Despite its amusingly obscene, on-the-nose title, How to Plan an Orgy in a Small Town isn't quite as smutty and salacious as you might think. The third full-length feature from writer-director Jeremy LaLonde (The Untitled Work of Paul Shepherd, Sex After Kids), it simultaneously revolves around a carnally canny columnist (Jewel Staite) trying to yank a group of tightly wound, sexually repressed yokels out of their shells and feels exactly like the kind of movie one of those fussy, fretful townspeople might make in the pursuit of trying - against every chaste impulse in their body - to be edgy.
When The Walking Dead lumbered onto AMC, sparking a pop culture phenomenon and establishing itself as one of the most harrowing horror narratives in small screen history, it also signaled a sea change for its network. Up until that point, the AMC brand had signified something sophisticated and slow-moving, refined and romantic, almost novelistic in its series' approaches to storytelling. Especially with Mad Men and Breaking Bad, but also on shorter-lived shows like should-have-been-a-hit Rubicon, the channel had a reputation for broadcasting prestige dramas with an air of old-school elegance.
Adam Devine, whose star has been rising fast with his work on Comedy Central's Workaholics and in big-screen ventures like this summer's Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates, will co-write and star opposite Alexandra Daddario in romantic comedy When We First Met.
Captain America who? Even with Captain America: Civil War just hitting theaters this weekend, some in the superhero news community are already looking ahead to another buzzy Marvel movie that (barring any tiny easter eggs I may have missed during my screening) went entirely unteased in Civil War: Phase Three entry Captain Marvel.
Any Idris Elba news is good news, and today brings exceptionally exciting word that the actor, currently filming The Dark Tower, has signed on to star in Molly's Game, the biopic on which The West Wing writer Aaron Sorkin will make his directorial debut.
During a lengthy Q&A session with Deadline, Marvel head honcho Kevin Feige dropped a whole lot of information, on everything from Doctor Strange (and its casting controversies) to its drive to include female filmmakers going forward ("We are meeting with many, many immensely talented directors, the majority of whom are female," he said), but some of his most excitingly on-the-money comments came while discussing this past spring's Deadpool.
A surprising amount of the fallout over Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice's brutal reviews and (comparatively) underwhelming box office has played out in the public eye, which means a lot of eyebrows got raised when Ben Affleck was announced to be executive-producing Justice League. It's no secret that Affleck was stung by the negative reception and felt somewhat trapped in a creative vision gone south after not only committing to multiple films playing Batman but to a solo Batman pic he'd direct. Letting him executive-produce Justice League, which The Hollywood Reporter says involves working with scribe Chris Terrio to "fine-tune the script" and finalizing the blockbuster in post-production, seemed like Warner Bros. simultaneously trying to appease Affleck and push someone of his creative talents to influence the slate more prominently.
Earlier this week, Russell Crowe was rumored for a role in Universal's star-studded take on The Mummy, and during press rounds for The Nice Guys, the actor has confirmed that he is in fact involved, playing none other than Dr. Henry Jekyll.
The grand, ghastly Guignol that is Showtime's Penny Dreadful ended its thrilling second season by entering a new act, one that found its myriad characters scattered to the winds without any clear adversary or obstacle to reunite them.
The movie may function fourfold as a prequel, sequel, spinoff and quasi-remake to the highly budgeted slice of fantasy dreck that was 2012's Snow White and the Huntsman, but it's surprisingly hard to hate The Huntsman: Winter's War. That's not to say it's a good movie - it manifestly is not - but what director Cedric Nicolas-Troyan and writers Evan Spiliotopoulos and Craig Mazin have wrought is a deeply weird, definitely unnecessary, and frequently entertaining piece of popcorn programming, one that - while existing purely to further Universal's franchise-first agenda - also possesses a wacky, oddball appeal its morose predecessor never even attempted to harness.
