Because all the best things come in trilogies, here are three (unrelated) pieces of movie news.
1. The entire world has been wondering what exactly Tom Cruise is doing in the newest version of The Mummy. We'll get the answer when that movie—the first in Universal's upcoming, interconnected "Dark Universe" franchise—opens this Friday, but the real answer may just have revealed itself. Because the trailer for Cruise's next movie, American Made, came out today and it... looks... nuts. My new working theory is that Cruise threw Universal a bone by starring in The Mummy so he could turn around and do this. With Edge of Tomorrow collaborator, director Doug Liman, on board, it looks at first blush like Cruise is making yet another drug/cocaine/scoundrel-with-too-much-disposable-cash movie. But when it includes Cruise crashing a plane in the suburbs and walking around with a full-body dusting of the devil's dandruff? Throw in Domhnall Gleeson, and I am 100 percent sold.
2. Director Terry Gilliam announced via Facebook on Sunday that he's finally completed the initial round of shooting The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. If you saw Lost in La Mancha, the 2002 documentary about Gilliam's aborted struggle to make this movie, and followed the reports of all the subsequent, similarly stymied attempts over the years, you'd be forgiven for thinking we'd never see this one. But Gilliam determinedly stuck at it, and it looks like the movie might actually get finished someday. Considering how difficult it has been for Gilliam to get his genius ideas onto movie screens this century, this is very, very welcome news. It'll star Jonathan Pryce in the Quixote role that were at various points filled by Jean Rochefort, Michael Palin, and John Hurt, with Adam Driver taking over Johnny Depp's part (as a possible Sancho Panza stand-in?). Lord knows when we'll actually get this thing on movie screens, but I'm happy to hear that the odds are looking dramatically better that we will.
Ugh. You have been warned.