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https://www.blackenterprise.com/spider-man-keep-spinning-web-marvel-cinematic-universe/

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Spider-Man, the popular web-slinging superhero currently played by actor Tom Holland, will headline a new movie in 2021 and appear in a future Marvel Studios film under a deal announced Friday by Sony Corp and Walt Disney Co.

The agreement between the Hollywood studios was welcome news to fans who had feared that a corporate dispute would keep Spider-Man out of the blockbuster Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).

“I am thrilled that Spidey’s journey in the MCU will continue”, Feige said in a statement.

In August, Disney-owned Marvel Studios and Sony’s Sony Pictures were at an impasse over Spider-Man’s future. Sony owns the rights to the Marvel character under a long-standing arrangement, while Disney controls others such as Iron Man, the Hulk, Captain Marvel and Black Panther.

The news about the breakup had disappointed fans, who took to Twitter to start a campaign with hashtags “#SaveSpiderMan” and “#SaveSpidey”.

Under the new deal, Marvel Studios and its president, Kevin Feige, will produce a third film starring Holland that will be released on July 16, 2021, a statement from the companies said. Amy Pascal also will be a producer.

The most recent film in the series, June release “Spider-Man: Far From Home,” ranks as Sony Pictures’ highest-grossing film, fetching $1.11 billion at global box offices.

Spider-Man also will appear in a future Marvel Studios film, the companies said.

(Reporting by Ayanti Bera in Bengaluru and Lisa Richwine in Los Angeles; Editing by Patrick Graham, Arun Koyyur and David Gregorio)

https://nerdist.com/article/nasas-shapeshifter-probe-concept-is-extremely-sci-fi/

Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) are working on a new concept vehicle dubbed “Shapeshifter” with the intention of sending it to Titan, one of the many moons orbiting Saturn. But Shapeshifter won’t simply be a new iteration of the Huygens probe NASA landed on the Saturnian moon back in 2005; as its name implies, Shapeshifter will be able to morph itself, transforming into everything from a submarine to a flying drone to a rolling land rover.

And because we know you’ve already said it in your head, here it is in writing: Shapeshifter bots, transform and roll out! 

A very brief summation of the Shapeshifter probe was released back in March 2018, noting that the vehicle is a “novel system concept for all-access and cross-domain mobility on bodies with atmospheres,” and that “The proposed robotic platform is capable of mobility across domains including flying in the atmosphere, rolling on a smooth surface, navigating subsurface voids (ex. caves), floating on a lake surface and propelling under an ocean.” Fast forward to now, and we get our first glimpse of a somewhat functional prototype that can… sort of do some of those things.

The clip of the prototype, which comes via Gizmodo, is brief, but it gives us a sense of what a real Shapeshifter probe may eventually look like. For right now, we’re looking at a wiry, mostly empty barrel with a quadcopter drone at its center, but by the time Shapeshifter has its first opportunity to take off for Titan sometime in 2026—with NASA’s Dragonfly mission—chances are it’ll look a lot more like the illustrations in the video rather than something you can piece together from a racing-drone junkyard.

NASA

Still though, Shapeshifter will have it where it counts (in theory). Principal investigator for the morphin’ probe, Ali Agha, said in the video’s associated news post that “We have very limited information about the composition of the surface [of Titan]. Rocky terrain, methane lakes, cryovolcanoes—we potentially have all of these, but we don’t know for certain.” Agha added that for Shapeshifter, he and his team “thought about how to create a system that is versatile and capable of traversing different types of terrain but also compact enough to launch on a rocket.”

But even though Shapeshifter could be a sweetheart of a probe perfect for the 2026 Dragonfly mission, it may not even leave Earth at all. Because the project is a part of “NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts Program” (NIAC), it will need to pass the space agency’s “Phase II selection process” in 2020, which may not happen.

NASA

If Shapeshifter does pass muster next year, and if it does end up tagging along with Dragonfly, we’d still have to wait until 2034 for the robotic probe to actually touch down on Titan’s surface. By then, who knows how robotics will have changed. It could be that by 2026 we can just send a few swarms of these Atlas robots to Titan, where they can record all the critical scientific data we need, as well as land some 10/10 gymnastics routines.

What do you think of this Shapeshifter probe? And what do you think we’ll find on the surface of Titan? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!

Images: NASA 

The post NASA’s ‘Shapeshifter’ Probe Concept Is Extremely Sci-Fi appeared first on Nerdist.

https://nerdist.com/article/deborah-chow-direct-obi-wan-disney-plus/

Holy Kenobi! According to the official Star Wars website, Deborah Chow has been hired to direct the upcoming Disney+ Star Wars TV series centered on Ewan McGregor’s Obi-Wan Kenobi. It is unclear at this time if she will direct the entire series–which is said to be either six or eight episodes–or just part of it. Either way, this is a huge deal for Lucasfilm, as Chow is one of the first women to step behind the camera for a Star Wars project, and certainly the first one to do it in such a large way. She will be joined by Hossein Amini (Drive), who is writing the series.

Kenobi won’t be the first time Chow has made her way to the galaxy far, far away; the Canadian-Chinese director  previously helmed episodes of the streaming service’s other upcoming Star Wars series The Mandalorian, which is set to debut this November. Her other TV credits include episodes of American Gods, Better Call Saul, Lost In Space, Jessica Jones, Reign, Mr. Robot and Iron Fist. She also directed the TV movie Flowers in the Attic for Lifetime.

The Obi-Wan Kenobi series has been a much-talked-about project for a long time now, and has already gone through several iterations. McGregor has expressed interest in returning to the role–which was originated by Alec Guinness in the original 1977 Star Wars, and which McGregor portrayed in The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and Revenge of the Sith–for quite some time. But the series was finally confirmed at this year’s D23 Convention in Anaheim. There, McGregor joined Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy on stage to announce that he would, indeed, play Kenobi again.

Before the project was officially confirmed to be a TV series for Disney+, it was going to be a standalone film directed by Oscar-nominee Stephen Daldry, who’s also known for his television work on Netflix’s The Crown. According to The Hollywood Reporter, those plans changed after Solo: A Star Wars Story–Disney’s Han Solo standalone film–performed to overwhelming box office returns.

It’s hard to guess exactly what will happen in the Obi-Wan Kenobi TV series. It will clearly take place after the events of Revenge of the Sith and before the events of A New Hope, where an elderly Kenobi becomes a mentor for Luke Skywalker and is killed by Darth Vader. We’ve seen a bit of Kenobi’s life in that timeline on the animated series Star Wars Rebels, where he duels the believed-to-be-dead Darth Maul on Tatooine, but other than that, his life on the desert planet is largely mysterious. Will the new series incorporate familiar characters, or send Kenobi off on a new adventure, in locations we haven’t seen before?

Anything is possible in the galaxy far, far away. We know with a talent like Deborah Chow behind-the-scenes, we have nothing to worry about. In the meantime, as we wait patiently for more Kenobi news, we have The Mandalorian and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker to look forward to. It’s never been a better time to be a Star Wars fan.

Header Image Credit: Disney/Lucasfilm

The post Deborah Chow Will Direct The Disney+ Obi-Wan Kenobi Series appeared first on Nerdist.

https://thenerdsofcolor.org/2019/09/27/hard-noc-life-crisis-of-infinite-supermen/

On a new episode of Hard NOC Life — which was recorded before the reveal of Brandon Routh as Superman! — Keith and Dominic get excited about all of the Superman, especially the inclusion of Smallville in this fall’s “Crisis on Infinite Earths” crossover on The CW. http://traffic.libsyn.com/thenerdsofcolor/HNL_160.mp3 In addition to reviewing Tom Welling’s time […]