Movies

Netflix has come a long way from those little red envelopes full of DVDs. Today the movies-by-mail rental company is a full-fledged movie and television studio with an impressive slate of original films, documentaries, mini-series, and cartoons. And they keep adding new content constantly; a week after Season 3 of the acclaimed series House of Cards, they unveiled Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt from Tina Fey; two weeks later they debuted Bloodline starring Friday Night Lights’s Kyle Chandler.

There’s a running joke in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade that Indy took his nickname from the family dog. That joke has some truth to it though because as George Lucas was developing Raiders of the Lost Ark, he actually named the character after his dog, Jones (the “Indiana” was a riff on Steve McQueen character Nevada Smith). Coincidentally, the same dog was the inspiration for Chewbacca in Star Wars. Need more Raiders of the Lost Ark facts? Throw us the idol and we’ll throw you the latest episode of You Think You Know Movies!

The LEGO Movie proved audiences’ appetite for charming, mildly subversive animated movies about talking toys. Now Warner Bros. is testing that appetite with a whole line of LEGO movies. There already announced Ninjago film in 2016, a Lego Batman Movie in 2017, and The Lego Movie 2 in 2018. Per The Hollywood Reporter, that onslaught will also includes a fourth film, a LEGO spinoff titled The Billion Brick Race, which will be co-written and directed by Forgetting Sarah Marshall and The Muppets’ Jason Segel.

It’s a poster! It’s a YouTube teaser! Actually, it’s a “living one-sheet” for the upcoming Terminator Genisys, featuring Mr. T-800 himself, Arnold Schwarzengger with his skin peeling off to reveal his metal endoskeleton. I like this sort of thing! Partly because it involves Arnold Schwarzenegger, and there’s not too many way you can go wrong there, but mostly because it’s different than your typical barrage of posters and one-sheets, along with micro-trailers and whatnot.

Well, this was unexpected. After a few years of development, Warner Bros. is officially moving forward with a big screen adaptation of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One and they’re doing so with the director most likely to break the brains of the novel’s biggest fans: Steven Spielberg. Yes, Spielberg is going to direct a science fiction story powered by raw ‘80s nostalgia for the same studio where he produced Gremlins and The Goonies.

Man, the rebooted Star Trek movie series really has this whole “casting actors we really like” thing down. The latest report from Star Trek 3 has the great Idris Elba cast as the movie’s villain, whose identity remains, for the moment, a mystery.

As one of the biggest Arnold Schwarzenegger nerds on the planet, I might be biased about this (okay I am definitely biased about this) but I think Maggie looks like one of the most interesting movies of the year. It’s a horror drama about a father trying to protect his daughter after she’s infected with some kind of zombie virus. The daughter is Abigail Breslin; the father is Schwarzenegger. Admittedly I don’t see (or hear) much of a family resemblance, but the themes this story touches on — parental responsibilities, broken families, an aging hero fighting against an increasing sense of irrelevance — jive perfectly with the stuff Schwarzenegger continues to explore throughout the latter half of his career.

Earlier today, we reported the rumor that not only has Captain Marvel been cast, but she’ll be making her first appearance in the already superhero-heavy Avengers: Age of Ultron. Having major superheroes make cameos or debut in other films from their respective studios has become the norm, so it’s hardly surprising to hear that X-Men: Apocalypse — which is said to primarily focus on the First Class cast — will feature a few cameos from other X-Men…including one pretty exciting mutant in particular.

Ready or not, the Entourage movie is coming. The latest trailer has arrived, boasting parties, booze, yachts and lots of famous faces. It’s like a Where’s Waldo? of cameos in there, from Bob Saget to George Takei to Liam Neeson to…Bob Saget. But enough name-dropping, already. This movie also has a story to tell, and that story is about Vinnie Chase, director.

It was recently reported that Bradley Cooper has been looking to make his directorial debut, and although it was rumored that his first project would be Honeymoon With Harry, Cooper’s first film might be something different — and a little more exciting. Cooper is eyeing the long-gestating remake of A Star Is Born featuring none other than Queen Beyoncé herself.