Andrew A. Smith
Tribune Content Agency
Aug. 14, 2018 -- It’s the Dog Days of Summer, when news about genre movies and TV and is mostly about the future, not the present. But there is a lot of it, so let’s check the Hollywood teletype:
Photo by Chuck Zlotnick. ©Marvel Studios 2017
James Gunn (right) directed Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2, starring Zoe Saldana as Gamora (left) and Chris Pratt as Star-Lord.
Dunned Gunn Not Done: The controversy over James Gunn keeps rolling along. But the worst is probably over for the beleaguered director.
Some background: Gunn had directed the first two Guardians of the Galaxy movies, and was scheduled to direct the third. But he was fired by Disney when some right-wing activists dredged up some decade-old tweets consisting of jokes in extreme poor taste. Disney, worried about its family-friendly image, booted him July 20.
Gunn was a popular guy, though, and his dismissal riled a lot of people up. All the major stars of the Guardians movies – including Chris “Star-Lord” Pratt and Zoe “Gamora” Saldana – signed a letter addressed to Disney in support of Gunn. Dave Bautista (who plays Drax) says he won’t appear in GotG3 if Gunn’s script isn’t used, and Michael Rooker (Yondu) quit Twitter in protest. Non-Guardians stars like Selma Blair and Patton Oswalt have risen to Gunn’s defense. A petition to reinstate Gunn at change.org is pushing 400,000 signatures.
And those years-old tweets don’t appear to much of an impediment for Gunn at studios not named Disney. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the director “has been approached by several top producers and executives at major studios dangling big film projects.”
Plus, Gunn still isn’t technically fired yet. He is still negotiating his exit from Disney, which could hit the studio pretty hard in the pocketbook. So, while unlikely, Disney could still decide to take the path of least resistance and un-fire that Gunn. Either way, it’s probable that Gunn’s script will be used for Guardians 3, if for no other reason than to keep Bautista aboard.
So shed no tears for Gunn, whose success on the Guardians franchise – the first two movies made roughly $1.6 billion – is gold-plated job security. “Don’t worry, folks,” said William Hughes of the AV Club, “James Gunn is going to be just fine.”
My opinion: Talking isn’t doing, and no one has ever claimed Gunn acted inappropriately. Having an immature sense of humor as a young adult shouldn’t be a firing offense. I’m 100 percent behind #MeToo, but this is an overreaction. Hire the guy back, Disney.
UPDATE: Disney has released a definitive announcement that it will not re-hire Gunn.
Batwoman Reborn #1 cover by Steve Epting. Copyright DC Comics Inc.
Batwoman will guest star on The CW’s superhero shows in December, and a pilot for an ongoing series has been ordered.
Game Gal Goes Gotham: The CW recently named Aussie actress Ruby Rose to play Batwoman – not just in the “Arrowverse” crossover in December (a story which will weave through Arrow, The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow and Supergirl), but also a potential series. A Batwoman pilot has been ordered for a possible 2019 premiere.
The current Batwoman at DC Comics is Kate Kane, Bruce Wayne’s first cousin and a formidable crimefighter in her own right. She is also a lesbian, a fact which has Rose – who has been out since she was 12 – routinely breaking into tears.
"Growing up, watching TV, I never saw somebody on TV that I could identify with, let alone a superhero,” Rose said on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. Playing an openly gay superhero who is the star of her own show, she says, is “a game changer.”
Rose is no stranger to genre roles, or to action movies which require a lot of physical effort. She stars in The Meg, which is out now, and has had big roles in xXx: The Return of Xander Cage, Resident Evil: Final Chapter and John Wick: Chapter 2.
Sadly, Rose was bullied so much on Twitter after the announcement that she has quit using the service. The power anonymous social media gives to mouth-breathers is appalling.
My opinion: LGBTQ is under-represented in heroic TV roles, and this will help to right the ship. Also, Batwoman is a terrific character, so everyone wins. But the Twitter thing is infuriating.
© 2018 CTMG, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Tom Hardy plays Spider-Man villain Venom in a movie without Spider-Man in it. Venom premieres Oct. 5.
Spidey Super Stories Switcheroo: Sony’s Silver and Black, which once boasted a February 2019 release date, has been canceled. Instead, the studio plans separate movies for the two leads, the war-criminal huntress Silver Sable and the burglar-cum-crime boss Black Cat.
Both characters got their start in various Spider-Man comics, and are part of an ambitious scheme by Sony to parlay its ownership of Spidey’s movie rights into a shared-universe series of Spider-Man-adjacent movies largely or completely without Spider-Man. That’s because current Spidey actor Tom Holland is contracted to Marvel Studios, due to a deal forged by Sony with Marvel after the Amazing Spider-Man franchise didn’t do as well as expected.
Which apparently deters Sony not a whit. They’ve already got Venom coming Oct. 5, which will ignore the character’s anodyne appearance in “Spider-Man 3” and re-launch the symbiote as an anti-hero completely severed from Spidey history. That’s quite a trick if you know Venom’s back story, which includes his origin as one of Spider-Man’s costumes.
OK, it’s a little more complicated than that. But I repeat: one of Spider-Man’s costumes.
Five other films in the proposed series have been mentioned. Morbius, about a living vampire, has Daniel Espinosa (Safe House) attached as director, and Jared Leto (Suicide Squad) as the titular character. Richard Wenk (The Equalizer 2) has been hired to write a screenplay for Spidey villain Kraven the Hunter. Other Spider-properies under consideration for the big screen are Jackpot (a reluctant, fortysomething superheroine), Nightwatch (a doctor who receives a super-suit from a dying version of himself from the future) and Silk (a Korean-American girl who received spider-powers at the same time and in the same way as Peter Parker).
In addition, there’s the animated movie Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse coming Dec. 14. A version of the Peter Parker Spider-Man does appear in that film, but the focus is on Afro-Latinx teenager Miles Morales, who in the comics is the Spider-Man from another, now-destroyed universe. Spider-Verse posits a world where an aging Parker mentors Morales, who will also meet a variety of Spider-people from other universes, including Ghost Spider, who comes from a world where Gwen Stacy was bitten by the radioactive spider instead of Parker.
My opinion: Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to create a Spider-Man movie series without Spider-Man at the center. Sony needs to give up on its Spider-dreams and sell those rights back to Marvel Films, where they belong.
Trip Flick Commit Nipped: Universal’s Cowboy Ninja Viking, formerly scheduled for a June 28, 2019, premiere, has been indefinitely postponed. According to Variety, the movie was postponed so as not to rush what the studio considers a possible franchise-starter.
Cowboy Ninja Viking is based on an Image comic book by writer A.J. Lieberman and artist Riley Rossmo. It features an assassin who can access the skills of – oh, you guessed it. Yep, a cowboy, a ninja and a viking.
Currently Chris Pratt and Prihanka Chopra (Quantico) are attached to star, with Michelle McLaren directing. The delay could change any of that, given that all are attached to other projects. Pratt, for example, is contractually obligated to both the Jurassic World and Guardians of the Galaxy franchises.
My opinion: I’d rather have a late film than a bad one. We can wait.
Marvel Mogul Nixes Sigs: Stan Lee, the co-creator of many of Marvel’s biggest movie characters and a perennial cameo star, announced recently that he will no longer do public signings. OK, give the guy a break, he’s 95, and there have been alarming reports of Lee being the victim of elder abuse in recent years (although that situation seems to have been addressed). Still, it’s the end of an era.
My opinion: Stan Lee can do whatever he damn well pleases. He’s earned it!
Find Captain Comics by email (capncomics@aol.com), on his website (captaincomics.ning.com), on Facebook (Captain Comics Round Table) or on Twitter (@CaptainComics).
Replies
...And HBO's much-discussed Watchmen TV series premieres in 2019. It features some big names, and will not be a straightforward adaptation of the source material.
(But it won't be Saturday Morning Watchmen, either)
Always fun to watch Saturday Morning Watchmen.
I suspect that Sony wants to see if the first one or two of its Spider-less movies does well. If not, they'll probably sell.
I remember Saturday Morning Watchmen! Didn't they do a dark and gritty adaptation that didn't sell well?
That's my hope. There are rumors that Venom or Silk will take Spidey's place in the "Sony Universe of Marvel Characters." Hate that name, hate the concept, want it to all go away.
Richard Willis said: