INTRO: It’s a story we’ve all heard before. A group of friends stray off the beaten path and end up having to fight for their lives. This has served as the set-up for many classic horror films and thrillers. Back in the early ‘90s, director Stephen Hopkins used it as the set-up for an action movie that has an awesome cast. Emilio Estevez, Cuba Gooding Jr., Jeremy Piven, and Stephen Dorff play the friends fighting to survive. Denis Leary is the leader of the criminal gang out for their blood. Unfortunately, not a lot of people went to see the movie when it was released… but they did make the soundtrack a hit. The movie is called Judgment Night, and it’s time for it to be Revisited.

SET-UP: Judgment Night started out as a spec script written by Kevin Jarre, whose other credits include Rambo: First Blood Part 2, Glory, and Tombstone. Working from a story idea by Richard DiLello, Jarre wrote the initial script – copyrighted under the title “Judgment Night, a.k.a. Escape” – in the late 1980s. It was dark and violent, but production company Largo Entertainment snatched it up quickly and found a home for the project at Universal Pictures. Then the script went through a whole lot of rewrites. Halloween and Escape from New York filmmaker John Carpenter wrote his own draft of the script. So did The Terminator and Terminator 2 co-writer William Wisher. Braveheart writer Randall Wallace. Christopher Crowe, who worked on The Last of the Mohicansand the Mark Wahlberg thriller Fear. And novelist Jere Cunningham, who had written Hunter’s Blood. A similar story about friends on a hunting trip being menaced by backwoods psychos. All of the writers presumably held onto the basic idea of outsiders running into trouble with a gang of criminals. But the scope of the action sequences and the settings varied wildly. There were drafts of the script that involved bikers in the desert outside of Los Angeles. And motorcycle chases across rooftops.

Universal spent so much time developing and rewriting the project, they were in danger of losing their option on it. According to the website That Shelf, 20th Century Fox was interested in acquiring Judgment Night if Universal lost it. And since they didn’t want Fox picking up their scraps, Universal finally gave the film the greenlight. 

Director Stephen Hopkins had just worked with Largo producer Lawrence Gordon on Predator 2, which set a skull-collecting alien loose in Los Angeles. So Gordon brought him over to Judgment Night to have him tell another story of terrible things happening in a big city. Before the Predator sequel, Hopkins had directed the horror movie A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child. After making those two outlandish movies back-to-back, he was interested in doing something more down-to-earth. Gordon had also produced the Walter Hill classic The Warriors, which was about the lead characters being pursued by gang members in New York. But Hopkins wanted to go more realistic than that film. Chicago was chosen as the setting for Judgment Night. The action was scaled down. The rooftop motorcycle chases were removed. They got Lewis Colick, who was working with Largo and Fox on the thriller Unlawful Entry, to write a fresh draft of the script. Judgment Night went into production in 1992 – and the script had changed so much in the three years since Jarre copyrighted his version of it, he’s not even credited. Colick received the sole screenwriting credit and shares story credit with Jere Cunningham. During filming, Larry Ferguson of Highlander and Alien 3 was brought on to do some uncredited rewrites.

The story all these chefs cooked up centers on a group of four friends from the Chicago suburbs. Frank Wyatt and his wife recently had a baby, and after sitting at home for over three months, Frank is stir crazy. So he heads into Chicago to see a boxing match with his hot-tempered younger brother John. Ladies man Mike Peterson. And Ray Cochran, who has lied his way into test-driving an RV for the night. When they get stuck in a traffic jam on the way to the venue, Ray decides to get around it by taking the nearest exit. In the age of GPS, getting back to the expressway would probably be quick and easy. But since this is the early ‘90s, they can’t find their way back. They get lost in a rundown, desolate neighborhood. Things get worse when a young man runs out in front of the RV and gets clipped. And that’s not the only injury he has sustained, as someone shot him for stealing the money he has in a small bag. That money was stolen from a criminal kingpin named Fallon, who shows up with three of his lackeys and puts the RV out of commission. The thief is executed in front of Frank and his friends. And, of course, Fallon has a strict “no witnesses” policy. The rest of the film consists of Fallon and his goons pursuing our heroes through this bad neighborhood where the police rarely venture.

For the role of Frank, Hopkins was originally considering John Travolta. But this was before his career was revived by Pulp Fiction, when Look Who’s Talking movies were his main source of income. So Hopkins wasn’t able to convince anyone that Travolta could carry a thriller at that time. Ray Liotta, Tom Cruise, and Christian Slater were offered the Frank role and passed on it. When Universal turned to Emilio Estevez, they were desperate. Judgment Night needed to start filming before they lost the rights. So even though Estevez asked for more money than expected, four million dollars, they agreed to it. Cuba Gooding Jr. and Jeremy Piven were cast as Mike and Ray, and Stephen Dorff as Frank’s brother John.

The first choice for the lead villain, Fallon, was Kevin Spacey, as Hopkins had met him and found him to be suitably creepy. But then comedian Denis Leary came in and impressed with his intensity. So he became Fallon, with Peter Greene as his right hand man Sykes and Michael Wiseman as Travis, who isn’t fully on board with everything Fallon wants to do. Cast to play henchman Rhodes was Erik “Everlast” Schrody fromHouse of Pain, the group that had just had a huge hit with the song “Jump Around.”

The characters are out of their element in a rough neighborhood. And the same could be said about the cast and crew. As Hopkins told Consequence of Sound, filming in Chicago was, “pretty dangerous. I was sending dailies to Universal to show them what we were shooting, and they thought it was all matte paintings. These were areas that were destroyed in the 1968 riots, really close to downtown. We went to some extreme places. We were in a dark basement looking around, and it seemed like the whole room was moving. We got out our flashlights, and it turned out the entire floor, walls and ceiling were covered with rats. You’d be driving down these areas, and there would be people sitting on porches with their rifles out.” There was a shooting near the set one night, and the next day the authorities moved in and closed the area down.

REVIEW: The movie benefited from being filmed in these parts of Chicago. But, of course, Hopkins and his go-to cinematographer Peter Levy didn’t present the areas in an entirely true-to-life way. Their Elm Street and Predator sequels had a Gothic look and feel to them, and they carried that over to this film as well. It may be an action movie, but they tried their best to make it look like a horror film. Putting characters in locations with deep, dark shadows. Almost presenting the film as if it could have been shot in black and white. But instead of black and white, a lot of the film has a yellow look to it. Because Hopkins and Levy were trying to match the yellow lighting of the sodium-vapor streetlights in the area. The horror movie look and Gothic vibe help Judgment Night stand out among action films. But it also delivers plenty of action at the same time.

It’s a very simple movie that goes through its one hundred and ten minutes at a good pace. It only takes fourteen minutes for the story to get our suburbanite heroes into the wrong neighborhood. And it’s off and running from there. The movie becomes one long stalk, chase, and fight sequence, during which the thrills and suspense never let up for too long. It almost starts to feel like a video game, with the characters moving from one level to the next. The killers track Frank and his buddies through a railyard. Into an apartment building. Across rooftops. Into the sewer. And end up in department store after hours. The standout set piece involves the group making their way across a rickety ladder from one roof to another. The ladder doesn’t hold together, threatening to drop them into the alley far below.

While the characters run and fight for their lives, each of them reacts differently to the dangerous situation they’re in. Ray is scared to death, in a total panic. And he finds out that his fast talk doesn’t work in this situation. Mike always wanted to see how he’d do in combat, and he goes a little too far into that mindset. John realizes he isn’t as tough as he thought he was. He can pick road rage fights on the expressway, but gets frozen in fear when he’s being stalked by armed criminals. Everyone says that Frank has gone soft since he got married and became a father. He finds the fight he used to have in him, but also figures out that home life with his new family isn’t something he should be seeking to escape from.

We know from the start that Frank is going to become our lead hero. And not just because he’s played by Emilio Estevez, who got a major payday. Throughout the movie, Frank is always the most sensible and level-headed character. But it does take surprisingly long for him to fully switch into hero mode. We’re more than an hour into the movie before Frank steps up and brings back some of the man he used to be. But Estevez is great no matter what mode Frank is in, and Gooding, Piven, and Dorff do great work around him.

Denis Leary was an unexpected choice for the lead villain in a movie like this. But when you see him in action, it’s clear why he won the role of Fallon. Critic Bobbie Wygant described Leary’s work in the movie as a “red hot performance,” which is a fitting way to put it. It’s red hot due to the burning rage he is barely able to contain most of the time. And which he gets to unleash in a few scenes. Hopkins said Leary’s anger is what made him so appealing. He used it to turn Fallon into a very memorable character.

LEGACY/NOW: Judgment Night wrapped production in January of 1993 and was sent out to theatres that October. And given the horror influence, a Halloween season release didn’t seem like a terrible choice. But apparently it was, because not many people were interested in seeing Judgment Night on the big screen. It landed at number five at the box office its opening weekend and quickly sputtered out from there. Made on a budget of twenty-one million, it only earned twelve million during its U.S. theatrical run. Hopkins has saidthat one of the reasons why it didn’t do well was because there was a shootout at a Bronx screening of the movie. So it was blamed for inciting violence and pulled from cinemas. Whatever the case may be, it did poorly enough that there was a time when Hopkins simply wrote it off as “a real, absolute, total bomb.” Thankfully, he seems to have grown more fond of it over the years.

But even while few people were showing up to watch the movie, music fans were making its soundtrack album a hit. The film’s music supervisor Happy Walters – drawing inspiration from the Aerosmith and Run-D.M.C. collaboration “Walk This Way” – decided to put together an entire album of rock and hip-hop team-ups. The result proved to be so popular that it made its way to the number seventeen spot on the Billboard 200. And there were four singles released. Helmet and House of Pain brought us the song “Just Another Victim.” Faith No More and Boo-Yaa Tribe did “Another Body Murdered.” Biohazard and Onyx teamed up for the title track. And Teenage Fanclub and De La Soul did the song “Fallin’,” which plays in its entirety right at the beginning of the movie as a slow-motion shot moves through Frank’s neighborhood.

The other artist collaborations featured on the album were Living Colour and Run-D.M.C. Slayer and Ice-T. Sonic Youth and Cypress Hill. Mudhoney and Sir Mix-A-Lot. Dinosaur Jr. and Del the Funky Homosapien. Therapy and Fatal. And Pearl Jam and Cypress Hill. Tool and Rage Against the Machine also recorded a song called “Can’t Kill the Revolution” for the album. But they weren’t satisfied with how it turned out, so it wasn’t included. That didn’t stop fans from getting a hold of the track and sharing it, though. Speaking about the album, Hopkins told Consequence of Sound, “I wasn’t even sure how we were going to use the tracks at first, but then when I started hearing it, it just felt fresh. I don’t think there’s been an album quite like it. I guess it sold huge numbers of records. My daughter thinks it’s the greatest album ever made. I think the only reason she likes me doing the film is because of that.”

A lot of listeners would probably agree that the album was the best thing to come out of this production. But Judgment Night was able to gather a cult following once it hit home video. You don’t often hear it being referenced as an action classic, but it has its appreciative fans. Now, more than thirty years after its release, it also has a nostalgic edge. Becoming a movie thatpeople like to put on because they remember watching it in their younger days. Decades ago. It does feel like a movie that was very much of its time. And while it doesn’t exactly have any really mind-blowing sequences in it… it does still hold up as an entertaining viewing experience. So if you haven’t seen Judgment Night yet, seek it out. And if you have seen it, it’s definitely worth revisiting.

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Earlier this month, an image cinematographer Christian Sebaldt shared on Instagram indicated that Final Destination 6 (which is going by the title Final Destination: Bloodlines) was finally, after years of development and a thirteen-year gap between sequels, heading into production. The next day, producer Craig Perry took to social media to confirm that Final Destination: Bloodlines is indeed filming, the aim being to get this one into theatres in 2025 – in time to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the release of the original film. Now, it’s been revealed that the long anticipated sequel has officially wrapped principal photography. Once again, the announcement came courtesy of Perry. The film stars Brec Bassinger (Stargirl), Teo Briones, Kaitlyn Santa Juana, Richard Harmon, Anna Lore, Owen Patrick Joyner, Max Lloyd-Jones, Rya Kihlstedt, and Tinpo Lee. It also features the return of Tony Todd in his iconic role as William Budworth, who was in the first, second and fifth films.

What is Final Destination: Bloodlines about?

According to entertainment industry scooper Daniel Richtman, Final Destination: Bloodlines has the following synopsis: Just as she’s about to leave home for college, 18-year-old STEFANI, who’s been having horrific nightmares about dying in a tower accident in the 1960s, discovers that her dream is actually a premonition that happened to her grandmother, Esther, who thwarted death fifty years ago but is now running out of time. Stefani learns that though her grandmother thwarted Death (until she died in her 80s), and Death has been going after the would-have-been victims of that long-ago catastrophe, killing them off and then going after their children. Stefani and her family realize that their bloodline isn’t safe from Death, who will take them violently and gruesomely, in order, unless someone like Stefani figures out a way to stop it.

Jon Watts, director of Spider-Man: Homecoming, Spider-Man: Far from Home, and Spider-Man: No Way Home, is producing the film with Perry, Dianne McGunigle, and Sheila Hanahan Taylor. Watts also wrote the initial treatment, which was fleshed out into a screenplay by Lori Evans Taylor and Guy Busick. The directing duo of Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein, who previously directed the 2018 film Freaks (starring Emile Hirsch and Bruce Dern) and the 2019 live-action Kim Possible movie, are at the helm. I

Are you looking forward to Final Destination 6 / Final Destination: Bloodlines? What do you think of the cast that has been assembled for the film? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

The post Final Destination 6 wraps filming; what else do we know about it? appeared first on JoBlo.

The episode of WTF Happened to This Horror Movie? covering Insomnia was Written and Narrated by Mike Holtz, Edited by Jaime Vasquez, Produced by Andrew Hatfield and John Fallon, and Executive Produced by Berge Garabedian.

In 2002, Christopher Nolan directed a film set in a small town in Alaska where the sun doesn’t go down for days at a time. The film starred the great Al Pacino as a once again decorated but tortured Detective at full Heat level intensity, squaring off against the legendary Robin Williams in an against-type role as a creepy, cerebral murderer of a teenage girl. And somehow……some way…..it’s considered underrated. Christopher Nolan. Al Pacino. Robin Williams. Underrated. These are not words that go together. So, let’s talk about just WTF Happened to Insomnia.

These days, in the year of our dark lord 2024, Christopher Nolan is an undeniable titan in Hollywood. After films like his Batman trilogy, Interstellar, and his most recent film Oppenheimer, he’s as much of a household name as a director can be. He’s won everything there is to win. The guy could direct a movie about a toasted cheddar chalupa and just the sound of the words leaving his lips with his smooth accent would make it sound regal and grandiose: “Toasted Cheddah Chalupa” and you just know it’s going to be huge. As it should be. They are delicious. So, when I tell you this next bit, it’s going to sound strange. When Christopher Nolan heard Warner Brothers was trying to remake a 1997 Norwegian thriller directed by Erik Skjodbjaerg and starring Stellan Skarsgard called Insomnia, his agent couldn’t even get him a meeting with the studio. Baffling, considering the same studio executives would probably do a cannonball into the needle pit from Saw II just to get Nolan to eat a bagel with them in 2024. But again… they hadn’t even seen Memento yet at this period in time. Which is the movie that would change everything for Nolan. But not without a little help. According to the book The Nolan Variations by Tom Shone, established Hollywood director, producer, and experimental filmmaker Steven Soderbergh was the catalyst that made all this happen. After screening Memento for himself and hearing of Nolan’s inability to get in a room with Warner Bros, Soderbergh allegedly stormed across the lot of Warner Bros and told the head of the studio at the time, whoever it was, (I’m picturing Satan personally, you go with whatever you like) and said, “you’re insane if you don’t meet with this guy” and eventually offered to Executive Produce the film himself, along with George Clooney, were they to give Nolan a chance. In Christopher Nolan’s own words, “Steven Soderbergh basically got Insomnia made”.

What was it that made Nolan so interested in remaking a film like Insomnia so early in his directing career? Nolan had stumbled across the film while working on the unreleased at-the-time Memento and was so enamored he watched it twice in one sitting. Of the experience, Nolan said, “I’d love to do this in a slightly different way. If you take that situation you can make it into a Hollywood movie with big movie stars. You could make it like Heat.”

At the time when Warner Bros finally decided to give Nolan a chance to direct the film, they had already given the script writing duties to an extremely new to the scene Hillary Seitz. Because of this and the lack of official writing credit on the film, many cite Insomnia as the only film of his that Christopher Nolan didn’t write. This is factually correct if IMDB is watching but it isn’t the full story.

The truth is, Nolan did his own rewrites of the script in 2000. Of this situation, Nolan said, “I don’t have a writing credit on the film and I didn’t ask for one. Because when I came on as director, Hillary Seitz really rewrote the script in the ways that I wanted her to, but I did do a set of rewrites for Pacino that were reasonably substantial.” So, take from that what you will. I definitely consider Nolan a writer on this one.

In the film, we follow Pacino’s character, LA Detective Will Dormer (whose name actually means “sleep” in multiple languages) as he’s being investigated by Internal Affairs for allegedly going too far to have his criminals put behind bars. He’s sent to the small town and Halibut fishing capital of the world, called Nightmute, Alaska to get away from it all and help solve the case of a murdered teenage girl. The kicker here is that the town is currently in one of its phases of the year where the sun doesn’t go down. Like, at all. For days. Now, if you’re like me and you’ve had your brain go coo-coo for Cocoa Puffs after working the night shift for an extended amount of time, you can already feel this situation taking hold. It’s not good for someone like Dormer who’s already stressed and exhausted and whose partner just informed him he’s going to cut a deal with internal affairs to cover his own ass, possibly putting child murderers Dormer put away back on the streets and ruining his life’s work. To make it worse, this jerk (played perfectly by actor Martin Donovan, who would later work with Nolan again on Tenet) just casually tells him all this as if it’s no big deal, then tries to use the waitress as a human shield of awkwardness to which Dormer gives him this amazing stare.

Eventually, in one of those unforgettable movie scenes, that just make films such as the diner scene in Heat or the pool sequence from The Strangers Prey at Night, Dormer is giving chase to the killer in an intense fog when he fires his weapon and realizes he’s mistakenly shot and killed his partner Hap instead. Hap thinks that Will has done this on purpose and screams “Get away from me!” in his last moments as Will tries to help him and the killer watches from the fog. Will has to lie and say that the killer was the one who shot his partner, knowing that no one would believe him once it gets out his partner was about to cut a deal with Internal Affairs. What follows is a cat-and-mouse game with Dormer and everyone else, including the killer who’s blackmailing him to frame someone else for the crime, as he struggles with the weight of his guilt and decisions. While also going seven straight days and nights unable to sleep. And for those of you wondering, that’s really f*cking hard to do. No human being on record has ever gone more than eleven days straight without sleeping and lived to tell the tale.

Though the film was a remake, it was the rare version of a remake that changed enough to have its own identity, even pleasing the director of the original film who said, “It was quite close, stylistically, to the original. I felt lucky that it’s such a well-crafted, smart film and that it had a really good director handling it, because as a remake I think it did really well, and it doesn’t hurt any original if a remake is well done.” Nolan’s Insomnia not only honored the film it was remaking but was also clearly inspired by the others who had come before. There’s a Hitchcockian feel to the movie that Nolan himself mentions several times as well as multiple similarities to Johnathan Demme’s Silence of the Lambs. Ironic, considering Demme was at one point attached to direct the film himself. But Nolan had the job and the rest was history. He would use his cast to make one of the biggest changes between the original and his own, stating “The original film is very brilliant in its process of slow alienation from the protagonist. My film’s the opposite. You go with him on the journey and in a way you get closer to him at the end than you are at the beginning. I love the idea of going okay, take this exact plot but you just change a few things. You change your relationship with them. That’s the point of stars. They have a relationship with the audience. You tend to trust them.” The studio, though still wary of Nolan agreed with him on this point. Which led to the hire of maybe the biggest star of all… Al Pacino.

Pacino was coming off a ten-year stretch that included some of his most fun and intense roles. Movies like Heat as mentioned earlier, The Devil’s Advocate, Any Given Sunday, and Carlito’s Way. He brought that same intensity to the set of Insomnia. With limited time to rehearse, Nolan and Pacino worked hand in hand in either reigning in that intensity or letting it off the leash. Nolan said that Pacino would request to do multiple takes with varying levels of intensity during his scenes but that Pacino was one of the greatest actors to ever live and he very easily could have simply used the first take each time.

On the opposite side of the spectrum was the late Robin Williams, one of the funniest people on planet Earth, taking a turn for the dark side for the second time in 2002 (as the film One Hour Photo released the same year) in the role of an author turned teen murderer, Walter Finch. Though Nolan noted that Williams was a delight on set, there was a method to Williams’ madness as well. Williams said that he had watched an interview of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer where Dahmer calmly explained to a TV crew how he would store the bodies of his victims and how it freaked them all out. He said “The creepier, the more normal and regular it seems… the creepier it is because that’s the way it is. To play it just straight and regular and much like this because people like that feel like they are not entitled, but it’s how they function.” In the end, Williams would deliver an amazing subdued, and complex villain that is hard to shake….even as you see his body disappear into the cold Alaskan water after being shot by Dormer at the end of Insomnia. He disappears into the nothingness as if he were never there… which was exactly the intent. Nolan would later say of the character, “In my conversations with Robin, I did actually say to him ‘This is something we’ll only talk about, but the guy could be unreal… as in he might not exist. He’s very much Dormer’s conscience”.

An interesting idea that would give you a great excuse to watch Insomnia again, although that isn’t the reality they decided to go with. It’s fascinating to consider. But as Lucas from Empire Records once said, “Always play with their minds.” Nolan would go on to praise William’s work in Insomnia further, saying, “I wound up watching the film hundreds of times as we cut it, and I never hit that point with the performance where you start to see the acting. Most performances, at a point, bits start to peel off and away…but with Robin’s, he was very much in that character. Not that he’s a very dark person to work with- he’s very lively and friendly and amusing to work with. He really found something within himself. I think it’s a very underrated bit of work on his part.”

Hillary Swank was cast as Detective Ellie Burr, who idolized Dormer’s work and was eager to get her chance to affect the world in the same way. Her character in the end would use all she learned from Dormer to realize that he was indeed the one to shoot his partner and the final conduit for Dormer to finally receive a cathartic release for his guilt, telling her not to “lose her way” by throwing out the evidence, though she knew it was an accident. And though it was the last moment of his life, he was finally able to get some sleep, his soul finally unburdened.

It was this guilt that was the main theme of Insomnia and the reason that if you wanted to you could watch the film under the spell that its killer was simply a figment of Dormer’s imagination. Watching such a talented actor as Pacino in his bag of goods, playing a character being broken to the very core by his guilt and lack of sleep is something to behold and by all accounts the main story at play here. Nolan himself said, “To me, the film is about responses to guilt and you’ve got two characters who deal with guilt in opposite ways. In fact, that’s what makes the relationship between them quite interesting.” On the lack of sleep front, Soderbergh was quoted as saying that was the most difficult task in making the film, saying, “The biggest challenge in a movie like this is creating the impression of fatigue and what it means to be tired without making the audience tired. You have to come up with some interesting visual ways to suggest that state of mind without lulling people into some stupor” Which, Insomnia did in spades using fragmented editing, up close camera shots, and the acting talents of Al Pacino. Yeah, I know, I know. You get it. I love Al Pacino.

The sunlight and setting played as important a role as Pacino, Williams, or Swank. The sun becomes an unrelenting metaphor for Dormer’s guilt and his inability to escape his current situation. The setting of Alaska (though mostly filmed in British Columbia), framed beautifully by Christopher Nolan’s right-hand man Wally Pfister, provides the ambiance for multiple memorable moments. From the plane ride at the beginning of the movie to a chase scene that ends with Dormer trapped in the water under a series of logs smashing together violently, to the famous and aforementioned fog scene. Pfister and Nolan also used the sun to their advantage in terms of cinematography with Nolan noting “We wanted to make a very dark film that had ever-present light.” Amidst all the beautiful settings, cinematography, metaphors, and intrigue…we were still treated to one-of-a-kind moments and one-liners like this one between Pacino and Williams: “You’re about as mysterious to me as a blocked toilet is to a plumber.”

So, Nolan had his cast, his cinematographer, his locations, and the wind at his back. But he still didn’t have the full trust of the studio. Who put him through multiple test screenings and even made him film an ending where Pacino’s character lived. Nolan explained “Probably the trickiest thing with Insomnia was we had to shoot two endings. I changed the (original) ending actually at Steven’s suggestion. He said to me, ‘He should die at the end and then it is like a John Ford film’. And I thought ‘yeah, that makes a lot of sense’. The whole thing becomes much more about the man’s interior and ethical journey. The studio was not happy about this. And so, they made me promise to shoot it both ways. And I did shoot it both ways. Pacino was not happy about it. But basically, I said to him ‘Look, I gave them my word I would do it’…and he respected that.”

Warner Bros never even as much as asked to see the other ending and Nolan never even edited it together. But the test screeners were still a pest for Nolan who said, “First Alcon, then Warner Bros made us test it. I haven’t done it since, but that is where they literally write you a book of how to fix your films, and it’s a brutal process. We had to do it three or four times over many months and it was a very, very stressful process of being almost pitted against the audience in a way, which is not what filmmaking is.”

Regardless, the film would be released on May 24^th, 2002 to the tune of 114 million worldwide (on a 46 million dollar budget). The reviews were overall outstanding, the director of the original was pleased, and all was right with the world. Nolan specifically calls it his most underrated film, saying “I’m very proud of the film. I think, of all my films, it’s probably the most underrated….That’s not really for me to say, but every now and again I meet a filmmaker and that’s actually the film that they’re interested in or want to talk about.” He also goes on to say that the film was one of the best-reviewed of his entire career at the time, which “helped a lot”. Which, it clearly did considering Warner Bros. trusted him enough to hand him the keys to the Batman universe afterwards…..and we all know how that turned out.

As far as why Insomnia feels underrated when you look at Nolan’s filmography? It’s hard to say. Nolan thinks it may be because it wasn’t genre-changing enough, saying, “Of all the films I’ve made, it sits the most squarely or comfortably within the genre that I was trying to make it in. It doesn’t really change the genre, and that’s what people have come to expect from the other films I’ve made. But I think the film holds up very well.” And I would agree. Insomnia is one of those movies that you kind of forget exists for whatever reason but then get really excited to watch it when it creeps through the fog and back into your brain again. And that, my friends, is just WTF happened to Insomnia. Thanks for watching and remember to catch Christopher Nolan’s Toasted Cheddar Chalupa, in theaters this Summer.

A couple of the previous episodes of WTF Happened to This Horror Movie? can be seen below. To see more, head over to our JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel – and subscribe while you’re there!

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Fans of the 2002 film 28 Days Later and its follow-up 28 Weeks Later have been waiting seventeen years for another entry in the franchise, hoping we’d someday see a movie called 28 Months Later. We’re not getting that one, but 28 Days Later director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland are currently working on reviving the franchise, and they’re going to make this revival worth the wait. Not only are we getting a new movie called 28 Years Later, but we’re actually getting a whole trilogy of sequels! Sony just reported that the film is set for a June 20th, 2025 release date. But what else do we know about this 28 Years Later sequel trilogy.

LONG IN THE WORKS

Way back in 2009, we heard that Paul Andrew Williams (The Cottage) was on board to direct 28 Months Later… but that project didn’t make it into production. Since then, we’ve heard Boyle and Garland mention 28 Months Later every once in a while. They would say there was a great idea for the sequel, then later say it might never happen. In a 2022 interview, Boyle said Garland had already written the script, and it might finally be the time to make it into a movie. In the middle of 2023, the collaborators confirmed to Inverse that they were having serious talks about the sequel, which they were calling 28 Years Later. Garland said, “A few years ago an idea materialized in my head for what would be really 28 Years Later. Danny always liked the idea.“ Boyle added, “So we’re talking about it quite seriously, quite diligently. If he doesn’t want to direct it himself I’ll be well up for it if we can execute a similarly good idea.“

28 Weeks Later wasn’t as successful as its predecessor, making $65.8 million on a budget of $15 million vs. 28 Days Later‘s $84.6 million on a budget of $8 million. That’s part of the reason why another sequel hasn’t happened sooner – along with the fact that Garland wasn’t overly pleased with the 2007 sequel 28 Weeks Later, which he didn’t write. Garland told Inverse, “I resisted [making a sequel] for a long time because there were things about 28 Weeks that bugged me. I just thought, ‘F*ck that. I’d rather try to write a different story in a different world.’“ Now he’s ready to write not just one but three new stories in the 28 Days Later world. No plot details have been revealed.

DIRECTORS

Alex Garland is expected to write the scripts for all three of the 28 Years Later movies, but apparently didn’t want to direct them. Danny Boyle will only be directing the first one. For the second film, possibly titled 28 Years Later Part 2, he’ll be passing the helm over to The Marvels and Candyman director Nia DaCosta. Production on DaCosta’s sequel will begin immediately after Boyle wraps filming on his. They wanted to have the sequel director signed on before filming on the first movie begins, as they want to “make sure each director is on the same page in regard to the story while also having time to bring their own vision to life.”

CILLIAN MURPHY

In 28 Days Later, Cillian Murphy played bicycle courier Jim, who wakes up from a coma to find himself in an apocalyptic England that’s overrun by people who have been infected by a rage virus. Boyle and Garland went through several endings for the film before landing on the one movie-goers saw in theatres – and that ending was the only one where Jim survived. So he’s still out there, ready to live through another rage virus nightmare 28 years later. If Boyle and Garland decide to put him in the story.

While doing the press rounds for Oppenheimer last year, Murphy told Collider, “I was talking to Danny Boyle recently, and I said, ‘Danny, we shot the movie at the end of 2000.’ So I think we’re definitely approaching the 28 Years Later. But like I’ve always said, I’m up for it. I’d love to do it. If Alex [Garland] thinks there’s a script in it and Danny wants to do it, I’d love to do it.“ Despite the fact that Murphy is willing to reprise the role of Jim and is returning as an executive producer on 28 Years Later, we still haven’t heard confirmation that he’ll actually be in the movie. While talking to Josh Horowitz on the Happy Sad Confused podcast a couple months ago, Murphy said (with thanks to Coming Soon for the transcription), “It’s for (Danny Boyle and Alex Garland) to speak about, I suppose, but I think it’s been brewing for a while. The first movie was so important for me, as an actor. I love working with those guys. Alex has an idea. And Danny directing is just huge. Watch this space.”

CAST

While we wait to hear for sure if Cillian Murphy is or isn’t in the movie, other casting news has been popping up. Industry scooper Daniel Richtman had shared the rumor that Jodie Comer (Killing Eve) and Charlie Hunnam (Sons of Anarchy) were in talks to play the lead roles. Deadline has since reported that they’ve heard Comer is indeed in the cast, along with Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Bullet Train) and Ralph Fiennes (Skyfall). There has been no further word about Hunnam’s involvement, and it looks like he’s no longer on the docket. However, recently Jack O’Connell was added to the cast in a supporting role, with the buzz being that his character is meant to emerge as a lead in follow-up movies. Details on the characters these actors might be playing are, of course, being kept under wraps.

DISTRIBUTION

There was a bidding war over the distribution rights to the 28 Years Later trilogy, with Warner Bros. and Sony emerging as the final competitors – and Sony taking the win in the end. According to The Hollywood Reporter, “Each movie will have a budget in the $60 million range but it’s unclear how goalposts or compensation may have changed during the high-stakes negotiations. A theatrical release was of great import to the filmmakers.” Sony had an edge in this race due to the fact that it’s headed up by Tom Rothman, who used to be at Fox and worked with Boyle on eight different movies there. Release dates have not yet been announced.

Boyle and Garland are producing 28 Years Later. Bernie Bellew is also producing, as are original producer Andrew Macdonald, and Peter Rice, who was the head of Fox Searchlight Pictures when that company backed 28 Days Later. As mentioned, Murphy is executive producing.

And that’s everything we know about the 28 Years Later trilogy at this point. Are you looking forward to these films? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

The post 28 Years Later gets a release date & everything we know appeared first on JoBlo.

The fact that there was going to be a Blade reboot as part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe came as a huge surprise when the announcement was made at the San Diego Comic-Con back in July of 2019 – but all these years later, we’re still waiting on the film to make its way into production. In fact, with Bob Iger recently announcing that the studio was cutting back (even more) on Marvel stuff, Blade’s future seems in limbo. So, here’s Everything We Know About Blade (the MCU reboot, that is).

MAHERSHALA ALI

The Blade character was previously played by Wesley Snipes in three feature films and by Sticky Fingaz in a short-lived television series. This time around, he’s going to be played by Mahershala Ali, who was already attached to the project when it was announced in 2019… and while there was no indication online that Ali has been interested in playing Blade, this was actually a role he had been chasing for a couple years by that point. During an interview on The Tight Rope podcast, he revealed that he had first asked what Marvel was thinking of doing anything new with Blade on the day the Marvel / Netflix series Luke Cage (where Ali played Cornell “Cottonmouth” Stokes) premiered, which would have been on September 30, 2016. At that time, Ali was told that Marvel was considering making a new Blade TV series. He wanted to play the character, but in a movie. Soon after he won an Oscar for his performance in the film Green Book at the start of 2019, he was able to get a meeting with Marvel Studios mastermind Kevin Feige to talk about Blade. That’s when the movie deal started to come together.

Although some fans were upset to hear that Wesley Snipes wouldn’t be reprising the title role in Blade, Snipes himself wasn’t bothered. Speaking to Yahoo, Snipes said, “I’m cool with it. I don’t walk around as Blade, so I’m not attached to the character like that, you know? I feel no emotional loss. Zero. I’m happy that he’s been cast, and more than likely he’ll do a great job.” Snipes and Ali did talk about the character, with Snipes giving his successor some advice: make sure you’re in shape, try not to get hurt, and enjoy it while it lasts.

SUPPORTING CAST

Delroy Lindo has been signed on to appear in Blade alongside Ali since November of 2021, and is apparently still attached to the project. The same isn’t said for Aaron Pierre, who was said to have landed a highly coveted role in the film back in February of 2022… but it seems that his character has since been dropped over the course of the multiple rewrites the script has gone through. Mia Goth was cast in the film back in April of 2023, and rumors have been swirling that she’ll be playing the villainous character Lilith.

At the start of 2022, the folks at Murphy’s Multiverse got their hands on character descriptions that were supposedly being used as part of the casting process. The characters they heard about were: “Abid”, described as a burly, South Asian character who has taken a vow of silence after a turbulent life; “Huntley”, described as a man, 40-60; and “Faiza”, a French-speaking North African female between 20 and 40. They speculated that these characters would actually be Blade’s fellow vampire hunters, introduced in the pages of the comic book Tomb of Dracula. They suspected that “Abid” was Taj Nital, “Huntley” was Quincy Harker, and “Faiza” was Rachel van Helsing. “Taj was indeed a burly, South Asian character who was first introduced in Tomb of Dracula #3, who did not speak; however, in the comics, he didn’t speak because he had his throat ripped out by vampires, so a slight change there. Taj, along with Rachel van Helsing, the granddaughter of great vampire hunter Abraham van Helsing, worked with Quincy Harker to hunt down the world’s oldest vampire threat, Dracula. Harker, the son of Jonathan and Mina Harker from Bram Stoker’s Dracula, eventually worked with Frank Drake, a descendant of Dracula, and Blade to take on the vampire nation.” But if these characters were ever in the script, there’s a chance they have been written out, like the one Aaron Pierre was going to play.

Ali made his debut as Blade with a vocal cameo at the end of Eternals, where he interrupts the character Dane Whitman (played by Kit Harington) before he can touch a mystical sword called the Ebony Blade. In the comics, Whitman becomes the Black Knight while wielding that sword, so some fans thought he might show up as the Black Knight in Blade. However, Harington has said that the Black Knight was never meant to be in the movie. The Ebony Blade, on the other hand, might be a different story…

WRITER(S)

The movie was announced in July of 2019, but it wasn’t until after we got through the 2020 lockdowns that a writer was hired to work on the film. In February of 2021, we heard that Stacy Osei-Kuffour, known for her work on the TV shows Watchmen and PEN15, was writing the script. Since then, we’ve heard that drafts have also been written by Michael Starrbury (When They See Us), True Detective creator Nic Pizzolatto (who worked with Ali on season 3 of that show), and Beau DeMayo (The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf).

At one point, we heard that Blade would start filming in September of 2021. Then it got pushed to July of 2022, with filming to take place in Atlanta, Georgia and New Orleans, Louisiana. There was a delay due to creative issues, and then it would start filming in 2023. It was just weeks away from filming when the production had to be delayed due to the writer’s strike, followed by the actor’s strike… once the writer’s strike ended, it was announced that a new writer, Michael Green (Logan), had been hired to start the script over from scratch.

That’s when Variety reported on some of the problems that had been holding Blade back, including five writers, two directors, and a shutdown six weeks before production was to star. It sounds like there were too many cooks in the kitchen, with perhaps the braintrust at Marvel looking to go a little too P.C: “One person familiar with the script permutations says the story at one point morphed into a narrative led by women and filled with life lessons. Blade was relegated to the fourth lead, a bizarre idea considering that the studio had two-time Oscar winner Ali on board. Amid reports that Ali was ready to exit over script issues, Feige went back to the drawing board and hired Michael Green, the Oscar-nominated writer of Logan, to start anew.”

Starrbury took to social media to say that he never saw a script that didn’t have Blade as the lead, but maybe such a script did exist at some point when he wasn’t involved. Whatever the case, it looks like Green might be the writer whose script gets filmed.

DIRECTOR(S)

As Variety mentioned, the project has been through two directors on its way to the screen. John Wick‘s uncredited co-director David Leitch, who has gone on to make films like Deadpool 2 and Hobbs & Shaw, said he would “love to” direct Blade. Chad Stahelski, who directed all of the John Wick movies and was also second unit director on Captain America: Civil War, said Blade was the one Marvel property that he would be really interested in taking the helm of. But instead of those experienced action directors, Marvel turned to Bassam Tariq, a documentarian who made his narrative feature debut with the 2020 drama Mogul Mowgli. Tariq was hired in July of 2021, but stepped away from the project in September of 2022, citing scheduling issues. Two months later, Yann Demange (White Boy Rick) signed on to direct the film, and it looks like he’s going to see it through production.

RATED R

It wasn’t always a sure thing that the MCU Blade was going to be rated R like the previous Blade movies were. But when Demange came on board as director, he got Marvel to agree to let him make an R rated movie. As he told Deadline, “They gave me the R, which is so important. … We are going to have fun, because Mahershala is such a deep actor. I’m excited to show a kind of ruthlessness, a roughness he has, that allows him to walk the earth in a particular way. I love him for that. He’s got dignity and integrity, but there is a ferocity there that he usually keeps under the surface. I want to unleash that and put it on the screen.”

STORY (MAYBE)

Now that Blade seems to be moving forward smoothly with Yann Demange set to direct, Michael Green writing the script, and Mahershala Ali, Delroy Lindo, and Mia Goth cast, industry scooper Daniel Richtman has also shared details on what he hears the story is going to be. According to his Patreon report, Blade is an R-rated period piece that will tell the story of “Lilith going after Blade’s daughter’s blood to create an army of Daywalkers.” Lilith’s weapon will apparently be the Ebony Blade, which was previously featured in Eternals.

Blade has had several release dates over the year, but as far as we know, right now, it’s on track to start filming soon, aiming for a November 7, 2025 theatrical release date. Then again, who knows? It may come in 2026, or not at all…

And that’s everything we know about Blade… so far…

The post Everything We Know About Blade, the MCU Reboot appeared first on JoBlo.

Back in 2000, director Ridley Scott (and screenwriters David Franzoni, John Logan, and William Nicholson) took us back to 180 AD for Gladiator, which told the story of Roman general Maximus Decimus Meridius (played by Russell Crowe), who is favored by Emperor Marcus Aurelius to be his successor because his own son, Commodus, is unfit to rule. Commodus disagrees, so he murders his father, has Maximus arrested, and has Maximus’s wife and son killed. While Commodus establishes himself as the new emperor, Maximus escapes from captivity – only to be captured again, this time by slavers who sell him off to become a gladiator. Soon he’s fighting in front of Commodus in Rome’s Colosseum… and it all builds up to Commodus challenging Maximus to a duel. Gladiator was a major box office success and racked up multiple Academy Award wins, including Best Picture. So there was already talk of a sequel in 2001, but it ended up taking more than twenty years to get a sequel into production. Gladiator II is now ready to reach theatres, courtesy of Paramount Pictures (domestic) and Universal Pictures (international) on November 22, 2024 – so we have put together a list of everything we know about this sequel.

DIRECTOR AND SCRIPT

Ridley Scott always planned to return to the helm for Gladiator II. The hold-up was the script. Since Maximus died at the end of Gladiator, screenwriters found it very difficult to figure out how to continue the story, especially since the initial idea was that Russell Crowe would return as Maximus in some capacity. The first writers to be involved were David Franzoni and John Logan, who crafted a story that would pick up fifteen years after the events of the first movie and center on the Lucius character, who was a child played by Spencer Treat Clark in Gladiator. While the Praetorian Guards rule Rome, Lucius would be trying to find out the truth of his parentage because the idea was always that, even though his mother (Commodus’s sister Lucilla, played by Connie Nielsen) would say that his father was the late Lucius Verus, it was actually Maximus. This story would have allowed for some prequel elements, but would have also seen Maximus being resurrected… somehow. According to Crowe, there was a time when they were just going to have Maximus rise from the dead like Jesus Christ.

Musician Nick Cave was hired to write his own version of the script, and this one has gotten a lot of attention because how over-the-top and insane it was. Cave’s title of choice was Christ Killer, and would have (as Cave explained on Marc Maron’s podcast) “found Maximus in purgatory as he’s sent down by the gods, who are dying in Heaven because there’s this one god, there’s this Christ character, down on Earth who is gaining popularity and so the many gods are dying so they send Gladiator back to kill Christ and his followers. Maximus was tricked by the gods, as the Christ character that they’ve sent him to kill was his own son, the one who died in the first movie. The end of the film would have found Maximus living forever, fighting battles throughout history, such as the Crusades, World War II, and Vietnam, before ending up as a General in the modern-day Pentagon.”

Things got quiet for a decade after Cave turned in his script, but in 2017 Scott started pushing the sequel forward again while swearing that he had found a way to bring Maximus back that would make sense. The Town and Top Gun: Maverick writer Peter Craig was hired to write a new script that would again center on Lucius, this time 25 to 30 years after the events of Gladiator. Craig found the idea tough to crack, so then Scott brought on his Napoleon writer David Scarpa. And it’s Scarpa who wrote the script that finally went into production in 2023.

CAST

Paul Mescal (Normal People) leads the long-awaited sequel, playing the adult Lucius. One report let us know, “Before he died, Maximus rescued Lucius and his mother from the clutches of the young man’s uncle, Commodus. The event left an impression on Lucius, who aspires to be as formidable as Maximus as he braves a harsh world.” Mescal is joined in the cast by Fred Hechinger (The White Lotus) as Emperor Geta (replacing Barry Keoghan in the role, as he had to drop out due to scheduling conflicts), Joseph Quinn (Stranger Things) as Emperor Caracalla, and – in roles that weren’t specified when their involvement was announced – Pedro Pascal (The Last of Us), Lior Raz (The Crowded Room), Peter Mensah (Spartacus), and Matt Lucas (Wonka).

May Calamawy (Moon Knight) is in there as well, and while we don’t know who she’s playing, it was said that her character is quite important to the story, so Scott did a “thorough search” before Calamawy earned the role over the course of multiple auditions.

Gladiator cast member Derek Jacobi is reprising the role of Senator Gracchus and Connie Nielsen is back as Lucius’s mother Lucilla. Scott made sure to involve Nielsen as much as possible during the development of the story.

Denzel Washington (American Gangster) is playing someone Scott described to Deadline as being a character who is parallel to Lucius. “The owner of a business that supplied weapons for the Romans, who supplied the oil when they traveled, who supplied the wine they drink. They wouldn’t drink water, they drank wine. When they traveled, who would supply wagons and horses and tack? There had to be the arms dealers of the period; here is a man who already rich from supplying the weapons, the catapults. His hobby is like a racing stable except it’s gladiators. He’s got a stable of 30 or 40 gladiators. He likes to actually see them fight and it evolves that that’s where he came from. He was captured in North Africa, and evolved into a free man because he was a good gladiator. But he hides that because also he’s now realizing the potential of his actual power. He’s wealthier than most senators, so already has thoughts and designs of the possible idea of taking power from these two crazy princes.”

Absent from the cast is Russell Crowe, as Maximus remains in his grave after all. Crowe doesn’t seem pleased that people keep asking him about the sequel – during an appearance at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, he said, “They should be f*cking paying me for the amount of questions I get asked about the f*cking film that I am not even in.” – but he has also said that he thinks it will be “absolutely spectacular” and he’s jealous of the experiences Mescal got to have on set.

PRODUCTION

Gladiator II started filming in May of 2023 – and the production wasn’t an easy ride. A month into filming, six crew members were left with non-life-threatening burn injuries when they were accidentally caught in a large explosion that went off during the filming of a stunt sequence. A studio spokesperson assured The Sun that “The safety and full medical services teams on-site were able to act quickly so that those who were impacted immediately received necessary care. They are all in stable condition and continue to receive treatment.”

Two months into filming, production had to shut down due to the Screen Actors Guild strike. The strike went on from July into November, with Scott using that time to edit together 90 minutes of footage (and possibly film some more footage with non-SAG extras). Before filming could resume in December, the deteriorating sets had to be repaired. A massive recreation of ancient Rome, including a life-size Colosseum, had been built for the production, and these open-air sets had to be left sitting there for four months while the strike played out. So it took some time to fix them up before the cast and crew could get back to work.

The strike helped the budget get out of hand. The movie was supposed to cost $165 million, but The Hollywood Reporter revealed that costs had ballooned to somewhere in the $250 million to $310 million range. For this project alone, the studio lost $600,000 a week during the strike.

There were also rumblings from PETA about the mistreatment of horses and monkeys on the set, but crew members refuted those claims, saying the Humane Society was always on set to oversee the treatment of the animals.

Filming wrapped in January after taking place in England, Morocco, and Malta. By filming in Malta (which was also a filming location for the first movie), the production earned a €46.7 million rebate, which is over $50 million in USD. So that brings some relief, despite the budget being out of control.

CINEMACON TRAILER

A five-minute trailer, which was preceded by a video introduction in which Scott said Gladiator II is “more spectacular than the original,” was screened at the CinemaCon event in early April. JoBlo’s own Chris Bumbray was in attendance and reported that the trailer was incredible. He wrote in, “Paul Mescal looks a lot like Russell Crowe, with the same beard. Lucius is a gladiator trained by Denzel Washington’s character. Meanwhile, Pedro Pascal is a Roman general trying to lead a revolt against the sadistic emperor (Joseph Quinn). At some point, Quinn and Mescal meet in the gladiator ring for a battle. The games are more sadistic this time, with the gladiators fighting wild baboons unarmed and a rhino. You also see lots of Connie Nielsen, who seems to be in cahoots with Denzel and opposes the emperor. Gladiator II has a ton of action and intrigue. Mescal and Pascal look like they handle the action side, with no shots of Denzel fighting.”

Not mentioned in that write-up was the fact that the trailer features “a scene where they flood the Colosseum and have the gladiators fight sharks.” Which might sound over-the-top and ridiculous to some, but in the early days of the Colosseum, the place would occasionally be flooded so it could be used to host staged ship battles called naumachia… and yes, apparently they would release sharks and other sea creatures into the flooded structure as well. So there is a reflection of reality in this insanity.

That’s everything we know about Gladiator II right now, but with the release date just seven months away, we should be learning more about the film very soon.

The post Gladiator II: Everything We Know About the Ridley Scott Sequel appeared first on JoBlo.

When The Crow emerged thirty years ago, it changed how audiences could perceive graphic novel adaptations. It was dark, gritty, violent, and well ahead of its time. On top of that, it had one of the best soundtracks of the decade. However, it also spawned some pretty bad sequels. After the release of the last one two decades ago, it seemed just as long for a remake of the original to come to fruition, with multiple actors and directors coming and going. Finally, after all that time, we got to see exactly what The Crow would look like in 2024. The reactions have been, well, let’s just say a little more less than enthused. But what if I told you there was one you probably forgot about? One that has the most bonkers casting out of the entire franchise. One that misses the mark by such a wide margin that it will make the new SoundCloud Crow look revolutionary. I’m Mike Conway for JoBlo Horror, and I’m going to talk about all of this and more as we go back to 2005 with The Crow: Wicked Prayer (watch it HERE) today on Horror Party Movies.

Wicked Prayer follows the story of Jimmy Cuervo, a former convict struggling to make ends meet in a contaminated mining town nestled within a reservation, who teeters on the brink of completing his probation. Dreaming of a fresh start with his beloved Lily, he plans to bid farewell to the town’s woes. However, his aspirations are shattered when Luc Crash and Lola Byrne, leaders of a local Satanic biker gang, execute Jimmy and Lily in a ritual aimed at summoning the Antichrist. Reanimated by the Crow’s mystical intervention, Jimmy embarks on a solitary quest for retribution. His path inexorably converges with El Nino, the gang’s enigmatic leader, as he seeks to avenge the heinous acts perpetrated against him and his love. Sounds awesome, right? Oh boy, just you wait.

So, how “party” is this movie? According to my scale, this hits the top of the charts as one of the partiest of them all. And as always, I’ll be making a drink to tie in with the movie. And I’ll show you how to make it. Trust me, you’re going to need it.

WICKED PALOMA

2 OZ TEQUILA

½ OZ JALAPENO SIMPLE SYRUP

3 OZ GRAPEFRUIT SODA

3/4 OZ LIME JUICE

TAJIN RIM

“Do people ever really play the drinking game?” You’ll need to with this one. Honestly, you could just settle for several cervezas.

THE RULES

As with any game, there are some basic rules you can follow or modify. For today’s game, take a drink when:

A crow appears onscreen.

Every time there is a flashback.

When Danny Trejo does his Crow dance

When Dennis Hopper says “shorty”

With any kill

If alcohol isn’t your bag, there are plenty of other things to choose from. Cannabis, if legal in your state, delta 8, 9, 10, or whatever the hell number they’re at now, caffeine, hot sauce, anything. Just know your tolerance. This is supposed to be fun; we don’t want to send you to the hospital. Basically, don’t be a dumbass.

So, does The Crow: Wicked Prayer cross the “so bad, it’s good” line? Screw the cocktail, gather some friends, crack open some cheap beer, and let’s dive right into this piece of shit.

The movie starts immediately trying to be a Robert Rodriguez flick, complete with zoom-ins and a southwestern-type score. We also get introduced to the movie’s villains, as if it were a cut scene from a video game. Yeah, it tells you their names, but trust me, you won’t remember them. But for the sake of following along, they are named after the four horsemen, and I’m not talking about Flair, the Andersons, and Blanchard. There’s Famine, War, and Pestilence. And they’re here for one thing only: Revenge. Revenge of what exactly? I don’t know. Anyway, these dudes, along with a woman named Lola Byrne, infiltrate a prison cleanup crew and free their leader and the most handsome prisoner you’ll ever see, Luc Crash. After pretending to set a priest on fire, Luc turns to Lola to pop the question. Sorry, filmmakers, but there’s only room for one Crash and Burn in this town. Hackers of the world unite!

We then meet Jimmy Cuervo, who lives in a dump of a trailer and is just trying to get by. However, in this town, everyone around him thinks he killed someone and treats him like trash. One person who doesn’t believe a word of this nonsense is Lilly, Jimmy’s girlfriend. After giving a speech about the legend of the crow, out of fucking nowhere, at her father’s blueprint of a casino unveiling, Jimmy tells her his parole will be up at midnight, and he wants them both to leave town. Something tells me to doubt it.

Later that day, Jimmy suits up with some fresh roses and an engagement ring and bikes down to Lilly’s work, looking like Billy the Puppet from Saw. However, when he gets there, he’s greeted by Lola and the rest of the gang. They wrap a noose around Jimmy and Lilly and take out Lilly’s eyes before hanging them both. Luc then performs a Mortal Kombat fatality on Jimmy by removing his heart. After some satanic chanting, the number of the beast appears on Luc’s chest.

Okay, that’s enough with the summary. if you’ve seen even one of these movies, you know where this will go from here. But this entire plot is so jumbled. There’s something about a town of miners, a casino being built, a dude trying to be the antichrist, and apparently, Jimmy killed somebody. Honestly, for a bit, I had no idea what the fuck was going on because I was accidentally watching this with the Italian track. I was like, they must be going for some spaghetti western vibe…for TEN MINUTES! Look, I’m not a dumbass. I’ve heard this was really bad, so I just thought there was bad dubbing in Spanish. I didn’t know it was Italian. I took German in high school. Anyway, I went back, started it over, and laughed just as hard at the awful dialogue. Good god.

Before I get right into how bad this thing is, I want to start with some positives.I appreciated how this film took a complete 180 from the others by placing it in a desert setting instead of the dark gothic city vibes from the previous films. I mean, if you’re going to tell the same story, try to make it different, I guess. Another positive is casting Edward Furlong as the lead. If you’re like me and skipped this movie when it came out solely because Eddie F was on that horrendous cover, then you’ll be pleased to know he does a great job. Despite the dumb shit written for him, he at least gives it his all and never looks bored. When I was a kid in the 90s, this dude was the coolest. T2, Pet Sematary 2, Brainscan, Pecker, Detroit Rock City. The guy owned, but the fact that he was cast in a direct-to-video Crow sequel was laughable. Nonetheless, he rocked. I can’t say the same for his barber, though. That’s all the positives I can give this. Crack open another one, and let’s get into the fun stuff.

First, let’s talk about how completely random and bonkers the cast is. Apart from John Conner, Kid Part II, David Boreanaz now playing Death, and freaking Dennis Hopper. How the hell did they agree to this script? Mind you, three people wrote this. The script tries its best to sound poetic but delivers some of the most asinine and laughable dialogue. And one of those dudes behind this dumpster fire wrote and directed Six String Samurai. What? Never heard of this obscure film from the 90s? Jesus, now I’m sounding like a hipster.

First, we have Boreanez fresh off of Angel. More like fresh off of angel dust because this dude looks like he snorted a huge line before every take. It’s the kind of commitment to a role that would make Nic Cage say, “Whoa, buddy, take it down a notch.” This is seriously a movie where the gangs for Satan chill and eat deviled eggs. Then you have Tara Reid. Poor Tara Reid. I don’t think she’s a bad actress at all, so I have no idea why the hell she succumbs to the world of D-List movies. Looking at her filmography, it looks like it all started with this one. Her character makes no sense. First, she’s down with Satan, and then she’s down with the Jesus. Unfortunately, she comes off as bored, and there are some areas where she looks like she made a mistake being in this.

Then, we have the most completely out-of-left-field casting I’ve ever seen. Dennis Hopper. He plays the head of the order, El Nino. However, when his name comes out of his mouth, he sounds like that drunk relative at a party who’s kinda racist and tries to say something Spanish. Hopper was a legend, and I’m willing to bet he knew what movie he was in and just there to collect a check. But damn, that doesn’t mean we get anything lazy from him. Hearing him call women “shortys” had me rolling the entire time. Especially when he performs the wedding ceremony for Lola and Luc, who is now Lucifer… don’t ask.

I spoke about how great Furlong was as an actor, but something changes when he becomes The Crow. It’s not his fault. For instance, he puts his crow makeup on with a sharpie and looks like he has shopped the clearance section of Hot Topic. The action, or lack thereof, is comically absurd to the point where the hits look more believable during a pro wrestling match. And even though the final showdown between Luc and Jimmy at least has some style, it all gets ruined by a single line uttered by Jimmy. “Quoth the Raven Nevermore, motherfucker.” This is that type of golden cheese you’ll find throughout this movie. Hey, at least Furlong has something in common with Reid: they both were in Uwe Boll films. Here’s hoping Eddie gets a career resurgence.

Lastly, I have to mention Danny Trejo. I have no idea why this character is important to the story other than this one single scene. He’s the father of Lilly and has been on the hunt for her killer, whom he still believes is Jimmy. But when he realizes Jimmy is The Crow, and the actual crow dies, Trejo removes his shirt to show us all his tats and performs the silliest resurrection dance.

Really, the level of ridiculousness in this movie is so high that it would take as long as the film itself to talk about it. The movie came out in 2005 straight to video, with a 0 on Rotten Tomatoes. It was the final film of the series until recently, with the remake. I know people are getting mad about the new one. “They’re shitting on Brandon’s legacy by making him Eric Draven.” Don’t forget they already shat on that in 1998 with The Crow: Stairway to Heaven. One thing is for certain: as bad as the sequels are, The Crow: Wicked Prayer kept me entertained throughout its entire runtime. Grab some of your best friends, and have a blast with it.

A couple previous episodes of the Best Horror Party Movies series can be seen below. To see more, and to check out some of our other shows, head over to the JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel – and subscribe while you’re there!

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Four months of horror releases down, eight to go! With our 2024 Horror Preview, we’re looking ahead at some of the other horror movies we can’t wait to check out this year. For now, we’re only including movies that have a known release date, so films like the remakes/reboots of The Toxic Avenger and Witchboard are currently absent because they don’t have a release date yet, even though they’re likely to show up at some point in 2024. Here we go:

I SAW THE TV GLOW – Now Playing

JoBlo’s own Chris Bumbray wasn’t a fan of I Saw the TV Glow (which is coming our way from A24 and We’re All Going to the World’s Fair director Jane Schoenbrun) when he saw it at the Sundance Film Festival, giving it a 5/10 review (you can read it at THIS LINK) where he said the movie is “so experimental that it feels like a half-baked attempt at a genre version of Inland Empire-era David Lynch.” But maybe it will work better for some genre fans when they get the chance to see it later this year.

TAROT – Now Playing

Formerly known as Horrorscope, this horror film is based on a 1992 novel by Nicholas Adams (pick up a copy HERE). Jacob Batalon, who is best known for playing Peter Parker’s best friend Ned in the recent Spider-Man movies, plays a character who is part of a group of college friends who get their horoscopes read, then start dying in ways connected to their fortunes. Seems sort of like a Final Destination set-up, but with the supernatural aspects pumped way up.

THE STRANGERS: CHAPTER 1 – Theatrical, May 17

Director Renny Harlin has shot an entire trilogy inspired by the 2008 film The Strangers, and we’ve heard that Lionsgate intends to release all three of the movies – said to be titled The Strangers: Chapter 1, The Strangers: Chapter 2, and The Strangers: Chapter 3 – over the course of 2024. Chapter 1 is the only one we know a release date for so far. Madelaine Petsch of Riverdale plays a young woman on a road trip who crosses paths with the title characters when her car breaks down in Oregon.

IN A VIOLENT NATURE – Theatrical, May 31

Written and directed by Chris Nash, In a Violent Nature is a slasher movie that follows a masked killer named Johnny as he hacks his way through a group of vacationing teens – but what sets this movie apart from the slashers we’re familiar with is the fact that the focus is on the killer. Instead of hanging out with the teens while we wait for them to get picked off, the camera follows Johnny as he splatters blood all over the forest. After its theatrical run, In a Violent Nature will be available to watch on the Shudder streaming service.

THE EXORCISM – Theatrical, June 7

Before he worked on The Pope’s Exorcist, Russell Crowe starred in another exorcism horror film that was called The Georgetown Project. Now titled The Exorcism, the film is ready to head out into the world – and what makes it really interesting is the fact that it was written and directed by Joshua John Miller (with M.A. Fortin), the son of Jason Miller, who played Father Karras in the classic The Exorcist. This film tells the story of “Anthony Miller, a troubled actor who begins to unravel while shooting a supernatural horror film. His estranged daughter wonders if he’s slipping back into his past addictions or if there’s something more sinister at play.”

THE WATCHERS – Theatrical, June 14

We’ve seen a lot of thrillers from director M. Night Shyamalan – and in 2024, we’re going to see one from his daughter Ishana Night Shyamalan. The younger Shyamalan makes her feature directorial debut with the story of a group of strangers (including Barbarian‘s Georgina Campbell) being stalked by mysterious creatures in the wilderness of western Ireland. Will Ishana be able to match or exceed the thrills her father has provided? We’ll find out soon.

A QUIET PLACE: DAY ONE – Theatrical, June 28

A Quiet Place and A Quiet Place Part II director John Krasinski helped craft the story for this spin-off/prequel directed by Michael Sarnoski, director of the Nicolas Cage drama Pig. Although the release date is just a month away, we still don’t know much about this one beyond the fact that it stars 12 Years a Slave Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o, Joseph Quinn – better known as Eddie Munson from the most recent season of Stranger Things – and Alex Wolff (Hereditary), and is set in New York City. The story doesn’t involve the Abbott family, the characters we followed through the first two movies, but it should be interesting to see the alien creatures stalking people in NYC.

MAXXXINE – Theatrical, July 5

Writer/director Ti West and star Mia Goth blew horror fans away with their collaboration X (which was set in 1979) and its prequel Pearl (set in 1918), and now they’re turning the series into a trilogy with the 1985-set MaXXXine, in which Goth reprises the role of Maxine Minx from X. Maxine is in Hollywood now, pursuing her dream of being a mainstream actress, while the Night Stalker terrorizes L.A. Joining Goth in the cast are singer Halsey, Kevin Bacon (Tremors), Elizabeth Debicki (Tenet), singer Moses Sumney, Michelle Monaghan (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang), Bobby Cannavale (Netflix’s The Watcher), Lily Collins (Emily in Paris), and Giancarlo Esposito (Breaking Bad).

LONGLEGS – Theatrical, July 12

The marketing for Longlegs, a psychological horror thriller from director Osgood Perkins – who, yes, is the son of actor Anthony Perkins – has been so awesome and creepy, the actual film might struggle to live up to it. Still, it sounds very promising, with genre regular Maika Monroe taking on the role of an FBI agent who is tracking an elusive serial killer played by Nicolas Cage. Cage has described his character as being like “a possessed Geppetto.”

TRAP – Theatrical, August 2

Two months after his daughter Ishana’s film The Watchers reaches theatres, we’ll be getting another thriller directed by M. Night Shyamalan – and this one stars another of his three daughters, Saleka. Plot details are being kept under wraps, but we know that the story plays out at a concert and Saleka, who is an R&B singer/songwriter, plays the popstar on stage. Josh Hartnett, fresh off playing a role in Oppenheimer, plays a father who takes his child to the concert. Shyamalan has had hits and misses, and it’s always interesting to see how his latest film is going to turn out.

CUCKOO – Theatrical, August 9

Hunter Schafer (Euphoria), Dan Stevens (The Guest), Jessica Henwick (Love and Monsters), Marton Csókás (Freelance), Greta Fernández (Santo), and Jan Bluthardt (Tatort) star in the new horror film from writer/director Tilman Singer (Luz). The story follows a 17-year-old American girl who reluctantly moves with her father to a resort in the German Alps… but there’s something strange going in at this resort, leading to an encounter with “a bird-like monster.”

ALIEN: ROMULUS – Theatrical, August 16

Evil Dead (2013) and Don’t Breathe director Fede Alvarez has set the story of Alien: Romulus between the events of the original Alien and Aliens. It involves a group of young people – played by the likes of Cailee Spaeny (Priscilla), David Jonsson (Industry), Archie Renaux (Shadow and Bone), Spike Fearn (The Batman), Aileen Wu (Away from Home), and Isabela Merced (Rosaline) – who find themselves in a fight for their lives with the titular alien on a distant colony. All we really needed to know to be sold on this one was “Fede Alvarez directing an Alien movie”.

STREAM – Theatrical, August 21

Directed by Terrifier cast member Michael Leavy and featuring special FX by Terrifier and Terrifier 2 director Damien Leone, Stream tells the story of a family being stalked by deranged murderers at a quaint hotel, and the movie is packed with genre icons. Here’s a sample of the Stream cast list: Tony Todd (the original Candyman himself), Jeffrey Combs (Re-Animator), Danielle Harris (Halloween 4), Felissa Rose (Sleepaway Camp), Dee Wallace (The Howling), Mark Holton (Leprechaun), Daniel Roebuck (Final Destination), Dave Sheridan (The Devil’s Rejects), Terry Alexander (Day of the Dead), David Howard Thornton (Terrifier), Tim Reid (Stephen King’s It), Charles Edwin Powell (Exorcist III), Bob Adrian (The Conjuring 2), Sydney Malakeh (Cheer Camp Killer), Wesley Holloway (Terrifier 2), and Linden Porco (Leprechaun Returns). 

THE CROW – Theatrical, August 23

The first images of Bill Skarsgard in the titular role in director Rupert Sanders’ reimagining of The Crow didn’t go over very well (and Alex Proyas, the director of the original film, let it be known that he wasn’t a fan). However, the folks behind the movie say this is NOT a remake and that it’s a fresh reimagining of the character James O’Barr came up with when he created the Crow comic book series. So, there’s a good a chance the new movie could still work even for viewers who think the new version of the character looks ridiculous.

BEETLEJUICE 2 – Theatrical, September 6

Thirty-six years after the classic Beetlejuice was released, we’re finally getting a sequel. Director Tim Burton is back at the helm, Michael Keaton is reprising the role of the title character, and Winona Ryder is back as Lydia Deetz, with Catherine O’Hara returning as her stepmother Delia. Joining the party are Monica Bellucci as Beetlejuice’s wife, Willem Dafoe as a law enforcement officer in the afterlife, Justin Theroux in an unspecified role, and Burton’s Wednesday star Jenna Ortega as Lydia’s daughter. Depending on whether or not Burton and his cast were able to recapture some of the original magic, Beetlejuice 2 could be a blast.

SPEAK NO EVIL – Theatrical, September 13

Director James Watkins and Blumhouse have teamed up to bring us a remake of the 2022 Danish film Gæsterne, a.k.a. Speak No Evil – and if this is as intense as the original film was, it sounds like it’s going to be a real endurance challenge for a lot of viewers. The story centers on “a family who takes a dream holiday to an idyllic country house, only to have the vacation turn into a psychological nightmare,” and the cast includes James McAvoy, Mackenzie Davis, Scott McNairy, Aisling Franciosi, and Alix West Lefler.

TERRIFIER 3 – Theatrical, October 11

Terrifier 3 may be reaching theatres in time for Halloween, but unlike its predecessors this one is not set on Halloween. Instead, the setting is moving a couple months, over to Christmastime. Writer/director Damien Leone had a budget of around $55,000 to work with on the first Terrifier movie, and a budget of “a little over” $250,000 for Terrifier 2 – which was so successful, a “couple million” is going into the budget of Terrifier 3. Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton) will be spilling more blood and facing off against heroine Sienna (Lauren LaVera) again, and Leone said he’s aiming to make this one shorter and less mystical than the second film.

SMILE 2 – Theatrical, October 18

Writer/director Parker Finn’s sequel to his 2022 horror film Smile is another project we don’t know much about yet, but Finn has said that if he were to make a Smile 2 he would want to make sure it’s “new, exciting, fresh” rather than just a retread of its predecessor. The freshness begins with the casting of Naomi Scott – who was not in Smile – as the lead character in Smile 2. The release date and the involvement of Finn and Scott are the only pieces of information that have been provided so far.

NIGHTBITCH – Theatrical, December 6

Amy Adams stars in this darkly comic “neo-horror” movie, written and directed by Marielle Heller (Can You Ever Forgive Me?) and based on a novel by Rachel Yoder. The lead character is a stay-at-home suburban mom who begins to suspect that she might be turning into a dog… and that’s about all we know about this one so far. Scott McNairy plays Adams’ “oft-traveling husband,” while Mary Holland takes on an unspecified role.

NOSFERATU – Theatrical, December 25

Nine years have gone by since it was first announced that The Witch director Robert Eggers was going to be writing and directing a remake of F.W. Murnau’s 1922 silent classic Nosferatu. At the end of this year, we’re finally going to be able to see what Eggers – who made The Lighthouse and The Northman in the interim – has done with the concept. Bill Skarsgard (It) plays the title character and is joined in the cast by Lily-Rose Depp (The Idol), Nicholas Hoult (Renfield), Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Bullet Train), Emma Corrin (The Crown), Ralph Ineson (The Witch), Simon McBurney (The Conjuring 2), and the legendary Willem Dafoe, who plays a crazy vampire hunter. Focus Features wanted to give this film “a prime holiday season release”, so they clearly believe Eggers has turned in something special.

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Director Fede Alvarez‘s new addition to the xenomorph canon is titled Alien: Romulus, and the film – which was originally designed to debut on Hulu – is set to receive a theatrical release on August 16, 2024, which bodes well for its quality. With its release just a few months away, Entertainment Weekly released some all-new pics from the movie and gave us some much-needed insight into our new protagonists. Much has been made about how the film is a throwback to Ridley Scott’s original 1979 classic, in that it centers around a group of blue-collar heroes, but according to Fede Alvarez, his new characters are even less qualified to deal with a Xenomorph than the doomed crew of the Nostromo. After all, the young cast is largely composed of people who aren’t even really adults!

“I liked this concept of putting people in the front seat of the story who are closer to what the audience is — not that the audience is young, more that the audience is completely virgin to the realities of space. When the characters are professionals, they know more than you do. But when they’re still in their early 20s, they don’t know how to operate the f—ing airlock.” 

Here are the two new pics from EW:

The article also reveals that Alvarez was a stickler for detail, especially regarding where the movie fell in the timeline. As it’s meant to take place in the fifty-seven years between Alien and Aliens, all of the technology is meant to look like it’s one step between the two films, such as the new pulse rifle star Cailee Spaeny is wielding in the photo above. Alvarez also had people who worked on Stan Winston’s team in Aliens on set at all times to handle the new xenomorph, which he says is closely patterned on H.R. Giger’s original creation.

What else do we know about Alien: Romulus?

Here’s the official logline: The sci-fi/horror-thriller takes the phenomenally successful “Alien” franchise back to its roots: While scavenging the deep ends of a derelict space station, a group of young space colonizers come face to face with the most terrifying life form in the universe.

The film is set to star Cailee Spaeny, who’s currently riding high off the success of Priscilla, and will next be seen in Alex Garland’s Civil War, David Jonsson (Industry), Archie Renaux (Shadow and Bone), Spike Fearn (The Batman), Aileen Wu (Away from Home), and Isabela Merced (Rosaline). Recent test screening reports suggested Spaeny would be the Ripley-esque lead while Jonsson will be playing her Android brother. This same source suggests the scavenger characters run into alien trouble while checking out an abandoned Weyland-Yutani research station called Romulus. Meanwhile, the film is said to be very violent, with Facehuggers now having spiked barbs on their fingers, making this element even more horrifying than it was before.

THE OTHER IDEAS

There were several directions the Alien franchise could have gone after the release of 2017’s Alien: Covenant. Although that film didn’t go over well with fans or critics, it did okay at the box office ($240 million worldwide) and Alien director Ridley Scott wanted to make a direct sequel. A chance to wrap up the Alien prequel trilogy he had begun with Prometheus and continued with Alien: Covenant. So that could have happened. Alternatively, the studio could have chosen to revive the Alien 5 project Neill Blomkamp had been developing, which would have brought Sigourney Weaver back as franchise heroine Ripley and given Michael Biehn’s Hicks character from Aliens a different fate than the one we had seen in Alien 3. Blomkamp’s ideas had a lot of fan support (and support from Weaver and Biehn), but it was put on ice because Scott wanted the focus to be on his prequel trilogy. Which ran into a dead end anyway. Another filmmaker who wanted to make an Alien sequel that would have brought Weaver back as Ripley was Walter Hill, who has been a producer on every Alien movie (and got writing credits on Aliens and Alien 3). Hill wrote a 50-page Alien 5 treatment with fellow franchise producer David Giler, who has since passed away, but somehow it didn’t gain any traction. So by getting his Alien movie into production, Alvarez has beaten competition from the likes of Ridley Scott, Neill Blomkamp, and Walter Hill.

THE PITCH STUCK WITH RIDLEY SCOTT

We may not know exactly what Alvarez’s story is, but we do know the pitch made an impact on Ridley Scott, who is producing the movie that could be called Alien: Romulus. Apparently Alvarez told Scott his idea for how to approach a new Alien movie years ago and it was stuck with him. In 2021, Scott called Alvarez and asked him if he was still willing to make that Alien movie. Obviously he was. 20th Century Studios president Steve Asbell had said that they decided to move forward with the project “purely off the strength of Fede’s pitch”, as it’s “just a really good story with a bunch of characters you haven’t seen before.”

NO CONNECTION TO OTHER ALIEN FILMS

Sources say that the script Alvarez has written with his frequent collaborator Rodo Sayagues doesn’t have any connection to the previous Alien movies – except, of course, for the presence of the Xenomorph. So we shouldn’t expect to see any direct tie-ins with the Scott prequels, the adventures of Ripley, or the Predator crossovers. That said, Alvarez has confirmed that the film is firmly set within the universe we’re familiar with from the other movies. His story isn’t meant to ignore or overwrite any of the other installments.

SET BETWEEN ALIEN AND ALIENS

Despite the lack of connection to other films in the franchise, we know that the story is set between the events of the original Alien and Aliens. Cailee Spaeny told Variety the film is supposed to “slot in between” those two movies, but of course she couldn’t go into detail about how or why it fits in there.

THEATRICAL RELEASE

Unlike last year’s new Predator movie Prey, the new Alien movie is going to be released theatrically, with the Mouse House giving the film an August 16, 2024 date. This is similar to what the studio did with Barbarian, which grossed $45 million on a $4.5 million budget, and their recent The Boogeyman, which has already raked in $25 million and counting. Many think Prey would have been a blockbuster had it gotten a theatrical release, as people still prefer to see their scary movies in a dark theater. As anyone who’s ever watched an Alien film theatrically can tell you, that’s always the best way.

RATING

Despite the young cast, Alien: Romulus seems bound for an R-rating. Recently, while promoting Madame Web, star Isabela Merced teased a scene so disgusting everyone watching had to turn away. So what could the moment be? Without giving it away, the rumor is that it has to do with the classic xenomorph chest-burster coming out of… somewhere else on the body. That’s as far as we’re going folks.

RIDLEY SCOTT’S REVIEW

According to Alvarez, Scott has already seen the completed version of Alien: Romulus, and praised it, calling it “f**king great.” Alvarez has confirmed that he received notes from both Scott and Aliens director James Cameron while putting together his own Alien movie.

FOOTAGE SCREENED AT CINEMACON

JoBlo was lucky enough to attend CinemaCon recently, and in the Disney panel, they were given an extended look at one of the film’s big setpieces, which involved the young cast encountering a lab full of facehuggers (which have been grown) and having to fight them off. Naturally, one of them gets infected (we won’t tell you who), and you actually get an x-ray shot of a xenomorph baby trying to break through the ribcage. The chest-bursting scene is shot very much in the vein of Ridley Scott’s original Alien, meaning no xenomorph in a Christ pose, such as in Alien: Covenant. This is old school, grimy, and seems to have been done practically.

TV SERIES

While Alien: Romulus may be destined for theaters, we’ll still be getting some xenomorph content on Hulu, with Noah Hawley’s (Fargo) Alien TV series in production. That show is set on Earth, with FX CEO John Landgraf teasing that the series takes place about seventy years from now, and will not feature any characters from the movies. However, the infamous Weyland-Yutani corporation will still be involved. Currently, the show has no release date and likely will only premiere after the new Alien movie comes out.

Are you looking forward to watching a new Alien movie that leans into pure horror territory as Fede Alvarez sets the Xenomorph lose on a group of young scavengers? Share your thoughts on this project by leaving a comment below.

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Production on MaXXXine, the sequel to director Ti West‘s films Pearl (watch it HERE) and X (watch that one at THIS LINK), wrapped way back in May of 2023, and just last month we heard that it has earned an R rating for strong violence, gore, sexual content, graphic nudity, language and drug use as it heads toward its July 5th theatrical release date. With that date just two months away, last week, USA Today unveiled a new image from the film that dropped Mia Goth into an ’80s party scene:

Not to be outdone, Entertainment Weekly, in their annual Summer Movie Preview, has also dropped a bunch of new pics for the movie, revealing our first looks at Goth’s co-stars, including a very bloody Kevin Bacon, Yellowjackets star (and horror super fan) Sophie Thatcher, and Elizabeth Debicki. Check em’ out:

MaXXXine is written and directed by West. Mia Goth reprises the role of X survivor Maxine Minx, a burlesque performer and adult film actress with the goal of being a star. The film has the following synopsis: In 1980s Hollywood, adult film star and aspiring actress Maxine Minx finally gets her big break. But as a mysterious killer stalks the starlets of Hollywood, a trail of blood threatens to reveal her sinister past. As you can see in the recently released trailer, the Hollywood setting even allows for a visit to the Bates Motel.

The horror magazine Scream learned that the film is described as being “a good old whodunit slasher,” while Goth described it as “a superhero movie.” She said that because, “Maxine, as a character, has come a long way. She’s a survivor, she’s gone through a lot. When we meet her again, in this new world that she’s in, she’s really fought for everything that she has, and she’s not about to give that up. She’s going to fight for what she has. She’s a badass. There’s a strength to her. And she’s a really proactive, determined, focused woman. She goes after what she wants, and she’s not really going to take no for an answer.“

Goth and singer Halsey (who can be seen with Goth in the first look image at the top of this article) are joined in the cast by Kevin Bacon (Tremors), Elizabeth Debicki (Tenet), singer Moses Sumney, Michelle Monaghan (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang), Bobby Cannavale (Netflix’s The Watcher), Lily Collins (Emily in Paris), and Giancarlo Esposito (Breaking Bad. The Hollywood Reporter noted that Esposito is playing an agent for adult film and Z-list movie actors, Debicki’s character is a film director, Monaghan and Cannavale play LAPD detectives, and Bacon plays a private detective.

MaXXXine is being produced by A24, Ti West, Jacob Jaffke, Kevin Turen, and Harrison Kreiss. Mia Goth serves as executive producer. 

Are you looking forward to MaXXXine? Let us know by leaving a comment.

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