For the first time in three years, the fall movie industrial complex is lurching back into high gear. Festival red carpets are rolled out. Oscar campaigns are primed. Long-awaited blockbusters, like and are poised for big box office.
But after the tumult of the pandemic, can the fall movie season just go back to way it was? Many are hoping it can. After two springtime editions, the Academy Awards have returned to . The Golden Globes, after near-cancellation, . Some movies, too, are trying to recapture a before-times spirit. At the Toronto Film Festival in September, Rian Johnsonâs âGlass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery,â has booked the same theater âKnives Outâ premiered to a packed house almost exactly three years ago.
âSeems like yesterday,â Johnson says, laughing. âOK, a few things have happened.â
After an all-but-wiped-out 2020 autumn and a 2021 season hobbled by the delta and omicron COVID-19 variants, this fall could, maybe, just maybe be something more like the normal annual cultural revival that happens every fall, when most of the yearâs best movies arrive.
âWeâre all, I think, just trying to will it into existence as at least some version of what we knew before,â says Johnson. âAs with everything, you kind of just have to dive into the pool and see what the waterâs like. Iâm really hoping that at least the illusion of normalcy holds. I guess thatâs all normalcy is.â
But âGlass Onion,â with Daniel Craigâs Benoit Blanc in a new mystery, is also a reminder of how much has changed. After âKnives Outâ was a box-office hit for Lionsgate, grossing $311 million worldwide for Lionsgate, Netflix shelled out $450 million to snap up the rights to two sequels. And while exhibitors and the streaming company discussed a larger theatrical release for âGlass Onionâ â a surefire hit if it did â a more modest rollout in theaters is expected before the films lands Dec. 23 on Netflix.
The balance between theatrical and streaming remains unsettled. But after and , theatrical moviegoing â with its billions in annual ticket sales and cultural footprint â is looking pretty good. For the first time in years, moviegoing has a strong wind at its back. Or at least it did until due largely to a dearth of new wide releases.
âIf you look at how many movies we had compared to what business we did, we were operating at 2019 levels,â says John Fithian, president of the National Association of Theater Owners. âWe had 70% of the supply of wide-release movies in the first seven months and we did 71% of the business we did in the same period in 2019. Moviegoers are back in pre-pandemic numbers, itâs just we still need more movies.â
That will be less of an issue as the fall season ramps up. âWakanda Foreverâ (Nov. 11) and âThe Way of the Waterâ (Dec. 16) may each vie with the summer smash âTop Gun: Maverickâ ($1.36 billion worldwide and still counting) for the yearâs top film. Less clear, though, is if the fallâs robust slate of adult-driven films and Oscar contenders can once again drive moviegoing. from Apple TV+, ran the awards gauntlet without a cent of box office.
Among the most anticipated films hitting the fall festival circuit and theaters are Steven Spielbergâs semi-autobiographical âThe Fabelmansâ (Nov. 23); âBlondeâ (Sept. 23), starring Ana de Armas as Marilyn Monroe; Todd Fieldsâ âTĂRâ (Oct. 7), with Cate Blanchett; Sam Mendesâ âEmpire of Lightâ (Dec. 9); âThe Sonâ (Nov. 11), Florian Zellerâs follow-up to âThe Fatherâ; Chinonye Chukwuâs Emmett Till saga âTillâ (Oct. 14); Martin McDonaghâs âThe Banshees of Inisherinâ (Oct. 21); James Grayâs âArmageddon Timeâ (Oct. 28); and (Oct. 7).
Superhero films (âBlack Adam,â Oct. 21, starring Dwayne Johnson), kids movies (âLyle Lyle Crocodile,â Oct. 7), horror flicks (âHalloween Ends,â Oct. 14) rom-coms (âTicket to Paradise,â Oct. 21, with Julia Roberts and George Clooney) and more high-flying adventures (âDevotion,â Nov. 23) will also mix in, as will prominent titles from streamers. Those include Amazonâs âMy Policemanâ (Oct. 21), with Harry Styles; and Netflix releases âBardoâ (in theaters Nov. 4), by Alejandro GonzĂĄlez Iñårritu; âWhite Noiseâ (in theaters Nov. 25) by Noah Baumbach; and Guillermo del Toroâs âPinocchioâ (streaming Dec. 9).
But if much of the fall movie season is about restoring what was lost the last few years, for some upcoming movies, change is the point. âWoman Kingâ (Sept. 16), directed by Gina Prince-Blythewood and starring Viola Davis, is muscular fact-based epic about a West African army of female warriors. To Prince-Blythewood, the filmmaker of âLove & Basketballâ and âThe Old Guard,â âWoman Kingâ represents âthe chance to reframe what it means to be female and feminine.â
âI donât think we have ever seen a movie like this before. So much of our history has been hidden or ignored or erased,â says Blythewood. ââBraveheart,â âGladiator,â âLast of the Mohicans.â I love those movies. Now, here was our chance to tell our story in this genre.â
âBrosâ (Sept. 30), too, is something different. The film, starring and co-written by âBilly on the Streetâ comedian Billy Eichner, is the first gay rom-com by a major studio (Universal). All of its principal cast members are LGBTQ. Comedies have struggled in theaters in recent years but âBros,â produced by Judd Apatow, hopes a new perspective will enliven a familiar genre.
âItâs a historic movie in many ways,â says Eichner. âThatâs not something we thought about when we were first developing it. Nobody sits down and says, âLetâs write a historic movie.â We said, âLetâs make a hilarious movie.â It will make people laugh but itâs unlike anything the vast majority of people have seen.â
âBrosâ and âWoman Kingâ are productions meant to challenge the status quo of Hollywood. Thatâs also part of the nature of âShe Saidâ (Nov. 18), a dramatization of New York Times journalists Jodi Kantor and Megan Twoheyâs investigation into movie mogul Harvey Weinstein. Sarah Polleyâs âWomen Talkingâ (Dec. 2) likewise chronicles a real-life female uprising. Itâs based on events from 2009, when Bolivian Mennonite women gathered together after having been drugged and raped by the men in their colony.
Olivia Wildeâs buzzed-about âDonât Worry Darling,â starring Florence Pugh and Harry Styles as a married couple living in a 1950s-style suburban nightmare-slash-male fantasy, approaches some similar themes through a science-fiction lens.
âI want to make something that is just really entertaining and fun and interesting, but actually is my way of provoking conversations about real issues like body autonomy,â says Wilde. âI didnât know it would be as timely as it is right now. Never in my wildest nightmares did I believe Roe would have been overturned right before the release of this film.â
Other movie production timelines seem to exist almost apart from our earthly reality. James Cameronâs âAvatar: The Way of the Waterâ will debut 13 years after 2009âs âAvatarâ (still the highest grossing film ever), a follow-up originally scheduled for release in 2014. Since then, that the sequels â four films are now slated to launch in the next five years â have sometimes seemed like blockbuster Godots that might forever wait in the wings.
Speaking from the New Zealand where âThe Way of the Waterâ was being mixed and scored, producer Jon Landau promised the wait is, in fact, nearly over.
âThis is finally happening,â said Landau. âThose delays, as you would call them, were really about us creating a foundation for a saga of movies. It wasnât about going: âLetâs get one script right.â It was about: âLetâs get four scripts right.ââ
Measuring the change in the movie industry is even harder when it comes to the span in between âAvatarâ installments. When the first âAvatarâ was in theaters, 3-D was being billed (again) as the future. Barack Obama was in the first year of his first term. Netflix was renting DVDs by mail.
âA lot has changed but a lot hasnât,â says Landau. âOne of the things that has not changed is: Why do people turn to entertainment today? Just like they did when the first âAvatarâ was released, they do it to escape, to escape the world in which we live.â
âJake Coyle, The Associated Press
