News

Bloody Disgusting has learned that The Tank, a new creature feature from New Zealand filmmaker Scott Walker (The Frozen Ground), is coming to select theaters in April 2023.

The film opens in theaters on April 21 and digitally on April 25.

Set in the 1970s, The Tank is a story about a young family who awakens a horde of creatures. Academy Award winning special effects supervisor and creative director Richard Taylor and his team at Peter Jackson’s VFX studio Weta Workshop created the creature effects.

In the upcoming creature feature, “After mysteriously inheriting an abandoned coastal property, Ben and his family accidentally unleash an ancient, long-dormant creature that terrorized the entire region—including his own ancestors—for generations.”

Luciane Buchanan, Matt Whelan, Zara Nausbaum, Regina Hegemann, Jack Barry, and Holly Shervey star. Scott Walker wrote and directed The Tank.

Watch the trailer below for a sneak-peek at Weta’s latest creature creations!

Production has wrapped in Los Angeles.

Highland Film Group has released the first look image in Berlin from Audrey Cummings’ western action Place Of Bones starring Heather Graham and Tom Hopper.

Production has wrapped in Los Angeles on the 1876-set tale about a ranch owner who must protect her daughter and their home from a vicious outlaw who comes looking for a treacherous accomplice following a botched robbery.

Richard Taylor wrote the screenplay and the cast includes Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone and Corin Nemec. Eric Gozlan is producing through his Goldrush Entertainment alongside David Lipper and Robert A. Daly Jr via Latigo Films.

The film joins Odin’s Eye’s EFM slate that also includes ’Shimmy: The First Monkey King’.

Australian outfit Odin’s Eye has taken world sales duties on family feature Trolgar & Me, about a Norwegian troll banished to New Zealand for not being scary enough and his friendship with a young New Zealand girl who has recently lost her mother.

Directed by Gillian Ashurst, the live-action comedy fantasy is in pre-production in New Zealand. It is being made through Toonz and Torrent Film. Developed with assistance from the New Zealand Film Commission, the project will have SFX created by Weta Workshop...

Bloody Disgusting has learned this week that production has wrapped in Sydney, Australia on Kiah Roache-Turner’s Sting, inspired by one of humanity’s greatest fears: Spiders.

The film stars Ryan Corr, Alyla Browne, Penelope Mitchell (Hellboy), Robyn Nevin (Top of the Lake), Noni Hazlehurst (The End) and Jermaine Fowler (Retreat).

One cold, stormy night in New York City, a mysterious object falls from the sky and smashes through the window of a rundown apartment building. It is an egg, and from this egg emerges a strange little spider…

The creature is discovered by Charlotte, a rebellious 12-year-old girl obsessed with comic books. Despite her stepfather Ethan’s best efforts to connect with her through their comic book co-creation Fang Girl, Charlotte feels isolated. Her mother and Ethan are distracted by their new baby and are struggling to cope, leaving Charlotte to bond with the spider.

Keeping it as a secret pet,...

Kiah Roache-Turner directed film wraps production in Sydney.

Kiah Roache-Turner’s Sting has wrapped filming in Sydney, Australia, with Studiocanal picking up the title for release in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany, Switzerland and Benelux.

Additional deals include Lucky Red (Italy), Diamond Films, Nordisk (Scandinavia), Kinoswiat (Poland), Pasatiempo Pictures, Karantanija (ex-Yugoslavia), Italia (Middle East), Filmfinity (South Africa) and Terry Steiner International (airlines).

The UK’s Cornerstone Films represents world sales.

The film centres on a 12-year-old girl living in New York who forms a bond with a strange spider. As her fascination with Sting the spider increases, so does the spider’s size.

StudioCanal has taken multiple territories on Sting, the upcoming arachnophobia horror movie from writer/director Kiah Roache-Turner that has just wrapped production in Sydney.

The film — for which a first image has also been revealed — stars Ryan Corr (House of the Dragon, The Water Diviner), Alyla Browne (Three Thousand Years of Longing, Nine Perfect Strangers), Penelope Mitchell (Hellboy), Robyn Nevin (Top of the Lake), Noni Hazlehurst (The End) and Jermaine Fowler (Retreat).

Sting was co-financed by Align and marks its second collaboration with sales company Cornerstone. They worked together previously on Good Luck To You, Leo Grande. The film has also received a major production investment from Screen Australia.

Cornerstone is handling worldwide sales and distribution on Sting, which StudioCanal has acquired for the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany, Switzerland, and Benelux. Additional deals include Lucky Red (Italy), Diamond Films (Latin America, Spain, Portugal), Nordisk (Scandinavia), Kinoswiat (Poland), Pasatiempo Pictures (Baltics,...

Heather Graham and Tom Hopper are set to star in the western action film “Place of Bones.”

The film also stars UFC welterweight and mixed martial artist Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone (“The Equalizer 2”) and Corin Nemec (“Stargate Sg-1”). Directed by Audrey Cummings, “Place of Bones” is written by cinematographer-director Richard Taylor.

Set in 1876, a botched bank robbery sees vicious outlaw gang leader Bear John (Hopper) feverishly hunting down his traitorous accomplice, Calhoun, to recover the stolen money. Nearly dead, Calhoun drags himself to a remote ranch where Pandora (Graham) lives with her daughter.

As Bear and his crew of bandits arrive, intent on delivering brutal revenge, Pandora has no choice but to defend her daughter. But Bear John and his men will soon discover that this isn’t Pandora’s first rodeo.

The film is produced by Eric Gozlan under his Goldrush Entertainment banner, and is executive produced by Tom Whiteman.

Mister Creep: "Three college students stumble upon a lost television broadcast of a deceased serial killer and search for its location. They discover a nightmarish cover-up of a clown-faced man who killed hundreds and may still be around long after his death.

From writer/director Isaac Rodriguez, and starring Thomas Burke, Ali Alkhafaji, Amber Lee Solis, and Judy McMillan, come face to face with Mister Creep on digital December 5."

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Monsters vs Madness: A Benefit Auction For Planned Parenthood - Happens Online November 11-27, 2022: "This November, fans around the world will have a chance to bid on one-of-a-kind painted figures of the most famous movie monsters ever in an online auction to benefit Planned Parenthood. The Monsters vs Madness auction is the brainchild of author, pop culture expert, producer and co-chair of the Atlanta Monsterama fan convention Anthony Taylor. Last summer, dismayed by the Supreme Court decision in the Dobbs case,...

Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy still has a lot of aging to do before it catches up to Bilbo Baggins (Ian Holm) — recall that the hobbit is celebrating his 110th birthday with the long-expected party that makes up the early beats of “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.” But as each entry in the series reaches its 20th anniversary — “Fellowship” last year, “The Two Towers” this year, and “The Return of the King” in 2023 — it’s worth reflecting on more than the shadow of the past of the films themselves. Or more than their theatrical cuts, at least.

A month prior to the premiere of “The Two Towers,” New Line Home Video unveiled the “extended edition” of “Fellowship of the Ring,” with 30 minutes of additional footage spread across six new and 20 expanded sequences. The DVD box set’s packaging resembled a well-worn tome bound in green leather,...

Fresh off starring in the Netflix adaptation of the Stephen King story Mr. Harrigan’s Phone, veteran actor Donald Sutherland has now signed on to star in the coming-of-age thriller Heart Land, which Variety has heard is being described as “28 Days Later meets Lord of the Flies.” Directed by David Carson (Star Trek: Generations), Heart Land is filming in New Zealand and Quebec, Canada. It will go through the post-production process in the UK.

Matthew A. Collins (All That Glitters) wrote the screenplay for this one, crafting a story that centers on two disparate bands of children struggling to survive in the brutal landscape of a pestilent America, where adults have become infected by a mysterious plague and only children are immune. Left to their own devices, the youthful survivors must rely on primal instinct and dwindling resources to fend off the raging infected.

The lead character is Jonah, the...

Donald Sutherland has boarded the coming-of-age genre thriller “Heart Land,” a rare U.K. and New Zealand treaty co-production.

Directed by David Carson, the film is currently being filmed in New Zealand and Quebec, Canada, with post-production set to take place in the U.K.

Penned by Matthew A. Collins (“All That Glitters”), “Heart Land” is billed as “28 Days Later” meets “Lord of the Flies.” The story is centered around two disparate bands of children struggling to survive in the brutal landscape of a pestilent America, where adults have become infected by a mysterious plague and only children are immune. Left to their own devices, the youthful survivors must rely on primal instinct and dwindling resources to fend off the raging infected.

The pic is centered around a character named Jonah, who is the grandson of Rick (Sutherland).

“Rick is the emotional heart and anchor of ‘Heart Land,’” says Carson.

The Lost King may look like geriatric matinee fare, but Sally Hawkins makes the film her own with another terrific, heartfelt performance. Hawkins is Philippa Langley, the amateur historian who led the exhumation of Richard III in a Leicester city car park. Some have questioned whether this event can sustain a feature film, but let’s not forget how remarkable this story is. Through diligence and almost obsessive focus, an enthusiast from the Edinburgh branch of the Richard III Society managed to rewrite history, correcting falsehoods that had lasted for over five hundred years.

Even if this still sounds dry to you, don’t discount the character work. I know very little of the real Philippa Langley, but the woman we are introduced to in The Lost King is deeply unhappy. Her life is one beset by stress and alienation. She’s separated from her partner John (Steve Coogan) and...

Terrence Malick first arrived on the scene as part of the New Hollywood movement in the 1970s with his directorial debut "Badlands" and its 1978 follow-up "Days of Heaven," and both are now listed in the National Film Registry for their historic significance. After making "Days of Heaven," however, Malick disappeared from show business for two full decades. It was only in 1998 that he finally returned to the big screen with his Oscar-nominated World War II movie, "The Thin Red Line."

That two-decade absence may have been partially rooted in Malick's experience on "Days of Heaven," which was a particularly daunting film for him and Billy Weber to edit. In an oral history of "Badlands" for GQ, Weber recalled that they spent two years editing "Days of Heaven" — an inordinately long time for a film to be in post-production. Paul Lee, a philosophy instructor at Harvard College and MIT, also recalled...

Before Karl Urban was in "The Boys," he played characters who love swords and shields as much as Billy Butcher loves killing supes. There's his role as Skurge in "Thor: Ragnarok" and as Éomer in "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, as well as the box-office dud "Pathfinder" or any of his various appearances in the Riddick films as Vaako. The reason for Urban's casting in this niche probably has something to do with the two television series that make up a large part of his early career: "Hercules: The Legendary Journeys" and "Xena: Warrior Princess."

Although Urban first appeared in "Hercules" as Cupid in the season 3 episode "The Green Eyed Monster," he's better known for the recurring character Julius Caesar in the spin-off "Xena". The actor also played two other guest roles in "Xena": the father-drugging psychopath Mael and the nomadic human Kor.

Urban's experience working on "Hercules...

With an anime movie and an Amazon series imminent, is Middle-earth about to be transformed into its own film and TV universe?

‘The road goes ever on”, wrote Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. But the esteemed Oxford don and creator of the high fantasy genre probably wasn’t expecting it to lead to a billion dollar multimedia franchise to rival Marvel and Star Wars.

But that, it seems, is what Tolkien’s Middle-earth tales are slowly morphing into, almost 70 years after he completed work on The Lord of the Rings, which was originally published in 1954 and 1955. This week, Deadline reports that a new anime movie, The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, is moving into production – and it all looks surprisingly legit. Brian Cox will play Helm Hammerhand, legendary defender of the Rohirrim, with Miranda Otto returning from Peter Jackson’s turn-of-the-century...

Exclusive: Brian Cox, Gaia Wise and Miranda Otto are just some of the names in the voice cast for New Line Cinema and Warner Bros. Animation’s upcoming The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim.

The movie centers around the fate of the House of Helm Hammerhand, the mighty King of Rohan, a character from the J.R.R. Tolkien book’s appendix. Succession actor Cox will provide the voice of that protagonist.

The anime feature, directed by Kenji Kamiyama, is set 183 years before the events chronicled in the original trilogy of films. A sudden attack by Wulf, a clever and ruthless Dunlending lord seeking vengeance for the death of his father, forces Helm and his people to make a daring last stand in the ancient stronghold of the Hornburg – a mighty fortress that will later come to be known as Helm’s Deep. Finding herself in an increasingly desperate situation,...

Rush Limbaugh never shied away from controversial comments and as such, “Saturday Night Live” seemed to never miss an opportunity to poke fun at him. The conservative and often polarizing radio host, who died Wednesday from lung cancer, has been impersonated over the years by the likes of Chris Farley, Dan Aykroyd and Taran Killam. For your enjoyment, we’ve rounded up all of the Rush Limbaugh sketches of “SNL” yore.

“American Sportsman Today”

On May 7, 1994, “SNL” great Chris Farley took on impersonating Limbaugh with John Goodman in a skit called “American Sportsman Today”. The skit depicted a show from the National Rifle Association “dedicated to the deadly art of hunting with semi-automatic weapons” and Farley, as Limbaugh, declared “it simply does not get any better than this!” after shooting numerous rounds of pretend fire at a deer.

Watch the clip at NBC.com here.

“Rush and Howard”

On March 25, 1995, Dan...

This CinemaScope musical remake of 1939’s The Women is highly watchable, especially in this flawless digital remaster. The actresses that bare their claws, compete for husbands and just plain cat-fight are a choice batch, with favorites from the ’50s the ’40s the ’30s — plus a few wildflowers that bloomed cinematically for only a few years (Dolores Gray) and one that somehow managed immortality (Joan Collins). It’s highly watchable despite, or maybe because of, its criminally outdated recipe for marital bliss. Did women really go for this fantasy — did anybody ever really live like this?

The Opposite Sex

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1956 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 116 min. / Street Date October 27, 2020 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: June Allyson, Joan Collins, Dolores Gray, Ann Sheridan, Ann Miller, Leslie Nielsen, Jeff Richards, Agnes Moorehead, Charlotte Greenwood, Joan Blondell, Sam Levene, Alice Pearce, Barbara Jo Allen, Sandy Descher, Carolyn Jones, Jerry Antes, Harry James, Art Mooney,...

The Little Song ‘n’ Dance Show that Could, this over-achieving Jack Cummings production is a bright exception to the dull waning days of the MGM musical, due to many factors but especially Michael Kidd’s athletic choreography. And it’s been restored in both of its simultaneously-filmed versions, flat-widescreen and CinemaScope.

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers

Two- disc Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1954 / Color / 1:77 widescreen + 2:55 anamorphic 16:9 (separate versions) /

102 min. / Street Date June 5, 2018 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: Jane Powell, Howard Keel, Jeff Richards, Russ Tamblyn, Tommy Rall, Marc Platt, Matt Mattox, Jacques d’Amboise, Julie Newmeyer (Newmar), Nancy Kilgas, Betty Carr, Virginia Gibson, Ruta Kilmonis (Lee), Norma Doggett.

Cinematography: George Folsey

Choreography: Michael Kidd

Film Editor: Ralph E. Winters

Original Music: Gene de Paul, Johnny Mercer

Written by Albert Hackett & Frances Goodrich, Dorothy Kingsley from the story The Sobbin’ Women by Stephen Vincent Benet

Produced by Jack Cummings...

(See previous post: Fourth of July Movies: Escapism During a Weird Year.) On the evening of the Fourth of July, besides fireworks, fire hazards, and Yankee Doodle Dandy, if you're watching TCM in the U.S. and Canada, there's the following: Peter H. Hunt's 1776 (1972), a largely forgotten film musical based on the Broadway hit with music by Sherman Edwards. William Daniels, who was recently on TCM talking about 1776 and a couple of other movies (A Thousand Clowns, Dodsworth), has one of the key roles as John Adams. Howard Da Silva, blacklisted for over a decade after being named a communist during the House Un-American Committee hearings of the early 1950s (Robert Taylor was one who mentioned him in his testimony), plays Benjamin Franklin. Ken Howard is Thomas Jefferson, a role he would reprise in John Huston's 1976 short Independence. (In the short, Pat Hingle was cast as John Adams; Eli Wallach was Benjamin Franklin.) Warner...

Joan Collins in 'The Bitch': Sex tale based on younger sister Jackie Collins' novel. Author Jackie Collins dead at 77: Surprisingly few film and TV adaptations of her bestselling novels Jackie Collins, best known for a series of bestsellers about the dysfunctional sex lives of the rich and famous and for being the younger sister of film and TV star Joan Collins, died of breast cancer on Sept. 19, '15, in Los Angeles. The London-born (Oct. 4, 1937) Collins was 77. Collins' tawdry, female-centered novels – much like those of Danielle Steel and Judith Krantz – were/are immensely popular. According to her website, they have sold more than 500 million copies in 40 countries. And if the increasingly tabloidy BBC is to be believed (nowadays, Wikipedia has become a key source, apparently), every single one of them – 32 in all – appeared on the New York Times' bestseller list. (Collins' own site claims that a mere 30 were included.) Sex...

Joan Crawford Movie Star Joan Crawford movies on TCM: Underrated actress, top star in several of her greatest roles If there was ever a professional who was utterly, completely, wholeheartedly dedicated to her work, Joan Crawford was it. Ambitious, driven, talented, smart, obsessive, calculating, she had whatever it took – and more – to reach the top and stay there. Nearly four decades after her death, Crawford, the star to end all stars, remains one of the iconic performers of the 20th century. Deservedly so, once you choose to bypass the Mommie Dearest inanity and focus on her film work. From the get-go, she was a capable actress; look for the hard-to-find silents The Understanding Heart (1927) and The Taxi Dancer (1927), and check her out in the more easily accessible The Unknown (1927) and Our Dancing Daughters (1928). By the early '30s, Joan Crawford had become a first-rate film actress, far more naturalistic than...

Mickey Rooney movie schedule (Pt): TCM on August 13 See previous post: “Mickey Rooney Movies: Music and Murder.” Photo: Mickey Rooney ca. 1940. 3:00 Am Death On The Diamond (1934). Director: Edward Sedgwick. Cast: Robert Young, Madge Evans, Nat Pendleton, Mickey Rooney. Bw-71 mins. 4:15 Am A Midsummer Night’S Dream (1935). Director: Max Reinhardt and William Dieterle. Cast: James Cagney, Dick Powell, Olivia de Havilland, Ross Alexander, Anita Louise, Mickey Rooney, Joe E. Brown, Victor Jory, Ian Hunter, Verree Teasdale, Jean Muir, Frank McHugh, Grant Mitchell, Hobart Cavanaugh, Dewey Robinson, Hugh Herbert, Arthur Treacher, Otis Harlan, Helen Westcott, Fred Sale, Billy Barty, Rags Ragland. Bw-143 mins. 6:45 Am A Family Affair (1936). Director: George B. Seitz. Cast: Mickey Rooney, Lionel Barrymore, Cecilia Parker, Eric Linden. Bw-69 mins. 8:00 Am Boys Town (1938). Director: Norman Taurog. Cast: Spencer Tracy, Mickey Rooney, Henry Hull, Leslie Fenton, Gene Reynolds, Edward Norris, Addison Richards, Minor Watson, Jonathan Hale,...

Lana Turner movies: Scandal and more scandal Lana Turner is Turner Classic Movies’ "Summer Under the Stars" star today, Saturday, August 10, 2013. I’m a little — or rather, a lot — late in the game posting this article, but there are still three Lana Turner movies left. You can see Turner get herself embroiled in scandal right now, in Douglas Sirk’s Imitation of Life (1959), both the director and the star’s biggest box-office hit. More scandal follows in Mark Robson’s Peyton Place (1957), the movie that earned Lana Turner her one and only Academy Award nomination. And wrapping things up is George Sidney’s lively The Three Musketeers (1948), with Turner as the ruthless, heartless, remorseless — but quite elegant — Lady de Winter. Based on Fannie Hurst’s novel and a remake of John M. Stahl’s 1934 melodrama about mother love, class disparities, racism, and good cooking, Imitation of Life was shown on...

Eleanor Parker today: Beautiful as ever in Scaramouche, Interrupted Melody Eleanor Parker, who turns 91 in ten days (June 26, 2013), can be seen at her most radiantly beautiful in several films Turner Classic Movies is showing this evening and tomorrow morning as part of their Star of the Month Eleanor Parker "tribute." Among them are the classic Scaramouche, the politically delicate Above and Beyond, and the biopic Interrupted Melody, which earned Parker her third and final Best Actress Academy Award nomination. (Photo: publicity shot of Eleanor Parker in Scaramouche.) The best of the lot is probably George Sidney’s balletic Scaramouche (1952), in which Eleanor Parker plays one of Stewart Granger’s love interests — the other one is Janet Leigh. A loose remake of Rex Ingram’s 1923 blockbuster, the George Sidney version features plenty of humor, romance, and adventure; vibrant colors (cinematography by Charles Rosher); an elaborately staged climactic swordfight; and tough dudes...

Chicago – Russ Tamblyn has seen it all. In a show business career that is now over 60 years old, he has gone from child star (”Father of the Bride”) to Oscar nominee (”Peyton Place”) to classic role (”West Side Story”) and cult hero (”Twin Peaks”). With a span like that, he has collected a few stories.

Tamblyn made an appearance in Chicago in 2010 at the Hollywood Palms in Naperville, Illinois, and did an interview with HollywoodChicago.com regarding the 50th Anniversary of the film “West Side Story.” After talking about that experience, he began to reminisce about his other career exploits. In a talk that lasted close to an hour, he spoke about the transition from child to adult star, encounters with Elvis Presley and adventures with rocker Neil Young, director David Lynch and actor Glenn Ford.

Russ Tamblyn in Chicago, 2010

Photo Credit: Joe Arce of Starstruck Foto for HollywoodChicago.com...

Howard Keel on TCM Pt.2: Rose Marie, Pagan Love Song, Callaway Went Thataway Schedule (Et) and synopses from the TCM website: 6:00 Am Desperate Search (1953) A man fights to find his children after their plane crashes in the Canadian wilderness. Dir: Joseph Lewis. Cast: Howard Keel, Jane Greer, Patricia Medina. Bw-71 mins. 7:15 Am Fast Company (1953) The heiress to a racing stable uncovers underhanded dealings. Dir: John Sturges. Cast: Howard Keel, Polly Bergen, Marjorie Main. Bw-68 mins. 8:30 Am Kismet (1955) In this Arabian Nights musical "king of the beggars" infiltrates high society when his daughter is wooed by a handsome prince. Dir: Vincente Minnelli. Cast: Howard Keel, Ann Blyth, Dolores Gray. C-113 mins, Letterbox Format. 10:30 Am Rose Marie (1954) A trapper's daughter is torn between the Mountie who wants to civilize her and a dashing prospector. Dir: Mervyn LeRoy. Cast: Ann Blyth, Howard Keel, Fernando Lamas, Bert Lahr, Marjorie Main.

Tina Fey has confessed that she felt conflicted about whether or not to have more kids. The 30 Rock creator and actress, who is already mother to 5-year-old daughter Alice, announced on Wednesday that she and husband Jeff Richards are expecting their second child together, a decision which she revealed was several years in the making. "I went for my annual check-up and, tired of carrying this anxiety around, burst into tears the moment [the gynaecologist] said hello," she recalled in her new book Bossypants. "I laid it all out for her, and the main thing I took away from our conversation was the kind of simple observation that only an impartial third party can provide - 'Either way, everything will be fine'." "I get up to go to the bathroom and study myself in the mirror. (more)...

Chicago – In our latest classic edition of HollywoodChicago.com Hookup: Film, we have 50 admit-two passes up for grabs to the special Chicago screening of the 1954 classic “Seven Brides For Seven Brothers” as part of the one-night-only Road to Hollywood event from Turner Classic Movies!

At the Chicago screening, you’ll be joined by Turner Classic Movies host Robert Osborne as well as “Seven Brides For Seven Brothers” star Jane Powell! The film also stars Howard Keel, Jeff Richards, Russ Tamblyn, Tommy Rall, Marc Platt, Matt Mattox, Jacques d’Amboise, Julie Newmar, Nancy Kilgas, Betty Carr and Ian Wolfe from director Stanley Donen and writer Stephen Vincent Benet.

To win your free pass to the special Chicago screening of “Seven Brides For Seven Brothers” courtesy of HollywoodChicago.com, just answer our question below. That’s it! This one-night-only screening is on Thursday, March 24, 2011 at 7:30 p.m. in Chicago. Directions to...