Here's an intriguing prospect. The Dark Knight Rises and Inception star Tom Hardy was originally going to star in Suicide Squad, but he had to drop out (he explains why here). Now, in a new interview with Collider, Hardy talks about a different collaboration that's in the works with DC Comics, but it's such a mystery that we don't even know whether it's a film, a TV show, or some strange combination of both:

I actually got something cooking with Warner Bros. which is also a comic book, it’s a DC thing which is kind of…It’s really good actually, it contains elements of all kinds of stuff. From Ocean’s Eleven, to Batman, you can get all the wrappers out and it would be a big, really cool, Technicolor, Pulp Fiction…It’s a psychological fuckfest, it’s absolutely awesome. It’s as if you would take Transmetropolitan and make it happen, but it’s not that out there it’s something which is much more real world. It could be like Heat, it could be fucking awesome.

Whoa. That sounds nuts, whatever it is. When asked if it was a film on DC's upcoming film slate, he responded, "It’s not even a movie." So what the heck is it?

It’s already… It’s real estate, it’s PRIME real estate which is sitting there right under everybody’s nose that no one’s really thought about yet and it goes TV and movie, it’s awesome. I can’t believe that nobody has even – I know they thought of it but no one has actually blown life into it yet.

I haven't had much time to read comics over the past few years, but for those of you who are still avid readers: do you have any guesses as to what he could be talking about here? I'm clueless but he's clearly excited about it, and with passion like that I'm hoping he's able to get it made soon — in whatever form it eventually takes. In the meantime, there's always the hope that Marvel will cast him as The Punisher (although my personal preference is that he'd be cast as this specific version of the character). Hardy will next appear in Mad Max: Fury Road, which cruises into theaters next Friday.

I find Conan O'Brien's Clueless Gamer segments one of the most entertaining parts of his show (along with the remotes — those are always great), and this time, he's sitting down to play The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. We've written a lot about the game recently (a new trailer dropped yesterday, in fact), and I'm sure those of you who are looking forward to playing it will get a kick out of Conan helplessly failing at every turn.

And as usual, when Conan encounters an attractive female video game character, he pervs out. That's pretty much a given at this point. But this may be a new low for him as far as creepiness goes.

Yesterday we got our first look at Quentin Tarantion's upcoming western The Hateful Eight. It showed us the characters being played by Samuel L. Jackson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Kurt Russell. Today we have seven more photos from the film for you to checkout that gives us a look at some additional characters. Some of those characters include Michael Madsen as Joe Gage, Bruce Dern as General Sanford Smithers, and Tim Roth as Oswaldo Mobray.

In an interview with EW, Leigh briefly describes her character's relationship with Russell's outlaw character John “The Hangman” Ruth saying, they “are essentially the most dysfunctional couple since Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” 

Tarantino also opens up about Hollywood, and his place as a director in the entertainment industry: 

“Hollywood has changed a whole lot, and if I had to change with it, I wouldn’t even make it to 60. I signed up for one film industry and I’m not signing up for the other one. That’s not why I got into this. I want there to be a connection to the young artist’s spirit that was there in Reservoir Dogs. I don’t want to be one of those old-man directors; I want there to be some form of aesthetic connection, a vitality, from my first film to whatever is my last film.”

As long as Tarantino is able to keep great and entertaining movies I'll be happy, and from the sound of it, he's not done making movies yet. Here's the synopsis for The Hateful Eight.

In THE HATEFUL EIGHT, set six or eight or twelve years after the Civil War, a stagecoach hurtles through the wintry Wyoming landscape. The passengers, bounty hunter John Ruth (Russell) and his fugitive Daisy Domergue (Leigh), race towards the town of Red Rock where Ruth, known in these parts as “The Hangman,” will bring Domergue to justice. Along the road, they encounter two strangers: Major Marquis Warren (Jackson), a black former union soldier turned infamous bounty hunter, and Chris Mannix (Goggins), a southern renegade who claims to be the town’s new Sheriff. Losing their lead on the blizzard, Ruth, Domergue, Warren and Mannix seek refuge at Minnie’s Haberdashery, a stagecoach stopover on a mountain pass. When they arrive at Minnie’s, they are greeted not by the proprietor but by four unfamiliar faces. Bob (Bichir), who’s taking care of Minnie’s while she’s visiting her mother, is holed up with Oswaldo Mobray (Roth), the hangman of Red Rock, cow-puncher Joe Gage (Madsen), and Confederate General Sanford Smithers (Dern). As the storm overtakes the mountainside stopover, our eight travelers come to learn they may not make it to Red Rock after all…

The movie will be released later this year.

Via: The Film Stage

No use in burying the lede: "The OceanMaker" is one of the best short films I've ever seen. Lucas Martell, whose work we've featured on the site in the past, is the filmmaker responsible for this awesome short. Here's the synopsis:

After the seas have disappeared, a courageous pilot fights against vicious sky pirates for control of the last remaining source of water: the clouds.

I realize that asking you to carve ten minutes out of your day to watch this is a big ask in 2015. But I promise you this will be worth your time. The brilliant concept is captured with gorgeous cinematography and absolutely beautiful animation, and it features some awesome aerial dogfighting action (which has Spielberg levels of spacial awareness and geography) and a perfect score that heightens the emotions in all the right ways. This is an essential piece of filmmaking for me, and I can't wait to see what Martell does next.

For more, including a gallery of stills and a making-of video, check out the short's official website.

We've written a little about The CW's upcoming spin-off of Arrow and The Flash, and now the network has finally given the show an official greenlight and committed to a title: Legends of Tomorrow. It's a little cheesy, but it makes more sense when you know that time traveler Rip Hunter is going to play a major part in the series. Coming Soon has the official synopsis:

When heroes alone are not enough… the world needs legends. Having seen the future, one he will desperately try to prevent from happening, time-traveling rogue Rip Hunter is tasked with assembling a disparate group of both heroes and villains to confront an unstoppable threat – one in which not only is the planet at stake, but all of time itself. Can this ragtag team defeat an immortal threat unlike anything they have ever known?

The Atom (Brandon Routh), presumably Black Canary (Caity Lotz), Hawkgirl (Ciara Renée), Captain Cold (Wentworth Miller), Heat Wave (Dominic Purcell), Rip Hunter (Arthur Darvill), half of Firestorm (Victor Garber), and Jay Jackson (Franz Drameh) will lead the charge against evil.

I like that they're upping the stakes from simply protecting a city or even our universe to all of time itself. No pressure or anything, guys. This should allow the writers to tell some pretty far-out stories that the more grounded superhero shows wouldn't be able to, so this could be a nice alternative to the other shows if it has a totally different tone.

Will you be watching?

It sure is a good thing that George Lucas handed off the Star Wars franchise to Disney and J.J. Abrams. The original plan Lucas had for Star Wars: Epsiode VII might have ended up being as bad as those prequel films. 

According to Bruce Handy's Vanity Fair cover story on the development of Episode VII, Lucas wrote a treatment for a story that he wanted to tell that “sketched out ideas for episodes VII, VIII, and IX.” It was around that time that he approached Harrison Ford, Carrie Fischer, and Mark Hamill about being involved, before Disney bought Lucasfilm.

Apparently Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy scrapped Lucas's ideas because they centered on young teenaged characters, and they didn't think anyone would want to see that. Here's what was said in the article:

"[Abrams] said Lucas’s treatment had centered on very young characters—teenagers, Lucasfilm told me—which might have struck Disney executives as veering too close for comfort to The Phantom Menace and its 9-year-old Anakin Skywalker and 13-year-old Queen Amidala. 'We’ve made some departures' from Lucas’s ideas, Kennedy conceded, but only in 'exactly the way you would in any development process.'"

I'm glad that Disney and Lucasfilm steered away from whatever Lucas was planning. The young teenage characters aren't really the issue — you can craft a good story around teens. I just don't think Lucas has what it takes anymore to craft a great story for Star Wars, and I think that's what the real issue was. It's hard to believe that Lucas would have given us the awesomeness that has been teased in the trailers for The Force Awakens that we've seen.

All I know is that Star Wars: The Force Awakens looks amazingly thrilling, and it opens on December 18th.

Via: The Atlantic

While Ant-Man is set to come out in just a couple of months, the former director of that movie is gearing up for his next film. Edgar Wright's Baby Driver already has Ansel Elgort lined up in the lead role, and now he may be joined by Cinderella star Lily James. THR reports that James is in talks to play Elgort's love interest, a waitress at a diner.

They also have an updated synopsis for us:

Ansel Elgort is set to star as a young mute man who has an ear condition that forces him to constantly listen to music in order to drown out the constant ringing in his ears. His character is a driver for a group of bank robbers who goes on the run after a heist goes bad.

That clicks with the descriptions we'd already heard, but instead of making the music out to be just a sort of cool element of the movie, this plot summary means that the tunes will be absolutely essential. Wright wrote and will direct this film, so we're hoping James has more to do than a typical love interest. With Wright behind the camera, I'm betting there will be something more than just the boring relationships that we often see in Hollywood action films.

After a brief discussion recounting Ben's recent trip to New York City, Ben and Tyler rank their Top 5 favorite Saturday morning cartoons. Agree? Disagree? Send us an e-mail at 5castpodcast@gmail.com, hit us up on Twitter, and subscribe to The 5Cast on iTunes. (Those links can be found below the player.)

[MP3]  |  RSS  |  iTunes  |  Twitter

Gamers everywhere are eagerly anticipating the release of Batman: Arkham Knight, and now Rocksteady and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment have released a new video that takes us behind the scenes of the game. In the first episode of Arkham Insider, some employees at Rocksteady talk us through the most recent trailer, answer fan questions, provide new hints about the identity of the Arkham Knight himself, and much more. It's a great way to get even more psyched for the game, which arrives in stores on June 23rd.

Check it out below, and for much more on the game, be sure to click here.

Via: ComingSoon

I don't think I've seen a single negative response to the most recent trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Everyone seems to love it, and since Star Wars fans are some of the most creative people in all of fandom, there have been multiple parodies and recreations of the trailer already. This one comes from YouTuber AndTheWorldWasPaper, which reportedly took two weeks of cutting, drawing, and puppeteering to complete.

That's pretty cool. But if you're all about paper-related Star Wars stuff, it probably doesn't get much cooler than Cut Scenes, an unbelievably cool art exhibition from Marc Hagan-Guirey that features iconic scenes from the original trilogy made from a single piece of paper. He uses an art form called Kirigami, and the artist has taken to Kickstarter to raise funds to continue the project. Check out the video below, as well as some stills of work he's already completed.

Last week the first trailer was released for for Vin Diesel’s supernatural action thriller The Last Witch Hunter. The actor has now released a teaser video for the film which he calls “Axe and Cross.” 

The Breck Eisner-directed movie looks like something I’ll enjoy watching. It’s not for everyone, but I’m looking forward to it. Diesel has a strong fan base and he does his best to please them with he work he does. Here’s the synopsis:

The modern world holds many secrets, but the most astounding secret of all is that witches still live amongst us; vicious supernatural creatures intent on unleashing the Black Death upon the world. Armies of witch hunters battled the unnatural enemy across the globe for centuries, including Kaulder (Diesel), a valiant warrior who managed to slay the all-powerful Queen Witch, decimating her followers in the process. In the moments right before her death, the Queen curses Kaulder with her own immortality, forever separating him from his beloved wife and daughter in the afterlife. Today Kaulder is the only one of his kind remaining, and has spent centuries hunting down rogue witches, all the while yearning for his long-lost loved ones. However, unbeknownst to Kaulder, the Queen Witch is resurrected and seeks revenge on her killer causing an epic battle that will determine the survival of the human race.

The movie also stars Rose Leslie, Elijah Wood, and Michael Caine, and it hits theaters on October 23rd.

Axe and Cross

As promised...Kaulder.

Posted by Vin Diesel on Thursday, May 7, 2015

So we know what happens in the Marvel Cinematic Universe leading up to the events of Avengers: Infinity War, but what happens after that? As fans, it's probably nothing for us to be too concerned with at the moment — that's a long way off, after all — but it's a legitimate question, and one that Kevin Feige and the people at Marvel Studios are going to have to answer soon.

YouTuber Steven Rosenthal got his hands on the "leaked" plans for Marvel's Phase Four and put the titles into a video, and it's a pretty humorous "what-if" scenario for the future of the company.

Via: Uproxx

Back in 2009, Legendary Pictures was trying to bring a Jimi Hendrix biopic to life, but they couldn't gain the rights to the rock icon's library of classic songs, so the project eventually fell back into development hell. Andre Benjamin ended up starring in a film called Jimi: All Is By My Side that was an unauthorized take on the musician's life, but now it appears that Legendary's patience has paid off. Deadline reports that the company has permission from Hendrix's estate to use all of his songs for a biopic, so the project is back on again.

Paul Greengrass was originally going to direct and he had discussions with Anthony Mackie to star, and now Greengrass is circling the movie once again and theoretically eyeing it for his next project following the upcoming fourth Bourne film with Matt Damon. No word yet on if Mackie is still in talks, but I imagine they'll need someone a little younger to pull off Hendrix's look, considering the real man died at the age of 27. Scott Silver (8 Mile, The Fighter) is writing the script, so this is shaping up to be the definitive film about one of the most famous musicians of all time. It should be awesome to hear the real songs in their full glory.

Jackie Chan is a living legend. The way he combined martial arts and comedy was groundbreaking, and he has to be one of the ballsiest actors on the planet for doing his own stunts for decades. If you've only seen his American work, do yourself a favor and dive back into his filmography, because you'll see some of the most impressive stunts you've ever seen.

We've praised Chan's work in the past, but for those of you who maybe don't have time to go back through his old work, or if you're just looking to be reminded of how amazing he was and continues to be, this new supercut shows every single stunt of his career. Good God, Chan has pulled off some insane moves in his lifetime. Not every one of these is considered death-defying, but look at the 4 minute mark for one that he's lucky to have walked away from. Thanks to The Playlist for pointing this out.

What's that, you say? A sequel to 2012's The Three Stooges? No thanks. I'd much rather poke my own eyes and kick myself in the balls...wait, let's back up here. After the original line-up of Sean Penn, Jim Carrey, and Benicio Del Toro all eventually dropped out of the Farrelly Brothers’ remake of The Three Stooges, expectations were so low for the film that audiences and critics were genuinely surprised that the film wasn’t a total disaster. “It’s not as bad as you think it is” isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement, let alone the kind of fandom needed to warrant a second film but, according to THR, a sequel is indeed in the works.

If none of the cast from the first film were returning, I’d assume this was a direct-to-DVD cash grab that is banking less on the recent movie and more on just the classic Three Stooges brand. But that doesn’t seem to be the case here. Sean Hayes (Larry), Will Sasso (Curly), and Chris Diamantopoulos (Moe) will all be reprising their roles. I haven’t cared for Hayes in recent years, but Sasso had some funny moments on his years on MADtv, and Diamantopoulos has been the funniest thing about HBO’s Silicon Valley so far this season. So maybe I shouldn’t totally write this sequel off.

Cameron Fay (Brother in Laws) is penning the script, which is being conceived as an “action-comedy rather than a straight comedy.” There’s no word on who will direct — fingers crossed the Farrelly Brothers don't return — but producers are apparently also looking for a “major action star” to round out the cast. 

I’d bet good money that they’re trying to get Dwayne “Franchise Viagra” Johnson to help invigorate this franchise. Even if they do land a major star or get a more relevant team behind the camera, I’ll keep my expectations low. If I do that, who knows? Maybe they’ll surprise me.

With Mad Max: Fury Road hitting theaters next week, it's a good time to revisit the other films in the series (well, maybe you can skip Beyond Thunderdome). George Miller's Mad Max and Mad Max 2 (aka The Road Warrior) were triumphs of low-budget action filmmaking, and still stand as beacons of how it's possible to create an entire lived-in world with a very small amount of money.

io9 has a video that features 12 facts from the original movies, and since I've only seen the movies one time each, all of this information was new to me. If you're curious about Fury Road and interested in the other movies in the franchise, this is a great primer.

Fans loved Rosario Dawson's turn as Claire Temple in the first season of Marvel's Daredevil on Netflix, and now the actress will officially be back to reprise her role in the show's second season. Deadline has the news, which includes word that her deal "will allow her to appear in any of Marvel’s other Netflix original series." So that means there's a very good chance she'll pop up in AKA Jessica Jones and Luke Cage when those shows hit the streaming service.

Jeph Loeb, the head of Marvel TV, had this to say:

“After working with Rosario in the first season, we knew instantly that we had to have her back for our second. Claire Temple proved a fan favorite in Season 1, and we can’t wait for fans to see all the plans we have for her next.”

The most surprising aspect of this announcement for me, though, is the confirmation that season 2 of Daredevil will arrive in 2016. I think a lot of people were expecting Marvel to run through their entire announced schedule in order before returning to any of the individual shows for second seasons, but now we know that's not the case.

What did you think about Dawson's work in Daredevil? Excited to see her show up in future Marvel shows?

Not too long ago we learned that back in the ‘70s, Robert Englund (the actor who went on to play Freddy Krueger in the A Nightmare on Elm Street films) played a direct part in Mark Hamill being cast in the original Star Wars. Englund told Hamill, who was sleeping on Englund’s couch at the time, that George Lucas was holding auditions for a space movie and that he may be right for the lead role (read the whole story here). Englund recounted:

"So Mark got on the phone to his agent and I think he went up the next day. He nailed it, and the rest is history."

There’s now a video currently making the rounds that shows Hamill screen testing opposite Harrison Ford, and he's indeed nailing it in this video. As you may or may not know, Ford was simply doing these tests opposite other actors as a favor to Lucas, who directed Ford in American Graffiti. Ford nailed it too, apparently, and the rest is galactic history — history that is about to repeat itself later this year when both actors reprise their roles in Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Thanks to Laughing Squid!

I'm setting my expectations low for Season 2 of HBO's True Detective. I feel like the first season was lightning in a bottle with McConaughey, Harrelson, and director Cary Fukunaga teaming for the entire run of episodes, and since none of those guys are coming back, it's clearly going to be an entirely different show moving forward. Creator Nic Pizzolatto is still running things behind the scenes, though, and I'm sure he has some pretty solid stuff cooked up. I hope it's just as amazing as the first season, but there's no harm in lowering expectations and then being pleasantly surprised.

But this is the Internet, and with a show like True Detective causing such an uproar last season — people parsed practically every frame for clues about the Yellow King and Carcosa — I'm sort of surprised the conspiracy theories haven't begun for the second season already. Today, for example, we have character posters featuring Taylor Kitsch, Rachel McAdams, Vince Vaughn, and Colin Farrell. Each of them is gripping something in their hands, except for Taylor Kitsch's character (above). WHAT DOES IT MEAN? WHAT DOES IT MEAN? Maybe we'll find out when the second season premieres on June 21st.

There’s no better way to send you off into Mother’s Day weekend than with this special Mother’s Day greeting from The Peanuts Movie. In the video, the Peanuts gang is featured next to reasons why we love moms. I’m sure the parents of these characters would be very touched by this message, and they’d probably give a heartfelt response to their kids like: Mwah wah wah mwah mwah mah mwah!

Truer words have never been spoken. *wipes single tear from eye*

The Peanuts Movie hits theaters November 6, 2015. Be sure to click here to watch the latest trailer.

Thanks to ComingSoon.