Controversial thriller Basic Instinct is heading for a restored 4K release from StudioCanal.

The well-remembered film, directed by Paul Verhoeven, stars Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone, in the role that made her famous worldwide thanks to ‘that’ scene.

The official synopsis is:

Michael Douglas stars as hardboiled San Francisco detective Nick Curran, a troubled cop with a history of trigger-happy shootings and a weakness for beautiful women and dangerous relationships. Sharon Stone is Catherine Tramell, a stunning, enigmatic novelist with a talent for seduction and a history of relationships that end in death. The death of a former rock star sends Nick into the orbit of the victim’s lover, Catherine, who immediately becomes prime suspect in the murder. Catherine ignites Nick’s suspicions and his passion, and he soon becomes involved in his most dangerous liaison yet.

StudioCanal has given us detailed information about the restoration:

The aim was to create an image just as crisp as audiences had enjoyed in 1992. The first step was to scan the 35MM image negative of the film in 4K DPX LOG 16 bits on Scanity – but the restoration team at Hiventy Laboratory in Joinville-le-Pont noticed a problem with the negative. STUDIOCANAL project manager, Sophie Boyer, explains – “we quickly realised that the negatives corresponded to the short version of the film. In addition, some shots from the most erotic scenes were censored in the United States. We went looking for these cuts: their negatives had disappeared, but we found them in the internegative. Thanks to this, we were able to restore the full-length version of the film, the only version that Paul Verhoeven wanted to have restored.”

All damages on the negatives were identified: stains, scratches, dusty shots and instabilities. DIAMANT film software was used to remove these defects.  The laboratory undertook over 100 hours of manual removal of the dark stains. Light filtering was applied to remove the superficial defects, with particular care taken to retain the grain and the texture of the original image. The film was colour graded for theatrical, home entertainment and 4K HDR release using previous digital releases and 35MM prints as a reference. The colour-grading required a painstaking homogenization between the different versions (the European cut vs. censored versions). The sound was similarly restored – the dynamic of the mixes was improved and the sync checked throughout, with corrections made using Protools plug-ins for a 5.1 + 2.0 version, from sources 3324.

The special features available on Ultra HD, Blu-Ray, DVD and Steelbook are:

• New documentary – Basic Instinct: Sex, Death & Stone
• New featurette – An unending story – Scoring Basic Instinct
• New – Trailer
• Making of featurette – Blonde Poison
• Cast & Crew interviews featurette
• Storyboard comparisons
• Screen tests
• Audio commentary by Paul Verhoeven & Jan de Bont
• Audio commentary by Camille Paglia

The 4K UHD Collector’s Edition will be in stores on June 14th, and you can pre-order the release now. The 4K Steelbook edition is available for pre-sale on Zavvi.

In true Vin Diesel fashion, the Fast & Furious star is set to do a hell of a lot more punching when he stars in Universal’s upcoming Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots film.

In yet another example of Hollywood definitely not running out of original, creative ideas, the film will be based on the classic children’s game where players compete to knock the opposing robot’s block off.

According to Deadline, the film’s screenplay has been written by Ryan Engle (Rampage, The Commuter), and follows a father and son duo (with Diesel playing the former half) who form an unlikely bond with an advanced war machine. Sounds an awful lot like Real Steel to us.

That 2011 film was set in the near future where robot boxing was the planet’s predominant sport, and followed an ex-boxer (played by Hugh Jackman) and his son as they took on the whole robot boxing world with a meagre little training robot named Atom.

It’s a sweet and heartwarming underdog story, and this new Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em film will have to work extremely hard if it’s to differentiate itself successfully.

Of course, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen Red Rocker and Blue Bomber on the silver screen: the pair made a delightful little cameo in Pixar’s Toy Story 2 all the way back in 1999, and also popped up in The Incredibles five years later. Diesel’s film, however, will be the first time we’ve seen the toy in live-action.

Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots is currently in pre-production, and as yet is without a release date, while Vin Diesel will next be seen in this summer’s F9, the ninth film in the Fast & Furious series.

Director George Miller has announced that his upcoming Mad Max: Fury Road prequel will begin filming in Australia next year.

The film, which focuses on the character of Furiosa, will shoot in New South Wales in 2022, before its release the following February.

With the announcement came the news that Thor actor Chris Hemsworth will be joining the cast of the film, which already includes Anya Taylor-Joy (The Witch) as a younger Furiosa, and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (Aquaman).

The film will take place over a number of years as it follows the character of Furiosa, first seen in 2015’s Fury Road, where she was played by Charlize Theron. Though Max himself is the series’ protagonist, Furiosa is seen by many as the heart of Fury Road. It’ll be interesting to see how Miller decides to fill in her backstory – especially as she works perfectly well without one.

Regardless of its narrative, fans can certainly expect more of the batshit-insane action that made Fury Road so beloved by all, and led the film to a whopping six Oscar wins from ten nominations. We’re secretly keeping our fingers crossed for more of the fire-spouting electric guitar.

It was also revealed that the film will be the biggest production ever shot in Australia, and will support more than 850 local jobs and contribute around $350 million to Australia’s economy. With so many people across the world facing economic hardship thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, it’s great to see big-budget productions supporting local workers like this.

Furiosa will be revving into cinemas in February 2023.

Things have been quiet on the Texas Chainsaw Massacre series for a while now, but the latest reboot has its official title: the highly creative Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

The news comes courtesy of the MPA, who gave the film an R rating in the US (equivalent to either a 15 or an 18 over here in the UK) for “strong bloody horror violence and gore, and language.” The ratings board also confirmed that the film will hit cinemas at some point in 2021, though a firm release date has yet to be set.

The new info is right on brand for the horror franchise, which is notorious for its gory style of terror across all of its eight films. The upcoming film is the ninth in the series, but will apparently be a direct sequel to Tobe Hooper’s 1974 original and ignore the events of all the other films. This method has worked for long-running horror franchises in the past (see: David Gordon Green’s Halloween reboot-sequel in 2018 – itself due a sequel later this year), but this new film isn’t the first in the Chainsaw series to try it.

The original series continuity ran for four films between 1974 and 1995. A Michael Bay-produced reboot was released in 2003, with a prequel following in 2006. In 2013, the series was rebooted again with Texas Chainsaw 3D, which disregarded all other films bar the original. A prequel to this new continuity, titled Leatherface, was released in 2017. No subsequent film since the original has had the intended or desired impact, which is presumably why studios keep hitting the reset button. And don’t worry if you’re confused about the timeline: we are too! This mess gives X-Men a run for its money, and that’s saying something.

The new film has been produced by Fede Alvarez, director of Don’t Breathe and the Evil Dead remake, written by Chris Thomas Devlin, and directed by David Blue Garcia. Garcia was hired late in the game after previous directors Ryan and Andy Tohill were fired only a week into shooting – the reason for their firing is unclear at this stage.

The reboot sees a 60-year-old Leatherface terrorising sisters Melody and Dreama, who head to the Texan countryside on a business trip (don’t worry, that last bit doesn’t make sense to us either). Mark Burnham is playing Leatherface, while Olwen Fouere is on board as Sally Hardesty, the protagonist of the original film. Elsie Fisher and Sarah Yarkin also star.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre will be bludgeoning its way into cinemas later this year.

Carey Mulligan, star of Emerald Fennell’s BAFTA-winning Promising Young Woman has joined Uncut Gems star Adam Sandler in Netflix’s Spaceman.

According to Deadline, the Oscar nominee will be playing Sandler’s wife in the film, which is based on Jaroslav Kalfar’s novel Spaceman of Bohemia. The novel follows an astronaut (played by Sandler in the adaptation) sent on a mission to the edge of the galaxy to retrieve some strange ancient dust. As his life back on Earth begins to fall apart, he turns to the only thing that can help him piece it back together – which, obviously, is a mysterious creature from the beginning of time that’s been hiding on his ship.

Channing Tatum is on board as producer, while Chernobyl’s Emmy-winning Johan Renck will be directing from a screenplay by Colby Day.

Based on Deadline’s scoop, Mulligan seems to be playing the ‘Worried Earthbound Wife’ character popularised by Claire Foy in Damien Chazelle’s (otherwise excellent) First Man. It’s a strange move for the actor, who recently made huge waves with her stellar turn in the ferocious Promising Young Woman.

In that film, Mulligan plays a woman who punishes predatory men who wish to take advantage of her. It’s a very angry film that does its best to tackle rape culture in the 21^st century, and to go from that to this seems like an odd choice for her.

There’s also the age gap to consider: Mulligan is 35, and on-screen husband Sandler is 54. That’s a gap of 19 years between the two – hasn’t Hollywood realised that huge age gaps like this are quite uncomfortable for audiences to watch?

Still, maybe Spaceman will do something different and buck the trend entirely. Or maybe it won’t. We’ll have to wait and see when it arrives on Netflix at some point in the future.

In a conversation that’s likely to give poor Kevin Feige an aneurysm, veteran actor Alfred Molina has revealed details of his role in the upcoming Spider-Man sequel No Way Home.

Speaking to Variety last week, he was more than happy to share some information about his return as the villainous Otto Octavius, aka Doctor Octopus. Molina previously played the character in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2 all the way back in 2004, and is set to reprise the role in this year’s Spider-Man: No Way Home, the third instalment in Marvel and Sony’s new Spider-Man trilogy.

It’s worth stating at this point that Molina’s involvement in the film had never been confirmed until now: rumours were rife late last year, but neither Marvel nor Sony had commented on Molina’s casting. Molina admits that it was “supposed to be some great big secret,” but feels comfortable discussing it now that it’s “all over the internet.” Those infamous Marvel snipers have clearly been given some time off thanks to the pandemic…

Perhaps the biggest reveal from the conversation was that of No Way Home picking up from “that moment” in Spider-Man 2 in which Octavius sacrifices himself and drowns. If you recall from that film, he comes to his senses in his closing moments and decides to destroy the experimental fusion reactor he and his mechanical tentacles had created.

We also learned that Molina will be digitally de-aged for the film, in the vein of Samuel L Jackson’s appearance in Captain Marvel, which took place in the 1990s. the actor is now 67, and admits he was initially worried about the role’s physicality, before he remembered “it’s the tentacles that do all the work!”

“My basic physical move as Doc Ock, as the actor, is just this,” he said, before glaring intensely at his webcam and making a menacing noise. “I just do that a lot, and the arms are doing all the killing and smashing and breaking. I’m just going —” he glares, “with a kind of mean look on my face.”

Molina joins previous Spider-Man actors Tom Holland, Zendaya, and Jacob Batalon in the film, which is also rumoured to feature Jamie Foxx’s Electro (from 2014’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2), as well as previous Spider-Men Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield.

Spider-Man: No Way Home swings into cinemas in December 2021.