As 2019 comes to an end, David, Devindra, and Jeff evaluate the merits of “worst of the year” list. For the feature review, the cast plus Melissa Tamminga, writer for @SeattleScreen, discuss The Irishman, the latest crime drama directed and produced by Martin Scorsese. Does the three and half hour Netflix epic live up to its spiritual predecessors Mean Streets and GoodFellas?
Read more about worst of the year lists on this Twitter thread. Read Martin Scorsese’s interview with Empire here. Read about the de-aging technology in The Irishman here.
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What’s happening in Marvel Contest of Champions for the fifth anniversary of the game? Who is Thomas Lennon playing in this season of Supergirl? Want to see the first trailer for the new DC Universe series Stargirl? What was the most Googled movie of 2019? What does Thanos creator Jim Starlin think of the weird, recent political use of Thanos by Donald Trump‘s campaign? All that and more in this edition of Superhero Bits. Read More »
Posted on Wednesday, December 11th, 2019 by Ben Pearson
Hey, remember earlier this year when Jason Bateman beat out the directors of Game of Thrones, The Handmaid’s Tale, and Killing Eve to win an Emmy for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series? Split votes be damned – the dude took home the gold, and immediately parlayed that success into potentially directing a remake of Clue. Now Bateman has set up another movie to direct (possibly instead) called Shut In, a thriller from New Line that’s described as being in the vein of David Fincher’s 2002 Jodie Foster movie Panic Room.
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Robert Downey Jr.‘s first post-MCU film is Dolittle, a remake of Dr. Dolittle that’s undergone heavy reshoots and seems about as ill-advised as the 1960s adaptation of this same story. In lieu of a new trailer, we instead have a Dolittle auditions video, which features Downey acting alongside some questionable-looking computer-animated animals. Nothing here looks very convincing, which is all the more disheartening when you realize this movie apparently cost $175 million to make.
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Alex Brightman, who is currently starring as the Ghost with the Most in the Broadway production of Beetlejuice, is set to lead a John Belushi biopic. Brightman will play the legendary comedian famous for Saturday Night Live, The Blues Brothers and more, with David Frankel directing. A new Belushi biopic has been in the works for several years, with numerous actors up for the part, including Emile Hirsch, Adam Devine, Joaquin Phoenix.
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Posted on Wednesday, December 11th, 2019 by Ben Pearson
As cable and broadcast television networks stand in the face of streaming services, they’re having to come up with creative ways to make money. AT&T‘s solution? A newfangled video version of a “pause ad,” which is, unfortunately, exactly what it sounds like. Thirty seconds after you press pause on your remote, a full video ad (with sound!) begins playing on your screen. I guess AT&T wanted to dump a piece of coal into its customers’ stockings during the holiday season.
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Stephen King‘s The Dark Half is getting a second chance on the big screen thanks to Alex Ross Perry. Perry will write and direct a new adaptation of King’s horror novel, which was previously filmed by George A. Romero. The story concerns a writer whose pseudonym comes to life and starts murdering people. The inspiration came after King’s own pseudonym, Richard Bachman, was discovered.
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Warner Bros. announced new release dates for two of their biggest projects: The Flash and The Matrix 4. While The Flash has shuffled around so much that it’s hard to accept this is legit, for now, Warners says the superhero film will open in 2022. As for the Matrix 4 release date, that’s set for 2021. And to make things extra interesting, the Matrix date is the same as the release date for another Keanu Reeves film: John Wick Chapter 4.
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On the December 11, 2019 episode of /Film Daily, /Film editor-in-chief Peter Sciretta is joined by /Film managing editor Jacob Hall, weekend editor Brad Oman, senior writer Ben Pearson and writers Hoai-Tran Bui and Chris Evangelista to have a writer’s room discussion to help determine the top 100 movies of the last decade.
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Cool Posts From Around the Web:
Denis Villeneuve has described his adaptation of Frank Herbert’s seminal sci-fi novel Dune as “Star Wars for adults,” and it sounds like he’s taking the “adult” part of that description seriously. The latest actor in Villeneuve’s very attractive cast to chime in is Oscar Isaac, who teased the filmmaker’s dark and “shocking” vision for Dune. The Dune tone will be “nightmarish” and “brutalist,” according to Isaac, teasing a film that is radically different from past adaptations of Herbert’s dense 1965 novel.
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