Blogs and Ends: Friday Night Roundup
FIRST
MoonKnight
It took three episodes until the mask dropped completely. The first episode actually looked good. The second started to reveal a few cracks in the façade. Then came the third episode and, yep, it’s a Marvel TV show.
Chief Creative Officer and Mega-Gamma Boss Kevin Feige is now making his impact truly felt.
Marvel Comics for the first time in its history failed to put a graphic novel in the top 750 of Bookscan. No Hulk, no Captain America, no Ironman, and no freaking Spiderman. Nothing.
This is the kind of quality storytelling that Marvel is now bringing to the small screen.
I was interested in Steven’s character at first but now he is on my nerves. The Gamma is the real good guy. You can see where the wife character is going to go. She’s married to Mark but is falling in love with his Steven personality because he thinks she’s super amazing and kisses her ass constantly. He’s approaching her sideways and winning her heart by being her friend just like any Gamma Male dreams of doing.
Also, Honshu wants her as her new avatar. Don’t be surprised if she is Moonknight by the end of the season. Think about it, how badly does Oscar Isaac want to keep doing a series, as opposed to how badly Feige wants another gender swapped superhero?
The biggest problem this show has is the writing. I found out what the Marvel TV method is. Feige has one of his executives sitting in the writers’ room the whole time. That is death for creativity. Instead of pitching their ideas freely to each other, they keep one eye glued to the executive, watching for eyerolls and tired sighs. Marvel has hired good writers in the past but they all quit inside a month. Who can blame them?
Bottomline: They are out, and I am too.
NEXT
Is Amber Heard Out As Mera?
Not yet but the matter is clearly up for discussion. Walter Hamada still has his job (damn it) but he’s clearly worried about keeping it. His testimony in Amber Heard’s defamation trial is interesting because it either reflects a true record of events OR the record of events as Hamada would like them to have been.
I had said last week that he and Ann Sarnoff were of Amber’s biggest supporters. Except now Walter is saying that was all Ann’s doing and he had wanted Mera recast for Aquaman 2. He thought there was no chemistry between her and Jason Mamamamamaoa (true). And now that I think of it, there was a rumor running around a while back that Emilia Clarke was in talks to take over the part. Maybe there was something to it.
Regardless, when Amber had her Believe All Women moment, and the cards broke her way, her career got boosted by executives and Johnny Depp got mega-canceled. Disney had second thoughts and is quietly trying to rehire him for the Pirates franchise. But Ann Sarnoff stuck to her guns and ended up sinking the leaky Grindlewald Trilogy, this ended with her out on her ass last week.
In my opinion, Amber Heard is a Dark Triad Female who got her hooks into a rich drug addict. The word I keep hearing insiders use to describe her is, “evil.” That doesn’t excuse Depp’s many, many failings in the least but between the two of them, I’m more inclined to think ill of Heard.
Aquaman 2 has finished shooting and is in post-production. It has, however, been moved back to next year and Walter Hamada has to figure out what his new boss wants. It’s known that David Zaslav was very unhappy about being stuck with two problem children in the DCU who should have been dealt with long before now. Ezra Miller should have been fired when he choked that pregnant woman in Iceland two years ago. Instead, Ann Sarnoff swept it under the rug and boosted his career because he identifies as non-binary. This used to be called being bat-shit insane and you didn’t promote somebody like that because they would do stuff that made you look bad.
The other one Zaslav isn’t cool with is Amber Heard.
Hamada will have to guess if his new boss wants to fire Heard more than he wants to NOT spend tens of millions on six to eight weeks of reshoots with Khaleesi.
Developing.
LAST
And speaking of the DC film universe.
According to Bounding Into Comics, there is going to be a major reorganization of the DC Films Unit.
David Zaslav wants DC to become “a solidified content vertical.” Meaning, Zaslav wants to have a DCEU that is closer to what Marvel does. A-list heroes are in the movies, and the B-list are on TV but they are sharing one universe.
“On the actual content side, the report says Zaslav and Discovery want to create a “coherent creative and brand strategy” something DC currently lacks as seen in many of their recent releases such as Peacemaker, Zack Snyder’s Justice League, Birds of Prey, and Wonder Woman 1984.
As part of this coherent creative and brand strategy, Discovery wants to ensure DC Comics’ top characters like Superman are being utilized. The report claims Discovery believes “top-shelf characters such as Superman have been left to languish and need to be revitalized.”
Zaslav and his team also allegedly want to see more films like The Joker as they believe it is “a shining example of how second-billed characters from the DC library can and should be exploited.”
I don’t know how he expects to get both, but Zaslav is a turnaround CEO. He is going to micromanage until he figures out for sure who all needs to be shot, replace them, and then start delegating. He is process-driven, so his real concern is implementing a process. Meeting “creative objectives” isn’t that vital.
In the real world, this is probably an end to the Arrowverse. I’m sorry Superman and Lois is going to die before its time but Batwoman will finally be put out of its misery.
Upside, Zaslav is a fan of Henry Cavil. Superman lives!
DC Comics itself is such a small part of Warner Brothers at this point it might survive because no one remembers to kill it. However, if the Sauronic eye of the evil wizard Zaslav falls upon it, DC Comics will be shut down and farmed out to third parties overnight. Traditional superheroes have only one chance and that is webtoons. The problem is that that is its own thing. I’ve got my doubts about how many of the old-school guys can make the adjustment. Chuck Dixon did it but that’s Chuck Dixon.
And let’s be clear, David Zaslav is not one of the good guys. He’s got a seat on the board of the Walter Kaitz Foundation.
His ultimate objective is to make the evil work better.
Okay, I’m done here.
