September
Boy Erased
Date: September 28th
Director: Joel Edgerton
Writers: Joel Edgerton
Cast: Lucas Hedges, Nicole Kidman, Joel Edgerton, Russell Crowe, Xavier Dolan, Troy Sivan, Jesse LaTourette, Britton Sear, William Ngo.
With 2015’s The Gift, Joel Edgerton revealed himself to be a filmmaker of exceptional ability, in addition to being a highly accomplished writer and actor. With Boy Erased, he turns that combination of skills to an adaptation of the memoir by Garrard Conley – which relates his experiences as a young man in Arkansas whose family forces him into ‘gay conversion therapy.’ This film features a powerhouse cast – including Edgerton, Russell Crowe, and Nicole Kidman – built around a central performance by Lucas Hedges (Manchester By The Sea), in the role based on Conley.
October
Venom
Date: October 5th
Director: Ruben Fleischer
Writers: Kelly Marcel, Jeff Pinkner, and Scott Rosenberg
Cast: Tom Hardy, Jenny Slate, Michelle Williams, Riz Ahmed, Michelle Lee, Grace Wan.
Venom is a comic book villain who exists in the world of Spider-Man – a fact that instantly makes this a fascinating project. Tom Hardy stars as Eddie Brock, who is host to an alien symbiote, which transforms him into Venom. The reason this is interesting is two-fold: this will be a film centred on an antagonist, and it will be a film in which the antagonist’s most famous nemesis will not appear. It has Ruben Fleischer at the helm, though, and if he brings any of Zombieland finesse to the project, it should be something very special indeed.
First Man
Date: October 12th
Director: Damian Chazelle
Writers: Nicole Perlman and Josh Singer
Cast: Ryan Gosling, Claire Foy, Jon Bernthal, Pablo Schreiber, Kyle Chandler, Corey Stoll, Jason Clarke, Patrick Fugit, Cory Michael Smith, Lukas Haas.
Based on the book First Man: The Life Of Neil A. Armstrong, by James R. Hansen, First Man will be the second collaboration between Academy Award winner Damian Chazelle, and Oscar nominee Ryan Gosling. Playing the lead role of Neil Armstrong, Gosling headlines an all-star cast to depict NASA’s epic mission to put a man on the moon.
Halloween
Date: October 19th
Director: David Gordon Green
Writers: David Gordon Green and Danny McBride
Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis, Judy Greer.
Writer-director David Gordon Green takes John Carpenter’s classic character, Laurie Strode, back to face her infamous masked tormentor one last time. It’s rumoured that story will ignore the lacklustre sequels that have preceded it, and will instead be directly linked to the first movie, released in 1978.
Jungle Book
Date: October 19th
Director: Andy Serkis
Writer: Callie Kloves
Cast: Rohan Chand, Cate Blanchett, Christian Bale, Benedict Cumberbatch, Andy Serkis, Naomie Harris, Peter Mullan, Eddie Marsan, Matthew Rhys, Freida Pinto, Tom Hollander, Jack Reynor.
This adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s classic novel has been in development since 2012, with director-producer-actor Andy Serkis joining the project in 2014. It’s set to be a live-action depiction of the well-known tale of Mowgli and the animals he encounters during his childhood in the jungle. The motion capture aspect of the film is being undertaken by Serkis’ Imaginarium Studios.
The Girl In The Spider’s Web
Date: October 19th
Director: Fede Alvarez
Writers: Fede Alvarez, Jay Basu, and Steven Knight
Cast: Claire Foy, Sylvia Hoeks, Claes Bang.
Based on the novel of the same name, by David Lagercrantz, this film features the same characters as those that appeared in 2011’s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo – which was directed by David Fincher. While the source novel is a sequel to Dragon Tattoo, The Girl In The Spider’s Web film is something of a reboot, with Claire Foy taking the role of Lisbeth Salander – previously played by both Noomi Rapace and Rooney Mara.
