Deadline is reporting that Amazon’s untitled spinoff series of their popular dark superhero series The Boys had landed two lead actresses as they’ve tapped Lizze Broadway and Jaz Sinclair (The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina) for the roles of superheroes Emma and Marie.
The untitled The Boys spinoff is set at America’s only college exclusively for young adult superheroes (and 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.
Season 3 of The Boys is currently filming in Toronto.
Based on the bestselling comic by Ennis and Robertson, The Boys, heading int its third season, is a fun and irreverent take on what happens when superheroes – who are as popular as celebrities, as influential as politicians and as revered as gods – abuse their superpowers rather than use them for good. It’s the powerless against the super-powerful as the Boys embark on a heroic quest to expose the truth about The Seven, and Vought – the multibillion-dollar conglomerate that manages these superheroes and covers up all of their dirty secrets.
Deadline has just revealed that John Wick creator/screenwriter Derek Kolstad is teaming-up with Amazon Studios to develop a live-action feature film based on the Japanese manga Hellsing from Kouta Hirano. An interesting take on the Dracula mythology seeing him joining The Hellsing Organization, a group that seemingly echos B.P.R.D. from the Hellboy comic books.
Written and illustrated by Kouta Hirano and published by Shōnen Gahōsha, Hellsing reimagines Dracula as Alucard, a special agent bound to The Hellsing Organization, under the leadership of Integra Hellsing, great-granddaughter of Abraham Van Hellsing, to aid them in their mission to protect England and the world from vampires, ghouls, and other supernatural threats. The manga also focuses on Hellsing’s newest recruit, a female ex-police officer named Seras Victoria.
Kolstad has been closely involved with the John Wick franchise along with writing the upcoming Bob Odenkirk action flick Nobody and was working on Marvel’s Disney+ series The Falcon & The Winter Soldier. He is also developing a Dungeons & Dragons live-action series for Hasbro/eOne as Paramount is moving forward with their own feature film remake.
Derek is excellent at world building which should be a huge asset for the Hellsing film.
Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse, or simply Without Remorse, is an upcoming American action thriller film directed by Stefano Sollima and written by Taylor Sheridan and Will Staples. It is based on the 1993 novel of the same name by Tom Clancy and a spin-off of the Jack Ryan film series. The film tells the origin story of John Kelly (aka John Clark), a U.S. Navy SEAL, who uncovers an international conspiracy while seeking justice for the murder of his pregnant wife by Russian soldiers. When Kelly joins forces with fellow SEAL Karen Greer and shadowy CIA agent Robert Ritter, the mission unwittingly exposes a covert plot that threatens to engulf the U.S. and Russia in an all-out war.
Expanding the Jack Ryan universe created by author Tom Clancy seems to be a priority to Paramount and Without Remorse will allow them to give John Clark a string of his own films. When Michael B. Jordan was originally cast in the John Clark role he was attached for their Rainbow Six movie as well.
There is also a possibility we might eventually see Jordan’s Clark and John Krasinski’s Jack Ryan eventually cross paths.
Without Remorse will debut April 30th on Amazon’s Prime Video.
Deadline is reporting that Paramount and Skydance are developing a television series for Amazon Prime Video that will focus on G.I. Joe operative Lady Jaye expanding upon the franchise. They’ve hired Erik Oleson, who was the Season 3 showrunner of Netflix’s Daredevil series, to write and showrun the streaming project.
The character appeared in Jon M. Chu’s G.I. Joe: Retaliation (an upgrade from G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra) and was previously played by John Wick actress Adrianne Palicki.
Paramount Pictures is rebooting the franchise with their upcoming film G.I. Joe: Snake Eyes with multiple new actors in key roles. In the origin film we’ll be seeing Henry Golding playing Snakes, Andrew Koji is Storm Shadow, Samara Weaving in the role of Scarlett, and Ursula Corbero is the the new Baroness. The assumption here would be that Lady Jaye would be getting a reboot and new actress as well.
A third G.I. Joe film has been in the works for ages now but when it will actually get made it’s a little unclear.
G.I. Joe is a Hasbro toyline that was rebranded with a cartoon series, animated film, and comic books published by Marvel Comics that led to two feature films with Snake Eyes set to reboot the franchise.
Yesterday, it was announced by Amazon Studios that Donald Glover would be reuniting with Phoebe Waller-Bridge for a series remake of the action-comedy Mr. & Mrs. Smith, the Doug Liman-directed flick that starred Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.
Phoebe and Donald previously worked together on the Lucasfilm prequel Solo: A Star Wars Story.
The new series from co-creator and showrunner Francesca Sloane is expected to debut on Amazon Prime Video in 2022.
MR. & MRS. SMITH – John (Brad Pitt) and Jane Smith (Angelina Jolie), a couple in a stagnating marriage, live a deceptively mundane existence. However, each has been hiding a secret from the other: they are assassins working for adversarial agencies. When they are both assigned to kill the same target, Benjamin Danz (Adam Brody), the truth comes to the surface. Finally free from their cover stories, they discover that they have been assigned to kill each other, sparking a series of explosive attacks.
No Time To Die wasn’t the only studio film to get a bump to later in the year as there were a wave of release changes yesterday. The COVID-19 pandemic doesn’t seem to be letting up over the spring or possibly the summer meaning that theatrical releases are going to be further delayed.
Here is a rundown of those releases changes that took place over the week.
Godzilla vs. Kong – March 26th, 2021 (moved up)
Nobody – April 2nd, 2021
BIOS – August 13th, 2021
The Many Saints of Newark – September 24th, 2021
No Time To Die – October 8th, 2021
Last Night In Soho – October 22nd, 2021
Antlers – October 29th, 2021
Ghostbusters: Afterlife – November 11th, 2021
Nightmare Alley – December 3rd, 2021
Morbius – January 21st, 2022
Uncharted – February 11th, 2022
Ambulance – February 18th, 2022
We’re likely to get more release date changes in the coming weeks as summer movies alongside other spring films might be getting pushed later in the year or to 2022. I wouldn’t be terribly shocked if we saw new dates for films such big films as Black Widow, Shang-Chi & The Legend of The Ten Rings, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Spider-Man 3, F9, The King’s Man, Top Gun: Maverick, Jungle Cruise and others.
I know people are going to assume that studios will simply throw these projects on streaming services, however, considering the large budgets involved they will be more interested in turning a profit than offloading the films from their slates, they are still businesses that need to generate revenue. Until we get those official announcements it seems a little premature to speculate which projects will end up on streaming as plenty of these releases escaped that fate in 2020 and might continue that in 2021.
I personally believe the best way to go is with reasonable prices for multiple digital renting and buying options along with great access to those choices. Having access to these films suck behind a paywall then given high price of $30 like with what Disney did with Mulan meant that Disney+ subscribers still had to pay a premium price alongside their monthly subscription. At the very least, they should have given a discount to subs asking for $10-20.
We’ll certainly update when further changes are announced.
A synopsis for The Lord of The Rings series posted by fansite The One Ring and confirmed by IGN doesn’t give us any hard plot details but has now given us two key locations the expensive Amazon project will explore within the Second Age of Middle-Earth.
Amazon had already confirmed that they would covering the island Kingdom of Numenor (Middle-Earth’s Atlantis) that eventually returns to the water after the inhabitants attempt a rebellion against the Elves/immortals sparked by the evil Sauron in his fair-form, a disciple of the original DarkLord Morgoth. Sauron embeds himself into the court after being captured and basically destroys Numenor from within leading to a Morgoth cult that included human sacrifices and turning the rulers/population against the Elves. The Numenoreans eventually made their way to the mainland and led the forces against Sauron at the end of The Second Age leading to the new Dark Lord losing the Ring of Power in defeat.
The two other locations for the show mentioned in the synopsis include the Elvish Kingdom of Lindon and Misty Mountains, the latter being where the Dwarf Kingdom of Khazad-dûm aka Moria that was explored in The Fellowship of The Ring and briefly shown in The Hobbit films. The Kingdom of Lindon was a place that was essentially abandoned by those Elves before the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of The Rings trilogy that took place in The Third Age.
Lindon included the Noldor and Sindar. The Noldor is the group of Elves that Celebrimbor belonged to, the Elvish Prince who helped forge the Eleven Rings of Power for Sauron in the Second Age and was seen in the Shadow of Mordor video games.
Here is that synopsis.
Amazon Studios’ forthcoming series brings to screens for the very first time the heroic legends of the fabled Second Age of Middle-earth’s history. This epic drama is set thousands of years before the events of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and will take viewers back to an era in which great powers were forged, kingdoms rose to glory and fell to ruin, unlikely heroes were tested, hope hung by the finest of threads, and the greatest villain that ever flowed from Tolkien’s pen threatened to cover all the world in darkness. Beginning in a time of relative peace, the series follows an ensemble cast of characters, both familiar and new, as they confront the long-feared re-emergence of evil to Middle-earth. From the darkest depths of the Misty Mountains, to the majestic forests of the elf-capital of Lindon, to the breathtaking island kingdom of Númenor, to the furthest reaches of the map, these kingdoms and characters will carve out legacies that live on long after they are gone.
These words about the Misty Mountains teasing the Mines of Moria which would suggest we’ll see those Durin Dwarves in the series (ancestors of Dwarves we’ve seen before in the Peter Jackson films), Lindon apparently had Dwarves among their population as well.
Filming is underway in Auckland, New Zealand.
The show’s massive cast includes actors Robert Aramayo, Owain Arthur, Nazanin Boniadi, Tom Budge, Morfydd Clark, Ismael Cruz Córdova, Ema Horvath, Markella Kavenagh, Joseph Mawle, Tyroe Muhafidin, Sophia Nomvete, Megan Richards, Dylan Smith, Charlie Vickers, Daniel Weyman, Lenny Henry, Peter Mullan (Trainspotting, Children of Men), Lloyd Owen, Augustus Prew, Peter Tait, Benjamin Walker (Heart of The Sea, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter), Cynthia Addai-Robinson (Arrow, Power), Simon Merrells, Maxim Baldry, Ian Blackburn, Kip Chapman, Anthony Crum, Maxine Cunliffe, Trystan Gravelle, Thusitha Jayasundera, Fabian McCallum, Geoff Morrell, Alex Tarrant, Leon Wadham, and Sara Zwangobani.
A report from Deadline is claiming that Amazon has now offered Skydance/Paramount a hefty $200 million to secure the rights to their upcoming sci-fi action film The TomorrowWar, which stars Guardians of The Galaxy and Jurassic World actor Chris Pratt.
Tonight, Amazon has aggressively offered $200M. The deal is still not done. Amazon recently bought Paramount’s Coming 2 America for $125M, which was set to debut during the year-end holiday corridor, and Skydance’s Without Remorse which was also set to get a theatrical release via Paramount this past autumn.
It was directed by The Lego Batman Movie‘s Chris McKay and we’re still waiting on more significant promotion materials from the film including a first-look trailer.
The film follows a man (played by Chris Pratt) who is drafted to fight a future war in which the fate of humanity relies on his ability to confront his past.
As pointed out by Deadline, this wouldn’t be the first film that Amazon has picked up from either studio which should give them an edge on other suitors at major streaming services alongside the hefty offer. They’re quick to point that this has yet to be accepted or finalized.
In all likelihood they’re moving quickly on securing a deal quickly, so that Amazon can piece together promo materials for the upcoming Super Bowl, normally a place where studios spend a lot of money to promote upcoming films. However, given the uncertainty of release dates we might end up seeing more spending from the streaming side this year.
Pratt recently completed work on Jurassic World: Dominion for Universal Pictures, has seemingly started or about to begin work in Sydney on Marvel’s Thor: Love & Thunder directed by Taika Waititi, and is set to return again as Star-Lord for James Gunn‘s Guardians of The Galaxy 3.
The Ronin has been able to confirm that Skydance/Amazon has hired French director Thomas Vincent to helm an undisclosed amount of episodes for their new Jack Reacher series starring Alan Ritchson (Titans, Ghosts of War). The Amazon series is a hard reboot of the character previously played by Tom Cruise in two feature films released by Paramount Pictures and based on the novels written by author Lee Child.
The first season is said to be an adaption of the novel The Killing Floor.
Jack Reacher comes to the little town of Margrave looking for information about the mysterious death of a guitar player named Blind Blake. Instead, he finds one of the largest counterfeiting operations in history.
Vincent is likely best known for directing the first three episodes of the hit Netflix series Bodyguard that was led by Richard Madden (Game of Thrones, Eternals).
BODYGUARD – Set in and around the corridors of power, Bodyguard tells the story of David Budd (Richard Madden), a heroic, but volatile war veteran now working as a Specialist Protection Officer for London’s Metropolitan Police Service. When he is assigned to protect the ambitious Home Secretary Julia Montague (Keeley Hawes), Budd finds himself torn between his duty and his beliefs. Responsible for her safety, could he become her biggest threat?
We previously reported that filming is expected to kick-off around mid-April in Toronto.
They’ve also hired production designer Patricio M. Farrell, who worked on The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor.
Skydance is also behind Amazon’s Jack Ryan series starring John Krasinski and developing an original spy series starring Arnold Schwarzenegger for Netflix.
Deadline is reporting that director George Clooney is looking to cast Ben Affleck (The Way Back, Gone Girl) is his next film as the actor is currently in negotiations to join the Amazon drama titled The Tender Bar. It’s unclear if Clooney will also take a role but the outlet suggests it’s a possibility.
Based on the J.R. Moehringer memoir about growing up in Long Island seeking out father figures among the patrons at his uncle’s bar, the film originally was set up Sony with Ted Melfi directing. When Melfi fell off, Sony put the film into turnaround, allowing Amazon to grab it.
Clooney latest directorial effort is the Netflix sci-fi film The Midnight Sky.
Affleck’s other recent projects include the erotic thriller Deep Water, Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel, and leading Robert Rodriguez’s crime thriller Hypnotic. The latter will see Affleck playing a detective that becomes entangled in a mystery involving his missing daughter and a secret government program, while investigating a string of impossible high-end heists.
THE RONIN 