THE 355 Trailer: A Quintet Of Spies Set Out To Save The World
The sixten words I long to hear most: “I’m putting together a team and you’re the best in the world at what you do.”
The sixten words I long to hear most: “I’m putting together a team and you’re the best in the world at what you do.”
Production has reportedly begun on Dark Phoenix helmer Simon Kinberg’s female fronted spy thriller, 355, as announced by actress and producer Jessica Chastain. All signs here point to Paris as the starting point after recovering from the stalemate surrounding headliner Fan Bingbing’s tax evasion charges last year amid China’s crackdown on tax fraud in the industry.
Wikimedia CommonsVariety reports that Fan Bingbing (X-Men: Days Of Future Past, The White-Haired Witch Of Lunar Kingdon) will yet see her starring alongside her colleagues in the female spy ensemble, 355. The news comes just as the actress has since emerged from obscurity following a disappearance from the public for several months – part of the extensive fallout she’s faced amid China’s sprawling crackdown on tax evasion last year.
Yeah… the trailer pretty much gives something away here. You might be keen on this notion if you’ve been reading the news at all since Wednesday night about Simon Kinberg’s solo directing debut, Dark Phoenix. I’m no avid comic follower as much as I dig the culture and so whatever lies ahead, I’m still pretty interested in what lies ahead at this point – this being Fox’s final entry into the near two decade-old X-Men saga.
Without question, director Bryan Singer has done some incredible work on the X-Men saga dating back to the early two-thousandies. Recent events and troubling revelations may or may have not dampened his prospects on the franchise – I’m not at all certain, though fans weren’t exactly keen on seeing Simon Kinberg take the mantle either. The comments at the time were, in a word, passionate.
The actress, who is set to produce 355 with Kelly Carmichael at their Freckle Films banner next to Kinberg at Kinberg Genre, spoke heavily to Deadline and cited her previous enjoyment on The Help (2011), and Zero Dark Thirty (2012), with the latter being the most influential in her interest toward the new action thriller.
Denis Villeneuve’s thrilling delivery with Blade Runner 2049 is the precedent reportedly being set for Warner Bros.’s current push to revive 1976 sci-fi classic, Logan’s Run. Word from Deadline on Friday writes, The Town scribe Peter Craig is being eyed to pen the script for Fox’s noted X-Men film saga producer Simon Kinberg to direct.
Set in an idyllic 23rd century, actor Michael York starred as Logan 5, a Sandman embedded in an agency established to hunt down “Runners” against society’s established order of pleasureable life until death at thirty. When Logan is assigned to track down a secret safe haven for Runners, he learns his own life clock was pushed forward by four years, forcing him to become a runner himself.
David Zelag Goodman adapted the 1967 novel by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson for director Michael Anderson. The film eventually landed a short-lived television series prior to Hollywood stirring remake efforts in the 1990s and onward.
The report also notes the film could see a female lead which would amply service Craig having written The Hunger Games and both Mockingjay installments thereafter. Kinberg’s own directorial debut lands this November for X-Men: Dark Phoenix.
When news broke last year that Simon Kinberg was going to direct an X-Men movie, the news wasn’t met with a lot of optimism on my end from folks who’ve said something on it. Personally, I didn’t know what to believe even though he’d worked on at least three X-Men titles in addition to having been involved with Bryan Singer’s canonical inductions with Days Of Future Past and Apocalypse.
Is that a referendum of some kind? Nah. I have rather enjoyed Fox’s little corner of the MCU sans Brett Ratner’s The Last Stand, and especially with regard to Singer’s work from the very beginning. So, I’m keen on giving Kinberg a chance with whatever lies ahead for X-Men: Dark Phoenix, and judging by what’s discussed over at Entertainment Weekly’s exclusive pictorals, it looks like he’s doing alright by the fans thusfar.
Sophie Turner returns to in the title role with select cast from First Class and onward along with actress Jessica Chastain and Daniel Cudmore. Hailing as one of two tonally different X-Men universe features for next year, his one arrives on November 2, 2018, and with 20th Century Fox extending its global slate deal with IMAX through 2019, you can expect to catch this one on IMAX screens as well.
Entertainment Weekly has a batch of first look photos for fans to take in the progress. Check out a few below and the rest by clicking here.
British director Chris Cunningham was once up to direct the film between 2000 and 2004 before switching hands in the years that followed. Fox is seeking a new writer while Miller packs on Neuromancer along with other projects in his workload, including the ambitious trilogy starter adaptation of Daniel Suarez’s 2014 novel, Influx, and a resurrection of Paramount/Skydance’s Terminator franchise with filmmaker/creator James Cameron which is expected to take off in Spring of 2018. (Deadline)
With two new X-Men movies on the horizon and movement on both over at 20th Century Fox, franchise producer Simon Kinberg is reportedly attached to helm the next endeavor for the studio, X-Men: Dark Phoenix. The film will mark Kinberg’s debut at the helm following the start of his involvement on Fox’s X-Men saga in 2006.
The mythology has been played around with ever since the first film directed by Bryan Singer and eventually took a turning point between X2 and X-Men: The Last Stand. Actress Famke Janssen’s role as Jean Grey struggled with the length and brevity of her powers as a telekinetic until eventually transforming into the penultimate anomaly, the Phoenix, and appeared a few more times next to actor Hugh Jackman between the main timeline as well as the actor’s 2013 Wolverine spin-off sequel.
The new film, which will be shot in Montreal this October ahead of a November 2, 2018 release will focus on the succession of the character per the Dark Phoenix story with actress Sophie Turner reprising after taking the reigns in Singer’s X-Men: Apocalypse. Deadline‘s exclusive also confirms the return of actress Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique, Michael Fassbender as Magneto, James McAvoy as Professor Charles Xavier, Nicholas Hoult as Beast, Alexandra Shipp as Orora Munroe, Tye Sheridan as Cyclops and Kodi Smit-McPhee as Nightcrawler.
Actress Jessica Chastain (The Huntsman: Winter’s Tale) is also in talks to join the cast in a new role as a villain.
Kinberg, currently producing David Leitch’s Deadpool 2 and John Boone’s X-Men: The New Mutants, is also producing with Hutch Parker and Lauren Shuler Donner.
Big screen efforts haven’t waned for the X-Men film saga at all recently and you needn’t look further than the latest developments with Simon Kinberg’s latest attachment to possibly write and direct the next movie in question. That said, we now advance toward small screen endeavors wherein it was last summer that Bryan Singer and Matt Nix were officially reported as on-board for a pilot committment with Fox Television’s advancement of a live-action X-Men TV series inspired by the hit Marvel franchise.
On Wednesday, you’ll find things bustling a bit with word via Variety that actress Jamie Chung has been tapped for a role as the mutant, Blink, in the series pilot. Based on the teleporter as seen in the comics as early as 1994, Blink (a.k.a. Clarice Fong) is described as a sardonic, lively, mild tomboy forced to adjust to her new life in the aftermath of a series of traumatic events. Actress actress Fan Bingbing briefly played the role in the futuristic battle sequences against the Sentinels alongside her fellow herors in the 2014 film X-Men: Days of Future Past which Singer directed.
Chung will be joined by Blair Redford who plays Sam, a strong-headed leader of the underground network Clarice becomes a part of amid the story of two ordinary parents forced into hiding with their children with the government surging in its hunt for mutants. 20th Century Fox Television and Marvel Television will co-produce the tentatively untitled series with the former handling principal production. Nix will serve as executive producer with Bryan Singer, Lauren Shuler Donner and the aforementioned Kinberg along with Marvel’s Jeph Loeb and Jim Chory.
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