Boys Are Out; Angels Are In
Good Boys were blasted last weekend by Secret Service agent Mike Banning (Gerard Butler – 300) as the action film Angel Has Fallen rolled into cinemas all around the country. A third entry in the Fallen franchise – after Olympus Has Fallen and London Has Fallen – follows Butler’s no-nonsense secret agent as he’s drawn into a vast conspiracy targeting US President Allan Trumbull (Morgan Freeman – Shawshank Redemption). Directed by director and stunt performer Ric Roman Waugh, Angel Has Fallen grossed $21,4 million in its opening weekend.
Comedy Good Boys dropped to the second place at the box office, earning $11,6 million. In the third place is the second newcomer of the week: Christian drama Overcomer. Directed by actor, director, writer, and producer Alex Kendrick, Overcomer earned $8,1 million in its inaugural weekend. Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw is now in the fourth place with just a bit over $8 million – $8,068,380, to be exact. The reason we mention this is that Hobbs & Shaw only barely managed to land ahead of Disney’s Lion King remake that grossed just $3000 less – $8,065,231. Not that Disney has anything to sweat about: Lion King is a veritable king of the movies, with over half a billion dollars domestic gross and another one billion dollars earned overseas. As always, all of this data comes to us courtesy of the Box Office Mojo.
Disney Reveals Its Slate of Star Wars Projects
Last weekend, Disney presented its new Star Wars projects at the D23 conference held in Anaheim, California. Naturally, the sizzle reel for the next Star Wars film drew the most attention. Both it and its accompanying movie poster show us the final confrontation between Rey (Daisy Ridley) and Kylo Ren (Adam Driver). There’s also a scene featuring a Sith version of Rey that may or may not be an actual thing in the movie. After all, its director J. J. Abrams is well known for using such elaborate misdirection. Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker arrives in cinemas this December.
But it’s another Star Wars project that looks far more interesting. Disney released the first trailer for Jon Favreau’s (Iron Man) upcoming Star Wars series The Mandalorian. As reported by comicbook.com, Favreau talked about his vision for the show and the studio’s strategy for its release. Meanwhile, Entertainment Weekly revealed new details about some of the show’s characters, like former imperial governor Moff Gideon (Giancarlo Esposito – Breaking Bad) or the former Shock Trooper Cara Dune (Gina Carano – Haywire).
Finally, there was also an official announcement that Ewan McGregor will return to the Star Wars universe in a live-action series following solo adventures of Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi.
All in all, that’s a lot of Star Wars projects. But not as many as…
…Disney’s Upcoming Marvel Projects
Between Star Wars and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Disney is really pushing its upcoming Disney+ streaming service. During the D23 conference, Marvel’s executives presented the audience with upcoming MCU TV shows that will exclusively stream on Disney+. The studio revealed several new TV shows. The Verge reports that Marvel is working on a live-action TV series about the lawyer/superhero She-Hulk. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the studio has also hired British writer Bisha K. Ali as showrunner for an upcoming TV series about Ms. Marvel – Marvel’s first Muslim superhero. Then there’s a live-action series about superhero vigilante Moon Knight.
Fans learned bits and pieces about other previously announced Marvel TV shows. WandaVision will follow the ill-fated romance between Scarlett Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany). According to GeekTyrant, the show will be part superhero epic and part… 1950s-style family sitcom? Marvel also showed footage from its animated TV series What If…? based on alternate history Marvel Comics storylines. Finally, film producer and MCU mastermind Kevin Feige announced that Kit Harington (Game of Thrones) and Gemma Chan (Captain Marvel) joined the cast of Marvel’s upcoming movie The Eternals.
I certainly hope you all really enjoy MCU and Star Wars. We’ll be all watching them for a long, long, long time.
