Currently, Mad Max: Fury Road has earned $125.1 million at the domestic box office, placing it at 9th on the current 2015 domestic box office list. Fury Road is sure to climb higher though before ending its run. George Miller has already announced that the script for a sequel has already been written in addition to a treatment for a third installment.
With an estimated production budget of $150 million and current box office gross of $307.8 million , just how high will Mad Max need to climb in order for WB to officially announce a sequel? The film is opening in Japan on June 20th and is still slated to open in China (though it doesn’t have an official release date) so there’s still million more to add to the final box office tally.
SO this DC Delights will be considered as the big one as it its pretty much two weeks worth of news crammed into one! We’re talking Constantine, Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, Gotham and to add the movie stuff also like Wonder Woman, Batman V Superman, George Miller’s cancelled Justice League movie and a bunch more!
SO let us begin the journey of DC news!
TV NEWS
Visual effects studios Important Looking Pirates and Crafty Apes have released videos showcasing the digital effects their artists created for NBC’s Constantine.
Yes, the television series was cancelled earlier this month, but that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy cool effects that were designed for its first and probably only season. I especially like ILP’s “Blessed Are The Damned” video because it shows the work that went into the wings and the flight of Imogen (Megan West) the Fallen Angel.
Regardless of how you felt about Season 1 of Gotham, the FOX show did manage to bring a startling number of Batman’s famous rogues gallery to life in its freshman year (even if there was no Caped Crusader around). Notable successes included Robin Lord Taylor’s popular take on The Penguin, and Cameron Monaghan’s memorable cameo as a younger Joker.
With the latter apparently set to play an even bigger role in Season 2, TVLine have revealed details about two more thorns in Jim Gordon’s side. The site claims that the first new arrival, “a male DC villain”, will be “intelligent, cultured and highly articulate,” as well as “extremely attractive, seductive and threatening”. A seductive Mr. Freeze, perhaps?! Joining this mystery rogue will be a female antagonist, “in her mid-to late 20s”, who is somewhat of a “sexy knock-out”.
Chris Chalk is the latest guest star to be promoted to series regular status on the FOX show, having made a small but memorable guest appearance as ‘Lucius Fox’ in the late stages of Season 1. This news, revealed first by TVLine, should not come as any surprise though, as Chalk was apparently brought onto the series with an explicit ‘option to return’ during the sophomore season.
When we last saw Mr. Fox, he had a few things to say to young Bruce about the state of Wayne Enterprises. According to Gotham EP John Stephens, Lucius will become “another person who’s going to help Bruce on his journey to find out what happened to his parents and what his parents were doing, and also his journey to manhood and Batman-hood.” Stephens also claimed that “[Adult Bruce is] like a science genius, and some of that’s going to come from Lucius Fox.”
While speaking recently at MCM London, the show’s stars Willa Holland, Karl Yune (Maseo), and Rila Fukushima talked about their experiences working on this past season as well as strategically teasing their characters’ possible futures on the show. This included Yune who, despite his character dying at the hands of his former wife, Tatsu, hinted that there is a possibility fans might see Maseo return. Yune hinted that the series’ creator and showrunner, Marc Guggenheim, had simply told him “don’t make any plans“. Meanwhile, Holland reveals what alterations she’d like to see made to Speedy’s new costume
After her brief cameo appearance in the second season of Arrow, the series could have used a lot more Harley Quinn, according to actress Willa Holland, who plays Thea Queen on the show.
Holland told Flickering Myth that “We had big plans for Harley, but I guess something came down from DC execs that told us to shut it down. I mean, we had that tease with the pigtails and the A.R.G.U.S. [prison] outfit but, we’ll never see it. We would love to Harley in Arrow but it will never happen.”
The character, who originated on Batman: The Animated Series, will be featured prominently in next year’s Suicide Squad live-action feature. The Squad were featured in the episode in which Harley made her unnamed cameo on Arrow and a number of others, but their role will reportedly be significantly diminished going forward, with some of the characters from the Suicide Squad movie taken off the board entirely.
This preview doesn’t reveal a lot about what’s to come in Arrow this Fall, but some very interesting hints are definitely dropped by executive producer Marc Guggenheim. Season three may have made the mistake of focusing more on Felicity crying than Ra’s al Ghul, but there’s a lot to look forward to in season four. For example, we have no idea how Oliver will once again take on The Arrow identity, while Damian Darhk and H.I.V.E. are also set to take on major roles which should be fun.
Flash executive producer Andrew Kreisberg has confirmed that the entire first season of the show is an alternate timeline due to the manipulation of Tom Cavanagh’s Harrison Wells. So will we ever see the original timeline or will the show always exist in the alternate one? As Matt Letscher Eobard Thawne stated in latter episodes of the show, Thawne went back in time and hijacked Well’s life so that he could create the S.T.A.R. Labs particle accelerator much earlier and create The Flash [and subsequently, many of Flash’s Rogue Gallery]. But Eddie’s (Rick Cosnett) heroic sacrifice means that Wells never even existed so wouldn’t that mean the timeline has been reset? Or does the alternate timeline continue on? Said Kreisberg to EW, “Part of the fun of The Flash is when you have people dabbling in sci-fi physics, they’re significantly altering the world. We established in the finale that the entire series of The Flash is, in itself, an alternate timeline that’s been skewed from the real one. Wells setting off the accelerator created all the metahumans, and the results of the singularity will also have long-term effects.”
The finale episode answered a lot of questions, but the ending left us with a lot of new ones. In the following promo which aired at the end of the finale, executive producers Greg Berlanti and Andrew Kreisberg tease plans for season two, and it sounds like the singularity might help to create new metahumans for the Scarlet Speedster to face off against! Throw in alternate timelines, Cisco being confirmed as having powers, that Killer Frost tease, and the Speed Force, and we have a lot to look forward to.
Grant Gustin was brought up and down the red carpet at The CW’s 2015 upfronts in New York last Thursday rather quickly. He answered questions rapid-fire, and was one of – if not the – most in-demand talents there, with Hollywood blogs, Comic Book websites, and TV news shows alike vying for his attention.
As the titular lead of The Flash, Gustin told ComicBook.com that it’s easy to relate to Barry Allen’s joy in embracing his alter-ego.
“I just innately have fun doing this,” the actor said.
While Barry has been put through quite a bit this season, especially in the last month or so of the show, Gustin hopes that he’s holding onto that sense of fun, and he talks with the folks in charge about it regularly.
“I had actually gotten to a place where I talked to [EPs] Andrew Kreisberg and Greg Berlanti about it, because I felt like Barry had gotten to this really dark place, and he maybe wasn’t having fun anymore,” he told us, expressing his concern. “They promised me that Barry was still having fun, and he’d still get those moments.”
As for next year, Gustin thinks that as Barry grows as a hero, he’ll get further away from that “dark place” and into a position that more mimics the Barry Allen of the printed page at DC Comics.
“I want to be able to, next year, get a little more cocky with it and confident with the super powers. I want to be a little bit closer to the Flash from the comics,” he said.
One thing that can help cure the “dark first season” blues as he described it, is the camaraderie with his castmates. With Wells presumably out of the picture, or at the very least off of “Team Flash,” Gustin hopes he’ll get to show how Caitlin, Cisco, and Barry spend more of their downtime.
“Cisco and Barry I’ve always wanted to explore more since the beginning; we did just a little bit in the first season, and that was because we [Grant and Carlos Valdes, who plays Cisco Ramon on the show] had brought that up to the writers,” said the star.
He also noted that he “loves working with Danielle Panabaker” and thinks the down moments with the three of them (Barry, Caitlin, and Cisco), outside of any superheroics, should get their due in season 2.
“I think it’s fun, even just as friends and not a superhero team, to just kind of have those three do more socially next year. Like the karaoke scene this year, we had a lot of fun doing that.
Gorilla Grodd’s small screen debut in The Flash was nothing short of incredible, but it could have been even better had they followed the concept art below (via Film Sketchr). Of course, this might give us an idea as to what we should expect from the character’s return in season two, but we’ll just have to wait and see on that.
Admitting that she really thought she was done in the CWverse following Sara Lance’s death in the Arrow season premiere, Legends of Tomorrow actress Caity Lotz told TVLine at upfronts last week that the new show is even cooler than she imagined it would be when the idea of a return was pitched to her.
“It’s going to be big,” she teased. “I didn’t really know that much about the show and I said ‘I want to do it, I trust you guys,’ and when we were shooting our teaser, they were telling me some of the stuff that’s going to be happening, and I was like, ‘This is way cooler than I — not that I didn’t think it would be cool, but just stuff that I wasn’t even imagining or picturing. I think this is going to be really fun to do.”
You can see the full interview below.
Speaking of DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, Entertainment Weekly talked with one of the stars, Wentworth Miller(Captain Cold)! “I hope the answer is no on the way to yes,” says Miller. “Because if you stuff a bunch of rabid dogs in a barrel and roll it downhill, that’s something that’s worth watching.” However, despite his evil tendencies, Miller’s Captain Cold does have a softer side. “In his relationship with his sister, you see he does have a heart. And there are people that he’s willing to put ahead of himself, so now that he’s aligned with these good guys, for better or worse, they’re going to start influencing him and his way of thinking. I’m excited to explore his shades of gray so we see he’s not just a villain, he’s a man.”
‘Kara Zor-El’ will soon be flying onto our screens on the new CBS show Supergirl this November. Apparently, one of the most overwhelming moments for star Melissa Benoist was the first time she ever got to put on the iconic suit – designed by three-time Oscar winner Colleen Atwood. Speaking to E! Online, Benoist explained how exciting the whole experience was for her:
“I just had this injury so I had this eye patch on. It was kind of embarrassing, but the second I put it on, something shifts inside of me. It’s kind of impossible not to feel strength and empowerment and positivity and hope. It really is pretty surreal!”
We recently had a glimpse of the show’s special effects in that action-packed trailer. Benoist noted how strange it felt watching herself perform these heroics on the small screen: “I don’t recognize myself when I see those scenes”, she claimed, “It’s kind of insane. The sheer scope of all of it, it’s so epic that it’s kind of mind-blowing to see it all put together.”
Sadly the pilot episode for the Supergirl show has leaked.
However, unlike last year’s leaked pilots for CW’s The Flash and NBC’s Constantine, the Supergirl pilot is available in full 1080p HD and is surprisingly watermark-free. The source of the leak is yet-to-be determined, but Variety confirms that the leaked episode went live around 3 a.m. ET this morning. At the time of this posting, CBS had yet to respond to the leak.
Variety posted their annual “10 TV Actors to Watch” piece, which includes fresh looks at hotly-anticipated superhero show, “Supergirl”!
“Supergirl” actress Melissa Benoist (Whiplash), can be seen standing proudly in the wake of the pilot episode being recently pirated.
“I never imagined myself getting a role like this,” Benoist says. “There are moments when I step back and look at the bigger picture and I’m on the set with fire and explosions and I’m in the suit — and I’ll have to do a double-take.”
Benoist leads a cast that includes Mehcad Brooks as James Olsen, Laura Benanti as Alura Zor-El, Calista Flockhart as Cat Grant, Chyler Leigh as Alexandra “Alex” Danvers, Jeremy Jordan as Winslow “Winn” Schott, David Harewood as Hank Henshaw and, in mystery roles, Dean Cain and Helen Slater.
Hailing from Warner Bros. TV and Berlanti Productions (who also produce the hit DC Comics series “Arrow” and “The Flash” for The CW), “Supergirl” is based on the characters from DC Comics and centers on Kara Zor-El, who comes to Earth after escaping the destruction of Krypton. After many years hiding her abilities, she joins the ranks of her cousin Superman to become the hero she was meant to be.
The pilot episode of “Supergirl” was written by Ali Adler (“No Ordinary Family”) and Greg Berlanti (“Arrow,” “The Flash”). They will also executive produce along with Sarah Schechter and Warner Bros. TV. The show has a series commitment at CBS, and is expected to debut in November.
In a chat with The Hollywood Reporter, executive producer Andrew Kreisberg reveals that Cavanagh will remain on the show as a series regular, weighs in on Eddie possibly returning, and teases “a bunch more villains” as well as additional speedsters for season two.
THR: When did you know Eddie would make this sacrifice?
Kreisberg: When we decided to name him Thawne, we hoped the audience would suspect Eddie was the Reverse-Flash because of his last name. We always knew Eddie would be his ancestor, but we weren’t quite sure how we would end the season. The way things were moving forward, it felt like it was the best thing to do for his character. Like with Colin Donnell [whose character Tommy died in Arrow’s season one finale], it was literally the worst thing we could do to ourselves as writers, producers and friends, because we all love Rick so much both personally and professionally, and we think he’s crushed it as Eddie all season. We’ve all become very close. It’s one of those terrible things. The story sort of tells you what it wants to be and as much as it broke our hearts, we knew this was the way the season needed to end.
What was Rick’s last day on set like?
Usually the last day on set tends to be something very mundane. The last day on set turned out to be his death scene. It was a very complicated day, visual effects-wise, because of all the things that were going on. It was also a difficult day emotionally. Not only was it the end of the season, and everyone from the crew to the cast has just been killing themselves to make this show as good as it could be, it was also incredibly emotional. Just like Collin Donnell, Rick was told about the plan way in advance, because obviously we didn’t want him to read it and be surprised. As soon as he found out, he kicked up his acting level a notch. It was almost subconsciously — his performance got even stronger, which again makes it even worse emotionally for us. Rick has been turning in his best work of the year in these last few episodes just like Colin did. I literally can’t say enough about Rick Cosnett.
Will Eddie be back?
The great thing with our show — you saw it with Colin Donnell and with Caity Lotz [whose deceased Sara is returning for spinoff Legends of Tomorrow] — is just because you are dead doesn’t mean you’re not coming back. Especially in the world of The Flash, which involves time travel and real hardcore science fiction, there’s always a way for Eddie to return, and we hope Rick will.
How does Eddie’s sacrifice work? Eobard disappears — but everything he did up until the finale still happened?
Our time travel hopefully holds together as much as it can. It doesn’t completely obliterate all of their memories of Eddie and everything, but it has the desired effect of “harm to Eddie means harm to Tom Cavanagh’s character.”
How did you lay the groundwork for Eddie to make this choice?
Eddie has been struggling these last few weeks, hearing about the future and about how there is no place for him in the future. He wasn’t going to believe in Wells’ interpretation of the future. He was going to make his own decision and he basically decided to recommit to Iris, which only makes his sacrifice that much more heartbreaking. He didn’t do it because he didn’t have anything to live for. He did it because he had everything to live for.
What does this mean for Tom Cavanagh’s future on the show?
Tom Cavanagh will be back. That is not in question. Tom Cavanagh will continue to be a regular.
This season was so well planned out in advance. Is that the approach you will take with season two — constructing a big master plan like you had for season one?
Not to pat ourselves on the back too much, but if you watch the pilot, there are clues that got laid out throughout the season. We’ve done the same thing for season two, and hopefully we’ve created a structure and a scenario for season two that people will find equally compelling and equally interesting. Some of it has already been set up in the events of season one — just like we do on Arrow where, without even realizing it, toward the end of the season we’re setting up the next season. Once people come back in season two, they’ll look back at some of these episodes in season one and go, “Oh wait a minute, I see where this came from.”
You’ve said season two will introduce more Speedsters. Is that going to be a major theme akin to the Rogues in this season?
Yeah. We are going to introduce a few more speedsters next year and a bunch more villains. How they and those villains come about is part of the surprise of season two. We’re really excited. [Executive producer] Greg [Berlanti] and myself and [executive producer] Geoff Johns and the writers, the cast, the crew, the directors — we are so proud of this season of television. It really is a high mark for all of us, and we feel a great deal of pressure and anxiety to live up to it because it’s been so well received. As proud as excited as we are about everything we’ve done this year, we really are just as proud and excited for all the things we are planning coming up. Hopefully people will continue to take this ride with us.
According to series star Grant Gustin, The Flash’s second season might explore the multiverse. With at least Earth 2 on the table, Gustin said that the series will explore alternate timelines and realities.
“What’s fun about this show is that there’s going to be multiple timelines as we move forward,” Gustin said. “I think we’re going to start showing Earth-One and Earth-Two in the near future. There will be kind of different dimensions going on.”
For those who’s heads aren’t exploding right now, let us explain. In DC Comics, there exists a multiverse of parallel dimensions and realities, all of which explore the DC Universe through a different lens. It’s one of the publisher’s biggest selling points, often playing a key role in their crossover events. Earth 2, for example, hosts all of DC’s golden age, WWII-era characters—including the silver-haired speedster, Jay Garrick.
While a thriving multiverse may work well for a sci-fi-heavy show like The Flash, series co-star Carlos Valdes (Cisco Ramon) thinks it could present a tricky situation for The CW’s other shows, Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow.
“It gets a little Rubik’s Cube-y in terms of keeping consistency between all these timelines and whatnot,” Valdes, always the science nerd, told TVGuide. “But the writers have their stuff together. If I were to trust anyone, it would be them.”
Robbie Amell, who appears on “The Flash” as one half of Firestorm, revealed in an interview with CBR News that although he filmed a sequence for the finale debuting Firestorm’s new matter manipulation ability, the scene was ultimately cut for length.
“In the finale, you were going to see a scene where Caitlin and I are talking. I tell her, we do have a better handle on our powers, [and] I show her a new trick,” Amell explained. “They introduced matter manipulation in the finale — but the finale was also thirty minutes too long, because it’s such a huge, incredible episode, [the scene] was one of the things that could go. You won’t see it, but originally I turn a thermometer into a flower for her. It was a very sweet scene that showed some matter manipulation. Maybe they will release it on the DVD/Blu-ray set… In the finale, there was going to be a scene when we turn into Firestorm. We literally step towards each other and turn into him. There isn’t any difficulty. And, now, we get to do matter manipulation — but nobody gets to see it yet.”
In the show, Raymond and Martin Stein (Victor Garber) have traveled a long, bumpy road to becoming a Firestorm that truly works in tandem. With this new ability, it seems as though the two have finally hit a groove that allows them to explore the possibilities of their metahuman abilities.
With the first season of “The Flash” coming to a close, lead actor Grant Gustin has readily expressed his gratitude for the show’s success. He’s already penned an open letter thanking the show’s cast, crew and fans, and now he’s given an in-depth interview to Buzzfeed in which he reveals what the future holds for the CW’s growing lineup of DC Comics programming.
Joining “Arrow” and “Flash” next season is “Legends of Tomorrow,” a team-up spinoff that features characters that got their start on other CW/DC series. As Gustin revealed in the interview, some “Legends” stars will pull triple duty during the 2015-2016 TV season.
“Like, I’m on ‘Flash,’ but as far as a lot of those other characters are concerned, they’re just on three TV shows at one time, which is really cool,” said Gustin. “Wentworth [Miller, who plays Captain Cold] and Dominic [Purcell, who plays Heat Wave] are on ‘Legends,’ but they’ll be on ‘Arrow’ and ‘Flash,’ too. It’s like a revolving door for all three shows.”
Crossovers with “Arrow” were commonplace during “Flash’s” first season, with a number of characters — including Felicity Smoak, Ray Palmer, Laurel Lance and the Arrow himself — all appearing on the show. Conversely, “Flash” actors Grant Gustin, Danielle Panabaker and Carlos Valdes all appeared on “Arrow.” Appearing on both shows proved to be a little taxing on the actor, as he told Buzzfeed, but he did power through the long schedules and has learned how to handle the workload better.
“When I was doing the ‘Arrow’ crossover for the first time, I thought, I’m going to die at some point this season,” said Gustin. “But we pushed through to Christmas and that was the moment I was like, Oh good, I’m not going to die. And now I know for next season what it’s going to take, I know how to pace myself, and I don’t have to come out of the gate so strong. I put a lot of pressure on myself this time last year, and I’m not doing that to myself now because I trust Andrew [Kreisberg], Greg [Berlanti], Geoff [Johns], and my cast. We all do it together.”
Greg Berlanti takes a hands-on approach to all of the shows in his stable, and over the years has assembled a trusted team to help him execute — Marc Guggenheim, Andrew Kreisberg and Ali Adler, among them — which DC Comics chief content officer Geoff Johns jokingly calls his “Justice League.”
“Honestly, I’m so reliant on others,” Berlanti says to Variety. “It’s the long-term relationships I’ve had that allow me to do multiple things, because you have a shorthand with these people.”
With a total of six shows now in production — the Debra Messing vehicle “Mysteries of Laura” on NBC, along with the CW’s hits “Arrow” (starring Stephen Amell) and “The Flash” (headlined by Grant Gustin), not to mention his upcoming feature “Pan” (due in October) — he’ll need superpowers of his own to manage his staggering workload.
But nervous network execs needn’t worry. The 42-year-old wunderkind says he discovered long ago — going back to his days on the WB’s “Dawson’s Creek,” where he had a meteoric rise to showrunner — what it takes to succeed in the role.
“I learned that I really rely on other writers — that I can break stories quickly, but I can’t write quickly,” he says. “I learned that it’s OK that I’m not great at everything, that there are a lot of things that I may never be as good at as some of the other people I hired. Don’t be threatened by that. Co-opt that. Be good at the stuff you’re good at, but also know what you’re not as strong at.”
So he focuses his time and energy on where he can make the most impact: developing stories, editing, casting. You’ll rarely find him on set.
“I don’t have to be on every phone call for everything that gets approved, but I need everybody to know — whether it’s a junior executive at a network, an actor, a production person or a department head on one of the shows — that they can always reach me,” he says.
His priority is always quality: “I don’t want to do more just to do more it if it’s not good,” he says. And the frustration, he admits, is that he can’t always be where things are going well — it’s the problems that draw his attention. And certainly, the debuting shows will be his focus.
“The first thing I’m thinking about in the morning, and the last thing I’m thinking about at night, are usually the newer ones, because you haven’t figured out the algorithm yet,” Berlanti says. “From the moment the shows get picked up until we have an episode that’s as good as the pilot, I’m usually stressed about how we can do it again.”
That comicbook shows are now a success seems a no-brainer, given that they’re all that seems to be scoring in movies, but “Arrow” was a smallscreen breakthrough. And everyone involved credits Berlanti, a self-professed comicbook geek. It was his passion for the source material that infused the show — along with its successor, “The Flash” — with its emotional heart, compelling narrative and whiz-bang visual effects that have stirred fans and critics alike.
“The first thing I always do is ask, ‘What is the show if you took away (super) powers?’ ” he says. “I only know, as a fan, what I would want to see.” Thanks to his track record, Berlanti has become DC’s go-to producer for its comicbook archive. Cue “Supergirl.”
A comics heroine has been long overdue — even Berlanti’s nieces have been nagging him — so when DC pitched him on the concept, he was intrigued. But rather than keep the show in the vein of what had been done before, he wanted to take a proportional leap. “With what we accomplished and learned from ‘The Flash,’ ” he says, “if we could do that on an even larger scale, on a bigger network, what would that look like?”
CBS, he reports, jumped at the chance. He says entertainment prexy Nina Tassler fell in love with “Supergirl” at the pitch meeting, so much so that she started to cry. “It didn’t matter at that point what they were going to pay for it,” he says. “That’s who you want buying the show.” (Despite the rumor mill, Berlanti says there was never a chance of the show moving to the CW. Plus, he adds, “We would never have been able to afford the kind of budget we have.”)
As with “The Flash,” Berlanti has insisted “Supergirl” invest heavily in visual effects, and Johns calls the money well spent.
“When people see the pilot, they’ll be blown away by what’s accomplished on television,” says the DC content topper. “But Greg knows that it’s not just about spectacle. It has to be about heart; it has to be about humor.”
Casting is paramount to Berlanti: He calls the show’s star, Melissa Benoist, the “Annie Hall” of superheroes.
“The most important decision you can make as a showrunner when you’re doing a pilot is who’s in it, and who’s directing it,” he says. “If we had not found her, I would have said, ‘I don’t want to make this.’ ”
MOVIE RUMOURS & NEWS
Wonder Woman is about to get hot and heavy with Chris Pine. Sources tell Variety the “Star Trek” actor is in negotiations to join Gal Gadot in the upcoming superhero pic for Warner Bros.
Pine would play Gadot’s love interest Steve Trevor in the origin story. Warner Bros. had no comment.
Patty Jenkins, who recently replaced Michelle MacLaren, is directing from a script by Jason Fuchs. “Wonder Woman” will be released on June 23, 2017.
Charles Roven is exec producing the DC Comics tentpole for Atlas Entertainment. Zack Snyder, director of “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice,” is also producing.
In the comics, Steve Trevor was an intelligence officer in the United States Army during World War II whose plane crashed on Paradise Island, the isolated homeland of the Amazons. He was nursed back to health by the Amazon princess Diana, who fell in love with him and followed him when he returned to the outside world. There she became Wonder Woman (and also his co-worker, Diana Prince).
Rumors had suggested that Scott Eastwood had landed the part, but insiders tell that Eastwood was given a choice to test for the Trevor role or sign on for a guaranteed supporting part in “Suicide Squad,” which he opted to take.
Warners tested a handful of other actors but later decided to look at more high-profile names and go with a straight offer. Pine won over production execs and Gadot at his meeting, leading the studio to pursue him for the role.
Pine, having starred as Captain Kirk in the last two “Star Trek” movies, is no stranger to the fanboy world, but “Wonder Woman” will mark his first venture into cinema’s most popular genre and should lead to more opportunities in DC’s Justice League universe. Gadot’s Wonder Woman, of course, plays a key role in Snyder’s forthcoming “Batman v Superman,” which arrives next March.
The CAA-repped Pine is currently in production on the thriller “Comancheria” and will immediately jump into production on “Star Trek 3″ afterward. He can be seen next in “Z for Zacharia” this August and co-stars in the Disney adventure pic “The Finest Hours” bowing next year.
It’s safe to say we’ve seen a lot of great stuff from the Suicide Squad set in Toronto recently, including some high speed chases, and some fascinating scenes from Margot Robbie’s ‘Harley Quinn’, Jared Leto’s ‘Joker’ and a certain Caped Crusader too. Many fans have (somewhat prematurely) started to wonder whether the whole movie was going to be spoiled for them. Thankfully, the movie’s director David Ayer has come out on Twitter to put their fears to rest:
Well we survived the streets. Time to go dark now. Remember, only the tiniest glimpse has been exposed. Our surprises are intact. — David Ayer (@DavidAyerMovies) May 31, 2015
It seems like he’s also signalling the end of filming on the streets of Toronto. This would give merit to his claims that fans aren’t going to see much else from the movie – and that’s probably for the best! Be sure to give the director a follow on Twitter though, you never know what sort of BTS images he could tease fans with over the coming months!
Taking to the ShanlianOnBatman Podcast, Umberto Gonzalez has revealed (as previously reported by BadassDigest) that what he refers to as “the muscle” in Zack Snyder’s upcoming BATMAN v SUPERMAN is none other than the iconic ‘Superman’ villain ‘DOOMSDAY’. Along with letting fans know (at the 39:33 time-stamp) that the villain apparently looks “incredible”, Gonzalez also been told that the [SPOILERS] “DO YOU BLEED” dialogue uttered by Ben Affleck’s ‘Batman’ actually occurs during a dream sequence in the film [END SPOILERS].
Check out the podcast down below starting at the 38: 34 mark for the details via. Elmayimbe himself.
JoBlo’s Paul Shirey is reporting that Batman v. Superman: Dawn Of Justice will indeed feature Jesse Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor suiting up in his trademark green/purple Warsuit on film!
According to Shirey, while the film’s initial conflict will unsurprisingly be between the film’s two titular heroes, Henry Cavill’s Superman and Ben Affleck’s Batman, the true main villain of the Zack Snyder-directed picture is actually Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor, which considering Luthor’s history, isn’t all that shocking. However, where this new Lex Luthor deviates from past iterations is that he will be the first ever depicted on screen to actually put on the Warsuit, an armor that Luthor has been seen wearing for decades in the comics. According to JoBlo’s sources, who have actually seen the Warsuit, the armor looks very comic-accurate, albeit with a slight DCCU touch. He isn’t sure how long Eisenberg will actually wear the armor, but he speculates that it will more likely than not be for at least part of the finale for a sure-to-be epic showdown with Superman.
It’s also not exactly known how Luthor acquires the Warsuit, but a popular theory is that he builds it with leftover Kryptonian technology, which may or may not include General Zod’s corpse, from Man Of Steel’s destructive finale. In addition to confirming that Eisenberg will definitely wear the suit, Shirey also corroborates the reports that Lex isn’t the only villain in the film, but he isn’t sure whether its Doomsday or another major villain like The Joker or Brainiac.
It was just a few years back that director Brad Peyton, fresh off the box office success of his second feature film, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island, signed on to develop a feature film based on DC Comics’ intergalactic antihero, Lobo. Word even followed that the film, to be produced by Joel Silver, looked like it was going to star Journey‘s Dwayne Johnson as the Main Man. Although Johnson and Peyton did reteam, their second project together became this month’s disaster actioner San Andreas instead. Meanwhile, the big screen DC Universe was officially revealed last October without a Czarnian in sight.
“I think what’s happening with DC is that they have prioritized what they need to make first in order to kind of lay the foundations for the DC Universe,” Peyton told ComingSoon.net this weekend at the San Andreas junket. “This is what I believe is happening just from what they’ve been taking about. They’re talking about ‘Justice League,’ ‘Batman v Superman,’ and going into ‘Flash,’ ‘Wonder Woman,’ and ‘Aquaman.’ Those are kind of the pillars of that universe.”
Unfortunately for the project, it sounds like Lobo was put on the back burner at the studio, despite having a completed screenplay.
“It’s one of those things where, creatively, you and I get it, but there’s a lot of people that don’t quite get that,” Peyton said when asked if the success of Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy helped bolster the chances of a film based on a similarly comedically irreverent space-traveling comic book character. “It’s a real uphill battle to talk people into spending a lot of money to do things correctly… I was really happy with the script, [though]. I talked with Dwayne about it. Joel Silver and I had a really amazing meeting about it. I did a rewrite of the script and was really, really excited for it. In their estimation, though, he wasn’t one of those main guys… That’s fair enough. I think that, to do any kind of comic book universe correctly, you do need to establish, ‘Here’s the tone. Here’s the main people.’ Then we can grow offshoots from there. With Marvel, they’re now doing smaller characters like ‘Ant-Man’ and ‘Guardians of the Galaxy.’ They obviously had to start, though, with their big guns and set up ‘The Avengers.’ I kind of feel like that’s where DC is now. They’re setting that team up.”
Does that mean that Lobo could return somewhere down the line? Peyton seems optimistic at the prospect.
“I think there’s going to be a really amazing time for ‘Lobo’ and I think people are going to realize, certainly once they revisit it, what they’re sitting on,” he says. “But you never know. I’m really happy with the project and where we got it and fingers crossed it comes to fruition at some point.”
It was revealed last month that Phil Lord and Chris Miller (The LEGO Movie, 21 Jump Street) are writing Warner Bros. Pictures’ upcoming big screen take on DC Comics’ fastest man alive. Although it was already revealed that The Flash, set for release March 23, 2018, will star Ezra Miller as Central City’s scarlet speedster, Lord announced during The Hippojuice Podcast (via /Film), that The Perks of Being a Wallflower star will likely be playing a new iteration of Barry Allen as opposed to one of the other men who have, in the comics, appeared as the hero.
“We’re trying to break a story,” says Lord. “It’s interesting, because there’s a really popular TV show out there, and we’re trying to carve out space for the movie that’s apart from that. I think we’re doing alright. …I believe [our Flash] is going to be Barry Allen. …We’re more trying to stick with the cinematic universe… iI really is its own thing and is kind of a stand-alone movie. We’re just trying to think of the best story. I think you guys will like it, it’s kind of a different take on superhero stuff. I’m optimistic!”
Miller is expected to also appear as Allen in Justice League Part One and, although unconfirmed, could even make a debut in next year’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
New promo art for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice has surfaced onlin, and it finally shows the two iconic heroes coming to blows. Some live-action stills would obviously be nice, but we’re probably still quite some time away from that, so this will do very nicely in the meantime. As you may have realised, both of these pay homage to some classic comic book images by David Finch and Jim Lee.
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is currently promoting his new movie San Andreas, but he also took some time to share his excitement for his upcoming role as the Shazam villain Black Adam in the DC Cinematic Universe.
“I can’t wait,” Johnson told HeyUGuys at the San Andreas world premiere. “He’s a unique type of villain. When you start off as a slave, you’re not in a good mood! There’s a heavy wrath that a lot of people have to pay. But when it’s fuelled by a righteous anger if you will, like Black Adam, then you open up to what the character can be which I’m really excited about. That’s why he’s not just a straightforward bad guy.”
Johnson has gone on to confirm in a new interview that the Shazam movie will come sooner than expected.
This won’t come as much of a surprise as The Rock has previously implied to MTV in March that Shazam is not beholden to the 2019 release date WB gave it back in October of 2014. Now, The Rock is sounds much more confident.
“No, I don’t think it is going to be that far away,” The Rock said when asked if fans will have to wait until 2019 to see Shazam. “It’s going to be earlier than that. I don’t think 2019.”
The latest scoop from HeoricHollywood’s El Mayimbe (formerly of Latino Review) is that Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman is really old in Zack Snyder’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. In fact, she’s been around for centuries! It sounds outlandish, but this actually lends itself to previous reports that the Wonder Woman film will be something of a prequel to the DC Cinematic Universe, with the Amazonian warrior’s solo outing being a Period Piece.
It will be interesting to see whether Snyder goes with Wonder Woman’s New 52 origin- that she’s half-Olympian God, the daughter of Zeus ( a female Hercules essentially).
Snyder could also opt for the pre-New 52 origin which details her origin as a clay statue given life by the Olympian Gods. The third option, is that Snyder comes up with a completely new origin story for Wonder Woman but that seems unlikely given Snyder’s penchant for remaining relatively close to the source material.
George Miller’s abandoned Justice League Mortal movie is one of the most mysterious comic book movies that never got made. While other canceled comic book movies have seen a lot of concept art surface online, no concept art for Justice League Mortal has ever been revealed. That is until now.
Australian director Ryan Unicomb sat down with Inside Film to discuss his vision.“I have always been fascinated with project, which would be in the same vein as 2013’s Jodorowsky’s Dune and this year’s The Death of Superman Lives: What Happened?, about a Superman movie that Tim Burton was to direct in the 1990s.” Unicomb is working on the documentary about George Miller’s abandoned Justice League movie, and the official twitter account for Miller’s Justice League Mortal documentary has just revealed the first three pieces of concept art ever shown for the film.
One piece of concept art shows what Aquaman’s costume would have looked like in the film, while the other two pieces of concept art show Wonder Woman in action. Also a concept sculpt of J’onn J’onzz the Martian Manhunter was released.
The Miller’s Justice League Mortal documentary hopes to feature never before seen artwork, interviews with some of the proposed cast and crew, and a behind the curtain look into what really happened to bring the blockbuster to its knees. The documentary plans to present a non-biased recount of the development, pre-production and untimely cancellation of the project as well as the long lasting effect it had on the Australian Film Industry.
The project is currently in development and hopes to begin filming later this year.
BOOM and there you go that wraps up another DC Delights for you lovely people! Be sure to check back next week for more!
Coming off near universally positive reviews, Mad Max: Fury Road had a solid opening weekend, but it wasn’t quite the stratosphere-breaking number that some were hoping. Pitch Perfect 2 was always going to win the weekend given its PG-13 rating, broad fanbase, and the fact that it’s a female-led movie marketed to female moviegoers (shocker: when Hollywood decides to make them, these movies do well!), but with a reported $150 million budget, some see Fury Road’s $44 million opening as disappointing. Why? Because they want a sequel, of course.
Director George Miller hasn’t been shy about the fact that he’s planned more than one new Mad Max movie, previously confirming that he’s written the follow-ups. Speaking on The Q&A Podcast with Jeff Goldsmith (via The Playlist), Miller went one further and confirmed that the Fury Road follow-up is titled Mad Max: The Wasteland:
“We’ve got one screenplay and a novella. It happened because with the delays [on Fury Road] and writing all the backstories, they just expanded.”
Indeed Miller seems keen on continuing this franchise, but that will depend on a couple of factors. First of all is box office, seeing as how Miller’s way of making these movies (ie. the way that ends in a masterpiece) isn’t cheap. For an R-rated movie Fury Road is doing fine and should have legs, but we’ll have to see how it continues over the next few weeks. But hey, if Pacific Rim’s box office was enough to warrant a sequel, Fury Road shouldn’t have too much of a problem.
The other factor is the actors. It’s no secret that Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy butted heads on set, and indeed Theron confirmed to Esquire that it was a tough shoot:
“We fuckin’ went at it, yeah. And on other days, he and George [Miller, the director] went at it. It was the isolation, and the fact that we were stuck in a rig for the entire shoot. We shot a war movie on a moving truck — there’s very little green screen. It was like a family road trip that just never went anywhere. We never got anywhere. We just drove. We drove into nothingness, and that was maddening sometimes. And it’s material that’s really frightening — we didn’t have a script. Tom and I are actors who take our jobs seriously. Both of us want to please the directors we work with, and when you don’t know if you can deliver on that, it’s a frightening place to be — and for Tom more than me, because he was stepping into big shoes.”
Theron has said previously that she’s not crazy about returning given how grueling a shoot Fury Road was. Action sequences aren’t fun to shoot, and when you consider that Fury Road is nothing but action sequences, it becomes a really tough production for an actor. Of course The Wasteland could be more Max-centric, so it’s also possible Furiosa doesn’t return.
At the Los Angeles press day Collider had landed an interview with George Miller. He talked about the various challenges of making Mad Max: Fury Road, deleted scenes, if he’ll do an extended cut on the Blu-ray, what version he test screened in Burbank a year ago, what his version of Contact would have been like, if he has a lot of unproduced screenplays, if making a superhero movie is still on his list of things to do (he came thisclose to making Justice League), and a lot more.
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Speaking with /Film, the filmmaker discussed a black and white cut of Fury Road that he says is the best version of the film:
“We spent a lot of time in DI (digital intermediate), and we had a very fine colorist, Eric Whipp. One thing I’ve noticed is that the default position for everyone is to de-saturate post-apocalyptic movies. There’s only two ways to go, make them black and white — the best version of this movie is black and white, but people reserve that for art movies now. The other version is to really go all-out on the color. The usual teal and orange thing? That’s all the colors we had to work with. The desert’s orange and the sky is teal, and we either could de-saturate it, or crank it up, to differentiate the movie. Plus, it can get really tiring watching this dull, de-saturated color, unless you go all the way out and make it black and white.”
It’s fascinating to hear Miller say he prefers this black and white version, especially since the over-saturated nature of the visuals are one of the (many) reasons Fury Road stands out as distinct amongst a sea of other blockbusters. However, if you’re curious about this black and white cut, there’s a strong possibility you’ll get to see it. Per /Film, Miller aims to put this version on the Blu-ray:
A while after this talk, during a post-film reception, I spoke with Miller about his affinity for that black and white version of Fury Road. He said that he has demanded a black and white version of Fury Road for the Blu-ray, and that version of the film will feature an option to hear just the isolated score as the only soundtrack — the purest and most stripped-down version of Fury Road you can imagine.
Collider had an interview with Tom Hardy. He talked about making Fury Road, filming on location in Namibia, what he learned from making such a massive movie, collaborating with George Miller and how the film has one of the “coolest female leads ever”.
What day did you realize when you were filming, ‘Holy fuck. Are we gonna get through this thing?’ Because of the practicality and the actual filming of this thing.
HARDY: I think day one, as soon as we landed. Because we were in the middle of nowhere—well actually Namibia is not in the middle of nowhere, if you’re in Namibia it’s absolutely fine. If you’re logistically trying to create an X amount of hundred million dollar movie, and you’re that far away from Los Angeles and you’re that far away from Australia which your home base is, Namibia is right in the middle of both of those places in the middle of the desert and it could be hard to get anything to and from that place and all that crap. Those vehicles, the stars, the camera crew, the actors; just a kit, and then to take that kit and that equipment that you need and move it all around the locations that you have to manifest the huge infrastructure and epic nature of that movie. Day one since you arrived there it was so, ‘This is a beast’ and how do you eat an elephant? Which I suppose –metaphorically speaking– would be a mouthful at a time. So it became a very methodological approach, a step at a time for seven months or whatever it was. But every day was a big day for stunts and you knew that something could inevitably go wrong at any given time, so a lot of care was taken to avoid any of this. And not to mention, it’s not like a military film. You’re seeing military vehicles, it would kind of make more sense to see this kind of organization; but what you saw was some kind of Hell’s Angels, S&M, Cirque Du Soleil fetish party. In the middle of the desert. So it was kind of surreal as well to see this military campaign going on in the middle of the desert, as some kind of strange festival, an orchestration of mad, epic stunts, violence, and surrealism.
Yeah, it’s crazy. Are there a lot of deleted scenes in the movie that you remember filming that didn’t make the finished film?
HARDY: No. Everything that George [Miller] had in a 300 page sort of comic book document, frame by frame is accurately executed an up on the screen, but much more relentless and hydraulic and dynamic than it would be in a comic book.
Sure.
HARDY: It was not until I saw the finished piece and I saw the latest version last night that I realized fully what George was trying to articulate on the floor. Because you couldn’t explain what I saw, and we wouldn’t have known—it was like trying to herd cats. He was trying to explain to us a color we hadn’t seen yet, so we were trying to understand but couldn’t have fully understood.
The thing that really struck me is that even though film is a hundred years old or over a hundred years old, I really think that he accomplished something that has not been done, in terms of telling the story. It’s innovative filmmaking, even with everything else that he’s done. Did you take that away from the film or what did you take away from the finished version?
HARDY: I can see what you’re saying, I think. I took a lot away from the film, to be fair. I mean a lot of it is hard to explain because I’d never done anything like this before. So now I think having worked with Alejandro [González Iñárritu]—now we’re eight months into it in another big sort of epic—my shoulders are wider enough to have the patience of how long it takes to get things of an epic nature done. So there is no end [Laughs], it’s easier to be, not patient, but to give myself over to a process which is seemingly relentless and unending, because I know there is an end to it and the results that can also be unequivocally masterful and brilliant. So I’ve learned that as a stretch. It was a muscle stretch as a performer because I’ve never done anything that big before, so Fury Road was a massive education for that.
As for filmmaking terms, I think George is somebody who challenges himself even though he’s getting up there towards 70 years of age now. This is a movie that one might attribute to a much more youthful perhaps director and a real mistake, because this is a wise man’s action movie, this is a man who’s had years and years of thoughts and meditation on his own. Everything from the original Mad Max to Babe, Happy Feet, which is historic and he’s really visited his world of which he’s created an entire culture, like a counterculture and a cult as it were. He’s really invested in it. He’s not come back and mad a superficial action movie, he’s come back and done three immediate things: He’s tested himself to a point where not only has he upped the finance behind his movie and subsequent downstream—there’s also films, and concepts, scripts, and comic books, and all kinds of stuff in the offing for George and a wealth of material on Mad Max. But also he pushed himself to a point where he got his team to do things that they hadn’t done before, like the stunt teams.
Chris Nolan would ask his folks to flip a truck or to take a plane out of the sky and that is an extensively difficult live-action stunt to do, because you want to see it done properly because it brings the audience in a bit closer as opposed to CGI or visual effects. George wanted to do that for an entire movie, so he demanded a huge amount of pressure of his stunt department and his drivers, they challenged them and they had to make that come true, and then you needed to cohesively hybrid that between the narrative storytelling with the characters and dialogue and physical action from the actors. They would seamlessly sort of blend it together with this action performance also combined together in a stylized design element, all of it is just his signature. So he’s pushed himself there, and then if you listen to the soundtrack, again, George Miller, you can’t sell George Miller anything, he chooses what he wants, he goes out there he finds it. You can torture him, but ultimately George is very clear about what he wants and methodically with due diligence picks exactly what he wants to fulfill his vision. And he chose that dubstep and mixed it with like hard vehicle sort of sounds and ambience sounds. The man has one foot in the future, he’s in the present and he has a legacy of the past drawn together, so he’s challenged himself and he’s got a mythology there’s nothing underneath this epic movie.
That’s why I said out of all the movies I’ve seen, I’ve never seen anything like this.
HARDY: Makes sense what you’re saying, I guess I hear you.
It’s fucking bonkers and awesome.
HARDY: And then the next thing he does is he says it’s Mad Max and he actually delivers arguably one of the fucking coolest female leads ever, and she’s an amputee [Laughs]. As if it isn’t enough to have a female lead who’s like a person of great strength, let alone a female lead, but she’s got one arm. So, he’s killing it, right across the board. George’s mind is I think sacred, of sorts, and he articulates in great sensitivity so I think so there’s nothing glib.
Collider again had an interview with Abbey Lee (she plays one of the women on the run from Immortan Joe). She talked about how she got into acting from modeling, memorable moments filming Mad Max: Fury Road, what it’s been like filming Nicolas Winding Refn’s The Neon Demon (she calls the film “mind bending”), her character in Alex Proyas’ Gods of Egypt, her worst jobs before acting/modeling, and a lot more.
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Charlize Theron’s stunt double, Dayna Grant tweeted out a bunch of behind-the-scenes set photos. Looking at these images, it creates hope that the Blu-ray will have an outstanding documentary that delves deep into the film’s practical effects and stunt work.
Lastly, speaking with MTV News, “Fury Road” production designer Colin Gibson revealed the instrument wasn’t a mere prop: It was a functioning guitar that also happened to belch flames.
“George — unfortunately — doesn’t like things that don’t work,” Gibson said. “I have in the past built him props that I thought were just supposed to be props, and then he goes, ‘OK, plug it in now.’ The first version of the guitar which — I think I put too much into the flame thrower, not enough into the reverb. And yes, the flame-throwing guitar did have to operate, did have to play, the PA system did have to work and the drummers … Unfortunately, I did get practice in all positions, and I’ve got to tell you, the drumming was very uncomfortable at 70 [kilometers] an hour, eating sand.”
Sean Hape, aka iOTA, who played the maniacal Doof Warrior strapped to the amps, conceded to Noisey that it “wasn’t a great guitar.”
“It spent a lot of time out in the desert, you wouldn’t want to record with it,” he said. “Most of the time, I’d just try to make noise. I pulled out some AC/DC, some Soundgarden, some Zeppelin, but after eight hours, you do just start thumping on it for a while.”
In George Miller’s postapocalyptic Mad Max: Fury Road, you are what you drive, with the tricked-out vehicles as essential as food and water. Miller and his production designer, Colin Gibson, combed junkyards in Australia to jury-rig nearly 150 killer rides, including the 1974 Ford Falcon XB GT coupe driven by Max (Tom Hardy). It’s the same model as the one in the original 1979 film, just in much worse shape. “We put it through hell,” says Gibson. “It’s basically beaten to death and falling apart, like Max himself when we first discover him.” Here’s a look at three other wasteland wrecks.
FURIOSA’S WAR RIG The monster truck driven by Charlize Theron’s heroine is “the dramatic heart of the film,” Gibson says. The stage for numerous nasty battles, the 78-foot 18-wheeler is the love child of a Czechoslovakian military off-roader and a 1940s Chevy Fleetmaster, with a Volkswagen Beetle thrown in as a rear-gun turret. Yes, those are human skulls on the grille. Don’t cross Furiosa.
IMMORTAN JOE’S GAS-GUZZLER The villain Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne) shows off his might with this gnarly ride made from multiple 1959 Cadillac Coupe de Villes. That model is so beloved and rare Down Under that Gibson had to scrounge up five cars in the States, cut them apart, and weld them together. “I jacked them up with over-two-meter-high wheels and gave them double V-8 engines,” he says.
NUX’S WARMONGER-MOBILE Bloodthirsty Immortan Joe devotee Nux (Nicholas Hoult) gets around in a 1932 five-window deuce coupe with canted wheels and weaponized exhaust pipes. “It’s almost the perfect hot-rod car,” Gibson says, “with a crucifix off the front for spearing, harpooning, and lancing—and that we lash Max to at the beginning of the film.” Jesus, take the wheel indeed. Source: Entertainment Weekly
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