Happy April Fool’s Day! Welcome back to our daily round-up of movie news, trailers, music, comics, and other noteworthy stuff. Can you spot the fake story below?
Just kidding, we wouldn’t put you through that. Pranks are fun, but the year of Someone Else’s Lord 2025 is no time for pranks. We are living through an era that is somehow gravely serious and tragic but also feels entirely like a really shitty joke. It’s hard enough to get through the front-page of the news on the toilet without some jerkoff putting Saran Wrap over the seat.
That said!
Let’s start off with something beautiful.
HAVOC!
HAVOC hits Netflix on April 25th. I don’t think DG has run the teaser yet, so here it is, now that it’s April and we’re getting close. This is one of my most-awaited films of the year, like most-eagerly by far.
Also coming to Netflix this month: BULLET TRAIN EXPLOSION, from Shinji Higuchi (SHIN GODZILLA). Like HAVOC, this looks like one I’d rather see on a huge screen, but OK. It’s 2025. At least here in New York, I can get over to the Paris Theater, which occasionally shows some of the Netflix movies (being owned by Netflix, and all). They also show some great classic films. Good place!
Netflix is adding THE AGE OF INNOCENCE (Scorsese takes the genre of movies I’m least likely to see and makes it awesome), BONNIE & CLYDE (see the movie where Gene Hackman made his breakout), FOR LOVE OF THE GAME (Sam Raimi does baseball, a must-see if you haven’t yet), HEAT (essential), PSYCHO (essential), and SMOKEY & THE BANDIT (also essential). Plus SMOKEY & THE BANDIT II (not as essential, but essential in my heart).
JOHN WICK WILL RETURN IN…
JOHN WICK 5. Which could be tricky, since (and I think it’s been long enough that this isn’t a spoiler), the last time we saw him, he was being memorialized by Ian MacShane and Laurence Fishburne. Of course, we never saw the body, and this is John Wick we’re talking about, so maybe he isn’t dead. Or maybe he is, and they’re going the FRIDAY THE 13th route and these sequels are just gonna keep coming. I like that. Let’s go with that. Lightning will resurrect him.
Keanu Reeves and director Chad Stahelski are returning for JOHN WICK 5. As perfect an ending as 2023’s JOHN WICK 4 could have been, it looks like they’re not done. This feels sort of like seeing another main course coming at a great restaurant — thought I was full, not sure how much more I can handle, but what am I gonna do, toss the plate on the floor.
Additionally, Donnie Yen is on board not just to star in a spinoff movie about Caine, his blind assassin character from JOHN WICK 4, but also to direct it. Sounds pretty great to me! And an animated prequel feature, set before the events of the original JOHN WICK from 2014, is in the works. This June still brings BALLERINA, costarring Keanu as John Wick, so you’ve got all the John Wick you can handle coming your way in the near future.
ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD II, MAYBE
The Hollywood Reporter, building on reporting from The Playlist, is maintaining that Brad Pitt is returning as Cliff Booth, with David Fincher directing from a script by Quentin Tarantino.
This character was based on Hal Needham, among other points of inspiration, so obviously I’m down for more Cliff Booth adventures.
Hal Needham doesn’t need to be fictionalized. There’s enough story there for seven movies. Read his autobiography! But yeah for sure, ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD will do until an official biopic arrives one day.
THE BEATLES ASSEMBLE…
At CinemaCon inLas Vegas, Sony Pictures announced a series of four Beatles biopics, each of them focused on an individual member of maybe the most influential band ever. No word yet if there will be a fifth movie where all four team up to save New York City from aliens.
Left to right, that’s Harris Dickinson, who will be playing John Lennon, Paul Mescal, who will be playing Paul McCartney, Barry Keoghan, who will be playing Ringo Starr, and finally Joseph Quinn, who will play George Harrison.
Here’s a picture of John, George, Ringo, and Paul, for reference. Couldn’t find one where they were standing exactly in John/Paul/Ringo/George order.
The casting here doesn’t bother me, although it’s 100% a case of “Who’s hot in this moment?” I have to admit I still haven’t seen a movie starring Harris Dickinson or Paul Mescal, and while I don’t watch Stranger Things, which is where he broke out, I did like Joseph Quinn a lot in A QUIET PLACE: DAY ONE. So Barry Keoghan, who I have seen in lots of things already, is most interesting to me so far. The George Harrison movie, in my view, has the most potential, since he’s the Beatle that most people know the least about, relatively speaking of course, considering we’re talking about the most famous band maybe ever.
It’s more than a little concerning to see that we’re now in a world where other studios are taking the Marvel Studios approach to subjects that aren’t superhero characters. Which Beatle do you think would be most grossed-out by the concept of “IP?” John Lennon? Maybe John. Also not thrilled that the director of choice here is Sam Mendes, who I find resolutely mediocre at best. He’s directing all four movies.
If this venture works out, I guess we can get ready for Glenn Powell as Pete Best, or maybe Mikey Madison as Pattie Boyd, or Anna Sawai as Yoko Ono (which is one I would watch).
THE NEW SPIDER-MAN MOVIE HAS A TITLE…
It’s BRAND NEW DAY.
(shrugs)
This harkens back to a highly unpopular story in the comics where the marriage between MJ and Peter Parker was rendered non-existent by Satan. (Not exactly, but how deep in the weeds do we want to go here?) The idea was to take Peter back to his single unlucky-in-love days, which is essentially where 2021’s NO WAY HOME left us. In that case it wasn’t Satan but Benedict Cumberbatch who wiped the memories of everyone but Tom Holland’s Peter, meaning he and Zendaya’s MJ weren’t just over; they never had happened at all.
I like the last three Spider-Man movies. I like Tom Holland in the role. I like Zendaya. But these movies were required to reckon with lots of “MCU” baggage, in addition to the last one having to do fan service with Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield. (I enjoyed it, relax.) But let’s be precise: In Spider-Man terms, these were more like issues of Marvel Team-Up than issues of Amazing Spider-Man. Observe:
SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING
SPIDER-MAN: FAR FROM HOME
SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME
SPIDER-MAN: BRAND NEW DAY will be directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, who started out with the promising SHORT TERM 12, which was a thoughtful film with performances by a cast of future stars who have rarely been better. His most recent film was SHANG-CHI, which all right, okay, and he was set to handle the next AVENGERS movie, but we’re doing something else now, I guess. Again, there is something concerning about Marvel Studios just Hoovering up interesting young directors who could be out there making movies for adults instead of movies for adults who refuse to be adults, but I’m also part of the problem, admittedly. I will see BRAND NEW DAY.
Still holding out hope for a title change. Keep getting that Sting song stuck in my head. Not one that’s well-remembered now, but I swear, in the few months leading up to January 1st, 2000, that song was inescapable. I can say for sure that it’s the first song I heard in this millennium. You kids out there won’t have any idea what I’m talking about. Things are hard enough for you out there right now. I get it.
BILL MURRAY IS EVERYWHERE!
My guess is that Bill Murray just likes to do these press tours with certain people. Naomi Watts is a tremendous actress and seems like a lovely person, so why not? Both of them were on Watch What Happens Live to promote THE FRIEND. Andy Cohen, who is a barnacle, got a chance to interview Bill Murray and used it to ask him about his time on Saturday Night Live, and holy shit, it’s good that somebody finally got around to asking Bill Murray about that. That’s for sure not terrain that any other interviewer has ever traveled before. Here’s a guy with one of the greatest post-Saturday Night Live careers ever, and we’re asking him 101 questions.
I get so tired, being marooned on this planet. Look at BM’s expression in that freeze frame from the YouTube clip. That’s the JPEG that represents me every time Andy Cohen speaks.
GEMSTONES!
This is fun. But also. There is something terrifying to me about any group of people that has McBride playing the straight man.
That’s all we got today! See you tomorrow for more. Hope you all had a happy April Fool’s, free of pranks and free of existential terror.
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Tags: Ana de Armas, bill murray, Billy Preston, brad pitt, Columns, daily grindhouse, David Fincher, donnie yen, Gareth Evans, George Harrison, hal needham, John Lennon, John Wick, Jon Abrams, keanu reeves, Naomi Watts, Pattie Boyd, Paul McCartney, Pete Best, Quentin Tarantino, Ringo Starr, Shinji Higuchi, Spider-Man, The Beatles, Tom Hardy, Tom Holland, Yoko Ono, Zendaya
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