News Shotgun 10/13
- Iron Fist canceled by Netflix: After what was mostly considered a hugely improved second season, Netflix has still decided to make Iron Fist the first casualty of their Marvel shows and it will not get a third season. The character could still potentially show up on other Defender shows or potentially on the Disney Play streaming service.
- NBC developing Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter spin-off series: Most people probably forgot that the movie based on the book Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter even came out but NBC is dipping back into that well for a spin-off following the character of Henry Sturges, Lincoln’s vampire ally who battles evil vampires for centuries. The Last American Vampire seems like it will lose all the interesting historical stuff though and be a generic supernatural procedural where Sturges teams with a young FBI agent to solve crimes.
- Ryan Coogler back for Black Panther 2: Ryan Coogler will return to write and direct the upcoming MCU sequel Black Panther 2. The first film made $1.3 billion worldwide this year.
- True Detective Season 3 premiere date: The third season of True Detective, starring Mahershala Ali and Stephen Dorff, will premiere on January 13th on HBO.
- Rambo 5 gets an official title and starts casting: Rambo 5 is in production right now and the movie is now officially Rambo 5: Last Blood. Paz Vega has been cast as a Mexican reporter who goes to Rambo for help rescuing her kidnapped half-sister and Sergio Peris-Mencheta has been cast as the main villain.
- Michael Crichton’s Micro getting adapted: Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment will be adapting the final novel credited to Michael Crichton, Micro, into a movie. The book was about 2/3 finished at the time of Crichton’s death and was finished by author Richard Preston and the plot followed a group of graduate students who are lured to work for a Hawaii biotech company but get themselves shrunk by a “tensor generator” and cast out into the rainforest, where they have to try and survive. Neil Widener and Gavin James have been hired to write the script.
- Morbius shooting in February 2019: With the massive success of Venom over its opening weekend, Sony is moving forward with their Morbius movie starring Jared Leto, which will start shooting in February next year. Leto was cast sometime last year as “the living vampire” but there are no specific plot details or if they are shooting for an R or PG-13 rating.
- Rookie of the Year getting a remake: A favorite of 90s kids and the movie that gave us the phrase “funky buttlovin” is getting a remake at Fox. It’s not clear if the plot will be exactly the same or if the Chicago Cubs will be the featured MLB team like the original. Dan Gregor and Doug Mand have been hired to write the script.
- The Witcher casts it’s main female leads: Joining Henry Cavill as Geralt of Rivia in the upcoming Netflix Witcher series will be Freya Allan as Ciri and Anya Chalotra as Yennifer. The trio journeys across the Continent together, battling giant monsters and navigating the various kingdoms.
- Netflix renews Ozark: Speaking of Netflix, they have renewed Ozark for a third season, which will probably arrive sometime next year.
- The Rock starring as John Henry for Netflix: In even more Netflix news, The Rock will be starring as legendary folk-hero John Henry for a movie called John Henry and The Statesmen, where Henry teams up with other figures of legend from around the world. Jake Kasdan, who directed Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, will be directing. The casting has generated some controversy on certain parts of the internet because they believe John Henry should be a darker skinned, full African-American as portrayed in previous adaptations of the legend.
- James Gunn writing and possibly directing Suicide Squad 2: In probably the biggest news of the week, James Gunn, after being fired from Disney after a disingenuous outrage was raised on Twitter over terrible jokes he made almost a decade ago, Gunn has jumped ship to Warner Brothers and will write and possibly direct Suicide Squad 2. WB has said SS2 will go in a “different direction” but it’s not clear if that means total reboot or just make the tone more consistent than the Frankenstein’d mess of the first film. It’s not clear when Suicide Squad 2 will be released, which is par for the course for most of the upcoming DCEU slate.
- World War Z 2 going into production: After five years, the sequel to World War Z is going into production in June 2019. Brad Pitt is back to star and David Fincher will take over as director. Hopefully, this sequel will incorporate more things from the book, as the first film basically only shared the title and the fact that there are zombies in it.
- Michael Shannon joins Knives Out: Rian Johnson’s new murder mystery movie is gaining a massive cast with Michael Shannon being the latest edition. Daniel Craig, Chris Evans and Lakeith Stanfield were cast previously and there are no plot details besides it being Agatha Christie-inspired murder mystery.
- First look at The CW’s Batwoman:
- Fantasy Island movie casts Michael Pena in lead role: Michael Pena will be stepping into the shoes of Ricardo Montalban for the upcoming reboot movie of Fantasy Island. Blumhouse is behind the movie and president Jason Blum said the film will be “horror adjacent” and is being directed by Jeff Wadlow, who directed Truth or Dare. The plot is being described as, “a group of guests who are warned by the island’s overseer, Mr. Roarke, that their fantasies may not play out how they expect”.
- Ridley Scott TNT series gets straight to series order: Ridley Scott is producing a new TNT series that has been given a straight to series order, Raised by Wolves. The show follows two androids who are tasked with raising human children on an off-Earth colony and religious beliefs and other issues threaten to tear the group apart.
- New Dresden Files series may be in the works: Fox21 Television Studios has optioned the rights to Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files book series for a potential new TV series based on them. The books follow wizard private eye Harry Dresden, who investigates magical crimes for clients and works with the Chicago PD as well. Arrow’s Paul Blackthorne starred in a SyFy series based on the book that lasted for one season back in 2007.
- George Romero left unreleased movies and tons of scripts behind: The great George Romero apparently behind a trove of scripts and a full unreleased movie behind after his death last year. His wife, Suzanne Desrocher-Romero, is working on getting the movie released, which she said is scary but not a horror movie or zombie related and possibly some of the scripts produced as well, which apparently there are 40-50 of. Road of the Dead is possibly one of them, a Mad Max style zombie movie.
- Movie Maniacs action figure line coming back: One of the most beloved toy lines from McFarlane, the Movie Maniacs line brought horror and cult film icons to life in incredibly detailed figures and the line is apparently going to be coming back, according to comments from Todd McFarlane at NYCC. The original series of figures started in the late 90s and featured characters like Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, The Thing, King Kong, Terminator, Predator and more.
- Universal Soldier reboot on the way: Universal Soldier is apparently the next film getting rebooted, as screenwriter Richard Wenk, who wrote both Equalizer movies, said this week he finished a script for a new UniSol movie. The last two movies in the franchise, Regeneration and Day of Reckoning, are both excellent, brutal, old-school action movies, so dropping those and rebooting everything is pretty disappointing and there’s no word on plot or who could possibly fill the shoes of Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren.
- CBS developing a Secret Six show: CBS is getting back into the DC comics game after passing Supergirl to The CW as the network is developing a show based on Secret Six. Secret Six is extremely similar to Suicide Squad as it’s a team of supervillains who are forced to work together, the difference being they are not imprisoned but being blackmailed by a mysterious character named Mockingbird. It’s not clear what characters will make up the team but expect the show to be heavily procedural like most of CBS’ other programming.
- New Kung Fu sequel series in the works: The Kung Fu franchise is getting a new sequel series where young Chinese-American woman Lucy Chang inherits her father’s kung fu studio, only to discover it’s secretly a hub for the local Chinatown community to get help when they have nowhere else to turn. Fox is developing the series along with WB TV, Greg Berlanti’s Berlanti Pods and Albert Kim, a producer on Sleepy Hollow. There’s no news on how exactly this would connect to either of the previous Kung Fu TV shows, which starred David Carradine.