Tom Cruise's Dr. Strangelove
Once again, the daily edition of The Industry will be in your inboxes shortly.
For the next few days, we’ll be sending a separate breakdown of the studio films announced at CinemaCon, which are being positioned to generate either massive box-office revenue or awards.
CinemaCon Day 2 brought freshly announced films from:
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Pictures
DC Studios
New Line
Neon
GKIDS
Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, Zendaya, Timothée Chalamet, Sandra Bullock, Denis Villeneuve, and Alejandro Iñárritu all took the stage to share footage from their new films.
Tom Cruise only worked with Stanley Kubrick once.
But now, over a quarter of a century after he gave a spellbinding performance in Eyes Wide Shut (1999), he will star in Warner Bros.’ Digger (2026), which shares a spiritual center with another Kubrick film: Dr. Strangelove (1964).
In Digger, Cruise plays a spoiled, overweight owner of an oil-digging company whose inaction causes the operation to go haywire, sparking a global catastrophe.
Director Alejandro Iñárritu described the Cruise character as:
“Humanity, human folly, the delusional need to control things. A powerful man who changed the way people see the world, who makes the worst decision in the world.”
The film is a world-on-the-brink-of-collapse black comedy with a zany tone. Cruise’s character feels like a strange combo of every Peter Sellers character in Dr. Strangelove: mad, fearful, self-righteous, silly, etc.
Tom Cruise already has an Oscar, but this may earn him a nomination for sure.
Releasing October 2nd.
Speaking of Kubrick, Warner Bros. announced the name for their newly created indie label: Clockwork. The logo is reminiscent of the style of A Clockwork Orange (a WB title).
The first film will be Sean Baker’s, Ti Amo! That’s a massive get as this will be Baker’s first major studio film. And it goes against his ethos of having distributors in a bidding war after he makes the finished product.
Part of the reason he jumped? WB’s Clockwork is run by a trio of former Neon execs: Christian Parkes, Jason Wald, and Spencer Collantes.
The new label aims to create smartly budgeted global theatrical releases with innovative marketing campaigns.
Completing our WB Kubrick coincidence trio, Eyes Wide Shut co-star Nicole Kidman got on stage with Sandra Bullock to show the trailer for Practical Magic 2.
Bullock spoke about the production team's wild attention to verisimilitude, replicating the exact architecture of the house from the original film. It seems that the level of detail brought back all the sensory memories of the first film (1998), unleashing a nostalgia that permeates.
On stage, Kidman and Bullock had great chemistry. A standout line from the trailer: “Everyone we love dies. Not great for a Tinder bio.”
Non Kubrick-related Warner Bros. films:
Denis Villeneuve, Zendaya, Chalamet, and Jason Momoa showed off the first 7 minutes of Dune 3. No spoilers, but Paul Atreides’s nightmares have come true. Seventeen years after Dune 2, he is a warlord, sending his people to certain death. And Villeneuve crafts the opening battle to reveal the soldiers' emotional scars well before a single shot is fired.
On stage, Villeneuve said that the first two Dune films were for him, and this final was for the fans. It’ll have a faster pace and more action. That has us a little worried, but we like what we’re seeing so far.
Two more things caught my eye…
DC’s Clayface is molding a new villain in Tom Rhys Harries. Written by Mike Flanagan, directed by James Watkins (Speak No Evil), and produced by Matt Reeves. It is a wild genre mash-up of a superhero film and a body horror. Harries, a B-movie actor, gets his face slashed to shreds and requires a horrific amount of plastic surgery, which transforms his face into clay. It’s about the horror of measuring self-identity through personal image. Releasing October 23rd.
This is J.J. Abrams’ first new film as a director since Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019). It’s called The Great Beyond and stars Glen Powell and Jenna Ortega. The trailer opened with a rewording of a famous H.G. Wells quote, “There is, though I do not know how there is or how it may be, another world out of sight and sound.” There’s some sort of parallel world here, but it’s hazy. We like Abrams when he focuses on intimate character work like Super 8 (2011) or Pine and Quinto’s chemistry in Star Trek (2009).
Mini tidbit:
Fun trailers from The Cat in the Hat (release: Nov 6) and End of Oak Street (release: Aug 14). Although one is animated and one is live-action, both speak to the need for an escapist fantasy when we are displaced from our homes.
On New Line’s side…
Evil Dead Burn (Release: July 24th) and Mortal Kombat II starring Karl Urban (release: May 8).
Now on to the rest of Warner Bros. Pictures’ slate. In 2027, they promised to release 18 films, up from 14 in 2026 and 11 in 2025. Warner Bros. is eager for these films to spark franchises and sequels.
Remain
Dir: M. Night Shyamalan
Wri: Shyamalan + Nicholas Sparks
Shyamalan hype quote: “My best since The Sixth Sense.”
Release: Feb 5, 2027
Panic Carefully
Dir: Sam Esmail
Cast: Julia Roberts, Elizabeth Olsen, Eddie Redmayne, Brian Tyree Henry
Release: Feb 26, 2027
Godzilla x Kong: Supernova
Release: March 6, 2027
Bad Fairies (animated)
Cast: Cynthia Erivo
Bold, musical
Release: May 21, 2027
Ocean’s (prequel)
Dir: Bradley Cooper
Cast: Cooper, Margot Robbie
Plot: Heist at the 1962 Monaco Grand Prix
Release: June 25, 2027
Man of Tomorrow
Superman sequel
DC Studios
Release: July 9, 2027
Minecraft 2
Jack Black and the rest of the cast return
Release: July 23rd, 2027
Shiver
Star: Keanu Reeves
Release: Aug 13, 2027
Margie Claus (animated)
Cast: Melissa McCarthy
Plot: McCarthy is Margie Claus, trying to track down her lost husband, Santa
Release: Nov 5, 2027
The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum
Cast: Andy Serkis, Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Kate Winslet, Jamie Dornan (taking over the role of Aragorn), Leo Woodall, and Lee Pace.
Release: Dec 17, 2027
Untitled Nancy Meyers film
Cast: Penélope Cruz, Kieran Culkin, Jude Law, Emma Mackey, and Owen Wilson
Release: Dec 25, 2027
2028 and beyond…
Oh, the Places You’ll Go! (animated)
Release: March 17, 2028
Evil Dead Wrath
Prod: Sam Raimi
Dir: Francis Galluppi (The Last Stop in Yuma County)
Release: April 7, 2028
Final Destination 7
Release: May 12, 2028
Dynamic Duo
DC Studios
Release: June 30, 2028
The Hello Kitty Movie (animated)
Release: July 21, 2028
The Flood
Dir: Zach Creggar (an original film)
Release: Aug. 11, 2028
Gladys prequel
Prod: Creggar
Release: September 8, 2028
The Lunar Chronicles (animated)
Release: Nov 3, 2028
Baz Luhrmann’s Joan of Arc
Release: Nov 22, 2028
Game of Thrones: Aegon's Conquest
GOT film now confirmed
NEON
Showed a very sexy sizzle of all their upcoming films. Here’s their line-up:
Hokum
Dir: Damian Mc Carthy (IFC’s Oddity)
Cast: Adam Scott
New trailer showed
Release: May 1
Scott spoke about growing up in the golden age of horror in the 80s, with The Thing and The Shining. When he saw Mc Carthy’s previous film, the simplicity scared him shitless, and it was an easy “yes.”
I Love Boosters
Dir: Boots Riley (Sorry to Bother You).
Cast: Will Poulter, Keke Palmer, LaKeith Stanfield
Release: May 22
Pure phantasmagoria, and Boots pulls out all the stops. On stage, Boots was wonderfully gestural, so much so that LaKeith Stanfield began mirroring the wild hand gestures.
Leviticus
Premiere: Sundance
Release: June 19th
The trailer Neon showed had a down-and-dirty It Follows vibe, with the Australian film following two queer teens in love who start seeing doubles of each other that hunt them down. There’s a tepid sweetness to the whole thing before it gets bloody. Mia Wasikowska co-stars as the disapproving mom.
A Place in Hell
Dir: Chloe Domont (Fair Play)
Cast: Michelle Williams, Andrew Scott, and Daisy Edgar-Jones
Release: Dec 25th
The trailer was a beautiful cat-and-mouse game between two lawyers dead set on making partner. With Williams playing a woman about to take maternity leave, whose temp (Daisy Edgar-Jones) begins to replace her. If you’ve seen Netflix’s Fair Play, you know that office spaces escalate from corporate side-eye disapprovals to full-fledged bloodbaths.
Hope
Premiere: Cannes 2026 - In Competition
Dir: Na Hong-jin (The Chaser, The Yellow Sea)
Cast: Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander, Hoyeon (Squid Game), and Taylor Russell
Genre: Action, Horror, Sci-Fi
Worldwide Sales Rep: UTA
Synopsis:
A mysterious discovery is made on the outskirts of the remote harbor town. The residents find themselves in a desperate fight for survival against something they have never encountered before
The trailer shown here was Neon’s best piece of their presentation.
It opens with a tiny earthquake-devastated town in South Korea, littered with crushed bodies, which we later see is a result of giant humanoid aliens. It’s got a cowboy style, with punk wide shots swinging around to reveal humans running to or being chased by aliens. It’s going to be one epic battle.
GKIDS
A sneak peek of Takashi Yamazaki’s Godzilla Minus Zero, the sequel to the VFX Oscar-winning Godzilla Minus One. The trailer teased Godzilla entering New York City, with a crazy low-angle shot of the monster dwarfing the Statue of Liberty. Releasing November 6th.
CinemaCon continues this week through Thursday.
Upcoming presentations include Focus/Universal, Amazon MGM, and Disney.
Written and edited by Gabriel Miller.
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