It’s been something else to watch Yahya Abdul-Mateen II’s career take off like a rocket. From his scene-stealing performances in The Get Down, to major roles in Watchmen, Aquaman, and coming up Candyman. And while he’s already got The Matrix 4 and Furiosa on his slate of huge projects, Abdul-Mateen has added another that will team him up with Creed II director Steven Caple Jr.
Abdul-Mateen II will star in By All, a dystopian crime-thriller to be directed by Caple that certainly sounds timely. The story follows Donte, a man struggling to make ends meet who is forced to go on the run in the wake of a tragic event. However, in this world, the police have basically been defunded and justice is crowd-sourced amongst the public.
Really cool concept. This has potential franchise written all over it. Caple has another franchise movie on the way as he was recently set to direct Transformers: Rise of the Beasts for Paramount. [THR]
Ted Lasso isn’t just the most popular and acclaimed show on Apple TV+, it’s also worked wonders for Jason Sudeikis’ career as people love him as the unflappable, upbeat football coach. Vince Vaughn, after starring in grim thrillers like Brawl in Cell Block 99 and Dragged Across Concrete, plus the goofy high school comedy The Binge and horror-comedy Freaky, could probably do with some of that Ted Lasso magic. So he’s teaming up with that show’s creator, Bill Lawrence, for a new streaming series that could do the trick.
THR reports Vaughn will star in Lawrence’s Bad Monkey series for Apple TV+, an adaption of Carl Hiaasen’s 2013 best-selling novel. And you can see where some of the Lasso-esque underdog aspects are going come in, too, as Vaughn will play Andrew Yancy, a former South Florida detective busted down to restaurant inspector, which is when he gets involved involving a severed arm and, yep, a monkey.
For obvious reasons, Apple wants to keep Lawrence under their umbrella and have given Bad Monkey a 10-episode straight-to-series order. This will be Vaughn’s first major live-action TV role since True Detective in 2015.
Worth is a film I remember from the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, where it premiered and sorta vanished from thin air. It wasn’t for a lacking in the performances, which were led by Michael Keaton, Stanley Tucci, and Amy Ryan. This was just a drama that had a hard time gaining attention, largely due to its fact-based story of Kenneth Feinberg, the attorney appointed Special Master of the U.S. government’s September 11th Victim Compensation Fund. Yeah, not exactly exciting stuff, right?
Netflix and the Obamas’ Higher Ground banner acquired Worth earlier this year and are releasing it select theaters and streaming next month, just in time for the 20th anniversary of 9/11. Keaton plays Feinberg, who is literally charged with deciding the value of the lives of those lost in the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. It’s an impossible task made more difficult by a grieving activist, and the various demands of those who lost loved ones on September 11th.
The film is directed by Sara Colangelo from a script by Monster-verse writer Max Borenstein. I quite liked it back then and tried hard to get it into some local festivals to no avail. Not sure how it’ll play on Netflix, but we’ll find out when Worth opens on September 3rd.
Following the horrific 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, Congress appoints attorney and renowned mediator Kenneth Feinberg (Michael Keaton) to lead the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund. Assigned with allocating financial resources to the victims of the tragedy, Feinberg and his firm’s head of operations, Camille Biros (Amy Ryan), face the impossible task of determining the worth of a life to help the families who had suffered incalculable losses. When Feinberg locks horns with Charles Wolf (Stanley Tucci), a community organizer mourning the death of his wife, his initial cynicism turns to compassion as he begins to learn the true human costs of the tragedy.
*UPDATE*: We have acquired passes to another Free Guy screening on the same day. This one is Wednesday, August 11th at 7:00pm at Regal Majestic in Silver Spring. If you’d like to attend that one, please go to the Gofobo site here!*
We’re happy to offer our DC readers the chance to attend a free early screening of Free Guy, starring Ryan Reynolds, Jodie Comer, Taika Waititi, Lil Rel Howery, and Joe Keery! The video game action-comedy is directed by Shawn Levy.
SYNOPSIS: In “Free Guy,” a bank teller who discovers he is a background player in an open-world video game, decides to become the hero of his own story…one he rewrites himself. Now in a world where there are no limits, he is determined to be the guy who saves his world his way…before it is too late.
The screening takes place on Wednesday, August 11th at 7:00pm at Regal Gallery Place. If you’d like to attend, simply register at the Gofobo site here. Please remember all screenings are first come first served and you will want to arrive early to ensure seating. Enjoy the show!
Is there such a thing as the Flanagan-verse? Perhaps there should be, connecting all of his hit horror shows and films? The Haunting of Hill House and Haunting of Bly Manor filmmaker, who also recently helmed The Shining sequel Doctor Sleep, is back at Netflix for Midnight Mass which should be a treat for Flanagan’s legion of fright fans.
The seven-episode series takes place in a small, religious island community that gets all riled up by the return of a disgraced young man, played by Zach Gilford, and the arrival of a charismatic priest, played by Hamish Linklater. Helping to whip up the townsfolk into a fervor is a series of miraculous events that could come at a deadly price.
We see some graphic images in this brief teaser, including a dead cat on a beach. Well, that’s ominous.
In a statement from Flanagan, the filmmaker said, “I’m just going to admit it… Midnight Mass is my favorite project so far. As a former altar boy, about to celebrate 3 years of sobriety, it’s not that hard to see what makes this so personal.”
Also in the cast are Kate Siegel, Rahul Abburi, Crystal Balint, Matt Biedel, Alex Essoe, Annarah Cymone, Annabeth Gish, Rahul Kohli, Kristin Lehman, Robert Longstreet, Igby Rigney, Samantha Sloyan, Henry Thomas, and Michael Trucco. Midnight Mass hits Netflix on September 24th.
Bidding wars among studios are nothing new, and we’d expect a film starring Jennifer Lawrence from The Great Beauty director Paolo Sorrentino to command big money. But with streaming outlets factoring into the equation, too, the dollar signs are ringing up higher than ever.
Deadline and various other outlets are reporting that Apple and Netflix are lobbying hard to acquire a film about superagent Sue Mengers that Sorrentino would direct and Lawrence would star in. The bidding has apparently hit $80M with $20M of that going to Lawrence. Damn. Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo (Orange is the New Black), and John Logan (Gladiator, Skyfall) wrote the screenplay, which centers on Mengers and how she crashed Hollywood’s boys club of talent agents brandishing her larger-than-life personality.
This is another big money deal for Lawrence, as she’s also earning $20M for Adam McKay’s Netflix film Don’t Look Up. Sorrentino is currently shooting The Hand of God, and is coming off of 2018’s Silvio Berlusconi film Loro. He’s also known for the Sean Penn drama This Must Be the Place and 2015’s Youth.
Well, I think many of us saw this coming. Look, Warner Bros. made a terrible strategic error when they decided it wise to release their films both in theaters and for free on HBO Max. The repercussions have been felt all year and now they’ve hit James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad, which opened with just $26.5M domestic and $72M worldwide. Oof. That hurts because the critically-panned but Oscar-winning 2016 Suicide Squad had $133M in its opening weekend on the way to about $800M. Obviously, reviews weren’t the problem in this case, it’s the ability to see it at home for no cost when the pandemic is still raging. It’s also questionable whether people wanted a new Suicide Squad movie at all, especially one that James Gunn and Warner Bros. tried so hard to push as being completely separate and definitely not a sequel.
2. Jungle Cruise– $15.6M/$65.3M
3. Old– $4.1M/$38.5M
4. Black Widow– $4M/$174.3M
Despite all of the negative buzz brought by Scarlett Johansson’s lawsuit against Disney, Black Widow gained another $4M this week. That was enough to push it past F9’s $171M stateside total. The long-awaited Marvel film has $359M worldwide, which is roughly half of what F9 has done globally, though.
5. Stillwater– $2.8M/$10M
6. The Green Knight– $2.5M/$12.1M
7. Space Jam: A New Legacy– $2.4M/$65.6M
8. Snake Eyes– $1.6M/$26M
9. Escape Room: Tournament of Champions– $1.25M/$23M
The queen has finally taken the throne in The Great season 2, which kicks off on Hulu next month. Dakota Fanning returns as Russian monarch Catherine the Great, who managed to pull off a coup against her clownish husband Peter (Nicholas Hoult) but now is faced with the difficulty of ruling a land that doesn’t want to be liberated.
A big addition to the cast is Gillian Anderson who guest stars as Catherine’s mother, theatrically fainting herself off of a chair. Phoebe Fox, Adam Godley, Gwilym Lee, Charity Wakefield, Douglas Hodge, Sacha Dhawan, Bayo Gbadamosi, and Belinda Bromilow co-star.
If you dug multi-time Oscar winner The Favourite then you’ve probably already found The Great to be right in your wheelhouse. The series was created, written, and exec-produced by that hit comedy’s writer, Tony McNamara, who obviously knows that palace intrigue is best served with a side of comic relief.
If you look on IMDb, the great character actor Udo Kier has appeared in over 250 film and television projects. None of them have showcased him quite like the appropriately titled Swan Song.
76-year-old Kier plays Pat “Miss Pat” Pitsenberger an aging gay hairdresser, now confined to a nursing home. He knows the end is near, as his past life living as an openly gay man in rural Ohio, comes creeping into his daydreams. A local lawyer representing one of Pat’s former clients visits him at the nursing home, basically demanding that he do her hair for her funeral despite the falling out they had years before.
From there, Pat spends the day wandering around his once beloved town of Sandusky Ohio, trying to acquire beauty supplies and debating whether or not to go through with what may be his last hair appointment. Throughout his journey he meets various figures from his past including the rival beautician Dee Dee Dale (a subtle and brilliant Jennifer Coolidge.) He visits graves and gay bars, realizing his glory days were more trauma filled than expected.
Not to be cliché but this was the role Kier was meant to play. After being supporting player in films like Blade, Susperia (1971), Ace Venture: Pet Detective, and Europa, the veteran actor finally gets the spotlight all to himself.. The first 10 minutes or so he doesn’t say much, but he makes that time as engaging as when he is spouting entire monologues.He easily switches from entertaining to devastating at the drop of a hat. His chemistry with Collidge is electric and can vogue and lipsync as well as the younger cast. He gives the performance of his life as Miss Pat and its a shame audiences have had to wait this long.
Swan Song is written and directed by Sandusky native Todd Stephens, best known for Edge of Seventeen (not the one with Hailee Steinfeld) and Not Another Gay Movie. Kier’s character is based on a real person who lived in Sandusky and was the first openly gay person Stephens saw in his conservative town. Because of this, sentimentality oozes from the script. It’s never precious but layers of nuance are inserted into the story from dialogue alone. Stephens ends up telling a vital story that many middled aged and older gay people affected by the AIDS epidemic have never seen before. A moving and quietly triumphant tale, Swan Song proves Stephens has evolved as filmmaker.
The soundtrack is also worth noting with songs by Judy Garland, Rupaul, Shirley Bassey, and Robyn. While the beginning is slightly slow, the music immediately brings the film together and feels like and extension of Kier’s character.
Overall, Swan Song is the work of quiet genius, both from Stephens and Keir. It feels like the latter got his own superhero film in a way, complete with an end credits scene and with more glitter.
Swan Song is in theaters now and On Demand August 13th, 2021. Watch the trailer below:
At this point, the opioid crisis has been examined in just about every way in a variety of films. However, the upcoming Hulu series Dopesick has one thing those didn’t have; Michael Keaton, who knows a thing or two about starring in projects about America’s worst scandals.
Dopesick is based on Beth Macy’s bestselling book about the worst drug epidemic in history and the pharmaceutical company that set it off. The series, which is directed by Barry Levinson from a Danny Strong script, takes you into the boardrooms of Big Pharma to the coal mines of Virginia and the hallways of the DEA.
The cast surrounding Keaton is top notch and includes Will Poulter, Kaitlyn Dever, Rosario Dawson, Peter Sarsgaard, Michael Stuhlbarg, John Hoogenakker and Phillipa Soo.
