Movie Scum

Information has been slowly trickling out about David Gordon Green ’s untitled Halloween continuation coming in 2018. Now, we know who Michael will be facing ... again.

After shattering box office records this weekend, in less than a week, Andy Muschietti ’s adaptation of Stephen King’s It has become a legitimate phenomenon. While other corners of the internet debate over whether It is a horror movie or not (spoiler: it totally is), production of the story’s second half is gearing up as Muschietti and writer Gary Dauberman are hard at work on the script. Chapter 2 is presumed to be released sometime in 2019. In the meantime though, for the home release on Blu-ray and Digital later this year, Muschietti tells Yahoo Movies that he is working on a director’s cut to add back approximately 15 minutes to the film. Given the original novel ran over 1000 pages, one would suspect there was quite a bit on the cutting room floor. More and more movies recently have included “Director’s Cuts” on home video release and this is certainly not a new development in home media. But most of these titles reek more of justifying a purchase to a film that view...

Creepy husbands or John Wick Jr.? Who will will this round? Mother Darren Aronofsky has plenty of acclaimed films on his resume including the Oscar-nominated Black Swan and the oh-my-god-so-depressing Requiem for a Dream . His movies generally aren’t the standard Hollywood type which makes it all the better that he continues to get the big projects and attract the big stars that normally would be relegated to the single screen Indie theater. I can’t tell you much about Mother ! other than Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem have the seemingly perfect life until he goes a little whacky (shocker). Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer round out the top-notch cast in what looks to be a potential mind-fuck of a movie. I, for one, can’t wait. American Assassin Based on a novel by Vince Flynn, American Assassin looks to be a greatest hits of the past fifteen years’ worth of action and espionage. Dylan O’Brien, who is definitely an actor I haven’t heard of, is going after a ter...

As it turns out, making a successful Star Wars film is hard. Fans were excited for new chapters in their favorite franchise among the stars when Disney announced it was purchasing Lucasfilm and the rights to further films in 2012. But it has not all been smooth sailing since then. The first new Star Wars film in over a decade, The Force Awakens , made close to a billion dollars worldwide and was received favorably, even if the tide of fandom has turned on JJ Abrams and his over-reliance on elements from previous films. In December 2015, any Star Wars fan likely would have been gushing over the film. Now, it’s met more with a shrug. Since The Force Awakens though, most of the other announced properties have gone through an upheaval. Josh Trank was fired from his spinoff. Gareth Edwards was forced to do massive retooling on Rogue One . Chris Lord and Phil Miller were let go during production of the upcoming Han Solo film. And just last week, Colin Trevorrow , who was in pre...

Send... more... paramedics. For all the zombie movies I’ve seen, including the worst of George Romero’s output, I never got around to Dan O’Bannon’s Return of the Living Dead for one reason or another. Considering I wrote a senior-year high school paper on the original Night of the Living Dead, I knew of the existence of co-writer John Russo’s offshoot to the seminal zombie flick but never had much interest. But when one come across a pristine Blu-ray special edition to a highly-regarded film, what choice does one really have?

I do not care for these Avatar movies. I have made that case before. In between stepping on a deserved landmine about feminism and over-promising a return to greatness for his signature series , James Cameron has apparently been spending the past eight years honing his talents for not one, nor two, but FOUR sequels to his CGI Dances with Wolves property. Granted, Avatar is somehow the highest grossing worldwide film but the demand for these additional sequels is ... what’s the opposite of palpable? The Dissolve had a great piece back in the day about the disposable nature of Avatar and it’s legacy only a few years after its release. For such a huge movie-going experience, no one talks about Avatar except for the promised forthcoming sequels. Have you seen any Avatar cosplay recently? Any Halloween costumes since Obama was elected a second time? Avatar is currently at its nadir of pop-culture relevance. And yet, we still supposedly have four ... more ... sequels coming so...

On the heels of Tom Cruise’s announcement of a forthcoming Top Gun sequel , MarketWatch published an article this weekend titled ‘Hollywood is running out of hit ’80s movies to reboot.’ A sequel to the Tony Scott-helmed 1987 film is just the latest in a long line of film properties from the 1980s that have been updated for “modern” audiences like RoboCop , Friday the 13th , and Ghostbusters to varying degrees of success.

I kid. She was great in Black Swan . Jane Foster will not be sticking around in Marvel’s sandbox. This isn’t really news considering production on Thor: Ragnorak began last month with no word of Jane’s return. Now, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Natalie Portman has declared her doneness, once and for all: “As far as I know, I’m done,” she said. “I mean, I don’t know if maybe one day they’ll ask for an Avengers 7, or whatever.” She continued by saying that Thor “was a great thing to be a part of.” Okay, maybe so it’s not ironclad but Portman doesn’t appear to be hanging her hopes on playing the straight-man to Chris Hemsworth’s Thor. To be fair, Jane really never did much else besides spout scientific exposition and be in danger when the story called for it. Fingers crossed though this means Kat Dennings’ Darcy is still around though.

Since last year’s Sicario was one of my favorite films, I was excited to learn that Denis Villeneuve was cooking up another film before heading off to the Blade Runner sequel. And the trailer for Arrival that popped up this week just increased my anticipation for that film even more. Based on the short story ‘ Story of Your Life ’ by Ted Chiang , Amy Adams , Jeremy Renner, and Forest Whitaker star as a team dispatched when an alien ship arrives on Earth. Adams’ Dr. Louise Banks is tasked to devise a way to communicate with the aliens and determine if their intentions are hostile or not. As you can see, the trailer does not give too much away but we can likely expect an escalation between the military and the aliens, especially as many more ships appear throughout the world. However, considering Villeneuve’s penchant for slow and meticulously drawn out affairs in his films, this will almost certainly not be an unofficial bombastic Independence Day sequel. Arrival opens Novem...

How many times can this dejected comic book series be adapted? I do not read comic books but I can dig comic book films, provided they don’t look like complete failures. So far, the Marvel comic series Fantastic Four has produced three films and not a single one has even hinted at something I’d be interested in seeing. But after last summer’s shit-show of Fant4stic , which not only managed to piss a bunch of fans off even more but also lose the studio a lot of movie, producer Simon Kinberg wants another bite at this festering apple of a series. Telling Den of Geek! that the much maligned property is still in play at Fox, Kinberg offers a bit of a mea culpa and a desire to continue with the present cast: “I think we made many mistakes when we made that movie - mistakes that we learned from and we wouldn’t repeat. I think we tried to make a darker Fantastic Four movie, which seemed like a radical idea but we were kind of messing with the DNA of the actual comic instead o...

Christopher Nolan goes back to Europe with his new film, Dunkirk . Set during the Battle of Dunkirk in 1940, Nolan’s original screenplay will center around the evacuation of the titular French city of Allied soldiers and citizens. And I now know more about this WWII event than I did before. According to Variety , Dunkirk will feature unknowns as the lead players but with backup by Nolan stalwart Tom Hardy and Kenneth Branagh. It will be produced by long-time partner and wife Emma Thomas and distributed by Warner Brothers in July 2017 and will be shot in IMAX. Could this be Nolan’s Saving Private Ryan? Let’s hope so come early 2018.

Well, it seems that rather than making a new Halloween film , Dimension Films, the guardians of Michael Myers for the past twenty years, have been stripped of their power. The Wrap reports that Dimension Films is no longer in the Michael Myers business and that Marcus Dunston and Patrick Melton are no longer involved in the production of the presumably dead-in-the-water Halloween Returns . Returns would have reportedly either taken place following Halloween II (not Rob Zombie’s) or found Myers on death row. Or both! But now neither. I can’t say I’m too broken up about it. Under Dimension’s reins, the Halloween films were very hit-or-miss, with the hits meaning not completely terrible and the misses being Halloween: Resurrection . Perhaps, it’s for the best now that little Mikey Myers finds a new home to play in.