News Shotgun 7/22/23
Here’s all the movie and TV news you need to know from the past week, it’s the News Shotgun
The Walking Dead spin-offs renewed: Revealed at the Walking Dead panel at Comic-Con, The Walking Dead: Dead City, the spin-off starring Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Lauren Cohan, will be back for a second season while Daryl Dixon, the spin-off featuring Norman Reedus, has already been renewed for a second season ahead of the series debut in September. Dead City’s season 1 finale will air this Sunday on AMC. It was revealed that the Rick and Michonne mini-series is officially called The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live and will debut next year.
Ryan Reynolds producing the new Biker Mice from Mars: Ryan Reynolds’ production company Maximum Effort, is producing the reboot of Biker Mice from Mars with The Nacelle Company, which purchased the rights to the franchise. The new animated series will debut on the Maximum Effort Channel, which features original and classic programming and is currently available on streamers like Fubo and FreeVee. The new series will share the same premise of the 90s original and feature three anthropomorphic mice from Mars who arrive on Earth and use their motorcycle skills to battle the evil Plutkarian aliens, who already destroyed Mars and are looking to conquer Earth.
Original TMNT cartoon coming to Nickelodeon: Nickelodeon has finally secured the rights to the original 80s TMNT cartoon, which will start airing soon on Nickelodeon as well as on platforms like PlutoTV and YouTube. The original series was owned by Fred Wolf Films, which kept it from appearing alongside other Nick-owned TMNT series on places like the Totally Turtles PlutoTV channel.
AMC abandons controversial seating plan: After a not particularly successful pilot program, AMC theaters are not moving ahead with their proposed plan to charge different prices for different seating positions in their theaters. When it was originally announced, AMC planned on charging less for seats closer to the screen and a premium for the prime, middle aisle/middle seat locations. Their testing found that people were willing to pay the premium for better seats but the front rows were still undesirable, even at a cheaper rate.
Adult Swim orders anime series Lazarus: Adult Swim/Toonami have ordered a new anime series from Shinichiro Watanabe, the creator of Cowboy Bebop, called Lazarus. The new series is set in a world where a drug called Hapuna can cure any disease, but anyone who takes it dies three years later. A special task force is set up to take down the creator of the drug, Dr. Skinner, who knew about the deadly side effect and unleashed it malevolently on the world. The series will have a mix of jazz and electronic music for the score from famed Japanese musicians and John Wick’s Chad Stahelski is designing action sequences for the series.
Netflix orders new movie from The Night Comes for Us director: Netflix is getting a new movie from Timo Tjahjanto, the director of The Night Comes for Us and Big 4. The Shadow Strays is the new movie and will feature an ensemble cast of young and popular and veteran Indonesian actors but the plot is currently unknown.
King Ivory announces cast: Crime drama King Ivory has announced its cast and is one of the few movies that has gotten an exemption from SAG-AFTRA to continue to shoot during the strike. Ben Foster, James Badge Dale, Michael Mando, Rory Cochrane, and Melissa Leo will star in the movie and it is set in the world of fentanyl smuggling in Oklahoma and the efforts of a joint task force to try and curb its spread. The movie is directed by Jeremy M. Rosen, who previously directed Ida Red and Candy Land.
Masters of the Universe movie at Netflix is canceled: Despite sinking around $30 million into the project, the Masters of the Universe live-action movie at Netflix is no longer happening. The movie was going to star Kyle Allen as Prince Adam/He-Man and was going to be directed by the Nee Brothers, who directed The Lost City for Paramount. This was the second major attempt to do a new live-action He-Man movie, with Noah Centineo attached to another one at Sony before Netflix bought the He-Man rights in 2019.
Pet Semetary: Bloodlines gets a debut date: A prequel to Pet Semetary is coming to Paramount+ in October this year with Pet Semetary: Bloodlines. The new movie will debut on October 6th and it stars Jackson White, Forrest Goodluck, Jack Mulhern, Henry Thomas, Natalie Alyn Lynd, Isabella Star LeBlanc, Pam Grier, and David Duchovny. The movie follows a young Jud Crandall in 1969 as he and his friends discover the dark secret lurking under their hometown of Ludlow and must battle an ancient evil. Lindsey Beer is making her directorial debut with the movie and also co-wrote the movie with Jeff Buhler.
Yellowstone coming to CBS: With no end in sight to the WGA/SAG-AFTRA strike, CBS is pulling in some streaming shows to round out its fall lineup, including the rating juggernaut Yellowstone. Yellowstone’s first season will begin airing on CBS on Sunday nights and SEAL Team, which left CBS proper to stream exclusively on Paramount+, is also coming back to the network along with the documentary series FBI: True and the original UK version of the comedy series Ghosts, having previously created and aired the US remake.
RIP Robert Lieberman: Director Robert Lieberman passed away this week at age 75 after a long battle with cancer. Lieberman is probably best known for directing the alien abduction movie Fire in the Sky and he also directed over a thousand commercials for clients like McDonalds, Hallmark, and Oreo. Lieberman also directed episodes of TV shows like The Dead Zone, The Expanse, The X-Files, and Dexter.
