The Octogeek – your weekly geek roundup – 27th May

For anyone following Arrow, they may have noticed a pigtailed blonde character in an A.R.G.U.S. jumpsuit in the Season 2 episode ‘Suicide Squad’. We only saw her from behind but fans of Harley Quinn will recognize that she was voiced by frequent Harley voice actress Tara Strong.  It’s the end of season 3 now and we’ve seen no more of the Joker’s squeeze. It seems Harley Quinn may have had a place in future episodes of Arrow but now that Margot Robbie’s playing the character in the Suicide Squad movie, this may be changing. During London MCM Comicon, Willa Holland who play’s Thea Queen in the show, had this to say on the character.

“We had big plans for Harley. But, I guess something came down from DC execs that told us to shut it down. I mean we had that tease with the pigtails and the ARGUS outfit but, we’ll never see it. We would love to [have] Harley in Arrow but it will never happen.”

This seems a bit strange to me as DC have long been running 2 universes. A T.V. one and a movie one. They have plan’s for a Flash movie with Ezra Millar while still having a Flash TV show with Grant Gustin. If you’re gonna milk your properties for all they’re worth, you might as well have Harley Quinn pop up on the small screen as well as the big screen.

There IS one property that’s making the transition from the big to small screen. Evil Dead is coming to our living rooms rather than theaters this time. The new show which is filming in New Zealand (isn’t everything) is called Ash vs Evil and stars Bruce Campbell as Ash (who else?). The first episode will be directed Sam Raimi of the original Evil Dead fame as well as Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2 fame. No one was famous for Spider-man 3.

Pixels! A new movie coming out this summer starring Adam Sandler and Kevin James. Why am I taking about an Adam Sandler movie? Well it also stars Tyrion Lannister himself Peter Dinklage and it’s about video games from the 80’s attacking earth. The trailer just came out and I think it actually looks like a bit of fun. It’s directed by Chris Columbus so it’s likely it’ll be a step up from Sandler’s previous films which just seemed to exist to keep his friends in work. The film also has Sean Bean in it so we can all take bets on when he’ll snuff it. Check out the trailer below. That bit with Kevin James and the Smurf is the first time either of those 2 things have made me laugh in years.

Fans of futuristic robo-nightmare Blade Runner have been clamoring for a sequel for over thirty years now. Ridley Scott may be busy but the legendary Roger Deakins looks to be taking the mantle of cinematographer. Nominated for 12 Oscars (although he hasn’t snagged one yet) Deakins has been responsible for the cinematography of Skyfall, The Big Lebowski and The Shawshank Redemption.

In other news Anne Hathaway is having some bother with Godzilla (see picture on right as proof). Her new indie movie at Cannes features a giant atomic dinosaur type thing that the film makers have called have not called Godzilla. On the promotional material they have referred to their movie as a serious Godzilla movie as not a Godzilla movie. Toho, the company that owns the rights to Godzilla and presumably keeps him locked up safe and sound in a warehouse somewhere has filed a legal complaint against Voltage Pictures’ Colossal (see they didn’t call it Godzilla) for using images of the recent big budget Godzilla movie in their marketing (whoops). Let’s hope no one tells them about Blue Oyster Cult.

This week Rockstar Games took a pop at the BBC for trying to make a drama about them. You can read about that story here. And in a final piece of housekeeping. Brad Pitt is to return for another World War Z in 2017. Does that mean we’re back round to World War A again? Answers on a postcard please and send them to next week’s Octogeek. If you’re looking for something new on Netflix, coincidentally you can find the newly added World War Z.