After years in development, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, the fifth title in the high-grossing Disney franchise, is finally unfurling its sails and kicking off production in Queensland, Australia. The pic, which will find Johnny Depp reprising the role of Captain Jack Sparrow, follows Pirates' most critically reviled installment and, as such, will likely determine whether the franchise still has a creative future.
James Marsh's luminous, illuminating Stephen Hawking biopic The Theory of Everything, one of my favorite films of last year, is finally coming to Blu-Ray, and to celebrate the release, all of us here at We Got This Covered are proud to be giving away a grand total of five Blu-Ray combo packs.
After failing to launch a franchise with Screen Gems' awful The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, director Harald Zwart is scaling down for his next film, having signed on to direct a microbudgeted horror flick for Blumhouse Productions.
Doctor Who has blown up stateside, but Starz's attempt to harness the same popularity for adult-oriented spinoff Torchwood with miniseries Miracle Day was met with little enthusiasm from critics, despite solid ratings. After the conclusion of that series in 2011, Torchwood's fourth, creator Russell T. Davies announced that the show would be entering an indefinite hiatus, which led many fans to believe that Torchwood might disappear from airwaves for good. Now, though, star Eve Myles has reaffirmed her allegiance to the series, should Davies ever return to the fold.
After years of solid work as a background player, Peter Dinklage finally broke into the mainstream with his terrific performance as conniving, charismatic Tyrion Lannister on HBO's Game of Thrones, and as the fifth season of that series approaches, it appears Hollywood is finally seeing the actor as leading man material.
Netflix made some small ripples at the Sundance Film Festival when it snagged Rashida Jones-produced documentary Hot Girls Wanted, about the amateur adult film industry, and now the streaming giant is leaving its mark on Berlin as well. Jadotville, a war thriller starring Fifty Shades of Grey actor Jamie Dornan, has been acquired by Netflix for release sometime in 2016, it was announced today.
Stephen King has been having one hell of a time in Hollywood of late. Josh Boone is moving full-steam ahead on an ambitious adaptation of King's The Stand, Cary Fukunaga (True Detective) will direct a two-part adaptation of his horror classic IT, King's zombie story Cell arrives on the big screen later this year, CBS just renewed Under the Dome for a third season, and adaptations of Gerald's Game and Lisey's Story, among others, are in the works. Now, exciting news has arrived with regard to Hulu's take on King's JFK assassination thriller 11/22/63, with word that James Franco has signed on for the lead role.
During a recent IGN interview for his terrific spy actioner Kingsman: The Secret Service, which opens in theaters today, Samuel L. Jackson noted an extremely interesting piece of information about his current place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe that makes us somewhat concerned for the future of his character, Nick Fury.
Though director Sam Taylor-Johnson's elegant touch was one of the few aspects of Fifty Shades of Grey that actually worked, rumor has it that the helmer will not be returning for sequels Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed, now that it's come to light that her working relationship with book author E.L. James must have felt something like a three-month visit to Christian's Red Room of Pain.
Alejandro Amenábar delivered one of the most haunting ghost stories of this century with 2001's The Others, so it's fair to say that his upcoming thriller Regression is already on many critics' lists of films to watch out for this year.
