WIRE Buzz: Wonder Woman 1984 greets Maxwell Lord; Conan O'Brien joins Death Stranding

Cheetah may be the biggest baddie named in writer/director Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman sequel, but some of her recent activity on social media seems to reveal that Wonder Woman 1984 might be more tightly packed with villains than previously believed.

Kristen Wiig’s Barbara Ann Minerva will certainly give Gal Gadot’s Diana Prince a worthy rival, but Pedro Pascal’s previously undisclosed role may continue the kind of devious patriarchy seen in Jenkins’ first film. Jenkins tweeted out a greeting to Maxwell Lord, a onetime Lex Luthor-type businessman/all-around smart guy who became a mind-controlling metahuman over the course of the comics. Like, so good at mind control that Wonder Woman has to murder him.

If Pascal is truly playing Lord, his mind control could certainly come into play — making one or more of the female characters operate under his control. That’s prime ground for liberation, especially with the 1984 reference right in the title.

Wonder Woman 1984 is scheduled to hit theaters on June 5, 2020.

Next, the impossibly strange Death Stranding has added another cameo to a cast that seems more familiar to a film or SNL episode than a highly conceptual video game. Joining the varied likenesses of actors and directors like Norman Reedus, Mads Mikkelsen, Léa Seydoux, Guillermo del Toro, and Nicolas Winding Refn — each of whom portrays everything from the main, playable character to brief side characters — is an equally unlikely face: comedian and talk-show host Conan O’Brien.

Confirmed in a tweet from game director Hideo Kojima, this cameo makes O’Brien as a kind of item dealer:

Yes, he gives players an otter suit. This strange relationship seems to have blossomed when O’Brien visited Kojima Productions and got his face scanned using the same process that made the other big names into oddball denizens of Death Stranding:

Death Stranding comes out exclusively on PS4 on Nov. 8.

Finally, the Independent Filmmaker Project kicked off awards season with its nominations for the Gotham Awards — and genre films are already scoring big in the indie-centric space. 

Early critical darlings like the horrorific Midsommar were joined by recent spooky fare like The Lighthouse, from The Witch writer/director Robert Eggers. Willem Dafoe earned a Best Actor nomination for the latter while Florence Pugh scored a Best Actress berth for the former. Midsommar also earned writer/director Ari Aster a Best Screenplay nomination. Aisling Franciosi was honored as a nominee for breakthrough actor for her work in Jennifer Kent's gripping revenger and Babadook follow-up The Nightingale.

Even Netflix's Groundhog Day-esque time-warp series Russian Doll got a nod, earning a nom for Breakthrough Series - Short Form, while spacey documentary Apollo 11 was honored among the Best Documentary candidates.

Winners of the Gotham Awards will be announced on Dec. 2.