We’re just a week removed from The Avengers: Age of Ultron, and already people are moving on to talk about the next one. Captain America: Civil War is the next chapter (after Ant-Man) in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and this one, (really, you guys) is the one you’ve been waiting for, not the one that came out seven days ago, whatever it was called.
The film involves a rift between the Avengers, particularly Captain America and Iron Man, and how Cap leads the new Avengers to deal with some political strife. We already know that it’s set to include a cameo with Spider-man, but now several other cast members were announced this week. First, Emily VanCamp, who appeared in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, will be reprising her role. Second is Paul Rudd, who after being introduced in Ant-Man will make an appearance in Civil War as well. Finally is The Hobbit and Sherlock star Martin Freeman. It’s unclear however which character he’s playing.
So there you have it. Captain America: Civil War opens May 6, 2016, at which point news of The Avengers: Infinity Wars will make this movie irrelevant.
Correction: An original version of this story featured Hayley Atwell as Agent Carter in the ABC series and said that VanCamp played Carter on the show.
For those who haven’t checked in a while, The Shawshank Redemption is still listed as the #1 movie on the IMDb Top 250. Whether anyone actually thinks it’s the greatest movie of all time is up for grabs, but we all agree it’s pretty great.
So it was amazing this week when The Washington Post ran a story that very closely resembled the film, and even had a direct tie. Frank Freshwater, a 79-year-old man living in Florida under the name William Harold Cox, was arrested after 56 years of being on the lam. Freshwater killed a pedestrian in a driving accident, then violated his probation, and later escaped in September of 1959. Freshwater was even once held in the Ohio State Reformatory, where Shawshank was filmed. Freshwater ended up escaping from a different prison, but the timing and the nature of his escape bares a remarkably uncanny resemblance.
One of Akira Kurosawa’s late, great masterpieces is Ran, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s King Lear. In gorgeous color, that film is now getting a 4K restoration. According to a press release via akirakurosawa.info, the film is also getting a cinematic re-release in Japan, the US and France starting this fall. UK viewers can see it starting in 2016. 2015 marks Ran’s 30th anniversary, and 2016 when it shows in the UK will mark Shakespeare’s 400th anniversary of his death.
Judd Apatow has written about just about every stage of life: high school adolescences (Freaks & Geeks), losing your virginity (The 40 Year Old Virgin), having your first baby (Knocked Up), and entering into middle-age (This is 40). His upcoming film with Amy Schumer, Trainwreck, allows him to break out of that box to some degree, but in a recent podcast with Pete Holmes, Apatow expressed his desire to write about a different subject entirely. Apatow explains he’s currently working on a screenplay with Phil Klay regarding his book Redeployment. The book is about soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan and how they behave upon returning home, and Apatow hopes to write a comedy about “service, sacrifice, things like that.”
“We’ve been writing an original screenplay and that’s been a different experience a comedy with drama or a drama with comedy about those people and what they’ve gone through and hopefully in an entertaining way so it’s not one of these depressing movies you don’t want to see,” he explained. “But it’s just about: what happens to soldiers who return to a country that isn’t even that aware that we’re at war? And different issues that they face that people don’t think about too much.”
“So, that’s an interesting area to explore,” he continued. “And it’s outside of the box of what happens in this house….It takes a lot for me to write about things I haven’t personally experienced.”
Listen to the podcast and read more of his quotes via The Playlist.
In other non-Marvel related casting news, Lily James has joined Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver alongside Ansel Elgort. And Blake Lively has joined Woody Allen’s next untitled project starring Jesse Eisenberg.
Also Making News:
- The cast of Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight appeared on the cover of Entertainment Weekly.
- The first image of Andrew Garfield in Martin Scorsese’s Silence has been released.
- Angelina Jolie’s By the Sea, starring herself and Brad Pitt, will be released November 13, 2015.
- Beverly Hills Cop 4 has been pulled off of Paramount’s release calendar.
