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Robert Eggers' Lines Up an Adaptation of ROMEO AND JULIET Robert Eggers ( Nosferatu , The Witch ), still awaiting the release of his upcoming Werwulf , has now lined up his next project: an adaptation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet at Focus Features, which won a bidding war against Warner Bros., A24, and others. Focus previously released Nosferatu and will release Werwulf on Christmas D...

Greta Gerwig's First NARNIA Movie Is a Bowie-Inspired 'Rock Opera' Greta Gerwig told Empire that her upcoming Narnia: The Magician's Nephew is a "rock opera" — though explicitly not a musical (no songs, just musical style and spirit). She's drawing inspiration from David Bowie, The Who, Paul McCartney, David Gilmour, Pete Townshend, Jimmy Page, and Robert Plant, expla...

LANTERNS Is So Good, It Silenced My Inner Comic Nerd Complaints This opinion piece reflects on how HBO Max's Lanterns — despite initially worrying the author with promotional material reminiscent of the poorly received Titans — turned into a surprise critical hit and one of HBO's highest-rated comic book series, reviving the Green Lantern brand after the disastrous 2011 film. Though the au...

Paramount and State AGs Settle Case, Paving Way for Warner Bros Merger Paramount and a 12-state coalition of Attorneys General (led by California's Rob Bonta) have reached a settlement in the antitrust case surrounding Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery's $111 billion merger, removing a major legal obstacle without requiring any major divestitures. Terms include a $1.5 billion, five-year commitm...

Disney+ Allows Ads Even on 'Ad-Free' Plans Disney+ has updated its European subscriber agreement to allow ads on all plans — including its premium "ad-free" tier — before and after content playback (though not during it), and no plan allows fast-forwarding through these ads. This mirrors a broader streaming industry trend of eroding "ad-free" as a meaningful term, similar to Netflix's password-sha...

SACRIFICE Trailer Turns Chris Evans Into a Human Offering Netflix's trailer for Sacrifice , from director Romain Gavras ( Athena ), shows Anya Taylor-Joy as a radical warrior planning to offer movie star Chris Evans as a sacrifice to an active volcano to save a dying world. The film also stars Vincent Cassel and Salma Hayek-Pinault as a billionaire couple, plus Ambika Mod, Sam Richardson, John Mal...

Brad Pitt Rocks '70s Style in THE FURTHER MIS-ADVENTURES OF CLIFF BOOTH Trailer The new trailer for The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth — David Fincher's surprising sequel to Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood , starring a returning Brad Pitt as stuntman/fixer Cliff Booth — shows Cliff pulled into a web of "murder, blackmail, theft, extortion" involving TV megastar Charlie Peters (Sco...

Tom King's Controversial WONDER WOMAN Run to End in December After three years and 40 issues, writer Tom King and artist Daniel Sampere will conclude their acclaimed but divisive Wonder Woman run with issue #40 in December, ending short of King's original 100-issue goal due to his other obligations, including showrunning the DCU's animated Mister Miracle series. The run, praised early on but seen...

Who Is LANTERNS' Carol Ferris? Hal Jordan's Old Flame, Explained This article covers the comics history of Carol Ferris — who appears in Lanterns episode 6 at Hal Jordan's funeral, played by Amie MacKenzie — tracing her from her 1959 debut as Hal's boss at Ferris Aircraft, through her transformation into the villainous Star Sapphire via the alien Zamarons in 1962, her decades-long on-again/off-aga...

THE VAMPIRE LESTAT Film Would Have Skipped the Rock Star Angle Director Neil Jordan revealed to Nerdist details about his never-produced script for The Vampire Lestat , the planned sequel to his 1994 Interview with the Vampire (Tom Cruise ultimately passed on returning). Jordan said he was never interested in portraying Lestat as a David Lee Roth-style rock star; instead, his script focused on Les...

An INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE Director's Cut Is Sadly Lost to Time Ahead of the film's September 22 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray release, Neil Jordan told Nerdist he tried to deliver a director's cut but couldn't locate his original theatrical/test-audience cut in Warner Bros.' vaults, nor had he kept a personal copy. Instead, the disc includes surviving deleted scenes, the most notable being a conversatio...

Neil Jordan on INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE'S Immortal Legacy In this extended Nerdist interview timed to the film's 4K Blu-ray release, Neil Jordan reflects on adapting Anne Rice's novel after its infamous 18-year development odyssey (which once considered Cher as Louis), casting Tom Cruise despite public backlash, working with makeup effects legend Stan Winston (who was inspired by veins on Jordan...

Matthew Lillard Is 'Ashamed' of SCREAM 7 Role After Barrera Firing During a 30th-anniversary Scream interview, Matthew Lillard admitted feeling "embarrassed" about returning for Scream 7 given Melissa Barrera's firing from the franchise over her comments supporting Palestine. Lillard said Barrera was "on the right side of history" and that the industry should have defended her. Nerdist's take crit...

Greta Gerwig's First NARNIA Movie Is a Bowie-Inspired 'Rock Opera' Greta Gerwig told Empire that her upcoming Narnia: The Magician's Nephew is a "rock opera" — though not literally a musical — drawing visual and tonal inspiration from David Bowie, The Who, Pink Floyd, and other glam-rock icons. She's shifting the story's setting to 1950s Britain, with fantastical Narnia sequences styled after '60s...

 LEGO's JURASSIC PARK Jeep Caused Me an Unexpected Conundrum A review of LEGO's 1,924-piece Jurassic Park Jeep Wrangler set (buildable in four variations reflecting different film moments) praises its craftsmanship, working features (movable wheels, doors, headrests, liftable hood), and included Dennis Nedry minifigure. The reviewer's "conundrum": the set only includes two side-view mirror st...

Could CASINO ROYALE Movie Theater Re-Release Signal New James Bond Announcement? Amazon MGM Studios is re-releasing Casino Royale in theaters worldwide in October to mark its 20th anniversary (the film turns 20 on November 17). The author speculates this could be a strategic prelude to finally announcing the next actor to play James Bond, a decision reportedly being led by director Denis Villeneuv...

Who Is Mads Mikkelsen's CALL OF DUTY: MODERN WARFARE 4 Villain? Trailer Offers Hints The new trailer for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 introduces Mads Mikkelsen as "The Archer," a menacing new villain seeking an unknown, catastrophic weapon amid a Korean Peninsula conflict and the manhunt for a rogue John Price (following the events of Modern Warfare 3 ). The article recaps Mikkelsen's history of...

Could MCU Rogue Start X-MEN as a Villain? With Inde Navarrette set to play Rogue in Marvel Studios' upcoming X-Men reboot, this article explores rumors that she may debut as an adversary rather than a hero — mirroring her rarely-adapted comics origin. Created by Chris Claremont and Michael Golden, Rogue first appeared in 1981's Avengers Annual #10 as a villainous member of Mystique's Brotherhood o...

DC's CLAYFACE Officially Rated R DC Studios' Clayface , penned by Mike Flanagan, has received an official R rating from the MPA for "strong bloody violence, gore, language, some nudity and brief drug use," confirming the hard-R body horror approach James Gunn and Peter Safran had promised. The film stars Tom Rhys Harries as actor Matt Hagen, who turns to experimental treatment from scientist Dr. C...

 BRAND NEW DAY Tops THE FORCE AWAKENS as Domestic Box Office Champ Spider-Man: Brand New Day has surpassed Star Wars: The Force Awakens to become the highest-grossing domestic film of all time, earning $936.773 million in just 47 days (compared to The Force Awakens 's decade-long $936 million record) and $2.45 billion globally, making it the third-highest-grossing film worldwide ever. The art...

James Gunn Drops Another Justice League International Hint James Gunn continues teasing that his DCU is building toward a live-action Justice League International , this time through comments about his take on Maxwell Lord (played by his brother Sean Gunn). When a fan asked how the Guardians could let Guy Gardner work for someone "evil" like Lord, Gunn clarified that his version draws from the dee...

Will the MCU X-MEN Reboot Feature Rival Mutant Schools? With Jean Grey, Cyclops, and Angel already cast (and Beast rumored to follow), it appears Marvel Studios' upcoming X-Men film will center on the "Original Five" (O5) X-Men from the 1963 comics. But the article speculates that other announced cast members like Emma Frost (Samara Weaving), Storm, and Rogue may instead belong to a rival mutant s...

Is DIGGER a Musical? The Internet Thinks So! The internet has latched onto a theory that Tom Cruise's upcoming film Digger might secretly be a musical, sparked by a viral tweet from writer Jason Pargin compiling trailer clips as "evidence." The clips do feature unusually sweeping camera angles, overwrought gestures, and dramatic flourishes resembling musical numbers, and other users noted that fil...

MR. IRRELEVANT Trailer: David Corenswet's Sports Movie Will Make You Sob The trailer for Mr. Irrelevant introduces David Corenswet as John Tuggle, the real-life last player selected in the 1983 NFL draft by the New York Giants, who fought a battle far bigger than earning a roster spot. Directed by Jonathan Levine ( 50/50 , Warm Bodies ), the film also stars Michael Shannon as Hall-of-Fame coach Bi...

LANTERNS Episode 5 Showed Us Pure Good and Evil This review of Lanterns episode five discusses how the finale of the show's 2016 storyline strips away moral ambiguity, revealing Zoe Macon (the Manhunter posing as a beloved Rushville community member) to be utterly amoral rather than sympathetic — she's used the townspeople for control and is willing to sacrifice them to draw out and kill Hal Jorda...