- Immediately after crapping the incestuous bed with the end of Game of Thrones — and shortly before Gemini Man inevitably tanks at the box office — David Benioff and his dudebro, B. Weiss, signed a five-year, $250 million development deal with Netflix. Despite having literally never delivered a completely satisfying anything, the duo was all set to write and possibly direct three new Star Wars movies. Except, quietly, the announcement of that Netflix deal mentions a bit of a walk-back there. Now the duo is “committed to penning at least one” of their Star Wars trilogy, and they may not direct any of them. Folks, this may well mean that trilogy goes the way of Benioff and Weiss’s “Y’all Remember Slavery?” confederacy fantasy show on HBO. May the Force show them the door.
- One more Star Wars nugget, because I’m a Greedo little pig… Those rumors about Ewan McGregor returning as Obi-Wan in a series for the upcoming Disney+ are popping up again. By the time you read this, said rumors may have even become truth facts! The potential of seeing McGregor as a weary-lapsed Jedi doing Western-genre stuff on Tatooine shouldn’t fill my foolish heart with such potential joy, but damn if it doesn’t make me feel like a half-priced Tosche Station power converter.
- As one of the literal dozens who still considers Black Mirror’s Bandersnatch an absolutely gripping first real foray into choose-your-own-adventure-style cinema, I’m unreasonably optimistic about news that we’re gonna get a haunted house movie in that vein. Alexandre Aja, who got his gators up in a hurricane with this year’s Crawl, is working with Haunting of Hill House writer Jeff Howard on an idea from Hill House and Doctor Sleep director Mike Flanagan for an interactive fright fest produced by Amblin. Might it suck? Verily, it might. But the idea of actually somehow participating in a horror film sounds like it could be potentially all the more terrifying. If there’s just, like, a button I can press to make jump scares happen, I’m gonna sprain my thumb.
- As one of the many absolutely grieving the cancellation of The OA, news that Natasha Lyonne is planning for her Netflix series, Russian Doll, to last only three years is happy/sad. On the one hand, we like for good things to go on as long as possible because the world is filled with so many bad things. On the other, few things are as bad as loving a show that dies before reaching its end. Except, one of those things that is as bad, or sometimes worse, is a show that lives longer than it should. So, overall, hearing that Lyonne is already thinking of how to end one of the year’s best TV shows generates the same kind of complex emotions her show itself does. Well done?
Cutting Room provides breaking local and national movie news… complete with added sarcasm. Send any relevant information to film@thereader.com. Check out Ryan on KVNO 90.7 on Wednesdays and follow him on Twitter @thereaderfilm.