In The News
Chilean Miner Drama The 33 Debuts A First Trailer
Patricia Riggen called the shots on this one, which features a cast led by Antonio Banderas, Juliette Binoche, Mario Casas, Lou Diamond Phillips, Rodrigo Santoro, Gabriel Byrne and James Brolin. It tells the harrowing true story of the miners, who were trapped underground in temperatures scorching to 100 degrees Fahrenheit by a boulder measured as twice the size of the Empire State Building. As the days ticked away, and the men’s families clung to the hope they might be rescued despite the high stakes and lack of supplies in the chamber 200 storeys below them, officials and politicians debated how best to proceed and the rescue mission became a global event.
From the looks of this, there’s a worry that it hits a few too many of the traditional points you’d expect from a drama of this sort, but we’ll wait and see the final film, not least because it features one of the last scores by James Horner. US audiences will see The 33 on November 13, but there’s no word on a UK date yet.
Johnny Depp Gets Serious In New Black Mass Poster
With Out Of The Furnace’s Scott Cooper directing, Black Mass tells the story of Bulger, who masterminded a violent gang in Boston while also reportedly turning federal informant to take down rivals. It seemed to be working out well – particularly with corrupt FBI agent John Connolly (Joel Edgerton) helping to smooth things – but when the Bureau began making arrests, agents double-crossed Bulger and prosecuted him. Bulger fled in 1994, was captured in 2011 in California and has since been sentenced to two consecutive life terms plus five years for his crimes.
With an ensemble that also includes Benedict Cumberbatch, Juno Temple, Kevin Bacon, Adam Scott, Corey Stoll, Peter Sarsgaard and Julianne Nicholson, Black Mass will be out in the UK on November 13.
First Promo For The Night Before
Ellis wrote the script with Anthony Frewin and is directing the real-life story about the attempted assassination of a prominent Nazi official. The title refers to the codename for the Allied operation to take down Reinhard Heydrich, the high-ranking SS officer who helped oversee the Holocaust. Seen as the number three Nazi – behind Hitler and Himmler – he was naturally a target for assassination. The men chosen for the task were Czechoslovakian army soldiers in exile (Dornan and Murphy), recruited and trained by British forces to parachute into their homeland and target the man known as The Butcher Of Prague.
The First Full Length Trialer For Black Mass Arrives
With Out Of The Furnace’s Cooper directing, Black Mass tells the story of Bulger, who masterminded a violent gang in Boston while also reportedly turning federal informant to take down rivals. It seemed to be working out well – particularly with corrupt FBI agent John Connolly (Joel Edgerton) helping to smooth things – but when the Bureau began making arrests, agents double-crossed Bulger and prosecuted him. Bulger fled in 1994, was captured in 2011 in California and has since been sentenced to two consecutive life terms plus five years for his crimes.
With an ensemble that also includes Benedict Cumberbatch, Juno Temple, Kevin Bacon, Adam Scott, Corey Stoll, Peter Sarsgaard and Julianne Nicholson, Black Mass will be out in the UK on November 13.
First Teaser Trailer For Beasts Of No Nation
Beasts, which adapts author Uzodinma Iweala’s novel, finds a young man named Agu (Abraham Attah) abducted from his home and pressed into service as a child soldier. Elba is playing the Commandant, a warlord who mentors Agu during his training. Fukunaga also adapted the script, which aims to take an unflinching look at a troubling, terrifying reality.
While Elba is often intense in his roles, we don’t usually get to see him being truly menacing. But from the looks of this, the Commandant, with his measured application of horror, will be a chance to do just that.
Netflix will be streaming the film from October 16 in several of its territories around the world including the UK. The company also has US distributor Bleecker Street on hand to release it in American cinemas the same day so it can qualify for awards season.
New Promo For We Are Your Friends Drops
We Are Your Friends sees Zac Efron playing Cole Carter, a 23-year-old wannabe DJ who spends his days working manual labour and other jobs with his mates and plotting how they’re going to shape their future. Cole wants to find that one track that will set him on the road to success, but he’s still struggling. Then he meets James (Wes Bentley), a charismatic, talented but damaged older DJ who takes him under his wing. Soon, his life is changing, but things start to get complicated when Cole falls for James’ girlfriend Sophie (Emily Ratajkowski). Soon, Cole has a choice, and his decision could make his career or destroy everything...
The film boasts a soundtrack featuring main contributors Years & Years alongside include Aluna George and Hook & Sling, who, young people assure us are all popular beat combos. YOU THERE, OFF THE LAWN!
With Max Joseph directing from a script he wrote with Meaghan Oppenheimer, and featuring Jon Bernthal, Jonny Weston, Shiloh Fernandez and Vanessa Lengies also in the cast, We Are Your Friends will be in UK cinemas on August 27.
Daniel Radcliffe Heads To Imperium
Though it sounds like some sort of epic space opera, it’s actually rooted in the real-life story of Michael German, an FBI agent who spent years undercover in neo-Nazi and militia groups in the States. In the film, the character based on German will be similarly embedded, trying to stop a bunch of chaos-happy white supremacists constructing a dirty bomb.
Daniel Ragussis, who has been making short films, is jumping to features with this thriller, which he co-wrote with German. All being well, the cameras should be rolling this autumn.
It’s another job for the ever-busy Radcliffe, who is currently shooting surreal indie pic Swiss Army Man alongside Paul Dano and Mary Elizabeth Winstead. He has Victor Frankenstein due out on November 27, while Now You See Me: The Second Act follows on June 10 next year. And there’s also Game Changer, about the legal battle over the violent and sexual content of the Grand Theft Auto game series, which will screen on BBC2 next year.
Tom Cruise Teases Edge Of Tomorrow Sequel
“I pitched it to [Christopher] McQuarrie and Doug [Liman]," he revealed of his idea for a sequel. "We were there one night and I was like, 'I’ve got an idea for it'."
McQuarrie, of course, is Cruise's screenwriter of choice and the man who adapted the Manga property All You Need Is Kill into a pulsing, pacy sci-fi actioner in which Cruise and Emily Blunt tooled up to tackle a species of grabastic extra-terrestrial killing machines. Liman directed the movie and is reconnecting with his star for crime biopic Mena.
Should it come to pass, Cruise is keen to see his co-star return. “It could be so much fun. Gotta get Emily," he said. "I was like 'Emily, please'. She was like, ’Give me another year, please'."
Maybe not so far-fetched, then. The next question is what the heck to call it...
Drew Pearce Says The Oter Ghostbusters Is Still Happening
If you've been following the saga of the Ghostbusters rebootquel, you'll know that as well as the Paul Feig / Melissa McCarthy / Kristen Wiig incarnation, there's also been talk of another film, in a bigger-picture, Marvel-type connected universe stylee. Channing Tatum and Chris Pratt were both mentioned in connection with the project, although Tatum and Pratt have both said they're not doing it. Now, writer and overseer Drew Pearce (Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, Iron Man 3) has clarified what's going on, and at least confirmed that this mooted other Ghostbusters is still in the works.
"Obviously it’s top secret," Pearce told MTV, "but there’s a gigantic bold idea that I came up with." He continued that Pratt and Tatum are "definitely the cast we've been thinking about as we approach the project. Whether that happens or not is very much above my pay grade. It's just my job to give them something exciting that maybe they'll do." So it's being written with those guys in mind, but they remain far from attached.
Pearce has since taken to Twitter with a couple of further nuggets, saying that he's written a TV series-style "Bible" for the possible extended Ghostbusters franchise, but the script for this second film doesn't yet exist. Addressing the ridiculous internet controversy around Feig's oh-so-horrifying cast of talented comedic actresses and SNL veterans, he added, "For the record, my GB idea has a mixed gender team. Also ghosts of all classes (I to VII). It's very inclusive that way."
His "gigantic bold idea" is now in the hands of the Russo Brothers (Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Civil War) and original Ghostbusters honcho Ivan Reitman, who will "take it and run with it. Hopefully in one year's time you'll know more."
Separate, interconnected Ghostbusting concessions across New York? Across America? Across the world? See you here next July. In the meantime, says Pearce, "Chill your boots..."
Jack Reacher Sequel To Start Shooting In November
Now, with the success of Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation reassuring everyone that Cruise's mojo is still intact, studio Paramount are pushing ahead, with shooting on Jack Reacher 2earmarked for November this year, for a release in late 2016.
Paramount are also keen to keep on striking while the Mission: Impossible iron is hot, with THRreporting that the studio want the sixth instalment shooting next summer, for a June or July release in 2017.
Back when Jack Reacher 2 was first mooted, the plan looked to be an adaptation of 2013's Never Go Back, Child's eighteenth Reacher novel. That plot would see Reacher heading back to his old military base in Virginia, to be charged with a violent incident and faced with a paternity case, neither of which transgression he remembers. Richard Wenk had been working on the screenplay, but it's now being re-written by Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz. So the final thrust remains to be seen.
With Cruise and Doug Liman's drug-smuggling DEA drama Mena almost wrapped but not due to come out until the beginning of 2017, we're looking at a triple-whammy of Cruiser vehicles released in a single year.
New Trailer For The Transporter Refuelled
Should you be wondering, the re-casting of the main role has not also prompted the creation of a new character. This is not, we're to accept, a different transporter, but the very same Frank Martin (although we're possibly in prequel territory, which explains the hair).
Martin is, you'll recall, the driver who never changes the deal and never opens the package (except when he does). Statham played the role in three films: four, if you include his cameo in Michael Mann's Collateral. Chris Vance headed up the TV series, which lasted for two twelve-episode seasons and is currently showing on Channel 5 on Friday nights.
A recast prequel series to a Stath vehicle? We've seen this before with the Death Race films, for which Luke Goss stepped into the DTV instalments. But The Transporter Refuelled seems an altogether bigger deal. It's out in the UK on September 4.
New Star Wars: The Force Awakens Details And Images
From the sounds of it, Ren is something of an obsessive when it comes to Darth Vader, more of an icon in his time, since Vader perished before Kylo was born. But he’s styled himself after the Sith Lord, especially in his distinctive saber, which he built himself, and his facial appearance. “The movie explains the origins of the mask and where it’s from, but the design was meant to be a nod to the Vader mask,” Abrams tells EW. “Ren is well aware of what’s come before, and that’s very much a part of the story of the film.” He’s described as the sort of Dark Side equivalent of Luke Skywalker, a man who came from nothing and ends up having a huge impact on the galaxy far, far away. "As you see in the best of storytelling, and no doubt the best of Star Wars, these are tales in which an everyperson has to step up. And I think that what makes Ren so unique is that he isn’t as fully formed as when we meet a character such as Darth Vader,” says Abrams. “And I think that there are two sides to the Force. Both sides, arguably, would see themselves as the hero of their story, and I think that applies here.”
Oh, and his name wasn’t Kylo Ren to begin with, either. “He is a character who came to the name Kylo Ren when he joined a group called the Knights of Ren,” admits the director, demurring to say anything further about the order, leaving that for the film to explain. “He is not your prototypical moustache-twirling bad guy,” he explains. “He is a little bit more complex than that, and it was a great joy to work with Adam Driver on this role, because he threw himself into it in a deep and remarkable way.” One more little intriguing element to Driver’s character? He might just have parents tied in to the original trilogy…
Abrams also spoke of his driving story desires for the new film and the whole trilogy, which he thrashed out with Michael Arndt and Simon Kinberg and wrote with Lawrence Kasdan. “They had just been hypothesizing and throwing out a bunch of what-ifs, but there was no story in place,” Abrams says. “It was, without doubt, a formidable assignment. There were so many options and so many paths that could be taken. Even when we were in debate — and sometimes it was frustrating and heated — it was always thrilling, because it seemed almost everywhere you looked there was something potentially extraordinary, which felt very much like the DNA of Star Wars itself.”
Prime among that genetic material was the idea of what has happened to Luke Skywalker, and how he has evolved from the idealistic farm boy we met in the original Star Wars. How have years of conflict and the state of the galaxy changed him? And what has he and fellow veterans Han Solo and Princess Leia learned in the three decades since Return Of The Jedi? “I thought, ‘Wow, okay, these people have lived — they’re in a different place in their lives, Han and Leia and so on. They’ve lived the same 30 years I have. What would that be like? How would you see things differently?’” Lawrence Kasdan says. “And I was trying to figure out how I saw things differently, and one of the surprises is that you don’t learn all that much. You haven’t become much wiser than you were, and things are not clearer to you, and the world is just as confusing as it always was — and that’s a kind of lovely thing to get to write about again. Age does not necessarily bring wisdom; it just brings experience.”
Don’t expect Luke and Leia to dominate the proceedings necessarily, though. According to Abrams, the focus will also be on Han Solo and Chewbacca, plus newcomers such as Driver’s Kylo Ren, Daisy Ridley’s Rey, John Boyega’s Finn and others, including Gwendoline Christie’s Captain Phasma and Domhnall Gleeson’s scheming General Hux, seen here sporting a natty coat.
And while the director was typically circumspect in discussing the plot, he did outline that the galaxy is, as you might expect, still not at peace. Because Star Hugs just doesn’t have the same ring to it. So The First Order, which rose from the ashes of the Empire, will be looking to take over, the Knights of Ren are doing their mysterious thing, there’s something called the Resistance made up of X-Wing pilots like Oscar Isaac’s Poe Dameron and, of course, our familiar heroes in the midst of it all. It’s enough to make you want to hide out in the Millennium Falcon’s smuggler hold.
Plus, there’s talk of the future – specifically Abrams saying he won’t be back for Episode IX. Rian Johnson is taking the baton for Episode VIII, the second of the new trilogy. “We know where we’re going, but only in the broadest sense,” Lucasfilm boss Kathleen Kennedy says. “When Rian came in and started writing his script, he started from scratch, other than knowing what we had done in Episode VII and projecting out where it was going. He then sat down and put pen to paper, and it’s 100 percent him.”
There will no doubt be new nuggets to learn about The Force Awakens when Disney holds its live-action presentation on Saturday. The film, meanwhile, arrives here on December 18.
