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  • REVIEW: ‘Nimona’ is a Movie Worth the Wait

    REVIEW: ‘Nimona’ is a Movie Worth the Wait

    Nimona is based on a graphic novel of the same name by ND Stevenson. The book was originally published as a webtoon by Stevenson in 2012, before being collected as a single graphic novel by Harpercollins in 2015. That same year, the graphic novel was optioned for film by Fox. Unfortunately, though, the film’s adaptation would take a long time to come to fruition – and following the Disney-Fox merger, the movie’s release looked rather grim. The movie was well into production, but Disney ended up shuttering the movie. Shapeshifter Films would later team up with Annapurna Pictures, though, after finishing production on the film to find a new home for the film with Netflix.

    Nimona tells the story of Ballister Boldheart, voiced by Riz Ahmed, and the titular character, Nimona (Chloë Grace Moretz). Growing up as a outsider in a futuristic medieval world, Ballister is framed for the murder of Queen Valerin. Deemed a murderer, Ballister spends his days in the shadows, eager to clear his name but failing to do so… until he meets the mysterious, mischievous teen, Nimona. The duo couldn’t be more different from one another – with Nimona constantly threatening to kill and Ballister eager to do anything but kill someone. But she seems to be the only person capable of helping him, so together, the duo form an unlikely friendship that’ll force them to reevaluate everything they thought they knew.

    Fans that have been eagerly awaiting the release of the Nimona film will find the wait well worth it. The road to the screen might’ve been bumpy, but the final product successfully captures the feel and tone of the comic and features a hell of a cast. Joining Ahmed and Moretz in the film are Eugene Lee Yang (The Try Guys), Frances Conroy (Six Feet Under), Beck Bennett (The Mitchells vs. the Machines), RuPaul and Indya Moore (Pose). Each actor is perfectly cast in their roles, with Yang and Conroy, specifically, both delivering noteworthy performances.

    It’s hard to really find an issue with Nimona. The film is full of action, charm and humor. It’s delightful from start to finish, filled with excellent voice performances and a wonderful message. If one were to find any fault with Nimona, it would be the art style as it is very similar to Stevenson’s animated She-Ra series, which drew criticism from fans for its art style. But even if you’re not a fan of the style, the film is well-crafted and full of love.

    Nimona is everything audiences can want in an animated movie. There’s humor, there’s plenty of action, there’s heart and there’s a story everyone can relate to. It’s ultimately about finding your place in the world and finding your people. That’s something we can all truly understand.

    (Side Note: There is a pretty great use of Metric‘s “Gold Gun Girls” in the movie.)

  • [SPOILER] May Return in ‘The Marvels’

    [SPOILER] May Return in ‘The Marvels’

    The following article contains spoilers for the ending of the first episode of Secret Invasion. So only continue at your own risk.

    One of the biggest shocks in the pilot episode of Secret Invasion was the death of Maria Hill. Cobie Smulders was a mainstay since her first appearance in 2012’s Avengers. While she didn’t quite follow her comic counterparts’ growth into the leader of SHIELD, she still remained a constant throughout the franchise. It worked well to highlight the dangers Nick Fury is about to face.

    Even with how big the show was and how many set photos have found their way online from the production, the twist was kept a secret up until the show’s release. Smulders shares her surprise and looking back at what she believes was “a dream job.”

    There were a lot of people around, so I’m surprised that there wasn’t an image that got leaked. I guess that’s the respect that Marvel has earned over the last decade, which is like, ‘Don’t spoil it for people.’ And nobody did, thankfully.

    Cobie Smulders

    Interestingly enough, the article from The Hollywood Reporter claims that she is still set to return in the upcoming film The Marvels. What adds a bit of confusion to this twist. Of course, it opens the possibility that we’re going to see more Skrull twists in the series moving forward. Of course, it may just also be a hint that the film takes place earlier in the timeline tahn expected but we might not know until Disney+ releases.

    Source: Hollywood Reporter

  • Animation Wins the Weekend as ‘The Flash’ Drops by 72%

    Animation Wins the Weekend as ‘The Flash’ Drops by 72%

    Ouch! It looks like The Flash isn’t doing so well as it dropped by 72% in its second weekend. DC’s biggest release of the year is not performing as “the best superhero movie” would, as it’s been completely overtaken by two animated projects. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse continues to show its legs and overtook the film while Elemental is only slightly behind. No Hard Feelings shows that R-rated projects still have some energy in them.

    The Flash overall pulled in $15.3M over the weekend, which is a sharp decline in its second weekend. As such, the film is only behind Morbius with the second-worst drop of any superhero film. As such, even bad performers Black Adam and Shazam! Fury of the Gods had better holds in its second weekend, the latter dropping around 69% on an even smaller opening. As such, the film may have passed $200M, but it’s unclear if it’ll even reach $300M at this rate.

    Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse returned to the top spot with $19.3M and already passed $560M globally. Has a decent chance of probably ending its total run at around $700M. Elemental even showed that a bad opening doesn’t mean the film could make up for it. It dropped only 37% which might not quite help with its $200M budget but if it keeps the pacing it could at least try to balance it out as much as possible. As of now, it placed second with $18.5M and stands at $121M.

    Jennifer Lawrence made her grand return to theaters with the raunchy No Hard Feelings, which opened pretty decent. $15M is a good start and better than some other R-rated comedies though won’t compete with Cocaine Bear. The big surprise is that not a single film managed to pass $30M this summer weekend, which is bizarre considering just how stacked the summer was going in. Either we’re seeing people become very selective about what they watch, or the box office still has quite a time to go before it heals.

    Source: Variety, Twitter, The Numbers

  • Bad Bunny Hops Off Sony’s ‘El Muerto’

    Bad Bunny Hops Off Sony’s ‘El Muerto’

    The announcement by Sony that they were developing an El Muerto project fans sent the dozens of fans of their Spider-Man cinematic universe without a Spider-Man to Google to learn just who the masked man was. After analyzing the brief Wikipedia entry, everyone remained confused as to why the film was in development other than as a vehicle for multi-hyphenate star Bad Bunny. Sony hoped that BB’s reach would generate enough interest to carry the project. Now, shortly after the film was scratched from Sony’s slate, further bad news has dropped.

    According to Big Screen Leaks, Bad Bunny has chosen to leave El Muerto.

    https://twitter.com/bigscreenleaks/status/1672312018882142211?s=20

    As BSL explains it, Bad Bunny‘s desire to continue touring plus the delays caused by the ongoing WGA strike combined to drive the star away from the project. However, despite Sony initially developing the project because of Bad Bunny, they are apparently–for reasons none of us will ever be able to come to understand–looking to recast the role and keep the project alive! What a world! While it would seem best for everyone to let El Muerto die, Sony has often continued to choose the road much less traveled, sometimes even opting to travel roads that nobody really wants to go down…or even know exist.

    Source: OTN

  • ‘The Flash’ Stumbles to a 70%+ Drop in its Second Weekend

    ‘The Flash’ Stumbles to a 70%+ Drop in its Second Weekend

    The Flash may be far removed from what Zack Snyder once started, but it seems it’s about to overtake Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice’s box office drop. After a soft opening in its first weekend at $55.7M, far below initial expectations, the film is seemingly on its way to a heavy drop that’ll be likely above 70%. If you have a strong opening you might be able to balance it out, but this isn’t the case. As such, the film is dropping to third place after opening to $4.5M on Friday, which is an 81% drop.

    That drop is quite a bit higher than that of Green Latnern back in 2011, which only made around $116M and it’s unclear if this film will face a similar fate. It’s not looking good for the film to make enough money to make up its $200M+ production budget. Whiles some are liking this to be a sign of superhero fatigue, The Flash isn’t the only film that has lost quite a bit of momentum, and perhaps expectations for blockbusters generally have risen.

    Transformers: Rise of the Beasts proves that fact after a sharp 66% drop in its second weekend, but things are looking up a bit as the third is going a bit softer than initially expected. The film will drop around 45% and could still push the film to pass Bumblebee and Transformers: The Last Knight’s overall domestic box office gross.

    The big surprise though is Elemental is holding on. After the worst opening weekend for a Pixar film, its A CinemaScore is proving useful with a strong hold. It’ll likely only drop around 40% in its second weekend, which would push it further but it is still not likely to take the top spot. At the moment, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is showing a stronger hold and has a good chance at retaking the top spot with a $18.2M weekend.

    The big release of the week, No Hard Feelings is doing pretty good. It pulled in $6.25M on Friday (incl. Thursday previews) putting it at the top spot for at least a day. It’s projected to make around $12M but it seems likely that the debut will land somewhere around $15M. It did take the day and while it’ll lose momentum it’s still not too bad of a showcase. Comedies sadly generally seem to be struggling at the box office, as many other films like The Machine, Bros, and Easter Sunday struggling with that R-rating.

    Source: Variety

  • Paramout+ Pulling a Warner Bros. and Removing Freshly Canceled Shows

    Paramout+ Pulling a Warner Bros. and Removing Freshly Canceled Shows

    Warner Bros. Discovery started a terrible trend when they started pulling projects from their streaming services. Not just projects they were licensing but also originals that weren’t readily available in any legal capacity outside of their specific streaming service. Then, Disney+ joined in by pulling some great shows like Big Shot and Willow, which were only released recently. It seems the streaming wars are slowly nearing their final chapter as Paramount+ is now pulling the exact same stunt.

    The streaming service has decided to cancel four shows, which include Star Trek: Prodigy, Queen of the Universe, The Game, and Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies. Yet, to add insult to injury, they have also decided to completely remove the shows from the streaming service in the coming days. So, if you haven’t seen any of these projects and still want to check them out, this might be your last chance before they are gone. A spokesperson shared the following statement:

    We want to extend our thanks to our tremendously talented cast and crew and our producing partners for their passionate work and dedication on these programs, and we wish them all the best on their future endeavors.

    The depressing aspect of this trend is simply that it highlights the importance of physical media as who knows if any o these projects may be released anytime soon on other streaming services or on network television. Some actions are done for tax reasons, but they may not just wait it out before releasing the projects as part of bundle deals with others. The only question is if this is perhaps just the beginning of other purges from Paramount+.

    Source: Variety

  • DC Veteran to Compose ‘Kraven the Hunter’s Soundtrack

    DC Veteran to Compose ‘Kraven the Hunter’s Soundtrack

    Looks like Kraven the Hunter is in good hands. Well, depends on who you ask when it comes to the upcoming Sony spinoff film focused on the Spider-Man film. Still, there is some exciting news with the addition of Benjamin Wallfisch. The veteran composer has seemingly joined the production and will give Aaron Taylor-Johnson the right melody to hunt down his non-animal prey.

    What is interesting about Wallfisch is that he’s no stranger to superhero properties. He’s worked quite a bit with Andy Muschietti on The Flash, his two It films, and even was involved with 2019’s Shazam! though his best work might be Blade Runner 2049, which he worked on it alongside composing icon Hans Zimmer.

    It’ll be interesting to see what direction he takes the soundtrack for this film, as Wallsisch has quite an extensive background. So, they could go any way they want with it but it would seem fitting if they lean into the characters’ Russian background in their choice of melody. Though, it’s hard to say if director J.C. Chandor already went in with a rather specific vision.

    Source: The Hollywood Reporter

  • ‘Spider-Verse’ Threequel Unlikely to Release Next Year

    ‘Spider-Verse’ Threequel Unlikely to Release Next Year

    Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse has opened to much acclaim and is quite a success at the box office. Many saw it as the perfect showcase of what animation and superhero movies are capable of, but a recent announcement has unveiled that things were a bit rough behind-the-scenes.

    In a new report by Vulture, a lot of details on how the crew is overworked were unveiled. Not just that, but they also made quite a point to highlight that Phil Lord was a big part of the production leading to many rewrites and changes even with an almost finished product.

    Yet, the question remained if Beyond the Spider-Verse was even far along, but one of the anonymous animators has pointed out that they aren’t far along enough to even hit the next year’s release that was originally set when the film was split into two parts.

    The only progress that’s been made on the third one is any exploration or tests that were done before the movie was split into two parts.

    It’s definitely realistic that the film won’t be available in 2024. At this point, we don’t know how long the wait might end up being, but here’s hoping that for future developments of the project they’ll take their animation staff into consideration and avoid the issues that are currently being reported.

    Source: Vulture

  • ‘One Piece’ Adds Revolutionary Character to Cast

    ‘One Piece’ Adds Revolutionary Character to Cast

    Even though we’re finally nearing the release of Netflix’s live-action One Piece in late August, it seems that one more cast member has potentially been uncovered. There are still quite a few major characters that have yet to be cast, but we also don’t know how far the story will go throughout the East Blue, as many are theorizing if we’ll even see Loguetown in the first season. This new casting, as first shared by @OP_Netflix_Fan, may have added some more confusion.

    Dean Damonse has seemingly revealed that he is playing a character by the name of Dragon in Project Panda a.k.a. One Piece. There has been a rumored casting some time ago due to an IMDb listing,b ut those are generally easy to edit by anyone that makes an account. So, we were left wondering if we’d actually see the iconic leader of the Revolutionary Army in the series.

    The casting has garnered some concerns over the actor’s age and if he would match the character. He also had only minor roles up to this point, which makes many wonder why they’d cast the actor in such a pivotal role. Of course, there might be a reason for that due to how he auditioned, but there’s also another factor to take into account: Dragon appears very briefly and disappears for quite some time.

    They might have just decided to have someone act as a stand-in that they can easily recast later down the line. With the character not having a prominent role up to the time skip, it’s not a surprise they wouldn’t want to fly in a big name. Even in his first appearance, you can only briefly make out his face after a short speech. Plus, the actor is quite young and could be used in a flashback instead with minimal lines. So, we’ll have to wait and see if he actually appears in a big capacity in the project.

    Source: Top Talent Management

  • Animators Speak Out on Turbulent Production on ‘Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’

    Animators Speak Out on Turbulent Production on ‘Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’

    For some time now, people have used the Spider-Verse films as a showcase of what happens if you respect animators and those working don’t the project. It has commonly been used as a point of comparison between how major studios utilize their VFX houses for live-action adaptations. Yet, it seems that there was a lot more happening behind the scenes than one might’ve assumed initially.

    Supposedly, while Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse cost only $150M to produce, it seems like things were quite messy and costly in the long run. Multiple crew members, who range from artists to production executives, have come out to share what has happened across the many years working on the film in a new article by Vulture. And, it seems that it wasn’t pretty.

    Around 100 artists have supposedly had to “flee the movie” before it was finished, as they share that the film sprinted in the last three years. One of the reasons is seemingly due to one of its producers, Phil Lord of LEGO Movies fame, having a hard time conceptualizing 3-D animation and seemingly prefers to edit with fully rendered work. This means, they finished an entire project and then end up having to scrap big chunks of it due to this editing style. Usually, these kinds of stages happen early on in production, but it seems they pretty much had to change elements that were already finished.

    Subsequently, their backlog started to pile on as time went by. It’s no wonder the film was postponed by more than a year from its initial April 2022 release. At the time, it was “pandemic-related delays” but it seems there’s more to that after all. Seems that Phil Lord’s partner, Christopher Miller was surprisingly absent throughout most of the production. Lord seemingly overshadowed even the trio of directors involved with the project.

    Of course, Sony executives have disputed the claim with producer Amy Pascal pointing out that “over a thousand” were involved and losing 100 isn’t too surprising. Though she did confirm that the project went through various major overhauls when it came to its visuals and narrative. Going as far as executive Vice President of Sony Pictures Imageworks, Michelle Grady, stating “It really does happen on every film,” which casts a darker shadow over their other work especially with Pascal’s stating: “Welcome to making a movie.”

    Though, it should be pointed out that one stated it was a harsh experience but one that is “extraordinarily rewarding” it’s still not a good sign that what VFX and gaming industries are going through also affects animation. We’ll have to see if the WGA strike might be a big milestone to push for better experiences of employees in these creative environments but it also is a sign not to point the finger at a single scapegoat and take a look at the bigger picture.

    Source: Vulture