Film
Leonardo DiCaprio to Star in Jim Jones Movie
Leonardo DiCaprio is in final negotiations to star in and produce MGM’s upcoming feature on Jonestown cult leader Jim Jones. The appropriately titled Jim Jones biopic is penned by Scott Rosenberg (Venom) and will be produced by DiCaprio alongside Jennifer Davisson for their Appian Way production company. Rosenberg will also serve as executive producer (via Deadline). Jones was the founder of the People’s Temple. What initially began in 1955 as a religious organization built on principals of Christianity and socialism eventually devolved into a fanatical religious cult. After becoming disillusioned with Christianity and the US government, in 1974 Jones migrated the group to Guanya, where they constructed a jungle commune known as Jonestown. Jones, who by then had publicly declared hims...
Foo Fighters to Star in Horror Comedy Studio 666
Foo Fighters will make their feature film debut in a new horror comedy inspired by the making of their latest album, Medicine at Midnight. Entitled Studio 666, the film is directed by BJ McDonnell and will be released in over 2,000 theaters across the US on February 25th, 2022. The story of Sonic 666 is a fantastical retelling of Foo Fighters’ recent experience recording in an old house in Encino California. In interviews in the lead up to Medicine at Midnight’s release, Grohl recounted strange, supernatural events that occurred as the band was recording. “We would come back to the studio the next day and all of the guitars would be detuned,” Grohl told NME. “Or the setting we’d put on the [mixing] board, all of them had gone back to zero. We would open up a Pro Tools session and tracks wo...
Bryce and Aaron Dessner Detail C’mon C’mon Soundtrack, Share “I Won’t Remember?”: Stream
Check in on your local sad boy: Bryce and Aaron Dessner, twin brothers and members of The National, have scored C’mon C’mon, the forthcoming Joaquin Phoenix-starring family drama directed by Mike Mills. Ahead of the soundtrack’s release on November 12th (and the film’s theatrical release the following Friday), the Dessners have shared “I Won’t Remember?” one of the songs they contributed to the film. Stream it below “I Won’t Remember?” is a simple ambient track, consisting of little more than just synths and a clarinet ensemble. Though it’s much quieter than your favorite National songs, the Dessners’ affinity for poignant melodies shines in the song, even without lyrics. Considering C’mon C’mon comes from the same guy who directed 20th Century Women, this soundtrack is boun...
Ariana Grande to Star in Film Adaptation of Wicked
Ariana Grande is headed to Oz. The pop star has been cast as Glinda in the film adaptation of Wicked, the musical prequel to The Wizard of Oz. She announced the news on Instagram Thursday evening. “Thank goodness,” she wrote, sharing ecstatic photos of her reaction to the casting. Grande’s good witch will be joined by Cynthia Erivo’s Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West. In the Heights director Jon M. Chu leads the big screen adaption, while Stephen Schwartz, who wrote the music to the original Broadway show, returns with Winnie Holzman to adapt the screenplay. Advertisement Related Video Though Grande’s become a world-renowned singer in recent years, she got her start as an actress, first on Broadway in the musical 13 and later as Cat Valentine in the Nickelodeon hit Victorious...
AMC to Sell Popcorn Outside of Theaters
AMC is bringing its popcorn to the people. Starting next year, the theater chain will begin selling the movie-watching must-have in shopping malls across America. AMC Theaters Perfectly Popcorn will also reportedly be available in 2022 via home delivery services, meaning movie buffs will be able to enjoy theater-quality popcorn in the comfort of their own at-home movie nights. The brand also plans to eventually expand by offering prepackaged and microwaveable varieties of the snack at retail outlets such as grocery and convenience stores in the near future. “AMC knows popcorn ever so well. On our busiest days, AMC Theatres currently pops in the range of 50 tons of popcorn per day,” Adam Aron, the company’s CEO and chairman of the board revealed in a statement to announce the expansion. “Bu...
Marvel’s Eternals Banned from Theaters in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Qatar
On the off-chance that you live in either Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, or Qatar, don’t go trying to see Eternals in theaters. Marvel’s latest blockbuster has been pulled from the big screen in those countries, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The apparent ban is believed to have been made over the film’s inclusion of a same-sex couple and the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s first openly gay superhero. News of the ban emerged after Eternals was quietly removed from various theater websites in each of the aforementioned countries before its intended release on November 11th. (It hits American theaters tomorrow, November 5th.) THR reports that Disney was not willing to acquiesce to “a series of edit requests” made by local censors, resulting in it being pulled from those countrie...
Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer Adds Matt Damon and Robert Downey Jr.
Christopher Nolan is making a big bang with his new film Oppenheimer. The biographical drama about the development of the nuclear bomb had already been armed with Cillian Murphy and Emily Blunt, and now, via The Hollywood Reporter, it’s added the weapons-grade star power of Matt Damon and Robert Downey Jr. Murphy stars as J. Robert Oppenheimer, the theoretical physicist who helped develop nuclear bombs, and whose later years were marked with disillusionment and ambivalence. Blunt plays his wife Kitty Oppenheimer, and Damon joins the team as another ally, Lt. Gen. Leslie Groves, the director of the Manhattan Project who stood by Oppenheimer during political turmoil. Speaking of turmoil, Downey Jr. will enter the fray as Lewis Strauss. A complicated figure, Strauss lobbie...
John Waters Announces “Yuletide Massacre” Christmas Tour Dates
John Waters is hitting the road. The cult icon just announced US tour dates for “A John Waters Christmas — It’s a Yuletide Massacre,” a one-man show that puts the filmmaker’s surreal spin on the holy holiday. The trek kicks off November 29th in San Francisco and includes dates across the US through the end of December. In true Waters fashion, each concert listing’s website touts its own outrageous event description. “Both Santa and Jesus will send their regrets when this ho-ho-homo lets loose about reindeer virgin births, the illegally squatting Christ-child and chubby-chasing Mrs. Clause,” the inaugural date guarantees. “There’ll be no silent nights here!” the description goes on to promise. “This rapid-fire monologue for adult delinquents asks the holiday questions, ‘Was Joseph a virgin,...
Splat! Eternals Becomes First Marvel Movie Certified Rotten on Rotten Tomatoes
Marvel had been on a 25-movie streak of good reviews, and you might’ve thought that streak was as inevitable as Thanos. But the critics have spoken about the new film Eternals, and now more than Thanos has snapped. Eternals has dipped below the 60% Fresh mark on reviews aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, becoming the first flick in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to earn the dreaded green splat. Rotten Tomatoes is a far-from-perfect website, though it’s influential enough that even people who hate it have to reckon with its scores. It sets 60% as the red line between fresh and rotten, and as of this writing, Chloé Zhao’s Eternals sits at 57%, far below the previous worst-reviewed MCU entries The Incredible Hulk (67% fresh) and Thor: The Dark World (66% fresh)...
Malfunction: The Dressing Down of Janet Jackson Documentary Coming to Hulu This Month
Now that Britney has effectively been freed, FX and Hulu are following up their New York Times Presents documentary Framing Britney Spears with a deep dive into Janet Jackson’s ill-fated performance at the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show. Entitled Malfunction: The Dressing Down of Janet Jackson, the documentary will explore the events that went down that evening and the pop culture shift that followed. In the off chance that you need a recap, Jackson found herself at the crux of a professional and personal crisis when she took the stage with Justin Timberlake at the Super Bowl in 2004. Near the end of the halftime show, Timberlake briefly exposed Jackson’s breast to millions of viewers. The move left Timberlake’s legacy intact, but unfairly tarnished Jackson’s for years to com...
Actor and Anti-Vaxxer Kristy Swanson Hospitalized with COVID-19
Kristy Swanson, who played Buffy in the 1992 movie Buffy the Vampire Slayer and who has recently devoted her social media feed to slamming Dr. Fauci, questioning the legality and effectiveness of mask mandates, and suggesting that COVID-19 vaccines are responsible for the deaths of children, has been hospitalized with COVID-19. “Prayers for me please,” Swanson wrote in a Tweet on November 1st. “Yesterday I took an ambulance ride to the hospital. I’m still here with pneumonia, I’m on oxygen etc, all covid related of course. I’m in good spirits and in great hands.” She added, “I was just at the tail end of my Covid diagnosis when it jumped into my lungs. So they are treating me with Baricitinib & blood thinners so I don’t clot. I’m ok.” Many well wishers on Twitter and Instagra...
The Boondock Saints III Announced with Norman Reedus and Sean Patrick Flanery
And Shepards they shall be: Norman Reedus and Sean Patrick Flanery will reunite for The Boondock Saints III, a sequel to The Boondock Saints (1999) and The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day (2009). As Deadline reports, Troy Duffy, who wrote and directed the first installments, returns to the director’s chair with a script co-written by Flanery. The franchise began with a violent revelation in 1999, as fraternal twins Connor McManus (Flanery) and Murphy MacManus (Reed) decided to rid Boston of crime after killing a pair of Russian mobsters in self-defense. The sequel found them returning to their hometown after being framed for a crime they hadn’t committed, and it ended with them locked in prison. Film three will be produced by Impossible Dream Entertainment,...
