Holy shit, talk about a long wait! The King’s Daughter is one of those projects that held a lot of promise when first announced. It’s based on the Nebula Award winning novel The Moon and the Sun by Vonda N. McIntyre and combines multiple genres; fantasy, sci-fi, and historical romance. A film adaptation starring Pierce Brosnan, Kaya Scodelario, and directed by Soul Surfer‘s Sean McNamara was completed way back in 2014…and has been sitting idle ever since. Now that six year wait is over and a trailer is here, but was the wait worth it?
Almost like The Shape of Water with a little more palace intrigue, The King’s Daughter stars Brosnan as King Louis XIV whose quest for immortality causes him to drain the life force of a mermaid, played by Chinese actress Fan Bingbing. Scodelario stars as the king’s headstrong daughter who complicates things by befriending the creature.
The Jim Henson Co. did extensive effects work on the film, with a Chinese film compaony throwing in a then-record $20M, the most ever for a studio project produced outside of China.
The script was previously written by former Focus Features CEO James Schamus back when Natalie Portman was attached way back in 2002. There have been multiple revisions since then.
Onboard to co-star are Benjamin Walker, William Hurt, Rachel Griffiths, Ben Lloyd-Hughes, Pablo Schreiber, and Julie Andrews.
The King’s Daughter will finally open in theaters on January 21st 2022.
Kick-Ass was exactly what the title promised, a giant kick in the ass of the superhero genre when it was released in 2010. But by the time the sequel arrived three years later, well, Kick-Ass 2 didn’t have much new to say or do. While there have been murmurs of a spinoff involving Chloe Moretz’s popular Hit-Girl, that never happened. But director Matthew Vaughn promises that Kick-Ass isn’t dead. In fact, it’s coming back…eventually.
Speaking with Collider, Vaughn promises that a Kick-Ass reboot will happen in a couple of years. The wait? It has to do with the film rights reverting back, presumably to comic book creator Mark Millar…
“We’ve got a big reboot of ‘Kick-Ass’ in two years. Big reboot,” said Vaughn. “It’s so fucking nuts that I can’t talk about it. But we’ve got that ready to go. All the rights revert back in two years and then we’re going to reboot it where people will be like, he is insane.”
Don’t be surprised if a new Kick-Ass heads over to Netflix, where Millar has an exclusive deal for his “Millarworld” projects. I’m curious to see where these movies could go now. I feel like The Boys says a lot of what Kick-Ass used to, so will it have anything special to add?
Much of the buzz surrounding dark comedy Big Gold Brick has centered on Mega Fox and the sizzling black number she wears in the film’s new trailer. Fox has been busier than ever of late, and here she stars alongside one of the best casts she’s seen in a while: Andy Garcia, Lucy Hale, Emory Cohen, and even Oscar Isaac.
Fox plays the unhappy “second wife” to Floyd Deveraux, an enigmatic father-of-two who enlists fledging writer Samuel Liston to write his biography. Hilarity ensues, of course, when the writer’s attempts to do so turn to chaos.
The film was written and directed by Brian Pestos in his directorial debut. This definitely looks weird, with Isaac sporting an eyepatch, some cosmic stuff going on, arson, and more. But there must be something good here to have Isaac on board both in an acting and producing capacity. Kristen Wiig is listed as a producer, as well.
Big Gold Brick opens in theaters and digital on February 25th 2022.
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Big Gold Brick recounts the story of fledgling writer Samuel Liston and his experiences with Floyd Deveraux, the enigmatic middle-aged father of two who enlists Samuel to write his biography. But the circumstances that lead up to this arrangement in the first place are quite astonishing—and efforts to write the biography are quickly stymied by ensuing chaos in this darkly comedic, genre-bending film.
Facilitating Bruce Willis’ descent into B action movie Hell has been the working relationships he’s built. Willis tends to work with the same filmmakers repeatedly, essentially rehashing the same mediocre movies which are why he can do so many in a year. And the latest is American Siege, which finds Willis reunited with Edward Drake, his director on Cosmic Sin, Breach, and Apex which just released last month.
In American Siege, Willis plays a small-town Georgia sheriff who must deal with a gang of outlaws who are holding a prominent doctor hostage.
The cast includes Timothy V. Murphy, plus Rob Gough, Anna Hindman, Johann Urb, Cullen G. Chambers, and Trevor Gretzk.
Some of these Willis flicks can be fun in a “so bad they’re good” kinda way. My issue with them isn’t that Willis does so many of them or their low budgets, it’s that he isn’t putting much effort in them. Most amount to glorified cameos. At least he seems to be putting the work in here.
American Siege opens in theaters and VOD on January 7th.
Washed-up Sheriff Ben Watts (Bruce Willis) guards the secrets of the wealthy residents of a small Georgia town. When three outlaws take a prominent town doctor hostage in search of a missing woman, Sheriff Watts is called in to handle the situation before the FBI arrives. In a race against time, mayor Charles Routledge (Timothy V. Murphy) pressures Sheriff Watts to launch an assault on the hostage-takers and to eliminate all witnesses. When the Sheriff realizes he may be a pawn in a larger scheme, he must carve a bloody warpath to expose the truth behind the town’s dark secrets.
People are obsessed with the inner workings of big business right now, whether they be fictional like in HBO’s Succession, or real-life examples of business gone wrong like in the upcoming AppleTV+ series, WeCrashed. EW has dropped the first look at the WeWork series that stars Anne Hathaway and Jared Leto as infamous execs Rebekah and Adam Neumann, whose business practices and odd behavior led to an epic rise and fall.
The series is by Lee Eisenberg (Good Boys) and Drew Crevello, with John Requa and Glenn Ficarra (Focus) directing. America Ferrera, Kyle Marvin, and O. T. Fagbenle co-star.
And according to the filmmakers, Leto was back doing weird Leto things while he was deep in character…
“We only spoke to ‘Adam Neumann,’” Crevello said. “Jared does this complete transformation, with prosthetics and an Israeli accent,” Eisenberg adds of Leto, who can be seen in the exclusive first-look photo below with a prosthetic nose. “My father’s Israeli, and he had no notes on the accent. I was like, ‘Okay, we’re good. We’re good.’”
For a lot of workaholics out there, no such thing exists as the perfect work/life balance. So what if there was a procedure that makes finding that balance mandatory? That’s the idea behind Ben Stiller’s new AppleTV + series, Severance, which reunites him with Escape at Dannemora star Patricia Arquette.
Severance centers on a group of people who undergo an experimental procedure that cuts off any memory of work during their personal time, and makes them forget their personal lives during work hours. The perfect work/life balance is then achieved, but is there something darker going on here?
Also in the cast are Adam Scott, Britt Lower, John Turturro, Zach Cherry, Dichen Lachman, Jen Tullock, Tramell Tillman, Michael Chernus, and Christopher Walken. Stiller directs each of the episodes from scripts by Dan Erickson.
Severance debuts on AppleTV + beginning February 18th 2022.
It’s been way too long since we’ve had a good Romancing the Stone/Jewel of the Nile-style romantic adventure. Fortunately, The Lost City is bringing that missed genre back, with Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum as the couple swinging through one wild jungle adventure. Following yesterday’s first-look images, the full trailer has been release and it looks like a blast.
Directed by Adam and Aaron Nee (Band of Robbers) from a story by Seth Gordon (Horrible Bosses), the film stars Bullock as a reclusive romance writer who gets swept up in a kidnapping plot along with her cover model, played by Tatum. The two end up in a crazy jungle adventure where life is stranger and more romantic than fiction.
“I don’t know if it’s because we’ve all been locked in our homes for so long, but if you can just sit in a room with someone and it’s quiet and just for no reason start laughing, and you know why the other one is laughing but you don’t know why the other one is laughing, it just makes things so much easier,” Bullock told EW.
“So yeah, I think we were separated at birth at some point in some sort of neurological experiment on brain development. And he and I feel that theory holds because no matter where you throw us, we’re still the same.” Tatum adds, “By the way, we should just make this movie. Maybe we will one day.”
The cast also includes Daniel Radcliffe as an eccentric billionaire, and Brad Pitt in a cameo.
Paramount Pictures will release The Lost City into theaters on March 25th 2022.
Similar to Guillermo Del Toro, David Fincher has a bunch of unrealized projects out there that his fans hope to see happen. Unfortunately, one that Fincher was eyeing some years ago, sci-fi adaptation Rendezvous With Rama, has fallen into the hands of another. But if something like that is going to happen, you could do a lot worse than have it be Denis Villeneuve who takes over.
THR reports Villeneuve is attached to direct Rendezvous with Rama, with Morgan Freeman, who was originally on board to star in the Fincher version, sticking around as producer. The project is being developed with Alcon Entertainment, who already worked with Villeneuve on Blade Runner 2049.
The title is likely to perk up the ears of hardcore sci-fi heads, as it is an adaptation of the Hugo Award-winning novel by esteemed writer Arthur C. Clarke. Clarke is also known for co-writing 2001: A Space Odyssey with Stanley Kubrick.
Set in the 2130s, the story centers on a 50-by-20-kilometre spaceship that enters the Solar system, and the group of human explorers who intercept it in hopes of unlocking its mysteries. A sequel novel, Rama II, was co-written by Clarke and Gentry Lee.
Villeneuve continues his passionate run with the sci-fi genre. After his successes on Arrival, Blade Runner 2049, and now Dune, he’s perhaps done more for it on the big screen than any other in recent years. But he’s also got Dune 2 coming up, so this might be on the burner for a while.
Well, it’s happening. They said that episode 5 of Hawkeye was going to be a doozy, and boy, was it! Not only did we find out what happened to Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova during the “blip”, she was actually gone for five years like half the population, but this episode also gave us our first appearance of Vincent D’Onofrio as Wilson Fisk in the MCU.
That’s right, the Netflix characters are finally in the MCU. Not only is Fisk referred to as Kingpin, but it’s also made clear that he’s not somebody to be fucked with. Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner) talks about him with nothing but fear for the entire episode, trying as he might to keep Fisk out of his business. But that’s impossible because not only is Fisk tied to Echo’s (Alaqua Cox) quest for revenge against Ronin, but he’s also apparently in league with Eleanor Bishop (Vera Farmiga).
It’s also clear this episode is a springboard for the upcoming Echo television series on Disney+, as Maya Lopez learns from Ronin that he was hired by Fisk to take out her father. And it was someone who works for Fisk, likely her closest friend Kazi (Fra Fee), who tipped Ronin off about where her father would be.
Cool shit all around this episode, and next week looks to be even better.
Illumination will probably always be known, for better or worse, as the Despicable Me folks who gave us those annoying/adorable Minions. But they have some real charmers under their belt, too, and one of those was 2016’s Sing, a film that surprised me with its crowd-pleasing jukebox musical spirit. I don’t normally think of myself as the type for underdog stories about singing anthropomorphic animals but that one won me over, and so did Sing 2…eventually.
If there’s something that I hate about sequels it’s the lazy storytelling trope that just does the exact same thing…except in Las Vegas. Sing 2 gets around that (slightly) by changing the location’s name to Redshore City, a glitzy showbiz town where Buster Moon (Matthew McConaughey) hopes to launch a bigger and flashier musical act than the rinky-dink dinner party show that kicks off the movie. To be fair, it’s quite a storybook-style spectacle, set to the tune of Prince classic “Let’s Go Crazy.” The number of characters and eye-catching pieces filling the screen is impressive, showing how Illumination has come visually.
But is this show enough to get what Buster wants? Which is to be a big-time production that warrants being on a much larger stage? Sing 2 gathers together much of the same cast playing the same diverse array of animal hopefuls: Scarlett Johansson returns as Ash the porcupine, who has gone on to bigger but not-so-better things. When Buster needs her help, she’s the first to answer the call. Taron Egerton returns as Johnny the gorilla, who gets a dance sequence in Buster’s new show but can’t master the moves until he pairs up with Lynx (Letitia Wright), a B-girl lynx with all the right steps. Reese Witherspoon once again voices Rosita, the momma pig who has basically achieved all the she wanted and more. When Buster makes a deal with shady wolf hotelier Jimmy Crystal (Bobby Cannavale) to launch a Vegas-sized act, he also agrees to replace Rosita with Jimmy’s Paris Hilton-esque daughter (Halsey). Meanwhile, Meena (Tori Kelly) the shy elephant has a crush on the ice cream shop guy (Pharrell Williams) but can’t work up any chemistry with her self-absorbed singing partner (Eric Andre).
All of the various storylines surround the central problems that Buster faces: he needs to lure rock legend Clay Calloway (Bono), a lion who has become a recluse, out of retirement others Jimmy Crystal will shut him down. And possibly eat him. Worse, the ridiculous sci-fi bonanza Buster is trying to pull off (think Jonathan Larson’s “Superbia”) is way beyond his grasp.
For a long stretch in Sing 2 these elements feel too separate and a bit random, when what makes these films enjoyable is how these characters play off one another. They actually don’t get to converse nearly enough, as new characters split them off into what amount to separate vignettes. The film didn’t actually take off for me until these subplots start to converge, as Clay Calloway learns to trust again and Buster remembers the people who brought him to the dance.
Once again returning as writer/director is Garth Jennings. Sometimes it’s hard to imagine this is the same guy who gave us The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Son of Rambow. But what he has that connects both of those things with Sing is finding something unique and special in the quirks of each character. Sing 2 isn’t grasping for anything profound, it’s meant to be fun and uplifting and move these weird animal dreamers forward just a little bit more. And if it gets you to bop your head for a couple of hours to a string of pop hits, too, then Sing 2 has given a performance worthy of an encore.
