Snake? Snake!? Snaaake! Stop me if you heard this one, folks. The long-gestating Metal Gear Solid movie may have hit another snag. According to industry insider Daniel Richtman, Oscar Isaac will no longer play Solid Snake in the Jordan Vogt-Roberts-directed adaptation of Hideo Kojima’s beloved video game fever dream.
It’s been a dog’s age since we heard any updates about Vogt-Roberts’ Metal Gear film project, with the last word coming from the director in 2021. Speaking with Entertainment Weekly, Roberts said the road to bringing Metal Gear Solid to theaters is long and winding.
“Metal Gear is something I’ve been trying to Sisyphus push up the hill for seven-plus years,” Jordan Vogt-Roberts told Entertainment Weekly. “That game and Kojima-san’s world mean the world to me, and that’s something that I’m very proud of what we’re doing. I think it’s very Kojima, punk rock, twisty. And then Gundam, likewise, is the godfather of otaku culture in a lot of ways without exaggeration. It is the grandfather to modern anime and thus most Japanese things that we love. It really is wild what Gundam was doing on television in an animated format in the ’70s and the complexity and the weight of the stories they were telling.”
On a more recent note, Twisted Metal and Captain America: Brave New World star Anthony Mackie said he’d like to tackle Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid when asked if he’s star in another video game adaptation.
“There’s so many video games that I would love to see turned into movies just so you can go on a journey with those characters,” Mackie told TheWrap. “They already did ‘Max Payne,’ they did so many of them already. It’s just another wave of it now. But I would love to do ‘Metal Gear Solid.’ I feel like there’s so many characters that we learned of and we fell in love with through video games that would make cool IP to turn into television shows and movies. “
Considering Oscar Isaac’s star power, it’s easy to understand why he would exit Vogt-Roberts’ Metal Gear Solid. It’s not a slight to the project. It’s a matter of Isaac’s Hollywood dance card filling up fast with high-profile projects like Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein and Ben Stiller’s London, a crime thriller based on the short story by Jo Nesbø. Why remain attached to a project that appears to be in development hell? I sincerely hope Vogt-Roberts figures something out soon, especially since Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima is getting into the film business with one of his forthcoming projects. Maybe the two of them can combine their talents? We shall see.
We know for sure that Danny and Michael Philippou, the sibling directing duo behind the Australian horror film Talk to Me (read our review at THIS LINK, watch our interview with the directors in the embed above) are going to be making a sequel to that movie. The film not only racked up over $90 million at the global box office, it also earned praise from the likes of Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson, Jordan Peele, George Miller, and Ari Aster… so it was no surprise when A24 announced they had given a greenlight to the a follow-up, titled Talk 2 Me. But while the sequel moves ahead, one person who still doesn’t know if they’re going to be involved with it is Talk to Me star Sophie Wilde.
Talk to Me marked the feature directorial debut of the Philippou brothers, who have a following of over 6 million subscribers on their YouTube channel RackaRacka. The film has the following synopsis: When a group of friends discover how to conjure spirits using an embalmed hand, they become hooked on the new thrill, until one of them goes too far and unleashes terrifying supernatural forces. Danny Philippou wrote the screenplay for Talk to Me with Bill Hinzman, who just happens to share a name with the late actor who played the Cemetery Ghoul in George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead and later made his own zombie movie with FleshEater. Danny Philippou and this non-ghoulish Hinzman are now working on the script for Talk 2 Me, and the Philippou brothers will be directing the sequel together.
When Games Radar asked her if she’ll be in Talk 2 Me, Sophie Wilde said, “I don’t know. I feel like it’s still a bit hush hush because I mean, the boys [filmmakers Danny Philippou and Michael Philippou], they’re such workaholics. I know they’re focusing on a bunch of other projects that they’re doing at the moment. So I don’t know, it’s all up in the air. But I said to them, I was like, ‘I’m gonna get actual FOMO if I’m not in this film, so can I just come on set and be like a boom operator? I will be an assistant director, I just want to be involved.’“
Wilde was joined in the Talk to Me cast by Miranda Otto (Annabelle: Creation), Alexandra Jensen (Frayed), Joe Bird (First Day), Otis Djanji (Aquaman), and Zoe Terakes (Wentworth).
Given the way Talk to Me wrapped up, an appearance by Wilde’s character isn’t absolutely necessary for a follow-up. There are many different directions the Philippous could take this concept. That said, Wilde gave such a great performance in the first me, I would be surprised if they don’t have her show up in the sequel at some point.
Are you looking forward to Talk 2 Me, and are you hoping Sophie Wilde will be in this sequel? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
We all sort of know that Sony’s PS5 is outselling Microsoft’s Xbox Series X/S. Sony gives us sales data, Microsoft hasn’t in years. You generally don’t stay quiet about that stuff when the news is great. And new data seems to indicate what we all suspected: The Xbox Series X/S is getting shellacked by the PS5, with…
We all sort of know that Sony’s PS5 is outselling Microsoft’s Xbox Series X/S. Sony gives us sales data, Microsoft hasn’t in years. You generally don’t stay quiet about that stuff when the news is great. And new data seems to indicate what we all suspected: The Xbox Series X/S is getting shellacked by the PS5, with…
Fans hoping for a Two and a Half Men reboot shall go wanting, at least when it comes to Jon Cryer getting back to business with Charlie Sheen. Cryer, who co-starred with Charlie Sheen and Angus T. Jones on the CBS sitcom, is aware of the demand for a reunion but feels Sheen may have poisoned the well. Speaking with The View, Jon Cryer confessed that he feels the ship has sailed for a Two and Half Men reboot, saying he would prefer to focus on his new sitcom, Extended Family.
Discussing the possibility of a Two and Half Men reboot, Cryer told Alyssa Farah Griffin of The View he’s aware of Sheen mending the once-broken bridge between himself and the sitcom’s producer Chuck Lorre. However, he’s uninterested in giving the Two and a Half Men formula another try. In so many words, Cryer said Sheen sabotaged a great thing regarding his treatment of the sitcom, and he can’t imagine working with him again “for any length of time.”
When asked directly about his interest in a Two and Half Men reboot, Cryer told The View, “Oh gosh, oh gosh, I don’t know how that happens. The thing is, Charlie is doing a lot better now, which is wonderful. He and I have not spoken in a few years, but he’s doing a lot better, which, obviously, I am happy about. Chuck Lorre, who produced Two and a Half Men…one of the hardest things for him when Two and a Half Men fell apart because he really thought he was friends with Charlie. And that he lost that was really hard for him. So that they have reconciled is really lovely.
“The thing for me is, when Two and a Half Men was happening, Charlie was like the highest-paid actor in television – probably ever. And there has been nobody that has surpassed the enormous amount of money he was making.
“And yet he blew it up. So you kinda have to think, I love him, I wish him the best and that he should live in good health the rest of his life, but I don’t know if I want to get in business with him for any length of time. If it was a one-off or…”
Cryer did not finish his thought and let the possibility of a reunion hang in the air. Shortly after that, The View co-host Ana Navarro joked about doing a Friends-style reunion for a combined payday, to which Cryer replied, “The sounds fair,” though he did not sound serious.
Would you like to see a Two and a Half Men reboot with the original cast? Could a scenario be proposed that inspires Jon Cryer to cave to the dollar or demand? Let us know what you think in the comments below.
Back when the Pokémon anime first premiered in the ‘90s, nearly every kid had a Pokédex—the renowned red device that identified the delightful creatures—on their wish list. Nearly three decades later, a YouTuber has created a real-life version of the Pokédex using ChatGPT—and it looks like it actually works.
Back when the Pokémon anime first premiered in the ‘90s, nearly every kid had a Pokédex—the renowned red device that identified the delightful creatures—on their wish list. Nearly three decades later, a YouTuber has created a real-life version of the Pokédex using ChatGPT—and it looks like it actually works.
Season 12 of the anthology series American Horror Story, which is also known as American Horror Story: Delicate, started airing back in September… but due to the writers and actors strikes, the season had to be split in half. Deadline reports that FX has now announced when the second half of the season is going to start airing: Wednesday, April 3 at 10 p.m. ET/PT. The return episode will then be available to watch on the Hulu streaming service the next day. The second half of this season consists of four episodes, which will air on a weekly basis.
Deadline notes, “The series will be available on Star+ in Latin America and Disney+ in all other territories at a later date.”
American Horror Story is an anthology series where each season is conceived as a self-contained miniseries, following a different set of characters and settings in the same fictional universe, and a storyline with its own “beginning, middle, and end.”
American Horror Story season 12 is based on source material, which is a first for the show. The material in question is the novel Delicate Condition by Danielle Valentine – which is why season 12 is subtitled Delicate. Valentine’s novel Delicate Condition was just published last year, courtesy of Sourcebooks Landmark. (You can pick up a copy at THIS LINK.) It’s said to be a “gripping thriller about a woman who becomes convinced that a sinister figure is going to great lengths to make sure her pregnancy never happens.“ Here’s the full description: Anna Alcott is desperate to have a family. But as she tries to balance her increasingly public life as an indie actress with a grueling IVF journey, she starts to suspect that someone is going to great lengths to make sure that never happens. Crucial medicines are lost. Appointments get swapped without her knowledge. Cryptic warnings have her jumping at shadows. And despite everything she’s gone through to make this pregnancy a reality, not even her husband is willing to believe that someone is playing twisted games with her. Then her doctor tells her she’s had a miscarriage―except Anna’s convinced she’s still pregnant despite everything the grave-faced men around her claim. She can feel the baby moving inside her, can see the strain it’s taking on her weakening body. Vague warnings become direct threats as someone stalks her through the bleak ghost town of the snowy Hamptons. As her symptoms and sense of danger grow ever more horrifying, Anna can’t help but wonder what exactly she’s carrying inside of her…and why no one will listen when she says something is horribly, painfully wrong. The TV adaptation is described as “a feminist update of Rosemary’s Baby“.
The cast of this season includes American Horror Story regular Emma Roberts, Cara Delevingne (Carnival Row), “reality star, entrepreneur, podcaster and pop culture icon” Kim Kardashian and Michaela Jaé Rodriguez, who earned an Emmy nomination for her performance in the FX television series Pose, a series that American Horror Story creators Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk created with Steven Canals.
Kardashian is taking on a role that was written with her specifically in mind. This season of American Horror Story is being written and showrun by a single writer, Halley Feiffer. Murphy, Falchuk, and Feiffer are executive producing American Horror Story: Delicate with Alexis Martin Woodall and Scott Robertson.
Are you looking forward to the second half of American Horror Story: Delicate? Share your thoughts on this one by leaving a comment below.
PLOT: An astronaut who returns to Earth after a disaster in space only to discover that key pieces of her life seem to be missing. The action-packed space adventure is an exploration of the dark edges of human psychology, and one woman’s desperate quest to expose the truth about the hidden history of space travel and recover all that she has lost.
REVIEW: Man, the International Space Station is getting trashed lately. For years, films like Gravity and The Cloverfield Paradox as well as countless others have used the station as the setting for disaster, but this year alone has had more than one project featuring it. First, the horror filmI.S.S. made the triumphant existence of a joint space station a thing of terror and now Constellation fills viewers with a sense of foreboding surrounding the orbiting satellite. The resulting series is a psychological thriller that combines elements of horror, science fiction, and paranoid drama into a concept that tries to set up the first season of a conspiracy-laden ongoing tale. The problem is that for everything this series gets right, it gets just a little bit wrong. Led by the always-great Noomi Rapace and Jonathan Banks, Constellation would be fantastic if it wasn’t a little boring. Not every science-fiction story has to be full of action or violence, but the pacing lags at times in this series as it builds an intriguing narrative that you wish would give you a little bit more.
Constellation opens with Jo Ericsson (Noomi Rapace) driving through the backwoods of Sweden with her daughter. Worried when a police car follows her too closely, Jo arrives at a seemingly abandoned cabin with no electricity. A bizarre painting and other odd moments make you question what is going on. If you watched the trailer for Constellation, you know this series centers on astronauts so the Earthbound opening is a bit confusing. The series then shifts to Jo aboard the I.S.S. where a routine experiment goes wrong and is followed by an amputation, an evacuation, and a desiccated corpse in space. While all of this is going on Jo’s daughter, Alice (Rosie Coleman), and husband, Magnus (James D’Arcy), await news of her fate. Scientist Henry Caldera (Jonathan Banks) realizes a scientific breakthrough has occurred and begs for them to prioritize bringing it back from the station and that is when things start to get weird. With a dreamlike and surreal shift between sequences, Constellation is oddly enthralling from the first episode.
The trouble begins when Jo returns to Earth and things are not quite what they seem to be. People are a little different, including her daughter. It soon becomes apparent that something is going on that could be insanity, a parallel universe, aliens, or any number of conspiracy theories. Over the eight-episode series, we follow as Jo investigates why her daughter does not seem like the Alice she remembers. Creatively, Constellation casts twin siblings Rosie Coleman and Davina Coleman as doppelganger daughters. Whether the actresses play individual versions or switch back and forth, the differences are slight enough that they add to the surreal nature of this series. At no point can you trust what you think watching this series and that kept me watching through the entire season. Rapace is fantastic even if this feels like a variation of a character she has played before in Prometheus, Lamb, What Happened To Monday, You Won’t Be Alone, and other films. Equally good is Jonathan Banks getting to play a character far different than Mike Ehrmentraut and showcasing his breadth of talent.
James D’Arcy, Barbara Sukowa, and William Catlett also add a lot to this story in supporting roles but the problem I continued to have watching this series is that as each episode unfolds, there are countless red herrings and misdirects dropped, many of which are not satisfactorily resolved. By the end of the season, I was caught off guard that so much was left open-ended. Constellation is a thinking person’s thriller that blends jump scares, character drama, and contemporary fads like liminal spaces to build a series that has high expectations and a strong cast but does not quite stick the landing. In many ways, Constellation is like an outer space-themed variation on the tones of Severence, Apple’s other substantial hit. The difference is that Constellation is split between focusing on the psychological and true supernatural elements with neither really getting enough attention.
Peter Harness, best known for writing the UK-based series McMafia, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, and Doctor Who created Constellation and wrote the series alongside Sean Jablonski and Ragna Wei. Directing duties were shared between Joseph Cedar, Oliver Hirschbiegel, and Michelle MacLaren. McLaren is one of the best directors working today who has not made the jump to the big screen despite being in contention to helm Wonder Woman. With extensive experience directing series like The Deuce, Westworld. and Game of Thrones, McLaren helms the first two episodes with an eye for the visual eerieness that becomes the hallmark of Constellation. Everything about this series is designed to make the viewer question reality and the sanity of the characters, something that McLaren and her fellow directors build into every episode. The muted colors and intricate shifting of the settings are augmented by the intercut scenes courtesy of the series editors as well as the score from Ben Salisbury and Suvi-Eeva Aikas. Any faults that Constellation has are a result of the complex nature of this story not quite coming together cohesively despite looking pretty damn good.
With limited series setting a precedent for stories to get wrapped up in a dozen chapters or less, Constellation is firmly designed as the first season in an ongoing series. The final episode sets up far more than it resolves and leaves viewers with a jaw-dropping final scene that will have some waiting excitedly for news of season two while others are going to be left scratching their heads. AppleTV+ has been a surprisingly vocal outlet for science-fiction programming of the highest quality as compared to other streaming platforms and I am thankful that a unique tale like this has made it to wide audiences. If Peter Harness and his creative team can mine Noomi Rapace and Jonathan Banks for the level of acting they deliver this season with a stronger collection of episodes, season two will make Constellation a series to be reckoned with.
Constellation premieres on February 21st on AppleTV+.
After all the delays, trailers, and start-and-stop hype cycles, Ubisoft’s highly(?) anticipated pirate simSkull and Bones is in beta. The game was meant to release in 2018, then 2019, but at least now there’s an open beta and your progress will carry over into Skull and Bones when it launches on February 16. So,…
