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Development: Hereditary director teases next film; new Dark Phoenix poster; more
Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the movie theater, the filmmaker behind Hereditary has just posted the first small but weird teaser for his highly anticipated follow-up.
The movie is called Midsommar, and it will be writer/director Ari Aster’s first feature since he came out of nowhere last year to scare the living daylights out of everyone with Hereditary. Aster has described the new movie as "folk horror" — think The Wicker Man, Blood on Satan's Claw, or Apostle — and the short video teaser sort of reflects that:
There's nothing blatantly frightening about that clip, but the flowers blooming on the girls' dresses — could those be bloodstains? — as they dance around an ominous device of some kind does a lot to set the mood. The movie's plot revolves around a young couple (Jack Reynor and Florence Pugh) who attend a rural mid-summer festival in Sweden and soon find themselves at the mercy of a pagan ritual.
Aster has quite a challenge ahead of him to make something as terrifying as Hereditary, but since he has said that Midsommar is "the only other horror movie I have," we expect him to pull out all the stops. Midsommar comes out this sommar summer, on Aug. 9.
With Dark Phoenix hitting movie screens in just over three months (June 7), a brand-new poster has arrived online along with a promise of a new trailer hitting tomorrow (Feb. 27).
The poster popped up on Twitter, along with the reveal of the upcoming trailer:
As you can see, the poster is centered around Jean Grey (Sophie Turner) and splits her right down the middle between her X-Men persona and the alien Phoenix entity that she becomes. Surrounding her are characters like Professor X (James McAvoy), Magneto (Michael Fassbender), Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence), Beast (Nicholas Hoult), Cyclops (Tye Sheridan), and others.
Dark Phoenix is written and directed by longtime X-Men movie scribe and producer Simon Kinberg and is almost certainly going to be the last X-Men entry for a while as Disney and Marvel absorb the franchise. With all the struggles to get this one to the screen, let's hope it does this classic storyline justice and sends out this cast in style.
Famed author and filmmaker Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park, Westworld) may have died in 2008, but his literary legacy lives on.
According to the Associated Press, a sequel to Crichton's 50-year-old novel The Andromeda Strain, titled The Andromeda Evolution, will be published on Nov. 12 of this year to mark the original book's Golden anniversary. The sequel will be written by Robopocalypse author Daniel H. Wilson under the supervision of CrichtonSun LLC, for which the author’s widow, Sherri Crichton, serves as CEO.
The Andromeda Strain was Crichton's sixth novel but the first published under his own name. The 1969 thriller followed a team of scientists as they fought to stop a deadly extraterrestrial micro-organism from spreading across the world. The book was adapted into a tense, faithful 1972 movie (which still holds up quite well) and a 2008 A&E miniseries that took many liberties with the source material.
Sherri Crichton said in a statement, "It’s exciting to be shining a spotlight on the world that Michael so brilliantly created and to collaborate with Daniel Wilson. This novel is for Crichton fans; it’s a celebration of Michael’s universe and a way to introduce him to new generations, and to those discovering his worlds for the first time.”
And before we go, little monster fans everywhere will be excited to hear that Sony Pictures Animation has officially given the green light to Hotel Transylvania 4. According to Deadline, the film will open on Dec. 22, 2021, and will once again follow the adventures of Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolf Man, the Mummy, and countless other classic monsters as voiced by Adam Sandler and other stars.
The third film in the series, last summer's Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation, became Sony Pictures’ biggest animated film of all time, with worldwide box-office returns of more than $528 million. So it's no surprise that a fourth movie is now in the works.
