Paul Dano Joins Florian Zeller’s Psychological Thriller ‘Bunker’: An Exciting Development for 2026

The November 2025 release of Disney’s long-awaited sequel, Tron: Ares, fizzled at the box office after a gross that trade observers called a disaster and an “IP-killing event”. The Joachim Rønning directed film made a lackluster domestic debut of $33.2 million to $33.5 million, well below its estimated opening gross by $10 million or more. The opening fell just shy of $60 million worldwide, ranging from $60.2 million to $60.5 million. 

Ares not hitting the $100m mark in its opening weekend against its sizable budget made for an early and likely impossible-to-recover-from financial loss for Disney. With the failure, Report said that it is very likely that Disney will “retire the franchise from the big screen” for the foreseeable future, signaling to investors a continued reluctance to finance risky.

Jared Leto’s Star Power Comes Under Fire Once Again

The box office doom of Tron: Ares, according to MovieWeb, once again raised and intensified doubts about Jared Leto’s bankability as a star who could anchor a major studio tentpole. The seeds for this industry skepticism were planted three years earlier with the collapse of Sony’s Morbius (2022). 

This recurring pattern of financial failure has consolidated a trade consensus that sees Leto as an actor who can’t reliably bring in box office for similar big Intellectual Property (IP) tentpole projects. Industry reports have indicated that “the big paydays Leto received for Ares might well be over,” as studios are increasingly shying away from the actor as a dependable male star draw. 

Controversies During the Tron: Ares Press Cycle

In today’s Hollywood, star viability is inexorably linked to public perception and promotability, more so for those who headline massive franchises for corporations like Disney. Leto also has considerable baggage, including several sexual misconduct allegations (which his representatives deny) that surfaced just prior to the Tron: Ares press cycle. 

The allegations posed significant challenges for Disney’s marketing team, with industry executives wondering how the actor could “shoulder the pressure of selling two theatrical movies while dancing around the damning claims”. The controversies had an immediate effect on possible promotional opportunities, creating uncertainty as to whether prominent media outlets would allow him to participate in the usual press routines to help market a blockbuster, making him a major-risk. 

Industry Frustration Over Leto’s On-Set Behavior

Industry peers is also pointed out his self-serving spectacle and unprofessional distraction after his extreme behavior on set including mailing eccentric gifts to Suicide Squad co-stars or walking around on crutches for Morbius. The perceived expense of working with the actor’s process wasn’t anymore worth the result. This professional reputation of being a “pain in the ass” who wastes time, combined with his inability to open wide films makes him a uniquely risky bet for studios that want to run-efficient production and clean PR. 

According to People, The flop of Tron: Ares is far more than a box office number, it’s the shattering of an actor’s sincere passion against the cold, hard financial calculations of contemporary Hollywood. For years, Jared Leto was spearheading the movie, leveraging his celebrity and producer credit, dating back to 2017, to bring Disney’s long-dormant sci-fi franchise out of development purgatory. His commitment was authentic; he was a fan of the original film and its tech, and playing the digital warrior Ares was a very personal goal for him. 

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A Strategic Rebrand: From Digital Warrior to Skeletor

The broad consensus in the business is that Leto’s way out is would be to turn on a dime and not be the lead vehicle for a big-budget franchise movie. The most obvious sign of that strategic recalibration: his next role is as Skeletor in Amazon MGM’s Masters of the Universe. 

Reports say, This casting is generally regarded as a potential career booster for the actor. Adopting the role of the main villain, Leto once again places the financial weight solely on the IP and the hero, enabling him to focus on crafting a memorable performance. The campy villainous role of Skeletor is a dream role for Leto, and one that lends itself perfectly to his style of transformative acting where he utilises heavy makeup and theatricality (see House of Gucci). How well this transition works will depend on his ability to strike the right balance of “menace and camp,” and keep critics away from dismissing the performance as too silly, a perception that has dogged both his Paolo Gucci and Joker performances. 

Conclusion

Leto and his team’s main professional challenge is to manage the promotional risk. Any future promotions around the film will have to strategically separate the actor from the success of the project, downplaying those risky stunts or conversations about method acting that come from set, and instead just talk about the character and the spectacle of the film. The twin flop of Morbius and Tron: Ares have cemented that Jared Leto is simply no longer considered bankable enough to weather the scrutiny and controversy that comes with carrying a mega-budget franchise. 

The majority of us thought the lockdown years were pretty exhausting, but director Ian Tuason made that isolation a nightmare—the good kind. His new film, Undertone, is currently the buzz at Sundance, and it’s easy to understand why. It’s a scary, sound-centered psychological horror that came from real-life anxiety and a house that could possibly be haunted now. 

The Horror of Moving Back Home

We’ve all been there—crashing at your parents’ place is not whatever you’re picturing it’s going to be. But for Tuason, it was a necessity so he could tend to his ailing parents. 

In an interview with Variety, he shared his experiences of where he got the idea. While he was there, he began to consider what makes us feel safe —and what happens when you flip that on its head. The Exorcist concept (taking a “safe” daughter and making her scary) and applied it to his own life.

“My mind is stuck on ‘The Exorcist’, how it scared me so much when I was a kid.”

–He said 

He wondered, What if my mom, who relies on me, starts speaking in a different voice? That dark thought transformed a simple podcast script into a feature film. He even shot it in his parents’ house to save money, but it came at a price. Living on your own horror set meant he never felt truly alone, and he said the house began feeling “haunted” well after the cameras stopped rolling. 

Why You Should Watch With Your Headphones On

Undertone is distinguished by its sound. The lead, Evy, is the host of a podcast, and the film plays with your ears. Tuason engineered the sound as if you are wearing noise-cancelling headphones. 

“Do you know that weird silence level where you have no clue what’s happening in the room behind you?”

–He said 

That’s precisely what he employs to frighten you. The film oddballed the sounds that Evy hears on her tapes and the sounds that are really in her hallway. 

Catching the Eyes of the Giants

The hype around Undertone is deafening and it seems like the biggest names in horror are officially placing their bets on Tuason. That’s just the beginning: A24 has already acquired the film and scheduled a March 13 release.

The legends behind Blumhouse and Atomic Monster (the producers of Insidious and The Conjuring) are the ones who brought in Tuason to give the Paranormal Activity franchise a revamp. It’s a complete full circle moment for a guy who started out recording spooky noises in his childhood bedroom. If he can make a DIY movie at his parents’ house this scary, then we can’t wait to see what he does with a Hollywood budget and the keys to one of the biggest horror series in history. 

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Conclusion

Undertone confirms the greatest horror has never been monsters or jump scares—it’s familiarity. By weaponizing a childhood home, a parent’s voice, and silence itself, Ian Tuason crafts a deeply personal and unsettling journey. Its choreography of sound is so perfect that it’s a movie to watch with headphones, each whisper feeling invasive and intimate. 

With Sundance buzz, an A24 release, and major horror studios lining up to back Tuason’s next project, Undertone is not just a powerful first feature—it’s the introduction of a filmmaker who gets that the real horror is right at home. 

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There is no question that 1999 was a blockbuster year for movies, with countless groundbreaking films that have defined popular culture. Here is 90s Movies List from the mind-boggling visual effects and philosophical musings of The Matrix to the shattering shock and surprisingly heartfelt emotional payoff of The Sixth Sense and the ferocious, anarchic spirit of Fight Club, each movie redefined the genre it was working in and spoke to its own particular audience. It was also a year in which directors and producers took a few chances and the final fruits of their risky labors continue to be enjoyed more than 25 years later. Truly, 1999 set a high bar for what cinema could be. 

Why 1999 Changed Everything

The last year of the last century was more than just a date on a calendar. It was a tectonic shift in Hollywood: the old guard of cinema collided with a new class of filmmakers who didn’t aren’t run the rulebook. Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg still commanded respect (along with the likes of Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese), but a new generation was emerging — Spike Jonze, Sofia Coppola, M. Night Shyamalan, David Fincher, Paul Thomas Anderson — and rewriting what a movie could be. The year seemed like the zenith of everything the 1990s had been building toward — indie films gaining mainstream legitimacy, blockbusters getting smart, and moviegoers revved to engage with difficult, out-of-the-way tales.

And there was something else in the cultural air that year. The approaching millennium, and the year 2000, or Y2K, brought with it a sense of collective existential dread that many filmmakers sought to channel— albeit while celebrating the liberating spirit of the past. The upshot: it was a year that not only produced fine films, but fine films of, it seems, every possible genre and style. 

Best 90s Movies List That Defined 1999

1. The Matrix

When the Wachowskis’ The Matrix opened in March, they hadn’t simply made a movie — they’d changed the language of action cinema forever. Featuring revolutionary “bullet-time” visual effects and questions about the nature of reality, kung fu, science-fiction, and existential philosophy, The Matrix was like nothing anyone had seen before. 

Keanu Reeves’ quietly assured turn as Neo has become iconic, with Laurence Fishburne and Carrie-Anne Moss also excellent. The film made $466 million worldwide and continues to inspire filmmakers today. What was remarkable wasn’t just the new technology — it was how that new technology allowed for the expression of high-level ideas about free will and reality that were easy to grasp. 

2. The Sixth Sense

M. Night Shyamalan made a striking debut with a psychological thriller that turned into a cultural touchstone. Bruce Willis, making a bid for dramatic respectability, was a perfect match for nine-year-old Haley Joel Osment in a movie that was really just a series of linked ghost tales. The movie’s legendary twist is one of film’s best kept surprises — an ending that rereads everything you’ve seen. 

But the most important thing about the twist is that it didn’t come off as a cheap trick – it is earned, powerfully, through carefully-crafted screenwriting and emotional veracity. The Sixth Sense grossed $672.8 million worldwide to be the second-highest grossing film of 1999, and it still holds up as a tender thriller that’s all in suggestion, not blood. 

3. Fight Club

David Fincher’s adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk’s novel was not only one of the most violently thought-provoking movies of the year. It was, paradoxically, one of its most rewarding experiences. What is discomfiting at first becomes addictive at second, third, and even fourth viewings. As the insomniac, crumbling narrator Edward Norton struggles not to fall under the spell of charismatic Tyler Durden, Brad Pitt dive bombs into a ferocious satire of consumerism, fragmented masculinity, and contemporary rebellion. 

That film’s twist is quieter and morally ambivalent, and works by revealing a narrator’s split mind. With an IMDb rating of 8.8, Fight Club has risen above the backlash that it received at its release and has been seen as a film of true artistic merit masquerading as mindless entertainment that causes conversations about meaning and social critique. 

4. American Beauty

Mendes (Bond) de­buted behind the camera on features with the year’s Oscar darling, taking home five Academy Awards, among them Best Picture and Best Actor for Kevin Spacey. Darkly satirical about suburban American culture, the trend was immediately established – Mendes and screenwriter Alan Ball were revealing the emptiness behind Middle America’s perfectly trimmed lawns. 

It was one of the rarest of things in Hollywood: a critics hit that also became a box office giant, raking in more than $350 million on an unassuming $15 million budget. That’s not to say that the film’s reputation hasn’t been reconsidered in recent years, though its impact on cinema is certainly undeniable. 

5. Eyes Wide Shut

The last film of Stanley Kubrick was meant to be his big comeback. What the viewers were offered was something much richer: a relationship drama hiding behind the trappings of a thriller, a farcical, sexual black comedy, and a reflective film on marriage and desire. 

Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman gave raw performances, and Kubrick’s obsessive direction turned a well-worn story line into something truly disturbing and thought-provoking . 

6. Being John Malkovich

Spike Jonze’s first feature film’s concept, a portal into the thoughts of actor John Malkovich might have been a novelty, but Jonze uses it to examine identity, obsession and the nature of consciousness itself. Cameron Diaz, John Cusack, and Catherine Keener give surprisingly profound performances in what easily could have been a straightforward comedy. 

7. Toy Story 2

Toy Story 2 showed that animated sequels could say something artistically, rather than just being financial grabs. It helped establish Pixar as a studio that treats its adult intelligence and emotions—and it remains one of the most powerful films in Pixar’s entire library.   

8. The Blair Witch Project

When it hit theaters in 1999, it revolutionized the horror genre with its use of found-footage style narration, minimal production costs, and a genius marketing strategy that obscured fact and fiction. 

The Blair Witch Project become the excessive horror which success demonstrated that people could be entertained simply by a story and a mood, without elaborate special effects or movie stars.  

9. Magnolia

Magnolia interlaces a number of connected stories throughout the day and night. At its heart, the film is about guilt, forgiveness, regret, trauma, coincidence and connection between people. The various characters’ lives intersect in small (and occasionally stunning) ways, leading up to one of the most-discussed finales in contemporary film. 

Magnolia is now considered a cult classic, and is often regarded as one of the best films of 1999 and one of the best ensemble films ever. It’s flawed and difficult, and so human — all of which is why it continues to provoke discussion more than twenty years on.   

10. The Best Man

The “Best Man” (1999), directed by Malcolm D. Lee, is a romantic comedy that rode the wave of popularity of the genre back then. With a predominantly Black cast, the movie is about a group of college friends coming back together for a wedding. Taye Diggs is a rising novelist whose latest book causes trouble — it’s a roman à clef that draws on their own lives. 

Warm, funny and sexy, the film was a box office hit and managed to distinguish itself without crass commercial exploitation or without being too blatantly positioned as a “milestone” in Black representation. Executive produced by Spike Lee, who is also the director’s cousin, “The Best Man” continues to hold a treasured place in the romcom canon.  

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Conclusion

What is interesting is that 1999 itself was not universally hailed as the best year in the 90s Movies List. American Beauty took the Oscar, but Being John Malkovich was more highly lauded. Fight Club divided opinions upon its release. It was a long time before audiences and critics as a whole realized what they had experienced that year: They’d been treated to something extraordinary—an entire year in which the movies seemed vital, even dangerous, and endlessly inventive.

In an era when blockbuster culture reigns and original concepts have a hard time securing funding, 1999 stands as a powerful testament to what can be achieved. It was the year that arthouse brains met Hollywood brawn, when first-time filmmakers could become auteurs overnight, and when a movie didn’t have to come from a known property to become culturally significant. Looking back, 1999 was not just a great year for movies — it was the year that movies proved that they still mattered. 

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Buzz builds for Die My Love. This is mind-bending dark drama duo’s first pairing. It is directed by Lynne Ramsay. She got an Oscar nom for We Need to Talk About Kevin. Ramsay and playwright Enda Walsh, along with Alice Birch, co-wrote the screenplay. The narrative is adapted from the Argentinean novel by Ariana Harwicz Die, My Love. It follows Grace, played by Jennifer Lawrence. She writes and is a new mother. Her psychosis disintegrates when she and her husband Jackson (Robert Pattinson) move out of New York City to his childhood home in rural Montana. In the film, Grace suffers from postpartum blues and madness. These things begin to crack her marriage. There’s heat building in the desolate rural location, too. Reports by Mubi. The company describe it as Ramsay’s razor-sharp perspective on a woman consumed by love and wild thoughts.

Powerhouse Production Backed by Scorsese and Lawrence

Die My Love is a celebrity-powered indie. Besides starring, Jennifer Lawrence is producing through her banner Excellent Cadaver and Martin Scorsese is producing via his Sikelia company. Scorsese, in fact, backed the project after he read the book as part of a book club, he recommended it to Lawrence. The two even passed on adapting another classic book because it presented a tougher role. Lawrence fought for it despite Ramsay’s initial hesitation (she’d just done a similar motherhood movie). One version has it that Lawrence was determined to have a go at working on Die My Love as a team and talked Ramsay into turning it from a straightforward depression narrative into a “bonkers, crazy love story.” 

Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson are headlining the film’s ensemble. Lawrence plays Grace, a mother and wife about to break. Pattinson is Jackson, her husband. LaKeith Stanfield has been cast as Grace’s forbidden love interest. Legendary actors Nick Nolte and Sissy Spacek star as Jackson’s parents. Grace and Jackson are said to be relishing their new beginning, via People. They have a good time with sex and crazy dances. But once the baby arrives, Grace’s isolation and mental illness strain their relationship. 

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Behind-the-Scenes Buzz and Cannes Acclaim

This Lawrence–Pattinson chemistry is what makes this especially exciting to fans. Lawrence, an Oscar winner for Silver Linings Playbook, is known for dramatic as well as blockbuster roles Hunger Games, while Pattinson went from being a teen heartthrob Twilight to an indie darling Good Time, High Life, and now, Batman. The two actors have praised each other’s performances and Lawrence has joked in interviews that starring opposite Pattinson at last is total revenge after her failed Twilight audition. 

They were reported to have gotten close off-screen during the film’s premiere in Cannes. Lawrence joked that having kids changes everything and Pattinson added that becoming a father has provided him with the biggest trove of energy and inspiration to work. (Lawrence has also said that playing Grace added another layer for her by drawing on her own difficult postpartum experience). 

The excitement ran high as Die My Love made its Cannes Film Festival debut in 2025. The critical response was overwhelmingly positive. Lawrence’s acting received an “award-worthy” standing ovation for around nine minutes, according to People. The MUBI buyout campaign draws attention to this praise. Trailers show Lawrence in wild dance, fight and fierce growl sequences deep in emotion. It is this hard edge that Ramsay can do so well. 

A Darkly Comic Love Story About Insanity

Ramsay, who refers to the film as a dark comedic love story about insanity, Pattinson joked some moments are “hilarious” in a twisted way, she said. 

Die My Love is a relentless, unsettling drama — a peek at a marriage disintegrating under the pressure of new parenthood. Ramsay directs the film, with Walsh and Birch as co-writers, with major producers attached (including Lawrence and Scorsese). Jennifer Lawrence is Grace and also produces through Excellent Cadaver, while Robert Pattinson is her husband Jackson.

The film is slated to be released in U.S. cinemas on 7 November 2025 after premiering at Cannes on 17 May. This pairing of acting titans both heavy Oscar front-runners has the fans talking, in part because reports have them pushing one another on set. Ramsay calls the completed film a really dark love story that’s also funny, and Lawrence gives what some are already calling the most riveting performance of her career.  

Conclusion

The unrated My Love is becoming one of the most awaited movies of 2025 — an unrefined, haunting, and passionate exploration of love, insanity, and motherhood. With Lynne Ramsay’s distinctive intensity leading the way and Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson delivering powerhouse performances, the film will no doubt be both visually breathtaking and psychologically enthralling. Lawrence’s performance as Grace has already earned early Oscar buzz, and Pattinson’s reserved yet multifaceted portrayal provides a tether for her spiraling descent.