| | | We're back for the first newsletter of 2025...and we gotta tell you, while it feels good to be back, things suck right now. The holiday hiatus was unexpectedly extended due to the crazy and devastating fires that blazed through Los Angeles. So many people are hurting, including some of the folks who create the stuff we write about week in, week out in this newsletter. To be honest, we can't really wrap our heads around the destruction and the dichotomy of seeing people living their normal lives in one neighborhood, while another one looks like a bomb went off. It is gratifying, however, to see the city and its people come together to help. Adding to the downcast mood, folks are mourning David Lynch, the iconoclastic director who inspired generations of filmmakers, from James Gunn to Robert Eggers. The director behind Mulholland Drive and Twin Peaks died this week at the age of 78. At the same time, people are looking for distractions, and may take them any way they can. Wolf Man is in theaters this week, and is a diversion from the doom and gloom around Los Angeles. The other improbable distraction has become the Justin Baldoni-Blake Lively legal battle, which even has seeped into the MCU and the Deadpool & Wolverine character Nicepool. Half a century ago, a defining question of the Watergate scandal was, “What did the president know and when did he know it?” Today, a surprising question has emerged in the Baldoni-Lively legal saga: “What did Nicepool say, and when did he say it?” We did a deep dive into that question here. Despite the wildfires, Hollywood is slowly continuing on. And productions that are shooting outside of LA have not been impacted by the disasters at home. Thus, we've got scoops on two movies that are now in production... — Aaron Couch and Borys Kit. |
MEET THE (SUPER) PARENTS. David Krumholtz and Emily Beecham will play the dad and mom in Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow. They join star Milly Alcock as Kara Zor-El, the cousin of Superman. Filming got underway in London this week, with Craig Gillespie directing for DC Studios. Krumholtz has been acting since his teenage years, notably appearing in The Santa Clause movies and later starring for six seasons in CBS crime drama Numbers in the late aughts. He played Nobel Prize-winner Isidor Rabi in Nolan's Oppenheimer. As dad and mom, they Kara lot. (Sorry.) |
THE NEW ANACONDA MOVIE HAS SWALLOWED UP THANDIWE NEWTON AND STEVE ZAHN. Columbia’s comedic reimagining of the 1997 horror movie centers on a group of friends facing mid-life crises who are remaking their favorite movie from their youth. They head to the rainforest, only to find themselves in a fight for their lives against natural disasters, giant snakes and violent criminals. Paul Rudd and Jack Black are already toplining the feature, which Heat Vision can report will also feature Selton Mello, who appears in Brazilian awards season hopeful I’m Still Here, and Ione Sky, whose series work includes Netflix’s Beef, NBC’s La Brea, and NBC’s Good Girls. Tom Gormican, who directed the Nicolas Cage meta movie The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, is behind the camera and still in meta movie mode. Open wide for details. | ➤ Great week for horror trailers: The Monkey shines; Until Dawn rises; Woman in the Yard sits in a chair. Also: Daredevil: Born Again breaks bones (and has become one of Marvel TV's most-watched trailer debuts ever, not to mention positively embraced by bloodthirsty fans, sources tell us). ➤ Graphic novel sales fell 11.5 percent in 2024, per Publishers Weekly (via ComicsBeat). ➤ Related bad news: Diamond Distributors files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. ➤ Grossest story of the week: New York Magazine's deep dive into the alleged sexual misconduct by Sandman and Coraline author Neil Gaiman. Also eye-opening: the Scientology aspect. Gaiman denies the allegations. J.K. Rowling compared him to Harvey Weinstein. ➤ Because you demanded it: Lego Twilight! (The Cullen house, to be more exact.) ➤ Mark Hamill is now part of the 1 million followers club on Bluesky. ➤ Loved Transformers One? Now there's a stop-motion animated series on Hasbro's YouTube channel. ➤ Anthony Mackie has a great story of how he found out he would be the new Captain America. Catch up on these Heat Vision interviews... ➤ Wolf Man star Christopher Abbott, who played matchmaker between The Brutalist brain trust of Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold, is glad the world is catching up to what he already knew. ➤ September 5 star John Magaro says Peter Sarsgaard convinced wife Maggie Gyllenhaal to cast him in the Christian Bale-led The Bride. ➤ Den of Thieves 2 director Christian Gudegast says a threequel is ready to go. ➤ My Old Ass star Maisy Stella says Saoirse Ronan raved about the awards contender (and her photographic cameo) during their recent meeting. ➤ Skeleton Crew star Kyriana Kratter recalls a key moment where she asked Bryce Dallas Howard for a second take that ultimately made it into the show. ➤ Better Man director Michael Gracey looks back on Fox's attempts to hide the fact that The Greatest Showman was a musical. ➤ Kraven the Hunter star Alessandro Nivola says the studio altered the performance of his viral scream in post-production. ➤ Nosferatu producer Chris Columbus explains how a Harry Potter executive forced him to settle for mediocrity. ➤ The Peanut Butter Falcon co-directors praised David Fincher for sacrificing a day of shooting The Killer's car chase for the benefit of their indie, Los Frikis. ➤ Sonic the Hedgehog 3 director Jeff Fowler never bought Jim Carrey's retirement talk. ➤ What If ...? EP Brad Winderbaum says Iman Vellani's Ms. Marvel is "top of mind" going forward. |
FIVE YEARS AFTER THE INVISIBLE MAN BECAME THE LAST HIT OF THE PRE-COVID ERA, LEIGH WHANNELL IS BACK IN THEATERS WITH WOLF MAN. The filmmaker and his wife and writing partner Corbett Tuck used the real-life tragedy of COVID, as well as the death of a close friend from ALS to fuel their script about a man succumbing to a horrible transformation. But as he reveals to Brian Davids, the filmmaker ultimately cut a direct link to ALS in the movie, which was meant to mirror Christopher Abbott's character's own unique affliction. “That's definitely one that hurt when I took it out, and I hope that people don't come away from Wolf Man with less of an understanding of what it is really about because I took that scene out," he says. The filmmaker also explains why he has no desire to make an Invisible Man sequel, even though it grossed nearly $140 million against a $7 million budget, and seemed tailor-made for a sequel. (Jason Blum and James Wan have said they want more.) But Whannell says: “The studio might look at that and say, ‘Well, we feel like it should keep going because we want to make more money.’ But on an artistic level, I'm like, ‘That's a nice closed door there. Let's just leave it closed.’” Whannell howls. |
THE COMIC ART WORLD WAS ABUZZ LAST WEEK WHEN THE ORIGINAL COVER FOR AMAZING SPIDER-MAN NO. 194 SOLD FOR A WHOPPING $1.02 MILLION. The history-making sale came after an intense bidding war at a Heritage Auction and surprised almost everyone. After all, the cover was from Al Milgrom, a journeyman artist who acted as penciller, inker and editor for a good many years at Marvel. He was never considered a hot artist, even in his prime, when his books shared shelf space with popular artists such as John Byrne and George Perez in their 1980s height, as well as that decade's rising Spider-Man artists such as John Romita Jr. and Todd McFarlane. The deal had longtime art collectors and observers stunned. “I just don’t understand it,” said one. One explanation: there is a feverish desire for first appearances of characters, and this one certainly fits the bill. Amazing Spider-Man No. 194 marked the first appearance of the Black Cat, the burglar created by writer Marv Wolfman and artist Dave Cockrum, who designed her black and white, fur-accented outfit, although the interior of the issue was drawn by Keith Pollard and Frank Giacoia. Milgrom handled the cover, one of hundreds he drew during his long career. While we can’t know prices of private sales, the record for top cover sale at auction is the $2.4 million realized in 2022 for Batman: The Dark Knight Returns Book One (1985), drawn by legend Frank Miller. And the cover for The Adventures of Tintin Vol. 1: Tintin in the Land of the Soviets by Herge notched a sale of $1.125 million in 2019. The biggest sale for a Spidey cover before last week was McFarlane’s artwork for The Amazing Spider-Man No. 328, which sold for $657,250 way back in 2012. In announcing the sale, Heritage said a portion of the proceeds will to go Milgrom, thanks to the piece's consignor's discretion. There's probably a good chance that those proceeds may be higher than whatever Milgrom sold it for many years ago. | | | | |
Commentaires
Enregistrer un commentaire
Thank you to leave a comment on my site