Welcome back to the Friday edition of Studio Coffee Run! I’ve had my coffee, so now I just need to do a bit of running, or at least some fast walking.

At this point, some of you may be wondering why streaming services like Disney+ and Apple TV+ have played such a large part in my entertainment news coverage here. Honestly, it’s impossible NOT to talk about these services, because they’re going to offer so much exclusive and original content on top of all the movie and television stuff we already have.

This is actually a bit of a down weekend movie-wise, so it’s kind of a shame that these services aren’t debuting until November, and we’ll have to see if those debuts start affecting the box office. (Don’t worry, I’m sure I’ll be talking about that a lot in my weekly Box Office Preview and recap.)

One thing I began wondering about, more in terms of Disney+ than Apple TV+, is whether Disney+ will be available for all platforms starting November 14.  Obviously, Apple will mainly be on Apple products as well as accessible via web browsers. Similarly, there will be a Disney+ website where subscribers can access its titles but what about those who have smart TVs or fire sticks or different tablets/smartphones or even in my case, something like an Xbox that they use for streaming to their TVs? Has Disney planned it so that there will be an APP download for all available platforms on November 14? Or will that require a slower rollout? I’ve understood from some of my international friends that the service won’t be available globally on the same date as North America, although I’m sure, like most American programming, people will figure out ways of getting Disney+ elsewhere.

One thing that came to light this week was that all the series/movies announced will not be remaining on Disney+ forever, as licensing deals were made that will mean they will “lose titles for periods of time.” One of these deals means that some of the Disney movies from 2016 to 2018 (which includes both Marvel and “Star Wars” movies) will mean that they have to move back onto Netflix in roughly six years. That’s just so interesting to hear, because I think most of us presumed that once they go to Disney+ they’re there forever. (As Netflix users know, nothing stays on there forever either.)

What that story linked above at least confirms is that you’ll be able to “download” Disney+ movies onto a device and it will remain on the device as long as it’s a subscriber. So for instance, if you subscribe to Disney+, you can download the entire Star Wars franchise to your platform and keep it on there as long as you pay $6.99 a month. I could see this being good for those who might want to rewatch every Star Wars movie any time they want to, but at a certain point, you could just buy the Blu-rays, which would be less expensive than renting. (This reminds me when I first got Netflix for DVD rentals and I’d often keep a DVD for months and months without rewatching, essentially paying $9.99 a month rental and paying Netflix more money than if I just outright bought that DVD.)

Again, we’re in interesting times, and with Apple TV+ debuting next Friday, we’re going to know right away if the series are any good since there will be lots of chatter about them all over social media.

In case you missed it…

Maxwell Lord is coming to WONDER WOMAN 1984…

Yup, director Patty Jenkins made it official over Twitter yesterday that Pedro Pascal (Kingsman: The Golden Circle,Narcos) is indeed playing the part of the master manipulator first introduced in the now-classic Justice League#1, written by J.M. DeMatteisand Keith Giffenand illustrated by Kevin Maguire a crazy 32 years ago! Maxwell Lord started out as a hero but over the course of the series became more of a villain. I think it’s interesting to cast Pascal in the role as I’m not sure he’s played a bad guy before but he is the title “Mandalorian” in Disney+ and Jon Favreau’s “The Mandelorian” so he might be on the verge of breaking out bigtime.

A few smaller items to mention…

The 100
The CW
  • I don’t know a ton about the various CW series but according to Variety, the network’s long-running series The 100 will be setting up a prequel series during the upcoming seventh and final season. This new series written and EP’ed by creator Jason Rothenberg with Leslie Morgenstein and Gina Girolamo will be set 97 years before the current series beginning with a nuclear apocalypse that wipes out Earth’s population and following a band of survivors.
  • Apparently, Sony is going to rerelease Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood with ten minutes of new footage today into about 1,000 theaters, which is interesting only because Tarantino’s last extended, director’s cut type of release was whenhis previous film The Hateful Eightpopped up on Netflix in a longer episodic incarnation. I loved the movie and apparently the footage is four new scenes with no details about where they take place in the film. I think I liked it more than The Beat’s Entertainment Editor Kyle Pinion but I’m not sure I’d sit through it for four extra minutes when it’s already such a long movie. (Although still shorter than Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman!)

Jeph Loeb and Marvel Television are parting ways…

Jeph LoebThis probably wasn’t too big a surprise after Marvel President Kevin Feige was promoted to Chief Creative Officer over all things Marvel, but Jeph Loeb, who has been in charge of Marvel Television for almost a decade is leaving the company. Apparently, Loeb had been planning to leave even before the announcement that Feige was adding television and comics to his Marvel portfolio, but it made even more sense with Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. coming to an end with its last season next summer. (The season has already completed filming, as confirmed by Chloe Bennett, who has been on the show since its inception.)

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has not remained the ratings blockbuster some were expecting despite early connections to the MCU that became less and less possibly to the fairly public friction between Feige and Loeb that kept a pretty big wall between the movie and show. That was even more noticeable in Loeb’s Netflix shows: Daredevil, Iron FistJessica Jones, Luke Cage, The Defenders and The Punisher, which all were fairly popular but were systematically cancelled just as Feige’s Disney+ shows were being announced. (Oddly, there are now growing rumors that Daredevil’s Charlie Cox and Jessica Jones’ Krysten Ritter are in talks to be brought over to the MCU, as well.)

Loeb had been developing a number of animated and live action series for Hulu, but a few of them, like a Ghost Rider series that was going to join Loeb’s Helstrom at the streamer, was scrapped. There was also the disastrous Inhumans series that even received a limited IMAX theatrical run but never took off beyond a first season.

It was clear that it would take Kevin Feige being put in charge of all things Marvel to make sure the quality was up to the blockbuster cinematic universe he has created. Surely, someone else will have to be brought on board to take over for Loeb, because that’s a LOT of work for just one man. Even if it’s a Kevin Feige.

Moneypenny, Eve Moneypenny…

Moneypenny
MGM/Sony Pictures

So I ended up getting a little scoop earlier this week, and sadly, it wasn’t for The Beat, but that’s just the way things go when you’re a freelancer, I guess. I had been assigned to cover the junket for Deon Taylor’s Black and Blue(which I highly recommend seeing this weekend if you’re into gritty police thrillers), and while interviewing the film’s star Naomie Harris, I thought I’d ask her a James Bond question, since it is one of my most favoritest franchise ever. I figured, “Hey, they just announced that No Time to Diestar Lashana Lynchis being groomed to become the next 007, so I’ll ask her why Eve Moneypenny wasn’t being promoted for that role.” I got an answer I wasn’t expecting.

Apparently, Harris and her Moonlight director Barry Jenkins had spoken about doing some sort of Moneypenny spinoff film, which sounds very cool. While I wasn’t the biggest fan of Moonlight, I do think Jenkins is a really good director, and he did direct Harris to an Oscar nomination, and she told me that Jenkins did meet with Bond über-producer Barbara Broccoli. Unfortunately, Harris was on Good Morning AmericaMonday, and she said that Broccoli already nixed the idea… at least for now.

The first awards season nominations are here! 

The Gotham Awards probably won’t be on the radar of the average comic or genre geek — granted, there’s plenty of other stuff to focus on –  but these annual awards have regularly paved the way for the official start of awards season in early December. (It’s actually a little amusing that various critics groups have been falling over each other to be the first to announce awards to the point where the season has been pushed forward into late November.)

The Gothams are a lower key but fun New York City-based awards tradition that tends to veer more towards the independent releases, and yesterday’s nominations might be telling with no movies from the bigger studios although Netflix is represented… but not by Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman. The Best Feature nominees are: Lulu Wang’s The Farewell, the Safdie Brothers’ Uncut Gems, Trey Edward ShultsWaves, Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story and STXfilms’ Hustlers. That last one is pretty surprising but three of the four others are from the New York-based Millennial-targeted A24, which makes sense since that’s the same demo as the Gotham nominating committee. There is no corresponding director category, just the “Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director Award,” which includes Olivia Wilde for Booksmart. There’s also no separation between lead or supporting actor categories with two acting nominations from five of the feature nominees: Adam Driver, but not Scarlett Johansson, from Marriage Story, and Awkwafina from The Farewell. Waves and Uncut Gems received “Breakthrough Actor” nominations. Only two of the five feature nominees received screenplay nominations: The Farewell and Marriage Story, clearly making them the favorites to win. Ari Aster’s Midsommar did receive nominations for screenplay and for actor Florence Pugh, though.

Casting Tidbits…

  • Kylo Ren
    Disney/Lucasfilm

    It’s looking very likely that Kylo Ren himself, Mr. Adam Driver, will be getting his second Oscar nomination next year for his role in Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story along with Scarlett Johansson, and he’s already booking his post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker gigs. Driver is in talks to join Matt Damon in Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel. This is just a few weeks after Killing Eve’s Emmy-winning Jodie Comer joined the project, and apparently, Ben Affleck is moving to more of a supporting role, as Driver takes over the role of Damon’s rapist friend… so not too far removed from creepy Kylo Ren? (What’s exciting is that indie filmmaker Nicole Holefcener will be co-writing the script with Damon and Affleck.)

  • Taylor Kitsch
    Walt Disney Pictures

    If you’ve been wondering, “What ever happened to that Taylor Kitch guy?” You know who I’m talking about. He was Disney’s John Carter and starred in Hasbro Studios’ Battleship, a movie I still can’t believe was made. He even played Gambit in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and many thought that someday he might play the character again… until Channing Tatum. Fine, he was on the Wacomini-series and will appear in the upcoming 21 Bridges, but he’s also signed onto Neil Blomkamp’s next movie Inferno. It’s another sci-fi thriller from the director of District 9and Elysium– we’ll try to forget about Chappie– for AGC Studios, who has announced quite a few movies over the past couple months. Infernois not to be confursed with the adaptation of Dan Brown’s Inferno, released by Sony Pictures, who has released all three of Blomkamp’s previous movies. Yeah, that title is gonna change, but it’s going out to buyers at AFM in L.A. in November.

  • While former writer and producer Chris Morgan has left the “Fast and Furious” franchise behind, the series continues with two more movies directed by Justin Lin (his fifth and sixth movies in the series), and lead actor Vin Diesel took to Instagram to announce that pop superstar Cardi B would be joining the ninth movie. This comes just a month after her big screen debut in the STXfilms hit Hustlers. Apparently, Latin superstar Ozuna– who have never heard of – has joined the movie in a role as well as possibly being on the soundtrack.

  • I couldn’t leave out the fact one of my favorite actors, Michelle Monaghan, is joining the growing cast of Sony’s The Craft remake, which I’ve written about a few times in SCR.
  • Also, The Last Purge has its female lead in Mexican actor Ana de la Reguera, who has appeared on the recent Twin Peaks and starred in movies like Cowboys and Aliens and Kevin Smith‘s Cop Out.

Trailers! Trailers! Trailers!

  • Coming to Netflix next Friday is The King, the new movie from Australian filmmaker David Michôd, best known for Animal Kingdomand The Rover, and Netflix has released the final trailer for a movie that I feel is not getting as much attention as some of Netflix’s other Fall releases. It’s a loose adaptation of Shakespeare’s Henry IV and Henry V plays with Timothée Chalamet playing the latter. They were adapted by Michôd with long-time collaborator Joel Edgerton, who is fantastic in a movie that includes some great action scenes as well as Robert Pattinsonin a rather humorous (but deadly) role. Anyway, the film will hit the streaming service next Friday and Netflix released a new trailer, which you can watch here.

 

  • I wasn’t quite as bullish about the upcoming Amazon Studios film The Aeronauts, starring Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones, which will be available on Amazon Prime starting December 20, two weeks after its theatrical release. The duo star as scientist James Glaisher and stunt pilot Amelia Wren, who try to make inroads into flying a hot air balloon higher than anyone else. I usually like historical dramas, especially ones like this where there’s some exciting moments but this is no The Theory of Everything.

 

That’s it for this week’s Studio Coffee Run, Friday Edition. You know the drill. More from Studio Coffee Run’s younger and less cranky Josh Hilgenberg on Tuesday, same Beat time, same Beat channel.

1 COMMENT

  1. (This reminds me when I first got Netflix for DVD rentals and I’d often keep a DVD for months and months without rewatching, essentially paying $9.99 a month rental and paying Netflix more money than if I just outright bought that DVD.)

    Which was still better than late fees from the rental stores.

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