Once upon a time, there was talk of HBO’s hit Game of Thrones series concluding with a trilogy of movies instead of its ultimately ill-fated eighth season. It sounds like Warner Bros. is now revisiting the prospect of some kind of film adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s books, even if the project is still in the…
Disney was in a strange place in the mid-eighties. The younger audiences that were once their bread and butter were tired of the old Disney fare, with many of them thinking their movies were “for babies.” Indeed, the success of Star Wars had changed the game, as family-friendly fantasy – with an edge – was all the rage at the big studios, and Disney was still stuck producing antiquated G-movies like Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo. They tried to make their own Star Wars-style movie with The Black Hole, as well as a James Bond-style action movie with Condorman, but neither were successful. Their big SFX-driven extravaganza, Tron, was too costly to turn a profit, so Disney dipped their toe into darker fare, such as Something Wicked This Way Comes, and the movie we’re highlighting in this edition of Fantasizing About Fantasy Films, Return to Oz.
To be sure, Disney had nothing to do with the original film version of The Wizard of Oz, but they were able to obtain the rights to the novels by L. Frank Baum. Rather than remake The Wizard of Oz, they opted to adapt one of the sequel novels, Ozma of Oz, albeit with a much harder edge than was found in the Judy Garland original. Disney wanted to be provocative, so Return to Oz had twisted visuals and a darker tone, but in the end, audiences still stayed away, and it became a costly flop.
However, in the years since its release Return to Oz has become a major cult film, especially for those who grew up in the eighties. In this episode of Fantasizing About Fantasy Films, our own Jessica Dwyer takes a deep dive into a film she considers one of the pivotal fantasy films of its era.
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About a year and half ago, it was announced that The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman will be producing a remake of the 1956 horror film The Mole People (watch it HERE) for Universal Pictures… and while we wait for further updates on that project, Deadline has revealed that there’s a different “mole people” project coming our way from Rob Savage, the director of the Stephen King adaptation The Boogeyman and the screen life horror films Host and Dashcam. This one is called Molepeople and has Anthony Ramos (Twisters) and Ben Mendelsohn (Animal Kingdom) attached to star in it.
Described as telling the story of one man’s nightmarish descent into the abandoned tunnels beneath the streets of New York City, where a twisted society lurks, Molepeople brings to mind not only The Mole People but also the 1984 film C.H.U.D., which involved people living in the tunnels beneath NYC, and the 1972 film Death Line (a.k.a. Raw Meat), which explored the tunnels under London. Savage will be directing this film from an original screenplay by Nathan Elston (Succession). Details on the characters Ramos and Mendelsohn will be playing haven’t been revealed.
Raphael Margules and J.D Lifshitz of BoulderLight Pictures are producing Molepeople with Rough House Pictures. Embankment Films is handling international sales and CAA Media Finance, Range, and WME will co-represent North American distribution rights at the upcoming American Film Market.
Embankment’s Hugo Grumbar provided the following statement: “Molepeople fuels a modern audience with shocks and thrills, captivating, heightened feelings of fear. Rob’s direction is stylish; BoulderLight’s understanding of modern audiences is unmatched – and together the filmmakers are best in class.“
Margules and Lifshitz added: “There’s something uniquely terrifying about urban isolation – the idea that in one of the world’s busiest cities, you could vanish without a trace. With Anthony Ramos – who’s quickly becoming one of Hollywood’s most commanding leading men – alongside the legendary Ben Mendelsohn, we have the perfect contemporary combination to bring this nightmare to life.“
Does Molepeople sound interesting to you? What do you think of the fact that there are currently two separate mole people projects in the works? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
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Remember those classic Christmas music compilation album commercials of yesteryear? The medley of Christmas songs in those commercials would jumpstart your holiday spirit and prepare you for the yuletide season. Now, Netflix has released a parody of the nostalgic commercials with a twist, in which they promote their upcoming slate of releases for the next two months to celebrate the jolly end of the year. The parody features their stars, including Lindsay Lohan and Lacey Chabert. Head over to the streamer’s Tudum site for a more comprehensive list of their releases.
However you celebrate, the holidays start on Netflix. And this year, they’re bigger than ever. Whether it’s watching heartwarming holiday rom-coms like The Merry Gentlemen, Our Little Secret, Meet Me Next Christmas and Hot Frosty with friends and wine, or holiday animation like Spellbound and That Christmas while snuggling with the kids by the fire, we’ve got you covered. We even have the Christmas Eve set thrillers Carry-On and Black Doves for the adrenaline junkies.
And it doesn’t stop there. We have two Christmas Day NFL Games to get your live sports fix, a cozy new holiday game, A Virgin River Christmas, and please, please, please enjoy your new favorite holiday variety music special A Nonsense Christmas with Sabrina Carpenter. When you’ve maxed out on eggnog and are looking for the ultimate dead-week binge, let the games begin with season 2 of our Most Popular series of all time, Squid Game, or curl up on the couch with season 6 of Virgin River.
From onscreen to under the tree, we’ve also got the perfect gifts for the Netflix megafan in your life. Help bring The Ton to life with The Official Bridgerton Cookbook, the Bridgerton x Williams Sonoma hosting collection, or tickets to experience the iconic soundtrack IRL at the sensational Bridgerton Candlelight concert. Cheers your favorite player with a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label Squid Game Edition or gift your favorite New Yorker tickets to Squid Game: The Experience. Bring The Upside Down inside with the Polly Pocket x Stranger Things compact playset or a Demogorgon Squishmallow. Countdown to Christmas with the Netflix Collectibles Advent Calendar. Check out Netflix.Shop for even more.
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She’s not bad, she’s just drawn that way…and that’s the problem. Rare as it is that the ahooooga-level sexiness of a cartoon would get in the way of a movie’s production, but that’s the situation that a sequel to Who Framed Roger Rabbit finds itself in, forever stalled because Jessica Rabbit is just too damn fine for the screen.
Appearing on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, original Who Framed Roger Rabbit director Robert Zemeckis confirmed that a screenplay is ready to go, but the suits at the House of Mouse won’t touch it. “There’s a good script sitting at Disney, but here’s what you have to know, and you know this: the current Disney would never make Roger Rabbit today…They can’t make a movie with Jessica in it. So the [Peter] Seaman and [Jeffrey] Price sequel script isn’t ever going to see the light of day, as good as it is. Because look what they did to Jessica at the theme park, they trussed her in a trench coat.” In other words, Disney tried to hide Jessica’s bust and legs, lest another slip occur – you know the one…
With Who Framed Roger Rabbit standing as the highest-grossing movie of 1988 and one of the top earners of the entire decade, it’s sort of incredible that a sequel never came to fruition, which is a shame because if there’s ever film that we’d love a sequel to, it’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit. It was on the table as far back as the release with Steven Spielberg attached to direct the project, titled Who Discovered Roger Rabbit, which would go into Roger’s earlier years. After numerous delays, reworkings and red lights throughout the decades, the film remains stuck in development hell.
Still, even though Who Framed Roger Rabbit stands as one of the true classics and is a landmark of cinema technology (it even won a rare Special Achievement Academy Award for the live-action/animated hybrid VFX), we do have to wonder if it would land with today’s audience. We’re not talking Jessica Rabbit here, but is there a viewership or appreciation for this sort of film outside of those who grew up with it? Could it get away with its obscure characters or would Disney try to cram in their more modern films, maybe have a modern-day Eddie Valiant running around with Olaf from Frozen? It’s not all that hard to fathom, really, which is why it might be best that the sequel hasn’t happened.
Do you think a sequel to Who Framed Roger Rabbit would find its audience today or should it remain unproduced? P-p-p-please leave your comments below!
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A good portion of Paul W.S. Anderson’s filmmaking career has consisted of video game adaptation, with his writing and/or directing credits including Mortal Kombat (1995), Monster Hunter, and six Resident Evil movies. (He also wrote and directed Alien vs. Predator, which wasn’t a video game adaptation, but there was a video game of the concept long before the movie came along.) Now, Deadline reports that Anderson is adding another video game adaptation to his filmography, as he is set to write and direct a film version of the Sega game The House of the Dead. Originally released in 1997, The House of the Dead spawned a franchise that includes several sequels and spin-offs, as well as a remake. Uwe Boll directed a film adaptation back in 2003, and that received a sequel in 2005 that was directed by Michael Hurst.
In the game, players take on the role of AMS agents, a government agency tasked with thwarting the conspiracies of organizations that threaten the world. The title comes from the bureau they work for, because their life expectancies are brief. Anderson will be producing the new film adaptation with his producing partner Jeremy Bolt, Sega’s Toru Nakahara, and Story Kitchen’s Dmitri M. Johnson, Mike Goldberg, and Dan Jevons. Timothy I. Stevenson serves as an executive producer.
Anderson told Deadline, “I’ve loved the video game since the ’90s. Back then I was a big player of video games in arcades, which is how I happened upon Mortal Kombat. And pretty much at the same time, I was also playing a lot of House of the Dead. It’s a title I’ve always loved. The IP has grown in strength, and now it’s really cross-generational. I was one of the original players, but now I have teenage kids who also play. That is the real attraction for me, that you’ve got a cross-generational piece of IP. We’re going to base the movie on House of the Dead 3, and if you know the mythology that is all about family conflict, amidst the action and scares. It’s about a woman, Lisa Rogan, who’s attempting to rescue her father. And it’s also about Daniel Curien, who’s the son of the man who caused this mutant outbreak in the first place and who has to deal with the sins of the father. My approach will be to reflect what this hyper-immersive, kinetic video game is, which is why Zack Snyder took these creatures and made them fast moving. This is a full-on terror ride. It’s different than what we did with Resident Evil, where there were lots of traps and puzzles and things to be figured out. House of the Dead is at heart a light rail shooter game, so it drags you straight into the middle of the action. I’m going to make a movie that mirrors that approach and plays out in real time, dragging the audience straight into the action. It’s not going to be kind of lumbered with a whole bunch of back story that might exclude people who know nothing about House of the Dead. Everyone’s going to be on the same page. Everyone’s going to get sucked straight into the action and learn about the characters and the plot, as they have 90 minutes to basically escape the most extreme haunted house you’ve ever been in.“
The “haunted house” he mentions is actually an abandoned research facility that has been overtaken by creatures.
Bolt had this to say about The House of the Dead: “The original director of the video game, Takashi Oda, was very specific and never referred to them as zombies. He called them creatures. Resident Evil, for example, was very clearly based upon the Romero Zombie movies. House of the Dead is something different. These are more like weaponized mutations, these incredible steroid-ed up figures that have chainsaws embedded into their limbs. It all has a very Japanese design aesthetic, related to manga and films like Tetsuo: The Iron Man, where you kind of have bits of metal and technology embedded in human mutated flesh. And these creatures are keenly intelligent, another thing that set House of the Dead apart. They’re not just going to come at you slowly lumbering. They’re coming from the sides, they’re coming from the back. They’re trying to trick you. They’re trying to trap you. And the level of intelligence differs. And they’re all being driven on ultimately by Dr. Curien, whose life force and intelligence lives on, almost like AI. The flesh is dead, but the mind lives on in a character called The Wheel of Fate. And he like all of the great villains from House of the Dead and Creatures, they’re all named after Tarot cards. So the Wheel of Fate, Death, the Magician.“
Paul W.S. Anderson’s take on The House of the Dead is expected to be in production by mid-to-late 2025. Are you looking forward to seeing what he does with this video game adaptation? Let us know by leaving a comment below – and check out this concept art while you’re scrolling down:
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The panel discussion left much to be desired.
Wicked, a big-screen adaptation of the famous theater production that regularly makes waves throughout New York City, is finally coming to theaters this November. From the few early critic previews of the film floating around, we know that anyone even remotely interested in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, or the theater…
Wicked, a big-screen adaptation of the famous theater production that regularly makes waves throughout New York City, is finally coming to theaters this November. From the few early critic previews of the film floating around, we know that anyone even remotely interested in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, or the theater…
Academy Award Winner Russell Crowe (Gladiator, A Beautiful Mind) will star in The Last Druid from director Will Eubank (Underwater, Land of Bad). Will Eubank penned the script with Phil Gawthorne and Carlyle Eubank. 42’s Ben Pugh is set to produce alongside Range Media Partners’ Brian Kavanaugh-Jones and Fred Berger, with Adrián Guerra also producing for Nostromo. Felix Farmer’s Brandon Millan and Sam Wasson will executive produce alongside George Hsieh. Stuart Ford’s AGC Studios will introduce the film during AFM next week.
The Last Druid tells the story of a Roman Emperor who discovers a secluded Druid stronghold in the mountains of Caledonia. A peaceful Celtic elder must awaken the warrior within to protect his family and people from total annihilation.
Crowe will next be seen in Sony’s Spider-Villain-Verse film Kraven the Hunter and the historical drama Nuremberg. He is repped by Brillstein Entertainment Partners and Goodman, Genow, Schenkman, Smelkinson & Christopher. Meanwhile, it was recently reported that a prequel to Crowe’s Master and Commander film is still in the works.
Eubank made his directorial debut in 2011 with the science fiction drama Love, which premiered at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival and later earned him the “Best Director” award at the Athens International Film Festival. He has also directed The Signal for Focus Features, starring Brenton Thwaites and Olivia Cooke; Underwater, starring Kristen Stewart and Vincent Cassel for Twentieth Century Fox; Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin starring Emily Bader for Paramount+; and Land of Bad with Liam Hemsworth and Russell Crowe. Eubank will next direct thriller The Epiphany, starring Sylvester Stallone.
Range Media Partners and CAA Media Finance arranged financing for the picture with Nostromo and are representing the U.S. rights.
42 is a leading management and production banner, whose upcoming projects include the thriller The Bet for Warner Bros.; Andrew Sodroski thriller Off Seasons for Apple TV+; Rupert Wyatt’s Boxman for Lionsgate; and The Penguin Lessons starring Jonathan Pryce and Steve Coogan which made its world premiere last month at TIFF and was acquired by SPC.
Eubank is represented by CAA, Anonymous Content, and Johnson Shapiro Slewett & Kole. Gawthorne is repped by Range Media Partners and Ziffren Brittenham.
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