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James McAvoy and Bill Hader in Talks to Join Jessica Chastain in IT Sequel

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James McAvoy and Bill Hader are in negotiations to join Jessica Chastain in It: Chapter Two.

The second installment of New Line’s adaptation of Stephen King’s It focuses on the adult versions of the characters that were subjected to the terror of demon clown Pennywise, last seen in the 2017 movie that grossed $700 million worldwide.

If deals make, McAvoy would play the role of the adult Bill Denbrough, the unofficial leader of the group of kids nicknamed the Losers Club, who grows up to be a successful author. When he returns to face his past, his old stutter resurfaces. Jaeden Lieberher played the character in the first movie.

Hader will play the adult Richie Tozier, the jokester who grows up to be a DJ. Finn Wolfhard played the character in the first installment.

Chastain is already on board to play Beverly Marsh, the group’s lone female member who as an adult ends up in an abusive marriage. Bill Skarsgard will return as Pennywise.

The kid actors from the movie, Lieberher and Wolfhard among them, are expected to return for the second chapter in flashback scenes.

It: Chapter Two is scheduled to begin production this July and will be released in theaters by Warner Bros. on Sept. 6, 2019. Andy Muschietti and Gary Dauberman are back as director and screenwriter, respectively.

McAvoy last year starred in the hit horror movie Split and appeared with Charlize Theron in Atomic Blonde. The actor next stars in X-Men: Dark Phoenix and Split follow-up, Glass. Former Saturday Night Live star Hader currently stars in HBO’s dark comedy Barry, about a hitman moving through L.A.’s acting classes scene. The show has received rave reviews and was just renewed for a second season.

James McAvoy, Bill Hader in Talks to Star Alongside Jessica Chastain in 'It: Chapter Two'
 
Jet Li and Gong Li Joins Donnie Yen in Disney's Live-Action MULAN Movie

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Disney's live-action Mulan has landed two massive Chinese stars, The Hollywood Reporter has exclusively learned. Jet Li is in final talks to play the emperor of China, who orders the mobilization of troops via the conscription of one male from each household. The titular heroine, Hua Mulan (Liu Yifei), disguises herself as a man in order to spare her elderly father from having to join the military.

The Beijing-born Li is one of China's biggest and most enduring crossover stars. After the martial arts champ became a superstar in Asia on the strength of franchises like Shaolin Temple and Once Upon a Time in China, he made his Hollywood debut in 1998's Lethal Weapon 4, followed by Romeo Must Die opposite Aaliyah in 2000. His other credits include Zhang Yimou's Hero, Peter Ho-Sun Chan's 2007 epic The Warlords and The Expendables series.

Meanwhile, Gong Li is confirmed as the villain of Mulan, a powerful witch (this appears to be a departure from Disney's 1998 animated version, in which the primary antagonist was Shan Yu, leader of the invading Huns).

Gong has long been considered one of China's finest actresses and greatest beauties. A longtime muse of Zhang Yimou since her debut in 1988's Red Sorghum, she also has starred in his The Story of Qiu Ju (for which she won two best actress awards at Venice), Raise the Red Lantern, Curse of the Golden Flower and, most recently, 2014's Coming Home. She also earned international acclaim in Chen Kaige's Farewell My Concubine. Gong starred opposite Jeremy Irons in Wayne Wang's Chinese Box and has acted in English in Memoirs of a Geisha, Miami Viceand Hannibal Rising.

Also joining the cast is Chinese-Vietnamese actress Xana Tang, who will play Mulan's sister (another original character for the live-action film). The New Zealand-based actress' credits include local series Filthy Rich and Australian series The Letdown and Dead Lucky.

Niki Caro is directing the film, which also includes Donnie Yen as Mulan's mentor, Commander Tung. Mulan, whose release date was pushed back to March 27, 2020, will begin shooting in August in China and New Zealand.

Disney's 'Mulan' Lands Gong Li as a Powerful Witch and Jet Li as the Emperor of China (Exclusive)
 
John Krasinski to Direct Sci-Fi Drama LIFE ON MARS with A QUIET PLACE Team

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John Krasinski has found his follow-up to A Quiet Place, the surprise hit he directed and stars in with his wife, Emily Blunt, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.

Krasinski and the producers of A Quiet Place — Michael Bay, Andrew Form and Brad Fuller — are reteaming for Life on Mars. Paramount, which distributed the horror movie, is in negotiations to pick up the project.

There is no writer on board and Krasinski, at this stage, is not expected to star. He will also be a producer on the project, alongside Allyson Seeger, an executive at his Sunday Night Productions banner.

The project will adapt a short story by Cecil Castellucci titled We Have Always Lived on Mars that centers on a woman who is among a handful of descendants of a Martian colony long-abandoned by Earth following a cataclysm. The woman one day finds she can breathe the air on Mars, upending her world and that of her fellow colonists.

Krasinski found the story and brought it to his Platinum Dunes cohorts, sources say.

A Quiet Place shook up the box office over the weekend when the pic opened to an astounding $50.2 million, surprising not just observers but those that made the film as well.

The Paramount movie, made for only $17 million, revolves around a family trying to survive in a world where any sound made attracts toothy aliens that kill. The pic is not only a box-office hit but a critical one as well, sitting with a 96 percent score on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.

Krasinski came to prominence acting on the NBC comedy The Office, but A Quiet Place has put him on the hot directors list.

It hasn't been an overnight journey and Krasinski made it the old-fashioned way, taking small steps and learning as he went. He made his directorial debut with 2009's Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, an adaptation of David Foster Wallace's collection of short stories. The film debuted at Sundance and earned $33,000 in limited release.

In 2016, Krasinski wrote and directed the comedy-drama The Hollars, in which he starred opposite Anna Kendrick. The film about a dysfunctional clan brought together by the life-threatening illness of its beloved matriarch earned $1 million at the box office.

John Krasinski Plans Sci-Fi Thriller 'Life on Mars' With 'Quiet Place' Team (Exclusive)
The short story is online. It's a very quick read. It's basically a pitch for an idea of something bigger.
 
First Look at the Villain Screenslaver in the New INCREDIBLES 2 Trailer

 
JOHN WICK's David Leitch Confirmed to Direct FAST & FURIOUS Spinoff

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The Fast & Furious franchise is about to get even more thrilling: EW can exclusively reveal that David Leitch (Deadpool 2) has officially signed on to direct the untitled Fast & Furious spin-off starring Dwayne Johnson and Jason Staham, about their respective characters Luke Hobbs and Deckard Shaw.

The spinoff has been rumored to be called, naturally, Hobbs and Shaw. The film is due in theaters July 26, 2019.

Leitch, who also directed Atomic Blonde and co-directed John Wick, has been the reported front-runner to helm the film for months. He’s known for incredibly visceral, stunt-driven action sequences and was a stunt double/coordinator prior to directing.

He will direct from a script written by Chris Morgan, who has penned six installments of the blockbuster series, including the most recent, The Fate of the Furious.

The eight Fast & Furious films have combined to gross more than $5.1 billion worldwide for Universal Pictures.

http://ew.com/movies/2018/04/12/david-leitch-fast-furious-dwayne-johnson-jason-statham/
 
MARY SHELLEY Trailer: Elle Fanning Stars in a New Take on the Frankenstein Creator

She will forever be remembered as the writer who gave the world Frankenstein. But the real life story of Mary Shelley—and the creation of her immortal monster—is nearly as fantastical as her fiction. Opening in theaters May 25th and VOD June 1st.

 
New TERMINATOR Casts Natalia Reyes as the Female Lead, Gabriel Luna to Play a Terminator

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Colombian actress Natalia Reyes has nabbed the starring role in the Terminator reboot.

Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger are returning to the fold while Blade Runner 2049 actress Mackenzie Davis is one of the new star additions to the sci-fi action project from Paramount and Skydance.

Gabriel Luna, who is known for playing Ghost Rider on ABC's Agents of SHIELD, has also been cast in the film, as well as Mexican-born Diego Boneto, known for his work in Scream Queens.

But the main role in the new Terminator is that of Dani, a young woman from a working class neighborhood in Mexico City who finds herself in the battle between humans and machines.

Luna will play a Terminator robot while Boneta will play Dani's brother. Davis is an soldier-assassin from the future.

Hamilton and Schwarzenegger are reprising their roles but sources say that their parts are relatively brief.

Skydance and filmmakers Tim Miller and James Cameron, directing and producing respectively, made a concerted effort to find a Latina actress and someone who they considered a “discovery," in the similar way Cameron did with Hamilton when he cast the young actress in his 1984 movie.

They came close a couple of times in the last few months but no cigar. Several weeks ago it was decided to broaden the search to central and South America, with seven actresses picked to screentest.

Reyes appeared in children’s programs in Colombia and has starred in two noteworthy Spanish-speaking series, Cumbia Ninja and Lady, the seller of roses (Lady, la vendedor de rosas). But what some sources say was the clincher was her work in Birds of Passage, the new film from Colombian filmmaker Ciro Guerra. Reyes is the lead of the film and buzz has the film heading for a debut at this year's Cannes Film Festival.

Now the cast is expected to begin training later in April with an eye towards a May production start. The film opens Nov. 22, 2019.

James Cameron's 'Terminator' Reboot Finds Its Star with Colombian Discovery After a Lengthy Search
 
Rumor: Marvel Studios is Reportedly Preparing to Announce ETERNALS Movie

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We've been hearing rumblings about the possibility of an Eternals movie for a while now but Bleeding Cool has run a report claiming to have heard from "ultra-reliable" sources that a big screen adventure featuring the characters is indeed in the works.

Eternals was created by Jack Kirby and with Thor: Ragnarok borrowing heavily from his work in terms of visuals, they'd fit in really well in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

An announcement is said to be imminent and Marvel Studios has been meeting with writers about the property recently so we could now hear something official about the film in a matter of weeks.

Eternals would also be a great way for Kevin Feige and company to outshine Warner Bros.' plans for a New Gods movie and this lot would definitely fit in well after Guardians of the Galaxy kicked open the door to a Marvel Cosmic Universe. This group of characters are an evolutionary offshoot of humanity living on Earth who possess greater powers and longer lifespans than the mainstream human race.

They're not the most well-known group but neither were the Guardians before James Gunn brought them to the big screen so this project definitely has some potential...if it ultimately happens that is!

Rumor: Marvel Studios is Reportedly Preparing to Announce an Eternals Movie
 
Trailer for JOHNNY ENGLISH STRIKES AGAIN Starring Rowan Atkinson

The new adventure begins when a cyber-attack reveals the identity of all active undercover agents in Britain, leaving Johnny English as the secret service’s last hope. Called out of retirement, English dives head first into action with the mission to find the mastermind hacker. As a man with few skills and analogue methods, Johnny English must overcome the challenges of modern technology to make this mission a success. In theaters Sept. 20.


awesome - and Olga to boot.

Will see
 
MARY SHELLEY Trailer: Elle Fanning Stars in a New Take on the Frankenstein Creator

She will forever be remembered as the writer who gave the world Frankenstein. But the real life story of Mary Shelley—and the creation of her immortal monster—is nearly as fantastical as her fiction. Opening in theaters May 25th and VOD June 1st.


How to kill an interesting concept with a PC agenda:

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How to kill an interesting concept with a PC agenda:
Firstly, that's something one critic said about the film, which has been latched onto by the distributors and used out of context in the marketing of the film, not surprising since this happens all the time. They do this with any snippet of a review they think will bring in more money to the film.

Secondly, is not a story about a teenage girl who writes one of the most iconic novels of all time, and pioneered the horror and science fiction genres naturally a feminist one?
 
How to kill an interesting concept with a PC agenda:

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To be fair, that's just a blurb from Variety.

I think the film looks interesting. And it wouldn't surprise me at all if Mary Shelley DID encounter some resistance at the time, being a female writer of a horror story.
 
Firstly, that's something one critic said about the film, which has been latched onto by the distributors and used out of context in the marketing of the film, not surprising since this happens all the time. They do this with any snippet of a review they think will bring in more money to the film.

Secondly, is not a story about a teenage girl who writes one of the most iconic novels of all time, and pioneered the horror and science fiction genres naturally a feminist one?
Essentially, any story where a female experiences any success at all these days is superlatively exaggerated to appease the social justice movement.

The paradox is: that isn't equality. Equality is treating everyone the same, regardless of yada, yada, and so forth.

So getting back to this movie, the fact that they decided to make a point of "fiery feminism" in the marketing indicates this will be a puff piece to inaccurately portray Shelley as a trailblazer for women's rights (which is further established when she's challenged by her oppressive male counterparts to write a horror story in the most sexist way possible, when in reality, Percy Shelley encouraged and actually helped her write The Modern Prometheus).

TL;DR: It's going to be a fictional puff piece when biopics should be accurate reenactments based on written accounts, in an unfortunate era where the solution to expose social issues is to lie about them, complicating things immensely.

The irony is, Shelley's mother was an actual feminist.
 
So getting back to this movie, the fact that they decided to make a point of "fiery feminism" in the marketing indicates this will be a puff piece to inaccurately portray Shelley as a trailblazer for women's rights
Not really considering the marketing departments are not the same people who write and direct the films, and the editors of the trailers are not the editors of the films.
which is further established when she's challenged by her oppressive male counterparts to write a horror story in the most sexist way possible, when in reality, Percy Shelley encouraged and actually helped her write The Modern Prometheus.
If by oppressive males counterparts you mean the man who comments on women's perceived lack of intelligence, that's Byron not Percy Shelley. Perhaps Byron said that, perhaps not. It would have hardly been an uncommon opinion at the time. Story wise it's likely purpose is to portray Byron as somewhat antagonistic in order to contrast with the more supportive and helpful Percy. If the movie does ignore or distort the part Percy played I will agree with claims of historical inaccuracy.

I don't see anything about women's rights in the trailer. I see Mary Shelley expressing her desire to be taken seriously as an author of macabre literature, and being frustrated at insinuations that Percy was the true author.
 
Milos Forman, Oscar-Winning Director of 'CUCKOO'S NEST and AMADEUS, Dies at 86

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Milos Forman, the anti-authoritarian director who left his native Czechoslovakia for creative freedom in the U.S. and captured Oscars for the masterpieces One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Amadeus, has died. He was 86.

Forman, also known for two biopics about controversial Americans — The People vs. Larry Flynt(1996) and Man on the Moon (1999) — died Friday after a short illness, according to his wife, Martina, who broke the news to the Czech news agency CTK.

His manager, Dennis Aspland, confirmed Forman's death to The Hollywood Reporter. The filmmaker died in Danbury Hospital, near his home in Warren, Connecticut.

Forman first attracted international attention with such features as Black Peter (1964), The Loves of a Blonde (1965) — an Oscar nominee for best foreign-language film — and The Firemen’s Ball(1967), which put him in hot water with the communist regime in Czechoslovakia.

Became an American citizen in 1975, Forman had a unique sensitivity to American themes, which he prismed through a sly, satiric sensibility. His films generally appealed to sophisticated audiences, though he could reach the mainstream with his savvy flourishes.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), adapted from Ken Kesey’s 1962 novel, dealt with life inside an Oregon mental institution. Starring Jack Nicholson as an insurgent patient, it was a sensation at the Oscars, winning five major categories (picture, director, actor, actress and adapted screenplay).

Amadeus
(1984), starring Tom Hulce as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, raked in 11 Oscar noms and eight wins, including those for best picture and director.

He earned his third and last Oscar nom for The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996), a drama about the founder of Hustler magazine that was framed around First Amendment issues. And his Man on the Moon (1999) attempted to distill the tormented comic creativity of Andy Kaufman.

Forman served as a professor of film and co-chair of the film division of Columbia University’s School of the Arts, and he wrote an autobiography, Turnaround, which was published in 1994.

He married Martina Zborilova, his third wife, in 1999. Their twin sons Andrew and James were named after Kaufman and Jim Carrey, who portrayed the madcap comic in Man on the Moon. He is survived by another set of twins, Petr and Matej.

Milos Forman, Oscar-Winning Director of 'One Flew Over Cuckoo's Nest' and 'Amadeus,' Dies at 86
 
First Trailer for HOTEL ARTEMIS Starring Jodie Foster and Sterling K. Brown

In HOTEL ARTEMIS, set in riot-torn, near-future Los Angeles, Jodie Foster plays The Nurse, who runs a secret, members-only emergency room for criminals. Surrounded by an all-star cast that includes Sterling K. Brown, Sofia Boutella, Jeff Goldblum, Bryan Tyree Henry, Jenny Slate, Zachary Quinto, Charlie Day, and Dave Bautista, HOTEL ARTEMIS is a stylish, high-octane action-thriller written and directed by Drew Pearce. In theaters June 8.

 
Just some random dude at that theater who's a big fanboy of the rock. He says he is a mechinest or something?

 
First Trailer for HOTEL ARTEMIS Starring Jodie Foster and Sterling K. Brown

In HOTEL ARTEMIS, set in riot-torn, near-future Los Angeles, Jodie Foster plays The Nurse, who runs a secret, members-only emergency room for criminals. Surrounded by an all-star cast that includes Sterling K. Brown, Sofia Boutella, Jeff Goldblum, Bryan Tyree Henry, Jenny Slate, Zachary Quinto, Charlie Day, and Dave Bautista, HOTEL ARTEMIS is a stylish, high-octane action-thriller written and directed by Drew Pearce. In theaters June 8.


Saw the trailer yesterday and looks good...a little John Wick style violence is never wrong.
 
Warner Bros. Taps Cathy Yan to Direct BIRDS OF PREY Starring Harley Quinn

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Filmmaker Cathy Yan is joining the DC universe. She is in talks to direct an untitled DC film featuring Margot Robbie's Suicide Squad character, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed.

The Warner Bros. film is expected to be based on the Birds of Prey property, which centers on a female-led team that debuted in 1995 and in the comics and has included characters over the years such as Barbara Gordon/Batgirl, Poison Ivy, Catwoman and Katana (who was played by Karen Fukuhara in Suicide Squad). The film has a script by Christina Hodson, whom Warner Bros. hired last week to write Batgirl after Joss Whedon exited the project.

Robbie debuted her take on Harley Quinn in 2016's Suicide Squad, which brought the character to even greater levels of popularity and inspired Warner Bros. to develop several projects centering on the anti-hero, including a Suicide Squad sequel and a movie focusing on Joker and Harley Quinn.

Yan is an up-and-coming filmmaker, whose feature directorial debut Dead Pigs earned strong reviews at Sundance earlier this year. The dark comedy won the World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award for Ensemble Acting. In addition to also directing several shorts, Yan has worked as a Wall Street Journal reporter based out of New York, Hong Kong and Beijing.

Yan, who was born in China and was raised in Hong Kong and Washington, D.C., would become the first Asian woman to direct a big-budget superhero movie. The move would also continue the studio's track record of hiring female filmmakers for its comic book properties. Warner Bros. has Patty Jenkins returning for Wonder Woman 2, while Ava DuVernay is set to direct the comic book epic New Gods.

Cathy Yan in Talks to Direct Warner Bros.' Untitled Harley Quinn Movie Starring Margot Robbie
 
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