While Giorgio Moroder’s soundtrack to the 1983 crime epic Scarface is considered a classic, Universal once tried to replace it with hip-hop.

While far from a smash hit in its original 1983 theatrical release, Brian De Palma’s Scarface, over time, became seen as a classic. The rise of home video played a big role, with it having an outsized impact on hip hop artists, with many (MANY) songs sampling the soundtrack/score and dialogue. In fact, its reputation in the rap community was so strong that, around the time of its 20th anniversary, Universal Pictures, in association with Def Jam Records, attempted to redo the movie’s soundtrack with hip hop. 

According to a new book, “The World is Yours: The Story of Scarface,” by Glenn Kenny, star Al Pacino and producer Martin Bergman actually weren’t opposed to the idea of dropping Giorgio Moroder’s classic score (and songs) and replacing it with hip hop, only for Brian De Palma to (thankfully) put the kibosh on the whole deal. As excerpted in the book (buy it here), De Palma said, “No one changes the scores on movies by Marty Scorsese, John Ford, David Lean. If this is the ‘masterpiece’ you say, leave it alone. I fought them tooth and nail and was the odd man out; not an unusual place for me. I have final cut, so that stopped them dead.”

While Def Jam did indeed put out a compilation album of hip-hop tracks inspired by the film, the original cut of the movie was left alone. However, in an interview with The Talks from a few years back, De Palma says Universal “continually” wanted to change the soundtrack, saying, “They’re very unhappy with me because they could obviously make a tremendous amount of money, but I said, “That score’s not being changed.”

One has to admire De Palma’s tenacity here, as a new score would, in the opinion of many of the film’s fans, be something akin to vandalism. Given that the movie takes place in early 1980’s Miami, a contemporary hip-hop score would be out of place, with Moroder’s music, dated as it is, very evocative of the era and the film’s setting. 

Do you think a director less committed than De Palma would have stuck to his guns the way he has? Let us know in the comments! 

Check out three first look images of John Woo’s upcoming remake of his own iconic action movie, The Killer.

IGN got the exclusive first look at The Killer, John Woo’s upcoming remake of his own 1989 action classic. This new version stars Nathalie Emmanuel as Zee, a mysterious assassin known as the Queen of the Dead. When she refuses to kill a young blind woman (Diana Silvers) on the orders of her handler, Finn (Sam Worthington), her world implodes, and she finds herself on the run, attracting the attention of police investigator Sy (Omar Sy).

You can check out three first-look images from The Killer below.

“[Zee] has a very specific code in how she likes to do things,” Emmanuel told IGN. “And when she’s told who and when to kill somebody, she does it in her own specific way. And her dilemma in this movie is that she’s being asked to kill somebody who she doesn’t believe deserves it. And for some reason she can’t believe that they deserve to be killed …“

“I like Sy because he’s a loyal cop playing by his own rules to make real justice and really do it with all his heart,” Sy said. “It’s more about instinct and feelings, you know? He’s the good guy, but sometimes he can cross the line to do what is best. That was very interesting for me.“

Of course, both actors are big fans of John Woo and the original version of The Killer. “I love the original movie,” Emmanuel said. “I’ve seen it more than a couple of times. (John Woo) was an innovator of action, in my opinion. And just really cared about not just the action, and the sort of excitement and the spectacle of the action, but really cares about the characters and their emotional dilemma as you put it. And so it’s an excellent movie. I’ve seen a lot of John’s movies. I’m a massive fan of Face/Off. I think it’s one of my favorites of his, and Mission: Impossible 2 is obviously fantastic.” You can check out more of the interview on IGN.

The Killer remake, directed by John Woo from a script by Brian Helgeland, will stream exclusively on Peacock on August 23rd.

Michael Chernus to play notorious serial killer John Wayne Gacy in Devil in Disguise limited series for Peacock.

We’ve got yet another serial killer drama on the way as Michael Chernus (Severance) is set to play John Wayne Gacy in a limited drama series for Peacock.

Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy will chronicle “the harrowing crimes of one of America’s most notorious serial killers and the investigation that ultimately brought him down.” Over the course of six years, Gacy kidnapped and murdered 33 young men, burying many of them in the crawl space beneath his home. On the outside, Gacy didn’t seem to fit the mould of a twisted killer; he was active in his community, hosted annual summer parties, and even volunteered to entertain sick children dressed as a clown.

“I’m both excited and humbled by this opportunity,” Chernus said in a statement. “The direction that the writers are taking with this project is important, focusing on the victims and their families as well as those who finally brought John Wayne Gacy to justice.”

Chernus continued: “While Gacy was the perpetrator of these horrific crimes, I’m relieved that he won’t be the main focus of the series. It’s heartbreaking for me to think of what his victims (all young men and boys) could have done with their lives had the system not failed them so tragically. I believe in the power of storytelling and hope that by telling this story, in a thoughtful way, we can play some part in preventing this from ever happening again.“

Patrick Macmanus, known for Dr. Death and The Girl From Plainville, will serve as writer, executive producer, and showrunner on the series. Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy “peels back the twisted layers of John Wayne Gacy’s life while weaving in the heartrending stories of his mostly gay victims; exploring the grief, guilt, and trauma of their families and friends; and exposing the systemic failures, missed opportunities and societal prejudices that fueled his reign of terror.“

Michael Chernus will next be seen in the second season of Severance on Apple TV+. The psychological thriller series finally wrapped shooting in April after being forced to halt due to the WGA and SAG strikes. The second season doesn’t have an official release date at this time.

Jessica Alba’s first movie in over five years is a weak copy of John Wick-style action.

Last Updated on June 27, 2024

Plot: Special Forces commando Parker is on active duty overseas when she gets called back to her hometown with the tragic news that her father has suddenly died. Now the owner of the family bar, Parker reconnects with her former boyfriend-turned-sheriff Jesse, his hot-tempered brother Elvis and their powerful father Senator Swann, as she looks to understand what actually happened to her dad. 

Review: It has been five years since Jessica Alba‘s last big screen role. While she led the Bad Boys spin-off L.A.’s Finest alongside Gabrielle Union the year after, Alba has spent the last half-decade working as Chief Creative Officer for The Honest Company, which she co-founded. While she recently stepped down from that role, her work on Trigger Warning goes back to 2021. The three-year road for Alba’s first leading role in a decade should indicate the quality of the finished product. Marketed as being an action flick in the vein of John Wick, Trigger Warning is a mediocre flick that feels like something Jason Statham would have passed over. Full of underdeveloped characters, repetitive action, and weak dialogue, Trigger Warning is yet another Netflix original that is not very good.

If the lack of marketing materials was not a clue as to the lack of quality in Trigger Warning, the fact that screeners were sent to critics less than twenty-four hours before it debuts on Netflix should tell you all you need to know about this action movie. From the outset, Trigger Warning opens with a bombastic chase sequence through a desert with Parker (Jessica Alba) in a truck pursued by terrorists. Parker has killed the bad guys after a crash and a brutal fight sequence. Chatting with her friend Spider (Tone Bell), Parker gets a phone call telling her that her father, Harry (Alejandro De Hoyos), was killed in a cave-in. Parker returns home to settle her father’s affairs by selling the family bar, Maria’s. Parker runs into her former boyfriend Jesse (Mark Webber), now sheriff of the quaintly named town of Creation. Parker also runs into family friend Mike (Gabriel Basso) and Jesse’s brother Elvis (Jake Weary). Elvis and Jesse are sons of Senator Swann (Anthony Michael Hall), a conservative politician with an iron grip on Creation, which should tell you what comes next.

Parker quickly realizes her father’s death was not an accident, and it involves Senator Swann and the local military base. Teaming up with Mike and reconnecting with Spider, Parker goes out for revenge for her father. Over the almost two-hour running time of Trigger Warning, Parker kicks ass as much as she gets her ass kicked and dispatches dozens of bad guys with everything from household objects to gunfire and more than a few with knives and a massive machete. Having appeared in Machete and Machete Kills, Jessica Alba is no stranger to action roles, but Trigger Warning boasts the most fight scenes the actress has participated in in her entire career. The action scenes are the highlight of this film, but even they begin to feel repetitive after Alba dispatches multiple thugs with the same blade slice to the neck. Most of the key action moments are used in the trailer, leaving over an hour for audiences to realize there is not all that much logic or depth to this revenge story.

So much of Trigger Warning is nonsensical, which makes the title fairly apt. There seems to have been an attempt to make this a story about a Latinx female character who kicks the ever-loving piss out of a cowboy hat-wearing conservative politician. Still, it gets lost in a story full of nonsense that boils down to greed and greed alone. Anthony Michael Hall barely registers as the villainous Senator Swann, who makes a jab about what “Latinx” means, but it comes across as blatant and heavy-handed. A character calls Alba’s Parker a racial slur at one point, to which she expediently kills him without a second thought. This would have been a wonderful showcase in the early to mid-1990s, but it does not take advantage of the setting or skills that Alba brings to the table. Jessica Alba fits Parker’s role well, but the meandering plot undermines her quest for vengeance, and the ending fails to put a stamp on why we just spent two hours with these characters.

Written by John Brancato (Terminator 3, Terminator Salvation) alongside Josh Olson (A History of Violence) and Halley Wegryn Gross (The Last of Us: Part II, Too Old To Die Young), Trigger Warning feels like it would have been a vehicle for a mid-level action star twenty years ago but is so uneven that it had nowhere to end up other than Netflix. It also comes from director Mouly Surya, who has no experience helming an action movie with the films What They Don’t Talk About When They Talk About Love and Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts to her credit. Alba and Surya may have been aiming for an unexpected angle to an action project. Still, even as a producer, Alba fails to find anything that amounts to a solid production here. The set design is somewhat better than that of other mediocre Netflix films from the last few years. Still, the bombastic and inappropriately epic score by Enis Rotthoff and the jerky cinematography from Zoe White are crippled by terrible editing from Chris Tonick and Robert Grigsby Wilson. No one seems to be the right fit for this project, with Alba coming close to being the only person in the right role.

Trigger Warning is not edgy enough to piss off either side of the political spectrum, nor is it engaging enough to warrant spending two full hours with. We have gotten unexpected action leads ranging from June Squibb to Bob Odenkirk and Bert Kreischer. Still, Alicia Vikander, Charlize Theron, and Anya Taylor-Joy have shown it is no longer shocking for an able-bodied young actress like Jessica Alba to kick ass. Netflix has found better projects like Trigger Warning with Jennifer Lopez in The Mother and Allison Janney in Lou. Both films are better constructed and more entertaining, even at a B-movie level. Trigger Warning is not even good enough to be called mediocre, and that is a shame for what seems to have been designed as Jessica Alba’s comeback as a lead. Avoid this one unless you want to see a bunch of rednecks getting killed and if you are not too worried about any semblance of a sensical plot.

Yellowstone season 6, a.k.a. Yellowstone season 5, part 2 (the final season of the show), has been given an official November premiere date

Update:

Kevin Costner has taken to his social media to confirm that although he recently stated that he loves doing Yellowstone and would be open to returning “under the right circumstances,” he will, in fact, NOT be returning to the Paramount+ show in the upcoming season. Deadline reports that Costner took it upon himself to post a video to his Instagram where he addressed the fans directly. His video post sported the caption, “An update for you guys. I’ll see you at the movies.” This video post came just hours after Paramount+ announced a release date for the final episodes in the series.

In the video, the Horizon star would candidly explain, “I want to reach out and let you know that after this long year and a half of working on Horizon and doing all the things that’s required, and thinking about Yellowstone, that beloved series that I love, that I know you love, I just realized that I’m not going to be able to continue Season 5B or into the future.” Costner continued, “It was something that really changed me. I loved it. And I know you loved it. And I just wanted to let you know that I won’t be returning and I love the relationship we’ve been able to develop and I’ll see you at the movies.”

Original Article: On June 20, 2018, Paramount Network aired the first episode of a neo-Western drama television series called Yellowstone – and a megahit franchise was born. The final batch of episodes are now in production, and while some are referring to those episodes as “Yellowstone season 6,” it’s officially Yellowstone season 5, part 2 – and Paramount Network has decided to celebrate the sixth anniversary of the show’s premiere to announce that Yellowstone season 5, part 2 has a premiere date of Sunday, November 10th at 8pm ET/PT.

Internationally, Yellowstone will premiere on Paramount+ in Canada on November 10th, the U.K. on November 11th, and in Latin America, Brazil and France later in November.

TV’s #1 show, produced by MTV Entertainment Studios and 101 Studios, Yellowstone chronicles the Dutton family who controls the largest contiguous cattle ranch in the United States. Amid shifting alliances, unsolved murders, open wounds, and hard-earned respect – the ranch is in constant conflict with those it borders – an expanding town, an Indian reservation, and America’s first national park.

It’s not known whether or not Kevin Costner, who caused a behind-the-scenes shake-up when he chose to work on the two-part epic Horizon: An American Saga rather than Yellowstone, will be appearing in the final episodes. He has said that he’s open to reporting to set, under the right circumstances.

The series was created by Taylor Sheridan and John Linson, and they both serve as executive producers alongside Art Linson, Kevin Costner, David C. Glasser, Bob Yari, Stephen Kay, Michael Friedman, Christina Voros and Keith Cox. The series is distributed by Paramount Global Content Distribution.

Yellowstone may be coming to an end with season 5, part 2, but the franchise will live in. Cast members Cole Hauser, Kelly Reilly, and Luke Grimes are on board to reprise the roles of Rip, Beth, and Kayce on a Yellowstone sequel series that might co-star Matthew McConaughey, Kurt Russell, and Michelle Pfeiffer. Jennifer Carpenter was recently cast in season 2 of the prequel series 1923. And spinoffs titled 1944 and 6666 are in the works.

Are you glad to hear that Paramount Network has announced the premiere date for Yellowstone season 5, part 2? Share your thoughts on this one by leaving a comment below.

Jesse Plemons showcases that he more than looks like Damon, but he’s a good sport at the jokes, as Damon himself usually is.

Last Updated on June 27, 2024

Jesse Plemons has made quite a name for himself with his career. However, the name he can’t help but be associated with is Matt Damon. Although Plemons has starred in his fair share of projects, mostly as a character actor, his striking resemblance to Damon do not stop the masses from either legitimately mistaking him for the Bourne Identity star or making jokes and memes out of his uncanny similarity. When Plemons had a heftier build, he would jokingly be referred to online as “Fat Damon,” but now that he has actually slimmed down to a smaller body type than his doppelgänger, the memes have changed to “Meth Damon.”

Damon is known to be a good sport when it comes to certain jokes, like when people shout “Matt Damon” to him in the same way that his marionette portrayal does from Team America: World Police. Plemons is showing that he’s an equally good sport as he addresses the subject. People reveals that while Plemons was on the TODAY show with co-star Emma Stone to promote Kinds of Kindness, the topic was breached and he humorously stated, “Still not Matt Damon.” TODAY show host Craig Melvin admitted his wife genuinely mistook Plemons for Damon when watching the film. Plemons responded,

Yeah, for a little while now, which there are worse things to be called, for sure. It’s definitely flattering. But yeah, throughout the course of my career, I’ve had various Matt Damon-associated nicknames and such.”

Emma Stone would then chime in, “Like what? Emily?” This is reference to Stone’s recent preference of being called by her real name as opposed to her stage name. Plemons responded, “Like Emily! Emily Damon.”

The two can be seen in the upcoming Yorgos Lanthimos film Kinds of Kindness, which our own Eric Walkuski was pretty lukewarm about when he mentioned in his review, “Kinds of Kindness ends up being more intriguing when you’re experiencing it rather than when you’re remembering it. Its unpredictability is absolutely its biggest asset, but when the smoke clears you wonder what, if anything, it was all for. Super fans of the director will surely be enamored with the film’s lurid quirks, while the casual moviegoer might wonder what the hell just happened during that almost three hour sideshow. It’s not exactly rewarding, but it’s also difficult to look away from.”

About the Author

E.J. is a News Editor at JoBlo, as well as a Video Editor, Writer, and Narrator for some of the movie retrospectives on our JoBlo Originals YouTube channel, including Reel Action, Revisited and some of the Top 10 lists. He is a graduate of the film program at Missouri Western State University with concentrations in performance, writing, editing and directing.