TV, Movies & Home Theatre News - Page 6

Fans will soon be able to revisit the magic of the mega-popular animated hit Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, which will return exclusively to IMAX theatres starting January 19.

The film, which is acclaimed for its groundbreaking animation, voice acting, and characters, will see our spider heroes swinging back onto the big screen for a limited time only, according to a recent post by the writer and producer Christopher Miller.

We have seen a recent surge of theatrical re-releases of films from the last year popping up in the last few months, most notably the return of Barbie and Oppenheimer. However, this particular re-release comes amid the build-up for the 2024 Academy Awards, where the spider-centric film is already gaining Oscar Buzz.

2023 was full of fantastic movies, and none were bigger than Greta Gerwig's Barbie, starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling.

However, despite campaigning for the Best Original Screenplay Oscar Nomination, Barbie has been deemed to be an adapted screenplay by the Writers Branch executive committee of the Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences, a committee that determines films' eligibilities in submitted categorizations.

According to a report from Variety, when official Oscar Nominations open next Thursday, January 11, Voters will only be able to vote for the script of the film as an adapted screenplay. There has been an ongoing debate for months as to whether Barbie will be an original or adapted screenplay after news came out that the film would be campaigning as an original work.

According to reports from Deadline, comedy legend Jack black may be set to play yet another iconic video game character as the default character skin, Steve, in the upcoming adaptation of the bestselling video game of all time, Mojang Studios' Minecraft.

Variety has also reported that Black is now a part of the cast but didn't say who he might be playing. Black is well known in the industry for iconic roles in movies such as School of Rock, the Kung Fu Panda series he recently won an Emmy for, and most recently, Bowser in the second highest-grossing movie of 2023, Illuminations the Super Mario Bros. Movie. He will also star as another video game character, the Sassy robot Claptrap, in Lionsgate's take on the video game Borderlands, hitting cinemas on August 9.

For fans of the game, Minecraft's main man, Steve, doesn't really have a defined personality and is more of an empty vessel for players to project their ideals onto. It would be interesting to see if Black will portray Steve with a muted performance or if he will bring his own comedic chops to the popular skin.

Marvel's Hawkeye actor Jeremy Renner is back on his feet and fully recovered, returning to work one year after almost losing his life.

On Jan 1st of this year, Renner was involved in a freak snow-plow accident that saw the beloved actor crushed by his snowcat while clearing snow near his home. His injuries were horrific, including 30 broken bones, and he had to undergo emergency surgery in the ICU to save his life.

Now, just one year since the accident, he has shared a post on his Instagram, originally posted by his Mayor Of Kingstown co-star Emma Laird, who tagged the actor and captioned "Back with my favorite guy next week." where Renner added, "It's happening."

Starting January 29, 2024, Amazon Prime users will soon have their viewing sessions interrupted by ads.

Amazon Prime Video started out as an added value to boost the appeal of its world-changing Prime subscription, but the streaming wars have kicked content investment into overdrive. Amazon has spent hundreds of millions of dollars creating original programming and adaptations like the Lord of the Rings series, Wheel of Time, and The Boys.

As is the case with other streaming services, that cost is starting to trickle down to subscribers. Rather than raise Prime Video's subscription costs outright, Amazon will instead use ads to make more revenue. The company has announced that all existing Prime Video users will be subject to "limited advertisements" in late January of next year. Users can pay an extra $2.99 per month to avoid these ads on Prime Video.

The director of the upcoming sequel to the Planet of the Apes series has confirmed the possibility of further movies in the franchise.

Speaking with Empire, director Wes Ball and producer Joe Hartwick Jr. have confirmed that the upcoming film Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes was always intended to be the next chapter in a brand new trilogy of monkey mayhem. While Ball is unsure if he will be involved with further installments of the series, he confirmed that he was in talks with the studio "about the next story."

He also suggested that while the former trilogy was about "the end of humanity," this new trilogy will be "very much about the beginning of something." This new film will be set 300 years after the ending of the rebooted Apes continuity that began with 2011's Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which saw Andy Serkis' Caesar lead his kind toward becoming the more predominant species on Earth.

According to multiple sources, Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount Global are reportedly in talks for a potential merger of the two entertainment giants that could have wide-ranging consequences for the industry. Both companies themselves are products of mergers as recently as 2022 with Warner Bros.

Discovery formed from a deal between WarnerMeida and Discovery, Inc. and Paramount Global in 2019, previously known as ViacomCBS Inc. until 2022, forming from a merger of CBS Corporation and Viacom. Sources report that Paramount Global's Bob Bakish and Warner Bros. Discovery's David Zaslav met with one another on Tuesday this week.

The CEO pair were reportedly in talks to discuss a possible merger of the two companies, though it does appear the companies would not be equal parties due to Warner Bros. Discovery being worth a whopping $29 billion and Paramount Global worth adding up to only $10 billion, just over one-third of that total.

Godzilla Minus One is set to be re-released in a more old-school look reminiscent of the original, as seen in the release of a new trailer.

The film, which had the best opening for a foreign film in 2023, also blasted the United States records for the best opening weekend of a live-action Japanese film debuting to a whopping $11 million. As well as making high returns at the box office, Godzilla Minus One has been widely acclaimed by fans and critics alike with it also becoming a finalist for Best Visual Effects at the Academy Awards in 2024 and became the sixth highest-grossing Japanese film in the history of the US box office.

Minus One's writer/director, Takashi Yamazaki, who had waited 15 years until the technology was right to produce this film, also won the award for best director at the Hochi Film Awards in Japan, where Minus One was nominated for an additional 3 awards.

Netflix's live-action adaptation of the beloved series Avatar: The Last Airbender is set to hit our screens early next year, and the showrunner of this new take has revealed that the series will "remix" events from the original animated series.

The biggest question fans have had about this new adaptation is how faithful it would play out to the original when it debuts, even more so once it was announced the creators of the original animated series had exited the project moving forward due to creative differences, after spending two years on the production.

Michael Dante DiMartino, one of the two original creators of the series, called his exit from the project "The hardest professional decision I've ever had to make." DiMartino also added that he believed the Netflix live-action project has potential, but "Whatever version ends up on-screen, it will not be what Byran and I had envisioned or intended to make."

In September, we were treated to the release of a new Ninja Turtles movie, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem.

This new iteration of the turtles was accompanied by a beautiful new art style and animation. The film pitted this version of Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo, and Raphael against a new foe in Superfly, voiced by Ice Cube. The turtles were able to put an end to Superfly's evil plan, but with the defeat of their first villain comes an even more formidable threat on the horizon.

The ending of Mutant Mayhem teased the arrival of long-time foe Shredder, and director Jeff Rowe has opened up about his take on the character and how he wants to make the well-known villain "100 times scarier than Superfly". Speaking with Empire, Rowe shared that Mutant Mayhem took inspiration from Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy by choosing not to use Shredder as the main villain in the first film.