Just a few weeks ago, when promoting his film, The Bricklayer, JoBlo asked Renny Harlin about making Die Hard 2: Die Harder, and he had high praise fro star Bruce Willis, who he compared, favourably, to the new generation of action stars, who seem reluctant to ever allow themselves to get beaten up on-screen, Willis never had this issue, said Harlin:
“I really wanted Bruce Willis to get really screwed up. His face is a blody mess by the end of the movie, and like you said, it really does make the character more heroic. They are really taking punishment and keep going.”
However, as we reported a little while back, there was one line Willis didn’t love in Die Hard 2:
Just the fax, ma’am…
It’s a line that made audiences laugh, but, in his book “The Last Action Heroes,” writer Nick de Semlyan interviews Harlin, and the director reveals it was a line the actor hated. In the book, Harlin says the only conflict between him and Willis happened because the latter wanted to play the great detective John McClane in a more serious way than he had in the original Die Hard, 1988’s biggest action movie. “One-liners and jokey comments are bullshit: that’s not real life. In a real situation, with lives on the line, you can’t say that kind of thing.”
According to Harlin, a compromise was made where Willis would do however many takes he wanted in a serious way, but Harlin would then be allowed to film a lighter, more humorous version. Most of these funny takes wound up in the final cut. But Willis drew the line by saying “just the fax” during a bit where a flirty airport worker helps him send a fax of a dead bad guy’s fingerprints. “He said it’s cheesy, it’s stupid. I’m not going to say it.” Finally, producer Joel Silver got involved, and the line was shot as planned.
Whatever the case, Die Hard 2: Die Harder wound up being a major financial hit, grossing $240 million worldwide, which is over $100 million more than the classic first instalment made. Ironically, the book states that when Die Hard 2 came out, Willis swore he was done with the character, saying, “Sure, Die Hard 3: He’s Dead. No, I think we’ve pretty much said everything about John McClane and terrorists.” Willis would go on to make Die Hard with a Vengeance, Live Free or Die Hard, and the now infamous A Good Day to Die Hard. Since being diagnosed with aphasia, which his family announced was an effect of frontotemporal dementia, Willis has been retired. Now is definitely time to look back at some of his classics, as well as some his movies that never really got their due, such as Antoine Fuqua’s Tears of the Sun (2003), 1991’s Hudson Hawk, The Last Boy Scout and, of course, his classic TV show Moonlighting, where he starred opposite Cybill Shepherd.
If you want more classic stories from the eighties and nineties golden age of action movies, I highly recommend checking out de Semlyan’s book. Buy it here!
Dune: Part Two, the second half of director Denis Villeneuve’s two-part adaptation of the Frank Herbert novel Dune, is now scheduled to be released on March 1st – but there are five more Herbert Dune novels that could serve as the basis for future films, and Villeneuve and his Dune stars Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya have all expressed interest in continuing the franchise. In an interview with Total Film magazine, Villeneuve said the ending of Dune: Part Two will set up the events of a third Dune film (which may be called Dune Messiah, after the second book in Herbert’s series)… if they get the chance to make it. He told Total Film, “All of the elements are there. But I think the movie adaptation is more tragic than the book. The way that Part Two ends… it would create a total balance and equilibrium to finish Paul’s storyline in what we could say in Part Three.“
Chalamet told Total Film, “The idea excites me very much. If the time and opportunity comes to complete the story with Messiah, I think we’re all super-enthusiastic about that.“
Zendaya said, “Denis is an artist, and doesn’t like to share things until he’s got it figured out. So whenever he’s ready, we’re all keenly ready to hear what his vision is.” She previously told Fandango she “would be down” to come back for Dune Messiah – but there might be a bit of break between Dune: Part Two and the third film, as Villeneuve would like to do something else in between for the sake of his sanity.
Scripted by Villeneuve, Eric Roth, and Jon Spaihts, Dune: Part One (watch or buy it HERE) introduced viewers to Paul Atreides, “a brilliant and gifted young man born into a great destiny beyond his understanding”, who must travel to the most dangerous planet in the universe to ensure the future of his family and his people. As malevolent forces explode into conflict over the planet’s exclusive supply of the most precious resource in existence – a commodity capable of unlocking humanity’s greatest potential – only those who can conquer their fear will survive. Coming to us from Warner Bros. and Legendary Entertainment, Dune: Part Two will explore the mythic journey of Paul Atreides as he unites with Chani and the Fremen while on a path of revenge against the conspirators who destroyed his family. Facing a choice between the love of his life and the fate of the known universe, he endeavors to prevent a terrible future only he can foresee.
Chalamet stars as Paul and is joined in the cast by fellow returning Dune: Part One cast members Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Javier Bardem, Stellan Skarsgård, Dave Bautista, Charlotte Rampling, Stephen McKinley Henderson, and Josh Brolin, as well as new additions Austin Butler, Tim Blake Nelson, Christopher Walken, Florence Pugh, Souheila Yacoub, and Léa Seydoux.
Villeneuve is producing Dune: Part Two with Mary Parent, Cale Boyter, Tanya Lapointe, and Patrick McCormick. Spaihts serves as executive producer alongside Josh Grode, Herbert W. Gains, Brian Herbert, Byron Merritt, Kim Herbert, Thomas Tull, Richard P. Rubinstein, and John Harrison. Kevin J. Anderson is creative consultant.
Villeneuve and Spaihts wrote the screenplay for Dune: Part Two, and The Last of Us showrunner Craig Mazin has revealed that he worked on the script as well.
While we wait to find out if Dune 3 / Dune Messiah is going to happen, a spin-off Max series called Dune: Prophecy (formerly known as Dune: The Sisterhood) is already in the works.
Would you like to see Villeneuve, Chalamet, and Zendaya get the chance to make Dune 3 / Dune Messiah together? Share your thoughts on this one by leaving a comment below.
Nearly seven years after the release of NieR:Automata, fans are still clamoring for a third entry in the series helmed by Yoko Taro. While we are all eagerly awaiting another AAA console game in the DrakenNier universe, it’s easy to forget that a sequel is already available to play—but it won’t be for much longer.…
Nearly seven years after the release of NieR:Automata, fans are still clamoring for a third entry in the series helmed by Yoko Taro. While we are all eagerly awaiting another AAA console game in the DrakenNier universe, it’s easy to forget that a sequel is already available to play—but it won’t be for much longer.…
Bottoms up! Comedian and filmmaker Chris Rock is getting behind the camera for a remake of Thomas Vinterberg’s Oscar-winning film Another Round. Appian Way and Makeready are producing for Fifth Season. Meanwhile, Jennifer Davisson and Leonardo DiCaprio produce through Appian Way, with Brad Weston and Collin Creighton producing for Makeready. The project has a script written by Stuart Bloomberg, but the draft will get a rewrite from Rock and a co-writer.
Released in 2020, Vinterberg’s Another Round stars Mads Mikkelsen, Thomas Bo Larsen, Magnus Millang, and Lars Ranthe as four high-school teachers who consume alcohol daily to see how it affects their social and professional lives.
Emerging from the shadow of the Oscar slap heard around the world, Rock’s next project is King: A Life, a cinematic biopic centering on the life and times of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Universal optioned the rights to adapt Jonathan Eig’s page-turning biography King: A Life. Rock is in final talks to direct, with Steven Spielberg executive producing.
Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig’s King: A Life is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.―and the first to include recently declassified FBI files. In this revelatory new portrait of the preacher and activist who shook the world, the bestselling biographer gives us an intimate view of the courageous and often emotionally troubled human being who demanded peaceful protest for his movement but was rarely at peace with himself. He casts fresh light on the King family’s origins as well as MLK’s complex relationships with his wife, father, and fellow activists. King reveals a minister wrestling with his own human frailties and dark moods, a citizen hunted by his own government, and a man determined to fight for justice even if it proved to be a fight to the death.
As he follows MLK from the classroom to the pulpit to the streets of Birmingham, Selma, and Memphis, Eig dramatically re-creates the journey of a man who recast American race relations and became our only modern-day founding father―as well as the nation’s most mourned martyr.
In this landmark biography, Eig gives us an MLK for our times: a deep thinker, a brilliant strategist, and a committed radical who led one of history’s greatest movements, and whose demands for racial and economic justice remain as urgent today as they were in his lifetime.
Rock will team up with Universal Pictures for the MLK project. Amblin Partners produces with Kristie Macosko Krieger and Rock.
What changes do you think Rock will make to the script? Who would you like to see star in the Another Round remake? Let us know in the comments section below.
Christopher Nolan has built his name up over the years to the point that he’s widley considered the greatest director or our generation. His latest film, Oppenheimer, seems bound to finally win him an elusive best director Oscar. But, in the wild build up to his latest movie, many failed to consider his last movie, Tenet, which was unusually divisive for the director. With it set for a nationwide re-release next month, now’s a good time to look back on a movie that’s winning more and more fans every year.
Tenet was born from a simple idea that came to him while making his breakout hit Memento over 20 years ago. While putting that film together, he thought of a single image that helped him crack the way in which to tell a backwards story. The image was that of a bullet being sucked out of a wall. That image stuck in his brain for years until around 2014 he finally realized that the perfect story to accompany such an image would take place in the world of spies and espionage. By that point, Nolan could do no wrong in the eyes of many. His Dark Knight trilogy reinvented the comic book genre with its grounded story telling while Inception became one of the most talked about movie endings of all time, and yes, the totem was wobbling and Leo got out!
While writing the film, Nolan says that he steered clear from watching any films in the spy genre as he didn’t want any of that to seep into his own story telling. Much as he did when crafting the superb space epic Interstellar, Nolan would make sure the science was correct. Although he says he wasn’t as fanatical about getting the science 100% right for Tenet as he was on Interstellar saying that for Interstellar the truthfulness of the science is why you buy into that story so completely and if anyone ever wanted to go back and track the science of that film, they could follow it to the T and it would make perfect sense. This one he could play it a little bit more loose and have the science fit the story and not the other way around.
He used theories such as Entropy (the lack of predictability), the second law of thermodynamics (which states that as energy is transferred and transformed, more and more of it is wasted), the Grandfather Paradox (the easiest to explain, if you go back in time and kill your grandfather before he has your father, how could you have ever been born to go back in time and do such a thing?) And other theories that are way above this lowly Internet Movie Writer’s head! The point is, the man puts in his work to make the films make sense!
With the script in the bag and a continued run of successful films under his belt, he would go to the studio that has been his home for over a decade, Warner Brothers who would give Nolan the biggest budget he has ever worked with: $200 Million.
The cast would assemble fairly quick with Kenneth Branagh, who appeared in Nolan’s previous film Dunkirk, cast as the films antagonist named Sator, taken from the famous Sator Square which is latin word square featuring a five word latin palindrome. With Nolan bringing on John David Washington after being impressed with his work in Blackkklansman and Elizabeth Debicki after being impressed with her work in Widows. Robert Pattinson, who had built up quite the indie resume with films like Good Time and The Lighthouse would join the cast soon after along with Bollywood star Dimple Kapadia and Emmy Award Winner Himesh Patel (He won Lead Actor in Limited Series for Station Eleven) with other Nolan familiar faces such as Martin Donovan and Michael Caine filling out the supporting cast. Keeping with the secretive nature of the film, Washington, Debicki and Pattinson were all only permitted to read the script while locked in a room as to avoid any chance of the script leaking.
Warner Brothers would announce the first day of filming on May 22, 2019 by putting out a press release that also included the films official title for the first time: Tenet. This would send the internet into a tizzy as they tried to figure out the hidden meaning of the title with many speculating on its religious meaning while others quickly picked up on the fact that the title was a palindrome, a word that is the same both forwards and backwards. Filming would kick off on soundstages in Los Angeles before jettisoning around the globe to places like Denmark, Estonia, India, Italy, Norway and The United Kingdom.
With the hefty budget in place, Nolan, one of the most vocal proponents of film over digital and of practical effects over computer generated ones would bring on Hoyte Van Hoytema, whom he worked with on Interstellar and Dunkirk as his Director of Photography and together the pair would continue their work shooting on both Kodak 65mm and Imax 70mm film stock. When you hear people talking about the “frame opening up” that is what they are talking about. When you see a film that is shot with both stocks, when you see the black bars on the top and bottom, those are the more traditionally framed shots, but when the screen opens up to fill it up in its entirety, those are the 70mm Imax shots that look so amazing in big action scenes or vast aerial shots. If you ever have the opportunity to check out a movie filmed with Imax cameras at a TRUE Imax theater, not one of the AMC Imax screens, which are suitable, but not the full on experience of a TRUE Imax screen, I must insist you take it. It will be an experience you will never forget.
The production had no shortage of interesting days, like one day in India when they had 40 boats parked at the Royal Bombay Yacht Club near The Gateway of India, as the crew was wrapping for the day, a man jumped in the water in what was later revealed to be a suicide attempt. The lifeguards and other professionals were unable to get to the man, but luckily the way the water set had been designed by the crew, several crew members were able to get near the man, toss him a rope and rescue him.
While filming in Estonia, the crew had originally wanted to shut down one of the major highways in the city of Tallinn, which is the biggest city in Estonia, for an entire month to film the big highway chase scene. The mayor of the city was not okay with that length of a shut down and had to work with the production until an agreement was reached for only temporary road closures and detours. The city would embrace the filming of this major Hollywood motion picture by sending out a casting call to its residents (see below for that picture). It all seemed to work, as when the film was eventually released, it became the highest grossing foreign film ever in Estonia with a whopping $1.2 Million!
One of the biggest set pieces to emerge from the filming of Tenet was the massive plane crash at the airport. The scene looked amazing and most who saw it in the film’s first trailer figured it to be a well done piece of computer magic. Those who thought that, truly underestimated Christopher Nolan’s desire to shoot all effects practically! Originally when he wrote the scene, Nolan did figure he would have to create the scene using a mixture of miniatures and computer generated images to get the exact look he wanted. He says he tries to avoid using CGI as much as possible because he feels the audience is smart enough to know the difference between something animated and something captured in camera. When they arrived at the airport in Victorville, California to shoot other scenes, Nolan says he, his cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema and Visual Effects supervisor Andrew Jackson noticed a sort of grave yard of old 747 jets. In a moment he would later call an “impulse purchase”, Nolan and his team decided to shoot the scene where the 747 jet crashes into the Freeport, using a real live jet! They ran the numbers and had it figured that using the real live decommissioned jet would be more cost effective than shooting it using CGI and other methods.
Andrew Jackson and his visual effects team would find 747 jet brakes to add back on to the plane and the scene would be filmed by attaching tow rope to the plane and using tow trucks to pull it forward until it hit its mark to cue the pyrotechnics. Jackson says the plane did miss its mark by a few feet, but that just added to the realism of the scene. So yeah, blowing up a real airplane is cheaper than using computer generated images! The practical visual effects did pay off though when Andrew Jackson and his team would be victorious at the Academy Awards, winning the film’s sole Oscar for Best Visual Effects.
The film would finish shooting in late 2019 and post production would begin shortly after. Nolan would reach out to his frequent collaborator Hans Zimmer to compose the score for the film, but Zimmer had to turn him down as he chose to compose the score for Dune instead, which given the fact that Zimmer would go on to win the Academy Award for Best Original Score for his work on Dune, it is hard to argue with his decision. Nolan would then turn to recent Academy Award Winning Black Panther composer Ludwig Göransson who would study retrograde composition which is how you make a melody sound the exact same forwards and backwards. In addition to being an Academy Award winning film composer, Goransson is also a Grammy Award winning producer who has worked with such artists as Childish Gambino, Adele and Travis Scott with whom he would collaborate with for Tenet’s closing credits song “The Plan.”
The first footage from the film was screened before the Dwayne Johnson/ Jason Statham Oscar Snubbed Fast and the Furious spin off Hobbs and Shaw with the film’s entire prologue, the opening Opera House siege, playing in Imax theaters before showings of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker in late 2019. Audience reaction was swift with fans eagerly anticipating this new science fiction epic that we still knew next to nothing about!
And then… the world changed forever.
Do you remember where you were on March 11, 2020? It was a day like any other, the sun was shining, the birds were chirping. There were rumblings and probably some particles in the wind about a virus that was quickly spreading, but life had continued to go on for most of us, unimpeded by such trivial things. And then came 9pm, March 11, 2020. The Masked Singer had just unmasked its latest celebrity (on this day it was Sarah Palin dressed in a bear costume) and as we sat on our couches enjoying a nice bowl of rainbow sorbet with a sprinkling of fruity pebbles for texture, the U.S President came on our TV’s and informed us all that this little virus we had been hearing about had now been classified as a full blown Pandemic by the World Health organization. Still, none of us really sounded the alarm. This is something out of a movie and things like that never show up on our doorsteps. We will be fine we said. A few hours later it was announced that the NBA had decided to postpone all their upcoming games indefinitely in order to protect their players and fans. Okay sure, makes sense, let’s wait and see what is going on before we proceed with anything. Good job NBA, way to play it safe and actually not think about the money over the safety for once. And then, shortly after, news broke that shook the entire world to its core: Tom Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson got the Vid.
Shit. Just. Got. Real!
As the world dealt with a new reality, so too did the movie industry. The weekend of Mar 13-15, 2020 had a top ten box office gross of $49,580,363, the following week the cumulative box office plummeted to $4,160, the following week, down to $3,758.
Theaters would be shut down across the United States and elsewhere around the globe while everyone tried to figure out what to do. Films that were originally scheduled to hit theaters such as Bill & Ted Face The Music, Greyhound, My Spy, Trolls World Tour and Hamilton would all forgo their planned theatrical outings in favor of streaming debuts. During this time, AMC, the largest Theater Chain in the world began floating the idea that if they weren’t able to open their theaters soon, they may not be able to survive the pandemic having lost nearly $5 Billion worth of revenue in 2020 alone. What didn’t help matters was the Coronavirus seemed to have ebbs and flows. One week it would seem things were getting better and then the next week we were back to def con 5. That shifting landscape saw studios continue to dangle movie release dates in front of theaters, with none more anticipated by all involved than Tenet, which seemed to be sticking to its July 17 release having embraced the new way of filmmaking: doing everything remotely.
As some theaters reopened, they would rely on older movies to fill vacant screens while awaiting any new content to arrive that could drive those that were willing back to theaters. On June 12 came the first blow. Tenet had been pushed back by two weeks to July 31. Just a week and a half later Warner’s would announce the second delay, pushing Tenet back until August 12. By this point, Disney who had been keeping an eye on the release of Tenet as a blue print for their own epic Mulan decided to just call it a day and release their film directly to their streaming service but at an additional cost of $30. Meaning you had to first pay to subscribe to their Disney+ service and then pay an additional $30 if you wanted to watch the live action remake of Mulan. That was simply not an option for Tenet as even if this wasn’t a movie by a visionary filmmaker who champions the theatrical experience more than most other filmmakers, Tenet cost $200 million to produce with another $150 million believed to have been spent on marketing with Warner Brothers saying that each delay the film had added nearly half a million dollars in marketing. Releasing this anywhere other than theaters would have been catastrophic to their bottom line.
On July 20, with movie theater openings still coming at a snails pace, Warner Brothers pulled Tenet from the release schedule, this time not offering up a new date only saying that a new release date would be announced “imminently.” A week later the studio would announce that Tenet would open in some international territories a week before opening in the United States on September 3. In the mean time other studios saw an opportunity to test the waters with non tent pole films. First out of the gate would the Russell Crowe starring Unhinged which would be the first film to receive a wide release on August 21, 2020 in 1,823 screens. Unhinged would gross just over $4 Million that weekend. It would be followed a week later by the long delayed X-Men film The New Mutants with just over $7 Million made in its opening weekend.
And then it happened: September 3, 2020, Labor Day Weekend, Tenet was finally released in the United States. Warner Brothers would actually hold Early Access Screenings at Imax theaters across the country from August 31 to September 2. The writer of this episode, Brad, was one such person who made it out to theaters on August 31 to see Christopher Nolan’s latest. He remembers it vividly. He had not been to a theater since way back in March. He had told himself that as long as he was cautious, he could go to the theaters just this once to see a movie he had been anticipating for over two years. He wore two masks as well as brought Clorox wipes to wipe down the seat and arm rests. At this time AMC had been blocking off seats around any seats that were occupied meaning that if you bought a seat, the seats next to you on either side and in front of you and in back of you, if applicable, were blocked off so no one else could buy those seats. Honestly, it was movie going bliss for an introverted germaphobe! At the time we were still three months away from any sort of vaccine being available, so with the very limited knowledge we had on the virus, it was very possible you were putting your own life at risk just to go to the movies. You could wear a mask, socially distance, but at the end of the day if the guy three rows behind you decides to take off his mask and sneeze, well… we all saw the scene from Outbreak!
So the movie is released, it does so-so numbers, opening to only $11.6 Million on its first official weekend, although at that point it had already took in nearly $9 Million from those early access screenings, so really it opened to around $20 Million. Although keep in mind at this time many theaters were not open including every one in New York and Los Angeles which are the two biggest markets in the United States. Tenet would remain atop the box office for five straight weeks before being taken down by Robert DeNiro in: The War With Grandpa!
Reviews for the film hailed the film as a visual treat with the type of mind bending story telling you expected from Nolan, however others would just find the film confusing and convoluted. But the biggest problem the average movie goer had with the film was that you just couldn’t hear anything! The sound mix was so robust that almost all of the dialog was inaudible in most theaters. This is not a new complaint for Nolan’s films as many had a hard time understanding what Bane was saying in The Dark Knight Rises as well as similar complaints for Interstellar and Dunkirk. One critic even noted in his review that for a film like Tenet that is supposed to show audiences that theatrical moviegoing is worth saving, it will probably play better on Blu ray with the subtitles turned on. Nolan would respond to these sound complaints by saying that he and his sound team decided long ago that they were not going to mix these films for substandard theaters. They are mixing for well-aligned, great theaters that keep up to date with the latest sound equipment. He also notes that often times the dialog is just one piece of the experience, saying that sometimes the dialog is only there as a sound effect that emphasizes the surrounding noises.
In the US the film would peter out with just $58.5 Million while international audiences would propel it higher with $306.9 Million for a worldwide total of $365.2 Million. Given the film’s high production budget and marketing costs many predicted the film would need to hit at the very least $500 Million to even be considered a a moderate success.
The gamble and constant push to get Tenet to theaters as fast as possible was not the theatrical savior it was meant to be.
The entire industry looked at this and were now more cautious than ever with their upcoming slate of films. Warner Brothers would announce their next big tent pole film, Wonder Woman 1984, would release day and date in theaters and on HBO Max. They would then announce that their entire 2021 slate of films, everything from Mortal Kombat to Godzilla vs Kong to Dune, would follow the Wonder Woman strategy and release day and date in theaters and on HBO Max. This was an unprecedented move by the studio and one that did not sit right with Christopher Nolan. When asked about it, Nolan did not mince words saying that he was in disbelief that the studio would do that without telling any of the people involved in the affected films. He called it a bait and switch with the studio using these people’s work as a loss leader for their fledgling streaming service. The most biting comment came when he said “some of our biggest filmmakers and most important movie stars went to bed the night before thinking they were working for the greatest movie studio and woke up to find out they were working for the worst streaming service.” In a weird way, Christopher Nolan and the release of Tenet directly led to the rise of streaming in the pandemic era. It is something that is still going on today as the recently released Halloween Ends saw its box office diminished when Universal decided to open it day and date on their own fledgling streaming service Peacock.
Nolan points out that the release of Tenet was not nearly the fumble it was perceived to be. He says that the studios were just drawing the wrong conclusions. They were so focused on where the film underperformed that they failed to look at the fact that in the areas where the Pandemic was handled correctly and the public felt safe going to theaters, the film was a massive hit like any other blockbuster, but in the areas where the virus was most out of control and not handled in the best way, that is where the film failed to find an audience and they panicked. However, not all of Tenet’s issues can be chalked up to COVID, with the film’s sound mix bitterly divisive among fans.
Of course Nolan was right and movie theaters made a comeback. Films like Spider-Man: No Way Home and Top Gun: Maverick helped bring theaters back from the brink, and Nolan’s own Oppeneheimer made close to a billion dollars worldwide just this year. It just seems that Warner Brothers and maybe even Christopher Nolan got so enamored with being THE movie that saved the movie going experience that they didn’t think to just wait it out a little bit longer. Of course hindsight is 20/20 and we can see that had they just waited a year, Tenet would have played the way it was always meant to, even more so given that extra year of anticipation, but somebody had to be the test subject, and Tenet was that guinea pig.
However, time heals all wounds, and Nolan has since buried the hatched with the studio. And who knows – maybe he’ll even do his next movie for the studio. Stranger things have happened.
The upcoming Marvel Studios production Thunderbolts is going to feature multiple actors from various previous Marvel films and TV shows reprising their roles. It’s got Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova, Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes, David Harbour as Red Guardian, Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, Wyatt Russell as US Agent, Hannah John-Kamen as Ghost, and Olga Kurylenko as Taskmaster… and if Thunderbolts had started filming last summer, as it was supposed to before the strikes hit, it also would have had actress/writer/comedian Ayo Edebiri, whose credits include Big Mouth, The Bear, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, in the cast. Unfortunately for Edebiri, the production delay caused her to run into scheduling issues, so she has had to drop out of the project. Deadline reports that the character she was going to be playing will now be played by Geraldine Viswanathan.
Viswanathan’s credits include Blockers, The Package, Hala, Bad Education, The Broken Hearts Gallery, 7 Days, CatPerson, The Beanie Bubble, and Miracle Workers. Details on the role she’ll be playing in Thunderbolts haven’t been revealed.
Jake Schreier (Paper Towns) will be directing Thunderbolts from a screenplay that has been worked on by Eric Pearson (Black Widow) and Lee Sung Jin (Beef). Filming is expected to begin sometime next month.
The actors mentioned above are joined in the cast by Harrison Ford as Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross, a role that was previously played by the late William Hurt in The Incredible Hulk, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame, and Black Widow. Before Thunderbolts is released, we’ll first see Ford play Ross in Captain America: Brave New World, which is set to reach theatres on February 14, 2025. Thunderbolts will follow on July 25, 2025.
Steven Yeun had been cast in a role believed to be the Marvel Comics character Sentry, but he also ran into scheduling issues. It looks like he’s being replaced by Lewis Pullman.
It’s a shame that Steven Yeun and Ayo Edebiri both had to drop out of Thunderbolts after being cast in the film – but I’m also a big fan of Lewis Pullman and Geraldine Viswanathan, so I’m hyped to see both of these replacements enter the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
What do you think of Geraldine Viswanathan being cast in Thunderbolts? Share your thoughts on this one by leaving a comment below.
I am notoriously early for flights. I consistently get to the airport more than two hours before a domestic trip, even during off-peak times. Because of my arrival anxiety, I have a lot of downtime at airports which I can (and often do) spend boozing at an overpriced “Irish pub” or relaxing in a lounge. But on my…
