Have you ever wished you could escape into a different life that’s still your own? What if infinite lifetimes were waiting behind a door, and the hallway goes on forever? Would you step through to see what the other side is like? What is a version of you who wanted your original life would do anything to take it? Joel Edgerton is about to discover what lurks behind a dark door in Apple TV+‘s Dark Matter trailer.
Based on the blockbuster book by New York Times bestselling author Blake Crouch, the new, nine-episode Apple Original series will premiere globally on Apple TV+ with the first two episodes on Wednesday, May 8, followed by one new episode every Wednesday through June 26, 2024.
Per today’s official Dark Matter press release:
Hailed as one of the best sci-fi novels of the decade, “Dark Matter” is a story about the road not taken. The series will follow Jason Dessen (played by Edgerton), a physicist, professor, and family man who — one night, while walking home on the streets of Chicago — is abducted into an alternate version of his life. Wonder quickly turns into a nightmare when he tries to return to his reality amid the mind-bending landscape of lives he could have lived. In this labyrinth of realities, he embarks on a harrowing journey to get back to his true family and save them from the most terrifying, unbeatable foe imaginable: himself.
Crouch serves as creator, executive producer, showrunner, and writer alongside executive producers Matt Tolmach and David Manpearl for Matt Tolmach Productions. Edgerton also serves as executive producer. “Dark Matter” is produced for Apple TV+ by Sony Pictures Television.
Joel Edgerton (Boy Erased, The Gift), Jennifer Connelly (Labyrinth, Requiem for a Dream), Alice Braga (Predators, I Am Legend), Jimmi Simpson (Black Mirror, Westworld), Dayo Okeniyi (Emperor, Hypnotic), and Oakes Fegley (Pete’s Dragon, The Goldfinch) lead the cast of Dark Matter.
What do you think about today’s Dark Matter trailer? Would you step through one of the doors? What’s the one thing in your life another version of you would covet? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below.
Prepare to let your imagination go as the new trailer for John Krasinski’s family comedy, IF, releases its final trailer. The new preview gives audiences a little bit more of a peek into the population of the imaginary friends. In addition to the trailer, Paramount has also released a collection of character posters featuring some newer peeks of the rest of the IFs. The posters have also revealed an impressive array of guest voices that will be featured in this film. IF is set to hit theaters on May 17.
The official synopsis from Paramount reads, “From writer and director John Krasinski, IF is about a girl who discovers that she can see everyone’s imaginary friends — and what she does with that superpower — as she embarks on a magical adventure to reconnect forgotten IFs with their kids. IF stars Ryan Reynolds, John Krasinski, Cailey Fleming, Fiona Shaw, and the voices of Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Louis Gossett Jr. and Steve Carell alongside many more as the wonderfully unique characters that reflect the incredible power of a child’s imagination.”
The additional voice talents that join our imaginary companions are revealed to be some pretty big names, including George Clooney, Matt Damon, Bradley Cooper, Richard Jenkins, Sabastian Maniscalco, Amy Schumer, Christopher Meloni, Jon Stewart, Maya Rudolph, Awkwafina, Keegan-Michael Key, Blake Lively, Emily Blunt and Sam Rockwell. The movie is produced by John Krasinski, Allyson Seeger, Ryan Reynolds and Andrew Form. Krasinski writes and directs with the executive producers including John J. Kelly and George Dewey. Allyson Seeger, p.g.a., John Krasinski, p.g.a., Andrew Form, p.g.a. and Ryan Reynolds are all on board as producers of the film.
Krasinski would explain that this “extremely personal” project was something made for his kids to finally see, Krasinski explains, “IF is a movie that I made for my kids because I don’t think they’re allowed to see A Quiet Place; Emily [Blunt] calls it PG-40, ‘You’ll get to see it when you’re 40!’ So I had to make a movie that they could see, and I’m really, really excited about it. I mean, Ryan Reynolds is as good as it gets in every single way, shape and form, and this incredible phenom of an actress, Cailey Fleming, is in the movie. For me, it was just about what if we could tell a story about these time capsules? Imaginary friends are adorable and all those things, but they’re also time capsules of your hopes, dreams, and ambitions when you were the most fertile of a brain, and it never goes away. I think we’re told that we’re adults instead of what if you realize that you never stopped being a kid.”
As soon as Saw X, the tenth entry in the Saw franchise (you can read our review HERE), was released last September, franchise producers Mark Burg and Oren Koules were already talking about the potential of a Saw XI. The official announcement came in December, along with a release date: September 27th. But over the last few months, the filmmakers have come to realize they need some extra time to make Saw XI something special, so the release has been pushed back a year, to September 26, 2025. So Lionsgate has unveiled a teaser trailer asking fans to play the waiting game, and you can check it out in the embed above.
Saw X screenwriters Pete Goldfinger and Josh Stolberg (who also wrote Jigsaw and Spiral: From the Book of Saw) have let it be known that they’re not coming back for the new sequel, but Saw X director Kevin Greutert will be back at the helm.
Greutert edited the first five Saw movies, and did the same on Jigsaw. He made his feature directorial debut with Saw VI and signed on to direct Paranormal Activity 2 after that. That movie was scheduled to be released on the same day as the seventh Saw movie, Saw 3D – so Lionsgate decided to remove Saw V director David Hackl from Saw 3D and replace him with Greutert, stealing him away from Paramount and Paranormal Activity 2. The Paranormal sequel ended up being directed by Tod Williams and was released the week before Saw 3D. Between Saw 3D and Saw X, Greutert directed the genre films Jessabelle, Visions, and Jackals.
We still don’t know who’s writing the film. Leigh Whannell wrote the first three films, sharing story credit with James Wan on the first and third and screenplay credit with Darren Lynn Bousman on the second. The writing duo of Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan took over for parts 4 through 7 (with Thomas Fenton also getting a story credit on Saw IV). Then we reached the Goldfinger/Stolberg era.
Are you looking forward to Saw XI? Are you disappointed that it’s going to be released a year later than initially expected? Take a look at the teaser trailer, then let us know by leaving a comment below.
PLOT: Infected by the bite of a werewolf, a man sets out to bring down a shady businessman before arranging the end of his own life.
REVIEW: Larry Fessenden has over 100 acting credits to his name, and if you’ve been following the horror genre over the last few decades there’s a good chance you’ve seen him show up in something, whether it be a Ti West movie, Stake Land, Late Phases, You’re Next, or the movie I first noticed him in, Session 9. He’s also a prolific producer, and has directing credits stretching back to the 1980s – most of those credits being on horror movies. Over the course of his career, he has told stories of vampires, the Wendigo, a man-eating fish, and even came up with his own take on Frankenstein’s Monster with his 2019 film Depraved. Continuing down the path of putting his stamp on the concept of classic monsters, Fessenden has now made an update of The Wolf Man, beating Universal Pictures to it by a year.
The lead character in Fessenden’s Blackout isn’t Larry Talbot, the beleaguered fellow Lon Chaney Jr. played in five movies back in the 1940s, but that character does get a prominent shout-out in the film, as the events take place in a town called Talbot Falls. Wolf Man franchise fans will remember that Larry Talbot hated being afflicted with his curse and was always hoping to be put out of his misery, whether through a cure or death. Similarly, the lead character in this film would rather be dead than be a wolf – but he has some unfinished business to attend to first.
Our lycanthropy-afflicted protagonist here is alcoholic painter Charley, played by Alex Hurt – and this could turn out to be something of a breakthrough for Hurt (who is the son of William Hurt, and there are pictures of his dad in the movie to prove it), as this was my first time seeing him in anything, and I was impressed by his performance. He does a good job of carrying the film on his shoulders and getting across the drama of his character’s situation. My only issue with Charley was actually due to the writing, not Hurt. As soon as we see Charley, we assume he’s the wolf man in this story, and it’s not too long before Fessenden confirms our suspicions. But for a long stretch of the movie, none of the everyday life scenes involving Charley show him expressing concern about his lycanthropy problem. Instead, his scenes are focused on his attempts to bring down shady businessman Hammond (Marshall Bell), who has made some questionable decisions while pushing forward his plan to build a resort called Hilltop in Talbot Falls. Charley goes around town, talking to people (including a lawyer played by genre icon Barbara Crampton) about Hammond, and it got to the point where I was getting frustrated. “Why is he always talking about Hammond instead of worrying about the fact that he’s a wolf man?” But Fessenden eventually explains why Charley is so focused on the businessman: he wants to do something good by bringing Hammond down before he exits this world. Once I got that explanation, I could go along with the story, but it took a while to get there.
Amidst all the Hammond talk, Fessenden gives Charley a few opportunities to wolf out and do the things we expect wolf men to do. Things go poorly for several Talbot Falls residents, and these sequences are fun to watch. You shouldn’t put this movie on expecting to see a really cool werewolf design, but the FX artists did fine work with their version of the classic Wolf Man idea of a werewolf.
You might think that Charley’s vendetta against Hammond would be complicated by the fact that he was dating the guy’s daughter Sharon (Addison Timlin), but his enemy and his former lover being related to each other doesn’t add much to the story. It wouldn’t have changed things if Hammond and Sharon had never met in their lives. Even though that element isn’t played up, Timlin was given some good dramatic scenes to work with, and her presence in the story was another thing that reminded me of the films from the ‘40s.
Actors who show up in smaller roles, like Crampton, include Joseph Castillo-Midyett, Ella Rae Peck, James Le Gros, Marc Senter, Joe Swanberg, John Speredakos, Kevin Corrigan, and Rigo Garay, among others, with a standout for me being Motell Gyn Foster as Charley’s buddy Earl, the only person he has told his werewolf secret to. Charley and Earl have a plan for how to deal with the problem, but you’ll have to see the movie to find out how that works.
Since he has made so many creature features, Fessenden has jokingly said that he’s competing with the major companies by building his own Monsterverse – or maybe you could call it a Dark Universe, since it includes characters inspired by Universal Monsters movies. I thought he did a great job updating the story of Frankenstein with Depraved, and while I didn’t find Blackout to be quite as fascinating as that movie was, I always liked Universal’s Frankenstein better than The Wolf Man, too. Blackout is a good update of the ideas presented in The Wolf Man, and is probably more in line with the original film than the official reboot coming from Universal and Blumhouse will be.
In a nod to the major studio cinematic universes, Fessenden drops a Depraved Easter egg into the end credits of Blackout, a moment that is sure to be baffling for viewers who haven’t seen Depraved. Fessenden was just having fun by putting this quick moment in the credits, but it does give me a reason to say that anyone who watches Blackout should also seek out Depraved, and vice versa. Both of these monster movies are recommended viewing.
Dark Sky Films is giving Blackout a digital and VOD release on April 12th.
[MAJOR SPOILERS FOR X-MEN ’97 EPISODE 5, “REMEMBER IT,” ARE IN THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE]
While Marvel Studios is struggling in the live-action department, Marvel Animation is currently captivating fans with its very nostalgic continuation of the 90s X-Men animated series that would broadcast every Saturday morning on the Fox Kids Network. X-Men ’97 has brought back the drama that kids used to get entangled in every week. The cartoon adaptation had the distinction of showing not only the struggles of mutants desperately trying to be accepted in a world that has shown a lot of hostility toward them but also the internal struggles of the team in a very soap opera-like manner.
X-Men ’97 is seemingly praised all around for successfully recapturing those themes and sentiments. However, as much as the show tries to emulate the era of the original, the revival series creator, Beau DeMayo, who encountered his own drama when Marvel let him go, had a big play up his sleeve to emulate a devastating turn for the world when the 90s ended and the new millennium began. Entertainment Weekly reports on DeMayo breaking his silence to address the newest episode, “Remember It.”
MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW
DeMayo explained, “Episode 5 was the centerpiece of my pitch to Marvel in November 2020. The idea being to have the X-Men mirror the journey that any of us who grew up on the original show have experienced since being kids in the 90s.” The impact that DeMayo chose to capture was the devastation of September 11th and the major shift in society after those events. “Things weren’t so safe anymore. Grassroots populist movements began to rise around the world as a whole nation struggled to deal with collective trauma and fracture at the seams of every diverse demographic. The effects we still feel today, and have only been exacerbated by more collective traumas like COVID or several recessions.”
So, to hammer home the feeling, DeMayo conceived of an episode that featured an attack on mutant haven Genosha which would claim the lives of important X-Men characters Gambit and Magneto. DeMayo states, “Yes, it looked like Gambit’s story was going a specific direction. The crop top was chosen to make you love him. Him pulling off his shirt was intentional. There’s a reason he told Rogue any fool would suffer her hand in a dance, even if it ended up not being him suffering. But if events like 9/11, Tulsa, Charlottesville, or Pulse Nightclub teach us anything, it’s that too many stories are often cut far too short. I partied at Pulse. It was my club. I have so many great memories of its awesome white lounge. It was, like Genosha, a safe space for me and everyone like me to dance and laugh and be free. I thought about this a lot when crafting this season and this episode, and how the gay community in Orlando rose to heal from that event.”
DeMayo decided to break his silence after he was publicly fired from the show, but he would devote his entire attention on his intentions with this episode. “Like many of us who grew up on the OG cartoon, the X-Men have now been hit hard by the realities of an adult and unsafe world.”
When a streaming service has so much to offer it can be overwhelming, and instead of hunkering down with your popcorn for a movie night in, you end up scrolling in every direction, ultimately giving up in favor of another comfort episode of The Office. But now, The Criterion Channel is going to decide what you watch. No, it’s not some sort of spin-the-wheel-and-make-a-deal but rather a continuously running stream of movies from their catalog. That’s right, they’re making good on the “channel” part.
The streaming service, which launched in April 2019, sent an email to coincide with their fifth anniversary, which read: “Don’t know what to watch? Let us choose! Over on the Criterion Channel, we’re trying something new: Click on Criterion24/7 and drop into a steady stream of must-see movies, any time you want.”
But Criterion’s live stream isn’t your average “channel”. There is one unique catch here. Unlike, say, Turner Classic Movies or any other broadcaster of essential films where you can see what is on and coming up in any given time frame, The Criterion Channel purposely doesn’t tell you which movie is on or what’s on deck. Kind of fun, but that can be a bit frustrating since if you’re really digging the film but don’t know the name it will be all that much harder to locate on the service.
Even if some of the features may feel off-putting at first, the entire thing is actually pretty damn cool. There are zero details or distractions, and you can be sucked into something you’ve never experienced. It also calls to mind the days of old when you could walk into the middle of an in-progress film at the cinema and just see where it takes you without knowing anything about it. The new 24/7 stream also allows you to backtrack up to four hours, giving you a chance to see what else The Criterion Channel had streaming.
It also lets serious film buffs play a sort of trivia game with themselves to see how quickly they can ID a movie. Here’s an example: not long before this article was posted, I jumped around on a block of The Seventh Seal, Hopscotch and a slew of others (but sadly not Freddy Got Fingered). And then there was something with a guy feeding his feline, which took about five minutes of detective work to figure out it was The Cassandra Cat…OK, yeah, Criterion, maybe you could tell us which movie is currently on…
Such a feature should absolutely be something that other services give a shot. Of course, it might work better with more niche ones (Shudder has a similar setup), as going from Taxi Driver to Love Is Blind on Netflix could be quite jarring…
In previous articles, we have taken a look at stars of the past we would like to see make a comeback – and there are a lot of them! It was too hard to narrow it down to just a few, so now we’ve put together another list of 80s stars we want back, including a couple of Freddy victims, some 1980s beauties we miss, and a lady we’ve only seen twice on our screens.
Michael Beck
It’s a sad tale of a promising career being kneecapped by bad luck… actually, by a bad movie. Playing the character Swan in the 1979 classic The Warriors, Michael Beck proved he had what it took to be a badass leading man. It looked like his career would be soaring onward and upward from there. But his momentum came to a screeching halt the following year when he had the misfortune of starring in the famously bad box office disappointment Xanadu. Who knew signing on to make a musical fantasy film with Olivia Newton-John and Gene Kelly could be such a tragic mistake? Beck has continued to act as the decades have gone by, working on titles like Battletruck, Megaforce, The Last Ninja, Chiller, Blackout, Houston Knights, and more, including episodes of Walker, Texas Ranger and Murder, She Wrote. His output has slowed down since the turn of the century, but he never received the career-reviving role he deserved, which would be something on the level of John Travolta getting cast in Pulp Fiction.
Mia Sara
Mia Sara may have started her career on All My Children in 1983, what most folks remember her for is her first feature film role as the ethereal Lili in Legend in 1985. She followed this with a huge film, playing Sloane Peterson in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off in 1986. She was quite busy through the 1980s and 1990s, only slowing down in the 2000s, and having her last credit in 2013. Simply put, we miss her, and we are certain we’re not the only ones. Her career has had a ton of variety from fantasy films to comedies to science fiction films to dramas, on the big and the small screen. From what can be found online, it looks like she’s been busy having a family and enjoying life. It looks like she’s in semi-retirement. As her youngest is an adult now, perhaps she may have a bit more time on her hands to get back to acting and come back to her fans. However, semi-retirement sounds great to be honest, especially if she’s enjoying it, so maybe we can keep hoping, but perhaps we should just return to her older films and enjoy them on repeat.
Miko Hughes
A mainstay of the convention circuit in the US, Miko Hughes is a favorite child actor of horror fans who started with Pet Sematary in 1989, so he’s only on the cusp of being a 1980s actor, but we’ll count him anyways. His horror film career launched him to stardom early on in a part that was both adorable and tragic. Later, he came back to horror Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, playing Heather Langenkamp’s son in the meta reality of the film. His part was quite central to Heather’s plight in the story, having some powerful scenes with Freddy as well. Between those two films, Hughes appeared in everything from Kindergarten Cop, Beverly Hills, 90210, Jack the Bear, and The Nanny to name but a few. Following New Nightmare, he kept busy with Full House, Apollo 13, Spawn, Mercury Rising, and plenty more. His career slowed down in the 2010s and he seemed only to go for the rare parts after 2007. He does have a few upcoming credits, but only one short film is in post-production. Everything else seems to be in pre-production or in development, with one film showing as in production as of now, but not much is available about it. This kid was everywhere and seemed to disappear for the most part, leaving behind a fairly big following, something clear from his popularity at conventions.
Carrie Henn
Better known as Rebecca, or Newt, the little girl found on LV-426 by the crew in Aliens, Henn has only done one more film in 2020, called Thunder Island. Why do we want her back? She has a ton of potential and a great personality. Her recent public appearances show that she still seems to be showbiz-minded, so why not get her back in front of the camera. She has said that she would love to be in a Quentin Tarantino film, something that could lead to a fun part for her and for the public. As she has been attending conventions for a few years now, she clearly has not been in hiding or shunning the spotlight, so why not bring her back for a feature film, something fun, maybe a science-fiction story, or something completely different.
Gene Davis
Gene Davis racked up 31 screen acting credits over a period of 33 years, but he didn’t get many opportunities to shine in a prominent role. He was in the 1986 classic The Hitcher, but only stands out for the moment where he gets accidentally kicked in the head by C. Thomas Howell. He’s in the Van Damme / Lundgren mash-up Universal Soldier, but didn’t even get a character name. Just a rank: Lieutenant. It’s the 1983 Charles Bronson film 10 to Midnight where Davis had the chance to show his full potential, delivering an unforgettable performance as serial killer Warren Stacey. We needed to see Davis in more Stacey level roles over the years. He hasn’t been on screen since the 2010 TV movie After the Fall, but he he’s not entirely out of the industry, as he runs Rocking Horse Productions and executive produced the TV movie Enchanted Christmas in 2017. Maybe he’ll decide to make a comeback one of these days and give himself a role that lives up to the greatness of Warren Stacey.
Jsu Garcia
Another face associated with the A Nightmare on Elm Street series, Garcia has had a solid career between 1982, when he first showed up the Fame television series, and 2011. Since then, he appeared in two Christmas movies and has 1 film pending post-production. Looking at his credits, the man had a varied career with lots of good parts of varying size in films such as Slaves of New York, Predator 2, Vampire in Brooklyn, Traffic, Collateral Damage, and Along Came Polly. His television career has seen him on The Facts of Life, Miami Vice, Babylon 5, JAG, CSI Miami, etc. The man has been all over the place, proving he is a solid choice for just about any part and then he was gone. Yes, he has one film coming soon, but that is nothing compared to his early career, and it would be great fun to get him back in films and television series. His biography details that can be found online are interesting to say the least, something that could probably be brought into parts of many kinds.
Deborah Foreman
THE Valley Girl, Foreman was a whole mood in this movie as well as in April Fool’s Day. She was everywhere for a while and then she vanished. Or so it seemed. Foreman’s career started in 1981 on The Grady Nutt Show, and she followed this with parts on Family Ties, MacGyver, The Marshal, and a few other television appearances. Her film career started with I’m Dancing as Fast as I Can, and included a bit of everything including Real Genius, Destroyer, Waxwork, Lobster Man from Mars, Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat, Lunatics: A Love Story, and a whole lot more. She seemed to go “poof” in 1995, only resurfacing in Beautiful Loser in 2008, a quick part in the Valley Girl remake in 2020, and a role in a recent film called The Demons Within. There hasn’t been all that much for Foreman in the last few years to say the least. This may have been by choice; we don’t really know. All we know is, we miss her and would love to see more of her.
Deborah Goodrich
Speaking of Deborahs who were in April Fool’s Day, we would love to see Deborah Goodrich return to the screen. Making her screen debut as a dancer in the 1980s film Those Lips, Those Eyes, Goodrich racked up several credits throughout the 80s and into the early 90s, from appearances on TV shows like All My Children, The Edge of Night, The New Mike Hammer, Three’s a Crowd, Hotel, The A-Team, St. Elsewhere, 21 Jump Street, Alien Nation, and Beverly Hills 90210, to roles in the feature films Just One of the Guys, Survival Game, and Remote Control. Sadly, she hasn’t earned a single acting credit since the 1992 movie Out on a Limb, which is a shame because she had a great screen presence and a distinct voice we wish we could hear in more movies. In the years since she retired from the screen, Goodrich has worked behind-the-scenes in script development and restored and reopened the Avon Theater Film Center, an independent cinema in Stamford, Connecticut.
There are so many folks we would love to see back on our televisions and theater screens, there are so many opportunities these days with all the streaming platforms producing their own content at an unexpected speed that there has to be room to bring back more beloved stars, some more obvious than others, and to revive careers while also playing the nostalgia strings.
There’s no place like CinemaCon for Universal to debut enchanting new footage for Jon M. Chu’s adaptation of Wicked! On Wednesday, the studio dropped a house on the CinemaCon crowd at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, helping Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, to tell her side of a misunderstood story.
During Universal’s CinemaCon presentation, the studio surprised the crowd by activating lanyards and roses given out before the presentation. Like magic, the objects lit up, flashing different colors as the theater filled with music. When the Great and Powerful Oz showed up, the lights interacted with his entrance. Jeff Goldblum is Oz, and he took the stage to introduce the film. “I’ll be a ringtail flying monkey if that’s not the biggest flying cranium I’ve seen in my life,” Goldblum quipped about his character.
“I’ve been chased by dinosaurs, I flew into a giant alien mothership threatening Earth, and I’ve become a fly,” Goldblum added. The Jurassic Park actor says he loved doing the movie, especially because they shot on real sets, and he got to sing and dance a bit.
When Jon M. Chu, Jonathan Bailey, and Michelle Yeoh took the stage, Yeah said, “In Crazy Rich Asians and in Wicked, why do you always cast me in roles that are mean?” Yeoh then said she was terrified to sing in the movie, to which Chu replied, “There’s nothing you can’t do. You played a literal rock,” referring to one of Yeoh’s many forms in the Oscar Award-winning film Everything Everywhere All At Once.
Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande also wore green (Erivo) and pink (Grande) to represent their characters when taking the stage.
Grande said she saw Wicked on Broadway when she was ten years old, which, she joked, was only five years ago. Erivo said she also saw it on Broadway, and both say the roles have been pivotal for them as making these two movies was a years-long proposition.
Universal screened new footage for the crowd, depicting Glinda and Elphaba becoming friends at a magic academy. Elphaba is summoned to see the wizard, but eventually, the latter becomes a public enemy because she realizes the wizard is just a scam artist. Oddly, the trailer didn’t include any of the songs.
Universal has been working on a Wicked film adaptation since 2004. Stephen Daldry was initially attached to direct but left the project due to scheduling conflicts. The movie’s original release was December 22, 2021, but fate threw a bucket of water on that plan. In addition to Covid casting a production hex, Chu went back and forth about dividing the story into two captivating presentations. Wicked: Part One will cast a spell in cinemas on November 27, 2024.
The three-time Tony Award-winning stage musical was adapted from Gregory Maguire’s bestselling novel by writer Winnie Holzman and composer-lyricist Stephen Schwartz, who collaborated on the screenplay adaptation. The story explains how a green-skinned woman framed by the Wizard of Oz becomes the Wicked Witch of the West. Maguire’s yarn is the ultimate fairy tale origin story and could have you rooting for the villain by the time it’s all over.
While Chu intends to honor the source material, he plans to bring more depth to the characters during the two-film production. Cynthia Erivo will star as Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, with Ariana Grande playing Glinda, the Good Witch. Michelle Yeoh plays Madame Morrible, the headmistress of Crage Hall at Shiz University, an institution of higher education in Shiz located in Gillikin, the northern province of Oz. Jeff Goldblum plays The Wizard of Oz, with Jonathan Bailey playing Fiyero, Adam James as Glinda’s Father, Keala Settle as Miss Coddle, Bowen Yang as Pfannee, Bronwyn James as ShenShen, Ethan Slater as Boq, and Colin Michael Carmichael as Nikidik.
Are you looking forward to WIcked? Let us know in the comments section below.
Robert Eggers’ upcoming remake of F.W. Murnau’s silent classic Nosferatu is one of the more highly anticipated horror movies of the year, and the lucky folks at CinemaCon got a look at an exclusive first look at the chilling production.
The first look at Nosferatu was suitably terrifying with a heavy gothic tone. Classic-looking tall, dark castles, scurrying rats, blood gushing from necks, and full-on bleak horror. The footage included looks at Lily-Rose Depp (The Idol) and Willem Dafoe (Poor Things) but sadly only featured quick glimpses of Count Orlock himself. Perhaps that’s for the best, but I can’t wait to see Bill Skarsgard (Boy Kills World) disappear into the character.
Nosferatu tells a “gothic tale of obsession between a haunted young woman in 19th century Germany and the ancient Transylvanian vampire who stalks her, bringing untold horror with him.” Lily-Rose Depp stars as the young woman alongside Nicholas Hoult (Renfield), Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Kraven the Hunter), Emma Corrin (Deadpool & Wolverine), Ralph Ineson (The Witch), Simon McBurney (The Conjuring 2), and Willem Dafoe (Poor Things).
Dafoe plays a “crazy vampire hunter” in the movie and previously teased that it’s unlike anything he’s every seen. “[Eggers] gets better and better and better, gets more articulate, more on top of it,” Dafoe said. “He’s so clear when he works. It opens in December… which is a long time away. Trying to be an optimist, I think the studio must feel very strong about it, because that quite a tough slot, so I’m excited about that. I saw some footage when we were shooting, and I can honestly say, visually, it was unlike anything I have seen… The look of it and how it was shot was extraordinary.” Nosferatu is slated to hit theaters on December 25th.
Audiences also saw a brief teaser for Wolf Man, which is currently in production under the direction of Leigh Whannell (The Invisible Man). The teaser opened with Christopher Abbott’s character and his daughter talking, with the daughter asking about death and how “everybody dies eventually.” We see clips of people running, Julia Garner (Ozark) looking terrified, a bloody arm, and an intense scream from Abbott as he (possibly) becomes the Wolf Man.
The first trailer for Speak No Evil was screened at CinemaCon, but it’s also been released online for us common folks.
The psychological thriller is a remake of the 2022 Danish film of the same name and stars James McAvoy, Mackenzie Davis, and Scoot McNairy. It centers on an American family who are invited to spend the weekend at the idyllic country estate of a charming British family they befriended on vacation, but what begins as a dream holiday soon warps into a snarled psychological nightmare. The film is slated to hit theaters on September 13th.
Save the cheerleader. Save the world. Heroes creator Tim Kring made the mission sound so easy in 2006, but as we all know, things are more complex when people with supernatural abilities start running amok. Thankfully, we’re getting another chance at winning the day because Tim Kring is rebooting Heroes for a second encore with Heroes: Eclipse.
According to Deadline‘s exclusive report, “Heroes: Eclipsed is set years after the events of the original series as new evos are being awakened and discovering powers that will change their lives. Featuring familiar villains and new enemies who once again will be attempting to suppress this next step in human evolution, it will be up to this new group of heroes to save the world.”
Heroes: Eclipse sounds an awful lot like Heroes Reborn, Kring’s 2015 limited series set years after the events of the original. Like Heroes Reborn, Heroes: Eclipse introduces new characters who discover they’ve inherited incredible powers and must decide if they’ll use them for good or ill.
Heroes skyrocketed in popularity in 2006, with fans tuning in weekly to watch Hayden Panettiere‘s Claire Bennet rapidly reconstruct her cellular structure or Masi Oka’s Hiro Nakamura slip through time. The NBC show lasted for four seasons before sunsetting. Heroes Reborn followed in 2015 but failed to recapture the hype created by the original.
Heroes: Eclipse is getting shopped to potential buyers, with Tim Kring leading the charge. There’s no word on if actors or characters from the original series of Reborn will appear in Eclipse.
What do you think about Tim Kring setting up another Heroes series? Will old heads show up for the new generation? Can Kring recapture the magic of the original series or introduce something new that brings in new fans? What powers would make for exciting heroes and villains for the new era? Have superheroes been done to death on TV thanks to shows like The Boys, Gen V, and Invincible? Comment below and let us know if you can watch Heroes: Eclipse when it debuts. Also, please tell us which superpower you’d like to inherit.
