Author: Charles Murphy

DC FanDome: First Look at the JSA Members from ‘Black Adam’
DC FanDome wasted no time bringing out the biggest star on its stage today. Dwayne Johnson kicked off the event with a first look at his long-developing passion project, Black Adam. We got some great footage of Adam’s revival in modern times, but we also got a nice tease of what to expect from the group of JSA members that will join Black Adam in the film as fans got their first looks at Hawkman, Doctor Fate, Cyclone and Atom Smasher.
Pierce Brosnan, Aldis Hodge, Quintessa Swindell and Noah Centineo will bring Doctor Fate, Hawkman, Cyclone and Atom Smasher to the screen, respectively, and will bring the JSA to the big screen for the first time.

Black Adam is set to hit theaters July 29, 2022.
October 16, 2021
Breaking: IATSE Strike Looming

As the trades have continued to report over the last several days, IATSE Union leadership is incredibly frustrated with the lack of progress being made in their negotiations with the AMPTP Union.

I have been told that the IATSE will strike Monday if they cannot reach an agreement by then. Voting members of the union authorized a strike in a recent vote and leadership has hit an impasse with the AMPTP negotiating team saying they are refusing a fair deal. The IATSE has been looking to negotiate a deal that gives crew members a reasonable amount of time between shoots, a living wage and competitive benefits.

Should the IATSE strike, it would appear that projects currently in production would pause and no new productions would be able to begin, creating a domino effect for studios. It’ll be interesting to see if the two sides can begin to actively resolve these issues before Monday.

October 13, 2021
No Time to Die: How Existing Characters Can Give New Life to the World of James Bond

In an interview with Fandango, James Bond producer and head decision maker, Barbara Broccoli, stated that the studio doesn’t have any future plans to create spinoff projects for other characters in the franchise, saying, “We have not done [a spinoff] in the past and I don’t think we have any plans to do it in the future.” While nobody can argue with the success of the Bond franchise, the unfortunate “that’s the way we’ve always done it” mindset (the TTWWADI mindset known as “the most dangerous phrase in business”) leans far too heavily into the past at the expense of the future.

There’s been a lot of conversation lately about genderbending and/or racebending the character of James Bond in the future. The idea was met with a definitive response by outgoing Bond actor Daniel Craig who explained why he was not in favor of either of those ideas:

The answer to that is very simple. There should simply be better parts for women and actors of colour. Why should a woman play James Bond when there should be a part just as good as James Bond, but for a woman?

And the reality is that those characters already exist within the orbit of James Bond, a character who, since 1953, has traveled the globe in adventures at which he has always found himself rightfully at the center. But those adventures have always been made more interesting by his supporting cast and, in the Craig films, that cast has become increasingly more diverse. No Time to Die introduced Lashana Lynch’s Nomi, a new 00, to a cast that already boasted Jeffrey Wright as Felix Leiter, Naomie Harris as Moneypenny and Ben Wishaw as Q. Each of those actors not only represents an underrepresented segment of society, but also potentially fascinating characters that could expand the world of James Bond from within. Craig said “there should simply be better parts” and there already are…it’s just that Broccoli is refusing to move forward with them.

There are plenty of films, film franchises and parts of films that serve as homages to the Bond franchise; unfortunately, none of them have been developed by the Broccolis. Wright’s Felix Leiter is a CIA agent who was introduced alongside Bond in the 1953 novel, Casino Royale. Leiter has bailed Bond out and been responsible for bringing him back into the world of espionage but the character, especially with a talent like Wright behind him, has to potential to spinoff into his own world and his own adventures worthy of a Bond-esque treatment. If Leiter can hang with Bond in a Bond film, he can be the man of action in his own.

Wright’s Leiter is just one example of how Broccoli and the creatives behind the Bond franchise don’t have to work too hard to give new life to the franchise. Bond films, on average have come out every 2 years or so with the exception of a 6-year gap between License to Kill and Goldeneye. Since Craig has been in the suit, however, that average trended closer to 3 even before the pandemic delayed No Time to Die. At a time when there are more shared cinematic universes than ever before, why not fill that time between Bond films with films about characters like Leiter, Moneypenny or Q? Why not develop those characters to a place where we’re having discussions 30 years from now about who might be the next actor in a line of great actors to have played them? For now, the only answer we have is because that’s they way it’s always been…and that’s no answer at all.

October 12, 2021
The Black Knight’s Legacy and Kit Harrington’s Future

Will Poulter’s casting as Adam Warlock dominated the afternoon news cycle yesterday, but earlier in the day, multiple sites published Eternals set visit reports and disseminated quite a few interesting tidbits. Key among them and certainly the one that produced the strongest reaction on our social media was the revelation by Executive Producer Nate Moore that Kit Harrington’s Dane Whitman was going to be “just a dude” in Eternals rather than the Black Knight. To sum it up, people were angry. Angry that this news seemed to slight both Harrington and the character, who has a rich legacy in the comics; however, it’s possible that everyone is jumping the gun a little bit and possible that while Kit won’t be swinging the Ebony Blade in Eternals, Marvel Studios might have even bigger plans in store for him. In short, you know nothing, angry fan.

Marvel Studios has plans for the Black Knight. They have for the better part of a decade. Barry Gibbs, longtime Marvel Studios prop master and not Bee Gees falsetto, once told the tale of how the Ebony Blade, the cursed weapon of the Black Knight, was originally set to appear in 2016’s Doctor Strange (presumably in the room in the Sanctum Sanctorum where other artifacts are seen) but was taken out of the script for unknown reasons. They didn’t take it out for no reason. There’s been buzz about the Black Knight in insider circles for several years, so while WHERE they chose to introduce him might have been a little surprising, it wasn’t surprising that they did. And when it’s all said and done, introducing Whitman through his relationship with Sersi-which is comic accurate, by the way-will leave all kinds of stories to be told down the road, something Marvel Studios is very keen to do with new characters on Disney Plus.

You won’t see the Ebony Blade in this movie. He’s not going to be Black Knight necessarily, but that is something that we get to play with down the road.
Nate Moore

Moore’s quote above says as much but it seems that, in anger, fans may have overlooked the last part. Marvel Studios didn’t cast Harrington, a face that is both instantly recognizable and associated with swinging a famous, fictional sword, to have him be Sersi’s man candy. We will see Whitman pick up the Ebony Blade (a long-circulating rumor claims that will be a part of one of the film’s two post-credit scenes) and explore the legacy of the Black Knight. In the comics, it’s a long and dark legacy. A recent merch leak indicates that we’ll see part of that legacy teased (maybe explored a bit) through a ring worn by Whitman bearing the Raven crest worn by all iterations of the character over the years. They pulled the Ebony Blade from Doctor Strange for a reason; they cast Harrington for a reason; they are using the ring to tease the legacy for a reason. I would be absolutely shocked if shortly after Eternals premiers there wasn’t some sort of announcement about a Black Knight series being in development for Disney Plus (perhaps this is the project that goes with the recently formed Speyside Productions LLC: Harrington’s wife was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, the starting point for most Speyside Whisky tours).

A Black Knight series has the potential to change the narrative fabric of the MCU in much the same way as Loki has done. If Eternals is the portal through which Whitman enters the MCU, his series could serve as the portal through which the King Arthur, Merlin, Mordred and Morgan Le Fay join him through their connections to the original Black Knight and Dane’s ancestor, Sir Percy of Scandia. An introduction to those characters could set the stage for Pete Wisdom, MI13, Captain Britain, Excalibur and more…all because Harrington likes Sersi in Eternals. The series could also introduce Whitman’s uncle, Nathan Garrett, and explore the dark side of the nature of the Black Knight, something that will surely be explored as Whitman’s character grows over the years-and make no mistake, the 34-year old Harrington didn’t sign on Marvel without a vision of what he might do over the next decade. At his age, a steady job with Marvel Studios sets him up for life.

So don’t despair, fans of Whitman. While he might take a back seat in Eternals, he’s going to get his time to shine.

October 12, 2021
Review: ‘Heels’ Season One

On Christmas Eve 2012, Michael Waldron wrote the first pages of his wrestling show, Heels. Last night, the final episode aired on Starz, wrapping up what was one of the best TV series of 2021. And while the episode revolved around the DWL and its crew of wrestlers performing on their biggest stage ever, the South Georgia State Fair, and the climax of the episode and of season 1 took place in the squared circle, Episode 8, “Double Turn”, wasn’t about wrestling…and neither is Heels.

Waldron and showrunner Mike O’Malley (who also plays Charlie Gully, the founder of the rival FWD wresting league) have created a show that pulls back the curtain on the world or wrestling. The audience is immersed in the language and trade secrets of professional wrestling right off the bat in Episode 1, “Kayfabe”, and throughout the series. But the series is as much “about wrestling” as The Walking Dead is “about zombies.” Heels is about people: good ones, bad ones and ones who don’t know for themselves which side of that coin they fall on. Heels is about characters-and great ones, too. Heels is about family, dreams and refusing to accept setbacks as permanent failures. Heels isn’t a wrestling show: it’s a show about the human beings and wrestling is simply the vehicle through which their stories are told.

Season 1 revolved tightly around the Spade family and the fallout of Jack’s efforts not only to keep the DWL afloat but to elevate it to the heights his father, Tom, had dreamt of. Over the course of the season, Jack’s refusal to give up on the dream and his need to be in control of the DWL’s story have caused him to lose sight of the role that he’s playing in his own and in Episode 8 he comes face-to-face with what that’s cost him. The deconstruction of Jack Spade is one of Waldron’s greatest Season 1 accomplishments. Even though he’s the heel of the DWL, Jack is the patriarch and de facto “good guy” of his two families; however, as the season progresses, the same determination and perseverance that has kept the DWL alive becomes Jack’s weakness. By the time he decides to loosen his iron grip, he’s lost his family even as the DWL reaches new heights, literally and figuratively, at the conclusion of the episode’s wild-ass ladder match.

And while Jack is the main character of this wrestling show, he’s surrounded by a dozen other colorful characters, each with almost the perfect amount of their own stories to make them matter just as much as they need to. This is, perhaps, one of the toughest balancing acts a creative team has and here it’s done incredibly well. The supporting cast around Jack do what a supporting cast should do: flesh out the main character. His relationships with Ace, his wife Staci (who quickly became one of the series’ best characters), Willie, Wild Bill and his father, Tom, define him; however, the relationships those characters have with other characters define them to the audience as well, making them, in most cases, fully-realized, multi-dimensional characters with interesting stories of their own. Waldron and O’Malley have said they have 5 seasons of the series mapped out and with characters like these, it’s easy to see how they have enough material to fill that out. As Episode 8 brings Season 1 to a close, it’s Crystal, a character not even mentioned above, one that was treated as disposable by almost everyone, who bails out Jack and the DWL just when everything looks to be crumbling down. Part of Crystal’s story is one that many folks are all to familiar with but Crystal refuses to let her circumstances be an excuse and dictate her reality. She’s progressed from the girl Ace banged when he was bored to the savior of the DWL and did so while being disrespected and denied at every turn. Great shows have great characters, something Heels has…in spades. And while these characters are wrestlers, they aren’t great because they’re great wrestlers; they’re great because Waldron and the writers’ room seem to deeply understand and connect with people and express that here in the way they curated these characters.

Reflecting back on the first season of Heels, it’s clear that one it’s core themes is processing trauma. Nearly every single character has been traumatized at some point and most of their traumas revolve around or are connected to wrestling. And so while that puts wrestling at the center of the series, it does not make it a “wrestling show.” What Heels ultimately becomes is a mirror into which we should all take a look and reflect on how we process our traumas. Do we drink it away? Do we hurt those closest to us because we’ve been hurt? Do we run away from it? Or do we confront it head on, process it an grow? Heels is a deep and beautiful character study in how we are all shaped by trauma and how the ways we choose to deal with us can impact us and those around us. Heels explores the nature of what makes us good guys (faces) or bad guys (heels) and how life almost never allows a binary determination of those things: we’re often the good guys in our own stories while being the villain in someone else’s. If you want to watch a wrestling show, turn on Raw; if you want to watch a show that’s going to hit harder than a Scorpion Death Drop, check out Season 1 of Heels.

October 11, 2021
The Pulse: Collecting the Biggest News of the Week of October 3rd-9th

Jake Gyllenhaal to Lead ‘Prophet’ Adaptation

Jake Gyllenhaal has his hands full. In addition to being the lead of the upcoming Oblivion Song film, we learned this week that he’ll be working with Extraction director Sam Hargrave to bring Rob Leifeld’s Prophet to live-action. Prophet is sort of a Captain America analogue from Image Comics and what’ll be most interesting here is to see if the character will have feet.

Ultron Bots and the Illuminati

A juicy rumor popped up this week that Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness would feature some Ultron bots from another reality. It was quickly followed up by the appearance of some leaked concept art that furthers the speculation that the film will feature a version of the Illuminati and that Charles Xavier will be a part of that group. We know Marvel Studios was, at one point, developing an Illuminati series for Disney Plus so they are eager to introduce the group so maybe this is our introduction to the secret society.

James Gunn Back for More DC Action

James Gunn’s move to DC has been fruitful for both parties. Fans and critics loved The Suicide Squad and Gunn spun a Peacemaker series, set to debut in January, out of that film. Now the director says he’s got another project in the pipeline, though he’s not tipping his hand just yet. Certainly it’s not Krypto…

Agatha Harkness Spinoff Headed to Disney Plus

Most fans knew it was Agatha all along way before the song hit but the reveal that Kathryn Hahn’s character was a 300+ year old power stealing witch was still done well and left a lot of gaps to be filled in. Now Marvel Studios might be able to fill in those gaps in a new Agatha-centric series in development for Disney Plus.

Hello There!

A new rumor suggests that Star Wars fans will be reuniting with an old friend next May (May 4th is a Wednesday, afterall) when the streaming series Obi-Wan Kenobi debuts. Previous rumors had it in March (?) but a release on May the Fourth Be With You Day is pretty sweet!

October 9, 2021
‘What If…?’ Introduced Marvel Studios Most Powerful Character to Date

Infinite Ultron. Infinite Black Panther Killmonger. The Watcher. Marvel Studios first canonical animated series, What If…?, brought these incredibly powerful characters into the Marvel Cinematic Multiverse and turned them loose against one another. When it was all said and done, Infinite Ultron-who is now Infinite Zola Vision-and Infinite Black Panther Killmonger find themselves imprisoned in a pocket dimension by Strange Supreme. Given what we this morose version of Stephen Strange survived not only during this episode but also in his own, an argument can be made that Strange Supreme is the most powerful being in the multiverse.

Episode 4 of What If…? was one of the show’s highest points. More than almost any other episode, it refused to adhere to the formula of following the familiarity of the Sacred Timeline and branched out. Resultant of that, fans were treated to a look at just how dark the mystic arts can be…and how dangerous. Strange’s motivations are not intrinsically villainous, but they result in the catastrophic collapse of his reality leaving him the sole survivor in a pocket dimension prison of his own making. Of course, the power it took to create that pocket dimension and contain whatever was left of his reality would have been immense, making him a near omnipotent god-like figure. Given he had already reached a god-like level of Cosmic awareness that allowed him to identify and communicate with The Watcher, this version of Strange was set up to be a pretty heavy hitter.

Strange Supreme returns in Episode 9 and displays those god-tier powers throughout. He creates another pocket dimension in which the Guardians of the Multiverse assemble, casts powerful protection spells on the team, survives a barrage of Infinity Stone-based attacks, summons zombies from another reality, unleashes some terrifying dark magic counter attacks and, finally, contains two beings fighting over the aforementioned Stones in another, smaller pocket dimension which he keeps inside his own dimension. Strange Supreme is essentially a 10-year old boy keeping fireflies in a jar at this point, demonstrating complete control over his own powers and over the ultimate powers in any given multiverse.

Marvel Studios has often been accused of nerfing characters that should, according to the comics, be their most powerful. In recent years, Thor and Hulk have been “powered up” a bit compared to their early appearances and both Captain Marvel and Wanda Maximoff have emerged as contenders for the most powerful being in the MCU after their displays in Avengers: Endgame and WandaVision. This dark version of Doctor Strange would seem worthy of putting up a fight with any of them, including the incredibly powerful Scarlet Witch. Who knows, maybe we’ll see the two of them face off in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

October 8, 2021
Director Bryan Andrews Discusses Paying Tribute to Jack Kirby in ‘What If…?’

The last 2 episodes of the first season of What If…?, Marvel Studios first canonical animated series, saw a significant ramping up in terms of action and big, frenetic fight scenes. Episode 8 saw The Watcher go God-mode and take on Ultron in one of the best battles of the series which also saw an iconic comic book aesthetic jump mediums to the MCU: the Kirby Krackle. In an interview with ComicBook.com, What If…? director Bryan Andrews talked about bringing the artistic convention to the series and honoring the man for who it’s named, comic book legend Jack Kirby.

Kirby often used the Krackle, or Kirby Dots, as a representation of Cosmic energy (and in Episode 8 The Watcher was giving off some big energy!). Comic readers might mostly associate the style with Kirby’s work on The Fantastic Four (as seen below) but the unique representation permeated his work and has been used in animated series and films before such as Ben 10 and Into the Spider-Verse. Andrews, who has worked as a story board artist for Marvel Studios for more than a decade, was thrilled to bring the effect to the series.

I just wanted to do it forever. And then I’ve always been bummed that they haven’t done Kirby Krackle on the live action movies, so I was like, ‘We’re doing it here, guys,’ and everyone was like, “Yay!” I think, now that we’ve done it and it looks amazing, I’m hoping that whatever weird thing that the visual effects people have been avoiding it for [is over] — I don’t know why they would. Come on guys. Bring it, bring it! So we’ll see. Maybe it’s a new era of visual effects.

Kirby’s influence has been felt more and more in the past few years of the MCU. Taika Waititi’s Thor: Ragnarok designs were very Kirby-esque and in just under one month one of Kirby’s most obscure creations, the Eternals, will be featured in their own film. It’s both wonderful and appropriate to see the Kirby Krackle introduced into the MCU via The Watcher, one of Kirby’s creations and a staple of The World’s Greatest Comics Magazine. Let’s hope the live-action crew take a cue from Andrews and find a way to bring the Krackle to the big screen in Marvel Studios Fantastic Four.

Source: ComicBook.com

October 8, 2021
Connecting Imaginary Dots: Oakhaven, Agatha, Nicholas Scratch and New Salem

Last month, paperwork was filed by Disney to create a new limited liability production entity titled “Oakhaven Productions LLC.” At the time of discovery, we at Murphy’s Multiverse were prettyy stumped about what potential production this might be but today’s announcement that Marvel Studios is developing an Agatha Harnkess-centric series around star Kathryn Hahn may not only have solved that problem, but also give some clues as to what the series might end up being about.

At the time of discovery, our Google searches for Oakhaven produced little with any relevance to Marvel Studios, but did turn up what we thought was a funny coincidence: a Scooby-Doo reference. In 1998’s Scooby-Doo and the Witch’s Ghost, Scooby and the gang end up in the fictional town of Oakhaven, Massachusetts where all sorts of witch-related madness ensues. Oakhaven essentially serves as an analogue for Salem as Puritan-founded city where witches are persecuted. The dots aren’t too hard to connect here as Agatha Harnkness is not only a witch but one who, in the comics, was persecuted by Puritans in Salem before moving West and settling in the hidden Colorado town of New Salem.

While the plot of the new Disney Plus series hasn’t been revealed at this point, we know that Agatha was persecuted by her own coven of witches in Salem in 1693. We don’t catch up with her again until 2023 (or so), meaning we have about 330 years of potential stories to be told about where Agatha has been since stripping the power from her coven in 1693 and showing up in Westview in 2023. We can glean from WandaVision that she’s been set up in New Jersey for a while, but it’s possible her own series could shed some light on other places she’s been, potentially opening up the door for New Salem, and its interesting residents, to make their way into the MCU.

Foremost among those interesting residents is Agatha’s comic book son, Nicholas Scratch. Scratch was referenced as somewhat of an Easter egg in WandaVision, with Harnkness’ pet bunny sharing the name, but in the comics he was a powerful warlock in his own right who had less than a loving relationship with his mother. Marvel Studios has proven to love their family dramas and a mother-son drama might just be next on the list! With 330 years of time to fill, writer Jac Schaeffer could have a ton of fun introducing New Salem, Nicholas Scratch and some of its other colorful inhabitants while expanding on Agatha’s story and the mystical side of the MCU.

October 7, 2021
BREAKING: Agatha Harkness Series in Development at Marvel Studios

According to Variety, Marvel Studios is developing a Kathryn Hahn-led Agatha Harkness series for Disney Plus. Hahn starred alongside Elizabeth Olsen and and Paul Bettany in Marvel Studios first streaming series, WandaVision, and did so to rave reviews.

According to the trade report, the series will be written by WandaVision head scribe Jac Schaeffer, who signed a big deal with the studio earlier this year. Hahn’s character, Agnes, was revealed late in WandaVision’s season to be Agatha Harkness, an old witch who has thrived by stealing power from other witches. When we last saw her, she seemed to have her memory wiped by Wanda but there was definitely a promise of more stories to come.

Hahn received and Emmy nomination for her role in the series and the character has a loooooooong history in Marvel Comics, so it’s not at all surprising to see the studios continue working with the actress to further develop the character. Schaeffer, who will also serve as an executive producer on the series, could chose to explore the character’s rich history, expanding the mythology of witchcraft in the MCU and connect her character to the growing mystical/horror element in the MCU. Marvel Studios is known to have over a dozen projects in development at this point in time and now we know we can count this Agatha-centric series among them!

October 7, 2021