Movies
‘Maleficent’ Sequel is Happening and a Director Has Come Aboard
You can count me among the fans of 2014’s Maleficent, a dark fantasy starring Angelina Jolie as the title character. The film, directed by Robert Stromberg, humanized one of Disney’s most iconic villains, and it proved to be a pretty massive hit at the box office.
Not surprisingly, a sequel is on the way.
Deadline reports this week that Joachim Rønning (Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales) is in talks to direct the untitled Maleficent sequel, expected to begin filming in early 2018.
Angelina Jolie will return as Maleficent.
Jez Butterworth and Linda Woolverton had been working on the script for producer Joe Roth, Deadline notes.
Two things that have proven to be pretty dependable at the box office in recent years are horror movies and Christopher Nolan movies. With Nolan’s The Odyssey absolutely dominating the box office this past weekend, many fans of Nolan’s work have been left hungry for a Nolan-directed horror movie. After all, The Odyssey does whet the appetite for Nolan nightmare fuel.
Christopher Nolan has brushed up against the horror genre in the past with 2002 thriller Insomnia, but does he have any interest in someday making a full-on horror movie?
Nolan tells the Empire Podcast in a new chat, “I’ve always been interested in doing a horror film.”
“But horror is most successful when the conceptual framework of whatever the story is is just so undeniable. I think there are very few really great horror movies,” Nolan continues.
So why hasn’t Christopher Nolan directed a horror movie yet?
He explains to Empire, “I’ve never clicked with a particular idea or concept that worked for me. I love the genre. Of all genres, it’s the most visceral. Where the direct response to the audience is the most important. That is to say, you’re trying to make people literally feel something in their bones about what’s going on on-screen.”
Nolan calls horror “a genre in which experimentation is demanded.” He explains, “I go to see a lot of horror films with my kids these days, and you’ll see things in the first half an hour, 45 minutes of any horror film that you’d never see in another genre. Risks that are taken. Dangerous approaches to things. Admittedly, a lot of movies can’t sustain that to the end. But in the horror genre, that kind of innovation is not just respected – it’s really demanded.”
Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is now playing in theaters.
Cillian Murphy as Scarecrow in Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Dark Knight’ (2008)
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