Black Gate

Honestly, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry about this one.

Sony has recently been toying around with the idea of revisiting several of its franchises, which may be due to the clamoring of fans, but sounds suspiciously like a sincere and long-lasting drought of new ideas. Word has it they’re already casting another Charlie’s Angels (insert face palm here), with Kristen Stewart attached (double face palm), as well as having planning meetings around the most rebooted of all rebooted franchises in the last 20 years – Spider-Man.

This, when we can all name at least five books each which should become films immediately, but for whatever reason remain in development hell… if they even got that far.

But there we are. Life is definitely not fair.

However, this week we got some serious Sony reboot news – or it may be a spinoff, we’re not entirely clear yet. But we did learn that Rafe Spall (Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom) and Kumail Nanjiani (The Big Sick) will star alongside Chris Hemsworth, Tessa Thompson and Liam Neeson in next year’s revisiting of Men In Black being directed by F. Gary Gray.

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There is a demon in here, so bear with me.

Last summer, Netflix ordered twenty episodes of Disenchantment, an  animated comedy-fantasy series from the mind of The Simpsons and Futurama creator Matt Groening. If you’re a fan of either show, you know how close to the line both get without stepping over what would be tolerated on commercial television. So, l invite you to let this news sink in…

It’s going to be an adult-themed animated comedy-fantasy series on Netflix.

Sweet.

In Disenchantment, viewers will be whisked away to the crumbling medieval kingdom of Dreamland, where they will follow the misadventures of hard-drinking young princess Bean, her feisty elf companion Elfo, and her personal demon Luci. Along the way, the oddball trio will encounter ogres, sprites, harpies, imps, trolls, walruses, and lots of human fools.

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Most people assume The Addams Family started life on TV in the 1960s, but they were actually conceived by Charles Addams as a series of comic panels for The New Yorker magazine, beginning in 1938 and running until Addams’ death in 1988. The roughly 150 unrelated panels that make up The Addams Family story are still enormously popular today, especially with me, who has stationary, artwork, and couple of tee-shirts depicting the family as well as a vintage Morticia and Gomez, Ken and Barbie set which is about as close as I have or ever will get to the Malibu version.

In the spring of 2017 there were rumors that on the heels of the success of The Incredibles and Hotel Transylvania, the world was now sufficiently primed for a seriously upscale animated version of The Addams Family which to me sounded like first-rate idea considering what happened the last time.

If you can believe this, The Addams Family had been animated before, having appeared in a well-received 1972 episode of The New Scooby-Doo Movies, “Scooby-Doo Meets the Addams Family” which saw several of the original cast members return to voice their TV roles. This resulted in Hannah Barbera’s launch of a cartoon modelled on Addams’ comic panels, which ran for two seasons (although the second was just repeats). A big change to the format was having the family hit the road in a Wacky Races-style Victorian motorhome. Sadly, the format change along with the loss of all but two of the original cast sort of doomed this venture, though not without launching the career of a 10-year-old Jodie Foster who voiced Pugsley.

Last summer it was officially announced that Oscar Isaac (Star Wars, X-Men) was slated to voice Gomez Addams in Sausage Party director Conrad Vernon‘s animated Addams Family film for MGM. This week Deadline has reported the entire core voice cast was announced, and it’s pretty unbelievably awesome end-to-end.

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This may be the greatest movie news I have had so far this year.

I’m a tad embarrassed to admit this one completely snuck up on me but I recently got a link to the red band trailer (aka: too naughty for the average viewer) for the movie The Happytime Murders. Thinking this might be some sort of serial killer bloodbath, I skeptically had a look only to discover the greatest thing ever.

Per its logline, The Happytime Murders is a “filthy comedy set in the underbelly of Los Angeles where puppets and humans coexist.”

Directed by Brian Henson, puppeteer, son of Muppets creator and master puppeteer Jim Henson and current chair of The Jim Henson Company, The Happytime Murders tells the story of two detectives with a shared secret. The human detective, played by Melissa McCarthy and her puppet colleague are forced to work together to solve the brutal murders of the former cast of a beloved classic puppet television show.

So, two things before you watch this.

First, I warn you this trailer is “red band” for a reason. Don’t watch this at work without a screen protector and headphones. Second, in spite of the fact the level of humor here is so gutter that I feel I now need a hot shower, I laughed hard enough to cause the people in the upstairs offices to think there was something wrong with me.

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CinemaCon was held in Vegas last week and for those of you lucky enough to attend, you got a first look at footage from the upcoming (final, and we mean it this time) installment in the Halloween franchise. The rest of us are going to have to wait for it to be released publicly, which is happening soon.

Still, a lot of scoop came out of the annual four-day event. Here is what we now know about David Gordon Green’s October sequel to the original classic.

Things Jamie Lee Curtis said at CinemaCon, along with descriptions of the footage that flooded social media, have revealed the basic plot details. As we already knew, the new movie takes place 40 years after the events of the original, with all subsequent sequels ignored. Michael Myers has been locked up in an asylum since tormenting the teenaged Laurie back in 1978, but of course he escapes. Only this time, Laurie isn’t a helpless victim – this time, Laurie is “ready.”

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