Monday, February 28, 2022

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Kraven the Hunter Film Casting More Pivotal Spider-Man Villains

Posted: 27 Feb 2022 03:20 PM PST

 

Sony’s Spider-Man universe is continuing to evolve in some unexpected ways, with iconic antagonists and antiheroes getting the spotlight in their own solo stories. The latest to join that list is Kraven the Hunter, who will be getting his own solo movie starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson.

 

The supporting cast of the project has begun to take shape. Zola and The Toxic Avenger actress Taylour Paige is reportedly being eyed to appear in Kraven the Hunter, which would see her playing Marvel villainess Calypso. This comes after previous reports suggested that Jodie Turner-Smith was being circled for the role.

 

Created by Denny O’Neil and Alan Weiss in 1980’s The Amazing Spider-Man #209, Calypso Ezili is a voodoo priestess with the abilities of mind control and resurrection, who has a key role in Kraven getting his enhanced abilities. She then becomes a love interest of Kraven’s, as well as a formidable villain for Spider-Man.

 

 

The Kraven the Hunter movie will also star Russell Crowe in a currently-unknown role, although some have speculated that he could be playing Kraven’s father, Nikolai Kravinoff. Another villain has also been cast, Fred Hechinger as Kraven’s half brother, The Chameleon. The character is usually depicted as a master of disguises, known for his ability to impersonate virtually anybody.

 

The Kraven movie’s forward momentum comes after the release of Spider-Man: No Way Home — a project that was originally poised to introduce the character to the big screen. As one of Sony Pictures' universe of Marvel characters, Kraven is among Marvel's most iconic and notorious antiheroes, who has encountered Venom and Black Panther among many others as well as being one of Spider-Man's best-known and most formidable enemies.

 

 

J.C. Chandor is directing the pic with Avi Arad and Matt Tolmach producing. Art Marcum & Matt Holloway and Richard Wenk penned the screenplay. The film is scheduled to be released theatrically on January 13, 2023.

 

via ComicBook.com

The post Kraven the Hunter Film Casting More Pivotal Spider-Man Villains appeared first on Bleeding Fool.

Steven Spielberg Helming a Brand New ‘Frank Bullitt’ Movie

Posted: 27 Feb 2022 12:55 PM PST

 

In interesting news, Deadline is reporting that Steven Spielberg is attached to direct a new original story based on the character of Frank Bullitt, the iconic character first introduced in the 1968 film Bullitt and played by legendary actor Steve McQueen.

 

 

The film is set up at Warner Bros and has Josh Singer set to write the script. Sources say that this is definitely not a remake, but an original film featuring the character. Bullitt is a no-nonsense cop in San Francisco looking to bring down a mob kingpin that killed his witness.

 

While this is one of McQueen's best-known roles, the film is best known for one of the greatest cinematic car chases ever put on screen. The producer/director had to negotiate a deal with the McQueen estate for use of the character Molly McQueen, the late actor's granddaughter, will serve as an executive producer on the film.

The post Steven Spielberg Helming a Brand New ‘Frank Bullitt’ Movie appeared first on Bleeding Fool.

Watch: Jared Leto Discusses the Comicbook Lore of Morbius

Posted: 27 Feb 2022 10:25 AM PST

In this new video released by Sony, Jared Leto introduces us to the lore of his upcoming character Morbius.

 

YouTube Video

 

The fact the character first appeared in 1971 as an antagonist for Spider-Man and then moved on to become an anti-hero. He also talks about how Marvel was not allowed to use supernatural characters due to the Comic Code Authority, which made Morbius a big deal when he was introduced. He goes on to say the everyone loves a good monster story and that there was something about the character that stoked people's imaginations.

 

 

While talking they show footage from the film, most of which we've seen in previous trailers. Morbius opens on April 1st and along with Leto, features Adria Arjona, Matt Smith, Tyrese Gibson, Jared Harris, Al Madrigal, and Michael Keaton.

The post Watch: Jared Leto Discusses the Comicbook Lore of Morbius appeared first on Bleeding Fool.

Francis Ford Coppola Makes Some Valid Points about Marvel Movies

Posted: 27 Feb 2022 07:55 AM PST

 

Veteran filmmaker Francis Coppola, who’s well into his 80s now, was interviewed by GQ magazine on the eve of the first Godfather film’s 50th anniversary, discussing the dire state of Hollywood, which has all but rejected his ideas, and along the way, he brought up the Marvel movies, adding his voice to several more cinematic auteurs who feel they’re not only carbon copies, but that too many eggs have been put into their basket by major studios, at the expense of the kind of dramas Coppola’s known for. On which note, his latest project, which he’s going to finance himself, comes up along with a serious query and response:

 

It is a film called Megalopolis, and Coppola has been trying to make it, intermittently, for more than 40 years. If I could summarize the plot for you in a concise way, I would, but I can’t, because Coppola can’t either. Ask him. "It’s very simple," he’ll say. "The premise of Megalopolis? Well, it’s basically… I would ask you a question, first of all: Do you know much about utopia?"

The best I can do, after literally hours talking about it with him, is this: It’s a love story that is also a philosophical investigation of the nature of man; it’s set in New York, but a New York steeped in echoes of ancient Rome; its scale and ambition are vast enough that Coppola has estimated that it will cost $120 million to make. What he dreams about, he said, is creating something like It’s a Wonderful Life—a movie everyone goes to see, once a year, forever. "On New Year’s, instead of talking about the fact that you’re going to give up carbohydrates, I’d like this one question to be discussed, which is: Is the society we live in the only one available to us? And discuss it."

Somehow, Megalopolis will provoke exactly this discussion, Coppola hopes. Annually.

You may be wondering at this point: What Hollywood studio, in the age of Marvel, will fund such a grand, ambitious, impossible-to-summarize project? How do executives at these companies react when he describes the film to them?

"Same way they did," Coppola answered, "when I had won five Oscars and was the hottest film director in town and walked in with Apocalypse Now and said, 'I’d like to make this next.' I own Apocalypse Now. Do you know why I own Apocalypse Now? Because no one else wanted it. So imagine, if that was the case when I was 33 or whatever the age and I had won every award and had broken every record and still absolutely no one wanted to join me"—imagine how they’re reacting now, to present-day Francis Ford Coppola. But, he said, "I know that Megalopolis, the more personal I make it, and the more like a dream in me that I do it, the harder it will be to finance. And the longer it will earn money because people will be spending the next 50 years trying to think: What’s really in Megalopolis? What is he saying? My God, what does that mean when that happens?"

And so this is Coppola’s plan. He is going to take $120 million of his own fortune, at 82 years of age, and make the damn movie himself.

 

This is why major studios today are a joke. Investing far more in blockbuster cinema that’s style over substance, with “screenplays” that offer little or nothing in the ways of thinking. To make matters worse, they don’t even offer much anymore in the ways of on-screen romance or sex. As for Apocalypse Now, I’m guessing the reason nobody else in Tinseltown wanted ownership or distribution rights is because of the Vietnam war subject. Something that’s become largely taboo in Hollywood since the mid-90s; you rarely see the subject in modern TV and film production now, if at all. Apparently, fighting communism is something the leftists just can’t stand anymore. Although, as Spy Culture notes, there were a lot of movies about the Vietnam war that were anti-war, and that’s hardly helping if you don’t at least admit the Viet Cong was abominable. Now, here’s where Coppola gets more into the point he wanted to make about Marvel movies:

 

Coppola loves movies but does not particularly recognize or enjoy the modern movie industry. "There used to be studio films," he said. "Now there are Marvel pictures. And what is a Marvel picture? A Marvel picture is one prototype movie that is made over and over and over and over and over again to look different. Even the talented people—you could take Dune, made by Denis Villeneuve, an extremely talented, gifted artist, and you could take No Time to Die, directed by…Gary?"

Cary Fukunaga.

"Cary Fukunaga—extremely gifted, talented, beautiful artists, and you could take both those movies, and you and I could go and pull the same sequence out of both of them and put them together. The same sequence where the cars all crash into each other. They all have that stuff in it, and they almost have to have it, if they’re going to justify their budget. And that’s the good films, and the talented filmmakers."

 

I’m going to just have to dissent on the issue of Fukunaga, based on the political correctness he brought to the James Bond franchise, which was unnecessary, especially considering Fukunaga got an actress fired from an HBO series for refusing to do a nude scene. One of the most truly hypocritical acts of virtue-signaling, and now, it may have cost the Bond franchise tons. That’s not doing any good to overlook the harm Fukunaga did, and puts his “talents” under a question mark.

 

 

But the point about Marvel movies stands. They’re basically in the same vein as one another, and certainly have become extremely bloated in scope. What matters now is the PC direction they look to be going in, as the Eternals movie hints, and that’s the first real failure in the franchise, along with Captain Marvel, which was definitely an artistic dud. Regardless of that, the movies have never provided the comics with any sales boosts. The monthlies continue to sell well below a million, with many selling less than 100,000 copies apiece, and perpetuate one of the biggest modern jokes of sales and marketing. The failure of the mainstream press to argue why it’d be better if they changed format and marketing approach only compounds how unserious they really are in caring.

 

The UK Independent followed up on the news admitting Coppola’s got a valid complaint:

 

In a 2002 episode of The Simpsons, an old man yelled at a cloud. Twenty years later, old men yell at Marvel. Francis Ford Coppola – who has this week described Marvel films as "prototypes made over and over and over again to look different" – certainly isn't the first elder statesman of cinema to criticise the superhero corporation (looking at you, Martin Scorsese) and he won't be the last. The internet outrage economy thrives on it; filmmakers in their retirement years are the only people brave enough to speak about it.

 

And when they bring up how the terrible filmmaker James Gunn attacked Martin Scorsese for his criticisms of the Marvel films, they say:

 

Beyond the laziness of that response, Gunn's statement rested on a specific train of thought: Marvel critics tend to be old, out of time and envious, and therefore aren't worth taking seriously. It should be said that very old people aren't automatically deserving of having their opinions listened to, when they're just as capable of profound stupidity as anyone. But in a film climate gripped in a stranglehold by Disney and a specific kind of nostalgic, male and unambitious corporate formula, it's important to listen to those sticking their heads above the parapet and asking "Why?" After all, few younger stars are brave enough to do so.

 

And that’s definitely the problem. Those younger “stars” have no sense of art or class. They’ve practically brought down the B-movie genre along with the kind of dramas Coppola and Scorsese are known for. Unfortunately, this being a left-wing paper that it is, they couldn’t resist the following:

 

You imagine that the conversation about Hollywood's creative drought and the Disney machine would be less hysterical if a diverse range of ages joined it. Much like the recent conflict between Spotify and Joe Rogan, it's disappointing that only very old artists – many of whom aren't as concerned by their bottom line – are willing to protest or critique a system that seems to be spiralling out of control. Coppola may be an old man yelling about something, but that doesn't mean he's not making sense.

 

Coppola’s making sense, but it doesn’t to drag the whole cancel-culture-spawned attack on Rogan into this. It’s just little more than leftist virtue-signaling that could’ve been avoided, and for now, it looks like most of the people who incited the whole flap have quieted down, but it doesn’t mean it won’t happen again.

 

 

It’s okay if Coppola’s let down by how Hollywood’s marginalized dramatists like himself for the sake of soulless science fiction blockbusters. And good luck to him in producing his Megalopolis project. It’s a shame, however, that no op-ed writers are likely to complain how far modern cinema’s fallen for the sake of all these overrated Marvel movies, at the expense of films that could provide some thinking.

 

Originally published here.

The post Francis Ford Coppola Makes Some Valid Points about Marvel Movies appeared first on Bleeding Fool.

Outlander Prequel Series is in Development at Starz

Posted: 27 Feb 2022 05:25 AM PST

 

Fans of the Starz series Outlander will be happy to hear that Variety is reporting a prequel series is in the works. Series showrunner Matthew B. Roberts is attached to write, and executive produce the prequel with a writers' room being assembled with the idea of beginning work in a few weeks. No word on what the series will focus on.

 

Outlander is based on a series of novels by Diana Gabaldon who has posted to social media that she is working on a prequel novel about Ellen MacKenzie and Brian Fraser, the parents of lead character Jamie Fraser. There was also a prequel novella back in 2013 which focused on a young Jamie and Ian Murray in 1740s France. So, there are two options of where the series might go.

 

Season 6 of the popular series is set to debut on March 6th and a seventh season has already been approved. The shorter sixth season will have eight episodes and adapt the novel A Breath of Snow and Ashes while season seven will be sixteen episodes and adapt An Echo in the Bone. The series remains one of the networks most popular shows.

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