Focker-in-Law (Universal, 11.25.26) will obviously be serving that good old Focker formula on a big silver platter. Fat paychecks for all concerned.
The only difference is that the first Fockers flick (i.e., Meet The Parents) was 26 years ago, and the original cast members have since moved into the realm of grandparenting and beyond.
Thank God Arianna Grande is finally free of her Wicked obligations.
I have to be honest about Skyler Gisondo — he’s weird looking. I certainly wouldn’t want him to date, much less marry, my granddaughter.
Either way she sounds sincere in a “I really don’t give a shit” sort of way.
Woman who lived in Hollywood for a decade claims Will Smith is gay.
“He’s always been gay. I lived in Hollywood for a decade. My boss was his agent at CAA for 8 years- would help him shuffle men in and out of their mansions.” pic.twitter.com/KNYviJwgSe
Day late, dollar short: If I’d been in Richard Rushfield‘s Ankler shoes, I probably would’ve thought twice about registering my discomfort over the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger (i.e., passing around “Block the Merger” buttons).
A couple of days ago Rushfield decided to bond with “more than 1,000 actors, directors and writers” who signed a letter protesting Paramount’s buying WBD. Paramount not only saw red but has reportedly declared it won’t be throwing The Ankler any ad money during the forthcoming 2026-2027 Oscar season.
Rushfield: “Both the Wrap and Page Six pieces are accurate to the best of my knowledge, but I’m not directly involved in sales stuff and am also [at Cinemacon] so missing out on much of the fuss.”
Quote given to Page Six: “[Paramount] obviously has an issue with Richard’s reporting and him signing the letter. It’s reached a bit of a boiling point. Their reaction is now one of the main storylines, which is so counter to what they were aiming for — now we’re all taking about these buttons.”
2026 has been a slumping, slumbering, soporific year so far…three and a half months of “who really cares?” Except, that is, for two excellent foreign-made flicks I’ve seen, reviewed and derived significant pleasure from: Hasan Hadi‘s The President’s Cake and Francois Ozon‘s The Stranger
Otherwise things have basically been bad, droopy and debilitating, although the pace will start to perk up during April’s second half — Kirk Jones‘ I Swear (4.24), Antoine Fuqua‘s Michael (4.24), Peter Farrelly‘s Balls Up (debuting today on Amazon…4.15…Mark Wahlberg, Paul Walter Hauser, Sacha Baron Cohen), David Frankel‘s The Devil Wears Prada 2 (5.1)…what else?
I hated the idea of The Super Mario Galaxy Movie existing as a feature. I spat upon it. Emerald Fennell‘s Wuthering Heights…nope. Gore Verbinski‘s Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die…never saw it, don’t care. (Maybe I should have.) I didn’t “hate” Project Hail Mary but it made me feel badly…it brought me down, left me feeling alienated, vaguely put off. I thought Maggie Gylllenhaal‘s The Bride! was mostly appalling. Nothing got to me except for Cake and Stranger. Everything else either stunk or meh’ed me to death.
I still haven’t seen Steven Soderbergh‘s The Christophers.
I actually quite loved Season #2 of The Pitt….forgot to mention that.
With season #4 of Mike White‘s The White Lotus having begun lensing in France, THR‘s Nick Porter is reporting that Variety critic Guy Lodge will play himself in a cameo during the show’s Cannes Film Festival lensing.
Kidding!…kidding!…false alarm, joke, please.
What I’m really saying is that if and when White’s HBO series shoots during the forthcoming 2026 festival (5.12 through 5.23), White should not cast Lodge or N.Y. Times correspondent Kyle Buchanan or IndieWire‘s Anne Thompson…none of the usual suspects. White should instead consider one or two outspoken, rebel-spirit journos…perhaps some loner type who, let’s say, rides a rented rumblehog and maybe wears saddle shoes, Kooples shirts and tinted glasses. Someone who vaguely resembles Jeff Goldblum‘s character in Nashville, say.
Or, better yet, White should use the Oscar Expert and Brother Bro….twins Cole and Justin Jaeger. White would probably like to use some kind of youngish, good-looking journos, right?
Two or three days ago Jeff “Insneider” Sneider posted an “uh-oh” reaction to a research screening of Alejandro G. Inarritu and Tom Cruise‘s Digger (Warner Bros., 10.2.26).
I don’t think it’s fair to post research screening opinions unless you have at least two (2) sources or reports, and even then you should always advise that said opinions are hardly absolute or definitive.
That said, the Sneider reaction suggested that (a) the film may not be quite what it needs to be or (b) the person who coughed up this reaction may not be an especially sharp or perceptive person…who knows?
But when I read the Andreas Weisman Deadline report that planted a notion that Digger isn’t likely to debut at any of the early fall film festivals (Venice. Telluride, Toronto)…when I read this on top of the Sneider thing, I went “aahh, okay, I see…maybe.”
There was a slight prayer that Ink might possibly premiere next month in Cannes, and then that went south. Then it was speculated that Boyle’s period journalism drama might debut at the Venice Film Festival five months hence. Nope! Now comes a report that Ink has been bumped into 2027. Translation: Boyle probably doesn’t feel confident about the way Ink has been shaping up in editing, and is probably planning upon much more editing, possibly some extra shooting…something in that vein.
A teaser for Aaron Sorkin‘s The Social Reckoning (Sony, 10.6) was screened yesterday at Cinemacon. Are you telling me this Sony release won’t debut at the 2026 Venice Film Festival? Of course it will.
Boilerplate: “The footage opens on Mikey Madison as Facebook engineer Frances Haugen and Jeremy Allen White as Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz, discussing a potential story exposing Facebook’s commitment to profit over negative social harm.
“The trailer then cuts to the first look at CEO Mark Zuckerberg, transformatively played by Jeremy Strong in convincing makeup, defending his role in the company and dubbing himself a leader of free speech. [A serving of] Sorkin’s sharp dialogue, hearings, scandals, and an examination of Zuckerberg’s impact on the changing modern world since the original film.”
At Sundance ’13 (13 years ago) I became a David Lowery de votee after catching Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, a descendant of Robert Altman‘s Thieves Like Us…basically a film about young love, guns, outlaws, rural flavor.
Three years later I got off the Lowery bus after totally hating Pete’s Dragon — a bone-headed, nonsensical, family-friendly dragon film, from Lowery and Disney and costarring Robert Redford.
But during Sundance ’17 I fell head over heels for Lowery’s minimalist Ghost Story (silent, watchful ghost under a plain bedsheet).
In ’18 came Lowery’s decent, modestly approvable Old Man & The Gun (Redford as gentleman bank robber).
And then in 2021 Lowery’s horrific The Green Knight, a sodden medieval dreamscape thing, arrived…a trippy, bizarre, hallucinatory quicksand movie that moves like a snail and will make you weep with frustration and perhaps even lead to pondering (not my idea but the film’s) the idea of your own decapitation.
After The Green Knight I said to myself, “okay, that’s it…Lowery is clearly Satan, a banshee, a vile goblin.”
“This is the David Lowery-est David Lowery movie ever made. Which is to say that by the end of it, you may be scratching your head to the point of wanting your money back.
“Mother Mary dances on the barn floorboards, and Sam says things like ‘You give people the gift of giving a shit about you.’ But what the movie really comes down to is a séance. And the stabbing of flesh. And a ghost.
“Yes, a ghost. In the form of a floating piece of red material that looks like a blanket made of organza. Is this the ghost of their relationship? Or a real ghost? That’s a question that will be debated by moviegoers for maybe four seconds. Because Mother Mary, as it takes the leap into Gothic metaphysical fantasy, becomes almost completely incoherent, and stays that way. It’s like an exorcist movie where the devil is a piece of bolt fabric.
“Mother Mary eventually turns into the most befuddlingly pretentious movie about a pop star since Brady Corbet’s Vox Lux. It heads down a blind alley of cosmic meaning that, in the end, means nothing.”
“I will never forget The Green Knight, and I will never, ever watch it again. It’s an exacting, carefully crafted, ‘first-rate’ creation by a director of serious merit, and I was moaning and writhing all through it. I can’t believe I watched the whole thing, but I toughed it out and that — in my eyes, at least — is worth serious man points.
“What would I rather do, I was asking myself — watch the rest of The Green Knight or bend over and allow my head to be cut off? Both would be terrible things to endure, I reasoned, but at least decapitation would be quick and then I’d be at peace. Watching The Green Knight for 130 minutes, on the other hand…”
