Check Book: ComicCon Recap

Marvel returns, Apple TV debuts, and uh, Johnny Depp showed up

IN THIS WEEK’S EDITION:

THE BARDI PARTY REPORT

Greetings from sunny San Diego!

Just kidding, I was dogsitting at my dad’s this weekend, but imagine if Blank Check had the kind of funds to fly me out to report on the ground at Comic Con?!? I’d kind of be the worst person to send, considering that the only Marvel movies I’ve seen in the past five years were Madame Web (masterpiece) and the Sam Raimi Doctor Strange movie (okay), but I’d probably have fun with the cosplay element. I would have dressed up as Paul Bettany in Master & Commander (slutty little glasses, straw hat, empty cage for a lizard I didn’t get to catch).

Anyway, I did keep abreast of the big announcements from my couch. Here were my big takeaways:

BIG MARVEL CASTING NEWS
In its last appearance at Comic Con 2024, Marvel broke some serious news by announcing Robert Downey Jr. would be playing Dr. Doom in Avengers: Doomsday. Coming off the heels of his career-capping Oscar win for Oppenheimer and an accompanying press tour where he made it seem like he was done starring in slop and ready to return to prestige projects, the Dr. Doom announcement felt like a deflation of cinephile goodwill. Similarly, this year at Comic Con, when Ryan Gosling took the stage to announce that he would be joining the MCU to play Ghost Rider in a Shawn Levy-helmed reboot, I experienced a familiar feeling of disappointment. Coming off of the smashing success of Project Hail Mary, Gosling is in prime position to cash in an actor blank check. He’s instead choosing to star in two Shawn Levy projects connected to dying franchises. I guess there’s no accounting for taste.

In slightly less disappointing news, Ryan Coogler announced that Black Panther III A) is happening in 2028, B) will be shot in large format celluloid, and most importantly C) will star David Jonsson as T’challa’s son. I’m thrilled for David Jonsson, who has been poised for a major breakout since Rye Lane. I’m slightly less thrilled that Ryan Coogler is returning to the MCU after Sinners. But, hey, he’s also shooting a TV series on IMAX cameras right now, so I can’t say that he isn’t taking advantage of his Oscar-winning clout!

STAR WARS DETOURS BACK ON TRACK
George Lucas and Seth Green’s completed but long-shelved animated series conceived to be “like The Simpsons in the Star Wars universe” is finally coming out! Kind of. Seth Green announced at ComicCon that a “curated selection of episodes” would be shown publicly for the first time at the George Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. I’m betting that securing tickets for that is going to be harder than getting Odyssey Lincoln Square IMAX seats, but I’m sure that Patrick Cotnoir will find a way in.

APPLE TV MAKES THEIR COMIC CON DEBUT
Everyone’s favorite prestige streamer showed up at ComicCon this year to promote their contractually-obligated Skydance slop, but the most exciting news was the reveal of the first trailer for Neuromancer. I think it looks REALLY COOL, William Gibson himself seems happy, and in my personal opinion, it knocked the wind out of Amazon Prime’s Blade Runner 2099’s sails. Will this get Griffin and David to change their minds about Callum Turner? The jury will be out until January 2027.

JOHNNY DEPP SHOWED UP
I really don’t want to devote a ton of column space to this because it made me angry, but it did make news, so, here we go. The Johnny Depp reclamation campaign is in full force, with the trailer for Ti West’s Ebenezer dropping last week, and Depp making a surprise appearance at ComicCon allegedly in character. This trailer is completely centered on the premise that Johnny Depp is beloved and back. “He brought us Jack Sparrow…Edward Scissorhands…and The Mad Hatter / This November…THE MASTER OF MISFITS RETURNS!” Wow, thank god for that. Truly what we all need right now, another Johnny Depp performance where he wears a lot of makeup and does a thing. Even aside from the Depp of it all, why are we making a Scrooge origin story, when A Christmas Carol itself is pretty much a Scrooge origin story? “So it’s just a movie about money lending in Victorian England?” is what Alan Smithee asked in the BC Group Chat. The master of misfits returns!

MONDAY FUNNIES BY JOE BOWEN

LET’S CRACK OPEN THE DOSSIER

I wrote a 15-page dossier for this week’s In the Blink of an Eye episode, and now I am back to write about the movie some more. I think this makes me the primary chronicler of the development, production, and release of In the Blink of an Eye. Next step: In the Blink of an Eye book deal.

Moving the Mountain

Prior to starring in In the Blink of an Eye, Rashida Jones briefly worked with Andrew Stanton on the fourth film in the Toy Story franchise. But Jones—and her writing partner Will McCormack—left Toy Story 4 amid controversy, with The Hollywood Reporter mistakenly opening a story with a claim that an “unwanted advance” from Pixar chief creative officer John Lasseter had forced Jones’s exit.¹ In a statement to The New York Times, Jones clarified, “We did not leave Pixar because of unwanted advances. That is untrue.” However, Jones added, “[W]e are happy to see people speaking out about behavior that made them uncomfortable.” Instead, Jones said, “[W]e parted ways because of creative and, more importantly, philosophical differences,” with the core issue being “a culture where women and people of color do not have an equal creative voice.” ²

During her time on Toy Story 4, however, Jones found Stanton specifically to be a uniquely adaptable collaborator. “[H]aving worked a little bit in animation with Andrew at Pixar at the beginning stages,” Jones told Polygon earlier this year, “[animation] is not rigid. You’re throwing out entire scripts every three weeks, and starting over with entirely new stories. In that way, [Stanton is] really flexible. His brain is extremely flexible.” In fact, Stanton provided Jones with “one of the best” pieces of writing advice she’d ever gotten: “[Y]ou’re trying to figure out the path around the mountain: You’re going to go up it, around it, down it, whatever. Move the mountain! Just move the mountain! I think about that every time I’m writing and trying to problem-solve: Sometimes you just have to restructure. You have to let something go.”³ It’s advice Jones is using well: her and McCormack’s screenplay for The Invite is among this year’s very best imo!!!

Someone Else’s Song

Working this gig for the past half-decade, I’ve been exposed to many quotes in which directors or actors cite influences of which they fall far short. “[I]t struck us that it would be interesting to see [Kate McKinnon] in a dramatic role,” Stanton said in one such quote to Gold Derby earlier this year. “I couldn’t stop thinking about the power that Peter Sellers had in Being There; he defied all of our expectations by holding all of his humor and comedic power back. It created such tension for the audience and the actor, and I felt we could do the same with Kate.”⁴ Anyway, here’s the greatest song of all time, which was featured on an album inspired by that same Hal Ashby film:

No Craps Given

With In the Blink of an Eye, Andrew Stanton went shingle-hopping. Each of his previous features had been made at either Pixar or Disney proper, but with this one, Stanton got a little arty with it, moving over to Searchlight (NO FOX ANYMORE) for the first time. Gone were the blockbuster pressures of his home studios. “They have a saying that if everybody likes their movies, they get worried,” Stanton told The Wrap in March. “Because they’re niche and what they’re really good at is finding and matching the audience to that niche. That’s music to my ears. I don’t give a crap whether or not everybody else likes them. I have the movies I like, you have the movies you like, and nobody’s going to change that.”⁵ And with that, my time covering Andrew Stanton in this newsletter is now over… in just the blink of a damn eye.

WHAT IS THE TEAM INTO THIS WEEK?

Marie Bardi, Social Media: “Two excellent series were added to Hulu this week - the 15th season of King of the Hill and Nirvanna The Band The Show. I’m still making my way through Nirvanna, but I finished King of the Hill in one evening. The dog episode made me cry.”

AJ McKeon, Associate Producer: “Introduced Hayes to Portal, it’s the best!”

JJ Bersch, Researcher: “Biggest, most obvious recommendation possible for Colson Whitehead’s decades-spanning Harlem Trilogy of crime novels (2021’s Harlem Shuffle, 2023’s Crook Manifesto, and now this year’s Cool Machine). Whitehead is my favorite contemporary author—going out on a limb there, I know—and these books are among his very best, among the very best crime novels ever written, and I kind of think just among the best novels I’ve ever read!! They are so rich in history, style, emotion, detail, and—most importantly—jokes. I also recently began reading Deniz Camp and Javier Rodriguez’s Absolute Martian Manhunter and holy shit that series is sick!! My PhD-level analysis: I like all the colors.”

Marika Brownlee, Director of Ops: “Also inspired by recent Blank Check group chat discussions, my recommendation this week is to revisit (or visit!) the 2011 performance of ‘A Freak Like Me Needs Company’ from Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark live on the Late Show with David Letterman. Everything about it is incredible to witness and I think it’s important to rewatch at least every few years. Or you can be like PTR and watch it on repeat for an hour. To quote the Green Goblin: “Get your freak on!”

Alan Smithee, Pseudonymous Editor: “I was roasted on the Blank Check group chat recently for being behind the times with my media consumption, I REFUSE TO BE COWED. I am recommending the film RRR (2022) and the video game Cyberpunk 2077 (2020), both of which I have enjoyed over the last couple weeks. If you (like me) have been waiting to get around to one or the other, first of all that’s TOTALLY FINE AND NORMAL, and second of all you should check them both out, they’re both really terrific.”

THIS WEEK ON THE PODCAST

Did you know that Andrew Stanton released TWO movies this year? Toy Story 5, of course, but also the centuries-spanning sci-fi yarn In the Blink of an Eye?! This episode is dedicated to the latter - kind of. Theater critic and brother of the show Joey Sims joins us to chat about a BUNCH of things, not limited to In The Blink of an Eye.

CRITICAL DARLINGS
Daddy, tie us to the mast, we’re off to see The Odyssey! Christopher Nolan’s epic about a dad going out for cigarettes has vanquished all foes, critical, commercial, and discourse-able. To unpack it all, we’re joined by Vulture’s Fran Hoepfner.

MEANWHILE ON PATREON…..

We’re wrapping up our Robert Cop series and tackling the oft-and-appropriately-forgotten RoboCop (2014).

COMING SOON:

MAIN FEED

PATREON

SCHEDULE GRAPHIC TO COME, BUT HERE’S WHAT WE’RE LOOKING AT FOR THE NEXT TWO MONTHS:

AUG 1 - Resident Evil (2001)
AUG 11 - Scorsese Shorts
AUG 21 - Resident Evil: Apocalypse
SEPT 1 - Resident Evil: Extinction
SEPT 11 - The Last Waltz
SEPT 21 - Resident Evil: Afterlife

1. The Hollywood Reporter, November 21, 2017.

2. New York Times, November 21, 2017.

3. Polygon, March 1, 2026.

4. Gold Derby, February 25, 2026.

5. The Wrap, March 6, 2026.