During the climactic scene in Man of Steel, Superman (Henry Cavill) battles General Zod (Michael Shannon) and in the process decimates the city of Metropolis. Turns out Batman (Ben Affleck) was witness to the destruction, too. “He has the power to wipe out the entire human race,” growls Bruce Wayne. There we have it: the “v” in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is clearer than ever now. Batman wants to take out Superman before he destroys us all. We, of course, know that Clark Kent’s intentions are good, but the mess he made in Man of Steel and the death toll to come out of all that tell a different story. What else does this positively jam-packed trailer tease? Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg) is up to no good and still has hair, and Gal Gadot looks fantastic as Wonder Woman. No sign of Aquaman (Jason Momoa) just yet.
If you were ever on the fence here, this latest peek at Dawn of Justice should reel you right in. A stellar trailer, indeed. Zack Snyder’s upcoming DC adventure is out March 26, 2016.
Four films and one spinoff later, the Paranormal Activity franchise is ready to reach its climax and conclusion. Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension is prepared to guide the supernatural horror flicks that came before it into the light by addressing the many unanswered questions and riddles left lingering over the years. Producer Jason Blum of Blumhouse Productions confirmed to USA Today that Ghost Dimension is indeed the final installment and that answers are coming.
“It’s coming to an end. This is it, the finale,” says Blum. “We’re saying it before the movie opens. We’re not going to grind this horror franchise into the ground. This will keep Paranormal Activity as part of this culture and this particular time in a really fantastic way. We couldn’t go just teasing. All the questions that everyone has asked from the past Paranormal Activity films: What does Toby look like? What’s the backstory to the families? These questions have been teased out. Now they will be answered.”
That’s a big one. Ever since the first Paranormal Activity released in 2007, audiences have been forced to use their powerful imaginations to put a face on the invisible, angry entity that has been terrorizing the families featured in all the movies. In Ghost Dimensions, a special video recording device enables the latest family to actually see the paranormal activity going on around them. PA producer and director of the original Oren Peli commented on this major reveal: “We’ve done well without showing Toby, being able to create tensions and scares based on audiences’ imagination,” he said. “But people are very curious.”
Curious, indeed! And by the looks of it, Ghost Dimension may just be the most haunting Paranormal Activity of all. Watch the debut trailer hanging above to see what I mean. Though the many sequels failed to capture the same kind of awe and suspense of the original, this final chapter aims to bring it all home by tying everything that came before it together in a neat bow. Hopefully plot satisfaction and fun scares will have made the journey worth it.
Eight years after the micro-budget original spent $15,000 and made $193 million at the box office worldwide, there’s no denying the powerful effect the Paranormal Activity franchise has had on the horror genre and the box office in general. It spurred the proliferation of scary micro-budget movies including other Blumhouse works like Insidious, Sinister, and The Purge. And perhaps we haven’t seen the last of PA after all?
“At some point, might there be a reboot? You never know. We’ve never discussed it,” says Blum. “[But] we made this movie like it’s the end of this Paranormal line for sure.”
Illumination Entertainment, the maker of Despicable Me and the upcoming Minions movie, has a new animated comedy in the works about the lives our pets lead after we leave for work or school each day. The first teaser trailer, embedded above, does a fantastic job of setting the scene featuring Illumination’s slick animation style and signature humor. An overarching plot isn’t being divulged just yet, but that doesn’t even matter–The Secret Life of Pets is sure to draw audiences of all ages to its adorable collection of cats and dogs and video game savvy birds. The stacked voice cast includes Louis C.K., Eric Stonestreet, Kevin Hart, Ellie Kemper, Lake Bell, Jenny Slate, Bobby Moynihan, Hannibal Buress, and Albert Brooks.
Ridley Scott, the director behind Alien and Prometheus, is going back to space with The Martian. Matt Damon stars as an astronaut who gets stranded on Mars when an expedition to the red planets goes sideways. The film’s official synopsis includes additional detail:
During a manned mission to Mars, Astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is presumed dead after a fierce storm and left behind by his crew. But Watney has survived and finds himself stranded and alone on the hostile planet. With only meager supplies, he must draw upon his ingenuity, wit and spirit to subsist and find a way to signal to Earth that he is alive. Millions of miles away, NASA and a team of international scientists work tirelessly to bring “the Martian” home, while his crewmates concurrently plot a daring, if not impossible rescue mission. As these stories of incredible bravery unfold, the world comes together to root for Watney’s safe return.
Damon’s Interstellar co-star Jessica Chastain joins him on this new mission and the rest of the star-studded cast includes Kristen Wiig, Jeff Daniels, Michael Peña, Kate Mara, Sean Bean, Sebastian Stan, Aksel Hennie, and Chiwetel Ejiofor. The Martian is based on the best-selling book of the same named written by Andy Weir.
Are you excited to watch Damon survive on Mars? As NASA and Elon Musk’s SpaceX continue their collective efforts to make a trip to Mars a reality, movies like Interstellar and now The Martian make for some good entertainment that also shines a light on our not-so-distant future.
This isn’t your Ashton Kutcher’s Steve Jobs. Danny Boyle (127 Hours, Slumdog Millionaire, Trainspotting) directs the third major biographical drama showcasing the life and times of the Apple co-founder (yes, I am absolutely counting 1999’s unforgettable Pirates of Silicon Valley). Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (Moneyball, The Social Network) adapts Walter Isaacson’s authorized biography Steve Jobs. Michael Fassbender slips into the iconic innovator’s black turtleneck this time around. Also starring is Kate Winslet as Joanna Hoffman, former marketing chief of Macintosh; Seth Rogen as Apple co-founder Steve Wozniack; Jeff Daniels as John Sculley, former Apple CEO; Katherine Waterston as Jobs’ ex-girlfriend Chrisann Brennan, and Michael Stuhlbarg as Andy Hertzfeld, one of the original members of the Apple Macintosh development team. The logline reads as follows:
Set backstage at three iconic product launches and ending in 1998 with the unveiling of the iMac, Steve Jobs takes us behind the scenes of the digital revolution to paint an intimate portrait of the brilliant man at its epicenter.
The debut trailer, hanging above, showcases a decidedly more elegant take on Jobs’ rise to influential immortality. With award-winning talent working hard to bring Isaacson’s esteemed book to life, there’s much to anticipate when Steve Jobs hits theatres October 9.
National Lampoon’s classic 1983 comedy Vacation is making a comeback. Instead of a reboot, the new Vacation stars Ed Helms as the now grown up Russell “Rusty” Griswold. In the original, Rusty was played by a young Anthony Michael Hall. Co-starring with Helms is Christina Applegate, who plays his wife, and Leslie Mann has a supporting role. Reprising their roles from the origial Vacation are Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo. The film, written by John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein (Horrible Bosses), sees a new generation of Griswolds take a bumpy trip to the Walley World theme park before it closes for good. This red-band trailer is a ton of fun packs some solid laughs. Are you excited for a Vacation set in 2015?
What happens when director M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs, The Village, Lady in the Water) teams up with producer Jason Blum (Paranormal Activity, Insidious, Sinister, The Purge)?
The Visit, that’s what. Shyamalan’s next original supernatural film goes a little something like this:
Shyamalan returns to his roots with the terrifying story of a brother and sister who are sent to their grandparents’ remote Pennsylvania farm for a weeklong trip. Once the children discover that the elderly couple is involved in something deeply disturbing, they see their chances of getting back home are growing smaller every day.
Let’s just say these aren’t your typical grandparents–unless your Grandma and Grandpa are seemingly possessed by otherworldly, decidedly demonic creatures.
With The Visit, Shyamalan is embracing Blum’s tried-and-true “found footage” shooting technique; Paranormal Activity and its many sequels have proven that even dirt-cheap horror flicks can be thrilling and quite lucrative. Though the acclaimed director has shot some duds as of late (read: The Happening, After Earth), this inevitable collaboration between Shyamalan and Blum is just tantalizing enough to warrant a look-see. Shyamalan is known for his twist endings that turn all of the events proceeding it on its head, and I can only imagine what he’s cooked up in Blumhouse Productions’ latest.
Following a decidedly lackluster debut teaser that dropped on January, the first official full-length trailer for the upcoming Fantastic Four reboot picks up the pace and excitement with some pretty slick looking action sequences and a closer look at the heroes’ superpowers. Also, we get a blink-and-you-miss-it first look at the face of the superhero team’s nemesis, Dr. Doom.
Fantastic Four, a contemporary re-imagining of Marvel’s original and longest-running superhero team, centers on four young outsiders who teleport to an alternate and dangerous universe, which alters their physical form in shocking ways. Their lives irrevocably upended, the team must learn to harness their daunting new abilities and work together to save Earth from a former friend turned enemy.
Miles Teller (Reed Richards / Mr. Fantastic), Michael B. Jordan (Johnny Storm / Human Torch), Kate Mara (Susan Storm / Invisible Woman), Jamie Bell (Ben Grimm / The Thing), and Toby Kebbell (Victor Domashev / Doom) star in the reboot directed by Josh Trank (Chronicle) and written by Simon Kinberg and Jeremy Slater.
If the original Ant-Man teaser left you feeling twinges of excitement for Marvel’s next superhero movie, the first official trailer will have you beaming in adrenaline. This is our first major look at Paul Rudd as the poorly (?) named hero who can shrink down to the size of an insect at will. The clip features extended scenes showing Rudd’s Scott Lang utilizing the power of his suit, as well as the introduction to Corey Stoll’s villainous Yellowjacket. The special effects look breathtaking, and the thrilling adventure laid out here–sprinkled with Marvel’s signature humor, of course–comes off as more than promising.
Here’s the debut trailer for Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, a breakout hit from this year’s Sundance Film Festival. The story hails from author Jesse Andrews; he adapted his 2012 novel of the same name for the big screen. You may recognize its stars Thomas Mann and Olivia Cooke from Project X and TV’s Bates Motel, respectively. Also starring is Connie Britton (Nashville), Nick Offerman (Parks & Rec), Molly Shannon (SNL), Jon Bernthal (The Walking Dead), and Ronald Cyler II. Alfonso Gomez-Rejon (American Horror Story) directs.
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is the uniquely funny, moving story of Greg (Thomas Mann), a high school senior who is trying to blend in anonymously, avoiding deeper relationships as a survival strategy for navigating the social minefield that is teenage life. He even describes his constant companion Earl (RJ Cyler), with whom he makes short film parodies of classic movies, as more of a ‘co-worker’ than a best friend. But when Greg’s mom (Connie Britton) insists he spend time with Rachel (Olivia Cooke) – a girl in his class who has just been diagnosed with cancer – he slowly discovers how worthwhile the true bonds of friendship can be.
Coming out of the festival it won the coveted Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award, and critics were captivated. Positive word of mouth spread quickly, and now’s your chance to preview it in this trailer. Looks like a beautifully shot, emotional rollercoaster of a love story. What do you think?
In December, director Sam Mendes introduced to the world the next Bond film, SPECTRE, with the cast and car in tow. Today, we get our first look. Daniel Craig is back as 007 for the fourth time and his past comes to haunt him here. Dangling threads from Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, and Skyfall come to a head in SPECTRE and Bond is forced to face the sinister Hannes Oberhauser, played already to perfection by Christoph Waltz. Though Waltz is credited as portraying Oberhauser, I had speculated that he’d end up being Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the actual head of the SPECTRE organization. (SPECTRE, remember, is an acronym that stands for SPecial Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion.) In the teaser, Waltz’ Oberhauser tells Bond, “It’s been a long time. And finally, here we are.” In Bond lore, Oberhauser served as a mentor for Bond before he mysteriously vanished; so perhaps Waltz really is Oberhauser and Blofeld’s portrayer is still being kept under wraps? So much speculation to be had here. It’s just so exciting how serialized Craig’s rendition of Bond has become in terms of his past meeting up with his present to propel the story forward. Watching this latest mystery unfold which has so much to do with Bond’s origins and his connection to SPECTRE and Oberhauser is going to be a fun ride, to say the least.
Here we have the third and final trailer for Avengers: Age of Ultron and it’s a doozy. In it we learn more about the origins of the superhero film’s big bad Ultron, who’s voiced by the incomparable James Spader. “I was designed to save the world,” snarls the A.I. And then: “There’s only one path to peace: their extinction.” Ultron was created by Tony Stark (aka Iron Man) as part of a project that would “create a suit of armor around the world.” Unfortunately, things went unexpectedly awry and he ended up “creating something terrible.”
Ultron’s plan? “We can tear them apart from the inside,” he brainstorms alongside Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch. Does this mean the new additions are playing for the wrong team, or is this all a trick? Regardless, the plan will prove fruitful since we’ve already seen The Hulk duke it out with Stark’s Hulkbuster.
Finally, there’s the tantalizing tease at the very end–our first look at The Vision, a popular superhero that Marvel’s been hinting at in its recent slew of movie posters. He’s played by Paul Bettany, the same actor who’s been voicing Stark’s home and suit A.I. J.A.R.V.I.S. Intrigue!