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Quentin Tarantino Might Finish A ‘Reservoir Dogs’ Novel After Writing Two Chapters

Quentin Tarantino is doing a bunch of interviews to help promote the publishing of a novelization of his Oscar-winning film Once Upon A Time Hollywood, expanding upon those characters and events from the film. However, Tarantino might not stop there as he revealed to The Big Picture podcast (via Slash Film) that he started out writing two chapters of a Reservoir Dogs novel before pivoting to Once Upon A Time In Hollywood instead.

“I thought to myself, ‘Well shit, I ought to do one of these for one of my movies. So my first thought was Reservoir Dogs, because there’s a mystery/crime section in the bookstore…I mean, it’s right there. And I even wrote, like, two chapters of a Reservoir Dogs novelization. But then I thought, ‘Wait a minute. What the fuck am I doing? The last movie I did was Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I have tons of material that never saw the light of day – material that I never even typed up because it’s not going to be in the movie, it was just edification for me. And people seem to like it.’ So it just seemed like this could do really well,” Tarantino said about the creative process of how he wrote his novelization of Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.

The filmmaker mused about doing more writing and even finishing his Reservoir Dogs novel, “Hopefully, I’ll do this quite a bit. I can see myself – I don’t know if I’m going to do every movie I’ve ever done, but I can definitely see the idea of a Reservoir Dogs novel. That could be really cool. And then [I’m working on] an original. It’s kinda pulpy. I’ve got a western idea, and I’ve written about two chapters of an original western novel.”

Maybe, we’ll find out what happened to Steve Buscemi’s Mr. Pink, as he believes the character became the Buddy Holly waiter in Pulp Fiction.

RESERVOIR DOGS – Six criminals with pseudonyms, and each strangers to one another, are hired to carry out a robbery. The heist is ambushed by police and the gang are forced to shoot their way out. At their warehouse rendezvous, the survivors, realizing that they were set up, try to find the traitor in their midst.

SOURCE: THE BIG PICTURE PODCAST

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EXCLUSIVE: ‘Luther’ Creator Neil Cross Developing A Project Based On William Gibson’s Sci-Fi Novel ‘Pattern Recognition’

The Ronin has learned that British writer Neil Cross is developing a project based on the William Gibson science fiction novel Pattern Recognition, the first in Gibson’s Blue Ant books. The sci-fi author, alongside folks like Philip K. Dick, is famously part of a small group of writers credited for the formation of the cyberpunk sub-genre.

PATTERN RECOGNITION – Published in 2003, the novel focuses on Cayce Pollard, an expensive, spookily intuitive market-research consultant. In London on a job, she is offered a secret assignment: to investigate some intriguing snippets of video that have been appearing on the Internet. An entire subculture of people is obsessed with these bits of footage, and anybody who can create that kind of brand loyalty would be a gold mine for Cayce’s client. But when her borrowed apartment is burgled and her computer hacked, she realizes there’s more to this project than she had expected.

Still, Cayce is her father’s daughter, and the danger makes her stubborn. Win Pollard, ex-security expert, probably ex-CIA, took a taxi in the direction of the World Trade Center on September 11 one year ago, and is presumed dead. Win taught Cayce a bit about the way agents work. She is still numb at his loss, and, as much for him as for any other reason, she refuses to give up this newly weird job, which will take her to Tokyo and on to Russia. With help and betrayal from equally unlikely quarters, Cayce will follow the trail of the mysterious film to its source, and in the process will learn something about her father’s life and death.

It’s unclear if the project is active or if Neil has since moved on to other things.

Gibson’s Blue Ant trilogy includes novels such as Spook Country and Zero History.

Cross worked on Spooks, created both Idris Elba’s Luther and Hard Sun, currently is the showrunner on The Mosquito Coast at Apple TV+. The former show recently got picked up for a second season earlier this month. The screenwriter is also behind the Guillermo del Toro-produced horror flick Mama, briefly worked on Pacific Rim, and was hired by 20th Century Fox to rewrite the script for their remake of the John Carpenter cult film Escape From New York.

This isn’t the only William Gibson adaptation in the works as Amazon Prime Video has a series based on the cyberpunk novel The Peripheral from Westworld co-creators Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan. It stars Chloe Grace Moretz (Shadow In The Clouds), Jack Reynor (Midsommar), Charlotte Riley (Edge of Tomorrow), and JJ Field (Captain America: The First Avenger).

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Sony CEO Yoshida Kenichiro Says Sony Pictures Isn’t For Sale

Every couple of months film and business trades run speculative interviews with analysts or “activist investors” claiming that Sony Pictures is poised for a big sale to places like Apple, Amazon, or Netflix. None of this is anything but opinion dressed-up as an editorial/interview, instead of based on concrete information or reporting. It usually comes after a shift in the industry like the Walt Disney Company acquiring 21st Century Fox or when telecoms company AT&T got their hands on a media giant like Time-Warner.

After the WarnerMedia-Discovery and Amazon-MGM deals being announced this month, it seems like we should prepare for another run of wild claims and speculation that Sony Pictures is next to be sold-off.

However, that doesn’t seem to be case, according to the person that actually runs the company. There is now a real statement coming from Sony CEO Yoshida Kenichiro while speaking with the Financial Times (via The Hollywood Reporter), Kenichiro says that while they’re open to partner with streaming services they’re not going to sell the film division.

KENICHIRO: “There is drastic realignment in the media industry, but I think our strategy of creating content as an independent studio while working with various partners will work.” 

It’s worth mentioning that Sony did strike deals with Netflix and Disney recently, but that has to do with post-theatrical window streaming rights of feature films and they’ve been working towards a television deal with Amazon that includes the Spider-Man spinoff series Silk. These deals will expand their presence in the streaming space, far from an actual acquisition. One of the big reasons for moves like this is that Sony doesn’t have their own streaming service, so, licensing their content to multiple suitors isn’t that surprising as the media landscape changes.

The Hollywood Reporter also added a comment from Sony Pictures Entertainment chief Tony Vinciquerra from the investor day presentation, where he sounded confident that the shows and films in development based on the PlayStation IP will continue the momentum as they have at least ten projects in the pipeline. Those PlayStation projects include Tom Holland’s Uncharted film, an HBO series based on The Last of Us, and a Ghost of Tsushima movie from John Wick franchise director Chad Stahelski.

VINCIQUERRA: “The PlayStation project has tremendous momentum with the establishment of PlayStation productions and ten projects already in development.”

They also have a string of their own Marvel films such as J.C. Chandor’s Kraven The Hunter, Olivia Wilde’s Spider-Woman, Spider-Man: No Way Home, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, and Jared Leto’s vampire flick Morbius. Sony Japan was behind the pressure on the film division to make a deal with Marvel Studios/Disney that led to Tom Holland appearing as Spider-Man in solo films made by Marvel and appearing in their other films as well.

Having a corner of the Marvel Comics rights and developing multiple projects based on their popular PlayStation video game franchises could keep them competitive for the foreseeable future. Franchises like Bad Boys and Jumanji seem to be audience draws the studio can rely on beyond Spider-Man projects.

SOURCE: THE FINANCIAL TIMES

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WarnerMedia Admits They Only Added 11 Million HBO/HBO Max Subscribers In The First Year

HBO Max is starting to look like a big albatross for WarnerMedia after reports that the hybrid release model (Warner Bros. films dropping on the same day in theaters and HBO Max) meant to boost subscriptions to the service has lost the company over a billion dollars (and counting) and the sluggish growth of HBO Max has been dismissed multiple times by both company representatives and defensive subscribers that have championed the platform’s library/original content.

Well, it looks like the subscriber count is indeed as bad we thought.

WarnerMedia (via The Playlist) has released official subscriber information from the last year, as their new streaming service, HBO Max, was launched one year ago today. Revealing in the official chart is that they only added 11.1 million subscribers since they launched the app (See info-graph image below) and are still mixing together HBO numbers with HBO Max numbers, despite lumping the two services together it’s not great growth and could explain the WarnerMedia-Discovery merger that was announced earlier in the month.

The total subscriber count is listed as being 44.2 million subscribers but as we imagined the bulk of these people have HBO subscriptions (around 3/4 of the total 44.2 million) prior to the launch. Making the growth look even worse.

Now, this doesn’t mean HBO Max can’t improve upon these numbers but it stands to reason that WarnerMedia/AT&T’s belief that the hybrid model would bring in a huge amount of subscribers has been nothing short of a disaster. It’s possible piracy played a big role here as HD copies of their shows and high-budgeted films are posted online almost as soon as they’re available on the service, one of the many risk factors to the hybrid release model for their feature films was removing the theatrical window that acts as a buffer to combat piracy.

There is some hope that the WarnerMedia-Discovery merger could place HBO Max in the hands of better management, but there are already industry rumblings the move was meant to make a sale of WarnerMedia easier in the future. Opening up the service to international markets should also help it’s growth.

SOURCE: WARNERMEDIA

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Amazon Officially Announces Agreement To Purchase MGM For $8.45 Billion – Will “Reimagine” Their Deep Catalog

It’s been reported for days that Amazon was looking to spend almost $9 billion to acquire MGM, a major Hollywood studio that has a heap of IP titles and legacy films. The studio also has a partnership with EON Productions for the James Bond franchise.

Well, the streaming giant made the merger official this morning and dropped a press release confirm it’s going ahead, paying an impressive $8.45 billion for MGM. The press release also mentioned Amazon’s intention to “reimagine” the deep catalog, which likely means turning properties into films and television shows.

“The real financial value behind this deal is the treasure trove of IP in the deep catalog that we plan to reimagine and develop together with MGM’s talented team. It’s very exciting and provides so many opportunities for high-quality storytelling,” said Mike Hopkins, Senior Vice President of Prime Video and Amazon Studios. 

Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) and MGM today announced that they have entered into a definitive merger agreement under which Amazon will acquire MGM for a purchase price of $8.45 billion. MGM has nearly a century of filmmaking history and complements the work of Amazon Studios, which has primarily focused on producing TV show programming. Amazon will help preserve MGM’s heritage and catalog of films, and provide customers with greater access to these existing works. Through this acquisition, Amazon would empower MGM to continue to do what they do best: great storytelling.

The studio’s film catalog includes 12 Angry Men, Basic Instinct, Creed, James Bond, Legally Blonde, Moonstruck, Poltergeist, Raging Bull, RoboCop, Rocky, Silence of the Lambs, Stargate, Thelma & Louise, Tomb Raider, The Magnificent Seven, The Pink Panther, The Thomas Crown Affair, and many films, over 4,000 of them. Not to mention 17,000 television shows as well.

MGM is already looking to soft-reboot RoboCop with RoboCop Returns from Aussie director Abe Forsythe (Little Monsters). The Russo Brothers are producing a new incarnation of the romantic crime flick Thomas Crown Affair led by Michael B. Jordan (Creed, Black Panther, Without Remorse) as the charming thief. Jordan is about to direct and star in Creed III, making his directorial debt on the boxing drama. A new James Bond is expected to be hired for Bond 26, once No Time To Die ends the Daniel Craig era. Alicia Vikander’s Tomb Raider reboot movie is set to get a sequel from director Misha Green (Lovecraft Country). Something like Stargate would be prime for a franchise reboot as it was a feature film that spawned multiple television shows. Those are just some examples that are just the tip of the iceberg and we should expect more projects announced in the coming weeks/months given the deep pockets of Amazon Studios/Prime Video.

Amazon getting their hands on a legacy Hollywood studio should help boost their film/television library but also allowing them to create new original IP content, allowing them to become more competitive against the Netflix originals and could see Amazon attempt theatrical distribution on a larger scale as they could add global box office to their revenue stream.

Some of the high-profile Prime Video shows on the horizon are the expensive Lord of The Rings that is expected to land at least five seasons and at least two seasons of Wheel of Time series led by Rosamund Pike that is based on the Robert Jordan fantasy novels.

SOURCE: AMAZON

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Robert Pattinson Signs Overall First-Look Deal With Warner Bros. – Will Include Future Film & Television Projects

British actor Robert Pattinson has been having a huge career resurgence lately with a large role in Christopher Nolan’s time-bending action film Tenet that was released last summer and landed the titular role in Matt Reeves new Batman movie, The Batman.

It sounds like Warner Bros. wants to continue to work with Robert Pattinson for the foreseeable future as The Hollywood Reporter reveals that the actor has singed a first-look deal that will allow him to be considered for projects at Warner Bros. Pictures, New Line Cinema, Warner Bros. Television/HBO, and the streaming service HBO Max.

The deal could allow Pattinson to appear on the HBO Max spinoff series Gotham PD, a prequel that will take place during the first year of Bruce Wayne acting as the vigilante known as The Batman. However, they might be more interested in having the British actor leading other original projects other than things connected to the DC Comics franchise because his Batman contract likely has him attached to sequels and Matt Reeves has talked-up his plans to make a trilogy.

Most people first noticed Pattinson when he appeared as Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter & The Goblet of Fire back in 2005 and led the popular Twilight films. Since then, he’s developed as an actor working with filmmakers such as David Cronenberg, The Safie Brothers, Robert Eggers, Christopher Nolan, James Gray, Claire Denis, and David Michod.

Having Robert Pattinson has the face of WarnerMedia could help them after heavy-weights such as Christopher Nolan and Denis Villeneuve signaled their frustration after the day-and-date announcement, Nolan has been signaling that he won’t work with the studio again and might already be looking for a new home.

The WarnerMedia-Discovery merger has led to rumblings within the business news community that this could be the beginning of a sale, although, this is unconfirmed as potential buyers haven’t been mentioned.

SOURCE: THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

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WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar Reportedly Exiting After Being Kept In The Dark About Merger

A little over a year after being hired by AT&T CEO John Stankey to run WarnerMedia, Jason Kilar is looking for the exit, according to a report from The New York Times. Stankey announced that Discovery and WarnerMedia would be merging in a shocking media announcement today while avoiding multiple questions about Kilar’s future role at the company.

Jason Kilar has hired a legal team to negotiate his departure as chief executive of WarnerMedia, according to two people briefed on the matter. AT&T, which owns WarnerMedia, said on Monday that it had agreed to spin off the division and merge it with a rival media company, Discovery Inc. Mr. Kilar was kept in the dark about the deal until recent days, the people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.

This comes after subscribers for their HBO Max service seemingly wasn’t doing as great as other competitors and WarnerMedia sacrificed hefty budgeted blockbusters to hand-out a free month of access to new releases on HBO Max as part of their controversial day-and-date release model. There were also reports like the one at Bloomberg that Kilar was earning more than his boss at AT&T, another controversy as most studios were hemorrhaging money last year making the pay-bump a bit ridiculous.

While speaking on CNBC, business journalist Kara Swisher had more dire perspective on the news saying that John Stankey is simply wasting shareholder money trying to catch-up with mega-streamers like Netflix, Amazon, and Disney. It should be noted this is simply an opinion but this is also coming from someone with years of experience covering these kinds of stories.

SOURCE: THE NEW YORK TIMES

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Marvel Studios Producer Nate Moore Says Disney+ Is The First Time Their Film & Television Universes Have Been Interwoven

While fans are patiently waiting for some official confirmation that their favorite Marvel Television actors might be making their way to the hard-canon Marvel Cinematic Universe by reprising their roles, it’s starting to sound like Marvel is indeed moving on from all that and might see the Disney+ shows as the true cohesive connection between film and television.

The Playlist’s Rodrigo Perez caught this statement from longtime Marvel Studios producer Nate Moore from the Marvel Studios: ASSEMBLED special covering the filming of The Falcon & The Winter Soldier, where he essentially states that the Disney+ shows is the first time that their cinematic and television universes have been combined, seemingly ignoring the Jeph Loeb era of Marvel Television on ABC and Netflix.

MOORE: “When Disney+ was announced we realized that there was an opportunity to interweave a cinematic universe with a television universe which has never been done before.”

While the audio is a little fuzzy you can watch that clip below.

WandaVision seemingly helped to tease things like Captain Marvel 2, Secret Invasion (Skrull cameo) and the motivations of Wanda in Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness. Falcon & Winter Soldier obviously could be directly connected to Captain America 4 and could also link to things like Armor Wars and whatever project that will use John Walker’s U.S. Agent. Unlike things like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Netflix shows, there isn’t a grey area, all these projects take place directly in the hard-canon Marvel Cinematic Universe and sort of impact each other.

The only real time that the films acknowledged the show was with Avengers: Endgame’s Jarvis cameo using Agent Carter actor James D’Arcy briefly in the role. It’s worth mentioning that Carter was a Captain America: The First Avenger spinoff show executive produced by Kevin Feige that had been co-created by Avengers: Endgame screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely. Agent Carter was originally spawned from a short directed by Marvel Studios’ Louis D’Esposito. Louis and Avengers: Endgame’s Joe Russo directing an episode a piece in Season 1.

This isn’t terribly surprising as when Kevin Feige was becoming Marvel’s chief creative officer and re-branding Marvel Television as Marvel TV Studios, a bulk of the television projects had been given the axe including the Netflix shows starting the path for Marvel Studios to have complete oversight on the television side with the exit of Jeph Loeb. While there has been a huge focus on those character rights reverting back to Marvel, the studio has yet to announce any plans to use them in the near future outside of Kevin Feige’s comments about being simply open to the idea.

SOURCE: MARVEL STUDIOS

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Erin Kellyman Keen To Reprise Her ‘Star Wars’ Character Enfys Nest – “I Would 100% Do It”

Erin Kellyman is having quite the career thanks to Disney as the British actress has appeared in Solo: A Star Wars Story as Enfys Nest, is currently seen playing Karli Morgenthau on Marvel’s The Falcon & The Winter Soldier, and has a lead role in the Willow sequel series at Disney+ that is filming in Wales.

The young actress is doing some press for The Falcon & The Winter Soldier when she was asked by Screen Rant about the possibility of reprising the role of Enfys Nest in a future Star Wars project. In her response, admitting she hasn’t spoken to the studio about it but would be willing to play her again.

KELLYMAN: “I would love if that was the case. I haven’t heard anything, but I would love to play Enfys Nest again. If Disney came to me and said, ‘Will you play her again?’ I would 100% do it. She was such a fun character to play.”

While the Obi-Wan Kenobi limited series takes place around the events of Solo: A Star Wars Story (follows Han Solo over multiple years), her other commitments to Willow would likely prevent her from appearing even if that was an option. However, depending when the upcoming Lando series is set within the Star Wars timeline, it could allow Kellyman to at least cameo as Nest down the road.

A much older version of the character could appear in The Mandalorian era shows on Disney+, but would likely mean they’d have to hire an older actress or keep Nest in the helmet.

We’ll have to wait and see if Lucasfilm ultimately has her return to the Star Wars universe.

SOURCE: SCREEN RANT

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Zack Snyder Says He’s Developing Arthurian Project – “Faithful Retelling of That Arthurian Mythological Concept”

While Zack Snyder has been suggesting he’ll be moving on from DC Comics projects in the future, that doesn’t seem to have stopped his fans from demanding he return to the franchise after the release of his version of Justice League heading to HBO Max on March 18th. However, a new non-DC project was apparently revealed by Snyder during a chat with Minutemen (spotted by CBR). As the director, who is a big fan of John Boorman’s 1981 film Excalibur, has teased early development on his own project covering the iconic Arthurian mythology.

SNYDER: “I’m working on something but we’ll see. I’ve been thinking about some kind of retelling, like, real sort of faithful retelling of that Arthurian mythological concept. We’ll see. Maybe that will come at some point.”

It will be interesting to see if the project lands at Netflix, where Zack Snyder was able to sell Army of The Dead after he couldn’t secure a proper budget for the horror-action flick elsewhere. Netflix is keen on the fantasy genre with two projects taking place within the world of The Witcher and they recently landed the film/television rights to Robert E. Howard’s Conan The Barbarian.

Given that the Arthurian stuff is in the public domain it could allow Snyder to find a comfortable home for the project and getting the budget he needs to make it properly without having to worry about it being a studio IP.

John Boorman made his R-rated Excalibur after he couldn’t get his mature Lord of The Rings film together and was instead turned into an animated feature by Ralph Bakshi. Another mature feature set within the Arthurian mythology is eventually going to be released by A24 with David Lowery’s The Green Knight.

Warner Bros. attempted to launch a King Arthur/Knights of The Round Table franchise starting with the Guy Ritchie film but it failed to connect with audiences killing development of the multiple films they had been planning for each of the Knights.

I’ll be curious to see if Snyder actually wants to attempt a real fantasy project or some sort of genre hybrid. 300 has been the closest thing to a fantasy project from Zack but also happened to be a comic book adaptation.

SOURCE: MINUTEMEN