The Inflection Cut

We're back with a new season and maybe the craziest film of the series.  In the wake of Jaws 2, the producers decided to mix it up by jumping on the 80s 3D bandwagon. But going with Dennis Quaid and throwing things at the audience wasn't the original way they wanted to shake up the status quo. Halstead and Eric dig up the crazy story and answer the real questions, like: What if instead of 3D horro...

The team closes out season two of The Infection Cut with another Infection Game - a lightning round, this time focused on casting what-ifs. From a very different Raiders of the Lost Ark to a couple of wild James Bond takes, Halstead and Eric look at some fascinating films that almost were. As always, it's about the burning questions that affect the everyman: Is the Bond franchise without Sean Conn...

While you wait for our (post?) holiday special, here's a little bonus special feature for you - a discussion we had while making the Peter Berg's Dune episode about the other versions of Dune that almost got made or did (kinda) get made. If you haven't listened to that episode, we recommend that you do so before listening to this. But hey, do what you want - we're not the boss of you. Enjoy, and w...

Join the team as they glue on goatees and head for the darkest timeline, set in motion by a seemingly innocuous event: Peter Berg making his dream project Dune in 2009. It's either a VERY late Halloween episode or an early holiday gift, depending on how you feel about the careers of Denis Villeneuve, Tyler Sheridan, and many others caught up in this inflection. Among the burning questions answered...

This month, the team heads to the final frontier to look at the decade-long struggle to revive Star Trek in the 1970s.  Even though there were no new episodes in the 1970s, CBS almost immediately had regrets about Star Trek's cancellation and spent the disco era trying to find a way back to the quickly growing legions of fans. As always, Halstead and Eric are ready with the tough questions, like:...

Halstead and Eric take a slightly different approach in the latest episode of the Inflection cut. They focus on Orson Welles' originally planned first film, an adaptation of Joseph Conrad's 1899 novel Heart of Darkness. However, along the way, they can't avoid the '70s elephant in the room - Apocalypse Now. While it was finally brought to the screen by Francis Ford Coppola in 1979, it was initiall...

On a new episode of The Inflection Cut, Halstead and Eric tackle the internet's safe space, Star Wars and its fandom. Specifically, the Episode IX that almost was, Colin Trevorrow's Duel of the Fates. The team tackles the questions that really matter, like: What if the final film in the Star Wars trilogy of trilogies was actually good? How did a little-seen indie destroy Disney's planned productio...

On this episode of The Inflection Cut, Halstead and Eric look at Guillermo del Toro's many attempts to get his passion project, an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's novel At the Mountains of Madness, to the big screen. At one point, we were mere inches from a $150 million blockbuster written and directed by Del Toro, produced by James Cameron, and co-starring Tom Cruise! As always, the team tackles t...

On the Season 2 premiere of The Inflection Cut, the team returns to the early aughts WB and DC to look at the big-budget Justice League by the director of Mad Max that was inches from production start when it was cancelled. They also offer a shocking follow-up to the Coyote vs. Acme-focused season finale. Were we robbed of supreme Aussie superhero goodness? What if the Snyderverse had been the Mil...

In a special mystery season finale, the team looks at a film that was actually completed but never released - Coyote vs. Acme. After a smooth production process and very successful test screenings, the film was nevertheless hidden away by Warner Brothers in 2024, never to be seen again. Why did WB Discovery refuse to release or sell Coyote vs. Acme? Was it wrong place wrong time, or was it MURDER?...

Eric and Halstead celebrate the holiday season with a special speed round we're dubbing The Infection Game. We get to the bottom of what really matters, like: Why has there never been a movie of the popular 80s Top Gun-meets-Gundam series Robotech? Was Superman a coded look at the post-WW2 Jewish diaspora? Is Scott Rudin a villain in the Inflection Cut multiverse, our universe, or both? Brooklyn -...

On an election's eve episode of The Inflection Cut, the team turns its multiversal projector on the MCU. They dig into the crazy story of when the director of Shaun of the Dead and Baby Driver left a major Marvel film he had been working on for almost a decade, less than a month before filming was to start. Why did Edgar Wright quit Ant-Man so close to production? Could his "Ocean's Eleven as a su...

In the latest episode of The Infection Cut, the team unspools the crazy story of Crusade, Paul Verhoeven and Arnold Schwarzenegger's wild, big-budget epic about the 13th century Catholic Crusades. This film had a cast, sets built, and yet was killed just days before filming started. As always, we focus on what really matters: What could make a Hollywood studio cancel a film with $10 million dollar...

After the blockbuster success of the Alien sequel Aliens, producing a 3rd movie was a top priority for 20th Century Fox. The tortuous development process that followed eventually led to 1992's divisive Alien3. Eric and Halstead look at the many false starts to see if there was a better way. Could the second Alien sequel have been salvaged? How might that have led to a golden age of auteur-driven s...

We had too much fun stunt casting Batman Year One and discussing a new vision for DC films in the 21st century, so we spun that discussion off into our first-ever bonus episode! Hopefully, that was a good idea.

After the underperforming Batman and Robin, a young filmmaker named Darren Aronofsky pitched a hard-R, 1970s set reimagining of Batman's origin. And it got surprisingly close to seeing the light of day. What if it had been made instead of Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins? Would we have the Aronofsyverse instead of the Snyderverse? Join Halsted and Eric in their second adventure in the cinematic m...

In our inaugural episode, Eric & Halstead look at the tortured history of Peter Jackson’s never-made film based on the Halo video game franchise. What led to the film’s failure to launch? Who could have brought this film across the finish line? Why would a Halo film lead to the streaming wars starting a decade earlier? Bibliography