Scream, Morbius, and some kid-friendly monsters kick 2022 off on a spooky note

Kaya Scodelario just can’t stay away from creatures. But after fighting giant alligators in and zombies in the most recent, she’s taking a friendlier approach in The King’s Daughter, wherein she befriends a mermaid, Aquamarine-style. This friendship is complicated by Scodelario’s character being the illegitimate daughter of King Louis XIV (Pierce Brosnan!), who wants to steal the mermaid’s lifeforce. It all looks a bit softer than the bonkers fantasy that its premise describes; director Sean McNamara does have kid-friendly creature experience, having worked on direct-to-video projects featuring aliens, Casper The Friendly Ghost, and the Baby Geniuses. He must be a nurturing and patient parent: The King’s Daughter was completed in 2014, which means in 2022 it will either be released in theaters or enter the third grade.

Credit due to the faith-based-cinema industrial complex: It’s mixing things up a bit with the awkwardly titled Redeeming Love, a Western romance set during the California Gold Rush of 1850. Angel (Abigail Cowen) has been sold into prostitution as a child, and grows understandably bitter until she finds the, yes, redeeming love of Michael Hosea (Tom Lewis) in this retelling of the Biblical story of Gomer and Hosea. It’s adapted from a 1991 novel; original author Francine Rivers co-wrote the screenplay with director DJ Caruso–making something of a left turn (or is it a hard right?) from his last, movie.

Having famously escaped the source-material indignity of having his nose chopped off on , Peter Dinklage now plays a Cyrano de Bergerac whose schnoz isn’t gigantic. That’s not the only way Joe Wright’s Cyrano deviates from the classic Edmond Rostand play. This version is also a musical, adapted by Erica Schmidt from her own 2018 stage show and featuring songs by Aaron and Bryce Dessner from The National. Our reviewer, who during its brief qualifying run a couple weeks ago, praised Dinklage’s acting but was less enamored with his singing. As he put it: “A musical with numbers written by The National was a terrific idea, and so was Dinklage as Cyrano. Just not at the same time.”

Finnish filmmaker Juho Kuosmanen launched his career with a low-key subversion of the underdog sports biopic, the immensely charming . For his sophomore effort, the writer-director essentially offers a very naturalistic take on an opposites-attract romantic comedy, following a Finnish graduate student (Seidi Haarla) who ends up warming to the boorish Russian knucklehead (Yuriy Borisov) she gets stuck rooming with on a long train ride. Our correspondent at this fall’s Toronto International Film Festival was a fan of Compartment No. 6, writing: “In some sense, the film almost collapses the arc of into a single trip, wondering what might have happened if that film’s initially testy rapport had blossomed into attraction over the course of its long, opening car ride, instead of over a matter of years.”

Not included among the plethora of dimensionally displaced supervillains in this month’s was classic Spidey foe Morbius. The Living Vampire will instead make his big-screen debut in this several-times-delayed solo vehicle that seems to take place, like the , in the Sony cinematic universe… though the trailer also includes a cameo from Michael Keaton’s vanquished Vulture, so who the hell knows. What we do know: Jared Leto plays the titular anti-hero, a scientist whose experimental attempts to cure his own rare blood disease end up giving him a bad hankering for the red stuff. Daniel Espinosa (, ) directs from a script by the writers of another, very cruddy vampire origin story, .

Don’t let the fact that Disney bought Fox and keep you from enjoying this newest and direct-to-streaming installment of the Ice Age franchise! After all, what better way to celebrate the upcoming 20th anniversary of Ice Age than firing all of the animators who might have worked on it or its many sequels? The voice talent remains for this sorta-spinoff that will include the lead trio of critters played by Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, and Denis Leary but focus more on a leading story for Simon Pegg’s Buck character, a weasel with the mentality of a crazed soldier.

Does every actor of a certain age want his own ? Adrien Brody evidently wanted one bad enough to co-write and produce it, arranging for himself the role of a seemingly gentle garbage man who has to get in touch with his secret violent side after he crosses a crime boss (Glenn Fleshler). We’ve seen odder choices for the aging ass-kicker mantle—the Oscar winner has played against type in action fare before, having once headlined a . Anyway, in the shocking absence of a Liam Neeson vehicle this January, someone has to, ahem, take out the trash. Brody will do in a pinch.