Welcome to The Rundown with Nerd Union (as gathered by Taryn Belle) for the weekend of October 8th, 2021.
MOVIES
Acclaimed screenwriter Kim Krizan is putting her UCLA screenwriting course, The Magic Hour, online for Patreon sponsors. Krizan is best known for originating and developing, with director Richard Linklater, the characters in the Before Sunrise trilogy of films, starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. For those efforts, she was nominated for an Academy Award and won a Writer’s Guild award. Joshua Meyer wrote up the exclusive announcement over on Slashfilm, which you can check out in the show notes.
Entertainment Weekly dropped exclusive photos of an upcoming Netflix Christmas movie, Single All The Way, that will feature their first openly gay couple for a holiday film. Nick and Peter, played by Philemon Chambers and Michael Urie respectively, are two gay best-friends who fake being together to appease the typical relationship questions that single people get over the holidays at family gatherings. This marks a vastly different shift from other LGBT films where the protagonists may have to hide their orientation from disproving family members by having a fake partner of the opposite gender. Single All The Way will debut on December 2nd over on Netflix.
New set photos have given us the first glimpse at Aldis Hodge’s portrayal as Hawkman in the upcoming Black Adam, starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. However, we won’t be able to show that photo here, unfortunately, as Twitter user @hawksmanworld’s photos were quickly taken down due to copyright concerns. Twitter users that were able to catch a glimpse before its takedown were pretty impressed so we’ll have something to look forward to once we get an official look.
SHOWS & SERIES
Apple TV will be debuting a new Peanuts special that will revolve around New Year’s eve, titled For Auld Lang Syne. Deadline reports that the new special will feature the Peanuts gang attempting to have a great New Year’s Eve celebration after their Christmas is soured due to a family member that was unable to attend. The brand new special will debut on December 10th.
Staying with Apple TV, Joseph Gordon Levitt’s Mr. Corman has been cancelled, as the series was not picked up for a second season. However, Levitt will continue working with Apple on Wolfboy and the Everything Factory, where he voices the lead and executive produces.
Director Destin Daniel Cretton, fresh off his success with Shang-Chi is set to direct a new Disney+ series. American Born Chinese, written by Emmy Award-winner Kelvin Yu along with Westworld writer Charles Yu, tells the story of Jin Wang, an average teenager juggling his high school social life with his immigrant home life. Per Disney’s official release: “When he meets a new foreign student on the first day of the school year, even more worlds collide as Jin is unwittingly entangled in a battle of Chinese mythological gods. The show is a genre-hopping action-comedy that explores issues of identity, culture, and family.” No word yet on a projected release, but we can expect it will at least be later in 2022 or possibly 2023 given the packed Disney+ calendar.
Over on Twitter, James Gunn teased that the upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday special will be canon with the MCU, and quote will “introduce the greatest MCU character ever.” Some have speculated this is a continuation of Adam Warlock’s tease from GotG Vol 2, or perhaps serve as the soft launch of another MCU character. However, Adam Barnhardt over at Comicbook.com has a simpler answer “Since it is a holiday special after all, we can’t rule out Santa Claus. The beloved holiday mascot has been officially introduced to the Marvel Comics canon as an Omega-level mutant so perhaps the Guardians Holiday Special is one of the first times we’ll see mutants arrive in the MCU.” We’ll just have to wait and see what happens when the special airs, sometime after Thor: Love and Thunder.
There’s a lot happening in Star Wars right now, especially with their book properties. Next week, Del Rey will release a book called Ronin, continuing the short film story Duel from the Star Wars: Visions series. This November, Timothy Zhan (who is one of my favorite authors of all time) concludes the Thrawn Ascendancy trilogy with Lesser Evil, and looking forward to next year, Obi-Wan and Luke Skywalker will both get new books, set in the Clone Wars and post-Return of the Jedi timelines respectively.
Per sources over at Variety, Kathryn Hahn is slated to return as Agatha Harkness, not only in future MCU films/series, but as a Disney+ series with Hahn as the lead actress, that would reportedly work as a dark comedy. WandaVision writer Jac Schaeffer will return to write and executive produce the project though neither Disney nor representation for Hahn or Schaeffer would confirm.
Two days ago, Hulu president Kelly Campbell stepped down and now we’ve learned that she’s taken the top role over at Peacock. Campbell spent 12 years over at Google, before eventually becoming Hulu’s chief marketing officer and then rising to the president role for the past two years. No word yet on potential replacements for her role over at Hulu, which has faced some turmoil as a service owned by Disney and has been pouring the majority of its focus into Disney+.
Bat-family lovers rejoice, DC has greenlit Wayne Family Adventures as a series of live-action shorts. Back in September during the Batman Day festivities, DC partnered with Webtoon to produce a weekly series of comic shorts that would feature Bruce Wayne dealing with his various Robin’s and family members. This niche has had a robust meme/fanfiction following so it’s not surprising that an official webcomic did super well and now has DC confident enough to try a short live-action series. The series is being produced by Ismahawk and will be released regularly over on their YouTube channel.
ACTORS & AWARDS
The set of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is currently dealing with on-set issues from anti-vaccination staff and cast members of which, Letitia Wright has been a vocal proponent. Back in December, the entire production seemed in peril due to Twitter comments and retweets from Wright that were advocating against getting vaccinated for COVID-19. No word yet on what impact these issues are having on the production, which is already navigating COVID-19 protocols in order to continue working and avoid an outbreak that regularly shut down productions this past year and during the pandemic.
Tessa Thompson’s adaptation of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies has added writer Tori Sampson to the crew. The HBO Max series, based on author Deesha Philyaw’s book, who is also contributing to the series, is a collection of 9 short stories dealing with issues of race and sexuality with black women in the church. Sampson comes off successful writing work on the series Three Women on Showtime and the Amazon series Hunters.
GAMING
Nintendo’s Switch OLED drops today along with the next entry in the Metroid franchise, Metroid Dread. While preorders have mostly been filled and taken since it was announced, various retailers, including Amazon and Gamestop have received additional units today that you may be able to take advantage of. Additionally, you may be able to check with your local brick-and-mortar stores for any units that weren’t offered online.
TECH
Twitch had a major breach this week that resulted in the source code of the site being released to the open. Engadget reports that Twitch was aware of the hack on Wednesday as news broke across the web. The hackers responsible have claimed a number of things, including that they have the entirety of Twitch’s source code and various APIs along with the complete earnings of every streamer since 2019, and circulated those numbers online. An important note: even if you use Twitch just to watch streams, your password information is vulnerable especially if you haven’t enabled two-factor authentication. Please make sure to update your password immediately and activate two-factor authentication, which can be as simple as getting a text code to log in or adding an authenticator app to your phone. We’ll be reporting on this in more depth next week so make sure to catch Commander Shipp and Grandmaster Fro on State of the Nerd Union this coming Monday.
Snapchat wants you to run for office…literally. Engadget reports that the latest tool added to the social media platform “Run For Office” allows users to share issues that are important to them and will allow users to find elected local and state positions that they are suited for. The app was built with input from the New American Leader organization, whose president Ghida Dagher stated “Running for office shouldn’t be just for those who are white and wealthy. If we want a democracy that works for and represents all of us, then we need leaders who reflect our increasingly diverse, multicultural communities”. The plan should also help get younger citizens more cognizant and/or involved in the political process at a younger age as Snapchat’s users are consistently younger than any other platform, with the next closest being TikTok.
TechCrunch reports that Instagram is continuing its shift away from simply being a photo-sharing app by consolidating their video options into one tab called “Instagram Video” doing away with the IGTV tab or Feed videos. The move comes as Instagram feels increased pressure due to the long-term success of YouTube and the meteoric rise of TikTok with its wide range of video and creator tool options.
MERCH
Ready to score some new Halloween-themed Marvel figurines? Iron Studios is releasing more statues based on the Disney Plus Marvel series WandaVision, this time featuring Wanda and Vision in their Halloween costumes which were actually a nod to their classic comic uniforms. However, as we stated last week for the Wanda-Darkhold statue, you can preorder these now, but they are not expected to arrive until some time late next year.
Finally, to end the show, we wanna give a shout to one of nerddom’s true queens, Starbuck. Katee Sackhoff, of Battlestar Galactica and The Mandalorian fame to name just a few, celebrated her nuptials over the past weekend with her long-time writer/producer boyfriend Robin Gadsby. She posted to Instagram a simple shot of her shoes and dress stating “Tell me you had an amazing wedding without telling me you had an amazing wedding”. I bet Katee looked like an angel in her wedding dress!
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