Sony Considering Nightwatch Film

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So, one of the developing superhero universe stories of the late 2010s has been that Sony is looking to continue their own movie-verse that’s adjacent to Marvel’s.  If you haven’t been obsessively following superhero copyright disputes and rights agreements, I’ll try and provide an abridged version.  Sony owns the rights to Spider-Man as well as his attendant mythos of characters but the box office failure of the Amazing Spider-Man films coupled with the North Korea hack eroded the studio’s confidence.  In the wake of dwindling returns, Sony elected to strike a shared custody agreement with Marvel Studios and Disney whereby Marvel would produce a new Spider-Man as part of their universe and Sony would get a share of the profits. 

However, the rest of the Spider-Man stable of characters would have their rights determined on a case-by-case basis, which means Sony can make movies out of those characters without sharing the profits with Marvel/Disney.  So far Sony’s confirmed they’re making a Venom movie with Tom Hardy and Gina Prince-Bythewood is on tap to direct a Black Cat & Silver Sable film.  Now the latest hero rumored to be added to that line-up is a bizarre blast from the past in the form of…Nightwatch. 

Gina Prince-Bythewood to Direct Silver Sable/Black Cat Film

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As we move into the 2020s one of the significant emerging trends is the way that trends aren’t going away in any meaningful manner.  The decade is beginning to dwindle, and there’s no outward indication that audiences are going to lose interest in the broad multimedia franchises that have managed to stick- most pertinently superheroes.  Despite a thousand and one hit pieces about the impending death of the genre or superhero fatigue, the format has proved itself just too versatile to actually collapse in on itself.  However, just because a thing isn’t going away doesn’t mean it isn’t changing. 

As we begin to cap-off the defining multimedia stories of the 2010s the superhero genre is already evolving in new and different ways like Fox’s non-continuity approach to the X-Men or the CW’s functional TV Multiverse.  One of the biggest changes going forward is the beginnings of a demand for diversity with stuff like Black Panther, Luke Cage, Black Lightning, Captain Marvel, and Wonder Woman.  There’s a lot of reasons for this change, and I’ll end up getting into them more as we go, but this week it added another notch to its belt as Sony has tapped director Gina Prince-Bythewood to direct their planned Silver Sable/Black Cat movie as part of their Spider-Verse. 

Spider-Man: Homecoming Final Trailers Breakdown

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With around a month left to go, Spider-Man: Homecoming is revving up to be a superhero film this year.  I’m not trying to denigrate the movie, in fact as we go through this breakdown I hope it shows I’m somewhat excited for the film, I’m just being honest about where it stands.  In many ways, 2017 has been kind of a hard year on Marvel Studios overall.  There are certainly successes, I don’t think anybody thought Agents of SHIELD would pull off a fourth season as well as it has and Thor: Ragnarok has smash hit written all over it.  But during a year when Marvel is facing down Wonder Woman, Logan, and Justice League none of their adaptations really seem to matter as much, and Homecoming is a pretty solid example of this. 

The film will be the second reboot of Spider-Man this decade and the fourth Spider-Man over the past 10 years.  There’s something in that to the fatigue of franchise management and repetition, especially with a character like Spider-Man who tends to revert to the same role of “teen hero” every time his film series reverts back to square one.  However, credit where it’s due that Homecoming looks very good, it just looks a bit like there might’ve been a more important movie lurking in the original script.  What am I talking about, let’s dive into this latest trailer, and I’ll tell you. 

Tom Hardy Cast as Venom

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The age of franchising and shared universe has been one of severe disappointment and frustration among all the good stuff.  As much as I love Marvel Studios, the CW shared superhero universe, or the emerging Kaiju-verse of Godzilla and King Kong those make up the occasional rarities.  For every one of them, it feels like we’re buried in terrible DCEU installments, ill-conceived horror universe, and yet more incompetent misfires from the people at Sony.  

There has truly been no one more knee-capped by the demand for cinematic universes than Sony, mainly because they only have 1 brand under their belt that could be turned into a bigger universe and now that brand is co-owned by Marvel and Disney. 

Obviously, I’m talking about Spider-Man- the franchise that started the modern superhero fixation at the turn of the millennium.  Sony still remembers those days when Spider-Man made them enough money to buy the Rock of Gibraltar and have been trying to recapture that moment ever since, without realizing it’s their corporate meddling that drove the brand into the ground from #3 onwards.  

However, now that Sony has to share the profits of its new Spider-Man film with the folks at Marvel Sony is trying to branch out with unofficial spin-offs.  So far these have all languished in development hell, but now they’ve finally started to get their act together with the first such project: Venom, starring Tom Hardy. 

Tom Holland Cast as Nathan Drake

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We now return to the story of Sony Pictures, the little studio that fought North Korea and lost.   Despite a downward spiral for Sony, they’re expecting big returns from this summer’s Spider-Man: Homecoming, so big they’re already preparing their own solo Spidey spin-off about Venom that they won’t need to share the profits of.  However, that wasn’t quite enough for them as now they’ve decided to scoop up Homecoming star Tom Holland for a multi-picture deal as Nathan Drake, star of the Uncharted video games.  

It’s obvious Sony thinks Holland/Spider-Man is going to be a big deal and wants to lock him into a less financial co-dependent film franchise now before he gets priced out of their range.  At the same time, however, Sony’s in a bit of a pickle because they don’t have a lot of franchises at their disposal, which is why they’ve bent over backward to fit Holland into the awkward shape of Uncharted.

Ghostbusters News Round-Up

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Edited by Robert Beach

At the time of writing, we are just a little over 2 weeks out from this summer’s new Ghostbusters film. As we’ve barreled full speed towards the all-women Ghostbusters remake, we’ve had a whole slew of trailers, posters, and behind-the-scenes images about the new film, all of which seems to indicate we’re in for a pretty fun movie. While maybe not the equal of the original, it will be a fun summer distraction and a new merchandising juggernaut for the much-in-need Sony Pictures. 

Of course, this build-up has also been accompanied by a cacophony of online whining about the reboot somehow ruining the source material or being an affront against nature; all of it is complete hogwash. Given that, this news round-up on what we know about the movie so far is going to be focused on just the facts, rather dive into the Internet outcry about how this latest reboot ruined everybody’s childhood.  

Martin Starr & Logan Marshall Good join Spider-Man: Homecoming

Edited By Robert Beach 
Damn, it must be casting season as this is the 4^th recent article I’ve written about casting news. If you haven’t been following the slow drip of casting news coming out of Marvel/Sony’s latest Spider-Man blockbuster, here’s the deal. 

We were all introduced to the new Spider-Man, Tom Holland, earlier this year during his star-making turn in Captain America: Civil War. Since then, Sony has slowly been announcing casting for his solo film Spider-Man: Homecoming, most notably with Michael Keaton, the original Batman, signed up. More recently Donald Glover, of Community and The Martian, was rumored to be playing a role in the film much to the Internet’s engagement. 

Now, two new names have joined the cast list in the form of Logan Marshall Good, of Prometheus and The Invitation, and Martin Starr, of Party Down and Silicon Valley.

Spider-Man: Homecoming News Roundup

Edited by Robert Beach 

We're a little over 2 weeks out from Captain America: Civil War’s premiere. The reviews are already trickling in with a resounding cry of “excellent” from pretty much all corners of the Internet. At this point, that’s honestly not that surprising; like it or not, Marvel Studios has become a cultural juggernaut, and Captain America is easily their flagship solo franchise.  

What’s more impressive are the reports that the new Marvel/Sony joint Spider-Man, played by Tom Holland and debuting in Civil War, is really damn excellent. This response and Internet reaction to Holland’s appearance in the film’s latest trailer has given Marvel enough of a high to release some major info about next year’s new Spider-Man movie entitled Spider-Man: Homecoming. 

Venom Solo Film Announced

At time of writing, Deadpool is the highest grossing film of the year.  This kind of massive success is pretty much assured to have ripple effects, especially given the high number of mitigating factors involved.  Whatever you personally think of the character Deadpool is undoubtedly a novelty act, a C-list hero getting a spin-off dumped in February that no one at the studio level really believed in.  

Remember, this movie had to be WILLED into existence by Ryan Reynolds and Internet pressure and the big reason for that is that everyone assumed Deadpool was too minor a supporting character to sustain a film without some X-Men heavy hitter like Wolverine or Storm backing him up.  What’s more, Deadpool is the first superhero action movie with an R-rating we’ve had since Blade 2 to actually be a smash hit.  Both of these elements have combined for the latest post-Deadpool movie announcement, specifically that Sony is relaunching its Venom movie.

Spider-man Reboot Finds Writers

Awhile back it a rumor started circulating that Marvel had chosen writers for their new Spider-man reboot.  In and of itself this may not seem like a big deal but with a character like Spider-man the writers on the film are actually a big deal.  This will be our third iteration of Spider-man and looking back over the Sam Raimi and Andrew Garfield films its easy to see how much the writing and dialogue defines the character.  In Sam Raimi’s version Spider-man is an earnest throwback to the classic silver age iteration of the character and that depiction filters down through every other aspect of the film.  Conversely Andrew Garfield’s Spider-man is emphasizes cynical sarcasm with a much sleeker and more modern bent to the character so the entire film ended up sleek and cynical in tone.