News

Last year, we heard that Spyder Dobrofsky – who worked on the scripts for such flicks as The Housewives of the North Pole and One Christmas Wish, as well as Mom’s Day Away, and made his feature directorial debut with the mystery thriller Spiral – was making a holiday horror movie called Down Below and had assembled a solid cast for the project: the legendary Eric Roberts (The Dark Knight) stars alongside Bai Ling (The Crow), Alexis Knapp (Pitch Perfect), and Doug Jones, who is best known for his creature (or heavily made up) performances in films like The Shape of Water, Hellboy, and Hocus Pocus. Now, Down Below has been sent out into the world, as it was given a digital release this week and is available to rent or purchase on Amazon’s Prime Video at This Link.

Down Below tells the following story: On the 20th anniversary of the...

"Some secrets are buried deep where evil dwells." Huh? What does that even mean? Gravitas has revealed an official trailer for an indie horror film titled Down Below, the latest from filmmaker Spyder Dobrofsky. This hasn't played at many festivals and will be dumped on VOD this fall in time for horror season. On the 20th anniversary of the gruesome Christmas Eve murders at St. Agnes church, a demonic preacher returns to haunt that same town's residents. Together and apart, two innocent residents are forced to face their own demons as well as a real one, who goes by the name of Mr. Monday. A gripping psychological horror movie with a shocking plot twist, this one stars Eric Roberts, Doug Jones, Bai Ling, Alexis Knapp, Hutch Dano, Christopher Livingston, and Greg Kriek. It has a wildly impressive cast for a film going direct-to-vod, but this looks very cheap and cheesy and just plain bad.

Spyder Dobrofsky is probably not a name you would expect to see credited on Christmas-themed TV movies, but that’s exactly how Dobrofsky got started out, working on the scripts for such flicks as The Housewives of the North Pole and One Christmas Wish, as well as Mom’s Day Away. When he made his feature directorial debut, it was on a movie called Spiral, which was something you’d expect to see a Spyder credited with: a mystery thriller. Now Deadline has broken the news that Dobrofsky is working on a holiday horror movie called Down Below… and he has assembled a solid cast for the project. The legendary Eric Roberts (The Dark Knight) stars alongside Bai Ling (The Crow), Alexis Knapp (Pitch Perfect), and Doug Jones, who is best known for his creature (or heavily made up) performances in films like The Shape of Water, Hellboy, and Hocus Pocus.

Raekwon of the Grammy-nominated hip-hop group Wu-Tang Clan is set to executive produce a new documentary short spotlighting the life of disco superstar Richie Weeks.

“Taking Back the Groove” will showcase the trials, tribulations and success stories of Week’s life. Per the doc’s official logline, “like many Black artists throughout American recording history, his talent was strip-mined to enrich white-owned record labels. Weeks and his manager Jerome Derradji narrate the story of how they clawed back the rights to Weeks’ music and the ongoing fight to restore his legacy and share his music.”

“Growing up in NY, I was around some of the best disco music – I loved it. It inspired me. Richie, and many artists like him, helped influence the culture,” said Raekwon. “What happened to Richie is an example of something that happens all of the time in the music industry. I’m really glad I...

Coming soon from High Stake Entertainment, Eric Roberts has been set to star in Down Below, a horror movie set on Christmas Eve. Deadline first reported the news this afternoon.

Spyder Dobrofsky is directing the psychological horror movie.

Hutch Dano and Christopher Livingston will also star.

Deadline details, “Down Below centers around a young sheriff and a criminal suspect who find their lives intertwined when both become haunted by a sinister force on Christmas Eve.

“Roberts portrays a highly intelligent police psychologist, who’s having a tough time with his current patient, a cop who was recently suspended for an act of violence on a civilian.”

The post ‘Down Below’ – Eric Roberts Starring in Christmas Eve Horror Movie appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Exclusive: Academy Award nominee Eric Roberts (Babylon) has been set to star opposite Hutch Dano and Christopher Livingston in Down Below, a psychological horror film from director Spyder Dobrofsky that is currently in production.

The plot of Down Below centers around a young sheriff and a criminal suspect who find their lives intertwined when both become haunted by a sinister force on Christmas Eve. Roberts portrays a highly intelligent police psychologist, who’s having a tough time with his current patient, a cop who was recently suspended for an act of violence on a civilian. Pic’s being produced by High Stake Entertainment.

Roberts was most recently seen playing Robert, the father of Margot Robbie’s Nellie Laroy, in Damien Chazelle’s Old Hollywood epic Babylon for Paramount Pictures, which scored three Oscar noms earlier this year. The always-busy actor is also known for turns in films like Hard Luck Love Song,...

Birthday Candles, Noah Haidle’s Broadway dramedy starring Debra Messing as a woman who, over the course of the play’s 90 minutes ages from 17 to 107, has just about all the right ingredients for the poignant, funny and life-affirming experience it sets out to be. If everything doesn’t always come together just as it should, well, even an imperfect cake is better than no cake at all.

Opening tonight at the American Airlines Theatre, the Roundabout Theatre Company production of Birthday Candles casts the always likable Messing, having already won us over from her years on Will & Grace, as Ernestine, whom we first meet on her 17th birthday as she joins her mother in a yearly tradition of cake-baking.

“Eggs, butter, sugar, salt,” says mother Alice, reciting a little speech that itself will become part of Ernestine’s lifetime birthday tradition. “The humblest ingredients. But when you turn back and look far enough,...

John Earl Jelks, currently appearing in the HBO Max series Love Life, has joined the previously announced Debra Messing and Enrico Colantoni in the cast of the upcoming Broadway production of Noah Haidle’s Birthday Candles.

The Roundabout Theatre Company production, which begins previews March 18 and opens April 10, was originally set to debut in spring 2020 but was postponed due to the Covid shutdown. At the time, Andre Braugher was set to co-star with Messing and Colantoni.

The limited engagement of Birthday Candles will run through May 29 at the American Airlines Theatre. Vivienne Benesch directs.

Jelks is known to Broadway audiences for his role in Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Sweat (2017) and his Tony-nominated 2007 performance in August Wilson’s Radio Golf. He had previously appeared in Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean. Other stage work includes Tarell Alvin McCraney’s Head of Passes, co-starring Phylicia Rashad, at the Public Theater Off Broadway and L.

The Clive Barnes Foundation, today announced finalists for the 10thAnnual Clive Barnes Awards, recognizing excellence in Theater and Dance. According to the New York Times,the list includesCelia Rose Gooding Jagged Little Pill,Sophia Anne Caruso Beetlejuice, Andrew Burnap The Inheritance, and Christopher Livingston The Great Society in the theatre category, and India Bradley, Roman Mejia, Kellie Drobnick, and Aran Bell in the dance category.

André Braugher has been cast opposite the previously announced Debra Messing in the Roundabout Theatre Company’s upcoming Broadway production of Noah Haidle’s play Birthday Candles.

Also newly announced for the production Enrico Colantoni in his Broadway debut, Crystal Finn (The Tick), Susannah Flood (Roundabout’s The Cherry Orchard) and Christopher Livingston.

Directed by Vivienne Benesch, the New York premiere of Birthday Candles begins previews on Thursday, April 2 at the American Airlines Theatre, with an official opening on Tuesday, April 21. The limited engagement runs through Sunday, June 21.

Braugher, currently co-starring alongside Andy Samberg in Brooklyn Nine- Nine, will be making his Broadway debut. He has won two Emmy Awards, for FX’s Thief and his breakthrough role on NBC’s Homicide: Life on the Street.

The play follows a woman named Ernestine (played by Will...

A new Broadway season is gearing up, and there are currently nine productions of plays set to open this fall. Could we be seeing any of them contend at this year’s Tony Awards? Below, we recap the plot of each play as well as the awards history of its author, cast, creative types, the opening, and (where applicable) closing dates.

“Betrayal” (opens September 5; closes December 8)

In the third Broadway revival of Harold Pinter’s 1978 award-winning play, the story charts a compelling seven-year romance, thrillingly captured in reverse chronological order.

The original Broadway production received Tony nominations for star Blythe Danner and director Peter Hall. This production is coming in after a successful run in London’s West End earlier this year. The cast includes Emmy nominee Tom Hiddleston, Zawe Ashton, SAG winner Charlie Cox, and is directed by Laurence Olivier Award winner Jamie Lloyd.

“The Height of the Storm...

The most gripping episodes of Mindhunter's second season revolve around Wayne Williams (Christopher Livingston), a young black man who authorities believed was linked to the tragic Atlanta child murders from 1979 to 1981. Today, uncertainties remain over whether or not Williams was responsible for the abduction and deaths of 29 black children and young adults. He was only convicted for the killings of two adults, which left 27 deaths officially unprosecuted according to season two's end screen card. As such, many believed that Williams may have been a scapegoat, because Atlanta soon closed the child murder cases after finding him.

Mindhunter casts Williams as a suspicious character, but it also introduces doubt as to whether he committed all of the crimes. The series examines the troubling politics of the city's rush to make the cases go away, as well as the FBI's search for a young black man. Beyond the narrative of these latest episodes,...

Robert Schenkkan’s Broadway-bound The Great Society, his second Lbj play following the celebrated All The Way, has completed casting and set an opening night for Tuesday, October 1 at the Vivian Beaumont Theater.

Joining the previously announced Brian Cox (as Lyndon B. Johnson) will be Marchánt Davis as Stokely Carmichael, Brian Dykstra as Adam Walinsky, Barbara Garrick as Lady Bird Johnson, David Garrison as Richard Nixon, Ty Jones as Reverend Ralph Abernathy, Christopher Livingston as James Bevel, Angela Pierce as Pat Nixon, Matthew Rauch as Robert McNamara, Nikkole Salter as Coretta Scott King and Tramell Tillman as Bob Moses.

Previews begin on the previously announced Friday, September 6 for a strictly limited 12-week engagement.

The newcomers join the previously announced Cox, Grantham Coleman as Martin Luther King Jr., Marc Kudisch as Richard J. Daley, Bryce Pinkham as Senator Robert F. Kennedy, Frank Wood as Senator Everett Dirksen, Gordon Clapp as J. Edgar Hoover,...