Wild rumours abound about a surprising supporting role in the Joker origin movie. Michael Douglas spills the beans on how Janet Van Dyne returns for Ant-Man and The Wasp. Jeff Goldblum is already teasing Jurassic World 3. Plus, more set footage from Wonder Woman 1984. Spoilers get!
Ah, awkward elevator encounters, am I right? Image: Lucasfilm
Star Wars: Episode IX
Another day, another rumour about Star Wars bringing back old friends. This time, Fantha Tracks reports Billy Dee Williams is set to reprise his role as Lando Calrissian in J.J. Abrams’ Episode IX.
In related news, Carrie Fisher’s brother Todd revealed to Variety his family still doesn’t know how the film will handle the presumed absence of Leia:
Yoda came back in the last movie, so why not Carrie? In the first film, Obi-Wan says that if he dies, he’ll come back stronger than ever. I feel like that’s Carrie. She’ll never disappear entirely.
The Joker
Salt shakers primed and at the ready: That Hashtag Show reports the production behind the Joker origin move is now eyeing Robert DeNiro for an undisclosed supporting role.
The outlet also has casting calls for eight distinct characters purportedly for the film.
Penny: Supporting Female (60-74) Caucasian. Lower class, very attractive in her younger days, still feels that way about herself. But recently her health has started failing, and she’s nearly bedridden in her Lower East Side apartment which she shares with her grown son who just moved back home. She’s obsessed with her former employer and can’t believe that this is what her life has come to, that she has ended up here, like this…
Sophie Dumond: Supporting female (27-34) to play African American or to play Latina. Not beautiful, has a hardness to her, a single mother living on the Lower East Side, doing the best she can, trying to make ends meet; worn out by the grind of the city. She understands how the system is stacked against her and the people in her community, how unjust it all is for them. She’s just trying to catch a break..
Murray Franklin: Male (65-75) Caucasian.
Randall: Supporting Male (40-59)Caucasian. Thinks he’s the wisest and most knowledgeable person in any room he’s in, tries to present himself as a mentor to everybody, but is really just looking out for himself, burly.
Gary: Supporting Male (30-49) any ethnicity to play a dwarf; Randall’s best friend, he’s good-natured and a buddy to his colleagues at work, one of the only decent people in the whole movie.
Hoyt Vaughn: Supporting Male (50-69) any ethnicity the old-school manager of hotel staff. He’s seen it all, and finds it difficult to give a shit about much of anything anymore.
Detective Garrity: Supporting Male (50-59) any ethnicity. Police Detective in a city on the brink; a by-the-book cop, worn down by all his years on the force. He doesn’t care about or take into consideration any of the societal or political ramifications of his cases.
Detective Burke: Supporting Male (30-39) any ethnicity. A Police Detective and Garrity’s partner; he’s an arsehole, who gets off by being in a position of authority. Being a cop is how he defines himself.
Wonder Woman 2
One more set video has surfaced, but you’ll have to squint pretty hard to see Gal Gadot or Chris Pine in the fray.
https://twitter.com/eagleeyesinDC/status/1008031971048591366
Pet Sematary
Production has officially begun on the Pet Sematary remake, and they’re using a very cool clapperboard.
Day one. #PetSematary pic.twitter.com/dfBAuW95xo
— Dennis Widmyer (@denniswidmyer) June 18, 2018
Ant-Man and The Wasp
Executive producer Stephen Broussard spoke to Screen Rant about bringing the unfathomable expanse of the Quantum Realm to life.
It can’t be a black void, right like you had a little bit in the first film, so it’s gotta be landscape-y, but how do you make it still feel at scale? How do you make it feel microscopic with the camera treatments and with the relationship of the horizon and stuff like that? Figuring all that out has been a bit of a head trip, but it’s pretty cool. You know, it can’t just feel like – I don’t know it’s not Lawrence of Arabia. It’s not a giant desert because that kind of – it triggers scale cues in your head, but you still have to kind of feel that it would be scale appropriate if you’re down there and finding that balance between the small and the epic, I guess has kind of been the challenge.
Speaking with /Film, Michael Douglas revealed Scott himself receives Janet van Dyne’s distress signal from subatomic space.
Well, we get a signal. No, really what happens – and I expect Marvel to shoot me with a blow gun in the back of the neck if I’ve said [too much]. We get a signal, Hope is certainly integral, but we get a signal, actually through Scott.
Publicist: The blow dart is coming, Michael.
OK, so there you go. So it’s an integral part, but we get a signal that she might still be alive.
In a separate interview with Coming Soon, director Peyton Reed cited After Hours, Midnight Run and Irwin Allen’s The Time Tunnel as direct influences on Ant-Man and The Wasp.
It needed to be something that was not a game time decision and not accidental, but something very, very constructed and purposeful. One of the things that I went back and looked at as inspiration was Erwin Allen’s The Time Tunnel… I’m sure I saw it reruns but there was a design for that thing which was literally a tunnel and I liked the idea of amidst all this stuff that there was a physical thing that you could look at. Something that physically sort of without any action happening, you could look at and say ‘OK, I get a sense of what that thing does.’
Finally, the latest TV spot pokes fun at Scott and Hope’s mysterious absence in Infinity War.
Suspiria
Suspiria 2018 has received an R-rating from the MPAA, perhaps to the surprise of no one.
This is accurate. #Suspiria pic.twitter.com/W3hZktXuGn
— Totally Killer (@nowscreamingpv) June 18, 2018
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
Bloody Disgusting has a supremely entertaining interview with Jeff Goldblum in which he discusses Dr Ian Malcolm directly quoting the late Richard Attenborough in the film’s trailer.
Well, it was a responsibility, a little callback and reprise, a quotation with some new resonance and dark irony I suppose. I remember distinctly, Ian Malcolm does, the interesting, intriguing John Hammond, and well meaning John Hammond. The day that he said, “Welcome to Jurassic Park” as we were first watching these creatures with unbelieving eyes, the three of us, Sam [Neill], Laura [Dern] and me. Now 25 years later, I’m always a little prescient about what’s going to happen in a few days, and I say if these things get out, now that we’ve done more, welcome to Jurassic World. It’s a new and more challenging era. Yes, I’m thinking of all that. Of course, as an actor, to in any way quote and do something with the shoes of the great Richard Attenborough.. I adore him to no end. What a sterling and spectacular filmmaker and actor he was. Boy, oh boy, oh boy.
Goldblum also offered another ambiguous update on the third entry in the Jurassic World franchise, suggesting he’d be more than happy to return:
I don’t know what the plan is. I think they’re cooking up the plan. Nobody’s shared with me the plan but Colin Trevorrow is a wonderful guy and I talked to him on this movie, my little part. Really, the best thing we could do, he’s a wonderful writer, wonderful director. He and Emily Carmichael are writing this script that will be a movie in your local theatre in summer of 2021 they say. Who knows? However humbly I can serve the story, if at all, I’ll be happy to do so.
The Meg
During a press conference at the 21st Shanghai International Film Festival, China.org spoke to Jason Statham and Li Bingbing about the difficulties of filming underwater – emphasising Li’s literally breathtaking scene set in a shark cage.
I’ve always been afraid of water, but one of my scenes required me to be put in a cage five or six meters underwater, and I had to hold my breath for a very long time. We had to reshoot the scene again and again and I felt like I was going to die. When they took me out of the water, the director came to compliment me, but I was too weak to speak, then he started to fear that I was really close to death.
Sonic the Hedgehog
Paramount CEO Jim Gianopulos described Sonic as a “juvenile delinquent” during a Q&A at the 10th Annual Produced By Conference.
He’s a juvenile delinquent on the adventures in a pretty straight rural environment with a local policeman. It was instantly engaging and it was good enough where you could see where it’s going.
[Deadline]
The Flash
TV Line reports Jessica Parker Kennedy has been recruited as a full-time series regular, so Barry and Iris will have a whole season to explore the origins of their speedster daughter from the future.
Supergirl
TV Line also has word Chris Wood will not return for season four of Supergirl. According to executive producer Robert Rovner:
The plan for Chris was always to have him on the show for two years. We’ve loved telling Mon-El’s story, as well as the story we’ve told for him and Kara. We hope the fans felt that it was a satisfying conclusion.
Game of Thrones
On a similar note, Emilia Clarke has finally wrapped filming on Game of Thrones.
Lucifer
Showrunner Ildy Modrovich revealed to TV Line that Netflix has only ordered 10 episodes of Lucifer, consequently cutting the show’s original plans for season four in half.
We were going to have two parts to it anyway, so we’ll just tell a really strong, gnarly first part.
Cloak & Dagger
KSiteTV has images from both episodes five, “Princeton Offence” and episode six, “Funhouse Mirrors“. Click the corresponding episode titles for more.
The 100
Finally, KSiteTV has an exclusive clip from this week’s episode, “Acceptable Losses”.
Banner art by Jim Cooke.