Ernie Hudson Making A Cameo in Paul Feig's Ghostbusters

As the film wraps shooting

He might not have been fully supportive of the idea of the new Ghostbusters when it was originally announced, but Ernie “Winston Zeddemore” Hudson changed his mind and has now thrown his weight behind – and into – Paul Feig’s version of the story, showing up on set to cameo on the last day of shooting. 

No information has been released as to whether he’s playing Winston again, though we doubt it since fellow former ‘busters Dan Aykroyd and Bill Murray have also cropped up on set, neither of whom playing their original characters. Maybe they’re going meta and he plays Leslie Jones’ disapproving father, who comes around to the idea once he sees the new Ghostbusters in action. 

It's a wrap on Ghostbusters!!! http://pic.twitter.com/gzQFRrLUYU

— Paul Feig (@paulfeig) September 19, 2015

Feig’s film, which features Jones, Kate McKinnon, Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy as four women who go into the paranormal elimination business, are laughed at, then triumph when their theories about a rising level of spectral nuisances in New York are proved correct, now counts all three of the surviving Ghostbusters for cameo appearances, at least during shooting. Whether they make it into the final cut is another matter.

With a script by Feig and Katie Dippold and Chris Hemsworth, Michael Kenneth Williams, Andy Garcia, Nate Corddry, Cecily Strong, Matt Walsh and Neil Casey in the cast, the new Ghostbusters will bring its neutron wands to bear on our screens on July 15 next year. 

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Brie Larson Will Be Billie Jean King

Opposite Steve Carell's Bobby Riggs in Battle Of The Sexes

Back In April, it was announced that Steve Carell would be up against former on-screen daughter Emma Stone in tennis pic Battle Of The Sexes. A date change means Stone can’t now take part, but Carell won’t have to hit tennis balls against a wall – he’s now facing Brie Larson. 

The film, which boasts a script by Simon Beaufoy, will chronicle the rivalry between former tennis pro Bobby Riggs and his 29-year-old opponent Billie Jean King (Larson), who hit the court for a legendary match in 1973 that – it was claimed – would establish if a female pro could ever beat a male in the sport. The event drew a huge audience of more than 50 million Americans, eager to see who would triumph.

Little Miss Sunshine directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris are calling the shots (and the points) for this one, which will itself be competing with project from HBO (Proof, with Paul Giamatti and Elizabeth Banks playing the real-life tennis pros) and Match Maker, which boasts Will Ferrell as Riggs, but lacks a King for now).

It’s just the latest project for Larson, who is drawing awards talk for Room (arriving here January 29), will also be seen in Ben Wheatley’s Free Fire and is headed on an exploratory voyage in Kong: Skull Island, which starts shooting later this year. 

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Kristen Bell Recruited For The CHiPs Film

She'll appear in the cop comedy

With Dax Shepard announced as writer, director and star of a cinematic take on cult cop action show CHiPs, we put out a quiet call to the universe for his wife, Kristen Bell to join him. Whaddya know? The universe heard us! Or… Dax just decided it was easier to cast from within his family.

Yes, Bell has boarded the film, which finds Shepherd as Office John Baker, who, along with fellow police biker Frank “Ponch” Poncherello (Michael Pena), must keep the highways and byways free of crime. Which won’t be easy when you’ve got Vincent D’Onofrio as the main villain of the story. 

Adam Brody and Rosa Salazar are also signed on for the movie, which adapts the series that ran between 1977 and 1983 in the States. Shepard is gearing up to shoot soon for Warner Bros.

Bell most recently worked on Melissa McCarthy comedy The Boss (formerly known as Michelle Darnell) and also reprised her role as Anna for the Frozen short Frozen Fever which played before Cinderella this year. 

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Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials Is Hot At The US Box Office

Black Mass gangs up in second

While critics largely took the side of W.C.K.D. and gave the heroes of Maze Runner Sequel The Scorch Trials a bit of a roasting, the second film based on James Dashner’s YA book series was fleet enough to register with audiences and walk away with the top spot this weekend and $30.3 million, according to studio estimates. 

Adding in earnings elsewhere, the movie has now made more than $108.3 million globally, even if it opened domestically lower than last year’s official effort, which made $32.5 million. So the franchise appears to have a level, which is something for the planned third film, The Death Cure, to aim for in 2017.

Second place went to Johnny Depp’s latest, Black Mass, with the actor playing notorious real-life Boston gangster Whitey Bulger. Depp could use a hit after the likes of Transcendence and Mortdecai, and Black Mass is doing decent business, opening with $23.3 million. The two new arrivals pushed M. Night Shyamalan’s low-budget horror comedy thriller The Visit to third place, with the film earning an additional $11.3 million for $42.3 million so far. That’s still a better second week than last weekend’s champ, The Perfect Guy, which slipped to fourth and $9.6 million. Rounding out the top five was new arrival Everest, not exactly scaling the heights and pulling in just $7.5 million. But that was on a more limited release platform of 545 screens, so there’s always a chance a wider release will help boost matters. 

Sixth was faith-based drama War Room, earning $6.2 million, ahead of A Walk In The Woods in seventh with $2.7 million. Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation was down to eighth and $2.2 million, while Straight Outta Compton fell to ninth with $1.9 million. 10th place went to new drama Captive, which launched on 806 screens, but took in just $1.4 million.

To see Dylan O’Brien and the Maze Runner gang outrun Johnny Depp in the full chart listings, head to Box Office Mojo.

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Latest Trailer For The Last Witch Hunter

Vin Diesel will be the dream warrior

Existence must suck if you manage to defeat your mortal enemy, only for her to curse you at the last second with everlasting life, which means watching those you love die around you and have to survive through the changing nature of society. That’s part of the conundrum in The Last Witch Hunter, conjuring up its latest trailer below. 

The movie, directed by Breck Eisner, finds Diesel as such an immortal warrior, named Kaulder, who ends up in present-day New York having to face down a powerful witch queen intent on unleashing a terrible plague that could wipe out the human race. 

His chief ally in the fight, however, is a female witch (Game Of Thrones’ Rose Leslie), who teams up with him to help take down the rising evil – or as she's described rather hyperbolically here as “beyond good and beyond evil”.  Leslie's Chloe is a “Dream Walker” who can cross between our world and the magical realm of the witches, a handy talent that Diesel’s Kaulder must exploit to put a stop to the queen’s dastardly plan. But he’d better not die there, or it’s curtains for him and the rest of us in back in the real world.

Elijah Wood, meanwhile, plays a young priest who is sworn to help Diesel in his struggle, with Julie Engelbrecht as the main villain and Michael Caine and Ólafur Darri Ólafsson aboard. The film’s out in the UK from October 21. 

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Francis Lawrence Heads To Neverwhere

A new adaptation of Neil Gaiman's story

Neil Gaiman fans who know Neverwhere probably break down into two groups, roughly by age: those who were introduced to the stories by the not-so-satisfying (but fondly remembered) 1996 BBC TV version and novel and the more recent Radio 4 dramatization. Hunger Games regular director Francis Lawrence is looking to add a third group, those who know a planned new drama series. 

Lawrence is aboard to help develop the new telly take with the Mark Gordon Company, working up a fresh version of the adventures of Door and Richard Mayhew, which kicks off when the latter is drawn into a struggle for the control of the mysterious, hidden netherworld above, below and on the streets of London.

Assuming it goes ahead, Lawrence will handle directorial chores on that series and one other, as he’s also part of a deal to bring a show based on Charles Belfoure’s novel House Of Thieves to screens. Belfoure’s book follows architect John Cross in 1886 New York, who has to step in when his wayward son gets in deep with gambling debts. Cross, needing a lot of money to pay his sprog’s creditors back, uses his insider knowledge of wealthy mansions and museums to try to pull off a robbery even the best detectives can’t solve. Unfortunately for him, those skills also make him invaluable to the Kent’s Gents, the gang that his son owed money too, and he’s launched on a new life of thievery that could destroy him with one mistake… 

Both series will be developed with the hopes that some channel will pick them up. We’d definitely like to see Neverwhere produced with a decent budget, though we’d be more than happy if they recruit Patterson Joseph to recreate his Marquis De Carabas. If it goes ahead, Neverwhere joins several Gaiman projects in development at companies, including American Gods, which Hannibal’s Bryan Fuller is working on for Starz. 

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Orange Is The New Black's Ruby Rose Joins Final Resident Evil

Iain Glen and Shawn Roberts return for more zombie madness

History will attest as to whether 2017’s Resident Evil: The Final Chapter truly was the last entry in the franchise (it’s not like horror movie series don’t have form announcing themselves as the last midway through the run), but the new one has certainly been locking down its cast with production underway. A mix of new and returning faces are aboard including Orange Is The New Black’s Ruby Rose, Eoin Macken, William Levy, Fraser James and Japanese model/TV personality Rola.

Milla Jovovich is naturally back as Alice, with fellow veterans Iain Glen (Dr. Isaacs) and Shawn Roberts (Albert Wesker) back and Ali Larter also in place.

The new film, somewhat understandably, picks up right from the end of Retribution, with humanity facing its final fight after Alice is betrayed by the sneaky Wesker in Washington D.C. She’ll have to go back to where it all began – Raccoon City – to take on the might of the Umbrella Corporation’s forces and rallying the last of the survivors of the viral apocalypse. Oblivion, chaos, battles and kittens are all promised. Well, maybe not kittens. Zombie kittens, perhaps? 

With Paul W.S. Anderson once more writing and directing, The Final Chapter should invade our screens on February 24, 2017. 

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