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    Bond Star Lashana Lynch In Talks for New 'Matilda' Movie

    WENN

    The actress, who will become the first black 00 agent in the upcoming James Bond movie, is reportedly circling one of the major roles in the upcoming adaptation of Roald Dahl’s children’s classic.

    Jan 7, 2021
    AceShowbiz – Lashana Lynch is reportedly in talks to play Miss Honey in “Matilda”
    The actress is said to be in line to take on the role of the title character’s good-natured teacher, who was portrayed by Embeth Davidtz alongside Mara Wilson in the 1996 big-screen adaptation of Roald Dahl’s children’s classic.
    According to Variety, Lynch is set to join the upcoming Netflix version based on the 2010 stage production “Matilda the Musical”.
    Matthew Warchus – who directed the musical – will helm the film while original playwright Dennis Kelly will adapt the screenplay, featuring music and lyrics by Tim Minchin.

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    The movie is based on the 1988 classic novel about a five-year-old girl named Matilda, whose gift for telekinesis helps her to overcome bullying from her parents, classmates, and terrifying school principal Miss Trunchbull.
    Meanwhile, film fans will be able to see Lynch on screen later this year as she stars opposite Daniel Craig as Nomi in highly anticipated James Bond blockbuster “No Time to Die”.
    The actress – the first black woman to play a 00 agent in the iconic spy series – recently revealed she wanted to represent the black community authentically in the franchise and she “searched” for moments in the script that audiences could identify with.
    “A character is too slick, a cast-iron figure? That’s completely against what I stand for,” she said. “I didn’t want to waste an opportunity when it came to what Nomi might represent. I searched for at least one moment in the script where black audience members would nod their heads, tutting at the reality but glad to see their real life represented.”
    “In every project I am part of, no matter the budget or genre, the black experience that I’m presenting needs to be 100 per cent authentic.”

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    Ray Fisher Dropped From 'The Flash' Movie After He Criticizes DC Boss

    Warner Bros. Pictures

    The Cyborg depicter has been written out of the upcoming DC Speedster standalone movie following the actor’s outburst against DC Films President Walter Hamada.

    Jan 7, 2021
    AceShowbiz – “The Flash” bosses have reportedly had “Justice League” star Ray Fisher’s Cyborg character written out of the upcoming standalone movie, following his public resignation from the role.
    Last summer (20), Fisher had been offered the opportunity to reprise his part for a cameo in “The Flash”, but he has since clashed with studio executives at Warner Bros., who are developing the DC Comics film, after accusing director Joss Whedon of misconduct on the set of 2017’s “Justice League”, which he completed when Zack Snyder had to step down.
    An internal investigation was launched, but Fisher refused to co-operate, and last week (30Dec20), he slammed DC Films President Walter Hamada, branding him, “the most dangerous kind of enabler” – even though he was not employed by the firm or involved in “Justice League” when it was originally released.
    Fisher then declared, “I will not participate in any production associated with him. A >E (Accountability >Entertainment).”

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    Hamada is currently overseeing work on “The Flash”, and it appears producers have taken note of Fisher’s outburst and had the storyline reworked to exclude an appearance by Cyborg, according to The Wrap.
    The character will not be recast.
    Fisher previously returned as Cyborg for reshoots for the “Justice League Snyder Cut”, an extended version of the director’s original vision, which will premiere this spring on U.S. streaming service HBO Max.
    Meanwhile, “The Flash” will feature two familiar faces reprising their roles as Bruce Wayne/Batman – both “Justice League” ‘s Ben Affleck and former Caped Crusader Michael Keaton will suit up for the blockbuster, which will introduce audiences to the multiverse, in which different versions of the same characters exist in alternate, co-existing realities.
    Andy Muschietti is directing “The Flash”, which is set for release in November 2022.

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    Zack Snyder Rules Out Returning to DC Extended Universe After 'Justice League' Reshoot

    WENN

    The ‘Justice League’ director has no plan to continue making anymore DC Extended Universe movies after completing the director’s cut of the 2017 superhero film.

    Jan 7, 2021
    AceShowbiz – Zack Snyder has no plans to make anymore DC Extended Universe movies.
    The filmmaker, who is currently working on a director’s cut of “Justice League”, due for a March (21) release, admitted that he hasn’t ruled out making a DC movie again, but he thinks a return is unlikely.
    “Look, I never thought I’d be here doing this. I didn’t think I’d be finishing Justice League,” he told ComicBook Debate. “The truth is, and it’s been widely reported, and I have no issue, this is an old movie.”
    “This is a years-old movie I’m working on. The DC universe has gone and branched off and done its own thing and that’s fine… as far as what I did and as far as what my vision for what I wanted to do with these characters and the journey I wanted them to go on, it’s well known that I planned on more movies – five movies or something – but I’m busy. I’ve got a lot going on.”

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    Zack added he’s grateful fans have “so much faith” in his filmmaking, musing, “Is it cool that the fans have so much faith in the trajectory?”
    “Yes, it’s amazing, and I couldn’t be happier and I’m excited for them to see Justice League so they can really drink the entire elixir of Justice League,” smiled the star. “But would I continue? I have no plan to. But like I said, I didn’t think I’d be here, so who knows?”
    Zack shot new scenes for his extended cut of “Justice League”, bringing back stars such as Ben Affleck as Batman and Henry Cavill as Superman during the week-long filming.
    The new material will form part of a four-episode limited series that will air on HBO Max, which would have been his intended edit of the 2017 DC Extended Universe blockbuster.

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    Sacha Baron Cohen Has No Plan to Make Third 'Borat' Movie

    Instagram

    The ‘Ali G Indahouse’ actor has ruled out any possibility of bringing back his controversial character for a third movie after the sequel ‘Borat Subsequent Moviefilm.’

    Jan 7, 2021
    AceShowbiz – Sacha Baron Cohen has retired his controversial “Borat” character because he can’t imagine bringing the oddball Kazakh journalist back after two films.
    Cohen released “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” – his follow-up to the 2006 mockumentary “Borat”, in October (20) via Amazon Prime Video, and in a new interview with Variety, the Brit has confirmed he can’t foresee a further movie for the character.
    “I brought Borat out because of (President Donald) Trump,” he said. “There was a purpose to this movie, and I don’t really see the purpose to doing it again. So yeah, he’s locked away in the cupboard.”
    And Cohen admits there were times while he was making the Borat sequel, during which he staged a series of questionable stunts – including dressing up as Trump for a political event – that made him wonder if he was “mad.”

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    “There were moments in making this movie where I thought, ‘Why the hell am I doing this?’ ” he explained. “This is illogical. You think, ‘Am I mad? Have I got something deeply wrong with me?’ ”
    Earlier this week (beg04Jan21), Maria Bakalova, who played Borat’s daughter Tutar in the sequel, said she felt it was her “duty” to see through a controversial interview scene with Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani even though it was terribly uncomfortable.
    Bakalova posed as a journalist for the interview with the former New York Mayor and, after the chat, the pair retreated to a hotel room before Cohen – as Borat – burst in.
    “I was afraid because Rudy is a lawyer, and he is the president’s lawyer,” she told the Los Angeles Times. “I am not an American and don’t know about American politics, but I knew that as an actor, it was my duty to do this scene to save the movie. I also knew that I wasn’t alone in the room because Sacha was hiding there. I knew that if something happened, I could make my exit.”

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    Stream These 8 Titles Before They Leave Netflix This Month

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyStream These 8 Titles Before They Leave Netflix This MonthAfter the end-of-year bloodletting, the losses are a little lighter in January. But there are still some great gems worth catching.Jan. 6, 2021Updated 10:57 a.m. ETThis month’s rundown of Netflix exits is lighter than usual — maybe because they seemed to drop half their library last month — but it’s full of little gems, including a double Oscar winner, a gripping limited series, and essential works from Paul Thomas Anderson and the Coen Brothers. Oh, and a comedy about a man who befriends a farting corpse.Catch these 8 titles before they leave by the end of January. (Dates indicate the final day a title is available.)From left, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Pixie Davies, Joel Dawson, Nathanael Saleh and Emily Blunt in “Mary Poppins Returns.”Credit…Jay Maidment/Disney Pictures‘Mary Poppins Returns’ (Jan. 8)Cooking up a sequel to one of the greatest Disney features, 54 years after the fact, may have been an impossible goal to begin with; it’s certainly fair to say that Rob Marshall’s 2018 follow-up to “Mary Poppins” does not measure up to its 1964 predecessor. But it does offer genuine pleasures: poignant work by Emily Mortimer and Ben Whishaw as the grown-up Jane and Michael Banks; juicily animated supporting turns from Colin Firth and Meryl Streep; a handful of toe-tapping tunes; and most of all, a sharp-tongued, twinkly-eyed performance by Emily Blunt as Mary Poppins, gamely capturing much of the matter-of-fact magic of Julie Andrews’s original characterization.Stream it here.‘The Master’ (Jan. 14)One of Paul Thomas Anderson’s most prickly and challenging pictures (and that’s saying something), this 2012 drama prompted plenty of prerelease hand-wringing, as Anderson reportedly drew the inspiration for his script from the Church of Scientology and the biography of its founder, L. Ron Hubbard. But this is no mere exposé. Anderson’s story of an alcoholic drifter and World War II veteran (Joaquin Phoenix) who stumbles into the circle of a religious leader (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is a complicated examination of blowhard masculinity, male bonding and cults of personality, bolstered by Anderson’s detailed period direction and the performances of two titans at the peak of their powers.Stream it here.Michael Stuhlbarg in the Coen brothers film “A Serious Man,” based on the biblical Book of Job.Credit…Focus Features/EPA‘A Serious Man’ (Jan. 15)The Coen Brothers followed up one of their broadest comedies (“Burn After Reading,” from 2008) with one of their strangest, a retelling of the Book of Job set in their home turf of Minnesota, circa 1967. The peerless character actor Michael Stuhlbarg gets a rare leading role as Professor Larry Gopnik, whose personal and professional life falls into such a shambles that he begins to question his Jewish faith. Darkly funny yet endlessly thought-provoking, “A Serious Man” has the Coens using Gopnik as a vessel to examine their own views on faith and humanity. And while they land on nothing so simple as “answers,” their journey and insights are strangely exhilarating.Stream it here.‘Dallas Buyers Club’ (Jan. 15)Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto won Academy Awards for best actor and best supporting actor for this 2013 drama from the director Jean-Marc Vallée, loosely inspired by a true story. McConaughey stars as Ron Woodruff, an H.I.V. positive Texan in the mid-1980s who funneled his frustration over limited AIDS treatments into action, smuggling experimental drugs into the country while the F.D.A. battled him for his efforts. “Dallas Buyers Club” occasionally falls into the traps of simplification and boilerplate storytelling that plague so many biopics, but Vallée’s direction is vivid and vibrant, and the performances are touchingly humane.Stream it here.‘Waco’: Limited Series (Jan. 15)We’re reaching a point, in the combined (and often intertwined) arcs of nostalgia and re-evaluation, in which it seems that every major news event of the 1990s has received the movie, mini-series or documentary treatment. This 2018 effort revisits the 1993 standoff at the Waco, Tex., compound of the Branch Davidian sect, in six episodes drawn from the memoirs of the Davidian survivor David Thibodeau and the F.B.I. hostage negotiator Gary Noesner. Even at that expanded length, the series sometimes pulls its punches, missing opportunities to connect these events to the fierce anti-government movements of ensuing decades. But the performers are not to be missed — particularly the reliably intense Michael Shannon as Noesner, and a shockingly effective Taylor Kitsch as the sect leader David Koresh, a role miles removed from his matinee idol work on “Friday Night Lights.”Stream it here.‘Swiss Army Man’ (Jan. 29)If there’s one thing you can say about modern movies, it’s that they tend to play it safe — every movie seems like a reflection of every other movie, and before you know it, your only entertainment options are a superhero flick, a “Star Wars” series, and a gritty “reboot” of a terrible show from the 1980s. So hats off to Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan, who wrote and directed this 2016 story of a desperate man (Paul Dano), trapped on a desert island, who befriends a washed-up corpse (Daniel Radcliffe) and makes ingenious use of the dead man’s post-mortem flatulence. Maybe it’s off-the-charts bizarre, maybe it’s tasteless, but you’ve got to admit: You’ve never seen anything quite like it.Stream it here.Tracy Morgan and Chris Rock in the American 2010 version of “Death at a Funeral.”Credit…Phil Bray/Screen Gems‘Death at a Funeral’ (Jan. 31)This 2010 comedy, directed by Neil LaBute, was a bit of a head-scratcher — a remake of the British film of the same title from only three years previous, merely shifting the setting of the events to America and the race of its central characters from white to Black. (Peter Dinklage plays the same role in both versions.) Chris Rock, as both star and producer, assembles an enviable collection of his comic contemporaries (including Martin Lawrence, Tracy Morgan, Regina Hall, Loretta Devine, Zoe Saldana and Kevin Hart), with the beloved elders Danny Glover, Keith David and Ron Glass joining ringers Luke Wilson and James Marsden to round out the ensemble.Stream it here.‘Pineapple Express’ (Jan. 31)The “Freaks and Geeks” co-stars Seth Rogen and James Franco took their considerable odd-couple chemistry to the big screen for the first time in this 2008 hit from the director David Gordon Green. The sharp script, penned by Rogen and his writing partner Evan Goldberg, mixes its laid-back Cheech & Chong-style “stoner comedy” with the fast-paced shoot-em-up action of ’80s adventures like “Beverly Hills Cop,” a tonal mismatch that could have easily failed. But it landed, thanks to the easygoing charisma of its leads — and the masterly scene-stealing of Danny McBride, in his breakthrough role.Stream it here.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Reports of Michael Keaton's Return as Batman for DCEU Falsely Exaggerated

    Warner Bros.

    An original article about the ‘Batman Returns’ star reprising his role as the Caped Crusader for an upcoming The Flash film has apparently been widely misinterpreted.

    Jan 6, 2021
    AceShowbiz – Michael Keaton isn’t replacing Ben Affleck in the DCEU, at least not yet. While recent reports about the “Beetlejuice” star returning as the Caped Crusader for future DCEU films have been met with excitement by fans, the news was apparently falsely exaggerated.
    Brooks Barnes, the writer of the original article on New York Times, returned on Twitter on Monday, January 4 to clarify the wild rumors. “Been offline (moving apartments) and return to see this Michael Keaton craziness,” he responded to the reports citing his article and previous tweet.
    While he did confirm Keaton would be donning his Batman cowl again for an upcoming The Flash movie, he denied ever mentioning the 69-year-old actor as the main Batman in future films of a non-Batman-centric saga. “I was referring to the *one film* that Keaton has been announced as being in, not a set of his own Batman films. If I had info on him beyond ‘The Flash,’ I would have obviously put it in my article,” Barnes stressed.

    Brooks Barnes clarified reports about Michael Keaton’s Batman return.

      See also…

    In the original article, Barnes wrote that “Warner Bros. will have two different film sagas involving Batman – played by two different actors – running at the same time.” One of them is starring Robert Pattinson.
    When asked on Twitter to confirm if he meant a new actor will play Batman in the second franchise, Barnes simply replied, “Keaton.”
    In the same article, Barnes also reported that both Affleck and Keaton will be appearing in The Flash stand-alone film, which is set for release in theaters in 2022. The upcoming movie “will link the two universes and feature two Batmans, with Mr. Affleck returning as one and Michael Keaton returning as the other,” so he wrote.
    Affleck starred as the Caped Crusader in “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” (2016) and “Justice League” (2017). He additionally made a cameo appearance as the character in “Suicide Squad” (2016). He was going to star in a standalone Batman film with him at the helm. After stepping down from the directing duty in 2017, he bid farewell to the character in January 2019, with Pattinson being tapped to take on the lead role in “The Batman”, which is directed by Matt Reeves.
    As for Keaton, he received critical acclaims for his dramatic portrayal of the Gotham hero in Tim Burton’s “Batman” (1989) and “Batman Returns” (1992).

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