Other than maybe James Wan, there may be no other horror director more in-demand than Mike Flanagan. The Haunting of Hill House and Doctor Sleep filmmaker has found his next project, an apparent childhood dream, in an adaptation of Christopher Pike’s sci-fi horror The Season of Passage.
Set up at Universal, The Season of Passage centers on celebrity Dr. Lauren Wagner who took part in an expedition to Mars, only to come back hearing voices and tormented by the mystery of the doomed group that had traveled there before her. Flanagan will also co-write the script with James Flanagan.
Flanagan has been moving at a prolific pace of late, mostly on the small screen. His Hill House followup The Haunting of Bly Manor hit Netflix last year. He has two more shows on the way for Netflix, the supernatural series Midnight Mass and the mystery-thriller The Midnight Club. [Deadline]
"I see you brought the fire…" This project has been a dream of mine since I was a teenager. I'm so excited to be collaborating with my brother James, and my partner in crime @IntrepidPix on this epic horror movie – in space – for @UniversalPics. https://t.co/YEn7iOj5yb
With so much division in our country it’s also led to filmmakers putting their energy to political thrillers to explore it. One of the best for a couple of decades has been Paul Greengrass, and he’s returning to the well once again with Night of Camp David, about a President’s descent into madness. Gee, wonder where that idea came from?
THR reports Greengrass has boarded Night of Camp David, based on the 1965 book by Fletcher Knebel. The story follows follows a junior senator and future Vice President who comes to belive the current President has grown dangerously paranoid, lashing out at the media and anyone who speaks out against him. Not only that, but the President begins to cut ties with America’s allies to forge a closer relationship to our rivals in the U.S.S.R.
Um, yeah, that DOES sound familiar! Honestly, I’m shocked this hasn’t been turned into a movie before now. How is that possible?
The film will have a script by Jed Murcurio, writer of the Brit series Bodyguard.
Greengrass is coming off another acclaimed film, News of the World, which has its own share of political subtext. Hmmmm…perhaps Tom Hanks as the mentally-crumbling President? I can see it. Or maybe a reunion with Jason Bourne‘s Matt Damon?
From one seafaring villain to a possible scourge of Atlantis? Deadline reports Game of Thrones‘ Pilou Asbaek, who played pirate brute Euron Greyjoy on Game of Thrones, has signed up for Aquaman 2. We can only hope he’ll be just as randy and devious as he was on that HBO series, right?
Details on Asbaek’s role are being held tight, but we know he’ll be joining Jason Momoa, Amber Heard, and more in the superhero sequel. I’d love to see him play someone like Scavenger, a villainous deep sea diver, or better yet Mera’s brutal ex Nereus. Oooh, I like that Nereus idea.
Asbaek’s resume beyond Game of Thrones is impressive. He first came to my attention with the Danish drama A Hijacking. He’s also appeared in other big films including Lucy, Ghost in the Shell, The Great Wall, and Ben-Hur.
James Wan is back to direct, having led the previous film to over $1.1B at the box office in 2017,. an incredible amount considering most people look at Aquaman as a C-list hero. Aquaman 2 begins shooting this summer and will open on December 16th 2022.
Maybe Brad Pitt and Sandra Bullock are getting along famously on the set of action flick Bullet Train, because he’s stopping by to appear in her next film. THR reports Pitt will take a small role in Lost City of D, which stars Bullock alongside Channing Tatum.
As for the reason for this little cameo? Simple, it’s a favor. Bullock is playing a small role in Bullet Train for Pitt, and now he’s doing her a solid on Lost City of D, described as a Romancing the Stone-esque romance/adventure. Bullock plays a romance author who discovers that one of the mythical cities she wrote about is real, so she teams up with the actor who played her lead character to find it.
The film is directed by the Nee Brothers from a script most recently penned by Dana Fox and based on an idea by Horrible Bosses director Seth Gordon.
Who knows? Maybe Pitt and Bullock will continue playing this little game until they can finally do an Ocean’s movie together.
From Promising Young Woman to outer-space, Carey Mulligan’s career is hitting new heights. Deadline is reporting that Mulligan has joined Adam Sandler in Netflix’s Spaceman. The project was originally calledThe Spaceman Of Bohemia.
Based on Jaroslav Kalfar’s novel of the same name, the film will follow an astronaut (Sandler) “sent to the edge of the galaxy to collect mysterious ancient dust. He soon finds his earthly life falling to pieces, and he turns to the only voice who can help him try to put it back together. It just so happens to belong to a creature from the beginning of time lurking in the shadows of his ship.” Mulligan is set to play Sandler’s wife. John Renck, the gentleman responsible for Chernobyl is directing.
This announcement comes at the heels of Mulligan’s SNL debut and award nominations for Promising Young Woman. She is nominated for her second Academy Award. The Oscars will air on ABC on April 25th.
*NOTE: This is a reprint of my review from the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.*
I know there will be people who absolutely love Ben Wheatley’s hallucinogenic, pandemic horror In the Earth. It’s a return to his genre roots after his luxurious Rebeccaremake, and blockbuster flirtation with a Tomb Raider sequel. But this messy, woodland thriller set after multiple waves of a viral outbreak can’t sustain itself beyond the opening moments, becoming a jumbled mass of random images by its thankful conclusion.
Yesterday breakout Joel Fry plays Martin, an agricultural researcher who arrives at a national park that would normally be a vacation hot spot. But due to a continued pandemic, the place is in a state of quarantine and the personnel desperately want to reopen. After going through a fairly rigorous testing process, Joel is teamed up with park ranger Alma (Ellora Torchia) to investigate the local habitat. Of concern are two missing teams that left previously, and local folklore about a dangerous spirit that has a home out in the forests. Surely nothing like that will be a factor, right?
The trek is surprisingly arduous, at least for Martin who is unable to keep up with Alma. His inexperience is a mystery, although he has a well-practiced excuse about not being an outdoors kind of guy, as if he’s an indoor cat or something. Haunting cinematography and an ominous Clint Mansell score build suspense, and the longer Wheatley keeps the story lean it’s quite compelling. Deadly mishaps snowball one-after-another. A seemingly random attack, a foot injury, and then an encounter with the helpful Zach (Reece Shearsmith), a survivalist living out in the woods all by himself. Nope, nothing to be concerned about.
Of course, Zach isn’t nearly as friendly as he appears. Quite the opposite. The guy looks like Wolverine if he were a lost woodsman, and has a creepy workshop that he really doesn’t want you to think about too much. Martin and Alma become intimately familiar with it, and Wheatley, a pro at stoking the fires of imagination, shows just enough to make the skin crawl without giving too much away.
Unfortunately, Wheatley gets away from this three-hander dynamic too soon, adding a mysterious scientist (Hayley Squires) into the mix, and coming up with all sorts of weird red herrings and psychedelic mumbo jumbo that takes away from the survival horror aspect. As the film descends into visual chaos, any sense of what is truly at stake is lost, and the characters are too thinly-drawn to provide much of a lifeline. The actors are good, however, with Torchia standing out amongst them in balancing Alma’s professional instinct to protect nature, and her gut which is telling her shit is really fucked up. Also, as a lone female out in the woods with one crazy loon and another guy who is hiding something, Alma’s perspective should’ve been given more focus.
Shot during quarantine over the course of two weeks, In the Earth looks great, with Wheatley doing what he does best by doing a lot with limited resources. In the haste to get the movie done, creativity seems to have been lost in the woods, and fans of Wheatley will have to wait longer to see him truly return to form.
In the Earth opens in theaters tomorrow April 16th.
The Falcon And The Winter Soldier may be his first Marvel project, but Wyatt Russell knows how to keep spoilers a secret. In a new interview with BBC Radio 1’s Ali Plumb, Wyatt was asked if he ever met his predecessor, Chris Evans.
Keeping coy, Russell responded with “I think I have,” making sure not to look at the camera. “I don’t think I’ve ‘shook his hand’ met him, but I think I’ve walked by him somewhere and made eye contact. That counts as being a stalker, that doesn’t count as meeting anybody. But, I guess it would.”
He could have left the subject there, but he brought the conversation back to The Falcon and The Winter Soldier. “You just gotta wait until the end of the series and then everybody will be like, ‘Oh, wow.’”
Does this mean we may see Chris Evans back in the MCU, even for a second? Maybe. The show’s creator Malcolm Spellman recently said that episode 5 is his favorite. “Hands down, [episode] five, it just gets real. And five, you’re going to cry.” He also mentioned to Rotten Tomatoes that the episode 5 cameo would be a “grounded character.”
“There are characters in our series who I would love to see partnered with like — it’s a very, very grounded character — partnered with one of the big world-shakers like Thor or someone like that. The personality is so strong, it’s the episode five character. I’d love to see that character with Thor.”
So will Chris Hemsworth’s Thor or Chris Evan’s Steve Rogers joined Bucky and Sam in the next few episodes of The Falcon And The Winter Soldier? We’ll have to wait and see when episode 5 premieres tomorrow on DisneyPlus.
This is turning out to be quite a Mads Mikkelsen day. Following news the Danish actor has joined the Indiana Jones 5 cast, now comes a new trailer for his upcoming revenge film, Riders of Justice, which has a bit of a darkly comic edge to it.
The film is directed by Anders Thomas Jensen, who previously worked with Mikkelsen on Men & Chicken, another dark comedy affair. Riders of Justice stars Mikkelsen as a deployed man who returns home after his wife is killed in a train accident, only to learn from a survivor that it may have been planned to off a witness in the trial of a motorcycle gang leader. Mikkelsen’s character sets off to avenge his dead wife by killing everyone involved.
Jensen may not be a big name, and hasn’t gained the kind of stateside notoriety that some other Danish filmmakers have, but he’s been keeping busy on some big projects of late. He wrote Nicolaj Coster-Waldau in the excellent drama A Second Chance, and also penned 2017’s The Dark Tower (which was awful, but hey).
Riders of Justice beat out the Oscar-nominated Another Round (also with Mikkelsen) at the Danish box office, an impressive feat. The film arrives in select theaters on May 14th and everywhere May 21st.
RIDERS OF JUSTICE follows recently-deployed Markus, who is forced to return home to care for his teenage daughter after his wife is killed in a tragic train accident. But when a survivor of the wrecked train surfaces claiming foul play, Markus begins to suspect his wife was murdered and embarks on a revenge-fueled mission to find those responsible.
Pete Davidson playing Joey Ramone in a Netflix biopic? Doesn’t sound very punk to me, but it’s a thing that’s happening, as the SNL comedian will play The Ramones frontman in I Slept with Joey Ramone.
Deadline reports Davidson will star as the Ramones frontman and the King of Punk himself, Joey Ramone, in a biopic being put together by Netflix and STX Films. The Ramone estate is on board for this one, too, so no worries about acquiring any of the band’s music.
Netflix, either worried about the reaction from The Ramones fans or really confident in their decision, have released a side-by-side comparison image of Davidson and Ramone.
The film is an adaptation of the book by Ramone’s brother, Mickey Leigh. Davidson not only stars but co-wrote the script with director Jason Orley, who previously worked with the actor on Hulu’s Big Time Adolescence.
Next up for Davidson is a role as DC Comics villain Blackguard in The Suicide Squad, which sorta sounds like something you’d name a punk band.
I’ll be honest with you…Indiana Jones 5? Eh. I could take it or leave it at this point. Harrison Ford doesn’t seem super interested, there’s no Steven Spielberg, even though James Mangold is a fine director to take over. So what’s there really to look forward to other than a passing of the torch? Well, for one thing the co-stars are top notch with Phoebe Waller-Bridge recently signed to co-star, and now the addition of Mads Mikkelsen in what we must presume is a villain role?
Deadline reports Mikkelsen, who is earning accolades right now for his role in Another Round, has joined the Indiana Jones 5 cast. While details on his character are under wraps, we have to expect that he’s a bad guy, right? I mean, just look at his past blockbuster credits.
Mikkelsen is one of the best dramatic actors around, but he’s also been highly sought-after for some of our biggest cinematic franchises. He’s starred as a villain Casino Royale, Marvel’s Doctor Strange, and will replace Johnny Depp in Fantastic Beasts 3. Mikkelsen also had a key role in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and played Hannibal Lecter in the hit NBC series.
Indiana Jones 5 opens July 29th 2022. We’ll see if it can stick to that date after a myriad of delays.
