It was a family affair during the Warner Bros. panel at CinemaCon as movies from M. Night Shyamalan and his daughter Ishana Night Shyamalan were teased, Trap and The Watchers, respectively.

Ishana Night Shyamalan is making her feature directorial debut with The Watcher, a thriller based on the novel by A.M. Shine. Steeped in Celtic horror and set in Ireland, the film stars Dakota Fanning as Mina, “a 28-year-old artist who gets stranded in an expansive, untouched forest in western Ireland. When Mina finds shelter, she unknowingly becomes trapped alongside three strangers that are watching and stalking by mysterious creatures each night.” A new trailer for the movie was screened at CinemaCon, which our Chris Bumbray said was “very fantasy-esque.“

Shyamalan has previously praised his daughter’s work as she helmed several episodes of Servant. “She has slightly more of a fantasy bend than I do,” Shyamalan said. “She speaks in bolder colors than I do. The camera is more canted or more grotesque in showing someone scarier. The disadvantage of being an accomplished artist is that your experience starts working against you. I see less options, because I’ve done so many things. She doesn’t see that; for her, everything is possible. There are advantages and disadvantages to the levels of experience that we each have.“

As for M. Night Shyamalan, he was on hand to tease Trap, his next thriller. The director got a kick out of promoting his own movie alongside his daughter, joking that they’re like the Indian Von Trapps. Shyamalan’s other daughter, Saleka, stars in Trap alongside Josh Hartnett. The first trailer for the physiological thriller was screened, which takes place at a concert. Saleka plays a Taylor Swift-style pop star known as Lady Raven, with Josh Harnett’s character attending alongside his daughter. He quickly discovers that the concert is a trap designed to lure a serial killer known as The Butcher, but it turns out that Harnett is the serial killer! I like it.

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Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, director Tim Burton’s long-awaited sequel to his 1988 classic Beetlejuice (watch it HERE), is set to reach theatres on September 6th. Since this is one of the most highly anticipated releases of the year, it was, of course, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice was promoted during the Warner Bros. panel at CinemaCon, the gathering of movie theater owners from around the world currently being held in Las Vegas.

During the Warner Bros. panel at CinemaCon, the crowd saw footage highlighting the film’s practical effects. JoBlo’s editor-in-chief, Chris Bumbray, says Beetlejuice Beetlejuice has more of the original’s style than the teaser trailer made it look. Keaton looks like the Ghost With the Most and hasn’t lost a step. WB showed more of what Keaton’s performance is like, and it’s fantastic!

Tim Burton took the stage with Catherine O’Hara, Monica Belluci, Willem Dafoe, and Michael Keaton. The crowd chanted “Beetlejuice” three times to draw out the show’s star. They were all dressed in black, but Keaton said he had no idea there was a dress code and was there with white pants and a brown jacket, making for a funny moment.

Burton says he’s always identified with Lydia and was intrigued by how life changes us. Keaton said he and Burton always kicked around the notion of doing the sequel, but it never got there. It was tough to get the script right, but Keaton also said he just followed Burton’s lead and said, in his Beetlejuice voice, “it’s really fucking good.”

Burton said Monica Bellucci fulfilled his lifelong dream of making an Italian horror film. Dafoe said he was always a fan of the original and loved they didn’t use CGI. Theroux said it felt more like a fun independent film, as everything is real, with rubber, latex, makeup, etc.

Keaton added that this was the most fun he had ever had making a movie. He was very nervous to see if they could pull it off again, but it got easier as it went on. He also said Jenna Ortega seemed to nail the tone immediately and that it was perfect.

The CinemaCon crowd then saw the new trailer. Chris thinks it’s much better than the teaser. Beetlejuice had pined for Lydia, and he was still obsessed when he was awakened. Notably, you see the Jeffrey Jones character get killed by a shark, but in stop-motion.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice was in development hell for decades before it finally got made. In 1990, Jonathan Gems was hired to write a sequel that was going to be titled Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian. Burton considered having Daniel Waters rewrite that script, Pamela Norris did rewrite it, and Warner Bros. offered Kevin Smith the chance to do another rewrite. He turned it down. Seth Grahame-Smith was hired to write and produce a new version of a sequel in 2011. Mike Vukadinovich was brought on to rewrite his script in 2017.

Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, co-creators and co-showrunners of Wednesday, have written the screenplay for Beetlejuice 2 that was actually filmed. Brad Pitt’s Plan B is producing the sequel, which filmed in London before moving to Vermont and Massachusetts.

Here’s the official synopsis: Beetlejuice is back! After an unexpected family tragedy, three generations of the Deetz family return home to Winter River. Still haunted by Beetlejuice, Lydia’s life is turned upside down when her rebellious teenage daughter, Astrid, discovers the mysterious model of the town in the attic and the portal to the Afterlife is accidentally opened. With trouble brewing in both realms, it’s only a matter of time until someone says Beetlejuice’s name three times and the mischievous demon returns to unleash his very own brand of mayhem.

Michael Keaton is back in the role of the titular “ghost with the most” and is joined in the cast by Winona Ryder, reprising the role of Lydia Deetz; Catherine O’Hara, back as Lydia’s stepmother Delia; Jenna Ortega as Lydia’s daughter Astrid, Justin Theroux as a fellow named Rory,  Monica Bellucci as Beetlejuice’s wife and Willem Dafoe as a law enforcement officer in the afterlife. Arthur Conti is also in there, in an unspecified role. 

Are you looking forward to Beetlejuice Beetlejuice? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

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During the Warner Bros. panel at CinemaCon, Robert Pattinson (The Batman, The Lighthouse) and director Bong Joon-Ho (Parasite, Okja) shared a trailer and new details about their upcoming science-fiction drama Mickey 17.

Robert Pattinson and Bong Joon-ho took the CinemaCon stage, giving the impression they’re proud of the movie they’ve made. Mickey 17 is based on the novel Mickey 7, but they changed it to 17 because that’s the number of times Pattinson’s character dies in the film.

Here’s a plot synopsis for Mickey 17: “Whenever there’s a mission that’s too dangerous—even suicidal—the crew turns to Mickey. After one iteration dies, a new body is regenerated with most of his memories intact. After six deaths, Mickey7 understands the terms of his deal…and why it was the only colonial position unfilled when he took it.” In addition to Pattinson, Mickey 17 has a wealth of other talents on board, including Steven Yeun, Tony Collette, Naomi Ackie, and Mark Ruffalo.

JoBlo’s editor-in-chief, Chris Bumbray, says the Mickey 17 trailer is very comedic, scored by “Ain’t that a Kick in the Head” by Dean Martin and Nelson Riddle. Pattinson plays a guy who applies to work on a space station as an expendable. When he dies, a new version is cloned, constantly being sent one suicide job and being reborn. Multiple versions end up alive at the same time and are hunted, as you cannot have more than one alive at the same time. It’s a buddy movie with multiple Mickeys and Pattinsons. Mickey 17 will get an IMAX release.

Addressing the CinemaCon crowd, Pattinson said Bong Joon-ho is a hero to him. Pattinson says making Mickey 17 is one of the funniest, weirdest sci-fi scripts ever, which made it a no-brainer. Pattinson says that because the movie doesn’t use hair or makeup or a different accent to change the Mickeys from each other. The clones had to be the same. But, the film revolves around Mickey 17 meeting Mickey 18, who has frontal lobe damage and no impulse control.

Meanwhile, Mark Ruffalo is the villain, a dictator. Toni Collette plays his wife. Naomi Ackie plays Mickey’s girlfriend. Steven Yeun plays “another crazy guy” in the movie, who is also Mickey’s buddy. The film is described as a “big, bold, original swing.”

What do you think about Mickey 17? Let us know in the comments section below.

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Superman director James Gunn made a video appearance during the Warner Bros panel for CinemaCon. While he didn’t have a lot to reveal just yet, he did tease that next year will be the “summer of Superman” as he revealed a closer look at the new logo, which seems reminiscent of the one from the Max Fleischer cartoons.

DC Studios co-CEO Peter Safran came out on the CinemaCon stage to tease the other Superman movie: Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story. The heart-wrenching documentary was acquired by Warner Bros. earlier this year for $15 million, and Safran revealed that it would be released in theaters this September. An exact date wasn’t specified, but the trailer screened at CinemaCon brought tears to more than a few in the audience.

Our own Chris Bumbray caught Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story at Sundance earlier this year. The doc is a deep dive into the life of Christopher Reeve, chronicling his overnight stardom as Superman through to his life after the tragic accident which left him a person with quadriplegia. “Directors Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui wisely adopt a non-linear style to tell Reeve’s story, opening with his accident, which came at a time when he was trying to rebuild his career following the disastrous end of the Superman franchise with Quest for Peace,” Bumbray wrote. “Only a year before his devastating fall, he had a good role in Merchant/Ivory’s The Remains of the Day, but one of his sons freely admits that at the time of the accident, he was doing movies of the week to pay the bills.” You can check out the rest of Bumbray’s review right here.

As for Superman, Peter Safran has previously teased that the film will not be an origin story and will focus on “Superman balancing his Kryptonian heritage with his human upbringing. Superman represents truth, justice and the American way. He is kindness in a world that thinks of kindness as old fashioned.”

David Corenswet and Rachel Brosnahan star as Clark Kent/Superman and Lois Lane, respectively. Nicholas Hoult plays Lex Luthor, Milly Alcock plays Kara Zor-El/Supergirl, Isabela Merced plays Kendra Saunders/Hawkgirl, Nathan Fillion plays Guy Gardner/Green Lantern, Wendell Pierce plays Percy White, Skyler Gisondo plays Jimmy Olsen, Anthony Carrigan plays Rex Mason/Metamorpho, Edi Gathegi plays Mister Terrific, Sara Sampaio plays Eve Teschmacher, Sean Gunn plays Maxwell Lord, and Maria Gabriela de Faria plays Angela Spica/The Engineer. James Gunn directs Superman from his own script. The film will hit theaters on July 11, 2025.

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Hold onto your horses, folks! Kevin Costner’s Horizon: An American Saga is riding into CinemaCon 2024 to share the latest about the Yellowstone and Dances With Wolves star’s Western epic. On Monday, we learned the first part of Horizon: An American Saga, which will debut at the Cannes Film Festival on May 19. Still, attendees moseying into CinemaCon got a new look at the sprawling drama of how settlers won the West.

During the Warner Bros. panel, Costner addressed the CinemaCon crowd, saying the movie is a bit about the promise of America. The idea was that if you were mean enough, tough enough, you could take what you wanted, but in the process, you stepped on people who had been here for 1000 years. But the film does not pass judgment, and that story, to him, was drama.

Speaking about making the movie, Costner said he likes “Journey” movies. He doesn’t like “plot movies” and prefers to take the ride. The movie covers a period of 12 years, from before the Civil War to during it (but it’s not about the Civil War). He notes that the West didn’t last long. It was over when the war ended.

Costner began work on Horizon in 1988. He has more movies planned, and the character he invented in 1988 was so important to him that he named his son after him (Hayes). His character is about a drifter who wants to find a home. He hopes the movies can be a big franchise and that years from now, people can binge-watch hours of Horizon in theaters.

Costner then screened an extended look at Horizon: An American Saga Part 1 and Part 2. Our editor-in-chief, Chris Bumbray, says Horizon truly looks like an epic. The footage he saw makes the movie look like an old-fashioned adventure. Still, it’s nuanced and acknowledges the danger of settling the West, the conflicts between the weak and the strong, the homesteaders and Native Americans, and more. The films highlight how many settlers left their families to join the war, leaving them to fend for themselves. The focus is on two stories. One is Costner, who is a drifter who takes in a prostitute (Abbey Lee) and her baby, while Sienna Miller and Sam Worthington are settlers separated by the war.

In addition to directing and starring in the two-film saga, Kevin Costner also produced the project and co-wrote the script alongside Jon Baird. “In the great tradition of Warner Bros. Pictures’ iconic Westerns, Horizon: An American Saga explores the lure of the Old West and how it was won—and lost—through the blood, sweat, and tears of many,” reads the official synopsis. “Spanning the four years of the Civil War, from 1861 to 1865, Kevin Costner’s ambitious cinematic adventure will take audiences on an emotional journey across a country at war with itself, experienced through the lens of families, friends, and foes all attempting to discover what it truly means to be the United States of America.” Despite the project playing a role in his departure from Yellowstone, I think a lot of fans are very excited about this one.

Horizon also boasts quite the epic ensemble cast, which includes (take a deep breath here) Sienna Miller, Sam Worthington, Giovanni Ribisi, Jena Malone, Danny Huston, Michael Rooker, Will Patton, Owen Crow Shoe, Tatanka Means, Ella Hunt, Tim Guinee, Colin Cunningham, Scott Haze, Tom Payne, Abbey Lee, Georgia MacPhail, Douglas Smith, Luke Wilson, Isabelle Fuhrman, Jamie Campbell Bower, Alejandro Edda, Wasé Winyan Chief, Michael Anganaro, Angus Macfadyen, Jon Beavers, Alex Nibley, Kathleen Quinlan, Etienne Kellici, Amos Jason Charging Cloud, Bodhi Okuma Linton, Gregory Cruz, James Russo, Jeff Fahey, David O’Hara, Chris Conner, Leroy M. Silva, Bernardo Velasco, Tom Everett, Glynn Turman, and more. Phew.

The first part of Horizon: An America Saga will be released in theaters on June 28th, followed by the second part on August 16th.

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This article contains mild plot spoilers for George Miller’s Furiosa!

Director George Miller is continuing the Mad Max franchise with the Mad Max: Fury Road prequel Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, which is set to reach theatres on May 24th – and with that date just over a month away, the film got some promotion during the Warner Bros. presentation at CinemaCon in Las Vegas.

Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Hemsworth, and George Miller took the stage during the panel. Miller told the eager CinemaCon crowd that Furiosa takes place over 18 years, whereas Fury Road’s story lasted three days. Miller then quipped that if the apocalypse actually happened, Anya would be the one he’d want to hang out with as she has the rigor and commitment.

Speaking about Hemsworth, Miller said he couldn’t think of anyone to play Dementus, and he’d had the script for a long time. Then, he met Hemsworth at a social gathering, and they had a far-reaching conversation that proved to him that he had more dimension than he thought. He also felt his feedback on the screenplay gave him a lot more insight into the character.

Meanwhile, Anya Taylor-Joy says George Miller is a real-deal director, and watching him work was unlike any experience you will ever have. In control of 3 full units, everything on the screen feels hand-painted by Miller. Hemsworth chimed in, saying that, being Australian and having watched the movies repeatedly with his dad, Miller was a god-like figure to him. He takes control of the organized chaos. He said that as wild and out of control as the set would feel, it also felt completely safe, as he’s always had such control.

The CinemaCon crowd also got a 6-minute sneak peek at the film, taking them through its arc. We get a lot more insight into Furiosa’s mother, a heroine in her own right, who fought Dementus’s men on an odyssey to save her, only to be killed, making Furiosa swear revenge. Immortan Joe raised her, and that’s how she became a warrior. Eventually, she encounters Tom Burke’s character, who she teams up with and becomes her mentor. He paints his head black like she does in Fury Road. He seems more heroic and looks A LOT like Mel Gibson/ Mad Max (but is not). He’s third-billed, so it’s a central character we haven’t really seen developed yet.

Directed by Miller from a screenplay he wrote with Nico Lathouris, Furiosa has the following synopsis: As the world fell, young Furiosa is snatched from the Green Place of Many Mothers and falls into the hands of a great Biker Horde led by the Warlord Dementus. Sweeping through the Wasteland they come across the Citadel presided over by the Immortan Joe. While the two Tyrants war for dominance, Furiosa must survive many trials as she puts together the means to find her way home. The story is said to take place over a span of fifteen years.

Title character Furiosa is played by Anya Taylor-Joy (The Witch), taking over from Fury Road‘s Charlize Theron. Lachy Hulme (Offspring) pulls double duty, playing both Fury Road villain Immortan Joe (taking over from the late Hugh Keays-Byrne) and a character called Rizzdale Pell, who is “one of the gang members affiliated with the warlord Dementus.” We’ve heard Dementus is “a pretty horrible individual, and he’s played by Chris Hemsworth (Thor). Also in the cast are Tom Burke (C.B. Strike) and Quaden Bayles (Three Thousand Years of Longing), with Alyla Browne (The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart) as a younger Furiosa. Nathan Jones and Angus Sampson are said to reprise their Fury Road roles of Rictus Erectus and The Organic Mechanic.

Miller hasn’t revealed whether or not Mad Max himself will be appearing in the movie, he has only teased that, “Max is lurking there in the background.” If you’re anxious to see more Mad Max, there’s some good news: Miller has confirmed that he has another Mad Max story written, which would presumably be the Mad Max: The Wasteland story that he has referenced here and there ever since Fury Road was released. Now that Furiosa is making its way out into the world, here’s hoping that Miller or a protégé (Miller has said he has three different directors in mind that he would like to see make movies set in the world of his franchise) will get Mad Max: The Wasteland into production sooner than later.

Are you looking forward to Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

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There have been more than a few Game of Thrones spinoff series in development since the flagship series concluded in 2019, but not all of them can make it across the finish line. Unfortunately, that seems to be the case for one potential series which would have followed Jon Snow.

While speaking with ScreenRant, Kit Harington gave an update on the Jon Snow series, which seems to have been shelved for the time being. “Currently, it’s off the table, because we all couldn’t find the right story to tell that we were all excited about enough,” Harington said. “So, we decided to lay down tools with it for the time being. There may be a time in the future where we return to it, but at the moment, no. It’s firmly on the shelf.“

Harington added that he has refrained from discussing the project because he “didn’t want the thing to happen where people kind of start theorizing, getting either excited about it or hating the idea of it, when it may never happen.” The actor does make it seem as though the project could be resurrected somewhere down the line, but HBO has no shortage of Game of Thrones projects. We’ve got the second season of House of the Dragon set to be released this summer, as well as production on Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight set to kick off later in the year.

Harington did briefly tease his thoughts on Jon Snow’s ending on Game of Thrones and where the spinoff could have led. “I think if you asked him, he would’ve felt he got off lightly,” Harington said two years ago. “At the end of the show, when we find him in that cell, he’s preparing to be beheaded, and he wants to be. He’s done. The fact he goes to the Wall is the greatest gift and also the greatest curse. He’s gotta go back up to the place with all this history and live out his life thinking about how he killed Dany, and live out his life thinking about Ygritte dying in his arms, and live out his life thinking about how he hung Olly, and live out his life thinking about all of this trauma, and that, that’s interesting. So I think where we leave him at the end of the show, there’s always this feeling of like… I think we wanted some kind of little smile that things are OK. He’s not OK.“

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Lionsgate is playing a little release date shuffle today as Deadline reports that the studio has made a few changes to the schedule. First off, the release of the upcoming reboot of The Crow has been pushed from June 7th to August 23rd, which sees it getting out of the way of Bad Boys: Ride or Die.

In addition to bumping back The Crow, Lionsgate and Twisted Pictures have also pushed back the release of Saw XI by a full year. The eleventh installment of the horror franchise was originally slated to hit theaters on September 27th, but the film will now debut on September 26, 2025.

More to come…

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Robert Downey Jr. spent a decade as the face of a multi-billion-dollar franchise and recently took home a well-deserved Academy Award. No matter how you slice it, the actor is doing well, which makes it easy to forget that there once was a time when he was persona non grata in Hollywood, a fate shared by Mel Gibson.

Mel Gibson found his career on the rocks following a 2006 arrest for driving under the influence, which saw him making disparaging remarks about Jewish people, but he had a supporter in Robert Downey Jr. In Esquire‘s recent cover story on Downey Jr., Gibson praised his friend for coming to his defence.

“One time, I got into a bit of a sticky situation where it kind of ended my career. I was drunk in the back of a police car and I said some stupid shit, and all of a sudden: blacklisted. I’m the poster boy for canceled,” Gibson explained. “A couple of years into that he invited me to some kind of award he was getting—we always had this kind of seesaw thing, where if he was on the wagon, I was falling off, and if I was on the wagon, he was falling off. So I was pretty much nonexistent in Hollywood at the time, and he stood up and spoke for me. It was a bold and generous and kind gesture. I loved him for that.“

The event Gibson speaks of was the American Cinematheque Awards ceremony in 2011. During his speech, Downey Jr. called upon those in attendance to join him in “forgiving my friend his trespasses, offering him the same clean slate you have given me, and allowing him to continue his great and ongoing contribution to our collective art without shame,” adding “unless you are completely without sin, in which case you picked the wrong f***ing industry.“

Of course, Downey Jr. had his own struggles, getting arrested multiple times for drug possession in the late ’90s and ultimately serving time in prison. While he had numerous roles throughout the 2000s, he didn’t truly bounce back until the release of Iron Man in 2008.

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Deadline reports that Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis will officially premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on May 17th.

The project has been a long time coming, as Coppola began writing Megalopolis back in the 1980s but recognized that it would require a huge budget to match its massive scope, so it sat on a shelf for decades. In order to get the film made, he put his own money on the line, reportedly upwards of $120 million. The film also boasts quite a star-studded ensemble cast, which includes Adam Driver, Forest Whitaker, Giancarlo Esposito, Nathalie Emmanuel, Jon Voight, Laurence Fishburne, Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Chloe Fineman, Kathryn Hunter, Dustin Hoffman, DB Sweeney, Talia Shire, Jason Schwartzman, Bailey Ives, Grace Vanderwaal, and James Remar.

“An accident causes the destruction of a New York City-like metropolis that is decaying anyway, bringing clashing visions of the future,” reads Deadline’s description. “On one side is an ambitious architectural idealist Caesar (Adam Driver). On the other is his sworn enemy, city Mayor Frank Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito). The debate becomes whether to embrace the future and build a utopia with renewable materials, or take a business-as-usual rebuild strategy, replete with concrete, corruption and power brokering at the expense of a restless underclass. In between their struggle is the mayor’s socialite daughter Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel), a restless young woman who grew up around power and tires of being a tabloid fixture looking for meaning in her life.“

Megalopolis is still searching for a distributor. However, a recent report stated that it might be an “uphill battle” as the project has been deemed “too ‘experimental’ and ‘not good’ enough for the $100 million marketing spend envisioned by the legendary director.” The film received a standing ovation during a recent screening, and while Coppola’s passion project is highly anticipated by many, there are doubts regarding its mainstream success. A potential distributor said, “There is just no way to position this movie.” Another viewer said, “Does it wobble, wander, go all over the place? Yes. But it’s really imaginative and does say something about our time. I think it’s going to be a small specialized label [that picks it up].“

We should know more about Megalopolis following its Cannes debut, but I’ve got my fingers crossed for Coppola!

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