Category: Television News

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‘The Falcon & The Winter Soldier’ Writer Derek Kolstad Says Characters From Earliest Marvel Movies Are Coming Back – Could Zola Be One of Them?

John Wick creator Derek Kolstad was brought on to help develop the scripts for Marvel’s series The Falcon & The Winter Soldier. During a recent interview on the podcast Script Apart (spotted by Empire), Derek seemed to reveal that multiple characters from the earliest Marvel movies making a return for the show.

We already know that Zemo and Batroc The Leaper are confirmed to return for the series, but this sounds like some Phase 1 characters are back as well.

KOLSTAD: “What I will say is that there are characters from the earliest Marvel movies that are coming back. We’re layering them in and reinventing them in a way that’s gonna shift the storytelling structure. It’s fucking awesome.”

I think we’ve all assumed that William Hurt’s Thunderbolt Ross from The Incredible Hulk and Captain America: Civil War is most likely going to show up since he appeared in Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame, and is expected to also appear in the upcoming Black Widow film as he was featured in the trailers.

Ross could be part of the effort to make John Walker aka U.S. Agent the next Captain America along with past super-soldier experiments that are expected to be in the series as he had access to the serum in The Incredible Hulk. There have also been rumblings that the Thunderbolts are going to be introduced or at least teased in The Falcon & The Winter Soldier, given Ross could be their namesake and operate from The Raft would make a lot of sense. Ross’ alter ego Red Hulk just happens to be one of the more modern members of a recent incarnation of the Thunderbolts as well.

One character that is likely a strong contender to return is the digital version of Dr. Arnim Zola, who appeared as a regular human scientist played by Toby Jones in Captain America: The First Avenger only to be brought to the United States and eventually part of the secret HYDRA cell within S.H.I.E.L.D. as revealed in Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

Zola himself was digitized in an underground bunker and seemingly was destroyed in that film.

However, concept art from artist Josh Nizzi revealed that there seemed to have been plans at Marvel Studios to bring Zola back a year later in Peyton Reed’s Ant-Man along with the idea of giving him a robotic body. Nizzi attempted to design multiple robot bodies for Zola but the character sadly didn’t appear in the final version of the film.

This new body established in the comic books was teased in Captain America: The First Avenger with the Easter Egg of Zola’s blueprints for that new robotic body.

While Zola didn’t appear in Ant-Man, Sam Wilson aka Falcon had a cameo in the solo installment tussling with Scott Lang on the Avengers campus and then Sam called him in for the airport battle in Captain America: Civil War.

The show’s cast includes Anthony Mackie as Sam Wilson aka The Falcon, Sebastian Stan as James “Bucky” Barnes aka The Winter Soldier, Daniel Bruhl as Zemo, Wyatt Russell as John Walker aka U.S Agent, Emily VanCamp as Sharon Carton aka Agent 13, Georges St-Peirre as Batroc The Leaper, Desmond Chiam, Erin Kellyman, Danny Ramirez, Adepero Oduye, Veronica Falcon (confirmed by The Ronin) and Carl Lumbly.

The Ronin first reported back in mid-August that The Falcon & The Winter Soldier would be delayed to sometime in 2021 and not debut in 2020 as originally expected. Disney and Marvel have yet to make an official announcement concerning the show’s new release date.

SOURCE: SCRIPT APART

Posted on in Television News

Lucasfilm’s ‘Willow’ Series Officially Moving Forward At Disney+ With Jon M. Chu Directing The Pilot – Production Will Return To Wales

A series sequel based on the 1988 Ron Howard and George Lucas fantasy film Willow has been in the works for a while now from Solo: A Star Wars Story screenwriter Jonathan Kasdan. Disney has announced they’ve finally greenlit the sequel series for Disney+.

They also confirmed that production will be returning to Wales where the original film was shot.

Crazy Rich Asians director Jon M. Chu will handle the the first episode and he commented on the news via Twitter. Ron Howard will return to executive produce the series with Jonathan Kasdan and Wendy Mercile set as the showrunners.

Here is the official press release from Disney.

The magical world of George Lucas’ “Willow,” the epic fantasy adventure set in an age of swords, sorcery, myths and monsters, will be returning in a Disney+ series slated to begin production next year.

Jon M. Chu (“In The Heights,” “Crazy Rich Asians”) is set to direct the pilot, and will serve as executive producer along with showrunners Jonathan Kasdan (“Solo”) and Wendy Mericle (“Arrow”). Jonathan Kasdan wrote the pilot.

The series, which is Lucasfilm’s first venture into non-Star Wars storytelling since 2015, takes place years after the events of the original “Willow” film. It introduces all-new characters to the enchanted realm of fairy queens and two-headed Eborsisk monsters, and welcomes back its namesake hero, Willow Ufgood, performed once again by the unmatchable Warwick Davis.

Kathleen Kennedy, Michelle Rejwan, Jon M. Chu, Jonathan Kasdan, Wendy Mericle, Ron Howard and Imagine Television will serve as executive producers, with Roopesh Parekh and Hannah Friedman as co-executive producers. Additionally, Bob Dolman will serve as consulting producer with Julia Cooperman as producer.

The production plans to return to the dramatic and enchanted landscapes of Wales, where much of the original film was shot.

You might remember that Chu was lobbying a while back to direct a Rose Tico series starring Kelly Marie Tran.

The Willow series is said to be a direct sequel to the original film and is expected to focus specifically on Warwick Davis’ titular character Willow Ufgood. It remains to be seen if they’ll attempt to resurrect any of the other characters from the original film.

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.

SOURCE: DISNEY

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CONFIRMED: ‘Queen of The South’ and ‘Jungle Cruise’ Actress Veronica Falcon Joins The Cast of ‘The Falcon & The Winter Soldier’

We can now confirm that actress Veronica Falcon indeed has a role in the Marvel Studios/Disney+ series The Falcon & The Winter Soldier. Her credits include the drug cartel crime series Queen of The South, HBO’s Perry Mason, and worked with Disney on their Jungle Cruise film starring Emily Blunt and Dwayne Johnson.

She joins a cast that includes Anthony Mackie as Sam Wilson aka The Falcon, Sebastian Stan as James “Bucky” Barnes aka The Winter Soldier, Daniel Bruhl as Zemo, Wyatt Russell as John Walker aka U.S Agent, Emily VanCamp as Sharon Carton aka Agent 13, Georges St-Peirre as Batroc The Leaper, Desmond Chiam, Erin Kellyman, Danny Ramirez, Adepero Oduye, and Carl Lumbly.

The Ronin spotted a social media post from Veronica on Instagram that hints to her landing a role in the series and was part of the Prague shoot before everything halted due to COVID-19 back in March.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CCtTHPEphez/

Her name had recently appeared on the IMDB listing for the series in the role of “Mama Donnya” but had yet to be officially announced by other websites or mentioned in trade reports.

The Ronin was the first outlet to report back in mid-August that series wouldn’t be ready for a 2020 drop and had been pushed to sometime in 2021.

Veronica’s upcoming film Jungle Cruise is set to be released on July 30th, 2021.

JUNGLE CRUISE – Inspired by the famous Disneyland theme park ride, Disney’s JUNGLE CRUISE is an adventure-filled, Amazon-jungle expedition starring Dwayne Johnson as the charismatic riverboat captain and Emily Blunt as a determined explorer on a research mission. Also starring in the film are Edgar Ramirez, Jack Whitehall, with Jesse Plemons, and Paul Giamatti.

Posted on in Television News

Marvel’s ‘The Falcon & The Winter Soldier’ Reportedly Adds ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ Actor Danny Ramirez In “Pivotal Role”

It looks like Marvel Studios is neither finished filming or adding to the cast of their upcoming series The Falcon & The Winter Soldier.

The Hollywood Reporter has learned that Top Gun: Maverick actor Danny Ramirez has landed an unnamed but “pivotal role” in The Falcon & The Winter Soldier. Ramirez is best known mostly for television with credits that include Netflix’s On My Block. He isn’t a stranger to the world of Marvel Comics as he had a small role in Fox Television’s X-Men series The Gifted before the merger moved the X-Men rights over to Marvel Studios.

He plays a fighter pilot with the call sign “Fanboy” in Paramount’s Top Gun sequel titled Top Gun: Maverick set to be released on July 2nd, 2021.

TOP GUN: MAVERICK – After more than thirty years of service as one of the Navy’s top aviators, Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Tom Cruise) is where he belongs, pushing the envelope as a courageous test pilot and dodging the advancement in rank that would ground him. When he finds himself training a detachment of Top Gun graduates for a specialized mission the likes of which no living pilot has ever seen, Maverick encounters Lt. Bradley Bradshaw (Miles Teller), call sign: “Rooster,” the son of Maverick’s late friend and Radar Intercept Officer Lt. Nick Bradshaw, aka “Goose.”

Danny isn’t the only actor from the upcoming Top Gun: Maverick that has landed a streaming series as Monica Barbaro is starring opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger’s upcoming father-daughter spy series for Amazon/Skydance Television.

It certainly feels a little late to be adding an actor to the cast with such a big role but it’s possible he was quietly hired and has been able to keep his casting a secret for multiple months.

The Ronin was the first outlet to report that Disney+ would be delaying the release of The Falcon series from late 2020 to sometime in 2021 back in mid-August. The company seemingly confirmed this after it recently left the MCU series out of their “Coming Soon In 2020” programming ad and their website had it listed for a TBA 2021 spot.

Originally, it was supposed to launch back in August before the Coronavirus pandemic paused production back in March and only recently resumed. Given the show is still filming it’s extremely unlikely it will be ready in December or would overlap with WandaVision’s episodes.

Ramirez joins a cast that already includes Anthony Mackie as Sam Wilson aka The Falcon, Sebastian Stan as James “Bucky” Barnes aka The Winter Soldier, Daniel Bruhl as Zemo, Wyatt Russell as John Walker aka U.S Agent, Emily VanCamp as Sharon Carton aka Agent 13, Georges St-Peirre as Batroc The Leaper, Desmond Chiam, Erin Kellyman, Veronica Falcon, Adepero Oduye, and Carl Lumbly.

The series will explore the transition between Steve Rogers handing over the Captain America mantle over to Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson in Avengers: Endgame only for the American government to install their own candidate with Wyatt Russell’s John Walker aka U.S. Agent.

Set photos have revealed that one of the locations in the show is most likely Madripoor, a fictional lawless South-East Asian island nation originally created in the pages of the X-Men comics and could be used in the future for X-Men projects along with setting up various villains from that corner of the Marvel universe. Since the island has connections to The Hand (villains connected to Wolverine, Daredevil, and Elektra), Ophelia Sarkissian aka Viper/Madame Hydra, Wolverine, and Psylocke. A gang member’s jacket spotted on the set used imagery of an X-Men character called Ogun, a Japanese villain connected to Wolverine and Kitty Pryde aka Shadowcat.

There have been plenty of rumblings that the series could introduce a version of The Thunderbolts which were led by Zemo in the comic books. It’ll be interesting if that actually comes together as there had been unsupported talk of a Thunderbolts project being kicked-around at Marvel at one point.

The Falcon & The Winter Soldier is expected to drop elusively on Disney+ sometime in 2021.

SOURCE: THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

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Jon Favreau Hopeful Season 3 of ‘The Mandalorian’ Will Begin Filming Before The End of 2020 and Is Open To Making A Movie

In a new interview with Variety, showrunner Jon Favreau states that Season 3 of The Mandalorian is seemingly on schedule to begin filming before the end of the year as soon as Pedro Pascal finishes up a film he’s working on in Europe.

Executive producer and showrunner Jon Favreau told Variety that The Mandalorian is “on schedule” to start production on Season 3 of the series “before the end of the year” — after Pascal wraps shooting in Europe on the feature film The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent with Nicolas Cage.

The Ronin previously confirmed that production designer Andrew Jones is already set to return for Season 3.

Jon talked up about focusing on characters and flushing them out being a high priority along with not rushing things.

FAVREAU: “I love the world of Star Wars because, on the one hand, there’s a familiarity with this sub-genre, but there’s also a tremendous amount of flexibility of which way you can go and genres you could explore within that sub-genre. As we’re meeting new characters, and as we’re starting to hit our stride, from a production standpoint with how this technology can be used, we are beginning to explore where we could go.”

“And we could start to expand what we’re doing and our ambitions about what characters we want to follow.”

“I learned a lot from my experience over at Marvel, where it was very organic, how it would evolve. You’re paying attention to a larger story arcs and characters that could come together, but also smaller stories of individual characters that could go off [on their own thing]. The key here is keep maintaining the quality and never scaling to the point that we’re losing sight of what’s important to us and what people like about the show.”

When asked if they were keen on the idea of making a feature film Jon says they’re in “no rush” but is open to the idea.

FAVREAU: “The line is blurring now. Things that you would have only seen in the movie theater, you’re seeing on streaming, and I think it could go the other way as well.”

“But we’re definitely open to it and excited to see where the story leads us and have that flexibility — because there’s no rulebook now.”

Actor Pedro Pascal, who will be returning to shoot Season 3 despite rumors he’ll be replaced, is also game to do a movie.

PASCAL: “I think that the work is so beautiful that I would love for that to be held by a big screen experience. But it seems to work so well that also I’m not sure it’s something that I would want corrupted by any kind of change, you know? I mean, I certainly know that the challenge can be met. It’s not like these people don’t have the experience. If anybody can do it, they can!”

Giancarlo Esposito recently suggested The Mandalorian would be getting a fourth season before that has been officially announced which could suggest they plan on going pretty far with their Mandalorian run on Disney+. There have also been plenty of unconfirmed rumors about this season leading to multiple spinoff series but that has yet to be supported by industry trades or announced by Disney/Lucasfilm.

Season 2 of The Mandalorian begins airing on Disney+ starting on October 30th.

SOURCE: VARIETY

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‘The Boys’ Showrunner Eric Kripe Confirms February Production Start In Toronto For Season 3

We now have confirmation from series creator and showrunner Eric Kripe that Season 3 of The Boys will indeed begin shooting this February in Toronto as he confirmed the scheduled start via Twitter.

However, with the province of Ontario and the country of Canada on the brink of a second shutdown due to COVID-19 there is a good possibility that they might have to delay the start if the government steps in to press pause on all production in Toronto.

Local sources indicate that filming will take place between February 1st and August 12th of next year barring any future delays in prep or COVID-related shutdowns.

On a more positive note, recent casting announcements include Supernatural’s Jensen Ackles as Season 3 villain Soldier Boy and Lord of The Rings actor John Noble taking the role of Billy Butcher’s father.

Amazon claims that Season 2 has been one of the popular originals they’ve ever released (take with a grain of salt) and have already started developing a spinoff series from Craig Rosenberg focusing on a college for supes run by Vought International.

The spinoff is set at America’s only college exclusively for young adult superheroes (or “supes”) that is run by Vought International. It is described as an irreverent, R-rated series that explores the lives of hormonal, competitive supes as they put their physical, sexual, and moral boundaries to the test, competing for the best contracts in the best cities. Part college show, part Hunger Games — with all the heart, satire and raunch of The Boys.

We’ll keep our fingers crossed they’ll be able to keep to their production schedule and release the next season on time.

SOURCE: ERIC KRIPE

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Jessica Henwick Says There Were “Light Discussions” For ‘Daughters of The Dragon’ Spinoff Series At Marvel Television/Netflix

Comic Book Movie was able to speak with Iron Fist actress Jessica Henwrick while promoting her upcoming film Love & Monsters revealing there were light talks from Marvel Television and Netflix about making a Daughters of The Dragon series featuring characters Colleen Wing and Misty Knight (played by Simone Missick) in their own superhero adventures. Something fans had been asking for since the characters showed up in Luke Cage and Iron First.

HENWICK: “There had been very light discussions about Daughters of the Dragon happening which I would have loved because working opposite Simone [Missick] was such a dream, and I think she’s so talented and perfect for the role.

“I do remember some very vague discussions, but you keep your fingers crossed and never know what’s going to happen in this industry. I’m just glad I got to play such an incredible arc with Colleen and I feel very happy that we ended on such a high note for her.”

Henwick is currently working on Matrix 4, where she is reportedly playing a Neo-type character in the new sequel.

With Marvel Television now under the purview of Kevin Feige and rebranded as Marvel TV Studios the relationship with Netflix has been severed, how or when Marvel will want to use the Netflix characters remains to be seen. It’s neat to know that Marvel Television was at least considering giving the Daughters of The Dragon their own show.

SOURCE: COMIC BOOK MOVIE

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Character Lineup Revealed For HBO Max’s ‘Green Lantern’ Series – Will Be Written By Seth Grahame-Smith and Marc Guggenheim

Yesterday, HBO Max and DC Comics made a big splash with announcing their character and creative lineup for the upcoming live-action Green Lantern series for HBO Max.

The Lanterns featured in the series will include Guy Gardner, Jessica Cruz, Simon Baz, Kilowog, and will also feature Sinestro. Original Green Lantern, Alan Scott, is showing up as well and they confirm the character will be openly gay in the series.

They also announced that Seth Grahame-Smith (The Lego Batman Movie, Dark Shadows) will be showrunning the series and writing it alongside Marc Guggenheim.

Here is the official press release from DC Comics.

From DC and HBO Max and Berlanti Productions comes a bold adaptation of the iconic comic book franchise: A saga spanning decades and galaxies. GREEN LANTERN will depict the adventures of a multitude of Lanterns, including Guy Gardner, Jessica Cruz, Simon Baz and Alan Scott—Earth’s first Green Lantern, who, true to the comics, is a gay man—and many more. The series will also include fan favorites such as Sinestro and Killowog, as well as introduce new heroes to the ranks of the Green Lantern Corps.

Green Lantern comes from executive producers and writers Seth Grahame-Smith, who will serve as showrunner, and Marc Guggenheim, along with executive producers Greg Berlanti, Geoff Johns, Sarah Schechter and David Madden. Many of these names should be familiar to DCTV fans, as Berlanti has overseen most of DC’s recent small screen offerings, including The CW’s beloved “Arrowverse,” as well as recent streaming hits Titans, Stargirl and Doom Patrol. Guggenheim and Schechter have both played key roles in many of those shows, including Arrow, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, Supergirl and Batwoman, among others. Guggenheim also co-wrote the 2011 Ryan Reynold’s Green Lantern movie along with Berlanti, Michael Green and Michael Goldenberg.

Grahame-Smith may not be as familiar of a name to DC fans, but Green Lantern isn’t the first DC project in which he’s been involved. Grahame-Smith co-wrote the screenplay to 2017’s The Lego Batman Movie, along with 2012’s Dark Shadows, directed by Tim Burton. Prior to that, he gained some notoriety in geek circles with his novels Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and Unholy Night.

Surprising nobody, Geoff Johns was announced as the show’s executive producer.

You might remember that Seth was one of the many people tasked to write and direct Ezra Miller’s Flash movie in one of it’s various incarnations.

I guess we’ll have to wait and see what level of quality they’ll be aiming for with the Green Lantern show.

It was also previously announced that James Gunn and John Cena would be reuniting for a Peacekeeper series that would be a spinoff of the upcoming sequel The Suicide Squad.

Matt Reeves and Terrence Winter are also working on a series set in the world of Gotham Police Department that will take place a year before the events of The Batman.

SOURCE: DC COMICS

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Ewan McGregor Says His ‘Star Wars’ Series ‘Kenobi’ Begins Shooting In March

Ewan McGregor previously chatted with Entertainment Tonight to promote Apple TV+’s Long Way Up, where he revealed that production on Kenobi has been pushed to the spring and is indeed being planned as a single standalone season. 

MCGREGOR: “Spring next year we start, I’m really excited about it. It’s gonna be great, I think. As I understand, it’s a standalone season. We’ll see. Who knows?” 

This is now an update from Ewan.

Appearing on BBC’s The Graham Norton Show he stated cameras would begin rolling in March, giving an actual start month for the Star Wars series. Originally, they had planned on starting in January.

MCGREGOR: “Yeah, it’s the Obi-Wan Kenobi story I suppose…we start shooting it in March next year.”

While speaking with ACE Universe back in June he confirmed that they would be implementing the StageCraft technology used on The Mandalorian. This could suggest they will be using the new setup at Pinewood Studios UK.

MCGREGOR: “[The prequels] were all blue screen and green screen and it was hard to imagine, but nowadays I think things have moved on so much, and I think a lot of what you see is gonna be what we see on the set. I don’t know if you’ve seen the behind-the-scenes of The Mandalorian series, but they employ that incredible screen…it’s pretty amazing. It makes you feel like you’re in the place, it’s going to feel realer for us, as actors. And I think we’ll be using some of that technology on our show.”

The Mandalorian’s Deborah Chow is directing with recent script rewrites from Army of The Dead’s Joby Harold.

While we’ve had a string of casting announcements for Diego Luna’s Cassian Andor series there haven’t been any for the Kenobi series and with a March start we will likely start hearing some news on that front in the very near future.

SOURCE: THE GRAHAM NORTON SHOW

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‘No Time To Die’ Director Cary Joji Fukunaga To Direct WWII Series ‘Masters of The Air’ For Apple TV+ – Produced By Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg

Deadline reports that No Time To Die director Cary Joji Fukunaga will helm at least three episodes of the upcoming WWII series Masters of The Air for Apple TV+.

The wartime series will be produced by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg, who were behind HBO’s Band of Brothers and The Pacific. Cary’s Parliament of Owls joins the producing team alongside Amblin Television and Playtone.

HBO passed on the expensive series and it eventually landed at Apple.

I previously reported that Alien: Covenant and X-Men: First Class production designer Chris Seagers would be working on the show. Seagers is no stranger to the WWII genre as he also worked on Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan as an art director.

Here is a synopsis of the Donald L. Miller book Masters of the Air: America’s Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany, which the series is based on.

Masters of the Air is the deeply personal story of the American bomber boys in World War II who brought the war to Hitler’s doorstep. With the narrative power of fiction, Donald Miller takes you on a harrowing ride through the fire-filled skies over Berlin, Hanover, and Dresden and describes the terrible cost of bombing for the German people.

Fighting at 25,000 feet in thin, freezing air that no warriors had ever encountered before, bomber crews battled new kinds of assaults on body and mind. Air combat was deadly but intermittent: periods of inactivity and anxiety were followed by short bursts of fire and fear. Unlike infantrymen, bomber boys slept on clean sheets, drank beer in local pubs, and danced to the swing music of Glenn Miller’s Air Force band, which toured US air bases in England. But they had a much greater chance of dying than ground soldiers.

The bomber crews were an elite group of warriors who were a microcosm of America—white America, anyway. The actor Jimmy Stewart was a bomber boy, and so was the “King of Hollywood,” Clark Gable. And the air war was filmed by Oscar-winning director William Wyler and covered by reporters like Andy Rooney and Walter Cronkite, all of whom flew combat missions with the men. The Anglo-American bombing campaign against Nazi Germany was the longest military campaign of World War II, a war within a war. Until Allied soldiers crossed into Germany in the final months of the war, it was the only battle fought inside the German homeland.

Masters of the Air is a story of life in wartime England and in the German prison camps, where tens of thousands of airmen spent part of the war. It ends with a vivid description of the grisly hunger marches captured airmen were forced to make near the end of the war through the country their bombs destroyed.

Cary has worked on television before with the first season of the hit HBO series True Detective. He most recently directed the final Daniel Craig era Bond movie titled No Time To Die which that has been delayed a second time from November 20th to April 2nd, 2021.

SOURCE: DEADLINE