Though much about Warner Bros. and DC Comics' highly anticipated Wonder Woman movie is being kept tightly under wraps, it's going to be damn near impossible for the studios to avoid some details leaking out during filming.
In an unusual move for a major studio, Lionsgate has opted to get ahead of bad press about the thoroughly whitewashed cast of its forthcoming Egyptian fantasy-epic Gods of Egypt by issuing a public apology - months before the pricey flick is due to hit theaters.
With his historical action-drama In the Heart of the Sea steadily gathering Oscar buzz as it prepares for a theatrical bow in just a couple of weeks, director Ron Howard is already lining up another red-hot project: psychological thriller The Girl Before.
WEtv isn't exactly known for its scripted programming, and South of Hell is sure as hell not about to change that. The series is airing all of its seven episodes back-to-back over the course of a Black Friday marathon, a decision that might be perceived as ambitious until one actually watches the show, at which point it becomes obvious that the strategy is more intended to burn the series off quickly and quietly.
The premise of Amazon's The Man in the High Castle is still as grimly transfixing today as it was back in 1962 when Philip K. Dick's source-material novel first hit shelves: what if the Axis Powers had triumphed in World War II, conquering the United States and dividing it into a Nazi-controlled east, a Japan-ruled west and a lawless neutral zone in between? And as executed by renowned X-Files writer Frank Spotnitz, the series is every bit as nightmarishly gripping as its literary namesake, a portrait of alt-history America so richly, intricately sketched that it almost immediately feels that most chilling of adjectives for a show of this nature: plausible.
A bawdy and big-hearted stocking-stuffer for the adults used to enduring all manner of kid-friendly rubbish around the holidays, The Night Before is also much, much better than the movie it's being sold as. Yes, this is an R-rated, drug-filled, profanity-laden comedy about three friends (Seth Rogen, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Anthony Mackie) who set out to end their annual tradition of Christmas Eve debauchery on a (very) high note. And yes, it totally follows through on that premise, taking said friends on an insane adventure through the snow-dusted streets of New York City as they struggle to make their way to that most hallowed of holiday bashes: the Nutcracka Ball.
Earlier this year, Marvel's Daredevil, Netflix's first collaboration with the superhero studio, sent fanboys into a rightful frenzy when it debuted on the streaming service not just as the fully realized introduction to The Man Without Fear that had been promised, but also as a surprisingly grim and gripping crime drama in its own right, bolstered by some top-notch fight choreography (that Oldboy-inspired hallway sequence) as well as Marvel's first thoroughly marvelous villain in Vincent D'Onofrio's mercurial Wilson Fisk/Kingpin.
Yes, Starz's Flesh and Bone is set within the high-stakes, higher-anxiety world of competitive ballet. No, that does not make it Black Swan: The Series. Hailing from Breaking Bad writer Moira Walley-Beckett (who penned that series' finest hour, "Ozymandias"), the eight-episode limited series is unmistakably its own kind of creature, a "dark and gritty" drama-with-a-capital-D punctuated by moments of over-the-top camp and truly transcendent dance.
Hope you're not weary of hearing about all thingsĀ Suicide Squad this week, because director David Ayer isn't quite done discussing what sets his entry in WB and DC's cinematic universe apart from the rest of the superhero movies out there (other than, you know, a tatted-up Joker with rock-hard abs).
Poor Guillermo del Toro. First, Universal mismarketed the crap out of his very beautiful, very Gothic love story Crimson Peak, forcing him to defend himself for making the movie he always wanted to make and not the crowdpleasing haunted-house frightener a less distinctive filmmaker might have gone for. And now, the studio is keeping him (and all of us) on tenterhooks about whether Pacific Rim: Maelstrom, the troubled sequel to his big-budget ode to kaiju cinema, is ever going to happen.
