Matthew Monagle
Watch Charlize Theron Cut Loose in These ‘Atomic Blonde’ Clips
As excited as we are for this summer’s Atomic Blonde — you can read our own glowing review from this year’s SxSW if you still need a gentle nudge — you’d think we’d be all over every new piece of footage from the movie. But it seems a few clips managed to slip through our fingers this past week, so I’m taking this opportunity to bring you back up to speed. Two new Atomic Blonde clips, each themed to a piece of period-appropriate music? Plenty of Charlize Theron kicking [expletive] and taking names? Yeah, that’s definitely worth circling back a little bit for those of you who may have missed these clips.
Antonio Banderas Gives His Best John McClane Impression in the ‘Security’ Trailer
Look, we all know that there’s a moment for every movie. Sometimes you want to watch the challenging documentary about a group of people struggling against a broken system; sometimes you want to watch the award-winning foreign film that exposes injustices in another country. And sometimes, just sometimes, you want to watch the movie where Antonio Banderas plays a mall cop who shoots a bunch of bad guys in the head. We may not be able to help you with the first two, but today? Today we’ve got enough Banderas goodness to make your Sunday just a little brighter.
Rumor: Guy Ritchie Wants Tom Hardy for Jafar in ‘Aladdin’
Is Tom Hardy doing OK? I mean, financially? After years of alternating between prestige films (The Revenant, Dunkirk) and more idiosyncratic projects (Legend, The Drop), Hardy seems to have accepted a streak of surprisingly mainstream blockbuster roles. After being attached to Ubisoft’s video game adaptation Splinter Cell for several years, Hardy recently shocked fans by accepting the title role in Sony’s Venom spinoff. And now, perhaps most surprising of all, is the rumor that Hardy is very close to signing on for the role of Jafar in Disney’s live-action Aladdin remake. At this point, maybe we should create a GoFundMe for whatever gambling debt Hardy seems to have racked up.
Producer Ivan Reitman Wants ‘Ghostbusters’ to Go International
There are two diverging narratives surrounding Paul Feig’s 2016 Ghostbusters remake. On the one hand, fans of the original films were irrationally upset to see Hollywood give their (suddenly untouchable) films an all-female cast. For them, the film was a deserved flop. On the other hand, countless stories were written about a new generation of female Ghostbusters fans who were thrilled to see the movie reach out to new audiences. These fans believe the movie did more than enough to warrant sequels. And while the box office numbers and critical scores didn’t signal the slam-dunk hit that most fans were looking for, it sounds like the producers side in the second camp, with Ivan Reitman promising earlier this year that he was hard at work weaving together a cohesive universe from the games, movies, and animated films.
Melissa McCarthy Is Set to Save Christmas in ‘Margie Claus’
Rejoice, parents: you’ll soon have a new Christmas movie to add to your family’s holiday rotation. If your family was anything like my own, you probably grew tired of placating screaming nieces and nephews with the same ratty DVD copies of A Christmas Story, Elf, or Home Alone. That makes any new holiday movie — regardless of quality — a welcome change of pace. Arthur Christmas? Fine. Rise of the Guardians? It’ll do in a pinch. Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale? Maybe save that one for the time in the evening when the uncles break out the adults-only eggnog. But a Melissa McCarthy Christmas comedy? That could be quite a boon for tired family members everywhere.
The Funniest ‘Wonder Woman’ Scene Was Completely Improvised
A few weeks before Wonder Woman hit theaters, film critics took to social media to share their early reactions of the newest movie in the DC Cinematic Universe. And while critics had plenty of great things to say about the film’s overall tone and Gal Gadot in particular, one sentiment above all others kept bubbling to the surface: this movie was funny. When fans got a chance to see the movie for themselves, they were pretty quick to agree. Gadot’s fish-out-of-water take on Diana Prince, combined with Chris Pine’s deadpan delivery as the superhero’s straight man, makes Wonder Woman one of the funniest comic book movies to date.
Noomi Rapace Goes Full ‘Orphan Black’ in the First Trailer for ‘Seven Sisters’
One of the few upsides of living in our current political climate is the uptick in dystopian film and television we’re about to see. From the successful run of The Handmaid’s Tale on Hulu to HBO’s planned adaptation of Fahrenheit 451, we are quite possibly entering in a new golden age of dystopian fiction, with every screenwriter who ever jotted down an idea about a broken society pitching their brains out with their original idea. That may not seem like much of a silver lining, but hey, it’s better than nothing!
Weekend Box Office Report: All Hail The Truly Wondrous ‘Wonder Woman’
Based on how this weekend’s box office numbers shaped up, odds are good that you either saw Wonder Woman this weekend or you avoided the theater altogether. It was a record-setting few days for everyone’s favorite warrior princess — sorry, Xena — but things were decidedly less rosy if your movie was… well, literally anything else. Here are the box office estimates as of Sunday afternoon:
Neill Blomkamp Says His ‘Alien’ Sequel Is ‘Totally Dead’
Someday, I hope someone makes a documentary about Neill Blomkamp’s Alien 5. First the project was held up by Ridley Scott, then Blomkamp released concept art that kinda-sorta forced the studio’s hand, then Blomkamp’s Chappie bombed and 20th Century Fox started dragging its heels, and then Scott started saying that the project was never actually anything substantial to begin with. No Alien sequel, no matter how fun, could possibly match the twists and turns of Blomkamp’s real-life struggle to get the film made.
Hailee Steinfeld Is in Talks to Join Paramount’s ‘Bumblebee’ Spinoff
While fans might be a little cynical about a Transformers multi-verse, there are plenty of reasons to be excited about their planned Bumblebee prequel. For one, Christina Hodson’s script has widely been praised as a standout in the franchise thus far. For two, the film will serve as the live-action directorial debut of Kubo and the Two Strings director Travis Knight, whose visuals in that film — and whose overall body of work with animation studio Lakia — make him a name to remember in future projects. Oh, and there’s this small little tidbit: the movie may now be adding a pretty talented star as its (human) lead.
Tom Holland Pushed Sony for an ‘Uncharted’ Origin Movie
Last week, Sony raised eyebrows when it announced that it was finally moving forward with its long-struggling Uncharted adaptation, albeit in a direction that no one saw coming. Despite the Uncharted series taking place with an older and more world-weary male protagonist, Sony cast Mr. Spider-Man himself, Tom Holland, as a young version of Nathan Drake. The film would be based on a sequence in the third game which flashes back to Drake’s relationship with his older brother; while Uncharted purists may find this to be an odd choice, it does potentially set Uncharted up for decades of movies with an aging Holland as the lead.
‘The New Mutants’ Adds a ‘Stranger Things’ Star
For a movie that hasn’t even begun production yet, we certainly seem to know a lot about Josh Boone’s The New Mutants. We know that Boone has pitched The New Mutants as an X-Men take on a “full-fledged horror movie.” We know that James McAvoy will probably appear as Charles Xavier at some point. We know that the Maisie Williams and Anya Taylor-Joy, two of the biggest rising stars in Hollywood, have joined on to play Wolfsbane and Magik, respectively. And now we know who will be playing Cannonball, a fan favorite from the original series.