Despite making nearly $500 million worldwide, Mr. & Mrs. Smith never got a sequel. We spoke to the writer and found out why.

Mr. & Mrs. Smith has to be one of the biggest movies never to get a sequel. Having grossed nearly $500 million worldwide, a follow-up would have seemed like a no-brainer. Filmed during happier times for the now divorced Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, the movie starred the gorgeous pair as sexy married spies who think their occupations are secret from their unknowing spouse. Assigned to kill each other, when they start fighting, they find the spark their marriage has been missing, and they team up to take on their crooked handlers.

According to the movie’s writer, Simon Kinberg, whom I spoke to recently via Zoom, there was a notion to do a sequel, but no one could figure out how to follow up the relatively close-ended story. “The strength of the first movie is it’s a love story; they are, you know, falling back in love with each other or in love for the first time in a genuine way. And to tell a love story, to serialize a love story is very hard. Because no matter what you do in the second movie, sure, they could be partners and spies and bickering together, but you wouldn’t actually have the arc of two people who are falling in love.”

After experimenting with various plot points, including having them partner up or get separated, the sequel idea was abandoned. While it never happened, a Mr. & Mrs. Smith series for Prime Video starring Donald Glover is set to launch soon. Director Doug Liman is also dipping his toes back into action films, shooting the highly anticipated Road House remake with Jake Gyllenhaal, which recently nabbed an R-rating. Meanwhile, Simon Kinberg’s Apple Plus show, Invasion, is wrapping its second season. Check it out – it’s a hidden gem.

The Expendables could be headed towards a $15 million opening weekend, putting in around the previous entry.

The Expendables 4 aka the incomprehensible Expend4bles took in $750,000 in previews on Thursday, indicating it could be headed towards a $15 million or so opening, according to sources.

Such an opening weekend would make it a tough mountain for The Expendables 4 to climb to recoup its $100 million budget. But if previous entries are any indication, it’s the international box office that will help it reach that goal. The previous outing, 2014’s The Expendables 3, opened with just under $16 million, peaking at #4 at the box office. Domestically, it would gross just $39 million, but the worldwide haul easily pushed it past $200 million, making it a global success. Still, it should be noted that The Expendables 3 had a Thursday take of $875,000.

The Expendables franchise has undoubtedly cooled. What started as a reunion of our favorite action heroes of the ‘80s and ‘90s – Stallone, Arnold, Dolph, Bruce, Chuck, Jean-Claude, and more – has devolved into what feels like direct-to-video territory. Gone are Schwarzenegger (despite being Netflix’s Chief Action Officer), Chuck Norris (who, now 83, hasn’t been in a movie since 2012’s The Expendables 2) and Jean-Claude Van Damme (hey, let the guy rest before Beetlejuice 2). Sure, Sylvester Stallone and Dolph Lundgren are there and Tony Jaa is generally fun to watch, but The Expendables 4 has apparently turned into the Jason Statham Show featuring 50 Cent, Megan Fox and Andy Garcia, some of whom are seen as expendable in other ways. And considering the third entry came out nearly a decade ago, The Expendables 4 is really looking at some dangerous, self-parodic territory.

The official plot of The Expendables 4: “Armed with every weapon they can get their hands on and the skills to use them, The Expendables are the world’s last line of defense and the team that gets called when all other options are off the table. But new team members with new styles and tactics are going to give “new blood” a whole new meaning.”

Will you be checking out The Expendables 4 this weekend? How do you think it will perform when its run has expired?

A new promo for director David Gordon Green’s The Exorcist: Believer shows a scene with the characters Angela and Victor

We’re exactly two weeks away from the October 6th theatrical release of director David Gordon Green‘s The Exorcist: Believer, and today a new promo has arrived online to give us a preview of a scene that features the characters Angela and Victor, played by Lidya Jewett (Nightbooks) and Leslie Odom Jr. (Hamilton). You can check it out in the embed above.

Green recently finished working on a trilogy of Halloween sequels for Universal and Blumhouse that consisted of Halloween (2018), Halloween Kills, and Halloween Ends. Now he’s working with the companies on a trilogy of sequels to The Exorcist (watch it HERE) that begins with Believer. Green crafted the story for the film with Danny McBride (who wrote all three of the new Halloweens with him) and their Halloween Kills co-writer Scott Teems, then wrote the screenplay with Peter Sattler (Broken Diamonds). Here’s the synopsis: Since the death of his pregnant wife in a Haitian earthquake 12 years ago, Victor Fielding has raised their daughter on his own. But when Angela and her friend Katherine, disappear in the woods, only to return three days later with no memory of what happened to them, it unleashes a chain of events that will force Victor to confront the nadir of evil and, in his terror and desperation, seek out the only person alive who has witnessed anything like it before: Chris MacNeil.

Ellen Burstyn reprises the role of Chris MacNeil, the character she played in the 1973 classic The Exorcist, “an actress who has been forever altered by what happened to her daughter Regan five decades before.” Odom, Jewett, and Burstyn are joined in the cast by newcomer Olivia O’Neill as Angela’s friend Katherine. Ann Dowd (The Handmaid’s Tale) plays Victor and Angela’s neighbor, and Jennifer Nettles (The Righteous Gemstones) and Norbert Leo Butz (Fosse/Verdon) play Katherine’s parents.

Okwui Okpokwasili (Master) is also in the cast, playing an unspecified role, and Raphael Sbarge (Carnosaur) plays a pastor. Original The Exorcist star Linda Blair is in there as well, reprising the role of Chris MacNeil’s daughter Regan.

The Exorcist: Believer is being produced by Jason Blum, David Robinson, and James Robinson. Green, Danny McBride, Stephanie Allain, and Couper Samuelson serve as executive producers. Ryan Turek is overseeing the project for Blumhouse.

Universal and Peacock forked over an amount somewhere in the range of $400 million to acquire the rights to distribute this trilogy, so you can understand why they’re trying to avoid competition. That’s a lot of money to recoup. It has already been announced that the next sequel, titled The Exorcist: Deceiver, will be reaching theatres on April 18, 2025.

What did you think of the The Exorcist: Believer Angela and Victor promo? Will you be watching this movie next month? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

Writer/Director Bishal Dutta uses a demon from Hindu mythology to tell a familiar story of trying to vanquish what cannot be stopped.

PLOT: An Indian-American teenager struggling with her cultural identity has a falling out with her former best friend and, in the process, unwittingly releases a demonic entity that grows stronger by feeding on her loneliness.

REVIEW: One of the coolest trends going on in horror right now is the usage of cultural Boogeymen. Some of these have reached the pop culture zenith, while others remain simple horrors for small-knit communities. Indian culture has a ton of demons, many of which the average American would have never heard anything about. The creature presented in It Lives Inside is called Pishacha and is based on flesh-eating demons in different Hindu and Buddhist mythologies. The history of the creature feels so much more intriguing since it’s based on actual mythology, versus something a screenwriter concocted to scare us. All of this is to say that, while the story may follow many beats we’ve seen before, It Lives Inside‘s unique identity makes it feel fresh and exciting.

Megan Suri’s Samidha is an extremely complex character that makes her intriguing to watch from the jump. I always love a story where we’re going down the rabbit hole of torture with a character. She doesn’t always do the right thing yet the justifications in the movie still keep the viewer firmly on her side. I also really enjoyed Tamira (Mohana Krishnan) as she serves as almost the Tina to Samidha’s Nancy. Which I think is apropos given some Nightmare on Elm Street imagery that the film evokes. I also like the dynamic that one of them is adapting to their new country while the other is struggling with it.

Written and directed by Bishal Dutta, he makes sure to bring some of his own personal experiences to the film, which grounds the film despite some of the otherworldly instances. The struggles with identity when moving to a new country, while still trying to pay respect to your heritage, is something many immigrants can relate to. 2023 has been an absolutely stellar year for cinematography in horror, and It Lives Inside continues that trend. Beautiful use of the wide aspect ratio and a color palate that only gets better as the film enters its final act make this stand out amongst other similar fare. There are several shots in this that I feel will be appearing in horror montages for years to come.

The demon itself is incredibly well done, utilizing mostly practical effects and being sure to keep them mostly in the shadows. The past year has had two similar villain reveals in both The Boogeyman and Smile, yet I’d say this eclipses both of those, by providing a great design that looks wonderful from all angles. It doesn’t matter how this is shot, it looks practical and, more importantly, great.  I’m very curious to see some more close-ups of this creature as there was plenty of detail to examine. If I had to get into what I didn’t like, it’s mostly the undefined rules with the creature. Whether it’s invisible or not seems mostly based on circumstance, which made it hard to establish tension. The creature’s presence felt like more of a roll of the dice. Thankfully, when it is around, it’s truly terrifying and leaves an impact. If anything, I could have gone for more violence from the creature. It’s supposed to be a flesh-eater after all but we’re mostly just treated to bites.

The story of It Lives Inside may be a bit generic, but its cultural roots really help to give it a unique identity. I often roll my eyes during the exposition scenes in films of this ilk yet I couldn’t get enough of Neeru Bajwa speaking on it with such authority. Megan Suri gives a phenomenal performance and the creature has one of the best designs in all of horror. The movie doesn’t tread any terribly new ground, but not all movies do. Sometimes a properly executed story with great performances and practical effects are all a good horror film needs.

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