The Hollywood Reporter

“Where’s Ant-Man?” Is the Question Selling Marvel’s 20th Cinematic Universe Film: Disney has sought to sell the movie as a fun caper, a stark contrast to the heavy and very serious push for ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ a few months ago. (Note: You can read everything that didn’t make it into that column here.)

‘The First Purge’ Leans In to Political Chaos to Sell Horror: There’s enough that’s attractive to the audience about the concept introduced in 2013’s The Purge that, five years later, Blumhouse and Universal are unveiling the fourth installment in the horror franchise, The First Purge. (Note: A few additional points of commentary here.)

Adweek

While Tom Cruise Is Off Doing His Own Stunts, Here’s How His Bored Stuntman Keeps Busy: He’s an Uber driver, according to this amusing Mission: Impossible tie-in .

Cinematic Slant

Art is What’s Finished: These stories are a great example of the kind of cheap, meaningless content that’s easy to produce because all you need is a lack of understanding about how art works, zero desire to do original reporting and an editorial mission devoted to stirring up some form of outrage. Let’s examine each one.

Sorry To Bother You – Marketing Recap: If Riley was looking to come out of the gate with a strong first impression, he appears to have succeeded spectacularly. Not only has he made what looks to be a spectacularly original movie, but Annapurna has given it a campaign that is one of the most colorful and eye-catching of the year.

Cinematic Slant’s First Year: Welcome to the beginning of Cinematic Slant’s second year. If you’ve been with us through the first 12 months, since the launch on July 3, 2017, you’ve seen the site evolve and change. As is usual for me I’ve played around with various things, tried some out and adopted a few long-term while abandoning others. If there’s one thing I excel at, it’s inconsistency.

That’s a Lot of Little Women: News broke last week that Greta Gerwig had chosen an adaptation of the classic novel Little Women for her directorial follow-up to the critically-acclaimed Lady Bird. I’m more interested in looking at how previous film adaptations were sold.

Sony Taps Villains to Keep the Spider-Man Franchise Running: Spider-Man has a substantial rogue’s gallery, most of whom have like him adopted some kind of animalistic totem for their identities. Chameleon, Doctor Octopus, Vulture, Scorpion, Rhino, Jackal and others all fit into that category while many of the rest are either some kind of Goblin. What he lacks, though, is a lineup of regular allies.

One Key Measure of Set It Up’s Impact: One indicator of just how buzzy Set It Up has become how much zeitgeist it generated has been, to my eye, how many Buzzfeed articles have been devoted to different aspects of the movie.

Chris Thilk is a freelance writer and content strategist who lives in the Chicago suburbs.