Matt Singer is the editor and critic of the website ScreenCrush.com. For five years, he was the on-air host of IFC News on the Independent Film Channel, hosting coverage of film festivals and red carpets around the world. A member of the New York Film Critics Circle, he’s been a frequent contributor to the television shows CBS This Morning Saturday and Ebert Presents At the Movies, and his writing has also appeared in print and online at The Village Voice, The Dissolve, and Indiewire. His first book, Marvel’s Spider-Man: From Amazing to Spectacular, is on sale now.
Matt Singer
‘Star Wars: Episode 8’ Gets a New Release Date, Rian Johnson Confirmed to Direct
For months it’s been rumored, now it’s confirmed: Rian Johnson, the writer and director of Brick and Looper is officially the writer and director of Star Wars: Episode VIII. Disney CEO Robert Iger also revealed to company shareholders today that Episode VIII has its official release date: May 26, 2017 — 40 years and a single day after the release of the very first Star Wars back in 1977.
‘Cinderella’ Review: This Old Fairy Tale Still Has Some Magic
The name “Disney” brings to mind images of fair princesses, charming princes, magical fairy tales, and simple happily ever afters. In recent years, though, Disney has begun rethinking their classic properties, and releasing more thematically complex versions of their famous films. Sleeping Beauty became Maleficent, which turned a wicked witch into a sympathetic anti-hero; a whole mess of fairy tales turned into Into the Woods, where happily ever after preceded a whole bunch of death and tragedy. The ranks of Disney Princesses grew to include women like Merida, the bow-slinging heroine of Brave, and Anna and Else from Frozen, who rescued each other from an prince, rather than the other way around. Every value and concept that Disney had established and reinforced through decades of repetition was seemingly up for reconsideration and revision.
Tim Burton Will Direct Disney’s New Live-Action ‘Dumbo’ Movie
With their new Cinderella just days away, Disney is continuing its streak of turning its animated classics into live-action features with the news, via the Wall Street Journal, that Dumbo is ready to make the transition from animated elephant to ... well, still-animated elephant surrounded by live-action actors. If that idea doesn’t get your ears flapping, maybe this will: the Journal says Tim Burton will be the man who’ll direct the new Dumbo.
‘San Andreas’ Trailer: The Rock Is Rocking in This Earthquake Movie
It’s been a while since we had a really good disaster movie. Roland Emmerich was the last guy to really push the genre forward, but after freezing and then destroying the entire planet (in The Day After Tomorrow and 2012, respectively) there’s not really a lot of ground left to cover (and demolish). Next summer’s San Andreas will attempt to revive the disaster movie by juicing up an old favorite: the earthquake. This version, directed by Journey 2: The Mysterious Island’s Brad Peyton, features a tremor so huge it encompasses all of California from Los Angeles to San Francisco. It’s so big, Paul Giamatti gravely intones, it can even be felt on the East Coast. That’s a big quake.
Sony Plans Second New Ghostbusters Franchise, This One ‘Guy-Themed’
Here’s something strange in the neighborhood: Deadline reports that Sony isn’t waiting for Paul Feig’s all-female Ghostbusters reboot (with its cast of comedy all-stars Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Leslie Jones, and Kate McKinnon) to debut before planning additional Ghostbuster sequels or spinoffs. They’re already getting to work on what the trade describes as a “guy-themed” offshoot with an all-male cast.
HBO Now Standalone Service Launches in April Exclusively on Apple Devices
After years of complaining from people who didn’t have or couldn’t afford cable (or whose parents refused to give them their HBO Go password), HBO is finally delivering a standalone streaming service, HBO Now. Today, the company announced some of its availability details, including pricing and when and where it will be available.
The Next ‘Wolverine’ Movie Will Start Shooting in Early 2016
Starting tomorrow, audiences around the country will be able to see Hugh Jackman in Chappie, playing a former military man turned robotics engineer trying to produce a new human-piloted police drone. He sports a hideous mullet, spends most of the film sitting at a dreary cubicle, and generally behaves like a dope. So if you’re a Jackman fan looking for the guy you love in the X-Men and Wolverine movies, I’m afraid you’re going to have to wait a while longer.
Bestflix: The Best New Netflix Instant Titles to Watch in March 2015
ScreenCrush is proud to present Bestflix, our new monthly web series and a companion to our regular column of Netflix recommendations.
‘Chappie’ Review: Highly Artificial, Limited Intelligence
The technology in Neil Blomkamp’s movies is so fully realized and intricately detailed that it feels like another one of his characters. Now Blomkamp’s made Chappie, a film where that’s literally true in the form of a police robot given the gift of human consciousness. The result is one giant metaphor for itself; a story of the world’s first true artificial intelligence and how it is almost corrupted by violence, presented in a movie where any semblance of serious consideration of what it means to be alive is drowned out by gunfire, explosions, and macho posing.
Dylan O’Brien Says He’s Not the Next Spider-Man
According to some reports (but not others), Sony has found the filmmaker to restart the Spider-Man franchise one more time, with The Sinister Six writer/director Drew Goddard swinging off of that project and onto a new Spider-Man franchise. But that still leaves the issue of who will play the new Peter Parker. Latino Review’s report on the Goddard rumor claimed they wanted a “new actor, probably an unknown” who’d start off in high school and grow with the part “a la Harry Potter.”