Some cliche somewhere said that ‘a picture is worth a thousand words.’ This has proven to be the case for me and especially when it comes to fan art. I have always sought out great fan art and have wanted to share it with as many people as possible. “Awesome Art We’ve Found Around The Net” is the outlet for that passion. In this column, I will showcase the kick-ass artwork of some great artists, with the hopes that these artists get the attention they deserve. That’s the aim. If you have any questions or comments, or even suggestions of art or other great artists, feel free to contact me at any time at theodorebond@joblo.com.
The Sundance Film Festival as we know it could be unspooling before our very eyes, as it could end up leaving Park City, Utah in the coming years. As previously reported, the contract that Sundance holds with the ski town is set to expire in 2027, leaving them the option to either renew or go with another city altogether. Ahead of this, the Sundance Institute has done some location scouting, listing a half dozen cities that could play host, including, yes, Park City.
Outside of Park City/Salt Lake City, the Sundance Institute also looked at Atlanta, GA; Boulder, CO; Cincinnati, OH; Louisville, KY; and Santa Fe, NM. Some of these potential host cities for Sundance may not exactly scream cinema, but there are thriving art scenes in all. They, too, are lacking full-blown film festivals on the scale of a Sundance. The Institute also ensured they had in-depth conversations and understandings with everyone from mayors to film commissioners.
Expanding on why they made the shortlist, festival director Eugene Hernandez (via Variety) said, “Each of these cities has a vibrant creative ecosystem, either expanding or established, and has enabled creativity to flourish in their cities through their support of the arts. These cities understand our ethos, are aligned with our key values, and have shown us interesting possibilities for partnership with our festival — for our artists, audiences, and all who want to be a part of the Sundance Film Festival — and that makes us want to see more.”
That Park City/Salt Lake City remains on the list is promising for traditionalists, as the Sundance Film Festival has been held there for more than 40 years. Park City’s mayor, too, wants to see it remain within city limits, as it has been reported that out-of-state visitors alone generate close to $120 million in revenue. Some may draw comparisons to the announcement that the San Diego Comic-Con could be leaving its namesake city, coming as a result of hotels surging their rates, thus pricing out out-of-town attendees.
How would you feel about the Sundance Film Festival leaving Park City? Which city would be a fitting host in future years?
This week saw No Man’s Sky, a game that has repeatedly reinvented itself in the years since its release, get one of its biggest overhauls ever. Not to be outdone, Baldur’s Gate 3 also got a patch that rounds out the game nicely. Also, the FTC responded to Microsoft’s latest Xbox Live price hike, calling it “exactly…
This week saw No Man’s Sky, a game that has repeatedly reinvented itself in the years since its release, get one of its biggest overhauls ever. Not to be outdone, Baldur’s Gate 3 also got a patch that rounds out the game nicely. Also, the FTC responded to Microsoft’s latest Xbox Live price hike, calling it “exactly…
Armie Hammer recently spoke with Piers Morgan and said Hollywood producers would be “smart” to cast actors such as himself or Kevin Spacey as they would probably be able to snag them for a “pretty cheap” price. While Hollywood is certainly always eager to save a buck, I’m not sure I can see that happening anytime soon. Hammer was one of Hollywood’s biggest upcoming actors, but when several women came forward with sexual assault allegations against him in 2021 (not to mention those bizarre cannibalism claims), his career was over.
“If they were smart, they could get guys like two-time Academy Award-winning actor Kevin Spacey for probably pretty cheap right now, for a good project,” Hammer said. As soon as the allegations surfaced, the actor was dropped from pretty much every project on his slate, which led to him seeking multiple jobs in the Cayman Islands. But despite being “cancelled” and broke, Hammer recently said that he’s “never been happier” in his entire life.
Morgan played a clip from his interview with Kevin Spacey last month, in which the actor was asked whether the #MeToo movement had gone too far. “Well, I could say yes, and not just in my particular case,” Spacey said. “There have been others that I feel, they may have been inappropriate, they may have done something that they wished they hadn’t done, but I didn’t think that what it was and maybe what they even admitted to was so heinous that they should have lost their career or their ability to make their livelihood. I think that is, that is too far. But I also think we have to be mindful that it doesn’t swing back too far in the other direction.“
Hammer agreed with Spacey but admitted that movements such as #MeToo are needed. “I agree with him. I think the genesis and origin of this movement was necessary,” Hammer said. “For a long, long time people in power were in positions to abuse it with no recourse and no fallout, and that’s not OK. I think the pendulum had swung so far in that direction that it’s probably expected that there be a bit of an overcorrection.“
In the past three years, Hammer has struggled to find work in the Cayman Islands. He sold timeshares but also applied to be a drama teacher, a landscaper, and a building manager, but each time, he got a letter back from the government which said, “Due to issues of character, we do not think it is in the best interest of the community for this person to be admitted to the Cayman Islands.“
While Armie Hammer hasn’t worked since Death on the Nile, Kevin Spacey has appeared in several low-budget movies and has found supporters in Liam Neeson, Sharon Stone, and others. Will Hollywood ever welcome them back? I suppose time will tell.
Since the very first moment Disney began considering acquiring 20th Century Fox, fans have been over the moon at the thought of the X-Men joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe. We’re still a ways off from a proper X-Men movie, but Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige spoke to io9 about the sheer amount of characters they have at their disposal to bring into the MCU.
“Well, it’s that phrase we use often at Marvel, which is ‘It’s an embarrassment of riches,’” Feige said. “And there are a lot of great X-Men characters in the Deadpool & Wolverine film. There are a lot of great X-Men characters in all of the Fox versions of the X-Men films. And there are a lot of great X-Men characters that have never gone on the big screen. So I think as we always try to do, as we did when we made the arrangement with Sony for Spider-Man, you’ll probably see a mix of characters you’ve seen before and characters you’ve never seen before.“
Feige added that the massive success of the X-Men ’97 animated series was “really exciting for us to see people revisit and reconnect with that world. And dare I say, the soap opera elements of that world, which is one of the things that’s so exciting to us about jumping into it finally in the MCU.“
Marvel has been taking their time with bringing the X-Men into the MCU, but we have seen a few X-characters pop up in the franchise in the last few years, including Professor X in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Beast in The Marvels. Of course, the upcoming Deadpool & Wolverine movie will include even more X-Men characters from the 20th Century Fox era. Feige even credited the original X-Men movie (as well as Blade) for helping to give birth to the MCU as we know it.
The X-Men movie is taking shape as it was revealed earlier this year that Michael Lesslie (The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes) was in negotiations to pen the screenplay.
Which X-Men characters do you hope make an appearance in the MCU movie?
Woah! When it was announced that Keanu Reeves would be co-writing his first novel, we were all excited. That it is set in the same universe as BRZRKR – the three-volume comic series Reeves created alongside Matt Kint – added even more hype. Ahead of the novel’s July 23rd release, Keanu Reeves is chatting his inspirations and the book’s heavy themes.
That The Book of Elsewhere – which he co-wrote with China Miéville – spawns from BRZRKR probably isn’t a surprise considering that comic series practically begs for expansion in some way. (There have already been spin-offs and Netflix had talked about adapting it in live-action form.) Through work on both the comic and the novel, Keanu Reeves said the complexity of it all allowed for some self-analysis. “It surprised me in the creative act, what gets revealed to oneself. Maybe the creative act is a kind of talking, you know. And so maybe I have father issues and mother issues. And maybe I think about death.”
Keanu Reeve also said curiosities such as these thrust him into more themes that he couldn’t help but explore in the novel. “Maybe I don’t understand the violence of the world. I don’t understand that we all know we’re going to die, and we kill each other over things that are, perhaps as you look back at them, not so important. Maybe I wonder about the world, you know, how did we get here, who are we…Maybe I wonder about love. And the power of it. Why is death so strong and love so frail, and yet it’s the strongest force on the planet? So, I like to think about those things, and I thought maybe I found that they could come out” in the comic and the book.
What’s so cool here is that Keanu Reeves has been able to mash complex themes with action in both BRZRKR and, presumably, The Book of Elsewhere (sadly, I haven’t had a chance to read this novel yet, although my pre-order is due next week). Combined with his own explorations and fears of the constant evolution of technology, it’s always great to see someone who cares taking charge and expanding on genre norms.
Will you be pre-ordering Keanu Reeves’ debut novel? Were you a fan of BRZRKR?
With just a week until the release of Deadpool & Wolverine, Disney and Marvel dropped the much-anticipated movie’s final trailer this morning. The trailer showcased the more emotional side of the film but also revealed a major cameo from a returning character: Dafne Keen as Laura, aka X-23 from Logan.
While speaking with Entertainment Weekly, Keen said she’s had to lie about her return quite a bit thanks to the press tour for Star Wars: The Acolyte. “I had a great time keeping it secret. I had to do a bunch of press for a job that I just finished,” Keen said. “I got asked in every interview, and I just got to lie, which was really funny.” Keen always wanted to return as X-23, and there was a project in the works, which unfortunately fell apart when Disney acquired 20th Century Fox.
“It was very much a reality that then kind of fell through,” Keen explained. “There were talks of a script being made. I’d heard it was an X-23 [movie]. I dunno how much of what I’m saying is true because I was 11, but this is what I’d heard through the grapevine. I was quite sad. I was like, ‘Oh well, I guess that’s it. That’s life, and I’ll have to move on’ — even though this is one of the greatest characters I’ll ever get to play, and annoyingly, I got to play her at 11! I peaked at 11.“
Flash forward nearly a decade, and Keen was on the set of Deadpool & Wolverine as X-23. After momentarily freaking out that she had forgotten how to play the character, she said that as soon as filming began, “It really felt like we were back doing Logan… It was like eight years hadn’t passed.” Keen added that the teenage X-23 is now much more understanding of Wolverine. “It was wonderful to get to come back to that and explore that as a grownup, now understanding more parental rage so much more and bringing that to the table for her,” she said. “I found that Laura in Logan stumbled into having a dad and then having lost her dad. We find her again really knowing how to appreciate — and with this kind of wiseness to her — how much her father means to her.“
Deadpool & Wolverine will hit theaters on July 26th.
Directed by Greg Berlanti and produced by star Scarlett Johansson, the romantic dramedy Fly Me to the Moon was originally meant to be released directly to the Apple TV+ streaming service, but strong test screenings inspired Sony to give the film a theatrical release first. The movie isn’t setting the box office on fire, having pulled in just $20 million worldwide during its first week of release, but it will be heading to Apple TV+ soon anyway – and Berlanti and Johansson were able to establish a strong working relationship during the making of the film. That’s a working relationship they’re now set to continue with a psychological thriller called Sasha, and Deadline reports that Amazon MGM Studios has come out the winner of a five-way auction to land the rights to the project.
Berlanti will be producing Sasha alongside Sarah Schechter and Mike McGrath for Berlanti Schechter Films, while Johansson does the same for These Pictures, alongside Jonathan Lia and Keenan Flynn. As of right now, Johansson is only involved as a producer. There’s no word on whether or not she’ll end up taking an acting role in the film as well.
Micah Schraft, who has worked as a writer on films like The Quiet and Sunny & Share Love You, as well as on TV shows like Jessica Jones and Jane the Virgin, is writing the screenplay for Sasha, working from a short story by Suzanne Rindell, the author of the novels The Other Typist, Three Martini Lunch, Eagle & Crane, The Two Mrs. Carlyles, and Summer Fridays.
Details on the plot are being kept under wraps, but this is said to be something along the lines of psychological thrillers like The Hand That Rocks the Cradle and What Lies Beneath.
Scripted by Rose Gilroy (with Bill Kirstein and Keenan Flynn receiving story credit), Fly Me to the Moon has been described as sharp and stylish and is set against the high-stakes backdrop of NASA’s historic moon landing. Brought in to fix NASA’s public image, sparks fly in all directions as marketing wunderkind Kelly Jones wreaks havoc on launch director Cole Davis’s already difficult task. When the President deems the mission too important to fail, Jones is directed to stage a fake moon landing as back-up and the countdown truly begins… Johansson was joined in the cast by Channing Tatum, Nick Dillenburg, Anna Garcia, Jim Rash, Noah Robbins, Colin Woodell, Christian Zuber, Donald Elise Watkins, Ray Romano, and Woody Harrelson.
Are you glad to hear that Greg Berlanti and Scarlett Johansson are working together again after Fly Me to the Moon, and does Sasha sound interesting to you? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
Bring on those blue skies; NBC has given an official series order to Suits: LA, a spinoff of the USA Network series which unexpectedly became the hottest TV series of last summer, despite coming to an end over four years ago.
Suits: LA comes from original creator Aaron Korsh and stars Stephen Amell as Ted Black, “a former federal prosecutor from New York who has reinvented himself representing the most powerful clients in Los Angeles. His firm is at a crisis point and to survive he must embrace a role he held in contempt his entire career. Ted is surrounded by a stellar group of characters who test their loyalties to both Ted and each other while they can’t help but mix their personal and professional lives.“
In addition to Amell, the new series also stars Josh McDermitt, Lex Scott Davis, and Bryan Greenberg. Victoria Mahoney directed the pilot and also serves as an executive producer alongside Aaron Korsh, David Bartis, Doug Liman, and Gene Klein. NBC hasn’t given Suits: LA a release date yet, but it will likely debut in the second half of the 2024-25 television season.
The original Suits series takes place in a fictional New York City corporate law firm and follows Mike (Patrick J. Adams), a college dropout who never attended law school but is able to talk his way into getting a job working for attorney Harvey Specter (Gabriel Macht) thanks to his impressive photographic memory. The series also stars Rick Hoffman, Sarah Rafferty, Gina Torres, and Meghan Markle. The series spanned nine seasons and 134 episodes. We’ve already seen one Suits spinoff, with Pearson following Gina Torres’ character as she entered the dirty world of Chicago politics, but the series was cancelled after just one season
Although the pilot for Suits: LA isn’t expected to include any members of the original cast, the door is open for them to appear. Patrick J. Adams has expressed a willingness to return if asked. “If I got the phone call, I’m ready to suit up again,” said Adams earlier this year. “I love the show, I love the character and I loved working with all these people.“
