We know we’ve done a lot of award season coverage of late and that continues today with the Screen Actors Guild Awards but we’ll try and fit in some other stuff too.
Best Ensemble Performance:
American Hustle
12 Years a Slave
August: Osage County
Dallas Buyers Club
The Butler
Best Leading Actor:
Matthew MacConaughey – Dallas Buyers Club
Bruce Dern – Nebraska
Chiwetel Ejiofor – 12 Years a Slave
Tom Hanks – Captain Phillips
Forest Whitaker – The Butler
Best Leading Actress:
Cate Blanchett – Blue Jasmine
Sandra Bullock – Gravity
Judi Dench – Philomena
Meryl Streep – August: Osage County
Emma Thompson – Saving Mr Banks
Best Supporting Actor:
Jared Leto – Dallas Buyers Club
Barkhad Abdi – Captain Phillips
Daniel Bruhl – Rush
Michael Fassbender – 12 Years a Slave
James Gandolfini – Enough Said
Best Supporting Actress
Lupita Nyong’o – 12 Years a Slave
Jennifer Lawrence – American Hustle
Julia Roberts – August: Osage County
June Squibb – Nebraska
Oprah Winfrey – The Butler
In TV, Breaking Bad won both Best Ensemble and Best Actor (Bryan Cranston) in a drama series. Maggie Smith (Downton Abbey) won Best Actress in drama but Julia Louis Dreyfus (Veep) picked up the corresponding award for comedy and Helen Mirren (Phil Spector) for mini-series/TV movie. Michael Douglas (Behind the Candelabra) and Ty Burrell (Modern Family, which also won Best Comedy Ensemble) respectively won Best Actor in a mini-series/TV movie and comedy series.
We move onto the surprising news that one of 2015’s major releases will follow in the footsteps of Pirates 6, Star Trek 3, Warcraft and Finding Dory to escape from the avalanche of film releases that 2015 brings, such as The Avengers: Age of Ultron, Ant-Man, Cinderella, The Good Dinosaur, Fast and Furious 7, Fifty Shades of Grey, Star Wars: Episode VII, Terminator: Genesis, Jurassic World, Assassin’s Creed, Seventh Son, The Fantastic Four, Pitch Perfect 2, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2, Bond 24, Mission: Impossible 5, Inside Out, Tomorrowland, The Minions, Frankenstein, Kung Fu Panda 3, Ted 2, Crimson Peak, Silence, Insurgent, Point Break, San Andreas, Poltergeist, In the Heart of the Sea, The Gambler, Queen of the Desert, Insidious 3, Chappie, Cyber, The Penguins of Madagascar, The Bourne Betrayal, The Secret Service, The Wedding Ringer and Killer Crow.
It’s Batman vs Superman which has pulled out into 2016. You’d think that this’d be one of the highest grossing films of the year so it’s backed out not because of competition but because of development difficulties. Fox cites that writer/director Zack Snyder (300, Man of Steel, Watchmen) and co need “time to realize fully their vision, given the complex visual nature of the story.” Pan, a prequel to Disney classic Peter Pan, is the Fox release that’ll replace it in 2015. That’ll be directed by Joe Wright (Hanna, Anna Karenina, Pride and Prejudice, The Soloist) and may star Hugh Jackman (X-Men, Real Steel, Australia, Les Miserables, The Prestige) The Man of Steel sequel will star Henry Cavill, Ben Affleck, Amy Adams, Diane Lane, Laurence Fishbourne and Gal Gadot and is rumoured to star Joaquin Phoenix and Jason Momoa.
There’s a few other quick snippets of news. Agents of SHIELD, which returns to Channel 4 in late February, recently confirmed that Bill Paxton will join the team. The show must be trying to up the anti by adding another major star. Asgardian warrior Lady Sif (Jaimie Alexander), who featured in both Thor and Thor: The Dark World, will be the focus of an upcoming episode. Initial ratings for the series have been lower than expected but ABC boss Paul Lee is confident a second series will be on the way.
While we’re on Marvel’s Disney side of things, we’d like to share with you the first promotional art of James Gunn’s (Slither, Super) stellar new comic-book adaptation which stars Chris Pratt, Vin Diesel, Zoe Saldana, Bradley Cooper, Michael Rooker, Karen Gillan, Lee Pace, Glenn Close and John C Reilly: Guardians of the Galaxy.
We swiftly move onto the James Bond franchise which we reference earlier. The yet untitled Bond 24 will be directed by Sam Mendes (Revolutionary Road, Road to Perdition, American Beauty, Away We Go, Jarhead) will return to the franchise after the huge success he had with Skyfall, which grossed over a billion dollars, nearly over double what any previous instalment had gained. Daniel Craig, Ralph Fiennes, Naomie Harris and Ben Whishaw are all set to revive their roles and John Logan is confirmed to be writing the script. As well as Skyfall, he penned Hugo, Rango, Coriolanus, The Aviator, The Last Samurai and Gladiator to much critical success so he should be able to astound us again with Bond 24.
“My goal is to write a great movie that’s appropriate, to build on what we did on Skyfall, but make it its own unique animal,” Logan said. “The themes, ideas and the characters from Skyfall can obviously continue on, because it is a franchise, and it is an ongoing story. So I think there’s resonance from Skyfall in the new movie.”
The fourth and final quick snippet of news is staying in the realm of scriptwriting. While Logan is starting his work on a new production, JJ Abrams has confirmed that the screenplay for his epic reboot Star Wars: Episode VII is finished. The Star Trek Into Darkness and Super 8 director/Felicity, Lost and Alias creator and his colleague Lawrence Kasdan (scribe of the original Star Wars’ The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi and Raiders of the Lost Ark) have finished their work writing. Also, producer Kathleen Kennedy told the ToysrEvil blog this about the franchise’s future as a whole.
“The canon that he created was the Star Wars saga. Right now, Episode VII falls within that canon. The spin-off movies, or we may come up with some other way to call those films, they exist within that vast universe that he created. There is no attempt being made to carry characters from the standalone films in and out of the saga episodes. Consequently, from the creative standpoint, it’s a roadmap that George made pretty clear.”
Batman vs. Superman – May 6th 2016
Pan – July 17th 2015
Bond 24 – November 6th 2015
Agents of SHIELD – Channel 4 in late February
Guardians of the Galaxy – August 1st
Star Wars: Episode VII – December 18th 2015
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