Plot: Begins with fraternal twins Devin and Cece adjusting to life with their recently divorced dad, Anthony. When the duo discovers a threat stirring, they quickly realize that dark secrets are among them, triggering a chain of events that unravel a profound mystery.

Review: Growing up, I was slightly too old to enjoy Goosebumps. While I was graduating from Christopher Pike novels and R.L. Stine’s Fear Street series to the more mature novels of Stephen King, tons of kids entered the gateway horror of Stine’s fun brand of scary stories to tell in the dark. The anthology series was a hit with kids looking for a good scare, and the big-screen films starring Jack Black amped up the comedy for a big-budget adventure. Disney+ and Hulu’s reboot of the franchise was a successful, scary take on the source material back in 2023, and this year’s sophomore entry is equally good. Led by David Schwimmer in a very different New York story, Goosebumps: The Vanishing is a solid franchise continuation for the small screen that favors jump scares over slapstick. With shout-outs to several memorable books in the Goosebumps catalog, The Vanishing takes a different approach than the first season but works just as well.

Shifting the setting from Stine’s preferred location of generic suburban America, The Vanishing takes Goosebumps to New York City. Set in Gravesend in Brooklyn, The Vanishing opens in 1994 with a group of teens exploring an abandoned military facility when they are seemingly killed by a black goo that reduces them to dust. Fast-forwarding three decades to the present day, the story shifts to twins Cece (Jayden Bartels) and Devin (Sam McCarthy), who are staying with their dad, Anthony (David Schwimmer), as he takes care of his mother’s home. Anthony is a botanist clearing out his childhood home as his mother has moved into assisted living. Anthony is still dealing with the death of his brother, one of the teens in the opening sequence. Cece and Devin deal with their own challenges, including Devin’s crush, Franke (Galilea La Salvia,) and her new boyfriend, Trey (Stony Blyden). They also run into CJ (Elijah M. Cooper) and Alex (Francesca Noel), neighborhood kids and new friends. When Trey challenges Devin to revisit the site of his uncle’s death, the group unleashes the same menace that killed the kids thirty years earlier.

Where the first season of Goosebumps blended the adult cast with a new group of teens facing off against the menacing dummy Slappy and a slew of interpretations of supernatural beings from the novels, there are few adults in the cast of The Vanishing. David Schwimmer is great as Anthony, who bridges the two time periods in the story along with Jen (Ana Ortiz), Anthony’s brother’s girlfriend and mother to Alex. The other significant adult character is Ramona (Sakina Jaffrey), a scientist whose father (Sendhil Ramamurthy) directly connects to the military facility. In the two-part opener, Goosebumps: The Vanishing tackles a twist on the book “Stay Out of the Basement” before shifting to episodes named after books like “The Haunted Car”, “Monster Blood”, and “Welcome to Camp Nightmare”. All of the stories, rather than serve as direct adaptations of the standalone books, are incorporated into the overall season narrative. While the story works better overall this season than it did in the first, the reveal as to what is actually behind the generational horror did not work as well as I had hoped.

What I liked the most in the first season of Goosebumps was the teen cast. While Justin Long provided the adult connection in the first season’s story, the young protagonists are all fully realized characters with a stake in the main story. Season two gives us a nice ensemble led by Jayden Bartels and Sam McCarthy as likable siblings who do not act like twins. Both Francesca Noel and Galilea La Salvia are good romantic interests for the main characters and never get relegated to being secondary. The same cannot be said for Stony Blyden and Elijah M. Cooper, as CJ and Trey are the least developed of the six teens. Because the story is centered on the Brewer family, we are meant to care most about Cece, Devin, and their dad, but this sometimes gets muddled in the middle of the season. There are a couple of weak entries in the middle of the season, something rectified in the solid and unexpected finale.

Pokemon: Detective Pikachu helmer Rob Letterman, who directed the 2015 Goosebumps film and co-created and directed entries in the first season of this series, returns to oversee The Vanishing. Letterman wrote two episodes and directed one in the first season. For The Vanishing, Letterman co-wrote three and directed three alongside Erin O’Malley, Gillian Robespierre, Oz Rodriguez, and The Blair Witch Project co-director Eduardo Sanchez. The intensity of the horror this season feels much stronger than in the first, making it a natural continuation of what we saw a couple of years ago. While it is nowhere close to what we got in Netflix’s Fear Street films, Goosebumps remains one of the scarier teen-centric series to debut in a long time. There are funny moments in the season, but the focus is on being scary, and the production values and visual effects make this feel like it is not designed for kids.

While it will not phase most horror fans, Goosebumps: The Vanishing is vastly scarier than the big screen takes on the subject matter. Rivaling the frights from the 1990s version of Goosebumps and even Are You Afraid of the Dark?, The Vanishing is a solid series that introduces younger audiences to the horror genre while still being entertaining for adults. Once the series unveils the big twist on what is going on in Gravesend, some may be disappointed compared to the supernatural origins in the first season. Nevertheless, Goosebumps: The Vanishing works far better than I anticipated and benefits from David Schwimmer doing a solid job as the main adult in a cast of young newcomers. Disney and Hulu missed a great opportunity to debut this series during Halloween, but it is still worth a watch during the wasteland of mediocre programming coming in January.

Goosebumps: The Vanishing is now streaming on Disney+ and Hulu.

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As far as modern action heroes go, one of the most enduring has certainly been Jason Statham, who’s headlined a slew of modestly budgeted action flicks that have made him one of the few genre staples left in the game. His career has been interesting, with him alternating smaller-scaled action flicks with bigger, tentpole event films, such as the Fast & Furious films and The Meg 1 & 2. Yet, the movie that established his persona wasn’t the Transporter films or any of his Guy Ritchie movies. Nope, instead, it was a small-scale but ambitious quasi-remake of the film noir classic D.O.A that put him on the map in a big way. That’s right, folks, it’s time to figure out WTF Happened to Crank! 

Jump back to 1997, when a young English director named Guy Ritchie released a little film called Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, which caused a sensation. One of the unknown actors in the film was a young Jason Statham, who had been a competitive swimmer before becoming a rather macho-looking male model in the mid-nineties. Despite a receding hairline and unconventional good looks, Statham’s role in the film caused a stir, leading to Ritchie giving him one of the leading roles in his follow-up, Snatch, which was an even bigger hit. This led to two supporting roles in American films, with him cast in John Carpenter’s Ghosts of Mars and the Jet Li vehicle The One, where he got to show off some of his martial arts training, with Statham having prior expertise in Kung fu, kickboxing and karate.

These roles and his physical prowess caught the eye of Luc Besson, who was assembling a slew of European-made action films in English for the international market. He was given the lead in The Transporter, where he played a shady courier/ getaway driver who breaks his own code when he realizes he’s gotten caught up in human trafficking. The role was a riff on the then-popular slate of BMW short films starring Clive Owen as an unnamed driver. The film was a modest success, making $25 million in the US and another $18 million internationally. Yet, it was a smash success on DVD, with it turning into such a big seller, a sequel, Transporter 2, was produced, which ended up doubling its predecessors’ gross. It was helped by the fact that the successful remake of The Italian Job had also showcased Statham to great effect. Thus, Statham had arrived. 

The time had come for Statham to play the lead in his first American studio film. Enter Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, two former DP’s and camera operators (who would also operate both a and b camera units on their movies), making their directorial debut with Crank, a movie they’d also written. Crank uses the same formula as a classic film noir, D.O.A, where a man is poisoned and given only a short time to live, which he uses to track down his killers. In Crank, their anti-hero would be a hitman, improbably named Chev Chelios. He’s infected with a drug that inhibits the flow of adrenaline, killing the victim. Yet, there’s a way for him to at least temporarily stay alive. If he can keep his adrenaline going, he can stay alive. Thus, to have the time to track down his killers, he has to keep the adrenaline flowing in any way he can, meaning fights, stunts, and lots of drugs. It’s a unique take on the genre, but it wasn’t designed with Statham in mind. 

In fact, given that the film was pitched more as a dark comedy, it was offered to both Nicolas Cage (who later worked with the directors on Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance) and Johnny Knoxville before they went to Statham. In an interview, the directors claimed they wanted a non-traditional action hero for the lead. Chev Chelios is considered a throwback to the kind of action protagonist you’d see in seventies films, with guys like Roy Scheider.

This dovetailed nicely with Statham’s own career plans. He wished to make something down and dirty to get away from the overly polished and CGI-enhanced vibe of the larger-than-life Transporter movies. It proved ideal casting, with the resulting film perfectly marrying the streetwise antihero vibe of Statham’s work in Guy Ritchie movies to the action genre with heavy doses of black comedy. 

Sporting a low $12 million budget, Neveldine/ Taylor were early adopters of digital technology, shooting the film with Canon XL2 and Sony CineAlta HDC-F950 cameras. No CGI was used, and the fight sequences were grounded despite the film’s ultra-frenetic, almost demented pace. Basically, the movie took the aesthetic of Run Lola Run, in which the pace never let up, but gave it this heavy-duty, methamphetamine-imbued vibe, as per the name, Crank, which is slang for meth.

The film benefitted from a strong supporting cast, which included Amy Smart as Chev’s girlfriend, who, to save his life, has sex with him in public to keep his adrenaline going in one memorable scene. Napoleon Dynamite’s Efren Ramirez shows up as Chev’s cross-dressing sidekick, while Dwight Yoakam gives the film some class as his doctor. Also, look out for It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’s Glenn Howerton in an early role.

Despite being heavily advertised on the then-new YouTube platform, Crank wasn’t a major success at the box office, topping out at $27 million domestically. However, given the low budget and the foreign gross, it turned a nice profit. It set the pattern for many Statham movies to follow, with many of his vehicles only performing modestly at the box office, only to become mainstays once they hit DVD, cable, and eventually streaming.

In fact, just like The Transporter, Crank was a big enough moneymaker on home video that Neveldine/Taylor were allowed to make a sequel, Crank: High Voltage. This is perhaps an even more deranged movie than its predecessors, where Chev somehow survives falling out of a helicopter over downtown LA to fight another day. This one tanked at the box office, only making $13 million, killing potential plans for a third film. 

Whatever the case, Crank helped make Statham the icon he is today, with it quickly followed by movies like Death Race and The Expendables, before the Fast & Furious films arguably elevated him to another sphere, with his recent The Beekeeper one of his highest-grossers in terms of solo star vehicles domestically (his new movie – A Working Man – also has great buzz). 

As for Neveldine/ Taylor, they went on to direct Gamer and Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance before their partnership ended. Mark Nelveldine, who married actress Alison Lohman, has had a low-key career since, with his DTV action movie, Panama earning poor notices (although one hesitates to blame him given that it was shot in 14 days – I’m not sure how you make a good movie on a timetable like that), while Brian Taylor directed the well-received Mom & Dad, before the recent Hellboy: The Crooked Man, which went direct to VOD. That said, Statham apparently has a lot of fondness for the Crank films and has repeatedly said he’d make another one if Neveldine/ Taylor were involved, so perhaps we’ll get another adventure for Chev Chelios after all!

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There’s a new sequel to the 1997 slasher I Know What You Did Last Summer (watch it HERE) and its 1998 follow-up I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (watch that one HERE) coming our way from director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson (Do Revenge) – and while Jennifer Love Hewitt, who played heroine Julie James in the first two films, and Freddie Prinze Jr., who was Julie’s boyfriend Ray Bronson in those films, are both back for this sequel, they are not the leads this time around… Which you might have assumed, given the fact that Hewitt’s deal to return wasn’t closed until after filming had already begun.

Prinze confirmed that he and Hewitt are not the leads during an interview on the Scale Talk Podcast with David Miniatures. He said, with thanks to our friends at Bloody Disgusting for the transcription, “[Director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson] just took such good care of Love’s character, Julie James, and my character, Ray Bronson. They’re not the leads of the movie by any stretch of the imagination. She made them such a powerful pushing forward of the other cast. It’s not like, ‘Oh, here’s the Ray and Julie movie that we deserve.’ That doesn’t even make sense. That guy’s dead. So it has to be new generation. And the way she sort of laces us in there with them is just beautifully done. The script is wonderfully written.” Another thing Prinze confirmed in that quote is the fact that Ben Willis, the killer from the first two movies, is dead. Which was also the case in the 2006 sequel that most fans disregard, I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer – but Ben Willis still found a way to come back in that one.

Robinson is directing the film from a screenplay by Leah McKendrick (M.F.A.), which has received some rewrites from Robinson and journalist Sam Lansky. McKendrick told Collider a while back that the new sequel will reckon with “some big ideas about hero and villain, right and wrong, how your skeletons come back to haunt you. And in the age of the internet and the age where fame is such a revered concept, the creation of TikTok and social media, who is Julie James in a world where there are no secrets anymore?“ McKendrick also said that when she went in to pitch her take to Sony, the most important things they wanted to hear about were “the accident, the event that kicks it off, and who the killer is.“

In addition to Hewitt and Prinze, the new I Know What You Did Last Summer stars Madelyn Cline (Outer Banks), Sarah Pidgeon (Tiny Beautiful Things), Tyriq Withers (Atlanta), Jonah Hauer-King (The Little Mermaid), Billy Campbell (The Rocketeer), Lola Tung (The Summer I Turned Pretty), Nicholas Alexander Chavez (Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menéndez Story), Austin Nichols (The Day After Tomorrow), and model / musician Gabbriette, who will be making her feature film acting debut. Robinson’s Do Revenge star Camila Mendes (Riverdale) was attached at one time, but had to drop out due to scheduling issues. It appears that she has been replaced by Chase Sui Wonders (Bodies Bodies Bodies).

What do you think of Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr. not being the leads in the new I Know What You Did Last Summer sequel? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

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August of 1985 saw the release of one of the great zombie movies of all time. And we’re not talking about George Romero’s Day of the Dead, though some will argue that particular sequel deserves to be in the conversation. We’re talking about Dan O’Bannon’s punk-rock horror-comedy The Return of the Living Dead, which introduced the world to speedy, brain-craving zombies – who also have a thing or two to say when they’re feeling chatty. The movie was by no means a blockbuster, but it did very respectable business, making around $30 million worldwide off of a budget in the low single digits. Naturally, a follow-up would be necessary in the eyes of that film’s producer Tom Fox, who assumed the Living Dead title was due for the franchise treatment in the vein of Friday the 13th. It would take three years, but we did eventually get a new Return of the Living Dead, which brought along some old faces to mix in with the new. But living up to the greatness of the first film would be no easy feat. And, as it would turn out, this movie was much more of a slog to make than its predecessor. If you’re ready to party one more time, grab a bowl of brains and find out WTF Happened to Return of the Living Dead Part II.

As mentioned, Tom Fox was eager to capitalize off the success of the first Return of the Living Dead – which was a hit overseas, especially in Japan. He decided to finance the sequel himself, figuring he couldn’t miss if the budget was under $10 million and he hired the right people to bring the dead to life. Original writer-director Dan O’Bannon was not interested in coming back to this world, but gave his blessing for a sequel to be made without him, so Fox would have to seek out new blood. Oddly enough, two of the original film’s stars – Don Calfa and James Karen – had taken it upon themselves to write their own screenplays for the sequel. Sadly for them, Fox wasn’t interested in either of their takes.

Around this time, a fellow named Ken Wiederhorn was attempting to break out of a rut. He’d been struggling with the label of “horror film director” after making two moderately successful thrillers: 1977’s Nazi zombie nightmare Shock Waves and the 1981 slasher Eyes of a Stranger. His most recent film at the time had been Meatballs 2, though it was filmed under a different title and turned into a Meatballs movie by the distributor. Ken was taking a writing class hoping to up his screenwriting game under the tutelage of the legendary screenwriting professor Robert McKee. Though he was trying to get away from horror films, Wiederhorn ended up writing a comedic script that featured zombies; soon after he was finished, the script ended up on Tom Fox’s desk. Fox saw an opportunity to take Wiederhorn’s original script, change a few things around and turn it into a “Return of the Living Dead” sequel. Though he was supposedly not even impressed by his own script, Wiederhorn agreed to direct under the stipulation that the movie lean more on the comedy side of things. Fox agreed because part of the first movie’s charm was its morbid sense of humor, so he allowed his new director to go a little broader with the humor.

Ken’s vision for the film was so far left of horror that he even referred to his new movie as being the Police Academy of horror movies. That could have been one of the first signs that things were not going to work out quite as well as they did with the first film.

While the film wouldn’t exactly be a direct sequel to the first film, Ken wanted it to have some connective tissue to it, so he suggested bringing back a large chunk of the original’s cast. James Karen, despite not having his script agreed to, was down to return because he was friends with Tom Fox. Karen didn’t much like the new script, but figured collaborating with the same cast from the first film would make this a fun experience.

Thom Matthews was less enthused about returning; in fact, he told Fangoria in an interview for Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI that if there were to be a Return of the Living Dead sequel, he wouldn’t be a part of it. Eventually, Matthews agreed to take part in it because, unlike some of the other participants, he warmed to the idea of making it a more humorous affair. Additionally, he and James Karen had struck up a genuine friendship on the first one, and the opportunity to do their schtick again appealed to both of them. But the plan to bring back the rest of the original cast fell through. Beverly Randolph, who played final girl Tina in the first one, was under the impression she was going to be asked back for the sequel, but was surprised to see it announced in the trades without so much as a phone call. Similarly, Don Calfa, who portrayed Ernie the mortician in the original, had to audition for a role in the sequel – and didn’t get it. Clu Gulager, who played Burt in the first one, was never going to be asked back because he didn’t get along with anyone on the set the first time around.

The sequel was given a budget of 6.2 million dollars, more money than they had for the O’Bannon picture. Returning to do the make-up effects would be Kenny Myers, who worked on the first Living Dead under strenuous conditions because he had to replace the original artist hired. While Myers wasn’t in love with the new script either, thinking it too silly, he appreciated that he had more time and money to work with, and eventually employed up to 30 make-up artists to work on the copious amounts of zombies – most of which were portrayed by Los Angeles locals. There would be about 6 main zombie actors, including Brian Peck who featured in the first film, and these performers played multiple ghouls throughout the picture in an effort to save money on cast.

Also not a fan of the sequel’s screenplay – boy these are really piling up aren’t they? – was the first film’s production designer William Stout. He detested the script so much that not only did he refuse to be a part of it, but he banned the film from using any of his original designs – including the infamous Tar Man, who would return for a cameo in the sequel. The Tar Man would be played once again by actor Allan Trautman , although the design was significantly changed as to not replicate the one we all know and love.

Return of the Living Dead Part II was not an easy movie to make. Things got off to a rocky start when producer Tom Fox casually announced in an interview with Variety that the movie was going to be a non-union show, which naturally led to picketing outside of the filming locations from pissed off union members, disrupting shooting for days. Though that was eventually sorted out, the movie was further plagued by bad weather: they were shooting in the winter, so even in L.A. it got cold at night, and to add insult to injury it was unusually rainy and windy, making conditions rather uncomfortable for all involved.

Things were so bad for a while that Wiederhorn joked to Fangoria that he regretted writing “night exterior” at the beginning of every scene heading, and if you listen to the audio commentary he admits he couldn’t wait for the production to end. Furthermore, he ultimately felt he couldn’t get along with the actors because he was too immersed in the film’s effects, not to mention the time constraints they were all under.

Further complicating matters was the fact that one of the film’s leads was a 12-year-old kid. Michael Kenworthy, who was cast in the role of Jesse after a nationwide search for the actor, was only allowed to film for four hours a day because of child labor rules. Since he’s in a large bulk of the movie, the filmmakers had to rush to shoot all of his scenes at the beginning of the night before he had to leave at around 10pm. This made scheduling the film difficult, and because he was somewhat new to the business, Kenworthy supposedly had trouble hitting his marks and following direction, which put them behind schedule even more.

In short: the actors were not having a good time. In a documentary made years later, Don Calfa related that he’d receive phone calls from both James Karen and Thom Matthews telling him he’d been lucky to miss out on the sequel, that they were miserable and unsatisfied with what they were making. What became clear to many people on set was that their director had an almost dismissive attitude toward his own material and the horror genre as a whole. A rift grew between the director and his cast as his ambivalence rubbed people the wrong way. Thom Matthews would quip years later that his favorite part of making Part 2 was the Craft Service table, which was supposedly one of the only improvements the sequel offered.

Wiederhorn eventually fell out briefly with his producer too. Without the director’s knowledge, Tom Fox had gone ahead and hired a composer to score the movie. Once Wiederhorn found out and heard the score, he refused to use it and phoned the production company, Lorimar Pictures, in an effort to persuade them to tell Fox the score was unusable. The head of the studio agreed, and Wiederhorn was able to throw out the unwanted music and bring aboard his own composer.

After post-production, Lorimar Pictures tested the film quite a bit, supposedly in an effort to find out just how to market it. Return of the Living Dead Part II was their first horror movie, and the company was unsure how to sell their slapstick-y zombie comedy to the public. Perhaps surprisingly to some of its detractors, the film supposedly tested fairly well; actually better than Wiederhorn thought it would. Opting to sell it to the loyal horror crowd, Lorimar’s trailers downplayed the comedy in favor of making the movie look like a straight-forward zombie thriller, deceptive marketing at its finest. If nothing else, the movie’s poster is still memorably chilling, if not a little reminiscent of the poster for Fright Night, which came out three years earlier.

Return of the Living Dead Part II was released on January 15th, 1988. It opened in fifth place with $3 million, on its way to an early grave to the tune of $9 million domestic. Tom Fox was not going to have his version of the Friday the 13th franchise after all, and he eventually sold the Living Dead rights to to Trimark, which would go on to make a third film in the series five years later, although that one jettisoned the comedy and familiar faces altogether for a darker, scarier zombie tale.

Return of the Living Dead Part II isn’t close to being in the same league as its predecessor, but it does have its champions; people who appreciate its goofy hijinks and the tenuous homages to the first film. If nothing else, some of us have a lingering sense of nostalgia for it because of its generous presence on cable TV back in the late 80s and early 90s, and one has to admit that the actors look like they’re having fun, even if they really weren’t. It’ll never be mistaken for a masterpiece, but its lack of brains might just be what keeps us talking about it to this day.

A couple of the previous episodes of What Happened to This Horror Movie? can be seen below. To see more, head over to our JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel – and subscribe while you’re there!

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One of David Cronenberg‘s most beloved films is getting a brand-new ultra-high-definition treatment. Blu-ray.com has revealed that the label Second Sight is going to be releasing new Blu-rays and 4K Blu-rays of Scanners. The sci-fi thriller, which features powerful telepaths, is sealed in history as having one of (if not THE best) head explosion scenes. And you can now see it in every gory detail when the new physical media is released on March 31.

Scanners stars Jennifer O’Neill, Stephen Lack, Patrick McGoohan, Lawrence Dane, and Michael Ironside. Following his 1975 film Shivers, Cronenberg penned a treatment for a sci-fi story called Telepathy 2000. The basic idea of the plot concerned a protagonist named Harley Quinn raping a woman telepathically in a subway before revealing itself as a spy story of corporate espionage. The evil Cytodyne Amalgamate Corporation deliberately bred Scanners as a government program to overtake the world. This idea eventually became the Cronenberg classic and you can check out the details of the release below.

The description reads,
“A scientist recruits a drifter with extraordinary telepathic ability to hunt down an equally powerful ‘scanner’ who, together with others of their kind, is hellbent on taking over the world.”

Special Features and Technical Specs:

• NEW 4K RESTORATION approved by Director David Cronenberg
• DOLBY VISION/HDR PRESENTATION OF THE FILM
• NEW audio commentary by Caelum Vatnsdal
• Audio commentary by William Beard
• My Art Keeps Me Sane: an interview with Actor Stephen Lack
• Method in his Madness: an interview with Actor Michael Ironside
• Bad Guy Dane: an interview with Actor Lawrence Dane
• The Eye of Scanners: an interview with Cinematographer Mark Irwin
• Mind Fragments: an interview with Composer Howard Shore
• The Chaos of Scanners: an interview with Executive Producer Pierre David
• Exploding Brains & Popping Veins: an interview with Makeup Effects Artist Stephan Dupuis
• Monster Kid: an interview with Makeup Effects Artist Chris Walas
• Cronenberg’s Tech Babies: a video essay by Tim Coleman
• Rigid slipcase with new artwork by Krishna Shenoi
• 120-page book with new essays by Dr Xavier Aldana Reyes, Eugenio Ercolani and Gian Giacomo Petrone, Kurt Halfyard, Craig Ian Mann, Francesco Massaccesi, Jessica Scott, Emma Westwood and Heather Wixson
• 6 collectors’ art cards

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Den of Thieves 2: Pantera is kicking off the year as 2025’s first number-one movie. It’s also Lionsgate’s first box office topper in over a year. The heist film reportedly made a $15.5 million gross on opening weekend. It opened in line with the 2018 original (not adjusted for inflation). It likely would have performed even better were it not for the horrific wildfires currently decimating large parts of Los Angeles. The movie marks Gerard Butler’s strongest opening since Angel Has Fallen back in 2019.

As the first film became a modest hit (which would collect more fans later in its release life) and got a sequel, could a third movie be in the books for this franchise? Christian Gudegast, the writer and director of both the first and second, says so. And this is despite the hardships that come from making these movies. When he spoke to The Hollywood Reporter, he was inquired about if he would pitch a threequel to the studio and Gudegast revealed, “It’s already pitched. It’s already done. We’re ready to go.” When the first two movies suffered long-gestating developments that were out of its control, THR asked if they should knock on wood so that it would be greenlit. Gudegast responded, “We’re feeling very good about it. But, sure, knock on wood. It doesn’t hurt.”

The hardships that came with the development of the movies meant it would be 15 years until the first film hit the big screen and seven years for the sequel. For Pantera, Gudegast explained, “We were ramping up to start, but then Covid hit.  We were just about to ramp up again after coming out of Covid, but then we had a bad injury to one of our leads [Gerard Butler]. So that was another nine or ten months, and then we were probably going to go shoot it in Croatia and Serbia. But then the war with Ukraine hit, and we had to move out of that zone because everyone from the Ukraine went down to where we were going to shoot it. There were literally no hotels or Airbnbs available to house the crew. Then, we went to France, but the exchange rate changed and the tax credit in France didn’t work. Ultimately, we ended up in Tenerife. So we had many, many hurdles, production-wise, and that was really the challenge.”

The post Den of Thieves franchise director says a third movie has already been pitched appeared first on JoBlo.

We could analyze why The Flash barely made a flicker at the box office all day long. There’s all of the controversy surrounding star Ezra Miller, it coinciding with the wave of “superhero fatigue”, the plan for it to “reset” the DCEU thus giving fans less reason to care…And you could take any or all of those stances, really. But for director Andy Muschietti, it comes down to something more direct: The Flash himself.

Appearing on Radio TU (via DC Films News), Muschietti said that while a number of the aforementioned problems nudged The Flash towards failure (although he does say he enjoyed working with Miller), he also pointed out that the character just couldn’t hit every demographic the studio wanted him to. “Years later, I started learning about other things, like how when a movie like this is made, there’s an expectation to appeal to all four quadrants of the audience. And this is a movie that, apart from everything else I mentioned, I think failed in the sense that it didn’t appeal to all four quadrants of the audience. When a $200 million movie is made, the studio expects to bring everyone, even your grandmother, to the theater. And in private conversations later on, I learned things like how a lot of people weren’t interested in the Flash as a character. Half of those four quadrants — the two female quadrants — many women didn’t care about Flash as a character.”

Andy Muschietti’s The Flash may have opened at #1, but it fell more than 70% in its second week, its total worldwide box office haul $271 million against a budget pegged upwards of $220 million. That drop points to a level of word of mouth that had no shot of ever getting grandmothers to the theater. And it didn’t exactly leave its mark on streaming, either, as it saw about 1.1 million viewers on its Max debut weekend; that’s less than what Black Adam and half of what Wonder Woman 1984 saw in their own premiere outings.

The Flash does indeed have its champions, but no doubt the studio and Muschietti are best moving forward, which they’ll be able to do as the “soft reboot” that The Flash set up kicks off this summer with James Gunn’s Superman. Also part of the Gods and Monsters chapter will be Muschietti’s own The Brave and the Bold, which we recently learned won’t be featuring Robert Pattinson as Batman.

Now far enough removed from its release, what are your thoughts on The Flash? Do you agree with Andy Muschietti’s take on why it failed?

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Toy Story changed it all in the animation game. As the first entirely computer-generated feature, it meant that studios were going to have to up their game. Take a look at the highest-grossing animated films ever and the top 50 maybe has three, all of them from the Disney Renaissance. So it’s an understatement to say that Toy Story (and Pixar) is the chief reason. But if you thought traditional animation was threatened, what about stop-motion? Nick Park – creator of the Wallace & Gromit series – remembers that it put him and his studio on high alert.

Nick Park – a key player at Aardman Animations – recalled that Pixar’s rise in the animation world was a moment of reckoning for both himself and the artform in which he cultivated. As he told Inverse, “Back when Toy Story first came out in the ’90s, a studio like us, we’re thinking, ‘Oh, boy, how long do we have left?’” So what did Nick Park and company do? They pressed on, refusing to let new technology have a say in their storytelling. “But we kept going. As long as you’re telling good stories, compelling stories with compelling characters, then it’s just the technique really.”

Thanks to Toy Story – which was given a Special Achievement Academy Award, a rarity for an animated film – and the influx of (computer-)animated features in the industry, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences introduced the Best Animated Feature Oscar in 2002. Just a few years later, Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit won as the first stop-motion film to do so, although it wasn’t competing against Pixar. (Interestingly, it did have another stop-motion film, Tim Burton’s The Corpse Bride, up for the award.) However, with Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl likely to get a nomination this year, it will put it in direct contention with Inside Out 2…although my money is on Latvia’s Flow taking home the Oscar.

Now, we’re not trying to pit one against the other, but we have to point out that Nick Park is one of the most crucial voices in ensuring that stop-motion animation isn’t forgotten, even as technology and artificial intelligence develops. With that – and Vengeance Most Fowl being one of the best films of 2024 (read our 9/10 review here) – a lot of people are pulling for another stop-motion victory at the Oscars.

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The killer AI-powered doll movie M3GAN (which gets its name from the fact that the doll is a Model 3 Generative Android) reached theatres back on January 6, 2023 – but months before the movie was even released, we were hearing that Universal Pictures was so pleased with it, sequel discussions were already underway. And less than two weeks after M3GAN made its way out into the world, Universal officially announced that we’ll be getting M3GAN 2.0 in 2025. The release date has changed a couple of times since then, moving from January 17 to May 16 to June 25, but the project has made its way through production and looks likely to stick with that June release date. In anticipation of the killer doll’s return, we have now put together a list of Everything We Know About M3GAN 2.0.

CREATIVE TEAM

The story for the original M3GAN originated from producer James Wan, with Wan’s Malignant and The Nun II collaborator Akela Cooper fleshing the idea out into a screenplay. In case you need a refresher, the first movie had the following synopsis: She’s more than just a toy. She’s part of the family. From the most prolific minds in horror — James Wan, the filmmaker behind the Saw, Insidious and The Conjuring franchises, and Blumhouse, the producer of the Halloween films, The Black Phone and The Invisible Man — comes a fresh new face in terror. M3GAN is a marvel of artificial intelligence, a life-like doll programmed to be a child’s greatest companion and a parent’s greatest ally. Designed by brilliant toy-company roboticist Gemma, M3GAN can listen and watch and learn as she becomes friend and teacher, playmate and protector, for the child she is bonded to. When Gemma suddenly becomes the caretaker of her orphaned 8-year-old niece, Cady, Gemma’s unsure and unprepared to be a parent. Under intense pressure at work, Gemma decides to pair her M3GAN prototype with Cady in an attempt to resolve both problems — a decision that will have unimaginable consequences.

Gerard Johnstone (Housebound) directed M3GAN and has returned to the helm for the sequel. Details on the plot of M3GAN 2.0 are being kept under wraps, but Entertainment Weekly was able to learn the story was crafted through combining “a kernel of an idea” from Wan with an idea Johnstone had for the first movie. Johnstone said, “I had actually a different idea for the ending of M3GAN, which would’ve been interesting but probably not as satisfying. The good thing about doing a sequel is I got the chance to expand on that idea into a longer narrative. The idea James had fit really well with that. So, it was just a really good marriage of those two things.“

Before M3GAN was released, Wan hinted, “I always think of a bigger world. I don’t just think of that one story; I think of the bigger world. So if we’re fortunate enough to tell any other stories, we can pull from the bigger world.“ He also talked about the “bigger world” in an interview with Collider, “What I will say to that is, in any of my movies, whether it’s The Conjuring Universe, or Saw, or Malignant, or M3GAN here, we like to think of a bigger world. For me, it’s about creating the world, and knowing who the characters are, where the story could potentially go, and then building this bigger world, and then going into that and going, ‘Okay, I’m telling this particular story, but I know other stuff that’s going on.’ So if we’re fortunate enough to have sequels, then we have an idea of where we want to go.” And when he saw that the film had a successful opening weekend, he wrote on social media, “Hopefully what all this means is that we get the chance to explore the bigger world of A.I. and perhaps witness — M3gan’s Revenge?“

During an interview with Empire Magazine, Wan said we can expect to see the sequel lean further into exploring concerns about AI. “M3GAN is coming back in a big way. The first film came just at the right time [when concerns about AI were mounting], and we’re definitely leaning into that on the next one. We’re exploring the AI universe even further.“

Before work began on the sequel, Johnstone made sure the creative team got together for a debrief on the first movie, “like a post-game analysis, and look at what worked and how we can do it again.” He told Entertainment Weekly, “It was really important that the sequel is a response to what people really loved about the first movie, but also this evolving conversation and fear that we’re having about how A.I. is changing us and changing our children and changing society. In a way, M3GAN is a personification of all of those fears.“

All we know about the script for M3GAN 2.0, which was written by Akela Cooper, is that is continues the story of “Gemma as a reluctant parent, the Frankenstein’s monster element, and the real-world parallels around A.I.” Of course, M3GAN finds a way to return, and she is said to still be very much obsessed with Cady, who might be taking after her aunt by working on robotics.

M3GAN 2.0 is being produced by James Wan, Jason Blum, and Allison Williams, with Johnstone executive producing alongside Mark Katchur, Michael Clear, Judson Scott, Ryan Turek, Adam Hendricks, and Greg Gilreath.

CAST

M3GAN stars Violet McGraw and Allison Williams are back for the sequel, reprising the roles of Cady and Gemma, respectively. Brian Jordan Alvarez and Jen Van Epps are also returning from the first movie, playing Gemma’s colleagues Cole and Tess. New additions include Ivanna Sakhno (Ahsoka), Jemaine Clement (What We Do in the Shadows), Timm Sharp (Blunt Talk), and Aristotle Athari (Saturday Night Live). When Sakhno was cast, Deadline reported that she had landed “a major part” in the sequel, but details on the character she’ll be playing haven’t been revealed.

Then there’s M3GAN, and Williams told New York Comic Con attendees that M3GAN herself is a diva. “Animatronics are, you know, temperamental. Sometimes she is rolled onto set. The vibe shifts in the room. It gets way spookier. It was fun to do it the second time. ‘Okay, so we know how this is achieved. We know how to do it.’ We can have a little bit more fun with it. And make it bigger and more expansive, without giving too much away.“ Attendees were also shown a video from M3GAN, who said, “Hi, New York Comic Con! Miss me? Sorry I couldn’t be there, because I’m slaying on set for my killer new film M3GAN 2.0. I’ve been upgraded. See you nerds in June.“

M3GAN will be sporting some new looks this time around because, as Johnstone said to Entertainment Weekly, “She’s a living doll, and part of the fun of having a doll is being able to play dress-up. We had a couple of looks in the first film, but I wanted 10 different looks for M3GAN. For the sequel, I felt like here’s a chance to do that.“

FRANCHISE

Whether or not M3GAN 2.0 is a financial success at the box office, the franchise is still going to expand, as Wan’s company Atomic Monster and Blumhouse are making a movie called SOULM8TE, which is set in the same world as the M3GAN films. Wan, his wife Ingrid Bisu, and Rafael Jordan (Salvage Marines) crafted the story for this one, with Jordan writing the first draft of the screenplay. Kate Dolan (You Are Not My Mother) is on board to direct the film and has done her own rewrite of the script. SOULM8TE will show us what happens when a man acquires an Artificially Intelligent android to cope with the loss of his recently deceased wife. In an attempt to create a truly sentient partner, he inadvertently turns a harmless lovebot into a deadly soulmate. David Rysdahl (Oppenheimer) is playing the man, while Lily Sullivan (Evil Dead Rise) plays the android. Claudia Doumit (The Boys) is also in the cast, playing an unspecified role. SOULM8TE is set to reach theatres on January 2, 2026, about six months after M3GAN 2.0. James Wan and Jason Blum are producing SOULM8TE, while Michael Clear and Judson Scott of Atomic Monster serve as executive producers with with Ingrid Bisu. Alayna Glasthal is the executive leading the project for Atomic Monster. 

If M3GAN 2.0 is a success, chances are good that we’ll see M3GAN again, because Wan and Blumhouse have brought the world several franchises with multiple installments. There have been jokes about Chucky, Annabelle, and even Fast & Furious crossovers, but those don’t seem likely. Instead, we’ll probably just see M3GAN continue to dance and kill as the years go by. Johnstone knows what sort of sequel he would like to see down the line: “Just jokingly, whenever the producers asked me what I think about a sequel, I’ve always said M3GAN 3000. M3GAN in a Mad Max universe. I would absolutely line up to see that.“

And that’s Everything We Know About M3GAN 2.0… for now. Are you looking forward to this movie? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

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Lionsgate, which had a disastrous 2024 thanks to duds like Borderlands and The Crow, are having a good start to 2025, with Den of Thieves 2: Pantera opening in first place at the box office. With Deadline reporting a $15.5 million gross, it opened in line with the 2018 original (not adjusted for inflation). It likely would have performed even better were it not for the horrific wildfires currently decimating large parts of Los Angeles. The movie marks Gerard Butler’s strongest opening since Angel Has Fallen back in 2019, proving once again that he’s a consistent draw in these meat-and-potatoes action flicks. 

Mufasa: The Lion King didn’t hold up quite as well post-holidays as we thought it would in our predictions, with it falling 50% to an $11.7 million weekend and a $187 million domestic total. That’s only a fraction of the $600 million plus grossed by its 2019 predecessor. Sonic the Hedgehog 3 came in third with $8.67 million for a $200 million plus total, making it the highest-grossing entry in the series thus far. 

Meanwhile, Focus Features is proving to have a major hit with Robert Eggers’s Nosferatu, which grossed $6.3 million for an $81 million total. It’s currently Focus Features’s third highest-grossing domestic release of all time, behind Downton Abbey and Coraline. Moana 2 was right behind with $5.9 million for a $434 million total, while Wicked continued to pull in impressive numbers, with a $4.55 weekend and a massive $458 million total. 

Searchlight’s A Complete Unknown was in seventh place this weekend, with the $4.5 million gross pushing it past $50 million, making it the studio’s highest-grossing domestic release in many years. While it hasn’t been a massive hit like director James Mangold’s previous biopic, Walk the Line, it will turn a handsome profit for the studio and should play well into award season. A24’s Babygirl has also proven to be a solid success, making $2.9 million for a $21 million domestic gross. While that’s not a huge number, it’s one of the most successful indie releases of the season, with it outgrossing a lot of the year’s more lauded awards fare. Ninth and tenth place is too close to call, with the Indian film Game Changer and the Pamela Anderson comeback film The Last Showgirl both making $1.5 million. Meanwhile, the $100 million Robbie Williams biopic Better Man landed with a thud outside the top 10, grossing $1 million. 

By comparison, The Brutalist, which is only playing on 68 screens compared to Better Man’s wide release, managed to outgross it with $1.35 million, boding well for its gradual expansion over award season. One of the reasons A24’s The Brutalist is having a slow roll-out is the fact that it’s getting a roadshow release in 70mm at elect venues before a conventional release. With it earning multiple Golden Globes, it will likely earn a ton of Oscar nominations this Friday, and should help it turn into a solid hit for the studio despite the grim subject matter. It’s a masterfully made film, so if you can see it in 70mm, I highly recommend it. 

Next weekend sees the release of The Wolf Man, which should easily take the top spot. Let us know in the comments if you plan to check it out!

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