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Yahoo
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘It almost killed me': Horror maestro Mike Flanagan looks back at career-making hits from ‘Gerald's Game' to ‘Hill House' to ‘Life of Chuck'
The Life of Chuck is easily Mike Flanagan's least scary offering, which is interesting to note considering the new adaptation of Stephen King's novella is set around the pending apocalypse. What it is, however, is Flanagan's coziest and most gentle offering, which helps explain why the drama won the highly coveted People's Choice award at last fall's Toronto International Film Festival – and could ride a wave of strong reviews into this fall's Oscar race. Prior to Chuck, of course, Flanagan has worked exclusively in the stuff of nightmares, becoming one of the horror's world's most revered writer-directors thanks to genre favorites on screens big (Oculus, Hush, Doctor Sleep) and small (Gerald's Game, The Haunting of Hill House, Midnight Mass). More from GoldDerby 'A Minecraft Movie' sets streaming premiere date, Matthew Conaughey reteams with 'True Detective' writer, and more of today's top stories 'I feel so lucky to be part of it': Tim Bagley on finding love, laughter, and belonging in 'Somebody Somewhere' Inside the comedy pressure cooker: How 'SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night' exposed the madness behind the magic of 'Saturday Night Live' In our latest edition of The Gold Standard, Flanagan looks back at 20-plus years of filmmaking, from his humble beginnings on the shoestring-budgeted debut Absentia to a horrific experience making Haunting of Hill House to his award-wining latest offering Chuck, whose cast includes Tom Hiddleston, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Karen Gillan, and Mark Hamill . He even picks his favorites. Flanagan used crowdfunding to finance his $70,000 debut, a supernatural scarer about a pregnant woman (Courtney Bell) whose husband mysteriously reappears after a seven-year absence that was immediately embraced by horror sites like Fangoria. So when I made when I made that one, I was working full time as a reality TV editor, and I was working a day and a night job to try to stay afloat in L.A. I'd lived in L.A. for eight years at that point, and had given myself five years to try to make something happen and get some traction, and it hadn't worked out. We used Kickstarter, which was still in its beta testing phase, it was brand new. And we shot it with available light on a Canon 5D Mark II in my apartment with a crew of eight people over two weeks. I remember feeling at the time, like one way or another that was either going to be my last movie, or it would kick something open. … It radically changed my life. I don't think Absentia would have done anything like what it did without Fangoria. Fango ran a feature piece on it, and instantly drove the audience to it. I was incredibly lucky in that I found the horror community to be so welcoming and enthusiastic about not only Absentia, but it was the same with the Oculus short (2006) before that. That was kind of championed only by Bloody Disgusting and Dread Central and Fango, and that really made all of the difference. I don't think Oculus would have been able to go forward if not for the way the horror press and the horror blogs held up Absentia and kind of demanded attention on it. … There are few fandoms as connected and passionate as the horror fandom, and they'll carry you all the way home if you let them. Flanagan was given a much more robust $4 million budget for his sophomore feature Oculus, starring Karen Gillan and Brenton Thwaites as adult siblings convinced that an antique mirror was responsible for the deaths that destroyed their childhoods. After premiering at TIFF, the Blumhouse and WWE-produced feature grossed $44 million. Flanagan also met his future wife Kate Siegel on the project. I was terrified going into Oculus. I was excited. I still think of it as my first real movie. I didn't know what I didn't know. I was suffering from constant imposter syndrome, and this feeling like any second now, they'd look around and figure out I had no idea what I was doing, and I was making it up as I went — which I still feel to this day, frankly. But I remember it being a time of enormous anxiety, but also it was so thrilling. It was so exciting to be on a real set with a real crew and with the equipment. And I'm a huge fanboy, so Karen Gillan was right here and Katee Sackhoff was right there, and I'm a major Whovian and Battlestar fan. And so I was geeking out every day to be working with them. There was one ghost in particular, who really, really changed my life. I remember, at the wrap party, sitting down and talking to Kate kind of for the first time outside of that type of work. And talk about life-changing. But yeah, Oculus for me was an incredible school. It was one of the most educational experiences of my life. And it kind of broke open this whole other level for me because it was released theatrically, which today I don't think it would have been. And Stephen King watched it and tweeted about it, and I about died. I mean, just completely, completely floored [by] that whole experience and going around doing the doing the press tour and going to the premieres overseas and seeing it with an audience, it was insane. There was a screening of it that WWE did where Hulk Hogan riled up the crowd and introduced the movie. It was bizarre. ... I still felt, though, that as quickly as that had happened, it could go away. And I better have another movie ready, another movie ready, another movie ready. Every one of those movies for that five -year period felt like this could be the last one. Flanagan sure had some more movies ready. The filmmaker premiered THREE different movies in 2016: Blumhouse's Hush (about a mute woman terrorized in the woods), Before I Wake (starring Jacob Tremblay as a kid with some very problematic nightmares), and Ouija: Origin of Evil (the prequel to 2014's Ouija). It's a little misleading because we shot Before I Wake before Oculus was released and because [its original distributor] Relativity went under, it was stuck in limbo for years. So really it was only Hush and Ouija that were back to back. And Before I Wake was released with them. But it would have been impossible to do all three in that time frame. But yeah, fortunately for me now, and unfortunately at the time, Relativity Media was going bankrupt and we had no idea, and so the movie didn't come out. But I had to be in prep on something new when I was in post on something, it was a compulsion and it was out of fear that whatever I just worked on was going to fail. And if I wasn't already working on a new thing, that would mean my career would just stop. And so I had to overlap them and keep it moving. And that was a panicked feeling I had that didn't let up for years. Like I was still feeling that way rolling into Doctor Sleep, like where it's like, 'Better keep going, better keep going.' Because if I stop and look down, I'm going to fall out of this career and it'll be over. And it took me a lot of years to finally look behind me and go, 'Oh no, I'm okay. I can go on vacation for a week and it's all right.' But it took a long time. This buzzed-about Netflix thriller starring Carla Gugino as a woman whose husband dies while she's handcuffed to a bed in a remote cabin marked Flanagan's first collaboration with legendary scribe Stephen King, whose 1992 novel the film was based on. He had tweeted about Oculus and that blew my mind. And then he tweeted about Hush. And at that point it was like, 'Can we do this?' And Gerald's Game was such a crazy project because no one had made it, and the book had been out for so long. I think the expectation on Steve's part was that no one was ever going to make it. And so between Oculus and Hush, that's what made him say, 'Yep, you can you can have it.' But back then, there was no communication with Steve at all. It was all [through] his agent, he gave me the rights. I sent the script out for approval. I heard that Steve had approved it, but I didn't actually communicate with Steve until after the movie was done. And when he saw the finished film, he sent me an email of his reaction to the movie. And I still have it framed in my office. But that was the first time we actually communicated. That movie also changed a lot of things for me because it didn't just start my relationship with Steve, but it also really propelled me [because] it was a Netflix original, and it really embedded me at Netflix in a very meaningful way. Now tight with Netflix, Flanagan teamed with Amblin Entertainment and Paramount Television to land his first series on the streaming giant — an incredibly well-received fright fest about adult siblings reckoning with the haunted house of their childhood. It took a massive toll on the writer-director, however. It's another case of I didn't know what I didn't know. I really wanted to get into television because I thought that was where some of the boldest storytelling was happening, and that you had time to really dig into character, which is my favorite part of what I do. Netflix was at a period of time in its evolution where they were really kind of defying the norms of the television industry and taking chances that other studios weren't, including taking a horror filmmaker who had never been involved with a TV show at all, and letting him be the showrunner and direct all 10 episodes of a show. That's crazy. And again, I don't think it would happen today. But Netflix was really cavalier back then about that. And so was I, because I didn't know what I didn't know. I had that same kind of defensive feeling where if this is my first foray into television, I have to empty the missile silos at it. I had to direct every episode because succeed or fail, I wanted it to be on my terms. It was as much about fear of it not going exactly as I wanted it to go as it was about anything else. And I learned an awful lot about television, about longform storytelling in a real crash course. And it almost killed me. I lost 45 pounds during production. Over 100 days of straight production. No breaks. Weekends were spent in prep… I think I went five months without a single day off at one point. I really overdid it. But that's what it took to direct 10 episodes all block shot like a feature. I almost didn't survive it. And, yeah, it turned out to again be a project that radically changed my life and leveled me up in a serious way. But it came at an enormous cost with that one… It remains to this day the hardest and most brutal production experience I've ever had. And I didn't enjoy it. I [came] out of Hill House bleeding and never wanting to go back. Flanagan did quickly return to television, however — multiple times. But he learned how to pace his himself and refine his approach on the Hill House follow-up Bly Manor, Midnight Mass (his Salem's Lot-esque thriller), Midnight Club (following eight haunted terminally ill young adults) and the Edgar Allen Poe-inspired Usher. I got smarter about not trying to do it all. I only directed one episode of Bly Manor, and I was there for all of it. But I got much better at delegation, and I got much, much better at enlisting other filmmakers and giving them ownership over it as well. By the time Midnight Mass came around, I had kind of forgotten [the trouble of Hill House]. It's like childbirth. You forget. You forget the pain. And so by then I was like, 'I want to do all the episodes again. But it was only seven episodes, so that one didn't almost kill me. That was a wonderful experience. It was really hard, but I think that was the right amount. And then I would kind of modulate it. You know, I did two episodes of Midnight Club, I did four episodes of Usher. I got better at figuring out what a human workload was for me. And I got a lot better at embracing the collaborative nature of television and surrounding myself with people I trusted to shoulder a lot of that weight. And now I'm about to do my sixth series [King's Carrie], and I'm completely relaxed about it. I feel like I've I figured that out. But Hill House was a trial by fire. And I wasn't qualified. Today I would have been like, 'You want to be a showrunner, spend some time in a writers room first.' You want to direct all ten episodes of a series, you need to understand what that really means. You should maybe do half of that. And so I've learned a lot, but I kind of ran face first into that one. I wouldn't have the fortitude today to do it. I was also young enough that I was able to kind of hang on by my fingernails in a way I don't think I would be able to do today. Flanagan has called Doctor Sleep one of the other most daunting experiences of his career because of how seriously he took the responsibility of bridging the gap between King's book The Shining and Stanley Kubrick's classic 1980 adaptation, which the author famously hated. So with Doctor Sleep, I met Steve for the first time when I showed him the movie. We brought the finished movie to Bangor [Maine] and screened it for him before anyone else saw it. And I sat with him in an empty theater and watched Doctor Sleep. ... And I was terrified of his reaction, because I know how he feels about The Shining, but he loved the movie. And then after that, I'd say we became friends, we became friendly, and then we were in more regular contact. And I've seen him in person a bunch since then. And he came to the Chuck premiere, which is really neat. But after that we started texting back and forth and just kind of being in touch. READ: The Flanagan-King pipeline continued with Chuck, which follows a terminally ill man (Hiddleston) in reverse-chronological three acts as he has deeply profound impacts on certain strangers that he meets. The thing about The Life of Chuck that was so exciting for me, I read the novella back in April 2020. So right after the shutdown, I felt like the world was ending outside the window back then. And when I started reading it, I didn't think I could keep reading it. It hit so close to home. But I'm so glad I did, because by the end of the story, I was crying with joy and optimism and this incredibly surprising, gentle kind of reassurance that the story provided and I was looking back at my life in a whole different way. I shut the book and turned to Kate, and I said, 'If I get to make this, it's probably the best movie I'll ever get to make.' And I emailed Steve and kind of begged for the story. He had just given me the rights to The Dark Tower so he said, 'Not right now.' He likes to only have one thing at a time, so it doesn't slow anything down. And The Dark Tower proved to take a lot longer to get on its feet than we imagined. It's still happening, but it's taking its time. It's a juggernaut. And so there was time to do Chuck and I got to ask again a few years later. And he said, 'Are you sure? That's a strange one.' And I was like, 'That's why I like it.' And he let me run with it. And it's my favorite movie I've ever, ever worked on in my life. I know it's a major departure. But that's one of the reasons I loved it, and this was always meant to just be a little movie that I wanted to leave in the world for my kids when I'm gone. In TV, the one that came most from the heart was Midnight Mass. And for my features, this is it. And I kind of feel like that feeling I've always had of, 'What if your career goes away? What if Hollywood doesn't want you anymore?' If that happens now … I'd be crushed, of course, but I'd walk away being like, 'I got to do Midnight Mass and Chuck. I'm good.' Those are those are my favorites. Best of GoldDerby Stephen King movies: 14 greatest films ranked worst to best 'The Life of Chuck' cast reveal their favorite Stephen King works, including Mark Hamill's love of the 'terrifying' 'Pet Sematary' From 'Hot Rod' to 'Eastbound' to 'Gemstones,' Danny McBride breaks down his most righteous roles: 'It's been an absolute blast' Click here to read the full article.
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Two Lost Exploitation Films from Trash-Cult Favorite Andy Milligan Will ‘Re-Premiere' at Tribeca
'It's so funny to me that Andy Milligan has become this great cult figure,' Laura Shaine Cunningham told IndieWire. To Cunningham — an author and playwright who describes her stint in Z-grade movies as 'a totally aberrant episode in my life' — Milligan was a sadist with a reddish beard who did his best to ruin her good time while shooting a movie on a derelict farm outside Woodstock, New York, in 1965. 'He was prolific, but not talented,' she added, a common sentiment even among Milligan's most passionate defenders. And Andy Milligan does have a cult, a small but devoted subgroup fascinated by the contrast between the cracked auteurism of his films and the callous commercialism of their production. 'These are true independent movies, and if you really are inclusive and you really want to spotlight independent filmmaking voices, then Andy Milligan needs to be there,' said Jonathan Penner, programmer at Tribeca Festival, where two Milligan films will screen on Friday, June 13. More from IndieWire Zoe Saldaña Says Her 'Emilia Pérez' Oscar Is 'Trans': The Statue 'Goes by They/Them' The Beautiful, Brutal Action of 'Predator: Killer of Killers' Milligan's films 'will move you,' Penner added. '[They] may not move you in the most pleasant way, which is OK. Not all art is nice. Andy Milligan was not a nice guy, and he didn't make nice movies. But they are near and dear to my heart, because horror movies in general are about fear and suffering and mortality, and Andy made movies about the darkest shit in humanity.' A once-promising independent filmmaker and gay Off-Off-Broadway pioneer, Milligan sold his soul to 42nd Street in the mid-'60s. He did so by joining up with producer William Mishkin, who would provide Milligan with small sums of money to churn out one-take wonders — horror movies and sexploitation pictures, mostly — that ran continuously in grindhouses until the prints wore out. Then, they were thrown away. 'They were considered orphans that nobody cared about,' Jimmy McDonough, author of the Milligan biography 'The Ghastly One,' said. 'Mishkin in particular cared very little about his legacy,' McDonough added. 'He saw it as all very contemporary stuff that you worked to death at the time. Maybe a few more years passed [when] you could get it into a drive-in and fool people into thinking it was in color.' Then Mishkin's son, Lou, took over the business in the mid-'80s. So the story goes, after an interview with Fangoria, where Milligan complained about him, Lou destroyed the remaining films out of spite. 'Melted down for the silver content,' as Severin Films researcher Todd Wieneke put it. As a result, many of the films Milligan made for the Mishkins are now considered lost. But Wieneke kept looking, and after years of searching, he discovered two previously unseen Milligan films, 'The Degenerates' (1967) and 'Kiss Me! Kiss Me! Kiss Me!' (1968). Both were found in Europe, where it's common for unclaimed materials to be sent to national archives when a film company goes into receivership, a practice Wieneke credited to the 'deeply entrenched film cultures' in these countries. 'Kiss Me! Kiss Me! Kiss Me!' was originally shipped to the Netherlands as part of a package of Mishkin films. This particular title, a hysterical New York apartment melodrama in the style of Doris Wishman, was a poor fit for the all-night theaters in Amsterdam's red-light district. And so it 'sat on the shelf, unscreened, not a single blemish on it,' as Wieneke said, for decades. It was eventually sent to the Eye Filmmuseum and kept, unlabeled, in its archive until it was finally catalogued in 2023. McDonough said that 'Kiss Me! Kiss Me! Kiss Me!' is 'the most mainstream of [Milligan's] exploitation pictures, certainly, and perhaps all of his strange pictures.' McDonough credits this to the fact that Milligan didn't write the film — Josef Bush, best known for the cheeky 1968 gay guide 'The Homosexual Handbook', crafted the script from Mishkin's outline. 'Mishkin really felt like this was his 'Star Wars,'' McDonough laughed. The film was a hit on 42nd Street, possessing a certain tawdry entertainment value. It's also a valuable time capsule: 'Kiss Me! Kiss Me! Kiss Me!' contains some of the only known footage of the Caffe Cino, the bohemian West Village coffee shop that nurtured Sam Shepard, Al Pacino, and Andy Milligan. 'The Degenerates,' meanwhile, resurfaced at the Royal Belgian Film Archive. This print's origins are murkier — Wieneke believed it 'fell into private hands' between its initial theatrical run and its rediscovery at the archive. It comes subtitled in French and Flemish, and like 'Kiss Me! Kiss Me! Kiss Me!,' it was restored by Severin Films after being scanned at the archives. The restorations are clean, but not too clean: Citing 'defects that are native to the print,' Wieneke said, 'sometimes you can fix things, but it's not aesthetically correct to fix them.' 'The Degenerates' is technically science fiction, although it plays more like a feverish blend of 'The Beguiled' and 'Faster, Pussycat! Kill, Kill!' 'It's very much in character with Milligan,' McDonough said. 'There's ranting, there's raving, there's poisonous family dysfunction, and total destruction at the end.' Cunningham sounded amused recounting her scenes in the movie, about a band of six women 'surviving in the post-apocalypse' on a dirt farm in Woodstock. 'I do remember running through the rain with a pitchfork … the whole thing was absolutely ludicrous,' she said. 'Everyone said [Milligan's] films were ungettable. As if they didn't really exist,' Penner said. This is especially true of his sexploitation pictures: The eternal popularity of the genre has ensured that Milligan's horror movies — with colorful titles like 'The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here!' — have remained in circulation since the VHS era. But sexploitation is 'a pocket that's never going to be duplicated,' according to Wieneke. 'It's very much a product of its time and the carnivalesque characters who worked behind the scenes.' Penner will attempt to capture the atmosphere of old, gritty 42nd Street at 'That's TribecXploitation! The Andy Milligan Time Machine,' part of the festival's Escape from Tribeca sidebar. 'There's a secret history of the movies in New York, a really profound history on 42nd Street,' Penner said. 'These movies truly will take you back to a different time and place and filmgoing experience, which is very beautiful to me.' Both 'Kiss Me! Kiss Me! Kiss Me!' and 'The Degenerates' will 'world re-premiere' in the program, along with a selection of trailers and commercials meant to capture the look and feel of late-'60s New York. (The festival will also premiere a new documentary, 'The Degenerate: The Life and Films of Andy Milligan,' co-directed by Severin Films' Josh Johnson.) McDonough and Cunningham will make the pilgrimage, as well as Milligan players Natalie Rogers and Hope Stansbury. All will gather for a celebration of Milligan and the grindhouse film culture that made him — minus the street hustlers and discarded needles. 'The idea that we're showing his pictures at the Tribeca Film Festival … his ghost will be there cackling, madly, just laughing his ass off,'' Penner said. 'These movies sank below the bottom of the barrel, and we've fished them out.' For McDonough, who was close with Milligan in the years leading up to Milligan's death from AIDS complications in 1991, the homecoming is personal. 'I feel his presence on a regular basis,' he said. 'When I wrote ['The Ghastly One'], nobody wanted to hear about Andy Milligan … now Andy belongs to the world in a larger fashion. I'm just thrilled that he's finally being acknowledged as the idiosyncratic, unmatched talent that he was.' Asked if he thinks the ghost of Andy Milligan will be present at the screening, McDonough laughed: 'Wear your Kevlar vests is all I have to say. You never know how Andy might strike back — with a kiss, or something sharper.' 'That's TribecXploitation! The Andy Milligan Time Machine' will screen at the Village East by Angelika at 8 p.m. on Friday, June 13 as part of the Tribeca Festival. Best of IndieWire Guillermo del Toro's Favorite Movies: 56 Films the Director Wants You to See 'Song of the South': 14 Things to Know About Disney's Most Controversial Movie Nicolas Winding Refn's Favorite Films: 37 Movies the Director Wants You to See
Gizmodo
04-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Gizmodo
Mike Flanagan Teases the ‘Batman: The Animated Series' Inspiration Behind the ‘Clayface' Movie
It's predators vs. ninjas in another brutal new Predator: Killer of Killers clip. Get a tiny look at Stranger Things season 5. Plus, the Fantastic Four ride out in another First Steps poster. To me, my spoilers! Clayface During a recent interview with Comic Book, Mike Flanagan revealed his Clayface script was 'absolutely' inspired by the Batman: The Animated Series two-part episode, 'Feat of Clay', while also clarifying that he's uncertain what will change now that the film is undergoing re-writes. I mean that is the perfect [story]. 'Feat of Clay,' Ron Perlman, to me, that's it. That two-parter knocked me out. The short answer is that is absolutely what inspired my script. That is the world I wanted to live in. I don't know what they're doing with Clayface. I'm not directing it, and that filmmaker will need to make it their own. I know that they're doing work on the script. I'm off doing other things now. I really hope it remains true to the spirit of what I wanted it to be. But it's not my movie, so I'll be in the audience with you, anxious to see how it comes out. Please Don't Feed the Children According to Fangoria, Destry Allyn Spielberg's (daughter of Steven Spielberg) debut feature Please Don't Feed the Children will premiere this June 27 on Tubi. Starring Michelle Dockery and Giancarlo Esposito, the story' takes place in a not-so-distant future where society contends with a pervasive virus that afflicts the entire adult population. After the deadly viral outbreak, a group of orphans flee in search of a new life, only to be taken hostage by a woman hiding a sinister secret.' Fantastic Four: First Steps Marvel has released a new poster for Fantastic Four: First Steps. Predator: Killer of Killers This time, the Predator goes after a ninja in another clip from Killer of Killers. Hell House LLC: Lineage A spooky new teaser for Hell House LLC: Lineage showcases the strange goings-on at the Abaddon Hotel. Hi-Five Following organ transplants from the same donor, five otherwise unrelated people inherit superpowers in the trailer for Hi-Five. The Dark Tower Mike Flanagan also provided Comic Book with an update on his planned TV series adaptation of Stephen King's The Dark Tower. It's not that I've put it down. It's just that the thing is so big, it's like building an oil tanker. We've been moving it forward this whole time. It's just, that's how big it is. It's constantly in the works, and you better believe as often as you guys may want to ask about it, Stephen King is asking me about it more, and I'm not gonna let him down. Stranger Things Bloody-Disgusting also has new images from the final season of Stranger Things. Click through to see the rest. Resident Alien Finally, Harry recaps the first three seasons of Resident Alien ahead of the fourth season premiere this Friday.
Forbes
27-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Horror Thriller ‘Wolf Man' Gets Peacock Streaming Premiere Date
"Wolf Man" partial poster. Universal Pictures Wolf Man — a modern reimaging of the classic Lon Chaney Jr. Universal Studios monster movie — is coming soon to Peacock. Rated R, Wolf Man opened in theaters on Jan. 17 and made its debut on digital streaming via premium video on demand on Feb. 4. The official logline for Wolf Man reads, 'A family at a remote farmhouse is attacked by an unseen animal, but as the night stretches on, the father begins to transform into something unrecognizable.' Christopher Abbott (Kraven the Hunter) and Julia Garner (Ozark) star in Wolf Man as Charlotte and Blake, and Matilda Firth plays their daughter, Ginger. Wolf Man is directed and co-written by Leigh Whannell, who previously wrote and directed the hit reimagining of the classic Universal Studios monster movie The Invisible Man in 2020. According to When to Stream, Wolf Man will arrive on streaming on Peacock on Friday, April 18. You must be a subscriber to the NBC Universal streaming platform to watch Wolf Man on Peacock. Peacock has an ad-based package for $7.99 per month or $79 per year, as well as an ad-free package for $13.99 per month or $139.99 yearly. While Wolf Man's roots date back to the classic 1941 Universal Monsters film The Wolf Man, director Leigh Whannell told the British Film Institute that his new version of the classic tale is actually a tribute to the horror films of the 1980s and the use of practical effects of the makeup artists of the day. 'As a horror fan, I've grown up obsessed with prosthetic make-up effects, and these guys who are the masters of that – Stan Winston, Rick Baker, Rob Bottin and Dick Smith – they're like rock stars to me,' Whannell told BFI. 'I was reading Fangoria, looking at these people as absolute heroes. I grew up in that era where those effects stood out in your mind.' Whannell, whose producer credits include nine movies in the Saw horror movie franchise (including spinoffs), told BFI that Wolf Man is the first movie he made that 'relied so heavily on prosthetic make-up effects and special effects make-up.' 'It's really a tribute to those films that exemplify the best of the make-up – The Thing (1982), An American Werewolf in London (1981), The Exorcist (1973),' Whannell explained to BFI. Per The Numbers, Wolf Man has earned $20.7 million in North American ticket sales and $14.1 million internationally for a worldwide box office gross of $34.6 million. Variety reported that Wolf Man had a production budget of $25 million before prints and advertising costs. Rotten Tomatoes critics collectively gave Wolf Man a 50% 'rotten' rating based on 252 reviews, while audiences gave the film a 56% 'rotten' rating on RT's Popcornmeter based on 1,000-plus verified user ratings. Wolf Man arrives on Peacock on April 18.
Los Angeles Times
03-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
‘Anora's' Oscars triumph is a much-needed win for workers, in Hollywood and beyond
When filmmaker Sean Baker won his first Oscar for original screenplay early Sunday night for 'Anora,' a screwball dramedy about a stripper who marries the son of a Russian oligarch, he gave an acceptance speech so heartfelt and complete, heaping praise on everyone from his cast and crew to his distributors and management team, that I wondered if he'd thanked himself into a corner. If Baker won anything else, what would he have left to say? I shouldn't have worried. There would be more awards, four in total for Baker himself: landmark wins for writing, editing, directing and producing 'Anora.' And Baker would have plenty more to add. A successful Oscar campaign makes a series of whistle-stop speeches. Baker's been delivering them since 'Anora' won the Palme d'Or in May. Gratitude can get rote. But Baker never gave the same speech twice, shaping each thank-you into a bull's-eye aimed at the occasion. His Indie Spirit speech rightly noted that independent directors like him stretch one paycheck across years of unpaid work pushing to get a movie made. 'We are creating product that creates jobs and revenue for the entire industry,' Baker said. 'We shouldn't be barely getting by.' My entire social media feed posted clips of his cri de cœur covered in clapping emojis. I loved it too. Although for me, that speech was tied with the one Baker gave at the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn. Awards where he charmed a roomful of movie journalists by whipping out a film review he had written in high school. It was an impassioned rave for the 1988 horror remake 'The Blob,' addressed to the letters section of Fangoria magazine. At the Oscars, Baker's speeches were idiosyncratic and gracious. Accepting the award for editing, Baker elevated his fellow nominees by calling the craft 'half of my directing and a third of my screenwriting.' Clutching his statuette for director, he put the spotlight on the struggling theatrical business and urged distributors and audiences alike to value the big screen. Loping back one last time for best picture, Baker ceded the microphone to his co-producers Alex Coco and Samantha Quan and popped in only for a 10-second shoutout to the academy for recognizing a truly indie $6-million movie. 'Long live independent film!' he whooped. The crowd whooped back. History was made. Independent film has a new ambassador, a ceremonial sharing — if not passing — of the torch made literal when Quentin Tarantino handed Baker his third prize. For what it's worth, Baker now has twice as many Oscars as Tarantino, who, to date, has inconceivably only won two of them, both for original screenplay. Hey, maybe Baker will someday get to hand the director statuette to him. Baker made a point of paying his 'deepest respect' to the sex-worker community who inspired the film. Eleven actresses have won Oscars for playing prostitutes. 'Anora's' lead actress Mikey Madison (more on her win in a minute) makes it 12. Of the 10 previous acceptance speeches I can find, no other winners felt comfortable giving a nod to their muses, and I'll assume Janet Gaynor, who won in 1929 for 'Street Angel,' and Helen Hayes, who won in 1932 for 'The Sin of Madelon Claudet,' were similarly mum. 'Anora' is about sex work, yes. But it's really about work work. The film feels wild and loose when four characters are shouting over each other at once. Yet, almost every scene is a comment on the desperation of struggling paycheck to paycheck in America. While Madison's Ani fights to stay married into life-changing money, the other minor characters are simply fighting to keep their gigs. Once you're looking for it, job instability underlines every interaction in the film, from the Las Vegas hotel manager terrified to tell rich brat Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn) that his suite isn't ready, to the nightclub waitress stuck with Vanya's $800 tab, to the tow-truck driver panicked that the billionaire's brutes have broken his vehicle. 'Been on the job two weeks,' he wails. Even the Russian minions who strong-arm Ani to get an annulment are a matryoshka doll of servants and masters, with Yura Borisov's Igor taking orders from Vache Tovmasyan's Garnik, who takes orders from Karren Karagulian's Toros, all the way up to Aleksey Serebryakov's plutocrat Nikolai, who, of course, cedes control to his icy wife, Galina (Darya Ekamasova). Employment is fickle unless you're at the tippy-top, with a private jet at your command. Ani is the one character who continually, and loudly, advocates for her own value. 'When you give me health insurance, workers' comp and a 401(k), then you can tell me when I work,' she claps back to her strip-club boss. The tragedy of 'Anora' is that even this smart and forceful girl gets crushed by wealth. Only the Russian billionaires end the film without a scratch — or bruise, broken nose or busted SUV. There were two clues this was going to be 'Anora's' night. One was the way Baker scampered off after his second win with a casual wave, an unconscious signal that it was dawning on him that the evening's momentum might bring him back up there again. The other came in host Conan O'Brien's opening-monologue pledge to shine a light on the hardworking craftspeople behind the camera, i.e., the artists who buttress the stars. The show's executive producers Raj Kapoor and Katy Mullan and director Hamish Hamilton made good on that vow. Last year, the Oscars goosed their A-list glitz by having each acting award presented by five celebrities who expressed their admiration for every nominee. Lupita Nyong'o brought supporting actress winner Da'Vine Joy Randolph to tears even before her name was called. This year, though, that laser beam of glamour instead highlighted two technical categories, with the performers of each nominated film paying rapturous homage to below-the-liners who make them look good. Minor exceptions were Bowen Yang, whose self-mockingly snotty type of comedy doesn't allow for sincerity (at least his 'Wicked' costumer won), and the glaring absence of Angelina Jolie for 'Maria's' cinematography nod (ironically, the show was forced to send out her character's maid). O'Brien did fantastic. His Oscars was determined to entertain yet never oblivious to this uneasy moment in time. 'Ball's in your court, Estonia,' O'Brien joked when winners made Oscars history, first when 'Flow' director Gints Zilbalodis became the first Latvian to win an Academy Award, and again when 'Wicked's' Paul Tazewell became the first Black man to win for costume design. For those keeping count, O'Brien could have made that joke at least twice more for supporting actress Zoe Saldaña (the first for an American of Dominican origin) and international feature winner 'I'm Still Here' (astonishingly, the first-ever Oscar for Brazil). Beginning with 'Parasite's' best picture win in 2020, the international scope of the last several Oscars is starting to feel like a warning: If Hollywood's increasingly cash-poor artists don't get more support, there's enough talent around the globe to leave our town in the dust. For the last two months and for nearly all of the night, prognosticators felt comfortable predicting that Demi Moore would claim her own much-anticipated statuette for 'The Substance.' Moore is fantastic as a once award-winning superstar who gets Stockholm-syndromed by a chauvinistic industry into believing that her only value is a bouncy set of buns. Moore's campaign was a salute to perseverance, to a body of work made rawly literal when, after she played a sex worker in 'Striptease,' people fixated on her thighs and breasts. She's labored for acknowledgment for decades. Just last week at the Screen Actors Guild awards, she once again won over the room reminding them that she'd gotten her SAG card in 1978 at the age of 15. Holding that seemingly auspicious prize, she choked up trying to find the words she wanted to say to teenage Moore, 'that little girl who didn't believe in herself.' But Moore lost and the loss hurt, even though there's no question that 'Anora's' young breakout star was equally good at carrying a movie on her be-thonged back. Part of the pain is that Moore is two-and-a-half times Madison's age but is only now being offered the kind of roles that prove her worth. And part of the salve is that Madison is ascending in an era that is (hopefully) writing more female parts worth playing for actors of all demographics. This year, the average age of all five lead actress nominees was a respectable 47. Here's an idea: Now that both Baker and Moore have everyone's attention and goodwill, how about they team up for another bold indie that'll once more bring the dogged, weary, film-loving workers of Hollywood to their feet. .
