Film & TV Friday: Ava Duvernay Is A New Goddess

Hello friends. It's your weekly roundup of film and tv news, premieres, and trailers. It starts with comicbook movie news and ends with a comicbook movie trailer, so I am on brand. Welcome to Films & TV Friday.

News

Ava Duvernay To Direct DC's New Gods

After co-creating much of the Marvel Universe, The New Gods was Jack "The King" Kirby's big project for DC, in which he created an entire new cosmology that has had a profound effect on the comics world. Characters such as Darkseid, Orion, Metron, Mr. Miracle, and Big Barda have become iconic. And it looks like they're going to become iconic on the big screen, as Warner Bros has hired A Wrinke In Time and Selma director Ava Duvernay for the upcoming New Gods film. Duvernay, who has said in the past that New Gods character Big Barda is her favorite comics character ever, seems like a spectacular choice, and I can't wait to see what she does.

Annabella Sciorra Cast As Luke Cage S2 Villain

Sciorra will play an underworld figure who wants to take Harlem over. Besides being a delightful casting pick, I am very happy at the trend of hiring women in their 50s plus to play powerful roles. These are the sort of roles who have, historically, gone almost exclusively to men and to younger women. Occasionally you'd see an older woman playing, well, an old woman. The Netflix Marvel shows have been particularly good at this, with meaty roles going to Sigourney Weaver in The Defenders and Carrie-Anne Moss in Jessica Jones.

Wide Release Films Opening This Weekend:

Film	# of Theaters
Tomb Raider	3,854
Love, Simon	2,402
I Can Only Imagine	1,628

Source: BoxOfficeMojo

The reviews for Tomb Raider have not been great, which hasn't been a huge surprise. While drawing inspiration from the much improved reboot of the game franchise written by Rhianna Pratchett, the plot looks like a mess. Bisexual coming of romance Love, Simon, on the other hand, has been getting some rave reviews and seems like a delight. I haven't been a fan of director Berlanti's DC shows on the CW, but this looks very interesting.

TV Show Premieres This Week

Show	Season	Country	Network or Service	Day	Time
Instinct	1	USA	CBS	Sunday	8PM EST
Brooklyn Nine Nine	5b	USA	Fםס	Sunday	8:30 PM EST
The Standups	2	Worldwide	Netflix	Tuesday	3AM EST
Shadowhunters	3	US	Freeform	Tuesday	8PM EST
Krypton	1	US	SyFy	Wednesday	10PM EST
RuPaul's Drag Race	10	US	VH1	Thursday	8PM EST
Alexa & Katie	1	Worldwide	Netflix	Friday	3AM EST
Santa Clarita Diet	2	Worldwide	Netflix	Friday	3AM EST

Source: The Futon Critic

A lot of variety this week. From Superman's family origins in Krypton, through the dark zombie humor of Santa Clarita Diet, to RuPaul's Drag Race, it seems like there's something for almost everyone either arriving or returning this coming week. I'll definitely watch the Nikki Glaser and Beth Stelling parts of The Standups.

Trailers

Interesting bunch this week. Let's take a look.

Borg vs. McEnroe

Wait, we're supposed to take Shia Lebaeuf seriously again (and the "again" here is a stretch)?

Sorry To Bother You

Welp, I guess this is why they make trailers. Because I flipped from "I have no idea what this is" to "I need it now" in the two and a half minutes of this one.

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

I do I hate this, let me count the ways! They cast abuser Johnny Depp. They ignored anything anyone had to say about abuser Johnny Depp. Then they said "hey, remember how Rowling said Dumbledore is gay and he and Grindlerwald had a thing? Yeah, we're not gonna actually refer to that directly in this film in which both are major characters." And on top of everything, you can't apparate into Hogwarts. Fuck this movie.

Life Itself

Great cast. Entire absence of interest on my part.

Adrift

Let's call this one "The Perfecter Storm." Yeah. I don't care, but if you dig "people lost at sea" movies, have at it.

Avengers: Infinity War

I'm an MCU stan. This is the biggest MCU film yet. I am so very here for this. I'm mostly upset it's not here yet.

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