TMW #42: CinemaCon, tributes to Val Kilmer, Elio sneak peek and The Great Gatsby on film
Enough hot takes to fill a Vegas convention hall
Ahoy cinephiles,
…and welcome to an extra-large helping of your Tuesday Wingman, the newsletter that’s all cinema and no con. Which oh-so-neatly leads us to one of today’s big topics, CinemaCon. We’re bringing you our hot takeaways from last week’s exhibitors’ convention in Las Vegas, from shrinking windows to pregnant superheroes.
We’re also sharing our thoughts on an exclusive sneak peek at Pixar’s next movie Elio and celebrating our favourite performances by the late Val Kilmer, who sadly passed last week. On top of all that, our former Total Film colleague-slash-honorary Wingwoman Jane Crowther writes exclusively for us about the history of screen adaps of The Great Gatsby, ahead of the publication of her new novel Gatsby, a modern-day spin on the classic story. And last but not least there’s our regular quiz, which is on - hold one moment, please - phones on film.
If you like the sound of all that, great news - because it’s nearly Easter and we’re feeling generous (read: already on a chocolate high) we’ve decided to lift the paywall for this edition, so everything’s free to read. If you’d like to receive the full Wingman treatment not just today but every Tuesday and Friday, why not sign up for the low, low price of £5.99 per month/£60 per year?
As ever, we’d love for you to like, share, restack and shout from the rooftops your enjoyment of The Movie Wingman and help build our little community into a great big one. We’ll be back on Friday with reviews of The Amateur, Drop and much more. Happy reading!
Matthew (Matt and Jordan)
CinemaCon Takeaways
Dissecting the big news from last week’s headline-sparking industry convention…
John Wick will return
CinemaCon isn’t typically a destination for major movie announcements (it’s notable that Marvel chose to assemble the Doomsday canvas chairs days before). Still, Lionsgate brought a wealth of John Wick news to the Las Vegas gathering. The headline announcement was that Keanu Reeves is back for John Wick: Chapter 5, dicky knees be damned. It makes the ambiguous ‘death’ of Wick at the end of Chapter 4 comically redundant, but if it means more Keanu gun-fu’ing his way through hundreds of goons, count us in. Of course, Keanu will return imminently in Ballerina, set between the events of Chapters 3 and 4, but centred on Ana de Armas’ Eve. Keeping up? Also announced was that Donnie Yen will direct and star in a spin-off about his kick-ass Chapter 4 character Caine, and that an anime project depicting the ‘impossible task’ Wick completed to escape his life as a mythical hitman is in the works, with Keanu on vocal duties. To paraphrase the great man himself, we’re thinking he’s back. (Jordan Farley)
Cinema owners really want movies to play in cinemas for longer
Theatrical windows were a major battleground at this year’s CinemaCon. Slashed to as little as 17 days since the pandemic from somewhere closer to 90 days pre-Covid, the argument goes that by making movies available digitally a little over two weeks after debuting in cinemas, audiences are being trained to wait and watch at home, where they don’t have to put up with sticky floors and the pungent scent of pickled jalapeños. There’s nuance to the debate – studios claim that pivoting to digital if a movie is underperforming in cinemas can turn a film’s fortunes around, funding the production of more movies – but it’s hard to argue that cinema’s aren’t suffering when films that would once exclusively play for months can now be streamed (and pirated in high-def) in a matter of days. During CinemaCon, AMC’s CEO told Deadline that “three of the six major studios [are] completely in agreement that we need to bring back the 45-day window”, but fully closing Pandora’s box (office) may prove impossible. (Jordan Farley)
2025 is no longer the promised land
The mantra at last year’s strike-blighted CinemaCon was ‘Survive until ’25’. It would seem that the industry is a lot less bullish on this year bringing the industry back in line with pre-pandemic box-office levels following the latest CinemaCon showing. Of course, there’s an Avatar sequel to give the industry a boost, and the surprise success of A Minecraft Movie over the weekend certainly helps, but cinema owners are now looking to 2026 as the great hope for a return to theatrical boom times. If a year with The Odyssey, Avengers: Doomsday, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Shrek 5, Toy Story 5, The Super Mario Bros. Movie 2, The Mandalorian and Grogu, Dune: Messiah, Fast X: Part 2, Jumanji 3, a new Hunger Games, a new Spielberg UFO movie, the live action Moana and more can’t deliver the goods, then cinemas have no hope. (Jordan Farley)
A big MCU character has been casually introduced
Marvel Studios’ presentation at the Vegas forum included a new, for-their-eyes-only look at The Fantastic Four: First Steps. Among the sizzle reel’s reported reveals is that Sue and Reed are expecting a Fantasti-baby. If the filmmakers are keeping things canonical, then the unborn child is most likely Franklin Richards, who’s been a comic-book mainstay since 1968. Though he’s only aged slightly faster than Maggie Simpson over nearly six decades, the boy is (of course) a super-powerful mutant who’s been central to multiple major storylines, including crossovers with the X-Men. In other words, he’s a major addition to the growing roster of MCU moppets (Black Panther’s son, Hulk’s son, Thor’s adopted daughter) that we’re likely to see more of, maybe even before the studio stops recalling every actor who’s played a Marvel character in the last three decades. My fanboy hope is that Franklin’s intro paves the way to the previously teased MCU arrival of Power Pack, the kiddie superteam (where Franklin adopts the codename Tattletale) previously (little-)seen in an early-90s TV pilot that didn’t lead to a full series. In its 80s comic-book heyday PP was like an Amblin take on the Fantastic Four, combining pre-teen travails with cosmic adventure; I’d be over the Spielbergian moon if they brought it to the big screen. (Matthew Leyland)
Why The Great Gatsby continues to fascinate filmmakers
Author and film journalist Jane Crowther on the enduring appeal of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic…
Jay Gatsby – bootlegger, romantic, mythomaniac and American Dreamer – is a delicious conundrum for Hollywood. As written by F. Scott Fitzgerald 100 years ago this week, he’s a pure heart with aspirations to deserve the rich bitch who rejected him in his youth, a hopeless stalker and phoney with Kardashian-level skills in self-promotion, a tragic hero who becomes the collateral damage of the negligence of the rich, an indistinct hottie queer-coded to enthral a criminally passive narrator, and a poster boy for the limited social mobility of the American Dream in a country riddled with snobbery despite its meritocratic intentions.
“I myself didn’t know what Gatsby looked like or was engaged in,” Fitzgerald admitted to his publisher Max Perkins in delivering his manuscript. He had cut out much of the character’s backstory to render him more of an enigma to the reader (his short story ‘Absolution’ is where some of that material ended up) and allowed the reliability of his narrator, Nick Carraway, to be questioned. Is Nick’s recollection the real events of the summer, or the rose-tinted view of a man he felt immense guilt over? Even the scant physical description of Gatsby allows readers to sketch their own mental version of his visage, casting their own character, projecting onto him what they want from his hardscrabble rise and sudden fall.
Perhaps that’s why he’s so tricky to satisfactorily pin down on celluloid – and presents such a challenge to filmmakers. The book was adapted just a year after publication into a silent film, casting Warner Baxter as the eponymous hero and pardoning his lover Daisy Buchanan of wrongdoing with key plot changes. It was then adapted again in 1949, when Alan Ladd essayed the bootlegger in a morally outraged adap warped by the Hays Code.
In 1974 the most handsome and charismatic man that director Jack Clayton could imagine who would appeal to both male and female viewers was Robert Redford. Hot off the back of another period hit, The Sting, and urbane enough to convince as both a Midwestern upstart with delusions of grandeur and an Oxford grad who may have killed a man, Redford could surmount the more icky aspects of Gatsby’s make-up (obsessive, criminal, manipulative, pompous). Though he is never described as blond in the book (indeed some scholars have suggested the character is mixed race), Redford’s wheat-coloured hair and cornflower eyes made a lasting cultural impression in a film that paints him as a WASPy dreamboat.
Baz Luhrmann’s wilfully artificial and frenetic fever-dream urtext from 2013 may have coloured outside the lines of Fitzgerald’s apograph with anachronistic music, pop-art cinematography and more overt sexuality (Nick Carraway now ogles half-stripped gents at Manhattan parties), but Gatsby in Leonardo DiCaprio is little more than a Redford facsimile. Tow-headed, handsome, heartbroken, hopeful. His champagne cheers to camera may have become an oft-used meme/gif but Luhrmann didn’t manage to crack the universal Jimmy Gatz.
There are numerous other oblique versions of this character on the big and small screen, such is the intrigue and mystique surrounding him. More recently, Dominic West’s cheating husband who takes a vehicular manslaughter rap for his DUI wife in The Affair, the ghastly wealthy people who mow down a local boy while driving to a party in Morocco in The Forgiven, the unwitting author played by careless people after a vacation hit-and-run in Infinity Pool. Even I have contributed to the universe with my new book, Gatsby, a gender-flipped, 21st century re-imagining through a social media lens that comes out the same day as Fitzgerald’s anniversary on 10 April (no pressure). In swapping the genders of the players, I’ve focused on the themes of celebrity (and the particular type of cruel judgement reserved for famous women), wealth disparity and the rise of MAGA.
Gatsby can take the interpretations and more movie/TV adaptations – and I say this not only because I’m actively looking for a producer to option my book but also because Fitzgerald’s character has so much space to work with. Possibly based on real people he encountered during his time living on Long Island in 1923-24, Gatsby is a riddle and a Rorschach test – reflecting the times of each new generation that discovers him. Right now, we can relate to the cruelty of wealthy, powerful people (maybe Gatsby should operate amid the tech bros and Washington bully boys on a next iteration?), the seductive nature of memory, the concept of shedding an identity and building another. Even though he’s a jazz-age character locked into an unhappy fate, Gatsby as an idea is eternal. And that is the kind of IP Hollywood can’t get enough of…. (Jane Crowther)
Gatsby by Jane Crowther, Borough Press, £16.99, out 10 April, and you can pre-order it via this link.
Inside Pixar’s next original
Five things to know about Elio
Last week, The Movie Wingman was invited to a presentation hosted by Pixar producer Mary Alice Drumm showcasing roughly 25 minutes of footage from the upcoming sci-fi adventure Elio, which sees a young boy abducted by aliens and believed to be an ambassador for Earth. Here’s what we learned about the new film…
IT’S A REVERSE LILO & STITCH
At the heart of the story is Elio (voiced by Yonas Kibreab), a lonely young boy who lives with his aunt Olga (Zoe Saldaña) following the death of his parents. A lonely outsider, Elio wishes to be abducted by aliens, in the hope he might find a place he belongs. When he actually does end up getting whisked up to the Communiverse - a lava-lamp-coloured wonderland that’s a sort of extra-terrestrial United Nations - he ends up becoming friends with eyeless alien Glordon (Remy Edgerly), who looks something like a cuter version of a Mickey 17 Creeper and is the son of the film’s big bad, Lord Grigon (Brad Garrett). Drumm explains that the original pitch for the film was “ ‘What if the world's weirdest 11-year-old was accidentally abducted into space and mistaken as the leader of Earth?’ And just that elevator pitch was so successful.”
THE ALIENS ARE GENUINELY OUT OF THIS WORLD
As well as the footage screened, concept art images were also shared at the presentation to showcase the variety of aliens that populate the Communiverse. Having researched a ton of old sci-fi movies, Drumm and the team were struck by how often the aliens were effectively a human in a suit. “ We had a goal of trying to not do that, like a bipedal person,” she explains. That means we get characters like Questa (Jameela Jamil), who floats with cuttlefish-like wings (there’s a neat explanation given for how the various species coexist in the Communiverse with different languages and gravitational requirements). In the planning stages, they almost had even more alien types, before narrowing it down to simplify the animation rigs. “ At one point I think we had like 24 or 28 different species, and I think there's like 16 [in the finished film],” she says. “But there's a lot of variety with colour and shape and other things you can do.”
THE ORIGINAL DIRECTOR IS NOW WORKING ON COCO 2
Adrian Molina - co-director of Coco - came up with that initial pitch for Elio, and was originally the sole director. But Elio was delayed by both Covid and the actors’ strike, and Molina ended up being tugged towards the recently announced sequel. “It became clear we wanted to start Coco 2,” Drumm explains. “And Elio was going to be extended for a period of time. So at that time, Maddie Sharafian [delightful 2D short Burrow] and Domee [Shi, Turning Red] had been along the journey because at Pixar we work together as all the directors come to your Brain Trust. So we felt like those were the two right people to take it to the end.” Molina retains a directing credit on the film. “ I like to say the three directors in my mind are like this Venn diagram,” says Drumm. “ They have been working together through different projects for years, and so there's this middle ground where they all meet.”
EASTER EGG HUNT
Elio will also keep with the Pixar tradition of featuring hidden Easter eggs galore, including Drumm’s personal favourite of a ‘DOMAD’ branded radio that references the new directing duo (a codeword Drumm used in production when referring to the two collectively). There’s also a lizard in the movie that’s a throw-forward to Pixar’s next film, Hoppers, due spring 2026. “ I'm such a fan, and so [talking to anyone working on Elio], I would be like, ‘Do you have an idea for an Easter egg? Do you wanna put an Easter egg there?’ So there are so many.”
EMOTION PICTURE
And in keeping with another Pixar tradition, Elio looks set to be totes emotional, with the footage challenging the tear ducts a couple of times in under 30 minutes. ”Just being with the filmmakers recently from Inside Out 2, and just hearing them get so many personal stories about, ‘I was able to talk to my kids about anxiety…’ It is a hope here that [Elio] opens those conversations [about loneliness].” (Matt Maytum)
Elio opens in cinemas on 20 June.
Me and My Val
Val Kilmer passed last week at the age of 65. From spoofery to superheroics, western legends to musical icons, Kilmer was a magnetic, energetic presence with the talent to match his movie-star looks. Here we celebrate our favourite performances by an actor who can be Wingman’s wingman any day…
MADMARTIGAN, WILLOW
Based on a story by George Lucas (who exec-produced), Ron Howard’s fantasy romp is basically Star Wars in chainmail, with its own Luke, Emperor/ess, skull-faced Vader and even R2/3PO (those helium-voiced Brownies). Kilmer’s mercenary-made-good Madmartigan is, of course, the movie’s Han Solo - though with his pirate-y look and pantomime flourishes (he even drags up in one scene), he feels as much a precursor to Jack Sparrow as a throwback. It’s the film on which the star met and fell in love with future wife Joanne Whalley (after taking a fancy to her on the London stage years earlier), though the onscreen chemistry you remember is between Kilmer and Warwick Davis’ Willow, whose comic sparring and growing bond over the care of Elora (the story’s Chosen Tot) help elevate the film above its more generic elements.
Kilmer’s dream gig playing Batman turned into a nightmare because of the restrictive suit; here, he gets to dash about with his chest out like a medieval Jim Morrison and looks like he’s having a blast. His ability to slip smoothly between playing the action hero and playing the fool is nutshelled in the moment (showcased in the original trailer) where Madmartigan flaunts fancy swordsmanship before falling on his arse. I likely saw Top Gun before Willow - but since the former was on VHS, whose muddy picture quality was ill-suited to Tony Scott’s orange filters, I’m not sure I could tell Iceman from Wolfman. A trip to see Willow in the cinema gave me a much sharper sense of Kilmer’s charisma and sheer gusto. Plus he could do a forward roll like it was nothing, which to this uncoordinated PE klutz was everything. (ML)
CHRIS SHIHERLIS, HEAT
Talk about range – the same year that Kilmer donned the cape and cowl in Batman Forever he starred in Michael Mann’s cops ‘n’ robbers classic as the cool-under-fire Chris Shiherlis. A hot mess in the sheets, shit-hot on the streets, Shiherlis takes centre stage during Heat’s legendary gunfight in downtown LA. Lauded by those with firearms know-how for his textbook weapon handling and rapid reloads (apparently used in military training videos), Kilmer’s disciplined ferocity is a crucial complement to the scene’s jackhammer-to-the-sternum sound design. In a film where two acting legends finally go toe-to-toe, the fact that Kilmer leaves such a lasting impression is a testament to his ice-cool chops. But it could have been very different – Keanu was offered the role but turned it down to play Hamlet on stage (yikes), while Bon Jovi auditioned. As the only member of McCauley’s crew to ride off into the sunset, it’s no great spoiler to say that Shiherlis plays a crucial role in Mann’s sequel novel, and one day film, Heat 2. Whoever steps into Kilmer’s shoes will have a hell of a time filling them. (JF)
NICK RIVERS, TOP SECRET!
Growing up on Kilmer’s performances in Tombstone, Batman Forever and Top Gun, and an ardent admirer of directors Jim Abrahams and David and Jerry Zucker’s The Naked Gun and Airplane!, it was a delightful surprise when I came to 1984’s Top Secret! relatively late. It stars Kilmer as Nick Rivers, a US rocker who travels to East Germany to perform at a festival which, unbeknownst to him, is a cover for nefarious military operation. It’s culturally insensitive and puerile in the extreme, and I laugh like a drain throughout. Like the best ZAZ movies, the funniest gags are often visual and/or physical, and at the centre is Kilmer, unwaveringly doing what’s needed of him: from playing dumb as naive fish-out-of-water straight man, performing song and dance numbers with gleeful aplomb, and fully convincing as an action hero (the underwater barfight is comedy-action masterclass). "I like to think of it as the role Elvis never got but should have", said Abrahams, as Kilmer apparently turned up to audition dressed as the King of Rock and Roll. (He also had an enigmatic cameo in True Romance as Presley.)
It's remarkable that Top Secret! was Kilmer’s film debut. He concurrently establishes leading man credentials and subverts them from the off. Now that’s a movie-star performance deserving of an exclamation mark! (MM)
The Wingman Quiz: Phones on Film
With Drop about to dial into cinemas, let’s see if you’re the type of viewer who pays attention as you go, or if you’re all talk talk. Scroll down for the answers, and no phoning a friend…
Phone Booth writer Larry Cohen originally pitched the concept to which director? a) John Frankenheimer; b) Steven Spielberg; c) Alfred Hitchcock; d) Ed Wood
In Juno, the title character owns a novelty phone in the shape of what? a) a hot dog; b) a hamburger; c) a banana; d) Michael Cera
Fill in the blank from this tagline for Cellular: ‘If the __ dies, so does she’ a) signal; b) line; c) phone; d) Angry Bird
Which of these thrillers is based on a story by Stephen King? a) The Black Phone; b) Cell; c) The Caller; d) BlackBerry
Before it became a phone booth, what was the time machine in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure originally set to be? a) a skateboard; b) a history book; c) a van; d) a wild stallion
(Quizmaster: Matthew Leyland)
Quiz Answers
c) Alfred Hitchcock
b) a hamburger
a) signal
b) Cell
c) a van
My favourite val Kilmer performance has to be Jim Morrison. I felt that his portrayal was uncanny and amazing!
In my office there is a massive poster for Willow and yet I've never seen it. When my colleagues started talking to me about the film as if I knew it I had to break the bad news to them. Based on their reaction you would have thought I had just told them I've never been to a cinema before. It's a good job I've got a Disney Plus membership so I can rectify this soon.