Movie Muser

For several months now we’ve known that Gareth Edwards was attached to direct the first of Disney/Lucasfilm’s planned Star Ward spin-offs from their upcoming Episodes VII-IX, and more recently it’s been revealed that Felicity Jones was in talks for the female lead.

Now we’ve got a title, a release date and Jones has been confirmed to star. The movie will be called Star Wars: Rogue One, and it will hit cinemas December 16th, 2016.

There’s still limited info about what the movie will actually be about, although the press release says, “The idea for the story of Rogue One came from John Knoll, an Academy Award-winning visual effects supervisor and chief creative officer at Industrial Light & Magic. He will executive produce along with Simon Emanuel (The Dark Knight Rises, Fast & Furious 6) and Jason McGatlin (Tintin, War Of The Worlds). Kathleen Kennedy and Tony To (Band Of Brothers, The Pacific) are on board to produce and John Swartz (Star Wars: The Force Awakens) will co-produce. The film starts shooting this summer in London.”

Although there is speculation that it will be about Rogue Squadron, which was formed shortly after the Battle Of Yavin, that hasn’t been confirmed.

It was also revealed that Star Wars Episode VIII will come out on May 26, 2017, with Rian Johnson (Looper) set to both write and direct. Incidentally that date is exactly 40 years after the first Star Wars movie came out.

For several years an endless array of King Arthur movies have been in development but got cancelled before they made it in front of the cameras. Now one has passed that milestone as Guy Ritchie’s Knights of the Round Table: King Arthur is now on set and to prove it, the director tweeted a pic of him ready for the shoot alongside his Arthur, Charlie Hunnam.

The film is the start of an ambitious franchise which, if it works out, will include at least six films, each concentrating on a different member of the Round Table.

We now have a few more details on the first film, with the official synopsis reading, ‘The bold new story introduces a streetwise young Arthur who runs the back alleys of Londonium with his gang, unaware of the life he was born for until he grasps hold of the sword Excalibur—and with it, his future. Instantly challenged by the power of Excalibur, Arthur is forced to make some hard choices. Throwing in with the Resistance and a mysterious young woman named Guinevere, he must learn to master the sword, face down his demons and unite the people to defeat the tyrant Vortigern, who stole his crown and murdered his parents, and become King.’

Alongside Hunnam are Astrid Bergès-Frisbey as Guinevere; Jude Law as villainous Vortigern; Eric Bana as Arthur’s dad Uther Pendragon; Djimon Hounsou as Resistance leader Bedivere; and Aidan Gillen as Goosefat Bill. The movie is due out July 22, 2016.

Miles Teller got a lot of kudos opposite Oscar-winner JK Simmons in Whiplash and this summer he’s making a bid for superhero status as Reed Richard (aka Mr. Fantastic) in Fantastic Four. He’s certainly going places including, according to TheWrap, a movie called The Life and Times of the Stopwatch Gang.

Universal has snapped up the rights to Josh Dean’s Atavist article, with Ruber Fleischer (Zombieland, Gangster Squad) set to direct.

The true life tale if about a notorious and in some circles revered band of three 1980s bank robbers, with Atavist saying, ‘They were in and out in less than two minutes—that’s how they got away with millions. And for the duration of their reign, no bank robbers were more feared (though they never fired their guns) nor more pursued or more mythologized than the Stopwatch Gang. The members themselves were straight out of central casting: Lionel Wright, a meticulous introvert who could disappear in a room full of people; Paddy Mitchell, a charming and well-connected crook who saw an angle in everything and would go to any lengths to avoid the hell of being locked away; and Stephen Reid, a fearless point man who could find the weakness in any system and whose story—of addiction and descent into crime, of redemption and literary fame—was all prelude to a tragic but life-saving fall from grace.’

It’s not known who Teller will play, but it will presumably be one of the robbers. It’s not clear when it will shoot.

Ever since he was a very young actor, Ben Foster has been on the edge of stardom, getting plenty of kudos but never quite breaking through into being the kind of guy who can lead a movie in his own right. He is good though, which is presumably why THR reports Ron Howard has cast him in Inferno.

It’s Howard’s third adaptation of one of Dan Brown’s Robert Langdon novels following The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons. In Inferno, symbologist Robert Langdon once more get thrust into the heart of a mystery, this time revolving around medieval poet Dante Alghieri.

However to make things a little more complicated Langdon wakes up in an Italian hospital with amnesia. He has no idea what’s going on but it soon becomes clear it has something to do with a global plague, as well as artefacts to do with Dante – and he may be the only one who can stop it (and if that sounds like James Bond with a university professor, it kind of is).

Foster will be a villain lined up to stop Brown from figuring out what’s going on.

Felicity Jones, Omar Sy, Irrfan Khan and Sidse Babett Knudsen also star, with shooting due to kick off fairly soon.