Horror movie season is over (though it hasn’t stopped me), and we now tumble into Christmas movie time, where every problem can be solved by moving back to your hometown, leaving your high-powered corporate job, and marrying your high school boyfriend Chad once he helps you discover the true meaning of Christmas.
TV
One more for @DCComics fans. In partnership w/ @GBerlanti we're excited to bring to series the beloved Green Lantern AND intro audiences to Strange Adventures which will explore close-ended morality tales about the intersecting lives of mortals and superhumans.
— HBO Max (@hbomax) October 30, 2019
HBO Max nabs two DC properties with two big producers, and I have no idea how Greg Berlanti manages to run this many shows other than maybe having clones?
Ming-Na Wen will be playing mercenary Fennec Shand in The Mandalorian and I am so excited I might actually commit to Disney+. [Vanity Fair]
Tamora Pierce fans rejoice — Lionsgate and Playground Entertainment have optioned the Tortall Universe for a series. Pierce seems pretty hype, too. [Deadline]
Production has started on Falcon & the Winter Soldier, which is wild because I feel like I’ve been hearing about this show for the past five years of my life. [Marvel]
Movies
Peyton Reed returns to the Ant-Man (and the Wasp) franchise to direct number 3. [THR]
Director Tim Miller (Deadpool, Terminator: Dark Fate) is pretty sure he’ll never get to make the Kitty Pryde movie of his dreams post-Disney merger. The script was written by Brian Michael Bendis and…honestly, I’m fine with this. Tim Miller will do just fine. [Comicbook.com]
Olivia Wilde finally got a chance to catch her own movie, Booksmart, on a Delta flight and confirmed what she’d heard — that it was a heavily censored version with gay content edited out and words like ‘vagina’ censored. Turns out Rocketman and lesbian fave Carol were similarly censored, with gay content cut. [WaPo]
Martin Scorsese ruminated over making a Joker film, which is honestly a pretty good joke. [THR]
Daniel Craig does not think of Phoebe Waller-Bridge as a diversity hire on Bond, thank you very much. [IndieWire]
Nigeria’s first entry into the Oscars’ Best International Feature Film category, director and actress Genevieve Nnaji’s Lionheart, was rejected for containing too much English. Despite renaming the category from Best Foreign Language Film, the Academy’s rules still state a film must have a majority of dialogue in a language other than English to qualify. Nigeria’s national language is, ironically, English. [The Wrap]
In Oscar-related news, actor Jon Bernthal (Punisher) thinks there should be an Academy Award for stunt performers, saying it’s a “crime” that there isn’t. [CinemaBlend]
Colin Ferrell is poised to play the Penguin in Matt Reeves’ Batman (and Andy Serkis is looking to play Alfred). [Deadline]
Margot Robbie’s production company LuckyChap will partner with Birds of Prey screenwriter Christina Hodson’s Hodson Exports to create the Lucky Exports Pitch Program to help women craft studio-ready action pitches. It’s explicitly meant to pull more women into franchise jobs. [THR]
Animation
April 8, 2022 ? #SpiderVerse pic.twitter.com/FC5nVIuciB
— Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse (@SpiderVerse) November 1, 2019
Very excited that a sequel to Into the Spider-Verse has been greenlit but already dreading the possibility of a multi-year long marketing campaign.
I recently wrapped up character design work on Steven Universe Future and I'm happy to announce I am now Lead Character Design on Adventure Time Distant Lands! pic.twitter.com/XXtrbAgQRS
— Frank & Becky (@beckyandfrank) November 4, 2019
Honestly just thought this was a cool thread from Becky Dreistadt (Tiny Kitten Teeth, Tigerbuttah), who is now working on Adventure Time: Distant Lands.
Amazon has picked up distribution of the Critical Role cartoon and ordered a second series already. The Kickstarter for the animated series smashed fundraising records, raising over $11 million (!!!!!!). Each season will be 12 episodes, and Prime has a first-look deal with the Critical Roles team. [LA Times]
Nickelodeon Universe has opened at American Dream (which is a mall? in New Jersey?), where you can get on rides based on your fave Nick properties like Aang’s Air Gliders, Fairly OddAirways, Ren & Stimpy’s Space Madness, several Spongebob rides, and a freaking Legends of the Hidden Temple Challenge ropes course which I am aware is not animated but!!! [Attractions Magazine]
i have been so scared to talk about this publicly, but with the support of the dragon prince community and others who've been treated terribly by aaron ehasz, i feel it's important to share. important threads from yesterday/today linked below. thank you so much for your support.
— Danika Harrod (@danikaharrod) November 6, 2019
Danika Harrod and Lulu Younes, former employees of ‘entertainment start-up’ Wonderstorm, took to Twitter to talk about their alleged negative and abusive experiences working on The Dragon Prince and with showrunner Aaron Ehasz (Avatar: The Last Airbender).
everything Danika said is 100% true, and she's not even scraping the top of the pile. there's so much horrible stuff, you have no idea. I started at wonderstorm before tdp was even funded, worked for free for months because I believed in the show and people there…
— lulu younes?️? ☻ (@luluryounes) November 5, 2019
Grab Bag
Iconic kabuki actor Ichikawa Ebizo (Blade of the Immortal, Hara-Kiki: Death of Samurai) will perform a one-night-only Star Wars show where he will play Kylo Ren. This rules and I hope it’ll be recorded. [CBR]
Martin Scorsese wrote an op-ed about Marvel movies, which is really about how major corporations are sort of demolishing the film industry as we (and he) knows it. If you haven’t read it yet, now’s the time. (My two cents are: he’s right but I think even bad movies are still ~cinema) [NYT]
Courtney B. Vance (NCIS, The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story) is the new president of the SAG-AFTRA Foundation. [Variety]
CGI James Dean might be forced to perform in a Vietnam war movie by ghoulish production company Magic City Films. I’m doubtful this will happen but if it does, welcome to hell. [THR]