News Shotgun 2/5/22

Here’s all the movie and TV news you need to know from the past week, it’s the News Shotgun:

• • New Goosebumps series coming to Disney+: Goosebumps is coming back with a new series on Disney+.  RL Stine’s beloved horror series is getting a 10 episode first season and has a similar premise to the recent two movie adaptations, where a group of high schoolers accidentally unleash various monsters from the Goosebumps universe onto their town.  Rob Letterman, who directed the Jack Black starring 2015 Goosebumps movie, will direct the pilot of this new series while Nick Stoller wrote and will executive produce the series.
  • Boondocks reboot not going forward: The reboot of the Adult Swim animated series The Boondocks is not going forward at HBO Max.  Creator Aaron McGruder was working on a follow-up to the original 55 episode series that would find Grandad, Huey, and Riley dealing with their suburban neighborhood being taken over by a neo-fascist regime led by Uncle Ruckus.  McGruder left the original series after the third season and was not involved in the fourth and final season.
  • Yellowstone renewed for Season 5: Surprising no one, one of the biggest shows on TV, Yellowstone, has been renewed for a fifth season on Paramount Network.  The series drew in 14 million viewers for the season 4 premiere and over 15 million for the season finale.  The prequel spin-off, 1883, also debuted on Paramount+ this year and is a huge success as well.
  • Scream 6 greenlit: With Scream (2022) doing well at the box office, despite the ongoing pandemic and the juggernaut of No Way Home, Spyglass and Paramount have greenlit the sixth film in the franchise.  Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett will return to direct the sequel after directing this most recent entry.  Scream (2022) has made over $100 million worldwide so far in its theatrical run.
  • Dakota Johnson cast as Madame Web for Spider-Man spin-off:  Sony continues to try and build out its Spider-Man adjacent universe and has cast Dakota Johnson as Madame Web for an upcoming solo movie.  Most 90s kids are probably familiar with the original Madame Web, Cassandra Webb, who debuted in the comics in the 80s and was a driving force on the beloved 90s animated Spider-Man series.  A second Madame Web, Julia Carpenter, was introduced in the comics and inherited the Madame Web powers and mantle when the original died and it seems like a good bet that Johnson will be playing the Julia Carpenter version.  The Madame Web movie was announced in 2019 and has director S.J. Clarkson at the helm.
  • Jonestown Massacre movie in development: Joining the recent trend of true crime and dramatic take on traumatic events of the past, a movie based around the Jonestown Massacre is in the works.  Based on the book Seductive Poison by former cult member Debbie Layton, the movie will follow Chloe Grace Moretz as Layton, who joined the cult run by infamous preacher Jim Jones, who will be played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and became a core member of the inner circle.  Jones convinced 900 people to kill themselves by drinking poisoned grape Flavor-aid rather than be arrested by the authorities after a US congressman was killed by a member of the cult while on a visit to ascertain the situation.
  • Den of Thieves 2 starts shooting in the spring: The upcoming heist sequel Den of Thieves 2: Pantera will begin shooting this spring with visits to France and Serbia.  Gerard Butler and O’Shea Jackson Jr. are back for the sequel along with Meadow Williams and Swen Temmel is joining the cast.  The sequel will see Butler’s “Big” Nick O’Brien, who travels to Europe to hunt down Jackson Jr’s Donnie Wilson, who is plotting a heist of the largest diamond exchange in the world. Christian Gudegast is back to direct the sequel.
  • Kiefer Sutherland starring Rabbit Hole coming to Paramount+: Kiefer Sutherland has found his next TV series after starring on Designated Survivor across ABC and Netflix with Rabbit Hole.  The series will be a Paramount+ exclusive and sounds very 24esque with Kiefer starring as covert agent James Weir, who “finds himself in the midst of a battle over the preservation of democracy in a world at odds with misinformation, behavioral manipulation, the surveillance state and the interests that control these extraordinary powers”.  Kiefer will executive produce the series with John Requa and Glenn Ficarra, who directed the pilot of NBC’s This is Us and the AppleTV+ miniseries WeCrashed.
  • Renfield adds The Expanse’s Shohreh Aghdashloo:  The cast of Dracula movie Renfield continues to grow with Shohreh Aghdashloo joining Nicolas Cage, Nicholas Hoult, Awkwafina, Adrian Martinez, and Ben Schwartz.  Aghdashaloo will play “Elle”, a major crime boss.  Hoult stars as Renfield, who is fed up with centuries of serving Dracula (played by Cage) and sets out to get a fresh start.  The movie will be a violent horror comedy directed by Chris McKay, written by Rick and Morty’s Ryan Ridley, and produced by The Walking Dead’s Robert Kirkman.
  • Geoffrey Rush playing Groucho Marx in a biopic: Based on the memoir, Raised Eyebrows: My Years Inside Groucho’s House by Steve Stoliar, Geoffrey Rush will star as an aging and frail Grouch Marx in an upcoming biopic.  Charles Plummer will play Steve Stoliar, who was hired Erin Fleming (played by Sienna Miller in the movie) to work with Marx between 1973 and 1977.  Fleming was Marx’s manager and in charge of his personal and professional life.  Oren Moverman will write and direct the movie and has some similar experience as he directed the Brian Wilson biopic Love & Mercy.
  • Paramount+ renewals: Paramount+ renewed three of their big original series; the Jeremy Renner starring Mayor of Kingstown, CBS transplant SEAL Team, and the revival of the BET/UPN series The Game.  Mayor of Kingstown will be getting a second season, SEAL Team will be entering its sixth season and The Game will be on its second Paramount+ series, with the original series running for six seasons.
  • Stephen King’s short story The Boogeyman coming to Hulu: The Kingaisance continues with another Stephen King short story being adapted into a feature film with The Boogeyman.  Coming as a Hulu exclusive, Sophie Thatcher, most recently on Yellowjackets and The Book of Boba Fett, will co-star with Chris Messina for the horror movie, which is about a young girl reeling from the death of her mother and her and her brother trying to convince their grieving father that a sadistic and malevolent presence is in their house.  The short story came from the 1978 collection The Night Shift, which previously gave us Children of the Corn, The Mangler, Maximum Overdrive, and Pet Semetary.
  • American McGee’s Alice in development as a TV series: American McGee’s cult video games Alice and Alice: Madness Returns are being adapted for a TV series by another video game legend, David Hayter.  Hayter is writing the adaptation of the games, which were a twisted and violent spin on Alice in Wonderland, and he previously co-wrote Watchmen, X-Men, and The Scorpion King in addition to being the iconic voice of Solid Snake in the Metal Gear Solid series.
  • Urban Cowboy series coming to Paramount+: The John Travolta/Debra Winger romantic western Urban Cowboy is getting a TV series remake on Paramount+.  James Pondsoldt, who directed the movie The Circle, and Benjamin Percy are behind the new series and it will dive deeper into the backstory and life of Buford Uan “Bud” Davis, played by Travolta in the movie, who travels from his family farm to the big city in the 80s and tries to woo the lovely Sissy (played by Winger in the movie) and hangs out at the large honky-tonk dance club, Gilley’s Club.
  • Titans Season 4 villains revealed:  The Titans will have their hands full in the upcoming fourth season of the HBO Max DC series as a trio of new villains were cast.  Joseph Morgan will play Brother Blood, Franka Potente will play Mother Mayhem, and Lisa Ambalavanar will play Jinx. Brother Blood previously appeared on the animated Teen Titans as well as on Season 2 of Arrow.
  • D&D cinematic universe in development: Hasbro is apparently looking to create a large universe of Dungeons & Dragons-related movies and TV shows and has tasked Red Notice director Rawson Marshall Thurber with a “flagship” live-action TV series set in the D&D universe.  This new series will potentially be a cornerstone for spin-offs to come out of.  There is a movie starring Chris Pine and another TV series with John Wick’s Derek Kolstad involved, but it’s unclear if either of those two projects is going to be involved in this new cinematic universe plan.
  • It Takes Two becoming a movie: One of the most critically acclaimed video games of last year, It Takes Two, is becoming a movie with the writers of the Sonic the Hedgehog movie behind it.  Pat Casey and Josh Miller will adapt the game, which was developed by Hazelight, and it follows couple May and Cody who are going to divorce.  After telling their daughter Rose the news, a magic spell involving a pair of dolls and her tears puts the couple into the bodies of the dolls and they have to navigate the massive and whimsical realms around their house to get back to Rose and try to get back to normal.  The game was exclusively co-op and required two players to play together either locally or online.