The Rundown for Weekend of 4/16/2021

Welcome to The Rundown report (as gathered by Taryn Belle) with Nerd Union for April 16th, 2021!

MOVIES

The Hollywood Reporter confirmed that Natalie Portman has signed on with HBO to star and executive produce a film where she “will play the lead role in The Days of Abandonment, based on a novel by My Brilliant Friend author Elena Ferrante. Sundance award winner Maggie Betts (Novitiate) will adapt the novel and direct the film, which is in pre production. The Days of Abandonment (which was previously adapted for a 2006 Italian film) centers on Tess (Portman), a woman who abandoned her own dreams for a stable home life and is in turn abandoned by her husband, throwing her world off its axis.”

Debuting on Netflix this weekend, “Chadwick Boseman: Portrait of an Artist” will be available for just 30 days. SlashFilm notes the “documentary special is clearly the last stop in Netflix’s campaign for the Oscar that Boseman already has in the bag. But it’s still a nice sentiment, especially with the actor’s Hollywood colleagues and friends speaking so tenderly about the actor, who died in late August after a multi-year battle with colon cancer.” View the trailer here:

Mark Hamil just closed a deal to co-star with comedian (and producer) Bert Kreischer in The Machine according to Deadline. Deadline further reports: “Described as Hangover meets Midnight Run, The Machine is a genre-bending comedy inspired by Bert’s real-life adventures and subsequent breakout stand-up routine “The Machine” … Bert’s drunken past catches up with him 20 years down the road when he and his father are kidnapped by those Bert wronged 20 years ago while drunk on a college semester abroad in Russia.”

SHOWS & SERIES
Can’t get enough of Baron Zemo letting loose on the dance floor in Episode 3 of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier? The Direct reports that Marvel Studios heard the pleas for more footage and dropped “a one-hour video of Daniel Brühl’s Helmut Zemo dancing in the Madripoor nightclub … The video includes never-before-seen footage that extends on his iconic two-second dance moment from the Disney+ series. This new footage is about 30 seconds long and was put on repeat for the length of the video.”
As a bonus, this fan made video pairing the new dance footage to Strong Bad’s techno improv is a nerd’s delight:

The Direct also collected three new stills from production, taken by photographer Chuck Zlotnick, of Sam Wilson, Bucky Barnes, and Baron Zemo navigating Madripoor, including an iconic photo of the trio undercover when infiltrating The Brass Monkey Tavern.

Jodie Turner-Smith, who was set to play a lead role for The Witcher: Blood Origin, has had scheduling conflict come up that has caused her to leave the prequel series. According to IGN, Netflix released a statement “confirming the actress’ exit from the series. ‘Due to a change in the production schedule for The Witcher: Blood Origin limited series, unfortunately Jodie Turner-Smith will no longer be able to continue on in the role of Éile,’ a spokesperson for the streamer told the outlet.”

The CW has officially released an official first look at costumes for The Powerpuff Girls live action series. SYFYWire explained that “there have been lots of paparazzi photos of the three actresses on location in very streamlined costumes similar in design to their animated counterpart’s signature looks. Obviously, the internet being the internet, much critical chatter has erupted around the quality of the looks … In an official release from The CW, the network clarified that the paparazzi images reflect costumes ‘that are only worn in flashbacks of their teenage years. The focus of the pilot is on the girls as adults as shown in this first look.’ Shooting outdoors always means that unofficially snapped photos don’t get the context of what is happening in the scene, and there’s obviously some quelling of negative opinions at hand with this release.”

Screenwriter Jeff Baena has come up with an innovative way to create new content in the midst of the pandemic and has caught Showtime’s interest. According to Variety, Cinema Toast will be a 10 episode anthology series that drops April 20th on Showtime: “The series is described as a post-modernist reinvention of older movies that turns pre-existing imagery from the public domain on its head to tell brand new unique stories … Episodes will cover a range of genres, including horror, comedy, and drama …’When the pandemic first hit and all paths to traditional production seemed unlikely at best, I racked my brain to find a way to still create,’ said Baena. ‘That’s when the idea hit me to re-dub and re-shape old material into something transcendent that extends beyond just a comedic curio.’” Produced by the Duplass brothers, Cinema Toast “will feature the voices of actors like Alison Brie, Nick Offerman, Fred Armisen, John Early, Christina Ricci, Megan Mullally, Chloe Fineman and Chris Meloni. Directors include Baena, Jay Duplass, Mel Eslyn, Alex Ross Perry, Marta Cunningham, Aubrey Plaza, Numa Perrier, Jordan Firstman, Kris Rey and David Lowery. ”

Comicbook.com found a fun piece of trivia about the upcoming Loki series for Disney+. Tom Hiddleston recently had an interview with Empire where he reveled, “‘I want to preserve the freshness of the show for when it emerges, but something to think about is the [show’s] logo, which seems to refresh and restore. The font of how Loki is spelled out seems to keep changing shape. Loki is the quintessential shapeshifter. His mercurial nature is that you don’t know whether, across the MCU, he’s a hero or a villain or an anti-hero. You don’t know whether you can trust him.'” 

GAMING
Pre-orders for Monster Hunter: World – The Board Game opens on Kickstarter April 20th, as reported by Polygon. Accommodating from one to four players, skilled warriors hunt down massive monsters. “Each creature is controlled by a deck of cards, shuffled before every hunt. Only by learning their subtle moves and tendencies can players hope to defeat monsters in a timely fashion and finish the campaign.”

In other board game news, Bloomberg released an in-depth report on how Asmodee Holding has cornered the market on cooperative gaming: “Asmodee, based just outside Paris, owns about a dozen game publishers and has more than 750 employees, with operations in scores of countries … Many board game enthusiasts insist creativity has suffered under Asmodee. Owners of game stores in three U.S. states say prices are up and customer support has suffered … And instead of original titles with new characters, settings, and situations, the emphasis has shifted to licenses of Hollywood franchises such as Marvel superheroes and Star Wars, and spinoffs of existing fare: Ticket to Ride now comes in 28 versions, and Catan has dozens. Fantasy Flight Games, a Minnesota studio that Asmodee purchased in 2014, made its name with the smash-hit Twilight Imperium. Today the studio focuses on derivative games rather than new titles; none of the 19 upcoming releases listed on its website are original.”

Yahoo! Finance has noted (via Reuters) that the recent stock market boon for GameStop has translated into a shake up at the top. Since Ryan Cohen of Chewy Inc. joined the GameStop board in January 2021, he has been making calls to help the company be competitive in the digital market. This includes pushing for a new CEO: “GameStop Corp is looking for a new chief executive to replace George Sherman as it pivots from a brick-and-mortar video game retailer to an e-commerce firm.”

Over on TikTok, Leslee Sullivant has been making waves calling out the gaming development industry’s toxic culture, as noted by The Verge: “The games industry struggles with #MeToo-style reckonings every few months, and Sullivant’s video is a pitch-perfect impression of one of the many insidious ways those problems happen … Sullivant’s TikToks are more than a way to pass the time — they’re small performances of digital activism and education. ‘I’m always trying to find a way to make [the industry] better,’ she tells The Verge, citing stories of abuse and harassment endemic to the field. ‘I don’t know how to fix it. In the past, I have raised issues internally only to get punished for them … I’m desperate to change the industry for the better. This seemed like one of the ways maybe it could be far-reaching and impactful.’”

ACTORS & AWARDS
Award season is upon us and there were some exciting wins at the Guild of Music Supervisors Awards. The Wrap reports: “Tom MacDougall won for Soul in the Best Music Supervision for Film Budgeted Over $25 Million category. Dawn Sutter Madell won for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom in the category for films under $25 million, Susan Jacobs won for Promising Young Woman for films under $10 million and Dondrea Erauw won for The Cuban for films budgeted under $5 million.
In the television categories, winners included the music supervisors of Watchmen, High Fidelity, Insecure, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, The Masked Singer and To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You.
Also at the ceremony, Quincy Jones received the Icon Award and received a special tribute from Stevie Wonder, while longtime music supervisor and GMS founding president Maureen Crowe received the Legacy Award.”

Deadline reported the Black Reel Awards founder, Tim Gordon, spoke on the legacy of Black Cinema at the recent 21st annual ceremony: “What an unprecedented year it was for Black filmmakers and creatives and I’m delighted that this year’s winners reflected the historic nature of Black Cinema. We are honored to have this year’s class of winners join the rich history of those acknowledged in the past as they stand on the shoulders of Black Cinematic giants who paved the way.” Awards honored the range of great films that released over the pandemic:
Judas and the Black Messiah won the marquee Outstanding Film award, while stars Daniel Kaluuya and Dominique Fishback won the Outstanding Supporting Actor and Actress awards. The films producers “Charles King, Ryan Coogler, and Shaka King become the first all-African American team to win Outstanding Picture.”
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom honored Chadwick Boseman, the first posthumous winner in Black Reel Awards history, as the Outstanding Actor, while Viola Davis won Outstanding Actress.
One Night in Miami won the most award – a total of five – such as Regina King for Outstanding Director and Outstanding Emerging Director, Outstanding Ensemble, Kingsley Ben-Adir as Outstanding Breakthrough Actor, and Speak Now, co-written and performed by  Leslie Odom, Jr., taking Outstanding Song.

For animation, ASIFA-Hollywood’s Annie Awards were swept by Soul and Wolfwalkers, according to IndieWire. The Mandalorian won best Live Action Character Animation. IndieWire also noted that: “The Winsor McCay Award for career contributions to the art of animation are being presented to Warner Bros. and Hanna-Barbera animation designer Willie Ito; posthumously to Sue Nichols, one of the few women who had a voice in the development of such Disney classics as Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King, Mulan, and Brave; and Bruce Smith, the influential character animator, director, and producer (the Oscar winning Hair Love and The Proud Family).”

THEME PARKS
Disney Parks chairman, Josh D’Amaro, surprised everyone by ending his April 8th presentation with a flourish: a retractable lightsaber. The Verge theorizes this must be connected to patent filed in 2018 for such a device. Check out the article for VR developer Ben Ridout’s breakdown on how the Force is strong with this lightsaber.

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