
Dune, The French Dispatch and everything else to watch in theatres and at home this week
CBC
After a year of shuttered theatres and delayed releases due to the pandemic, the box office is poised for a comeback.
Movies like Shang-Chi, Venom: Let There Be Carnage and James Bond's No Time To Die all proved audiences were willing to make their way back to the theatre, though without the same wealth of choice. This week though, the marquee will look more familiar than it has in quite a while.
There are a number of big-ticket movies premiering all on the same day — Friday, Oct. 22 — including some titles moviegoers have been waiting on for years.
CBC News has compiled some of the most notable premieres from that list — as well as a few options for those who would rather stay at home.
Director Wes Anderson's tenth feature, The French Dispatch, has had a long and difficult journey to the screen. Originally scheduled for a July 2020 release, it was first delayed to October of that year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and then pushed back indefinitely.
After a premiere at Cannes in July 2021 — where it received a nine-minute standing ovation — the tale of a fictitious American magazine in a small French town will finally be released to wide audiences on Friday. Like all Anderson films it boasts a star-studded cast, including Bill Murray, Frances McDormand, Owen Wilson, Tilda Swinton, Adrien Brody, Christoph Waltz, Timothée Chalamet and more.
Speaking of Chalamet, he has another film hitting theatres — also with a long and difficult journey to the screen. Denis Villeneuve's Dune was first supposed to hit theatres in December 2020, before being pushed to Oct. 1 the following year, then to its current date of Oct. 22. Then — according to Variety — it was almost pushed to 2022.