Corey Hawkins Joins Kong: Skull Island

Straight Outta Compton's Dr. Dre is going exploring

He’s been receiving early praise for his performance as the younger Dr. Dre in N.W.A. biopic Straight Outta Compton (which you can read more about here), and now Corey Hawkins is going on an entirely different sort of journey. He’s joining the cast of Kong: Skull Island.

Jordan Vogt-Roberts is preparing to direct the film, which sees a team (currently including Tom Hiddleston and Brie Larson) heading to the fog-shrouded, mysterious titular island, home to the world’s biggest, angriest ape and a whole host of other creatures. As they venture deeper within the place, they encounter yet more surprises.

Quite what those are, we don’t yet know, but the script comes from Max Borenstein, John Gatins and Dan Gilroy. It’ll all gear up to shoot later this year with a March 10, 2017 release date on the calendar. As for Hawkins, who has had roles in the likes of Non-Stop, last year's Romeo And Juliet and Iron Man 3, he’ll also be seen on the small screen in the new season of The Walking Dead as Heath, a character seen in the comics as part of the team at Alexandria. 

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The Coen Brothers Adapting Ross MacDonald's Black Money

And they may direct the private eye pic

While they often generate their own ideas, Joel and Ethan Coen have been known to base films on other peoples’ work. Warner Bros. has them doing just that, hiring the award-winning sibling duo to adapt Ross MacDonald’s 1966 crime novel Black Money with an eye to possibly directing it.

While they haven’t decided whether they will actually make the film themselves, it sounds like something that could have them steering into Blood Simple/Fargo territory, albeit with more of a noir angle than the latter. MacDonald’s book focuses on private eye Lew Archer, who is hired by a jilted lover to investigate the Frenchman who ran off with his girlfriend. 

As so often happens with tales like this, it’s a case Lew probably wishes he hadn’t started digging into, as he’s soon deep into a conspiracy connecting the boyfriend to a suicide from years ago and a mountain of gambling debts.   

Joel Silver is aboard to produce this one, with the studio hoping it could prove a fruitful match-up of filmmakers and source material along the lines of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice. It would certainly be a pivot from Joel and Ethan’s current project, ensemble comedy drama Hail, Caesar!, which is out here on February 26 next year. 

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Sony Plans Two New Bad Boys Films

Fourth film announced as part of a release date splurge

There has been a lot more chatter recently about the long-gestating and occasionally vaporous third Bad Boys film. A couple of writers and come and gone since around 2009 and The Grey’s Joe Carnahan was the last person talked about as someone who could get it made. It seems Sony is feeling bullish about either his idea or someone else’s, as the studio has announced a release date for not one new film in the franchise, but two.

With its results lagging behind some of the other studios at the moment, Sony could certainly use the return (or even reincarnation) of one of its big franchises, and Bad Boys has performed in the past. The big question will be whether the new movies can lure back franchise stalwarts Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, but clearly these films are something Sony is willing to plant flags for, setting Bad Boys 3 for February 17, 2017 (in the US at least) and the fourth on July 3, 2019.

It’s all part of a big dates announcement that sees other notable information such as Antoine Fuqua’s The Magnificent Seven moving back into 2016 in the US, settling in September, Chris Pratt/Jennifer Lawrence sci-fi pic Passengers scheduled for December 21 the same year, and, in a sign it might actually get off the ground this time, Stephen King adaptation The Dark Tower on January 13, 2017.

We’re happy to see that Edgar Wright’s latest, Baby Driver, is also now officially on the calendar, scoring a March 17, 2017 slot, with long-bubbling game adaptation Uncharted hopefully placed on June 30 the same year. For the full list, head to Deadline.

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Colin Farrell On For Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them

From True Detective to Wizarding World

He’s currently on our TV screens being the moody, troubled cop type in True Detective, but Colin Farrell is looking for something a little more magical for a future job. He’s joined the cast of Warner Bros.’ Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them.

The Harry Potter spin-off, scripted by J.K. Rowling herself from her short tome, and set to be directed by Potter film veteran David Yates, is set decades before Harry, Hermione, Ron and the rest crossed the threshold of Hogwarts. Our hero here is magizoologist Newt Scamander (Redmayne), who is on a mission to document the creatures filling the wizarding world. On a trip to New York, he meets several characters, including a wizard named Graves, played by Farrell.

Fantastic Beasts’ cast already includes Katherine Waterston, Ezra Miller, Dan Fogler and Alison Sudol, and Yates is filling the various other roles ready for shooting this year and early next ahead of a November 18, 2016 release.   

Farrell will also be seen in psychic thriller Solace, which arrives on September 25. And he’s part of the cast for Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Lobster, which scored positive reviews at Cannes and lands in the UK on October 16. 

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Laurence Fishburne In Talks To Board Passengers

He may join the sci-fi pic with Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence

With its renewed momentum, sci-fi project Passengers is coming together properly under the aegis of director Morten Tyldum. He’s now looking to add Laurence Fishburne to the mix.

The script, written by Prometheus' Jon Spaihts, chronicles a ship en route to a distant colony with all of its crew in cryosleep. A malfunction causes one man (Chris Pratt) to be rudely awakened 90 years before anyone else. Unable to fix the situation and seemingly doomed to spend his time dying alone, he decides to take the unusual and controversial step of waking up a fellow passenger (Jennifer Lawrence).  

Quite what Fishburne will be up to, even if he does make a deal, has yet to be announced. Will he be another passenger? Will he just be seeing the ship off? Is he destined only to appear on view screens? We do at least know what one other cast member is doing in the film, as Michael Sheen signed up last month to play the ship’s robot. 

Passengers should be filming later this year, with Sony recently announcing a December 21, 2016 release date in the States. Whether we get it at the same time or close to that date has yet to be ascertained. Fishburne, who was part of the cast of the late, lamented Hannibal TV series, will be seen in Standoff and is back as Perry White in Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice, readying for cape fear on March 25 over here. For more on the movie, check out the current issue of Empire. 

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Dennis Quaid Finds A Dog's Purpose

Britt Robertson also aboard the novel adaptation

What could be better than an inspirational, heart-warming film that’s all about a dog? Admittedly, the last attempt at that – this year’s Max from Warner Bros. – didn’t quite run away with the box office bone, but that’s not stopping DreamWorks from going ahead with an adaptation of W. Bruce Cameron’s best-seller A Dog’s Purpose, setting Lasse Hallstrom to direct a cast that includes Dennis Quaid and Britt Robertson.

They’re part of an ensemble that also includes K.J. Apa, Juliet Rylance and Peggy Lipton in the story of a devoted pooch that is reincarnated various times, helps a number of different owners (think The Littlest Hobo, but across the plain of existence, not just the wilds of Canada), always with the driving aim of reuniting with his original human friend.

This is one that, like Cameron’s 2010 tear-targeting tome, hops across several lives for the dog (expect some complaints from the cat unions, including Meowcal 716 over that idea) as he inhabits different canines. Robertson and Quaid are part of the same timeline, but with her playing a young woman who falls for a quarterback and he as the football player later in life. 

Cameron and Cathryn Michon and Audrey Wells wrote the script for this one, which Hallstrom will start shooting in Canada this month. 

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The Leftovers Season 2 Trailer Teases Zero Departures, But More Drama

The Leftoversis moving to the small town of Miracle, Texas in Season 2, but don't let the name fool you...things won't be getting any cheerier.

HBO has released the first trailer for the drama, offering a cryptic look at the seemingly pleasant neighbors, a possible wedding (is that Nora at 1:05?), a

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• The Leftovers
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• Regina King

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