News Shotgun 8/13
- Bad Boys 3 gets an official title and release date: Will Smith and Martin Lawrence will be back on January 12, 2018 for Bad Boys For Life. This is the third release date the sequel has gotten and was originally going to come out in February 2017. The A-Team and The Grey director Joe Carnahan will be directing and Michael Bay will just be producing this time around.
- Han Solo movie looking for a young Lando Calrissian: Lord and Miller are apparently looking for someone to play a young Lando opposite Alden Ehrenreich and their first choice is supposedly Donald Glover, but nothing is official yet.
- Rocko’s Modern Life getting a TV movie on Nick: Rocko is joining Legends of the Hidden Temple and Hey Arnold with a movie return to Nick. Joe Murray, the show’s creator, is writing and co-directing the new hour long special that will most likely bring most of the wacky characters along with Rocko, although it’s not clear if all the original voice cast will return or when it will air.
- CW DCverse News: The Television Critics Association held a number of panels and press interviews in NYC over the last week and a bunch of news came out about the upcoming seasons of The CW’s DC universe. The biggest is that Dolph Lundgren will be a part of Arrow’s flashbacks this season, which will reveal Oliver’s time in Russia when he was in with the Bratva. They also revealed Lance Henriksen will be the JSA’s Obsidian on Legends of Tomorrow. There is also a new animated show on CW Seed called Freedom Fighters: The Ray, of which they only revealed that “The Ray” is a gay character. Finally there will be a Flash/Supergirl pair of crossover episodes that will be a musical, although why the characters would be breaking out in song was not revealed but hopefully it’s the Music Meister.
- Spider-Man: Homecoming adds The Tinkerer as a villain: Michael Chernus, from The Bourne Legacy and Orange is the New Black, will be playing the villain The Tinkerer in next year’s Spider-Man: Homecoming, joining the still not confirmed Vulture and it’s likely the Vulture’s flying suit will be created by The Tinkerer, as his role in the comics is to design tech for various Marvel villains.
- Aquaman villain most likely Black Manta: There’s talk that the villain of the upcoming Aquaman movie with his classic nemesis Black Manta but WB has not confirmed anything yet. Since the news came out, Michael K. Williams and Michael Jai White both expressed interest in playing the role.
- Jason Momoa may be the new Crow: Similar to how The Rock breaks news on Instagram, Jason Momoa posted a photo on his account with The Crow reboot director Corin Hardy that seemingly confirmed he would be the new Crow. The movie has seemed cursed, going through both directors and actors at an alarming rate.
- Ghostbusters sequel unlikely: After all the hubbub, the Ghostbusters reboot is winding down it’s theater run and will most likely lose Sony at least $70 million, so the chances of a sequel are slim to none. Sony may shift focus to an animated Ghostbusters movie that was announced in October last year.
- Ocean’s 8 cast gets more additions: Speaking of all female reboots, the new Ocean’s movie starring Sandra Bullock and Cate Blanchett is rounding out the heist team with Rihanna, Anne Hathaway, Helen Bonham Carter, Mindy Kaling and Awkwafina aka Nora Lum. Gary Ross, who directed the first Hunger Games movie and this summer’s Free State of Jones, is directing this new Ocean’s film.
- Star Wars Rebels gets a debut date: The third season of Disney XD’s great Star Wars series will arrive with a one hour premiere on September 24th. At Star Wars Celebration, Disney rocked the Internet by revealing that Grand Admiral Thrawn would be returning to Star War canon and he would be the villain of the third season of Rebels.
- New Girl and Brooklyn Nine-Nine crossing over next season: Worlds will collide when the cops of the Nine-Nine bump into the gang from New Girl in a two episode event. The event will occur in New York in Brooklyn, as it makes more sense for the New Girl group to be visiting New York than for the whole Nine-Nine to travel to Los Angeles. The crossover will occur on October 11th on Fox.
- Man of Steel sequel in active development at WB: Shocking no one, Superman will be recovering from his death soon and a proper solo sequel to Man of Steel is in development at Warner Bros. There’s pretty much no other info besides the fact that it’s coming.
- Hulu ends free streaming: Hulu became a fully paid subscription service this week, ending their free streaming of recent TV episodes on their website. You will now have to either pay for the $7.99 ad-supported plan or the $11.99 ad-free plan although there will be free content on Yahoo View, a video service that is a collaboration between Hulu and Yahoo that will have the last few episodes of shows that are also on Hulu.
- Another George RR Martin series in the works for TV: Although most famous for A Song of Ice and Fire, George RR Martin has another massive universe to his name with Wild Cards, a post apocalyptic mashup anthology series that he and other writers contribute stories to and is set in a universe where an alien virus hits Earth shortly after World War II, it kills 90% of infected humans, transforms another 9% of infected humans into horrific monsters and 1% gain incredible abilities. Martin isn’t directly involved because of his commitment to HBO and Game of Thrones but his assistant editor and co-runner of the Wild Cards universe, Melinda Snodgrass would most likely be at the helm of a TV series if it happens.
- Christopher Lambert joins Kickboxer: Retaliation: The Highlander himself will join the sequel to this year’s Kickboxer: Vengeance, playing a sleazy fight promoter who runs an illegal underground fight ring in Thailand and is pumping the movie’s villain, played by Game of Thrones’ Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson, full of steroids to make him the ultimate fighting machine.
- Dead Rising Triple Pack coming to current gen consoles: Dead Rising, Dead Rising 2 and Dead Rising 2: Off the Record are coming to the PS4 and Xbox One in September in both digital and physical form. The pack with all three games will be $59.49 but, at least on the PSN Store, you can preorder all three for $49.99.
- CBS Films developing a horror movie based on the Winchester House: CBS Films is looking to adapt the legendary story of Sarah Winchester and her obsession with making her house into a maze to trap all the ghosts she believed haunted her as revenge for being killed by the family’s guns and Helen Mirren will play Sarah Winchester with Predestination directors The Spierig Brothers set to direct. The movie seems like it will take the stance that there are actually ghosts, as it involves a skeptical psychiatrist who is sent to evaluate Winchester’s mindset and finds out she might not be so insane.
- Friday the 13th reboot may get a new director: The long in development reboot of Friday the 13th may be getting a new director to possibly get it moving again with The Crazies’ Breck Eisner. According to the last update given by producer Brad Fuller, the new movie would be an origin story for Jason Voorhees and his mother Pamela would be a major factor as well. It was originally going to be released in January of next year but that seems like a long shot.