News Shotgun 11/6/21

Here’s the movie and TV news for the week, it’s the News Shotgun!

• Gael Garcia Bernal is Werewolf by Night: Werewolf by Night has been cast for the upcoming Disney+ Halloween special set for next October.  Gael Garcia Bernal will play the Marvel werewolf, although it’s not clear what specific version of the character he’ll be playing.  Jack Russell was probably the most famous comic version of the character who was associated with the Legion of Monsters and Midnight Sons.
• Gal Gadot playing Evil Queen in live-action Snow White remake: Snow White is getting the live-action Disney remake treatment and Gal Gadot has been cast as the Evil Queen.  Marc Webb is directing the movie with Rachel Zegler cast as Snow White.  The new movie will expand on the story of the original animated feature and feature new music from The Greatest Showman/Dear Evan Hansen songwriters Benj Pasek and Justin Paul.
• Daniel Dae Kim cast as Fire Lord Ozai for Netflix’s Avatar: Daniel Dae Kim will play the ruthless leader of the Fire Nation, Lord Ozai, for the upcoming live-action reboot of Avatar: The Last Airbender.  Kim appeared in the original animated series as General Fong and Hiroshi Sato on The Legend of Korra.
• Alvin and the Chipmunks rights up for sale: If you have a spare $300 million laying around, you can purchase the rights to the Alvin and the Chipmunks IP.  Apparently, most of the major streamers are potentially interested, including Paramout+, HBO Max, and Netflix, and whoever purchases the IP will be able to make shows, movies, and whatever else they want with Alvin, Simon, Theodore, and the rest of the Chipmunks universe.
• Donkey Kong movie with Seth Rogen in development: He’ll be appearing in the upcoming Illumination Super Mario movie but Seth Rogen is apparently getting a spin-off for his version of Donkey Kong.  Illumination will handle the animation for this new movie like the Super Mario movie but no plot details or additional casting was revealed.  Presumably, Fred Armisen, who is voicing Cranky Kong, will appear in this new Donkey Kong movie as well.
• Robert Downey Jr. and Matt Damon join Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer: Christopher Nolan is building up an all-star cast for his next movie, a biopic about J. Robert Oppenheimer.  Robert Downey Jr. and Matt Damon joined the cast this week and Cillian Murphy and Emily Blunt were previously cast as the co-stars, with Murphy playing Oppenheimer and Blunt playing his wife, Katherine “Kitty” Puening.
• Sofia Boutella starring in Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon: Sofia Boutella will star in what is essentially going to be Zack Snyder’s Star Wars, Rebel Moon.  The movie will be a Netflix exclusive and is, “…set in a peaceful colony on the edge of the galaxy that finds itself threatened by the armies of the tyrannical Regent Balisarius. They dispatch a young woman with a mysterious past to seek out warriors from neighboring planets to help them take a stand the Tyrant”.  Boutella will be that young woman with a mysterious past.  The movie was originally a pitch to Lucasfilm and Disney for an actual Star Wars movie but it didn’t go through.
• Chris Pratt voicing Garfield in a new animated movie: As if Super Mario wasn’t crazy enough, Chris Pratt is now also going to be voicing iconic fat cat Garfield in a new animated movie from Sony.  The movie will be directed by Disney veteran Mark Dindal, who directed The Emperor’s New Groove and Chicken Little.  The most recent voice for Garfield was Bill Murray, who played Garfield in two live-action/CG hybrid movies.
• Boondock Saints III in development: 12 years after Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, a third movie in the franchise may be on the way.  Troy Duffy will return to direct and Norman Reedus and Sean Patrick Flanery are on-board to return as the McManus brothers.  Impossible Dream, one of the production companies on Get Out and BlacKkKlansman, is producing the movie with financing from Dragonfly Films.  There was a bizarre attempt to crowdfund a Boondock Saints TV series that didn’t go anywhere a few years ago.
• Emilio Estevez not returning for Mighty Ducks: Game Changers Season 2: Gordon Bombay will not appear in the upcoming second season of Mighty Ducks: Game Changers on Disney+ over the show’s vaccine mandate.  Emilio Estevez would not offer confirmation that he would comply with the show’s vaccine mandate but there may have also been creative differences that were a contributing factor as well.