Terminators, IMF agents and superheroes by the barrel full will blitz the box office this summer in what is sure to be one of the most competitive and entertaining movie bonanzas in recent memory. A lot of other big films were originally tipped for this sunny release window (Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Star Wars: The Force Awakens) but vacated for various reasons, with even films like Warner Bros. Pictures blockbuster Pan exiting the competitive summer fray right before this preview went live.
That’s not to say this slate isn’t still packed to the gills with huge tentpoles the likes of Avengers: Age of Ultron or Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation, long-awaited sequels including Mad Max: Fury Road and Jurassic World, and new, original potential franchises like Pixels or Tomorrowland. With our finger firmly on the pulse of what’s generating serious buzz, we will point out the must-sees as well as the potential sleepers, and give fair warning on a few that might not deliver. Start marking your calendar now because you will need to plan accordingly to get the most from your moviegoing dollar, so squirt on some SPF 100 and let us ease you into the hottest cinema season of 2015!
Check out our 2015 Summer Movie Previews Part 5 below!
Paper Towns (July 24)
Can young adult lightning strike twice? 20th Century Fox hopes to recapture some of that swooning romance The Fault in Our Stars author John Green generated with this adaptation of another of his YA books. Nat Wolff stars as Q, an introverted high school nerd who enjoys a wild night of prankish abandon with dreamgirl Margo Roth Spiegelman (Cara Delevingne) only for her to vanish off the face of the Earth the next day. He follows a trail of breadcrumbs that might lead him to her, adulthood, or both.
Pixels (July 24)
Based on a viral short film, this feature-length fantasy posits that a race of aliens who have studied the 8-bit video games of the ’80s (Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, et al) would use that same iconic imagery as weapons of mass destruction. The President of the United States (Kevin James) has no choice but to call in his childhood best friend/arcade champ Sam Brenner (Adam Sandler) to assemble a team of nerds to defeat the pixelated menace. Michelle Monaghan, Josh Gad and the great Peter Dinklage co-star in what Sony hopes will be a Ghostbusters-ish franchise.
Southpaw (July 24)
Jake Gyllenhaal went through a shocking physical transformation to believably portray a middleweight boxing champion whose life falls apart after a violent tragedy. After everything in his life falls apart, he finds a new mentor in the form of a no-nonsense trainer played by Forest Whitaker, who helps him fight his demons in and out of the ring in order to win back the love of his daughter. Antoine Fuqua (Training Day, The Equalizer) directs what could very well be one of the summer’s true Oscar contenders.
The Gift (July 31)
Blumhouse Productions, the low-budget horror kings behind Insidious and The Purge, deliver a terrifying present in the form of Joel Edgerton playing the friend from hell. His character stalks a former high school buddy and his wife (Jason Bateman and Rebecca Hall) in an escalating cycle… except he might not be the most dangerous person in the situation. Hot character actor Edgerton (Exodus: Gods and Kings, The Great Gatsby) also wrote and directed.
Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation (July 31)
Tom Cruise is back to his old death-defying tricks as he returns once again as superspy Ethan Hunt, this time providing a showstopping set piece in which he actually hung for dear life from an aircraft 5000-feet in the air. Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg and Ving Rhames are also welcomed back into the fold, along with gorgeous newcomer Rebecca Ferguson as they globetrot from Vienna to Morocco to London trying to hunt down an anti-IMF force known as the Syndicate.
Vacation (July 31)
Thought you had seen the last of the Griswold family? Think again. This time Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo take a backseat to Rusty Griswold (Ed Helms), who wants to relive memories of the 1983 classic by driving his own family on a sure-to-be-nightmarish trek across country to the Wally World theme park. Christina Applegate plays his wife Debbie and Leslie Mann is his sister Audrey, while Chris Hemsworth, Charlie Day, Keegan-Michael Key and Regina Hall also come along for the ride.
Check out our 2015 Summer Movie Previews Part 6