Weekly Round Up: Samuel L Jackson, Eddie Redmayne, The Meg

13th August 2018

Ah, the Academy. Am I right? Or am I right? You all know what I mean. It’s weekly round up movie news and this week the conversation has been all about the Oscars. It’s no secret that they’re suffering a steep decline in viewership, mostly down to the fact that it’s… well, the Oscars are really boring, don’t really mean anything and are a prime example, to me at least, of where Hollywood tends to get it all wrong.

As if to prove how utterly bizarre, out of touch and absurd the entire thing is, this week, in an attempt to try and claw back some kind of interest in this ever-changing world, the Academy sparked a debate over how to make their show more audience friendly. Topic ranged from the sensible (let’s keep the ceremony to three hours, shall we?) to really kind of stupid (we’ll hand your award out the commercial break because… haha, you don’t matter!).

But the bulk of the discussion was taken up by the idea that they might implement some kind of Oscar for most popular movie. I’ve got an idea; how about you just start looking at all movies with the same kind of consideration rather than the blatant Oscar bait ones? It shouldn’t be that hard to understand where you’ve gone wrong. C’mon, guys…

Anyway, Samuel L Jackson’s going to be in the next Spiderman movie, apparently.

Sorry, that was a bit of a bizarre jump there, wasn’t it? I should have done some kind of ease into it like, “speaking of popular movies” or something. I didn’t. That’s my bad. I could go back and re-edit, but I’m not going to. It remains in.

So, those of you who keep up to date with this kind of thing will know that the follow-up to the Marvel/Sony Spiderman: Homecoming is going to be titled Spiderman: Far From Home. After the release of Avengers: Infinity War (spoilers! If for some reason you’re yet to see the highest grossing movie, spoilers now) speculation began about just what this title could mean.

Could it mean that Peter Parker is still trapped out in space? Could it mean he’s trapped in some alternate dimension and he wasn’t actually erased from existence? Who knows? Who cares?

What we do know, however, is that Far From Home will feature both Samuel L Jackson and Cobie Smulders, one imagines reprising their roles from previous entries because… well, if not then that would be weird. The film will also feature Jake Gyllenhaal as the villain, Mysterio (which is weird because at one point he was touted as being a potential Spiderman!).

Sony also have a bunch of other projects scheduled for release, they hope within the Marvel canon, including Venom this October, as well as Morbius the Living Vampire with Jared Leto, Kraven the Hunter, Silk and Nightwatch and they have recently added to that line-up solo adventures for Black Cat, Silver Sable and Jackpot.

Far From Home has a scheduled release date of July 5, 2019. Jackson is returning in 90s set prequel Captain Marvel, which will be out March 6, 2019. With Avengers 4 coming out in April of that year that’s… well, that’s a whole lotta Marvel and I just don’t… ugh.

Shall we do some original movie news?

The Jason Statham fights a shark B-movie extravaganza that is The Meg surpassed studio projections during its opening weekend, more than doubling it’s take at the box office. This was a surprise to almost everyone except people who have been paying attention.

Thing is, it’s not like The Meg is even that good, it’s just that it’s not a reboot, remake, sequel or the first in a proposed franchise or cinematic universe, it’s a dumb, broad and kind of fun action movie that doesn’t take itself too seriously and that’s something that’s been sorely lacking in recent years.

In other original movie news Academy award winning actor Eddie Redmayne (he plays one character, seriously!) and Academy Award nominated actress Jessica Chastain are teaming up to appear in the true crime thriller The Good Nurse. The film will tell the story of real life nurse Charlie Cullen who used his job as a way to carry out the murders of an estimated 300 to 400 patients from the late 80s all the way through to 2003. It will be the English language debut of Danish writer/director Tobias Lindholm (sadly not Tobias Funke, although wouldn’t that have been swell?), the man behind 2012’s critical hit The Hunt, starring Mads Mikkelsen.

Count me in for this one. It sounds interesting. I’m not a Redmayne fan, not going to lie, but I think this has potential and a great group of people heading it up.

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