Thursday, September 3, 2015
By Jake Coyle
AP Film Writer
NEW YORK
Though the fall movie season is traditionally the time of year when Hollywood gets serious, this fall is stuffed with spectacles.
Alongside the seasonal biopics, true-life tales and period dramas that will surely contend for Oscars, some of the biggest franchises around are set to add a whiff of popcorn to awards season.
James Bond returns in “Spectre” (Nov. 6).
The blockbuster franchises continue as the holidays approach. “The Hunger Games” comes to a close with “Mockingjay, Part 2” (Nov. 20) and a little movie called “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” lands Dec. 18.
Before that, mobster Whitey Bulger and computer visionary Steve Jobs get the Hollywood treatment in “Black Mass” (Sept. 18) and “Steve Jobs” (Oct. 9).
Here’s a monthly rundown of a few highlights coming to theaters through mid-November (the holiday season movie preview will run Nov. 12):
SEPTEMBER
“Sicario” (Sept. 18): Emily Blunt stars in Denis Villeneuve’s grim and muscular drug war thriller on the U.S.-Mexican border.
“Black Mass” (Sept. 18): Johnny Depp takes on the role of Whitey Bulger, the Boston mobster who inspired Jack Nicholson’s gangster in “The Departed,” in an engrossing true-life crime story.
“The Walk” (Sept. 30): The French high-wire artist Philippe Petit, whose walk between the Twin Towers in 1974 inspired the 2008 documentary “Man on Wire,” gets Robert Zemeckis’ 3-D treatment, with Joseph Gordon-Levitt starring.
OCTOBER
“Steve Jobs” (Oct. 9): Danny Boyle directs Aaron Sorkin’s script of the Apple co-founder, played by Michael Fassbender.
“Truth” (Oct. 16): A starry cast of Cate Blanchett and Robert Redford dive back into the CBS News scandal over the network’s report on President George W. Bush’s Vietnam service.
“Bridge of Spies” (Oct. 16): Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks reunite for their fourth film together in a Cold War spy thriller about the negotiated release of a U.S. pilot shot down in the Soviet Union.
NOVEMBER
“Spotlight” (Nov. 6): Thomas McCarthy dramatizes the reporting of the Boston Globe’s “Spotlight” investigative reporting team and their Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the Catholic sex abuse scandal.