Hannibal Lecter's first movie appearance was in 1986's Manhunter, starring Brian Cox. It took director and writer Michael Mann just five weeks to adapt Thomas Harris's novel Red Dragon for the screen. But when it came to adapting his own work Heat 2, co-authored with Meg Gardiner as both a prequel and sequel to his 1995 film Heat Mann discovered the pain of self-editing.
It rooted slowly but firmly, like all "cult classics." It wasn't so much the story of her abusive childhood and the liberation she found in sex and substances, swimming, and writing as it was a polemic against the notion of a fixed past. Its emphatic embrace of subjective experience-celebrating a certain ownership and reframing of your own history-over static, objective fact made it a kind of guide. Words to live by.
However, Shams Jorjani, the CEO of Helldivers developer Arrowhead Studios, says there's no reason to worry Writing on Discord, Jorjani said he trusts Lin, saying the filmmaker did a "great job" with Star Trek Beyond. The executive also encouraged people to let the man cook. "Let Justin Lin work his magic," Jorjani said, as reported by GamesRadar. The Hollywood Reporter said it was in fact Lin's lack of experience with games that helped him get the job when pitching to production company Sony.
Turning a beloved animated series into live action is always tricky. For every success, there's something like the 2010 film version of Avatar: The Last Airbender, a complete calamity. But arguably, the adaptation process gets trickier with source material that edges into the transgressive. So, in 2005, when the 1990s dark, animated cyberpunk series Aeon Flux became a movie starring Charlize Theron, something strange happened.
"It feels like a circus," Hoover says. "I'm just trying to stay removed from the negativity. I have my own story I could tell ... but I don't want to bring attention to it, and I don't want to have to put someone else down to lift myself up. So I'd rather just ignore it and let people think and say what they're going to say."
Train Dreams, Clint Bentley's glorious rendering of Denis Johnson's elliptical novella borders on visual poetry as it profoundly observes one man's existence. It's a transcendent experience that echoes the best elements of Terrence Malick's films, particularly in how a wandering camera caresses and gazes at the awesomeness, and danger, of nature. But Train Dreams never gets manacled by arc creative pretensions, resisting the urge to surrender to opaqueness (which doesn't always happen in Malick's films).
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire 's story is unlike any of the three previous books. It follows Harry Potter (his hair now overgrown into a very 2000s mop) as he returns to Hogwarts for an unusual year: he not only becomes an unprecedented part of a big wizarding event, but he also experiences some of the hallmarks of his teenage years, including crushes.
The main voice cast is returning for the sequel: Chris Pratt as Mario, Charlie Day as Luigi, Anya Taylor-Joy as Princess Peach, Jack Black as Bowser, Keegan-Michael Key as the anthropomorphic mushroom Toad, and Kevin Michael Richardson as Bowser's advisor and informant Kamek. We're also getting two new cast members: Brie Larson as Princess Rosalina, protector of the cosmos and the Lumas; and Benny Safdie as Bowser, Jr., Bowser's son and heir to the throne.
Earlier this year, Grow a Garden--a game created by an unknown teenage Roblox user-- blew up in popularity and became one of the biggest titles of 2025 with concurrent player counts that rivaled and even exceeded Fortnite. Now, Grow a Garden is growing in Hollywood as well thanks to a new movie based on the game. As reported by Deadline, Story Kitchen--a production company behind several video game adaptations--has signed a deal with Grow a Garden's creators to develop it as a feature film.
The vast majority of Train Dreams unfolds outside or in very close proximity. It is an elemental film, as in earth, air, fire and water. (Fire isn't metaphorical for Robert, nor for Bay Area viewers who recall the Oakland firestorm or Paradise conflagration.) That's one reason it should be seen in a theater: You should enter and depart the world of the film via the outdoors, in a reality not entirely within your control.
Last year, Netflix released a documentary called The Remarkable Life of Ibelin, which followed the story of Mats Steen, a Norwegian gamer who found community and acceptance through World of Warcraft as his body suffered the effects of a rare form of muscular dystrophy. Now, Steen's life is being adapted as a scripted film, which already has a number of stars lined up.
