Over at Box Office Mojo an onslaught of upcoming films just earned release dates, primarily films from the Weinstein Co. and Universal. Instead of sorting through paragraphs giving you an update on each I decided to just create mini previews of each film below with what is known so far and what films they will be opening up against.
If you don’t see a director or a cast listing that’s because they haven’t been announced yet. So have a look through and see what interests you. The date I found most interesting was the log jam of films opening on November 23 where you have Martin Scorsese’s Hugo Cabret, the Muppets movie, the 3D Piranha sequel, the animated feature Arthur Christmas and now the Weinstein Co. throws the Cannes Film Festival silent film standout The Artist into the mix. Going to be a wild Thanksgiving weekend.
Title: My Week with Marilyn
Release Date: November 4, 2011
Studio: The Weinstein Co.
Director: Simon Curtis
Cast: Michelle Williams, Eddie Redmayne, Kenneth Branagh, Judi Dench, Julia Ormond, Dougray Scott, Emma Watson, Toby Jones, Philip Jackson, Derek Jacobi, Dominic Cooper
Films It Will Open Against: Puss in Boots, Tower Heist, A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas
Synopsis: In the early summer of 1956, 23 year-old Colin Clark, just down from Oxford and determined to make his way in the film business, worked as a lowly assistant on the set of The Prince and the Showgirl, the film that famously united Sir Laurence Olivier and Marilyn Monroe, who was also on honeymoon with her new husband, the playwright Arthur Miller.
Nearly 40 years on, his diary account “The Prince, the Showgirl and Me” was published, but one week was missing and this was published some years later as “My Week with Marilyn” – this is the story of that week. When Arthur Miller leaves England, the coast is clear for Colin to introduce Marilyn to some of the pleasures of British life; an idyllic week in which he escorted a Monroe desperate to get away from her retinue of Hollywood hangers-on and the pressures of work.
Title: The Artist (Read my review from Cannes here)
Release Date: November 23, 2011
Studio: The Weinstein Co.
Director: Michel Hazanavicius
Cast: Jean Dujardin, Bérénice Bejo, John Goodman, James Cromwell, Penelope Ann Miller, Missi Pyle, Malcolm McDowell
Films It Will Open Against: Arthur Christmas, Hugo Cabret, The Muppets, Piranha 3DD
Synopsis: Hollywood 1927. Georges Valentin is a silent movie star who seems blessed: he is handsome, athletic and an excellent dancer. The arrival of the talkies causes Georges to fall into oblivion, alcohol and poverty. As for the young extra Peppy Miller, her star shoots to the heavens.
Title: Coriolanus
Release Date: December 2, 2011
Studio: The Weinstein Co.
Director: Ralph Fiennes
Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Gerard Butler, Brian Cox, Vanessa Redgrave, James Nesbitt, John Kani, Jessica Chastain, Ashraf Barhom
Films It Will Open Against: None at this time
Synopsis: Caius Martius ‘Coriolanus’ (Ralph Fiennes), a revered and feared Roman General is at odds with the city of Rome and his fellow citizens. Pushed by his controlling and ambitious mother Volumnia (Vanessa Redgrave) to seek the exalted and powerful position of Consul, he is loath to ingratiate himself with the masses whose votes he needs in order to secure the office. When the public refuses to support him, Coriolanus’s anger prompts a riot that culminates in his expulsion from Rome. The banished hero then allies himself with his sworn enemy Tullus Aufidius (Gerard Butler) to take his revenge on the city.
Title: The Iron Lady
Release Date: December 16, 2011
Studio: The Weinstein Co.
Director: Phyllida Lloyd
Cast: Meryl Streep, Jim Broadbent, Anthony Head, Richard E. Grant, Roger Allam
Films It Will Open Against: Alvin and the Chipmunks – Chipwrecked!, The Descendants, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
Synopsis: The Iron Lady is a surprising and intimate portrait of Margaret Thatcher (Meryl Streep), the first and only female Prime Minister of The United Kingdom. One of the 20th century’s most famous and influential women, Thatcher came from nowhere to smash through barriers of gender and class to be heard in a male dominated world.
Title: Scary Movie 5
Release Date: April 20, 2012
Studio: Dimension
Director: David Zucker
Films It Will Open Against: House at the End of the Street
Synopsis: Fifth film in the horror parody franchise.
Title: House at the End of the Street
Release Date: April 20, 2012
Studio: Relativity Media
Director: Mark Tonderai
Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Max Thieriot, Elisabeth Shue, Gil Bellows
Films It Will Open Against: Scary Movie 5
Synopsis: Directed by Mark Tonderai (Hush) and written by David Loucka (Dream House), House at the End of the Street is about a mother (Shue) and daughter (Lawrence) who move into a new community and find themselves next door to a house in which a psychotic young girl murdered her parents. While the locals insist the girl vanished after the brutal murders, the young newcomer befriends the surviving son (Theriot) and discovers the sinister story is far from over.
Title: Savages
Release Date: September 28, 2012
Studio: Universal Pictures
Director: Oliver Stone
Cast: John Travolta, Uma Thurman, Blake Lively, Emile Hirsch, Demián Bichir
Films It Will Open Against: Looper
Synopsis: An adaptation of the Don Winslow novel set for publication this July centering on two pals from Laguna Beach who share the same girlfriend and a thriving business growing and distributing the best-quality pot on the planet. When they resist being muscled by a Mexican drug cartel, the girl is kidnapped and the ransom is every cent they’ve made for the last five years. They agree to pay but hatch an alternate plan to get her back, get revenge, and then get lost.
Title: Halloween 3-D
Release Date: October 26, 2012
Studio: Dimension
Director: Patrick Lussier
Films It Will Open Against: None at this time
Synopsis: The third film in the rebooted Halloween franchise.
Title: Despicable Me 2
Release Date: July 3, 2013
Studio: Universal Pictures
Films It Will Open Against: None at this time
Synopsis: Sequel to the 2010 animated hit comedy featuring Steve Carell as the voice of Gru, a supervillain who finds a family in three little orphaned girls who look at him and see something that no one else has ever seen: a Dad.
Title: Oblivion
Release Date: July 19, 2013
Studio: Universal Pictures
Director: Joseph Kosinski
Cast: Tom Cruise
Films It Will Open Against: None at this time
Synopsis: The story is set on a future Earth, where civilization lives above the clouds and scavengers collect ancient artifacts from the polluted surface below. When one young scavenger finds a crashed spacecraft planetside, it leads him on a journey filled with romance and adventure.
