2006 Sony Pictures Preview

The sequel to the $100 million worldwide hit, Underworld: Evolution continues the saga of war between the aristocratic Death Dealers and the barbaric Lycans (werewolves). The film traces the beginnings of the ancient feud between the two tribes as the beautiful vampire heroine Selene (Kate Beckinsale) discovers that she has been betrayed by her own kind and seeks her revenge. The fast-paced, modern-day tale of deadly action, ruthless intrigue and forbidden love takes them into the battle to end all wars as the immortals must finally face their retribution. Directed by Len Wiseman and co-starring Bill Nighy, Tony Curran and Derek Jacobi.

In a remote hilltop house, high school student Jill Johnson (Camilla Belle) settles in for a routine night of babysitting. With the children sound asleep and a beautiful home to explore, she locks the door and sets the alarm. But when a series of eerie phone calls from a “stranger” insists that she “check the children,” Jill begins to panic. Fear escalates to terror when she has the calls traced and learns that the calls are coming from inside the house. Jill must use all her strength if she is going to fight back and make it out of the house alive.

A world-famous soccer coach has been murdered and his priceless ring has been stolen – a ring set with the stunning diamond known as the Pink Panther. The French government needs a master detective to solve the crime and recover the gem… but he’s not available, so they recruit Inspector Jacques Clouseau. Comic superstar Steve Martin stars as Clouseau in an all-new adventure of “The Pink Panther”. A stunning pop star (Beyoncé), a soccer player, a Chinese assassin – who committed the crime? And can anyone solve the case? Clouseau and his partner, Ponton (Reno), must unmask the murderer and keep their boss, Dreyfus (Kline), from taking credit for the victory, all without bringing the French legal system to a screeching halt. Get ready to be tickled pink.

Based on Richard Price’s bestselling novel, which opens as a bruised and bloodied white woman named Brenda Martin stumbles into a Dempsey, New Jersey, emergency room, claiming that a black man stole her car with her four-year-old son in the backseat. Veteran detective Lorenzo Council is assigned to investigate the case, and despite reservations about Brenda’s story, he launches an all-out search for the abducted boy. Jesse Haus, an ambitious young reporter for the local newspaper, also suspects that Brenda is hiding something, and she befriends the grief-stricken mother in an attempt to break the biggest story of her career. But as the search for the alleged carjacker intensifies, smoldering racial tensions between the predominantly black city of Dempsey and its mostly white neighbor, Gannon, threaten to explode.

Set in the late 21st century, a subculture of humans called Hemophages has emerged who have been genetically modified, giving them enhanced speed, incredible stamina and acute intelligence. To the government’s dismay, more and more of the population are being transformed, and they have set out to rid the world of this new subculture that they deem menaces to society.

One rogue warrior is bent on protecting her race – and seeking revenge on those who changed her life forever. With fierce fighting skills and chameleon-like abilities, Violet (Milla Jovovich) sets out to destroy a government-designed time bomb that will eliminate all Hemophages.

In Columbia Pictures’ family adventure-comedy RV, an overworked executive, Bob Munro (Robin Williams), persuades his wife and children to give up their Hawaiian vacation for some “family bonding” on a cross-country RV trip.

But it’s all a ruse. Bob has other, more career-oriented reasons on his mind than spending quality time with his family in the Rocky Mountains. Through a series of misadventures, including constant run-ins with an overly friendly troupe of full-time RV’ers, Bob inadvertently learns the true meaning of family.

In addition to Williams, RV stars Jeff Daniels (Dumb and Dumber), Cheryl Hines (“Curb Your Enthusiasm”) and Kristin Chenoweth (The Pink Panther). The film is directed by Barry Sonnenfeld (Men in Blackâ„¢), written by Geoff Rodkey (Daddy Day Care) and produced by Lucy Fisher and Douglas Wick (Stuart Little).

In the erotic thriller Basic Instinct 2, after re-locating from San Francisco to London, best-selling crime novelist Catherine Trammel (Sharon Stone) once again finds herself on the wrong side of the law.

Dr. Andrew Glass (David Morrissey) a respected London criminal psychiatrist is brought in by Scotland Yard detective DCI Washburn (David Thewlis) to perform a psychiatric profile and evaluation of Trammel following the mysterious death of a top sports star. Physically drawn to her and mentally intrigued by Trammel, Glass is quickly sucked into her web of lies and seduction. The professional boundaries between the two are obliterated when she uncovers his basic instincts and a deadly battle of wits ensues, climaxing with Glass facing a choice that will change both their lives forever.

Revolution Studios’ comedy The Benchwarmers, tells the story of three guys (Rob Schneider, David Spade and Jon Lovitz) who try to make up for their lack of athleticism when they were younger by forming a three-man baseball team to challenge a full squad of elementary school baseballers. They develop a large following of left-out kids as they head into a high-stakes, winner-take-all game with the best team of kids in the state.

A woman desperate to save her child finds herself trapped in an alternate dimension as she searches for her daughter in a world of decay inhabited by strange beings. Rose (Radha Mitchell, Melinda and Melinda, Finding Neverland) cannot accept the doctor’s verdict that her daughter Sharon (Jodelle Ferland, Tideland) should be permanently institutionalized for psychiatric care. Over the protests of her husband (Sean Bean, The Island, Lord of the Rings), she flees with her child, heading for an abandoned town to which the child seems drawn. Sharon disappears in the town, and Rose follows what she thinks is her daughter’s silhouette into what seems like an alternate reality. It’s soon clear this place is not like anywhere she’s ever been. It’s smothered by fog, inhabited by a variety of strange beings and periodically overcome by a living Darkness that literally transforms everything it touches. Joined by Cybil (Laurie Holden, Fantastic Four The Majestic) a local police officer, Rose searches for her little girl while learning the history of the strange town and realizing that Sharon is just a pawn in a larger game.

Jennifer Garner stars in Susannah Grant’s wry romantic comedy Catch and Release.

When Gray Wheeler (Garner) and Fritz Messing (Timothy Olyphant) are thrown together by a not-so-simple twist of fate, they find love entering their lives at the most unexpected time.

From director, Ron Howard, producer Brian Grazer and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman, the Oscar®-winning team of A Beautiful Mind, and producer John Calley (the Oscar®-nominated The Remains of the Day), comes the film version of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, one of the most popular and talked about novels of our time, with a cast headed by two-time Academy Award® winner Tom Hanks, Audrey Tautou, Sir Ian McKellen, Alfred Molina, Jürgen Prochnow, Paul Bettany and Jean Reno.

Produced by Grazer and Calley, The Da Vinci Code, begins with a spectacular murder in the Louvre Museum. All clues point to a covert religious organization that will stop at nothing to protect a secret that threatens to overturn 2,000 years of accepted dogma.

In the hilarious comedy Little Man, Shawn Wayans plays a man so anxious to become a father that he mistakes a short-statured, baby-faced criminal on the run, played by Marlon Wayans, for his newly adopted son.

In Columbia Pictures/Revolution Studios’ comedy Click, Adam Sandler portrays Michael Newman, a family man whose busy career as an architect doesn’t leave much time for his wife Donna (Kate Beckinsale) and two kids. Unable to figure out which of his many remotes turns on the television, he goes shopping for a universal remote and finds the perfect device through Morty (Christopher Walken), who gives him a one-of-a-kind remote with magical powers. With each click, Michael is able to control his career and personal life. But complications arise when the remote starts to overrule his choices.

Click also stars David Hasselhoff as Michael’s boss and Henry Winkler and Julie Kavner as his parents and Sean Astin.

Monster House is an animated family film in which three teens discover that their neighbor’s house is really a living, breathing, scary monster.

Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby tells the story of NASCAR stock car racing sensation Ricky Bobby (Will Ferrell) whose “win at all costs” approach has made him a national hero. He and his loyal racing partner and childhood friend Cal Naughton Jr. (John C. Reilly), are a fearless duo — dubbed “Thunder” and “Lightning” by their fans for their ability to finish so many races in the #1 and #2 positions, with Cal always in second place. When a flamboyant French Formula One driver, Jean Girard (Sacha Baron Cohen), challenges the “Thunder” and “Lightning” for the supremacy of NASCAR, Ricky Bobby must face his own demons and fight Girard for the right to be known as racing’s top driver.

In Revolution Studios’ comedy Zoom, Tim Allen plays Jack, formerly Captain Zoom, an out-of-shape former superhero who has lost his powers. Jack is reluctantly called back into action to turn a rag-tag group of kids into a new generation of superheroes and save the world from certain destruction.

Brought to you by the Pang brothers, The Messengers is a horror centering on an ominous darkness that invades a seemingly serene sunflower farm in North Dakota, and the Solomon family is torn apart by suspicion, mayhem and murder.

Based on the graphic novel by Aron Coleite and Tone Rodriguez, The Covenant is the power passed down from generation to generation, but when four boys accidentally unleash an evil force in the process of receiving the powers from their fathers, they must join together to stop it.

Columbia Pictures’ Gridiron Gang tells the uplifting story of detention camp probation officer, Sean Porter (“The Rock”), who creates a high-school-level football team from a ragtag group of dangerous teenage inmates as a means to teach them self-respect and social responsibility. He is joined in this experiment by co-worker, Malcolm Moore (Xzibit).

But Porter must first overcome almost universal resistance from the powers that be — his skeptical bosses and coaches at rival high schools who don’t want their players mixing it up with convicted criminals on the football field.

The true story of a boy whose mother (a poet with delusions of Anne Sexton) gave him away to be raised by her unorthodox psychiatrist who bore a striking resemblance to Santa Claus. So at the age of twelve, Burroughs found himself amidst Victorian squalor living with the doctor’s bizarre family, and befriending a pedophile who resided in the backyard shed. The story of an outlaw childhood where rules were unheard of, and the Christmas tree stayed up all year round, where Valium was consumed like candy, and if things got dull an electroshock- therapy machine could provide entertainment.

In the new action-adventure comedy Open Season, the first feature-length animated film from Sony Pictures Animation, Boog (Martin Lawrence), a happily domesticated grizzly bear, has his perfect world turned upside-down after he meets Elliott (Ashton Kutcher), a scrawny, fast-talking wild mule deer.

In the tranquil mountain town of Timberline, 900-pound Boog enjoys an idyllic existence. He spends his days as the star of the town’s nature show and his nights living the life of luxury in the garage of Park Ranger Beth (Debra Messing), who raised him since he was a cub.

Every town has a bully, and Timberline’s is the paranoid uber-hunter Shaw (Gary Sinise). Shaw believes that animals are conspiring against humans, “So we have to get them before they get us!” When he drives into town with the one-horned mule deer, Elliot, strapped to the hood of his truck, Boog is reluctant to intervene. But, moved by Elliot’s pleas for help, Boog – against his better judgment – frees him. He never expects to see Elliot again.

But Elliot has other plans. He follows Boog home and is intent on returning the favor by “freeing” Boog from his garage “captivity.” Elliot introduces Boog to a world of sweet temptations that he has never known. But when the bear’s true instincts begin to emerge, events quickly spiral out of control and the two troublemakers are tranquilized and relocated into the wild – only three days before the start of open season and the arrival of Shaw!

From the imagination of Oscar®-winning writer/director Sofia Coppola (Lost in Translation) comes a vibrant retelling of the classic story of Marie Antoinette, the naïve Austrian princess, who is thrown into the scandal-ridden world of the French aristocracy, when she is betrothed to King Louis XVI. While still a teenager, Marie Antoinette conquers her fears and becomes France’s iconic queen. Marie Antoinette stars Kirsten Dunst in the title role with Jason Schwartzman as King Louis XVI.

Other members of the ensemble, portraying various members of the elitist court of Versailles include Rip Torn (in the role of King Louis XV), Judy Davis (as the Comtesse de Noailles), Steve Coogan (as Mercy), Asia Argento (playing the Comtesse du Barry), Danny Huston (as Joseph), Rose Byrne (in the role of Polignac), Molly Shannon (as Aunt Victoire) and Shirley Henderson (as Aunt Sophie).

A follow up to the 2004 horror hit The Grudge in which a murderous supernatural curse born of a grudge held by someone who dies angry passes like a virus to its victims. Sarah Michelle Gellar returns as the star with Takashi Shimizu back at the helm.

Will Ferrell plays Harold Crick, an IRS Agent whose world is turned upside-down when he begins to hear his life being chronicled by a narrator only he can hear. The Narrator, Kay Eiffel (Emma Thompson), a nearly forgotten author of tragic novels, is struggling to complete her latest and best book, unaware that her protagonist is alive and uncontrollably guided by her words. Fiction and reality collide when the bewildered and hilariously resistant Harold hears the Narrator say that events have been set in motion that will lead to his imminent death.

In the first of Ian Fleming’s tales of 007, James Bond (Daniel Craig) finds himself on a mission to neutralize lethal, high-rolling Russian operative called “le Chiffre.”

Will Smith plays a homeless single father who works his way up the ranks of a brokerage firm to become a billionaire.

An American woman (Cameron Diaz) with man troubles who crosses paths with a British villager (Kate Winslet) with similar problems.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely in writer/director/producer Steven Zaillian’s (the Oscar®-winning screenwriter of Schindler’s List) adaptation of Robert Penn Warren’s classic novel, “All the King’s Men”, featuring an all all-star cast led by Sean Penn, Jude Law, Kate Winslet, James Gandolfini, Mark Ruffalo, Patricia Clarkson and Anthony Hopkins.

All the King’s Men charts the spectacular rise and fall of a charismatic Southern politician, “Boss” Willie Stark (Penn). Law co-stars as Jack Burden, the once idealistic, now embittered ex-reporter who unwittingly fuels Stark’s corrupt political ambitions.

The Woods is a psychological horror story that begins when a neglected teenager named Heather (Agnes Bruckner) is dropped off by her parents at a remote all-girls boarding school deep in the forest. Watched over by sinister headmistress Ms. Traverse (Patricia Clarkson) and her staff, Heather is tormented by her classmates and is desperate to go home. But when students start disappearing and she begins to have horrifying visions, Heather realizes things at the school are not what they seem. She only knows there’s something out there in the wood—and it won’t be letting her leave any time soon.