Caught Stealing, The Long Walk, and Black Phone 2 have all been given R ratings

Darren Aronofsky’s crime caper Caught Stealing is set to reach theatres on August 29th, with Francis Lawrence’s intense Stephen King adaptation The Long Walk following on September 12th and Scott Derrickson’s sequel to his Joe Hill adaptation The Black Phone (a sequel simply titled Black Phone 2) dropping on October 17th – and today, we have learned that the Motion Picture Association ratings board has given all three of these movies R ratings!

Directed by Aronofsky from a screenplay by Charlie Huston, who is also the author of the book that the movie is based on, Caught Stealing has the following synopsis: Hank Thompson (Austin Butler) was a high-school baseball phenom who can’t play anymore, but everything else is going okay. He’s got a great girl (Zoë Kravitz), tends bar at a New York dive, and his favorite team is making an underdog run at the pennant. When his punk-rock neighbor Russ (Matt Smith) asks him to take care of his cat for a few days, Hank suddenly finds himself caught in the middle of a motley crew of threatening gangsters. They all want a piece of him; the problem is he has no idea why. As Hank attempts to evade their ever-tightening grip, he’s got to use all his hustle to stay alive long enough to find out… Butler, Kravitz, and Smith are joined in the cast by Regina King, Liev Schreiber, Vincent D’Onofrio, Griffin Dunne, Benito A Martínez Ocasio and Carol Kane. The film has been rated R for strong violent content, pervasive language, some sexuality/nudity and brief drug use.

Strange Darling writer JT Mollner has written the screenplay for Lawrence’s The Long Walk. The novel is set in a future dystopian America ruled over by a militaristic dictator, and the titular event is an annual contest in which 100 teenagers must keep a steady pace of at least four miles an hour under strict rules until only one of them is left alive. The winner receives “The Prize”: anything they want for the rest of their life. The story follows Raymond Garraty, a 16-year-old from Pownal, Maine, as well as a group of other teenagers with good, bad, and mysterious intentions. Cooper Hoffman, David Jonsson, Garrett Wareing, Tut Nyuot, Charlie Plummer, Ben Wang, Jordan Gonzalez, Joshua Odjick, and Roman Griffin Davis star in the film alongside Judy Greer and Mark Hamill, who recently worked on another King adaptation called The Life of Chuck. The film has been rated R for strong bloody violence, grisly images, suicide, pervasive language, and sexual references.

Derrickson wrote the screenplay for Black Phone 2 with C. Robert Cargill, who was also his co-writer on the first film. Here’s the official synopsis: Ethan Hawke returns to the most sinister role of his career as The Grabber seeks vengeance on Finn (Mason Thames) from beyond the grave by menacing Finn’s younger sister, Gwen (Madeleine McGraw). As Finn, now 17, struggles with life after his captivity, the headstrong 15-year-old Gwen begins receiving calls in her dreams from the black phone and seeing disturbing visions of three boys being stalked at a winter camp known as Alpine Lake. Determined to solve the mystery and end the torment for both her and her brother, Gwen persuades Finn to visit the camp during a winter storm. There, she uncovers a shattering intersection between The Grabber and her own family’s history. Together, she and Finn must confront a killer who has grown more powerful in death and more significant to them than either could imagine. The sequel sees the return of Mason Thames as Finney Shaw, Madeleine McGraw as Finney’s sister Gwen, Jeremy Davies as their dad Terrence, and Miguel Mora as Robin, a friend of Finney’s who was killed in the first movie. Ethan Hawke is reprising the role of the child-killer The Grabber. New additions to the cast include Demián Bichir, Arianna Rivas, and Anna Lore. The film has been rated R for strong violent content, gore, teen drug use, and language.

What do you think of Caught Stealing, The Long Walk, and Black Phone 2 earning R ratings? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

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