Tenet, Tarantino, Firestarter: Weekly Round Up

23rd December 2019

Tenet, Tarantino, Firestarter: Weekly Round Up – Okay people, let’s all get excited. As we round out the year of our Lord 2019, we find ourselves with a slew of new movies to look forward to going into 2020. Trailers abound, many of then attached to the screenings of both Cats and Rise of Skywalker.

While both those movies may be seeing off the year in a rather downbeat fashion (Cats is, after all, possibly the worst movie of the decade, destined for midnight love from stoners and drinking buddies looking for a so-bad-it’s-good kind of vibe, while Rise of Skywalker is… well, it’s somehow even worse than Cats because at least Cats has a modicum of, y’know, imagination), we have something very exciting headed our way, and thankfully a trailer landed just in time to wash the bad taste of the aforementioned movies out of our mouths.

That’s right, Christopher Nolan’s Tenet dropped a trailer last week, and I’m pleased to tell you I’m very excited about it.

Thought previously to be some sort of spy thriller, the trailer reveals that it is, in fact, more closely linked to Nolan’s own Inception, with a whole host of time-warping, strange and sci-fi-like goings on. If you haven’t watched the trailer yet, I suggest you do so now, because it’ll undoubtedly get you pumped for what the Dark Knight director has planned for audiences next.

Nolan, as far as I’m concerned at least, has had a diminishing success rate with his films ever since The Dark Knight hit theatres. Inception is great, but it’s hardly as great as everyone pretended it was (I mean, it’s not like we’re all still talking about it, right?), while the less said about The Dark Knight Rises and Interstellar the better – and I never bothered to watch Dunkirk.

But the Tenet trailer promises something fun and inventive, and most importantly original. Despite the silly sounding title, the movie looks like it’s going to be super interesting at the least, and given the modern movie landscape, that’s not something to turn your nose up at.

Starring John David Washington and Robert Pattinson (who is, oddly enough, playing Batman in Matt Reeves’ reboot The Batman), Tenet is scheduled to hit theatres in July of next year. A six-minute prologue for the film was attached to IMAX screenings of The Rise of Skywalker and, let me tell you, it sounds mind-bendingly fun!

And while we’re on the subject of fascinating sci-fi properties, remember Quentin Tarantino’s Star Trek project? Yeah, a couple of years ago now the director revealed he had made a pitch for the Gene Rodenberry created classic that was R-rated and very different to anything we’d seen from the franchise up until this point. But this week it looks like that might not actually be happening, despite it being the most intriguing thing to have happened to Star Trek since… well, since Picard was announced as a series, so not that long ago really… but before that… I guess the reboot and Discovery… but before that! Ah, you get the idea. Star Trek has been in a bad place for a while.

Speaking to Consequence of Sound, Tarantino revealed, while discussing his future plans (as we all know the director has famously said he’d like to step away from directing after his tenth movie), that “I think I’m steering away from Star Trek”. He went on to say he hadn’t had an official conversation about it yet, but it certainly seems he’s losing his interest in the project.

Of course, this could just be Tarantino being Tarantino, and it’s wholly possible he’s referring solely to the directing aspect, which he wasn’t expected to be doing anyway. We don’t know. But one thing’s for sure, since we don’t actually know anything about anything when it comes to this tantalizing possibility, it would be a real shame if we never found out what it could be.

Whatever Tarantino’s tenth movie does wind up being (the money at the moment is on a third installment of the Kill Bill franchise), it’ll be sad to see him go. He has been an interesting voice in cinema for a long time now, and a favorite of film students everywhere. Personally I’d quite like to see him tackle an out and out horror movie, since his films, especially of late, have featured some very horroresque sequences… I mean, did you see the Ranch scene in Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood?

Another property looking to be getting an interesting new take comes in the form of Stephen King’s Firestarter.

Hollywood is keen on King right now, with their being something of a resurgence in the horror author’s work adapted for the big screen. Both IT movies were big successes, while this years Doctor Sleep was critically acclaimed (and it was absolutely great, why the hell didn’t you go see it? This is why we can’t have nice things, guys!), and even the small screen has been busy getting in on the action, what which CBS’ new take on The Stand, Netflix’s Gerald’s Game and The Long Grass adaptations, and anthology series Castle Rock taking inspiration from the novels of the master.

Horror production company Blumhouse have obviously been taking notes and are now moving forward with an adaptation of King’s book Firestarter, directed by The Vigil director Keith Thomas.

Firestarter has been adapted for the big screen before in 1984. That movie, starring a nine-year-old Drew Barrymore, was a box office dud and a critical disappointment, so here’s hoping Blumhouse and Thomas find success where others could not.

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