I haven't been posting as much due to the embarrassing state of entertainment. I can derive some enjoyment in hilariously awful things like Rebel Moon (here's a great review), but it's sad that there's so little quality material to consume anymore. Things are so bad that middling fair like Fallout gets a pass based largely on aesthetics and 'it wasn't as bad as we thought' (a review)--it's a bit like Stockholm Syndrome. With that said, there are some things I wanted to go over.
In May we came to the conclusion of the long running Silk IP saga. Announced as a live-action film by Sony back in 2018, it transitioned into an animated project, then into a solo TV-series pitched to Amazon in 2020. Almost three-years later Amazon has passed on the series due to disinterest in the character. The failure of the MCU's Ms. Marvel (2022), Echo (2024), and Madame Web (2024), likely played a role in that decision.
Falcon's Captain America film is getting another round of reshoots. THR claims these are the first, but from insiders we know this isn't the case at all as the film has required incessant reshoots (the latest are to incorporate an entirely new villain, which is a major alteration to a film that wrapped last year). Given how hilariously bad Falcon and the Winter Soldier was (my review), I can only expect more of the same, particularly given how awful the MCU has become.
Blade's never ending struggles continue as the film is getting it's fifth re-write. The primary reason for the constant changes is lead actor Mahershala Ali has tremendous influence on the project and keeps rejecting what he's given. He just wants Blade to kill vampires, but that's too complicated for Marvel. Ali is now 50 (the project was announced five years ago) and you have to wonder if it will ever happen. Since the announced re-write the film has lost it's second director.
I mentioned last time that the Dragonlance creators were out of touch and hadn't enjoyed success in a long time (cf the failure of their new trilogy is part of why Joe Manganiello's show project failed). We see an echo of this reality as Margaret Weis (the loudest of the two authors) is complaining about WotC not race-swapping her original characters in artwork for the upcoming PHB. This is hilarious and may imply that Manganiello's Dragonlance project was suffused with ESG-drivel.
A bit of trivia: back in April we learned that the 1990 Hulk TV special featuring Daredevil failed to be a springboard to a series because NBC bought it out. The company didn't want competition for it's Flash show. As someone who saw both at the time, the latter was definitely better, but it's interesting that there was fear about having more than one comic book show on-air at the same time.
On the heels of scooper Mikey Sutton passing away, Lords of the Long Box's T-Vo (a friend of Sutton's) has also died unexpectedly. I knew neither well, although I interacted with them (briefly replacing T-Vo as one of the hosts for Small Screen's short-lived roundtable show). Neither were particularly old, although Sutton had a history of health problems. Commiserations to his friends and family.
This article was written by Peter Levi
