Franchise Addicts

Luke, Chris, and Peter break down the horror phenomenon of the year. Kane Parsons started posting Backrooms videos on YouTube at 16, teaching himself Blender from his bedroom. Four years later he directed A24's highest-grossing film ever, starring two Oscar nominees, on a 30,000 square foot practical set so large the cast and crew actually got lost in it. $402 million worldwide on an $8 millio...

Luke, Chris, and Peter take on Zach Cregger's Resident Evil reboot fresh off opening weekend. The Barbarian director made a video game movie that actually feels like playing a video game. Austin Abrams is a medical courier, not a supersoldier. Paul Walter Hauser is here. Zach Cherry shows up. The camera angles literally mimic the game's second and third-person perspectives. Cregger spent thousands...

Luke, Chris, and Peter take on the biggest horror movie of the year. Obsession was made for $750,000 by a 26-year-old YouTube sketch comedian and has grossed over $500 million worldwide. Curry Barker wrote, directed, and edited it. He fought the MPAA over head smashes to avoid an NC-17 rating. The music store where they filmed got shut down a year after they wrapped. It was also featured in Wayne'...

The isolation series finale. Luke, Chris, and Peter close it out with the most literal isolation movie ever made. Tom Hanks gained 50 pounds, production shut down for a year so he could lose it all, and Zemeckis made an entire other movie in the gap. Wilson the volleyball had actual written dialogue that was cut from the final film. FedEx didn't pay a cent for the placement and saw a 30% spike in...

Week three of the Isolation series. Luke, Chris, and Peter take on Spike Jonze's 2013 masterpiece. Her is a love story between a lonely man and his operating system, and the scariest thing about it is that none of it feels like science fiction anymore. Jonze conceived the idea after reading about an AI chatbot in the early 2000s. The original voice of Samantha was Samantha Morton, who performed on...

Week two of the Isolation series. Luke and Chris go back to the movie that made them friends. Drive isn't an action movie. It's a fairy tale set in Los Angeles about a man who built walls around himself so carefully that the one time he lets someone in, it destroys everything. Refn doesn't have a driver's license. Gosling restored the Malibu himself. Carey Mulligan summarized making the film as "s...

The isolation series begins. Luke, Chris, and Peter kick off a brand new custom franchise with John Carpenter's 1982 masterpiece. The Thing isn't a monster movie. It's a trust movie. Twelve men trapped in Antarctica with a creature that can perfectly imitate any of them. The paranoia doesn't come from what the alien looks like. It comes from the fact that anyone could be it. Rob Bottin was 22 year...

Week four of our alien invasion franchise. Luke, Chris, and Peter take on Denis Villeneuve's masterpiece. Arrival isn't about aliens. It's about a woman who learns to see time the way they do and has to decide whether knowing how the story ends changes whether it's worth living. Amy Adams accepted the role in 24 hours. The ship interior was built practically 50 feet off the ground. Villeneuve made...

Fresh out of the theater. Luke, Chris, and Peter just saw Disclosure Day and are going live with their instant reaction. Steven Spielberg's return to alien contact closes out our five-week alien invasion franchise series. From Close Encounters' obsession to Independence Day's spectacle to District 9's refuge to Arrival's understanding to this. No prep. No notes. Just raw first impressions. 🎙️ Part...

Description: Week three of our alien invasion franchise. Luke, Chris, and Peter take on the most politically charged film in the series. District 9 flips the alien invasion on its head. The aliens have been here for 20 years and humanity's response isn't wonder, isn't spectacle, it's a refugee camp, barbed wire, and forced relocations. Neill Blomkamp grew up during apartheid in South Africa and ma...

The podcast covers the film 'Independence Day' and explores its marketing, box office success, character development, and political and social commentary. The film is discussed in the context of its spectacle and ensemble cast. In this conversation, the hosts discuss the magic of summer blockbusters in the 90s, the impact of Independence Day on the film industry, the compelling characters of the m...

The Franchise Addicts are joined by special guest Zach to talk through 1977s Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Check him out on all his platforms: https://open.substack.com/pub/zachonarthouse Tik Tok: zachonarthouse Letterboxd: Zsmith33 The podcast episode covers the movie 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' and delves into the themes of wonder and obsession. The discussion explores the initial...

The conversation covers the disnification of the Predator franchise, the use of practical effects and CGI, the reception and audience response to the film, and a humorous discussion about the Disneyfication of horror franchises. The conversation delves into the portrayal of characters in movies, highlighting the impact of video games on character development and the influence of video game dynamic...

Luke, Chris, and Peter cover the two best Predator films since the original. Prey takes the hunt back to 1719 with a Comanche warrior who earned the franchise its best reviews in 35 years. Killer of Killers sends Vikings, samurai, and WWII pilots against the Yautja in an animated anthology that builds the first Predator cinematic universe. After weeks of suffering through sequels, the franchise fi...

Luke, Chris, and Peter attempt to survive three Predator sequels in one night. Predator 2 moves the hunt to 1990s LA with Danny Glover and Gary Busey. Predators drops Adrien Brody on an alien planet and asks you to believe he's an action star. The Predator brings back Shane Black, the guy who wrote bad jokes in the original, to direct an entire movie that somehow makes even less sense than his jok...

In this live-stream recording, the Franchise Addicts crew—Luke, Chris, and the team—trek deep into the jungle to hunt down the 1987 masterpiece that defined a generation of sci-fi horror: Predator. Join the Hunt:Who was your favorite member of Dutch's team? And honestly—if you were in the jungle, would you have "gotten to the choppa" in time? Let us know in the comments! Subscribe to Franchise Add...

In this episode of Franchise Addicts , Luke, Chris, and special guest Peter dive into the high-octane prequel Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga . We’re concluding our journey through the Wasteland by breaking down George Miller’s latest epic and its place in the legendary franchise. We explore the fascinating production history of the film, including the "lost" Studio Ghibli-style anime script known as The...

Four hosts. One War Rig. Luke, Chris, returning guest Peter, and special guest Dominic from Talkin TV take on the greatest action movie of the century. Mad Max: Fury Road is George Miller's masterpiece, made 30 years after Thunderdome by a 70-year-old director who embarrassed every action filmmaker half his age. Is this Furiosa's movie more than Max's? Is Nux the real hero? How did Miller make Hap...

Luke and Chris step outside the franchise world for a special episode breaking down their favorite films of 2025 and making their Oscar predictions before the big night. From the blockbusters that dominated the box office to the smaller films that deserved more attention, this is the full rundown of a year that turned out to be one of the best in recent memory. Plus, who's taking home Best Picture...

Luke, Chris, and the return of Peter take on Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, the strangest entry in the franchise and the first film George Miller made without his producing partner Byron Kennedy. Is this secretly two different movies? Why does Tina Turner disappear for 40 minutes? Did Tupac really shoot California Love on the Bartertown set? And how does Max go from road warrior to reluctant messiah...

The Franchise Addicts are back from hiatus and diving straight into the latest entry in the 28 Days Later franchise. Luke and Chris break down 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, Nia DaCosta's blood-soaked sequel that splits its story between a 12-year-old trapped in a satanic cult and a man building a friendship with the monster he should be running from. Ralph Fiennes, Jack O'Connell, the Jimmys, a...

Is Mad Max: The Road Warrior a post-apocalyptic movie or a Western in disguise? Luke and guests Peter and Andres dig into the 1981 sequel that spawned an entire genre of leather-clad wasteland cinema. In this episode: The case for Road Warrior being the greatest quality jump from movie one to movie two in film history Why Max only has 12 lines of dialogue (and two of them are "I just came for the...

We’re starting 2026 by going back to the beginning with Mad Max . Before the wasteland. Before the mythology. Before Max became a symbol. This is a small, angry road movie about a world still pretending to function. We talk about the collapse of law before the collapse of society, the violence that feels more procedural than heroic, and a protagonist who understands exactly what the road will turn...

We’re closing out the year by looking back at everything we covered on Franchise Addicts — the franchises, the debates, the surprises, and the episodes that stuck with us. In this end-of-year episode, we revisit the movies and series we spent the most time with, pick our favorite episodes from the catalog, revisit a few moments we still think about, and allow ourselves one rating mulligan — becaus...

In this episode of Franchise Addicts , we take on Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny — the final chapter in one of cinema’s most iconic franchises. Set decades after his last adventure, Dial of Destiny finds Indiana Jones aging, isolated, and wrestling with a world that no longer needs him. When an ancient artifact tied to time itself resurfaces, Indy is pulled into a story that forces him to c...