HBO is developing multiple series set within the world of George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones, one of the projects, House of The Dragon, has already started production and the network announced it will begin airing next year.
Based on George R.R. Martin’s book Fire & Blood, the series will tell the story of House Targaryen (a.k.a. the House that gave us the Mother of Dragons herself, Daenerys Targaryen) and take place 300 years before the events of Game of Thrones.
It’s been officially announced today that Emily Carey and Milly Alcock have landed parts in the mature fantasy series.
Below are the official character descriptions.
Milly Alcock as Young Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen. She’s the king’s first-born child, of pure Valyrian blood, and she is a dragonrider. Many would say that Rhaenyra was born with everything…but she was not born a man.
Emily Carey will play Young Alicent Hightower, the daughter of Otto Hightower, the Hand of the King, and the most comely woman in the Seven Kingdoms. Alicent was raised in the Red Keep, close to the king and his innermost circle; she possesses both a courtly grace and a keen political acumen.
George R.R. Martin and Ryan Condal will serve as co-creators on the series with Condal and .Miguel Sapochnik set as showrunners.
The rest of the cast consists of Paddy Considine as King Viserys Targaryen, Olivia Cooke as Alicent Hightower, Emma D’Arcy as Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen, Matt Smith as Prince Daemon Targaryen, Steve Toussaint as Lord Corlys Velaryon (The Sea Snake), Eve Best as Princess Rhaenys Velaryon, Rhys Ifans as Otto Hightower (The Hand of the King), and Sonoya Mizuno as Mysaria.
Martin recently signed a five-year deal with HBO and could see even more Game of Thrones projects being developed. There have been previous reports that Martin’s Knight of The Seven Kingdoms will be turned a series, titled Tales of Dunk & Egg, along with three other projects in development such as Sea Snake aka The 9 Voyages, Flea Bottom (slum in King’s Landing), and 10,000 Ships.
Netflix is moving forward with a second series set within the fantasy world of The Witcher, as they’re assembling a cast for their prequel The Witcher: Blood Origin. Their flagship series starring Henry Cavill (Man of Steel, Mission: Impossible – Fallout) has wrapped on Season 2 in the United Kingdom.
Set 1,200 years before the world of The Witcher, Blood Origin will tell the story of the creation of the first prototype Witcher, and the events that lead to the pivotal ‘conjunction of the spheres’, when the worlds of monsters, men, and elves merged to become one.
The streaming giant has officially announced today that action star Michelle Yeoh has nabbed a role in Blood Origin, revealing she’ll play an elf. Yeoh’s recent credits include Star Trek Discovery, Marco Polo, Last Christmas, Crazy Rich Asians, Dr. Karina Mogue in James Cameron’s Avatar sequels, Karen Gillan’s action flick Gunpodwer Milkshake, and Marvel’s upcoming Asian-led superhero blockbuster Shang-Chi & The Legend of The Ten Rings (will be released on September 3).
The Witcher: Blood Origin has cast Michelle Yeoh as Scían. The very last of her nomadic tribe of sword-elves, she is an artist with the blade, on a deadly quest that will change the fate of the Continent.
Irish actor Laurence O’Fuarain (Game of Thrones, Vikings) had recently joined the series in the role of Fjall. Jodie Turner-Smith (Without Remorse) was going to star as well before her reported exit.
The original series is based on the novels by Polish fantasy author Andrzej Sapkowski that was eventually turned into the internationally popular video game franchise from CD Projekt Red. Netflix is also developing an 10-episode anime series based on their new game release Cyberpunk 2077 that will be titled Cyberpunk: Edgerunners and seems like only a matter of a time before a live-action project is announced.
The Ronin can confirm and exclusively reveal a brand new Marvel Studios LLC company as they’ve set the name as Maglev Train Productions. It’s been announced a while back that Ryan Coogler would be behind a Wakanda series for Disney+ from Marvel Studios’ team. Maglev Train Productions, is likely a direct nod to the train system in Wakanda and was the location of the big third act fight between Killmonger and T’Challa.
Just so people don’t get confused thinking this would be for Black Panther 3, the first two movies used the LLCs Kimoyo Productions (Black Panther) and Kimoyo Productions II (Black Panther: Wakanda Forever). A reference to the tech-based bracelet multiple characters from Wakanda wear.
This means the untitled Wakanda project is officially a go at Marvel Studios.
However, we’re still waiting on some concrete details about the project and how they’ll move forward with the Black Panther franchise without recasting the T’Challa role. It’s been expected that we could see a series focus on the female warriors of Wakanda, the Dora Milaje.
Earlier in the year, Marvel Studios’ producer/executive Nate Moore revealed that the Disney+ shows were the first time that films universe, the MCU, connects directly with Marvel shows. This comes after Marvel Television head Jeph Loeb exited the company and Kevin Feige took over the television division (killing multiple shows including a Ghost Rider series) after becoming Marvel’s chief creative officer, re-branding as Marvel TV Studios.
“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,” Nate Moore said in a Disney+ special Marvel Studios: ASSEMBLED focusing on The Falcon & The Winter Soldier.
You can see that clip below spotted by The Playlist.
This would confirm that Marvel Studios only sees the series that they make are the shows that are canon in the MCU because Moore’s statements were cleared by both Disney and Marvel, since this was their own segment and not a random interview. Even if it was an interview, Moore is so high-up at Marvel Studios that what he says is gospel, just like when Kevin, Victoria or Louis speak upon what the studio is doing.
Now, Guardians of The Galaxy franchise writer and director James Gunn (who speaks with Marvel Studios brass on a regular basis) is under this impression too while interacting with fans on Twitter and dismissing that Agents of SHIELD/Agent Carter are MCU Canon, despite what fans think or desperately want to believe is true.
James Gunn has completed work on The Suicide Squad (releases August 6), will wrap on his HBO Max series Peacemaker this month (releasing January 2022), and Chris Pratt says Guardians of The Galaxy Vol.3 (will hit theaters on May 5, 2023) begins shooting this November.
In December, FX confirmed they were indeed moving forward with an original series set within the Alien universe with Noah Hawley (Fargo, Legion) and producer Ridley Scott. However, the project wasn’t going to be a continuation of the David or Ripley stories, as it would be taking place on Earth.
During a new interview with Vanity Fair, Noah Hawley is giving tiny tidbits about the project and reaffirming his plans to take more of human angle with the show. Something that sort has got lost with Scott’s wishy-washy prequels and the horrible cash-grab Alien vs. Predator films.
“Those are great monster movies, but they’re not just monster movies. They’re about humanity trapped between our primordial, parasitic past and our artificial intelligence future—and they’re both trying to kill us. Here you have human beings and they can’t go forward and they can’t go back. So I find that really interesting…It’s a story that’s set on Earth also. The alien stories are always trapped… Trapped in a prison, trapped in a space ship. I thought it would be interesting to open it up a little bit so that the stakes of ‘What happens if you can’t contain it?’ are more immediate,” Hawley told Vanity Fair.
He also brought-up returning to the franchise’s main dynamic between the greedy corporation (Weyland-Yutani) exploiting it’s workforce, something that was a key element of the first three Alien movies.
Hawley states the show will focus on the human dynamics, “On some level it’s also a story about inequality. You know, one of the things that I love about the first movie is how ’70s a movie it is, and how it’s really this blue collar space-trucker world in which Yaphet Kotto and Harry Dean Stanton are basically Waiting for Godot. They’re like Samuel Beckett characters, ordered to go to a place by a faceless nameless corporation. The second movie is such an ’80s movie, but it’s still about grunts. Paul Reiser is middle management at best. So, it is the story of the people you send to do the dirty work…In mine, you’re also going to see the people who are sending them. So you will see what happens when the inequality we’re struggling with now isn’t resolved. If we as a society can’t figure out how to prop each other up and spread the wealth, then what’s going to happen to us? There’s that great Sigourney Weaver line to Paul Reiser where she says, ‘I don’t know which species is worse. At least they don’t fuck each other over for a percentage.'”
Folks seem to be losing their minds about these comments, however, I have to question if they have actually watched the Ellen Ripley movies that mainly focused on the rich exploiting the poor workforce to get their hands on the xenomorph to make billions off it by turning it into a bio-weapon.
The original film saw the company secretly install a robot (Ash) and direct the Nostromo crew to the derelict ship, Ripley discovers the company sees the crew is expendable (seen as glorified space truckers) and Ash tries to kill her when she discovers the company is willing to sacrifice them all to get their hands on the alien. Walter Hill and David Giler (did rewrites on Alien and co-wrote Aliens with James Cameron) seemingly took elements directly from the Joseph Conrad (his book Heart of Darkness inspired Vietnam War film Apocalypse Now) novel Nostromo, that was about human greed connected to a fictional silver operation in South America.
Parallels of greed from Nostromo was doubled-down in Aliens (Sulaco name came from the book too), as seen when Ellen Ripley tries to explain what happened to the ship and crew they simply dismiss her story. Carter Burke, a Weyland-Yutani suit, pretends to be concerned about Ripley as a manipulation tactic and it’s discovered that he personally got all the colonists on LV-426 killed (colonists and Newt’s parents shown in the director’s cut) without warning them about the alien. Not only that, he also was willing to kill the Marines (sabotaging their freezers on the trip home) alongside turning Ripley and Newt into hosts to bring back the xenomorph back to Earth for the company’s weapons program. Silver being replaced with the promise of a perfect bio-weapon. When he was caught by Ripley, he tries to rationalize his greed and when that doesn’t work he unleashes facehuggers upon her.
In David Fncher’s Alien 3, Ripley crash lands on a prison colony planet and the Warden blindly is following orders from the company only for her to warn them that they might kill everyone in the installation just for witnessing the xenomorph to keep it a secret as the previous two movies backed-up that conclusion.
Lastly, Alien Resurrection saw a black site military operating trying to clone an alien queen, then hiring space pirates to hijack a transport full of innocent workers kidnapping them to become hosts (essentially killing them) for soldier aliens before everything hits the fan. Yet, another attempt to get a bio-weapons program going.
To say the Alien franchise isn’t about politics is complete ignorance.
James Gunn is wrapping on his HBO Max series Peacemaker next month and is already gearing up to shoot both Guardians of The Galaxy Vol.3. and a Disney+ holiday special as well.
Production Weekly has listed the working title of Guardians of The Galaxy Holiday Special will be Buzzcut, the working title for the third film has been Hot Christmas (confirmed).
UPDATE: James Gunn has debunked Production Weekly’s new info via Twitter, which is another reason to be cautious about their information.
A reminder that working titles are mainly used during filming and then are discarded once the project is locked.
There is an assumption the projects will see the return of Chris Pratt as Peter Quill aka Star-Lord, Karen Gillan as Nebula, Dave Bautista as Drax The Destroyer, Pom Klementieff as Mantis, Sean Gunn as Kraglin, and Vin Diesel as the voice of Groot. It’s still questionable if we’ll see Zoe Saldana as Gamora in both.
Filming on Guardians of The Galaxy Vol.3 was revealed to be set for November to April, this news comes after Star-Lord actor Chris Pratt mentioned the production schedule during a visit to Jimmy Kimmel! after he was asked when they would be making the sequel. It will mainly be taking place in the United Kingdom, a location that is already being used for for Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania and The Marvels.
Other recent working titles for Marvel projects include the following.
LOKI – ARCHITECT
BLACK WIDOW = BLUE BAYOU
ETERNALS = SACK LUNCH
SHANG-CHI & THE LEGEND OF THE TEN RINGS = STEAMBOAT
DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS = STELLAR VORTEX
SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME = THE NOVEMBER PROJECT
THOR: LOVE & THUNDER = THE BIG SALAD
SHE-HULK = CLOVER
MOON KNIGHT = GOOD FAITH
THE MARVELS = GOAT RODEO
BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER = SUMMER BREAK
ANT-MAN & THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA = DUST BUNNY
SECRET INVASION = JAMBALAYA
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.
The Ronin can confirm that James Gunn’s HBO Max series Peacemaker has added British cinematographer Sam McCurdy, who is likely best known for shooting Neil Marshall’s Blackwater episode of Game of Thrones. Pacemaker is a direct spinoff of Gunn’s upcoming sequel The Suicide Squad focusing on the origins of John Cena’s character Christopher Smith.
Oh f*ck, it’s Peacemaker! HBO Max is set to explore the origins of the Peacemaker character, the master of weapons from the highly anticipated upcoming The Suicide Squad film, in the new Max Original action-adventure-comedy series Peacemaker. HBO Max has given a straight-to-series order of eight episodes for the first season of the show. John Cena will reprise his role from The Suicide Squad movie to star in the series, and the film’s acclaimed writer/director James Gunn will write all eight episodes of Peacemaker and will direct multiple episodes, including the first.
Sam McCurdy also worked with Neill Marshall on his feature films Dog Soldiers, The Descent, Doomsday, and Centurion. Other credits include Netflix’s Lost In Space (Neil Marshall again), The Hills Have Eyes 2, The Devil’s Double, Into The Badlands, Pennyworth, and Carnival Row.
He isn’t the only seasoned cinematographer on the DC Comics project as Michael Bonvillain (Westworld, Zombieland, Cloverfield, Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, Outside The Wire) was announced a while back.
The show’s directing team working alongside James Gunn consists of Jody Hill (Eastbound & Down), Rosemary Rodriguez (Jessica Jones), and Brad Anderson (Boardwalk Empire).
James Gunn previously announced that Peacemaker will debut on HBO Max sometime in January 2022 and you’ll get your first real taste of John Cena as the character on August 6 in The Suicide Squad.
THE SUICIDE SQUAD – Welcome to hell—a.k.a. Belle Reve, the prison with the highest mortality rate in the US of A. Where the worst Super-Villains are kept and where they will do anything to get out—even join the super-secret, super-shady Task Force X. Today’s do-or-die assignment? Assemble a collection of cons, including Bloodsport, Peacemaker, Captain Boomerang, Ratcatcher 2, Savant, King Shark, Blackguard, Javelin and everyone’s favorite psycho, Harley Quinn. Then arm them heavily and drop them (literally) on the remote, enemy-infused island of Corto Maltese. Trekking through a jungle teeming with militant adversaries and guerrilla forces at every turn, the Squad is on a search-and-destroy mission with only Colonel Rick Flag on the ground to make them behave…and Amanda Waller’s government techies in their ears, tracking their every movement. And as always, one wrong move and they’re dead (whether at the hands of their opponents, a teammate, or Waller herself). If anyone’s laying down bets, the smart money is against them—all of them.
Today, Apple has finally announced that it’s original series Foundation will debut on Apple TV+ on September 24, with three episodes out of the first season’s 10-episode run. The show is based on the epic and expansive world created by author Isaac Asimov and the adaptation was overseen by showunner by David S. Goyer (Blade, Batman Begins, Kryton).
When revolutionary Dr. Hari Seldon predicts the impending fall of the Empire, he and a band of loyal followers venture to the far reaches of the galaxy to establish The Foundation in an attempt to rebuild and preserve the future of civilization. Enraged by Hari’s claims, the ruling Cleons – a long line of emperor clones – fear their grasp on the galaxy may be weakening as they’re forced to reckon with the potential reality of losing their legacy forever.
Originally, filmmaker Destin Daniel Cretton was attached to direct a Japanese-set crime series based on the non-fiction novel Tokyo Vice by journalist Jake Adelstein, but had to exit due to scheduling conflicts with his Marvel Studios film Shang-Chi & The Legend of The Ten Rings, that was shooting in Australia. Instead, HBO Max ended up hiring the best replacement imaginable for a crime series, Michael Mann. Since he was the creative force behind the original Miami Vice series.
The Ronin has been able to confirm that one of the show’s cinematographers is Diego Garcia, who worked on the Nicolas Winding Refn thriller series Too Old To Die Young and the upcoming Jennifer Lawrence drama at A24 from director Lila Neugebauer.
One of the other names mentioned for the series has been Westworld cinematographer John Grillo.
Tokyo Vice is a firsthand account of a young American journalist (Elgort) working the Tokyo Metropolitan Police beat. Elgort stars as Adelstein as he embeds himself into the Tokyo Vice police squad to reveal corruption. The series chronicles Adelstein’s daily descent into the sordid underbelly of Tokyo, where nothing and no one is truly what or who they seem.
Ken Watanabe, Rinko Kikuchi, Rachel Keller, and Ella Rumpf also have key roles.
Tokyo Vice’s production resuming happened to take place around the same time Destin Daniel Cretton was finishing up principal photography on Shang-Chi and moving into post-production. Cretton remains as the show’s executive producer alongside Michael Mann and series leads Ken Watanabe and Ansel Elgort.
Director Michael Mann is best known for his impressive body of work that consists of Thief, Manhunter, Heat, The Insider, Collateral, Miami Vice, Public Enemies, and Blackhat. Oddly enough, he never directed an episode of the Miami Vice series but did helm a single episode of the Chicago-set show Crime Story starring the late Dennis Farina.
The impressive part of the series is that they’ve done a lot of filming in country in Japan, which is notoriously expensive for foreign/western productions because of the endless red tape and scheduling that is involved. I also can’t imagine the added costs with pandemic delays and protocols thrown into the mix.
The Ronin can confirm that director Danny Boyle has been working with Oscar-winning cinematographer of Slumdog Millionaire, Anthony Dod Mantle, on his biopic series at FX about the British punk bank The Sex Pistols. Mantle’s credits also include the gorgeous Alex Garland comic book film Dredd, T2 Trainspotting, 127 Hours, Antichrist, Trance, Rush, 28 Days Later, Millions, The Last King of Scotland, and the HBO series The Undoing.
Anthony has a stunning eye and at the very least Pistol is going to look spectacular as you can see with some select samples of his work below.
The six-episode series comes from the perspective of guitarist Steve Jones and is based on his book Lonely Boy. It was adapted by Craig Pearce and Frank Contrell Boyce.
Pistol’s extensive young cast consists of Thomas Brodie-Sangster (The Queen’s Gambit) as Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren, Talulah Riley (Westworld) set to play punk design icon Vivienne Westwood, Toby Wallace as Steve Jones, Anson Boon as Johnny Rotten, Louis Partridge as Sid Vicious, Jacob Slater as Paul Cook, Christian Lees as Glen Matlock, Iris Law as punk icon Soo Catwoman, Maisie Williams (Game of Thrones) as punk icon Jordan, Dylan Llewellyn as Wally Nightingale, Sydney Chandler as Chrissie Hynde, and Emma Appleton as Nancy Spungen.
That’s not the only reunion on the show’s crew as production designer Kave Quinn is also confirmed for the Apple series. Quinn previously working with Boyle on Trainspotting, Shallow Grave, and A Life Less Ordinary. Other credits are Matthew Vaughn’s Layer Cake starring Daniel Craig pre-James Bond, Harry Brown, The Woman In Black, and the FX series Black Narcissus starring British actress Gemma Arterton.
Danny Boyle famously was originally attached to No Time To Die (known back then as just Bond 25), but left over creative differences with the script and decided to make his Beatles-themed comedy Yesterday instead.
FX hasn’t announced an official air date for Pistol.
THE RONIN 