“Today we celebrate our Independence Day.” There are few speeches as rousing as the one given in Independence Day by Bill Pullman as President Thomas J. Whitmore, inspiring a ragtag team of pilots to take down the alien invaders that have wreaked havoc across the globe.
But there’s a real threat facing America and the rest of the world today, and it’s not an alien invasion. It’s the coronavirus pandemic. That’s why Alamo Drafthouse brought back Bill Pullman to inspire people to protect themselves and their fellow Americans by wearing a mask to squash the spread of COVID-19. If everyone wears a mask for just a month, we can beat this thing and truly celebrate our freedom. Read More »
In this edition of Sequel Bits:
- Walter Hill wrote a 50-page treatment for a new Alien movie with Ripley, but Sigourney Weaver doesn’t seem interested.
- David Koepp had different plans for Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy. He also opens up about leaving Indiana Jones 5.
- David Dobkin says there might be a Wedding Crashers sequel for some reason.
- Kevin Smith wants fans to pick the Mallrats 2 title.
- Paramount is releasing the new Scream movie.
- Elisabeth Moss says she’ll take part in an Invisible Man sequel if there’s enough fan demand.
- Bruce Campbell details plans for a My Name is Bruce sequel called Bruce vs. Frankenstein.
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Relic was one of the best-reviewed films at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, and now a wider audience will have a chance to experience what the hype is all about. This indie horror flick from writer-director Natalie Erika James is a slow burn loaded with atmosphere, and it’s bound to find new fans of the genre. Ahead of the upcoming release, watch a moody Relic clip below.
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David Farr, writer of The Night Manager and Hanna, is taking a trip to The Village of the Damned. Farr is set to adapt John Wyndham’s novel The Midwich Cuckoos, which inspired Village of the Damned, into an eight-part series. The book concerns a small town where all of the women mysteriously become pregnant on the same day, eventually giving birth to creepy kids with telepathic abilities.
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In this edition of TV Bits:
- A Phantom of the Opera TV adaptation is in the works
- The Kenny Rogers western series The Gambler might get a reboot
- Director Jay Roach has secured a killer cast for his new series Coastal Elites
- HBO Max will soon stream a new series from the Oscar-winning writer of Moonlight
- Ghostbusters star Dan Aykroyd will narrate a new show called Hotel Paranormal
- And more!
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Mike Flanagan knows a thing or two about Stephen King adaptations. The filmmaker helmed both Gerald’s Game and Doctor Sleep, and now he’s gearing up for another: Revival. King’s revival, published in 2013, is a bleak, disturbing novel – and it sounds like Flanagan isn’t going to water things down. In a recent interview, Flanagan offered a quick update on the project and confirmed that it’s going to be just as dark as the source material.
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Musician Elliott Smith has made an abundance of legendary contributions to cinema, both in his short lifetime (he passed away at the age of 34 in 2003) as well as posthumously. He is, arguably, the greatest singer-songwriter of his generation. In film, Smith is, perhaps, most well-known for his tracks on Gus Van Sant’s Good Will Hunting in 1997, namely, his Oscar-nominated “Miss Misery.” That song played over the oft-quoted “Had to see about a girl” scene. Although Smith lost to Céline Dion’s (of whom he used to do a spot-on impression) “My Heart Will Go On” at the Academy Awards, “Miss Misery” and Good Will Hunting launched him from indie musician to somewhere in between the stratospheres of successful and superstardom overnight.
The Nebraska-born, Texas-raised, Portland transport’s hauntingly graceful tracks have also been featured in several other prominent films and television shows, including many indelible scenes. His hollow, whispery voice, forever yearning for a different reality, remains a staple in film. If Van Sant hadn’t run out of music to listen to on a cross-country road trip and been forced to listen to discarded soundtrack music for To Die For, perhaps Smith’s brilliance wouldn’t have been exposed to the masses. And he wasn’t exactly the type of person capable of bearing the pressures of fame. He had enough demons, as it was. However, fame was inevitable for someone as talented as Smith. Alas, it’s a delicate, almost selfish relationship we, as fans and admirers, have with artists. They create. We consume, and consume, and consume. If their art is deemed mainstream, we become exponentially more voracious. Sometimes, it can destroy a person. Sometimes, it can enable their most dangerous temptations. Sometimes, it can awaken their most sinister demons.
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On the July 3, 2020 episode of /Film Daily, /Film editor-in-chief Peter Sciretta is joined by /Film managing editor Jacob Hall, weekend editor Brad Oman, senior writer Ben Pearson and writer Chris Evangelista to discuss what they’ve been up to at the Water Cooler.
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(Welcome to Out of the Disney Vault, where we explore the unsung gems and forgotten disasters currently streaming on Disney+.)
Despite Mr. Boogedy (which I previously wrote about for this column) never becoming the TV show it was meant to be, the Disney powers-that-be thought that the horror parody about a family of pranksters being haunted by a ghost absolutely warranted a sequel. Long before shows like Lost or movies like the Marvel Cinematic Universe got audiences used to watching a new chapter in a story without spending time to recap the previous chapter, Disney decided that audiences didn’t need to remember what a 45-minutes made-for-TV movie from a year earlier was about, and could simply jump into its sequel.
The result is The Bride of Boogedy, a sequel that drops most of its scary elements to instead tell a comedic tale of parents just not believing their kids, seances, and lots of Halloween pranks.
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Cool Posts From Around the Web:
In this edition of Theme Park Bits:
- Disneyland’s opening is delayed.
- Walt Disney World reopening information is being revealed.
- Universal comments on laying off Orlando staff members.
- And more!
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