Another week gone by, another literal ton of news to go over. Welcome to the third edition of Awesome News! This week we cover the Hugo Award and Creative Emmy Awards winners, Hailee Steinfeld joins Hawkeye, AppleTV+ launch date and price, Disney+ full launch day roster, a feature length Kung Fury is still happening, Michael Fassbender is working with Taika Waititi, and new movies from Funko Pops (yes, really) and M Night Shyamalan. No word on a collaboration between those two. Yet.

Anyway let’s get to it.

Avengers: Endgame cleans up at the Saturn Awards

The 45th Saturn Awards (decided each year by Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films) ceremony was held on Friday the 13th and Marvel cleaned up. Endgame took home 6 awards: Best Editing, Production Design, Makeup, and Special Effects, as well as Best Comic to Film Motion Picture and Best Actor in a film for Robert Downey Jr. In addition to those six Marvel also took home Best Animated Film for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Best Supporting Actor for Josh Brolin in Infinity War, and Best Performance by a Younger Actor for Tom Holland in Spider-Man: Far From Home. Quite the night for the house of mouse.

There are a ton of other deserving winners including Jordan Peele for Best Director and and Sonequa Martin-Green for Best Actress in a Streaming Presentation.

The winners were called out on twitter as they happened but the best place to see the complete list (as of this writing) is the Wikipedia page for the ceremony.

Hailee Steinfeld tapped for Marvel’s Hawkeye series

Here’s a bit of casting news I missed last week, Hailee Steinfeld has been tapped to play Kate Bishop opposite Jeremy Renner in the upcoming Hawkeye series on Disney+.

Kate Bishop is the third Hawkeye in Marvel Comics and will be the second in the MCU. Steinfeld is a great actor and this is great news for the series. Who knows, if it goes well maybe these series will actually lead to movies for the characters. Hawkeye is currently scheduled for a 2121 debut on Disney+.

(source: Variety)

AppleTV+ Launches 1st November

Speaking of new streaming services , the service is set to launch on 1st November at a price of $5.99 CAD/month. They’re also giving away a year for free if you buy a new Apple device, but no word on if that’s a one time thing or if you can keep re-upping it when you make your nearly Apple purchase. It’s not launching with a ton of content, but it is launching at the lowest price of any of the streaming services, so that’s something.

(source: Apple)

Here’s the full Disney+ day one lineup

Unless you’re living under a rock you know that Disney’s continued cultural dominance will.. uh… continue this year with the launch of their new streaming service, Disney+.

We already know that it will be launching on 12th November for $8.99 CAD per month, and now thanks to Attractions Magazine we know everything that will be on the North American site[1] day one.

Check out the full list over at Attractions Magazine now.

[1]: I think it’s North American, anyway. I assume they’ve locked up the rights to their stuff but that can be a minefield up here in the Frozen North.

Speaking of death by 1000 cuts, NBC Universal is launching a streaming service

It’s going to be called Peacock and they’re rebooting Saved by the Bell, Battlestar Galactica, and The Office, apparently. Look I don’t want to go to in depth on this because up here in Canada we’ll probably get all this content via CTV and Craved, but remember when streaming was supposed to be the way forward and away from the cost of a cable bill? Fun memories.

(source: The Hollywood Reporter)

They’re still making that Kung Fury feature length movie and Arnold Schwarzenegger is in it.

If you’ve never seen it Kung Fury is a short film about a hot shot police detective who is simultaneously struck by lightening and bitten by a cobra while trying to arrest a ninja and gains the power of kung fu. Yes, it’s ridiculous and fun. Anyway, they’re making into a movie (apparently with Michael Fassbender) and Arnold Schwarzenegger is apparently playing the president.

Which makes sense, to be honest. Anyway, Arnold posted about it on Twitter:

Michael Fassbender in talks for Taika Waititi’s Next Goal Wins

Taika Waititi has a bunch of exciting projects on the horizon and Michael Fassbender is the running for his next one.

Next Goal Wins is based on a 2014 documentary of the same name that follows American Samoa National Football Tea and their coach, Thomas Rongen, as they try to qualify for the FIFA World Cup. I’m betting that Fassbender is after the role of Rongen and the team will be made up of indigenous actors from American Samoa. Still early days but talented actors in talks for the kinds of happy-sad dramedies that Waititi makes for exciting news. Next Goal Wins is due after Jojo Rabbit and before Thor: Love & Thunder. Production starts this fall presumably for a later 2020 or early 2121 release.

(source: The Hollywood Reporter)

M Night Shyamalan is making two more movies with Universal and that’s a good thing

I find M Night Shyamalan to be a pretty inconsistent filmmaker, some of his work I like (most recently Split) and some of it I don’t (most recently Glass). His work is always personal and weird and interesting though even when I don’t like it. He’s working stuff out through art. I dig that.

It was announced Monday that he has two movies set for release with Universal, one in February 2021 and another in February 2023. Love him or hate him, his movies make money and they’ve been cheap to make lately (The Visit, Split, and Glass cost $35 million to make –combined– and made more than $600 million).

There’s no other news on this one, the films don’t even have titles yet, but it’s good news he’s making them.

(source: Variety)

They’re making a Funko Pops movie because of course they are

Long after the bombs fall or the ice caps melt and the food supplies fail and we live in a post apocalyptic world where the only currency is Tony figurines of pop culture icons whose names and deeds are lost to the ancient histories of our forebears, there will also now also be a movie we treat as the gospel.

Yes, Warner Animation is making a Funko Pops movie.

Look, I don’t really get this? At least lego has a long history of creativity and imagination. Funko Pops are tiny plastic statues of characters we like. I’m of the opinion that you can make a good movie out of anything but I don’t see a path for this here because all Funko Popss do is sit on your shelf. Usually in a box. Usually along side a ton of other Funko Pops. ….so maybe it’s a jail break movie…

Anyway, no word on a release date or anything yet but rest assured we will be bombarded with marketing when the time comes, and that marketing will become the basis of our new religion.

(source: Deadline)

Creative Emmy Awards

It’s Emmy season! The first part of their annual awards were this past weekend and there are a host of great wins to celebrate (Bradley Whitford won for his guest role on The Handmaids Tale and so did Jane Lynch for her guest role on Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) but I’d like to highlight Canadian born actor Luke Kirby, who won for his guest role as Lenny Bruce on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. If you’re not watching the show you’re missing out in general but he steals literally every scene that he’s in playing the troubled comic. Congratulations to Mr. Kirby, always great to see Canadians bringing home the gold!

A full list of winners is available on the Emmy website and the main night of awards is this weekend.

More Great Stuff From Around the Web

Here are a few more links I thought you might like this week:

• Matt Singer ranks the 50 best Criterion covers for ScreenCrush.com (link)
• Fantastic Fest is about to start up in Austin, TX and Slashfilm has a list of the 86 most essential films from the festival from the last 15 years. (link)
• The crew at BirthMoviesDeath are also recalling their favourite Fantastic Fest movies from the last 15 years (link)
• This interview by Bilge Ebiri with Antonio Banderas for the New Yorker is just great (link)
• This profile of Constance Wu by Jiayang Fan, also for the New Yorker, is also great (link)

The End

It has been another eventful week for news! I’m trying to keep a slightly Canadian twist on things these days, have you guys noticed that? Do you like it if you did? Let me know!

Also, as always, please consider supporting the generation of this sweet, delicious content. It does take time and effort to do and I would greatly appreciate the, er, support. Thanks.