Author: Trafficblast

GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers.

Tenet has, by virtue of the COVID-19 pandemic, become the most important movie of 2020–and whether Christopher Nolan’s new film can succeed at the international box office when its rollout begins on August 26 will likely be an indicator of whether or not other studio films will see cinema releases this year. Now, in a new interview with The Irish Times, many of the film’s stars and its producer have opened up about the challenges of the shoot.

Emma Thomas, who produces Christopher Nolan’s movies (and is also his wife), told The Irish Times that Tenet is their most ambitious film yet, even though the temptation is always there to go smaller rather than bigger. “With every movie, we have the same conversation,” she says. “Are we going to do a small one this time? In a world where studios have become more and more risk averse, we’ve just been lucky that every movie we’ve done has worked. So we keep on capitalizing on the last movie.”

Thomas also says that while previous Nolan films often have one scene that they know will be tricky (citing the hospital explosion from The Dark Knight), Tenet has several. “With Tenet it felt like every time we would do one of those big things, you relax for five minutes and then you look at the set schedule for next week and then there’s another one,” she said.

Robert Pattinson–who stars in the movie and gives some of the all-time best Hollywood interviews–recalls how difficult some of the action scenes were to film, referencing a specific driving sequence they filmed early on. “I’m s***ting myself as I’m whipping between cars at 80 miles an hour and Chris is behaving like this is completely normal,” he says.

Pattinson says that he’s generally paired with John David Washington, the film’s main protagonist, and since the actor is an ex-NFL player he’s in extremely good shape. “The maximum workout I do most of the time is a casual stroll,” Pattinson says. “John David can run all day long. It was good that I ended up being pretty fit. But definitely, at the beginning, there were days I just could not walk afterwards.”

He also revealed that Washington had to explain elements of the plot to him. “Right up until the last week of the shoot, I was talking to John David and asking him some pretty fundamental questions about who my character was. And John David was like: ‘Wait, you don’t know this?’ But it’s complicated! You’re not just being fed the story.”

Kenneth Branagh, meanwhile, plays the film’s villain, who he says is “darker than anything (he’s) ever played.” According to Branagh, Nolan told him to make the character “unremittingly evil.” He also says that there were two scenes he filmed where he wasn’t really sure what was going on–the first time that’s happened in his career.

Tenet will have a limited US release on September 3 in select markets, if all goes as planned.

New reports from Deadline and The Hollywood Reporter have shined a light on the future of the Star Trek movie series, and this includes a project originally set to be directed by Quentin Tarantino that still could happen.

The new movie boss at Paramount, Emma Watts, is said to be “re-assessing” the company’s entire movie slate, and this includes the Star Trek series. There are three Star Trek projects currently in the works at different stages of production, including the sequel to 2016’s Star Trek Beyond, another film from Fargo’s Noah Hawley, and the Tarantino movie.

Hawley’s movie is supposedly being put on the back burner, and this could be due to its story. THR says the plot is related to a virus that wipes out a huge part of the universe, and Paramount may not want to pursue this story in the current climate.

The Star Trek Beyond sequel seeks to reunite the cast of the reboot series from JJ Abrams, including Chris Hemsworth, John Cho, Chris Pine, Simon Pegg, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, and Zoe Saldana. The actor who played Chekov, Anton Yelchin, died in a 2016 accident.

Director S.J. Clarkson was at one point attached to direct this new film, but she dropped out to work on a Game of Thrones spinoff. Among the reasons why this project has stalled, the report said, is due to the high price tag given the big-name actors who would appear in it.

The Star Trek movie originally set to be directed by Tarantino, meanwhile, is written by Mark L. Smith (The Revenant), and it reportedly draws inspiration from the 1968 Star Trek Season 2 episode, “A Piece of the Action,” with a story that takes place in a 1930s gangster setting. Tarantino will no longer direct this movie, should it happen, but Deadline said the project is “still viable.”

Tarantino previously told Deadline that, while he wouldn’t direct this new Star Trek film, he stands behind the plot of it and said he would provide notes.

“I think they might make that movie, but I just don’t think I’m going to direct it. It’s a good idea. They should definitely do it and I’ll be happy to come in and give them some notes on the first rough cut,” he said.

The Star Trek series is owned by GameSpot’s parent company, ViacomCBS.

GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers.

An American Pickle, the new Seth Rogen movie that debuted exclusively for HBO Max on August 6, has received mixed reviews that trend mildly positive. It’s a film about a man who gets preserved in a vat of pickles for 100 years and then has to connect with his great-grandson in modern-day Brooklyn, but that’s not the weirdest thing about it.

One viewer noticed something interesting in the background of the film, and noted it on Twitter. At a bar that the characters frequent, there’s a game playing on the TV, and it’s the same one each time. It’s unusual for a video game to be playing on a TV bar at the best of times, of course, but what makes it even weirder is that the game is PS4 launch title Knack.

Here’s the tweet from Michael Leri noting the cameo.

The game, which launched in 2013, has become a bit of a meme over time. The launch title received a 4/10 from GameSpot, and is often the butt of jokes, with players ironically calling it one of the true greats of the console.

So why is Knack, of all things, popping up in the background of An American Pickle? Unless first-time feature director Brandon Trost decides to explain, we might never know.

Knack was eventually followed up with a sequel, Knack 2. It was much better.

One of the most highly anticipated upcoming films is Arrival and Blade Runner 2049 director Denis Villeneuve’s new Dune adaptation featuring a star-studded cast led by Timothee Chalamet. Art director Tom Brown has now spoken more about the film, likening it to The Lord of the Rings when it comes to the “sheer scale” of the project and what Villeneuve is trying to achieve with the story.

“I think what Denis Villeneuve is doing is what’s called a seminal version of this story. I don’t think it will be topped, to be perfectly honest,” Brown told KIDS FIRST! Film Critics (via IndieWire). “The sheer scale of it is going to be daunting. But I do think it’s going to be extremely special.”

“I heard in the paper the other day that they’re looking at the new Lord of the Rings, and I firmly believe that. I think it’s going to be up there with those kinds of films, really,” he added.

Dune will be split into two films, the first of which is scheduled for release in December this year. The movie also stars Rebecca Ferguson, Josh Brolin, Jason Momoa, Zendaya, Javier Bardem, Oscar Isaac, Stellan Skarsgard, and Dave Bautista.

The film is based on the writing of Frank Herbert. Dune was originally made into a movie directed by David Lynch in 1984 starring Kyle McLachlan, Patrick Stewart, and Sting. It was a commercial disappointment, but it gained a cult following, and a Dune mini-series aired on the Sci-Fi Channel (now known as Syfy) in the early 2000s.

GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers.

GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers.