Derek Connolly, the writer whose work includes the Jurassic World franchise, has been tapped to write a live-action adaptation of the Sega video game, Eternal Champions, for Skydance.
First released in 1993, Eternal Champions was a fighting game whose premise is as follows: “An omniscient being known as the Eternal Champion predicts that mankind will soon fade from existence due to the untimely and unjust deaths of key individuals throughout history who were destined for greatness. Seeking to restore balance to the world, the Eternal Champion gathers these souls from time moments before their deaths. The Eternal Champion only has enough power to restore life to one of these individuals, so he organizes and holds a fighting tournament between them, where the victor will be able to regain their life and change their fate while bringing balance to the universe, whilst the losers will be forced to die just as history recorded.”
Connolly also co-wrote Safety Not Guaranteed with Colin Trevorrow, working with the filmmaker again on Jurassic World, and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. He also earned credits on Legendary’s Monsterverse film Kong: Skull Island, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, and Detective Pikachu. He also wrote the script for another upcoming video game adaptation, The Legend of Zelda, which has Wes Ball on board to direct, and is reportedly working on Paramount’s untitled Transformers/G.I. Joe crossover film that’s set to star Chris Hemsworth.
With a fantastic cast led by Willa Fitzgerald (The Fall of the House of Usher/Scream: The TV Series) and Kyle Gallner (Smile/Scream) and the stamp of approval from writing legend Stephen King, then it goes without saying that Strange Darling should instantly be on your watchlist. Following a serial killer, we see a night full of twists and turns and unpredictable events that will have you hooked from the first chapter. The film has its international premiere at Pigeon Shrine FrightFest on August 24th. STARBURST catches up with director/writer JT Mollner (Outlaws and Angels) and cinematographer Giovanni Ribisi (Avatar/Saving Private Ryan) to discuss their creative dynamic and why a 35mm shooting style was the perfect approach to capturing the film’s uniquely disturbing feel…
STARBRUST:The entire film is shot using a 35mm camera. Can you tell us what you enjoy the most about filming that way and what it brings to a movie like this in particular?
JT Mollner: When I grew up watching movies in the ’90s and other films that I was tuned onto from the ’70s, and before it, there was always a look that differentiated cinema from TV, and that’s the beginning of it for me. There’s a look, a feeling, when you watch something on film. When I started making short films decades later, everybody was shooting digitally, and I just looked at the quality and the way those movies looked, and I said, “This isn’t what I signed up for, I want to shoot film.” So we did everything we could to start shooting film when I started making short films. When I met Giovanni at the ASC Awards – through our mutual friend at Kodak, Steve Bellamy – he felt the same way. Especially with this movie, and it’s not just 35mm, I love it all, 16mm, 35mm, 70mm, but in this movie, we knew when we were developing the look, the anamorphic, 35mm, it just felt right for this story and what we were trying to convey, and obviously I found the right guy to do that with…
Giovanni Ribisi: Yeah, I think there was also this thing when you’re growing up and you’ve been shooting for the last fifteen years or so. There were just a lot of misconceptions about film being so much more expensive than digital, or it’s for those movies that are 120 million dollars, and it really isn’t. It’s a lot more accessible than people would think. At the end of the day, I think the story is the most important factor, but I think we both agree that it’s a better tool, generally, to tell those stories, and there’s just sort of an organic quality, a superior image I guess.
JT: Also, it’s a visual medium, so I think that matters so much. And if the look doesn’t matter, we might as well be doing radio shows. The look matters, but I also love the process, and some people hate it. I’m used to it now, but the process keeps us disciplined. Giovanni likes to work that way as well. Everybody on set, when they hear that film roll, when they smell it, and they see it, it just creates a level of reverence for the process, and for cinema, while you’re at work, that I think ups everybody’s game.
Giovanni, this is your first full-length movie as a cinematographer; what was the most rewarding moment of the whole process for you, and why?
Giovanni: It’s not because I’m sitting next to him, but it was really working with JT and watching him go through the process of making this movie. No movie is easy, but in this case, it was like something that I had never seen. When I first saw an early cut, I remember turning to the other producer Steven Schneider, and feeling like it was just so radical and digesting it. I was just happy that we had gone through everything that we had gone through.
STRANGE DARLING screens at Pigeon Shrine FrightFest on August 24th and will be released in UK cinemas this September 20th
“When the first trailer for Alien: Romulus was unleashed like a facehugger exploding from an ovomorph egg, fans leapt up in awe due to its instant, throwback feel. The highly claustrophobic and bleak atmosphere, combined with realistic-looking sets and a clear use of practical effects, harked right back to Ridley Scott’s Alien, and from that point, we have all been waiting with bated breath for its release date. To celebrate the arrival of Alien: Romulus, we caught up with its director/writer Fede Álvarez (Evil Dead), to discuss character dynamics, xenomorphs and how he went about crafting a film that could appease both new and old fans of this legendary, space horror franchise!”
STARBURST: In the Alien saga, there’s always a back-and-forth between the lead character and an android. With Alien: Romulus, it’s no different. So, what was it like to work with Cailee Spaeny (Rain) and David Jonsson (Andy)? Fede Álvarez: Those two were amazing, I couldn’t ask for a better casting when it came to playing those two roles. They are, on many levels, very similar. The dynamics captured on screen are very similar to their dynamics off-screen. Their personalities and how they interact. I would probably say that David is more similar to Andy from the start, as opposed to the company man Andy. It was truly a privilege, what can I say, great actors, that really inject so much life into the characters. When you’ve seen the movie, the evolution and the transformation of seeing Andy going from who he is at the beginning to who he becomes at the end is quite unique. The androids rarely have an arc in these movies, so it was great to see one where an android goes through a full arc.
There are a lot of exciting callbacks to earlier Alien movies. How important was it for you to thread moments like that in, and ultimately, how did you create a film for both newcomers and old fans of the franchise? It’s not that difficult at the end of the day. With any movie and any new story, usually, particularly in science fiction, when they’re big universes, as soon as the story starts, people are going to be referring to things that have happened in the past. There’s always a backstory, there’s always something that happened before, there’s always other characters. No story starts when the universe started, right? Every story and movie starts at some point in time when a lot of things have happened in the past that will affect the story. This is no different. What changes here is those stories that happened in the past were actually already made into other movies that you can go and watch if you want. But for the newer audience, those stories are for reference, for things that happened in the past, and that’s just the backstory of this movie. So it’s quite simple. I think the key is to make sure that there’s nothing in the movie that references nostalgia, or if you’re in the audience, you just go, “What?” you blank at it, and you feel like you’ve been left out. That would be unfair to the young audience that shows up to this movie. To feel like everybody is reacting to something that they don’t understand. They miss out and don’t understand the movie’s meaning. They don’t understand where the story is going because they haven’t seen the other movies. That would be a shame. So, we tried to build it in a way where you aren’t required to have seen the other ones, but if you have, you just understand better what they’re talking about.
When it came to designing the Xenomorph costumes, you worked with Shane Mahan. How did this collaboration come about, and what did you really want to see from the Xenomorph design within Alien: Romulus? Well, I knew from day one that I needed to bring back the team from Aliens. Those guys are very active and the best of the best when it comes to practical effects and creature work. So, I knew Shane specifically needed to be involved in the film, and he knows a Xenomorph really, really well. From Aliens, he went off to work on Jurassic Park, and a lot of the classic animatronic movies of the era, and recently a lot of the Star Wars content. However, he hadn’t really gone back to the Alien world in a long time, so he really wanted to go back. He was joking, well, I don’t think he was joking, but I thought he was joking, saying, “I can’t wait to go back and get it right this time.” When these people push themselves so hard, and when they’re trying to do the best work they can, even in movies that we consider to be classics, they look back on them and they go “Ah we should have done this better, we could have done better with this.” He had a lot of thoughts about what he could have done better with the Queen in Aliens. So he brought a lot of those improvements to the Xenomorph on our movie, when it comes to the animatronics. Obviously now there a lot of tools that didn’t exist back in the day, so he could use all of the technology from 2024, and it looks like nothing else people have seen in movies.
Alien: Romulus is in cinemas now. Read our review here
Camila Mendes, best known for playing Veronica in the CW series Riverdale, has landed one of the lead roles in Amazon MGM Studios and Mattel Films’ live-action film, Masters of the Universe. The actress will play Teela, opposite The Idea of You’s Nicholas Galitzine as He-Man.
Travis Knight, the founder of stop-motion champions Laika, is helming the film based on the popular toy brand introduced in the 1980s. The screenplay hails from Chris Butler, following initial drafts by David Callaham, and brothers Aaron and Adam Nee.
Plot details are still top secret, but the concept centres on the character of Prince Adam of Eternia who, thanks to his Power Sword, turns into the muscular He-Man and is imbued with superhuman strength and abilities. With his assortment of allies, he defends the planet from the evil Skeletor and his armies. Teela (Mendes) is the captain of the royal guard and the adopted daughter of Man-at-Arms, the royal family’s inventor of weapons.
Further to Riverdale, Camila Mendes was seen starring opposite Maya Hawke in the dark comedy Do Revenge, and will be seen next in Sony’s reboot of the iconic horror movie,I Know What You Did Last Summer.
Masters of the Universe is expected to release in cinemas on June 5th, 2026.
After many setbacks and pushed releases, Sony Pictures has released the full trailerfor Kraven the Hunter, the latest feature from director J.C. Chandor. Landing in cinemas from December 13th, the film is based on the titular Marvel Comic character and stars Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ariana DeBose, Fred Hechinger, Alessandro Nivola, Christopher Abbott, and Russell Crowe.
Kraven the Hunter centres on the Spider-Man villain who first appeared in the comics in 1964. Taylor-Johnson plays Sergei Kravinoff, who is left for dead by his hunter father (Crowe, doing ham on the Russian accent) after a lion attack. The animal’s bite then appears to gift Sergei with special abilities, and he becomes known as Kraven the Hunter and uses violence to protect the animal kingdom. The movie’s previous trailer had revealed Alessandro Nivola to play Aleksei Sytsevich, aka the Rhino. This newest trailer grants fans a greater look at Nivola, as we glimpse Rhino taking on Kraven in what looks to be the African savannah.
Chandor directed the film from a script by Richard Wenk, Art Marcum and Matt Holloway. Avi Arad, Matt Tolmach and David Householter serve as producers.
Watch the full trailer for Kraven the Hunter below, ahead of a December 13th, 2024 cinema release:
Lucasfilm showed off the first trailer fortheir Star Wars: The Skeleton Crew series as part of its D23 presentation. The show centres on a group of kids lost in a galaxy far, far away, as they try to make their way home. The show hails from Jon Watts, who directed the MCU’s Spider-Man trilogy starring Tom Holland, and frequent collaborator Christopher Ford. Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni are, as per usual, executive producing the series. The show is set in the New Republic era of the Star Wars canon, aka in the years after the Empire’s fall in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi.
A team of renowned directors worked on the project, including Everything Everywhere All At Once‘s Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, The Green Knight‘s David Lowery, Jake Schreier, Bryce Dallas Howard, and Lee Isaac Chung. The series was written by Ford and Watts, excluding the fifth and sixth episodes which were writeen by Myung Joh Wesner. The cast stars Jude Law alongside young actors Ravi Cabot-Conyers, Kyriana Kratter, Robert Timothy Smith and Ryan Kiera Armstrong.
Watch the trailer for Star Wars: The Skeleton Crew below, streaming with a two-episode series premiere December 3rd on Disney+.
Neon has just dropped the first teaser trailer for The Monkey, Longlegsdirector Osgood Perkins’ next project. The horror film, which stars Theo James alongside Tatiana Maslany, Elijah Wood, Christian Convery, Colin O’Brien, Rohan Campbell and Sarah Levy, debuts in cinemas on February 21st, 2025.
The film centres on twins Bill and Hal (both played by James), whose discovery of their dad’s monkey toy in the attic leads to a string of grisly deaths. Perkins both writes and directs The Monkey, which is based on the Stephen King short story of the same name, first published in 1980. Dave Caplan, Michael Clear, Chris Ferguson, Brian Kavanaugh-Jones and James Wan are aboard the project as producers.
During a recent interview with THR to promote Longlegs, Perkins said that The Monkey will be far more comedic than any of his previous work. “It’s feeling more like an old John Landis movie or a Joe Dante movie or a Robert Zemeckis movie,” the filmmaker said at the time. “I saw an opportunity to make a wry, absurdist comedy about death. It’s about the very basic fact that we all die — and how fucking funny and weird and impossible and surreal is that shit? And to come at it from a tragicomedy kind of voice felt like it fit.”
Perkins continued, “At the end of the day, if you want to reduce it, it’s the haunted toy or evil toy subgenre, and I couldn’t imagine doing a serious one of those. To me, it rang utterly false to approach it that way, so I just went in the other direction.”
The award-winning documentary (K)nox: The Rob Knox Story, which tells the story of the Harry Potter actor who was tragically killed, is getting a special screening at Picturehouse Central in London on Saturday, September 28th.
The film was followed by a panel discussion with BAFTA-nominated actor Ray Winstone – patron of the Rob Knox Film Festival, Aaron Truss – director of the Rob Knox Film Festival, and Rob’s father, Colin Knox. It will be hosted by Paul McEvoy from FrightFest and Stark Raving Cinema podcast.
The film recounts the story of 18-year-old Rob Knox, who is out celebrating his big break in Harry Potter when he learns that his little brother has been threatened at knife point. He and his friends rush to disarm the man, but during the struggle, Rob is stabbed several times and is killed. Now, his family must try to navigate their grief and anger while under the ever-watchful eye of the invasive British media machine. Meanwhile, more young people than ever are losing their lives on the streets. Something has to be done. The tragic incident led to the creation of the Rob Knox Foundation and Rob Knox Film Festival.
Earlier this year, Aaron Truss, director of the Rob Knox Film Festival, announced that the Bromley Picturehouse would be the future venue of the festival, housing the permanent memorial to Rob. However, after successful negotiations with senior group management following the cinema’s closure, it has now been relocated to Picturehouse Central, which will continue to honour the young actor’s legacy.
Aaron Truss says, “After the closure of Bromley Picturehouse, discussions were held between myself and Picturehouse Cinemas. Both parties wanted to ensure the continuation of the Rob Knox London Film Festival, and I’m happy to say that an agreement was reached and a contract signed. Rob Knox’s legacy will live on, and it will live on in the heart of London’s West End at Picturehouse Central”.
Clare Binns, Managing Director for Picturehouse Cinemas, says, “We’re very happy to be able to continue our work with the Rob Knox London Film Festival at Picturehouse Central, and especially to have found a new place for Rob Knox’s memorial: overlooking Piccadilly Circus in our Members’ Bar. We very much look forward to hosting our first event with the festival in September”
The Rob Knox London Film Festival will return in 2025.
All ticket money from this event will go straight to the Rob Knox Foundation and can be bought here.
Inspired by the works of the cinematic legend and Master of Suspense, born on this day in 1899, Hex Studios’ latest venture, Black Chariot, has launched on Kickstarter. The film promises to be an intense and deeply disturbing supernatural horror. Director Lawrie Brewster (Lord of Tears) will be drawing from Alfred Hitchcock’s dark thrillers like Rebecca (1942) and Psycho (1960), to invoke the master’s spirit in his latest spine-chilling horror noir.
Director Lawrie Brewster shared, “Black Chariot is a love letter to the Master of Suspense, and my greatest cinematic inspiration, Alfred Hitchcock, so it seemed only fitting that we launch our campaign seeking support for the film on the date of his birth. Our eccentric pitch video even sees me pay a more personal homage to the great director, which I’m hoping fellow fans will enjoy!”
Starring horror legend Laurence R. Harvey (The Human Centipede), Black Chariot follows the plight of three young men who have fallen prey to the manipulative schemes of a nefarious bank manager (Harvey) who plans a heist to steal a mysterious red case, harbouring something of great value.
However, not all is as it seems, and not everything goes to plan. In the chaos, a guard is shot dead, and a frightened girl is taken hostage.
With the police on their heels, the three must press on into the dead of night, for somewhere deep within these eerie woods, a sinister figure known only as ‘The Devil’ awaits them.
Co-starring upcoming genre talent Megan Tremethick, Novarro Ramon, Dorian Todd, and Sam Barclay, as well as veterans Richard Pate and Nick Ford, the film is currently exclusively available to pre-order on Kickstarter, with a general release expected in April 2025.
You can sign up to the Hex Studio’s Patreon to keep up to date with news here.
James Wan, a pillar of contemporary horror cinema and the creator of the Saw and The Conjuring franchises, is developing a new take on the classic Universal monster feature, The Creature From the Black Lagoon. According to THR, Wan is in early talks to direct the feature film.
A writer will now be hired to write a script for the remake of the 1954 classic, working alongside Wan and Universal. This is the first project Wan has attached himself to as director since his company’s production banner, Atomic Monster, merged with Jason Blum’s Blumhouse Productions.
Wan will, of course, also act as a producer on Creature From the Black Lagoon, with Atomic Monster’s Michael Clear and Judson Scott serving as executive producers.
The original film, a black-and-white, 3-D horror, featured a prehistoric, water-dwelling, humanoid monster and followed the group of scientists that aim to capture and study him. Jack Arnold directed the ’54 creature feature from a script by Arthur A. Ross, which starred Julie Adams and Ben Chapman as the Gill-Man. Wan’s take is described as being a grounded, modernized retelling that will lean into visceral horror, while still paying respect to the original.
