Tag: entertainment-news

Marvel shows footage from Thunderbolts*, the MCU Suicide Squad, at SDCC

Posted on by faz_business


When Marvel Studios first announced Thunderbolts* at 2022’s San Diego Comic-Con as part of its ambitious lineup for Phase 5 and 6 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe franchise, the movie didn’t yet have that odd asterisk in the title. It didn’t come with many details, either, apart from a July 26, 2024 release date that shifted along with many other MCU projects in the wake of the 2023 WGA strike.

In the wake of the Thunderbolts* segment of 2024’s San Diego Comic-Con, we don’t know much more! The asterisk is still a mystery: Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige said at a CinemaCon appearance, “we won’t talk more about that until after the movie comes out,” and confirmed it again at Comic-Con.

But as the core cast of Thunderbolts* took the stage, the Hall H audience was treated to a teaser in which all their characters came under fire from a mysterious foe who, according to Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova, wants them all dead.

Traditionally in Marvel Comics, the Thunderbolts are a team-up of second-string villains or anti-heroes, though their membership and motives vary significantly depending which iteration you’re talking about. The MCU team is built of not-exactly-always-good characters introduced in previous films in the franchise: Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen, of Ant-Man and the Wasp), Red Guardian (David Harbour, Black Widow), the Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan, the Captain America movies), U.S. Agent, aka John Walker (Wyatt Russell, Falcon and the Winter Soldier), and Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko, Black Widow). Pugh’s Yelena, from Black Widow and Hawkeye, leads the team, with slimy mastermind Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Falcon and the Winter Soldier) behind the scenes.

Who might want all those folks dead? What might those folks do to stay alive? And what the heck is that asterisk about after all? We’ll have to wait for the theatrical debut of Thunderbolts* on May 2, 2025, as the final movie in the MCU’s Phase 5.

You can find all Polygon’s coverage of SDCC 2024 news, trailers, and more here.

New Wicked, Gladiator 2 release dates set up this year’s Barbenheimer

Posted on by faz_business


Universal Pictures has moved the release date of its lavish musical Wicked forward by a few days, from Nov. 27 (the day before Thanksgiving) to the preceding Friday, Nov. 22.

The move is ostensibly, and sensibly, to avoid a clash with Disney’s animation sequel Moana 2, also set for Nov. 27. Universal may have been motivated (read: scared) by the astonishing box office performance of Disney and Pixar’s Inside Out 2, which has racked up over $1 billion globally in a little over two weeks, setting a new record for an animated film.

But the date change also sets up another, potentially more exciting clash: Wicked, which stars Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo, will now hit theaters on the same day as Ridley Scott’s historical action drama Gladiator II, starring Paul Mescal and Pedro Pascal. Wicked is the first part of a two-part adaptation of the hit stage musical, which prefigures the 1939 classic The Wizard of Oz, telling the witches’ backstory. Gladiator II is a generation-later sequel to Scott’s Oscar-winning 2000 epic. (Vanity Fair just published a surprisingly meaty preview of Gladiator II, which is stuffed with first-look images, plot details, and good quotes from Scott and the cast; it’s worth checking out.)

The contest between these two movies instantly recalls “Barbenheimer,” the 2023 box office phenomenon that pitted Greta Gerwig’s candy-colored comedy Barbie against Christopher Nolan’s somber nuclear bomb drama Oppenheimer. That date clash created a storm of publicity and a kind of unofficial festival of moviegoing that worked out to the benefit of both movies, which finished 2023 as the biggest and third-biggest films of the year worldwide.

Theater owners, if no one else, will be hoping for similar from Wicked and Gladiator II, but the juxtaposition isn’t quite so striking this time around. It’s true that one is a colorful, fantastical stage musical centering female characters and the other is a violent action movie front-loaded with manly actors.

But they’re both big, old-school spectacles with Old Hollywood feel, and they don’t make for as stark (or as funny) a contrast as between a toy-branded meta comedy and a three-hour biopic about physics and nuclear holocaust. Wicked and Gladiator II are also both franchise movies of a sort, relying on brand familiarity, whereas Barbie and Oppenheimer are both daring, original films from auteur directors.

Also, it’s hard to come up with a compound name for them that rolls off the tongue as smoothly “Barbenheimer” does. Gladicked? Surely not. The best I can do is “Wickiator.”

None of that matters quite as much as what Wicked and Gladiator II have in common with Barbie and Oppenheimer, though: They’re both exciting-looking movies that present very compelling reasons to see them on the big screen, that complement each other in fun ways, and that stand to do very well with audiences. It’s going to be a fun November.