When Gareth Edwards' original Monsters came out in 2010, it was a welcome breath of fresh air for the sci-fi genre - an atypically thoughtful and atmospheric drama about two humans falling in love and learning to wonder at the otherworldly beauty of a strange new world being born around them. Shot on a shoestring budget with visual effects Edwards created in his bedroom, it was a marvelous, unexpected film that left you thinking.
However you feel about Disney plumbing its past fairy tales for big screen redos, there's no denying that the studio's casting choices for Bill Condon's upcoming Beauty and the Beast have been spot-on. With Emma Watson in the role of Belle, with Dan Stevens and Luke Evans vying for her affections as the Beast and Gaston (respectively), the film looks increasingly like a must-see for acting aficionados. Now, the production has attracted another A-lister, with news that X-Men's Ian McKellen is taking on the role of Cogsworth.
After putting a found-footage spin on the time-travel genre in this spring's Project Almanac, Dean Israelite is next angling to take on a classic kids franchise for his next gig, with news that Lionsgate is negotiating for the helmer to tackle its Power Rangers reboot.
Summit's Deepwater Horizon, about the 2010 BP oil-rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico that took the lives of 11 people and spilled oil into the ocean for a horrific 87 days, got a whole lot less interesting when A Most Violent Year director J.C. Chandor exited and was replaced by Battleship helmer Peter Berg, but the talent that's being assembled in front of the camera for the pic is undeniably exciting. Mark Wahlberg and Jane the Virgin breakout Gina Rodriguez are already attached, and now The Maze Runner star Dylan O'Brien is in talks for a major role.
After menacing Taron Egerton and Colin Firth with her deadly blade legs in February's smashing spy caper Kingsman: The Secret Service, Sofia Boutella has landed a lead role in Star Trek 3.
There was a time before The Lone Ranger and Pirates of the Caribbean when Gore Verbinski was known not as Disney's go-to director for big-budget bores, but rather as the exciting helmer behind excellent horror remake The Ring. Now, he's attempting to regain some of that credibility by taking on a small-scale supernatural horror pic at New Regency called A Cure for Wellness, and to aid him in that pursuit, Verbinski is calling on the talents of Kill Your Darlings star Dane DeHaan and on-the-rise actress Mia Goth.
As Universal attempts to breathe life back into its classic movie monsters, The Tracking Board reports that Avengers: Age of Ultron star Scarlett Johansson is the studio's top choice to star in a Creature from the Black Lagoon remake.
Ryan Reynolds is currently basking in the love of millions of fanboys around the world for taking on the role of Deadpool in an R-rated standalone movie that looks all kinds of awesome. But one of the actor's most sensational performances hasn't attracted nearly as much attention - in The Voices, on Blu-Ray this week, he plays a likable Everyman who is cajoled by his talking cat into becoming a serial killer. It's an unusual part for the actor, but he absolutely kills it.
One of the summer's hottest tickets is sure to be Mad Max: Fury Road, an update of the George Miller classic that, based on trailers, looks like a brilliant blast of pedal-to-the-metal mayhem. With the film trending incredibly well on social media, Warner Bros. is clearly eyeing it as the first in a new franchise, and though much will depend on how Fury Road fares at the box office, star Tom Hardy recently confirmed that he's in it for the long haul.
