It seems like every year or two, we have a new “Battlefield-killer” storming the market in the hopes of gaining a following within the large-scale first-person shooter market. Following the absolute disaster of Battlefield 2042, there’s a pretty large hole to fill. But is Delta Force—the free-to-play first-person…
Back in March, we heard that production had wrapped on the Stephen King adaptation The Monkey, which is coming our way from the team of producer / genre regular James Wan and director Osgood Perkins, whose credits include The Blackcoat’s Daughter (a.k.a. February), I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House, Gretel & Hansel, and the recent Nicolas Cage horror film Longlegs (you can read our review HERE). Longlegs was released by Neon – and they’ll also be giving The Monkey a theatrical release on February 21, 2025. With two months to go until that date arrives, The Monkey has been screened for the Motion Picture Association ratings board and they have decided to give the film an R rating for strong bloody violent content, gore, language throughout and some sexual references.
Perkins wrote the screenplay for The Monkey, working from a King short story. The film will tell the following story: When twin brothers Hal and Bill discover their father’s old monkey toy in the attic, a series of gruesome deaths starts occurring all around them. The brothers decide to throw the monkey away and move on with their lives, growing apart over the years. But when the mysterious deaths begin again, the brothers must reunite to find a way to destroy the monkey for good before it takes the lives of everyone close to them.
Theo James (The White Lotus) plays the twins in later years, while Christian Convery (Sweet Tooth) plays them in their younger days. Also in the cast are Elijah Wood (The Lord of the Rings), Tatiana Maslany (She–Hulk: Attorney at Law), Colin O’Brien (Wonka), Rohan Campbell (Halloween Ends), and Sarah Levy (Schitt’s Creek).
James Wan and Michael Clear are producing The Monkey for Atomic Monster, while Jason Cloth and Dave Caplan produce for C2 Motion Picture Group. Executive producers include Brian Kavanaugh-Jones and Fred Berger of Automatik, Peter Luo and Nancy Xu of Stars Collective, John Friedberg of Black Bear, and Chris Ferguson. Atomic Monster and Stars Collective developed the project, and C2 Motion Picture Group provided the financing.
Wan previously provided the following statement: “Stephen King is the godfather of the horror genre. He had a huge influence on me as a child and throughout my career and it’s always been a dream to help bring one of his stories to life. The Monkey is a personal favorite, with its simple, iconic, and incredibly marketable conceit. And I can’t imagine anyone better than a visionary and lifelong genre fan like Osgood to bring this to life.“
In addition to directing the films mentioned at the top of this article, Perkins directed an episode of the recent revival of The Twilight Zone. He has also worked on the screenplays for the thriller Removal, the crime thriller Cold Comes the Night, and the horror film The Girl in the Photographs.
Are you looking forward to The Monkey? What do you think of the reasons given for the film’s R rating? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
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Thirteen months ago, we heard that production had wrapped on an A24 project called Death of a Unicorn (it originally had an E at the end its title), which stars Paul Rudd (Ant-Man franchise) and Jenna Ortega (Wednesday), was executive produced by Hereditary/Midsommar/Beau Is Afraid director Ari Aster, and boasts a score composed by the legendary John Carpenter, along with his collaborators Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davies. We’re anxious to see how this one has turned out – and thankfully, we don’t have much longer to wait. A24 will be giving Death of a Unicorn a theatrical release in the spring of 2025, and today they have unveiled a trailer for the film. You can check it out in the embed above.
Said to be a dark comedy, Death of a Unicorn marks the feature debut of writer/director Alex Scharfman, who co-founded the production company Secret Engine and has produced films like Blow the Man Down and Resurrection. The story centers on a father (Rudd) and daughter (Ortega) who accidentally hit and kill a unicorn while en route to a weekend retreat, where the former’s billionaire boss seeks to exploit the creature’s miraculous curative properties.
Here’s some more information: The movie follows Elliot and his teenage daughter Ridley as they are en route to a crisis management summit with Elliot‘s bosses, the Leopold family, when they accidentally crash into a unicorn. The Leopolds quickly seize the opportunity to exploit the magical creature’s flesh, blood, and horn, which are endowed with supernaturally curative properties. However, as they delve deeper into their research, they discover the deadly consequences of their actions.
Richard E. Grant (Saltburn) plays the billionaire boss. Also in the cast are Téa Leoni (Flirting with Disaster), Will Poulter (Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3), Anthony Carrigan (Barry), Sunita Mani (GLOW), Jessica Hynes (Shaun of the Dead), and Stephen Park (Asteroid City).
Scharfman produced Death of a Unicorn alongside Drew Houpt and Lucas Joaquin of Secret Engine, Tyler Campellone and Lars Knudsen of Square Peg, and Tim Headington and Theresa Steele Page of Ley Line Entertainment. Aster, Rudd, and Ortega serve as executive producers with Michael Williams, Jacob Epstein, David Darby, and Nate Kamiya. A24 and Ley Line Entertainment provided the financing and A24 will be handling the distribution.
What did you think of the trailer for Death of a Unicorn? Does this look like a movie you’d want to catch on the big screen next year? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
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PLOT: Sonic, Tails and Knuckles are tasked with stopping a powerful and mysterious new adversary, Shadow the Hedgehog, by teaming with the former enemy, Dr. Robotnik.
REVIEW: It may have taken well over 30 years, but it’s starting to feel like video game adaptations are finally taken seriously, or at least in the case of the Sonic franchise, well received.
When the first Sonic the Hedgehog movie graced the screens JUST before the pandemic started, we were followed up with great adaptations like The Last of Us, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, and, of course, most recently, Fallout. Thank the cinema gods, Paramount Pictures, and Sega did us right when we all complained about Sonic’s awful design in that first trailer. Now Sonic and pals have returned for a third outing, with Jeff Fowler returning behind the camera, with all the cast and voice cast returning once again for Sonic the Hedgehog 3.
And I say without a doubt, the Sonic franchise not only dodged the typical threequel curse, but this movie is easily the best of three. What makes this the best of the three? That would be Keanu Reeves making his franchise debut as the fan favorite Shadow the Hedgehog. Keanu’s performance as Shadow is dark, brooding, and sympathetic. He is the perfect contrast to our three main heroes, Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles and an absolute show stealer.
Not only this film has that typical family-friendly humour that we have grown familiar with since the first film, but Sonic The Hedgehog 3 also follows the lore of the games closer than the other two films did, getting Shadow’s backstory accurate with Maria and Gerald Robotnik. Speaking of Gerald Robotnik, Jim Carrey not only returns for this film as we had hoped for but also plays two roles, Ivo and Gerald Robotnik, once again carrying this franchise further (no pun intended) with his zany performances.
One area where the film falls a little short is we do get a little less from Sonic’s adapted family, Tom and Maddie played once again by James Marsden and Tika Sumpter. I may be a little biased here since Knuckles is my all-time favourite Sonic character, but I wish Idris Elba’s Knuckles had a little bit more to do in this movie. Maybe that is why he was given a spinoff series on Paramount Plus. With the growing cast of characters in the Sonic universe, you can’t really fault the film too much.
But just like how the fan reactions have been saying, what makes this movie really stand out are the fierce battles between Shadow and Sonic that feel like they ripped a page off of the Kryptonian battle in Man of Steel or in DragonBall Z.
With that said, the film has good balance of family fun and over-the-top action that you can bring your friends to or bring your kids to! No spoilers, but be sure to stick around for the mid-credits scene and the post-credit scene. If you’re a die-hard Sonic fan, you will be very excited to see what is to come next.
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As fans wait with bated breath for the Superman trailer, which is due to drop online tomorrow, James Gunn is teasing a little bit about what influenced him during the making of this movie. A lot is riding on this first official entry in the DCU as the movie will set the tone for the rebooted universe after Zack Snyder’s take with Man of Steel similarly kicked off the DCEU with a more divisive perception than Marvel Studios’ beginning. Deadline now reports on Gunn’s report from ComicBook.com.
The director explained, “I wrote up this big document on action and what our philosophy is of action and how we shoot it and what it is, and keeping it alive in the air, as well as on the ground. And to be able to shoot stuff in the sky as if we were shooting it … Because everything was rougher, like, it’s in Guardians [of the Galaxy], like it’s in The Suicide Squad. And being able to shoot stuff in the sky like that is really hard.”
He continues, “So we took a lot from films like Top Gun: Maverick, which, we are shooting flying things. We shoot a lot of our action with actual drones flying in and around Superman and the people that he’s flying with, The Engineer, whoever else, that he’s fighting up in the air, and we did that on sound stages. We got these really small, crazy drones now. We’ve got some of the best flyers in the world here who are working with it. And so we use those guys a lot and everything’s planned out with me, as it always is. But at the same time, I’ve gotten even more into finding new stuff on the set and new moments and exploring that stuff, finding magic where it is.”
Gunn said that his Superman film is also influenced by previous DC outputs, including Zack Snyder’s universe. He tells IGN, “I think that all previous DC media influenced me. I think that obviously the original Donner movie influenced me, but there’s also a lot of things that this isn’t, like I’m just making a Donner-type movie. It’s very different from that. Zack [Snyder] did some excellent stuff. So there’s a lot of ways that influenced me. There’s a lot of ways in which the DC animated universe [influenced me], and then there’s a lot of stuff from the comic books – above and beyond anything else, All-Star Superman – that influenced me more than anything. To take that sort of Silver Age feel, that sort of science-fiction approach to it with gadgets, Lex [Luthor] is really a sort of sorcerer in a way. He’s a scientist, but he’s so good at science and I think of him as like a sorcerer.”
Superman stars David Corenswet (Pearl) as Clark Kent and Rachel Brosnahan (The Marvelous Ms. Maisel) as Lois Lane. The cast also includes Nathan Fillion (The Rookie) as Guy Gardner, a charismatic and slightly obnoxious member of the Green Lantern Corps; Isabela Merced (Dora and the Lost City of Gold) as Hawkgirl; Edi Gathegi (X-Men: First Class) as Mister Terrific; Anthony Carrigan (Barry) as Metamorpho; María Gabriela de Faría (Deadly Class) as The Engineer, a member of The Authority; Sara Sampaio (At Midnight) as Eve Teschmacher; Skyler Gisondo (The Righteous Gemstones) as Jimmy Olsen; Wendell Pierce (The Wire) as Perry White; Neva Howell (Logan Lucky) as Martha Kent; Pruitt Taylor-Vince (The Walking Dead) as Jonathan Kent; and Nicholas Hoult (The Great) as Lex Luthor.
Superman is slated to hit theaters on July 11, 2025.
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Sixty can put a hurtin’ on any man. Now imagine you’ve spent the bulk of your career in the movie industry. Then imagine further that you reinvented yourself as a full-fledged, franchise-leading action star in your 50s, and you might be worse for the wear. With four John Wick movies and a spin-off in Ballerina, that’s about where Keanu Reeves finds himself. So while it might be selfish to ask for a fifth, it’s unavoidable at this point.
Appearing on CBS Mornings alongside Sonic the Hedgehog 3 director Jeff Fowler, Reeves was asked if John Wick 5 was in the pipeline. To this, Reeves replied, “You can never say never, but my knees right now are saying, ‘You can’t do another John Wick.’ So, my heart does, but I don’t know if my knees can do it…” Fowler was quick to chime in, quipping, “Which is why you can play Shadow for decades to come!…You heard it here first: Keanu will be playing Shadow for the next 20 years.”
Playing Shadow in the Sonic movies might be a safe bet as far as bodily damage goes, but now that Keanu Reeves has led one of the best action franchises ever in John Wick, we’ll be greedy and keep asking for one more…and then one more after that. Reeves does seem to be ready to rid himself of John Wick (at least with movies focusing directly on the character) – having reportedly begged for Chapter 4 to be the final outing – but director Chad Stahelski thinks it’s possible to move forward, saying he has developed a few ideas that could work.
Keanu Reeves isn’t the type of actor who does a movie for the paycheck, so if he truly doesn’t want to give John Wick one more round, then we have to hope that Stahelski will know when to stop, at least in that regard. Even without Wick himself, though, there are a lot of projects coming up, including the promising-looking Ballerina and Donnie Yen’s Caine-centric spin-off.
Do you think Keanu Reeves should come back for one more John Wick movie or was the ending to Chapter 4 satisfying?
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Before Joe and Anthony Russo return to the Marvel family for Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars, they will unleash The Electric State. Based on the illustrated novel by Simon Stålenhag, the film takes place in an alternate, retro-futuristic version of the 1990s where sentient robots, who once peacefully served among humans, now live in exile following a failed uprising.
“The robots in this alternate universe came from Walt Disney and Disneyland — the animatronics that he created gained a sentience, were put into the workforce, and became worker bots, service bots, and marketing bots,” Joe revealed while speaking with Entertainment Weekly. “But they retained that Disney-esque quality to keep them appealing and non-threatening to humans. So you have this tapestry of really interesting, cartoonish-looking robots who are very complex characters in their own right, who are on their own journey of discovery.“
The Electric State features plenty of robots, including Mr. Peanut, who led the robots during their failed uprising. “Mr. Peanut is, in a lot of ways, the Atticus Finch or the Jimmy Carter of the robots,” Joe explained. “He’s the most intelligent, the most progressive, the most humane. He has now secreted himself away in an area of the country called the Exclusion Zone, where any of the surviving robots were rounded up and put into [after the war]. It’s a large-scale prison that covers several hundred square miles of the American Southwest.“
The official synopsis for The Electric State reads: “The Electric State is a spectacular adventure from the directors of Avengers: Endgame set in an alternate, retro-futuristic version of the 1990s. Millie Bobby Brown (Stranger Things) stars as Michelle, an orphaned teenager navigating life in a society where sentient robots resembling cartoons and mascots, who once served peacefully among humans, now live in exile following a failed uprising. Everything Michelle thinks she knows about the world is upended one night when she’s visited by Cosmo, a sweet, mysterious robot who appears to be controlled by Christopher — Michelle’s genius younger brother whom she thought was dead. Determined to find the beloved sibling she thought she had lost, Michelle sets out across the American southwest with Cosmo, and soon finds herself reluctantly joining forces with Keats (Chris Pratt, Guardians of the Galaxy), a low-rent smuggler, and his wisecracking robot sidekick, Herman (voiced by Anthony Mackie). As they venture into the Exclusion Zone, a walled-off corner in the desert where robots now exist on their own, Keats and Michelle find a strange, colorful group of new animatronic allies — and begin to learn that the forces behind Christopher’s disappearance are more sinister than they ever expected.“
The Electric State will debut on Netflix on March 14, 2025.
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Deadline reports that FX has cancelled The Old Man after two seasons. The series, which is based on the bestselling novel of the same name by Thomas Perry, stars Jeff Bridges as former CIA agent Dan Chase and John Lithgow as former FBI Assistant Director Harold Harper.
The cancellation largely stems from the multiple delays the series has experienced. Production was first shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. When production resumed months later, it had to halt soon after when Bridges was diagnosed with lymphoma and contracted COVID-19 while in treatment. Nearly a year later, Bridges announced he was in remission, and work on the first season was finally completed. Production on the second season was also brought to a halt due to the 2023 Hollywood strikes. Although the first season of The Old Man became the most-watched FX series debut on Hulu on its opening weekend, there was a gap of over two years between seasons thanks to all the delays, and the audience wasn’t there anymore.
The second season of The Old Man found Dan Chase and Harold Harper setting off on their most important mission to date — to recover Emily Chase (Alia Shawkat) after she is kidnapped by Faraz Hamzad (Navid Negahban), a powerful Afghan tribal leader. With all three men claiming her as their daughter, Emily finds herself in an identity crisis that has dire implications.
Our own Alex Maidy was a big fan of the second season, which he felt was even better than the first. “The Old Man was a good show that took the leap to great and delivered a nail-biting run, which is one of the best second seasons I can recall,” Maidy wrote. “No one is safe in this story that sees a hefty body count while never being about violence for the sake of violence. The Old Man has grown beyond its title into something that embraces the age of the lead actors while not letting it define them. This is a story of the consequences of youth haunting you later in life, and I cannot think of better actors to overcome the challenge.” You can check out the rest of his review right here.
How do you feel about The Old Man getting cancelled?
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When it comes to the Academy Awards, they’re not exactly known for showing much love for motion-capture acting, which Avatar star Zoe Saldaña admitted is “quite deflating.“
“Old habits die hard, and when you have old establishments, it’s really hard to bring forward change,” Saldaña told The Independent about the Oscars not recognizing motion-capture acting. “And I understand that, so I’m not bitter about it, but it is quite deflating when you give 120 per cent of yourself into something. I mean, not winning is OK, not being nominated is OK, but when you’re overlooked and then minimised and completely disregarded…“
Saldaña gives a fantastic performance as Neytiri in James Cameron’s Avatar movies, but some believe that performance is more the work of CG artists than the actress herself. “I know the difference between that and what we did,” she said. “At some point you have to ask yourself: why is it that I do what I do? Is it so others can give me approval? Or is it because I don’t want to do anything else?“
Andy Serkis has won praise for his digital performances as Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and as Caesar in the Planet of the Apes franchise, but just like Saldaña, the Oscars have ignored him. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before the Academy recognizes these types of performances, and we’ll look back at Serkis and Saldaña as pioneers of the art form.
Saldaña will have a few more opportunities to wow us with her digital performance as she reprises her role of Neytiri in Avatar: Fire and Ash, the next installment of the franchise. The sequel will also introduce another biome of Pandora, where the “aggressive, volcanic race” of Na’vi, known as the Ash People, reside. Avatar: Fire and Ash is currently set for a December 19, 2025 release, followed by Avatar 4 on December 21, 2029 and Avatar 5 on December 18, 2031. Cameron even has ideas for a potential Avatar 6 and 7, but that all depends on whether the demand for the franchise is still there. “There’ll be just far enough apart that they remain events, hopefully, in the lives of fans, of people who want to follow us, but not so far apart that it’s like there’s a generational difference between one movie,” Cameron said. “We’re fortunate we survived that, right? We got over that hurdle. So now we believe it’s going to come at the right pacing.“
Should Zoe Saldaña have been recognized for her performance in the Avatar movies?
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Ghostface’s potential victims in Scream 7 continue to grow as Deadline reports that Anna Camp (Pitch Perfect) has joined the cast of the upcoming sequel. As we’ve come to expect from the project, character details are being kept under wraps.
The upcoming sequel will see the return of Neve Campbell as Sidney Prescott. After playing the role in the first five Scream movies, she was expected to return for the sixth until the studio low-balled her. “As a woman, I have had to work extremely hard in my career to establish my value, especially when it comes to Scream,” Campbell said. “I felt the offer that was presented to me did not equate to the value I have brought to the franchise. It’s been a very difficult decision to move on.” Courteney Cox is also expected to return as Gale Weathers, but she hasn’t officially signed on yet. It’s also possible that Patrick Dempsey might be returning as Mark Kincaid (now married to Sidney) from Scream 3. It was announced that Isabel May (Yellowstone: 1883) had joined the cast as Sidney’s teenage daughter. Celeste O’Connor (Madame Web), Mckenna Grace (Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire), and Sam Rechner (The Fabelmans) have also signed on.
It was reported yesterday that Mason Gooding will be returning as Chad Meeks-Martin. As for Jasmin Savoy Brown, who plays Chad’s sister Mindy, she hasn’t officially signed on yet.
The original plan for Scream 7 would have seen Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega returning as Sam and Tara Carpenter, but Spyglass Media fired Barrera after a few pro-Palestinian social media posts that they deemed anti-Semitic. The very next day, it was revealed that Ortega had exited the project as well. It was initially reported that this was due to scheduling conflicts with the second season of Wednesday, but it later emerged that she had wanted a substantial salary increase, which Spyglass refused, so she walked.
That wasn’t the end of the drama either. Christopher Landon (Happy Death Day) was set to direct the movie, but he also departed, calling it a “dream job that turned into a nightmare.” The studio then turned to Kevin Williamson, screenwriter of the original Scream movie, to direct. Upon the announcement, Neve Campbell said, “While I’ve been so incredibly lucky to make these films with both the master of horror Wes Craven and the wonderfully talented Matt and Tyler team, I’ve dreamt for many years of how amazing it would be to make one of these movies with Kevin Williamson at the helm. And now it’s happening, Kevin Williamson is going to direct Scream 7! This was his baby and it’s his brilliant mind that dreamt up this world. Kevin is not just an inspiration as an artist but has been a dear friend for many years.“ Scream 7 is slated for a February 27, 2026 release.
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