It sure looks like it should be connected to The Mothman Prophecies. One of the best supernatural thrillers ever made, director Mark Pellington’s 2002 sleeper hit has its twentieth anniversary this year. If you missed it, you missed some of Richard Gere and Laura Linney’s best character work. It also co-stars Will Patton, and at least in the trailers for the new contemporary Western meets supernatural horror tale Outer Range, you might agree it looks like an outright sequel to The Mothman Prophecies. Patton, like Clancy Brown, Michael Ironside, and JK Simmons, is in a small league of character actors that bring authenticity and legitimacy to any project he associates with. He co-stars in the series with Josh Brolin, whose return after 20 years to the cowboy hat will evoke his father, James Brolin, who had plenty of Old West television stints across the decades.
Calling it a “supernatural cult Western” isn’t right, so maybe we’ll call attach the old labels “weird Western” or “paranormal Western,” which may or may not be about another creepy cult. Or maybe it’s a new branch of The X-Files. It definitely brings a heavy paranormal horror vibe. Check out this trailer for Outer Ridge, beginning on Prime Video this week:
What defines the Men in Black the best? The neuralyzer? The Noisy Cricket? The suits? Or maybe its the sunglasses. 1997, 2002, 2012, and 2019. Plenty has changed in 22 years since the first Men in Black movie, but readers of a new book on all four films in the MiB franchise will learn a lot hasn’t changed. As part of the release of the latest entry in the series, Men in Black International, Titan Books partnered with Columbia Pictures to put together Men in Black Films: The Official Visual Companion to the Films, an oversized, chrome, hardcover guide spanning the creation of the MiB universe and each film from the original comic books to the new movie.
Writers Lisa Fitzpatrick and Sharon Gosling interview the directors, writers, visual effects crew, and other artists and actors from each movie to find out why the series has resonated with sci-fi audiences. Moving between images from the film, the characters, and plots, to what happened behind the scenes to develop the ideas from page to final film, readers will get two views of the films: one in-universe and one real-world. It’s told chronologically, giving equal treatment to each film. Along with stars Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones, James Brolin, and now Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson, you’ll see familiar characters from the past played by Tony Shalhoub (Galaxy Quest), Michael Stuhlbarg (The Shape of Water),Luke Cage stars Rosario Dawson and Mike Colter (Luke Cage), and Rip Torn (Defending Your Life), and you’ll meet new characters played by Emma Thompson and Liam Neeson.
The writers find lots of common threads with the first three films because of the overlap in creators, so look for some deep dives into the moviemaking process from director of the first three films, Barry Sonnenfeld, producers Laurie MacDonald and Walter F. Parkes (and how they coordinated ideas with executive producer Steven Spielberg), production designer Bo Welch, set decorator Cheryl Carasik, and, of course, Rick Baker, monster (and alien) maker, plus dozens more. It’s all a nostalgic look back to some of the major creators that guided the look of Hollywood in the 1980s and 1990s. It includes commentary from comic book creator Lowell Cunningham and the several writers that had a hand in the screenplays. From the great futuristic props to those sunglasses and black suit changes, every major talent behind the camera gets to share where the ideas came from, with full-color photographs documenting the production steps along the way.
Known for one of the most bizarre characters ever played by actor Yul Brynner, 1973’s Westworld was writer/director Michael Crichton’s original theme park-turned disaster. Twenty years before Jurassic Park’s dinosaurs went on a murderous rampage, it was sideshow automatons from a high-tech vacation spot that turned on the tourists. Will HBO’s new series Westworld also add in the other theme parks (like RomanWorld) as in the original? We’ll know soon.
Jonathan Nolan, brother of The Dark Knight series’ Christopher Nolan, is directing the return of the sci-fi classic. The original starred Brynner as the cool and unflinching Gunslinger, with Richard Benjamin running for his life, along with appearances by James Brolin and Majel Barrett. The new series stars a great, comparable actor to Brynner–Ed Harris, as well as Anthony Hopkins, James Marsden, Jimmi Simpson, and James Bond’s Jeffrey Wright.
Check out the first teaser for the series Westworld:
