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The Cleopatra movie starring Angelina Jolie was announced over a decade ago, and it went through many phases of development, with several big names attached to create it, but it stopped just short of completion before ultimately being scrapped. The movie was part romance epic and part “political thriller with assassinations and sex,” according to the movie’s original screenwriter Brian Helgeland. The Oscar-winning Jolie was set to play the Egyptian queen in a tentpole for Sony Pictures that once courted directors David Fincher, Ang Lee, and Martin Scorsese to helm. But it never exactly got off the ground.

Helgeland said in an interview with Inverse (via Variety):

“I was the very first writer on ‘Cleopatra’ when it was being developed for Angelina Jolie to star in, which was almost made. It had elements of a political thriller with assassinations and sex, but it’s an epic that’s divided between her love affairs with Caesar and Marc Antony. Lots of true events surprised me when I was writing it.”

He went on:

“For example, the day Caesar was assassinated — the Ides of March and all that stuff — she was in Rome. They were leaving for Egypt, and the reason why they had to kill him at that time was because he was headed out of town with her. That’s historically true and featured in the script. She writes Marc Antony’s speech — ‘friends, Romans, countrymen’ — because he doesn’t know what to say, but she tells him what to say. It’s sort of her way of saying ‘fuck you’ to those guys because she’s smart enough and he’s not.”

Hollywood has long struggled to get a Cleopatra movie into production following Elizabeth Taylor’s infamous 1963 epic, which had such an enormous budget that it nearly bankrupted 20th Century Fox. Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins was developing a new Cleopatra movie for Gal Gadot a few years ago, while Dune filmmaker Denis Villeneuve has long wanted to make his own Cleopatra movie. The latter project appeared to get a promising development update when reports surfaced earlier this year that 1917 screenwriter Krysty Wilson-Cairns was writing Villeneuve’s movie.

Back in May 2011, Jolie herself said in an interview with The Telegraph that she was hoping her Cleopatra movie would be an accurate portrayal of the historical icon. She said:

“She has been very misunderstood. I thought it was all about the glamour, but then I read about her and she was a very strong mother, she spoke five languages and she was a leader. My performance will never be as lovely as Elizabeth’s. We are trying to get into a different truth about her as a pharaoh in history and not as a sex symbol, because she really wasn’t … Even this idea of her having many lovers – it was possible that it was only two. She is very interesting, but she wasn’t a great beauty.”

When exactly Villeneuve might go into production on his own Cleopatra movie remains to be seen. The filmmaker has several high profile projects currently in development, including a third Dune movie with Legendary Entertainment.

Jennifer Aniston is producing a remake of the classic 1980 comedy 9 to 5 for 20th Century Studios, and Diablo Cody (Juno, Lisa Frankenstein) is currently wiring the script.

The original film starred Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Dolly Parton and Dabney Coleman, and it follows three female office colleagues who decide to exact revenge on their sexist, egotistical boss.

Fed up with their boss’ behavior, the trio team up to transform their oppressive workplace into a more equitable and supportive environment.

Through a series of hilarious and unforeseen events, which includes accidentally kidnapping their boss, the women make changes in the office that improve productivity and morale.

The movie was a big hit and in 1982 there was a sitcom that was made which aired on ABC. Tomlin and Fonda also participated in the 2022 documentary Still Working 9 to 5, which focuses on the impact of the classic film 40 years later.

There are no details on what this reimagining will entail, but the original film is a great and funny movie and a classic. Good luck to the creative team trying to make a better film than what that original movie delivered.

Source: Variety

Not long after we learned that Russell Crowe is starring in a new demonic horror film titled The Exorcism, the first trailer has dropped teasing the terrifying nightmare that awaits.

This film comes from the creator of the Scream franchise, Kevin Williamson, who produces, and it looks like a great concept for a horror film. It’s inspired by movie productions that are said to be cursed.

The Exorcism follows Anthony Miller (Crowe), “a troubled actor who begins to unravel while shooting a supernatural horror film.”

It’s explained that “His estranged daughter (Ryan Simpkins) wonders if he’s slipping back into his past addictions or if there’s something more sinister at play.”

The film comes from director Joshua John Miller from a script he wrote with M.A. Fortin. They are the creators of the hit series Queen of the South.

Additional cast includes Sam Worthington (Avatar: The Way of Water), Chloe Bailey (Praise This), Adam Goldberg (The Equalizer) and David Hyde Pierce (Frasier).

The filmmakers said in a statement: “Vertical has been a great partner in helping us complete and realize our vision for this story. Their level of enthusiasm and support are rare to find.”

The Exorcism releases in select US theaters on June 7th, ahead of it streaming exclusively on Shudder.

Paramount+ has released a full trailer for Taylor Sheridan’s Mayor of Kingstown Season 3. It features Jeremy Renner back as Mike McClusky, and he is jumping back into a hardcore crime war, and has no problems roughing up people he doesn’t like.

Mayor of Kingstown follows the McLusky family, powerbrokers in Kingstown, Michigan, where the business of incarceration is the only thriving industry. Tackling themes of systemic racism, corruption and inequality, the series provides a stark look at their attempt to bring order and justice to a town that has neither.

In Season 3, “A series of explosions rock Kingstown and its citizens, as a new face of the Russian mob sets up shop in the city, and a drug war rages inside and outside prison walls.

“The pressure is on Mike McLusky (Renner) to end the war but things get complicated when a familiar face from his incarcerated past threatens to undermine the Mayor’s attempts to keep the peace among all factions.”

The third season comes almost two years after Renner’s snowplow accident. He had a rough road to recovery, but it looks like he’s ready to be back and kick some ass.

Mayor of Kingstown Season 3 will debut on Sunday, June 2nd. This next season looks great!

When the Transformers One trailer was released, fans of the franchise were caught off guard by the strange, childlike comedic tone of the film. It’s not what any of us were expecting.

During an interview with CinemaBlend, director Josh Cooley addressed the comedic tone of the trailer and explained that when they set out to make this film, it wasn’t to make a comedy. But, that’s what it looked like!

Cooley explained: “The trailer definitely leads into the comedy of it and shows the fun of these characters together. Which was actually very easy to do. It wasn’t like we set out to make a comedy, but it was setting out to make a film for everyone.”

He went on to say: “And it was easy to do with the characters because they were so clearly defined. But also with our actors, there’s a lot of improv that came into this. … The beginning of the film definitely has that.”

While the movie will have a fair share of comedy, the director also explained that the movie will also feature real danger. He said: “But there’s real stakes that we’re not showing yet in the trailer that has the epic scale and adventure and action that we know about Transformers films.”

He added: “There’s a lot of danger. There’s some real danger in this film. Yeah. And there’s always that, like we talked about earlier, that ticking time bomb of when’s this relationship going to fall apart between Orion and D-16.”

We’ll just have to wait and see how the story for the film plays out. That first trailer, though, did not do anything to get me excited to watch the film. I’m also not a fan of the animation and art style of it.

I will watch the movie because I’m curious to see if it can win me over. My expectations are low, though, which means it can either meet them or surpass them.

This movie tells the “origin story of how the most iconic characters in the Transformers universe, Orion Pax and D-16, went from brothers-in-arms to become sworn enemies, Optimus Prime and Megatron.”

The film stars Chris Hemsworth as Orion Pax / Optimus Prime, Brian Tyree Henry as D-16 / Megatron, Scarlett Johansson as Elita-1, and Keegan-Michael Key as B-127 / Bumblebee.

Producer Lorenzo Di Bonaventura previously said: “This is … the origin story of young Megatron and young Optimus. If you know the origin, they started as friends, and over time things devolved for them and they ended up on two sides.

“So we’re telling the young Optimus and the young Megatron story. We really are telling the origin story of all Transformers, both what they were at the beginning of it, to how they grow, to how they grow apart.”

This will be the first of what Di Bonaventura calls a “natural trilogy,” and it’s going to explore “Cybertron in a way you’ve never seen it, that no one’s ever seen it before.”

Jon Hamm is also in the film and will voice Sentinel Prime. The movie will be released on September 20th, 2024.

Mike Flanagan (Doctor Sleep, Midnight Mass, The Haunting of Hill House) has offered an update on his film adaptation of Stephen King’s The Life of Chuck. He has completed post-production on the film, and one of its stars, David Dastmalchian, has offered his thoughts on the film.

Dastmalchian said of the film: “It’s beautiful. You think, ‘Oh, Mike Flanagan, Stephen King, this thing’s going to just be the most horrifying, terrifying, thing you’ve ever seen.’ [But] it is so beautifully rendered, heartfelt, the drama, the performances,” gushed Late Night with the Devil star Dastmalchian in a new interview with Gizmodo. 

He continued: “The cast in this is deep. [Matthew] Lillard has a moment in this film that just breaks my heart. Karen Gillan, another one who I think rides that incredible ski slope between her small indie art films and then big studio budgeted things. One of the best actors in Hollywood right now. Kate Siegel, I mean there’s so [many] great people! Ah, what a joy.”

The movie is based on the short story from King’s 2020 anthology If It Bleeds, “The Life of Chuck is three separate stories linked to tell the biography of Charles Krantz in reverse, beginning with his death from a brain tumor at 39 and ending with his childhood in a supposedly haunted house.”

According to the production, the project will draw tonally from Stand By Me, The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile.

Karen Gillan, one of the stars of the movie, saw a rough cut of it, and previously said that it had her “crying for days.”

The actress explained: “You know what, it didn’t feel that different. I was going into it like, ‘OK, how has he changed? He’s done so many movies. [It] felt the same! We were back in Alabama like we’d never left. If there was any difference, I suppose he just felt more… I mean, he was relaxed on the first one, but maybe he wasn’t, he was just pretending to be relaxed. But no, he was just the same Mike Flanagan, and brilliant and the movie is absolutely incredible. I saw a not-finished version of it, and literally didn’t stop crying for days. In a good way.”

The movie also stars Tom Hiddleston, Mark Hamill, Chiwetel Ejiofor (Doctor Strange), and Jacob Tremblay (Doctor Sleep), as well as Mia Sara, Matthew Lillard, Trinity Bliss, Harvey Guillen, Rahul Kohli, David Dastmalchian, and Heather Langenkamp.

This is one of might most anticipated upcoming film projects, and I’m very excited to see how Flanagan tells this story.

Source: Letterboxd / Gizmodo

Danny Boyle and Alex Garland’s 28 Years Later has added Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and Ralph Fiennes to its cast.

This is an exciting cast of actors for a project like this, the story of which will be told over the course of three films, all of which Garland is writing.

We don’t have any plot details to share, but Garland previously offered some insight on the theme of the film. He shared: “It’s to do with the passage of time, and thinking about what effect the passage of time would have.”

He added: “Is it what you would traditionally call a post-apocalyptic state? Or has something else begun to manifest? Time is really at the core of the engine of the film.”

When previously teasing the third movie, Garland said: “I have got a really cool idea for it, but it’s a much bigger movie, and one of the things about 28 Days Later is that it was small and punk and this idea is less small and punk.”

Boyle is set to direct the first film in the trilogy and The Marvels director Nia DaCosta is in talks to helm the second one.

This is going to be a really interest project. Boyle and Garland have been talking about doing this for years, and I’m excited to see what their plans are!

Source: Variety

Jerry Seinfeld has directed his feature film debut with the upcoming Pop Tart movie, Unfrosted, which is coming to Netflix. During a recent interview with GQ magazine, Seinfeld talked about his experience directing for the first time in his career and he has some interesting things to say.

He talked about his experience and explained that he believes the movie business is over. He said: “It was totally new to me. I thought I had done some cool stuff, but it was nothing like the way these people work.”

Seinfeld then added: “They’re so dead serious! They don’t have any idea that the movie business is over. They have no idea.”

When he was asked to elaborate on that comment, Seinfeld continued on a more serious note: “Film doesn’t occupy the pinnacle in the social, cultural hierarchy that it did for most of our lives.”

He added: “When a movie came out, if it was good, we all went to see it. We all discussed it. We quoted lines and scenes we liked. Now we’re walking through a fire hose of water, just trying to see.”

When asked what had replaced film, he responded: “Depression? Malaise? I would say confusion. Disorientation replaced the movie business.”

He said: “Everyone I know in show business, every day, is going, ‘What’s going on? How do you do this? What are we supposed to do now?’”

Seinfeld went on to discuss his stand-up career and how that’s different from the movie biz, saying: “I’ve done enough stuff that I have my own thing, which is more valuable than it’s ever been.”

He explained: ”Stand-up is like you’re a cabinetmaker, and everybody needs a guy who’s good with wood. … There’s trees everywhere, but to make a nice table, it’s not so easy. So, the metaphor is that if you have good craft and craftsmanship, you’re kind of impervious to the whims of the industry.”

He continued: “Audiences are now flocking to stand-up because it’s something you can’t fake. It’s like platform diving. You could say you’re a platform diver, but in two seconds we can see if you are or you aren’t. That’s what people like about stand-up. They can trust it. Everything else is fake.”

The iconic comedian makes a lot of solid points here. He specifically mentioned something that rings true to me. “We all discussed it. We quoted lines and scenes we liked.” I don’t see that happening as much these days.

We are always quoting films from the past, but what kind of films are coming out that have people quoting great lines of dialogue these days!? It’s rare! I can spit great memorable quotes from all kinds of films from the 70s, 80s, 90s, and early 2000s. But now? There’s no real or fresh memorable dialogue that people are quoting.

Seinfeld was also asked about the series finale of his classic sitcom. While he admits that it has bothered him a little over the years, he doesn’t regret it.

“I don’t believe in regret,” Seinfeld said. “It’s arrogant to think you could have done something different. You couldn’t. That’s why you did what you did. But me and Jeff Schaffer and Larry were standing around, talking about TV finales and which we thought were great.”

He continued: “I feel ‘Mad Men’ was the greatest. A lot of people like the ‘Bob Newhart’ one. ‘Mary Tyler Moore’ was OK. ‘Mad Men’ was the greatest final moment of a series I’ve ever seen. So satisfying. So funny. And they said that they had sat and watched the ‘Seinfeld’ finale, trying to figure out what went wrong. And it was obviously about the final scene, leaving them in the jail cell.”

I was actually fine with the Seinfeld finale! I liked how it ended as it ended with the exact conversation that the series started with. That was great.

A new rumor has surfaced for Deadpool & Wolverine that claims to reveal three specific characters who will appear in the movie and how these characters will fit into the story.

One of these characters involves Jennifer Garner’s Electra, which is a role that was already confirmed. Then there are Channing Tatum’s Gambit and Dafne Keen‘s X-23.

Gambit and Keen have been rumored in the past, but now we are hearing it from @MyTimeToShineH, who has turned out to be a reliable inside scooper.

The insider also adds some additional information on the character, though, which is where things get interesting. Apparently, Elektra, Gambit, and X-23 are all members of a resistance group that has teamed up in The Void to fight back against Cassandra Nova and the villains who surround her. 

It’s also said that Cassandra takes pleasure in killing Professor X’s Variants, likely explaining why she steps out of his wheelchair in the film’s trailer.

As for that portal we saw in the trailer, there are people saying that the psychic is using a sling ring taken from a dead Doctor Strange Variant who, in his reality, was Sorcerer Supreme.

There’s no other details regarding that, but I love the fact that these three characters might actually be teaming up in the movie! That will be fun to see.

This is all just a rumor for now, but when it comes to this Deadpool & Wolverine movie, all bets are off and anything is possible!

In this new story, Deadpool is recruited by the TVA to save the Sacred Timeline and he recruits Wolverine to help him with the job. This is a journey that Wolverine initially doesn’t want any part of. But after a big mutant brawl, he signs up.

In the film, “After facing some professional setbacks while going through a midlife crisis. Wade Wilson decides to officially retire Deadpool and becomes a used car salesman.

“But when his friends, family, and the whole world are at stake, Deadpool decides to bring his katanas out of retirement. He recruits an unwilling and wary Wolverine to not only fight for their survival but ultimately, their legacy.”

It’s also explained: “That f–king irresponsible hero Deadpool will change the history of the MCU with Wolverine!?”

The confirmed cast for the movie includes Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool, Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, Emma Corrin as Cassandra Nova, Morena Baccarin and Stefan Kapicic as Vanessa and Colossus, Matthew Macfadyen as a TVA Agent, and Leslie Uggams as Blind Al.

They are joined by Brianna Hildebrand and Shioli Kutsuna, who will also return to the franchise as Negasonic Teenage Warhead and Negasonic Teenage Warhead’s girlfriend Yukio. It was previously confirmed that Jennifer Garner will return as Elektra in the movie.

Deadpool & Wolverine will hit theaters on July 26th!

In the early days of the casting of James Gunn’s Superman, we learned that Nathan Fillion was going to be playing the Guy Gardner version of Green Lantern.

This is pretty perfect casting and during a recent interview with Collider, Fillion shared the story of when he found out he landed the role, and also what attracted him to the flawed superhero.

Fillion shared: “We were actually at the premiere party after Suicide Squad, and he was in a huge crowd of people. We saw each other in the crowd, and I congratulated him, ‘Oh, my God, that was amazing.”

He continued: “It’s so great.’ He goes, ‘Hey, did Peter [Safran] tell you what we’ve got for you next?’ I said, ‘No, he hasn’t said.’ He looked around like someone was gonna be listening. We were in a throng of people, but he leaned over and said, ‘You’re gonna be Guy Gardner.’”

The actor went on to talk about how he was drawn to the complex, unconventional persona of Gardner that contrasts with the traditionally heroic Man of Steel.

He said: “The reality is that people have flaws. We all have quirks. We all have vulnerabilities. You could have the most wonderful family but be like, ‘Oh, my God, my dad drives me nuts. He’s got this one thing.’

“Everybody’s got something, and I love to lean into those faults and flaws. It’s what makes people real and what allows audiences to relate because we all know what that is. We all have our own.

“We witness it in other people. Guy Gardner is 90% flawed and doesn’t care. That’s one of his flaws. I think there’s a real freedom in playing that. So, for a guy who likes to play flaws and flawed people, Guy Gardner is a gold mine.”

It’s going to be so much fun to watch Fillion play Green Lantern and I hope that he actually has a decent sized role in the Superman story and that he’s not just a throwaway character.

Superman will tell the story of “Superman’s journey to reconcile his Kryptonian heritage with his human upbringing as Clark Kent of Smallville, Kansas. He is the embodiment of truth, justice and the American way, guided by human kindness in a world that sees kindness as old-fashioned.”

Superman also stars David Corenswet as Clark Kent/Superman; Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane; Isabela Merced as Hawkgirl; Edi Gathegi as Michael Holt / Mr. Terrific; Skyler Gisondo as Jimmy Olsen; María Gabriela de Faría as Angela Spica, aka The Engineer; Sara Sampaio as Eve Teschmacher; and Terence Rosemore as Otis.

Superman is scheduled for a theatrical release on July 11, 2025.