Summer Movie Scoops: Details on the Biggest Films

Few romances have been adapted for the screen as often as the saga of Tarzan and Jane — whether it’s Johnny Weissmuller telling Maureen O’Sullivan, "Me Tarzan, you Jane" in 1932’s Tarzan the Ape Man or Andie MacDowell teaching Christopher Lambert English in the 1984 Greystoke. But when Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows director David Yates set out to cast the leading lady in his upcoming blockbuster The Legend of Tarzan, he knew he needed a Jane who, yes, had chemistry with Alexander Skarsgård but could also fend for herself in the Congolian wilderness. Find out how he found Margot Robbie.

Jared Leto is the first to admit that he hasn’t quite pinned down his feelings about playing one of comic lore’s most iconic villains — the Joker in Warner Bros.’ coming DC Comics adaptation Suicide Squad. Leto puts a tattooed spin on the anarchic clown prince of crime, a ring leader of sorts for the group of baddies brought together to execute incredibly risky missions — ones that will most likely get them killed — in exchange for clemency. With the movie’s release months away, the actor and 30 Seconds to Mars frontman is still figuring out how to articulate his approach to assuming the mantle of Batman’s greatest foe. See what Leto had to say to EW.

After a nine-year hiatus from the big screen, fans have a burning question for Jason Bourne: Where the heck has the guy been? Find out what director Paul Greengrass had to say.

In The Purge: Election Year (out July 1) the near-future franchise enters political-conspiracy territory for a tale in which Elizabeth Mitchell (Lost) and Kyle Secor (Homicide: Life on the Street) play rival presidential candidates. Their main policy difference? While Mitchell is agitating to end the annual “holiday” in which nearly all crimes — even murder — are legal, Secor is campaigning to maintain the status quo. After Mitchell’s character is nearly killed on Purge Night, she goes on the run with Frank Grillo’s character, “Sarge,” the hero of 2014’s second entry in the franchise, The Purge: Anarchy. Find out where director James DeMonaco got his inspiration for the flick.

Is there any other major movie star more closely associated with magic than Daniel Radcliffe? That’s exactly why it was such a shock (and a treat) to see the former Harry Potter star appear at the very end of the first Now You See Me 2 trailer fumbling a deck of cards. (What was all that Hogwarts tuition money for?) Find out more about his character's magical ability — or lack thereof.

Independence Day begins with massive hovering alien vessels lingering over the major cities of the world. The sight of the hovering mega-ships is one of the most memorable images from the 1996 film – along with that exploding White House. Director Roland Emmerich returns to the Independence Day universe with this summer’s sequel, Resurgence. Twenty years later, learn the state of the nemesis' strength.

In addition to being Duncan Jones’ (Moon, Source Code) biggest film to date, the June release for Warcraft has a deep, personal meaning to the director. The three and a half years Jones spent working on the project were a particularly difficult period in his life. Learn more.

Chris Hemsworth was nervous. The Australian actor may be Thor, the god of thunder, but he was about to face off against four comic titans when he stepped on the Boston set of the Ghostbusters reboot last summer opposite Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, and Leslie Jones. See what director Paul Feig and Hemsworth's costars had to say about his performance.

In this summer’s thriller The Shallows, Blake Lively (The Age of Adaline) plays a surfer who is attacked by a shark and then must fend for her life while trapped alone on an ocean rock. Lively is basically the only actor in the film — even the shark was added later through CG. Find out how she found inspiration for the gig.

Josh Gad had initial reservations about The Angry Birds Movie, in part because of a certain frosty feature that had him as a snowman named Olaf. "There were two words that terrified me, angry and birds," he explains. "I [said] to myself, I don’t need to be following up Frozen, which has obviously taken on a life of its own, by doing an animated movie based on a mobile app game." Find out why he signed on for the flick.

As if you didn't already know, Time is a villain – in Alice Through the Looking Glass, at least. Director James Bobin (The Muppets, Flight of the Conchords), who took over the reins from Alice in Wonderland director Tim Burton, explained to EW where the character comes from. See what he had to say.

There’s a lot of destruction in this summer’s X-Men: Apocalypse. But there’s also a fair amount of romance, mostly in the form of the X-Men’s version of Brangelina, Jean Grey and Scott Summers, better known as Cyclops. (Of course, Angelina Jolie never turned into an all-powerful, malevolent, telekinetic creature so maybe that’s a bad example.) Learn more.

You can only imagine how intimidating it might feel as a young actor to step onto a Jodie Foster-directed set with your new costars George Clooney and Julia Roberts. But Jack O’Connell, the British actor best known for his role as Louis Zamperini in Unbroken, held his own while playing the unhinged investor who hijacks the financial investment television show Money Monster, which features Clooney as host Lee Gates and Roberts as his level-headed producer. See what O'Connell had to say about the experience.

Two years ago, Neighbors dove deep into undergraduate exploits, with its portrait of Zac Efron’s boozy-druggy Greek life disrupting Seth Rogen’s and Rose Byrne’s expectant suburban couple. Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising has a bigger budget, which means director Nicholas Stoller was able to explore a new corner of coed existence: The rampaging joy of the football tailgate. Find out more.

An asteroid is coming right for Earth, and it may very well be that the only person who can save it is a llama. Or not. In Blue Sky Studios’ and 20th Century Fox’s upcoming Ice Age: Collision Course – the fifth film in the Paleolithic franchise that launched in 2002 – the familiar pack of home-seeking mammals faces a new threat from the cosmos, but they seek a solution in someone who might know everything: Shangri Llama, a new character in the Ice Age franchise, voiced by Modern Family star Jesse Tyler Ferguson. Get the scoop on Shangri Llama.

Here’s some fish food for thought: You’ve got a sequel, 13 years in the making, to the second highest-grossing film of 2003, a slew of new characters to cast (Beluga whales! Sea lions!), and one very recognizable voice who will share a scene with most of them. What do you do? Find out here.

This is the story of how a great big giant took baby steps to the screen. Steven Spielberg’s The BFG will stomp into theaters this July, with Bridge of Spies Oscar-winner Mark Rylance towering over it as the title character. But Roald Dahl’s 1982 children’s novel was almost adapted into a movie two decades ago, when producers Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall first started developing it in the early 1990s. Find out more.

When the comedy troupe trio of Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone, and Akiva Scaffer — better known as The Lonely Island — were brainstorming ideas for their first feature film, they looked to real life for inspiration. “We’d been talking about this new genre of movie, the popumentary, if you will,” says Samberg. “It’s a glossier version of a rock documentary and all these pop bands have had them. They’re sort of like borderline propaganda from their own camp — just, like, fluffy documentaries that track their tours and lives and are really bubbly and awesome to look at and fun to watch." Read how Samberg became a pop icon for Popstar.

Idris Elba joins the Star Trek franchise with Star Trek Beyond. Since this is a J.J. Abrams production, everything about Elba’s role has been shrouded in mystery – to the point where Elba hesitates to even reveal his character’s name when reached by EW. See what he had to say.