It’s been said many times before, but there’s a lot riding on the upcoming release of Tenet. But here’s the problem: we don’t really know what Warner Bros. is thinking right now. Sure, they would like the film to hit the intended July 17th release date and do gangbusters at the box office. Christopher Nolan would like that, too. If so, it could be the catalyst for a post-outbreak resurgence for movie theaters around the world. The question is whether WB will stick to their guns and not move the anticipated to a more accepting date.
If WB is worried about the number of theaters open when Tenet hits, the National Association of Theatre Owners has some good news. The organization expects (via Business Insider) that 90% of world cinemas will be reopened by the time Tenet‘s release comes around next month. It’s unclear where NATO is coming up with that figure, especially since the three biggest markets in the country, New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco have no definite plan for reopening theaters.
We do know that AMC, Cinemark, and Regal want to be ready very soon, and they’ll make every effort to do so. But what about the rest of the world? That’s far less certain, and considering the huge expense put into Tenet, those international figures are going to be necessary if WB wants to hit that $1B mark we know they’re aiming for.
Daniel Espinosa has quietly been one of the most interesting filmmakers around since his stylish debut, the crime flick Snabba Cash. Since then he’s bounced around with blockbusters such as Safe House, political thrillers including Child 44, and the (underrated) alien horror Life. While his upcoming film is Sony’s Spider-Man spinoff Morbius, after that Espinosa will be getting very political once more by bringing the story of murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi to the screen.
Deadline reports Espinosa is developing-to-direct The Execution, a drama on the tragic murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. In October 2018 Khashoggi, a harsh critic of Saudi prince Mohammad bin Salman, walked into the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul and never came out. He had been there to get a marriage license; but instead he was butchered by members of the Saudi government. His murder caused a political firestorm around the world, with most countries condemning the Saudis for their action. Meanwhile, here in the U.S. we had an administration who seemed to be doing everything possible not to offend their friends in the Saudi government.
The film will be written by Petter Skavlan, best known for the Oscar-nominated film Kon-Tiki. There are a lot of angles to take on the Khashoggi killing and it’ll be interesting to see where this one goes. In terms of the political fallout one could probably make a dozen movies, or a docuseries on the subject.
Next up for Espinosa is Sony’s Morbius, which opens March 19th 2021.
Could there be a more perfect time for a new Spike Lee joint? I don’t think so, and Netflix hopes you agree. Da 5 Bloods hits the streaming service next week, and in preparation for that a handful of powerful new posters have been unveiled.
Da 5 Bloods finds Lee returning to the battlefield for the first time since 2006’s Miracle at St. Anna. The film stars Delroy Lindo, Norm Lewis, Clarke Peters, and Isiah Whitlock Jr. as a quartet of Vietnam War vets who return to the country to locate the body of their fallen squad leader, played by Chadwick Boseman, and for the promise of buried treasure. The cast includes Jonathan Majors, Paul Walter Hauser, Jean Reno, and Melanie Thierry.
Lee posted one of the new images on Twitter, accompanied by this caption calling for a continued fight for social justice: “Now Our Fight Is For Social Justice Plus Too Many Issues To List At This Moment In Time And Space. DA 5 BLOODS Streams On Netflix In Da Year Of Our Lawd 2020 June 12th. YA-DIG? SHO-NUFF. And Dat’s Da “BLACK LIVES MATTER”,TRUTH,RUTH”
Da 5 Bloods hits Netflix on June 12th.
Now Our Fight Is For Social Justice Plus Too Many Issues To List At This Moment In Time And Space. DA 5 BLOODS Streams On Netflix In Da Year Of Our Lawd 2020 June 12th. YA-DIG❓SHO-NUFF. And Dat’s Da “BLACK LIVES MATTER”,TRUTH,RUTH.???? pic.twitter.com/3tcvYPlI10
We’re happy to offer three of our readers the chance to win Universal and Blumhouse’s hit horror, The Invisible Man, on 4K Ultra Bluray! The film stars Elisabeth Moss, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Aldis Hodge, Storm Reid, and Harriet Dyer, with Leigh Whannell (Upgrade) directing this modern reimagining of the classic Universal monster.
SYNOPSIS: What you can’t see can hurt you. Emmy winner Elisabeth Moss (Us, Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale) stars in a terrifying modern tale of obsession inspired by Universal’s classic monster character.
Trapped in a violent, controlling relationship with a wealthy and brilliant scientist, Cecilia Kass (Moss) escapes in the dead of night and disappears into hiding, aided by her sister (Harriet Dyer, NBC’s The InBetween), their childhood friend (Aldis Hodge, Straight Outta Compton) and his teenage daughter (Storm Reid, HBO’s Euphoria).
But when Cecilia’s abusive ex (Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Netflix’s The Haunting of Hill House) commits suicide and leaves her a generous portion of his vast fortune, Cecilia suspects his death was a hoax. As a series of eerie coincidences turns lethal, threatening the lives of those she loves, Cecilia’s sanity begins to unravel as she desperately tries to prove that she is being hunted by someone nobody can see.
To enter, simply send an email to punchdrunktrav@gmail.com with your full name, mailing address, and the classic monster you want to see get a modern update. It’s that easy! Winners will be selected on Saturday, June 6th and notified by email. So act fast!
The Invisible Man is available now on Bluray, DVD, and digital!
While Ari Aster’s breakthrough film Hereditary didn’t do much for me, it’s been impossible to shake his more-ambitious followup, Midsommar. After that, I’m pretty much down to see whatever he’s got planned, which is good because his next film is being described as a four-hour-long “nightmare comedy.” Alrighty then, sign me up.
Aster had a chat with students at UC Santa Barbara, which is where he started talking about his next movie. The untitled film he says would be a “nightmare comedy”, and then he added “All I know is that it’s gonna be four hours long….”
Four hours is a bit stiff so I hope that changes along the way. Then again, Midsommar clocked in at 148 minutes, with the director’s cut at 171 minutes, so perhaps Aster is just looking to top himself this time. The lengthier cut of Midsommar was far superior to the theatrical, so he might have cause to go long.
There have been casting rumors lately surrounding the Disney+ series WandaVision, and the timing on them has been curious. Marvel’s live-action show had wrapped production back in March, just barely ahead of the COVID-19 shutdowns, but it seems there’s more left to do and that may explain why new roles may be getting filled.
WandaVision will be resuming production next month, with the news coming from the Tampa Bay Comic Convention (Those are still a thing???) who were forced to cancel an appearance by Vision actor Paul Bettany. The reason, according to Bettany’s reps, is that he’s got work to do on WandaVision happening in July.
As for those casting rumors, they involve the possible addition of Evan Peters to the series. Peters played Scarlet Witch’s brother, Quicksilver, over in Fox’s X-Men movies, and that has led to speculation he’ll play the character once more in the MCU. Other rumors have surfaced he could instead be playing Mephisto, Marvel’s version of the Devil, basically.
It’s possible WandaVision is going in for reshoots that will add Peters into the mix. Or the Peters rumor may only be just that, a rumor, and they’re going in to finish up other things. Months have passed and minds may have been changed about the footage previously shot.
Debuting later this year on Disney+, WandaVision stars Elizabeth Olsen as Wanda “Scarlet Witch” Maximoff and Paul Bettany as her android romantic partner, Vision, reprising their roles from previous films. Others from the MCU who are coming back for more are Randall Park as FBI agent Jimmy Woo from the Ant-Man films and Kat Dennings as Darcy Lewis from the Thor movies. Teyonnah Parris plays a grown-up Monica Rambeau, last seen as a child in Captain Marvel. Kathryn Hahn plays their “nosy neighbor” but you can bet there’s more to it than that.
I feel like this rumor pops up every few months, but here it goes one more time. The DisInsider says Lucasfilm may be casting for the role of Grand Admiral Thrawn for an upcoming live-action Star Wars series.
Details on this are very slim, and as always be a little skeptical of a rumor like this. Thrawn is one of the most popular Star Wars villains. Having been established in Timothy Zahn’s Heir to the Empire books, he made his canonical debut in Star Wars Rebels a few years ago. When that show ended, the fate of Thrawn was left hanging in the air, right alongside Ezra Bridger. That necessitated Ahsoka Tano to go off in search of the missing Bridger, and with Tano returning in The Mandalorian and possibly a spinoff, there’s a chance we could see Thrawn come back, too.
It might be too much to ask for Thrawn to show up in The Mandalorian season 2. There’s already a lot going on there (including Ahsoka) and the season has completed shooting. But an Ahsoka Tano spinoff, perhaps? That’s a definite possibility.
Some celebrities choose to take their considerable influence and stay silent, but John Boyega is definitely not one of those. Forget all that he does as part of Star Wars, he’s just not someone known for keeping quiet when he’s got something to say. That has been especially true following the reactions to The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker. But more crucially, it’s true now as Boyega has chosen to speak out in support of Black Lives Matter and against racism.
You may have already seen it or heard about it, but Boyega attended a protest in London’s Hyde Park and he didn’t mince words on his feelings about the police brutality and racism that led to the death of George Floyd and has all black people under threat.
You can watch the his impassioned speech in full below, but here’s just a little of what Boyega had to say…
“I’m speaking to you from my heart. Look, I don’t know if I’m going to have a career after this, but fuck that,” said Boyega. “Today is about innocent people who were halfway through their process, we don’t know what George Floyd could have achieved, we don’t know what Sandra Bland could have achieved, but today we’re going to make sure that won’t be an alien thought to our young ones.”
What Boyega says about his career is key, because he could very easily see backlash for standing with Black Lives Matter. Somehow in our polarized society it’s controversial to side with those who simply ask that black people not be killed by those in power. He could easily see the same kind of backlash that Colin Kaepernick was met with. Even more, Boyega has a business relationship with Disney that could be put in jeopardy.
But it turns out, Lucasfilm is actually on Boyega’s side here. The official Lucasfilm Twitter account showed him some love, labeling him a “hero” in the process. Good stuff by all around, but especially Boyega for doing the right thing no matter what the consequences might be.
*NOTE: This review was originally run during the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.*
A traditional biopic from Josephine Decker, the filmmaker whose Madeline’s Madeline is one of the most visually vivid and unique pieces of cinema in recent years? Of course, there’s absolutely nothing traditional about Shirley, a nasty little number about nasty little literary couple Stanley Edgar Hyman and Shirley Jackson. Shirley, a reclusive writer whose horror novels and short stories have seen a sudden surge in popularity, namely The Haunting of Hill House, is a particularly venomous piece of work, and Decker observes her like one observes a snake about to devour a mouse.
Michael Stuhlbarg and Elisabeth Moss play Stanley and Shirley, who bear their fangs not only at one another but at the improbably gorgeous Fred and Rose Nemser (Logan Lerman and Odessa Young), a young couple invited to stay in their home while Fred moves up the professorial ranks on campus. The dynamic between the four is contentious from the start, in no small part thanks to Shirley. A shut-in who can barely get out of bed in the morning, it’s clear she’s not just mean but perhaps a little bit insane. Certainly, she’s become too much for the outgoing, charismatic Stanley to deal with by himself, which is where Rose comes in. Despite being horrified at Shirley’s treatment towards her (Shirley outs her pregnancy to a befuddled Fred), Rose is an admirer and more than a little naive.
That makes them perfect targets for the elder couple, who seem to fuel their own creative genius through the mental manipulation of others. Shirley is no biopic, it’s a horror in the vein of Jackson’s literary works, but with a really twisted sense of humor that makes one feel “terrifically horrible”, as Rose puts it. For those who like their comedy blacker than old coffee, they’ll get a kick out of the way Shirley teases and scorns, befriends and alienates, all to her own satisfaction. “People like Shirley don’t have friends”, Fred warns Rose at one point, and he’s not wrong. Rose is meant to be a positive influence but, for someone as broken as Shirley, what’s positive for her is negative for everyone else.
The best part of Shirley is that it gives Moss another role in which she can delve into another’s mad genius. The story takes place following the release of Jackson’s wildly controversial novel, The Lottery, during the time when she’s been inspired by the disappearance of college freshman Paula Jean Welden to craft the story, Hangsaman. Already a neurotic suffering from severe bouts of anxiety, Shirley begins to identify closely with the lost girl, and other lost girls just like her. It only makes her devious control over Rose all the more insidious and tragic. Shirley takes the hopeful young woman treats her like a character in one of her novels, writing her story at every turn of the page.
Decker keeps the tension tightly wound, mixing in enough humor to lessen the bitterness of Sara Gubbens’ script. Even though at times it seems they don’t have an idea where it should go, making for a conclusion that muddles any empowering themes, Shirley doesn’t shy away from its subject’s toxicity. It embraces everything she was, everything she needed to be, warts and all.
Thomas Vinterberg. Mads Mikkelsen. You put those two together and good things are bound to happen. The Danish pair last teamed up for 2012’s Oscar-nominated drama The Hunt, and now they’re back for something very different. Another Round was recently chosen as an Official Selection of the Cannes Film Festival, and a trailer has been released which gives the impression it could be a fun, light-hearted comedy, but that turns out not to be the case.
Another Round stars Mikkelsen, Thomas Bo Larsen, Lars Ranthe, and Magnus Millang as a group of friends who decide that life might be better under a constant state of intoxication. We’ve all heard of “liquid courage”, right? Perhaps it’ll help them loosen up, and thus make all of the problems life throws at them easier to take? It’s an interesting experiment, but what happens when they start to depend on alcohol too much and their lives totally fall apart?
Vinterberg is behind the camera, his first movie since 2018’s submarine disaster film Kursk. He also co-wrote the script with his usual collaborator Tobias Lindholm.
