A Quiet Place: Day One makes noise at the box office with $7M in preview screenings, while the first part of Costner’s Horizon earns $800k.

The makers of A Quiet Place: Day One will need help keeping quiet about the film’s success at the box office, with $6.8M earned in Thursday previews. The total is a record high for the franchise and a more significant opening than some of the summer’s other blockbusters, like Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, which opened with $6.6M in previews. If A Quiet Place: Day One keeps up the pace, the third film in the intense horror thriller franchise could shout its supremacy with $50M for its 3-day launch window.

Elsewhere, Kevin Costner’s Horizon: An American Saga hit the dusty trailer below expectations with $800K in previews. However, it’s worth noting that the target audience differs from those who rush to theaters for Thursday screenings. For many, Horizon is a Friday Date Night film or even a weekend afternoon wind-down to beat the summer heat and doldrums of the work week. We can expect the movie to fare better throughout the week. Still, it isn’t easy to know how much until the numbers come in.

Thankfully, Pixar’s Inside Out 2 still draws crowds after reaching $863.1M worldwide, beating the original film’s lifetime total of $859M. It only took Inside Out 2 16 days to outperform its predecessor and become number 19 on the highest-earning animated films list. Inside Out 2 is the ninth most successful domestic animated film ever, with $411.8M, overtaking 2013’s Frozen.

While John Krasinski directed A Quiet Place and A Quiet Place: Part II, he has passed the helm of this one over to Michael Sarnoski. A few years ago, Sarnoski earned a lot of positive attention with his feature directorial debut, Pig.

The story of A Quiet Place: Day One, which is credited to Krasinski and Sarnoski, does take place in the same world established in the first two movies but doesn’t involve the Abbott family, the characters we followed through the first two movies. Deadline’s sources said that after seeing Pig and being blown away by the film, Krasinski quickly put Sarnoski on the short list of directors to take a meeting for the project. While insiders say Sarnoski’s vision for the film was still his own and different from what Krasinski had done with the first two, he still gave a pitch that fit the tone of the world they had created and felt he was the perfect fit for their next installment.

JoBlo’s Editor-in-Chief, Chris Bumbray, reviewed A Quiet Place: Day One. You can read his review here.

About the Author

Born and raised in New York, then immigrated to Canada, Steve Seigh has been a JoBlo.com editor, columnist, and critic since 2012. He started with Ink & Pixel, a column celebrating the magic and evolution of animation, before launching the companion YouTube series Animation Movies Revisited. He’s also the host of the Talking Comics Podcast, a personality-driven audio show focusing on comic books, film, music, and more. You’ll rarely catch him without headphones on his head and pancakes on his breath.

Rockstar Games co-founder Dan Houser says the company turned down numerous offers to bring GTA and Red Dead Redemption to the big screen.

Last Updated on July 2, 2024

It’s hard not to play the Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption games and not wonder what live-action adaptations would be like. Then again, the games are so cinematic to begin with that it all seems so unwarranted. And that’s just the feeling that Rockstar Games co-founder Dan Houser has, saying he has been asked numerous times by studio honchos about bringing GTA and more from Vinewood to Hollywood.

As Houser recalled, he was told by executives that there could be potential in making movies from GTA and other Rockstar Games properties, to which Houser replied, “And we’d be like, no, what you’ve described is you making a movie and us having no control and taking a huge risk that we’re going to end up paying for with something that belongs to us.”

Despite the constant push for Rockstar Games movies, Houser and his team consistently turned down any offers while he was still with the company (he left in 2020), no matter how many Oppressor Mk IIs they could have bought with the payday. “They thought we’d be blinded by the lights and that just wasn’t the case. We had what we considered to be multi-billion-dollar IP, and the economics never made sense. The risk never made sense. In those days, the perception was that games made poor-quality movies.” While he did note that it’s a completely different time now and pre-established properties can be adapted to great acclaim (see: The Last of Us), it’s just not part of Rockstar’s plan.

So what is? Well, Grand Theft Auto VI, for one, which is set to be released in the Fall of next year. Hype is strong enough there – the trailer hit 90+ million views in the first 24 hours – that the idea of Rockstar Games even considering turning the series into a movie seems pointless. Based on the trailer, it looks to be the company’s most insane GTA outing yet, also showing the series will make do just fine without Houser.

Do you think Rockstar Games should turn any of their properties into movies or would these inevitably be unfulfilling adaptations? Would any missions make for great big screen action? Give us your take below!

Trailer: Alec Baldwin, Stephen Dorff, Tom Welling, and Clive Standen star in the thriller Clear Cut, which Lionsgate will release in July

Last Updated on July 1, 2024

Lionsgate is set to give the thriller Clear Cut, which stars Clive Standen of the Taken TV series, Tom Welling (Smallville), Stephen Dorff (Blade), and Alec Baldwin (Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation), a theatrical, digital, and VOD release on July 19th – and with that date just a few weeks away, a trailer for the film has arrived online. You can check it out in the embed above.

Brian Skiba directed Clear Cut (formerly known as Cold Deck) from a screenplay by Joe Perruccio, who earns his first feature writing credit on this film. The Hollywood Reporter let us know that the story centers on Jack (Standen), who tries to leave his past behind him when he starts a logging job but finds that a team of criminals with a score to settle are out to kill him.

Jesse Metcalfe (Desperate Housewives), Lucy Martin (Vikings), Lochlyn Munro (Freddy vs. Jason), Chelsey Reist (The 100), Elena Sanchez (The Hunger Games: Catching Fire), Tom Stevens (Wayward Pines), Sophia Shaw (Center Stage: On Pointe), and Fawn Damara Robson (Reap) are also in the cast.

Skiba is quite a prolific director, having racked up nearly thirty feature credits in just the last fifteen years. Among those credits are Blood Moon Rising, Dirty Little Trick, .357, Defending Santa, Merry Ex Mas, Beverly Hills Christmas, Christmas Truce, Evil Doctor, Rottentail, One Nightmare Stand, My Adventures with Santa, The Christmas High Note, The 2nd, Obsessed with the Babysitter, Pursuit, Dead Man’s Hand, Deadly Excursion, and Deadly Excursion: Kidnapped from the Beach.

Corey Large produced Clear Cut, with Eric Bromberg, Ram Getz, Greg Meyer, Nick Mao, Michael Mortensen, Jordan Wayne Nott, Matthew Helderman, Luke Taylor, Tyler Gould, Kirk Shaw, and Stephanie Rennie serving as executive producers.

The Hollywood Reporter also reminds us that Baldwin’s involuntary manslaughter trial for the fatal shooting of Halyna Hutchins, the cinematographer on his film Rust, is set to begin in July… and in fact, the first day of the trial is ten days before the release of Clear Cut.

What did you think of the trailer for Clear Cut? Will you be watching this movie next month? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

Will Forte is ready to vacation with Tina Fey, Steve Carell, Colman Domingo, and more for a reimagined version of The Four Seasons.

The upcoming reimagining of The Four Seasons needs to make some room because Will Forte (MacGruber, The Last Man on Earth, The Lego Movie) is checking in. Universal Television is producing the all-new series adaptation from Tina Fey, Land Fisher, and Tracey Wigfield. Forte joins Fey, Steve Carell, Colman Domingo, Kerri Kenney-Silver, and Erika Henningsen for the show written by Fey, Fisher, and Wigfield.

The Four Seasons, a retread of the 1981 Universal movie of the same name, is a co-creation between Fey, her 30 Rock co-star Lang Fisher, and Tracey Wigfield. Details about Forte’s character remain a mystery, though the cast list for Alan Alda’s 1981 comedy could provide some clues. In 1981’s The Four Seasons, three couples vacation together every season. After one couple divorces, feelings of betrayal and more spawn criticisms of one another, but the things that keep them together are stronger than those that might tear them apart. Alan Alda directed and wrote the 1981 version, which stars Alda, Carol Burnett, Len Cariou, Sandy Dennis, Rita Moreno, Jack Westen, Bess Armstrong, and Elizabeth Alda.

Fey’s version of The Four Seasons comes from Universal Television and Fey’s Little Stranger, Inc. production studio. Fey, Fisher, Wigfield, David Miner, Eric Gurian, and Jeff Richmond are the executive producers, with Alda and Marissa Bregman producing.

Unfortunately, Warner Bros. shelved Will Forte’s latest film, Coyote vs. Acme, much to the dismay of Looney Tunes fans. The decision to bury the film in the WB vault in favor of a tax write-off is not sitting well with audiences, with the public viewing the move as another blunder on behalf of CEO David Zaslav’s contentious tenure. Meanwhile, Forte is developing MacGruber 2, a sequel to the 2010 comedy starring Forte as MacGruber, Kristen Wiig as Vicki, and Ryan Phillippe as Piper. The laugh-out-loud film also features Val Kilmer, Powers Booth, and Maya Rudolph.

Are you excited about so many great comedic actors banding together for a reimagining of The Four Seasons? Have you ever vacationed with other couples? How did that turn out? If you have any nasty stories, we’d love to hear about them in the comments section below.

About the Author

Born and raised in New York, then immigrated to Canada, Steve Seigh has been a JoBlo.com editor, columnist, and critic since 2012. He started with Ink & Pixel, a column celebrating the magic and evolution of animation, before launching the companion YouTube series Animation Movies Revisited. He’s also the host of the Talking Comics Podcast, a personality-driven audio show focusing on comic books, film, music, and more. You’ll rarely catch him without headphones on his head and pancakes on his breath.

A trailer has been released for the shark thriller The Last Breath, featuring Julian Sands in one of his final performances

Actor Julian Sands (Warlock) went missing while hiking on California’s Mount Baldy back in January of 2023, and sadly, his remains were found the following June. Just four months before Sands went missing, we reported on a film called The Last Breath, a shark thriller he was working on. He gave one of his final performances in this film – and soon, we’re going to have the chance to see that performance. RLJE Films will be giving The Last Breath a theatrical and VOD release on July 26th, and with that date right around the corner, a trailer has dropped online. It can be seen in the embed above.

Scripted by Nick Saltrese (Prayer Before Dawn), The Last Breath follows a group of college friends who embark on a once-in-a-lifetime dive. However, their adventure quickly turns into a nightmare as they become trapped in the darkness of a shipwreck and soon discover they are not alone…

Sands is joined in the cast by Kim Spearman (As I Am), Jack Parr (Peaky Blinders), Alexander Arnold (Yesterday), Erin Mullen (Midsomer Murders), and Arlo Carter (Doc Martin).

Andrew Prendergast of Picaro Films receives a “story by” credit on the IMDb page for The Last Breath, and produced the film with Chris Reed of Freebie Films. Funding was provided by Orogen Entertainment, Anamorphic Media, and Filmgate. Umedia co-produced. Will Machin, Sam Parker, and Michael Yates of Metro, Blair Ward, Anders Erdén, and Eric Harbert of Orogen, Sara Shaak and Matt Lyons of Anamorphic, and Bastien Sirodot and Cloé Garbay of Umedia serve as executive producers.

The Last Breath was directed by Joachim Hedén, who previously brought us the survival thriller Breaking Surface (watch it HERE), about a woman struggling to save her sister, who was trapped underwater by a rockslide in the icy waters of Norway. So it makes sense that he was chosen to direct this shark thriller that’s also about divers.

What did you think of the trailer for The Last Breath? Will you be watching this movie when it’s released next month? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

It can’t be denied that as far as martial arts movies go, the best ones come from Asia, particularly Hong Kong during their action heyday, which was arguably the 70s, 80s and first half of the ’90s. That said, martial arts movies were also making a foothold in the States at the time, thanks mainly to Bruce Lee-mania following the release of Enter the Dragon. Before that movie, very few actors in Hollywood seemed like they were credible martial artists, except maybe James Coburn, a student of Lee’s, who pulled off some pretty good-looking moves in the otherwise silly Our Man Flint movies. Steve McQueen also had training but didn’t use martial arts on screen.

Up to then, though, the most notable uses of martial arts in movies usually revolved around Judo, with James Cagney showing off some good moves in the film Blood on the Sun, while Spencer Tracy – who was HEAVILY doubled, demolished Ernest Borgnine in the classic thriller Bad Day at Black Rock with only one arm.

But, in the seventies, fight sequences started to get better, with the Asian influence especially notable in Blaxploitation movies because many of the stars, including Fred Williamson and Jim Kelly, had legit training. When Chuck Norris came along towards the end of the decade, you also started to see mainstream stars dip their toes into martial arts. Still, sometimes the results weren’t pretty, such as when Richard Burton uses drunk-fu to beat up a racist in the abysmal melodrama The Klansman (check out my choice for the worst fight scene ever right here). 

In the eighties, fights in American movies started to get good. However, the way they were shot often didn’t quite match up to what was happening in Hong Kong, with a great example being the climactic fight between Mel Gibson and Gary Busey in Lethal Weapon. Both actors had been extensively trained in a variation called Jailhouse Rock, which was popular in prisons, but there was too much rain and close cutting to showcase the movies. 

That said, there were some great American martial arts movies then – and loads of great ones are being made now, so here’s our list of the best American martial arts movies ever made. Note that movies like The Matrix or John Wick, which married martial arts with gunplay, didn’t make the list, with this dedicated more to straight-up martial arts mayhem.

Honorable Mention: The Undisputed sequels:

So, if you know action, our mentioning these sequels probably established us as somewhat legit, as director Isaac Florentine and his leading men, Michael Jai White (who holds seven black belts!) and Scott Adkins, brought something new and fresh to the DTV world. The first two sequels, Undisputed 2 and 3, are arguably more famous than the now obscure Walter Hill movie they’re sequels to. 

10. Kill Bill:

Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill pushed the envelope for martial arts mayhem, but then again, being a student of film, should you expect anything else? Tarantino had Yuen Woo Ping as a choreographer plus, The Street Fighter himself, Sonny Chiba, along with the very proficient David Carradine (who only really shows off his moves in a deleted sequence opposite Michael Jai White), and Uma Thurman. For my money, the best fight sequence in the film is the first one, where Thurman goes at it with Viveca A Fox, but the House of Blue Leaves sequence is also a classic.

9. Big Trouble in Little China:

At the time, this movie was a box office flop, but years later, people finally caught on and started digging the fact that John Carpenter was making a beautiful Hong-style action fantasy movie in the vein of Mr. Vampire and Zu Warriors. The martial arts in this beats anything happening in American action movies at the time, even if much of it is wire-fu in the classic WuXia fashion.

You can’t do a best American Martial Arts movie list and not include Steven Seagal. Granted, he never really made a pure martial arts movie in his heyday, but the ultra-violent aikido style he broke out in Above the Law and those first few movies were highly influential on American action movies of the area. At his best, Seagal was excellent, but it could be argued that the lean and mean Seagal was only ever present in those first five movies, with everything after Under Siege going downhill. Too bad.

7. Revenge of the Ninja:

Cannon Pictures did more to bring Ninja’s into the mainstream than any other movie studio. While their first Ninja movie, Enter the Ninja, is a joke, the sequel, Revenge of the Ninja, which elevated the first movie’s bad guy actor, Sho Kosugi, to a hero, is a slick movie and the best of their loose Ninja Trilogy. The director, Sam Firstenberg, also did a great job with the first two American Ninja movies, thanks to the untrained Michael Dudikoff being a gifted mimic and athlete, who, likely, could have been a JCVD-level star had Cannon put more money into his movies.

6. Best of the Best:

While the notion of casting James Earl Jones as the coach of a national martial arts team is almost as silly as the fact that the out of shape Chris Penn plays one of their best fighters, Best of the Best is still one of the most legit martial arts films of the era. It mixes the sports genre with martial arts. It gets the attitude of competition better than a lot of other films of this ilk, with it emphasizing sportsmanship and the surprising bond you establish with your opponent, no matter who wins. Philip Rhee is a terrific lead in this, thanks to the fact that his skills are legit. Still, Eric Roberts, despite no training, also acquits himself very well, thanks to the fact that he took the choreography very seriously and got himself into peak physical shape.

5. The Last Dragon:

Martial Arts movies had a significant cult status in the inner city, and The Last Dragon is Motown’s tribute to the genre, with a young black marital artist named Taimak, our likeable lead, Leroy Green, aka Bruce Leroy. The music is excellent, as are the fights, with the movie stolen by Julius Carry as Sho’nuff, the shogun of Harlem. Carry wasn’t trained, but he proved to be a good mimic, and attitude is everything sometimes.

4. Kickboxer:

While often overshadowed by Bloodsport, Kickboxer helped bring Muay Thai into the mainstream, and the movie features Jean-Claude Van Damme at his best, with terrific training sequences, an incredible final battle between JCVD and Michel Quissi’s Tong Po, and Van Damme shaking his ass in a bar fight. Also, who could forget the opponents wrapping their hands in bandages and dipping them in broken glass, which was sent up brilliantly in Hot Shots Part Deux

3. Bloodsport:

More JCVD, with this the movie that made him a star. We’ve talked about this a lot on JoBlo, but it introduced the term kumite into the mainstream and also showcases a wide variety of different styles of martial arts. This is a movie made by people who genuinely know the genre

2. The Karate Kid:

While I maintain that the fights in these movies were never great, with Ralph Macchio’s fight skills leaving a lot to be desired (he’s better as a martial artist on Cobra Kai – which has AMAZING fights), this movie did more for martial arts as a practice than any other movie on this list. It led to an explosion in Karate schools across North America, and, thanks to the gentle discipline and philosophy of Mr. Miyagi, proved that karate, and martial arts in general, is an art form that can help a lot of people discover an inner strength they never knew they had.

Bruce Lee’s only American movie, it came out posthumously and was such a cultural phenomenon that it led to a kung-fu craze that was so big, within a year, you had Roger Moore’s James Bond kung-fu fighting his way through The Man with the Golden Gun. Lee’s so damn good in this, but John Saxon also acquits himself well in the fight scenes; Jim Kelly, in some ways, is almost as iconic as Bruce is with his massive afro.

So that’s our list – special thanks to EJ Tangonan, who edited this video, for helping brainstorm this list.

Joseph Quinn, who played fan favorite Stranger Things addition Eddie Munson in season four, thinks it’s possible he could return.

Last Updated on July 2, 2024

With the upcoming fifth and final season of Stranger Things poised to be of the “completely insane” variety, we can only imagine what the Duffer Brothers have in store. Season four teased a truly sinister future for the citizens of Hawkins and left a lot on the table. But even those ends that looked tidy may not be. After all, what’s really stopping an apparently dead character from coming back? No, we’re not talking about Barb, but rather Eddie Munson.

One of the standout additions in later seasons was undoubtedly Eddie Munson, leader of the Hellfire Club, who was played by Joseph Quinn. While it looked as if Eddie made the ultimate sacrifice, he teased that might not be the last we see of the master of puppets. On a potential return, Quinn said, “I might have that feeling [it could happen].” He added, “Or maybe I don’t. I don’t know! Who knows?” OK, that’s not entirely helpful but it’s not entirely out of the realm of possibility. No doubt Eddie dies in “The Piggyback” but he could still return in an Upside Down or hallucinatory form, just as Billy did despite dying in season three. I personally don’t think an Eddie Munson appearance (even as a cameo) is really necessary unless he’s there as a further demonstration of the power Vecna holds. But considering that has been laid out pretty heavily, it might be a pointless addition that’s only there to appease fans who were upset he was killed off.

Whether we get more Eddie Munson or not, Joseph Quinn remains faithful to his (former?) castmates. “I’m sure they’re working very hard to land the plane. It’s been a long time that they’ve been working on that, so I’m really delighted that they’re kind of getting towards the end, and they’re having a nice time…I’m sure they’re gonna deliver it in a pretty epic way. I have no doubts.”

Stranger Things may have slipped a bit in the most recent season but there is still a lot to look forward to for the final outing. As the season four finale showed, so much more is at stake, with Hawkins seemingly on the brink of a full takeover from the Upside Down.

Do you think Eddie Munson should return for the final season of Stranger Things or would it diminish his death?