Is it safe to go back to the cinema? After a washout summer with one studio dud after another, traumatized audiences can be forgiven for vowing never to visit their local multiplex again.
But everyone likes a great comeback story and the studios might be on the verge of redeeming themselves – in style.
Feeling let down by Paul Feig’s all-female Ghostbusters? Of course you weren’t the only one so you might want to take the plunge into 1920’s New York for what could well be a kind of period Ghostbusters courtesy of JK Rowling: Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them.
The first in a series of spin-off films from the Harry Potter universe, it’s inspired by the Hogwarts textbook studied by Harry and pals. Eddie Redmayne is “magizoologist” Newt Scamander who arrives in the Big Apple and unleashes all manner of flying, crawling and misshapen beasties from his battered briefcase.
New entries in existing franchises look like they could be the best yet. Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, directed by Edward Zwick, brings some much needed human interest to Tom Cruise’s meathead hero, pairing him with the lovely Cobie Smulders as his ally, Major Susan Turner. Reckons Zwick: “It’s a about a certain intensity of relationship with other people that wasn’t quite happening in the other film.”
And after a series of flops most recently In The Heart Of The Sea, director Ron Howard better have pulled out all the stops for the latest Dan Brown thriller, Inferno, with Tom Hanks and Felicity Jones dashing around Europe to save the world from an ‘extinction-level’ virus.
Hanks himself could do with a hit after A Hologram For The King vanished so fast from cinemas it likely was a hologram itself. But he’ll probably hit box office and awards pay dirt with Sully, an account of how pilot Chesley B. Sullenberger crash landed US Airways Flight 1549 into New York’s Hudson River in 2009 only for his heroic actions to come under investigation. Directed by Clint Eastwood, it’s sure to be a class act.
Another true story looks guaranteed to bring audiences out in a sweat- Deepwater Horizon. Reuniting Mark Wahlberg with his Lone Survivor director Peter Berg, the action thriller gives a human face to the environmental catastrophe. Wahlberg plays family man Mark Williams, the last person to leave the stricken rig and Berg says, “Everyone knows that lots of birds and fish were killed but 11 men were killed. And the story of those men trying to get out alive was a powerful one”.
The Venice Film Festival is underway, firing the starter pistol on the never-ending awards’ season, and opening film La La Land looks like a contender. Directed by Whiplash prodigy Damien Chazelle, it’s a gloriously romantic tribute to golden era Hollywood musicals starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone as a jazz pianist and actress falling in love in present day Los Angeles.
Put money too on Nocturnal Animals, Tom Ford’s first film since A Single Man seven years ago. An adaptation of a 1993 novel by Austin Wright it chronicles a failed marriage between Amy Adams and Jake Gyllenhaal via the device of the latter’s own novel about the relationship.
Another adaptation looks like it could be this season’s Gone Girl: The Girl On The Train, based on the bestseller by Paula Hawkins, starring Emily Blunt as an alcoholic commuter caught up in a woman’s disappearance. The trailer sizzles.
Summer 2016 was a dead loss for comedy (the belated chuckles of Sausage Party notwithstanding) but expect some decent politically incorrect gags in Bad Santa 2 in which Billy Bob Thornton’s boozed-up Santa is roped into a plot by his dreadful mother (Kathy Bates) to relieve a Chicago charity of its Yuletide proceeds.
More traditional raucous japes are promised by Office Christmas Party with Jason Bateman leading the cast of office workers facing lay offs unless they can woo a major client at the annual shindig. And, of course, there’s the very belated return of Bridget Jones with Renée Zellweger, Colin Firth and Patrick “McDreamy” Dempsey. Word on the sequel, Bridget Jones’s Baby, is surprisingly good.
As they did this summer, Disney will surely dominate the season with three sure-fire smashes: Doctor Strange with Benedict Cumberbatch, South Pacific-set animation Moana with music provided by Hamilton‘s Lin-Manuel Miranda and let’s not forget. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, directed by Godzilla’s Gareth Edwards. Starring Felicity Jones and Diego Luna, it occurs just before the events of the original 1977 Star Wars. It better supply a fresher force than Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
The one I can’t wait for, however, packs the coolest cast and some serious firepower (and horsepower): Antoine Fuqua’s remake of The Magnificent Seven with a cast led by Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt and Matt Bomer.
Perhaps, most unlikely of all, this year will deliver a decent remake…