James Bond, Venom, Dune: A fall movie season in flux (like everything else)
Filmmaker Cary Fukunaga has been waiting more than a year and a half for the biggest moving-picture show of his career, the James Bond movie No Time To Die, to arrive in theatres. It has been a foreign and surreal look. Months before the much-delayed pic is even released on October viii, the film'due south theme song, by Billie Eilish, has already won a Grammy.
"I had a dream last night where Sam Mendes was in that location," Fukunaga said in a contempo interview, referring to the managing director of the previous 2 Bond movies. "Nosotros were on vacation on some frozen lake. He was done with Bail films. And he was like, 'Oh, you finished one. Now you lot get a interruption.' And then we started, like, water skiing on a frozen lake."
"It was a weird dream," says Fukunaga.
'EVERYTHING IS FLUID'
The autumn movie season – commonly a reliable rhythm and cozy autumn comfort – is this year, like much of the by 18 months, a fiddling disorienting. On the fashion are movies once planned to open as far back every bit April 2020, like No Time To Dice, summertime movies that hope to detect better conditions in autumn, and films that accept been shot and edited during the pandemic.
What has coalesced is a motion picture hodgepodge – something much more than robust than last fall'due south cobbled together, more often than not virtual autumn movie season – a flavor that stretched all the way to the Oscars in April. But the contempo rise in COVID-19 cases due to the Delta variant has added new uncertainty to a time Hollywood had once hoped would be nearing normality.
"Everything is fluid, and everything volition stay fluid," says Tom Rothman, chairman and main executive of Sony Pictures. "Information technology'southward the antithesis of the style it used to be. In the old days, you planted your flag and you lot didn't motility for hell or high water. Now, there's a bang-up premium on being very flexible and nimble."
The unpredictability of the conditions is universally shared but acutely felt at studios like Sony that even through the pandemic have remained largely committed to sectional theatrical releases. While Disney (with Disney+) and Warner Bros (with HBO Max) accept sought to hedge their bets and boost subscribers to their streaming services with day-and-appointment releases in 2021, Sony, Universal, Paramount and MGM (home to Bond) – with diverse windowing strategies – have mostly stuck to theatre-outset plans.
In all the movies coming this autumn – amid them The Final Duel (Oct 15), Dune (October 22), Eternals (November 5), House Of Gucci (Nov 24) – nothing may be quite as tense as the e'er-unfolding drama around one-time-fashioned, butts-in-the-seats moviegoing.
Citing the Delta-driven surge, Paramount has uprooted from the season, booting Meridian Gun: Bohemian to next year. But on the heels of some promising box-office performances, many of the autumn's summit movies and leading Oscar hopefuls are only doubling down on theatrical, and the cultural affect that comes with it. Even if it'southward a gamble.
"We have a lot of inventory. You don't desire to keep pushing all of the films," says Rothman. "At a certain point, you lot have to go."
After building confidence in moviegoing over the summertime, Delta has sapped some of Hollywood's momentum. The National Research Group had recorded more than 80 per cent of moviegoers were comfortable going to theatres in July. Just that number dipped to 67 per cent last month.
Yet summer's final big film, Curiosity's Shang-Chi And The Fable Of The Ten Rings, gave the fall a major lift with an estimated U.s.a.$90 million in ticket sales over the four-twenty-four hour period Labor Solar day weekend – one of the all-time performances of the pandemic. Notably, it was simply playing in theatres.
Even before all the numbers were in, Rothman and Sony moved upwardly the release of Venom: Let At that place Be Carnage, the sequel to its Us$856 meg superhero hit, by 2 weeks to Oct ane. Information technology kicks off Sony's slate including Jason Reitman's Ghostbusters: Afterlife (Nov 19), Denzel Washington'south A Journal For Jordan (Dec 10) and Spider-Man: No Manner Home (Dec 17).
'TRY TO STAY POSITIVE'
No studio is betting quite as big on motion picture theatres this fall as Sony. The studio lacks a major streaming platform simply has signed lucrative pacts with Netflix and Disney to stream films afterward theatrical release. Discussing the disappointing results of solar day-and-appointment movies like Warner Bros' The Suicide Squad versus a theatre-beginning hitting like Disney's Free Guy, Rothman recently touted the caption: "Information technology'southward the window, stupid."
"There is no economic model to – never mind make a turn a profit – to break fifty-fifty on the assets themselves without a windowed universe. It doesn't exist," says Rothman.
That debate – what movies open where and when – is sure to remain unsettled in the coming months, and probably well beyond. Warner Bros has pledged to return to exclusive theatrical releases, for 45 days, side by side twelvemonth. Simply little this fall – including the movie calendar – is a sure thing.
"Until the pandemic is genuinely behind united states of america, I don't recall that you tin can prognosticate nearly what the future of cinema is going to be," says Rothman. "It's still on emergency basis right now."
So Hollywood's summer in limbo volition stretch into the fall. But more than than any previous point in the pandemic, a whole lot of movies are lined up. The Venice and Telluride film festivals have kindled buzz for a broad assortment of upcoming films, including Jane Campion's lauded Netflix drama The Ability Of The Canis familiaris (Nov 17), with Benedict Cumberbatch. The Oscar race could take some major star ability, too. Among the early on standouts: Kristen Stewart equally Princess Diana in Spencer (Nov. 5) and Volition Smith as Richard Williams, father of Venus and Serena, in King Richard (Nov 19).
In The Eyes Of Tammy Faye Jessica Chastain transforms into the infamous televangelist. Searchlight Pictures will release it Sep 17 in theatres.
"We like that communal experience, especially later a twelvemonth and a half of beingness starved of it. It doesn't mean streaming is going away. Information technology's here to stay," says Chastain, who besides stars in the HBO miniseries Scenes From A Marriage. "In my mind, I just come across the manufacture as expanding."
Only how many films accept been released during the pandemic is often underestimated. Merely even with a few loftier-profile departures, the upcoming flavor is crowded. Apple has Joel Coen's The Tragedy Of Macbeth, with Denzel Washington. Amazon has the musical accommodation Everybody'south Talking About Jamie (Sep 17). New movies are on tap from globe-class filmmakers similar Paul Thomas Anderson, Guillermo del Toro (Nightmare Aisle, December 3), Pedro Almodóvar (Parallel Mothers, Dec 24), Asghar Farhadi (A Hero, Jan seven) and Paolo Sorrentino (The Manus Of God, Nov 24).
There'south as well a banquet of docs including Julie Cohen and Betsy West's Julia Child portrait Julia (not however dated); Liz Garbus' Becoming Cousteau (October 22); Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin's The Rescue (October), about the 2022 Thai cave rescue; and, fittingly, a portrait of one of the pandemic'southward almost ubiquitous faces, communicable diseases expert Dr Anthony Fauci, in John Hoffman and Janet Tobias' Fauci (Sep ten).
Netflix volition release 3 dozen films betwixt now and Christmas – including Maggie Gyllenhaal's directorial debut The Lost Daughter (Dec 17); the Western The Harder They Fall (Nov 3), with Jonathan Majors and Idris Elba; Lin-Manuel Miranda'south directorial debut Tick, Tick ... Boom!; and Antoine Fuqua's The Guilty (Sep 24), a unmarried-setting crime thriller starring Jake Gyllenhaal as a demoted law officer taking 911 calls.
Merely before production began earlier this year, Fuqua came in shut contact with someone who tested positive for the coronavirus. To go on distance from his bandage and crew, he directed the flick from a van parked outside the set.
"It'south a strange world nosotros're in at the moment, and it wears on all of us quite a bit," says Fuqua. "But I try to stay positive. That's why The Guilty happened. I do think in that location'due south a responsibility for all of united states to forge ahead, not wallow in the situation that nosotros're in, and find new means to do it."
Hopefully, the long delay of a number of films that have been waiting in the wings for more than a yr – including Steven Spielberg'south West Side Story (Dec 10), Wes Anderson'southward The French Dispatch (October 22) and, yes, No Fourth dimension to Die – will presently finally be over.
"What I haven't gotten on this one is the satisfaction of anyone else seeing the flick and saying 'I hated information technology' or 'I like it,'" says Fukunaga. "That's the part y'all're waiting for. Some people are going to like information technology. Some people aren't going to like information technology. But you lot still desire to hear it. Fifty-fifty if you don't want to hear information technology, you lot desire to hear it."
Source: https://cnalifestyle.channelnewsasia.com/entertainment/fall-movie-lineup-james-bond-dune-last-duel-venom-278696
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