We’ve gotten through another week, and while we have quiet a bit of news to share, we also have a TON of trailers which have launched in the last couple days.
But first, the news broke as our “Hump Day Update” went to “press” on Wednesday that actor Harrison Ford was injured on the set of the fifth Indiana Jones movie. According to various reports, Ford injured his shoulder while rehearsing a fight sequence, although Director James Mangold is able to continue filming without Ford. The untitled fifth movie started filming in the UK earlier this month.
Disney released the following statement: “In the course of rehearsing for a fight scene, Harrison Ford sustained an injury involving his shoulder. Production will continue while the appropriate course of treatment is evaluated, and the filming schedule will be reconfigured as needed in the coming weeks.”
Ford previously suffered a back injury while making Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom and had leg trauma while filming, Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
Disney has set the Lucasfilm production for a release on July 29, 2022.
Let’s jump into some awards as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the recipients of its 2022 Governor Awards, which will go to actors Samuel L. Jackson and Liv Ullmann and filmmaker Elaine May. The Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award will go to actor Danny Glover. All four Oscar® statuettes will be presented at the Academy’s 12th Governors Awards on Saturday, January 15, 2022, in Los Angeles.
These statuettes are given as an Honorary Award “to honor extraordinary distinction in lifetime achievement, exceptional contributions to the state of motion picture arts and sciences, or for outstanding service to the Academy.”
Also, the full list of Peabody Awards honorees was announced. You might remember that we posted a few of these on Wednesday, but there were a few more additions in the Entertainment category. Joining the previously mentioned winners are 12 Years a Slave Director Steve McQueen‘s anthology series, Small Axe, on Amazon Prime Video; HBO‘s I May Destroy You; Showtime‘s mini-series The Good Lord Bird; and the Guatemalan horror film, La Llorona, which streams on Shudder. 30 awards were handed out for this year’s Peabodys, presented by the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia with the winners selected by 19 jurors.
Jumping back to production news, the third and final season of HBO’s His Dark Materials is about a month into production at the Wolf Studio Wales stages, as well as at locations in England and Wales, with directors including Amit Gupta, Charles Martin, and Weronika Tofilska. Production company Bad Wolf actually began filming on May 24, according to the picture of stars Dafne Keen and Amir Wilson posted to celebrate. The third season will be based on the third novel in Philip Pullman‘s trilogy of fantasy novels, The Amber Spyglass, which involves the main characters Lyra (Keen) and Will (Wilson) travelling across worlds to find each other.
Joining the cast for the third season are Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (Lost) as Commander Ogunwe; Jamie Ward (Tyrant) as Father Gomez; Kobna Holdbrook-Smith (Zack Snyder’s Justice League), Simon Harrison (No Man’s Land), and Chipo Chung (Into the Badlands) as rebel angels Balthamos, Baruch, and Xaphania; and Amber Fitzgerald-Woolfe as Ama.
Executive Producer Jane Tranter said in a statement: “This season is both an epic adventure and a story about love and truth. Jack, Francesca and Amelia’s scripts capture the brilliance of Philip’s worlds and we are joined by our much-loved existing cast and some exceptional talent new to the series.”
Getting into some new projects, our pal Jeff Sneider at Collider broke the news that Oscar nominee Scarlett Johansson is developing and producing a movie based on the Disney theme park ride Tower of Terror, continuing the Mouse House’s love for turning its theme park rides into movies, as seen by the hit Pirates of the Caribbean movies and the upcoming Jungle Cruise, starring Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt. Inside Out screenwriter Josh Cooley is currently writing the script for the movie that will be produced by Johansson’s company These Pictures along with Jonathan Lia. No director has been attached, but that should be easy enough with the high-profile of Ms. Johansson after receiving Oscar nominations two years in a row. Previously, a 1997 TV movie was made from the Tower of Terror name, written and directed by D.J. MacHale.
From even odder source material comes the report that Netflix has won the rights for Unfrosted, a movie directed and starring Jerry Seinfeld about the creation of the Pop-Tart. (Yes, the popular morning pastry from Kellogg’s — I happened to have one this morning.) Seinfeld co-wrote the script for the comedy with Spike Feresten and Barry Marder inspired by a joke from Seinfeld’s stand-up comedy act about the invention of the Pop-Tart. Production is set to start next spring. Netflix previously ran Seinfeld’s interview series, Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, as well as his stand-up specials, Jerry Before Seinfeld and 23 Hours to Kill. Netflix also made a global deal to stream episodes of Seinfeld’s eponymous series for five years beginning later this year.
Just a week after the announcement that two-time Oscar winner Christoph Waltz would do a Western with Willem Dafoe, it’s been announced that Waltz is currently filming The Portable Door, a fantasy adventure adapted from Patrick Holt‘s novels, along with Sam Neill and Patrick Gibson. The movie is being filmed in Queensland, Australia with Director Jeffrey Walker (Ali’s Wedding) from a script by Leon Ford (Griff the Invisible). The tagline for the film from Jim Henson Company and Stony Bridge Films, produced by Blanca Lista from the former and Todd Fellman from the latter, is: “The story sees two lowly, put-upon interns at a mysterious London firm, J.W. Wells & Co., become steadily aware that their employers are anything but conventional. The charismatic villains who run the company are disrupting the world of magic by bringing modern corporate strategy to ancient magical practices.”
You can keep tabs on all these projects and more at our Production Listings.
A couple new television projects…
Another one from Deadline, news comes that Jensen and Danneel Ackles are developing a prequel to the CW series, Supernatural, a show in which Jensen starred as Dan Winchester and Danneel appeared as a guest star. The prequel is called The Winchesters, and it will be about Jensen Ackles’ character’s parents, Todd and Mary Winchester, with Jensen acting as narrator for the series, as well as the show’s exec. producer. Written and exec. produced by former Supernatural Co-Executive Producer, Robbie Thompson, the show is described as “the epic, untold love story of how John met Mary and how they put it all on the line to not only save their love, but the entire world.”
Also, AMC Networks‘ streaming network ALLBLK has greenlit West Philly, Baby, a drama series inspired by Colman Domingo‘s play, Dot. Co-produced by AMC Studios and ALLBLK, the series “will follow the journey of a Philadelphia family forced to grapple with their matriarch’s declining memory amidst uncovering long held family secrets that shake the foundation of their home. Midlife crises, troubling revelations, childhood trauma, and complications of Alzheimer’s make for an American family story set in the heart of one of the country’s oldest and most historically significant cities.”
Domingo is best known for his roles on AMC’s Fear the Walking Dead and HBO’s Euphoria, but he also appeared in last year’s critically-acclaimed Oscar nominee, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, and next week, he’ll appear in two movies, A24‘s Zola and Vertical Entertainment’s The God Committee. He also appears in the upcoming Blumhouse/Universal remake of Candyman, which offered a new trailer (which you can watch below).
Production for West Philly, Baby is expected to start in early 2022 with a first season comprised of six half-hour episodes produced by Domingo’s Edith Productions, along with Exec. Producer Alisa Tager with Sean San José acting as story consultant.
In a statement, Domingo said, “West Philly, Baby is straight from my heart. It is a love letter to Black families and communities. It is about our collective memory and our hope for where we are going in the future. It holds many generations, genders, sexualities, races, and beliefs. It holds plenty of dark humor which is the key to everyone’s survival in my world. I am thrilled to be able to bridge the gap between AMC Studios and ALLBLK as we seek to collaborate across platforms to create a more diverse, equitable and inclusive entertainment industry.”
Getting into some more casting news lighting round style…
Game of Thrones star Sophie Turner has joined Jennifer Kaytin Robinson‘s Netflix feature, Strangers, reports Deadline. The Hitchcockian dark comedy co-written by Robinson, writer of Marvel Studios‘ upcoming Thor: Love and Thunder, stars Camila Mendes (Riverdale) and Maya Hawke (Stranger Things).
Kamal Bolden and Noah Bean have joined the Untitled Nick Wootton/Jake Coburn NBC Drama Pilot that we’ve been tracking for the past few weeks.
We might as well get to those trailers, because with so many high-profile summer movies being released over the next few weeks, the studios are trying to get their best wares out there. And by “studios,” I mean Universal Pictures, because starting with this weekend’s F9, the studio will be releasing three movies over the next couple weeks
Before we get to those Universal trailers, Marvel Studios and Disney released the newest trailer for its September release, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, this morning. Starring Simu Liu from Kim’s Convenience, Awkwafina from Crazy Rich Asians, and China legends Tony Leung and Michelle Yeoh, the film directed by Destin Daniel Cretton (Short Term 12) and shot by Cinematographer Bill Pope (The Matrix) will be released on September 3. The new trailer gives us a little more intel on what those “ten rings” in the title are about.
Beyond the release of F9 this weekend, Universal Pictures is releasing The Forever Purge over 4th of July weekend, so it’s geared up a few trailers for its high-profile 2021 horror releases, the big one being the trailer for filmmaker David Gordon Green and Blumhouse‘s Halloween Kills, which reunites Jamie Lee Curtis with the franchise in which she got her start, and of course, the deadly Michael Myers.
Warning: this trailer is not for the faint of heart or those who get queasy from the sight of blood.
Another horror movie from Blumhouse being released on August 27 by Universal is the Nia DaCosta-directed, Jordan Peele co-written and produced remake of the 1990 horror film, Candyman, which was delayed from its original release date in 2020. Starring Colman Domingo, this updated horror film offers a far more intense trailer that gets into the origins of the horror icon who appears when you say his name five times. Same warning for this trailer as the one made for the Halloween Kills trailer above.
Apple TV+ released the first trailer for its August 13 release, CODA (an acronym for “child of deaf adults”), which was the big hit at this year’s virtual Sundance Film Festival. Written and directed by Siân Heder, the movie won both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award at the festival. It stars Emilia Jones as 17-year-old Ruby, who is the only hearing member of her deaf fishing family, who helps her family on the fishing boat after school but has real dreams of being a singer. It’s a wonderful movie, and a great trailer that you can watch below.
Despite not having a movie in theaters this weekend, Netflix released the first trailer for its fall Western film, The Harder They Fall, starring Jonathan Majors, Zazie Beetz, Delroy Lindo, LaKeith Stanfield, Damon Wayans Jr., and Deon Cole with Regina King and Idris Elba. The film is directed by Jeymes Samuel (They Die by Dawn), written by Samuel and Boaz Yakin, and produced by Shawn Carter, James Lassiter, Lawrence Bender and Samuel. (The connection is that Samuel wrote and directed Jay-Z: Legacy, produced by Carter aka Jay-Z.)
Oh, wait, we have one more Universal trailer, because next week sees the release of its DreamWorks animated sequel, The Boss Baby 2: Family Business. Playing in front of that (at least in theaters — since it will also be on Peacock) will be the first (quite long at 3.5 minutes) trailer for Sing 2 from Illumination Entertainment, Universal’s own animation house that made the Despicable Me and Minions movies. The original Sing grossed $634 million worldwide, and the sequel will be released on December 22, just in time for Christmas.
