Now THIS is exciting. We’re still waiting to see what Jordan Peele’s followup to Get Out will look like, but fans of his comedic partnership with Keegan-Michael Key may be asking a different question: “When are you guys going to follow-up on Keanu?” Okay, maybe it’s just me. Anyway, we have the answer, and what is awesome about it is their next project will team them up with animation genius Henry Selick.
Selick is the director behind Coraline, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and James and the Giant Peach, so his resume is beyond reproach. He will join with Key & Peele for animated film Wendell and Wild, which has been picked up by Netflix. It’s based on an idea by Selick who will co-write the script with Peele and Clay McLeod Chapman. Sold! Here’s how the plot was described back in 2015 when we first learned about it.
“‘Wendell and Wild’ is a comedy about two scheming demon brothers who must face their arch-nemesis, the demon-dusting nun Sister Helly, and her two acolytes, the goth teens Kat and Raoul.”
No word on a start date but I assume it will need to fit into Peele’s busy schedule. He’s currently working on the HBO series Lovecraft Country with J.J. Abrams.
Does anybody expect Oscar winner Alicia Vikander to be Angelina Jolie? Ever? Then it’s probably a good idea to set certain expectations aside for her performance as adventure-seeking video game heroine Lara Croft. While Jolie was outwardly tough, untamed, and looked like she could kick any guy’s butt just as easily as she could swing across deadly pitfalls in skin tight shorts, Vikander’s physicality is more deceptive. She’s younger, leaner, vulnerable, and more savvy, a new Lara Croft to appeal to a new generation of fans. If the question is “Why does there need to be a Tomb Raider reboot?”, the answer is Vikander makes Lara Croft cool again after The Cradle of Life nearly ruined her.
To be clear, both Vikander and Jolie were perfect for their era’s version of Lara Croft. This update is based partly on the most recent reboot of the bestselling games, and an origin story that takes us back to how Lara began raiding tombs. So we find the Swedish actress as Croft in her aimless days, working as a bike messenger and pizza delivery girl, racing recklessly through London’s streets to earn a quick buck. Not that she needs it. Her father Richard (Dominic West) left her an entire fortune but she refuses to use it just as she refuses to accept that he’s dead, even though it’s been seven years since he vanished while away on a mysterious journey. Lara and Richard shared a love of puzzles and mysteries, and a chance encounter in a boardroom sets her off to solve a riddle her father left behind. It leads her to a discovery of her father’s true passion, searching for a mysterious island off the coast of Japan that’s said to hold a tomb of supernatural power. If that’s where he disappeared, Lara is willing to cross The Devil’s Sea to find him and learn what truly happened.
Norwegian director Roar Uthaug won’t be familiar to American audiences but he impressed a few years ago with disaster flick, The Wave. As such, it’s not surprising that he excels at the geographical dangers Lara faces. It begins with her attempting to cross The Devil’s Sea in a rickety old boat captained by Lu Ren (Daniel Wu), the drunken son of her father’s former colleague, also missing. The waves rise up from the murky depths like talons ready to rip the boat to shreds, leaving them shipwrecked on the island with no way home. That’s where they encounter Walton Goggins as villain Mathias Vogel, a gun-toting corporate middle man in search of the same tomb as Lara’s father. He’s got an entire slave operation running on the island to find it, but he’s just as trapped as they are. Mathias has a great villain name, and he’s fairly ruthless with that pistol he’s sporting, but Lara’s toughest foe are the natural obstacles and traps she encounters. Uthaug clearly has played his share of Tomb Raider video games. Lara endures crashed airplanes, getting spin cycled by raging rivers, and booby traps laid forth by ancient civilizations. I can imagine all of them as Quick Time Events (QTEs) begging for a quick button mash otherwise certain doom. The 3D digital effects take some getting used to compared to the practical effects of the first movie, but Vikander handles herself well. She can cling for dear life like a champ, notch an arrow like Hawkeye, and make desperation slo-mo leaps like a true action star. I doubt Jolie has the same spring in her step nowadays.
One downside to this Tomb Raider and the casting of Vikander is the lack of campy fun Jolie brought to the role. Vikander’s incredibly serious throughout and the tone is grim. This is a video game movie, shouldn’t it be both exhilarating and kind of silly? They knew how to have fun with the ridiculous plot before but something has been lost in the rebooted take. You’ll also be hard pressed to find any big surprises either in the challenges Lara faces or the people she’s surrounded by.
For sure, Vikander is going to have to win some people over that she’s a believable Lara Croft, a funny thing to say about a 100% fictional character. Hopefully audiences will give her a chance to prove she’s every bit as capable as Jolie, at least until Hollywood figures out a way to give us a Lara Croft vs. Lara Croft battle for the Tomb Raider crown. Now there’s a puzzle I think would be worth solving.
Star Wars: The Last Jedi is out digitally, and will be on Blu-Ray in a couple of weeks. We know by now that it will be loaded up with extra features, enough to keep any fan occupied for months. While at SXSW for a screening of the documentary The Director and the Jedi, itself bonus content on the home release, Johnson revealed one additional feature: a music-only version of The Last Jedi.
That’s right, you can watch the film with no other audio than John Williams’ epic score. It will be available to anyone who purchases the film regardless of format.
The Last Jedi’s out today in the states for digital download, blu in two weeks. Of all the special features, my favorite one is kinda hidden, so wanted to call it out. If you buy the movie anywhere online (or the blu) you have access to a music only version of TLJ.
This is the full movie, but with no dialogue, fx or backgrounds… just John’s score. I really wanted to put this out, it’s really something to see John’s music play with the movie, like a silent film.
There is a catch, though. To access that version, you’ll also need to be a Movies Anywhere subscriber. So if you’re itching to hear what will be one of the final Star Wars scores by John Williams in all of its fullest glory, make sure you download the Movies Anywhere app.
Despite a bit of a delay and a major casting change at the top, Noah Hawley’s astronaut drama Pale Blue Dot is shaping up to be pretty special. Reese Witherspoon was replaced by Natalie Portman in the lead role, and now she’s being joined by Baby Driver and Mad Men‘s Jon Hamm.
Hamm, who recently debuted his espionage thriller Beirut at Sundance, joins Portman in the film about an astronaut who begins to unravel after returning home from an extended mission. Hamm will play Portman’s colleague and love interest. The script was penned by Brian C. Brown and Elliot DiGuiseppi, with Witherspoon sticking around as producer.
Filming on Pale Blue Dot begins this spring, while you can catch Hamm in Beirut next month. [Variety]
Let’s face it, the release of Alex Garland’s Annihilation was a shit show. So it’s no wonder he’s turning to TV for his next project. Garland will write and direct the series pilot Devs for the fine folks at FX.
The series would bring Garland back into the realm of tech thriller similar to his awesome film Ex Machina, and centers on a young software engineer named Lily who investigates a secret department in the massive company she works for, thinking they may be involved in her boyfriend’s disappearance. Garland further revealed to Collider that the series is set in San Francisco and designed to last only one season.
FX hasn’t given it a season order yet and are waiting to see how the pilot goes. Garland’s a huge talent with a lot of fans and it’s hard to see them letting this one go. Shooting is expected to begin in the next six months. [Deadline]
Comedian Bo Burnham has been making people laugh for years, whether it’s true his popular YouTube channel or through his work with Judd Apatow. He even had a brief appearance in The Big Sick last year as, wait for it, a standup comedian. But he’s not exactly a name being talked about around the water cooler, although that may be changing soon thanks to his directorial debut, Eighth Grade. The teen comedy received some of the best reviews at Sundance a couple of months ago, and A24, who swooped in to pick up the rights fairly quickly, have released the first trailer.
Us awkward folks who struggled through middle school but found our voices in high school, rejoice. This film is for us. Elsie Fisher gives what many are calling a breakthrough performance as 13-year-old Kayla, a shy middle schooler who decides to end her eighth grade year on a high note before embarking for high school. Here’s a synopsis:
“Thirteen-year-old Kayla endures the tidal wave of contemporary suburban adolescence as she makes her way through the last week of middle school—the end of her thus far disastrous eighth-grade year—before she begins high school.”
It’s easy to see why A24 wanted this one. I can see them trying to position this as a Lady Bird style indie favorite. Also starring Josh Hamilton and Emily Robinson, Eighth Grade opens July 13th.
Is Nicolas Cage about to get his own Sicario-style drug trafficking movie? Lord let’s hope so. The actor, who has been on a bit of a roll lately, has joined the cast of Running with the Devil from writer/director Jason Cabell, a former DEA agent.
The film is based on Cabell’s experiences working with the DEA in Columbia. The story follows a cocaine shipment as it makes way from Mexico through America and Canada. Cage will play “Cook”, the right hand man of a cartel leader sent to audit their drug supply when a shipment goes missing. The cast includes Barry Pepper, Laurence Fishburne, Leslie Bibb, Peter Facinelli, Adam Goldberg, Cole Hauser, and Clifton Collins Jr.
Damn. That cast is way too good for it to be another disposal Cage flick that ends up going straight to VOD. I guess that means most of the pressure will fall on the unproven Cabell to make this a film good enough to hit multiplexes. Filming is underway now in New Mexico.
Sony may be trying to get some of that sweet sweet Black Panther cash. Last fall we learned of possible plans for a Spider-Man spinoff centered on Nightwatch, the African-American hero who looked like a Spawn knockoff. Spike Lee was attached as director but we hadn’t heard any progress on the film until now when That Hashtag Show says it’s moving forward.
Take that with a grain of salt. I don’t have the confidence in That Hashtag Show that CBM and some other sites do. They report that Lee is officially on board but handling the script duties will be Luke Cage writer Cheo Hodari Coker, taking over from Ed Ridencourt (Now You See Me). Nightwatch aka Kevin Trench, was introduced in a 1992 issue of Web of Spider-Man when he discovered a dying costumed hero on the street, only to learn that it was a future version of himself.
Yeah, it’s on some Looper-type stuff and to me that’s hella cool. I was a big fan of the character back in the day, so the idea of Lee making a Nightwatch movie sounds like something worth checking out. The closest thing to a comic book movie Lee has done was his remake of Oldboy, which is based on a Japanese manga.
Dan Fogelman has millions of viewers in tears each with his multigenerational series drama, This Is Us. So can he replicate that kind of success on the big screen with another love story that spans generations and follows people from all walks of life? Amazon Studios is hoping so, and they’re expecting big things from Life Itself, which stars Oscar Isaac and Olivia Wilde.
Amazon debuted the first teaser during tonight’s season finale of This Is Us. The story is pure Fogelman, following various characters all around the world who are connected in some way. Along with Isaac and Wilde the film includes Annette Bening, Laia Costa, Olivia Cooke, Antonio Banderas, and Mandy Patinkin. Here’s the official synopsis:
“‘Life Itself’ centers on a couple (Oscar Isaac and Olivia Wilde) which leads a multigenerational love story spanning both decades and continents, from the streets of New York to the Spanish countryside, and are all connected by a single event.”
It’s been seven years since Madonna last went behind the camera with the royal biopic W.E. which, compared to her previous directorial effort Filth and Wisdon, wasn’t so bad and had an awesome cast that included Andrea Riseborough and Oscar Isaac. But it didn’t exactly inspire a lot of offers for Madonna’s services, so it’s taken a while for her to land her next gig, a biopic on ballerina Michaela DePrince.
Madonna will direct Taking Flight, based on the memoir by DePrince and her mother Elaine’s memoir, adapted by Camilla Blackett. Michaela grew up an orphan in Sierra Leone during the civil war, but in 1999 she was adopted by the DePrince family and raised in New Jersey. She was just one of 11 children, 9 of which were adopted. Michaela would pursue her dream of becoming a ballerina, which she had nurtured since finding a U.S. magazine while a child in Sierra Leone, and faced racial discrimination at various points in her career.
You may recall hearing of Michaela’s story from the 2011 documentary, First Position, as she and other dancers tried to earn a spot in an elite ballet school. No word on when Taking Flight takes flight, but MGM has been holding on to the rights for a few years and will probably want to move quickly.
