The thriller streaming service Shudder will soon serve an up-close and personal look at some of movies’ scariest baddies, perfect for Halloween viewing.
Behind the Monsters examines the nightmare fuel from the films A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Halloween, Child’s Play, Hellraiser, and of course, Candyman.
The docuseries drops a new installment each Wednesday, premiering October 27 with a deep dive into Michael Myers from Halloween.
The next episodes explore Candyman‘s titular villain; Chucky, the murderous doll from Child’s Play; Friday the 13th‘s hockey mask-wearing Jason Voorhees; and Hellraiser‘s demonic Pinhead.
With representatives from the massive Hollywood union the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) and those from the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers still at the bargaining table, things are tense in Tinseltown.
The showbiz union, representing tens of thousands of behind-the-scenes workers, says its workers will gp on strike Monday, hitting the picket lines at 12:01 a.m. Pacific time if the union’s needs aren’t met.
The strike would spell a massive shutdown of countless productions in Hollywood and elsewhere.
Last week, IATSE’s membershiip authorized its first nationwide strike in its 128-year history, but both sides continue to negotiate.
Union members say they’re seeking adequate compensation and safe working conditions in an industry that pushes work days far longer than most realize. The boon in production from streaming services has compounded the overwork problem, union members say.
“Assume there will be a strike and hope there isn’t,” Deadline says a representative told members of one of the IATSE’s groups, Local 800, at a virtual town hall Thursday.
Another source told the trade the odds are “about 50-50” whether the union will strike or not, “but that could change quickly either way…”
IATSE’s “most grievous problems” with producers and studios include: “excessively unsafe and harmful working hours; unlivable wages for the lowest paid crafts; consistent failure to provide reasonable rest during meal breaks, between workdays, and on weekends,” and its assertion that, “workers on certain ‘new media’ streaming projects get paid less, even on productions with budgets that rival or exceed those of traditionally released blockbusters.”
Penn Badgley returns as Joe Goldberg, an unassuming serial killer, stalker, and book enthusiast turned suburban dad, in season three of Netflix’s You.
Badgley tells ABC Audio that although he appears to have met his match in his partner Love Quinn, there’s no certainty that he’ll ever change his killer ways.
“I don’t know that he can be reformed,” Badgley says. “I don’t know what that really would look like for him. I don’t know if he came to terms with who he really is and what he’s done.”
Badgley says Joe’s inability to hold himself accountable is because “he’s a fugue state,” a person who temporarily loses their sense of personal identity and impulsively wanders off.
“Fugues are interesting. Fugues are actually very powerful,” he explains. “Maybe within their own kind of thing they go somewhere, but they always return. They always return to the beginning. And that’s really what Joe is.”
Similar to Badgley who offers some much needed insight into Joe’s troubled mind, Victoria Pedretti, who plays Love Quinn, shares her personal take on Love’s erratic behavior.
“Her behavior is obviously a lot of extremes, but I think we find her relatable because she is programed… through the media, and schools… that teach us our roles as women,” she says, before noting that Love’s season three motivations come from “familial trauma,” “being deeply neglected” and a lack “of self-worth.”
Still, Pedretti believes that as problematic as Joe and Love may be, they both are “worthy” of “empathy and sympathy.”
“I think it’s valuable to try to understand people, at least a little bit,” she shares.
Season three of You is now available to stream on Netflix.
In less than a month, Netflix’s dystopian thriller Squid Game has officially become a cultural phenomenon, with record viewers on the streaming platform.
The success was a surprise to the hyper-violent show’s creator, Hwang Dong-Hyuk. But he tells Good Morning America he always envisioned the global appeal of the show.
“If you look at the cast of characters, you have the elite member of society, Sang-woo. You have the…middle-class man, Gi-hun. You have the migrant worker, Ali…and you have Il-nam, who…represents the senior class,” he said. “…I think they constitute the minority in any country in the world.”
Dong-Hyukwas 38 and broke — and living off his mom, like the show’s main character Gi-hun — when he wrote Squid Game more than 10 years ago.
“The first game — was the most difficult and scary thing to film,” recalls the creator. It was a grown-up version of the kid’s activity “Red Light/Green Light” — except the penalty for moving is death. “It was like seeing 456 characters all move according to choreography, like watching a K-Pop band, because all these people had to move and stop in unison,” Hwang says.
Squid Game has reached #1 in 94 countries and has been translated into over 30 languages, but Dong-Hyuk pleaded, “please, please watch the subtitle” version. “Because if you don’t see — the acting, the performance from the real actor…You’re missing — most of [the] Squid Game fun.”
For a second season, Dong-Hyuk’s gotten inspiration from many fans, thanks to their own Squid Game challenges on social media.
“Some of them [were] really brilliant, you know?” he said. “So maybe I’ll go through…YouTube again…Then I’ll steal the ideas from the fans,” he added with a laugh.
At its heart, The Last Duel, out in theaters today, is a story about believing women. It’s based on a true story of a high-ranking French official accused of rape in the 14th century, told from three different perspectives: the accused, the accuser, and the accuser’s husband.
The film was written by Matt Damon, Ben Affleck and Nicole Holofcener, and Affleck tells ABC News it’s a story he thinks most in the United States don’t know.
“We were totally like blown away by the story. We had no idea,” the Academy award winner recalls. “I know it’s a fairly well-known story still in France, because at the time it was the sort of, I don’t know what the equivalent would be, the O.J. Simpson case or something, a very famous person accused of a horrible crime,” he adds. “It was very sensational. And so, it even lingers to this day in the consciousness in France. But I’m pretty confident that it’s a story that is very unfamiliar to audiences here.”
Even though the story wasn’t necessarily a well-known one in the U.S., Jodie Comer, who plays the woman at its center, shares that she was “fascinated” at the idea of the film having three perspectives “but ultimately one truth,” which made the gig pretty easy to say “yes” to.
As if the film wasn’t already star-studded enough, Adam Driver appears and gets in a few scuffles with Damon, who says he enjoyed the bumps and bruises.
“It was really fun. It was really physical. And you know, and I had to try to keep up with Adam Driver. He’s a good deal younger than I am, and he’s very physically fit,” Damon admits. “So, there was that.”
It’s safe to say that William Shatner and Prince William don’t see eye to eye when it comes to space exploration.
Just one day after Shatner traveled to space with Jeff Bezo‘s company Blue Origin, the royal criticized space travel, and while he didn’t name the Amazon founder he told BBC, “We need some of the world’s greatest brains and minds fixed on trying to repair this planet, not trying to find the next place to go and live.”
When asked to respond to the Prince’s comments, the Star Trek alum told Entertainment Tonight, “He’s a lovely Englishman. He’s going to be king of England one day. He’s a lovely, gentle, educated man, but he’s got the wrong idea.”
“The idea here is not to go, ‘Yeah, look at me. I’m in space.’ The landing that consumed all that…energy and people to take a look and go, ‘Oh, look at that.’ No,” Shatner clarified. “I would tell the prince, and I hope the prince gets the message, this is a baby step into the idea of getting industry up there, so that all those polluting industries, especially, for example, the industries that make electricity…off of Earth.”
“We’ve got all the technology, the rockets, to send the things up there…You can build a base 250, 280 miles above the Earth and send that power down here, and they catch it, and they then use it, and it’s there,” Shatner continued. “All it needs is…somebody as rich as Jeff Bezos [to say], ‘Let’s go up there.'”
“The prince is missing the point,” Shatner repeated. “The point is these are the baby steps to show people [that] it’s very practical. You can send somebody like me up into space.”
If the real world isn’t scary enough, the new Halloween movie fans have been dying to see is out now.
After the COVID-19 pandemic delayed its release by a year, Halloween Killsslashes its way into theaters today and star Jamie Lee Curtis promises fans it was well worth the wait.
The actress explains that the film is bigger, badder and even gorier than the previous installment.
“[Halloween] 2018 was about female trauma and violence against women and 2021’s movie is about a mob violence,” Curtis, 62, explained, saying the town of Haddonfield, IL, is finally fed up with Michael Meyers and is “taking matters into our own hands.”
“[It’s] a group of people — collateral damage — coming together, saying, ‘We are as mad as hell. We are not taking it anymore. The system is broken,'” she continued, adding that “the violence is next level.”
However, director and writer David Gordon Green hints taking down the legendary killer won’t be easy, but remained coy on how Meyers will be able to withstand the wrath of an entire town.
Does the slasher have powers or is he just an abnormally strong and violent man? Green said the film won’t answer that age-old question, but it will explore “the mystery [of] what makes him scary.”
In order to do that, he needed to expand the scope of “Laurie versus Michael” and include the thousands of voices of Haddonfield who have been a part of the Halloween saga since the beginning.
“I thought it would be fascinating to study a community, to an effect of fear that transcends the interpersonal and becomes the almost cosmic interpretation of fear,” Green explained.
Halloween Kills — also starring Judy Greer and Andi Matichak — is now playing in theaters.
Chris “Ludacris” Bridges says he wants to “change the world” with his new animated Netflix series Karma’s World.
Inspired by his real-life daughter, Karma, Bridges says the idea of the series came to him over 10 years ago, when his daughter expressed her interest in following in his footsteps.
“She wanted the rap too,” Bridges tells ABC Audio. “So…I actually put her in the booth, [and] to my surprise, she had the good genetics and…the vocal ability at the age of six…[that] it kind of blew me away. And I was like, ‘If you want to do music, you have to talk about what goes on in your world and in your life.’ And, you know, that brings us to everything that we’re at today.”
The rapper-turned-Fast & Furious actor says he and Karma are a lot alike because they both showed “diligence, hard work, and determination at such an early age.”
“And it made me want to create this entire idea just based on my offspring,” he shares. “And that’s what life is supposed to be all about.”
Looking at his new series, Bridges is confident that he’s created something special.
“I feel like there are a lot of children that will be able to relate to Karma,” he says. “And it’s really encouraging them to find their own voice and to express themselves in very unique ways — the same way that Karma does.”
He continues, “Overall…the same way that Karma wants to change the world with music, I want to change the world with this show.”
Karma’s World is now available to stream on Netflix.
Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Kelly Rowland and Tiffany Haddish were just some of the stars that showed up and showed out at Netflix’s The Harder They Fall special screening in Los Angeles.
Held on Wednesday night at The Shrine, the event included an impressive group of A-list film and music talent that came out to support singer-songwriter Jeymes Samuel‘s directorial debut. Additional attendees included cast members Jonathan Majors, Regina King, and Deon Cole, as well as stars Alicia Keys, Swizz Beatz, Seal, Nas, Kendrick Lamar, John David Washington, among others. As previously noted, the film follows Majors as outlaw Nat Love, a man set on revenge after he learns that the man who killed his parents is being released from prison. The Harder They Fall hits select theaters October 22 and debuts on Netflix November 3.
In other news, Netflix has released the first trailer for Halle Berry‘s directorial debut, Bruised. Written by Michelle Rosenfarb, the film stars Berry as disgraced MMA fighter Jackie Justice, who’s attempting to redeem herself. After her six-year-old son comes back into her life, Jackie decides to return to the ring to fight one of the “fiercest rising stars of the MMA world” and “become the mother” her son deserves. Bruised hits Netflix on November 24.
Finally, Starz has given a second-season renewal to their hit dramedy Blindspotting. As previously noted, the series, which is a spinoff of the 2018 indie film of the same name, follows Jasmine Cephas Jones‘ Ashley and her struggles moving in with her recently incarcerated boyfriend’s family. A season two release date for Blindspotting has yet to be announced.
In a clever marketing gimmick, a company that helps customers get out of credit card debt has been slipping Squid Game cards underneath their doors.
For those few who haven’t seen Netflix’s biggest series launch of all time, getting one of those mysterious business cards — decorated only with a circle, a triangle and square — usually means that person is in debt, deep. In fact, according to the show, their only option is to participate in a deadly series of children’s games, with a fortune — and players’ lives — on the line.
However, for the 10,000 people who received them in New York and Miami, the debt app Relief was trying to get the word out about the dangers of credit card debt. The guerilla marketing campaign was the brainchild of the Canadian ad agency Wunder, according to Adweek.
“We thought if we could strike with something quick enough and relevant to the situation, we could create a surprising brand interaction and start the conversation around debt,” the company’s Stephen Flynn told industry trade.
Relief noted that credit card debt in America is at a record high of $930 billion, and with tens of millions out of work thanks to COVID-19 job losses, it’s only going to get worse.
What’s more, millennials and Gen Z — arguably Squid Game‘s biggest audience — have the highest rates of credit card debt delinquency.
