Author: Christopher Marc

Posted on in Film News

‘The Flash’: Michael Keaton Says He’s Unsure About Appearance As Batman

We’ve all been excited after there was a report about Batman actor Michael Keaton reprising the DC Comics role in The Flash movie directed by Andy Muschietti. It was even more interesting when a piece of concept art from the film confirmed they planned on having both Keaton and Ben Affleck’s Batman in the event project that would introduce DC’s own Multiverse.

The only catch is that according to Michael Keaton, he hasn’t agreed to be in the film. Keaton did a lengthy interview with Deadline and the subject of The Flash was brought up. He was quick to point out that he hasn’t even read the script they sent along with the potential that his current project, upcoming projects, and the COVID-19 situation in the United Kingdom could prevent him to even doing it.

KEATON: “…to tell you the truth, somewhere on my iPad is an iteration of the whole Flash thing that I haven’t had time yet…I called them and said, I have to be honest with you. I can’t look at anything right now. I’m so deep into this thing I’m doing. Also, I’m prepping a thing I’m producing and getting ready to do down the road in the fall that I’ll be in, and I feel responsible to that. So, yeah, there is that. I’m not being cute or coy. If I talked about it, I’ll be just bullshitting you. I don’t really know. I have to look at the last draft. To be honest with you, you know what worries me more than anything about all this stuff?”

“It’s Covid. I’m more concerned. I keep my eye more on the Covid situation in the UK than anything. That will determine everything, and so that’s why I’m living outside the city here on 17 acres, staying away from everybody, because the Covid thing has got me really concerned. So, that’s my first thing about all projects. I look at it and go, is this thing going to kill me, literally? And you know, if it doesn’t, then we talk.”

Despite the possibility they might be losing Keaton, there will be the introduction of the DCEU’s Supergirl as played by actress Sasha Calle. We’ll keep our fingers crossed we’ll end up getting multiple Batman in The Flash, but it’s not looking like that is going to happen but I wouldn’t be shocked if there are more surprises yet to be announced.

SOURCE: DEADLINE

Posted on in Television News

Disney+ Claims ‘The Falcon & The Winter Soldier’ Has Most Watched Series Premiere On The Streaming Service

Last Friday saw the first episode drop for Marvel’s The Falcon & The Winter Soldier. The superhero series is expected to lead to Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson taking up the Captain America mantle. But we’ll have to watch all six episodes to discover if that is the actual plan or not.

Now, Disney via the official Marvel website is claiming the premiere episode had more eyeballs than with WandaVision or the massive-hit The Mandalorian. However, they failed to get into numbers or provide any data to support their claim.

Disney+ Original series The Falcon and The Winter Soldier from Marvel Studios ranked as the most watched series premiere ever on Disney+ during its opening weekend, Friday, March 19 – Sunday, March 22, and the most watched title overall for the same time period on a global basis, including in Disney+ Hotstar markets. The premiere of The Falcon and The Winter Soldier joins the premieres of Marvel Studios’ first live-action series, WandaVision, and the season two premiere of The Mandalorian from Lucasfilm as the three most-watched Disney+ Original series opening weekends to-date.

Variety cites Samba TV data on the debut of both Falcon and Zack Snyder’s Justice League, the latter seemingly squeaking ahead of WandaVision’s debut in January.

While Disney Plus did not include any audience figures for “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” in its announcement, TV software and data analysis firm Samba TV announced earlier in the day that roughly 1.7 million households watched the show, edging past the 1.6 million households that watched the debut of Marvel Studios’ “WandaVision.” (As a point of comparison, Samba TV estimates that 1.8 million households watched at least five minutes of the four-hour “Zack Snyder’s Justice League” on HBO Max over the same time period; HBO Max has not made any announcements regarding the Snyder cut’s viewership.)

None of this can be independently verified as Disney+ isn’t sharing their data to compare with numbers from Samba TV.

SOURCE: MARVEL

Posted on in Film News

WarnerMedia’s Ann Sarnoff Joins Zack Snyder In Denouncing Toxic Fandom – Too Little Too Late?

Yesterday, WarnerMedia Studios CEO Ann Sarnoff spoke with Variety in a lengthy interview and suggested that Zack Snyder’s era has ended with his version of Justice League completing his trilogy. Hopefully, fans can respectfully accept that WarnerMedia is focusing on new projects and won’t be returning to the Snyderverse anytime soon.

I say this because there is vocal group of toxic fans that have embedded themselves into The Snyder Cut movement and even getting on the radar of Snyder himself. This made waves last week in the blogging community with a charity Zoom event where Zack Snyder had to distance himself from the Alt-Right leaning Geeks+Gamers YouTube channel. The Zoom happened to include three people linked to G+G along with a couple other YouTubers in the Zoom that are equally questionable.

After Snyder’s statement, the G+G channel seemed to be outraged that he would distance himself on their live-stream reaction and this led to one of their cohorts, Ethan Van Sciver, essentially wig-out over it and you can see his comment during the stream below as ComicArtistPro Secrets.

Ethan is actually mentioned by name in the “thank you” section of the credits for Zack Snyder’s Justice League, so he’s not unknown to the filmmaker or The Snyder Cut group. He went even further on his own stream with a horrifying rant about calling upon people to kill Chinese people (this coming soon after the shooting in Atlanta that targeted Asian women) with a machine gun on his own YouTube channel with other people linked to G+G in the chat and one other person agreeing with the violent call-to-arms.

It certainly begs the question why didn’t anyone vet these people as most of them have public personas/channels that could have been looked over by other people if Zack was too busy. Snyder had previously dismissed the “toxic fan” question recently citing the money they had raised for suicide prevention. These are the same people he eventually denounced last week as G+G and Ethan thought raising donations gave them cover to keep being horribly toxic because Snyder had embraced them for the charity stuff.

Well, Sarnoff in the interview with Variety took the opportunity to denounce toxicity in the fandom.

SARNOFF: “We’re not tolerating any of that. That behavior is reprehensible no matter what franchise you’re talking about or what business you’re talking about. It’s completely unacceptable. I’m very disappointed in the fans that have chosen to go to that negative place with regard to DC, with regard to some of our executives. It’s just disappointing because we want this to be a safe place to be. We want DC to be a fandom that feels safe and inclusive. We want people to be able to speak up for the things they love, but we don’t want it to be a culture of cancelling things that any small faction isn’t happy with. We are not about that. We are about positivity and celebration.”

There are already butt-hurt people from yesterday’s news about moving on from the Snyderverse trying to coax fans into boycotting the HBO Max release of Godzilla vs. Kong later this month to send a message to WarnerMedia, which is only going to hurt the people involved with that film including Legendary, who has nothing to do with the current wave of DC Comics projects. It feels like this is only going to get worse now that there won’t be months of speculation about when WarnerMedia announces the next DC project from Snyder.

Boycotts have been a huge thing in both DC and Star Wars fandom from a small minority of people thinking depriving views on streaming services or box office money will lead studios to reconsider certain choices they’ve made as massive corporations.

While most of my own interactions with DC fans has been mostly positive including from those that are keen for the Snyderverse to make a return and have been championing The Snyder Cut. The ones that do stand-out are the people who gang-up and upload targeted harassment from mostly anonymous Twitter accounts. When that toxicity it’s brought-up there are plenty of people quick to dismiss any of that and jump directly into whataboutism instead of sticking to the topic-at-hand.

SOURCE: VARIETY

Posted on in Film News

WarnerMedia Moving On From The Zack Snyder Era & Unlikely Restoring The Snyderverse

Zack Snyder’s Justice League finally debuted last week on HBO Max and embolden fans to push their next phase of their Snyder campaign with #RestoreTheSnyderverse, however, that doesn’t seem to be really in the cards despite over a year of hucksters pushing bogus scoops that Zack was coming back to make more films and oversee the franchise again.

Variety spoke with WarnerMedia Studios CEO Ann Sarnoff, who poured cold water all over that fan speculation as she states that Zack has now completed his trilogy with his original version of Justice League and seem to be more focused on the other things they’re currently working on with their other DC Comics films. Ann also reiterates they never actually planned on releasing Zack Snyder’s Justice League until about a year ago and doesn’t sound like it’s release has inspired them to reconsider having him return to make more films.

SARNOFF: “We wanted to give Zack the opportunity to complete his vision in a four-hour movie, which is impossible to do in theaters. We’re happy that we have HBO Max to let the rope out as it were and allow the fans to see all four-hours of Zack’s vision.”

“I appreciate that they love Zack’s work and we are very thankful for his many contributions to DC. We’re just so happy that he could bring his cut of the Justice League to life because that wasn’t in the plan until about a year ago. With that comes the completion of his trilogy. We’re very happy we’ve done this, but we’re very excited about the plans we have for all the multi-dimensional DC characters that are being developed right now.”

Some fans have been hopeful that Zack would at the very least be able to finish the films he planned to make after Justice League. That seems far-fetched given the vast amount of money spent on Justice League alone and there is a big difference between an extra $70 million to complete an unfinished cut and WarnerMedia spending another $200-300 million a pop for more films that only small portion of people are asking for. The latter seems to be a stretch even more so with the comments from Sarnoff.

As Zack’s relationship with Netflix grows after releasing Army of The Dead, I wouldn’t be shocked if he ended up pursuing bigger projects with them in the future and maybe even superhero stuff since as they have plenty of comic book adaptations.

SOURCE: VARIETY

Posted on in Film News

WarnerMedia’s Ann Sarnoff Says They Won’t Be Developing The Ayer Cut of ‘Suicide Squad’

DC Comics and Zack Snyder fans seemed to rejoice last week with Zack Snyder’s Justice League finally being released on HBO Max, the 4-hour juggernaut’s release seemed to give the impression to fans that there was a shot that David Ayer’s original cut of Suicide Squad referred to by fans as The Ayer Cut could see the light of day.

WarnerMedia Studios CEO Ann Sarnoff seemed to dispel rumors The Ayer Cut was being worked on or even on the table in the future during an in-depth interview with Variety that was published yesterday. Ann was pretty blunt about The Ayer Cut when asked if they would be releasing that version of the film, stating the following.

SARNOFF: “We won’t be developing David Ayer’s cut.”

David Ayer had suggested the original version had a lot more of Jared Leto’s Joker and there had been some drastic editing involved with the final theatrical version. But it doesn’t look like that version aka The Ayer Cut is going to be released on HBO Max or anywhere else anytime soon.

The franchise is chugging along without David Ayer as James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad is set to hit theaters and HBO Max on August 6th.

SOURCE: VARIETY

Posted on in Film News

‘Promising Young Woman’s Emerald Fennell To Write ‘Zatanna’ Movie With J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot Producing

Screenwriter and director Emerald Fennell is coming off a very successful year for her rape-revenge film Promising Young Woman as it landed an impressive five Oscar nominations, three for Fennell. Those include Best Original Screenplay, Best Picture, and Best Director there is a good chance she’ll end up with multiple awards come April 25th.

Studios are already circling the talented filmmaker as Variety reports that Warner Bros. has tapped Fennell to write a DC Comics film focused on the heroine Zatanna for them with DC Films and J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot producing it.

Zatanna, created by Gardner Fox and Murphy Anderson, is a magician and considered one of the most powerful sorcerers in the DC universe. Her magical abilities are genetic, as her dad Giovanni Zatara was also an alchemist.

There had been an expectation that the Zatanna character would be part of the Justice League Dark series on HBO Max that Abrams is also involved with. However, Variety states the feature film will this incarnations first appearance.

Abrams is also developing a “dark” Constantine reboot series for HBO Max.

It’s quite interesting to see DC Films recruiting from Oscar contenders.

PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN – Nothing in Cassie’s life is what it appears to be — she’s wickedly smart, tantalizingly cunning, and she’s living a secret double life by night. Now, an unexpected encounter is about to give Cassie a chance to right the wrongs from the past.

SOURCE: VARIETY

Posted on in Television News

Marvel In Early Development On Spinoff Series Focused On Alaqua Cox’s Echo From ‘Hawkeye’ – Etan Cohen & Emily Cohen To Write

Marvel Studios is still deep into production on their Hawkeye series staring Jeremy Renner (Clint Barton) and Hailee Steinfeld (Kate Bishop) in Atlanta but there is word that they have bigger plans for the deaf Native-American character Maya Lopez aka Echo played by Alaqua Cox.

A spinoff series focused on Echo is in early development according to a report from Variety with Etan Cohen and Emily Cohen being hired to both write and executive produce the potential series. However, they are quick to state Marvel and Disney+ have yet to give the show a full series order and it’s still very early in the show’s development.

A show centered on Echo, a deaf Native American character who will be played by Alaqua Cox in the “Hawkeye” series, is in the early stages of development for Disney Plus, Variety has learned exclusively from sources. Etan Cohen and Emily Cohen are attached to write and executive produce the show, with a writers’ room recently being assembled. Marvel Studios will produce.

Echo, whose real name is Maya Lopez, has the ability to perfectly copy another person’s movements or fighting style, making her a formidable opponent in battle. 

If Disney+ moves forward with the series it would join the next wave of shows from Marvel Studios that include Secret Invasion, Armor Wars, and Ironheart.

As we first reported, Hawkeye is expected to debut on Disney+ in late 2021 just like Ms. Marvel.

SOURCE: VARIETY

Posted on in Film News

Creator Derek Kolstad Says He Won’t Be Writing Next Two ‘John Wick’ Films & ‘John Wick 4’ Still Expected To Begin Filming This Spring

We’ve been anticipating the next chapters of the John Wick franchise as Lionsgate has promised that John Wick: Chapter 4 and John Wick: Chapter 5 would be filming back-to-back with Keanu Reeves back in the titular role. Last we saw, Wick agreed to go to war against the High Table (powerful puppet masters of this world of assassins) with Laurence Fishburn’s Bowery King.

In a recent press release from Netflix, about the BRZRKR movie starring Keanu Reeves, they noted that the actor will begin shooting John Wick: Chapter 4 this spring.

Reeves recently completed production on Matrix 4 which will be released later this year. He will begin production on John Wick 4 this Spring. 

Collider has now spoken with the franchise creator and architect, Derek Kolstad. The screenwriter is currently on the promotional press rounds for the Bob Odenkirk action flick Nobody, which is getting some positive buzz from early press screenings. Derek revealed that he actually isn’t working on the next two John Wick films and has seemingly stepped aside.

KOLSTAD: “I’m actually not involved in four and five. At a certain stage of the studio will tell you, your creation is graduated, and you wish it well. I’m still close with Chad, still close with Dave, and I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I’m excited to see.”

“No, it wasn’t my decision. When you think of the contractually of these things, the third one I shared the credit with any number of people, they didn’t have to come back to me, and so they didn’t. At a certain stage the studio will tell you, your creation is graduated, and you wish it well. I’m still close with Chad (Stahelski), still close with David (Leitch), and I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I’m excited to see.”

Derek Kolstad is working on a maddening amount of projects as he recently worked on Marvel’s hit streaming series The Falcon & The Winter Soldier on Disney+, he’s also working on a live-action Dungeons & Dragons series and a live-action film based on the anime/manga Hellsing, among many other things.

The world of John Wick is expected to be built-out in the not too distant future from beyond the main films with Len Wiseman’s spinoff movie Ballerina and the Starz series The Continental, about the assassin hotel.

SOURCE: COLLIDER & NETFLIX

Posted on in Film News

Netflix Adapting Keanu Reeves’ Comic ‘BRZRKR’ Into Live-Action Film & Anime Series – Reeves To Star In Both

Yesterday, Netflix announced they’ll be boarding the Keanu Reeves train as they’ve made a deal to adapt the BOOM! Studios/Reeves comic book BRZRKR for a live-action film and anime series as a follow-up afterwards. Reeves himself will, of course, star in both projects with the latter lending his voice.

BRZRKR is a brutally epic saga about an immortal warrior’s 80,000 year fight through the ages. The man known only as “B” is half-mortal and half-god, , cursed and compelled to violence… even at the sacrifice of his sanity. But after wandering the earth for centuries, B may have finally found a refuge – working for the U.S. government to fight the battles too violent and too dangerous for anyone else. In exchange, B will be granted the one thing he desires – the truth about his endless blood-soaked existence…and how to end it.

The anime series will further expand the BRZRKR universe by exploring different elements of the story. In the series, Reeves will reprise his role and voice his character. 

Keanu is coming off a shoot for Matrix 4 aka Matrix Resurrections at Warner Bros. with John Wick: Chapter 4 and John Wick: Chapter 5 on the horizon. While Lionsgate has suggested their plan is to film the next two John Wick installments back-to-back. There is a good chance John Wick: Chapter 5 will be the final film according to franchise creator Derek Kolstad.

Developing another action franchise at Netflix seems like the choice move there for Reeves.

SOURCE: NETFLIX

Posted on in Television News

‘The Falcon & The Winter Soldier’ Head Writer Malcolm Spellman Would Like To Reboot Deathlok Next

The Falcon & The Winter Soldier has finally debuted after being delayed a couple months as production had been pushed due to the pandemic. The series head writer and executive producer Malcolm Spellman has been doing interviews and recently talked-up another Marvel Comics superhero he’d like to get his hands on next if the studio allowed it.

While speaking with Heroic Hollywood, Spellman reveals he’d love to get his hands on Deathlok and clarifying he would want to reboot him for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, not continuing the Michael Peterson version seen in the ABC series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. played by J. August Richards.

SPELLMAN: “My favorite character, the character I would most love to do next, would be Deathlok. But it would have to be right.”

When they mention the A.O.S. version Malcolm responded by stating he’d want to do another version of the character, a reboot. Potentially, referring to the other versions such as Col. Luther Manning, Michael Collins, Jack Truman, and Henry Hayes.

SPELLMAN: “Yeah. Yeah. Not that Deathlok. A different Deathlok.”

Interestingly enough, there was a Deadline article from 2019 that Marvel Studios was keen on rebooting the cyborg character and the MCU has already introduced time-travel in Avengers: Endgame along with human characters with cybernetic enhancements. Sam jokingly refers to Bucky as a “cyborg” in the trailers/promos for the series, his robotic arm would indeed place him into the cyborg category.

Deathlok was a oft-discussed project back in the 1990s when Marvel characters were still a tough sell in Hollywood and a script by Randall Frakes (Terminator 2: Judgment Day) stirred fan hopes but it never materialized. A version of the character has appeared on the ABC series Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (portrayed by J. August Richards) and there’s been rumors that Marvel Studios may use the character soon.

In his original incarnation he was Col. Luther Manning, a Detroit native killed in battle whose corpse is reanimated in post-apocalyptic future for battlefield domination. He rebels against his makers and goes his own way, including a time-travel trip to the present day.

We’ll have to wait and see if Spellman will get his wish concerning Deathlok. If we start to see Marvel Studios rebooting Marvel Television characters from the Loeb era it might signal that others might end up getting rebooted too.

SOURCE: HEROIC HOLLYWOOD