Guillermo del Toro discusses the future of his Fantastic Voyage adaptation. Legends of Tomorrow casts a Fringe star. Ben Affleck offers the briefest of updates on his future as the Batman. The Duffer brothers are already teasing Stranger Things‘ third season. Plus, new footage from Arrow and The Flash. To me, my spoilers!
Image: DC Comics
Suicide Squad 2
According to The Wrap, “two insiders familiar with the idea” have revealed Dwayne Johnson’s Black Adam – originally meant to be part of the Shazam movie and now long rumoured to be having his own film at some point instead – may make his debut in the sequel to Suicide Squad as a “weapon of mass destruction” the team is tasked to locate.
Fantastic Voyage
In an interview with Collider, Guillermo del Toro stated production begins on Fantastic Voyage in September 2018.
That was on the calendar already. I announced the year in September, and if everything goes well and it happens, it would happen next September. We’d start prepping again. We had already delayed it. It is a very difficult movie, technically, and I needed to figure out a bunch of stuff. We’ve been doing R&D and we’ve been building stuff. I never know whether they’re going to happen or not. I’ve learned that, in 25 years. But, we’re still working on it.
Spider-Man
Speaking with Entertainment Tonight, J.K Simmons repeated that, as ever, he’s open to returning to the Spider-Man franchise as J. Jonah Jameson.
I never say never. I mean, you know, obviously I had an amazing time with Sam Raimi on those movies, and Tobey [Maguire] and everybody. That was a great great time, and huge for my career and my life, and just pure fun. If there were an opportunity to revisit that…. I don’t know, though… how old is Spider-Man going to be if J. Jonah Jameson is this old?
Suspiria
Director Luca Guadagnino gave an update on the film’s production to Criterion, stating his remake of Dario Argento’s classic is “a very personal film”.
I have three months until I finish it. It’s a very special film, and I’m proud of it. I wonder all the time how people will react to it, being that it is based on a masterpiece. I often find myself in the position of saying “Oh, it’s ridiculous!” when I hear stories that they want to remake a movie like 8½, so I don’t know if I’m going to be served the same dish. But I can say that my Suspiria is a very personal film; it’s like oxygen to me. When I saw the original movie thirty-two years ago, the emotion I felt was so strong, so mind-blowing, and so important to my upbringing. I wanted to investigate the experience I had watching that film.
Justice League
Meanwhile, a deflated Ben Affleck whispers “we’ll see”, when asked if he’d return to play Batman a fifth time.
Runaways
Showrunner Ben Schwartz discussed with Comicbook.com how the show is treating the original comic while promising some changes and updates for the series:
We love the book, so obviously we wouldn’t have wanted to do this if we were like, ‘well let’s just chuck the comic book, we don’t need it.’ We love the book. So naturally, being reverent to it was going to be a part of that but we were very fortunate that we had Brian K. Vaughan in the room with us for the first month in the writer’s room of the show.
And as we talked about the things we were going to do to update the story, or dig into the story, or slow down the story, to have him there not only endorsing those ideas or embracing ideas but pitching ideas just made us all feel much more confident and excited about how it was going to live as a TV show.
Legends of Tomorrow
Entertainment Weekly has revealed John Noble has been cast as the voice of this season’s arch-villain, Mallus. According to Marc Guggenheim, we’ll learn more about the character next week.
That’s the big mythology of the season and what makes Mallus cool at this stage of everyone’s viewing experience is that right now he is just a name and is this whisper. You’ll learn more about him in [episode] 305.
The Magicians
Meanwhile, Felicia Day has joined the cast of The Magicians as Poppy, “a Brakebills postgrad working as a Dragonologist who feels destined to help restore magic”. [Nerdist]
Stranger Things
Speaking with Indie Wire, Matt Duffer cryptically stated the show’s third season will metastasise into “something almost weirdly more intimate”.
The Flash
The Elongated Man suits up with what is probably not his final costume in a new promo for next week’s episode, “When Harry Met Harry”.
Arrow
Finally, Manu Bennett returns to Arrow in the trailer for this week’s episode, “Deathstroke Returns”.
Banner art by Jim Cooke.