Ben Affleck has seemingly secured yet another directing project.
Deadline reports he’ll be adapting the novel Keeper of The Lost Cities written by Shannon Messenger for Disney as it’s director, producer, and co-writer with screenwriter Kate Gritmon.
A telepathic girl must figure out why she is the key to her brand-new world before the wrong person finds the answer first. When 12-year-old Sophie finally discovers where her secret telepathic ability comes from, she learns she’s actually not human but is from another world that exists side-by-side with ours.
Affleck has been a busy bee lately working on his erotic thriller Deep Water co-starring with now girlfriend Ana de Armas along with a small role in Ridley Scott‘s period drama The Last Duel and leading the crime thriller titled Hypnotic directed by Robert Rodriguez at Solstice Studios. There was talk of a sequel to The Accountant in the works but hasn’t fully materialized.
He is also attached to direct a WWII film titled Ghost Army for Universal Pictures with a script penned by True Detective‘s Nic Pizzolatto.
The film tells the true story of a squadron of recruits from art schools, ad agencies and other creative businesses who were tasked with fooling the Nazis into thinking the U.S. had larger troop numbers than it actually did.
It’s unclear when they expect to begin shooting the Disney film or if he’ll make Ghost Army for Universal beforehand.
Deadline is reporting that Darren Aronofsky has picked his next feature film which will be a drama titled The Whale starring Brendan Fraser as an obese gay man named Charlie. The project has been picked-up by A24 and playwright Samuel D. Hunter will be adapting his own play for the big screen.
Variety also provides a bit more insight into the project than the original report with a synopsis.
It’s the story of a 600-pound middle-aged man named Charlie and his attempts to reconnect with his 17-year-old daughter. The two became estranged after Charlie abandoned his family for his gay lover, who later died. Charlie then turned to compulsive eating out of grief.
Aronofsky is best known for his dramas such as Requiem For A Dream, The Wrestler, and Black Swan, films that often highlight deeply flawed characters in unsettling environments.
Fraser best known for starring in studio comedies and action films for the better part of two decades fell off the map but recently had got some success with the television series Doom Patrol.
Today, Sony Pictures has announced they’ve again moved the release date of their upcoming Spider-Man spinoff feature film Morbius, starring Oscar-winner Jared Leto as Doctor Michael Morbius, a scientist that accidentally turns himself into a vampire.
The release date has been moved to October 8th after being set for March 19th previously.
It’s first teaser trailer revealed the interconnection with the solo Spider-Man films made by Marvel Studios as it featured Michael Keaton‘s Vulture in some sort of jailbreak scene. This has given fans hope that the character will indeed within the Marvel Cinematic Universe or at the very least, Tom Holland’s Spider-Man.
There is also an expectation that J.K. Simmon’s J. Jonah Jameson from Spider-Man: FarFrom Home will show up too thanks to previous comments made by the actor.
MORBIUS – One of Marvel’s most compelling and conflicted characters comes to the big screen as Oscar® winner Jared Leto transforms into the enigmatic antihero, Michael Morbius. Dangerously ill with a rare blood disorder, and determined to save others suffering his same fate, Dr. Morbius attempts a desperate gamble. What at first appears to be a radical success, a darkness inside him is unleashed and transforms this healer into a hunter.
While speaking with Collider, Marvel’s Kevin Feige has reaffirmed previous details about Deadpool 3 that the film is rated R and will be indeed be set within the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the latter seemed to be slightly up-in-the-air given the maturity of the franchise.
FEIGE: “It will be rated R and we are working on a script right now, and Ryan’s overseeing a script right now… It will not be [filming] this year. Ryan is a very busy, very successful actor. We’ve got a number of things we’ve already announced that we now have to make, but it’s exciting for it to have begun. Again, a very different type of character in the MCU, and Ryan is a force of nature, which is just awesome to see him bring that character to life.”
We officially know that The Molyneux Sisters from Bob’s Burgers are currently writing the film alongside Reynolds overseeing that work. Oddly enough, previous screenwriters and producers Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese were absent from trade articles concerning the new script suggesting they might not be involved creatively.
Deadpool 3 would likely mark the first mutant film for the studio and be released before the main X-Men reboot. What I think fans are still curious about is if the previous two films will be treated as canon moving forward and if they’ll bring back folks like Josh Brolin as Cable.
It’s still slightly unclear when they plan on shooting it, who will direct it, and what branch of Disney will ultimately end up distributing.
You might remember an unreliable YouTuber was pushing a rumor that Marvel Studios was considering using a CGI Chadwick Boseman for Black Panther 2, something that was quickly debunked by Marvel Studios’ Victoria Alonso when speaking with Clarin last year.
ALONSO: “No. There’s only one Chadwick, and he’s not with us. Our king, unfortunately, has died in real life, not just in fiction, and we are taking a little time to see how we return to the story and what we do to honor this chapter of what has happened to us that was so unexpected, so painful, so terrible, really.”
“[We] have to think carefully about what we are going to do, and how, and think about how we are going to honor the franchise.”
During the Disney Investor Day back in December, Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige revealed they weren’t planning on recasting the T’Challa role. He’s now reaffirmed they have zero plan to use a CGI version of Chadwick in the sequel while speaking with Deadline to promote the upcoming release of WandaVision.
However, he is being vague how they’ll continue the franchise as referring back to writer/director Ryan Coogler working on hard on the project.
FEIGE: “So much of the comics and that first movie is the world of Wakanda. Wakanda is a place to further explore with characters and different subcultures. This was always and initially the primary focus of the next story. We’re not going to have a CG Chadwick and we’re not recasting T’Challa. Ryan Coogler is working very hard right now on the script with all the respect and love and genius that he has, which gives us great solace, so it was always about furthering the mythology and the inspiration of Wakanda. There’s also the task of honoring and respecting the ongoing learnings and teachings from Chad as well.”
Narcos: Mexico actor Tenoch Huerta is reportedly playing an unnamed villain in the new film and has a release date of July 8th, 2022 with production said to begin this summer in Atlanta, Georgia.
Ever since movies started going to streaming, Marvel fans have assumed that Black Widow would be thrown onto Disney+ like recent films such as Mulan (Premiere Access) and Soul (free with subscription), with Disney debunking that theory over and over. Most recently at the Disney Investor Day presentation, Marvel’s Kevin Feige reaffirmed that Black Widow would be released in theaters on May 7th as of mid-December.
Deadline has asked about the chance of Black Widow heading to Disney+ instead of hitting it’s May 7th theatrical release. His response seems to be both vague and politically neutral as it does appear to be that the distribution of the movie is truly out of his hands and really up to Disney at this point.
FEIGE: “If I had a crystal ball, I’d look into it and tell you. I don’t. All I can tell you is that for the past three years since Bob Iger brought me into his office and talked about a streaming platform that would become Disney+ and asked us to start working on programs for it. Our long lead plan was to have the MCU and the storytelling woven between weekly episodic big swings on Disney+ and into the feature big swings in theaters. It’s my great hope that that continues. Don’t ask me week by week what is going to happen in this world, I have no idea and don’t want to guess. Everything we’ve done at Marvel Studios has been based in ‘Ok, if everything goes perfectly, here’s what we’d like to do.’ And until this past year, things have gone remarkably well. And it’s my hope that the world gets back on track and we all get back into theaters, and that people will see and experience week by week for the low monthly fee of Disney+ of what we’re bringing there, and then be excited to get together with people again in real life and sit with strangers and share an experience on the big screen.”
We’ll have to see what Disney ultimately decides to do as they’d lose hundreds of millions of dollars if they simply put the film on the service for free such as Warner Bros. putting Wonder Woman 1984 on HBO Max and Mulan may have scared Disney to use Premiere Access again for such a costly film as it was restricted to Disney+ subscribers later revealed as not the success people had first thought.
The pandemic is getting increasingly worse in the United States and United Kingdom, despite the slow distribution of multiple COVID-19 vaccines. Theaters being a viable option in May or over the summer is increasingly looking less likely, but what Disney does with their massive Marvel movies remains to be seen.
BLACK WIDOW – In Marvel Studios’ action-packed spy thriller Black Widow, Natasha Romanoff aka Black Widow 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.
According to Feige while speaking with The New York Times, the pandemic may have delayed some of the release of the shows by a weeks. Their film lineup apparently hasn’t been affected in any significant way.
FEIGE: “If the run we had in 2018 and 2019 had gotten disrupted this way, in the buildup to Endgame, it would have been a bigger headache,” he said. “With these projects, it worked well,” he went on, adding that the debut dates for the TV shows were shifted only “by a matter of weeks.”
People after San Diego Comic-Con 2019 started making theories on when Phase 4 would end that led to plenty of assumptions what would end up becoming Phase 5 projects, however, a brief comment from Kevin Feige is suggesting he’s not ready to say when Phase 4 is ending and when Phase 5 begins. Because of the pandemic Phase 4 will kick-off with WandaVision instead of Black Widow, which was originally set to be released in May 2020.
Murphy’s Multiverse asked Kevin Feige during a WandaVision press conference for clarification if the Marvel Studios president would reveal when in the release schedule we’ll see the end of Phase 4 and got a straight-up “no” in response.
We’ll just have to wait and see when they want to reveal that information publicly.
It’s worth mentioning that Phase 3 included 11 feature films starting with Captain America:Civil War and ended with Spider-Man: Far From Home. There is a good chance that Marvel might extend Phase 4 further than where they originally wanted.
I think the delays in release could also make things a little more complicated.
Something like James Gunn’s Guardians of The Galaxy 3 might be something that could end Phase 4 if they want to push the slate into 2023-2024.
WandaVision begins airing on Disney+ starting January 15th.
Here’s a reminder of the current MCU movies that are set for release and is still subject to change.
Spider-Man 3 officially started shooting back in November under the working title of TheNovember Project with director Jon Watts behind the camera and there have been waves of rumors concerning the project. Those rumors include it essentially becoming a Spider-Verse story, The Sinister Six looking like big villains of the film, the return of former Peter Parker actors, She-Hulk potentially being Peter’s lawyer, and most recently the big rumbling was Daredevil actor Charlie Cox returning.
Most of these rumors have yet to be confirmed in official circles or even by Marvel. While speaking with Comic Book, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige stated that some of the Spider-Man 3 speculations aren’t very accurate, given the volume of them it shouldn’t be a surprise.
FEIGE: “The fun thing about online speculation when it comes to our stuff is how sometimes it couldn’t be more off the mark and sometimes it’s shockingly close, and that’s held true for the last few years. But saying which is which would take all the fun out of everything.”
“The biggest clue is the title of the second Doctor Strange movie. That’s the biggest clue of where the Multiverse of Madness is taking us and how we’re exploring that.”
We can only further speculate which rumors Feige is talking about here.
Some things are officially known about the upcoming sequel as Kevin confirming that Sam Raimi’s Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness is connected to it and this was signaled when Benedict Cumberbatch reportedly joined the character lineup. Both films shooting at the same time likely isn’t a coincidence.
We’re also going to see Jamie Foxx as Electro and Alfred Molina as Doctor Octopus stoking those Sinister Six expectations.
Spider-Man 3 will eventually get an official title and has been set for release on December 17th, 2021.
A new report from The Hollywood Reporter suggests that WarnerMedia and Warner Bros. Pictures may avoid an incoming lawsuit from production partner Legendary Entertainment as they’re nearing a new distribution deal for Godzilla vs Kong and possibly Dune as well.
Last year, it was announced by WarnerMedia they would be throwing the 17 feature films from their 2021 slate on HBO Max with a day-and-deal model, allowing HBO Max subscribers to view new releases exclusively on the streaming service for a month. This led to backlash as none of the filmmakers, talent or production partners like Legendary were informed about the decision in a timely manner ahead of the public announcement.
Godzilla vs Kong will keep it’s theatrical release on May 21 with Legendary handling the distribution in China, the company has Chinese ownership and makes sense they’d want to tackle the local roll-out. It also seems to be heading to HBO Max.
Legendary is still negotiating with talent on Godzilla but that is not expected to derail a deal. The movie will keep its May 21 release date in theaters, including IMAX, as well as HBO Max. Legendary will release the film in China.
Legendary along with Dune director Denis Villeneuve had voiced their opposition as the studio has reportedly sided with Denis as they rallied against WarnerMedia’s announcement. It’s pointed out the film could end up landing a theatrical window and another hiccup has been revealed as WarnerMedia may have used Dune “images” to promote HBO Max without permission from Legendary.
According to a source, conversations regarding various theatrical windowing approaches are ongoing and it remains unclear which option will be acceptable to Villeneuve. Another potential issue: It appears Warners may have been using Dune images to promote its streaming service without approval.
They also hypothesize that other filmmakers like Matrix 4 director Lana Wachowski could also demand theatrical window, like Villeneuve, that could help dissolve the day-and-date model for bigger films.
If Warners gives Dune an exclusive release, that could set a precedent allowing others, such as Matrix 4 filmmaker Lana Wachowski, to demand similar treatment. As talks continue, it is unclear whether Warner Media will be able to hold the line on its day-and-date strategy to bolster its streaming service. Wachowski is said to be adamant about an exclusive theatrical run.
Deadline has revealed that Paramount Pictures is bumping the release date of DamienChazelle‘s latest movie titled Babylon an entire year to December 25, 2022 . The film will be a period drama set in Hollywood’s transition to talkies in the 1920s with Brad Pitt attached to star and Margot Robbie reportedly in talks for a role after Emma Stone exited.
The film is a period, R-rated drama, set in the shifting moment in Hollywood when the industry turned from silent film to talkies.
This new release date would place Babylon in direct competition with upcoming blockbusters Avatar 2 and Aquaman 2 as both will drop earlier in the month.
The pair of actors starred in Quentin Tarantino‘s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood leading to Pitt’s Oscar win for Best Supporting Actor, however, they never shared the screen together. It’ll also be interesting to see if the project will skew more in the realm of something similar to David Fincher‘s latest project Mank, a dramatic biopic about the Citizen Kane screenwriter that takes place well after that talkies have dominated the film industry.
Brad Pitt is currently shooting the Sony Pictures assassin action flick Bullet Train in Los Angeles for director David Leitch (Deadpool 2, John Wick, Atomic Blonde).
Margot Robbie‘s next theatrical release will be The Suicide Squad on August 6th and is said to have a role in David O. Russell‘s next project.
It’s certainly notable that movies focused on Hollywood and the film industry tend to do extremely well during awards season nominations suggesting that Babylon could be gearing-up to become a contender even before cameras roll.
THE RONIN 