What’s up my friends? Are we all hydrated? Stretching? Remembering to text our friends and also do what you can to fight against a crushing racist system that’s currently being heralded on American television at the RNC? Well, get psyched, because there’s new shows, canceled shows, and two comic adaptations inside!
Hey guys, wanna feel old?
I'm 40.
You're welcome.
— Macaulay Culkin (@IncredibleCulk) August 26, 2020
Animation
Kelly Marie Tran will be the voice of the newest Disney princess in Raya and the Last Dragon, as a young woman who joins up with Sisu (Awkwafina), a human-ified dragon trying to recover her majestic form. Don Hall (Big Hero 6, Moana) and Carlos López Estrada (Blindspotting) are on board to direct, and screenwriter Adele Lim (Crazy Rich Asians) is partnering with playwright Qui Nguyen on the screenplay. [EW]
The Powerpuff Girls might be returning to the small screen, but with five fingers on each hand this time. Is Berlanti Productions involved in this live-action project? You guessed it! Also involved are Diablo Cody (Juno, One Mississippi) and Heather Regnier (Veronica Mars), which is not a bad team for a show about twenty-something heroes realizing they lost their childhood fighting villains (seems a little OOC to me!). [Deadline]
Magical Girl Friendship Squad, an animated show from Quinta Brunson that sold me with a magical bong joke in the preview, now has a premiere date: September 26th! [Shadow & Act]
TV
I know this column doesn’t cover sports too often, but last night instead of a playoff game, the Milwaukee Bucks stayed off the court in protest of the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin. The players converged and the league followed up by cancelling all of Wednesday’s games, and the WNBA (a league well-known for activism) followed suit almost immediately. Another Wisconsin team, the Brewers, also went on strike for the day’s game, leading to the cancellation of other MLB games that day as well. Tennis player Naomi Osaka, herself Afro-Japanese, announced that she was pulling out of her current tournament, though she reversed the decision after the WTA and officials moved the match to Friday. Whether or not the NBA playoffs, or really major league sports in general, will continue as planned is up in the air. [Washington Post]
We as players made the decision. Fix this, please give the right narrative. https://t.co/0Qhb8L7dMc
— Mark-Anthony Kaye (@MarkThEwizz) August 27, 2020
Altered Carbon has been cancelled after two seasons, following the cancellation of two other Netflix original series — The Society and I Am Not Okay with This. The decision was in part due to the show’s high cost. [Variety]
its strange how my frustration about the name joke on fringe is suddenly getting so much traction, because I’ve been vocal about my issues with it for years, but I guess now that black lives mattering is more “popular” people want to pay attention to it now?
— Jasika Nicole (@TheJasikaNicole) August 23, 2020
On Twitter, Jasika Nicole spoke about how “tasteless” she found a long running joke on Fringe about mispronouncing her character Astrid’s name, and then delved further into how she was treated on set and felt devalued. [TVLine]
Movies
As part of the lead-up to Bill & Ted Face the Music, fans partnered with Orion Pictures to beat the Guinness Book of World Records’ record for simultaneous air guitaring, virtually![Comics Beat]
During DC FanDome, director and producer Reginald Hudlin (House Party, Marshall) dropped a little tidbit that Milestone Media was looking to expand beyond comics, saying “we’re in serious conversations about, as we’re launching the comic book series, developing the ‘Static Shock’ movie.” [Variety]
(and while that kicked off a ton of casting speculation, John Boyega tweeted that he was already too old for the high school aged character. I’ve got my own thoughts on who in the DC universe I’d be into seeing him play).
— John Boyega (@JohnBoyega) August 26, 2020
Comic strip American Reaper, by Pat Mills and Clint Langley, published in Judge Dredd Megazine, has been optioned by Amblin, with Ciarán Foy attached as director. [THR]
While AfterShock Comics’ The Kaiju Score hasn’t actually debuted, Sony Pictures has already scooped it up. By James Patrick and Rem Broo, the comic is about a heist being pulled off during a kaiju attack. [THR]
