Doctor Strange is shaping up to be a great movie, but fans wonder where the good doctor fits into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Where has he been all this time?
Surely, he can’t be everywhere at once, but you’d think he would make his presence known at some point. Or at least try to help out the Avengers now and then.
In a Collider interview. Kevin Feige talks about the Sorcerer Supreme’s whereabouts. There’s a good reason why he hasn’t shown up to help during the Chituari invasion or the attack on Sokovia.
I wonder how long the timeframe of Doctor Strange’s plot will cover
“There are people inhabiting the same world that are stopping buildings from falling down, robots from doing this, aliens from doing that,” he says. “These people in this movie are stopping inter-dimensional forces from wiping out all of reality.
As for Doctor Strange, he has bigger problems to deal with. “We’ve always assumed that the sorcerers have bigger fish to fry when they hear there’s something in a city or there’s a bank being robbed,” Feige states. “They’re not thinking about it. They’re thinking if we don’t keep vigilant our sense of reality will disappear.”
However, Strange does get a name drop in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Although it’s a brief reference, this indicates Strange is well-known in the MCU.
While Benedict Cumberbatch will appear in Avengers: Infinity War, don’t expect him to hang out with Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. Or make a post-credits cameo in other films. Feige explains Strange isn’t that type of character.
“I don’t think he does a lot of hanging out, necessarily. No, he usually gets involved when – as I said, he’s not going to intervene in the bodega crime down the street. But as things get bigger and as threats get bigger he can serve a very good purpose and can make his presence known.”
Turning Tragedy Into Spectacle Is What Makes This Industry ‘Deepwater Horizon’ Understood That.
Taking notes from great films like ‘Towering Inferno‘ and ‘The Poseidon Adventure‘ was a great move from director Peter Berg. ‘Deepwater Horizon’ had the tough task of telling a true story while remaining entertainment. What they did with this disaster movie is incredible. I’ll admit I wasn’t sold on the film going in but the effort put in was remarkable and unique.
This felt like no disaster flick before it; the thrills were authentic and intense.
Director Peter Berg, cinematographer Enrique Chediak, and editors Colby Parker Jr. & Gabriel Fleming somehow made even routine tests thrilling. That’s what stood out during ‘Deepwater Horizon‘. It subverts genre expectations and used to them bait & switch you. This isn’t the cliched melodrama action-disaster films of the 90’s. The tropes of useless romantic sub-plots and generic heroes are gone. What we had throughout was fun action scenes that felt organic and natrually built tension.
“When faced with our darkest hour, hope is not a tactic”
I spoke about the relationship between an actor and director in my ‘Magnificent Seven‘ review and this is another example of the magic that happens when those two click. Like Antoine Fuqua and Denzel Washington, Peter Berg and Mark Wahlberg just get each other. The pair worked together on 2013’s ‘Lone Survivor‘ to great success and now repeat that with ‘Deepwater Horizon‘. Berg’s care for the character Wahlberg played named Mike Williams was outstanding but he didn’t slack on allowing others to shine in doing so.
Could they be 3-0 when they release 2017’s ‘Patriots Day‘? That film will be about the Boston Bombing like ‘Lone Survivor‘ was based on real events and like ‘Deepwater Horizon‘ was. I figured this is the new niche for Peter Berg and his films. But unlike other based-on-true-story movies from this year like ‘Sully‘, Berg found a way to make this enjoyable as a film and still pay respect.
Speaking of ‘Sully‘, the way they tried to villainize the National Transportation Safety Board came off ineffectively. But the way ‘Deepwater Horizon‘ makes B.P. and supervisor Donald Vidrine (John Malkovich) the villain seemed effortless. You want to punch Vidrine by the end of the film for what he did and in a true cinematic sense, he should have faced a grim fate but that’s not how it happened in real life.
Moving away from script, actors, and directors, there is massive technical accomplishments here. The cinematography work was truly breathtaking. The wide-shots gave scale of how a tiny oil rig ruined a massive part of the ocean. The jarring camera work disorients you when the action gets heavy. So much work went into it from cinematographer Enrique Chediak. But his work was masterfully edited by Colby Parker Jr. & Gabriel Fleming. They use match-cuts that superbly transition the scenes. Another trick they did very well was the use of juxtaposition between tense and relaxed moments.
Final Thoughts:
With making the film such a spectacle, many will say this is an exploitation of the events. Maybe that isn’t a bad thing. The film industry is about entertainment and money; I believe ‘Deepwater Horizon‘ is highly entertaining and also a bonafide money-maker. Not only that but it has great characters that are simply fleshed out and some of the best CGI disaster effects I’ve seen in a very long time. Simply put, this is filmmakers at the top of their craft.
A lot of brewery owners say they built their business from the ground up. Very few mean it in the same way as Jackrabbit Brewing Company co-owner Chris Powell.
“We were all doing everything, all the time,” Powell says and he’s not kidding. “Once we actually got our permits and could build stuff, we were here late at night after work, jack hammering out the concrete to put in the trench drain and stuff. We started assembling the equipment. We got a welder and I taught myself to weld.”
Jack hammering? Welding? Not exactly the skills you’d expect to need when you decide to open a brewery. But by mid-2011 Powell, along with co-owners Kevin Hull and two others had picked up these new skills and a whole lot more, essentially working two jobs, “70-80 hours a week… well maybe more than that actually.”
This is some of the equipment Powell welded and customized himself.
IT BEGINS WITH A BEER
So how did Powell, an attorney by day, find himself living as a brewery owning steel worker by night? Would you believe it all started over a beer?
“(I said), ‘why don’t we start a brewery?’ on New Year’s Eve while we were drinking and this was like 2011 and (Kevin) said ‘yeah let’s do it!’ ” Powell says with a laugh. “Sixteen year olds start a band, 35 year olds start a brewery I guess.”
Kevin is also an attorney. He was also Chris’s best friend at law school and like many college friends they shared many nights filled with beer. In their case though, it was beer they’d made themselves.
“We started having brewfests, little parties where we’d brew a crap load of beer and invite a bunch of people and have a good time,” Powell reflects.
But going from home brewing in college, to brewery owners with full-time jobs is a leap that seemed crazy. As it turns out the internet agrees says Powell, “if you read online about whether or not it was a good idea, most people were telling you ‘Don’t do it. It’s a terrible idea. You’re going to lose all your money.’ We didn’t listen to any of that advice.”
BREWERY ON A BUDGET
Instead, they began an experiment of opening a brewery on a budget. They found the cheapest space they could, which landed them tucked away in an industrial area in West Sacramento. Powell says they couldn’t afford fancy machinery, instead opting to get old dairy equipment and customizing it to meet the breweries needs.
“Which is like the old-fashioned approach that people did 30 or 40 years ago when they were trying to start microbrews in America,” Powell says. “We did it really low-budget.”
Welding and jack hammering, soon gave way to brewing and fermenting. The beer was flowing but only to bars and restaurants, the Jackrabbit crew choosing to forego opening a taproom.
Powell admits, it was a miscalculation of the market, “in hindsight, maybe just starting a taproom first would have been a quicker start because we didn’t understand how popular that was going to be.”
TAPPING INTO THE TAPROOM
Kevin ?? working behind the bar in the Jackrabbit taproom.
“I didn’t expect it to be this successful.” Powell says the taproom offered a connection to the public Jackrabbit didn’t have before, “we got to have a lot of one-on-one interaction with customers and see what they like, what they don’t like, hear from them directly.”
Operating the taproom meant hiring more employees (they have 10 now) which actually helped reduce Powell’s workload. He says he’s now able to mostly avoid those 80-hour work weeks that took up so much of his time just a few years ago.
“We really built everything with our hands, which is something that I’m proud of,” Powell says. “No one is getting rich doing this right now, but it’s rewarding just to see a place that we created from an idea (turn) into a real thing; people making their living working here, making good beer.”
CARVING A BEER NICHE
Jackrabbit (named for the rabbits that can be found just about everywhere in the area) distinguishes itself from many of the other Sacramento-area breweries by focusing on English and Belgium style beers. It was a decision that was made after carefully considering the market, and of course buying a bunch of beer.
“Probably a month after (deciding to open a brewery), we had our first meeting of the people who were going to do it and we went to BevMo and we bought like $100 in beer,” Powell explains. “We went to Kevin’s house and had a sip of this and spat it out and a sip of that and spat it out and took notes, ‘I like this, I don’t like that’ and just talked about what we wanted to do.”
Powell says early on it became clear early on they wanted their beers to stand out from the craft beer scene that is growing more crowded by the day. “We thought we didn’t want to be what everyone else was doing. We wanted to clear our own niche in the market.” That niche includes beers like their English-style Pub Ale and Greybeard Old Ale, Order of the Rabbit (a Belgian-style dubbel), a Golden Strong, and at any given time a variety of Saisons.
Powell says he’d like to expand the Jackrabbit brand within the region reaching to the Bay Area and Tahoe. Eventually, he’d like to see their beer sold in Nevada. For the time being though, he just wants Jackrabbit to continue to make good beer, and come up with new and interesting brews.
“We’re in the middle of a renaissance of American beer and it’s really cool be a part of America awakening and rediscovering its love of flavorful beer.”
WWE Studios Keeps Releasing Actions Movies Even If Their Stories Start To Blend Into Each Other; ‘Interrogation’ Is No Exception.
Honestly, I was thrilled when WWE began producing films. Their horror films are notable with hits like ‘See No Evil‘ and ‘Oculus‘ while action films like ‘The Marine‘ shined. But after a while, they moved away from horror and focused on these typical Hollywood action films. The newest one is ‘Interrogation‘, which stars Adam “Edge” Copeland, C.J. “Lana” Perry, and Patrick Sabongui. It is the third in a series of six WWE action films dubbed the “Action Six Pack”.
The story follows Lucas Noland (Copeland), an interrogation expert who is the best at what he does. He is joined by I.T. specialist Becky (Perry) as they attempt to stop a threat that could destroy the entire city. The pair engage in mind games with criminal mastermind Vasti (Sabongui) as they try to discover his true agenda.
Movie Review:
The plot is pretty generic when it comes to the action genre but what made it work was how well Copeland’s character was handled. His introduction where he made tactical decisions based on reading the situation was bad-ass. Timing his moves in between bullet fire and reloads, he comes off smart. The Lucas Noland character really gets going once they pair him with bad guy Vasti played by Patrick Sabongui.
The protagonist and antagonist dynamic worked well as both men were cocky about their smarts. I enjoy seeing action movies when both sides are good at what they do so they try to out-do each other. Making your bad guy seem weak as a means to push your hero as a bigger bad-ass only hurts the film’s credibility.
With a modest budget compared to widely released films, a story like this could have been scaled back a bit. To avoid becoming too procedural, I would have loved to see a more focused battle of the minds with these two actors. Both did well but couldn’t help avoiding the marketable cliched route these movies take.
The acting was fine for the most part expect when it came to C.J. Perry, who is known as Lana to WWE fans. Her role as an I.T. Specialist didn’t come off believable. Standing with Copeland and Sabongui, she looked weak in comparison. Following her character in WWE, I believe she would have excelled more in a villainous role.
Another thing I enjoyed were the action sequences. They made the entire film feel grander than the usual home video release. The introduction I mentioned was a great segment as well as the close-quarters fights. How refreshing it is to see an interrogation specialist be an awesome fighter and not just a good talker?
Final Thoughts:
Obvious flaws are present like the generic cinematography and average plot but honestly, there is some really fun sequences here. ‘Interrogation‘ is what you come to expect from WWE Studios but their formula worked well under director Stephen Reynolds. This is the second film he has done for the studio following ‘12 Rounds 3: Lockdown‘. Expect to see more of collaborations between them.
The action-thriller from Lionsgate and WWE Studios, ‘Interrogation‘, is available now on Blu-ray (plus Digital HD), DVD (plus Digital), Digital HD and On Demand.
We are just over a week away from Nate Parker’s passion project – the slavery-revolt drama The Birth of A Nation, the film that overwhelmed Sundance this last winter and sold for the biggest price tag in the festival’s history – opening nationwide to audiences.
And we’re also a few weeks removed from the news that Parker and his old roommate were not only accused, but arrested on allegations of sexual assault back in 1999.
If you want the whole story again, you can find it, but there’s no need to get into the dirty details here. It was an awful, seedy, disgusting night from what the reports suggest. The issue in front of us now involves a few things. First off, how will this film be received by the masses who know about Parker’s horrible history in that Penn State dorm? And what does this do for Oscar chances for the film?
Now, I don’t want to just sit here and say “oh no, it won’t win any Oscars!” That’s ridiculous. It’s as pointless on some level as the awards themselves. But the Oscars are still a cultural event, and think about it… here was this film, a passion project from an African-American filmmaker, lauded as an instant classic the moment it premiered at Sundance, seemingly ushered to the front of the Best Picture/Director/Actor lines, in a very poignant and crucial year for the Academy. Last year’s #OscarsSoWhite needed a counterpunch from an African-American prestige picture. The Academy needed a strong response this year, no matter what the case, and here was a miracle to make those stodgy old white males feel better about themselves, and they had it gift wrapped.
Until August.
I don’t know if The Birth of A Nation will win any Oscars and, frankly, it doesn’t matter at least a little but outside of social media controversy. Shutting the film out of the Oscars won’t bring back the victim of Parker’s crimes, who killed herself in 2012. It won’t do a damned thing. The Academy members will just have to work harder to be a little less shitty and racist when nomination time rolls around. There’s plenty of great work from minority artists out there, but this one was their Golden Goose and now they don’t know what to do. (Psst… see more movies!)
Back to that wide release… What about the masses watching this movie at all? Should there be some sort of widespread boycott for The Birth of A Nation, given its creator’s horrible transgressions? That is a tricky issue. My personal approach is to separate the art from the artist. Taking a stand on Parker’s film then means you must never watch a Woody Allen movie or a Roman Polanski movie ever again. If you say, “who cares? Those guys suck and I don’t watch them anyway,” well, you probably aren’t interested in this film and you have missed a ton of great cinema over the years.
I understand Woody Allen has done very creepy and deviant things in his past, and is probably a pederast to some degree. But I absolutely adore Annie Hall. Match Point is a brilliant thriller, Hannah and Her Sisters is terrific, and so on and so forth. Roman Polanski did some terrible things to an impressionable young girl, but Chinatown and Rosemary’s Baby are undeniable masterpieces of the highest order (not to mention the brilliance of his smaller films). I can watch these films and divorce myself from the flaws and horrible acts of their creators. It may not be the right thing to do, but it’s a compartmentalization that works for me to appreciate artistry for the sake of art.
And what about the other actors, and the hundreds of workers attached to The Birth of A Nation beyond Parker and his collaborator and fellow rapist (oof), Jean McGianni Celestin? Should Armie Hammer suffer yet another failure because of Parker’s horrific acts? What about the rest of the cast and crew who spent a great deal of time and effort on this picture? There’s more at play here than Nate Parker and his unforgivable sexual assault.
This isn’t meant to sway your position. Perhaps you’re dug in on this issue and you won’t see it on principle. To that I say, congratulations. But if we are denying this film based on Parker, then read up on the dozens and dozens of scandals and terrible actions of filmmakers and actors and weed those films out of your life as well. And while you’re at it, you might wanna check in on your favorite musicians and musical artists and take a look at their biographies. Ignoring art because you don’t like the artist, or the artist has done unforgivable things in their past, is a tough thing to manage, and that hill you’re set to die on will definitely change too often to remain consistent.
A new Alfred Hitchcock anthology series, similar to the show the late, great director hosted back in the day, is coming to television.
According to the report over at The Wrap, the Hitchcock Estate is teaming up with Universal Cable Productions to create this new anthology series “in the spirit of the classic Hitchcock style and legacy.” The series will bring in fresh new thriller filmmakers to riff on Alfred Hitchcock, like the Hitchcock Presents did back in the day.
“Our grandfather always collaborated with the best and the brightest to help shape his vision,” Hitchcock Estate Trust member Katie O’Connell-Fiala said. “We’re confident that Universal Cable Productions will take great care in helping us to continue preserving his legacy.”
This is still very obtuse sounding. Are we getting famous filmmakers or up-and-coming fresh visionaries? Either way, I have blind faith in the Hitchcock Estate being involved in this project, and that should make it worth checking out whenever it gets a channel and release schedule. It still won’t have the same punch as the original series did, since Hitchcock won’t be there to introduce the episode.
I just sort of halfway wish Brian De Palma could get involved in this project, in one capacity or another.
Most fans attribute the current flourish of superhero TV to the ground work laid down by CW’s iconic show, Smallville. A show that owes its great success in no small part to Michael Rosenbaum’s Lex Luthor. Rosenbaum brought much depth and nuance to the character and fans were very disappointed to see him leave the show after the seventh season. The character had finally evolved into the classic Superman villain, only to be written out of the show. A good number of fans believed it was due to bad writing but in a recent interview with Empire Online, Rosenbaum tells a different story.
“He (WBTV President Peter Roth) tried to get me to do two more seasons of Smallville. I was very polite and respectful. I said, ‘Peter, my grandma thinks I’m funny and I’ve always wanted to do comedy, and I started out in comedy, and I was doing tons of comedy, and then I was catapulted into this role that I love and it’s been great, but I was contracted for six years to play Lex Luthor, I did seven, and I’m just ready to move on and I’m just ready to take a new step.’ He looked at me and says, ‘You know, Julianna Margulies, she turned down millions of dollars to stay with ER and look where she is now.’ It wasn’t two or three years later where she just made a fortune with The Good Wife and all of that, and her career just took off. I said, ‘I’m going to bank on my talent. I’m just going to take a chance on me. I think I’ve done this long enough, I did this character for seven years and I just don’t feel like shaving my head for two more years.’ I came back for the finale, but at the time I just wanted to take a chance.”
Rosenbaum’s decision to leave Smallville may have seemed like career suicide at the time but the success of Impastor (which stars Michael Rosenbaum) proves that he made the right call for his career. Rosenbaum wasn’t completely done with the show though, as he returned for the two-hour finale in 2011.
About his return, he said, “I finally called them up and said, ‘Hey, look, it’s the last episode ever. I’ll do it, you’ve got me for one day next week.’ When I got there I was, like, ‘What’s happened since I left?’ I had no idea what was going on. There were moments where I just didn’t know what the f— I was doing. I liked my scenes with Tom Welling, but I felt like the show was, for me, done when I left in season seven. Then I sort of did it for the fans and did it for me for closure and to say, ‘Hey, I did come back.’ I did do it, and that’s ultimately why.”
Most fans still see his version of Lex Luthor as the best live action rendition of the character. Michael Rosenbaum currently stars as Buddy Dobbs in TV Land’s Impastor.
Deepwater Horizon as a film seems to strive above all for realism. In that regard, it succeeds spectacularly.
Forget any of this year’s horror films in terms of “scary.” This depiction of the 2010 man-made oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is more terrifying to behold than any found-footage walks in the woods or paranormal investigations.
Director Peter Berg’s effort to immerse audiences in the experience of being on the rig with its crew during its final hours succeeds thanks to incredible attention to detail and solid, “every-man” performances from the film’s star-studded cast. Nothing audiences see or hear in Deepwater Horizon rings false, and that’s why the film works so well.
What’s it about?
Of course, the story behind Deepwater Horizon should be familiar to most people, at least in the broad strokes.
On April 20, 2010, the Macondo well, an oil well located 40 miles off the Lousiana coast and three miles below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, experienced a massive “blowout.” The Deepwater Horizon, the sophisticated oil rig working the Macondo site for BP, suffered catastrophic damage in the resulting explosions.
11 members of the Horizon’s crew lost their lives that night, either trying to save the rig or in the ensuing evacuation.
The film depicts events that took place on the rig hours before the blowout. Installation manager “Mr. Jimmy” Harrell (Kurt Russell) and chief electronics tech Mike Williams (Mark Wahlberg) tangle with BP “company men” on board the Horizon concerned about why the operation was 43 days behind schedule. One of those BP managers, Donald Vidrine (John Malkovich), clashes with the veteran rig crew, challenging their conclusions about safety tests and their concerns about the well’s stability.
Meanwhile, other rig workers like bridge crew member Andrea Fleytas (Gina Rodriguez, TV’s “Jane the Virgin“) and floorhand Caleb Holloway (Dylan O’Brien) go about their duties. Work on “the well from hell,” as Macondo was known, was almost done, and the crew was eager to get home.
Within hours, the crew’s worst fears are realized. The blowout begins, and all of the Horizon’s sophisticated defenses and redundancy systems fail to save the rig. Survival and escape become the only options for those still alive, but to do that they’ll have to go through the flames and combustible gas that turned their workplace into a deathtrap.
As “real” as it gets
Deepwater Horizon marks the second “real-life heroes” collaboration between star Mark Wahlberg and director Peter Berg. The first was 2013’s Lone Survivor, which also immersed audiences the experience of the people at the center of the story.
In this film, the sense of realism comes in great part from astounding production design, photography, and special effects that bring both the rig and the disaster to life. If there’s CGI in Deepwater Horizon, it’s hard to spot. The sets all look practical, and the fireballs and explosions as “real” as they get in films.
All together, it’s an awesome spectacle, one that may earn Deepwater Horizon Oscar attention this year.
Characters stay “life-sized”
Along with overwhelming CGI, thinly written characters surrounded by needless melodrama usually sink weaker disaster films. Thankfully, Deepwater Horizon avoids those traps.
Rather, Berg and the scriptwriters deliver characters whose stories are genuinely relatable in order to draw audiences in. Is that part of the disaster film formula? Sure, but lesser films with weaker scripts incorporate subplots that invariably get discarded once things start blowing up.
In this film, the emotional ties that bind the characters get just enough weight to provide gravitas when lives are endangered. As such, Russell, Wahlberg, and Kate Hudson, playing Williams’s wife Felicia, all give solid, if understated, performances.
Jargon, dialect hamper understanding
All the attention to detail in Deepwater Horizon does present some challenges that film doesn’t quite overcome, however.
For one, all the specialized language and jargon in the script makes understanding exactly what’s happening difficult at times. It adds to the realism, but it also threatens to take audiences who struggle to comprehend it all out of the story entirely.
Regional dialect among some of the characters presents another cumbersome hurdle. Some of the performers handle the Cajun better than others, but it’s undeniably tough to get used to.
Worth seeing?
If you enjoy “real-life heroism” stories like Sully from earlier this year, then Deepwater Horizon is a must. It’s a well done and heartfelt effort to honor the courage displayed by the people whose experiences the film depicts.
Some may be critical of the film’s lack of attention to the environmental and economic impact of the disaster. Arguably, that’s another story entirely, one that continues to get attention in other media as litigation against BP continues.
Rather, Berg and the people behind this film focus instead on the stories of those who were there that day. Those stories are worth telling and worth remembering. If you give Deepwater Horizon a chance, you’ll most likely agree.
Deepwater Horizon
Starring Mark Wahlberg, Kurt Russell, John Malkovich, Gina Rodriguez, Dylan O’Brien and Kate Hudson. Directed by Peter Berg.
Running Time: 107 minutes
Rated PG-13 for prolonged intense disaster sequences and related disturbing images, and brief strong language.
During an interview with Comicbook.com on the set of Doctor Strange, Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige was asked what difference was between Doctor Strange and Scarlet Witch, considering they are both wielders of other worldly magic.
Feige answered saying, “Her powers, she’s never had any training, I’m talking about Scarlet Witch. She never had any training; she’s figuring it out. Arguably, you could say that that’s why her powers are much more chaotic and much more loose in the way that we showcased those light effects. In [Doctor Strange], some of what you might see today, even the cover of Entertainment Weekly, it’s much tighter. It’s all about focus. It’s all about pulling energies from other dimensions in an organized and purposeful fashion, which is why they can do a lot more than she can in, at least, a much more precise way.”
Fans continue to speculate if this is an indication that she may be drawing her powers from another dimension and tapping into “Chaos Magic”. In the comics, Doctor Strange was surprised to learn that Scarlet Witch used this specific form of magic as he and other Masters of the Mystic Arts believed that form of magic to be mythical and not real. Wanda rewrote reality in the 2005 limited series, House of M, using this ability.
Asgardians such as Loki, Odin and Frigga have also showcased the use of magic in the MCU being explained away in The first Thor film as simply very advanced science.
Dr. Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), a young, arrogant surgeon with a promising career, loses his ability to operate after a terrible accident. Despondent and suicidal, Dr. Strange seeks advice from a mystical being known as the Ancient One and learns that he is the newly designated Sorcerer Supreme, responsible for protecting the planet from evil. With his girlfriend Clea and his loyal assistant Wong in tow, Strange sets out to fulfill his destiny.
Disney is in the middle of remaking all their animated classics into live-action films, and they must have loved what Jon Favreau did with The Jungle Book. The director/actor is now on board to direct their live-action take on The Lion King.
Favreau tweeted a not-so-cryptic tweet earlier this morning, and Disney has now confirmed it:
The Jungle Book was a massive global winner earlier this year, bringing in over $363 million domestically and almost a billion worldwide. Even though it has a similar setting as The Jungle Book, The Lion King is a whole new ball of wax for Favreau. It’s still one of the highest-grossing and most critically successful animated films in Disney’s never-ending catalogue of commercial successes and crowdpleasers. It also has one of the longest-running and most successful Broadway shows in the history of theater.
We don’t have a release date or a shooting schedule for The Lion King, but it should be coming fairly soon. Disney is loving these successful reimagining of their cartoon hits, and they haven’t had a real misfire yet.
Rosenbaum’s decision to leave Smallville may have seemed like career suicide at the time but the success of Impastor (which stars Michael Rosenbaum) proves that he made the right call for his career. Rosenbaum wasn’t completely done with the show though, as he returned for the two-hour finale in 2011.
