Movies

As the Fast and Furious film series has evolved into a more conventional, though still car-focused action franchise over the last decade, that’s resulted in its protagonists getting into more fights. Hobbs and Shaw will certainly be no exception, as Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Jason Statham’s characters find themselves having to stop Idris Elba’s Brixton Lore from unleashing a deadly virus on humanity in the spinoff.

As we saw in the last Hobbs and Shaw trailer, one of the big fights will unfold when Luke Hobbs, Deckard Shaw and Vanessa Kirby’s Hattie Shaw team up with Hobbs’ family to clash with Brixton Lore and his goons in Samoa. With two months to go until the movie’s release, Johnson not only posted this cool behind-the-scenes video of part of this fight, but also shared how it was initially planned for him to bite and spit out his opponent’s eye.

PG-13 movies are granted a fair amount of leeway when it comes to action and violence, but naturally there are some things that are off limits within that rating. Luke Hobbs removing a man’s eye from his socket would have been shocking, brutal and badass, but the MPAA wasn’t having it, so we’ll have to make due with Johnson’s character simply tossing his adversary to the ground and bludgeoning him senseless.

Maybe Hobbs and Shaw could have kept in the eye bite had it been rated R, but the Fast and Furious franchise has always been a PG-13 one, pulling in moviegoers young and old. That’s undoubtedly helps these movies big piles of money, but the tradeoff is that gory moments like the one Dwayne Johnson talked about on Instagram need to be left on the cutting room floor.

Regardless, Hobbs and Shaw definitely doesn’t look like it will be lacking in exciting moments. With each movie, the Fast and Furious franchise gets kookier and more over-the-top, and now we’ve reached the stage where things like a genetically enhanced super soldier and pulling down a helicopter with a chain of trucks are on the table.

Along with the previously mentioned actors, Hobbs and Shaw sees Helen Mirren reprising Magaldene Shaw, Eiza González as Madame M, and Cliff Curtis, Roman Reigns, Josh Mauga and John Tui as Luke Hobbs’ brothers. Eddie Marsan and Ryan Reynolds have also reportedly joined in undisclosed roles. Early box office projections place Hobbs and Shaw at making approximately $100 million opening weekend.

Directed by Deadpool 2’s David Leith and written by longtime Fast and Furious screenwriter Chris Morgan, Hobbs and Shaw charges into theaters on August 2, so keep checking back with CinemaBlend for more coverage. In the meantime, don’t forget to look through our 2019 release schedule to learn what other movies are coming out later this year.

With Dark Phoenix now hitting theaters, here is everything we know about the X-Men's movie future. 20th Century Fox kicked off the long-running franchise based on Marvel characters in 2000 and helped shape what superhero movies would look like for the coming years (and decades). The grounded but slightly futuristic approach to the X-Men movies fit well with what audiences wanted to see at the turn of the millennia, although the franchise has changed and expanded in many ways since.

The Fox X-Men franchise began with two solid and successful entries, but then X-Men: The Last Stand gave the trilogy a less than stellar conclusion. The studio decided to continue with the franchise by giving Hugh Jackman's Wolverine, the unquestioned star of the initial wave of X-Men movies, a solo movie exploring his origins. When that didn't work, the studio quickly soft-rebooted the series by going back to the 1960s to show the beginning of the team's formation in X-Men: First Class. While they've done more Wolverine solo films, delivered two proper Deadpool films, and experimented with other ways to expand the franchise, the core of it has always been the main series.

Dark Phoenix is the fourth installment of the new series and the seventh overall but also marks the end of an era. Disney has bought 20th Century Fox, and with it the rights to the X-Men movies, meaning a lot of planned projects have been scrapped and a total reboot of the series is imminent. Here is everything we know about the future of the X-Men franchise on the big screen after Dark Phoenix, from retooling and delaying upcoming releases to a brand new future.

Nineteen years after the original X-Men movie hit theaters, Dark Phoenix officially closes the door on the main franchise for Fox. Dark Phoenix stars the First Class ensemble with the younger cast of Sophie Turner (Jean Grey), Tye Sheridan (Cyclops), Kodi Smit-McPhee (Nightcrawler), and Alexandra Shipp (Storm) introduced in X-Men: Apocalypse stepping into more significant roles. It is directed by longtime franchise writer Simon Kinberg and adapts the Dark Phoenix Saga comic storyline for the second time in the entire series.

Unfortunately, the reviews for Dark Phoenix point to another disappointing adaptation and series capper. The results may be disappointing all on their own but will sting longtime fans of the franchise even more since this is the final X-Men film: Fox previously had hopes that Dark Phoenix would be the start of a brand new trilogy of films centered around the young cast, but these plans have been abandoned. Also scrapped as a result of the Disney deal are over a dozen in-development X-Men movies.

While the main X-Men series from Fox is over and no more films entering production, they do still have one more mutant-related property coming: The New Mutants. The movie is a low-budget haunted house-style horror movie but with superpowers, and the first trailer (which was released over eighteen-months ago) showed that they executed this idea. However, reports then surfaced that reshoots were coming that would either add more horror or lessen it, depending on the source.

Back in late 2014/early 2015, it looked like the faces of both the Men In Black and 21 Jump Street franchises were going to change. It was a time when Sony Pictures was trying to figure out what was in store for the future of both of the brands, and that shared status led to some interesting talk about to potential of a crossover. Minds around Hollywood immediately started buzzing about the possibilities for the project, and while it ultimately turned out that the film just wasn’t worth pursuing, it remains one of the most interesting “What If?” Hollywood stories of the last few years.

So what exactly happened? How did the project initially start developing, and what was the reason for it never moving forward? For answers to those questions, I recently turned to Men In Black franchise producers Laurie MacDonald and Walter Parkes, with whom I spoke during the recent London press junket for the upcoming Men In Black International.

Approximately two years after the release of Men In Black 3 (which made $624 million at the global box office), the franchise was still looking at how to continue its cinematic future, particularly because there was an awareness that the Will Smith/Tommy Lee Jones era had come to an end with the Barry Sonnenfeld-directed trilogy. Work was being done behind the scenes on another kind of spin-off idea, but the concept wasn’t fleshing itself out property. It was at that point that the idea of a radical crossover came into the picture, and it was essentially viewed as an approach that had a “crazy enough to work” type vibe.

Phil Lord and Chris Miller – who were just coming off of the massively successful 22 Jump Street, and had a growing reputation for turning bad ideas into great ideas – put forward the idea of a movie that would blend the universes of 21 Jump Street and Men In Black, and reveal that they take place within the same world. It immediately struck Laurie MacDonald as an odd trajectory for the sci-fi heavy franchise, but she was won over by the notion particularly because of the talent of the men making the sale. She explained,

Chris and Phil are maybe the only people... because we love this franchise, and at the moment I think for us to even say 'Okay' to that was a big deal. But we love them! They're amazing. We were a little stalled on another project - we had this initial impulse, and we were having trouble getting a script 'there.' We thought, 'Oh, they're brilliant.'

It was also basically a win-win scenario for the Men In Black producers. According to MacDonald, the deal that was struck gave them the option to back out once a script had been written – and that was apparently the only safety net required for the crossover to be explored. Chris Miller and Phil Lord started working on combining the two worlds with help from Rodney Rothman (who would eventually go on to co-direct Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse in collaboration with the filmmaking duo). Unfortunately, though, it didn’t quite go as well as hoped. In MacDonald’s words,

It didn't quite get ‘there.’

“There,” of course, is the determined threshold where a concept makes the leap into becoming a real potential movie – and Men In Black/21 Jump Street was just never able to make it to that point. One might find that surprising, not only because of the aforementioned talent involved, but also because you’d expect that both buddy cop-centric approaches would play off each other well. There was, however, a bigger issue which ultimately prevented the project from fully functioning.

As Walter Parkes explained, it all had to do with the way in which each series generated its core sense of humor. For Men In Black it was all about grounding heightened events; while for 21 Jump Street the humor called for heightening what otherwise might be mundane. Putting the two side-by-side, he explained,

After we got into it, I remember, I think [Laurie MacDonald and I] had this conversation: They are at, their heart, opposites. In other words, Men In Black comes down to taking extraordinary situations and playing them in a comedic deadpan way. Jump Street is taking very recognizable genre situations and going over the top with them. And, actually, that doesn't mesh. It was a good intention, and everyone was smart, but when you really step back and look at what's at the heart of either of those two series of movies, they're not very compatible.

If the Men In Black/21 Jump Street crossover were to happen, it sounds like it would have essentially be a robbing Peter to pay Paul situation. Going one way it would have just meant basically turning Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Jenko (Channing Tatum) into lesser-skilled alien fighting agents. In the other direction it would have been a pair of black sunglasses-clad agents entering the world of undercover police work in schools. One franchise would have had to sacrifice its essence in favor of the other, and that just didn’t really work.

So the movie didn’t get made, and the Men In Black franchise decided to go the International route – re-pairing Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson as the new leads – but both Laurie MacDonald and Walter Parkes look back with a certain fondness on the 21 Jump Street crossover that was ultimately not meant to be. It was a funny idea, and an outside-the-box approach, and while it proved to be too great a challenge it was something they were happy to develop for the time that they did:

Laurie MacDonald: I think everyone felt creatively, 'Not quite; almost.'

Walter Parkes: But worth a try.

Laurie MacDonald: It was one of those things, because usually we all tire of everything trying to be made into a franchise, but to us it was actually such a crazy bold idea that's also the reason we said yes. It was just a crazy impulse that was worth exploring.

Fans of Men In Black will soon get to see the alternate direction that was chosen for the franchise, as Men In Black International is coming to a theater near you this Friday, June 14th. Between now and then, you’re definitely going to want to keep coming back to CinemaBlend, because I will not only have more from my interview with the wonderfully informative Laurie MacDonald and Walter Parkes, but also my sit downs with stars Chris Hemsworth, Tessa Thompson, and Kumail Nanjiani.

Here's how Marvel Studios can bring back several dead Avengers in Phase 4 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In the build-up to Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, the common word attributed to both was "culmination." Marvel Studios and directors Anthony and Joe Russo believed that these two films would put an end to the last eleven years of MCU storytelling, while still leaving room for the franchise and many characters to continue.

They succeeded in doing just this as Avengers: Endgame sets up a promising and different future for the MCU, but it came at a cost. To push the stories of various characters forward and bring others to a close, the last two Avengers films featured some notable deaths. Not all of them have been easy to digest for fans, as a petition was recently started to bring back Iron Man after his heroic sacrifice in Avengers: Endgame.

Marvel Positioned Iron Man As A Villain - But Endgame Proves He's The Biggest Hero

A petition likely won't change Marvel's plans for the future, but if their plans do include bringing some prominent characters back to life, we may have an idea of how they could do so. To recap, Avengers: Infinity War killed Heimdall, Loki, Gamora, and Vision, while Avengers: Endgame killed Black Widow, Iron Man, and Thanos (twice). In the latest Screen Rant video (featured at the top of this post), we discuss how many of them could return in Phase 4.

Of all the characters mentioned, the one who is most likely to be brought back to life in some sense is Vision. Even though Thanos ripped the Mind Stone out of his android skull, he is set to return in the Disney+ series WandaVision. The series will be centered around Elizabeth Olsen's Scarlet Witch, but Paul Bettany is confirmed to be reprising his role too. It is unclear how this will be done, but as discussed in the video, there are quite a few options from the comics that Marvel could use as inspiration.

However, the one who could return the soonest may be Tony Stark. We've previously proposed a theory that Spider-Man: Far From Home will introduce how Robert Downey Jr. could stick around in the MCU and still make sure Tony remains dead. Becoming Peter's A.I. in his Spider-Man suits would be an easy way for Tony to still be part of his life, while still making it so he can't physically be there to help him. These are just a few possibilities, though, and many fans will prefer it most of these deaths remain permanent, but only time will tell if the MCU will bring these characters back in some form.

Creating toys out of everyday objects is a staple of any imaginative child’s playtime: a cardboard box becomes a car; a piece of wood transforms into a sword; and a plastic fork... becomes Forky.

Sophie Turner is so thankful to have Joe Jonas by her side.

A day after the actress stepped out to support her husband at his event, the Jonas Brother accompanied his wife to her Dark Phoenix premiere held at TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood on Tuesday.

ET's Nischelle Turner caught up with the X-Men film's leading lady, who couldn't help but gush about how comforting it was to have him as her date.

"It's great. It's wonderful. It's nerve wrecking, but it's amazing [to have him here]," Turner expressed. "It's a bit of comfort in an otherwise nerve-wrecking day."

The newlyweds looked picture perfect posing on the red carpet. The blonde beauty was stunning in a black-and-gray striped strapless dress by Louis Vuitton that featured silver detailing and a black belt. She also wore earrings and a ring from the French designer.

Jonas, on his end, coordinated with his lady love, wearing a black suit with a black-and-white stripped shirt.

The night before, Turner dazzled in a silver metallic number while attending the Los Angeles premiere of Jonas' Chasing Happiness. ET caught up with the Jonas Brothers during the event, where they praised their wives for supporting them for the special event.

"It's a dream come true," Nick Jonas expressed. "They're all so busy that the fact that they get to come here and support us means the world."