WIRE Buzz: Avatar lands Star Trek’s Michelle Yeoh, Tyrese teases Morbius role, more

The Emperor of the Terrans is crossing over to Avatar.

Star Trek: Discovery star Michelle Yeoh will be jumping into a Pandora's box of a franchise and joining the cast of James Cameron's Avatar sequels, the film's official Twitter account revealed on Monday. 

Yeoh, who’s become a Discovery fan favorite in her mirrored roles as Cpt. Philippa Georgiou, will play a Pandoran scientist named Dr. Karina Mogue as work ramps up on the first of four planned Avatar movies. If that's not enough, she'll also be plenty busy with her very own just-announced Star Trek spinoff series for CBS All Access.

After breaking out with English-speaking audiences in Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) and Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), Yeoh more recently has ventured further into genre, including Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011) and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017) — as well as her lengthier stints on Discovery and, now, Avatar.

Details on where Cameron is taking the Avatar franchise, recently brought under the Disney umbrella following the 20th Century Fox merger, are still super-light. Here’s hoping Yeoh’s Dr. Mogue will end up recurring beyond just the first sequel in Avatar’s whole new (blue) world. The opening installment is set to plug us back into Pandora starting Dec. 18, 2020.

At last check, we knew Tyrese Gibson was on the cusp of diving into Jared Leto’s Morbius movie — but now we’re seeing him getting into character for the blood-tinged Spider-Man spinoff.

Via Instagram, Gibson teased a shot from the Morbius makeup chair, accompanied by an #AgentStroud tag and a evil-spurning audio sermon that appears to confirm earlier reports he’ll be playing an FBI agent who’s on the hunt for the living vampire, and that he’ll be running from — and not with — the devil.

As ill luck would have it, Tyrese’s tease leaves us wanting a look at his character’s face. But at least it appears that the core Morbius cast is finally set. In addition to Leto and now Gibson, Morbius also stars Matt Smith (Doctor Who), Adria Arjona (Pacific Rim: Uprising and the upcoming Good Omens series), and Jared Harris (Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows). 

Morbius emerges from the shadows on July 31 of next year.

Finally, a new pair of posters for Avengers: Endgame is throwing things back to Marvel’s rich comic book pages, at least in spirit: Paul Rudd (Ant-Man) and Scarlett Johansson (Black Widow) recently did the honors in debuting Marvel’s new U.K. promotional Endgame posters for a recent interview, and they offer up a cool, 2D illustration style that shows our surviving heroes at their most iconic — while really bringing out the red:

The posters are the work of Matt Ferguson, who’s already responsible for a handful of killer frames for recent MCU movies like Thor: Ragnarok, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, and Captain Marvel. Sadly, it looks as though only U.K. audiences will be treated to the good stuff: Ferguson’s tweet suggests the posters are exclusive to the Odeon Cinemas chain. But that’s why the universe is grateful for the picture-sharing power of the internet — and it’s one more reason (out of 14,000,605) to get hyped for Endgame’s April 26 arrival.