In this era of movies being rushed out of the gate (please see the Snow White movies, “The Hunger Games,” “X-Men: First Class” and “Green Lantern,” among others) to meet a release date, Universal has just dropped info on three titles in their roster and it’s notable because they are far, far in the distant future.
Kicking things off, Oliver Stone‘s thriller “Savages” will hit on September 28, 2012. Based on the best-selling crime novel by Don Winslow with a script by Winslow, Stone and Shane Salerno, the plot follows a pair of Laguna Beach drug dealers forced to work for a Mexican cartel after the girl they share is kidnapped. Aaron Johnson and Taylor Kitsch lead the cast with Blake Lively as the girl, Uma Thurman as her mother, Salma Hayek as the leader of the cartel, Benicio Del Toro as her main enforcer, John Travolta as a burnt-out DEA agent, Demian Bichir as a double-crossing attorney who represents Hayek’s cartel and Emile Hirsch in an unnamed role. Sounds pretty great right? Well, you have to flip a coin that weekend as Rian Johnson‘s “Looper” is also slated.
Next, Joseph Kosinki‘s sci-fi epic “Oblivion” with none other than Tom Cruise leading the way, will land two years from now on July 19, 2013. Based on Kosinski’s own graphic novel with Karl Gajdusek rewriting a script first penned by William Monahan, the story is “set in a future where the Earth’s surface has been irradiated beyond recognition and the remnants of humanity live above the clouds, safe from the brutal alien Scavengers that stalk the ruins. But when surface drone repairman Jak (Cruise) discovers a mysterious woman in a crash-landed pod, it sets off an unstoppable chain of events that will force him to question everything he knows.” The project will come in at a PG-13 rating and will start shooting this fall with a $100 million budget. No other film is yet slated on that weekend and we expect other studios to steer clear.
Finally, last year’s animated hit “Despicable Me” is getting a sequel. No plot details yet but expect plenty of minions in “Despicable Me 2,” which lands on July 3, 2013. [Box Office Mojo]