So, I lied. I am writing a Studio Coffee Run this week after all.
(If you want to sue me, you’re not likely to get a lot of money, so save your own money on lawyers.)
- Just a brief follow-up of all of our Disney+ news from D23 last week is that it’s being reported that interest in subscribing to the service is exceeding expectations. There was also word of long lines at D23 for those who wanted to sign up for the discount 3-year plan, which is a genius bit of marketing on Disney’s behalf, because I meant that the service was already going to take in thousands of dollars to counter-balance the cost of some of the original series/movies being made for the service.
- On the other hand, all of the excited journalists who visited the new DisneyWorld incarnation of “Galaxy’s Edge” last week might have been disappointed to learn that the “Thermal Detonator” Coke bottles they could get at the theme park… well, they couldn’t bring them home. TSA has banned them from being carried either on planes or put in carry-on luggage, so expect that TSA agents will be regifting the “Galaxy’s Edge” merch for holidays and birthdays for years to come. In other words, TSA employees, this year’s Secret Santa is going to be interesting.
As I expected, there isn’t a ton of entertainment news today, although I expect there’ll be a lot in the weeks to come. This is a quieter week for movies, to the point where I didn’t bother to write a Box Office Preview. Next week is another story as we get Andy Muschietti’s It: Chapter Two, and while on the junket trailer, the filmmaker confirmed that The Flash is going to be next for him with Ezra Miller returning to the red spandex.
Starfire’s looking fierce…
DC Universe posted a picture of Anna Diop‘s new look as Koriand’r/Starfire for the second season of Titans, which you can check out below. Season 2 will kick off on the streaming service starting Sept. 6.
Casting Tidbits…
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Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore I feel like once every couple of weeks, we need to mention New Zealand filmmaker Taika Waititi, partially so he doesn’t think we’ve forgotten about him but also because he’s keeping very busy this year after the success of Thor: Ragnarok and the impending Jojo Rabbit, which already has quite a bit of buzz even before its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival next month. Part of Waititi’s current work with Marvel must involve some coordinating with fellow filmmaker James Gunn since Thor is expected to be a member of the Guardians of the Galaxy after the events of Avengers: Endgame. Clearly, the two filmmakers must have gotten along since Taika is now in talks for an undisclosed role in Gunn’s upcoming The Suicide Squad, according to Deadline. Not sure how Waititi has time and how big the role is, but production is scheduled to start next month with the cast including Margot Robbie, Viola Davis, Jai Courtney, Joel Kinnaman – all returning from the first movie – joined by Idris Elba, David Dastmalchian (Ant-Man), Daniela Melchior, Flula Borg, Steve Agee and Nathan Fillion. That’s a pretty big cast but Gunn is used to it from directing the Guardians. I’m hoping that maybe we’ll have a few weeks off from Taika or Suicide Squad news.
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Photo credit: Keith McDuffee 
Universal Pictures Competing with The Suicide Squad for “largest cast ever” is New Line’s planned Mortal Kombat remake directed by Simon McQuoid (seemingly a first-time director?) with James Wan and Todd Garner producing.
According to Variety, the already large cast is being joined by Chin Han (left) as original MK final boss Shang Tsung and Hiroyuki Sanada, who just appeared in Avengers: Endgame in the Ronin in Japan scene and also starred in The Wolverine as Shingen, another Japanese criminal. Han has appeared in quite a few Western films including The Dark Knight, Captain America: the Winter Soldier and Independence Day: Resurgence, and Tsung is a pretty major role in the film. Sanada will play Scorpion, the two of them joining Joe Taslim as Sub Zero, Ludi Lin as Liu Kang, Jessica McNamee as Sonya Blade, Josh Lawson as Kano, Tadanobu Asano (aka Hogun of Thor’s Warriors Three) as Raiden, Mehcad Brooks, Sisi Stringer and Lewis Tan. Oddly, there aren’t any really big names involved with Sanada and Asano likely to be the biggest draws in Japan, but I guess New Line are hoping that the popularity of the characters from the game will make it so it doesn’t matter who is playing them, as long as the movie doesn’t suck as much as the 1995 movie. The new Mortal Kombat is already set for a release on March 5, 2021.
Trailers! Trailers! Trailers!
Of course, the big trailer of the week has been Warner Bros’ new Joker Trailer, but there were a few smaller fall movies that might also be of interest…
- Amazon Studios’ The Aeronauts was looking to be one of the big fall movies as there was even an IMAX run planned (that’s no longer the case) but Amazon released the trailer for the ballooning movie that reunites Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones from the Stephen Hawking biopic The Theory of Everything. It will hit theaters on December 6 and then be available a couple weeks later on Amazon Prime, Dec. 20 to be exact. This is the strange tact that Amazon is now taking that’s very similar to streaming competitor Netflix’s own stance on theatrical releases. It’s directed by Tom Harperwho helmed the fantastic Wild Rose earlier this summer.
- Stephen Soderbergh’s The Laundromat, which premieres at the Venice Film Festival this week, also got a new trailer before its release on Netflix on Sept. 27. It’s Soderbergh’s third movie for the streaming service, but this one has some bigger Oscar-caliber names like Meryl Streep, Gary Oldmanand Antonio Banderas. It seems to be in the vein of Adam McKay’s The Big Short, being a comedy set in the world of headlines, in this case insurance fraud. I’ve been waiting for some time for Soderbergh to make his true comeback, and if he can help get Netflix into the Oscar race even without a substantial theatrical release, then good for him. (Soderbergh joins the Coen Brothers, Martin Scorsese and Alfonso Cuaron by going the Netflix route.)
- Since this is a quieter week, I’m going to share a trailer that I missed last month, and that’s the one for Takashi Miike’s First Love. I saw the movieearlier this week, and I think it’s his best movie in twenty years. And this comes from someone who has been a fan of the Japanese genre filmmaker for that long. It’s an action-packed crime thriller about a boxer who gets involved in a gang war over drugs while trying to save an unfortunate and troubled young woman. It’s already being compared to Tarantino, and I personally think it’s Miike’s Pulp Fiction. This also will hit theaters on September 27.
We’ll be back next week with more Studio Coffee Run. Sorry, Josh, that’s the best I could do for a closer.
