…With Sony pushing full steam ahead with its Spider-Man spinoff plans, it’s been announced this week that Riz Ahmed is in talks to join Tom Hardy in Venom, with rumours suggesting he could be in line to play the film’s villain Carnage; meanwhile, Sony has also set a February 8th, 2019 release date for Silver & Black, while some new potential plot details for the female-led adventure also arrived online, which you can read here…
…The dismal reception to The Amazing Spider-Man 2 killed Sony’s previous attempt at launching a shared Spider-Man universe, and director Marc Webb has been chatting this week about what was planned for the franchise before the studio got cold feet and turned to Marvel: “They were going to make a Sinister Six movie before we did the third [Spider-Man movie]. Chris Cooper was going to come back and play the Goblin. We were going to freeze his head, and then he was going to be brought back to life. And then there was that character called The Gentleman. We had some notions about how to do it, but I think maybe we were thinking too far ahead when we started building in those things. But it was a fun exercise. I look back very fondly on those days…”
…Moving on to Fox now and the studio has given us our very first look at Josh Brolin as the time-travelling mutant Cable, releasing a couple of promotional images of Brolin in costume from Deadpool 2, along with a rather bizarre behind-the-scenes image of Cable with ‘Little Deadpool’. We also got some set photos and video featuring Cable, Domino (Zazie Beetz) and Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds), while director David Leitch promised fans that the relationship between Deadpool and Cable will be similar to that of the comics: “Cable has a really interesting and complex backstory. Obviously, no film could ever encapsulate the entire backstory, so I think we’ll find the first introduction is about who this character is. When you look at the Cable and Deadpool comic book series, you see how there is banter between them. Whether they are on opposite sides or not, they are definitely formidable to each other. One is frustrating to the other. The chemistry between Ryan Reynolds and Josh Brolin is amazing. It’s not unlike what you see in the Cable and Deadpool series…”
…During an appearance at the Television Critics Association press tour, FX chief John Landgraf gave a brief update on the network’s upcoming Deadpool animated series from Donald Glover and his brother Stephen Glover: “They had a staff working in London while Donald was shooting Star Wars. He wrote the second season of Atlanta before London, had a staff in London, he’s coming back to shoot Atlanta season 2 and simultaneously we’ll be animating Deadpool. It’ll be really different from the movies. It’s animated and they’re live-action, but also it has a different tone and editorial voice as evidenced by Donald and Stephen Glover, who have their own voice and tone. We really wanted to make something that was distinctly different from the movies…”
…As production continues on X-Men: Dark Phoenix, it’s been reported that Kota Eberhardt (The Persian Connection) and Scott Shepherd (The Young Pope) have joined the cast of the mutant superhero sequel. Eberhardt has been cast as Luna, who is described as “intense and exudes a sense of power. Although she is a commanding presence, she is also slightly unhinged”, while Shepherd is set to play Dr. John Grey, the father of Sophie Turner’s Jean Grey. The same report went on to suggest that Evan Jonigkeit and Gregg Lowe are also in talks to reprise their X-Men: Days of Future Past roles as Toad and Ink, with speculation suggesting they could be part of Magneto’s Acolytes…
…Remember all those scenes in the X-Men franchise which hinted at a secret relationship between Wolverine and Storm? No? Well, according to Halle Berry, that was the case: “Storm and Logan used to be lovers. It’s true. Storm and Logan had a thing. I joke in the movies, I’m like, ‘How come nobody’s loving on Storm.’ Like what’s wrong with Storm? Nobody is checking for Storm’ So, we decided that Storm and Logan had a thing, and then Jean came and messed that up. When he really decided that Jean Grey was his [love] … that caused a problem. The having two girls at once thing, that doesn’t work for Storm…”
…With The Gifted set to premiere in October, Fox has released a new trailer for Marvel’s X-Men series [watch it here], while we also got a batch of promotional images and character portraits featuring the cast [see here]. The show also got a new cast member in Elena Satine (Smallville, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.), who is set to portray the character of Dreamer (a.k.a. the Morlocks’ Beautiful Dreamer), and showrunner Matt Nix has revealed that the whereabouts of the X-Men will be one of the show’s big mysteries: “In our world, one of the things we’ll be unpacking is the specific relationship of this group of characters to the X-Men. It’s in the trailer that the X-Men are gone. And that’s not a dodge, like ‘The X-Men are gone and we’re never going to mention them again!’ We’re going to be exploring it. It’s a huge deal to these guys. It’s a huge deal in the world. It’s one of the central mysteries of the show…”
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