By Lindsey Bahr, Film Writer
LAS VEGAS (AP) --Iron Man just put Spider-Man in time out.
Sony Pictures on Monday unveiled the second trailer for "Spider-Man: Homecoming" at CinemaCon, featuring Tom Holland, the newly anointed web-slinger, being put in his place by Robert Downey Jr.'s more seasoned Tony Stark. The film, out July 7, picks up with Holland's Peter Parker returning to high school after the events of "Captain America: Civil War," and wanting to immediately get back into the action as a new threat emerges from Michael Keaton's Vulture.
The annual gathering of theater owners, exhibitors and Hollywood studios kicked off Monday evening at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas with Sony Pictures' presentation of their upcoming slate, featuring new looks at everything from "Blade Runner 2049" and "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle" to the Stephen King adaptation "The Dark Tower." The studio also announced that they were bumping up the release of Edgar Wright's "Baby Driver" to June 28 from its planned August release.
Ryan Gosling was on hand to preview the "Blade Runner 2049" trailer in advance of its Oct. 6 release. The sequel to Ridley Scott's seminal 1982 dystopian Los Angeles epic picks up with a new cop, Gosling's Officer K, on a mission and looking for advice from Harrison Ford's Rick Deckard.
"I had your job once," Ford says in the trailer. "I was good at it."
Director Denis Villeneuve's vision was dark and stylized, and very much in the vein of Scott's film. It's not, as Sony Chairman Tom Rothman noted. However, little was revealed about the secretive plot which is said to expand the mythology and continue the story.
Rothman spoke nostalgically of the power of seeing "Blade Runner."
"I saw the future, of man and movies both," Rothman said. "Like millions around the world, I longed for more ever since."
Gosling, who was only 2 when the original came out, remembers seeing the film when he was 13 or 14.
"I saw everything that stole from it first," the actor said. "I was just blown away by how influential this film had been, not only in film but in my reality as well."
The studio also previewed a first look at "The Dark Tower," out July 28, an adaptation of Stephen King's seminal saga starring Idris Elba as Roland the Gunslinger and Matthew McConaughey as the Man in Black. The gritty fantasy takes audiences from the real world where a young boy, Jake (Tom Taylor), has visions of the Tower and the Gunslinger before sliding through a portal to another reality.
Dwayne Johnson and Jack Black were on site as well to tease "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle," a sequel to the 1995 Robin Williams pic about a board game that gets a little too real. The film, set in the present day, takes everyday high school students into a body swapping situation with the characters in the game (i.e. the nerdy kid in the game becomes Dwayne Johnson and the beautiful popular girl becomes Jack Black).
"We wanted to make a movie that was not only phenomenal, not only paid homage to the original, but something that had evolved, something that could be global, something that could be fun," Johnson said. He remembered meeting the late Robin Williams at CinemaCon years ago and being too nervous to talk to him.
"Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle" hits theaters on Dec. 22.
As with every year at the annual convention, the sanctity of the theatrical experience was paramount, with everyone from studio executives to the filmmakers stressing to the audience that their movies are ones that will attract audiences to the cinema.
"Netflix, my ass," Rothman said after the "Blade Runner 2049" footage showed – the first but likely not the last of the jabs at streaming services threatening to upend the theatrical model. As the annual convention gets underway, there are talks of negotiations between studios and exhibitors to experiment with shortened theatrical windows that could allow consumers to purchase films for $30 to $50 within 30 to 40 days of release.
CinemaCon runs through Thursday.
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After 20 Years of Acting, Megan Park Finds Her Groove In The Director’s Chair On “My Old Ass”
Megan Park feels a little bad that her movie is making so many people cry. It's not just a single tear either — more like full body sobs.
She didn't set out to make a tearjerker with "My Old Ass," now streaming on Prime Video. She just wanted to tell a story about a young woman in conversation with her older self. The film is quite funny (the dialogue between 18-year-old and almost 40-year-old Elliott happens because of a mushroom trip that includes a Justin Bieber cover), but it packs an emotional punch, too.
Writing, Park said, is often her way of working through things. When she put pen to paper on "My Old Ass," she was a new mom and staying in her childhood bedroom during the pandemic. One night, she and her whole nuclear family slept under the same roof. She didn't know it then, but it would be the last time, and she started wondering what it would be like to have known that.
In the film, older Elliott ( Aubrey Plaza ) advises younger Elliott ( Maisy Stella ) to not be so eager to leave her provincial town, her younger brothers and her parents and to slow down and appreciate things as they are. She also tells her to stay away from a guy named Chad who she meets the next day and discovers that, unfortunately, he's quite cute.
At 38, Park is just getting started as a filmmaker. Her first, "The Fallout," in which Jenna Ortega plays a teen in the aftermath of a school shooting, had one of those pandemic releases that didn't even feel real. But it did get the attention of Margot Robbie 's production company LuckyChap Entertainment, who reached out to Park to see what other ideas she had brewing.
"They were very instrumental in encouraging me to go with it," Park said. "They're just really even-keeled, good people, which makes... Read More