Released back in August, the Colleen Hoover adaptation It Ends with Us raked in almost $350 million at the worldwide box office, so we can probably expect to see several Hoover adaptations popping up in the immediate future, especially since she has a good number of books to choose from. In fact, Deadline has broken the news that Anne Hathaway has signed on to play the title character in an adaptation of Hoover’s thriller novel Verity.
That character is Verity Crawford, a famous author who is unable to finish her latest thriller novel after a car accident leaves her badly injured and incapacitated. So her husband Jeremy offers a struggling writer named Lowen a huge sum of money to complete the remaining books in the series. Lowen accepts the gig but uncovers dark secrets in the process — including an unfinished manuscript that hints at chilling admissions about Verity and her family’s past — leaving Lowen to determine if Verity is a gifted fictionist or deranged psychopath.
The Verity novel has a great opening line: “I hear the crack of his skull before the spattering of blood reaches me.” When I read the book last year, I was shocked that it hadn’t been given some kind of screen adaptation yet, because the story seemed like it was crying out to be turned into a movie or limited series. It was also one of the horniest books I’ve ever paged through, as there’s so much sex to read about in Verity’s memoir / manuscript, even Lowen gets tired of it. It will be interesting to see how many sex scenes Hathaway will end up having to act her way through.
The Verity adaptation is coming our way from Amazon MGM and director Michael Showalter, who previously worked with Hathaway on The Idea of You, another adaptation of a popular book that was packed with sex. Nick Antosca, whose credits include Hannibal, The Forest, Channel Zero, Brand New Cherry Flavor, Antlers, Candy, and A Friend of the Family, has written the latest version of the script. Older drafts of the screenplay were written by Hillary Seitz, Angela LaManna, and the duo of Will Honley and April Maguire.
Hathaway, Hoover, and Showalter are producing the movie through their companies Somewhere Pictures, Heartbones Entertainment, and Semi-Formal Productions. Antosca is producing for Eat the Cat, while Jordana Mollick of Semi-Formal and Stacey Sher of Shiny Penny are also producing. Lauren Levine of Heartbones will serve as executive producer. Verity is part of Semi-Formal’s first-look film deal with Amazon MGM.
Verity is described as being a “gothic, psychosexual thriller in the vein of Rebecca and Gone Girl.”
What do you think of Anne Hathaway and Michael Showalter reteaming for an adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s Verity? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
Released in 2022, DreamWorks Animation’s animated heist comedy The Bad Guys, based on the books by Aaron Blabey, pulled in over $250 million worldwide, launching a franchise that has included two Netflix streaming specials (The Bad Guys: A Very Bad Holiday and The Bad Guys: Haunted Heist) and will see a sequel, The Bad Guys 2, reaching theatres on August 1,2025. We still have a while to wait for this one, but a The Bad Guys 2 trailer has dropped online to give a glimpse of what the movie has in store for us. You can check it out in the embed above.
The Bad Guys director Pierre Perifel returned to the helm for The Bad Guys 2, in which the former criminal outlaws who have been trying to find their place as Good Guys find themselves pulled out of retirement for one last job led by an all-female squad.
The voice cast includes Sam Rockwell, Marc Maron, Craig Robinson, Anthony Ramos, and Awkwafina as the titular group, which consists of former pickpocket Mr. Wolf, Mr. Snake, Mr. Shark, Mr. Piranha, and expert hacker Ms. Tarantula. New additions to the cast this time around include Natasha Lyonne, Danielle Brooks, and Maria Bakalova. Lyonne’s character is a snow leopard, the leader of the all-female squad. Perifel told Variety that the character is “Wolf 2.0. She’s super smart, super strong, cooler and younger than Mr. Wolf. Her second-in-command is a Boar. She’s the opposite of Kitty, this bigger-than-life character with a soft heart, but has childish energy. The last character is a raven. She’s super dry and sarcastic, and her humor is on point.” If you’re wondering who Kitty is, that’s a cat that was adopted by Mr. Wolf in the previous film.
Producer Damon Ross said, “The books genre hop and we played in the Ocean’s Eleven space (in the first movie). Now we get to ratchet things up; action wise, stake wise and set piece wise, and lean into Mission: Impossible. Nobody does set pieces better than the Mission: Impossible franchise. We have a pretty not-so-subtle nod to that.” While the first movie was set in Los Angeles, the events of the sequel will see the bad guys venturing out of the city.
For Perifel, making The Bad Guys 2 was appealing because, “We leave the bad guys (in the first movie) as they’re trying to be good. They’ve paid their debt to society, and they’re about to be released from prison, and there’s a whole arc after that where they’re ready to be accepted by society.“
Are you a fan of The Bad Guys (which JoBlo’s own Steve Seigh considers to be a “criminally underrated gem”), and will you be checking out The Bad Guys 2? Take a look at the trailer, then let us know by leaving a comment below.
Hollywood hopes we’re on the eve of another Barbenheimer, with all eyes on the weekend box office to see if Glicked becomes a thing. Glicked, of course, refers to Gladiator II and Wicked, with the hope being that a movie mad public will make a double bill of these movies go viral. I’m not so sure, with both movies being over 2.5 hours long and a pretty full meal as far as films go. The charm of Barbenheimer was that both movies were so different, with Barbie light and airy compared to Oppenheimer’s massive scale. Both Wicked and Gladiator are epics. They also haven’t been receiving the kinds of raves Barbie and Oppenheimer did, with Gladiator II’s Rotten Tomatoes score a fair 73%. By comparison, Wicked has it beat with a strong 91%.
For me, this weekend’s box office winner is a no-brainer, with Wicked bound to open to at least $100 million. I’m predicting a $120 million start based on both the reputation of the musical, and the fact that it has a ton of crossover appeal for both families, date night regulars, and fans of the musical. By contrast, Gladiator II is aimed squarely at an older, more serious audience, who tend not to rush out and see movies opening weekend.
Still, the fact that Ridley Scott’s movie is a sequel to an all-time classic and the presence of the iconic Denzel Washington in a key role should allow it to perform well, with a $50 million opening – give or take $10 million or so. Overseas, it will be a blockbuster and may even outgross Wicked, but domestically, I think it will have to contend with the fact that the historical epic genre has been hit and miss, with Scott’s The Last Duel a flop and Napoleon underperforming. However, neither film was as well-reviewed (read ours) or as action-oriented as Gladiator II, so that should help inflate its box office somewhat.
Another big question mark is whether or not Red One will collapse at the box office following its soft $34 million opening. I expect Wicked to take a massive bite out of its gross, and I’d be surprised if it made much more than $18 million this weekend. Venom: The Last Dance should be behind it with about $5 million, while The Best Christmas Pageant Ever should round out the top 5 with about $3 million.
My box office estimates:
Wicked: $120 million
Gladiator II: $50 million
Red One: $18 million
Venom: The Last Dance: $5 million
Best Christmas Pageant Ever: $3 million
What do you think of our estimates? Let us know in the comments!
All eyes are on James Gunn’s Superman, which will set the tone for his DC film universe for years to come. The director and CEO of DC knew he had to dedicate time to post-production in order to make it look right, “If you do some research you’ll see my films have always taken a different approach and I’ve always given my VFX artist-collaborators time to do their jobs properly, and the respect they deserve.” He explains, “This is why we wrapped on Superman a year before release and why they’ve been hard at work on many shots for months before that.“
So, would this mean a teaser could be ready for release sometime soon? Perhaps in coordination with a couple of possible family holidays coming up? According to Collider, back in October, a fan asked Gunn on Threads if there would be a teaser or trailer revealed before the end of the year. In true cryptic fashion (that Gunn may have picked up from his time at Marvel Studios), the Guardians of the Galaxy director simply responded with a thinking emoji. Could this mean the fan got him to consider it? Or that he’s playing coy?
Superman stars David Corenswet (Pearl) as Clark Kent and Rachel Brosnahan (The Marvelous Ms. Maisel) as Lois Lane. The cast also includes Nathan Fillion (The Rookie) as Guy Gardner, a charismatic and slightly obnoxious member of the Green Lantern Corps; Isabela Merced (Dora and the Lost City of Gold) as Hawkgirl; Edi Gathegi (X-Men: First Class) as Mister Terrific; Anthony Carrigan (Barry) as Metamorpho; María Gabriela de Faría (Deadly Class) as The Engineer, a member of The Authority; Sara Sampaio (At Midnight) as Eve Teschmacher; Skyler Gisondo (The Righteous Gemstones) as Jimmy Olsen; Wendell Pierce (The Wire) as Perry White; Neva Howell (Logan Lucky) as Martha Kent; Pruitt Taylor-Vince (The Walking Dead) as Jonathan Kent; and Nicholas Hoult (The Great) as Lex Luthor.
The members of the Daily Planet newsroom have also expanded for the movie, with Beck Bennet (Saturday Night Live) set to play Steve Lombard, Mikaela Hoover (The Suicide Squad) as Cat Grant, and newcomer Christopher McDonald as Ron Troupe.
DC Studios co-CEO Peter Safran has previously teased that Superman will not be an origin story and will focus on “Superman balancing his Kryptonian heritage with his human upbringing. Superman represents truth, justice and the American way. He is kindness in a world that thinks of kindness as old fashioned.” Superman is slated to hit theaters on July 11, 2025.
A24 and We’re All Going to the World’s Fair director Jane Schoenbrun teamed up for a horror movie called I Saw the TV Glow, which received a theatrical release in May and is now available to watch at home (you can check it out HERE). JoBlo’s own Chris Bumbray had the chance to see at the Sundance Film Festival at the start of this year and he wasn’t particularly impressed by it at the time; you can read his 5/10 review at THIS LINK. Someone who was impressed by the film was legendary director and cinematic gatekeeper Martin Scorsese, who recommended I Saw the TV Glow while speaking with the Associated Press.
Written and directed by Schoenbrun, I Saw the TV Glow tells the story of two teenage outcasts who bond over their shared love of a scary television show. However, the boundary between TV and reality begins to blur after it is mysteriously canceled.
Justice Smith (Jurassic World: Dominion) and Brigette Lundy-Paine (Bill & Ted Face the Music) play the teenage outcasts and are joined in the cast by Helena Howard (The Wilds), Danielle Deadwyler (The Harder They Fall), Amber Benson (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Ian Foreman (The Holiday Switch), Michael C. Maronna (The Adventures of Pete & Pete), Conner O’Malley (Palm Springs), Emma Portner (Ghostbusters: Afterlife), and Danny Tamberelli (also of The Adventures of Pete & Pete).
I Saw the TV Glow was produced by Emma Stone through her company Fruit Tree, along with her Fruit Tree partners Dave McCary and Ali Herting. Sam Intili and Smudge Films’ Sarah Winshall produced as well. A24 handled the financing and the worldwide distribution.
Bumbray said in his review that the film is “so experimental that it feels like a half-baked attempt at a genre version of Inland Empire-era David Lynch.” Which, I have to admit, definitely lowered my interest in this one.
When asked if he has watched anything that he liked recently, Scorsese told the Associated Press, “Some older ones I’ve been watching. There was one film I liked a great deal I saw two weeks ago called I Saw the TV Glow. It really was emotionally and psychologically powerful and very moving. It builds on you, in a way. I didn’t know who made it. It’s this Jane Schoenbrun.” As for the older movies he mentioned, “People should see A Face in the Crowd over and over again. I think that’d be important.“
Will you be taking Martin Scorsese’s recommendation and watching I Saw the TV Glow? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
A little bit ago, I discussed Hardware from 1990 and how it became a little lost to time. Today’s movie is no different as it’s pretty hard to come by and actually has three different versions to look out for. To that end, Richard Stanley can definitely be considered the best horror director you never saw. While he had a resurgence with the Nic Cage cosmic Lovecraft horror Color Out of Space, the rest of his catalogue is either a wonderful hot mess like his incomplete version of The Island of Dr. Moreau where he was fired or his first two movies that just don’t get talked about enough. While Hardware is loosely based on a comic, Dust Devil is what I would call a wholly original South African supernatural slasher flick. It has lore based in both legend and the creative mind of its writer/director Richard Stanley but with 3 different versions and a lot of studio meddling, it has become of the best candidates we’ve ever had for the Best Horror Movie You Never Saw.
Hardware, Richard Stanley’s first feature length film, was purchased by the now infamous for all the wrong reasons Weinstein brothers for distribution. It was successful enough even with some of the legal and dramatic baggage that it carried to get the director another movie and this one would end up being a lot more personal as it was a remake and extended version of a movie, he made on 16mm as a student in 1984. It was inspired by what is considered the only serial killer in Namibia, a location in South Africa. Nhadiep, as he was known, had ritualistic killings of mostly rail workers in the early 1980s and was illusive in his capture from authorities. He was believed by the locals to be a shapeshifter and even after he was allegedly killed in a shootout with police, people didn’t believe he was actually dead. Stanley would eventually take a lot of that lore and made it even more supernatural on screen.
He gave the script to producer Joanne Sellar who he knew from their work together on Hardware and she was able to secure 2.8 million for the budget and get agreement from the government to shoot the entire film in Namibia. The crew was a mix of different countries even if most of the listings you can find have it as a British movie. That mixed crew was from all over including British, American, South African, and Namibian for both in front of and behind the camera. Some of it followed Stanley from Hardware with the score by Simon Boswell, editing by Derek Trigg, and cinematography by Steven Chivers. The cast only has one carry over in William Hootkins who goes from a despicable pervert in Hardware to a fleeing South African Police Captain here. While it doesn’t have any other crossover, it does maintain having different recognizable actors.
The main heroes are played by Zakes Mokae who you may most recognize as the villain from The Serpent and the Rainbow amongst a bunch of other fun roles, and Chelsea Field who I first saw in Masters of the Universe and The Last Boy Scout but also showed up in way too fun things like Renny Harlin’s Prison and The Birds II which almost certainly shouldn’t exist. They are balanced on the scales of good and evil by Robert John Burke who plays the titular Dust Devil. Burke had the unfortunate assignment of following Peter Weller and starring as RoboCop in the third movie. He may have been better than we think but he was put in a movie that was neutered to PG-13 to help ticket sales, video game creations, and a toy line. Burke has had a hell of a career though with appearances in Tombstone and a bunch of other action flicks as well as horror stuff like the lead in Thinner and a supporting role in Hide and Seek.
Stanley took everything he learned on Hardware and expands it with his vision of a movie that he tried to make himself. It feels much more epic than his first movie while simultaneously being more personal too. While Hardware takes place mostly in one building apart from a character bringing the robot villain to that building, Dust Devil is expansive and has a chase all over the South African landscape. Its also filled to the brim with a lot heavier themes than Hardware. While Hardware is a fairly straightforward sci-fi horror movie, Dust Devil deals with abusive marriages, race issues, the effect of a child’s death on the parent, and national belief and superstition. It is also harder to pigeonhole into a genre but is definitely able to be put into the category of horror. When I decided to do a blind buy on the old two-disc DVD from DVD Planet in Huntington Beach, California, I don’t think I was ready for it or even knew what to expect. 20 years later I get it and hope that it gets a wider release for more eyes to see.
The movie essentially follows a South African demon known as a Dust Devil as he works his way through the desert landscape in the shape of a man. We are told a lot of the lore and what he is by an old drive in theater projectionist named Joe who is also a Sangoma which is a South African Healer. The Dust Devil picks up a woman who he ends up killing during sex and as horrific as that sounds, the real horror happens after. The movie opens with Burke looking all cool in his long jacket and hat, something Stanley himself would emulate in his personal life, but the devil part of the dust devil reveals itself shortly after. He cuts her up, taking her fingers with her, and burns down her house without caring that the police will find him. On the other side of the movie, we have Wendy fleeing her abusive marriage and officer Mukrob investigating murders that become all too regular.
While the three stories don’t fully intersect until the end of the third act, they are intertwined in the history of the country. The investigating officer has nightmares about his child dying and wife leaving him while slowly believing the tales that Joe is telling him. Wendy tries to end her life before finding hope in the Dust Devil hitchhiker followed just as quickly by an overwhelming urge to fight and stay alive, and the Dust Devil himself is infatuated with Wendy both to quench his abject loneliness and his thirst and need for souls of those that he believes have given up. We as the audience get invested in every character and it’s impossible to not get sucked up in both the lore and the world building. Things like the police finding evidence of similar killings from nearly 100 years ago to little details like Joe reminiscing about a double feature hosted at his theater that included The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires. That’s our kind of double feature and clearly Joe has impeccable taste.
The acting and writing of the story are top tier even with the cast and writer not going on to too much acclaim but it’s also the supporting crew that give Dust Devil a leg up. The cinematography has room to breathe with its vast landscapes and the score jumps between whimsical, dangerous, and outright frightening when it needs it. The effects are great too with tons of gore both with characters deaths including the ones we don’t see, and one offs like the many different looks to the Dust Devil either when he is actively chasing people or when he looks into his own soul in a motel bathroom mirror. A final head explosion and the use of different color grading on the film to represent how the characters are feeling also go a long way to give the movie both a bigger budget feel and a grander scope than Stanley’s previous effort.
While I love the fierceness of Chelsea Fields’ Wendy and the inner sadness of Zakes Moakes’ Ben, this is certainly Robert John Burke’s movie. He is able to move between cold, loving, and intense with little to no effort between scenes. He can kill without remorse while looking downright surgical with how he leaves crime scenes, but his best work comes when he chases Wendy after an escape attempt. He stalks the open desert like a terminator, using his dark magic to cause multiple car crashes, again practical effects, and then lights the desert ablaze from the spilling gas. It’s a cool scene and for about 15 minutes we get to see many of his different forms and abilities. He can even hold up his hand to try and control the sands and people with little touches like a translucent webbing.
The movie builds a legend, and the movie ends with its legend intact while following all of the rules it sets up. Sadly, the movie was doomed from the start. Studio interference and fear of a wholly original product gave it multiple different releases under different names and cuts across the world. It didn’t make much money and Stanley had to fight to get the original cut. While the studio wanted to cut it down to a barely Ed Wood or Roger Corman 85 minutes and Stanley’s first cut was a 120-minute epic, eventually we would get a final cut of 108 minutes. Multiple versions were seen, and one was even renamed as Demonica which grossly misrepresents the movie’s tone and final product. Critics weren’t kind to it, calling it overlong and pretentious and it never really picked up any steam, or money at the box office for that matter.
Dust Devil is a very personal and emotional effort from Richard Stanley, and I wish I had kept my 2 Disc DVD that contained a work print and loads of special features. It’s better now and dreamlike in both what happens inside the movie with characters often having literal dreams as well as the dreamlike journey it sends its audience on. The film is mostly forgotten to time but its worth tracking down and getting more eyes on it. Give it a shot for yourself to see why it’s not only one of the best horror movies you’ve never seen but maybe to some, never even heard of.
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!
In an article called “Meet the Movies of 2025,” Vanity Fair has just unveiled a batch of images that go behind the scenes of several upcoming films – including genre movies like the sci-fi thriller sequel M3GAN 2.0, the Jordan Peele-produced sports horror film Him, director Scott Derrickson’s The Gorge (that’s an image from The Gorge above), and Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein. Let’s take a look at them:
From M3GAN 2.0, we see an image of the killer doll M3GAN, reunited with returning M3GAN star Violet McGraw. Allison Williams is also back for the sequel, as are Brian Jordan Alvarez and Jen Van Epps. This time, they’re joined in the cast by Ivanna Sakhno (Ahsoka), who is said to have landed a major part in the sequel, Jemaine Clement (What We Do in the Shadows), Timm Sharp (Blunt Talk), and Aristotle Athari (Saturday Night Live). Gerard Johnstone is back at the helm, working from a screenplay by Akela Cooper. M3GAN 2.0 is being produced by James Wan, Jason Blum, and Allison Williams, with Johnstone executive producing alongside Mark Katchur, Michael Clear, Judson Scott, Ryan Turek, Adam Hendricks, and Greg Gilreath. The film is set to reach theatres on June 27, 2025.
Formerly known as GOAT, the sports-related horror film Him has a release date of September 19, 2025. Justin Tipping – who made his feature directorial debut with the 2016 drama Kicks – directed the film, with lead roles going to Marlon Wayans (Scary Movie), Tyriq Withers (The Game), and Julia Fox (Uncut Gems). Zack Akers and Skip Bronkie’s script centers on a promising young athlete who is invited to train with a team’s retiring star. How exactly horror enters the picture is being kept under wraps. ComicBook.com has heard that the script centers on a rookie QB who goes to train with a retiring star QB who may hold a secret about how he has played so long at such a high level. So obviously the GOAT has been using unusual methods to achieve his success, and finding out about them are going to cause the rookie some trouble. Wayans plays the greatest-of-all-time athlete, while Withers plays the promising young athlete / rookie QB. Details on the character Fox plays in Him haven’t been revealed. Jordan Peele is producing Him with Win Rosenfeld, Ian Cooper, and Jamal Watson. David Kern and Kate Oh serve as executive producers. Universal’s EVP Production Development Sara Scott and Director of Development Tony Ducret are overseeing the project for the studio.
Based on a spec script by Zach Dean, The Gorge is said to be a high-action, genre-bending love story. We previously heard that it centers on two soldiers (Anya Taylor-Joy and Miles Teller) who are tasked with guarding a seemingly never-ending gorge with one agent posted on either side. IGN revealed that Teller and Taylor-Joy play elite snipers – one American, the other Lithuanian – stationed in watchtowers on opposite sides of a vast and highly classified gorge located in a faraway land whose exact location they’re not even allowed to know. Their mission? To safeguard the outside world from an undisclosed, mysterious evil that lurks within. They bond from a distance while trying to stay vigilant in defending against an unseen enemy. When the cataclysmic threat to humanity is revealed to them, they must work together in a test of both their physical and mental strength to keep the secret in the gorge before it’s too late. Sigourney Weaver is also in the cast. David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, and Don Granger of Skydance Productions are producing the film with Crooked Highway’s Scott Derrickson, C. Robert Cargill, and Sherryl Clark, as well as Zach Dean, Adam Kohlbrenner, and Greg Goodman. Derrickson directed the film, which will be released through Apple TV+ sometime in 2025. The Vanity Fair image gives a behind-the-scenes look at a set piece that involved “a WWII Willys Jeep pulled up the side of a rock wall while under attack. Miles and Anya did most of their own stunts while attached to safety wires.“
Director Guillermo del Toro has been spending this year working on one of his dream projects, an adaptation of Mary Shelley’s classic tale Frankenstein that is set up at the Netflix streaming service. The behind the scenes image gives us a glimpse of the Frankenstein laboratory, with Frankenstein’s monster lying on the slab. Del Toro’s Frankenstein might have the following logline: Set in Eastern Europe in the 19th Century, the story of Dr. Pretorius, who needs to track down Frankenstein’s monster- who is believed to have died in a fire forty years before–in order to continue the experiments of Dr. Frankenstein. The film stars Oscar Isaac (Moon Knight), Mia Goth (Pearl), Jacob Elordi (Saltburn), Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds), and Charles Dance (Game of Thrones), with Ralph Ineson (The Witch) showing up for a pivotal cameo. At one point, Andrew Garfield was in the cast, but he had to drop out and was replaced by Elordi… and it has been said that the role Garfield had passed over to Elordi was the Monster.
What do you think of these behind the scenes images? Are you looking forward to these movies? Let us know by leaving a comment below – and if you want to see more images, from the likes of Jurassic World Rebirth,The Amateur, You’re Cordially Invited, The Wedding Banquet, Materialists, The Ballad of a Small Player, Mickey 17, Love Hurts, and Mother Mary, click over to Vanity Fair.
The renowned animation studio had recently brought a sequel to Chicken Run to Netflix and now the streamer has released the trailer for their new film, Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl. Four-time Academy Award-winning director Nick Park and Emmy Award-nominated Merlin Crossingham return with this new tale of revenge. The film is written by scribe Mark Burton and is produced by Richard Beek. The executive producers on board include Nick Park, Mark Burton, Sarah Cox, Peter Lord and Carla Shelley.
The official synopsis reads, “Aardman’s four-time Academy Award®-winning director Nick Park and Emmy Award-nominated Merlin Crossingham return with a brand new epic adventure, Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl. In this next installment, Gromit’s concern that Wallace is becoming too dependent on his inventions proves justified, when Wallace invents a “smart” gnome that seems to develop a mind of its own. When it emerges that a vengeful figure from the past might be masterminding things, it falls to Gromit to battle sinister forces and save his master… or Wallace may never be able to invent again!”
Nick Park tells Netflix, “Returning to Wallace and Gromit is like meeting up with family friends. People respond to them because they feel so familiar. They’re like an old married couple in some ways, who know each other so well –– it’s a sort of love-hate relationship, but when the chips are down, they are always there for each other. Wallace pushes Gromit’s loyalty to the extreme, and Gromit always wants Wallace to change. It’s something everyone can relate to.”
Crossingham added, “One of our most asked questions is ‘When will Feathers come back?’ Well now is the time, and he’s back with a vengeance.” The directors also said, “We are delighted to introduce Norbot, a ‘nifty odd-jobbing robot’ gnome, designed to help Gromit with his gardening chores. Norbot is Wallace’s most proud achievement to date and, according to Wallace, his ‘best invention ever’! Garden gnomes have long been a part of Wallace and Gromit’s world, but this is no cute patio ornament. Norbot is the ultimate gnome — a ‘smart-gnome.’ We’re so excited to see Wallace unleashing his latest invention, Norbot, into the world. However, his long-suffering pooch, Gromit, may be a little less sure …”
Plot: Follows the elite students of Manchester College, a Washington, D.C.-adjacent university, where reputation means everything, fraternities and sororities are the gold standard, and two ruthless step-siblings, Caroline Merteuil and Lucien Belmont, will do anything to stay on top of the cutthroat social hierarchy. After a brutal hazing incident threatens the entire Greek Life system, they’ll do whatever is necessary to preserve their power and reputation – even if that means seducing Annie Grover, the daughter of the Vice President of the United States. Hearts will be broken, loyalties will be tested, and secrets will be revealed in this modern-day royal court that is Manchester College.
Review: Since the 1988 film version of Dangerous Liaisons starring Glenn Close, Michelle Pfieffer, John Malkovich, and Uma Thurman, there have been ten adaptations of the eighteenth-century bestseller by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos including a 2022 series that aired on Starz. The most popular take on the novel was 1999’s Cruel Intentions, which starred Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillippe, Reese Witherspoon, and Selma Blair. Notable for being the film that began the real-life relationship between Witherspoon and Phillippe, Cruel Intentions spawned a lackluster prequel and sequel film and a stage musical in 2015. A television series starring Gellar failed to get past a pilot in 2016. Still, now the contemporary teen-centric romantic update of the classic novel is back for a new generation with Prime Video’s Cruel Intentions. Featuring a cast of relative unknowns in the leads, this version of Cruel Intentions aims to capture the melodrama and eroticism of the films in a long-form series. The question is: were they able to capture the same sexual chemistry as the 1999 film?
The eight-episode first season boasts some changes from the film, notably the shift in setting from New York City to Washington, DC. The school remains the primary location for the new series, with private high school Manchester Prep turning into Manchester College. The aging up of the teenage characters from Roger Kumble’s film does remove some of the creepier underage elements, but with the cast all in their mid-to-late twenties, they all seem too old for their roles. The novelty of rich kids acting naughty is not exactly a new concept, with Gossip Girl and Pretty Little Liars mining this material for the last decade. Cruel Intentions pushed the envelope of the PG-13 rating back at the close of the twentieth century, and the reboot has no qualms about profanity or sexual content, with the premiere episode boasting everything you can show on screen short of nudity.
In both Dangerous Liaisons and Cruel Intentions films, the main thrust of the plot centers on a wager between step-siblings to see if the brother can seduce a new student at their school. With manipulation and trickery, the brother develops feelings for his conquest, to the chagrin of his step-sister. In the new series, there is still a psycho-sexual battle waged between the siblings, now named Caroline Merteuil (Sarah Catherine Hook playing the equivalent role played by Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Lucien Belmont (Zac Burgess in Ryan Phillippe’s role). Their conquest changes from Reese Witherspoon’s virgin headmaster’s daughter to Annie Grover (Sara Silva), the daughter of the Vice President. Some supporting roles are similar, with Lucien still having a gay friend, now called Blaise Powell (John Harlan Kim playing Joshua Jackson’s role), who seduces a dimwitted student, Scott Russell (Khobe Clarke). Selma Blair’s naive Cecile is now CeCe (Sara Silva), and rather than being Caroline’s enemy, she is her second-in-command at their sorority. Through the first season, the relationship between Caroline and Lucien shifts from an alliance to a rivalry and back again.
The eight-episode first season does not follow the original film outside of key plot points, with this adaptation being a wholly original look at the spoiled and wealthy behaving badly. While series like Succession offer solid writing and biting commentary, Cruel Intentions is just sex and revenge thrown together and repeated. There are callbacks to moments from the original film, along with the inclusion of Sean Patrick Thomas in the cast, albeit in a very different role than he played in 1999. Most of the series is focused on the youthful ensemble, with some, notably John Harlan Kim, Sara Silva, and Brooke Lena Johnson, standing out as more interesting than the rest. Zac Burgess is the least interesting character in this series and has virtually no charisma compared to those who have played the role before. The adult cast boasts some nice supporting roles for Claire Forlani, Jon Tenney, and Nikki Crawford, but
The first season of Cruel Intentions, with episodes directed by Adam Arkin, Nick Copus, and Iain B. MacDonald, was created by Phoebe Fisher and Sara Goodman, with the duo writing three of the eight episodes. Roger Kumble, writer/director of the 1999 film, serves as executive producer, which may account for the similarity in the title font and the repeated use of The Verve’s “Bittersweet Symphony,” which was the theme song for the original film. Phoebe Fisher’s experience writing for Prime Video’s short-lived I Know What You Did Last Summer and Sara Goodman’s tenure writing for The Hardy Boys series show in the CW-caliber writing of this series. The characters are all atrocious and bad people, making it hard for the audience to root for anyone to win against the other nasty characters. The affluence on display is gross, but none of this series qualifies as satire or commentary and instead is just wealth porn.
The original Cruel Intentions was not entirely well-received by critics and has become a cult classic over the last twenty-five years. The film still remains a showcase for three actors with great potential. The new Cruel Intentions will share a similar critical consensus as it is nowhere near as good as the source material that inspired it. This series can only distinguish itself from its predecessor in the fact that the leads in this version do not boast anything close to the talent that the 1999 cast had. I am sure there will be an audience who enjoys watching overly thin actors get naked with each other and treat one another like sex toys, but there is a way to make a series erotic and entertaining rather than just nasty. This new series’s creators had the best intentions with their reimagining, but the results are just plain cruel.
Cruel Intentions premieres all eight episodes on November 21st on Prime Video.
Before the Resident Evil franchise ended up in the hands of Paul W.S. Anderson, the filmmaker who was developing a cinematic adaptation of the zombie video game series was the one who first brought us the concept of flesh-eating zombies: Night of the Living Dead (and Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead) director George A. Romero. For decades, fans have been pondering what it would have been like if Romero had been able to bring his vision of Resident Evil to the screen – and that’s the subject of the upcoming documentary George A. Romero’s Resident Evil. We’ve been waiting for this one for a while, and now our friends at Bloody Disgusting have learned that it’s set to receive a Digital and On Demand release on January 7th!
Directed by Brandon Salisbury, George A. Romero’s Resident Evil is being produced by Key 13 Films in association with Point Five Films. During an interview with the Resident Evil Podcast, Salisbury revealed that he didn’t want George A. Romero’s Resident Evil to be your average “talking heads” documentary. So he had the idea to shoot interviews in an abandoned mansion that has been made up and lit to look like the mansion from the Resident Evil video game. He also got permission from the game rights owners at Capcom and the film rights owners at Constantin Film to film some scenes from Romero’s script that were based on iconic scenes from the game, but it’s not clear if they were able to shoot those.
George A. Romero’s Resident Evil received some input from Romero’s personal assistant Jason Bareford. As the story goes, Romero had an assistant play through Resident Evil so he could watch the gameplay while writing the adaptation – and Bareford was that assistant. When the project was first announced, Bareford said the mission with this documentary was to set the record straight on what really went on behind the scenes when Romero’s version of Resident Evil was in the works. He was in the room when decisions were being made, and when Romero was informed that Constantin Film no longer intended to make the movie with him.
Salisbury provided the following statement: “George Romero gave birth to modern horror, the modern zombie, and ultimately Resident Evil. I am honored to bring fans the untold story of his most important unmade project, to celebrate the legacy of the man that inspired me to pursue filmmaking as a career. I hope fans enjoy this ultimate experience in survival horror.“
Will you be watching George A. Romero’s Resident Evil when Uncork’d Entertainment gives the documentary a Digital and On Demand release in January? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
