Keeping up with the subset cult around whispering David Lynch rumors can be a little taxing and trying, but as we know, the filmmaker hasn’t released anything since the transformative “Twin Peaks: The Return” series in 2017. But as it turns out, there appear to be some truths to some of the rumors and speculation circulated over the last five years.

Most of it started when the “Blue Velvet” filmmaker was spotted in the offices at Netflix in 2018, presumably taking some meetings, and things subsequently snowballed.

Continue reading David Lynch’s ‘Unrecorded Night’ Was Canceled At Netflix When The Pandemic Hit & Ideas Exist For More ‘Twin Peaks’ at The Playlist.

Sometimes the fan campaigning really works, though in this case, the fan is actor Giancarlo Esposito, known for his roles in “Breaking Bad,” and “The Mandalorian.” In the last year or more, Esposito has made it no secret that he’s been eager to join the Marvel Cinematic Universe, seemingly talking it up every chance he gets and telling audiences. Previously, the actor revealed he had met with Marvel Studios and said he was keen to play a new version of Professor X in the “X-Men” movies.

Continue reading Giancarlo Esposito Joins Marvel Universe In Mystery Role & Promises “It’s Better Than You Imagine” at The Playlist.

One of cinema’s living legends, at 85 years old, filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola (“The Godfather,” “Apocalypse Now”) has finally made “Megalopolis,” an ambitious sci-fi epic he’s been dreaming of making since the 1980s. With the film set to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival later this month, in a matter of days, French distributor Le Pacte has released the first look teaser of the movie.

Continue reading ‘Megalopolis’ Teaser Trailer: Adam Driver Stops Time In First Look At Francis Ford Coppola’s Upcoming Dramatic Epic at The Playlist.

It’s always important to separate the filmmaker from the film and ignore all the related nonsense around releasing a new movie. So, when someone like comedian Jerry Seinfeld makes a broad and flippant statement about the film industry being “over” and chastising those who work in it for being earnest, diligent in their craft, and clueless about their impending demise, you have to just dash it to the rocks and move on. But Seinfeld’s new movie, ”Unfrosted”— his feature-length narrative debut about cereal titans’ Post and Kellogg’s space-race-esque competition to create the Pop Tart— is so egregiously trifling, it’s tempting to suggest something wild like he knows it and is either trying to beat critics to the punch or just acting out in self-sabotage.

Continue reading ‘Unfrosted’ Review: Jerry Seinfeld’s Silly Pop-Tarts Movie Is A Banal Excuse To Do ‘Mad Men’ For Cereal at The Playlist.

Multiverse narratives are all the rage these days, especially within the comic book movie genre, where there’s always a convenient excuse for nostalgia grabs and time-folding mash-ups where three different actors who have played the superhero can turn up in the same universe together side by side for the first time. But what about a consideration of the multiverse for adults and a deeper, darker contemplation about regrets, choices made that irrevocably shaped our lives, and the haunting aspects of the roads not taken?

Continue reading ‘Dark Matter’ Review: Joel Edgerton & Jennifer Connelly Traverse The Multiverse For Adults & Consider Existential Regrets at The Playlist.

Filmmaker Barry Jenkins has made celebrated indies (“Medicine for Melancholy”), Academy Award-winning dramas (“Moonlight,” “If Beale Street Could Talk”), and an epic ten-part historical period series (“The Underground Railroad”), but his latest film, “Mufasa: The Lion King,” is easily his biggest and most ambitious leap to date. A live-action-styled photorealistic animated prequel to the 1994 film “The Lion King,” and the similar-looking 2019 remake from director Jon Favreau, Disney has released the first look trailer for the film that comes out in December.

Continue reading ‘Mufasa: The Lion King’ Trailer: Barry Jenkins’ Live-Action Prequel Arrives In December at The Playlist.

Two decades after British filmmaker Danny Boyle resurrected the then-ailing zombie genre with his post-apocalyptic rage-virus movie (technically, not zombies, but close enough), the long-belated sequel to “28 Days Later” is finally taking shape. Titled “28 Years Later,” and reuniting Boyle with his original screenwriter Alex Garland, late yesterday, the main cast was revealed.

Deadline reports that Jodie Comer (“Killing Eve”), Aaron Taylor-Johnson (“Bullet Train”), and Ralph Fiennes (“The Grand Budapest Hotel”) have all joined the cast.

Continue reading ‘28 Years Later’: Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor Johnson & Ralph Fiennes Join Danny Boyle’s Zombie Thriller at The Playlist.

There’s an intriguing show somewhere buried within the mysterious shrouds of “The Veil,” the new FX international spy drama from creator/writer Steven Knight (“Peaky Blinders”), that’s just a little too slippery for its own good. Truthfully, it’s there front and center from the start, a series about shapeshifting spies that lose their sense of identity and self because of all the surreptitious double lives they are leading, a strong concept.

Continue reading ‘The Veil’ Review: Obsessive Elisabeth Moss Spy Drama Gets Buried Under Melodrama at The Playlist.

Late last week, filmmaker Quentin Tarantino shocked the film industry. All set to start shooting his tenth and would-be final film, “The Movie Critic,” or at least a handful of scenes to be eligible for a tax credit and then resume in 2025, the filmmaker pivoted, changed course, and then canceled the film.

While some details leaked in the aftermath, the film apparently morphed into a “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood” spin-off featuring Brad Pitt’s Cliff Booth stuntman character, thanks to Tarantino’s endless rewriting, a new in-depth piece on the cancelation of the film by the Hollywood Reporter is separating some of the facts from the fictions.

Continue reading Tarantino’s ‘The Movie Critic’ Could Have Included Olivia Wilde & David Krumholtz, But Probably Not Tom Cruise at The Playlist.

Let’s put it out there quickly, “Sonic The Hedgehog” films—about the young anthropomorphic creatures that run at lightning speeds and become heroes of Earth—are no cinematic marvels or blockbuster essentials, and they’re arguably not super memorable either. But for what they are—light, charming escapes for kids that aren’t a chore to sit through for adults thanks to their breezy pace and charismatic actors — they’re fine little diversions (Jim Carrey and Ben Schwartz being effective in their roles as quippy villains and heroes).

Continue reading ‘Knuckles’ Review: ‘Sonic’ Spin-Off Sidelines The Main Character Revealing Limitations Of Franchise TV at The Playlist.

“Deadpool & Wolverine” has been called one of the most anticipated movies of the year, and with an ailing box office in 2024 so far, perhaps it’s the movie the industry needs. But if there was a chief complaint about the “Deadpool & Wolverine” teaser revealed during the Superbowl, it’s that, well, it hid a lot and especially any real appearances by Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine other than a brief silhouette and an over-the-shoulder shot of Logan getting pissed and seemingly stabbing Ryan Reynold’s Wade Wilson.

Continue reading ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ Trailer: Marvel’s Much-Anticipated Team-Up Finally Shows Its Claws at The Playlist.

This week’s release of Zack Snyder’s “Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver” (read our review) puts many of Netflix’s problems into sharp focus. Reportedly costing around $166 million to make for both films, arguably much less expensive than some big Marvel and “Star Wars” that cost around $200 million each, it’s still a significant figure for movies that have been met with massive critical derision.

Continue reading Netflix’s Ted Sarandos Says Streamer Has “No Appetite To Make Fewer Films” at The Playlist.

Filmmaker Zack Snyder’s profoundly unfortunate “Rebel Moon — Part One: A Child of Fire,” a turgid, ostentatiously vacant space opera, was, to put it politely, a dire film and hollow regurgitation of familiar sci-fi tropes. But it at least had a story with three bare acts, however tedious. “Rebel Moon — Part Two: The Scargiver,” the sequel, however— continuing the already unexceptional story of the ragtag group of warrior misfits defending a peaceful farming community on an off-world moon—is somehow even worse and barely justifies its existence on a fundamental level.

Continue reading ‘Rebel Moon: Scargiver’ Review: Zack Snyder’s Excruciatingly Slight Sequel Barely Justifies A ‘Part 2’ at The Playlist.

Well, this is an interesting about-face, and so much for the rumors about the recent start dates. Filmmaker Quentin Tarantino has decided to scrap “The Movie Critic” as his final film. He’s changed his mind; he won’t make it, and what he will substitute for his supposed tenth and final film is unclear.

According to Deadline, the rumors are true that Brad Pitt was going to star, and apparently, many of the previous members of Tarantino’s repertory company were eyeing roles, but it’s all moot now, and the film has been scrapped.

Continue reading Quentin Tarantino Scraps ’The Movie Critic’; Brad Pitt Would Have Reprised Cliff Booth Role From ‘Once Upon A Time In Hollywood’ at The Playlist.

Two years after it premiered, one of our favorite shows of 2022, “The Outer Range” returns this summer (read our review). Something of an unusual but welcome mix of “Yellowstone” family drama and existential “X-Files” sci-fi, “Outer Range” star Josh Brolin as a rancher in Wyoming fighting for his land and his family, who discovers something unfathomable on its outskirts. Brolin also makes his directorial debut with season two’s penultimate episode

The mindbending series also features an outstanding cast including Imogen Poots (“Baltimore”), Lili Taylor (“Manhunt”), Tamara Podemski (“Reservation Dogs”), Lewis Pullman (“Top Gun: Maverick”), Tom Pelphrey (“Ozark”), Noah Reid (“Schitt’s Creek”), Shaun Sipos (“Reacher”), Isabel Arraiza (“The Little Things”), Olive Abercrombie (“The Haunting of Hill House”), and Will Patton (“Horizon: An American Saga”), among others.

Continue reading ‘Outer Range’ Season 2 Trailer: Time Is A Motherf***er for Josh Brolin at The Playlist.

With high school in the rearview, five teenagers from small-town Oregon decide to embark on one last adventure. That’s the premise of “Gasoline Rainbow,” the new film by Bill Ross IV and Turner Ross, aka The Ross Brothers, primarily known for free-wheelin’ documentaries like “Tchoupitoulas,” “Western,” and “Contemporary Color.”

The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival and screened at the SXSW Film TV Festival and First Look Fest ahead of its May 10 opening in the U.S..

Continue reading ‘Gasoline Rainbow’ Trailer: Ross Brothers’ First Narrative Feature Opens In May at The Playlist.

The multiverse has infinite realities is a tagline that would probably fit snugly within a Marvel movie. But the same ideas apply and work perfectly well within the confines of the more adult drama, “Dark Matter,” a new sci-fi mindbender from Apple TV+.

Today, Apple unveiled the trailer for its new sci-fi thriller series starring Joel Edgerton alongside Academy Award winner Jennifer Connelly, Alice Braga, Jimmi Simpson, Dayo Okeniyi, and Oakes Fegley.

Continue reading ‘Dark Matter’ Trailer: Apple’s Sci-Fi Series With Joel Edgerton & Jennifer Connelly Hits In May at The Playlist.

Alex Garland’s political war thriller, “Civil War” opens in theaters this Friday, April 12, and now that all the reviews have arrived (read ours here), A24 is giving the film one last push, using some of the breathless raves as quotes to stir up excitement. We’re even quoted at the beginning of the trailer calling it “the movie event of the year.”

READ MORE: ‘Civil War’ Review: Alex Garland’s Latest Is Both Unforgettable & Challenging As Hell [SXSW]

That’s fairly accurate because “Civil War” feels like it could be this year’s “Joker” in terms of a movie potentially so polarizing it may have everyone from every aisle of the political divide watching it to see what they make of the film.

Continue reading Final ‘Civil War’ Trailer Positions Political Thriller As The Movie Event of The Year at The Playlist.

Built on a wearying cheerful optimism/cruel fatalism dichotomy—contrasting chords that aren’t all that engaging or novel to begin with but repeated ad nauseum regardless—it’s astonishing just how quickly the post-apocalyptic sci-fi series, “Fallout,” wears out its welcome. Startlingly glib, one-note, and yet self-assured in its vacant design, the series reveals its shallow hand very early. “Fallout” endlessly reprises the wholesome quaintness vs. the grotesque or freakishly ruthlessness mode of apposition and fails to do anything remotely interesting with it, reinforcing what swiftly becomes a long, tiresome pattern and slog.

Continue reading ‘Fallout’ Review: One Note Clash Of Post-Apocalyptic Hostility & Quaint ‘50s Retro Futurism Is Exhaustingly Dull at The Playlist.

“He’s not alone anymore.” Against seemingly all odds, given its R-rating, adult nature, and disconnection from traditional cinema superheroics, Warner Bros. “Joker” movie earned over $1 billion at the box office in 2019, the sixth highest-grossing movie of the year, even outgrossing “Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker” worldwide.

READ MORE: ‘Joker: Folie á Deux’: Todd Phillips Reveals New Images, Cinematographer Says Sequel Isn’t A Musical

Previously, the highest-grossing R-rated superhero film was “Deadpool 2” ($785.8 million), but “Joker,” a much grittier “Taxi Driver”-esque drama than a superhero film, trumped that figure by nearly $400 million.

Continue reading ‘Joker: Folie À Deux’ Trailer: Lady Gaga Joins Joaquin Phoenix In Musical Supervillain Sequel at The Playlist.

Originally titled “Project Artemis,” Apple Studios’ original space-race rom-com is now known as “Fly Me To The Moon.” Directed by Greg Berlanti (“Love, Simon,” and the overseer of the CW’s Arrowverse), the 1960s space film star Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum. Not much has been known about the movie until today, but today, Apple’s distributor, Sony Pictures, released the first trailer for the film, pulling back some of the curtain and details.

Continue reading ‘Fly Me To The Moon’ Trailer: Scarlett Johansson & Channing Tatum Space Race Rom-Com Arrives In July at The Playlist.

It’s wild to see a jumping-around-in-time horror franchise come together at A24 and one that’s not even built on a title brand at the same time. Written and directed by horror filmmaker Ti West, “MaXXXine” is the third and final (?) installment in his slasher trilogy that began with “X” and “Pearl.” “X” was basically a kind of sexploitation horror/cautionary tale about fame set in the late 1970s about a cast and crew who gather to make a pornographic film on an elderly couple’s rural Texas property, but things go horribly awry.

Continue reading “MaXXXine”  Trailer: Ti West’s Slasher Trilogy Closer With Mia Goth Opens In July at The Playlist.

After years of exile on planet Disney+, Lucasfilm’s plan to marshal “Star Wars” back to the big screen is about to take off. Just a few hours after “The Mandalorian & Grogu” landed a summer 2026 release date from Disney, another “Star Wars” film from director James Mangold is starting to take shape. And it’s re-enlisting too. Beau Willimon, one of Tony Gilroy’s writers on the “Rogue One” prequel series “Andor,” has been hired to co-write Mangold’s “Star Wars” movie, tentatively known as “Dawn Of The Jedi” (via THR).

Continue reading ‘Star Wars’: Beau Willimon To Co-Write James Mangold’s ‘Dawn Of The Jedi’ Movie at The Playlist.

When is an already well-distinguished artist arguably underrated and still overdue for further and greater recognition? Well, 71-year-old writer/director Steven Zaillian, an Academy Award-winning screenwriter (“Schindler’s List”) and five-time nominee (“Moneyball,” “The Irishman”), is already regarded as one of the most celebrated screenwriters on the planet. Yet, following the release of the fabulous “Ripley,” his striking and haunting new Netflix series— not to mention in addition to his excellent and deeply undervalued 2016 series, “The Night Of” starring Riz Ahmed— Zaillian’s filmmaking career recognition merits an ascension to the level of venerated master.

Continue reading ‘Ripley’ Review: Steven Zaillian’s Gripping Thriller Is A Strikingly Haunting Portrait Of A Fractured & Fraudulent Life at The Playlist.

With Marvel’s “The Fantastic Four” leading quartet of heroes cast, Marvel Studios is moving on to some of the adversaries and supporting characters who will appear in the film. The first of them will be Shalla-Bal, a female version of the Silver Surfer. She’ll be played by Emmy-winning “Ozark” actress Julia Garner, according to Deadline.

Shalla-Bal is generally known as one of Galactus’ heralds, so that gigantic, planet-killing villain surely won’t be far behind (for months, rumors have pointed to either Javier Bardem or Antonio Banderas in the role, but so far, nothing’s been remotely official).

Continue reading ‘The Fantastic Four’: Julia Garner To Play Female Silver Surfer In Marvel Movie at The Playlist.