Family matters in Universal Pictures’ August releases

This August, it’s all about families’ survival and surviving the family with Universal Pictures’ thrilling films – Beast, Nope and Easter Sunday. 

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Beast (opens August 10) is a pulse-pounding new thriller about a father and his two teenage daughters who find themselves hunted by a massive rogue lion as the jungle’s apex predator. Idris Elba stars as the recently widowed Dr. Nate Daniels who returns and brings his daughters to South Africa where first he met his wife.  The long-planned journey takes them to a game reserve managed by an old family friend and wildlife biologist, Martin Battles played by Sharlto Copley.  But what begins as a journey of healing jolts into a fearsome fight for survival when a lion, a survivor of blood-thirsty poachers who now sees all humans as the enemy, begins stalking them.  Iyana Halley (The Hate U Give, This is Us series) plays Daniels’ 18-year-old daughter, Meredith, and Leah Sava Jeffries (Rel series, Empire series) plays his 13-year-old, Norah.

From Oscar® winner Jordan Peele who disrupted and redefined modern horror with Get Out and then Us comes his latest expansive new horror epic Nope (opens August 17).  In Nope, siblings Oj (Daniel Kaluuya) and Emerald (Keke Palmer) find themselves unwittingly drawn into a mysterious realm once they started taking over the horse ranch of their industry-legend father.  Carrying the torch of their father’s craft as animal wranglers for film and television, OJ and Emerald face financial challenges and the heartbreak inherent to a trade where livestock is the talent.  OJ and Emerald begin observing unexplained phenomena on their vast ranch that leads them down an obsessive rabbit hole—plotting attempts to capture the mystery on camera. The hijinks of their quest for documentation, through increasingly elaborate and dangerous set-ups, puts at risk the only thing they truly have: the hard-earned business of their late ue father, who has left them in his long shadow. Things unexpectedly escalate as the siblings enlist the expert help of Fry’s Electronics store employee Angel Torres and acclaimed cinematographer Antlers Holst, who is on the cusp of retirement. As their efforts, and hubris, cross a point-of-no-return, ratcheting the stakes to terrifying consequences, our heroes are drawn straight into the eye of an irreversible storm. The result is an expansive horror-spectacle with an intimate and emotionally complex core.

Easter Sunday (opens August 31) stars stand-up comedy sensation Jo Koy (Jo Koy: In His Elements, Jo Koy: Comin’ in Hot) stars as a man returning home for an Easter celebration with his riotous, bickering, eating, drinking, laughing, loving family, in this love letter to his Filipino-American community.  Easter Sunday features an all-star comedic cast that includes Jimmy O. Yang (Silicon Valley series), Tia Carrere (True Lies, Wayne’s World films), Brandon Wardell (Curb Your Enthusiasm series), Tony nominee Eva Noblezada (Broadway’s Hadestown), Lydia Gaston (Broadway’s The King and I), Asif Ali (WandaVision), Rodney To (Parks and Recreation series), Eugene Cordero (The Good Place series), Jay Chandrasekhar (I Love You, Man), Tiffany Haddish (Girls Trip) and Lou Diamond Phillips (Courage Under Fire).