Charles Bramesco
Schedule Shuffling at Fox May Have Just Outed the ‘Avatar 2′ Release Date
Big things are a-happenin’ over at Fox, per The Hollywood Reporter. The studio made a slew of scheduling changes on the night before Thanksgiving as a sort of special edition of a Friday dump. (That term refers to the PR practice of burying bad or otherwise uninteresting news on a Friday afternoon, when coverage will be minimal.) Big-name projects have all been shuffled around, and that’s all fully detailed below, but the most eye-catching item on Fox’s docket happens to be an unnamed project from James Cameron’s production company Lightstorm Entertainment.
‘Beauty and the Beast’ Unseats ’Fifty Shades’ as Most-Viewed Trailer in 24 Hours
The trailer for the handsomely-mounted live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast surfaced on Tuesday, and drew strong reactions across the board. Many were taken with the first look at the Emma Watson/Dan Stevens romance, allowing themselves to be flooded with the same swooning emotion that Disney’s animated film conjured back in 1991. Some were less impressed, expressing low-level terror at the unnatural-looking designs for Mrs. Potts, Cogsworth, Lumiere, and the rest of the anthropomorphized household object gang. But regardless of overall reception, one thing is for certain: The Guardian notes that an unprecedented crap-ton of people accessed the trailer on YouTube, making 2017’s Beauty and the Beast the most-viewed-in-a-24-hour-period trailer of all time.
‘Patriots Day’ Trailer: Mark Wahlberg to the Rescue
Noted actor, model and erstwhile Funky Bunch member Mark Wahlberg raised a few eyebrows in 2012 when he claimed that had he boarded the planes used for the September 11 terrorist attacks, things would have gone down a little differently. Suggesting that you could have singlehandedly prevented the most traumatic disaster in American history is big talk, but now Wahlberg will get the chance to pretend to put the money where his terrorist-fighting mouth is with Patriots Day, a dramatization of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. We may be too late for a Mark Wahlberg-led United 93 reimagined as a two-hour beatdown, but this looks like the next best thing.
No One Enjoyed the Cubs’ World Series Win More Than Bill Murray
Late last night, a little after the midnight hour, Hell froze over. Reports of pigs and other assorted swine growing wings and taking flight started pouring in from all over the country. Dogs and cats were living together — it was mass hysteria, all because the Chicago Cubs had finally won the World Series after a 108-year drought.
James Cameron Wants ‘Avatar’ Sequels to Run at Higher Frame Rates, Escape Reality
It was just this past April that blockbuster alchemist James Cameron made the promise/threat of four sequels to his massively lucrative sci-fi fantasy Avatar. Having apparently calculated “eight years or so” as the optimal amount of time to let Avatar fever percolate before reaching a boiling point, the filmmaker hinted at plans for his follow-up(s) while accepting his honorary membership into the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers on Friday night. Indiewire reports that while entering an elite group of industry professionals devoted to expanding the technological reach of film, Cameron stated his intentions to bring Avatar even further into the future with groundbreaking techniques and equipment.
Ice Cube and ‘Hamilton’ Director Teaming for Disney’s Live-Action ‘Oliver Twist’ Musical
O’Shea Jackson Jr., better known as rapper and erstwhile N.W.A. affiliate Ice Cube, has changed a touch over the years. Just last year, his own son reenacted all the partyin’ and sexin’ and gun-totin’ of his dad’s younger years in the biopic Straight Outta Compton, showing how the seminal gangsta rapper changed the rap game with a loaded weapon and a cop-hating snarl. But in the years since his late ‘80s/early ‘90s heyday, Mr. Cube has taken some decidedly un-thug work as the face of the Are We There Yet? franchise, and now the man who once exhorted the listeners of America to f–k the police will lend his songwriting talents to none other than Disney.
The New ‘Van Helsing’ Movie Will Be Part of Universal’s Monster Universe, Says Screenwriter
In their unending battle to compete with the box-office behemoth that is the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Universal tapped their deep roster of classic horror properties for interlocking remakes that could form one larger narrative tapestry. The recent Dracula Untold was intended to launch the Universal Universe, or whatever better thing they decide to call it, but lackluster ticket sales gave studio higher-ups pause. They’ve since redoubled their efforts, hiring Sofia Boutella to play their Mummy and Tom Cruise as the target of her curses, Russell Crowe as their Dr. Jekyll, Javier Bardem in the role of Frankenstein’s monster, and Johnny Depp as The Invisible Man. But even with such extensive plans already laid out, Universal continues to expand.
Tyler Perry Wants to Make a ‘Madea’ Police Brutality Movie
There are a handful immutable truths in this life: death, taxes, and the perennial profitability of a Madea film. Over the course of ten plays, nine live-action films and one animated feature, creator Tyler Perry has proven beyond any shadow of a doubt that he can make a buck just by slapping on a wig and muumuu and referring to the people in his immediate vicinity as "fools." It's almost as if Perry's fully conquered the world of entertainment, and like Alexander weeping before the totality of his own empire, he now wonders what new challenge might test his powers. Perhaps he's been left to compete with himself, concocting an idea so ill-advised that wringing a payday out of it anyway will be the one true measure of his abilities as a storyteller and visual stylist.
Animated Scooby-Doo Reboot ‘S.C.O.O.B.’ to Launch Hanna-Barbera Cinematic Universe
Remember the late ’90s? Remember the dot-com bubble, when this exciting newfangled invention called “the Inter-net” was going to make us all richer than god and jet-propel the American economy into the future? Wall Streeters started buying up highly speculative tech stocks like crazy, and when it came time for the invested companies to deliver the goods, many failed completely and the business wen
Denzel Washington to Direct, Star in ‘Fences’ Film with Viola Davis
Turn back the clock to 2010, and the hottest ticket on Broadway is a revival of August Wilson’s Pulitzer-winning play Fences, a poignant and daring meditation on race relations in America with a focus on the hardships of the black experience. It has all the necessary qualifications for a bona fide Broadway smash: a handsome pedigree of awards and acclaim (the production took the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play in 2010), urgent social significance, and some Hollywood talent slumming it on the boards in between film projects. Denzel Washington and Viola Davis starred as the married couple at the heart of Fences, winning raves and a Tony apiece, and created a rare sensation that dazzled audiences for thirteen weeks and then vanished.