2021’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife had a strong launch at the box office in November 2021, taking in $44M in its first weekend on the way to a domestic total of $129M. The film’s $204M global gross more than offset its moderate $75M budget and while it wasn’t a critical darling, an A- CinemaScore meant it resonated with audiences. It didn’t take long for Sony to announce a sequel and in December 2022 they announced that Oscar nominee Gil Keenan was on board to direct and co-write with producer Jason Reitman, who directed the first film. Since then, things have stayed pretty quiet around the project but development must have gone well because Keenan and Reitman have revealed that production has begun.
The screenwriting duo took to Twitter to reveal that they were “Back in the Firehouse” on the first day of principal photography for the untitled sequel. The project’s working title, Firehouse, was revealed by Reitman on Ghostbuster’s Day in June of 2022 and is obviously a nod to the HQ of the original group of Ghostbusters. Ghostbusters: Afterlife saw the return of original Ghostbuster Winston Zeddemore to the gang’s firehouse and teased big things for the future of the franchise.
Carrie Coon, Paul Rudd and McKenna Grace are all expected to be returning for the sequel, as well as Ernie Hudson. The untitled sequel is currently slated to hit theaters on December 20, 2023.
Even though it feels small sometimes, the galaxy far, far away is a vast place full of incredible characters. Not every character needs an origin story and there’s not enough time to explore the origins of them all anyway; however, since he first appeared in Chapter 1 of The Mandalorian, fans have been waiting for the origin story of The Child/Baby Yoda/The Foundling/Grogu. Through bits and pieces of that story glimpsed through the Force, it is clear that Grogu was at the Jedi Temple when Order 66 was enacted but where he came from and the details of how he escaped the massacre have been left untold. But that may be changing soon…
In a recent tweet, The Mandalorian star Carl Weathers revealed that he returned behind the camera to direct Chapter 20 of the ongoing series and shared the title: The Foundling. That’s just one of the names Grogu has been called over the course of his adventures and now that he’s chosen not to study the Force with Luke and return to the care of Din Djarin, it’s a fitting description of him again.
THE FOUNDLING is coming this week on Disney+ and is directed by Yours Truly. #TheMANDALORIAN#BePeace
While fans have been bemoaning the new episode’s reportedly short runtime (it’s rumored to run for 30 minutes and 39 seconds), the potential implications of the title and the fact that it was written by Dave Filoni may buffer some of those hard feelings a bit. Of course, it remains to be seen just how Grogu’s story will be shared since he can’t talk. So far, he’s only been able to communicate with Jedi through the Force and there weren’t any of those hanging out in the Mandalorian covert and the end of Chapter 19. Interestingly enough, actress Rosario Dawson recently indicated she was pretty hyped up for the next installment of the series, possibly teasing the return of Ahsoka Tano who has used the Force to communicate with Grogu in the past.
Judging the impact of the episode by its size wouldn’t seem to be prudent at this juncture and certainly wouldn’t fall in line with the teachings of the Jedi!
Chapter 20 of The Mandalorian will be streaming on Disney Plus at 12 AM PT on March 22nd.
Shazam: Fury of the Gods had a tough opening weekend at the domestic box office where it only pulled in $30.5M, not a good number for a superhero film and less than the 2022 box office bomb Morbius. The film has been harshly reviewed, especially compared to its 2019 predecessor, and the B+ Cinemascore doesn’t really bode well for it to have legs, especially with John Wick: Chapter 4 blasting into theaters this weekend. All those factors work together to paint a pretty grim picture of the future of the film and it looks like Warner Bros. may have looked at that picture and decided to shake things up.
A listing for Shazam: Fury of the Gods on Amazon Prime Video indicates that it will be available on the streaming service as of midnight Eastern time on April 18th.
Should that digital release date hold true, it would mean Shazam: Fury of the Gods‘ theatrical release window would end after just 32 days. Nothing is official just yet but given all the negativity surrounding the film and the competition it faces at the box office, it wouldn’t be surprising to see this pan out. Of course, this news won’t do any favors for the film’s second (or third or fourth) weekend at the box office as families who may be considering seeing the film may just opt to wait a few more weeks and catch it at home.
Days after an interview with /Film in which he expressed his hesitation to work on a Star Wars film, writer Damon Lindelof has reportedly left the top secret project that he’d been working on for the past year. Lindelof had been co-writing the film with Justin Britt-Gibson, who has also left the project, which was expected to be directed by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy.
According to Above the Line, the duo turned in a screenplay in February before parting ways with Lucasfilm, who has already brought a new writer on board, and the film still has the green light. Lucasfilm will reportedly announce the film during April’s Star Wars Celebration and reveal that it’s slated to hit theaters in December of 2025. After a recent report revealed that long-developing projects such as Rogue Squadron and the untitled Kevin Feige film were no longer on the slate, speculation ramped up that the top-secret Lindelof/Britt-Gibson/Obaid-Chinoy project was on deck for Lucasfilm. A more recent rumor indicated that the project had already found its star in Yahya Abdul-Mateen II which may lend some credence to Above the Line’s report that production on the project is currently expected to begin in February 2024.
The shockwave of Lindelof’s departure was slightly reduced by his recent admission that he wasn’t sure he wanted to continue “cooking” a Star Wars project given his admiration and attachment to the franchise he grew up on.
I will just say, that for reasons that I can’t get into on this Sunday morning, on this day, the degree of difficulty is extremely, extremely, extremely high. If it can’t be great, it shouldn’t exist. That’s all I’ll say, because I have the same association with it as you do, which is, it’s the first movie I saw sitting in my dad’s lap, four years old, May of ’77. I think it’s possible that sometimes when you hold something in such high reverence and esteem, you start to get in the kitchen and you just go, “Maybe I shouldn’t be cooking. Maybe I should just be eating.” We’ll just leave it at that.
Damon Lindelof
It’ll be interesting to follow the project and see how it develops beyond Lindelof and Britt-Gibson’s draft and if the pair are ultimately granted a writing credit for whatever version of the project hits theaters. A previous report from THR indicated that the film was expected to be set in the aftermath of the sequel trilogy and would bring back some characters from those films. That same report suggested that while Lucasfilm was moving away from its trilogy model, they were open to sequels to the Obaid-Chinoy project should it be successful. With Star Wars Celebration kicking off in just over two weeks on April 7th, fans won’t have too long of a wait to see which of these rumors is true.
Earlier set photos from Daredevil: Born Again indicated that the upcoming Disney Plus streaming series will involve a flashback but without much context, fans were left to speculate blindly. Thankfully, a new series of set photos has come along that may clarify what was being shot today in Harlem.
The new photos, courtesy of Joseph Adames, come with the claim that flashback, set in 1970’s Hell’s Kitchen, features a young Wilson Fisk mixing it up with a group of bullies.
Fans had all day to concoct wild theories about how the young actor seen in previous set photos might be playing Matt Murdock but as it turns out, the much more sensible conclusion that he is playing a young Wilson Fisk checks out.
Fans of the Netflix Daredevil series will undoubtedly remember Cole Jensen’s performance as a young, traumatized Wilson Fisk. In that series, Fisk was born sometime in the early 1960s and murdered his father at some point in the early 1970s. It’ll be interesting to see if Daredevil: Born Again adds to that origin tale of Fisk or if they retell it as star Charlie Cox has indicated the new series may choose to do with some bits and pieces of Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk’s lives.
Fresh off seeing their film EverythingEverywhere All at Once score big at the 2023 Academy Awards, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, aka the Daniels, have signed on the direct an episode of the Star Wars streaming series Skeleton Crew.
Skeleton Crew, starring Jude Law, will be set during the New Republic era, the same time frame as The Mandalorian, Ashoka and The Book of Boba Fett. The show wrapped filming several months ago, meaning the directing duo has been on board for some time and the news is only making the rounds now, perhaps conveniently after they were awarded the Oscar for Best Director.
With Star Wars Celebration 2023 coming up in London in April, it’s possible that some footage of Skeleton Crew may be on the way and the Daniels could be on hand. Also of note is that now that the pair is in with Disney, this will only increase the online push to see the directors helm Avengers: Secret Wars. Disney loves its corporate synergy, after all.
In a stunning move, executive Victoria Alonso has parted ways with Marvel Studios. According to THR, Alonso’s final day with the studio was Friday, March 17th and no reason has been disclosed for her move.
Alonso has served as an executive producer on dozens of Marvel Studios’ projects dating back to 2012’s The Avengers. In 2021, she assumed the position of president of physical, postproduction, VFX and animation at the studio and has taken the lead in the studio’s push to increase diversity in its projects in front of and behind the camera.
The move ends a 17-year career for Alonso who began working as the studios’s chief of visual effects and post-production in 2006. She also co-produced the studio’s first film, Iron Man, in 2008.
Principal photography on Daredevil: Born Again is well underway in and around New York City with various parts of different neighborhoods being transformed into key settings for the streaming series. Last week, pictures of a corner store in Harlem being remodeled as Hell’s Kitchen and Delicatessen made their way online and now filming has begun at that location and revealed it is part of a flashback sequence.
— Daredevil: Born Again Behind the Scenes (@DDBAbts) March 20, 2023
The location stretches down the block a bit and judging by the cars on set, seems to be set in the late 1970s or later. As seen below, a stack of newspapers on set are dated November 1, 1999 but while it’s tempting to believe that’s the time period for this setting, those are actually real newspapers. Valley News is a publication that serves the New Hampshire and Vermont region and the Patriots did really beat the Cardinals 27-3 on October 31, 1999 so they may serve only as a prop and the date may not come into play in the series. There’s also an issue with the fact that the posters seen on the store are all classic 70s posters (the Raid poster, for example, is from 1978), making the newspaper anachronistic.
— Daredevil: Born Again Behind the Scenes (@DDBAbts) March 20, 2023
Given the difficulty in nailing down the exact time period when this scene is set, it’s all but impossible to determine exactly what might be going on without further context. However, star Charlie Cox indicated in a 2022 interview that as part of Daredevil: Born Again being a “whole new deal”, the series may include a retelling of some events that had previously been seen onscreen in Netflix’s Daredevil series.
What’s great about that is that we potentially get to tell some of the stories over and over again, in the same way that they do in the comics. Every now and then they start back in the beginning of Murdock’s journey as a little boy and they tell the whole origin story again, so maybe we’ll get to do that. I don’t know.
Charlie Cox
Could that be what’s going on here? This scene looks to be set in the late 1970s. In the canon established through the Netflix series, Matt Murdock was 30-32 years old, meaning he was born sometime in the mid-1980s. That Daredevil series was set in 2015 while the MCU is currently set in 2025-2026 depending on what project is being viewed (Cox’s most recent appearance in She-Hulk is widely believed to be set in 2025). With the big-time jump, that would make Matt 40-42 years old in the present day of the MCU. If Matt was out and about in the 1970s, he’d be pushing 50 years old in present day.
It’s also possible that it’s not Murdock’s story being told at all but another of the series’ main characters: Wilson Fisk. The casting of Sandrine Holt as Vanessa Fisk in Daredevil: Born Again has raised some questions about just what parts of the Netflix Daredevil series are being considered canon in the MCU. It’s possible, given the length of the series, that Marvel Studios may be choosing to retell the origin of Wilson Fisk and Matt Murdock for the MCU.
Paul Dano‘s Edward Nashton drove Robert Pattinson‘s Batman to the edge in 2022’s The Batman; ultimately, the World’s Greatest Detective discovers the endgame of Nashton’s riddles and nabs Carmine Falcone. Of course, as Riddler is “captured” and shipped off to Arkham, Batman discovers too late the secondary plan to flood Gotham and wash away its history of corruption. While Batman was able to intervene to some extent, Riddler’s extravagant plan was a success and Gotham will certainly be in all manner of disarray when it’s next seen in the HBO Max series The Penguin and again in 2025’s The Batman-Part II.
Set to film in late 2023, little is known about Matt Reeves‘ The Batman-Part II. It survived the great purge when James Gunn and Peter Safran took over at DC and formed DC Studios and will be released under that studio’s new Elseworlds banner which means the stories developed by Reeves will take place outside of the DCU’s main continuity. What story is The Batman-Part II going to tell? There are plenty of rumors out there but the truth is nobody knows what Reeves has in mind; however, a new rumor from a reliable insider might at least give fans an idea of who some of the key players will be in the new chapter.
According to Daniel RPK, both Colin Farrell and Paul Dano will reprise their respective roles in 2025’s The Batman-Part II. To be sure, most everyone probably expected Farrell’s Oz to return; the streaming series The Penguin is set in the immediate aftermath of the events in The Batman and looks to be diving into the turmoil unleashed in the criminal underworld of Gotham following the death of Carmine Falcone. Dano’s return, however, might come as much more of a surprise, especially given the breakdown he suffered in the film’s closing moments.
With all the talk of Mr. Freeze somehow being incorporated into the sequel, a return by the Riddler might not be exactly what fans are hoping for. Of course, Dano’s return doesn’t mean he’ll play a major role or be the primary antagonist once again, especially as Reeves looks to build Batman’s Rogues Gallery throughout the different projects set within his Gotham-verse. Given there are over two years until The Batman-Part II hits theaters on October 3, 2025, this is just the first turn of the rumor mill for the cast of the film.
Bob Iger‘s return to Disney has thrown a monkey wrench into Marvel Studios streaming plans. Iger has forced the studio to rethink the pacing of its streaming releases, rethink its budget and generally slow the big wheel that includes production, marketing and release. So slowed down has it become that with a quarter of 2023 almost gone, audiences don’t know when they might catch Secret Invasion, the first of the studio’s streaming offerings. While it’s likely to be a while before Disney gives in on that end, they may have given fans something to chew on.
It was recently discovered that an official Disney site that features upcoming streaming series had removed date windows from every Marvel Studios project and replaced them with “Coming Soon.” This is true for every project listed on the site from Secret Invasion to the animated Spider-Man: Freshman Year. In doing so, the order of the studio’s live-action projects were also reshuffled and that reshuffling may have given fans a glimpse into the order they should expect the studio’s live-action offerings.
Secret Invasion, which has recently been rumored to debut in June, will take the lead as expected. It’s been expected for some time now that Season 2 of Loki would follow the spy thriller but beyond that, the slate has been up in the air with Echo’s showrunner confirming a delay, word that Ironheart and Agatha: Coven of Chaos were pushed to 2024 and the lengthy production schedule of Daredevil: Born Again. While there’s no confirmation and no guarantee, it’s possible that the official Disney site rearranged the projects in anticipation of a coming announcement and put at least the live-action projects in order of expected release.
Should that be the case (and I can’t state strongly enough that this is JUST A GUESS), Secret Invasion looks to be followed in 2023 by Loki Season 2 and Echo. Just what changed behind the scenes to make Echo releasable in 2023 remains to be seen, but it would represent a significant shift in thinking should that series make a late 2023 debut on Disney Plus. With those three live-action projects taking up the last half of 2023, it would seem that Ironheart would kick off 2024 and be followed by Agatha: Coven of Chaos and then at least part of Daredevil: Born Again. Given the mandate to spread releases out a bit more, it would seem tough for all 18 episodes of Born Again to be released in 2024 but there’s no reason they all have to, either.
There’s currently no hard evidence to support this but, to some extent, it fits some of the rumors making their way around (both publicly and privately) about the current and very, very tentative live-action slate of Marvel Studios streaming projects. In the past, I’d have only given this a 33% chance of working out but in the current climate, 25% would be generous. However, it’s certainly worth pointing out so we can all kee an eye on things.
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