Welcome to the first installment of Geekly News Roundup. Here, you’ll find all of the past week’s biggest and coolest geek culture news in one convenient place.
This week’s News stories are listed below. You can click on any news story to be taken directly to it.
- Scarlett Johnasson to Star in Ghost in the Shell Live Action Movie
- Game of Thrones Behind-the-Scenes Featurette in February
- Channing Tatum Reveals Release Date for Gambit Movie
- Ant-Man Teaser Trailer, Poster and Costume Revealed
- Daredevil Coming to Netflix on April 10
- Dark Horse Star Wars Comics Now Listed Under Marvel
- Edward James Olmos Joins Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
- CHAPPIE Gets a New Trailer Full of Robotic Rumbles
- Walking Dead Season 5 Trailer Released
Scarlett Johansson to Star in Ghost in the Shell Live Action Movie
Scarlett Johansson has made a name for herself as an action hero in films like Lucy and of course as her stint playing Black Widow in various Marvel Studios movies like Iron Man 2, Avengers, and the upcoming, Avengers: Age of Ultron. She’s now set to star in another iconic property from the world of anime and manga.
Variety reports that Johansson has signed on to play the leading role in Dreamwork’s live action adaptation of Ghost in the Shell. The franchise, which is based on the manga by Masamune Shirow and has since been adapted into several anime films and television series, tells the story of a cybernetic police officer and her team who are specialists in dealing with technology related crime and terrorism. Johansson was originally undecided about staring in the movie but sources now say that she has officially signed on.
Rupert Sanders (Snow White and the Huntsman) is set to direct the film with Avi Arad and Steven Paul as producers and Mark Sourian as executive producer. The script is being handled by Bill Wheeler. Steven Spielberg, one of Dreamworks’ founders, is a big fan of Ghost in the Shell and has wanted to produce a live action version of it for some time.
Though Johansson is set to star in the movie, it’s unclear if she will play Motoko Kusonagi or if the film will even take place in Japan. We’ll have more news on this as it develops.
Source: Variety
Game of Thrones Behind-the-Scenes Featurette in February
Hankering for more Game of Thrones? While we’ll still have to wait a few more months for the premier of Season Five of the hit fantasy series, HBO will give us a nice behind the scenes featurette next month to satiate us in the mean time.
The special will be called Game of Thrones: A Day in the Life and will air on February 8th at 7:30 pm EST and run for 28 minutes. We don’t know much about this featurette but if it’s anything like the previous one, then expect it to have behind-the-scenes footage and even a glimpse of what to expect in the upcoming season.
Since this all the news we have on this, why not enjoy the previous featurette while you wait for the upcoming one?
Season five of Game of Thrones premieres on April 12 on HBO.
Source: Hollywood Reporter
Channing Tatum Reveals Release Date for Gambit Movie
Twitter is not only a great repository for one’s random thoughts, but it’s also a viable means to relay news and tease upcoming projects if you’re a Hollywood-type person.
Check out what our friend Channing Tatum had to tweet this past week:
How do you say October 7, 2016 in Cajun?
— Channing Tatum (@channingtatum) January 6, 2015
This is a (not) so subtle way of telling us when Fox’s Gambit movie will hit theaters. Why is he tweeting this? Because he will star as the Cajun Mutant of course.
Unfortunately that’s all the news we got but it’s good to know when we can expect the movie. Let’s just hope Tatum does a better job than Taylor Kitsch did in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Actually, let’s just hope the Gambit movie is better than that film in general. The world doesn’t need any more bad X-Men flicks after all.
Source: Channing Tatum on Twitter
Ant-Man Teaser Trailer, Poster and Costume Revealed
Marvel’s tiniest hero got the spotlight this week. After releasing an ant-sized trailer (seriously, it was super small), Disney has released a full-sized teaser for their upcoming Ant-Man film.
The trailer itself is more about setting up who Scott Lang is and how Hank Pym uses Lang’s love for his daughter to get him to become the hero she imagines him to be. There are some brief scenes of Lang shrinking and also some other actions scenes with characters we’ve yet to meet. A very short trailer but one that definitely gets me excited. Also, the “Is it too late to change the name?” bit was hilarious.
In addition to that, Entertainment Weekly released an image of their upcoming magazine which has Scott Lang (played by Paul Rudd) front and center.
Rudd looks pretty bad-ass in the costume which itself is a nice modern version of the one from the comics. The helmet looks pretty sweet too although I suspect Rudd won’t be wearing it up. Super heroes in movies seem to never wear their helmets or masks for some odd reason.
Last but not least is the official movie poster which is pretty freakin’ cool.
Marvel is doing a great job of promoting this film for sure. It’s a good thing that Ant-Man is getting the royal treatment. After all, he was one of the original Avengers and deserves his turn in the spotlight.
Ant-Man will be released in theaters on July 17 of this year. We’ll have more news on for sure.
Source: Entertainment Weekly
Daredevil Coming to Netflix on April 10
The wait is almost over! Today, Marvel officially announced the release date for the upcoming Netflix series based on their blindest hero: Daredevil.
All 13 one-hour episodes of the series will be available on Netflix on April 10 at 12:01 am PST. The show will be available to all territories where Netflix is available.
Daredevil stars Charlie Cox as Daredevil/Matt Murdock, Eldon Henson as Foggy Nelson, Deborah Ann Woll as Karen Paige, Rosario Dawson as Claire Temple, Ayelet Zurer as Vanessa Marianna and Vincent D’Onofrio as Wilson Fisk/The Kingpin.
In addition to the fancy motion poster above, Marvel also released this traditional poster for the series.
This is easily my most anticipated TV series so any news on definitely gets me excited. Steven S. DeKnight promises that this series will be grittier than the movie and go places where Marvel movies can’t. The disaster that was the Daredevil movie is still felt by fans of hornhead so here’s to hoping that this Netflix series gives the hero the proper treatment he deserves.
Source: Comic Book Resources
Dark Horse Star Wars Comics Now Listed Under Marvel
For decades, Dark Horse was in charge of releasing Star Wars comics. Though Marvel published its own Star Wars comics in the past, it was Dark Horse who took the comic book version of the franchise and made it blossom. Now that Disney owns Star Wars AND Marvel, The House of Ideas is once again in charge of the ink and Paper version of Star Wars. This lead to the obvious question: What’s going to happen to Dark Horse’s Star Wars books?
Last month, it was news came out that all Dark Horse published Star Wars comics would no longer be available digitally. Many believed we’d never see these comics again outside of physically owning them but it turns out that this isn’t the case as Marvel Comics has taken ownership of those books.
Marvel has listed a number of Dark Horse comic books under its own name on Comixology. Some of these include: The Thrawn, and Dark Empire trilogies, Shadows of the Empire, Knights of the Old Republic, and X-Wing: Rogue Squadron. All of the Dark Horse labels have been replaced with Marvel’s instead.
Although the books are now published under Marvel Comics, the Expanded Universe stories have been officially announced to be non-canon. The only canon stories now take place around the time of the movies. Anything besides that (especially anything AFTER Return of the Jedi) has been wiped from existence. Stories that take place before the Saga may still be canon but that is ultimately up to Disney to decide.
Source: Comixology
Edward James Olmos Joins Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
The cast of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. continues to grow and this week it was announced that a huge star would be appearing on the show. None other than Edward James Olmos will be joining the popular TV series starting this March as a character named Robert Gonzales. His debut “will have massive repercussions for Director Coulson and his team.”
“Edward James Olmos brings an amazing gravitas to any role he inhabits, something we knew we needed for Robert Gonzales,” said Jeph Loeb who is the Executive Producer and Marvel’s Head of Marvel Television. “When Olmos first appears on our series, everyone will have to take notice–including our favorite Agents.”
While we don’t know much beyond this bit of news provided by Marvel, this can only be a good thing for the series which continues to get better with each passing episode. Olmos is also one of the finest actors in Hollywood so it’ll be good to see him on television again after his long stint on Battlestar Galactica.
Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. returns to ABC on March 03 at 9:00pm EST.
Source: Marvel
CHAPPIE Gets a New Trailer Full of Robotic Rumbles
Neil Blomkamp’s next sci-fi movie, CHAPPIE got itself a fancy new trailer today.
This trailer has more footage than the original teaser did. We see a world that has a robotic police force but which is still wary of artificial intelligence. CHAPPIE is a former robo-cop who becomes sentient and is, for all intents and purposes, a peaceful being. This is an action movie though so our metallic friend doesn’t spend much time painting, spilling milk, or pretending to be He-Man before the bad guys show up to try to kill him.
One thing that I find interesting is how Hugh Jackman and Sigourney Weaver are both villains who want to destroy CHAPPIE. You would have thought Wolverine and Ripley would be trying to help the leading robot but that isn’t the case. They even sick an ED209 type robot on Chappie too which is pretty messed up. However, Chappie isn’t a meek automaton by any means and you see him going toe to toe with his much bigger adversary.
I’m pretty excited for this movie. Yeah, Elysium was a disappointment but I’m hopeful CHAPPIE will be as good as Blompkamp’s breakthrough hit, District 9.
CHAPPIE will be released in movie theaters on March 09.
Walking Dead Season 5 Trailer Released
The Walking Dead will shamble its way back to the small screen this February to give us more tales of post-apocalyptic Americana. To get people pumped, AMC released a brand new trailer.
This video shows Rick Grimes and his group in the middle of a foggy wooded area shooting at random, unseen foes. Well, not miss katana Michonne of course who isn’t about that gun life. We pretty much get to see all of the major players in all of their slow-motion glory.
If we can take away anything from this short, minute long promo is that the next half of the season will see the group actually be a group again. For some time now, the team has been separated but it appears that they’ll all be one unit again. No doubt that tensions will rise among the group which could prove to be more dangerous than the marauding cannibal corpses.
The Walking Dead returns to AMC on February 08.
