With a pair of Avengers movies coming in 2026 and 2027, Marvel Studios seems to be getting back on the right track. That said, there are some other projects that fans have been asking about, and one of those is Doctor Strange 3. Considering Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness banked nearly $1B and ended on an intriguing cliffhanger, a sequel was a certainty even if they weren’t saying anything. Well, now its star Benedict Cumberbatch is saying something, and he’s got some news.
Speaking with Variety, Cumberbatch confirmed that Doctor Strange 3 is in the works, but it’s in the very earliest stages when they are still figuring out who will write and direct…
“They are very open to discussing where we go next,” Cumberbatch said. “Who do you want to write and direct the next one? What part of the comic lore do you want to explore so that Strange can keep evolving? He’s a very rich character to play. He’s a complex, contradictory, troubled human who’s got these extraordinary abilities, so there’s potent stuff to mess about with.”
The previous film concluded with Strange encountering Clea, played by Charlize Theron, who in the comics is a powerful mystic and the love of his life. Together, they go off to stop an incursion in the Dark Dimension.
So we know one place Strange will be turning up, but how about where he won’t be? Cumberbatch accidentally let slip that Strange won’t be appearing in Avengers: Doomsday…
“Is that a spoiler?” Cumberbatch asked. “Fuck it!”
So while Strange won’t be appearing in Doomsday because of “the character not aligning with this part of the story”, the will be “quite central to where things might go” in Avengers: Secret Wars.
With Robert Downey Jr. returning as Doctor Doom, and reports that Chris Evans is coming back as Nomad, the MCU is unpredictable right now and Doctor Strange is one of the few steadying elements. It doesn’t seem that Cumberbatch is eager to go anywhere any time soon, either.
After Parasite took the Oscar for Best Picture, Bong Joon-Ho could’ve done anything he wanted. After making us wait a while, he settled on a sci-fi project, Mickey 17, starring Robert Pattinson, that puts the actor in a role that’s very different from Batman.
Based on the book by Edward Ashton, Mickey 17 stars Pattinson as a man who signs up to be an “expendable”, meaning he is sent on dangerous missions with no chance of survival. When one body is destroyed, another is regenerated with most of the memories intact. Trouble arises when a clone is regenerated while the previous is still alive.
The film has faced multiple delays and changes in release date, but it’s solidly set for March 7th now from Warner Bros. When the first footage arrived, I think people were surprised at how silly the humor seems to be, complete with Pattinson’s goofy voice. The tone seems closer to his 2017 film Okja than Snowpiercer, Mother, or The Host.
Pattinson is joined in the cast by Naomi Ackie, Steven Yeun, Toni Collette, and Mark Ruffalo.
SYNOPSIS: From the Academy Award-winning writer/director of “Parasite,” Bong Joon Ho, comes his next groundbreaking cinematic experience, “Mickey 17.” The unlikely hero, Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) has found himself in the extraordinary circumstance of working for an employer who demands the ultimate commitment to the job… to die, for a living.
With Sonic the Hedgehog 3 still in theaters having made $422M globally, while also available on digital, Paramount Pictures isn’t wasting any time in getting the blue speedster back into theaters. SEGA’s famous mascot will return on March 19th 2027 for Sonic the Hedgehog 4, according to Variety’s sources. No other films are slated for that date, and given the proven strength of Sonic, we might see studios try to steer clear and keep their tentpoles far away.
Few would’ve anticipated that Sonic would be such a mainstay franchise. The first film opened in February 2020 during the pandemic and earned $320M as theaters were shutting down. That launched a sequel in April 2022 that collected another $405M and led to a Knuckles miniseries. The franchise as a whole has earned over $1B billion at the box office and has been a merchandising goldmine, not to mention adding another $180M in digital purchases.
Jeff Fowler has directed all three movies and is likely to return as he’s been talking about a sequel. Ben Schwartz has voiced Sonic in each film, with Jim Carrey playing villain Dr. Robotnik. Idris Elba and Colleen O’Shaughnessey voice Sonic’s teammates Knuckles and Tails, with Keanu Reeves voicing Shadow.
Did you ever think that one day we might see Ryan Gosling in a Star Wars movie? Well, it could be about to happen. THR reports the Goose is in talks to star in the upcoming Star Wars movie from Shawn Levy, which could be about to get a huge boost.
After several years hiatus, Lucasfilm set into motion multiple Star Wars projects, many of which remain in limbo. But Levy’s movie seems to be moving at warp speed all of a sudden, and if Gosling signs on it suddenly becomes even more high-profile if that’s even possible. What we know about the story is that it’ll be a standalone completely separate from The Skywalker Saga, which is a good thing.
The film will have a script by Jonathan Tropper, who has worked with Levy previously on This is Where I Leave You and The Adam Project. Levy, of course, is coming off the smash success of Deadpool & Wolverine, which might explain why Disney is so keen to work with him again.
Speaking of which, considering Levy, Ryan Reynolds, and Hugh Jackman are all such close buds…what are the chances they sign on, too? Even just for cameos? The report says Levy considered a boy band movie that would reunite the trio (perhaps this one?), but Gosling’s interest has changed plans.
So let’s see what happens. Are you excited to see Gosling do Star Wars? Let us know!
Amanda Seyfried reunites with director Atom Egoyan for Seven Veils, a drama that had its world premiere last year at the Toronto International Film Festival. After a lengthy wait, the film is finally arriving in theaters this March and a new trailer has been released. Seyfried and Egoyan previously worked together on the erotic thriller, Chloe, but this looks like something altogether different.
As seen in the Seven Veils trailer, Seyfried plays a opera director who returns to work to oversee a new production of Richard Strauss’ 1905 opera Salome as a tribute to her late mentor. But as she goes further into it, her repressed traumas begin to resurface, blurring art with reality. The film’s title comes from the play’s infamously erotic “Dance of the Seven Veils”, which concludes with the beheading of John the Baptist.
The film is directed and written by Egoyan, his first since 2019’s Guest of Honour. Egoyan is best known for directing Exotica, The Sweet Hereafter, and Devil’s Knot. He shot Seven Veils while staging his own production of Salome.
Also in the cast are Rebecca Liddiard, Douglas Smith, Mark O’Brien, Vinessa Antoine, Ambur Braid, and Michael Kupfer-Radecky.
SYNOPSIS: After years away, theater director Jeanine (Academy Award® nominee Amanda Seyfried) re-enters the opera world to stage her former mentor’s most famous work. Haunted by dark and disturbing memories from her past, Jeanine allows her repressed trauma to color the present as her personal and professional lives begin to unravel. Renowned director Atom Egoyan (Exotica, The Sweet Hereafter) reunites with Seyfried in this visually stunning, propulsive work, filmed on location during the staging of Egoyan’s acclaimed production of “Salome.”
For more than half of my life, I’ve been watching Chris Jericho in the wrestling ring. He’s one of the all-time greats and continues to perform at a high level on All Elite Wrestling and Ring of Honor every single week. He’s also someone who can act, and it used to be that it’d be a treat to see him pop up in something like Jay and Silent Bob Reboot, but now he’s staying pretty busy with roles in Terrifer 2 & 3, Killroy Was Here, and more. One thing Jericho didn’t want to do was play a wrestler or to do a wrestling-themed movie, but that all changed with Dark Match, a horror film that allows The Nueve a chance to show a more Satanic edge than ever before.
In Dark Match, a small-time wrestling promotion takes a big-money gig doing a show in a backwoods town. However, when they arrive they find it’s too good to be true, as the town is run by a mysterious cult leader who deems that every match will now be fights to the death.
Dark Match is directed by Lowell Dean, best known for his popular, cult favorite Wolfcop movies. With Jericho playing the film’s top heel, the top babyface role goes to Ayisha Issa as Nick/Miss Behave, who goes to the mat to save herself and the wrestling family she has grown close to.
As someone who has grown up watching wrestling all of my life, it was a real dream to talk with Chris Jericho about Dark Match. We talked about why he’s never wanted to do a wrestling movie and what made him change his mind. Jericho also talked about his love of movies and which of his personas would make good big-screen characters.
I’ll admit to being unaware of Ayisha Issa prior to Dark Match but now I’m a full-fledge fan. I’m a convert. She’s a total badass as Miss Behave, and we discussed her Brazilian jiu-jitsu background and whether she’d want to ever get in the ring as a pro wrestler.
Lowell Dean is a longtime wrestling fan and I think that shows in the movie, but he is a fan of the old school style of WWF in the 1980s which is why Dark Match is set around that time.
Check out my interviews with Jericho, Issa, and Dean now. They were a blast and I hope you enjoyed them. If you enjoy them, please subscribe to our YouTube channel for more, or listen to the interviews as part of the Cinema Royale podcast.
Colman Domingo could be on the verge of an Oscar nomination for his performance in Sing Sing, one of the best-reviewed movies of 2024. Coming up next is a role in Edgar Wright’s The Running Man, and after that Domingo has lined up a part in Gus Van Sant’s next film, Dead Man Wire.
Deadline reports Domingo will join Dacre Montgomery and Bill Skarsgard in Dead Man Wire. Van Sant’s first feature since 2018’s Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far On Foot, the film is based on the true story of a desperate man who took a mortgage broker hostage in 1977. Domingo will play a radio announcer the man talks to during the crime.
“This guy was just in dire straits, holding people hostage and speaking to a radio announcer,” teased Domingo. “That’s the only person he felt like he could communicate with. He’d listened to him every day and I sort of guide him not to kill people.”
Also coming up for Domingo is Steven Spielberg’s sci-fi film, and the long-awaited third season of HBO’s Euphoria. He will also be seen later this year as Joe Jackson in Antone Fuqua’s Michael.
In speaking about Spielberg’s mysterious project, Domingo said…
“I will tell you this, I finished reading the script and I bawled. I thought it was one of the most beautiful scripts about our humanity. I think it was just the most beautiful film about our humanity, and I literally cried because Steven Spielberg believes in the possibility of the human beings we could be. That’s what I’ll tell you.”
In a relatively quiet year at Sundance, one of the films that is emerging as a must-see is Opus, and a big reason is its star, Ayo Edibiri. The busy star of The Bear will hit Park City with a horror film by writer/director Mark Anthony Green that has already been acquired by A24 for release this March.
A24 has dropped the first trailer for Opus ahead of its world premiere in a few days. The film stars Edibiri as a writer invited to attend a private concert from a pop star who vanished 30 years earlier. There, she’s surrounded by the star’s cultish fans and what feels like the beginnings of a twisted plan.
Edibiri is joined in the cast by John Malkovich, Juliette Lewis, Murray Bartlett, Amber Midthunder, Stephanie Suganami, Rosario Dawson, Amber Midthunder, Young Mazino, and Tatanka Means. The film marks Green’s directorial debut, following his award-winning short film Trapeze.
Opus has its world premiered in Sundance on January 27th, before hitting theaters on March 14th.
SYNOPSIS: A young writer (Ayo Edebiri) is invited to the remote compound of a legendary pop star (John Malkovich) who mysteriously disappeared thirty years ago. Surrounded by the star’s cult of sycophants and intoxicated journalists, she finds herself in the middle of his twisted plan.
You don’t have to be a fan of professional wrestling to know this but if you are, you know it’s true. Pro wrestling is a cult. I say that as someone who has been watching it, practically every day of my life, for more than 40 years and is very much in the cult myself. It’s a very isolated society that most on the outside frown upon but to those who love it, pro wrestling encourages the kind of following that’s close to a religious experience. Dark Match director Lowell Dean understands all of this, blending the world of sports entertainment (as Vinny Mac so divisively named it) with cult horror for a gruesome, grindhouse battle royale that should be a hit with wrestling and genre fans alike.
Dean, an admitted fan of old-school pro wrestling, sets Dark Match in the late ’80s, but if you’re looking for the WWF’s colorful Rock ‘n Wrestling heyday, think again. This is purely indie circuit stuff, when small companies were more like traveling circus road shows entertaining rabid fans in tiny, backwater towns before moving on to the next. It’s a fitting setup for Dean’s retro rumble, which finds one such wrestling company hired by a mysterious benefactor for a big-money private gig only to get a lot more bloodshed than your average Mick Foley hardcore match.
Badass Brazilian jiu-jitsu champion Ayisha Issa stars as Nick, or as she’s known in the ring, Miss Behave. A physically intimidating heel accustomed to getting booed out of buildings, she’s nonetheless frustrated by the racist undertones she feels are part of the business, especially as she often is forced to lose to prissy blonde babyface Kate the Great (Sarah Canning). She doesn’t get a lot of support from their shady manager Rusty Beans (Jonathan Cherry), and her on again/off again romantic relationship with veteran grappler Mean Joe Lean (Steven Ogg) is a source of confusion.
Rightfully, Dean casts this motley group as the kind of makeshift family that often forms during the wrestling circuits. Nick is especially fond of the silent masked luchadore Enigma (Mo Adan), and Wolf Cop favorite Leo Fafard as the colorfully-named Lazarus Smashley. The costuming is delightfully DIY and has that authentic stitched-by-hand quality. None of these folks are ever going to get rich where they’re at. Anything they want or need they have to do for themselves.
Unfortunately, that will soon also mean fighting for survival. The venue looks more like a Branch Dividian compound than a place for professional wrestling. The locals are partying hard in celebration of sacrifice and some strange rite of rebirth, led by the charismatic Prophet, played by AEW superstar and pro wrestling legend Chris Jericho. Whether caught up in the promise of a massive payday, or delirious from illicit party drugs, nobody is wise enough to get the Hell out of dodge, not even when Rusty finds himself branded like cattle by the vicious hosts.
From there, every contest is “No DQ” and to the death against opponents eager to set them on fire or shred them with broken glass. The jig is up when the aptly named tag team Thick & Thin leaves the ring in body bags, and soon Nick, Joe, and the gang are wrestling like their lives depend on it. Dean wisely keeps Prophet’s true motivations a secret, and while the plot gets unnecessarily convoluted, he still makes a fascinating heel. Jericho’s a consummate showman and he has shown in his recent wrestling personas to be someone who can lead a bunch of loyal followers to do crazy things. He brings a lot of that skill in the crafting of Prophet, who is more than just some weird cult leader. His roots are in wrestling and that shows. While many of the supporting characters are one-dimensional and leave a lot to be desire, Prophet, Miss Behave, and Mean Joe are fleshed out enough that we can rally to their various causes.
The athleticism is well-performed, especially by Issa, and shot in searing, dusty neon hues by DP Karim Hussain, known for his stellar work with Brandon Cronenberg. Dean is having a lot of fun with the grisly match types, and the carnage gets thick for the gore hounds out there. He strikes a nice balance between dark humor and B-movie thrills, while the actors are largely asked to kick ass and play it straight. Issa’s Miss Behave is such a compelling, dominant force that you want to see her character live on for future sequels. I’ve never thought of Steven Ogg much other than his role on The Walking Dead, but I really like how he depicts Mean Joe Lean as a broken-down former main eventer who has seen the worst and lived through it.
Dark Match was always going to be right in my wheelhouse, and it definitely connected with me. It doesn’t take itself too seriously and packs silly humor, brutal body slams, and wrestling jargon that fans can mark out over. Wrestling and genre cinema are very niche, and Dark Match will appeal to a specific audience who will go nuts for it.
It was a win for comedy this week as One of Them Days, starring Keke Palmer, SZA, and Katt Williams, had more bite than Wolf Man at the box office. The female-led laugher scored higher than analyst projections and could be in for a Girls Trip-style run as reviews have been positive overall, hitting over 90% on Rotten Tomatoes with critics and audiences.
2. Mufasa: The Lion King– $11.5M/$205.8M
Trailing close behind was Disney’s Mufasa: The Lion King, which crossed the $200M domestic mark after five weeks. Worldwide the prequel has $591M total.
Universal and Blumhouse hoped to match the success of The Invisible Man, but instead Wolf Man was defanged at the box office with just $10.5M. For comparison, this is way below the $31M launch of that awful Benicio Del Toro-led The Wolfman in 2010. A big reason is that the reviews just weren’t very good, with only 53% of critics and 59% of audiences digging it on Rotten Tomatoes.
4. Sonic the Hedgehog 3– $8.6M/$216.4M
5. Den of Thieves 2: Pantera– $6.6M/$26.1M
Taking a big hit and falling out of first place was Den of Thieves 2: Pantera, which dropped 56% for just $6.6M. Worldwide the heist sequel has $32M after two weeks.
6. Moana 2– $6M/$442.7M
After eight weeks, Disney’s Moana 2 has officially joined the $1B billion club.
7. Nosferatu– $4.3M/$89.4M
Once considered to be a niche project, Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu has hit $155M worldwide, surpassing the $138M global haul of Smile 2. Impressive.
