Tag: Amazon

Posted on in Television News

Hugo Weaving Has Zero Interest In Joining Amazon’s ‘Lord of The Rings’ Series

It was recently revealed by Aussie actor Hugo Weaving that he was keen on returning to the Agent Smith role for Lana Wachowski’s Matrix 4, but the director ultimately decided against it. 

However, when it comes to being asked to reprise the role of Elrond in future Middle-Earth projects such as Amazon’s Lord of The Rings series set in during the Second Age, he has no interest according to comments made to Variety. 

WEAVING: “Matrix might have happened. But Lord of the Rings, no, I would never — I’m not interested in that at all. Look, I loved being in New Zealand with all those great people, and it was like going back to a family but actually, to be honest, I think everyone had more than enough of it.”

“They have to be something really interesting, with a different twist to make me really keen to do it.”

“I’m not saying ‘no’ [to those kinds of tentpole films] because I’m sort of open to anything,” he says. “But I suppose my interests have always lay with this country and trying to find really interesting projects out here. That’s my primary focus.”

His experience working on the Hobbit films and their outcome might have something to do with his stance. 

There had been some unconfirmed fan rumblings of his character returning for the Amazon series, but Hugo won’t be involved. 

SOURCE: VARIETY

Posted on in Television News

Alan Ritchson To Lead Amazon’s ‘Jack Reacher’ Series

Yesterday, it was announced by Amazon via Deadline that they’ve officially cast Alan Ritchson (Titans, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) as the new Jack Reacher for their Prime Video series, which will be a reboot of the Lee Childs hard-boiled character. Reacher is known to be a hulking figure at 6’5 (Ritchson is 6’4), so the casting seems to be great on paper, we’ll have to see if Amazon will have another Jack Ryan level hit on their hands. 

Its first season is said to be based on the novel The Killing Floor and will take place in Georgia. 

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.

The character had been previously played by action star Tom Cruise in Christopher McQuarrie’s Jack Reacher and the box office blunder Jack Reacher: Never Go Back. A casting choice that seemed to irk author Lee Childs in retrospect.  

I’m sure folks are going to be curious if a Jack Ryan and Jack Reacher crossover event could be in the cards given they’re both Paramount/Skydance characters with their own Amazon shows. 

Amazon has a bevy of shows based on novels on the way including Lord of The Rings and The Wheel of Time about to resume production after production pauses. They also announced plans in 2018 to make a series reboot of Robert E. Howard’s Conan The Barbarian, the film incarnation starred Arnold Schwarzenegger and is credited to launching his successful Hollywood career. 

SOURCE: DEADLINE

Posted on in Television News

‘The Boys’ Season 3 Officially Adds Jensen Ackles As Soldier Boy

Today, it was announced via Twitter that Supernatural actor Jensen Ackles has landed the role of Soldier Boy in the third season of Amazon’s mature superhero series The Boys.

The Boys is an 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 their formidable Vought backing.

Ackles made the announcement on the official account for the series in a cheeky video.

The news comes ahead of the Season 2 drop on Prime Video which will debut September 4th.

I’d totally recommend catching up with Season 1 before the new season drops if you haven’t already.

In a more intense, more desperate Season 2 of THE BOYS, Butcher, Hughie and the team reel from their losses in Season 1. On the run from the law, they struggle to fight back against the Superheroes. As Vought, the company that manages the heroes, cashes in on the panic over the threat of Supervillains, and a new hero, Stormfront, shakes up the company and challenges an already unstable Homelander.

SOURCE: AMAZON

Posted on in Television News

‘Fallout’ Series Officially Coming To Amazon – Produced By ‘Westworld’s Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan

Another high-concept and potentially expense series is coming to Amazon Prime Video.

Today, game developer Bethesda announced that they’re partnering with Amazon Studios and Kilter Films to bring to life a live-action series based on the beloved post-apocalypse video game franchise Fallout.

They’ve hired Westworld series co-creators and showrunners Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan to develop the show for the streaming service via Kilter Films and will act as producers. Nolan is also known as a screenwriter working on his brother Christopher Nolan’s films such as Interstellar, The Prestige, The Dark Knight, and The Dark Knight Rises.

Here is the press release.

Amazon Studios has licensed the rights to the worldwide best-selling game franchise Fallout, with acclaimed producers Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy’s Kilter Films attached to produce the project, currently in development with a series commitment.

The world of Fallout is one where the future envisioned by Americans in the late 1940s explodes upon itself through a nuclear war in 2077. The magic of the Fallout world is the harshness of the wasteland set against the previous generation’s utopian idea of a better world through nuclear energy. It is serious and harsh in tone, yet sprinkled with moments of ironic humor and B-movie-nuclear-fantasies.Fallout games have achieved record-setting sales and received hundreds of awards, including dozens of Game of the Year awards, while its mobile game, Fallout Shelter, has been downloaded more than 170 million times.

Fallout is from Amazon Studios and Kilter Films in association with Bethesda Game Studios and Bethesda Softworks, with executive producers Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, and Athena Wickham for Kilter Films, Todd Howard for Bethesda Game Studios, and James Altman for Bethesda Softworks.

The pair’s Kilter Films is also in pre-production on their series adaptation of the William Gibson cyberpunk novel The Peripheral.

Lisa Joy recently made her feature film directorial debut with her sci-fi thriller Reminiscence for Warner Bros. starring Hugh Jackman, Rebecca Ferguson, and Thandie Newton.

This is yet another high-profile series in development at Amazon Prime Video as they’re about to resume production on their fantasy shows such as The Lord of The Rings and The Wheel of Time.

If successful, I’m curious if Amazon Studios will also attempt to license the rights for Doom and Skyrim in the future to give those properties series adaptations as well.

SOURCE: BETHESDA

Posted on in Television News

Amazon’s ‘Lord of The Rings’ Series Might Resume Production In New Zealand Next Month

New Zealand’s Star News says that fellow Kiwi outlet, The New Zealand Herald, is reporting from an “insider” that production on Amazon’s billion-dollar Lord of The Rings series is expected to resume shooting next month. Filming had paused in mid-March due concerns of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Amazon’s giant Lord of the Rings shoot is set to resume in West Auckland next month, an insider earlier told the Herald.

The original story is behind a paywall.

It’s certainly believable they could begin next month as last week 20th Century Studios/Disney resumed filming on James Cameron’s Avatar sequels at Wellington’s Stone Street Studios. New Zealand is also in a better position to resume film and television productions than places like the United States. As America is still dealing with a prolonged first wave of coronavirus with staggering amounts of new cases popping up in various states like Texas.

Production on the Lord of The Rings series is expected to take place in Auckland.

It’s cast is said to include Robert Aramayo (Game of Thrones), Morfydd Clark, Ema Horvath, Joseph Mawle, Markella Kavenagh, Owain Arthur, Nazanin Boniadi, Tom Budge, Ismael Cruz Cordova (The Mandalorian), Tyroe Muhafidin, Sophia Nomevete, Megan Richards, Dylan Smith, Charlie Vickers, and Daniel Weyman. 

The new series is confirmed to take place during the Second Age of Middle-Earth which likely means the show could potentially follow the rise and fall of franchise baddie, Sauron. The Second Age is set thousands of years before the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of The Rings trilogy.

We’ll have to wait for official word from the show’s Twitter account that would likely be the place that an announcement is going to be made by Amazon about filming resuming.

SOURCE: THE NEW ZEALAND HERALD

Posted on in Film News

Michael Mann’s ‘Ferrari’ Speeding Forward With Hugh Jackman Playing Enzo Ferrari

Reporting out of the Cannes Virtual Market via Deadline has revealed that Michael Mann’s upcoming film Ferrari is now seeking distribution partners next week.

They’re also expected to begin shooting Ferrari by next spring.

The film will chart the summer of 1957 when all the forces in Ferrari’s life – which were often as combustible and volatile as the iconic race cars he built – collided. The now legendary car company he and his wife Laura built was at the time going broke. Their tempestuous marriage had already suffered the death of their son, Dino, and Ferrari’s other son, 12-year old Piero, the product of a wartime romance, was struggling to find his place in the world.

The entrepreneur rolled the dice for all their futures on one race – 1,000 miles across Italy, the brutal and infamous 1957 Mille Miglia. The film will be framed so that during the highly dangerous race, Laura discovers long kept secrets, we see opportunities rise and fade, and drivers, who are like surrogate sons, are pushed beyond the edge.

X-Men actor Hugh Jackman is currently in discussions to play the Enzo Ferrari role, but there isn’t word about who will play Laura.

They also reveal that Mann has reworked the script that was originally penned by Italian Job and Kelly’s Heroes screenwriter Troy Kennedy Martin, who passed in 2009. Michael has been trying to get the film made for almost two decades.

Ferrari’s resurgence certainly comes at the right time after James Mangold’s own racing biopic Ford v Ferrari from 2019 did okay at the box office and earned a handful of Oscar nominations including Best Picture. I’m sure both Mann and Jackman see the film as potential awards contender.

STX will distribute Ferrari in the UK and Ireland.

STX is now handling international sales and will directly distribute the film in the UK and Ireland. We understand Amazon is tying up a deal to bolster international with STX and has been integral in the process. CAA Media Finance arranged the financing and is repping domestic.

Mann was in the middle of shooting the pilot episode of HBO Max’s Tokyo Vice in Japan before the Coronavirus pandemic paused filming. Hugh Jackman most recently starred in the HBO film Bad Education and had wrapped on the Warner Bros. sci-fi thriller Reminiscence directed by Westworld’s Lisa Joy.

SOURCE: DEADLINE

Posted on in Television News

‘Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse’s Rodney Rothman Directing Live-Action ‘Promised Neverland’ Series For Amazon

 Amazon is tackling another interesting series adaptation with news today of them adapting a Japanese property for western audiences. It’s been announced via outlets like Variety that Amazon Studios, Fox 21 Television Studios, and Vertigo are moving forward with an English-langue live-action series adaptation of the manga The Promised Neverland. 

The manga is written by Kaiu Shirai and illustrated by Posuka Demizu. It is in it’s second season of an anime series in Japan as well. 

THE PROMISED NEVERLAND – A group of the smartest kids at a seemingly idyllic orphanage uncover its dark truth when they break a rule to never leave the orphanage grounds. Once the truth is discovered, they begin to plan an escape to save all of the children. 

Rodney Rothman, who co-directed the Oscar-winning animated film Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse will be helming the series with a script from Spider-Verse screenwriter Meghan Malloy.

I’m not familiar with the property but this certainly sounds interesting enough to be serialized. I’m curious how fans will react from a western adaption. 

SOURCE: VARIETY

Posted on in Television News

Amazon Developing Lisbeth Salander Standalone Series

Earlier in the week it was reported by Variety that Amazon will be developing a standalone series focusing on Swedish literary heroine Lisbeth Salander best known from the Sony Pictures thrillers The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and The Girl In The Spider’s Web.

Originally, the novels from author Stieg Larsson were adapted as a trilogy of Swedish films.

The new streaming series from Amazon is said to take Salander in a new direction giving her new stories and characters to interact with, hence the “standalone” aspect. Unlike her other live-action counterparts this won’t be an adaption of existing novels.

Amazon and Left Bank Pictures will produce the series in association with Sony Pictures Television.

It sounds like the show is in very early stages as a showrunner or writers weren’t named in the report.

Lisbeth is one of the more complex female protagonists as she is an investigator, hacker, and vigilante that happens to get herself caught-up in the grim underworld of serial killers, international human trafficking, and corporate espionage.

The role has been previously played by Noomi Rapace, Rooney Mara, and Claire Foy. Mara ended up landing a Best Actress Oscar nomination for the David Fincher incarnation of Lisbeth.

Who exactly is playing her in this new version in currently unknown.

SOURCE: VARIETY