Rundown: Brendan Fraser as a 600lb Recluse; Deadpool Joins MCU; Nicole Kidman as Lucille Ball

In today’s Movie News Rundown: Brendan Fraser and Nicole Kidman have very intriguing roles coming up; Deadpool 3 will be set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe;  read our stories about some very deserving Gotham Awards winners.

The Whale: Brendan Fraser will play an isolated 600-pound man trying to reconnect with his daughter in Darren Aronofsky’s upcoming film The Whale, based on the play by Samuel D. Hunter. Good or bad, the reviews will yield deliciously hacky headlines. (“A Whale of a Tale,” “Killer Whale,” “Thar She Blows.”) I can’t wait. Deadline first broke the news.

I’m Home: Deadline also reports that Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem are in talks to play Lucille Ball and Desi Arnez in Being the Ricardos, which Aaron Sorkin wrote and will direct. It takes place during a week of production on I Love Lucy as Lucy and Desi face a crisis.

I Think I Can Predict What the Crisis Is:

Good Read: Celebrity interviews used to be waaaaay better than they are now.

Gotham Awards: Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland won both Best Feature and the Gotham Audience Award at the ceremony last night. Best Documentary went to Ramona S. Diaz’s A Thousand Cuts and Garrett Bradley’s Time. Fernanda Valadez’s Identifying Features won in the new Best International Feature category. Riz Ahmed won Best Actor for Sound of Metal, and Nicole Beharie won Best Actress for Miss Juneteenth. Best Screenplay went to Radha Blank for The Forty-Year-Old Version and Dan Sallitt for Fourteen. Kingsley Ben-Adir won the Breakthrough Actor award One Night in Miami, and Andrew Patterson won the Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director award for The Vast of Night. More details here.

Deadpool Joins the Marvel Cinematic Universe: Deadpool 3 will be set firmly in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Marvel chief Kevin Feige told Collider. As you likely know, and definitely know if you are a nerd, Fox previously owned Deadpool and X-Men, and the Deadpool and X-Men universes co-existed, though the Deadpool movies were much more fun. Disney owned most of the rest of the MCU, so Deadpool could never fight, say, the Hulk. Then Disney bought Fox, and anyone can fight anyone. Or team up. Or whatever. Now, shareholders. You’re welcome, Deadpool.

Looking Forward: To someone doing a story about how messed up the X-Men timeline is, and how Marvel might try to fix it, but no way am I writing that.

Hey, Another Thing They Could Do: Is keep Deadpool at arm’s length from the rest of the MCU, the way he’s been at arm’s length from the X-Men, because that seems to be working just fine.

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Lady Sings the Blues: Here’s the trailer for the new Lee Daniels film The United States v. Billie Holiday.