News Brief: HANDMAID’S TALE Sequel, NEW MUTANTS’ Strategy, OUTLANDER: Season 5 & WATCHMEN Premiere Dates, & More

News Brief: Handmaid’s Tale Sequel, New Mutants’ Strategy, Outlander: Season 5 & Watchmen Premiere Dates, and More

In brief, new movie news and television show news has broken. Below you will find a succinct rundown on all that news and their most significant segments, distilled down to the most salient information.

TV Show News

Watchmen’s TV Premiere Date Released

HBO’s Watchmen TV series will be released on October 20, 2019 at 9 PM ET.

10/20. Tick Tock. #WatchmenHBO pic.twitter.com/RsEq8Fh3es

— Watchmen (@watchmen) September 3, 2019

Outlander: Season 5 Premiere Date Released by Starz

The fifth season of Outlander will premiere on Starz on Sunday, February 16, 2020.

Hulu Options The Handmaids Tale Sequel Novel for Possible Adaptation

The Testaments, the sequel novel to Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale this is being released on September 10, 2019, is being developed by Hulu and MGM Television. The TV project would become an extension of the current TV series as The Testaments picks up fifteen years after Offred’s final scene in the original novel and is told through the perspective of female characters.

Grace and Frankie’s Seventh Season on Netflix Will Be its Last Season

Grace and Frankie‘s upcoming sixteen-episode seventh season will be its last season. The TV series will end its run as Netflix’s longest running original TV series.

Fox Orders The Perfect Couple Book-to-TV Series Adaptation

Fox has ordered a book-to-TV series adaptation of Elin Hilderbrand’s The Perfect Couple.

The Perfect Couple‘s plot synopsis: “The Perfect Couple centers around wedding season on Nantucket. The beautiful island is overrun with summer people – an annual source of aggravation for year-round residents. When one lavish wedding ends in disaster before it can even begin – with a body discovered in Nantucket Harbor just hours before the ceremony – everyone in the wedding party is suddenly a suspect. As Chief of Police Ed Kapenash digs into the bride, the groom, the groom’s famous mystery novelist mother, and even a member of his own family, the chief discovers that every wedding is a minefield – and no couple is perfect.”

Boies/Schiller Film Group Orders The Quantum Spy Book-to-TV Series Adaptation

Boies/Schiller Film Group has ordered a book-to-TV series adaptation of David Ignatius’ The Quantum Spy.

The Quantum Spy‘s plot synopsis: “The Quantum Spy is rooted in reality, a story ripped from today’s headlines: The 21st century’s biggest challenge is a secret twilight struggle between the U.S. and China for mastery of quantum computing technology that is the new Manhattan Project. Hyper-fast quantum computers are the digital equivalent of a nuclear bomb, able to shred military-grade encryption and crack any code. The nation who builds a quantum computer first will attain global dominance, and its adversaries will have no security, no safety, and no secrets.”

Dave Kalstein is writing the screenplay for the TV series.

A24 Orders Earthsea Book-to-TV Series Adaptation

A24 has ordered a book-to-TV series adaptation of Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea book series. Fox is a producer on the TV series but there is no word yet if the series will air on Fox. The project will be shopped around.

Earthsea‘s plot synopsis: “The book series is comprised of five novels and eight short stories set in a fantasy archipelago of hundreds of islands, imperiled by those who use magic to gain power and upset its delicate balance. Most of its characters are people of color and the emphasis is on understanding nature and human nature, not possessing power over them.”

Movie News

Robert Pattinson Talks about his Bruce Wayne/Batman Role in The Batman

Robert Pattinson on the leak on him obtaining the Bruce Wayne/Batman role in Matt Reeves’ The Batman:

“When that thing leaked, I was fucking furious. Everyone was so upset. Everyone was panicking from my team. I sort of thought that had blown up the whole thing.”

The leak happened when Pattinson was on a plane sitting next to director Christopher McQuarrie. As it occurred, Pattinson began Googling himself:

“I was sitting next to Christopher McQuarrie. I’d never met him before. Oh, God! He’d seen me Googling myself for the past hour! To be honest, [the response] was less vitriolic than I was expecting. It’s much more fun when you’re an underdog. There’s no expectation of you.”

Pattinson also shared his experience trying on the Batsuit in front of director Matt Reeves:

“I put it on. I remember saying to Matt, ‘It does feel quite transformative!’ He was like, ‘I would hope it does! You’re literally in the Batsuit. You do feel very powerful immediately. And it’s pretty astonishing, something that is incredibly difficult to get into, so the ritual of getting into it is pretty humiliating. You’ve got five people trying to shove you into something. Once you’ve got it on, it’s like, ‘Yeah, I feel strong, I feel tough, even though I had to have someone squeezing my butt cheeks into the legs.’”

The Batman will be released in U.S. theaters through Warner Bros. on June 25, 2021.

The New Mutants Severs Fox / X-Men Ties

In a move to leave the deleterious vestiges of Fox’s X-Men film franchise behind, it is rumored that Disney is cutting out all references to X-Men and mutants in general in The New Mutants. I find this ironic since the film’s title has “Mutants” in it.

“the idea of ‘being a mutant’ won’t be exactly mainstream..[the film is] set within a secret facility that experiments on mutants and the main character (Blu Hunt’s Danielle Moonstar) doesn’t know she is a mutant or the meaning of the word (mutant). Moonstar is brought to the facility after an attack by Demon Bear.”

By utilizing this modus operandi, Disney hopes to sever all ties to Fox’s X-Men universe so that integration into the Marvel Cinematic Universe for The New Mutants and any future X-Men team is smooth and unencumbered by the past.

The New Mutants will be released in U.S. theaters through 20th Century Fox on April 3, 2020.

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