Author: Simon Andrews

With filming completed, and only a mere two months left until it finally arrives on our screens, it seemed improbable that the upcoming ‘Punisher’ show would have any significant announcements left to make. The awesome teaser trailer that landed this week alongside ‘The Defenders’ perfectly set the dark and brooding tone for the series, but it seems the makers still aren’t finished yet with the big reveals. EW are reporting that Iranian actress Shohreh Aghdashloo has joined the project in the recurring role of Farah Madani. Farah is the mother of Dinah Madani (played by Amber Rose Revah), a Homeland…

So what do you actually remember about the 2003 film adaptation of Daredevil? I’m guessing it’s most likely not going to be anything positive. Perhaps it’s that awkward playground flirt/fight between Matt and Elektra? Maybe Colin Farrell’s famously misjudged hammy, leering take on Bullseye? Or is it the messy fight scene in the church, completely saturated with CGI broken pipes and piles of stained glass? Allow me to set out my stall from the start. Daredevil isn’t a brilliant movie, not by any stretch of the imagination. It is however, far too easy and unfair to sit back now with…

We were recently given the first teaser trailer for Marvel’s The Punisher. It wasn’t very long and didn’t seem to offer very much. Upon re-watching it, though, I have spotted some interesting details. They’re not great quality, but they do reveal a few little things. First is a close up of actor Paul Schulze’s version of Rawlins. The trailer clearly shows that the character has a livid and visible injury to his left eye. This is faithful to the original MAX version, where Bill Rawlins wore an eyepatch to cover an old injury to his left eye. The second of…

With the amazing success that Mark Ruffalo is currently enjoying playing Bruce Banner, it’s easy to forget that this was a case of ‘third time lucky’ for the character. Despite the best efforts of Eric Bana and Ed Norton, The Incredible Hulk has historically proven a somewhat difficult product to sell to mainstream audiences in isolation. A fact that is also very true of The Punisher. Putting the hammy 1990’s Dolph Lundgren action vehicle to one side, both Tom Jane and Ray Stevenson gave the best they had to offer, but failed to win over cinema-goers with their portrayals of…

Next year sees Marvel celebrating the 10th birthday of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. That’s right, as Avengers: Infinity War finally debuts in theaters, it really will have been a whole decade of your life that’s elapsed since Robert Downey Jr. first announced to the world that he was indeed Iron Man. It’s fair to say that the MCU has wildly exceeded any of the expectations that Marvel originally had in mind for it. The vision they conceived for their franchise was revolutionary, pinning the studio’s financial future on an ambitious forward-facing blueprint which was dependent on audiences buying into talking…

If there’s one thing that those crafty devils over at Lego know how to do, it’s make themselves some money. In recent years, they’ve managed to secure contracts to produce Lego sets associated with the majority of the big movie franchises, to the degree that the hype and expectation around their summer releases is now almost as great as any accompanying teaser trailer or TV spot. Of course, they have also been known to cause no small amount of outrage and confusion amongst movie fans with the extent to which they are happy to stretch their creative vision to a…

It’s now been a full decade since ‘The Mist’ first tentatively crept onto our cinema screens (see what I did there?), so we thought we’d use said 10th anniversary as the perfect excuse to revisit the iconic horror flick to see just how it has fared since it made its original debut, and how relevant it now is in a movie market that has changed immeasurably over the intervening years. The answer, unsurprisingly, is that the film is every bit as jarring and thought-provoking as when it first arrived, and today still comfortably stands shoulder to shoulder amongst the best…

The Marvel/Netflix collaboration may have had a relatively short lifespan, but it’s certainly been an eventful one. For the first two years of its existence, it could seemingly do no wrong. The debut seasons of ‘Daredevil’ and ‘Jessica Jones’ were showered with both critical and audience praise, prior to ‘Daredevil’s’ second season pretty much setting the benchmark of how superhero television should be done. And then, the problems began. Whilst ‘Luke Cage’ was a huge success in terms of critical acclaim and viewing figures, a growing wave of criticism started to creep into the fan forums and online reviews. Switching…

If there’s one thing that Disney is most well known for, it’s for turning a profit. Much as when they purchased and reinvigorated the ailing Star Wars franchise from the hands of George Lucas, in 2010 the ‘House of Mouse’ saw the potential for the MCU and picked it up for a cool 4 billion dollars. What has followed has been a masterclass in filmmaking. Assembled in trilogies and sub-franchises, the two companies have produced an endless string of movies that are absolutely packed with talent, both in front of and behind the camera. Linked together by a flexible and…

Unless you’ve been living under the proverbial rock for the last twelve months, you should be well aware that the latest effort to breathe some badly-needed life back into the ailing ‘Predator’ franchise is currently in production. Following on from the critical car-crash that was the ‘AVP’ films, and the disappointingly tepid audience response to Robert Rodriguez’s 2010 ‘Predators’ offering, original cast member Shane Black was asked by studio execs to go away and come up with a new and inventive script for the series. Filming is currently underway on the subsequent project, which was somewhat predictably titled ‘The Predator’,…