Sci-Fi Storm

Warning…as Tom Holland says at the beginning, there is a major spoiler if you haven’t yet watched Avengers: Endgame, so go watch that first…but the irony of Tom Holland warning of spoilers…

That earthquake you felt wasn’t real…it was just a rumored-but-still-surprising deal being made in Hollywood.

Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios, owned by Sony’s rival Disney, struck a deal on Monday for Spider-Man which will allow the character to appear in the Marvel Cinematic Universe – basically all the Marvel movies not done by Sony or Fox thus far, which all exist within the same “universe”, allowing for the crossover of the characters. Kevin Feige, who has led the MCU juggernaut, will come on board as a producer for a new Spider-Man film alongside Amy Pascal, who helped shepherd the Spider-Man franchise for Sony.

Sony will likely want to re-launch the franchise for a third time with a new face. With the second round starring Andrew Garfield, the release of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 made a decent amount of money but was considered a disappointment given its very large budget.

In the meantime Marvel has wanted to include Spider-Man alongside the Avengers – Spidey is a member of the group in the comics after all. Word is that they’d like to include him at least in a cameo for Captain America: Civil War, and I can forsee a bigger role for the webslinger in the third Avengers team film.

In the meantime, Sony had already penciled in a July 28th, 2017 release date – which had already been planned by Marvel/Disney for Thor: Ragnarok. So Marvel/Disney has agreed to shift all of the Marvel films back, with Thor moving to November, taking Black Panther‘s slot, who moves back to Captain Marvel‘s slot, etc. All the relevant dates have been updated in our calendar.

Sony Picture Television and Sony Computer Entertainment America has announced that David Slade will direct the first two episodes of their first series for the Playstation Network, Powers.

Slade directed Twilight Saga: Eclipse, and most recently directed several episodes of Hannibal, on which he also serves as executive producer.

Based on the graphic novel, Powers is an edgy dramatic series that follows the lives of two homicide detectives, Christian Walker and Deena Pilgrim, who are assigned to investigate cases involving people with superhuman abilities, referred to as Powers. Set amidst today’s paparazzi culture, Powers asks the questions, what if the world was full of superheroes who aren’t actually heroic at all? What if all that power was just one more excuse for mischief, mayhem, murder, and endorsement deals? Enter the men and women of the Powers Division, the brave people in charge of protecting humans like us and keeping the peace with these over-paid, commercialized, god-like men and women who glide through the sky imposing their power over the mortals who both worship and fear them.

The first two episodes are written by executive producer Charlie Huston, adapted from the best-selling graphic novel series by Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming. Powers is produced by Jinxworld and Circle of Confusion in association with Sony Pictures Television. Brian Michael Bendis, Charlie Huston, Remi Aubuchon, Michael Avon Oeming, Michael Dinner, and David Engel serve as executive producers.

All PlayStation owners will get to watch the debut episode for free, with PlayStation Plus subscribers able to watch the whole series for free.

Here is the first trailer for Men In Black 3 from Sony Pictures. Agents J and K (Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones) are back, and it appears that some history-changing time travel is involved…

Isaac Asimov’s Foundation stories seem to have long been a pipe dream of SF-aware producers to get to the big screen…even the latest developments have been long dormant, when Sony won the bidding war almost 3 years ago for the rights after Warner Bros. let them lapse, and it was previously in development with Fox. Well at last there is movement again, with Sony Pictures announcing that Dante Harper has been hired to adapt it.

Harper appears to be relatively new on the writing scene, working on Black Hole for David Fincher/Paramount (based on the graphic novel by Charles Burns), and rewrote the upcoming Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters for Paramount/MGM/Spyglass. Roland Emmerich is still set to direct.

The Foundation series of novels center around mathematician Hari Seldon, who develops a new system of mathematics called “psychohistory”, which can model at a grand scale what will happen in the future – and Seldon discovers that the Galactic Empire, which consists of humans populating millions of other worlds, is in danger of immanent collapse and could lead to a Dark Age that could last thousands of years.