Science fiction TV is a risky business. Even a fantasy show can get away with filming plenty of scenes on a nearby hillside, but when it comes to sci-fi, it’s very much about not looking like our everyday reality. But what if you just removed the need to look like anything at all? That’s the secret behind two of the…
Science fiction TV is a risky business. Even a fantasy show can get away with filming plenty of scenes on a nearby hillside, but when it comes to sci-fi, it’s very much about not looking like our everyday reality. But what if you just removed the need to look like anything at all? That’s the secret behind two of the…
A new year means new entries for the Marvel Cinematic Universe are on the way. First up will be Anthony Mackie taking center stage as the new Captain America in Captain America: Brave New World. The movie went into production in March of 2023, with filming lasting through June. But in December of ’23, another screenwriter was brought onto the project to write new material for reshoots, and those reshoots seemed to be quite substantial, lasting from May 2024 through November. We know that the story still involves the Serpent Society; in fact, the reshoots added Giancarlo Esposito into the mix as Sidewinder, the leader of the Serpent Society.
Even with all the reported reshoots and reworking plaguing the production and delaying the release, the brand recognition of Captain America and an added element of Harrison Ford’s Red Hulk being promoted, the movie is still being projected to make some coin on its opening weekend. While it may not have the strength to compete with last year’s Deadpool & Wolverine, Deadline is reporting that early tracking from the service Quorum is saying the film is expected to do $86 million to $95 million over the 3-day of the 4-day Valentine’s Day/Presidents Day weekend on February 14. The Friday-Monday figure is also bound to be $100M+ at this point in time.
Despite the inclusion of the likes of Red Hulk and some of the grand scale settings in the trailer, the tone for this new film is strongly resembling the more grounded feel of Captain America: Winter Soldier. That installment had opened to $95 million over a 3-day period on April 4-6.
Here’s the official information on Captain America: Brave New World, straight from Marvel: Anthony Mackie returns as the high-flying hero, who’s officially taken up the mantle of Captain America. Harrison Ford makes his Marvel Cinematic Universe debut as newly-elected U.S. President Thaddeus Ross, a role originated by the late William Hurt. Ross and Sam have a bit of a history: In his previous role as Secretary of State, Ross was responsible for arresting Sam and his fellow Avengers during the events of Captain America: Civil War. Now as president, Ross is eager to work with Sam, hoping to make Captain America an official military position. But that tentative alliance is jeopardized when Sam finds himself in the middle of an international incident, with friend and retired super-soldier Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly) as the prime suspect. Sam’s investigation send him on a dangerous chase, and (leading to) a deadly showdown and a tease of the menacing Red Hulk. Danny Ramirez returns as former Air Force lieutenant Joaquin Torres, who’s picked up Sam’s old wings and taken on the role of Falcon. Tim Blake Nelson is also back as Samuel Sterns, AKA The Leader, appearing in the MCU for the first time since 2008’s The Incredible Hulk. New to the cast is Shira Haas, who joins as Ruth Bat-Seraph. A former Black Widow, Ruth is now a high-ranking U.S. government official who has the trust of President Ross. Giancarlo Esposito, Liv Tyler, and Xosha Roquemore also star. The film is directed by Julius Onah and produced by Kevin Feige and Nate Moore. Louis D’Esposito and Charles Newirth serve as executive producers. Malcolm Spellman, Dalan Musson, and Rob Edwards crafted the story for the film. Onah receives screenplay credit alongside Peter Glanz and Matthew Orton (Orton being the writer who was brought on for the reshoots).
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A Real Pain, written and directed by Jesse Eisenberg, follows David (Eisenberg) and Benji (Kieran Culkin), making their way round Poland on a tour in honour of their recently departed grandmother. The bickering cousins with an odd couple dynamic visit Majdanek concentration camp as well as the childhood home of their beloved ancestor, a Holocaust survivor, in a desperate bid to feel something.
My own grandfather survived Auschwitz and, after he died on his 93rd birthday in early 2023, my mother and I travelled to Poland to see the apartment of his youth, the place he lived until history had other ideas. I went to Majdanek and other camps with friends and family on an organised tour in 2019. When I told him all this, Eisenberg spent the first few minutes of our time together peppering me with questions and googling my grandfather. He was fidgety and inquisitive, seemingly keener to talk about my family than his film. In truth, there isn’t much that separates the two things.
I know you’ve been trying to sort Polish citizenship in recent years – did that lead to A Real Pain?
I became really interested in my family’s Polish history when I was 18-years-old. I became interested because I had started to become close to my dad’s aunt Doris (who we call Grandma Dory in the movie). From the time I was 18 to 36 I saw her every Thursday and I even lived with her for a period in my early 30s. She was a very close person to me and she lived to 107. She was born in Poland and left before the war but I became so obsessed with her history probably because I felt a certain lack of meaning in my life as I became a professional actor and became celebrated for something that didn’t feel worthy of celebration. I became interested in my past and the suffering of my ancestors to connect to something more real and meaningful.
Did you make a similar trip to the one shown in the film?
My wife and I went to Poland in 2008. Her family, like your grandfather, was from Lodz and we did the trip shown in the movie but not on a tour. I really felt this deep connection to the place. I stood outside the house my family lived in up until 1939 and felt the fluke of history that I’m American with this JanSport backpack and I’m not living inside these doors. We were in this city for much longer than we were in New York City. I was further interested in getting Polish citizenship when I met all these people who were not only helping with the movie but also preserving the memory of my family by working at concentration camps and memorialising Jewish history. In the town my family’s from, the town’s gynaecologist is also the Jewish genealogist–
It’s like a dyslexia joke.
I know, I know! He’s not Jewish but he knew more about my family than I did.
Did you go back to write the script?
No. I was so desperate to go back but it was Covid when I was writing and it just seemed like an impossible thing to tell my wife, “I’ve had this idea for a movie, I’m going to leave you for a week and go on a tour of Poland.” Especially when ninety percent of what I write doesn’t get produced. I ended up doing this really weird thing of getting brochures online for Holocaust tours and then using Google Street View and going street by street walking where the characters would go.
Which of the two main characters is closest to the person you were doing that trip in 2008?
I probably present to the world what David presents to the world.
You look a lot like him.
Exactly! But I was actually going to play Benji. I did that character in a play I wrote called The Spoils which played here in London. But the producer of this, Emma Stone, said I should not play an unhinged character while also trying to direct. It’s too much cognitive dissonance to try and reconcile on a set. I have elements of Benji in that I’m also a performer and at times I’m in control of groups but I’m much more self-conscious and self-aware than Benji is.
Kieran Culkin is perfect in the role but did you think about casting a Jewish actor?
Of course. The only reason I didn’t send the first ten pages I wrote to Kieran Culkin was because we thought a Jew should play this role. It was a very complex process where I was trying to mine my own feelings about representation and what I ultimately felt, after asking a lot of people, was that this is a movie that’s in my head about my family’s story. Who is best to illustrate this story in a way that’s closest to my reality? It’s Kieran Culkin.
You still took on a lead role. What was it like doing that as well as directing?
In some ways, really helpful. I could pace the scenes as I wanted to pace them and play things that would come across on screen if not the page. I understood the emotional stakes of my character in a way some readers didn’t even understand. In terms of a disadvantage, I barely watched the scenes. We had the option after every take to do another one or watch the take back. Almost without exception, I’d do another take. We didn’t have much time or money.
You chose not to deify the survivor in the story and I really related to that. My grandfather was an amazing man but I also saw the way he behaved when he was stuck in traffic. When we talk about six million, the key is to humanise rather than turn people into statistics. Were you conscious of that while writing?
My God. I just think about what it took to survive something like that. It requires a real tenacity. What does that look like in the quietness of regular, modern life? The characters in this movie are missing their grandmother and Benji in particular is really grieving her loss because she was the only one in the family who would set him straight. But she was not a saint and that probably speaks to you because it’s real. Sometimes people who’ve been through really horrible situations can be scary to little kids because they’ve had to toughen themselves up unfairly. The person who has been toughest with Benji is the only one he can feel love with.
And he’s felt suicidal since she died. Judaism puts such a large emphasis on being alive with the Book of Life, l’chaim, wishing someone a long life when they’ve lost a relative etc and that’s even more significant when you’re talking about the descendants of Holocaust survivors.
That’s the great irony of our modern pain. We talk about it more than previous generations and feel less of it. That’s something I wanted to explore but the counter irony is that sometimes when you have real suffering it provides meaning in a way this modern life can never do.
I’ve always found it strange to be called a third generation survivor. I didn’t survive anything. But then I read articles about generational trauma and wonder if I’m different because my grandfather survived Auschwitz. Were you deliberately attempting to grappled with this stuff?
I don’t think of generational trauma as this magical, epigenetic phenomenon. I think of it in very practical terms. If your grandparents went through something historically and epically unbearable, they were probably a stressed-out parent to your parents and your parents were probably stressed-out parents to you. With the movie I was just trying to pose the question – what pain is valid? Is our modern pain valid? Is my character’s treatable OCD valid when our grandparents survived the holocaust?
Growing up with this thing, I watched so many films and read so many books about the topic. But I was really moved to see someone do something from our kind of perspective. I’ve never seen that before.
That was exactly my goal. I’d never seen this movie. I’m obsessed with movies about this topic because it’s an impossible subject to understand and I watch movies in an attempt to get some little nugget or some truth. With this, I was trying to do something different with characters that are irreverent. It brought up all sorts of interesting questions like why are we travelling on a train to a concentration camp and sitting first class? It sheds light on an irony that people like you and me would feel whereas our parents’ generation might have a different perspective.
Sequences like that make you cringe but they’re relatable. I’ve read you’re a big fan of The Office and I feel like there’s something of that in here.
Oh my God, it’s the greatest. It’s that, it’s that. What they did, and they didn’t even get enough credit for, is that Ricky Gervais is playing this character that’s saying all the wrong things and you love him. How do you make that thing work? What’s great is that Kieran never pushes it too far and he remains lovable. He makes good arguments even when he’s being obnoxious. Throughout the film, he breaks people open because he is open himself.
How hard was it to get permission to film in a camp given this is a comedy drama?
It was the most interesting process I’ve ever been involved with. When we got Polish producers on board, they told me that to shoot the Majdanek concentration camp it would be a $1 million build. I said, “What do you mean a $1 million build?” They told me you can’t shoot in concentration camps; you have to build them. I said, “That’s weird, there’s somebody who knows how to build concentration camps?” That was a third of our budget so we couldn’t afford it. I reached out to anyone I’d ever met with a connection to the camps and got the word to Majdanek that it would be a reverential scene about a tour group at the camp now. Nobody would be running around dressed as a Nazi. Eventually I met the people there and we got along so well as they’re young academics who’ve devoted their lives to preserving the memory of yours and my families’ histories. By the end of the experience, we realised that on some level we were all trying to do the same thing – let people know what happened here.
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Back in 2005, The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman put a superhero twist on the idea of zombie outbreaks with the five issue limited series Marvel Zombies. That series became incredibly popular and has gotten a ton of sequels and spin-offs over the years. There was a nod to it in one of the illusions on display in Spider-Man: Far from Home, and then the Marvel Zombies concept got an entire episode of Marvel’s animated Disney+ series What If…? devoted to it. That episode is leading to a full Marvel Zombies animated series, which will be rated TV-MA – and the Walt Disney Company has now reveal that the series is set to premiere on Disney+ on October 3rd.
Showrunner Bryan Andrews said, “Brad (Winderbaum, Head of Marvel Television and Marvel Animation) and Kevin (Feige, President of Marvel Studios) loved the What If…? episode so much. They were like, ‘We need more zombies!’ They said, ‘Let’s do a sequel to that episode — but let’s do four episodes, like a mini-movie event.’ So, we’re upping the ante. It’s TV-MA, so we don’t have to pull punches. We can be a little bit more hardcore. We go for the throat — no pun intended. It’s pretty wild, pretty out there.”
Winderbaum added, “In many ways, animation is the most direct access you’ll ever have to a filmmaker’s imagination. If you can conjure it in your mind, you can put it onscreen. Marvel Zombies is proof of that. It’s not just a zombie story, it’s a sweeping adventure — one with themes of hope and despair, and that’s what you want from a rich zombie story.”
The Marvel Zombies voice cast includes Simu Liu (Shang-Chi), Awkwafina (Shang-Chi’s best friend Katy), Elizabeth Olsen (Wanda Maximoff / Scarlet Witch), David Harbour (Red Guardian), Florence Pugh (Yelena Belova), Randall Park (FBI agent Jimmy Woo), Hailee Steinfeld (Kate Bishop), Dominique Thorne (Riri Williams / Ironheart), Iman Vellani (Kamala Khan / Ms. Marvel), and Todd Williams, voicing an unspecified character. Other characters known to be showing up in the series are Ten Rings assassin Death Dealer, Ten Rings founder Xu Wenwu, zombie versions of Clint Barton / Hawkeye, Steve Rogers / Captain America, Emil Blonsky / Abomination, Ava Starr / Ghost, Carol Danvers / Captain Marvel, Ikaris from Eternals, and Okoye of of Wakanda’s Dora Milaje. While we’re still waiting for the Blade reboot to go into production, it has been confirmed that Blade will be appearing in Marvel Zombies – and since this is a What If…? story, this version of Blade is also Moon Knight, the avatar for the Egyptian moon god Khonshu.
Marvel Animation’s series finale of What If…? was recently released, and season 2 of X-Men ’97 is currently in production. Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man is scheduled to premiere on January 29th, followed by Eyes of Wakanda on August 6th. Then Marvel Zombies comes along in October, just in time for Halloween.
Will you be watching Marvel Zombies when it premieres in October? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
The post Marvel Zombies animated series has a TV-MA rating and an October premiere date appeared first on JoBlo.
What Do We Know About the upcoming second season of the Disney+ Star Wars series Andor? More than you may think. The acclaimed prequel to Rogue One, Andor’s first season, became one of Lucasfilm’s most critically acclaimed projects since Disney acquired them. With production wrapped on the second and final season, let’s dive in and take a look at what is coming up next in Andor.
The first season of Andor followed a single year in the life of Cassian Andor, played by Diego Luna, reprising his role from the prequel feature film. Since we know the first season of Andor is set five years before Rogue One, four years of plot need to be compressed into the twelve episodes comprising season two. The final three episodes of Andor’s second season will cover the three days before the start of Rogue One.
Once creator and showrunner Tony Gilroy realized the time commitment to completing Andor would make it impossible to run logistically for five seasons, the creative team behind the series shifted their approach. According to Luna, Tony Gilroy came up with the idea for the second season to be split into blocks of three episodes, each covering a year of the remaining four years leading to Rogue One.
The three-episode arcs in Andor’s sophomore run are built almost like self-contained narratives, each with a different lead director and lead writer. This allows for all of the narrative developed for the five-season vision of Andor to exist without taking two years for each season to be written, produced, and released. If the original timeline it took to produce the initial season of Andor, we would not have seen the fifth and final season until 2034, so this approach may work better for us impatient fans.
Tony Gilroy wrote the first three episodes of the season, followed by Beau Willimon on four through six, Dan Gilroy on seven through nine, and Tom Bissell on the final three chapters. This season, Ariel Kleiman, Janus Metz, and Alonso Ruizpalacios are the directors. Ariel Kleiman, who directed the film Partisan and episodes of the Showtime series Yellowjackets, directed six of the twelve episodes, but it is unclear which episodes. Ruizpalacios, known for the films A Cop Movie and La Cocina, is confirmed to have directed the final three episodes.
Diego Luna returns in the title role as Cassian Andor alongside Kyle Stoller as Syril Karn, Denise Gough as Dedra Meero, Genevieve O’Reilly as Mon Mothma, and Stellan Skarsgard as Luthen Rael. Adria Arjona’s Bix Caleen will have a larger role in the second season. Faye Marsay, Varada Sethu, Elizabeth Dulau, James McArdle, and Muhannad Bhaier are all confirmed to return for the second season. It remains to be seen if any other characters from season one, like fan favorite Andy Serkis as Kino Loy, will be back.
The first season saw Forest Whitaker reprise his Rogue One role of Saw Gerrera, who potentially could come back but has yet to be confirmed. We know that Ben Mendelsohn will return as the villainous Death Star leader Orson Krennic, while Alan Tudyk will return as Cassian’s droid friend K2-SO. Benjamin Bratt has also been confirmed for a role in the second season, but details remain a mystery.
After delays in production due to the 2023 writer and actor strikes, the release of Andor was pushed from August 2024 to the following year. Production wrapped in February 2024. A teaser was revealed at Star Wars Celebration in London back in 2023, and a second teaser was revealed at the D23 Expo in 2024. The formal release date for season two is set for April 22, 2025, and it will likely mimic the weekly episode drop that was so successful with the first season.
Stay tuned to JoBlo.com as we learn more about season two of Andor and all your other favorite shows. What do you expect to see in Andor‘s upcoming season? Let us know in the comments, click like, and subscribe to follow all our latest original videos.
The post Andor Season 2: Everything We Know About The Star Wars Series’ Final Episodes appeared first on JoBlo.
We finally made it folks: The Switch 2 reveal is just days away. At least that’s what insiders are now claiming. It’s about time.
We finally made it folks: The Switch 2 reveal is just days away. At least that’s what insiders are now claiming. It’s about time.
Plot: Begins with fraternal twins Devin and Cece adjusting to life with their recently divorced dad, Anthony. When the duo discovers a threat stirring, they quickly realize that dark secrets are among them, triggering a chain of events that unravel a profound mystery.
Review: Growing up, I was slightly too old to enjoy Goosebumps. While I was graduating from Christopher Pike novels and R.L. Stine’s Fear Street series to the more mature novels of Stephen King, tons of kids entered the gateway horror of Stine’s fun brand of scary stories to tell in the dark. The anthology series was a hit with kids looking for a good scare, and the big-screen films starring Jack Black amped up the comedy for a big-budget adventure. Disney+ and Hulu’s reboot of the franchise was a successful, scary take on the source material back in 2023, and this year’s sophomore entry is equally good. Led by David Schwimmer in a very different New York story, Goosebumps: The Vanishing is a solid franchise continuation for the small screen that favors jump scares over slapstick. With shout-outs to several memorable books in the Goosebumps catalog, The Vanishing takes a different approach than the first season but works just as well.
Shifting the setting from Stine’s preferred location of generic suburban America, The Vanishing takes Goosebumps to New York City. Set in Gravesend in Brooklyn, The Vanishing opens in 1994 with a group of teens exploring an abandoned military facility when they are seemingly killed by a black goo that reduces them to dust. Fast-forwarding three decades to the present day, the story shifts to twins Cece (Jayden Bartels) and Devin (Sam McCarthy), who are staying with their dad, Anthony (David Schwimmer), as he takes care of his mother’s home. Anthony is a botanist clearing out his childhood home as his mother has moved into assisted living. Anthony is still dealing with the death of his brother, one of the teens in the opening sequence. Cece and Devin deal with their own challenges, including Devin’s crush, Franke (Galilea La Salvia,) and her new boyfriend, Trey (Stony Blyden). They also run into CJ (Elijah M. Cooper) and Alex (Francesca Noel), neighborhood kids and new friends. When Trey challenges Devin to revisit the site of his uncle’s death, the group unleashes the same menace that killed the kids thirty years earlier.
Where the first season of Goosebumps blended the adult cast with a new group of teens facing off against the menacing dummy Slappy and a slew of interpretations of supernatural beings from the novels, there are few adults in the cast of The Vanishing. David Schwimmer is great as Anthony, who bridges the two time periods in the story along with Jen (Ana Ortiz), Anthony’s brother’s girlfriend and mother to Alex. The other significant adult character is Ramona (Sakina Jaffrey), a scientist whose father (Sendhil Ramamurthy) directly connects to the military facility. In the two-part opener, Goosebumps: The Vanishing tackles a twist on the book “Stay Out of the Basement” before shifting to episodes named after books like “The Haunted Car”, “Monster Blood”, and “Welcome to Camp Nightmare”. All of the stories, rather than serve as direct adaptations of the standalone books, are incorporated into the overall season narrative. While the story works better overall this season than it did in the first, the reveal as to what is actually behind the generational horror did not work as well as I had hoped.
What I liked the most in the first season of Goosebumps was the teen cast. While Justin Long provided the adult connection in the first season’s story, the young protagonists are all fully realized characters with a stake in the main story. Season two gives us a nice ensemble led by Jayden Bartels and Sam McCarthy as likable siblings who do not act like twins. Both Francesca Noel and Galilea La Salvia are good romantic interests for the main characters and never get relegated to being secondary. The same cannot be said for Stony Blyden and Elijah M. Cooper, as CJ and Trey are the least developed of the six teens. Because the story is centered on the Brewer family, we are meant to care most about Cece, Devin, and their dad, but this sometimes gets muddled in the middle of the season. There are a couple of weak entries in the middle of the season, something rectified in the solid and unexpected finale.
Pokemon: Detective Pikachu helmer Rob Letterman, who directed the 2015 Goosebumps film and co-created and directed entries in the first season of this series, returns to oversee The Vanishing. Letterman wrote two episodes and directed one in the first season. For The Vanishing, Letterman co-wrote three and directed three alongside Erin O’Malley, Gillian Robespierre, Oz Rodriguez, and The Blair Witch Project co-director Eduardo Sanchez. The intensity of the horror this season feels much stronger than in the first, making it a natural continuation of what we saw a couple of years ago. While it is nowhere close to what we got in Netflix’s Fear Street films, Goosebumps remains one of the scarier teen-centric series to debut in a long time. There are funny moments in the season, but the focus is on being scary, and the production values and visual effects make this feel like it is not designed for kids.
While it will not phase most horror fans, Goosebumps: The Vanishing is vastly scarier than the big screen takes on the subject matter. Rivaling the frights from the 1990s version of Goosebumps and even Are You Afraid of the Dark?, The Vanishing is a solid series that introduces younger audiences to the horror genre while still being entertaining for adults. Once the series unveils the big twist on what is going on in Gravesend, some may be disappointed compared to the supernatural origins in the first season. Nevertheless, Goosebumps: The Vanishing works far better than I anticipated and benefits from David Schwimmer doing a solid job as the main adult in a cast of young newcomers. Disney and Hulu missed a great opportunity to debut this series during Halloween, but it is still worth a watch during the wasteland of mediocre programming coming in January.
Goosebumps: The Vanishing is now streaming on Disney+ and Hulu.
The post Goosebumps The Vanishing TV Review: David Schwimmer leads a fun and scary second season appeared first on JoBlo.
Marvel Rivals fans were having a field day with mods earlier this month. But last week NetEase shut the party down in a season one update. Now, a workaround has surfaced to bring back everything from wholesome Chainsaw Man mod for Jeff the Land Shark to very NSFW 19-inches of Venom overhaul, at least for players…