Most of the headlines surrounding Warner Bros.’ unprecedented decision to send all of their upcoming movies to HBO Max and theaters simultaneously have been grabbed by the titles with the biggest budgets, whether it be Gal Gadot’s $10 million bonus for Wonder Woman 1984, director Denis Villeneuve’s fears that his hopes for a Dune franchise have already been dashed or Legendary Pictures threatening legal action over Godzilla vs. Kong, but there are a lot of smaller projects also heading to the streaming service next year.
First out of the gate is The Little Things, which hits the big screen and Warner Bros.’ in-house platform on January 29th, and the crime thriller boasts some serious pedigree on both sides of the camera. The Blind Side‘s John Lee Hancock writes and directs, with four-time Academy Award winning producer Mark Johnson pulling the strings behind the scenes.
The star-studded cast, meanwhile, is headlined by two-time Academy Award winner Denzel Washington, who plays a veteran County Sheriff sent to Los Angeles for an assignment, where he ends up being drawn into the hunt for a serial killer. Fellow Oscar winners Rami Malek and Jared Leto co-star as a hotshot cop and the prime suspect respectively, and based on the trailer, things aren’t quite as straightforward as they seem.
As a Denzel Washington thriller, history has more than proven that The Little Things will be watchable at the very least, but there’s a real sense of atmosphere lurking just under the surface of the footage, and it appears as though the plot will have a few surprises in store. It isn’t the showiest entry in the Warner Bros. 2021 catalogue, but it could go down in the books as the movie that helped kickstart a cinematic revolution.