Alam Nyo Ba?

The slasher sequel Scream 7 took a bumpy road to production, losing some cast members and directors along the way, but it has now made its way out into the world. The reaction is split (you can read a 5/10 review from Tyler Nichols HERE and an 8/10 second opinion review from Mike Conway at THIS LINK), but the box office is good, with the film setting the record for the highest opening weekend of the franchise.

Kevin Williamson, who wrote the screenplay for the original Scream, directs the film from a screenplay by 2022’s Scream and Scream VI writer Guy Busick, who crafted the story with his co-writer on the fifth and sixth films, James Vanderbilt. (Vanderbilt is also a producer on the most recent sequels.) Williamson also did enough work on the script to earn a “screenplay by” credit alongside Busick. He recently sat down for a SPOILER-filled interview with Esquire – and during that interview, he revealed that there was a deleted coda that would have confirmed that a character who is said to be dead was actually alive. So watch out, there will be SPOILERS below.

Cast and Synopsis

Returning franchise heroine Neve Campbell is joined in the cast by Isabel May of the Yellowstone prequel 1883, who has signed on to play Sidney’s daughter Tatum; Mckenna Grace of the Ghostbusters franchise, Grace’s Ghostbusters co-star Celeste O’Connor, Gen V‘s Asa Germann, The Fabelmans‘ Sam Rechner, Pitch Perfect‘s Anna Camp, Riverdale‘s Mark Consuelos, fellow franchise star Courteney Cox, who reprises the role of reporter / author Gale Weathers, Joel McHale (Community) as Sidney’s husband Mark Evans, and Ethan Embry (The Devil’s Candy). Although two of the “core four” characters established in the previous two movies are no longer around, Mason Gooding and Jasmin Savoy Brown are back as Chad Meeks-Martin and Mindy Meeks-Martin.

Also in the cast are Matthew Lillard and Scott Foley, who played Ghostface killers in the original Scream and Scream 3, respectively, and did not appear to make it out of those movies alive. David Arquette is back as the dearly departed Dewey, who exited the world of the living in the fifth movie.

Here’s the film’s official synopsis: When a new Ghostface killer emerges in the quiet town where Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) has built a new life, her darkest fears are realized as her daughter (Isabel May) becomes the next target. Determined to protect her family, Sidney must face the horrors of her past to put an end to the bloodshed once and for all.

Scream 7 earned an R rating with strong bloody violence, gore, and language.

SPOILERS

The mystery at the heart of the film is whether or not Matthew Lillard’s character Stu Macher really died at the end of the original film or if he somehow survived and is now coming after Sidney again. In the end, it’s said that the video calls Sidney was receiving from Stu were just AI deepfakes created by another maniac. Stu is dead.

But, during his Esquire interview, Williamson said they did shoot a coda that would have revealed that Stu actually was alive all along.

Williamson told Esquire, “I went to game night at Mike Flanagan’s house and Lillard was there. I’m like, ‘Oh shit, he’s going to ask me.’ And the whole evening he was just like, ‘You’ve got to bring Stu back, man. You got to bring Stu back.’ And I’m like, ‘What do I tell him?’ My husband goes, ‘Just tell him.’ I was like, ‘No, I’m not.’ And he kept going on and on about it. Finally I said, ‘Listen, Stu’s dead. It will make no sense whatsoever if he’s alive. And I do not want to do that to this franchise. I do not want to jump the shark in that big a way. I’ll jump one shark, but I’m not going to jump ten sharks.’ He goes, ‘All right, bro, forgive me.’ And in my head I’m going, ‘Oh shit, I lied to him.’ But then I realized I didn’t lie to him because … he’s not alive.“

He went on to say, “Guy Busick had that in his script. He wrote all the AI stuff. The first time I read it I was like, ‘How is this going to work? How is he going to be alive?’ Furthermore, if it is AI, will part of the audience be disappointed that he’s not real? We were playing that game. And I’d be lying if I said we didn’t shoot it both ways. … We shot a little coda at the end that we had in our back pocket. But oddly enough, the decision was that the audience wanted him dead.“

So if you’re disappointed that we didn’t get a “Stu is alive” coda, blame the test screening audiences. “It makes more sense. It’s more real. If he’s alive, that’s a big stretch. We live in a world now where with fake AI, we know that’s possible.“

What do you think of the ending of Scream 7? Do you wish a coda would have revealed that Stu is alive, or were you satisfied that he was just an AI deepfake? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

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Chris

After a massive opening for Scream 7, exhibitors seem to be on track for another solid weekend, with Pixar’s Hopperslooking like it’s set for an opening north of $40 million. Given the excellent reviews, it’s possible the film even hits $50 million. While that would be on the low end for the studio, it’s still a significant improvement over their last film, Elio, which earned a disastrous $20.8 million. Pixar movies tend to have legs, so it’s possible Hoppers could have a similar trajectory to Elemental, which opened soft with $29 million but legged out to a $150 million domestic gross.

This weekend’s other new opener, The Bride, has a less rosy outlook. A pricey feminist reimagining of The Bride of Frankenstein, reviews for Maggie Gyllenhaal’s film have been all over the place. Some are calling it brilliant, while others are saying it’s a total dud (I was somewhere in between). One thing everyone seems to agree on, though, is that its box office prospects are dim, with it very much an “art film” as opposed to the horror movie it’s being marketed as. I predicted an opening in the $12 million range, but it could go a lot lower. It could even, theoretically, get beaten by Sony’s GOAT if it only hits single digits, but I’m expecting curious horror fans will at least help it reach double digits.

Whatever the case, Scream 7 will easily take second place this weekend, with about a $30 million gross. The CinemaScore rating is a weak B-minus, and the franchise has always been front-loaded. Even so, its performance has been terrific, and it’s likely Scream 8 will be in production before long.

Here are my predictions:

1. Hoppers: $40 million
2. Scream 7: $30 million
3. The Bride: $12 million
4. GOAT: $7 million
5. Wuthering Heights: $4 million

What are you seeing this weekend? Let us know in the comments.

The post Box Office Predictions: Hoppers Should Top The Box Office, The Bride Will Struggle appeared first on JoBlo.

A good portion of Paul W.S. Anderson’s filmmaking career has consisted of video game adaptations, with his writing and/or directing credits including Mortal Kombat (1995), Monster Hunter, and six Resident Evil movies. (He also wrote and directed Alien vs. Predator, which wasn’t a video game adaptation, but there was a video game of the concept long before the movie came along.) Next up for him is a film version of the Sega game The House of the Dead – and you can be sure that, unlike other video game movie directors, he has been playing the game in the build-up to production.

Outrageous

Anderson recently sat down for an interview on the Post Games podcast. On the subject of directing video game movies, Anderson said (with thanks to SuperHeroHype for the transcription), “I think it’s important for me to be a fan. You know, it always shocks me when directors give interviews, and they’re doing a video game movie and go, ‘Well, I never played the game.’ Like, that’s outrageous! You know, would you adapt War and Peace and say, ‘You know, I never read the book. I’ve got the script, it’s fine. I shot that. The book, I’m not interested in.’“

Anderson said that directors not playing the games is “a disservice to the people who love the game and have invested many hours and days and months of their time into this world for you to ignore it.“

He assures fans that he always has respect for the IP and an understanding of what the audience gets out of playing the game when he goes into these projects. And he makes sure that he’s not the only one who’s familiar with the source material: “I always make sure the production designers I work with play the game or watch playthroughs of the game, so they know what it looks like, and the director of photography knows how the camera moves. All of those things are present in my movies because they’re present in the games that I’ve adapted.“

The House of the Dead

Originally released in 1997, The House of the Dead spawned a franchise that includes several sequels and spin-offs, as well as a remake. Uwe Boll directed a film adaptation back in 2003, and that received a sequel in 2005 that was directed by Michael Hurst. Now, Anderson is plotting an adaptation that he promises will be “very, very scary.”

In the game, players take on the role of AMS agents, a government agency tasked with thwarting the conspiracies of organizations that threaten the world. The title comes from the bureau they work for, because their life expectancies are brief. 

Anderson is producing the new film adaptation with his producing partner Jeremy Bolt, Sega’s Toru Nakahara, and Story Kitchen’s Dmitri M. Johnson, Michael Lawrence Goldberg, and Timothy I. Stevenson.

Isabela Merced (The Last of Us) will be starring in and executive producing The House of the Dead.

Do you agree with Paul W.S. Anderson that video game movie directors should always play the games their movies are based on, and do you think his familiarity with the games comes through in his own video game movies? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

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PLOT: After being murdered, a gangster’s moll, Ida (Jessie Buckley), is brought back to life by the brilliant Dr. Euphonious (Annette Bening) at the behest of Frankenstein’s monster, aka Frank (Christian Bale), who’s looking for a companion.

REVIEW: The Bride (or rather The Bride!) is The Lost Daughter director Maggie Gyllenhaal’s highly ambitious take on the 1935 sequel to Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein, centering on the mute character from James Whale’s classic Universal Monsters film (she doesn’t actually ever come to life in Mary Shelley’s book). This actually isn’t the first modern movie centered around the character, with it having inspired a little-remembered 1985 film, also called The Bride, which starred Jennifer Beals, Clancy Brown (as the monster), and Sting as Dr. Frankenstein — not that anyone remembers.

It comes along at perhaps a bad moment, with it having to exist in the shadow of Guillermo del Toro’s recent Frankenstein, which is up for a slew of Oscars this year. Yet, anyone fearful of another take on that familiar story need not worry, as Gyllenhaal’s movie does its own thing — quite radically. It doesn’t always work, with it being a bit of a mess more often than not, but at times it’s a pretty dazzling spectacle.

The film is set in a deliberately anachronistic 1930s-era Chicago, with it home to bootleggers and gangsters, but also goth clubs where bands like Fever Ray play neon-lit raves. In terms of visuals and style, The Bride is a triumph. Gyllenhaal has built a unique world for Jessie Buckley’s Bride and Christian Bale’s Frank to inhabit, with dazzling production design and razor-sharp cinematography by Lawrence Sher.

The performances all swing for the fences, with Buckley’s work here an interesting contrast to her Oscar-nominated turn in Hamnet. That movie was about nuance; this is maximalist, ear-shattering rage from start to finish. In fact, the film plays more like a horror take on Bonnie & Clyde meets Sid & Nancy rather than a Frankenstein movie, with Christian Bale’s Frank a kindly, lovesick guy who’s sensitive — even if he won’t hesitate to cave in the occasional face or two. Buckley is dialed up to eleven, while Bale is her low-key foil.

It’s too bad that Gyllenhaal’s screenplay feels a bit too much like a hodgepodge of ideas, many of which don’t work. The idea to have The Bride occasionally possessed by the spirit of Mary Shelley (also played by Buckley), who also breaks in now and then as a narrator, is very gimmicky and takes away from Ida/The Bride’s character arc, sending the movie off on tangents that are more confusing than gripping.

The influence of Todd Phillips’s Joker is also palpable, with the film not only using the same DP (Sher) and composer (Hildur Guðnadóttir), but also a producer — Emma Tillinger Koskoff. It feels like the movie must have been pitched as Frankenstein meets Joker when that was still fashionable (the film was already well underway when Joker: Folie à Deux flopped), and it covers a bit too much of the same ground, with The Bride influencing women all over the world the film is set in to rise up, give themselves the black facial mark the Bride has, and murder men.

It feels like this notion was just tacked on, with it never really paying off. Some of the dialogue is also a bit too on the nose. While it’s definitely a feminist take on the genre, having The Bride literally yell out “Me Too” has the subtlety of a jackhammer.

The film is also overloaded with characters who distract from the Bride/Frank dynamic, specifically Peter Sarsgaard as a lazy detective and Penélope Cruz as his brainy secretary, who’s the real sleuth of the pair. A lot of time is spent on them, but they feel like they walked in from another movie, and whenever we leave The Bride and Frank, the film grinds to a halt.

Yet, there are some inspired casting choices, with Jake Gyllenhaal having a fun role as the Fred Astaire–style movie star that Frank idolizes, with him even leading a few full-on musical numbers. Oddly enough, of all the Frankenstein movies Maggie Gyllenhaal seems to be pulling from, the one she references the most is Mel Brooks’s Young Frankenstein, with Bale’s Frank shouting out “Puttin’ on the Ritz!”

Much has been written about how the theatrical cut of The Bride took some time to come together, and it has the feel of a movie that’s been edited down. It’s uneven, at times frustratingly bad, but then at others it’s absolutely riveting. Regardless of whether or not The Bride goes down as a failure or a success (it will almost certainly become a cult movie), there’s no denying that Gyllenhaal has serious chops behind the camera and is a rising talent as a director.

The Bride is a movie that I loved at times and disliked at others. Is it actually great? No. But it has more than a few moments of brilliance within it, and at its worst it’s never dull.

The Bride (2025)

AVERAGE

6

The post The Bride Review: Messy, But Occasionally Brilliant appeared first on JoBlo.

Director Renny Harlin shot an entire trilogy of Strangers movies at the same time, and while there was a point when it looked like Lionsgate might be releasing all three of the movies within 2024, but that idea was clearly pushed aside. The Strangers: Chapter 1 (read our review HERE) reached theatres back in May of 2024, and The Strangers: Chapter 2 (read that review HERE) didn’t come along until September of 2025. Thankfully, the wait for The Strangers: Chapter 3 wasn’t as long, as Lionsgate brought the film to theatres on February 6, 2026. (Our review is HERE.) And if you’re waiting for the digital release, that wait is also almost over!

What’s the synopsis?

Madelaine Petsch (Riverdale) stars in this trilogy and is joined in the cast by the likes of Richard Brake (31), Froy Gutierrez (Cruel Summer), Rachel Shenton (All Creatures Great and Small), Gabriel Basso (Hillbilly Elegy), and Ema Horvath (The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power). The Strangers: Chapter 1 centered on Petsch’s character as she drives cross-country with her longtime boyfriend (Gutierrez) to begin a new life in the Pacific Northwest. When their car breaks down in Venus, Oregon, they’re forced to spend the night in a secluded Airbnb, where they are terrorized from dusk till dawn by three masked strangers. Lionsgate plans from there to expand the story in new and unexpected ways with its sequels. Here’s the synopsis for Chapter 3: This final chapter delves into newer and darker territory, the franchise’s darkest descent yet — a ruthless thriller with scares that deliver. The Strangers: Chapter 3 closes the trilogy with a full-circle reckoning that expands the mythology of the iconic masked killers. Madelaine Petsch returns as Maya for the Final Girl’s long-awaited vengeance, delivering a final chapter that fans won’t want to miss. Tethered by a frightening conclusion, Maya and the Strangers are locked on an unavoidable, unforgiving collision course — a showdown that proves they’re far from strangers now.

Enhanced with additional photography

Harlin has said The Strangers: Chapter 1 “is close to the original movie in its set-up of a young couple in an isolated environment in a house and a home invasion happening for random reasons.” Then Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 “explore what happens to the victims of this kind of violence and who the perpetrators are of this kind of violence. Where are they coming from and why?“ Harlin has also said that viewer feedback was taken into account when they were making changes and enhancing the sequels in the additional photography process. The financial success of Chapter 1 allowed for Harlin and his cast and crew, who had completed principal photography on the trilogy in just 52 days, to go back for 8 days of additional photography on Chapter 2 and 15 days of additional photography on Chapter 3. 

The new film has been rated R for strong bloody violence and language.

Deleted Strangers

Up to this point, the only strangers we’ve ever known have been Scarecrow (a.k.a. Man in the Mask or Baghead), Dollface, and Pin-Up Girl. Solomon told Dread Central, “There were actually in the original version, two new Strangers that were actually shot and fully in the movies. One was called Ghost Skull. The other one was Witch Face. We filmed them. They’re going to be included in the extras.“

Those “extras” are expected to be on a “supercut” release that will combine the three films in the trilogy into one epic film. The supercut might receive a short theatrical run before moving on to Premium VOD and physical media.

Digital Release

Amazon lets us know that The Strangers: Chapter 3 will be receiving a digital release this Friday, March 6th. The UHD digital version is available for pre-order at THIS LINK for $19.99.

Will you be watching the digital release of The Strangers: Chapter 3? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

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The Bride

Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride is set to hit theaters this week. The first reactions to the gothic romance started trickling in on social media a few days ago, following the film’s world premiere in London. The film is tracking soft, so it’s not currently projected to be a monster at the box office. However, it could be the kind of welcome shake-up for mainstream movies if it lives up to its hype.

The film stars Jessie Buckley as The Bride and Christian Bale as Frankenstein’s Monster. “A lonely Frankenstein travels to 1930s Chicago to seek the aid of a Dr. Euphronius in creating a companion for himself,” reads the official synopsis. “The two reinvigorate a murdered young woman and the Bride is born. She is beyond what either of them intended, igniting a combustible romance, the attention of the police and a wild and radical social movement.“

The concern

The early reactions talk about how bold the movie is and how its content is totally unhinged. According to Variety, after the studio held test screenings, Warner Bros. had requested that Gyllenhaal tone down the intensity of the violence. Gyllenhaal explained, “There’s sexual violence. There’s violence. Because it’s a big studio movie, we tested and tested it. We had big screenings in malls, where people came to see it, which I had never been a part of as an actress or a director before. So fascinating. And one of the things that they brought up was the violence: Is it too violent? And I was talking about it with a girlfriend of mine, who said — and she wasn’t being reductive — ‘I wonder if you had been a man making this movie, if you would have had the same response.’”

Gyllenhaal made it a point not to desensitize the extreme scenes during filming, so the uneasy response is just what she aimed for. Warners “asked to take some” of the violence out of the movie during test screenings. She reveals, “So what you’re seeing is even a little bit pulled back from what was originally in the movie.”

Gyllenhaal also explained how she wanted to have gravity with the deaths in the film, “One of the things that was important to me is that everybody who is killed, is hurt — we, at least for a moment, get to know them. There’s the Stormtrooper version of killing people, where they have white masks on and you don’t know who they are. And then there’s the version where every single death has a consequence and a cost — every single one.”

The understanding

As The Bride comes from a big studio with more general audience appeal than something like A24, the savvy director still realized that she could compromise with Warners. “Yeah, it was difficult, but not in a bad way. It was just very new for me,” Gyllenhaal told The Times. “I loved working with Pam Abdy, who runs Warner Bros. with Mike De Luca. She understood me and understood what I was saying. And there would be times where she would be like: ‘Maggie, you cannot have Frankenstein lick black vomit off the Bride’s neck. It’s just too much. You can’t do it.’ But she understood why I wanted it.”

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Last April, Blumhouse Productions spent some time in the spotlight during the Universal panel at the CinemaCon event in Las Vegas, and JoBlo’s own Chris Bumbray was there to witness an early preview of SOULM8TE, which is “a new movie in the M3GAN universe” that was set to reach theatres on January 2, 2026… but then, M3GAN 2.0 underperformed and SOULM8TE was dropped from the release calendar. We still don’t know when the movie is going to make its way out into the world – but now we know that it’s rated R.

Background

The M3GAN movies and SOULM8TE come from the recently merged companies Atomic Monster (headed up by James Wan) and Blumhouse Productions (headed up by Jason Blum).

James Wan, his wife Ingrid Bisu, and Rafael Jordan (Salvage Marines) crafted the story for this one, with Jordan writing the first draft of the screenplay. Kate Dolan (You Are Not My Mother) is directing the film and has done her own rewrite of the script. 

SOULM8TE will show us what happens when a man acquires an Artificially Intelligent android to cope with the loss of his recently deceased wife. In an attempt to create a truly sentient partner, he inadvertently turns a harmless lovebot into a deadly soulmate. 

The film stars Evil Dead Rise actress Lily Sullivan, Claudia Doumit of The Boys, and David Rysdahl, whose credits include Fargo season 5, The Family, No Exit, Black Mirror, Oppenheimer, and Booger. Rysdahl is playing the man, while Sullivan plays the android. Details on the role Doumit will be playing have not been revealed.

James Wan and Jason Blum are producing SOULM8TE, while Michael Clear and Judson Scott of Atomic Monster serve as executive producers with with Ingrid Bisu and M3GAN cast member Allison Williams. Alayna Glasthal is the executive leading the project for Atomic Monster.

Preview

Bumbray reported, “Seems similar to Companion. Centers on a sexbot that becomes so obsessed with her “owner” that she kills anyone close to him and goes on a murder spree. Looks more violent (and kinkier) than M3GAN but has the same humor. When a woman she’s about to kill says ‘Women aren’t supposed to be pitted against each other,’ she answers, ‘Don’t start that girl power shit with me.’”

The film has been described as “Fatal Attraction with robots.”

Rating

The Motion Picture Association ratings board has announced that they’ve given SOULM8TE an R rating for strong violence, gore, sexual content, graphic nudity, and language. This sets it apart from both of the M3GAN movies in a major way, because those were PG-13.

Are you interested in SOULM8TE, and are you glad to hear that it’s rated R? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

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