Warner Bros. Animation and Paramount have dropped the first trailer for their animated feature, Watchmen Chapter 1, a two-part film based on the classic DC Comics. The alt-history series is a satirical take on the superhero genre in which superheroes, known as costumed vigilantes, have been made illegal.
“October 13th, 1985,” begins Rorschach’s voiceover. “On Friday night, the Comedian died in New York. Somebody knows why. These days, nobody’s safe.” Per Warner Bros.’ brief synopsis, “In an alternate world, the murder of a government sponsored superhero draws his outlawed colleagues out of retirement, into a mystery that threatens their lives and the world itself.”
The impressive voice cast includes Matthew Rhys as Dan Dreiberg, aka Nite Owl, Katee Sackhoff as Laurie Juspeczyk, aka Silk Spectre, Titus Welliver as Rorschach, aka Walter Kovacs, and Michael Cerveris as Jonathan Osterman, aka Dr. Manhattan. Rick D. Wasserman’s The Comedian, Adrienne Barbeau’s Sally Jupiter, Jeffrey Combs’ Moloch, and Geoff Pierson’s Hollis Mason round out the main cast. Corey Burton, John Marshall Jones, Yuri Lowenthal, and Kari Wahlgren are aboard in unconfirmed roles.
Brandon Vietti directs the film from a script by J. Michael Straczynski. The feature will be released via Warner Bros. Discovery Home Entertainment on August 13th, and will later hit Blu-ray on August 27th. Watchmen Chapter 2 is set to be released later this year, though an exact date has yet to be announced.
Jennifer Lawrence’s projects just keep lining up, with news that A24 has optioned Paul B. Rainey’s dark sci-fi comedy graphic novel Why Don’t You Love Me and have tapped Lawrence to star. Robert Funke, best known for his co-creating the dark comedy On Becoming a God in Central Florida, is on board to write the feature adaptation.
Released in 2023, the graphic novel follows a couple struggling with an unhappy marriage. In Rainey’s work, “Claire and Mark are in the doldrums of an unhappy marriage. She doesn’t get out of her bathrobe and chain-smokes while slumped on the couch. Mark has lost track of the days and can’t get the kids to school on time. They’ve lost interest in family and have pizza and Chinese food delivered every night. Mark sleeps on the couch and has trouble remembering his son’s name. He feels like a fraud at work but somehow succeeds. Claire stalks an ex-boyfriend. How could he have left her to this life?
“Claire and Mark are both plagued by the idea that this is all a dream. Didn’t they have different lives? When reports of an imminent nuclear war come on the radio, the truth begins to dawn on them: This is not the life they chose.”
No news yet on who might star opposite Lawrence in the feature, nor who might be tapped to direct. Lawrence will also produce the pic via her banner, Excellent Cadaver. Midsommarfilmmaker Ari Aster, Lars Knudsen and Emily Hildner of Square Peg will also produce Why Don’t You Love Me? Rainey will executive produce.
The wait is over! The line-up for the 2024 edition of Pigeon Shrine FrightFest is here. Taking place between Thursday, August 22nd and Monday, August 26th, the event will take place at its new home, Odeon Luxe on Leicester Square.
As usual, there will be an array of world premieres (WP), UK premieres (UK), international premieres (IP), European premieres (EU), and English premieres (EP) to keep fans of every subgenre happy. You can feast your eyes on the horrors that await below…
6.25pm A Samurai in Time – director: Junichi Yasuda (EU)
Sunday, August 25th
1pm A Samurai in Time
4pm Mermaid Legend
6.40pm From Darkness
Monday, August 26th
3.45pm The Last Podcast
6.30pm Things Will be Different
Festival co-director Alan Jones comments: “FrightFest, the Dark Heart of Cinema, has been beating loud and proud now for an amazing 25 years. An incredible quarter of a century that has seen major challenges and transformations to the global film industry that FrightFest has embodied, embraced and emblazoned. Our past 25 glorious years have shown FrightFest in a state of continuous evolution, something we are determined will never, ever stop. So let the 25th Anniversary FrightFest begin”.
Tickets for Pigeon Shrine FrightFest go on sale on Saturday, July 13th. For more information, head to www.frightfest.co.uk
The festival guest line-up and full details for the Short Film Showcases and other events will be revealed soon. Watch this space!
Paramount Pictures is reportedly in the final stages of closing a deal with Robert Pattinson and Smile filmmaker Parker Finn to tackle a remake of Possession, the 1981 supernatural psychological horror movie from writer-director Andrzej Żuławski.
Finn will write the script, direct and produce via his Bad Feeling banner. Pattinson will produce via his production company, Icki Eneo Arlo. Whether he plans to also act in the film will become clear once the script and schedules have been confirmed. Vertigo Entertainment’s Roy Lee, who produced Zach Cregger’s breakout horror film Barbarian, will also produce.
The original Possession was set in West Berlin and starred Sam Neill as a spy who returns home from the film to his wife (Isabelle Adjani) and son. However, the wife soon asks for divorce and the couple descends into a destructive, toxic cycle that not only includes infidelity and emotional neglect, but spins out into murder, doppelgangers, and a tentacled, alien creature.
The screenplay was written during Żuławski’s own painful divorce from actress Malgorzata Braunek. While Possession was not commercially successful upon release, the film, as horror flicks are oft prone to do, eventually acquired cult status and was positively re-appraised in later years.
With Finn currently in post-production on Smile 2 for Paramount, Possession is set to be the filmmaker’s next movie.
Paul Mescal and Denzel Washington don their togas in the first trailer for Ridley Scott‘s long-coming sequel movie, Gladiator2.
Starring Mescal, Washington, Pedro Pascal, Joseph Quinn (looking very sickly) and Connie Nielsen, the film is director Scott’s follow-up to his Oscar-loaded, 2000 epic Gladiator that starred Russell Crowe and Joaquin Phoenix.
Set several decades after the events of the first movie in ancient Rome, Gladiator II centers on Lucius (Mescal) — the grandson of former Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius and now the grown-up son of Emperor Commodus — who resides with his family in Numidia. After ending up in slavery following an invasion led by Roman general Marcus Acacius, Lucius follows the inspiration of Maximus (played by Crowe in the original Gladiator) and competes as a gladiator.
Paramount debuted footage from the sequel at CinemaCon earlier this year, where Scott said of the new film: “It is possibly even more extraordinary than the first.” From the impressive set pieces and action glimpsed in the trailer, we’re tempted to believe him.
The trailer, in an inspired choice, is set to Kanye West (now Ye) and Jay-Z’s “No Church in the Wild”.
Gladiator 2 will be released by Paramount Pictures in cinemas from November 22nd. Watch it below:
Kathryn Hahn is back as the dark witch Agatha Harkness in the long-awaited first trailer for the Disney+ and Marvel series, Agatha All Along. The spinoff series from the 2021 show WandaVision — which has been renamed from House of Harkness, to Coven of Chaos, to now Agatha All Along after the song of the same name — hails from creator Jac Schaeffer.
Per the official synopsis, “The infamous Agatha Harkness finds herself down and out of power after a suspicious goth Teen helps break her free from a distorted spell. Her interest is piqued when he begs her to take him on the legendary Witches’ Road, a magical gauntlet of trials that, if survived, rewards a witch with what they’re missing. Together, Agatha and this mysterious Teen pull together a desperate coven, and set off down, down, down The Road…”
Granted, the trailer makes it appear as though it’s Aubrey Plaza’s Rio Vidal that encourages Hahn’s character to break from the spell the Scarlet Witch trapped her in, not Joe Locke’s teenage character, but no doubt all will become clear in time. In all, the show looks like it’ll be a humorous, dark, spooky series fit for its titular witch.
Joining Hahn for the Marvel Television project are Aubrey Plaza, Patti LuPone, Joe Locke, Sasheer Zamata, Ali Ahn, Maria Dizzia, Paul Adelstein, Miles Gutierrez-Riley, Okwui Okpokwasili and Debra Jo Rupp.
Agatha All Along premieres September 18th with the first two episodes. The rest of the nine episodes will release weekly to Disney+. Watch the trailer below:
Rejoice, John Cho fans, because he’s back and battling a futuristic HAL-9000 technology in the trailer for Afraid, coming to cinemas on August 30th.
Sony released the first trailer this week for writer-director Chris Weitz‘s thriller film, formerly known by the title They Listen. Coming from Columbia Pictures and Blumhouse Productions, Afraid centers on Curtis (Cho), whose household is selected to test a groundbreaking digital family assistant called AIA. Taking smart home to the next level, once the unit and all its sensors and cameras are installed in their home, AIA seems able to do it all. She learns the family’s behaviours and begins to anticipate their needs. However, the family soon realizes that AIA might have become a bit too… involved in the family’s lives, both inside and outside the home. Katherine Waterston stars opposite Cho.
Havana Rose Liu, David Dastmalchian, Lukita Maxwell, Keith Carradine and Riki Lindhome round out the cast. Weitz, Jason Blum and Andrew Miano serve as producers. Meanwhile, Beatriz Sequeira, Paul O. Davis, Dan Balgoyen and Britta Rowings are on board as executive producers. Chris Weitz is best known for directing The Golden Compass, The Twilight Saga: New Moon, and Operation Finale.
While the plot for Now You See Me 3 is still being kept in the disappearing magic vanishing box, the film promises to bring back the thieving illusionists known as the Four Horsemen for another adventure, while introducing a new generation of clever magicians. Earlier this week, Lionsgate announced that the third instalment to the hit franchise will be released in cinemas on November 14th, 2025.
Cast members Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Isla Fisher, Dave Franco, and Mark Ruffalo are all set to reprise their roles from the first two films in this latest instalment, with franchise newcomers Justice Smith (Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves, I Saw The TV Glow), Dominic Sessa (The Holdovers), Ariana Greenblatt (Ahsoka, Barbie), and Rosamund Pike also aboard. It’s unclear whether Lizzy Caplan, who took over as the Fourth Horseman in the second film from Isla Fisher while the latter was pregnant, will return in this third instalment. Also unconfirmed is whether Morgan Freeman will appear.
Ruben Fleischer will direct Now You See Me 3 from a script by Seth Grahame-Smith, Gavin James, and Michael Lesslie. Principal photography on the project is expected to commence sometime within the next three months, so stay tuned for further information as we hear it!
The Black Sunday Film Festival is back for a one-day mini-fest at the Chelmsford Odeon on Saturday, July 20th. It promises to be a day filled with fantastic horror features and shorts from some of the best indie filmmakers the world has to offer.
Feature film screenings include the UK premiere of indie darling Sigil from director Jacob Perrett, starring Karlee Mihailov and Isabella Rodriguez. The Essex premiere of festival hit Haunted Ulster Live from writer/director Dominic O’Neill, starring Aimee Richardson, Mark Claney, and Siobhan Kelly. The UK premiere of the mesmerising The Buildout by writer/director Zeshaan Younus and stars Black Sunday favourite Jenna Kanell and Hannah Alline. The Essex premiere of Custom from cult writer/director Tiago Teixeira, starring Abigail Hardingham, Rowan Polonski, Brad Moore, and Samantha Steel.
In addition to the feature line-up, we have eight incredible short films on offer, including Black Samphire from Alexander Vanegas-Sus and Cathy Wippell, Cakes! from Johnny Herbin, Cassandra from Paula Granato, Dead End from Dima Barch, Hallowed from Olivia J Loader, Have a Good Day from Lisa Soper, and Les Betes from Michael Granberry.
In time-honoured Black Sunday tradition, Midsummer Scream will close with the Cult Film Secret Screening, a rare big-screen presentation not to be missed!
Local hotspot Voodoo Keller will once again host the Black Sunday After Party for all filmmakers and attending guests from 10pm till late.
Full-day passes, which give you access to every film on offer, are on sale now. A small number of single tickets are also available for each block. All tickets include admission to the Black Sunday After Party.
For more information on the Black Sunday Film Festival and its upcoming events, visit www.blacksundayff.com. You can also book tickets here.
Jeffrey Reddick, creator and writer of the iconic horror franchise Final Destination, is teaming up with producer Todd Slater on Bloody Mary: Origins, a new spin on the infamous urban legend. Lane Shefter Bishop, best known for The Venice Murders, is set to direct and produce from a script by Reddick and the late John Stancari.
Bloody Mary: Origins is based on the New York Times bestselling novel Mary: The Summoning, by Hillary Monahan. The upcoming horror centres on “a group of teenage girls who discover an ancient spell that conjures the real Bloody Mary. When the terrifying entity pulls one of the girls through the mirror, she becomes trapped in the past living out the real Mary Worth’s last days. With time running out, the others must discover a way to save their friend in the past while vanquishing a terrorizing Bloody Mary in the present.”
Slater explained in a statement: “The script brings Reddick’s signature blend of suspense, humor and horror to a completely new take on the urban legend my friends and I used to play as kids. Much like Final Destination created a theatrical franchise that generations have enjoyed, our goal is for ‘Bloody Mary’ to generate ongoing films with the same impressive longevity.”
