Moana 2 is coming, and a lot sooner than you think. Disney’s earnings call today was the place for a new teaser for the sequel. It’s a brief piece of footage revealing a shot of the island and the titular heroine calling out with a conch. We also hear the familiar laugh of the demigod Maui, voiced in the previous movie by Dwayne Johnson.
Here’s the kicker: Moana 2 will hit theaters on November 27th of this year.
You may recall that back in 2020 we learned of a Moana TV series set for Disney+. It was supposed to arrive in 2023, but Disney CEO Bob Iger confirmed that it has been retooled into a feature film.
David Derrick Jr., a storyboard artist on Raya and the Last Dragon and Encanto, will direct the film. While Lin-Manuel Miranda won’t return as composer, new music will be composed by Grammy winners Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear, along with nominee Opetaia Foa’i, and Grammy winner Mark Mancina.
It’s unclear if previous stars Auliʻi Cravalho, who recently starred in Mean Girls, and Dwayne Johnson will return.
*NOTE: This is a reprint of our review from the Sundance Film Festival*
In January of 2023, Nico Parker stole the first episode of The Last of Us, playing the doomed daughter of Pedro Pascal in the HBO existential zombie series. The follow-up to her breakout role is playing an average teenager in just as a devastating situation: dealing with her brother going through hospice.
Written by first-time writer/director Laura Chinn, Suncoast follows Doris (Parker) as she ignores her feelings about her brother’s impending death. As she starts to acclimate to her Christian High School, her mother Kristine (Laura Linney) moves her son into the Suncoast Hospice Center. It just so happens that it is 2005 and the facility is the same one where Terri Schiavo, a vegetative woman at the center of a national debate between right-to-die groups and pro-life ones, was placed by her husband.
Suncoast marks Chinn’s directorial debut, but she did cut her teeth writing for sitcoms like The Mick and Grandfathered. Despite her comedy background, the film is extremely moving and filled with pathos for every single character. Doris is a typical teenager that you’ve seen in other coming-of-age films, but because it is partially based on Chinn’s real life, the character feels like a groundbreaking representation. She takes advantage of the distance between herself and her mother by throwing parties at their home while Kristine sleeps at the center. Keeping an eye on her is Paul Warren (Woody Harrelson), a life advocate protesting Schiavo’s impending death outside the hospice.
Woody Harrelson plays the religious version of his character in The Edge of Seventeen. Guiding Doris along, he serves as more of a mentor character than someone on their own journey. It seems like Harrelson likes to break out the surrogate father figure every couple of years and he’s good at it.
Laura Linney is trading her prim and proper but ruthless character from Ozark for a vicious and passionate mother as Kristine. Both Linney and Chinn do a great job at making the character seem neglectful of her daughter for the most understandable reason. Linney is raw and yet grounded, throwing in a few laughs here and there.
Keyla Monterroso Mejia, who you may know from her guest spots on Curb Your Enthusiasm and Abbot Elementary, shows up as an overly smiley nurse. It’s a very small part but Mejia knows how to make the most of it.
Despite standout performances, Suncoast belongs to Parker. It’s a star-making turn for the young actress and somehow she can be relatable and funny in a very specific situation. She doesn’t milk the humor and instead brings a sweet awkwardness to Doris. Her performance, which won the Breakthrough Performance Award at Sundance, and Chinn’s script work beautifully together. If this is the role she chose as her follow-up to The Last of Us, then I can’t wait to see the full breadth of her range.
Celine Song had the kind of debut feature any filmmaker would die for. Past Lives debuted at Sundance to rave reviews but went on to be one of the most awarded films of the year, heavily discussed by those who felt it deserved more than the two Oscar nominations it received, even if one was for Best Picture. Count me among that group. It’s an unforgettable movie and has everyone on pins and needles to know what she’ll do next. Well, now we know, and there’s good reason to be excited.
Deadline reports Celine Song’s new film is The Materialists, and it has the incredible cast of Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans, and Pedro Pascal already attached. Damn. Of course, A24 will be handling this one just as they did Past Lives because it would be stupid to get off this train when it’s just started chugging.
Details on the plot are few, but the report states it’ll be a rom-com that centers on a matchmaker who gets involved with a rich man but still pines for the broke guy she left behind.
So a definite change of pace for Song, but with that cast it might not even matter. All three are incredibly popular and hot right now, so we could see The Materialists be more than a critical favorite.
If you thought Margot Robbie would duck into the shadows for a while after the box office smash Barbie, think again. Robbie has signed on to star opposite Colin Farrell in A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, the latest film from Columbus and After Yangdirector Kogonada.
This is a pretty exciting package. Deadline reports on the news, but has little in the way of details. What we do know is that the story centers on two strangers who connect through an amazing journey. I imagine that journey is big, bold, and beautiful, too.
The film will be directed by Kogonada from a script by Seth Reiss, a co-writer on The Menu.
So no breaks for Robbie, even after she was left out of the Best Actress race at the Oscars. Barbie still earned eight nominations, with Robbie included as one of the film’s producers. She’s currently developing an Ocean’s 11 prequel film, but who knows how far along that is or if it’ll even happen. As for Farrell, he can be seen next in the Apple TV+ series, Sugar, and he has Penguin, a series spinoff of The Batman, coming to Max.
Nobody could’ve thought the person to launch the next great hit horror franchise would be John Krasinski, but that’s exactly what he did with 2018’s A Quiet Place. The rare genre film that was a box office success and a critical darling, the film launched an equally successful sequel just two years later, one that teased a wider universe ready to be explored. And now that idea comes to fruition with A Quiet Place: Day One, which isn’t a sequel but a prequel to an even that has already been teased.
In A Quiet Place Part II we see the chaotic arrival of the hostile extraterrestrial creatures that hunt by sound. In A Quiet Place: Day One, we see that day expanded on from the perspective of an entirely new cast led by Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o. She’s joined by Joseph Quinn, Djimon Hounsou, and Alex Wolff.
Hounsou is the only returning character of them all, playing the “Man On the Island”, leader of a small clan of survivors seen in Part II.
With Krasinski off directing IF and preparing A Quiet Place Part III, the duties on Day One went to Michael Sarnoski. He’s best known for the Nicolas Cage drama Pig. Sarnoski also wrote the script and is keeping plot details mostly under wraps.
As you may have heard me say since returning from Sundance, this year’s festival was a bit of a downer. Fewer films overall, and definitely fewer movies that we’ll be shouting about during the awards season. But there were still a few highlights and one of the most electrifying films at Park City was Love Lies Bleeding, Rose Glass’ pulpy queer crime-romance starring Kristen Stewart and Katy O’Brien.
Love Lies Bleeding is a queer romance set within a small-town crime thriller. Stewart plays Lou, a gym manager (we liken her performance to Mickey Rourke-esque) who enters a steamy relationship with Jackie, a nomadic bodybuilder with a dream of winning a bodybuilding competition in Vegas. The two find themselves swept up in a web of violence, pulling them closer to Lou’s criminal family ties.
I was at the world premiere of Love Lies Bleedingand loved it. Gritty and surreal at the same time, I think it’s the film that takes Glass into the mainstream and makes a star out of O’Brien.
The film also stars Dave Franco, Ed Harris, Jena Malone and Anna Baryshnikov.
Glass made waves with her debut feature, Saint Maud, which earned her a ton of new fans. O’Brien is best known for her roles on The Mandalorian and Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania.
Here’s the synopsis: From Director Rose Glass comes an electric new love story; reclusive gym manager Lou falls hard for Jackie, an ambitious bodybuilder headed through town to Vegas in pursuit of her dream. But their love ignites violence, pulling them deep into the web of Lou’s criminal family.
A24 will release Love Lies Bleeding in theaters on March 8th.
If a Predator movie was set in the Stone Age period, it might look something like Out of Darkness. To me, that’s high praise considering my love of that action franchise, which through multiple films combined man vs. nature thrills with the visceral horror of monster movies. First-time director Andrew Cumming makes good use of the rarely-seen setting (2018’s Alpha a notable highlight) to craft an atmospheric and tense survival film that, like the Predator spinoff Prey, puts its female characters in the spotlight.
Set 45,000 years ago, Out of Darkness opens with a group of Paleolithic travelers around a campfire. They have survived a dangerous voyage to find a mythical “promised land”, but it isn’t as bountiful as they hoped. On the verge of starvation, they are growing desperate in this barren, frigid, unfamiliar land of endless mountains and hills. As if it wasn’t bad enough in the daytime, at night it’s even worse. Fearful that it is plagued by demons, their worst fear comes true when a shrill shriek heralds the arrival of an unknown predator, who snatches away the most defenseless member of their clan.
Adem (Chuku Modu) leads this small pack, having encouraged this fruitless venture. With his spear, and apparent ego, he believes he can repel any danger that comes their way. He also believes they will find the haven they’ve been looking for. Adem has a son, Heron (Luna Mwezi), with another on the way with Ave (Iola Evans), who worries about giving birth to a female. A female will have to “earn her place” among the largely-male tribe, and it sounds as gross as you think it does. Our suspicions are confirmed in teen stray Beyah (Safia Oakley-Green), who, after getting her first period, is lustily told by Adem and sinister elder Odal (Arno Luning) that she exists “for whatever we need.” They don’t mean foraging for berries. Adem’s younger brother Geirr (Kit Young) is the timid one, treating the women with a respect they won’t get elsewhere.
Working with a minimal budget, Cumming makes smart use of lighting, sound, and shadow to mask the deadly creature. The Scottish Highlands are intimidating in the best of circumstances, but they are downright terrifying when the flicker of firelight is all there is to go by. A quibble that I had is that the actors don’t look like Stone Age travelers struggling to survive. The costumes, mostly made of animal pelts, are too fresh and dare I say stylish in some cases. It momentarily took me out of it but was forgotten once the gloomy atmospherics took hold, and Oakley-Green stepped up with a fearless performance as Beyah proved her mettle to the men.
Further immersing you into this desolate world is a unique subtitled language dubbed “Tola” that was created for the film by historical advisors Daniel Andersson and Rob Dinnis. It just goes to show the level of care and detail paid to the film, which had its world premiere back in 2022 and was originally titled Origin. Probably a good move to change that title, although Out of Darkness is a title so bland as to be forgettable and confused with about a thousand other horror movies.
A familiar rhythm is established as the creature hunts the tribe down, one by one. And like Predator before it, their various personalities and quirks often play into their demise. Fans of this particular type of survival horror will appreciate the mounting tension among the prey as they each look for a way out of certain death. The showdown is an appropriately chaotic life-or-death fight, backed by the glimmer of cave light. But the reveal of the hunter is a disappointment, as Cumming seeks to deliver a clumsy message than give audiences a satisfying introduction to a new screen monster. Cumming does so much right in crafting an exciting, precarious adventure that you can mostly forgive the misstep, and hope that Out of Darkness is the start of a long, successful career.
Bleecker Street opens Out of Darkness in theaters on February 9th.
It’s been ages since we heard anything about Moon director Duncan Jones’ next project, an animated adaptation of the Rogue Trooper comic book. Not only is the film still very much in the works, but the voice cast has been revealed, and it’s an impressive lineup.
Variety reports that Aneurin Barnard will voice 19, the titular Genetic Infantryman on the planet Nu-Earth who is the sole survivor of an invasion. Desperate to find the traitor to sold out him and his squadmates, 19 is accompanied by three of his fallen comrades whose personalities are kept in biochips attached to his helmet, backpack, and rifle.
Also leading the cast are Hayley Atwell and Jack Lowden. Others lending their voices include Jemaine Clement, Matt Berry, Diane Morgan, Alice Lowe, Sean Bean, Asa Butterfield, Daryl McCormack, and Reece Shearsmith.
Barnard is best known for his roles in The Goldfinch and Dunkirk; Atwell most recently starred in Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning and Lowden was also in Dunkirk and Fighting with My Family.
The film marks Jones’ first feature since Warcraft in 2018. Interestingly, Rogue Trooper‘s animations are being developed using Unreal Engine 5, which is primarily used for video games and includes motion-capture elements. As video games grow in size and budget to become more like movies, and movies adapt more and more video games, we are now starting to see them sharing the same technology.
Perhaps Alex Garland had a change of heart about retiring from directing after his upcoming film, Civil War? Because he’s suddenly very busy, working with Danny Boyle on the long-awaited 28 Years Later, and now Deadline reports Garland has signed on to co-direct a new project that has a popular leading man already aboard.
May December star Charles Melton is set to star in an untitled war film co-written and co-directed by Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza. Garland and Mendoza most recently worked together on Civil War, where the latter served as military supervisor. A24 is backing the project and will eventually release it.
Melton is on fire right now after his supporting role in May December opposite Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman. He arguably stole the movie from them both, with many thinking he should’ve been nominated for an Oscar. For his performance, he earned a Golden Globe nomination and won many regional critics awards. The Riverdale actor could’ve chosen just about anything he wanted, and he decided that working with Garland was the right move.
As for Garland, we’ll see where this takes him. After directing Ex Machina, Annihilation, and the FX series Devs, Garland’s star seemed to be on the rise. It’s his experience on Men, which was bruised pretty badly critically and at the box office, that appears to have changed him. Civil War looks amazing and like the most easily accessible to mainstream audiences. We’ll see how it does when it opens on April 12th.
Two MCU veterans are teaming up for the first time. Deadline reports Samuel L. Jackson and Dave Bautista will star in Afterburn, an adaptation of the Red 5 graphic novel set in a post-apocalyptic future. The comic was created by Scott Chitwood and Wayne Nichols.
Afterburn takes place one year after a solar flare wipes out all technology around the world. Bautista will take on the lead role of Jake, an ex-soldier “who works as a treasure hunter recovering valuable objects from the old world for powerful clients. His latest mission is to team with freedom fighter Drea to recover the Mona Lisa before an unhinged warlord gets there first.”
Jackson will take on the supporting role of Valentine, a freedom fighter.
A producer on the film is Neal H. Moritz of the Fast & Furious franchise. This is a longtime passion project for him and the other producers, who first tried to get the film going in 2018.
The action picks up when Jake and his fellow treasure hunters venture into the Burn Zone, facing mutants, rival raiders, and more to secure big payoffs.
Behind the camera is director JJ Perry, a former actor who previously directed Jamie Foxx in the underrated vampire film, Day Shift. He and Bautista are familiar with one another as they recently wrapped up the action-comedy, The Killer’s Game.
Filming on Afterburn is to begin in April. Coming up for Bautista is Dune: Part Two and the My Spy sequel. Jackson can be seen in theaters right now in Argylle.
