Exclusive: Christian Bale to Play Former Raiders Owner Al Davis in David O. Russell’s John Madden Movie

Happy Sunday, folks, and welcome to a special weekend edition of the newsletter — the least I could do after missing the past couple of days.

Let’s start with what I’ve been watching lately.

I saw RaMell Ross’ incredibly overrated Nickel Boys, which I found to be wildly pretentious and dramatically inert. Naturally, it was nominated for a Golden Globe and made the AFI’s Top 10 list. The film dragged on for 140 excruciating minutes and built to a weak climax that offered little emotional payoff — for me, anyway.

I was warned that I wouldn’t like Nickel Boys heading into it, but I really tried to give it a chance, as one of my favorite books of all time is Lorenzo Carcaterra’s Sleepers, which also chronicled horrific abuse in a home for boys.

That movie had the balls to go there. This movie offers a more abstract version of events, and frankly, I didn’t care for the artsy-fartsy approach or the first-person cinematography.

Nickel Boys is more like an impressionist painting than a movie and while some will appreciate its originality, I value storytelling above all else and this film’s style got in the way of its substance, in my opinion.

Next, I watched the first episode of Dexter: Original Sin, which was a little disappointing if I’m being honest. But I’ll tell you the two actors who are perfect in their roles — Molly Brown as Young Deb, and Alex Shimizu as Young Masuka. I can’t wait to see the bad decisions that teenage Deb makes and the situations that her brother Dex will have to bail her out of.

The jury is still out for now on Dexter: Original Sin, as it’s hard to judge this series by a single episode — which is why Paramount+ should probably just send me all of the episodes now considering I’m an OG fan of the franchise.

Last night, I watched The Twilight Zone: The Movie for the first time, and it’s too bad that the 1983 film was marred by tragedy, as it’s pretty interesting. I wound up crying during Steven Spielberg’s feel-good entry — I’m going to have to write a separate piece about why 20th Century Studios needs to remake Cocoon — and I found Joe Dante’s segment pretty interesting as well. But it’s George Miller’s Nightmare at 20,000 Feet that stole the show for me. I loved how he directed it and thought John Lithgow was perfect, too.

Anyway, let’s talk box office. Kraven the Hunter is going to wind up making $11 million this weekend at the domestic box office, and that’s on a production budget of $110 million. Not good, Tom! No wonder Sony is reportedly pumping the brakes on future Marvel movies that don’t feature some version of Spider-Man in them.

It’s likely no coincidence that this week, I heard that Aaron Taylor-Johnson was out of the running for James Bond. I’m now confident that the role will end up going elsewhere. It’s not just that audiences didn’t have an appetite for Kraven this weekend, it’s that they didn’t seem to be particularly interested in Taylor-Johnson, whose name won’t be used to sell Sony’s 28 Years Later, either. That’s a Danny Boyle-Alex Garland movie as much as it is IP, but what it isn’t is the new Aaron Taylor-Johnson movie.

Taylor-Johnson never had the right name for James Bond — Sean Connery. Roger Moore. Timothy Dalton. Pierce Brosnan. Daniel Craig. Those are all good, strong James Bond names. “Aaron Taylor-Johnson IS James Bond” just doesn’t have the same ring to it. I’m telling you, keep an eye on Theo James. He’s got the right look, the right chops, and a movie — The Monkey — coming out next year that could be big. Nothing to report on the 007 front, James is just a hunch on my part, but stay tuned…

Warner Bros. should send Taylor-Johnson a fruit basket though, as the underperformance of Kraven the Hunter allowed the studio to mask the fact that its animated Lord of the Rings movie completely flatlined, opening to less than $5 million this weekend. It was a movie that allowed the studio to hang onto the feature rights to the LOTR franchise, and it feels like audiences sniffed out that cynical motivation.

In tonight’s newsletter, you’ll read about Christian Bale joining fellow Oscar winner Nicolas Cage in the John Madden movie that’s warming up at Amazon MGM Studios. And speaking of Bale, you’ll also read about Austin Butler replacing him as Patrick Bateman in the new American Psycho movie.

There are also items about Chris Evans’ rumored role in Avengers: Doomsday, J.J. Abrams’ “return” to Warner Bros., an erotic thriller starring Glen Powell, Eddie Redmayne teaming up with fellow Oscar winner Julia Roberts, and the latest Stephen King adaptation. Plus, I weigh in on the trailer for Amazon MGM’s wedding comedy You’re Cordially Invited starring Will Ferrell and Reese Witherspoon, and wonder why it isn’t heading to theaters.

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