While British actor Tom Holland recently took a sabbatical from feature film work to do a run of “Romeo & Juliet” on stage, he’s filling up his dance card nicely. His next big project looks to be finally connecting with Christopher Nolan, who is making an untitled mystery film at Universal Pictures that had Matt Damon (“Oppenheimer”) expected to star. A new report from Deadline says that Holland is also circling a lead part in the project and is reportedly aiming to begin “shooting in early 2025.”
The next Nolan pic has already landed a July 17, 2026, release date from Univeral ahead of the film’s production start.
The Hollywood Reporter also reveals that delays on “Spider-Man 4” are potentially the reason why Denis Villeneuve‘s “Dune Messiah” isn’t likely to shoot until 2026, backing up recent comments made by the director. Zendaya, of course, is expected to have major roles in both blockbusters. This all would suggest that the fourth installment won’t be hitting an early 2025 production start after there had been some rumblings online about a push into the summer.
It’s still yet to be confirmed if Holland is even going to be participating in “Avengers: Doomsday” or “Avengers: Secret Wars,” let alone the scale of his role in the massive two-part superhero ensemble event film. More realistic for Holland to have simply the same scale role he had in the two previous “Avengers” installments, and it’s lucky on the part of Marvel Studios that all three MCU movies will be shot in proximity of each other in the United Kingdom, making shooting scenes between projects much more logistical for the actor.
Filmmaker Christopher Nolan is still riding high from his massively successful atomic bomb drama Oppenheimer, and we now have some idea of what his next feature film will be and when we’ll see it on the big screen. Deadline reports that Nolan will be re-teaming with Universal Pictures (after severing his longtime relationship with Warner Bros.) for yet another feature film that Matt Damon (“Oppenheimer”) is reportedly eyeing a lead role.
Not only that, but it already has a planned release date of July 17, 2026, which would likely mean Universal has greenlit the film and is now feet-first into the casting/pre-production stages.
Filming is expected to begin in early 2025, which, of course, means that we’ll likely receive a lot of casting news and more details in the coming weeks and months.
“Oppenheimer” not only won seven Academy Awards (for Best Original Score, Best Editing, Best Supporting Actor, Best Actor, Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Cinematography) in 2024 but gave Universal a huge box office earner that summer with the R-rated drama amassing an impressive $975.5 million at the global box office. It got a major boost via the organic online theatrical marketing campaign Barbenheimer that attempted to get audiences to see both “Oppenheimer” and “Barbie” as they opened the same weekend, but both became two of the biggest films of 2023.
The partnership between Nolan and Universal is seemingly going to be cemented here, and we shouldn’t be all that shocked if this ends up being the director’s new homestead studio for the foreseeable future.
The “Fast & Furious” franchise is chugging along with screenwriters Christina Hodson and Oren Uziel tasked to write the script for the next film with French action director Louis Leterrier (“The Incredible Hulk”) returning after being a replacement for longtime franchise creative/helmer Justin Lin (“Star Trek Beyond”) when he exited “Fast X” over creative differences leading the studio to hire a new director while in the middle of an expensive production.
There had been some questions if Diesel would be kept on the franchise moving forward as we’ve seen some Hollywood studios dumping actors from high-profile projects due to racist, antisemitic, violent, and criminal behavior/allegations to avoid PR nightmares or end working relationships before further revelations are revealed. Diesel had been keeping a low profile since the lawsuit was announced last year and Universal had previously etched in the release for “Fast X: Part 2/Fast & Furious 11” for April 4, 2025. That date would signal a shoot starting up this spring or summer unless the studio decided to delay it.
Universal Pictures and producer David Leitch have reportedly found their lead actor for a feature film reboot of the beloved martial arts western series “Kung Fu.” Deadline says that veteran action star and director Donnie Yen has been selected to lead the new incarnation. Yen, known for his martial arts abilities, has been a versatile actor moving between Hollywood, China, and Hong Kong productions throughout the last 20-plus years (working decades longer in Asian cinema before nabbing Hollywood parts) with his Western credits including “Blade 2,” “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” “John Wick 4,” and “Shanghai Knights.” He’s likely most known for leading the “IP Man” franchise which focuses on a dramatized version of the life of the famous Wing Chun Master, who taught a young Bruce Lee in Hong Kong before he moved to California to pursue an acting career and opening his own martial arts school.
“Kung Fu” has a script penned by Stephen Chin (“War Dogs”) and Leitch is expected to potentially direct the martial arts film having an extensive stunt background himself. Some of the many projects Leitch has worked on in the past include the original “John Wick,” “Bullet Train,” “Hobbs & Shaw,” “Deadpool 2,” and the upcoming Ryan Gosling pic “The Fall Guy.” The latter film due to be released on May 3 is also a feature film based on an older television show.
The original series in retrospect is steeped in controversy as the legendary Bruce Lee saw “Kung Fu” as the perfect project to help transition into leading roles after having done supporting stuff including playing the sidekick Kato in the popular “Green Hornet” series in the 1960s. Instead, the main role would go to David Carradine, the son of veteran actor John Carradine, who had zero martial arts training at the time. Once Lee was passed over, the actor decided to return to Hong Kong where he originally started out as a child actor in movies such as “The Kid,” and created a new action persona for himself with “Enter The Dragon” before his untimely death in 1973 at the young age of 32. Launching a new wave of modern martial arts movies to counter The Shaw Brothers’ period films within the genre of wuxia that quickly became extremely popular in the West.
Some of the controversy stems from Carradine, a white actor, playing a Shaolin monk named Kwai Chang Caine. In the show, Caine’s European ancestry was explained with the character being an orphaned American boy living/raised in China who would leave the temple as a young man to wander the American West but obviously, the part was meant for an Asian actor. The series would eventually get a revival in the 1990s with a descendent of Caine navigating a modern New York City alongside his son, who worked for the NYPD, but like his father had also trained at the Shaolin temple.
More recently there was the CW series reboot starring Olivia Liang that ran from 2021-2023.
It’s unclear when “Kung Fu” will begin shooting but with Yen attached, the movie is now in great shape to go in front of cameras very soon. This isn’t the only big project Yen is expected to be looked at as there had been some chatter within Lionsgate that his “John Wick 4” character Caine could end up getting his own movie spinoff and he’s been attached for ages to a feature film adaptation of the cops vs. Triads video game “Sleeping Dogs.”
One of Universal Pictures’ most successful franchises is the “Jurassic Park/World” films, so it isn’t surprising to hear that another film is reportedly in the works. The Hollywood Reporter has revealed that “Jurassic World 4,” aka, “Jurassic 7” is now in development at the studio with “Jurassic Park” and “Jurassic Park: The Lost World” screenwriter David Koepp (“Mission: Impossible”) behind the new script. Koepp has a longtime relationship with Amblin/Steven Spielberg after tackling those first two installments alongside legacy sequels “Indiana Jones & The Kingdom of Crystal Skull” and “Indiana Jones & The Dial of Destiny.”
However, the kicker is that Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, and other cast members aren’t expected to reprise their roles. This tidbit about the cast not returning could be a suggestion that a second soft reboot might pivot to a new wave of lead characters and perhaps attempt a different angle with the dinosaur adventure flick. Things are seemingly in a really good place with Koepp’s script because Universal is said to be considering a “possible release date in 2025”, but without a director or the studio not making an official announcement we’ll just have to wait for more details.
The sixth film “Jurassic World: Dominion” hit theaters back in 2019 and was still able to make a solid amount of money for Universal with a global cume of over a billion dollars. While the new trilogy made the studio an impressive $4 billion. Not hard to see the reasoning why they’d imagine audiences would still want to see more films, but just a different group of actors starring in them.
As a fan of the franchise going back to 1993, I’ve sort of lost interest in a lot of these stories as the movies have sort of all blended together until the dinosaurs had one of the islands destroyed in “Jurassic Park: The Fallen Kingdom.” The original idea for the never-made version of “Jurassic Park” featured dinosaurs being mutated into giant humanoid creatures as highlighted in concept artwork (That artwork that made it online was from Hollywood concept artist Carlos Huante and you can see it below) and there also had been ideas of adding the dinos into a military weapons program (Seeds were planted in “Jurassic World”) that may have mirrored “Dino-Riders.”
Another way to go could be taking a page from “Kingdom of The Planet of Apes” and “Mad Max: Fury Road” by pushing forward into a post-apocalyptic setting in the future where the human population has dwindled as the dinosaurs have thrived as they have reclaimed the planet.
The 80’s comic book “Xenozoic Tales,” later retitled “Cadillacs & Dinosaurs,” created by Mark Schultz is sort of neat template for this concept as prehistoric animals overrun a futuristic version of the planet (set in the 26th Century) that had runs at Marvel Comics and Dark Horse Comics. While the IP hasn’t kept in the zeitgeist decades later it did spawn an animated series that aired on CBS, a popular arcade game from “Street Fighter” publisher Capcom, and a line of action figures. Universal likely wouldn’t have to spend too much if they wanted to flat-out acquire this for its budding new trilogy or change just enough to apply the concept given that the cloned dinosaurs living in the wild is the angle of “Jurassic World: Dominion.”
Universal Pictures and DreamWorks are teaming up for a live-action feature film version of their popular animated franchise “How To Train Your Dragon” with co-writer/director Dean DeBlois returning to oversee and helm the project. While the 2023 writers and actors’ strike placed the project on pause there is now finally some movement on the casting front with supporting roles being filled. It’s been revealed by The Hollywood Reporter that British actor Nick Frost is set to play Gobber in the live-action incarnation.
He’ll star alongside Gerard Butler (“Plane”), who is reprising the Stoick the Vast, the leader of the island-dwelling Viking clan that is known as legendary hunters and killers of dragons. Stoick is also the father of our protagonist, Hiccup (played by “The Black Phone” actor Mason Thames), who isn’t as brave as other townsfolk until he decides to train/tame a rare dragon type he calls Toothless leading the Vikings to eventually cohabitate with the fire-breathers as sort of a symbiotic relationship in subsequent installments after they have a change of heart. “The Last of Us” actress Nico Parker is also set in the role of Astrid and we’re still waiting who will be cast as the other young Viking characters.
The Gobber part was originally voiced by former late-night host Craig Ferguson in the animated movies.
Frost is maybe best known to audiences for his co-starring role in Edgar Wright’s “Cornetto Trilogy” which he co-wrote with creative partner and star, Simon Pegg. Those films include “Shaun of The Dead,” “Hot Fuzz,” and “The World’s End.” He also had a supporting part in “Attack The Block,” an alien invasion flick that introduced many of us to a young John Boyega.
Hiccup is a Norse teenager from the island of Berk, where fighting dragons is a way of life. His progressive views and weird sense of humor make him a misfit, despite the fact that his father is chief of the clan. Tossed into dragon-fighting school, he endeavors to prove himself as a true Viking, but when he befriends an injured dragon he names Toothless, he has the chance to plot a new course for his people’s future.
Another modern remake of “The Wolf Man” had been in development at Blumhouse/Universal after the studio’s plans for a cinematic universe centered on their iconic Universal Monsters had been in the works but there is a bit of shakeup on the project. The Hollywood Reporter has revealed that both director Derek Cianfrance (“A Place Beyond The Pines”) and Ryan Gosling have exited “Wolf Man,” with replacements already found.
Actor Christopher Abbott (“Poor Things”) has been tapped to take over the lead role from Gosling and Aussie filmmaker Leigh Whannell (“Upgrade”) is back on the film after Cianfrance had been hired to take on directing duties. Whannell was behind Universal’s “Invisible Man,” a modern take on the H.G. Wells character with a domestic abuse spin that had a solid reception from both audiences and critics leading to the studio to assign the director for a remake of “The Wolf Man” next.
The script was penned by both Whannell and Corbett Tuck.
Abbott is no stranger to genre projects with a string of credits that include Brandon Cronenberg’s cyberpunk thriller “Possessor,” “Catch-22,” and most recently can be seen in the Frankenstein-inspired satire “Poor Things.”
Of course, the movie would focus on a man who is cursed with transforming into the Wolf Man during a full moon with deadly results. Oscar-winner Benedict Del Toro starred in the last incarnation helmed by Joe Johnston (“Captain America: The First Avenger”) which was released back in 2010 and used a mix of Rick Baker’s excellent practical makeup alongside wonky digital effects. “Wolf Man” already has a release date set for October 25, 2024, which means production is about to start soon.
It looks like the cat is finally out of the bag. The writer Elly Conway is indeed a fictional character and didn’t actually write the new spy film “Argylle” from director Matthew Vaughn (“Layer Cake”) as Universal Pictures and Apple Studios have released the first-look trailer for the upcoming action-comedy revealing the film’s main twist. What Conway (played by Bryce Dallas Howard) writes in her series of spy novels has an odd way of actually happening in the real world which has now caught the attention of various good and bad folks within the spy community including Sam Rockwell‘s Aiden.
Also revealed in the trailer is that the characters played by Henry Cavill and John Cena are actually from her books, and remains to be seen if they’ll ultimately be making the jump to reality. Changes are good though. “Argylle” seems to mix adventure, supernatural, and comedic elements something alien to Vaughn’s second film, “Stardust.” But with a bit of “Romancing The Stone” and “Knight & Day” thrown into the blender.
Another wild tidbit is that the new film hilariously features the real-life cat of Vaughn’s supermodel wife, Claudia Schiffer.
Here is the official logline of the film via Universal:
The greater the spy, the bigger the lie. From the twisted mind of Matthew Vaughn (“Kingsman” franchise, “Kick-Ass”) comes “Argylle” a razor-witted, reality-bending, globe-encircling spy thriller. Bryce Dallas Howard (“Jurassic World” franchise) is Elly Conway, the reclusive author of a series of best-selling espionage novels, whose idea of bliss is a night at home with her computer and her cat, Alfie. But when the plots of Elly’s fictional books—which center on secret agent Argylle and his mission to unravel a global spy syndicate—begin to mirror the covert actions of a real-life spy organization, quiet evenings at home become a thing of the past. Accompanied by Aiden (Oscar® winner Sam Rockwell), a cat-allergic spy, Elly (carrying Alfie in her backpack) races across the world to stay one step ahead of the killers as the line between Elly’s fictional world and her real one begins to blur. The top-flight ensemble cast features Henry Cavill (“The Witcher”), John Cena (“Fast X”), Oscar® winner Ariana DeBose (“West Side Story”), Grammy-winning pop superstar Dua Lipa (“Barbie”), Emmy winner and Oscar® nominee Bryan Cranston (“Breaking Bad”), Emmy winner and comedy icon Catherine O’Hara (“Schitt’s Creek”), Sofia Boutella (“Kingsman: The Secret Service”), and the legendary Samuel L. Jackson. Alfie is played by Chip, the real-life cat of supermodel Claudia Vaughn (née Schiffer). Argylle is directed and produced by Matthew Vaughn, from a screenplay by Jason Fuchs (“Wonder Woman”).
There’s been chatter about the film potentially becoming a franchise starter for Apple and could lead to multiple installments given the main crux of the film is that Elly can predict various missions and their outcomes. Also, the staggering $200 million Apple reportedly paid to secure the film. Perhaps, she ends up choosing a side or an organization by the end of the film.
“Argylle” will be heading to theaters on February 2 and you can watch that new trailer below.
Amblin Entertainment, DreamWorks, and Universal Pictures partnered to bring one of the longest-gestating horror projects in Hollywood of recent memory to the big screen. “The Last Voyage of The Demeter” was first announced as a being in development all the way back in 2003. A new take on a somewhat familiar Dracula tale as it would place the iconic vampire on the high seas, something that had been hinted towards in things like Francis Ford Coppola’s definitive modern take “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” back in 1992. The events of the film fill the month-long gap in the original “Dracula” novel as the Captain’s Log chapter teased a brutal journey from Romania to the coast of Whitby, England as crew members keep getting picked off one by one at night by the roaming vampire.
“Last Voyage of The Demeter” starts out well enough with a caravan of weary villagers delivering mysterious crates of dirt bound for the shores of England. But we’re all too aware of the looming threat and this makes it really hard to get too scared or surprised about what is about to happen since we have a really good idea of how things will end since most Dracula films include the wreckage of The Demeter along with the angle that nobody has survived. The film does a mostly good job of trying to introduce us to The Demeter’s Captain (played by “Game of Thrones” actor Liam Cunningham) and a surly veteran crew made up of mostly drunkard deckhands with a lone religious zealot acting as the ship’s cook.
Hard to not notice that David Fincher already got there first with his “Love Death + Robots” episode “Bad Travelling” tackling a similar ravenous creature threat on a boat in the animation medium. However, the live-action film has some extremely violent and inventive kills mixing both the gore of a vampire killing their victim and some extra lore that wasn’t expected. Speaking of the violence, there are some specifically gruesome scenes that make me question if kids under 13 could handle the violence, I wouldn’t recommend young kids that might be trying to venture into the horror genre picking this movie as their first go at an R-rated vampire movie. That said, fans of slashers and gory vampire movies will likely enjoy how far Norwegian director André Øvredal goes with the kills.
Corey Hawkins, of course, is our lead and isn’t a stranger to genre projects having previously worked on “The Walking Dead” and “Kong: Skull Island” but the character choice of a British accent can be distracting at times, even though, his character is said to be educated as a doctor at Cambridge University, and helps establish him as “a man of science” but still able to believe something supernatural is going on. At certain times, it feels like a miscalculation on Amblin’s part not to have cast someone like Daniel Kaluuya (“Nope”) or Damson Idris (“Snowfall”) for the part of Clemens, an actor actually from England with a natural accent. While Hawkins did a fine job acting scared and over his head, that certainly was an issue I kept replaying through the film when the accent didn’t work or he slightly struggled to keep it throughout his massive amount of dialogue. Then again, it wasn’t as bad as some other American actors that I won’t be naming and he does a solid job as the lead.
Helping Hawkins out in supporting roles are Aisling Franciosi and David Dastmalchian playing Anna and Wojchek respectively. Anna adds much-needed exposition for the crew giving them some idea of what they’re up against. Dastmalchian’s Wojchek plays the skeptical first mate that seems to fit the best in the film and the actor certainly is aware of what he needs to do in that role. Cunningham as Captain Eliot adds some gravitas when needed in the first act but the veteran seadog takes the backseat to the younger cast members.
Some of the film’s other highlights include the production design of the ship, some of the compartments feel way too big at times like the cargo hold, certainly feels like a ship from the era but it would have been nice to lean more into a claustrophibic angle of being on a ship. Still, the ship feels like an eerie character of its own and that’s super important given this is really our main set for the bulk of the story.
Here come my biggest gripes with the horror film. The other crew members sort of blend together and you sort of forget certain ones are still alive when they show up in scenes. While their deaths are fun to watch for the pure gory madness, there isn’t much in the way of connection to them as people when they do die because they haven’t had much time to present themselves as fully formed characters. Maybe that was done by design? The most impactful death scenes were the characters we got to know better.
Another minor but important issue I had, I’m not terribly convinced that CGI vampires work for me. I know that actor Javier Botet was playing Count Dracula in some well-framed practical shots, but the use of digital effects in parts made the scariness levels drop dramatically for me. There are spots when it’s hard to differentiate what is practical and what is enhanced with digital VFX. The underwhelming design of Dracula also is a glaring problem even when he’s in England and I wished he at least had a less Count Orlok vibe to him since Robert Eggers’ remake of “Nosferatu” isn’t far from release. We’ve also seen this design resurrected multiple times for the two incarnations of “What We Do In The Shadows” and felt like something we’d see in the “Underworld” films. Not terribly original, in my opinion. When you make a creature-driven horror film it lives or dies on the scariness of your creature’s design, I’m sure others will disagree but I didn’t find the design all great.
I think the actors and director manage well with what feels like a mundane script. Some of the scenes with crew members between the kills and leading up to them feel like they could have been polished a bit more and as previously pointed out a little more character depth for the supporting crew would have been nice.
I wouldn’t be terribly shocked if director André Øvredal ends up being recruited for the next installment of “Friday The 13th” as he has the chops for the slasher genre and could add something to one of the more high-profile franchises. Most of the direction works, but, there are times when I sort of wanted less lingering shots of Dracula (I’m sure meant to highlight the painstaking makeup) or close-ups. But in the end, it’s very much a competent and ambitious horror film that stretches a $45 million budget into something that certainly feels much bigger than that. Øvredal will keep getting steady work given the quality he was able to do here with a project that had been lingering in development limbo for two decades.
There have been previous comparisons to Ridley Scott’s “Alien” and they are apt, but hearing that beforehand sort of inserted the idea this could have worked better as an original sci-fi horror film given the plot beats are still different enough from previous “Alien” films it might have been able to exchange Dracula for an alien beast. Oh well, I’m sure someone will get that bright idea and make a sci-fi version in the future.
Without spoiling anything, they do sort of end the film with the hint that there could be a sequel set during Dracula’s well-explored reign of terror in Victorian-era London. I’m reminded of both Tom Cruise’s “The Mummy” and “Dracula: Untold” getting sequel-bait endings leading to nothing. I wished the film had done better at the box office but I can understand how a period horror film might have been a harder sell during a busy summer season of ups and downs. Even more so after Universal had already released an underwhelming Dracula earlier in the year with “Reinfeld.” Curious to think how “Last Voyage of The Demeter” would have done with audiences 10-15 years ago.
If you’re a big horror fan I think you’ll enjoy it as much as I did, but for older folks looking for something more thought-provoking and mature like horror pics such as “The Witch” or “Midsommar” you’re not going to get that here.
If you weren’t already aware, Universal Pictures is putting together a live-action incarnation of their beloved animated franchise, “How To Train Your Dragon.” The young cast members have been announced already as director Dean DeBlois has selected Mason Thames (“The Black Phone”) to play Hiccup and Nico Parker (“The Last of Us”) in the role of Astrid. Despite the strikes halting multiple major Hollywood productions across the globe, it does seem like a few productions planning on shooting in the United Kingdom and Europe are, at least, gearing up in the prep/pre-production stages.
There are two key crew additions to “How To Train Your Dragon” that we can now share.
The Ronin can confirm that production designer Dominic Watkins has joined the fantasy film. Some of Watkins’ credits consist of “Snow White & The Huntsman,” “The Huntsman: Winter’s War,” “Kate,” “Bad Boys II,” and “The Bourne Supremacy.” Of course, “Snow White” is one of his more complex projects, hopefully, he’ll be able to tap into that dark fairytale imagery with “Dragons” and there are some expectations that the project will attempt to incorporate as many practical sets as the budget will allow. Fingers crossed for an actual Viking village being built.
We previously reported earlier in the month that cinematographer Bill Popehas been added to the crew as well with credits that include “The Matrix” trilogy, “Shang-Chi & The Legend of The Ten Rings,” “Baby Driver,” “Spider-Man 2,” “Scott Pilgrim vs. The World,” “Alita: Battle Angel,” and “Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania.” A fantastic director of photography who surely will add a slick visual element to the remake.
If you haven’t watched the animated films, here is the first film’s synopsis:
Hiccup is a Norse teenager from the island of Berk, where fighting dragons is a way of life. His progressive views and weird sense of humor make him a misfit, despite the fact that his father (Kongkrapunt Sangsuriya) is chief of the clan. Tossed into dragon-fighting school, he endeavors to prove himself as a true Viking, but when he befriends an injured dragon he names Toothless, he has the chance to plot a new course for his people’s future.
THE RONIN 