Sam Raimi Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Willem Dafoe is talking Spider-Man.

Willem Dafoe isn’t entirely against doing another “Spider-Man” movie as the Green Goblin.

4x Oscar nominee Willem Dafoe has expressed his willingness to return to the Spider-Man multiverse again, should the right opportunity arise.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Willem Dafoe is not ruling out a third appearance as the iconic Spider-Man villain Norman Osborne/Green Goblin. The actor’s beloved role in Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man” remains his most recognizable performance, and he reprised Green Goblin to rave reviews in 2021’s “Spider-Man: No Way Home.” Dafoe told Inverse in a recent interview to promote his new thriller, “Inside,” that a third go-around with the Spider-Man villain is not out of the question. “If everything was right, sure,” Dafoe said. “I mean, that’s a great role. I liked the fact that it’s a double role both times. Twenty years ago, and fairly recently, both times [were] very different experiences, but I had a good time on both.”

The “Evil Dead” series continues with “Evil Dead Rise,” fresh off its world premiere at SXSW in Austin earlier this week. The Playlist’s critic didn’t like Lee Cronin‘s new installment (read our review here), but others elsewhere have, which bodes well for the film’s theatrical release next month.

pic.twitter.com/aocgJ4e3mQ“I think someone got possessed during the movie,” one of the panelists said, followed by “Keep back, keep Austin weird, right?”“There was no alcohol involved in that whatsoever,” Campbell added.“Evil Dead Rise” is a sequel/reboot to the franchise that follows Beth (Lily Sullivan), a road-weary traveler who visits her older sister Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland). Ellie is raising three kids in a small Los Angeles apartment, and their reunion gets interrupted by a book beneath Ellie’s basement that gives rise to flesh-possessing demons. The film stands alone from Sam Raimi’s trilogy starring Bruce Campbell as Ash as well as the television series continuation “Ash vs.

Lee Cronin’s “Evil Dead Rise” calls to mind those items we used to read before every “Die Hard” sequel, about how each had begun its life as a completely different story having nothing to do with “Die Hard” that was hastily re-written into another John McClane movie. That is not, as far as I know, the origin story of this “Evil Dead” sequel.

Joe Leydon Film Critic Just a skosh more than a decade after Fede Alvarez’s carnage-crammed “Evil Dead” reboot jump-started the horror franchise spawned by Sam Raimi’s low-budget 1981 cult favorite, writer-director Lee Cronin has delivered his own imaginatively scary take on the “Book of the Dead” mythos with “Evil Dead Rise.” A kinda-sorta sequel, it offers incontrovertible evidence that predatory and possessive bogeymen are just as frightful when their hunting ground shifts from a cabin in a dark corner of the woods to a gone-to-seed apartment building in downtown Los Angeles.    Said building — aptly described by one holdout resident as a “condemned dump” — just happens to have been built on the site of a long-closed bank that evidently shuttered before certain mystical merchandise could be retrieved from its vault. Specifically, we’re talking about yet another Book of the Dead: an ancient tome with a binding of human skin that can serve as an entryway for savage supernatural creatures eager to infect and forage in our world. This particular edition was locked away along with some 1923-era vinyl recordings of a clergyman’s warnings about the dangers of even glancing between the covers. Trouble is, all it takes is an earthquake, and a curious adolescent living with his family several stories above the buried material, for all hell to break loose.

A post-screening Q&A for the Evil Dead Rise briefly turned into a shouting match at SXSW Wednesday evening after the film’s executive producer Bruce Campbell clashed with a heckler in the audience.

EXCLUSIVE: Lauren Kisilevsky is reuniting with Reese Witherspoon after being hired to oversee live-action family programming at Hello Sunshine.

grossed $3.5 million at the Thursday box office in January 2022. It went on to make $81.6 million in the U.S. and $137.7 million worldwide against a $25 million budget.

A satisfying stew of genre tropes and classic sci-fi and monster movie influences, “65” is a popcorn movie that isn’t quite the intense thrill ride it gives the impression it wants to be, although it definitely has its moments. READ MORE: ‘65’ Trailer: Adam Driver Transforms Into An Action Hero Fighting Dinosaurs In Sci-Fi Thriller From Sam Raimi Adam Driver plays Mills, a pilot who agrees to take a two-year space mission so that it will give him the money he needs to help pay for his sick daughter’s medical treatment.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Adam Driver-starring sci-fi adventure film “65” has been approved for theatrical release in mainland China. It will hit cinemas on March 31, some three weeks after the film began to release in other international territories. The film is branded as a Columbia Pictures title and will be released by the Sony label in most territories. In China, however, all revenue-sharing import titles are officially handled by a state-owned enterprise. The Hollywood studio’s Chinese office theoretically operates in an advisory capacity, though in practice it is likely to be involved in marketing strategy and p&a decisions. The film has a survival-quest narrative. After a catastrophic crash on an unknown planet, pilot Mills (Driver) quickly discovers he’s actually stranded on Earth some 65 million years ago. Now, with only one chance at rescue, Mills and the only other survivor, Koa (Ariana Greenblatt), must make their way across an unknown terrain riddled with dangerous prehistoric creatures in an epic fight to survive.

Julia MacCary editor Nicolas Cage and Nicholas Hoult’s vampire horror-comedy “Renfield” will get its world premiere at the Overlook Film Festival on March 30. Hoult (“The Menu,” “About a Boy”) stars as Renfield, the tortured aide to Dracula, who is being played by Cage (“Face/Off,” “The Rock”). Chris McKay (“The Tomorrow War,” “The Lego Movie”) directed the film, and Ryan Ridley (“Rick and Morty,” “The Wastelander”) penned it. Additional cast members include Awkwafina, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Brandon Scott Jones and Ben Schwartz. Lee Cronin’s “Evil Dead Rise” will close out the festival on April 2. Lily Sullivan and Alyssa Sutherland star in the film about estranged sisters reuniting, only to have flesh-possessing demons force them into a battle to survive. Rob Tapert, Sam Raimi and Bruce Campell produced the film.

The Overlook Film Festival has unveiled the full lineup for its 2023 edition, taking place in New Orleans from March 30-April 2, naming the world premiering Universal horror-comedy Renfield as its opening night film, and Warner Bros’ Evil Dead Rise as its closer.

“Cocaine Bear,” now playing in theaters courtesy of Universal Pictures. Directed by Elizabeth Banks and penned by Jimmy Warden, the not-quite-true story concerns a black bear minding her own business who stumbles upon cocaine dropped from a drug-smuggling plane.

EXCLUSIVE: Two-time Oscar winner Anthony Hopkins will team with Top Gun: Maverick’s Glen Powell in Locked, a remake of the Argentinian action thriller 4X4, for ZQ Entertainment and Raimi Productions. David Yarovesky is set to direct. He and Sam Raimi collaborated recently on Nightbooks. Michael Arlen Ross (Oracle) wrote the script. The original was written and directed by Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat (Official Competition).

EXCLUSIVE: Deadline has learned that Lidya Jewett will star in The Exorcist, the first film in the rebooted trilogy, which Blumhouse, Morgan Creek, Universal and Peacock scooped up global rights to for $400M.

UPDATE: The Sony Adam Driver sci-fi movie 65 will now open a week ahead of Shazam: Fury of the Gods on March 10. Meanwhile, the studio’s AFFIRM George Foreman biopic has now titled Big George Foreman: The Miraculous Story of the Once and Future Heavyweight Champion of the World. It is still set for April 28.

In a few short years, Adam Driver has gone from underground TV curiosity to the most compelling leading man in movies. The young actor has already notched two consecutive Oscar nominations for his roles in 2018’s “BlacKkKlansman” and 2019’s “Marriage Story,” plus an extended excursion into the “Star Wars” universe.

Edward R. Pressman, the prolific Hollywood indie producer behind Wall Street, Badlands and The Crow, among dozens of others, died Tuesday in Los Angeles. He was 79.

Paramount and eOne’s Dungeouns and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves will fire up this year’s South by Southwest Film Festival on March 10 before its theatrical release on March 31.

While the original trilogy of Sam Raimi’s horror film franchise “Evil Dead”— “The Evil Dead” (1981), “Evil Dead II” (1987), and “Army of Darkness” (1992)—rocks, most of the attempts to resurrect the film have been primarily non-starters. Granted, there’s only been one film since, Fede Álvarez‘s “Evil Dead” (2013), and there was also the series “Ash vs.

With 2023 right around the corner, we’re lucky to have one of the biggest series of the new year, “The Last of Us,” be one of the first things we see. HBO is debuting the first episode of the highly-anticipated post-apocalyptic series (based on the massively popular video game franchise) on January 15.

The Sony Adam Driver sci-fi movie 65 is moving onto the opening weekend of New Line’s Shazam: Fury of the Gods, March 17-19. The Scott Beck-Bryan Woods movie was previously dated for March 10, 2023.

EXCLUSIVE: Genre legend Sam Raimi’s Raimi Productions and Barbarian EP Alex Lebovici’s Hammerstone Studios are reteaming with Christian Mercuri’s Capstone Studios to produce the horror-thriller, Don’t Move. The project comes following the parties’ collaboration on Boy Kills World — an action-thriller starring Bill Skarsgård, which is currently in post-production. 

EXCLUSIVE: UTA has signed actress and filmmaker Katie Holmes and her recently launched production company, Lafayette Pictures, for representation in all areas. 

Typically, when we see social media reactions to major film releases, especially blockbusters, the results tend to be very, uh, generous. That’s when you get people really go for hyperbolic statements claiming “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” will melt your face and make you pray to the altar of Sam Raimi.

EXCLUSIVE: Dermot Mulroney (Hanna, Insidious: Chapter 3) has signed on to star in action-thriller Ruthless which starts principal photography in Nevada on October 24.

The 1980s was a great decade for horror, with classics like “The Shining,” “The Fly,” and two “Evil Dead” movies. Effects were largely practical (not computer-generated) and genre giants Wes Craven, John Carpenter, Sam Raimi and David Cronenberg were making some of their most iconic movies ever.

Since we’ve officially made it past all of the “on October 3rd he asked me what day it was” memes, we can transition into celebrating Autumn and Halloween the best way we know how– with horror films.  In 1978, Sam Raimi wrote, directed, and produced a low-budget short film called “Within the Woods.” After convincing a Detroit theater manager to play the film alongside “Rocky Horror,” it gained interest, garnered a remake, and launched the successful “Evil Dead” franchise.

“Halloween Ends,” the formal conclusion of Jamie Lee Curtis’ time with the franchise). Don’t worry, we’ll be adjusting the list accordingly.

With “Werewolf by Night,” the Marvel Cinematic Universe is getting spooky.The new 53-minute movie, dubbed a “Marvel Studios Special Presentation” and directed by Michael Giacchino, debuts on Disney+ next week. Starring Gael Garcia Bernal as the title character, it evokes the spirit of Universal monster movies from the 1940s, with its black-and-white photography, scratchy soundtrack and somewhat exaggerated performances.

J. Kim Murphy Bassam Tariq has exited his role as director of Marvel Studios’ “Blade.” Tariq’s departure comes as a shock, as production was set to begin in November on Marvel’s new feature about the iconic comic book vampire slayer. The film is set to star Mahershala Ali in the title role, alongside a cast that includes Delroy Lindo and Aaron Pierre. Although he will no longer be helming “Blade,” sources close to the situation state that Tariq will remain attached to the project as an executive producer. The filmmaker was first confirmed as the director of “Blade” in the summer of 2021.

Elizabeth Olsen is one of creative leaders honored for Variety’s 2022 Power of Women presented by Lifetime. To read about her work with the Rape Foundation and Stuart House, click here. For more honorees, click here. When audiences last saw Elizabeth Olsen as Wanda Maximoff in Disney’s May box office juggernaut “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” it certainly looked like Olsen’s time in the Marvel Cinematic Universe was over. Definitively, actually: An entire castle collapsed on Wanda, a building brought down by her own powerful magic after she sacrificed herself to destroy the Darkhold — the evil book that had corrupted her, turning her into a nearly unbeatable villain for most of the movie.

“The Last of Us,” the highly anticipated drama series adaptation of the critically acclaimed video game of the same name.Set 20 years after the fall of civilization, the story follows Joel (Pedro Pascal), a survivor who is hired to smuggle a 14-year-old girl named Ellie (Bella Ramsey) out of an oppressive quarantine zone. But while the job begins small, it soon becomes a brutal and heartbreaking journey across the U.S.