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Lost featured multiple well-written, memorable characters over the length of its six-season run -- but only a handful of these Island-dwellers had abilities that went beyond the norm. For a show that many people look back on as one of the best dramas in television history, Lost eventually evolved into one of the more famous examples of TV's greatest supernatural sci-fi programs. Though many viewers wrote Lost off once it started to fully embrace these genres -- claiming it went off the rails -- It's clear that these divisive elements were present from the early goings, as these seemingly super-powered characters make clear.

Whether it be talking to the dead or acting as an omnipotent being looming over the decisions of people for generations, Lost offered abilities that spanned a large spectrum within its lore-heavy series. Even if the nature of said powers isn't always offered with spoon-fed explanations to the TV audience,...

It's been 20 years since the debut of Lost, the hit ABC series that, in hindsight, was one of the last massive pop culture sensations to air on network television. A new documentary from Pop Motion Pictures directed by Taylor Morden examines the landmark series from beginning to end, including the actual, lasting effects it had on the real world. Through this lens, Getting Lost reveals the impact the series had was, inadvertently, perfect because it mirrored Lost's narrative both on and offscreen. This is not to say that Lost fans were left watching out for polar bears in strange places or avoiding the Smoke Monster. Rather, the themes and events the storytellers created mirrored people's experiences when they were making and watching Lost.

For better and worse, Lost's themes echoed the story behind the story. While Getting Lost is mostly a celebration of the series' unlikely success, the...

Chicago – Erika Olson is having a full circle moment. In 2004, the J.J. Abrams produced iconic series “Lost” first hit the ABC-tv airwaves, and Erika just had to blog about it. The blog took off, Erika became a freelance media writer, and now she is Executive Producer of the new documentary tribute, “Getting Lost.” The Chicago Premiere will take place on Monday, November 11th, at the Landmark Century Centre Cinema on Chicago’s Northside. For tickets, click Lost.

“Getting Lost” is the definitive retrospective documentary on the television show Lost and its lasting impact on the people who made it and the fan community. It explores life-changing personal stories touched by Lost, including incredible friendships and heartwarming love stories, touching tales of heartache and loss, and the influence the show had on the television landscape and the careers of some of the biggest names in Hollywood. Featuring cast members, producer J.

A question that hasn’t really been talked about much in the entertainment world is the whole spin-offs, remakes, and reboots thing. How smart is it to consider bringing back something that was super successful? Lost was a big deal back in the day, and it really kicked off this conversation in the 2000s when the show wrapped up after six seasons.

Evangeline Lilly in Lost (Credits: ABC)

Ian Somerhalder and Evangeline Lilly, who were part of the cast, have shared their thoughts on this topic before, strongly believing that reviving something like Lost wouldn’t be a great idea. They both have pretty convincing reasons for their stance.

Ian Somerhalder And Evangeline Lilly Share Common View On Possible New Versions Of Lost Ian Somerhalder in Lost (Credits: ABC)

These days, Lost is seen as a classic, and not much chatter surrounds it anymore. However, even though the conversation about...

The 44th running of the Hawaii International Film Festival presented by Halekulani will open with “Tinā,” an uplifting drama film that marks the feature directorial debut of Miki Magasiva, and close with Sori Fumihiko’s “Hakkenden: Fiction and Reality.”

In between, the festival will pack in 92 features and 114 short films, major awards for guests including Jimmy O Yang, Hong Kong’s Sandra Ng and documentary filmmaking star Stanley Nelson.

“This year, we have the largest selection of Hawai`i films in competition in the festival’s history, are presenting multiple films that explore Indigenous perspectives, narrative sovereignty, and the nurturing of cultural identity, and additionally, we are launching a new spotlight showcasing the best in television,” said Beckie Stochetti, Hiff executive director.

Hailing from New Zealand, with dialog in English and Samoan, “Tinā” sees Anapela Polata’ivao (“Our Flag Means Death”) portray a well-respected and gifted vocal coach endure family tragedy...

The upcoming documentary Getting Lost has announced its cast as it nears the end of production. The timing is just right as Lost, the survival show on which it is based is nearing its twentieth-anniversary milestone. Not to mention, it was not long ago when Taylor Morden (The Last Blockbuster) was announced as the director of the documentary in partnership with Popmotion Pictures (Unstuffed: The Build-a-Bear Story).

Horror adaptations of children's stories are on the rise, with two more set for 2024 release. Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey sparked interest in other horror versions, making way for Bampire and Your Monster. Artists are modernizing public domain stories with a horror twist, aiming to shock and captivate audiences.

Among the ongoing trends in the horror genre are adaptations of children’s stories and fairy tales, and two more are secretly getting horror adaptations in 2024. Thanks to some classic tales and characters meant for a young audience becoming public domain, many artists have seized the opportunity to modernize them and give them a twist. In many cases, these changes are towards a horror route, giving a whole new perspective to these once innocent characters and stories, but not without a good dose of controversy.

While horror versions of fairy tales and children's stories are not a new practice, they gained force...

Bambi is one of the most famous animated characters, and it will also be the base for a couple of horror films, one of them called Bampire.

Bampire will be a gory horror-comedy that will pay tribute to the slasher horrors from the '80s and '90s. The film has Taylor Morden at the helm, who directed The Last Blockbuster and the upcoming Lost documentary Getting Lost, with a script from Zoë Wassman. The director created a crowdfunding campaign on IndieGoGo for the upcoming horror, alongside a first look at the film, giving fans a chance to order limited edition merchandise and the ability to pre-order copies of the movie.

Related 'Really Strange': Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey Director Addresses Low Rotten Tomatoes Score Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey's director explains why the reviews for the film on Rotten Tomatoes were so harsh.

Bampire is set in...

In addition to Bambi: The Reckoning, which is part of the Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey universe, another upcoming Bambi horror movie has been announced this week.

A gory horror-comedy that pays tribute to the slasher movies of the ’80s and ’90s, Bambi horror movie Bampire was just launched on Indiegogo, and we’ve got your first look.

Directed by Taylor Morden (The Last Blockbuster) and written by Zoë Wassman, the indie film is said to feature “heart-wrenching live action performances, hand-drawn animation by Josh Stifter (A24 and Kevin Smith’s Tusk), practical gore by award-winning fx artist Trysta Kelley, a claymation sequence from effects supervisor Webster Colcord, and even diegetic VHS footage from an in-world camera.”

Writer Zoë Wassman teases, “Picture Evil Dead 2 meets Who Framed Roger Rabbit.”

Bampire (produced by Path Films and Popmotion Pictures) features appearances by Diane Franklin, Greg Sestero, and Troma’s own Lloyd Kaufman...

One of TV’s most prolific network hits is ringing in a major milestone in 2024 as Lost marks its 20th anniversary. In celebration of the show’s legacy, filmmaker Taylor Morden, who helmed The Last Blockbuster, the documentary about the last Blockbuster rental store has been putting together a new documentary, Getting Lost. The independent feature-length documentary has been a crowd-funded fan endeavor via Indiegogo, where Morden and team have been sharing updates about the film, which is set to premiere later this year, timed to the exact 20th anniversary of Lost’s pilot, which aired September 22, 2004. No network or streamer is currently attached to run the title as of now. https://t.co/cs58vNgYs7 pic.twitter.com/5ch0YQmjQc — Getting Lost (@gettinglostdoc) February 5, 2024 The project aims to make it the definitive story of Lost and its dedicated fandom. Some familiar faces are helping bring it to life as...

Exclusive: Build-a-Bear’s stuffed animal characters have inspired development of animated series Kabu.

Build-a-Bear Entertainment, Foundation Media Partners and Montreal toon maker Laughing Dragon Studios are working up a 10-part show, aimed at 7-11s, and release an exclusive first look at the upcoming Kidscreen Summit.

Mike Mariano, writer and producer on network sitcoms such as Raising Hope and My Name is Earl, is writing alongside Drew Gormley (Family Guy), Claire Ross Dunn, Brian Clark (Glisten and the Merry Mission) and Monica Kelly (Cocomelon).

Build-a-Bear President and CEO Sharon Price John and Foundation Media CEO Patrick Hughes executive producing the series.

The show is billed as a “stylized, colorful new offering with a fun ensemble cast of a variety of ‘stuffed animal’ friends,” with the creative influenced by the popularity of kawaii styling and each episode utilizing “an entertaining, sometimes ‘wacky’ way of...

Exclusive: Freestyle Digital Media has cuddled up to Unstuffed: A Build-a-Bear Story, taking North American rights to the doc from The Last Blockbuster‘s Taylor Morden, which features the voices of talent including Jon Lovitz, Pete Holmes, Jerry Mathers, Larry Hankin and Mike Tyson.

The film, produced in a mixed-media format including animation and storyboarded sequences, will become available on digital platforms and on DVD beginning October 3. View the trailer above.

Directed by Morden from his script, Unstuffed explores the origins of the “teddy bear” as well as the psychological importance of stuffed animals in childhood development. Sprinkled with stories of Build-A-Bear’s lasting and emotional impact on the lives of everyday people and celebrities alike, the doc is told through the eyes of a teddy bear narrator (voiced by Lovitz) as it follows the furry footsteps of a single idea that reimagined not one, but two industries. The...

Lost fans are preparing to go back.

It has been announced that, 20 years after the show premiered, a new documentary detailing the show’s groundbreaking success will be released.

The film, titled Getting Lost, will tell the entire story of how Lost became the biggest cult show on the planet, generating intense fan discussion and theories on the internet throughout its six seasons on air.

Getting Lost is also set to address – and hopefully put to bed – the furore surrounding the show’s finale, which has gone down in history as one of the most misunderstood endings of all time.

Find The Independent’s deep dive on the finale, featuring words from co-showrunner Damon Lindelof, Henry Ian Cusick (Desmond) and L Scott Caldwell (Rose), here.

The film will be overseen by filmmaker Taylor Morden, who directed The Last Blockbuster.

In a statement, he said: “Lost was a show that meant...

This news will you give you the warm and fuzzies. Filmmaker Taylor Morden has begun production on a Build-A-Bear Workshop documentary, E! News learned April 6. That's right, we're heading back to where best friends are made. The feature length documentary—which has started production at Build-a-Bear headquarters in St. Louis, Mo.—will trace the iconic brand's 25 year journey from startup to cultural craze. The film finds the company "navigating a tumultuous era for retail," according to the official description, and "will explore what dynamics led to 2021 becoming the most profitable year in the company's history." Director Morden's previous...

Having chronicled the decline of one influential business with “The Last Blockbuster,” Taylor Morden will instead tell the story of the incredible rise of another in his next feature length documentary.

Morden’s new film will examine Build-a-Bear Workshop, charting its growth from startup fad to decades-old experiential retailer. The film is being made with the company’s cooperation and will coincide with Build-a-Bear’s 25th anniversary. It recently started production at the company’s headquarters in St. Louis.

For the uninitiated or the childless, Build-A-Bear sells teddy bears and other stuffed animals and characters. In a unique spin, customers get to tailor the toys, choosing outfits, accessories and sounds that it wants the stuffed character to make.

Morden’s breakout film “The Last Blockbuster” examines the negative impact the video rental retailer faced during the rise of streaming services. Although the Build-a-Bear documentary will follow the company as...

The era of nostalgia bait has reached its inevitable height: here comes a workplace sitcom dedicated to Blockbuster Video Store. The kicker? The series comes from none other than Netflix. Perhaps you've heard of this tiny DVD mail company turned streaming giant — it's the one that Blockbuster once had the chance to purchase before the company blossomed and eventually buried them. Now only one Blockbuster remains standing, a tourist attraction and singular reminder of the place where so many movie lovers found their sole outlet for exploration. Ironically, said business also happens to be the subject of Taylor Morden's documentary "The Last Blockbuster,"...

The post Netflix Comedy Series Blockbuster Adds Brooklyn Nine-Nine Star Melissa Fumero appeared first on /Film.

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By Todd Garbarini

I love home video. It has introduced me to the films that have been held near and dear to me in a far more intimate way than broadcast television ever could. The first home video system that I ever owned was the RCA SelectaVision Capacitance Electronic Disc system, a $500M failure that nearly bankrupted its creator, RCA, just five years after its inauspicious introduction in March 1981, Following 17 years of research and development hell, it proved to be a technological also-ran even before it left the gate. Star Wars (1977) and Poltergeist (1982) were the first two films that I owned on a caddie-enclosed 12-inch capacitive disc that were played over and over again during the spring and summer of 1983. These were not just movies that I saw, these were movies that I owned. They were mine and they became a part of my identity.

At its peak in 2004, Blockbuster licensed its name to nearly 9,000 video rental stores around the world. According to my calculations, that means the chain, which specialized in stocking up on new releases (and strangling competitors out of business), must have had at least 90,000 copies of “Gigli” in circulation.

Today, you can’t find even a single “Gigli” DVD at the one remaining Blockbuster store on Earth — a family-owned, community-supported franchise holdout in Bend, Ore. I know because I just got off the phone with them. “Can you spell it?” asked the clerk, unfamiliar with the 2004 Ben Affleck-Jennifer Lopez flop. That said, you can still find thousands of other movies for rent, the increasing rarity of which is apparently enough to inspire pilgrimages to this Tuvalu-like outpost for many who associate Blockbuster with early jobs and/or formative movie-watching experiences — even though there are probably local stores that could...

At one point in the late Nineties, the Blockbuster video rental chain had a ubiquity comparable with other American mega-chains like KFC or Burger King. Today, the company has downsized – it only has one store left in all of the US. The Last Blockbuster, an amiable, breezy documentary directed by Taylor Morden and narrated with enthusiasm by actor Lauren Lapkus, aims to explain how this onetime king of the video rental fell from grace.

Morden knows most will blame Netflix for Blockbuster’s woes, but after considering the question early on in the film, he takes us on a roundabout history, first of the video rental market and then Blockbuster itself, centring on a remaining last-store-standing bastion of the chain still operating in Oregon, where old dusty PCs that require floppy disks are still in use, and its manager, likeable ‘Blockbuster mom’ Sandi Harding, continues to fight the good fight.

Blockbuster Video was recently back in the news after its last remaining outpost in Bend, Oregon began offering movie lovers a chance to spend the night on an air mattress or pull-out couch, surrounded by rows and rows of new releases. The cost was the same as a movie rental — $4 (not accounting for those exorbitant late fees!). The AirBnB promotion went viral, riding a crest of social media interest both from Twitter-users who fondly remember spending weekends picking out movies at their local Blockbuster, as well as from Gen Z members for whom the idea of a “video” is as relevant as a Spanish galleon.

Now, 1091 Pictures has acquired worldwide digital and broadcast rights to “The Last Blockbuster,” the story of how one small town video store managed to survive the decline and fall of its corporate parent. The film follows Sandi Harding, the manager of the Oregon-based Blockbuster...

In the age of streaming and VOD, movie fans old enough to remember the era of VHS and DVD rentals are surely filled with warm and fuzzy memories of browsing the aisles of their local Blockbuster Video. While they once numbered over 9,000 locations, there now exists a single Blockbuster store, in Bend, Oregon, which is offering a very special blast from the past in the form of three available overnight stays on Airbnb.

Yes, you can actually have a movie-night sleepover inside an actual Blockbuster, which has created a living room space amid its towering shelves of movies. The decor harkens back to the 1990s peak of the rental chain, with a pull-out couch and pastel-patterned bedspreads and pillows. Guests will be able to play VHS movies on the included 4:3 TV.

Unfortunately, the sleepovers are available only to residents in Bend’s Deschutes County. Beginning on August 17 at 1 p.

"Did you know that Blockbuster had a chance to buy Netflix, but they didn't?" What?! No way! Pop Motion Pictures has debuted an official trailer for an indie documentary called The Last Blockbuster, which is indeed a film about the very last Blockbuster video rental store to ever exist. Many of you might know the Twitter account, @loneblockbuster, which was started as a joke but is also based on the real-life reference - the very last Blockbuster video rental store still in operation, located in Bend, Or. The Last Blockbuster is a feature length documentary film about the rise and fall of Blockbuster video and how one small town store managed to outlast a corporate giant. Kevin Smith is featured prominently, along with Sandi Harding, manager of the last Blockbuster store. I'm most curious to hear what this former CEO has to say about it all. Here's the first official...

Welcome to the Fund This column, where we look at a planned web series or other online video project currently in search of funding on crowdfunding sites. We’ll tell you what the series is all about and explain why it is worth your money. Do you have a project that’s currently being crowdfunded? Contact us to let us know and we may feature it in upcoming installments. Check out previous installments right here.

Project name: The Last Blockbuster

Asking for: $20,000

Amount raised thus far (at time of post): $4,682

Days remaining in campaign (at time of post): 33

Description: If you didn’t know there’s still a bona fide, functioning Blockbuster shop open in the U.S., you’re probably like most people. But the folks of Bend, Ore., know the last Blockbuster well — it’s their local store. In this Kickstarter, documentary filmmaker Taylor Morden and...

Bend, Oregon is the site of the last surviving Blockbuster Video store and now there's a documentary in the works titled, The Last Blockbuster. Back at the beginning of the year, there were a total of 8 stores that were still open across the country, down from 9,000 back in their heyday. However, in the last 7 months, seven of the stores have all been forced to close, including the location in Anchorage, Alaska that John Oliver and Last Week Tonight donated all of the Russell Crowe memorabilia to.

Popmotion Pictures and filmmaker Taylor Morden are making The Last Blockbuster with the help of the internet. The crowdfunding page just went up and so far, they've raised nearly $2,000 out of their $20,000 goal. There's still over a month to donate, as of this writing, so if you want to see this documentary, get over there and open your wallet. If you donate $2,500, you can...