Early this week, there was a controversial rumour that The Bear‘s breakout star, Ayo Edebiri, could be replacing Johnny Depp as the lead in the long-planned sixth Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Notorious scooper Daniel Richtman reported the news, but he’s since clarified the original post, writing, “It’s not true, there’s no “Replacing Depp” or anything like that. She’s only the “Type” they’re looking at for the lead in one of the planned spinoffs (not the Margot Robbie one).”
Nevertheless, fans have been wondering why Disney seems to be moving on without Johnny Depp, given how popular the franchise has been up to this point (to the tune of $4.5 billion). One such fan is none other than Elon Musk, who took to X, writing, in the replies to one of the tweets revealing this info, “Disney Sucks.”
Indeed, it seems like the 6th Pirates of the Caribbean movie has become a hot-button topic for many, especially given that Johnny Depp still hasn’t had a prominent role since the outcome of the infamous Depp v Heard trial. Many feel his innocence should have catapulted him back to the top of the heap in terms of roles. Depp, in the past, has said he wasn’t interested in reprising the role. However, franchise producer Jerry Bruckheimer has gone on record saying that he hopes Depp returns someday and that he would work with him again. One wonders if Disney feels the same way, with them being notoriously risk-averse, to the point that many feel their movies have lost their way and become overly concerned with messaging rather than pure entertainment.
What do you think? Do you believe a Pirates 6 will ever happen without Depp? Would Ayo Edebiri be a good addition to the franchise, perhaps with Depp himself being back as Jack Sparrow by her side? Let us know in the comments!
Netflix’s much-anticipated adaptation of Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem will debut next month, but Peacock is stealing a little of that hype by releasing a different adaptation tomorrow. Pretty sneaky, sis.
Peacock will release the Chinese adaptation of The Three-Body Problem, which was released internationally last year. All thirty episodes of the series will be available to stream on Peacock on February 10th. “With all the buzz surrounding Netflix’s English adaptation, we’re excited about the opportunity for sci-fi and Chinese drama fans to watch the Chinese-language original (with English subtitles) ahead of the Hollywood adaptation,” reads the press release from NBCUniversal.
However, THR notes that the two adaptations are quite different despite drawing from the same source material. The Chinese version from Tencent is said to be an “ultra-faithful” adaptation of the story, while the Netflix version includes a global cast and aims to make “the dense and physics-heavy novels” more accessible and entertaining for mainstream audiences. The Tencent series also covers Liu Cixin’s full Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy of novels, but the Netflix version only tackles the first book.
“A young woman’s fateful decision in 1960s China reverberates across space and time into the present day,” reads the synopsis for the Netflix version. “When the laws of nature inexplicably unravel before their eyes, a close-knit group of brilliant scientists join forces with an unflinching detective to confront the greatest threat in humanity’s history.”
David Benioff, who developed the series alongside Dan Weiss and Alexander Woo, commented on the differences while speaking with THR last month. “During the first couple of seasons of Thrones, a lot of people were like, ‘Why didn’t they put in this scene?’ They wanted a literal adaptation of every single page,” Benioff said. “I always wondered, ‘Would people like that if they actually got it?’ Now we have that with this, where there’s one extremely faithful adaptation and then ours, which is less so, and others can judge how they stack up.“
Netflix’s 3 Body Problem will debut on the streaming service on March 21st.
For fifty-nine episodes, Sophie Turner played the role of Sansa Stark on the hit series Game of Thrones. For sixty-two episodes, Kit Harington played the role of Jon Snow on that same show. And now Turner and Harington are set to work together again, as Deadline reports that they have both signed on to star in the Gothic horror film The Dreadful! This film is coming our way from writer/director Natasha Kermani, who has previously directed the thriller Shattered, the sci-fi drama Imitation Girl, and the horror film Lucky, as well as multiple short films and a segment of the horror anthology V/H/S/85.
The Dreadful will be set against the backdrop of the War of the Roses, which took place from 1455 to 1487. The story follows Anne (Turner) and her mother-in-law Morwen, who live a solitary, harsh life on the outskirts of society. But when a man (Harington) from their past returns, he will set off a sequence of events that become a turning point for Anne.
UTA Independent Film Group and Film Bridge International will be presenting the project to potential buyers at the upcoming European Film Market. Turner is producing the movie alongside Redwire Pictures/Tunnel’s Luke Daniels, Storyboard Media’s Patrick Muldoon and Patrick Hibler, and Greg Lauritano of Black Magic.
I don’t know anything about the War of the Roses, in fact when I see that term, the first thing that comes to my mind is the 1989 dark comedy that was directed by Danny DeVito and starred Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner. Despite my ignorance of this historical event, I am interested in seeing how this horror movie set during that time period is going to turn out.
Does The Dreadful sound interesting to you? Are you excited to see Sophie Turner and Kit Harington working on the same project again? Share your thoughts on this one by leaving a comment below.
Beyond Game of Thrones, Turner’s credits include Do Revenge, Survive, X-Men: Apocalypse, Dark Phoenix, The Staircase, and Josie. Harington’s credits include Silent Hill: Revelation, Pompeii, Brimstone, Eternals, Lot No. 249, Extrapolations, and entries in the How to Train Your Dragon franchise.
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.
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.
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 reinvigorating the Predator franchise with 2022’s crowd-pleasing Prey, filmmaker Dan Trachtenberg is getting back behind the camera for a new Predator film titled Badlands. The project is not a sequel to Prey but is said to take place in the future. Badlands will feature a female lead, with Trachtenberg penning the story while Patrick Aison writes the screenplay.
Trachtenberg is going into lockdown mode for Badlands, meaning he’ll keep details about the film under lock and key. Reports say development for Badlands is already underway, with July targeted as the project’s production start date.
Following the success of Prey, which many hail as the second-best film in the Predator franchise (or the best, depending on who you talk to), Trachtenberg commented on hopes for a sequel, saying, “I can’t really say anything about that right now, but I’ll say while we were finishing the movie, we were having really exciting conversations. The studio, myself, the writer, and the producers about what crazy things could we do next. And I’ve never stopped, no one stopped thinking about how cool things could be going forward.”
Adding to the discussion, Trachtenberg says he never approached Prey like a movie destined to debut on the Hulu streaming service: “I was in denial about that, that it was for streaming. I don’t even know that I would think it’s for streaming anyway and shoot that, the studio was in denial. No one was thinking, ‘Oh, let’s make a concession for streaming.’ Maybe there may have been, I don’t know. But even when I’ve done commercials that I know and people say, ‘Oh, it’s people looking on their iPhone.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, we watched movies on our iPhone that were shot, we have to treat it all as if it was the best version of itself.’”
What do you think about Dan Trachtenberg returning to the Predator franchise for another hunt? Where and when could the story take place? Did 2022’s Prey rekindle your love of the wicked alien warrior? We’ll bring you more details as soon as we hear more about Dan Trachtenberg’s Badlands.
I need to sit down, as the Batgirl flashbacks are real, folks. Another unreleased film could get the axe as Warner Bros. Discovery is reportedly scrapping and deleting the live-action animated hybrid Coyote vs. Acme after plans to secure a buyer have failed.
According to TheWrap, Warner Bros. rejected offers from Amazon, Netflix, and Paramount, with Paramount proposing a theatrical release for the film, which Warner Bros. denied. The report says WB wanted $70-$80M for Coyote vs. Acme and refused to entertain counter offers. Adding salt to the wound, TheWrap says WB executives, including president David Zaslav, failed to watch the film’s final cut, coloring the move to scrap the project as misguided and ill-informed about the project’s quality. The report also says that two executives, CEOs, and Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group co-chairpersons Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy, reportedly screened a “director’s cut” of the film. Meanwhile, Warner Bros. Pictures Animation president Bill Damaschke watched an audience preview of the live-action animated comedy starring John Cena alongside classic Looney Tunes characters.
Reacting to the report, Carsten Kurpanek, who helped edit Coyote vs. Acme, voiced their frustration on Twitter while simultaneously revealing the film’s themes, saying, “Coyote vs. Acme is about a giant corporation choosing stock over empathy, doing nothing “illegal” but morally shady stuff for profit. It’s a David vs Goliath story. It’s about the cynical and casual cruelness of capitalism and corporate greed. No wonder Warner doesn’t want to #releaseCoyoteVsACME.”
#CoyoteVsAcme is about a giant corporation choosing stock over empathy, doing nothing "illegal" but morally shady stuff for profit. It's a David vs Goliath story. It's about the cynical and casual cruelness of capitalism and corporate greed.
“With the re-launch of Warner Bros. Pictures Animation in June, the studio has shifted its global strategy to focus on theatrical releases,” a WB Motion Picture Group spokesperson said in November. “With this new direction, we have made the difficult decision not to move forward with Coyote vs Acme. We have tremendous respect for the filmmakers, casts, and crew, and are grateful for their contributions to the film.”
Coyote vs. ACME had a production budget of $70 million, giving Warner Bros. an estimated $30 million write-down. It’s reportedly not worth the cost for Warner Bros. to release the film in theaters or accept offers made by premiere studios.
Director Dave Green took to X/Twitter in November to comment on Warner Bros.’ decision to put his movie in the vault. “For three years, I was lucky enough to make a movie about Wile E. Coyote, the most persistent, passionate, and resilient character of all time,” he wrote. “I was surround by a brilliant team, who poured their souls into this project for years. We were all determined to honor the legacies of these historic characters and actually get them right. Along the ride, we were embraced by test audiences who rewarded us with fantastic scores. I am beyond proud of the final product, and beyond devastated by WB’s decision. But in the spirit of Wile E. Coyote, resilience and persistence win the day.”
What do you think about Warner Bros. Discovery scrapping Coyote vs. Acme and refusing to negotiate with studios for a proper release? Do you believe the details about executives not screening the film before deciding on such drastic measures? Let us know in the comments section below.
