Cruise, Sorkin and a witches’ sequel headline Post’s fall movie list

The latest:

A transformed Tom Cruise, a Facebook whistleblower drama and a long-delayed witches’ sequel anchor The Washington Post’s list of the 10 most anticipated films of the fall. Columnist Michael O’Sullivan framed the season as one of legacy and reckoning, pairing sequels with the awards-season dramas that arrive each autumn. The Post noted opening dates are subject to change.

Details:

• Practical Magic 2: Sandra Bullock, Nicole Kidman, Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest reprise their roles under Danish director Susanne Bier, whose ‘In a Better World’ won the foreign-language film Oscar. Joey King plays a new Owens family member trying to break a curse that dooms men who love Owens women. Sept. 11.
• The Uprising: Paul Greengrass directs Andrew Garfield as an English ploughman leading the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt against teenage King Richard II, played by Woody Norman. Greengrass told People he is not scoring political points but acknowledged contemporary echoes, describing a roiling rage he sees across lands worldwide. Also Sept. 11.
• Knife documentary: Alex Gibney traces Salman Rushdie’s story from the 1988 publication of ‘The Satanic Verses’ and Iran’s supreme leader issuing a death sentence, to the near-fatal 2022 knife attack in Chautauqua, New York. The Post said the Sundance premiere left audiences gasping, and called the film unexpectedly wry and funny. Sept. 17.
• Digger: Alejandro G. Iñárritu directs a darkly comic environmental satire with Cruise as a Texas oil tycoon in thinning white hair, a prosthetic potbelly and false teeth, fixing an ecological catastrophe unleashed by fracking, including a drifting Greenland glacier. Oct. 2.
• Cruise on the role: Cruise told the Hollywood Reporter nothing had challenged him this way before, that neither he nor Iñárritu had faced anything comparable, and called the film totally original. The Post said the trailer is Dr. Strangelove-esque and that Cruise appears to outdo his image-subverting turn in ‘Tropic Thunder.’
• The Social Reckoning: Aaron Sorkin follows 2010’s ‘The Social Network’ with a fact-based drama about leaks exposing real-world harms caused by Meta’s platforms. Mikey Madison plays whistleblower Frances Haugen, Jeremy Allen White plays Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz, and Jeremy Strong plays Mark Zuckerberg. Oct. 9.
• Strong’s approach: Strong, who played Roy Cohn in ‘The Apprentice,’ told the Hollywood Reporter he felt an enormous sense of weight and responsibility, and that his job was to understand and defend Zuckerberg’s point of view, guided by a desire to avoid demonization.
• Sense and Sensibility: Georgia Oakley, whose debut ‘Blue Jean’ was nominated for the outstanding debut prize at the 2023 British Academy Film Awards, adapts Austen with Daisy Edgar-Jones and Esmé Creed-Miles as the Dashwood sisters. Oakley told Vogue she is tired of the fetishization of the period. Oct. 16.
• Klara and the Sun: Taika Waititi and Emmy-winning co-writer Dahvi Waller adapt Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2021 bestseller, with Jenna Ortega as a solar-powered artificial friend built to prevent loneliness for a sick child played by Mia Tharia. Waititi told Vanity Fair the material grew more complicated the deeper he read. Oct. 23.
• Competing Austen slate: The Post placed Oakley’s film within a wave of Austen adaptations that includes Netflix’s upcoming ‘Pride and Prejudice’ and Britbox’s ‘The Other Bennet Sister,’ while noting the 1995 version written by and starring Emma Thompson endures as the definitive screen treatment.

Background:

The original ‘Practical Magic,’ Griffin Dunne’s 1998 adaptation of Alice Hoffman’s novel about lovelorn witches, disappointed at the box office and with critics, then became a Halloween-season staple.

Between the lines:

The list’s through-line is reinterpretation rather than novelty. Three entries revisit material audiences already know — a 1998 flop turned cult favorite, Sorkin’s own Facebook film, and a novel with a definitive 1995 adaptation. Two more turn on actors dismantling their public image: Cruise under prosthetics, Strong defending a figure he says he refuses to demonize.

What’s next

Releases run from Sept. 11 through Oct. 23, opening with ‘Practical Magic 2’ and ‘The Uprising’ the same day. The Post said dates may change, and three of the 10 titles were not detailed in the published excerpt.