Late Night With The Devil is a special sort of film that combines reality and horrific fantasy into the depths of what a man will do to succeed. Even when you know you need to stop, the drive keeps you going. You need to see, you need to win. And it’s there that the devil makes himself known.
Taking place during a live broadcast in 1977 on Halloween Night, the film shows us the biggest night of Jack Delroy, talk show host’s, career. It also happens to be the most infamous night in talk show history. Jack is desperate to win the audience and all the ratings as he fights to be the king of Late Night. Jack decides to bring together different aspects of the supernatural for a Halloween night no one will forget, and one of his guests may be the devil himself.
Actor David Dastmalchian has been in some of the biggest blockbuster films of the last many years. Dune, The Suicide Squad, Blade Runner 2049, and most recently Oppenheimer. But not many film viewers have seen the actor take on a lead role. Here in Late Night With The Devil, Dastmalchian takes center stage and shows he’s got what it takes to keep your eyes glued to a screen…even if you are creeped out and want to turn away (check out our review here).
Dastmalchian joined me for a conversation about the film and how we all have a little bit of a devil in us.
Late Night With The Devil is now in theaters (indeed it made an unholy $666,666 at the box office Sunday) and will be streaming on Shudder exclusively on April 19th.
HBO’s hit controversial show Euphoria from the risqué maestro, Sam Levinson, has delayed the shoot for season 3. Levinson had planned to work on season 3 while his other series for HBO, Idol, was in post-production, but the dual strikes from the writers’ and actors’ unions would initially hold up the production. HBO’s Head of Drama Francesca Orsi said last year, “Euphoria is one of those that we had begun writing in tandem with post-production on Idol but at this point, we don’t have countless scripts. We can’t start shooting, so the delivery of that show — ideally in 2025 — will be determined on when we can pick back up with Sam [Levinson], who at this point is all pencils down and just finishing posts on Idol.“
Now HBO is telling Deadline that while Levinson tweaks the scripts for season 3, they are letting the stars take on other projects during the delay. In the statement from the premium channel, they explain, “HBO and Sam Levinson remain committed to making an exceptional third season. In the interim, we are allowing our in-demand cast to pursue other opportunities.” Sources had said that the show did not set a firm start date to production, but shooting was expected to take place sometime in the next couple of months. Sydney Sweeney, at the SXSW premiere of her movie Immaculate, was asked about taking time off after the festival, and the actress would say, “I go into Euphoria.”
Academy Award nominee Colman Domingo talked about the delay and teased what the upcoming themes of next season that the series was set to explore, “[Sam is] a person who writes and rewrites and writes and rewrites again, because I think he’s wrestling with what’s important. He’s responding immediately to what the ills of the world are. I know that the one thing I can tell you is that he’s very much interested in the existential question of who we are right now. Our souls. That’s what he wants to figure out with season three.”
The star power of Domingo, Sweeney and Zendaya is continually climbing. HBO’s allowance of their stars to explore projects while in delay may set up a situation where, when the production is finally able to move forward, it may suffer similar scheduling issues as Arrested Development and Community when the cast of those shows had stacked their schedules to the point where their reunions became tricky.
On April 5th, 20th Century Studios will be giving a theatrical release to The First Omen, which serves as a prequel to the 1976 horror classic The Omen (watch it HERE). The film stars Nell Tiger Free of the Apple TV+ series Servant, and will be hitting the big screen with an R rating for violent content, grisly/disturbing images, and brief graphic nudity. That’s a rating the filmmakers really had to fight for, as director Arkasha Stevenson revealed to Fangoria that there’s a birthing scene that nearly earned the film an NC-17 rating – mainly because it featured a thirteen second shot of a woman’s vagina. That shot had to be whittled down to secure the R.
Stevenson said, “The horror in that situation is how dehumanized that woman is. This has been my life for a year and a half, fighting for the shot. It’s the theme of our film. It’s the female body being violated from the inside outwards. If we were going to talk about female body horror, we were going to talk about forced reproduction, and we have to be able to show the female body in a non-sexualized light. I’m very proud of this shot.“
The director had the support of producers David S. Goyer and Keith Levine as she fought to keep the vagina shot in the film. Levine confirmed that they had to take the film back to the Motion Picture Association ratings board five times before they approved of the amount of time the vagina shot appears on screen. He added, “Weirdly, avoiding the NC-17 made it more intense.“
Goyer added, “The movie, by its nature, deals with female body horror, and I do think there’s a double standard. That was really interesting when we were negotiating with the ratings board. I think there is more permissiveness when dealing with male protagonists, particularly in body horror. That birthing scene is super intense, I also have three kids and have been at their births. It’s intense!“
The First Omen has the following synopsis: When a young American woman is sent to Rome to begin a life of service to the church, she encounters a darkness that causes her to question her own faith and uncovers a terrifying conspiracy that hopes to bring about the birth of evil incarnate.
Free is joined in the cast by Tawfeek Barhom (Mary Magdalene), Sonia Braga (Kiss of the Spider Woman), Ralph Ineson (The Northman), and Bill Nighy (Living). Tim Smith served as executive producer with Whitney Brown and Gracie Wheelan.
We first heard that a prequel to The Omen was in development way back in 2016. At that time, Antonio Campos (The Devil All the Time) was in talks to direct First Omen from a script by Ben Jacoby (Bleed). Later The Conjuring writers Chad and Carey Hayes came on board to work on the script, and they were followed by author Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl). The film ended up in the hands of Arkasha Stevenson – who has previously directed episodes of the genre shows Channel Zero, Legion, and Brand New CherryFlavor. Stevenson rewrote the script with her writing partner Tim Smith, then Firestarter‘s Keith Thomas worked on it as well.
The Omen (1976) was followed by Damien: Omen II in 1978, Omen III: The Final Conflict in 1981, Omen IV: The Awakening in 1991, and a 2006 remake. So this is the sixth entry in the film franchise.
Are you looking forward to The First Omen? Does this talk of the birthing scene and intense vagina shot make you more or less interested in the film? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
1985’s Fletch was directed by Michael Ritchie and written by Andrew Bergman. The film is an adaptation of the popular novels written by Gregory McDonald and brings a more comedic and dry approach to its titular character, Fletch, played by Chevy Chase. Fletch is an investigative journalist working the undercover beat as a homeless beach junkie as he tries to uncover the truth behind a kingpin-level drug ring that is looming over greater L.A. While undercover, Fletch is propositioned by a rich man called Alan Stanwick who claims to be dying of bone cancer to kill the man in his upper-class home so that his family can reap the benefits of his life insurance. In exchange, Fletch will receive $50,000 cash and a ticket out of the country.
When this movie was made, Chevy Chase was arguably at the height of his career. While he’d opened the decade with a few horrible flops, including Modern Problems, Under the Rainbow and Oh Heavenly Dog, he bounced back in a big way in 1983 with the classic National Lampoon’s Vacation. 1985 would prove to be his biggest year as a comedy star, with him headlining three hugely successful films, Spies Like Us, National Lampoon’s European Vacation, and this one, Fletch. Of all his movies, outside of the Vacation films, Fletch remains his most identifiable role, and perhaps his best film ever.
But what makes Fletch such a great movie? For one thing, it’s based on an ultra-compelling novel, has a terrific screenplay by Andrew Bergman, and features a dynamite cast headed by Chase. It’s also a compelling mix of genres, with equal doses of comedy and mystery thrown in, as well as a healthy dollop of action (the film has a great car chase). It’s all tied together by Chase’s charismatic performance and a classic 80s synth score by the great Harold Faltermeyer. In the video embedded above, our host Kier Gomes explains why Fletch remains perhaps his favourite comedy of all time and why it remains the sometimes controversial Chase’s best-ever role.
Do you like Fletch as much as we do? Let us know in the comments.
A while ago, it was announced that It Follows director David Robert Mitchell was working on a mysterious project for Warner Bros. Pictures, Jackson Pictures, and J.J. Abrams’ company Bad Robot, with Anne Hathaway attached to star in the film. Since then, Ewan McGregor and Maisy Stella have signed on to join Hathaway in the cast, and now Variety reports that the main cast is rounded out with the addition of Christian Convery, whose credits include Cocaine Bear and the Netflix series Sweet Tooth. Variety hears that Stella and Convery will be playing the children of Hathaway and McGregor’s characters.
Pretty much everything about this project is being kept under wraps. Last year, film journalist Jeff Sneider reported the rumor that this happens to be “a dinosaur movie set in the ’80s”. In their report of the McGregor news, The Hollywood Reporter also said that their sources have described it as “a family adventure set in the 1980s that involves dinosaurs.” They added that Hathaway and McGregor would be playing the parents in this family adventure. Deadline’s sources simply described the project as a “thrill ride”… and it’s going to be shot in Imax to maximize the thrills.
It isn’t surprising that there’s not much information available, since this is a Bad Robot production, and Bad Robot likes to keep its movies as secretive as possible. Remember, they even managed to keep Cloverfield a secret until the trailer was released, and hid the fact that 10 Cloverfield Lane was a Cloverfield movie until the trailer for that one was released. Those are just a couple examples of their secrecy.
Mitchell made his feature directorial debut with the 2010 comedy The Myth of the American Sleepover, then had a hit on his hands with It Follows in 2014. He stumbled a bit with his 2018 follow-up Under the Silver Lake, but now he’s rebounding with this project and the long-awaited It Follows sequel They Follow. Of course, since the project is set up at Warner Bros., now we just need to hope they won’t end up scrapping the movie for a tax write-off.
So now that we know that the lead cast of this mysterious thriller consists of Anne Hathaway, Ewan McGregor, Maisy Stella, and Christian Convery, let us know – are you interested in this project?
Back in 1983, legendary producer Roger Corman brought the world a sword and sorcery film with an awesome title: Deathstalker. It was so successful, it paved the way for three sequels: Deathstalker II: Duel of the Titans (1987), Deathstalker and the Warriors from Hell (1988), and Deathstalker IV: Match of the Titans (1991). The franchise went dormant for more than thirty years, but earlier this month we learned that it’s being revived by filmmaker Steven Kostanski – whose previous credits include Manborg, Father’s Day, The Void, Leprechaun Returns,Psycho Goreman, and episodes of the short-lived Day of the Dead TV series. Kostanski is writing and directing a Deathstalker remake that has Daniel Bernhardt (John Wick) on board to play the title character… and now more details on the plot have been revealed!
When the project was announced, we heard a Kickstarter campaign would be raising funds to help Kostanski’s Action Pants FX shop create the monsters that will be populating the film’s fantasy setting. That campaign is now live, and that’s where some details on the plot were spilled.
Here’s what the Deathstalker remake is about: The Kingdom of Abraxeon is under siege from The Dreadites, a mysterious horde of warriors, whose sudden appearance is rumored to foretell the return of Nekromemnon, an ancient sorcerer long thought dead. Such times of chaos are times of fortune for men like Deathstalker who, having broken ties with all guilds and banners, now ekes an existence from the spoils recovered in the wake of Dreadite attacks. Our story begins when Deathstalker unknowingly recovers an enchanted amulet from a corpse-ridden battlefield, and finds himself cursed by an arcane magick. Now pursued by a monstrous clan of assassins at the behest of the Dreadite scourge, Deathstalker is forced into a perilous quest to reverse the curse and rid the realm of evil. Death is just the beginning… of great adventure!
The campaign also confirms that artist Boris Vallejo, who painted posters for all four of the previous Deathstalker movies, will be creating the poster for this one as well.
In addition to this film, there’s also going to be a Deathstalker comic book series from Vault Comics. Kostanski is on the comic’s creative team with writer Tim Seeley, artist Jim Terry, and Slash of Guns N’ Roses.
The Deathstalker remake is coming our way from Hangar 18 Media. Pasha Patriki, Avi Federgreen, and Michael Pazst are producing the film, with Slash and Rodrigo Gudiño of Berserkergang Films serving as executive producers alongside Andrew Thomas Hunt, James Fler, Josh Viola, and Peter Kuplowsky. Scott Weatherall is an associate producer and Melissa A. Smith a co-producer. Raven Banner will be handling international sales and Canadian distribution.
What do you think of the Deathstalker remake plot details? Will you be contributing to the Kickstarter campaign? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
Leslie Nielsen famously flipped his career 180 degrees when he started working with the Zuckers — David and Jerry — on the 1980 comedy Airplane! Nielsen was a seasoned dramatic actor who took his serious demeanor and used it to deliver the silliest of lines in a dry manner, resulting in some of the greatest comedy performances. Nielsen was able to become a leading man late in his career in The Naked Gun series, which would then spin him off into more leading roles in similar comedies, which would not necessarily be made by the Zuckers.
Enter Liam Neeson. The thespian has already reinvented himself when the former dramatic actor starred in 2008’s Taken, which showed that he could use his tall stature in the action genre. Neeson’s acting route would eventually land him in some comedy roles, including a self-parody guest spot on Life’s Too Short and working with Seth MacFarlane on A Million Ways to Die in the West and a cameo in Ted 2. Neeson is now starring in a reboot of The Naked Gun and Collider reports that the actor is finding the task a little daunting.
Neeson spoke with the site when promoting his new Irish-centric film In the Land of Saints and Sinners when he said, “Well, obviously, the script has got to be funny and have a kind of a theme, a kind of a story, albeit quite loose, going through the script rather than just a series of gags, which can get boring very, very quickly. Yes, I’m honored to be offered the part of Frank Drebin, and a little bit nervous about it because I’ve done a couple of skits before that were just very short TV things, but this would be, I don’t know, 95, 100 minutes of a film. They’re still casting it so hopefully my other cast members will be funny and sexy so that I could just be dead absolutely straight. There has to be lots of visual gags going on, too.”
Sadly, two members of the original team behind The Naked Gun, David Zucker and Pat Proft aren’t happy about the reboot, with them telling THR that they actually came up with a draft for Naked Gun 4, which was rejected, and that if another movie in the series was going to be made, they should be the ones doing it (even if they hold no ill feelings towards Schaffer, who they praised).
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. We’ve previously heard that it might be a vampire movie – and the folks at World of Reel have revealed even more. According to them, 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.“
They can’t say for sure that’s what the movie is about, because it’s surrounded in so much secrecy 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.” But now that they’ve dangled the possibility out there, I really hope that does turn out to be what this movie is about.
What do you think of the idea of Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan making a vampire movie that’s set in the ’30s and has vampires fighting the Klan? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
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 April.
A new episode of the Awfully Good Horror Movies video series has just been released, and in this one we’re taking a look at an entry in the Crow franchise that often gets overlooked: The Crow: Salvation from 2000 (get it HERE). With a remake of The Crow heading to theatres on June 7th and The Crow: Salvation getting a limited edition Blu-ray release from Scream Factory, this seemed like the perfect time to dig into this one – and you can hear all about it in the video embedded above!
Directed by Bharat Nalluri from a screenplay written by Chip Johannessen, The Crow: Salvation has the following synopsis: Alex Corvis is falsely convicted of brutally stabbing his girlfriend Lauren to death. He maintains his innocence and insists that Lauren was killed by a man with distinctive scars on his body but the police cannot find any trace of him. After three years on death row, Alex is electrocuted in a messy execution and shortly after, his guardian crow appears and resurrects him. With the help of Lauren’s sister Erin, the Crow begins his hunt for the killer.
The film stars Eric Mabius, Kirsten Dunst, William Atherton, Grant Shaud, Jodi Lyn O’Keefe, David H. Stevens, Dale Midkiff, Bill Mondy, Walton Goggins, Tim DeKay, Don Shanks, Joey Miyashima, Kylee Cochran, Bruce McCarty, Kelly Haren, Noname Jane, and Fred Ward.
With the Awfully Good Horror Movies series, we take a journey through the world of “so-bad-it’s-good” cinema in the horror genre. We’ll provide you with some fun trivia, details on the production, and some food/drinks to go with it. So join us for some schlock as we go through the who’s who of terrible horror cinema!
The The Crow: Salvation episode of Awfully Good Horror Movies was Written, Edited and Narrated by Tyler Nichols. The show is Produced by John Fallon and Executive Produced by Berge Garabedian.
A couple of the previous episodes of Awfully Good Horror Movies can be seen below. To see more, and to check out our other shows, head over to the JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel – and subscribe while you’re there!
On the JoBlo Originals YouTube channel, they’ve been running a series called Awfully Good Movies for a while – you can check out the playlist at THIS LINK.
What do you think of The Crow: Salvation, and of this episode of Awfully Good Horror Movies? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
Spyglass Media and Paramount Pictures once intended to make a Scream 7 that would have starred Scream (2022) and Scream VI leads Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega, with Freaky and Happy Death Day director Christopher Landon at the helm. But then Ortega allegedly asked for a substantial pay raise – and as we saw when Neve Campbell dropped out of Scream VI due to a pay dispute, these pay issues don’t tend to work out. Then Barrera was fired from the project after comments she made about the Israel-Hamas war didn’t go over well with executives at Spyglass. Landon dropped out the of the project soon after. So now Scream 7 has been re-developed, and it was recently announced that Campbell is returning to the lead as franchise heroine Sidney Prescott. We’ve heard that executives were hoping to get her Scream 3 co-star Patrick Dempsey to join her in this one, reprising the role of LAPD Detective Mark Kincaid – and industry scooper Daniel Richtman hears that Dempsey is “in talks” to do just that. Richtman’s sources also claim that Courteney Cox is locked in to return as author and reporter Gale Weathers… which would make sense, because Cox has never missed out on any of these movies.
Kevin Williamson, who wrote the screenplay for the original Scream, is set to direct this new sequel. In addition to writing the original Scream, Williamson has also written I Know What You Did Last Summer, Scream 2, The Faculty, and Halloween H20 (where his script contributions were uncredited). He wrote the initial drafts of Scream 3 and Scream 4, then those both received some major rewrites. For Scream 7, he’ll be working from a screenplay by 2022’s Scream and Scream VI writer Guy Busick, who crafted the story with his co-writer on the fifth and sixth films, James Vanderbilt. (Vanderbilt is also a producer on the most recent sequels.) Williamson made his directing debut with the 1999 thriller Teaching Mrs. Tingle. Twenty-five years later, Scream 7 will be his second directing credit.
Are you hoping to see Courteney Cox and Patrick Dempsey share the screen with Neve Campbell (again) in Scream 7? Share your thoughts on this one by leaving a comment below.
