News Shotgun 5/9
- Mike Flanagan joins new Stephen King adaptation: After writing and directing Gerald’s Game and Doctor Sleep, Mike Flanagan has signed on for another Stephen King adaptation, Revival. Flanagan will write and produce the movie, with an option to direct, for Warner Bros. The novel came out in 2014 and follows a heroin-addicted musician who encounters a faith healer who is obsessed with communicating with his dead wife and child but ends up contacting a Lovecraftian horror.
- The Midnight Club coming to Netflix: Speaking of Mike Flanagan, he and his Haunting of Bly Manor team are adapting the Christopher Pike book The Midnight Club into a Netflix series. The book was set in Rotterdam Home, where teens with terminal diseases were sent to die. A group of five teens form a group called The Midnight Club, where they meet at midnight to tell spooky and mysterious stories. They also make a pact that the first one of them to die will try to communicate with the others from beyond the grave.
- Boba Fett coming to The Mandalorian: The OG Star Wars bounty hunter in the Mandalorian armor is coming to Season 2 of The Mandalorian with Jango Fett actor Temuera Morrison playing the character. Morrison also played Commander Cody in Revenge of the Sith and voiced Boba Fett starting with the 2004 edition of Empire Strikes Back and multiple games, including the Battlefront series. Season 2 of The Mandalorian is supposed to arrive on Disney+ in October.
- CBS picks up “Clarice” and “The Equalizer” series: We’re not going to get a traditional Upfronts week this year due to the coronavirus but some new TV news has started to trickle out, including CBS picking up their Silence of the Lambs series Clarice and their reboot/remake of The Equalizer. Clarice will be set six months after The Silence of the Lambs in 1993 as Clarice Starling (Rebecca Breeds) returns to the field. Kal Penn, Nick Sandow, Michael Cudlitz, and Lucca De Oliveira co-star and it’s being produced by Alex Kurtzman & Jenny Lumet. The Equalizer series stars Queen Latifah in the title role as a new character with a mysterious past who uses her skills to help those in need. Chris Noth, Lorraine Toussaint, Tory Kittles, Liza Lapira, and Laya DeLeon Hayes co-star.
- National Treasure series in development for Disney+: There’s a third film apparently in development and now Disney has announced a National Treasure series is in development for Disney+. However, before we all get too excited about weekly Nic Cage, the series seems like it will not have any of the movie’s cast members and instead feature a younger cast presumably chasing artifacts and mysteries of American history.
- Muppets Now arriving in Summer on Disney+: The Muppets are finally making a proper return after the failed ABC comedy series with Muppets Now debuting this summer on Disney+. The show is a short-form, unscripted variety show featuring celebrity guests.
- RL Stine series coming to Disney+: Also coming to Disney+ is an adaptation of the great RL Stine’s graphic novel series Just Beyond, which is a horror anthology with two volumes out and a third scheduled for next week. The first volume, The Scare School, follows a group of middle schoolers who encounter a deadly creature stalking the halls of their school and end up in a horrifying alternate dimension. The show is expected to get into production toward the end of this year and debut in Fall 2021.
- Project Blue Book and Knightfall canceled by History: History Channel has canceled two of their drama series, Project Blue Book and Knightfall. Project Blue Book was inspired by the work of J. Allen Hynek and his investigation into UFOs in the 50s for the Air Force while Knightfall was set in the world of the Knights Templar. Both shows were on for two seasons and Project Blue Book specifically ended on a cliffhanger that will most likely never be resolved.
- Alamo Drafthouse launching VOD platform: Alamo Drafthouse has launched a VOD platform called Alamo on Demand. The service will feature curated selections of movies, including Oscar winner Parasite, Knives Out, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, and more, and the movies will be available to rent or own.
- Freak Brothers series gets cast: The Freak Brothers, based on the cult comic from Gilbert Shelton, is becoming an animated series with Woody Harrelson, Tiffany Haddish, Pete Davidson, and John Goodman starring. The show follows three stoned out hippies and their foul-mouthed cat in the 60s who, after smoking some genetically mutated weed, end up waking up 50 years in the future in modern times.
- Children of the Corn getting a remake: After an inexplicable 10 movies, TV mini-series, and more, Stephen King’s Children of the Corn is getting a remake with director Kurt Wimmer signed on to direct. Wimmer is probably best known for movies like Equilibrium but he hasn’t directed a movie since 2006’s Ultraviolet and has written the scripts for stuff like Salt and the Total Recall remake. Wimmer has been in production on the movie in Australia and because of the outdoor nature of the movie and implementing safety procedures to protect the cast, the movie has not been shut down due to coronavirus like almost every other project that was shooting before everything stopped.
- Quibi could suffer massive money loss: Quibi has not gotten off to a great start in about a month since it launched. Most of its high profile drama series are finished and it dropped out of the App Store top listings within a week or so of its debut. It has 3.1 million app downloads but a huge majority of those users are still in the 90-day free window and who knows how many will start paying the $4.99 a month (or $7.99 for no ads)? All of those factors contribute to the estimate that Quibi could lose over $500 million in this first year.
- Robocop coming to Mortal Kombat 11: Mortal Kombat 11 announced a massive new DLC release coming on May 26th called Aftermath that will feature a new single-player story with Shang Tsung but also adds Robocop to the roster. The character is the original 80s version of Robocop with Peter Weller back to voice him. The Joker, Spawn, and Terminator: Dark Fate style T-800 were previously added to the game as guest characters.
- Chris Pratt conspiracy thriller The Terminal List picked up by Amazon: Chris Pratt is heading to Prime Video with The Terminal List, a military/conspiracy thriller with Antoine Fuqua executive producing. The show stars Pratt as James Reece, a Navy SEAL whose entire squad is wiped out in an ambush on a covert mission. Reece returns home with conflicting memories of the event and when he starts to dig into what happens, he discovers that dark forces are working against him.
- Bright 2 gets a director: Although it wasn’t the most critically acclaimed Netflix Original movie, Bright was popular enough to warrant a sequel and Incredible Hulk and Now You See Me director Louis Leterrier has signed to direct Bright 2. Leterrier directed all the episodes of the Netflix Original series The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance. Bright 2 stars Will Smith and Joel Edgerton as mismatched cops partners in a world where fantasy creatures exist alongside humans, with Edgerton being the first Orc cop. The sequel is expected to send the duo outside of Los Angeles for a more global adventure.
- Cate Blanchett in talks for Borderlands movie: Eli Roth is directing a movie based on the Borderlands games and it seems he might reunite with one of his The House with a Clock in its Walls stars as Cate Blanchett is apparently in talks to star as Lilith. Lilith is one of the original vault hunters you could choose from in the first Borderlands game; she was a “Siren” who had alien abilities and could turn invisible or “phasewalk”.
- Tom Cruise literally going to space for an upcoming movie: It’s been joked about since the newest wave of Mission: Impossible movies started coming out about how Tom Cruise was going to top himself with stunts and that he would have to go to space but now that’s possibly going to happen. Cruise is apparently working with Elon Musk, SpaceX and NASA to shoot an action/adventure movie in space, including on the International Space Station. If this movie becomes a reality, it will the first-ever feature film shot in space.
- Extraction 2 in development at Netflix: After 90 million people streamed Extraction in its first week of release, Netflix has a sequel in development. Joe Russo has signed on to write the script for the sequel, although he wouldn’t say if it would take place before or after the events of Extraction. It’s expected that Sam Hargrave would return to direct and Chris Hemsworth would return as mercenary Tyler Rake.
- Gary Busey presiding over Pet Judge court: Gary Busey is donning judicial robes and taking pet-related cases in the upcoming court show Gary Busey: Pet Judge, which will debut on May 25th on Prime Video. Busey will dole out rulings on people bringing pet-related cases, with two cases in each of the six episodes.
- Nicolas Cage in talks to play Joe Exotic in scripted Tiger King series: Nicolas Cage is apparently in talks to star in a dramatic, scripted version of the Joe Exotic story for CBS Television Studios. CBS acquired the rights to an article from Texas Monthly called “Joe Exotic: A Dark Journey Into the World of a Man Gone Wild” by Leif Reigstad in 2019 and this is also one of two scripted shows based on Joe Exotic, with the other in development by Universal Content Productions based on a podcast with Kate McKinnon signed on to play Carole Baskin.
- Taika Waititi directing a Star Wars movie: Announced on Star Wars Day, Taika Waititi is directing a new Star Wars movie, although predictably there are no details about when it would be set or what it would be about. Taika directed the season 1 finale of The Mandalorian.
- Stallone says Demolition Man 2 is in development: Coming from the man himself, Sly Stallone says that he’s working with Warner Bros on a Demolition Man sequel. There are no other official details besides Sly’s Instagram.