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Emma Thompson and Dakota Fanning in Effie
Based on a real-life Victorian-era scandal, this period drama (now shooting in Venice and set for a June 2013 release) stars Dakota Fanning as Euphemia ''Effie'' Gray, a teen who fights to escape a loveless marriage to celebrated art critic John Ruskin (Greg Wise). Emma Thompson — who plays Effie's confidante, Lady Eastlake, and wrote the script — says the story highlights ''part of the submerged history of women: very, very famous men who are absolutely vile to their wives.''
Wahlberg Leads Broken City
In the thriller Broken City, opening Jan. 18, Mark Wahlberg plays New York cop-turned-PI Billy Taggart. The Book of Eli helmer Allen Hughes directed the film, which Wahlberg says ''has elements of great movies I grew up loving, like Chinatown: really strong characters, plot points you didn't see coming.''
Zeta-Jones and Crowe Are Politically Incorrect in Broken City
In City, Mayor Nicholas Hostetler (Russell Crowe) hires Taggart to find out if his wife (Catherine Zeta-Jones) is having an affair. In the course of the investigation, Taggart begins to uncover hidden corruption and decides to try to take the mayor down. Wahlberg also served as producer on the film. ''It's a rare thing in this day. [Studios] don't mind spending [$250] million to make The Lone Ranger, but they're hard-pressed to spend $60 or $70 million to make an adult movie,'' he says. ''But I think there's definitely still an audience for a smart adult movie.''
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Jessica Chastain Cry Mama
Game of Thrones star Nikolaj Coster-Waldau made his breakthrough with the 1995 Danish thriller Nightwatch, but that doesn't mean he's an expert horror-movie viewer. ''As soon as the scary music starts, I start hiding [with] my hands in front of my eyes,'' he says. Still, he managed to survive filming the ghost flick Mama (out Jan. 18), in which he and The Help's Jessica Chastain play a couple who take in his two nieces, who are found five years after disappearing on the day of their mother's murder. As for what's threatening the foursome in this photo, he'll reveal only, ''It has something to do with the title of the movie. There is something there that is very menacing.'
The Croods Goes Lowbrow (Literally)
DreamWorks Animation's caveman saga, The Croods (out March 22), is set in a fictional prehistoric era, with Clark Duke, Cloris Leachman, Catherine Keener, Emma Stone, and Nicolas Cage voicing a not–quite–Homo sapiens clan. ''Physically they're very capable, but mentally we have a lot of beginner minds,'' jokes Chris Sanders (How to Train Your Dragon), who directed with Kirk DeMicco (Space Chimps). After continental drift tears the world apart, the Croods must wander across such landscapes as the floor of a now-empty ocean. ''This is the world's first family road trip,'' DeMicco says.
Chloë Grace Moretz in the Remake of Carrie
Carrie White in her prom dress, streaked with blood: It's one of those indelible cinematic images that are harder to scrub from your mind than, well, blood from a prom dress. Sissy Spacek played the bullied telekinetic schoolgirl in the 1976 film adaptation of Stephen King's debut novel, but in director Kimberly Peirce's modernized, more character-focused remake — which opens March 13, 2013 — the role belongs to Chloë Grace Moretz. The young actress has previously played girls dangerous beyond their years in films like Kick-Ass and Let Me In, but never one as tragic as Carrie, whose tormentors include a religious mother (Julianne Moore) and the cruel high schoolers who douse her in blood. ''We only have, like, four chances to get it right,'' Moretz says of the infamous scene. ''Because that stuff stains your hair.''
Mother Mayhem in Carrie
Though Carrie's mother is a vicious, fire-and-brimstone tyrant who uses her own Christianity as a cross and abuses her daughter in the name of the Lord, Moore hopes that her portrayal of Margaret White will still manage to hold a few grains of humanity. ''This woman has clearly had a psychotic break, perhaps several,'' says Moore. ''But what's sad about it for me is that she's clearly sick and here's this poor child in the thrall of this person who is seriously ill. And on top of that, they have this mother-daughter relationship. So we want to make that relationship as meaningful as possible, even though it is horrible and destructive.''
Toy Story Makes a Splash with Partysaurus Rex
In Pixar's new animated short Partysaurus Rex (to be shown before Finding Nemo 3D starting Sept. 14), bath time is when everyone's favorite nervous-Nellie plastic dinosaur finally gets down and dirty. ''He's sick of being the angel of goodness and sensibleness and caution and fear. He wants to stand on the side of pleasure and happiness and joy,'' says Wallace Shawn, Rex's longtime voice. ''I live this drama every day of my life!'' The short is the third in Pixar's series of Toy Story Toons, which chronicle life for Woody, Buzz, and the gang in the care of new owner Bonnie (seen at the end of Toy Story 3). In this one, Rex gets drafted for bath-time duty and encounters a sad lot of rub-a-dub-dub cohorts. ''If you're a bath toy, when the water goes down you can't move. You're helpless,'' says Mark Walsh, the directing animator on Finding Nemo. Rex tries to remedy this by using his tiny arms to turn on the faucet, triggering a bubble-filled rave set to tunes by Grammy-nominated electronica musician BT, with glow-in-the-dark toys making dance lights under — what else? — a colander.
Bridesmaids' Lovable Cop in 3, 2, 1.. Frankie Go Boom
A bad boy lurks inside Chris O'Dowd. Or so the Bridesmaids and Friends With Kids star claims. Although his character on HBO's Girls toys with despicability, O'Dowd says he wanted to really channel ''the more douche side of myself'' to portray Bruce, a recovering drug addict, in 3, 2, 1...Frankie Go Boom (out Oct. 12). ''I've been playing so many nice guys that I was ready to boil over inside,'' he says. Bruce takes steps toward recovery, but his main addiction ''is attention seeking,'' O'Dowd explains. This impulse leads him to surreptitiously tape a, ahem, mature video of his brother (Charlie Hunnam) that shakes up their relationship by going viral. From there, O'Dowd says, the film plays like a ''modern take on French farce.''
A Castle Star Goes Punk for CBGB
Sporting a voluminous late-'70s hairdo, edgy makeup, a ''badass'' attitude, and no bra, Castle's Stana Katic says she was excited to channel her inner punk rocker for her role as musician-producer Genya Ravan in CBGB, a movie (out next year) about the legendary New York City club of the same name. (Alan Rickman stars as club owner Hilly Kristal.) The gritty role was a welcome departure from Det. Kate Beckett, Katic says. ''[Genya] doesn't care about laws. She doesn't care about anything but rock & roll.''
Amy Adams and Clint Eastwood in Trouble With the Curve
For nearly two decades, Clint Eastwood has acted for only one director — himself. But when his longtime cinematic sidekick Rob Lorenz took the helm of the family baseball drama Trouble With the Curve (out Sept. 28), the iconic actor found himself in front of the camera for the first time since 2008's Gran Torino. Eastwood plays Gus, an Atlanta Braves scout with secret vision problems whose daughter, Mickey (Amy Adams), reluctantly agrees to be his eyes. ''He gets his chance to prove whether he still has value as a scout — and as a dad,'' says Lorenz, who has worked as a producer or assistant director on Eastwood's films since 1995. Justin Timberlake costars as fellow scout Johnny. ''They're friendly,'' Lorenz says. ''When Johnny was a ballplayer, Gus scouted him.'' But when Johnny develops eyes for Mickey, you can just imagine the older fellow narrowing his a little.
Tom Hanks and Halle Berry Open Cloud Atlas
Andy and Lana Wachowski (the Matrix trilogy) and Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run) co-wrote and codirected this adaptation of David Mitchell's 2004 novel (out Oct. 26). As if that weren't complicated enough, each cast member plays multiple roles in the film's kaleidoscopic tale, which includes a sci-fi story of a man (Tom Hanks) who meets an emissary from an advanced civilization (Halle Berry). ''We thought about these individual characters as aspects of larger characters,'' Lana Wachowski says. ''Their lives are interwoven over one big story that takes place over a thousand years.''
All the News That's Fit to Apprentice in Cloud Atlas
Atlas also spins a darkly comic yarn about a composer (Jim Broadbent, left) and his apprentice (Ben Whishaw).
Emmy Rossum's Wicked Ways in Beautiful Creatures
Most teenagers spend their sweet 16 grumbling over having to drive Dad's old minivan or wondering how best to ask Mom for a new pair of skinny jeans. But for Lena (Alice Englert), the young witch at the center of the upcoming YA adaptation Beautiful Creatures, turning 16 means determining whether she's going to be a good or evil sorceress (or ''caster,'' as they're called in this universe). Shameless' Emmy Rossum stars as Lena's supernaturally manipulative cousin Ridley, who's sent by Lena's own mother (Emma Thompson) to make sure the teen doesn't opt for good. ''She and Lena were almost sisters before she was claimed by the Dark,'' explains director Richard LaGravenese, ''so she wants Lena to be claimed so they can be together again.'' For her part, Rossum loved getting to play devious. ''We get to show the dark side as kind of more fun than the light,'' says the actress, who just finished shooting the film, due out Feb. 13, in New Orleans. ''Who wouldn't want to be an evil witch?''
Gerard Butler Hangs Ten in Chasing Mavericks
Scottish actor Gerard Butler (left) had surfed only a few times before taking on the role of Frosty Hesson, the mentor of the late surfing legend Jay Moriarity (Jonny Weston, right), in the biopic Chasing Mavericks, opening Oct. 26. But he quickly learned to respect the notoriously perilous Northern California surfing spot known as Mavericks after a terrifying wipeout during shooting landed him in the hospital. ''[The waves] just took me and didn't let me back up for a long time,'' Butler says. ''It started to feel like I was never coming up. I feel like I earned my surfer stripes on that day.''
Tom Cruise Is Jack Reacher
A wise man once sang, ''When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose,'' and that about sums up Tom Cruise's title character in the crime thriller Jack Reacher (out Dec. 21). In the scene above, the military policeman-turned-vigilante drifter is attempting to escape from the police — who wrongfully suspect him of murder — by slipping out of a still-moving 1970 Chevelle while the cops continue to chase the car. ''Tom often plays characters who are under extreme pressure, but in Reacher he plays someone who does not experience pressure,'' explains screenwriter-director Christopher McQuarrie. Still, Reacher is a man haunted by his years investigating soldiers who went lethally astray, and in the film (adapted from Lee Child's best-selling novel One Shot) he's drawn into the case of an unseen sniper who randomly targets civilians. ''[Reacher's] very solitary, but he can't walk away from a situation that needs to be made right,'' McQuarrie says. ''That's his Achilles' heel.'' Given this guy's ruthless combat skills, we're thinking it would probably be a mistake to underestimate that heel.
With Paperman, Disney Goes Back to the Future
In the romantic animated short Paperman (debuting Nov. 2 with Wreck-It Ralph), an office worker tries to get the attention of the woman of his dreams by sailing paper airplanes from his skyscraper to hers. His strategy involves folding a 2-D piece of paper into a 3-D shape to make an emotional connection—which is also a good way of describing how Walt Disney Animation Studios used new in-house technology called Meander to make the movie. Meander allows 2-D hand-drawn artwork to ''stick'' to a dimensional CG layer underneath, which results in a world that appears to be sculpted out of sketches. ''Drawing can have a really powerful, visceral effect on the viewer. You can create anger and surprise or anguish with just a few lines of a pencil,'' says director John Kahrs (an animator on The Incredibles and Tangled). ''But for 2-D to be revitalized, you have to figure out a way to make it new again.''
A lifeless office — brought to life in Paperman
Paperman is set back in a more analog time, roughly the middle of the last century. That stack of forms on his desk supplies the raw material he needs to fire airplane after airplane to the building next door. (E-mail just wouldn't be the same.) While the story is tinged with nostalgia, the film is trying to stretch the limits of what old-time animation can accomplish. ''As exciting a time that we live in right now, with so many CG features being done, that kind of stylized photo-realism can't be the only way that animation can look,'' says Kahrs. ''And I also think it's okay to push on 2-D. The time has come to see what the future can be for that, too.''
Guillermo del Toro Builds a New Pinocchio
The visionary filmmaker, currently at work on his sci-fi monster epic Pacific Rim, is already heading into preproduction on his next directing gig: a 3-D stop-motion version of Pinocchio, which he plans to start shooting in the summer of 2013. Judging by the project's concept art — which shows Pinocchio heading for a dip in the sea with one of puppet-theater owner Mangiafoco's monkeys — the Jim Henson Company-produced movie will have a very different look from the Disney interpretation. ''If I thought it would be similar I would be very afraid,'' says del Toro, who is co-directing the film with Fantastic Mr. Fox animation director Mark Gustafson. ''You cannot top Disney.''
Master at Work in Pinocchio
Wood carver Geppetto sculpting his wooden ''son,'' as imagined for Guillermo del Toro's 3-D stop-motion version of Pinocchio.
Steel Magnolias Blooms Again
When Steel Magnolias premiered in 1989, it was one of Queen Latifah's favorite movies. ''It was just this group of Southern women, living their lives,'' she recalls. ''It felt very real.'' It was also a film about loving your community. So when Lifetime decided to do an all-African-American remake, it made sense to her. ''It's a story anyone can relate to.''
The Ladies of the South in Steel Magnolias
This fall, Queen Latifah will take on Sally Field's role as M'Lynn, joining Jill Scott as Truvy (Dolly Parton's role), Alfre Woodard as Ouiser (Shirley MacLaine's role), Phylicia Rashad as Clairee (Olympia Dukakis' role), and Rashad's daughter, Condola, as Shelby (Julia Roberts' role). On set, Latifah says, Rashad and Woodard were the resident comedians. ''Phylicia and Alfre are funny, funny people,'' she says, laughing. ''They should do a buddy-cop movie.''
Emma Watson Joins The Bling Ring
To prepare for writer-director Sofia Coppola's drama (release date TBD) about the real-life, fame-obsessed thieves who allegedly stole from the homes of celebs like Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, and The Hills' Audrina Patridge, Emma Watson (center) turned to the best resource imaginable. ''I just watched a ton of reality TV,'' she says. ''I was doing an English course. So I would go from reading Virginia Woolf to [watching] Kim Kardashian. I kind of loved it, this mix of super-high and super-low culture. I think it was a nice balance.''
Spacey for President in House of Cards
Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright star as a ruthless politician and his ambitious wife in Netflix's next big streaming event, David Fincher's reboot of House of Cards, the revered 1990 BBC drama about a backstabbing British MP. ''The original was about a wily, murderous politician worming his way to becoming prime minister,'' Spacey says. ''This is about a wily, murderous politician worming his way to the White House.'' The series won't be streaming till sometime in 2013, but ''it ain't your daddy's West Wing,'' Spacey says.
Neeson's Back for Taken 2
Liam Neeson returns as Bryan Mills, the CIA agent who boasts of having ''a very particular set of skills'' for hunting down bad guys. But in the sequel (out Oct. 5), he's the one under the gun. ''I took out a lot of Albanian guys, smugglers, and sex traffickers [in the first film],'' Neeson says. ''So now it's their uncles, brothers, fathers who have motive to find [me], come hell or high water.'' Their goal is to torture and humiliate Mills before bringing him back for execution. As you can tell from this picture, he doesn't go easily.
Justin Long and Evan Rachel Wood in A Case of You
Call it Match-dot-comedy: in A Case of You, Long (right) plays a writer who tries to woo a woman (Wood, left) online by embellishing his profile. Long not only stars in the film (release date to be determined), he also co-wrote the script — along with his brother Christian and pal Keir O'Donnell — while recovering from a breakup. ''We wanted to write a romantic comedy that felt true to the things we were dealing with,'' he says. The title was inspired by the Joni Mitchell song of the same name, off an album Long says he and his co-writers spent a lot of time listening to. ''That should give you an indication of all the raging testosterone that was happening.''
Wes Bentley Retreats for 3 Nights in the Desert
In the indie 3 Nights in the Desert (release date to be determined), Bentley (American Beauty) plays an unhinged musician named Travis. ''He's a very brash, in-your-face rock guy,'' says Bentley, right, whose character was inspired by Jack White. Tensions flare when Travis reunites for a weekend with his former bandmates, played by Amber Tamblyn and Vincent Piazza (left). ''At times it feels like they're rebonding. At times you think they're going to kill each other.'' Sounds like a Van Halen reunion tour.
Greg Kinnear and Jennifer Connelly Are Writers
''It's the great nostalgic vision of the writer,'' says Kinnear (left), who stars in the dramedy Writers (release date to be dtermined) as a novelist with a complicated family life, including an ex-wife (Jennifer Connelly, right) and a daughter (Lily Collins) whose book has just been accepted for publication. ''He lives in a gorgeous beach house; he smokes, drinks, and has faraway looks.'' Writers is written and directed by Josh Boone, making his feature film directing debut, and is produced by Judy Cairo of Informant Media. Kinnear also stars in the upcoming film The English Teacher. He jokes, ''People will look back and say, 'This is Kinnear's literary period.' ''
Jennifer Lawrence Moves In to The House at the End of the Street
The Hunger Games' Jennifer Lawrence stars in The House at the End of the Street (out Sept. 21) as the new neighbor of a guy (Jumper's Max Theriot) who lives in the house where his parents were slain. Inevitably, he falls for her. ''The murder was committed by his sister, and there's a rumor she lives in the woods,'' says director Mark Tonderai (Hush). Of course, she's watching—and not happy.
Journey to The Europa Report
Which is tougher for an actor: portraying a man turning into an alien, or pretending you're weightless when you're wearing a heavy astronaut suit? The latter, according to Sharlto Copley, who morphed into an alien in District 9 and dons an astronaut helmet in The Europa Report (due later this year). ''You're playing weightless, but we have very heavy space suits,'' says the South African actor from the Brooklyn set of the just-wrapped movie. ''It's probably the most challenging thing I've had to do.'' The sci-fi film, which also stars Swedish actor Michael Nyqvist (the original Girl With the Dragon Tattoo) and Romanian actress Anamaria Marinca, follows six astronauts as they venture to Jupiter's fourth moon. Copley says the inter¬national cast was ''one of the reasons I wanted to do it — just the idea of working with people from all over, which is very much what space exploration is becoming.''
Meet the Seven Psychopaths
Sam Rockwell (right) is a struggling actor who steals dogs for quick cash, to the chagrin of his screenwriter pal (Colin Farrell, above left). ''It's kind of a cruel thing,'' says Martin McDonagh (In Bruges), the writer-director of Seven Psychopaths (out fall 2012). ''But they take care of the dogs, and give them back promptly, and they don't charge a lot."
It's a Dog Eat Dog World in Seven Psychopaths
How kind the dognappers are doesn't really matter, though, when Bonny, a shih tzu that's the best friend of a ruthless Mob boss (Woody Harrelson, right), is swiped. This time, he intends to make the pair pay the price.
7500 Flies the Unfriendly Skies
The scariest thing about airline thriller 7500 (out 2013) isn't the lack of legroom. True Blood's Ryan Kwanten (center) and Shameless' Amy Smart (left) play a married couple on an L.A.-to-Tokyo flight that is menaced by malevolent forces. Also on board: Jerry Ferrara (Entourage, third from right) and Nicky Whelan (Scrubs, right). ''It's a haunted-house movie on an airplane,'' Kwanten says. ''The passengers must choose to [either] band together or become loose cannons and start looking out for themselves. It's a survival-of-the-fittest-type thing.''
Sean Penn and Josh Brolin Pull Out the Big Guns in The Gangster Squad
Ruben Fleischer, director of comedies Zombieland and 30 Minutes or Less, takes a serious turn with the action-driven movie The Gangster Squad, due in theaters next January. The film stars Sean Penn (left) as 1940s Mob kingpin Mickey Cohen, with Josh Brolin (right) and Ryan Gosling playing L.A. cops bent on bringing him down. ''It's very macho,'' Fleischer says. ''With guys like Sean and Josh on set, there's a lot of testosterone. It's the antithesis of 30 Minutes stars Aziz (Ansari) and Jesse (Eisenberg).''
Matthew McConaughey Is a Man Named Mud
Two 14-year-old river rats, Ellis (Tye Sheridan) and Neckbone (newcomer Jacob Lofland), discover a man named Mud (Matthew McConaughey) hiding out on an island in the middle of the Mississippi River in the coming-of-age drama Mud (no release date set). ''He tells the boys that he killed a man in Texas, and he's there waiting for his girlfriend [played by Reese Witherspoon] to show up,'' explains director Jeff Nichols (Take Shelter). The boys, inspired by Mud's feelings for his lady, decide to help them reunite. Ah, fugitive love.
Sienna Miller Goes Belly-Up in Just Like a Woman
The actress dons a brunet wig (and some sparkly tassels) for Just Like a Woman (release date to be determined), in which her character ditches her husband to join the world of competitive belly dancing. ''The story [follows] her and a Muslim woman who also leaves a bad marriage, and they dance their way across America,'' says Miller. ''It's a bit like Thelma & Louise.'' After three months of training, she has become at least somewhat proficient. ''I can semi–belly dance now. Just in case everything doesn't go as planned with this acting thing!'
Chris Colfer Is Struck by Lightning
The Glee star, who's just 21 years old, wrote the script for and stars in this dark comedy (release date TBD) about teenager Carson Phillips, whose titular encounter with electricity is anything but positive. ''My character dies on page 1,'' explains Colfer, seen here with Allison Janney, who plays his mother. ''He gets struck by a bolt of lightning and is killed. Then we journey to my funeral, and then everything else is a flashback to his last year in high school.'' As for whether Carson bears a resemblance to Colfer's TV persona, Kurt? ''Well, they look alike,'' jokes Colfer.
A Truly Badass Comedy in Knights of Badassdom
If scientists distilled ''geek'' into reels of film, the result might be Knights of Badassdom, an indie comedy-fantasy film about Dungeons & Dragons-style role-play aficionados who accidentally awaken a real hell-demon. ''This was completely made with the Comic-Con crowd in mind,'' says director Joe Lynch, who'll be promoting the film at the annual San Diego gathering. The cast is sure to get the fanboy seal of approval, thanks to starring turns by (from left) Summer Glau (Firefly), Ryan Kwanten (True Blood), Steve Zahn (Joy Ride), and Peter Dinklage (Game of Thrones). Lynch adds, ''You can't embrace something like [Comic-Con] without being a little satirical.''
A two-handed attack in Knights of Badassdom
Peter Dinklage gets all medieval on Ryan Kwanten in Knights of Badassdom.
Jack the Tripper in Big Sur
There's more to Jack Kerouac than On the Road. And it's on display in Big Sur, a film adaptation (out next year) of his semiautobiographical 1962 novel. ''People think the Beats were just a bunch of alcoholics,'' says Jean-Marc Barr (near left), who plays the '60s icon opposite Josh Lucas as pal Neal Cassady. (That's the real-life Cassady and Kerouac, insert.) ''But they questioned the values of America, much like people do now.''
Aaron Eckhart gets scarred in The Expatriate
Eckhart trained for four months in jujitsu and mixed martial arts to prepare for his role as an on-the-run ex–CIA agent in the international thriller (release date TBD). ''I learned a lot about self-reliance, street fighting, how to get out of a knife fight, stuff like that,'' says Eckhart (The Dark Knight). Has any of it come in handy off screen? ''Not yet,'' he laughs. ''But I tell you, it gives you a certain confidence.''
Eric Bana and Olivia Wilde star in Deadfall
The tense drama (expected next year) features Bana and Wilde as a brother-and-sister team of thieves who get lost in the woods of northern Michigan after a violent heist. Along the way, they take up with a quiet family (including Sons of Anarchy's Charlie Hunnam) — and things quickly veer off course.
Wilde on brotherly love in Deadfall
''I love the tension [between siblings],'' says Wilde. ''It's an abusive relationship, emotionally, and my character has a bit of a Stockholm syndrome that keeps her as her brother's prisoner.'' But in this story, the picked-on little sis may strike back.
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