AD
Home Blog Page 1701

Jordan Peele May Be Eyeing A ‘Candyman’ Remake

By
John Nolan
-

You can’t go to a horror convention anywhere in the country without seeing Tony Todd there, and if he’s there somebody is going to ask about a Candyman remake. The underrated horror franchise didn’t make Todd a star, he was well-known among genre circles before that, but it did turn him into a slasher movie icon that made audiences terrified to say “Candyman” aloud for fear he might actually show up.

Well, Jordan Peele isn’t afraid, and Bloody Disgusting says he’s interested in making a Candyman remake a reality. The site says Peele, who won awards and kicked box office ass with Get Out, is in talks to produce the film, although it’s unclear if he’ll direct.  It would be in his wheelhouse, for sure, dealing with race and class through the prism of genre. Candyman is an urban legend, said to be the son of a slave who found prosperity as a businessman and fame as an artist. When he fathered a child with a white woman, a lynch mob strung him up, sliced off his painting hand, and smothered him in honey so that bees could sting him to death.  Creepy origin, right? The film was based on a Clive Barker short, and it seems the film rights may have finally reverted back to him.

I don’t know if you want to revive Candyman without Todd in the role, they’re so linked it’s tough to imagine. But the thought of Peele taking this on is pretty exciting. If true, of course.

Horror ‘Goodnight Mommy’ Is Getting An English-Language Remake

By
John Nolan
-

When Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala’s freakish horror Goodnight Mommy hit theaters stateside in 2015, it not only became a cult favorite, it was one of my favorite movies of the year. But it’s an Austrian production, which meant American audiences didn’t turn out for it in the numbers they probably should’ve. And that also means we’re going to get an English-language remake, because that’s just how shit works.

Deadline repots that Goodnight Mommy is being remade, with Matt Sobel behind the camera. Sobel is best known for the family abuse drama/thriller Take Me to the River, which earned hime some buzz on the festival circuit.  A producer on It Follows is backing this one, with Kyle Warren writing the screenplay. Goodnight Mommy tells the creepy as fuck story of identical twin brothers, stuck in their home with a curiously bandaged woman who claims to be their mother recovering from severe cosmetic surgery. When weird shit starts happening, the boys are forced to ask whether the woman is who she claims to be.

Franz and Fiala will exec-produce, so hopefully that means the American version won’t stray too far from what made the original work.

Tom Waller To Direct Thai Cave Rescue Film ‘The Cave’

By
John Nolan
-

Human tragedy is big business, in more ways than one. Studios practically leap out of their skin any time a disaster captures the global spotlight the way the recent Thai cave rescue did. When those  Chilean miners were trapped a few years ago, movies were in development before anybody knew the end of their story. And now one of the multiple Thai cave rescue films has a director in place.

Deadline reports Tom Waller will direct The Cave, a project that was a hot property shopped around Toronto. Waller’s not a huge name but on the international scene he’s gained notoriety and awards for his films The Last Executioner and 2011’s Mindfulness and Murder.  The Bangkok-born filmmaker should treat the story with all of the authenticity it deserves, so there shouldn’t be any fears of whitewashing.

The will tell the true story of the 12 young soccer players and their coach who became trapped in the Tham Luang cave when heavy rains flooded it. For 18 days and 24-hour news coverage, the world watched breathlessly during the complicated rescue effort, that was not guaranteed to work by any measure. Ultimately it was an international effort, including five Thai Navy Seals, who accomplished the feat.

So the race is on to see which of the six (!!!) films on the rescue gets to screens first. The highest-profile once has Crazy Rich Asians director Jon M. Chu attached, but we’ll see where that goes now that he’s even busier than he was before.

Giveaway: Win ROE Passes For ‘White Boy Rick’ Starring Matthew McConaughey

By
John Nolan
-

We’re happy to offer our readers the chance to win a pair of Run of Engagement (ROE) passes for White Boy Rick, starring Matthew McConaughey and directed by Yann Demange (’71).

SYNOPSIS: Set in 1980s Detroit at the height of the crack epidemic and the War on Drugs, WHITE BOY RICK is based on the moving true story of a blue-collar father and his teenage son, Rick Wershe Jr., who became an undercover police informant and later a drug dealer, before he was abandoned by his handlers and sentenced to life in prison.


To enter, simply send an email to punchdrunktrav@gmail.com with ‘White Boy Rick ROE’ in the subject line. Include your name, full mailing address, and favorite Matthew McConaughey movie. The passes are valid Monday-Thursday at any Regal Cinema in the DC area, starting Tuesday, September 18.

Good luck! White Boy Rick opens September 14th.

Ben Wheatley’s ‘Happy New Year, Colin Burstead’ Headed To TV, Spinoff Series In The Works

By
John Nolan
-

While nobody was paying attention, Ben Wheatley quietly completed his latest film, Happy New Year, Colin Burstead, and agreed to have its world premiere at BFI London Film Festival. Good news for fans of the director behind films Free Fire, High Rise, Sightseers, and more, and if they live across the pond it gets even better because they won’t have to trudge to a theater to see it.

Wheatley has agreed to release the film on BBC Two later this year after the holidays. That’s right, it’s going to debut on the small screen. Following that, characters from the movie will live on as part of a TV series project to air at an undetermined date in the future. Interesting for it to have this kind of devoted plan in place, especially since nobody has actually seen the movie yet.

Happy New Year, Colin Burstead stars Neil Maskell as the title character who invites his extended family to a lavish country estate for the new year. When his estranged brother David arrives unexpectedly, it threatens Neil’s  position within the family.  Richard Glover, Peter Ferdinando, Mark Monero, Sam Riley, Asim Chaudhry, Joe Cole, Charles Dance, Alexandra Maria Lara, Doon Mackichan, Sinead Matthews, Bill Paterson, and Hayley Squires co-star. [BBC]

Jessica Chastain’s Action Film ‘Eve’ Casts Colin Farrell And Common

By
John Nolan
-

Things are trending upwards for Jessica Chastain’s action flick, Eve, following the dismissal of director Matthew Newton.  She brought on Tate Taylor, her director on The Help, to replace Newton pretty quickly, and now Colin Farrell and Common have become part of the cast.

Farrell and Common are the latest to join Eve, which is being described as a character-driven action film about a female assassin. Farrell will play Simon, a Black Ops agent Chastain’s character works under, while Common is her former fiancée. It’s still unclear if Newton’s script will be kept or if Taylor will give it a rewrite. Considering she’s a producer it’s likely Chastain will have some input on that decision.

Next up for Farrell is Steve McQueen’s Widows, while Common has The Hate U Give; both films played big at TIFF and are expected to be factors in the awards season.

Ray Fisher Doesn’t Think A ‘Cyborg’ Movie Will Happen

By
John Nolan
-

A reminder of just how lopsided Warner Bros.’ plans for the DCEU were/are, they released their full slate of films a few years ago and among them was a Cyborg movie. It was an odd choice since Cyborg isn’t incredibly popular, the actor playing him, Ray Fisher, is unheard of by most people, and he hadn’t even made his first full appearance yet. That would happen eventually with Justice League, which shit the bed something fierce and we haven’t heard much about any solo movies outside of Batman and Wonder Woman ever since.

Now Fisher has come around to thinking a Cyborg movie won’t happen at all, telling Comicbook.com..

“I don’t know. I can’t comment on that specifically, because they don’t tell me anything until the very last minute. There’s a ton of people making those kind of decisions behind the scenes. And it would be a very, very costly movie to make because it is so CGI heavy with Cyborg, because I’m the only member of the League that’s not in a practical costume. You’re going to be looking at $200 million just to make it. So it’s one of those things you have to take into consideration. It’s a numbers game for some people at the end of the day.”

His math is probably right on that one, especially given how pricey DCEU movies tend to be. There’s a good chance we’ve seen the last of Cyborg, period, at least on the big screen. The character has been recast for the upcoming Titans and Doom Patrol shows on the DC Universe streaming channel, and that may be the only place to get your Cyborg fix, if there is such a thing. We had heard rumors Cyborg would show up in The Flash’s solo film but that was when it was still known as Flashpoint, before rewrites and a total shift in direction.

Fisher is holding out hope, adding “If we keep making noise, it can happen. It’s about what the people want. And that’s what people understand, that’s what they recognize.”

Yeah, okay. Let me know when somebody launches the “Give Cyborg A Movie” online petition.

No, Michael Bay And Ryan Reynolds Aren’t Making A ‘Thundercats’ Movie

By
John Nolan
-

Rumors pop up in the strangest places. Not like Hawkins, Indiana or Derry, Maine, but in totally random sites that seem to have conjured them up out of the Upside Down. One such rumor that has emerged fully-formed out of the Hellmouth has to do with a Thundercats movie, which fans of the classic ‘toon have long been hoping for. So this rumor, which set Ryan Reynolds, Michael Bay, and the Deadpool writers on the project, is particularly egregious. Suffice it to say, the folks at IGN Middle East who reported it had no idea what they were talking about.

Both Ryan Reynolds and Deadpool co-writer Rhett Reese shut down rumors of a Thundercats movie on Twitter. Reese took the short and sweet route, while Reynolds responded more in the fashion we would expect from him…

So where did this whole thing come from, anyway? So Bay, Reynolds, Reese, and Paul Wernick actually are making a movie together. Titled Six Underground, it’s an action flick for Netflix that also stars Now You See Me alums Melanie Laurent and Dave Franco, along with Corey Hawkins (Straight Outta Compton). Somehow, the original story made the leap that it’s actually a cover for a live-action Thundercats movie, based on the word of  a reliable source that is working closely with the Abu Dhabi production team for the movie.

How much you want to bet they keep posting stories based on this “Curveball’ of a source?

Anyway, I’m sure there will be a Thundercats movie someday, but the time isn’t now and these aren’t the folks involved. Bay has already driven two nostalgia properties into the dirty (TMNT, Transformers), and it’s doubtful he’ll get a shot at a third.

*SPOILERS* Watch That Shocking ‘Solo: A Star Wars Story’ Cameo In Full

By
John Nolan
-

While we mostly knew that Solo: A Star Wars Story would hit on all of the big moments of his roguish life, there was a cameo towards the end that shocked everybody. It was the one thing that I received the most befuddled looks about and the most questions, because unless you were a devoted follower of Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels, it made no sense to you.

With the film hitting home release soon, that scene has been released in full by IGN, and it features the return of Ray Park as Darth Maul. Well, at this point in time he’s just Maul since he’s no longer being trained as a Sith apprentice. Even that much may be confusing to those who last saw Maul being sliced in half in The Phantom Menace. Suffice it to say, he somehow survived being vivisected (!!!) through sheer force of will. He re-emerged in the final two seasons of The Clone Wars, reunited with his long-lost brother, and began building a criminal empire. This is roughly around the time when his appearance in Solo would fit in.

In the scene, we find out that it’s Maul, now leader of the Crimson Dawn, who is the real criminal mastermind overseeing the activities of  Dryden Vos (Paul Bettany) and Han Solo’s former lover, Qi’ra (Emilia Clarke).  It’s a cool reveal, even if somewhat shoe-horned in to please only the most devoted of Star Wars fans.

Solo: A Star Wars Story hits digitally on September 14th, Bluray/DVD on September 25th.

Box Office: ‘The Nun’ Scares Up ‘The Conjuring’ Universe’s Biggest Debut

By
John Nolan
-

1. The Nun (review)- $53.5M
While The Nun is the first in what will likely be a hit R-rated horror franchise, it is technically the fifth movie in The Conjuring universe, which has now become the highest-grossing R-rated horror franchise in history. The Nun opened with $53.5M domestic plus $77.5M overseas for $131M worldwide. The $22M budget is par for the course; these movies routinely double or triple their production costs in a single weekend, and from then on it’s all just gravy. The $53M debut charts higher than other franchise’s installments, Annabelle ($37M), Annabelle: Creation ($35M), The Conjuring ($41M), and The Conjuring 2 ($40M), this despite having worse reviews overall.  The five movies in total have earned an incredible $1.33B.
2. Crazy Rich Asians– $13.6M/$136.2M
3. Peppermint (review)- $13.2M
The only other big release of the week was Peppermint, Jennifer Garner’s return to the action genre, really for the first time since Elektra tanked so hard in 2005. Her comeback was pretty bland in nearly every respect. Not only is the film a generic Death Wish riff but the $13.2M is about half of its production budget. I don’t foresee it having much of a run before falling off a cliff, so if it’s going to break even it will have to be soon.
4. The Meg– $6M/$131.5M
5. Searching– $4.5M/$14.3M
6. Mission: Impossible-Fallout– $3.8M/$212.1M
Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible-Fallout continues to soar with $726M worldwide, making it the highest-grossing film in the franchise. I guess it’s not ending any time soon?
7. Disney’s Christopher Robin– $3.1M/$91.7M
8. Operation Finale– $3M/$14.1M
9. Alpha– $2.5M/$32.4M
10. BlacKkKlansman– $1.5M/$43.4M

1...1,7001,7011,702...1,946Page 1,701 of 1,946
Want To Advertise With Punch Drunk Critics?
Contact us: info@punchdrunkcritics.com
Facebook Instagram Mail Twitter Youtube
© Copyright 2020 PDC Entertainment