That’s an odd bunch for a story about the animal overthrow of a farm turning into a dictatorship. There’s no word yet on the cast—will Serkis be performing all of the animals?—but the July 11th release date is still in place. That’s not a lot of time if Serkis wants to improve upon the 1954 and 1999 adaptations of the novella, neither of which impressed audiences.
The Smurfs Movie (July 18)
Do kids today even care about the Smurfs? Heck, do most parents even care about the Smurfs? Created by Belgian cartoonist Peyo, the little blue forest dwellers were regulars on the screen in the 1980s, but outside of some crass star-studded movies in the 2000s, the Smurfs haven’t been important parts of pop culture.
Still, Nickelodeon hopes that the concept has enough inherent charm to draw eyes on their new version in The Smurfs Movie. And if that fails, they’ve got big famous names to lend their voices, including Rihanna as Smurfette alongside Nick Offerman, Natasha Lyonne, Dan Levy, and more. No word yet on who is playing who, but we’re guessing Offerman is Papa Smurf, Levy is Vanity Smurf, and Lyonne is, uh, Raspy Smurf? Be honest, you don’t know if there really is a Raspy Smurf, and neither does anyone else.
The Fantastic Four: First Steps (July 25)
Not content to let DC have all the fun, Marvel will be matching Superman with their own course-correcting revival of seminal and oft-misunderstood heroes. The Fantastic Four: First Steps brings Marvels’ first family to the big screen, hoping to shake-off not just the bitter taste left behind by the bland mid-2000s movies and the misguided 2015 film, but also the general disinterest in superhero movies.
First Steps takes a bold approach, set in an alternate 1960s where the FF are science stars as much as they are superheroes. When the Silver Surfer (Julia Garner) announces the coming of Galactus (Ralph Ineson), the Fantastic Four—Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach—try to save their world and their family. The film has six credited screenwriters, never a good thing, but director Matt Shakman proved his chops with WandaVision, still the best Marvel TV series.
The Naked Gun (August 1)
A reboot of The Naked Gun has been in development for decades, and often looked like a lost project, which may have been a good thing. It’s hard to imagine anyone other than Leslie Nielsen playing clueless cop Frank Drebin and anyone other than prime Jim Abrahams and the Zucker brothers producing. The impeccable deadpan of the original films, and the six-episode series Police Squad! that inspired it, have rarely been seen elsewhere.
