USA TODAY International Edition
Mark your calendar: Fall movie preview
Will Smith, Brad Pitt and killer clowns will be lighting up the big screen
This fall, Hollywood’s sending in the clowns. And throwing in a couple of Will Smiths – in the same movie! – plus Brad Pitt in space. But don’t forget Jimmy Hoffa and Adolf Hitler, or Jennifer Lopez’s Robin Hood- esque girl gang of scheming strippers. As the leaves turn, a cornucopia of new films is hitting theaters. In the run- up to Halloween, there are plenty of scares to be had, and “It: Chapter Two” could rival its original, the highest- grossing horror film ever. Creepy Pennywise is joined in theaters by another face- painted oddball, Joaquin Phoenix’s reimagined “Joker.” The latter film is part of a fresh slate of festival flicks that could be contenders this awards season, including Pitt on a mission to the stars with “Ad Astra” and J. Lo’s A- list crew living up to the name “Hustlers.” Do you want some happy returns? We’ve got plenty of those, too, with a timely new reboot of “The Addams Family,” “Downton Abbey” moving from the small screen to the cinema, and gangland icons Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci back in the underworld for Netflix’s “The Irishman.” Here are the 10 films out this September and October that you absolutely, positively must see ( release dates are subject to change):
‘ It: Chapter Two’ ( Sept. 6)
Stars: James McAvoy, Jessica Chastain and Bill Hader
Director: Andy Muschietti
The skinny: The sequel to the hit Stephen King adaptation brings the Losers Club back to Derry, 27 years later, to take on the evil clown Pennywise ( Bill Skarsgard). Some of the heroes’ lives have changed, though the group’s resident foul- mouthed jester Richie Tozier ( Hader) is still the same guy. “There are a lot of repressed feelings for Richie. Like a lot of people who are kind of funny, you’re hiding other things,” says Hader, who notes that he resembles King in the movie and in real life. “I had a guy come up to me and say, ‘ Hey, did you write ‘ The Stand’?’ And I said, ‘ That’s Stephen King, he’s twice my age.’ It just makes me feel really bad.”
‘ Hustlers’ ( Sept. 13)
Stars: Jennifer Lopez, Constance Wu and Cardi B Director: Lorene Scafaria
The skinny: Based on a 2015 magazine article, the crime drama centers on former strip club employees – headed by veteran dancer Ramona ( Lopez) and single mom Destiny ( Wu) – who pull scams on their rich Wall Street clients. Scafaria’s aim was “to paint an authentic portrait of a world that hasn’t been seen from a certain perspective,” says the filmmaker, who always thought Lopez was her ideal Ramona. “There was no second choice.” Lopez proved key in getting others interested, like Wu. “I just felt she and Jennifer would have this sisterly relationship with each other,” Scafaria adds. “You become a matchmaker in a way.”
‘ Ad Astra’ ( Sept. 20)
Stars: Brad Pitt, Tommy Lee Jones and Ruth Negga
Director: James Gray
The skinny: With shades of “2001: A Space Odyssey” and the classic Joseph Conrad novella “Heart of Darkness,” the sci- fi drama stars Pitt as an astronaut tasked to find his missing father ( Jones), who’s possibly involved with an existential threat to Earth. “You want a mix of the personal and the large scale,” says Gray, who chose a “steely and square- jawed” guy like Pitt “to show the vulnerability behind a classic iconic figure.” Gray researched the dangers of cosmic ray bursts as well as the “absence” of everything in space. “You take away sound, you take away light, you take away a character’s ability to survive out in the open, and all of a sudden that becomes very scary.”
‘ Downton Abbey’ ( Sept. 20)
Stars: Michelle Dockery, Maggie Smith and Hugh Bonneville
Director: Michael Engler
The skinny: It’s been four years since the British historical drama ended but long enough “to really miss it and feel really nostalgic,” says Dockery, who reprises her role as Lady Mary. Set in 1927, the “Downton” movie centers on the upper- crust Crawley family and their servants preparing for a royal visit from King George and Queen Mary. Lady Mary is now in charge of the estate, an evolution from the reluctant teen with a “rebel heart” that Dockery played when the show began: “She’s really so invested in Downton and very passionate about keeping it going.”
‘ Joker’ ( Oct. 4)
Stars: Joaquin Phoenix, Robert De Niro and Zazie Beetz
Director: Todd Phillips
The skinny: Phillips always liked the villainous Joker’s “predilection for mayhem,” and he sees the new film – and a clown- for- hire’s tragic “descent into madness” – as a way to make a 1970sera character study out of a comic book movie. His star also just happens to be the “ultimate get,” Phillips says. “My goal wasn’t to take Joaquin Phoenix and put him in the comic book universe. My goal was to take comic books and put them in the Joaquin Phoenix universe.” There’s “a darkness that ( previous) actors probably had to live in” to play the Joker, and “Joaquin was aware of that,” Phillips adds.
‘ The Addams Family’ ( Oct. 11)
Stars: Oscar Isaac, Charlize Theron and Chloe Grace Moretz
Directors: Conrad Vernon and Greg Tiernan
The skinny: The creepy, kooky and altogether ooky clan from the 1960s TV show and ’ 90s movies is reintroduced in an animated film that delves into their unusual origins and finds them moving to New Jersey – where they freak out their new neighbors. In this “immigrant story,” the Addamses are “the epitome of ultra- inclusivity and accepting diversity,” Tiernan says. The voice actors were asked to give each character a distinctive accent, so Isaac lends a Latino lilt to patriarch Gomez Addams and as wife Morticia ( Theron) has “this midAtlantic kind of Katharine Hepburn- y accent where you just don’t quite know where it’s from.”
‘ Gemini Man’ ( Oct. 11)
Stars: Will Smith, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Clive Owen
Director: Ang Lee
The skinny: The sci- fi action thriller stars Smith in dual roles as 50- year- old government assassin Henry Brogan, who is in the twilight of his career, and as the 23- year- old clone Junior sent to kill him. “I’m not that young anymore, so that really hit me,” Lee says about the film’s thought- provoking premise. Instead of de- aging Smith in post- production, Lee says Junior was created via Smith’s motion- capture performance, with a personality that’s a mix of his “Bad Boys” and “Six Degrees of Separation” characters, Smith’s own military dad and “his true younger self that only he knows.”
‘ Jojo Rabbit’ ( Oct. 18)
Stars: Scarlett Johansson, Sam Rockwell and Roman Griffin Davis Director: Taika Waititi
The skinny: The “anti- hate satire” centers on Jojo ( Davis), a 10- year- old boy recruited into a Nazi youth camp during World War II who discovers that his mother ( Johansson) is hiding a Jewish girl ( Thomasin McKenzie) in their attic. Jojo is bullied by peers but confides in his imaginary friend, a very goofy Hitler ( Waititi). “We went out to a lot of actors to play the role of Hitler but their agents were all too scared to even ask them, so Fox Searchlight encouraged me to do it,” the director says. “By far, the most difficult aspect of the role was having to see myself in the mirror as Hitler. As one can imagine, I really don’t like the guy and I felt like he had eaten me.”
‘ Maleficent: Mistress of Evil’ ( Oct. 18)
Stars: Angelina Jolie, Elle Fanning and Michelle Pfeiffer
Director: Joachim Ronning
The skinny: The sequel to Disney’s 2014 live- action reimagining of “Sleeping Beauty” continues the motherdaughter relationship between winged fairy Maleficent ( Jolie) and Aurora ( Fanning). A rift occurs, though, when Aurora is engaged to Prince Phillip ( Harris Dickinson) and Maleficent tiptoes a bit back to the dark side when she squares off with Phillip’s villainous mom, Queen Ingrith ( Michelle Pfeiffer). “Aurora is basically moving out. That’s something I and a lot of parents can relate to,” says Ronning, adding that Pfeiffer is one of the few people who can “hold their own” against Jolie, “especially when she puts on the horns.”
‘ The Irishman’ ( fall)
Stars: Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci
Director: Martin Scorsese
The skinny: The Netflix crime drama teams two gangster- movie icons for the first time: Scorsese and Pacino, who plays union leader Jimmy Hoffa. “We got close a few times and then it didn’t quite happen,” the director says. “He and Bob and I needed to work together.” With De Niro ( as hitman Frank Sheeran) and Pesci ( as mob boss Russell Bufalino), Scorsese wanted to capture the same magic they had on “Raging Bull.” “We came at it from a different point in our lives, from a different perspective, and that means we explored new tones and nuances, new values.”