News Shotgun 4/15
- The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then The Bigfoot announced: Sam Elliott will star in the awesomely titled new movie that follows a war vet in an alternate timeline where he successfully killed Hitler during World War II and must now track and kill the legendary Bigfoot, as it is carrying a deadly plague.
- New Watchmen movie may be in the works: Warner Bros may be potentially looking to do a new R rated, animated version of Watchmen, based on a survey they sent out to gauge interest on the already in development movie. It’s not clear if it would be a straight adaptation of the original or if it would potentially incorporate anything from the Before Watchmen books.
- Fede Alvarez directing a Labyrinth sequel: Hinted at since 2014, Evil Dead/Don’t Breathe director Fede Alvarez has been hired to direct a new movie in the Labyrinth universe not related to Jareth, since no one could possibly replace Bowie. Alvarez said in a statement said, “Labyrinth is one of the seminal movies from my childhood that made me fall in love with filmmaking. I couldn’t be more thrilled to expand on Jim Henson’s mesmerizing universe and take a new generation of moviegoers back into the Labyrinth“
- Coming to America sequel in development: Paramount is developing a sequel to the Eddie Murphy comedy classic Coming to America, with the original screenwriters back to write the new script. Murphy will apparently be back but no other details are known.
- Stallone suing WB over Demolition Man: Stallone is currently suing Warner Bros with a claim that they allegedly have withheld his share of profits from the film, specifically he was entitled to 15 percent of profits if the film made $125 million, which Stallone says it has thanks to continued DVD, Blu-Ray and digital sales. Stallone says this is typical WB behavior and they are “notoriously greedy”.
- Miles Morales cast for animated Spider-Man movie: Shameik Moore, star of Dope and The Get Down, will voice Miles Morales in Sony’s upcoming animated Spider-Man movie. It was also announced that Liev Schreiber will play the unannounced villain.
- Hellboy gets an official whiskey: Hellboy is getting an officially licensed whiskey from XXX Distillery LLC called Hell Water and it’s a cinnamon whiskey in the vein of Fireball and it’s 66.6 proof.
- Dolph Lundgren joins Aquaman: James Wan announced this week that Dolph Lundgren is joining the cast of Aquaman as King Nereus, the leader of the rival underwater kingdom of Xebel that Aquaman’s wife Mera is from. Wan said he’s not quite a full on villain and Aquaman already has Black Manta and Ocean Master to deal with in his first movie.
- Josh Brolin is cast as Cable: After months of speculation, Josh Brolin has been cast as Cable in Deadpool 2, so he’ll be a part of both of the major Marvel film universes. Brolin was not one of the names being tossed around, probably because he seemed locked down as Thanos, but he has signed a four film contract with Fox to appear as the time traveling mutant.
- Netflix making a Haunting at Hill House series: Netflix has hired Mike Flanagan, director of Oculus and Ouija: Origin of Evil, to make a new series based on The Haunting of Hill House, which was previously turned into a fantastic 1963 movie The Haunting and a terrible 1999 remake starring Liam Neeson. This new version will be set in the modern day, much like the 1999 version although hopefully much better. Flanagan is also adapting Stephen King’s Gerald’s Game for Netflix as well.
- Deathstroke returning to Arrow: Stephen Amell tweeted out that Manu Bennett will return as Deathstroke to Arrow, possibly late this season as some sort of last ditch effort to stop Prometheus. In the 100th episode this season, a hallucination of Deathstroke appeared as part of the alien mind control technology Oliver and the others were trapped in but it wasn’t Bennett in the suit.
- Jude Law cast as Dumbledore for the future Fantastic Beasts movies: With the reveal of Grindelwald at the end of Fantastic Beasts, the movies going forward needed a young Dumbledore, who is a professor at Hogwarts as Grindelwald begins his rise to power as the main threat to the wizarding world before Voldemort.
- RIP Charlie Murphy: Chappelle’s Show regular and Eddie Murphy’s brother, Charlie Murphy, passed away at age 57 this week after battling leukemia. Murphy was the focus of arguably the biggest Chappelle’s Show sketches, the Rick James True Hollywood Story, and contributed to almost every other great sketch as well.
- Escape Plan 3 greenlit: Escape Plan 2 is barely a thing yet (although I believe they just finished shooting) but Escape Plan 3 is already greenlit with Stallone escaping from yet another seemingly impossible to escape from prison. Arnold is not back for either sequel and Dave Bautista is co-starring with Stallone in 2.