Scream 6 co-director Matt Bettinelli-Olpin teases how the movie’s easter eggs tie into its murderous villain’s plot. Helen Mirren teases her fury of the gods in the new Shazam. Plus, meet Jack Crusher in a new clip from Star Trek: Picard. To me, my spoilers!
Hellboy: The Crooked Man
During a recent interview with Collider, director Brian Taylor described Hellboy: The Crooked Man as an R-rated “creepy folk horror movie” set in rural Appalachia.
So first of all, I love the character of Hellboy and my favourite run of the character is this particular era. The GDT movies were massive scale space operas and just pure Del Toro through and through. But some of the comics Mike (Mignola) was doing at the time had a very different feeling. More lean and mean, creepy folk horror. A younger Hellboy, wandering the dark corners of the world… Paranormal investigator, night stalker… The Crooked Man in particular is just such an iconic book — written by Mike, drawn by Richard Corben, another legend. Set in the late 50s. For me it’s my favourite version of the character. So the appeal of this one to me, is to go back to that and do a real reset, and really give us that version of Hellboy, which I just don’t think we’ve seen yet.
We’ve definitely had a discussion of, you know, it doesn’t really serve anybody to make something R for R’s sake. To say it has to be R so we have to add A, B and C. But this material, this original material is dark and scary and violent and adult. So in order to really embrace that, we just don’t wanna have any handcuffs on.
We’ve been doing a lot of location scouting out here and the goal is to recreate 1950s rural Appalachia, and the locations that we’re finding, I think would make fans of the original comic really excited. Because some of these places just seem to have sprung straight from the pages. There’s a lot of haunted woods in Bulgaria!
Scream 6
In conversation with SFX Magazine (via /Film), co-director Matt Bettinelli-Olpin revealed the shrine to Ghostface seen in the Scream VI trailer not only puts “Easter eggs” from the franchise “literally on display” but “bakes them into the plot” as a reflection of the killer’s obsessive psychosis.
The shrine is looking back to the previous crimes for sure, but the way it’s worked into the script creates forward momentum. We had fun with the Easter eggs in the last film, but we didn’t want to repeat ourselves this time. There was something so great in this one about putting the Easter eggs literally on display and baking them into the plot.
There’s this mythologising of what Ghostface is and has been and that exists in this idea of the shrine. For us, certainly as fans of the franchise, it felt like there was a fun opportunity to continue to build the mythology around this character in this movie, so that it’s this sort of omnipresent force.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie
According to the Irish Film Classification Office, The Super Mario Bros. Movie runs 92 minutes long.
Shazam! Fury of the Gods
In another recent interview with SFX Magazine (/Film), Helen Mirren revealed she broke a finger punching a concrete wall in Shazam! Fury of the Gods.
I’ve got my Shazam finger… Can you see that? [shows SFX her hand]. That finger’s all bent. I had to hit someone. They’re brilliant stunt people, fantastic, but he said, ‘You must follow through, otherwise it doesn’t look right.’ So I did follow through, straight into a concrete wall.
We also have new character posters of Kalypso, Hespera, Anthea, and Shazam himself.
Lucy Liu as ‘Kalypso’ for #Shazam: Fury of the Gods!⚡️ pic.twitter.com/I1VxnvPnoq
— Shazam Updates (@ShazamNews) February 21, 2023
Helen Mirren as ‘Hespera’ for #Shazam: Fury of the Gods!⚡️ pic.twitter.com/cO8cjtG9Zg
— Shazam Updates (@ShazamNews) February 21, 2023
Rachel Zegler as ‘Anthea’ for #Shazam: Fury of the Gods!⚡️ pic.twitter.com/Wgasxm1xNQ
— Shazam Updates (@ShazamNews) February 21, 2023
Zachary Levi as Shazam for #Shazam: Fury of the Gods!⚡️ pic.twitter.com/8LYuEfyrxh
— Shazam Updates (@ShazamNews) February 21, 2023
The Pope’s Exorcist
Russel Crowe discusses playing The Pope’s Exorcist in a new featurette.
Mindhunter
In conversation with the French news outlet Le Journal du Dimanche (via TV Line), David Fincher confirmed Netflix will not be moving forward with a third season of Mindhunter.
I don’t blame them; they took risks to get the show off the ground… It’s a blessing to be able to work with people who are capable of boldness. The day our desires are not the same, we have to be honest about parting ways.
Bryan Fuller’s Friday the 13th
During a recent interview with Fangoria, Bryan Fuller revealed Pamela Voorhees’ murderous love for her son Jason made him “fall in love” with the franchise.
I’ll tell you something very personal, and I may have shared this with you previously. I know part of this story has been out in the public discourse – as public a figure as I am, which is not very, but some people will have heard this: I read [a detailed plot synopsis for] Friday the 13th when I was maybe nine or 10, in Famous Monsters Magazine. This was a few years before I saw the movie! It became a story I’d tell my friends around campfires, which is also where I got my first taste of storytelling and the thrall an audience can fall under when it’s hearing a story as captivating as that of Friday the 13th.
So there was that, combined with the fact that – at the same time – I was working with special needs kids. I was hyper-aware of the challenges of parenting special needs children. One of the kids I sat with during most of that volunteer work, his mother simply couldn’t handle him. He was amazing and unique and had a different sort of intelligence, but he was also non-verbal. His mother couldn’t get far enough away from him. And so, when I read about Friday the 13th and saw the lengths Pamela Voorhees would go to for her special needs child, I found myself in this Venn diagram of influences, and I fell in love with the series. I fell in love with the first movie, I fell in love with the second movie, I fell in love with all of them – well, maybe not Jason Goes to Hell, but I’m not mad at it. At any rate, I feel that I’m in a unique space to tell this story and to make sure it is loved and cared for appropriately.
Star Wars: Ahsoka
According to Rosario Dawson, the live-action Ahsoka series will “probably come out in the fall” later this year.
Rosario Dawson says on the Today show that Ahsoka might come out in the fall. It makes sense since they ended filming in October 2022, it’s usually 1 year of post production at least. @StarWarsMeg1 pic.twitter.com/foOwRAv1qx
— Live-Action Ahsoka 🧡💙🤍 (@LAahsokathinker) February 20, 2023
Poker Face
Nick Nolte and Luis Guzman guest-star in photos from this week’s episode of Poker Face. Head over to Spoiler TV for more.
While you’re here, why not check out Gizmodo Australia’s guide to what’s streaming this month on Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+, Stan, Binge and more. We’ve also got one for all the good movies coming out in 2023 if that’s more your thing.