GottaGetAGrip

Wonder where this will be popping up.

Completely lost all track of whatever the hell's going on with DC's upcoming solicits...

I suspect that this sequel getting made is down more to Keanu's general post-Wick popularity than anything specific to the Keanu Constantine movie itself!

(come to think of it, the HBO Max Constantine show getting cancelled while a sequel to the old movie is greenlit is like if Disney decided to can the upcoming D+ Daredevil revival in favor of getting Ben Affleck back in the suit for Daredevil 2)

https://deadline.com/2022/09/constantine-sequel-keanu-reeves-francis-lawrence-warner-bros-dc-akiva-goldsman-scripting-producing-bad-robot-jj-abrams-hannah-minghella-1235121127/

Out of nowhere, a sequel to Keanu's Constanteen has been announced today, with director Francis Lawrence also returning. Interestingly, JJ Abrams is a producer via his company Bad Robot - wonder what this means for the Constantine HBO show it was developing? (Maybe JJ thinks he's special, so he'll produce a Keanu Constantine movie and also a separate Constantine tv show at the same time)

EDIT: according to Variety, the HBO show is dead but being shopped to other networks... along with a Madame Xanadu show that was also in development. I guess RIP to JJ Abrams' Justice League Dark plans for now...

Akiva Goldsman scripting may be the scariest thing about this, more frightening than any issue of Hellblazer.

(Also given this is Warner Brothers, there's no guarantee this will actually make it to screen)

Alas, a failure on that front.

Caught George Miller's new film "Three Thousand Years of Longing", and there's an early scene in the film that features this DC art in the background.

Via this detail, George Miller has gotten John Constantine (and Swamp Thing too) back on the big screen - in a movie about the DJINN of all things. Looks like they finally found them!

https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/neil-gaiman-sandman-season-2-release-good-omens-calliope-1234580270/?_thumbnail_id=1234580332

Here's an interview Neil did covering the show, the comic, and the attempts at adaptation over the years.

There was also Kit Ryan being name-dropped as an ex- of Johanna's. Which I suppose is another strike against Johanna being her own distinct character rather than a genderbent adaptation of John.

I'd like to shout-out his work on The Demon as well. Never read every issue, but the few back-issues I own were my introduction to the character of Etrigan. Perhaps skewing my standards for Etrigan appearances a bit.

It's an argument that conveniently ignore how little gun death Japan and other countries with gun control have annually (to say nothing of mass shootings) and when it does happen, how many hoops the killer has to jump through compared to the United States of Ammo.

Adding to even more crazy political news: Japan's former prime minister Shinzo Abe has been assassinated. Most bizarrely, his killer wanted him dead so badly they made their own gun to do it with.

Not too much tears to be shed over a right-wing nationalist + war crimes denier, but I suppose this will lead to less than pleasant consequences for the Japanese...

In addition to the Shazam sequel currently scheduled for December this year, Shazam's nemesis Black Adam is getting a solo movie (for some reason) beforehand. Guess Dwayne stipulated he gets at least one movie with him as the (anti)hero before he has to play villain/share the focus in a Shazam movie!

Also starring Pierce Brosnan as Dr. Fate.

Did see some complaints that Coleman didn't dye her hair or stick on a wig, but there seemed to be more confusion as to why Constantine was a GURL now by people not in the know about Lady C.

Maybe that's how they'll distinguish between the two in the show - Lady Johanna has the blonde hair as she did in the comic with Modern Johanna as the brunette.

Edit: Seems Neil confirmed that Coleman's playing two separate characters.

Coleman's Constantine does look a bit like how I'd expect a live-action Gemma to look...

Has it been clarified if Coleman will be playing both a genderswapped John and Lady C as separate characters or if the two characters have been combined for the purposes of adaptation?

Also find myself wondering if she'll be the first live-action Constantine to use the Tyne pronunciation!

Given his rural Kansas upbringing, it may very well be possible that there's a part of Supes that don't feel too swell about his son's orientation too!

Back to the figure, it don't feel too right that John comes with a spellbook and sigil over a cigarette but I suppose there's laws in place to dissaude them giving the toys smokes.

https://mcfarlane.com/toys/john-constantine7in-black-adam-comic-page-punchers/

For those who collect 'em: McFarlane's putting out a new John figure.

Though why he's part of some Black Adam-themed line is beyond me.

George Perez has passed from his cancer.

First Neal, now George. Been a rough couple of days for comics.

Another of comics' living legends has passed on.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/neal-adams-dead-batman-comics-artist-1235138106/

On the other hand, I don't suppose Cockfighter ever got a sequel where he ended the Cold War by cockfighting a genetically enhanced Russian alpha cock and making a big speech about how we should all just get along afterwards...

In other Republican news, it seems that Florida's governor is aiming to pick a fight with Disney over corporate wokeness or something. Because it's a great idea politically speaking to tangle with the mega-corp that I'm pretty sure owns like half your state.

I also suppose this is also him doing some early legwork to get his name out there for the crazies in 2024, in the event of Trump choking down one Big Mac too many and suddenly leaving the 2024 GOP nominee spot wide open.

It is something of a twisted pleasure to see what part of Moore's bibliography Johns will crib from next. Do you suppose eventually he'll dip into Lost Girls territory once he finishes rooting through all the big-name bins?

In other news:

https://www.cbr.com/round-robin-round-2-creative-teams-expanded-descriptions-dc/?utm_content=buffer33a1b&utm_medium=Social-Distribution&utm_source=CBR-TW&utm_campaign=CBR-TW

Si Spurrier has an entry in DC's Round Robin contest, though he's writing one of the Green Lantern pitches. Not the Constantine one, which is written by a writer I've never heard of. Guess at least Green Lantern and no Batman in the running gives him a shot at actually making it to the top of this rather ghoulish battle royale, eh?

https://aiptcomics.com/2022/03/29/dc-round-robin-2022-vote/

DC is doing another Round Robin competition, where fans vote on which pitch out of sixteen gets a mini made. Thought throwing someone's chances at work to the mercies of what character has bigger name recognition amongst fans was a preposterous/dickish thing of DC to do last year, and my feelings haven't changed much seeing how they seem to be redoing the competition verbatim - right down to not revealing who the creative teams are until the second round where half the pitches have already been eliminated.

Guess I'll still go ahead and vote for the Constantine/Demon pitch, not that I expect it has a chance in hell of making it.

https://screenrant.com/swamp-thing-new-series-daughter-return/

Tefe Holland is being dug out of limbo by Ram V and Mike Perkins for the second season of their Swamp Thing run. Maybe there's hope that one day a writer will remember Gemma's existence as well...

I'm trade waiting this series and I gotta say that while a good read the first trade is pretty poorly collected... you'd think for a 10-issue "season," you'd put them all in one big trade... but instead DC opted to collect just the first four issues and then an unrelated DC Future State story by the same creative team. I suppose to pad out the length of the trade whilst splitting up the run into more trades for more profit.

Somehow, hopefully not through some dark demonic bargain I forgot I made, I acquired the mythological PS5.

So far, all I've done is play PS4 games on it and watch movies and TV. The future of gaming is great!

(do have a few PS5 games acquired and queued up... but I figured it was best to clear some current backlog commitments first before tossing even more on the pile)

(It is great to have a backwards compatible Playstation after the PS4 couldn't play PS3 games which meant I had to rely on increasingly faulty old hardware if I ever felt like playing something older in the collection)

Had a free pass to a local theater after a technical mishap at a previous movie so I used it on the Uncharted movie in the weekend of its opening. I figured I might as well use it on something I normally wouldn't pay to see.

After over a decade in development hell, the Uncharted movie is finally here. It neither directly adapts one of the games or tells a story set in the universe of the games but rather freely mixes in elements from every game in the series (most prominently the third and fourth installments) + a dosage of liberties for its own take on an origin story for series protagonist Nathan Drake - played here by Tom Holland. While he's likeable as the Friendly Neighborhood wallcrawler, Tom does not fit into the role of Nathan Drake quite as well - and the less said about Mark Wahlberg as Nathan Drake's mentor the better. And sadly Antonio Banderas is very wasted as the film's villain.

The less attachment you have to the game series, the more likely it is you'll enjoy the movie as a standalone globetrotting adventure in the vein of Indiana Jones (somebody in the theater actually applauded at the end). But alas the movie never quite shakes the big problem of adapting a video game series that was already heavily inspired by movies into a movie - the appeal of the games was being able to play a big blockbuster action film. Taking away the playing part means you're just left watching recreations of stuff you already played or cliches you've seen in plenty other movies.

(I suspect the The Last of Us show in production at HBO will run into a similar conundrum)

I'll be seeing the new Batman movie soon, so hopefully that will be a better time at the movies. Though given that it'll be drawing a packed audience... I suspect there's room for a joke in very poor taste about catching Covid from a Bat(man). And speaking of bats, could anyone seriously foresee this timeline lining up for us to also get a live-action Morbius movie? That one getting delayed to an April 1st release date had to be intentional on the marketing team's part.

Bad news for anyone reading King's Human Target live: it's getting a pretty lengthy delay in order for Smallwood to finish the art.

Though with art the quality Smallwood's been putting out, who'd want rushes or substitutes?

(King's Batman/Catwoman series underwent similar art-related delays and still needed Liam Sharp to come in and do a few fill-ins for Clay Mann, hopefully for its readers Human Target has a brighter fate)

King fans in the interim have his Batman: Killing Time mini-series to look forward to, a mini about a younger Batman fighting a trio of his iconic villains with the first issue coincidentally timed to launch right when the new movie about a younger Batman fighting the exact same trio of iconic villains hits cinemas...