Matt Damon

The director’s latest sends Matt Damon on a strange journey to a futuristic land.

Things aren’t looking so hot for the ’50s-era family man in the latest spot for George Clooney’s new film.

In case you missed it, Nebraska director Alexander Payne is back with a new movie this year. Downsizing will open in theaters this December, and today brings our first look at a movie that finally asks: what if we could shrink Matt Damon to combat overpopulation?

In the idyllic planned community of Suburbicon, everything appears to be in its right place. Apple-cheeked kids race home from school every afternoon, white picket fences outline immaculately manicured lawns, and a cheery mailman greets you in the same way at the same time every day. But there‘s trouble brewing in this homogeneous paradise. Is that a drop of blood?

Matt Damon and Julianne Moore star in this film, based on a screenplay by the Coen brothers.

When a big studio tentpole comes out, it’s common practice for the personnel involved to take their next jobs around the same time, riding the crest of publicity generated by the release. Usually, the offers start coming in shortly after the film in question hits theaters and proves successful or less-so, and the news will follow that. But when, say, the director of the upcoming Dark Tower adaptation signs a deal for his next project weeks in advance of his big premiere, it’s a sign foretelling one of two things. It’s either so good that a studio made him an offer too appealing to pass up, or so bad that he just wants to sign a contract before word gets out.

Elysium is far from Neill Blomkamp’s best movie — I’ll even bet money that he made Chappie so that the general public would forget about how much they hated that movie were Matt Damon and Sharlto Copley beat each other up while wearing mechanical exoskeletons on a space station reserved only for rich people. But it’s human nature to want to improve upon your failures, and Blomkamp is, as far as we know, a human, so it’s no surprise that he’d want to have another crack at it.

Last summer’s Jason Bourne may be 2016’s biggest movie we‘ve all already forgotten about. The franchise‘s revival put Matt Damon back in the driver’s seat after trying a legacyquel with Jeremy Renner, and the crowd responded in kind with a princely $164 million box-office take in the U.S. alone. But even as the Jason Bourne formula continues to yield fiscal gains for all parties involved, Matt Damon appears to have grown unsure about the franchise’s continued viability. In a new interview with the Toronto Sun, he expressed his doubts about the future of the secret agent that made him a bona fide movie star.

We’ve likely not finished the fallout of Sunday’s big Oscar snafu, though few would place any blame at the feet of host Jimmy Kimmel, who wandered out to bring some humor to the La La Land error. In all the chaos, however, Kimmel’s final bit with Matt Damon ended up lost to time, as the host now explains how the show was meant to end.

The Great Wall has garnered controversy for its white savior narrative that finds Matt Damon, a white dude, saving an ancient Chinese dynasty from mythical monsters. But the most offensive thing about The Great Wall isn’t even the racial dynamic, or Damon’s painfully bad Irish/Scottish accent; it’s that Zhang Yimou, the acclaimed Chinese filmmaker behind Hero and House of Flying Daggers, has managed to make a movie this ugly.