‘Fortitude’ Trailer: Nicolas Cage Plays The Inspiration For James Bond In New WWII Spy Thriller

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September 2, 2026

As our military is learning right now, superior firepower isn’t always enough to win a war. In WWII, the Allied forces knew this, and employed sophisticated deception schemes to fool the enemy and set the stage for D-Day. This plot is at the center of Simon West’s new film, Fortitude, a reunion with his Con Air and Stolen actor Nicolas Cage.

Fortitude has a script by Simon Afram, and stars Matthew Goode and Ed Skrein as British intelligence operatives Thomas Argyll “TAR” Robertson and Dudley Clarke. Robertson and Clarke engaged in an ambitious plan to fool the Nazis as to the date and whereabouts of the Allied invasion on D-Day. The deception included fake armies, phony radio signals, bogus military equipment, and extensive use of double agents.

The film has a surprisingly jam-packed ensemble starring as real-life heroes of the war. Cage plays flamboyant Serbian double agent Dusko Popov, considered one of Ian Fleming’s inspirations for James Bond. Jordi Mollà plays Spanish double agent Juan Pujol, Alice Eve is British intelligence agent Nancy Armstrong. Also in the cast are Sir Ben Kingsley, Lukas Haas, Adrian Topol, Emilio Sakraya, Maeve Courtier-Lilley, Art Malik, and Paul Anderson.

SYNOPSIS: FORTITUDE is based on an incredible true story and follows the fearless and unpredictable spy-soldiers Dudley Clarke (Ed Skrein) and Thomas Argyll “TAR” Robertson (Matthew Goode), as they devise the biggest deception mission ever mounted. With the support of Winston Churchill (Michael Sheen), Ian Fleming (Art Malik) and an extraordinary network of double agents, among them Dusko Popov (Nicolas Cage), the real-life spy who inspired the James Bond novels, Juan Pujol (Jordi Mollà), a Spanish chicken farmer, and Nancy Armstrong (Alice Eve), a top British Intelligence agent, they create a spectacular master plan using a fictitious army, fake tanks, aircraft and ships, actors and false radio messages to fool Hitler’s Nazi Army in the build-up to D-Day. Operation FORTITUDE decisively changed the course of World War II and paved the way for a free world.

While this movie looks like the best thing West has done in quite some time, there’s some interesting legal stuff going on behind the scenes. Afram, who is also a producer on the film, sued Netflix for $105M in June after an unencrypted copy of Fortitude was stolen from its office. He says this theft put sale of the film to potential buyers in jeopardy and also compromised any awards season strategies. I’m curious to see where that goes.

As such, Fortitude doesn’t have a distributor or a firm release date, but maybe this new trailer will change that. Too bad it’s not coming to TIFF.

‘Ink’ Teaser Trailer: Danny Boyle’s Rupert Murdoch Drama Stars Guy Pearce And Jack O’Connell.

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Travis Hopson

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September 2, 2026

Before Rupert Murdoch launched Fox News and used it to transform journalism into a force for evil, he was transforming The Sun into a populist tabloid juggernaut. The trailer for Danny Boyle’s new film, Ink, charts the rise of Murdoch as a media heavyweight with Jack O’Connell as controversial editor Larry Lamb.

Guy Pearce, who can be seen right now in The Dog Stars, plays a younger Murdoch, the Australian businessman who takes over the struggling British newspaper The Sun, and enlists Lamb to be its editor. Together, they introduced the Page 3 convention featuring splashy images of topless glamour models. Unsurprisingly, sales began to skyrocket.

Also in the cast is Claire Foy as fictional reporter Jules Davies. The screenplay is by James Graham, adapted from his own stageplay.

SYNOPSIS: The film is an explosive cinematic rollercoaster about a group of visionaries and misfits who had an idea for a new kind of news — one that would give the people what they want and would change the face of the world we live in today.

Ink will have its world premiere today at the Venice International Film Festival. It will then hit theaters on December 11th before Netflix on January 8th 2027.

‘Mouse’ Trailer: Sophie Okonedo Leads Latest Drama From ‘Ghostlight’ Duo Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson

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Travis Hopson

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September 1, 2026

Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson made waves at Sundance in 2024 with Ghostlight, a tender drama about the players in a local community theater group. The duo returned at Berlinale with Mouse, another heartfelt, emotional film exploring complicated relationships, and based on early reviews, they’ve delivered another winner.

Starring Sophie Okonedo, Katherine Mallen Kupferer, Chloe Coleman, Tara Mallen, Iman Vellani, David Hyde Pierce, Mouse is set to hit theaters on November 6th courtesy of Independent Film Company, which also distributed Ghostlight. Clearly, they like being in the O’Sullivan and Thompson business.

SYNOPSIS: “It’s 2002, and best friends Minnie (Kupferer) and Callie (Coleman) are heading into their senior year of high school, with Minnie long living in the protective shadow of the charismatic and admired Callie. When their friendship is suddenly upended at the start of the summer, Minnie struggles to define her own identity and forms a complicated relationship with Callie’s poised, attentive mother (Okonedo), pulling her further from her own chaotic home.”

Check out the trailer for Mouse below!

New Playable ‘Street Fighter’ Trailer Lets You Throw Some Deadly Combos

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Travis Hopson

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September 1, 2026

The Fighting Game Community is lovin’ life right now. A pair of good Mortal Kombat movies got things going, and later this year the granddaddy of all fighting games, Street Fighter, makes its epic return to the big screen. With the wild assemblage of talent, including no shortage of pro wrestlers, this is shaping up to be an insane throwback that knows exactly who its audience is.

The huge ensemble playing the “world warriors” include Noah Centineo as Ken Masters, Andrew Koji as Ryu, Callina Liang as Chun-Li, Joe “Roman Reigns” Anoai as Akuma, David Dastmalchian as M. Bison, Cody Rhodes as Guile, Andrew Schulz as Dan Hibiki, Eric André as Don Sauvage, Vidyut Jammwal as Dhalsim, Orville Peck as Vega, Olivier Richters as Zangief, Hirooki Goto as E. Honda, Rayna Vallandingham as Juli, Alexander Volkanovski as Joe, Mel Jarnson as Cammy White, 50 Cemt as Balrog, Jason Momoa as Blanka.

Seriously, Hirooki Goto, former IWGP World Heavyweight Champion, the “Bishimon” himself, is playing E. Honda. It’s just crazy. I love it.

SYNOPSIS: Set in 1993, estranged Street Fighters Ryu (Koji) and Ken Masters (Centineo) are thrown back into combat when the mysterious Chun-Li (Liang) recruits them for the next World Warrior Tournament: a brutal clash of fists, fate, and fury. But behind this battle royale lies a deadly conspiracy that forces them to face off against each other and the demons of their past. And if they don’t, it’s GAME OVER!

Paramount Pictures and Legendary are taking Street Fighter on a World Tour that kicks off today. I’m going to reiterate that if they don’t let me do some interviews for this, maybe attend the world premiere, I’m going to cry very real tears.

Street Fighter hits theaters on October 16th, directed by Kitao Sakurai . Check out the trailer below, along with a new playable version in which you can actually get in on the action. Throw some combos!

Noah Jupe Joins ‘Avengers: Secret Wars’ In A Mystery Role

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Travis Hopson

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September 1, 2026

Now this is interesting news. Noah Jupe, probably best known for the A Quiet Place films, has joined Avengers: Secret Wars in a mystery role. It’s interesting because Deadline calls it a “key part” in the Russo Brothers-directed follow-up to Avengers: Doomsday.

Could Jupe be playing The Beyonder? He’s certainly got the hair for it.

Jupe joins an insanely stacked ensemble of pretty much everyone who has ever appeared in a Marvel Studios movie, and then some. The actor most recently starred in Chloe Zhao’s Hamnet. He also starred with Spider-Man: Brand New Day‘s Sadie Sink on stage at the West End. Jupe will be seen next in Jaume Collet-Serra’s Play Dead for Netflix, as well as in A Quiet Place 3.

Seriously, he’s The Beyonder, right? Or maybe Franklin Richards? Captain America’s kiddo?

Avengers: Secret Wars hits theaters on December 17th 2027.

DC Readers: Attend A Free Early Screening of ‘Mayday’ Starring Ryan Reynolds And Kenneth Branagh

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Travis Hopson

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September 1, 2026

I’m happy to offer our DC area readers the chance to attend a very special screening of Mayday, Apple TV’s action-packed spy comedy starring Ryan Reynolds and Kenneth Branagh! The film is directed by John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein (Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves) and co-stars Maria Bakalova.

SYNOPSIS: Ryan Reynolds and Kenneth Branagh team up in “Mayday,” a genre-bending, action-packed buddy comedy that flips the spy thriller on its head. When hotshot U.S. Navy pilot Lieutenant Troy “Assassin” Kelly (Reynolds) is sent on a top-secret mission into Russian territory at the height of the Cold War, the operation implodes, leaving him stranded behind enemy lines. Discovered by Nikolai Ustinov (Branagh), a gruff ex-KGB agent with a penchant for American culture, Troy thinks he’s toast — but could an unlikely alliance between the two lead to Troy’s rescue and a bond neither saw coming?

The screening takes place tomorrow, Wednesday, September 2nd at 7:00pm at the U.S. Navy Memorial! If you’d like to attend, RSVP at the Apple TV site here. Please remember, all screenings are first come first served and you’ll need to arrive early to ensure seating. Enjoy the show!

Mayday opens on Apple TV on September 4th.

First Look At Andrew Garfield In Luca Guadagnino’s OpenAI Drama ‘Artificial’, Premiering At NYFF

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Travis Hopson

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September 1, 2026

Oh, and I thought we were told Luca Guadagnino’s controversial OpenAI/Sam Altman film Artificial wasn’t going to do any festivals? Turns out that’s not true at all, as it was just added to the New York Film Festival lineup as a world premiere. This news arrives after Amazon MGM dropped the hot-button project (Bezos doesn’t want to piss off any of his pals in Big Tech!), and it was acquired by NEON for practically pennies on the dollar.

As part of the news, we have our first look at Andrew Garfield as OpenAI founder Sam Altman, alongside Anora co-star Yura Borisov as co-founder Ilya Sutskever. Artificial will center on Altman’s firing by Sutskever and the OpenAI board due to a lack of confidence, only for him to be reinstated days later.

Also in the cast are Mark Rylance, Monica Barbaro, Ike Barinholtz, Jason Schartzman, Zosia Mamet, Cooper Hoffman, and Chris O’Dowd. Guadagnino directs from a script by Simon Rich that is said to be unflinching in its look inside tech bro culture.

Per NYFF’s statement, “The stakes couldn’t be higher in Luca Guadagnino’s thrilling, funny, and very human ‘Artificial,’ a drama of immense moral urgency that propels the viewer through the two decades of machine learning research and technocratic recklessness that have brought us to our current AI crisis point. In 2003, Soviet-born computer scientist Ilya Sutskever (Yura Borisov) began studying artificial neural networks under University of Toronto professor Geoffrey ‘Godfather of AI’ Hinton (Mark Rylance). A decade later, while employed by Google, Sutskever fatefully crosses paths with a young entrepreneur named Sam Altman (Andrew Garfield), the eventual co-founder and CEO of OpenAI.”

Artificial has yet to be given a release date, but expect that to change once NEON gauges reactions from NYFF.

‘La Bola Negra’ Trailer: Netflix’s Acclaimed Queer Epic Features Penélope Cruz And Glenn Close

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Travis Hopson

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September 1, 2026

Netflix scored 13 Oscar nominations, winning 2, for its LGBTQ drama Emilia Perez a couple of years ago. It might earn similar accolades this year for La Bola Negra, a queer historical epic from directors Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi (aka Los Javis) that won them the Best Director award at Cannes.

La Bola Negra stars Spanish singer/songwriter Guitarricadelafuente in his feature acting debut, plus Miguel Bernardeau, Carlos González, Milo Quifes, Lola Dueñas, Julio Torres, Penélope Cruz, and Glenn Close. Calvo and Ambrossi co-wrote the screenplay with Alberto Conejero, based on unfinished work by slain poet and playwright Federico García Lorca, and Conejero’s stageplay.

Here’s the synopsis: La Bola Negra tells the story of three generations of men whose lives are intimately connected through desire, pain, and love.

So there’s a lot of legacy behind La Bola Negra, and it’s something Calvo and Ambrossi long to give the proper respect…

“When we began writing La Bola Negra, we wanted to tell a story about freedom, legacy, and the importance of LGBTQ+ visibility,” said Calvo and Ambrossi to Netflix’s Tudum. “Above all, we wanted to honor the generations of people whose courage and sacrifice made our freedoms possible today.”

La Bola Negra hits theaters on October 16th before coming to Netflix on December 2nd.

‘Copperhead’: Jason Momoa, Adria Arjona, Tenoch Huerta, And Kiefer Sutherland Join Miles Teller In West Texas Crime Film

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Travis Hopson

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September 1, 2026

The prospect of Miles Teller teaming up with John Swab, director of one of the best recent crime movies in King Ivory, for a new film in that genre was already pretty exciting. Now there’s even more reason to get pumped for Copperhead, as Teller will be surrounded by an A+ supporting cast.

According to Deadline, Jason Momoa, Adria Arjona, Tenoch Huerta, and Kiefer Sutherland have joined Teller in Copperhead. The West Texas crime flick has a script by Chad Feehan and J. Todd Scott. We also have a brand new synopsis:

In “Copperhead,” when an undercover drug deal explodes into violence, a veteran detective is forced to team with a young federal agent to unravel the conspiracy within their elite task force.

It’s clear that Swab and Momoa are starting to become a thing. Momoa is already attached to another of Swab’s films, Hell’s Angels, in which he plays notorious outlaw biker Sonny Barger.

Arjona’s profile has skyrocketed recently thanks to her starring role in Endor. Depending on who you believe, she’s also the frontrunner to be James Gunn’s Wonder Woman, possibly debuting in Man of Tomorrow. She can be seen this week kicking ass in Adam Wingard’s Onslaught.

Huerta is best known for playing Namor in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and he’ll reprise the role in Avengers: Doomsday. Sutherland has been great for a long time, including in recent films The Cain Mutiny Court-Martial and Juror #2.

Review: ‘Onslaught’
Adam Wingard's Super Soldier Slasher Horror Shoots Nothing But Blanks

By
Travis Hopson
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Sometimes you really can’t go home again. Adam Wingard made his name on a pair of gritty thrillers that became cult favorites, You’re Next and The Guest, both being pretty awesome. He took a diversion into big budget land with the Monsterverse movies, but has since taken a breather and returned to familiar territory with Onslaught. Don’t get me wrong, this is a move I support, but not if the results are going to be this disappointing, a promised full-velocity action flick that fails to deliver in just about every way.

So how do you mess up a movie like Onslaught, which boasts the incredible Adria Arjona as a military sniper taking on a trio of escaped super soldiers bred to kill? Well, you do it with an amateurish screenplay by Simon Barrett and poorly shot PG-level violence. It’s clear what Wingard is going for here, a kind of grindhouse-style invasion flick crossed with a slasher horror. The trio of elite killers, escaped from a secret government compound, even come armed with chainsaws and machetes, like the spawn of Leatherface and Jason Voorhees.

But…man, these guys are a joke. We learn early on that they are all former war criminals, enhanced and given an unstoppable thirst for killing by an old Nazi scientist played by a scene-chomping Dan Stevens, almost recognizable with his white hair and bald scalp. They decimate an entire squad of armed soldiers in a bloody test run, overseen by Michael Biehn’s government spook. Even then, Wingard pulls back from showing the worst of the carnage, but at least then we’re left to assume that he’s saving the best for later.

Arjona plays Celeste, who between struggles with her ex-husband over custody of their daughter Daisy (Blake Kennedy), is also clearly a damaged woman dealing with PTSD from her military service, which we get frequent flashbacks to. Now she manages an off-the-grid trailer park full of misfits, including the always-great Reginald Veljohnson as Josiah, an aging Vietnam War vet who doesn’t mind dispensing a pearl of wisdom or two. It’s a role for Arjona that she elevates beyond Barrett’s lackluster writing, showing both vulnerability and mama bear ferocity in equal measure.

In other places, you wonder what the heck Wingard and Barrett were thinking. For instance, Drew Starkey is poorly used as Cyrus, a killer and off-the-books clean up man introduced as someone who can bring some much needed comic violence. When we first meet him, he’s in the midst of a major drug binge while being serviced at a BDSM club. He’s called to investigate the super soldiers and clean up the scene if necessary, even though he’s high on 100mg of pure MDMA. This guy should be trippin’ balls throughout the movie, but other than the occasional flash of weirdness, it barely registers. The character is just a waste. In other places, the script introduces emotional connections to Celeste out of nowhere, likely for shock value, and they fall flat.

It’s a such a bummer because there’s stuff to like here. Clearly aiming for a John Carpenter-esque tone, Onslaught delivers gritty visuals and quirky nostalgic tunes. The vibe is post-apocalyptic, shadowy stuff going on around every corner. One wouldn’t be surprised if we learned the world was destroyed outside of Celeste’s trailer park. There’s an attempt to build in a bit of lore, too, in hopes of turning this into a potential franchise.

Onslaught’s trio of goons, one of them played by MMA fighter Alex Pereira, stalk the trailer park looking menacing with their glowing eyes (Are they Furyans like Vin Diesel’s Riddick?), but that’s about all they do. There are only a couple of major setpieces and the biggest one in the final act is the most disappointing, with the super soldiers looking more like clowns who defeat themselves rather than true threats. It’s unfathomable how soft this stuff is. Super soldiers vs. resourceful war veterans who are most comfortable in a war zone than at peace. This shit should write itself, but Onslaught misses the mark badly and if this is what Wingard is going to be giving us, perhaps making another King Kong/Godzilla movie is what he should be doing.

Onslaught opens on September 4th.