If there are any names that come to mind in the horror genre business, it’s Jason Blum‘s Blumhouse Studios and James Wan‘s Atomic Monster. Wan has been more on the creative side of the business and made his splash with The Conjuring and Saw franchise. Blumhouse however established itself as a big contender in the small to the medium-sized budget horror scene. With a variety of projects ranging from Halloween Ends, The Black Phone to the first Five Nights at Freddy‘s Adaptation, and even out-there projects like M3GAN. Now, it seems these two powerhouses are set to unite.
Speaking of the horror film about a strange robot doll, the project seems to be the catalyst as it saw the two producers unite. It does seem like we aren’t merging both projects into one but rather they will act as separate labels that keep their brand identity. They will likely only unite to further push their productions forward and will set Atomic Monster to have a first-look deal with Universal Pictures. It originally had one with Warner Bros. but that expires with Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, very likely a sign of what’s to come for the studio given recent developments.
It’ll certainly be an interesting deal in the film market and could push new projects forward in interesting ways. If they are indeed acting as separate entities, it might mean we’ll see more co-productions moving forward while they still keep a focus on some of their own projects and franchises. In a market filled with major studios, it’s a smart move to keep that independence while also bolstering their standing. So, it seems horror films are definitely not going out of style anytime soon.
There’s been a lot of debate on the success of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever at the box office, mostly due to it ending up lower than Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Many believed this might be the sign that Marvel won’t have a billion hit this year, but the box office is quite fiscal and there are many more elements at play. All eyes are currently on its second weekend to see how the film holds with a $181M opening weekend, especially after the previous two Marvel Studios releases have hit some sharp drops.
As of now, it seems that predictions have the film opening to $72M with upwards of $80M also a possibility. Any drop between 55% to 60% would be seen as a major win and a great showcase of that A CinemaScore the film scored in comparison to other Marvel titles of the year. The pandemic hasn’t been kind to most releases and with only a few exceptions really catapulting beyond expectations, mostly Top Gun: Maverick, Marvel has been the most dominant sure-fire opening scorer at the box office.
The film did end up going lower on Monday than even Thor: Love and Thunder as it pulled in $11M but did tick up to $12.6M on Tuesday. Yet, the film also isn’t a summer release like the previous two Marvel films which makes a world of difference when it comes to its performance during the week. Plus, it’s a much longer film than previous entries which also means fewer available screenings per day playing a key factor in its performance. So, it’s still hard to say how the weekend goes but predictions have been difficult even s the pandemic slowed down, as we’re seeing more variation in how films perform. Even with that, it’s likely to reach $400M worldwide in no time.
The original Black Panther had a very impressive 44.7% decline and it’s unclear to say this film could do the same. It doesn’t have the coveted A+ CinemaScore its previous iteration had and it also had a smaller opening, not too surprising given the challenges this film had to face and the new release slot. It’s only the seventh film to pass $200M domestically and that is definitely a good sign for Marvel Studios, as it pushed Disney passed $3B total gross for the year, beating last year. With little competition until Avatar: The Way of Water in mid-December, the film could have a chance at proving its legs to at least close in on a billion. If predictions are right, it has a decent chance but anything can change once the weekend rolls around.
Eddie Munson is back to fight more monsters, only this time, he won’t be able to shred on his guitar. Stranger Things breakout star Joseph Quinn has joined the cast of A Quiet Place: Day One, a prequel spin-off to John Krasinski‘s acclaimed horror franchise. He is set to play a leading role opposite Black Panther favorite Lupita Nyong’o, who boarded the project earlier this month. Day One will be directed by Michael Sarnoski, who recently received praise for his indie hit Pig, making it the first entry in the Quiet Place pantheon not to be helmed by Krasinski himself. However, though nothing is publicly known about it’s plot details at this time, the film’s story is reportedly set to be based on an idea from Krasinski that will help set up a full-blown Quiet Place cinematic universe for the future.
A Quiet Place Part III is also in development, with Krasinski back to direct, but is an entirely separate project from Day One. It is highly unlikely thateither Krasinski or fellow franchise star Emily Blunt reprise their roles from previous films, if not completely impossible. For now, fans should find themselves very content with talents like Quinn and Nyong’o leading a new adventure through the horrific silence of the Quiet Place world. This will be the former’s first major role since his Stranger Things character threw him into the international spotlight.
A Quiet Place: Day One is set to hit theaters on March 8th, 2024. A Quiet Place Part III will follow sometime in 2025.
Game over, man. Game over! The Xenomorphs, a ferocious species of extraterrestrials who have been terrifying audiences since 1979’s Alien, are back. Deadline has revealed a new film in Ridley Scott‘s sci-fi horror franchise is finally in the works, and this time, it will likely star up-and-coming actress Cailee Spaeny. There is next-to-no further information regarding the project, with its plot and placement on the Alien timeline still a mystery. Fede Alverez, known for his work on 2016’s instant thriller classic Don’t Breath and 2013’s Evil Dead remake, will direct the picture with Scott Free Productions on board to produce. Reports claim Scott Free and 20th Century Studios have made this project a top priority after being impressed by a pitch from Alverez, and filming will begin in early 2023.
Spaeny rose to fame in 2018, with supporting roles in Bad Times at the El Royale, Pacific Rim Uprising, and Vice. She achieved leading status over the past few years, in projects like The Craft: Legacy and How It Ends, before landing the coveted role of Priscilla Presley in Sofia Coppola‘s upcoming biopic Priscilla. The young performer has also booked a part in Alex Garland‘s next film, Civil War. It’s unknown who Spaeny might be playing in the next Alien film, but Deadline states she’s been the top choice for the lead role for some time. Alverez and 20th Century were reportedly very pleased with Spaeny following several meetings between her and the film’s producers. There is currently no release date for the project.
Theory Thursdays are pretty special at Murphy’s Multiverse and it looks as though one of the most recent bits of speculation might turn out to have been spot on! According to a new report from insider Daniel RPK, the villain of the upcoming Disney Plus streaming series Wonder Man will be exactly who Hunter Radesi posited him to be just a few weeks ago.
Casting has begun for the series, which is expected to begin production in the Spring of 2023, and with that comes a description of the villain of the piece, who happens to be the agent of struggling actor Simon Williams, aka Wonder Man. As pointed out in the theory, the villain may well be based on a character first introduced in 1991’s Wonder Man comic book series, created by Gerard Jones and Jeff Johnson. That series introduced Simon’s agent, Neal Saroyan, who was ultimately revealed to be a supervillain in charge of a cadre of assassins known as The Nobility.
Rumors swirled recently that Bob Odenkirk was engaged in talks for the role of the agent, but no official word has come along on if he’d taken the role. Given Odenkirk’s body of work in Better Call Saul and Nobody, he would seem the perfect fit for an otherwise non-descript character who turns out to be a deadly assassin. Wonder Man is expected to stream on Disney Plus in 2024.
With the release of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Marvel Studios has completed its theatrical slate for Phase 4 which began when Black Widow was released in July 2021 after a long wait due to the COVID-19 pandemic. With Phase 4’s films all now available for consumption, Team MM thought there was no time like the present to rank them.
Hunter Radesi
1 Black Panther: Wakanda Forever 2 Spider-Man: No Way Home 3 Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings 4 Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness 5 Eternals 6 Thor: Love and Thunder 7 Black Widow
Anthony Canton III
1 Spider-Man No Way Home 2 Black Panther: Wakanda Forever 3 Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness 4 Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings 5 Thor: Love And Thunder 6 Black Widow 7 Eternals
Charles Murphy
1 Black Panther: Wakanda Forever 2 Shang-Chi and The Legend of the Ten Rings 3 Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness 4 Spider-Man: No Way Home 5 Eternals 6 Black Widow 7 Thor: Love and Thunder
João Pinto
1 Shang-Chi and The Legend of the Ten Rings 2 Black Panther: Wakanda Forever 3 Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness 4 Spider-Man: No Way Home 5 Black Widow 6 Eternals 7 Thor: Love and Thunder
Michael T. Ford III
1 Black Panther: Wakanda Forever 2 Spider-Man: No Way Home 3 Black Widow 4 Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings 5 Eternals 6 Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness 7 Thor: Love and Thunder
Jared Kirschenbaum
1 Spider-Man: No Way Home 2 Shang-Chi and The Legend of the Ten Rings 3 Black Panther: Wakanda Forever 4 Black Widow 5 Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness 6 Thor: Love and Thunder 7 Eternals
Dalbin Osorio
1 Black Panther: Wakanda Forever 2 Spider-Man: No Way Home 3 Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness 4 Shang-Chi and The Legend of the Ten Rings 5 Eternals 6 Black Widow 7 Thor: Love and Thunder
Torbjorn Frazier
1 Spider-Man: No Way Home 2 Shang-Chi and The Legend of the Ten Rings 3Black Panther: Wakanda Forever 4 Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness 5 Thor: Love and Thunder 6 Eternals 7 Black Widow
Spider-Man: No Way Home: It was the worst-kept secret in Hollywood about what this film was going to be, and yet No Way Home still provides the best live-action cinematic experience of Spider-Man. It has a truly epic scope, successfully pays off (and improves) films outside of the studio that made it, and even still is a strong personal story for Tom Holland’s Peter Parker. No Way Home is the largest success of Phase Four.
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings: While other films on this list are built upon the legacies of the past, Shang-Chi is the strongest film in Phase Four based on its own individual merits. The core four of the cast all bring their best, Destin Daniel Cretton established himself as a marquee director of the future, and the film has left audiences with a great future to look forward to.
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever: Trying to rank a film like Wakanda Forever feels futile and plays into the argument of why rankings can be arbitrary and reductive. Even still, Ryan Coogler adeptly manages the insurmountable task of having to manage the grief of Chadwick Boseman’s death and turn it into this beautiful exploration of grief and loss. It continues the strong desire for Wakanda to play a major role in the MCU.
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness: Sam Raimi’s return to superheroics was a strong success in my eyes. It is much closer to the imaginative experience that Doctor Strange should bring to the big screen with his magic and dimension-hopping. As well, it’s a film where I found the fast pacing to be more of a benefit here as opposed to Love and Thunder. And to boot, I appreciated all the narrative themes and allowing Benedict Cumberbatch’s to be more quiet and nuanced than most MCU protagonists.
Thor: Love and Thunder: This film is a perfectly fine adventure into the world of New Asgard and the power dynamics of the Thors. Natalie Portman is fantastic in her return to the role of Jane Foster aka Mighty Thor. For me, the biggest issue is the film being too fast-paced and really needing another 10-15 minutes to slow down.
Eternals: While I completely understand the issues some have with this film, I am someone who absolutely adored Eternals. The time spent marinating on the human experience and the concept of family resonated in an unexpectedly fantastic way. Though the film’s pedestrian attempts at the superheroic tropes do hold it back in these rankings.
Black Widow: It was a refreshing experience watching this film as the first MCU film released post-pandemic and a perfectly passable romp of a spy film. However, it still feels like it would’ve been much better served in Phase Three and doesn’t move the needle for the future beyond Florence Pugh’s iconic Yelena Belova.
Average Ranking
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever Spider-Man: No Way Home Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness Black Widow Eternals Thor: Love and Thunder
1.8 2.1 2.8 3.9 5.5 5.8 6.2
Power Ranking
Murphy’s Multiverse Power Rankings are calculated by assigning point values for rankings. In this instance, a film received 7 points for being ranked #1, 6 points for being ranked #2 and so on down to 1 point for being ranked #7.
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever Spider-Man: No Way Home Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness Black Widow Eternals Thor: Love and Thunder
Lionsgate is developing a Streets of Rage movie. The news comes courtesy of Deadline with the outlet reporting that the studio has set John Wick franchise creator and scribe Derek Kolstad as the film’s writer. News that a Streets of Rage film was in development was first announced in April, although no studio was attached at the time of the announcement.
“When Dmitri first mentioned the idea of cracking a Streets of Rage movie, I was so immediately freaking in. And to play with Sega? The 10-year-old me is still grinning.”
Kolstad
Following the news that Lionsgate has boarded the project, Erin Westerman, President of Production at Lionsgate Motion Picture Group, said, “The game has a rich world and narrative, and we’re thrilled to be reuniting with Derek to bring it to life.”
Streets of Rage was a hugely popular video game franchise from Sega in the 90s. Between 1991 and 1994, the franchise released three games, with a fourth game finally being released in 2020. As of now, no further details are known about the project and a director has yet to be announced.
Brady Fujikawa and Jon Humphrey will head the project for Lionsgate, while Shuji Utsumi and Toru Nakahara will oversee the movie for Sega. Kolstad will produce the movie alongside Sega’s Nakahara, dj2 Entertainment’s Dmitri M. Johnson, Timothy I. Stevenson and Dan Jevons.
Telling a story to which the audience already knows the ending certainly isn’t an easy task. It is, however, the task Tony Gilroy took on in Andor. Gilroy, who co-wrote the screenplay for Rogue One, which introduced Cassian Andor and followed him to his death on Scarif, found the secret formula for doing so and created a series that’s becoming increasingly integral to the history of the Star Wars universe. Episode 11, “Daughter of Ferrix”, is another stunning example of how while Andor keeps Cassian at the center of the plot, it’s not really his story at all.
Episode 11 opens with Cassian and Melshi still working on their escape and ultimately sets Cassian on a course to return to Ferrix once he learns of Maarva’s death. Indeed the entire episode is, on the surface, about making sure anyone and everyone who has been involved in the key events of the series can come together on Ferrix in Episode 12. However, there’s no true tension surrounding Cassian’s actions. The audience knows he is meant to survive this series, though it’ll certainly be as a different man than the one that began it. The reason this episode, and the entire series, continue to grab the attention of the audience week after week is the investment by Gilroy and his writer’s room into other characters whose stories are less defined.
While characters such as Bix and Mon Mothma have their share of tense moments in the episode, it’s Stellan Skarsgård’s Luthen Rael who, once again, finds himself at the center of the lion’s share of the best moments. Over the course of the series, Rael has gone from an unknown to unarguably one of the Rebellion’s most important figures and Episode 11 cements that status. While the Rebellion continues to exist in a less-than-perfect way, it’s clear that Rael has enough cache to put even the most radical of Rebels in his place. As such, the episode’s most intense scene involves Rael’s escape from the Empire on Segra Milo following his meeting with Saw Gerrera. It’s worth pointing out here that the escape from the tractor beam is almost certainly of the most “Star Wars” moments of the series and among one of the best-looking space sequences in recent live-action projects; it’s also worth pointing out that everything about the scene probably looks and feels the way it does because of how important of a character Rael has become not just to the series, but to the future of the galaxy.
Ultimately, the strength of Andor (and of Rogue One) is the wealth of fascinating characters who inhabit the dark corners of the Rebellion. And so while the plot continues to revolve around Cassian and the final episode will certainly be about everyone going where he is going, Andor isn’t really Cassian’s story at all: it’s the story of the thousands of faceless, nameless people who may not have even known they were Rebels but whose otherwise insignificant lives and actions made the grand gestures of the Rebellion possible. It’s more of Rogue One in all the best ways.
Christina Choe, who directed two episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale and two episodes the The Twilight Zone, is set to helm the feature film Pizza Girl, which is being produced by Margot Robbie. Though it was unclear at the time of publication, it is also believed that Robbie will hold down one of the film’s leads. Casting for the film is underway now ahead of a January start of production.
Pizza Girl will tell the story of a young, expectant mother struggling to come to terms with a multitude of major changes in her life all happening in rapid succession. As her tenuous grip on reality continues to slip, Pizza Girl finds herself obsessed with an older woman who may be played by Robbie. Robbie recently revealed that her planned Pirates of the Caribbean film was no longer in development at Disney.
Jean Kyoung Frazier, who has just one writing credit for Law & Order: Organized Crime, penned the script for Pizza Girl. Robbie’s husband, Tom Ackerly, will serve as a producer on the project alongside Amy Lo and Steven Rales, who also produced Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City, an upcoming film starring Robbie.
Dave Bautista will reunite with co-star Chloe Coleman and writer/director Pete Segal for My Spy 2, a sequel to the surprise 2020 film. The film will be produced by Amazon Studios, which purchased the rights to My Spy in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic shut down theaters across the globe. After a couple of years in development, production is set to begin in February 2023 with shoots planned on location in South Africa and Italy.
My Spy followed Bautista’s CIA operative JJ’s mission to track uncle of Coleman’s Sophie. Though the nine-year-old Sophie was much more than JJ bargained for, the pair formed a bond and an unlikely alliance. The film ended with JJ living with Sophie and her mother, Kate, played by Parisa Fitz-Henley. Jon and Erich Hoeber, who co-wrote the original film, penned the script for the sequel as well, which looks set to be released on Amazon Prime in late 2023 or early 2024.
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