Matthew Monagle
American Humane Disproves ‘A Dog’s Purpose’ Animal Abuse Video
With everyone’s feeds full of horrible news stories these days, you’ve probably already forgotten about the video of alleged animal abuse on the set of A Dog’s Purpose. Back in January, TMZ shared leaked footage of animal handlers aggressively dragging their canine star into a tank of water. The clear signs of the dog’s panic caused an internet firestorm, with star Josh Gad distancing himself from the project and PETA calling for an immediate boycott of the film. A Dog’s Purpose still performed well enough in its opening weekend, but the scandal no doubt cost it ticket sales at the box office.
‘Rogue One’ Featured Unused ‘Star Wars’ Footage Found by the Director
Even if you’re not the biggest fan of CGI actors returned from the dead, you probably had to appreciate the ways that Rogue One: A Star Wars Story director Gareth Edwards tried to bring the events of Star Wars: A New Hope more directly into his film. In several key sequences, Edwards was even able to feature unseen footage from the original 1977 film, causing fans to wonder where that new footage came from (and why they hadn’t seen it before). Are there entire archives of unseen footage that Lucasfilm has been hiding from fans for all these decades?
Al Gore’s ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ Gets a Sequel Just in Time for Sundance
Al Gore is one of those people who gets me thinking about legacy. When Gore’s time on the earth comes to a close, how will he be remembered? As a solid vice president who lost one of the most hotly disputed elections of all time? Or as a champion of environmental conservationism? From the outside, it certainly appears that Gore is angling for the latter. Just this past weekend, it was announced by Paramount Pictures (via Variety) that Al Gore has been working on a sequel to his 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth and that the film was set to be the opening night film at next year’s Sundance Film Festival.
Sony Sets a ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming 2’ Release Date
File this one under ‘Least Surprising News Stories of the Day’: right on the heels of releasing the first trailer for Spider-Man: Homecoming, Sony has announced the release date for Spider-Man: Homecoming 2, proving that no title is so awkward as to prevent Hollywood from slapping the number ‘2’ on it and calling it a day.
U.S. Court Dismisses MPAA Case Requiring Movies With Smoking to Be R-Rated
As times change, standards change, and we occasionally find ourselves bumping up against old traditions that need to retire. Even some of our most beloved childhood movies feature behavior and activities — smoking, strong language, casual misogyny — that went unnoticed and unappreciated by our older selves. Given the well-established health risks that smoking poses, one person recently took it upon himself to sue Hollywood in an attempt to get onscreen smoking banned. I’ll give a moment to guess who won.
‘Jurassic World 2’ Will Start Filming Next March
One of the peculiarities of the modern studio system is that we often know the date a movie will be released long before we know the date when a movie will actually go into production. For example, we’ve known since last year that Jurassic World 2 would be released in June of 2018, but here it is, the end of 2016, and we’re just now learning the timeline to actually make the darn thing. Production schedules, like box office gross, sometimes have a logic all their own.
Tom Cruise Will Live to Be 1,000 in Biblical Epic ‘Methuselah’
Tom Cruise is not one for subtlety. After spending the last decade in peak physical condition and proving his prowess through a series of action films, the actor was seemingly worried that we still did not get the point of how impressive he is. So what does Cruise do? He signs on for Methuselah, a movie about a famous biblical character who lived over 900 years and was considered a great warrior and leader for almost all of them. Yes, Tom Cruise, we get the point. You’re amazing and will never actually die
‘Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders’ Will Swing Into Theaters for One Night Only
Time is a flat circle. When Matthew McConaughey’s character spoke these words in True Detective’s first season, he probably didn’t have the Batman character in mind (although, maybe he did, there’s a lot about that show I didn’t quite understand). And yet, here we are, in the year 2016, and many people are legitimately as or even more excited for an animated Batman movie starring Adam West than they were for the blockbuster Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. What was once camp is now mainstream, and vice versa
‘Jurassic World 2’ Director J.A. Bayona Confirms ‘Jurassic World’ Trilogy
About a year ago, Jurassic World director Colin Trevorrow went on a Jurassic Park-themed podcast and talked about Universal’s plans to make his film the first in a trilogy of movies about dinosaur-induced mayhem. And while nothing really seemed to indicate that the creative team had switched gears since then, today we did finally get confirmation that a Jurassic World trilogy is still the plan going forward.
Japanese Blockbuster ‘Shin Godzilla’ Sets its American Release Date
It’s been twelve years since Japanese film studio Toho released its last Godzilla movie, the longest gap between films dating back the first Godzilla movie in 1954. And while Japanese audiences have always loved their kaijū (“strange monsters”) movies, the fact that international audiences are starting to develop a taste for giant monsters has set the stage for Toho to bring back their most famous creation in the 2016 blockbuster Shin Godzilla.