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Wilson himself adapted the play, which tackles the story of Troy Maxon (Washington), a Pittsburgh sanitation employee who once dreamed of a baseball career only to be left facing down daily discrimination in a more menial line of work, while grappling with his lost ambitions. Viola Davis, who won a Tony alongside Washington for her performance in the play, is Troy's wife, Rose. She supports her husband, but is painfully aware of what she also gave up.
As well as the actors' stage success, the play took the Tony and Drama Desk Awards for Revival, and from the looks of the footage, we can expect typically powerful performances from the leads and the supporting cast, which includes Russell Hornsby, Jovan Adepo and Mykelti Williamson. Fences will arrive in the UK in February following a Christmas Day release in the US.
First Fences trailer
See Denzel Washington, Viola Davis and more in the first Fences images
Jones, not surprisingly given his many creature credits, is playing a member of a previously unseen alien species, Lt. Saru, who serves aboard the starship as a Starfleet science officer. Rapp (A Beautiful Mind), is also a science officer as well as astromycologist and fungus expert (!) named Lt. Stamets. As previously reported, Yeoh will be portraying Captain Han Bo of the U.S.S. Shenzhou.
Every Star Trek series has had its share of growing pains from conception through production, and Discovery is no different. Bryan Fuller had originaly been made showrunner alongside Alex Kurtzman, but recently left the project due to an overwhelming workload that includes Starz' forthcoming adaptation of American Gods. Now guiding the show are Gretchen J. Berg and Aaron Harberts, with a staff that includes Nicholas Meyer, Jesse Alexander and Joe Menosky.
Michelle Yeoh confirmed for Star Trek: Discovery
Star Trek: Discovery — Bryan Fuller jumps ship
10 new Star Trek: Discovery reveals
That figure means Moana enters the charts as Disney's second-highest opening in the Thanksgiving period, behind just Frozen, and seems likely to have the same longevity – adding in its overseas totals, the movie is sailing towards $100 million after just a few days. With the all-powerful 'toon sweeping into the top spot, Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them had to vacate its throne after just one week, but still earned a healthy $45.1 million across the three-day weekend. And Doctor Strange slipped to third with $13.3 million after four weeks in the charts, but has something of its own to celebrate, becoming Marvel's most successful character introduction movie with more than $600 million worldwide.
Fourth place went to Robert Zemeckis' World War II tale Allied, which didn't manage to perform despite being targeted as something for grownups who didn't want to watch family films or superheroes. The new drama earned $13 million for the three days, and $18 million taking its pre-Thanksgiving release. Fifth was Arrival, as the sci-fi film continued to do well. It's now up to $62.3 million in the States after adding $11.2 million this weekend.
Trolls, hit by the new animated arrival, fell from third to sixth, earning $10.3 million. Family comedy drama Almost Christmas took in $7.6 million. A slightly less charming festive offering landed with a thud, as Bad Santa 2 received coal in its stocking from both critics and audiences, opening on Wednesday and ending up in eighth with $9 million.
Hacksaw Ridge fell to ninth, adding $5.4 million and The Edge Of Seventeen slipped to 10th with $2.9 million. And we have to voyage outside of the top 10 for a moment to report on Warren Beatty's latest, Rules Don't Apply. The comedy drama failed to catch the audience's attention and opened 12th with $2.1 million. It's a sorry end for a film that Beatty has long wanted to make.
The film based on A Monster Calls writer Patrick Ness' dystopian novels has been in the works for a while now, going through at least one other director and seeing script drafts from Charlie Kaufman and Money Monster's Jamie Linden.
Ness’ trilogy – The Knife Of Never Letting Go, The Ask And The Answer and Monsters Of Men – finds humankind in a dark future, colonising a distant planet after the Earth has been ruined. When an infection called the Noise strikes, all thoughts become audible and chaos follows.
A corrupt autocrat takes the chance to seize control of the human settlements in order to launch a strike on native alien race the Spackles, blaming them for the infection that's apparently killing human women. Young Todd Hewitt (Holland, assuming he signs on), the only boy in a town solely comprised of men, rebels to stop the oncoming destruction. Going on the run with his dog, he teams up with a mysterious girl (Ridley), who is the source of a precious patch of silence.
With the casting finally falling into place, it would seem that Chaos Walking is finally ready to get moving itself. Holland, of course, is the current Spider-Man, having made his debut in Captain America: Civil War. He'll be back on our screens as the web-slinger in Spider-Man: Homecoming, due on our screens 7 July next year.
This comes after Universal, which picked up the rights to the characters and their stories up for a new planned movies series in 2014, decided to let them lapse. Rice explained the updated situation on her Facebook page. "The theatrical rights to the Vampire Chronicles are once again in my hands, free and clear! As many of you know, Universal Studios and Imagine Entertainment had optioned the series to develop motion pictures from it, and though we had the pleasure of working with many fine people in connection with this plan, it did not work out. It is, more than ever, abundantly clear that television is where the vampires belong.
"I could not be more excited about this! A television series of the highest quality is now my dream for Lestat, Louis, Armand, Marius and the entire tribe. In this the new Golden Age of television, such a series is THE way to let the entire story of the vampires unfold. My son Christopher Rice and I will be developing a pilot script and a detailed outline for an open ended series, faithfully presenting Lestat’s story as it is told in the books, complete with the many situations that readers expect to see. We will likely begin with The Vampire Lestat and move on from there."
Rice and her son are apparently aiming for a Game Of Thrones-style sprawling series that would be a faithful rendering of the series. Rice's latest book Prince Lestat And The Realms Of Atlantis is just the most recent entry in the series, which comprises 13 main books and several spin-offs. The most famous adaptation of her work remains 1994's Interview With The Vampire, starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, though Rice will be hoping that the new series – wherever it ends up – will enjoy the same long-lasting success.
Blending moments we've seen in previous promotional footage (including young Jyn Erso receiving a very Star Wars universe-familiar crystal from her mother) and lots of battle scenes, there are new chances to see Imperial droid K-2SO (brought to robotically sarcastic life by Alan Tudyk) in action, and little interactions between the grown Jyn (Felicity Jones) and the band of heroes gathered to track down the plans to the Death Star.
You can, of course, learn a lot more about the movie in Empire's latest issue, out now in all good and outlying star system newsagents. And Rogue One itself arrives in the UK on 15 December, so there's a little more than two weeks wait now.
The artist's story is one seemingly tailor-made for the biopic treatment: diving into drink and drugs before he turned 18, an alcohol-fueled car accident left him a quadriplegic at 21. He met the challenges of his life and became a cartoonist unafraid to tackle tough subjects such as race and disability – even if meant calls to boycott him. His work was published in the New Yorker, Penthouse and Playboy among others, and he died in 2010.
Callahan published an autobiography, Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far On Foot (named for one of his famous pieces) in 1989 and filmmakers have been trying to make a movie of it since then. Robin Williams was a particular fan, and had been trying to get the film version made for several years, with Van Sant first approached about directing it in the early 2000s. But it never came together. Now, though, Anonymous Content and Iconoclast Films are trying to put the pieces together at last and seems closer than ever. It's not the first time that the actor and director have tried to reunite, though – Phoenix was to play the lead in Van Sant's The Sea Of Trees before dropping out, and given the savage critical and poor commercial reception of that one, he might be happy he never ended up starring.
Adapted by writer/director Don Roos from the 2009 tome with a more recent draft by Tom Bezucha, the film will see James play journalist Juliet Ashton, who wrote magazine columns during World War II. In the aftermath of the conflict, she’s contacted by Channel Islander Dawsey Adams (Huisman), who tells her the intriguing tale of the book society formed to help undercut the Nazi presence on Guernsey. Ashton decides to investigate, starts communicating with Adams and romance blossoms… At least until Adams agrees to a fight with a towering, muscle-laden brute, who promptly crushes his sk... No, that's something else.
There's no sign yet of when the movie will kick off shooting, but Huisman has been keeping himself busy with several new acting gigs, including Janusz Kaminski's American Dream.
The "Man" has connections with the growing resistance movement, though his actual role in it hasn't been made clear yet. What is, is that the current government wants those films confiscated before the flames of resistance grow stronger.
Picking up where season one left off, the show's focus is on growing tensions between Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, and the continuing journeys of the various characters who are dealing with what's happened and using those events to propel them into the future.
The second season of The Man In The High Castle will be available for streaming beginning 16 December.
TV News: Man In The High Castle, Stranger Things, Arrow and more
The Man In The High Castle gets a Season 2 trailer
Using the current interwebs fad to make an announcement feels in keeping with Wrinkle, which has an eclectic cast and source material that plays with space and time. A Wrinkle In Time has Jennifer Lee adapting Madeleine L'Engle's 1962 children's tale, the start of her Time Quartet series of novels. The story follows the Murry family; especially teenager Meg (Storm Reid) and her genius 5-year-old brother Charles Wallace (Deric McCabe), and Meg's classmate Calvin O'Keefe. Their scientist father has gone missing, but after the visit of a mysterious woman called Mrs. Whatsit, they learn that their father's research may have been more successful than they guessed and that he may have travelled in space and time. The kids end up following his footsteps to a planet called Camazotz, ruled by a giant evil brain called The Black Thing.
The likes of Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, Mindy Kaling, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Chris Pine and Zach Galifianakis help fill out the cast. In the States, at least, we now know the movie will be out on 6 April, 2018, and we'd expect the UK release to be either day and date or close to it.
Zach Galifianakis ready to join A Wrinkle In Time
Ava DuVernay makes history with A Wrinkle In Time
Reese Witherspoon and Mindy Kaling join A Wrinkle In Time
This is certainly a positive step for a movie that has had go up against complaints about its casting (particularly Scarlett Johansson in a role many thought should be played by an Asian actor) and is paddling upstream against the usual torrent of misgivings about remakes. Mansell is known for haunting, evocative music and is a regular collaborator for some great directors, so we're interested to see what he brings to the tech-noir world of The Major (Johansson) and her fight against a terrorist out to take down Hanka Robotics.
With Pilou Asbæk, Michael Pitt and Takeshi Kitano also in the cast, Ghost In The Shell has taken aim at a 31 March release date next year.
As for Mansell, he recently provided the music for one of the latest Black Mirror episodes and will reunite with Moon director Duncan Jones for Mute.
Here's what you need to know about Ghost In the Shell's history
See the making-of featurette
First look at Scarlett Johansson in Ghost In The Shell
Jackson is joining Joan Cusack and Bradley Whitford in the movie, which was written by Samantha McIntyre. In addition to making her full-length directorial debut (she's worked on shorts in the past), Larson will play a young woman named Kit whose life issues means she has to move back in with her parents. But then she receives a mysterious invitation to a strange-sounding store that will challenge her ideas about what it means to grow up.
Larson is cranking the cameras now in Los Angeles and the film should be out next year. As for Skull Island, that will arrive on our screens on 10 March next year. Larson has also worked on The Glass Castle, which has yet to lock in a confirmed release date, but she'll be back on our screens in Ben Wheatley's Free Fire, due 31 March.
Brie Larson directing new comedy Unicorn Store
Take a fresh look at Kong: Skull Island's ape in action
Referring not only to people that the history books have a tendency to sidestep, but also to the many calculations required to send people in space, Hidden Figures chronicles Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), the brilliant mathematician who worked with Dorothy Vaughn (Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe) as some of the main brains behind John Glenn's first trip into space and back in 1962. People remember his being the first American orbit of the Earth, now we'll properly learn who helped get him there. Kevin Costner, meanwhile, is the boss of the space programme.
Ted Melfi's the director here, with writer Allison Schroeder adapting Margot Lee Shetterly's book Hidden Figures: The Story Of The African-American Women Who Helped Win The Space Race. Kirsten Dunst, Mahershala Ali and Jim Parsons (hold the Big Bang Theory jokes, please) are also all in the cast. The film will land in UK cinemas on 24 February.
Exclusive image from Hidden Figures
Janelle Monáe joins Hidden Figures
Watch the previous trailer for Hidden Figures
Deadline reports that Paramount and Chernin Entertainment have bought up the rights to the character now that Sony has let them go. And O'Connor is aboard to realise a long-held dream to bring Reid and sidekick Kato to life in a movie that sounds more akin to Batman Begins than Rogen's laugh-grabbing attempt.
"I’ve been wanting to make this movie – and create this franchise – since I’ve wanted to make movies,” O’Connor tells Deadline. "As a kid, when most of my friends were into Superman and Batman, there was only one superhero who held my interest: The Green Hornet. I always thought he was the baddest badass because he had no superpowers. The Green Hornet was a human superhero. And he didn’t wear a clown costume. And he was a criminal – in the eyes of the law – and in the eyes of the criminal world. So all this felt real to me. Imagine climbing to the top of the Himalayas, or Mount Everest, or K2 over and over again and no one ever knew? You can never tell anybody. That’s the life of Britt and Kato. What they do, they can never say. They don’t take credit for anything."
And O'Connor clearly has a vision for this thing that goes beyond other super heroic attempts to bring classic characters to life. "The Green Hornet is ultimately a film about self-discovery,” O’Connor adds. "When we meet Britt Reid he’s lost faith in the system. Lost faith in service. In institutions. If that’s the way the world works, that’s what the world’s going to get. He’s a man at war with himself. A secret war of self that’s connected to the absence of his father. It’s the dragon that’s lived with him that he needs to slay. And the journey he goes on to become The Green Hornet is the dramatization of it, and becomes Britt’s true self. I think of this film as Batman upside down meets Bourne inside out by way of (American Sniper subject) Chris Kyle. He’s the anti-Bruce Wayne. His struggle: Is he a savior or a destroyer? Britt made money doing bad things, but moving forward he’s making no money doing good things. He must realize his destiny as a protector and force of justice by becoming the last thing he thought he’d ever become: his father’s son. Which makes him a modern Hamlet. By uncovering his past, and the truth of his father, Britt unlocks the future." For more from O'Connor, head to Deadline's site.
Sean O'Keefe is aboard to write the script under O'Connor's supervision, and it certainly sounds like the director has some interesting ideas for the future of the Hornet. Now we'll see whether a clean slate is what this hero needed.
Read Empire's review of the 2011 Green Hornet
The plot for the potential new show, in development at 20th Century Fox TV, sounds an awful lot like 1990s parallel realities series Sliders. In The Building, a group of young urban explorers are rooting through an old skyscraper when it suddenly shifts into a different version of Earth, one where Ronald Reagan didn't become president and Russia dropped the bomb. They have a limited amount of time to figure out the situation and rescue members of their team from new threats when the building moves again... leaving them to wonder if they'll ever get back to their own reality.
For all its Sliders-like qualities, the series will actually be based on a film called Parallels, directed by Chris Leone from a story he wrote with Laura Harkom. While Gaiman and Angry Films duo Don Murphy and Susan Montford are producers, Leone was involved in the development with Gaiman and Albert Kim. And it's Kim who will be running the show if it scores a home on US TV.
Listen to Neil Gaiman's visit to the Empire Podcast booth
Trailer for American Gods on TV
Neil Gaiman's Interworld heads for TV
Ben Sherwood, co-chairman, Disney Media Networks and president, Disney-ABC Television Group, offered in PR speak, “This unprecedented alliance represents a bold, innovative approach to launching great TV content for a worldwide audience. It highlights Disney-ABC’s unrelenting commitment to finding new and creative ways to showcasing our best programming and increasing global engagement and reach.” The idea is that the first two hours of the series will play in IMAX, and then will debut on television with additional footage not shown theatrically.
The Inhumans have become a significant part of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., having been introduced in full force last season. In fact, it was the use of them on the small screen that many believed diminished the possibilities for the big (denied by producer Kevin Feige). At the same time, The Inhumans series is not intended to be a spin-off from S.H.I.E.LD.
Created in 1965 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, The Inhumans are described by Marvel as “a race of superhumans with diverse and singularly unique powers.” The focus of the television series is going to be on the character of Black Bolt and the royal family. He is the ruler of his people, which consists of a race of genetically altered superhumans.
First discussion of an Inhumans film began in 2011, though little more was said until three years when word came out that the script was being written by Joe Robert Cole. Then, in 2014, Marvel Studios announced that the film version would be released in November of 2018, which was later pushed back to July of 2019 before the project was pulled off the schedule in April 2016.
On television, they appeared in 1978 and 1994 animated series based on The Fantastic Four, and more recently in Marvel’s new wave of animated shows, including Hulk And The Agents Of S.M.A.S.H., Ultimate Spider-Man, Guardians Of The Galaxy and Avengers Assemble.
The Inhumans joins an ever-growing roster of Marvel live action series, including S.H.I.E.L.D., Daredevil, Jessica Jones, and Luke Cage, as well as the forthcoming Iron Fist, The Defenders, Legion and Runaways. It's too early to tell whether UK audiences will get the full IMAX package, or which channel here will carry the eventual show. But who knows? Maybe it'll follow the MCU's cinematic habit and screen here first...
Who the heck are The Inhumans?
Stan Lee says Marvel will make The Inhumans
Marvel removes The Inhumans from release schedule
Taken – loosely – from Philip K. Dick's book, High Castle posits a world where the Axis powers won World War II. And now, 20 years after the end of the conflict, America is split between the Greater Nazi Reich and the Japanese Pacific States, with the two superpowers uneasily sharing the country.
But there are still those who believe in a free America, including Juliana Crain (Alexa Davalos) and Frank Frink (Rupert Evans), and they find themselves wrapped up in an effort to destablise their rulers. On the governmental side, there are the likes of Obergruppenführer John Smith (Rufus Sewell), an SS officer charged with hunting down the resistance. Yet even he's starting to question his values when he discovers that his son is sick.
The new season promises to explore more about the titular "man", a mysterious figure who is distributing films showing a very different outcome to the war... Where is his seemingly impossible intel coming from, and can Juliana and the resistance trust him?
Coming at a time when many people might wish they were living in an alternate reality, The Man In The High Castle returns to Amazon for a second run of 10 episodes on 16 December.
See two minutes of the new season
Read Empire's review of Season 1
Check out the first trailer for Season 2
“I thought, ‘My God, it’s about time you guys called me up!’” says West about being approached for the project. He admits, jokingly, that it “took a little time” to get back into character. "About 20 seconds!”
The interview also delves into the explosion of fame that West and his sidekick co-star, Burt Ward, enjoyed during their ‘60s peak. “In a sense, I took advantage of it,” West says, adding conspiratorially, “with all of the human pleasures that one could accrue”. Ward has said that he and his co-star were “sexual vampires” – especially during the personal appearances they made in costume at weekends, where he claims women were banging on their windows while they were in bed with other women.
Be sure to pick up a copy of the latest issue of Empire, where the full interview covers such golden anecdotes as Adam West and Frank Gorshin (aka The Riddler) being asked to leave a Los Angeles orgy for talking in character.
The Fantastic Beasts issue of Empire is on sale in all good and evil newsagents now. You can also buy the issue online here. Or if you fancy getting this sort of thing plopping on your doormat every month, before everyone else, with exclusive covers, you’ll probably want to subscribe to Empire.
Grossing $745 million worldwide, Suicide Squad was a hit beyond the dreams of even the DC brains trust. If you didn’t catch it in cinemas, David Ayer’s blockbuster was an action team-up movie that assembled the likes of Deadshot (Will Smith), Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), (Jay Hernandez) and Slipknot (Adam Beach) and unleashed them on an ungrateful world.
There’s not a whole lot of new footage in evidence here, although Warner Bros. is promising an additional 13 minutes in the Extended Cut.
Find out what Suicide Squad The Extended Cut has in store when it lands on digital download on 28 November and Blu-ray on 5 December. Read Empire’s review of the theatrical version here.
The movie sees Steinfeld swapping Barden University of Pitch Perfect 2 for a high-school life she’s not entirely comfortable with as junior Nadine Byrd. He bestie (Haley Lu Richardson) is dating her cool older brother, she has an annoying mom (Kyra Sedgwick), and her mentor and history teacher is Woody Harrelson. She’s probably not getting a lot of sympathy there.
Happily, there’s a boy too. Specifically a shy, thoughtful one (Hayden Szeto) who may offer a confidante (or more) for Steinfeld's sparky, smart teenager.
Originally called ‘Besties’, Edge Of Seventeen is a coming-of-age comedy directed by Kelly Fremon Craig. The debutante director is pitching for a John Hughes-style mix of pathos and comedy. Find out if she’s nailed it when Edge Of Seventeen gets its UK on 30 November.
Deadline's report offers no details of who Depp will be playing, but there is a suggestion that eagle-eyed viewers will be able to spot him in a small cameo in the first movie, which signals that the studio is looking to pull off a Marvel-style trick and introduce the new character in amongst the ones we know about, either in the body of the film or a post-credits tag.
With Wizarding World creator J.K. Rowling writing the script (and planning to craft the rest), and David Yates directing at least the initial two, the first Fantastic Beasts has Redmayne's Newt Scamander arriving in 1920s New York and unwittingly unleashing a host of magical creatures from within his magic case. Which isn't good news for the city's magical population, as relations are already strained between those with abilities and the Muggles of the States, known as the No-Maj.
The movie is out on 18 November and you can find out lots more about it in the current Empire.
Written by Michael Mitnik, the film will follow the real-life public clash between Thomas Edison (Benedict Cumberbatch) and George Westinghouse (Michael Shannon) as to who was going to decide the future of the electricity industry in the 1880s. Edison favoured direct current, while Westinghouse and several other companies preferred to push alternating current. Caught between them is inventor Nikola Tesla (Nicholas Hoult), with Waterston on as Westinghouse's wife.
As for Holland, he'll be playing Edison's right hand man, Samuel Insull. The film should be shooting next month, looking to get out ahead of Imitation Game duo Morten Tyldum and Graham Moore, who are adapting Moore's book about the fight, The Last Days Of Night. They have Eddie Redmayne aboard to play lawyer Paul Cravath (who defended Westinghouse from a lawsuit by Edison), and have a February start pencilled in.
Holland returns to the role of Peter Parker in Spider-Man: Homecoming, which is out here on 7 July.
Suzi Ewing is in the director's chair for the kidnap pic, which sees Evans as Lewis, who on the surface seems to be a regular guy, but who is harbouring a burning desire for revenge. The focus for his vengeful obsession is a woman named Cathy (Reilly). He grabs her from the street in broad daylight and imprisons her in a soundproof cell he's built into his house, intent on getting her to reveal a dark secret.
Lewis, however, hasn't planned on his motives starting to unravel and for Cathy to turn out to be a formidable, dangerous match for her kidnapper. Clarke wrote the script and is producing with Unstoppable Entertainment partner Jason Maza alongside Maggie Monteith and Gina Powell.
He's already shot the role of a private security agent charged with escorting a valuable Chinese antique out of Shanghai. That is until a gang of thieves target the shipment, putting both him in and the woman he loves in peril. To save them both and recover the goods, he'll have to outsmart the mastermind behind the crime and evade the Shanghai police.
Marcella and The Returned's Charles Martin called the shots for this one, which also stars Simon Yam, Hannah Quinlivan, Lynn Hung, Lei Wu and Yanneng Shi.
"S.M.A.R.T. Chase will be the most original and innovative roller-coaster of 2017," producer Vincent Maraval tells screen International, looking to start a little hype. "It will bring the international audience through an unknown traditional and super modern Shanghai at full speed." There's no word on a UK release date for this one yet.
Harper played Suzy Bannion, a young woman who attends a prestigious ballet academy in Europe. She soon comes to realise that there is something terrifying and supernatural at work at the school, and we don't just mean the awful treatment of toes in ballet slippers.
A Bigger Splash's Luca Guadagnino has just started the cameras rolling on the new take in Italy. He has Chloe Grace Moretz, Mia Goth and two previous collaborators (Dakota Johnson and Tilda Swinton) aboard, and a story that roughly follows the same track. A young American heads to the prestigious Markos Tanz Company in 1970s Berlin and becomes a star pupil under the tutelage of Madame Blanc. She befriends another dancer, but comes to fear that the place harbours a dark secret. And we don't just mean the awful treatment of to... we've done this bit.
We don't yet know what role Harper will take this time, but the film should be out next year.
