We’re still several weeks out from Moana 2‘s Thanksgiving debut, but long-lead tracking puts the film at saying “You’re welcome” to a $100M+ 5-day launch. The projected total for the animated sequel’s Wednesday through Sunday holiday premiere arrives courtesy of Quorum. In contrast, 2016’s Moana set sail with an $82M premiere over five days. By the end of its run, the spirited island musical banked $248.7M in domestic coconuts, with a $643.3M+ worldwide take. Estimates for Moana 2’s Friday through Sunday earnings range from $75M-$82M.
Opening only in theaters on November 27, 2024, Moana 2 reunites Moana and Maui three years later for an expansive new voyage alongside a crew of unlikely seafarers. After receiving an unexpected call from her wayfinding ancestors, Moana must journey to the far seas of Oceania and into dangerous, long-lost waters for an adventure unlike anything she’s ever faced. Directed by David Derrick Jr., Jason Hand, and Dana Ledoux Miller and produced by Christina Chen and Yvett Merino, Moana 2 features music by Grammy winners Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear, Grammy nominee Opetaia Foaʻi and three-time Grammy winner Mark Mancina.
According to the numbers, Moana 2 is tracking better than Universal’s Wicked Part One ($67M-$74M) and Paramount’s Gladiator II ($42M-$47M). Despite Wicked’s mass appeal and built-in audience, the sympathetic take on TheWizard of Oz‘s Elphaba is only Part One of a two-part presentation. Some moviegoers don’t like it when movies are split into multiple parts, knowing they’ll need to wait to complete the story. Still, Wicked will draw audiences during the holiday; the same could be said for Gladiator II.
Regarding Moana 2, the anticipated sequel will attract female audiences under 25, with the “Frozen crowd” along for the ride. Men aren’t as keen to join Moana and Maui for another sea-faring adventure, but the film isn’t aiming to reel them in. Moana 2‘s bread and butter lies with kids and parents looking to take a break from holiday madness to enjoy a song-and-dance spectacle with lovable characters and positive messaging.
How much money do you think Moana 2 will make during its 5-day debut on Thanksgiving weekend? Let us know in the comments section below.
Plot: Brothers tells the story of a reformed criminal whose attempt at going straight is derailed when he reunites with his sanity-testing twin brother on a cross-country road trip for the score of a lifetime. Dodging bullets, the law, and an overbearing mother along the way, they must heal their severed family bond before they end up killing each other.
Review: Some of the best dramatic actors have started as comedic performers. The same can not always be said about the reverse. Peter Dinklage has proven himself skilled at any genre he puts his talents to, while Josh Brolin has not appeared in a role like this in a long time. Brothers boasts the creative team behind the time loop hit Palm Springs and the upcoming remake of The Toxic Avenger but lacks the creativity nor distinctiveness of those projects. Brothers feels like a relic from decades ago, with jokes that fall flat, an uneven tone throughout, and a bizarre subplot involving a masturbating orangutan that feels beneath everyone involved. Brothers is buoyed by the charming on-screen presence of Dinklage and Brolin, who do everything they can to save this movie from the annals of forgettable streaming fare.
Opening with brothers Moke and Jady as teenagers, we see their mother, Cath, played by Yellowstone‘s Jennifer Landon, stealing some priceless emeralds before running from the cops. Left to their own devices, Moke (Josh Brolin) and Jady (Peter Dinklage) grow from delinquents to full-fledged criminals. Jady gets caught and sent to prison, where he spends five years before getting sprung by a crooked guard, Farful (Brendan Fraser), who wants the stolen emeralds. Moke has since gone straight and has a pregnant wife, Abby (Taylour Paige), and leads an uneventful life. With Jady back in his life, Moke joins his brother on his journey to find the stones before Farful catches up with them. Along the way, they run into Cath (Glenn Close) and have some heartfelt moments as they trek to recover the jewels while trying to find their familial connection lost over the years.
Clocking in at under ninety minutes, Brothers is lean to begin with and yet still feels like it is missing something to give it purpose. Brendan Fraser, who filmed this movie close to his Osar-winning turn in The Whale, is incredibly over-the-top in a way we have not seen since his Furry Vengeance days. Glenn Close is equally slumming it again in a weird role, even for her. Cath is an unlikeable character whose motivations waver through the film and make little sense in the end. Close also wears gloves throughout her entire performance, which is completely inexplicable. There is also a bizarre cameo from Marisa Tomei as a woman who lives with an orangutan named Samuel. The primate, who gets a prominent place in the Brothers trailer, maybe the strangest part of this movie and could be a low point in Josh Brolin’s career. The trailer does a good job of teasing what takes place in that particular scene, but the reason for its inclusion remains a mystery to me since it does not seem to serve the plot and is not that funny.
Part of me hoped that Brothers would be the next best thing to a Twins sequel, but it only works because the lead characters have a believable sibling relationship. Like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito, Josh Brolin and Peter Dinklage do not outwardly look like they are related. Still, the Brothers duo both have striking jawlines and substantial onscreen presence. Dinklage is the funnier of the two here, with Brolin mostly playing it straight, but it is still an unusually comic turn for the No Country for Old Men and Avengers star. Both actors are in their mid-fifties, which makes these characters feel about twenty years out of their league. However, after seeing Brolin’s recent hosting stint on Saturday Night Live, it is apparent that he has the chops for fare like this. It takes a solid half of the film before Brolin finds his footing as Moke, but just as the brothers find some rhythm, the film throws in a weird golf cart chase that is straight out of a Farrelly Brothers movie.
Directed by Mark Barbakow, who made an impressive debut with the Cristin Milioti and Andy Samberg time travel movie Palm Springs, Brothers is inconsistent in tone, style, pacing, and everything else. Brothers reunite Peter Dinklage with Macon Blair, the writer-director of the as-yet-unreleased remake of The Toxic Avenger. Blair has appeared on screen for directors ranging from Christopher Nolan to Steven Soderbergh and Jeremy Saulnier. He has written solid films like I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore and Hold the Dark but is out of his league with Brothers. Based on a story by Tropic Thunder‘s Etan Cohen, Brothers thinks that seeing career criminals getting tossed around and punched is the height of comedy while still trying to deliver an emotionally resonant family story. The film misses on all fronts.
While Peter Dinklage and Josh Brolin try their very best to save this movie, there is not enough chemistry to salvage Brothers. After sitting on the shelf for three years, it is no wonder this movie is being dumped on streaming despite a solid trailer promising a fun time. Brothers is decidedly not fun and is immediately forgettable. If it succeeds at anything, it proves that while some actors are a natural fit for comedy roles, the script is ultimately more important than whether the talent can be funny. Also, animal masturbation is creepier than it is funny.
There’s a reboot of the classic Universal Monsters property The Wolf Man coming our way from Blumhouse Productions and The Invisible Man (2020) director Leigh Whannell, aiming for a January 17, 2025 theatrical release – and today, a trailer for the film has been unveiled! After making its debut at the New York Comic-Con, the Wolf Man trailer has made its way online and can be seen in the embed above.
The leads of this version of Wolf Man are Christopher Abbott and Julia Garner, both of whom were in the 2011 film Martha Marcy May Marlene. Abbott is taking on the role of a man whose family is being terrorized by a lethal predator. Garner is playing his wife. Sam Jaeger is also in the cast, along with child actress Matilda Firth, playing a character named Ginger: “Female, 10 years old, white. Blake and Charlotte’s daughter. Smart, precocious, and strong. When her family decides to leave the city for a quieter life in a remote area, she faces her biggest fear, the possibility of losing one or both of her parents forever.”
When Wolf Man was first announced in 2020, Ryan Gosling was set to star in it – and in fact, it got rolling when Gosling pitched this take on the concept of The Wolf Man to Universal, and his idea was then fleshed out into a screenplay by Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo, a writing duo that previously worked on Orange Is the New Black. (Blum also happens to be married to Blumhouse founder Jason Blum.) At the time, it was said the story was “believed to be set in present times and in the vein of Jake Gyllenhaal’s thriller Nightcrawler with an obvious supernatural twist.” The final version of the script is credited to Blum and Angelo, as well as Whannell and his wife Corbett Tuck.
Whannell first signed on to direct the film in 2020, but dropped out the following year. That’s when Gosling’s Blue Valentine and Place Beyond the Pines director Derek Cianfrance came on board. Gosling and Cianfrance both stepped away from Wolf Man early last year… and then Whannell came back. A collaboration between Blumhouse and Motel Movies, Wolf Man is being produced by Jason Blum. Gosling receives an executive producer credit alongside Ken Kao, Bea Sequeira, Mel Turner, and Whannell.
The Wolf Man reboot was recently given an R rating for bloody violent content, grisly images and some language. This isn’t the first time a reboot of The Wolf Man has been given an R rating, as the 2010 reboot that was directed by Joe Johnston and starred Benicio Del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, and Emily Blunt was also rated R, for bloody horror violence and gore.
What did you think of the trailer for Leigh Whannell’s Wolf Man? Are you looking forward to seeing this movie in January? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
The crash and burn of Mel Gibson is one of the most infamous in modern Hollywood. Beginning in 2006, Gibson went a spiral that’s been written about over and over. It took a few years but Mel Gibson eventually came back, starring in everything from action flicks to comedies to movies where he speaks through a beaver puppet. Yet, with him now mostly acting in B-movies, it can’t be denied that his talents in front of the camera are being wasted somewhat. Yet, his career as a director seems to still be doing well, with him helming the upcoming Flight Risk. One of his actors from 2016’s Hacksaw Ridge – his first directing gig since his controversies subsided – Andrew Garfield, thinks his return is well deserved.
Speaking with People, Garfield said he learned a lot from the situation and working with Gibson. “I learned that people can heal. I learned that people can change, that people can get help. I learned that everyone deserves respect. And that people deserve second chances, third chances, fourth chances. That none of us are infallible.”
As for Mel Gibson’s progress since the aforementioned moments and the stage that he deserves, Garfield added, “He’s done a lot of beautiful healing with himself. And thank God. Because he’s an amazing filmmaker, and I think he deserves to make films. He deserves to tell stories, because he has a very, very big, compassionate heart. He’s the kind of director that would come from behind the monitors, just with his eyes wet. He knew when it was right and he knew when it wasn’t right. And I just really trusted him. And he’s a visceral storyteller so he can feel… He’s like he can’t help but feel everything. He’s a real empathetic guy.”
What do you make of Andrew Garfield’s remarks over Mel Gibson? Do you think Gibson has earned a spot back in the Hollywood elite? Chime in in the comments section below.
People love to complain about how long Call of Duty campaigns are even though most people never finish them and just play the multiplayer deathmatch meat grinder instead. Even so, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 promises a set of story-based missions that should run longer than both Cold War and Modern Warfare III, both of…
People love to complain about how long Call of Duty campaigns are even though most people never finish them and just play the multiplayer deathmatch meat grinder instead. Even so, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 promises a set of story-based missions that should run longer than both Cold War and Modern Warfare III, both of…
Plot: When a beloved varsity quarterback disappears during the “Satanic Panic” of the late 1980s, a struggling high school heavy metal band of outcasts realize they can capitalize on the town’s sudden interest in the occult by building a reputation as a Satanic metal band, until a bizarre series of murders, kidnappings, and reported “supernatural activity” triggers a leather-studded witch hunt that leads directly back to them.
Review: There have been many 1980s-set retro horror movies in recent years, ranging from My Best Friend’s Exorcism to Totally Killer and more. The 80s were a bastion of paranoia about the impact of Dungeons & Dragons and heavy metal, a thread used in Netflix’s Stranger Things. The new series Hysteria! goes back to the heart of the Satanic Panic to see how one small town in Michigan deals with its own devilish challenges. Led by genre legend Bruce Campbell along with Julie Bowen, Anna Camp, Garret Dillahunt, and more, Hysteria! has a sense of humor but is at its heart a creepy horror romp through a period in recent history that eerily parallels our contemporary culture of fake news, misinformation, and widespread panic about what our neighbors could be up to.
Set in the town of Happy Hollow, Hysteria! centers on Dylan Campbell (Emjay Anthony), a mild-mannered and somewhat nerdy teen who is part of a heavy metal band with his friends, bass player Jordy (Chiara Aurelia), and drummer Spud (Kezii Curtis). When a popular football player disappears and a pentagram is painted on his family’s garage, the town begins to suspect evil may be lurking in their suburban paradise. Dylan decides this may be the time to lean into the Satanic side of their musical tastes, which conjures attention from his crush, Judith (Jessica Treska). Dylan’s mother, Linda (Julie Bowen), is unsure how to feel about her son’s new style, nor is local religious zealot Tracy Whitehead (Anna Camp). Heading the investigation is Chief Dandridge (Bruce Campbell), who must quell the fears of his constituents while addressing the seemingly supernatural goings-on in Happy Hollow.
I can say with sincerity that Hysteria! caught me off guard. Based on the trailers and the cast, I anticipated a comedy, but this series is a dark and semi-serious horror story involving demons, possessions, and the danger of crowdthink. The eight-episode series starts with some tongue-in-cheek moments, gradually giving way to some truly scary imagery and a more complex web involving most of the ensemble cast. Anna Camp echoes great horror zealots from Carrie‘s Piper Laurie to The Mist‘s Marcia Gay Harden, while Julie Bowen delivers a performance I did not think she had in her. Equally, the great Bruce Campbell is deadly serious as the lead law enforcement officer without any hint of Ash lurking in his demeanor. Hysteria! plays it straight, accentuating the horror while adding to the sense of dread as the story goes in a direction I did not anticipate.
The benefit that Hysteria! has over other period-set horror projects is the multiple narratives, none of which feels weak compared to the rest. While the adults focus on blaming Satan and trying to find a scapegoat, there is a sinister plot lurking underneath. Meanwhile, the three main teens, Dylan, Jordy, and Spud, get to play Harry Potter and investigate both to clear their names and figure out what is happening in their town. There is also another thread involving the teens and the cult they manufacture as the paranoia grows. All of these stories culminate in the final episode, which offers closure to the story without leaving anything hanging. Some of the plot elements are wrapped up too neatly, but they work overall.
Creator Matthew Scott Kane makes an impressive debut as a showrunner with this project influenced by the last decade of political and social division in the United States and around the world. There is most definitely an ulterior motive hiding in this story that is not too in your face to detract from the horror of Hysteria! but helps drive it home. Hysteria! includes a solid writer’s room, including Mike Flanagan’s sibling Jamie, who boasts a writing credit and appears in a supporting role. Longtime Seth MacFarlane collaborator David A. Goodman is involved as a writer and producer, but don’t let his resume fool you, as Hysteria! is not a Family Guy-style project. The series also boasts a top crew of directors led by Jordan Vogt-Roberts, director of Kong: Skull Island, who directs the first and final episodes.
Full of classic rock tracks from the 1980s and a neon aesthetic full of big hair, acid-washed jeans, and Reagan-induced fear, Hysteria! has just the right amount of fun to complement the scary. This series unfolds and teases a lot of relevant themes while doing so in a fun and entertaining way. You may be looking for just pure terror this Halloween season, but you will get your fair share of blood and jump scares from Hysteria! but this series is possessed of something altogether more terrifying: a message. Enjoy Hysteria! for the scares, you may learn something eerily true about how easy it can be to convince the world the sky is falling or even that the Devil is among us.
Hysteria! premieres onPeacock on October 18 with a simulcast on USA Network and SYFY. USA Network will air episodes each Friday.
In the summer of 2024, an entertainment project went more spectacularly wrong than possibly any entertainment project in human history. A venture that cost an approximated $400 million, and is thought to have made back only $1 million, representing a flop that dwarfs the likes of movie disasters Joker: Folie à Deux…
In the summer of 2024, an entertainment project went more spectacularly wrong than possibly any entertainment project in human history. A venture that cost an approximated $400 million, and is thought to have made back only $1 million, representing a flop that dwarfs the likes of movie disasters Joker: Folie à Deux…
Beware of people who invite you to a Huey Lewis and the News listening party, and make sure your business cards aren’t too fancy. Luca Guadagnino (Challengers, Call Me By Your Name, Bones and All) is in final negotiations to direct an American Psycho movie. Guadagnino’s version, which is set to be a new story interpretation, comes from Lionsgate. Scott Z. Burns will write the adaptation, with plans to take creative license with Bret Easton Ellis’s novel.
The following description hails from Amazon’s landing page for Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho novel:
In American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis imaginatively explores the incomprehensible depths of madness and captures the insanity of violence in our time or any other. Patrick Bateman moves among the young and trendy in 1980s Manhattan. Young, handsome, and well educated, Bateman earns his fortune on Wall Street by day while spending his nights in ways we cannot begin to fathom. Expressing his true self through torture and murder, Bateman prefigures an apocalyptic horror that no society could bear to confront.
Mary Harron directed the fan-favorite adaptation of Ellis’s novel, starring Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman, a wealthy New York City investment banking executive who hides his alternate psychopathic ego from his co-workers and friends as he delves deeper into his violent, hedonistic fantasies. Justin Theroux, Reese Witherspoon, Chloë Sevigny, Bill Sage, Josh Lucas, Samantha Mathis, and Jared Leto join Bale for Harron’s take on the twisted tale of ego, jealousy, and delusion. Harron’s film is considered by many to be a cult classic, with fans dressing as Bateman for Halloween and re-creating the disturbing “Huey Lewis and the News” murder scene online, with disclaimers, of course.
Sources close to Luca Guadagnino’s American Psycho project say it’s not a remake and that the studio has been waiting for the perfect filmmaker to provide a fresh take on the story. Guadagnino is a master of presenting audiences with manipulative characters, making him an excellent fit for the American Psycho premise.
Do you think Luca Guadagnino is a fantastic fit to bring American Psycho back into the limelight? Let us know in the comments section below.
