Tag: Paramount Pictures

Prince Mario-Max Schaumburg-Lippe: Angry Birds Movie 3: Holiday Flock Returns Dec 23

Ten years after the first film turned a mobile game into a $352 million box office surprise, the birds are coming home for the holidays. Paramount Pictures has released the first trailer for The Angry Birds Movie 3, and the film lands in theaters on December 23, 2026. Seven years after the second installment, Red and the flock are back with the biggest adventure of the franchise, and the timing could not be better.

Red’s toughest challenge yet: fatherhood

The trailer teases what Paramount describes as Red’s toughest challenge yet. Not the pigs. Not a new villain. Fatherhood. Jason Sudeikis returns to voice the famously short-tempered bird, and the idea of Red navigating family life while once again finding himself in the middle of a mission to save the world is the kind of premise that writes its own jokes.

It’s also a smart evolution. The first film was about Red learning to belong. The second was about the flock learning to work with their enemies. A third film about Red learning to be a father completes a genuine character arc, the kind most animated franchises never bother with. When a third installment has something real to say about its lead, it’s usually a sign the filmmakers still care.

The flock expands

The returning cast is the good kind of familiar: Sudeikis, Josh Gad, and Danny McBride are all back, the comic engine that powered the first two films. But the new ensemble is where things get interesting. Emma Myers, Rachel Bloom, Walker Scobell, Marcello Hernández, Tim Robinson, Anna Cathcart, Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, Nikki Glaser, Sam Richardson, James Austin Johnson, Lily James, and Keke Palmer join the flock.

That’s a genuinely exciting mix. Bloom’s musical-comedy brilliance. Hernández’s breakout energy. Robinson’s deadpan chaos. Palmer’s star power. And yes, MrBeast and Salish Matter join the voice cast too, marking a real crossover between YouTube culture and mainstream Hollywood animation. It’s a shrewd move. The kids who grew up watching MrBeast are exactly the audience that will drag their parents to a Christmas animated film, and their parents will recognize every other name on that list.

John Rice directs from a screenplay by Thurop Van Orman, with producers John Cohen, Dan Chuba, Carla Connor, and Namit Malhotra. Rice and Van Orman are animation veterans, and the franchise has always been at its best when it trusted its artists to be funny first and faithful to the game second.

Why the holiday slot matters

Paramount moved the film up from its original January 29, 2027 date to December 23, 2026. That’s not a small adjustment. That’s a studio deciding its animated sequel deserves the holiday corridor, one of the most competitive and lucrative windows of the year. You don’t move a film into Christmas week unless you believe it can hold its own.

The history supports the confidence. The 2016 original, released by Sony Pictures, earned more than $352 million worldwide against a reported $73 million production budget, despite mixed reviews. The 2019 sequel is widely considered the better film. The franchise has a proven audience, a proven formula, and now a proven holiday slot. Christmas week is where family films become traditions, and Paramount is clearly aiming for exactly that.

The holiday season’s family anchor

Look at the December corridor and The Angry Birds Movie 3 stands out as the pure family play. It’s the film parents can take a five-year-old and a fifteen-year-old to and have everyone laughing. The franchise’s secret weapon has always been its layered comedy: slapstick for the kids, sly references for the adults, and just enough heart to make the whole thing stick.

It’s part of a holiday season that’s shaping up to be one of the strongest in years. Our recent coverage of Paramount’s Christmas slate, including the upcoming Ebenezer with Johnny Depp, shows the studio going all-in on holiday moviegoing. And with Warner Bros.’ animated ambitions arriving in November, the family audience will already be in theaters and ready for more.

The verdict: a holiday win in the making

The Angry Birds Movie 3 isn’t trying to reinvent animation. It’s trying to do something harder: deliver a genuinely funny, genuinely warm holiday movie that earns its spot in the Christmas rotation. With Red facing fatherhood, a voice cast that blends comedy royalty with new energy, and a studio confident enough to plant it in the year’s biggest family window, this one looks like a gift.

December 23. The flock is back. Don’t be surprised if this becomes the movie your family quotes all year.

Prince Mario-Max Schaumburg-Lippe: Johnny Depp’s Ebenezer: A Haunted Christmas Coming Nov 13

A Christmas Carol Gets the Horror Treatment It Always Deserved

Some stories are so sturdy they can survive any genre transplant. Dickens knew it when he wrote A Christmas Carol in 1843, and Paramount clearly knows it now. Ebenezer, the new film from Ti West starring Johnny Depp as Scrooge, takes the most re-told redemption story in literature and leans into what most adaptations politely leave on the cutting-room floor: the ghosts are terrifying.

The second trailer dropped October 2, following the first on October 1, and the footage doesn't flinch. This is a proper ghost story. Spectral apparitions drift through candlelit rooms. There's a buried-alive sequence that has no business appearing in anything with "Christmas" in the title, and yet here we are. West, the director behind the X trilogy (X, Pearl, MaXXXine), shoots dread the way other filmmakers shoot dialogue. His signature aesthetic, those long patient takes and analog-era textures, fits a Victorian ghost story like a tailor-made frock coat.

Johnny Depp Returns to the Studio Big Stage

Here's the part everyone will be talking about: this is Depp's first major Hollywood studio film since 2018's Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, and his first big studio lead in eight years. Both trailers lean into the transformation. People and Just Jared both describe him as nearly unrecognizable — salt-and-pepper hair, colored contacts, a full scowl that looks carved out of coal.

The tagline says it cleanly: "The name you know, the story you don't." Scrooge is one of those roles every great actor eventually circles. The miser of the miserable, the man who hates Christmas before it's fashionable. Depp surprised Comic-Con this summer by showing up in full Scrooge costume at a pop-up activation, and per PEOPLE, a source called the project "a very special project for him." Read into that what you like. The trailers do the talking.

The Cast Is Stacked Like a Christmas Feast

This is not a one-man show. The confirmed ensemble reads like an awards-season shortlist:

Ian McKellen plays Jacob Marley, pale and chain-laden, delivering the warning that sets Scrooge's night in motion. If anyone was born to tell Johnny Depp that he is doomed, it's McKellen.

Rupert Grint takes Bob Cratchit, a casting choice that makes immediate sense once you hear it — earnest, warm, overdue for a character with real weight.

The three spirits are split between some of the most interesting actors working: Andrea Riseborough as the Ghost of Christmas Past, Tramell Tillman as the Ghost of Christmas Present, and co-star Daisy Ridley (trade outlets have differed slightly on her exact role, so we'll simply note she co-stars in a major capacity).

Rounding out the company: Sam Claflin as Fred, Arthur Conti as young Ebenezer, Ellie Bamber as Isabel Fezziwig, plus Henry Lloyd-Hughes and Charlie Murphy. Screenplay by Nathaniel Halpern, produced by Emma Watts, with Paramount presenting in association with Domain Entertainment, a Wattsco / IN.2 Films production. It hasn't been rated by the MPA yet, which tells you the studio intends to push the horror as far as it can without losing the family-holiday crowd.

Why This Could Be the Holiday Event

The timing is perfect

November 13 makes Ebenezer the first big holiday-season release, landing a week before the Thanksgiving corridor titles start elbowing for screens. That's a wide-open lane. The film that kicks off Christmas season gets to define it, and the holiday frame is already getting crowded — Christmas celebrations are such an institution that 10 of the best Christmas events in NYC for the 2026 holidays are already being planned. A genuinely scary Christmas movie landing first gives audiences something the season rarely offers: novelty.

Horror is the natural home for this story

Strip away two centuries of cozy adaptations and A Christmas Carol is, structurally, a horror film. A man is visited in the night by the undead, shown his own corpse, and wakes up screaming. The genre shift isn't a gimmick; it's a restoration. Ti West understood that. The trailers keep Dickens' redemption arc intact while treating the ghosts as actual supernatural horrors rather than festive set dressing.

The Depp factor

Eight years is a long time between studio leads. However you frame the intervening years, the industry math is simple: a major movie star in a major genre film at the start of the biggest moviegoing stretch of the year is an event. The unrecognizability of Depp in these trailers suggests he didn't take this as a paycheck role. He took it as a transformation.

What to Watch For

The film's gamble is tone. Horror Christmas is a narrow tightrope — Clayface, DC's horror-tinged arrival this month, proves studios are hungry for genre hybrids, but Christmas has its own rules. Audiences will forgive terror if the ending delivers the uplift. West's X trilogy showed he can make horror with genuine craft and heart underneath the dread. If he threads that needle here, Ebenezer won't just open the holiday season — it might become a permanent part of it.

One more thing worth noting: the Gothic-horror Christmas corner of the calendar has been begging for a flagship title. Every December brings the same comfort-food rotations. A Scrooge who actually scares you before he redeems himself is the kind of bold swing that makes the holiday season feel alive again.

Ebenezer arrives in theaters November 13, 2026. Mark it. This one's going to haunt you — in the best way.

Prince Mario-Max Schaumburg-Lippe: Street Fighter Review: Momoa Leads Epic 2026 Reboot

Round one. Fight.

On October 16, Paramount Pictures brings Street Fighter back to the big screen, and this time the people making it clearly grew up feeding quarters into the arcade cabinet. Directed by Kitao Sakurai, produced by Legendary Entertainment with Capcom, the film is the third live-action take on the fighting game series, and it looks determined to be the first one that feels like the game.

The roster

The cast list reads like someone rage-drafted their dream character select screen. Andrew Koji, the breakout star of Warrior, plays Ryu. Noah Centineo plays Ken Masters. Callina Liang plays Chun-Li, the Interpol agent who recruits the estranged fighters for the next World Warrior Tournament. Around them: Jason Momoa as Blanka, Joe “Roman Reigns” Anoa’i as Akuma, Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson as Balrog, Cody Rhodes as Guile, David Dastmalchian as M. Bison, Orville Peck as Vega, Vidyut Jammwal as Dhalsim, Olivier Richters as Zangief, Hirooki Goto as E. Honda, Mel Jarnson as Cammy, Rayna Vallandingham as Juli, plus Eric Andre, Andrew Schulz, Kyle Mooney and Alexander Volkanovski in supporting roles.

The story is set in 1993, the year Street Fighter II owned every arcade in America. Ryu and Ken, once brothers in training, are pulled back into combat by Chun-Li for a tournament that turns out to be a brutal clash of fists, fate and fury. Behind the spectacle sits a deadly conspiracy tied to their past. If they do not face it, it is game over.

Why this reboot has a real shot

Two things separate this from the 1994 and 2009 attempts, and both are encouraging. First, the director. Sakurai made Bad Trip, the hidden-camera comedy that proved he can stage chaos with a straight face and an athlete’s timing. A Street Fighter movie needs exactly that: total commitment to the absurd, played without a wink.

Second, the fidelity. The teaser that debuted at The Game Awards played like a lineup of statement poses, each fighter introduced the way the arcade game introduced them. One sequence recreates the famous car-smashing bonus round, sedan and all. Another has Rhodes’ Guile hitting Vega with a leaping kick that sends him through a wall. The film leans on music, crowd noise and color-saturated lighting rather than exposition. That is a director who understands the assignment: this is not prestige drama, it is Saturday night.

The 1993 setting is smart too. It lets the film live in the era when these characters were mythology, before irony got its hands on them. And the production has real muscle behind it: Mary Parent producing, Ken Seng shooting, music by Leo Birenberg and Zach Robinson. The film wrapped in Australia late last year, and everything since has suggested confidence.

The tournament movie formula

Tournament movies live or die on casting, and this cast is a fever dream in the best way. Momoa as Blanka is inspired. Roman Reigns has the physical presence to make Akuma terrifying. Dastmalchian, one of the great character actors working, will chew every scene as Bison. And Rhodes and 50 Cent bring the kind of larger-than-life charisma the games always promised.

The risk, of course, is bloat. Seventeen fighters is a lot of screen time to share in 120 minutes. But the premise is built for it: a tournament is a machine for introducing characters fast and making you care faster. Sakurai’s job is to keep the fights legible and the stakes human. If he does, this could be the rare video game movie that plays to the faithful and the curious alike.

What to watch for

Watch the Game Awards teaser again and notice what is not there: no grim origin story, no apology for the source material, no attempt to make this respectable or important. Just ring lights, pyrotechnics and a cast that looks thrilled to be there. Sometimes the best version of a movie is the one that trusts the fun.

Make it a fight night. Stock up on NYC’s best hot chicken beforehand, and if you need something with real heat for the post-movie debate, these spicy tofu spots will do the job. Street Fighter opens October 16. The arena is truly waiting. Hadouken.

Prince Mario-Max Schaumburg-Lippe: Days of Thunder 2: Tom Cruise Back on the Track

Thirty-six years. That’s how long it’s been since Cole Trickle first white-knuckled his way around the track in 1990 — and Tom Cruise is finally coming back. Paramount has officially dated Days of Thunder 2 for June 2, 2028, with Cruise returning as the veteran NASCAR driver and Anne Hathaway co-starring as a talented team owner and engineer. If your pulse quickened reading that, you’re not alone.

The legacy play done right

Hollywood loves a legacy sequel, but it rarely loves them well. This one has a fighting chance because the pieces fit. Cruise described the plot to Entertainment Tonight as “a fun story” — classic Cruise understatement, the same man who called hanging off an airplane “a fun story,” probably. He called Hathaway “talented,” and coming from the hardest-working movie star alive, that lands.

Hathaway told ET she begins “on the track” in March, right after her new film Verity opens October 2, 2026. Read between the lines: real track time, real preparation. This isn’t a green-screen cameo; she’s putting in the work the way Cruise always does.

Why Hathaway changes everything

Here’s the inspired part. Hathaway isn’t playing the love interest or the sideline reporter. She’s a team owner and an engineer working alongside Cruise’s character. That’s a genuinely modern dynamic — brains and grease under the same roof — and it gives the sequel a reason to exist beyond nostalgia. Cole Trickle facing “modern racing challenges” (plot specifics remain unconfirmed, so we’ll leave the inventing to the fan forums) with a brilliant engineer in his corner? That’s a movie.

Director Jonathan Levine (50/50) might seem like a left-field pick until you remember what he does best: heart, humor, and characters you actually care about. A racing movie lives or dies on whether you care who’s in the car. Levine cares about people. Smart hire.

Racing’s moment

There’s never been a better time to make a racing movie. The sport’s cultural footprint has exploded — new fans, packed weekends, and a whole generation discovering the thrill of the track. Cruise, who famously does his own stunts and insists on the real thing wherever cameras allow, is the perfect ambassador for that energy. You can already picture the practical racing footage, the in-car cameras, the sound design that rattles your ribcage. Nobody fakes it like Cruise refuses to fake it.

And Hathaway heading “to the track” in March tells you everything about the production’s ambitions. Real preparation, real locations, real speed. In an age of weightless digital spectacle, there’s something deeply appealing about a movie that plans to make you feel the G-forces.

The Cruise summer-movie machine

Let’s be honest about something: nobody protects the theatrical experience like Tom Cruise. From the Mission: Impossible run to Top Gun: Maverick — the film that basically reminded the world why movie theaters exist — Cruise treats the big screen like sacred ground. Paramount knows it, which is why Days of Thunder 2 is one of their flagship theatrical bets for summer 2028.

And the appetite is real. Motorsport culture is surging right now — from packed grand prix weekends to racing’s growing grip on pop culture — and a Cruise-led return to the track lands right in the slipstream.

What we’d love to see

No spoilers to parse, no leaks to decode — just the good old-fashioned pleasure of anticipation. Will Cole Trickle be the mentor now, the aging lion showing a new generation how it’s done? Will the film reckon with how much racing — and Cruise — has changed in 36 years? The script is by Will Staples, and the only promise so far is Cruise’s own: it’s “a fun story.” Sometimes that’s exactly enough.

Our early verdict

Enthusiastic, with the engine revving. A beloved character, a genuinely exciting co-star in a genuinely exciting role, a director who understands heart, and the most reliable movie star on the planet treating a summer release like it matters. Hollywood’s biggest nights are built on exactly this kind of star power, and June 2, 2028 is officially circled on our calendar.

Prince Mario-Max Schaumburg-Lippe: Heart of the Beast Review: Brad Pitt’s Alaskan Triumph

Every year has one movie that reminds you why theaters exist. In 2026, it’s Heart of the Beast. David Ayer’s survival drama — released September 25 by Paramount — pairs Brad Pitt with a retired combat dog for a 58-mile trek through the Alaskan wilderness, and the result is the most emotionally overwhelming film of the fall. Critics agree: it’s sitting at 87–89% on Rotten Tomatoes, the best-reviewed film of Ayer’s career. Audiences agree harder: 93–96% on the Popcornmeter, with an A- CinemaScore. When was the last time critics and crowds lined up like that? Go see it and you’ll understand.

A Simple Story, Told Perfectly

The setup is clean enough to fit on an index card. Retired Army Special Forces officer James Belmont — played by Pitt — survives a plane crash with his retired combat dog Odin, a German Shepherd played by a dog named Uber. Stranded in Alaska, the two make a brutal 58-mile trek to safety, leaning on their bond and their shared scars.

That’s it. That’s the movie. And it’s everything.

What makes Heart of the Beast soar is its refusal to complicate a perfect premise. Ayer, reuniting with Pitt fourteen years after Fury, directs like a man who finally trusts silence. Long stretches pass with no dialogue — just wind, snow, breath, and two survivors reading each other’s body language. The Alaskan wilderness is photographed with genuine awe, all jagged peaks and merciless white, and the film never lets you forget the scale of what these two are up against. It’s the kind of elemental filmmaking that strips everything down to what matters, the way the best celebrations of craft remind you that tradition and skill beat noise every time.

Pitt, Stripped Down

Brad Pitt has given a lot of great performances, but there’s something different happening here. James Belmont is a man running on fumes — physically wrecked, emotionally guarded, held together by routine and duty. Pitt plays him without vanity and without showboating. It’s all in the eyes and the economy of movement: a soldier who knows exactly how much he has left and spends it carefully.

The critics’ consensus keeps circling the same word: powerful. And the performance earns it honestly. There’s a scene — no spoilers — where Belmont has to decide whether to keep going or lie down in the snow, and Pitt plays the entire decision without a word. You watch a man argue with death and win the argument by refusing to have it. It’s as good as anything he’s ever done.

J.K. Simmons and Anna Lambe round out the human cast with strong supporting turns, but let’s be honest about the billing here.

Odin Is the Star

Every critic says it, every audience member says it, so we’ll say it too: the dog is the real star. Uber, playing the three-legged Odin (reportedly fitted with titanium teeth — this dog has seen things), delivers one of the great animal performances in recent memory. Not cute. Not a trick pony. A working dog doing working-dog things: sensing danger, refusing to quit, checking on his human with a look that will flatten you.

The man-and-dog dynamic is the whole film, and it works because Ayer treats Odin as a full character, not a prop. Odin has his own arc, his own fears, his own courage. The bond between James and Odin — two retirees from the same war, carrying the same scars — gives the trek its meaning. When audiences call this a tearjerker, this is why. Bring tissues. Seriously.

There’s a long, proud tradition of great dog movies, and the best of them understand that the dog isn’t comic relief — the dog is the moral center. Heart of the Beast belongs in that company, and it might be the new high-water mark. It’s a film about loyalty that actually understands loyalty, the kind of sincere emotion that feels genuinely uplifting rather than manufactured.

Ayer’s Best Film

Let’s talk about David Ayer for a moment, because this is a career moment. His previous best-reviewed film was End of Watch at 85%. Heart of the Beast has cleared that with room to spare, across 61 to 140-plus reviews. The man who made his name on gritty LA crime dramas and the tank warfare of Fury has made his most tender film in the coldest place imaginable. There’s something poetic in that.

The craft is undeniable. The cinematography — singled out repeatedly in audience reactions — finds terrible beauty in the whiteout. The pacing trusts the audience. The score knows when to swell and when to get out of the way. At a reported $82 million budget, every dollar is on screen, and the film opened to a solid $19–20 million domestic and $50.1 million worldwide — a strong start for an original adult drama in this market.

The Verdict

Heart of the Beast is the rare film that delivers everything it promises and then quietly gives you more. It’s a survival thriller with the tension of the best of them. It’s a war-aftermath drama with real insight into what service costs. And it’s a dog movie — one of the great ones — that will leave you hugging your own pets a little tighter.

See it on the biggest screen you can find. See it with someone you love. And when Odin does the thing in the third act — you’ll know the thing — try not to cry. Everyone else in the theater will be crying too.

Verdict: a triumph. The best-reviewed film of David Ayer’s career, one of Brad Pitt’s finest performances, and a dog for the ages. Heart of the Beast is essential viewing.