News Round-Up for the Week Ending 7/1/18

This is the first of what will be a weekly article rounding up the entertainment news of the past seven days. It is worth noting at this point that this list cannot and will not contain everything of note that occurred in the entertainment industry in the past week – I’m only one person. What follows is instead a highly curated list that trends towards my own interests. I hope you all get something out of it.

FILM

• Upcoming horror-thriller Death House has received a US release date of February 23, 2018. The film follows a group of visitors at a prison for the worst of the worst who must fight for their lives after the prisoners stage an escape when the power goes out. The cast is composed of horror heavyweights such as Kane Hodder, Dee Wallace, Adrienne Barbeau, Tony Todd, Barbara Crampton and Bill Mosely.
• HBO has acquired the US TV rights for Believer, an upcoming documentary film produced by Imagine Dragons frontman Dan Reynolds. The movie will investigate the Mormon community’s relationship with the LGBT community.
• The upcoming Cloverfield anthology movie formerly known as God Particle has been moved from its early February 2018 date. Currently untitled, the film will now release on April 20, 2018, setting it against Dwayne Johnson starrer Rampage. Per IMDB, the movie’s plot is as follows: “After a scientific experiment aboard the space station involving a particle accelerator has unexpected results, the astronauts find themselves isolated. Following their horrible discovery, the space station crew must fight for survival.”
• Netflix has officially greenlit a sequel to Bright, its big budget urban fantasy film which released to terrible reviews but much audience interest in December. Will Smith and Joel Edgerton will reprise their roles in the sequel, while director David Ayer will also return. Per IMDB, the original film is “set in a world where fantasy creatures live side by side with humans. A human cop is forced to work with an Orc to find a weapon everyone is prepared to kill for.”
• Netflix will release The Ritual in markets outside of the UK on February 9. The horror film, which is based on Adam Nevill’s 2011 novel of the same name, originally released in the UK on October 13, 2017 and, per IMDB, follows a group of friends who “…reunite for a trip to the forest, but encounter a menacing presence in the woods that’s stalking them.”
• Director Rusty Cundieff seems to have accidentally revealed an upcoming sequel to his 1995 horror anthology film Tales from the Hood. Cundieff tweeted a photo on January 5 with a caption claiming that it was from a location scouting trip for the as yet unannounced Tales from the Hood 2. Per IMDB, the 1995 original was about a funeral director who “…tells four strange tales of horror with an African American focus to three drug dealers he traps in his place of business.”
• Showtime will premiere The Fourth Estate, a documentary film, on May 27, 2018. The film chronicles the behind the scenes story of The New York Times in the first year of the Trump administration. The Times has been a favourite target of the President, who has repeatedly labelled it fake news.

TELEVISION

• Gillian Anderson has confirmed that she will not be returning to the role of Dana Scully in any future X-Files seasons. Series creator Chris Carter noted that he had no intention of continuing without Anderson, implying that the show’s eleventh season (currently airing, the second since its revival in 2016) would be its last.
• Netflix quietly released the eight part comedic drama miniseries The End of the F***ing World on Friday, January 5. The series, which aired on Channel 4 in the UK last year, is branded as a Netflix Original internationally and is based on Charles S. Forsman’s comic of the same name. Per IMDB, “James is 17 and is pretty sure he is a psychopath. Alyssa, also 17, is the cool and moody new girl at school. The pair make a connection and she persuades him to embark on a road trip in search of her real father.”
• Netflix has ordered a new stand-up comedy special from Ricky Gervais, his second for the streaming giant. No release date has been revealed.
• Amazon and ITV have teamed for an international thriller series called The Widow, starring Kate Beckinsale. The co-production, which begins filming this month, follows a widow who spots her supposedly dead husband on the news and sets out to discover what happened to him.
• ABC (the American one) will stage a crossover between two of its most popular shows sometime before the end of the current television season. The characters of Scandal (in its final season) and How to Get Away With Murder will meet in a two-part storyline beginning on one show and ending on the other.
• Showtime has renewed its real-time documentary series The Circus for a third season, premiering April 15, 2018. The American political series, which very publicly parted ways with producer and co-host Mark Halperin last year after the career journalist was accused of sexual harassment, will focus on the campaign for the US mid-term elections when it returns. Previous seasons have covered the 2016 presidential election and President Trump’s first one hundred days in office.
• Syfy has issued an official series order to Nightflyers, a science fiction horror series based on Game of Thrones creator George RR Martin’s novella of the same name. The series, a co-production with Netflix which will distribute the show in all markets outside of the US, follows nine astronauts venturing beyond the edge of the solar system whose voyage is disrupted by violence and terror.
• Fox has renewed its X-Men drama The Gifted for a second season. Per IMDB, “in a world where mutated humans are treated with distrust and fear, an institute for mutants battles to achieve peaceful co-existence with humanity.”
• The BBC is taking a page out of Ridley Scott’s book and refilming large portions of its Agatha Christie adaptation Ordeal by Innocence to replace star Ed Westwick who was accused of rape by two women and sexual assault by a third in November of 2017. Based on the 1958 novel of the same name, the three-part miniseries was originally set to air over Christmas 2017, but was pulled after the allegations became public. The cast and crew will return to reshoot large portions of the murder mystery with actor Christian Cooke taking Westwick’s place. Per IMDB: “Christmas 1954. Wealthy philanthropist Rachel Argyll is murdered at her family estate Sunny Point. Her adopted son Jack Argyll is arrested for her murder. He vehemently protests his innocence.”
• FX has renewed anthology crime drame Fargo for a fourth season, intended to air in 2019. The critically acclaimed series follows a different story with a different cast each season, all set in the snowy Minnesota landscape.
• FX has given a premiere date of March 25 to its upcoming anthology drama Trust. Each season will take place at a different point in the life of oil tycoon John Paul Getty, with the first season chronicling the 1973 kidnapping of his grandson and the elder Getty’s refusal to pay the ransom. Donald Sutherland will play the businessman in the inaugural season, whose story was recently adapted in Ridley Scott’s feature film All the Money in the World, currently in theatres.

VIDEO GAMES

• Romantic visual novel Code: Realize -Bouquet of Rainbows- is heading west exclusively on PlayStation 4. The game will release on March 30 in North America and sometime in Q2 in Europe, and will also include a version of Code: Realize – Guardian of Rebirth- as a bonus. Guardian of Rebirth will also release as a standalone title on PlayStation Vita on the same days as the PlayStation 4 version.