Production just wrapped on Steven Soderbergh‘s male stripper movie Magic Mike and, as expected, the film has been picked up by Warner Bros. for a June 29th, 2012 release. Starring Channing Tatum, and inspired by his real-life experience, the coming-of-age drama also features a cast including Alex Pettyfer, Matthew McConaughey, Matt Bomer, Joe Manganiello, Gabriel Iglesias, Olivia Munn, Riley Keough, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Cody Horn, Adam Rodriguez, Kevin Nash, and Betsy Brandt. It will open next to his big action blockbuster G.I. Joe: Retaliation, so it makes for quite a double feature.
In other release date news, Oren Moverman‘s The Messenger follow-up Rampart, starring Woody Harrelson, Ben Foster, Sigourney Weaver, Robin Wright, Steve Buscemi and Ice Cube was recently picked up by Millennium Entertainment. It now has a release date of November 23rd, 2011. There has been talk that the police drama may have awards potential for Harrelson’s performance, but I saw the film at Toronto and had a very different interpretation from many others.
I thought it was a trainwreck, despite Harrelson giving his best effort. The frenetic docu-style only provided a distraction and much of the performances from the supporting cast rang false. It is fitting for an outfit like Millennium Entertainment to pick this up after disasters like Trespass and recent disappointments like Blitz and Trust.
Broken City, the next film from The Book of Eli and From Hell co-director Allen Hughes, has been given a January 18th, 2013 release, which is in comfortable territory around his Denzel Washington post-apocalyptic film. Catherine Zeta-Jones recently joined Mark Wahlberg and Russell Crowe in the plot where she’s having an affair with a man who dies and sets off a detective (Wahlberg) on an investigation, in which he eventually uncovers information on a real estate scandal. The film is part of a busy weekend which includes Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s return to action in The Last Stand and Louis Leterrier’s Now You See Me, which stars Jesse Eisenberg, Isla Fisher, Morgan Freeman, Woody Harrelson and Mark Ruffalo.
Which film are you most looking forward to? Do these release dates fit?