Sam Mendes thinks directing the next James Bond movie will come down to someone younger and more impressionable.

The name’s Mendes, Sam Mendes. The Bond franchise has been ongoing for more than 60 years and 25 films, so it’s no surprise that there have been many repeat directors. But Sam Mendes was the first to helm multiple Bond films since the ‘80s (an era ruled by John Glen), guiding Daniel Craig through the 2010s. After Skyfall and Spectre, the torch was passed to Cary Joji Fukunaga. So will Sam Mendes go the Terence Young route, sitting one installment out and returning with thunder? Never say never…but probably not.

Speaking with Inverse, Sam Mendes credited the Bond films with coming at a crucial time in his career but doesn’t see it as a guarantee for his future. “Never say never, to quote the man, but I would doubt it. It was very good for me at that moment in my life. I felt like it shot me out of some old habits. It made me think on a bigger scale. It made me use different parts of my brain. You have to have a lot of energy.”

With that, the 59-year-old Sam Mendes thinks directing a Bond film is a young man’s game. “They want slightly more malleable people who are earlier in their career…who perhaps are going to use it as a stepping stone, and who are more controllable by the studio.”

Who the next Bond director will be is anybody’s guess. All Quiet on the Western Front director Edward Berger has already dismissed supposed talks, while Christopher Nolan rumors have also been debunked. So, will the Bond team go for someone mainstream American audiences are more familiar with or someone off of their radar?

The James Bond franchise will obviously press on but, in addition to the giant question mark surrounding the director, there is still so much in the air, with the future of the character himself — or maybe even herself — undetermined. Who will play 007 and what direction will the studio go? Three years removed from No Time to Die and with no clear path, we’re possibly looking at at least three more before we see it on the big screen.

Do you think Sam Mendes should return for another James Bond film? Who else do you think should step into the job?

The actress was announced to have died peacefully this Friday morning, surrounded by family and friends.

Maggie Smith, who has graced audiences with her work in the Harry Potter films, Downton Abbey, A Room with a View and Gosford Park, has passed away at the age of 89.

According to the BBC, her sons Toby Stephens and Chris Larkin have made the announcement with the following statement, “It is with great sadness we have to announce the death of Dame Maggie Smith. She passed away peacefully in hospital early this morning, Friday 27th September. An intensely private person, she was with friends and family at the end. She leaves two sons and five loving grandchildren who are devastated by the loss of their extraordinary mother and grandmother. We would like to take this opportunity to thank the wonderful staff at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital for their care and unstinting kindness during her final days. We thank you for all your kind messages and support and ask that you respect our privacy at this time.”

Modern audiences got to view Smith in the hit 2010 show Downton Abbey, where she portrayed Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham. Hugh Bonneville, who co-starred with Smith pays tribute to his castmate, “Anyone who ever shared a scene with Maggie will attest to her sharp eye, sharp wit and formidable talent. She was a true legend of her generation and thankfully will live on in so many magnificent screen performances. My condolences to her boys and wider family.”

Fans of the Harry Potter series would get to see Smith portray Professor Minerva McGonagall through multiple films in the series and she would also lend her talents to comedies such as the Sister Act series, co-starring Whoopi Goldberg, and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel films.

Dame Maggie Smith was a legend of British theatre and crossed over into movies and television shows of many genres and notoriety. Smith would win two Academy Awards during her prestigious career. She would win for 1970’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and also for California Suite in 1979. The esteemed actress would also be nominated four other times and would also take home the prize at the BAFTA Awards eight times.

Smith started as an actress of the stage, but in 1958, she would secure her first BAFTA win for her role in the film Nowhere to Go. In 1963, she co-starred opposite Sir Lawrence Olivier as Desdemona in the stage production of Othello for the National Theatre. In 1965, that production was adapted into a film with the original cast and Smith would be nominated for an Oscar for her performance.

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.

Trailer: Shaun of the Dead’s Nick Frost stars in the horror film Get Away (formerly known as Svalta), reaching theatres in December

Back in 2022, it was announced that Fighting with My Family co-stars Nick Frost and Lena Headey were going to reunite to work on the serial killer thriller Svalta, which was set to start filming in Finland soon… but then Headey had to drop out of the project due to scheduling issues before it started rolling in 2023 and was replaced by Aisling Bea, whose previous credits include This Way Up, Living with Yourself, and Home Sweet Home Alone. Last month, IFC Films and the Shudder streaming service acquired the North American distribution rights to Svalta, which is now going by the title Get Away, and the plan is that IFC Films will be giving the movie a theatrical release on December 6th. Get Away will then make its way over to Shudder sometime in 2025. As we dive into spooky season, a trailer for Get Away has now arrived online and can be seen in the embed above.

Get Away was directed by Steffen Haars (New Kids Turbo) from a screenplay Frost wrote himself. The story follows a family on their summer vacation to a remote island where they discover a serial killer is on the loose. Unfortunately for them, the locals have no interest in helping the stranded family. The title is taken from the name of the fictional island. As Frost described the story, “Take a gentle English family and send them on holiday to a tiny Swedish island full of maniacs. Simple. Not so much Nuts in May. More ‘Nuts in Mayhem’.“

Frost and Bea are joined in the cast by Sebastian Croft (Heartstopper) and newcomer Maisie Ayres. 

Coming our way from XYZ Films, Wayward Entertainment, and Resolute Films, Get Away was produced by Lee Kim for Resolute Films, John Hegeman for Wayward Entertainment, Nick Spicer and Aram Tertzakian for XYZ, and Frost. Richard Kondal co-produced for Big Safari, while Vince Totino of Wayward Entertainment and Patrick Fischer of Creativity Capital served as executive producers. Financing was provided by XYZ in collaboration with IPR.VC, along with additional funding from Creativity Media, with tax incentives and support from Business Finland, Business Tampere, and the City of Tampere.

We first heard about this project back in 2019, at which time Frost’s frequent collaborator Simon Pegg was going to producing the movie with him, and James Serafinowicz and Nat Saunders were going to be co-writing the script. But it doesn’t look like Pegg, Serafinowicz, or Saunders have any involvement with the finished product.

What did you think of the Get Away trailer? Will you be watching this movie later this year? Let us know by leaving a comment below. While we wait for this one, Frost has another horror movie, Krazy House, reaching VOD on October 4th.

Jeff Goldblum, 25, has forgotten his mantra. At least, his nameless party guest character – dubbed “Man on the Phone” in the screenplay – has. And it’s the way he delivered that line in 1977’s Annie Hall that made him stand out despite only having a few seconds of screen time. Somehow – just by being himself – Jeff Goldblum turned a throwaway bit into one of the funniest lines in one of the funniest films.

As for Jeff Goldblum himself, he says his mantras are “I am grateful” and “Accept, enjoy, enthuse.” And that, across 50 years on the big screen, is as truthful as it gets when it comes to Jeff Goldblum.

Let’s find out: What Happened to…JEFF GOLDBLUM?

Jeff Goldblum was born on October 22nd, 1952 just outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of a doctor and a radio broadcaster, the sort of brains and art pairing that perfectly describes the actor (his father even once considered the arts).

Goldblum developed a love of acting early on, even writing, “Please, God, let me be an actor” on steamed bathroom mirrors. And so it was, doing a few summer acting sessions at Carnegie Mellon before going to New York to study at the famed Neighborhood Playhouse under legendary coach Sandy Meisner.

Two years later, he made his Broadway debut in Two Gentlemen of Verona (1971). A natural performer, Goldblum would continue to take the stage even as he made it on TV and in movies, returning many times over the years…In 2006, he launched his own theater troupe called The Fire Dept, which isn’t surprising considering he started an acting school in the early ‘80s.

Early roles

The stage actually helped him get his start. No, not as Freak #1 in Death Wish (1974; he’d play something similar in ‘76’s St. Ives, also starring Bronson) but rather California Split, as director Robert Altman saw him perform. Altman would next cast him in 1975’s Nashville as a tricycling mute, clearly recognizing the quirk Goldblum had embedded in him. Although he was still a few years off from fame, he had at least the confidence to quit his job peddling office supplies to prisons…As such, he continued with small bits on shows like Columbo and Starsky & Hutch, as well as supporting roles in Next Stop, Greenwich Village and Special Delivery (both 1976).

1977 would mark his first genuine breakthrough. Following The Sentinel, Woody Allen (who Goldblum later named his dog after) cast him in Annie Hall as a man calling his manager to tell him he forgot his mantra. It’s just one line and Goldblum is barely on the screen, but somehow it is one of the most quoted in his career and the iconic comedy. That same year, he stood out as a music critic at a low-level newspaper in Between the Lines, truly introducing us to his trademark humor and mannerisms in every scene he stole. It was like the title for his next picture was intentional…

Following the thriller Remember My Name (1978) and playing a disco owner in Thank God It’s Friday (1978), Goldblum appeared in his first mainstream supporting role, falling victim to the pod people in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978). Almost a fact, this is where he defined his easily identifiable patterns, especially in speech, blowing away director Philip Kaufman – and audiences – with the delivery of the line: “I – I – I – I never thought that they would come in – in metal ships.” It was never intentional, Goldblum said, but “it became useful.”

It’s this unusual nature, this singular voice that ensured he would get a lot of voice work on shows like King of the Hill, Crank Yankers, Big Mouth, and actual play podcast Dark Dice; heck, he even voiced God on an oddball series call Happy! (2019). And certainly, we can’t forget Verminous Skumm on Captain Planet and the Planeteers, a brilliant one-off on The Simpsons “A Fish Called Selma” and The Prince of Egypt (1998). It’s no wonder he has been cast as The Wonderful Wizard of Oz – a character known, at least at first, by his voice and commanding presence – in Wicked.

In 1980, he played a pitch-perfect Ichabod Crane on TV’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, the same year his one-season comedy Tenspeed and Brown Shoe aired. The early ‘80s kept him busy: re-teaming with Donald Sutherland for another sci-fi, Threshold, to a Genie Award nod; playing a comic accused of murder in TV movie Rehearsal for Murder (1982); again playing a reporter in ensemble record-seller The Big Chill (1983), turning up for the faithful Philip Kaufman in an unnamed role in The Right Stuff (1983), a cowboy-topped fella named New Jersey in Buckaroo Banzai (1984); and a diverse 1985 triple feature, showing great chemistry with Michelle Pfeiffer in Into the Night, playing a heel who meets a proper fate in Silverado and leading a lousy but near-cult horror-comedy Transylvania 6-500. All the while, he kept doing TV one-offs on fare like American Playhouse, Faerie Tale Theatre and The Ray Bradbury Theatre.

The Fly

But it was time to be afraid, be very afraid. In 1986, Jeff Goldblum starred in David Cronenberg’s The Fly remake. It was the most praise he had ever earned, giving the genre performance of a lifetime that should have been nominated for Best Actor. While always a scene-stealer, too rarely does Goldblum get credit for just how good of an actor he can be. Consider also 2008’s Adam Resurrected, earning some of the highest praise of his career and putting him in the middle of failed Oscar chatter, playing a Holocaust survivor committed to an institution. Another good one is 1992’s Deep Cover, showing he wasn’t afraid to steal scenes from Laurence Fishburne; and for it he earned an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

Perhaps for too long, he spent too much time doing whatever he wanted, however good or bad, concluding his post-Fly output with virtually nothing memorable: lifetime rom-com Beyond Therapy (1987), TV drama Life Story (playing DNA structure discoverer Watson; he would only play one other real-life figure, in Spinning Boris), Cyndi Lauper-starrer Vibes (1988), former Comedy Central staple – and genuinely fun time – Earth Girls Are Easy (1988), an enjoyable enough starring role in The Tall Guy, and again playing a writer in Spanish-French production El Sueño del Mono Loco.

The ‘90s had a forgettable start, too: demented, chewy roles in Mister Frost and HBO movie Framed (1990); 1991’s The Favour, the Watch and the Very Big Fish, which was far less entertaining than the title. 1992 brought Fathers & Sons – giving Goldblum much physical and emotional to handle – and Shooting Elizabeth.

Jurrasic Park

Another resurrection waited behind the gates of Jurassic Park (1993), playing what would be his trademark role: Dr. Ian Malcolm, later reprising him for 1997’s The Lost World and 2022’s Jurassic World: Dominion. Somehow – or maybe inevitably – Jeff Goldblum also became a sex symbol. This character is now so regarded that a 25-foot statue was erected in London – and even that was sexy! Jeff Goldblum was now officially in the pop culture hierarchy, a wholly unique figure in a field where it’s near-impossible to stand out. And yet there he is, becoming a guy we knew could bring something interesting to anything. Here was a guy trusted to sell everything from apartments and Apple products (even though he can barely use an iPhone) to Toyotas and German beer (even though he rarely drinks).

As he did for a lot of his post-The Fly work, very little was truly memorable, but he enhanced every project: hosting PBS series Future Quest (1994); 1995’s Hideaway, Nine Months and Powder; 1996’s The Great White Hype and Mad Dog Time. All this unmemorable fare was balanced by another defining role in Independence Day (and its 2016 sequel), as well as – fun fact here – earning an Oscar nod for Best Live-Action Short for Little Surprises. The ‘90s ended with Holy Man (1998) before the next century brought Beyond Suspicion, Chain of Fools, One of the Hollywood Ten (all 2000), Perfume (2001), the paycheck movie Cats & Dogs (2001), Igby Goes Down (2002), Dallas 362 (2003), Mini’s First Time, Fay Grim, Man of the Year (2006), The Switch, Morning Glory (both 2010), Le Week-End (2013), Mortdecai (2015), Hotel Artemis, The Mountain (both 2018)… And what of his various spots on Friends, Will & Grace (earning an Emmy nod), The Larry Sanders Show, Glee, The League, Portlandia, and Kimmy Schmidt? From 2009-2010, Goldblum replaced Chris Noth’s detective on Law & Order: Criminal Intent, a show lucky to have him. But he would leave after 24 episodes, uncertain as to the show’s future. Here’s an even more uncertain future: he was the subject of a death hoax that had him falling off of a cliff. That’s so Goldblum!

Wes Anderson

In 2004, Jeff Goldblum first teamed with Wes Anderson, playing an oceanographer in The Life Aquatic, returning as a deputy in The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), a pooch in Isle of Dogs (2018), and, most recently, the alien – how fitting! – in Asteroid City (2023). He, too, has made that MCU rite of passage, having proven himself as a key supporter of blockbuster entertainment, here playing Grandmaster in Thor: Ragnarok (2017) after a credits cameo in Guardians 2 but before in voice form on What If…? Next, he will play Zeus in Netflix’s mythology-based Kaos.

In 2019, Goldblum said, “I still have creative choices more varied than ever. I still feel like I’m on the threshold of my best work, not only understanding it but being able to practice it.” OK, so his next movie was Boss Baby (2021), but you know what he means! That year, he hosted The World According to Jeff Goldblum, in which he somehow made denim, puzzles, and random small stuff interesting!

It’s that endless curiosity and fascination with all of it that continues to keep Jeff Goldblum in the collective consciousness of oddballs everywhere. As he once said, “There’s so much that’s delicious, precious, magnificent, mysterious and infinitely enjoyable that it would be foolish not to make every day an adventure.” And he does because, as we know, Jeff Goldblum, uh, finds a way.

Jeremy Saulnier, director of Rebel Ridge, Murder Party, and Green Room (among others) is writing a fun script that has to do with Halloween

The thriller Rebel Ridge was announced back in 2019, but took five years to make its way out into the world because the production was delayed by the pandemic lockdowns, then by the departure of lead actor John Boyega a few weeks into filming, reportedly due to “family reasons.” Saulnier has said that the making of Rebel Ridge saw him “slamming right into the Hollywood I’ve tried to avoid,” and, “We came back three years in a row to make that movie.” But the troubles were worth it, because the finished film was well-received (you can read our 8/10 review HERE) and a success on Netflix. Now, Saulnier is looking forward to his next movie – and he’s going back to his roots to tell a fun Halloween story.

Saulnier’s previous credits include Murder Party, Blue Ruin, Green Room, Hold the Dark, and episodes of True Detective season 3. During an interview on The Playlist podcast, Saulnier said he’s looking to make something along the lines of Murder Party and Green Room. He told The Playlist (with thanks to MovieWeb for the transcription), “I’m currently writing something that’s a little more in the Green Room universe. Because with Rebel Ridge, I was exploring a new side. I was just tired of everything I do being oppressive. But I’ve kinda gone back. It has to do with music and Halloween and fun shit.”

This sounds great to me, because that description is reminiscent of Saulnier’s 2007 horror comedy feature debut Murder Party, which has been a favorite of mine ever since it was first released on DVD (and remains my favorite Saulnier movie). We just learned a couple of days ago that Murder Party is finally set to receive a Blu-ray release, thanks to a deal that OCN Distribution, sister company of the genre-centric home video label Vinegar Syndrome, has made with distributor Magnolia Pictures and their genre imprint Magnet Releasing.

Written and directed by Saulnier, Murder Party begins when a man gets a random invitation to a Halloween party, and when he arrives he finds he’s the guest of honor at his very own gut-wrenching murder. Made on a budget somewhere in the $200,000 range, the film stars Chris Sharp, Sandy Barnett, Macon Blair, Paul Goldblatt, William Lacey, Stacy Rock, Skei Saulnier, Bill Tangradi, Beryl Guceri, Beau Sia, and a dog named Puff Snooty.

Of course, the music part of the description also brings to mind Green Room, Saulnier’s very cool 2016 action thriller, which told the following story: After witnessing a murder, a punk rock band is forced into a vicious fight for survival against a group of maniacal skinheads. That one starred Patrick Stewart, Imogen Poots, Anton Yelchin, Mark Webber, Alia Shawkat, Macon Blair, and Eric Edelstein.

What do you think of Jeremy Saulnier returning to his Murder Party / Green Room roots with his next movie? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

A trailer has been released for director George Nolfi’s creature feature Elevation, starring Anthony Mackie and Morena Baccarin

The creature feature Elevation, which stars Anthony Mackie (The Falcon and the Winter Soldier) and Morena Baccarin (Deadpool), went into production in the second half of 2022 with director George Nolfi, who previously worked with Mackie on the films The Banker and The Adjustment Bureau, at the helm. Earlier this year, it secured a theatrical distributor in the U.S., and now we know that the distributor, Vertical, is planning to bring the film to the big screen on November 8th. With that date just over a month away, a trailer for Elevation has arrived online and can be seen in the embed above.

Scripted by John Glenn (Eagle Eye) and SEAL Team duo Jacob Roman and Kenny Ryan, Elevation is set in a post-apocalyptic Rocky Mountains, where a single father and two women venture from the safety of their homes to face monstrous creatures to save the life of a young boy.

Mackie and Baccarin are joined in the cast by Maddie Hasson (Malignant) and Danny Boyd Jr. (Bruised).

Nolfi, Mackie, and Glenn produced the film with Brad Fuller, Alex Black, Jeremy Kipp Walker, and Joel Viertel. Black, founder of the production company Lyrical Media, provided the financing. Jon Rosenberg and Alex Ginno of Fuller’s company Fuller Media serve as executive producers alongside Natalie Sellers of Lyrical and Jason Spire of Inspire Entertainment. Ryan and Roman co-produced.

Vertical Partner Peter Jarowey had this to say about the distribution deal: “Elevation brings together a world-class group of seasoned professionals, who have combined the fruits of their craft to deliver a film that is not only thrilling but also delivers a cinematic scope that we seldom see outside of the studio system. Its compelling visual elements provide an elevated feel that sets the film apart from the traditional ‘creature feature.’ We look forward to working with George, Brad, and the team to unveil the film to audiences.“

Nolfi added: “Working with Anthony Mackie, for a third time now, Morena Baccarin, and the rest of our exceptional cast and crew to bring this innovative screenplay to life was a blast. Anthony, Morena, and the rest of the team dove in head first (sometimes literally) as we shot action scenes in some extremely challenging places – from a working ski lift high in the Colorado Rockies, to an active mine under a mile of rock – all to enhance the theatrical experience of the film. We are thrilled to partner with Vertical to put this film in theaters all across the country later this year.“

What did you think of the Elevation trailer? Will you be watching this movie during its theatrical run? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

Despite its low key release, Wolfs proves George Clooney and Brad Pitt are still a great combo, with this a lot of fun.

PLOT: Two top-level fixers (Brad Pitt and George Clooney) with underworld connections must overcome their rivalry when a job goes awry.

REVIEW: Wolfs is getting a curiously unceremonious release, considering the talent involved. There was a time when Brad Pitt and George Clooney doing a buddy action movie together would have been an event. And the movie’s good to boot! Yet, Wolfs, which comes from director Jon Watts, who made the Tom Holland Spider-Man Trilogy for the MCU, I only got a quiet one-week theatrical run before its debut on Apple TV Plus on September 27th. It’s playing on precisely one screen here in Montreal and was not screened for critics.

So, what’s going on here? Probably, Apple is still licking its wounds from the embarrassing failure of their mega-budget movies, Argylle and Fly Me To The Moon, which, despite huge casts, cratered at the box office. Their debuts on Apple TV were met with indifference, as both films have the reputation of being flops, and Apple likely didn’t want that to happen with Wolfs, as this is part of a planned franchise for them. It’s too big to fail if you want to get into clichés.

Yet, it says something when a movie starring Brad Pitt and George Clooney can’t be relied on to deliver big box office, especially given that it’s an action comedy, which isn’t a tough genre to sell. The premise here is good, even if it would be a huge stretch to call it original. Likely, everyone reading this will remember Harvey Keitel playing Winston Wolf in Pulp Fiction, the guy you need to call to get rid of a body. That’s exactly the service both Pitt and Clooney’s characters perform here, with the title, Wolfs, being a nod to QT’s films – apropos given they both come from that world (Pitt is a regular in his movies, while Clooney played his brother in From Dusk Till Dawn). 

Both actors play to their strengths here. They’re famous for playing cool and collected, albeit with human touches and a sardonic sense of humour. This served them well in the Ocean’s Trilogy, and Wolfs is very much in the same vein, albeit with a bit of a harder edge. Like those movies, this is a crime caper, but Watts has an R-rating to play with, meaning lots of F-bombs, and some violence. 

The stakes in this are deadlier than in the Ocean’s films, with the two fixers called in to dispose of a dead body a wannabe DA (Amy Ryan) has inadvertently ended up with after a one-night stand gone awry. Of course, the guy they’re getting rid of (played by Austin Abrams) isn’t quite dead and happens to be in possession of a quarter million dollars of heroin that’s been stolen from the Albanian mob.

Clooney and Pitt have always had great chemistry, and the film is totally built around this aspect. They’re supposed to hate each other, but the bromance gradually building between the two is palpable, building to a legitimately great finale that calls to mind Newman and Redford in Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid. 

Working with a streamer gives Watts more leverage to make this more adult than the Ocean’s movies were, as a PG-13 does not shackle him. Both Clooney and Pitt have fun with their advancing ages, with them having similar bad backs and sharing a bottle of Advil at one point. It also has some great needle drops, with Clooney’s character a fan of Sade, plus a little Phil Collins on the soundtrack never hurt anyone.

While it’s a shame a movie like Wolfs can no longer be assured of a major release, it will likely find an audience on Apple TV Plus. It’s far from the best either Pitt or Clooney has done, but if you look at their combined filmographies, that’s to be expected. This is the two of them having fun, and with a contained setting, it’s a great hangout flick. Watching the two of them do their thing together has always been a blast, and Wolfs is their best as a combo since the original Ocean’s Eleven. 

8

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Viewer Ratings (0 reviews)

Malcolm McDowell, Heather Langenkamp, and Courtney Gains have been cast in the psychological horror film Dirt

Director Cosmos Kiindarius made his feature directorial debut with the 2016 thriller Stand, which was about American brothers who head out into the Vietnam jungle and get trapped in a mine field that was left over from the war. Now he’s about to head into production on his second film, a psychological horror tale called Dirt, and he has gotten some genre icons to join the cast. Dirt will feature Malcolm McDowell of A Clockwork Orange (and the Rob Zombie Halloween movies), A Nightmare on Elm Street heroine Heather Langenkamp, and Courtney Gains from the Stephen King adaptation Children of the Corn. Also in the cast are James Paxton, who recently appeared in Twisters and happens to be the son of Bill Paxton, Emily Tosta (Mayans MC), and Owen Vaccaro (The House with a Clock in Its Walls). Filming is set to begin in New Mexico this November.

Dirt is said to be a “chilling blend of romance, psychological horror, and addiction” that will delve deep into “the complexities of love and the dark corners of the human mind.” The story centers on Sammy (Paxton) and Marisol (Tosta), an ill-fated couple embarking on a road trip from Miami to Los Angeles in search of a fresh start. Their journey takes a sinister turn when they accidentally hit a mysterious desert creature, unleashing a powerful curse that intertwines their fates with themes of addiction and despair. As they confront their pasts and the horrors of their choices, the road ahead becomes perilously unpredictable.

Kiindarius, who is also producing the movie with Salomé Breziner, told Variety, “Dirt is as layered thematically as the painted desert that it’s set in. It explores the universal experience of returning to love after pain and the haunting addiction to our own thoughts that can lead to self-destruction.“

Breziner added, “This horror-tinged thriller blurs the boundaries of magical realism and deeply felt visceral emotions. We’re excited to take audiences on this dark and thrilling journey.“

Does Dirt sound interesting to you? What do you think of the cast that has been assembled for the movie? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

About the Author

Cody is a news editor and film critic, focused on the horror arm of JoBlo.com, and writes scripts for videos that are released through the JoBlo Originals and JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channels. In his spare time, he’s a globe-trotting digital nomad, runs a personal blog called Life Between Frames, and writes novels and screenplays.

Francis Ford Coppola likes to push the boundaries of filmmaking and one ambitious factor he includes with Megalopolis may confuse movie-goers.

As ambitious as Megalopolis is, one factor that Francis Ford Coppola wanted to push even further was the fact that he included a scene that featured a “live theater” component in which a person from the audience would stand in front of the screen and briefly interact with Adam Driver‘s character on screen. Coppola instituted this unique fourth wall-break at the Cannes screenings and certain IMAX presentations have also played out the scene with a microphone set up at the foot of the screen and the picture shrinking to a size so that Driver’s character can make somewhat eye contact with the person in the theater.

Obviously, it would be a monumental task for every single theater screening to incorporate a plant in the audience to bring this moment to life, but IndieWire reports that over 20 markets in North America will feature this live participant component to the film. The scene in question is largely inconsequential to the rest of the film, except for Coppola’s philosophical writing that he may still have wanted the viewers exposed to. However, instead of simply cutting out the scene, the picture shrinks as intended, but the interaction comes from an actor off-screen.

In the screenings that will feature the live actor, the screening may be labeled “The Ultimate Experience” when you’re buying your tickets, and each of those showings will feature what Lionsgate is calling a “Live Participant” as part of the movie. It is being assumed that this will mostly take place on IMAX or PLF screens. However, it is also said that there are a handful of the live experiences that will also be available on standard screens.

As unique and strange as this hook is, it’s not even the most experimentally ambitious that Coppola has gotten. For 2011’s Twixt, which was a horror mystery starring Elle Fanning and Val Kilmer, Coppola intended to do a 30-city tour of that film in which he would “live edit” the movie so that it would play differently to each audience it’s screening for. With that concept, “they have a great deal of footage which adds up to a movie called Twixt, but depending upon where and when you see the presentation, you might see a totally different telling of the story than others.”

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.

Bob Odenkirk’s return to the action genre will be coming soon and the director has just announced that filming has wrapped.

Although Timo Tjahjanto has a new action film, The Shadow Strays, premiering on Netflix next month. His next and higher-profile action film has just been put in the can. Tjahjanto has posted on his social media that principal photography on Nobody 2, starring Bob Odenkirk and Christopher Lloyd, has wrapped and now it’s on to post-production.

Tjahjanto posted a picture of the film’s (presumably final scene) clapperboard along with a photo of him and the film’s star, Bob Odenkirk, behind the scenes celebrating the wrap. The caption simply states, “Wrapped. See you at the cinemas.”

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.