Thursday, August 13, 2026

Now Showing: The Midnight Library

 

The Midnight Library
Genre: Fantasy
Director: Michel Gondry
Writer: Meirad Tako
Based on the novel by Matt Haig
Cast: Jessie Buckley, Julie Walters, Daryl McCormack, Ben Whishaw, Jack Lowden, Meirad Tako

Plot: Nineteen years before she decided to die, Nora Seed sat playing chess with Mrs. Elm (Julie Walters) in the Hazeldene School library. ‘You could be anything you want to be, Nora,’ the kind librarian had said, her eyes twinkling. ‘Think of all that possibility’.

Nineteen years later, that possibility felt like a crushing weight. Twenty-seven hours before she decided to die, Nora Seed (Jessie Buckley) sat on her dilapidated sofa, waiting for something to happen. The first domino fell when a man named Ash (Daryl McCormack) rang her doorbell. He was a surgeon she knew from the music shop where she worked, a kind man who had once asked her for coffee. He hadn’t come for coffee. He’d come to tell her that her cat, Voltaire, was lying dead by the side of the road. As she stared at Voltaire’s still expression, an inescapable feeling brewed in the darkness. Envy.

The next day, her boss at String Theory, the musical equipment shop where she’d worked for nearly thirteen years, fired her. ‘I can’t pay you to put off customers with your face looking like a wet weekend,’ Neil told her. Wandering aimlessly through Bedford, the town became a conveyor belt of despair. She ran into Ravi (Meirad Tako), her brother’s best friend and their former bandmate in The Labyrinths. He blamed her for their failure. ‘We could be Coldplay now,’ he spat, before delivering the final blow: ‘I don’t think your problem was stage fright. Or wedding fright. I think your problem was life fright’.

The small pillars of her life crumbled one by one. Her only piano student quit. Her elderly neighbour, Mr. Banerjee, for whom she collected prescriptions, cheerfully informed her he no longer needed her help. She was superfluous to the universe.

That night, she finished a bottle of wine and left a final voicemail for her brother, Joe (Ben Whishaw). ‘I love you,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing you could have done’. She found a pen and paper.

I had all the chances to make something of my life, and I blew every one of them, she wrote.

I have nothing to give. I’m sorry. It was, she decided, a very good time to die.

At first, there was only mist, which slowly cleared to reveal a building with a grand-looking clock, its hands pointing to midnight. Her own watch was frozen. 00:00:00. She stepped inside and found herself not in a building, but a library. Aisles of shelves stretched into infinity, holding books of every shade of green. They had no titles on their spines.

‘Be careful,’ a voice said.

Nora turned to see her old school librarian, Mrs. Elm, looking precisely as she always did in Nora’s mind, right down to the turtle-green polo neck.

‘Am I dead?’ Nora asked.

‘Not exactly,’ Mrs. Elm said. ‘Between life and death there is a library. And within that library, the shelves go on for ever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be if you had made other choices… Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets?’

Mrs. Elm retrieved a single, heavy, grey book from a shelf. The title was embossed in small typeface:

The Book of Regrets. ‘Every regret you have ever had, since the day you were born, is recorded in here,’ Mrs. Elm explained.

Nora opened it and felt the weight of her life crash down upon her. The regrets swarmed, ranging from the minor to the substantial:

I regret not staying in The Labyrinths, because I let down my brother. I regret not going to Australia with Izzy. I regret not becoming a glaciologist. I regret not getting married. The regret of breaking up with Dan (Jack Lowden), the man she’d so nearly married, was particularly strong and bold. The power of all the regrets emanating from the book became an agony, a physical weight that made it hard to breathe.

‘Make it stop!’ she cried.

‘Close the book,’ Mrs. Elm instructed. Nora managed to slam it shut, gasping in relief.

‘Which regret stands out?’ Mrs. Elm asked. ‘Which life would you like to try on?’

Nora thought of Dan and his dream of owning a country pub, a dream that had almost become hers too. ‘I wish I hadn’t left Dan,’ she said. ‘Is there a life where we are still together?lin

‘Of course,’ said Mrs. Elm, handing her a dark green book. Nora opened it and read the first line:

She walked out of the pub into the cool night air….

The text swirled, and the library dissolved. She was standing outside a quaint pub called The Three Horseshoes in the Oxfordshire countryside. It was their dream, made reality. Inside, she found Dan. He looked older, more tired, and the beard was gone. Their conversation was stilted. He was stressed about money, complaining about the wine she’d chosen and the menu. The dream felt strained.

‘Was just turning the chiller units off,’ he said, his voice emptier than she remembered.

The truth unravelled quickly. Dan had been unfaithful. ‘Am I going to be beaten up for ever about one stupid drunken moment?’ he asked.

‘One stupid mistake?’ she echoed.

‘Okay, two’.

This life she had mourned, the one she had beaten herself up for not living, was a prison of its own. He drank heavily, belittled her, and seemed utterly ungrateful for the life she had felt so guilty for not allowing to happen. The disappointment was complete, a cold wave washing over her, and just as suddenly as she had arrived, she was back in the library.

'Well, that was terrible,’ she told Mrs. Elm.

Her next choice was driven by fame. What if she hadn’t quit The Labyrinths? She found herself backstage at a massive stadium in São Paulo, the roar of the crowd a physical force. In this life, she was a global icon with 11.3 million Instagram followers, a lip piercing, and a dramatic white streak in her hair. She had dated and dumped the movie star Ryan Bailey, a man who featured in her root-life fantasies. She felt a surge of power as she sang a Simon & Garfunkel cover to twenty thousand adoring fans.

This, surely, was the life. But in a hotel suite after the show, during a podcast interview, the dark side of this life was revealed. The interviewer, Marcelo, spoke of stalkers, court cases, rehab, and a messy break-up with Ryan Bailey. Then came the question that shattered the illusion.

‘Your brother was such a big part of your life, such a big part of the band…’ he said, his voice full of sympathy.

Was. Such dread in a small word.

‘You know,’ Marcelo said gently, ‘it’s only been two years since his death… his overdose…’

The grand hotel dissolved into nothing. The pain of this loss was more acute than any failure she had felt in her original life. Back in the library, she realized that success wasn't an inoculation against tragedy.

She needed something different. Not fame, not someone else’s dream, but purpose. She remembered wanting to be a glaciologist, a dream born from a National Geographic article and encouraged by Mrs. Elm. She woke on a small boat in the Arctic, the air so cold it burned. Here, she was a scientist researching the impact of climate change.

She met another "slider," a French scientist named Hugo Lefèvre. His gateway was a video store from his childhood in Lyon. ‘The many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics suggests there are an infinite number of divergent parallel universes,’ he explained. They were Schrödinger’s cats, suspended between life and death, able to observe every possibility.

Assigned as the polar bear lookout for a fieldwork team on a tiny, nameless island, Nora stood alone in the vast, white silence. It was here, as a massive white bear emerged from the fog and moved toward her with terrifying grace, that a profound realization hit her. As she frantically banged a ladle against a saucepan, screaming for the library to take her back, another, more powerful truth became astoundingly clear. She didn’t want to die. In the face of death, life seemed overwhelmingly attractive.

The bear slipped back into the water, and Nora was left with the shocking, electrifying knowledge that she wanted to live.

This realization led her to a quieter regret. Ash, the surgeon. The man who found her dead cat. What if she had said yes to that coffee?

She woke in a bed next to him. A small voice from the landing jolted her. ‘Mummy, I had a nightmare’.

In this life, they had a daughter. Molly. They lived in Cambridge, where Ash was a surgeon and Nora, on sabbatical from teaching philosophy at the university, was writing a book on Thoreau. It was a good life, an excess of good. She had a loving husband, a wonderful daughter, a meaningful career, and a healthy relationship with her brother, Joe. This was it. The life she would stay in.

But a day trip back to her hometown of Bedford revealed the subtle, tragic cost of this happiness. She saw her former piano student, Leo, a boy with real talent, being arrested for shoplifting, a knife in his pocket. Without her as his teacher, he’d fallen in with the wrong crowd. Her old neighbour, Mr. Banerjee, was no longer in his house with its beloved garden; he was in a care home, a place he’d been determined to avoid. And the real Mrs. Elm, the one from her root life, had died there three weeks ago.

She had joined this movie halfway through, stepping into a life she hadn’t earned. She was a fraud. As she hugged Molly in their garden, she felt the life slipping away. The perfection was the flaw. It wasn't truly hers.

‘NO!’ she screamed as she found herself back in the Midnight Library. But this time, it was different. The library was coming apart. Dust fell from a fissuring ceiling, books ignited on their shelves, and her watch began to tick forward from midnight.

‘This library isn’t falling down because it wants to kill you,’ Mrs. Elm yelled over the chaos. ‘It’s falling down because it is giving you a chance to return. You have decided you want to be alive. Now go on, live, while you still have the chance’.

The library was a construct of her own mind, a way to process the quantum wave function. Its destruction meant her root life was ending. She was dying. Mrs. Elm pointed her toward the one book that wasn't burning: a blank one. Her root life.

Nora scrambled through the debris, dodging falling chunks of ceiling, and grabbed the book. Taking the fountain pen Mrs. Elm had given her, she uncapped it and, with the whole universe collapsing around her, scribbled three simple words, the one truth she now welcomed with every fiery molecule of her being.

I AM ALIVE.

At one minute and twenty-seven seconds past midnight, Nora Seed marked her emergence back into life by vomiting all over her duvet. Choking, trembling, in pain, it was the worst life could feel, and yet it was life, and that was precisely what she wanted. She staggered to Mr. Banerjee’s door and collapsed on his doormat as he called for an ambulance.

Life begins on the other side of despair. In the hospital, she reconciled with a tearful Joe, who confessed he’d been struggling with alcohol after a bad break-up. Izzy texted to say she was moving back to the UK. The impossible, she supposed, happens via living.

A few days later, she visited Oak Leaf Residential Care Home. Mrs. Elm was frail, her hair white, but her eyes sparkled when Nora produced a chessboard.

‘I’m so pleased you came to see me,’ the old woman said.

‘Well, I have no one to play chess with either,’ Nora smiled.

Mrs. Elm made a move, a bishop sweeping into a strong position. ‘You’re going to win this,’ Nora observed.

A real smile spread across Mrs. Elm’s face. ‘Well, that’s the beauty, isn’t it? You just never know how it ends’.

And Nora smiled as she stared at all the pieces she still had left in play, thinking about her next move.



Wednesday, August 12, 2026

IN DEVELOPMENT

 

The Chain: The final film of Season 36, Fleetwood Mac biopic The Chain from director Charlotte Wells and writer Diane Esposito, has officially rounded out its cast with the additions of Scott MacArthur (The Lone Ranger, Spider-Man vs. The Sinister Six), Holliday Grainger (Lancelot, Captain America), Joe Alwyn (Pocahontas, Paki), and Emile Hirsch (The Lights, Red Riding Blood). MacArthur and Hirsch will play studio engineers, Grainger will play Sara Recor, and Joe Alwyn will play Don Henley of The Eagles.

Pokemon: More classic Pokémon characters are set for the blockbuster film from the Duffer Brothers. Kevin Durand (Boba Fett, ThunderCats) and Oona Chapin (Martian Manhunter, Avatar: Fire and Ash) will play Pokémon Gym leaders Lt. Surge and Erika, Shawn Roberts (Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, XXX: Return of Xander Cage) will play the dragon-type master Lance, Georgia King (Constantine: The Hellblazer, The Lost Husband) will play Nurse Jenny, and David Dastmalchian (Magic, Desert Dreams) has an undisclosed cameo role that is expected to expand over potential sequels. Diane Esposito penned the adaptation of the global phenomenon. 

The Passageway: David Denman (Bigfoot, Ghost Rider: Damnation) and Alice Kremelberg (She Came from the Woods, "The Boroughs") have joined Rami Malek in The Passageway, completing its small ensemble. Sam Esmail is directing the project, while D.K. Moon penned the film based on the Bone Orchard Mythos graphic novel.

Deadline: Mark Duplass (The Hulk 3, Black Dublin), Tim Allen (Kill Zone, "Changing Lanes"), and John Goodman (Broadway Joe, Tomato Can) have all joined the upcoming political thriller Deadline, which depicts two rival news groups trying to beat each other on what could be the story of the century - if only someone could prove it's true. Tony Gilroy is directing the film from a script by Jimmy Ellis and Chad Taylor.

Metroid Prime: After Metroid earned over $350 million at the box office to open Season 33, it was only a matter of time until we saw a sequel. Jennifer Lawrence (Starlight, Metroid) is back to star as Samus Aran. Metroid Prime will see Samus forced to confront her past and destroy a spreading cosmic infection before it escapes into the galaxy. David Tennant (Metroid, Batman Beyond) is also back from the first film as the monstrous Ridley, while Jamie Foxx (Kill Bin Laden, E.P.) as Federation Commander Marcus Nemo. Cary Joji Fukunaga (Metroid, Unkempt Garden) is back to direct the video game adaptation once again from a script by Dawson Edwards (Ilvermorny: The Hidden School, Unkempt Garden).

Below the Surface: Jon Bernthal (Rodeo, Death in the Shadows) is set to headline the intimate drama Below the Surface as a Wyoming miner struggling to raise his daughter after the death of his wife. Brooklynn Prince (ThunderCats, New Christianity) will co-star as Bernthal's daughter in the project. Fran Kranz (Mass) is directing the drama, which was written by Sammy-Jo Ellis (Heartbeat, The House of Black).

PREMIERE MAGAZINE #359

 

Tuesday, August 11, 2026

The Roundup with Jeff Stockton (Season 36 Round 9)

 

This round we got another promising expansion of the Wizarding World, a horror film with a terrific lead pairing that never quite figured itself out, and one of the more frustrating historical dramas of the entire season. Here's The Roundup....


AN UNHOLY UNION
Before I criticize it — and trust me, that's coming — I want to acknowledge what this movie gets right. The concept is excellent. Take isolated horror, mix in psychological obsession, cast Elizabeth Olsen and Aubrey Plaza opposite one another, and you've immediately got my attention. On paper, this sounds like one of the season's strongest pitches.

And for long stretches, the chemistry between Olsen and Plaza justifies that excitement. They're very different screen presences, which is exactly why the pairing works. Olsen brings sincerity and emotional vulnerability, while Plaza's naturally off-kilter energy constantly makes you question her intentions. The movie ultimately doesn't capitalize on that potential.... but the potential was absolutely there.


WIZARDING WORLD
Building a cinematic universe is hard. Building one that audiences actually care about? That's even harder. While Ilvermorny: The Hidden School didn't capture me the way The House of Black did last season, I still came away encouraged by the larger picture. LRF is gradually constructing a version of the Wizarding World that feels willing to explore corners of the mythology we've barely seen before. That's exciting.

Not every entry has to be a home run if the franchise itself continues expanding in interesting directions. Exploring American wizarding culture through Ilvermorny gives the universe a distinctly different flavor without feeling disconnected from what audiences already recognize. Maybe this installment wasn't quite the magical experience I hoped for. The franchise itself still feels like it's heading in the right direction.


BEST ACTRESS
Let's be honest. The Best Actress race this season has been.... underwhelming. There have certainly been good performances, but very few that have felt like undeniable "this actress is winning the Golden Reel" moments. Compared to other years, the field has lacked obvious heavyweights. At least Round 9 gave the category a little life.

Elizabeth Olsen and Aubrey Plaza both receive substantial showcase roles in An Unholy Union, and whether either ultimately gets nominated remains to be seen, but the category desperately needed recognizable contenders entering the conversation. Sometimes awards races aren't defined by one transcendent performance. Sometimes they're simply waiting for enough credible candidates to show up.



BOX OFFICE
Well.... I think we can officially stop talking about the billion-dollar profit milestone. At this point, it would require something bordering on miraculous. Round 9 essentially broke even, which ordinarily wouldn't be disastrous. But Season 36 lost the luxury of "just okay" financial rounds months ago. The early bombs dug such a deep hole that every remaining release almost needs to overperform just to keep pace.

When I look at what's left on the calendar, I don't see the obvious billion-dollar rescue mission. This season isn't collapsing financially. It's just slowly running out of runway.


KILL BIN LADEN
This one frustrates me because I completely understand the movie Alex Conn wanted to make. A procedural thriller. A tense collection of meetings, intelligence briefings, and impossible decisions culminating in one of the defining military operations of the century. That should work.

Instead.... Everything that should've strengthened the concept seemed to weaken it. The historical accuracy often felt.... flexible. The characters rarely behaved like real people wrestling with extraordinary circumstances. Instead, too many of them came across as exaggerated caricatures, almost like political satire that never fully committed to being satire. At times I honestly felt like I was watching an SNL sketch stretched into a feature-length drama. And structurally, the movie never establishes momentum. It bounces from room to room, briefing to briefing, conversation to conversation, without ever generating the mounting tension a story like this desperately needs.


AN UNHOLY UNION
Yes.... It's in both columns. Because this might be the season's greatest example of wasted potential. The cast works. The concept works. The direction is... fine. Not spectacular, not disastrous—perfectly competent. The screenplay is where everything begins falling apart.

Rachel Hallett Hardcastle clearly had an idea she wanted to explore, and I genuinely appreciate the ambition behind it. But somewhere between the premise and the execution, the movie starts spinning its wheels. Scenes begin repeating the same emotional beats, the tension plateaus instead of escalating, and by the time the climax arrives, the film hasn't really delivered on the horror or psychological promises it spent two hours making. The result isn't a bad movie. It's almost worse. It's a movie that constantly reminds you how much better it could've been.

ON LOCATION (SEASON 36 ROUND 9)

 


Kill Bin Laden
- Toronto, Ontario, Canada


Ilvermorny: The Hidden School
- Montreal, Quebec, Canada


An Unholy Union
- Astoria, Oregon, USA

Monday, August 10, 2026

Box Office Breakdown (Season 36 Round 9)

 


AN UNHOLY UNION
Budget: $18,000,000
Total Box Office: $37,350,012
Total Profit: $790,000



An Unholy Union managed to land on the right side of the ledger, but only barely. Its $790,000 profit leaves the horror-thriller about as close to a true break-even result as a film can get, though that tiny victory carries considerably more significance for the writer behind it.

BOX OFFICE FACT
An Unholy Union is the first film from writer Rachel Hallett Hardcastle since Season 20's That Was Then, This Is Now to avoid a loss, ending a streak of seven consecutive box office flops.

GENRE RANKINGS
Horror: #127 
Thriller: #131
Supernatural: #35



KILL BIN LADEN
Budget: $50,000,000
Total Box Office: $56,735,938
Total Profit: -$29,221,700


The political thriller failed to translate its provocative subject matter into enough theatrical interest to justify its cost. The result is especially notable because it continues a surprisingly consistent pattern for writer Alex Conn's recent films centered on real-world political figures.

BOX OFFICE FACT
Writer Alex Conn has now penned four recent films built around real-life political figures — Repeal and Replace, Dean, Mises, and Kill Bin Laden. All four lost substantial amounts of money, combining for more than $131 million in losses, or roughly $32 million per film.

GENRE RANKINGS
Drama: #212
Thriller: #113 
Historical: #51 



ILVERMORNY: THE HIDDEN SCHOOL
Budget: $105,000,000
Total Box Office: $260,440,506
Total Profit: $30,044,424


LRF's second trip into the Wizarding World remained profitable, but the numbers suggest considerably less enthusiasm than greeted the franchise's debut. Ilvermorny: The Hidden School still earned enough to justify its investment, though its performance raises some questions about how much room the series has to expand beyond its initial success.

BOX OFFICE FACT
LRF's Wizarding World took a significant step backward with its second entry. Ilvermorny: The Hidden School suffered a 24% decline in worldwide box office compared with The House of Black — and an even steeper 70% drop in profit.

GENRE RANKINGS
Action: #182 
Adventure: #56 
Fantasy: #60 


Season 36 Round 9 Total Box Office:
$354,526,456

Season 36 Round 9 Total Profit:
$1,612,724

Round 9 finished about as close to neutral as possible. Ilvermorny: The Hidden School supplied just over $30 million in profit, only for nearly all of it to be erased by Kill Bin Laden. An Unholy Union's $790,000 contribution ultimately kept the round from slipping into the red.



Season 36 Total Box Office:
$4,886,846,939

Season 36 Total Profit:
$855,945,264

With only Round 10 remaining, Season 36 enters its finale needing roughly $144 million in additional profit just to reach $1 billion. Even if it gets there, that would still leave the season in decidedly mediocre territory by LRF standards. The top of the slate has produced several major hits, but a deep collection of bombs and disappointments has prevented those successes from translating into a stronger overall financial year.


SEASON 36 BOX OFFICE STANDINGS
1. Boba Fett — $763,673,771 👑
2. Donkey Kong Country — $720,434,668 👑
3. The Hulk 3 — $641,110,407 👑
4. Lobo — $480,893,956 🔥
5. Assassin's Creed: Eternal — $421,105,411 🔥
6. The Song of Roland — $263,839,608 💰
7. Ilvermorny: The Hidden School — $260,440,506 💰
8. Luke Cage: The Purple Man — $249,978,106 💰
9. Stretch Armstrong — $144,189,611 ☠️
10. Buffy the Vampire Slayer 2 — $131,525,669 💰
11. Fletch — $123,159,160 💰
12. Echoes of Red — $82,814,137 💰
13. Double Date — $80,369,160 💰
14. The Bounty Hunter — $80,094,428 ☠️
15. Gray — $62,441,218 💣
16. Kill Bin Laden — $56,735,938 💣
17. Darkness — $43,316,174 💰
18. 1995 — $40,003,252 💰
19. Pirouette — $39,100,555 📉
20. An Unholy Union — $37,350,012 ⚖️
21. Three Rounds — $34,386,590 💣
22. The Quiet Between Us — $26,319,562 📉
23. Heartbeat — $25,404,407 💣
24. Fading Star — $23,730,087 💣
25. Voice — $23,437,788 💣
26. Diary of a Wimpy Kid — $18,000,669 💣
27. 1016 West Monroe — $12,992,089 💣

LRF TRIVIA TIDBITS (SEASON 36 ROUND 9)

 

Round 9 of Season 36 puts the spotlight on some familiar LRF patterns: heavily relied-upon stars, writers carving out distinct niches, and creators who keep returning to adaptation as their preferred playground.


AN UNHOLY UNION
An Unholy Union brings together two of LRF’s most frequently cast leading ladies in Aubrey Plaza and Elizabeth Olsen. Between them, the pair have now appeared in a combined 22 films for the studio, making this horror-thriller something of a showcase for two of LRF’s most dependable recurring stars.


KILL BIN LADEN
Writer Alex Conn appears to be making a serious run at Lon Charles’ unofficial “Fact to Film” territory. Kill Bin Laden marks Conn’s 14th LRF screenplay based on a true story, further cementing real-world events and historical figures as one of the most recognizable recurring threads in his filmography.


ILVERMORNY: THE HIDDEN SCHOOL
Ilvermorny: The Hidden School is already Dawson Edwards’ 11th film for LRF despite the writer having joined the studio just four seasons ago. Even more strikingly, it is his seventh adaptation, revealing a clear early-career preference for taking established properties and reshaping them into LRF projects.