It’s Friday morning, and time for another weekly dose of entertainment news. This week’s news bites include a healthy dose of mighty Marvel Movie news, a little speculation on Green Lantern, some other sequel news, and a little bit of talk about television and music. So while the movie talk may be pretty fantasy-centric, overall it’s a pretty well-rounded batch.
The Fantastic Four reboot is rolling along. Matthew Vaughn (director of Kick-Ass) is set to produce, and it will be directed by Josh Trank, director of Chronicle. The screenplay is being written by Jeremy Slater, who has no previous credits to his name.
Mark Strong, who played Sinestro in Green Lantern, says he’s heard no word on a sequel and would be surprised to hear of one after this long. It’s a little hard to gauge this, really; the film was two years ago, and typically a superhero sequel would already be well into by this point to get it out within three years of the original. But with Green Lantern under-performing, even if they were to do a sequel, extensive retooling would be likely. My personal guess is that Warner and DC will pull a “Hulk” and eventually make a new Green Lantern movie that doesn’t contradict the original but doesn’t really acknowledge it either.
Seth MacFarlane has said he will not be hosting the Oscars again. This is at his choice, not necessarily the Academy’s or ABC’s. Tina Fey was asked by Huffington Post if she’d be open to hosting, and said “no way”.
Chris Cooper has been cast as Norman Osborn in The Amazing Spider-Man 2. I think he’ll do a good job as Osborn; hopefully when the sequel turns him into the Green Goblin, they give him a costume that actually looks good.
The decline of music sales has, at least for now, stopped. There was only a small decline between 2010 and 2011, and in 2012 the industry posted its first year of overall sales growth since 1998. Not a big growth, but an uptick nevertheless. Notably the stabilizing and growth are due entirely to digital music downloads; physical music sales are still in a decline.
Stone Temple Pilots have fired lead vocalist Scott Weiland. No reason has been provided.
The official Disney Pictures Twitter account has just announced that Dane Cook will be providing his voice to Dusty, the lead character in Disney’s Planes (set in the Cars universe), which is out August 9. (Just a little over five months away; cutting it close, aren’t they?)
The release date for The Hobbit: There and Back Again, the third film in the trilogy, has gone there and back again. Initially scheduled for a December release when the series was a duology, it was bumped to summer 2014 when the series was expanded into a trilogy. It is now being delayed just a little bit more, to December 17, 2014, putting it in line with the December releases of the first two films. It’s probably a wise move; people have come to associate Middle Earth films with December releases, and the consistency will help make it look more like it’s being planned carefully. It’ll also give more time to build anticipation between installments.
He had not that supreme gift of the artist, the knowledge of when to stop.
— Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventure of the Norwood Builder, 1903
Morgan on Media 
My initial reaction to the Chris Cooper casting news – MANIACAL LAUGH.
Ha ha ha! Yeah, it’s going to be just a little hard not to think of his Muppets role when he’s playing a character known for his actual maniacal laughter. 😀
The music sales thing might related to one song: that “home” song performed by American Idol singer Phillips, used in film and tv commercials, and later as backdrop for Olympic broadcasts when it entered Billboard top 10 a second time. I dig it. Nice news post.
I don’t imagine one song would make the difference all by itself — though certainly the ubiquity of it might indicate a shift in consumer preferences back to purchasing music again.
Lots of superhero news. I bet youre right on Green Lantern. They wont let that property die, but they’ve probably seen enough of the Ryan Reynolds version. The FF NEED a reboot. Those two films were sadly underwhelming.
Two franchises definitely in need of some heavy retooling. Although in a way it’s too bad that the FF movie is rolling along… might have been better had it lapsed back to Marvel the way Daredevil did.
Hopefully FF and GL will get re-done correctly. They should be grand cosmic adventures. It will be sad if Guardians of the Galaxy gets this right before the two most recognizable cosmic superhero franchises do.
That would be kind of sad. But since GotG is coming out first, it’s also fairly likely.
Cool, interesting news. I have faith in the Fantastic 4 reboot. Looking forward to that one.
Bummed that Tina Fey doesn’t want to host the Oscars 😦 She’d be great for the gig.
Chris Cooper as Norman Osborn is great casting. And so is Dane DeHaan as his son.
No Dane Cook for me, thanks.
I don’t know that I have faith in the F4 reboot yet… but at least it could be better.
I agree Tina Fey could have been great as an Oscar host. I didn’t catch much of the Golden Globes, but from what I saw, her and Poehler were good.
Cooper and DeHaan as the Osborns ought to be good.
I’m glad to see Cooper as Osborne, he’s such a fantastic actor! I even like him more than Dafoe in general. Oh I didn’t know Trank is gonna direct the Fantastic Four reboot. I don’t really care for that franchise but I’m curious now as I thought Chronicle was better than I expected.
Cooper could be pretty good as Osborn. Trank directing the F4 might be interesting… I liked Chronicle, but he’s still largely an unknown quantity.
some def big news this week. I also thought to what type of costume they might eventually use for the Green Goblin. hopefully it’s good.
nice round up, Morgan
Thanks, Terrence. I’m really hoping for something that’s a modernized adaptation of the classic Green Goblin costume, similar to what the Dodsons did for Marvel Knights Spider-Man. Something that’s stylish enough for the movie crowd, but still recognizably based on his traditional look.
yeah, i just hope that whatever they do, it ends up looking good and being plausible/realistic. Have you seen the test footage for the Green Goblin mask from the first SpiderMan movie? They scrapped it and went with the power ranger type, but the footage is on YouTube.
Yeah, I think you were the one who pointed it out to me before. The initial version shown there certainly didn’t look quite right, no. But I still think it could be done.