At the beginning of the year, The Criterion Collection released their annual megaclue, which sent cinephiles guessing which movies the boutique label would release in customary deluxe fashion in 2015. With illustrations of two suns and one moon featuring prominently, many speculated that the long rumored addition of Richard Linklater‘s trilogy —"Before Sunrise," "Before Sunset," "Before Midnight"— to the collection was on the horizon. According to Ethan Hawke himself, the DVD company is attempting just that.
“Criterion is trying to get the rights to all three,and do a triptych, which is what we want. So hopefully, that’ll be soon,” he told Collider. So perhaps a box set with the three films and a bounty of extras? Yes please! But there are likely tricky rights to work out with respect to the middle film "Before Sunset," which was released by Warner Bros. while the other two were handled by Sony.
Meanwhile, Hawke also revealed recently that he was nearly Marvel‘s man for "Doctor Strange," telling Happy Sad Confused that he came “as close as anybody could” to the role in the film. Working previously with director Scott Derrickson on "Sinister" likely helped those odds, but it sounds like part of the reason Hawke wasn’t quite the right fit was in the extensive duties he’d be required to fulfill off camera.
“There’s a tremendous amount of salesmanship that’s now really important to a studio like that,” he explained. “It’s a tremendous amount of time in your life where you’re working, and you’re not acting.” It’s definitely a big part of the decision process for any actor jumping into the Marvel-verse.
So will we see the ‘Before’ trilogy before the sun sets on 2015? Fingers crossed.