Episode 95 - Everyone's Favourite Goldblum

It's just Julian and Daniel this week on the program as Jeremy is "away". But the show must go on, so to kick things off Julian takes us through his picks for this year's "summer movie wager" and rips Regal Theatres for some questionable business practices. The guys then dive deep into the latest geek news, starting with a couple notable trailers for Marvel's Defenders and The Dark Tower. Moving on, Fox announces 3 new X-Men movies for 2018, Kevin Feige talks about "Phase 4" of the MCU, the Avatar sequels get new release dates (again) and Jeff Goldblum joins the Jurassic World sequel. On the TV front we got our first tease of Marvel's Inhumans and, DC and WB announce a new "DC focused" streaming service that will feature Young Justice season 3 and a new Teen Titans live action series. Over with games, Call of Duty: WWII got a trailer, Nintendo revealed some impressive sales numbers and Injustice 2 continues its march towards launch. To wrap things up the guys shower praise all over the premier of American Gods on Starz, the latest show from Brian Fuller based on the work of Neil Gaiman. All this and so much more on the week's Tower of Babble Podcast!

Remember to Subscribe and rate us on iTunes to give us your feedback!

Show Notes

Movies

• Trailers:
  • Kingsman 2 (The Golden Circle)
  • The Dark Tower
  • Dunkirk
  • Marvel’s Defenders
• Happy belated Star Wars Day. Celebrating 40 years!
• Director Rian Johnson revealed he leaned hard on Carrie Fisher to help write lines for Leia in The Last Jedi
• A little bad news, it looks like Lucas CHANGED the original prints of Star Wars to make some of his changes so it would be almost impossible to get a remastered version of the unaltered copies of the original trilogy.
• Aquaman has officially started filming and to commemorate the day WB revealed the official logo and title treatment. James Wan also revealed a photo from set that looked to be on the inside of a submarine.
• Fast and Furious 8 has officially made a billion dollars at the boxoffice worldwide. Making it the second movie of the year to reach that mark after Beauty and the Beast.
• Jeff Goldblum will appear in the Jurassic World sequel. He’ll reprise his role as Dr Ian Malcolm for the 3rd time.
• On May 2 the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers came to a “tentative” deal with the Writers Guild of America to avoid another writer's strike.
• According to The Wrap, Seth Rogan and Billy Eichner have reportedly been cast as Timon and Pumba in the live action Lion King remake.
• Fox has set release dates for 2 new X-Men movies and it looks like 2018 will be the year of the mutant as New Mutants will release on April 13, Deadpool 2 on June 1st AND X-Men (Dark Phoenix) will be released on Nov 2.
• Speaking of release dates, coming off the rumours dropped by some of the cast of Avatar, it looks like we have “concrete dates” for James Cameron’s Avatar sequels. Announced on the films Facebook page, Avatar 2 will hit theatres Dec 18, 2020, Avatar 3 on Dec 17 2021, then after a three year wait, Avatar 4 will come out on Dec 20, 2024, and finally Avatar 5 on Dec 19, 2025.
• In an interview with the BBC, Guardians actress, Zoe Saldana might have accidentally revealed the title to the sequel to Avengers: Infinity War. It’s not official yet but it looks like it will be called Avengers: Infinity Gauntlet.
• Speaking of the Avengers, Marvel Studios Kevin Feige says that the MCU will “very different” after the Infinity War movies. He also mentioned that Avengers 3 and 4 are no longer filming simultaneously as it apparently got too complicated to “cross-board” both films and wanted to give each film the right amount of attention.
• According to Variety, David Fincher is coming close to closing a deal to direct the sequel to 2013’s World War Z.
• Director James Mangold revealed that there will be a one night showing of Logan in black and white.
• In a bit of a surprise, M. Night Shyamalan announced a sequel to Unbreakable AND Split. Spoilers: Apparently the James Mcavoy film Split was secretly in the same universe as Unbreakable. Sam Jackson and Bruce Willis will reprise their roles and join James Mcavoy in the film that’s called simply “Glass”.
• Heath Ledger’s sister in an interview with EW after a screening of the documentary “I Am Heath Ledger” shot down rumours that playing the Joker led to the actors premature death.

TV

• DC and WB Television have announced that Young Justice season 3 and a new live action Teen Titans series, simply called “Titans”, will premier in 2018 on a new DC-focused streaming service. The streaming service promises to “deliver an immersive experience designed just for DC fans”.
  • “Titans”, is being written by Akiva Goldsman, Geoff Johns and Greg Berlanti. All of whom will also be executive producing along with Sarah Schechter. The show will centre around Dick Grayson and will also include Starfire, Raven, and others.
• First image from the coming Inhumans show shows off the main cast.
• The DC comedy Powerless has been pulled from the schedule by NBC with only 3 episodes left to air in its first season. Its likely been cancelled.
• A Boondock Saints TV series is in development, called Boondock Saints: Origins. The project is a partnership between creator Troy Duffy and Con Carmody Television.

Games

• Call of Duty WWII trailer
• Injustice 2 revealed The Joker and Darkseid gameplay as well as announced the first DLC fighter pack. The first 3 DLC characters in "Fighter Pack 1" are Sub Zero, Starfire and Red Hood.
• Halo  6 will focus on Master Chief and won't have any other playable characters.
• Fun fact: Did you know that the original Mario Kart started as a multiplayer mode for F-Zero
• Nintendo had its year end earnings call and we got a few numbers:
  • Switch sales numbers
    • Nintendo has apparently sold 2.74 million units worldwide in less than its first month on sale.
    • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild sold 2.76 million copies on Switch (20,000 more copies than there are Switches on the market)
    • Mario Kart 8 Delux also recently launched on the Switch and it’s been the fastest selling Mario Kart to date having sold 459,000 copies on launch day in the US.
    • They expect to sell 10 million units of the switch in the next year with a projected 35 million in software sales.
  • We also found out how many NES Classics were sold to retail: 2.3 million.
• Nintendo WON'T have a large scale press conference at E3. They didn’t say what they would be doing instead but you can probably expect another Nintendo Direct type video.
• According to rumour, a Mario/Rabbids crossover RPG is coming this year to the Switch. Called "Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle", it will feature 2 player co-op, 8 playable characters and is being developed by Ubisoft.
• Half-Life 2, Portal and Left 4 Dead writer Chet Faliszek has left Valve. This means that EVERY primary writer from the Half-Life games and DLC has left the company.

What We've Been Watching/Playing

• Guardians of the Galaxy
• American Gods