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WEST SIDE STORY’s Ariana DeBose Joins KRAVEN THE HUNTER

Ariana DeBose Joins Kraven the Hunter, best known as Anita in West Side Story

Oscar nominee Ariana DeBose, best known for her show-stealing performance as Anita in Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story remake, is the latest star to join Sony’s Universe of Marvel Characters in Kraven the Hunter.

DeBose joins a cast that already includes Aaron Taylor-Johnson as the titular antihero, Russell Crowe in an undisclosed role and, as we reported last week, The White Lotus and Fear Street actor Fred Hechinger as Kraven’s half-brother Dmitri Smerdyakov, aka Chameleon.

Ariana DeBose’s casting was first reported by Deadline, and the actress is rumoured to be playing an ally and lover of Kraven’s, the supervillain Calypso – a psychopathic voodoo priestess whose abilities include the use of mind control, creating potions and the power of resurrection. In the comics, Calypso was also known as a fierce enemy of Spider-Man’s.

Other Spider-Man spinoffs currently in development at Sony include the long-delayed Morbius, which is finally releasing at the end of the month, and a Madame Web film starring Dakota Johnson. Details of the plot for Kraven are currently scarce, but expect further casting announcements in coming weeks.

Kraven the Hunter will release in cinemas January 13th, 2023.

Kraven the Hunter

Guest Cast and Story Details for DOCTOR WHO: LEGEND OF THE SEA DEVILS

A Sea Devil in a still from Doctor Who – Legend of the Sea Devils

Some enticing new information has been announced regarding the next Doctor Who special, Legend of the Sea Devils.

The episode will see Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor, along with companions Yaz (Mandip Gill) and Dan (John Bishop), travel to a coastal village in nineteenth-century Asia. Here they find the villagers under threat from both Madame Ching – a Chinese pirate queen based on the real historical figure – and the eponymous Sea Devils. Last seen in 1984 serial Warriors of the Deep, the Sea Devils are an underwater form of the ancient Earth-dwelling Silurians.

The episode’s guest cast, we now know, includes Crystal Yu as Madame Ching, Arthur Lee as Ji-Hun, Marlowe Chan-Reeves as Ying Ki, and Craige Els as Marsissus. If you recognise that last name, that’s because Els appeared in the last series, Doctor Who: Flux, as canine alien Karvanista – but it seems that this is an unconnected character, perhaps one of the Sea Devils.

The script is co-written by showrunner Chris Chibnall and Who newcomer Ella Road. Road is best known for her science fiction play The Phlebotomist and for her work on Amazon Prime series Ten Percent. The episode is also the television debut of acclaimed short film director Haolu Wang.

The episode is expected to air sometime around Easter. After this, there will be one more outing for Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor – a feature-length special which will air in autumn. Then in 2023, the as-yet-unannounced Fourteenth Doctor will take over the TARDIS, alongside returning showrunner Russell T Davies.

doctor who

Critical Role Hits US Cinemas, Again

Cult online show, Critical Role has announced that they will celebrate the seven-year anniversary of the show by simulcasting a special show on cinema screens. The show will broadcast on twitch at the same time. Alas, this is only available via one of 55 Cinemark owened cinema’s in the USA or one of three cinemas in Brazil.

The seven-year anniversary will be celebrated on March 17, 2022 at 7PM Pacific Time, that’s 3AM on March 18 if you’re in the UK.

“Following the massive response from our third campaign’s theatrical premiere, we knew we wanted to bring our show back to the big screen where people can gather safely and enjoy the experience collectively,” said Travis Willingham, Critical Role’s CEO. “We’re working with some incredible theatrical partners to help celebrate our seven-year anniversary, which is still mind-boggling to say!”

Starring Critical Role founders Matthew Mercer (Overwatch), Ashley Johnson (The Last of Us), Marisha Ray (Final Fantasy XV), Taliesin Jaffe (Final Fantasy XIV), Travis Willingham (Marvel’s Avengers), Sam Riegel (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), Laura Bailey (The Last of Us: Part II), Liam O’Brien (Star Wars: The Bad Batch), Campaign 3 takes place in the Exandrian continent of Marquet, where, from the dusty canyons of the Hellcatch Valley, to the rising plateaus of the Taloned Highlands, many wild adventures and mysteries are waiting to be uncovered!

“Cinemark is thrilled to once again welcome Critters to our immersive auditoriums and help Critical Role celebrate their seven-year anniversary in a larger-than-life way,” said Justin McDaniel, Cinemark’s SVP of Global Content Strategy. “Fans showed up in droves for our premiere event with Campaign 3, and we look forward to bringing the shared experience to more of our theatres across the U.S. and to host the inaugural big-screen viewing in Brazil.”

Please visit critrole.com/seven for more information.

Check Out Ryan Reynolds (x2) In THE ADAM PROJECT Trailer

The Adam Project (L to R) Ryan Reynolds as Big Adam and Walker Scobell as Young Adam. Cr. Doane Gregory/Netflix © 2022

In The Adam Project‘s newly released trailer, Netflix promises aliens, energy blasters, time travel and a whole lot of fun.

When lonely kid Adam (Walker Scobell) comes face to face with his future self (Ryan Reynolds), his life takes a very exciting (if confusing turn). Older Adam has travelled back in time to try and prevent an incoming extra-terrestrial war, fighting alongside warrior Laura (Zoe Saldana). They will also need to find Adam’s late-but-still alive dad (Mark Ruffalo) to try and save the world.

Assembling an all-star cast that includes Reynolds, Saldana, Ruffalo and Jennifer Garner, the upcoming Netflix science fiction film evokes an old-school alien-invasion adventure film from the 80s, courtesy of director Shawn Levy (who worked with Reynolds recently on Free Guy) and writers Jonathan Tropper, T.S. Nowlin, Jennifer Flackett and Mark Levin.

The Adam Project releases March 11th. Check out the trailer below:

The Adam Project

Zack Snyder’s Sci-Fi Fantasy REBEL MOON Adds More To Cast

Rupert Friend, best known for his role as Peter Quinn on Homeland, will star in Zack Snyder feature Rebel Moon

With an already cracking team locked in, Zack Snyder’s epic sci-fi fantasy film Rebel Moon has added Rupert Friend and Stuart Martin to its cast.

Those already aboard include Sofia Boutella (Settlers, Kingsman: The Secret Service), Charlie Hunnam (Pacific Rim, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword), Djimon Hounsou (A Quiet Place Part II, The King’s Man, Captain Marvel), Doona Bae (Sense8, The Host), Ray Fisher (Zack Snyder’s Justice League), and Jena Malone (The Neon Demon, The Hunger Games franchise).

Rebel Moon tells the story of a peaceful colony on the edge of the galaxy that is threatened by the armies of a tyrannical regent, Belisarius. Desperate, the colonists dispatch a young woman with a mysterious past (Boutella) to seek out warriors from neighbouring planets to help them make a stand against the invading forces.

Friend, best known for Homeland and the upcoming Obi-Wan Kenobi series, will play the film’s lead antagonist, a man who leads Belisarius’ armies against Boutella’s ragtag team. There’s little information about what role Martin, who worked on the Snyder-produced Army of Thieves, might play in the feature. However, sources at The Hollywood Reporter suggest his role will also be as an antagonist.

Snyder co-writes the script with Army of the Dead co-screenwriter Shay Hatten and Kurt Johnstad (himself a co-writer of 300). Production on Rebel Moon is due to begin in April and finish in November, with sights on a 2023 release.

Rebel Moon

THE PRISONER Escapes to Horror Channel in March

1960s cult TV classic The Prisoner is heading to Horror Channel in March to excite and puzzle a new generation of viewers (as well as the ones who remember it!). Created by and starring Patrick McGoohan, the show followed the actor’s previous series, Danger Man, and took a decidedly surreal turn. McGoohan plays an unnamed secret agent who decides to retire only to be kidnapped and placed within an inescapable community, ‘The Village’, and given a number – No. 6.

As much of an enigma today as it was in the ‘60s, the show still boasts a cult following and the location of the Village, Portmeirion in Wales, is a regular place of pilgrimage for fans (as well as being a stunning place anyway).

The first episode is on Thursday, March 10th. Be seeing you!

For more information, head over to http://www.horrorchannel.co.uk

Tune in on Sky 317, Virgin 149, Freeview 69, Freesat 138.

Horror-Thriller BARBARIANS Releases First Trailer

2021 film Barbarians starring Tom Cullen and Iwan Rheon

The horror-thriller Barbarians, which premiered to positive reviews at last year’s Fantasia Fest, has just released its first trailer ahead of its April 1st release.

Directed and written by Charles Dorfman, the film stars Iwan Rheon (Game of Thrones, Misfits), Tom Cullen (My Son, Castle in the Ground), Catalina Sandino Moreno (Falling Skies, A Most Violent Year) and Will Kemp (Reign) as four friends who come together for a celebratory dinner party at a country house. As the night progresses however, dark secrets emerge and unsettling events begin to unfold around them.

Though this marks Dorfman’s directing debut, he has worked as a producer on numerous projects including Skylines and the Oscar-nominated The Lost Daughter.

Barbarians, which STARBURST labelled a “superb” watch, releases in cinemas and on VOD April 1st. Watch the trailer below, courtesy of IFC Films:

Film Based On BEYBLADE Toy Franchise In Development

Producer extraordinaire Jerry Bruckheimer – the man you can thank for Top Gun, Crimson Tide, Con Air, Armageddon, Black Hawk Down and the Beverly Hills Cop, Pirates of the Caribbean, National Treasure and Bad Boys franchises (!) – is now developing a live-action film with Paramount based on the popular toy franchise Beyblade.

Deadline also confirms that Neil Widener and Gavin James are aboard to script the project, though plot details are being kept under wraps for now.

Beyblade is a line of spinning top toys that fight in a battle arena setting, similar in many ways to Pokémon – which just so happened to be the brand’s biggest competitor.

These toys have already been at the centre of countless mangas, animated television series, films, video games, and comic books, all primarily developed in Japan. But with many toy franchises like Transformers and Lego having received the cinematic treatment in recent years, it’s very possible that Beyblade could become the next brand to make it big in Hollywood.

Only time will tell. Stay tuned for further updates on the project.

Beyblade

Check Out an Exclusive Clip from THE LAST JOURNEY

The Last Journey is a sci-fi action thriller, starring Hugo Becker, Jean Reno, Lya Oussadit-Lessert, and Paul Hamy, which will be available on DVD and digital from March 7th. You can watch an exclusive clip of the film’s first 10 minutes below to whet your appetites.

Directed by Aware Lowri, the film won the Best Film Award at the famous Sitges Film Festival in 2020 and is produced by Fannie Pailloux and David Danesi. Here’s the synopsis:

The red moon threatens existence on earth. The only hope is the enigmatic Paul WR, the most talented astronaut of his generation. But a few hours before the start of his great mission, Paul disappears.

Altitude present The Last Journey on DVD and digital on March 7th.

BABYLON 5 Reboot Pushed To 2023

Babylon 5 space station from original series

Fans will have to wait a while longer still for the hotly-anticipated Babylon 5 reboot series, as The CW pushes J. Michael Straczynski’s project back to the next development season.

As we wrote in September last year when news first broke of plans for a “from-the-ground-up reboot” of the beloved 1990s series, the new series will centre on John Sheridan, an Earthforce officer with a mysterious and complicated background who is assigned to Babylon 5, a space station designed as neutral ground for galactic diplomacy and trade in the aftermath of several major inter-species wars. Set during a subsequent and uneasy peacetime, Sheridan’s arrival “triggers a destiny beyond anything he could have imagined, as an exploratory Earth company accidentally triggers a conflict with a civilisation a million years ahead of us, putting Sheridan and the rest of the B5 crew in the line of fire as the last, best hope for the survival of the human race”.

While the Babylon 5 reboot was intended for release this coming autumn, Straczynski updated the series status on his Patreon with some (temporarily) unfortunate news. As Deadline relays, the showrunner explained that the series concept was not being picked up: “99.999% of the time, that’s the end of the road for the project.”

However, the creator also explained that The CW’s CEO, Mark Pedowitz, is a “long-time fan of B5… Calling the [reboot] pilot ‘a damned fine script,’ he said he was taking the highly unusual step of rolling the project and the pilot script into next year, keeping B5 in active development while the dust settles on the [prospective] sale of the CW.”

“Here’s the bottom line: Yesterday, Babylon 5 was in active development at the CW and Warner Bros. for fall 2022. Today, Babylon 5 is in active development at the CW and Warner Bros. for fall 2023,” Straczynski clarified.

“That is the only difference.”

Babylon 5