Suddenly several animated series and movies in the fantasy, adventure, and science fiction genres are going to be appearing on your TVs and in theaters. Most are coming to Netflix and Disney+, so get ready. Each one has a unique look, and they all feature intriguing trailers that offer enough to get us to give them at least a try. From a pirate sea beast tale to Sonic the Hedgehog, Ice Age, and Despicable Me sequels, to the latest seasons of the Pacific Rim and Ghost in the Shell spin-offs, a new kind of vampire series, an Apollo movie, and more. Which will be the biggest hit? Take a look at all these trailers:
The second trailer for a sequel to a 1980s action film, two animated shows, and two films about courageous dogs make today’s installment of Trailer Park. We saw our first trailer previewed earlier here for Tom Cruise′s return to the skies in Top Gun: Maverick. Now we have the next preview, with co-star Jennifer Connelly. The Fast & Furious franchise is expanding to the small screen with a new kids’ show, Fast & Furious: Spy Racers, featuring the fast driving young cousin of Vin Diesel’s character in the movies. Another animated movie brings a modern comic book tale to the screen, Superman: Red Son, an alternate history version of Superman where baby Superman landed in the Soviet Union instead of Kansas. It features the voices of Harry Potter’sJason Isaacs as Superman, The Drew Carey Show’sDiedrich Bader as Lex Luthor, Grimm’sSasha Roiz as Hal Jordan, and Oscar and Grammy-winning pop star Paul Williams as Brainiac.
Two CGI movies are bringing tales of loyal canines to the screen. Call of the Wild is a remake of the 1935 film based on Jack London’s 1903 novel. It stars Harrison Ford, Dan Stevens, and Karen Gillan. And based on a true story, Togostars a dog named Diesel and stunt doubles from The Snowy Owl Sled Dog Tours, Inc., with Willem Dafoe, telling the tale of the dog that had the toughest leg of the journey to get medicine to Nome, Alaska, in 1925, before handing the package off to the more well-known dog Balto and his team.
The first season of FX’s fringe superhero series Legion was an unexpected hit, but the sophomore season didn’t quite have the same mix of edgy, weird, and dark humor. The series, based on the comic book by Chris Claremont and Bill Sienkiewicz, returns a little more than a week away for its third and final season, and FX has revealed the first look at what lies ahead. FX has also released a summary to catch up anyone who missed last season:
Legion follows lead character David Haller (Dan Stevens), a man who believed himself to be schizophrenic, only to discover that he is the most powerful mutant the world has ever seen. From childhood, David shuffled from one psychiatric institution to the next until, in his early 30s, he met and fell in love with a beautiful and troubled fellow patient named Syd Barrett (Rachel Keller). After Syd and David shared a startling encounter, he was forced to confront the shocking reality that the voices he hears and the visions he sees are actually real.
With the help of Syd and a team of specialists who also possess unique and extraordinary gifts – Ptonomy Wallace (Jeremie Harris), Kerry Loudermilk (Amber Midthunder) and Cary Loudermilk (Bill Irwin) – David unlocked a deeply suppressed truth: he had been haunted his entire life by a malicious parasite of unimaginable power. Known as The Shadow King, this malevolent creature appeared in the form of David’s friend Lenny Busker (Aubrey Plaza), but was actually an ancient being named Amahl Farouk (Navid Negahban). During an epic showdown, David managed to push Farouk out of his body and gain control of his mind. With Farouk on the loose, the team formed an unlikely alliance with their former enemy, Clark DeBussy (Hamish Linklater), and his well-funded government organization, Division 3. Unfortunately, the hunt for Farouk reawakened the dark voices in David’s head, and with them, a lust for power. At odds with everyone he once considered a friend, David enlists the help of a young mutant named Switch (Lauren Tsai) whose secret ability is key to his plans to repair the damage he caused.
That’s the story so far.
We were supposed to see even more X-Men this year. Fox’s last hoorah, The New Mutants movie based on Chris Claremont’s comic book series was slated for release in theaters later this year, but it’s been pushed again, this time to April 3, 2020. Dark Phoenix director Simon Kinberg is a producer on this series.
Take a look at this preview for Season 3–the final season–of Legion:
It’s that time of year again, time to take a look forward at what movies should be on your radar for 2019. Are you going to see them all? Heck no. These are the genre films we think borg readers will want to know about to make their own checklists for the coming year–and they are only the films we know about so far. We pulled 78 of the hundreds of films that have been finalized or are in varying stages of final production, slated for next year’s movie calendar.
What looks to top the list for most fanboys and fangirls? The last of the nine films in theStar Wars saga. Captain Marvel, Avengers: Endgame, and Spider-Man: Far From Home.Shazam!is DC’s contribution. Quentin Tarantino returns to movies to direct Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and Martin Scorsese is back with an all-star cast in The Irishman (on Netflix). M. Night Shyamalan finishes his dark superhero trilogy with Glass. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton return in Terminator. Jordan Peele is back with another horror film with Us.
Do you like sequels? This is your year. Another Men in Black, X-Men, Shaft, Happy Death Day, Lego Movie, Hellboy, John Wick, Kingsman, Jumanji, The Secret Life of Pets, How to Train Your Dragon, Fast and the Furious, Zombieland, Addams Family, Charlie’s Angels, Godzilla, Shaun the Sheep, Annabelle,and Stephen King’s It and Pet Sematary—Disney is trying to get you to move into your local theater with another Toy Story, Aladdin, Dumbo, Frozen, and Lion King–all in one year. Yep, lots and lots of sequels are coming.
Some films don’t have locked-in release dates yet. Amazon Prime and Netflix haven’t revealed dates for these 2019 releases:
Martin Scorcese’s The Irishman, a film about Jimmy Hoffa starring Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, Harvey Keitel, Ray Romano, and Bobby Cannavale (Netflix)
The Kid, a Western biopic with Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke, Dane DeHaan, and Vincent D’Onofrio (Netflix)
The Man Who Killed Hitler Then Bigfoot, starring Sam Elliott (Netflix)
6 Underground, a Michael Bay film starring Ryan Reynolds, Ben Hardy, Dave Franco, and Mélanie Laurent (Netflix)
The Last Thing He Wanted, Dee Rees directs Anne Hathaway, Ben Affleck, Willem Dafoe, and Toby Jones; journalist quits newspaper job to become an arms dealer for a covert government agency (Netflix)
The Laundromat, Steven Soderbergh directs Meryl Streep, Gary Oldman, Antonio Banderas, James Cromwell, about the Pentagon Papers (Netflix)
Radioactive, Rosamund Pike plays Marie Curie, with Anya Taylor-Joy (Amazon)
Some of these films will have revised release dates, or get pushed to 2020.
So grab your calendar and start making your plans–here are the movies you’ll want to see in 2019 (and many you might not):
January
Glass – Superhero, M. Night Shyamalan trilogy part 3, stars Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, James McAvoy; continues where Unbreakable and Split left off – January 18.
Serenity– Mystery/Thriller, stars Anne Hathaway, Jason Clarke, Djimon Hounsou, Jeremy Strong, Diane Lane; sorry, no relation to Firefly – January 25.
King of Thieves– Heist Comedy, stars Jim Broadbent, Tom Courtenay, Charlie Cox, Michael Gambon, and Ray Winstone – January 25.
The new courtroom drama and biopic Marshall hits theaters across the U.S. beginning today. Director Reginald Hudlin (Boomerang, House Party) recounts a case in the life of Thurgood Marshall, one of the leading U.S. Supreme Court Justices in the history of the bench. We meet Marshall, played by Chadwick Boseman, midway through the beginning of his career as lawyer and civil rights crusader. After he already sued one law school for discrimination and graduated from another, he began defending individuals that were targeted as criminals based on race, and at the beginning of the film Marshall is struggling to justify to the NAACP, the organization that employs him, that his ongoing fight is worth the resources of the group. Marshall needs a win for his own reputation and for the NAACP. Plus, there is a man accused of a crime whose life is at stake.
The biggest surprise in the new courtroom drama is the risk-taking by Hudlin and Boseman in showing Marshall from his introduction not as humble and endearing, but cocky, abrasive, and confident. Not the quiet Atticus Finch of To Kill a Mockingbird, or the lazy and arrogant Lt. Daniel Kaffee of A Few Good Men, the film establishes upfront that the young Thurgood Marshall, the future first African-American member of the U.S. Supreme Court, was already a brilliant and savvy attorney and outspoken and fearless even early in his career. We only learn of the difficult rise he had in his life before the film takes place via stories told by Marshall to local counsel Sam Friedman, played by Josh Gad, as the case procedure unfolds and more facts surface. Echoing his performance as Jackie Robinson in the biopic 42 (reviewed here previously at borg.com), the Marvel Studios Black Panther actor plays Marshall as decisive and determined. The audience has no doubt he’s going to succeed, but the drama is in how he makes the system work for him and his client, risking Friedman and his firm or anything else that gets in the way, to get a favorable verdict.
Before Marshall won 29 of 32 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, before he successfully argued the landmark 20th century case Brown v. Board of Education–the famous school desegregation case–Marshall had to learn how to win with the deck always stacked against his clients. The message is historically important and delivered without the preaching that often accompanies biopics. But it would have served Marshall’s legacy better had Hudlin, and writers Jacob and Michael Koskoff, selected a case with universal impact. Like the obvious: Brown v. Board of Education. The matter-specific case selected instead is a bit unfortunate from a storytelling standpoint because it so closely mirrors the case in To Kill a Mockingbird, one of the great American novels of all time and also one of the great American films about jurisprudence and race. Those familiar with Harper Lee’s 1960 novel may feel some deja vu. But there’s no mimicry here per se, Lee’s novel was derived from an actual case from 1936 and State of Connecticut v. Spell was a real case that is used to attempt to showcase Thurgood Marshall, the man, the lawyer, and the civil rights crusader, in an introductory sense. But the question remains: Why select a Marshall case that the master lawyer didn’t even get to argue?
This one looks like it could be the next holiday classic.
Although he’s had theatrical roles in 2013’s The Fifth Estate, 2014’s A Walk Among the Tombstones, 2016’s Colossal, and this year’s Beauty and the Beast remake, Dan Stevens is better known for his British TV roles like Matthew Crawley throughout the run of Downton Abbey. But the genre world really took notice of Stevens this year when he headlined a new X-Men TV series, playing David Haller, a crazed wielder of superpowers on FX’s new series Legion. His next role takes him back to jolly old England and a character that can’t possibly be more classic and British: Charles Dickens himself.
Although the last time we saw someone play the part of Charles Dickens in a major film it was Gonzo in The Muppet Christmas Carol, Stevens’ off-kilter, frenetic kinetic sense, and quizzical expressions make for an intriguing take on Dickens in the first preview for The Man Who Invented Christmas. Stevens looks like he’s channeling Gene Wilder from Young Frankenstein in one scene from the movie’s first trailer.
And we get to see Academy Award-winning actor and Shakespearean great Christopher Plummer (Twelve Monkeys, Up, Wolf, Dragnet, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Somewhere in Time, Return of the Pink Panther, The Sound of Music) join the likes of Alastair Sim, Albert Finney, Michael Caine, Patrick Stewart, and Bill Murray as Ebenezer Scrooge. This take on Scrooge focuses on Dickens writing the novel A Christmas Carol and getting a spell of writer’s block. And speaking of Finney, the view of the film in the preview looks like a mash-up of style from the comedies Tom Jones and Shakespeare in Love.
Here’s a fun preview for The Man Who Invented Christmas:
Many think kaiju movies–Asian giant monster flicks featuring Godzilla, Mothra, and the like–are comedic in their own right. Right or wrong, at some point a worldwide disaster apparently brings along its own laughs. Melodramas, rampaging monsters, usually devoid of a solid plot, kaiju still claims millions of loyal members in its fan base.
A new U.S. film with the look of a J.J. Abrams Cloverfield production or even Attack the Block is coming your way in 2017. Colossal, screening at the Sundance Film Festival this weekend, is a monster movie, but probably more of a parody of the giant beasty films. It’s close enough that the company owning the right to the actual Godzilla movies sued the filmmakers of Colossal during production (a confidential settlement was reached in 2015). Academy Award-winning actress Anne Hathaway stars as a rather ordinary woman who happens to have a psychic connection with a giant monster ripping apart the streets of Seoul, South Korea.
Is there an audience for a Godzilla meets Being John Malkovich mash-up?
Previewed last year here at borg.com and teased even earlier here, the live-action version of Beauty and the Beast, starring the Harry Potter series’ Emma Watson as Belle, is on its way to theaters this year. Disney just released a new television spot and theatrical poster showcasing leads Watson and Dan Stevens and the all-star cast. You can’t understate how significant this film will be for Disney this year at the box office, with the potential to rival both Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and Star Wars: Episode VIII, based on early responses to the first release of images from the film.
An Academy Award nominee for Best Picture, Disney’s animated Beauty and the Beast is arguably the finest Disney production to come from the studio in its more than ninety year history, and no actress today has such a large and devoted fan following as Watson. More than 20 million viewers saw the first teaser, and nearly 30 million viewers watched the first trailer. Watson’s first major genre role since Harry Potter will make this a big box office winner for Disney.
This is the first time audiences get to see Watson singing as Belle. She evokes Julie Andrews in a very The Sound of Music-inspired setting. Here is the new trailer for Beauty and the Beast:
It’s interesting that 20th Century Fox is not calling the new FX channel series Legion, X-Men: Legion, although it at least is carrying the X-Men symbol as part of the title art. Netflix’s Marvel series Daredevil was already a recognizable brand, and once onboard it was easy for fans to try on the next series, Jessica Jones and Luke Cage. But Legion may get lost in the shuffle of a half-dozen DC Universe series and Netflix’s cornering the market on Marvel serials. To be successful Legion will need to be good, and good enough to succeed based on word-of-mouth, just as Luke Cage was able to take off with viewers earlier this year.
Legion, as a character, hails from writer Chris Claremont and legendary comic book artist Bill Sienkiewicz from the New Mutants comic book in 1985. Legion is David Haller (played by Downton Abbey actor and the new Beauty and the Beast star Dan Stevens), the mutant son of Professor Charles Xavier. Legion is one of those superheroes who can take on others’ abilities (something like the adaptive powers of Sylar and Peter Petrelli in Heroes, the Charmed Ones in Charmed, the X-Men universe Sentinels, The Borg from Star Trek, or Doomsday). This is related to his schizophrenia or similar mental disorder–as a mutant it means each personality is tied to Haller manifesting different powers. Which means we have the foundation for what could be a pretty open-ended playground for the series writers.
Legion’s cast includes Scott Lawrence, Mackenzie Grey, Rachel Keller, Aubrey Plaza, Jean Smart, Katie Aselton, Jeremie Harris, Bill Irwin, and Amber Midthunder.
An Academy Award nominee for Best Picture, Disney’s animated Beauty and the Beast is arguably the finest Disney production to come from the studio in its more than ninety year history. Coming next year to the big screen is a new, live-action version of Beauty and the Beast (teased earlier this year here at borg.com), starring the Harry Potter series’ Emma Watson as Belle. Academy Award-winning screenplay writer Bill Condon (Gods and Monsters, Chicago, the Twilight series) is directing the picture.
Despite press accounts to the contrary, don’t look for an adaptation of the classic fairy tale, but a close adaptation of the animated Disney film (as the original did not have the talking furniture or most of the other characters created for the 1991 film). Just like the first teaser was quite pretty as set design goes, so is this fuller trailer. More than 20 million viewers watched the first teaser, so make no mistake: Emma Watson’s first major genre role since Harry Potter will make this a big box office winner for Disney.
The previews remind us of the grand production of Phantom of the Opera back in 2004, a sleeper, but a visual spectacle, too. Jacqueline Durran (Pride and Prejudice) adapted the animated costumes for the film, which look close but not quite as amazing as the 1991 animated versions. Everything else looks like this could be a near scene-for-scene copy of the 1991 version except in the animated movie Belle had dark brown hair and a distinct, different hair style from other “Disney princess” characters that set her apart from the rest of the blonde fairy tale leads, something you’d think Disney would have kept the same at least for cross-marketing its toy tie-ins.
Who doesn’t love each new appearance of Kevin Kline? He’s featured prominently in this new trailer. Check it out:
