Two of the most distinct voices in music history are undoubtedly Bob Dylan and Elvis Presley. But if you can believe it, the story goes that the two never actually met. But Timothée Chalamet wants to change that – at least on the big screen, saying he wants to resurrect Austin Butler’s Elvis for his Dylan biopic. Oh come on, Timmy, let Austin finally shake that voice!
Cuing his Dune: Part Two co-star up, Butler said of the upcoming Dylan biopic during an interview with NME, “I can’t wait for that film…I wish I could be on set every day to just watch the magic happen,” to which Chalmet responded, “I wish you were in it!” before outlining why Elvis should be worked into the Dylan movie. “There’s an Elvis character in the Johnny Cash biopic [Walk The Line]. It’s really brief, it’s very brief, but I was kind of wishing we could create a musical cinematic universe.” Elvis was played by Tyler Hilton in Walk the Line, the movie which earned Joaquin Phoenix his first Best Actor nomination.
Like Austin Butler in Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis, Timothée Chalamet does his own singing as Bob Dylan in James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown. Although it has faced delays due to everything from the Covid-19 pandemic to last year’s SAG-AFTRA strike, the movie is still moving forward, giving Chalamet a way to capitalize on the success of Dune: Part Two and Mangold a chance to redeem himself after Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.
Despite their prominence – and the long-held stance that the 1970 song “Went to See the Gypsy” was about a meeting between Dylan and Elvis – one Robert Zimmerman has said that the King of Folk never actually personally encountered the King of Rock and Roll. “I never met Elvis, because I didn’t want to meet Elvis. Elvis was in his Sixties movie period, and he was just crankin’ ’em out and knockin’ ’em off, one after another. And Elvis had kind of fallen out of favor in the Sixties.” Even still, that doesn’t mean Elvis couldn’t appear in the Dylan movie.
Would you like to see Austin Butler bring back his Elvis for a small role in Timothée Chalamet’s Bob Dylan movie? Or could Butler use an even longer break from the voice?
Marvel Studios has a lot of course-correcting ahead of it. The company is recovering from a year of flops, and with the exception of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and Loki Season 2, even their loyal fans have not received the rest of their projects well in the past year or so. Disney CEO Bob Iger has addressed that the studio has previously concentrated more on quantity instead of quality and has vowed to pull back on the amount of project output so the movies and TV shows do not suffer. He has recently even admitted that Disney has secretly “killed a few projects already that we just didn’t feel were strong enough.”
Another big looming shadow on the company is the controversial case of the once rising star, Jonathan Majors. Majors was let go from Marvel as Kang when he was found guilty in his assault case and many were waiting to see how Marvel would proceed. A popular rumor being whispered in many ears is the notion of Academy Award hopeful Colman Domingo getting cast in the role as the Conqueror. Vanity Fair recently sat with Domingo (via World of Reel) and one of the topics the covered was his involvement with the Kang recasting. Domingo would not deny the rumors, but would interestingly play dumb on whether or not he knows if he’s signed on to play the MCU villain.
Colman would play coy on the topic, saying,
Do I know this to be true or not? I actually don’t know. I feel like my team doesn’t bring me something unless it’s real. So I don’t know. I could be in conversation, but I’m not sure. I would welcome a conversation around it.”
He also added, “There’s hearsay, there’s conversations, but I’m not even sure because I feel like nothing comes to me until something’s real. But I’d be down with it […] I can’t tell if it’s true or not.” Colman’s schedule is already filling up with many projects as the industry takes notice of his performances. He’s been announced to be cast in a couple of new musical biopics — one as Nat King Cole, which he will also direct, “I’ve been working on it quietly for a few years. It’s something I’m looking forward to putting together with some great partners.” And the other big project will be his portrayal of the infamous father of Michael Jackson, Joe Jackson, in Antoine Fuqua’s Michael. Should Domingo sign with Marvel, he will also be looking at something like a four-year commitment to various projects with the character.
Human sacrifice! The original Ghostbusters and reboot characters living together! Mass hysteria! Ahead of the release of Frozen Empire, Bill Murray, who of course plays Peter Venkman in the Ghostbusters franchise, has some thoughts about those carrying the proton pack…with his trademark snide, of course.
Sitting alongside Annie Potts (secretary Janine Melnitz) and Ernie Hudson (recruit Winston Zeddemore) in a promotional piece, Bill Murray joked, “This different generation, they are nice people, but they’re not as much fun as we are, you know that,” prompting him to roll his eyes and his co-stars to laugh.
Bill Murray has a rocky history with the Ghosbusters movies, but he has proven to be genuinely proud of how the franchise has developed, even after claiming he was duped into signing on for Ghostbusters II. Murray truly came around with 2021’s Afterlife, not only reprising Venkman for the first time since the 1989 sequel (he played an unrelated character in the 2016 reboot, as did a number of other ‘84/’89 stars) but championing Jason Reitman’s movie as an appropriate throwback to the original movies.
As per Sony, “In Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, the Spengler family returns to where it all started – the iconic New York City firehouse – to team up with the original Ghostbusters, who’ve developed a top-secret research lab to take busting ghosts to the next level. But when the discovery of an ancient artifact unleashes an evil force, Ghostbusters new and old must join forces to protect their home and save the world from a second Ice Age.” The movie is due out on March 22nd, less than three months from the 40th anniversary of the first movie.
While it’s impossible to match the original Ghostbusters – Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Hudson and the late Harold Ramis – Afterlife did a fine enough job of at least paying tribute to that which came before it. Now, with Frozen Empire taking the action back to New York City after a detour in Oklahoma, this might be time for the ultimate tribute to the iconic busters of spooks, specters and ghosts.
Do you think the new Ghostbusters are properly carrying on the legacy of the original cast or has the series worn out its welcome? Give us your take below!
Plot: Based on the Edgar Award-winning non-fiction book from author James L. Swanson, “Manhunt” is a conspiracy thriller about one of the best known but least understood crimes in history, the astonishing story of the hunt for John Wilkes Booth in the aftermath of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination.
Review: The life and untimely death of Abraham Lincoln have been fodder for film and television since the invention of the medium. Before that, books and stage plays told the story of the President who ended the Civil War, abolished slavery, and died unceremoniously. But, in all of the tales of Honest Abe and his killer, John Wilkes Booth, few have chronicled the tumultuous aftermath between Ford’s Theater and the capture of those who perpetrated the heinous murder. Aside from Robert Redford’s The Conspirator, which focused on the trial of Booth’s accomplices, we have never gotten a full retelling of the events. Manhunt dramatizes the events and flashes back and forth over the six years before and four years after Abraham Lincoln’s death. It is a fascinating tale that brings various theories to light while focusing on historical figures whose importance has long gone underappreciated. Led by Tobias Menzies as War Secretary Edwin Stanton, Manhunt is a well-made political thriller that has a lot to say but spends too much time on some plot threads that slow down the pacing.
Manhunt wastes no time in getting events underway as Abraham Lincoln (Hamish Linklater) is shot within the first half of the premiere episode. As the tension builds leading towards the fateful hour in Ford’s Theater, none of the events linearly take place. The pilot shifts between the minutes, hours, and days leading up to Booth shooting Lincoln and gives us the vantage of not only John Wilkes Booth (Anthony Boyle) but also his accomplices David Herold (Will Harrison) and Lewis Powell (Spencer Treat Clark). With multiple assassinations plotted simultaneously, including failed attempts on Vice President Andrew Johnson (Glen Morshower) and William H. Seward (Larry Pine), the chaotic proceedings fall on Edwin Stanton to pull together. Leveraging lead investigator Lafayette Baker (Patton Oswalt), Manhunt plays with many storytelling conventions right off the bat. At first, the method of Booth’s escape from Washington to rural Maryland and the care of Samuel Mudd (Matt Walsh) feels like a tense thriller, but then the tone shifts.
In the immediate hours after the death of Lincoln, Edwin Stanton takes on the role of trying to keep the tenuous peace between the Union and the Confederacy. This means quickly trying to find the assassin who killed his close friend while also helping to run the recently unified country. Despite his high ranking in the Cabinet, Stanton takes on a detective role as he visits the crime scene and dispatches others to investigate. At times, Manhunt echoes the police procedural format of Law & Order but set in the 19th century. There are also elements of spycraft on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line which gives way to long-running conspiracy theories about the assassination plot baked into the narrative of this series. Was John Wilkes Booth tasked with the murder by Confederacy President Jefferson Davis? Was Vice President Andrew Johnson somehow involved? Were Booth’s co-conspirators Mary Surratt (Cary Lazar) and John Surratt (Joshua Mikel) more involved than at first though? All of these are addressed throughout the series.
Knowing the main timeline of the events depicted in this series, I was surprised to learn just how much I did not know about some of the historical context of the era. Abraham Lincoln is often depicted as a great orator and brilliant leader, but Hamish Linklater portrays him as less polished and more of an everyman. Lili Taylor evokes Mary Todd Lincoln’s manic state of mind. Anthony Boyle follows up his excellent turn in the AppleTV+ series Masters of the Air with a menacing portrayal of Booth while comedic actor Matt Walsh is quite good as Samuel Mudd. Tobias Menzies is excellent as Edwin Stanton, playing him as the beacon of hope we often associate with Lincoln. Lovie Simone is also a pleasant addition here as Mary Simms, Dr. Mudd’s slave who becomes a key witness during his trial. Everyone in this cast does solid work with a few exceptions. As much as I love Patton Oswalt, his inclusion here sticks out noticeably. While Oswalt has proven himself a solid dramatic actor, he does not fit the part of Lafayette Baker.
Clocking in at seven, hour-long episodes based on the book by James L. Swanson, Manhunt‘s propensity to flash back and forth in the timeline can be quite jarring with some episodes shifting four years in the past to five minutes before the assassination followed by three days before within fifteen minutes. Created by Monica Beletsky (Fargo, The Leftovers, Friday Night Lights), Manhunt spends a great deal of its running time on the search for Booth and the capture of his associates with the first episode reserved for the assassination and the final for the trial. The intervening five episodes, written by Beletsky as well as Tim Brittain, Ben H. Winters, and Jan Oxenberg, build up the repercussions of Lincoln’s death and how divided the country was after the end of the war. Directing duties are split on the series between Carl Franklin (Mindhunter), John Dahl (Rounders), and Eva Sørhaug (Let the Right One In). All three directors manage to elevate the material to a cinematic level without sacrificing the character focus, but the series still feels like it spends a lot of time on supporting stories that pad out the main narrative when they should have been the focus of a story all their own.
Manhunt is a unique dive into a specific chapter of American history that has not been adapted for the screen to this degree. It plays loose with some historical details and wallows in conspiracy theories a bit too much which undermines the powerful supporting stories that should have been at the forefront of this tale. In telling the stories of the former slaves and others impacted by the death of Abraham Lincoln, actors like Lovie Simone and Betty Gabriel shine while Tobias Menzies makes a case for getting more substantial leading roles like he does here. As good as those aspects of Manhunt are, a heavy reliance on the titular search for John Wilkes Booth makes what came before and after feel perfunctory. The miscasting of Hamish Linklater and Patton Oswalt notwithstanding, this is a solidly constructed period procedural. Manhunt is good but could have been much better.
I think we all know that Deadpool and Wolverine will be packed with cameos from across the Marvel Multiverse, but one character who won’t be appearing is Juggernaught, at least not with Vinnie Jones in the costume.
Vinnie Jones played Juggernaut in X-Men: The Last Stand, and he recently told Yahoo Movies UK that he was actually asked to reprise the role for Deadpool and Wolverine, but they couldn’t reach a deal. “Funnily enough I just got asked to do ‘Deadpool,’ the new one now, and I spoke to the director and I just said it’s such a drama putting that suit on mentally and physically,” Jones explained. “I mean it had its mental toll as well because you’re in it and you can’t do anything all day, you can only drink through a straw. So we couldn’t strike the deal for ‘Deadpool [and Wolverine].’“
Jones added, “But ‘Deadpool’s’ my favorite movie of all f**king time more or less. I really wanted to do it, but they didn’t have the budget to put me in the suit.” The character of Juggernaut did appear in Deadpool 2 but was brought to life through motion capture.
When Jones signed on to play Juggernaut in X-Men: The Last Stand, Matthew Vaughn was attached to direct the movie. However, the actor said his role drastically changed when Brett Ratner got involved. “The new director came on and it was not the same role as I had signed on to do,” Jones explained. “They diluted the dialogue. It [used to be] a bigger role. The director brought in so many moving parts and so many other actors that mine got diluted. I lost all interest quite early because I knew they were just taking me along…I was very upset really. It was such a big stage and I became an extra, that’s what happened. I was going in and going, ‘Where is all my dialogue? Where is the storyline?’ For me it was shambles and it was a shame.” For a time, X-Men: The Last Stand was deemed the worst of the franchise… and then came Dark Phoenix.
Deadpool and Wolverine will hit theaters on July 26th.
After a two-week-long trial, Rust armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed has been found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the fatal shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.
The Rust armorer was then taken into custody, with sentencing set for next month. Although Gutierrez-Reed was found guilty of the involuntary manslaughter charge, the jury decided she was not guilty of evidence tampering. The involuntary manslaughter charge carries up to 18 months in prison as well as a $5,000 fine.
During the production of Rust, a live round was discharged from a revolver used by Alec Baldwin, which killed Halyna Hutchins and injured director Joel Souza. The prosecution claimed that it was Gutierrez-Reed, who they alleged was wildly negligent, who was responsible for six live rounds getting onto the set. “She had six, six live rounds on that movie set, the earliest date that I can track them for you is October 10,” said special prosecutor Kari Morrissey during closing arguments. “Six, and she failed to ferret them out for 12 days. What that means is that she wasn’t shaking any dummy rounds, she wasn’t testing anything.“
Morrissey continued, “If she’s not checking the dummy ammunition during the pendency of the filming to make sure that those rounds that are designed to look like live rounds are in fact dummy rounds, this was a game of Russian roulette every time an actor had a gun with dummies.“
Guiterrez-Reed’s main defense lawyer Jason Bowles said that “there’s reasonable doubt she had anything to do ultimately with Halyna Hutchins’ death,” and that his client is being treated as a “convenient scapegoat.“
Alec Baldwin is also facing charges of involuntary manslaughter, with his trial set to begin in July. Morrissey mentioned the actor in her closing statements: “Alec Baldwin’s conduct and his lack of gun safety … on that day is something that he’s going to have to answer for. Not with you and not today,” she said. “That will be with another jury, on another day.” Baldwin has pled not guilty to the charges and has maintained that he did not pull the trigger.
Do you agree with the verdict? Should Hannah Gutierrez-Reed have been found guilty for her part in the Rust shooting?
2003’s Freaky Friday was a major box office success and stands as a fan favorite amongst a certain Disney-loving demographic, so it’s a bit of a surprise there hasn’t been a sequel. But with recent rumblings from its leads, a proper Freaky Friday 2 may be closer than ever. While promoting her new Netflix movie, Irish Wish, Lindsay Lohan told Andy Cohen on his Sirius XM show that a follow-up to the 2003 film (which Quentin Tarantino loves) is happening.
While she was mum on the details, she did mention that former co-star Jamie Lee Curtis is on board. “We’re both excited! I’m gonna speak for Jamie.” This would be right in line with statements previously made by Curtis. Back in 2022, she told People, “There would be nothing I would love more, honestly, than to be able to work with her again, share our time again, and now be able to share it at this age with both of us 20 years older, or whatever we are.” But could it possibly happen? According to Curtis, yes. “We’re talking…There’s a lot of good talk going on.”
Last year, Curtis pitched a plot idea. “I would like to see Lindsay be the hot grandma, and I would like to see me try to deal with toddlers today…Let me be the grandma, let me be the old grandma who switches places, so then Lindsay gets to be the sexy grandma.” Sexy grandma? Hubba hubba!
2003’s Freaky Friday is the third iteration of the story, after the 1976 version with Jodie Foster and Barbara Harris and the less successful TV movie remake with Shelley Long and Gaby Hoffmann.
What do you think? Is the nostalgia strong enough for a Freaky Friday sequel or would this just feel like a cash grab? With Lindsey Lohan mounting a comeback, could it happen? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
It seems to be Karate Kid day out there as yet another piece of casting news for the upcoming sequel has been announced. Variety has reported that Ming-Na Wen (The Mandalorian) has joined the cast of the new Karate Kid movie.
While there are no details on who Ming-Na Wen will play in the Karate Kid movie, the actress is always a welcome addition to any project. The new Karate Kid movie will star Ben Wang (American Born Chinese) as a young teenager from China who finds identity and strength in martial arts. During his journey of self-discovery, Wang’s character meets a disciplined martial arts master. The coming-of-age drama will also find Jackie Chan and Ralph Macchio reprising their roles of Mr. Han and Daniel LaRusso. Joshua Jackson (Fatal Attraction) is also set to appear in the movie. It was announced earlier today that Sadie Stanley (Cruel Summer) had signed on as the movie’s romantic lead.
Jonathan Entwistle (The End of the F***ing World) is set to direct the movie, which has been scripted by Rob Lieber (Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good Very Bad Day). It’s exciting to think of the Karate Kid series back on the big screen, especially as it will bring together the original franchise and the 2010 remake with the involvement of Macchio and Chan.
Ming-Na Wen has played bounty hunter Fennec Shand across multiple Star Wars projects, including The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, and Star Wars: The Bad Batch. She has also lent her voice to a variety of animated shows over the past year, including Velma, Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai, and Blue Eye Samurai.
The new Karate Kid movie has already been slated for a December 13th release, but it’s not the only upcoming project in the franchise. The sixth and final season of Cobra Kai kicked off production earlier this year, and while there’s no official release date yet, Netflix did include the final season in their sizzle reel of 2024 projects. If that pans out, we’ll spend a lot of time in the dojo later this year, which sounds fine.
We’re still two months away from the release of Ryan Gosling’s action comedy The Fall Guy, but the actor has already gotten the seal of approval from someone very special: Steven Spielberg.
Ryan Gosling told Variety that he ran into Steven Spielberg at the Golden Globes, with the director telling him that he loved The Fall Guy. “I saw Steven Spielberg walking in my direction,” Gosling said. “I don’t know Steven Spielberg. I thought there’s no way he’s coming to talk to me. And yet he kept getting closer, and then I thought I know what’s going to happen. I’m going to point to him, and he’s going to go, ‘Not you, behind you,’ so I’m not going to do that. Finally I said, ‘Me?’ and he goes, ‘Yeah you.’ I go, ‘I’m sorry I didn’t think you were coming to talk to me.’ And I stood up and he gave me a hug and said, ‘I just saw ‘Fall Guy’ and I loved it.’”
Gosling continued, “As far as I’m concerned it doesn’t matter anymore what happens. Steven Spielberg liked it. That was an all-time moment for me. I’m really excited for people to see it. I think it’s a really special movie.“
The actor added that The Fall Guy is “such a love letter to movies and moviemaking and the people who make movies… It’s a very unique perspective on a genre of movie that we all love so much, but it’s from a perspective you’ve never seen, from the people who actually make it and how much they’ve been taken for granted.“
Gosling stars in The Fall Guy as Colt Seavers, “a battle-scarred stuntman who, having left the business a year earlier to focus on both his physical and mental health, is drafted back into service when the star of a mega-budget studio movie—being directed by his ex, Jody Moreno. While the film’s ruthless producer, maneuvers to keep the disappearance of star Tom Ryder a secret from the studio and the media, Colt performs the film’s most outrageous stunts while trying (with limited success) to charm his way back into Jody’s good graces. But as the mystery around the missing star deepens, Colt will find himself ensnared in a sinister, criminal plot that will push him to the edge of a fall more dangerous than any stunt.”
The Fall Guy will premiere at SXSW next month before hitting theaters on May 3rd.
So, you’ve seen every film in the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise – but have you seen every episode of the anthology TV series Freddy’s Nightmares? Night of the Living Tapes author Geoff Turner, filmmaker Henrique Couto, and Couto’s frequent collaborator David Denoyer have, and now they’ve put together a book called Welcome to Primetime: The Unofficial Freddy’s Nightmare Companion! Copies are available for pre-order through Death Cult Press and are expected to ship out the week of April 1st.
Freddy’s Nightmares ran for two seasons, from 1988 to 1990, with a total of 44 episodes. Robert Englund appeared in full Freddy Krueger mode in every episode of the show, in which Freddy, the dream serial killer, hosts an anthology of stories set in Springwood.
Directors who contributed to Freddy’s Nightmares include Tobe Hooper, Mick Garris, Tom McLoughlin, Ken Wiederhorn, William Malone, Gilbert Adler, and Dwight H. Little, and one of the most notable cast members to show up along the way was Brad Pitt, earning one of his earliest screen credits. Hooper directed the pilot episode, No More Mr. Nice Guy, which serves as a prequel to the Elm Street film series.
As for Welcome to Primetime, the companion book features breakdowns of each episode in the series, interviews with the show’s creators and a selected history of the bizarre world of horror anthology television.
At the Death Cult Press website, there are three different Welcome to Primetime bundles up for pre-order. Every bundle features both a print version of the book (signed by the authors) and a digital version. Other items in the bundles include an exclusive bookmark, vintage ad sticker, a button set, and a replica Elm Street sign. So head over there and make your choice!
Are you a fan of the Freddy’s Nightmares TV series, and will you be buying a copy of Welcome to Primetime? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
I have fond memories of watching this show as a very young kid, back when it was first airing. I definitely didn’t see all 44 episodes then, though, and I haven’t caught up with all of them in the decades since, so I should fill in the Freddy’s Nightmares gap in my Freddy knowledge.
