News Shotgun 1/22/22
Here’s the movie and TV news that you need to know from the past week, it’s News Shotgun
- Mary Elizabeth Winstead joins the Ashoka series: Mary Elizabeth Winstead is coming to Star Wars by joining the upcoming Ashoka series in an undisclosed role. Rosario Dawson is starring as Ashoka Tano after making her debut in The Mandalorian Season 2 and Hayden Christensen reprising his role as Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader in some form. Actress Natasha Liu Bordizzo was cast as well and is rumored to be playing Star Wars Rebels Sabine Wren, which would tie the Ashoka series into the end of Rebels and continue that show’s story.
- Alex Garland directing new action movie Civil War for A24: Alex Garland, who previously brought us Ex Machina, Annihilation, and the FX series Devs, is directing a new action movie for A24 called Civil War. Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, Stephen McKinley Henderson, and Cailee Spaeny are co-starring and the only plot details are that it’s set in a near-future America.
- Mission: Impossible sequels delayed again: Paramount has pushed the release dates of Mission: Impossible 7 and 8 yet again to 2023 and 2024 respectively due to the ongoing pandemic. 7 was supposed to be out in September this year and will instead be July 14th, 2023 while 8 will come out on June 28th, 2024. Paramount’s other big Tom Cruise movie, Top Gun: Maverick, is still scheduled for release on May 27th this year.
- RIP Louie Anderson and Meat Loaf: Two great entertainers passed away this past week with Louie Anderson and Meat Loaf. Anderson was 68 and had been battling cancer and was famous for his stand-up and for appearances in movies like Coming to America and TV like his cartoon series Life with Louie and, most recently, Baskets on FX, for which he won an Emmy award. Meat Loaf was 74 and is best known as a musician, especially his iconic Bat Out of Hell album but he was also a prolific actor, appearing in movies like Fight Club, Black Dog, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Wayne’s World, Crazy Alabama and more.
- Aristocats live-action remake coming from Disney: Disney is going back to the vault to remake another of their classic films, this time The Aristocats. This new version will be similar to Disney+’s The Lady and The Tramp remake with CG animals interacting with live-action actors. The original movie and this remake find a group of Parisian cats set to inherit a fortune from their owner but a jealous butler kidnaps them and leaves them in the countryside. They team up with a streetwise tomcat to make their way back to the city. Will Gluck, who wrote Peter Rabbit 2, and Keith Bunin, who co-wrote Onward, are writing the script.
- A Christmas Story sequel movie in development: Warner Brothers is developing a sequel to A Christmas Story that will be an HBO Max exclusive and see the return of Peter Billingsley as Ralphie Parker. The new movie will be set in the 1970s and finds Ralphie bringing his kids to his old home to have an old-fashioned Christmas as he experienced as a kid. Julie Hagerty will play Ralphie’s mother. There have been two other sequels to A Christmas Story over the years, My Summer Story and A Christmas Story 2, but neither had the impact as the original.
- Monsterverse series coming to Apple TV+: Godzilla is coming to Apple TV+ with a new TV series set in the Monsterverse. The new show will be set in the aftermath of 2014’s Godzilla and follows a family as they “uncover its buried secrets and a legacy linking them to the secret organization known as Monarch”. The show is co-created by Chris Black and comics legend Matt Fraction along with executive producers Hiro Matsuoka and Takemasa Arita from Toho.
- Wallace and Gromit returning on Netflix: It’s been at least 15 years but beloved stop motion duo Wallace and Gromit are returning for a new film on Netflix. Series creator Nick Park is back for this new movie and it finds lovable but bumbling inventor Wallace inventing a “smart gnome” that gains a mind of its own and, as always, it falls on loyal dog Gromit to stop it before things get out of control. There’s also a sequel to Chicken Run, Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget, that will debut on Netflix in 2023.
- Martin Kove launching a Cobra Kai podcast: If you want stories and recaps from Cobra Kai direct from Sensei Kreese himself, then the new podcast Cobra Koves will be a must-listen. Martin Kove will host the new show along with his twin children, Rachel and Jesse Kove, as they recap each episode of the Netflix series and Kove will share stories from the original movies as well. The show will also feature guests, including other actors, musicians, athletes, and psychologists to dig into other aspects of the series and its impact. The first episode is out now.
- Amazon’s Lord of the Rings show gets a title: Amazon’s massive Lord of the Rings series has gotten its official title as Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. The show is set in Middle-Earth’s Second Age and will show events like the rise of Sauron, the forging of the Rings of Power, the story of the Atlantis-like kingdom of Numenor, and the Last Alliance of Elves and Men. The series will debut on September 2nd this year.
- Star Trek renewals: Paramount has renewed most of their Star Trek shows, including Discovery, Lower Decks, and Strange New Worlds. They also revealed Season 2 of Star Trek: Picard will debut on March 3rd this year.
- Weird Al biopic coming to Roku: An exclusive of The Roku Channel, a new biopic following the career of the universally loved Weird Al is coming soon with Daniel Radcliffe playing the accordion playing parody genius. The movie is titled Weird: The Al Yankovic Story and was co-written by Al and Eric Appel from Funny or Die, who will also direct. Appel previously directed the goofy fake trailer for a Weird Al biopic that debuted on Funny or Die some years ago and featured Aaron Paul as Al.
- Heat sequel novel gets a release date: Almost 30 years after the movie debuted, you can return to the Los Angeles of Michael Mann’s Heat with a sequel novel co-written by Mann himself. Heat 2 will arrive wherever you get books on August 9th this year and it will be set after and before the classic 1995 heist movie to further flesh out characters like Vincent Hanna and Neil McCauley.
- Robert Pattinson teaming with Bong Joon Ho for a new movie: One of Robert Pattinson’s post-The Batman projects will be working with Oscar-winning director Bong Joon Ho for a new sci-fi movie. The movie is still untitled but it will be based on the upcoming sci-fi novel Mickey7, which follows a man on a mission to colonize an ice world called Niflheim. Due to the dangerous nature of the mission, he clones himself with his memory intact if he dies but one of the clones comes back to find his replacement in the mission’s base. The book will be out sometime later this year.
