While McG respected what Elizabeth Banks did with her own spin, he would like to see Charlie’s Angels get an official third entry.

2000’s Charlie’s Angels and its 2003 sequel, Full Throttle, were huge hits at the box office so it was no surprise that there was a planned third (and fourth!) installment. Unfortunately for fans, that never came to be. But director McG is ready to see Charlie’s Angels become an official trilogy, whether he’s at the helm or not.

As per Deadline, McG said, “It would take a long discussion with those three wonderful performers, who I adore…I was very happy to see Elizabeth Banks take the helm and do what she did, which was fun,” referring to the 2019 Charlie’s Angels movie that Banks wrote and directed. “There always seems to be chatter about that. I’m very happy to discuss it with Drew and Cameron and Lucy, but at the same time, I’m very happy to pass the torch. I mean, I love the Tim Burton Batman movies, I love the new Batman movies. It’s just sort of like there can be a keeper of the flame and you can pass the torch.”

Still, McG does have a special connection with his three leads – more so than Bill Murray, at least – that might push him to step into the director role for another Charlie’s Angels outing. “Maybe we’ve got one left in us that tells a very compelling story if the opportunity presents itself…I love the three of them so much. They put me on the map. They looked out for me when I was a first-time filmmaker. I was very nearly fired off that film on many, many occasions, and Drew stood up for me and I’m forever indebted to her. And obviously, those are three performers where God broke the mold. They don’t make ’em like that. I mean, those are three special ones.”

With Drew Barrymore on TV every morning with a syndicated talk show, Cameron Diaz at least partly out of retirement and Lucy Liu in the DCEU, who knows, there might actually be a renewed interest to see the ladies step back into their roles. Barrymore herself has said if Diaz and Liu are down, so is she. The first two Charlie’s Angels movies grossed over $500 million worldwide; Banks’ effort, on the other hand, was a flop.

Do you think the Charlie’s Angels franchise is worth reviving? If so, should McG be involved or should someone else step in as director? Give us your take below!

As the studio systems take an image beating and hire a PR firm to spin some sympathy their way, the top brass will be meeting as no end to the strikes look to be near.

We are nearing the fourth month of the Writers’ Guild of America strikes that had officially gone into effect on May 2nd. A couple of months after the WGA started their picketing, SAG-AFTRA followed suit, and both have been in solidarity ever since. There have since been a couple of failed attempts at reaching a new agreement between the movie studios and the writers’ union, and the AMPTP had reportedly even hired the Levinson Group, a PR firm, to help soften their image in the public eye during the fray.

Deadline is now reporting that internal tensions have prompted the studio CEOs to set up a meeting among themselves today. Disney’s Dana Walden and Alan Bergman, Amazon Studios’ Mike Hopkins and Jennifer Salke, Netflix’s Ted Sarandos, Universal’s Donna Langley, and Warner Bros Discovery’s ever-popular David Zaslav are some of the prominent names that are planning to meet virtually as there doesn’t seem to be any end in sight for the conflict. Disney’s CEO, Bob Iger, is not expected to be in attendance, as Walden and Bergman are tasked with handling the labor-related issues, and Iger reportedly chooses to wait in the wings until “an appropriate time.”

There hasn’t been confirmation on whether AMPTP President Carol Lombardini will include herself in the meeting. The last attempt to meet with the WGA ended in a disaster as the proposals brought on by the studios did not meet the terms that the writers had been proposing. Their proposals have been deemed “neither nothing nor nearly enough” by the WGA, and studios have experienced blowback that left both Iger and Zaslav are said to be stunned that they have been vilified.

According to Deadline, the AMPTP is waiting for the official WGA response to the August 11 offer, but the WGA insists that the other shoe is waiting to drop on the studios’ side after they made a counter-offer on August 15. A source that is close with the divisions of CEOs has stated, “Before, some wanted to blame Carol, accused her of being stuck using a pre-streaming playbook. Now they have only themselves to blame for how bad things look. That’s why they brought in the Levinson Group, and that’s why they are squabbling.”

The episode of Revisited covering Class of 1984 was Written and Narrated by Andrew Hatfield, Edited by Ryan Cultrera, Produced by Tyler Nichols and John Fallon, and Executive Produced by Berge Garabedian.

In an upcoming video, we will be looking at the modern genre classic VFW. I say genre because while my wife astutely pointed out that the drugged-up gang in VFW kind of act like rage zombies and the movie has that great over the top gore and characters, its not really horror. Its gritty action like the movie that inspires it, Assault on Precinct 13. Genre encompasses multiple things like horror, exploitation, and any other type of movie that just has that feel to it. While today’s movie isn’t horror, though it does have situations that would be scary in real life, it is genre. It’s school-ploitation at its finest and has a pedigree both in front of and behind the camera that fits wonderfully with many of the greats we usually talk about. While it could probably fit well with our Test of Time series or even as a Best Movie You Never Saw, I don’t want to talk about what works and what may not from that critical lens. I want to revisit a movie that is a classic and hope that it gets more people to put it on their radar or even revisit it themselves.

Class of 1984 (watch it HERE) is the 1982 movie brought to us by a really fun creative team. First is the least known in co-writer John Saxton. No, not John Saxon, the horror legend who showed up to fight Freddy Kruger, cannibals, and Giallo villains, and everything in between, but a man that only had 8 projects to his name. Now three of those are Happy Birthday to Me, today’s flick, and frickin Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS but still a small sample size. The other writers are director Mark Lester who we will get to in a minute, and legend Tom Holland. This was only his third screenplay, and it was before his directorial debut. That debut, Fright Night, would also have a connection to this movie with Roddy Mcdowell coming back to play Peter Vincent after playing one of Class of 1984’s best characters. Holland, besides the ones you know him for, also wrote Cloak and Dagger and Thinner. Mark Lester is much more of a producer now more than anything but is also quite the acclaimed writer and director. Well director mostly. While this is my favorite film he has directed, he also did classics like Firestarter, Commando, Armed and Dangerous, and Showdown in Little Tokyo.

The other behind the camera guy of note is Alice Cooper who contributed the awesomely 80s opening tune that will make you cringe slightly but also stick with you. Perry King plays Lincoln Highs new music teacher Andrew Norris who moved to the city with his pregnant wife to teach a rougher crowd the joy of music. He’s in for a wake-up call when on his first day he sees kids with weapons, a full-on security team, and a staff that is either too scared or defeated to do anything about it. King was the first and only choice for the role and he had been around for about a decade with his first major role being in slaughterhouse five. While the only horror project he has done is an episode of Tales from the Crypt, he has a long and storied career that is still active today.

The teacher that shows him the ropes, and becomes his closest friend at the school, is biology teacher Terry Corrigan played by the legendary Roddy Mcdowell. The role was offered to Duel’s Dennis Weaver, but he turned it down when he found the script to be too violent. I like Dennis Weaver but I’m also thankful for him turning down the role as it gave us one of the quintessential Roddy parts. The film itself was heavily inspired by true events with it also being a loose remake of Blackboard Jungle with Lester citing A Clockwork Orange as his other cinematic influence for the movie. The movie wasn’t just too violent for Weaver as other countries gave it their hardest rating due to the content and the creators found it hard to find a distributor. Roger Ebert did say it was the best movie he saw at Cannes that year which is high praise both for the critic that typically didn’t get into these types of movies and for the fact that it made it to Cannes at all.

Andrew doesn’t like the idea of how reckless and violent the students are and really doesn’t care for the fact the school is run by one gang in particular. Stegman is the leader of this quintet of scumbags that also includes Fallon, Drugstore, Barnyard, and Patsy. They all serve a purpose within the gang as driver, muscle, drug dealer, and consort. While this sort of gang mentality certainly isn’t new, they do something a little different with the gang leader Stegman. Instead of being just the generic bad kid, he’s a genius who chooses to be bad but part of him also wants to succeed in the traditional way. Andrew Norris is the music teacher and while the rest of the gang isn’t supposed to be in his class, Stegman is. At first it doesn’t seem to matter but the second time we see an interaction in class, Stegman plays the first part of a beautiful piece of music before sincerely asking to be a part of things. Norriss says no based on previous transgressions and it seems to push our young criminal mastermind over the edge.

Stegman is played by Timothy Van Patten, he of the famous Van Patten acting family, no seriously, look it up, and while his acting career really never happened, his directing resume is quite impressive. Since the early 1990s he has directed over 100 episodes of television including the most episodes of the mega hit The Sopranos of any director. He is a mix of menacing and tragic here as the lead bad guy and while none of these actors look like high schoolers, Van Patten does the best job humanizing his role. These little transgressions with Norris continue back and forth. Little things at first like the gang looking up where their teacher lives to spray him with fake blood to Norris trying to catch them dealing drugs and get them kicked out of school. That may sound like more than a minor feud but compared to what comes later, it’s minuscule.

The attempted drug bust is what really escalates tensions between the two teachers and the gang. A young Michael J Fox, here going by just Michael Fox, is with his friend who wants to buy drugs to enhance his scholarly performance. Fox did this movie at the same time he started his 172-episode run on Family Ties and this character has the smartass and sarcastic attitude we would come to love in the Back to the Future movies as well as much of his later career before he had to step away for medical reasons. His buddy dies of a drug related incident and both the police and Norris want him to snitch on the gang for selling the drugs. He won’t out of fear, but the gang isn’t convinced. They corner him and a band classmate in an alley and threaten them before Andrew and Terry come to the rescue. The kids escape but both teachers come out of it with wounds.

Now that Terry is officially involved in the gang’s mind, the kill all the animals in his biology lab. An already fragile Terry holds his class at gunpoint in not only a prescient scene in 1982 and 41 years later but one of the best scenes in the movie. Terry feels like he can’t get through to the kids anymore but when their lives are on the line with how they answer, they miraculously come up with the right answer. In what could have been an after-school melodrama moment, Roddy McDowel makes it as tense as possible. Andrew is able to stop him from killing Stegman, something he probably regrets later, and Terry ends up trying to kill the gang with his car before dying in a car crash. That would be enough to push Andrew over the edge, but Stegman also beats himself up and blames the teacher and then has Michael J fox’s character stabbed after he thinks he’s snitched to the police officer that isn’t willing to do anything.

The gang has big plans for Mr. Norris and while he is attempting to show off what he and his music students have learned this year, the gang sneaks into his house and assaults his pregnant wife. They take turns doing it and even takes pictures before kidnapping her and taking her to the school. They lure Mr. Norris out with the photographic evidence, and this is where the movie takes everything to its violent and sadly natural conclusion. The assault scene is also the biggest giveaway that A Clockwork Orange was an influence. The scenes could be put next to each other to show off its homage. From that point to the end of the movie is where the movie really earns its R and its banning and extremely high content rating in other countries. While Norris is ambushed and beaten a few times at first, he quickly gains the upper hand and realizes he can trap them rather than continue to walk into their traps.

He kills Fallon by cutting off his arm and impaling him on a table saw, Drugstore by immolation, and Barnyard and Patsy by way of crushed car. It’s brutal stuff especially when you remember these are supposed to be high school kids. With just Stegman remaining, the two men fight on the roof where Andrew wins but is still willing to save his young nemesis. Defiant to the end, Stegman tries to cut Mr. Norris with a knife who then punches him with an expression of both seething anger and shocked disbelief that he killed another kid. Stegman falls through the remaining roof panels of glass and ends up caught hanging in a rope in front of the whole school. The movie ends with a note that Norris was never charged because nobody saw him do it and we get Alice Coopers one-of-a-kind song again.

I LOVE this movie. It doesn’t pull punches even if its concept and execution are over the top. And make no mistake, the movie is over the top in the most enjoyable way. While most would mark Commando as the director’s finest hour, a film that itself is over the top in its action, dialogue, and body count, Class of 1984 is, well, it’s in a class of its own. It spawned two sequels including the stupid but way too fun Class of 1999 directed again by Lester and it holds up like fine wine today. Stream it on Tubi or Shudder with Joe Bob’s commentary and add a gem to your physical media collection by picking up the Scream Factory Blu-ray release that’s loaded with features and has made the film look better than ever. Horror sometimes needs good old fashioned genre films to balance it out and there’s fewer examples finer than Class of 1984.

Two previous episodes of Revisited can be seen below. To see more of our shows, head over to the JoBlo Horror Originals channel – and subscribe while you’re at it!

The newest adventure from the heroes in a half-shell (and they’re green!) is coming to home screens just a month after its release in theaters.

Now that the summer movie season has come to a conclusion and school starts for many, Paramount Home Entertainment has announced that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem will be available on digital this week, according to ComingSoon.net. The newest incarnation of the four green heroes in a half-shell would hit theaters in the wake of Barbie and Oppenheimer‘s historic run, but the Seth Rogen-produced film would make a nice bit of profit with a worldwide gross of over $137 million on a $70 million budget.

Fans of the franchise will not be waiting at all as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem is going to be released for home viewing on September 1. Those who purchase Mutant Mayhem on digital will be treated to a bevy of behind-the-scenes footage and other bonus content, as the film comes with over 40 minutes of special features. The special bonus content will include:

• TEENage Mutant Ninja Turtles — For the first time the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are voiced by actual teenagers! Hear how each Turtle was cast and how having all four boys record together helped create the authentic camaraderie seen on screen. 

• The Mutant Uprising — Get to know the Turtles’ mutant antagonists, led by the wild and original character Superfly, voiced by Ice Cube.

• New York, New York: The Visual World of Mutant Mayhem — Take a deep dive into the breakthrough visual style of the film’s characters and environments and how they evolved over time.  

• Learn to Draw Leo —Try your hand at drawing the Turtle leader with this fun tutorial!

This release follows a new trend of the shockingly small theatrical window some movies are now given. This film, Creed III, Fast X and certain others have all interestingly had just about a month in theaters before being made available online no matter the reception or box office performance. Our own review from Tyler Nichols enjoyed the movie as a love letter to fans of the brand, saying, “I know as a thirty-something nerd who grew up on Turtles, I found myself laughing and having a grand ole time. I can’t wait to see where they go with this and what other characters they bring in. While Shredder is certainly a given, I’m hoping Bebop and Rocksteady are able to take on a more villainous role. All I know is I’m ready for more Turtles!”