Here comes June already! And with it a bunch of new stuff is happening!
In this week’s “Universal Monsters” story, Universal has made some interesting announcements regarding their Dark Universe of films – those that will be their rebooted classic Universal Monsters films.
It seems that now Dwayne Johnson and Angelina Jolie will be involved in this Universe. There’s nothing official as of yet, but supposedly Universal is eyeing Johnson for The Wolfman, and Jolie for The Bride of Frankenstein. Personally, i think these are terrible choices for either, but hey, they got Tom Cruise for The Mummy, so they may as well continue the trend.
Universal also has attached Johnny Depp as The Invisible Man, Russell Crowe as Dr. Jekyll, and Javier Bardem as Frankenstein, so it’s a strange world, indeed.
Of course, if The Mummy flops, all these films could be scrapped. Mummy needs to make $ 40 million in its’ opening weekend to be deemed a success, so this could be a tall order.
In this week’s “One billion, here we come” story, Guardians of the Galaxy 2 has crossed the $ 800 million mark worldwide. Pretty safe to say that will continue to a billion dollars. Good for James Gunn. That guy can make a good movie.
In this week’s “Get ready for a lot of dicks” story, our once 11th Doctor will now be portraying controversial artist Robert Mapplethorpe in the biopic Mapplethorpe.
Production starts this July for the this intimate portrait of one of the most controversial photographers in American history, the film stars Smith as Mapplethorpe.
Documentary filmmaker Ondi Timoner will direct the film, which she co-wrote with Bruce Goodrich. The movie follows Mapplethorpe from his rise to fame in the 1970s to his untimely death in 1989 due to complications from AIDS. Boston Diva Productions will produce alongside Timoner’s Interloper Films.
In this week’s “Less is more, except the title” story, director Doug Limon is getting his sequel to Edge of Tomorrow together, and he says it will be smaller in scope.
“I think what people tend to do with sequels is they just make them bigger. And I’m like, ‘No, a sequel should be smaller,’” Liman said.
He also says it will be a more intimate, funnier prequel, however at the moment the title is a clunky one: Live. Die. Repeat. And Repeat.
Well, that’s not so good. Sounds like we’re doing laundry.
Liman also said he had no further plans for sequels, calling it a “two-movie franchise.” It also sounds like Emily Blunt’s character has some intriguing changes in store: “Remember, at the end of the first movie, she doesn’t know who he is—and that’s gonna launch us into an amazing new direction,” Liman said. “It does pick up right where we left off, but it doesn’t keep going forward, because we’d screw with time, because the aliens screwed with time.”
Ok, I’ll see where this thing goes.
In this week’s “Stranger Mutants” story, Stranger Things star, Charlie Heaton, is in negotiations to star in the X-Men spin-off, New Mutants, for Fox and Marvel as Sam Guthrie, a.k.a. Cannonball.
New Mutants is in pre-production and has been set for an April 13, 2018, opening. “The Fault in Our Stars” director Josh Boone is helming New Mutants from a script he co-wrote with Knate Lee about teenage superheroes-mutants.
Simon Kinberg and Karen Rosenfelt are producing. Fox announced last month that it was dating three Marvel movies for 2018 — New Mutants for April 13, Deadpool 2 for June 1, and Dark Phoenix for Nov. 2.
Heaton plays Jonathan Bryers on Netflix’s Stranger Things. The Sam Guthrie character is also known as Cannonball, who’s invulnerable when he’s in the air.
In this week’s “Singularity now!” story, Fox Animation is developing a movie on the upcoming Michelle Cuevas book The Care and Feeding of a Pet Black Hole.
Matt Reeves, director of Fox’s upcoming War for Planet of the Apes, is attached to produce through his 6th and Idaho production company.
The story, to be published in September by Dial Books for Young Readers, centers on an 11-year-old girl who shows up at NASA to request that her recording be included in Carl Sagan’s Golden Record. A black hole follows her home, and sets out to live in her house as a pet. The black hole swallows everything he touches — including the ugly sweaters her aunt has made for her, the smelly class hamster she’s taking care of, and most important, all the reminders of her dead father that are just too painful to have around.
That sounds kind of heavy. Not exactly a musical comedy. But a touching animated film, for sure.
In this week’s “So that ‘s where you’ve been” story, actor Brendan Fraser has been cast in FX’s anthology series Trust, according to Variety.
Fraser joins in a leading role and will star opposite A-listers Donald Sutherland and Hilary Swank. The drama hails from the Academy Award-winning team of Danny Boyle, Simon Beaufoy and Christian Colson.
The first 10-episode installment of Trust tells the story of John Paul Getty III, heir to the Getty oil fortune, and is set in 1973 when the young Getty is kidnapped in Rome and his mafia captors are banking on a multi-million dollar ransom. The series is described as being equal parts family history, dynastic saga and examination of the corrosive power of money.
Fraser will play J. Paul Getty’s private investigator, James Fletcher Chace, who is eccentric, but is a master fixer who hails from Texas.
Sutherland will star as J. Paul Getty, the great oil man and founder of the Getty family dynasty; Swank will portray J. Paul Getty III’s mother, Gail Getty; and Harris Dickinson will play kidnap victim, J. Paul Getty III.
Apparently Fraser has actually been busy, just with smaller projects and TV/cable stuff. And he is about to be busier. In addition to Trust, he is also a series regular on AT&T Audience Network’s series Condor from MGM Television and Skydance TV, in which he’ll star alongside Max Irons and Mira Sorvino. Fraser is currently filming Condor in Toronto, and will be back-and-forth in the coming months from that set to London and
Rome where Trust is shooting. The FX series heads into production overseas in June.
Ok, so he’s working. Good to know. He just dropped off the map. I was worried he was stuck doing infomercials somewhere.
In this week’s “Too expensive for Netflix” story, The Wachowski’s Netflix show Sense 8 has been cancelled. The show shoots in 16 cities in 13 countries, according to Cindy Holland, Netflix’s vp original content. Though it’s not exactly a surprise with all those locations. It must cost a fortune to make.
“It is everything we and the fans dreamed it would be: bold, emotional, stunning, kickass and outright unforgettable,” she continued. “Never has there been a more truly global show with an equally diverse and international cast and crew, which is only mirrored by the connected community of deeply passionate fans all around the world. We thank Lana, Lilly, Joe and Grant for their vision and the entire cast and crew for their craftsmanship and commitment.”
The series centers on eight strangers around the globe who find themselves interconnected. The ensemble cast is made up of Aml Ameen, Doona Bae, Jamie Clayton, Tina Desai, Tuppence Middleton, Max Riemelt, Miguel Angel Silvestre and Brian J. Smith. Rumors of Sense8’s uncertain future loomed in the days before the announcement, and castmember Smith even helped get a #RenewSense8 hashtag trending on Twitter in an effort to keep the show alive.
No luck though. Too bad, because it’s a really interesting show and it pushes all sorts of boundries. It’s a cool show.
UPPDATE: Fans are petitioning Netflix to keep it going. But money tends to be a more powerful motivator.
In this week’s “In case you were wondering” story, don’t get your hopes up for M. Night Shaymalan’s revival of Tales From The Crypt, because TNT has snuffed that idea for reasons of red tape.
TNT president Kevin Reilly revealed that Tales From the Crypt, and the weekly two-hour horror block the network had planned around it, had to be axed because of rights issues.
However, a ray of hope shines within that pile of bad news for Crypt fans — Ridley Scott will be coming onboard TNT develop a sci-fi block, which the network plans to debut in 2018. There’s no news on which pilots or series will be picked up for the block, but Reilly said, “it could be a series order. When you got Ridley, there are projects he is potentially interested in getting directly involved.”
But will the horror block stay alive without Crypt? Turns out it might. Reilly told Birth.Movies.Death that he hasn’t “ruled out” continuing the block without Tales From the Crypt: “We don’t have a specific property today but we’re open to it.”
So that’s still just a big ‘maybe’, then.
In this week’s “Godzilla goes West Wing” story, actor Bradley Whitford joins the cast of Godzilla: King of the Monsters.
Still no word on plot details, but also added to the cast is Thomas Middleditch (Silicon Valley).
In this week’s “Hurry up and …wait” story, Game of Thrones season 7 is nearly here, but you better take your time to enjoy it because season 8, the final season, likely won’t air until 2019.
Speaking with EW, HBO programming president Casey Bloys revealed that season eight won’t necessarily be coming next year, as creators/writers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss still have to lay down the final roadmap.
When asked if the network would allow the pair to debut the final season in 2019, Bloys essentially said yes.
“They have to write the episodes and figure out the production schedule. We’ll have a better sense of that once they get further into the writing,” he stated, leaving the door open.
It would seem that even though the eighth season will run a mere six episodes, Benoiff and Weiss want to make sure they’re doing it right. Still, asking fans to wait two years to see how it ends is a big favor.
It’s good to know they don’t want to rush things. Patience is indeed a virtue.
In this week’s “Penguin rumours” story, actor Josh Gad recently tweeted a picture of The Penguin, one of Batman’s arch nemeses. People began to talk about whether he was going to play the Penguin in the upcoming Matt Reeves-directed stand alone Batman movie.
Well, Gad assured everyone that that was not true He was “just having some fun” posting that pic. But then he goes and tweets a photo of him in the DC offices with Geoff Johns and Jon Berg, the two of the people involved with guiding the Extended DC Universe.
So what’s that all about? Josh Gad ain’t telling. We all just have to guess. I think he’d probably be able to pull off being the Penguin.
In this week’s “Like, Oh muh Gawd, gag me with a spoon” story, Disney channel star Peyton List has joined the chorus of MGM’s musical film Valley Girl. The Bunk’d actress joins Jessica Rothe, Josh Whitehouse, Mae Whitman, Logan Paul, Jessie Ennis, Ashleigh Murray and Chloe Bennett in the Rachel Lee Goldenberg-helmed remake adaptation to the 1983 romantic comedy.
Oh yeah, they’re remaking Valley Girl.
The pic, which is currently shooting in LA, follows a Fernando Valley girl whose world and values are rocked when she falls hard for a rock musician. The script is by Amy Talkington with revisions from Marti Noxon.
This seems like the worst idea for a remake I’ve heard in a while. The original is good but a bit dated now. Is the Valley Girl thing still relevant? I don’t think so.
In this week’s “The hosers are back, ay” story, Rick Moranis has been out of the spotlight for going on 20 years, but he’s found something that will bring him back.
He and Dave Thomas, both of Second City fame, will reprise their most wonderful roles as Bob and Doug MacKenzie in a one night special benefit event in Toronto.
The two hick Canadian brothers the duo played on SCTV, “Saturday Night Live,” and in the movie Strange Brew.
A slew of Canadian comedy legends from the Second City Toronto crowd are turning up. Martin Short will host, and is set to appear as Jiminy Glick. Also on the bill are Dan Aykroyd, Catherine O’Hara, Eugene Levy, and Joe Flaherty, along “Kids in the Hall” alum Scott Thompson. Former bandleader for Dave Letterman’s “The Late Show,” Paul Shaffer, will also appear.
The gang is showing up to raise money to benefit Thomas’ nephew, Jake Thomas, who recently suffered a spinal cord injury that paralyzed him from the waist down. It’s a bummer of a reason, but there will surely be some uplifted spirits by the end of the show.
In this week’s “Inspired title” story, Tom Cruise reveals the name of the Top Gun sequel, and it’s a stunner: Top Gun: Maverick.
Really? What collective braintrust was required to spend hours pain-stakingly conjuring that inspired bit of nomenclature? Yeesh.
In this week’s “Wish you had a Mask, now” story, It seems Jim Carrey will actually have to face the music over the death of his ex-girlfriend.
After months of filed legal documents and flying accusations, Canadian actor Jim Carrey is going to face trial in the death of his ex-girlfriend Cathriona White.
On Wednesday, Los Angeles Superior Court judge Deirdre Hill refused to dismiss two wrongful death suits filed against Carrey, and set a trial date of Apr. 26, 2018. She estimated the trial would last 20 days.
White’s mother, Brigid Sweetman, and White’s estranged husband, Mark Burton, have both filed lawsuits against Carrey, claiming that he provided the drugs White used to kill herself. The 30-year-old makeup artist, originally from Ireland, was discovered deceased in her Los Angeles home in September 2015. She and Carrey, 55, met in 2012, and dated on and off.
A coroner’s report concluded that White died from an intentional prescription pill overdose.
Carrey’s lawyer, Raymond Boucher, attempted to get the judge to throw the lawsuits out of court, calling them “malicious” and “predatory.” Carrey himself has called the lawsuits a “shakedown,” and denies any wrongdoing on all accounts.
In previous legal documents, Boucher argued:
“[The allegations] are based on categorical lies concocted by Sweetman in collaboration with White’s ‘green card’ husband with whom White never lived as husband and wife, and whom she married only to avoid deportation to Ireland. There is absolutely no evidence that Carrey furnished his prescription medications to White. Rather, she stole them.”
Turns out, White was a Scientologist, as is her Green Card husband and his mom. That adds a whole new weird wrinkle to this story.
Totally bonkers.
Well, it’s always somethin’ each week in film news. Stay tuned for more next week!