This summer, the epic studio disaster movie returns with an adrenaline-pumping, seat-gripping, big-screen thrill ride that puts you in direct contact with one of nature's most wondrous---and destructive---forces.
From the producers of the Jurassic, Bourne and Indiana Jones series comes Twisters, a current-day chapter of the 1996 blockbuster, Twister. Directed by Lee Isaac Chung, the Oscar® nominated writer-director of Minari, Twisters stars Golden Globe nominee Daisy Edgar-Jones (Where the Crawdads Sing, Normal People) and Glen Powell (Anyone But You, Top Gun: Maverick) as opposing forces who come together to try to predict, and possibly tame, the immense power of tornadoes.
Edgar-Jones stars as Kate Cooper, a former storm chaser haunted by a devastating encounter with a tornado during her college years who now studies storm patterns on screens safely in New York City. She is lured back to the open plains by her friend, Javi (Golden Globe nominee Anthony Ramos, In the Heights) to test a groundbreaking new tracking system. There, she crosses paths with Tyler Owens (Powell), the charming and reckless social-media superstar who thrives on posting his storm-chasing adventures with his raucous crew, the more dangerous the better.
As storm season intensifies, terrifying phenomena never seen before are unleashed, and Kate, Tyler and their competing teams find themselves squarely in the paths of multiple storm systems converging over central Oklahoma in the fight of their lives.
Twisters features an exciting new cast, including Nope's Brandon Perea, Sasha Lane (American Honey), Daryl McCormack (Peaky Blinders), Kiernan Shipka (Chilling Adventures of Sabrina), Nik Dodani (Atypical) and Golden Globe winner Maura Tierney (Beautiful Boy).
From Amblin Entertainment, Twisters is directed by Lee Isaac Chung and is produced by Oscar® nominee Frank Marshall (Jurassic and Indiana Jones franchises) and by Patrick Crowley (Jurassic and Bourne franchises). The screenplay is by Mark L. Smith, writer of the Best Picture nominee The Revenant. Twisters will be distributed by Universal Pictures domestically and by Warner Bros. Pictures internationally.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
- DOLBY VISION/HDR PRESENTATION OF THE FILM
- DOLBY ATMOS AUDIO TRACK
- FEATURE COMMENTARY WITH DIRECTOR LEE ISAAC CHUNG
- GAG REEL
- DELETED SCENES
- TRACKING THE FRONTS: THE PATH OF TWISTERS -- Trace the trajectory of TWISTERS from its earliest inception to production and get to know the cast as they lead this look into creating their characters, using science to add authenticity, and working through extreme weather wreaking havoc on set.
- INTO THE EYE OF THE STORM -- Discover how TWISTERS blends practical and visual effects to turn nature's most destructive forces into entertaining thrills.
- GLEN POWELL: ALL ACCESS -- Glen Powell provides a private tour of a day in his life on the TWISTERS
- FRONT SEAT TO A CHASE -- Strap in with the cast and professional storm chasers as they brave the elements to track tornados in Oklahoma.
- VOICE OF A VILLAIN* -- Hear the creation of the film's deafening howls with a seat in the studio where the audio team mixes unexpected sounds to give the storms a new dimension of depth.
- TRICKED-OUT TRUCKS -- Buckle up for a wild ride in the film's custom vehicles fitted with unique features ranging from rocket launchers to advanced radar tech.
- Optional English, French Canadian, Latin American Spanish subtitles for the main feature
I'm assuming those extra features will only run for about ten minutes each. Sadly we don't get massive making of documentaries anymore. However, I am pleasantly surprised to see an audio commentary, want expecting that.
I missed that bit off, soz. I was rushing it on my phone. 😊 Thanks for including.
From the official Netflix twitter account:
Here's a first look at Millie Bobby Brown and Chris Pratt in The Electric State. Directed by the Russo Brothers. Coming 2025.
After a robot uprising in the '90s, an orphaned teen searching for her brother travels the American West with a robot, a smuggler, and his sidekick.
And some more information from Dark Horizons;
Millie Bobbie Brown, Chris Pratt, Ke Huy Quan, Giancarlo Espostito, Anthony Mackie, Stanley Tucci, Jason Alexander, Brian Cox, and Jenny Slate star in the coming-of-age sci-fi western tale set in a retro-futuristic alternate 1990s.
Brown plays an orphaned teenager who traverses the American West with her robot friend and Keats (Pratt), an eccentric drifter and veteran of the robot-human war in search of her younger brother.
The project is based on the acclaimed graphic novel by Simon Stalenhag. Shot in October 2022 and wrapping in February 2023, further reshoots took place in March and April of this year.
While Vanity Fair published the photos, not mentioned in the piece accompanying it is all the talk of the film’s budget with the movie reportedly costing around $320 million to produce.
The budget blowout on this film is rumored to be one of the reasons why Netflix reassessed its film division and brought Dan Lin to replace Scott Stuber as head of film with a mandate of being more frugal.
The pictures were released in this one block.
I'm guessing PVOD is renting the film while a digital release is buying a copy. COUGH! I mean buying a license to stream a film whenever you want until they remove it from the service.
Discs forever!✊
It's not even pinned for me! Go right ahead!
by Ryan Lambie | October 1, 2024
Hellboy's back in cinemas with The Crooked Man, but its budget is drastically reduced from its 2000s heyday. A shrinking home video market may be the reason.
There was a crooked man who walked a crooked mile... presumably so he could share top billing in Hellboy: The Crooked Man, which snuck into UK cinemas on the 27th September.
For fans of the source comics, seeing the antihero back on the big screen after the disappointment of 2019's Hellboy reboot -- a film even its director Neil Marshall, publicly disowned -- will be at least some cause for celebration. But what's noteworthy about Hellboy: The Crooked Man (directed by Crank co-director Brian Taylor) is just how small-scale it looks compared to the visually sumptuous movies director Guillermo del Toro served up in the 2000s.
Where 2004's Hellboy served up a bold-looking take on the comic books, The Crooked Man is a contained story largely set in run-down chapels and shacks in Appalachia. Where 2008's Hellboy II: The Golden Army featured dozens of intricately-designed characters and action set-pieces, this year's movie offers up a smaller cast and a title villain who could have come from one of Blumhouse's low-budget horrors.
Although it's far from a bad film -- it's certainly less muddled than its 2019 predecessor -- its relatively low budget of $20m is often plain to see, from its muddy lighting to uneven digital effects. All of which might beg the question: what happened in the preceding 20 years? How did the movies go from budgets of $60-80m in the 2000s to less than a third of that in 2024? The likely answer doesn't necessarily come down to the popularity of Hellboy himself, but rather a changing filmmaking ecosystem.
It's worth pointing out that neither Hellboy nor its immediate sequel were huge hits. The 2004 original made roughly $100m worldwide on its $60m-ish budget; its sequel did better with worldwide take of about $168m, but then that film's budget also swelled to around $85m.
Back in the 2000s, however, profits in cinema only formed a part of a movie's lifecycle, and 2004's Hellboy was a big success on DVD. A two-disc special edition, released that July, reportedly sold about 500,000 copies; a three-disc director's cut was also released in the autumn of that year, and likely sold well in the run-up to Christmas.
It was that popularity on its home release that convinced Revolution Studios to go ahead with Hellboy II: The Golden Army, which followed a similar pattern: it more-or-less made a profit theatrically, but it was on disc that it made the most money. In fact, The Golden Army, despite its expanded budget, would have gotten a sequel itself were it not for outside forces acting against it. Guillermo del Toro expressed his interest in making Hellboy 3, a film that would have completed the trilogy with title star Ron Perlman, but he spent several years working on an adaptation of The Hobbit that, ultimately, would never happen.
By 2014, del Toro revealed that he'd tried to pitch Hellboy 3 to studios, but they'd all turned it down. The reason, he said in a Reddit AMA, was due to the collapse of the home video market in the years since The Golden Army came out.
"We have gone through basically every studio and asked for financing, and they are not interested," the filmmaker wrote that July. "I think that the first movie made its budget back, and a little bit of profit, but then it was very very big on video and DVD. The story repeated itself with the second already, it made its money back at the box office, but a small margin of profit in the release of the theatrical print, but was very very big on DVD and video. Sadly now from a business point of view all the studios know is that you don't have that safety net of the DVD and video, so they view the project as dangerous."
Del Toro estimated elsewhere that his concept for a third Hellboy would require a budget of $120m -- a sum studios were increasingly reluctant to stomach. When a new Hellboy finally emerged in 2019, directed by Neil Marshall and with David Harbour replacing Ron Perlman as its demonic antihero, it was made with a budget of $50m. Given how much inflation had risen since 2004, that sum was even tighter than it might initially sound.
Although intended as a reboot, the 2019 Hellboy wasn't quite the fresh start its studio might have hoped, with a troubled production and an ultimate box office take of about $55m. That the movie made about $12m on its home release in the US likely helped push its profits nearer to the black than the red, but it's still far below the franchise's high point in the 2000s.
All of which explain why, when Millennium Media decided to reboot Hellboy again with The Crooked Man, the budget was slashed again, this time to a reported $20m. Now featuring Jack Kesy as the gun-wielding, crimson lead, its R-rated action and backwoods horror tone will no doubt be familiar to readers of the source comics, but the downside is that it's far less cinematic in its presentation than what emerged from del Toro's baroque imagination some 20 years ago.
In the 2020s, movies still have other ways of making profits beyond their initial cinema releases, from premium video-on-demand to fancy 4K Blu-rays. The market for physical media has shrunk dramatically since 2005, however; an industry at its peak worth some $16bn in the US alone is now worth more like $2bn. It was once the case that you could see movies in most major retailers, and buy a DVD or Blu-ray on impulse. By now, many outlets -- including Best Buy in the US -- have stopped selling them entirely.
The market for physical media's still there, but its huge reduction has seen studios grow increasingly wary of where they invest their money -- and how much they spend. Just ask Hellboy.
How the fuck was that man not jumped on by the media (I can't remember if this was post or pre vagina grabbing) when he mocked that disabled journalist! I thought that would've been the end, but no one seemed to care!
Alien: Romulus will be available to watch in the comfort of your own home, on the likes of Prime Video, Apple TV, and Fandango at Home, as of October 15th. Some retailers will be offering a 2-Movie Collection digital bundle that pairs the film with the original Alien. The 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, and DVD physical media release will follow on December 3rd. An image of the 4K steelbook can be seen at the bottom of this article.
Alien: Romulus will be available to watch in the comfort of your own home, on the likes of Prime Video, Apple TV, and Fandango at Home, as of October 15th. Some retailers will be offering a 2-Movie Collection digital bundle that pairs the film with the original Alien. The 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, and DVD physical media release will follow on December 3rd. An image of the 4K steelbook can be seen at the bottom of this article.
The film's home video release will include the following bonus features (which may vary by product and retailer): Return to Horror: Crafting Alien: Romulus featurette, which has five chapters:
- The Director's Vision -- Discover how one of today's greatest horror directors, Fede Alvarez, collaborated with master filmmaker Ridley Scott to craft a new, heart-pounding chapter in the Alien franchise.
- Creating the Story -- Learn what inspired the story of Alien: Romulus and see the many easter eggs from previous Alien installments that you may have missed.
- Casting the Faces -- Meet the stars of Alien: Romulus as they take us inside the hearts and minds of their characters. Explore the parallels between Rain and the iconic franchise heroine, Ripley, and learn how filmmakers brought back a face from the past.
- Constructing the World -- Explore the massive, practical sets of Alien: Romulus that hearken back to the futuristic style established in the '80s and get up close and personal with a hoard of practically built facehuggers, chestbursters, and xenomorphs.
- Inside the Xenomorph Showdown -- Experience the film's climactic zero-gravity sequence from every angle as filmmakers break down what it took to make the moment spectacular. From sets and performances, to wirework, stunts, and VFX, see how it all came together.
- Alien: A Conversation -- A special conversation with Ridley Scott and Fede Alvarez for the Alien 45th Anniversary theatrical re-release.
- Alternate / Extended Scenes -- Check out scenes that didn't make the final cut.
To add to the insults, it was pointed out to me via Instagram yesterday, that in this shot from the trailer and film, you can see the crew member helping to pull the hatch open. 😄
The 8 bit guy. I loved his retro computing channel and then one day, he acquired a rare IBM computer and promptly destroyed the power supply by sticking a screwdriver into it (if I remember correctly).
For some reason, I googled about this and discovered he's a gun nut. They're videos of him going grocery shopping with his rifle on his back which apparently he does this knowing it will annoy people.
Unsubscribed from the channel and never looked back.
There's a possibility that the whole thing was a publicity stunt? This picture has started circulating.
Back in the old days of 8bit computing, I remember a few magazines used to explain their scoring system.
Most magazines reviewed a game out of ten. A score of five would be an average. The game is just ok. Not brilliant but not terrible either.
A great game would be an eight or nine. Very rarely would a game receive a ten as that indicates perfection.
In today's world, the way people talk, it feels like a game needs at least an 8 (or 80%) or it's not even worth touching.
Those are some impressive special features! This show passed me by as a kid though.