and Silk movies in the works. It could be any one of them, or perhaps something else we aren’t aware of.
Orci’s skills have seen him write a number of blockbuster properties, including Mission: Impossible and JJ Abrams’ Star Trek. He’s also found a ton of success in TV. He could be doing anything, but my guess is it’s either Nightwatch or Kraven the Hunter, since a woman is likely to tackle the female-led projects. It was his work on The Amazing Spider-Man 2 which was so disastrous it forced Sony to make a deal with Marvel Studios. Why he would be entrusted with any of the characters again is beyond me, but maybe Orci can make it work this time.
Jason Blum may want to chill on announcing the horror flicks he wants to make for Universal. The last time he did it was to express a desire to do a Frankenstein movie, and that was promptly given to James Wan to do soon after. Oops. Now, Blum has his eyes set on making reality of a Halloween Horror Nights flick, only this time it’s a bit beyond the idea stage.
Speaking with Collider, Blum said that Blumhouse is already trying to crack a movie based on the annual Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights event. Basically, the entire theme park is converted into a giant homage to the scariest of holidays, with haunted houses, mazes, etc.
Blum said, “Yes! Definitely! We’ve actually talked about it. We haven’t quite figured it out, but there’s definitely a movie in Halloween Horror Nights somewhere.”
This sounds like a perfect setup to a slasher flick set in a giant amusement park. It’s a well-worn idea, most recently done to great effect in 2018’s Hell Fest, but also a tried-and-true one. Blumhouse could definitely come up with a novel approach to it.
