New Trailers! Mother Mary, California Schemin’, Shelter & Obsession
🎥 Anne Hathaway spirals into pop-diva madness, James McAvoy directs a hip-hop hoax, Jason Statham goes full protector mode, and viral horror filmmaker Curry Barker spins a new monkey-paw yarn!
🎥 “Mother Mary” Trailer: Anne Hathaway Transforms Into a Mega Pop Diva Spiraling Into a Fashion-Fueled Meltdown in David Lowery’s Genre-Bending Pop Star Thriller with Michaela Coel & Hunter Schafer — Coming Soon 2026
If you were wondering where Anne Hathaway has been these days after having a rather quiet 2025... well, don’t fret. She’s lining up a helluva 2026 comeback, with several major releases on the way, including the highly anticipated The Devil Wears Prada 2 and Christopher Nolan’s much-buzzed-about epic The Odyssey. But for those fans who’ve been waiting for Hathaway to unleash her inner diva and see her play a full-blown mega-pop star in the vein of Lady Gaga or Taylor Swift... well, get ready to be happy. Because Anne Hathaway’s Mother Mary is here! And this diva is dressed to impress — that is, if the dress doesn’t end up stealing the whole show first while also stealing her soul in the process.
In this genre-bending pop-star melodrama-slash-head-scratching fever dream, Hathaway is Mother Mary, a Gaga-meets-Swift megastar who flees her tour mid-meltdown and retreats to the last place anyone would look: a 13th-century barn in rural Germany. That’s where she seeks out Sam Anselm (played by Michaela Coel of I May Destroy You), the estranged best friend and former costume designer she once cut out of her life ten years ago.
Their reunion happens on the eve of Mary’s big comeback pop tour. But instead of a warm hug from her long-lost friend, Mary is met with the emotional equivalent of a sewing needle to the ribs. Mary asks her to create a dress that represents everything she is and wants to be. Sam, meanwhile, crafts an extravagant “hate dress” that has just as much power to dazzle as it does to torment. Which begs the question: does the dress make the woman, or is the woman just whatever the dress chooses to summon out of her?
Part pop-star soap opera, part supernatural exorcism fantasy, this is the latest vision from writer-director David Lowery, the mind behind the critically acclaimed The Green Knight and A Ghost Story. Joining Hathaway and Coel is Hunter Schafer as Sam’s dressmaking assistant, while rounding out the cast are FKA twigs, Kaia Gerber, Atheena Frizzell, Jessica Brown Findlay, and more.
Featuring original songs written by Jack Antonoff and Charli XCX, Hathaway underwent extensive vocal and dance training to pull off her performance sequences. The shoot reportedly stretched to 14 months, and Hathaway has called it her hardest role yet — one that required her to build a character while simultaneously training like a real-life pop star. The result is a psychedelic mind trip that seems to border on the edges of horror and high-gloss pop spectacle. It’s also another example of the boundary-pushing films A24 loves to champion.
Mother Mary is slated for a 2026 release. So prepare to see the rebirth of a material girl whose fashion choices might be the very thing that makes her... or breaks her.
🎥 “California Schemin’” Teaser Trailer: James McAvoy Directs This Stranger-Than-Fiction Hip-Hop Biopic of Scotland’s Fake American Rap Duo Silibil N’ Brains — Opening in the U.K. April 10th
Milli Vanilli is arguably the biggest known hoax in music history. Everyone pretty much knows the scandal of how two German-French dancers, Rob and Fab, faked their way into winning a Grammy in 1990, only to have it all blow up when the truth came out they were lip-syncing to prerecorded tracks sung by uncredited singers. It was a pretty big deal at a time when the music industry, at least back then, still prided itself on authenticity.
Now did you know a similar thing happened again in the early 2000s? This time, it was a rap group in Scotland. And although they sang all their own songs, the question of authenticity still came crashing down when it was revealed their background wasn’t exactly what they claimed it to be. Meet Silibil N’ Brains, perhaps the biggest hoaxers in rap history.
Scottish actor James McAvoy makes his directorial debut by dramatizing this stranger-than-fiction true story about how two Scottish lads, Gavin and Billy Boyd, were able to break through the emerging U.K. rap scene as the rap duo Silibil N’ Brains. Unable to be taken seriously as Scottish rappers, Gavin and Billy decided to tell everyone they were from California, donning flimsy American accents as they toured around Great Britain as the next big rap group from the U.S. To their surprise, it worked. But keeping up the lie quickly became its own full-time performance.
Featuring Samuel Bottomley (Ladhood) and Séamus McLean Ross (Outlander: Blood of My Blood) as the two rapping swindlers, with McAvoy himself co-starring as their mildly unhinged record-label boss, California Schemin’ is based on Gavin Bain’s autobiography Straight Outta Scotland, telling the outrageous true story of how Bain and his best mate Billy dreamed of becoming rappers but were mocked — literally laughed off a London stage — for daring to rhyme with Scottish accents. So they did what any rejected artists with something to prove might do: they reinvented themselves as a pair of supposedly West Coast American MCs. And as a result, they signed a record deal and became a rap sensation for a brief period.
Gavin and Billy Boyd’s incredible life story was previously featured in the 2014 documentary The Great Hip Hop Hoax, and VICE also did a story on them (watch the videos below), but McAvoy’s take seemingly promises something wilder, bigger, and far more musical as he takes audiences on every twist, turn, and chaotic detour of their unbelievable rise.
Also co-starring James Corden, Amber Anderson, Jennifer Winn, and more, California Schemin’ made its world premiere two months ago at TIFF, earning a wave of strong reviews. The film is now set to open in the U.K. on April 10th, though there’s still no official U.S. release date on the books.
🎥 “Shelter” Trailer: Jason Statham Protects a Young Girl (Bodhi Rae Breathnach) From a Kill Squad in Director Ric Roman Waugh’s Brutal Action Thriller with Bill Nighy & Naomi Ackie — Opening in Theaters January 30th
Word to the wise: if you want to eliminate a skilled assassin who has been living off-grid for years, don’t send in a troop... send in a whole army. Especially if that operative happens to look and sound like Jason Statham, whose own gravelly voice could scare a storm back out to sea.
In this new gritty action thriller where the kills come quick and the consequences hit even harder, Jason Statham stars as Michael Mason, a lone elite operative who has been forced into hiding since deciding his days of killing for the government were over. Now holed up and laying low in an abandoned lighthouse off the coast of nowhere-ville, Mason tries to keep his head down and his past buried.
But trouble has a funny way of washing up on his shore. And it comes in two forms: a young innocent girl (newcomer Bodhi Rae Breathnach) who’s been supplying him with a boat of weekly provisions, and the kill squad sent to erase him. Now Mason not only has to defend himself but also his unexpected companion from skilled assassins, setting off a brutal fight for survival that threatens to drag him back into the violent world he thought he’d escaped.
Now tasked with a real mission and a purpose he believes in — to protect this young girl at all cost, Mason digs in, locks on, and unleashes every lethal instinct he swore he’d left behind. And for Statham fans that means he’s about to break plenty of bones, break plenty of rules, and eliminate anyone foolish enough to come within swinging distance. Guns first, apologies never!
Joining Statham in the cast are veteran actor Bill Nighy and Blink Twice’s Naomi Ackie as the film hails from prolific action director Ric Roman Waugh, who already finished the Gerard Butler–starring sequel Greenland 2: Migration, which is also coming out in January.
With Statham also serving as a producer, Shelter is expected to storm into U.S. theaters on January 30th. Consider this your warning: if you mess with Statham, you’d better start running.
🎥 “Obsession” Teaser Trailer: ‘Milk & Serial’ Viral Filmmaker Curry Barker Makes His Feature Debut With a Monkey-Paw Horror Romance Starring Michael Johnston — Hitting Theaters May 15th
They say you can’t make any real money on YouTube. That might be true for most, but 25-year-old YouTuber Curry Barker managed to turn his viral short film Milk & Serial into a whopping multi-million-dollar deal with Focus Features. Sure, his actual YouTube profit wasn’t life-changing, but the online buzz from that short is exactly why Hollywood came calling when it was time to sell his first feature film.
Made for just $1 million, Obsession became one of TIFF’s buzziest Midnight Madness entries when it premiered back in September this year, sparking a bidding war that Focus Features ultimately won for a reported $14 million. It’s a staggering figure for a first-time director working at this scale. And Barker is just getting started, as Blumhouse’s Jason Blum, who executive produces here, has already snapped up the filmmaker’s next two features, which already makes Curry Barker a rising filmmaker to watch.
Supposedly inspired by one of the Halloween episodes of The Simpsons where Bart gets a monkey paw, Barker delivers his own riff on the horror fable, turning it into a twisty horror romance in which winning someone’s heart comes with a very steep price.
In the upcoming thriller, Michael Johnston (from MTV’s Teen Wolf) stars as Bear, a lonely music store employee who ends up buying a supernatural trinket known as the “One Wish Willow” in a desperate attempt to finally win the heart of his childhood crush, Nikki (played by Superman & Lois’s Inde Navarrette). Hoping it would make his lifelong dreams come true, Bear soon realizes love can work in a couple of ways: it can blossom naturally or be foisted on you without warning... and without your permission. And like all Monkey Paw fables, the lesson is that every wish comes with consequences... and every consequence demands a price you never saw coming.
Also co-starring Cooper Tomlinson, Megan Lawless, and Andy Richter, with Curry Barker writing, directing, and also editing himself, Obsession is slated to hit theaters May 15th.