Category: Film News

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Dave Bautista Game To See Drax The Destroyer Get His Traditional Comic Book Costume In ‘Guardians of The Galaxy 3’

Marvel Studios will finally begin shooting Guardians of The Galaxy 3 in November, according to star Chris Pratt and fans are already assembling wish lists for the sci-fi superhero film.

James Gunn recently laughed-off the fan idea of giving Drax The Destroyer his traditional look (see above) from the comic books (includes a cowl, cape, and top) in the upcoming sequel, however, Dave Bautista jokingly chimed-in giving his endorsement on Twitter.

https://twitter.com/JamesGunn/status/1412202496097931267?

You can’t really blame Dave Bautista, considering that adding more clothes to the character would cut-down on the time he spends in the makeup chair as to play Drax in previous films he’s had half his body covered in special effects makeup. Even if they’re covering his torso, that would likely trim time in the makeup trailer.

Bautista has suggested this will be his final outing as Drax and that he hasn’t been terribly happy with how he’s become simply the comic relief, instead of being a fearsome alien strong-man. There had been early rumblings that we could see Drax’s daughter Moondragon in the sequel, who eventually became a member of the Avengers, but this has yet to be confirmed by Marvel or supported by trades.

Ultimately, it’s director James Gunn’s call and he’ll be wrapping up his HBO Max series Peacemaker soon, so he can start pivoting to focus on prep for Guardians of The Galaxy 3 ahead of it’s production start in the United Kingdom. The rest of returning cast is expected to include Chris Pratt as Peter Quill aka Star-Lord, Karen Gillan as Nebula, Zoe Saldana as Gamora, Pom Klementieff as Mantis, Sean Gunn as Kraglin, Bradley Cooper as the voice of Rocket, and Vin Diesel as the voice of Groot. 

Guardians of The Galaxy Vol.3 has a release date of May 5, 2023 and we have to assume the Guardians of The Galaxy Holiday Special will air on Disney+ around December 2022. However, we’ll see the Guardians next in Taika Waititi’s Thor: Love & Thunder on May 6, 2022 as they shot scenes during the production in Australia earlier this year.

SOURCE: DAVE BAUTISTA

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Director Lisa Joy Teases Follow-Up To Her Cyberpunk Film ‘Reminiscence’ Starring Hugh Jackman

Westworld’s Lisa Joy is making her feature film directorial debut with the cyberpunk thriller Reminiscence that will hit theaters and HBO Max on August 20. While speaking with Empire Magazine, the filmmaker briefly teased some ideas she is developing for a follow-up movie, but isn’t calling it a sequel but a “cousin.”

“It’s a distant cousin, not a sequel. It’s an evolution in theme and a conception of the world and man’s place within it. Plus, there’s a lot of action. I wanted to create a new type of action,” teases Joy. “It’s taking different bits from different cultures and kind of fusing a new way of approaching action that I think will be exciting,” Lisa Joy teased to Empire about her plans for an untitled second film.

At one time, there was going to be a Black Cat (a Spider-Man character) movie at Sony Pictures written by Lisa Joy before the project was altered to be team-up film Silver & Black to be directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood (The Old Guard). The Marvel project ultimately was killed and the fate of the character in future films is up in the air.

Joy is behind the Amazon Prime Video series adaptation of the William Gibson cyberpunk novel The Peripheral and is also developing a series based on the beloved video game franchise Fallout.

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?

SOURCE: EMPIRE

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Colin Trevorrow’s WWII Movie ‘War Magician’ Officially Set To Begin Shooting In 2022; Benedict Cumberbatch Will Fight Nazis With Magic

Benedict Cumberbatch has been busy shooting scenes for Marvel’s Spider-Man: No Way Way alongside his Doctor Strange sequel, Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness, that will be directed by Sam Raimi (Evil Dead, Army of The Dead, Darkman, Spider-Man 1-3) and co-starring Elizabeth Olsen as the actress reprises the Scarlet Witch role.

He’ll continue to be busy next year as French studio StudioCanal has announced via The Playlist that production on the WWII film, War Magician, will begin in 2022. Colin Trevorrow (Jurassic World, Jurassic World: Dominion) will be directing from a script penned by E. Nicholas Mariani that is based on the novel by David Fisher. The movie focuses on the real-life magician and illusionist Jasper Maskelyne (playe by Cumberbatch) was enlisted by the British Army to help fight the Nazis during WWII.

Jasper Maskelyne was a world famous magician and illusionist in the 1930s. When war broke out, he volunteered his services to the British Army and was sent to Egypt where the desert war had just begun. He used his skills to save the vital port of Alexandria from German bombers and to ‘hide’ the Suez Canal from them. He invented all sorts of camouflage methods to make trucks look like tanks and vice versa. On Malta he developed ‘the world’s first portable holes’: fake bomb craters used to fool the Germans into thinking they had hit their targets. His war culminated in the brilliant deception plan that won the Battle of El Alamein: the creation of an entire dummy army in the middle of the desert.

Colin Trevorrow had famously been developing the ninth Star Wars film under the tile Star Wars: Duel of The Fates, only to exit and most of his work scrapped as J.J. Abrams and Chris Terrio put together Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.

A release date for War Magician wasn’t mentioned but I’m sure they’re hoping for an awards friendly fall/winter spot.

SOURCE: STUDIOCANAL VIA THE PLAYLIST

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‘Blade’ Actor Stephen Dorff Hammers Modern Marvel Movies & ‘Black Widow’; “I’m Embarrassed For Scarlett”

Actor Stephen Dorff recently worked with Oscar-winner Mahershala Ali on third season of HBO’s True Detective, but it sounds like the former Blade actor wouldn’t have advised Ali to take on the Blade mantle. Dorff spoke with The Indepenent (via The Hollywood Reporter) and proceeded to hammer the modern Marvel Studios movies, specifically, Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow solo film.

“I still hunt out the good shit because I don’t want to be in Black Widow. It looks like garbage to me. It looks like a bad video game. I’m embarrassed for those people. I’m embarrassed for Scarlett! I’m sure she got paid five, seven million bucks, but I’m embarrassed for her. I don’t want to be in those movies. I really don’t. I’ll find that kid director that’s gonna be the next [Stanley] Kubrick and I’ll act for him instead,” Stephen Dorff said.

Mr. Dorff had played vampire villain Decaon Frost in 1998’s Blade, the successful R-rated film led by Wesley Snipes and directed by Stephen Norrington that was released two years before Fox’s X-Men. It’s regarded as the film that proved to Marvel that they could make successful films with their popular and obscure characters.

I guess fans that wanted Stephen Dorff to play the MCU’s Wolverine might want to pump those breaks. Then again, Ethan Hawke had a similar opinion only to join the Disney+ series Moon Knight, starring opposite with Oscar Isaac.

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: INDEPENDENT

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‘F9: The Fast Saga’ Crosses $500M At Global Box Office

Universal Pictures delaying F9: The Fast Saga has paid off for the studio as the sequel is breaking miltuple pandemic records as Box Office Mojo has the film sitting at an international total of $500.3 million with $126 million coming from domestic box office.

The last installment, The Fate of The Furious, made an impressive final total of $1.2 billion.

Vin Diesel recently told Regal Movies in an interview that Furious 10 (parts 1-2) will begin shooting in January. With the main movies winding-down, there are plenty of offshoots in the works from Universal Pictures such as a Hobbs & Shaw sequel in development along with Michelle Rodriguez and Charlize Theron getting spinoffs as well. Diesel has also mused about potential prequels as well.

We’ll keep our fingers crossed that Sung Kang’ Han will get his own film too because it only makes sense to bring him back to give him a spinoff adventure.

While it’s not complete picture of the theater industry completely healed, it’s a good sign that other summer films might end up doing well as Black Widow, Snake Eyes, and The Suicide Squad are coming up. The problem at the moment is that vaccine numbers have stalled in the U.S. and the Delta variant quickly becoming the dominate version of COVID-9 across the globe, when many countries are behind in their vaccinations.

F9: THE FAST SAGA – Dom Toretto is living the quiet life off the grid with Letty and his son, but they know that danger always lurks just over the peaceful horizon. This time, that threat forces Dom to confront the sins of his past to save those he loves most. His crew soon comes together to stop a world-shattering plot by the most skilled assassin and high-performance driver they’ve ever encountered — Dom’s forsaken brother.

SOURCE: BOX OFFICE MOJO

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EXCLUSIVE: Timothee Chalamet’s ‘Wonka’ Movie Enlists ‘Godzilla’ & ‘Avengers’ Cinematographer Seamus McGarvey

The Ronin can confirm that cinematographer Seamus McGarvey has joined the production of Wonka, the prequel film about Willy Wonka that will be played by Timothee Chalamet (Dune). McGarvey is best known for his work on Marvel’s The Avengers, Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla reboot, Atonement, and Bad Times At The El Royale.

Willy Wonky had been previously played by Gene Wilder and Johnny Depp.

Paul King, the director of the first two Paddington movies, is at the helm with production taking place at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden in Watford, England.The facility in Watford is the home base of the Potterverse franchise and has been one of the key places that the modern era of DC Comics movies are shot as The Batman, The Flash, and Aquaman & The Lost Kingdom have recently used their stages.

Paul King and Simon Farnaby co-wrote the latest incarnation of the script, the prequel film is said to include song and dance numbers, just like the last two movies. King had been attached to Disney’s live-action Pinocchio movie before exiting to focus on Wonka and was replaced with Robert Zemeckis (Back To The Future 1-3)

Christopher Nolan’s longtime production designer Nathan Crowley (Tenet, Inception, The Dark Knight, John Carter, Interstellar) is also confirmed for the film and had been previously announced.

The production team being assembled would suggest the project might be bigger than people might have originally imagined. An official release date for Wonka hasn’t been announced by Warner Bros., but there is an expectation it will be released sometime in 2023.

Below are some examples of Seamus McGarvey’s work.

WILLY WONKA & THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY – A sweet boy from a poor family dreams of finding one of five golden tickets hidden inside chocolate bar wrappers which will admit him to the eccentric and reclusive Willy Wonka’s magical factory. One after another, tickets are discovered by ghastly children – but will the lad find the last remaining one and have all his dreams come true?

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Quentin Tarantino Reveals He Was Offered A Chance To Remake Sci-Fi Thriller ‘Westworld’ With A Script From ‘Overlord’s Billy Ray

Quentin Tarantino spoke to The Big Picture Podcast (via The Playlist) to promote his novelization of Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. During that chat, the filmmaker revealing that around the time of his Grindhouse double-feature experiment (Death Proof and Planet Terror) flopped at the box office he was offered a couple of IP projects such as DC Comics film Sgt. Rock and Westworld remake that was being written by Billy Ray. The latter would have been Tarantino’s first entry into the sci-fi genre before attempting to get a Star Trek film together with the help of Mark L. Smith (The Revenant).

If you’re not familiar with Westworld, it was an original film that was released back in 1973 and was written/directed by author Michael Crichton, who is best known as the writer of Jurassic Park and The Lost World. It focuses on a futuristic theme park with realistic robots that exist to be killed and screwed by guests, that’s until the robots malfunction and start killing their human guests.

Westworld is a futuristic theme park where paying guests can pretend to be gunslingers in an artificial Wild West populated by androids. After paying a sizable entrance fee, Blane (James Brolin) and Martin (Richard Benjamin) are determined to unwind by hitting the saloons and shooting off their guns. But when the system goes haywire and Blane is killed in a duel with a robotic gunslinger (Yul Brynner), Martin’s escapist fantasy suddenly takes on a grim reality.

The project eventually was remade at HBO as a series from Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, it’s heading into it’s fourth season.

Billy Ray is certainly a competent screenwriter with credits such as The Comey Rule, Richard Jewell, Terminator: Dark Fate, Gemini Man, Captain Phillips, The Hunger Games, State of Play, and the Bad Robot WWII horror movie Overlord.

Quentin Tarantino plans on retiring from feature film directing after making his 10th movie, but has yet to announce that will be and has working on a Bounty Law mini-series that will likely be next for him.

SOURCE: THE BIG PICTURE PODCAST

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Quentin Tarantino Ponders Making A Faithful Adaptation Of ‘First Blood’ With Adam Driver As Rambo & Kurt Russell As Sheriff Teasle

Director Quentin Tarantino is on a book tour meeting and speaking with multiple outlets, this means he’s talking-up a bunch of hypothetical projects and ideas that normally he’d keep to himself or wait until there was a film to promote.

While chatting with The Big Picture Podcast (via The Playlist), the filmmaker brought up the idea of making a more commercial viable film by doing a faithful adaptation of the David Morrell novel First Blood, the book published in 1972 was developed into a starring vehicle for Sly Stallone in 1982 and led to four sequels.

“I would do the novel. And Kurt Russell would play the sheriff, and [Adam Driver] would play Rambo. Every time I read [the novel], the dialogue is so fantastic…[The film] would be so good,” Tarantino told the podcast about his ideas for a remake and who should take lead roles.

First came the man: a young wanderer in a fatigue coat and long hair. Then came the legend, as John Rambo sprang from the pages of FIRST BLOOD to take his place in the American cultural landscape. This remarkable novel pits a young Vietnam veteran against a small-town cop who doesn’t know whom he’s dealing with — or how far Rambo will take him into a life-and-death struggle through the woods, hills, and caves of rural Kentucky.

The idea is based on if he hadn’t planned on retiring after making his 10th feature film, so even if it’s neat idea, it’s unlikely going to happen. First Blood is considered the best of the Rambo movies as it the most coherent film, but wasn’t as faithful as some might imagine.

It’s a little curious why he’s bringing up First Blood, as there is indeed a Rambo remake in the works called Rambo: New Blood from Millennium Films. The remake reportedly had Brooks McLaren attached to pen the script and Ariel Vromen (The Iceman, Criminal) to direct, but there hasn’t been much of an update since 2016, so it’s unlikely that incarnation is going to happen.

Back in 2015, Stallone suggested in an interview during the press rounds for Creed that Canadian actor Ryan Gosling take the John Rambo mantle.

Author/creator David Morrell took to Twitter during the release of the critically panned Rambo: Last Blood and said he was embarrassed by it. Stallone had announced his retirement of the character not too long ago and it’s not like a remake would be stepping on his toes with a remake.

SOURCE: THE BIG PICTURE PODCAST

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Quentin Tarantino Says He Was Offered A ‘Sgt. Rock’ Movie That Had A “Magnificent” Script From ‘Blade Runner’ Screenwriter David Webb Peoples

Warner Bros. has been trying since 1980s to make a feature film based on the WWII era DC Comics hero Sgt. Rock, producer Joel Silver famously tried to get an incarnation starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and if you look closely at the end credits of Predator, you can see cast members like Shane Black holding copies of Sgt. Rock.

Well, it sounds like one incarnation almost had a script from screenwriter David Webb Peoples (Blade Runner, Unforgiving, 12 Monkeys, Leviathan, Soldier) and his “magnificent” script almost convinced Quentin Tarantino get involved as he was offered it by the studio. Tarantino briefly mentioned the potential comic book film during a chat on The Big Picture podcast (via The Playlist).

“There’s a really good script that David Webb Peoples wrote for Sgt. Rock that I still think about doing that from time to time. I don’t think I will, but I think it’s a really magnificent script and I would do a good job with,” Tarantino told The Big Picture.

It’s been well established that the director is a huge comic book guy.

Quentin Tarantino has mulled over the idea of making a comic book project over the years, in the 1990s, he wanted to make a Luke Cage movie starring Laurence Fishburne and had been once offered another DC Comics property Green Lantern.

He was previously upfront that Marvel’s Sgt. Fury & His Howling Commandos was a huge influence on the Oscar-winning film Inglourious Basterds and there were a handful of Marvel Comics homages in Reservoir Dogs.

“A big influence on the Basterds was Marvel Comics’ Sgt. Fury & His Howling Commandos. That was definitely an influence on that flick,” the filmmaker told MTV News back in 2009.

There seems to be further nods in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood with Rick Dalton’s WWII action film The 14 Fists of McCluskey, as his character wore an eye-patch a possible wink to Nick Fury and there were Sgt. Fury/Kid Colt comics in Cliff Booth’s trailer.

SOURCE: THE BIG PICTURE PODCAST

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Charlize Theron Confirms She’ll Film ‘The Old Guard’ Sequel In 2022 & Vin Diesel Says A Cipher Spinoff Movie Is Being Written

While Oscar-winner Charlize Theron is fully embracing her era as an action star, she won’t be reprising the Furiosa role in George Miller’s prequel film that will begin shooting next month in Australia with Anya Taylor-Joy (The Witch, The Queen’s Gambit, Last Night In Soho) playing a younger incarnation of the character. However, Theron will have plenty of things on her plate for the foreseeable future.

Variety’s Mark Malkin has dished some interesting updates on Charlize Theron projects such as The Older Guard sequel that will begin shooting in the first quarter of 2022 and even development on a Cipher movie focused on her character from the recent Fast & Furious movies, according to franchise star Vin Diesel.

Charlize Theron tells me that the script is done for the sequel to The Old Guard, her Netflix film adaptation of the graphic novel of the same name. Cameras will start rolling in the first quarter of 2022. The gay couple, played by Marwan Kenzari and Luca Marinelli, will be back, too. “Oh, yeah!” Theron says. “They’re definitely there.” Meanwhile, Vin Diesel tells me that he has writers working on a Fast & Furious spinoff for Theron’s character, Cipher.

The Old Guard is a Netflix action movie based on the Greg Rucka (also wrote the script) comic book about a diverse group of immortals and was directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood (Love & Basketball). According to Netflix, it was one of their most popular original feature films and a sequel felt like a given.

Given the box office successes of The Fate of The Furious and F9: The Fast Saga along with Hobbs & Shaw it feels like an obvious thing to give Theron her own film, but you’d hope that someone hires a better hairstylist for the actress. Other projects in the works at Universal Pictures is a Hobbs & Shaw sequel and a female-led film focused on Michelle Rodriguez’s character Letty Ortiz.

I’ll patiently wait for director David Leitch (Bullet Train, John Wick, Deadpool 2, Hobbs & Shaw) and Theron to reunite for an Atomic Blonde sequel.

SOURCE: VARIETY