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  • Anthony Mackie Confirms New Title for ‘Captain America 4’

    Anthony Mackie Confirms New Title for ‘Captain America 4’

    For some time now, rumors have swirled that the fourth installment of the Captain America franchise would not release under the title Captain America: New World Order. Now, a new subtitle for the film has been revealed via Anthony Mackie‘s Instagram.

    As seen on the chairs of Mackie and co-star Harrison Ford, the film will now be released as Captain America: Brave New World. The previous subtitle certainly carried with it some problematic sociopolitical connotations that are absent in the new, if not somewhat underwhelming and unexciting, subtitle. Of course, if the film is good, nobody will really care what the subtitle was. For example, recall all the hype and buildup around what the fourth Avengers film would be subtitled and the online hysteria when it was revealed to be Endgame. 4 years hence, nobody seems to care much that Endgame was the subtitle.

    Brave New World is rumored to center around the governments of the world–and some non-governmental entities–working to win the race to harvest Adamantium from the corpse of Tiamut the Celestial. The film will also feature the debut of the Serpent Society and see the return of a pair of characters who haven’t been seen in the MCU since 2008’s The Incredible Hulk: Tim Blake Nelson‘s Samuel Sterns and Liv Tyler‘s Betty Ross.

    Directed by Julius Onah, Captain America: Brave New World is still scheduled to land in theaters on May 3, 2024.

  • ‘One Piece’s Taz Skylar Shares What it Was Like Preparing to Play Sanji

    ‘One Piece’s Taz Skylar Shares What it Was Like Preparing to Play Sanji

    Netflix has a reputation when it comes to anime live-action adaptations. Ever since they released Death Note in 2017, it seemed like many have made up their mind about what future anime adaptations will be like. Cowboy Bebop wasn’t welcomed with a lot of fanfare before swiftly being canceled after only one season. Still, Tomorrow Studios has one major project up their sleeve for Netflix: a live-action adaptation of One Piece.

    It’s a major challenge to tackle one of the world’s biggest manga franchises but the talented team and cast added some hope for what’s to come. Among the talented cast is Taz Skylar, who will take on the role of the Straw Hat cook, Sanji. While filming, the actor shared his intense kick-based training while also highlighting he took cooking lessons.

    In an interview with Zero Nine, Skylar got a chance to share what it was like bringing the character of Sanji to life and added that he had “a clean slate” for bringing a character to life that never had a live-action adaptation before but is aware of the challenge of bringing an animated character to life.

    Whenever you see references of the character, (Sanji) I don’t have to worry about my interpretation being anything close or anything that is copying or resembling anything that anyone else has done. I get a clean slate when I do it. But secondly, with it being animation, there’s not a single thing you see that isn’t deliberately done.

    Taz Skylar

    He goes on to highlight what makes his character different from the others, as while most have a weapon of some kind, Sanji mainly uses kicks as his weapon of choice. He also deliberately doesn’t use his hands due to them being tools to cook.

    Every other character has an external object they had to practice with. This doesn’t diminish the process of learning how to be good at something. However, in my case, I couldn’t learn to use the object until it became usable. Understanding the mechanics of kicking, for example, doesn’t count unless you can reach the target.

    Taz Skylar

    Skylar goes on to also share that he was all-in or “gone psycho” for this role. We’ve seen a lot of dedication from the cast throughout the production. He shared how he handled the pressure of preparing for this multi-faceted role.

    I’ve never gone psycho like I’ve gone psycho on this. This is the hardest I’ve ever worked for anything in my entire life. But part of it was because of the pressure, which I don’t like admitting because I don’t think it’s a useful sentiment. My way of dealing with the pressure was to go, “Well, at least if I do everything that I know is humanly possible by my standards. And then, you know, if people don’t like it, I can’t go, ‘Oh, well, maybe just Ignore them and go for it.

    Taz Skylar

    To highlight what he accomplished during production, director Marc Jobst took to Twitter highlighting that “he’d come to rehearsal with another awesome dish” and that he was truly committed to the role.

    It’s great to see just how committed Skylar was to the role and here’s hoping that it’ll pay off with this series going on for many more years, as the story of One Piece is still being told after over 1,000 chapters. While the WGA may postpone any work on a second season and Netflix’s tendency to set very high standards for viewership, if there’s any project to accomplish it, it would be Eiichiro Oda’s work.

    Source: Twitter, Zero Nine

  • Becky G Joins ‘Blue Beetle’ as the Scarab’s AI

    Becky G Joins ‘Blue Beetle’ as the Scarab’s AI

    Blue Beetle is the only HBO Max original DC film that managed to survive Warner Bros. Discovery’s purge. While Batgirl might sadly never see the light of day, we’ll get to explore the story of Jaime Reyes who ends up having an extraterrestrial bug attached to his back. While we still have some time before the film releases as all eyes are on The Flash, it seems a major casting has been revealed.

    Ángel Manuel Soto’s film will seemingly integrate some familiar elements from other tech-based superheroes as the alien Scarab will have a voice. And it seems the one to voice the being is nonother than Rebbeca Marie Gomez, better known as the singer Becky G. She’ll be joining Xolo Mariduena, who played Jaime, in his unlikely adventure of becoming a new hero.

    The entity she voices will be named Khaji-Da and we already got a tease of her voice in a teaser that has found its way online, as shared by @bluebeetlenews on Twitter. It seems they are adding some more distortions to her voice but it’s definitely strongly inspired by the AI voices we’ve seen with Iron Man and Spider-Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It’ll be interesting to see how they try to make this dynamic stand out.

    Source: The Hollywood Reporter

  • Den Den Murphy Episode 29 – Return to the Reverie

    Den Den Murphy Episode 29 – Return to the Reverie

    Eiichiro Oda has returned to the Reverie during the Egghead Island arc. Joe and Suki take their time to retrace the steps on where the current story is heading for One Piece, while also discussing some of the latest live-action news.

  • ‘Daredevil: Born Again’ Star Confirms SDCC ’23 Plans

    ‘Daredevil: Born Again’ Star Confirms SDCC ’23 Plans

    Convention season is upon us and as it begins to ramp into high gear, studio plans for the biggest fan convention of the year are once again a hot topic. Last year, Marvel Studios kept a lid on whether or not they’d even attend SDCC ’22 for quite some time, with One Above All Kevin Feige waiting until late June to confirm. While the Feigster has yet to comment on the studios plans for the 2023 convention, which will run from July 19-23, it looks like MCU fans can start planning out their Saturday night.

    In response to a Tweet from the #WeSavedDaredevil account, Daredevil: Born Again star Vincent D’Onoforio has revealed that he co-star Charlie Cox will “definitely” be at SDCC ’23.

    Daredevil: Born Again was officially announced as one of the biggest surprises at SDCC ’22 and Cox and D’Onofrio are sure to draw a huge reaction from the Hall H crowd at SDCC ’23. Production on the 18-episode series has been ongoing in and around New York City since January and is expected to continue throughout most of 2023, despite the ongoing WGA strike.

  • Natashsa Liu Bordizzo on Sabine’s Headspace in ‘Ahsoka’

    Natashsa Liu Bordizzo on Sabine’s Headspace in ‘Ahsoka’

    In 2018, the final episode of the final season of the animated canonical series Star Wars Rebels ended with Sabine Wren making a promise to find Ezra Bridger. Five years and a jump to live-action later, fans will finally see Sabine, brought to life by actress Natasha Liu Bordizzo, make good on that promise in the Disney Plus streaming series Ahsoka.

    As teased in the epilogue to the final episode of Star Wars Rebels, former Jedi Ahsoka Tano will accompany Sabine on the journey to find out what happened to their friend after they freed Ezra’s home planet of Lothal from looming Imperial presence. While it’s not entirely clear how much time has passed in the galaxy far, far away since the epilogue, Bordizzo says that Sabine’s promise to find Ezra remains at the forefront of the character’s mind.

    “She feels an obligation to him,” Bordizzo told Empire. “When they freed Lothal, she was given this hero status. But she doesn’t feel that she’s earned that because she lost her friend in that whole debacle. She’s just focused on the promise she made to him to find him.” And while finding Ezra will fulfill that promise, Sabine and the rest of the crew of the Ghost will have to deal with the fact that their friend won’t be the only familiar face they find. How will she and her friends deal with the return of Grand Admiral Thrawn, who went missing alongside Ezra? Tune into Ahsoka when it debuts on Disney Plus on August 31st to begin to find the answer to that question.

  • Dave Filoni on His Biggest Challenge in Creating ‘Ahsoka’

    Dave Filoni on His Biggest Challenge in Creating ‘Ahsoka’

    Now one of two primary creators of the New Republic era stories being told through multiple streaming series on Disney Plus ahead of a theatrical event, Dave Filoni was once the chief creative mind behind Lucasfilm’s canonical animated adventures such as Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels. Through Disney Plus streaming series such as The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett, Filoni has had the opportunity to shepherd the adaptation of several fan-favorite animated characters into live-action.

    Of those characters, none was dearer to Filoni than Ahsoka Tano, who, played by Rosario Dawson, made her live-action debut in the second season of The Mandalorian. Now, three years later, the former Padawan of Anakin Skywalker will take center stage in her own streaming series, Ahsoka, and Filoni opened up to Empire about putting his beloved creation at the center of a series to be shared with legions of Star Wars fans, some of whom have not seen the animated adventures that fleshed out her story.

    Ahsoka Tano from “STAR WARS: TALES OF THE JEDI”, season 1 exclusively on Disney+. © 2022 Lucasfilm Ltd. & ™. All Rights Reserved.

    While Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels are considered canon, Filoni is acutely aware that not everyone who will be tuning into Ahsoka will be a Star Wars completist, meaning that not insignificant chunk of the audience won’t be fully familiar with the lead character’s story. According to Filoni, that presented him with a bit of a problem. “The biggest challenge was, there’s a whole bunch of audience that know her, and a whole bunch that don’t,” said Filoni. “She has one foot in the Star Wars that a lot of people know because of her connection to Anakin, and yet she’s all new and can go in her own direction, in her own way.”

    As is often the case with creatives, however, Filoni found a way to reframe that challenging aspect of the character. Rather than limit Ahsoka by holding her to what little fans who haven’t seen the animated series do know about her, Filoni has chosen to see the unfamiliarity as door that opens myriad possibilities. “I think that makes her an interesting bridge between what came before and what’s really possible,” said Filoni of Ahsoka’s potential. Given that the character is likely set to play a major role in Filoni’s New Republic era film and his enduring love for her, it sounds like there may be many more stories in Ahsoka’s future.

    Ahsoka debuts on Disney Plus on August 31st.

    Source: Empire

  • ‘It’, ‘The Flash’ Director Andy Muschetti Reportedly Set to Helm a New DC Studios Film

    ‘It’, ‘The Flash’ Director Andy Muschetti Reportedly Set to Helm a New DC Studios Film

    While the old DCEU begins to flame out, James Gunn and Peter Safran look to be grabbing one of its hottest embers to start the fire of their new DCU. One Take News is reporting that The Flash director Andy Muschetti has agreed to direct DC Studios’ upcoming film, The Brave and the Bold.

    The report comes on the heels of earlier rumors that Gunn would look to find a way to retain Muschetti as the transition from the Snyderverse era continues. Described by Gunn as a “a very strange sort of father-son story,” The Brave and the Bold will introduce the DCU’s new Batman alongside his son, Damian, and will also “feature other members of the extended Bat-Family just because we feel like they’ve been left out of the Batman stories in the theater for far too long.”

    Muschetti, who recently refused to comment on the rumors saying only “I don’t think I can talk to that yet,” became a hot commodity after turning in two stellar films as an adaptation of Stephen King‘s It. As a follow up, he is currently filming the Max streaming project and It prequel, Welcome to Derry. According to OTN, The Brave and the Bold is currently without a script or release date.

    Source: OTN

  • Ahsoka Tano Creator Dave Filoni on the Character’s Lonely Journey to Her Solo Series

    Ahsoka Tano Creator Dave Filoni on the Character’s Lonely Journey to Her Solo Series

    After making the jump to live-action in The Mandalorian, Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels fan-favorite Ahsoka Tano her own streaming series this August on Disney Plus. Ahsoka, brought to live action by Rosario Dawson, has had one of the most compelling and emotional arcs of https://www.empireonline.com/tv/news/ahsoka-wanderer-dave-filoni-exclusive-image/any character in the great history of the Star Wars franchise. Once the promising Padawan of Anakin Skywalker, Ahsoka is a Jedi no more and now finds herself in a galaxy again on the brink of another major power struggle. The series, set in the same New Republic era as The Mandalorian, will reunite the character with her friends from the cast of and, according to an Empire interview with creator Dave Filoni, help her find a “new purpose.”

    “She’s a wanderer at this point,” says Filoni of Ahsoka’s lifestyle at the beginning of the series, “and is in a lot of ways wary of any organization as such because of the power that comes with it as a group. She walks a path that basically died out a long time ago,” he explains. “And there aren’t many like her left, if any. So that’s a lonely thing.” No longer a Jedi, Ahsoka is more of a ronin, as fans have seen in her appearances in The Mandalorian.

    However, as teased in the final episode of Star Wars Rebels, the former Jedi has one very important mission to take care of that will reunite her with her friends, the crew of the Ghost, who she hasn’t seen in years. “If you are a loner, you have a very small circle of friends. What is it like, then, when you try to open back up?” That question seems to be at the heart of what fans can expect in Ahsoka.

    With the series set to see Grand Admiral Thrawn return to the galaxy far, far away, it is expected to play a major role in the ongoing New Republic era of stories. While it’s not been confirmed, it’s widely believed that the character will play a large role in Filoni’s untitled and undated Star Wars “Heir to the Empire” film. If that’s the case, that makes Ahsoka a ca n’t-miss for fans when it starts streaming on Disney Plus on August 31st.

    Source: Empire

  • Disney Has Put ‘Hocus Pocus 3’ into Development

    Disney Has Put ‘Hocus Pocus 3’ into Development

    Disney has officially ordered a third Hocus Pocus movie. The news was announced on Sunday, with Walt Disney Pictures president Sean Bailey revealing the news in a New York Times profile piece. When asked what other upcoming live-action projects were in development at the studio, Bailey answered with, “‘Hocus Pocus 3’ is happening.”

    The news comes after the long-awaited sequel to 1993’s Hocus Pocus finally hit Disney+ in 2022. The sequel saw Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy return as the Sanderson Sisters, however, the film notably left out some of the main cast from the original film. Hocus Pocus 2 writer, Jen D’Angelo, explained that she hoped they could bring back both Max (Omri Katz) and Alison (Vinessa Shaw) for a third film. “We tried so hard to get the original cast back for cameos and then it just kept not working out for one reason or the other. But I’m hoping in ‘Hocus Pocus 3,’ we’ll see Max and Alison living in California.”

    Anne Fletcher directed Hocus Pocus 2 from D’Angelo’s script, but it’s currently unknown if either are returning for Hocus Pocus 3.

    Both Hocus Pocus and Hocus Pocus 2 are currently streaming on Disney+.

    Source: Variety via New York Times.