“It’s really fun so far. We’re about halfway through the script,” Slater told The Direct (opens in new tab). “I’m working really closely with the director and the studios, and the game guys.”

While Slater was reluctant to reveal anything about the Mortal Kombat 2 story, it’s going to address any potential concerns fans may have had – and is taking feedback onboard.

“I think they definitely learned some lessons the last time around in terms of, ‘Here’s the stuff fans responded to, and here’s what people liked out of the movie, and here’s the stuff that didn’t work out as well as we hoped,’ Slater said. “So we’re really looking at this as a chance to take everything that worked in the first one and do it even better and give the audience even more, and make something that is just incredibly satisfying, and really exciting, and unpredictable.”

Mortal Kombat was a notable success for the fledgling HBO Max service, garnering over 3.8 million viewers in its first weekend alone, per Samba (H/T Deadline (opens in new tab)). Despite that, some fans still had a bone to pick with the movie, most notably its lack of a fighting tournament – a staple of the video game franchise.

No release date yet for Mortal Kombat 2, though – judging by Slater’s words – a director is attached.

Discover some of the biggest console-to-cinema success stories with our ranking of the best video game movies ever made.

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Per Samba TV’s figures (reported by Deadline (opens in new tab)), The Batman brought in 4.1 million Smart TV US household views in its first week streaming. That’s more than Wonder Woman 1984 (3.2 million), The Suicide Squad (3.5 million), Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2.2 million), Dune (2.3 million), and The Matrix Resurrections (3.2 million). But, it’s not enough to beat Mortal Kombat, which brought in 4.3 million viewers, meaning the Caped Crusader claims second place in the overall ranking of theatrical movie first-week views. 

Of the films The Batman beat, all bar the HBO Max exclusive Snyder Cut were theatrical day-and-date releases, following Warner Bros.’ 2021 release strategy (Wonder Woman 2 debuted in December 2020). This year, though, the studio has returned to theatrical exclusives, and new releases will have a 45-day window in theaters. 

The Batman stars Robert Pattinson as the Dark Knight, who goes up against Paul Dano’s Riddler. Colin Farrell co-stars as the Penguin, while Zoë Kravitz is Catwoman, Jeffrey Wright is Jim Gordon, and Andy Serkis is Alfred Pennyworth. 

A sequel to The Batman hasn’t been officially confirmed just yet, but Pattinson has revealed the villains he’d like to see in the sequel. “I’d love to do something like Court of Owls,” he commented, adding, “There are elements of The Batman which are kind of horror and I think it really feels quite new for Batman.” 

The next DC movie to release is DC League of Super-Pets, which lands this July 29. In the meantime, check out our roundup of 2022’s major movie release dates for everything else coming our way. 

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“Richard Williams was a fierce defender of his family. In this time in my life, in this moment, I am overwhelmed by what God is calling on me to do and be in this world,” the actor said upon accepting his award. 

He spoke about his castmates, then appeared to address his altercation with Chris Rock which took place earlier in the ceremony. The moment saw Smith step on stage to confront Rock about a joke about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith.  

“Denzel [Washington] said to be a few minutes ago, at your highest moment, be careful, that’s when the devil comes for you,” he said: “I want to apologize to the Academy, I want to apologize to all my fellow nominees.” 

The visibly emotional Smith continued: “I want to say thank you to Venus and Serena and the entire Williams family for entrusting me with your story, that’s what I want to do, I want to be an ambassador for that kind of love and care and concern.” 

Best Actor in a Leading Role goes to Will Smith for his incredible performance in ‘King Richard’ Congratulations! #Oscars pic.twitter.com/y0UTX48214March 28, 2022

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In King Richard, Smith plays Richard Williams, father to Venus and Serena Williams (Saniyya Sidney and Demi Singleton) and married to Oracene ‘Brandy’ Price (Aunjanue Ellis). The movie follows Richard’s efforts to help Venus and Serena become professional tennis players – the real-life Williams sisters are executive producers on the film.

Following the incident, the Los Angeles Police Department has released an official statement saying that Rock will not be pressing charges.

“LAPD investigative entities are aware of an incident between two individuals during the Academy Awards program,” the statement reads. “The incident involved one individual slapping another. The individual involved has declined to file a police report. If the involved party desires a police report at a later date, LAPD will be available to complete an investigative report.”

King Richard is up for six Oscars tonight: along with Best Actor, it’s nominated for Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress for Ellis, Best Original Screenplay, Best Original Song, and Best Film Editing.

You can stream King Richard on HBO Max now – head to our Oscars 2022 winners list for the full rundown of the ceremony. 

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When Justice League was in production, director Snyder stepped away due to a personal tragedy, and The Avengers helmer Joss Whedon oversaw reshoots that substantially changed the tone and plot of the film. After a lengthy fan campaign, the Snyder Cut was finally released in March 2021, with Irons once again playing Batman’s trusty butler Alfred Pennyworth.

“Strangely, I think I have it and I haven’t seen it,” Irons told Variety (opens in new tab). “I shall have to hunt it out and see if I have it somewhere online or on a DVD. I remember talking to Zack before he did it and being very interested to see what he came up with. It couldn’t have been worse.”

In answer to a follow-up question on if Irons meant the Snyder Cut couldn’t be worse than Justice League, the actor replied: “I don’t think it could have been, could it?” Then, when Variety’s interviewer said they thought the theatrical film was “dreadful,” Irons agreed: “Well, so did I.”

He’s not the only Justice League actor to comment on the film lately, either. Ben Affleck, who played Batman in the movie, recently said (opens in new tab): “It just was the worst experience. It was awful. It was everything that I didn’t like about this. That became the moment where I said, ‘I’m not doing this anymore.’ It’s not even about, like, Justice League was so bad. Because it could have been anything.”

Zack Snyder’s Justice League streams on HBO Max. If you’re in the mood for a super-movie marathon, check out our guide to watching DC movies in order.  

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The main trio of Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, and Emma Watson are front and center – they played Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, and Hermione Granger in the films. Behind them in the Hogwarts Great Hall is James and Oliver Phelps (Fred and George Weasley), Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy), Evanna Lynch (Luna Lovegood), Alfred Enoch (Dean Thomas), Matthew Lewis (Neville Longbottom), and Bonnie Wright (Ginny Weasley). See the poster below.

The special, titled Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts and filmed at the Warner Bros. Studio Tour London, looks back at the making of the movies to mark 20 years since Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone released (AKA Sorcerer’s Stone in the US and India).

Other cast members involved include Ralph Fiennes (Voldermort), Helena Bonham Carter (Bellatrix Lestrange), Mark Williams (Arthur Weasley), Robbie Coltrane (Hagrid), Ian Hart (Professor Quirrell), Imelda Staunton (Professor Umbridge), Jason Isaacs (Lucius Malfoy), and Gary Oldman (Sirius Black). Chris Columbus, who directed the first two Harry Potter movies and produced the third, will also be part of the reunion. 

“The retrospective special will tell an enchanting making-of story through all-new in-depth interviews and cast conversations, inviting fans on a magical first-person journey through one of the most beloved film franchises of all time,” reads the special’s official synopsis.

Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts releases on HBO Max on January 1, 2022. Until then, check out our guide to the best Netflix Christmas movies to plan those festive movie marathons.

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Olivia Colman and David Thewlis play Susan and Christopher Edwards, a married couple who were found guilty in 2014 of shooting Susan’s elderly parents and burying them in their own back garden in Mansfield, England – a crime that took place in 1998 and was concealed for 15 years. 

“There’s something to do with trying to understand how on earth they managed to do this for so long,” Thewlis, best known for his roles in the Harry Potter and Wonder Woman movies, says when asked what he found most interesting about his character. “For 15 years, they’ve managed to keep this a secret, and how stressful that must have been. We can’t really explore that, we can’t explore 15 years, but that’s what lies underneath everything. By the time you’re introduced to these two characters, you’re meeting them at the end of these 15 years, and trying to live a relatively normal life.”

Sharpe previously helmed the dark comedy Flowers — which also starred Colman and Loki’s Sophia DiMartino — and the recently released The Electrical Life of Louis Wain, starring Benedict Cumberbatch. Like Flowers, Landscapers has a darkly comic, off-beat tone – the series was written by Colman’s real-life husband Ed Sinclair in his first screenplay. It’s also the first time the couple has worked together since they met doing student theater at university.

“I just couldn’t stop thinking about it. It really got under my skin,” Sharpe says of Sinclair’s script. “I found myself even waking up in the middle of the night thinking about scenes. I thought Ed’s scripts were really tender, and I liked how empathetic they were and how I could tell that [he was] trying to present a complex and nuanced picture of this crime.” 

The series contains a heady mix of homage and pastiche, with scenes referencing the classic Hollywood movies and Westerns that Susan is obsessed with and uses as a form of escapism. “Just from an acting point of view, I like the way Ed has let us do 10 different jobs in one,” Colman says. “So we get to do the silver screen and the cowboy and everything, and there’s the flights of fancy that they go on.” 

It’s Christopher and Susan’s relationship that’s the center of the show, though, and Colman thinks the pair are “perfect” for each other. “It seems he’s willing to be her hero,” she says, “and she is willing to be utterly devoted to someone, has searched for a really good male in her life rather than her experience as a child. All of the memorabilia she collected was, which I’d forgotten, but [Thewlis] pointed out the other day, they were all great fathers. And that was the point, Gary Cooper was famously a wonderful father, and that’s what she craved. I think they genuinely adored each other.”

Each episode flits between black and white scenes to moments garishly colored in nightmarish red, then back to normal again, as flashbacks and memories intersperse with the present day and fact and fiction clash. It’s a series that keeps you on your toes.

“Another visual motif is these deep blacks, where parts of the set or the world almost feel like they’re missing, and that felt like speaking to this idea of truths and constructed truths,” Sharpe explains. “Hopefully, it makes the audience feel a little bit unsettled and like, ‘Well, if those details are missing, can I trust the details that are here on the screen?'”

Adapting true crime for an audience always comes with ethical concerns, which Sinclair acknowledges. “I knew I really wanted to tell it from Susan and Chris’ point of view, and that’s obviously an inherently sympathetic act, there’s no way around that,” the screenwriter says. However, it was important for him that the story didn’t become moralistic.

“There were, of course, ethical concerns about not wanting to be seen to be doing down the horror of what they did,” he continues. “What happens quite early on is that you become aware that your retelling of these events, all your exploration of their psychology, becomes a story in its own right, that is actually quite different to the real life story. I think audiences are naturally very good at understanding how stories work. So my hope is that they will take it in that spirit, as a story, as an exploration, as an asking you questions rather than a didactic pronouncement on where our loyalties should lie.”

Sharpe adds: “I felt like the relationship between Susan and Chris is about the truths that they perhaps needed to tell themselves or to tell each other. There are questions about the truth of the story of the crime, and so related to that is us just being quite upfront with the audience about the fact that we’re also just storytellers. We’re trying as best we can to be fair and accurate and empathetic, but, at the end of the day, this is also just our version. We have no agency over the truth. It’s a fictionalized, dramatized version of the story.”

Landscapers is on Sky Atlantic and NOW TV from December 7. The first episode is available to watch now on HBO Max, with the rest of the series arriving weekly.

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“I saw the film in Berlin in September. It’s really good. I cannot tell you what this film is about, but I could explain what it is not,” he told To Vima (H/T Screen Rant (opens in new tab)). “It’s certainly not yet one more sequel, but something autonomous that contains the three Matrix that preceded in a really ingenious way. It’s a very beautiful and weird creation. It also achieved a couple of things that we do not see in action films, meaning it subverts the rules of blockbusters.”

It sounds like we’re in for a weird and wonderful movie, and we expect nothing less from the Matrix franchise.

One of the biggest mysteries surrounding The Matrix Resurrections is what exactly is going on with Yahya Abdul-Mateen II’s Morpheus. “I play a character who’s definitely aware of the history of the Matrix [and] the history of Morpheus,” the actor said recently of his role in the movie. “This character is on a journey of self-discovery. There’s a lot in our story that’s about growth, defining your own path. Morpheus isn’t exempt from that.” He added: “This is definitely a different iteration of the character.”

Keanu Reeves returns as Neo in the fourquel, along with Carrie Anne-Moss as Trinity, Jada Pinkett Smith as Niobe, Lambert Wilson as The Merovingian, and Daniel Bernhardt as Agent Johnson. Newcomers to the franchise include Neil Patrick Harris, Priyanka Chopra, Jessica Henwick, Christina Ricci, and Jonathan Groff. Lana Wachowski returns to direct, and also co-wrote and co-produces the film, but without her sister Lilly Wachowski this time around.

The Matrix 4 arrives this December 22 to theaters and HBO Max in the US. In the meantime, get up to speed with our ultimate Matrix recap.

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The trailer shows off lavish opulence, beautiful costumes, and tension between the old and new. The impressive cast includes Christine Baranski, Cynthia Nixon, Carrie Coon, Jack Gilpin, Taissa Farmiga, Audra McDonald, Morgan Spector, Louisa Jacobson, Denée Benton, and many more.

The official synopsis for the HBO series reads: “The American Gilded Age was a period of immense economic change, of great conflict between the old ways and brand new systems, and of huge fortunes made and lost. Against the backdrop of this transformation, the series begins in 1882 with young Marian Brook (Jacobson) moving from rural Pennsylvania to New York City after the death of her father to live with her thoroughly old money aunts Agnes van Rhijn (Baranski) and Ada Brook (Nixon).

“Accompanied by Peggy Scott (Benton), an aspiring writer seeking a fresh start, Marian inadvertently becomes enmeshed in a social war between one of her aunts, a scion of the old money set, and her stupendously rich neighbors, a ruthless railroad tycoon and his ambitious wife, George (Spector) and Bertha Russell (Coon).” (H/T IndieWire (opens in new tab))

The Gilded Age was first set for NBC in 2018, but went to HBO the following year. It will finally debut early next year, and was co-written by Fellowes and Sonja Warfield. Michael Engler and Salli Richardson-Whitfield direct. 

“It was originally Mark Twain who called this the gilded age,” Fellowes told Entertainment Weekly (opens in new tab). “The important word is gilded. It’s not the golden age, it’s the gilded age. And that tells us it was all about the surface. It was all about the look of things, making the right appearance, creating the right image. That’s what was really what distinguished the era.”

The Gilded Age releases on HBO next January 24, and will also stream on HBO Max. In the meantime, check out our roundup of the best Netflix shows to fill out your watchlist.

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Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, who played the franchise’s main trio of Harry, Ron, and Hermione, and director Chris Columbus are set to discuss the franchise for the first time – Radcliffe, Grint, and Watson starred in all eight Harry Potter movies, while Columbus directed the first two and was a producer on the third.

The special, titled Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts, will arrive on the streamer on January 1, 2022. According to HBO Max, it will “tell an enchanting making-of story through all-new, in-depth interviews and cast conversations”. 

Other cast members joining the trio include Helena Bonham Carter, who played Bellatrix Lestrange, Robbie Coltrane (Hagrid), Ralph Fiennes (Voldemort), Jason Isaacs (Lucius Malfoy), Gary Oldman (Sirius Black), Imelda Staunton (Professor Umbridge), Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy), James Phelps (Fred Weasley), Oliver Phelps (George Weasley), Mark Williams (Arthur Weasley), Bonnie Wright (Ginny Weasley), Alfred Enoch (Dean Thomas), Matthew Lewis (Neville Longbottom), Evanna Lynch (Luna Lovegood), and Ian Hart (Professor Quirrell).

As for our next venture into the wizarding world on the big screen, that will be Fantastic Beasts 3, which is set to release on April 8, 2022. In the meantime, check out our list of the other upcoming movies to get excited about in 2021 and beyond.

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In fact, fans are calling on Warner Bros. to #RestoreTheSnyderVerse, the campaign asking the studio to restore Snyder’s vision for its DC movies, including Justice League 2 and 3, as well as projects like Ben Affleck’s scrapped Batman movie.

While sitting down with Snyder to chat about the upcoming Army of the Dead prequel Army of Thieves, we asked whether he would be open to another director continuing the Justice League story for him.

“Oh gosh, I wouldn’t have thought of that,” Snyder says. “Listen, I loved making all those DC movies, and I love superheroes, and I love the genre. I’m very excited to see Matt [Reeves]’s Batman movie [The Batman], so that’s exciting. Something like that [though], I’m not sure.”

Warner Bros. CEO Ann Sarnoff has previously poured water over hopes for a continuation of Zack Snyder’s Justice League, so it’s looking unlikely that further movies will ever see the light of day, even if another filmmaker came on board. Still, stranger things have certainly happened.

Army of Thieves arrives on Netflix on October 29. While you wait, check out our preview for the prequel, which features the rest of our interview with Snyder and star/director Matthias Schweighöfer.

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