Universal Pictures 2007 Preview

Universal Pictures has just sent over images from all 15 of its upcoming 2007 movies along with brand new storylines and official release dates set. Below you will learn all you need to know along with a link to all the gallery pages. You can begin browsing the previews and the galleries just below. By clicking on the “View Gallery” links a new browser window will open, which you just need to close to return to this article.

Enjoy!

Alpha Dog
January 12, 2007
In the sprawling, privileged neighborhoods around L.A., bored teenagers with too much time and too much money string one hazy day into another, looking for the next thrill–doing suburban imitations of the thug life they idolize from rap music, video games and movies. When you’re living without any consequences, anything can happen. And in the hot California summer six years ago, something did.

Inspired by true events, Alpha Dog follows three fateful days when the lives of a group of Southern California teens suddenly dead-ended. The film features a powerful ensemble cast including Ben Foster, Shawn Hatosy, Emile Hirsch, Christopher Marquette, Sharon Stone, Justin Timberlake, Anton Yelchin and Bruce Willis and is written and directed by Nick Cassavetes.

Johnny Truelove (Emile Hirsch) controls the drugs on the well-manicured streets of his neighborhood. Where Johnny goes, the party, the girls and his loyal gang follow. When he’s double-crossed over missing deal money by raging hothead Jake (Ben Foster), Johnny and his gang impulsively kidnap Jake’s little brother, Zack (Anton Yelchin), holding him as a marker and heading to Palm Springs. With no parents in sight, they grow used to having the kid around, and Zack enjoys an illicit summer fantasy of drinking, girls and new experiences.

Out in the desert, Johnny and his boys lose sight that the kid is a hostage who can’t just be neatly returned. As the days tick by, the options of how to get themselves out of their situation start to disappear. Good times turn bad and bad turns worse as Johnny finds himself out of his league and with no idea how to fix it…leading all these players toward a shocking conclusion they never saw coming. (View Gallery)

Smokin’ Aces
January 26, 2007
An incendiary array of stars–including Ben Affleck, Andy Garcia, Ray Liotta, Jeremy Piven, Ryan Reynolds, Peter Berg, Martin Henderson, Taraji Henson and, in their motion–picture debuts, Alicia Keys and Common–star in Smokin’ Aces, the new dark action comedy from Joe Carnahan, the acclaimed director of Narc.

In these interlocking tales of high stakes and low lifes, Mob boss Primo Sparazza has taken out a hefty contract on Buddy “Aces” Israel (Piven)–a sleazy magician who has agreed to turn state’s evidence against the Vegas mob. The FBI, sensing a chance to use this small-time con to bring down big-target Sparazza, places Aces into protective custody-under the supervision of two agents (Reynolds and Liotta) dispatched to Aces’ Lake Tahoe hideout.

When word of the price on Aces’ head spreads into the community of ex-cons and cons-to-be, it entices bounty hunters, thugs-for-hire, smokin’ hot vixens and double-crossing mobsters to join in the hunt. With all eyes on Tahoe, this rogues’ gallery collides in a comic race to hit the jackpot and rub out Aces. (View Gallery)

Because I Said So
February 2, 2007
Powerhouse actresses Diane Keaton, Mandy Moore, Lauren Graham and Piper Perabo serve up the laughs when they join wickedly funny director Michael Lehmann (The Truth About Cats & Dogs, 40 Days and 40 Nights, Heathers) in his new film about cutting the apron strings, Because I Said So.

Keaton stars as Daphne Wilder, a mother whose love knows no bounds or boundaries. She is the proud mom of three daughters: stable psychologist Maggie (Graham), sexy and irreverent Mae (Perabo) and insecure, adorable Milly (Moore)-who, when it comes to men, is like psychotic flypaper.

In order to prevent her youngest from making the same mistakes she did, Daphne decides to set Milly up with the perfect man. Little does Milly know, however, that her mom placed an ad in the online personals to find him. Comic mayhem unfolds as Daphne continues to do the wrong thing for the right reasons…all in the name of love.

In a hilarious battle of strong wills, the mother-daughter dynamic is tested in all its fierce, wacky complexity. The girls help Daphne finally discover the truths and impossibilities of motherly love, all while trying to answer the questions: where does it begin and where should it end?

Joining Lehmann behind the scenes on Because I Said So are scribes Karen Leigh Hopkins (Stepmom) and Jessie Nelson (I Am Sam). Paul Brooks (My Big Fat Greek Wedding) produces the film with Nelson. (View Gallery)

Breach
February 16, 2007
Inspired by true events, Breach is a dramatic thriller set inside the halls of the FBI–the gatekeeper of the nation’s most sensitive and potentially volatile secrets.

When young Eric O’Neill (Phillippe) is promoted out of his low-level surveillance job and into the headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, his dream of becoming a full-fledged agent is on the verge of becoming reality. Even more impressive, O’Neill is hand picked to work for renowned operative Robert Hanssen (Cooper) within “information assurance,” a new division created to protect all classified FBI Intelligence.

But O’Neill is quickly confronted with the true reason behind his hire: Hanssen is the sole subject of a long-term, top-secret investigation, a suspected mole made all the more dangerous by the sheer global import of the information he is charged with protecting. The Bureau asks O’Neill to use Hanssen’s growing trust and slowly draw the traitor out of deep cover. Engaged in a lethal game of spy-versus-spy without the benefit of a cover story or backup, O’Neill finds himself fighting to bring down Hanssen before the treacherous double-agent can destroy O’Neill, his family and the nation they are both sworn to serve.

Following his success with the electrifying and acclaimed Shattered Glass, writer/director Billy Ray explores more deeply the disillusionment and questionable moral mentorship of a young idealist in Breach. The film is produced by Bobby Newmyer (Training Day), Scott Strauss (Mindhunters) and Scott Kroopf (The Last Samurai). Universal Pictures will release the film in North America and Kimmel International will distribute globally. (View Gallery)

Dead Silence
March 23, 2007
From the team responsible for the international sleeper hit Saw–writer/actor Leigh Whannell, writer/director James Wan and producers Gregg Hoffman, Mark Burg and Oren Koules–comes the supernatural thriller Dead Silence.

Newlyweds Jamie (Kwanten) and Lisa Ashen have established a new life for themselves far from their hometown of Ravens Fair–a sleepy, near-forgotten blip on the map haunted by late-night whispers and ghost stories from generations past. But when his wife is gruesomely murdered, Jamie reluctantly returns to Ravens Fair for the funeral, intent on unraveling the mystery surrounding her death.

Once back under his family’s roof, reunited with his ill father (Gunton) and his father’s new young bride (Valletta), Jamie begins to explore the creepy town and encounters the legend of Mary Shaw, a famous murdered ventriloquist whose presence still casts a pall over Ravens Fair. Himself the lead suspect in his wife’s murder, Jamie is forced to dig deep into the town’s bloody past for answers, where he soon uncovers the truth behind the curse that ended Lisa’s life…and threatens to take his as well.

Dead Silence is written by Leigh Whannell & James Wan and directed by James Wan. It stars Ryan Kwanten, Amber Valletta, Donnie Wahlberg and Bob Gunton and is produced by Gregg Hoffman, Mark Burg and Oren Koules. (View Gallery)

The Kingdom
April 20, 2007
Director Peter Berg, who blisteringly reinterpreted the high-school sports drama with the celebrated Friday Night Lights, producer Michael Mann (Heat, The Insider, The Aviator, Miami Vice), and producer Scott Stuber (You, Me and Dupree, The Break-Up) join Oscar® winner Jamie Foxx in a timely thriller about the explosive clash that happens when Middle East meets West: The Kingdom.

Foxx stars as whip-smart FBI Special Agent Ronald Fleury, who has just received the assignment of his career: assemble an elite team (played by Jennifer Garner, Oscar® winner Chris Cooper and Jason Bateman) and go to Riyadh to hunt down and capture the terrorist mastermind behind a deadly attack on Americans working in Saudi Arabia. The feds have only one week to infiltrate and cripple a cell bent on jihad to western society.

No training could prepare Fleury and his team for the disorienting culture shock they face once inside this scorching foreign land–a byzantine maze of profiteering politicians and storefront terrorists. Bound by handlers who refuse to play ball with the U.S., the agents quickly find the local law enforcement more hindrance than help and soon grow uncertain of anybody’s allegiance.

But when a sympathetic Saudi police captain helps them navigate Riyadh politics and investigate the true cause of the attack, Fleury finds an unexpected comrade-in-arms. In their lightning fast attempt to crack the case, the partners’ search leads them straight to the killers’ front door. Now in a fight for their own lives, two teams on opposite sides of the war on terror won’t stop until justice is found in The Kingdom. (View Gallery)

Georgia Rule
May 11, 2007
Three generations of top actresses unite in a film from director Garry Marshall (Beaches, Pretty Woman, Runaway Bride) about the power of redemption, freedom in forgiveness and unbreakable bonds of motherhood–Georgia Rule.

Rebellious teenager Rachel (Lohan) screams, swears, drinks and is–in a word–uncontrollable. With her latest car crash, Rachel has broken the final rule in mom Lily’s (Golden Globe winner Huffman) San Francisco home. With nowhere else to take the impulsive and rambunctious girl, Lily hauls her daughter to the one place she swore she’d never return…her own mother’s Idaho farm.

Matriarch Georgia (two-time Oscar® winner Fonda) is not your typical sweet and doting grandmother. She lives her life by a number of unbreakable rules, demanding anyone who shares her home do the same–God comes first and hard work comes a very close second. Now saddled with raising the young woman, it will require each patient breath she takes to understand Rachel’s fury.

But as Rachel succumbs to her summer of misery and shakes up the tiny Mormon town, Georgia notices something is changing within her granddaughter. Given structure and responsibilities, Rachel is letting her guard down and learning compassion…especially for her mother. Her journey will lead all three women to revelations of buried family secrets and an understanding that–regardless what happens–the ties that bind can never be broken. (View Gallery)

Knocked Up
June 1, 2007
On the heels of 2005’s blockbuster The 40-Year-Old Virgin, writer/director Judd Apatow again mines hilarity from the relatably human in a comedy about a one-night stand with unexpected consequences: Knocked Up. Katherine Heigl (Grey’s Anatomy, Roswell) joins Virgin alums Seth Rogen, Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann for a comic look about the best thing that will ever ruin your best-laid plans: parenthood.

Allison Scott (Heigl) is an up-and-coming entertainment journalist whose 24-year-old life is on the fast track. But it gets seriously derailed when a drunken one-nighter with slacker Ben Stone (Rogen) results in an unwanted pregnancy. Faced with the prospect of going it alone or getting to know the baby’s father, Allison decides to give the lovable doof a chance.

An overgrown kid who has no desire to settle down, Ben learns that he has a big decision to make with his kid’s mom-to-be: will he hit the road or stay in the picture? Courting a woman you’ve just Knocked Up, however, proves to be a little difficult when the two try their hands at dating. As they discover more about one another, it becomes painfully obvious that they’re not the soul mates they’d hoped they might be.

With Allison’s harried sister Debbie (Mann) and hen-pecked brother-in-law Pete (Rudd) the only parenting role models the young lovers have, things get even more confusing. Should they raise the baby together? What makes a happy lifetime partnership after all? A couple of drinks and one wild night later, they’ve got nine confusing months to figure it out… (View Gallery)

Evan Almighty
June 22, 2007
Steve Carell (The 40 Year-Old Virgin), reprising his role as the polished, preening newscaster Evan Baxter of Bruce Almighty, is the next one anointed by God to accomplish a holy mission in the hilarious new comedy Evan Almighty. Blockbuster comedy director Tom Shadyac (The Nutty Professor, Liar Liar, Bruce Almighty) returns behind the camera for this next episode of divine intervention. This time, however, his cast grows two-by-two.

Newly elected to Congress, Evan leaves Buffalo behind and shepherds his family to suburban northern Virginia. Once there, his life gets turned upside-down when God (Morgan Freeman) appears and mysteriously commands him to build an ark. But his befuddled family just can’t decide whether Evan is having an extraordinary mid-life crisis or is truly onto something of Biblical proportions. (View Gallery)

I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry
July 20, 2007
Adam Sandler (Click) and Kevin James (Hitch) team as two straight guys who stumble down the aisle with the best of intentions in I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry. Chuck Levine (Sandler) and Larry Valentine (James) are the pride of their fire station: two guy’s guys always side-by-side and willing to do anything for each other. Salt-of-the-earth widower Larry wants just one thing: to protect his family. His buddy Chuck also wants one thing: to enjoy the single life.

Grateful Chuck owes Larry for saving his life in a fire, and Larry calls in that favor big time when civic red tape prevents him from naming his own two kids as his life insurance beneficiaries. All that Chuck has to do is claim to be Larry’s domestic partner on some city forms. Easy. Nobody will ever know.

But when an overzealous, spot-checking bureaucrat becomes suspicious, the new couple’s arrangement becomes a citywide issue and goes from confidential to front-page news. Forced to improvise as love-struck newlyweds, Chuck and Larry must now fumble through a hilarious charade of domestic bliss under one roof. After surviving their mandatory honeymoon and dodging the threat of exposure, the well-intentioned con men discover that sticking together in your time of need is what truly makes a family. (View Gallery)

The Bourne Ultimatum
August 3, 2007
Matt Damon returns as the trained assassin Jason Bourne for the latest showdown in The Bourne Ultimatum. In the follow-up to 2002’s The Bourne Identity and 2004’s The Bourne Supremacy–the smash hits that have earned over $500 million at the global box office–acclaimed director Paul Greengrass (United 93, The Bourne Supremacy) joins returning cast members Julia Stiles and Joan Allen and new additions David Strathairn, Paddy Considine and Edgar Ramirez.

All he wanted was to disappear. Instead, Jason Bourne is now hunted by the people who made him what he is. Having lost his memory and the one person he loved, he is undeterred by the barrage of bullets and a new generation of highly-trained killers. Bourne has only one objective: to go back to the beginning and find out who he was.

Now, in the new chapter of this espionage series, Bourne will hunt down his past in order to find a future. He must travel from Moscow, Paris, Madrid and London to Tangier and New York City as he continues his quest to find the real Jason Bourne–all the while trying to outmaneuver the scores of cops, federal officers and Interpol agents with him in their crosshairs.

The Bourne Ultimatum will be shot in Morocco, Spain, France, the United Kingdom and the United States. (View Gallery)

Bean II
September 28, 2007
Rowan Atkinson returns to the iconic role that made him an international star in Bean II. In his latest misadventure, Mr. Bean–the nearly wordless misfit who seems to be followed by a trail of pratfalls and hijinks–goes on holiday to the French Riviera and becomes ensnared in a European adventure of cinematic proportions.

Tired of the dreary, wet London weather, Bean packs up his suitcase and camcorder to head to Cannes for some sun on the beach. Ah…vacation. But his trip doesn’t go as smoothly as he had hoped when the bumbling Bean falls face first into a series of mishaps and fortunate coincidences, far-fetched enough to make his own avant-garde film.

Wrongly thought to be both kidnapper and acclaimed filmmaker, he has some serious explaining to do after wreaking havoc across the French countryside and arriving at his vacation spot with a Romanian filmmaker’s precocious son and an aspiring actress in tow. Will Bean be arrested by the gendarmes or end up winning the Palme d’Or? It’s all caught on camera as Atkinson again applies his awkward athleticism to a comedy of errors in Bean II. (View Gallery)

The Golden Age
October 5, 2007
Reprising the roles they originated in seven-time Academy Award®-nominated Elizabeth, Cate Blanchett and Geoffrey Rush return for a gripping historical thriller laced with treachery and romance–The Golden Age. Joining them in the epic is Clive Owen as Sir Walter Raleigh, a dashing seafarer and newfound temptation for Elizabeth.

The Golden Age finds Queen Elizabeth I (Oscar®-winner Cate Blanchett) facing bloodlust for her throne and familial betrayal. Growing keenly aware of the changing religious and political tides of late 16th century Europe, Elizabeth finds her rule openly challenged by the Spanish King Philip II (Jordi Molla)–with his powerful army and sea-dominating armada–determined to restore England to Catholicism.

Preparing to go to war to defend her empire, Elizabeth struggles to balance ancient royal duties with an unexpected vulnerability in her love for Raleigh. But he remains forbidden for a queen who has sworn body and soul to her country. Unable and unwilling to pursue her love, Elizabeth encourages her favorite lady-in-waiting, Bess (Abbie Cornish), to befriend Raleigh to keep him near. But this strategy forces Elizabeth to observe their growing intimacy.

As she charts her course abroad, her trusted advisor, Sir Francis Walsingham (Academy Award® winner Geoffrey Rush), continues his masterful puppetry of Elizabeth’s court at home–and her campaign to solidify absolute power. Through an intricate spy network, Walsingham uncovers an assassination plot that could topple the throne. But as he unmasks traitors that may include Elizabeth’s own cousin Mary Stuart (Samantha Morton), he unknowingly sets England up for destruction.

The Golden Age tells the thrilling tale of an era…the story of one woman’s crusade to control love, crush enemies and secure her position as a beloved icon of the western world. (View Gallery)

American Gangster
November 2, 2007
Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe, Brian Grazer, Steve Zaillian and Ridley Scott team to tell the true juggernaut success story of a cult hero from the streets of 1970s Harlem in American Gangster.

Nobody used to notice Frank Lucas (Oscar® winner Washington), the quiet driver to one of the inner city’s leading black crime bosses. But when his boss suddenly dies, Frank exploits the opening in the power structure to build his own empire and create his own version of the American Dream. Through ingenuity and a strict business ethic, he comes to rule the inner-city drug trade, flooding the streets with a purer product at a better price. Lucas outplays all of the leading crime syndicates and becomes not only one of the city’s mainline corrupters, but part of its circle of legit civic superstars.

Richie Roberts (Oscar® winner Crowe) is an outcast cop close enough to the streets to feel a shift of control in the drug underworld. Roberts believes someone is climbing the rungs above the known Mafia families and starts to suspect that a black power player has come from nowhere to dominate the scene. Both Lucas and Roberts share a rigorous ethical code that sets them apart from their own colleagues, making them lone figures on opposite sides of the law. The destinies of these two men will become intertwined as they approach a confrontation where only one of them can come out on top.

Washington (Training Day) and Crowe (Gladiator) lead a spectacular cast of accomplished and rising stars–including Chiwetel Ejiofor, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Josh Brolin, Armand Assante, RZA, John Ortiz, John Hawkes and Ted Levine?in this blistering tale of a true American entrepreneur directed by Oscar® nominee Ridley Scott (Gladiator) and produced by Academy Award® winner Brian Grazer (A Beautiful Mind) and Scott from a screenplay by Academy Award® winner Steve Zaillian (Schindler’s List). (View Gallery)

Charlie Wilson’s War
TBA 2007
Charlie Wilson’s War centers on a rogue Texas congressman (Hanks) whose penchant for booze and women earned him the nickname Good Time Charlie. He watched his political career almost go down the drain in the early 1980s when he was caught in a hot tub tryst with two cocaine-sniffing showgirls in Las Vegas.

He survived the scandal and ended up overseeing the largest and most successful covert CIA operation in history; his efforts to fund resistance fighters in Afghanistan hastened the fall of the Iron Curtain. (View Gallery)

Movie News
Marvel and DC
X