Captain Phillips was an incredibly taut and finely made thriller that ranked among the very best films of last year, so it's very exciting to learn today that its director Paul Greengrass and producer Scott Rudin are already planning another collaboration. Sticking to ripped-from-the-headlines drama, the pair are reteaming for the red-hot book Agent Storm: My Life Inside Al Qaeda, which is set to hit U.S. bookstores in September.
At Comic-Con this year, Legendary stunned panel attendees by revealing that it was planning a new King Kong feature, titled Skull Island. The reveal wasn't accompanied by much information (just a tantalizing teaser), but today brings more updates about the project - as well as a reassurance (like we needed it) that Legendary isn't wasting any time with this one.
Disney's upcoming adaptation of Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book has been ahead of a competing project set up at Warner Bros. for a very long time, and that's not changing today. The Disney version, which Jon Favreau is directing, just added Breaking Bad alum Giancarlo Esposito and acting legend Christopher Walken to its already impressive voice cast.
After scaring the pants off us throughout Showtime's Penny Dreadful, Eva Green is heading back into spooky, supernatural territory, with news that she's in talks to topline Tim Burton's upcoming Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children.
Fox's upcoming series Gotham, which charts the struggles of Jim Gordon (Ben McKenzie) to clean up the streets of Gotham City long before Batman ever arrived on the scene, fared very well at Comic-Con this year. The pilot episode was screened in Hall H on Saturday night to major applause from attendees - in particular, Sean Pertwee's edgier Alfred Pennyworth was a hit, and audiences loved Gordon's action heroics.
Comic-Con is a wonderful place, one where exciting scoops can emerge from unexpected places. Attendees at the panel for Alexandre Aja's upcoming Horns, a Daniel Radcliffe-led horror comedy about a young man trying to solve his girlfriend's murder (which looks amazing by the way), were treated to plenty of information about that project, but one well-placed question led to an update about an entirely different but also promising project - Universal's comic adaptation Locke & Key.
One of the movies that departed Comic-Con with the most wind in its sails this year was definitely Mad Max: Fury Road, which debuted a first trailer to widespread acclaim from fans of the dystopian franchise. And though we have a while to wait until the film, which stars Tom Hardy as Max and Charlize Theron as a new character named Furiosa, hits theaters next summer, recent comments by George Miller suggest that Fury Road will almost certainly lead in to even more Mad Max madness.
Few filmmakers have as much geek cred as Guillermo del Toro, who has brought us some of the most visually enchanting fantasy films in cinematic history. He's the man who made us love the Antichrist with Hellboy, created the terrifying Pale Man in Pan's Labyrinth, and who brought us giddily back to our childhood days of mashing together action figures with Pacific Rim (among other stunning accomplishments). So, it wasn't exactly a shock when his Comic-Con panel in Hall H, showcasing del Toro's upcoming Crimson Peak, was received with wild excitement from attendees.
Transformation (or perhaps more aptly, mutation) is again the theme of this week's episode of The Strain, and I mean that both in terms of the major characters and the rather unsightly changes the plane survivors are undergoing. This show isn't afraid to make its vampires really gross, and the body horror aspects of "Gone Smooth" are what will stick with me the most about it. But there's more to the episode than just those physical changes - in its third installment, The Strain still feels like it's shifting as a show, figuring out what it wants to be. Unfortunately, there's more Scooby Doo-esque dialogue and silly acting in "Gone Smooth" than the last two installments combined, but I'm willing to forgive The Strain that trespass for what it still offers - campy/creepy scares, top-notch visual effects and an ambitious storyline that so far isn't getting side-tracked by any of the characters' individual subplots.
Would Damon Lindelof be a member of the Guilty Remnant? Based on "Gladys," the misery-loving latest episode of his series The Leftovers, I'd have to say yes. But what is he trying to tell us? That's as unclear as the motivations of the show's actual GR members. The Leftovers quickly reached a point of diminishing returns after its enigmatic and atmosphere-heavy pilot, and I know I wouldn't still be watching if I didn't have to review the show week after week for all of you. After watching "Gladys," I have to question whether The Leftovers actually has any purpose other than depressing the hell out of its viewers. The show's big mystery may never be answered, its characters are all frustrating a-holes and its bleakness appears to be the main attraction. And I'm feeling fed up with it all.
