Progress is going quite slowly in the negotiations between SAG-AFTRA and the AMPTP with no deal in sight, even though the two groups worked through the weekend to hash out a deal for a new three-year contract. SAG took Monday off to review the studios’ latest offer, and things will resume today as the 160,000 members of SAG-AFTRA continue to hit the picket lines.
With the announcement a few weeks back that Marvel Television would be starting from scratch with its planned Daredevil: Born Again series for Disney+, it was announced that Dario Scardapane (Jack Ryan, The Punisher) would be the new showrunner for the series. Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, who directed episodes of Moon Knight and Loki Season 2, have been brought on board to direct the remaining episodes of the series.
The saddest news to hit this past weekend was about the sudden death of Friends star Matthew Perry, but just before that, it was reported that Night Court actor Richard Moll had died at the age of 80 years old at his home in Big Bear Lake, California. The 6-foot 8-inch Moll received fame from playing bailiff Bull Shannon on the NBC sitcom Night Court from 1984 through 1992. During that time, he also appeared in films like the horror film, House, for which he received a Saturn Award nomination, and in 1999, he appeared in But I’m a Cheerleader with Natasha Lyonne. Other roles include a recurring role on Cindy Williams‘ Getting By and voicing Harvey Dent/Two-Face on The Adventres of Batman & Robin and the Scorpion on Spider-Man: The Animated Series. He regularly appeared on television in everything from Smallville to Sabrina, the Teenage Witch.
Moll was born in Pasadena on Jan. 13, 1943, and after graduating UC Berkeley, he began his career acting in Shakespeare works at the Will Geer Theatre. He is survived by his children Chloe and Mason Moll; ex-wife Susan Moll and stepchildren Cassandra Card and Morgan Ostling.
As the annual AFI Fest comes to a close in L.A., the American Film Market (aka AFM) begins today, and as in years past, many new projects are being announced or confirmed as they go to market.
There’s been talk for some time of Henry Cavill (Man of Steel) headlining a reboot of Highlander, but Lionsgate confirmed the project with John Wick director Chad Stahelski at the helm. The original fantasy film directed by Russell Mulcahy about an immortal Scottish swordsman hit theaters in 1986 with Christopher Lambert as Connor MacLeod, co-starring Sean Connery. It led to two direct sequels in 1991 and 1994, as well as a number of reboots, a television series from 1992 through 1998, and even an animated series.
Filmmakers have been trying to revive Highlander for over 15 years from when Summit Entertainment bought the rights in 2008 with many names attached to write or direct. This new movie will have a budget north of $100 million, with plans to start filming in 2024.
Another Summit project that found quite a bit of theatrical success was 2013’s Now You See Me and its 2016 sequel, Now You See Me 2. Word came out of AFM that Lionsgate International has begun sales on Now You See Me 3, with Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland, Venom) directing and some of the cast returning, including Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, and Morgan Freeman. Michael Lesslie (Macbeth, Assassin’s Creed) is writing the current draft for producers Alex Kurtzman and Bobby Cohen.
NEON used AFM to announce sales for the sequel to David Robert Mitchell‘s hit horror film, It Follows, which will be called, They Follow.
It’s everywhere.
THEY FOLLOW.
The long-awaited sequel to the modern horror classic IT FOLLOWS from David Robert Mitchell.
Coming soon. pic.twitter.com/V1IiS7PpzU— NEON (@neonrated) October 30, 2023
Possibly one of the stranger stories from the weekend involved Martin Scorsese‘s Killers of the Flower Moon, which had received some complaints about its 3 1/2 hour runtime. A couple theater chains took it into their own hands to insert an intermission, which turns to be a violation of their agreement with Paramount Pictures, who has been handling distribution for Apple Original Films. This mostly seems to be happening overseas with a number of European cinema chains, including UCI Cinemas that put a “six-minute interval towards the middle of the film.” Others that have put in their own intermission include the U.K.-based chain, The Vue, and Amsterdam cinema, The Movies Haarlemmerdijk. Domestically, The Lyric in Fort Collins, Colorado, were showing Scorsese’s movie with an intermission until Oct. 26, when it was informed that it was violating its contract.
Those chains inserting their own intermissions even caught the attention of Scorsese’s long-time collaborator, Oscar-winning Editor Thelma Schoonmaker, who told The Standard, “I understand that somebody’s running it with an intermission which is not right. That’s a violation so I have to find out about it.”
Instead of leaving you with a new trailer, we’ll wrap things up today with a timely Saturday Night Live sketch from the weekend in which Sarah Sherman spoofed Fran Drescher and the SAG-AFTRA mandate to not promote studios’ movies with the costumes worn on Halloween.
