World Movie News: The Last 24 Hours
The next Bond’s final screen tests, a truly packed Friday at the cinema, I Play Rocky‘s second trailer, Tom Skerritt is mourned & Ryan Reynolds turns 50.
The next Bond’s final screen tests, a packed Friday at the cinema, I Play Rocky‘s second trailer, Tom Skerritt is mourned & Ryan Reynolds turns 50.
Morning, all. After yesterday’s Dune: Part Three record, today’s big story is the Bond casting, and there’s a stacked Friday of new releases to get through.
Final screen tests for the next 007: Amazon MGM has set the final auditions for the next James Bond, with screen tests that could begin as early as today and run through next week. At least four actors have been offered tests, and Deadline reports that three of them are Jack Lowden, Callum Turner and Josh O’Connor, though those names are unconfirmed, and a fourth is still unidentified. (Although I truly detest the Range Rover cinema advert that he was in, my money would be on Theo James to fill that final slot.) Producer Amy Pascal has said a casting announcement by the end of 2026 is “a good bet”, although there’s no set timeline for a decision. Denis Villeneuve is directing, with Pascal and David Heyman producing and Steven Knight writing the script, and 2028 is the earliest the film could be released.
New in UK and Irish cinemas: The busiest film-going day in a while brings eleven new films. The films are:
- Taika Waititi’s Klara and the Sun, adapted from Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel, stars Jenna Ortega as an artificially intelligent android companion and Amy Adams as the mother of the sick girl she befriends. Although it’s been getting mostly negative reviews, I saw it at the LFF and loved it! (Read my review here.)
- James Watkins’s Clayface stars Tom Rhys Harries as Matt Hagen, a Hollywood star who is disfigured by a crime boss and turns to an experimental treatment that restores his appearance but alters his perception of reality, with Naomi Ackie, Max Minghella and Eddie Marsan.
- Laika’s stop-motion fantasy Wildwood, which premiered at the London Film Festival (I missed it), features Peyton Elizabeth Lee, Angela Bassett, Awkwafina and Carey Mulligan, and follows a girl on a quest through a mysterious kingdom to save her baby brother.
- Sacha Baron Cohen returns as Ali G after 20 years in Ali G: Who Iz I?, taking classes, walking the streets and appearing on shows.
- Ghosts: The Possession of Button House: the first feature film from the BBC sitcom reunites the cast with series director Simon Hynd.
- Fatherland: Paweł Pawlikowski’s drama stars Sandra Hüller as Erika Mann, the actress, writer and rally driver, and her relationship with her father, the Nobel Prize-winning writer Thomas Mann. (I saw this at the LFF and – sorry – but I found it a beautiful looking snooze-fest. Read my review here.)
- Tad and the Magic Lamp: Enrique Gato’s Spanish animated family adventure, from Paramount.
- Children of the Wicker Man: a documentary on the making of The Wicker Man, with the sons of director Robin Hardy revisiting the production via lost letters. (Not to be confused with Olivia Colman’s Wicker, which arrives next Friday.)
- Netflix’s Possible Love, from Lee Chang-dong, in more than 25 cinemas ahead of its Netflix debut on 6 November.
- Monster Mia: a U-rated animated film about a girl attending a school of monsters.
- Kung Fu Soccer (dubbed)
- Netflix’s Possible Love, from Lee Chang-dong, in more than 25 cinemas ahead of its Netflix debut on 6 November
- Eleanor Coppola’s documentary Making Marie Antoinette, featuring Sofia Coppola and Kirsten Dunst;
- Jeanie Finlay’s documentary All Rivers Spill Their Stories to the Sea, about a fisherman in North East England; and
- Park Circus’s re-release of Wes Craven’s Scream.
It’s been a busy week at cinemas for other reasons, too. On Wednesday, the Punjabi sequel Godday Godday Chaa 2 and These Violent Delights opened, and on Thursday Trafalgar Releasing screened Noël Coward’s Fallen Angels from the stage.
New in US cinemas only: Wicker, the twisted fairy tale starring Olivia Colman as an ostracised fisherwoman who commissions a husband from a basketmaker (Peter Dinklage) and gets a wicker husband (Alexander Skarsgård) who proves to be rather better than she bargained for, opens in a limited release in US cinemas today, a week ahead of its UK release on 30 October. I saw it at the London Film Festival, and it is fantastic fun. (Read my 5* review here.) Anton Corbijn’s thriller A Talent for Murder, starring Helen Mirren as Patricia Highsmith and Alden Ehrenreich as a young literary agent who visits her, also opens in US cinemas today, with Olivia Cooke co-starring. It arrives in the UK on 20 November.
More I Play Rocky: Following last week’s surprise screening at the London Film Festival, Amazon MGM has released a second trailer for Peter Farrelly’s I Play Rocky, the story of how Sylvester Stallone fought to write and star in the original Rocky. It arrives in UK cinemas on 6 November.
Tom Skerritt, 1933–2026: The actor died on Wednesday of natural causes, aged 93, his family announced on Thursday. A blue-collar kid from Detroit who served in the Air Force before studying at UCLA, he became one of cinema’s most reliable screen presences, from MASH*** and The Turning Point to Captain Dallas in Alien, Viper in Top Gun, Sally Field’s husband in Steel Magnolias, the minister father in A River Runs Through It and a scheming opportunist in Contact. On television he won an Emmy in 1993 for playing Sheriff Jimmy Brock in Picket Fences. He had a gift for playing the calm, sensible person in a room full of louder characters, and he made every film he was in feel just a little bit safer. His family said he cared deeply about imagination, creativity, storytelling, service, veterans and the natural world, and he is survived by his wife, Julie Tokashiki, and five children. Rest in peace.
Birthdays: Ryan Reynolds, star of Deadpool, turns 50 today, and Ang Lee, the director of Brokeback Mountain and Life of Pi, turns 72. Also celebrating are Emilia Clarke (40), who starred in Me Before You, and “Weird Al” Yankovic (67).
That’s all for today.
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