Emma Stefansky
‘Hidden Figures’ Beats ‘La La Land’ for Best Picture in Moviegoer Oscar Poll
Sure, the Academy Awards are swanky and fun and tell us what the industry wants in a film, but what about what the people want? Well, as it turns out, when Fandango conducted a poll of 8,000 moviegoers nationwide, Oscar favorite La La Land didn‘t stand a chance against Hidden Figures.
‘The Fate of the Furious’ May Be an Epic 160 Minutes Long
It seems like every big blockbuster movie these days is getting longer and longer. Sometimes that’s a good thing, if a movie requires a lot of time to pace out its story, but sometimes a longer running time just means there’s more time for the movie to run itself into the ground. If a new report is true, the next Fast & Furious movie won’t be very fast at all — in fact, it’ll take almost three hours to watch.
The Live-Action ‘Aladdin’ Will Have a Diverse Cast, Promises Producer
There’s been a lot of talk about whitewashing in the news lately, what with two big blockbusters, The Great Wall and the live-action Ghost in the Shell, poised to hit theaters soon. Disney has plans for both a live-action Mulan and Aladdin in the works, and the production of both will be scrutinized for how they handle casting. But not to worry, because the producer of Aladdin says the cast will be fittingly diverse for a movie set in the Middle East.
Marvel Co-President Reveals a New ‘Black Panther’ Logo
A lot goes into the design of a logo, especially the design of a logo for a huge superhero blockbuster. Logo and title reveals for upcoming Marvel and Lucasfilm properties and the like are big news, mostly because it’s just fun to use whatever fonts the studio chose to speculate about what that says for the movie. Today, Marvel’s co-president Louis D’Esposito tweeted a photo of one of the chairs on the set of Black Panther, revealing a logo that’s very different from the one we’ve become accustomed to.
We Could’ve Seen ‘G.I. Joe’ Meet the ‘Transformers,’ and We Still Might
How do you save a franchise that never really took off? Combine it with another, bigger one from (technically) the same universe, of course! While Michael Bay has, uh, transformed Transformers into a billion-dollar industry with his live-action movies, G.I. Joe hasn’t exactly done as well. Apparently, there was talk at one point of joining the two franchises together in what would have been a beautiful, violent mess.
Sterling K. Brown Has His Eye on Another, Greener Superhero Role
Even though he’s just signed on to appear in Marvel’s Black Panther movie, Sterling K. Brown isn’t letting that stop him from dreaming of other superhero roles. After yesterday’s announcement that John Smith would be one of the heroes of the Green Lantern Corps, fighting space crime alongside his buddy Hal Jordan, Brown gave a shout out to DC and Warner Bros. that he wouldn’t say no to the part.
Michael Keaton Says He Bailed on ‘Batman Forever’ Because He Knew It ‘Sucked’
Batman Forever is perhaps best known for being the second most terrible Batman movie ever made aside from Batman & Robin. It is, in a word, spectacularly bad, marring the promise of seeing the Riddler and Two-Face banter onscreen with some truly terrible acting on the part of everyone involved, and a script that just defies any willful suspension of disbelief. Michael Keaton seemed to be unusually prescient of all of this, since the reason he gave for why he chose to bow out of the franchise was that he knew it was going to be terrible.
‘Fences’ Clip: Viola Davis Is Definitely Going to Win an Oscar
While some actresses would shy away from letting their line deliveries get emotional enough that their spit and snot practically flies at the camera, Viola Davis is not some actresses. If you feel like you’ve heard the word “Oscar” more than enough when it comes to Davis and Denzel Washington’s Fences, get ready to hear it one more time: Viola. Davis. Is. Going. To. Win. Best. Actress. This. Year.
‘The Founder’ Clip: Michael Keaton Sells McDonald’s to the McDonalds
The Founder shows us the untold story of how McDonald’s-the-restaurant was swindled away from McDonalds-the-brothers by a very savvy businessman by the name of Ray Kroc. He’s portrayed by Michael Keaton in the film, who manages to look and sound less trustworthy than whatever kind of meat Big Macs are made out of. In this new clip, we get to see Kroc in action as he details his sweeping plans for the future burger franchise.
‘Jurassic World’ EP Frank Marshall Teases Another Character Return for the Sequel
Jurassic World promised a return, for better or worse, to Steven Spielberg and Michael Crichton’s original island full of genetically engineered living fossils, and the film had one of the biggest openings in box office history. Audiences returned to the park in droves, and the film gifted us with a few unexpected returns of its own. Our beloved Tyrannosaurus rex was featured in arguably the coolest shot of the entire movie when Bryce Dallas Howard’s Claire Dearing lures it out of its paddock with a lit flare, and B.D. Wong reprised his role as Dr. Henry Wu, the biologist who engineered the dinosaurs for Hammond in the original Jurassic Park. He left the park at the end of Jurassic World as the dinosaurs ran rampant, but the movie’s executive producer says that might not be the last we see of him.
Forest Whitaker Joining ‘LAbyrinth,’ That Movie About Biggie and Tupac Starring Johnny Depp
Remember that movie about the murders of Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur that Johnny Depp is in, for some reason? Depp is playing a detective who tries (and, obviously, fails) to crack both cases, and Forest Whitaker has just joined the cast as Depp’s journalist buddy who is also interested to find out what actually happened to the hip hop icons.
Kevin Hart Is Our New Santa Claus for Disney’s ‘Dashing Through the Snow’
When you think of Santa Claus, what do you think of? Fur-lined red coats? Red- and green-wrapped presents? Cookies left out by the fireplace? A successful decade-and-half-long standup comedy and acting career working with the likes of Judd Apatow, Ice Cube, and Dwayne Johnson? If it’s that last one, first of all, really? Second of all, you’re in luck, because professional standup comedian and actor Kevin Hart is in talks to play Santa Claus in Disney’s Dashing Through the Snow.