B.O. FINALLY REOPENING: More and more theaters are reopening this weekend, after being shut down for five months due to the pandemic. The New Mutants, starring Maisie Williams, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Heaton, Alice Braga, Blu Hunt and Henry Zaga will bow, as will Searchlight's The Personal History of David Copperfield, starring Dev Patel and directed by Armando Iannucci, and Orion Pictures' Bill & Ted Face the Music starring Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves. Unhinged debuted last weekend. Next weekend, Tenet will premiere.
MAISIE WILLIAMS TALKS PANDEMIC: Maisie Williams sits down with Variety to discuss the premiere of her new film, The New Mutants, the final chapter in X-Men series, and what she’s been up to during the pandemic. She says of her love of sweats: “Even now that I started leaving the house a bit more, I don’t know that I’m ever going to wear jeans again.” Of reopening theaters, she says: “I just hope that people wear masks and that cinemas are clean. I know there is quite an intense cleaning that happens in between films anyway. So I would hope that the extra precautions can be knitted in fairly easily to the viewing schedule. But I just hope people are safe. If people don’t feel comfortable, don’t go watch it. It’s going to come out on DVD at some point, you can watch it then.”
RESIDENT EVIL A GO: Netflix is giving an eight-episode greenlight to a drama series inspired by Capcom‘s Resident Evil survival horror game franchise. The series will explore a new story across two timelines, Deadline reports. In the first, fourteen-year-old sisters Jade and Billie Wesker move to a city that with their father, who seems to harboring dark secrets. In the second, a decade into the future, just 15 million people are left on earth, with 6 billion monsters. Jade is struggling to survive, and her sister and father’s memories haunt her.
CATE BLANCHETT TALKS DIVERSITY: When the Venice Film Festival announces its official selection in July, eight female-directed films were among the 18 films chosen. Cate Blanchett tells Variety that as president of the jury, she is determined to push diversity and inclusion. She says: “It falls upon us as an industry where, as we emerge into this brave new world, we’re not bringing bad and lazy habits with us, like ignoring diverse and interesting voices. Audiences just want to see films that inspire and ignite them and reflect their lives back to them in illuminating ways. And it’s wonderful that when they see the credits roll at Venice they can go, ‘Oh my God, over 40% of the directors are female.'”
