Culture Crave Newsletter — #2 ⚔️

Welcome readers!

This week we’re sharing updates on Game of Thrones, Shogun, the box office, and more 📺🍿

With A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms wrapping filming and George R.R. Martin resuming updates on his blog, we’ve compiled a comprehensive overview of all GoT series currently in development, along with Martin’s progress on the A Song of Ice and Fire books. This summer, Martin confirmed that seven projects are in various stages of development, though none are greenlit yet 🟢

Unfortunately, The Winds of Winter has had slow progress this year. GRRM credits this to depression and stress for a variety of reasons:

• Close friends passing away this year
• Development on the GoT TV shows
• Traveling for cons and events
• Pondering what his legacy will be — this came after visiting J.R. Tolkien’s grave this year

This brings us to our next graphic:

GRRM recently criticized several aspects of HOTD on his blog, though he later deleted the post. He’s also praised aspects in the past, for example, he thought The Battle at Rook’s Rest featured the best dragon fight ever in film and TV

His friend and fellow author, Xiran Jay Zhao, says that Martin was holding back many of his true thoughts, based on her conversations with him. While Zhao has since removed most of her comments, some of her tweets remain available here and this article recorded most of her previous comments

Will HOTD bounce back? Despite HBO boss Casey Bloys' out-of-touch comments, most fans would agree that while S2 had many standout moments, it was overall a step down from S1. The finale was seen as a good episode but not a strong season ender, with a cliffhanger that may not be resolved for over two years. Still, next season has all the makings to be peak Game of Thrones, with several major battles on the horizon, including the Battle of the Gullet, one of the deadliest sea battles in Westeros history 🌊🐲

Shogun, the best show of 2024, just rightfully took home 18 Emmys — the most ever for a single season. The path forward is both interesting and tricky, as there is no source material to draw from. The writers have hinted that they will draw from real-world events of that time period in Japan. Regardless, we will be watching 🫡

Deadpool and Wolverine continues to climb the box office charts — surpassing The Avengers (2012) domestically to become the fifth highest-grossing CBM ever. The entire top five are all MCU films. When compared to other top-grossing film franchises globally, it seems unlikely that anything will achieve this level of success again 💰

More film news 🎬

• The Batman Part 2 script is finally finished, confirms Matt Reeves. Filming is expected to begin by mid-2025. We will have a full breakdown of all the known details in our next newsletter 🦇

• Ridley Scott says he’s working on an idea for Gladiator 3. The second film, reportedly carrying a $310M budget, is the most expensive rated-R film ever made. Even if the film becomes a breakout hit, it would need to be a massive success to recoup its enormous budget—a daunting task for any R-rated movie. While recent hits like Oppenheimer and Deadpool and Wolverine have proven it’s possible, the financial hurdle remains significant, making the prospect of another sequel feel unlikely at this time ⚔️

• The future of the Transformers franchise is planning to focus more on the robots’ POV in the live-action films — a rather funny statement, considering the next film is a planned crossover with the G.I. Joe franchise. Let’s see how that plays out 🤖

• Lionsgate, after several bombs this year including Borderlands, The Crow, The Killer’s Game and not to mention the upcoming Megalopolis, which is tracking to be an all-time flop, has decided to partner with a company called Runway to train a generative AI model on all their content. Some creatives have shared online that they weren’t informed ahead of the announcement that their Lionsgate projects will be used to train the AI. The company, Runway, is currently being sued by a group of artists for copyright infringement 😬

• James Cameron is still planning to develop another Terminator film and is also set to direct The Last Train to Hiroshima, having acquired the rights. The film tells the true story of a man who survived the atomic blast at Hiroshima, boarded a train to Nagasaki, and then survived the second nuclear explosion there. Cameron previously said this project would begin after completing Avatar: Fire and Ash, but it’s now unclear if it will be delayed until after he finishes Avatar 4 and Avatar 5. Avatar 5 is currently scheduled for release on December 31, at which time Cameron will be 78 years old 🔵

That’s all for this week. Hit the subscribe button if you’re new and enjoyed it 🤝

Make sure to join 30K members in our Discord and follow us on Twitter, Threads, and Instagram. You can also follow my personal Twitter account.