Movie News After Dark
The day’s top headlines in bite-size portions.
Perhaps a post-Halloween sugar crash kept you from catching the day’s big entertainment news. No worries, it was a pretty slow day out there anyway, so suck on a Jolly Rancher and let us catch you up.
How about a double dose of Netflix news to start things off?
Though it might have seemed a foregone conclusion, there was some doubt that Millie Bobby Brown, the breakout actress of 2016 who plays “Eleven” on Netflix’s Stranger Things, would return for season 2 of the popular series. Long story short, there were some disagreements during contract renegotiations that could have derailed pretty much the entire show – season 2 of Stranger Things without Eleven is like season 3 of Twin Peaks without Dale Cooper; no one cares – but it seems now those issues have been put to bed because TV Line is reporting (albeit without confirmation from Netflix, but that’s a formality, most likely) that the I’s have been dotted, the T’s crossed, and the actress is set to return as a regular.
Stranger Things season 2 will pick up a year after the events of the first season and will focus on, in the words of creators and executive producers Matt and Ross Duffer, the “bigger mythology” surrounding the events of season 1. I don’t know about you, but that sounds like another, deeper trip into the Upside Down to me. No release date has been set and in fact shooting hasn’t even begun, but expect this mid-to-late 2017.
Defenders Assemble! I don’t think that’s their catchphrase, but you get the gist. Marvel’s small-screen heroes – Daredevil (Charlie Cox), Jessica Jones (Kristen Ritter), Luke Cage (Mike Colter) and Iron Fist (Finn Jones) – have finally come together to start shooting their team-up show for Netflix, The Defenders, and Fan Portal over on Twitter has the photovisual proof. In the first image, Miss Jones can be seen squaring off with Misty Knight (Simone Missick), a supporting character from the Luke Cage series. Those are the two mini-Marvel worlds that have already overlapped – Luke was in several episodes of Jessica Jones as her, um, love interest? – so it’s not surprising the first image to leak comes out of that connection. Just how the heroes themselves will intersect is still unknown, but likely Iron Fist, the last of the solo shows before The Defenders, will shine some light on that. Other supporting characters making the cast cut are Foggy Nelson (Elden Hensen) and Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll) from Daredevil, and Malcolm (Eka Darville) from Jessica Jones. The only other tidbits we really know are that Sigourney Weaver will pay the villain, though her specific role is still unclear, and that instead of the 13-episode run the solo series enjoyed, there will only be eight episodes of The Defenders, which is set to premiere late next year. Iron Fist bows first, on March 17th, 2017.
One of the coolest facets of the myriad minutiae that makes HBO’s Westworld series so truly other-worldly is how the score is composed, in part, of contemporary songs adapted for player piano. “Name That Song” is quickly becoming the show’s most popular in-episode game behind “Drink Every Time Dolores Drops That Can,” and thus far songs from Radiohead, Soundgarden, and others have been rearranged to sound like they were written by a ragtime drunkard, but you know, in a good way. Fans have been clamoring for access to these songs sans show, and if you listen very closely right now, you can hear them all cheering in unison, because at long last (five weeks in) HBO has complied. We found the songs – “Black Hole Sun” by Soundgarden, “No Surprises” by Radiohead, “The Forest” by The Cure, and “Paint It Black” by The Rolling Stones – in a handy playlist (Apple Music or Spotify, dealer’s choice) over at NPR that also includes the show’s haunting main theme by Ramin Djawadi, who scored the Game of Thrones theme as well. Sounds like you just got the musical accompaniment to your next sexbot orgy.
That’s all for now, but be sure to stop by same time tomorrow night for more Movie News After Dark. Emphasis on the “more,” hopefully.
Related Topics: Marvel
