Liam Neeson is in negotiations to join Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson in Sony’s Men in Black spinoff.
Fate of the Furious filmmaker F. Gary Gray is directing the project, written by Iron Man screenwriters Matt Holloway and Art Marcum. The studio has the film dated for a June 14, 2019, release.
Hemsworth and Thompson are not playing the same alien-fighting and world-saving characters portrayed by Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones in the initial film trilogy. The new movie is set in the same onscreen world, however.
The show was in the pilot stage until now, but HBO released a short teaser video on the network’s Twitter on Friday to celebrate the series order. The video shows the text “Nothing ever ends” and the bloody smiley face that is the novel’s signature image, before revealing that the show will premiere in 2019.
…Lindelof revealed plot details about the series in a letter on Instagram in May. The show will be an original story with new characters, but take place in the universe of the graphic novel. He implied it would be set in a post-Trump world.
A former race car driver, Cliff Steele was in a horrific accident that left his body uninhabitable. Cliff’s brain was saved by the mysterious Dr. Niles Caulder and he lives on in a powerful robotic body.
Fraser will provide the voice-over for Robotman and will appear in flashback scenes as Cliff Steele. Riley Shanahan has also been cast in the role of Robotman. He will provide the physical performance of the character on stage in full body costume.
If you’re looking for a new supernatural television series, you’re in luck (if you don’t mind waiting a while). Fox 21 Television Studios will produce a new show based on the video game Vampyr by the developer of Life is Strange, Dontnod. The title came out for Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on June 5th.
The service has unveiledProdigy, a Mark Millar-penned comic book due in both digital and paper forms on December 5th. The series revolves around Edison Crane, the “world’s smartest man,” who has virtually everything he could want but is fueled by an endless drive that leads him to solve problems for governments around the planet. As the artwork from Batman visualizer Rafael Albuquerque suggests, Crane will have to rely on both his mind and some firepower to get things done.
Black Canary, Huntress, Cassandra Cain, and Renee Montoya will join Harley Quinn’s girl gang in the Margot Robbie film “Birds of Prey,” TheWrap has exclusively learned.
It’s tough keeping track of all the places that Margot Robbie might show up in the DCEU at the moment. Conservatively, there’s Suicide Squad 2, a Joker and Harley Quinn movie, maybe a Harley Quinn solo movie, and Birds Of Prey.
The team-up movie that could potentially introduce characters like Batgirl, Poison Ivy, Black Canary, Huntress, and others to the DCEU, seems to be high on the priority list at WB, having recently hired Cathy Yan as director with a script by Christina Hodson.
Move over Marvel/DC, these are the new comic book movies
But there are a lot more comics out there. If you’ve never heard of Rogue Trooper, the Umbrella Academy or American Jesus, here’s everything you need to know about these stories leaping from page to screen.
15 comic book projects in development and 15 that are rumored
It’s not only limited to the big screen, though. Comic books are being adapted everywhere. There are almost too many shows to count from both Marvel and DC, not even counting series based on so many indie comics.
DC has built an entire universe at CW, just as Marvel has done at Netflix.
Spider-Man will return to the universe of open-world adventure games that he helped to define with ActiVision’s Spider-Man on the original PlayStation for the new PS4 game, while other Marvel properties are promised to receive new games as well.
DC has been dominating the gaming sphere for years with mega-hit titles like the Arkham series and Injustice.
From comics to TV to movies, superheroes are all over the place—and comics aren’t just limited to them either, of course. There are so many comic based properties coming down the pipeline that they can be hard to keep track…
By Carl Slaughter: When Trump announced a space force, the late-night comedians had a field day.
But Neil deGrasse Tyson, who is this generation’s Carl Sagan, has been making the rounds of the talk shows to say that the idea of a space force is not fundamentally flawed.
I would go further. Much further.
Tucked away in an article about China going to Mars and the Moon is a sentence that jumped out at me: One of the craters on the far side of the Moon is iron rich.
We haven’t seen a soil sample from that crater or a gas sample from Jupiter or an ice sample from Saturn’s rings or a metal sample from the Asteroid Belt. So we have not yet gotten excited about space mining.
But we will. When we have lab confirmation that those resources are available and realize they are within our grasp, we’re going to decide to mine space, just as we decided to walk on the Moon, and we’re going to make it happen.
And that’s when we will have high-stakes claims wars – and sabotage and espionage and assassination.
Meanwhile, back on Earth, geopolitics and economies will go through upheaval in response to what’s happening in space.
Meanwhile, out in space, colonies will declare their independence, just as America and India did, and try to nationalize the resources they were sent there to mine.
Those mother countries are going to say to those colonists, “We financed that colony. If you want to be independent, you can start your own colony. If not, prepare to be executed, exiled, or imprisoned.”
It’s going to be something out of a science fiction story. Yeah, there’ s gonna be space forces. Forces plural.
The Pentagon, the Russians, and the Chinese have all demonstrated the capacity to shoot down satellites. We have manned shuttles and manned space stations. We have already landed on the Moon. It’s only a matter of time, and probably in our lifetime, before Elon Musk or NASA or someone builds a colony on Mars.
Eventually, some clever scientists will find a way to mine those gases, metals, and ice. Then other clever scientists will find a way to transport all those resources to Earth cheaply.
Wormholes, FLT, mass transfer. They are distant, but their day will arrive.
The day is coming when a space force will make as much sense as a police force, a naval force, and an air force.
The Quatermass Experiment is a British science-fiction serial broadcast by BBC Television in the summer of 1953 and re-staged by BBC Four in 2005. Set in the near future against the background of a British space programme, it tells the story of the first manned flight into space, overseen by Professor Bernard Quatermass of the British Experimental Rocket Group. Only poor-quality copies of the first two episodes were recorded before the idea was abandoned.
Quatermass 2 TV series
All episodes
Quatermass II is a British science-fiction serial, originally broadcast by BBC Television in the autumn of 1955. It is the second in the Quatermass series by writer Nigel Kneale, and the oldest of those serials to survive in its entirety in the BBC archives. The serial sees Professor Bernard Quatermass of the British Experimental Rocket Group being asked to examine strange meteorite showers. His investigations lead to his uncovering a conspiracy involving alien infiltration at the highest levels of the British Government. As even some of Quatermass’s closest colleagues fall victim to the alien influence, he is forced to use his own unsafe rocket prototype, which recently caused a nuclear disaster at an Australian testing range, to prevent the aliens from taking over mankind. Although sometimes compared unfavourably to the first and third Quatermass serials,[1] Quatermass II was praised for its allegorical concerns of the damaging effects of industrialisation and the corruption of governments by big business.[2] It is described on the British Film Institute’s “Screenonline” website as “compulsive viewing.”
Quatermass and the Pit
All episodes
We begin our third year of Orphaned Entertainment with the 3rd and final “Quatermass” serial from the BBC.
4D MAN. Shakespearean story of a scientist who abuses his discovery because he can’t resolve his personal problems – love triangle, family drama, office politics. A tragic man whose new found powers render him indestructible to others but who is all too capable of self destruction. A great deal of time is devoted to building up to the protagonist/antagonist’s trip wire.
By Carl Slaughter: Terminator meets Star Trek meets Six Million Dollar Man meets Time Tunnel.
Our great grandchildren will have chips implanted in their brains. From these chips, they will control everything from cars to doors to refrigerators to printers.
Computers, phones, and CDs will in museums, as will TVs and radios, because they will download, watch, listen, and communicate without the aid of any other device.
Many generations later, as their bodies adapt through evolution, our descendants will be born with slits to accommodate those chips (just as women will eventually be born without uteruses after babies are conceived and gestated in labs). All manner of cottage industries will accompany this trend.
And all manner of dangers. If someone can hack into your brain chip, they can theoretically control your brain, virtually enslaving you without you realizing it.
With that chilling prediction as an introduction, here is a review of Cyborg 2087:
Cyborg 2087 is a B science fiction movie [released in 1966] starring Michael Rennie of The Day the Earth Stood Still fame and Warren Stevens of Forbidden Planet fame.
A scientist develops radio telepathy technology that is later used to create a dystopia. A cyborg with the resistance travels back in time to prevent the scientist from selling his invention to the Pentagon.
Two other cyborgs travel back in time to stop him. Of course, there is a climactic battle of cyborg versus cyborg.
This was 30 years before the Borg, 20 years before Terminator, 10 years before The Six Million Dollar Man, and at the same time as the original Star Trek.
Plenty of science premise in movie and plenty of rehearsing the implications of science. In classic touch, at the end of the story, the chief protagonist has to choose between love and destiny — sort of.
Trivia: One of the characters is named Professor Sigmund Marx. Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx?
(1) ALL SYSTEMS WIN. Martha Wells posted a Worldcon 76 report including her experiences at the Hugo Awards ceremony —
Then we got to novella, and I was extremely nervous. I felt like I had a strong chance and was hopeful, but it was still awesome to win. I managed to get up the stairs to the stage, give my speech without crying (After the Nebula Awards I didn’t want to be the author who cries all the time.) (I saved it all up for Monday, when every time anyone said anything nice to me, I would start crying.) Managed to get down the Stairs of Doom backstage with the help of about four people, got stopped to get a photo outside the auditorium in the reception area, went back in the wrong door and could not get it open and had to thump on it until the backstage people heard me, and then got back to my seat in time to see Nnedi Okorafor win for Best YA novel and N.K. Jemisin win for Best Novel!
(2) DIGBY IN ONE PLACE. The Golds reminded readers today about the extended electronic edition of Tom Digby’s amazing fanwriting that’s available online, “Along Fantasy Way”. Originally produced for the 1993 Worldcon where Tom was a guest of honor, the collection was expanded in its 2014 digital version. What a treasure trove of wonderfully creative idea-tripping. Delightful poetry, too – for example:
…OR MINERAL(2/07/76)
Pet rocks are OK, but some people prefer more variety.
The guy upstairs from me
Has a 1947 Chevrolet engine block.
I think his apartment is too small for it,
But there it is.
And the family down the street
With the goldfish pond in the yard
Has an old ship’s anchor
To keep the fish company.
But of all the inorganic pets in the neighborhood,
The happiest is an old beer can
Belonging to a small boy.
It would never win a prize at a show:
Too many dents
And spots of rust
And paint flaking off.
And besides, it’s a brand of beer
Most people don’t like.
But that doesn’t really matter.
What matters is FUN
Like afternoons when they go for a walk:
The can leaps joyously ahead
CLATTERDY RATTLEDY CLANG BANG!
Then lies quietly waiting for its master to catch up
Before leaping ahead again.
I may get a beer can myself some day.
But I still don’t think it’s right
To keep a 1947 Chevrolet engine block
Cooped up in such a small apartment.
The collection is illustrated by Phil and Kaja Foglio.
Sources say that crewmembers, which is, at this stage, a small group that was prepping for preproduction, are being dismissed and are free to look for new work.
The Marvel project was originally to have been directed by James Gunn and was to have begun principal photography in the winter, either in January or February. The project was crewing up and was to have gone into full preproduction mode in the fall.
But Gunn was let go as the director in July when old tweets were resurfaced in response to his vocal political posts. While some held out hope that the director would be given a reprieve by Disney, a mid-August meeting with Disney chairman Alan Horn closed the door on that.
(5) LAST DAYS OF BANG ON EARTH.Big Bang Theory has started production of its final season.
To see other outstanding stories that didn’t make it into the five “year’s best” SF/F anthologies, go to RSR’s 2017 Best SF/F article, which has also been updated with the BASFF stories for a total of 256 stories by 201 authors.
(8) TODAY IN HISTORY
August 26, 1953 — The War of the Worlds premiered. (“Welcome to California!”)
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge]
Born August 26 — Katherine Johnson, 100. NASA mathematician and physicist awarded Presidential Medal of Freedom by Obama in 2015. Her work made space travel possible. And yes she’s African-American as well! (Makers has a post celebrating her birthday.)
Born August 26 — Barbara Ehrenreich, 77. Social activist and author of one genre novel, Kipper’s Game which gets compared to the works of Connie Willis.
Born August 26 — Stephen Fry, 61. Narrator, all of the Harry Potter audiobook recordings, Col. K. In the animated Dangermouse series and any number of other delightfully interesting genre related undertakings.
Born August 26 — Wanda De Jesus, 60. Genre work includes Robocop 2,SeaQuest 2032, Tales from The Darkside, Babylon 5, and Ghosts of Mars
Born August 26 — Melissa McCarthy, 48. Now starring in The Happytime Murders which apparently is the first film from the adult division of Jim Henson Productions. Also Ghostbusters: Answer the Call.
Born August 26 — Chris Pine, 38. James T. Kirk in the current Trek film franchise; also Steve Trevor in the Wonder Woman film franchise as well as A Wrinkle in Time and Rise Of The Guardians.
(10) COMICS SECTION.
Brevity shows some movie dinosaurs who keep comic back.
Launched into a solar orbit on Aug. 25, 2003, Spitzer was the final of NASA’s four Great Observatories to reach space. The space telescope has illuminated some of the oldest galaxies in the universe, revealed a new ring around Saturn, and peered through shrouds of dust to study newborn stars and black holes. Spitzer assisted in the discovery of planets beyond our solar system, including the detection of seven Earth-size planets orbiting the star TRAPPIST-1, among other accomplishments.
In a new study, physicists attempted to find differences between matter and antimatter—confusingly, also a kind of matter, but with the opposite charge and other differences. It’s like an evil twin. Confusingly, the universe has way more matter than antimatter, for no clear reason. Physicists haven’t found the specific differences they were looking for when studying the antimatter version of hydrogen, called antihydrogen, but they have demonstrated a way to study antimatter better than ever before.
Mike Kennedy forwarded the link with the note, “It’s a complicated story, and mostly about recent measurements of the Lyman-? emission lines of anti-hydrogen… in particular it being the same wavelength as for hydrogen <http://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0435-1>. The bit about laser cooling anti-hydrogen and dropping it to observe how it reacts to gravity is IIUC speculative at this point.”
The legendary actor and musician William Shatner is giving us another reason to be excited about the holiday season. Shatner tweeted the Amazon link to pre-order his first upcoming record: Shatner Claus The Christmas Album. You can add the self-described godfather of dramatic musical interpretation’s album digital audio, CD, or vinyl in your letter to the North Pole. With vinyl record sales on the constant rise, it’s exciting to see if this will find Shatner Claus’ sleigh riding its way to the top of the Billboard charts.
But fighting fires in freezing temperatures also calls for some specialist equipment.
Surprisingly, water is still an option. McMurdo’s fire engine has a pump, which cycles water constantly through the vehicle to prevent it from freezing.
Remembering to set the pump going is, says Branson, a lesson quickly learned.
“You do not want to be the person who freezes all the water in the fire engine. Then you’re stuck with a 500 gallon engine with an ice block in it… and nobody on base is going to like you.”
A bear was filmed going through the lobby of the hotel that inspired Stephen King’s classic horror novel in Colorado.
(17) YOUR MILEAGE MAY VARY. While excavating on YouTube, Carl Slaughter found Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster (1965): “Frankenstein, ie, Frank the android, does battle with a Martian beast to prevent a Martian princess from replenishing Mars with voluptuous and sometimes bikini-clad Earth women. The Pentagon monitors the situation and tries to lend Frank a hand. Turns out Frank wears an Air Force uniform and holds military rank – like Data. This is in the so bad it’s good category.”
[Thanks to Chip Hitchcock, JJ, Martin Morse Wooster, John King Tarpinian, Mike Kennedy, Cat Eldridge, Carl Slaughter, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Brian Z.]
