American Beauty and SPECTRE director Sam Mendes will direct four separate Beatles movies, each one told from the perspective of one of the members: Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr.
A press release quoted by Variety says that the four Beatles movies will intersect to “tell the astonishing story of the greatest band in history.” Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and the families of the late George Harrison and John Lennon have granted full music and life-story rights to the filmmakers. This is reportedly the first time the Beatles have given their full support to a scripted film about the Fab Four.
“I’m honored to be telling the story of the greatest rock band of all time, and excited to challenge the notion of what constitutes a trip to the movies,” said Mendes in a statement about the Beatles movies. Director Mendes will also produce alongside his Neal Street Productions partner Pippa Harris and Neal Street’s Julie Pastor.
“We intend this to be a uniquely thrilling, and epic cinematic experience: four films, told from four different perspectives which tell a single story about the most celebrated band of all time,” said Harris in a statement. “To have the Beatles’ and Apple Corps’ blessing to do this is an immense privilege.”
Sony Pictures plans to distribute all four Beatles films theatrically in 2027. The movies will cover the Beatles’ history leading up to their 1970 breakup.
Matt Damon Says He Would Like To Play Jason Bourne Again but Is ‘Not Getting Any Younger’
Matt Damon seems willing to play Jason Bourne again if production gets moving on another installment before he ages out of the part. Damon has played the part of the former CIA assassin in four out of five Bourne movies, beginning with 2002’s The Bourne Identity and most recently in 2016’s Jason Bourne (pictured).
In a recent appearance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert reported by IndieWire, Matt Damon said that All Quiet on the Western Front director Edward Berger is in the early stages of developing a sixth movie in the Bourne franchise with Damon reprising his role as Jason Bourne. “There is a great director named Edward Berger,” said Damon. “[All Quiet on the Western Front] is a fantastic film, and he’s wonderful and he said he had an idea. I would love to work with him, so he’s working on it. Look, I’m as anxious as you are to see if this thing [happens] — I hope it’s great and that we can do it.”
Despite Damon’s enthusiasm about the possibility of a new Bourne movie with him as the lead, the 53-year-old actor doesn’t seem to want to pull a Liam Neeson and star in action movies in his 60s and 70s. “At a certain point somebody is going to need to take it over,” said Damon. “I’m not getting any younger.”
‘Blade Runner 2099’ Finds New Director With Jonathan Van Tulleken
Prime Video’s Blade Runner 2099 series has found a new director, Jonathan Van Tulleken, for the first two episodes of the upcoming limited series. Blade Runner 2099 follows the events of 1982’s Blade Runner — set in 2019 — and 2017’s Blade Runner 2049. Due to the 50-year time jump from the latter to the new series, no actors from Ridley Scott’s seminal sci-fi masterpiece or Denis Villeneuve’s Oscar-winning sequel are expected to reprise their roles for Blade Runner 2099.
According to Deadline, Tulleken replaces Jeremy Podeswa who had to bow out due to scheduling changes caused by the WGA strike. Originally set to start filming in Belfast, Northern Ireland last year, production for Blade Runner 2099 has relocated to Prague, Czech Republic and will reportedly begin in April.
Deadline reports that “in 2011, Alcon secured film, television, and ancillary franchise rights to produce prequels and sequels to the 1982 science-fiction thriller Blade Runner. Since that time, Alcon has financed and produced the Blade Runner 2049 as well as the recent Blade Runner: Black Lotus, an anime series that debuted in 2022 on Adult Swim and Crunchyroll.”
Tulleken recently directed episodes of FX’s Shōgun and Apple TV+’s The Changeling.
New ‘Civil War’ Trailer Shows the United States in Ruins During a Modern-Day Second Civil War
The new trailer for A24’s Civil War shows the United States not so united. The new movie written and directed by Alex Garland is not about the actual Civil War in the 1800s, but rather a modern-day one. The movie stars Kirsten Dunst (pictured), Wagner Moura, Cailee Spaeny, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Sonoya Mizuno, and Nick Offerman.
The official Civil War logline reads, “An adrenaline-fueled thrill ride through a near-future fractured America balanced on the razor’s edge.” According to Variety, the new trailer’s “footage kicks off with an address from the president, played by Nick Offerman, who calls citizens to arms against ‘the Florida alliance and the Western forces of Texas and California’ for their secession from the United States. The trailer also teases new battle sequences taking place in New York City and Washington, D.C. — including a rocket launch obliterating the Lincoln Memorial.” Dunst plays a war photographer in the movie.
Civil War drops in theaters nationwide on April 12. Click here to watch the new trailer.
‘Irish Wish’ Trailer: Lindsay Lohan Switches Lives With Her Best Friend in Netflix Rom-Com
Lindsay Lohan is switching lives with another character on-screen in the rom-com Irish Wish. Unlike in Freaky Friday in which she switched bodies with her mother, Lohan switches lives with her best friend in Janeen Damian’s Irish Wish.
According to Entertainment Weekly, “Set amid the rolling green seaside hills of Ireland, the Irish Wish trailer centers Lohan in the tale of Maddie, a young lovelorn woman who travels to Europe for her best friend’s wedding to the man Maddie thinks she loves. A mystic wish leads Maddie to swap lives with her pal the next morning when she wakes up in the same bed as her romantic interest.” The movie also stars Ed Speleers, Alexander Vlahos, Ayesha Curry, and Jane Seymour.
“It’s a nice story of luck and love and confidence,” said Lohan to Netflix. “Maddie’s [one of the only] characters that I’ve played [who’s] a woman on her own making her way in the world. We shaped her in a way that she was a bit more insecure in the beginning, and then she grows throughout the movie, and by the end, she really comes into her own.”
Irish Wish premieres March 15 on Netflix. Click here to watch the new trailer.
Michael Keaton Says ‘Beetlejuice’ Sequel ‘Had To Feel Handmade’
Michael Keaton says he was willing to reprise his titular role in Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice Beetlejuice as long as it wasn’t CGI overkill. Keaton joins Winona Ryder, Catherine O’Hara, Jenna Ortega, and Monica Bellucci in the long-awaited sequel to 1988’s Beetlejuice.
“The one thing that he and I decided on early, early, early on from the beginning, if we ever did it again, I was totally not interested in doing something where there was too much technology,” said Keaton to People about Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. “It had to feel handmade.”
Keaton continued, “What made it fun was watching somebody in the corner actually holding something up for you, to watch everybody in the shrunken head room and say, ‘Those are people under there, operating these things, trying to get it right.’ When you get to do that again after years of standing in front of a giant screen, pretending somebody’s across the way from you, this is just enormous fun.”
Catherine O’Hara, who reprises her role as Delia Deetz in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, joked about Keaton, “He looks the same. Beetlejuice has aged very well.”
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice premieres in theaters September 6, 2024.
‘Tales From the Crypt’ Publisher EC Comics Resurrected After Nearly 70 Years
In the 1950s while DC and Atlas Comics focused on superheroes, EC Comics served up Tales From the Crypt, Weird Science, and Two-Fisted Tales. EC Comics printed its last comic book in 1956, but now the brand has returned from the crypt after 68 years with a new line of comics.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, “Oni Press, the publisher perhaps best known for the breakout indie hit Scott Pilgrim, has partnered with William M. Gaines Agent, Inc., the rights holders of the EC line, to launch all-new stories with A-list comics creators beginning this summer.”
“EC Comics is one of the most artistically important and culturally significant publishers of all time,” Oni’s publisher Hunter Gorinson wrote to The Hollywood Reporter in an email. “In ways both artful and shocking, EC confronted the darkness lurking behind the thin façade of American society — a through line of radically confrontational storytelling that we intend to both uphold and escalate with the first new EC tales in decades.”
The Hollywood Reporter continues, “The first book from the new line will be Epitaphs From the Abyss, a horror title debuting in July, followed by sci-fi comic Cruel Universe in August. The new comics will keep the anthology format with creative teams rotating in and out.”
