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Jonathan Lipnicki is All Grown Up and Kicking Ass in “Circus Kane”

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Jonathan Lipnicki wants you to put your phone down when you watch Circus Kane.

It’s an ironic request considering the film revolves around a group of social media stars invited to witness the rebirth of a horror circus made famous by a man named Balthazar Kane, but the actor thinks it’s important.

“This is a roller coaster ride of a movie,” the actor points out.  “Things happen fast, and if you’re looking down at your phone, you’re going to miss something…maybe something important.  Watch the movie; Tweet about it later.”

Circus Kane is equal parts horror and comedy with something for everyone, and Lipnicki’s character, Scott, is right in the middle of everything.  The role afforded the actor to not only explore the horror genre from the inside, but also allowed him to show off some of the martial arts skills he’s been developing for years.  And it all started with a phone call from screenwriter James Cullen Bressack.

“I’d worked with James before on another movie called Limelight,” Lipnicki related.  “So, he calls me up and said, ‘I’ve written this thing about evil clowns; and there’s a role in it that makes me think of you.’  Then I get the script and start reading and the character is a total brat! I told James that I wasn’t sure if it was an insult or a compliment, but I was ready to take the job.”

As is the case with most independent films, there wasn’t a lot of time for rehearsals, but the producers knew they’d need a cohesive ensemble when they started filming Circus Kane.  So, the week before production was set to begin, they got the actors into a group and put them in an Escape Room.

“We had to work together, you know?  We had to be a team and collaborate,” he says, “and I think that went a long way to helping us once filming began.”

As I said before, the film centers on a group of social media stars who are invited to witness the rebirth of the infamous Circus Kane.  In a very House on Haunted Hill homage, the participants are promised $250,000 each, should they stay and survive the entire evening.  Of course, in horror films, things are never that easy, and the guy who sends the invitations never intends to pay.

One by one, the group is whittled away in campy horror fashion by killer clowns, deadly over-sized toys, and booby traps from hell.  Through it all, Lipnicki insists he was having the time of his life, especially when the production crew allowed him to incorporate his marital arts training into one of his big scenes.

“I got to help and really collaborate with the stunt men to incorporate some of the Jujitsu and Muay Thai that I’ve been studying for years into those scenes, man, and it was really cool that they trusted me to do that.”

It was a nice turn for the young star who still feels his role from Jerry Maguire looming over his shoulder some days.  In fact, the actor thanked me when I told him I intended to leave the subject completely out of the interview.  I will tell you that, at a pivotal point in Scott’s arc, another actor ad libbed the line “The human head weighs eight pounds” and Lipnicki admits they all had a good laugh about it on set.

So, will we be seeing more of Jonathan in horror?

“If I could just go from movie to movie for the rest of my life, I’d be perfectly happy,” the actor says, “and I’ve always been interested in the ‘horror space’ because it’s so varied with so many different elements.  Horror has some of the best and most dedicated fans and I love that.  It’s something I’d definitely want to do more of in the future.”

You can catch Jonathan Lipnicki in Circus Kane on demand!

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‘Evil Dead’ Film Franchise Getting TWO New Installments

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It was a risk for Fede Alvarez to reboot Sam Raimi’s horror classic The Evil Dead in 2013, but that risk paid off and so did its spiritual sequel Evil Dead Rise in 2023. Now Deadline is reporting that the series is getting, not one, but two fresh entries.

We already knew about the Sébastien Vaniček upcoming film that delves into the Deadite universe and should be a proper sequel to the latest film, but we are broadsided that Francis Galluppi and Ghost House Pictures are doing a one-off project set in Raimi’s universe based off of an idea that Galluppi pitched to Raimi himself. That concept is being kept under wraps.

Evil Dead Rise

“Francis Galluppi is a storyteller who knows when to keep us waiting in simmering tension and when to hit us with explosive violence,” Raimi told Deadline. “He is a director that shows uncommon control in his feature debut.”

That feature is titled The Last Stop In Yuma County which will release theatrically in the United States on May 4. It follows a traveling salesman, “stranded at a rural Arizona rest stop,” and “is thrust into a dire hostage situation by the arrival of two bank robbers with no qualms about using cruelty-or cold, hard steel-to protect their bloodstained fortune.”

Galluppi is an award-winning sci-fi/horror shorts director whose acclaimed works include High Desert Hell and The Gemini Project. You can view the full edit of High Desert Hell and the teaser for Gemini below:

High Desert Hell
The Gemini Project

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‘Invisible Man 2’ Is “Closer Than Its Ever Been” to Happening

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Elisabeth Moss in a very well-thought-out statement said in an interview for Happy Sad Confused that even though there have been some logistical issues for doing Invisible Man 2 there is hope on the horizon.

Podcast host Josh Horowitz asked about the follow-up and if Moss and director Leigh Whannell were any closer to cracking a solution to getting it made. “We are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” said Moss with a huge grin. You can see her reaction at the 35:52 mark in the below video.

Happy Sad Confused

Whannell is currently in New Zealand filming another monster movie for Universal, Wolf Man, which might be the spark that ignites Universal’s troubled Dark Universe concept which hasn’t gained any momentum since Tom Cruise’s failed attempt at resurrecting The Mummy.

Also, in the podcast video, Moss says she is not in the Wolf Man film so any speculation that it’s a crossover project is left in the air.

Meanwhile, Universal Studios is in the middle of constructing a year-round haunt house in Las Vegas which will showcase some of their classic cinematic monsters. Depending on attendance, this could be the boost the studio needs to get audiences interested in their creature IPs once more and to get more films made based on them.

The Las Vegas project is set to open in 2025, coinciding with their new proper theme park in Orlando called Epic Universe.

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Jake Gyllenhaal’s Thriller ‘Presumed Innocent’ Series Gets Early Release Date

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Jake gyllenhaal presumed innocent

Jake Gyllenhaal’s limited series Presumed Innocent is dropping on AppleTV+ on June 12 instead of June 14 as originally planned. The star, whose Road House reboot has brought mixed reviews on Amazon Prime, is embracing the small screen for the first time since his appearance on Homicide: Life on the Street in 1994.

Jake Gyllenhaal’s in ‘Presumed Innocent’

Presumed Innocent is being produced by David E. Kelley, J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, and Warner Bros. It is an adaptation of Scott Turow’s 1990 film in which Harrison Ford plays a lawyer doing double duty as an investigator looking for the murderer of his colleague.

These types of sexy thrillers were popular in the ’90s and usually contained twist endings. Here’s the trailer for the original:

According to Deadline, Presumed Innocent doesn’t stray far from the source material: “…the Presumed Innocent series will explore obsession, sex, politics and the power and limits of love as the accused fights to hold his family and marriage together.”

Up next for Gyllenhaal is the Guy Ritchie action movie titled In the Grey scheduled for release in January 2025.

Presumed Innocent is an eight-episode limited series set to stream on AppleTV+ starting June 12.

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