Of all the…well, I guess there can never be too much Batman, right? If you’ve seen the trailer for Teen Titans GO! To The Movies, there’s a moment where it pokes fun at the idea of a movie featuring Batman’s butler, Alfred Pennyworth. Well, today Alfred has his own TV series. From the guy who made the poorly-received Batman prequel, Gotham. Cue up the laugh track?
Yep, Gotham creator Bruno Heller now has another origin series on his hands with Pennyworth (ugh), which has been given a straight-to-series order of 10 episodes by Epix. That’s a real channel? Anyway, it’s set in a complete different universe from Gotham (so no Sean Pertwee in the role), and centers on Alfred’s past “as a former British SAS soldier who forms a secret company and goes to work with Thomas Wayne — Bruce’s billionaire father — in 1960s London.”
Danny Cannon, who directed the Gotham pilot, will do the same for Pennyworth. So expect it to look and feel much the same way. All criticism aside, Gotham is heading into its fifth and final season, a solid stretch for a show many thought would never get off the ground. If Pennyworth is half as successful Epix would likely be very happy. [THR]
Even if one has never heard of Chekhov’s classic play The Seagull, an adaptation featuring Saoirse Ronan, Annette Bening, Corey Stoll, and Elisabeth Moss should be extremely inviting. And for the most part, the cast are game for modernizing the more than a century-old romantic story, but the script doesn’t do much to give them any help and the material feels extremely dated as a result.
The Seagull is an Austen-esque story of various romantic entanglements and social mishaps, set within Russia’s artistic world. On a picturesque country estate is where we find tortured artist Konstantin (Billy Howle), a lovesick writer who is in love with Nina (Ronan), an aspiring actress who stars in most of his inscrutable plays. Their lives intersect with aging actress Irina Arkadina (Bening) and her young lover Boris Trigorin (Stoll), who happens to be in love with Nina, making Irina jealous of the youthful woman. “Hold my beer…” says Konstantin, who is violently envious of the more successful Boris, and for capturing the eye of Nina who admires him in every way possible.
There are other characters ducking their heads into this mess, such as the miserable Masha (Moss) who dresses all in black to mourn her unrequited love for Konstantin. Masha has the attentions of a poor schoolteacher (Michael Zegen), but she’ll never return his love. She sees the poor state of her parents’ relationship; Polina (Mare Winningham) and her husband (Glenn Flescher) who owns the estate. Polina is having an affair with Dr. Dorn (Jon Tenney), a bachelor having his way with just about any woman he wants, including Irina back in the day. Meanwhile, Irina’s ailing brother (Brian Dennehy) watches the whole thing with the comical insight of someone who has seen it all.
It’s all enough to make your head spin, but keeping track of the criss-crossing affairs isn’t the film’s problem. Screenwriter Stephen Karam and director Michael Mayer stick stubbornly to the source, leaving the characters as little more than walking symbols of love and regret It doesn’t allow much room for Mayer’s talented cast to breathe much life into their performances, but as you can guess a few of them rise to the occasion. Bening is brilliant as the conceited and controlling Irina, who busts out into song at a moment’s notice just to remain the center of attention. She has no qualms disrupting Konstantin’s play to the point that he quits, yet moments later has the nerve to wonder why he’s so upset with her. Moss brings much needed deadpan humor as Masha, while Stoll is oily/charming as Boris.
Meanwhile, the central love story falls pretty flat. Ronan and Howle never click when together and separately they feel strangely adrift from the whole. There’s such an inevitability to Nina and Boris’ relationship that there’s little drama to it, even with a gun introduced in the first act that we know (based on Chekhov’s own rules!) that will be used at some point. Meanwhile, Howle is pretty hard to stomach as Konstantin, who spends the entire movie sulking to such a degree that we really just need him to turn that gun on himself, post haste. While Stoll exudes so much charm that it casts Boris in an appropriately disingenuous light, Howle has so little to offer that we can understand his romantic woes. Who would want to be with a mope like him?
The combination of Karam’s old-fashioned dialogue and Mayer’s zippy camera gives The Seagull a feel similar to the recent adaptation Far from the Madding Crowd, minus that film’s charismatic romantic pair. Without it, The Seagull can only fly so high.
Kristen Stewart is currently at Cannes serving as part of their Jury. That’s right, the actress you hated for those Twilight movies is one of the most respected working today, having long since embraced the art house scene at the cost of her previous fame. And now she’s taking her career to the next level by stepping behind the camera for The Chronology of Water.
In a profile interview out of Cannes, Stewart revealed that she plans to adapt the memoir by Lidia Yuknavitch about a lifelong swimmer-turned-artist and explores issues of violence, sexuality, and grief.
“I’m adapting a memoir. It’s called ‘The Chronology of Water,” said Stewart. “Lidia Yuknavitch is from Portland. I love her novels but her memoires… it’s deeply personal to her. She’s in my blood and I knew that before I met her. As soon as I met her it was like we started this race without any sense of competition.”
She continues, “I’m making the movie this summer but other than that, my only goal is just to finish the screenplay and hire a really spectacular actor: I’m going to write the best fucking female role. I’m going to write a role that I want so badly but that I’m not going to play,”
On paper this sounds perfect for Stewart, who is clearly excited to be moving on to this next phase of her young career. I’m willing to bet she’ll have it ready in time to premiere at Cannes next year. [via ThePlaylist]
Hopes of a sequel to 2009’s zombie comedy Zombieland have been ongoing for years, but despite writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick being all for it nothing has ever happened. Lately the duo have been busy with a couple of movies you may have heard of, Deadpool and this week’s Deadpool 2, which has them more in-demand than ever. But no matter how many projects they undertake, Zombieland 2 is the one that keeps coming up, and now they have an update fans have been waiting a decade for.
Wernick tells Vulture that a Zombieland sequel isn’t just a pipe dream anymore, but darn close to a reality. There’s even a planned start date and release window…
“We’re going on the tenth anniversary of ‘Zombieland,’” Wernick said. “’Zombieland’ came out October of 2009. We don’t know what you get someone for their tenth anniversary, but it may be a ‘Zombieland 2…The hope is that we’re shooting that thing early 2019 for an October of ’19 release,” Wernick continued. “With the original cast, by the way.”
Zombieland starred Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Abigail Breslin, and Emma Stone with the best Bill Murray cameo ever. It was a funny, suberversive take the stale zombie genre sorely needed. Now all of these years later I think we’ve seen enough riffs on these movies, which might make it hard for Zombieland 2 to stand out. That said, if Wernick is right and the original cast returns it would be huge.
We’ve heard these kinds of promises before so what makes this different? Wernick’s confidence, for one.
“We are sitting on information that we can’t entirely share at this moment, but we can just say we think fans of ‘Zombieland’ who have been hoping for a ‘Zombieland 2,’ that we will grant their wish very, very soon.”
Solo: A Star Wars Story opens next week but the reviews are already out there in the atmosphere. The general feeling is that it’s entertaining and opens up a wealth of future possibilities for the Star Wars universe. Sequels could happen if audiences respond well to this one, and then there’s the chance of spinoffs following certain characters. While rumors have floated that an Obi-Wan Kenobi film would be the next standalone effort from Lucasfilm, Kathleen Kennedy has another idea in mind and it seems she and I are having a mind meld moment.
“We think that the next spin-off will be dedicated to Lando Calrissian, ” Kennedy told Premiere France. “Of course, there are still many stories to tell about Han and Chewbacca, but Lando will be next.”
There are many reasons why this makes sense. First of all, Donald Glover’s performance as Lando is getting the most praise of anybody in the cast. I pretty much dedicated an entire paragraph of my review to how good he is and the potential for him to lead a franchise of his own. Second is that Glover is red hot right now, coming off the latest season of Atlanta, and a little video you may have seen called “This is America.” It’s always good to strike while the iron is hot and an announcement of a Lando Calrissian movie would do the trick.
Kennedy’s wording is curious, though. I hope this doesn’t morph into a Han Solo movie with just a little more Lando in it, because a true film featuring the caped smuggler could reach an audience on par with Black Panther. That’s one Hell of an incentive to put a lame Kenobi movie on the shelf for a while.
Glover is down for it, too. We know that he and the cast are signed up for multiple movies, so that’s not an issue. The actor just wants to make sure that Lando is well-represented in his own movie, telling Screenrant that he wants to see all of the aspects of Lando come into play, from the guy who betrayed the Rebels to the guy who later returns as one of their most reliable generals…
“I really just want to see him, like doing all of that. Still doing anything. Like, I think that would just be fun to just see him just like… Because like, we see him change so much… He’s just like, I think charismatic and people are like, you know what, you should own this city. You should own Cloud City, like that kind of thing, or like winning. So I think it would be just nice to see like, oh, like I’m a General, and now I’m mad at this hotel, and then now, I’m just like… I think that will be just funny but also cool to see like how far charm gets you. Almost like a ‘Catch Me If You Can. A space ‘Catch Me If You Can’ .”
All of this is premature, though. While Kennedy’s word is about as official as it gets, to the best of our knowledge no development has actually begun. I expect that will change once audiences get a chance to see Glover’s performance for themselves. [via ThePlaylist]
Marvel has taken a big step forward on making The Eternals part of the MCU, hiring Black List writers Matthew and Ryan Firpo (Ruin) to pen the script. They’ll have the unenviable task of adapting Jack Kirby’s offbeat characters who were never really supposed to interact with the likes of Captain America, Iron Man, and others. Yep, good luck.
The Eternals were first published in 1976 as a race of powerful and nearly immortal humanoids created by the all-powerful Celestials millions of years ago. They were created, along with their monstrous foes the Deviants, as offshoots of humanity locked in a constant power struggle ala Game of Thrones. Counted among the Eternals’ number is the Mad Titan himself, Thanos, who is a pretty prominent fixture in the MCU right now due to Infinity War, so it makes sense to capitalize on that. Kirby intended for his series to be a standalone but over the years Marvel changed that and his characters have figured prominently.
One of my favorite Marvel characters is Sersi, an Eternal who integrates herself into human culture more than the others. She becomes a member of the Avengers for a while and her partnership with the Black Knight was one I followed even when they crossed over into the Malibu Universe. Chances are Sersi will be one of the main Eternals to appear on the big screen.
Naming a director will probably wait until after the screenplay is finished so Marvel can find somebody in sync with the Firpos. Their script for WWII film Ruin rose to the top of the 2017 Black List and centers on a former Nazi captain hunting down the members of his old SS Death Squad. Justin Kurzel (Assassin’s Creed) is looking to direct a screen version with Gal Gadot and Christian Bale potentially starring.
With just two months left before Mission: Impossible-Fallout skydives into theaters, Paramount has released the new full trailer and it’s full of the insane stuntwork we’ve come to expect from Tom Cruise and Co. With the footage debuting at roughly 3am they need that kind of action to keep guys like me awake.
Cruise’s pal Christopher McQuarrie returns as director, but you’d never know it based on all the many ways he tried to kill him with some of these stunts. One, a skydiving spectacle over Paris, took over 100 takes and a year’s worth of time just to figure out the logistics. Remember Cruise shattered his foot in one such action sequence, which set the film back nearly three months. You can still see that bone-breaking scene in this trailer as Cruise’s Ethan Hunt leaps from building to building after some impatient urging by Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg). Ving Rhames, Alec Baldwin, Rebecca Ferguson, Angela Bassett, Sean Harris, Vanessa Kirby, and Michelle Monaghan co-star, but it’s the bruising Henry Cavill who looks like he may be more than a match for Cruise.
Here is the synopsis: The best intentions often come back to haunt you. MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – FALLOUT finds Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his IMF team, along with some familiar allies in a race against time after a mission gone wrong.
For some reason Sylvester Stallone has a real passion for Escape Plan, the forgettable 2013 prison thriller he starred in alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger. Maybe it’s the $130M it made worldwide, mostly overseas, or maybe it’s because he gets to be the face of a new franchise that isn’t burdened by expectations, the way Rocky or Rambo are. Remember, Stallone pretty much ended The Expendables so he could focus on sequel Escape Plan 2: Hades, with an eye already on a third movie. So is all of his time and energy worth it?
The new trailer for Escape Plan 2 is here and it actually looks better than the original. A bit part of the reason is swapping out Schwarzenegger for Dave Bautista, with the Guardians of the Galaxy star (he and Stallone co-starred in Vol. 2 together) bringing energy and physicality to the role of Trent DeRosa. Stallone returns as security expert Ray Breslin, who we last saw breaking out of an escape-proof prison of his own design. This time he’s breaking into one in order to help a kidnapped teammate trapped inside a maze-like prison known as Hades.
Steven C. Miller (Arsenal) is behind the camera, with Jesse Metcalfe, Jamie King, and 50 Cent co-starring. Escape Plan 2: Hades hits theaters and VOD on June 29th.
The dilemma with supremely cool characters like Han Solo is how much do you ever reveal about them? Go too far and you run the risk of ruining their mystique, like has happened to Wolverine, or more aptly a different Star Wars character, Boba Fett. Reveal too little and fans will wonder why you did anything at all. Disney tackles this challenge head on with their second sorta standalone movie, Solo: A Star Wars Story, which introduces us the roguish hero long before he ever stumbled upon anybody named Skywalker. While the case could easily be made that Han Solo doesn’t need any kind of origin, by the time the film is over fans will be glad he does.
An entertaining and often thrilling exercise in fan service, Solo checks off all the expected boxes: How Han Solo met Chewbacca, how he acquired the Millennium Falcon and learned to fly the Kessel Run, how he met Lando Calrissian, etc. But in truth those are the least interesting aspects of the story told by director Ron Howard and screenwriters Lawrence and Jon Kasdan. The best is seeing how a younger Han, played with surprising swagger by Alden Ehrenreich, pulls himself out of the gutter to take the first steps to becoming the reluctant Rebel leader we would come to love.
Howard, who took over a troubled production from fan-favorite directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller, sets up a romp of a space Western in the vein of Firefly. You half expect Nathan Fillion to come bounding around the corner with a laser pistol on his hip. Fortunately we are spared a lot of childhood backstory, jumping straight into Han’s attempted escape, via a stolen speeder, from a crappy life of servitude in the gutters of Corellia. Along with his gal Qi’Ra (Emilia Clarke), they want to escape and live a life among the stars as pilots. But when their plan hits a snag and they are separated, Han is backed into a corner and forced to join the Empire.
Contrary to the events of The Force Awakens, the Han Solo we know is a survivor, and he does whatever it takes to get back to Qi’Ra so they can be together. Even if that means fighting on the battlefield as a grunt soldier, which is where he meets his hetero lifemate Chewbacca, along with con artists Beckett (Woody Harrelson), Val (Thandie Newton), and others. Worming his way into their crew for a huge score of stolen coaxium hyperfuel, Han’s propensity for going against orders bites him in the butt as it so often does. Unlike the Han we would come to know later, this one is wide-eyed and hopeful, or at least brazenly confident in his own abilities even when it backfires. In this case, his screwup runs them all afoul of notorious gangster Dryden Voss (Paul Bettany), who has ties to Qi’Ra that Han isn’t so happy with.
Solo: A Star Wars Story zips along quickly and features one of the best extended action sequences the franchise has ever produced. A twist on the classic train heist, this one finds Han and his crew on an ice planet hurtling along on an elevated rail while gun-toting marauders and Imperial sentry droids take potshots at them. It’s a blistering sequence that reminds you of cinematographer Bradford Young’s unmatched eye, and Howard’s taste for blockbuster action. He may not be the most inspiring filmmaker out there but he knows how to fashion thrilling popcorn entertainment, and that’s all Solo really aspires to be.
Some may find it disappointing the lack of ambition to be something greater, but that’s what the numbered trilogy movies are for. The spinoffs have a singular goal which is to tell a specific, straight-forward story. It should come as no surprise this is the second spinoff to be a heist movie about a ragtag group of criminals. Howard is the right guy for that kind of movie, although we see in bits and pieces how things might have looked if Lord and Miller had remained. They were canned when their version resembled an improv comedy rather than a Star Wars movie, and we see elements of what was probably left over from their regime. For instance the feminist android L3-37 (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), Lando’s right hand bot, who loudly fights for droid equality while secretly harboring a crush on her human master. Like most of the overt attempts at humor in the film she is more curious than outright funny, and definitely overstays her welcome.
The rest of the cast are solid but there are two standouts. The first is Ehrenreich, a gifted actor ever since he debuted in Francis Ford Coppola’s Tetro years ago, he was given the impossible task of walking in Harrison Ford’s boots. He doesn’t try to emulate Ford, which would have had us all screaming for his head, but every now and then he’ll crack a devilish smirk or strikes a cocksure stance and you’ll be reminded of the guy who played that role for so long. The other is Donald Glover, whose Lando Calrissian with his closet full of capes could carry an entire franchise all by himself. Glover embodies all of the magnetism of Billy Dee Williams but isn’t afraid to play the character his own way. Lando’s backstory has as much mystery as anybody and would be perfect for a future spinoff. Hey Disney, you listening?? Make it happen!
Solo: A Star Wars Story doesn’t try to do too much, but it still fits neatly into the wider universe. There are cameos and at least one surprising appearance from a Star Wars legacy character, and many of the questions we have about Han have been answered. He’s a little less mysterious now, but still every bit the rough ‘n tumble scoundrel who bucks authority and eventually becomes part of a Resistance. We know where his story ends, but there are many years’ worth of Han’s adventures left to tell before getting there.
We’re happy to offer our DC readers the chance to attend a special IMAX screening of Solo: A Star Wars Story! The Star Wars prequel film stars Alden Ehrenreich as Han Solo, Donald Glover as Lando Calrissian, plus Woody Harrelson, Emilia Clarke, Paul Bettany, and Thandie Newton.
SYNOPSIS: Board the Millennium Falcon and journey to a galaxy far, far away in “Solo: A Star Wars Story,” an all-new adventure with the most beloved scoundrel in the galaxy. Through a series of daring escapades deep within a dark and dangerous criminal underworld, Han Solo befriends his mighty future copilot Chewbacca and meets the notorious gambler Lando Calrissian, in a journey that will set the course of one of the Star Wars saga’s most unlikely heroes.
The screening takes place on Monday, May 21st at 7:00pm at the Lockheed Martin IMAX in Washington, DC. If you’d like to enter, simply complete the required steps in the contest form below. Winners will be selected on Sunday, May 20th and notified by email. Good luck!
