Find out what The Dark Tower movie takes from across the entire novel series. Gal Gadot talks about the values behind the Wonder Woman movie. Plus, Captain Power is coming back, and new looks at American Gods, Powerless and Luke Cage. To me, my spoilers!
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
Fan site The Star Wars Post offers a rumour that Dr Cornelius Evazan and Ponda Baba — AKA those guys that Luke bumps into in the Mos Eisley Cantina in A New Hope, only for Obi-Wan to casually slice Baba’s arm off — are in the movie, bolstered by a screengrab from the behind-the-scenes reel shown at Celebration Europe this weekend.
That’s supposedly them in the background, unless you suddenly think Felicity Jones is playing an alien fishman.
If the figures in the background are Evazan and Baba, then they are on Jedha during the events of the movie, presumably a very short time before their fateful encounter with Luke Skywalker in Mos Eisley. It’s likely a background Easter egg rather than a major point in the film — but still, a weird callback to the original movie if true.
The Dark Tower
Entertainment Weekly has a new feature about what elements from each book in Stephen King’s saga are actually in the movie, including an interesting tidbit that the climax of the final book in the series is actually the beginning of the movie, seemingly confirming recent speculation about the film potentially being set in a new cycle of events, rather than a straight adaptation of the books:
The ending of the novels figures prominently in the beginning of this movie. Without spoiling very much, Roland has the Horn of Eld in his possession in the film, which is a signal that his journey is starting anew — and each turn of the wheel of Ka, or fate, rolls him to a new place even as it returns to the same position.
Star Trek 4
The movie — which has now been confirmed as starring Chris Hemsworth as George Kirk, Kirk’s father, seen dying heroically in the first reboot movie — will, unsurprisingly, not recast the role of Chekov, according to J.J. Abrams:
I would say there’s no replacing him. There’s no recasting. I can’t possibly imagine that, and I think Anton deserves better.
The producer also said that the creative team is still deciding if they want to acknowledge Anton Yelchin’s tragic passing with a funeral for Chekov in the film:
I have thought about it, we’re working on it, and it’s too early to talk about it.
Emojimovie: Express Yourself
T.J. Miller will star in the Emoji movie, which continues to be a facet of our absurd existence. Here’s his “audition”:
Wonder Woman
Gal Godot tells Entertainment Weekly about the film’s female-focused creativity:
It’s a story about a girl becoming a woman. I think only a woman, who has been a girl, can be able to tell the story in the right way.
All my life I’ve been working with male directors which I’ve really enjoyed. And I’m lucky in that I’ve worked with men who have a lot of respect for women. But working with a woman is a different experience. It feels like the communication is different. We talk about emotions. With Patty, it’s a thing now, we communicate with our eyes. She doesn’t need to say a thing. If I’m hurt, she feels the pain. It’s a whole different connection that I have with her. She’s also brilliant, she’s bright, she’s fierce, she’s sharp. She knows exactly what she wants ‘Wonder Woman’ to be.
For a long time, people didn’t know how to approach the story. When Patty and I had our creative conversations about the character, we realised that Diana can still be a normal woman, one with very high values, but still a woman. She can be sensitive. She is smart and independent and emotional. She can be confused. She can lose her confidence. She can have confidence. She is everything. She has a human heart.
Jason Bourne
Matt Damon only has 25 lines of dialogue in the whole film!
Well, I’ve done it three times. In the first movie, the Marie Kreutz character [Bourne’s girlfriend, played by Franka Potente) is still alive, so Bourne has a sounding board and he’s more confused about who he is and a lot more chatty. Once she dies in the first act of the second movie, it’s really a very lonely character. And we talked about that mostly on the second one. I remember Tony writing me an email saying, ‘You do realise what this means? You do realise you’re not going to talk in this movie.’ I said, ‘No, I love that.’
Suicide Squad
Amanda Waller is your consequence in her very own TV spot:
Phoenix Rising
A reboot of Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future is in the works at Planet X Productions, with co-creator Gary Goddard confirming his involvement. The reboot is set in the wake of a devastating war between humanity and an artificial intelligence, only for the son of the man who started the conflict to discover a highly advanced power suit that lets him and a ragtag group of resistance fighters fight back against the machines. [Deadline]
Gotham
Benedict Samuel has been cast as the Mad Hatter. Deadline describes the show’s version of Jervis Tetch as such:
…a talented hypnotist teetering on the edge of madness. He arrives in Gotham with an unwavering desire to find his sister, Alice, a young woman who went missing in the city years ago. It is anyone’s guess just how far down the rabbit hole he’s willing to go in order to find her.
American Gods
Here’s the first look at Bilquis, played by Yetide Badaki.
Powerless
Ron Funches has joined the cast, as revealed in a new poster. He’ll play Ron, a “sweet and innocent” IT guy who works at Retcon Insurance, who lacks the jaded view of superheroes that many of his colleagues harbour. [EW]
Luke Cage
Here’s the show’s SDCC poster, featuring art by Joe Quesada. [TV Insider]
Blindspot
And here’s a season two poster. [ET Online]
Emerald City
Finally, here’s some character posters for the show — more can be found here.
Additional reporting by Gordon Jackson. Banner art by Jim Cooke.