Author: Christopher Marc

Posted on in Television News

‘Game Of Thrones’ Costume Designer Michele Clapton Confirmed For Amazon’s Cyberpunk Series ‘The Peripheral’; From Co-Creators Of HBO’s ‘Westworld’

Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan (Westworld) are producing a new Amazon series The Peripheral, an adaptation of the William Gibson cyberpunk novel with Chloe Grace Moretz (Kick-Ass, Shadow In The Cloud) and Irish actor Jack Reynor (Midsommar, Free Fire) set to play the show’s leads.

The William Gibson novel centers on Flynne (Grace Moretz) and her brother Burton (Reynor). Burton, a veteran of the United States Marine Corps’ elite Haptic Recon force, is hired for a security job which takes place in what he thinks is cyberspace. When Flynne temporarily takes his place, she witnesses something that might have been murder.

The Ronin can confirm the cyberpunk series has indeed added six-time Primetime Emmy-winner Michele Clapton to the production team as their costume designer, who previously worked on Seasons 1-8 of HBO’s Game of Thrones and The King’s Man directed by Matthew Vaughn. 

We previously reported the show’s production designer will be Jan Reolfs (Ghost In The Shell, F9: The Fast Saga, 47 Ronin). 

Production will take place around London with Vincenzo Natali set to direct the show’s pilot. Natali’s extensive credits include The Stand, Westworld, American Gods, The Strain, Lost In Space, Locke & Key, Luke Cage, Hannibal, Orphan Black, Splice, and Cube.

Gibson, alongside Philip K. Dick, is considered one of the fathers of the cyberpunk genre. Dick’s work, of course, inspired feature films such as Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner and Paul Verhoeven’s Total Recall. The Peripheral isn’t the only William Gibson adaptation in the works as we’ve previously reported that Luther creator Neil Cross is looking to turn his novel Pattern Recognition into a project as well and has yet to be officially announced.

Lisa Joy is making her feature film directorial debut with the Hugh Jackman and Rebecca Ferguson dystopian cyberpunk film Reminiscence, which will hit both theaters and HBO Max on August 20.

REMINISCENCE – Nick Bannister (Jackman), a private investigator of the mind, navigates the darkly alluring world of the past by helping his clients access lost memories. Living on the fringes of the sunken Miami coast, his life is forever changed when he takes on a new client, Mae (Ferguson). A simple matter of lost and found becomes a dangerous obsession. As Bannister fights to find the truth about Mae’s disappearance, he uncovers a violent conspiracy, and must ultimately answer the question: how far would you go to hold on to the ones you love?

Posted on in Television News

EXCLUSIVE: Russo Brothers’ Action-Packed Spy Series ‘Citadel’ Adds Veteran Director Jessica Yu

The Russo Brothers (Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame) are behind a new action-packed spy series at Amazon Prime Video, called Citadel with a cast that consists of Richard Madden (Game of Thrones, Bodyguard, Eternals), Priyanka Chopra Jonas (The Matrix 4, The White Tiger, Quantico, We Can Be Heroes ), and Stanley Tucci (Spotlight, Captain America: The First Avenger, Road To Perdition, The King’s Man), Ashleigh Cummings, Roland Møller, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Susan Lynch, Sara Martins, Leo Woodall, Gráinne Good, Osy Ikhile, Caoilinn Springall, and Leo Ashizawa.

The Ronin can now confirm that seasoned director Jessica Yu is helming at least two episodes of Citadel. Yu’s varied television career includes credits such as In Treatment, Billions, This Is Us, American Crime, Fosse/Verdon, Ratched, Hollywood, The Affair, I’m Dying Up Here, Scandal, ER, Grey’s Anatomy, West Wing, and directed the pilot for Walker.

Jessica Yu is also an Oscar-winner earning a statue for Best Documentary Short in 1997 for Breathing Lessons, which was presented to her by Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones.

Joe and Anthony Russo are producing via their production company AGBO and are expected to direct episodes alongside fellow executive producer Brian Kirk (21 Bridges, Game of Thrones, Luther, Boardwalk Empire, Dexter). Josh Appelbaum (showrunner), André Nemec, Jeff Pinkner, and Scott Rosenberg of Midnight Radio serve as writers and executive producers.

Citadel is assumed to drop on Prime Video sometime in 2022.

The sibling pair is also working on The Gray Man, another high-profile spy project at Netflix, which is said to be budgeted at over $200 million, making it their most expensive production to date. The Gray Man’s impressive cast includes a heap of well-known names such as Ryan Gosling (The Nice Guys, Drive), Chris Evans (Snowpiercer), Ana de Armas (Knives Out, Blade Runner: 2049, No Time To Die), Rege-Jean Page (Bridgerton, Dungeons & Dragons), Jessica Henwick (The Matrix 4, Knives Out 2), Alfre Woodard (Luke Cage), Billy Bob Thorton (Fargo), Wagner Moura (Narcos), Deobia Oparei (Dredd, Game of Thrones, Independence Day: Resurgence), Robert Kazinsky (Pacific Rim), Dhanush, Scott Haze (Venom, Antlers), Callan Mulvey (The Outlaw King, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Batman v Superman), and Julia Butters (Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, The Fabelmans).

Posted on in Television News

‘She-Hulk’ Cinematographer Revealed To Be Florian Ballhaus

She-Hulk has been shooting for months in Atlanta and it looks like a major crew member has been revealed for the upcoming Marvel Studios series airing on Disney+ sometime in 2022. Thanks to a tipster, the German lens company Leitz’s website has the show’s cinematographer listed as Florian Ballhaus. The German director of photography’s credits include The One & Only Ivan, RED, The Devil Wears Prada, and The Captain.

The 10-episode series will be directed by Kat Coiro and Anu Valia with Emmy-winner Jessica Gao (Rick & Morty) set as head writer. It’s crew consists of production designer Elena Albanese (Lovecraft Country), costume designer Ann Foley (Godzilla Vs. Kong, Altered Carbon), and stunt coordinator Monique Ganderton (Loki, Avengers: Endgame).

Tatiana Maslany’s (Black Orphan) Jennifer Walters aka She-Hulk is the cousin of Avengers member Dr. Bruce Banner aka Hulk and after a blood transfusion from Bruce is granted her own Hulk powers becoming She-Hulk. The series officially will see the return of Tim Roth as Emil Blonsky aka Abomination (the new updated design recently revealed in Shang-Chi trailer) , Mark Ruffalo back as Banner aka Professor Hulk, Renee Elise Goldsberry as Amelia, and Ginger Gonzaga.

Jameela Jamil (The Good Place) was recently announced to be playing the super-strong villain Titania in She-Hulk and it’ll be interest to see if she’ll be in projects other than the series.

Set photos recently posted by actress Anais Almonte (Gotham, The Punisher) confirmed her involvement.

She-Hulk will likely debut on Disney+ sometime in the second half of 2022. Given the extensive visual effects involved and multiple motion-capture characters, we shouldn’t expect to see it arrive before the summer of next year, but we’ll certainly update if that changes.

Other live-action shows on the horizon from Marvel Studios consist of Hawkeye, Ms. Marvel, Moon Knight, Secret Invasion, Armor Wars, Ironheart, Echo, and the untitled Ryan Coogler-produced project about Wakanda.

SOURCE: LEITZ

Posted on in Film News

‘Black Widow’ Screenwriter Eric Pearson Explains Reason For The MCU Revamp Of Taskmaster

***WARNING SPOILERS AHEAD FOR BLACK WIDOW***

Marvel’s Black Widow finally released over the weekend, ending the journey of Scarlett Johansson’s Natasha Romanoff and allows Florence Pugh to continue in sequels/spinoffs as she is set to reprise the Yelena Belova role in the Hawkeye series.

While I had my own gripes with the action sequences not meeting the hype from Johansson comparing the pic to projects like Terminator 2: Judgement Day, one of the things I did enjoy was the reworking of Taskmaster. Screenwriter Eric Pearson spoke with Comic Book and explained the switch-up from the comic book counterpart, Anthony Masters.

“Well, there was a previous draft where it was a Tony Masters character, but it did… It was hard because we had certain things that we knew certain constants. One of the constants was we were right after Captain America: Civil War and before Avengers: Infinity War which meant our great threat, the Red Room… One of the bigger kind of complications was figuring out a villain plot that could succeed and go unnoticed, which ultimately, I think kind of works out for a spy thriller film and also for Dreykov as an ultimate villain because he is a bit of a cowardly man who wields power from the shadows, but spends most of his time isolated, like a weird Howard Hughes, just talking about how big he is to himself because he’s too scared to actually kind of like get out there in the world,” the screenwriter told Comic Book.

Pearson adding their reasons for pivoting from Masters to Dreykov’s daughter, “Tony Masters didn’t seem to really fit into that. And meanwhile, we had this mystery of ‘What happened to Dreykov’s daughter?’ And I don’t know it seemed like because Natasha Romanoff’s story is always going to be more grounded, but you still want some Marvel fun, fantastic in it. The idea of an accident going wrong and we’ve already got this facility now in the Red Room that is constantly with working on and the idea of mind control and rebuilding and controlling the human brain, the idea of an accident going wrong with a loved one and using the technology to reconstruct that person’s mind finding something new, finding the photographic reflexes in rebuilding that mind that felt like a good Marvel comic book addition to an otherwise more grounded spy thriller thing.”

One of the biggest theories early on was that Mason (played by O-T Fagbenle) was going to be Anthony Masters or a version of him. That would also explain Fagbenle’s large credit on the posters only for him to ultimately appear in three minor scenes.

Adding to this idea that the gender swap happened much later on, British stuntman Andy Lister posted an image on Instagram of himself in the Taskmaster costume during the third act scenes (when Taskmaster’s identity is revealed to Natasha) and potentially confirms that they changed the villain’s identity/gender later on in the production.

SOURCE: COMIC BOOK

Posted on in Film News

‘Tron: Legacy’ & ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ Director Joseph Kosinski Returns To Sci-Fi With ‘Chariot’ For Warner Bros.

Filmmaker Joseph Kosinski finished the big Tom Cruise sequel Top Gun: Maverick, which simply waiting to be released by Paramount Pictures this fall and is in post-production stages with his Chris Hemsworth pic Escape From Spiderhead at Netflix.

After previously talking the science-fiction genre with Disney’s Tron: Legacy and the Tom Cruise action movie Oblivion, Kosinski is reportedly returning to the genre for a comic book adaptation, Chariot. The adaptation, according to Deadline, was won by Warner Bros. after the project went to auction.

The Chariot was a Cold War-era secret government project to provide its star agent with a weapon unlike any other in the form of a supercharged muscle car. It sank into the ocean decades ago, and the agent along with it. Now, a petty criminal looking to reform his life has stumbled upon the Chariot, and he’s about to find out that the agent’s consciousness is still controlling it in this synthwave thriller.

Julian Meiojas (Jack Ryan) adapted the sci-film’s script from the AWA Studios graphic novel written by comic book creator and screenwriter Bryan Edward Hill (American Carnage, Bitter Root) and drawn by Priscilla Petraites (Rat Queens).

From design standpoint, Chariot lucked-out landing at the feet of Joseph Kosinski as Tron: Legacy was pure eye candy and this new project could easily take similar visual cues, alongside a hip synthwave soundtrack. Sadly, Daft Punk have broken up and won’t likely get involved here.

With the popularity if the Fast & Furious franchise, picking up a high-octane driving genre movie based on a graphic novel doesn’t sound like the worst idea imaginable, hopefully, it doesn’t turn out as generic as Need For Speed did. Chariot certainly feels like it could be the fourth project for Kosinski and Tom Cruise, as Warner Bros. is also trying put together a sequel to Edge of Tomorrow with director Doug Liman but is reliant on schedules and might offer this up if things are delayed further.

Then again, it could be a good excuse for the director to reunite with Garrett Hedlund.

SOURCE: DEADLINE

Posted on in Film News

‘John Wick 4’ Adds Chilean Martial Arts Actor Marko Zaror From ‘Machete Kills’ & ‘Alita: Battle Angel’

Production is currently under way in Germany on John Wick 4 starring Keanu Reeves and director Chad Stahelski behind the camera.

John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum ended with John Wick surviving the fall from the roof of The Continental hotel after Ian McShane’s Winston shot him. Winston’s motivations weren’t entirely clear as he didn’t seem shocked that Mr. Wick got away and could be giving The High Table a false sense of security. Wick eventually lands at the feet of Laurence Fishburne’s Bowery King, who had his organization taken away from him by The High Table and convinces John to go to war with him against the mysterious group of criminal syndicate puppet masters. 

There is yet another martial arts trained actor joining the fourth installment, as Deadline reports that Chilean actor Marko Zaror (Machete Kills, Undisputed III: Redemption, Alita: Battle Angel, From Dusk Till Dawn) is in talks for an undisclosed role that might be villainous in nature.

The franchise’s newest additions joining for the fourth film include Japanese action star Horiyuki Sanada as Watanabe, Hong Kong action star Donnie Yen playing Wick’s old pal, British martial artist Scott Adkins (The Expendables 2, Doctor Strange), Atomic Blonde’s Bill Skarsgard, Stowaway’s Shamier Anderson, and the film’s female lead played by Japanese-British singer Rina Sawayama. 

Returning actors include Ian McShane as Winston, Lance Reddick as Charon, and Laurence Fishburne back as the Bowery King.

We’re still in the dark about established characters played by Halle Berry, Asia Kate Dillion, John Leguizamo, Peter Stormare, Common, Jason Mantzoukas, Anjelica Huston, Said Taghmaoui, Yayan Ruhian, and Cecept Arif Rahamn making an appearance in John Wick 4.

The Ronin first reveled and confirmed cinematographer Dan Laustsen would be back behind the camera.

John Wick 4 will hit the big screen on May 27, 2022 and Lionsgate had confirmed plans to make John Wick: Chapter 5, but will no longer shoot back-to-back with the next installment. Franchise creator and architect, Derek Kolstad, stated that he won’t be involved in the next two films and suggested John Wick 5 could be the final pic.

SOURCE: DEADLINE

Posted on in Film News

‘Black Adam’: Dwayne Johnson Posts New Set Photo Showing Off Costume

Dwayne Johnson has taken to Instagram to post a new pic from the set of Black Adam in Atlanta and gives us the best look at his DCEU character’s costume as production is about to wrap soon.

Joining Johnson on the superhero project directed by Jaume Collet-Serra (Jungle Cruise) includes Aldis Hodge as Carter Hall aka Hawkman, Pierce Brosnan as Kent Nelson aka Dr. Fate, Noah Centineo as Al Rothstein aka Atom Smasher, Quintessa Swindell as Maxine Hunkell aka Cyclone, Sarah Shahi as Adrianna Tomaz aka Isis, Bodhi Sabongui, James Cusati-Moyer, and Marwan Kenzari expected to play the film’s villain.

A project like Black Adam will allow them to introduce a multitude of new characters in a single installment with The Justice Society playing a role in the film. They should be an interesting addition to the DCEU alongside the Shazam! family.

The New Line Cinema project is going to be releasing head-to-head with Indiana Jones 5 on July 29, 2022 as Lucasfilm announced they would be sticking to the summer date even after Warner Bros. placed Black Adam in the same spot. We imagine one of them is going to eventually find a new date down the road with Indy’s recently production delays it’s starting to feel like Disney will find a new release date.

“This image of Black Adam from behind gives you a tactile sense of the absolute massive scale and size of our movie. You also see a little of the intricate and beautiful textured detail of Black Adam’s body suit. (this is not your typical DC or Marvel muscle suit) And finally you get a glimpse of the enormous and appropriate destruction. As we all know, superheroes have a code of justice and don’t kill the bad guys. But, Black Adam does. The hierarchy of power in the DC UNIVERSE is changing.”

SOURCE: DWAYNE JOHNSON

Posted on in Film News

‘Black Widow’ Director Cate Shortland Says Red Guardian Needs His Own Movie; Should They Do A Winter Guard Project?

Marvel Studios is currently at a point where they’re open to branching-out various characters with their own Disney+ shows or even giving them their own films. A good example is Anthony Mackie leading Captain America 4 after playing a sidekick for years and then landing his own series with The Falcon & The Winter Soldier.

Could we see that with David Harbour’s Red Guardian?

Black Widow director Cate Shortland believes that Red Guardian deserves his own film while speaking with The Wrap. She previously said she’d return for a hypothetical Black Widow 2, that could be led by other characters (Florence Pugh’s Yelena is a given).

“Sometimes — not sometimes — often I would be crying with laughter. And there was so much good stuff that didn’t end up in the film. But I think that’s why Red Guardian needs his own movie. Because it will be so funny,” the filmmaker told The Wrap as she champions the idea of a Red Guardian spinoff film.

After mentioning to Collider that he’s had early talks with Marvel about reprising the role, David Harbour mentioned to The Wrap he is game for a Red Guardian project if Marvel decided to make it.

“People want to see more of this character, I would love to give people more. And I’m glad he’s alive at the end of the movie too,” David Harbour said when asked if he’d want to reprise the role in a series or movie.

Clearly, there is more you could do with Red Guardian because in the comics he leads his own team, Winter Guard (made up of other Russian Marvel characters), and allows him to do his own side adventures outside of the Black Wdow franchise. Darkstar, Ursa Major, Red Widow, Vostok, Perun, Crimson Dynamo, Fantasma, Sibercat, Powersurge, and Chernobog could end up being members of the Winter Guard roster led by The Red Guardian.

Yelena briefly calls Alexei, Crimson Dynamo, an Iron Man villain and member of Winter Guard.

BLACK WIDOW – In Black Widow, Natasha Romanoff confronts the darker parts of her ledger when a dangerous conspiracy with ties to her past arises. Pursued by a force that will stop at nothing to bring her down, Natasha must deal with her history as a spy and the broken relationships left in her wake long before she became an Avenger. Directed by Cate Shortland and produced by Kevin Feige, the movie stars Scarlett Johansson reprising her role as Natasha Romanoff. Florence Pugh stars as Yelena Belova, David Harbour as Alexei Shostakov aka Red Guardian, and Rachel Weisz as Melina Vostokoff.

SOURCE: THE WRAP

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Quentin Tarantino Wanted An All-Black Cast For His ‘Reservoir Dogs’ Remake; Could End Up Becoming A Stage Play Instead

Not too long ago, Quentin Tarantino revealed that one of the early ideas he was considering for his tenth and final film was a remake of his 1992 hit film Reservoir Dogs, but he abandoned the idea and promised that it wouldn’t end up doing it as he decided against it but mulled over turning it into a novel. 

However, while speaking with CinemaBlend’s Reel Blend Podcast (via The Playlist) the filmmaker dished that the crux of the remake was having a fresh perspective by having an all-black cast and added that he might consider doing it as a stage play instead. 

“I didn’t get that far in it, but I’ve decided that if I wanted to do something like that I would do it more onstage. I think that would be cool, but my thought process was, well, if it’s a strong piece of material, it would work doing it any time, it does seem timeless, and with a new group of actors, it would have a new life and it would have a new life because of the fact that I didn’t really know what the hell I was doing when I did Reservoir Dogs, and now I know what I’m doing a little bit more so that could be interesting. I won’t have the youthful exuberance that I had, but we’ll see how much that accounts for anything,” Tarantino said of remaking the film because of his years of experience being applied to that original idea. 

The filmmaker continued revealing that he wanted to cast black actors, “At the time, I was considering doing it as a movie, making it as an all-Black cast, that would have been my twist on it as far as making it a different movie. Nah, I don’t think I took it that far,” he said when asked about a potential cast for the remake. “I think part of the idea to open up would be just to see who responded to it and figure it out that way.”

Tarantino’s stage play idea isn’t a new thing as when his Hateful Eight script leaked online he cancelled the film, only to do a play version that eventually inspired him to return to the feature film incarnation after having a bunch of much fun dong it live with an audience.

Considering that he didn’t get that far with coming up with ideas for the new cast. I figured I’d come up with my dream cast after re-watching the film and trying to figure out, who would likely work for the characters and also be people that Tarantino would want to work with given their body of work. 

  • Don Cheadle – Mr. White
  • Daniel Kaluuya – Mr. Orange
  • Jamie Foxx – Mr. Blonde
  • Brian Tyree Henry – Mr. Pink
  • Samuel L. Jackson – Joe Cabot
  • Craig Robinson – Nice Guy Eddie
  • Jonathan Majors – Mr. Brown
  • Laurence Fishburne – Mr. Blue
  • Jake Gyllenhaal – Officer Marvin Nash
  • Walton Goggins – Detective Holdaway

I’d also like to see a setting and era switch-up, possibly seeing this crew stealing from Al Capone during the height of the gangster’s empire of crime in Chicago in the 1920s (the 1970s could work too). That would allow Tarantino to make his large scale gangster film just like his directing heroes Brian De Palma (The Untouchables) and Sergio Leone (Once Upon A Time In America).

SOURCE: REEL BLEND PODCAST

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Ridley Scott’s Napoleon Film ‘Kitbag’ Adds Oscar-Winning ‘Gladiator’ Costume Designer Janty Yates

Ridley Scott and Oscar-winner Joaquin Phoenix are set to reunite for an epic period film at Apple Studios that will focus on Napoleon Bonaparte with Phoenix playing the lead role. Shooting is expected to begin next year in the United Kingdom with Scott reportedly adding The Last Duel’s Jodie Comer to play Josephine. The script was penned by All The Money In The World’s David Scarpa

The film is an original and personal look at Napoleon’s origins and his swift, ruthless climb to emperor, viewed through the prism of his addictive and often volatile relationship with his wife and one true love, Josephine. The intention of the film is to capture Napoleon’s famous battles, relentless ambition and astounding strategic mind as an extraordinary military leader and war visionary.

The Ronin can now confirm that the period epic has added Oscar-winning costume designer Janty Yates, who previously worked with both Ridley Scott and Joaquin Phoenix on Gladiator. Yates’ extensive credits include Kingdom of Heaven, Robin Hood, Exodus, Raised By Wolves, Prometheus, The Last Duel and the Lady Gaga-led crime film House of Gucci.

Famously, Stanley Kubrick (A Clockwork Orange, 2001 A Space Odyssey, The Shining) attempted to make a Napoleon project spending years developing and researching it. HBO/MGM recently tried to resurrect as a miniseries with Steven Spielberg producing and Cary Fukunaga (No Time To Die, True Detective, Masters of The Air) directing.

Phoenix is currently shooting Ari Aster’s Disappointment Blvd. in Montreal and is attached to co-star with Rooney Mara in director Lynne Ramsey’s Polaris.

There is an assumption that Scott’s longtime cinematographer Dariusz Wolski will be part of the film’s crew as well.

Speaking of Gladiator, the British filmmaker has been developing a direct sequel with The Town screenwriter Peter Craig and takes place 25-30 years after the events of the original movie that earned Russell Crowe a Best Actor Oscar statue. There is an expectation that Spencer Treat Clark’s (Animal Kingdom, Glass, Unbreakable) Lucius will be the focus of that project.