When Helen Shivers was murdered on July 4th, 1997, there was no doubt she was a goner. And yet, Sarah Michelle Gellar keeps getting asked if she will turn up in the upcoming I Know What You Did Last Summer. But the reason she won’t is precisely the same reason she wasn’t in the 1998 sequel. Yeah, she’s dead.
Sarah Michelle Gellar recently told People that there isn’t a chance she will turn up in the planned fourth installment in the I Know What You Did Last Summer series, bluntly confirming, “I am dead.” However, she’ll still have a role behind the scenes, saying, “My best friend [Jennifer Kaytin Robinson] is directing it, so we joke that I have an unofficial job, which is I am continuity. So I’m always the one telling her, ‘Well, that would happen, or that wouldn’t happen with those characters,’ so I do have kind of an unofficial job title.”
So while we won’t see Sarah Michelle Gellar on the screen, she does sort of hit on another point of sequels that come years and sometimes decades after the last movie: it’s not necessarily that we need another, it’s that the nostalgia brings us back to a time that that movie helps encapsulate. Let’s look at another horror franchise launched around the same time, also through the lens of some supporting characters. Did we need to see Randy in Scream 3? Possibly not but his video tape enhanced the movie and laid out what was truly at stake that time around. What about Billy Loomis turning up in 2022’s Scream? To me, it was pretty forced and tried to be a piece of fan service that the story could have survived without. Then again, this could in theory be an approach for the filmmakers to take if they really wanted Helen Shivers back for the next movie…
As of now, both Jennifer Love Hewitt (Julie James) and Freddie Prinze Jr. (Ray Bronson) are in talks to return to the franchise, while Brandy (sequel addition Karla Wilson) could also be making a return. With or without Sarah Michelle Gellar (and Ryan Phillippe), fans of the originals will no doubt be bumping this entry up on their list of most anticipated horror movies.
Do you think Sarah Michelle Gellar could somehow be utilized in the I Know What You Did Last Summer sequel?
Put the town on alert! The 1997 volcano film Dante’s Peak will be erupting into a new 4K Ultra-High Definition Blu-ray sometime next year. According to Blu-ray.com, the Universal Pictures film will be getting a new physical media release courtesy of Kino Lorber. The film comes from director Roger Donaldson, who is known for films like the Kevin Costner suspense film No Way Out, the Tom Cruise bartender drama Cocktail, and the sci-fi horror Species. Dante’s Peak stars Pierce Brosnan, Linda Hamilton, Jamie Renée Smith, Jeremy Foley, and Elizabeth Hoffman.
The movie is a part of the often-occurring dual release of movies with similar plots, with examples that include Armageddon and Deep Impact, Antz and A Bug’s Life and White House Down and Olympus Has Fallen. Dante’s Peak would be released the same year as the other notable volcano film Volcano. Volcano would star Tommy Lee Jones and sport a more grand premise of a volcano being discovered right in the city of Los Angeles. Dante’s Peak would end up outgrossing Volcano at the worldwide box office.
The description reads, “Volcanologist Harry Dalton (Pierce Brosnan) and Mayor Rachel Wando (Linda Hamilton), finally convince the unbelieving populace that the big one is about to hit and that they need to evacuate immediately, only to discover her two children have gone up the mountain to get their grandmother. With Earth’s clock racing against them, they must rescue the kids and grandma before the volcano explodes in a fury of flame and ash a million times more powerful than an atomic bomb.”
Not much as been announced by way of special features, but the technical specs read:
Video Codec: HEVC / H.265 Resolution: Native 4K (2160p) HDR: Dolby Vision, HDR10+ Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Audio TBA
Subtitles English SDH
Discs 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Disc Two-disc set (2 BD)
Packaging Slipcover in original pressing
Playback 4K Blu-ray: Region free 2K Blu-ray: Region A
One, two, Freddy’s coming for you…OK, maybe he’s not, as Robert Englund thinks he is far too old to ever don the hat and sweater of Freddy Krueger ever again. But he does have a more informal idea on how he could if the chance ever came up…
Speaking with Bloody Disgusting, Robert Englund confirmed that he is done playing Freddy Krueger in live-action movies but thinks there is a possible route in animation. “I could possibly voice a really high-end, animated version. That would be nice to be asked to do, but I know I can’t do the fight scenes more than one take now, one angle. I just can’t be snapping my head or anything like that. I’m an old dog! Give me a break.”
Considering Robert Englund is just a few years away from being an octogenarian, we’re totally fine with him sitting out any more A Nightmare on Elm Street entries. While he still has his wit and remains as sharp as Freddy’s glove, the viewer would know just how phony it would all feel. Really, it’s just not how we want to see Freddy.
One way we can’t wait to see Freddy, however, is in the upcoming 4K restoration of A Nightmare on Elm Street (stree date: October 15th), which Robert Englund himself is hyping. On the transfer, he confirmed, “This is gonna be better than the original release…There’s a lot of color work in these movies for when the nightmares begin. When you graduate into that dream world, they did different kinds of lightings. That should be really pronounced in this. It’s just going to be pristine.” Englund added, “I’m encouraging everybody, because — even though it was a great thing with the family, a cold pizza on the coffee table and a blanket around your shoulders, and your dad’s in the kitchen putting knives on his fingers to scare you — this will look so good. You can turn the lights down and have fun, and maybe bring somebody in to see it that’s never seen it before, experience it that way.”
Most of us horror fans were pretty hype for this transfer to begin with – and you know we here at JoBlo.com love our physical media (and you should, too!)– but now that Robert Englund is encouraging us to pick it up, we almost have no choice to work that disc into our spooky season rotation.
The Lonely Island is back and boy do they have a pitch; just hear them out! It has been more than six years since the comedy group last released one of their famed SNL Digital Shorts, but the boys returned during this week’s episode of Saturday Night Live to drop a new banger…so to speak.
“Sushi Glory Hole” finds Andy Samberg and Akiva Schaffer (two founding members of The Lonely Island, along with Jorma Taccone) entering a meeting with top execs played by Bowen Yang, Maya Rudolph and Kenan Thompson. Their idea? Well, let’s see if these ill rhymes do the trick: You forgot to eat, now you’re out and about but you wanna be discreet / Can’t be eatin’ omakase in the middle of the street / Then you open the app: SGH is all over the map / So you head to a club, hit the bathroom stall / Find the sushi-size hole in the bathroom wall / Then make a wish, and prepare for some shockingly high grade fish! Now this is culinary innovation! You can watch the full short below:
Andy Samberg was on double duty on the second episode of the season, as he also played Doug Emhoff (to Rudolph’s Kamala Harris), a role he debuted during the season 50 premiere of SNL last week. With the election ramping up, Samberg can expect to have a steady role for at least another month.
The Lonely Island’s last Digital Short came with 2018’s “Natalie’s Rap 2.0”, the follow-up to one of the best, 2006’s “Natalie’s Rap”. That number – which found Natalie Portman vulgarly reacting to fans – would end up being featured on the band’s first album, Incredibad. Also on that album were “Lazy Sunday” (which launched the SNL Digital Shorts into the stratosphere), “Jizz in My Pants” and holiday staple “Dick in a Box.” Another track, “I’m on a Boat”, would be nominated for a Grammy, while their sophomore album, Turtleneck & Chain, would be up for Best Comedy Album.
What do you think of The Lonely Island’s return to SNL? What is your favorite song/video of theirs? Let us know below!
Genre favorite Joe Dante hasn’t directed a movie in a decade. Yet, some of his beloved ‘80s movies have found or are finding new lives in the 21st century. With the second season of the Gremlins animated series now out and word coming last month that The ‘Burbs would be getting the small screen treatment from Peacock with Keke Palmer leading, Joe Dante gave his perspective on the projects and how involved — or distant — he will be.
After Gremlins 2: The New Batch proved to be a bomb, the idea of a third ever seeing direct sunlight fizzled out. But with renewed popularity in the series, it’s no surprise chatter of a threequel popped up. But Joe Dante isn’t quite sure he would be behind the camera — or that it should even happen. “That’s up to the audience. The fact is that it’s too big a property for somebody not to make something. But it’s been difficult for people to wrap their heads around, ‘Exactly how are we going to do this?’ This series is a brilliant answer to that problem because it’s a prequel, and it’s animated, and it’s the perfect next step in the Gremlins saga.”
As for The ‘Burbs, Joe Dante inadvertently hinted that he wanted to be involved in the TV series but insists that any comments he made were more critical than they were taken. “I think my actual comment was, ‘How are they going to make a whole TV series out of that story?’ As opposed to, ‘I want to be the one to do it.’” He added, “Good luck to them. It’s kind a one-off story…It’s always nice when things have a shelf life.”
While we’d be absolutely down for Joe Dante taking to the director’s chair for a Gremlins 3 (he serves as consulting producer on Secrets of the Mogwai / The Wild Batch), the idea of a TV version of The ‘Burbs does seem a bit unnecessary, at least at this point. For it to be a success, it would best serve the project to bring a different twist than what the 1989 movie offered. Then again, Ricky Butler said…
Do you want to see Joe Dante return to directing? What sort of project should it be?
Despite being a sequel to a movie that made a billion dollars worldwide, Joker: Folie à Deux has posted a truly disastrous opening. According to Deadline, the film didn’t even crack $40 million this weekend, with them estimating a horrible $39 million finish. That’s over $20 million less than we expected in our box office predictions, which is crazy as just a few months ago, no one would have thought it conceivable that the film would open to anything less than $90 or so million. The $39 million opening is even worse than the $55 million opening posted by The Flash, and The Marvels, which opened with $46 million. Both openings were considered disastrous, and Joker: Folie à Deux looks like it might not even cross $100 million domestically.
So what happened? It seems fans didn’t go for Todd Phillips’s rather ambitious idea to make this a musical, with it peppered with fantasy musical sequences in between some rather dull courtroom melodrama. The star pairing of Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga wasn’t enough to win over fanboys or general audiences, who slammed it with an almost unheard of (for a comic book movie) D CinemaScore rating. With word of mouth like this, expect this Joker film to quickly crash and burn at the box office over the coming weeks.
Meanwhile, The Wild Robot held up quite well this week, making $18.7 million, a fall of just 46%, for a $63.9 million total. While it’s not going to be a huge blockbuster as far as animated movies go, expect it to have strong legs in the weeks ahead thanks to its terrific reviews (including a rave from our own Steve Seigh). Beetlejuice Beetlejuice also held firm at the box office, with it dipping 36% to $10.3 million and a massive $265.5 million total, which is a much-needed win for WB, who are no doubt reeling from Furiosa, Horizon, and Joker 2 all flopping.
Sadly, Paramount’s very decent Transformers One continued to struggle to find an audience despite good word of mouth. It only made $5.35 million this weekend, with a $47 million total. Blumhouse’s Speak No Evil continued to pull in solid numbers, with a $2.8 million fifth-place finish and a $32 million domestic total.
In a surprising move, YouTube stars Sam & Colby managed to eke out a sixth-place finish for their film, Sam & Colby: The Legends of Paranormal, which made $1.77 million, for a $2 million total. With more YouTubers expanding their reach, expect more movies like this to start showing up in the top 10. In seventh place was Deadpool & Wolverine, which made $1.55 million for a $633.8 million total, with it also showing up on digital this week (Disney made a wise move holding it for so long). Lionsgate had yet another flop this weekend, with their Wonder prequel, White Bird, having an abysmal $1.5 million opening. Mubi’s The Substance has proven to be a solid art-house horror hit, with the $1.4 million weekend almost allowing it to crack the $10 million mark. Finally, Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis lost a whopping 73% of its audience to earn just over $1 million this weekend for a terrible $6.45 million total.
Next weekend seems like it will be disappointing, as it’s fairly light on new releases, and Hollywood no doubt thought Joker 2 would be packing them in. There likely won’t be any real fireworks until Smile 2 opens in two weeks.
Did you go see Joker 2 this weekend? Let us know in the comments!
Keanu Reeves had a wipeout of a different kind over the weekend, as the actor spun out in his pro auto racing debut during the Toyota GR Cup in Indianapolis. Reeves had no injuries and ended up finishing 25th.
Keanu Reeves has had a number of passions outside of acting, including music, motorcycles and surfing. This foray into auto racing, however, could have been a deadly one, but thankfully Reeves got through his accident without a collision with another car or into an object and pressed on, completing the 45-minute race. Reeves has previously driven in the Toyota Grand Prix as a celebrity racer, even winning back in 2009.
Interestingly, Keanu Reeves was also promoting another project of his, BRZRKR, the comic book series he created with Matt Kindt. As it turns out, Reeves was driving the BRZRKR car. This past summer, Reeves’ novel The Book of Elsewhere was released, expanding on the world established by the series. As for BRZRKR itself, the comic books follow “an immortal warrior’s 80,000-year fight through the ages. The man known only as “B” is half-mortal and half-god, cursed and compelled to violence… even at the sacrifice of his sanity. But after wandering the earth for centuries, B may have finally found a refuge – working for the U.S. government to fight the battles too violent and too dangerous for anyone else. In exchange, B will be granted the one thing he desires – the truth about his endless blood-soaked existence…and how to end it.”
Of course, Keanu Reeves isn’t the only celebrity to have a love of race cars, joining the likes of Paul Walker, Tom Cruise, Paul Newman, and more. But probably the one who has taken it to the next level with the most fervor as of late is Frankie Muniz, who has actually raced as a NASCAR driver.
Keanu Reeves will be pretty busy outside of the race track, too, as he is voicing Shadow in December’s Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and returning to the world of John Wick with Ballerina, due out in June 2025.
Which Keanu Reeves project are you most looking forward to?
Plot: After a devastating loss, Esteban “La Máquina” Osuna is at a low point in his boxing career. Lucky for him, his manager and best friend Andy Lujan is determined to get him back on top. But when a nefarious organization rears its head, the stakes of this rematch become life or death. While struggling to mount a comeback, Esteban must also juggle his own personal demons and protect his family, including his ex-wife Irasema, a journalist who finds herself on a collision course with the dark side of the boxing world.
Review: While many boxing films and series have focused on the sports aspect, La Maquina skews towards the fallout and repercussions of being a successful athlete. Lifelong friends Diego Luna and Gael Garcia Bernal have starred in four films together and produced countless more, but La Maquina is their first television project. Coming twenty-three years since they co-starred in the classic Y Tu Mama Tambien, Luna and Bernal have experienced success together and apart, with each having been involved in the worlds of Star Warsand the Marvel Cinematic Universe, respectively. Told across six episodes, La Maquina is a powerful drama that showcases what Luna, Bernal, and Eiza Gonzalez are capable of in a narrative that originally treads familiar territory before differentiating itself as the plot unfolds. As Hulu’s first original Spanish language effort, this impressive production blends sports, drama, and humor for a unique series event.
La Maquina follows the lifelong friendship between boxer Esteban “La Maquina” Osuna (Gael Garcia Bernal) and his manager Andy (Diego Luna). Esteban is at the tail end of his successful career as a fighter and is poised for a championship match when he loses spectacularly. Desperately needing a financial windfall dependent on Esteban, Andy orchestrates a quick rematch and does whatever it takes to ensure it goes off in their favor. All the while, Esteban contemplates his life after boxing, including his relationship with his two sons and his ex-wife, Irasema (Eiza Gonzalez). Esteban also must face the fallout of a career of getting punched as he begins experiencing hallucinations, which may be a sign of a more serious medical diagnosis. As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that more than just athletics is at play as a sinister force returns to collect what they are owed.
Both Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna are immeasurably talented performers and have distinct characters in La Maquina. Esteban is the more grounded character whose challenges romantically and emotionally are subtly played on screen as Bernal carries a full range of emotion in his eyes alone. We learn so much about his life, especially his difficult childhood, through flashbacks that Bernal must encapsulate all of that through facial expressions. Conversely, Diego Luna is almost unrecognizable as Andy, with a wig, lip fillers, make-up, and more cosmetic enhancements that do little to hide Andy’s massive inferiority complex, which is accentuated by a creepy relationship he shares with his mother, Josefina (Lucia Mendez). As their friendship begins to crack under the immense stress of their business relationship and familial bonds, Bernal and Luna portray Esteban and Andy as fictional shadows of their real-life friendship, much like how their chemistry came to the screen in Y Tu Mama Tambien, Luna and Bernal manage to imbue these characters with a similar bond decades after that classic Alfonso Cuaron film.
As good as Bernal and Luna are here, Eiza Gonzalez is phenomenal. Despite being over a decade younger than her co-stars, Gonzalez holds her own as the veteran journalist and ex-wife of Esteban. There is definitely a love shared between these three characters that runs deep, and Irasema serves as a voice of reason, as well as the one who calls Esteban and Andy on their lies and excuses. Gonzalez has shown a prowess for strong leading characters, which she carries into this supporting role. Because La Maquina is fully in Spanish, all three actors show that they and the supporting cast can bring as much intensity to roles regardless of the language of the project. Set in various locations ranging from multiple in Mexico to Las Vegas and beyond, La Maquina often straddles the line between genres but never feels like a foreign production but rather a global one.
Based on an original story developed by Gael Garcia Bernal, Diego Luna, Julian Herbert, and Monika Revilla, La Maquina is directed by Gabriel Ripstein and has scripts by Marco Ramirez, Andres Fischer-Centeno, and others. The six-episode series starts out dramatically with a long take that shifts into some elements of humor before completely shifting into drama again. There is a surreal nature to some of the story, which begins to take on more complex elements involving drugs, murder, crime, abuse, and some other reveals, which I will not spoil here. By the penultimate episode, La Maquina reaches a precipice that risks alienating the audience with a bold plot twist that surely pays off in the finale. Because the series is the brainchild of the two lead actors, La Maquina carries an additional heft thanks to the personal investment from both Luna and Bernal.
La Maquina is more focused on the fallout and tangential impact of boxing rather than being a sports story. Sport is key to who Esteban Osuna is and how Andy reaches the level of success that he does, but unlike the short-lived FX series Lights Out or the Rocky and Creed franchises, La Maquina uses boxing as an entry into the lives of these characters while exploring the depths that Esteban and Andy must go to as they try to reconcile their personal demons with their public success. Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna are phenomenal actors in everything they do, but they reach a different level when they work together. La Maquina is a wonderful companion piece to their previous collaborations and deserves to be seen by fans of the actors and those who love solid dramatic stories.
La Maquina premieres all six episodes on October 9th on Hulu.
We sometimes too often think of directors as straight-faced stiffs, their only passion in life being celluloid. But with all of the pressures that go into making a major motion picture, of course they want to unwind, too. And quite a few do it with video games, with some of its biggest fans found in the likes of Guillermo del Toro, John Carpenter and even Steven Spielberg. Just don’t give Steve a controller!
Max Spielberg recently said of his father, “He loves gaming, he’s the one that got me into it. He plays games, he’s a big PC gamer and so that’s kind of our bonding point as well. He’s like, ‘Hey what’s good, what new Call of Duty should I be playing, send me a list of the top five shooters, I’ll get ‘em downloaded and we can play ‘em together when you come over to the house.’” OK, we all have to admit that the 77-year-old wanting to bond with his nearly 40-year-old son is cool, but that he wants to do it over video games is immensely so.
Max Spielberg added, “It’s always a Call of Duty. He loves Call of Duty, he enjoys the campaign. He’s big into story games and I’m always trying to get him to play Uncharted, y’know ‘It’s Indiana Jones, you’d appreciate this’, and he’s always, ‘I can’t do controllers, I only do keyboard and mouse.’” Steven Spielberg might have his worlds collide soon enough, as the upcoming Indy game Indiana Jones and the Great Circle will be available on PC. But will he play it…?
But it’s not just the PC that Steven Spielberg huddles behind, it’s his phone – damn kids… “He also plays a lot of mobile games, he’s big into Golf Clash and stuff like that, anything he can play on the side. ‘Is your game coming to mobile?’”
Steven Spielberg is, of course, no stranger to the world of video games and has a lengthy history with them, contributing extensively to Electronic Arts and Lucasfilm Games, formerly known as LucasArts. Spielberg’s own Saving Private Ryan has also been credited for helping launch the Call of Duty series, with a number of entries – including the very first – being set during World War II. And who can forget all of the great video games more directly adapted from his movies, like Atari’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial? Oh… Outside of those, here’s an oft-forgotten one: computer game Steven Spielberg’s Director’s Chair, which, while promising sounding, stands more as an oddball piece of media than anything. Where else can you get a collaboration between Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino and Penn & Teller?
If you could recommend one video game to Steven Spielberg, what would it be? Drop your pick below!
Joker: Folie a Deux is proving to be an all-out disaster for Warner Bros/ DC. The original film was an Oscar-winner for star Joaquin Phoenix and grossed a mighty billion dollars worldwide, but the sequel is having the most disastrous comic book movie opening since The Marvels, and with a D CinemaScore, it’s the kind of sequel which can’t help but tarnish the original to some degree.
All this got us thinking—what were other REALLY bad sequels? Sure, a lot of sequels are disappointing (think Iron Man 2 or Thor: The Dark World), but which have been all-out franchise-killing disasters? We’ve compiled a bunch of them into our poll below, so let us know—and if we’ve missed any, make sure to chime in via the comments!
