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Dwayne Johnson Joining The DCEU!

There have long been rumors that DC Comics antihero Black Adam would one day get his own solo movie, after studio executives decided the character was too important to be introduced as a supporting character in the Shazam movie. Well, now Shazam is out and has run its course, raking in a decent profit at the global box-office, and paving the way for Black Adam to finally reach the big screen by himself. The character is not a traditional hero: he first appeared in the comics as a villain, and still has a somewhat troubled and morally gray personality there, to this day. We’ve known for some time that one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is set to play him – when he appears on the big screen, he’ll probably be one of the crown jewels of the DC’s roster of actors, which at the moment doesn’t feature too many household names in starring roles, apart from maybe Jason Momoa (Aquaman). And maybe that’s the reason that Black Adam is suddenly moving into production: there’s been some chatter recently about Johnson wanting to join the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and DC probably doesn’t like the sound of that.

And that’s how we’ve ended up here, today, with Jaume Collet-Serra being brought on to direct Johnson in the upcoming Black Adam movie, expected to start filming sometime next year. Collet-Serra recently finished working with Johnson on Disney’s Jungle Cruise movie, and seems to have a good relationship with the actor. One little wrench in the plan, of course, is that the story of Black Adam may rely on his heroic arch-nemesis Shazam – and the Shazam movie, while it received glowing praise from critics, wasn’t exactly a box-office sensation in the domestic market. It didn’t do badly, but it was somewhat drowned out due to its unfortunate release date in between Marvel’s Captain Marvel and Avengers: Endgame, both of which hit the billion-dollar mark: its domestic total of 139 million is still less than what Captain Marvel made just in its opening weekend. For more information on the film’s box-office, see here. Regardless of that, DC is apparently moving on with the franchise, with a sequel already in the works.

With Johnson starring (and producing), the Black Adam movie will likely get off the ground and make its way to theaters soon enough. Shazam 2 will probably follow. But the real question is: will audiences care, even if they do? Even the epic battle between Batman and Superman in Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice failed to inspire much interest – and that also featured the highly-anticipated arrival of heroes like Wonder Woman and Aquaman. Godzilla: King of the Monsters, which marketed epic battles between fan-favorite monsters such as Mothra, Rodan, Ghidorah, and of course, Godzilla himself, has only managed to muster 67 million domestically. And these are characters with fanbases and followings. Shazam and Black Adam, meanwhile, are little-known characters, and Shazam‘s box-office returns suggest only moderate interest in the hero – and it  succeeded in part due to its appeal to younger audiences and families: a battle crossover event would likely be darker and grittier, and less of a kid-friendly film. But then again, Dwayne Johnson is one of only a few movie-stars who can draw all sorts of audiences to theaters like flies to honey: his DC debut could generate substantial publicity for the fledgling franchise.

What are your thoughts on the Black Adam movie? How do you think Dwayne Johnson’s involvement will help or hurt the film? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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“Ad Astra” Trailer Review!

It’s been difficult for any sci-fi films to compete with the indomitable force that is Star Wars over the last couple of years, and so we’ve seen the genre descend into something of a niche – sci-fi and space-adventure films like Gravity and Interstellar still win awards and get critical praise, but tend to fall short at the box-office. Sci-fi adaptations have been few and far between: even Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy, which should be an easy win for any studio, has been stuck in stasis over at Apple TV.

This year, 20th Century FOX (now owned by Disney) is going to be attempting the impossible, with a new, completely-original sci-fi epic that transforms award-bait Brad Pitt into an astronaut living in the shadow of his father, who was lost in the deep expanses of space. He’s got all the trademarks of one of your generic astronaut protagonist of the last few years – maybe it’s just the astronaut suit and the sort of vaguely Midwestern name, but our hero Roy McBride feels like an amalgamation of many stellar explorers who have come before.

The first part of the new Ad Astra trailer only seems to reinforce this: Liv Tyler gets the thankless job of playing Roy’s wife – again, one of the archetypal characters in modern astronaut thrillers. After meeting her, we’re then treated to some fairly generic explosions on the International Space Station that send Roy plummeting towards the surface of the Earth (I honestly have no clue how he makes it out of that alive). As he wakes up in a hospital bed, I’m already yawning and waiting for this to turn into a sequel to Gravity.

Yeah, no.

Immediately after that point, the trailer changes radically – Tyler’s character is going on about fires and explosions all over the world, Pitt discovers that his father is alive somewhere on the far side of the solar system, working on alien tech that could destroy the earth, and there’s…a car-chase on the Moon? The way this trailer plays on your subdued expectations, and makes you think you’re watching another sad, ponderous astronaut drama: and then suddenly throws you into a full-speed-ahead science-fiction epic? That’s brilliant. It’s like the best of both worlds – because don’t get me wrong, the trailer still unabashedly shows off how much Ad Astra wants praise (and awards) from critics; aside from Pitt and Tyler, the film also stars Oscar-winner Tommy Lee Jones and rising star Ruth Negga (who, unfortunately, is not seen in the trailer).

And yes, there is one epic action-scene on the Moon, with astronauts in little space-buggies zipping around shooting at each other – you honestly can’t go wrong with something like that.

Trailer Rating: 8.5/10

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A “Magic: The Gathering” Adaptation Is Coming!

Right up front, let me inform you that I am not part of the sprawling fandom devoted to the card, tabletop and digital Magic: The Gathering games. For those of you who are, you will be pleased to know that the upcoming Netflix adaptation of the games will be directed by devout fans – none other than Joe and Anthony Russo. Maybe their names aren’t familiar to you? They’ve directed a couple of films – Captain America: Winter Soldier, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame. Nothing too big.

Turns out the Russo Brothers aren’t just Marvel fans, though: apparently, they’ve been playing the game for “as long as it has been around” – in other words, since 1993. And since pretty much anything that the Russos touch turns to pure cinematic gold – and box-office gold, too – that’s enough to pique my interest in this show. The adaptation will be an animated series, and will be produced in collaboration with game-makers Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro. Never having played the game in question, I really can’t say for certain what I expect to see in the series (um, magic, I’m guessing?), but I bet it’s a pretty great game, if it comes from Wizards of the Coast – who also created one of my own personal favorite tabletop games, Axis & Allies.

If the idea of “animation” conjures up disturbing visions of two-dimensional cartoons, rest assured that the show will combine cutting-edge animation techniques with multi-genre storytelling including suspense, horror and drama. Sounds pretty good, right? The drawbacks, of course, are obvious: Magic: The Gathering is a game, and game adaptations aren’t exactly notable for being faithful to the source-material, or even very entertaining on their own merits. And this one is more convoluted and complex than most: there’s a huge cast of characters (sorry, “Planeswalkers”) involved in the Magic: The Gathering game franchise, and an inordinately large number of fantasy worlds and dimensions to bring to the screen. But if anybody can do this, it’s the Russo Brothers, who were able to satisfy both long-time Marvel comic fans as well as general audiences during their four-film tenure in the MCU – and, as previously noted, they’ve raked in a lot of cash with just those four films.

Avengers: Endgame is still in theaters if you want to get a taste of what a Magic: The Gathering adaptation might look like in the Russo Brothers’ hands.

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“Umbrella Academy” Season 2!

SPOILERS FOR UMBRELLA ACADEMY SEASON 1 AHEAD. BEWARE.

"Umbrella Academy" Season 2! 1
tvline.com

The final scene of Netflix’s first season of Umbrella Academy is one that inspires a sinking feeling of dread and depression, and eventually anger, frustration, and impatience. You watch the seven beloved members of the Hargreeves family of superheroes, plus fan-favorite couple Hazel and Agnes, vanish through time-vortexes mere seconds before the world is utterly obliterated by a piece of the moon. And then…the screen goes black. I don’t know about you, but that ending drove me insane. Not because it’s bad (it’s fantastic), but because it makes you desperately want more.

Like, now. Right now.

But no, instead we have to wait forever for Season 2 to finally arrive on Netflix: there are a billion questions we have, and none of them will get answered until next year, at the earliest. Thankfully, over the past couple of weeks, we’ve seen indications that Season 2 is going to start filming very soon, maybe even this month.

First, we know that the script for at least the first episode is completed, because writer Steve Blackman posted a picture on his Instagram of the script, titled “Right Back Where We Started”. That lends extra credence to the idea that the Academy will be traveling back to the time when they were kids: as the family time-traveled in Season 1, we watched them almost morph into younger versions of themselves, though it was difficult to tell if this was some sort of temporary thing, or if they would be actually transformed back into children. Since the adult actors are still confirmed to star in Season 2, the latter seems somewhat unlikely – though it’s possible we might see the adult versions and the child versions both existing simultaneously. “Right Back Where We Started” also implies that our heroes will be reunited with the man who literally started their whole cycle of disaster and catastrophic violence: their abusive and dispassionate father, Sir Reginald Hargreeves – who was kind-of-maybe-sort-of implied to be an alien in the first season’s finale.

A few days ago, it was again hinted that Umbrella Academy Season 2 is soon to begin filming, with Business Times also pessimistically reporting that it could take about…18 months before we actually see said Season 2 on Netflix: i.e., sometime around late 2020 or early 2021.

But we have so many questions! Vanya is in an unstable condition (having just blown up the moon and the earth), Allison can’t speak and thus can’t use her powers (and is probably also going to be reeling from losing her daughter in the apocalypse), Hazel and Agnes are hopefully safe in some other time and dimension…there’s a lot going on. Is Ben possibly coming back from the dead, after being given tangible form through Klaus’ powers? Are Allison and Luther actually going to end up together? Did Cha-Cha really die, or will she come back too? Is there someone greater than The Handler, and will we finally find out where she – and all the other time-traveling assassins – came from?

Today, we got another clue from Instagram, specifically from actor Aidan Gallagher, who portrays the enigmatic and sarcastic Number Five on the show. His official location is now “Toronto, Ontario” where Umbrella Academy will be filming, and he posted a picture of the city, with the caption “Season two starts now!”. It might not be official confirmation, but it’s good enough for me. I’ll take any tidbit of hope that I can get, at this point. I’m going to cautiously predict that Season 2 will indeed start filming this very month, and we’ll start to (maybe) get some vague answers to some of our burning questions.

What are you excited to see from Season 2 of Umbrella Academy? Share your thoughts in the comments below!