Hollywood is looking to the senior generation of directors for help as the film release schedule is reset in the last quarter of 2023 and first months of 2024 for several reasons. The first has to do with the strike of scriptwriters and actors that paralyzes the main film and series studios: the “masters” have their own production companies and teams, and they have a handful of scripts already curated and ready to film if there is the project financing.
The second: the failure of pochoclera movies in 2023 (including several Marvel superhero movies) suggests the need to once again target an older adult and movie-loving audience, who remains loyal to movie theaters, and who seeks and values masterpieces that you know you won’t see on streaming.
Authors. Michael Mann with “Ferrari”, Ridley Scott (“Napoleon”) and Martin Scorsese (“Killers of the Flower Moon”) to name a few, are already getting ready to release.
And behind them is an even older lineup of filmmakers, like Woody Allen (87) and Roman Polanski (90), whose films are awaiting release dates, and Francis Coppola (84), who is awaiting distribution of his epic “Megalopolis.” , self-financed and still in post-production.
Even the maestro Steven Spielberg (76), who has just competed for an Oscar with his most recent film, “The Fabelmans”, developed with his production company Amblin, is preparing to start filming again. Scorsese (80), who has just released his most recent film, has been the clearest of his generation. He maintains that his $200 million effort, “Killers of the Flower Moon,” starring Leonardo Di Caprio, represents a forceful rebuttal to Marvel movies: “It’s about marketing, not filmmaking,” he said.
But he understands that to survive and be successful, he must not fall into the niche: he regrets his previous award-winning film with Di Caprio, “Shutter Island.” He acknowledges that “it was a genre film,” and that “Silence,” another recent project, was unclassifiable.
“Killers of the Flower Moon” had its gala screening at Cannes, and although some critics expressed concern that its violent moments harked back to the excesses of “Gangs of New York,” the film is already shaping up to be a huge hit. at the box office and opens a new wave of films by great directors.
stories
True stories, and biopics, always work. Thus, it is hoped that Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon” (85) could be the epic that Stanley Kubrick dreamed of (it was long considered the best unmade film). Kubrick’s “Napoleon” was going to star David Hemmings and Audrey Hepburn. His script even prompted Spielberg more recently to create a miniseries for HBO, which also did not materialize and was put on the freezer.
But Ridley Scott could. The director of “Gladiator” once again turns to the story of a great general and Joaquin Phoenix in the shoes of an emperor: here he will be Napoleon, whose trailer hit the screens last week.
As with most new movies, its release date has been a guessing game, but it’s probably expected in mid-November.
And for Christmas, “Ferrari” is scheduled, the new biopic of the creator of one of the most important brands in the automotive industry and automobile competition. The new film by director Michel Mann has Adam Driver (Kylo Ren from Star Wars) as the protagonist – he had already been Maurizio Gucci in the film directed by Ridley Scott, “House of Gucci” -, playing Enzo Ferrari, and Penélope Cruz as a female partner.
The film, which was well received at the Venice Film Festival, is one of the promises on the end-of-year billboard along with legendary director Sofia Coppola’s film about the life of Priscilla Presley. It premiered on September 4 also in Venice and will hit theaters towards the end of spring. “Priscilla” will show a more personal side of Elvis, so it will be different from Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis, a film starring Austin Butler and Tom Hanks.}
Returns
So do senior filmmakers favor period stories? Not necessarily. Polanski and Allen’s two new comedies are set in the present. And Coppola’s most ambitious “Megalopolis” is set in the future: the director describes it as “utopian.”
While “May December”, the new film by the celebrated Todd Haynes (“I’m Not There”, “Carol”, “Dark Waters”), with the script by Samy Burch, is presented as a kind of satire on the fictions and the industry, taking a case based on real events which it transforms.
In the film Natalie Portman is Elizabeth Berry, an important film actress who must become acquainted with a woman who must study for her next film. And Jullianne Moore is Gracie, who 20 years ago made headlines for having a sexual affair with a teenager who is now her husband.
“The Holdovers” (opening October 27) by Alexander Payne (62) is a dramedy that reunites the director with his “Sideways” star, Paul Giamatti, who plays an unpleasant private school teacher in charge of supervising students who cannot return home for Christmas.
“We started screening it, and in the first two festivals I was looking at it and it said 133 minutes. I had to call the studio and say that we had reduced it to around 124,” said Payne, who points out that directors must be able to make shorter films if they want people to return to the movies.
Police
Before the end of the year, a new gangster film starring Robert De Niro should hit theaters, the crime thriller “Wise Guys”, directed by Oscar winner Barry Levinson (81), responsible for classics such as “Good Morning, Vietnam” and “Rain Man.”
The film will tell the story of two bosses of the Tilian mafia in the United States, Vito Genovese and Frank Costello. De Niro will play both characters, perhaps in what would be his last appearance in the genre after a long career that includes “Casino”, “The Irishman”, “The Godfather Part II”, “Heat”, “Once Upon a Time in America”, “American Hustle”, “Jackie Brown” and “The Untouchables”.
And another legend who returns with a new film is John Woo. The 77-year-old director will give a new twist to the story of the policeman and the murderer, with “The Killer”, a revival of the 1989 Hong Kong film by the same filmmaker. The character that was played by Chow Yun-Fat in the original film will now be played by Nathalie Emmanuel, and production is carried out by Charles Cy Atlas Entertainment, the same team as “The Dark Knight.”
“John Woo was motivated to make the remake inspired by Jean-Pierre Melville’s new wave gangster films that starred Jean-Paul Belmondo and Alain Delon, and those were obviously shot in Paris. So this tribute to The Killer also goes in Paris,” said Roven.
And finally the section closes with the return to direction of Robert Rodríguez with “Hypnotic”, an amazing science fiction thriller starring Ben Affleck, and with a budget of 70 million dollars. Rodríguez is not Nolan, but some scenes are ridiculously reminiscent of “Inception”, in a film that pays tribute to the master Hitchcock.
by RN
