The first trailer for Emma Watson’s upcoming thriller, Regression, has been released. The movie also stars David Thewlis (Professor Lupin), and Ethan Hawke and has a release date of August 28, 2015. The trailer as well as a short synopsis may be seen below:

REGRESSION is set in a small Minnesota town in 1980 where a man is arrested for sexually abusing his daughter. He admits his guilt despite having no memory of it. With the help of a psychologist, he relives the memories and implicates a police officer as his partner in crime. The man’s estranged son and other townspeople are also suddenly able to relive suppressed memories of horrific abuse. At the same time, the local news reports blame a Satanic cult that has been performing rituals of orgies, assault, killing animals and even babies, for years. The officers are alarmed when similar reports come in from all around the country—they believe they’ve uncovered a national and possibly supernatural conspiracy. Is the abuse real, or something else?”

As we’ve been reporting since 2012, Emma Watson has officially been cast as Belle in Disney’s upcoming live-action version of Beauty & the Beast!

“I’m finally able to tell you that I will be playing Belle! It was such a big part of my growing up, it almost feels surreal that I’ll get to dance to ‘Be Out Guest’ and sing ‘Something There.’ My six-year-old self is on the ceiling – heart bursting. Time to start some singing lessons. I can’t wait for you to see it.”

The film was originally going to be done by Guillermo del Toro and Warner Bros. but now is in the hands of Disney. Bill Condon is directing the film and the script will be written by Stephen Chbosky, who directed Emma in The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

We will post more as the story develops!

Back in September, Emma Watson announced the UN Women’s HeForShe campaign. Earlier today, she delivered another speech encouraging world and corporate leaders to take action for gender equality during the kickoff of a HeForShe program launch at the World Economic Forum at Davos on January 23rd, 2015.

She says: “The groundswell of response we have received in support for HeForShe tells us we are tapping into what the world wants: to be a part of change. Now we have to channel that energy into purposeful action. The pilot initiative provides that framework. Next we need all country leadership, as well as that of hundreds of universities and corporations to follow HeForShe’s IMPACT 10x10x10 so as to bring an end to the persisting inequalities faced by women and girls globally.

A press release for states:

The HeForShe campaign’s IMPACT 10X10X10 initiative is a one-year pilot effort that aims to engage governments, corporations and universities as instruments of change positioned within some of the communities that most need to address deficiencies in women’s empowerment and gender equality and that have the greatest capacity to make and influence those changes. Each sector will identify approaches for addressing gender inequality, and pilot test the effectiveness of these interventions for scalability.

[…]

“HeForShe exemplifies UN Women’s groundbreaking leadership on gender equality. We know where change is proving hardest. The HeForShe IMPACT Initiative puts responsibility for change right where it matters- and spotlights leaders who can make it happen. The founding Champions from industry and government will pave the way for others to join in, using the pilot initiatives to streamline decision-making on relevant and successful activities,” stated UN Women Executive Director and Under-Secretary-General Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka. “Ultimately we need everyone to get involved if we are to turn the tide.”

It was rumored last year that Emma Watson would be starring in the musical La La Land, written by Damien Chazelle and also starring Miles Teller.  It seems that the news has been confirmed by The Telegraph and Page Six. Emma will reportedly be playing Mia, an aspiring actress trying to make it in the competitive world of Los Angeles. This has not been completely confirmed as of yet.

Of the project, Chazelle says: “I’ve been trying to get off the ground since I lived in LA, in the past five or six years. I wrote the script about four years ago, and I worked with the same guy who did the music on Whiplash. We wrote it four years ago and we were just trying to convince someone to do an original, MGM-style musical, because I don’t think there are enough.”

Justin Hurwitz, Chazelle’s collaborator said:

“Most current musicals are based on stage musicals (like Chicago) or other properties, so it’s really cool Lionsgate are letting us do a totally original musical. Even the few other original musicals made today have diegetic justification for the music, like Once. Now I love Once, but the music is all on screen, as opposed to older musicals where orchestra just swells up behind the actor. Or take the film Enchanted from a few years ago, which I thought was great, but it had a high concept to justify the music – she was a storybook character. There hasn’t been a movie in a while where the music just swells up for no reason other than that the characters are moved and want to break into song.”

A little more information on the film, as seen in The Telegraph:

The film will have eclectic influences. Hurwitz started playing piano at the age of six and is influenced by people as diverse as French musician Michel Legrand and Charlie Chaplin. […] Jazz is a common love for director, composer and main star Tiller. They believe in their films that they have been able to show how much precision goes into jazz, a musical form sometimes considered to be “loose” because of the improvisation involved. But La La Land isn’t a film centered solely on jazz. The creators are taking their style from iconic Hollywood musical films such as Singin’ In The Rain, [A] Star is Born, Gentleman Prefer Blondes and Meet Me in St Louis, as well as French New Wave and Umbrellas of Cherbourg.

According to the article, ‘filming is expected to begin in March and Chazelle says they will pre-record the songs in the style of the old Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movies for MGM. As a fan of Harry Potter, Chazelle admits he is looking forward to working with Watson and on a project with a comic touch’

Variety is reporting this morning that Emma Watson is set to star opposite Daniel Bruhl in the thriller Colonia. The movie will be filmed in Luxembourg, Munich, Berlin and South America until the end of the year.  A description of the film is as follows:

[Colonia] tells the story of Lena and Daniel, a young couple who become entangled in the Chilean military coup of 1973. Daniel is abducted by Pinochet’s secret police and Lena tracks him to a sealed off area in the south of the country, called Colonia Dignidad. The Colonia presents itself as a charitable mission run by lay preacher Paul Schäfer but, in fact, is a place nobody ever escaped from. Lena decides to join the cult in order to find Daniel.

Emma Watson, newly appointed UN Women Global Goodwill Ambassador, was at the UN Headquarters in New York on Saturday, September 20 to launch their new ‘HeForShe‘ campaign which asks men and boys worldwide to join the movement for gender equality. The campaign aims to mobilize one billion men and boys as advocates of change in ending inequalities that women and girls face globally.

Watch her full speech below and read a transcript over at Rappler: