The Electric State has new directors after Deadline reports that Andy Muschietti (IT, The Flash) has stepped aside as the film’s potential director due to scheduling conflicts with his upcoming Flash movie starring Ezra Miller. However, Andy and sister Barbara Muschietti will stay on as producers.
Producers Joe Russo and Anthony Russo will instead take up the role of directors on the sci-fi film that has been picked-up by Universal Pictures. The pair are best known for the directing a bunch of films for Marvel Studios such as the highest-grossing film Avengers: Endgame.
Adapting the graphic novel from Simon Stalenhag into a feature film script will be Marvel screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, who are also working with the directing duo’s massive Netflix film The Gray Man.
Set in an alternative future, it tells the story of a teenage girl (Millie Bobby Brown) who realizes that a strange but sweet robot who comes to her has actually been sent by her missing brother. She and the robot set out to find the brother in an imaginative world of humans mixing with all manner of robots, uncovering a grand conspiracy in the process.
Looking at the artwork from the graphic novel it’ll certainly have a unique visual style.
It’s unclear when The Electric State will begin shooting given that the Russo Brothers begin shooting The Gray Man next month in Long Beach, California and Millie is busy with the fourth season of Stranger Things.
It was announced not too long ago that Legendary Entertainment landed the film and television rights to the classic sci-fi hero Buck Rogers. Now, there is word from The Hollywood Reporter that Legendary has hired comic book and screenwriter Brian K. Vaughn (Lost, Y: The Last Man, Saga) to tackle a new television series.
Brian K. Vaughan, the comics author behind Y: The Last Man and Saga, has been tapped to pen Legendary’s television series adaptation of classic pulp hero Buck Rogers. Don Murphy and Susan Montford, whose credits include TransformersandReal Steel, will produce via their Angry Films banner along with Flint Dille, the grandson of the original Buck Rogers creator.
Rogers first appeared in a story titled Armageddon 2419 and published in a 1928 issue of pulp mainstay, Amazing Stories. Written by Philip Francis Nowlan, the story told of a man who is trapped in a coal mine during a cave-in, falls into suspended animation, and Rip Van Winkle-style, wakes up almost 500 years into the future. There, he is enlisted to help fight a war between several gangs in what was once America.
Where the show will land is up-in-the-air but most recently Dune spinoff series Dune: The Sisterhood is at HBO Max. However, there could be issues with working with WarnerMedia at the moment as Legendary is reportedly on the cusp of suing them over placing Dune and Godzilla vs Kong on HBO Max, something that the production company wasn’t consulted on after WarnerMedia blocked a $250 million offer from Netflix to secure Godzilla vs Kong.
They’re also said to be developing a film and anime series.
Lionsgate has finally dropped the first trailer for Doug Liman’s long-delayed science fiction film Chaos Walking which stars Spider-Man actor Tom Holland and Star Wars actress Daisy Ridley. The project has been having trouble finding a release date and the studio seems to want to keep it TBA in 2021 for the time being.
The trailer showcases the film’s interesting mix of science fiction like Oblivion meets a post-apocalypse western like The Last of Us, certainly looks to be action-packed alongside some choice visuals.
Liman is best known for the Tom Cruise film Edge of Tomorrow.
CHAOS WALKING – In the not too distant future, Todd Hewitt (Tom Holland) discovers Viola (Daisy Ridley), a mysterious girl who crash lands on his planet, where all the women have disappeared and the men are afflicted by “the Noise” – a force that puts all their thoughts on display. In this dangerous landscape, Viola’s life is threatened – and as Todd vows to protect her, he will have to discover his own inner power and unlock the planet’s dark secrets. From the director of The Bourne Identity and Edge of Tomorrow and based on the best-selling novel The Knife of Never Letting Go, Daisy Ridley and Tom Holland star with Mads Mikkelsen, Demián Bichir, Cynthia Erivo, Nick Jonas, Kurt Sutter, and David Oyelowo in Chaos Walking.
The Wrap reports that Legendary Entertainment has nabbed the movie rights to Buck Rogers and has partnered with Transformers producer Don Murphy via Angry Films.
The project is based on the “Armageddon 2419 A.D.” novella by Philip Francis Nowlan that introduced the Buck Rogers character in 1928. The story centers on a coal mine inspector who awakens from suspended animation after 500 years to find himself in the middle of a planetary war.
Buck Rogers has been adapted into various comic strips, a movie serial, radio and television shows. Developed by Chicago newspaperman John F. Dille in the 1930s, it immediately became one of the world’s most popular comic strips, read by millions daily in the newspapers all over the world. The strip was essentially Rip Van Winkle in the future in which a modern-day man wakes up 500 years in the future to a world that is no longer recognizable to him.
The popularity of Buck Rogers led to the creation of the more notable Flash Gordon (rights are at 20th Century Studios) and could easily be traced to the origins of Star Wars as well.
At one time, Sin City’s Frank Miller attempted to direct a feature film over ten years ago but when his film The Spirit tanked his involvement dissolved.
Legendary is behind the Monsterverse with Godzilla vs Kong set to be released next year along with Denis Villeneuve’s first installment of the Dune franchise. They have serious genre experience and could give new life to an aged property like Buck Rogers that has slipped from the consciousness of modern audiences.
Considering Legendary’s relationship with Warner Bros. there is a got shot it could land there for distribution.
Deadline reports that Get Out star Allison Williams will be reuniting with Blumhouse for a new technology horror film titled M3GAN. Williams will star as the lead character, Gemma, a brilliant robotics scientist.
She will produce alongside James Wan’s Atomic Monster as well.
Williams plays Gemma, a brilliant roboticist at a toy company. She uses artificial intelligence to develop M3GAN, a life-like doll programmed to be a kid’s greatest companion and a parent’s greatest ally. After unexpectedly gaining custody of her orphaned niece, Gemma enlists the help of the M3GAN prototype – a decision that has unimaginable consequences.
The project sounds interesting with a script penned by Akela Cooper (Malignant, The Nun 2, Luke Cage) based on a story by James Wan and will be directed by Gerard Johnstone (Housebound).
A while ago it was announced that Westworld’s Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan would be producing a brand new science fiction series The Peripheral, based on the William Gibson novel for Warner Bros. Television and Amazon Studios that will air on Prime Video with Scott B. Smith and Greg Plageman set to showrun.
Variety reports that Chloe Grace Moretz (Kick-Ass, Let Me In) has nabbed the role of Flynne Fisher in the show.
The series centers on Flynne Fisher (Moretz), a woman trying to hold together the pieces of her broken family in a forgotten corner of tomorrow’s America. Flynne is smart, ambitious and doomed. She has no future – until the future comes calling for her.
It’s certain one of the upcoming adaptations at Amazon I’m very interested in seeing come together.
William Gibson is credited as creating the cyberpunk genre as we know it starting with his seminal novel Neuromancer and his work has gone to influence things like The Matrix franchise, Altered Carbon, and the upcoming video game Cyberpunk 2077.
Chloe recently joined Miramax’s upcoming sci-fi flick Mother/ Android that will be written and directed by Mattson Tomlin (The Batman, Project Power).
Collider is reporting that Zac Efron has landed the role of Andy McGee in Blumhouse’s remake of the sci-fi action thriller Firestarter based on the Stephen King novel. Andy is the father of Charlie a young girl with telekinesis powers that include the ability to create fire out of thin air. Keith Thomas will direct a script penned by Halloween Kills screenwriter Scott Teems.
Zac Efron’s Netflix series Down To Earth turned heads when the actor revealed his “dad bod” which has led to him now playing dad roles.
The original 1984 film starred Drew Barrymore as Charlie.
Firestarter was a huge influence on the Netflix series Stranger Things.
Universal Pictures hasn’t given the film a release date.
FIRESTARTER – As youths, Andy McGee (David Keith) and his future wife, Vicky (Heather Locklear), participated in secret experiments, allowing themselves to be subjected to mysterious medical tests. Years later, the couple’s daughter, Charlie (Drew Barrymore), begins to exhibit the ability of setting fires solely with her mind. This volatile talent makes the youngster extremely dangerous and soon she becomes a target for the enigmatic agency known as “The Shop.”
Deadline has word that the New Zealand production of Amazon’s Lord of The Rings series has resumed and Netflix’s live-action Cowboy Bebop heading towards a start on September 30th, both series had been shooting in Auckland.
Filming has just resumed in New Zealand on Amazon’s sprawling The Lord Of The Rings TV series, an adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy novels, I have learned. Production on Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop is slated to restart on Wednesday, Sept. 30, in the island country where Netflix’s Sweet Tooth has been shooting since Sept. 14, sources said. The three shows were among handful of Hollywood TV series and movies that were granted border exemptions by the New Zealand government in July to film in the country.
The Lord of The Rings series will take place during The Second Age of Middle-Earth, which means this will be thousands of years before the events of two feature film trilogies that took place in The Third Age. It’s cast includes Robert Aramayo, Markella Kavenagh, Morfydd Clark, Ema Horvath, Ismael Cruz Cordova, Maxim Baldry, Nazanin Boniadi, and Joseph Mawle.
The Second Age sees the rise of Sauron, who has replaced Melkor aka Morgoth as the new Dark Lord after Morgoth is banished to the void. During this time Sauron creates the rings of power and uses them to destroy multiple ancient kingdoms leading to the battle scene in the prologue sequence from Lord of The Rings: The Fellowship of The Ring.
It’ll be interesting to see if we’ll end up seeing fair-faced version of Sauron and the origin of The Witch King, who might have been a Numenorean king of the ancient island kingdom. A key location that is going to be explored in the series.
Sadly, Amazon is tackling The Second Age because they don’t have access to The First Age, which is mostly covered in The Silmarillion and the History of Middle-Earth. This could lead to Amazon having to come up with a lot of that mythology on their own and filling blanks with the help of the Tolkien Estate. This series will likely be familiar to fans but will also likely be it’s own thing.
We are hearing they’ll be adding many familiar Middle-Earth creatures but remains to be seen if they’ll attempt to make the production design match the Peter Jackson films.
Deadline adding that writers have used the production pause to start writing Season 2 (previously confirmed) scripts which isn’t shocking it’s being planned as getting five seasons.
The writing team of the series, led by showrunners and executive producers J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay, used the time to map out and write Season 2 scripts.
Netflix had begun shooting the live-action Cowboy Bebop last fall and after a knee injury suffered by lead actor John Cho led to a hiatus in Auckland before the COVID-19 impacted global production. Resuming this week sounds is the first step for them to finally get this completed after a year of hiccups.
COWBOY BEOP – Based on the worldwide phenomenon from Sunrise Inc., Cowboy Bebop is the jazz-inspired, genre-bending story of Spike Spiegel, Jet Black, Faye Valentine and Radical Ed: a rag-tag crew of bounty hunters on the run from their pasts as they hunt down the solar system’s most dangerous criminals. They’ll even save the world…for the right price.
This news comes after James Cameron recently confirmed to Arnold Schwarzenegger that they’ve completed live-action filming on Avatar 2 and is 95% completed on Avatar 3. Those two massive sequels had been shooting at Stone Street Studios in Wellington, New Zealand.
Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series of novels are considered some of the best examples of the science fiction genre and is getting a series adaptation at Apple TV+ that will begin airing in 2021.
Check out the upcoming show’s teaser trailer below.
Based on the award-winning novels by Isaac Asimov, Foundation chronicles a band of exiles on their monumental journey to save humanity and rebuild civilization amid the fall of the Galactic Empire
Before there was a show, director Roland Emmerich (Stargate, Independence Day) attempted to make a feature film version for Sony Pictures that ultimately didn’t come together.
Production designer Oliver Scholl has posted a bunch of Foundation concept artwork on his website that was created between 2010-2011.
Scholl’s credits as a production designer include Venom, Edge of Tomorrow, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Independence Day, Godzilla 1998, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., and Suicide Squad. He also worked in the art department on sci-fi films such as Stargate, Mission To Mars, Titan A.E., and A.I. Artificial Intelligence.
The artwork certainly has a scale that we’re not really used to from Roland and does have an Avatar feel to it.
Artwork by Manuel Plank, James Clyne, Steve Burg, The Aaron Sims Company, with the help of Michael Meier, Oliver Scholl
Raised By Wolves is officially getting a second season!
WarnerMedia and HBO Max has announced they have renewed the Ridley Scott produced science fiction series for a second season and has been revealed as the “top-performing” original programming on the platform, suggesting that it’s the most popular original they have currently on the streaming service.
Below is the announcement from the official press release.
After a striking debut on the streamer as the #1 performing Max original since the platform’s launch, HBO Max has ordered a second season of Raised by Wolves, a serialized sci-fi series from master storyteller and filmmaker Ridley Scott (The Martian, Gladiator, Alien), which has immersed fans into the rich, intricate world of Kepler 22-b. The series, which debuted with three episodes on Sept. 3, has continued to be a strong performer in its second week on the platform, growing its audience by nearly 50% week over week.
Raised by Wolves centers on two androids tasked with raising human children on a mysterious virgin planet. As the burgeoning colony of humans threatens to be torn apart by religious differences, the androids learn that controlling the beliefs of humans is a treacherous and difficult task.
This is excellent news for fans like myself who had been curious if the show would get more than a single season. It’s worth noting that the cast are committed to multiple seasons of the show beyond Season 2, so there is the good chance we could get up to Season 4-5 given how the actor’s contracts are written.
Kind of a stroke of luck for HBO Max given that the series was originally going air on TNT.
THE RONIN 