Tag: Cary Joji Fukunaga

Posted on in Television News

Cary Fukunaga Announces WWII Series ‘Masters of The Air’ Has Started Filming In London – Produced By Tom Hanks & Steven Spielberg

Director Cary Fukunaga is going to be following-up his James Bond movie No Time To Die with a WWII series, titled Masters of The Air, for producers Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks at Apple TV+. As you would expect the project is considered a sequel to previous HBO series Band of Brothers and The Pacific, except this time the series will be exploring the airmen of the war.

The filmmaker has announced on his Instagram account that they’ve completed the first week of filming in London under the working title of Whirlwind with cinematographer Adam Arkapaw. I can confirm they’ve also hired production designer Chris Seagers (Alien: Covenant, X-Men: First Class), who recently worked with Ridley Scott on the TNT/HBO Max series Raised By Wolves.

The series is based on the novel by Donald L. Miller with a cast that consists of Anthony Boyle as Major Crosby, Austin Butler as Major Gale Cleven, Raffery Law as Sgt. Ken Lemmons, Nate Mann as Major Rosie Rosenthal, Callum Turner as Major John Egan, and James Murray as Colonel Chic Harding.

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. 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 Fukunaga as mentioned before is coming-off the massive production on Daniel Craig’s final outing as 007 in No Time To Die with other credits that includes True Detective, Beasts of No Nation, Maniac, Jane Eyre, and Sin Nombre.

SOURCE: CARY FUKUNAGA

Posted on in Film News

‘No Time To Die’ Director Cary Joji Fukunaga Tackling Cyberpunk With ‘Tokyo Ghost’ Movie For Legendary

Director Cary Joji Fukunaga has joined the world of massive studio blockbusters with the upcoming James Bond release No Time To Die, the final film of the Daniel Craig era and the studio now looks to find a new actor. The filmmakers seemingly itching to tackle more genre IP as he’s set to direct a feature film adaptation of an Image Comics property.

Yesterday, The Hollywood Reporter revealed that Legendary Entertainment has tapped Fukunaga to tackle a film based on their cyberpunk comic Tokyo Ghost.

Tokyo Ghost is set in 2089 when humanity has become fully addicted to technology as an escape from reality. The story follows peacekeepers Debbie Decay and Led Dent, who are working in the Isles of Los Angeles and are given a job that will take them to the last tech-free country on Earth: the garden nation of Tokyo.

The comic’s writer Rick Remender (Deadly Class, Fear Agent) will be writing the script.

Western cyberpunk films such as The Matrix, RoboCop, Blade Runner/Blade Runner 2049, Upgrade, and Total Recall have had varying levels of success. However, there has been a bit of hiccup with Hollywood attempts to adapt Japanese entries such as the Scarlett Johansson box office flop Ghost In The Shell and Warner Bros. has spent almost twenty years trying to make a movie based on the manga Akira.

Tokyo Ghost being from an western comic book might have an easier time being translated to the big screen. Audiences are also newly aware of the genre thanks to the recent video game Cyberpunk 2077. It’ll be interesting to see how they tackle this adaptation visually as the artwork from the comic would be certainly jarring to general film audiences.

Cary is also set to direct episodes of the Apple TV+ series Masters of The Air, the WWII project is produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks. Considered to be a follow-up to their previous shows Band of Brothers and The Pacific as HBO passed and Apple grabbed it.

No Time To Die will be released in October.

SOURCE: THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

Posted on in Television News

‘Band of Brothers’ Follow-Up WWII Series ‘Masters of The Air’ Casts Austin Butler & Callum Turner

Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg previously were behind HBO’s WWII series Band of Brothers and The Pacific about American soldiers that fought in European and Pacific campaigns. They’re currently working on a new show, Masters of The Air, that HBO passed on and landed at Apple TV+. An adaption of the novel from Donald L. Miller that focuses on bomber pilots aka bomber boys, which will be written by John Orloff and Graham Yost.

The Hollywood Reporter has revealed that Once Upon A Time In Hollywood’s Austin Bulter and Fantastic Beasts 2 actor Callum Turner. They have landed the roles of Maj. Gale Cleven and Maj. John Egan.

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. 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.

According to a report from Deadline from October, No Time To Die director Cary Joji Fukunaga is attached to tackle episodes. Also, I can confirm that Alien: Covenant and Raised By Wolves production designer Chris Seagers is going to be working on the series.

SOURCE: THE HOLLYWOOD STUDIOS

Posted on in Film News

‘No Time To Die’ Expected To Get Another Release Delay

We’ve been waiting almost a full year to finally get to watch the final Daniel Craig outing as James Bond, however, No Time To Die has moved it’s official release date twice already and it looks like there might be another release hiccup on the way. According to a small tidbit from Daily Mail reporter Baz Bamigboye (very reliable for Bond news) another delay for the action blockbuster is expected.

The actress plays an MI6 agent with a licence to kill in No Time To Die. But the 007 movie keeps being postponed. A release date was set for April 2. Expect it to shift again.

We’ll have to wait for official word from EON/MGM concerning No Time To Die‘s release delay.

This wouldn’t be terribly shocking as the pandemic is getting increasingly worse in both the United States and the United Kingdom, both top box office markets for the Bond franchise. There is also the less than speedy distribution and administration of the COVID-19 vaccines in North America. Delaying a couple of months into the summer or even November at this point seems like a foregone conclusion for it’s distributor to avoid a weak box office performance in April.

We have yet to hear about the fate of other movies in the spring but there could be a move from studios to either push releases to later in the year, further offload to streaming services or quickly put together PVOD options for consumers. It seems tougher to find homes for these massive blockbusters given their budgets and projected profits.

Wonder Woman 1984 recently had an extremely tough time earning money at the domestic box office over the holiday season proving that releasing big films theatrically during the pandemic won’t magically create box office dollars even with large studio IP and franchises. It’s also worth mentioning that WarnerMedia’s streaming service HBO Max was a direct competitor with U.S. theaters via their day-and-date release model likely kneecapping those domestic numbers alongside online piracy, a symptom of early digital access.

How major studios and distributors will react to the pandemic in 2021 isn’t fully known at this point as we’re only in January. There are signs that WarnerMedia might pivot from dumping their entire 17 film lineup on HBO Max after backlash and potential lawsuits from Legendary, films like Dune may avoid the day-and-date model. If this extends to other big projects remains to be seen.

NO TIME TO DIE – Bond has left active service and is enjoying a tranquil life in Jamaica. His peace is short-lived when his old friend Felix Leiter from the CIA turns up asking for help. The mission to rescue a kidnapped scientist turns out to be far more treacherous than expected, leading Bond onto the trail of a mysterious villain armed with dangerous new technology. 

SOURCE: DAILY MAIL

Posted on in Film News

‘No Time To Die’ Director Cary Joji Fukunaga Interested In Making More Movies With The Next James Bond – Producers Also Keen For Reunion

While the final installment of the final Daniel Craig film in his era of the James Bond franchise with No Time To Die won’t be released until April 2nd, 2021, there is some possibly good news about director Cary Joji Fukunaga potentially returning in the future.

In the Wall Street Journal’s new No Time To Die coverage they were able to get some indication from both Cary and franchise producers that his return in the future could very well happen. They also mention he was courted by Disney for Marvel and Star Wars films.

Hypothetically speaking, Fukunaga would be interested in reuniting on another Bond film, or perhaps a series of films introducing the new 007.

In reality, though, Fukunaga’s future with Bond will depend on the film’s reception. 

FUKUNAGA: “I have never been able to predict how people react to something I’ve made. It could fly or completely fall. It doesn’t change how I view the film.”

Franchise producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson also had kind words for Cary suggesting they’d like to work with him again.

BROCCOLI: “He’s a perfectionist, but that’s what you want. He far exceeded anyone’s expectations. He’s made probably one of the best Bond films ever…. He’s delivered a film on an epic scale, but it also has a tremendous, tremendous intimacy…. It’s a classic Bond movie but also a Cary Fukunaga film.”

WILSON: “He’s certainly someone we’ll work with again.”

This wouldn’t be a strange concept as Martin Campbell directed both GoldenEye and Casino Royale, covering two eras of Bond.

Bond 26 is indeed in development as Phoebe Waller-Bridge was previously linked as writing the script after tackling rewrites on No Time To Die. There have been plenty of rumors concerning the next James Bond actor but nothing has been made official and remain to be rumor/speculation until producers make an announcement. It means we’ll have to endure many more casting rumors for the foreseeable future.

Cary is a busy gent as it was recently announced he will direct three episodes of the Apple TV+ series Maters of The Air, the WWII show produced by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg.

SOURCE: WALL STREET JOURNAL

Posted on in Television News

‘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