Welcome back to The Rundown, our daily breakdown on comic news stories we missed from the previous day. Have a link to share? Email our team at rundown@multiversitycomics.com.
In case you missed it yesterday, AfterShock announced “Moth & Whisper,” and Marvel unveiled “Return of Wolverine,” both set to start in September. BOOM! also announced “Power Rangers: Soul of the Dragon,” a graphic novel starring Tommy Oliver for December.
– MGM revealed the voice cast for the upcoming animated Addams Family movie, directed by Conrad Vernon and Greg Tiernan (Sausage Party). The cast consists of:
Vernon said the film will draw heavily from Charles Addams’s original New Yorker cartoons, and depict how Gomez and Morticia settled down, though the main storyline will focus on Needler and the family preparing for a stay from their extended family. The film is out October 11, 2019.
– Meanwhile, former Village Voice cartoonist Jules Feiffer, 89, has a film out on Friday based on his characters, titled Bernard and Huey. It stars Jim Rash (Community) as Bernard, and David Koechner (Anchorman) as Huey, two old friends who reconnect after 30 years away from each other. Feiffer also mentioned in an interview his next graphic novel “The Ghost Script,” which explores the Hollywood blacklist and acts as a finale to his previous books “Kill My Mother” and “Cousin Joseph,” will be released next month.
– Warner Bros. has put into a development a spin-off film for Jared Leto’s Joker from Suicide Squad. This is in addition to the standalone Joker project directed by Todd Phillips (The Hangover) that has approached Joaquin Phoenix to star, as well as the Suicide Squad sequel and the numerous proposed spin-offs for Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn.
– Keiynan Lonsdale will not be returning as Wally West as a series regular for Legends of Tomorrow season 4. The character returned to The Flash for the season four finale, where he met his baby half-sister Jenna, and will be around for that show’s season five premiere at least.
– “The Millionaires’ Magician,” a graphic novel about the eponymous illusionist Steve Cohen, is now available for digital download. The comic, written by Keith Champagne, with art by Peter Krause and colors by Jordie Bellaire, reimagines the Waldorf Astoria New York’s resident parlor magician as a crimefighter. A print edition will be released this fall.
– Star Wars characters Doctor Aphra, Triple Zero and BT-1 will be coming to the San Diego Comic Con in a 3.75″ action figure triple-pack. The characters were originally created by Kieron Gillen and Salvador Larroca for Marvel’s “Star Wars: Darth Vader” comic. These action figures will be available afterwards in a limited capacity at the Hasbro Toy Shop.
– Speaking of Star Wars, Disney and Lucasfilm currently stand to lose at least $50 million from Solo: A Star Wars Story. The film, which cost $250 million to make after extensive reshoots, is not expected to break even, with an expected final gross in the $400 million range. It is unknown how much the film is expected to make back through home entertainment and television, as exact terms for Disney’s deals in such areas are generally unknown. Analyst Doug Creutz of Cowen & Co. suggested the film’s underperformance may be due to poor marketing, rather than franchise fatigue.
– Grace Byers (Empire) has joined the cast of Fox’s The Gifted. She will play Reeva, a member of the Hellfire Club described as having “a soft spot for her new recruits, but [who] is still capable of extreme violence in defense of her vision.” The X-Men-inspired show returns for its second season this fall.
– A Turkish court has ordered the conditional release of cartoonist Nuri Kurtcebe. Kurtcebe, 69, was sentenced to 14 months in jail last year for drawing “insulting” cartoons of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, but had launched an appeal and remained free pending the ruling. Another court overturned the appeal, leading to Kurtcebe’s arrest this week, but a tribunal ruled last night that he be released on probation.
– An error at the National Cartoonists Society’ ceremony on May 26 resulted in the wrong nominees receiving the awards for Best Gag Writing and Editorial Cartoons. The actual respective winners of both awards were The New Yorker‘s Pat Byrnes, and Clay Bennett of the Chattanooga Times Free Press.
