News Shotgun 6/22/2024
Here’s all the movie and TV news you need to know from the past week: It’s the News Shotgun.
RIP Donald Sutherland: The legendary Donald Sutherland passed away this week at 88 after a long illness. Sutherland has 199 credits on IMDB, including classics like MASH, The Dirty Dozen, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and Animal House. He reached a new generation recently as the villainous President Snow in the Hunger Games series, and his most recent appearance was on last year’s Lawman: Bass Reeves. The upcoming post-apocalyptic thriller Heart Land will be Sutherland’s final on-screen role.
RIP Taylor Wily: Also passing away this week was Hawaiian character actor Taylor Wily at age 56. Wily was a former sumo wrestler who became an actor. He is best known for his roles in Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Hawaii Five-0, where he played Kamekona Tupuola on 171 episodes of the CBS show. He appeared as the character on other CBS reboots, Macgyver and Magnum PI.
Patrick Dempsey joins Dexter: Original Sin: Patrick Dempsey has been cast in the upcoming Dexter prequel series, Dexter: Original Sin, which will be exclusive to Paramount+. Dempsey is playing Aaron Spencer, the head of the Miami Metro Homicide department and long-time friend to Dexter’s father, Harry Morgan, who Christian Slater is playing. Patrick Gibson is playing the role of the younger Dexter in 1999 as he struggles to control his killing urges while attending an internship with the Miami PD’s forensic unit.
M3GAN universe expands with Soulm8te: While M3GAN 2.0 is still on the way, a new movie is expanding that universe at Blumhouse with Soulm8te. Directed by Kate Dolan, Soulm8te will follow a grieving man who obtains an android to help cope with the death of his wife, but “in an attempt to create a truly sentient partner, he inadvertently turns a harmless lovebot into a deadly soulmate.” The movie is described as being in the vein of 90s erotic thrillers, like Basic Instinct or Fatal Attraction, but with modern, sci-fi trappings. It’s not clear how exactly the movie will expand the universe of M3GAN or if everyone’s favorite killer companion robot will make some appearance.
Spaceballs sequel from Josh Gad in development: Josh Gad is helming a sequel to the Mel Brooks classic Spaceballs, with Brooks on board to produce. The movie will be an Amazon MGM production. There are no plot details or if any of the 1987 cast, like Bill Pullman or Daphne Zuniga, will return. A genuinely awful animated series, Spaceballs: The Animated Series, aired on G4, so hopefully, this will be at least better than that. Gad is making his directorial debut with a biopic about Chris Farley.
New Richard Linklater movie announces cast: Fresh off Hit Man, Richard Linklater has lined up the cast for his next film, Blue Moon. The movie is based on the final days of songwriter Lorenz Hart, of Hart & Rodgers, who co-wrote songs like “Blue Moon”; “The Lady Is a Tramp”; “Manhattan”; “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered”; and “My Funny Valentine” for broadway. The movie is set in Sardi’s in New York on March 31st, 1943, the opening night of Oklahoma!, which was the debut of Rodgers & Hammerstein, Hart’s replacement. Ethan Hawke, Margaret Qualley, Bobby Cannavale, and Andrew Scott are starring, with Hawke playing Hart.
Will Smith is starring in sci-fi thriller Resistor: Hot off the success of Bad Boys: Ride or Die, Will Smith has signed on to star in a sci-fi thriller called Resistor for Sony. The movie is based on the 2024 novel Influx, which follows a physicist named Jon Grady who discovers technology that can reflect gravity, revolutionizing physics and changing the future. However, the Bureau of Technology Control suppresses his invention, and he’s thrown into a high-tech prison when he refuses to join them. There’s no director currently attached.
Netflix opening entertainment complexes: Like Sony, Netflix is looking to expand its live entertainment offerings and is opening a pair of massive entertainment complexes next year. Dallas and King of Prussia will both get “Netflix Houses,” entertainment and shopping complexes with stores, dining, and attractions based on shows like Stranger Things, Bridgerton, and Squid Game. The complexes will replace abandoned department store locations with over 100,000 square feet of retail space.
Jason Patric joins Terrifier 3: Jason Patric is returning to horror as he is announced as joining the cast of Terrifier 3. The third movie in the over-the-top series starring Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton), Terrifier 3, is set on Christmas Eve as Art brings gory chaos to the holiday season. It’s unclear who Patric plays, but Lauren LaVera, Samantha Scaffidi, Chris Jericho, and Elliot Fullam are returning from the previous films. Daniel Roebuck also joined the cast to play Santa. The movie is hitting theaters on October 14th this year.
Live-action Totally Spies! is in development: Will Ferrell and Amazon are bringing Totally Spies! to live-action with an adaptation of the long-running animated series for Prime Video. The series began in 2001 and is still running, with a seventh season debuting in France, which will soon air in the US on Cartoon Network. The show follows Clover, Alex and Sam, who in the live-action adaptation, will have to balance being international spies with the ups and downs of their first year in college..
Megalopolis gets distribution: Francis Ford Coppola’s divisive magnum opus, Megalopolis, has gotten distribution from Lionsgate, who will distribute the film in theaters in the US. Coppola previously got a commitment from IMAX to screen the film. The movie follows Adam Driver as “an architect who accidentally destroys a New York City-esque metropolis and works to rebuild it as a sustainable utopia.” The movie got a broad mix of reactions at the Cannes Film Festival, with some praising it as brilliant while others called it a self-indulgent mess.
Anthony Carrigan joins Twisted Metal: Anthony Carrigan will be the man behind the curtain for the upcoming season 2 of Twisted Metal as the Barry co-star has been cast as Calypso. The organizer of the titular Twisted Metal tournament, in the games, Calypso manipulates events behind the scenes and offers the winner of the tournament one wish to get anything they desire, but there’s always some catch.
Voice cast of Batman: Caped Crusader revealed: Amazon has revealed the voice cast for the upcoming animated series Batman: Caped Crusader. Hamish Linklater will voice Bruce Wayne/Batman, Christina Ricci will play Selina Kyle, Jamie Chung will be Harley Quinn, and Diedrich Bader will be Harvey Dent/Two-Face. Minnie Driver and McKenna Grace are also in the cast, but their roles are not revealed. JJ Abrams, Matt Reeves, and Bruce Timm are producing the series, which will debut on Prime Video on August 1st.
