James Cameron says his first post-Avatar 3 outing won't be Ghosts of Hiroshima after all.

"I have 10 other projects," Cameron said on The Town with Matt Belloni. "That one just sort of hit the headlines briefly because of the book announcement and trying to push the book to a best seller because the author is a friend of mine. Doesn't mean I'm not going to make the film, but I've written the script, and it's not slated right now, and I don't even have a distribution partner on it. So it's pretty much a vaporware project right now."

Earlier this year, Cameron told Discussing Film's Andrew J. Salazar that "this might be the most challenging film" he'll ever make. Cameron bought the rights to the book in 2024, with the book releasing this past August. The non-fiction book, which chronicles the story of survivors of both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear disasters, was written by Avatar: The Way of Water and Titanic advisor Charles Pellegrino. If the film goes ahead, the story will center on Tsutomu Yamaguchi, who escaped Hiroshima only to board a train to Nagasaki just before it was bombed (via Jake's Takes).

Cameron does have a lot on his plate, what with Avatar 3 hitting theaters in December, Avatar 4 and 5... though we don't know yet if he'll direct the final two films in the franchise. There's also been talk of Camera writing another Terminator movie (though I'm not sure we need one after Terminator 6 completely retconned John Connor, rendering Sarah Connor's mission in Terminator 2: Judgement Day completely obsolete).

Avatar: Fire and Ash hits theaters on December 19. For more, check our lists of upcoming movies and movie release dates.

James Cameron is about to become the highest-grossing director of all time, but even he thinks he "might not be up to the task" of making his next movie after Avatar: Fire and Ash.

Speaking to Discussing Film's Andrew J. Salazar about his upcoming adaptation of Ghosts of Hiroshima, which charts the story of survivors of both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombs, Cameron said, "To me, this might be the most challenging film I ever make. I don't 100% have my strategy fully in place for how I want to see it; how I want to shield people from the horror but still be honest; how I can find some kind of poetry, beauty, or spiritual epiphany in it somehow – which I know must be there. It's there in every human story."

"It's going to be very challenging," Cameron reiterated. "I might not even be up to the task, but that never stopped me before."

Cameron bought the rights to Ghosts of Hiroshima – written by Charles Pellegrino, who advised the director on Titanic and Avatar – last year.

In a separate interview with Jake's Takes, Cameron again remained humble in the face of telling its story, including the real-life tragedy of engineer Tsutomu Yamaguchi, who was returning home to see his family in Hiroshima. Upon escaping the blast, he boarded a train to Nagasaki just before it, too, was bombed.

"I only hope that I know enough as a filmmaker to do this subject justice. I know how to do the visual effects – the issue is how to tell this as a human story and, yet, be truthful to what happened, to the horrific aspect of it," Cameron said.

While Ghosts of Hiroshima is undated, the rest of Cameron's releases are already on the calendar. Avatar: Fire and Ash, which just received its first trailer, is out on December 19, 2025. If it grosses $2 billion, it will see Cameron overtake Steven Spielberg as the highest-grossing director in history.

Avatar 4 and 5 hit cinemas on December 21, 2029 and December 19, 2031 respectively. Cameron has even indicated he would be prepared to direct the final two films in the series, despite previously suggesting otherwise.

For more, you'll need our guide to upcoming movies and movie release dates.

Gerard Butler has recalled filming Zack Snyder's historical epic 300 – and, while art doesn't quite imitate life, it does sound pretty brutal.

"I remember every day somebody was getting taken to the hospital," Butler said in a recent interview with People. "You’d be doing a fight, you turn around, there’s a guy down there, a spear went in his eye. Another time, you turn around, there’s a guy over there who just fell, broke his ankle. I mean, it was insane."

Released in 2006, the movie tells a fictionalized version of the Battle of Thermopylae in the Greco-Persian Wars back in 480 BC. Butler plays Leonidas, the King of Sparta, who leads 300 Spartans into battle against the much, much larger Persian army. The cast of the historical epic also includes Dominic West, Lena Headey, and Michael Fassbender.

A sequel, 300: Rise of an Empire, followed in 2014, and a TV show is currently in the works. "We're just getting ready to dive in and get to work on it. It's super fun, I love the world," Snyder told ComicBook last year. "And even just in the preliminary meetings we've had talking about, like, 'What if this happened or that happened,' just a lot of it's just really fun to like go, wow, it's a rich standard.

As for Butler, he can currently be seen in Den of Thieves 2: Pantera, a sequel to the 2018 heist movie Den of Thieves. He stars as an LA sheriff who follows a career criminal, played by O'Shea Jackson Jr., to Europe and finds himself caught up in the world of diamond thieves.

Den of Thieves 2: Pantera is out now in theaters. For more, fill out your watchlist with our guide to all the biggest movie release dates in 2025.

The first official look at Gladiator 2 has arrived – and it both confirms the film's title and teases more about the sequel. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the title is confirmed to be Gladiator II, while the logo – displayed on a golden shield at CinemaCon venue Caesars Palace, Vegas – also includes the tagline: "What we do in life echoes in eternity." 

Now, those who know their Gladiator will know that this is a line from Russell Crowe's Maximus, spoken near the start of the film. It would seem it's also the theme of the sequel – again, perhaps unsurprisingly, considering we know the follow-up will be focused on Lucius Verus, who is son of Lucilla (Connie Nielsen), is Marcus Aurelius's grandson, and is Emperor Commodus's (Joaquin Phoenix) nephew. That's quite the legacy. 

Paul Mescal will play the grown up version of Lucius in the sequel, with the massive cast also including Denzel Washington, Pedro Pascal, Joseph Quinn, Fred Hechinger, May Calamawy, and more. Nielsen and Derek Jacobi are returning to reprise their roles, while Ridley Scott returns to direct. 

While no footage from the film has yet been released to the public, early footage reportedly blew studio executives away. 

"Can I see Paul Mescal being as big as Russell Crowe? For sure," Scott told our sister publication Total Film of casting Mescal. "I watched Normal People. It's not my kind of show but I saw four episodes in a row – boom, boom, boom. I was thinking, 'Who the hell is this Paul Mescal?' And then I watched the whole series. And then, suddenly, Gladiator 2 came up, because the script was working pretty well. And I kept thinking about Paul. And that was it."

Gladiator 2 releases this November 22. While you wait, check out our guide to all of 2024's most exciting movie release dates for everything else the year has in store. 

Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer absolutely dominated this year's Golden Globes, taking home five awards. But not all of the cast members were feeling the love that night as one actor was left out of the group picture for the most hilarious reason.

Alex Wolff, who plays Luis Alvarez, the Nobel-winning physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project in Nolan's newest epic, was not allowed in the room to take the Oppenheimer cast picture at the Golden Globes afterparty as he was mistaken for a server working at the event.

But the Hereditary star was not at all salty about the mistake. Instead, Wolff took to social media to share the mix-up with his followers, posting on his Instagram story, “Occasionally someone thinks you are working at the afterparty and (you) are not allowed in the room for the cast photo so. It is now your job to draw me into this photo. Please fans. Place me in. Place me (in) any photo. Go internet. Go!”

Wolff’s fans then started to draw the actor in the image, starting with a little stick man placed in between composer Ludwig Göransson and producer Emma Thomas Nolan. Later Wolff reshared the image where a fan had photoshopped a rather comical childhood picture of him into the frame. See screenshots of Wolff’s story posted to Twitter by a user below.

However, the mishap wasn't enough to put a damper on the night as the whole Oppenheimer cast and crew was on cloud nine after the movie won over half of the awards it was nominated for. The winnings include Best Drama Motion Picture, Best Actor in a Drama Motion Picture accepted by Cillian Murphy, and Best Director for a Drama Motion Picture accepted by Nolan himself, just to name a few. Destroyer of worlds? More like Destroyer of award ceremonies, if you ask us!

Oppenheimer is available to rent on Prime Video.  For more see our list of upcoming movies heading your way in 2024 and beyond. 

Before spiraling costs forced him to retreat, Stanley Kubrick famously claimed his planned Napoleon biopic would be "the best movie ever made". Ridley Scott, a visualist with similarly unwavering self-belief, hasn’t reached those unimaginable heights with his own account of the French autocrat’s life, but this masterfully marshaled, entertainingly playful historical epic is one of the 85-year-old director’s finest features in almost two decades.

Opening with the macabre execution of Marie Antoinette in 1793, David Scarpa’s smartly focused screenplay covers Napoleon’s life from his career-making role in ending the Siege of Toulon, to his death in exile on Saint Helena almost 30 years later. 

The half-a-dozen-or-so battles depicted provide Napoleon with its blockbuster thrills (Apple financed the film for a reported $130m), but the film is as much a character piece about Bonaparte and his voracious wife Josephine, their unconventional relationship a public balancing act between power and love.

Abandoning the faux-continental accent requirements that made Scott’s House of Gucci almost impossible to take seriously, Phoenix plays the general-turned-Emperor in his vanilla American accent, and at the precise nexus between Gladiator’s Commodus and Beau is Afraid’s titular loser – the source of much of the film’s humor ("Destiny has brought me this lamb chop!" he bellows in a moment of impotent rage). 

On the battlefield he’s commanding and ruthless. At home it’s a different matter entirely. Napoleon is variously flustered, buffoonish and hopelessly in thrall to Josephine (Vanessa Kirby), whom he can’t help but forgive, even after being publicly cuckolded and forced to make a humiliating early return from the Egyptian campaign.

Kirby – a late addition to the film after The Last Duel star Jodie Comer was forced to drop out – proves a perfect fit for Josephine. The age gap is all wrong (Josephine was famously older than Napoleon), but the dynamic works thanks to Kirby’s innate confidence and implied dominance. Rupert Everett also makes a memorable impression as Arthur Wellesley, the sporting, tea-sipping British general who faces Napoleon at Waterloo and can scarcely hide his disdain for the once-exiled French Emperor.

Despite clocking in at a little over two-and-a-half hours (Scott told TF a four-hour director’s cut is in the works for Apple TV+) there’s an awful lot to fit in, and the approach here is necessarily elliptical. The highlight is undoubtedly the mid-film Battle of Austerlitz, where the French army obliterates the combined forces of Russia and Austria on an icy battlefield thanks to Napoleon’s strategic nous, a sequence of extraordinary tension, terror and tactility. 

Visual effects unquestionably play an integral role in bringing alive the battle sequences, with their ferocious cannon fire, thousands of charging cavalrymen and exploding horses. But how satisfying that a film of this scale at least feels grounded in some semblance of reality.

This isn’t a comprehensive account of Napoleon’s life, and nor does it try to be – save that for Spielberg’s planned seven-part HBO series based on Kubrick’s scripts – and there’s a questionable relationship with historical veracity (to critics, Scott has already bluntly said: "Get a life"). 

But, still, the film can feel like it’s in a race to squeeze everything in, while the essential politicking that unfolds on the fringes and in back rooms is never as gripping as when Napoleon and Josephine’s deeply unhealthy relationship plays out, let alone when the cannonballs start flying. These may be issues that the longer cut solves, but even in its already lengthy theatrical form, Napoleon has achieved another resounding victory.

Napoleon is released in US and UK cinemas on November 22. For more upcoming movies, check out our guide to the remaining 2023 movie release dates.

Ridley Scott is no stranger to historical epics, from 1492: Conquest of Paradise to Gladiator – which single-handedly revived the swords-and-sandals genre – to Kingdom of Heaven. And he’s back staging huge-scale battles against a period backdrop in the upcoming Napoleon.

This take on the French leader, played here by Gladiator actor Joaquin Phoenix, covers his rise and fall in the context of his relationship with Empress Joséphine (Vanessa Kirby), looking as much at politics of the bedroom as the battleground.

In the new issue of Total Film, which hits shelves next week, Scott talks in-depth about Napoleon (as well as digging into the biggest films of his career). At 85 years old, he’s showing no signs of slowing down – literally, in terms of how quickly he can prep and shoot a movie. And there’s no shrinking of his ambitions when it comes to spectacle too. Here’s an exclusive shot of Scott on set with Phoenix from the new issue of Total Film:

• Preorder the Ridley Scott issue of Total Film here

Scott announced that he’d be turning his attention to Napoleon on 14 October 2020, the same day that The Last Duel wrapped filming. He works fast, and had begun the 62-day shoot – yes, just 62 days, ridiculous for a film of this scale – by February 2022.

As Scott points out, Napoleon took part in 66 battles over the course of his career, which would be impossible to put on screen. In the film, there are six battles, and each is staged differently, and each one wows.

Scott puts his prowess with shooting action down to his background in commercials (having shot a lot of sport) and also, particularly, his time at art school.

"The best thing for my career I could ever have done was to go to the art schools I went to. I can really draw. After seven years of art school, you bloody better well be able to. I’ll draw all my own storyboards. Every frame is drawn from close-up to medium shots. The locations I haven’t found yet – I’ll imagine the location. So we’ll look for that location. Visual narrative is my strength. I find it very easy, therefore, to handle eight or 11 cameras at once."

Scott used to shoot two commercials a week and would operate the camera on all of them. He took that into his filmmaking. "I was the only operator – one camera – on Alien," he says. "I was the only operator – one camera – on The Duellists. Legend. Thelma & Louise. On all these things, I operated the camera. And so I know exactly what a lens will give me. Today, that has evolved into six to eight to 11 cameras. So I’ll sit in my trailer. I’ll have monitors like this [spreads arms to indicate a bank of screens]. I’ll be sitting there, talking to each operator.

"Every scene is geometry. By having 11 to 14 cameras, we shot Napoleon in 62 days. I’m doing Gladiator 2 now in 54 days, because I’m not doing 50 takes with one camera, on one shot, and then turning around. This normal fight [scene] that could take anything up to a month, I’ll take six days. So the savings are colossal."

Napoleon opens in cinemas on November 22. For much more on the film and Ridley Scott’s career, pick up a copy of the news issue of Total Film when it hits shelves on October 12. Check out the covers below:

Pre-order the issue here to bag your copy, or click here to subscribe to Total Film and never miss another exclusive. With our latest offer, you can get a JOBY Magnetic Wireless Charger worth £29.95 when you take out a print subscription.

The real-life grandson of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb and the subject of Christopher Nolan's box office hit Oppenheimer, has spoken out about the movie, revealing his least favorite scene. 

"There are parts that I disagree with, but not really because of Nolan," he explained in a recent interview with Time. "The part I like the least is this poison apple reference, which was a problem in American Prometheus. If you read American Prometheus carefully enough, the authors say, 'We don't really know if it happened.' There's no record of him trying to kill somebody. That's a really serious accusation and it's historical revision."

American Prometheus is the biography of Oppenheimer that Nolan used as a source text for his movie, written by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. When Charles refers to the "poison apple", he means a scene toward the start of the movie when the physicist is still studying at Cambridge and comes to blows with a hostile professor. After making Oppenheimer stay late, alone, after class, he injects an apple on the professor's desk with a syringe of poison (but promptly regrets his actions and returns to the classroom to dispose of it the next morning). 

"There's not a single enemy or friend of Robert Oppenheimer who heard that during his life and considered it to be true," Charles continued. "American Prometheus got it from some references talking about a spring break trip, and all the original reporters of that story – there were only two, maybe three – reported that they didn't know what Robert Oppenheimer was talking about. Unfortunately, American Prometheus summarizes that as Robert Oppenheimer tried to kill his teacher and then they [acknowledge that] maybe there's this doubt."

Oppenheimer is in cinemas now. For more on the movie, check out our coverage on:

• Our interview with Christopher Nolan on crafting Oppenheimer
• Christopher Nolan on Oppenheimer's R-rating
• Christopher Nolan on Oppenheimer's blockbuster status
• Our interview with Cillian Murphy
• Our interview with Matt Damon
• Our interview with Emily Blunt
• Why Robert Downey Jr. is at his best in Oppenheimer

Oppenheimer may have blown away all expectations at the box office, but its climactic scene – involving the atomic bomb being tested for the first time at Los Alamos – is something that’ll likely linger for far longer than opening weekend.

Now, Oppenheimer director of photography Hoyte van Hoytema has revealed how that incredible sequence came to life. Partially revealed, anyway – he’s still keeping some of Nolan’s secrets.

"Obviously, we couldn’t make an explosion the size of the actual explosion so we used trickery," Van Hoytema told Variety. 

Van Hoytema outlined the process, which featured everything from balloons to ping-pong balls – and camera tricks.

"We created science experiments. We built aquariums with power in it. We dropped silver particles in it. We had molded metallic balloons which were lit up from the inside," Van Hoytema said. 

"We had things slamming and smashing into one another such as ping-pong balls, or just had objects spinning…We had long shutter speeds, short shutter speeds, wide negative color, negative overexposure, underexposure. It was like a giant playground for all of us."

Nolan had previously told Total Film that he and his team recreated the Trinity test "without the use of computer graphics," something which he admitted was a “huge challenge.”

The director explained: "Andrew Jackson – my visual effects supervisor, I got him on board early on – was looking at how we could do a lot of the visual elements of the film practically, from representing quantum dynamics and quantum physics to the Trinity test itself, to recreating, with my team, Los Alamos up on a mesa in New Mexico in extraordinary weather, a lot of which was needed for the film, in terms of the very harsh conditions out there – there were huge practical challenges."

For more on the biopic, Christopher Nolan talks the R-rating, we chat to Matt Damon, and look into why Oppenheimer isn't coming to streaming anytime soon. 

Cillian Murphy arguably delivers the performance of his career as the title character in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. Portraying the ‘father of the atomic bomb’ from his student days to the post-war years where his loyalty was called into question, he truly carries the largely subjective film on his shoulders.

And what a character Oppenheimer - Oppie to his friends - is to dig into. A man of complex contradictions, he was a scientist and an aesthete, a pragmatist who could be highly irrational, arrogant and also self-doubting. His life story is detailed in depth in American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by authors Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. The title of that biography - on which the film is based - references the figure from Greek mythology who stole fire from the gods, and faced eternal punishment as a result.

In the latest episode of the Inside Total Film podcast, TF sits down for a chat with the Peaky Blinders star to talk about the role. Murphy’s a veteran of five previous Nolan films (the Dark Knight trilogy, Inception, Dunkirk) and his performance here will surely put him at the front of the pack when it comes to the next awards season.

You can read that podcast interview below, which has been edited for length and clarity.

Christopher Nolan has talked a lot about how he wrote this script in the first person. How did that present itself when you read the script?

I’d never read a script like that before. I’d never read a script written in the first person. You realise, then, that it’s going to be completely subjective, and very much from Oppenheimer’s point of view, and that the audience would be with him, on his shoulders, as he experiences the struggle of all these huge moral, ethical, and paradoxical dilemmas.

I kind of knew that it would be very much kind of an interior performance, as well as an exterior performance – if that doesn’t sound too pretentious.

The film covers a large period of Oppenheimer’s life. Did you film in anything like chronological order?

We did some of the young stuff at the beginning – when he’s studying, and he’s a student. But then after that, no. It was mostly kind of out of order. But when you have someone as brilliant as Chris… you rely on him and you rely on the work that you’ve done. But that’s generally the way films are shot – always out of sequence.

Is it helpful when you’re playing someone like Oppenheimer where there’s just so much research material available?

Yes, it is. It is very helpful, and I did an awful lot of reading. But ultimately, it’s about the script. It’s about what’s on the page. That’s Chris’s version of the story. So that’s what you’ve got to serve. That’s your primary resource.

Was it heavy going playing this character, when there’s just so much going on in his mind?

Yeah, it was, but they’re the kind of jobs I love. They’re the kind of characters that I really enjoy portraying. It was amazing hanging out with those fantastic actors, the best actors in the world. There’s a lot of laughing and a lot of joking around, because you have to have some kind of levity when you’re dealing with this sort of material.

Matt Damon recently said that you couldn’t join them for a lot of the dinners because there was so much going on in your brain. Was that a fair comment?

Yeah. He’s played those sort of parts before. Emily’s [Blunt] played those. They’ve all done those sorts of parts. They’re big, big parts, and they require an awful lot of focus. They kind of consume you. I was in, most days. I was skipping dinner anyway, most of the time. But it’s been great to hang out with them now, on the tour.

This is your sixth film with Nolan. Is there something about the way you both work that you connected straight away?

There seems to be something. It’s developed, of course, like any working partnership or any friendship. I think we have similar tastes. We have a very good shorthand. And most of all, we really trust each other. I’d do anything for Chris. When you have that core understanding between each other, you can do good work, I think.

Where do you see Oppenheimer sitting in the canon of his work? 

People have been saying all sorts of things. You can say that his work has been building towards this, that this is his magnum opus. You can draw a line back to, perhaps, Dunkirk, or Interstellar because of the science. But I just think it’s an extraordinary achievement. He is incomparable. He is a totally unique filmmaker.

You first met him during your audition for Batman Begins. Was that nerve-wracking?

It was, but it was more exciting than nerve-wracking, because I’d never considered myself to be the sort of perfect physical specimen for Batman. It was just the opportunity to get to work with him, even in a brief way. They had built the whole sets, and it was all shot on 35mm. So, it was a proper screen test. And it always felt to me like it should be Christian Bale, always.

But then something happened in that test, and he gave me that other part in Scarecrow. And we just continued to work.

Even if people are not that familiar with Oppenheimer, everyone knows that famous quote from the Bhagavad Gita that he recited. Did you imagine that’s what it’s like when an actor has to say, “Bond, James Bond”?

Maybe. And we all knew that line would have to be in there in some shape or form. But I think the way Chris has introduced it is very, very clever, because it takes a lot of the air out of it. It’s still incredibly important. But we didn’t talk about it too much when I was delivering it. He didn’t direct me very much. We kind of both knew what it meant.

Were there comparisons between the experiences of playing Tommy Shelby in Peaky Blinders and Oppenheimer?

I never compare characters. I think it’s death for an actor if you kind of bring some residue of a character into another performance. So, I don’t see any similarities. You want to be starting afresh, completely. You know, mannerisms, voice, emotions, everything. It has to be a fresh start.

Oppenheimer opens in cinemas on 21 July. For more from writer/director Christopher Nolan and star Cillian Murphy, plus Greta Gerwig on Barbie, listen to the latest episode of the Inside Total Film podcast. You can also read more from our interviews with Nolan, as well as actors Emily Blunt and Matt Damon, online.

In the meantime, check out our guide to the rest of the most exciting upcoming movies in 2023 and beyond.

They don’t make ’em like this any more. Unless the ‘they’ you’re talking about is Christopher Nolan. His latest film, Oppenheimer, opens this week in the middle of a busy summer blockbuster season, when multiplexes are also showing franchise sequels and recognisable properties like Indiana Jones, Mission: Impossible, and Barbie.

Oppenheimer is a unique offering. Sure, it has the director’s signature scope and grand-scale IMAX photography. It moves with a pulse-pounding pace. And it has the starriest cast assembled for years: listing the key players Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Robert Downey Jr., Matt Damon, and Florence Pugh barely scratches the surface when it comes to the sheer amount of talent on screen.

But even so, historical biopics rarely get made on this scale. There are significant portions in black-and-white. In place of action set-pieces you have high-stakes dialogue scenes. And quantum physics plays a crucial role in this story. On the latest episode of the Inside Total Film podcast, Nolan is asked if he considers Oppenheimer to be an outlier in a summer season of more traditional blockbuster fare.

“That’s a hard question to answer,” he says, “because as somebody who’s watched films my whole life, and loved films, and studied the history of films… This film is absolutely in the tradition of what big summer blockbusters can be, or ways in which you can engage with an audience, and take them on a journey. 

“But it’s been a while since this type of film has been put out there, and is really attempting to do that. There’s been a bit of a separation over the years, if you like, [of] entertainment from serious drama that’s kind of awards-worthy or whatever. I think over the history of movies, there’s been so many amazing films that don’t make that decision.”

For Nolan, J. Robert Oppenheimer’s story demands an epic canvas. “This is a giant story that affects the entire world, and always will,” he adds. “This man changed the world, like it or not, for all time. So, you’ve got to tell his story on the biggest scale possible. And it’s the most dramatic and intense story that I know of. So, on that basis, we humbly offer it - [laughs] maybe not so humbly - we offer it to the audience to be entertained by it or not.

“And the word ‘entertainment’ is complicated in regards to such a dark subject matter. But entertainment in cinema is about engagement. It’s why you can be entertained by a horror movie, or a set of appalling events, just the same as a comedy or a romance. This film is a lot of different things, but hopefully the thing that unites it is that it’s consistently engaging.”

Oppenheimer opens in cinemas on 21 July. For more from Nolan and star Cillian Murphy, plus Greta Gerwig on Barbie, listen to the latest episode of the Inside Total Film podcast. You can also read more from our interviews with Nolan, as well as actors Emily Blunt and Matt Damon, online.

In the meantime, check out our guide to the rest of the most exciting upcoming movies in 2023 and beyond.

Jude Law is taking on the mantle of one of England's most famous monarchs in Firebrand, a movie about Henry VIII and his sixth wife Katherine Parr. He decided to go method for the role – in a way that wasn't hugely popular with his co-stars. 

"I read several interesting accounts that you could smell Henry three rooms away. His leg was rotting so badly. He hid it with rose oil," Law said during the Cannes press conference for Firebrand (via Variety). "I thought it would have a great impact if I smelt awful."

Law decided to go to a perfume specialist who "makes wonderful scents, and she also makes awful scents. She somehow came up with this extraordinary variety of blood, fecal matter, and sweat." Director Karim Aïnouz added: "When he walked in on set, it was just horrible."

The movie received an eight-minute standing ovation after its Cannes premiere on Sunday (May 21). The historical drama, based on the 2013 novel Queen's Gambit by Elizabeth Fremantle, also stars Alicia Vikander as Katherine Parr, along with Sam Riley, Eddie Marsan, Simon Russell Beale, Erin Doherty, and Patsy Ferran. 

The film joins a host of other movies premiering at the French film festival, including Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, and Wes Anderson's Asteroid City.

While we wait for Firebrand to arrive on the big screen, check out our guide to all the other highly anticipated upcoming movies on the way in 2023 and beyond.

Christopher Nolan's next film, Oppenheimer, focuses on the titular scientist, who is considered the father of the atomic bomb. Cillian Murphy is front and center as the man himself, backed by an all-star cast – but one thing that has caught everyone's attention is the trailers switching between full colour and black and white, harkening back to 2000's Memento. 

There have been plenty of theories regarding how and why exactly the film is split like this. Many believe that the color sequences take place before the detonation of the bomb, with the black-and-white scenes taking place afterwards (such as the court scenes with Robert Downey Jr.'s character Lewis Strauss) – a metaphor for how the creation of the atomic introduced a new chapter for our world.

Speaking to Total Film magazine in the new issue, which features Oppenheimer on the cover and is out on newsstands on May 25, Nolan discussed why the colors shift, helping shed some light on these theories: "I wrote the script in the first person, which I'd never done before. I don't know if anyone has ever done that, or if that's a thing people do or not… The film is objective and subjective. The colour scenes are subjective; the black-and-white scenes are objective. I wrote the colour scenes from the first person. So for an actor reading that, in some ways, I think it'd be quite daunting."

What this means exactly? We will have to wait and find out, but it could indeed imply the above fan theory is correct.

Along with Murphy and Downey Jr., Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Florence Pugh, Jack Quaid, Josh Hartnett, Rami Malek, Gary Oldman, Kenneth Branagh, Alden Ehrenreich, Dane DeHaan, and David Dastmalchian have roles in the film. 

• Preorder the Oppenheimer issue of Total Film now

Oppenheimer is out in cinemas on July 21, 2023. This is just a snippet of our interview in the new issue of Total Film magazine, which features the Nolan epic on the cover. The magazine hits shelves this Thursday, May 25. Check out the covers below:

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Nomadland director Chloé Zhao's next movie is in the works and has set its leads: Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley are set to star in the filmmaker's adaptation of award-winning novel Hamnet, Deadline reports.

Hamnet follows William Shakespeare (Mescal) and his wife Agnes (Buckley) in the wake of the loss of their only son, Hamnet, following the emotional and artistic consequences of his death that culminate in Shakespeare penning his famous tragedy Hamlet. Written by Maggie O'Farrell (who will adapt the script in collaboration with Zhao), the New York Times bestselling novel won the Women's Prize for Fiction back in 2020.

Mescal seems to be the man of the hour at the moment, with a recently announced role in Ridley Scott's Gladiator sequel, an Oscar nomination for his performance in Aftersun, and an Olivier Award for his role in A Streetcar Named Desire on London's West End. 

Buckley, meanwhile, was most recently seen in Sarah Polley's Academy Award-winning drama Women Talking and she also recently won an Olivier, albeit at last year's ceremony, for playing Sally Bowles in Cabaret. 

As for Zhao, this is her first movie since the 2021's Eternals. Prior to that, her movie Nomadland won Best Picture and Best Director at the 2021 Oscars, making her the first Asian woman to win the latter award. The film's star, Frances McDormand, also won Best Actress. 

While we wait for Hamnet to arrive on our screens, fill out your watch list with our guide to all the most exciting upcoming movies on the way in 2023 and beyond.

Matt Damon has confirmed that Christopher Nolan's next movie, Oppenheimer, is around three hours long – which means it may be the director's longest film yet. Currently, Nolan's longest movie is Interstellar, which has a runtime of 169 minutes, followed by The Dark Knight Rises, which is 165 minutes.

"It’s three hours. It’s fantastic," Damon told Variety, after revealing that he’d seen the movie. "Cillian [Murphy] is phenomenal. He’s everything you would want him to be," he added. "I think it’s almost three hours. It goes so fast, it’s great."

Murphy stars as J. Robert Oppenheimer, an American theoretical physicist and head of the secret Los Alamos Laboratory during the war – and the man who developed the atom bomb. He was heavily involved with the Manhattan Project, which is credited with developing the first nuclear weapons used to bomb the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Damon will play United States Army Corps of Engineers officer Leslie Groves, the director of the Manhattan Project who also oversaw the construction of the Pentagon.

Alongside Damon, the star-studded cast also includes Emily Blunt, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh, Rami Malek, Benny Safdie, Jack Quaid, Alden Ehrenreich, and Kenneth Branagh. 

According to Universal Studios, Oppenheimer is an "epic thriller that thrusts audiences into the pulse-pounding paradox of the enigmatic man who must risk destroying the world in order to save it."

Oppenheimer arrives on the big screen on July 21. While we wait, fill out your watch list with our picks of the other best upcoming movies on the way in 2023 and beyond.

Denzel Washington and Barry Keoghan are in talks to appear in Paramount’s upcoming Gladiator sequel – marking a reunion between the former and American Gangster filmmaker Ridley Scott (via Deadline).

While Washington’s prospective role in the flick remains under wraps, Keoghan is said to be in talks to play the next chapter’s antagonist. If he winds up landing the part, the Oscar-nominated actor will go toe to toe with Aftersun’s Paul Mescal, who was cast as the project’s lead back in January.

Scott is lined up to direct and produce the follow-up, working with a script from All the Money in the World scribe David Scarpa. According to Variety, Keoghan might end up playing Emperor Geta, while Mescal will reportedly bring Lucius, the son of Russell Crowe’s ill-fated Maximus Decimus Meridius, and his lover Lucilla (Connie Nielsen) from the original.

Michael Pruss, Doug Wick, and Lucy Fisher are on board to produce alongside Scott. Executive producers include Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald. Also returning from the original film are cinematographer John Mathieson, production designer Arthur Max and costume designer Janty Yates.

Released in 2000, Gladiator charts Roman soldier Maximus’s descent into slavery at the hands of Joaquin Phoenix’s traitorous Commodus. It was nominated for 12 Academy Awards, winning five including Best Picture, and earned $460 million at the box office.

Keoghan’s previous works include Dunkirk, Eternals, The Batman, and The Banshees of Inisherin, for which he recently picked up the BAFTA award for Best Supporting Actor. He’ll next be seen opposite Wednesday and Scream 6 star Jenna Ortega in Trey Edward Shults and The Weeknd’s new movie.

The currently untitled Gladiator sequel is set to release on November 22, 2024. While we wait, check out our list of the most exciting upcoming movies coming our way throughout 2023 and beyond.

Colin Farrell has shared his reaction to hearing about negative reviews for Alexander. The historical epic sits at a 16% Critics Score and 35% Audience Score on Rotten Tomatoes. 

Farrell starred as the titular Alexander the Great in the film, and, participating in an Actors Roundtable for The Hollywood Reporter, explained that the film was personal for both him and director Oliver Stone, and the actor had high expectations for its reception. 

"When I say 'expectations,' we all had our tuxedos ready. I'm not even joking," Farrell said. "There were some of the lads who were all like ‘Right, lads, we're off to the Oscars. This is a sure thing,' because we had Oliver Stone. We had a story of that magnitude. We had a script that was really moving and really just brilliant and so muscular. And then it came out.

"I was in Toronto, and I think I was due a bit of a foot in the arse to be honest. Which is not the same as saying I deserved it," he continued. "I just want to be clear... But the reviews came out – we were up in Toronto – and I remember my sister Claudine going, 'Oh god. It's not good.' And Danica my publicist, going, 'It's really not good.' I was like, 'What do you mean, not good?' There wasn't any shortcut, Rotten Tomatoes, 'What percentage are we talking here?' It wasn’t that. It was 'What do you mean?' And they had all the printed reviews. And it was one after another, and it was 'pack my bags,' 'found out,' 'Alexander the Dull,' 'Alexander the Boring,' 'Alexander the Inarticulate,' 'Alexander the Weak,' 'Alexander the…' I was like 'Holy shit.' And I thought 'What can I do?' I felt so much shame."

But, in better news, Farrell has won a Golden Globe for his performance in The Banshees of Inisherin, which also won for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy. 

Banshees is streaming on Disney Plus in the UK and HBO Max in the US. You can fill out your watchlist with our guide to the best Netflix shows available to watch now. 

Will Smith's first movie since he slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars, historical drama Emancipation, is set to be released next month – but he understands if people aren't ready to see him on-screen again just yet.

Smith hit the headlines earlier this year after he slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars when the comedian made a comment on stage about his wife Jada Pinkett Smith's hair – Pinkett Smith has alopecia. Smith later apologized, going on to address the incident in a YouTube video, but he was subsequently banned from the Oscars for the next 10 years and several of his upcoming projects, including Bad Boys 4, were reportedly shelved or delayed due to the incident.

"I completely understand – if someone is not ready, I would absolutely respect that and allow them their space to not be ready," the actor told CinemaBlend. "My deepest concern is my team – Antoine has done what I think is the greatest work of his entire career."

He continued: "The people on this team have done some of the best work of their entire careers, and my deepest hope is that my actions don't penalize my team. At this point, that's what I'm working for. I'm hoping that the material – the power of the film, the timeliness of the story – I'm hoping that the good that can be done would open people's hearts at a minimum to see and recognize and support the incredible artists in and around this film."

Directed by Training Day and Olympus Has Fallen helmer Antoine Fuqua, Emancipation is set in the 19th Century and follows an enslaved man named Peter (Smith) who escapes from a Louisiana plantation after being brutally whipped and sets out on a search for his family. Photos of his injured back were published by the press, providing proof of the barbarity of American slavery.

Emancipation is due to be released on Apple TV Plus on December 9. In the meantime, check out our guide to the rest of this year's movie release dates. 

The Wonder may not be the movie starring Florence Pugh that gets the most publicity this year, but it looks set to be the most critically acclaimed. Set in 19th Century Ireland, Pugh stars as Lib, an English nurse tasked with observing a young girl who – somehow, "miraculously" – hasn't eaten for months. 

"This is a film that explores the power of fiction in our lives," director Sebastián Lelio tells Total Film for the new issue of the magazine, featuring Avatar: The Way of Water on the cover. "You know, everything is a story. The self is a story. Democracy is a story. Money is a story. A nation is a story. And in the era of the internet you have all these people that are willing to suspend disbelief in a second, in a blink. We have to finesse the stories that we create for each other. We cannot let stories degrade, because then we will disintegrate. That’s why the film wants to say, 'What are you believing in? Who are you believing in? Are you fixated on that position? Or do you have enough spiritual and intellectual elasticity to change, to adapt?'"

After a limited theatrical run, the film is now streaming on Netflix, and viewers are full of praise for the period drama. "Just finished The Wonder and Florence Pugh was phenomenal as usual," tweeted one viewer.

"A controlled, haunting and beautifully paced examination of trauma and the constrictions of rigid faith. Florence Pugh proves herself once again to be a hypnotic and potent screen presence," echoed another Twitter user.

"The Wonder is such a wonderful adaptation of Emma Donoghue's novel, with some stylistic choices that elevate everything out of the period drama staple. Florence Pugh is a triumph and young Kila Lord Cassidy more than holds her own as the wonder herself. What a film!!" tweeted someone else.

"It's a strange, patient story that plays tremendously to Florence Pugh's strengths as an actor. The cinematography by Ari Wegner is gorgeous, and I haven't been able to shake Matthew Herbert's score for weeks," added another viewer.

Critics are full of praise for the movie and its lead performance, too. "Pugh knows that stories need protagonists to follow, and she gives you a great one: spiky, sullen, sensitive, enraged, grieving, lustful, loving, nurturing, and not prone to taking prisoners or any shit," reads David Fear's Rolling Stone review, while The Independent's Clarisse Loughrey writes: "Pugh is very much at home in this kind of role, but it’s no less arresting in its familiarity," 

"A drama this ambitious demands a fearless performer like Pugh, who knows exactly the tightrope to walk when it comes to the story’s delicate balance between realism and melodrama," echoes Roger Ebert's Brian Tallerico.

The Wonder is available to watch on Netflix now. For more viewing inspiration, check out our picks of the other best Netflix movies on the streamer.

All Quiet on the Western Front, a new Netflix war movie, is getting rave reviews and has an almost perfect Rotten Tomatoes score. One of the biggest budget movies to come out of Germany and the country's entry for this year's Oscars in the Best International Feature Film category, the movie currently has a critics' score of 94% on the review aggregator site, with an audience score of 91%. 

Entertainment Weekly describes All Quiet on the Western Front as "a film that feels both aesthetically dazzling and full of necessary truths: an antiwar drama that transcends the bombast of propaganda mostly just because it's so artfully and indelibly made," while The Observer says the movie is "remarkable, if harrowing, film-making".

Based on the 1929 classic novel about World War I by former German infantryman Erich Maria Remarque, the movie follows teenagers Paul Baumer and his friends Albert and Muller, who voluntarily enlist in the German army. Initially passionately patriotic, their preconceptions about what’s right and wrong quickly crumble away as they witness the horrors of life on the front.

This isn’t the first time the novel has been adapted – a version made for the screen soon after its publication went on to win Best Picture at the 1930 Oscars and a Golden Globe-winning TV movie followed in 1979. However, this is the first time it’s been adapted by a German filmmaker. Edward Berger directed the movie, who’s previously helmed projects like the Showtime series Patrick Melrose starring Benedict Cumberbatch and AMC’s The Terror featuring Tobias Menzies and George Takei.

All Quiet on the Western Front is available to stream now on Netflix. For more viewing inspiration, check out our picks of the other best Netflix movies to add to your watch list. 

Swedish artist Hilma af Klint is thought to be one of the Western world's first abstract painters – but have you heard of her? A Spiritualist (the belief that it's possible to communicate with spirits) as well as an artist, the two things are inextricably linked for af Klint, and her huge paintings have an awe-inspiring feel to them. Unable to find renown or recognition in her own lifetime, she’s now the subject of a biopic, titled Hilma, from writer and director Lasse Hallström, best known for What's Eating Gilbert Grape and Chocolat.

"I heard the name of this painter from Lena [Olin, Hallström's wife] and started reading about her and got obsessed,” Hallström tells Total Film as we discuss the film in a central London hotel. "I was wanting to write something on my own, because I had really been working on other people's stories for such a long time. Last time I made a script on my own was [1985's] My Life as a Dog, based on a novel. So I felt like I really wanted to control the whole project."

Hilma – played by Tora Hallström, daughter of Lasse – became involved with Spiritualism while she was attending Sweden's Royal Academy of Fine Arts in the 1880s. There, she met Anna Cassel, one of the founding members of a group of women known as the Five, the other members being Cornelia Cederberg, Sigrid Hedman, and Mathilda Nilsson.

"I think it was a really fascinating time," says Lily Cole, who plays Mathilda. "You had Christianity being the orthodoxy for so long in Europe and then, suddenly, you had a lot more Eastern ideas coming across, and science and psychoanalysis, photography, technology, there was so much changing. It was an incredibly powerful, transitional time."

"This was the realm where women had power," Maeve Dermody, who plays Sigrid, adds. "Women were holding the seances." The Five were some of these women, using seances and reaching out to make contact with the 'spirit realm' to get inspiration for their art. In order to prepare for their roles, some of the actors got method with their research.

"We worked with a psychic in Stockholm," Cole explains. "Me and three of the other actresses as part of the Five spent time with him. And that, for me, felt really respectful. Because it's using the tools that the women used themselves as a way of getting information, so I personally made peace with honoring them through that process."

The psychic, a friend of a friend of the Hallströms named Benny, "has this amazing energy and doesn't really put on a show to prove that he's speaking to the other side, so you fully believe that it's true," according to Tora Hallström. 

"He came into contact with Hilma and you could just see how he changed, authentically changed, and he felt her energy. She was so excited to be doing this because this was how she got inspiration for her art, and this was obviously something that she enjoyed doing. She was funny and came with these really interesting facts and little anecdotes from how she was in her private life that we can't read about in the books about her that made it into the film."

Cole says a lot of the information from Hilma was "about the emotional dynamics and the relationships between these different women that you would never be able to know because it's not documented – who was in love with who, when there were any frictions and tensions between them." Dermody adds that they found out the group experimented with wearing men's clothing and "taking on masculine energy."

"He hadn't read anything about Hilma," Cole continues. "Everything he would say would be based on what apparently she was saying and he was hearing. My character, Mathilda, founded the spiritual magazine Spiritual Society, so when I went into that session I was fully Mathilda. Like, 'I'm not going to doubt this for a second because I have to honor the faith that Mathilda had and these women had', and bizarrely it sort of stayed, that faith, and it feels amazing."

In the movie, Hilma's friendship with Anna (Rebecca Calder), her first friend at the Royal Academy, turns romantic and sexual, a part of her life that isn’t readily available to read about. Did Benny the psychic shed any light on that? "I think it's really important to the film to have it in there, but it's more speculative," Tora says. "But we did get it confirmed through Benny and through Hilma that they did have a relationship, and that was her big love, and that there were relationships which aren't in the film between the five women. There was a lot of jealousy and very complicated relationships between all five."

Despite how closely the Five worked together, it's Hilma's name that is the most well-known today – her work has been exhibited in institutions like the Serpentine Galleries in London and the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. Cassel, Cederberg, Hedman, and Nilsson, however, have not had the same fate. 

"The thing I really love about the film's focus on the Five is that, if you did have a feminist revision of art history, it would probably move away from things like singular heroes and recognize that all great art is usually a collaborative effort, even if there was one leader or one person at the helm," says Cole. "Still today, as Hilma becomes recognized, it's very much like a singular hero, she's by herself as this outlier amazing woman. Of course, it's true that she's an incredible woman. But it's powerful and important to recognize that, actually, her work came out of 20 years of these five women working together and doing it very collaboratively."

Lasse Hallström kept it in the family for his latest piece of filmmaking – while his daughter, Tora, plays the younger version of Hilma, his wife, Olin, plays an older version of the artist. "It's just wonderful," Olin says of working with her husband. "It's just a dream. It's very free and relaxed. I trust him so completely and how he takes care of what you give, if you will, on set. You never have to worry about how it's going to be taken care of, so that's lovely."

This is Tora's first leading role in a movie – what was it like to take that on with her own father in the director's chair? "I realize the optics of it doesn't look great," she laughs. "But I just went into it with an open heart, thinking, 'I'm just gonna do the best I can and prove that this wasn't just handed to me for no reason.' I felt so connected to the script immediately that all of these emotions were coming up for me from the get-go and then coming into contact with Hilma just really gave me a lot of strength through the filming process so I was never nervous about it. Having [Lasse] behind the camera, I know he's very, very honest with me and holds me to a very high standard, so it felt very safe."

"It was during the pandemic when we first started looking at the early version of the script, and we had these workshop sessions as a family," says Tora. "We were always from the get-go very aligned on who we wanted Hilma to be. We fell into agreeing on exactly what she stood for and how she would react to certain situations and then, towards the end, we got into more details, like, how she moved, what are the mannerisms? I would watch [Olin] and then try to bring that to life."

Hilma is out now in UK cinemas. In early 2023, Hilma will also be available on Viaplay UK, Viaplay’s streaming service set to launch in the UK this autumn. For more viewing inspiration, check out our picks of the rest of the year's biggest movie release dates.

"This is a film and a story that we haven't seen before," Gina Prince-Bythewood tells Total Film. "And it was a fight – a real fight – to tell this story." 

We’re talking The Woman King, The Old Guard director’s new movie about an all-female elite group of warriors, the Agojie, who protected the Kingdom of Dahomey at the height of the slave trade in the 1800s. It’s a fascinating story based on true events – and yet, Hollywood’s various studios were initially reluctant to make an epic cenering on a Black female cast. Prince-Bythewood, though, was ready to battle to make it happen, even if The Woman King took seven years to take from pitch to the screen.

"We put all this work into it because our names are on it, this is what we're leaving," she says over Zoom. "I believe, these actors believe, that what we do can have an impact and can absolutely change the world. When you have a platform as big as this, let's entertain, absolutely, but let's say something as well."

Fact and fiction 

Telling a story based on historical events comes with a set of challenges, though. The Woman King will be many people’s first introduction to the Agojie – and that means there’s pressure to get it right while also delivering an entertaining and emotional movie. 

"I do the same thing when I’m watching a historical epic, I'm taking what I'm seeing up there as fact," Prince-Bythewood says. "I knew that we created fictitious characters, but we put them in an absolutely real world.” She points to the conflict the Dahomey has with the slave trade and that they were the “only kingdom in all of Africa that allowed women to have an equal voice in the government and the council" as being examples of very real aspects of the story.

For the filmmaker, this also meant doing judicious research into the Agojie, one of the few all-female armies documented in modern history. It meant getting everything from their clothes to their food right, as well as some of the more unique tactics they used, like putting palm oil on their bodies to make them harder to catch and sharpening their nails to use as weapons. However, the truth for Prince-Bythewood was not only in the historical accuracy, but also in the beauty of this story and of Africa. "I wanted a beauty for this film," she says. "I wanted to give it the beauty in the bigness that these women, these real women, that we were embodying, their story that's never been told. I wanted to give it that."

Much of that beauty was achieved through the stunning sunrises and sunsets that mark the story – an added benefit of filming on location in South Africa. "There’s just an emotion to a sunrise in the sunset," Prince-Bythewood adds. "It's a beginning, it can be an ending. But even sometimes, subconsciously it can just make you feel."

A dream cast

There was also pressure on getting the cast right. The filmmaker had to find a group of women capable of balancing the intense training schedule necessary for playing a warrior with the ability to convey the story’s emotion. After Viola Davis was cast in the lead role of General Nanisca (Davis also serves as a producer), the rest fell into place. James Bond star Lashana Lynch plays the razor-fingered Izogie; Bruised’s Sheila Atim is Nanica’s closest confidant Amenza; and Thuso Mbedu – best known for The Underground Railroad – portrays Nawi, a new recruit who joins the Agojie after an arranged marriage goes wrong. 

When it came to King Ghezo – the leader of the Dahomey people – Prince-Bythewood only had one name in mind for the role: John Boyega. He quickly agreed, and his casting helped secure finances for the movie 

"It's the second time I've been able to support a movie in that way and I think it's lovely," John Boyega tells Total Film. "[Rather] than just talk about your support for Black women, what better way to actually show it than do something about it? I'm glad that I was able to do that through accepting a job role, which is like the softest form of charity.”

That wasn’t the only reason Boyega wanted to get involved – he was also drawn to the character. Though best known for playing Finn in Star Wars, Boyega has recently focussed on more character-driven, nuanced roles, whether Leroy Logan in Steve McQueen’s Small Axe or Brian Brown-Easley in 892. King Ghezo is another example of the same.

"I always like playing characters who are multi-layered, like all of us as human beings," he says. "You can meet us in the streets when you get deeper and find out more different sides to us. I've always been connected to characters like that. And, just as an actor, [those roles] gave me an opportunity just to branch out in comparison to the stuff that I've done before."

Ghezo is an important figure in Dahomey’s history. In The Woman King, we meet him as a leader torn between whether to eschew his brother’s legacy of connections with the slave trade or to keep with it for the riches. 

"I like playing a character that's so pivotal to the education of African history, of Black history," Boyega adds. "A complex character who makes you discover other sides to that narrative. King Ghezo is somebody that represents a person that definitely made decisions in several different ways – and that affected his people in several different ways. And the more and more you get to know him, the more and more you get to explore what that necessarily means, in terms of the movie and the actual history that's on the ground."

Oscars on the horizon 

With The Woman King now playing outside of North America, the awards chatter is getting louder, with pundits already placing odds on the movie picking up nominations in best film categories. Prince-Bythewood is keeping a level head though, letting the words of her leading lady do the talking. 

"I'm gonna use Viola’s answer because then I don't look like an asshole," she says. "What this film is, what everybody put into it, the extraordinary performances that these actors gave – and not only the extraordinary performances but the degree of difficulty in the amount of training they did to be able to do their own fighting and stunts so that they can embody these characters fully – it's absolutely lovely, and we're just going to embrace it."

Boyega equally steers clear of any awards chat about his own performance. "I’ve never experienced Oscar buzz," he laughs. "The Oscar buzz I experience is when my next-door neighbor tells me when I’m taking the bins out, 'You should have got an Oscar for that episode of 24.' I don’t get to experience it the way everybody else does."

He’s instead keen to champion his co-stars. "I do believe that Viola Davis, Thuso Mbedu, and Lashana Lynch should be nominated. And if they do that wayward stuff this year… you know what’s up. But if you watch the movie – come on, it writes itself." Over to you, Academy.

The Woman King is in cinemas now. For what else is out in 2022 and beyond, check out our guide to upcoming movie releases.

The Woman King star Viola Davis has defended the "fictionalized" movie following backlash over its historical inaccuracy. Directed by The Old Guard's Gina Prince-Bythewood, the action-packed drama centers on the Agojie, the all-female warriors that protected the West African kingdom of Dahomey in the early 1800s – and while it's inspired by the real-life women, its story isn't exactly based on true events. 

More closely, it follows General Nanisca (Davis), the unit's hardened leader, who is forced to confront her own violent past as defiant youngster Nowi (Thuso Mbedu) trains as one of the next band of fighters. Their goal? To liberate themselves from the domineering Oyo Empire and push back against the emerging slave trade. 

Since its release in the US, the acclaimed movie has topped the box office but some viewers have taken to social media to criticize its portrayal of certain historical figures and suggest that the movie doesn't explore Dahomey's part in the business deeply enough. The film sees Nanisca challenge John Boyega's King Ghezo – who accumulated vast wealth through the slave trade – on his brother's decision to hand over Dahomey's captives a handful of times. It certainly doesn't avoid shedding light on the complex generational trauma human trafficking causes, either. In reality, though, King Ghezo didn't cease exporting people until 1852 – and a few viewers have suggested it glosses over that fact.

"You're not going to win an argument on Twitter," Davis recently explained to Variety, quoting an earlier interview of Bythewood's. "We entered the story where the kingdom was in flux, at a crossroads. They were looking to find some way to keep their civilization and kingdom alive. It wasn't until the late 1800s that they were decimated. Most of the story is fictionalized. It has to be."

"We are now what we call 'edu-tainment'. It's history but we have to take license. We have to entertain people," producer Julius Tennon, Davis' husband, added. "If we just told a history lesson, which we very well could have, that would be a documentary. Unfortunately, people wouldn't be in the theaters doing the same thing we saw this weekend. We didn't want to shy away from the truth. The history is massive and there are truths on that that are there. If people want to learn more, they can investigate more."

The Woman King is out in US cinemas now, and will be released in the UK on October 4. While we wait across the pond, check out our breakdown of the most exciting upcoming movies still to come our way in 2022 and beyond.

Director Gina Prince-Bythewood may be from California, but both her identity and her latest film are firmly rooted in the African continent. 

The Woman King is set in 19th Century Benin and follows General Nanisca (Viola Davis), leader of an elite all-female unit of warriors – the Agojie – who protect the Kingdom of Dahomey. In telling a story that so distinctly belongs to an African group of women, Prince-Bythewood immediately knew the production had to travel across the Atlantic. 

"I didn’t want this to be a green screen film," she tells Total Film. "But it wasn’t just for the aesthetics – we wanted our feet and hands in the soil to tell the stories. This is an epic film with big crowds, and I wanted it to be us."

Much of the African diaspora, even generations after their ancestors left its shores, still feel pulled back to the continent, and that was certainly the case for Viola Davis. "I first went to Africa when I was 25, a student at Juilliard," she explains. "[I went to] the Gambia because I was trying to find myself, to redefine myself. Not as an artist, but as a Black woman. It was almost like I was screaming inside: 'I know I’m more than what you’re telling me I am!'" 

Davis has now traveled extensively across Africa, including to South Africa to make The Woman King, and each time feels that same release. "Every single day it was as if I had meditated for five hours. I had absolutely no anxiety. I had no problem sleeping. It’s the feeling of just being." 

Prince-Bythewood’s first footsteps on the continent were no less impactful. "My honeymoon was to Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, and we often spoke about how we wished that every African-American could take that journey," she says. "It’s profound to not be a minority for the first time."

The Woman King arrives in US cinemas on September 16, and opens in the UK on October 4. For more on the movie, check out the new issue of Total Film magazine, which is on sale from Thursday, August 18.

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Frances O'Connor may be best known for her roles in movies like AI: Artificial Intelligence and Mansfield Park, but now the actor has turned her hand to writing and directing. Her feature debut is Emily, a dramatization of the life of Emily Brontë, the author of the 19th Century classic novel Wuthering Heights.

Sex Education's Emma Mackey is playing the titular writer alongside a supporting cast including Fionn Whitehead, Adrian Dunbar, and Gemma Jones. Despite being set in the 1800s, though, O'Connor is adamant that the movie is not your standard period drama – and she says it's not a traditional biopic, either. The movie's first trailer is now live, and we sat down with the writer-director to talk working with Mackey, filming in Yorkshire, and "pissing off" Brontë historians. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Total Film: What was it about Emily Brontë's story in particular that made you want to take the jump from acting to writing and directing?

Frances O'Connor: I've always wanted to write and direct something and I've always loved Emily as a character. I read [her] book, Wuthering Heights, and also Jane Eyre, Charlotte [Brontë]'s novel, when I was about 15 and just loved them. I think the thing I really loved is this kind of wildness in it – you really feel the author, I think, in the novel. The thing about Emily is that she died when she was 30. She was an intensely private person. And yet, she created this kind of gargantuan piece of literature that is full of fierce intelligence and humor and atmosphere, so she's a fascinating character. And yet no one's ever made a film about her and we don't know that much about her. So I wanted to tell a story, not a straight biography, but take elements of who she was as inspiration. And then [in] the novel Wuthering Heights, there are themes that I was interested in exploring too, like how do you find your voice as a young woman when you can't see anyone else around you like you?

As you said, there hasn't been a biopic or much made about her previously. Did you feel any pressure being the first in a way or treading new ground with that?

I think you have to take courage in your hands when you're telling a story about a real historical figure, but I was very clear in my mind that I didn't want to do a biopic. I really wanted to speak to the younger audience, because of the themes I'm exploring. And so I didn't really think of it as a period film and I didn't really think of it as a biopic. When you see the film, you understand why there are elements in it that have a supernatural vibe [or] atmosphere. But in terms of pressure, no, I didn't. I know there'll be some people that are pissed off about it, people like Brontë historians will probably say, 'Well, that didn't happen.' But I feel like everything in the film is connected to the truth about who she was as a person. 

What made Emma Mackey the perfect actor to play Emily?

Firstly, she also loves Emily Brontë, and she actually said in the past, 'I'd love to play Emily Brontë,' so she's qualified. She's super bright and she's a very passionate person but, at the same time, she's got this fierce intelligence to her the same way that Emily did and she knows who she is in a really strong way. It's just very compelling when you put that on screen. And I think because she wanted to play it in a way that was very personal to her, that's why she's so amazing in the film.

She's great in Sex Education.

She's phenomenal in that. I think people will be surprised when they see her in this because she does play this character that's kind of dominated by her sister and she's introverted and she's finding it hard to grow up, and then she blossoms into this full force by the end of the film. I think she really is phenomenal in the role. 

As you were saying earlier, there's not a lot of information about Emily out there, but a lot of what we know about her comes from Charlotte and what Charlotte wrote about her. Did you take that into account? And what kind of role does Charlotte play in the film?

I've read pretty much everything on [the Brontës] and there are some amazing biographies, like Juliet Barker's one is brilliant. Lucasta Miller wrote this [book] called The Brontë Myth that is in itself a fantastic read. So I read around all of that, and then I slightly push the narrative for Charlotte. I think she very much edited Emily, but it was coming from a sense of protection. When you read the early reviews of Wuthering Heights, people were horrified. Somebody said, 'Why this author didn't commit suicide within the first three chapters, I do not know.' It's like, this is a savage piece of work. So I feel like she comes from a good place, but she always curated who Emily was, so I wanted to tell a story where [Emily]'s in the center of the story, and she gets to kind of be the hero of the story. It was quite fun playing with these historical figures and making one of them the protagonist, one of them the antagonist. I think that's quite fun.

What about Anne and Branwell, the other Brontë siblings? How did you approach those dynamics?

Anne in our film is played by Amelia Gething. She's also a huge talent just starting off. She really is the peacemaker, and Anne was also the peacemaker in the Brontë household, definitely. And Branwell, I've made him the only one who really understands [Emily] and the one who sees her for who she is, and accepts her, which helps her be who she's meant to be and helps her like herself, In truth, he was quite a tragic figure, he was the golden boy of the family.

It was quite a tragic family, really, wasn't it? Would you say that the film has a tone of tragedy? 

I think the trailer pushes that. There are a lot of really funny moments at the beginning of the film – actually, all the way through the film. We've gone for a tone of the trailer that's more mysterious and more dramatic, which it is as well, but I think there's a lot more humor in it than we're showing.

The Brontës lived in Yorkshire and the trailer's got some really stunning scenery shots in it. Did you film on location, and what was that like?

We mainly shot in a place called Dent, which is in Yorkshire, it's a little bit wilder than the real Haworth now. We did also shoot in Haworth, on the streets of Haworth and near the parsonage, but the moorland there has been flattened a little bit and there's a lot of telephone poles and things. We went up to the virgin Yorkshire countryside. It's so beautiful, so it was very inspiring to shoot up there. And the house that we shot in actually was the inspiration for Emily to write Wuthering Heights. It was rumored that they had a slave there. She took that for inspiration for Heathcliff when she wrote her book, and then we got to shoot this.

Why do you think filmmakers haven't tried to tackle Emily's story before? Why do you think you're the first?

I'm asking myself the same question! I don't know, people tend to love telling stories about the three [sisters], but I felt like it's nice to just take the perspective of one of them. If I ever did another story about them, I'd probably do something about Charlotte, or Charlotte and Emily but from Charlotte's perspective would be fun, but narrative is always better if it goes through the perspective of one person. I think you get a more intense narrative. 

But I don't know why. I think because we don't know that much about her, perhaps. And also, I think that it's a kind of thing that a woman might want to make and in the past there haven't been enough female directors to make that happen.

You've acted in TV as well as film, so did you ever consider turning the story into something more episodic? Was it always going to be a film?

I did, actually, when I was writing it. But I feel like the narrative just fit very much into this kind of length. If it wasn't just about Emily, I think you could have done something where it was maybe one person per episode or something, but the narrative feels very filmic. And you've got to support cinema.

You've acted in some period pieces yourself – did you take any of that into the filmmaking experience? 

The period stuff I've done, it's been quite naturalistic. Maybe The Importance of Being Earnest is a little bit more heightened. But in a way, it's a coincidence that [Emily]'s a period thing, what I really wanted to do was do a story about Emily because she's such a fascinating character. But in terms of how I approached it, I didn't even think of it as a period piece. I didn't do any crane shots, I kept it very handheld and intimate in keeping the acting very natural. I encouraged all the actors to just forget about it being a period piece and just concentrate on the scenes and what [their] objectives are. That kind of period style acting, when everyone starts acting very proper, I'm pretty sure no one acted like that back then. There might have been moments when they were formal, because they knew the rules, but I wasn't really interested in doing that, because I think you limit the story a little bit. It's a bit of a turn-off for audiences.

Emily is in cinemas on October 14, 2022, following its premiere at Toronto International Film Festival in September. In the meantime, check out our guide to the other upcoming movies that we think should be on your radar.

Persuasion, the Netflix adaptation of Jane Austen's classic novel, is out in selected cinemas today before it arrives on the streamer next week – and the reviews are in. 

The movie sees Dakota Johnson star as Anne Elliot, a young woman living with her snobby family who are on the brink of bankruptcy. She may only be 27, but this is the 19th Century, and therefore she's on the brink of spinsterhood, mourning the lost love of Frederick Wentworth (Cosmo Jarvis), a man her family persuaded her not to marry eight years before. That is, until he reappears in her life. The cast also includes Henry Golding, Richard E. Grant, Suki Waterhouse, Nikki Amuka-Bird, and Mia McKenna-Bruce.

The movie was helmed by theatre director Carrie Cracknell in her feature debut and she's put a modern twist on the adaption, despite keeping its Regency setting. But what do the critics make of Persuasion? 

The Independent

"At no point during Carrie Cracknell’s directorial debut do you ever get the sense that anyone’s actually read Persuasion. For those with even the slightest affinity for Austen’s work, it’s vaguely mortifying to watch – seeing one of her most beautifully moulded protagonists, a sorrowful vessel hounded by the ghosts of lost love, stripped of her poetry and reduced to an Instagram caption about the pitfalls of millennial dating."

The Hollywood Reporter

"From the minute the trailer dropped, the Austenite gatekeepers were crying sacrilege, and sure, this will rankle lovers of the novel. But it’s a movie that knows exactly what it’s doing, using its source as a baseline rather than an unyielding blueprint, with a star ideally chosen to navigate its century-crossing gambit. She’s a woman susceptible to persuasion but ultimately driven by her own sense of agency. Approached as a free-standing rom-com only loosely tethered to its origins, the film is a sweet distraction."

The Guardian

"Jane Austen’s calm, subtle novel gets the Fleabag treatment in this smirking romcom; it has more wrong notes than an inebriated squadron of harpists, including everything but a last-minute rush in a barouche to Bath airport. Our demure protagonist Anne Elliot is forever doing supercilious takes and wry monologues to camera, taking despairing swigs from a bottle of red wine in private, occasionally nursing a quirky pet rabbit, and at the end (unforgivably) gives us a wink to seal the deal of our adoringly complicit approval."

IndieWire

"This Persuasion does indeed have plenty of modern, chatty flourishes (yes, Anne does tell us she’s "single and thriving," and later does refer to her hunky unrequited love as her "ex"), and it features a number of positively Bridget Jones-esque sequences that see Anne crying, drinking, crying, drinking, etc., but they all serve one essential purpose: to get us inside Anne’s heart. Lauded playwright Cracknell wanted to loosen up this Austen, and that means everything from literally undoing Anne’s hair and unfussing her clothes, to also figuratively bringing the audience closer to her by treating her like, well, any sort of woman."

iNews

"Persuasion is neither silly nor serious enough. It is in thrall to Bridgerton, with a colour-blind cast and superficially feminist values, but never goes quite as big. It has none of the sex and fleshy exuberance, nor the outlandish costumes, preferring instead a low-key look of genteel poverty and a focus on domestic life. Like Austen’s books in fact, except that its absurd dialogue (“It is often said if you’re a five in London, you’re a ten in Bath!”) and quippy breaking of the fourth wall jar horribly with this muted aesthetic."

Persuasion arrives on the streamer on July 15. While we wait, check out our picks of the best Netflix movies that you can watch right now.

The first trailer for The Woman King is here – and it's epic.

Based on a true story, Viola Davis stars as General Nansica, leader of the Dahomey Amazons, who were an all-female military regiment in the West African Kingdom of Dahomey from the early 1700s to 1904. John Boyega plays King Ghezo, ruler of Dahomey, with Thuso Mbedu (The Underground Railroad) playing Nawi, the youngest and newest recruit for the Amazons.

According to Deadline, the film depicts how the Dahomey Amazons "fought enemies who violated their honor, enslaved their people, and threatened to destroy everything they have lived for." In the brief trailer, which can be viewed above, Nanisca prepares to lead the Amazons into war all while training Nawi, who, while ambitious, seems like she might be a little in over her head. "To be a warrior," Nanisca tells a crying Nawi, "You must kill your tears."

The historical drama is directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood (Love and Basketball, The Secret Life of Bees) from both a screenplay she crafted with Dana Stevens (Fatherhood, The Nightingale) and a story by actress Maria Bello (ER, NCIS). Terrence Blanchard, who received an Oscar nom for Best Original Score for both BlacKkKlansman and Da 5 Bloods, will compose the score. Lashana Lynch, Sheila Atim, Hero Fiennes Tiffin, Adrienne Warren, Jayme Lawson, Masali Baduza, Angelique Kidjo,  Zozibini Tunzi, and Makgotso M also star.

The Woman King will hit theaters in the United States on September 16, 2022, and October 4 in the United Kingdom. For more, check out our list of the most exciting upcoming movies in 2022 and beyond.

Elvis Presley's daughter, Lisa Marie, has shared her praise of Baz Lurhmann's upcoming biopic, calling the movie "spectacular" and "exquisite."

"I do want to take a moment to let you know that I've seen Baz Luhrmann's movie Elvis twice now," Presley tweeted. "Let me tell you that it is nothing short of spectacular. Absolutely exquisite. Austin Butler channeled and embodied my father’s heart & soul beautifully."

Once Upon A Time in Hollywood and The Dead Don't Die actor Austin Butler plays the legendary musician, while Tom Hanks is his manager Colonel Tom Parker and Olivia DeJonge plays Elvis' wife, Priscilla Presley. The movie will tell the story of Presley's life through his complicated relationship with Parker, spanning 20 years from his childhood to his rise to fame. 

Presley added: "In my humble opinion, his performance is unprecedented and FINALLY done accurately and respectfully. (If he doesn’t get an Oscar for this, I will eat my own foot, haha.)

"You can feel and witness Baz’s pure love, care, and respect for my father throughout this beautiful film, and it is finally something that myself and my children and their children can be proud of forever."

This is Lurhmann's first time in the director's chair since 2013's The Great Gatsby, which starred Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan, and Tobey Maguire. His other movies include Strictly Ballroom, Romeo + Juliet, and Moulin Rouge!. His last project was the Netflix show The Get Down, but that was shelved after season 2.

Elvis arrives on the big screen on June 24. While we wait, check out our picks of the other upcoming movies that we think should be on your radar.

Downton Abbey: A New Era is a movie that is essentially divided into two parts. In it, several members of the Crawley family visit the French Riviera to try and uncover why matriarch Violet (Maggie Smith) has been left an enormous villa by a recently deceased marquis, while the rest remain at the titular estate and try to keep out of the way of the production crew that's hired out Downton as the set of its silent film.  

Between locations, it manages to juggle a crazy amount of characters, with almost all of its cast reprising their roles from the show and its big-screen predecessor, and newbies Hugh Dancy, Dominic West and Laura Haddock joining in on the fun – and boy, is it fun. 

Offering up a whole bunch of laugh-out-loud moments, writer Julian Fellowes – who created the original series – proves he's just as adept at splitting sides as he is splitting plot lines. And according to its stars, Michelle Dockery, Kevin Doyle, Raquel Cassidy, and Dancy, all of whom Total Film recently sat down with, that was evident from their very first read-throughs of Downton Abbey: A New Era's "very funny" script.

During our chat, the foursome also talked about the delights of filming a film within a film, Lady Mary's "lovely" relationship with Dancy's new character Jack Barber, and how envious the actors who had to stay in the UK were of those who got to sun themselves at the Villa Rocabella for 10 days...

TF: As actors, what was your favourite part about filming a film within a film? I thought Kevin, you could start us off, because your character Molesley was the most excited about the movie being made at Downton.

Kevin Doyle: It was learning about how it was done. I hadn't realised how precarious the business was and how quickly it changed from the world of making silent movies to the need to change them into talkies. That was part of it I hadn't realised – how desperate things were. There's a sequence in the script, certainly, where your characters, Michelle and Hugh, go to the cinema, and it was a silent film, right? There's an enormous, long queue to see the talkie. I hadn't realised that aspect of film history, so that was fascinating. Watching them doing the film within a film was just such a joy to watch, too, actually. Watching Dom and Laura "doing the acting" was just so gloriously over the top.

Were there any particular challenges with the film stuff? I remember Simon Curtis, the director, saying that he would sometimes mix up pretend crew members with real ones, and things like that.

Michelle Dockery: Ha! That's brilliant. Sometimes when Hugh yelled cut, I would get confused as to who was saying it, the real director or Hugh. So that was quite funny at times, and not knowing what equipment was the modern equipment and what were props. Some of it actually looked quite similar, didn't it?

Raquel Cassidy: Some of it's moved on massively, hasn't it? It's shrunk, whereas some other things haven't moved on at all.

Doyle: I love that the sound was recorded on a record player. That was wonderful.

Downton has always had its lighter moments, but I was really struck by how funny the film was. I laughed out loud a lot. Did that stand out to you guys when you read the script? And I was wondering, Michelle, were you particularly tickled by the fact that Mary's voice and posh accent became a part of the plot, without giving too much away, as you must have had so many people over the years say, "Oh, you don't sound anything like Lady Mary."

Dockery: Definitely. That part of the story was really surprising and really funny. I mean, I think you're right, when I read the script for the first time, I thought, "This is the funniest I've ever seen Downton get." I mean, you know, there are moments in it that are funny, of course, throughout the show. But this is very funny, and I personally love all this stuff with Carson and him being so reluctant to change, and how much he hates the house being invaded by actors and crew. 

It's just really amusing seeing the characters being forced into something that they're maybe not comfortable with, but Mary sort of embraces it. I think she quite enjoys it. She always does that thing where she's like, "Oh, god, how do I get myself these things?" and rolls her eyes, and then she actually really enjoys it. I love that side of her, when she sort of pretends she's so over it but she loves it! It's something very different for her. Jack and her have this connection very early on and they become, like, these brilliant business partners. She almost becomes like a producer on the film and it's a lovely relationship, and something quite new for Mary, so I love that.

I've heard over the years that things can often get quite giggly on set. Did you struggle to keep a straight face with all the jokes that were in there this time around?

Dockery: I mean, it's always hard to keep a straight face with Maggie [Smith] because she's so funny. She's as witty as Lady Violet. So, yeah, there were definitely some moments. Kevin always really makes me laugh. It’s often the biggest challenge of Downton, trying not to giggle.

Cassidy: It's so playful too, isn't it? You're always looking for that… thing. So if you're on the edge of giggling, it's probably because you're really doing it, you know?

Hugh, you’re the newbie in A New Era. What was it like joining the family?

Hugh Dancy: It was very easy to be the newbie. They were very generous and they really welcomed me in.

Most of your scenes are with Michelle as Mary, but if you could have worked with another of the original cast members, who would have been your number one pick?

Dancy: Lucky enough, I had a scene or two with Maggie, so I ticked that box, so to speak. I worked with Hugh [Bonneville] a long time ago, a couple of times, and I would have loved to have had a couple more scenes with him for old time's sake.

Raquel, while these guys were making a film at Downton, you were shooting the more mysterious side of the plot in the French Riviera, what was that like?

Cassidy: It was absolutely stunning, really beautiful, but also a lovely way to end the shoot because we had to be locked down in this gorgeous hotel, which had a view of the sea. We had our own pool and, you know, cast and crew all together for 10 days just hanging out together? It was really gorgeous. Yeah.

TF: Were the rest of you jealous that half of the team got to go out to France, while you had to stay in the UK?

Dockery: I was very envious of those beautiful views and the pictures they would send us while they were there looked gorgeous.

TF: Oh, guys... you were dropping photos on the Downton WhatsApp?!

Cassidy: It's got to be done, hasn’t it?

Dockery: Oh, I wanted to see. I wanted to sort of feel like I was there, so I told them to send me pictures. We should have gone for a holiday, actually, and just joined everyone.

Cassidy: I think if it hadn't been for the fact that we were locked down as cast and crew. I think there was a chance that, for that last weekend, they would have got us all together and that would have absolutely been the icing on the cake. We’ll have to wait for the next movie. 

Dockery: In the Bahamas.

So, the family and some of the staff go to France to try and learn more about Violet’s history, and why she’s been left this lavish villa. It's interesting that this film is called A New Era, and yet is very much about the past. There are lots of mentions of Mary's late husband Matthew and Sybil, and other moments from the series. What was it like to revisit all that through the script?

Dockery: I think [writer] Julian [Fellowes] always likes to remind the audience you know, of those characters that were so integral to the story. I think it's very true to life, isn't it? The past sometimes informs the present, and I think it's something that he does in every story actually. It's like you never forget them. 

Dancy: It really speaks to family, doesn't it? You move forward. You can move into a new era, or a new part of your life, but the past is always with you.

While some of the gang go off to France, Mary is left in charge of the estate, what does her time flying solo teach her about herself? I love the parallels here between what's happening to Mary in the present, and what was happening to Violet in the time period that the others are trying to piece together. Did you feel daunted being the only member of the Crawley clan at Highclere Castle?

Dockery: Yeah, I did. It was really different this time around for me because you know, normally, I do a lot of scenes with Laura Carmichael and Hugh and Elizabeth [McGovern]. But I figured that that's how it would feel for Mary. So it was sort of right that, you know, she has kind of left to deal with all of this – again, something that she rolls her eyes at, but actually I think she quite quite enjoys it. Everyone leaves and then she can just control everything and do what she likes. 

I think she's really embracing her responsibilities and she's a very different woman from the person that we met at the beginning, in series one, and she's enjoying that role.

I don't want to give too much away but there's a moment towards the end of the film where the Downton staff get to experience how the other half live. How fun was that to shoot?

Doyle: It was really great. It's the first time in 12 years that I've managed to sit at that table. Normally I'm sort of stood behind it, so it was lovely.

Cassidy: It was funny because the characters are dead excited about it but, I think, we as actors were dead excited, too. There were definitely some parts where there was no acting required. It was really delicious and it was towards the end of our shoot together. Hugh sent a beautiful picture of us as we're waiting to come on. It was just really exciting. The sense of play in that scene is really reflective of how we were all feeling.

Now, Kevin, Molesley is often the go-to comic relief but he's no bumbling fool. He became a schoolmaster in the series, and he turns out to be quite the gifted screenwriter in this. If you were to make a third film, what surprisingly useful skill would you want it to reveal he has?

Dockery: Champion figure skater! 

Dancy: Heavyweight boxer.

Doyle: I'm kind of batting for the next project to be Downton on Ice. I'd like to see that. There could be a lovely dream sequence. You, Michelle, and the ghost of Matthew? Reunited on ice? 

Dockery: It'd be beautiful!

Doyle: Or a comic scene in the kitchen with Mrs. Patmore trying to cook an egg on ice.

Dockery: You heard it here first.

There's a lovely scene in one of the France sequences where Phyllis finally opens up about her feelings for Molesley. What do you think it is about him that she loves so much?

Cassidy: Oh, my goodness. I mean, well, from the beginning he was her knight in shining armour. He's a truly noble human being. I think she, you know, she loves his mind. He is intelligent, and he cares about things and has enthusiasm for life and the world. I think she's seen by him as well. It's quite easy to not see Phyllis Baxter because she is very much a team player and she wants to help other people do what they do, particularly Lady Cora, but he sees her. To be seen and to see someone as beautiful and noble as he is? That's kind of what dreams are made of.

Much like the first film, A New Era wraps things up neatly but open enough that more story could be told. Would you be keen to do a third one if the opportunity arises?

Cassidy: Yes.

Dockery: Yeah.

Doyle: Yeah.

Dancy: Sure! 

One last question. Given the plot of the movie, I wanted to ask what some of your favourite films about making films are? So there are things like Singin’ in the Rain, Ed Wood, The Disaster Artist…

Dancy: Living in Oblivion. Everybody's in it. It’s kind of an indie movie about making an indie movie specifically, so they’ve got no money, it's a disaster from start to finish. It's hysterical.

Doyle: The Player? That’s a good one.

Dockery: There's one that's coming out now that I really want to watch. It's about people shooting something during COVID. It’s on Netflix, and it’s meant to be really funny?

TF: The Bubble?

Dockery: That's it. The Bubble. I'm really interested to see that!

Downton Abbey: A New Era is in UK cinemas now, and will be released in the US on May 20. If you want to see what other titles are due to come out in 2022, then check out our list of upcoming movies, and get planning those future cinema trips.

The Northman director Robert Eggers has revealed some surprising information about the Viking epic's finale. 

In the film's final battle, Amleth (Alexander Skarsgård) and his uncle Fjölnir (Claes Bang) face off against each other sans clothes, in full Viking berserker mode. However, despite what appears to be full-frontal nudity in the scene from the two male leads, there are no real testicles on display.  

"The berserker warriors, who are bear warriors, and the Ulfheonar, they're wolf warriors – their nudity is scary to people," Eggers told EW. "Other Vikings wear armor. They are naked to show their ferocity, their invincibility. This naked sword fight is at the gates of hell and is this full circle of this revenge. The duel itself is a ritual and the ferocity of the nudity is, again, this elemental thing that I wanted."

The two actors were not fully naked – Eggers revealed that they were wearing G-strings. "We had to put in some CG testicles every now and again to finish the illusion of full nudity," he added. 

Alongside Skarsgård and Bang, the movie also stars Anya Taylor-Joy, Nicole Kidman, Willem Dafoe, Ethan Hawke, and Björk. As well as directing, Eggers co-wrote the movie with Icelandic writer Sjón. This is the filmmaker's third feature film – he previously directed 2016's The Witch and 2019's The Lighthouse.

The Northman is in cinemas now. If you've already seen it, check out our list of the upcoming movies that we think should be on your radar in 2022 and beyond.  

Persuasion, the latest Jane Austen movie adaptation, finally has a release date – the film is arriving on Netflix on July 15. 

Based on the classic 19th Century novel of the same name, Persuasion follows Anne Elliot (Dakota Johnson), a young woman living with her snobby family who are on the brink of bankruptcy. 

According to Netflix's official synopsis, Anne "is an unconforming woman with modern sensibilities. When Frederick Wentworth – the dashing one she let get away – crashes back into her life, Anne must choose between putting the past behind her or listening to her heart when it comes to second chances."

Wentworth will be played by Cosmo Jarvis and the cast also includes Henry Golding, Richard E. Grant, Suki Waterhouse, Nikki Amuka-Bird, and Mia McKenna-Bruce. The movie will be helmed by theatre director Carrie Cracknell and the script was co-written by Oscar-winning screenwriter Ron Bass and Alice Victoria Winslow.

The streamer has also unveiled a new look at the movie, with two new stills showing Johnson's Anne looking out of a window and Jarvis' Wentworth and Golding's Mr. Elliot in conversation.

Persuasion won't be Johnson's first Netflix movie – she recently starred in The Lost Daughter for the streamer, based on the novel by Elena Ferrante, opposite Olivia Colman. The actor's other upcoming projects include the HBO Max comedy drama Am I OK? and the Apple TV Plus movie Cha Cha Real Smooth. 

While we wait for Persuasion to arrive on the streamer, check out our picks of the best Netflix movies that you can watch right now.

"If it had been made up, it might have seemed a bit too much, actually," Colin Firth tells Total Film. We’re discussing the real-life events that inspired the actor’s latest movie, Operation Mincemeat, a World War II story about two British intelligence officers, Ewen Montagu (Firth) and Charles Cholmondeley (Matthew Macfadyen), who come up with an improbable disinformation strategy centered on an unlikely secret agent – a dead man. 

The pair equip a corpse with classified documents that identify the body as an army major, and set about making sure he washes up on the shores of fascist Spain. The body also holds planted papers revealing a British plan to invade Greece, which Montagu and Cholmondeley hope will go straight into Nazi hands. Why? Because none of it is true – the British are actually invading Sicily.

Before signing onto the film, Jason Isaacs, who portrays Admiral John Godfrey, was as clueless as the Germans – he didn't know anything about the plot until he read the script. "This is what's great, the audiences will arrive with exactly the same notion, 'Oh, I heard about this, and there was some deception at work.'," he says. "And then they get taken into a ride of twists and turns, they don't know who's gonna be responsible for what, which bits are going to work, which bits aren't going to work, which bits have to be salvaged at the edge of disaster. It's a safe and exciting journey for the audience that I took as a reader." 

The slightly deranged plan to mislead the enemy by using a dead body sounds like a James Bond novel – and that’s no coincidence. Ian Fleming, creator of 007, worked under Godfrey in Naval Intelligence during the war, with Godrey being the supposed inspiration for Bond’s boss, M.

"Ewen Montagu wrote this book, The Man Who Never Was, which got turned into a film,” says muscicisan-turned-actor Johnny Flynn, who plays Fleming in Operation Mincemeat. “But that was a fake version of these disinformation events, because it was all official secrets until quite recently. The fact that the story that people half have in their heads is actually wrong, and we're giving them a slightly truer version, although all kind of imagined, in terms of what conversations happened in the secret rooms and things, it's fun to slowly reveal the truth."

Rather than taking inspiration from Montagu's text, the movie is based on a book of the same name by historian Ben Macintryre, which was later adapted into a documentary for the BBC in 2010. This time around, thanks to the nature of the film, they were able to take more creative liberties with the story.

"With a feature film, you can do the things that I couldn't do with either the book or with the documentary, which is to imagine the emotional world that exists between the facts," Macintryre explains. "There's a certain amount of speculation that one can do in a nonfiction book, but you have to be really rigorous about that. 

"Whereas [director] John [Madden] and [screenwriter] Michelle [Ashford] have brilliantly taken the raw material, the raw facts of what happened, and created something, which is very true to the spirit of Operation Mincemeat because the whole thing is essentially fictive. It is about imagining a truth that isn't a literal truth and trying to lure the world into it. And in a way that's the warp and weft of this whole story. So it's been wonderful to see it given another life."

With Operation Mincemeat, Madden wanted to make a film that was about the people behind the plot as much as it was about the intricacies of the operation. "My magnetic north in terms of navigating this material was to find the human thread through it," the director says. 

"You can say that the four key characters at the center of it really, two men and two women, have their own hidden story going on about their relationship to what they're creating. But ultimately, the arc of the story is one in which they create a fiction which they then become lost in and enveloped by. And that delivers them to a place of terrible uncertainty, because it's a made-up story, and they have no idea whether anybody will believe it."

One of those central women is Jean, a secretary who becomes integral to the operation, portrayed by Kelly Macdonald: "She's there because she's got something to offer, and she's smart, and I loved playing her because she is all that,” she says. “But as you get to know her, you realize she's got this history, and she had lost a love years before and so she ends up involved in this very romantic situation where she's almost becoming this fictitious love of this fictitious airman, and it's all just very innocuous, really, and flirtatious, maybe, but their hearts are involved." 

None of these actors are strangers to period dramas (both Firth and Macfadyen have played Mr. Darcy in adaptations of Pride and Prejudice, for example), so what is it about the genre that keeps them – and audiences – coming back? "They're just good stories, aren't they?" says Macfadyen. "And human behavior hasn't changed that much whether you're in a frock coat, or whether you're in a pair of jeans."

Operation Mincemeat will be released in UK cinemas on April 15. For more viewing inspiration, check out our picks of the other upcoming releases to get excited about in 2022 and beyond. 

The Viking Age may have been over 1,000 years ago, but looking at popular culture over the past few years, it seems like our obsession with the seafaring warriors has never really stopped. You don’t have to look far to see them permeating books, TV, and games. We’ve had Michael Hirst’s six-season epic series Vikings chart the rise and fall of the period’s biggest warriors; games like God of War and Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla have found huge popularity; and now the resurgence continues with the release of Robert Eggers’ acclaimed new film, The Northman. 

In fact, the director recently admitted this huge resurgence of popularity is one of the things that helped finance his epic – and quite weird – 10th-century tale. The movie tells the epic story of Alexander Skarsgård’s Prince Amleth who is set on a path of grisly vengeance after his father is brutally murdered by his uncle. It charts his beginnings as a young boy thrust into adulthood before he begins his quest to kill his father’s murderer and save his mother. His mantra is haunting: "I will avenge you father, I will save you mother; I will kill you Fjölnir."

The Northman is in UK cinemas now, ahead of a US release on April 22. If the blockbuster has left you craving more Norse legends, we’ve compiled a round-up of the best Vikings movies and shows to watch next. To Valhalla!

Vikings

History Channel’s Vikings is one of the most comprehensive retellings of the period. Created by Michael Hirst, the show initially centers on Ragnar Lodbrok, one of the most prolific Norse heroes, as he becomes a notorious Scandinavian king after raiding England. The series evolves over its six seasons, shifting to his family’s fates as they spread across England, Scandinavia, Kievan Rus, the Mediterranean, and North America. Plenty of recognizable faces appear in the show, including Katheryn Winnick, Alexander Ludwig, and Gustaf Skarsgård. Full of character focus, epic scale, and brutal battles, the series has garnered huge popularity and even a spin-off – but more on that later.

Where to watch:
UK: Amazon Prime Video
US: Hulu

The Last Kingdom

The Last Kingdom is based on acclaimed historical writer Bernard Cornwall’s series of novels called The Saxon Stories. These follow Alexander Dreyman’s Uhtred of Bebbanburg, who was a Saxon lord captured and adopted by a Danish warlord. The adaptation began life on the BBC back in 2015 before being acquired by Netflix as it continued the 9th and 10th-century story. It lasted five seasons and is widely regarded as one of the best historical epics on the streamer. And if that’s not enough, then there’s also a movie on the horizon called Seven Kings Must Die.

Where to watch?
Netflix

Valhalla Rising

Mads Mikkelson led this 2009 film directed by Drive’s Nicolas Winding Refn. The Danish adventure film follows a Norse warrior called One-Eye (Mikkelson) and his boy companion as they travel in search of the Holy Land. Set in 1096, the pair soon find themselves on a different, and much darker, path. The film was generally popular with critics, who praised Mikkelson’s performance in the uncompromising film. We gave it three stars when it was released, praising the tone of the film that "keeps you in a state of expectant, queasy unease".

Where to watch?
Available to buy on Amazon Prime Video

 Vikings: Valhalla

Vikings: Valhalla continues the story of Vikings in a new show set 100 years after the original. The Netflix series was created by Jeb Stuart to chart the beginning of the end for the Viking Age. The premise follows tensions rising between Christian and Pagan beliefs between the Vikings and English royals as it focuses on new characters like Leif Erikson, Freydís Eiríksdóttir, and Harald Hardrada. Season one is already available to stream, and two more series have been ordered by Netflix – and did we mention there’s plenty of brutality and bloodshed in this latest epic? Find out more about Vikings: Valhalla season 2 through that link.

Where to watch?
Netflix

Thor

While tonally a mile away from the other entries on this list, we would be remiss if we mentioned Norse legends without a nod to Marvel. The original Thor film, which was released in 2011, introduced a new generation to the mythology, telling the origin stories of the God of Thunder. Characters like Odin and Loki are reimagined in the movie that introduces Midgard, Bifröst, and the Valkyries, likely to many viewers for the first time. While there’s not been a great deal of emphasis on the mythology since, there's a lot of fun to be had in the Thor movies, especially the wilder Thor: Ragnarok – and there's not long to wait until Thor: Love and Thunder. 

Where to watch?
Disney Plus

If you're still stumped about what to watch next, check out our list of the best Netflix shows to watch right now.

A24 is lining up its next star-studded movie – The Governesses will feature Lily-Rose Depp, Squid Game's Hoyeon, and The Worst Person in the World's Renate Reinsve. 

The movie is set to center around three rebellious governesses who turn both the bohemian household they work in and the minds of the boys in their care upside down. Filming is set to take place in Spain. 

The Governesses will be directed by Joe Talbot, who made his feature film debut in 2019 with Sundance hit The Last Black Man in San Francisco, which follows two Black residents of the Californian city who are struggling to remain connected in their rapidly changing hometown.

Talbot is also co-writing the script, with Olivia Gatwood, which is based on the novel of the same name by French writer Anne Serre. The book, the first of Serre's to be translated into English, is described as an "erotic fairytale". 

After competing in Korea's Next Top Model in 2013, Hoyeon made her small-screen debut in Squid Game on Netflix last year. The Governesses will be her first movie role. Reinsve was last seen in the critically acclaimed Norwegian movie The Worst Person in the World, a role which won her the Best Actress award at Cannes Film Festival in 2021. As for Depp, she recently starred in Wolf, alongside George MacKay and Paddy Considine, and sci-fi movie Voyagers. 

While we wait for The Governesses to arrive on our screens, check out our list of the other upcoming films to get excited about in 2022 and beyond.

Blonde, Netflix's upcoming Marilyn Monroe biopic starring Ana de Armas, has been officially rated NC-17.

After months of speculation regarding the movie's certificate, the Motion Picture Association has confirmed that it has landed the adults-only rating due to "some sexual content". While Netflix has hosted a couple of NC-17 films before, such as Shame and Blue Is the Warmest Colour, this makes Blonde the streamer's first original title to receive the rating.

Based on Joyce Carol Oates' best-selling novel of the same name, Blonde offers up a fictionalized account of Monroe's life, and sees Adrien Brody play Arthur Miller, Bobby Cannavale portray Joe DiMaggio, Julianne Nicholson bring Gladys Pearl Baker to life, and Caspar Phillipson play John F. Kennedy.

Back in February, writer-director Andrew Dominik talked openly about not wanting to compromise on some of the more intense aspects of the book, and claimed that "if the audience doesn't like it, that's the fucking audience's problem."

In an interview with Screen Daily, he said: "I'm not running for public office. It's an NC-17 movie about Marilyn Monroe, it's kind of what you want, right? I want to go and see the NC-17 version of the Marilyn Monroe story."

Dominik's past credits include Brad Pitt-led dramas The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and Killing Them Softly. de Armas is best known for her roles in titles such as Knives Out, No Time to Die, and Deep Water.

Blonde has not set an official release date just yet, although it's expected sometime in 2022. While we wait for it to arrive on the platform, check out our list of the best Netflix movies that you can watch right now.

Director Alfonso Cuarón has seen The Northman, Robert Eggers' upcoming Viking revenge epic, and he seems impressed. 

"Every single frame is charged with all the thematic elements of the whole film," Cuarón told The New Yorker. "I have to say, it is very complex, it is very complicated what he does."

Speaking about the long scenes that Eggers frequently has in his films, Cuarón added: "The impression is almost of intoxication. You are there, and you’re breathing with those actors."

The Northman follows a Viking prince who will stop at nothing to avenge his murdered father. It features an all-star cast including Alexander Skarsgård, Nicole Kidman, Claes Bang, Anya Taylor-Joy, Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe, and Björk. Taylor-Joy previously played the lead role in Eggers' debut feature The Witch, while Dafoe starred in the director's 2019 follow-up The Lighthouse opposite Robert Pattinson. 

As for Cuarón, he's directed movies like Children of Men, Gravity, and Roma. The filmmaker read an early draft of The Witch for Eggers in 2013, and the two directors have been close ever since. 

"I was just in awe of it," Cuarón said of the 2015 movie. "It’s as if those [supernatural] elements are as natural as the weather. And people coexist with those elements as a matter of existence. There’s no question about the existence of witches. There’s no ulterior explanation… It was just witches."

The Northman arrives on the big screen on April 22 – you can read our interview with Skarsgård and Taylor-Joy about the movie here. In the meantime, check out our list of the other movie release dates that we think should be on your radar this year.

Robert Eggers' The Northman tells an epic Viking tale – a vast, brutal, uncompromising saga of cold-blooded revenge. To capture such intense scenes, the cast and crew headed to Northern Ireland, with forays to Iceland, for filming. The result was a shoot more intense than anything lead actor Alexander Skarsgård had done before.

"It was physically and mentally the most difficult job I’ve ever had, but also the most rewarding," Skarsgård tells Total Film for the new issue of the magazine, featuring The Northman on the cover. "The days were really long and hard, and we were out in the mud, and up on these mountaintops with the wind and the cold. The week prior, I was working on the television show Succession, on which I play a tech billionaire in a villa on Lake Como. So I literally went from playing one of the richest dudes on the planet in a crazy, beautiful villa, surrounded by yachts and helicopters and luxury, and got on a plane and flew to Iceland to get shackled and dragged through the mud. It was definitely a waking-up moment and a humbling experience."

Eggers insists that while many of the huge guys playing Viking warriors struggled, The Queen Gambit's Anya Taylor-Joy, who plays the female lead, was a trooper. "Aw, Rob," she responds affectionately when TF passes this along. "I’m not a complainer, and Rob and Jarin know that, but there was one day when the mud was up to my knees, and it had frozen overnight, and I’m barefoot. It had got to a point where I think just squeaked out, ‘Please!’ And they were like, ‘Oh, OK, it’s bad. It’s really bad. We need to get this done. If Anya’s saying, ‘Can we please roll? I can’t stand here any longer...'"

But there is, of course, a point to all this movie masochism. "Because of the authenticity that we’re bringing to it, in terms of the costume, in terms of the landscape... we don’t have to imagine much," Taylor-Joy explains. "You can just inhabit. You can just exist. You’re not on a stage where the director is saying, ‘Hey, remember, it’s really bloody cold.’ It gives you a real appreciation as to how tough these people were. Because nothing about this life is easy. There is no cushy going home and watching a movie while you’re all toasty, eating dinner. No, it’s pretty miserable all of the time."

The Northman hits UK cinemas on April 15, before opening in the US on April 2022. For much more on the film, including interviews with Eggers, Skarsgård, Taylor-Joy, Ethan Hawke, Wilem Dafoe, and Claes Bang, check out the brand new issue of Total Film when it hits shelves this Thursday, March 3. Check out the new covers below.

If you’re a fan of Total Film magazine, please consider becoming a subscriber. If you subscribe via MagazinesDirect, you’ll save money on the cover price, and you’ll have the magazine delivered to your door before it hits the shops and you’ll get exclusive subscriber-only covers like the one you see above.

Oppenheimer, the next movie from director Christopher Nolan, has added even more actors to its already stacked cast list. 

Jason Clarke and Louise Lombard are the most recent additions to the movie, per two reports from Deadline. Their roles are still being kept under wraps.

Clarke has appeared in movies like Zero Dark Thirty, White House Down, and The Devil All the Time, while Lombard has had roles in CSI, How to Get Away with Murder, and After We Collided. 

They join a star-studded cast of A-listers that includes (deep breath): Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Robert Downey Jr., Matt Damon, Benny Safdie, Florence Pugh, Rami Malek, Jack Quaid, Josh Hartnett, Alden Ehrenreich, and Kenneth Branagh. 

In the movie, Murphy will star as Robert Oppenheimer, the man who developed the atom bomb, while Blunt is playing his wife. Oppenheimer was an American theoretical physicist and head of the secret Los Alamos Laboratory during the war. He was heavily involved with the Manhattan Project, which is credited with developing the first nuclear weapons used to bomb the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. 

According to Universal Studios, Oppenheimer is an "epic thriller that thrusts audiences into the pulse-pounding paradox of the enigmatic man who must risk destroying the world in order to save it." Filming is currently underway on Nolan's first movie since 2020's Tenet.

Oppenheimer arrives on the big screen on July 21, 2023. In the meantime, check out our list of the other upcoming movies to get excited about this year and beyond.

With The Northman, director Robert Eggers is moving from the contained, claustrophobic brilliance of his first two features – The Witch and The Lighthouse – to a much grander canvas.

Here, he's dealing with a historical epic with a Shakespearean sweep, adapting the story of Viking prince Amleth, a figure from Scandinavian legend who was the inspiration for Hamlet. In 10th-century Iceland, Amleth is on a quest for vengeance against the uncle who murdered his father. It’s going to be bloody and brutal. Alexander Skarsgård plays the grown-up Amleth, while Ethan Hawke plays his ill-fated pa, Aurvandill, and Willem Dafoe (reuniting with Eggers after The Lighthouse) is Heimir the fool.

Also reteaming with Eggers after The Witch are Anya Taylor-Joy, Kate Dickie, and Ralph Ineson. Taylor-Joy plays Olga, who joins Amleth on his mission with her own particular set of skills.

The Northman is on the cover of the new issue of Total Film magazine, which is out this week, and here you can see three exclusive new stills from the film. Skarsgård’s Amleth is in full-on berserker mode on his roaring rampage of revenge, Hawke is looking suitably regal, and Dafoe’s looking, well, foolish below. Check them out below.

"When I first thought, ‘I want to make a Viking movie,’ I knew three things," Eggers tells Total Film in the new issue."I knew it needs to take place mostly in Iceland, it needs to have a revenge story, and it needs to have a naked swordfight on a volcano…"

The Northman hits UK cinemas on April 15, before opening in the US on April 2022. For much more on the film, including interviews with Eggers, Skarsgård, Taylor-Joy, Hawke, Dafoe and Claes Bang, check out the brand new issue of Total Film when it hits shelves this Thursday, March 3. Check out the new covers below.

If you’re a fan of Total Film magazine, please consider becoming a subscriber. If you subscribe via MagazinesDirect, you’ll save money on the cover price, and you’ll have the magazine delivered to your door before it hits the shops and you’ll get exclusive subscriber-only covers like the one you see above.

Dane DeHaan has joined the cast of Christopher Nolan's historical drama Oppenheimer.

The film chronicles the tumultuous life of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb. The screenplay, written by Nolan, is an adaptation of the book American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Autobiography. Peaky Blinders star Cillian Murphy will take on the titular role alongside Emily Blunt as the scientist’s wife, Florence Pugh as psychiatrist Jean Tatlock, Robert Downey Jr. as former U.S. Secretary Lewis Strauss, and Ben Safdie as theoretical physicist Ben Teller. Matt Damon, Rami Malek, and Josh Harnett have also joined the cast.

Nolan has enlisted frequent collaborators Hoye Van Hoytema as director of photography and Jennifer Lame as editor. Venom and Creed composer Ludwig Goransson will produce the score.

DeHaan is perhaps best known for his role as Harry Osborn/The Green Goblin opposite Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man in The Amazing Spider-Man 2. The versatile actor played famous outlaw Billy the Kid in Vincent D’Onofrio’s 2019 western drama, a tortured WallStreet broker in A Cure For Wellness, and Beat poet Lucien Carr opposite Daniel Radcliffe’s Allen Ginsberg in Kill Your Darlings. DeHaan will play the son of convicted murderer Michael Peterson in HBO Max’s The Staircase, based on the documentary of the same name.

Oppenheimer is set for a 2023 release date. The name of DeHaan’s character has yet to be announced. For more, check out our list of upcoming movies.

Director Ridley Scott has spoken out about The Last Duel's disappointing box office performance – and he blames it on "millennials" and their "fucking cell phones." The historical epic made $27 million at the global box office against a budget of $100 million when it was released in October, despite being well-received by critics.

"Disney did a fantastic promotion job," Scott told the WTF podcast (via The Hollywood Reporter). "The bosses loved the movie because I was concerned it was not for them. I think what it boils down to – what we've got today [are] the audiences who were brought up on these fucking cell phones. The millennian [who] do not ever want to be taught anything unless you told it on the cell phone. This is a broad stroke, but I think we're dealing with it right now with Facebook. This is a misdirection that has happened where it's given the wrong kind of confidence to this latest generation." 

Set in 14th Century France, the movie follows a knight (Matt Damon) who challenges his squire (Adam Driver) to a duel, after his wife (Jodie Comer) accuses the squire of raping her. Ben Affleck also stars as the count under which Damon's knight serves. Damon and Affleck co-wrote the movie's script with Nicole Holofcener. 

Scott's next movie to arrive on the big screen is House of Gucci, which releases on November 26. In the meantime, check out our list of the other upcoming movies to get excited about in 2021 and beyond.

Anthony Mackie is set to star in Desert Warrior, a new historical epic from Rise of the Planet of the Apes director Rupert Wyatt, Deadline reports. 

Set in 7th Century Arabia, the movie will follow a princess (Aiysha Hart) who is forced to escape from the ruthless emperor (Ben Kingsley) when she refuses to become his concubine. Alone in the desert and pursued by the emperor's troops, she and her father (Ghassan Massoud) must entrust their safety to a mysterious bandit (Mackie) who has some secrets of his own. Production is currently underway, with filming taking place in Saudi Arabia. 

District 9's Sharlto Copley, Sami Bouajila, Lamis Ammar, and Géza Röhrig will also star. Wyatt has also co-written the script, along with Road to Perdition screenwriter David Self, Ocean's 8 scribe Gary Ross, and Erica Beeney. 

Wyatt made his directorial debut in 2008 with The Escapist, which starred Brian Cox, Damian Lewis, and Dominic Cooper. On the small screen, he directed the first two episodes of Apple TV Plus' adaptation of The Mosquito Coast.

Mackie, meanwhile, is perhaps best known for playing Sam Wilson in the MCU – he played the Falcon in the Avengers movies and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier series on Disney Plus, and is now set to take on the mantle of Captain America. He's also had roles in The Hurt Locker, Detroit, and Black Mirror. 

While we wait for Desert Warrior to arrive on the big screen, check out our list of the other upcoming movies to get excited about in 2021 and beyond.

Christopher Nolan is planning his next movie and, like 2017's Dunkirk, it's another World War 2 story, Deadline reports. 

The currently untitled project will focus on J. Robert Oppenheimer, the man who developed the atom bomb. Oppenheimer was an American theoretical physicist and head of the secret Los Alamos Laboratory during the war. He was heavily involved with the Manhattan Project, which is credited with developing the first nuclear weapons used to bomb the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. 

According to Deadline, Cillian Murphy is rumored to be in talks to star – he's a frequent collaborator with the director, having appeared in the Dark Knight trilogy, Inception, and Dunkirk. However, it is unclear whether he would play Oppenheimer or another character. 

All of Nolan's recent movies (in fact, every single one of them since 2002's Insomnia) have been released with Warner Bros., but the filmmaker is reportedly speaking to several major studios about his next project.

The director's last movie was 2020's Tenet, starring John David Washington and Robert Pattinson, which he was adamant would get a theatrical run despite being released during the COVID-19 pandemic when many cinemas were closed. Nolan was also very vocal about his opposition to Warner Bros.' decision to release its 2021 slate of films simultaneously in theaters and on HBO Max. 

While we wait for Nolan's next project to arrive on the big screen, check out our list of all the upcoming movies to get excited about in 2021 and beyond.

Woody Harrelson is set to star in the upcoming WW2 psychological thriller The Man With the Miraculous Hands, according to Variety. It's an adaptation of the snappily titled The Man With the Miraculous Hands: The Fantastic Story of Felix Kersten, Himmler's Private Doctor, written by Joseph Kessel.

Harrelson will play Kersten, a doctor who ends up working for the Nazis against his will, treating one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany, Heinrich Himmler. Based on a true story, the novel is being adapted by Oren Moverman who Harrelson previously worked with on another WW2 drama, The Messenger.

"Even 70 years on after the end of the conflict, the Second World War still manages to reveal some of the most deeply moving untold stories of those who managed to triumph against adversity,” said producer Eric Jehelmann, who added that the original story “sheds new light on the end of the war."

It's heavy subject matter for Harrelson, but he's proved he can handle it. Along with mega-franchises like The Hunger Games, horror-comedy like Zombieland: Double Tap, and even cameos as Joe Biden on SNL, he's also starred in more thoughtful fare like Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and HBO's True Detective. Next year we'll also see him in Venom: Let There Be Carnage as Cletus Kasady. 

Need to fill out your watchlist? Check out the best Netflix movies and the best Netflix shows to watch right now.

Still(er) on trend? 

Fifteen years after Derek Zoolander drunk an Orange Mocha Frappuccino, gave himself a wedgie in a walk-off and stopped a Chinese throwing star with one look, Ben Stiller’s really, really good-looking male model is back.

Where has he been? In hiding, it seems, after his Center For Kids Who Can’t Read Good collapsed, killing wife Matilda, injuring his model mate Hansel (Owen Wilson) and leading to Derek Jr. (Cyrus Arnold) being taken into care.

When fashion’s new queen, Alexanya Atoz (Kristen Wiig), entices him to Rome for her catwalk extravaganza, Derek sees it as an opportunity to get his son back. There's a reunion with Hansel, but these two fashion fools soon realise the industry has moved on, and is now run by incoherent hipsters, like Alexanya’s chief designer Don Atari (Kyle Mooney, hilarious). Trying to make amends with his overweight offspring, Derek's left gazing in a puddle asking, ‘Who am I?’

There’s more plot here than the original Zoolander (2001), much of it involving Valentina (Penélope Cruz), an agent for Interpol’s Global Fashion Police, embroiling Derek and Hansel in the hunt for a killer who's gunning down pop stars. But, sadly, the script lacks the earlier film’s novelty.

Maybe it’s a comment on the way the fashion industry recycles old ideas, but the same catchphrases, music cues and characters are dug out, often to lesser effect – notably when Wham’s ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go Go’ gets a second airing.

There are cameos aplenty – from Sting to Valentino to Benedict Cumberbatch – and Wiig has a ball, mispronouncing every line as she literally floats around in a costume that makes her look like a giant Quality Street. But the film only really gets going when Derek’s nemesis Jacobi Mugatu (Will Ferrell) turns up.

Ferrell is always at his best playing outlandish, and he steals every scene he’s in, spouting some magnificent gobbledegook (“I’m the mamma bejamba!”). A Mugatu spin-off? Now that’s an idea...

"I think if you talk about the golden age being 1957 through to the late sixties, Hammer alighted on a genre that no one had really identified as horror. I mean, people didn’t really talk about horror films as such… it was a genre within other genres. I think it was their decision to take classic characters and up the ante with them. With Dracula you tended to see this slightly gothic, black-and-white approach but suddenly Technicolor pushed it in your face and made it sexy."

“You had this group of people - Jimmy Sangster, Terry Fisher, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee – this group of can-do, smart, creative people, all of whom came together at the same time. They went back to the source material, back to the classic characters, and that gave them a grounding that resonated with people. They were pushing at the boundaries and making the genre stretchy. You’ve got sci-fi with Quatermass , you’ve got monster movies like The Gorgon , you’ve got the mini-Hitchcock psychological thrillers and you’ve got Dracula and Frankenstein . Their output was extraordinary.”

“I think Hammer just ran out of steam, and I think it didn’t have the creative direction. Basically, they didn’t move quick enough in the ’70s. They didn’t see what was coming down the pipe at them – which was a raft of urban myth movies coming out of America like The Omen and The Exorcist . I mean, the same year that The Exorcist came out, Dracula AD 1972 had Christopher Lee walking down The King’s Road in a velvet cape…”

“To me, Hammer was something I got to know via late night television. Directors like Scorsese and Tarantino had often referenced it – looking at Hammer from the pulp point of view, or from the artistic point of view – but it wasn’t producing anything anymore. So, I had an affection for it, but I wasn’t scared by it. By the time I came onboard, Hammer had entered the vernacular as an expression, almost like a descriptive noun. So, I wasn’t buying a film company, I was buying a brand, buying a library and buying a feeling.”

“Part of the thought process was thinking ‘what films would Hammer be making now if they had carried on?’ They wouldn’t be slashers, they wouldn’t be torture-porn, they’d be character-driven, story-driven films. I probably wouldn’t use the word ‘horror’ all the time either. ‘Hammer House of Horror’ only came in with the TV series, but in its heyday it was called ‘Hammer Films’.”

“I would say we found our feet slowly. We made Wake Wood – it was OK. It was on a budget. We thought it was in the right wheelhouse. And we’re incredibly proud of Let Me In . I think in retrospect it was probably very close to the original, but when we saw the Swedish film we never in a million years expected it to become this sort of global, arthouse phenomenon… so we made our version. I think it was critically well received, but it’s difficult to market to the key demographic when your leads are 12 years old!”

“ The Woman In Black was the film that really put us on the map again. I think people were saying, ‘OK, let’s see what they do next.’ And clearly The Woman In Black , for lots of different reasons, had all those elements that define the new Hammer. There’s no point competing in the same wheelhouse as Eli Roth or James Wan or whatever – we have to be ourselves. And also, we have to celebrate the Britishness and the heritage of the films, and I think that’s really important because it sets us apart. No one else can be Hammer. We are who we are.”

“ The Quiet Ones was one of the scripts we first bought in 2007. It just happened that we got the other movies made quicker, because the development process was quicker. The reality is that it isn’t a found footage film – it appears to be found footage because it’s real and it’s happening now – but it’s a play on the idea of found footage. The whole shaky camera thing intrigued us but we said, y’know, ‘been there, done that’... Let’s just land this in the here and now.”

The Quiet Ones is in UK cinemas now.

“We’re trying not to use the word sequel because it’s set 40 years later in the Second World War, in blitz-torn London. These kids are evacuated from the city to go to the country where it’s ‘safer’. Of course, it’s not safer at all, because they’re evacuated to Eel Marsh House. We’ve got a sort of triangle going on between the woman in black, Jeremy Irvine’s character and this young, amazing actor called Phoebe Fox, who’s our lead. So, instead of having the most famous young actor in the world playing the lead in the first one, we have a complete unknown playing the lead in this one! I thought, if you’re going to be different, you may as well be really different…”

“I’d honestly like us to resurrect some of the classic characters. We’re always looking at Frankenstein, Dracula and Mummy projects but it’s all about finding a way in. But we are doing The Abominable Snowman . I’m calling it our ‘ Jaws in the snow’ – as opposed to our ‘ Predator in the snow’. It’s that push of abnormality with normality… of characters finding themselves in extraordinary circumstances. We’re in the latter stages of development for that and it’s going to be the first time we’ve ever done anything from our back catalogue. Other than that, we’re also working on rebooting Quatermass for television – taking the character, taking the DNA and placing him in the real world now. Steve Thompson’s the writer who’s been part of the Sherlock team, and we’re nearing the point where we think we’re very confident with it. It’s been a long process, but I’m really, really excited about it."

What seems like a promising homegrown horror turns out to be just another shaky-cam shock-fest. Produced by Hammer, featuring a fine young cast and painted in stylish ’70s hues, it certainly looks the part, with grainy Super 8 stock putting a vintage sheen on a choke of clichés.

There’s creepy dolls, cameras tipped on their side, blasts of white noise and a horny teenage Scooby gang helping Jared Harris’ Oxford prof stir up a poltergeist in the mind of a moody emo girl (Olivia Cooke).

Sam Claflin plays the videographer whose occasionally found footage adds bursts of atmosphere, but jump-heavy scares numb the nerves long before the finale.

Christian Bale’s first performance post-Bruce Wayne is a reminder of just how effectively his earthy, simmering humanity can ground an otherwise flimsy narrative.

Set in a depressed Pennsylvania steel town, Scott Cooper’s ( Crazy Heart ) blue-collar thriller is intimately lensed but never more than predictable in its depiction of fraternal ties and male power struggles.

In a role that recalls his beleaguered rancher in 3:10 To Yuma , Bale plays salt-of-the-earth mill worker Russell, a character who seems designed to suffer stoically. His live wire younger brother, Rodney (Casey Affleck) is restless and volatile, burnt out by his most recent tour in Iraq and hell-bent on avoiding a life of manual labour.

The brothers’ bond is movingly drawn; in contrast to much of the film’s macho posturing, there’s real poignancy in their clashes.

Having lost his father and his girl (an underused Zoe Saldana) during a spell in jail, Russell is released to a whole new set of problems, all leading back to Woody Harrelson’s resplendently repugnant drug kingpin Harlan DeGroat.

Despite moments of near-satirical bite there’s a sense that the film is revelling too much in its own unyielding misery. Brutal twists and violent face-offs come so thick and fast in the third act that their impact is numbing, and the vengeful trajectory for Bale’s everyman is intelligently played but easy to map from the off.

Harrelson’s villain typifies Out Of The Furnace ’s flaws. He’s a one-note psychopath whose character relies largely on shock value; you’re rattled at first, but after a while the impact dwindles.

Verdict:

Christian Bale’s earnest, emotional turn sustains a thriller that throws a few mean jabs but staggers towards a punch-drunk resolution.

Subject A’s ambition in life is to party all the time; Subject B has joined a murderous London gang; and Subject C wants to be famous for being famous.

Not dispatches from today’s Broken Britain, but the authentic voices of youngsters from the 1900s, 1920s and 1940s, as resurrected in Jon Savage and Matt Wolf’s documentary: a haunting, hypnotic collage of archive footage and period recreations charting the pre-history of the teenager.

As shown here, ‘teenagers’ didn’t just spring from nowhere circa 1945 – which is when this film very pointedly ends too. Mesmerising.

Frances Herr would be a good title for this black-and-white indie, focusing as it does on a twentysomething Berliner (Tom Schilling) every bit as aimless and unmotivated as Greta Gerwig’s Big Apple ditz.

Yet Jan Ole Gerster’s deceptively slender character study has a complex undertow, subtly linking its wallflower anti-hero’s acceptance of his failings with his country’s wider atonement for its World War II past.

Set over the course of a single day, the film sees the numbly passive Niko encounter a lively cross-section of Teutonic oddballs in his amusing pursuit of an elusive cup of coffee. Worth seeking out.