We’re happy to offer our readers the chance to experience The Forever Purge in theaters! The fifth and final film in Blumhouse’s thriller franchise breaks all of the rules, as one night of violence per year simply isn’t enough anymore.
SYNOPSIS: Adela (Ana de la Reguera, Cowboys & Aliens) and her husband Juan (Tenoch Huerta, Days of Grace) live in Texas, where Juan is working as a ranch hand for the wealthy Tucker family. Juan impresses the Tucker patriarch, Caleb (Will Patton, Halloween), but that fuels the jealous anger of Caleb’s son, Dylan (Josh Lucas, Ford v Ferrari). On the morning after The Purge, a masked gang of killers attacks the Tucker family—including Dylan’s wife (Cassidy Freeman, HBO’s The Righteous Gemstones), and his sister (Leven Rambin, The Hunger Games), forcing both families to band together and fight back as the country spirals into chaos and the United States begins to disintegrate around them.
We’re offering 20 of our readers Admit-Two Fandango vouchers to see The Forever Purge in theaters! If you’d like a chance to win, simply complete the Rafflepress contest below. Winners will be selected tomorrow, July 2nd, and notified by email. Good luck!
Quentin Tarantino is in-between movie projects at the moment, with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood becoming one of the most successful of his career. Whatever he does next will, at least according to him, be the last before retirement. But Tarantino isn’t resting easy until then. His novelization of ‘Hollywood’ is out and folks are raving about it, and he’s talked about doing a stage play that he wrote. We’ve never known what that play would be until now, and if you liked his most recent film you’re going to be happy.
Speaking on The Big Picture podcast, Tarantino reveals that he’ll be doing a stage version of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Hey, people complained the movie needed an intermission or two, well, now they’ll probably get it.
“Believe it or not, no one knows this yet. I’ve written a play version of [OUATIH],’” Tarantino said. “I finished the script, then I wrote the play version of the story, and I purposefully made it that I didn’t put scenes that are in the play in the book. I didn’t need more material, but I wanted it to exist as a play, and I was able to explore things that are in [neither] pieces. [The play] is the one that deals with [Rick Dalton’s time] in Italy.”
“That’s the idea…the next thing on the list is to start thinking about the play,” Tarantino continued. “The whole second act of the play is Rick Dalton and Marvin [the agent played by Al Pacino in the film], having dinner with Sergio Corbucci [and his wife] at his favorite Japanese restaurant in Rome.”
Tarantino added that he just kept on going when he finished the screenplay and has more than enough to work with to fill out both the novel and the play. He’s a guy who always comes up with tons of wild ideas for his films that often never see the light of day. He’s talked about doing more Inglourious Basterds, and a film that would pair up Vincent and Vega in a Reservoir Dogs/Pulp Fiction mashup, and of course, Kill Bill which he’s been talking about again recently.
“Like the entire time I was doing ‘Kill Bill,’ I originally thought I would do three Kill Bill’ movies, one every ten years. Uma will be ten years older with each new one. And also, I’ll do an anime movie that follows this aspect of the Bride when she was with the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad. And then I’ll do a whole animation movie that will be the origin of Bill and his three Godfathers [Hatori Hanso, Pei Mei, and Esteban Vihaio].”
If this is the direction Tarantino’s career goes, doing novelized or theatre expansions of his entire universe of movies, then I’m all for it. He also revealed that he’s written two chapters of a Reservoir Dogs novelization, which he’s been teasing recently. Whatever keeps him going and the content flowing.
There are two characters most closely associated with the Green Lantern Corps, Hal Jordan and Sinistro, and so far neither has been cast in the upcoming Green Lantern HBO Max series. While Jordan isn’t expected to appear, we’re at least hearing a rumor about will play Sinistro, one of the greatest villains in the entire DC Universe.
According to The Illuminerdi, Game of Thrones actor Tobias Menzies is in talks to play Thaal Sinestro. One of the greatest and most powerful Lanterns whose willpower is unrivaled, Sinestro would eventually betray the Corps and become their greatest foe, wielding a yellow ring imbued by fear.
If true, Menzies would join a cast that includes Jeremy Irvine as Alan Scott and Finn Wittrock as Guy Gardner. Other characers expected to appear are Simon Baz, Jessica Cruz, and Bree Jarta, although more Lanterns will play a role across multiple generations.
Menzies is best known for his role as Edmure Tully on Game of Thrones, remembered for the way Sansa humiliated him in the series finale. Tully was a fool. He also has a lead role on Outlander, and starred in Underworld: Blood Wars.
Green Lantern is created by Marc Guggenheim and Seth Grahame-Smith, with Lee Toland Krieger directing the first two episodes.
Kill Bill 3? Never gonna happen. I’ve made my peace with it, and will content myself with watching Quentin Tarantino’s kung fu classic (We still need The Whole Bloody Affair, thank you!) when the mood strikes. Even though there has been zero movement on a sequel, the prospect is continually talked about, both by fans and by Tarantino himself.
Well, QT is at it again. This time he’s got an idea who should play the daughter of Uma Thurman’s Beatrix Kiddo if a sequel were to happen. And I have to say it’s a pretty cool idea…
“I think it’s just revisiting the characters twenty years later and just imagining the Bride and her daughter, Bebe, having 20 years of peace, and then that peace is shattered,” Tarantino said on Joe Rogan’s podcast . “And not the Bride and Bebe are on the run and just the idea of being able to cast Uma [Thurman] and cast her daughter Maya [Hawke] in the thing would be fucking exciting.’
Um, yeah, I want that please. But it’s this next bit that has be unnaturally excited as it centers involes my favorite character from the prior films: Chiaki Kuriyama’s sadistic schoolgirl Gogo…
“Elle Driver is still out there, Sophie Fatale got her arm cut off, but she’s still out there,” he said. “They all got Bill’s money. Actually, Gogo had a twin sister Shiaki and so her twin sister could show up.”
Anything that gets Kuriyama swinging that meteor hammer around again is okay with me. I have a feeling Tarantino will tease shit like this forever, and will never deliver on any of it. He’s supposed to retire after his next movie, anyway, and the chances of it being Kill Bill 3 are slim.
Hawke is obviously best known for her role on Stranger Things, and will return for its upcoming season. She can also be seen in Netflix’s Fear Street trilogy which kicked off this week.
It’s been almost seven years since we’ve gotten a new live-action Wes Anderson film. Sure, we got the so-so Isle of Dogs in 2018, but its been a long time coming since we got to see our favorite Anderson players in person.
Variety revealed Wednesday that Anderson is set to shoot a new movie in Spain this coming fall with Tilda Swinton in the starring role. This will be the fourth collaboration between the actress and director, the first being 2012’s Moonrise Kingdom and 2014’s The Grand Budapest Hotel. Anderson told the outlet he’s “not ready to share any details” about the upcoming film. Swinton added that the film may be set in Spain, but “it’s not about Spain.”
If you are tired of waiting for a new Wes Anderson film, you are in luck. The French Dispatch is set to premiere in a few weeks at Cannes. It will be released nationwide in the US on October 22. This will be the third collaboration between Anderson and Swinton. Joining her are Benicio del Toro, Adrien Brody, Léa Seydoux, Frances McDormand, Timothée Chalamet, Lyna Khoudri, Jeffrey Wright, Mathieu Amalric, Stephen Park, Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Liev Schreiber, Elizabeth Moss, Edward Norton, Willem Dafoe, Saoirse Ronan, Christoph Waltz, Jason Schwartzman, Henry Winkler, and Anjelica Huston lead a hefty and robust star-studded cast.
Again, you can catch The French Dispatch on October 22 unless you are a lucky duck and get to see it in France.
Good luck recognizing This is Us heartthrob Justin Hartley in the new trailer for The Exchange. Hartley sports an ’80s Tom Selleck ‘stache in the comedy led by Wildlife actor Ed Oxenbould and directed by Dan Mazer, a Sacha Baron Cohen confidante who has co-written both Borat films. Mazer previously directed the comedies I Give it a Year and Dirty Grandpa.
The Exchange follows “a socially awkward but highly enterprising teenager decides to acquire a “mail order best friend”; a sophisticated exchange student (Avan Jogia) from France. Instead, he ends up importing his personal nightmare, a cologne-soaked, chain-smoking, sex-obsessed youth who quickly becomes the hero of his new community.”
Harltey plays the uncomfortably serious gym teacher/lawman Gary Rothbauer, who seems to be single-handedly trying to bring aviators back in style.
Judging by the trailer, this looks closer in tone to Mazer’s writing on Dirty Grandpa than his many collaborations with Cohen, for which he earned an Oscar nomination.
Blumhouse has been at the top of the horror game for a decade and David Gordon Green is horror’s new savior, it’s no surprise a future for that team is developing. Green’s Halloween was critically and commercially loved, bringing an iconic franchise back to it’s former glory. It appears now that he’ll be catching that Shatner faced lightning in a bottle twice, as the Halloween Kills trailer dropped a few days ago and looks to be just as faithful to the originals theme while adding an insane level of mayhem. It’s easy to see a pattern developing where this group of creatives could succeed where studios like Platinum Dunes tried and failed…successfully reviving iconic horror titles.
If you’re going to bring something back from the dead, why not aim high? The Exorcist, after nearly 50 years, is still heralded by most as the scariest film of all time. Personally, even thinking about certain scenes of the film make me uneasy if I’m alone. While there were four more films and a tv show in the franchise (one of which would have been great if it just had a different name) they failed to come close to the achievements of the original. This is where Jason Blum has set his sights next.
While doing press for The Forever Purge Jason Blum sat down with the guys at DenOfGeek and spoke about tackling The Exorcist once the new Halloween trilogy was wrapped up, saying:
“It’s going to be like David’s Halloween sequel, I think it’s going to pleasantly surprise all the skeptics out there. We had a lot of skeptics about Halloween and David turned them around, and I think he’s going to turn it around with The Exorcist.”
There is no doubt in my mind that these guys know how to tap into the secret sauce of what made these films iconic in the first place, that’s the piece that’s usually missing. My concern is two-fold. First, the market saturation of possession movies…I mean, they’re everywhere. Just this month we saw The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It and there were at least 3 possession titles hitting VOD. Second, and I suppose this runs contrary to my first point, the world is much different then it was when the original came out. Religion was much more at the forefront, alot of the impact of The Exorcist came from peoples familiarity in the content and belief that, unlike most movie monsters, this one was very real. So while it can (and will) be terrifying, it will be harder to live up to the cultural impact with this property then it was with Halloween.
If anyone can do it, it’s these guys. I just can’t wait to see the result (not by myself though…)
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever has got to be the most anticipated upcoming release on the Marvel slate. Not only was the original film a bonafide cultural phenomenon, grossing over $1 billion worldwide but the shocking death of franchise star Chadwick Boseman has left a glaring hole in the MCU. As morbid as it was, the first question on many peoples lips was “What will happen to the Black Panther?”. Tasteless? Yes. Were we all thinking it in the back of our minds? Yes.
While no successor has been named it does seem that the rest of the original cast will return; Danai Gurira, Letitia Wright, Daniel Kaluuya, Winston Duke, Lupita Nyong’o, Florence Kasumba, and Angela Bassett to name a few. There’s 100 ways it could go, and we won’t know which until much farther down the road. Thankfully Kevin Feige relayed to Variety that filming had begun at Atlanta’s Pinewood studios. Chadwick Boseman’s shadow will loom large over the production, and you can bet that everyone involves feels that they owe the late superstar everything they have to do his legacy proud. Kevin Feige had as much to say at the fan event for Black Widow (which premiers July 7th, next Wednesday), saying:
“…everyone is also very excited to bring the world of Wakanda back to the public and back to the fans. We’re going to do it in a way that would make Chad proud.”
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When The Purge debuted in 2013 as a home invasion thriller with a socio-political backbone, nobody could have predicted how disturbingly prescient it would be. Arriving during the Obama era, the film’s dark twist on “hope and change” lent itself to a world of possibilities that franchise creator James DeMonaco explored in multiple sequels and even a TV series. One thing became clear, however, as the films tumbled into the Trump administration; the grim totalitarianism that led to the underclass being snuffed out in an annual “purge” holiday had little on a reality in which that seemed uncomfortably plausible.
What’s interesting about The Forever Purge, a followup to 2018’s prequel The First Purge, is that after five movies and a new Presidential administration, the premise is just as hot-button on target as ever before. With the events of January 6th still fresh in mind, and white rage the most lethal fuel for domestic terrorism, the film wraps itself in the question, “What does it mean to be a Patriot?” And what better place to tackle that than in Texas, where our very notion of the American cowboy was born. And of course, those cowboys are always white; they wear the red, white, and blue proudly, and they defend their freedoms at the barrel of a gun.
But what does any of that mean in a country that is growing more diverse by the day, and when it’s expected that black and brown people will be the majority in a matter of years? Would you fight to preserve what your notion of patriotism looks like? Would you kill for it? Those questions linger as we’re introduced to immigrants Adela (Army of the Dead‘s Ana de la Reguera) and Juan (Narcos: Mexico‘s Tenoch Huerta), as they sneak across the border into America. Months later, they’ve found work on the sprawling ranch of the Tucker family, where Juan proves to be a better cowboy than pompous son Dylan (Josh Lucas), who expresses to his pregnant wife Cassie (Cassidy Freeman) his frustration at all of the illegal immigrants under their employ. Meanwhile, patriarch Caleb (Will Patton), and sister Harper (Leven Rambin) are more accepting.
Boiling tensions are a really bad thing to have when the Purge is coming up. Created by the New Founding Fathers of America ostensibly as a means of blowing off steam one night per year in which all violent crime is legal, the real reason has always been to wipe out those deemed undesirable. The ultra-conservative political party used the Purge to eliminate homeless, reduce the minority population, and target ideological rivals. All of the violence and death done in the name of patriotism. But what happens when the purpose of the Purge metastasizes and grows out of control?
While the Tuckers slam their security doors shut and wait out the Purge in relative luxury, while Adela and Juan gather in a bunker for immigrants, patrolled by paid guards. It’s all supposed to be over by morning, but that was the old way. As expressed by murderous star-spangled Purgers the next day, the new way is to make the “Ever After” Purge a reality. Why confine it to a single 12-hour event when you can return America to the “real” Americans by ridding it of those who don’t fit their limited idea. And you can guess what color those supposed “real” Americans are.
It makes complete sense that the NFFA, who was reelected back into power after events of The Purge: Election Year, have lost control of this awful thing they created as a weapon for themselves. Sound familiar? As Trump teases a return to office in 2024, his loyal band of extremists are being whipped into a frenzy that has already led to violence and attacks on the democratic process. DeMonaco, whose finger has always been on the country’s pulse, knows it won’t end there. The Purgers are a dark reflection of the toxic patriotism, which is really just white supremacy, that we face today. There’s something DeMonaco realizes that all of the Tea Party idiots and MAGA morons never quite understood, which is that most of the people out there claiming to be Patriots are just pawns to corrupt officials, con men, and rich folks using them to get wealthier.
If bloodshed is what you’re here for, The Forever Purge offers it sparingly. These films have always been about the atmosphere, and there’s nothing quite like the sight of an American city being turned into a warzone. Bullets and rockets fly in equal measure, while innocents get hacked up on every corner. In one scene, an entire row of people is mowed down execution-style; in another, a man is dragged behind a speeding vehicle to his grisly end. As Adela and Juan ride in the back of a police van, an imprisoned skinhead rattles off the types of weapons he can hear firing outside. It’s genuinely unnerving; you just know that Nazi dude is going to get free and fuck some shit up.
Without the threat of the NFFA, The Forever Purge lacks a compelling villain to focus on. One emerges too late to have much impact, although he does lead a pretty cool Alamo-esque standoff, with Dylan being forced to put his biases aside and work alongside Mexicans and Native Americans. Ultimately, if this is the end of The Purge as a franchise, it goes out on a high note and with a blood-soaked message of unity.
What are these? Trailers #1 million and 1 million and one? Disney, who probably doesn’t need to excessively promote a movie with Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt, have nonetheless chosen to do so for Jungle Cruise. All you need to know? It’s based on yet another theme park attraction, just like Pirates of the Caribbean, and has a star-studded cast sailing up the Amazon to find a rare tree with healing properties.
Joining Johnson and Blunt in the cast are Edgar Ramírez, Jack Whitehall, Jesse Plemons, and Paul Giamatti. Behind the camera is Jaume Collet-Serra, who will also join Johnson for Black Adam. I guess those guys got along pretty famously.
Jungle Cruise opens in theaters and Disney Premier Access on July 30th. The latter will run you $30, so gather up the fam.
Inspired by the famous Disneyland theme park ride, Disney’s “Jungle Cruise” is an adventure-filled, rollicking thrill-ride down the Amazon with wisecracking skipper Frank Wolff and intrepid researcher Dr. Lily Houghton. Lily travels from London, England to the Amazon jungle and enlists Frank’s questionable services to guide her downriver on La Quila—his ramshackle-but-charming boat. Lily is determined to uncover an ancient tree with unparalleled healing abilities—possessing the power to change the future of medicine. Thrust on this epic quest together, the unlikely duo encounters innumerable dangers and supernatural forces, all lurking in the deceptive beauty of the lush rainforest. But as the secrets of the lost tree unfold, the stakes reach even higher for Lily and Frank and their fate—and mankind’s—hangs in the balance.
