New Orleans Saints head coach Sean Payton is getting the Netflix treatment.

NBC Sports’ Peter King revealed in his “Football Morning in America” column Monday that the streaming platform is making a movie about Payton’s time coaching his son’s sixth-grade football team in 2012, when he was suspended from the league for his role in the bounty scandal. The movie is called “Home Team,” and we also know who will be playing Payton in the movie: Kevin James. 

Yes, Kevin James of the TV show “King of Queens,” and movies like “Grown Ups,” “Pixels” and “Paul Blart: Mall Cop.” James and Payton look … kind of similar? A little bit? 

Well, there’s at least a passing resemblance. Perhaps this fact explains James’ casting a little more: the movie is being produced by Happy Madison Productions, which is Adam Sandler’s production company. Happy Madison has produced eight movies James has starred or appeared in, including some of his biggest hits. 

The movie is based on a true story

This plot of the movie feels like a Hollywood creation, right? A big name head coach spends a year reevaluating his life and coaching his young son’s football team while he’s serving a suspension for one of the NFL’s most notorious scandals.

But it’s true. When Payton was suspended, he served as the offensive coach for his son’s football team at Liberty Christian in Argyle, Texas. (That’s the same school where former Dallas Cowboys tight end Jason Witten was recently named head coach.) Payton talked about it in a 2019 Sports Illustrated interview, and mentioned how he wrote original plays for the team and used his NFL playbook as a basis for other plays. 

The story might be true, but there will likely be a lot of liberties taken with the actual content. You don’t cast Kevin James in a movie just to watch him get up, go to practice, coach his son’s team, drive home, have dinner with his family, and go to sleep. That’s normal person stuff. 

You cast James because he’s funny and a gifted physical comedian. James does a lot of falling down and running into things in his movies, and it doesn’t seem like Payton does any of that. Or if he does, it’s probably not Kevin James-level funny. The big plot points will probably remain true to life — according to King, Payton recently read the script and made a few corrections before sending it back — but we can assume we’ll see some comedic set pieces that are likely made up. 

The movie doesn’t have a release date yet, but filming is expected to start sometime this year. Hopefully it goes quickly, because Kevin James playing Sean Payton in a movie is something the world deserves to see as soon as possible.

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However, he questioned the storyline, writing: “It’s all extremely entertaining, although I do have to say that in these snowflakey days of emotional correctness and respect for animals, this movie rather fudges the whole question of Cruella actually wanting, now or in the future, to kill Dalmatians for their skins.”

BROCKTON, Mass. —

Work on a Netflix movie being filmed in Massachusetts was halted Friday after actress Jennifer Lawrence was injured on the set in Brockton.

Lawrence was hurt when shattered glass hit her eye while filming an explosion scene Thursday night. Her injury was first reported by Page Six and confirmed by a source to NewsCenter 5.

We are told she will be OK.

Photos from the Brockton Enterprise show Lawrence was working in the city with actor Timothee Chalamet on Main Street prior to the incident.

The production was expected to continue in Brockton Friday.

Lawrence, Leonardo DiCaprio and other Hollywood stars are here working on a comedy called “Don’t Look Up,” which is expected to be released later this year.

The movie is written and directed by Adam McKay, who wrote “The Big Short” and “Ant-Man.” A synopsis of the plot says the film is about a pair of astronomers who are trying to warn everyone about impending doom from an incoming meteorite.

The production has previously been spotted in Framingham, Fort Point, near South Station, at the Wheaton College campus in Norton and Battleship Cove in Fall River.

Other A-listers on the cast, according to IMDB, include Cate Blanchett, Meryl Streep, Jonah Hill, Matthew Perry, Ariana Grande and Tyler Perry.

Warner Bros.’ latest Mortal Kombat movie has driven the US’s biggest box office weekend since the start of the pandemic.

According to figures published by Deadline, the video game adaptation generated some $22.5m, which marks the biggest R-rated opening to date during the Covid-19 pandemic.

When combined with Funimation’s Demon Slayer, which also debuted in the US, $52.9m was generated during the weekend, which represents a 180% increase over the previous period and the biggest overall weekend since mid-March last year.

Around 60 percent of US theaters are said to be open currently, while Warner Bros. is also releasing its 2021 movies – including Mortal Kombat – on its HBO Max streaming service.

Mortal Kombat’s performance has reportedly exceeded the expectations of Warner Bros., which was reportedly anticipating first-weekend revenue in the region of $15m.

“New Line once again far exceeded expectations and brought a movie that wowed fans general audiences,” said its domestic distribution boss Jeff Goldstein in a statement.

Mortal Kombat 2021 is helmed by Simon McQuoid, making his feature directorial debut, and produced by James Wan (Aquaman), Todd Garner (Into the Storm), E. Bennett Walsh (The Amazing Spider-Man 2) and McQuoid.

further reading

While it was poorly received by critics, the original Mortal Kombat movie grossed over $120 million worldwide following its release in 1995. Its sequel, 1997’s Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, grossed $50 million.

The Mortal Kombat video game franchise launched in 1992. According to co-creator Ed Boon, it had sold some 46 million units prior to the release of the most recent series entry, April 2019’s Mortal Kombat 11. And Boon said in October 2020 that Mortal Kombat 11 had sold eight million copies.

All information carried by the Yonhap News Agency, including articles, photographs, graphics, audio and video images, and illustrations (collectively, the content) is owned by the Yonhap News Agency.

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It is official: Michael Keaton is reprising his role as Batman/Bruce Wayne in the upcoming movie “The Flash.”  

According to The Wrap, Keaton’s talent agency, ICM Partners, confirmed his participation in the Andrés Muschietti-directed DC Comics superhero film.

Muschietti confirmed production kicked off in London on Monday in an Instagram post. Keaton first played the Caped Crusader in Tim Burton’s 1989 hit “Batman,” and then again in the 1992 film “Batman Returns.”

Ezra Miller is set to reprise his role as Barry Allen/The Flash. Fans were introduced to him in “Justice League” in 2017. Sasha Calle, best known from “The Young and the Restless,” will play Supergirl.

MICHAEL KEATON IN TALKS TO RETURN AS BATMAN IN UPCOMING ‘THE FLASH’ MOVIE: REPORT

Back in December, Keaton, 69, sent fans into a frenzy when he told Deadline he was concerned about COVID-19 safety and said he may not do the movie. 

Michael Keaton on the set of ‘Batman.’
(Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images)

“To be honest with you, you know what worries me more than anything about all this stuff? It’s COVID,” Keaton said at the time. “I’m more concerned. I keep my eye more on the COVID situation in the U.K. than anything. That will determine everything, and so that’s why I’m living outside the city here on 17 acres, staying away from everybody, because the COVID thing has got me really concerned. So, that’s my first thing about all projects. I look at it and go, is this thing going to kill me, literally? And you know, if it doesn’t, then we talk.”

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Per The Wrap, “The Flash” movie will be introducing fans to the “idea of the multiverse, one of the core concepts underpinning DC Comics,” and will allow “several different versions of the same characters to simultaneously exist and, occasionally, interact.”

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Keaton’s version of Batman reportedly will not affect Matt Reeves’ movie “The Batman,” starring Robert Pattinson, which is also filming in the UK. 

“The Flash” is slated to be released on Nov. 4, 2022.

Before we delve into Jo Sung-hee’s Space Sweepers, which is now streaming on Netflix, we need to first talk about an epidemic (of sorts) in the film industries across the globe. It’s this tendency to make a film designed to seem ‘global’, in a manner where the production seems to be merely ticking boxes off. Indian character in a South Korean film – check. There seems no real thought into planting the character, except for peddling the notion of a ‘universal entertainer’. We’ve seen similar examples in recent times, where a Sanjay Dutt agrees to a ‘cameo’ in a Kannada film like KGF, Nagarjuna playing a character in Ayan Mukerji’s Brahmastra, or even Priyanka Chopra starring as the ‘Indian connect’ in Hollywood films like We Can Be Heroes. In a bid to appease most significant demographic of movie-goers, the choices seem triggered by dollar-hungry corporations, undermining the very ‘cause’ it claims to be fighting for.

Space Sweepers could have tried being an ‘authentic’ Korean film, set in space. But its English-speaking villain, in the garb of a ‘crossover film’ meant to represent the Korean film industry on the world stage, comes off as a ploy to leverage on the thriving K-pop culture in the West. 

The year is 2092, and the film begins with visuals of a completely ravaged planet earth. People are walking around wearing masks, and the world seems to be engulfed in dust. Space Sweepers is also the kind of film that supplements these visuals with a voice-over that says something to the effect of ‘All hope was lost…’ – something Ryan Reynolds might (unless he already has) parody in Deadpool. 

On the surface, Jo Sung-hee’s film seems like the poorer, less-funnier, and an infinitely more derivative cousin of James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy films or a generic Michael Bay film set in space. Four ‘space sweepers’ — Tae Ho (Song Joong-ki), Captain Jang (Kim Tae-ri), Mr Park (Jin Seon-kyu) and a funny android, Bubs (voiced by Yoo Hae-jin) — are barely making ends meet by chasing debris and helping clean space orbits. All these characters are a ‘type’. Tae Ho is a former commander with a ‘traumatic past’. Captain Jang is a retired assassin, who has been deliberately relegated to a job like this, to feed on pennies. Mr Park is a former drug-lord with a ‘heart of gold’, who escaped Earth to dodge a death sentence. While Bubs is the cheerful android, an amalgamation of Rocket, Groot, TARS or any other non-human (with a sharp tongue) that come to mind. These four characters living on the fringes of a rebooted civilisation, where only the rich can afford clean air, find a little girl called Dorothy hiding in their ship. Dorothy, as they find out, is possibly a robot who might be mankind’s last hope at survival, therefore presenting an opportunity for them to get rich.

Still from Space Sweepers. Twitter @iconickdramas

This rebooted civilisation on Mars, is because of the concentrated efforts of a corporation called UTS, which is helmed by (who else but) a white man called James Sullivan (Richard Armitage). He seems like the kind of ‘do-gooder CEO’ like most of the Big Tech CEOs have projected themselves to be. He talks about sustainable farming, but when he’s tasked with one ‘difficult’ question about reports alleging that he might be draining earth’s resources to build this new private planet for the super-rich, the smile is wiped off his face and he clenches his teeth and says something to the effect of how ‘HUMAN BEINGS ARE THE VIRUS’. It’s hard not to be reminded of Agent Smith saying something similar to Morpheus in The Matrix at this point.

When I sat down to watch Space Sweepers, my expectations were, well, managed. But one of the film’s many shortcomings, is its inability to see the B-movie potential in itself. So much of it is borrowed from set templates within mainstream filmmaking, that even if the filmmakers were mindful enough to subvert audience expectation during key moments, or taken scenes to an unexpected place, this would have been a starkly different (and a much more improved) film. Instead, what the makers have done here is written the most predictable beats of a ‘Sci-Fi, Space adventure’, and placed them on an assembly line of set-pieces. Of course, the crew of space sweepers will grow fond of the child, and tears will be shed around the time the ransom changes hands. Of course, the trillionaire CEO will reveal himself as the evil mastermind, who is only the 764392th version of Lex Luthor. Of course, there will be a ticking clock where the ‘unlikely’ heroes will strive to save the child, and make the ultimate sacrifice. Of course, good will win over evil. This isn’t even a spoiler in a movie so predictable. 

Space Sweepers is the kind of vanity project that concerns itself with the little things like whether the leading man’s hair looks perfect for his massive fan following, that it completely messes up the big picture. They can go ahead and accommodate as many communities, ethnicities or characters of the third gender. But in a pot luck of filmy references like this one, it will always feel dishonest and archetypal. Maybe the makers could’ve tried something with a limited scope, where every single creative decision doesn’t seem fuelled by the sound of the cash register.

Rating: 1.5

Space Sweepers is streaming on Netflix.

A terrorist is proving to be slippery. The National Investigation Agency (NIA) officers need a whole new plan to outsmart him. At that juncture, they are reminded of the possibilities ahead of them — if they fail, they might be executed in a foreign land or be imprisoned with no hope of rescue. If they succeed, they return with pride but won’t be celebrated in public, because they are undercover officers who have to take on new missions.

That moment in Wild Dog, co-written and directed by Ahishor Solomon, underlines why this relentless chase between the NIA and the terrorist, is different from other such on-screen fictional battles we’ve seen before.

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Wild Dog is inspired by the NIA’s undercover operation to nab Yasin Bhatkal from Nepal. Bhatkal was a key operative of the Indian Mujahideen and involved in several blasts across India, including the 2007 serial blasts in Hyderabad and the 2010 blast in Pune.

A dramatised story based on true incidents, Wild Dog is an ode to the NIA officers who staked everything to nab Bhatkal. Expectedly, there are a few unmissable cinematic tropes — like the best officer not being in the thick of the action, after being relegated to a desk job because his methods came across as brash. There’s also a personal loss, for the emotional heft. But, on the bright side, the emphasis remains on the bigger battle of stopping more such blasts that this terrorist could mastermind.

Leading the mission from the front is an in-form Nagarjuna Akkineni, slipping easily into the part of the middle-aged NIA officer Vijay Varma whose ‘Wild Dog’ reputation precedes him. His fitness and agility come in handy to play the part of an officer who is no stranger to tough terrains and opponents.

Ahishor saves the best for the latter portions of the film, taking his time to build the drama and set the stage for the crucial mission. The introductions to the NIA team members could have been written better; while one of the character’s fascination for Amitabh Bachchan is utilised to push the plot forward, there’s not even a feeble mention of it later.

For an hour or so, facts are unearthed and we understand the magnitude of the problem, but little else happens. There’s also the sense of deja vu of having seen broadly similar story arcs in mainstream films, be it how a group of officers attempting to close in on a target, or how the target tries to outsmart them.

However, once the action shifts to Nepal, Wild Dog is in top gear and pulls all stops to put forth a nail-biting chase. The casting is spot on; Ali Reza, Mayank Parakh, Prakash Sudarshan and Pradeep Rudra play their parts as NIA officers effectively and the gorgeous Saiyami Kher is impressive as the RAW (Research and Analysis Wing) agent who is no pushover. Dia Mirza makes her presence felt in a cameo. As the final chase gets underway, it’s easy to guess which character/s might switch sides, but there’s enough to keep us hooked.

There are scenes where Vijay Varma is shown to finish his opponents rather than leaving room for a trial, playing into populist methods. But then, Ahishor also shows his other side — as an officer who knows where to show restraint, and props to that. The patriotic fervour in Wild Dog also plays out effectively, without going overboard.

The film benefits from its able technical crew and special mentions are due to action directors David Ismalone and Sham Kaushal, cinematographer Shaneil Deo and Thaman for his background score.

With some more attention to the writing in the first hour, Wild Dog could have raised the bar higher. Nevertheless, the slick film is a celebration of the unsung NIA officers who made this story possible and of Nagarjuna, who shows that he can still pack a punch in action thrillers, with a mix of brawn, charm and maturity.

Wild Dog is currently running in theatres

Georgia’s controversial new voting restrictions caused director Antoine Fuqua and actor Will Smith to move production on their $100 million thriller, set to begin production soon, from that state to Louisiana, according to the mayor’s office in New Orleans.

The script is based loosely on the story of “Whipped Pete,” the Louisiana slave whose scarred back is one of the most famous images of the Civil War.

The Republican-majority Georgia General Assembly and GOP Gov. Brian Kemp approved new laws on the heels of Donald Trump’s loss and two Democratic U.S. senators wins in that once ruby red state. The new laws shortened the duration of absentee voting, added more identification requirements, limited the use of drop boxes, and criminalized handing out food or water to voters standing in line.

“At this moment in time, the nation is coming to terms with its history and is attempting to eliminate vestiges of institutional racism to achieve true racial justice,” Fuqua, the movie’s director, and Smith said in a joint statement to Variety, a trade publication. “We cannot in good conscience provide economic support to a government that enacts regressive voting laws that are designed to restrict voter access. The new Georgia voting laws are reminiscent of voting impediments that were passed at the end of Reconstruction to prevent many Americans from voting. Regrettably, we feel compelled to move our film production work from Georgia to another state.”

“They made the decision to [move] based on the voter laws that were passed in Georgia recently,” City of New Orleans spokesman Beau Tidwell told WWL after Louisiana became the place the production headed.

“Emancipation,” which was scheduled to begin filming on June 21 near Savannah, stars Smith as Peter, a fugitive from slavery who is fleeing Louisiana in the hopes of traveling north to freedom. Fuqua will direct from a script by William N. Collage.

The story is based on “Whipped Pete,” whose real name was Gordon. He ran away in March 1863 from the Lyons plantation on the Atchafalaya River near what is now Krotz Springs. Rubbing onions on his body to throw off his pursuer’s dogs, Gordon walked barefoot through swamps — now traversed by elevated U.S. 190 — before running into Union troops who ferried him to Baton Rouge. It took about 10 days.

While getting a medical examination, Yankee doctors were shocked by the sight of his back, though one wrote that he had seen dozens that just like it. The famous photograph was taken in the doctor’s tent about where Florida Street now crosses Interstate 110 at the edge of downtown Baton Rouge.

The photograph was widely published at the time and helped make ending slavery a goal for the Civil War. Gordon later joined the Union Army.

Right-wing bloggers and emailers are calling on moviegoers to boycott the film when it is made and released.