The Octogeek – 1st July

The Octogeek has 8 arms for gathering geek news. One for each day of the week and one left over for you know, octopus stuff.

We have news on Spider-Man, Twins, Conan, Top Gun and more, but Pastie bap reported earlier in the week on the new Spider-man so we’ll start with some more news on that, will we?

Spider-Man

Marvel and Sony have their new Spider-Man. In May we reported that Asa Butterfield had been tipped to play the wall crawler but that it hadn’t been confirmed yet. Well there’s a reason it hadn’t been confirmed. It wasn’t true. Tom Holland is the new Peter Parker. So don’t believe anything you read on the internet. Especially the news that Tom Holland is the new Spidey.

Tom is 19 years old and the idea seems to be to go with a young actor so that they can get some mileage out of the high school years of Peter Parker. 19 seems a bit old to me but then again Hollywood has a history for this kind of thing. The 2 previous actors to play Spider-Man Maguire and Garfield were 26 and 27 respectively. Both played a 17 year old. Hollywood is weird. According to Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige they are going for more of a John Hughes vibe. I’d just like to add that Cameron in Ferris Bueller’s Day off was played by a 29 year old Alan Ruck. This is only relevant because we’re talking John Hughes movies and actors ages. Here’s what Feige had to say on the movie’s direction.

“It’s the soap opera in high school, and those supporting characters, that are interesting”, he said. “Just as we hadn’t seen a heist movie in a long time, or a shrinking movie in a long time, we haven’t seen a John Hughes movie in a long time. Not that we can make a John Hughes movie – only John Hughes could – but we’re inspired by him, and merging that with the superhero genre in a way we haven’t done before excites us”.

As far as a bad guy, it looks like we’re getting something new. That’s good, I always felt Spider-Man had the best rogues gallery. I’d like to see Mysterio in the mix. Big fish bowl head and everything.

“Right now we’re interested in seeing villains we haven’t seen before”.

Twins 2

Apparently Junior isn’t the sequel to Twins. Shows you what I know having not seen Twins and only catching the end of Junior last week on TV. Twins 2 is an actual thing that looks like it might happen. Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito are back and according to to Arnie “Triplets is happening”. The plan is to cast Eddie Murphy as the third amigo as it were. Schwarzenegger has been revealing the deets.

“We are talking about a sequel, where we find out at the funeral of our mother, when we read the will, that there’s three of us. [. . .] Eddie Murphy loves the idea. Danny DeVito and I had lunch with Eddie Murphy over at my house, and talked about the thing, and we were laughing and laughing the whole meal through because it was such a funny idea”.

Firstly, did i just use the word deets? I appologise. Secondly, I love the idea of the three of them lunching together at Arnie’s house. DeVito spills red wine on his shirt and Arnie has his maid (not the one he knocked up, a different one) get him a clean one that’s 12 sizes too big. Eddie Murphy’s doing ‘Donkey’ impressions and trying to get Arnie to do a Scottish accent to be his live action ‘Shrek’. His Scottish accent is obviously terrible but once he has that green face paint on, you kind of buy into the whole scenario. They are all ‘laughing and laughing the whole meal through’. Oh to be a fly on the wall in that house. Why aren’t they making a live action Shrek instead of Twins 2?

Conan 3

While we’re on the subject of Schwarzenegger, we might as well talk Conan. The Barbarian himself was talking to the Nerd Report about the long mooted sequel.

“I was hoping to do another one and I was hoping that the idea of Conan having been king for a long time, then just threw it all away and went into retirement and went off into the mountains. [. . .] That whole idea always appealed to me. Then of course he gets asked back because of some hideous and unbelievable things that are happening to the kingdom. So that’s when the battle begins again.”

I like to imagine that when he’s not having DeVito and Murphy round for comedy lunch, he’s doing weights in his living room dressed as Conan. I know he probably has a home gym but he likes to pump iron in the living room okay!

Top Gun 2

Top Gun 2 is in the works. Of course it is. According to David Ellison of Skydance Studios.

“Justin Marks is writing the screenplay right now [and] there is an amazing role for Maverick in the movie [. . .] there is no Top Gun without Maverick, and it is going to be Maverick playing Maverick.“

Who’s Tom Cruise going to play if Maverick is going to be play Maverick? This sounds so meta. Top Gun 2 with Tom Cruise in an amazing role and the role of Maverick being played by Tom Cruise’s character from Top Gun! Mind Blown. He goes on to say:

“He has a phenomenal take to really update that world for what fighter pilots in the Navy has turned into today. I don’t think [it is] what people are going to expect, and we are very, very hopeful that we get to make the movie very soon. But like all things, it all comes down to the script, and Justin is writing as we speak.”

He also went on to say some stuff about it being IMAX and 3D and there being planes that actually come out of the screen and fire actual bullets at the audience. So… you know, go see this one in theaters when/if it ever comes out.

Rampage

This isn’t the story about Phantom Menace Star, Jake Lloyd, being involved in a high speed chase with police and crashing though a fence and several small trees before being arrested. That did happen this week but it’s not the story I’m reporting on. I’m not some tabloid hack! I have class. Give the poor kid a chance, he was the ‘star’ of Phantom Menace and was hired for his bowl haircut rather than his acting ability. Anyway I digress. The Rock has just been hired because of his acting ability rather than his bowl hair cut to star in a movie based on the eponymous arcade game. Rampage is a game where you control a giant gorilla/lizard thing/werewolf and smash through the city to get to the next level. Pretty simple concept eh? I have no idea what Dwayne Johnson will be doing in the movie but he’s in it so it’ll make money.

Masterminds

A night guard at an armored car company in the Southern U.S. organizes one of the biggest bank heists in American history. Masterminds stars Zach Galifianakis, Kristen Wiig and Owen Wilson.  It looks like it could be some half decent throwaway comedy nonsense. Fingers crossed.

Ghostbusters

While we’re on the subject of Kristen Wiig (why does she need 3 ‘I’s in her name?), Paul Feig has posted a picture on twitter of the costumes for the new Ghostbusters. It’s not much but we can at least see that they’re not spangly or pink or souped up futuristic girlie jump suits. Kristen Wiig is one of the 4 new busters along with Melissa McCartney, Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones.

Netflix and Free Games

This week’s netflix pick is ‘Invasion of the Bodysnatchers’ starring the always awesome Jeff Goldblum and Jack Bauer’s dear old dad, Donald Sutherland. Who said all remakes are terrible?
If you’ve got an Xbox or Playstation you might be looking for a new game to play as well. This month’s free games for Xbox One are Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag and So Many Me. For 360 we have Plants vs Zombies and Gears of War. Sony has been changing things up recently as eurogamer.net reports that PS Plus games are to be coming a little earlier in the month.

“Hey folks. As of this month, Plus games go live in both EU and US on the first tuesday of the month (no longer Wednesday in EU),” wrote EU PlayStation blog manager Fred Durst. “The first Tuesday in July is 7th July, hence why the games aren’t launching this week.”

It’s good to see that Fred Durst has found something to do with himself outside of Limp Bizkit and wearing hats the wrong way. We’ve still to hear what the PS games will be so you’ll have to wait til next week. Until then, buh bye!