Movie News: Georgia’s Big Production Plans; Mel Gibson’s Career, Russell Crowe’s Unlikely Acting Coach

In today’s Movie News Rundown: Georgia has big plans to lead film production post-quarantine; Mel Gibson’s career is going great, considering; and Russell Crowe turned to an unlikely source for advice on playing Roger Ailes. Plus: Another fight about a superhero movie.

A Brighter Hannibal: It’s not your imagination — Hannibal looks brighter on Netflix than it ever has before. And further kudos to Netflix for taking out all the murders! No, don’t worry, the murders remain.

Mel Gibson: How Does Mel Gibson Still Have a Career? asks a just-published Variety piece. The answer, of course, is that people keep paying to see his movies. The key quote comes from publicist Howard Bragman: “You have to separate the PC police from the moviegoing public.” Bragman briefly represented Gibson’s ex, Oksana Grigorieva, when a tape leaked of a guy who sure sounded a lot like Gibson saying many horrible things.

And a Peach State Shall Lead Them: The Hollywood Reporter says Georgia wants to be the state to “lead Hollywood’s return to production,” which, I know, Georgia isn’t in Hollywood, but I get what they’re saying. We’re all just a little stressed out and tired so let’s cut each other some slack. The article cites sources who say many productions are expected to restart production in the coming months, including the Disney+ series Loki and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (both of whom are pictured above), and Netflix’s Red Notice, starring Ryan Reynolds, Dwayne Johnson and Gal Gadot, and Stranger Things. 

See, Jared Kushner Is Good for Something: Russell Crowe says the Son-in-Law-in-Chief gave him some tips on how to play former Fox News boss Roger Ailes. Crowe says he met Kushner at Hugh Jackman’s birthday party, which is a good argument for continued social distancing.

Booyaa? Ray Fisher, who played Cyborg in Justice League, took to Twitter yesterday to accuse director Joss Whedon, who took over the film from Zack Snyder, of “gross, abusive, unprofessional, and completely unacceptable” behavior toward the cast and crew. He provided no evidence or additional details, except to say he was “enabled, in many ways,” by former Warner Bros. co-president of production Jon Berg, and former DC Entertainment president and chief creative officer Geoff Johns. Whedon had no comment, Variety says, but Berg said it was “categorically untrue that we enabled any unprofessional behavior.” He added: “I remember [Fisher] being upset that we wanted him to say ‘Booyaa,’ which is a well known saying of Cyborg in the animated series.” Earlier this week, Fisher tweeted that he wanted to “forcefully retract every bit” of a statement he made at Comic-Con in 2017 that “Joss is a great guy and Zack picked a good person to come in and finish up for him.”

And also? Here’s yesterday’s Movie News Rundown.