Turns out 'Solar Opposites' never needed Justin Roiland

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Hulu dropped the fourth season of Solar Opposites this week, the first run of episodes without series creator Justin Roiland. Dan Stevens was revealed as the new voice of Korvo, the leader of the show’s Shlorpian family unit, a few months ago, but besides a quick clip, it was unclear how the Roiland/Stevens swap would affect the show.

Turns out, Solar Opposites never needed Roiland.

After a few minutes of Season 4’s first episode, I totally forgot that Stevens hadn’t always been the voice of Korvo. In fact, after finishing the season, I even suggested to Caitlin that Solar Episodes was better with Stevens.

Instead of the burpy, sputtering version of Korvo that really wasn’t all that different from how Roiland voiced Rick Sanchez on Rick and Morty, Korvo was now his own, distinct — sexy? — character.

On the topic of Rick and Morty, we still don’t know how that show will handle the recasting of the countless characters — Rick and Morty included — that Roiland voiced. The show’s Twitter account teased a Season 7 release date reveal this week with a series of clips focused on the battle between Rick and Rick Prime. (The end of Season 6 has the show moving in a new direction.) The only dialogue in the teaser was of Roiland voicing Rick.

Will Rick and Morty make a bold recasting like Stevens playing Rick and Morty? (And Mr. Poopybutthole, Mr. Meeseeks, Noob Noob, Ants-In-My-Eyes Johnson …) Decider’s Alex Zalben joked that Rick and Morty should get Stevens to replace Roiland too.

Maybe Solar Opposites had more leeway when it came to picking a new voicer actor for Korvo. The show, while in its fourth season, doesn’t hold the same cult status as Rick and Morty. There’s not an entire YouTube genre of people posting their impressions of the show’s main characters.

With Season 7 getting closer, it’s only a matter of time before Rick and Morty reveals how its title characters now sound.

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• The News: Godzilla and Apple TV+, Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman claims
• Trailer Watch: Maestro
• What to Watch: Blue Beetle
• Odds and Ends: Making Mutant Mayhem, Hayden Christensen and Ahsoka

Godzilla returns on Apple TV+

Despite what Godzilla vs. Kong led you to believe, Godzilla is the undisputed king of monsters. In addition to his massive size (which Godzilla vs. Kong had to scale up Kong to match), he has atomic breath (which Godzilla vs. Kong had to give Kong a magical ax to combat). Unless you’re Ghidorah, you’re not going to stand a chance against Godzilla. Sorry, Kong.

Anyways, Legendary Studios is bringing its Monsterverse to Apple TV+ in the form of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. The series will pick up after Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla reboot and explore not only the aftermath of the destruction of San Francisco but also jump back in time to the early days of Monarch, the titan-obsessed secret group.

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters will star Kurt Russell, Wyatt Russell (playing a younger version of Kurt Russell’s character), Anna Sawai, Kiersey Clemons, Ren Watabe, Mari Yamamoto, Anders Holm, Joe Tippett and Elisa Lasowski.

Matt Shakman, the prolific television director who helmed every episode of WandaVision and will direct Marvel Studios’ upcoming Fantastic Four reboot, will be behind the camera for a few episodes.

The series will run for ten episodes, but we don’t have a release date or trailer yet.

What’s up with Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman claims?

Since James Gunn and Peter Safran took the reins of DC Studios and news broke that director Patty Jenkins was no longer moving forward with a third Wonder Woman movie, it was safe to assume that Gal Gadot — like Ben Affleck and Henry Cavill — was done playing her DCEU role.

Gadot threw a wrench in things over the past few weeks, telling ComicBook.com that “from what I heard from James and from Peter is that we're gonna develop a Wonder Woman 3 together.”

So Gunn and Safran were going to keep an established actor in a major role while rebooting everything? The DCEU-to-DC Studios reboot hasn’t been the most conventional reboot, with films from the former era like The Flash and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom still hitting theaters, so maybe Gadot would stick around.

Not so fast, according to Variety.

According to the sources, a third Wonder Woman film is not in development at DC Studios nor do Gunn and Safran have plans at this time for any Wonder Woman project in the new DC Universe other than their previously announced Paradise Lost prequel series for Max.

Variety also points out that Gadot told Flaunt Magazine that she “was invited to a meeting with James Gunn and Peter Safran, and what they told me, and I’m quoting: ‘You’re in the best hands. We’re going to develop Wonder Woman 3 with you. [We] love you as Wonder Woman— you’ve got nothing to worry about.’ So time will tell.”

That also doesn’t sync up with what sources have told Variety.

The sources added to Variety that nothing was ever promised to Gadot regarding Wonder Woman 3, nor was there any definitive discussion of Gadot’s Wonder Woman continuing with the new DC Universe. Gunn and Safran gave a presentation at the start of the year unveiling the first titles in their new DC Universe, including Superman: Legacy, and they continue to be laser focused on these new films.

Huh. What’s the game here? Did Gunn and Safran really tell Gadot that she was still Wonder Woman and they planned to make another film with her? Did she misunderstand a conversation? Or is this a Dwyane Johnson-esque power move, where you just keep throwing bullshit at the wall and hope that through the power of repetition, you can make something a reality? I mean, it almost worked for him with Black Adam and Cavill as Superman …

First look at Please Don’t Destroy’s movie

We finally have some info on the long-in-the-works movie from Saturday Night Live’s Please Don’t Destroy trio. Thanks to an Entertainment Weekly feature, we now know that the Peacock movie is titled Please Don't Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain and will be about Martin Herlihy, John Higgins and Ben Marshall playing “loose versions of themselves, three childhood BFFs who live and work together at the nearby outdoor supply store. But one day they realize that a mysterious compass they stumbled upon as kids might lead them to a local legend: a priceless golden bust of Marie Antoinette, which is rumored to be buried in the nearby forest.”

The film cast also features Bowen Yang and Conan O’Brien.

Quick hits

• Billy Cranston morphs again. EW broke the news on Thursday that Billy Yost will return as his iconic Blue Ranger character in the upcoming Power Rangers Cosmic Fury season.
• Has The Last of Us found its Abby? Showrunner Craig Mazin teased to The Hollywood Reporter that they’ve “maybe” found the actress to play The Last of Us Part II’s major character.

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Maestro

After the first trailer for Maestro debuted, all social media could talk about is the fake nose star and director Bradley Cooper is wearing to play Leonard Bernstein. Bernstein’s children even had to release a statement on the subject. “It happens to be true that Leonard Bernstein had a nice, big nose,” they said (via The New York Times). “Bradley chose to use makeup to amplify his resemblance, and we’re perfectly fine with that. We’re also certain that our dad would have been fine with it as well.”

Maestro opens on Nov. 22 and premieres on Netflix on Dec. 20.

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• How HGTV’s Barbie Dreamhouse Challenge Became a Neighborhood Nightmare (Claire McNear, The Ringer)
• The 50 Worst Decisions in TV History (Andy Greene, Rolling Stone)
• Bring Back the Hack (Sam Adams, Slate)
• It’s time to rethink our relationships with streaming services (Charles Pulliam-Moore, The Verge)
• Inside the Oppenheimer Imax 70mm Craze: Fans Crossing State Lines, the Search for New Projectors and More (Ethan Shanfeld, Variety)
• Oppenheimer doesn’t show us Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That’s an act of rigor, not erasure (Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times)

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Blue Beetle

Blue Beetle is are superhero movie from Warner Bros. that’s getting very positive reviews (an 81 percent on Rotten Tomatoes!) and seems to be a fun film. It’s also allegedly a franchise that’s going to survive Gunn and Safran’s reboot for DC Studios. Will we see Xolo Maridueña’s Blue Beetle as part of a future team with Superman and Batman a few years from now?

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Making Mutant Mayhem

I’m likely going to have to catch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem when it hits streaming, but I love seeing how this movie came together. Between this, the Spider-Verse films and one-off projects like The Mitchells vs. the Machines, it’s been great seeing new styles of animation break through the Disney/Pixar/DreamWorks visuals that have dominated the era of computer-generated animation.

Hayden Christensen returns for Ahsoka promo

We’re likely going to see Hayden Christensen in some form — Force Ghost? flashback? — in Ahsoka, and a new promo for the upcoming Disney+ series gave us a snippet of Christensen not only reciting some Clone Wars era lines but also saying Ahsoka’s name. Pretty sure this is the first time in Star Wars history the live-action Anakin Skywalker has done so.

Blending Hayden Christensen and James Earl Jones

Speaking of Christensen, Variety published a video looking at how the Obi-Wan Kenobi crew brought a broken Darth Vader to life using both his and James Earl Jones’ voices. I know Kenobi was a bit disappointing on some fronts, but this moment made the entire show worth it.

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