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Doux News Weekly Round Up: April 29, 2018

Meet Thanos, the star of Avengers: Infinity War
Sorry about the short unexpected hiatus, but I’m back and here’s what we have this week; Movie Pass is acting shady, Maleficent 2?, a YouTube Red scripted series, new titles for new sequels, Katee Sackhoff returns to sci-fi TV, another Star Wars animated series, Star Trek news, The Walking Dead producers make the right choice, Joss explains why he left Batgirl, the Future of the MCU, and it looks like it’s time to watch/rewatch Sense8.

A few weeks ago I put in a segment involving Movie Pass, the subscription service that lets you go to a movie a day, every day you’re subscribed. Now, they have put a limitation on it that makes the service a little less appealing – you can now only watch a movie once. Honestly, this is going to bite them in the butt, because repeat viewings is one of the main draws. Now if I want to watch Avengers: Infinity War again, I’ll have to pay full price. Oh, and they might roll out a fraud thing where you have to send them a picture of your ticket stub, which is another stupid idea.

I kind of liked Maleficent; it was far from perfect, but Angelina Jolie made it work. It’s also a film that really doesn’t have the room for a sequel, and yet we’re getting one. With Angelina Jolie and Elle Fanning already set to return, they have just added Michelle Pfeiffer to the cast. There’s no news on story, or even if they have a finished script, but filming is set to start later this year.

YouTube Red has started to dip their toes in the series market with a new sci-fi show called Origin. Starting Natalia Tena (Game of Thrones, Harry Potter) and Tom Felton (The Flash, Harry Potter), the series is about a group of strangers waking up on an abandoned spaceship traveling to a distant planet. Could be fun, but I really don’t want to subscribe to YouTube Red.

The new Terminator sequel and X-Men: Dark Phoenix movies are coming next year, and it looks like they now have official titles. In an odd move, it looks like X-Men: Dark Phoenix is dropping X-Men from the title so it’ll now be released as just Dark Phoenix. It comes as no real surprise but the new Terminator will be titled… Terminator. I know, kind of anticlimactic.

Disney/Lucasfilm is finally going to explore the time period between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens in a new animated series called Star Wars: Resistance. We don’t have much information yet, but we’ll get appearances from characters like Poe Dameron and Captain Phasma. But mostly it looks to be a story about a resistance fighter who infiltrates the First Order. Although it looks like it’ll air on the Disney Channel, I cannot imagine this will not be on the new Disney streaming service.

In Star Trek news, production of Star Trek: Discovery season 2 is underway with pretty much no real news about what will happen except we’ll get Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) and some flashbacks with a young Spock. Paramount announced that there will be two more Star Trek films, most likely in the J.J. Abrams Kelvin timeline.

It looks like the producers of The Walking Dead finally nailed down Lauren Cohan’s contract to bring her on for season nine. This settles rumors that she was shopping around and a lot of networks were trying sign her on for pilots. While losing her character would’ve severed my last remaining thread of goodwill towards the series, I hope they don’t go too far with her character next season in her hate towards Negan.

Katee Sackhoff has just been cast as the lead in a new Netflix sci-fi show called Another Life. She’ll play an astronaut named Niko who is set on searching for proof of alien intelligence, but the mission may be far more dangerous than they thought. There is no release date set; I’m not even sure when production will start, but it will be at least ten episodes long. Here’s to hoping for another strong Netflix series, and I’m happy to see Katee in a project I’m interested in again (sorry, Longmire).

A little while ago Joss Whedon stepped away from writing/directing a movie featuring Batgirl. He explained when he left the project that he didn’t have a story (which didn’t ring true for me). Recently in a red-carpet interview he finally elaborated that when he originally pitched the idea for the film, it worked within the Warner Brother’s plans for the DC movie universe. As time moved on, more and more elements of his core idea no longer fit until the story “kinda just crumbled in my hands.” The good news is that he has now moved on to an original personal project of his own creation, so yay!

Kevin Feige (the head honcho at Marvel Studios) has explained why we haven’t heard much about the MCU movies planned beyond Avengers 4. For one thing, ten years ago they made a promise to release ten movies between 2014 and 2019, and technically they haven’t quite done that yet, so announcing even more before they have delivered on that promise feels a little wrong. Also, one of the reasons Avengers: Age of Ultron had some issues is that characters were already locked into pre-announced movies, so we knew who was coming back and who was not. Right now all we know is that Spider-man is getting a film after Avengers 4, and so are the Guardians of the Galaxy (and as an ensemble could have any combination of cast). That raises the stakes, not only for Avengers: Infinity War but also for Avengers 4. That being said, he also went on record that they would be announcing a bunch of those films at next year’s Comic-con (which is after Avengers 4 releases).

Bits:

Sense8 finally has a finale release date of June 8th which will wrap up the story and resolve the cliffhanger ending from season two.

A few movie theater chains (no info yet on which ones) are considering subscription services a la Movie Pass in the near future. Which could be cool, since they would likely allow for 3D and IMAX tickets.

Avengers: Infinity War has already made 95 million internationally (39 million domestically) on Thursday showings alone. It has already made 237 million dollars in the first three days of opening. That puts it up into the same realm as Star Wars: The Force Awakens box office territory (god, the mouse is rich).

The 100 and The Handmaid's Tale (Hulu dropped the first two episodes) returned this week, yay!  The links are to our reviews.

Here’s a clip from the upcoming season of Luke Cage.


Movie Releases for April 27, 2018

Avengers: Infinity War - The first part of the culmination of the first ten years of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  It is long, brutal, and freaking fantastic.

(why other movies released this week is beyond me but here are a few more)

Kings - Drama starring Halle Berry and Daniel Craig about the lead up to the riots in South Central LA after the Rodney King trial verdict.

Let the Sunshine In - A French language romance starring Juliette Binoche.

Disobedience - Starring Rachel Weisz and Rachel McAdams, about a women who returns to her home after being shunned for her attraction to a childhood friend.

Backstabbing for Beginners - Starring Theo James and Ben Kingsley thriller about a conspiracy involving Iraq's oil reserves and the United Nations.

That’s all for now folks, see you next week!

Samantha M. Quinn spends most of her time in front of a computer typing away at one thing or another; when she has free time, she enjoys pretty much anything science fiction or fantasy-related.

3 comments:

  1. hey JD, just wanted to let you know I'm really enjoying these weekly round ups.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh, and - Sense8 - YAY - and I guess I need to try Luke Cage again. I love the character but had a hard time getting in to Season 1. The Season 2 clip though, was funny. So - some humor in the season?
    - Same Anon as the 1st post

    ReplyDelete
  3. Aw thanks for plugging my Maleficient review! I have so much to say about the Marvel news but I'll save it for the Infinity War review.

    ReplyDelete

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