Jeremy Saulnier, the acclaimed director behind Blue Ruin, Green Room, and Rebel Ridge, is back with a new thriller, Slayground. It’s been kept quietly under wraps for a while, but over the weekend, the teaser trailer was leaked online. So today, A24 has made that footage available.
Originally titled October until very recently, Slayground is a return to the violent thrillers Saulnier is known for. This is hardly a traditional teaser, instead looking like surveillance footage from inside a twisted Halloween attraction. Rumors are that this could be a clever ruse, and that this footage is from the opening minutes of the movie, which then turns out to be something completely different.
Cory Michael Smith leads the cast as a worker at the haunted attraction. Accused of mass murder, Smith’s character escapes custody and attempts to clear his name while avoiding the police on his trail. The title refers to the name of the place where Smith’s character works.
The footage then teases a fall release, possibly in time for Halloween, before sending you to RunLikeHell.com for more.
Also in the cast are Chase Sui Wonders, Sophie Wilde, Young Mazino, Stephen Root, James Badge Dale, Matty Matheson, Stanley Simons, and Imogen Poots.
If the plan is to have Slayground ready for Halloween, then expect a deeper trailer to follow soon.
Take this one with a grain of salt until official confirmation, but World of Reel is reporting that James McAvoy will star in Ben Wheatley’s next film, titled Fear the Reaper. What’s it about? Your guess is as good as mine.
The plan is for shooting to begin soon in London, although the film has yet to find a distributor. That shouldn’t be a problem. Wheatley has successfully moved from directing indie cult hits such as A Field in England, Kill List, and High-Rise to more mainstream stuff such as The Meg 2 and Normal.
Then again, “successful” is a relative term in this case. Wheatley’s fans might not like the move he’s made. I strongly prefer his later films such as Free Fire and Normal to his early work, even if that puts me in the minority.
Fear the Reaper sure does sound like a horror movie. McAvoy is more than familiar with the genre following It: Chapter Two, Split, and Speak No Evil. His latest film, Faith, premiered to solid reviews at TIFF and has a supernatural angle to it. You can check out an early review of it here.
Netflix has revealed the full trailer for The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth, returning Brad Pitt to the role that won him Best Supporting Actor at the Oscars. This time, however, it won’t be Quentin Tarantino behind the camera. The script is Tarantino’s, sure, but it’ll be Pitt’s other pal, David Fincher, directing the follow-up to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
Set in the summer of 1977, eight years after Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Booth’s run-in with the Manson Family, the film finds the former stuntman and body double working as a fixer, solving problems big and small in Los Angeles.
The huge ensemble includes Elizabeth Debicki, Scott Caan, Carla Gugino, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Peter Weller, Holt McCallany, JB Tadena, Corey Fogelmanis, Karren Karagulian, Barry Livingston, and Lauren Glazier, and Timothy Olyphant reprising his role as Lancer actor James Stacy.
Pitt and Fincher’s relationship runs pretty deep, as they’ve worked together three times previously: Seven, Fight Club, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. They almost worked together again in a sequel to World War Z, but Edward Berger took over that gig.
Tarantino’s part in this story isn’t over with the movie, either. He recently announced The Further Adventures of Cliff Booth, a novelization that he wrote, which will be published on December 8th.
The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth hits IMAX theaters exclusively on November 25th, followed by Netflix on December 23rd.
Zach Cregger has another hit on his hands. Resident Evil opened to a huge $60M, from 3,684 theaters for a $12K average. This is, easily, the best debut weekend for the franchise, and it has already matched the entire domestic theatrical run of Resident Evil: Afterlife in 2010. Then again, Cregger’s film is a complete break from the bloated Milla Jojovich films, which always fared better overseas. This new Resident Evil can boast something that the earlier films can’t, and that’s being a critical favorite with 95% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 91% audience score. Internationally, tack on another $48M for a 108$ overall worldwide.
2. Practical Magic 2– $12.1M/$50M
The spell was short-lived for Practical Magic 2, which fell 59% in its second weekend for just $12M and a $50M haul domestically. Worldwide, the Sandra Bullock/Nicole Kidman sequel to the 1998 has $76M after two weeks.
3. Spider-Man: Brand New Day– $6.5M/$944.5M
4. The Odyssey– $4.9M/$609.7M
5. Coyote vs. Acme– $4.5M/$54.8M
6. Runner– $3.18M/$11.9M
7. Daniel and the Fiery Furnace– $3.14M
8. Transformers: The Movie– $3.1M
In the “You’re getting old, Travis” category, Transformers: The Movie was re-released into theaters in celebration of its 40th anniversary! Good lord. My all-time favorite animated movie, which I saw in theaters as a kid and again for its 35th anniversary, earned $3.1M which is pretty damn good. Optimus would approve.
Vertical released the Ethan Hawke/Russell Crowe Depression era thriller The Weight into 1500 theaters for $2.1M. The film, about a convict recruited with other inmates to make a dangerous journey transporting gold, has received strong reviews (I absolutely loved it) for being a Friedkin-esque throwback.
Released in 2013, World War Z is the most expensive zombie movie ever made. It’s also the highest-grossing with $540M globally. After more than a decade of false starts, a sequel is finally coming together with All Quiet on the Western Front director Edward Berger and, surprisingly, a return from Brad Pitt.
Deadline confirms that Paramount has inked deals with Berger and Pitt for World War Z 2, with a script by Utopia writer Dennis Kelly. The original movie was based, very loosely, on Max Brooks’ acclaimed epistolary novel, an oral history of a world overrun by a zombie outbreak. In truth, the movie barely resembles Brooks’ book at all other than the title.
Plot details on the sequel are under wraps for now.
World War Z was a huge hit, but also one of the most tortured productions in recent memory. There were massive rewrites and a third act that was completed dropped in order to make it more of an action movie. As for the sequel, Pitt tried for years to get it done with his pal David Fincher (who he’ll work with on The Further Adventures of Cliff Booth), and it nearly happened in 2019 until the Chinese government banned movies with zombies.
Berger follows up Conclave and Ballad of a Small Player with this World War Z sequel, finally landing the franchise film he’s been eyeing for months. He’s also attached to a new Jason Bourne movie that will have to go on the back burner.
Coming out of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, my guess was there were a few real contenders for the coveted People’s Choice Award, often a precursor to the Best Picture frontrunner. Those picks were Being Heumann, I Play Rocky, Elsinore, The Debut, and La Bola Negra. Well, TIFF has now come to a close, and the award went to Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi’s La Bola Negra, which will get a big Academy Awards push from Netflix. I do think this is the best shot Netflix has ever had at winning the big prize. It’s a massive film, spanning decades and many generations, to tell a story that’s relevant to the struggle of the LGBTQ community right now.
The runner-up was Peter Farrelly’s crowd-pleasing I Play Rocky, with a breakout performance by Anthony Ippolito. Coming in third was Siân Heder’s Judith Heumann biopic, Being Heumann.
The International People’s Choice Award did, in fact, go to Simon Stone’s Elsinore, led by a tremendous Andrew Scott performance as actor Ian Charleson. Lee Chang-dong’s Possible Love came in second, while Hur Jin-ho’s The Assassin(s) was next.
The complete list of TIFF award winners is below. You can find my complete coverage of the festival, including reviews of all winners, here.
People’s Choice Award presented by Rogers: La Bola Negra, dirs. Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi
First runner-up: I Play Rocky, dir. Peter Farrelly
Second runner-up: Being Heumann, dir. Siân Heder
International People’s Choice Award presented by Rogers: Elsinore, dir. Simon Stone
First runner-up: Possible Love, dir. Lee Chang-dong
Second runner-up: The Assassin(s), dir. Hur Jin-ho
People’s Choice Documentary Award presented by Rogers: Darlene Love: I Know Where I’ve Been, dir. Barry Avrich
First runner-up: Black Sunflowers, dir. James Marcus Haney
Second runner-up: The Ultra Runner dir. Mila Aung-Thwin
People’s Choice Midnight Madness Award presented by Rogers: Ladies and Gentlemen, Brian Mulroney, dir. Matthew Rankin
First runner-up: The Spiral, dir. Paolo Strippoli
Second runner-up: Arrested Memory, dir. SABU
PLATFORM PRIZE
Platform Prize: Angh, dir. Theja Rio | India
Platform jury’s statement: “The Platform Prize goes to Angh. For its refreshing perspective, strength of filmmaking, and deeply resonant portrait of a world. We praise the filmmaker’s vision, audacity and courage.”
Special Jury Award: Brace Your Heart (Garrat Du Váimmu), dir. Amanda Kernell | Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Bulgaria
Platform jury’s statement: “We would like to recognize Brace Your Heart with an Honourable Mention. For how its apparent simplicity reflects the complex nature of the world today, its powerful central performance and beautiful visual journey.”
SHORT CUTS AWARDS
Short Cuts Award for Best International Short Film: MAMMALIA, dir. Elia Kalogianni | Greece, Netherlands
Short Cuts jury’s statement: “We were struck by the audacity of a film willing to expose what we would rather not admit about ourselves and concepts we thought we were comfortable with. Bold, visceral, and formally assured, it explores the toxic relationship we don’t examine enough with those around us. It takes the grotesque and makes it disturbingly relatable, forcing opposing sides of a double standard into the same frame. What first feels extreme slowly reveals itself as something much more unsettling: a reflection of our own behavior, and of a society whose contradictions urgently deserve to be challenged.”
Honourable Mention: The Spectacular Death of Prisca, dir. Kaelo Iyizoba | Nigeria
Short Cuts jury’s statement: “We wanted to give an Honourable Mention to a film that took us on a completely different kind of ride: a delightful mashup of melodrama, action and comedy that reminded us of the pure joy of making and watching cinema. Executed with remarkable precision in both filmmaking and performance, it turns family dynamics into something heightened, absurd and unexpectedly revealing. We were especially struck by how original it felt without ever seeming to chase originality. Choices that many filmmakers might hesitate to make were handled with such confidence and ease that the film created its own singular tone, full of personality and completely free of pretension.”
Short Cuts Award for Best Canadian Short Film: Fight Kid, dir. Michael Del Monte | Canada
Short Cuts jury’s statement: “A film that is at once gripping and cautionary, offering a sharp dissection of inherited masculinity and ambition. We were taken by its enigmatic and electric journey, and by the unique way it blurs performance and reality, making it almost impossible to disengage from the screen.”
Honourable Mention: Almost Pink, dir. Justine Prince | Canada
Short Cuts jury’s statement: “A film that helps us address another shameful and traumatic experience we fear to share. Disturbing but vital, it confronts the sexual exploitation of teenagers and the social and economic forces that allow it to happen. With remarkable confidence, the film builds and sustains an unbearably tense and terrifying atmosphere, demanding that we pay attention to a reality too often kept out of sight.”
Short Cuts Award for Best Animated Short Film: Into The Betaverse, dirs. Varun Raman, Tom Hancock | United Kingdom
Short Cuts jury’s statement: “This film is a venue where ridiculous meets the profound. It is a surprisingly emotional comedy about friendship and finding love in unexpected places. This confident hybrid of live action and animation is unapologetically primitive and loose. Which, in an era of AI smoothing, that roughness only makes its humanity feel more present.”
Honourable Mention: Terminal, dir. Alexandre Siqueira | Portugal, Spain, France
Short Cuts jury’s statement: “We shared the joy of discovering a film that knows how to be poetic and surreal without becoming overwhelming. It creates a delicate allegory of death and loss while giving us the space to sit with those emotions. Its animation is crisp and full of detail, but never calls attention to itself at the expense of the story. The style serves the film’s quest to connect rather than competing with it.”
FIPRESCI PRIZE
FIPRESCI Prize: Ancestors, dir. David Turpin | Ireland, United Kingdom
FIPRESCI jury’s statement: “In this story of lost people finding each other, we saw an extraordinary command of translating the dreamy landscape of memories and recollections into compassionate cinematic language. It immersed us in someone else’s life, a time of love and turmoil, a past that returns through photographs and memories to haunt, bring longing, and give hope at once.”
NETPAC AWARD
NETPAC Award: Thirteen in Gaza, dir. Hosam Abu Dan | Palestine
NETPAC jury’s statement: “Against unfolding genocide, Thirteen in Gaza by Hosam Abu Dan turns suffering into neither spectacle nor victimhood, but into riveting images of life in all its complexity. A brave, intimate film that announces a major new voice in cinema.”
BEST CANADIAN DISCOVERY AWARD
Best Canadian Discovery Award: Smudge the Blades, dir. Cody Lightning | Canada
Canadian Discovery jury’s statement: “Smudge the Blades is electric. It carries heart and humour in equal measure, while never shying away from the challenges faced by Indigenous communities caused by the ongoing treatment of Indigenous people and colonization of Indigenous lands. Rooted in joy and resilience, Smudge the Blades challenges familiar genres by placing Indigenous voices at the centre of a story filled with hope, offering a radical path forward. Cody’s deeply empathetic directing and his eye for character, has resulted in a film that is propulsive, funny and furious. An assured sophomore feature about family, ambition — and the transformational power of community.”
Honourable Mention: The Black Box is Orange, dir. Yuula Benivolski | Canada
Canadian Discovery jury’s statement: “A childhood impacted by settler ideology is unpacked through painful memories and the striking use of archival images. For its sensitive, brave and challenging formal dexterity, showcasing a nuanced depiction of the systematic erasure of Palestinian histories while delicately threading the needle between personal and political, we award The Black Box is Orange with the Honourable Mention for this year’s Discovery Award.”
BEST CANADIAN FEATURE FILM AWARD
Best Canadian Feature Film Award: Sunburn, dir. Serville Poblete | Canada
Honourable Mention: Man in Motion: The Rick Hansen Story, dir. Adrian Buitenhuis | Canada
I’m happy to offer DC area readers the chance to attend a free early screening of Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty! starring Rinko Kikuchi. The film earned director Josef Kubota Wladyka Sundance’s Directing Award for Drama earlier this year.
Synopsis: Haru and Luis love competing in Tokyo’s ballroom dance scene, but after tragedy strikes, Haru withdraws into isolation. When friends coax her back to the studio, she develops an infatuation with the new instructor. She must face what comes next as sparks fly.
The screening takes place on Monday, September 21st at 7:00pm at AMC Georgetown. If you’d like to attend, RSVP here now! Please remember, all screenings are first come first served and you’ll need to arrive early to ensure seating. Enjoy the show!
Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty! opens September 25th from Sony Pictures Classics.
The Middleburg Film Festival continues to set the highest bar for movie lovers in the DMV, and the 14th edition is shaping up to be one of the best. The first round of announcements was made for this year’s festival, which is set to run from October 15th to October 18th. Kicking off the event on Thursday is Jesse Eisenberg’s phenomenal The Debut, starring Academy Award winner Julianne Moore, who will be in attendance with Eisenberg for a post-screening Q&A. Moore stars alongside Paul Giamatti, Halle Bailey, Bernadette Peters, Havana Rose Liu, and Eisenberg in the film about New Jersey housewife Mona Friedman, who lands a small role in a community theater production and transforms into a zealous method actor willing to do anything to protect the artistic integrity of her part.
The Centerpiece Film is another crowd-pleaser, I Play Rocky, starring Anthony Ippolito as Sylvester Stallone in the story of the making of Rocky, as Sly struggles to get his screenplay made while refusing to relinquish his dream of playing the title role himself. The film is directed by Oscar-winning Green Book director, Peter Farrelly. Actors Jay Duplass and P.J. Byrne, who portray Rocky director John G. Avildsen and producer Irwin Winkler, will be on hand for a post-screening Q&A.
Léa Seydoux will be in attendance to receive the Outstanding Achievement in Acting Award for her performance in Gentle Monster, from writer/director Marie Kreutzer. The film stars Seydoux as a concert pianist whose life is shattered when her husband is arrested and accused of an unspeakable crime, forcing her to confront how little she may know about the man closest to her while protecting their young son. Also in the cast are Jella Haase, Laurence Rupp, and legendary French actress Catherine Deneuve.
Danny Boyle’s Rupert Murdoch tabloid drama Ink will also be at the festival, with two of its major figures receiving accolades. Academy Award nominee Daniel Pemberton will receive the Distinguished Composer Award for his tremendous Ink and Project Hail Mary scores. Ink star Jack O’Connell will also be on hand to receive the Spotlight Actor Award for his performance as Larry Lamb, whom Murdoch hired to run The Sun tabloid in 1969.
Jordan Firstman will receive the Breakthrough Filmmaker Award for his directorial debut, Club Kid, which he wrote, directed, and stars in. The film about a New York City club promoter whose hard-partying lifestyle is upended by the arrival of the young son he never knew he had, was nominated for two awards at Cannes.
Finally, Oscar winner Oliva Colman will be a Special Guest at Middleburg with two films, followed by post-screening panels. The first is the romantic fairy tale Wicker, from writer/director duo Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson (Save Yourselves!) and co-starring Alexander Skarsgård. Colman stars as an outcast fisherwoman who commissions a local basketmaker to create her a husband out of wicker, played by Skarsgård, sparking outrage in her small seaside village.
Colman also appears alongside a breathtaking Andrew Scott in Elsinore. She plays trailblazing doctor Margaret Johnson, who helped care for Chariots of Fire actor Ian Charleson, who, while gravely ill with AIDS, delivered a celebrated final performance as Hamlet at London’s National Theatre. Also attending with Elsinore is Academy Award-winning makeup and Hair designer Nadia Stacey, who will be presented with MFF’s Distinguished Makeup & Hair Design Award.
For more on the Middleburg Film Festival, visit here. Tickets go on sale in early October when the full slate is announced.
You can find early reviews of Elsinore, The Debut, Ink, I Play Rocky, and Gentle Monsterhere now!
Zack Snyder’s Escape from New York remake won’t be contemporary, as some expected. Instead, the film will be set in 1997, the same year as John Carpenter’s classic, and told from the perspective of 1981, the year that film was released.
“The movie is going to be set in ’97,” Snyder told the Happy Sad Confused podcast. “It’s sort of from the perspective of 1981.”
He continued, “The war between the United States police force and the criminal elements takes place, I think, July 9th, 1981, which is the release date of the original movie. And then the rest is pretty much Escape from New York.”
Snyder was just a day off; the release date was July 10th 1981.
Kurt Russell starred as Snake Plissken in Carpenter’s classic Escape from New York. The crucial turning point of the story was in 1988 when the crime rate exploded to 400%, so Snyder is adjusting things a little.
Snyder says the film still holds up and works as a satire for today.
“It’s a way that satire can get to us,” Snyder said. “We can make comments about government and all the overreach, or whatever you want to call it — the People’s Liberation Front of America. All that stuff is in the headlines. So I think it’s quite current in some ways.”
When asked by host Josh Horowitz if he’d found his Snake Plissken, Snyder teased, “I may,” and said the iconic eyepatch look will remain.
Last month, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who starred in Snyder’s Watchmen and appeared in Batman v Superman, revealed that he’d been texting the director for a role. Snyder confirmed it, but declined to say if he was signed.
Something tells me Morgan will be part of Escape from New York, but probably not as Plissken. I think he’ll shoot for someone younger. Snyder wouldn’t confirm if it was someone he’d worked with before. Just don’t let it be Fra Fee! Stuart Martin, on the other hand, might be able to do it.
Zack Snyder has been talking up a Director’s Cut, a “Snyder Cut”, of Sucker Punch for almost a decade. I’m sure somebody out there REALLY wants this to happen, because somehow there must be a better version of that movie. Not sure I buy that, and that comes from someone who defended it more than most. Snyder’s been talking a lot lately, following the world premiere of The Last Photograph (which I attended and reviewed), and he tells the Happy Sad Confused podcast that a new version is “definitely on the docket.”
A lot of what Snyder had to say sounds like wishful thinking, such as the idea that he can get the original actresses back to do additional ADR work. He says that he’s waiting for “some licenses to completely finish” before moving forward. In the past he’s said the additional footage has already been shot, so it shouldn’t be too difficult.
Here’s how Snyder previously described the fantasy film, led by Emily Browning, Abbie Cornish, Jamie Chung, Vanessa Hudgens, and Jena Malone, as women in a mental institution who escape into action-filled alternate worlds as part of a plan to escape…
“It’s a protest movie in a lot of ways. It’s a movie about genre. I was asked at the time ‘Why did you dress the girls like that?’ and I’d always go ‘I didn’t dress them like that, you did.’ I always saw it as an indictment of, in some ways, popular culture. I think at the time I was criticized for it being the opposite, like, some sort of sexist rant. It was fun to make and I still love it to this day.”
It’s a female empowerment movie from a guy who has never been able to write women, so it was just a mistake all around. His latest film, The Last Photograph, has three women in it and all they do is show their tits. The female gaze is not his strong suit.
