It used to be that people thought of Clint Eastwood (and before that, John Ford) when they thought of American westerns. Nowadays though, maybe we think of Tommy Lee Jones. The gnarled and folksy actor has been a staple in various westerns for the better part of several decades, even adding directing to his arsenal with The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. Now, he'll return to the genre as both the director and star of The Homesman.
20th Century Fox owns the rights to the X-Men franchise, and they are not about to let those mutants go. With Marvel Studios announcing plans into the next decade, and Sony pushing their Spider-Man series with all their marketing arsenal, Fox is not going to be outdone. With more than a month left to go before the release of X-Men: Days of Future Past, Fox and Bryan Singer are pushing hard for the next installment in this lucrative franchise, X-Men: Apocalypse.
Philip Seymour Hoffman's death was a tragedy for his family and friends, but it was also a tragedy for cinema, who lost one of its finest and most varied actors. While his final performance will be his appearances in The Hunger Games finale films, Hoffman's last leading role was in A Most Wanted Man. The first trailer for the spy thriller hit the web today and it showcases Hoffman in his pivotal part as the head of an anti-terrorist team.
If you happen to be of a certain age, then chances are you grew up watching Boy Meets World on ABC. The series followed Cory Matthews (Ben Savage) and his friends Topanga (Danielle Fishel) and Shawn (Rider Strong) as they grew from cheeky sixth graders to responsible college students. Now, Cory and Topanga are married and have kids of their own, and are starring on the Disney Channel's new sitcom Girl Meets World. The first teaser trailer for the show premiered today, and it's enough to whet our appetites for more middle-school shenanigans.
DreamWorks' brilliant and surprising How To Train Your Dragon proved that excellent animated films do not just come from the Pixar factory. The aptly named sequel How To Train Your Dragon 2, hopes to keep that track record going, with new dragons, new battles, and new characters, but plenty of the same high-flying action that made the original so much fun.
Fairly or unfairly, writer/director/comedian/hipster icon Zach Braff received a good bit of drubbing for taking to Kickstarter to finance his Garden State follow-up film Wish I Was Here. In the midst of the criticism leveled at the filmmaker for funding his film via a website intended to help projects of struggling artists, Braff still managed to raise over $3 million. Now, the first trailer for Wish I Was Here has hit the web, and it's exactly what we expected it would be.
It's a truism in Hollywood that when you have ahold of a good thing, you should proceed to produce at least three different versions or sequels to that good thing until the public gets sick of it. This is especially true when it comes to horror films, which we all know deserve at least five sequels. The latest in the genre to be trilogized is Creep, co-starring and co-written by Mark Duplass and produced by Paranormal Activity's Jason Blum.
Marvel's upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy might be a bit of a watershed moment for the superhero franchise world. It's one of the first Marvel films to depart from the known universe of Avengers and avenging-type things, and features characters that most of those outside the comic book community have never heard of. While there are plenty of big names attached to the project, including Chris Pratt, John C. Reilly, and director James Gunn, there's no one near the level of Robert Downey Jr. In other words, Guardians of the Galaxy has the potential to prove that comic book films can continue to be box office smashes even when they're slightly less well known to the general public.
Buddy cop comedies are popular once more, following on the heels of 21 Jump Street, The Heat, and even Kevin Smith's ill-fated Cop Out. As Hollywood bids to remake every film made in the 1980s and 90s, it's therefore no surprise that a remake of the 1984 cop comedy Police Academy is at the top of everyone's list. To this end, comedy team Key and Peele have stepped in to produce the Police Academy remake.
We know him as Sherlock Holmes and Khan, but it's sometimes nice to be reminded that Benedict Cumberbatch is first and foremost a proper actor. So proper, in fact, that he can make the choice to move away from a potential star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for a little while and take on a major part in a Shakespearean play. Now, he seems to be doing just that, as BBC Two recently announced that Cumberbatch will appear in a television production of Richard III as part of a trilogy of adaptations of Shakespeare's history plays.
