Guess who’s playing this ↓ guy?

This ↓ guy:

The long-discussed “Gambit” film starring Channing Tatum in the lead role is officially a go at 20th Century Fox, Deadline reports Friday.

Tatum will also be a producer on the film, along with Reid Carolin (his partner in production company Free Association) plus long-time X-Men movie producer Lauren Shuler Donner and genre veteran Simon Kinberg. Josh Zetumer, who wrote this year’s “Robocop” reboot, has been hired to write the screenplay. In an unexpected move, Zetumer’s script is reportedly based on a treatment by prolific X-Men writer Chris Claremont, the character’s co-creator.

As one of the most popular (and polarizing) X-Men characters, a solo “Gambit” movie has been a source of speculation for years. Tatum has long publicly expressed his appreciation of the character and desire to play Gambit on screen, and Donner discussed wanting to make the film happen on the promotional trail for this year’s “X-Men: Days of Future Past.” For months, reports have surfaced that Tatum as Gambit was virtually a done deal, but Friday’s report is the first that states the film is officially in motion at Fox.

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Carol Danvers is *the* Captain Marvel. Deal with it.

From Fawcett’s creation of the original Captain Marvel in 1939 to the various heroes who have held that name, Brett White lays out the reasons readers need to accept Carol Danvers as Captain Marvel.

(excerpt)

I mentioned before that these attempts to lionize the male Captain Marvel while diminishing the female one are dangerous. Here’s why: it’s casual misogyny. I will givesome Cap Trolls the benefit of the doubt, because they could have just had a slip of the Twitter tongue, be genuinely confused, or have an old habit they’ve yet to break. But in other cases, yes, it’s casual — or straight up intentional — misogyny. It shows an unwillingness to progress past the era when all female heroes had to have gendered codenames. It shows a preference towards female heroes that are obvious analogues of male heroes. It completely overlooks the fact that a surprising number of female heroes already have a tenuous grasp on their codenames as it is.

In his excellent essay over at Comics Alliance, “Lady She-Woman: Female Superhero Codenames And Identity,” Andrew Wheeler broke down the facts behind female hero code names. Most women either have gendered codenames (Black Widow, Scarlet Witch, Huntress), codenames tied to male heroes (She-Hulk, Ms. Marvel, Batgirl, Supergirl), or don’t go by a codename at all (Kitty Pryde, Emma Frost, Danielle Moonstar, Misty Knight). Men, on the other hand, get to have gender-neutral codenames (Hawkeye, Quicksilver, Nightwing), they get to originate codenames (Hulk, Captain Marvel, Batman, Superman), and the majority of them have codenames.

When Cap Trolls argue that Captain Marvel will be reduced back to Ms. Marvel, they are touching on a very real — and dangerous — trend in comics that treats female hero codenames as interchangeable. The two previous female Captain Marvels, Monica Rambeau and Phyla-Vell, know this all too well. Rambeau debuted as Captain Marvel but lost the codename when Genis-Vell took it. That pattern repeated itself when Rambeau had her new codename, Photon, stolen by Genis-Vell. Phyla-Vell took on the codename Quasar after ditching the Marvel moniker, but she had to give it up just as soon as the original Quasar, Wendell Vaughn, returned from the dead. She then took on the name Martyr and, well, died. The same really can’t be said for male heroes; even when Peter Parker is no longer Spider-Man, there’s no uncertainty that he’s going to be back in the webs again. The same has also proven true for Thor and Captain America in the past, and will definitely prove true again when their current replacements — one of whom is a woman — run their course. Yes, there’s a history of women having their codenames taken away from them, but that doesn’t mean that history should keep repeating itself. The Captain Marvel codename needs to stop with Carol Danvers because this trend needs to be broken.

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 Lemony Snicket adaptation coming to Netflix

On the heels of picking up AwesomenessTV’s live-action comedy Richie Rich, the streaming company has acquired rights to the best-selling series of books A Series Of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket, with plans to adapt them as a live-action series. Search is underway for a director to help re-create Snicket’s visual world on TV. Netflix is producing the project, which is being fast-tracked, with Paramount Television. Paramount was behind the 2004 movie starring Jim Carrey, which grossed $209 million worldwide.

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 Portraits painted on film negatives by Nick Gentry

As part of an effort to repurpose obsolete media, London-based artist Nick Gentry paints on cut film negatives to create works of art.

Here is Gentry’s website.

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Just say no to Pepsi True?

I would have anyways because I think Pepsi is awful–it’s far too sweet (I love Coke though). Rebecca Fishbein tried Pepsi True and I’m not sure, but I think she didn’t like it:

Here’s a little food-related rage for your Friday. We were offered free samples of Pepsi True, a new stevia-sweetened soda from PepsiCo that purports to have “Real Cola Taste. True Pepsi Fun.” It’s made without artificial sweeteners and high fructose corn syrup, and it has only 16 grams of sugar. And guess what—it’s disgusting.

It is as lethally saccharine as the faux-stevia poison that killed a bad lady on that TV show I won’t name-drop for the sake of spoiler preservation. It tastes like food coloring that’s been soaked in a noxious chemical and the chalky caramel they use in calcium chews. It does not taste like Pepsi, and it does not taste like Diet Pepsi. It does not taste good.

She ought to stop beating around the bush and say how she truly feels.