Category: Television News

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‘Halo’ Showrunner Steven Kane Exiting Paramount+ Series Once Season 1 Is Complete

One of the more interesting video game adaptations is a new live-action series based on Microsoft’s Halo franchise from Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Television, the project having multiple production shake-ups from losing director M.J. Bassett and even one of it’s showrunners Kyle Killen.

Well, even before it has aired on Paramount+ after switching from Showtime, the sci-fi series has lost a second showrunner. Variety reports that Steven Kane (The Last Ship) is exiting once Season 1 has been completed, star Pablo Schreiber (plays Master Chief) had teased on Instagram that filming in Budapest, Hungary, was wrapping-up and has since been travelling with family.

Halo’s cast also consists of Bookem Woodbine, Charlie Murphy, Olive Gray, Kate Kennedy, Yerin Ha, Jen Taylor, Shabana Azmi, Bentley Kalu, Natasha Culzac, and Danny Spani.

Otto Bathurst, Jonathan Liebesman, Roel Reine, and Jessica Lowery are directing various episodes.

Amblin could certainly find a new showrunner to handle Season 2, but there hasn’t even been a sign that Halo is even going to get a second season. The show I imagine is extremely pricey as it filmed in Budapest where other high-profile sci-fi projects have shot such as Blade Runner 2049, Terminator: Dark Fate, and Denis Villeneuve’s Dune remake. It’ll be interesting to see how audiences react to the series when it debuts on Paramount+ in 2022 and if it becomes their flagship series at Paramount+ or they simply finish with a single season.

In the meantime, it was announced that Amblin would partnering with Netflix on a wave of new feature films and The Ronin revealed that Halo director Otto Bathurst is attached to helm/produce an Aurthian show Warlord Chronicles for Epix based on the Bernard Cornwell novels. This development came after his period gangster series Peaky Blinders has ended it’s run. So, it might be difficult to coax Bathurst to return as well.

It’s been an abnormally long production for everyone involved with Halo due to the pandemic that started back in the fall of 2019 and only recently wrapped, which likely has exhausted a lot of people involved with Halo. It’s crew includes production designer Sophie Becher (Mars) alongside cinematographer Karl Walter Lindenlaub (Stargate, Independence Day, Black Book, Ninja Assassin) handling the bulk of the show’s episodes. There is also the expectation the action will be great after hiring stunt coordinator Tom Struthers, who has a laundry list of credits such as The Dark Knight, Dunkirk, Dune, Inception, and The Dark Knight Rises.

SOURCE: VARIETY

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‘Loki’ Director Kate Herron Confirms The God Of Mischief’s Bisexuality Is MCU Canon After The Big Reveal In Episode 3

While we won’t spoil anything else from the third episode of Loki, director Kate Herron took to Instagram yesterday to double-down on comments made by Tom Hiddleston’s character Loki about his sexual preference for both would-be princes and princesses.

A huge revelation that Loki is now canonically bisexual.

“From the moment I joined [the Loki series] it was very important to me, and my goal, to acknowledge Loki was bisexual. It is a part of who he is and who I am too. I know this is a small step but I’m happy, and heart is so full, to say that this is now canon in [the MCU],” the director said in a post on Instagram (See below).

Marvel has previously tipped-toed with same thing with Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie off-screen bisexuality by Thompson herself and endorsed by Kevin Feige, but this feels like the first time a major character has been established as part of the LGBTQ+ community.

Will this be the only time it will be referenced? We’ll have to wait and see, but given that the character hasn’t really been given love interests in the past, it’s possible we might not see Loki establish same-sex relationships. But I would love to be wrong here.

One of the big things announced about Chloe Zhao’s Eternals is that Brian Tyree Henry’s character Phastos will be part of a loving same-sex family, establishing the Marvel Comics character as openly gay. I think fans are going to be excited to see themselves on the big and small screen as Marvel continues to grow their tent of representation, I’m sure folks are going to be watching carefully about how Marvel hopes to continue these character’s stories within the MCU beyond these reveals.

Loki still has more episodes to air on Disney+ and we’ll be curious to see if that comment is all we end up getting concerning his bisexuality. It’s certainly an encouraging start.

SOURCE: KATE HERRON

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Brian Tyree Henry & Kate Mara Tapped To Lead FX On Hulu Limited Sci-Fi Crime Series ‘Class Of ’09’

FX On Hulu is moving forward with a brand new limited series titled Class of ’09 focusing on a group of FBI agents in a near future setting as artificial intelligence has transformed the U.S. criminal justice system. The news comes from Deadline, who also add that it will be led by Brian Tyree Henry (Widows) and Kate Mara (House of Cards).

The eight-part limited series is from Tom Rob Smith, Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson

Follows a class of FBI agents set in a near future where the U.S. criminal justice system has been transformed by artificial intelligence. A group of FBI agents who graduated from Quantico in 2009 are reunited following the death of a mutual friend. Spanning three decades and told across three interweaving timelines, the series examines the nature of justice, humanity and the choices we make that ultimately define our lives and our legacy.

There are also character breakdowns for the two main leads.

Henry will play Tayo Miller, one of the most brilliant and unorthodox Agents ever to join the Bureau, a man who seeks not merely to make his mark on the institution but to remake it entirely. Mara will play Amy Poet, a woman who never imagined joining the world of law enforcement and finds herself at the center of its most pivotal moment of transformation.

Brian Tyree Henry has been a busy bee with recently roles in Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse, Joker, Child’s Play, Hotel Artemis, White Boy Rick, Widows, Godzilla Vs. Kong, Brad Pitt’s Bullet Train, and plays an openly gay MCU character in Chloe Zhao’s Eternals.

SOURCE: DEADLINE

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‘The Acolyte’: Leslye Headland Talks Hiring Writers New To ‘Star Wars’ & Ignoring Online Feedback To Avoid Covering Politics

Lucasfilm is making a giant push with their live-action Star Wars shows and one of the more interesting projects is Leslye Headland’s (Russian Doll) The Acolyte, a series set directly at the tail-end of The High Republic that seemingly focuses on the presence of the Sith (I’ll keep my fingers crossed for Darth Talon).

The Acolyte is a mystery-thriller that will take the audience into a galaxy of shadowy secrets and emerging dark side powers in the final days of The High Republic era.

The showrunner recently spoke to the AV Club about the assembling the writers’ room and also staying true to George Lucas’ original vision by ignoring fan demands to stay away from covering politics. Something voiced heavily by the closed-minded corner of Star Wars fandom that have serious trouble understanding what the franchise was influenced by or is even about.

When it came time to hire writers for the show, Headland was looking for solid writers with a different perspective rather than amazing knowledge of the Star Wars Universe, “Mostly what I looked for were people that I felt could execute a great script, number one. And then in the job interview, just really talking to people who had different life experiences than I did, and had different connections to Star Wars than I did.”

Headland continued, “What I also learned about hiring my room is that everyone’s fandom was very different. No one had the same experience with Star Wars. There were people like myself that were like later-in-life [Dave] Filoni acolytes. I literally had one writer that was like, ‘I have never seen any of them. I’ve never seen any Star Wars media.’ And she’s texting me before we started the room, she’s like, “Luke and Leia are brother and sister, what the…?” [Laughs.] And it was so great, because I would really love to know from someone who is not fully immersed in this fandom, what do you think about the pitch we just made?

She also talked about bucking various “feedback” suggesting that any future Star Wars project should stay away from politics. It makes sense considering that George Lucas made a direct point that his films would be infused by politics and it’s sort of shocking that many fans watch those movies having zero idea they were influenced by things like the Vietnam War, Nazi Germany/Nazi Occupied Europe, the Iraq War, and British Colonialism.

“I mean, it’s funny, because a lot of the feedback that I’ll get—and I use the term feedback very lightly—but when I do go on social media, the feedback is ‘Don’t make Star Wars political.’ I’m like, ‘George Lucas made it political. Those are political films.’ War is, by nature, political. That’s just what’s up. It’s truly what he was interested in talking about and looking at and digging into. So it’s kind of impossible to tell a story within his universe that doesn’t have to do with something that has to be that the characters see externally reflected in whatever’s happening in the galaxy at that particular time period of when it takes place. You know? That’s another thing that we all kind of inherited from him as well, and hope to kind of keep reflecting in the work, hopefully,” the showrunner told The AV Club.

While I could careless about Lucasfilm’s publishing efforts with The High Republic, I am really excited to see the studio tackle an era of Star Wars that could open the door for a wave of brand new characters and not just recycling things we’ve seen from the nine films or the animation side over and over.

SOURCE: AV CLUB

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‘Ghost In The Shell’ & ‘F9’ Production Designer Jan Reolfs Confirmed For Amazon’s Cyberpunk Series ‘The Peripheral’; From The Co-Creators Of HBO’s ‘Westworld’

Westworld co-creators Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan are behind the Amazon series The Peripheral, an adaptation of the William Gibson 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 that the Amazon series has indeed enlisted production designer Jan Reolfs, who is likely best known for working on the gorgeous box office disaster Ghost In The Shell starring Scarlett Johansson, the Keanu Reeves fantasy film 47 Ronin loosely inspired by Japanese historical events, and Universal’s massive blockbuster F9 that is about cross $300 million at the global box office before it’s domestic debut later this week.

Having previously tackled the world of cyberpunk with Ghost In Shell, it would suggest The Peripheral is going to look stunning. Hopefully, it will be a stronger and compelling adaptation than the 2017 film from director Rupert Sanders.

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?

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EXCLUSIVE: Lucasfilm’s ‘Willow’ Series Adds ‘Outlander’ Director Stephen Woolfenden

The Ronin can exclusively reveal that British director Stephen Woolfenden has joined Lucasfilm’s Willow series with production officially taking place in Wales. It’s unclear how many episodes he’ll be helming. The director’s television credits include Outlander, The Spanish Princess, Poldark, Doctor Who, Strike Back, and Fate: The Winx Saga.

Woolfenden also has an extensive career as a second unit director working on massive studio films such as Harry Potter & The Order of The Phoenix, Harry Potter & The Half-Blood Prince, Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows 1-2, Fantastic Beasts & Where To Find Them, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, Fantastic Beasts 3, Detective Pikachu, and The Legend of Tarzan.

Willow is a direct sequel to Ron Howard and George Lucas’ original 1988 fantasy film but is set decades after those events.

Warwick Davis is reprising the role of Willow Ufgood with new additions like Erin Kellyman (The Falcon & The Winter Soldier, Solo: A Star Wars Story, The Green Knight) in the role of Jade, Ellie Bamber (Nocturnal Animals) playing Dove, Ruby Cruz (Castle Rock) taking the role of Kit after replacing Cailee Spaeny, and Tony Revolori (The Grand Budapest Hotel, Dope, Spider-Man: Homecoming) in an undisclosed part.

Jonathan Entwistle, who is attached to direct the Power Rangers reboot at Paramount Pictures, is set to helm the pilot after Jon M. Chu (In The Heights, Crazy Rich Asians) exited the fantasy series to focus on a big screen adaptation of Wicked.

Willow is said to debut on Disney+ sometime in 2022.

WILLOW – Enter the world of Willow. Journey to the far corners of your imagination, to a land of myth and magic, where dream and reality live side by side … to a place that never existed, a time that never was. It is a world where a young man named Willow lives out an adventure that explodes beyond the boundaries of his own hopes and fears.

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‘Terminator’: Showrunner Mattson Tomlin Shares Update On His Netflix Anime Series Being Made By ‘Ghost In The Shell’ Animation Studio

Writer Mattson Tomlin might not be a household name but he’s been behind the Netflix superhero flick Project Power and co-wrote Robert Pattinson’s The Batman with director Matt Reeves. One of his upcoming projects that people seem to have forgotten he’s involved with is a Netflix anime series from Japan’s Production I.G set in the dystopian cyberpunk world of James Cameron’s Terminator that launched in 1984.

Well, the writer/showrunner has teased that he’s completed a draft or currently working on one as the title page credits both James Cameron and Gale Anne Hurd.

THE TERMINATOR – Disguised as a human, a cyborg assassin known as a Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) travels from 2029 to 1984 to kill Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton). Sent to protect Sarah is Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn), who divulges the coming of Skynet, an artificial intelligence system that will spark a nuclear holocaust. Sarah is targeted because Skynet knows that her unborn son will lead the fight against them. With the virtually unstoppable Terminator in hot pursuit, she and Kyle attempt to escape.

TERMINATOR 2: JUDGEMENT DAY – In this sequel set eleven years after “The Terminator,” young John Connor (Edward Furlong), the key to civilization’s victory over a future robot uprising, is the target of the shape-shifting T-1000 (Robert Patrick), a Terminator sent from the future to kill him. Another Terminator, the revamped T-800 (Arnold Schwarzenegger), has been sent back to protect the boy. As John and his mother (Linda Hamilton) go on the run with the T-800, the boy forms an unexpected bond with the robot.

If you’re unfamiliar with the Japanese animation company Production I.G, they were behind the original Ghost In The Shell, Ghost In Shell 2: Innocence, Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Ghost In The Shell: Arise, Blood: The Last Vampire, Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade, Neon Genesis Evangelion: Death & Rebirth, Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion, and they made the anime segment in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill Vol.1 that covered the origin of O’Ren Ishii.

SOURCE: MATTSON TOMLIN

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Disney+ Will Continue Dropping Original Series Episodes On Wednesdays & Original Films On Fridays

When Marvel’s Loki series moved from the traditional Fridays to Wednesdays, it felt like a shift in how Disney+ would be dropping original programming as Fridays had been traditionally meant for their big Star Wars and Marvel shows.

However, Deadline is reporting that the streaming is planning to keep original shows for Wednesdays as Fridays will be for original films. The news seems to stem from a new press release of show release dates.

Going forward, the streamer will drop all of its originals on Wednesdays. This will include all original scripted, unscripted and animated series. ..Disney+ Original Movies will continue to premiere on Fridays.

I have to assume this will include Premier Access films are continuing to stick with Fridays such as Marvel’s Black Widow and other projects that will be heading to that added pay service in the future. I’m slightly curious if this means they’ll be aiming to release a greater number of original films weekly and could suggest some stuff that was meant for the big screen could be tossed on Disney+ instead, like the last two Pixar films, Soul and Luca.

Upcoming Disney+ original series coming in the not too distant future include Willow, What…If?, Ms. Marvel, The Book of Boba Fett, Hawkeye, She-Hulk, Moon Knight, Andor, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Secret Invasion, Armor Wars, The Guardians of The Galaxy Holiday Special, Ironheart, Echo, and much much more.

SOURCE: DEADLINE

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Netflix Hires ‘Die Hard’ & ‘Leviathan’ Screenwriter Jeb Stuart For Their Live-Action ‘Assassin’s Creed’ Series; Recently Worked On ‘Vikings: Valhalla’

Netflix is looking to bring Ubisoft’s video game franchise Assassin’s Creed to the small screen and have reportedly landed on a well-known action film writer to tackle the upcoming live-action series.

The open world games explore the war between the rival secret orders of the Assassins and the Templars as they use advanced machines to access the genetic memories of Assassins in different periods of the past to track down powerful artifacts called Pieces of Eden.

According to a report from Variety, Netflix has tasked writer Jeb Stuart for the new show and had recently worked with the streaming service giant for Vikings: Valhalla. His screenwriting credits are the iconic action flick Die Hard that established Bruce Willis’ acting career, the genre-bending/underrated Leviathan, Harrison Ford’s The Fugitive, Another 48 Hours, and Sly Stallone’s Lock Up.

Casting information hasn’t been announced but it sounds like it hasn’t been given an official series order at this time.

SOURCE: VARIETY

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‘Ms. Marvel’ Series Might Film Something In The United Kingdom

The Ronin mentioned not too long ago that something related to the Loki series was going to shoot in the United Kingdom. Our latest update is that the Ms. Marvel series is potentially doing some filming there as well. Unlike with Loki, there haven’t been signs that Marvel would like to pursue a Season 2, but it wouldn’t be a surprise if they did as Marvel has left the door open to some shows getting multiple seasons. For the time being, I’m going to assume this is connected to Season 1.

While looking into this, we were able to confirm that Ms. Marvel head writer/executive producer Bisha K. Ali is developing a new sci-fi series called The Well. However, plot details are unknown or what this ultimately means for follow-up seasons of the Marvel superhero show.

It’s worth noting that Loki head writer Michael Waldron has been able to rewrite the Doctor Strange Into The Multiverse of Madness script from scratch, potentially write on the Kevin Feige-produced Star Wars project, and is reportedly going to be involved with Loki’s second season in some capacity. So, theses writers can juggle many different plates at once.

If Loki and Ms. Marvel were to “hypothetically” get Season 2 renewals from Disney they wouldn’t be able to begin production until sometime in 2022 at the earliest because of how many things are shooting there in 2021 along with the actors’ commitments to other stuff since wrapping. Moving the two shows from Atlanta to England would be an ordeal itself.

As far as we know, Kamala Khan actress Iman Vellani is going to be busy with Nia DaCosta’s The Marvels and could possibly appear in Secret Invasion too, since both MCU projects are featuring S.W.O.R.D. and will have primary stage locations in the United Kingdom. This may allow Marvel to have the two the projects cross-pollinate characters/cast members. We were able to confirm recently The Marvels is shooting mainly at Longcross Studios, the facility located in Surrey was just used for Sam Raimi’s Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness.

Marvel Studios is bringing a lot of industry business to the United Kingdom with Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania, Moon Knight, and Guardians of The Galaxy Vol.3 set to shoot there in 2021 on top of The Marvels and Secret Invasion. Turning the London area into the next Atlanta could make some sense as the studio continues to expand the volume of things they are releasing on Disney+ and in theaters.

Pinewood Studios UK now has their own Volume/StageCraft via ILM, which could make the increased amount of MCU projects a little easier to handle.

The studio has confirmed the Ms. Marvel cast includes other folks such as Aramis Knight, Saagar Shaikh, Rish Shah, Zenobia Shroff, Mohan Kapur, Matt Lintz, Yasmeen Fletcher, Laith Naki, Azher Usman, Travina Springer, and Nimra Bucha. Episodes were directed by Adil El Arbi, Bilall Fallah, Meera Menon, and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy.

The Marvel Studios original series centers on fan-favorite Kamala Khan — a 16-year-old Pakistani-American growing up in Jersey City. A great student, avid gamer, and voracious fan-fic scribe, Kamala has a special affinity for superheroes, particularly Captain Marvel. However, Kamala struggles to fit in at home and at school — that is, until she gets super powers like the heroes she’s always looked up to. Life is easier with super powers, right?

Ms. Marvel will debut on Disney+ late 2021.