#marvel live nycc 2016

[a-man-for-hire-and-his-archives]

Up next, our pals from BlkSails_STARZ (Black Sails) on #MarvelNYCC live!

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[maxbegone]

SAPPY ESSAY INCOMING!

With NYCC getting (expectedly and rightfully) canceled this year due to the ongoing pandemic, I wanted to talk a little bit about what it’s meant to me to go over the last three, almost four, years.

In my senior year of high school, early on in that October of 2016, I was in Manhattan for the day checking out a school (which I ultimately turned my nose-up at, having received a cold shoulder and a weird air to it all). My dad and I were walking through Penn, I was on the edge of nerdom loving anything involving video games, DND, and voice acting. At the time I was watching very minimal anime, but I recognized a few characters, if not by name then just by face and costume.

In Penn, while weaving through a crowd, I passed an ordinary-looking teen in khaki green/brown pants, a white Henley, and boots. He was carrying a backpack, and as I said he looked ordinary. However, had it not been for the ring on a rope hanging around his neck, I would have continued to think so.

No, this kid was dressed up as Nathan Drake (circa Drake’s Deception) and I immediately jumped with excitement and smacked my dad’s arm to tell him. My dad, whose nerdom starts and ends with The Peanuts.

We headed to the tour for this school, I felt inadequate, it was...fine at best. Afterward we went down toward Hudson Yards where my uncle was working for the day roughly five or six blocks from Javits. There were waves upon waves of people decked out in cosplay, tees depicting their favorite characters, shows, groups, etcetera. I was, for lack of a better term, in awe.

The following year, my freshman year of college, I attended NYCC for the first time. I only went for a day, two passes gifted from my family, and I took a friend. The Javits Center, if you have never been, is big, cacophonous, and overwhelming. I had already been there’s twice; once for the Cotiê Buying Show earlier that month for one of my classes, and the college fair (more overwhelming than anything else) the year prior.

Now the real reason I was going? To meet Troy Baker.

I remember the adrenaline upon walking in. I was anxious, jittery, everything was exciting and beautiful. The floors were jam-packed with people of all genders, ages, demographics and interests. This was the same year I met @softpedropascal for the first time, and if I can just take a moment to say how genuinely kind Cass is. I recognized her in line to meet Troy and she was just so so sweet.

I chased down a group dressed up as the characters from the comic, Saga, and got a picture with them later on.

Anyway, NYCC 2017 was an incredible experience and one I wouldn’t forget. My friend and roommate at the time still makes fun of me for falling asleep in my jeans, full face of makeup, and my contacts. I woke up at seven the next morning completely disoriented.

2018 was bigger and better. The cast of Critical Role was attending, their first campaign having ended the October or November a year beforehand. Now that was a fantastic year. Not only did I go three days instead of one, I stayed with a friend at a hotel a few blocks away (my lovely @buttercupcumbersnatcher ).

This is also the year I met @kaytikazoo and @allurakimas and a few others when we bolted through the concourse halls to make it to the Talks Machina Live panel (where Travis Willingham was subsequently roasted). Later that same day, at the meet and greets, I met @bisexualpluto who became my unofficial hype man (there’s a joke here that they get, believe me).

We all got to meet most of, if not all of, the CR cast but my favorite moment from that weekend was meeting Brian Foster. I say this constantly, it’s probably exhausting at this point, but Brian is an incredible writer. I walked up to his table, shyly set the book down and he genuinely looked surprised.

We spent a few minutes talking about writing, the ins and outs and graces of doing so, how writing what you know is, through and through, important as well as tough. The note he wrote on the inside cover still makes me a little emotional now two years later, but when I tell you he is kind, you better believe it. I went back the next day to get a photo with him, having been too excited to speak to him to even fathom doing so, and again, just very kind.

And for those of you wondering, yes, Laura Bailey is as magnificent and stunning in person as she is on screen and in gaming.

2019 was another wonderful year, running into old friends and for the first time actively going to panels. I don’t have Disney+, I won’t be getting it, but I got to see the pilot for Marvel’s Heros Project a month before it aired. There wasn’t a dry eye in the room, it was incredible.

Two panels later and out walks Troy Baker, dressed to the nines in his own “John Wick” cosplay (shout out once again to Cass for saving me a seat).

That same day I got an autograph from Lorraine Newman for my dad, a huge SNL fan from the early years. @buttercupcumbersnatcher made me watch Booksmart for the first time over wine, then delved into the best episodes of Bob’s Burgers, and bought overpriced coffee the following morning.

Needless to say, I love NYCC. I love New York especially, I always will, and I’m going to miss this year’s convention. I’m going to miss the friends I’ve made. But I get it. I understand, and they made the only call there is.

I’ll be wearing my mask, nerd-inspired or not, and rooting for it next year or the following.

To anyone I’ve met through this convention, I am so grateful. We’ll all be there again soon.

[aion-rsa]

Wheel of Time Amazon TV Series: Everything You Need to Know

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The Wheel of Time, the sprawling fantasy novel mythology by Robert Jordan, is heading to Amazon Prime as a series.

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One of the most popular fantasy franchises of the literary world, The Wheel of Time, is getting a live-action television adaptation. Originally authored by Robert Jordan, the 80 million-selling 1990-2013 book series depicts a sprawling mythology, amalgamating feudal and magical tropes with elements of Eastern mysticism. Indeed, the books bear philosophical influences from European and Asian culture, notably Buddhism and Hinduism, centered on the idea of time being cyclical in nature.

Amazon gave a series order to The Wheel of Time back in October 2018, setting the project as an hour-long series that will stream on Amazon Prime Video, as reported by Deadline and confirmed by an APV retweet. The move was the culmination of what had been a year-and-a-half process, going back to April 2017, when it was first reported that Sony Pictures Television was moving forward with the TV project.

The Wheel of Time Cast

Amazon recently released this footage featuring The Wheel of Time cast in a table read of the script, which also reveals the presence of Naana Agyei-Ampadu (GameFace), whose role is unknown at this time.

On September 10th, the cast and crew of #WOTonPrime got together to read the first episode of The Wheel Of Time. Production is now on its way and we are VERY excited to see this show come to life! #TwitterOfTime, this is for you. pic.twitter.com/FmWA4zeh2r

— The Wheel of Time on Prime (@WoTonPrime) October 2, 2019

As for the rest of the cast...

Daniel Henney was recently added to The Wheel of Time cast. He will play al’Lan Mandragoran, a.k.a. Lan, the stoic warder (essentially a protector,) of Moraine (Rosamund Pike). However, Lan happens to be the lone survivor of a royal bloodline, and is the uncrowned king of Malkier, a province that was overrun by forces of the Shadow. Henney's announced casting as Lan was accompanied by the following quote: "I swear to stand against the Shadow so long as iron is hard and stone abides - to defend the Malkieri while one drop of blood remains. I swear to avenge what cannot be defended."

Henney, an American actor, can be currently seen on CBS’s Criminal Minds, which he joined in 2015’s Season 10, and is also known as the voice of Tadashi in 2014 feature Big Hero 6 and its current animated series. Besides TV runs on Revolution, Hawaii Five-0 and Three Rivers he appeared in the 2009 Fox-Marvel solo spinoff movie, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, as Agent Zero, the character known in the comic book mythology as assassin Maverick.

The series recently revealed a quintet of main cast members. The show’s official social media also provides pertinent quoted descriptions for each of the characters, culminating with the message, "It was about them all." The cast members consist of the following (pictured directly below from the left):

Madeleine Madden (Picnic at Hanging Rock, Tidelands) as Egwene Al’Vere. – “It was about a woman who would not bend her back while she was beaten, and who shown with a light for all who watched.”

Josha Stradowski (Instinct, Spangas) as Rand Al’Thor. – “It was not about me. It’s never been about me.”

Marcus Rutherford (Obey, Shakespeare & Hathaway) as Perrin Aybara. – “It was about a man whose family was taken from him, but who stood tall in his sorrow and protected those he could.”

Zoë Robins (Power Rangers Ninja Steel, The Shannara Chronicles) as Nynaeve. – “It was about a woman who refused to believe that she could not help, could not heal those who had been harmed.”

Barney Harris (Clique, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk) as Mat Cauthon. – “It was about a hero who insisted with every breath that he was anything but a hero.”

They will, of course, join the show’s June-announced headliner...

Rosamund Pike officially landed the lead role in The Wheel of Time as Moiraine. A member of an all-female secret society of magic users, called the Blue Ajah of the Aes Sedai, Moiraine embarks on a dangerous journey with five young people she comes to mentor, one of whom she believes could be the reincarnation of someone prophesized to either save or destroy humanity.

Pike, an Oscar-nominated actress for her role as Amy Dunne in 2014’s Gone Girl, is also known from 2005’s Pride & Prejudice and as a Bond villainess in 2002’s Die Another Day. She recently fielded a small screen starring run on SundanceTV comedy State of the Union, and appeared in films such as A Private War, 7 Days in Entebbe, Beirut, Hostiles and The Man with the Iron Heart. She’ll next be seen in the August-scheduled crime drama, The Informer, and, amongst other projects, will co-star as Marie Curie in the fact-based 2020 romance drama, Radioactive.

The Wheel of Time Director

Uta Briesewitz is set to direct the first two episodes of The Wheel of Time, reports Deadline. This should be great news for genre fans, seeing as the German director and cinematographer, Brieswitz, brings small screen experience from directorial runs on shows like Netflix’s Stranger Things (in the recent Season 3), HBO’s The Deuce and Westworld, AMC’s Fear the Walking Dead, Starz’s Black Sails and Netflix-Marvel shows such as (the just cancelled) Jessica Jones, Iron Fist and The Defenders, as well as streaming giant offerings Orange is the New Black and the returning Altered Carbon. Plus, she’s fielded runs on Fox’s Lethal Weapon and The CW shows The 100 and Jane the Virgin. Indeed, with a peak television CV like that, The Wheel of Time should be in good hands for its launch.

The Wheel of Time series buck stops with Rafe Judkins, who assumes duties as writer, executive producer and showrunner. Judkins is no stranger to genre television, serving as a producer and writer on ABC’s Marvel series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Netflix horror series, Hemlock Grove. He was also a story editor for NBC’s beloved geek-wish-fulfillment spy series, Chuck. Judkins will be joined by executive producers Rick Selvage and Larry Mondragon of Red Eagle and producers Ted Field and Mike Weber of Radar Pictures. Additionally, the property’s authorial legacy is in place with Jordan’s widow, Harriet McDougal, onboard as a consulting producer.

As Sharon Tal Yguado, Head of Event Series, Amazon Originals states:

“Developing and producing Robert Jordan’s beloved fourteen-books-series for TV is a big undertaking, and we don’t take it lightly. We believe that Rafe’s personal connection to the material and soulful writing will resonate with the book’s passionate fans.”

The Wheel of Time Release Date

The Wheel of Time has yet to announce a release date. However, a production timeframe was recently spotted in trade magazine Production Weekly, via fan site The Daily Trolloc. The excerpt claims that the series is set to begin rolling cameras in Prague, Czech Republic sometime in September 2019.

The Wheel of Time Details

The Wheel of Time TV series is moving along swiftly, with production having started on September 16, a bittersweet date, since it also marked the 12-year anniversary of author Robert Jordan's passing.

#ThankYouRobertJordan pic.twitter.com/B5MF5LO5aU

— The Wheel of Time on Prime (@WoTonPrime) September 16, 2019

Of course, The Wheel of Time is a large-scale endeavor, since the novels of Robert Jordan (nom de plume of James O. Rigney Jr.), three of which were completed by Brandon Sanderson after Jordan passed away in 2007, build an intricate mythology governed by the titular seven-spoke Wheel of Time powered by an incorporeal celestial source of power. Like the Force in Star Wars, it is a binary power utilized by gifted people, here called “channelers.” The story is spread across epochs in the continuing battle against Shai’tan (or, the Dark One,) who, upon breaking free of imprisonment from the Creator, exerts influence on the malleable to lead the source toward evil.

Amazon's series order for The Wheel of Time arrives after several years of starts and stops, going back to 2000 when author Jordan was still alive. A pilot called Winter Dragon, starring Billy Zane and Max Ryan, aired on FXX on February 8, 2015 (at 1:30 a.m.) to no fanfare or fruition (it was essentially a move by Red Eagle to prevent the rights from expiring). However, McDougal herself made media ripples in April 2016 when she announced “exciting news” about the property; something that required the clearing of some legal issues before moving forward. After the resolution of said legal issues, McDougal speculated that The Wheel of Time would become a “cutting edge TV series.”

We’ll keep you updated on Amazon’s The Wheel of Time as things develop.

Read and download the Den of Geek NYCC 2019 Special Edition Magazine right here!

Joseph Baxter is a contributor for Den of Geek and Syfy Wire. You can find his work here. Follow him on Twitter @josbaxter.

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Joseph Baxter

Oct 18, 2019

Wheel of Time

Sony Pictures TV

Amazon Prime Video

from Books https://ift.tt/2Is5rVJ

[claquetevirtual]

LEGO tem aproveitado muito bem suas parcerias com algumas das marcas mais famosas na cultura pop, produzindo games, filmes e desenhos que literalmente brincam com as franquias mais populares as transformando em legos, e parece que mais um herói Marvel ganhará sua pequena versão de brinquedo, de acordo com o heroic hollywood, foi anunciando durante a NYCC que a citada empresa está preparando um especial animado com o Pantera Negra, na esteira da chegada de seu live-action marcado para 16 de Fevereiro de 2018. Realizado em parceria com a Marvel Animation, o título, que se chamará Black Panther: Trouble in Wakanda, deve ser um lançamento direto para o mercado de Home Vídeo (ou Streaming), segundo o site, ao estilo de LEGO Marvel Super-Heróis: Sobrecarga Máxima (atualmente disponível na Netflix). O Pantera foi apresentado ao grande público, recentemente e em carne-e-osso, em Capitão América: Guerra Civil (de 2016). Seu longa solo do ano que vem terá a direção de Ryan Coogler (de Creed: Nascido para Lutar) e um elenco cheio de estrelas, incluindo Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong'o, Angela Bassett, Forest Whitaker, Andy Serkis e Martin Freeman, entre outros.

[theconservativebrief]

New York Comic Con feels like it gets bigger every year.

Its growth makes sense: Comic and geek culture have become mainstream culture. Doctor Strange and the Guardians of the Galaxy are no longer esoteric comic book superheroes. If you ask somebody what they think of Doctor Who, they’re likely to respond by asking you to specify which iteration of the show you’re talking about. And the number of people who are familiar with Taika Waititi’s work has exploded since he directed Thor: Ragnarok.

The drawback to this golden age of entertainment is that it makes compiling any given “best of” list extremely difficult. For some, the task might compare to such challenges as choosing between money and love, deciding on a hypothetical desert island meal, or definitively naming Marvel’s best Chris.

With that said, of all the TV and movie offerings I had the chance to preview at this year’s New York Comic Con, I’ve highlighted my top five below, in no specific order.

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The sly, infuriating, and ultimately most heartbreaking thing about writer Rick Remender and artist Wesley Craig’s 2014 comic book Deadly Class was how it made you fall in love with its 1980s antiheroes — a group of damaged teenagers whose crime lord parents enroll them in a prep school for future assassins and murderers — before showing their monstrous sides and their seemingly inevitable downfalls.

The comic is now being adapted into a TV series (Remender is credited as one of the executive producers, along with the Russo brothers, among others) that will debut on SYFY in January, and those who attended its NYCC panel got to screen the first full episode.

Lana Condor (best known for playing Lara Jean in Netflix’s breakout hit To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before) and Benedict Wong (who starred as Wong in Avengers: Infinity War) are the most recognizable names in the cast, and both actors are playing characters who are the polar opposites of their famed roles. But Deadly Class belongs to sentient chestnut Benjamin Wadsworth as the show’s protagonist, deeply troubled Marcus Lopez. The show centers itself on Marcus’s experience and his own vulnerabilities, and Wadsworth holds that spotlight effortlessly.

“Gritty,” “grim,” and “murdery” aren’t unique traits for a show to have in the ever-growing field of comic book and superhero television (see: Gotham; every single Marvel superhero show on Netflix; Arrow; and even some elements of Riverdale). But Deadly Class boasts a few elements — like Henry Rollins playing a professor who teaches an “Introduction to Poison” course or its Harry Potter-esque setting — that heighten and brighten its world.

It’s also fitting, and almost too cutting, that amid America’s current introspection into how our institutions are run and the culture they breed, one of the most exciting TV shows coming down the pike focuses on the next generation of supervillains.

Deadly Class premieres January 16, 2019, on SYFY.

Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement’s beloved 2014 vampire roommate mockumentary gets ported over to television via FX in spring 2019, and attendees of the show’s NYCC panel were treated to a screening of the pilot episode.

Like the original movie, the show depicts how mundane aspects of real life — from drugstore crepe paper to roommate quarrels and city living — become exponentially funnier in the hands of centuries-old vampires who have decided to break with the old world and move to … Staten Island.

Fans of the film will remember that Clement and Waititi (who hadn’t yet found mainstream fame for directing Thor: Ragnarok) starred in, co-directed, and co-wrote it. They’re back for the show as executive producers, along with Paul Simms, but are handing over the starring roles to three new vamps played by Kayvan Novak, Natasia Demetriou, and Matt Berry. Harvey Guillen, meanwhile, plays their faithful and scene-stealing human servant.

There’s something wildly hilarious, but also sad — or at least sad-adjacent — about this cadre of vamps finding the meaning of life and adjusting to its bleak modernity, and I can’t wait to see more.

What We Do in The Shadows doesn’t yet have an exact premiere date but is slated to debut on FX in the spring.

A still from Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy. Netflix

One of the common themes of the new TV shows featured at NYCC concerned fictional schools and academies — and more specifically, how broken they can be or what they signify. Deadly Class is about a prep school for death dealers, and one of the main conflicts of Netflix’s upcoming The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is centered on the dark magic school that Sabrina is supposed to attend.

The Umbrella Academy fits that theme but explores something different entirely: the idea of a chosen family. The series is adapted from the Eisner Award-winning 2007 comic book of the same name, by Gerard Way and artist Gabriel Bá.

The story centers on a “family” of adopted superhuman kids with quirky abilities brought together to save the world by a figure named Sir Reginald Hargreeves. The group is dubbed “The Umbrella Academy,” but they eventually break up after years together and carry the trauma of being superheroes.

In this Netflix adaptation, which is anchored by Ellen Page and Mary J. Blige (who promised the audience at the show’s NYCC panel that she’s pure evil in this series), the Academy — who are now young adults — is brought back together after the death of their mentor Hargreeves. They find out that dealing with each other, and mending their relationships, is just as difficult and important as saving the world.

Attendees of the show’s NYCC panel got to see stylish footage from the series, which featured the beginning of the group’s formation and slivers of the numbers (the members of the Academy have numbers, such as No. 7, as code names) showing off their superpowers.

The Umbrella Academy premieres February 19, 2019, on Netflix.

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One of the most intriguing things about X-Men: Dark Phoenix isn’t necessarily good. The movie’s release date has been continually pushed back — it was originally scheduled to release in theaters in November 2018, then was pushed to February 2019, and then pushed again to June 2019.

This much jumping around and uncertainty isn’t usually a good thing for movies. So it’s possible that Fox wanted to calm some of fans’ reservations by scheduling an NYCC event.

Audience members at Dark Phoenix’s offsite panel got to see the first 13 minutes of the movie, which features the team going to space to save a NASA mission gone awry. Jean Grey (played by Sophie Turner) seemingly becomes a casualty, but not so fast — cosmic rays bombard her, and for some unexplained reason, she survives.

As any X-Men fan could tell you, said unexplained reason is that Jean is imbued with the Phoenix Force, a cosmic entity with immense power.

The footage sets the foundation of the fourth movie in the rebooted franchise (it is preceded by 2011’s X-Men: First Class, 2014’s X-Men: Days of Future Past, and 2016’s X-Men: Apocalypse) by lighting the fuse that will end with the team going up against its most powerful adversary — and someone who happens to be one of their own.

X-Men: Dark Phoenix hits theaters on June 7, 2019.

David Harbour is essentially the prom king of New York Comic Con. Harbour is currently most widely known as Sheriff Jim Hopper on the Netflix TV series Stranger Things. But he’s also building on that geek cred by playing the titular role in Lionsgate’s forthcoming Hellboy reboot.

And during the movie’s Comic Con panel, Harbour even said he would officiate a wedding in character as Hellboy if this tweet gets 666,000 retweets. At this point, any celebrity who wants to win over a Comic Con crowd should be paying Harbour for a clinic — the man knows his audience and how to play to it.

But Hopper’s biggest crowd-pleasing moment during the panel came when he and original Hellboy comic creator Mike Mignola showed a brief trailer for the upcoming movie.

We’re introduced to a more rambunctious, ruder, and crasser Hellboy than the one originated by Ron Perlman in the first film. The footage from the new movie suggests it will skew darker and more along the lines of a horror movie (Mignola said so) with a go-for-broke energy (think: a giant sword engulfed in flames) than the world that director Guillermo del Toro created in 2004.

This isn’t to say that del Toro did a bad job — far from it. But Harbour, Mignola, and director Neil Marshall are aiming for something completely different with the character and the story, rather than trying to trace the steps of the work of a master like del Toro. And by the looks of it so far, they’ve done just that.

Hellboy hits theaters on April 12, 2019.

Original Source -> 5 highlights from New York Comic Con, from Hellboy to Deadly Class

via The Conservative Brief

[creatorsofwrittensins]

Marvels defenders to have Sugorney Weaver as villain  .THROW BACK to 2016

Marvels defenders to have Sugorney Weaver as villain  .THROW BACK to 2016

LIVE from NYCC

[a-man-for-hire-and-his-archives]

Just made quick gifs of them to kill my time, while downloading video of Luke Arnold when he was on Marvel Live during NYCC 2016, before Black Sails's panel.

So stay tune!

[a-man-for-hire-and-his-archives]

Here’s clip of Luke Arnold and Hannah New on Marvel Live! on NYCC 2016, talking about Black Sails season 4 finale, Jack Rackham (I mean Toby Schmitz) and others.

[aion-rsa]

Cherry: Cast and Details on Russo Brothers Movie

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Avengers: Endgame directors the Russo Brothers aren’t done with Tom Holland, who's set to star in their film, Cherry.

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Cherry, a biographical chronicle of the PTSD and addiction-afflicted life of its author, Army vet Nico Walker, was the center of a serious bidding war among studios for the movie rights, one that ultimately saw AGBO – the upstart shingle of esteemed Marvel mega-movie directors Joe and Anthony Russo – offer $1 million to buy it outright. Indeed, the Marvel movie maestros are not only set to direct, but have tapped Spider-Man himself, Tom Holland, to star.

Consequently, while the film will serve as the first non-Marvel follow-up from the Russos after the colossally culminative events of Avengers: Endgame, it won’t be without one of the directors' Marvel-made stars atop the marquee.

The Russos will direct Cherry working off a script, adapted from Walker’s book, by Jessica Goldberg, the creator/executive-producer/writer of Hulu’s The Path. Last August, the siblings acquired the film rights through their AGBO company barely over a week after the book was first released. The acclaimed book from first-time author Walker is a timely tome amid the current opioid epidemic.

Cherry Cast

Ciara Bravo is set to co-star in Cherry alongside headliner Tom Holland, reports Variety. The Kentucky-born actress recently fielded a TV run on YouTube Premium action-comedy Wayne, and is also known from TV runs on Fox short-lived 2016 sci-fi series, Second Chance, and from ABC’s single-season 2014-2015 hospital-set teen drama, Red Band Society, and a 2017 also known from film appearances in The Long Dumb Road, To the Bone and Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising. Technically, she’s banked time in the Russos' and Holland’s Marvel Cinematic Universe, having fielded a guest role in a 2017 episode of ABC’s Agents of SHIELD.

Tom Holland will star in Cherry, as first reported by Variety. Cherry is part of Holland's bountiful backlog, which notably includes more runs as Spider-Man – assuredly in the MCU, despite a recent studio spat – as well as a prospective post-apocalyptic film franchise in the 2020-scheduled, Doug Liman-directed Chaos Walking, in which he stars opposite the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy’s Daisy Ridley. Sometime after that, he’s also set to manifest as the one and only Nathan Drake, starring in the live-action film adaptation of the popular video game series, Uncharted.

Cherry Details

Cherry chronicles Walker’s experiences, starting as a college freshman in Cleveland whose romantic woes lead him to join the Army as a medic in 2005 – during the height of the Iraq War – in which he served until 2006. Consequently, his experiences on over 200 combat missions leave him with a serious (tragically undiagnosed,) case of PTSD, leading him down a road of addiction to opioids, notably heroin; an addiction that doesn’t leave him upon his return to civilian life, resulting in desperate attempts to replenish funds as a bank robber. After hitting 10 banks in the Cleveland area, Walker was arrested in April 2011, which led to a guilty plea in 2012 for which he received an 11-year sentence. However, the incarcerated Walker would become the focus of a Buzzfeed article about his tragic story, which led to him connecting with a publisher.

Cherry directors Joe and Anthony Russo – already lauded for their previous Marvel movie work on Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Captain America: Civil War – currently reside in the stratosphere of the industry for their work on last year’s Avengers: Infinity War, which earned over $2 billion worldwide, setting up April’s follow-up effort, Avengers: Endgame, which ended up becoming the biggest-earning movie of all time, earning $2.8 billion worldwide. Consequently, the Russos’ presence on the Cherry movie immediately gives the project major weight, prospectively serving as the siblings’ attempt at awards season adulation. Moreover, it showcases a story that's close to home for the Russos, who grew up in its Cleveland setting and saw opioid addiction claim the life of a friend.

The Russos, in addition to directing, will serve as producers on Cherry, joined in the latter capacity by AGBO’s Mike Larocca.

We will keep you updated on the Russos’ Cherry movie project as things develop!

Read and download the Den of Geek NYCC 2019 Special Edition Magazine right here!

Joseph Baxter is a contributor for Den of Geek and Syfy Wire. You can find his work here. Follow him on Twitter @josbaxter.

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Joseph Baxter

Oct 3, 2019

Joe Russo

Anthony Russo

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[theconservativebrief]

New York Comic Con feels like it gets bigger every year.

Its growth makes sense: Comic and geek culture have become mainstream culture. Doctor Strange and the Guardians of the Galaxy are no longer esoteric comic book superheroes. If you ask somebody what they think of Doctor Who, they’re likely to respond by asking you to specify which iteration of the show you’re talking about. And the number of people who are familiar with Taika Waititi’s work has exploded since he directed Thor: Ragnarok.

The drawback to this golden age of entertainment is that it makes compiling any given “best of” list extremely difficult. For some, the task might compare to such challenges as choosing between money and love, deciding on a hypothetical desert island meal, or definitively naming Marvel’s best Chris.

With that said, of all the TV and movie offerings I had the chance to preview at this year’s New York Comic Con, I’ve highlighted my top five below, in no specific order.

[embedded content]

The sly, infuriating, and ultimately most heartbreaking thing about writer Rick Remender and artist Wesley Craig’s 2014 comic book Deadly Class was how it made you fall in love with its 1980s antiheroes — a group of damaged teenagers whose crime lord parents enroll them in a prep school for future assassins and murderers — before showing their monstrous sides and their seemingly inevitable downfalls.

The comic is now being adapted into a TV series (Remender is credited as one of the executive producers, along with the Russo Brothers, among others) that will debut on Syfy in January, and those who attended its NYCC panel got to screen the first full episode.

Lana Condor (best known for playing Lara Jean in Netflix’s breakout hit To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before) and Benedict Wong (who starred as Wong in Avengers: Infinity War) are the most recognizable names in the cast, and both actors are playing characters who are the polar opposites of their famed roles. But Deadly Class belongs to sentient chestnut Benjamin Wadsworth as the show’s protagonist, deeply troubled Marcus Lopez. The show centers itself on Marcus’s experience and his own vulnerabilities, and Wadsworth holds that spotlight effortlessly.

“Gritty,” “grim,” and “murdery” aren’t unique traits for a show to have in the ever-growing field of comic book and superhero television (see: Gotham; every single Marvel superhero show on Netflix; Arrow and even some elements of Riverdale). But Deadly Class boasts few elements — like Henry Rollins playing a professor who teaches an “Introduction to Poison” course or its Harry Potter-esque setting — that heighten and brighten its world.

It’s also fitting, and almost too cutting, that amid America’s current introspection into how our institutions are run and the culture they breed, one of the most exciting TV shows coming down the pike focuses on the next generation of supervillains.

Deadly Class premieres January 16, 2019, on Syfy.

Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement’s beloved 2014 vampire roommate mockumentary will get ported over to television via FX in spring 2019, and attendees of the show’s NYCC panel were treated to a screening of the pilot episode.

Like the original movie, the show depicts how mundane aspects of real life — from drugstore crepe paper to roommate quarrels and city living — become exponentially funnier in the hands of centuries-old vampires who have decided to break with the old world and move to … Staten Island.

Fans of the film will remember that Clement and Waiti (who hadn’t yet found mainstream fame for directing Thor: Ragnarok) starred in, co-directed, and co-wrote it. They’re back for the show as executive producers, along with Paul Simms, but are handing over the starring roles to three new vamps played by Kayvan Novak, Natasia Demetriou, and Matt Berry. Harvey Guillen, meanwhile, plays their faithful and scene-stealing human servant.

There’s something wildly hilarious, but also sad — or at least sad-adjacent — about this cadre of vamps finding the meaning of life and adjusting to its bleak modernity, and I can’t wait to see more.

What We Do in The Shadows doesn’t yet have an exact premiere date, but is slated to premiere on FX in the spring.

A still from Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy Netflix

One of the common themes of the new TV shows featured at NYCC concerned fictional schools and academies — and more specifically, how broken they can be or what they signify. Deadly Class is about a literal prep school for death dealers, and one of the main conflicts of Netflix’s upcoming The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is centered on the dark magic school that Sabrina is supposed to attend.

The Umbrella Academy fits that theme, but explores something different entirely: the idea of a chosen family. The series is adapted from the Eisner Award-winning 2007 comic book of the same name, by Gerard Way and artist Gabriel Bá.

The story centers on a “family” of adopted superhuman kids with quirky abilities brought together to save the world by a figure named Sir Reginald Hargreeves. The group is dubbed “The Umbrella Academy,” but they eventually break up after years together and carry the trauma of being superheroes.

In this Netflix adaptation, which is anchored by Ellen Page and Mary J. Blige (who promised the audience at the show’s NYCC panel that she’s pure evil in this series), the Academy — who are now young adults — is brought back together after the death of their mentor Hargreeves. They find out that dealing with each other, and mending their relationships, is just as difficult and important as saving the world.

Attendees of the show’s NYCC panel got to see stylish footage from the series, which featured the beginning of the group’s formation and slivers of the numbers (the members of the Academy have numbers, i.e. #7, as code names) showing off their superpowers.

The Umbrella Academy premieres Feb. 19, 2019 on Netflix.

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One of the most intriguing things about X-Men: Dark Phoenix isn’t necessarily a good thing. The movie’s release date has been continuously pushed back — it was originally scheduled to release on theaters in November 2018, then was pushed to February 2019, and then pushed again to June 2019.

This much jumping around and uncertainty isn’t usually a good thing for movies. So it’s possible that Fox wanted to calm some of fans’ reservations by scheduling a NYCC event.

Audience members at Dark Phoenix’s off-site panel got to see the first 13 minutes of the movie, which features the team going to space to save a NASA mission gone awry. Jean Grey (played by Sophie Turner) seemingly becomes a casualty, but not so fast — cosmic rays bombard her, and for some unexplained reason, she survives.

As any X-Men fan could tell you, said unexplained reason is that Jean is imbued with the Phoenix Force, a cosmic entity with immense power.

The footage sets the foundation of the fourth movie in the rebooted franchise (it is preceded by 2011’s X-Men: First Class, 2014’s X-Men: Days of Future Past, and 2016’s X-Men: Apocalypse) by lighting the fuse that will end with the team going up against its most powerful adversary — and someone who happens to be one of their own.

X-Men: Dark Phoenix hits theaters on June 7, 2019.

David Harbour is essentially the prom king of New York Comic Con. Harbour is currently most widely known as Sheriff Jim Hopper on the Netflix TV series Stranger Things. But he’s also building on that geek cred by playing the titular role in Lionsgate’s forthcoming Hellboy reboot.

And during the movie’s Comic Con panel, Harbour even said he would officiate a wedding in character as Hellboy if this tweet gets 666,000 retweets. At this point, any celebrity who wants to win over a Comic Con crowd should be paying Harbour for a clinic — the man knows his audience and how to play to it.

But Hopper’s biggest crowd-pleasing moment during the panel came when he and original Hellboy comic creator Mike Mignola showed a brief trailer for the upcoming movie.

We’re introduced to a more rambunctious, ruder, and less weary Hellboy than the one originated by Ron Perlman in the original film. The footage from the new movie suggests it will skew darker and more along the lines of a horror movie with a go-for-broke energy (think: a giant sword engulfed in flames) than the fantasy world that director Guillermo del Toro created in 2004.

This isn’t to say that del Toro did a bad job — far from it. But Harbour, Mignola, and director Neil Marshall are aiming for something completely new and different with the character and the story, rather than trying to trace over the steps of the work of a master like del Toro. And by the looks of it so far, they’ve done just that.

Hellboy hits theaters on April 12, 2019.

Original Source -> 5 highlights from New York Comic Con, from Hellboy to Deadly Class

via The Conservative Brief