Marvel’s Inhumans
Marvel has so many characters in its history that it seems like Disney and ABC have an almost infinite well from which to draw when it comes to creating movies and TV. This time, ABC has brought the Inhumans to life, a group of characters who have appeared in one form or another in Marvel’s comics since the 1960s. Is Marvel’s Inhumans worth your while? Attilon is a city of Inhumans, humans with genetic mutations that give them powers, that’s located on Earth’s moon. Most people on Earth don’t know the Inhumans exist, and the royal family wants to keep it that way: Black Bolt (Anson Mount), who can knock buildings down with his voice; his wife Medusa (Serinda Swan), whose long red locks prove to be powerful weapons; Gorgon (Eme Ikwuakor), who is has hooves and lots of strength; Karnak (Ken Leung), who can see into the immediate future and readjust (at least that’s what we think he does… it’s not clear in the pilot what his powers are); Crystal (Isabelle Cornish), a ward of the king and queen who can turn things hot or cold; and Lockjaw, Crystal’s gigantic pug who can transport people in an instant.
Jennifer Lawrence’s ‘Red Sparrow’ First Trailer Arrives at CinemaCon
Jennifer Lawrence’s upcoming film Red Sparrowshowed off its first footage at CinemaCon in Las Vegas Thursday. The Fox film, an adaptation of the Jason Matthews espionage novel, follows a Russian intelligence officer (Lawrence) who is ordered against her will to become a “Sparrow,” a trained seductress, and to operate against a young CIA agent who handles the agency’s most important Russian mole. Joel Edgerton also stars. The first trailer shows Lawrence as a beautifully dressed ballerina who is injured onstage. A brunette and bangs, she’s recruited to be a spy in Russia, taught psychological manipulation and how to sexually manipulate men. “When we are finished with you the person you were will no longer exist,” says Charlotte Rampling, who plays Lawrence’s character’s instructor. The tense trailer shows flashes of Lawrence’s character with her hands covered in blood as well.
78/52
An unprecedented look at the iconic shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), the “man behind the curtain”, and the screen murder that profoundly changed the course of world cinema. For a long time now, Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho” has been two movies, and the hypnotic film-geek documentary “78/52” is an ingenious and irreverent master class in both of them. There is, of course, the “Psycho” that shocked audiences to their souls when it was released in 1960: the one that made people scream with primal terror, that slashed a knife through the rules of popular storytelling — and, arguably, through the entire culture — by killing off its main character in the most savage way possible after just 40 minutes. That “Psycho” is the “Psycho” of legend. For those of us who were born too late to experience it, we can only guess what it felt like to have a horror thriller yank the rug out from under every sacred moviegoing expectation you’d ever had.
KUNG FU: ARROW’S GREG BERLANTI DEVELOPING FEMALE-LED TV REBOOT
A female-led reboot of the 1970s TV series Kung Fu is moving forward at Fox with Arrow’s Greg Berlanti on board as executive producer. According to Deadline, the television reboot, written by Arrow executive producer Wendy Mericle, has received a put pilot commitment. In addition to Mericle and Berlanti, Sarah Schechter is on board to executive produce for Warner Bros. and Berlanti Productions. The new series will serve as a sequel to the original show, which is set in the 1880s and tells the story of a Shaolin monk named Kwai Chang Caine (David Carradine), who travels the American Old West in search of his half-brother. Fox’s Kung Fu reboot will center around a Buddhist monk named Lucy Chang, who travels 1950s America in search of the man who stole her child. Mericle has a longstanding working relationship with Berlanti. Before becoming an executive producer on Arrow, she served as a writer on Berlanti’s series Everwood, and worked with him on the drama series Jack & Bobby and the comedy Eli Stone.
Men in Black spin-off confirmed, won’t feature Will Smith
The Men in Black are back, officially. Though without their beloved star, as Deadline has revealed Sony has fast-tracked a spin-off of the franchise to hit cinemas on 17 May, 2019; spin-off being the key word at play here, meaning Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones aren’t expected to reprise their roles. The script, penned by Iron Man and Transformers: The Last Knight‘s Matt Holloway and Art Marcum, is set within the same universe as the previous films, but puts a contemporary spin on the franchise that captures things on a more global scale. Supposedly, Sony is hoping to do something similar to Jurassic World, which changed up the stakes while still acknowledging the history of previous films. This isn’t, unfortunately, the planned crossover movie that would pit the worlds of Men in Blackand 21 Jump Street together, either; that idea is still apparently in development, despite Jonah Hill previously confessing the project was pretty much dead.
TOM HANKS WILL RETURN AS DAVID S. PUMPKINS FOR ANIMATED HALLOWEEN SPECIAL
Last year’s popular “Haunted Elevator” skit on Saturday Night Live will be the inspiration for a half-hour animated Halloween special that will bring back Tom Hanks back as the enigmatic, orange-suited David S. Pumpkins. NBC will air the David S. Pumpkins Halloween Special at 11:30 p.m. ET on Saturday, October 28. The special will bring back the movie star and veteran SNL host as the bizarre character who — accompanied by a pair of skeletons played by Mikey Day and Bobby Moynihan — confused and eventually terrified a pair of guests on a haunted attraction. According to NBC’s announcement of the Halloween special, the animated tale will be set “in a small suburban town on All Hallows’ Eve,” and feature a young boy and his sister who learn about the true meaning of Halloween from David Pumpkins and his skeleton sidekicks. In keeping with the theme of the original skit, the trio of weird Halloween characters teach the siblings about Halloween while “answering none of their questions,” according to NBC.
