Emma Stefansky
Oscar Contenders Set Yet Another Record With 91 Eligible Original Songs
It’s a big year for the Oscars, and not just because of the movies. 2016 brought us a record-breaking 27 animated films eligible for Best Animated Feature, and today the Academy announced that there is a whopping 91 tracks eligible for Best Original Song.
We’ll Be Seeing Roger Ailes and Megyn Kelly’s Feud on the Big Screen Courtesy of ‘The Big Short’ Writer
Batman v. Superman. Godzilla vs. Mothra. Kramer vs. Kramer. Throughout film history we have been treated to the battle royales of battle royales, the feuds to end all feuds, but there may be one that stands above all others. Earlier this year, Fox News host Megyn Kelly, along with other female employees of the network, both names and unnamed, accused now-former Fox News chairman Roger Ailes of sexual harassment. The ensuing waterfall of accusations combined with a lawsuit leveled against him by Gretchen Carlson caused Ailes to resign form his position in July. If you’ve been hungry for all the hot deets on the scandal to be brought to light, perhaps on the big screen, get ready for your dreams to be realized. The Ailes-Kelly feud is being made into a movie by one of the screenwriters behind The Big Short.
Kristen Stewart Is One of the Directors Featured on Sundance’s New Shorts List
Did you think the 2017 Sundance Film Festival announcements were over? Silly you! We still have the short film category ahead of us, and today’s announcement from the festival gives us a look at what we can expect to see.
‘Fist Fight’ Trailer: Ice Cube Really Wants to Punch Charlie Day in the Face
More often than not, schoolteachers have just as much beef with each other as the students they teach. Acting like models of excellence in front of 30 or 40 kids a day has got to be exhausting, and sometimes we all just need to let off some steam. A movie starring both Charlie Day and Ice Cube — not to mention Tracy Morgan, Jillian Bell, and Christina Hendricks — hardly has to be marketed, but Warner Bros. has just released their second trailer for next year’s Fist Fight.
Sigourney Weaver Says ‘Avatar’ Sequel Scripts Are ‘Amazing’ in Scope
Sigourney Weaver is something of a sci-fi movie icon. Since her performance in Alien, she’s made a ton of appearances in all kinds of movies about the weird and the wonderful, from The Cabin in the Woods to WALL-E to a brief but not unwelcome scene in this summer’s Ghostbusters. She was also one of the best parts of James Cameron’s Avatar, playing Dr. Grace Augustine, one of the scientists in the Avatar Program who started a research program to learn more about the planet Pandora and its inhabitants. She’s read the scripts for Cameron’s planned sequels, and, according to her, they’re “amazing.”
We Finally Know How ‘True’ ‘Captain Phillips’ and ‘Spotlight’ Are, Thanks to New Infographic
One of the biggest questions a director or a screenwriter asks him or herself before starting work on any kind of “true story” movie is: how much of the truth do I keep, how much do I toss, and how much do I tweak a little bit? Real life, as you may know, isn’t like the movies, and sometimes stuff just… happens. While it may be full of good stories, life isn’t subject to neat plot arcs, which can be pretty irritating when you’re trying to fit it into a two-hour movie. Which is why, sometimes, moviemakers like to fudge things a little bit. Have you ever been to the movies and asked yourself, I wonder if it actually happened this way? Now, with a handy new infographic, we can know for sure.
New ‘Rogue One’ TV Spot: Krennic Has ‘Immeasurable Powah’ and K-2SO is More Helpful Than He Thinks
Disney aired The Wonderful World of Disney Holiday Celebration last night, and along with it came a special sneak peek at the new Star Wars movie Rogue One. Introduced by an extremely pleased Disney CEO Bob Iger, the TV spot has a lot of footage we’ve already seen in trailers before, but also a few bits we haven’t. And for those of you itching to get tickets, according to the Star Wars official Twitter account they’ll be available on Monday.
Emma Watson Just Released the ‘Beauty and the Beast’ Teaser Poster, and It’s a Throwback
When the news that Disney was making a live-action Beauty and the Beast movie dropped, we all wondered one thing: how close was this version sticking to the original? Would the costumes look the same? Would the inanimate object characters be changed at all? Would there still be songs? From what we’ve seen, it looks like everything in this version, will look the same, just more realistic. Emma Watson’s Belle still has her blue-and-white outfit, the Beast looks similar, if not a little more uncanny-valley, and Lumiere and Cogsworth look more or less like themselves, just with a few tweaks.
Shockingly, ‘Fifty Shades Darker’ Rated R for ‘Strong, Erotic Sexual Content’
Holy cow! In a turn of events more shocking than what we’ve all experienced over the past 24 hours, Fifty Shades Darker, the sequel to Fifty Shades of Grey, has gotten an R rating from the MPAA for “strong erotic sexual content, some graphic nudity, and language.” Boy, bet not even our inner goddesses saw that one coming.
Leonardo DiCaprio Will Play Sam Phillips, Introduce the World to Rock and Roll
The one thing Hollywood loves more than biopics is literary adaptations, and when the two combine, it’s even better. Paramount recently acquired the rights to the book Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock ‘N’ Roll by Peter Guralnick, about the producer who launched the careers of artists like Elvis Presley, Ike Turner, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Johnny Cash. You might’ve heard of them. And who better than Leonardo DiCaprio himself to play the titular producer?
Johnny Depp and Michelle Pfeiffer Eyed for ‘Murder on the Orient Express’
Kenneth Branagh’s Murder on the Orient Express hasn’t left the station yet, as it still doesn’t have a full cast. Angelina Jolie was considering a role in the remake, but she dropped out over this summer, and while Charlize Theron had her eye on the movie, nothing has come of that as of yet. Hopefully production on the film will start chugging along soon, because Johnny Depp and Michelle Pfeiffer are both reportedly being considered.
The ‘Fifty Shades Darker’ Trailer Has Surpassed the Record Set by ‘The Force Awakens’
We hope you’re proud of yourselves. Last April, the second Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer garnered 88 million views in 24 hours, breaking the record previously set by Furious 7. That’s 3.7 million views per hour. Now, it looks like the trailer for Fifty Shades Darker has not only beaten, but curbstomped that record, weighing in at 114 million views in one day.
Prepare for Redrum in ‘The Shining’ U.K. Re-release Trailer
Horror has never been an unpopular genre, and some would even argue that arthouse horror is greater than it ever has been. But none even come close to the terror conjured by Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Stephen King’s chilling The Shining, a film so meticulous and mysterious in its composition it has its own conspiracy theory documentary. If you’re a fan of The Shining and you also happen to live across the pond, or will be vacationing there within the next month, good news: the BFI is planning a theatrical re-release of the film for one night only this Halloween, and they just posted the new trailer.
How 9/11 Changed the Ending of ‘Lilo and Stitch’
The events of September 11, 2001 changed a lot of things. Airline security got tighter, the War on Terror became a regular national news item, and, overall, the outside seemed a little less safe than it had the day before. The repercussions of 9/11 were also felt as far as Hollywood, with the industry’s output of films based on or around themes of violence, terrorism, and war taking on a more serious, sinister bent. “Post-9/11 horror” and “post-9/11 action” became units students study in film class. A lot of films already in production went through slight alterations: the World Trade Center towers were digitally erased from New York City skyline scenes in movies released after the attacks, and entire scenes featuring the towers were cut. Hawaii is about the furthest you can get from New York and still be in the U.S., but even so, there’s a whole scene in Disney’s Lilo & Stitch that was altered so that audiences watching the film so soon after 9/11 wouldn’t be disturbed.
In Honor of Gene Wilder, ‘Young Frankenstein’ Is Coming Back to Theaters
It’s difficult, maybe impossible, to say which of Gene Wilder’s many performances is his best. He had the fastest hands in the West as Jim, aka the Waco Kid, in Blazing Saddles, he invited us into a world of pure imagination as the titular candyman from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, and he accidentally created a not-so-politically-correct Broadway hit in The Producers.
Jackie Chan Is Master Wu in This ‘LEGO Ninjago’ Clip
Ahead of Warner Bros.’ Storks, the animation team has put together a short called The Master: A LEGO Ninjago Short that you can enjoy before all of the birds and babies mayhem. The short introduces us to Master Wu, voiced by Jackie Chan, who will appear in The LEGO Ninjago Movie in 2017.