Alam Nyo Ba?

The Leprechaun is coming back!

A new Leprechaun horror movie is in the works at Lionsgate, with horror veterans Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan writing the screenplay. The new movie’s plot is being kept under wraps. Oren Koules and Miles Koules will produce through their Koulest Productions banner, with Dan Heffner and Ketura Kestin executive producing.

The project gives the long-running horror franchise another chance at a comeback after Lionsgate previously attempted to develop a new Leprechaun movie a couple of years ago.

Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan Are Writing the New Leprechaun

Melton and Dunstan are no strangers to horror franchises. The pair previously teamed up on The Collector, The Collection, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, and Unhuman, with Dunstan directing several of their collaborations. They also have extensive experience with the Saw franchise. Melton and Dunstan co-wrote Saw IV, Saw V, Saw VI, and Saw 3D.

That makes their involvement particularly interesting for a Leprechaun movie, considering the franchise has always mixed horror with dark comedy and outrageous kills.

Oren Koules is also closely connected to Saw. He produced all 10 movies in the original Saw film series, which collectively earned more than $1 billion at the worldwide box office.

“After producing all the Saw films, and twenty-three wonderful years at Lionsgate, I’m thrilled to be working again with the Lionsgate team, Patrick and Marcus, and my son, Miles, on a terrifying new way into the rich world of Leprechaun,” Koules told Deadline.

Lionsgate Previously Tried to Reboot Leprechaun

This isn’t Lionsgate’s first attempt to bring the Leprechaun franchise back. In 2023, Lionsgate announced that filmmaker Felipe Vargas was attached to direct a new Leprechaun movie from a screenplay by Mike Van Waes. Roy Lee and Miri Yoon were set to produce.

That version did not make it into production.

Now Lionsgate is taking another swing at the franchise with Melton and Dunstan.

The Leprechaun Franchise Explained

The Leprechaun franchise began in 1993 with writer-director Mark Jones’ original Leprechaun, starring Warwick Davis as the murderous, wisecracking creature. Davis would go on to play the Leprechaun in six of the franchise’s eight movies. The original film also featured Jennifer Aniston in one of her earliest movie roles, years before she became one of Hollywood’s biggest stars.

The basic premise of the series is wonderfully simple: The Leprechaun is a murderous creature who will do just about anything to recover his pot of gold. From there, the movies have taken the character to a variety of locations, including Las Vegas, outer space, and the hood.

The franchise currently consists of eight movies released between 1993 and 2018.

Lionsgate became the owner of the Leprechaun franchise after acquiring Trimark Pictures in 2000. The most recent entry was 2018’s Leprechaun Returns, which brought the series back to its original setting and featured Linden Porco taking over the role of the Leprechaun from Warwick Davis.

The franchise has remained a cult favorite over the years, with the movies regularly receiving marathon treatment on the Syfy network around St. Patrick’s Day.

When Will the New Leprechaun Movie Be Released?

There is currently no release date for the new Leprechaun movie. The project is still in development, and details about the story, cast, director, and production schedule have not been announced.

It also remains unclear whether the new movie will continue the existing Leprechaun continuity or serve as another reboot of the franchise.

For now, all we know is that Lionsgate is developing the movie with Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan writing and Oren and Miles Koules producing. Are you glad to hear that there’s still life in this franchise? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

The post New Leprechaun movie in development with Saw writers Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan appeared first on JoBlo.

PLOT: A young arthouse director, Kris (Hannah Einbinder), seeks to reboot her favorite horror franchise, Camp Miasma, by tracking down the reclusive final girl from the first film, Billy (Gillian Anderson).

REVIEW: Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is director Jane Schoenbrun’s follow-up to I Saw the TV Glow. That movie was a solid arthouse hit following its acclaimed run at Sundance, and Camp Miasma is clearly designed to scratch a similar itch, with the two thematically similar in some ways. I Saw the TV Glow was an allegory for the transformative effect of the content we watch at an early age, and Miasma is similar in that way. Yet, where I Saw the TV Glow had a more complicated mythology, with the leads obsessing over a TV show (and expanded universe) called “The Pink Opaque,” Miasma is more universal. Who among us wasn’t obsessed with teen slashers while coming of age?

The Camp Miasma franchise, which we learn spanned the nineties and 2000s across multiple entries, is presented very much in the mold of Friday the 13th, with the original classic giving way to a whole variety of installments, including the inevitable sci-fi entry, Miasma 3000 — a riff on Jason X. But it’s also heavily influenced by Sleepaway Camp (although both franchises actually exist in the world of this film), particularly the shock ending.

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, for the first half, anyway, is Schoenbrun’s most accessible film to date, functioning as a fairly knowing satire of the current state of horror franchises and how studios handle them. Kris, whose first feature was a Sundance hit but bombed (it’s described as Psycho from the POV of the shower curtain), has been hired to reboot Camp Miasma because the original has been deemed transphobic, but because she’s queer, the studio believes she will deliver a woke reboot that will relaunch what she dubs “zombie IP.”

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma largely splits the narrative into two. Half of the movie focuses on Kris as she visits Gillian Anderson’s Billy, who has become a recluse but now actually lives on the set from the first film. The two have a unique dynamic, with Billy not quite understanding Kris’s high-minded ideas for a reboot, even if there’s something else at play, with the vibe between the two immediately turning flirtatious. A KFC fried chicken-eating scene is this movie’s riff on the famous chess sequence from The Thomas Crown Affair.

Einbinder plays Kris with the right amount of pretentiousness and likability, making her easy to invest in—a good thing, as, through the film’s surreal twists and turns, she effectively becomes a kind of final girl, even if it’s not quite as simple as that. Anderson plays Billy to the hilt as a kind of sexy Norma Desmond type (she even wears a similar hat with a diamond), but the film is knowing enough to basically name-check the character outright.

But a big chunk of the movie is Schoenbrun’s recreation of the original Camp Miasma, which plays out as a nostalgic, nearly pitch-perfect recreation of these kinds of slasher movies (I say “nearly” because too much CGI blood is used, which lessens the impact of the gore and makes it cartoonish). We get our slasher, Little Death (Jack Haven — star of I Saw the TV Glow), his origin story, and a group of teens ready to be slaughtered. The casting is a hoot, with deliberately too-old actors, including the great Zach Cherry from Severance and Sorry, Baby’s Eva Victor sporting a mohawk.

Where the film will prove divisive is in the highly meta final third, in which it becomes more of an allegory for Kris’s sexual awakening, with both her and Billy presented as being in a sort of erotic thrall to Little Death and his murders. They become excited at the prospect of being one of his victims — but he’s not real, right? Or is he?

What’s real and what isn’t doesn’t matter all that much in Schoenbrun’s film, which is highly surreal and not open to easy interpretation. This isn’t that different from I Saw the TV Glow, but I found Camp Miasma to be more openly entertaining, with a great sense of humor that Schoenbrun’s last film only showed in brief flashes. Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is amusing from start to finish, and it’s gorgeously assembled.

With backing from Mubi and Brad Pitt’s Plan B, it seems to have been made on a healthy budget, and it boasts beautiful cinematography by Eric Yue, with cigarette burns and print damage worked into the Camp Miasma scenes, as though we’re watching a battered 16mm print. The soundtrack is also well assembled, with Alex G’s score and the needle drops carefully curated.

It will be interesting to see how hardcore horror fans take to Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma. While it’s probably too meta to actually be scary, it does have a strong love for the genre running through it, as well as nostalgia for the movies it riffs on. It’s lovingly made and certainly a unique experience that should become a cult hit — particularly for younger viewers, who it could serve as a gateway to some of the classics it references.

The post Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma Review: Jane Schoenbrun’s meta riff on 80s slashers is wild appeared first on JoBlo.

Cody

For more than fifty years, filmmakers have turned to the works of Stephen King for some of Hollywood’s most memorable adaptations. From Carrie and The Shining to It and Pet Sematary, they have repeatedly found ways to bring King’s worlds to life. But there was always one story that seemed almost impossible to adapt: The Dark Tower.

King’s epic saga was unlike anything else in his bibliography: a strange blend of horror, fantasy, science fiction, westerns, and metafiction. At the center was Roland Deschain, the last gunslinger, crossing a dying world in search of the mysterious Dark Tower that holds reality itself together.

For years, Hollywood tried to figure out how to bring that story to the screen. But the project struggled because The Dark Tower wasn’t just a story. It was an entire universe.

In 2017, director Nikolaj Arcel finally brought Roland’s journey to theaters, with Idris Elba playing the gunslinger and Matthew McConaughey playing his mysterious enemy, the Man in Black. It seemed like a great combination. Elba had the intensity and presence needed for Roland, while McConaughey brought a smooth, playful evil to one of Stephen King’s most iconic villains. But when The Dark Tower arrived, critics were disappointed, longtime readers questioned the changes to King’s mythology, and audiences were left underwhelmed.

It was a failure, but an intriguing one. Because behind the troubled development process, shortened runtime, and changes to the source material was a fascinating challenge: How do you adapt one of Stephen King’s most personal and ambitious creations for a mainstream audience?

Was The Dark Tower truly impossible to adapt, or did Hollywood simply make the wrong choices? And after years of failed attempts, production problems, and disappointed fans, does The Dark Tower still have a chance to rise again?

Today, we’re going to find out what happened to The Dark Tower.

The Story of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower

The Dark Tower began as a challenge Stephen King set for himself in the late 1960s and early 1970s. King loved J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. He was in awe of Tolkien’s imagination and storytelling, but he had little interest in writing a traditional fantasy filled with elves and medieval kingdoms. After watching Sergio Leone’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, King envisioned something different: a sweeping, Tolkien-style quest set against the landscapes of the American West.

Robert Browning’s poem “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came” provided the basic setup. It told the story of a fallen knight named Roland journeying through a nightmarish wasteland toward a mysterious Dark Tower. King’s Roland would be a gunslinger rather than a knight: the last in a line of gunslingers stretching back to Arthur Eld, essentially King’s version of King Arthur.

King began writing the story by hand while he was still a student at the University of Maine. He wanted to create an epic, even imagining that it might become the longest book ever written. He fell short of that particular record, but he certainly succeeded at creating an epic.

It took King more than forty years to complete the story. By the time he was finished, The Dark Tower had become an eight-volume saga blending fantasy, horror, science fiction, westerns, and metafiction. At the center of everything was the Dark Tower, a structure standing at the crossroads of all realities. Protecting the Tower meant protecting existence itself. Roland’s search became a story about obsession, sacrifice, destiny, and the cost of chasing an impossible goal.

Roland wasn’t just a cowboy with a pair of revolvers. He was a tragic figure whose obsession with reaching the Tower repeatedly cost him the people he loved. Throughout the saga, he is forced to choose between his quest and his humanity. That makes him one of King’s greatest characters.

The Dark Tower Is an Entire Stephen King Universe

The saga is unlike anything else King has written, and yet it’s connected, in various ways and to various degrees, to many of his other books. The Stand, The Talisman, The Eyes of the Dragon, Insomnia, ’Salem’s Lot, Hearts in Atlantis, and others all connect to The Dark Tower.

The story’s world is also unlike a conventional fantasy setting. Roland’s Mid-World resembles the American Old West, but it clearly isn’t the Old West. There are strange creatures and magical beings. Areas have been poisoned by nuclear radiation. Remnants of a technologically advanced civilization destroyed by war remain scattered throughout the landscape. There are robots, monorails, demonic spirits, and songs that, in our world, were recorded by artists like ZZ Top and The Beatles.

And this isn’t simply some twisted, post-apocalyptic version of our world. King reveals that our reality can be accessed through special doorways: portals to other dimensions. Through those doorways, Roland eventually gathers three companions from 20th-century New York City, including a young boy named Jake Chambers.

The Dark Tower wasn’t just a series of novels. It was an entire universe. That universe would be almost impossible to fit into a traditional blockbuster. But that didn’t stop Hollywood from trying.

J.J. Abrams and the First Dark Tower Movie Plans

The seventh Dark Tower novel was published in 2004, seemingly bringing Roland’s story to an end. King later returned to the world with The Wind Through the Keyhole, which was published in 2012 and became the eighth book in the series. Hollywood’s attempts to bring the saga to the screen started soon after the seventh book went out into the world.

In 2007, J.J. Abrams, Carlton Cuse, and Damon Lindelof, the creators of Lost, optioned the rights to The Dark Tower for just $19. The number was a deliberate reference to the significance of the number 19 throughout King’s saga.

Abrams hoped to make The Dark Tower a seven-film series, with each book receiving its own cinematic adaptation. The problem was that Abrams, Cuse, and Lindelof had just made six seasons of Lost. They weren’t ready to immediately take on another enormous project.

Their plans sputtered out, and their option eventually lapsed. Hollywood, however, wasn’t finished with Roland.

Ron Howard and the Planned Dark Tower Trilogy

Just a few months later, Universal Pictures optioned the rights with an even more ambitious plan: a trilogy of films with two seasons of a television series airing between the movies. That was what the studio believed would be required to faithfully bring King’s story to the screen.

Ron Howard was set to direct the first film, with Akiva Goldsman writing the screenplay. Mark Verheiden was attached to executive produce the television side and write the pilot with Goldsman.

Universal had reportedly paid $15 million for the rights, but concerns quickly emerged about the cost of the proposed three-movie-and-TV-series plan.

In July 2011, Universal canceled development of the entire project. But Howard wasn’t ready to give up. He moved the television series to HBO, while the movies were pitched to Warner Bros. Warner passed. Finally, in 2015, Sony Pictures and Media Rights Capital put an adaptation on the fast track to production.

But the plan had changed. There would no longer be a trilogy, and the television series was pushed to the back burner. Howard stepped aside as director but remained attached as a producer. Goldsman and Jeff Pinkner wrote a new screenplay. When Nikolaj Arcel was hired to direct, he rewrote the script with Anders Thomas Jensen.

After years of development, The Dark Tower was finally going to become a movie. But the version that reached theaters would be very different from King’s books.

The 2017 Movie Wasn’t Really an Adaptation

The writers had more than 4,000 pages of source material to pull from. In the end, they chose not to directly adapt any of the books. Instead, they cherry-picked elements from the saga: a little from the first book, some from the third, more from the sixth and seventh, and other pieces from elsewhere.

Faithfulness was no longer the priority. If they had polled fans and asked what they thought about this approach, those fans probably would have told them not to bother. But nobody asked. Sony wanted the movie in theaters in 2017, and the filmmakers pushed forward.

There was a clever way to explain the changes, though. In the final book, Roland reaches the Dark Tower only to discover that he has been there many times before. He is caught in a loop. Every time he reaches the Tower, he is sent back to the beginning of his quest. The book ends with Roland beginning that quest again.

The filmmakers decided their movie would take place during Roland’s next cycle. That meant The Dark Tower wasn’t replacing King’s story. It was a sequel to it. The filmmakers weren’t saying, “This is our version of the books.” They were saying, “This happened after the books.”

King supported that idea. Unfortunately, the concept was much more interesting than the movie itself.

Idris Elba Becomes Roland

Now that a Dark Tower movie was actually happening, the filmmakers needed an actor to play Roland. This was the most important piece of the puzzle because the actor would be at the center of the franchise Sony hoped to build. Javier Bardem had previously been attached to play the gunslinger during the Universal era. Russell Crowe and Liam Neeson were later rumored to be contenders.

Ultimately, Idris Elba brought Roland to life. Elba was already one of the most respected actors in the world. He had demonstrated his range across numerous genres and had the physical presence needed to play a legendary warrior. More importantly, he could communicate the emotions beneath Roland’s hard exterior. Roland isn’t interesting simply because he can fire a gun faster than anyone else. He’s interesting because of what those skills have cost him. He has lost almost everything while pursuing his mission.

But the casting announcement immediately created controversy among some fans. In King’s books, Roland is described as a white gunslinger inspired by western stars like Clint Eastwood, with light blue eyes. Some fans questioned whether changing his appearance would alter the character.

King quickly came to Elba’s defense. “To me, the color of the gunslinger doesn’t matter,” King said. “What I care about is how fast he can draw, and that he takes care of the ka-tet.” He also praised Elba as one of the best actors working.

For his performance, Elba spoke with Arcel about soldiers with PTSD and veterans of traumatic experiences. He wanted to bring that emotional exhaustion to Roland. His Roland would be driven by grief and duty.

Matthew McConaughey Plays the Man in Black

The other major piece of the puzzle was Roland’s greatest enemy: Walter, the Man in Black. The character is essentially the same person as Randall Flagg from The Stand, making him one of the most important villains in King’s larger mythology.

While Elba had to bring emotional depth to Roland, Matthew McConaughey was able to have a little more fun with the Man in Black. He was happy to play such a character. As Arcel explained, McConaughey immediately saw the character as essentially the Devil.

“He was really happy to just be able to play evil,” Arcel said, explaining that many villains are given complicated reasons for their actions. “I thought it was refreshing that the Man in Black is just evil.”

In the movie, the Man in Black abducts children with psychic abilities, or the “shine,” and uses their mental energy to attack the Tower. He wants the Tower to fall because demons living in the darkness outside the universe will then be able to enter and rule everything. This brings him to Jake Chambers, an 11-year-old living in New York City. Jake has a particularly powerful shine and has been plagued by nightmares that are actually psychic visions of the Man in Black and Roland’s world, Mid-World.

The Man in Black believes Jake’s abilities are powerful enough to destroy the Tower. But Jake discovers a portal to Mid-World and comes under Roland’s protection.

Tom Taylor Plays Jake Chambers

Tom Taylor was cast as Jake Chambers, another crucial character in the Dark Tower saga. Despite his psychic abilities, Jake serves as the audience surrogate. We experience this strange world through his eyes. He is a newcomer, just like the audience, and we learn about Mid-World as he does.

The supporting cast included Katheryn Winnick as Jake’s mother, Dennis Haysbert as Roland’s father, Claudia Kim as a seer, and Jackie Earle Haley, Fran Kranz, and Abbey Lee as some of the Man in Black’s followers.

Casting wasn’t one of the movie’s problems. The supporting cast was solid, and Elba and McConaughey had more than enough talent to carry the lead characters. Unfortunately, the movie didn’t give them enough time.

The Dark Tower Was Only 95 Minutes Long

The Dark Tower had the nearly impossible task of introducing an entire mythology while telling a complete story. It tried to do both in a shockingly short running time.

For budgetary reasons, Arcel made the movie as short as he could. The Dark Tower runs just 95 minutes, with the end credits beginning before the 88-minute mark. That isn’t enough time to properly tell a story about a universe this complicated. It’s enough time to give viewers the basic idea.

For a typical action movie, a 95-minute runtime might not be a problem. But this was supposed to be the beginning of an epic franchise.

Why The Dark Tower Failed

When The Dark Tower arrived in theaters in 2017, it carried an enormous amount of history with it. This was the result of years of development, decades of fan anticipation, and the pressure of adapting one of Stephen King’s most ambitious creations. It had a talented cast, a filmmaker passionate about the material, and the potential to launch an entire franchise.

But audiences noticed the problem immediately. The Dark Tower felt smaller than the story it was trying to tell.

King’s books are filled with mythology, character relationships, strange details, and world-building that make Mid-World feel alive. The movie simplified almost all of it.

Concepts such as the Dark Tower, the Beams protecting reality, and Roland’s battle against the forces of darkness are introduced, but the movie moves through them so quickly that they never have time to develop.

For longtime fans, the mythology that made the books fascinating was reduced to short explanations. The mysterious, hard-edged nature of King’s universe was replaced with a straightforward hero-versus-villain story with a soft PG-13 rating.

The result was a movie that was arguably too different and simple for established fans and too rushed for newcomers. It was trying to build a franchise and tell a complete story at the same time. It didn’t succeed at either.

There are some fun moments, particularly when Roland gets to unleash his gunslinger skills, but The Dark Tower should have been much more than this. The scenes involving the Man in Black and his assistants have the style and atmosphere of a low-rent TV movie.

The movie was made for a reported $66 million and earned approximately $113 million worldwide. It was a box office disappointment. Critics tore it apart. Fans were let down. Even Ron Howard was dissatisfied with how the movie turned out. He said the filmmakers had done “too much listening to what [we thought] the marketplace was calling for instead of the essence of what Stephen King was giving us.”

King also believed the PG-13 rating played a role in the movie’s failure. He said the concept had “lost a lot of toughness” and became something audiences could look at and say they had seen before.

The Dark Tower experiment was over. Or at least it seemed that way.

The Dark Tower TV Series That Never Happened

Media Rights Capital hoped to repair the damage with a television series developed for Amazon Prime Video. The Walking Dead‘s Glen Mazzara was chosen as showrunner, while Sam Strike and Jasper Pääkkönen were cast as Roland and the Man in Black.

Unlike the movie, this series was intended to be independent of the film and provide a more faithful adaptation of King’s books. A pilot episode was filmed, but Amazon ultimately passed on the project.

And that was it for The Dark Tower. For a while.

Mike Flanagan Wants to Bring The Dark Tower Back

In December 2022, filmmaker Mike Flanagan revealed that he had acquired the rights to The Dark Tower. Flanagan already has experience adapting Stephen King, having made Gerald’s Game, Doctor Sleep, The Life of Chuck, and an adaptation of Carrie. He has said that the ideal way to bring The Dark Tower to the screen would be a television series running for five seasons, followed by two movies.

The project has not yet gone into production, but it is set up at Prime Video. And Flanagan understands the biggest problem with the 2017 movie. He believes another adaptation needs to happen because, as he put it: “We can’t let [the 2017 movie] be the final word. We really can’t.”

Can The Dark Tower Still Be Adapted?

Hopefully, there will eventually be a more faithful Dark Tower adaptation to watch. A series, movies, or a combination of both could finally capture the epic feeling and emotional weight of King’s novels. Because the problem wasn’t necessarily that The Dark Tower couldn’t be adapted. The problem may have been that Hollywood tried to turn an enormous, strange, deeply personal saga into a conventional 95-minute blockbuster.

King’s story needed room to breathe. It needed its mythology. It needed Roland, Jake, Eddie, Susannah, Oy, Walter, Mid-World, the Beams, the Tower, and all the strange connections that make the books so fascinating. The 2017 movie didn’t have the time or the willingness to fully embrace all of that.

Instead, it was compromised by budgetary limitations, marketplace concerns, a soft rating, and a script that scrambled elements of an enormous saga into a story that simply didn’t work very well.

And that’s what happened to The Dark Tower. For now, the 2017 movie is all we have. But Roland has been to the Tower before. Maybe he’ll get another chance to make the journey.

A couple of previous episodes of this show can be seen below. For more, check out the JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel—and don’t forget to subscribe!

The post What Happened to The Dark Tower? The Story Behind Stephen King’s Failed Movie appeared first on JoBlo.

The first official images have arrived for Beware Boiúna, the upcoming creature feature from Wrong Turn (2021) and Silent Night, Deadly Night (2025) director Mike P. Nelson. Previously announced under the title Boiúna: Legend of the Amazon, the horror thriller is now set to reach theatres on October 2, 2026.

The film stars Kiana Madeira (Fear Street), Jessica Rothe (Happy Death Day), and Logan Marshall-Green (The Invitation), with a screenplay by Alan McElroy, whose genre credits include Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers and both versions of Wrong Turn. The story comes from Tony Giglio and McElroy.

You can check out the newly released first-look images below.

The official synopsis reads:

Deep in the Amazon, a medical mission spirals into a fight for survival when Boiúna, a colossal ancient predator, awakens to reclaim her domain. In the jungle where nature holds absolute power, she decides who lives and who dies.

Earlier story details described the film as following a team of young doctors traveling into Brazil’s Amazon rainforest on a humanitarian mission along the Curuçá River. Their arrival awakens the legendary Boiúna, an ancient predator equally deadly on land and in water, turning the mission into a desperate battle for survival.

The title refers to a creature from Brazilian folklore. Also known as the Cobra Grande, the Boiúna is a gigantic mythical serpent said to inhabit the rivers of the Amazon. The legend has inspired stories throughout Brazil, making it an intriguing foundation for a creature feature.

Behind the camera, Nelson continues his run of horror projects following the Wrong Turn reboot, The Domestics, the Silent Night, Deadly Night remake, the Friday the 13th short film Sweet Revenge, and his segment of V/H/S/85.

After making his feature debut with Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, McElroy went on to write films including Rapid Fire, Spawn, The Marine, Tekken, the original Wrong Turn, and Nelson’s reboot.

Beware Boiúna is produced by Constantin Film and JB Pictures, with Robert Kulzer and Jeremy Bolt producing.

What do you think of the first-look images? Will you be checking out Beware Boiúna in theaters this October? Let us know in the comments.

The post Beware Boiúna first-look images unleash the Amazon creature feature appeared first on JoBlo.

Zach Cregger has already earned a reputation for delivering shocking horror with Barbarian and Weapons, but according to the filmmaker, his upcoming Resident Evil reboot pushes the violence further than anything he’s done before.

Speaking with Empire, Cregger described the upcoming video game adaptation as “definitely the most violent thing I’ve done,” promising fans a relentless, blood-soaked survival horror experience that embraces the franchise’s monster-filled roots.

“You gotta go grotesque!” Cregger said. “I wanted to go all the way. So it’s gnarly. It’s brutal. A very bloody affair.”

Rather than spending time explaining the mythology behind the Umbrella Corporation or the T-virus, Cregger says his focus is on delivering a fast-paced survival story.

“Fleshing out what [the Umbrella Corporation is] up to and how the T-virus works, that’s not what this movie is,” he explained. “This movie is about one dude’s journey on foot, fighting monsters. I don’t give a f*ck about checking boxes.”

He added that the movie wastes little time getting started.

“All I cared about was just telling a fun story. We step on the gas at about eight minutes in and never take our foot off the floor.”

Rather than adapting one specific game, the film tells an original story set within the Resident Evil universe while remaining faithful to the established lore.

Austin Abrams stars as Bryan, a medical courier who unknowingly becomes trapped in the middle of a devastating biohazard outbreak. According to the official synopsis, Bryan’s routine delivery turns into a desperate fight for survival as one horrifying night spirals completely out of control.

An earlier leaked logline revealed that Bryan is sent to Raccoon City General Hospital during a snowstorm, where a chance encounter with a mysterious woman leads him into an outbreak filled with grotesque mutations and bio-engineered monsters.

Cregger has previously described Bryan as an intentionally unconventional protagonist.

“The concept here is that we’re following an idiot. Not that he’s stupid, but he’s not your typical game character, with no combat skills whatsoever and completely inept at survival. Bryan is very much an everyman… It’s kind of like Frodo going into Mordor.”

The filmmaker has also compared the movie’s structure to the games themselves, saying audiences will move rapidly from one dangerous set piece to another without much opportunity to catch their breath.

Despite all the bloodshed, Cregger says the film also explores deeply personal themes. Like Weapons, which drew from his own grief, Resident Evil reflects questions he has been wrestling with in his own life through Bryan’s story.

Bryan begins the film after learning that his girlfriend is pregnant, and Cregger says that emotional dilemma becomes central to the narrative.

“People will be able to tell what I’ve been dealing with. It’s still autobiographical. [We’re asking] is it right to bring a child into a world that just seems to be getting worse and worse? We’re wrestling with that question. Only for this character to find out it’s even worse than he’d imagined.”

The film also stars Paul Walter Hauser, Zach Cherry, Johnno Wilson, and Kali Reis. The screenplay was written by Cregger and Army of the Dead writer Shay Hatten, with Constantin Film producing alongside Vertigo Entertainment and PlayStation Productions.

Resident Evil is set to hit theaters on September 18, 2026.

Do Cregger’s comments make you even more excited for the reboot, or are you hoping for something closer to the games? Let us know in the comments.

The post Resident Evil director Zach Cregger says reboot is his “most violent” movie yet appeared first on JoBlo.

One of the most influential horror films ever made is getting a modern reimagining. Variety reports that Talia Ryder (Never Rarely Sometimes Always, Honey Don’t) has joined Michael Shannon in Doctor Caligari’s Cabinet of Wonders, a contemporary reimagining of the 1920 silent classic The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. The psychological horror film recently wrapped production in Germany and is being fully financed and sold internationally by Anton.

Written and directed by John Erick Dowdle (As Above, So Below, Quarantine), the film aims to reinvent one of cinema’s earliest and most influential horror stories for a new generation.

A New Take on a Horror Landmark

Released in 1920, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is widely regarded as one of the first true horror movies and remains a landmark of German Expressionist cinema. Its surreal visuals, psychological storytelling, and twist have influenced generations of filmmakers, from Alfred Hitchcock to Tim Burton and beyond.

Rather than serving as a straightforward remake, Doctor Caligari’s Cabinet of Wonders is being described as a contemporary psychological horror film inspired by the original. Michael Shannon stars as the mysterious Doctor Caligari.

The official synopsis reads:

A terrifying and mind-bending psychological horror, the film follows Doctor Caligari, a traveling mesmerist who journeys from town to town with a sleepwalker under his control, leaving a trail of grisly murders in their wake. When a young woman’s boyfriend disappears mysteriously, she becomes convinced the enigmatic Doctor Caligari is responsible—but no one believes her.

Talia Ryder’s Role Revealed

Ryder will play Jane, an intuitive young woman whose ability to perceive things others cannot has left her isolated from those around her. Still haunted by the murder of her sister and the betrayal of her parents, Jane discovers that the very gift that has made her an outsider could become her greatest weapon against Doctor Caligari.

The role continues Ryder’s impressive run following acclaimed performances in Never Rarely Sometimes Always and Ethan Coen’s Honey Don’t. She is also currently filming the second season of Prime Video’s Mr. & Mrs. Smith opposite Mark Eydelshteyn.

Behind the Camera

The project is produced by Drew Dowdle for Brothers Dowdle Productions alongside Sébastien Raybaud, Brandt Wrightsman, Stuart Manashil, Jonas Katzenstein, and Maximilian Leo. The production also received support from the Film- und Medienstiftung NRW and Germany’s Federal Film Fund.

Anton is fully financing the film while handling worldwide sales, with North American rights being jointly represented alongside CAA Media Finance.

No release date has been announced, but with production now complete and international sales set to begin at the Toronto International Film Festival market, horror fans likely won’t have to wait too long to learn more.

What do you think of Michael Shannon and Talia Ryder leading the cast of a new take on Doctor Caligari? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

The post Doctor Caligari’s Cabinet of Wonders adds Talia Ryder as Michael Shannon leads new reimagining of horror classic appeared first on JoBlo.

Frendo the Clown is coming back for another bloody trip through the cornfields. Temple Hill Entertainment has officially announced (via Fangoria) that Clown in a Cornfield 2: Frendo Lives, a sequel to the 2025 horror/comedy hit based on author Adam Cesare’s popular slasher novel series. The follow-up will continue the story of survivor Quinn Maybrook and expand the growing Clown in a Cornfield franchise. The announcement confirms what horror fans have been hoping for since the first film’s release: Frendo the Clown will return to the big screen.

Production on Clown in a Cornfield 2: Frendo Lives is scheduled to begin later this year, with Temple Hill once again producing. The screenplay will be written by Hudson Morgan and Will Lowell, whose work has appeared on the Black List and includes multiple television and feature film projects.

While no director has been confirmed yet, fans will be watching to see whether Eli Craig, who directed the first film and is best known for Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, returns behind the camera. Craig is currently working on the holiday horror film White Elephant.

What Is Clown in a Cornfield 2: Frendo Lives About?

An official plot synopsis for the movie has not been released, but the sequel will follow the storyline of Adam Cesare’s second novel in the series. Here’s the book’s synopsis:

After barely making it out of the Kettle Springs cornfields alive, Quinn’s first year away at college should be safe and easy. All she wants is to be normal again.

But instead, Quinn finds that her past won’t leave her alone when she becomes the focus of online conspiracy theories that claim the Kettle Springs Massacre never happened. It’s a deranged but relentless fantasy, and there’s nothing Quinn can do to get people to hear the truth—not even on her own campus or in her own dorm room.

So when a murderous clown attacks Quinn at a frat party while another goes after her father in Kettle Springs at the same time, Quinn realizes that the facts alone are never going to save her. Her only option is to go back into the cornfields, back where the nightmare began, to set the record straight the only way she knows how. Because when the truth gets lost in the lies, that’s when people start to die.

Katie Douglas played Quinn Maybrook in the first film, and while her return has not officially been confirmed, it would make sense for the franchise’s Final Girl to come back for another battle with Frendo.

Clown in a Cornfield Became a Horror Hit

The original Clown in a Cornfield was directed by Eli Craig and co-written by Carter Blanchard. The film earned nearly $14 million worldwide against a reported production budget of only $1 million. Following its theatrical run, the movie found an additional audience through the horror streaming service Shudder.

Given the film’s performance and the popularity of Cesare’s novels, a sequel was a natural next step for Temple Hill.

The Clown in a Cornfield Franchise Continues

The movie sequel isn’t the only way fans can return to Frendo’s world. Adam Cesare is continuing the book series with Lights! Camera! Frendo!, the fourth novel in the franchise, arriving on August 18 in hardcover, audiobook, and ebook formats. The book follows 2023’s Clown in a Cornfield 3: The Church of Frendo and brings the killer clown to Hollywood.

With multiple novels available to adapt and Frendo becoming more popular all the time, Clown in a Cornfield 2: Frendo Lives could be the beginning of a much larger slasher franchise. No release date has been announced yet, but Frendo’s return is officially on the way. Are you excited? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

The post Clown in a Cornfield 2: Frendo Lives is officially happening appeared first on JoBlo.