Charles Bramesco
AMC Is Not At All Pleased With the Recent MoviePass Price Slash
The theatrical chain believes that lower prices for tickets will be, somehow, bad for moviegoers.
‘Wonder Woman’ Home Video Release Will Include Unused Epilogue
Here in my home of New York, Wonder Woman still has multiple daily showtimes at multiple theaters around town, nearly two and a half months after its theatrical debut. And just yesterday, Warner Bros. announced that they would begin the film’s home-video rollout on August 29 with a Digital HD streaming option before releasing the Blu-ray and DVD on September 19. With theatrical screenings scheduled to continue until at least a week from today, that leaves an eleven-day window during which fans will have to live in a world where they can’t readily watch Wonder Woman at their leisure. It will be a brief dark age, but the specifics of the release suggest that devotees will find the wait worth it.
‘Despicable Me’ Edges Out ‘Shrek’ As All-Time Highest-Grossing Animated Franchise
It’s a Minion world, and we’re all just living in it. The little pill-shaped yellow critters have left an indelible imprint on the cultural mainstream, for better (footage not found) or for worse (try googling “minions memes,” I dare you). Kids and adults alike have latched onto the phenomenon with an uncommon enthusiasm, and now the numbers reflect the totality with which the Despicable Me universe has permeated modern life. In the seven brief years since Illumination Entertainment loosed the original Despicable Me on an innocent populace, the franchise has grown into the largest of its kind — the highest-grossing animated franchise of all time.
McDonald’s Actually Sent the ‘Rick and Morty’ Creators a Half-Gallon of Szechuan Sauce
It all began when Rick and Morty creators Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon went all in on an obscure, absurd joke until it grew into an all-encompassing metaphor for the disappointment and frustrations of life. (As is the show’s wont.) In the recent opener for Season 3, profligate alcoholic scientist Rick speaks at length about his lifelong quest to track down some Szechuan Sauce, a discontinued condiment that McDonald’s packaged with McNuggets as part of a promotion for Mulan in the ’90s. (It makes more sense in context, but barely.)
Anne Hathaway May Take Over for Amy Schumer on ‘Barbie’
Amy Schumer has seen better days. Back in May, her big-screen vehicle Snatched was savaged by critics, who were pretty much the only people to actually go see the film. That followed a mini-controversy surrounding a video Schumer recorded of her and some chums on set performing Beyoncé’s single “Formation,” which now feels like a faint memory from a more innocent time. On top of all that, Schumer had to part ways with the live-action treatment of the Barbie doll line currently in the works at Sony. The good news, for Sony at least, is that they’ve found a suitable replacement. And she’s got Oscar bona fides.
Daniel Craig Will Reportedly Return… For the Next ‘James Bond’ Movie
With the arrival of San Diego Comic-Con last week, the major announcements started flying fast and furious. After the avalanche of release date announcements, trailer releases, and other first-look headline-generators, the news broke that the gears of progress had begun turning for James Bond’s next cinematic outing. The official Twitter account posted that the still-untitled James Bond 25 would hit American theaters on November 8, 2019 after an earlier release in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, and also presumably after shiploads of online pirates have gotten their mitts on it. Americans do not tend to take delayed release dates lying down.
‘Baby Driver’ Star Lily James Takes Key Role in ‘Mamma Mia!’ Sequel
Lily James cannot fight the music. In the title role of 2015’s handsome Cinderella rework, her beautiful singing served as a plot point, attracting a suitor to her like a sailor drawn in by a siren’s song. She’s gotten another bump in visibility as the female lead of Baby Driver, another film fundamentally oriented around music. (The swooningly romantic scene in which she and her crush Baby share a pair of earbuds at a laundromat is already a fan-favorite.) Now she’s taken her next major role, and it’s sure to put her vocal cords through their paces.
Ryan Gosling Reportedly Wants to Play Willy Wonka
Ryan Gosling is about to play himself. (In the DJ Khaled sense, not the Being John Malkovich sense.) The actor’s been on something of a roll recently, scoring critical plaudits for The Nice Guys and La La Land last year — the latter of which ended up a surprise blockbuster and less-surprise Oscar hoarder — and continuing on into 2017 with this past spring’s Song to Song. He’s got Blade Runner 2049 on the docket for this fall, a likely smash that may earn him admiration among nerd circles, the last niche demographic he has not yet charmed. But with the world at his feet, Gosling’s now making moves to dash all the goodwill he’s recently built up.
Shia LaBeouf Back in Trouble With the Law After Drunken Cigarette-Bumming Gone Wrong
Shia LaBeouf gets arrested a lot. And not “a lot” relative to law-abiding namby-pambies like you or me, I mean “a lot” relative to a street-level Adderall dealer. There was the incident in 2005, where he got an assault with a deadly weapon charge after threatening his neighbor by driving directly into his car, the 2007 arrest outside a Chicago Walgreens, the 2008 drunk driving accident and subsequent license suspension, the 2011 bar fight, the 2014 disorderly conduct charge outside Studio 54, a public intoxication arrest in 2015, and then a minor harassment violation back in this most recent January during an anti-Trump demonstration. That’s quite the rap sheet, but it’s like the old judicial system proverb goes: “Seven strikes and you’re out, unless you’re famous and wealthy, in which case just try to be more careful next time.”
Per Edgar Wright, a ‘Baby Driver’ Sequel Might Continue Baby’s Driving
It wasn’t so long ago that Edgar Wright voiced some misgivings about the business of sequels, saying “I guess I would rather be telling new stories than revisiting old ones.” But in that very same interview, he emphasized that he has no hard-and-fast rules for how he chooses projects, and that if reviving an established property felt natural and creatively productive, he wouldn’t rule out the possibility. He batted around the idea of following up on cop-parody Hot Fuzz back then, and now today, he’s reignited fan murmurs of an entry into sequeldom with Baby Driver.
Our Boys Vow to Never Surrender in Latest ‘Dunkirk’ Trailer
Christopher Nolan doesn’t do small movies — if he’s going to mount a war picture, you can bet it’s gonna be one of the biggest (and priciest!) to date. He’s seemingly spared no expense for his new film Dunkirk, reportedly corralling thousands of extras, destroying vintage planes, and dominating the land, sea, and air all for a grand new vision of combat. And in order to fully convey the enormity of his ambitions, Nolan went all-in and mounted his production on 70 millimeter film. For laymen, that means he used a larger film strip while shooting to capture more brilliant colors, richer sound, and a greater sharpness of detail. For those who don’t give a hoot, it means this film will rattle your bones.
Playtime Gets All Stabby-Stabby in the Creepy ‘Cult of Chucky’ Trailer
As The Conjuring’s demonically possessed plaything Annabelle gains in popularity, it’s in murder-doll Chucky’s best interest to get back in the public eye and remind us of who’s the real top dog. Maybe Annabelle’s been stronger at the box-office as of late, but put the two toys mano-a-plastic-mano? Not even a fair fight. Chucky’s simply more sadistic; he really and truly hates people and loves killing them. That quality of violence alone sets his tiny head and tiny shoulders above the rest. In case anyone needed a refresher, we now have the Cult of Chucky trailer.