News Shotgun 9/16
- RIP Harry Dean Stanton: The legendary character actor Harry Dean Stanton passed away on Friday this week at age 91. Stanton had over 100 credits over six decades acting including Alien, The Godfather Part II, Twin Peaks, Cool Hand Luke, Red Dawn, The Green Mile, Repo Men and so many more.
- Fox Rebooting True Lies as a TV Show: Following up the shockingly good reboot of Lethal Weapon last year on Fox, the network is reteaming with McG to bring the Arnold action comedy classic True Lies to the network as a TV show. There’s not really any details about what it will be about but I would wager it will be Harry Tasker going on episodic spy missions and then trying to cover it up in a wacky manner with his family.
- Jamie Lee Curtis back in the new Halloween: Speaking of True Lies, Arnold’s co-star Jamie Lee Curtis is returning to the Halloween franchise in the new film from Danny McBride and David Gordon Green. Blumhouse tweeted out a photo of Curtis in character as Laurie Strode and, since this new film is essentially only acknowledging the first two Halloween films, her death in Halloween: Resurrection will be ignored.
- Jon Hamm voicing Boba Fett for a new short story: For the audiobook of the upcoming anthology Star Wars: From A Certain Point of View, a slew of celebrities have been assembled including Neil Patrick Harris, Clone Wars’ Ashley Eckstein, Battlefront II’s Janina Gavankar and Jon Hamm, who will be voicing Boba Fett in a story written by none other than Batman: TAS legend Paul Dini. The audiobook and book will be out on October 3rd.
- Blade Runner getting anime short film: Shinichiro Watanabe, the creator of Cowboy Bebop, is creating one of the short film prequels that are leading to the release of Blade Runner 2049. His is called “Black Out 2022” and is set a year after the original movie. It will debut on Sony’s Japan Pictures youtube page on September 26th.
- John Wick Chapter 3 gets a release date: With Episode IX forced to leave May 2019, John Wick has snuck in to take it’s place, claiming the May 19th, 2019 release date for the third chapter of the franchise. An Avengers movie is set to kick off that month and Guy Ritchie’s live action reboot of Aladdin is set for the weekend after on 5/24.
- Tim Miller directing a Terminator film for James Cameron: Although it’s been talked about pretty concretely for a while, this week it was officially confirmed that Tim Miller, director of Deadpool, wiil be directing a new entry in the Terminator franchise for James Cameron when he regains the rights in 2019. Arnold will be back as the T-800 and this new film will only acknowledge Terminator 1 and 2 but, other than those details, there are no story details.
- RIP Frank Vincent: Along with Harry Dean Stanton, another great character actor passed away with Frank Vincent dying at age 78 from complications due to heart surgery. Vincent appeared in numerous Scorsese movies like Raging Bull, Goodfellas and Casino and played Phil Leotardo on The Sopranos.
- First Look at David Harbour’s Hellboy:
- Plot of new Nic Cage Movie Primal: The plot of a new, upcoming Nic Cage movie was revealed this week and it sounds like hopefully it will be an insane masterpiece. It’s called Primal and Cage plays a big game hunter transporting a bunch of deadly animals on a ship that is also, for some reason, carrying a political assassin back to the US for trial. The assassin escapes and unleashes the animals and Cage has to deal with both on this cargo ship in the middle of the ocean. Stunt coordinator Nick Powell is making his directing debut with this movie after working on things like Resident Evil and X-Men: The Last Stand.
- Vikings renewed for Season 6: History’s biggest show, Vikings, will be back for a sixth season and co-star Katheryn Winnick will make her directing debut on one of the episodes. Season 5 starts in November this year and the wraps up in 2018, so Season 6 will most likely be in the fall of 2018.
- Liam Neeson says he’s “done with action movies”: Neeson said during an interview this week that he’s done being in thriller and action movies, despite getting tons of offers for more thanks to the Taken trilogy and other movies, like his collaborations with Jaume Collet-Sera. He feels he’s getting too old and doesn’t want it to be ridiculous for the audience. He has two thrillers that he already shot, January’s The Commuter and the upcoming Hard Powder, and those will be his final two roles as an ass-kicking action hero.
- JJ Abrams back to direct Star Wars Episode IX: After Colin Trevorrow left the directing job on Star Wars Episode IX due to differences with Disney on how the script was being developed, JJ Abrams will return to the franchise after bringing it back from the brink with The Force Awakens. Episode IX is planned for December 2019 now.
- New Hellboy may cast Daniel Dae Kim: After Ed Skrein exited the film due to accusations of whitewashing a Japanese-American character, Maj. Ben Daimio, it looks like former Lost and Hawaii Five-0 star Daniel Dae Kim may be in talks to replace him. Major Daimio is part of the BPRD and is “a rugged military member of the bureau of paranormal research and defense who, due to a supernatural encounter, can turn into a jaguar when angered or in pain”
- Mouse Guard movie gets director: Wes Ball, the director of The Maze Runner and it’s sequel, has signed on to direct a movie adaptation of the critically acclaimed comic Mouse Guard for Fox. Matt Reeves is producing and Gary Whitta, one of the writers of Rogue One and Book of Eli, is writing the script. The comic follows a group of warrior mice in a fantasy land where they defend their fellow mice from various threats and a tabletop RPG was created based on the comics.
- The Boys coming to Amazon: With two seasons of Preacher under their belt, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg are adapting another brutal Garth Ennis’ comic, The Boys, this time for Amazon Video. The Boys is about a black ops government team who polices the superhero community and maintains the status quo by blackmailing, beating or killing anyone who threatens it.
- Patty Jenkins back for Wonder Woman 2: In a pretty big no-brainer, DC and WB have reached a deal with Patty Jenkins to return to direct the sequel to Wonder Woman. This deal apparently will make her the highest paid female director of all time and the movie is scheduled for December 2019. Jenkins is working on a script as well with Geoff Johns.
- RIP Len Wein: Another sad death this past week as legendary comic creator Len Wein passed away at age 69. Wein created both Wolverine and Swamp Thing and was one of the editors on Watchmen. He also wrote the relaunch of X-Men in 1975, Giant Size X-Men #1, that officially added Wolverine to the team and contributed numerous stories to anthology issues and specials for both Marvel and DC over the years.