Michael Fassbender promises scares for Alien: Covenant. Agent Coulson’s robo-hand is getting some upgrades on Agents of SHIELD. Echo Kellum says he’ll be suiting up in Arrow season five. Plus, more details on the plans for the CW’s big DC show crossover event, and new looks at Wonder Woman and MacGyver. Spoilers now!
Spider-Man: Homecoming
Director Jon Watts talks about the long-rumoured decision to use the Vulture as the movie’s primary villain, telling Comicbook.com:
Well, we wanted to sort of go back to the origins of what made Spider-Man and Peter Parker so unique you know, and that’s why we just sort of really doubled down on the idea that he is a kid. He is a high school student in this crazy universe. He has to keep his identity a secret, which a lot of the other characters in the MCU don’t, um, and just, in general, going back to those origins ya know. The Vulture is really the first supervillain that Spider-Man ever fights in Amazing Spider-Man, the second issue, after the chameleon, so it just felt like the right thing to do, to go back to the roots in that way.
We talked about a lot of different things but The Vulture always sort of rose to the top and just the opportunity to have Spider-Man versus a guy that can fly really lends itself to some pretty cool visuals.
He also tells the site how he views where the movie slots into Marvel’s vast cinematic landscape:
I think of it as the ground floor. If the Avengers Tower is the penthouse and we know what it’s like to be a millionaire, billionaire playboy to be Tony or we know what it’s like to be a God on another planet, that’s the penthouse level of the MCU. Spider-Man is the ground floor. What does a high school in the MCU look like? What does riding the subway in the MCU feel like? Spider-Man seems like the most perfect opportunity because he’s the most regular person in the canon that I thought he was a great chance to show what that angle of the MCU feels like.
The Division
Jessica Chastain is in talks to star in the adaptation of Ubisoft’s shooting game, set in a wintry near-future New York ravaged by a biological terror attack. [THR]
Blade Runner 2
Lennie James has joined the cast in an undisclosed role. [/Film]
Alien: Covenant
The new Alien will be much scarier than Prometheus, according to Michael Fassbender:
This Alien is going to be… I’m very excited to see it and everybody in the film was saying this is a film that we all want to see. It’s much scarier than Prometheus but it’s got the same sort of scope of Prometheus. It’s kind of got more of the sort of thriller, imminent disaster feel that Alien had, so it’s kind of a beautiful meeting of both of those films. I’m really excited to see it, I think it’s gonna be super scary number one and then again with the massive scope of Prometheus… Once it starts and the ball starts rolling, it doesn’t let up. It’s really gonna bring chills to the cinema.
[Collider]
Wonder Woman
Empire has released a new still of Diana in the trenches.
Pitchfork
Here’s a new trailer for the horror film about a “misshapen beast” on the prowl.
Arrow
Echo Kellum says that he’ll definitely be suiting up as Mr Terrific in the next season:
I can definitely say you’ll see [the costume] this season, 100%. You won’t have to wait too long. It’s something that’s definitely a part of Curtis.
CW/DC TV Shows
Arrow producer Wendy Mericle re-confirms the big crossover story will affect all four DC shows next season, stating that the story will develop over the course of a single week of programming on the shows:
Yes we [have a loose plan] for the crossover. It’s loose, but we know that it will go in order for the week, you know, Supergirl [Monday], Flash [Tuesday], Arrow [Wednesday], Legends [Thursday]. That’s the loose plan right now.
It opens up so many story telling possibilities, you have all sorts of things you can play with now that we didn’t have before. If it was still just Arrow, we wouldn’t be going back to the basics; we never would have moved away from the basics in a lot of ways! Flash opened doors for Metas, and they can do time travel – we’re not doing that though! It is challenging because it gives you more to balance, more to process, but it’s more than outweighed by the fact you have so many more ways to tell stories than you did three or four seasons ago.
The Walking Dead
Scott Gimple discusses how the show’s world will expand beyond the confines of Alexandria in the next season:
We have these groups coming into the mix. Some of these groups, we’ve only seen hints of, like the Saviors. They exist in their own society. We see that. We talked about the Kingdom. That’s their own place. We saw Tara and Heath in a weird place. There’s Alexandria. With these places, you have different characters and ways of life. We’re expanding literally to these types of locations but also with these characters and the types of lives that they lead.
Stranger Things
Matt Duffer says season two will be “more of a sequel” than a second season:
We don’t answer all the questions by the end of the season — there are definitely some dangling threads. The hope is that it feels satisfying but that we left room and that if people respond to it we can go back into this world. But if we do get to go back, it’s not a second season as much as a sequel.
Ross Duffer chimed in:
There’s a lot there we don’t know or understand. Even with ‘The Upside Down,’ we have a 30-page document that is pretty intricate in terms of what it all means, and where this monster actually came from, and why aren’t there more monsters — we have all this stuff that we just didn’t have time for, or we didn’t feel like we needed to get into in season one, because of the main tension of Will. We have that whole other world that we haven’t fully explored in this season, and that was very purposeful.
[Variety]
Agents of SHIELD
Clark Gregg says he’s getting a few upgrades for Coulson’s robotic hand next season:
Yes. I think Fitz just surprises Coulson with a new version, it’s like an iPhone. He just comes up and hands him a new hand every once in a while. In fact, maybe the instructions are just on the hand!
MacGyver
Finally, here’s some new pictures from the pilot. More at the link. [Spoiler TV]
Additional reporting by Gordon Jackson. Banner art by Jim Cooke.