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WIRE Buzz: Stallone's Samaritan sets cast; Chaos Walking gets another release date; more
Sylvester Stallone is ready for another mythic comeback.
We already knew that the erstwhile Rocky star was set to topline MGM's Samaritan, a superhero thriller about a young boy on a quest to learn the fate of a legendary superhero (Stallone), who disappeared 20 years earlier after a tragic event. Now we know who else will be joining the quest.
According to Deadline, shooting starts next week, and Stallone will be joined by a cast that includes Game of Thrones' Pilou Asbaek, who played memorable psychopath Euron Greyjoy; Silicon Valley alum Martin Starr; Orange Is the New Black's Dascha Polanco; and Hannah Montana's Moises Arias. Junior Olympic boxing prodigy Javon "Wanna" Walton, who played Ashtray in HBO's Euphoria, will play the kid.
Samaritan, directed by Overlord filmmaker Julius Avery, hits theaters Dec. 11.
After a very rocky road, Daisy Ridley and Tom Holland's problem-plagued sci-fi flick, Chaos Walking, is finally getting another release date.
Per Variety, Lionsgate has announced the Doug Liman-directed film will hit the big screen on Jan. 22, 2021.
It's not exactly blockbuster time on the release calendar, but perhaps it's for the best, given all the trouble behind the scenes. Chaos Walking, adapted from the YA novel by Patrick Ness, began shooting way back in 2017 with an estimated budget between $90 and $100 million. It follows a teenager named Todd (Holland) who's grown up to believe a pathogen has wiped out all women in this dystopian world, and enabled men the ability to read each other's minds. When Todd encounters Viola (Ridley), the first woman he's ever met, the two embark on an adventure while the world around them erupts into war.
Chaos Walking was supposed to come out in March 2019. But the drama was delayed after studio executives deemed it "unreleasable" and ordered extensive reshoots. Those were undertaken, however, not by Liman, but instead by Uruguayan helmer Fede Alvarez, who directed 2013's Evil Dead reboot and 2016's Don't Breathe.
Let's hope they fixed whatever was ailing it.
Anyone watching the new Apple TV+ new comedy Mythic Quest: Raven's Banquet, about a fictional video game studio, is probably wondering how the heck the workplace sitcom's faux video game looks so friggin' cool.
Well, the answer is Ubisoft, the real-life video game house behind the Assassin's Creed and Far Cry franchises.
Mythic Quest's executive producer, Danielle Kreinik, who is also director of television development at Ubisoft, is opening up about how the sausage — in this case, a genuine quality gaming world — is made to ensure the modeling lives up to the high standards gamers are used to.
"It was really important to the team behind the series to bring an authenticity to the world," Kreinik tells The Hollywood Reporter.
And for good reason. Scenes from the game are a key part of Mythic Quest's narrative, and serve as connective tissue between some of the more dramatic moments featuring the show's game designers, engineers, writers, testers, and producers.
To accomplish its mission, Ubisoft partnered with Red Storm, the studio behind such first-person shooters as Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon.
"Red Storm also did a great job modeling avatars for the [Mythic Quest characters] Masked Man, White Knight and Poppy," Kreinik adds. "It was a joy to work with a games team who is first, super talented, and secondly, had a handful of Sunny fans who understood exactly what we were doing."
The show hails from It's Always Sunny in Philadelpia's Rob McElhenney, Megan Ganz, and Charlie Day.
"We worked with a real game dev team, to make a fake game, that feels like a real game, for a TV series," said Jason Altman, Kreinik's fellow executive producer and Ubisoft's head of film and television, who noted that both execs were in the writer's room and on set to help nail the gaming company vibe.
Mythic Quest is now streaming on Apple TV+.
