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https://nerdist.com/article/superman-legacy-james-gunn-everything-we-know/

Soon the world will meet a new Clark Kent in Superman: Legacy. DC Studios co-CEOs James Gunn and Peter Safran are rebooting the most famous superhero in the world as they transition the franchise from the DCEU to the DCU. Who will play the Man of Steel on the big screen this time around? What kind of story will we see him in? And who will bring it to life?

Gunn also neither confirmed nor denied whether Lex Luthor will appear in his Superman movie. But he did agree with Rosenbaum that if Lex Luthor does appear in the DCU, he’ll be grounded and real.

Here’s everything we know about Superman: Legacy…so far.

Title

The DCU’s first official movie (though not its first official release) is titled Superman: Legacy. That will kick off the film side of what James Gunn has called the franchise’s first chapter, “Gods and Monsters.” He has also called Superman: Legacy “the true beginning” of the DCU.

Superman: Legacy‘s Plot

While the film still has no official synopsis, Warner Bros. did provide a description of what we can expect from the story, which James Gunn says is not an origin tale.

Superman: Legacy tells the story of Superman’s journey to reconcile his Kryptonian heritage with his human upbringing as Clark Kent of Smallville, Kansas. He is the embodiment of truth, justice and the American way, guided by human kindness in a world that sees kindness as old-fashioned.

Gunn announced the film with art from the cover of All-Star Superman by writer Grant Morrison and artist Frank Quitely. Whether or not that means the story is influenced, inspired by, or adapted from the 12-issue comic series in any way is unclear. What Gunn has said is the movie will focus on “an earlier part of Superman’s life,” where he is still old enough to already be working for the Daily Planet.

In a recent interview, Gunn did tease that a potential fan-favorite character might be part of the movie. The idea of Krypto the Superdog appearing in Superman: Legacy was batted around by James Gunn and Chris Pratt. But whether everyone’s favorite heroic canine will really appear is yet to be 100% confirmed.

Superman: Legacy‘s Cast

We now know who will play both Superman and Lois Lane in the movie! While the last several weeks saw James Gunn dropping hints about the process, like on the Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum podcast, Gunn confirmed on June 27 that he’d found his Clark and Lois. Deadline reported Gunn and co-CEO Peter Safran have selected David Corenswet to play Superman. The actor has a number of credits, including Pearl and We Own This City, however this will be his first leading role in a major studio movie.

As for Lois Lane, while other names like Emma Mackey and Phoebe Dynevor were on the finals list, Gunn chose Emmy-winner Rachel Brosnahan (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) to play the intrepid reporter. Honestly, you absolutely need someone brassy and self-assured to properly assay the role of the star Daily Planet journalist, and Brosnahan has that for days. Excellent choices.

Accurate! (They are not only both incredible actors, but also wonderful people). https://t.co/1FtwYIDeYj

— James Gunn (@JamesGunn) June 27, 2023

In addition, four more actors have joined the cast of Superman: Legacy. Isabela Merced will play Hawkgirl, Edi Gathegi will play Mister Terrific, Nathan Fillion will play Green Lantern Guy Gardner, and Anthony Carrigan will play Metamorpho.

Behind the Scenes 

James Gunn wrote the (definitely completed) script and is directing. On Twitter he also announced pre-production has already begun on the film.

I’m honored to be a part of the legacy. And what better day than #SupermanAnniversary Day to dive fully into early pre-production on #SupermanLegacy? Costumes, production design, and more now up and running. pic.twitter.com/TJYpCRmdsf

— James Gunn (@JamesGunn) April 18, 2023

For fans worried about possible interference from Warner Bros. Discovery executives, Gunn said his DC Studios operates independently and he won’t be getting any notes on his script from them.

No, WB wouldn’t be giving notes on a DC Studios production. Since we came on board, we’re two separate entities within WBD.

— James Gunn (@JamesGunn) April 18, 2023

Superman: Legacy‘s Release Date

Superman: Legacy will soar into theaters faster than a speeding bullet on July 11, 2025.

Originally published on April 11, 2023.

The post Everything We Know About the DCU’s SUPERMAN: LEGACY appeared first on Nerdist.

https://nerdist.com/article/aporia-trailer-judy-greer-time-travel-thriller-fantasia-fest-2023/

We love ourselves some Judy Greer here at Nerdist. Put her in more things. Put her in everything! She’s always good. When she was in Halloween (2018)? We loved it! (And subsequently we did not love what happened in Halloween Kills.) Greer takes center stage in Aporia, a new sci-fi thriller which is set to premiere at the 2023 Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal. In it, Greer deals with debilitating grief by messing with time. It doesn’t go how she wants. Take a look at the trailer below.

Aporia feels like a mix of Primer and The Butterfly Effect, but completely centered around loss. Greer’s character so badly wants her husband (Edi Gathegi) back that she allows a machine to send a “bullet” through time. The results aren’t just as clean as “yay, my husband’s back!” Wouldn’t be much of a movie if they were, yeah?

The movie comes from writer-director Jared Moshe and also stars Payman Maadi. Gathegi, as you probably recently learned, will play Mister Terrific in James Gunn’s Superman: Legacy. Check out the cool poster below as well.

Aporia will have its world premiere at Fantasia Film Festival on July 27 ahead of the film’s August 11 US theatrical release.

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

The post Judy Greer Messes with Time Travel in Sci-fi Thriller APORIA appeared first on Nerdist.

https://nerdist.com/article/good-omens-where-do-aziraphale-and-crowley-stand-with-heaven-and-hell-status-before-season-2/

You would think stopping the literal end of the world would earn you some serious bonus points with Heaven. That’s not what happened in Good Omens first season, though. Angels wanted to fight Satan’s army just as much as demons wanted another war with God’s. Neither side cared billions of innocent people would die as a result. Only one angel and one demon did. So what happened to our favorite supernatural beings once they helped foil Armageddon? Here’s where Crowley and Aziraphale stand with the forces of Heaven and Hell ahead of Good Omens season two.

Why Did Angels and Demons Both Want War on Good Omens?

“Wars are to be won” and “not avoided” is an obviously evil stance for anyone to take. It’s the kind of attitude we’d expect to hear only a truly evil leader say. But those were the words of Heaven’s archangels on Good Omens. Ten million celestial beings wanted to take up arms against ten million equally excited soldiers of Satan. After thousands of years of anticipation both sides were eager to finally destroy the other.

Neither Heaven nor Hell worried all humans would die in the ensuing war. Angels and demons alike certainly didn’t care about destroying Earth itself, either. If not for one single angel and one single demon Heaven and Hell would have had the Apocalypse they so desperately wanted.

Why Did Aziraphale and Crowley Want to Stop Armageddon?

Azariphale and Crowley had called Earth home since Adam and Eve resided in the Garden of Eden. Over six thousand years the two had not only grown quite fond of each other, they’d grown fond of the lives they’d built for themselves among humans. Working with little supervision, they’d been mostly free to partake in Earthly delights. Whether reading, listening to Queen, or getting drunk, they both had it good on Earth. They also both had a soft spot for humans and a general dislike of their respective kind. Hell is dreadful and full of uninteresting cretins. Heaven is sterile and full of smug elitists. But Earth is full of interesting things and people.

So once the two learned Satan was sending his son the Antichrist to trigger the Apocalypse, Aziraphale and Crowley conspired to work together and stop it entirely. Their initial plan didn’t come together as they’d hoped, but in the end they helped prevent the End Times. Good news for mankind, yes. But you don’t stop a war every other angel and demon crave without creating armies of supernatural enemies.

How Did Heaven and Hell Punish Aziraphale and Crowley

Heaven kidnapped Aziraphale and Hell kidnapped Crowley shortly after the pair stopped Armageddon. Both faced the ultimate punishment.

Despite claiming to be on the side of good, Heaven’s highest ranking officer delighted in ordering Aziraphale’s death. The Archangel Gabriel had wanted war with Hell more than anyone. Not getting to lead Heaven’s forces caused him another big problem, too. Gabriel had to deal with a lot of frustrated, bloodthirsty angels.

Meanwhile, Gabriel’s counterpart in Hell, Lord Beelzebub, served as judge over Crowley’s trial. Once Hell’s demons convicted Crowley for treason, Beelzebub sentenced “the traitor” to a painful death, too. For him that would mean bathing in Holy Water, delivered to Hell by the Archangel Michael herself. Crowley had killed a Duke of Hell the same way earlier in the season.

In Heaven a demon delivered literal Hellfire to aide Gabriel in murdering Aziraphale. But once more the duo ruined their superiors’ plans.

How Did Aziraphale and Crowley Avoid Death in Good Omens Season 1?

Angels and demons might be supernatural beings, but they’re not especially smart or competent. They were no match for their two Earth-wise counterparts with millennia of experience working as unlikely partners. Especially not when the final nice and accurate prophecy of the witch Agnes Nutter warned Aziraphale and Crowley their respective factions would come looking to punish them for stopping Armageddon.

Thanks to her warning they had planned for their death sentences by swapping bodies. That’s how Crowley was able to survive his Holy Water bath. it was really Aziraphale splashing around in a liquid that is totally harmless to angels. And in Heaven it was actually Crowley bathing in Hellfire, which couldn’t possibly hurt him.

Why Do Heaven and Hell Fear Aziraphale and Crowley?

Not only did their clever switcheroo save their lives, it also granted Aziraphale and Crowley another measure of protection. Gabriel and the other archangels couldn’t understand how Aziraphale survived Hellfire. Nor could Beelzebub and the other Dukes of Hell make sense of how Crowley could be immune to Holy Water. As a result both factions grew fearful of the two friends.

They seemed more powerful than any other angel or demon. So as “Crowley” told Beelzebub, it was probably best if they simply left the two of them alone.

That’s where the two stand before Good Omens second season. Each has been branded a traitor by their former faction. Heaven and Hell both hate Aziraphale and Crowley, but they also fear them. So as Crowley had said the night they stopped Armageddon, the two no longer have a “side.” They don’t belong to Heave on Hell. They are on their own side.

But Heaven and Hell will come calling on the two again. “They’ll leave us alone,” said Crowley. “For a bit.” Good Omens season two trailer show it won’t a very long bit.

Probably not the best news for our favorite angel and demon. But it will be for fans.We need Aziraphale and Crowley just as much as Heaven and Hell ever did.

Good Omens returns for its second season on Prime Video on July 28th.

Mikey Walsh is a staff writer at Nerdist. You can follow him on Twitter at  @burgermike. And also anywhere someone is ranking the Targaryen kings.

The post Here’s Aziraphale and Crowley’s Status with Heaven and Hell Before GOOD OMENS Season 2 appeared first on Nerdist.

https://blackgirlnerds.com/tananarive-due-what-scares-a-luminary-of-modern-horror/

Author Tananarive Due is the winner of the American Book Award, a recipient of the NAACP Image Award, as well a multiple Bram Stoker Award finalist and a general luminary of horror literature. With a career spanning three decades and highly influential academic and fictional works in Black horror and speculative literature, her contributions to American letters are impossible to overstate. Due teaches in the writing MFA program at Antioch University in Los Angeles, and is an endowed Cosby chair in the humanities at Spelman College. She currently teaches a class at UCLA called “The Sunken Place: Racism, Survival, and the Black Horror Aesthetic” based in part on the work of Jordan Peele, who visited the class in its early days to express his appreciation.

With a body of work that just keeps coming — The Reformatory, a new novel about the horrors of segregation will be published by Simon and Schuster in October 2023 — her point of view on the current glow-up of horror is thoughtful, engaging, and impressive. Speaking with BGN via video chat, Due had much to share.

What keeps you going in disheartening times?

Writing has always been the thing to sustain me during hard times. That’s been true though the pandemic, but I remember it was true in 2012 when my mother passed away. I was fourteen when I had my BLM moment. Miami cops had beat a motorcyclist to death and then were acquitted, and that was when I realized we don’t matter. It blew my mind; this was the same nation to which I had been pledging allegiance.

I wasn’t naïve. My parents were civil right activists, and I knew the fight remained. But the vastness of white supremacy is the major trauma in my life. I leaned on my writing through all of that. I finished The Reformatory during COVID after working on it for seven years. The literal notion that I might die got me on a page quota, and I finished that baby.

Is it easier to write horror than stories that end happily ever after?

It is for me! Some people escape through happy stories, and a lot of people like those. Patricia Stephens, my mother, was the first horror fan in my life. She used horror and fantasy and that immersion into imaginary monsters to heal herself from the real monsters of state violence. We all like a good comedy, and that’s the other side of the coin of how I handle myself. I don’t get to show that side of myself often. I try to give that bad feeling a face and a protagonist to fight it, to confront the unknown.  

What’s the work you’d recommend to get someone new into horror?

I love that horror is getting a glow up right now. I’d say look for best of the year short story anthologies and collections. Of course, I’d recommend my own collection, The Wishing Pool and Other Stories. Other Terrors: An Inclusive Anthology contains works only by marginalized authors. Anthologies can be uneven, but this one is consistent. For Black readers who might not think of themselves as horror fans, the first step is to see yourself. Seek out Black authors, as well as the works of other marginalized folks.

The documentary Horror Noire, of which you were a huge part, has been out for a couple of years. What was that project like for you? What has the aftermath been like?

I was so honored to have been a part of this. The production team came to me and brought me in after the film was written, to give interviews and to lend my name and support.

Alejandro Brugués, director of the film Juan of the Dead,told me he loved it. I was fangirling him, and he came back to tell me he loved Horror Noire. Brian Fuller said the same thing to me when we walked past one another in the hallway.

And then I worked on the anthology of the same name for the horror network, Shudder — those are my first screen adaptations. I wrote the episodes “The Lake” and “Fugue State” with my husband, Stephen Barnes. That collab was a peak experience.

My only letdown was that I don’t feel like the series found its audience. That’s frustrating. You never feel like there’s enough billboards, never enough PR behind anything. But I love the short form, both in prose and scripts. I hope to be part of another anthology in the future. It is difficult but so exciting to create these pint-sized stories.

As a master of the horror genre, what kind of story still really scares you? What’s the monster you dread most?

So many stories begin with people moving into a dark house in the middle of nowhere. And they walk around the creepy house yelling, “Hello? Hello?” I wouldn’t do that, but they do. Everyone is so afraid that the house is haunted and they’ll meet a ghost. That doesn’t scare me; ghosts are simple. They want to be acknowledged, they want to tell somebody who killed them. But a demon? That’s the one that gets me. Demons can’t be placated. You can’t solve the mystery of how they died. It’s so hard to know how you pissed the demon off. Maybe you knocked a stone out of place, and now it’s an intergenerational curse.

I’m also afraid of zombies because they’re the monster who looks like a loved one. For those of us who have cared for aging parents or someone very ill, that can really hit home. They don’t know you, or they’re angry in their suffering. It’s like watching them transform into a zombie. That’s why they get under our skin so much. There’s too much truth to the zombie.

Who are you reading right now?

When I was at the L.A. Times Book Fair, I was paired with an author I didn’t know, but I was the last to find out about Leigh Bardugo. So now I’m reading Ninth House. It’s hot and I really like it.