Cruella DeVille, the name alone is the pinnacle of Disney’s ability to create (or steal from existing Fairy Tales) compelling villain’s. She sits near the top of the Disney Rouge’s gallery but we never really got much into what made her who she is, well it appears the upcoming film Cruella, starring Emma Stone as the titular baddie, will get to the bottom of PETA’s public enemy #1.
This latest trailer reveals a story that seems three parts The Devil Wears Prada and one part Catwoman? I have to admit, the anti-hero lean that seems to be established was somewhat unexpected. Emma Thompson’s character, Baroness, features heavily and the impact she has on the budding tyrant’s future is obvious. Did I feel a pull to see this movie when it was announced? Not at all. Are these trailers pulling me in? I’d be lying if I said no.
Check out the full trailer below and look for Cruella in theaters and on Disney+ Premier Access on May 28th, 2021
A24 might have something huge on their hands with the upcoming thriller Bodies, Bodies, Bodies. Just look at this case. Oscar-nominated Borat Subsequent Moviefilm breakout Maria Bakalova and The Hate U Give‘s Amandla Stenberg are set for the film from directed by Dutch actress/filmmaker Halina Reijn. SNL‘s Pete Davidson and Industry actor Myha’la Herrold could possibly be joining, as well.
Details on the film are being kept secret, which suggests A24 knows they have something good on their hands. What Deadline has picked up is that it’s a “secret slasher film” of some kind, but all of the secrecy tells me there’s more to it than that.
It’s unclear when shooting starts, but it appears A24 has been gathering all of the pieces together for months so it could be sooner rather than later. Reijn made her directorial debut with the 2019 drama Instinct. Next up for Bakalova is a role in Judd Apatow’s ensemble comedy The Bubble, while Stenberg has the adaptation of Broadway hit Dear Evan Hansen. Davidson will be seen next as Blackguard in James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad.
Mark Romanek directed two tremendous films early in his career: the Robin Williams domestic horror One Hour Photo, followed by 2010’s stirring sci-fi drama Never Let Me Go. Then…he simply vanished, at least from feature film work.The notoriously selective filmmaker is finally set to make his return with Mother Land, and it’s another horror that we can expect Romanek’s sensibilities to elevate greatly.
According to Deadline, Mother Land “deals with a family that has been haunted by an evil spirit for years. Their safety and their surroundings come into question when one of the children questions if the evil is real.” The script is by Kevin Coughlin & Ryan Grassby (Mean Dreams), with Shawn Levy on board as a producer.
This has been a long time coming. Romanek is a renowned music video director, taking on projects for Jay-Z, U2, Beyonce, Taylor Swift, and many more. In 2010 he was close to directing Benicio Del Toro in The Wolfman, but dropped out due to creative differences. He also directed the pilot episode and was exec-producer on Amazon’s Tales from the Loop series. Again, Romanek is very picky so there must be something about Mother Land that has attracted his attention, and that is enough to get excited about.
I knew there was something about Godzilla Vs Kong director Adam Wingard that I liked. Turns out that he’s just like us. The Death Note and Blair Witch director is getting rave reviews for his take on the most epic Titan deathmatch the world has known, one might think that outside of staging big action scenes there’s not much design to go into a film like this. That’s where you’d be wrong. When it comes to the secret big bad of the film *Spoilers Ahead* Mechagodzilla Wingard knew which direction he had to go based on a bad experience he had while watching Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon. Wingard had showed up late with a date and came to the same conclusion as most of us when it came to the films big action scenes…it was almost impossible to tell what was going on. Honestly, Wingard’s description is more apt then anything I’ve heard before:
“The Transformers, they just looked like metal. They looked like a plane crash. So I thought, that’s the thing I wanted to avoid. They were too complex. There are too many moving parts, and I couldn’t latch on to anything.”
A plane crash…seriously, is there a better description of the action scenes in the Transformers films? So with this impression Wingard did what we’ve always assumed big time Hollywood directors didn’t do, take a hint from an audience perspective.
Just because director James Gunn is working on DC’s Suicide Squad doesn’t mean he isn’t thinking about his upcoming Marvel projects. Replying to a fan’s tweet, the Guardians of the Galaxy director hyped up the third Guardians film’s aesthetic.
“Our designers & visual development geniuses are busy creating new, fantastic designs of other worlds & alien beings. I’m not sure the galaxy is big enough for all this magic,” he said of the franchise’s final film. Since it will be the final film, we can expect some sad and somber moments mixed in with its signature humor.
“This. One. Is. Huge.” Gunn promised.
Our designers & visual development geniuses are busy creating new, fantastic designs of other worlds & alien beings. I'm not sure the galaxy is big enough for all this magic. This. One. Is. Huge. I'm excited. #Vol3 ? https://t.co/gtboIx2YWX
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is set to start filming this year, so don’t hold your breath for that final film just yet. In December, Marvel Entertainment announced that the galaxy’s biggest a-holes won’t get that final film until 2023.
But don’t fret. The Guardians are set to appear in their on Christmas Special on DisneyPlus in 2022 and everyone’s favorite tree based life form, Groot is also hitting the streaming site soon with his own show aptly titled, I Am Groot.
If you really can’t wait that long to see Star-Lord, Drax, Gamora, Groot, Rocket, Mantis, and Nebula again, some of the characters are set to appear in Thor: Love And Thunder, out May 6, 2022. Director Taika Waititi even worked with James Gunn on the characters’ trajectory, reading the new Guardians’ script ahead of time.
In the meantime, you catch Gunn’s signature humor and chaos in The Suicide Squad, due to hit theaters and HBO Max August 6.
Angelina Jolie doesn’t get in front of the camera as much as she used to, and when she does now it’s usually for a very special opportunity, such as working with a specific filmmaker or starring in a Marvel movie. Such is the respect earned by writer/director Taylor Sheridan (Yellowstone, Hell or High Water) that he has Jolie for his upcoming HBO Max film Those Who Wish Me Dead, which we are getting a first look at.
Those Who Wish Me Dead is set against the backdrop of a Montana wildfire, with Jolie as a survival expert coping with its devastating effects. But this is Taylor Sheridan, known for violent, mostly male-driven films of action, and there’s more to this story than just wildfires. Jolie’s character must also protect a young murder witness from assassins out to kill him.
The cast is especially stacked with Nicholas Hoult, Aidan Gillen, Jon Bernthal, Tyler Perry, Medina Shenghore, Jake Weber, Tory Kittles, and Finn Little.
Sheridan not only directed but co-wrote the script with Blood Diamond writer Charles Leavitt.
HBO Max will debut Those Who Wish Me Dead on May 4th. [EW]
American remakes of acclaimed foreign films is nothing new, but yeah, it can sometimes be frustrating when they’re extremely recent. Such is the case with Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala’s psycho-horror Goodnight Mommy, a genuine creep-fest that arrived in 2014. However, it is what it is and the film is indeed being remade. The good news is that the mom role will be played by Naomi Watts. Thumbs up for that.
Variety reports that Amazon Studios is developing an English-language remake of Goodnight Mommy with Naomi Watts set to star. Directing the film will be Matt Sobel (Take Me to the River) from a script by Kyle Warren.
Goodnight Mommy centers on twin brothers sent to live with their mother, whose face has been completely bandaged after a surgical procedure. When the boys start noticing odd behavior from her, they begin to wonder whether this person is actually an imposter.
Don’t watch it if you ever want to have children.
So here’s the thing: while I’m predisposed to hating this news, Goodnight Mommy is a film that might work really well from an American point of view. Some of its ideas about motherhood, abandonment, and so forth are easily adaptable to different cultures. I’m curious to see where this goes.
Ray Fisher has a lot to get off his chest. That’s not a shock; he’s been teasing little bits of his troubles with Joss Whedon, Geoff Johns, and Warner Bros. for about a year. While most of it stems from time on reshoots of Justice League, which Whedon oversaw after the departure of Zack Snyder, the truth is that the ripple effects are far-reaching.
The THR piece on Fisher covers a lot of ground, from the “gross, abusive, unprofessional, and completely unacceptable” actions that he first alluded to last year. Conflicts arose when Whedon began making wholesale changes to Justice League, and was “dismissive” when Fisher and other co-stars tried to offer suggestions. In the case of Fisher, some of these responses by Whedon and other execs were “racist and inappropriate”. In the case of Johns, some of these complaints bled over to his SyFy show, Krypton.
Johns and other WB execs took issue with Cyborg only smiling twice throughout Justice League, and said they couldn’t have an “angry black man” at the center of the film. Some of that may explain why Whedon went to such lengths to slash Cyborg’s storyline, which had been the film’s heart when under Snyder’s guidance.
Speaking of which, Fisher is still feeling the impacts of his allegations. He was meant to have a co-starring role in The Flash opposite Ezra Miller, building on a friendship we saw quite clearly in the Snyder Cut. The role was then reduced to a cameo, and finally cut altogether.
According to Fisher, he and Flash director Andy Muschietti were on good terms about Cyborg’s part in the film. Then WB changed things up on him, reducing it to a cameo but requiring him to shoot for two weeks while still making cameo money. Reports, which look like smears in retrospect, said that Fisher had demanded more money, and that’s why negotiations fell through. WB put the blame on Fisher for also having said he wouldn’t work on any project by DC Films chief Walter Hamada. If Fisher is telling the truth, sounds like he was justified.
“When I first spoke up, I assumed there was no way these guys would allow me to do my job in peace,” Fisher says. “I’m not so indebted to Hollywood that I haven’t been willing to put myself out there.”
Fisher concluded with, “I don’t believe some of these people are fit for positions of leadership. I don’t want them excommunicated from Hollywood, but I don’t think they should be in charge of the hiring and firing of other people. If I can’t get accountability, at least I can make people aware of who they’re dealing with.”
So this wasn’t a great day to be Joss Whedon. It wasn’t a great day to be ex-DC Films exec Geoff Johns, either. After more than a year, Ray Fisher finally cut loose to THR on the issues he’s had with Warner Bros., Whedon, and Johns during reshoots of Justice League in 2017. A lot of it is a more detailed retelling of stuff we’ve already heard, but man, some of those details really sting. What comes through is that Fisher wasn’t the only one who had issues with Whedon. His co-stars did, too, with Gal Gadot becoming a target of the director’s wrath.
We’ve known from statements by Gadot that her experience working with Whedon on Justice League “wasn’t the best”, but we didn’t know it included the filmmaker threatening her career. The report says Gadot had “issues about her character being more aggressive than her character in ‘Wonder Woman.’ She wanted to make the character flow from one movie to the next.” By this point it’s been established that Whedon was”dismissive” when others gave notes on his script, so it’s not surprising to learn that Gadot took her complaints to WB’s chairman.
Whedon’s reaction? When back on set, he pushed Gadot to record lines she didn’t like, then threatened her career while also disparaging Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins.
A witness told THR that “Joss was bragging that he’s had it out with Gal. He told her he’s the writer and she’s going to shut up and say the lines and he can make her look incredibly stupid in this movie.”
Gadot did respond to the THR story an these allegations, saying “I had my issues with [Whedon] and Warner Bros. handled it in a timely manner.”
Whedon isn’t commenting on any of this stuff, of course. Nor should he, it would only add fuel to a fire that has been burning pretty hot.
When your last name is Coppola and you get into the movie business, suffice it to say all eyes will be on you. For Gia Coppola, the granddaughter of Francis Ford Coppola and niece of Sofia and Roman Coppola, she made an impressive directorial debut in 2013 with Palo Alto. That film had quite the cast of rising young stars, too, and now she’s gathered another great group for her followup, Mainstream.
Maya Hawke (Stranger Things), Nat Wolff (Paper Towns), Andrew Garfield (The Amazing Spider-Man), Jason Schwartzman (Rushmore), Alexa Demie (Euphoria), and Johnny Knoxville (Jackass) star, along with appearances by Jake Paul and Charles Melton star in the film which takes a satirical look at Internet celebrity and the dark side of fame.
Response to the film out of Venice was polarizing from what I can remember, with a lot of the attention on Garfield’s over-the-top performance.
Frankly, this looks obnoxious to me, but Coppola is a talented filmmaker and it deserves a chance to impress.
Mainstream opens in select theaters an VOD on May 7th.
MAINSTREAM follows a young woman (Maya Hawke) who thinks she’s found a path to internet stardom when she starts making YouTube videos with a charismatic stranger (Andrew Garfield) – until the dark side of viral celebrity threatens to ruin them both.
In today’s social media-focused society: what constitutes popularity, how do we struggle to be creative in a modern age of “cool,” what is it like growing up with a social media presence. MAINSTREAM will leave you analyzing your relationship with social media while acting as a cautionary fairytale about what our culture values and the psychological dangers that can come with it. Featuring appearances from some of today’s most prominent social media stars, including Patrick Starrr and Jake Paul.
