Welcome to Force Friday on TWN! Don’t know what that means? I’ll clue you in at the end. Let’s get to it.
Alien invasions and Chloe Grace Moretz? I’ll play along. From the trailer, it appears that once again the human race is on the verge of extinction until we take one final stand. In all honesty, I’m mostly curious because they managed to make a trailer for a movie about an alien invasion without showing the actual aliens. Intriguing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vVEN57BS28
Will Smith stars in a biopic about the man who discovered CTE, or chronic traumatic encephalopathy. The movie is billed as a dramatic thriller, though I don’t know how much of the content in the movie will be actual true events. Smith shows a lot of emotion in the trailer, which gives me some hope for great performances in this film.
I’ll be honest with you here, I’ve never read the Shannara books. I tried, I really did. But I could never make it through “The Sword of Shannara” and I don’t think I would really understand a universe that dense if I didn’t have all the background. But, watching this and just remembering how excited my brother was when he dove into that world I am pretty pumped for the series. The first season will be based on “The Elfstones of Shannara“.
Since we are on the topic of TV… I figured some of you might want to know about this. Ridley Scott is co-heading a TV series adaptation for EVE Online. There is a HUGE backstory to this game and it has only grown over their decade-plus of activity. They are currently in talks with financiers to try and get the funding for a pilot.
Marvel Studios has seen a reorganization. I don’t think this means much to the general public currently, but it might have some impact on the future. The re-org has shifted Kevin Feige’s position on the ladder, so to speak. He will now report directly to Disney (Alan Horn) instead of Marvel Entertainment. I do not hesitate to say that Feige is the primary reason that Marvel Studios and the MCU is the powerhouse that it is, and this shift does technically fall in line with the rest of the mergers and buyouts that Disney has made over time (Pixar and LucasFilm are structured the same way). One would ask, though: “if it ain’t broke, why fix it”?
There have been reports of money being the primary issue for the start of this change, with Age of Ultron underperforming at the box office and the budget on the next Captain America movie becoming exponentially larger due to the immense cast. This does not affect the television series however, which maintains it’s banner directly under Marvel Entertainment.
Remember how last week, I was talking about the quiet development of the Luke Cage series and the lack of casting news? I must be psychic or something because they announced a few people this week. Mahershala Ali, Theo Rossi, and Simone Missick were all announced this week. They join Mike Colter (Luke Cage) and Alfre Woodard (Minetta/Black Mariah). The new cast members will be playing Cottonmouth, Shades, and Misty Knight, respectively.
In more casting news, we finally have the villain for Season 2 of “The Flash”. Well, we have the voice of the villain at least: Tony Todd has been cast to be the voice of Zoom. The studio has stated that the reason behind the “voice” of the villain is to keep people guessing who or what he is. The suit being used for Zoom has a “more organic” appearance than the previous villain, so it will be hard to tell if it is an inanimate object or perhaps some form of sentient presence. Todd definitely has a voice that can sound quite evil, I am excited for this casting.
Toys? TOYS!!!
All of the Star Wars toys were officially unveiled on Tuesday (Sept 2), via a live stream event on the Official Star Wars YouTube channel. These toys will ALL be available for purchase today, which has been lovingly named “Force Friday” and it even has it’s own hashtag. For myself, there are two that stand out.
1. BB8.
The price tag? $165 USD. Likely to be gobbled up by SW fans everywhere. The amazing part? This is a Bluetooth-enabled, smartphone-controlled toy.
2. Kylo Ren Force FX Lightsaber (you know, the cross-guard one from the trailer)
The price tag here? $200 USD (which is standard for Force FX sabers). Likely to sell out immediately upon release.
Here’s the good news, these products are both available now. In Canada, you can pick up the saber at Toys-R-Us. BB8 can be ordered from gosphero.com.
You can view the entire livestream series here.
David Alberto is a Contributing Editor for aybonline.com. You can often find him making people cry in Counter-Strike. Roll percentile dice to see if his opinions change, your chances are slim.
