Just when you thought Lucasfilm had enough “Star Wars” projects in development, another one has surfaced, though whether it ever sees the light of day remains to be seen. According to a new report, Jon Watts and Christopher Ford, the creative team behind Disney+’s “Star Wars: Skeleton Crew,” spent much of this year developing another secret “Star Wars” series, this time with a Western-inspired approach.

Continue reading ‘Star Wars’: Jon Watts & Christopher Ford Developed Secret Western Series For Disney+, But It May Have Been Sidelined [Report] at The Playlist.

Alex Gibney has spent decades making documentaries about powerful men who behave badly, from the corporate criminals in “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room” to the inner workings of Scientology in “Going Clear.” But Elon Musk is a particularly slippery subject. Here’s a man who has become one of the richest people on Earth, bought himself a global megaphone, helped elect a president, and still somehow found time to feud with strangers on the internet.

Continue reading ‘Musk’: Alex Gibney On Elon Musk’s Legal Threats, His Disturbing Errol Musk Interview & Ashley St. Clair’s Allegations at The Playlist.

It’s a common misconception to equate British cinema with kitchen sink realism. After all, it’s impossible to discuss its legacy without acknowledging the socially conscious classics of Mike Leigh, Ken Loach, and other filmmakers who attacked authority, questioned the social ills of their time, and rooted their work in everyday life. Not so for Ken Russell.

A rare British filmmaker who matched the flamboyance and excess of the great European masters, Russell could look at Fellini’s illicit carnival of sin and rhapsody and say, “Hold my beer, sir.” Over a remarkable career, he adapted renowned authors, directed for the BBC, worked with legendary rock bands, and made grand, personal epics about historical figures.

Continue reading Ken Russell Essentials: From ‘The Devils’ To ‘Altered States,’ ‘Tommy’ & Beyond at The Playlist.

It begins in the grass. Rather than showcasing some stunning threads or sweeping scenery, Georgia Oakley starts her spin on Jane Austen’s classic novel “Sense and Sensibility” at ground level with the Dashwood sisters. As Marianne (Esmé Creed-Miles) plays with a caterpillar perched on her finger while Elinor (Daisy Edgar-Jones) broods nearby, you sense this will not be a standard, stuffy costume drama.

Continue reading ‘Sense And Sensibility’ Review: Daisy Edgar-Jones & Esmé Creed-Miles Bring Jane Austen’s Classic Down To Earth at The Playlist.

Garth Davis’ television resume is currently short, sweet, and critically acclaimed. The director of the 2017 Best Picture nominee “Lion” has the celebrated “Top of the Lake” and now critically acclaimed “East of Eden” as his episodic credits. He was already an Emmy nominee for “Lake,” and he may spend the next 11 months being celebrated by his peers for the latter. A journey that appears well worth the wait considering “Eden” began shooting two years ago.

Continue reading ‘East of Eden’: Garth Davis On Directing “A Treasure Trove Of Gorgeous Complexity And Emotions” [Interview] at The Playlist.

Earlier this month, news broke that David Fincher would be ending his longstanding relationship with Netflix, declining to renew his exclusive deal when it expires in 2027. It was a surprising development given the filmmaker’s decade-plus history with the streamer, which produced “Mank,” “The Killer,” and “Mindhunter,” among other projects. With no immediate plans to sign elsewhere, the decision raised questions about why Fincher would walk away from such a fruitful partnership.

Continue reading David Fincher Walked Away From Netflix After Clashing With Dan Lin Over ‘Cliff Booth’ [Report] at The Playlist.

There’s something faintly absurd about Hollywood finally having the technology to make the movies it couldn’t pull off in the 1980s and ’90s, only to discover nobody quite knows how to make them anymore. Back then, visual effects weren’t up to snuff; they couldn’t meet the fantastical demands of video games, cartoons, and action figures. “Street Fighter,” “Masters of the Universe,” and their ilk looked ridiculous, and not necessarily as intended.

Continue reading ‘Street Fighter’ Review: Too Busy Congratulating Itself On Its Own Absurdity To Tell A Worthwhile Story at The Playlist.

Like the opposing ocean tides, forces that both contrast and complement each other, 20th Century Studios’ “Whalefall” is one compelling movie with two powerful narratives. The first is the one the marketing sells hardest: one man’s race against time in a desperate fight for survival. The second is the one that will probably affect audiences most: a father-son relationship where time has already run out.

Epic and emotional, “Whalefall” adapts the titular 2023 novel by Daniel Kraus, who co-wrote the screenplay with director Brian Duffield, known for writing “Underwater” and “Love and Monsters,” and directing Hulu’s “No One Will Save You.” The film follows Jay Gardiner, played by Austin Abrams (“Resident Evil”), as he returns home to California’s Central Coast following the death of his father, Mitt, a professional diver played by Josh Brolin (“The Dog Stars”).

Continue reading ‘Whalefall’ Review: Brian Duffield’s Thrilling Survival Nightmare Delivers An Unexpectedly Powerful Father-Son Story at The Playlist.

Few Marvel movies have delivered an ending as satisfying as “Avengers: Endgame” for the franchise’s adoring fans. After years of fighting, sacrifice, and saving the world, Steve Rogers finally got something resembling a normal life, returning to the past to grow old with Peggy Carter. It was a lovely, understated conclusion to one of the MCU’s longest-running romances. Naturally, Marvel Studios has decided to complicate things.

Continue reading Hayley Atwell Says ‘Avengers: Doomsday’ Shot “Different Storylines,” But Some “Dropped Away” at The Playlist.

There’s a cruel irony at the heart of “VisionQuest,” the third and final chapter in Marvel’s “WandaVision” trilogy. At its best, the saga of Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) and the Vision (Paul Bettany) poignantly confronted love, loss, grief, and the emotional wreckage of an elaborate delusion. “VisionQuest” takes those ideas further, exploring family, the reclamation of identity, and the possibility that beyond grief and blame lies something more profound: mercy.

Continue reading ‘VisionQuest’ Review: Paul Bettany & James Spader Find Something Beautiful Beneath Marvel’s Overwrought Machinery at The Playlist.

No actor working in television today has a smile deadlier than Linda Cardellini’s, which, at least on paper, suits her well for roles where she’s required to kill people. Who better to play the unsuspected murderer than someone capable of lighting up any room with the mere flash of her pearly whites? Cardellini’s gift for modulating her grins from “bashful” to “luminous” to “threatening” verges on preternatural, so there’s a logic behind A24 casting her as Pamela Voorhees in the “Crystal Lake” miniseries, billed as a reimagining of “Friday the 13th” but, in fact, so far removed from the source material that it’s hard to fathom why the creators bothered leaning on preexisting IP in the first place.

Continue reading ‘Crystal Lake’ Review: Linda Cardellini Can’t Save A Thunderously Dopey ‘Friday The 13th’ Reimagining at The Playlist.

Nearly a decade after “Girls” ended its six-season run, Lena Dunham is getting the gang back together. HBO has ordered a five-episode revival of the Emmy-winning comedy, with Dunham returning as creator, writer, director, and star. Judd Apatow will also return as executive producer, with production set to begin in 2027.

And this isn’t some reboot with a new generation of twenty-somethings making terrible decisions in Brooklyn.

Continue reading ‘Girls’ Returns: Lena Dunham, Allison Williams & Original Cast Reunite For Five-Episode HBO Revival at The Playlist.

There was something almost startling, even thrilling, about watching “Lanterns” reach its finale without losing its nerve. After a season of murder, damaged superheroes, cosmic mythology, and Green Lantern lore, the HBO series didn’t suddenly decide everything needed to get bigger, louder, or more explosive. It didn’t pull a “WandaVision,” nearly abandoning what made the preceding episodes thoughtful and distinctive for an obligatory superhero punch-up. Instead, “Lanterns” trusted the story it had actually been telling and delivered something quieter, more morally thorny, and ultimately more resonant than another battle designed to reassure viewers that, yes, they were still watching expensive genre television.

Continue reading ‘Lanterns’ Puts Genre TV To Shame With A Poignant Story About Fear, Legacy, & Breaking The Cycles [The Take] at The Playlist.

Ten years after Ava DuVernay used “13th” to trace the ugly afterlife of slavery through America’s deeply inequitable criminal justice system, she returns to the Constitution and similarly incendiary terrain with “14th.” Another outstanding, sometimes enraging, and remarkably lucid documentary, it functions as a spiritual sequel while widening the frame. This time, DuVernay examines citizenship itself: who belongs, who receives the protections America promises, and what happens when those guarantees become inconvenient to the people holding power.

Continue reading ‘14th’ Review: Ava DuVernay’s Urgent ‘13th’ Companion Sounds The Alarm On America’s Constitutional Crisis [NYFF] at The Playlist.

It’s probably just a coincidence, but Netflix recently released “The Last House,” a baffling film about a family unable to leave their Pacific Northwest home for vaguely supernatural reasons, which eventually turns out to involve an army of sea creatures intent on doing…something. With its new six-episode limited series, “Below,” Netflix seems determined, whether intentionally or otherwise, to make amends for that film’s shortcomings. This time, the mystery unfolds gradually, building tension alongside genuine human drama as an increasingly sinister story proves that sometimes the best scares are worth waiting for.

Continue reading ‘Below’ Review: Josh Hartnett & Mackenzie Davis Anchor Netflix’s Impressively Tense, Slow-Burn Creature Feature at The Playlist.

Still shaggy, baggy, and amiable, “The Lowdown” returns with another conspiracy to unravel and another thread that Lee Raybon cannot leave alone. Creator, writer, and director Sterlin Harjo adds two welcome complications to his Tulsa stoner noir comedy this season: Betty Gilpin as a public defender who finds Lee increasingly hard to resist, and Tommy Lee Jones as the estranged father he would happily dismiss forever. Both additions suit the show’s eccentric personality while creating fresh trouble for Ethan Hawke’s shambling citizen journalist, a man considerably better at exposing other people’s secrets than examining his own behavior.

Continue reading ‘The Lowdown’ Season 2 Review: Betty Gilpin & Tommy Lee Jones Bring Romance & Family Weight To Ethan Hawke’s Shaggy Noir at The Playlist.

Stephen King’s first published novel has existed for more than half a century, Brian De Palma’s 1976 film long ago entered the horror canon, and several less successful adaptations have already brought Carrie White back to the screen. The bucket of blood isn’t exactly a surprise anymore.

READ MORE: 62 TV Shows To Watch This Fall: ‘VisionQuest,’ ‘Blade Runner 2099,’ ‘East Of Eden,’ ‘Pride And Prejudice,’ & More

That turns out to be part of the fun of Flanagan’s “Carrie.” He knows what you’re waiting for, what you remember, and what you probably assume he’ll do with it.

Continue reading Matthew Lillard, Amber Midthunder & More On Mike Flanagan’s Meaner, More Modern ‘Carrie’ [Interview] at The Playlist.

Fans of “Widow’s Bay” looking for another series that can bounce between dark humor, genuine thrills, and some very strange things lurking just out of sight may have their next binge. On the surface, Netflix’s “Below” has a pretty easy sales pitch: Josh Hartnett and Mackenzie Davis versus a giant sea creature in Newfoundland. Frankly, some of us were already sold and didn’t need additional information.

Continue reading Mackenzie Davis Talks Netflix’s ‘Below,’ Says ‘Terminator: Dark Fate’ Got A “Bad Rap,” & Wants To Do Comedy [Bingeworthy Podcast] at The Playlist.

Mike Flanagan has built a career on staring directly into the dark recesses of our greatest fears, from “The Haunting of Hill House” and “Midnight Mass” to “Doctor Sleep” and his new adaptation of “Carrie.” But apparently, none of those projects go quite as far as “The Exorcist: Martyrs.” According to Flanagan, his new take on one of horror’s most sacred franchises is not only a complete break from the familiar Regan MacNeil story, but the most frightening thing he’s ever made.

Continue reading Mike Flanagan Says ‘The Exorcist: Martyrs’ Is “Vicious,” His “Scariest And Darkest” Work Yet & A “Huge Swing” [Exclusive] at The Playlist.

He’ll always have the walk-and-talk, “A Few Good Men,” “The West Wing,” and, depending on which elements of the screenplay are his, “Moneyball,” but four-time Oscar-nominated writer-turned-director Aaron Sorkin has also become just as known for hyper-verbal speechifying, smugness, self-righteousness, condescension, overexplaining, and a recurring problem where everyone starts sounding like Aaron Sorkin.

All of that is true of his latest film, “The Social Reckoning,” a continuation of the Facebook story told in “The Social Network,” though hardly a conventional sequel.

Continue reading ‘The Social Reckoning’ Review: Jeremy Strong, Jeremy Allen White & Mikey Madison Help Aaron Sorkin Spike The Engagement Of A Smug But Urgent Facebook Drama at The Playlist.

In a day of monumental change in Hollywood, one piece of news may have slipped under your radar. Rumored for weeks, Amazon and the Television Academy put pen to paper and signed a new deal to stream the Emmy Awards. This follows almost sixty years of NBC, CBS, ABC and, eventually, FOX as rotating broadcast partners for television’s biggest night. There is no set date for the 2027 Emmy Awards, but the agreement effectively begins now.

Continue reading Prime Video Is The New Home For The Emmy Awards For The Next Six Years at The Playlist.

A fascinating slipperiness runs through Luca Guadagnino’s “Artificial,” an entertaining, funny, occasionally unsettling, and increasingly uneven account of the rise of OpenAI and the spectacular 2023 boardroom coup that briefly ousted CEO Sam Altman. Truth is slippery, so is morality, and Andrew Garfield’s Altman may be the slipperiest figure of all. An impish, persuasive Pied Piper, his greatest talent seems to be convincing everyone around him to follow him into the future.

Continue reading ‘Artificial’ Review: Luca Guadagnino’s Slippery AI Drama Is Fascinating, But Strangely Elusive at The Playlist.

The best-reviewed world premiere out of the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival may surprise you. It wasn’t the latest films from Academy Award winners Sian Heder or Peter Farrelly. Nor was it Theja Rio’s “Angh,” the Platform slate prize winner with an automatic entry into the International Feature Oscar race. Instead, it was Bassam Tariq’s “Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother,” an Orion Pictures – Amazon MGM Studios release that has become one of the best-reviewed films of the year.

Continue reading ‘Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother’: Bassam Tariq On ‘Ghost Dog’s’ Influence, Wong Kar-wai & Mahershala Ali As His Buster Keaton [Interview] at The Playlist.

Perhaps it speaks to a certain lack of human self-awareness that we have clichés about the impossibility of herding cats and other unruly animals, but no equally familiar idiom for attempting the same with human beings. Because anyone who has ever worked in an office understands that the job is usually the easiest part, and the real challenge is managing the people inside it. Tom McCarthy’s dense, intelligent, sharply observed, and ironically titled “A Statement” takes that familiar workplace frustration and applies it to considerably higher stakes: humanity’s dawning realization that carbon dioxide emissions are warming the planet and something needs to be done about it.

Continue reading ‘A Statement’ Review: Tom McCarthy Examines The Human Problem At The Heart Of A Global Crisis [NYFF] at The Playlist.

There’s nothing quite like the evocative, ephemeral, almost unconscious way music triggers and unlocks memory—or the strange emotional distance it can travel in an instant. A melody, a few transportive notes, even a particular sound can summon something nostalgic, amusing, joyful, embarrassing, painful, or sad—sometimes several of those things at once. That multitude of feeling, and the way musical memory so often leads back toward family, humiliation, longing, old wounds, and moments we thought we had left behind, seems to be the territory Tony Gilroy explores in “Behemoth!

Continue reading ‘Behemoth!’ Review: Tony Gilroy & Pedro Pascal Turn Music, Memory & The Burden Of Family Legacy Into A Graceful Crescendo [NYFF] at The Playlist.