Is Pedro Pascal A Movie Star Now?
With ‘The Fantastic Four: First Steps’ a hit, the Emmy nom’s future is on the big screen
As scattered as our media marketplace remains, and as much as real-life horrors keep commanding the most attention, there has been one person this year who is the most consistently, singularly ever-present: Pedro Pascal.
He popped up on SNL50 for a “Domingo” sequel in the winter, launched the latest season of The Last Of Us in the spring and danced with his AirPods somewhere in the middle of all of that. This summer, Pascal has backed up his small screen work with the genre-spanning triple feature of movies: Materialists, Eddington and, most recently, The Fantastic Four: First Steps. The guy has been busy busy, and despite stepping in front of so many cameras throughout this process, Pascal, 50, wears it all as lightly as any would-be movie star we’ve seen in ages. He’s a thoroughly modern performer, one who can open up about anxiety in interviews and inspire five-minute fan-cams about his platonic flirting with co-star Vanessa Kirby. But as Fantastic Four’s more than $200 million global opening weekend proves, he’s more than just an Internet boyfriend — he’s getting people in theaters, too.
So is Pedro Pascal now officially a movie star? It’s hard to say whether that actually happens when your superhero movie opens big — think of Chris Hemsworth, who brings people to the theater when he stars as Thor for Marvel, but has trouble opening movies (Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Men in Black International) without the aid of the Norse god’s hammer. But the sheer force of all of these projects (including Pascal’s strong supporting work in Gladiator II last fall) — and his embrace by the industry writ large, as evidenced by his latest Emmy nomination for The Last of Us despite limited screentime in the second season, since his character was killed off — has made Pascal pretty undeniable. With his tenure on the HBO series now at an end, and a movie version of his work on The Mandalorian coming next year, in addition to further work in the Marvel universe with the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday, Pascal’s future is very much on the big screen.
Even better, his wide range of hits, big and small, makes it feel like there’s actually a place for movie stars in this business. Marketed like an old-fashioned rom-com despite its spikier subject matter, Materialists has been rewarded with a $50 million global box office haul, making optimists like me hopeful that a comeback for real rom-coms might be next. It felt fitting that Pascal’s co-stars, Chris Evans and Dakota Johnson, both arrived in the film as refugees from 2010s franchises (respectively, the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy), finding safe harbor in a movie that was built around their charms, not just incidentally lifted by them. It’s a cliché, but it’s true: Once upon a time, movie stars were the special effect.
I’m hoping there’s a similar path forward for the summer’s other most thrilling breakout star, Superman’s David Corenswet, who managed to combine sweet sincerity with some truly sparkling chemistry with Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane to create what felt like a genuinely new version of Superman. I was particularly taken by the promotional social media videos the two recorded alongside Nicholas Hoult, who plays Lex Luthor. Brosnahan and Hoult are technically more famous, although she has been mainly a TV star, and he has been primarily a supporting player in previous blockbusters. Regardless, in the videos, they take on the role of familiar faces who introduce Corenswet to their existing fans, threatening anyone who might not be nice to him.
Playing Superman has, famously, been a path to being thought of mainly as Superman for the rest of your career. Time will tell if Corenswet can navigate his way out of that box. Still, his next few years will undoubtedly be spent playing the Man of Steel (while a Superman sequel hasn’t been confirmed just yet, the chances are good Corenswet will appear in next year’s Supergirl, which was teased in the closing moments of Superman). But both the new Superman film and Fantastic Four are harnessing star power in slightly new ways, making superhero service feel more like a stopover in an otherwise robust career, not the final destination. After years of our national movie star reserves feeling dangerously low, this summer has felt like tapping into a promising new vein. Now let’s see if the industry can actually make the most of it.
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The long-delayed, possibly cursed Michael Jackson biopic, Michael, is now set for release on April 24, 2026. Rather than dealing with the controversies that plagued Jackson in the ’90s, the film will be “a celebration of the King of Pop’s life,” according to reports. That’s a pretty stark difference from how Michael, directed by Antoine Fuqua, was described when it went into production early last year, with a logline promising “a riveting and honest portrayal of the brilliant yet complicated man who became the King of Pop. The film presents his triumphs and tragedies on an epic, cinematic scale — from his human side and personal struggles to his undeniable creative genius, exemplified by his most iconic performances.”
That’s a tough thing to pull off when depicting a musician whose estate still pulls in millions, and indeed, the struggles behind the scenes of Michael have been pretty well-documented, including reports of full-fledged rewrites for the portions of the script that dealt with allegations of child sexual abuse against Jackson. The solution, it seems, is to snip out the allegations entirely, as well as the sad years that led to Jackson’s death.
With Colman Domingo still part of the film as Joe Jackson, the imperious patriarch of the Jackson family, there will still be plenty of room for drama in depicting Michael’s early years. But we’re most likely getting something more like the rounded edges of Bohemian Rhapsody than a film that properly reckons with one of the most important musical figures of the last century. (According to the trade reports, a second movie about Jackson, which presumably would focus on the abuse allegations and trial, is being developed.)
Then again, Bohemian Rhapsody grossed $910 million worldwide and won multiple Oscars, including best actor for Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury. So if you were Michael and Bohemian Rhapsody producer Graham King, which version of the story would you choose?