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"The Matrix Resurrections grossed $40.5 million in the United States and Canada, and $118.7 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $159.2 million against a budget of $190 million."

So the last Matrix movie grossed just $40.5 million in the U.S.? I didn't realize (or simply forgot) it did that bad, but alright. Did "Resurrections" do very well on home media/HBO Max or something? If Matrix had a pretty decent merchandising machine behind it with toys, and shirts (ect) I guess I could somewhat understand the thinking here, but there's really nothing to speak of on that front either. That machine came and went back in 2003.

As for another Matrix? Ehhh ... F it. Why not? lol Despite this being a 'curious' project Warners wants to financially explore, and MR being incredibly dull, it's not something I would be completely uninterested in (damn my nostalgia). The budget sincerely needs to be adjusted though. Severely.

I guess not all hope is lost with Keaton and "Batman Beyond" with Warners after all if something like this is being advanced. 

Hope they have a TPB collection that includes the alternate #428. Every comic shop I went to was either sold out or didn't carry it. Wasn't about to go out of my way for a single issue.

I had to settle for a 2nd printing, but yeah, hopefully the trade includes that alt #428 as well. It would make all the sense in the world to include it.

Going back even further, here's a 1995 fan casting for a JLA movie by Wizard Magazine.




While the Lex Luger, and Arsenio Hall castings are very amusing, some of these castings are pretty legit for their time. A 1990's William Sadler as Reverse Flash isn't a bad idea at all really. Especially when you think about his villainous role in "Die Hard 2". Bruce Campbell as Hal Jordon would've been anything but wooden. Can't say I'm familiar with Rachel McLish, as I never followed female bodybuilding, but that's not a bad photo to be perfectly honest here, and visually speaking, you could do a lot worse with casting Wonder Woman (I remember essentially thinking the same with Megan Gale being temporarily cast as Wondy for George Miller's cancelled JL movie).

FLASHBACK 1999:

Wizard Magazine article on what was being talked about thru the grapevine about the casting of the-then upcoming "X-Men" movie.

QUICK SPOILER REVIEW

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Checked out "GxK New Empire" the other day, and it's overall a fun film that fully embraces some of the outright and comedic absurdity from the Godzilla Showa era. The human element is even more scaled back from GvK, and much of the focus is decidedly on Kong and Godzilla. Once again, it's much more of a Kong focused movie, with Godzilla bits here and there until the final battle. As far as the villain goes, the Skar King is alright and pretty much to the point. There's no sympathetic or understanding quality about him, as he is simply evil and it's very much black and white. Shimo, I was a little bit disappointed with as it's revealed this monster is kinda like Titanosaurus from "Terror of Mechagodzilla" and being manipulated by Skar King. Sure, it's a twist, but for me takes away a little bit from the final battle as Shimo isn't quite as a dominating force as I would have preferred him to be. I've read someone say that Skar King is essentially the Million Dollar Man Ted Debiase to Shimo's Andre the Giant, and that's apt I think (making Kong and Godzilla the Mega Powers basically).

For me, the rematch fight between Kong and Godzilla was very much the highlight of the entire film. With Godzilla performing a Goldberg-like spear to Kong right into a pyramid, Kong doing his best Bully Maguire and putting some dirt in Godzilla's eye, some ground and pound by Kong, and seeing Godzilla literally suplex Kong was absolutely hysterical. The addition of Mothra returning was pretty cool as well.

I wouldn't say I liked GxK, as much as I did GvK, but the Monsterverse continues to very much lean into being a modern day Showa universe that's primarily focused on spectacle. Where does it go from here? Welp, there's a Xilien UFO easter egg, so a alien invasion wouldn't be all that surprising at this stage since the hollow earth got focused upon much more so in this film.

7 or 8 out of 10.

Also, I love this gif. 

Wizard Magazine's B&R "Calling All Heroes" contest scans from 1997.

1981 advertisement for the original "Halloween" premiere on NBC. Coinciding with the theatrical release of "Halloween II".

Someone needs to give their gaydar a rest for once. Sounds like the same type of person who would blog about the notion that Bucky Barnes and Steve Rogers are definitely in love with one another. I mean, one of Captain America's main objectives was driven by Bucky in the MCU. By trying to find and save him. Which is telling, right? Obviously they are gay! A platonic relationship that is affectionate, empathetic, but not sexual, simply doesn't and shouldn't exist in todays world. Is this critic associated with slate.com by any chance?

Plus, let's get real. If this movie actually took the step of literally taking the cuties route with no F's given, it's RT. That would have resulted in automatically alleviating the severe cases of red*ss among critics about the 2016 flick getting canned, and the critic score would undoubtedly be much higher, don'tcha think? Why would they hold back? They love that underage stuff. Mainstream audiences? Yeah, not so much, and for good reason. The dichotomy between the scores is more indicative to me that most people are simply not seeing what this critic is apparently seeing as an absolute. Maybe a lot of us watched a edited cut? Nah, probably not.

On the topic that the original Ghostbusters should have been focused upon in a new set of films, that we can agree on. It's one of those situations where you just know there was much more to explore with the original cast, but the years of developmental hell, Bill Murray, and unfortunately, Harold Ramis passing away really took the oomph away from what that could have been like. The fact that Sony willed the 2016 crap into existence really did a lot of damage to the overall brand. Hell, I have a Ghostbusters logo t-shirt, and stopped wearing it because I literally didn't want to give anyone the notion that I was a fan of what was then the 'current' ill-conceived iteration. Also, as I've stated before, I'm thankful for "GB Afterlife", as in no world would I want what we got in 2016 to be the ultimate bookend with "Ghostbusters" in the title. If "Afterlife" succeeded in any way by making the 2016 failure a distant memory for the new generation, sweeping it right into the dust bin of history, in addition to getting the bad taste out of everyone's mouth of which the franchise was left in, then, yes, it ultimately did it's job.

Batman 1943 gets a shout out with Lewis Wilson getting a name drop.