What's new in the geek cosmos? Ben Affleck solo Batman soon? The Russo's talk Civil War death conversations and more! Find out in the newest instalment of the Geekly News Round-Up!
Batman Solo Movie Shooting Soon?!
During the 25th Annual Goldman Sachs Communacopia Conference, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes talked a bit about the future of the DCEU. He acknowledged the poor critical reception the films have gotten so far, but said that financially they have done better than WB expected and that the company is now more positive about the future of DC films than ever before.
There was one other tidbit, that many news outlets did not talk about however.
“Ben announced a Batman movie he’s going to direct, star, write for - I think it’s a year and a half out. So, the strategy worked,”
This is the first confirmation that the solo Batman film will hit theatres in 2018 and will probably start shooting later this year or early 2017.
I already expected that, since I doubt Affleck would tease Deathstroke as main bad guy for the film, if filming was still far away. Great news, as far as I am concerned. Now I only hope that Jared Leto's Joker will find his way into this film as well.
Passengers Trailer
Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence star in the new sci-fi movie Passengers as two people on board of a starship which are awoken from cryo sleep 90 years too early. You can check out the trailer above, which looks like a sci-fi mix between rom-com and the Shining. I think it looks kinda interesting. Passengers hits theatres on December 21st.
New Assassin's Creed Movie Images
Courtesy of Total Film come a couple of new images from the upcoming Assassin's Creed movie, starring Magneto Michael Fassbender. Check out the Cover above and some images below.
The movie is the current chance for video game movie adaptation to get legitimacy, as hopefully the first great video game based film ever. It brings a big pool of talent with it, plus the makers of Assassin's Creed, Ubisoft, have great creative input, so everything point towards a good film. We will find out later this year, at December 21st.
Was Cap Supposed To Die In Civil War?
Comic fans know that Captain America Civil War only had the name in common with the Marvel comic event series, but the Russo Brothers still talked about the possibility of including the death of Steve Rogers into the film. According to HitFix, who attended a "For Your Consideration" (to ready the film for Oscar consideration) screening of Civil War last week, this was what they had to say about that:
Anthony Russo: "We never talked about killing Cap in this one, right? No?"
Joe Russo: "We did for a beat. We talk about everything."
Anthony Russo: "I think the thing to remember is, we do talk about every possible scenario over and over and over again for months and months and months. We talked about it. But it never made its way into a realistic outline."
Joe Russo: "We talked about lots of potential characters dying at the end of the movie. And we thought that it would undercut what is really the rich tension of the movie, which is this is Kramer vs Kramer. It’s about a divorce. If somebody dies, it would create empathy, which would change and allow for repair, and we didn’t want to do that."
Hugo Weaving Talks Red Skull
After Captain America The First Avenger Hugo Weaving had not only nice things to say about the experience.
"...it’s not something I would want to do again. I’m glad I did it. I did sign up for a number of pictures and I suppose, contractually, I would be obliged to, if they forced me to, but they wouldn’t want to force someone to do it, if they didn’t want to."
In a new interview with Yahoo, the grumpy actor was asked about the role again and had a somewhat nicer opinion about it, which might open the door for a return of the character in the future.
"It was fun to play; I enjoyed the outrageousness of the German accent that I employed and I enjoyed the extraordinary mask and costume, even though it was unbelievably hot inside it. I enjoy mask work; I enjoy trying to animate masks and reveal certain things that the mask itself might not reveal. V for Vendetta was another example of that, but there was less animation within that mask versus the Red Skull."
"With Marvel, it’s pretty basic stuff: accept the deal and enjoy the ride. It’s not a major stretch for an actor, but on the other hand the difficulty with the Marvel universe is maintaining a link to a human dimension within such an extraordinary, technological CGI universe. In terms of me going back and doing another one, I don’t know. I’m not sure what they’re up to with the Red Skull."
While he still has a certain level of grumpyness about him, he seems less against the idea now than years ago. To be honest though, the character could be recast easily without breaking illusion at all. I really hope the character, Weaving or not, does re appear in the MCU in the future. We are talking about Cap's Joker here.
Dark Tower Gets A TV Series
The Dark Tower movie with Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey is storming into theatres next year, but it seems there will be an accompanying TV series for it in 2018.
Entertainment Weekly confirmed that and said the producers are committed to making a full run of 10 - 13 episodes which will begin shooting in 2017, WITH Idris Elba returning to his role. He will apparently appear in a framing device for the show, because it will mainly focus on his characters younger days.
Matthew McConaughey is not confirmed to reprise his role as the Man in Black on TV, but since the character is known to inhabit different forms it would be easy to use him without McConaughey.
