News Shotgun 5/22/21
- Henry Cavill in talks to star in Highlander reboot: Henry Cavill seems to be turning his Witcher sword skills into a starring role in the Highlander reboot, as he’s in talks to star. The reboot is being directed by John Wick’s Chad Stahelski. It’s not clear if Cavill will be Connor Macleod (or an equivalent character) or the movie’s villain, maybe going off his villainous turn in MI: Fallout.
- Dwayne Johnson voicing Krypto for animated Super Pets movie: The Rock is staying in the world of DC as, in addition to his upcoming Black Adam movie, he will be voicing Krypto the Super Dog in an upcoming animated movie, DC League of Super Pets. Krypto is Superman’s dog and shares a lot of his super abilities. The movie will arrive around Memorial Day next year.
- Final Brooklyn Nine-Nine season gets a release date: The final season of Brooklyn Nine-Nine will debut on NBC on August 12th and will air two episodes a week with 10 episodes total. The final season will address the increased focus on police and their tactics that resulted from the Black Lives Matter protests last year as well as the Covid-19 pandemic.
- More Knives Out 2 casting: Knives Out 2 continues to rack up an impressive cast and both Kate Hudson and Leslie Odom Jr joined the cast this week. Daniel Craig is back as the southern fried investigator Benoit Blanc and Ed Norton, Janelle Monae, Dave Bautista, and Kathryn Hahn were previously cast. Rian Johnson is also back to direct and the movie will be a Netflix exclusive, as will Knives Out 3.
- Injustice getting a DC animated movie: The next DC animated movie following the two-part Long Halloween adaptation will be an adaptation of Injustice, the fantastic fighting game from Mortal Kombat studio Netherrealm. The game and the movie are set in an alternate DC world where the Joker was responsible for the death of Lois Lane and Superman’s unborn child. Superman brutally kills The Joker and then takes over the world to prevent something like that from happening again but becomes a totalitarian dictator, which Batman and many of the other DC heroes build a rebellion against. In the first game, the heroes of the regular DC universe crossed over to the Injustice universe to help their multiverse counterparts defeat this evil Superman.
- Hocus Pocus 2 officially confirmed: Disney officially confirmed this week that Hocus Pocus 2 is arriving next fall on Disney+. Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Kathy Najimy will return as the evil Sanderson sisters. Anne Fletcher, who directed The Proposal and 27 Dresses along with multiple episodes of This Is Us, is directing the sequel. Original Hocus Pocus director Adam Shankman is currently working on Disenchanted, which will also be a Disney+ exclusive sequel.
- Green Lantern series finds Alan Scott: The upcoming HBO Max Green Lantern series has most likely found its Alan Scott with Jeremy Irvine in negotiations to co-star on the series. Irvine was most recently seen on the Bourne spin-off series Treadstone. The Alan Scott of the new show will be a closeted FBI agent in 1941 who becomes the original Green Lantern. Finn Wittrock was previously cast as Guy Gardener, who will feature in a 1984 based part of the series.
- David Simon adds three cast members for a new show: The Wire’s David Simon is working on a new show for HBO Max called We Own This City about a corrupt Baltimore PD task force that was using its directive to cut down on gun crimes as a front for racketeering and extortion. Jon Bernthal, Josh Charles, and Jamie Hector are the first three cast members to join the series, with Bernthal and Charles playing members of the task force while Hector is a cop who is set to testify against them in a grand jury.
- Netflix picks up Arnold Schwarzenegger spy show: Netflix will stream Arnold’s first-ever TV series, as it picked up the still-unnamed spy action series for an eight-episode first season. Schwarzenegger plays a CIA agent who learns that his daughter, unbeknownst to him, is also a CIA agent and the duo is forced to team up for the first time for a globe-trotting mission. Monica Barbaro, who is currently in Army of the Dead and will be in Top Gun: Maverick, is co-starring as Arnold’s daughter. Nick Santora, who is showrunning the Jack Reacher series for Amazon, is also showrunning this series.
- Batgirl movie finds directors: The upcoming Batgirl movie has found new directors with Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah coming on board. The duo directed Bad Boys for Life, which was the highest-grossing domestic theatrical release of last year. Christina Hodson, who wrote Birds of Prey and the upcoming Flash movie, wrote the screenplay for Batgirl as well. There’s currently no one cast as Barbara Gordon/Batgirl yet.
- Wednesday Addams cast for Netflix series: Netflix and Tim Burton have found their new Wednesday Addams for their upcoming Addams Family series. Jenna Ortega has been cast as Wednesday and the new series follows her as she leaves home and attends Nevermore Academy and begins to learn to control psychic abilities she has started to develop while also solving a mystery that involves her parents and trying to stop a murder spree that is terrorizing the local town. Tim Burton is executive producing and directing the series.
- RIP Paul Mooney and Charles Grodin: The world lost two more comedic legends this past week as both Paul Mooney and Charles Grodin passed away. Mooney died at age 79 from a heart attack and was best known for collaborations with Richard Pryor as well as on-screen in movies like The Buddy Holly Story and Bamboozled and TV shows like Chappelle’s Show. Grodin died at age 86 and was known for film roles like Beethoven, Midnight Run, The Heartbreak Kid, King Kong, Clifford, and more.
- New Superman animated series coming to HBO Max/Cartoon Network: A new family-friendly Superman animated series is coming to HBO Max and Cartoon Network with My Adventures with Superman. The series follows a younger Superman/Clark Kent and Lois Lane as Clark is just beginning his career as a superhero and reporter and also follows the start of Clark and Lois’s romantic relationship. Jack Quaid, Huey on The Boys, will voice Clark while Alice Lee, of Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist, will voice Lois. The show has a two-season order.
- New Batman animated series coming to HBO Max/Cartoon Network: Speaking of new DC animated shows, Batman: Caped Crusader is a new animated series coming from Bruce Timm, JJ Abrams, and Matt Reeves. It seems like the show might be a spiritual successor to the beloved Batman: The Animated Series as it will return to Batman’s noir roots and focus on the psychology of the characters, both the hero and the villains.
- Adult Swim announces a bunch of spin-off shows: Adult Swim is expanding the world of some of their popular shows with a series of spin-offs that will be “digital” so potentially HBO Max exclusives or some sort of adultswim.com exclusive. The Vindicators, the superhero team introduced in season 3 of Rick & Morty, are getting their own show as well as Alabama Jackson, Robot Chicken’s resident time traveler voiced by Donald Faison. Aqua Teen Hunger Force is also getting a spin-off focusing on a bunch of the side characters, including The Moonites, MC Pee Pants, The Frat Aliens, and more. The first of these spin-offs will debut later this year and subsequent shows will debut in 2022.
- Attack the Block getting a sequel: The cult classic alien invasion movie that put John Boyega on the map is finally getting a sequel with Boyega and director Joe Cornish on board. The first movie came out in 2011 and followed Boyega as he and his mates tried to stop an invasion of aliens that were threatening their neighborhood in London. It’s not clear what the plot of the sequel will be.
- AT&T selling off WarnerMedia: Probably the biggest news of the week, AT&T shocked everyone when it announced on Monday that it was selling off WarnerMedia and was negotiating a deal with Discovery Networks for $43 billion. AT&T originally purchased Time Warner and its assets for $85 billion back in 2016. The new company would fuse the Warner properties, like Warner Bros, DC, TNT, TBS, CNN, Adult Swim, and Cinemax with Discovery, which has Discovery Channel, Food Network, TLC, HGTV, OWN, and more. Discovery CEO David Zaslav would be the CEO of this new company while WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar will still be an executive. The deal will take at least a year to hash out and there are no plans yet for the two companies respective streaming services but speculation is that we could eventually see a potential super app that combines HBO Max and Discovery+ into one or perhaps a bundle for both along the lines of the Disney/Hulu/ESPN bundle.
- CBS moving several shows to Paramount+: CBS made the somewhat strange move to renew a number of their shows but move them off the main broadcast network and onto Paramount+. Clarice, SEAL Team, and Evil will all be back for new seasons but they will be exclusive to Paramount+ and not air on CBS proper. The move apparently came as the shows don’t have particular good ratings during their linear (live) broadcasts but was much stronger streaming. CBS made a deal with Netflix that put Evil on that streaming platform and it apparently did extremely well.
- Travis Knight directing vampire movie Uprising: The director of Bumblebee is directing a new vampire action movie for Netflix called Uprising. It’s based on the book A People’s History of the Vampire Uprising by Raymond Villareal and was similar to World War Z but for vampires and it tells an oral history of a virus that turns people into vampires and a CIA investigating as the vampires grow more and more dominant in society and the world.
- Amazon looking to buy MGM: Amazon is looking to bolster their current and future film catalog by purchasing the venerable studio MGM for $9 billion. Amazon is apparently deep in negotiations for the studio, which would give Amazon a library of classic films, including the Bond movies, Rocky/Creed, Robocop, The Silence of the Lambs, The Magnificent Seven, the Stargate franchise, and 4,000 more films. It would also give them the rights to future films and you could potentially see things like a future Bond movie being a Prime Video exclusive.