Variety reports that Steven Spielberg is going back to his genre roots after his Oscar-nominated drama The Fabelmans, writing that the beloved filmmaker will “likely make his next project a UFO film based on his own original idea”.
This, of course, is far from Spielberg’s first tangle with aliens, having directed the genre-defining Close Encounters of the Third Kind in 1977 and E.T. in 1982, as well as the an adaptation of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds in 2005.
The director clearly has had aliens on the brain, appearing on Stephen Colbert last year to discuss alien visitors while promoting The Fabelmans. Steven Spielberg first clarifies that he’s “never seen a UFO” but that he believes others have, and that “there is something going on that simply needs extraordinary due diligence.” He goes on to explain that “it’s mathematically impossible that we’re the only intelligent species in the cosmos.”
That’s all we know about this upcoming UFO film so far, but we’re very curious to find out more.
Horror will have a new home this August, as Pigeon Shrine FrightFest takes over the massive Odeon Luxe Leicester Square for its 25th anniversary. The poster for the event – painted by the legendary Graham Humphreys – has also been unveiled.
Graham said of the poster: “Although FrightFest marks its first quarter century, the significant change of venue is this year’s focus. The soaring black Art Deco tower of the ODEON Luxe Leicester Square, which was completed in 1937, is as iconic to London as the Art Deco Empire State Building in New York – completed six years earlier, in 1931. In the 1933 movie King Kong, the giant primate scaled the Empire State Building. It seems a fitting homage to have our own monster scale the Leicester Square landmark… the top of the world for the king of horror festivals.”
FrightFest co-director Ian Rattray observed: “The move to our new venue after many successful years is bittersweet, but we are excited about the fresh opportunities and experiences it will bring. As we celebrate 25 years, we look forward to welcoming FrightFesters to this exciting new chapter for the UK’s biggest, brightest, and most successful genre event.”
He added: “Graham’s poster art Is inspired, and it amazes all of us that year after year his FrightFest creations continue to thrill and surprise. He is a truly talented artist”.
Bill Brock, event manager of ODEON Cinemas Group, commented: “We’re thrilled to be hosting FrightFest at the iconic ODEON Luxe Leicester Square for its 25th anniversary event. We share FrightFest’s passion for this genre and are honoured to be hosting the event. As our most famous cinema location and the home of UK premieres, we can’t wait for guests to brave and enjoy five days of fantasy and horror stories in our luxurious OLLS screens.”
This year’s annual Bank Holiday event, the UK’s largest celebration of genre cinema, will take place at Odeon Luxe Leicester Square between Thursday, August 22nd, and Monday, August 26th, 2024.
The line-up of films will be announced on Thursday, July 11th.
John Wick star Keanu Reeves is heading to Sonic the Hedgehog 3to voice the popular video game character,Shadow.
The news comes after Paramount presented the first footage for Sonic 3 at last week’s CinemaCon event. The footage saw Dr. Robotnik (played by Jim Carrey), depressed and out of sorts after the events of the second film, getting his groove back after creating Shadow the Hedgehog, a character first introduced in 2001’s Sonic Adventure 2.
The character possessed extraordinary speed, like Sonic, as well as Chaos Control, a power that allows him to manipulate space and time. Though originally depicted as an antagonist to Sonic, he eventually becomes an ally. Reeves joins an ensemble cast led by Ben Schwartz, who plays Sonic, and James Marsden as Sheriff Tom Wachowski. Idris Elba also reprises his voice role as Knuckles.
The plot details for this third movie entry are still under wraps. Directed by Jeff Fowler, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 will release December 20th, 2024.
Jonathan Bailey, an English actor who broke out on the international stage with his role in Bridgerton, is in early talks to for a leading role in Universal’s upcoming Jurassic World film.
Scarlett Johansson has already been tapped for the feature, which has Gareth Edwards (known for helming Rogue One: A Star Wars Storyand the recent, John David Washington-starring sci-fi epic The Creator) directing this new chapter in the dino-centric movie series, which has a script from the original Jurassic Park scribe, David Koepp. Edwards stepped up to the director’s seat after David Leitch exited the project. Jurassic World trilogy helmer Frank Marshall is also attached to produce alongside Patrick Crowley. Amblin Entertainment, Steven Spielberg’s production banner, is partnering with Universal on this continuation of the popular franchise.
The new movie is a fresh take on a Jurassic era with Jurassic World cast members Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard not expected to return, nor the original trilogy’s thespians Jeff Goldblum, Laura Dern and Sam Neill. This is a project on the fast-track, with a planned release to cinemas on July 2nd, 2025.
Jonathan Bailey will next be seen opposite Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande in Universal’s upcoming Wicked films, playing prince Fiyero. He’s previously starred in Broadchurch and Leonardo.
Beau Willimon is returning to the world of Siths and Jedis, having now been tapped to write for Star Wars: Dawn of the Jedi, the Lucasfilm feature to be directed by James Mangold. The playwright and screenwriter is best known for his work on House of Cards, as well as The Ides of March and The First series.
Dawn of the Jedi, which is a working title, will take place 25, 000 years before any of the timelines and stories told by the Star Wars films and series so far, and will trace the very origins of the Force.
When the project was first announced at the Star Wars Celebration event in April 2023, Mangold stated: “When I first started talking to Kathy [Kennedy] about doing one of these pictures, what occurred to me was thinking about what kind of genre of movie within Star Wars I wanted to do. And I thought about a biblical epic, like a Ten Commandments, about the dawning of the Force. Where did the Force come from, when did we discover it, when did we learn how to use it?”
The feature has no release window as of yet, but Mangold is expected to start working on Dawn of the Jedi once he wraps his Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown. The next Star Wars feature to hit our screens should beThe Mandalorian & Grogu, which was just last week announced to release May 22nd, 2026.
As mentioned above, this isn’t Willimon’s first venture into the Star Wars universe. He worked on season one of Andor, work which earned him an Emmy nomination for outstanding writing for a drama series.
How long have we been waiting to get a good look at Bong Joon-ho’s follow-up to the acclaimedParasite, the sci-fi feature Mickey 17? Too long, that’s for sure. While we may not get to see the first official trailer yet, the cinema owners at CinemaCon have. Bong introduced the trailer for this upcoming pic starring Robert Pattinson, which promises to explore themes of human printing, identity, and space colonisation, at the industry event this week. The South Korean filmmaker stated that this is the story of “a simple man who ultimately ends up saving the world.”
Mickey 17 also stars Steven Yeun, Naomi Ackie, Toni Collette and Mark Ruffalo, with Bong penning the script based on the book Mickey7 by Edward Ashton. Ashton’s novel centres on a man known as an Expendable, on a mission to colonize a distant planet. Each colony features one such Expendable who takes on the most dangerous jobs on the mission – jobs that will assuredly lead to their deaths. However, their memories are backed up and they are restored to cloned bodies when they die. In the novel, Mickey 7 – the 7th version of this crewmember – is left for dead on a mission, but survives. When he returns to base, he discovers that Mickey 8, a clone of himself, has already been created – which is a problem because the idea of duplicate Expendables is universally loathed, and if caught, they would likely be thrown into the recycler for protein.
In the case of the film adaptation, though, Bong has changed a key thing: “The number is the number of times he dies. I killed him ten times more,” the director joked. “It’s a sci-fi movie, but it’s a human story.” Pattinson essentially plays two characters, then: Mickey 17 and Mickey 18. Pattinson previously explained that Mickey 17, on one hand, is beaten down by life but is happy to be part of a team, while 18 is more like “playing an evil brother” who is “out of control.”
Journalists in attendance have reported that the trailer was set to the song “Ain’t That A Kick In The Head” by Frank Sinatra and included some violent scenes, including one of Mickey losing a hand and being dumped alive in liquid metal. The trailer was described by IndieWire as “a tongue-in-cheek, screwball dystopia of sorts”.
Fingers crossed that the trailer is made available online very soon! In the meantime, you can check out a previously-released teaser here.
Mickey 17 releases in cinemas from January 31st, 2025.
A pretty impressive team is coming together to adapt Avengelyne, the ’90s comic book character from Deadpool creator Rob Liefeld and Cathy Christian.
Olivia Wilde, who helmed the very good Booksmart and the far-less-good Don’t Worry Darling, is attached to direct what would be a feature adaptation. Margot Robbie, Tom Ackerley and Josey McNamara’s production banner, LuckyChap, is attached to produce. Simon Kinberg, writer and producer of several X-Men and Deadpool films, is also aboard to produce. Per THR, the package is being put together with the hope that it’ll be ready to take to studios and streamers in coming weeks.
Rob Liefeld and since-controversy-ridden actress Gina Carano were also, from July 2013, working to adapt the comics for the big screen, with Carano expected to star. In 2016, Paramount Pictures had purchased the film rights with Akiva Goldsman as the intended producer.
Avengelyne was once the most feared warrior in Heaven’s Warhost, having single-handedly broken into Pandemonium, the outer fortress of Hell, to confront the Devil himself. Since then, she was banished from Heaven by God after being tricked into questioning His love for humans: her banishment stripped her of all angelic abilities, other than her great strength and her blood, which, once extracted, can be used as a weapon or miracle. Avengelyne uses her powers to fight demons on earth and to protect humankind from a coming Armageddon.
The first trailer for Joker: Folie àDeux brings Oscar winners Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga together in song, ahead of an October 4th release. Warner Bros. unveiled the trailer at CinemaCon, where cinema owners were eager to catch a first look at Todd Phillips’ sequel to his 2019 blockbuster hit. In Folie àDeux, Phoenix returns to the role of Arthur Fleck, with Lady Gaga stepping into a role said to be inspired by the famous comic book character Harley Quinn.
Though the sequel has musical elements, Phillips has insisted he doesn’t consider Folie àDeux to be a musical. “We never talked about it like that,” said Phillips. “I like to say it’s a movie where music is an essential element. To me that doesn’t veer far from the first film.”
The Joker sequel belongs to the DC Elseworlds banner, which explores stories set outside of the shared DC Universe being crafted by James Gunn and Peter Safran. Matt Reeves’ The Batman Part II movie and HBO Max Penguin series, for instance, also under that banner.
Joker: Folie à Deux releases to cinemas from October 4th, 2024. Watch the first trailer below:
Glen Powell, one of our favourite – yet still, somehow, underrated – rising stars has been tapped to star in Paramount’s The Running Man, a new adaptation of the Stephen King novel that Edgar Wright is set to direct. Wright has been attached to the project since 2021, and is producing alongside Nira Park and Simon Kinberg.
King’s The Running Man was famously adapted in 1987, and starred a gold lycra-clad Arnold Schwarzenegger. The novel was set in 2025 in an America under a totalitarian regime (please, let this not be a prediction of the 2024 election results) that uses violent game shows to placate the disenfranchised masses (too close…). One man, needing money to save his sick daughter, joins the most popular show, “The Running Man”, in which teams of killers hunt down contestants. The longer one survives, the more money that person can take away. But as the game show’s producers and killers will soon find out, it only takes one desperate man to break all the rules and expose the show’s dark secrets.
Wright co-wrote the new script alongside Michael Bacall. It’s already shaping up to be a winning year for Glen Powell, coming off the hit rom-com Anyone but You, and looking ahead to his excellent action-comedy Hit Man, directed by Richard Linklater and which the star co-wrote, and to Universal’s Twisters, in which he stars opposite Daisy Edgar-Jones, Anthony Ramos and David Conrenswet. The Running Man reunites Powell and Paramount for the first time since his breakout role as Hangman in Top Gun: Maverick.
The new sci-fi series Chaser is available to rent on Prime Video from today and we have the first look at the fantastic trailer.
A hit on the independent festival circuit, Chaser won Best Series at both the Birmingham Film & TV Festival and Star International Film Festival in 2024, and received nominations for Best Series, as well as nominations for Best Actor (Russ Russo), Best Supporting Actor (Daniel de Weldon), and Best Actress (Gia Bay) at Breaking TV Festival 2023 in London. Chaser was a finalist at the Stockholm Film & Television Festival and a semi-finalist at Blow-Up International Arthouse Film Festival.
Chaser is an eight-episode sci-fi drama following the life of struggling film editor Eddi Sebastian (Russ Russo). Frustrated with his life and work, Eddi experiences a life-changing event as he discovers a mysterious software that lets him cut and edit his life from the past 24 hours. Each half-hour episode sees Eddi drawn further and further into a new, mysterious world – only partly of his own creation – and chronicles the increasingly dark, compounding consequences of his editing decisions.
This erudite show is part of a wider trend in entertainment towards cerebral science fiction, be it the new Netflix series 3 Body Problem, Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part 2 or Severance or Foundation on Apple – sci-fi that’s less about epic space battles and more about intellect, is very much de rigueur in 2024. This series asks us to consider the ethics of changing the past, our role in manipulating the choices of others, and the complexities of the butterfly effect, where one small change can unleash devastating effects.
Fans of Russo will remember him from his previous roles in Ryan Phillippe’s directorial debut, Catch Hell, the acclaimed short Victim No. Six, NBC’s Revolution, and feature film An Act of War for which he won Best Actor at the New York-based Take Two Film Festival. Alongside Russo, Chaser features Daniel de Weldon, star of the critically acclaimed horror film Anonymous 616, and Gia Bay, who can be seen on Season 5 of What We Do In The Shadows and as Chozanne Lopez on Diggstown.
The series is written and directed by Daniel Roemer, whose previous work includes the feature film Gray, which received a special screening by Sony Pictures. His short, The Select Fit, on which the series Chaser is loosely based, was distributed by Lionsgate and was a top 20 finalist in Project Greenlight, handpicked from over 12,000 entries by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, as well as winning multiple other awards. Chaser was inspired by Roemer’s love of Donnie Darko, the series Black Mirror, and the work of Darren Aronofsky and Stanley Kubrick.
