Welcome back to Studio Coffee Run, Friday Edition!

I hope everyone is fully recovered from New York Comic-Con, although I personally still have quite a bit of stuff to share from it. The Beatstaff really killed it this year, but even with thirty-plus “Beaters” on the ground, I didn’t run into a single one. Maybe I’m just really good at covering comic-cons in “stealth mode,” but thanks to Josh Hilgenberg for filling in for an extra spot last week.

In Case You Missed It…

Did you know that it was “LOST week”?

Lots of fun stuff has been written by The Beat staff about the beloved and hardly-forgotten ABC drama that’s been so pivotal to where we’re at today as far as quality television. Who knows? Maybe yours truly might have something to add to the mix, but you’ll have to wait until later this afternoon to find out what. You can read all of it here.

Sony has given us a nice preview of the Playstation 5

I’m an X-Box diehard but over a year before its release for the holidays in 2020, Sony’s Playstation 5 is not looking too shabby for those who have been thinking of an upgrade.

There’s also a lot of great movie and television stuff still being posted from last week’s New York Comic-Con which you can find here. I wrote about TNT’s Snowpiercer series, and I hope to have some stuff on Alex Garland’s FX series DEVSvery soon as well.

“I thought that X-Men theme song sounded familiar,” says some sue-happy Hungarian…

X-Men Animated Series
Saban Entertainment

Maybe one of the stranger stories of the week was that Marvel, Fox and any other studio involved with the ‘80s X-Men animated series is now being sued by someone named Zoltan Krisko claiming that its theme song was stolen from a similar theme written by a Hungarian composer named Gyorgy Vukan for the “hit Hungarian show” called “Linda,” a theme he trademarked in 1983. This storywas broken by TMZ, of all places, and apparently, Krisko, who manages the late composer’s estate, didn’t learn about the existence of the popular animated until a few years ago, suggesting those involved with the series would have known about the popular hit show having “rubbed elbows with Hungarian film professionals in the ’80s.”

Check out the two videos below to hear the similar-sounding themes, and then you can join the various corporate lawyers who are probably laughing at how much they’re going to be making to defend this lawsuit.

UNDERWORLD’s Len Wiseman takes a turn with BALLERINA

Ballerina
Lionsgate

In case you still haven’t already seen the excellent John Wick: Chapter 3, then you may have missed the germ of an idea that’s being turned into a spin-off movie called Ballerina, which will focus on a female assassin. It looks like director Len Wiseman, best known for his Underworldmovies, will develop and direct that movie based on a script by John Wick 3co-writer Shay Hatten with the same production team and Keanu Reeves as executive producer. Since Chapter 3made $323 million worldwide, Lionsgate is still focused on getting Chapter 4out for its May 21, 2021 date, but it looks like they’re trying to do like what the Fast and Furious did with Hobbs and Shawby creating a few spin-offs as well.

Casting Tidbits…

Yahya Mateen Matrix
Warner Bros.

Fresh off his role as Black Manta in last year’s Aquaman and a creepy role in Jordan Peele’s Us, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II has been cast in one of the leading roles in Warner Bros’ planned Matrix 4 (although we know it won’t actually be called that), having met with writer/director Lana Wachowski about the secretive part.  The actor is on quite a roll after being cast as Black Panther activist Bobby Seale in The Trial of the Chicago 7 and the Peele-written/produced Candyman reboot. Even so, we’ll have to wait H 2022 to see the return of Keanu ReevesNeo. 

Billy Porter
FX

It’s only been a couple weeks since Billy Porter won an Emmy for his leading role on FX’s Pose, becoming the first openly-gay black actor to win lead actor in the dramatic category, but he looks to have already booked his next big gig. The Tony-winning Broadway star is in talks to join Sony’s Cinderella musical in the role of the title character’s fairy godmother. Former Fifth Harmony member Camila Cabello is playing the title as well as providing music with Blockers director Kay Cannon at the helm and James Corden producing, as he provided the original idea for the musical project. It’s a little strange since Cinderella has most-commonly been associated with Walt Disney Pictures due to the classic 1950 animated and the Kenneth Branagh 2015 live action remake, but it is a folk tale in the public domain and open for other interpretations.

Almost concurrently as the above announcement, Collider reported that Porter is also up for the voice of the man-eating plant Audrey II in Warners’ new feature version of the musical Little Shop of Horrors with Greg Berlanti directing.

Maybe not as exciting but still interesting is that actor Charles Cyphers will be returning as Sheriff Leigh Bracket for David Gordon Green’s horror sequel Halloween Kills, which will be out in just about a year from now. The 80-year-old Cyphers hasn’t appeared in the franchise since 1981’s Halloween II, so they’re obviously keeping the continuity. It was announced on Twitter, and then star Sigourney Weaver followed suit by posting on twitter that she’s back at work on the sequel.

https://twitter.com/Halloween__Fans/status/1181775436071571459

 

Trailers! Trailers! Trailers!

Let’s start this week’s selection with a nice scary DreamWorks movie called The Turning, which is based on a very well-known ghost story that’s been re-envisioned by director Floria Sigismondi from The Handmaid’s Tale. Loosely based on the Henry James novel, Mackenzie Davis plays a woman hired as a nanny to two kids, played by Brooklynn Prince from The Florida Project and Finn Wolfhard from Stranger Things and It (that guy is super-busy!) It doesn’t open until January, but it should continue the DreamWorks horror tradition of films like The Ring.

And now for something completely different… If you’ve ever seen a puppet show, you’re likely to be familiar with the dark tale of “Punch and Judy” but the Australian thriller Judy and Punchis mostly definitely note for the kiddies. Starring Mia Wasikowskaand Damon Herriman, Mirrah Foulkes’ film feels like it’s handling the story more as a revenge-thriller where Judy fights back against her violent husband.

I’m not sure if there’s anyone more excited to see Netflix’s El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie when it airs on the streaming network today – okay, maybe there’s a few people who stayed up late to watch it as soon as it showed up. Netflix continues to drive up anticipation by releasing a new featurette yesterday with Vince Gilligan and Aaron Paul talking about the return of Jesse Pinkman.

And as always, those crazy kooks at Screen Junkies found a way to find everything rather hilarious about one of the more popular movies of this past summer, in this case, Sony and Marvel’s Spider-Man: Far from Home, which thankfully resolved their issues to make more movies together. They definitely nailed this one:

 

That’s it for this week. Josh is back on Tuesday, and then I’ll be right back here again next Friday.

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