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‘Don’t Look Now’, ‘The Witches’ Director Nicolas Roeg Has Died at 90

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Nicolas Roeg, the man behind the camera of genre masterpieces like Don’t Look Now, has died at aged 90.

By the time he sat down in the director’s chair for the atmospheric film starring Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie as a couple trying to move beyond the loss of their daughter on a trip to Venice, Roeg had already established himself as an editor and cinematographer. Don’t Look Now‘s violent and unexpected climax is still one of the most stunning in cinematic history.

Three years later, Roeg once again found himself in the director’s chair on an unusual project. The Man Who Fell to Earth starred David Bowie as an alien who comes to Earth in an attempt to save his own dying planet.

David Bowie in The Man Who Fell To Earth

The film, which was Bowie’s first starring role, received a lukewarm response by critics but, like many of Roeg’s films, it gained its own cult following in the decades that followed its release.

Roeg continued directing in the years that followed across genres with films like Castaway starring Oliver Reed and Track 29 with Gary Oldman, but it was 1990’s The Witches that would become his most famous and popular film.

Starring Anjelica Huston, The Witches was based on the Roald Dahl book about a plot by the world’s most powerful witches to be rid of children once and for all. Huston’s performance was both stunning and terrifying as the Grand High Witch in the film that was the last that Jim Henson oversaw himself before his death.

Anjelica Huston as The Grand High Witch in Nicolas Roeg’s The Witches

The Witches did not come without its controversies, however. Roald Dahl, upon seeing the film, called it appalling and too vulgar and threatened legal action to have his name and title removed from the film. In a strange twist, he also said that the film’s ending was too positive and unlike the book he had written.

He later, grudgingly, dropped his threat.

These kind of reactions had followed Roeg throughout his career. Don’t Look Now was criticized for its lengthy, graphic sex scenes. The Man Who Fell to Earth was called too surreal and confounding.

And yet, these were the marks that ultimately made his work stand out. He delighted in playing with time and space in his films in ways that kept the audience on their toes. Those that “got it” became ardent fans.

Nicolas Roeg perhaps explained it best, however, and it seems perfect and right to end with the director’s own words:

“I’ve been told my movies are difficult to market. It isn’t a horror film, it isn’t a thriller. Yes, there’s a love story in it but it could hardly be called a romance,” Roeg told The Guardian in 2007.  “People love things in boxes, classified a genre. But it’s just life. Life and birth and sex and love — they don’t necessarily all go together.”

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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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