Charles Bramesco
Tom Cruise Stares Down Sofia Boutella in Latest ‘Mummy’ Preview Image
June 9 is gonna be a big day in 2017: not just this writer’s birthday, not just the funniest numerical date of the year (6/9 — nice), not just the release of well-pedigreed indies Beatriz at Dinner and It Comes at Night. The day will undoubtedly be dominated by the grand debut of Universal’s remake of The Mummy starring box-office king of summer Tom Cruise and breakout star Sofia Boutella. We’ve seen the trailer, we’ve pored over the scoop that Cruise’s mummy-fighting hero will also himself be a walking-dead type, and we’ve pondered the larger implications of Universal going all-in on a connected universe of monster movies. And today, a pair of new tidbits with slake our thirst for new Mummy details.
‘American Assassin’ Trailer: Don’t Mess With Michael Keaton
Alien Vs. Predator. Freddy Vs. Jason. Kramer Vs. Kramer. Plessy Vs. Ferguson. Soon, a new rivalry shall join the ranks of the great cinematic grudge matches. You saw Bradley Cooper plumb new depths of moral compromise with American Sniper in 2014. Now, he’ll go up against his greatest nemesis yet: it’s American Sniper Vs. American Assassin — Battle of America.
‘Star Wars’ to Survey Female Heroes Across the Galaxy With ‘Forces of Destiny’ Animated Shorts
Star Wars is great, everyone’s pretty much on the same page about that one, but the problem is that it’s just so dang long. Eight movies, with more on the way? And they’re all two-plus hours? And there are TV shows?! It would take a viewer days if not weeks to wade through all of that action, and so the minds at Lucasfilm and Disney have done us all the service of condensing Star Wars into segments a little closer to bite-size. In the future, everyone will be world famous for 15 minutes; likewise, in the future, new Star Wars content will be between two and three minutes long.
‘Wreck-It Ralph 2’ Gets a Title and Release Date, and It Will (Literally) ‘Break the Internet’
What exactly does the term “break the internet” mean? Web-surfers understand the definition as “causing a commotion of such great size and scale that the World Wide Web could shut down as a result of its enormity,” and yet the phrase only conjures one image to mind — that of Kim Kardashian on her notorious Paper Magazine cover, popping champagne directly onto a glass balanced atop her buttocks. So when Disney announced yesterday that their sequel to video game hodgepodge Wreck-It Ralph would bear the subtitle Ralph Breaks the Internet, we may interpret it one of two ways. Either Ralph’s going to go on an epic quest through the online wilds, or the 8-bit hero is about to blow our minds with the roundest ’donk in the history of animated cinema.
‘Moana’ Sailing Back Into Theaters with Special One-Day Sing-Along Version
Among the most difficult aspects of parenting is the matter of simply filling the hours in a day. Kids become bored after approximately twenty unstimulating minutes, so moms and dads have to constantly plan out diversions to keep their offspring occupied. Disney just did the parents of America a real solid, however. Animated movies have long been a go-to option for parents hoping to run out the clock, and they’ll be able to go back to Moana for seconds later this month, when the film re-enters theaters for a one-day sing-along engagement.
J.J. Abrams Wants Out of the Reboot/Remake/Re-Whatever Business
J.J. Abrams made his bed, stuffed it with money and gold bricks, but now he‘d rather not lie in it. The director has risen to the top of Hollywood’s most-wanted list in recent years as a serviceable conductor of franchise pictures; he did right by the Mission: Impossible series, then moved on to mount the massive Star Trek resurgence, and brought Star Wars back to the grateful people of Earth with Episode VII. But this whole money-in-the-bank reputation comes with its downsides. Speaking with People, Abrams indicated that he‘s had his fill of franchise pictures and would prefer to explore some original concepts in the years to come.
After Five Years, One Woman’s Bizarre ‘Drive’ Lawsuit Rages On
Truly, there is no greater type of entertainment industry news story than “bizarre legal proceedings.” Strange and ill-fated court cases pepper the world of showbiz, and today brought a long-awaited conclusion to one of the weirdest and most nonsensical in recent memory.
Things Get Steamy, and Deadly, in Extended ‘Fifty Shades Darker’ Trailer
It’s every woman’s fantasy: not the perfect man, but the man who is perfect in all ways except one, which can only be changed with the gentle touch of a lover. Anastasia Steele, the Dakota Johnson-played protagonist of the Fifty Shades of Grey franchise, shares this widespread fixer-upper fetish, and she makes as much clear in the new trailer for Fifty Shades Darker. In the film disappointingly not titled Fifty-One Shades of Grey, Ana accepts Christian back into her life under the condition that he cut it out with all the brooding angst that originally attracted her to him and got old pretty quickly. They let one another back into their lives (and beds, and red-lit sexual torture chambers), but tragedy may cut the honeymoon phase short.
Check Out the New ‘Beauty and the Beast’ TV Spots, Go Ahead, Be Our Guest
Despite volumes of scholarship from feminist theorists on its undertones of spousal abuse and insidious romanticizing of male brutality, Disney‘s Beauty and the Beast has remained a cherished childhood favorite worldwide. Kids love talking furniture, go figure. The live-action remake starring Emma Watson and an unrecognizable Dan Stevens is hot on the way to its March 17 release, and Disney has now released two new TV spots to further amp up the anticipation. In the first, embedded above, the Beast implores lovely Belle to “think of the one thing you’ve always wanted, and feel it in your heart.” We get a glimpse of the timeless ballroom-waltz scene, some barroom carousing from Gaston, and yet another look at the deeply unsettling character designs for Lumiere and Cogsworth.
A New Nighttime Show Will Add an Extra Dose of Magic to Harry Potter Theme Park
Stocks in magic are down. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them was less than fantastic (hey-o), the much-touted stage play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child won’t come to Broadway for months, and we can assume that the constant onslaught that was 2016 sapped many children of their belief in the wonder of magic. The Harry Potter-industrial complex needs a shot in the arm, and head honchos over at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme park may have just the thing to inspire a little excitement.
Did ‘Friends’ Chandler and Monica Move Into the ‘Home Alone’ House?
It’s not uncommon for movie studios to recycle their sets between productions, or for different crews to make use of the same locations. For sharp-eyed viewers, this can create the surreal effect of fictional universes overlapping and coexisting with one another. Take Hogan’s Heroes, for instance: the company behind the popular POW camp-set sitcom put the compound on which they shot most of their episodes up for sale after they had wrapped. It was later used for numerous other shoots, most notably in the pornographic Nazi-exploitation film Ilsa, She-Wolf of the S.S.
James Franco Looks Like He’s Actually Trying in the ‘I Am Michael’ Trailer
Showbiz is weird sometimes: director Justin Kelly premiered his first feature-length film I Am Michael at Sundance in January 2015, where James Franco earned scattered praise for his performance as real-life “ex-gay” Michael Glatze. Instead of sitting on his hands and waiting for the film to land a distribution deal, Kelly went right ahead and commenced work on his second feature, the gay porn saga King Cobra, which premiered at Tribeca back in the spring of 2016. “James Franco in a movie about gay porn” proved to be a more hooky angle, and the film was shown in theaters across America this past fall. That bump to Kelly’s profile enabled him to finally land distribution for I Am Michael, the trailer for which surfaced yesterday in advance of its release on January 27. Both debut and not, Kelly’s first film will be his second release. Just a fun film-industry fact.