News Around the Net!

I am probably way too excited for the upcoming Deadpool & Wolverine.  This latest trailer hits all the right buttons for me:

(I love seeing the 20th Century Fox logo in the place where abandoned universes go to die, as seen in Loki.  I love seeing Cassandra Nova as the villain.  I love that she’s apparently hanging out inside the corpse of Ant Man/Giant Man.  Are Logan and Deadpool jumping into the MCU at the end?  I can’t wait for this!!)

Here’s our first clip at Francis Ford Coppola’s long-in-the-works Megalopolis:

I’m not blown away by that.  The special effects are a bit wonky.  (The reflections on the windows behind Adam Driver look particularly fake.)  Still, I am excited to see this someday!  Mr. Coppola has been talking about this for years.

This is delightfully weird: Wes Anderson directed this Montblanc commercial, which features a new pen that he himself designed:

This short film is a terrific promotional piece for Jerry Seinfeld’s Unfrosted.  (Click here for my review of Unfrosted.)  This video features several Seinfeld characters and a great Friends joke.

Here’s a second trailer for The Acolyte, and I think this looks terrific:

Here’s a trailer for Ron Howard’s Jim Henson documentary Idea Man:

That looks beautiful, I can’t wait to see it!

On the other hand, I see little to get excited about in this trailer for The Lion King: Mufasa:

I liked Jon Favreau’s 2019 version of The Lion King, but in general I don’t think any of Disney’s live-action and CGI versions of their classic animated films have much if any reason to exist.  And I generally dislike prequels.  So that’s not a combination that I find exciting…

The Bear is returning for season three in June!!  Here’s a teaser.  I can’t wait!

Wow, this came as a surprise to me: Peter Jackson (along with his collaborators Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens) is working on two new Lord of the Rings films.  The first is called The Hunt for Gollum, and it will star and be directed by Andy Serkis.  The plot description reminds me of something Mr. Jackson talked about a lot back when they working on the adaptations of The Hobbit — that there could be a bridging film set between the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, about Aragorn hunting for Gollum and other events that are part of the Lord of the Rings backstory.  That always sounded like a cool idea to me!  I’d love to see that.  I’m a defender of The Hobbit films, but there’s no question that they didn’t live up to the greatness of the Lord of the Rings films.  And so much time has passed — could it work to go back to this well?  Is Viggo Mortensen too old to play Aragorn?  But I have faith in Andy Serkis and especially in Peter Jackson.  (And having read a lot about the making of The Hobbit films, I think it’s clear that the main reason those films were wobbly was the incredibly rushed pre-production.  They started filming into without having solidified the scripts, because they were rushing to meet a release date.  That’s never a good idea.)

Speaking of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films, I was sad to read the news of the passing of Bernard Hill, who was of course spectacularly memorable as “Theoden King”.  He was also great in Titanic.

This is also a nice time to mention that the Extended Editions of the Lord of the Rings films will be coming to theaters this summer!  I hope I can find time in my schedule to get to one of these screenings!  (Back in 2003, I did see the Extended Editions of The Fellowship of The Ring and The Two Towers in theaters, followed by the premiere of The Return of the King, and it was an amazing day.)

There have been rumors for a while that a spin-off of The Office was in the works.  It’s looking real now, as a spin-off is officially underway, overseen by Greg Daniels and starring Domhnall Gleeson (Ex Machina, Star Wars: The Force Awakens) and Sabrina Impacciatore (The White Lotus).  Will this be any good?  The American version of The Office was fantastic for its first five or so years.  It way overstayed its welcome, but I have a decent amount of faith in Greg Daniels, and I’m curious to see what they’re cooking up.

We recently got our first glimpse of David Corenswet in full costume as Superman in James Gunn’s upcoming film.  It looks… OK!  I’m surprised but not unhappy to see the classic red shorts.  The colors are subdued, but they work for me.  I like seeing the Kingdom Come more stylized version of the “S”.  After the dour Zack Snyder films, I’m hoping for a more classic, upbeat version of Superman, so it’s a little bit of a bummer to me that he’s not smiling in the photo.  The biggest problem with the photo is the weird way his suit is bunching up at the shoulders — it makes the costume look fake to me.  I hope it looks better in motion in the film.

I’m really hoping Marvel’s upcoming Fantastic Four film is good!  I’m intrigued by the recent news that John Malkovich has joined the cast!  I wonder who he’s playing?  I’m also excited by the announcement that Paul Walter Hauser is a part of the cast as well!  (I enjoyed Mr. Hauser’s work last year in The Afterparty season 2.)

Mr. Hauser is also apparently involved in a reboot of The Naked Gun.  I’m game for that!

Getting back to Fantastic Four, Ralph Ineson (Game of Thrones, The Creator) is apparently playing Galactus??  I am intrigued!

I miss the “golden age” of Star Trek fan films from 5-10 years ago, before Paramount squashed them with their terrible lawsuit.  This is a fun story of how Doug Drexler — an incredible designer who has a long history with Star Trek — briefly got into hot water for his involvement with the early films of James Cawley and his Star Trek: New Voyages project.

Speaking of Star Trek, I am very, very bummed to hear that the animated Star Trek: Lower Decks — a bright light among the mostly awful modern Star Trek shows — will be ending with next year’s fifth season.  I’m sad they’re not getting the seven-year run they’d hoped for.  That stinks.

I’m also bummed to read that Quentin Tarantino has apparently decided not to move forward with The Movie Critic as his planned next film.  (Mr. Tarantino has worked on several projects in the last few years that didn’t come to fruition.  Is he putting too much pressure on himself to pick the perfect final film?  Why does his next film have to be his final film?  I don’t want to see him stop writing & directing films with his next film!)

Matthew Vaughn has been talking about making a reboot of Kick-Ass, and he’s described the film The Stuntman, which he’s producing, as being set in the rebooted Kick-Ass universe.  I’m curious to see what that all means.  (I love that first Kick-Ass film; it’s great as-is, I don’t feel the need for a reboot…)

It looks like they’re really making another Game of Thrones spin-off show: A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.  I’m curious to see what this is all about.  (I haven’t read any of the Dunk and Egg stories…)

This is a nice article about Madge Sinclair, who had a small role in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home as a starship captain — notable because she was both a woman and a person of color.

Edgar Wright is making a remake of The Running Man?  Ok, I’m intrigued…!  That’s not a combination I would have expected.

They’re apparently planning on making a G.I. Joe and Transformers crossover movie.  That could be fun.  I’d be more excited if I didn’t think the modern film versions of both of those franchises were such garbage.  But as a kid in the eighties, I deeply loved both cartoons.  And I loved that both the Transformers and G.I. Joe were incorporated into the Marvel comics universe in their comic book series in the eighties!!  Strangely, decades later, I’m again reading both G.I. Joe and Transformers comics in Robert Kirkman (Invincible)’s new “Energon Universe” rebooted universe, which has found beautifully surprising and entertaining ways to relaunch both franchises and also find lots of ways to connect them.  Will a crossover movie be any good?  I highly doubt it.  But my inner child is excited.

This is a surprise: years after The Night Manager mini-series was released, it’s being brought back for a second season!  I quite enjoyed the original mini-series, and with Tom Hiddleston and Hugh Laurie both returning, I’m very interested to see what they’re planning.  I hope they bring back the rest of the original’s excellent supporting cast — especially Olivia Colman!!

I enjoyed Netflix’s live-action reboot of Avatar: The Last Airbender, but I’m very happy that the planned animated films, set in the original show’s continuity and overseen by the original show’s creators Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, are moving forward, with Dave Bautista announced as one of the voice actors!

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