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We here at Nerdist have a very cool parent company in Legendary Pictures. Between the Monsterverse, Dune, and the upcoming Street Fighter movie, they make a lot of things we geeks care about. One of the projects on Legendary’s docket for seemingly ever has been a live-action movie based on anime royalty Mobile Suit Gundam and its myriad spinoffs and continuations. Giant robotic suits punching each other for the fate of humanity? Come on! Let’s go. Well, it’s been several years but it’s looking like the movie will come out, with Netflix reportedly distributing.

According to Deadline, the world’s biggest streamer is going to be the home for the Gundam movie. Noah Centineo and Sydney Sweeney will star in the movie while Sweet Tooth‘s Jim Mickle will direct. In its initial iteration, Netflix was on board to coproduce with Jordan Vogt-Roberts (Kong: Skull Island) directing. That was 2021 and many things have changed in the interim. While Netflix bowed out as co-developer, leaving it to Legendary and Gundam IP owner Bandai Namco, they have no problem distributing it on their platform.

Mickle is writing the script, the plot of which is still under wraps, and he’ll produce the movie along with his partner Linda Moran. Centineo will also produce with his producing partner Enzo Marc.

Bandai Namco, of course, has been the stewards of Gundam since 1980, only a year after the franchise first came into being. With the company so involved, this Gundam live-action movie will no doubt fulfill all of fans’ many wishes. Meanwhile, Bandai Namco’s partner Legendary, has also proven itself a great keeper of fan-forward franchises, creating the much beloved Monsterverse and shepherding Dune to live-action greatness. Together, this union will no doubt create a movie that evolves the legacy of Gundam and takes it to new, out-of-this-world heights.

Editor’s Note: Nerdist is a subsidiary of Legendary Digital Networks

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. He hosts the weekly pop culture deep-dive podcast Laser Focus. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Letterboxd.

The post Netflix Reportedly Eyeing GUNDAM Movie from Legendary appeared first on Nerdist.

When Chet found vault overseer Steph Harper’s old ID, he learned she’s more than 200 years old. He also learned that even though the United States issued that identification, she’s not actually American. Steph is from Canada, which America brutally annexed in the years prior to the bombs dropping. Why did Vault-Tec have a Canadian among its exalted executive group? It seemed possible Steph had once been a Canadian spy undermining her homeland. But in Fallout season two‘s seventh episode, we learned she’s anything but. She’s not a villain; she’s one of the show’s most sympathetic figures, a woman on a centuries old mission of justified vengeance against her oppressors.

In the world of Fallout, the United States began what would turn into a decades long process of formally conquering Canada in 2059. As war raged all across the globe for resources, America wanted access to its northern neighbor’s abundance of natural materials. The Sino-American War, which included China’s invasion of Alaska (which was also shown in Fallout‘s second season), led to America increasing its presence in Canada starting in 2066. Eventually, begrudging cooperation between the allies turned hostile, with the U.S. military imposing its will on “Little America.”

As the United States used more and more of Canada’s resources, native citizens pushed back. Protests and violence broke out. Eventually, despite some pushback from Americans now learning about its country’s atrocities in the north, things got hostile enough the U.S. military decided to take over the entire country. In the summer of 2072, the United States of America formally annexed “the Big 51.” Despite that nickname, Canada’s provinces did not become states. The entire country became a U.S. territory. Canadian citizens were then given IDs like the one Steph had hiding in her vault room.

The bombs dropped in 2077. When they did, like Canada before, America ceased to exist. Steph’s anger survived.

She and her mother escaped an internment camp patrolled by U.S. Marines in power armor. Their imprisonment, which happened before the official annexation, shows the two were targeted. It’s possible they were even part of the group of Canadians that tried to blow up the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, which had played a big role in bringing American forces to their homeland in the first place. Or they might have been nothing more than protestors.

No matter the reason for their internment, by the time Steph’s mom suffered her fatal wound the two had come to loathe America. The United States had robbed them off their freedom, stolen their country, and robbed them of their morality. Steph’s dying mother told her daughter that to survive she should hurt anyone she had to because God wouldn’t judge her. And it would be easy to commit violence if Steph didn’t think of those people as human beings. Instead she told her daughter to think of them as Americans.

Steph took her mother’s dying command to heart immediately, killing everyone she needed to on her way somewhere “warm.” She also followed her mother’s dying wish to climb “the highest branch” by getting herself a job at Vault-Tec. A fortuitous encounter with Cooper Howard and a “drunk” Hank MacLean in warm Vegas made that possible. That minimum wage job ultimately led proud Canadian/American hater Stephanie Harper to an executive vault.

It was a long, painful journey to reach two hundred years into the future. It required surviving a path paved by an immoral friend-turned-enemy, an evil nation who sacrificed whole countries so it could cling to power for a few more years before it helped blow up the world. No wonder Steph is so full of hate and wants retribution on people who still proudly claim America as their home.

Now she just has to figure out how to escape an American prison once again. The Vault dwellers know the truth about Steph. But they don’t know the whole story. They now see her as a villain, just as we did before we learned about her past. It’s a tragic past that has turned one of Fallout‘s most detestable villains into one of its best, most interesting, most sympathetic figures. Because long before someone dropped the bombs that ended the world, worse monsters turned its weapons on friends. It made Steph a monster herself, one of righteous fury who has never forgotten what America did and never will no matter how much time passes. And who could blame her for that?

Mikey Walsh is a staff writer at Nerdist. He loves Canada and its people. You can follow Mikey on Bluesky at @burgermike. And also anywhere someone is ranking the Targaryen kings.

The post FALLOUT’s Steph Revelation Turns a Great Villain Into a Sympathetic Figure appeared first on Nerdist.

Tom Hiddleston and Diego Calva sit down with us to talk Season 2 of The Night Manager from shocking twists to behind-the-scenes secrets, this is the conversation every fan has been waiting for.

Jonathan Pine (Tom Hiddleston) thought he’d buried his past. Now living as Alex Goodwin – a low-level MI6 officer running a quiet surveillance unit in London – his life is comfortingly uneventful. Then one night a chance sighting of an old Roper mercenary prompts a call to action and leads Pine to a violent encounter with a new player: Colombian businessman Teddy Dos Santos (Diego Calva).

Interviewer: Chalice Williams

Video Editor: Jamie Broadnax

Season 2 of The Night Manager is currently streaming on Prime Video.

The post ‘The Night Manager’ Cast Spills All with Tom Hiddleston and Diego Calva appeared first on Black Girl Nerds.

The world loves an underdog. And right now, when the gap between the privileged and the few continues to grow, we relate more than ever to the person who has been working hard, only to find themselves at the mercy of corporations who don’t care about the value you provide.

Sam Raimi’s Send Help, a gloriously bloody romp on a deserted island in the Gulf of Thailand, isn’t shy about making its statement. The rich get richer, whether they’re qualified or not, leaving us to fade into a penniless obscurity where we watch reality TV shows alone with our pets (which sounds greta, really).