The future of Star Wars is on the small screen, not in theaters. That’s the crux of the message from Disney CEO Bob Iger during his recent earnings call, where he confirmed the release dates for upcoming Marvel shows and a second season of The Mandalorian.
Putting an emphasis on Disney+ makes sense given the box office disappointment that was The Rise of Skywalker. Iger mentioned the previously-known hiatus that leaves Star Wars with no clear direction on the big screen. A December 2022 release date has been pegged, but with no movie in development it seems unlikely to stick.
“The priority in the next few years is television,” Iger said.
To that point, Iger teased the possibility of The Mandalorian spinoffs featuring some of its more popular characters, saying “the possibility of infusing [‘The Mandalorian’] with more characters and taking those characters in their own direction in terms of series.”
Maybe a Cara Dune series featuring Gina Carano? Yes, please.
Iger mentioned the two other Star Wars spinoffs on the way; Cassian Andor, which features the return of Diego Luna as his Rebel captain character from Rogue One. There’s also the Obi-Wan Kenobi series led by Ewan McGregor, but that one is in a state of flux after all of the scripts were thrown out to be rewritten. On hold indefinitely, it’s unclear when that one will arrive. It’s likely we’ll see Cassian Andor hit Disney+ in 2021, assuming everything goes smoothly. Assuming anything about Star Wars has been a fool’s gambit lately, though.
The big question surrounding Disney+ has been whether subscribers, of which Disney has confirmed there are 26 million of them, will have enough content to stick around for the long haul. The Mandalorian can’t run year ’round, can it? Well, there’s another way to keep those paying customers happy and that’s to keep giving them more Marvel and Star Wars programs to look forward to, and now we have release dates for three of the biggest shows coming to Disney+.
During an earnings call CEO Bob Iger confirmed Marvel’s Falcon and the Winter Soldier series would arrive this August, as had been previously reported. Anthony Mackie returns as Falcon, who will be wielding Captain America’s famous shield, and Sebastian Stan is back as Bucky aka the Winter Soldier, as they face the renewed threat of Baron Zemo, played once again by Daniel Bruhl.
The anticipated second season of The Mandalorian will arrive this October, with Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni back steering the adventures of Mando and Baby Yoda.
Moving up from its 2021 spot is WandaVision, which is now expected to arrive this December. The oddball series sets Elizabeth Olsen’s Scarlet Witch and Paul Bettany’s Vision in a 1950s-era TV sitcom world.
Disney dropped a teaser for the upcoming Marvel shows during the Super Bowl, which you can check out here!
Remember before Chris Pratt became big movie star Chris Pratt, the headliner of huge Jurassic World and Guardians of the Galaxy franchises? He was just another funny cast member on NBC’s Parks & Recreation and hasn’t done much TV since other than a hosting gig on SNL and a guest spot on CBS sitcom Mom.
Well now Pratt is returning to the small screen and, sorry, it’s not for a Parks & Rec reunion. Instead, he’ll be joining director Antoine Fuqua’s upcoming series The Terminal List, about a Navy Seal who uncovers a dark conspiracy while investigating his role in a deadly overseas mission he has incoherent memory of. The script is penned by writer David DiGilio.
This is a reunion between Pratt and Fuqua, having previously worked together on The Magnificent Seven. Make of that what you will. There’s currently no home for The Terminal List, but I can see streaming networks bidding hard to land it. [Deadline]
Critical acclaim has followed director Sally Potter throughout her career, with films including Orlando, The Man Who Cried, and 2017’s The Party. But back in 2012, she directed the coming-of-age drama Ginger & Rose, which saw her working with Elle Fanning for the first time. It must have been a great experience for both, because they’re together again for the Berlin-bound The Roads Not Taken.
Written and directed by Potter, The Roads Not Taken pairs Fanning with Javier Bardem, the latter playing a father who appears to be suffering from mental illness, but is actually seeing visions of what his life might’ve been if he made different choices. The film also stars Laura Linney, Salma Hayek, Branka Katic, and Milena Tscharntke.
SYNOPSIS: Sally Potter’s THE ROADS NOT TAKEN follows a day in the life of Leo (Javier Bardem) and his daughter, Molly (Elle Fanning) as she grapples with the challenges of her father’s chaotic mind. As they weave their way through New York City, Leo’s journey takes on a hallucinatory quality as he floats through alternate lives he could have lived, leading Molly to wrestle with her own path as she considers her future.
The Roads Not Taken opens on March 13th, after its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival.
It’s still kinda surreal that Chris Rock is making a Saw movie, reviving the once-popular horror series that saw victims tortured in various games of death. A few weeks ago rumors began to surface of an official title, once that sounded like a working title or placeholder, Spiral: From the Book of Saw. Clunky though that might sound, it appears to be legit.
So there’s a leaked version of the new Saw trailer out there, which we won’t bother to post. The legit trailer should be out in a few days, anyway, and the leak is pretty shitty. But one thing about it is clear and that’s the title is indeed Spiral: From the Book of Saw.
Ugh. damn, that’s clunky.
What probably happened is the film was going to be titled simply Spiral, until the marketing gurus reminded them that people only give a shit because this is a Saw movie. Better put it in the title.
My question is, “Why not just call it “Saw: Spiral”?
Whatever. The film, which Rock is starring in and developed the story for, also features Samuel L. Jackson, Marisol Nichols, and Max Minghella. Darren Lynn Bousman is behind the camera, with a May 15th release date set.
Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood remains one of the most discussed films in the running for Best Picture, and the reason is audiences can’t get enough of the vintage Hollywood fantasy featuring Rick Dalton and his stunt double, Cliff Booth. While there’s a good chance we’ll see another cut of the movie with even more footage, Tarantino is giving fans something else to think about and that’s how Dalton’s career might’ve gone after the movie’s closing credits.
For those who don’t know, the film ends with Dalton and Booth giving Sharon Tate the happy ending she didn’t get in life. The duo gruesomely finished off the Manson Family members before they could murder Tate, with Dalton having one of the movie’s best moments by roasting one of them with an old flamethrower used in one of his iconic roles. Speaking with The Wrap, Tarantino says this moment would prove to be Dalton’s launching pad to a career resurgence…
“The whole incident with the flamethrower and the hippies got a lot of play. No one quite knows what a big deal that was, but it was still a big deal. And it’s a big deal that he killed ‘em with the flamethrower, with the prop from one of his most popular movies. So he starts becoming in demand again. I mean, not in demand like Michael Sarrazin at that time was in demand, but he’s got some publicity and now all of a sudden ‘The 14 Fists of McCluskey’ is playing more on Channel 5 during Combat Week and stuff. And so he gets offered a couple of features — low-budget ones, but studio ones.
But the thing is, on the episodic-TV circuit, he’s a bigger name now. He’s not quite Darren McGavin, all right? Darren McGavin would get paid the highest you could get paid as a guest star back in that time. But Rick’s about where John Saxon was, maybe just a little bit higher. So he’s getting good money and doing the best shows. And the episodes are all built around him.
So as opposed to doing ‘Land of the Giants’ and ‘Bingo Martin,’ now he’s the bad guy on ‘Mission: Impossible,’ and it’s his episode.
Oh, and he does a Vince Edwards show, ‘Matt Lincoln.’ Or a Glenn Ford show, ‘Cade’s County.’ And that’s a big deal, ’cause he did ‘Hell-Fire Texas’ with Glenn Ford and they didn’t really get along. But now they bury the hatchet and they make a big deal about the two guys doing it together. And then he does a couple of Paul Wendkos’ TV movies.
And you know, he’s doing OK.”
Sounds like Tarantino has given this some thought. Of all the Tarantino films, other than Kill Bill this is the one I’d want to see him revisit most. Hopefully he can make that happen someday.
It’s not often that a movie without any awards prospects gets a re-release this late in the season, but that’s exactly what’s happening with the Safdie Brothers’ hit street-hustle film, Uncut Gems. Featuring a career-best performance by Adam Sandler, one criminally overlooked by the Oscars, it’s become something of a sensation on social media. How many “This is how I win” memes have you seen in the last few months?
Uncut Gems is set to return to theaters this weekend, raising the blood pressures of an all-new audience. This will be a different cut of the movie, 18-minutes longer and featuring a hidden camera Q&A with Sandler, who plays a New York diamond jeweler who gets way in over his head in debt as he’s unable to refuse a high stakes gamble. The film also stars Lakeith Stanfield, Idina Menzel, Eric Bogosian, and Judd Hirsch.
A24 has dropped a new trailer for the re-release which you can check out below.
This week Birds of Prey finally comes flying into theaters. Kinda feels like we’ve been waiting forever for it, thanks to the Gotham City Sirens confusion. The film returns Margot Robbie to the role of Harley Quinn, who is no longer tied down by the Joker (figuratively, although literally is probably true, too), and must team up with an all-new girl gang to survive the threat of Roman Sionis, aka Black Mask, played by Ewan McGregor.
Since we know Harley Quinn is entirely unhinged, and this movie is largely seen from her perspective, expect it to get pretty bonkers. In a handful of new clips we get an idea of just how far off the wall this could go, with Harley Quinn battling some of Sionis’ goons on a pair of roller skates, swining her mallet around with reckless abandon.
In another clip we see Harley Quinn being interrogated by Sionis and his right-hand-man Victor Zsasz (Chris Messina), and in another we see her, along with Huntress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), Black Canary (Jurnee Smollett-Bell), Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez), and Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Basco) realizing they must work together. I think this scene also reveals a certain character’s death, so beware of spoilers. There’s more, including Black Canary breaking out her soulful rendition of “It’s A Man’s World”, giving Smolett-Bell a chance to show what she can do.
Directed by Cathy Yan, Birds of Prey opens February 7th!
With Downhill right around the corner, now’s a pretty good time to catch up with Ruben Östlund, who directed the original version of that movie, 2014’s Force Majeure. He followed that up Palme d’Or winner The Square, and now he’s got a new film in the works that will star none other than Woody Harrelson.
Östlund will make his English-language debut with Triangle of Sadness, and it will feature not only Harrelson, but Maleficent 2 actor Harris Dickinson and Black Lightning actress Charlbi Dean. The story centers on a wealthy couple on a luxury cruise captained by a Marxist (Harrelson), only to have the group stranded on a deserted island where only the cleaning lady knows the basics they need to survive.
Östlund said, “I have had a goal with ‘The Square’ and ‘Force Majeure’ and ‘Triangle’ of trying to combine the best parts of European film history with the best part of the American approach. I want to make a wild, entertaining, thought-provoking film that for me brings to mind Buñuel and Lina Wertmüller. I have tried not to have any limitations of where this film can go, it’s a project that I hope can be an adult rollercoaster.”
“I wanted to be very careful with my first English-language film. I wanted to try out different scenes with the [potential] actors and I also wanted to develop the script while we were trying out these scenes in casting. I wanted to give all the actors time.”
The debilitating fear and uncertainty that comes with motherhood is of particular interest to Austrian directing duo Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala, who had an art house breakout a few years ago with the domestic horror Goodnight Mommy. A few years later and they’re back exploring similar themes and premise with The Lodge, another slow burn that’ll have you reconsidering whether kids ought to be in your future. However, in this case it’s the discord that comes with becoming a new step-parent to a pair of kids who may resort to maniacal means to keep their original family unit intact.
Once again the discordant relationship between a mother and two children is brought to freezing temperatures while stuck in claustrophobic isolation. Riley Keough gives a subtle turn as Grace, an escapee from an Evengelical cult who has found new purchase with her soon-to-be husband Richard (Richard Armitage), the reporter who covered her story. Unfortunately, his children Mia (Lia McHugh) and Aiden (Jaeden Martell) have no interest in Grace becoming part of their family. They hold her responsible for the demise of their birth mother (Alicia Silverstone), who took hard news of her ex-husband’s impending marriage to the much-younger Grace.
“You left mom for a psychopath“, Aiden scolds, giving us the first clue that maybe all isn’t well with Grace. She keeps it well hidden, though, just like the stash of pills she takes to stay balanced. Months later, Richard takes the family to their remote lodge in the middle of a snowy nowhere, hoping all sides can come together and respect one another, if not learn to love one another. But when he’s called into the city on work, leaving Grace and the surrogates alone, all sorts of weird crap starts happening, as one might expect from this genre of film.
Franz and Fiala aren’t interested in crafting anything as easily-identifiable as horror, and the ambiguous nature of the story feeds into that. One morning, Grace and the kids wake up to find the power out, all of their warm clothes missing, the food has disappeared, and worse, Grace’s stabilizing pills are nowhere to be found. As if it wasn’t tense enough in the tiny household, perched precariously on a dangerous lake of ice, the accusations only make it worse. Are Mia and Aiden responsible for trying to push Grace over the edge, or is Grace already suffering some kind of mental break? The possibility of paranormal interference is also dangled as a possibility, with more than one clue pointing in that direction. Grace’s past as a religious zealot points to something of a supernatural nature, but the same goes for the devout Mia, who seems to be headed down a similar path. You’d think they’d get along.
But for all of these red herrings, including ominous shots of a dollhouse that seems to be replicating the odd events, few prove satisfying in sustaining the mystery, as if they were thrown together at random. This is exacerbated by a disappointing reveal that will be a gut blow to horror fans hoping for something edgier, or at least one that makes sense seen in full context. The mounting household pressure is exquisitely delivered, albeit at a crawl’s pace, through cinematographer Thimios Bakatakis’s icy lens, giving you the sense of being trapped inside of an igloo. The performances help, as well, most of it done in cold stares and if-looks-could-kill glances. Only Keough gets anything remotely layered, as Grace’s brittle psyche finds her leaning on the religious beliefs she fought so hard to escape. A surprisingly violent, forbidding finale clashes with the deliberate tone, and fails to deliver enough of a jolt for those who put their faith in The Lodge to live up to Franz and Fiala’s chilling predecessor.
