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Universal Orlando Announces Time Frame For Opening Of Epic Universe Universal Studios By BJ Colangelo/Jan. 27, 2022 4:19 pm EST Universal Studios Orlando first announced the plans for their Epic Universe theme park all the way back in 2019, and after an understandable construction delay due to the pandemic, Epic Universe has finally been given a time frame for opening, with the park eyeballing summer 2025. Epic Universe is the first theme park built from the ground up in Florida since Universal’s Islands of Adventure arrived in 1999, and will be the largest theme park investment in Orlando in two decades, providing over 14,000 new jobs....

Batman by Florey Warner Bros. Pictures As you can see, these new prints are stunning, capturing the vivid gothic atmosphere Tim Burton created for “Batman” that has become the gold standard for how to do a “dark” superhero flick. Available in three different versions, including a three-day timed edition regular, Florey pays homage to both the classic “Batman” poster and opening credits through his use of the logo and colors. There is also a special yellow framed “Trading Card Super Variant....

Why Top Gun: Maverick Opted For ‘Dog Fight Football’ Instead Of Another Volleyball Match Paramount Pictures By Joshua Meyer/June 10, 2022 8:54 pm EST While “Top Gun: Maverick” retreads some ground from the original 1986 “Top Gun,” director Joseph Kosinski chose to depart from franchise tradition when it came to the sport that Tom Cruise and company play on the beach in the 2022 legacy sequel. One of the most famous — or infamous — scenes in the first “Top Gun” is the homoerotic beach volleyball scene, where the camera fixates on shirtless men as they glisten with sweat and the Kenny Loggins song “Playing with the Boys” enlivens the soundtrack....

What It Brought To The Genre Warner Bros. Animation Still, “Scooby-Doo and the Legend of the Vampire” is a fun-loving, original vampire story in a franchise that’s known for introducing kids to the popular monster canon. The movie sees the Scooby Gang on vacation in Australia, where they decide to attend a music festival at a place called Vampire Rock. “Legend of the Vampire” marked a new, brighter era of Scooby animation that would carry the franchise through the next decade....

It shows a darker side of Trek Paramount Pictures One of the principal qualities that sets “Deep Space Nine” apart from previous Trek installments is its embrace of conflict and a muddied morality. The eternal optimism and integrity of Roddenberry’s utopian vision was jettisoned like an escape pod by the showrunners. In its place, they established a more mature and nuanced tone. Over the course of seven serialized seasons, “Deep Space Nine” chronicled a costly, years-long galactic war....

The Ritual Netflix Horror is often about survival, whatever form that torment takes. Unique horror import “The Ritual” isn’t just about surviving a secret cult and their horrible, hidden god, but about survivor’s guilt. Four buddies go on a hiking trip through the lush Scandinavian wilderness to honor their dead friend’s memory. But one of them is carrying more than an offering to their deceased friend: He witnessed their pal’s cold-blooded murder and did nothing to stop it....

AMC+ Is Planning To Premiere A New Movie Once Per Week RLJE Films By Shania Russell/April 27, 2022 12:31 pm EST The number of streaming services available seems to be growing at an exponential rate and our bank accounts are not following suit — which means each streamer is doing all they can to come out on top, and keep the subscriptions going strong. In a world where even a content-churning machine-like Netflix is hitting a rough patch, distribution pacts are more important than ever....

Channing Tatum To Star In Adaptation Of His Children’s Book The One And Only Sparkella Paramount Pictures By Jeremy Mathai/May 19, 2022 9:58 am EST I’m going to level with you all: I’m just petty enough to advocate the idea that people should only ever be allowed to be exceptional at one thing at a time. Professional athletes making millions of dollars as the most talented in the world within their area of expertise?...

‘What the f*** is this? What happened to our drugs?’ HBO Looking back for The Guardian, Dorian Lynskey’s 10-year retrospective on “The Wire” highlights behind-the-scenes misgivings about the show’s oscillating direction from season to season, through Clarke Peters (one of a handful of carry-overs from “The Corner”), who plays Det. Lester Freamon: “I thought: ‘What the f*** is this? What happened to our drugs?’ For me, it was a way of saying: this isn’t about you....

How Bobby Fischer Served As Inspiration For Oscar Isaac’s Ex Machina Performance A24 By Miyako Pleines/May 9, 2022 5:55 pm EST Now that Elon Musk has successfully bought Twitter, it seems like a great time to talk about the trope of the “genius” tech bro, and what better way to do that than to discuss director Alex Garland’s psychologically thrilling A.I. movie “Ex Machina”? This 2014 hit tells the story of Caleb Smith (Domhnall Gleeson), a programmer who wins a competition to spend a week living alongside tech genius Nathan Bateman (Moon Knight … I mean, Oscar Isaac)....

How Malcolm McDowell Created The Signature ‘Kubrick Stare’ Warner Bros. By Bill Bria/March 22, 2022 12:36 pm EST One of the most identifiable — and imitated — cinematic tropes is the “Kubrick Stare,” a particular type of close-up shot used in several films by director Stanley Kubrick. It turns up in “The Shining,” “Full Metal Jacket,” and “Eyes Wide Shut,” and to a lesser extent, “Lolita” and “2001: A Space Odyssey....

How Public Domain Saved James Stewart’s Favorite Film Performance Liberty Films/RKO Radio Pictures By Lee Adams/June 20, 2022 10:53 am EST Several years ago, I held a screening of “It’s a Wonderful Life” in my local pub just before Christmas. It’s not a festive staple here in the Czech Republic, and a good few people in the audience didn’t know anything about it. Toward the end, as George Bailey (James Stewart) is really going through the wringer, some were getting visibly bummed out by it....

Human Spoiler Tom Holland Spoiled Spider-Man: No Way Home For Ms. Marvel’s Iman Vellani Sony By Valerie Ettenhofer/June 7, 2022 2:48 pm EST Tom Holland is at it again. It’s been nearly six months since “Spider-Man: No Way Home” came out, yet stories are still rolling in about the creative ways the famously spoiler-prone actor managed to spill the beans about Peter Parker’s latest adventure. This time, it wasn’t to the public, but to Marvel newcomer — and superfan — Iman Vellani....

The Amazing Peter #3 The trailer was dropped in honor of “No Way Home” becoming available on digital (with the Blu-ray following in April), but if you ask some fans, the real meaning behind this video is to hint at a possible follow-up to “The Amazing Spider-Man 2.” And if that wasn’t Sony’s intention, they may as well consider it because the internet certainly is. Within hours of this video dropping, fans got “#MakeTASM3” trending, inputting fan posters, storyline ideas, and lots of meme material....

It Took Seeing Bruce Willis On Screen For Samuel L. Jackson To Understand Split Blumhouse Productions By Jeremy Mathai/May 26, 2022 5:28 pm EST When looking back at the first two decades of the 2000s, box office analysts in the future will come to the undeniable conclusion that superhero movies ruled the roost in Hollywood. Every conceivable type of franchising effort under the sun — sequels, prequels, spin-offs, multimedia crossovers, and now even multiverse-driven storylines that have united multiple different universes into one — has gone on to result in great success, with credit largely going towards comic book adaptations within the last several years....

John Wick 2 Pulled Off The Impossible For One Of Its Best Action Scenes Lionsgate By Mike Williams/March 30, 2022 8:54 am EST You really need to set the scene for a great action film. The glowing metal foundry from the end of “Terminator 2,” the shiny marble lobby from “The Matrix,” or the dingy high rise from “The Raid;” the environment is part of your detailed memory of the film....

Jurassic World Dominion Featurette: Women Inherit The Earth Universal Pictures By Jenna Busch/May 26, 2022 1:59 pm EST The final film in the second “Jurassic Park” trilogy is almost in theaters. With the return of original trilogy cast members Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, and Sam Neill in “Jurassic World Dominion,” fans have been looking back at the groundbreaking first film. We all remember Goldblum’s Dr. Ian Malcolm saying, “Life … uh … finds a way” and his chaos theory, but for me, the best line has always been Dern’s Ellie Sattler saying, “Woman inherits the earth....

Legal Troubles Had That ’70s Show Scrambling To Find A Title By Anya Stanley/May 20, 2022 8:55 am EST In a sprawling collection of showrunner anecdotes with The Hollywood Reporter, everyone from writers to development heads weighed in on the titling challenge. Some series, like the J.J. Abrams/Damon Lindelof survival series “Lost,” had the title from the jump and resisted any amendments to the name — to be fair, naming the show “Nowhere” would have led to similar jokes being cracked at the writers’ expense during the later seasons as some fans grew frustrated with loose plot threads....

But Eggers isn’t actually into Kubrickian cruelty There was one particular scene in “The Northman” that seemed to confirm Skarsgård’s personal suspicion. It consists of a shamanic ritual that turns humans into beasts — a scene that was shot overnight during freezing rainfall. Because of the fantastic elements at play, the actors had to sustain a level of adrenaline in order to sell the scene, meaning their dissatisfaction with the weather couldn’t show on their faces....

Rian Johnson’s Poker Face Adds Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Johnson’s Good Luck Charm Netflix By BJ Colangelo/April 13, 2022 8:21 am EST If we weren’t already losing our collective s*** over Rian Johnson’s upcoming Natasha Lyonne starring mystery series “Poker Face” for Peacock, the latest casting announcement is surely going to put us all over the edge of excitement. The 10-episode series of “case-of-the-week mystery goodness” has added Rian Johnson regular Joseph Gordon-Levitt to the cast....