After spending a little more than a year in development, Amazon and MGM+ are now moving forward on their live-action Spider-Man Noir streaming series starring Nic Cage. After debuting in the animated Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Cage’s character became a fan favorite which led producers Phil Lord, Chris Miller, and Amy Pascal to put gears in motion on the project with Oren Uziel developing the scripts. The series, titled Spider-Noir, series will tell “the story of an aging and down on his luck private investigator in 1930s New York, who is forced to grapple with his past life as the city’s one and only superhero.” Now, as casting on the project gets underway, details about Spider-Noir have begun to emerge.
As was originally reported, Cage’s Depression-era hero won’t be a variant of Peter Parker but rather Ben Reilly. Brendan Gleeson was recently cast and some new information on the project from a reliable source may reveal which Spidey villain he’ll be playing. Insider Daniel RPK has shared a brief of the project’s plot which includes NYC mob boss Silvermane and cop turned vigilante Yuri Watanabe.
We follow Ben Reilly, a PI, as he stumbles down a rabbit hole of corruption in 1933 New York City, while also establishing his past as a superhero. Reilly investigates the death of Edward Addison, which leads him to discover that the Mayor is up to something nefarious that involves crime boss Silvermane and femme fatale Yuri Watanabe.
-Spider-Noir details via Daniel RPK
It does seem possible that Gleeson could fill the role of Silvermane though there’s already some speculation that he might portray the Noir universe’s Norman Osborn. Gleeson joins a cast that currently only consists of Cage and Lamorne Morris (New Girl), who is set to play Daily Bugle editor Robbie Robertson. With casting underway, Spider-Noir should begin filming late in 2024 which means much more information on the project will come to light over the next several months.
In 2021, Season 1 of Amazon Prime’s animated subversive superhero series Invincible enraptured audiences starved for content. An adaptation of creator Robert Kirkman’s long-running Image Comics series, the streaming series worked wonderfully as counter-programming to the world’s most popular film franchise. Season 1’s cagey navigation of the superhero tropes fans think they know and love allowed for its hard-hitting finale to serve as a major shock to the system while leaving fans craving more. Over two-and-a-half years later, in November 2023, the first four episodes of the show’s second season finally debuted and delivered a somber and blood-soaked follow-up that took the series lead, Mark Grayson, on a heavy emotional journey that crescendoed in a reunion with his father, Nolan, and another titanic battle that, once again, left Invincible feeling rather vincible and, of course, teasing fans with plenty of potential for what’s next. Thankfully, the gap between Season 2, Part 1 and Season 2, Part 2 was nowhere near as interminable as the gap between Seasons 1 and 2. On March 14th, Part 2 of Invincible Season 2 debuts on Amazon Prime and the four episodes that comprise it are as saturated in emotional trauma as they are in the blood of the heroes and villains of the series.
It’s in the exploration of Mark’s trauma where these episodes of Invincible make their greatest impact. While the show’s savagery caught the attention of unsuspecting audiences in Season 1, returned with renewed vigor in Season 2, Part 1 and remains part of the fabric of the story in Season 2, Part 2, Invincible is no one-trick pony. Indeed the show’s greatest strength remains not in its ability to raise the bar in terms of onscreen brutality but rather to generate genuine pathos through the continued exploration of its characters’ response to trauma. As the title character, Mark is rightfully front and center in that exploration but Season 2, Part 2 also peels open the emotional wounds of Mark’s mom, Debbie, Donald, Eve, Amber, The Immortal, Robot, Monster Girl, Rex, Rick Sheridan and yes, even Nolan. And even as the characters recover from black eyes, broken arms and bullets to the head, Invincible never hesitates to remind the audience that it is the wounds others cannot see that heal most slowly, if at all, and often take the greatest toll. And for as depressive and weighty as that sounds, Invincible also reminds us of one of the most important universal truths of humanity: we’re stronger together and none of us need to face our trauma alone.
Of course, time to heal from both physical and emotional wounds is hard to come by when you’re the savior of Earth and, unfortunately for Mark, the four episodes of Season 2, Part 2 provide the hero no time for respite. As social media continues to keep trying to make fetch happen in terms of superhero fatigue, Invincible Season 2, Part 2 presents the fatigued superhero. There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that Mark can and will survive and recover from even the most egregious physical damage; however, over the course of these four epsidoes, the question of just how much emotional damage Invincible can sustain adeptly arises.
One of the few and admittedly mild criticisms of Part 1 of the sophomore season was that it felt bloated with new characters and setups that played no significant role over the course of its four episodes. Unfortunately for Mark, his mother and baby brother and the Guardians of the Globe, those characters and setups are cascadingly paid off, culminating in the episode eight showdown with Angstrom Levy. Already at his breaking point as Mark Grayson’s needs continue to take a back seat to Invincible’s uses, Mark faces an all-new challenge that proves more than the hero can abide, pushing him toward the inevitable existential crisis his ruptured relationship with Nolan created: is he his father’s son?
As part of a series that Kirkman has expressed he hopes will continue on for seven or eight seasons, Season 2, Part 2 is partially a prolepsis of two major events to be adapted from the 144 issues of the Invincible comics. The ability of the episodes to elucidate the dangers of the present is never impeded by foreshadowing the colossal challenges ahead for Mark. Rather, they continue to provide Invincible with ample opportunity to appraise his abilities ahead of the ordeals coming his way and to find out just how Invincible he truly is. Truly dark and cataclysmic, Season 2, Part 2 of Invincible takes its hero to a place on his journey rarely explored in the genre. And while the final post-credit scene hints that there may be some hope on the horizon, one is left to wonder if Mark can recover enough to recognize help when he sees it.
Invincible Season 2, Part 2 begins streaming on March 14th.
*NOTE: This spoiler-free review covers Episodes 1-3 of Season 2 of Reacher. All 3 episodes debut on December 15th.*
Alan Ritchson has found his home. After trying his hand as a pair of superheroes and voicing a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, the mammoth Ritchson has found a character he nearly perfectly embodies in Jack Reacher. Based on the works of author Lee Child, Reacher follows Ritchson’s nomadic military police investigator who dispenses equal parts brains and brawn as an “avenging angel.” The 8-episode first season of Reacher was incredibly well-received by critics and audiences alike in early 2022 and the new season, adapted from Child’s 2007 novel, Bad Luck and Trouble, doubles down on everything that made Season 1 such as a hit with dads all over the globe.
Like Season 1, Reacher Season 2 makes a strong statement as an intentional antithesis to modern action franchises. Neither hyper-stylized like The World of John Wick nor full of adrenalized stunts like the Mission: Impossible series, Reacher is undeviating in the pursuit of purpose and predictably principled. Nothing about Reacher requires the audience to pay particularly close attention to detail, the villains are neither subtle nor nuances and both the series and the title character work methodically and joyfully through whatever impediments are introduced to solve the problem at hand. To that end, Ritchson gets to flex his mental muscle as well; despite his bullish physique and demeanor, Reacher is always the smartest guy in the room. Reacher presents a wonderfully full-bodied bouquet with hints of 80’s action films such as Commando and Cobra upfront with a tight, underlying structure of Columbo.
While Emmy-nominated showrunner Nick Santora was smart enough to veer too far from the formula that made Season 1 such a hit, the choice to adapt Bad Luck and Trouble, the 11th book in Childs’ series, does add a little more to the show in terms of a stronger supporting cast and to Ritchson‘s Reacher by humanizing him a bit more. The season opens with Maria Sten’s Neagley, who played a solid supporting role in Season 1 as one of the only characters to have a shared history with Reacher, contacting her old boss with some bad news: one of their old Army buddies was tortured and dropped from a helicopter. Their investigation quickly leads them to conclude that a bad man is out to get the members of Reacher’s old Army MP Unit: the Special Investigators of the 110th. As Reacher and Neagley track down the other members of their old unit, they continue to uncover clues that lead them down the road to a much bigger mystery.
Serinda Swan (Inhumans, Coroner), who plays the saucy Karla Dixon, and Shaun Sipos (Krypton, Outer Range), whose wise ass David O’Donnell serves as a wonderful foil to Reacher’s straight-man routine, work well as newbies whose connections with Reacher allow the audience to get to know the tough guy a little more. Teamwork makes the dream work and Reacher’s team of Special Investigators help transmute their old boss into something more than just a rageful ronin who is all-too-happy to rid the world of wrongdoers. In this case, that wrongdoer is Shane Langston, a character seemingly pulled directly from a late 20th-century action movie, whose commitment to corruption has put him on a collision course with the unstoppable, American knight errant. And to make Langston feel authentic last century, the series cast Robert Patrick, the face of one of the 90s greatest villains, in the role…and then dropped a T2 reference in case you missed it.
Season 2 of Reacher smartly hold on to the recipe that made the first season a wide-ranging success while adding just the right amount of accouterments to make it feel like a truly new chapter. Ritchson leans even harder into his portrayal of the stoical character yet maintains enough charm to elicit a few laughs in between the beatings. An unabashed ode to 20th-century action films and the tough guys that inhabited them, Reacher Season 2 is a triumphant throwback.
About Reacher Season 2
Reacher Season Two begins when veteran military police investigator Jack Reacher (Alan Ritchson) receives a coded message that the members of his former U.S. Army unit, the 110th MP Special Investigations, are being mysteriously and brutally murdered one by one. Pulled from his drifter lifestyle, Reacher reunites with three of his former teammates turned chosen family to investigate, including Frances Neagley (Maria Sten); Karla Dixon (Serinda Swan), a forensic accountant for whom Reacher has long had a soft spot; and fast-talking, switchblade-wielding family man David O’Donnell (Shaun Sipos). Together, they begin to connect the dots in a mystery where the stakes get higher at every turn, and that brings about questions of who has betrayed them—and who will die next. Using his inimitable blend of smarts and size, Reacher will stop at nothing to uncover the truth and protect the members of his unit. If there’s one thing Reacher and his team know for certain, it’s that you do not mess with the Special Investigators. This season, get ready for Reacher and the 110th to hit back hard.
Based on Bad Luck and Trouble, the 11th book in Lee Child’s global best-selling series, Reacher Season Two stars Alan Ritchson in the title role of Jack Reacher, with Maria Sten, Serinda Swan, and Shaun Sipos as key members of the 110th MP Special Investigations Unit. Rounding out the cast are Ferdinand Kingsley as A.M., a mercenary that homeland security refers to as a “ghost;” Robert Patrick as Shane Langston, head of security for a private defense contractor with a questionable track record; and Domenick Lombardozzi as tough NYPD detective Guy Russo.
Reacher is produced by Amazon Studios, Skydance Television, and Paramount Television Studios. Based on the novels by Lee Child, who serves as an executive producer, the series is written for television by Emmy-nominated writer Nick Santora (Scorpion, Prison Break), who also executive produces and serves as showrunner. In addition to Santora and Child, the series is executive produced by Don Granger, Scott Sullivan, and Adam Higgs, with David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, and Bill Bost for Skydance.
There’s a fun irony to see The Boys series slowly turn into exactly what it mocked in its earliest seasons. The series created by Eric Kripke explored a dark and twisted take on superheroes that is steeped deeply in American politics and consumerism. It was the “gotcha” of its time as an anti-movement towards the more light-hearted fun the superheroes on the silver screen offered by mocking its foundations as a franchise-building, marketable product.
The Boys is now set to get its third spinoff series, The Boys: Mexico. The offshoot will be developed by Blue Beetle writer Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer, who is seemingly actively looking for a co-showrunner to join the project. The project has not started casting and is set to film in Latin America. This marks another expansion of the Boys-verse after the recent release of Gen V and the animated spinoff Diabolical, which were both steeped in the R-rating of the original.
The series is also going to be executive produced by Andor’sDiego Luna and Werewolf by Night’sGale García Bernal, who is also interested in potentially having a minor role of some kind in the series, though it’s not yet set in stone. It’ll likely further explore another venture by Vought into expanding its superheroes across the world, or perhaps be a series that echoes the normal man vs. the superheroes that we see in the main The Boys series. We’ll have to wait a bit until we get more info on the series as Gen V is also set to get a second season.
Amazon Studios rolled the dice in 2018 with what at the time was perceived as yet another, other attempt to reboot author Tom Clancy‘s Ryanverse into a successful franchise. From the start, however, it was clear that the team behind Amazon’s Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan had no interest in putting out more page-to-screen adaptations of Clancy’s novels but rather taking the central character of those novels and creating original stories set in modern times. Then they rolled the dice again by casting John Krasinski, an actor who certainly did not have the action resume most fans associated with the role of Ryan. As the streaming series comes to an end with its fourth and final season, it’s now clear that Amazon’s gamble paid off.
While the first season of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan wasn’t critically beloved, it provided a template for the show’s success: drop Jack Ryan–who’s a little more Jack Bauer than previous versions–in the middle of a complex, multi-faceted problem, surround him with an interesting supporting cast and put him up against a compelling antagonist. Over the second and third seasons, that template was tweaked, adding some seedy secondary villains, introducing some nefarious conspiracies and, most interestingly, bravely taking the series to places in the world where real issues exist that might not always make the headlines. Season 4 of the show ultimately (and smartly) works as a highlight reel of what worked well across the previous three seasons only falling short by failing to find an antagonist as uniquely formidable as Season 1’s fascinating Mousa bin Suleiman.
The Problem
The final season of Jack Ryan shines the spotlight on one of Hollywood’s favorite group of faceless baddies–a Mexican cartel–but spices things up a bit by adding some more evil to the mix from a place most folks couldn’t find on a map in Myanmar. A hot bed of organized crime in the real world, the Ryanverse’s Myanmar (almost certainly influenced by real world events) is home to a Chinese triad who has made its home in the Shan State and is looking to up its game by joining forces with the cartel. That convergence requires some nasty work done in Lagos, Nigeria. That work, which has the earmarks of the CIA all over it, ultimately comes across the desk of the CIA’s new Deputy Director, Jack Ryan, the one man baddies all over the globe should know by now to fear!
The Villains
Jack Ryan Season 4 has no shortage of bad guys for Jack to take on; on the contrary, if there’s weakness to the final season it’s that there are so many that none of them get anywhere near enough screen time to be as bad as they wanna be. Not quite cannon fodder, not quite on the level of Season 3’s more memorable assemblage of baddies, the group of villains that Jack and his team work their way through over the course of the season’s six episodes has the feel of a “AAAA ball player”: too good for AAA and can’t quite cut it in The Show. And while the writers gave the old college try to throwing a surprise villain or three in the mix, you’d have to have slept through the first 3 or 4 episodes to truly be surprised.
The Supporting Cast
As it turns out, the lack of a great villain who chews up the screen works out in that it allows for the supporting cast of the series to really take off. National treasures Wendell Pierce and Mike Kelly return as tritagonists James Greer and Mike November, respectively, and do what they do best: elevate every scene they’re in. Pierce owns the role of Greer now and seems to be having a blast delivering ass kicking and mother fuckers left, right and center and Kelly, who definitely hit the gym, plays the Howling Mad Murdock to Ryan’s Hannibal Smith with all the appropriate reckless abandon. Neither seems to have a wasted moment on screen. They’re matched in that regard by newcomer Michael Pena whose Domingo Chavez provides a wonderful “Ready. Fire. Aim” foil to Krasinski‘s analytical Ryan. Betty Gabriel gives Elizabeth Wright a little more depth in her second go around and Abbie Cornish gets more to do as Cathy Mueller. A lead is only as strong as the supporting cast and Amazon has understood that–and nailed it–from the start.
If you’ve been watching all along, Season 4 of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan will serve as a great farewell to the characters and Krasinski’s final big speech truly captures the spirit of Clancy’s iconic character. While beyond Michael B. Jordan and Chad Stahelski’sRainbow Six film the future of the Ryanverse is largely undefined, whatever comes next will rest comfortably on a firm foundation built over four seasons of a very solid series.
If there is one unspoken rule in Hollywood, it’s keeping classic IPs alive with various spinoffs, revivals, or whatever they can turn a project into. Amazon is seemingly mapping out a variety of new IPs under its umbrella as TV series and films for the future. So, let’s go down the IP reboot road to see what exactly Amazon has planned.
Besides a potential revival of the long-dormant Stargate franchise, one of the big reveals is the revival of RoboCop. This would mark the second reboot of the franchise since 2014 which took a more modern approach to the 1987 classic but wasn’t as well received. The character has recently appeared in the Mortal Kombat gaming franchise and still remains a classic.
They are also seemingly hoping to bring back Legally Blonde as a series and also a film. It seems they have been trying to revive it for quite some time as a third entry in the franchise has been in development for almost five years. They also are hoping to bring a TV series to life based on Fame, Barbershop, The Magnificent Seven as well as new films based on the Pink Panther (potentially animated) and Poltergeist.
There are many iconic space-based series with the name “Star” in them. Star Wars and Star Trek have been among the most prominent in the Internet’s IP-infected watercooler chatter. Yet, there’s another series that had quite a cult following and a very respectable run on television, Stargate SG-1.
It seems Amazon sees the potential of bringing the franchise back, as Deadline has reported there are currently talks on reviving it with a TV series and even as a film. There’s no word how exactly they’d build upon it or if that’ll act as a direct reboot to the original taking place in modern times. To be fair, they also have no talent attached so it’s unclear when the series might get released.
The series ran for ten seasons on Showtime and the SciFi Channel before ending on Sky1 in 2007. What makes the franchise so interesting is that it was initially a film by Roland Emmerich that spun out into a unique series. That was just the beginning, as the Stargate SG-1 series had a variety of spinoffs.
The series had two direct-to-DVD films The Ark of Truth and Continuum. There was also a direct spinoff series Stargate Atlantis that featured some of the original cast members throughout its run. Stargate Universe was a unique spinoff taking place in the same world but was completely removed from the original series and ran for two seasons. There also was a web miniseries called Stargate Origins that acted as a prequel.
Here’s a rather shocking reveal, but it seems Amazon’s gamble with The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power may have not paid off as initially hoped. The series is one of the most expensive productions out there and already has a second season on the horizon, but new internal data has revealed that the first season was only finished by 37% of its viewers domestically. Internationally, it’s not too far off at around 45% with 50% usually considered a “solid” performance.
There’s a bit of irony to this story, as the series is not viewed as a failure, even if it didn’t even become a major awards contender either. The series had the biggest debut for the streaming service and that does mean its smaller finish rate still would rival any other series on the platform. Up until now, The Boys seems to remain their biggest release (throwing another wrench into the superhero fatigue blender) and Amazon Studios chief seemingly views The Rings of Power quite a bit more positively.
This desire to paint the show as anything less than a success — it’s not reflective of any conversation I’m having internally. That’s a huge opportunity for us. The first season required a lot of setting up.
Jennifer Salke
Netflix dominates the Nielsen ratings and there’s quite a bit of difficulty in truly pinpointing a series’ success. The service with the highest viewership seemingly also sets the highest bars of what makes a successful series. Amazon also seemingly has a problem in that there’s “no vision of what an Amazon Prime show is” which stands in an interesting juxtaposition to just how easy it is to figure out if Netflix or Disney+ is behind the wheel on a project.
Here’s a surprise but it looks like The Terminal List starring Chris Pratt is not only returning for a second season but is also going to be turned into a full-fledged franchise. According to a new report by Deadline, the Amazon Studios production is picking up an additional origin series focused on Taylor Kitsch‘s character from the series. Kitsch is also set to executive produce the adaptation similar to how Pratt was an executive producer on The Terminal List. David DiGilio, the creator of the series inspired by Jack Carr‘s 2018 novel.
While details are still kept under wraps, it does seem like the prequel series would introduce a few characters from the original novel that weren’t present in the series. The series was a huge hit for Prime Video, and it seems they’ve been discussing a potential second season for quite some time now. It also seems that it was Pratt‘s idea to expand the series with a prequel which he is also an executive producer on. They want to use this series as a way to explore the “true darker side of warfare.”
DiGilio would be set to showrun the spinoff as well and will include Carr and Antoine Fuqua in its executive production staff. Former Navy SEAL Jared Shaw is also attached as a producer, who is Pratt‘s coach, alongside former Army Ranger Max Adams. It’ll be interesting to see if they focus on the prequel and if it may set up some story elements from the second season.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power has seemingly been pushing them forward. Work has already started on the second season in the United Kingdom, as the franchise sadly is moving away from New Zealand. J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay continue their work on the series exploring the Second Age of Middle-Earth and have seemingly added eight more to its cast for the next season.
Deadline reports that The Rings of Power has added Oliver Alvin-Wilson, Stuart Bowman, Gavi Singh Chera, Kevin Eldon, William Chubb, Calam Lynch, Selina Lo, and Will Keen to its cast. They join the previously announced actors Sam Hazeldine, Yasen ‘Zates’ Atour, Ben daniels, Nia Towle, Nicholas Woodeson, Amelia Kenworthy, and Sam Hazeldine.
So far the only confirmed role is Hazeldine is taking over the role of Adar, the leader of the orcs in the second season. They also teased that one of the elfs that carries Celebrimbor’s three rings will be introduced in Season 2. As such, one of the newly announced actors is expected and we should also meet other ring-bearers in the next season. So, the time is right to guess which new addition could be taking on what role moving forward.
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