Tag: Overlord

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‘The Marvels’ Enlists ‘Doctor Strange 2’ & ‘Overlord’ Stunt Coordinator Jo McLaren

Director Nia DaCosta is hard at work in the United Kingdom with the Captain Marvel sequel, The Marvels, that stars Brie Larson as Carol Danvers, Teyonah Parris as Monica Rambeau, Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, and newcomer Iman Vellani as Kamala Khan (to debut in the Ms. Marvel series).

While most of the film’s crew has been revealed, The Ronin can confirm that the film’s stunt coordinator will be Jo McLaren. The veteran stunt woman recently worked with Marvel and director Sam Raimi on Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness. McLaren was also the stunt coordinator on Bad Robot’s WWII horror action pic Overlord alongside Alex Garland’s sci-fi film Annihilation and his tech thriller series DEVS.

We first revealed that James Gunn has hired Hawkeye’s stunt coordinator Heidi Moneymaker for Guardians of The Galaxy Vol.3, which will begin shooting next month if the IATSE strike can be avoided next week.

New additions to the cast are expected to include Zawe Ashton set to play a villain and Park Seo-Joon (Parasite) also is said to have a role.

Plot details on the pic are scarce, but there is an expectation that there will be cross-pollination between the casts of The Marvels and the Skull event series Secret Invasion, this was highlighted when Samuel L. Jackson shot his scenes for the film before announcing today on Instagram he’s starting shooting the Disney+ show.

Filming will mainly shoot at Longcross Studios in Surrey, England with a production team that has cinematographer Sean Bobbitt (Widows, Judas & The Black Messiah) and production designer Cara Brower (Candyman). However, we learned not too long ago that some sequences will be shot at Pinewood Studios UK, likely related to The Volume/StageCraft facilities.

The original film earned an impressive $1.128 billion at the global box office making it one of the most successful superhero debut films of all-time.

It’ll be interesting to see if Disney+ Day on November 12 will reveal any spinoffs connected to the cosmic side of the MCU or if they’ll announce a Season 2 commitment for Ms. Marvel.

The Marvels has a release date of November 11, 2022.

Posted on in Film News

‘Doctor Strange 2’ Stunt Coordinator Team Includes ‘Overlord’s Jo McLaren & ‘Mission: Impossible – Fallout’s Liang Yang

Director Sam Raimi is returning to the world of Marvel Comics films with Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness, which has wrapped filming at Longcross Studios in Surrey, England. Raimi’s Spider-Man movies alongside Blade and X-Men helped launch the popularity of the characters leading to the formation of the Marvel Cinematic Universe at Marvel Studios. 

One of the interesting elements of the production are the folks assembled to handle the action in the Doctor Strange sequel. The team of stunt coordinators consists of seasoned vets such as Jo McLaren and Brycen Counts, with Liang Yang taking the role of fight coordinator. Their combined knowledge and vast credits in the stunt community should give the sequel a bit of an elevated edge when it comes to action sequences. 

McLaren did stunt double work for Angelina Jolie in the original Tomb Raider movies before rising up the ranks working as a stunt coordinator on things like the J.J. Abrams-produced WWII horror film Overlord, Annihilation, Enola Holmes, The Favourite, Doctor Who, and the Alex Garland tech-thriller series Devs. 

In December 2019, McLaren confirmed her involvement with the sequel during an interview with FanSided. 

Brycen Counts has the most experience with Marvel Studios as he was the assistant stunt coordinator on Spider-Man: Homecoming, Spider-Man: Far From Home, Ant-Man & The Wasp, and did additional work on Black Panther. He was recently the stunt coordinator on Charlize Theron’s hit comic book film The Old Guard at Netflix. 

Yang (Morbius, Wonder Woman 1984) is likely more recognizable out of the trio thanks to his standout on-camera scene in Christopher McQuarrie’s Mission: Impossible – Fallout where he beats the stuffing out of both Tom Cruise and Henry Cavill during the big Paris bathroom fight scene. He also was Emily Blunt’s stunt double on Edge of Tomorrow alongside working on big action sequences for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and Star Wars: The Last Jedi. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3HMz25LvnY

Marvel has been hiring some impressive stunt people lately such as Olivier Schneider (No Time To Die, Taken, Spectre, Fast & Furious 6) for Oscar Isaac’s Moon Knight series, which is filming in Budapest.

Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness will hit screens on March 25, 2022, and we’ll likely have the first trailer by the fall. 

Posted on in Film News

Quentin Tarantino Reveals He Was Offered A Chance To Remake Sci-Fi Thriller ‘Westworld’ With A Script From ‘Overlord’s Billy Ray

Quentin Tarantino spoke to The Big Picture Podcast (via The Playlist) to promote his novelization of Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. During that chat, the filmmaker revealing that around the time of his Grindhouse double-feature experiment (Death Proof and Planet Terror) flopped at the box office he was offered a couple of IP projects such as DC Comics film Sgt. Rock and Westworld remake that was being written by Billy Ray. The latter would have been Tarantino’s first entry into the sci-fi genre before attempting to get a Star Trek film together with the help of Mark L. Smith (The Revenant).

If you’re not familiar with Westworld, it was an original film that was released back in 1973 and was written/directed by author Michael Crichton, who is best known as the writer of Jurassic Park and The Lost World. It focuses on a futuristic theme park with realistic robots that exist to be killed and screwed by guests, that’s until the robots malfunction and start killing their human guests.

Westworld is a futuristic theme park where paying guests can pretend to be gunslingers in an artificial Wild West populated by androids. After paying a sizable entrance fee, Blane (James Brolin) and Martin (Richard Benjamin) are determined to unwind by hitting the saloons and shooting off their guns. But when the system goes haywire and Blane is killed in a duel with a robotic gunslinger (Yul Brynner), Martin’s escapist fantasy suddenly takes on a grim reality.

The project eventually was remade at HBO as a series from Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, it’s heading into it’s fourth season.

Billy Ray is certainly a competent screenwriter with credits such as The Comey Rule, Richard Jewell, Terminator: Dark Fate, Gemini Man, Captain Phillips, The Hunger Games, State of Play, and the Bad Robot WWII horror movie Overlord.

Quentin Tarantino plans on retiring from feature film directing after making his 10th movie, but has yet to announce that will be and has working on a Bounty Law mini-series that will likely be next for him.

SOURCE: THE BIG PICTURE PODCAST

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EXCLUSIVE: Daisy Ridley Thriller ‘The Marsh King’s Daughter’ Adds ‘Sunshine’ & ‘Hanna’ Cinematographer Alwin Küchler

The Ronin can confirm that German cinematographer Alwin Küchler has joined the upcoming Neil Burger-directed thriller The Marsh King’s Daughter. The pic begins shooting this month in Toronto with Star Wars actors Daisy Ridley and Ben Mendelsohn (Animal Kingdom, Killing Them Softly) taking main roles.

Helena Pelletier has a loving husband, two beautiful daughters, and a business that fills her days. But she also has a secret: she is the product of an abduction. Her mother was kidnapped as a teenager by her father and kept in a remote cabin in the marshlands of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Helena, born two years after the abduction, loved her home in nature, and despite her father’s sometimes brutal behavior, she loved him, too…until she learned precisely how savage he could be. More than twenty years later, she has buried her past so soundly that even her husband doesn’t know the truth. But now her father has killed two guards, escaped from prison, and disappeared into the marsh. The police begin a manhunt, but Helena knows they don’t stand a chance. Knows that only one person has the skills to find the survivalist the world calls the Marsh King–because only one person was ever trained by him: his daughter. 

His feature film credits include Joe Wright’s Hanna, Neil Burger’s Divergent, Danny Boyle films Sunshine and Steve Jobs alongside additional photography for Netflix’s Project Power. Alwin recently worked on the MARV Films’ video game development biopic Tetris directed by Jon S. Baird (Filth) and stars Taron Edgerton (Rocketman, Eddie The Eagle, Kingsman 1-2).

Writers Mark L. Smith (Overlord, The Revenant, The Midnight Sky) and Elle Smith adapted the Karen Dionne novel for the screen. Mark was also working with Quentin Tarantino to develop a Star Wars film for Paramount that seemingly has stalled.

Mendelsohn will reprise his Marvel Cinematic Universe role, Talos, in the Disney+ series Secret Invasion. The Marvel sci-fi show will focus on the shape-shifting Skrulls replacing superheroes as the aliens attempt to invade Earth. It’s possible he’ll also appear in Nia DaCosta’s Captain Marvel sequel, The Marvels.

A release date for The Marsh King’s Daughter hasn’t been set.

Posted on in Film News

‘Star Trek’: Screenwriter Mark L. Smith Talks Quentin Tarantino Project and Seemingly Confirms Captain Kirk’s Involvement

When news hit that Paramount Pictures would be rethinking the Star Trek franchise placing Noah Hawley’s Star Trek 4 on pause it was revealed by Deadline that the Quentin Tarantino project penned by Mark L. Smith (The Revenant, Overlord, The Midnight Sky) may have been influenced by a classic Star Trek episode titled “A Piece of The Action” that featured a 1930s gangster setting.

Tarantino dropped out as director, but the project is still viable based on an episode of the classic Star Trek series that takes place largely earthbound in a 30s gangster setting — might serve the franchise best as Logan-like spinoffs when the core franchise has been revitalized. 

SFX Magazine (via Games Radar) spoke with Mark L. Smith and he certainly indicated that Captain Kirk would have been part of it. We have to assume they would have wanted Chris Pine back in that role given Tarantino’s previous supportive comments on Pine.

SMITH: “I wrote a Star Trek with Tarantino, and that was a sci-fi script on which I could have fun and lean into some bigger, broader things. Kirk is always just so fun. Tarantino and I had so much fun with him, because Kirk is just William Shatner, y’know? It’s like: you’re not sure who is who, so you can kinda lean into that. Because you watch Chris Pine and he’s playing Kirk, but he’s also playing William Shatner a touch.”

How Paramount moves forward with the franchise is a little unclear as Star Trek 4 isn’t happening anytime soon and the studio seems to be more keen to grind-out various television shows for it’s streaming service. Tarantino also has been public that he is going to be working on books and is prepping a television series of Bounty Law as well.

SOURCE: SFX MAGAZINE

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‘Van Helsing’: New Movie Coming From ‘Overlord’ Director Julius Avery and ‘Black Widow’ Screenwriter Eric Pearson – James Wan Producing

At one time, Universal Pictures tried to develop a new film focusing on the famous monster hunter Van Helsing with director Guillermo del Toro and Tom Cruise starring. The character best known as the nemesis of Count Dracula in multiple installments from Hammer Films played by Star Wars actor Peter Cushing. More recently played by Anthony Hopkins in Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula from 1992 and Hugh Jackman in the less scary Van Helsing adventure film from 2004.

Back in 2015, Universal then attempted to developed another reboot from screenwriters Jon Spaihts (Dune, Prometheus) and Eric Heisserer (Bloodshot, Arrival, Lights Out). This took place when the studio was assembling their Universal Monsters franchise called Dark Universe, which crumbled after the misstep of The Mummy reboot starring Tom Cruise flopped at the box office.

Deadline has an update on the project that will see James Wan’s production company Atomic Monster getting involved along with Overlord director Julius Avery now attached for the horror reboot. They also mention that a new script was penned by Eric Pearson (Black Widow, Thor: Ragnarok, Godzilla vs Kong, Agent Carter) that will now get rewrites from Avery.

Julius had once been attached to direct a reboot of Flash Gordon for 20th Century before the the merger with Disney led to the project’s demise.

Fellow Australian director Leigh Whannell (Upgrade) was tapped to reboot The Invisible Man with help from Blumhouse Productions and is now working on a new Wolfman movie that will star Ryan Gosling (Blade Runner 2049, Drive). There is a Dracula movie in the works from director Karyn Kusama (Jennifer’s Body, Destroyer) with other more comedic projects in various stages of development.

They had also been trying to reboot both Bride of Frankenstein and Creature From The Black Lagoon.

It’ll be interesting to see if Universal will want to make an R-rated film given the graphic nature of vampires to begin with and making PG-13 movies with vampires tend to be toothless concerning the horror angle being hindered without the use of blood/gore. I’m slightly curious if Avery’s film will be connected to Karyn’s Dracula film.

SOURCE: DEADLINE