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Taika’s director’s cut could (and should) feature more of the goats Marvel Studios Although Waititi is right about some director’s cuts running the risk of being self-indulgent and overly bloated, it is also true that director’s cuts, in some respects, can be instrumental in enriching a film’s themes/characters as a whole. A good example of this would be the extended editions of Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, which makes significant additions while resolving key character arcs in a satisfying manner (such as that of Saruman)....

Filming In An Actual Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade Meant Long Nights For The Miracle On 34th Street Cast By Jenna Busch/Nov. 30, 2022 8:14 pm EST The cast had to sneak in some shots during the real festivities and parade performances because they couldn’t shut down the Macy’s event. That meant a lot of time out in the cold. According to star Maureen O’Hara’s 2004 autobiography “‘Tis Herself” (via TCM.com), the scenes set in the actual store also meant some really long nights shooting with her fellow actors....

Guillermo Del Toro Wants Pinocchio To Inspire Two Important Conversations Netflix By Danielle Ryan/Dec. 20, 2022 3:59 pm EST Guillermo del Toro’s latest film is a beautiful, emotionally resonant stop-motion animation adaptation of the classic children’s tale “Pinocchio,” but fans expecting a fluffy, frolic-filled romp like its predecessors are sure to be disappointed. “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio,” now streaming on Netflix, is set in Italy during the rise of fascism circa World War II, and it’s a much darker take on the material than we’ve seen before....

Here’s How Black Adam Directly Connects To James Gunn’s Peacemaker Series HBO Max By Ben F. Silverio/Oct. 24, 2022 6:00 am EST This post contains spoilers for “Black Adam.” To borrow a phrase from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, “it’s all connected.” But this idea isn’t exclusively owned by the House of Ideas. Many superhero movie franchises (or franchises in general) aim to create a larger world for their characters consisting of films, TV, comics, and beyond....

It all came back to Vader Disney+/Lucasfilm The Battle of Mandalore sees Mandalorian warrior Bo-Katan Kryze and ex-Jedi Ahsoka Tano successfully team up with Ahsoka’s old pal Captain Rex and his clone battalion to reclaim Mandalore from Darth Maul. But what ought to be a victory goest terribly wrong when Ahsoka fails to heed Maul’s warning that Sidious plans to make her former mentor, Anakin Skywalker, his new apprentice, resulting in Ahsoka’s near-death when Order 66 is issued....

Climbing the ranks Warner Bros. According to A.M. Sperber and Eric Lax’s “Bogart” biography, the actor had begun complaining about his roles after several years of frustrating bum parts. Speaking with Warner Bros. super-producer Hal B. Wallis (who would go on to oversee the legendarily chaotic Bogart-starring “Casablanca”), he found out where he stood in the studio’s actor hierarchy. Wallis put him behind George Raft, Edward G. Robinson, and Paul Muni....

James Cameron Received A Two-Word Note From An Executive For His Avatar 4 Script 20th Century Studios By Matthew Bilodeau/Dec. 7, 2022 5:58 pm EST Going off the glowing critical reactions from its first few screenings of “Avatar: The Way of Water,” it’s safe to assume that James Cameron has once again done the impossible. For over 13 years, he toiled away in his own little underwater world, while we made jokes about whether the sequels would ever make it to the screen....

Kaleidoscope Trailer: Netflix Gets Experimental With A Nonlinear Heist Series Netflix By Shania Russell/Dec. 13, 2022 3:13 pm EST Remember the days of channel surfing and cable television, when you would flip to a station with a random TV series and start watching? Remember how you wouldn’t think twice about starting with episode 7 of a show you’ve never once watched before? Ironically, Netflix has become so nostalgic for those days that the streamer designed a new series that’s meant to be watched in any possible order....

Tinkling the ivories MGM Even if you find something that you love a tad later in your life, that first love never really leaves you. This is particularly true in the arts, as creative expression of one’s own emotions and thoughts is central to all of them. Music and acting are two entirely different disciplines and each require immense amounts of dedication, but what’s at the core of both of these art forms is the same....

Kyle Gallner And Sosie Bacon Devised An Entire Backstory For Their Smile Characters [Exclusive] Paramount Pictures By Matthew Bilodeau/Nov. 18, 2022 1:27 pm EST In a year where horror is especially thriving, it’s always fun to see movies like “Smile” succeed. Akin to what happened with “Lights Out,” Parker Finn’s chiller was born out of a short film (“Laura Hasn’t Slept”), where its effectively simple premise left enough room for a major studio to give it a boost in a feature-length expansion....

Black Panther: Jabari Forever Marvel Studios The “bald-headed demon” line comes within moments of M’Baku’s return in “Wakanda Forever,” and hot off the heels of him referring to Namor as “fish-man” (complete with air quotes). “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” is a pressure cooker in many ways, not the least of which is the death of “Black Panther” star Chadwick Boseman, which hangs heavily over the sequel as it deals with the grief of T’Challa’s family and loved ones in the wake of his death....

Namor’s Motivations In Black Panther: Wakanda Forever Are ‘The Opposite’ Of Aquaman Marvel Studios By Jenna Busch/Oct. 10, 2022 10:04 pm EST They’re both underwater rulers, come from the pages of a comic book, and have superpowers. However, Marvel’s Namor (Tenoch Huerta) and DC’s Aquaman (Jason Momoa) are very different characters with very different motivations. We’re going to meet Namor in the upcoming film “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” and a new feature in the November 2022 issue of Total Film (on sale October 13, 2022) gives us a bunch of new information about him....

Paul Walker Used An Old High School Bully As Inspiration For Varsity Blues Paramount Pictures By Jeff Kelly/Dec. 22, 2022 3:24 pm EST Sometimes it’s almost hard to recall that the late Paul Walker had a career outside of the “Fast & Furious” films. Before he became a cornerstone of one of the most successful franchises in Hollywood history, Walker was cutting his teeth the way any young, ludicrously handsome actor just breaking into the movie business does: in teen movies like “She’s All That” and “Varsity Blues....

Scream 6: What We Want (And Don’t Want) To See Paramount Pictures By Michael Boyle/July 14, 2022 4:35 pm EST Of all the horror franchises that refuse to die, “Scream” is probably the best of them. The series has had five movies so far and the closest thing it had to a near miss was “Scream 3,” a movie that still managed to give Sidney (Neve Campbell) one of her best character arcs in the whole series....

Smile Is The Best Kind Of Pretty Good Horror Movie [Fantastic Fest] Paramount By Jacob Hall/Sept. 24, 2022 9:00 am EST My wife and I have a Friday-night-at-home ritual: we get drunk and watch horror movies. And we have rituals within the ritual. She’s a trained singer, and alcohol loosens her pipes. When a horror movie utilizes a menacing drone shot to establish a location, she sings “Drone shot! Everybody loves a drone shot!...

Steven Spielberg Gave Judd Hirsch A Blank Canvas To Create Uncle Boris In The Fabelmans Universal Pictures By Witney Seibold/Dec. 15, 2022 4:43 pm EST About a third of the way into Steven Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical film “The Fabelmans,” the titular family is visited by the wild and extroverted Uncle Boris, played by the legendary Judd Hirsch. Boris is the uncle of the family matriarch Mitzi (Michelle Williams), and the two seem to share a similar passion for the arts and for theatricality....

Superhero Bits: A New Black Adam TV Spot, Why New Line Didn’t Make An Iron Man Movie & More Warner Bros. By Ryan Scott/Sept. 20, 2022 5:00 pm EST (Superhero Bits is a collection of stories, updates, and videos about anything and everything inspired by the comics of Marvel, DC, and more. For comic book movies, TV shows, merchandise, events, and whatever catches our eye, this is the place to find anything that falls through the cracks....

The Invitation Tops Box Office With Just $7 Million In Unnecessarily Terrible Weekend Sony Pictures By Ryan Scott/Aug. 29, 2022 11:49 am EST It was another tragically quiet weekend at the box office as Sony Pictures released the vampire flick “The Invitation” as the “big” new release. It (by default) topped the charts, taking the top spot from last week’s winner, “Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero,” which essentially fell off a cliff....

The Rings Of Power Head Of Prosthetics On Creating The Characters Of Lord Of The Rings For 20 Years [Exclusive Interview] Prime Video By Vanessa Armstrong/Sept. 16, 2022 4:04 pm EST There are many fantastical creatures in “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.” And many of these creatures, from orcs to dwarfs to harfoots, require their associated actors to undergo some prosthetic magic to make them look truly otherworldly....

Tom Holland Isn’t Off The Table For Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse Sony Pictures By Ernesto Valenzuela/Dec. 15, 2022 11:19 am EST Before Marvel Studios and director Jon Watts broke the collective minds of “Spider-Man” fans everywhere with “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” the 2018 animated film “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” assembled a team of Spider-Men first. Although “Spider-Verse” was the first to mark its claim on the crossover of Spider-Men, “No Way Home” had the distinct honor of being the first live-action film to do so....