Spider-Man: No Way Home finally swings into theaters this week and fans are eagerly anticipating not only the ending of the first MCU Spidey trilogy, but putting to rest all the crazy rumors that have swirled around this film for over a year. Promotional material for the film put a rest to any doubts that the film would feature villains from Sam Raimi and Marc Webb’s Spider-franchises as they heavily featured Doc Ock, Green Goblin, Electro, Sandman and Lizard. One doubt that has remained front and center for fans, however, is if ThomasHaden Church and Rhys Ifans returned to play Flint Marko and Curtis Conners, respectively.
Ifans’ Conners proved a key character in The Amazing Spider-Man, not only as the villain but as link between Peter and his father. While the Lizard was an outright villain, Conners was a bit of tortured genius and Ifans played the role well. Ifans is playing another tortured genius, Rasputin, in the upcoming film The King’s Man. Our own Hunter Radesi interviewed Ifans today and asked the actor if he was in fact the man behind the Lizard again for Spider-Man: No Way Home. With a big grin on his face, Ifans responded:
Well you know, like most Christmas presents, the good thing is not knowing what’s in them until it’s time to open them.
While Jaime Foxx and Alfred Molina seemed all too happy to talk about their time in the film, Ifans was definitely a little less forthcoming. With the aforementioned actors returning for their roles, it’s hard to imagine that Sony and Marvel Studios didn’t do everything in their power to bring Ifans and Church back as well. With just 4 days until the film’s debut in theaters, we won’t have to be left wondering much longer.
Favorite comfort show would have be Parks andRecreation. It’s one that absolutely never gets old and I can watch it over and over. In fact I have, I’ve seen Parks and Recreation like 11 times. I watch it less now due to it no longer being on Netflix, but it’s the characters and their progression throughout the series that makes it so special to me.
Nathan Miller
My favourite comfort film is 1979’s The Muppet Movie. I think it’s the first film I remember watching and probably caused my love of roadtrips. Not only are The Muppets themselves incredibly comforting in their humour and life lessons, but the songs are brilliant. “The Rainbow Connection” still makes me misty-eyed and “Movin’ Right Along” is also a really great roadtrip sing-along. The film itself is one of the few origin films that I truly love, because of how much it commits to the verisimilitude that makes The Muppets great in general. There are also some cracking cameos that still hit decades later. The whole film is a warm embrace and a reassuring pat on the shoulder to keep at the things that make dreams come true.
Mary Maerz
My comfort movie is Hunt for the Wilderpeople. I only watched it back in the day (2016) because I knew some random guy named Taika Waititi was directing Thor: Ragnarok, so I was curious about his other films. Long story short, Hunt for the Wilderpeople is now probably my favorite non-Marvel movie of all time. Sam Neill and Julian Dennison are incredible in the lead roles and bounce perfectly off of each other. Dennison is the reason the film is so funny, and Rachel House’s serious-but-absurd child welfare services officer is dry humor at its finest. Even through some darker themes and scenes, the movie manages to feel so wholesome overall.
Nicole Sobon
My comfort television show is Criminal Minds. It’s admittedly, not the greatest, however, the earlier seasons are enjoyable, even if ridiculous at times. The ensemble cast is great, and I have a connection to the series that makes it a comfort for me. When I’m not working here or at my day job, I write books. One of those books, Program 13, ended up being quoted in a Season 8 episode of Criminal Minds – episode 13, “Magnum Opus.” Needless to say, since then, Criminal Minds has become a comfort series I revisit at least once a year when I “can’t” find something to watch, or simply don’t want to commit to a new series.
Joseph Aberl
If it comes to comfort shows, there is enough to choose from. For some, it’s a show they’ve seen over and over again or something they can turn on while turning off their brain to take it easy. In my case, it’s more the former, as my comfort show is the sitcom Friends. I somewhat have a tradition where I rewatch the show once a year, especially made easier now with the option to binge it on Netflix, to get my mind off of things. There’s a strange familiarity returning to these characters and their stories even if some aspects of the show I have a hard time sitting through. Still, it was something I always fall back on if I have met a point where I don’t know what to watch or even do with myself and has stayed as such to this day. And if that doesn’t work, I tend to just watch a random cooking competition.
As I said on Twitter, we have entered the Wild West age of Marvel Studios’ projects being spoiled. At this point, no spoiler is too big and multiple projects had big spoilers leaked this week. You can check them out here:
Netflix’s live-action adaptation of the iconic sci-fi anime series, Cowboy Bebop, is dead after one season. Read our review before it becomes a collector’s item.
Michael, not Kenny, G. to score ‘Thor 4’
Michael Giacchino, who has scored at least a half dozen Pixar projects and a handful of Marvel Studios projects, including all the Spidey films, revealed he is now scoring Thor: Love and Thunder. Wait until you guys find out about his next project for Marvel! It’s a howling big deal.
Let There Be More Venom
Sideshow Amy Pascal confirmed this week, to literally nobody’s surprise, that the studio was developing a third Venom film. The two films have inexplicably built a huge fanbase and made a metric shit ton of money, so a third film, featuring Tom Holland, would probably somehow become the biggest money maker of all-time for Sony.
‘Wonder Woman 3’ Headed for a Potential 2024 Debut
WW director Patty Jenkins has been on, off, in and out of a lot of films recently. A new report from one of the trades indicates that she’s still on Wonder Woman 3 and that it’ll start production in 2023, making a 2024 release date a possibility.
Destin Daniel Cretton Signs a Ryan Coogler-esque Deal with Disney
Shang-Chi director Destin Daniel Cretton signed a new deal with Disney that will see him develop, among many other things, the Shang-Chi sequel and a Disney+ Shang-Chi spinoff.
Shang-Chi and The Legendof the Ten Rings became a critical and financial success for Marvel Studios during the ongoing pandemic. To no one’s surprise, a rumored sequel was officially given the green light recently, with Destin Daniel Cretton returning to write and direct. Cretton, who is also developing a Disney+ series that spins out of the events of the first film, recently gave an update on the Shang-Chi sequel in an interview with Collider.
As is often the case, it turns out that conversations that took place during the production of the first film ended up being the genesis of a potential sequel; however, as Cretton told Collider, sequels aren’t guaranteed until Marvel Studios’ execs see how the first project is received by fans:
While we were shooting, we were throwing around joke ideas of what a sequel could be. But with Marvel, it really is gauging to see how people react to the movie and also gauging what the experience of making the movie was. We had such a good time on it that it would’ve been a shame not to have a sequel, so I’m very excited to.
And Shang-Chi was incredibly well-received. Audiences lauded the acting, action and fantasy elements and were immediately hungry for more. That demand gives Cretton an opportunity to more fully develop some of those idea thrown around during production on the first film, ideas that, as it turns out, made their way into the first film as potential sequel set-ups:
There are a lot of ideas that we had in the opener, and some of those ideas are planted as questions, by the end of our movie. There are things that we potentially want to explore in the future. Everything changes so much, so it’s hard to say how many of those ideas will actually make it to the finish line, but there are many of them there.
With all that prep work having been done, it would seem that Cretton’s sequel script might be well underway. However, Cretton told Collider that is far from the truth. When asked about the work he’d done on the script, the writer/director had this to say:
I’ve done [zero]. It’s a fun place to be right now. Everything is a possibility. We’re just tossing very loose ideas around and we’ll start to hone in on something, hopefully.
During the interview, Cretton also expressed his excitement to be able to continue working with both Marvel Studios and the cast and crew of the first film. His new deal with the studio should excite fans of the first film as we can look forward to great content for years to come.
Marvel Studios is closing out its first year of live-action streaming content. While the series had some uneven moments, it’s hard to argue that the studio’s first foray into the world of streaming series wasn’t successful. WandaVision, The Falcon and The Winter Solider and Loki all featured great character work, introduced new characters and opened the door to new corners of the MCU. The studio’s final effort in year one, Hawkeye, has been similarly well-received and will close out the year with a Kingpin-sized bang.
Of course even as we’re still getting great content in 2021, fans are eagerly anticipating Marvel’s 2022 slate of streaming series. Ms. Marvel, Moon Knight and She-Hulk are all sure things for the service as well as a Werewolf By Night project that could be the studio’s first made-for-Disney+ movie and The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special. Even with all that going on, it’s possible that Secret Invasion could find a spot on the streaming service near the end of 2022 as well.
The studio has, however, been tight-lipped about WHEN we can expect which series, with Ms. Marvel being the only one to which they’ve assigned a time frame. While we wait on Disney’s 2022 press kit, an update by Disney+ Spain, shared on Twitter by Quid Vacuo, looks to give a little more insight on what to expect when.
¡BOOM! El mail de prensa de Disney Plus tiene este orden para las series de Marvel Studios.
The update, emailed to press yesterday, lists the three Marvel Studios projects in the order indicated above, meaning it’s likely that that the Oscar Isaac-led series should stream first, likely shortly after The Book of Boba Fett completes its run. While it is an official communication, it’s important to remember that the 2021 press preview kit indicated that Ms. Marvel would not only stream in 2021, but also stream before Hawkeye. Things can and do change all the time, a lesson fans have had to learn time and time again over the past 2 years.
Should this potential schedule hold, fans would have 3 streaming series, spanning 22 episodes (She-Hulk is said to have a 10-episode run) between February and September. Marvel Studios also has films slated for May (Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness), July (Thor: Love and Thunder) and November (Black Panther: Wakanda Forever), the two holiday-themed events as stated above and a second season of What If…?, meaning fans have plenty of content to consume in 2022.
Lucasfilm’s next Star Wars streaming series, The Book of Boba Fett, will kick off later this month and has already generated a considerable amount of buzz. The series will follow Fett attempt to take over the criminal empire once headed by Jabba the Hutt and looks like it’ll have room for plenty of appearances by other interesting characters, old and new. According to a new rumor, one such character might be a fan favorite who could owe Fett a favor.
SWNN (via our good friend at Bespin Bulletin) claims that Jedi-in-training Grogu will make an appearance in The Book ofBoba Fett. The origin of the claim stem from t-shirts made for a visual effects crew that worked on the series, seen below. SWNN reported they then checked with sources and were able to confirm Grogu’s appearance in the series.
Grogu joins a long list of characters from The Mandalorian who are rumored to appear in the new series. Grogu’s caretaker, Din Djarrin, his friend Greef Karga, for Imp Miggs Mayfield and the man who once wore Fett’s armor, Cobb Vanth, have been said to be in the show at one time or another. There are also plenty of rumors about other bounty hunters and criminals from the Star Wars Universe popping up in the series, all of whom might look to do more than chew the fat with Fett.
The Book of Boba Fett‘s 7-episode run kicks off December 29th on Disney Plus.
Hollywood newcomer Alaqua Cox has made a big impression with her work on the latest Disney+ streaming series, Hawkeye. Cox, a Deaf, Native American amputee, impressed Marvel Studios execs so much during filming that they quickly moved to create a spinoff series centered on the character. Her character, Maya Lopez, has ties to both Wilson Fisk and Matt Murdock, two characters that are expected to join the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Sacred Timeline next week. She also has ties to Moon Knight, and the Avengers and could easily become a mainstay in the next 5-10 years of Marvel’s Cinematic Universe.
The spinoff series, Echo, is expected to film this coming Spring and already has an impressive writers’ room, led by Better Call Saul scribe Marion Dayre. That room is replete with both Deaf and Native American writers. The incredible talent includes Rebecca Roanhorse, Bobby Wilson, Shoshannah Stern, and Josh Feldman. While Dayre was kind enough to share with us the talents who would be helping her craft Echo’s journey in the MCU, what she didn’t share was who might be behind the camera. As all of you reading this certainly know, when we connect the imaginary dots, we are simply speculating, but at this point in time, it seems safe to speculate that we may have identified one of the directors of the upcoming Marvel Studios Disney Plus streaming series Echo.
At this point, there is enough evidence to make a reasonable claim that Sydney Freeland will direct one or even all of the episodes of Echo. As you can see, Freeland is following Cox, Dayre, Roanhorse, and Bobby Wilson, who like the others above was named by Dayre as a writer. An abundance of data points like this cannot be considered confirmation, but it can absolutely fuel the speculation that she could be working on the project.
And she is EXACTLY the type of talent Marvel Studios should be trying to land for a project of this magnitude. Freeland, a transgender Navajo/Scotch, won two awards at the 2014 American Indian Film Festival for Drunktown’s Finest, recently directed two episodes of Taika Waititi’s FX series, Reservation Dogs, which follows a group of indigenous teens for which Wilson also worked. She has also directed episodes of Grey’s Anatomy, P-Valley, Fear the Walking Dead, and Rutherford Falls. Coincidentally, Zahn McClarnon, who memorably plays Maya’s dad, Willie Lopez, in Hawkeye also starred in Reservation Dogs.
Freeland is uniquely poised to helm one or all episodes of Echo. She is a director whose career trajectory is ascending and fulfills Marvel Studios’ continued efforts to ensure diverse perspectives are behind their projects. Only in the very recent past has Echo had her own comic series, so it’s likely that her Marvel Studios’ series would be fairly original, giving Freeland free reign to create both a unique backstory for the character and the new, original characters that will surround her. We’ll have to wait to see how her character’s arc on Hawkeye concludes, but Cox’s Echo is likely being set up to play a big part in the future of the MCU.
When it was announced that Fra Fee would be bringing Kazi Kazimierczak to the screen in Hawkeye, fans on the iconic Matt Fraction and David Aja run on the comic of the same name were thrilled at the idea of seeing the character terrorize Clint and Kate. In the comics, Kazi certainly displayed all the characteristics of a psychopath but, so far in the show, we’ve seen a much more subdued take on the character. Fee talked to ComicBook.com about the differences between the character we’ve seen so far on the show and the one from the comics and whether or not we might ever see him unleash the true evil he displayed in the great run.
I was fully aware of the origins of this character. And I think it was a really intriguing character in the comics. And there was a lot that I was able to take from his persona in the comic books. What I love about Kazi, he’s got this really intense, sort of brooding, everything’s simmering at the surface sense of himself. And I believe that’s because he’s harboring a lot of stuff. There’s a lot of issues and there’s a lot of painful things that have happened. And also deep rooted passions that make for this very intriguing character that doesn’t necessarily wear on his sleeve, unlike his counterparts in the mafia that are big, brash versions of themselves. He’s not, he’s got a quiet intensity. Whether or not it is to be seen that he takes on this persona that is traditionally viewed in the comics, we’re not sure. But like you said, I think that the comic book figure is inherently evil.
It’s always interesting to hear how deeply involved actors become entangled in the characters they play. Fee has clearly put a great deal of thought into how who Kazi WAS defines who he IS.
What I love about Marvel Studios and how they’ve tackle tackled villainous characters is that we have a much more fully fledged out version of themselves. There’s a sense of history, there’s always a reason to be, there’s always a reason why these characters act the way that they do. And so to be able to actually figure out why Kazi is who he is, how he’s got to the place that he has found himself, that’s really, really exciting rather than just playing an evil dude. Whether you need to know the why, and I think we’re able to do that here.
Through four episodes, Fee’s relationship with Maya seems to be vital to who is at the moment, a relationship he discussed here with our own Charles Villanueva. It would be interesting to see what might become of Kazi should his relationship with Maya fall apart. As Fee said, the reasons the characters become who they are is a part of fleshing out the characters for these adaptations, so maybe, in this adaptation, we’re just in the middle of Kazi’s Clown persona’s origin story.
Clint Barton’s a man of secrets. Always has been. Dating back to when he surprised his Avenger friends with the knowledge that he had a wife, kids and a beautiful farm tucked away in Missouri. He would continue on with the secrency to his time as Ronin, Barton has played things close to the vest and openly trusted very few people. Avengers: Age of Ultron did, however, establish, that he had a very open relationship with his wife, Laura.
The first few episodes of Hawkeye have peeled back the curtain even more on their relationship, showing that not only does Laura support Clint’s avenging, she also seems to know quite a bit about it. She’s been supportive of Clint staying in New York to clean up the mess that unfolded when Kate Bishop put on the Ronin suit, but more than that, she seemed to have quite a bit of information about Clint’s past with the Tracksuit Mafia and, possibly, the fact that her husband was Ronin. Today’s episode erased any doubt that Laura knew Clint was Ronin and replaced that doubt with speculation that there might be more to her than meets the eye.
Episode 4, “Partners, Am I Right?”, provided enough evidence to support a reasonable claim that Laura Barton is more than just a supportive spouse. Not only does Laura confirm that she knew about Clint’s time as Ronin (silly suit), she also demonstrates the ability to fluently speak a second language to hide things from her children and does some research on Sloan Ltd. that leads to uncovering its a shell corporation (seems like it took more than a Google search to determine that bit of info). Again, enough evidence to support a reasonable claim that Laura is more than just a supportive spouse and maybe, just maybe, a trained spy herself.
And if, in fact, it turns out that Laura Barton is a trained spy who also happens to be married to Clint Barton, it would be no stretch to make the case that Laura might be “Laura” and actually be Barbara Morse, better known to comic book fans as one-time Avenger, West Coast Avenger, and Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., Mockingbird. In the comics, she was a doctor who trained as a spy by S.H.I.E.L.D. and was given the codename Agent 19 (let’s keep an eye out for Agent 19 Easter eggs over the next two episodes. In fact, we should probably go back and look at the last four episodes to make sure we didn’t miss any). Along the way, she met Clint Barton and the two embarked on a rocky relationship that saw them marry, get divorced, get back together, be killed by Mephisto, be impersonated by a Skrull, and then show up in Matt Fraction and David Aja’s Hawkeye, the series on which the Hawkeye show is largely based. And there was that time she faked her death to protect her family…
As told in issue 2 of the 2010 series Hawkeye and Mockingbird, after falling into a coma, Morse had Nick Fury fake records of her death and make access to her files “Eyes Alpha”, otherwise known as “nobody can see them.” Morse stayed undercover for 8 years until a threat from her and Hawkeye’s shared past drew her out.
If that sounds familiar, it’s because it’s pretty close to what’s happening in Hawkeye. We know absolutely nothing about how Laura and Clint met, nothing at least that couldn’t have been fabricated by Fury when he helped find them their home in Missouri. The skillset Laura has demonstrated so far is congruent with that of Mockingbird in the comics. She is married to Clint, as Mockingbird once was. It’s not too hard to imagine that while an Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., she worked undercover (in the comics she worked with Ted Sallis on his project to recreate the Super Soldier Serum, a project that turned him into Man-Thing), met Clint, and had Fury delete all knowledge of her from the S.H.I.E.L.D. database. Again, there is certainly enough evidence to support a reasonable claim that Laura Barton could be a trained spy herself, and could have been, at one point, a SHIELD agent that went by the name Barbara “Bobbi” Morse, aka Mockingbird.
While it’s fun to speculate, this is a classic 50/50 scenario: either Laura was Mockingbird or she was not. It would certainly be a wonderful way for Marvel Studios to bring the character, who was portrayed on ABC’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. by Adrianne Palicki, into the Sacred Timeline and give national treasure Linda Cardellini a larger role. Jeremy Renner has teased that he’d love to see his character transition to a leadership role on the West Coast Avengers. Perhaps the events of Hawkeye (Maya Lopez was looking into Barton’s family, so it’s possible her connection to Kingpin and Kate’s mother’s spy…er, security company, could shake something loose about Laura), will make it possible for Laura to reclaim her prior identity as Mockingbird and partner with her husband leading the West Coast Avengers and mentoring the next generation of MCU heroes. Crazy theory? Time (maybe the time on a Rolex) will tell…
The animated film Diary of a Wimpy Kid debuted on Disney Plus last week and fans of the book have noticed it wasn’t exactly a beat-for-beat adaptation of the original novel, nor an animated remake of the 2007 film. According to author Jeff Kinney, who also wrote and served as an executive producer on the new, animated film, that was intentional. Kinney used the animated retelling as way to beef up the emotional impact of the story, as he explained to our Arlyn Murphy.
We’re really trying to tell an emotional story. Like my first book is just a bunch of jokes, really, with a thin story and this is a more meaty story where you really come to care for Greg and Rowley.
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![Postponed] The Muppet Movie (1979) - The Music Hall](https://www.themusichall.org/uploads/2020/03/2004_WC_TheMuppets.jpg)
