If you make this much news on End Credits in a week, you must be the Walt Disney Company. There are a lot concerns with Disney this week, they’re banning journalists, contemplating corporate takeovers, and creating new trilogies, and in-between, the fallout of Hollywood sex abuse scandals continues as not only is old work banned, but upcoming works now as well. All that, plus a remake of a well-known murder mystery featuring one of the most famous detectives of all time…
This Thursday, November 16, at 10 am, Adam A. Donaldson and Tim Phillips will discuss:
1) Fox Sells Out to Bad Mouse. It was the best of times, and it was the worst of times… That’s a line from a book that Disney *can’t* buy the rights to (because it’s in the public domain), but it still sums up nicely what’s been going on at the Walt Disney Company. While picking a fight with the Los Angeles Times over, of all things, coverage about parking at Disneyland, lawyers and execs have been discussing the purchase of the 20th Century Fox film studio with that company’s parent 21st Century Fox. Just what we need, more media consolidation. We’ll talk about the issues with this now defunct (?) deal beyond what it means for Marvel superheroes.
2) Gone with the Wind. Allegations of sexual assault, sexual harassment, and bullying have pretty much thrown Kevin Spacey off the A-list, and into the sewer. The scandal was threatening to take a lot of upcoming projects with him, like Ridley Scott’s new movie All the Money in the World, but Scott and the crew have decided to take an unusual approach: replace Spacey with Christopher Plummer, and re-shoot all of Spacey’s scenes with just six weeks to go before the film’s release. We’ll talk about why Scott can do it, and why it was the right call in order to save the movie.
3) What’s Tried and True. In other Disney matters, there was, for once, good directors news concerning Star Wars directors. The Last Jedi’s Rian Johnson has signed on the dotted line to develop a new trilogy of Star Wars movies that will be unconnected to anything that’s come before in the franchise, an incredible vote of confidence coming a month before the release of the next, great Star Wars movie. But here’s a conundrum worth discussing: What would you rather see: a new Johnson Star Wars movie series, or three movies by Johnson in the vein of his excellent films Brick, The Brothers Bloom and Looper?
REVIEW: Murder on the Orient Express (2017). The year is 1934, and a man has been murdered on a train from Istanbul to Paris. If there is a murder, then there is a murderer, and fortunately aboard this train is *possibly* the greatest detective in the world. Kenneth Branagh brings to lavish life this classic Agatha Christie mystery, and stocks his train with a murderer’s row of acting talent including Dame Judi Dench, Willem Dafoe, Johnny Depp, Penélope Cruz, Derek Jacobi, Josh Gad, Daisy Ridley, Leslie Odom Jr., Olivia Coleman, and Michelle Pfeiffer. Can the considerable intellect of Hercule Poirot sort the suspects while keeping his mustache game on point?
End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Thursday at 10 am.
End Credits 
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