News Shotgun 3/4/23
Here’s all the movie and TV news you need to know from the past week, it’s the News Shotgun
RIP Tom Sizemore: Tom Sizemore died this week at age 61. Sizemore suffered a brain aneurysm on February 18th and was on life support. His family removed him from life support after doctors confirmed there was no hope of recovery. Sizemore appeared in movies like Saving Private Ryan, Heat, Black Hawk Down, True Romance, Passenger 57, and Natural Born Killers and worked with directors like Steven Spielberg, Oliver Stone, Martin Scorsese, Ridley Scott, and Michael Mann.
Clancy Brown joins The Penguin: The upcoming The Batman spin-off, The Penguin, has added Clancy Brown as a major Batman villain, Salvatore Maroni. Maroni is a major crime boss in the world of Batman and is the one who disfigured Harvey Dent while on trial, causing the DA to turn into the villainous Two-Face. Colin Farrell is returning as Oswald Cobblepot from The Batman and the show is a prequel that follows his attempts to rise in the criminal underworld of Gotham.
Casting for the new Hellboy begins: After hearing about Hellboy: The Crooked Man last week, we already have our new Hellboy with Jack Kesy. Kesy previously appeared in Deadpool 2, Baywatch, and 12 Strong, and shows like Claws and The Strain. The movie also cast Jefferson White as Tom Ferrell and Adeline Rudolph as Bobby Jo Song. Brian Taylor is directing the movie and Hellboy creator Mike Mignola is co-writing the script, based on the 2008 Hellboy comic The Crooked Man.
Aaron-Taylor Johnson joins Nosferatu: Aaron Taylor-Johnson has joined the cast of the next Robert Eggers movie, a new version of Nosferatu. The director of The Witch, The Lighthouse, and The Northman is directing the vampire movie, and Lily-Rose Depp, Bill Skarsgard, Nicholas Hoult, Willem Dafoe, Simon McBurney, Ralph Ineson, and Emma Corrin were previously cast. Skarsgard is playing Nosferatu and Depp is playing a young woman who the vampire is obsessed with.
John Cena, Awkwafina, and Simu Liu co-starring in new Paul Feig movie: Paul Feig has found a trio of stars for his next movie with John Cena, Simu Liu, and Awkwafina for Grand Death Lotto. The movie is being produced for Amazon Studios and it’s an action/comedy that sounds like a kind of similar premise to The Purge where, in the near future, an economically depressed California has established the Grand Lottery. The person with the winning ticket needs to survive until sundown and if anyone kills them, they get their prize. Awkwafina plays Katie, who accidentally ends up with the winning ticket, and she teams with John Cena to try and survive while Liu is the main person looking to kill her.
Star Trek: Discovery ending with Season 5: The voyage of Star Trek: Discovery is coming to an end with the upcoming Season 5. The fifth season will wrap up the Paramount+ series and the premiere was also pushed back to next year. Discovery spin-off Strange New Worlds is prepping a second season and there is a Michelle Yeoh-led spin-off of Discovery in development following the mysterious Section 31.
Dead by Daylight movie in development: Dead by Daylight is coming to the big screen with Blumhouse and James Wan producing a movie version of the popular game. There are no writers or directors announced or any idea what the plot will be. The game is an asynchronous multiplayer game where four players play survivors and one person plays the killer and the survivors are trying to power generators around the map to open the exit and escape while the killer is trying to find and murder all the survivors. The game has brought in a slew of licensed characters, including Freddy Krueger, Leatherface, Michael Myers, and Jigsaw, along with their original killer characters.
Doug Bradley guest starring on Gotham Knights: The CW’s upcoming Batman adjacent series, Gotham Knights, debuts on March 14th and there was casting news this week that Pinhead himself, Doug Bradley, will guest star on the show’s sixth episode as Joe Chill. Chill is significant for all Batman fans as the low-level criminal who murdered Thomas and Martha Wayne. On Gotham Knights, Chill has been in prison for five decades and is scheduled to be executed but may have some information vital to the show’s young lead characters. The premise of Gotham Knights is that Batman has been murdered and his son must team up with a group of young villains and vigilantes to solve the crime.
Robert De Niro starring in new Netflix series Zero Day: Robert De Niro is coming to Netflix with a new conspiracy thriller series, Zero Day. The limited series will be six episodes and,
“…asks the question on everyone’s mind — how do we find truth in a world in crisis, one seemingly being torn apart by forces outside our control? And in an era rife with conspiracy theory and subterfuge, how much of those forces are products of our own doing, perhaps even of our own imagining?”. Leslie Linka Glatter, who previously worked on Mad Men and Homeland, is executive producing and directing all six episodes, and the show was created by Eric Newman, Noah Oppenheim, and Pulitzer-prize-winning reporter and author Michael S. Schmidt.
Stranger Things stage play coming to London: Stranger Things is coming to London’s famous West End with a new stage production prequel called Stranger Things: The First Shadow. The theatrical production will be set in 1959 and follow a young Joyce, Hopper, Bob, and Henry Creel in Hawkins as the first inklings of the darkness to come are revealed. Stranger Things executive producer and writer Kate Trefry wrote the stage play and the show is being produced by Tony Award-winning director Stephen Daldry and Justin Martin. Tickets will go on sale in the spring.
Dune HBO Series loses tons of talent: The upcoming Dune spin-off, Dune: The Sisterhood, saw an exodus of talent this week as the lead actor, one of the showrunners, and a director have left the production. Shirley Henderson was supposed to star in the series as Tula Harkonnen and Diane Ademu-John was the co-showrunner. Johan Renck was going to direct. There was apparently an overhaul behind the scenes that led to some of these departures. The show is set in Denis Villeneuve’s version of Dune 10,000 years in the past and follows the creation of the Bene Gesserit, the mysterious and powerful sisterhood that works behind the scenes and manipulates events. Mark Strong, Indira Varma, Sarah-Sofie Boussnina, Aoife Hinds, Shalom Brune Franklin, Travis Fimmel, Faoileann Cunningham, Jade Anouka, and Chris Mason are still on board to star.
Jackie Earle Haley and Ross Marquand co-starring in new thriller: Jackie Earle Haley and Ross Marquand are co-starring in the new thriller Tuesday’s Flu, directed by recent The Munsters co-star Daniel Roebuck. Marquand stars as a compulsive gambler who owes a massive debt to a local bookie, played by Haley. The bookie offers one last shot to erase the debt, but the gambler could lose his son in the process. Along with directing, Roebuck will co-star as well.
The Night Manager getting a second season: The John le Carré adaptation The Night Manager is getting a long-delayed second season on Prime Video and the BBC, with Tom Hiddleston returning as Jonathan Pine. The first season aired on AMC in 2016 and also on the BBC and the new season will be an Amazon/BBC joint venture. David Farr, who wrote the first season, is back for the second season. The first season followed Hiddleston’s Pine, who worked as the titular Night Manager at a luxury Cairo hotel and is recruited by the British Foreign Office to infiltrate the inner circle of notorious arms dealer Richard Roper, played by Hugh Laurie, who is staying at the hotel.
James Bond novels being edited for “modern” audiences: A disturbing trend in the world of publishing continues as first Roald Dahl novels were being edited for content that publisher Penguin Random House determined is offensive for modern audiences (although they have agreed to republish uncensored versions of the original novels as well) and now the original Ian Fleming James Bond novels are being edited and changed by publisher Ian Fleming Publications. The publisher had “sensitivity readers” go through the original novels and highlight anything deemed insensitive to modern audiences. The books are being republished as part of the series’ 70th anniversary and the new editions are expected in April. There will be a disclaimer in the front of the new versions explaining the changes.