News Shotgun 10/20
- Netflix cancels Luke Cage: Last week, Netflix canceled Iron Fist and this week, they have canceled Luke Cage after two seasons. The second season of Luke Cage aired over this past summer. The fate of the Marvel Netflix shows has been up in the air since Disney announced their own streaming service and their intent to let their license expire at Netflix so all of the content currently there would move over.
- Eve gets two new cast members: Eve is an upcoming action movie starring Jessica Chastain who is a former assassin trying to live a normal life with her family who is hunted by her former employers. Colin Farrell, Common and John Malkovich were previously cast and now this week Geena Davis and Joan Chen have joined the cast. The Girl on the Train director Tate Taylor is directing and it’s under production right now in Boston.
- Jungle Cruise delayed: Disney’s latest attempt to turn a theme park ride into a movie, The Jungle Cruise, was originally supposed to come out in the fall of next year but now it’s been moved into prime Summer 2020 territory, July 24th, 2020. The movie is starring The Rock and Emily Blunt and is set in the 1900’s with The Rock playing a boat skipper transporting Blunt and her brother, played by Jake Whitehall, up a jungle rive to a tree with supposed magical healing powers. Jaume Collet-Sera is directing.
- Lex Luthor coming to Supergirl: He’s been name-dropped for the last three seasons but Lex Luthor will finally appear in the flesh on Supergirl sometime this fourth season, which has set up his head of security Mercy Graves, played by Rhona Mitra, as one of the main villains and, obviously, Lena and Lillian Luthor being major recurring characters.
- Hunter movie with Stallone in the works: Originally pitched as one of the possible plots of Rambo 5, the rights to the novel Hunter by James Byron Huggins were purchased years ago by Stallone but Rambo: Last Blood is now focused on Rambo taking on the Mexican drug cartels. Hunter is still getting made into a non-Rambo however with Stallone starring as the titular character, who is the world’s best tracker and is hired to track and kill a genetic abomination that has escaped from a lab in the Arctic.
- Shudder picks up rights to Mandy: Shudder is quietly becoming a major force in the streaming game and a must-have for fans of horror and they’ve gotten the exclusive streaming rights for the recently released Nicolas Cage epic Mandy. The movie has garnered rapturous reviews from critics and is an awesomely insane, surreal, heavy metal inspired fantasy action movie where Nicolas Cage attempts to get revenge on a cult that kills the woman he loves. It’s been available on VOD since last month but if you’ve been holding off and have a Shudder subscription, it will be available soon on the service.
- Michael B. Jordan starring in hitman action movie: On top of being the new John Clark in new Tom Clancy movies, Michael B. Jordan has signed on to star in a hitman action movie called The Silver Bear. Based on the first in a series of books by screenwriter Derek Haas, who wrote the scripts for Wanted and 3:10 to Yuma, The Silver Bear follows an assassin named Colombus who eventually becomes a John Wick level legend in the Russian underworld. He becomes conflicted however when his latest target is the Speaker of the House and a strong presidential candidate, and also Colombus’ father.
- The Warrens will appear in Conjuring spin-off: Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga will appear in their first non-Conjuring spin-off as Ed and Lorraine Warren in the upcoming Annabelle 3, which features the demonic doll unleashing the captured evil of the Warren’s Artifacts Room and targetting the Warren’s ten-year-old daughter and her babysitter. Gary Dauberman, who is making his directorial debut after writing Annabelle, Annabelle: Creation, The Nun and IT.
- High-end Sega Genesis console on the way: Analogue, the company behind the high-end Super NT console that plays actual Super NES and Super Famicom cartridges, is coming out with the Mega SG, which will do the same thing with for Sega Genesis/Mega Drive games. The games will be able to be displayed in pixel-perfect 1080p on your television and the sound will be perfectly recreated as well. An adapter will be released alongside the console to play Master System games and you’ll be able to hook up an original Sega CD and play those games as well, as the Mega SG as an identical port that matches the Genesis’ port that hooked into the CD but the 32x will not work with this new console. You can pre-order it now for $190.
- Grimm getting a spin-off: NBC’s Grimm ended it’s run last year after six seasons but it may return in a new spin-off following a new female Grimm. Grimm, while not a massive hit, was the highest performing Friday show during most of it’s run and had a very dedicated and loyal fanbase and the show followed Portland detective Nick Burkhardt (David Giuntoli) who discovers he’s a Grimm, a person who is able to see Wesen, seemingly normal people who are secretly fantastical creatures, and he battled threats and solved cases related to that world with his team of allies. The show previously setup Jacqueline Toboni as a Grimm named Trubel but there’s no casting for this new series announced but the hope is that characters from the original series would show up here and the show would continue building the world that was set up.
- TMNT score being released in full for the first time: Fans have never been able to hear the entire score for the original TMNT movie but it’s finally been released in full on vinyl thanks to Waxworks Records. There are 8 different versions of the album, with each one being a different colored vinyl and based around a different character and is a double LP with two records and 24 tracks, all re-mastered and restored. The album is $40 on the Waxwork Records site.
- Wrong Turn getting rebooted: The Wrong Turn franchise, which is currently up to six movies, is getting rebooted by franchise creator Alan McElroy. The movies have all featured some sort of variation of a group of friends taking the titular wrong turn and ending up fighting off inbred cannibals or similar horrors.
- WB rebooting a ton of cartoons into live action movies: WB is apparently rebooting a number of classic cartoons into new live-action/animation hybrids, including Tom & Jerry, The Flintstones and Scooby-Doo. Tim Story, director of the Ride Along movies, is signed on for Tom & Jerry and Chris Colombus is producing the new Scooby-Doo.
- New Dracula series from Sherlock creators: Stephen Moffatt and Mark Gatiss, who created Sherlock and ran Doctor Who for most of the current iteration, are back to create a new Dracula series that will air on the BBC in the UK and stream on Netflix here in the US. The story will apparently follow the Prince of Darkness as he travels to Victorian London and there’s currently no release date info.