Just as last year’s hit documentary “Won’t You
Be My Neighbor?” ($22.8 million in ticket sales)
proved, audiences are eager to reconnect with
kind-hearted altruism of Fred Rogers.
“There’s a reason that everybody feels so
connected to him right now,” says Heller.
“I don’t know, some collective consciousness
thing where we all want Mr. Rogers in our life
right now — myself included.”
There are many other freshly original films on
tap, too, including the Donna Tartt adaptation
“The Goldfinch” (Sept. 13), the stripper revenge
tale “Hustlers” (Sept. 13), Steven Soderbergh’s
Panama Papers satire “The Laundromat” (Sept.
27), Robert Eggers’ mad monochrome tale of 1890
lighthouse keepers “The Lighthouse” (Oct. 18), the
Lena Waithe-penned black outlaw drama “Queen
and Slim” (Nov. 27), Noah Baumbach’s divorce
chronicle “Marriage Story” (Nov. 6), Kasi Lemmons’
Harriet Tubman biopic “Harriet,” Edward Norton’s
Jonathan Lethem adaptation “Motherless
Brooklyn” (Nov. 1) and “Parasite” (Oct. 11), Bong
Joon Ho’s Palme d’Or-winning class satire.
The most affection ode to moviegoing might
come, ironically enough, from Netflix. “Dolemite
Is My Name” (Oct. 4) stars Eddie Murphy as
Rudy Ray Moore during the making of the 1975
Blaxploitation classic “Dolemite.”
A handful of filmmakers will also, for a moment
at least, be stepping off the franchise treadmill.
In “Jojo Rabbit” (Oct. 18), Taika Waititi will break
from “Thor” installments for a madcap Nazi satire
in which he, himself, co-stars as Adolf Hitler. In
“Knives Out” (Nov. 27), Rian Johnson’s follow-up to
“Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” the writer-director crafts
an elaborate Agatha Christie-inspired whodunit.