Mathieu Kassovitz, whose last film was the 2011 French action-drama Rebellion, is returning behind the camera thirteen years later. According to Deadline, Kassovitz will be taking on a passion project — a film titled The Big War. The Big War will be an English-language film that aims to showcase a hybrid of live-action and animation. The script will reportedly be written by The Nightmare Before Christmas, Corpse Bride and Edward Scissorhands screenwriter Caroline Thompson. Kassovitz explains, “This is a project I’ve been working on for twenty years.”
Kassovitz is also known for working in front of the camera as an actor on projects such as Amélie and Munich and the hit TV series Le Bureau Des Legendes. He expounds on his new upcoming film, “It is inspired by cult French graphic novel La Bete Est Morte, which was written during the Second World War. It reimagines that war as enacted by animals. The Nazis are the wolves who go after the ‘vermin’ — the rabbits — who represent the war’s victims. The story focuses on two rabbits who go after their family who have been taken away and on their journey they discover adventures and more rabbits who join their cause.”
The writer, Caroline Thompson, adds, “It’s a heartfelt, lovely story. We’ve been passing it between ourselves for quite a while. Mathieu is a wonderful person to work with and this has nudged me back into writing.” Kassovitz says, “I’m shooting the movie with real locations and set-pieces and then the animal characters will be dropped in, so I’ll be shooting a movie that will be delivered to the animators.” He, himself, will also be acting in the movie. “We’re now in the design phase and looking for financiers and want to start production by the end of the year. We will have a budget in the $30M range and we’re in discussions with American and British actors whose names I can’t reveal just yet.”
Kassovitz has made two other English-language movies in his career with Gothika and Babylon A.D. In addition to The Big War, he is also working on a stage musical version of his classic 1995 film La Haine, which stars Vincent Cassell, and that production is due to open later this year in Paris.
A decade ago, Legendary Pictures secured the rights to Godzilla and other characters owned and created by the Japanese company Toho so they could launch a cinematic universe they call the MonsterVerse – and they also secured the rights to the King Kong character so he could be part of their MonsterVerse as well. Things got started with Godzilla in 2014, and since then the universe has expanded with Kong: Skull Island, Godzilla: King of the Monsters, Godzilla vs. Kong, the animated series Skull Island, and the live-action series Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. Director Adam Wingard‘s Godzilla vs. Kong sequel Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is in theatres now and surpassing expectations, with its opening box office numbers being almost double what had been predicted for it. So it’s understandable that Legendary is telling The Hollywood Reporter they’re feeling good about the future of the MonsterVerse.
Legendary isn’t ready to make any sequel announcements just yet, but when The Hollywood Reporter asked what’s next, Mary Parent, the company’s chairman of worldwide production, told them, “This (box office) is certainly an exciting result. We are in a good position to continue the journey, but let’s see how Godzilla x Kong unfolds. These are early days, but we are certainly feeling good.“
Wingard previously told the trade, “There’s always the seduction of making a trilogy out of it, and I think that there’s some untapped areas to go into. There’s also ways to continue to innovate the stylized approach to the MonsterVerse, and what’s great about the MonsterVerse is that it’s allowed so many different directors to approach it with their unique style and color palette.“
Godzilla remains the top-grossing MonsterVerse film at the domestic box office, having pulled in $200.6 million during its theatrical run – but Godzilla x Kong has already passed $136 million domestically and is expected to knock Godzilla out of the top spot by the time it reaches the end of its run. When it comes to worldwide numbers, Kong: Skull Island is at #1, having made $568 million. Godzilla x Kong is closing in on $363 million worldwide, so it still has a way to go before it can catch (or surpass) that one.
What would you like to see from the MonsterVerse? Do you want a third Godzilla & Kong movie from Adam Wingard? Share your thoughts on this franchise by leaving a comment below.
At long last, the first teaser trailer for Joker: Folie à Deux has been released! The Joker 2 teaser trailer features Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck standing in the rain in the Arkham Asylum exercise yard. As he laughs maniacally, we can only assume he’s thinking about flying the coup and stirring up more mayhem in Gotham City. The full trailer for Joker: Folie à Deux arrives later tonight!
Joker: Folie à Deux has some big clown shoes to fill, especially after the first movie received 11 Academy Award nominations and became the first R-rated flick to gross over $1 billion worldwide. Warner Bros. has pumped a lot of money into the sequel, with recent reports stating the budget has grown to nearly $200 million, quite the leap from the $60 million budget of the first movie.
The sequel does seem to be departing from the original in a major way in that it has some major musical elements. A recent report stated that Joker: Folie à Deux will be “mostly a jukebox musical” as it will include “at least 15 reinterpretations of very well-known songs.” In hindsight, it would have been hard to imagine Joaquin Phoenix returning for more of the same, no matter how many dump trucks full of money they drove to his house.
In addition to Phoenix and Gaga, the film also stars Brendan Gleeson, Catherine Keener, Jacob Lofland, and Harry Lawtey. Zazie Beetz returned to reprise her role as Sophie Dumond from the first movie, a love interest for Arthur. Plot details are being kept under wraps, but it’s been said that much of the sequel will take place within Arkham Asylum, which is where we left Arthur in the last film. Joker: Folie à Deux will hit theaters on October 4th. Find out everything we know about the movie right here!
Legendary filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola comes from an elite group of directors who shaped the modern-day era of movies with films like The Godfather, Scorsese’s gangster epics, Spielberg’s many blockbusters and George Lucas’ pop culture phenomenon, Star Wars. Among the group, Coppola would remain at odds with the Hollywood studio system for most of his career despite being responsible for some of the most notable titles in cinema. He would also be the auteur to experiment more often and be seen as less accessible to general audiences.
Recently, Coppola would unveil his latest self-funded project, Megalopolis, which features an impressive list of actors for an all-star cast, including Adam Driver, Laurence Fishburne, Dustin Hoffman, Giancarlo Esposito and more. He premiered his film at Universal CityWalk IMAX Theater with many Hollywood stars as well as executives in attendance with the hopes of securing a buyer. However, according to The Hollywood Reporter, the new film from the Apocalypse Now director is looking at an “uphill battle” in finding a distributor because it has been deemed “too ‘experimental’ and ‘not good’ enough for the $100 million marketing spend envisioned by the legendary director.”
In Megalopolis, “the film follows the rebuilding of a metropolis after its accidental destruction, with two competing visions — one from an idealist architect (Adam Driver), the other from its pragmatist mayor (Giancarlo Esposito) — clashing in the process. References to ancient Rome — including Caesar haircuts on the men — abound.”
The screening was reported to be met with a standing ovation. However, a potential distributor responded after the screening, saying, “There is just no way to position this movie.” An attendee of the screening explained, “Everyone is rooting for Francis and feels nostalgic. But then there is the business side of things.” Another viewer from the screening mentioned “a conspicuous silence at the end of it,” then continued, “Does it wobble, wander, go all over the place? Yes. But it’s really imaginative and does say something about our time. I think it’s going to be a small, specialized label [that picks it up].”
While Megalopolis sounds more like the style of an A24 or NEON film, the kind of marketing budget Coppola is hoping for may be out of reach for the more modest studios. Coppola would apparently quickly sign a deal if a studio is willing to spend in the vicinity of $40 million domestically, and $80 million to $100 million globally for the prints and advertising in the marketing campaign.
Several months ago, word leaked out that Maggie Gyllenhaal was set to write and direct a film called The Bride!, a new take on the concept of the 1935 classic The Bride of Frankenstein (watch it HERE). Once thought to be set up at the Netflix streaming service, this one is actually happening at Warner Bros., and the studio has set the film for a theatrical release, IMAX screens included, on October 3, 2025. Gyllenhaal has assembled a strong cast for the film that includes Penelope Cruz, Annette Bening, Peter Sarsgaard, and Julianne Hough, with Jessie Buckley as The Bride and Christian Bale as Frankenstein’s Monster. Now Deadline reports that John Magaro (Past Lives) and Jeannie Berlin (You Hurt My Feelings) are also in the cast, but no details have been revealed about the characters they’re playing.
The Bride! has the following synopsis: A lonely Frankenstein travels to 1930s Chicago to seek the aide of a Dr. Euphronius in creating a companion for himself. The two reinvigorate a murdered young woman and the Bride is born. She is beyond what either of them intended, igniting a combustible romance, the attention of the police and a wild and radical social movement.
This isn’t a Universal project, but it wouldn’t be the first Bride of Frankenstein remake to be made by a different company. In 1985, Columbia Pictures brought us another movie simply called The Bride, which starred Sting as Baron Charles Frankenstein, Jennifer Beals as Eva (the bride) and Clancy Brown as Viktor (the monster). A few years ago, it was announced that Scarlett Johansson was going to star in a similar project called Bride for A24 and Apple, but that still hasn’t made it into production.
In addition to Past Lives, John Magaro’s credits include The Brave One, Assassination of a High School President, The Box, My Soul to Take, Unbroken, Carol, The Big Short, Jack Ryan, Overlord, The Umbrella Academy, Orange Is the New Black, and The Many Saints of Newark. Beyond You Hurt My Feelings, Jeannie Berlin’s credits include Getting Straight, Portnoy’s Complaint, Bone, The Heartbreak Kid, Sheila Levine Is Dead and Living in New York, Margaret, Inherent Vice, Café Society, The Night Of, The Fabelmans, Hunters, and Succession.
Are you interested in The Bride? What do you think of John Magaro and Jeannie Berlin joining the cast? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
When I was in high school, kids wouldn’t shut up about Isaac Asimov, the American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University. When he wasn’t molding young minds in the classroom, Asimov was busy becoming one of the “Big Three” science-fiction writers worldwide. Cerebral and scientific, Asimov’s writing teased the brain and tickled the imagination. In 1988, Asimov partnered with Michael Wagner to create the short-lived TV series Probe. Looked upon fondly by those who remember it, Probe lasted for two months before getting yanked from the ABC Network.
In today’s Gone But Not Forgotten, Parker Stevenson joins us to discuss this rare gem of science-fiction entertainment. Stevenson’s presence makes this a special episode of this series, and we thank him for his participation. If you’re a Probe fan, let us know in the comments!
Probe would air on ABC in 1988, with a two-part pilot screening on Monday night, March 7th. The premise was a spin on the Sherlock Holmes dynamic but with a scientific flair and coolness factor, thanks to a hero who knew how to use high tech to help solve the mysteries he encountered.
The series followed Austin James, a young, brilliant scientist who was a prodigy. He graduated from college before he was old enough to drive a car or get a learners permit. He’s got an eidetic memory and can calculate multiple problems at once. He’s very much like Batman because he’s wealthy to the point that he doesn’t have to think about money. He’s started the think tank business Serendip but doesn’t give it much thought. He’s got better things to do and mysteries to solve.
Austin doesn’t have friends, and his family is also fairly non-existent. This alienation can happen when someone like Austin, who is super-intelligent and advanced way beyond his years, becomes isolated. He doesn’t really know how to behave per se around people without coming across as unfeeling or, well, kind of a dick.
Austin’s group at Serendip has a new employee named Mickey Castle. Mickey, with her glorious hair and hurt arm, gets assigned as Austin’s secretary, almost like the position is a cruel joke or dare at Serendip. Once Mickey arrives at Austin’s house and solves the unanswerable limerick door code, the duo meet in Austin’s self-made isolation chamber. During the first part of the pilot episode, Mickey tries in vain to get Austin to pay his water bill, which is the reason Mickey is there. After failing to get Austin to comply, Mickey discovers she’s been pulled into an investigation regarding a rich woman who died after freezing to death, even though her body is colder than where she is found. This circumstance is a scientific impossibility. Let’s investigate!
Probe was considered “deep stuff” for television audiences, and they’re not wrong! Still, the show’s outlandishness is part of what makes it so much fun. Probe is the only TV series one of the High Lords of Science Fiction, Isaac Asimov, ever made. Many fans say Probe is way ahead of its time, and ABC canceled it because it was intimidated by the show’s heady subject matter.
We hope you enjoy this look back at Probe, a science-fiction gem that was too good for this planet.
Earlier this year, it was revealed that frequent collaborators Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan – who have worked on Fruitvale Station, Creed, Black Panther, and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever together as director and cast member, and have other collaborations that Coogler didn’t direct – have been developing a new project in secret. Coogler has written the script for this project, which is being described as both a genre picture and a period piece that Coogler will be directing and Jordan is attached to star in. The project is set up at Warner Bros., is expected to have a budget of around $90 million, and is scheduled for a theatrical release on March 7, 2025. Last week, we heard that Jack O’Connell (Unbroken) and Delroy Lindo (Get Shorty) were in talks to join Jordan in the cast. Now The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed the deals with O’Connell and Lindo have closed and they’re officially on board – and so is Wunmi Mosaku, who may be best known for the roles she played on Lovecraft Country and Loki.
Details on the characters these actors will be playing have not been revealed, but The Hollywood Reporter hears that Mosaku is “the female lead and playing the romantic interest of one of Jordan’s characters.” Yes, Jordan is apparently playing two different characters.
This project is being kept so tightly under wraps that when it was looking for a studio to call home, “executives and buyers were forced to make the pilgrimage to the Beverly Hills offices of WME, the agency that represents Coogler and Jordan, in order to take a gander on the script and get details.”
We’ve previously heard that the project might be a vampire movie – and the folks at World of Reel went even further, sharing that it’s RUMORed to be about vampires battling the Ku Klux Klan! World of Reel has heard that “Coogler’s film would be set in the ’30s South, centering on vampires, with dual twin roles for Jordan and that it would be heavy in ‘anime influences.’ The ’30s Jim Crow South setting is not an accident. There’s been word that the plot would center on Vampires going to war against the Ku Klux Klan. That actually makes total sense given the setting of the film which is smack dab in the middle, and during, the height of the Klan.“
Coogler (who is also developing a reboot of the TV series The X-Files) will be producing the film with Proximity Media partners Zinzi Coogler and Sev Ohanian. Rebecca Cho serves as executive producer alongside Will Greenfield and two-time Oscar-winning composer Ludwig Goransson (who won his first Oscar for his work on Coogler’s Black Panther and his second for Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer). Production is set to begin in New Orleans this month.
What do you think of Wunmi Mosaku being cast in Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan’s mysterious genre project? Share your thoughts on this one by leaving a comment below.
Top Gun was a major banner film in 1986. It catapulted Tom Cruise into the stratosphere of film stardom. Tony Scott became the go-to director for a lot of action films. The film would also make a star out of Maverick’s rival-turned-wingman, Val Kilmer. Also Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson became a huge powerhouse producing team in Hollywood. Paramount had an enormous hit on their hands, but this property didn’t actually become a franchise until 2022, when after careful planning and a treatment of love, they finally gave audiences the follow-up Top Gun: Maverick, which became a massive hit at the box office.
The story of Top Gun dates back to a magazine article from May 1983 from California Magazine. The article was titled Top Guns (which sounds like the title of an upcoming sequel in the franchise), and it was written by the late author Ehud Yonay. Yonay’s family, Shosh and Yuval Yonay, would file a lawsuit claiming the original film infringed on copyright as the blockbuster would sport many elements that were taken from the article. However, The Hollywood Reporter has now revealed that U.S. District Judge Percy Anderson has dismissed the case, citing “that several elements from the film — including plot, theme, setting and dialogue — are ‘largely dissimilar’ from Ehud Yonay’s article. And to the extent both works revolve around a fighter pilot training school, the court concluded that any overlapping factual similarities aren’t protected by copyright law.”
The court says the decision of dismissal in this case is based on the “unprotectable factual similarities” between the article and film. The order states, “Although the plots of both the Article and Sequel feature Top Gun and various graduates and instructors, Top Gun is a real fighter pilot school and the graduates and instructors mentioned in the Article are real people (i.e., Yogi and Possum). Those factual elements are not protected by copyright law.” However, Marc Toberoff, representative of the plaintiffs, states this dismissal will be appealed, “Once Yonay’s widow and son exercised their rights under the Copyright Act to reclaim his exhilarating Story, Paramount hand-waved them away exclaiming ‘What copyright?’ It’s not a good look.”
The first twenty minutes of the 1979 horror film When a Stranger Calls (watch it HERE) really creeped out movie-goers. It stuck in their heads, earning the movie cult classic status. The rest of the running time, viewers don’t often remember so clearly. So when Screen Gems gave the greenlight to a remake, they decided to expand those first twenty minutes to feature length, stretching out the thrills and suspense for as long as possible. It was a clever idea that was brought to the screen in an entertaining way. And if you haven’t seen the When a Stranger Calls remake, this is the best horror movie you never saw. (You can watch that one HERE.)
To properly tell the story of this 2006 release, we first have to rewind thirty years. That’s when college friends Fred Walton and Steve Feke sat down to write the script for a thrilling horror short called The Sitter. They would claim that they based the script on a true story: a newspaper article they had read about a young woman being harassed with creepy phone calls while babysitting in Santa Monica, California. But the inspiration was actually an urban legend that has been circulating since at least the 1960s. The legend might have its roots in a real-life incident where a thirteen-year-old girl was killed while babysitting in Columbia, Missouri back in 1950. But a fictional story was built around the basics of that crime.
The urban legend centers on a teenage babysitter who has already put the kids to bed for the night. She gets a call from a stranger who asks her, “Have you checked the children?” She brushes it off… but the stranger keeps calling her. With the situation getting increasingly scary, the sitter notifies the police of what’s going on. They tell her to try to keep the stranger on the line so they can trace his calls. And when they do trace a call, they find that the stranger is calling from inside the house. He’s lurking upstairs… and he may or may not have murdered the children, depending on which version of the story you’re told. This urban legend had already served as the inspiration for another horror classic: Black Christmas, released in 1974, but Walton and Feke didn’t let that stop them from making The Sitter. Starring the little-known Lucia Stralser, that short tells the urban legend over the course of twenty-one creepy minutes. Once the short was finished, the filmmakers were surprised to discover there wasn’t much of a market for short films. But The Sitter did get a brief theatrical run at one theatre in Los Angeles, where it was paired with the crime drama Looking for Mr. Goodbar. Luckily, the short caught the attention of a pair of producers during that theatrical run. A feature version of The Sitter – now titled When a Stranger Calls – was given the greenlight, with recent Oscar nominee Carol Kane taking over the role of the babysitter.
The original When a Stranger Calls reached theatres in the fall of 1979. Just one year after John Carpenter’s Halloween proved that audiences would show up for stories about babysitters being terrorized. The film was a box office success… but it was the first twenty-three minutes, a remake of the short, that really impressed movie-goers. Walton and Feke had decided to pad the idea out to feature length by beginning with a re-telling of The Sitter, then jumping ahead seven years to tell the story of the stranger escaping from the psychiatric facility he was sent to, living on the streets, befriending a woman he meets in a bar, his mental state deteriorating until he decides to seek out the babysitter he harassed seven years earlier, finding that she now has children of her own. In the meantime, a vengeful private investigator is tracking the stranger down, planning to murder him. It’s a good story, but the sleazy slow-burn of the “seven years later” section is kind of a letdown after the intensity of the first twenty-three minutes.
That opening sequence is why When a Stranger Calls lingered in the minds of audience members for the next couple decades. It’s a big reason why the film was featured in the 1984 documentary Terror in the Aisles. It paved the way for a 1993 sequel called When a Stranger Calls Back. And it’s definitely why Sony’s Screen Gems decided to bring the world a remake of When a Stranger Calls during the remake boom of the early 2000s.
The remake was the first produced screenplay for writer Jake Wade Wall, who was getting some high profile jobs around this time. He was also hired to write the remake of The Hitcher for Platinum Dunes and wrote an entry in the Halloween franchise that was never made. When writing this remake, Wall took the approach that Walton and Feke could have taken, but didn’t: expand the babysitter story so it takes up the entire running time. That’s the part that really sticks with people, so show it to them for eighty minutes instead of twenty.
The directing job went to an unexpected choice: Simon West, best known for making action films like Con Air, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, and, some years after this, The Expendables 2. This time around, babysitter Jill Johnson has to carry the entire film on her shoulders. Evan Rachel Wood was offered the chance to take on that challenge, but she turned it down. So the filmmakers turned to Camilla Belle… who nearly turned down the offer as well, because she’s not a horror fan. As she told Radio Free, “I was really skeptical about doing it… and I was like, ‘No, I don’t want to do a horror movie. Not my thing.’ And then my agent was like, ‘Just go meet with Simon… I think this is a little bit different than what you think it’s going to be.’ So then I met with him, and I read the script, and he was telling me the type of movie he wanted to make. ‘I want to make a psychological thriller. I don’t want to make a horror film… And we really want to make it like Wait Until Dark with Audrey Hepburn.” I was like, ‘Ooh, okay! Well, if that’s the type of movie you’re going to make, I’m fine.’” Belle signed on, then had to do two months of weight training and track workouts to prepare to play her character.
Cast to play people around Jill were Clark Gregg as her dad, Derek de Lint and Kate Jennings Grant as the people she’s working for, Rosine Ace Hatem as their rarely seen live-in maid, Arthur Young and Madeline Carroll as the kids Jill is taking care of, Tessa Thompson as one of her friends, Brian Geraghty as her boyfriend… who is on shaky ground with her, because he recently kissed another of her friends, played by Katie Cassidy, who was also in the remakes of Black Christmas and A Nightmare on Elm Street. We don’t see a whole lot of the stranger in this movie. When we do see him, he’s played by Tommy Flanagan. That actor didn’t provide the voice of his character when he’s making phone calls, though. The filmmakers brought in gravelly voiced genre icon Lance Henriksen to speak the strangers’ lines.
West was given a budget of fifteen million dollars to bring his version of When a Stranger Calls to the screen, and a good chunk of that money went toward building the house that serves as the setting for most of the story. At first, production was just going to take place at an existing house in Brentwood, California, but eventually West figured that it was going to be so complicated to film at that house – and expensive to buy out the neighbors – that that they should just build a house. A location was found in Franklin Canyon and construction began just eight weeks before filming was scheduled to start. The paint was still wet when the cast and crew showed up for the first day of production. But this extra work was worth it, because they built an incredible house. Impressive design, sitting in a mind-blowing, remote location. Lots of glass, wood, and stainless steel. A security system. Motion-detecting lights in the rooms. It’s such an awesome place, it has been described as being another character in the movie. Its unique qualities include a mid-house atrium, complete with birds and a fish pond. Which allowed West to add a sequence that wasn’t in the original script where Jill hides in the water while the stranger is looking for her.
When this project was first announced in the summer of 2004, Screen Gems also announced a sequel at the same time: When a Stranger Returns. Wall had already written a treatment for the follow-up, so it’s weird that they never actually made that one. Filmed in the early months of 2005, the When a Stranger Calls remake reached theatres on February 3, 2006, and it did well at the box office, pulling in over sixty-seven million dollars despite the likes of Final Destination 3 and the Hills Have Eyes remake coming along to compete with it. The Hills Have Eyes had almost the exact same level of success, earning seventy million on a budget of fifteen, and it got a sequel. But Screen Gems abandoned their plan to make When a Stranger Returns, so they obviously weren’t just looking at the box office numbers. If you look at Rotten Tomatoes, you’ll see that only nine percent of the critic reviews were positive. The audience score stands at forty-three percent positive. That could be why Screen Gems decided not to press their luck with a sequel. Meanwhile, The Hills Have Eyes scored in the fifties in both categories, so Fox pressed their luck very quickly on that one and the resulting sequel didn’t work out for them. So maybe Screen Gems made a wise choice, even though When a Stranger Calls leaves the door wide open for When a Stranger Returns.
Even with its low critic and audience scores, When a Stranger Calls managed to earn a cult following. Plenty of us were left wanting to see the stranger return… just to be disappointed that he didn’t.
It’s not that the film is an example of misunderstood greatness. It certainly has its flaws. You can tell West was holding back a bit to get a PG-13 rating and there’s some clunky dialogue. In fact, there are some lines in here that might just make you cringe. And when it comes to final girl performances, Camilla Belle doesn’t live up to what Carol Kane did in the original, even though her character has more to do that Kane’s did… and when the stranger asks her if she has checked the children, she actually does go check on them. Something Kane’s character never bothered to do. But what makes this remake work as well as it does is the fact that it takes the exact right approach to the concept. The opening sequence of the original film has gotten so much hype, a lot of genre fans have mistakenly come to believe that it’s not just the opening sequence. When they put the movie on for the first time, they expect to see a babysitting Carol Kane receiving creepy calls for the entire running time. That’s not how it plays out. When it came time for a remake, it wasn’t just a clever choice to make it about a babysitter receiving creepy calls the whole time, it was the correct choice.
And sure, Belle’s Jill Johnson may not be the most inspiring heroine we’ve ever seen. But she does her best to keep the kids safe from the maniac who wants to bathe in her blood. And it can’t be said that Belle didn’t put her all into the role. Not only did she have to deal with the intensity of the situation her character finds herself in, but she also did most of her own stunts, from the running scenes she trained for to the fight scenes, including an encounter with the stranger that takes place on a flight of stairs. As she told MovieWeb, “I went home every night emotionally and physically drained. I looked forward to every weekend just to sleep and relax my body. I really didn’t have any breaks. It was hard, but it was a good experience. … I’ve never had so many welts and bruises in my life, especially being dragged down the stairs a million times. It hurt a lot and I definitely got more bruises than Tommy because he was just the one pushing me around. But we had a really good time. I wore the bruises with pride. I really enjoyed it, actually. It was fun, really, really fun.” Even though she had fun making the movie, she also told MovieWeb, “I don’t think I’ll be able to do another film like this.”
We’re just twelve minutes into the movie’s eighty-seven minute running time when Jill reaches the secluded house she’ll be working in. Sixteen minutes in, she has been left alone at the house with the sleeping children and Rosa, the barely present maid. Which means we spend more than an hour with Jill in that house. Watching her make her way through the rooms, receiving disturbing phone calls, feeling like she’s being watched, eventually confirming that there is a stranger in the house who has been murdering people around her. Then she has to confront him to keep the children safe… and try to survive her encounter with him. The execution could have been improved in some areas, but the director and writer still did nice work making sure the sequence that made up only twenty minutes of the original film could sustain an entire feature running time. The movie is one long suspense sequence that erupts into violence in the end.
If you’re looking for a movie that can deliver an hour of thrills and uneasy feelings on a dark night, the When a Stranger Calls remake is a good one to turn to. So make the trip out to that secluded house with Jill Johnson. Listen to those creepy calls she gets from Lance Henriksen. But watch out for that stranger lurking in the shadows…
A couple previous episodes of the Best Horror Movie You Never Saw series can be seen below. To see more, and to check out some of our other shows, head over to the JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel – and subscribe while you’re there!
Last April, the Netflix streaming service unveiled a pair of first look images from the then-untitled shark thriller genre regular Xavier Gens has been working on for them. Now a trailer for the film has made its way online, revealing that it’s going by the title Under Paris and is scheduled to begin streaming on June 5th! You can watch the trailer in the embed above.
Starring Bérénice Bejo, who earned an Oscar nomination for her performance in the silent film The Artist, Léa Léviant of Mortel, and Nassim Lyes of Overdose, this shark thriller has the following synopsis: Set in the Summer of 2024, the film unfolds in Paris which is hosting the World Triathlon Championships on the Seine for the first time. Sophia, a brilliant scientist, learns from Mika, a young environmental activist, that a large shark is swimming deep in the river. To avoid a bloodbath at the heart of the city, they have no choice but to join forces with Adil, the Seine river police commander.
Gens’ previous directorial credits include the films Frontier(s), Hitman, The Divide, The Crucifixion, Cold Skin, Budapest, and Mayhem!, plus episodes of the shows Mortel, Gangs of London, and Crossing Lines. Gens also directed the X is for XXL segment of the horror anthology The ABCs of Death.
Let Me Be is producing Under Paris, which was previously listed on IMDb under the title Sharks. The IMDb page reveals that the script was crafted by Gens, Yaël Langmann, Yannick Dahan, and Maud Heywang. Dahan co-wrote and co-directed the zombie film The Horde, and Heywang had an acting role in that film. Dahan was also credited as a script consultant on Gens’ film The Divide.
What did you think of the Under Paris trailer? Will you be watching this movie when it starts streaming on Netflix in June? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
I was sold on watching this one as soon as I saw the synopsis last year, so I will definitely be watching it when it’s available in a couple months. Bring on that Parisian shark action.
