Released last fall, no one expected the Wachowskis‘ ambitious undertaking of Cloud Atlas to be a box-office smash, but Warner Bros. was nice enough to put it out stateside, where it picked up not-so-stellar $27.1 million (but totaled a modest $121 million worldwide). Fear not though, as the studio is wasting no time getting back in business with the helmers for their next project, this one being another sci-fi epic, but this time of the original variety.
As production kicks off for Jupiter Ascending, the studio has now given the crew a goal to aim for, as a release date has been set for July 25th, 2014. Scored by Michael Giacchino, the film stars Channing Tatum, Mila Kunis, Eddie Redmayne, Douglas Booth, Tuppence Middleton and Sean Bean, and is set in the near future where humans aren’t as evolved as powerful beings across the universe. We follow a woman (Kunis) becomes an assassination target by the queen of the universe.
This release date marks strong confidence on WB’s part, just a week after they normally release their Christopher Nolan tentpole (which instead, will be heading to a November release). Jupiter‘s only currently competition that weekend is Brett Ratner‘s Dwayne Johnson‘s Hercules epic, but it is squished between Bryan Singer‘s X-Men: Days of Future Past the previous week and Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy the next. Regardless, its nice to have an original film from the Wachowskis in the summer and it will hopefully go better than their last project in the same season, Speed Racer.
In other minor release date news, Warner Bros. has let us know we can all collectively forget about their upcoming boxing drama Grudge Match. With a once hopeful release date in November, the studio perhaps some saw less-than-promising dailies, or just one of the set photos and decided to dump it on January 10th, 2014, around the same timeframe they delivered Gangster Squad this year. Featuring Robert De Niro and Sylvester Stallone both stepping back into the ring, the film is coming from Get Smart‘s Peter Segal and also stars Alan Arkin, Kim Basinger, Kevin Hart, and Jon Bernthal.
Have your hopes increased for Jupiter Ascending? Lowered for Grudge Match?