With the upcoming live-action Teen Titans show having recently cast its Dick Grayson, Starfire and Raven, the series has now found its Hawk and Dove.

As per Deadline, Alan Ritchson and Minka Kelly have been brought in to the pay the pair. Ritchson is no stranger to genre fans, having played the young Aquaman in Smallville, Raphael in the current cinematic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series, and headlined the recently cancelled Blood Drive. For Kelly, she’s likely best known for her role in Friday Night Lights.

Ritchson will play Hank Hall, aka Hawk, and Kelly is playing Dawn Granger, aka Dove. Not only are the duo a crime-fighting double-act, but they’re also lovers. In Titans, the pair are recurring roles with the potential to become series regulars should a second season happen, and there’s even already been some early rumblings of possibly giving the couple their own spinoff show should all go well. Ritchson and Kelly join a cast that currently has Brenton Thwaites as Dick Grayson, Anna Diop as Starfire, and Teagan Croft as Raven.

In terms of the characters, Hawk has the standard superhero powers of super strength, speed and stamina, while Dove is a more magical presence. The pair’s powers are summoned from the Lords of Order and Lords of Chaos by simply saying their names.

The early word on Titans reads:

Titans follows a group of young soon-to-be Super Heroes recruited from every corner of the DC Universe. In this action-packed series, Dick Grayson emerges from the shadows to become the leader of a fearless band of new heroes, including Starfire, Raven and many others. Titans is a dramatic, live-action adventure series that will explore and celebrate one of the most popular comic book teams ever.

Titans is set to premiere next year on Warner Brothers shiny new on-demand streaming service.

Having been in development for what seems like forever by this point, 20th Century Fox’s X-Force has finally brought in a director.

As per Deadline, it will be Drew Goddard who’ll be tackling the badass team of mutant mercs. In addition to directing, Goddard will also be on writing duties, too, and it’s believed he’s actually already finished a script for the film. No stranger to genre fans, his previous work includes directing The Cabin in the Woods, penning the likes of Cloverfield, World War Z and The Martian, and, of course, he was one of the early driving forces behind the fantastic Charlie Cox-starring Marvel’s Daredevil.

Given how next year’s Deadpool 2 will see Ryan Reynolds’ Wade Wilson joined by Josh Brolin as Cable and Zazie Beetz as Domino, it seems as if those three characters will be a lock for X-Force. In addition to that, mutants such as Psylocke, Bishop, Colossus, Sunspot, Warpath, or even Wolverine could all be realistic possibilities for the ensemble effort.

No release date has been officially announced for X-Force at this stage, although Fox do have placeholder dates set for six unknown Marvel-based movies right now, the latest of which is October 2020. Goddard is currently working on Bad Times at the El Royale, and he should be starting work on X-Force as soon as that picture is finished.

In recent years, one of the more interesting concepts to be brought to the big screen is the basis of James DeMonaco’s Purge franchise. With a fourth movie previously confirmed, DeMonaco has now given some new details on when and where that movie will take place.

Speaking to Vulture about what’s now titled The Purge: The Island, DeMonaco has reiterated that the film will be a prequel and that it will take place on Staten Island and showcase the very first experimental Purge night. “I said it’s the first experimental Purge,” he explained, “which I don’t know if I was supposed to say, but now I’ve said it, so you have it. I was wondering how you get people to stay for the first Purge, and what they do is they start monetizing it. People from Staten Island can easily go to Brooklyn for the evening, so what they do is start promising very decent sums of money for the very poor people in the neighbourhood. It becomes a monetization of murder and violence, incentivizing killing and keeping people around for them to be victims. So you see the inception of how grotesque the idea of the Purge is, and the manipulation upon the society.”

Despite a clearly dark premise for the film, DeMonaco went on to describe the movie as the biggest crowd-pleaser of the series so far, explaining, “It’s so kick ass in its third act. What’s fun, too, is there’s an anti-hero. More than the previous films, there’s a singular hero in this movie. This is one man’s journey, Williams, an anti-hero who was inspired by Eastwood in Unforgiven, so it’s this very cool, modern kind of badass who redeems himself through the story.”

While he himself is on writes duties for The Purge: The Island, DeMonaco is handing over directing duties to Burning Sands‘ Gerard McMurray. In addition to this, there are still plans afoot for a Purge TV series, which will reportedly take place in between the happenings of the first movie and The Purge: Election Year. That show, as DeMonaco had explained to STARBURST previously, will use a flashback narrative at times in order to look at how people got to the position where they’re eager for Purge night to roll around so that they can kill off certain others.

The Purge: The Island is currently set for a July 4th, 2018 release, with the to-be-titled TV series also set to arrive at some point in 2018. As ever, expect more on both of these projects as they continue to develop.

After much rumours and speculation, Warner Brothers’ Suicide Squad sequel has finally found itself a director.

As per Deadline and Variety, Gavin O’Connor has been brought in to write and direct the next cinematic outing for Task Force X. O’Connor is best known for the likes of Warrior and The Accountant.

If you remember back, names such as Mel Gibson and Jaume Collet-Serra were previously linked to the gig, but now Warners have finally found the person they deem best suited to take the project forward. And with Gibson out of the equation, at least any fears of Harley Quinn being referred to as sugar tits in Suicide Squad 2 have been calmed.

Very few details are known on the Suicide Squad sequel right now bar that Margot Robbie will be back as Harleen, and she’s expected to be joined by plenty of the no-good sorts seen in David Ayer’s Suicide Squad.

As ever, expect more on Suicide Squad 2 as we get it.