WIRE Buzz: Spider-Man 2099 trailer, James Dean revived via CGI, The Mandela Effect trailer

This month, Marvel Comics is going back to 2099. After spending much of 2019 celebrating its 80th anniversary, a new story spinning out Amazing Spider-Man is set to take readers back to that fan-favorite future first glimpsed in 1992. To celebrate, Marvel has released a launch trailer in which Amazing Spider-Man writer Nick Spencer and editor Nick Lowe hype up what's to come. 

It all kicks off in Amazing Spider-Man #33, with a story in which Miguel O'Hara (aka Spider-Man 2099) jumps back to the past to ask for Peter Parker's help in saving the time stream. That launches an epic story featuring everyone from The Foreigner to Doctor Doom, with the future of the Marvel Universe at stake. 

In addition to the main story in Amazing Spider-Man, a number of one-shots will be released following the 2099 adventures of everyone from Conan to Venom. 

"One of the great things about the original 2099 was they brought you new identities and new origins to these characters, and so we wanted to build on that, but there are still some survivors out there that are going to peek up," Spencer said. 

Check out the launch trailer above, and check out the beginning of the new 2099 saga at your local comics shop this week.

At this point, thanks to everything from Ant-Man to The Irishman, we've grown accustomed to digital de-aging technology that allows older actors to play younger characters in scenes that indicate the passage of time. With certain exceptions like Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, though, we haven't seen a whole lot of deceased actors revived for the big-screen. That seems to be changing, because a Hollywood legend has just been "cast" in an upcoming film despite being dead for more than 60 years. 

According to The Hollywood Reporter, James Dean — who died in a car accident in 1955 at the age of just 24 — has been cast by directors Anton Erst and Tati Golykh in Finding Jack, a Vietnam-era drama adapted by Maria Sova from the novel by Gareth Crocker. Dean will play Rogan, which THR describes as a "secondary lead role," via a "full body" CGI recreation based on existing images of the late actor.

"We searched high and low for the perfect character to portray the role of Rogan, which has some extremely complex character arcs, and after months of research, we decided on James Dean," Ernst said. 

Dean became a pop culture icon and one of the defining actors of his generation thanks to his three major film roles in Rebel Without a Cause, East of Eden, and Giant, but he did not live to see his own success. Finding Jack is moving forward with casting Dean thanks to permission from his family. Visual effects houses Imagine Engine and VOI Worldwide will work together to recreate Dean's image for the film, while another actor will provide his voice. 

This is not the first time an actor has been brought back from the dead via CGI for a film. Peter Cushing's role as Grand Moff Torkin was digitally recreated for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story in 2016, but that was more about recreating an iconic character than casting an actor. This is a high-profile instance of a long-dead actor simply being cast as a new character via CGI. Will it work? We'll find out soon enough. Finding Jack is set to launch production later this month for a release date aimed at Veterans Day 2020.

Have you ever had a conversation with a friend and it turns out you have completely different recollections of certain events? Or you remember seeing something common in a completely different way from everyone else? Well, what if that's not just a weird coincidence or a quirk of our human minds? What if that's evidence that something is very wrong?

That's the premise at the heart of The Mandela Effect, the new sci-fi thriller from director David Guy Levy. The film follows a coder (Charlie Hofheimer) who, after a family tragedy, becomes obsessed with tracking misremembrances and examples of false memories that cover everything from the death of Nelson Mandela decades before it happened (hence the title) to what the Mr. Monopoly's face actually looks like. As he digs deeper, it becomes just as likely that he's uncovered a vast simulation of the world as it is that he's just plain crazy. 

The Mandela Effect hits theaters and VOD on December 6.