Month: February 2020

The whodunit homage Knives Out is officially getting a sequel, but what to call it? The official Twitter account requested title suggestions from fans, and has gotten a flurry of responses from the silly to the sincere. But mostly silly.

“Alright we need title suggestions for the sequel!” the tweet reads. “Drop em!” The result is a critical mass of replies, likes, and retweets. One suggestion is “KNIIVES OUT” to form the Roman numeral 2. Other popular suggestions include Knives In, and Knives Out 2: No Forks Given. You can see some of our favorite cheeky suggestions below.

Knives Out was Rian Johnson’s follow-up to Star Wars: The Last Jedi, but far from a special effects blockbuster. Instead he went for an ensemble mystery in the style of Agatha Christie, complete with a central detective character. Johnson announced that character, Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) will return for the sequel, but the rest of the cast is up in the air.

Johnson compared Blanc to Christie’s Hercule Poirot character, who was featured in several mystery novels with different surrounding characters–most famously Murder on the Orient Express. For more on Knives Out, check out GameSpot’s Knives Out review.

Wes Anderson is one of the most idiosyncratic directors working today. His movies are marked by a mix of offbeat humour, stunning production design, and amazing ensemble casts. Films such as The Royal Tenenbaums, Moonrise Kingdom, and The Grand Budapest Hotel have given him a hugely dedicated fanbase over the years. Anderson’s latest movie is The French Dispatch, and the first trailer has been released.

The title of the film refers to an American magazine operating out of a French city during the mid-20th century. Bill Murray plays the owner, and the movie is divided into three stories, all based on articles that are being written and researched for the publication. The trailer delivers everything you’d want from a Wes Anderson movie, and while it’s hard to keep up with the sheer number of famous faces appearing in just over two minutes, it all looks gloriously entertaining. Check it out below:

The French Dispatch hits theaters on July 24. Its cast also includes (deep breath)…

• Tilda Swinton
• Frances McDormand
• Jeffrey Wright
• Adrien Brody
• Benicio del Toro
• Owen Wilson
• Léa Seydoux
• Timothée Chalamet
• Christoph Waltz
• Elisabeth Moss
• Henry Winkler
• Saoirse Ronan
• Liev Schreiber
• Edward Norton
• Willem Dafoe
• Anjelica Huston

In an interview last year, Anderson provided a few details about the movie’s themes. “The story is not easy to explain,” he said, via The Playlist. “[It’s about an] American journalist based in France [who] creates his magazine. It is more a portrait of this man, of this journalist who fights to write what he wants to write. It’s not a movie about freedom of the press, but when you talk about reporters you also talk about what’s going on in the real world.”

For more, check out GameSpot’s guide to the biggest upcoming movies of 2020.

The rosters of the upcoming Disney+ MCU TV shows just keep growing. After the addition of Owen Wilson, Loki has gained a new cast member in Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Variety reported. She will join Tom Hiddleston and Sophia Di Martino in the God of Mischief’s very-own solo spin-off, hitting the streaming service next spring. Thus far, there is no confirmation as to who Mbatha-Raw will be playing, but it could be that she’s playing an employee or associate of the TVA organization confirmed to be involved in the show during the Super Bowl spot.

Not much is known about Loki aside from the fact that the show will be spinning directly out of Avengers: Endgame where we last saw the trickster escape from SHIELD custody with the Tesseract during all the time-traveling chaos. The specific powers of the Tesseract have never actually been confirmed in the MCU, but given that it contains the Space Stone, we can assume it teleported Loki somewhere in space rather than somewhere in time, which would mean Loki the show will be taking place in or immediately around 2012.

However, we were treated to a brief clip of Loki during this year’s Super Bowl, which featured the trickster in what seemed to be in the custody of the TVA, or the Time Variance Authority, a group from the comics that exists to police continuity and preserve the timeline. Did Loki end up on their radar because he’s using the Tesseract to mess with time? Or is he there because his escape with the Tesseract was a variance in and of itself?

We’ll have to wait until Spring 2021 to find out.

Lately there has been a lot of discussion around the reports about Birds of Prey movie changing its name to Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey, but there are some important facts to know about the switch.

Birds of Prey is not officially changing names. Instead, movie theatre chains across the US have opted to change the title that they display on their websites and other promotional materials in an attempt to draw in more people and make it extra clear that this is a Harley Quinn movie. This is happening in response to Birds of Prey’s slow start at the box office. The idea is to give the movie a more eye-catching and recognizable name to attract new viewers.

According to Deadline, the Warner Bros. distribution department made this suggestion to theatre chains in an effort to help with “SEO optimizations, searches, and ticket reader boards.”

Some of the changes are happening behind the scenes, as searches for “Harley Quinn” on ticket-seller Fandango return results for Birds of Prey. Other theatre chains, like Regal, AMC, and Cinemark, have changed the name in a more upfront manner to Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey.

Also worth mentioning is that the official title of Birds of Prey is actually Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn), though most people and websites refer to it as simply Birds of Prey. This is similar to the Oscar-winning movie Birdman, which is actually titled Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) but is commonly shorted to Birdman.

Birds of Prey opened to $33.2 million at the US box office, which is the lowest box office number in the history of the DCEU. The movie, which is R-rated and released in the traditionally slow month of February, also had the lowest budget of any DCEU movie. Worldwide, the movie has made more than $81 million so far, which is close to its production budget (before marketing).

Birds of Prey star Margot Robbie, who plays Harley Quinn and is also a producer on the movie, recently foreshadowed the title change in an appearance on the Hot Ones show.

Asked what the most nerve-wracking part of being a producer is, Robbie said it’s watching the first-week box office numbers come in, because at that point, there is almost nothing you can do to improve the fortunes of a film. A marketing change might help things, but it might not be enough, she said. This very marketing change is now happening.

“The most nerve-wracking … probably the box office,” she said. “At that point, you can’t do anything anymore. You can pivot your marketing strategy a little bit but really there’s not a lot you can do. You just hope people like it. You and so many people have spent so much time on something that you just want people to like it, or even see it.”

Birds of Prey’s slow start came as a surprise, as the movie fared well with critics and carries a strong B+ CinemaScore rating.

In GameSpot’s review of Birds of Prey, Meg Downey said, “It’s the sort of kinetic, high energy romp that comes with built-in replay value, and proves exactly why Harley Quinn has become such an endearing, beloved character in the pop-culture pantheon. If this is the direction the DCEU is headed, the future’s looking bright.”

For more on Birds of Prey, find out more about the ending of the movie, whether or not Joker is in the movie, and the connection to Harley’s first appearance in Suicide Squad.