If you could have any super power, what would it be? Many would say flight. Some would say super-strength. But what the power to become invisible? The ability to go through life unseen seems especially geared towards those with a dark sensibility. Such was the case with H.G. Wells’ classic The Invisible Man, and the same holds true with Blumhouse’s upcoming reimaging of the iconic horror.
Fresh off of yesterday’s first-look images, the trailer for The Invisible Man has arrived, promising a fresh and timely take from writer/director Leigh Whannell. Elisabeth Moss stars as a woman who is terrorized by her abusive ex, who has somehow defied death and returned turned as…well, an invisible man. The film co-stars Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Aldis Hodge, Harriet Dyer, and Storm Reid.
SYNOPSIS: Cecilia receives the news of her abusive ex-boyfriend’s suicide and begins to rebuild her life for the better. However, her sense of reality is put into question when she begins to suspect her deceased lover is not actually dead.
The Invisible Man hits theaters on February 28th 2020.
Pixar has never shied away from deep subject matter and concepts, but with their latest film Soul they take on mortality and some of life’s most existential questions.
First revealed this past summer at D23, Soul features Jamie Foxx, marking the studio’s first time ever with a black lead actor. Foxx voices Joe Gardner, an aspiring jazz musician who finally sees his dreams of playing in a prestigious club coming true, only to suffer an accident that leaves his soul separated and adrift in the great beyond, looking for a means to return.
“Ever wonder where your passion, your dreams and your interests come from? What is it that makes you … you? Soul takes you on a journey from the streets of New York City to the cosmic realms to discover the answers to life’s most important questions.”
Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, and Jon Batiste worked on the movie’s score, which promises to be more prevalent than most Pixar movies given the lead character and the subject matter. Director and Pixar COO Pete Docter tells TheWrap…
“I grew up with Peanuts cartoons and the Vince Guaraldi music. I feel like it’s coursing through my veins and this is our version of that. Jon Batiste is a fantastic musician–he’s a historian yet is able to push the music forward, bringing all these different influences to the work. I sincerely hope that the jazz music in ‘Soul’ will inspire a whole new generation.”
Alsofeaturing the voices of Phylicia Rashad, Tina Fey, and Daveed Diggs, Soul opens in theaters on June 19th 2020.
I like every single thing about this project. Funnyman Jason Sudeikis and MCU alum Evangeline Lilly are set to star in Till Death, an action thriller from director Aharon Keshales’. Keshales became a hot commodity when his 2013 film Big Bad Wolves was named dubbed by Quentin Tarantino as that year’s best.
Based on a story Keshales cooked up and co-wrote with Navot Papushado and Kai Mark, Till Death centers on Jimmy, a convicted felon who is paroled after serving twelve years for armed robbery and reconnects with Annie, the love his life, who is now dying from terminal cancer. Jimmy decides to use his newfound freedom to give Annie the best final year of her life. Of course, things don’t go quite as he planned.
Sudeikis has been killing it on the dramatic front lately, with films such as Tumbledown, Kodachrome, and Colossal. He was most recently seen in the comedy Booksmart. Lilly was most recently seen as Wasp in Avengers: Endgame and will likely return for the recently-announced Ant-Man 3. Keshales is in post on Gunpowder Milkshake, an actioner led by Karen Gillan, Lena Headey, and Michelle Yeoh.
Dwayne Johnson continues to bring the sport of wrestling further into the cinematic mainstream. Earlier this year he developed and appeared in the biopic Fighting with My Family about WWE superstar Paige, and now he’s set to bring another wrestler’s uplifting story to the big screen with Unstoppable.
Produced by Johnson and Dany Garcia through their Seven Bucks label, Unstoppable will tell the inspiring true story of Anthony Robles who despite being born with only one leg to a single-parent family on the wrong side of the tracks, Robles overcame every obstacle to become an undefeated collegiate wrestling star, three-time All-American, 2011 NCAA National Champion, two-time ESPY Award winner and a National Wrestling Hall of Fame inductee. The film was written by John Hindeman based on Robles’ 2012 memoir.
The plan is to move fast on this one, which means a director and cast should be found soon. Mudbound actor Jason Mitchell had been attached to play Robles as of last year, but that appears to be over. Nothing suggests Johnson will take a role, but just as his small cameo in Fighting with My Family gave that film a big boost, I expect an appearance in Unstoppable could do the same.
Midway is exactly the war film you would expect from disaster movie peddler Roland Emmerich. For some, that it’s big, dumb, and has more explosions than characters you give a damn about will be seen as a plus, just as many feel the same way about Michael Bay movies. You don’t show up to an Emmerich film expecting authenticity, which makes the “Based on True Events” header a joke in itself, but nobody expects it to be quite so dull and badly acted, either.
Badly acted largely due to a cast who are given a cringe-worthy script from Wes Tooke devoid of anything that resembles human emotion. Not even actors the caliber of Patrick Wilson, Dennis Quaid, Aaron Eckhart, and Woody Harrelson can make heads or tails out of the rah-rah speechifying and expository statements they are forced to rattle off. Emmerich’s take on the battle of Midway is about as retro as they come, using a scaled-down color palette and a heightened, almost superheroic tone similar to the bombastic war movies of a bygone era. It’s an interesting choice to make and might have worked with a better screenplay that truly honored the sacrifices made by these real-life heroes.
In true Emmerich fashion, we’re thrown into the action early as the Japanese launch the infamous attack on Pearl Harbor. The devastation is massive; ships torn asunder, fires raging, as Japanese warplanes launch strafing run after strafing run like something out of Star Wars. In the midst of all this emerges hotshot Navy pilot Dick Best, and no that name isn’t a joke. He’s a real war hero, worthy of a much better performance than Ed Skrein can give him. Best wants to punch back immediately, but of course, he can’t. Instead, he acts like a jerk while the higher-ups come up with a strategy for response.
After the carnage of the opening attack, the film slows down as intelligence is gathered leading up to the battle of Midway. Patrick Wilson plays Intelligence Officer Edwin T. Layton, who figures out early on where the Japanese will attack next, but has to convince his superiors, including Woody Harrelson as Admiral Chester Nimitz, that the divisive code-breaking tech he’s using is sound. None of this stuff is compelling in the least. There’s a hint of an underdog story as Layton tries to get Washington to support his theories, but it doesn’t really go anywhere. Meanwhile, other characters are introduced who serve little purpose. Dennis Quaid’s Vice Admiral William “Bull” Halsey is around long enough to bark a few orders before being shuffled off with a case of shingles (!?!?), Nick Jonas plays an easygoing soldier who doesn’t really care about anything, and whole lot of other actors with mustaches who fail to make much of an impression. Tooke’s screenplay identifies them all by whatever their singular trait might be. “He’s the man who tried to warn us!”, greets Layton. “He’s the best pilot we’ve got!” is about the only thing good anybody has to say about the appropriately-named Best. Don’t go looking for too much from the female characters, either, one of which is played by Mandy Moore. As Best’s long-suffering wife, she exists to make sandwiches late at night and worry about his safety. Moore is given little from Skrein to connect with emotionally and he is especially terrible during their scenes together.
Midway deserves credit for offering an even-handed look at the Japanese, as well. A tremendous amount of time is dedicated to capturing their side of the conflict, and how their code of honor clashes with the overconfidence they bring into every fight. It’s not quite Letters from Iwo Jima level, but I found the look at Japanese war culture to be fascinating and deserving of even more time.
But at least the action is good, right? Well, sure, as long as you aren’t expecting realistic aerial dogfights or naval combat. This is video game-level stuff, with some slick CGI visuals that you can tell Emmerich squeezed every bit of that $100M budget to get. If this is all you came for, you might be disappointed there isn’t more, as two major setpieces are about all you get. Unfortunately, it’s all the stuff in-between that torpedoes Midway from being all it could be.
Bill Murray, John Candy, Amy Poehler, Dan Akroyd, many of our greatest comedians passed through the ImprovOlympic (now known as iO), the improv theater created by comedy legends Del Close and Charna Halpern. You can bet many of its alumni are going to turn out for Del & Charna, a new film that’s in the works from Blockers director Kay Cannon.
Deadline reports Cannon will make Del & Charna one of her upcoming films, working from a script by Rich Talarico and Alex Fendrich. Interestingly, Cannon, Talarico, and Fendrich all trained at the ImproOlympic under Del and Charna.
Here’s the movie’s synopsis:
Del & Charna tells the true story of the unlikely pairing of eccentric improv legend, Del Close and feisty comedy theater owner, Charna Halpern. The movie chronicles their tumultuous 19-year relationship, which saw them as friends, saviors, and soulmates. Together, these two helped each other overcome his addiction, financial ruin, and their own personal demons to ultimately establish improv as an art form, launching the careers of some of our most beloved comedians, writers, and directors.
The film has Charna’s blessing, and like I said before, it’s bound to be filled with tons of comedy cameos. While Del passed away in 1999, his story is suddenly quite popular around Hollywood. Another film on Del Close was being put together by Mike Myers, but it lost funding a couple of years ago and is no longer happening.
Cannon is also developing a reimagined Cinderella film for Sony and that’s going to come first.
I think we all can agree at this point that the best Nic Cage is weird Nic Cage. Yes, there is another kind of Nic Cage, but he isn’t nearly as much fun. There’s a reason Mandy is the best-received movie he’s had in years. Well, Cage gets weird again in the H.P. Lovecraft adaptation Color Out of Space, which looks like it goes completely over the edge.
The film is directed by Richard Stanley in his first feature-length film since 1992’s Dust Devil. He gets to direct an unhinged Cage in the story of a family man who discovers a strange meteorite has crashed onto their farm. While the rock soon disappears, it leaves behind a deadly organism that infects the man’s family, turning their calm, rural existence into a nightmare.
I can scarcely think of a better combo than Cage and the twisted works of Lovecraft. If this doesn’t become another Cage classic perfect for the Midnight crowd I’ll be shocked.
Also starring Joely Richardson, Madeleine Arthur, Brendan Meyer, Julian Hilliard, Elliot Knight, Josh C. Waller, Q’orianka Kilcher, and Tommy Chong, Color Out of Space opens January 24th 2020.
Emerging from the ashes of the failed Dark Universe experiment, Blumhouse’s The Invisible Man promises to do something vastly different with the iconic Universal Monster. Given their track record turning low-budget films into massive blockbusters, their take on the classic horror is one of the most eagerly awaited projects of 2020, and today we have the first look.
Star Elisabeth Moss is featured in the first images from The Invisible Man, which comes from Insidious Chapter 3 and Upgrade writer/director Leigh Whannell. In each scene she looks to be going through something traumatic, which makes sense considering she plays a woman terrorized by her abusive ex, who appears to have committed suicide but still manages to haunt her by becoming invisible. Moss is joined in the cast by Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Storm Reid, Aldis Hodge, and Harriet Dyer.
Whannell explained to EW that his goal was to do something different from the Invisible Man we’ve all seen before, the guy with a pair of sunglasses on a face wrapped in bandages…
“I wanted to kind of get away from that and make something that was really modern, really grounded, or as grounded as you can be when you’re dealing with a film called ‘The Invisible Man,’” he said. “Just something that was really tense and scary in a way The Invisible Man hasn’t been before.”
While the Dark Universe may be dead, that doesn’t mean the possibility of sequels is. Not that Whannell wants to think about that…yet.
“I don’t know. I haven’t put any thought into a sequel. I’m a pretty superstitious filmmaker. I don’t want to jinx anything. I’ve been involved with movies that have had a lot of sequels, like the original ‘Saw’ film obviously spawned a whole franchise, as did ‘Insidious.’ But I can tell you with total honesty that in the case of both of those films, I never thought about a sequel. I would never want to jinx the release of a movie by thinking about what comes next.”
Ang Lee’s Gemini Man saw a 100% digital creation of Will Smith battling his flesh and blood self. While the film was a dud, it did show that the technology has progressed by leaps and bounds, almost to a scary degree. And if you’re one of those who worried it might’ve marked the beginning of the end of real, living actors on the big screen…well, your nightmares are starting to take shape.
The upcoming Vietnam War film Finding Jack, which none of us was probably ever going to see, will feature James Dean in a role. Yes, THAT James Dean. Not some random dude who dared take the charismatic, gone-too-young actor’s name, but a digitally created CGI version of James Dean.
Anton Ernst and Tati Golykh are directing, based on Gareth Crocker’s book about the existence and abandonment of more than 10,000 military dogs at the end of the Vietnam conflict. Dean will play a secondary character named Rogan.
“We searched high and low for the perfect character to portray the role of Rogan, which has some extremely complex character arcs, and after months of research, we decided on James Dean,” said Ernst.
He added, “We feel very honored that his family supports us and will take every precaution to ensure that his legacy as one of the most epic film stars to date is kept firmly intact. The family views this as his fourth movie, a movie he never got to make. We do not intend to let his fans down.”
This sounds like a terrible idea, but the gimmick will do its job. People will now want to see what they do with James Dean, who died way back in 1955. I mean, if this is such a secondary role, how “complex” can his character arc truly be? And if these unknown filmmakers do manage to complete this successfully, what’s to stop a more accomplished director from taking it to the next level? [THR]
Well, that didn’t take long. Just a couple of days after Robert Rodriguez moved forward on his sci-fi/action film Hypnotic, he’s already landed a star worthy of the film’s big-budget prospects.
Deadline reports Ben Affleck will star in Hypnotic, playing a detective embroiled in a mystery involving a shadowy government program, his missing daughter, and the investigation into a series of impossible high-end heists. The script is co-written by Rodriguez and Max Borenstein, who recently penned Kong: Skull Island.
This is just the latest in a number of projects Affleck has coming up, including Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel, Dee Rees’ The Last Thing He Wanted, and sports drama The Way Back which reunites him with The Accountant director Gavin O’Connor.
