VARIETY – Dylan O’Brien is in negotiations to star in Peter Farrelly’s next movie, which is based on the novel “The Greatest Beer Run Ever: A True Story of Friendship Stronger Than War.”
O’Brien beat out a number of other actors for the part, which was one of the more sought after roles in Hollywood for a leading man in recent weeks. Viggo Mortensen, who previously starred in Farrelly’s last film “Green Book,” has a supporting role in the movie.
Brian Currie and Pete Jones will co-write the script with Farrelly, which is being adapted from Joanna Molloy and John “Chickie” Donohue’s book. It’s based on the true story of Donohue, who left New York in 1967 to track down and share a few beers with his childhood buddies in the Army … while they were fighting in Vietnam.
David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, Don Granger and Andrew Muscato will serve as producers. The project is being overseen at Skydance by Granger, Goldberg and Aimee Rivera.
This movie follows Farrelly’s commercial hit “Green Book,” which was nominated for five Academy Awards. It won three Oscars, including best picture and screenplay (both for Farrelly), as well as supporting actor for Mahershala Ali. The film was also a box office success, grossing $314 million worldwide on a reported $23 million budget.
O’Brien is best known for the MTV series “Teen Wolf” and “The Maze Runner” franchise. He was most recently seen in the eOne film “The Education of Fredrick Fitzell” and will appear next in two Paramount movies, “Infinite” and “Monster Problems.”
He is repped by WME and Principal Entertainment LA.
MTV Announces ‘Teen Wolf’ Virtual Reunion Special
VARIETY – Get ready to revisit Beacon Hills High School, or at least one very important graduating class: “Teen Wolf” will be delivering a virtual reunion special on June 5, MTV announced Thursday.
This special celebration is in honor of the supernatural teen drama’s ninth anniversary, but it is also only the first in a new digital format entitled “MTV Reunions,” which is designed to bring together cast members from television’s most memorable shows, all with a charitable angle. The “Teen Wolf” reunion will spotlight and benefit First Responders First, which aids frontline workers during the coronavirus pandemic.
Creator Jeff Davis and cast members Orny Adams, Linden Ashby, Ian Bohen, Charlie Carver, Max Carver, Arden Cho, Cody Christian, Shelley Hennig, Dylan O’Brien, Melissa Ponzio, Tyler Posey, Holland Roden and Dylan Sprayberry will all take part in this virtual reunion, which will be hosted by MTV News’ Josh Horowitz.
During the special, they will reminisce about the show and discuss their lives now, joining a growing list of fan-favorite series to come back together for a good cause during this pandemic. Others who recently reunited virtually include the cast and creator of “Community,” who participated in a table read in addition to a Q&A; some of the cast of “Friday Night Lights,” who watched the pilot together; and the cast of “Melrose Place,” who relived highlights of the Aaron Spelling primetime soap opera’s seven-season run.
“MTV Reunions: Teen Wolf” will be free to watch on MTV’s YouTube channel at noon on June 5, but it will also stream across MTV News, MTV brand, MTV Vault and the “Teen Wolf” social accounts.
“Teen Wolf” ran for six seasons from 2011 to 2017. The series started when once-average high school student Scott McCall (Posey) got bit by a werewolf and had to learn how to keep his deadly new secret while still juggling high school life. His town of Beacon Hills was revealed to be more of a hotbed for supernatural activity than it appeared at first glance, with characters including werewolf hunters, a banshee and a kitsune.
This “MTV Reunions” piece of programming coincides with the network’s launch of the #AloneTogether initiative, which is a global talent and social media-driven campaign designed to educate the younger demographic about the importance of social distancing.
Dylan O’Brien Is The Voice Of ‘Bumblebee’
IGN – After years of being unable to talk, Bumblebee will finally speak in his upcoming spinoff — and IGN can exclusively reveal that Dylan O’Brien (Maze Runner, Teen Wolf) is the actor giving voice to the titular Autobot in the Transformers prequel!
IGN chatted with Transformers franchise producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura last week about casting O’Brien as Bumblebee and why it was necessary for the film to finally give the Transformer his own voice.
“Since we were approaching this as an origin story, we felt that it was appropriate that you got to hear his voice,” di Bonaventura said of the character who thus far has only been able to communicate using existing media. “That’s the simple logic that we employed. The longer term implication of that is different. But the short-term implication of that is, since we really are resetting the mythology, essentially, of who Bumblebee is. And so, that seemed to us to be the appropriate, to get the chance to hear what he sounds like.”
The ’80s-set film, which sees Travis Knight take over the directorial reins from Michael Bay, follows Bumblebee as a young soldier in the Autobots’ war against the Decepticons on Cybertron who goes on an all-important mission to Earth.
While on Earth, Bumblebee befriends a teenage girl named Charlie (played by Hailee Steinfeld) who unwittingly buys him as her first car. Together, they face off against the sinister Decepticons Shatter (voiced by Angela Bassett) and Dropkick (voiced by Justin Theroux) in an adventure that will shape both of their young lives. This movie will be the first time Bumblebee’s voice is depicted in the live action films.
“Dylan has that great quality in his voice of youthful exuberance, and also sort of trustworthiness,” the producer explained. “I think those are the two qualities that we wanted Bumblebee to have.”
Di Bonaventura added that so far the responses he’s received about O’Brien’s voice casting has been positive. “Thankfully, we’ve showed it to a few audiences, and people seem to think that it’d be right and an appropriate voice,” he said. “You never know, obviously that can be a sensitive thing for people. But it turns out, they imagine his voice that way.”
‘Maze Runner’ Star Dylan O’Brien Joins ‘Education of Fredrick Fitzell’
VARIETY – Dylan O’Brien, whose credits include “The Maze Runner,” “American Assassin” and “Deepwater Horizon,” and Maika Monroe, who appeared in “It Follows,” “I’m Not Here,” “The Guest” and “The Bling Ring,” will star in Christopher MacBride’s “The Education of Fredrick Fitzell.”
Protagonist Pictures will handle international sales and launch the film to buyers in Cannes, with ICM Partners and Endeavor Content handling North America.
The film is written by and will be directed by MacBride, whose last film was the critically acclaimed found-footage thriller “The Conspiracy.” Lee Kim (“Operation Avalanche,” “I’ll Follow You Down,” “The Conspiracy,” “Small Town Murder Songs”) will produce for Resolute Films. Russell Ackerman and John Schoenfelder of Addictive Pictures are executive producing.
“Fred (O’Brien) is not a detective, a secret agent or a philosopher,” according to a statement. “He’s a normal guy approaching 30 and going through an existential crisis as he finds himself on the precipice of full-blown adulthood.”
It adds: “After a chance encounter with a man forgotten from his youth, Fred literally and metaphorically journeys into his past. He slowly begins to unravel a long hidden mystery about a missing girl, a drug called Mercury, and a terrifying creature that has now followed him into adulthood… As past, present and future begin to intersect and parallel each other, Fred explores all the possible lives he could lead. Which one will he choose?”
“The script is unlike anything I’ve read,” says Kim, who re-unites with MacBride, having worked together on “The Conspiracy.” “Chris has crafted a unique, brilliant story – one that transcends genre and provides a surreal snapshot of a man on the brink of collapse.”
O’Brien was last seen in the final instalment of the “Maze Runner” trilogy – which to date has grossed just shy of a billion dollars worldwide, and Monroe was most recently seen alongside Timothée Chalamet in “Hot Summer Nights,” which premiered at SXSW.
“The Education of Fredrick Fitzell” will start shooting in summer 2018.
EMMYS 2017 Every unforgettable moment, every gorgeous dress.CLICK HERE TV Teen Wolf: Tyler Posey, Dylan O’Brien talk about the show’s six-season journey
EW – At the heart of Teen Wolf‘s six seasons of supernatural villains, unexpected twists, romance, and lacrosse games, there has always been two people: Scott and Stiles. Together, they went looking for the body in the woods on the very night that Scott was bitten. Together, they fought Peter, Gerard, Deucalion, Kate, Peter (again), and a long list of others who tried to hurt the citizens of Beacon Hills. And together, they will say goodbye when the Teen Wolf series finale airs Sunday, Sept. 24 at 8 p.m. ET on MTV.
EW sat down with the actors behind Scott and Stiles — and real-life friends — Tyler Posey and Dylan O’Brien to talk about their time on the hit show.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: At what point did you all know this show was going to work, that it was going to be a hit?
TYLER POSEY: I had an intuition when we first started. During the pilot, it always felt right, it always felt good. There was just something about it that felt really interesting and its [success] wasn’t really a surprise to me. I always stayed grateful and thankful for everything so I was always excited, but it was never really too much of a shock. I’d say maybe the second Comic-Con, where we had a packed house, that was the first time where I really felt like we were making an impact and doing some cool stuff.DYLAN O’BRIEN: Once I saw the first season, I just felt like it worked, I felt like the show had a lot of things going for it. When you work on something where you have such a great chemistry on set with our whole crew and cast, those things tend to unfold in a positive way. It translates to the screen. If you have a good thing going behind the scenes, you’ll have a good thing going on-screen. Once I saw the first season, I was so proud of what we did with it and how the season went. I thought it was a really good arc too and there was so much in the show to love — it was funny, it was scary, it was romantic. I was like, “Oh yeah we’ll totally get a second season.” Then it just kept going from there. It was something I always wanted to keep going and then it just became amazing how long it kept going for.
POSEY: It never stopped.
What about these characters and this world kept you engaged all these years?
POSEY: When you play a character for so long, it’s easy to get disengaged and it becomes mundane and routine. For me, the way that I made it interesting and fresh was: The scenarios and the writing were so far-fetched and so unrealistic for a lot of it that it was a challenge for me to try to make it as realistic and believable as possible. That’s what really kept it fresh. And constantly trying to change my character in subtle ways, growing him up and having him mature — that kept it fun.For you Dylan, especially in the final season, you really had to work with scheduling to be a part of the show. Why was it so important to you to keep coming back?
O’BRIEN: This was my first role. I’ve loved Stiles since I read the pilot script, and throughout the series I only grew closer to him. I loved everything he got to go through too, everything [showrunner] Jeff [Davis] wrote for me, it kept it exciting. So I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. I always did everything I could to try to be a part of the show whenever I could, especially toward the end when it got difficult with everything else. Throughout [the series], it was always in the back of my head that this wouldn’t be around forever and that I would really miss it when it was over, so I was always conscious of that. I wanted to enjoy it while it lasted and enjoy working with T Pose while it lasted because we have just loved working together since day one and we’ve had so much fun on the show. We’ve built a lifelong friendship and he’s one of my best buds ever. So I was always aware of how special it was to me. I wanted to soak it up while it was around.
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Back from the brink, ‘American Assassin’s’ Dylan O’Brien is ready to prove he’s an action hero
LA TIMES – For the past year, Dylan O’Brien has been in hiding. He spent most of his time inside his home in Sherman Oaks, wondering if he’d ever be the same person he was before the accident. Not just emotionally, but physically too: After major reconstructive surgery that left him with four metal plates holding one side of his face together, he feared he’d never look the same again.
“It’s a miracle, what they’ve done,” O’Brien says, placing his hand on his cheek. Indeed, the actor’s team of doctors must have done some incredible work, given the fact that he looks almost exactly as he always has — the boyish teen heartthrob who has amassed an army of young female fans since he began working on MTV’s “Teen Wolf” at age 18.
Of course, he’s 26 now, so he’s filled out a bit, and there’s also a hint of patchy scruff on his face. He had enough gravitas to him that the producers of “American Assassin,” which opens nationwide Friday, felt confident casting him as the grizzled action-hero Mitch Rapp — even though the character in Vince Flynn’s bestselling books was widely believed by readers to be in his 40s.
“American Assassin” is the reason O’Brien emerged from his self-imposed exile. He’d signed onto the film just a few weeks before he began work on “Maze Runner: The Death Cure,” the third and final installment in 20th Century Fox’s post-apocalyptic young-adult franchise. He was hoping “Assassin” would mark the beginning of a new period in his career. In 2017, after six seasons, “Teen Wolf” would come to an end, as would the “Maze Runner” series.
“I’ve never looked at myself as this pop candy type,” O’Brien says, peppering his speech with more colorful language. “I felt like I was more real than that, so I would get mad when someone would say [I was a teen heartthrob]. I’d be like, ‘I’m 19! I’m a stoner!’ I really resented that.”
He was so excited to begin work on “Assassin” that he fielded calls from director Michael Cuesta just as production began in Vancouver, Canada, on the final “Maze Runner” film. Together, they discussed how O’Brien would approach the character, a 23-year-old who is recruited by the CIA to hunt down terrorists after he witnesses his girlfriend’s murder at the hands of Muslim radicals.
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Dylan O’Brien slays early critics, kills it in ‘American Assassin’ adaptation
USA TODAY – LOS ANGELES — Dylan O’Brien knew there would be online turbulence when he was cast as black ops killer Mitch Rapp in American Assassin.
O’Brien, 26, understands that fans of Vince Flynn’s best-selling novels might not visualize the star of MTV’s Teen Wolf as the guy to take on the lethal hitman, a part that Thor’s Chris Hemsworth turned down for scheduling reasons.
“Maybe people didn’t assume I could step into this role and be believable,” says O’Brien. “All’s fair in filmmaking, but no one knows you like yourself.”
He knew he could defy those expectations, unleashing an angry young killer-in-training in the edgy origin story American Assassin (in theaters Friday), a portrayal fueled by O’Brien’s emotional return from an injury last year on the set of Maze Runner: The Death Cure that nearly ended his career.
He was cast in Assassin while holed up in his L.A. home, feeling angry and depressed as he recovered from a serious head injury suffered when he was thrown from the harness of a moving vehicle during a stunt.
“There’s the physical recovery. And you’re going through a post-traumatic psychological recovery as well,” O’Brien says. “Your mind is so consumed with doubt, you’re just beaten down. And you feel guilt in a really weird way.”
Not only was Maze Runner filming postponed because of the accident (the movie will be out in January), but he had doubts whether he could take on any parts, much less an action role.
“You start experiencing things that are abnormal, you’re just not yourself. What you don’t realize is that you’re reacting to a situation where your brain experienced severe trauma,” says O’Brien. “You’re irritable and isolated and you’re angry. So angry. Because that can give you some power back.”
He realized he could fuel those feelings into the character, who loses his fiancée in a terrorist attack, a trauma that consumes Rapp with a desire for revenge as he trains with a black ops specialist (Michael Keaton).
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‘American Assassin’: Dylan O’Brien Plays War Games in Exclusive Clip
COLLIDER – We at Collider have an exclusive clip from the upcoming thriller American Assassin to share today. Based on the Vince Flynn novel of the same name, the film stars Dylan O’Brien as Mitch Rapp, a CIA black ops recruit who comes under the instruction of a Cold War veteran, played by Michael Keaton. Over the course of the film, Rapp is enlisted to investigate a wave of apparently random attacks that could trigger a third World War.
In this clip we see O’Brien and others participating in a war game that aims to train their quickness in targeting antagonists. It’s a pretty neat sequence—like VR paintball but much more painful—and it shows off some of the dynamic camera work of director Michael Cuesta (Kill the Messenger).
Check out the exclusive American Assassin clip below. Scripted by Stephen Schiff and Michael Finch and Edward Zwick & Marshall Herskovitz, the film also stars Sanaa Lathan, Shiva Negar, Scott Adkins, and Taylor Kitsch. American Assassin opens in theaters on September 15th.
Teen Choice Awards 2017 Nominations
The nominations for this year’s Teen Choice Awards have been released. Dylan is nominated for #ChoiceSciFiTVActor for his role as Stiles Stilinski in Teen Wolf. The series itself is nominated for #ChoiceSciFiTVShow ! Congrats to the cast & crew. Head over to teenchoice.votenow.tv to vote!
Your #ChoiceSciFiTVActor nominees: @WildpipM @dylanobrien @iansomerhalder @JensenAckles @JosephMorgan & @MatthewDaddario. 🔬 #TeenChoice pic.twitter.com/VrFSl3p31L
— Teen Choice Awards (@TeenChoiceFOX) June 20, 2017
Say congrats to these #ChoiceSciFiTVShow nominees: @ShadowhuntersTV @Stranger_Things @cw_spn @MTVteenwolf @cwtvd @NBCTimeless! #TeenChoice pic.twitter.com/LcIOqEH6lw
— Teen Choice Awards (@TeenChoiceFOX) June 20, 2017
“Maze Runner: The Death Cure” to Release on February 9, 2018
COMINGSOON.NET – Maze Runner: The Death Cure, the third film in the franchise, has been moved from January 12, 2018 to February 9, 2018.