Sony Pictures have released a final trailer for Insidious: The Red Door, ahead of fans returning into the Further this summer. The final chapter of the Lambert family’s harrowing journey will release in cinemas from July 7th, closing out the popular horror series after five films over thirteen years. However, this won’t mean the end of the franchise. While Insidious: The Red Door will be saying farewell to the Lamberts, a spinoff Thread: An Insidious Talewas recently announced.
Per the synopsis, “to put their demons to rest once and for all, Josh (Patrick Wilson) and a college-aged Dalton (Ty Simpkins) must go deeper into The Further than ever before.” Expect more demons, family secrets, and other horrors from a feature in which franchise vet Patrick Wilson makes his directorial debut.
The rest of the original cast from 2010’s Insidious is also back, with Rose Byrne, Andrew Astor and Lin Shay starring alongside newcomers Sinclair Daniel and Hiam Abbass. The screenplay is written by Scott Teems from a story by Leigh Whannell, the latter of whom also produces with Jason Blum, James Wan, and Oren Peli.
Insidious: The Red Door releases in cinemas on July 7th, 2023. Watch the final trailer below:
As you’ll likely have expected from the streaming success of Disney+’s Hocus Pocus 2 late last year, we now know that Hocus Pocus 3 is going ahead.
The project was confirmed in a new New York Times profile of Disney live-action production chief Sean Bailey, released this weekend.
It’s not yet clear whether the threequel to the 1993 original would follow-up on the sequel’s new characters – having introduced Whitney Peak as Becca, Belissa Escobedo as Izzy, and Lilia Buckingham as Cassie – or introduce new ones. As Hocus Pocus 2 producer Adam Shankman hinted previously, the success of the 2022 film has created “a lot of excitement about potential spinoffs,” which suggests both sequels and spinoffs are on the table for the witchy franchise.
Screenwriter Jen D’Angelo also previously suggested to Variety that a potential sequel could showcase Omri Katz’s Max Dennison and Vinessa Shaw’s Allison Watts: “We tried so hard to get the original cast back for cameos and then it just kept not working out for one reason or the other,” stated D’Angelo. “But I’m hoping in Hocus Pocus 3, we’ll see Max and Alison living in California.”
And though it’s not been confirmed, it’s likely safe to assume that Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Kathy Najimy will return as the Sanderson Sisters for Hocus Pocus 3.
Stay tuned for more information on the upcoming project as we learn it.
Hulu’s latest original horror movie is Jagged Mind, a queer psychological thriller due to premiere on the streamer on June 15th. The official trailer, starring Maisie Richardson-Sellers and Shannon Woodward, has just been released.
Per the film’s synopsis, the horror feature follows Billie (Richardson-Sellers), as she starts dating a mysterious new girlfriend and begins to suffer blackouts and strange visions that feel like she’s stuck in a series of time loops, living the same moments of her life over and over. Jagged Mind hails from director Kelley Kali, and is based on Kali’s own short for Hulu’s “Bite Size Halloween” programme, which was titled First Date. The script comes courtesy of Allyson Morgan, who previously collaborated with Kali when the former worked as a producer on First Date.
Billie is plagued by blackouts and strange visions that lead her to discover she’s stuck in a series of time loops, possibly related to her mysterious new girlfriend.
Actress Richardson-Sellers is best known for her recurring roles on television series like DC’s Legends of Tomorrowand the CW vampire spin-off The Originals. Woodward, meanwhile, has starred in science-fiction prestige series Westworld. Kelley Kali has produced and directed a number of features, among them the 2021 SXSW entry I’m Fine (Thanks for Asking).
Jagged Mind releases on Hulu from June 15th. Watch the trailer below:
After years of fans impatiently waiting for another batch of the weird, thought-provoking stories the show has become known for, Black Mirror season 6 is finally making its way to our screens on June 15th. Not only that, but Netflix have released an official trailer for the new season and detailed information on each upcoming episode.
Charlie Brooker’s latest series will feature five stories and a star-studded cast including Aaron Paul, Michael Cera, Salma Hayek, Myha’la Herrold and Kate Mara. Brookerwrites every Black Mirror season 6 episode, though the final episode, Demon 79, is co-written with Ms. Marvel creator Bisha K. Ali. Brooker.
The full list of season 6 episodes is below:
JOAN IS AWFUL
An average woman is stunned to discover a global streaming platform has launched a prestige TV drama adaptation of her life — in which she is portrayed by Hollywood A-lister Salma Hayek.
Cast: Annie Murphy, Ben Barnes, Himesh Patel, Michael Cera, Rob Delaney, Salma Hayek Pinault
Director: Ally Pankiw
Written by: Charlie Brooker
LOCH HENRY
A young couple travel to a sleepy Scottish town to start work on a genteel nature documentary – but find themselves drawn to a juicy local story involving shocking events of the past.
Cast: Daniel Portman, John Hannah, Monica Dolan, Myha’la Herrold, Samuel Blenkin
Director: Sam Miller
Written by: Charlie Brooker
BEYOND THE SEA
In an alternative 1969, two men on a perilous high-tech mission wrestle with the consequences of an unimaginable tragedy.
Paramount Pictures have released a full trailer for their upcoming animated featureTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, ahead of its August 2nd release date.
Per the official synopsis: “In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, after years of being sheltered from the human world, the Turtle brothers set out to win the hearts of New Yorkers and be accepted as normal teenagers through heroic acts. Their new friend April O’Neil helps them take on a mysterious crime syndicate, but they soon get in over their heads when an army of mutants is unleashed upon them.”
Micah Abbey, Shamon Brown Jr., Nicolas Cantu, and Brady Noon voice the four turtle brothers Donatello, Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Raphael, respectively. Meanwhile, April is portrayed by Ayo Edebiri and Jackie Chan voices rat mentor Splinter; they are joined by Rogen as the villain Bebop, John Cena as Rocksteady, Hannibal Buress as Genghis Frog, Rose Byrne as Leatherhead, Ice Cube as Superfly, Natasia Demetriou as Wingnut, Giancarlo Esposito as Baxter Stockman, Post Malone as Ray Fillet, Paul Rudd as Mondo Gecko, and Maya Rudolph as Cynthia Utrom.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem releases in cinemas from August 2nd. Check out the film’s official trailer below:
Universal’s live-action adaptation of the beloved DreamWorks trilogy How To Train Your Dragon has cast its human riders. Mason Thames, known for starring opposite Ethan Hawke in Blumhouse horror The Black Phone, and The Last of Us‘s Nico Parker, will portray Hiccup and Astrid in the upcoming feature.
Dean DeBlois will write and direct the adaptation, which is due to begin filming this summer ahead of a March 14th 2025 release date. DeBlois both wrote and directed each of the three animated How To Train Your Dragon films, as well as having co-written and co-directed Disney’s Lilo & Stitch (which is also being adapted to live-action).
How to Train Your Dragon centres on the growing relationship between a young, clumsy Viking teen and aspiring dragon hunter named Hiccup and Toothless, an injured dragon he saves. Meanwhile, Astrid also progresses from someone prejudiced against dragons to a warrior bonded to one. In the animated trilogy, Astrid is voiced by America Ferrera, and Hiccup by Jay Baruchel.
Parker is no stranger to live-action adaptations of other story formats, having acted in Disney’s 2019 feature Dumbo, as well as portraying Sarah Miller in HBO’s adaptation of the video game The Last of Us. Thames most recently appeared in the CW’s Walker series.
Jack Quaid, best known for his lead role in Prime Video’s The Boys, has been tapped to star in sci-fi thriller Companion, a feature which hails from the team behind horror hit Barbarian.
Companion will mark My Dead Ex creator Drew Hancock’s directorial debut, from his own original script. The film’s plot is being kept top secret, so we know nothing beyond its genre, including who Quaid might be portraying. Barbarian writer-director Zach Cregger is producing the film alongside BoulderLight Pictures’ Raphael Margules and J.D. Lifshitz, and Vertigo’s Roy Lee. BoulderLight’s Tracy Rosenblum and Vertigo’s Andrew Childs will executive produce. Cregger was initially set to direct Companion, before opting to go ahead with his own script instead, a New Line film titled Weapons.
Beyond his work on The Boys, Jack Quaid is currently one of the voice stars in Paramount+’s animated series Star Trek: Lower Decks, as well as starring in the upcoming second season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, as his Lower Decks character Ensign Boimler makes the jump to live-action. The new season, which sees Paul Wesley take on the role of James T. Kirk, premieres June 17th. Quaid will also appear amidst Christopher Nolan’s sprawling ensemble cast in Oppenheimer, which releases on July 21st.
French director Camille Delamarre is no stranger to the action genre. Having directed films such as Brick Mansion and The Transporter Refueled, Delamarre has a solid sense of why this genre is so popular. His latest, indie actioner, Assassin Club, stars Henry Golding (Snake Eyes), Sam Neill (Jurassic Park), Noomi Rapace (Prometheus), and Daniela Melchior (The Suicide Squad) and employs a number of effective tricks to immerse audiences in its fight sequences.
We caught up with Delamarre ahead of Assassin Club‘s home video release, talking everything from Henry Golding and Noomi Rapace to the key to creating great action…
STARBURST: Could you tell us a little bit about Assassin Club?
Camille Delamarre: The movie is about a hitman who wants to take his retreat for a woman, but he has to accept just a last job, a last mission, just about to kill six other assassins all over the world. He is, of course, also just a target. So he has no choice if he wants to stay alive and to go away, to take this last mission.
You have a really good cast for this movie. What was it like working with them? Had you worked with them before? Did anything surprise you?
No, I met all of them for the first time on this movie. Noomi Rapace was attached from the beginning of the movie, so I met her in London and just what a great actress! We were on the same page about her character. So it was great to work with her because she’s professional. She’s very intense on screen. With Henry, of course, the goal was to find someone who is not only a generic action hero with just a muscle guy without any charisma and sensibility. Sam Neill -he’s just a legend. To work with Sam was, for me, a dream. His voice! His charisma! He has something, just in front of the camera, like crazy for a director. It was just so cool to work with him.
And Daniela – it was, of course, some years ago before what she’s doing now. And now, she’s a movie star! But when I met her for the first time, she was a very great European actress. And for me, it was really important for her to fit with Henry because they are a couple in the movie. We organized a meeting altogether, and just it was like, ‘okay, let’s make this film together!’ It’s the perfect casting for that.
Did Henry do his own stunts for the movie? Or did you have somebody come in for him to do some?
Henry and Noomi gave me an easy life as a director because they were with me for all the stunt scenes and fighting for real. All the stunt doubles were on the chairs, and the main cast was in front of the camera! It gave me a lot of liberty to shoot them and to avoid having them only for some closeups and just shooting the fight from the back. They gave me a lot from the beginning to the end of the shoot. They were with me and ready!
It’s impressive when great actors are also great stunt people. It’s such a different skill set that interacts with acting so beautifully if they do it right. The stunt work in the movie is really good. You have Henry leaping out of windows as the building explodes and stuff. It’s epic action. What would you say are some of the challenges that are specific to directing action?
For me, it’s just an area where I feel very confident – action is my passion! The most difficult thing was the time and the money we had on this movie. It’s an independent action movie, not a big studio film with a huge budget. When you have only one day, it’s a real challenge to just finish the day, to get everything, to make a good scene. So, of course, working with some actors and actresses who are with you to play the action scenes for real saves a lot of time.
Toward the end, when the action gets bigger, and the stakes get higher, one of the things we noticed about some of the camera workwas a POV shot. It was like a first-person shotand a break in the normal way action is shot.
The goal was to be very immersive and to be inside the action with the characters. And just like a rollercoaster, you have also this sensation of movement, speed, and danger. So yeah, the point of view is important to create this sensation of the feeling of a rollercoaster!
Are there going to be more of these? It definitely ends on a note where it’s like, “Oh, they could keep going with this.”
Yeah, we have all in mind that we all hope just to be all together again for the next chapter, for sure.
Assassin Club is now available digitally in the US and on June 13th in the UK. It will be released on DVD/Blu-ray in the US on June 6th.
At a point when video game inspired films and projects are at their healthiest state in years, off the back of HBO’s monumental success with The Last Of Us and The Super Mario Bros. Movie being the highest grossing film of 2023 thus far, the long awaited Minecraft movie is finally taking shape.
Inspired by the feverishly popular world building game, this live-action feature film adaptation’s plot at the moment is being kept under wraps but what we do know, since it was announced way back in 2014, is that the shape of the film has potentially shifted a few times already. Initially to be helmed by Shawn Levy (Free Guy) and scripted by Kieran and Michele Mulroney (Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows), who all left the project.
Then the directorial reigns were handed to Rob McElhenney (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia) in 2015, with Jason Fuchs (Pan) writing and Steve Carell set to star. Until 2018, when McElhenney left and Fuchs was replaced with Aaron and Adam Nee (The Lost City). Then in 2019, Peter Sollett (Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist) was to be the new director/co-writer alongside Allison Schroeder (Hidden Figures). Until COVID happened, delaying the project (a few times) further, with Sollett and Schroeder officially leaving the film in 2022, and Jared Hess (Nacho Libre) being tapped to direct, while Chris Bowman and Hubbel Palmer (Masterminds) were supposedly set to rewrite the script. Phew!
And that is where we are now, and finally it seems we are building things up rather than constantly restarting, as Aquaman and Fast X star Jason Momoa is not only confirmed to be the headliner of the film, but the sumptuously voiced star of The IT Crowd, What We Do In The Shadows and Toast of London Matt Berry is in talks to join the film too, which would already give the film a mighty fine cast!
Berry’s varied talents add to any project and in a film based on a game where literally anything (within reason) is possible, the film could go in any direction story wise. No doubt we will hear more about the official plot, as well as the characters, as the film starts assembling its world, as we head for the (at the moment) April 4th 2025 release date.
Let’s hope no other developments block the film’s path.
Just when one classic children’s story in Winnie the Pooh gets the horror treatment, then bibbidi bobbidi boo you have loads on your hands.
Already we have had the Dr Seuss’ Grinch-inspired The Mean One, and it has been confirmed we will be getting new horror treatments of both Bambi and Peter Pan, as well as a further sequel to the aforementioned Winnie the Pooh Blood and Honey, well now it’s the turn of Cinderella in Cinderella’s Curse. As this new horror trend looks to get in there before the clock strikes midnight!
Bloody Disgusting broke the story this week, announcing this new “gory horror” take on the legendary and enduring tale. This film will apparently be the Cinderella we know and love, but with a bit more death and rampage! Those stepsisters better watch their back!
Producer/director Louisa Warren has said, “gore hounds are in for a treat in my dark retelling”. As writer Harry Boxley will pen the screenplay, with Kelly Rian Sanson, Chrissie Wunna and Danielle Scott cast as the leads, as the film prepares to film in the UK next month.
You shall go to the ball indeed! Or rather go ball-istic.
