Overwatch 2 launched its Transformers crossover skins this week, and while those were obviously the headliner of the hero shooter’s July 9 update, they were accompanied by the game’s midseason balance patch. The buffs and nerfs were meant to address criticisms surrounding the lack of “tankiness” with the game’s tank…
Overwatch 2 launched its Transformers crossover skins this week, and while those were obviously the headliner of the hero shooter’s July 9 update, they were accompanied by the game’s midseason balance patch. The buffs and nerfs were meant to address criticisms surrounding the lack of “tankiness” with the game’s tank…
Longlegs star Nicolas Cage voiced the Marvel Comics character Spider-Man Noir in the animated feature Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, and now he’s set to play the character in live-action for an upcoming MGM+ and Prime Video series that appears to be going by the title Spider-Noir. During an interview with The New Yorker, Cage dropped some quotes about Spider-Noir, mentioning that the show is expected to consist of eight episodes… and it will involve monsters.
Spider-Noir first came up in the conversation when Cage was asked if he sees himself as part of a category of actors. He said, “The fantasy would be that I could try to aspire to be something more Golden Age. You know, something more like James Cagney or Humphrey Bogart. Or Hedy Lamarr or Bette Davis. I wanted to have that kind of aura, you know, like the more enigmatic, you don’t know too much. That’s why I’m not on social media. That’s the thinking, anyway. I don’t know. We’ll see what happens if I do this Amazon show, and they put me in black-and-white. We’ll see if we can get some of that flavor.“
It came up again when he was talking about how he gets ready to play a role: “I like to have two months to prepare for a movie. … I start reading it. I’m a little behind the curve on this next one I’m doing, called The Carpenter’s Son. But I get on the elliptical in the morning. I start reading the script from the front to the back. And then I reverse it and read it from the back to the front. And then I take the biggest—or, I should say, the most dialogue-intense—scenes and get them off the plate first, so they’re in my body. The problem that I have with it, though, is I’m carrying all that around in my head for two months, going through it every day, so that, by the time I get on the set, I’m not thinking about it, just flowing. But that’s a lot of memory retention every day for two months—and then for however long the movie takes. It’s yeoman’s work. So, with this show, if I do this, I don’t know if I’m going to have the time to be that…“
When reminded that TV episodes and their scripts are shorter than movies and their scripts, he replied that Spider-Noir episodes will be, “Forty-five minutes. I mean, it’s eight episodes. So it’s the equivalent of four movies in five months. And I’ve got another movie I’ve gotta prepare for, and then a movie right after it…” He’s a busy guy.
Later in the interview, Cage mentioned, “One of the things that I like about this potential show is that it’s fantasy. It’s not really people beating people up. Monsters are involved.“
Spider-Noir will see Cage taking on the role of an aging and down on his luck private investigator in 1930s New York who is forced to grapple with his past life as the city’s one and only superhero. He’s being joined in the cast by Brendan Gleeson as the villain and Lamorne Morris as journalist Robbie Robertson.
Spider-Noir comes to us from Oren Uziel (22 Jump Street) and Steve Lightfoot (Marvel’s The Punisher), who will serve as co-showrunners and executive producers. Harry Bradbeer (Killing Eve) will direct and executive produce the first two episodes. Uziel and Lightfoot developed the series alongside Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, and Amy Pascal, the team behind the Spider-Verse movies. Lord, Miller, and Pascal will also serve as executive producers on Spider-Noir.
Are you looking forward to watching Nicolas Cage fight monsters in eight episodes (forty-five minutes each) of Spider-Noir? Share your thoughts on this show by leaving a comment below.
The post Nicolas Cage on Spider-Man Noir series: eight episodes and monsters appeared first on JoBlo.
Those who have been waiting for a continuation of the FX show The Old Man, wait no more. Although it’s been just over two years since the first season of the Jeff Bridges and John Lithgow thriller series, the premiere date for season 2 has just been revealed along with a teaser trailer, courtesy of The Hollywood Reporter. The upcoming season of The Old Man will be broadcast on FX this fall on September 12.
According to THR, the synopsis for season 2 reads, “Season two of The Old Man will follow former CIA operative Dan Chase (Bridges) and ex-FBI assistant director Harold Harper (Lithgow) as they work to rescue Emily (Alia Shawkat) after she’s kidnapped in Afghanistan. Gbenga Akinnagbe, Navid Negahban and Jacqueline Antaramian will reprise their roles from the first season.”
In the banner debut season, Jeff Bridges stars as Dan Chase, a former CIA operative who has been living off the grid for thirty years. When an assassin attempts to take him out, Chase learns that to ensure his future, he must now reconcile his past. The series is based on the bestselling novel by Thomas Perry and has been a big success so far. FX has said that The Old Man was the most-watched cable series premiere in more than a year, and was also the most-watched FX series debut on Hulu in its opening weekend. The series also stars John Lithgow as the FBI’s Assistant Director for Counterintelligence Harold Harper, who works alongside protégé Angela Adams (Alia Shawkat), CIA Special Agent Raymond Waters (E.J. Bonilla), and highly trained special ops contractor Julian Carson (Gbenga Akinnagbe) to hunt Chase down. Amy Brenneman also stars as Zoe McDonald, a woman who rents a room to Chase while he’s on the run and is pulled into the conspiracy.
“Jonathan E. Steinberg, Dan Shotz and Warren Littlefield have done a fantastic job with The Old Man, which delivers on the powerful intrigue and breathtaking action of Thomas Perry’s book,” said Eric Schrier, FX Entertainment President. “The stellar cast led by Jeff Bridges, John Lithgow, Amy Brenneman and Alia Shawkat is really connecting with audiences and we are excited to get to work on season two with our colleagues at 20th Television and this fantastic team.” Karey Burke, President of 20th Television, added, “This terrific series has had a long journey to the air, which makes the reaction from critics and audiences these past few weeks all the sweeter. But the truth is, no one who has worked on it these past three years is surprised it’s resonating so deeply. From the brilliant creative execution by Jon, Dan and Warren to the spectacular star turns from Jeff, John, Amy and Alia, this heart racing series delivers and we thank FX for the incredible support.“
You can check out a review for The Old Man from our own Alex Maidy right here.
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Nailing the final entry of a classic cinematic trilogy is always the most difficult to get right. Tasked with sticking the landing and tying the narrative strands across three movies together requires a precise amount of pre-planning that must be executed in ways that both trump its predecessors and satisfy fans at once with a compelling conclusion. Every once in a while, we get perfect trilogy-enders like The Good, the Bad and The Ugly, The Return of the King, or The Last Crusade. But more often than not, we get limp and lackluster results like The Godfather Part III, Jaws 3D, Terminator: Rise of the Machines, Alien 3, Back to the Future 3, Men in Black III, and countless other movies that fail to live up to the first two instalments. That begs the question, where does Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome register on the scale of all-time good or bad final chapters in movie trilogies?
Released four years after The Road Warrior, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome was made much differently than the first two films. For instance, Beyond Thunderdome is the first Mad Max movie made without instrumental producer Byron Kennedy, who tragically died in a 1983 helicopter crash. It’s also the only franchise entry to be co-directed by someone other than Miller. In this case, Miller hired his friend and previous collaborator, George Ogilvie, to helm the sequel. While there are plenty more cool tidbits and trivial factoids about the making of the movie, it’s hard to overstate the absence of Byron and the split directorial duties that led to what many believe is the worst Mad Max movie thus far. “Ladies and Gentleman, boys and girls, Dyin’ time is here” as we lift the hood and find out What Happened to Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome!
The first thing to know about Beyond Thunderdome is that it was not initially conceived as a Mad Max movie. Miller always felt that Max Rockatansky’s story ended with The Road Warrior and set out to make an apocalyptic Lord of the Flies type of movie as a follow-up. Yet, once Miller got the idea to have an adult find the feral children in the wild and lead them toward salvation, the idea for Beyond Thunderdome was born. Unfortunately, producer Byron Kennedy, whose invaluable contributions to the first two films live in infamy, could not work on Beyond Thunderdome. On July 17, 1983, Byron died when a helicopter he was piloting crashed at Warragamba Dam in New South Wales, Australia. He was only 33 when he died. That Byron produced the first two Mad Max movies at age 29 and 31 is truly special and should not be understated. As one might imagine, Byron’s death deeply affected Miller, who thought he could no longer continue the franchise without him. According to Miller:
“I was reluctant to go ahead. And then there was a sort of need to – let’s do something just to get over the shock and grief of all of that.”
To compensate for the sudden absence of his longtime producing partner, Miller hired the late George Ogilvie to co-direct Beyond Thunderdome. Miller and Ogilvie worked together on the 1983 Australian miniseries The Dismissal. About the decision to co-direct the film, Miller stated:
“I had a lot on my plate. I asked my friend George Ogilvie, who was working on the mini-series, ‘Could you come and help me?’ But I don’t remember the experience because I was doing it to just… You know, I was grieving.”
Part of the collaboration process between Miller and Ogilvie included a rehearsal workshop period before filming occurred. This was most invaluable for the child actors, who spent two months training how to hunt, climb, and wield makeshift weapons. Oddly enough, Miller was attached to direct the movie Contact but was granted the rights to The Road Warrior and Beyond Thunderdome in exchange for walking away from the sci-fi spectacle ultimately directed by Robert Zemeckis.
Written by Miller and Terry Hayes, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome takes place 20 years after events depicted in the original Mad Max. Partially inspired by the sobering historical documentary The Atomic Cafe, Beyond Thunderdome was the most expensive Australian movie made up to then, breaking a record previously held by The Road Warrior. The original Mad Max cost roughly $400,000, The Road Warrior cost $4.5 million, and Beyond Thunderdome boasted a budget of $10 million.
One of the reasons Miller cast American pop star Tina Turner was because Beyond Thunderdome was the first film to receive funding from the U.S. Of course, Turner’s rousing anthem “We Don’t Need Another Hero” became an international radio charting hit. The role of Aunty Entity was written specifically for Turner before she was asked to play the part. When Turner arrived on set, she was surprised to learn that the production vehicles had manual transmissions. Turner could not drive a stick and was given a custom-made car with an automatic engine for her to drive in the film. Meanwhile, the kick-ass hairdo she sports in the movie is a wig. Turner had to shave her head before filming to fit in the wig, which she was more than willing to do.
Miller also had to coax Mel Gibson to play Max again after the actor had sworn off the part after The Road Warrior. Yet, one of the strangest bits of casting involves Bruce Spence, who played the Gyro Captain in The Road Warrior. Spence plays the flying bandit Jedidiah in Beyond Thunderdome, a similar but different character than the Gyro Captain. Rather than the Gyrocopter, Jedediah flies a Transavia PL-12 “Airtruk”, a single-motor biplane first flown in 1965 for agricultural use. At the time, only 120 “Airtruk” models were produced.
According to Spence about his casting:
“They were well into the shoot when they offered me a part described as ‘not the Gyro Captain but kind of like the Gyro Captain!’… they said there’s kind of a reflection of him and that they were having difficulty casting the role so they thought to themselves, ‘Why not Bruce!’”
Armed with a $10 million budget, principal photography on Beyond Thunderdome began on September 10, 1984. To keep the project secret, the film’s working title was Desert World. Director of Photography Dean Semler returned for duty following his work on The Road Warrior, who claimed Beyond Thunderdome was much harder to film than its predecessor. The main reason for the increased difficulty came from the varied locations throughout Australia and to create unique visual aesthetics for each distinct environment Max encounters. For instance, most of the exterior scenes were filmed in the mining town of Coober Pedy, South Australia. Meanwhile, the children’s campground was filmed in Mermaid’s Cave in the Blue Mountains in South New Wales. The bustling Bartertown was filmed on a set built in an abandoned brick factory called The Brickpit in Homebush Bay in Western Sydney.
Speaking of Bartertown, for the scene in which a grumpy-ass iguana hisses at Max, real-life herpetologist Graham Gow was just off-screen pulling at the iguana’s tail to make the reptile audibly react. Gow was the owner of Graham Gow’s Reptile World in Humpty Doo and would go on to work on the Crocodile Dundee movies and others. Throughout his dangerous career, Gow was bitten by snakes over 140 times and eventually died of cancer in 2005 after sustaining an adder bite. Gow told reporters that the background extras in Bartertown were not actors, and their Goth/punk appearances and attitudes were authentic.
Although rumors persisted that Miller only directed the action scenes, leaving the rest of the film to be done by Ogilvie, Miller refuted such and blamed the confusion on a poorly worded press release. According to Miller, the only time he and Ogilvie split up while making Beyond Thunderdome involved the camel scenes. Otherwise, the two made the movie together every step of the way.
While the making of Beyond Thunderdome didn’t experience as many tragic fatalities or grave injuries as the first two films, at least one notable mishap occurred. For example, the train crashing into the car with Ironar Bassey onboard didn’t go as planned. The stunt was coordinated by Dennis Williams, the same performer who flipped the Mack Truck in The Road Warrior. After delaying the stunt to accommodate the passing of an operational train, Williams performed the crash, sustained burns on his left arm and shoulder, and had to be taken to a nearby hospital to treat his wounds.
One of the movie’s most memorable moments comes at the end when Max helps the children flee as a sandstorm savages the land. Like most of Mad Max’s timeless sequences, the sandstorm was 100% real. In addition to the camera plane deliberately flying into the storm to capture raw footage, the crewmembers had to brave the storm by hiding in cars taking safe cover nearby. Unlike the CGI-heavy 21st-century Mad Max films, the tactical and practical stunts and FX work are why the film remains so durable 40 years later. Nowadays, CGI pigs would be used for the Underworld scene. When making Beyond Thunderdome, 600 real pigs were rented from a nearby farm and used for the sequence. The pigs were rented because purchasing such a large amount would have affected the local pork market.
Of course, as the third franchise entry, there are several overt and covert callbacks to the first two films that fans may have missed. For instance, when Max first meets Aunty Entity, one of her men plays the saxophone, a subtle nod to Max’s wife Jessie in the first film. Another example includes Max’s mangled left eye, which has a more dilated pupil than his right eye. This was a callback to The Road Warrior when Wez threw Max off the road, rolled his V8 Pursuit Special, and suffered an injury. Similarly, after sustaining a gunshot wound to his leg from Bubba Zanetti in the original film, Max sports a noticeable limp and leg brace in The Road Warrior and a residual bandage on his knee in Beyond Thunderdome.
When Max wanders through Bartertown and relinquishes his weapons, eagle-eyed fans can spot Wez’s wrist-held crossbow from The Road Warrior, which Max must have stripped from Wez’s corpse after he was smashed by a truck. Max also gives up a Mauser C96 handgun, which many believe he pulled from old Bubba after he lethally shot him in the original film. These small details add up and give the franchise’s world-building a connective continuity that bolsters Max’s character and ties each movie together. However, there is one confusing aspect relating to Blaster’s fate. Some fans have claimed that Max spares Blaster in the film because he reminds him of Benno, the autistic rancher living with May Swaisey in the original Mad Max. Others believe Benno and Blaster could be the same character despite being played by different actors.
As for other obscure character connections in Beyond Thunderdome, Savannah Nix cries in horror when Finn Coo is lethally sunken by quicksand because she is his mother, a detail revealed in the movie’s novelization by Joan D. Vinge.
Regarding discontinuity, one of the biggest changes Beyond Thunderdome made from the first two films was the music composer. The music for Mad Max and The Road Warrior was scored by Australian musician Brian May (no, not the Queen guitarist). For Beyond Thunderdome, Miller hired Oscar-winning composer Maurice Jarre fresh off his Academy Award victory for David Lean’s A Passage to India. Hiring Jarre led to an increase in the musical budget for the film, resulting in an epic score featuring a full orchestra and over 100 musicians. Jarre turned in a massive 87-minute score, including the 25-minute “Big Chase!” finale as Max escorts the children across the desert away from Aunty. May was understandably devastated to learn Jarre replaced him, as he looked forward to sonically concluding the trilogy.
The grand irony is that Jarre’s score would not be released in its entirety until 2010 due to a rights mix-up. When Miller gave up directing Contact, he was granted the rights to the entire Mad Max franchise, unwittingly including the musical score. Part of Jarre’s unused score for Beyond Thunderdome can be heard in Wolfgang Petersen’s Enemy Mine, released in December 1985. Meanwhile, Tina Turner’s hit Thunderdome theme song “We Don’t Need Another Hero” reached #1 in Canada, #2 in the U.S., and #3 on the UK single charts.
Another fascinating aspect of Beyond Thunderdome relates to the deleted scenes. To shorten the runtime, at least two scenes were cut. The first involved Max waking from a nightmare about his murdered wife Jessie and son Sprog. As he cries in agony, Max realizes that he is becoming like the feral marauders he pursued as a police enforcer and vows to re-instill his humanity. Although the footage no longer exists, the novelization detailed the scene further.
The other deleted scene involved Max taking Gekko to the top of a dune at night, spotting the lights of Bartertown in the distance, and declaring they’d reached Tomorrow-Morrow Land. A few snippets from this deleted scene are featured in the music video for “We Don’t Need Another Hero.”
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome was released in July 1985, marking Mel Gibson’s final time portraying the title character. Although the film drew mostly positive reviews, it failed to reach the critical apex of The Road Warrior. Beyond Thunderdome grossed $36 million worldwide when factoring in rental sales, the same amount as The Road Warrior. The difference is, that Beyond Thunderdome was more than twice as expensive as its predecessor, making it harder to justify the franchise’s continuation on the big screen. As such, Miller considered adapting the franchise to the small screen in 1986, a factoid that may have eluded fans.
In 1986, Miller considered making a Mad Max TV show starring Australian actor Jon Blake in the title role. Unfortunately, in December 1986, Blake suffered severe brain damage during a car accident he suffered one day after filming a movie called The Lighthorsemen. Blake remained paralyzed in a locked-in state until he died in 2011. While far less important, the Mad Max TV show was scrapped after Blake was injured.
Of course, the lasting legacy of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome is still felt today. “Thunderdome” has entered the pop lexicon to denote a chaotic royal rumble-style death match where the loser faces a harsh penalty. Thunderdome’s apocalyptic iconography has been adopted by pro wrestling and recycled in such popular music videos as 2Pac and Dr. Dre’s California Love. The Fallout videogame franchise has cited the Mad Max franchise as a major influence, and shows like Eastbound & Down and Rick and Morty have overtly parodied Beyond Thunderdome. After the movie’s release, the vehicles featured in Beyond Thunderdome toured various car shows in Australia in 1985.
While the writers considered killing Max Rockatansky in Beyond Thunderdome, the character’s spirit died a bit when Mel Gibson portrayed the character for the final time. Meanwhile, Aunty Entity is the only female antagonist in the Mad Max franchise thus far, and the only villain to survive the original trilogy. The gender reversal has paved the way for Fury Road and Furiosa to expand the franchise’s horizons. Fury Road proved to be a monumental event and marked the rousing return of Miller to his most iconic cinematic contributions. Sadly, Furiosa crashed and flamed at the box office in 2024, raising serious doubts about the future of Mad Max and the next planned installment, The Wasteland. But that’s for another day.
Until then, it’s best to slam on the brakes and say – yup, That’s What Happened to Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome!
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When season one of office thriller show Severance aired in early 2022 it became an instant hit. The Apple TV+ show starring Adam Scott was a biting critique of the modern workplace and an engaging sci-fi mystery wrapped into one. Fans have been waiting for news of a second season of the program for over two years! Now…
When season one of office thriller show Severance aired in early 2022 it became an instant hit. The Apple TV+ show starring Adam Scott was a biting critique of the modern workplace and an engaging sci-fi mystery wrapped into one. Fans have been waiting for news of a second season of the program for over two years! Now…
The scope for a definitive film about Napoleon Bonaparte can only be grand. Ridley Scott’s Napoleon was released with a theatrical runtime of just under two hours and forty minutes. However, there has always been talk of a director’s cut that is twice as long. It was reported that Apple, the studio behind the Joaquin Phoenix historical film, has said that the four-hour director’s cut will “not be made available any time soon.” Perhaps their time frame has shortened as the MPAA has just given an official rating to the Napoleon: Director’s Cut. It has been “Rated R for strong violence,
grisly images, sexual content, some nudity and language.”
Ridley Scott himself confirmed not only its existence but its release, saying last year, “I’m working on it. It was four [hours] 10 [minutes] this morning…And so what will happen is, we’ll screen [the theatrical cut] first with Sony, and then it has its run, and then the perfect thing is that [the director’s cut] goes to streaming, and we have four hours 10 minutes.” Napoleon star Joaquin Phoenix also casually promoted the extended cut of the film, saying, “Napoleon is almost three hours long, although Scott has a “fantastic” near four-and-a-half-hour cut, which features more of Joséphine’s life before she meets Napoleon. He’d love Apple (who funded the film) to eventually screen it.”
Meanwhile, the anticipated trailer for Scott’s other historical epic, Gladiator II, has just been released. Here’s the official synopsis from Paramount Pictures, who are releasing the film on November 22: “From legendary director Ridley Scott, Gladiator II continues the epic saga of power, intrigue, and vengeance set in Ancient Rome. Years after witnessing the death of the revered hero Maximus at the hands of his uncle, Lucius (Paul Mescal) is forced to enter the Colosseum after his home is conquered by the tyrannical Emperors who now lead Rome with an iron fist. With rage in his heart and the future of the Empire at stake, Lucius must look to his past to find strength and honor to return the glory of Rome to its people.”
While Russell Crowe was openly critical of the script for the original Gladiator, saying there were only 26 useful pages in the whole thing, Mescal feels the opposite about the Gladiator II script. He told Vanity Fair the sequel is about, “What human beings will do to survive, but also what human beings will do to win. We see that in the arena, but also in the political struggle that’s going on outside of my character’s storyline, where you see there’s other characters striving and pulling for power. Where’s the space for humanity? Where’s the space for love, familial connection? And ultimately, will those things overcome this kind of greed and power? Those things are oftentimes directly in conflict with each other.“
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Two years have gone by since a psychological thriller called Apartment 7A – which Relic (watch it HERE) director Natalie Erika James helmed for Paramount Players and A Quiet Place collaborators Platinum Dunes and John Krasinski – wrapped filming. Soon after filming came to an end, rumors began to circulate that Apartment 7A was secretly a prequel to the 1968 classic Rosemary’s Baby… and sure enough, that’s exactly what the movie is. It’s set to receive a Paramount+ release in the U.S. and in select international markets sometime at the start of the Halloween season, and while we wait to find out the exact release date and look forward to seeing the marketing, the Motion Picture Association ratings board has revealed that they have given the movie an R rating. The reason for this R: some violent content and drug use.
That’s similar to the rating M. Night Shyamalan’s thriller Trap was just given, but that one has been rated PG-13 for some violent content and brief strong language. So both films have “some violent content,” but Apartment 7A‘s drug use puts it into R territory while Trap‘s brief strong language gets by with a PG-13.
Apartment 7A started out with an original screenplay written by Skylar James. Natalie Erika James and Christian White, who wrote the script for her feature debut Relic with her, performed their own rewrite of the script. Skylar James was a writer on the comedic Netflix series The Green Beret’s Guide to the Apocalypse, which was executive produced by Matt Damon and has never been released despite wrapping production in 2018.
The film stars Julia Garner of Ozark and has the following synopsis: When a struggling, young dancer (Garner) suffers a devastating injury, she finds herself drawn in by dark forces when a peculiar, well-connected, older couple promises her a shot at fame. Set in 1965 New York City, the film tells the story prior to the legendary horror classic Rosemary’s Baby, exploring what happened in the apartment before Rosemary moved in.
Garner is joined in the cast by Dianne Wiest (The Lost Boys), Jim Sturgess (Across the Universe), Kevin McNally (Pirates of the Caribbean franchise), Marli Siu (Anna and the Apocalypse), Andrew Buchan (All the Money in the World), Rosy McEwen (Blue Jean), and Kobna Holdbrook-Smith (Wonka).
Paramount+’s Jeff Grossman provided this statement: “Apartment 7A is the perfect way to kick off the Halloween season. Director Natalie Erika James and the prodigious creative team have crafted a chilling and clever new entry into the genre.“
Krasinski produced Apartment 7A with Allyson Seeger through their company Sunday Night Productions, while Michael Bay, Andrew Form, and Brad Fuller produced through Platinum Dunes. Alexa Ginsburg oversaw the project for Sunday Night Productions, while Alex Ginno did the same for Platinum Dunes.
Are you looking forward to Apartment 7A? What do you think of the film receiving an R rating? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
The post Apartment 7A: Rosemary’s Baby prequel gets an R rating appeared first on JoBlo.
At the start of 2023, filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan secured a multi-year deal with Warner Bros., and soon after that deal was made, we heard that his first movie for Warner Bros. would be Trap, a “psychological thriller set at a concert”. That project made its way through production toward the end of last year, with lead roles going to Josh Hartnett, fresh off his appearance in Oppenheimer, and Shyamalan’s daughter Saleka. The film is now set to receive an international release on July 31st, with its domestic release to follow on August 2nd – and with those dates right around the corner, the Motion Picture Association ratings board has revealed the rating for the film. While Shyamalan describes the film as “What if The Silence of the Lambs happened at a Taylor Swift concert?”, we now know that the movie won’t be quite as hard-edged as The Silence of the Lambs was, because the MPA has decided that it earns a PG-13 rating with for some violent content and brief strong language.
Trap has a short and simple synopsis: A father and teen daughter attend a pop concert, where they realize they’re at the center of a dark and sinister event.
For a better description, we turn to what JoBlo’s own Chris Bumbray said about the first Trap trailer after seeing an early screening of it at CinemaCon, “Saleka plays a Taylor Swift-style pop star known as Lady Raven, with Josh Harnett’s character attending alongside his daughter. He quickly discovers that the concert is a trap designed to lure a serial killer known as The Butcher, but it turns out that Harnett is the serial killer!” We had previously heard (via FilmUpdates) that Saleka – who is an R&B singer/songwriter – plays “a popstar whose concert is at the heart of the story.” Hartnett’s character is “a father who takes his child to a concert, and unwittingly gets caught up in the surrounding events.” Saleka has recorded songs for her father’s previous projects Old and Servant, but this marks her acting debut.
Hartnett has said that Trap is “very bizarre, very dark, and wild.” But apparently not so dark and wild that it strays into R rating territory.
It’s not exactly shocking to see that Trap is rated PG-13, as that’s the rating most Shyamalan movies have received. He has only made two R rated movies: The Happening and Knock at the Cabin. Still, any time there’s a serial killer involved in the story, we kind of hope it will result in an R rating.
Since Shyamalan produces and finances his own movies, he was able to get a SAG interim agreement for Trap (which filmed under the codename Good Grades) that allowed the project to go into production before the Screen Actors Guild strike wrapped up. His daughter Ishana was also able to get a SAG Interim deal for her feature directorial debut, the gothic fairy tale The Watchers. That film was set up at Warner Bros. as well, and was released last month.
Here’s what Shyamalan had to say about Trap in an interview he did with NME a while back: “I have a new idea that I’ve started writing. It’s out in 2024 and it’s very, very exciting. It’s a thriller. It’s very unusual and very new compared to what I’ve been trying to do [recently], but I’m feeling very excited about the story, so much so that I can’t wait to tell it to you guys. I love that feeling, that electricity of ‘wow, I can’t wait for you to see it’. I will say this, the angle into the story is why it’s so exciting. The story might be something that you’ve seen before but the angle is very, very unique – the point of view.“
What do you think of Trap being rated PG-13? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
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