Glen Powell’s star is on the rise since his fun, antagonistic performance in 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick. You can currently see him steaming up the screen with Sydney Sweeney in Anyone But You, plus he’s due to chase storms in the semi-sequel Twisters, and you can also now get a look at him in the new Richard Linklater film, Hit Man. While the generic-sounding title seemingly leads you to a kind of film you think you may have seen already, much like the similarly titled The Killer from David Fincher that starred Michael Fassbender as a hitman, the trailer is actually mysteriously an upbeat, fun romp with loads of critical praise plastered throughout. Glen Powell stars in the film as well as co-writing the screenplay with director Richard Linklater.
The trailer has been released from Netflix and the synopsis reads, “A mild-mannered psychology professor (Glen Powell) interested in electronics takes a sideline bugging undercover cops in sting operations, specializing in setting up phony hits. When the usual undercover guy is suspended, he’s enlisted to pose as a hitman. He turns out to be a natural at undercover work, with the police using him to entrap people taking out contracts. Things get complicated when he falls for an abused wife (Adria Arjona) wanting to take out her husband.”
According to Entertainment Weekly, “Hit Man is based on a 2001Texas Monthly article by Skip Hollandsworth, whose journalism previously inspired another Linklater movie, Bernie.” Linklater told EW, “I asked Skip, ‘Is it true?’ And he goes, ‘There’s never been a case of someone arrested for being a hitman.’ That was 2001, so I have followed really closely over the years. Whenever I see an article about someone getting arrested for taking out a hit, I check it, and it’s always another person getting arrested by an undercover officer. But no one ever figures out from there that hitmen don’t exist.” Linklater remarked on what set his film apart from other contract killer movies, “We deconstruct the hitman film. Isn’t that funny? Those films are basically crime dramas, but we’re the one based on real events — and we’re a comedy!”
Our own Chris Bumbray glowed about this movie in his film review from the Toronto International Film Festival, saying, “Notably, despite being a movie about killing, the film is pretty non-violent and charming. If there was ever a feel-good movie to be made about murder-for-hire, this is it.” You can read the rest of his review HERE.
Hit Man is set to premiere on Netflix in select countries on Friday, June 7, after a limited theatrical release.
I don’t know of many Christmas horror adaptations. Sure, I could probably look at the history of Krampus and piece something together but other than that I’m hard pressed so let me know in the comments what I could cover next holiday season. Winter in general has all sorts of movies and stories that they are based off of. The very first episode of this show was all about The Thing and its source material Who Goes There and now in the middle of winter, at least in Colorado, I think it’s time to look at one of the better vampire properties of the 2000s and a great limited series comic. 30 Days of Night was originally pitched as a movie but when it was turned down, the comic came out and put the author’s name on the map. As is the nature of Hollywood, it got adapted into a movie anyway and even received a direct to video sequel a little bit after. Both are dark, gritty, original pieces of media but how close does the movie stick to its pulpy counterpart? Find a place to hold up for 30 days of night as we find out what happened to this adaptation.
The Movie
The journey for 30 Days of Night (watch it HERE) was not an easy one. The original concept from author Steve Niles was pitched as a comic but there were no takers. He then tried to move it as a film or TV property which also fell through. After he had to shelve the idea for a time, publisher IDW came around and wanted to publish the idea as a limited miniseries of comic books. Once it was a published property, Niles found it much easier to shop the idea around. There was bidding on it and finally horror royalty Sam Raimi won the rights to make an adaptation of it in 2002. His company that would later become Ghost House hired Niles to write the screenplay which was completed in March of 2004. The next month he was asked to re-write it and Stuart Beattie was brought in to do an additional draft which Niles ended up really liking.
Director David Slade was attached to the movie in September of 2005 with yet another writer brought in to do yet another script in March of 2006. Brian Nelson’s script was approved and the movie was shot that summer. Josh Hartnett, Melissa George, and Danny Huston were the lead cast members but it also starred Ben Foster, Mark Boone Junior, and Mark Rendall. Rendall made his debut in kids TV that included a sizable chunk of time on Arthur and for horror also appeared in the incredible TV adaptation of Hannibal. He still does quite a bit of TV into the early 2020s. Mark Boone Junior has become one of the best THAT GUY character actors we have. Depending on the type of stuff you watch, you could know him from his best-known property of Sons of Anarchy or like me know him from that time he was split down the middle in John Carpenter’s Vampires. Ben Foster is a powerhouse of a performer that I feel doesn’t get enough credit. He’s incredible in 3:10 to Yuma and Hell or High Water and for horror showed up in things like Pandorum and the Dead Zone TV series.
Danny Huston is another fantastic actor that I don’t think gets discussed enough and is wonderful as the main vampire here. He is also in The Number 23 and American Horror Story for us gore fans and great other movies like Children of Men and The Proposition to name a couple that I really like. Josh Hartnett has had an interesting career that has come back into focus with his part in Oppenheimer but started his career in Halloween H20. He has worked in Penny Dreadful, The Faculty, and Black Dahlia with a ton of other movies thrown in too. Finally, Melissa George is an Australian actress who I first saw in Dark City but is also great in Alias, The Amityville Horror, and a cool indie horror called Triangle. Behind the camera, director David Slade was a music video guy first, but his movie Hard Candy really got him noticed and three years after this movie, he directed an entirely different type of vampire movie with The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. Stuart Beattie also wrote Collateral and the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie while Brian Nelson also did Hard Candy and Devil. The movie opened in October of 2007 and received decent reviews but more importantly 75 million on its 30-million-dollar budget.
The Story
30 Days of Night started out as a 3 issue short series written by Steve Niles and illustrated by Ben Templesmith. IDW is the publisher, and all 3 entities own the rights to the IP. As stated above it was shopped first as a comic and then as a movie before coming back around as a comic again. Steve Niles hadn’t done too much up to the release of 30 Days of Night but did write a graphic novel adaptation of Richard Matheson’s seminal I Am Legend which became popular again after the release of today’s work. He really took off and published 12 titles in 3 years after the release of Night and worked steadily into 2020. Templesmith has worked with Niles on a few other projects but also worked heavily on the 30 Days of Night universe. He is a multi-Eisner award nominee and has done other things like game books and what I didn’t know at the time but found out after doing the research is he did one of my favorite Dead Space graphic novels too.
The actual 30 Days of Night property has done very well for itself. It had 10 comic collections released between 2002 and 2009, two film adaptations, an audio adaptation, a novelization of the movie, and two mini-series added after the fact too.
What is the Same?
The story takes place in the Alaskan town of Barrow where the residents prepare for the time of year where darkness rules for nearly 30 days. Sherrif Eben starts finding strange things happening around the town such as all cellular phones being destroyed and the appearance of a vagrant stranger to the town who warns the residents but also is the one that scouted ahead and led a group of killers to their town. It turns out that this group of killers is actually a group of vampires led by Marlow who decided to take advantage of the long-lasting darkness to feed on the poor residents of barrow. They also take out some of the power stations and slowly close in on the rest of the townsfolk who hide away and slowly get picked off one by one.
Sheriff Eben decides that there is really no other way to deal with the vampires than becoming one himself and injects some of their blood into his own stream. He turns but has enough humanity left to realize he needs to take out the vampire group and goes for their leader. After a fight in which some of the other vampires are killed too, Eben emerges victorious and saves the remaining townsfolk before admitting he doesn’t want to remain the undead forever. He sits with his wife Stella and watches the sunrise only to die like vampires do. In addition to the basic overall plot with mostly similar names, the movie and book share a very similar dark tone. The art style of the comic is almost minimalist in what it shows while still being an incredibly violent and gory piece of literature. The movie matches this tone with the vampires looking lifeless but simultaneously brutal. There is a washed-out tone that fits with the forever night feeling.
What is different?
A surprising amount was changed here considering both how shorth the source material is and the fact that the author had a lot to do with the movie. The book stranger that comes into town seems to be almost vampire already and is killed by Eben and his team while in the movie, he talks about how he expects the vampires to turn him and make him one of their pack. He is also killed by Marlow when the vampires go to investigate the jail. Marlow in the movie is the leader of the vampire crew but in the comics, he is actually killed by Vicente who comes to Barrow to clean up the mess that Marlow has made. He finds out about the mission through emails and there is a whole other group that is trying to prove the existence of vampires. Eben kills Vicente in the climactic fight instead of Marlow.
The movie also focuses on a handful of other side human characters while the comics just focus on the vampire’s story and lore and Eben and Stella on the human side. Speaking of Stella and Eben. In the Comics they are happily together but the movie adaptation has them separated and Stella almost getting out of dodge on the last flight before missing it and coming back. Ebens family is also a much stronger presence in the movie and ties back to what I said about the other characters getting more screen time and story. This gives the movie much higher stakes in my opinion and is almost more tragic as we care about the people of Barrow and their families more on screen.
Legacy
This is a tough one because if we are just talking about legacy in terms of entries, the comic has the movie beat by a mile. It’s universe was expanded by multiple authors and the lore of the vampires within creates an entire universe to explore. The movie got a direct to video sequel that really isn’t too bad and sits in a weird time for vampire movies with it’s ultra violence being juxtaposed with the Twilight movies romantic teenager nonsense. When I think about which one I prefer, I go with the movie. While the comic is much deeper and a good, original story, its also just a lot to get through and keeps asking new questions with each new entry. The movie is a solid snow/winter tale that I can just throw on without much thought and is a fun movie to recommend to people looking for something a little different. It expands enough on the story in it’s relatively lengthy runtime of 114 minutes while delivering on the gore and monster action we crave. The comic is good, original, and extensive but the movie is just a lot more fun to get through.
A couple of the previous episodes of WTF Happened to This Adaptation? can be seen below. To see the other shows we have to offer, head over to the JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel – and subscribe while you’re there!
Soon after the release of M3GAN back in January, it was announced that the team behind the film – Universal Pictures, Blumhouse Productions, and James Wan’s production company Atomic Monster – were aiming to replicate M3GAN‘s January theatrical success by setting a January 2024 release date for their supernatural thriller Night Swim. The movie reached theatres at the start of this month – and didn’t manage to go over as well or get as much attention as M3GAN did. While M3GAN earned over $180 million during its theatrical run, Night Swim (read our review HERE, check out our Night Swim interviews HERE) has only pulled in about $37 million at this point. Now the movie is heading to the small screen, as it’s getting a VOD and digital release this week, on January 23rd. If you want to watch the movie in the comfort of your own home tomorrow, it will set you back $29.99 on Amazon.
Bryce McGuire wrote and directed Night Swim, which is based on a short film he made with Rod Blackhurst back in 2014. The feature version of the story is built around the hidden source of terror found in an iconic backyard swimming pool. The film has the following logline: No running. No diving. No lifeguard on duty. No swimming after dark.
Here’s the synopsis: Ray Waller, a former major league baseball player forced into early retirement by a degenerative illness, moves into a new home with his concerned wife Eve, teenage daughter Izzy, and young son Elliot. Secretly hoping, against the odds, to return to pro ball, Ray persuades Eve that the new home’s shimmering backyard swimming pool will be fun for the kids and provide physical therapy for him. But a dark secret in the home’s past will unleash a malevolent force that will drag the family under, into the depths of inescapable terror.
The feature version of Night Swim stars Wyatt Russell (The Falcon and the Winter Soldier), Kerry Condon (The Banshees of Inisherin), Amélie Hoeferle (The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes), and Gavin Warren (Fear the Walking Dead).
James Wan and Blumhouse founder Jason Blum are producing Night Swim while working on merging their companies. Atomic Monster’s Michael Clear and Judson Scott serve as executive producers alongside Blumhouse’s Ryan Turek. Alayna Glasthal is overseeing the project for Atomic Monster.
The 2014 short film version of the story starred Megalyn Echikunwoke (Night School 2018) and had the following synopsis: What better way to relax after a hectic day in the office than a long and cool night swim under the stars? Immersed in the aqueous element like a fetus inside the mother’s womb, the unsuspecting Eve enjoys the water in the privacy of her house; however, she is not alone. Apart from Margot, her cat, an intangible menace in the form of a shadowy night watcher observes from afar–invisible like the midnight breeze, yet very real. Is Eve in danger? Is this her last dive? It had a running time of just 4 minutes.
Will you be watching Night Swim now that it’s getting a VOD and digital release? Let us know by leaving a comment below – and if you have already seen the movie, let us know what you thought of it!
Plot: Gal Dove and Don Logan are best friends and small-town thieves living the good life in ‘90s East London. Deedee Harrison is a captivating adult film star whose ambitions to control her own personal destiny and her love affair with Gal Dove put her in danger. Teddy Bass is a treacherous, rising name in the gangster world who seduces Gal and Don into his criminal web.
Review: Of all the films I never expected to get a prequel, Sexy Beast would never have occurred to me. The 2001 crime movie, director Jonathan Glazer’s feature debut, focused on a pair of former friends whose lives have drifted apart since they were thieves working for a London crime boss. That film was barely a blip at the domestic box office but garnered critical acclaim and an Oscar nomination for Sir Ben Kingsley. Since Sexy Beast, screenwriters Louis Mellis and David Scinto reunited with stars Ray Winstone and Ian McShane for the less acclaimed film 44 Inch Chest. Two decades later, Sexy Beast is back with Mellis and Scinto aboard as executive producers for a 1990-set foray into the origin story of Gal, Don, and Teddy Bass. Sexy Beast is more than just an attempt to milk intellectual property. Instead, it is a solid crime drama with well-placed callbacks to the modern classic movie that inspired it.
Without any context for the feature film, Sexy Beast opens with little connection to the 2001 film. Right off the bat, we meet Gary “Gal” Dove, played by James McArdle, and Don Logan, played by Emun Elliott. Gal is engaged and in a rut, as he faces a life of settling down with his fiance. Gal and Don make decent money as small-time thieves, something Don’s controlling and abusive sister, Cecilia (Tamsin Greig), wants to change. Cecilia sets Gal and Don up with up-and-coming gangster Teddy Bass (Stephen Moyer), who has an intricate plan involving a local politician and a pair of criminal siblings. Teddy offers a lucrative partnership with Gal and Don, something Gal is unsure he wants to be a part of. Don, however, wants the wealth and notoriety that working for Teddy could bring, which pits the two friends at odds. This is further complicated when Gal meets DeeDee Harrison (Sarah Greene), a porn star whom Gal instantly falls in love with. In the feature film, we know that Don works for Teddy, Gal is married to DeeDee and living in Spain, and little else. Sexy Beast worked perfectly as a movie, and this series fills in those blanks despite there being no need to in the first place.
What I noticed immediately in the first episode of Sexy Beast was the physical similarity that James McArdle shares with Ray Winstone. With bleached blonde locks and a scruffy beard, both actors could convincingly play the same role decades apart. They share line delivery, mannerisms, and an opening shot of them in very different pools. On the other hand, Emun Elliott is much different than Sir Ben Kingsley’s take on Don Logan. This series wastes no time in showing us that Don has a screw loose and could snap at any minute, but the younger Don is not the sociopath his older self is in the movie. Here, Don struggles under his older sister, Cecilia, who delivers lines through the eight-episode series that are direct quotes from the feature film. The dynamic between Cecilia and Don is reminiscent of Norma and Norman from the seriesBates Motel, and that twisted relationship led to dark places. Equally, Ian McShane’s chillingly psychopathic take on Teddy Bass is given more depth here by Stephen Moyer. However, I found the added back story for the gangster to detract from the mysteriousness McShane lent his performance.
As much as Sexy Beast is a story about a heist and criminal enterprise, the series is heavily focused on the romance between Gal and DeeDee. The movie positions the pair as star-crossed lovers, and the series wastes little time getting the sparks going between the two. A solid amount of time is spent on DeeDee dealing with issues within the porn industry as well as the challenge of Gal already being engaged to be married. Sarah Greene does some of the best work here as she delves into the fairly underdeveloped character in the feature film. The rest of Gal’s family, who factor into his personal life and how it clashes with his career as a criminal, are not nearly as endearing as they are intended to be and offer some of the weakest elements of the series’ narrative. Gal’s clash with his younger sister throughout the series takes up much screen time and ends up as filler compared to the much more interesting arcs for Don, Teddy, and more. Even within this prequel series, we get flashes even further back to the childhood days of some characters, which adds depth and some sympathetic elements for characters I did not want to feel anything for, like Don and Teddy.
Michael Caleo, whose prior credits include writing for The Sopranos and Rescue Me, wrote more than half of the episodes of Sexy Beast and directed the first three. Co-writers include Jennifer Cacicio, Lee Patterson, Ollie Masters, and Juliet Lashinsky-Revene, while David Caffrey, Alex Eslam, and co-star Stephen Moyer helmed the remaining episodes. Moyer directed the finale after previously helming episodes of True Blood and the series Flack, starring his wife Anna Paquin. The series is rooted in London during the early 1990s. Still, aside from the music that factors heavily into every episode, the era is a requirement in preceding the feature film’s narrative. The eight-episode season works as the start of an ongoing series as it ends in a place still a long way from where the movie started. Still, it also feels like it has used much of its strongest material, leaving a second season in the difficult position of transitioning the story to where Jonathan Glazer’s film takes over.
Jonathan Glazer’s Sexy Beast remains among the most impressive directorial debuts of the last twenty-five years. This prequel series arrives just as the filmmaker is back in the limelight with his acclaimed film The Zone of Interest. While Glazer has zero involvement with this series, it is respectful of the movie and does not do anything to detract from its standing as one of the best British films in recent history. As a series, Sexy Beast is a standalone crime drama with intriguing characters and a plot worth investing in. However, I garnered more enjoyment out of the show because of the connections I found with the feature film. I would love to see if a second season of Sexy Beast can improve upon the first, but I hope audiences will discover this show and seek out the brilliant movie that inspired it even more.
Sexy Beast premieres on January 25th on Paramount+.
As Kingpin once said, “The people need to be reminded that the city belongs to me.” And apparently all of the Kingpin reading material belongs to Vincent D’Onofrio, who has consumed just about every piece he can get his hands on.
Speaking with ComicBook.com, D’Onofrio said, “I’ve seen everything that involved [Wilson] Fisk that’s up to this point. I mean, there’s some of the new runs, the Kingpin runs that I haven’t looked at yet, but as far as everything, any canon that connects Fisk I’ve read.” We sense a little slacking from D’Onofrio, but then again, considering just how much Kingpin material is out there, we can’t entirely fault him for falling behind.
As far as which Kingpin works have grabbed his attention the most, D’Onofrio pointed to the legendary Frank Miller, who wrote Daredevil’s Born Again storyline in 1986. “The [Frank Miller] runs were always very exciting for me. And I found early on before I met David [Mack, creator of Marvel’s Echo], I found some of his stuff and the first couple of paintings that he did of Fisk were really, really truly inspiring. I didn’t get to tell him that for a while, but eventually, I did get to tell him, and then he was just super helpful with turning me onto maybe stuff that I didn’t have or anything that he offered his help.”
Kingpin first appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man #50 in 1967 when D’Onofrio was just eight years old. The actor first took on playing the character (aka Wilson Fisk) in Netflix’s Daredevil series, reprising him on Hawkeye and most recently on Echo. He is set to return once again for Daredevil: Born Again, currently set for 2025. Prior to D’Onofrio, Kingpin was most notably played by Michael Clarke Duncan in the 2003 Daredevil movie, although he had been featured in Marvel media properties since the ‘60s, having first been voiced by Tom Harvey on Spider-Man.
The actor recently went to work to settle any fan concern of the behind-the-scenes troubles surrounding Daredevil: Born Again, saying in part, “Every cool project I’ve been involved with has evolved constantly during pre-production, production and post. It’s just reported on these days as if it’s big news. It’s not. It’s simple a bunch of creatives doing their best to get it right. It’s a constant in this business. I wouldn’t have it any other way. Frankly I’d be worried if we were settling for less.”
How do you think Vincent D’Onofrio has done as Kingpin? Does he deserve a standalone movie?
When Mad Max: Fury Road was released by Warner Bros. back in 2015, Mad Max saga mastermind George Miller already had ideas for more Max Rockatansky stories and a prequel that would focus on the Furiosa character. Unfortunately, before he could move forward with any of them, his production company had to take WB to court over unpaid Fury Road earnings, an issue that slowed things down for years. The problem was finally resolved and now, nine years after Fury Road, the prequel Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga has made its way through production and is set to reach theatres on May 24th. In anticipation of the film’s release, we have compiled a list of everything we know about this one – and you can check it out right here:
STORY
Directed by Miller from a screenplay he wrote with his Fury Road co-writer Nico Lathouris, Furiosa has the following official synopsis: As the world fell, young Furiosa is snatched from the Green Place of Many Mothers and falls into the hands of a great Biker Horde led by the Warlord Dementus. Sweeping through the Wasteland they come across the Citadel presided over by the Immortan Joe. While the two Tyrants war for dominance, Furiosa must survive many trials as she puts together the means to find her way home.
Miller and Lathouris wrote the script long ago; in fact, Miller has said that it was “virtually complete” even before Mad Max: Fury Road started filming in 2012. The story begins 15 years before the events of Fury Road and spans across those 15 years, leading directly into the previous film. As for why this story is being told, Miller has said, “When we wrote Mad Max, the task was to tell a story that was always on the run and to see how much the audience could pick up in passing. That was one of the tricks of Mad Max: Fury Road, that there would be references to things of where she’s from, why they’re doing things, but it was always on the run. There were very few moments of quiet. We never explained how she lost her arm. We never explain what the actual Green Place Of Many Mothers was. We never explained the workings of the Citadel. So we had the screenplay virtually complete before we shot Fury Road, and we did it because it arose out of wanting to explain to everybody who Furiosa was—to Charlize Theron when she took on the role, and to all the actors and the designers and everybody else working on the Citadel and so on. The feeling was, gee, this is a pretty good screenplay, and then I kept saying to myself, ‘if Fury Road works, I’d really like to tell this story.’ So it came about, I’m not going to say accidentally, but it came out of a need to explain [Fury Road’s] world which essentially happened over three days and two nights. It’s really trying to explain how that world came to be.“
There’s a chance that parts of this story may be familiar to Mad Max fans, as some of the prequel elements Miller had put together were published as comic books around the time of Fury Road‘s release.
ANYA TAYLOR-JOY AND CHARLIZE THERON
When he was first planning Furiosa, Miller thought he would be able to bring Fury Road‘s Charlize Theron back to play the younger version of the character and they would just do some CG de-aging on her. But, “despite the valiant attempts on Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman“, he came to the decision that CG de-aging just hadn’t been perfected yet, there’s still an uncanny valley effect when watching people who have been de-aged. So the character had to be recast. While it was rumored that Killing Eve actress Jodie Comer might be in the running to play Furiosa, the role ended up going to Anya Taylor-Joy of The Witch, who Miller first saw in Edgar Wright’s Last Night in Soho. Although Taylor-Joy doesn’t have a drivers license, she did perform her own stunt driving in the film.
When she learned she wouldn’t be starring in Furiosa, Theron told The Hollywood Reporter, “It’s a tough one to swallow. Listen, I fully respect George, if not more so in the aftermath of making that film with him. He’s a master, and I wish him nothing but the best. Yeah, it’s a little heartbreaking, for sure. I really love that character, and I’m so grateful that I had a small part in creating her. She will forever be someone I think of and reflect on fondly. Obviously, I would love to see that story continue, and if he feels like he has to go about it this way, then I trust him in that manner. We get so hung up on the smaller details that we forget the thing that we emotionally tap into has nothing to do with that minute thing that we’re focusing on.”
Theron and Taylor-Joy didn’t discuss their shared role until after production ended. Taylor-Joy told People, “Charlize was sweet enough — I think both of us ended up in a situation where we were both so respectful of each other that we didn’t want to reach out prior [to filming]. The second it’s over, we’re having dinner and we’re going to swap war stories for sure.“
CAST
Beyond Taylor-Joy, the cast also includes Chris Hemsworth (Thor) as the biker warlord Dementus, with Tom Burke (C.B. Strike) and Quaden Bayles (Three Thousand Years of Longing) in unspecified roles. Alyla Browne (The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart) appears as a younger Furiosa, and Nathan Jones and Angus Sampson are said to reprise their Fury Road roles of Rictus Erectus and The Organic Mechanic. IMDb has a list of characters with names like Smeg, Pissboy, War Boy, Treadmill Rat, Blackfinger, Fang, The Wretched, Corpse Minder, Mr. Harley, and Mortiflyer.
Don’t expect to see Nicholas Hoult show up as his Fury Road character Nux. As Hoult told ComicBook.com, “Going into Fury Road, I knew all of Nux’s life up until the moment we meet him in that film. And obviously as (Furiosa is) a prequel, it’s earlier. Nux would’ve maybe just about been born and I don’t think I could play a six-month-old or a year old. It would be a stretch for me.“
Hemsworth has said that working on Furiosa was “by far the best experience of my career, and something I feel the most proud of.” He came into the film exhausted, wondering how he was going to get through it, but as soon as rehearsals started it reignited his creative energy. “It made me think, the work isn’t what’s exhausting, it’s what kind of work it is, and how invested I am in it and if it is challenging in the right way.”
FURY ROAD REUNION
Miller, Lathouris, Jones, and Sampson aren’t the only Fury Road holdovers on Furiosa. The films also share editor Margaret Sixel, production designer Colin Gibson, sound mixer Ben Osmo, makeup designer Lesley Vanderwalt, costume designer Jenny Beavan, and composer Junkie XL.
BIGGEST AUSTRALIAN PRODUCTION
Furiosa was the biggest production ever for Australia, surpassing the $150 million production of Baz Luhrmann’s Australia (which was recently reworked into a mini-series called Faraway Downs). It created 850 jobs and brought $350 million AUD (around $230 million USD) to the local economy. Miller is producing the film with Doug Mitchell.
MORE MAX STORIES
While it seems clear that he’s not a major character, Miller has never said whether or not Max Rockatansky will be making an appearance in Furiosa, but he did say, “Max is lurking around somewhere in this story.” If you’re more interested in seeing Max than you are in seeing Furiosa, don’t worry: Miller has said that he has two more Max stories in mind, one of them being the Mad Max: The Wasteland movie he was already mentioning by name back in 2015.
Are you looking forward to Furiosa? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
Air Force One – which found president Harrison Ford telling that darn Korshunov to “Get off my plane!” – was a massive hit at the box office, taking in $173 million domestically and another $142 million in the international market to be one of Wolfgang Petersen’s biggest hits. And so, with the influx of sequels in the ‘90s, it’s a bit surprising that Air Force One never had a follow-up. Come on, the vice president literally flies on Air Force Two!
Getting a sequel to Air Force One off the ground was in consideration for a while but as screenwriter Andrew W. Marlowe told SYFY WIRE, it was the repetitive nature of franchises like Die Hard that kept another installment from ever happening, saying, “…every time John McClane goes on vacation or goes anywhere, the terrorists take over.” As such, he and some execs at Beacon Pictures could never come up with a passable idea. It seems the farthest they ever got was having “Harrison as president goes someplace, he’s on an Air Force carrier, it’s attacked, he’s in the middle of an unstable geopolitical situation. And so, there are things he can and can’t do, because you don’t want to inflame it. He’s got to navigate it and he’s the person at the heart of it.”
While we may never see Harrison Ford reprise President James Marshall for an Air Force One sequel, it’s nice to know it at least has less to do with age – a president in their 80s isn’t exactly unfathomable… – than it does a suitable plot. Still, there is always the possibility for a reboot, provided there is a real purpose. “We don’t want to do something that’s just exploitative storytelling, we want to do something that feels like it has a purpose in the world. And when we were doing it, the presidency and that position was not as politically charged as it is today. And so, I think that there are specific challenges about doing it in the contemporary climate that we would have to figure out. But believe me, people keep talking about it.”
Do you think an Air Force One sequel or reboot could work? What could you see the main character tackling? Give us your thoughts below.
January is generally a quiet time at the box office as studios give their big Holiday hits some breathing room while also avoiding the massive draw that is the NFL playoffs. Last year at this time, the record breaking Avatar: The Way of Water was still riding high with a $20.1 million take in its sixth week while Puss in Boots: The Last Wish continued its epic run from a $12 million opening to a $186 million domestic finish. We even had a surprise horror hit with M3GAN entering her third week with just under $10 million while the Tom Hanks starring A Man Called Otto continued to see solid numbers for a drama aimed at adults.
This year sees this third weekend of January hit a bit of a snag with the remake/ Broadway adaptation Mean Girls landing in first place for a second week in a row with $11.7 million. That number represents a 59% drop off, proving that its 65% audience score and B cinemascore are keeping some audiences away. Of course this second week drop off isn’t horrible news for the film because the budget was just $36 million and with $50 million already in domestic grosses, Mean Girls will see a solid profit for the studio. Even though I wasn’t the biggest fan of this movie (it recycled too much from the original), I would love to see a sequel that combined the casts from the two movies to create some sort of meta mash-up comedy masterpiece.
Remaining in second place is the Jason Statham/ David Ayer/ Phylicia Rashad (names I’m sure we all thought would one day share a marquee) film The Beekeeper, with an additional $8.4 million added to its domestic total of $31.1 million. With just a $40 million budget (relatively cheap for an action film in today’s $300 million marketplace), this tale of revenge should see a decent return on investment once international numbers are figured in. You can check out Tyler Nichols’ 7/10 review here.
Third place goes to the holiday heavyweight that is Wonka with an additional $6.4 million added to its stellar $187.1 million domestic total. With over half a billion dollars collected worldwide, this musical prequel has emerged as a genuine hit for the studio. By the end of Monday, Wonka will likely become star Timothée Chalamet’s highest-grossing domestic release ever, as it passes Interstellar’s $188 million (Wonka has a bit of a climb to go if it wants to pass that films $731 million worldwide total.) (For those who may not remember, Chalamet played a young Casey Affleck in the Christopher Nolan film.)
Coming in fourth is Anyone But You which is continuing to draw on its tremendous word of mouth for another $5.4 million added to its solid $64.2 million domestic total. With a budget of just $25 million and a worldwide total nearing the $100 million mark, this movie has been the true surprise of the past month. Personally, I am glad this movie is finding success as I found it to be a solid old school R-rated comedy that knew what it wanted to do and did it.
Rounding out the top five and making our predictions from Thursday spot on is Migration, with another $5.3 million added to its domestic total of $94.6 million. This one is following the model set forth by last year’s Puss in Boots as families continue to flock to it, giving it tremendous legs at the box office. The good news is that it still has a solid runway as the next animated family film to release is Kung Fu Panda 4,which doesn’t drop until March 8.
Sixth place belongs to Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom with $3.6 million, while the Ariana DeBose-fronted I.S.S sees a dismal seventh place opening with just $3 million. This is no laughing matter for the studio, which spent around $14 million on the film before marketing costs and will likely fail to recoup even that as the film has a horrible C- CinemaScore while not enough people saw it to give it an audience score yet! I did actually catch this one last week and thought it was okay. The first half was a decent claustrophobic thriller with an intriguing premise, while the second half just ran out of steam, resorting to space thriller cliches.
Rounding out the top ten is Night Swim with $2.7 million, followed by the George Clooney-directed true story The Boys in the Boat with $2.5 million. Seeing a bit of an awards season bump is the Emma Stone starring Poor Things which actually gained 14% this weekend with around $2 million in receipts. Hopefully, the more people that see the movie will help propel Stone onto that stage come Oscar Sunday, as I think her performance is one of the best we have seen in a while and blows the competition out of the water.
Did you make it to theaters this weekend? If so, let us know what you saw, and don’t forget to take our weekly poll where this week we take a trip to the past and ask: What is your Favorite Movie from 1994?
PLOT: A gym manager, Lou (Kristen Stewart), falls head-over-heels in love with a female bodybuilder, Jackie (Katy O’Brian). But, their bliss is short-lived, as the two end up getting tangled up with Lou’s criminal father (Ed Harris).
REVIEW: Rose Glass’s Love Lies Bleeding is a dark, stylized, ultra-mean-spirited neo-noir. It skates on the edge of perhaps being a little too self-aware for its good in the surreal finale, but it’s still a very entertaining and twisty thriller.
Kristen Stewart is perfectly cast as the laconic noir anti-hero who hooks up now and then with a girl (Anna Baryshnikov), she can’t stand but otherwise leads a lonely life with her cat. Being set in 1989, the constantly smoking Lou is trying to quit with books on tape that have little to no effect, only for her life to be blown up when she sets her eyes on Katy O’Brian’s impressively muscled bodybuilder.
Gender-swapping, the typical noir protagonist, is an intriguing choice, with Stewart playing it in a rough-and-tumble fashion. She’s mostly excellent, outside of a moment or two when she leans too heavily into the anti-hero tropes, allowing the film to border on parody. This includes a moment where Lou smokes a cigarette while trying to seduce Jackie after a fight that felt a bit like she was trying to satirize the kinds of alpha-male roles Mickey Rourke played back in the era this is set in, making it border on becoming a spoof rather than a homage. It feels out of touch with the rest of the film, which is pretty classically styled, outside of a controversial, surreal climax open to interpretation.
Katy O’Brian, who’s a rising star with roles in The Mandalorian and the upcoming Twisters, is impressive as the femme fatale bodybuilder. Both characters are prone to be abusive to each other at times, making this a darker love story than you might think. Glass isn’t interested in creating a fairy tale, with Stewart showing off a cruel streak several times in the movie that I imagine a lot of other actresses wouldn’t dare play. She’s always been brave with her choice of roles, and this is undoubtedly one of her roughest.
Stewart and O’Brian are well-supported by the great Ed Harris, who shows up sporting a Kim Mitchell-tyle skullet as Lou’s gun-dealing papa, with many bodies buried he doesn’t want people digging into. While psychotic, one thing the movie doesn’t do is make him homophobic, with him openly approving of Lou’s sexuality, even if in every other way he’s a nightmare. Dave Franco plays against type as Lou’s wife-beating brother-in-law, although the depiction of Jena Malone as his oft-hit wife is pretty one-note.
Glass has undoubtedly made a beautiful film in Love Lies Bleeding, opting for a pulpy aesthetic that suits the film. The score by Clint Mansel is terrific, as are the eighties new wave needle drops. It’s an interesting second film for Glass, a mash-up of classic neo-noir in the vein of John Dahl’s Red Rock West and the Coen Bros’ Blood Simple, with a synth wave undertone and horror movie-style graphic violence. It’s not perfect, and it won’t be for everyone. But it’s a wild, entertaining ride.
It is hard to believe (for people of a certain age), but the year 1994 was 30 years ago! For this week’s poll, we wanted to step back into the time machine and reminisce about what could possibly be considered one of the best years in cinema history. If, like me, you are in your thirties, 1994 holds a nostalgic place due to movies such as Blank Check, D2: The Mighty Ducks, Major League 2, Clifford, The Flintstones, Getting Even With Dad, Little Big League, Angels in the Outfield, The Little Rascals, Camp Nowhere, Richie Rich and Little Giants. The year also represented the huge breakout of comedy legend Jim Carrey as Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Mask, and Dumb and Dumber were all released during that single calendar year.
But it wasn’t just movies aimed at a child’s heart that were released in 1994. The year also saw some genuine masterpieces that have gone on to be heralded as some of the best films ever made. Whether it was the eventual Best Picture winner Forrest Gump or the film currently sitting at number one on the IMDB top movies of all time list: The Shawshank Redemption. 1994 would also be Quentin Tarantino’s true breakout year with his Oscar-winning film Pulp Fiction, while we would also be introduced to a new indie filmmaker named Kevin Smith with his film Clerks.
We would get two now classic Christmas films, The Santa Clause and Miracle on 34th Street,while also getting two films that have been labeled by some as the worst movies ever made with North and Exit To Eden.
1999 often gets hailed as the greatest year for movies ever, but after compiling this list, I’d say 1994 gives it a run for its money. Even though we did compile an exhaustive list of some of the best films from 1994, if you don’t see your favorite listed, click the “Other” button and let us know in the comments.
