While we’re still waiting on official confirmation on who is playing Kate Bishop in Marvel’s Hawkeye series a new rumor is making the rounds.
The Direct claims that Black Widow actress Florence Pugh will be reprising her role of Yelena Belova in the show, although, they can’t say how large the appearance will be or if this will be a reoccurring role.
She is currently busy making the feature film thriller Don’t Worry Darling in California for director Olivia Wilde and if Florence is joining the Hawkeye show she won’t be filming scenes anytime soon.
Yelena Belova is part of the main character lineup of the Black Widow film (takes places between Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War) and there has been assumptions from fans that Pugh would continue the legacy of the Black Widow mantle in future films after Natasha died in Avengers: Endgame. However, we don’t ultimately know Yelena’s fate in the Black Widow movie until we actually watch it.
The MCU incarnation of Yelena is meant to be more of a little sister to Natasha instead of a rival.
Filming will mainly take place in Atlanta but there is confirmation that some of the shoot will take place in NYC this week.
Jeremy Renner will be reprising the Clint Barton role as he mentors a young protege named Kate Bishop that becomes a member of the Young Avengers.
A while back it was reported that Fargo and Legion series creator Noah Hawley had attempted to pitch 20th Century Fox to develop a series at FX set within the Alien universe which was ultimately rejected before the merger with Disney.
An Alien series wouldn’t be the first new project that was purposed.
District 9’s Neill Blomkamp had tried to finally get an Alien 5 movie (Ridley Scott and James Cameron pitched a version before AVP years ago) off the ground with Sigourney Weaver attached to star and Ridley Scott producing but that never materialized. As Scott has been talking up a third installment of his Alien prequel, a follow-up to Alien: Covenant that had been once called Alien: Awakening and more recently has been indicating that it’s in development stages. Franchise screenwriters/producers Walter Hill and David Giler seemingly inspired by Blomkamp’s concept of erasing the two sequels had written a couple of drafts for Alien V with Weaver reading an early draft of it.
It was announced that Dan Trachtenberg (10 Cloverfield Land, Black Mirror) would be directing Predator 5 aka Skulls, that according to him had been in the works for almost four years. An old synopsis for the project suggested it could be taking a period western setting with the main human character being “a female Comanche warrior”.
There had been some hints that Disney might want to circle back to Noah’s Alien series idea and Deadline asked him about it in their interview for Season 4 of Fargo. Admitting he’s since had talks about the show since the merger which sounds like new interest in making it as Deadline suggests a deal for a show is incoming.
DEADLINE: Are you still involved with the Alien reboot TV series? I understand deals are trying to be done.
HAWLEY: “I know that there’s an effort to reshuffle a lot of things post-Disney takeover and it was a conversation that I had a couple years back. And I have not in the last few weeks been having those conversations about it. But I know that like any studio that there’s a great desire to make the most of one’s library so I wouldn’t be surprised to see something like that.”
DEADLINE: But you’re involved in it?
HAWLEY: “Ya know, I have conversations from time to time but I’m not committed.”
DEADLINE: And there isn’t a hard conceit to it yet?
HAWLEY: “No, I haven’t — nothing is at that stage.”
Back in September, Noah gave some insight to Observer what he wanted to do and hinted that he would like to explore a character-driven series set in the universe that may have focused on the humans behind the Weyland-Yutani company and those underneath them. An interesting proposal given that filmmakers have really only scratched the surface of what that futuristic universe looks like.
HAWLEY: “Alien is on some level the complete opposite of Stark Trek. It’s sort of about humanity at its worst. There’s this moment in the second film when Sigourney says, ‘I don’t know which species is worse. At least they don’t screw each other over for a percentage.’ If you look at what Aliens tends to be, it’s usually a trapped story – trapped in a ship, trapped in a prison, etc. And because the Alien has this life cycle to it, where it goes from egg, to chestburster, to xenomorph, there becomes a certain routine to it.”
“I thought it would be interesting if you could expand. If you’re going to make something for television, you’ve got 10 hours let’s say. Even if you have a lot of action, like two hours, then you’re still going to have eight hours left. So what is the show about? That’s what I tried to talk to them about. As I did with Legion, the exercise is: Let’s take the superhero stuff out of the show and see if it’s still a great show. What’s the show about? Let’s take the Alien out of the show. What’s the show about? What are the themes, who are the characters and what is the human drama? Then we drop the aliens back in and we go, ‘This is great. Not only is there great human drama, but there’s aliens!’”
We had heard a while back there had been some interest in Ridley Scott getting involved with a Hulu series, the streamer now has a strong relationship with FX’s programming post-merger and would be a perfect home for an Alien series if/when it come together. If there were to be any Alien series Scott is most likely landing an automatic executive producer credit given his current status on the franchise and previous involvement with Alien 5 as a producer.
It’s also worth noting that Ridley Scott’s sci-fi series Raised By Wolves (formerly at TNT) had been touted by HBO Max as their most successful original series and that could help influence folks at Disney, 20th Century Studios, FX, and Hulu to give Noah’s series a second look as it sounds like they might already have.
The Verge’s Chris Welch has posted a photo of a local production notice on his Twitter account confirming something for the upcoming Hawkeye series (working title Anchor Point) will be shooting in Brooklyn on December 2nd along with a list of the areas they’ll be filming.
Disney+ Hawkeye show gonna be doing some filming in downtown Brooklyn next week. pic.twitter.com/J2bWdr9TQ4
It’s possibly some exterior scenes like was done recently with Spider-Man 3 and it’s unknown if any cast members will actually be involved as the main shoot for the series is taking place in Atlanta, Georgia. Flying in actors doesn’t seem terribly necessary given the status of the pandemic. It’s worth mentioning that Shang-Chi had also shot stuff in San Francisco without their main cast.
Keeping the cast in as few locations would be in their best interest to avoid exposure to COVID-19 during the shoot. Given the technology available to these Marvel Studios shows they could simply film their surroundings then add actors later in the post-production stage.
We’re still waiting on if actress Hailee Steinfeld will be confirmed to play Kate Bishop or another yet-to-be-named actress has signed on to play Clint Barton’s protege. Hopefully, we start getting some new casting information concerning the series soon along with confirmations concerning the high-volume of character rumors that have been circulating.
However, this would yet again confirm that Hawkeye is next up with She-Hulk expected to be the next Atlanta series and will start-up sometime in March.
Chapter 13 is written and directed by Dave Filoni which leads to our first and possibly only look at Rosario Dawson as the live-action version of Ahsoka Tano.
Our first sequence on Corvus is a battle between Ahsoka Tano and a group armed men from The Magistrate aka Morgan Elsbeth (played by Diana Lee Inosanto), during a duel at the end it’s reveal Morgan’s master is Grand Admiral Thrawn (introduced into canon via Star Wars: Rebels) and Ahsoka is trying to find him. The action sequences are pretty neat and there is a huge Princess Mononoke vibe in the episode, it’s also nice to see her cut through the grunts with lightsabers.
The village of Calodan also seemed to take some visual cues from The Labyrinth.
Michael Biehn (Aliens, Terminator) shows up as the Magistrate’s hired-gun, possibly ex-military according to Mando.
When Mando is assigned by The Magistrate to kill Ahsoka Tano for a berskar spear. He eventually meets up with her and she reveals The Child’s real name is Grogu along with a bit of his origin story that he was at the Jedi Temple on Coruscant being trained during the Clone Wars. The Child is not a clone of Jedi Grand Master Yoda as previously suspected by fans but one of the few young Jedi that were able to survive Order 66.
Ahsoka seemingly refuses to train Grogu seeing darkness in him and instead tasks Din Djarin to take The Child to an ancient Jedi Temple on Tython (a planet from The Old Republic video game) to see if his path is meant towards that of a Jedi.
Tython is a planet located within the Tython System of the Deep Core. It is the planet where the first society of Force-users in known history gathered, which would eventually become the Jedi Order. It is the starting world of the Jedi Knight and Jedi Consular character classes.
The planet is also home to the Flesh Raiders and if they are on Tython it would be their first live-action debut as they were created for The Old Republic video game.
As she hopes another Jedi can be reached through placing The Child on the Seeing Stone at the top of the mountain and if he reaches out to the Force another Jedi will sense his presence to find/train him.
This feels like endless side-missions at this point and it’s getting to be a bit of headache but it’s nice to get some hard information about Baby Yoda. But it’s nice to hear we might be seeing another Jedi, although, I’m unsure it’ll be Luke Skywalker.
It’ll be interesting to see if Ahsoka ends up getting her own solo series from Dave Filoni or if this Thrawn thread is ever pulled because it does seem like this stuff will get wrapped in The Mandalorian. I think a live-action version of Thrawn showing up in something like the Cassian Andor series could be fun or elsewhere. Thrawn was a Legends character from the novels that got a second life when he was added in Star Wars: Rebels and officially joined canon.
With Mercedes Varnado aka Sasha Banks’ debut as a Mandalorian cohort of Bo-Katan (played by Katee Sackhoff) there was some assumptions that there characters could play a bigger role in Season 2 of The Mandalorian. That doesn’t seem to be the case.
According to Mercedes herself while speaking with Comic Book, she only shot a single episode which means her character Koska Reeves won’t be showing up again, at least in this season. She does sound keen on reprising the role just as much as Katee.
VARNADO: “I can only hope that the fans get to know more, I’m only in this episode. It’s awesome but we can only hopee for more stuff. So, if I can pray and manifest anything, I just hope myself and Katee, Bo-Katan, can hopefully get the Darksaber one day. But we’ll have to see, I don’t know.”
I’m not entirely sure if this means we won’t see Katee Sackhoff’s Bo-Katan again in this season but it is a possibility. We’ll have to see if the trio will get a bigger stage in Season 3 or in spinoffs.
Deadline reports that Amazon will renew The Expanse for a sixth and final season.
I’m sure this heartbreaking news to fans as the news was announced before the Season 5 premiere. The expensive series had been cancelled by SyFy after three seasons before it was picked-up by Prime Video for Season 4.
Cast member Cas Anvar will not be returning after sexual misconduct allegations.
The Expanse is set in the future where humanity has colonized the solar system and the people of Earth, Mars and the Asteroid Belt have long been in opposition with one another. When the crew of the Rocinante uncovers an ancient alien technology, a vast conspiracy begins to emerge — one that will bring the solar system to the brink of war.
It’s unknown if the show will find a new home or will end forever with Season 6.
Filming paused on the Japanese crime series Tokyo Vice back in March but according to The Hollywood Reporter the HBO Max series will resume filming this week in Japan.
Heat’s Michael Mann is set to direct all 10-episodes of the series starring Ansel Elgort (Baby Driver), Ken Watanabe (Inception, The Last Samurai), and Rinko Kikuchi (Pacific Rim, The Brothers Bloom). The new series is loosely inspired by the real-life experiences of American journalist Jake Adelstein chronicled in his 2009 memoir, Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter On The Police Beat in Japan. Adelstein covered crime for the one of the largest newspapers in Japan becoming one of the few Westerners to do so and spent 12 years there.
Originally, Destin Daniel Cretton was tapped to direct the show but there was a scheduling conflict with Marvel’s Shang-Chi & The Legend of The Ten Rings and Michael Mann was brought on as a replacement. Mann is best known for being the architect of the popular 1980s series Miami Vice but never directed an episode. However, he did make the 2006 reboot film starring Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx.
HBO Max has yet to announce when they expect episodes will begin airing on the streaming service.
The Ronin can now confirm that Marvel’s Hawkeye series under the working title Anchor Point is about to begin shooting (if it hasn’t already) in Atlanta, Georgia. This would make the Jeremy Renner project to be the next series entry into the Marvel Cinematic Universe to shoot after Ms. Marvel officially started filming last week.
Jeremy Renner is reprising the Clint Barton role and will be mentoring a young female protege named Kate Bishop, one of the Young Avengers.
A previous report from The Hollywood Reporter stated that She-Hulk (Atlanta) and Moon Knight (London) wouldn’t begin their shoots until March. With WandaVision and The Falcon wrapped (Loki about to wrap) this gives Marvel the extra space needed to shoot both Ms. Marvel and Hawkeye simultaneously.
There was also a production grid making the rounds suggesting a September start which obviously wasn’t accurate as the pandemic led to extended shoots on Falcon and WandaVision not leaving much room for new shows to jump in. COVID-19 has been throwing production dates into a tizzy for months and as studios adopt bubbles they might be able to avoid future delays once filming starts.
Also filming in Atlanta, is Spider-Man 3 aka The November Project which is rumored to be using a production bubble to keep cast and crew safe during filming on the Spidey sequel.
There still isn’t official confirmation about who exactly has taken the Kate Bishop (Barton’s young protege) role in the show despite Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit, Bumblebee) being in the mix for the part early on as reported first by Variety. It’s expected to become a key role not just in the series but for future MCU films as well.
Renner posted this image on his Instagram stories yesterday leading fans to believe this means filming has started, although, could have been connected to a workout picture he posted from the gym.
Another Disney+ show on the horizon includes a Nick Fury series starring Samuel L. Jackson and written by Kyle Bradstreet (Mr. Robot) that could end up tackling the Skrulls/S.W.O.R.D. depending when and where it’s set in the timeline.
There are also other shows in development stages that have yet to be made official by Marvel/Disney.
WandaVision is the the first Disney+ series to release and will officially debut on January 15th.
Tucked in The Hollywood Reporter’s update and casting information about Marvel’s Black Panther 2 they mentioned the shooting statuses of upcoming Disney+ series She-Hulk and Moon Knight, both said to kick-off filming in March 2021.
Marvel Studios has yet to make any official casting announcements for the two shows but are expected to be led by Oscar Isaac (Dune, Star Wars, X-Men: Apocalypse) as Marc Spector in Moon Knight and Tatiana Maslany (Orphan Black, Perry Mason) as Jennifer Walters in She-Hulk as trades have reported they’ve essentially landed the superhero roles.
Moon Knight will be using the working title of Good Faith shooting in London, Budapest, and possibly Morocco with the recent announcement that Mohamed Diab will direct.
She-Hulk’s filming is confirmed to take place in Atlanta under the working title Libra (also being used for Mission: Impossible 7 overseas) with Rick & Morty’s Jessica Gao set as writer/showrunner and Kat Coiro (Brooklyn Nine-Nine, It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia) directing.
We should be getting some new casting information in the coming weeks.
Current productions filming include Spider-Man 3 aka The November Project (Atlanta), Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness aka Stellar Vortex (Surrey), and the Ms. Marvel aka Jersey (Atlanta) series has started filming this week. The Loki series aka The Architect (Atlanta) is a few of weeks away from wrapping joining WandaVision and Falcon as releases in 2021.
As expected Mando in the latest episode has to do yet another side mission while the Razor Crest is being repaired on Nevarro, a lava planet from Season 1. There was an assumption this would simply be a buffer episode before Din Djarin finally meets up with Ahsoka Tano.
The Siege was directed by Carl Weathers where Mando is tasked by Greef to help them blow up an “abandoned” Imperial base elsewhere on Nevarro and we see a return of comedian Horatio Sanz (was spotted in the Season 2 trailer), who played a bounty in Chapter 1 and is now working off his debt. The group attempts to blow-up the facility to keep weapons out of the black market.
It’s revealed that it’s neither abandoned or just a base, as it looks like some sort of laboratory as we see weird tubes (giving me The Force Unleashed vibes) with what looks like some sort of failed genetic experiments that had Moff Gideon was involved with. They also mention they were indeed taking blood from The Child back in Season 1, just enough not to kill him but have run out and mention The Child having a high “M-count” referring to Midichlorian Count that was introduced in The Phantom Menace. They’re seemingly using The Child’s blood enhance subjects which may or may not be an attempt to give The Child’s vast Midichlorians to other people, possibly Moff Gideon himself.
This is the most information we’ve had concerning The Child and what Gideon wanted with him so far in the series.
At the end of the episode we learn that Cara Dune (now a Marshal) is from Alderaan and lost everyone after the Death Star destroyed the planet.
This lab remains to be seen if it’s part of the secret Palpatine plot from Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker or possibly something else non-clone related. But we finally get to see Gideon in-person as they’ve placed a tracking device on the Razor Crest which suggests he’ll be showing up soon once they find Mando’s ship.
I’m curious if these experiments could be how they attempt to insert a Star Wars Legends character like Galen Marek aka Starkiller from The Force Unleashed video games and played by Sam Witwer. Having his abilities created via a lab and Baby Yoda blood making him an Imperial volunteer for this secret enchantment project. Sam has worked with Dave Filoni on the Star Wars animation series voicing both Darth Maul (also voiced him in Solo: A Star Wars Story) and Palpatine. Considering they had Katee Sackhoff play Bo-Katan, having Sam play a live-action version of character Starkiller could be fun for fans.
Thrawn was a Legends character that got a second life in Star Wars: Rebels thanks to Filoni.
THE RONIN 