Warner Bros. is revving up their engines for its upcoming live-action Hot Wheels movie. The studio has hired screenwriters Neil Widener and Gavin James to write the script for the film. They previously worked on San Andreas and Now You See Me 3. They’re also working on a retelling of Romeo and Juliet titled Verona that is set up at Columbia.
It’s explained that Widener and James got the writing gig by coming out on top of “a bake off in which the studio asked for several scribes, or teams, to come up with a treatment. Widener and James beat out several more established players.”
We still don’t have any details to share regarding what the story will tell, but it will be interesting to see what kind of story these two talents came up with. Ynon Kreiz, Mattel’s chairman and CEO, previously shared his excitement for the movie, saying:
“We are excited to bring the thrill of a Hot Wheels live-action feature film to the big screen in partnership with Warner Bros. Pictures. Mattel Films has great momentum as it continues to execute on our commitment to bring global audiences new ways to experience the brands they love as we transform Mattel into an IP-driven, high-performing toy company.”
This isn’t the first time a Hot Wheels movie has gone into development. Back in 2003, directors such as Simon Crane and McG jumped in the driver’s seat. Then in 2016, Justin Lin (Fast and Furious) was going to direct the movie for Legendary Entertainment.
It’s looking like the Hot Wheels project might actually happen this time and I hope that the film project actually turns out to be something that Hot Wheels fans will enjoy.
ILM has released a cool new behind-the-scenes video for The Mandalorian and it explorers the creation of The Razor Crest ship. If you’re a fan of the series, this little doc is worth your time. It features some cool information and interesting insight.
Join us as we journey behind the scenes of the Emmy™ Award-winning visual effects behind the first season of The Mandalorian. We’ll pull back the curtain on one of our favorite bounty hunter’s ship, the infamous Razor Crest and look at the distinctive former military ship from its initial concept design in Doug Chiang’s Lucasfilm art department through to ILM artists building the ship in the digital realm and as a practical miniature for filming. We’ll also look at the parallel development of the custom motion control camera system created by ILM Visual Effects Supervisor, John Knoll to allow for the first motion control shots to film at ILM in 15 years. We hope you enjoy this look ‘Inside ILM’.
The doc was directed by Chris Hawkinson, and it focuses on ILM’s commitment to using miniatures despite the increased usage of CGI, and he explains, “Miniatures and motion control are in our DNA at ILM, and it’s been over 15 years since we have done a motion-control shoot.”
The video also reveals that the Razor Crest is supposed to be a ship that “predates X-Wings.” Check out the video for The Mandalorian below:
We’ve got a couple of cool photos from the set of James Cameron’s Avatar 2. One image shows the stuntmen preparing for a scene, the other teases a battle on Pandora. It’s actually one of the most action-heavy sequences from the movie that we’ve seen so far.
Producer Jon Landau shared the photos on Instagram with the caption, “Garrett Warren, 2nd Unit Director, gives stuntman Steve Brown some notes before a take. Garrett, Richard Bluck (2nd Unit DP) and the Kiwi team have been getting some great shots. Keep it up.”
With Cameron pretty much dedicating the rest of his filmmaking career to the Avatar franchise, I really hope these sequels turn out great.
Producer Jon Landau has talked about the upcoming sequel and what we can expect from it. When talking about the story that the sequel will tell, he shared the following tease:
“This is the story of the Sully family and what one does to keep their family together. Jake and Neytiri have a family in this movie, they are forced to leave their home, they go out and explore the different regions of Pandora, including spending quite a bit of time on the water, around the water, in the water.”
It’s also been explained that Avatar 2 is set several years after Avatar. “At the center of each of our four movies will be the Sully family. Each sequel will play as a standalone movie. Each movie’s story will come to its own conclusion… However, when looked at as a whole, the journey across all four movies will create an even larger connected epic saga for audiences around the world.”
Landau also previously opened up about the setting for the sequels, saying:
“As we’ve moved on with the sequels to Avatar we made a very conscious decision to stage the whole four sequels on Pandora. We don’t need to go to another world if we want water, we’re going to go to the oceans of Pandora.
”It’s a continuation of the same characters, but what happen when warriors that are willing to go on suicide charges, and leap off cliffs on to the back of big orange toruks, what happens when they grow up and have their own kids? It becomes a very different story. Now the kids are the risk-takers and the change-makers. So, it’s interesting, but it makes sense to me. Everybody’s either a parent, or they had parents at the very least, and if you look at the big successful franchises now, they’re pretty much uninterested in that.”
It was also revealed that there are different clans of Na’vi all over Pandora:
“We’re going to go to totally different environments, we’re going to meet different cultures. Just like our planet is as diverse culturally as we are environmentally. We want to introduce people to different cultures. In the first movie, we only met the Omaticaya clan, and they are the clan here allowing us to come to the Valley of Mo’ara. But as we venture out we’re going to different environments and different clans.”
Cameron also previously explained that Stephen Lang’s Colonel Miles Quaritch will be the main villain throughout the sequels.
The Avatar sequels also star Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Joel David Moore, Dileep Rao, Stephen Lang, and Matt Gerald. New cast members include Kate Winslet, Edie Falco, Michelle Yeoh, Vin Diesel, Jemaine Clement, and Oona Chaplin.
James Cameron’s Avatar 2 will be released in theaters on December 16th, 2022.
Michelle Monaghan is teaming up with director Brad Anderson (Session 9, The Machinist) for a new psychological thriller titled Blood.
Monaghan will take on the role of Jess, “a separated mother and nurse who moves with her daughter and young son Owen back into her old family farmhouse. Shortly after settling in, Owen is bitten by the family dog, resulting in a mysterious infection from the bite. When Jess discovers a disturbing cure, she is tested to the extent will she go to keep her child alive.”
That sounds like it could be an interesting story. I’m curious to find out what this “disturbing cure” is, and how the story of this woman and her family plays out.
I’ve enjoyed the films that Anderson has made as a director and I hope that this project turns out to be another good one for him. The fact that he landed Monaghan in the lead role is definitely a pig plus! Monaghan will next be seen in Zoe Lister-Jones’ The Craft, the Blumhouse reboot of the 1996 feature, and she recently wrapped production on Christine Jeffs’ Every Breath You Take, starring opposite Casey Affleck and Sam Claflin.
Will Honley (The Hive, Bloodline) wrote the script for Blood.
The Xbox Series X will feature a 1TB custom SSD and the Series S will have 512GB to store digital games, updates, etc. For some gamers this simply isn’t enough.
Well, Xbox has a few options for you to expand the storage capacities. First, you can take your USB 3.1 storage devices that you already use and plug them into the Series X|S. The one catch is that while the drive can store any Xbox game, you can’t play games optimized for the Series X|S consoles off of it. Second, Xbox has partnered with Seagate to create a custom 1TB Storage Expansion Card (SEC). This card reminds me a lot of the memory card for the N64 and appears to simply plug into the back.
Now, here’s the even better news. Xbox is making a big promise with the SEC. Due to the Xbox Velocity Architecture, the SEC will be able to play games at the same performance levels as the internal drive. That’s an incredible promise! It is because of that very promise though that the SEC costs $219.
The SEC will work with both consoles and is available for pre-order now through the Microsoft Store with it shipping out on November 10.
Crash Bandicoot his back and his wacky 4th major game. Wild worlds, cool powers, and taking control of other characters bring a fun and new life to this game series. There’s a lot to enjoy here, just in the demo. After playing the demo I saw a lot of potentials, but there still are some platforming issues and general gameplay problems that have plagued the game since it’s inception.
Crash 4 looks really great. The over-the-top art design and wildly cartoonish characters and colors keep things visually entertaining the entire time. The music and the extreme expressions from Crash and the other characters are good usages of it being on a new platform. I do think the graphics overall could’ve been a little crisper and nicer like the Ratchet and Clank games that came out years ago, but overall things look pretty good for this very stylized and cartoonish setting.
There are many parts of this game and gameplay that are really fun. Being chased by certain enemies and new mask powers that slow down time or make things pop in and out of existence along with other things are really great and give us a good taste of it will be in the final game. Players can also play as Neo Cortex. I wish there was a lot more tutorial and how to use each character specifically and they’re different moves. It is somewhat fun to experiment, but after trying and trying the same part over and over again to realize that you had a certain power move that you never knew about to make it far easier is an odd design.
As much fun as the platforming is here, it still suffers from the same issues as years ago. The 3-D platforming doesn’t feel super tight and yet Crash himself feels very ridged. It’s hard to gauge exactly where Crash is going to land and I don’t know how many hours I’d have to put in if I would or could even perfectly learn his moves that and how he moves around. I’ve also played other performers where the different skills and techniques are used to combat really engaging and challenging levels. However, these levels didn’t challenge my platforming abilities as much as it challenged my patience. It’s hard to explain, but it just didn’t feel great playing the same part of a level over and over again. I didn’t feel like I was learning and getting better, I just felt like I had to get lucky with where I’d land as Crash.
The game will be coming out in a few days and we’re excited to try it out but still wary of the 3-D platforming and difficult to discern the depth of field.
Yu-Gi-Oh! has released the Legendary Duelists: Rage of Ra booster set which brings some new support for The Winged Dragon of Ra as well as reprints of cards related to Marik and Espa Roba. Oh, plus there are Meklords. The set is fun to open and Konami was kind enough to send me a box. Of course, the big card that everyone is wanting to pull is the Ghost Rare version of Ra. What did you pull from this set?
