Movies
Li Bingbing Will Not Return for ‘Meg 2: The Trench’
Filming is underway on big budget shark attack sequel Meg 2: The Trench, and while many stars from the first film will be back, we’ve learned this week that Li Bingbing will not.
Variety reports that The Meg star Li Bingbing, who was originally set to return for the sequel (last we heard, at least), “is not returning to the franchise at this point.”
Li Bingbing played marine biologist Suyin Zhang in The Meg back in 2018, one of the few survivors of the action-horror movie. In recent years, the actress starred in Transformers: Age of Extinction as well as Resident Evil: Retribution in 2012, playing the character Ada Wong.
In other news, Chinese mega-star Wu Jing (The Wandering Earth) has joined the cast.
Jason Statham will be back as Jonas Taylor in director Ben Wheatley‘s (Kill List, Sightseers, A Field in England, High-Rise, Rebecca, In the Earth) upcoming sequel to the 2018 action-horror movie The Meg, along with Cliff Curtis, Sophia Cai and Page Kennedy.
Sienna Guillory (Resident Evil: Afterlife), Skyler Samuels (“Scream Queens”) and Sergio Peris-Mencheta (Rambo: Last Blood) are the other fresh faces in the Warner Bros. sequel.
The sequel’s script has been written by Dean Georgaris and Jon & Erich Hoeber.
Jon Turteltaub’s The Meg, based on Steve Alten’s Meg novels, was released in theaters back in 2018, devouring over $500 million at the worldwide box office. Jason Statham starred as heroic shark-slayer Jonas Taylor, part of a group of scientists exploring the Mariana Trench who encounter the largest marine predator that has ever existed – the Megalodon.
Filming is underway on The Invisible Man director Leigh Whannell’s Wolf Man for Universal and Blumhouse, which will be howling its way into theaters on January 17, 2025.
Deadline reports that Matilda Firth (Disenchanted) is the latest actor to sign on, joining Christopher Abbott (Poor Things), Julia Garner (The Royal Hotel), and Sam Jaeger.
The project will mark Whannell’s second monster movie and fourth directing collaboration with Blumhouse Productions (The Invisible Man, Upgrade, Insidious: Chapter 3).
Wolf Man stars Christopher Abbott as a man whose family is being terrorized by a lethal predator.
Writers include Whannell & Corbett Tuck as well as Lauren Schuker Blum & Rebecca Angelo.
Jason Blum is producing the film. Ryan Gosling, Ken Kao, Bea Sequeira, Mel Turner and Whannell are executive producers. Wolf Man is a Blumhouse and Motel Movies production.
In the wake of the failed Dark Universe, Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man has been the only real success story for the Universal Monsters brand, which has been struggling with recent box office flops including the comedic Renfield and period horror movie The Last Voyage of the Demeter. Giving him the keys to the castle once more seems like a wise idea, to say the least.
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