Britt Hayes

Fox Searchlight’s awards season plans for The Birth of a Nation have grown increasingly complicated in recent weeks, as reports surfaced revealing that the director and star of the historical drama has a troubled history of his own. Although details of Nate Parker’s alleged involvement and subsequent acquittal in a 1999 sexual assault was available to the public (it’s on his Wikipedia page) before the studio acquired the rights to distribute the Sundance hit, it was only recently that the case became a point of controversy. Despite all of this, according to Fox Searchlight, their plans to release the film in October have not changed.

To celebrate the release of Suicide Squad — which has its own song courtesy of Skrillex and Rick Ross — we collected 20 of the weirdest, wackiest and most wonderful (but mostly wonderfully terrible) hip hop theme songs in movie history. Our criteria is simple: The song has to be from the film’s official soundtrack (sorry, “Nightmare on My Street”) and must be directly related to the title or the narrative of said film. From Deep Blue Sea to Wild Wild West and (almost) everything in between, this list celebrates some of the best and worst of one of cinema’s most absurd musical devices.

Captain America: Civil War introduced two more Marvel heroes: Tom Holland’s new Spider-Man, and Chadwick Boseman’s Black Panther — both of whom will hit the big screen in their own solo films over the next couple of years. We know a little about Spider-Man: Homecoming, but not very much at all about Black Panther, aside from the fact that it has a great cast and director. And thanks to one of those actors, we now have our first plot details for the upcoming film.

Ask any Dark Tower fan about their hopes for a big screen adaptation, and they’ll all tell you the same thing: “I’ll believe it when I see it.” Even then, most of us refuse to believe it’s actually happening until we’re sitting in a theater and the Dark Tower title card appears on screen. Well, we’re definitely a big step closer to that dream becoming a reality, as new set photos from the Stephen King adaptation reveal Idris Elba in full Gunslinger dress, sandalwood grips and all.

Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon’s Preacher is one of those tricky properties to properly adapt. Remain too faithful and you run the risk of creating a laughably absurd, tonally catastrophic mess. Venture too far away from the source material and you may alienate the very fan base you wish to please. Thankfully, producers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg and showrunner Sam Catlin have hit that rare sweet spot, and though the pilot episode of AMC’s Preacher does recalibrate some of Ennis and Dillon’s basic plotting and setups, the essential spirit and characters of the graphic novel remain delightfully the same.

Dominic Cooper is following up his role as the younger Howard Stark in Marvel’s Agent Carter with two more franchise adaptations this summer. In addition to appearing on the big screen in Duncan Jones’ Warcraft, Cooper stars in Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s Preacher, the new AMC series based on Garth Ennis’ beloved graphic novels. Debuting on May 1, the first episode impressively captures the darkly comedic and devious tone of the comics, leaving us eager to see more. We had a chance to speak with Cooper following the premiere of Preacher at SXSW, where he discussed his part in the risky adaptation and teased some of the crazy stuff we'll see in the episodes and (hopefully) seasons ahead.

Take the comedic talents of Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key, add an intensely adorable kitten, the musical stylings of George Michael, and a riff on John Wick, and you get Keanu — an action comedy that is mostly enjoyable, until it stretches its premise a little too thin and falls victim to the narrative demands of a feature-length film. Perhaps fittingly enough, Key and Peele’s first film outing is at its most lively when the titular kitten is on screen. Remove the kitten from the equation and you have a film that adheres a little too closely to the action flick formula it seeks to emulate, particularly during the lengthy third act.

Okay, the green band trailer for Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key’s Keanu isn’t all that different from the red band version, but are you really going to pretend like you don’t want to watch this trailer again? Key and Peele’s kitten kidnap comedy looks so good that it’s almost unreal — thankfully this movie is very, very real.

Don Cheadle makes his directorial debut with Miles Ahead, a biopic starring the actor as iconic jazz musician Miles Davis, and judging by the first trailer, it appears to be as unconventional as Davis’ own musical stylings. In addition to the release of the full trailer for the upcoming drama, Cheadle opens up about why he chose to make Miles Ahead his directorial debut.

The O.J. Simpson trial was a cultural milestone for an entire generation. Just as our parents and grandparents remember where they were when JFK was assassinated, many of us can recall with distinct clarity where we were when Simpson notoriously fled the police in a white Bronco with a gun to his head. The media coverage was breathlessly sensational, but there is nothing sensationalized about The People v. O.J. Simpson, the flagship season of Ryan Murphy’s American Crime Story, which is undoubtedly the very best thing Murphy has ever produced.