A busy year for director Tommy Wirkola, who already gave us the Netflix shark thriller Thrash, wraps up with a dose of Christmas violence. Back in 2022, Wirkola directed Violent Night, in which David Harbour plays Santa Claus who goes on a bloody rampage to save a kidnapped family from a bunch of goons on his “Naughty” list. The film was a solid $76M success, and now Santa is gearing up for more action in Violent Night 2.
Kristen Bell joins Harbour in Violent Night 2, playing, who else, Mrs. Claus! The sequel finds good ol’ Saint Nick forgetting the true meaning of Christmas and sapped of his powers while trying to defend mall patrons from armed thugs led by Jared Harris. Good thing he’s got a loyal, heavily armed wife to help out when he’s in a pickle.
One thing the trailer makes clear is that Santa doesn’t have a say in who is on the Naughty list, because when he ends up on it himself, his powers disappear. I dig the way they are expanding the Christmas lore with each movie.
Pat Casey and Josh Miller return as co-writers, with Wirkola once again behind the camera. Also in the cast are Joe Pantoliano, Maxwell Friedman, Daniela Melchior, and Andrew Bachelor.
Vin Diesel is VERY good at using social media to convince his fans that he’s got projects cooking that…well, aren’t. I mean, he’s been telling us about a fourth Riddick movie since 2014 and that’s no closer to happening. The same has been going on with Fast Forever, the supposed end of the long-running Fast & Furious franchise. But as of today, nobody seems to have any clue what’s going on with it, including its supposed director, Louis Leterrier.
Leterrier was asked about Fast Forever by Polygon, and pretty much all he could do was confirm that he’s still involved…but only barely.
“Not currently because I’m finishing another movie, but yeah,” he said.
However, Leterrier couldn’t admit to having read the script, even though Diesel claimed over the weekend that it was completed and the best he’s ever read, and that it left him “crying.”
“Well, uh, I’d love to tell you the full truth, but I can’t. There will be an ending, and it’s great. I was very, very lucky to be part of the franchise, and I love Vin and I love Universal. They’re great to work with. So yeah. We’ll see, hopefully”, Leterrier said.
This is all compounded by recent statements by Alan Ritchson, who played devious agent Aimes in Fast X, to the Happy Sad Confused podcast. He claims Fast Forever is plagued by budget issues and that these movies have gotten too big…
“It’s too expensive — it doesn’t make a ton of sense. There’s a more efficient way to shoot those.”
Ritchson added, “There has to be a way to show restraint while also honoring the fact that this world has expanded to something humongous. That gets very difficult; now we’re at the crossroads of something very hard to figure out. Everybody’s figuring it out. But I think there’s going to be another one, I think it’s going to be great. It’s just a matter of solving some big problems, some very real problems.”
Fast X hit theaters three years ago, and there has been practically zero movement on it. There’s no start date to speak of, and the March 2028 release date seems more like Diesel trying to speak it into existence than a hard confirmation from Universal.
NEON has dropped the debut trailer for prolific director Takashi Miike’s Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo, shortly after the first-look images revealed stars Shun Oguri and Lily James. The film will have its world premiere in September at TIFF.
The third film in the Bad Lieutenant series that began with Abel Ferrara’s 1992 classic and Werner Herzog’s divisive spiritual sequel, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, from 2009, Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo follows a similar narrative theme. Oguri plays a Tokyo police officer and compulsive gambler who becomes involved in a complex investigation when a mysterious FBI agent, played by James, arrives in Japan following the disappearance of a politician’s daughter, played by WWE superstar Liv Morgan.
Daisuke Tengan wrote the script, based on original concepts by late producer Edward R. Pressman. There’s no official release date, but expect NEON to change that once reviews roll in after the premiere.
“I want to make, like, a cool ‘Fast and Furious’ kind of thing for motorcycles.”
When Reacher star Alan Ritchson said that to Dax Shepard last week, it’s clear he already had a project in mind and in the works. Deadline reports Ritchson has inked a first-look film deal with Netflix, and the first project out of the gate is an untitled action thriller set in the world of MotoGP. Ritchson will star and produce, joined by Fast & the Furious franchise screenwriter Chris Morgan.
Ritchson couldn’t have picked a better writer to help make his goal come true. Morgan has written or produced eight films in the Fast & Furious franchise since Tokyo Drift in 2006. He also wrote the spinoff, Hobbs & Shaw and produced the animated series Fast & Furious Spy Racers.
The deal cements Ritchson as a fixture with Netflix, following the massive audience for his action flick, War Machine. Ritchson will return for the sequel, and might also star in Maelstrom, a new thriller from Jaume Collet-Serra that Netflix hopes will reach similar heights.
Coming up next for him is season four of Reacher, which hits Prime Video on August 12th.
Amazon’s troubled God of War series, based on the bestselling video game, might have found its new Kratos. Following the on-set injury that sidelined actor Ryan Hurst, the need to recast the lead became clear. Deadline reports that Dave Bautista is reportedly in talks to take over, after production has already begun.
The need for this move came after Hurst injured his shoulder in June while filming, necessetating surgery that would keep him out of action. As you might imagine, playing Kratos is going to be a constant physical challenge, and so the decision was made to recast the role rather than delay production further. Four episodes with Hurst will need to be reshot once his replacement is found, whether that’s Bautista or not.
Interestingly, Bautista is no longer the jacked dude he was while in WWE or even during Guardians of the Galaxy. Anyone who has seen him in recent years has seen the physical change to his body. He’s made a concerted effort to trim down, get healthier, and lose a lot of the extra weight that came with being so muscular. There might need to be a change in workout plan if he’s going to play Kratos.
Other changes coming to God of War will happen in season two, when Callum Turner will give up the role of Atreus to a teenage actor to reflect the jump forward in time. Also, Thor’s daughter Thrud, played in the first season by Island Austin, will similarly be replaced by an older actress.
I have my doubts that Bautista will want to do something like God of War, both for the physical and possible dietary demands, but also because he’s focused on dramatic and comedic work rather than action.
Is there anyone out there who doesn’t love Girl Scout Cookies? Even if you’re like me and dread the aggressive selling practices during Girl Scout Cookie season, chances are you have a favorite that your sweet tooth can’t deny. Alysa Nahmias’s doc Cookie Queens, produced by Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, is charming and disarming in equal measure. Most of us never look past the sweet, saintly smiles of the cookie dealers themselves; we’re too occupied with getting our Samoas fix. Cookie Queens follows the trials and tribulations of four Girl Scouts of differing age, economic status, and ethnicity, as they endeavor to max out their sales totals during the six-week selling period to achieve either personal success or a prize they’ve long been seeking.
All four girls are camera-ready, personable, and charismatic, which doesn’t hurt in making those crucial Thin Mint sales. The oldest is 12-year-old Olive, the highest-selling scout in her suburban Charlotte, NC troop. Then there’s 9-year-old Nikki, a Black girl from Chino, CA who longs to outsell her teenage sisters, Nyah and Nala, top sellers themselves, so that she can afford a trip to Paris. El Paso native Shannon Elizabeth has more modest goals. With the help of her Latinx and Native American parents, who are risking their financial security on this endeavor, Shannon just wants to sell enough cookies that she an go away to summer camp.
Then there’s the real sweetheart of the group, 5-year-old Ara. A tiny go-getter and Type 1 diabetic (meaning she can’t really eat the cookies she sells), Ara pulls her little wagon full of cookies and cheerfully, hopefully peddles her wares to California beachgoers who likely don’t consume any carbs or sugar at all. It’s tough sledding for the child but you’d never know it. She seems just happy to be out there with her father, who helps her out only when she asks for it, or doing other things like kiddie pilates.
Nahmias isn’t breaking the mold stylistically with Cookie Queens; it follows the formula of many festival docs that have emerged over the years. She’s content to put the camera on her young charges and let them do the heavy lifting, because they’ll eventually give voice to the unseemly aspects of Girl Scout Cookie selling that we have questions about. For instance, Olive, clearly media-trained by her well-to-do parents, is dismayed by the low earnings for sellers, and openly questions the profits made by her hard work and those of other scouts. We learn that roughly $800M is made by Girl Scouts of America during cookie season. At the same time, Olive is driven to be the best whether she has misgivings or not. She talks with her friends about upselling, and knows how to sell her cuteness to reach her goals, even if she does consider what they’re doing to be “child labor” in some respects.
While Olive’s family has no problem buying thousands of dollars worth of cookies to sell (a fact I didn’t know, that they have to pay for their own merch), the other girls aren’t so charmed. In the case of Shannon Elizabeth, her struggles to meet sales goals could mean that her working-class parents need to eat the cost of the inventory, and that’s something they can’t afford. The need to sell becomes desperate, even as her parents try to keep that harsh reality a secret.
One can’t help but wonder just how healthy this whole exercise is for children, or if they’re being exploited to help keep the GSA swimming in cookie money. Olive and Nikki, as the two oldest, seem to be hyper-aware that they are being used to some extent. It’s no surprise that both girls eventually show misgivings about continuing on as sellers. If you can face an existential crisis before you’re even a teenager, these girls certainly go through it. In Olive’s case, she doesn’t seem to know who she’d be if she weren’t the top selling cookie dealer. If she lost that, or were to give it up, what’s left for her? That bleak outlook doesn’t last long before she’s back and looking to push her sales totals above 10,000, an insane number when young Ara would be happy just to hit 55 sold.
While Olive emerges as the breakout character because, frankly, she’ll probably be running the world someday, it’s Ara who we cheer on most. She’s the quiet, plucky Cookie Queens champion who at her young age is already making and selling her own diabetic-friendly cookies because the Girl Scouts don’t offer them. It’s her compassionate, entrepreneurial spirit that shines through, and while that is one of the stated goals of the program, we can only hope that more girls like Ara grow up who will seek to make selling Girl Scout cookies fun and wholesome again.
When you meet the challenge of playing Michael Jackson to the tune of over $1B at the box office, you can pretty much write your ticket on what’s next. Jaafar Jackson, who led Michael to be the highest-grossing music biopic ever, has joined Will Smith and AnnaSophia Robb in Supermax, the action-thriller set up at Amazon MGM Studios.
Details on Jackson’s role are being kept under wraps, but it’s said to be a pivotal one. David Gordon Green directs the film about two FBI agents, played by Smith and Robb, investigating a seemingly impossible murder within the walls of the maximum security prison.
David Weil and David J. Rosen wrote the screenplay.
Jackson has been keeping a low profile since playing his late uncle, the King of Pop, although he’s likely fielding tons of offers. Officially, he doesn’t have any features lined up.
Supermax is expected to hit Prime Video streaming at a later date. [Deadline]
If I had to quickly draw up a list of my most anticipated movies to premiere at TIFF, top of the list would be Takashi Miike’s Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo. Not only does this appear to be the closest to a Hollywood thriller that we’ve ever seen from Miike, but it’s the third film in the Bad Lieutenant series that began with Abel Ferrara’s 1992 classic and Werner Herzog’s divisive spiritual sequel, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, from 2009.
Miike’s film stars Shun Oguri (Godzilla vs. Kong), Lily James (Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again), and WWE Women’s Champion Liv Morgan in her biggest role since 2023’s The Kill Room.
Oguri plays a Tokyo police officer and compulsive gambler who becomes involved in a complex investigation when a mysterious FBI agent, played by James, arrives in Japan following the disappearance of a politician’s daughter, played by Morgan.
Daisuke Tengan wrote the script, based on a concept by producer Edward R. Pressman.
NEON has dropped the first images from Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo via IndieWire. It will release the film in theaters at a later date, and my guess is that when will depend on early reactions from TIFF. You can look for my review then.
In case you weren’t aware, the box office numbers that drop on Sundays are studio estimates, and they tend to be fairly accurate. But when the record books depend on a couple of million dollars here or there, the actuals released on Monday are what counts. And after yesterday’s report that Spider-Man: Brand New Day had the second biggest domestic debut ever with $355M, the actual results show that it hit $360M, surpassing Avengers: Endgame for the all-time record. It’s quite the achievement for director Destin Daniel Cretton, plus his cast of Holland, Zendaya, Jacob Batalon, Sadie Sink, Mark Ruffalo, and Jon Bernthal. Brand New Day did manage to break Endgame‘s preview night record with a huge $72M Thursday, also is also the best debut ever for Sony Pictures. Globally, while it didn’t beat Endgame‘s $1.22B, it came close with a whopping $927M. Reviews were strong across the board, with critics scoring it at 90% on Rotten Tomatoes and audiences at 98%.
Bravely going against Spider-Man: Brand New Day in an attempt at counterprogramming, Gregg Araki’s raunchy comedy I Want Your Sex opened in 670 theaters by Magnolia Pictures. The Olivia Wilde/Cooper Hoffman film about a timid guy who becomes a provocative artist’s sexual muse earned just $600K for a weak $857 per site average.
The seven-year wait to get Marvel’s failed Blade movie off the ground really changed Mahershala Ali’s perspective on what he wants from his career. Speaking with EW, he said that it has moved him towards films that are “unique, but purposeful” and have a “real reason for being here.” He added, “It’s gotta go back to stories that really matter.”
Ali clearly feels that way about Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, his first true action lead role, and a reunion with director Bassam Tariq, who was briefly attached to direct him in Blade.
The latest trailer shows the Oscar-winning Ali as Latif, a grieving hitman struggling to reconcile his violent work with his deeply religious beliefs, while on a journey to protect his children.
The film was written and directed by Tariq, best known for the Riz Ahmed drama Mogul Mowgli and the Netflix documentary short, Ghosts of Sugar Land.
The supporting cast is terrific, too, with John Cho, Abubakr Ali, Laith Nakli, Tramell Tillman, Tiffany Boone, Giancarlo Esposito, and Adia.
Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother will have its world premiere at TIFF this September. Amazon MGM Studios and Orion Pictures will then release it in theaters on September 25th, expanding on October 9th.
