It’s been three years since George Clooney’s Suburbicon failed to connect with audiences, but he hasn’t let that slow him down from directing. In the meantime, he took the helm of his Hulu series, Catch-22, and recently wrapped filming on sci-fi film The Midnight Sky. And now Clooney has found his next directorial effort, an adaptation of The Tender Bar for Amazon Studios.
Deadline reports Clooney will direct an adaptation of J.R. Moehringer’s memoir, The Tender Bar, about the author’s coming-of-age experiences hanging out at a local bar owned by his uncle. There, he finds replacement father-figures and a sanctuary away from his chaotic life.
It’s unclear if Clooney will also have a role, but the door is always open. Clooney has a pretty good track record of appearing in the movies he directs. The film had previously been setup at Sony, with Ted Melfi (Hidden Figures) developing, but that fell through when Amazon swooped in.
Clooney had been eyeing another project, MGM’s Boys in the Boat, a true story about the 1936 University of Washington rowing team that won gold at the 1936 Olympics. He’s still attached, but felt it too complex to try and do it at this time with the pandemic going on.
In 2018, Netflix introduced their “Summer of Love,” where each month from May to September a new romantic movie was set to premiere on the streaming site. Some were good (To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before), some were problematic (Sierra Burgess is a Loser), some underrated (Ibiza), but none could compare to The Kissing Booth. The rom-com of the summer, millions of Netflix users watched a brilliantly overacted and over the top love teen love story mainly because of Jacob Elordi’s abs. If you don’t believe me go to Buzzfeed and search for The Kissing Booth. See? It captured the attention of teens and young adults for months.
Its sequel, aptly titled The Kissing Booth 2, premieres this weekend, continuing the story of Elle (Joey King) and her love life. Now a senior, she is still dating her best friend’s brother Noah (Jacob Elordi) though new guy Marco shows up to threaten that. Her BFF Lee (Joel Courtney) is struggling with managing his friendship with Ellen and his new relationship with Rachel (Maganne Young). Everyone is struggling with their futures, deciding where to go to college, while Elle pines for her boyfriend, who is attending Harvard.
The Kissing Booth 2 literally packs every single teen movie troupe into a very long 2 hours and 12 minutes. We’re talking dance competitions, multiple love triangles, not having enough money for college, not knowing where to go to college, an identity crisis, accidentally admitting how hot someone is, thinking someone is cheating on you. The only thing missing from it is someone making a bet that they can’t make it with the ugly girl and then falling in love with her. Despite this, the acting does feel less melodramatic this time around. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of unneeded teen drama, but compared to the first, this go-round is much better acted.
Part of that is due to Jacob Elordi’s performance. Since the first one, the Australian actor has cut his teeth in HBO’s Euphoria, an exceptionally well-done look into the private lives of teenagers. It could be that the prestige of the show has rubbed off on the young actor, but his performance is more subtle and less cringy this go-round. Because his character is at college for most of the movie, Joey King’s unbridled joy doesn’t get as eclipsed by his brooding.
The thing about The Kissing Booth 2 is that if you liked the first one for whatever reason, you should like the second one. Like most sequels, it’s essentially just an extension of the first one with forty-five more minutes of fan service. And the film knows this. It spends very little time catching up the audience or anyone who hasn’t seen the first one. It just dives right in, knowing that the people watching the second one was obsessed with the first. And you know what, let them have it. 2020 has been awful for everyone, so I feel like we should just let Kissing Booth fans have this one. If they can find some joy for 2 hours and 12 minutes, let them have it.
You can watch The Kissing Booth 2 on Netflix and catch the trailer below.
Norman Reedus as Daryl Dixon, Melissa McBride as Carol Peletier - The Walking Dead _ Season 10 - Photo Credit: Jackson Lee Davis/AMC
A mixed bag of news for fans of the O.G. version of The Walking Dead, which has been disrupted more than most by the coronavirus. Yesterday during the show’s Comic-Con @ Home panel, showrunner Angela Kang revealed the season 10 finale, titled “A Certain Doom”, would air on AMC on October 4th. Filming of the episode had been postponed due to the outbreak of COVID-19.
The Walking Dead‘s Comic-Con panel always ends with a trailer and season premiere date for October. That’s not going to be the case this year, though. Kang also revealed that Season 11 would be delayed, and that instead there would be six additional season 10 episodes to air in early 2021. Kang added “if all goes well”, suggesting that the situation is still wide open and could change.
A brief look at “A Certain Doom” was also shown, giving our first look at the on-screen return of Lauren Cohan as Maggie. Cohan had left the series briefly during season 9 to star in the short-lived Whiskey Cavalier, but now she’s back full-time and in the thick of the zombie action.
You can watch the full Comic-Con @ Home panel for The Walking Dead below!
The Walking Dead has been a staple of AMC for more than a decade, and if you thought it was ready to be buried, think again. The zombie franchise continues to expand, and credit to them, new series The Walking Dead: World Beyond actually feels different than either of the two previous shows. For one, this one is less about zombie apocalypse, and more about young people who are finding a way to live.
A new trailer has debuted as part of Comic-Con @ Home, and it’s…well, upbeat is probably too strong of a word. But if you’ve seen trailer for The Walking Dead before, especially from Comic-Con, then you know they tend to be EXTREMELY dark and grim. Well, World Beyond isn’t quite like that, nor should it be.
The series follows the first generation of teens to grow up during a time when the undead walk the Earth. While there’s still plenty of zombie bashing and blood-flying gore, the tone is definitely closer to a CW series or a John Green adaptation than what we’re accustomed to from The Walking Dead.
A fresh-faced cast leads the way, including Nico Tortorella, Annet Mehendru, Alexa Mansour, Aliyah Royale, Hal Cumpston,, Nicolas Cantu, and Emmy-winner Julia Ormond. World Beyond was co-created by Scott M. Gimple and showrunner Matthew Negrete. AMC will launch the series on October 4th at 10pm.
It’s hard not to look at Helstrom as a remnant of the old age of Marvel TV. The show, which is based on the characters Daimon “Son of Satan” Hellstrom and his sister Satana, is likely to be the final one before Kevin Feige and Marvel Studios fully take over with their Disney+ programming. After this season, the chances are it’ll go the way of Cloak & Dagger, Agents of SHIELD, and Runaways into the great multiverse in the sky.
But Helstrom is here now, and if it’s going to make a strong impression anywhere it’s during Comic-Con @ Home. The first trailer has debuted, revealing a horror vibe that fits with the paranormal world in which Daimon Helstrom (Tom Austen) and his sister Ana Helstrom (Sydney Lemmon) walk in every day. The siblings are “the son and daughter of a mysterious powerful serial killer”, who in the comics is literally Satan himself. I can see that still playing out on the small screen, as well.
Marvel TV done bad looks pretty bland, and that’s the impression I’m getting from this footage. Austen and Lemmon don’t really command my attention, but I think this whole thing could be worth it just for Elizabeth Marvel as their mother, who has some serious Exorcist shit goin’ on.
Helstrom comes to Hulu for a 10-episode first (and last?) season on October 16th.
The Comic-Con panel for Fear The Walking Dead was full of fun, tid-bits, and most importantly a 1 minute teaser for the upcoming sixth season. Full disclosure, I fell off after season one of FTWD. At least four times I’ve tried to catch up, and I’m always super into it but I just can’t commit…no clue why. That being said I may add a fifth try after seeing this teaser. The teaser debuted during a virtual panel with stars Alycia Debnam-Carey, Colman Domingo, Jenna Elfman and Rubén Blades and several other series stars. The clip itself is only a minute long and I have no idea who most of the characters are but here’s what I can tell you it’s absolutely packed with awesome looking zombie action and, possibly more importantly, it shows a world that I want to really understand more which isn’t something I’ve felt with it’s parent show in a while. There’s shots of traditional wilderness zombie apocalypse sure, but there’s also plenty of civilization in differing levels of structure. Oddly, the thing that interested me the most was a shot of an oil rig spewing oil. It’s the little things, I mean our whole modern world runs on fossil fuels at the moment so why wouldn’t that be one of the first things they tried to do.
The big surprise of the panel was the announcement of a release date for the premier, October 4th, 2020. While that’s about 4 months later then FTWD usually premiers the fact that they can release while quarantine is still in effect is great news. They have six episodes shot and almost complete so the winter break may end up being longer then usual getting new content anywhere is a huge deal these days. Lastly it was confirmed that the series would depart form it’s single narrative structure and become something of an anthology series following smaller groups of characters. Changing up the game is key to keep anything zombie related fresh. It’s been almost 20 years since 28 Days Later and Shaun of the Dead revitalized the zombie genre so keeping things new and exciting is the only way to keep going.
No news about The Walking Dead‘s season finale, which was not aired during the usual run due to COVID. Thoughts are still pointing to it being released later this year.
For more great coverage of this year’s Comic-Con click here!
Whew, HBO is really doing their thing lately and from the looks of this trailer Lovecraft Country will be another in a string of solid shows since the end of Game of Thrones. Even they’re lower-profile stuff has been worth watching, I’m currently getting sucked into Perry Mason (there’s something I never thought I’d say).
Being a horror fan through and through, I have a depressingly vague knowledge of HP Lovecraft, I know the name Cthulhu, I know some people worship him ironically, but that’s about it. I did know enough to know I’d be into anything that uses the man’s name in it’s title and based on the clip below I’m right on target. The series, which was created by Misha Green and Jordan Peele follows a young African-American man as he travels across the Jim Crowe south looking for his missing father in the 1950’s. Needless to say this show is going to have layers and will most likely teach the lesson that the best Zombie movies always teach…humans are the real monsters.
Check out the trailer chock-full of scares below and look for Lovecraft Country on HBO August 16th, 2020
For more on Lovecraft Country check out our coverage here!
The Fugitive has been an Emmy-winning series in the 1960s, then a popular movie with Harrison Ford in 1993, then it was unsuccessfully remade for TV in 2000. And now, The Fugitive is back again in yet another format, as part of Quibi’s streaming platform with Boyd Holbrook and Kiefer Sutherland leading the way.
The story remains the same, even if the players have changed. Holbrook plays an innocent man on the run after being falsely accused of detonating a bomb. Sutherland plays the hard-nosed detective on his trail. Also in the cast are Genesis Rodriguez, Shareeka Epps, Brian Geraghty, Natalie Martinez, Daniel David Stewart, and Tiya Sircar.
The series is created and written by Nick Santora (Breakout Kings) with Stephen Hopkins (Predator 2) serving as the director and executive producer.
The Fugitive premieres on Quibi beginning August 3rd, with new episodes each day through August 18th.
SYNOPSIS: Kiefer Sutherland and Boyd Holbrook star in this edge-of-your-seat crime thriller from the creator of Most Dangerous Game and co-executive producer of Prison Break in which an innocent man on the run, desperate to clear his name, is chased through Los Angeles by the cop who will not rest until he is captured.
It’s no secret that Josh Boone had big plans for The New Mutants. When he originally came aboard, the film was part of the long-running X-Men franchise for 20th Century Fox at a time when they were expanding with movies such as Logan and Deadpool. New Mutants would’ve done something different, as well, sparking a trilogy of horror movies featuring the teenage mutants.
Well, then Disney happened. The movie is now all but assured to be a standalone, with little chance it will fit into the MCU. However, Boone still has those ideas of what could’ve been, and he tells Slashfilm all about them. He was going to add my favorite New Mutant of all, the techno-organic alien Warlock, in the sequels that will now never happen. *sniffle*
“So after I made [The] Fault [in Our Stars], I ran back to Fox and said, “You’ve gotta let me develop New Mutants.” Knate and I made them a comic book, which was like a PDF where we’d gone and taken frames from all these comics we love and strung them into a vision for what the series was going to be. The characters we chose were always the characters – we had plans, obviously, to bring in new characters in the next movie – the character of Warlock was featured in all the early drafts of the script, but it was so expensive that we weren’t able to do it. Basically, cutting him out of the narrative allowed us to make the film. So our plan was always to have Warlock come back in the next one and try to tell his story then. They were all supposed to be kind of separate horror genre films: the first one’s like a rubber reality horror movie, the second one was supposed to be an alien invasion movie with Warlock, and then the third one was going to take all these elements from the X-Men crossover from the late ‘80s and early ‘90s called Inferno to be a kind of supernatural, apocalyptic horror movie. That was the plan.”
I’m imagining the New Mutants team, with Warlock by their side, battling the alien’s evil father Magus and a horde of invaders throughout New York City. Gives me the chills at the possibilities! Perhaps Kevin Feige and Marvel Studios will let Boone do something else with the X-Men at a later time, but I think it all depends on how well The New Mutants is received when it opens on August 28th.
The coronavirus situation has a lot of studios scrambling, that’s nothing new. It’s been that way for months and will probably continue for quite a while. Each has found their own way through this mess, and in the case of Paramount they have decided selling off some of their biggest titles is the way to go. The latest film they’re unloading is Without Remorse, the Tom Clancy thriller with Michael B. Jordan, which appears to be headed to Amazon.
Variety reports that Paramount and Amazon Studios are in final talks for the streamer to buy Without Remorse. The film, which is based on another popular Tom Clancy character, finds Michael B. Jordan as Navy Seal John Clark, considered by fans to be the dark side to Jack Ryan. The story finds Clark on a path of vengeance against those who murdered his wife. The film is directed by Stefano Sollima and penned by Taylor Sheridan. The duo recently teamed up on Sicario: Day of the Soldado. Jamie Bell, Jodie Turner-Smith and Luke Mitchell co-star.
This makes perfect sense from an Amazon point of view. The network already has John Krasinski starring in a Jack Ryan series, and they’ll easily be able to pair it up alongside Without Remorse to build out a franchise.
The John Clark character has been played a couple of times on screen, by Willem Dafoe in Clear and Present Danger and Liev Schreiber in The Sum of All Fears.
