We use cookies to give you the best web experience.

About Cookies When you visit our website, like most others, small pieces of data are sent to and retrieved from your browser, mostly in the form of ‘cookies’. These cookies can be used to store information about you or your device (computer, tablet or mobile) which can be used to present you with a more personalised web experience. Please see our Privacy Policy for more details.

| Manage Cookies

I'd like to book tickets for:
at:

No films

Log in

ShowHide
Invalid log in details. Please check and try again
Captcha Verification Failed

Register

  • Register for free with no monthly fees
  • Earn 10% rewards on tickets, snacks and drinks
  • Discounted admission*
  • 25% OFF food & Frankie & Benny’s and Chiquito Restaurants**
  • Advance screening offers

*Valid after 7pm Sunday and all day Monday and Tuesday at all Showcase Cinemas and Showcase Cinema de Lux.
**Terms & Conditions apply, log in for full details

Reset Insider details

Enter your email address and we’ll send you a link to update your Insider details.

Please note: this needs to be the email address you used when setting up your membership.

Email not recognised. Please check and try again.

Thank you. Your reset email should be with you shortly - remember to check your Junk folder.

Go back

Bad Times At The El Royale

Published Date: 21/09/2018

Seven strangers, each with a secret to bury, meet at Lake Tahoe’s El Royale, a rundown hotel with a dark past. Over the course of one fateful night, everyone will have a last shot at redemption… before everything goes to hell.

Jeff Bridges, Chris Hemsworth, Jon Hamm, Dakota Johnson and Cynthia Erivo lead an all-star cast, directed by Drew Goddard.

The film is the highly anticipated follow-up to his lauded directorial debut, The Cabin in the Woods. We say highly anticipated because when it was leaked that Goddard was to write and direct a new film, the film world was buzzing! He chose 20th Century Fox as the studio for his new film, after enjoying the relationship he built up with them after scripting The Martian, which earned him a well-deserved Oscar nomination.

Goddard reunites with his The Cabin in the Woods star Chris Hemsworth who plays a mysterious and yet charismatic cult leader in the 60s set film. Hemsworth is one of seven strangers who end up at the mysterious El Royale hotel. Among the gathered rogues: a down-on-his-luck priest (Jeff Bridges), a singer named Darlene Sweet (Cynthia Erivo), an impressionable Southern girl (Cailee Spaeny) and her older sister (Dakota Johnson), and a vacuum cleaner salesman (Jon Hamm).

It is always a thrill to see the legendary Jeff Bridges on the big screen at Showcase and the actor has spoken at the ease of agreeing to star in Bad Times At The El Royale. One read of Goddard's screenplay and the Oscar winning actor said "Let's go!". Certainly Goddard is a fan and describes Bridges as the "dream person" to play the down-on-his-luck priest, Father Flynn.

Rightly Goddard is loathed to give away too much about his forthcoming film, which he has called a "love letter" to the great 60s noir films. What was key for him was to write a great ensemble film.

Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, the writer director said, "Rather than starting from an idea and a logline, this started from a basic premise: A bunch of characters check into a hotel on one night in 1969, and nobody is who they appear. I started with that very simple concept, wrote the roles, and then let the characters dictate the story.”

Primarily, he sees Bad Times… as a wonderful opportunity to pit some of his favourite actors against one another. “It really stems from wanting to give these actors a stage and let it explode outward from there,” he says.

 From the footage we have seen we can say that Goddard, only two films into his career, is honing a distinctive style and flair and we are only looking forward to what is sure to be an illustrious career.