During a press conference on Monday with Marion County prosecutor Ryan Mears and Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department Chief Chris Bailey, Mears announced that Sanchez was facing a level 5 felony battery resulting in serious bodily injury charge. The new charge carries a potential sentence of up to six years in prison.

Sanchez was initially facing misdemeanor charges — for alleged battery with injury, unlawful entry of a motor vehicle and public intoxication — but once they learned more about the victim’s current medical condition, Mears said “it became clear to us that additional charges needed to be filed.”

The Associated Press reported that a police affidavit alleges Sanchez, smelling of alcohol, aggressively approached a 69-year-old truck driver who had backed into a hotel’s loading docks in downtown Indianapolis. This allegedly led to a confrontation between them outside the vehicle at around 12:30 a.m. Saturday, prompting the truck driver to pull out a knife to defend himself.

“We are literally talking about people fighting over a parking space and/or a dispute about where people are parking, and it resulted in someone receiving just incredibly significant injures,” Mears said on Monday.

The Hollywood Reporter previously reported that both men received medical treatment, with Fox Sports PR sharing later on Saturday that Sanchez was “recovering in the hospital in stable condition.” He remained hospitalized as of Monday morning.

The Associated Press reported that the former New York Jets quarterback was pepper-sprayed and stabbed multiple times during the incident and the truck driver was cut on his cheek, according to court records.

“This was a situation that did not need to occur,” the prosecutor added. “The allegations involve a 38-year-old man becoming involved in an altercation with a 69-year-old man who sustained significant and very severe injuries as a result of that altercation.”

Authorities did not share whether the truck driver might also face charges.

THR has reached out to Fox Sports and Sanchez’s reps for comment.

The broadcaster was in Indianapolis for Sunday’s game between the Colts and Las Vegas Raiders.

THR recently spoke with Sanchez’s wife, Perry Mattfeld, who stars opposite Glen Powell in the sports-comedy series Chad Powers. At the time, she said the former NFL player shared some of his professional insight with writers on the show. “Mark was definitely able to consult with me quite a bit on some of my lines,” Mattfeld said. “I have to give him some credit; some of his lines made it in terms of my improv or things that he had given me. (Laughs.) But he did spend some time in the writers room giving some insight not only about his NFL career, but college as well.”

Will Marvel Studios Want to Deliver ‘Eyes of Wakanda’ Season 2?

Disney+

In 2018, Black Panther became one of the highest rated MCU movies ever, and added several big Oscar nominations to its name. While the sequel, 2022’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, did not gain the same praise, it was one of the highest grossing Marvel projects of the Multiverse Saga. Eyes of Wakanda was meant to delve deeper into the history of the hidden nation, and it did that admirably. It is, however, unclear whether Marvel Studios would be pursuing a second season even before the news of Axis Studios’ collapse. Recently, there has been a huge pullback on Marvel content, and particularly the amount of Disney+ shows that were being lined up. The loss of the animation studio that helped create the series could be something that makes the decision about the show’s fate a simpler one. Regardless of what happens with Eyes of Wakanda, the Black Panther story is set to continue with a third movie from Ryan Coogler. The director, who was also behind this year’s horror hit Sinners, has previously shared vague details on Black Panther 3, including the casting of Denzel Washington. Although dates for any MCU project beyond Avengers: Doomsday seem to be in constant flux, it is believed that the third Black Panther movie will be released after Avengers: Secret Wars.

Release Date

2025 – 2025

Network

Disney+

Franchise(s)

Marvel Cinematic Universe

Terri Douglas

Additional Voices 1

Michael Woodley

Additional Voices 2

Fred Tatasciore

Additional Voices 3

Kimberly Bailey

Additional Voices 4

Collider’s Perri Nemiroff talks with Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill for Black Phone 2 at Fantastic Fest 2025.

The sequel enters a dream world when the Grabber makes a call from hell, with family secrets fueling the mystery.

The pair discuss filming Super 8, casting Anna Lore, Madeleine McGraw and Mason Thames’ evolving relationship and powers, and more.

Four years ago, Finn (Mason Thames) killed his abductor and escaped, becoming the only survivor of Ethan Hawke’s Grabber, but true evil transcends death. In Black Phone 2, Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) begins to receive calls in her dreams from the black phone and experiences disturbing visions that lead her and Finn to a snowed-in winter camp and a shocking discovery about the Grabber and their own family’s past. The sequel is directed by Scott Derrickson, who co-wrote the screenplay with longtime collaborator C. Robert Cargill, continuing the nightmare they first brought to screens in 2021, adapted from Joe Hill’s short story of the same name from his 2005 anthology, 20th Century Ghosts. Thames and McGraw return as brother and sister Finn and Gwen, with Hawke also reprising his role of the Grabber. At Fantastic Fest 2025, Collider’s Perri Nemiroff sat down with Derrickson and Cargill to talk about the idea that spurred Black Phone 2 forward, the scene that took three reshoots to nail, and the hardest part of the film to get right. The pair also briefly discuss the possibility of a third installment to the Grabber’s story.
The Call Is Coming from… Hell?

Joe Hill thought this killer ‘Black Phone 2’ idea might be dumb.

Ethan Hawke wearing a devil mask and menacing Mason Thames in a phone booth in The-Black-Phone-2Image via Universal Pictures

PERRI NEMIROFF: I have a bunch of follow-ups from our last chat, which happened when I had only seen the first trailer. The first thing on my list is what you were telling me about Joe Hill’s idea for Black Phone 2. Specifically, what you said was that you were looking for an idea, and Joe emailed you a pitch. Some of it you didn’t respond to, but there was an idea within that email that you thought was fantastic that you had never heard of. So now I want to know, in the movie I just saw, what is that specific idea? SCOTT DERRICKSON: The central idea was the idea that the grabber had killed, Hope, their mother, and that the backstory of the movie would be sort of an unveiling and a reveal of how that had occurred. So that was something I’d never, never thought about. And what I liked about it was pitched it to you first, and then, Carter liked it. So then he emailed me. What I liked about it was the fact that it allowed for the movie to be a ghost story. You could create a narrative that tonally is very different, sort of bringing you into the movie, not as a serial killer movie, but as, a mystery ghost story. And then there would be high emotional stakes and and I thought that reveal would really matter when it happened, I hope. But that’s a big spoiler. C. ROBERT CARGILL: There’s a central tenet to when he called me up, because he called me, and then I said, “You gotta talk to Scott.” He emailed Scott because he wanted it to all come out, just like, “Okay, here are all my ideas.” But that core idea was, he was just like, “I have the dumbest idea,” and I’m like, “We love dumb ideas. Let’s go. What’s the dumb idea?” And he goes, “A phone rings and Finney answers, and it’s the Grabber calling him from hell.” He had this additional thing on it that we’ve kind of done, where now the mask is his face in hell. But there is no Grabber without the mask; that is who he is. We were just like, “ Fuck yes.” Did you mention that the role of their mother was written for Anna Lore last night? DERRICKSON: She was the person I had in mind all the time, but we try not to write for somebody specifically, or to do so very loosely. So as soon as that came up, I thought she’d be perfect for it, but Cargill didn’t know her at that time. CARGILL: Oh no, I did. We worked on Valentine together. DERRICKSON: Of course. Yes, that’s right. But I always had her in mind and hoped that she would do it. It makes me really happy to see her have the one-two punch this year with this and Final Destination [Bloodlines]. CARGILL: She’s close friends with Scott’s wife, and so we worked with her in the past. We’ve just hung out with her numerous times, and so when he’s like, “I want Anna for this,” I was like, “Of course. Yes.”

Anna Lore screaming in a garden in Final Destination Bloodlines.Image via Warner Bros.

So good. Sign me up for anything she’s in. CARGILL: And then she really, really looks like Maddie. They look like mother and daughter in a way that when Scott pointed it out, I was like, “Oh man, that’s genius.” That was Scott’s stroke of genius with the casting. DERRICKSON: She also has to play a character with a pretty big age gap. Anna can look so young in the opening. She does look like she’s 18 or 19 years old, and then she needs to play a mother many years later in the movie, when you see her. That was also something, that there aren’t a lot of actresses that can fit the bill there. Yeah, I had that actual discussion with somebody else last night about how impressed we were with that. CARGILL: You see her next to Jeremy Davies, and it’s like, “Yeah, I see it,” even though you just saw her 20 minutes ago in a phone booth looking, like you said, 19 years old. DERRICKSON: By the way, no visual effects on her at all. She can just look that different. That’s also a road I could go down and discuss for quite a while! CARGILL: Yeah. You know what? Fuck her. Fuck her for being so genetically awesome. [Laughs] You said it, not me! Here’s one other thing I really wanted to follow up on with both of you that you had brought up in our last conversation. You said that the screenplay that you guys wrote was very confusing to a lot of people. I was revisiting the interview having seen the movie, and I’m like, what was confusing? DERRICKSON: What was confusing was the fact that you were jumping back and forth so much between the dream world and reality. So every time you got a slug line that says, “Dream world, Super 8, you’re describing, and it goes back and forth so many times.” The structure of the narrative is also kind of all over the place. You’re getting pieces of information from the history in random ways, so when you read it all the way through, it’s very difficult to take it in on the page. Even when we were in prep, I would get lost on things sometimes. I’d be like, “No, wait a minute. Does this take place before that scene or after that scene?” It was a bit of a puzzle. I remember my production designer, Patti Podesta, about three weeks before we finished shooting, she just said, “Scott, I gotta just tell you, I think you’re the only person who understands the movie you’re making,” because it was technically so complicated. I would tell people what to do, and everybody did it, but it was a hard movie on the page to grasp what was visually represented on the screen. CARGILL: Yeah, you’re talking about a movie in which we were operating with three very different cameras to capture very different parts of the movie to visually represent it. So sometimes you’d be like, “Okay, wait, where in the movie are we? Which camera are we using? Which film stock are we using?” There are so many moving parts. It’s one of those things that there’s a handful of people on the planet that could make that work, and Scott is one of them.
One ‘Black Phone 2’ Scene Had to Be Reshot Three Times

The filmmakers discuss the volatile nature of Super 8.

Finn tries to wake up a sleeping Gwen in a bunk bed covered in writing, with a girl watching nearby.Image via Universal Pictures

I’ll dig into the Super 8 of it all now. Can you tell me a little bit about figuring out the right visual language so that it not only feels like an expansion of how it’s used in the first film, but it also almost feels like another step from Sinister to Black Phone to Black Phone 2? DERRICKSON: It’s definitely an evolution of those films stylistically, you know? And rather than drawing on other films, this is the first time I’ve sort of drawn on my own past visual style and tried to evolve it into something that I haven’t seen before. I have not seen a movie in a theater, or maybe ever, that has this much Super 8 material in it. Super 8 is really dangerous-feeling, and it’s actually dangerous to work with. It’s very volatile. Is it underexposed? Is it overexposed? It flutters in the gate. The aberrations are part of the beauty of it, and the dangerousness of it. CARGILL: An entire reel will just be lost because it won’t develop properly, so we’ll have to shoot it again. Are you saying that as a hypothetical? DERRICKSON: No, that really happened. CARGILL: Oh no, no, no, I wasn’t saying that as a hypothetical. DERRICKSON: We have one scene in the movie we had to reshoot three times because the Super 8 was so volatile. But it was worth it, because it’s hard these days to go into a cinema and have a visual experience where you’re looking at something that you don’t feel like you’ve seen before. It just doesn’t look like other movies, and that’s very exciting for me as a film viewer when that happens. I felt like part of the excitement of the movie was going to be the audiovisual power of the medium itself, and that that could be used to really be a storytelling device separating the dream world from reality. Super 8 always feels very dangerous. It ups the tension. But can you tell me a little bit about weaving that way of filming into Gwen’s journey thematically, so that it’s also evolving in a way that supports where you want to take her in the story? DERRICKSON: That’s actually a script decision that we made. I remember calling Cargill one time when we were sort of playing with some of the horror scenes early on, and I said, “I think that maybe we should have all of the terror of this movie in this dream world.” That was a hard decision to make, and Cargill immediately was like, “Oh, I thought that all along.” And I was like, “Okay, well, I was slow to the process.” But making that decision meant that I really did have to create worlds here. And for Gwen, she is this character with these ethereal gifts, and to be able to give her a visual space where, when you see it in her, you know that you’re inside of her own mind to a degree. You know that you’re inside a space that she occupies mentally and spiritually. That became very challenging for me because every time that we were in there, I needed to feel not an intellectual idea, but I needed to feel like her. It needed to feel like her world. The seamlessness is hopefully that you don’t have to experience it intellectually, you just experience it viscerally, and it makes sense to you as it’s happening.
Creating a Dream World for ‘Black Phone 2’

And how they developed the rules on the page and screen.

Gwen, with short hair in pajamas, hiding around a corner from the Grabber coming her way with an axe.Image via Universal Pictures

I have so many follow-up questions. One of the first ones that crossed my mind, just because you emphasized the dream world, and obviously a lot of folks out there are comparing this movie to Nightmare on Elm Street, which I think is very applicable. How do you approach embracing that kind of comparison rather than pushing it away? CARGILL: There’s a phrase I like to use, and I use it quite often: “Turning into the skid.” Sometimes when you’re sliding on ice or water, you turn into the skid instead of away from it, and that’s how you right the car. That’s what you do with things like this. The minute we realized we were bumping up against material that had been done in movies that we love, we were just like, “Why try to ignore that and pretend we’re something else, and instead just turn into the skid and be like, ‘We love Nightmare on Elm Street. You love Nightmare on Elm Street. We’re not going to steal from Wes [Craven], but we will do our own variant on this with the rules that we set up in the previous movie.’” So, it’s like any similarities are a good thing for this audience. As I was saying in another interview last night, one of the great things about horror audiences is they are so film literate and they know their movies inside and out and chapter and verse, and so you’re not going to pull it over on them and be like, “Hey, we made a Nightmare on Elm Street movie that you don’t recognize.” No, they’re going to know. So it’s like, “Well, let’s go for it, but let’s also make sure we honor that material as well by not stealing from it.” I think one of the best things you do is that you do honor it, but you honor it within this really rich world that you two have created, with Joe, of course. I wanted to lean into that a little bit. I believe you brought this up at the Q&A last night, but I forget the exact verbiage you used. Something about overwriting rules, or something to that effect. CARGILL: I overwrite. Like my other job, I’m a novelist, and so I love to overwrite, so then Scott’s first job when he’s rewriting me is cutting out, like, six pages, and just being like, “Let’s cut this down to the bone and make it work.” But I always like to overwrite with the rules there so that we both know what we’re playing with, and then the secret with writing in general is that you then pare that away and pare that away to exactly the point that the audience understands it, but doesn’t ever feel like you’re sitting there and giving them a lecture on how the movie works. That’s always the point at which the movie grinds to a halt is the point where someone looks in the camera and goes, “Let me explain dreaming to you. Let me explain the rules of Inception.” That’s the one criticism of Inception that functions is that 70% of that movie is explaining the other 30% to you. DERRICKSON: I don’t have that criticism. CARGILL: Oh, love the movie. But the point is that you’re always trying to avoid that. So, I like to overwrite, and then we cut down and get to that point where the audience is like, “Oh, this is everything I needed to know.” To follow up on that a little, can you each give me an example of a rule that you knew had to be rather explicit in the movie, but then also maybe a rule that you developed that you didn’t need to flat out mention in the film, but we could still feel informing the film overall and the world that you’re creating? CARGILL: One of the big ones is that one of the great things about this story is it’s about the kids learning that this is not something happening to them, this is something that is happening within them that’s connected. So, having the phone ring and not having both of them hear it, but only the one who’s getting the call, only the one who’s mentally reaching out. So we always had to make sure we knew what that was, because there is no real phone ringing. It’s just the medium with which they’re communicating with the dead, and it’s how their brain processes it. So yeah, we always were making sure that someone would hear it ringing, but it was never both of them because this isn’t some shared thing. They just both have the same abilities from their mom. Also in that vein, Finn is rejecting it, and so he’s not having all the experiences Gwen is having because Gwen is open to it. We’re seeing two people with the same gifts, and one person trying to shut it down while the other person is being open to it, which is why, as she goes through the movie, she starts being able to do things that Finn can do. Because it’s not that they have two separate abilities, it’s that they both developed them in different ways, and he’s not furthering his learning of that while she is. That’s why she, by the end of the movie, would be a much more competent paranormal investigator than her brother would be.
Would Anyone Want ‘Black Phone 3’?

The pair also discuss Madeleine McGraw and Mason Thames’ on and off-screen relationship.

The Grabber with an icy mask, tilting his head and holding an axe down by his side in Black Phone 2.Image via Universal Pictures

This is the greediest follow-up question, but you explain that and I’m sitting here like, “I want more.” I assume you see the potential in a Black Phone 3, right? CARGILL: Would anyone want that? I don’t know. [Laughs] DERRICKSON: No one’s brought that up to me. CARGILL: No, that’s the first time we’ve heard it. Hey, I hope other people would like that. I want to see you expand, especially with the two of them. I thought they were phenomenal in the first film, but when you see what they’re able to do at a different stage of life here, it really is something extra special, so I would love to see them continue in these roles as well. Leaning into them in particular, can you tell me something that you saw Madeleine and Mason do on this set that made the two of you stop and go, “I thought I knew how powerful this scene could be, but you two just took it to another level?” DERRICKSON: I mean, the thing about the two of them is that they are so comfortable around each other and know each other so well that it was much more about feeling continually surprised at how easily they stepped into a scene and felt like brother and sister, and felt like they had real history, because they do. They’ve known each other for years now, since the first film. For me, it’s the more emotional moments when they’re leaning on each other. I think that for me, the greatest performance moment that Maddie has is actually after the first nightmare that she has when she wakes up. She is really crying, and she is really distraught, and she had to get herself into a very dark place, which is painful for her as an actress. Some people can do that on command and it doesn’t affect them; it really affects her. So when I ask her to do something like that, I’m aware that I’m extracting real emotional energy and power from a person for the sake of the movie. The way that in that scene, and to a lesser degree in the basement when she wakes up, but when she wakes up in the dorm, the way Mason is with her and the way he is calming her and talking to her and telling her she’s okay, but then when she sort of folds in on him, and the fear then sets in, all that was instinctive for them. That was something that just naturally would step in and do. They both respect the other person’s skill and they both just understand that relationship and what it is. So, it doesn’t take a lot of work to get that dynamic on screen. CARGILL: One of the great things about the kids is on the very first movie, they all just kind of fell in love with one another and started a text group, so they just have been texting as a group. All the kids on Black Phone have been hanging out online together for several years, and they are super close friends, so when they would be on set, oftentimes when they would be wrapped for the day, they would go get out of hair and make up, and they’d be ready to go home, and then they would just stick around on set because their argument was, “I’m just going to be sitting at home texting the boys anyway, so why don’t I just hang out and be on set with everyone?” And so they would just all hang out together and run around playing together, and that energy comes across in the movie. You get the idea that these kids have a real connection.
Scott Derrickson Reveals the Hardest Part of ‘Black Phone 2’ to Get Right

“I was terrified that it would be the dumbest shit ever.”

Finn kneeling in front of Gwen in a kitchen with a girl sitting against a table in the background.Image via Universal Pictures

I do have to take a minute to highlight the Grabber. Last we were talking, you very lightly mentioned that the look of the Grabber in this movie went through a series of concept art until you landed on what we see in the finished film. Can you maybe paint a picture of what the first piece of concept art you saw looked like, and how that compares to what he looks like in the finished film? DERRICKSON: Boy, that’s a good question. I knew the mask was going to have to be affected by the origin of the character story. I think that it got gradually more violent-looking. I think that what we started with was a tamer version of what we have in the actual movie. As we continued to work on the movie and I started to feel some of the visceral power of some of the scenes, I was just like, “We have to take this further.” Ethan [Hawke] was very patient with the makeup effects work and that sort of thing. And it’s in the trailer, but the ripping off of the mask and seeing his actual countenance under that mask is really the stuff of nightmares, and that was just about progressing and having him get more and more violent until we landed there. That’s really what it was. It looks phenomenal. Now, a very hot topic of conversation, the Grabber on skates. I know you’ve probably been asked about that to death at this point, but one particular thing I’m curious about is, does something like that look scary when you’re on set? Do you know it’s going to work when you’re filming it? DERRICKSON: Oh, no. I was terrified that it would be the dumbest shit ever. We’re drawing very unabashedly on a 1983 horror film called Curtains that has a wonderful scene with a masked killer on skates. It’s just one scene, but that was the origin of the idea. The problem is, I couldn’t just put him on skates, you know? So, the most difficult production design element were the Grabber’s feet. There’s nothing we spent more time on, and didn’t get it right until very late in the process, in post. But the idea, as it was, was that they would be ice-encrusted and bloody, and something that could slide on ice and all of that. When we started to get it right, I started to feel like, “Oh, this is actually actively disturbing in its own right.” So, by the time you have the trailer images, I felt confident that it was going to work in the narrative of the movie. But I was also surprised that as soon as people saw it, they liked it. In fact, from the screening last night, my favorite review I’ve seen so far, my wife sent it to me, was a five-star Letterboxd review that just said “Hail skatin’.”
Why Scott Derrickson Tapped Maggie Levin to Direct ‘Ghost Eaters’

“It was an automatic fit.”

Close-up of Scott Derrickson on the red carpet.Image via Doug Peters/PA Images

I’ve gotta wind down with you, and I did want to end on one unrelated question, because it just so happens that my next interview here at Fantastic Fest is with Clay [McLeod], and I know you two are doing Ghost Eaters. How far along are you with that movie, and what is it about Maggie [Levin] in particular that makes you say to yourselves, “This material is in the perfect hands with her as the writer and director?” DERRICKSON: There’s a great story. Crooked Highway, our company, has optioned Clay’s novel. What happened was Maggie had read that novel a few years ago, and I remember her telling me about it. She reads a lot, but she loved the book. The book was not available. It was owned by another company. I’m not going to mention who, but it was Blumhouse. I’m sorry, was that my out-loud voice? So they put it in turnaround, and I found out what happened is… I didn’t find out about that, but one week I was just sort of surveying all the great, acclaimed horror novels of the 2020s, and the last five to 10 years, and this novel came up quite a bit. I was basing my read-quick survey of just ideas — what’s the concept of the novel? Is it something that we as producers should look at? And when I saw Ghost Eaters, I was like, “Oh, this idea is really fantastic. This is a really interesting idea for a movie.” So I went to Vince [Cheng], who runs our company, and said, “Find out if this is available.” Turns out it was in turnaround at Blumhouse. They optioned it but weren’t going to make a movie out of it, and I said, “Oh, interesting.” Then when I told my wife, Maggie, she was like, “That’s the book I read! Do you remember? That’s incredible.” So it was an automatic fit. I remembered she had tried to get the rights, but they were not available. So, through a different angle, I was trying to get the rights, and then just when we got them, she was the natural filmmaker to do it. CARGILL: Maggie is just such an incredible talent. Quite literally, they fell in love while they were developing a project together that we were all working on. It was just one of those things where we went from being work buddies to all of a sudden, “Oh, she’s family now.” She has shot second unit on several of our films. She’s a very important component to why our films are what they are. So, we’ve been trying very hard to get her first main theatrical feature off the ground, and Hollywood being where it is right now, it’s been so hard. So finally, we’re in that space where other people are waking up and going, “Oh, Maggie Levin is brilliant.” We’re like, “We know. It’s about time you recognize.” DERRICKSON: Now she’s in a place where I think she’s going to have, like, three greenlit movies all at once. CARGILL: Poor us. [Laughs] DERRICKSON: Champagne problems. I like hearing that. I like that problem quite a bit. And just because I didn’t bring up the other element of your family that is involved in Black Phone 2, your son, [Atticus Derrickson], his score is exceptional. DERRICKSON: It’s a truly brilliant score. Black Phone 2 opens in theaters on October 17.

Release Date

October 17, 2025

Runtime

114 Minutes

Director

Scott Derrickson

Writers

C. Robert Cargill, Scott Derrickson, Joe Hill

Appreciably, that opening metonymic image tells us all we need to know about Morgan’s mission here. As the opening song tells us, we’re about to eat a ridiculous plate of sex and violence in a film about how one begets the other, and vice versa. The problem is, Bone Lake has four truly unlikeable characters doing absolutely unlikeable things. And Friedlander’s script is so poorly written that, even in the context of something so pulpy, no one is responding to their circumstances with any degree of normalcy. Diego is a community college teacher and aspiring novelist; he is bizarrely ashamed of the former and bullish about the latter. The couple is driving across the country for Sage to start a new job as an editor, and to transition into a one-income household so that Diego can concentrate on finishing his book. Sage is uncomfortable about taking on so much financial pressure, especially since it is quite clear she is not exactly sexually satisfied with Diego, and because her own creative writing is taking a pause to feed his. We get all this information through clunky exposition, doled out in strange, forced moments. The other couple, Cinnamon (Andra Nechita) and Will (Alex Roe), are immediately hospitable, warm and, most notably, sexually explicit. Yes, her name is Cinnamon, but don’t worry, she goes by Cin. Not much information is given about them except that Cin works in wealth management and that one of her more high-profile clients is Diego’s favorite author. What a coincidence! Never mind that Cin is oddly quick to offer to send his writing to Mr. Kearns. Suddenly, this romantic vacation has turned into a perfect opportunity for Diego’s career.

Bone Lake never lives up to its opening ten minutes, which is aces.

Almost immediately, Cin and Will go to work to seduce both Diego and Sage, the latter of whom is the only person here who seems to think the entire situation is a bit kooky (but only momentarily). What Cin and Will’s game is exactly remains elusive for the first half of the film, as they successfully start to break down the bonds between Diego and Sage, luring them into “games” in and around the house. Thus, the film slowly takes shape as something of a cross between Michael Heneke’s Funny Games and Speak No Evil. Indeed, the film is at its best when leaning into its promised sadomasochism. Cin and Will’s frank and open sexual libidos reveal in Sage and Diego what they’ve been missing in each other, and when Morgan concentrates on the web-like, erotic dynamics, Bone Lake becomes more interesting and tense. But it does seem pulled between that and its extremely flat and forced comedy in a way that cheapens both the sex and the humor. Roe and Hasson are both strong actors, but Pigossi and Nechita seem adrift. Pigossi is never quite believable as meek, and his character is confusingly drawn. He is both an erotic novelist and scared of sex? Or is it that he wants sex but is so in his own world that he just doesn’t know how to satisfy Sage? Is he not adventurous enough, or is he too adventurous? For Sage’s part, why is an award-winning sex journalist staying with someone who doesn’t satisfy her and is adamant about not using toys in the bedroom? Bone Lake never lives up to its opening ten minutes, which is aces. It is neither as sexy nor as enjoyably violent as it advertises itself to be, and even when things do blow up in the final act, the shock is ham-fisted for shock’s sake. Morgan and Friedlander can’t ever justify properly why Diego and Sage are staying behind with two creepy sex fiends, and especially can’t justify why Sage is such a powerless character, nor why she seems so beholden to a partner she does not seem to like. Some of the violence is fun and goopy, and Bone Lake’s denouement sticks the landing, though cinematographer Nick Matthews and team need to understand that lighting fake blood in the manner they do does risk looking like blackface. While it’s probably fair to say it wasn’t intentional, one does wonder about the lack of care that went into this and other decisions. Haneke’s film, which Morgan and Friedlander seem to be referencing, works because it is so bleakly cynical and sociopathic. Part of its potential success lies in our ability to believe the light of the love that emanates from its victims over the black hole of the villains. But if all the characters are unbelievable, it seems hard to care about the spilled blood.

Release Date

October 3, 2025

Runtime

94 minutes

Director

Mercedes Bryce Morgan

Writers

Joshua Friedlander

Producers

Jason Blumenfeld, Mickey Liddell, Jacob Yakob

Since celebrating its world premiere earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival, East of Wall has been a favorite among audiences and critics alike. The film nabbed the highly sought-after Audience Award at Sundance in the NEXT section and also enjoyed a well-received follow-up screening later in the year at the Tribeca Film Festival. Meanwhile, on Rotten Tomatoes, critics can’t get enough of the grief-driven drama, hailing it with an impressive 94% approval rating. Check out the extended look at East of Wall above and find it on digital today.

Release Date

August 15, 2025

Runtime

97 minutes

Director

Kate Beecroft

Writers

Kate Beecroft

Producers

Lila Yacoub

Kate Beecroft

Tabatha Zimiga

Porshia Zimiga

Porshia Zimiga

Plainclothes Review: Desire, Duty, and Deception Collide

Acting – 0/10

Cinematography/Visual Effects – 0/10

Plot/Screenplay – 0/10

Setting/Theme – 0/10

Watchability – 0/10

Rewatchability – 0/10

Summary
Carmen Emmi’s Plainclothes is an evocative, bruising romantic thriller that takes place in the shadowy underbelly of 1990s New York, where personal identity collides with institutional control. More than just a story about police work, the film is a taut and deeply emotional exploration of repression, connection, and the fragile pursuit of authenticity under a system that demands secrecy. Anchored by standout performances from Tom Blyth and Russell Tovey, and lifted by a dreamlike, sensuous visual style, Plainclothes is both tense and unexpectedly tender.

Pros

Nuanced, layered, and emotionally gripping; Tom Blyth captures the struggle between duty and desire
Russell Tovey is vulnerable yet resilient, with expressive subtleties that make the romance feel real
Dreamlike cinematography and atmosphere
Raises questions about repression, institutional cruelty, and the search for authenticity in a hostile system

Cons

Some side characters, like Ron and Uncle Paul, feel more like archetypes than fully realized people
The film lingers in quiet moments that may test viewers seeking a tighter thriller rhythm

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Acting

Cinematography/Visual Effects

Plot/Screenplay

Setting/Theme

Watchability

Rewatchability

Summary: Plainclothes is a film about what it means to live under surveillance, to love under threat, and to find fleeting freedom in another person’s gaze. Its blend of suspense and tenderness ensures it will stay with audiences long after the credits roll.

3.9

Intricate and Tense

Neil Gaiman Could Be Brought Back to Court

The court case against Gaiman was dismissed without prejudice, which means that Pavlovich can now pursue the case again through a New Zealand court. However, that may not be the end of his U.S. court dealings, as if Gaiman refuses to be served in New Zealand, then the case in the U.S. could be reopened in the future. There is also currently a case outstanding in Massachusetts federal court against Gaiman’s wife, Amanda Palmer, which is potentially going to receive the same dismissal on similar grounds. The controversy around the claims against Gaiman sparked a quick demise of the author’s several TV and movie projects that were in the works or airing at the time the allegations were made. This included the third season of Good Omens being drastically reduced in length, The Sandman coming to an end after its second season (although its showrunner claimed this was always the intention), and other projects such as a movie based on his novel, The Graveyard Book, being abandoned entirely. This dismissal is not going to change studio sentiment towards the author’s work, and we shouldn’t hold our breath for more Gaiman adaptations being announced in the near future.

Headshot Of Neil Gaiman In The Art Of Elysium’s 2024 HEAVEN Gala at The Wiltern.

Birthname

Neil R. Gaiman

Birthdate

November 10, 1960

Birthplace

Portchester, England, UK

Bouchra

In Bouchra, 3D animated anthropomorphic animals may populate the world, but the intricacies of their lives are unmistakably human. This approach is par for the course for the film’s co-directors, the Brooklyn-based visual artists Meriem Bennani and Orian Barki, whose bite-size episodic project 2 Lizards captivated viewers during the early stages of lockdown in 2020—and landed them on our 25 New Faces of Film list the same year. In the latter project, the eponymous 3D-rendered lizards (voiced by Bennani and Barki) shoot the shit about celebrities, news coverage, pandemic-era anxieties and the morbid relief of being able to shirk social obligations. 
With their feature debut, Bennani and Barki retain much of the “essence” of this past project, just with a much higher production value. The 3D animation is far from amateurish, and the real-life locations that they opt for were painstakingly replicated via the process of photogrammetry (more on that below). The filmmakers similarly voice two best friends—Barki stays a lizard, but Bennani instead takes the form of, per her co-director, a “very sexy” coyote. Yet the story here is an ambitious blend of personal revelation, improvisational dialogue and a metatextual narrative that elevates the straightforward hangout vibe of 2 Lizards. 
Bennani voices the titular protagonist, a Moroccan-born, Manhattan-based filmmaker who finds herself creatively invigorated by a series of confessional phone calls with her Casablanca-based mother. These conversations—based on actual discussions that Bennani had with her own mother—address the strain that their relationship has suffered ever since Bouchra came out as queer. Thus she gets to work on storyboarding a feature that follows a fictionalized version of herself that returns to Casablanca for a family visit. Reconnection, resentment and exploration define this trip; Bennani’s own relatives voice their animated avatars, once again blurring whether these interactions are fictional, facsimile or somewhere in between. This question is never more pronounced as when Bennani and Barki (who voices Bouchra’s best friend) share a scene, the effortlessness of their rapport emphasizing the effectiveness of their collaboration. 
I spoke with Bennani and Barki during the New York Film Festival, where Bouchra premiered on Saturday, September 27. It screens once more at 12:15pm on September 29. 
Below, the duo provide insight on their intrinsic chemistry, the team that created the intricate details of the world that these characters inhabit and what the future of their artistic collaboration looks like. 
Filmmaker: When we profiled you for the 25 New Faces back in 2020, you teased the fact that you were looking to develop another project together that was a blend of “animation technique and a certain tone.” Is Bouchra the result?
Bennani: I guess it’s the result, but not from a straight road. When we did 2 Lizards, it was a very spontaneous thing. I guess all things start like that. We were just playing and noticing things that were happening and that then became an entry point to making [short] films. After that, we got the opportunity to develop an animated TV show. We pitched it and didn’t manage to sell it. Maybe it was too weird, too indie, too many languages, not American-centric. We were like, “well, this is disappointing,” but we don’t really need an industry to make things. We like making things in our own way. I function more in the art world; we don’t wait for permission or big budgets. We got an opportunity to do a big exhibition that found us in the [Fundazione] Prada and we asked if we could get financing to do a feature. That allowed us to build an animation studio and start working on this. 

Filmmaker: Can you elaborate on what the TV project was? 
Bennani: It was a kind of dystopian sci-fi about the spywares that are developed by Israel and tested on Palestinians.
Barki: It was like this program that can basically implement a memory that didn’t happen. You would get a spam text message with a photo of yourself at an event that never happened. Once you open that photo, it implements that memory into your brain. There are two main characters: one of them is the daughter of the developer, the other is someone that she met online and lives in a different country. So they start using this software to sort of create memories together, even though they’ve never met.
Filmmaker: 2 Lizards is also episodic, albeit mostly 90-second installments. Can you tell me a little bit about how your collaboration developed to scale up for Bouchra? 
Barki: This feature has some similar elements, like working with reality and then fictionalizing it. We also did that with 2 Lizards; not everything happened exactly the way it is in those little episodes. We really care about using reality to capture an essence, but we’re free enough to make stuff up too. That is something that definitely also exists in Bouchra, even though the process was a little different. We started with writing a script and didn’t want it to be as involved with reality or as personal. As we were writing the script, the meta element of the story started unfolding. Meriem had these conversations with her mom as research for the script to understand this [similar] relationship in a more dimensional way. We listened to these conversations and were like, “It’s very powerful.” We did not want to limit ourselves to making a full-on documentary, but [we decided to] use these conversations. That was very liberating because we felt a bit of a responsibility while writing the script to represent all these different queer experiences. Once we rooted it in Meriem’s personal story, we felt like, “Okay, now we can do whatever we want.” 
Bennani: The other very big difference is that it wasn’t just us. We wrote the script with Ayla Mrabet, and four of us were the core team for this film: John Michael Boling, Jason Coombs and the two of us. John Michael and Jason had a project called Culture Sport. It’s an animation project that I’ve been a fan of for years. When we realized we could make a feature film, the first thing we did was look for people to work with us. Even though I do animation and we made the lizards ourselves, we knew we needed people who are way better than us. So John Michael did the cinematography ,and Jason did the modeling, rigging and animation.
Of course, there are so many more people involved, but those are the people that were there every day. We had the 2 Lizards technique of [using] these anthropomorphic 3D animal characters and these live action backgrounds, but how do we scale up? How do we make it much higher in production value, sustain a longer narrative and still keep this essence and also let it be this new thing? It was very different, actually, having a whole team and having to direct a bit more. You have to know what you want because you’re collaborating with people and have to communicate versus figuring it out on your own.

Filmmaker: This version of New York City is different in so many ways. For one, it’s a bustling metropolis instead of a pandemic-era ghost town, but I’m curious how you approached capturing the city in all of its chaotic glory. 
Bennani: So there’s New York and Casablanca. Sometimes we also shot a few shots in Rabat, but mostly in Casablanca. Whenever [the scene] is indoors, it’s 3D. Then we also have photogrammetry, which is this process of 3D scanning. It’s kind of like a collage of photos and 3D scans to recreate some locations [so that we’re then] able to do a top shot, even though we can’t afford a crane. Casablanca is a familiar place for me and we spent a lot of time there with the team. But we’re New Yorkers. 
Barki: We wanted to go for a darker look in general. On an impressionist level, it was reflecting a bit of a mood that we were in while we were making the movie—just dealing with this story, our personal lives and collectively in the world. It put us in this mood of seeing New York with a melancholy, darker look to it, whereas in 2 Lizards there’s a romantic innocence to it. 
Bennani: But John Michael is responsible for a lot. It’s not like a chain of command, it’s all artists bringing in some things. Then by the time an image is ready, it’s a new idea [compared to] our storyboard and animatic. It’s great. The film has our storyboards [hung up behind Bouchra’s desk] because of the meta layer. You can even see how the film was made in the film itself. 
Filmmaker: As New Yorkers, were there any specific spots you wanted to capture? At the press screening, people definitely reacted when the subway stopped at Myrtle-Broadway. 
Barki: A lot of it is the financial district. I think that’s part of the darker, moodier vibe that we wanted to capture for this film. It’s also more empty at night, because otherwise you can’t film places without people. 
Bennani: [In 2 Lizards] it was possible because the streets were empty so we were able to shoot an empty New York, even Times Square. But for this film, there are all of these little streets and financial districts that were easy to film. In Casablanca it’s the Centre Ville, a specific neighborhood that’s very beautiful and has a mood. I don’t know that there was a specific way we wanted to show New York, it’s more like showing the pace of her life in New York—having this shitty Midtown apartment, [all this] time alone, going out with her ex, going out with her friend. As close as possible to our life is the most specific we can get. 

Filmmaker: We’ve touched on Casablanca a few times. You brought up how you depicted New York as this very dark place, but there’s a sunniness to the Casablanca scenes that contrasts the real emotional weight of them. I’m sure some of that has to do with the actual climate, but Meriem obviously has a personal relationship to the city and you mentioned that the crew also spent some time there. How did you capture the specifics of the city while also allowing for a less familiar gaze? 
Bennani: We went and we saw it with the production team, which was Casablanca-based, but I wanted to make sure that John Michael, because of the cinematography, spent time there. There are so many things that are shot there. There are so many images [that represent Casablanca], but they’re always these touristy images. I wanted him to get a feel for it. I also knew how I wanted to capture it, in a way, because I had this pile of iPhone images. Every time I go there, I take photos. I have hundreds of images that I have organized in groups: restaurants that I like, cafes, outfits, pedestrians. So whenever we needed to make extras or think about what this ashtray looks like, I had it. John Michael and I spent three weeks there. While we were recording some actors, he was going around scanning and doing photogrammetries of things in the streets: fountains, furniture, things that you won’t think about modeling, like a random thing on the street that you don’t even know what it’s called, but it sells it. Like the way this specific sidewalk is. We also went out a lot in the neighborhood where we filmed and went to all these bars, so he had a specific experience with all of the lighting. 
Filmmaker: And is Bouchra’s parents house based on your parents house, or is it a made-up setting? 
Bennani: She’s kind of a Frankenstein of so many types of houses that I’ve seen, [including] from old design magazines from Morocco that my parents collect. I scanned a lot of them and we made a full 3D [model] of it and then had a reference for each [piece of] furniture and every detail that you see. 
Filmmaker: Meriem, you voice the protagonist, and Orian, you voice her best friend. How did you straddle the line between presenting your own personalities, vocal inflections and musings while embodying fictional characters? 
Bennani: We really played ourselves. We didn’t try to be different. The more spontaneous and real we are in how we say things, the better it’s going to be, because we always go for nuance and specificity. We keep the stutters, we keep the hesitations, because otherwise it’s just going to be animals [laughs]. 
Barki: It was very easy to voice my character. I think that there’s something about our voices together that just works. That was a chemistry that we already had in 2 Lizards. Even watching the movie now with an audience, every time there’s a scene with us together, I can feel the air of engagement in the theater kind of heighten. We knew this chemistry is something we could count on. 

Bennani: I think it’s your voice, because I’m in every scene! The second you start speaking, people are laughing so hard. 
Barki: It’s true [laughing]. It has that quality to it. But I also think it’s our chemistry and our dialogue with each other. In a way, the opposite thing was harder, because we were writing for a lot of other characters talking in their [own] voice. Meriem kept telling me when we were writing the script, “You’re making them speak like you! They can’t land that joke because they’re a different person.” I had to learn how to do that.
Bennani: But we made people improvise. 
Barki: We ended up keeping the dialogue writing pretty loose, just the story beats that we wanted to hit. Then we would just go and record it in an improvisational style and edit it. 
We made this film at first for an exhibition; it was a medium-length film with the same storyline. Then we had an opportunity to extend it into a feature film because we wanted it to exist in the film world and do festivals. After we showed the first version in the exhibition, we came back and I told Meriem, “I think we should add more scenes with the two of us because it’s something that people really react to.” So we did a little bit of that, but we ended up adding a lot of scenes with the main character and her ex-girlfriend. But my character speaks more in the longer version. 
Filmmaker: In terms of the character design, how much were you involved in shaping their look? Are they emblematic of either of your tastes, styles, etcetera? 
Bennani: The way it worked is that we made these drawings, then we gave them to John Michael and Jason when we started working with them. Jason was modeling the characters to have the same essence as the drawings and then passed them to John Michael. They would make like a hundred versions of each character, where there’s just the slightest difference in the eyes. But at the same time, these characters are so specific—in the same way that if I changed one little thing about your face, you wouldn’t be you anymore. So we would look at all of these [designs] and choose together. 

Barki: There’s a picture of my character next to a picture of me doing the same pose. If you look at it side by side, you see that captures my essence. For my character, I stayed a lizard. Meriem is the one who made the bigger transition. 
Bennani: But she is not supposed to look like me. We didn’t design her after me.
Barki: Yeah, my character is designed more after me. I also chose her big hoodie. I made the graphic for the back, but because the lighting is very film noir, you never see it. And for [Meriem’s] character, she had a stylist, our friend Becky [Akinyode]. It’s all real clothing. I think Meriem’s character is very sexy. 
Filmmaker: How do you see your collaboration being shaped going forward? 
Bennani: We have a company called 2 Lizards that we started for this film. We think of 2 Lizards as whenever we work together. But also if we work separately, we’re always so involved in each other’s projects that those projects would also fall under 2 Lizards. We think of it maybe as a type of filmmaking, like a tone that we have together. We want to make more movies together. We want to make more animated films with John Michael and Jason. But we also have our separate things. 
Barki: Meriem already started writing our next film. I’ve been kind of busy doing a little bit of freelance work and working on another passion project. Meriem has a successful career as an artist, so she’s doing an exhibition. 
Filmmaker: Is there anything you can share about the film? 

Bennani: Oh, no, I wrote like five pages of it! 

Hollywood couple Justin Long and Kate Bosworth play a Hollywood couple besieged by coyotes in the snarling new trailer for the horror film Coyotes.

There’s an undercurrent of social satire and good old fashioned resentment of the beautiful people in the latest from Colin Minihan (Grave Encounters). And this is a creature feature we we aren’t necessarily supposed to root for the humans.

“Eat the Rich” is the tagline of the film’s poster. (You can watch the trailer here if you don’t see it above.)

Residents and casual visitors to the Hollywood Hills know that coyotes are indeed an issue. Dog walkers in Runyon Canyon know that they may need to scoop up smaller pups at the sound of coyote shrieks that often arrives with the twilight.

Hungry coyotes have been known to make eerie appearances in dense urban areas, when L.A. is at its most quiet and dark.

And, as the film notes, even pet owners on residential streets, at perfectly normal hours, need to be on the lookout for coyotes.

But like another new comedy about the haves, Aziz Ansari’s guardian-angel, trading-places tale Good Fortune, the Hollywood Hills serve as a metaphorical shorthand for people who seem to be above it all.

In Coyotes, Long and Bosworth think they they’re safe in their chic home on a hill, but the coyotes want what’s been taken from them, back in the days when only they stalked the land.

“They want your shelter, your food, your water, your sanity,” someone explains.

But the scariest line in the trailer comes from another character, who observes of the coyotes: “They can… open doors?”

We already love this silly movie.

Coyotes will premiere at Fantastic Fest on September 20, 2025, and arrives in theaters on October 3 via AURA Entertainment.

Main image: A coyote in Coyotes. AURA Entertainment.

Eleanor Tomlinson and Aidan Turner in Poldark.British Broadcasting Corporation

We’ve already mentioned that Poldark was a big success in the UK, but the scale of its popularity was phenomenal. The series brought back the once defunct water cooler talk, as people couldn’t help but commit employee time theft by discussing the latest episodes while on the clock. The series as a whole boasts an excellent 89% Rotten Tomatoes score, with an strong 80% audience rating. Audiences adored Poldark from the first episode, calling it “a fund and steamy romance,” while another called it “dramatic, but never over-the-top.” According to critics, the first season is the strongest, as it holds a tremendous 91% critics rating. Audiences agree, rating it 89%. In fact, four of the five seasons have great audience reviews that put it within the 80% range. But, Season 5 still remains divisive among fans, as it holds a Rotten Tomatoes audience rating of just 50%. But critics still adored it, bestowing it with an 86% rating on the Tomatometer. Following Poldark, Aidan Turner has moved on to yet another raunchy series, that being Disney+’s Rivals. Also set in the English countryside, albeit several centuries later, Rivals starred Turner, David Tennant, and Alex Hassell as moguls of the TV industry in the ’80s all competing to come out on top. Turner’s role in the series as Irish TV star, Declan O’Hara, is less steamy as his turn in Poldark. But the show as a whole is notoriously R-rated, and Season 2 (which is currently in development) appears to be upping the ante.

Collider’s Steve Weintraub sat with director Shane Black, producer Jules Daly, and executive producer Susan Downey to chat about Play Dirty.

The movie, based on a character by author Donald E. Westlake, stars Mark Wahlberg, LaKeith Stanfield, and Rosa Salazar as a group of expert thieves pulling off the heist of a lifetime.

During this Q&A, the trio discuss the most unforgettable moments of their careers, Black’s approach to filmmaking, behind-the-scenes of Play Dirty, and what they have in the works, including a potential Sherlock Holmes 3.

Academy Award nominee Mark Wahlberg is never far from a new project, having already starred in Flight Risk, the Mel Gibson–directed action thriller, earlier this year. Now he’s back with another crime thriller, as he stars in Play Dirty, the latest outing from The Nice Guys director Shane Black. Teaming up with Amazon MGM Studios, Black co-writes and directs Play Dirty, based on the Parker book series by author Donald E. Westlake. However, Black is putting his own spin on the books, admitting, “The Parker books are wonderful, but they’re like popcorn,” and promising to deliver a fuller meal for Play Dirty audiences. Black is doing this first by assembling a stacked ensemble, which sees Wahlberg star alongside the likes of Rosa Salazar, Academy Award nominee LaKeith Stanfield, Tony Shalhoub, Keegan-Michael Key, Claire Lovering, Chai Hansen, Chukwudi Iwuji, and more. In the movie, Wahlberg is expert thief Parker, working with a skilled crew to pull off the job of a lifetime, with plenty of double-crossing and twists to keep viewers guessing. Ahead of the movie’s release, Collider’s Steve Weintraub had the chance to chat with Black, producer Jules Daly, and executive producer Susan Downey about all things Play Dirty. From Black’s signature spin on the source material to the Bond-inspired opening credits, no stone is left unturned. The trio also discuss upcoming projects, like what Black has in the works, a Sherlock Holmes 3, and John Cena’s Matchbox. You can watch the interview in the video above, and check out the full transcript below.
‘Play Dirty’ Team on the Most Unforgettable Scenes of Their Careers

Get to know Shane Black, producer Jules Daly, and EP Susan Downey.

Shane Black talking on stage with producers Susan Downey and Jules Daly for a Play Dirty Q&A.Image via Trent Barboza

COLLIDER: I like throwing a few curveballs at the beginning of every Q&A. What’s your coffee order? SUSAN DOWNEY: I found this new thing called Ripple, which is like a pea protein, vegan, kind of half-and-half — high recommend. I don’t even know if you can get it out in the world; you have to get it at the grocery. I throw a little bit of that in, and then just coffee on top. If that’s not around, there’s no coffee to be had. SHANE BLACK: I like Ripple, too, but it’s a different one. It costs five bucks a gallon at 7-Eleven. JULES DALY: But, Shane, I think you’re like a Folgers guy, right? BLACK: Yeah. DALY: He’s a simple coffee guy. BLACK: I like black coffee. Period. We’ll call this Get to Know Our Producers and Director. What is your favorite thing to cook? DALY: Spaghetti bolognese from The River Cafe. BLACK: You cook it? DALY: Yeah, I do. Want to come over and have some spaghetti bolognese? Not tonight. BLACK: Yeah. Susa, what do you cook? You cook actual stuff. DOWNEY: Oh, you’re giving me way too much credit. I don’t even know if this counts. I think I can say I prepare this. That’s kind of like cooking. It’s like cooking adjacent. Robert [Downey Jr.] likes tuna melts, and I make a mean tuna melt. I don’t actually eat it, but he loves it. BLACK: Yeah, I don’t cook. I wish I did. When I was in college, I used to make pizza where you keep pushing the dough and it keeps having holes in it, and then you fill the hole in, and then there’s another hole over here. That’s my cooking. So do you eat out a lot, or are you more like DoorDash or Uber Eats? BLACK: DoorDash is a rip-off. It’s like if you ever want two eggs and a piece of cheese for $60… I’m not arguing with you. BLACK: I don’t know what I do. I look at what’s in the fridge: a can of chili, a can of beans, whatever. And healthy stuff, as well. What is the last movie, TV show, or book that you’ve read that you want to recommend? DOWNEY: I just saw [Paul Thomas Anderson]’s new movie, and I thought it was fantastic. DALY: I watched Being There recently. It’s a great movie. BLACK: I’ll put in a plug for a guy I really like, Scott Frank, who did Queen’s Gambit. He has a new one on Netflix called Dept. Q. Great. Exquisite. Really good. Exquisite. And it got renewed for a second season. BLACK: I didn’t know that. DALY: Deservedly. BLACK: I’m happy. You guys have worked on many projects throughout your career, and I am curious, was there a particular shot or sequence that was really challenging to pull off, or you consider one of the toughest of your careers? DALY: I made a movie called The Grey, and there was a hardcore plane crash in that movie. We built a gimbal around a piece of the fuselage that we strapped Liam [Neeson] into and literally turned it, like, 360, and he got sick. Everyone got sick. The camera crew got sick. But it turned out pretty good. Worth it. I completely agree. Joe Carnahan directed that. DALY: He did. Great job. BLACK: I don’t have a single shot. I just have a challenging piece to sort of put together and edit afterwards, which was the whole car show in The Nice Guys. Six things going on at once, keeping the geography, not having time to get every angle you want, but somehow making it fit so that this guy exits frame here, and here he’s in the background with the subsequent shot coming in, and things like that. By the way, I’m assuming everyone in here has seen The Nice Guys, and if you haven’t, you need to absolutely watch that fucker immediately. Seriously, I believe it’s on HBO Max. BLACK: Buy the damn thing. [Laughs] My bad. You should obviously buy it. DOWNEY: God, it’s a hard question. I’m going to go a different direction. So early in my career, I did a lot of genre movies, and I did this absolutely fabulous one called House of Wax. I think it has to be probably the most memorable thing we did because at the end of the movie — this is a big spoiler alert, and I’m sure you’re all going to rush home and watch this — the house melts because it’s made of wax, right? So we’re there shooting it down in Australia, and I was at the monitor, and I’m like, “Wow, they really upped the fire this take.” And then I’m like, “And they’re not putting it out… What’s going on?” And all of a sudden they’re like, “Get out! Get out!” And we all had to get out. No one was hurt, but we all had to get out of the soundstage. We burned the entire soundstage down. It was kind of famous. It was the largest soundstage in Queensland, and we burned it down. I remember my boss at the time called me and I explained to him what was going on, and he’s like, “You’ve got to go back in and take pictures.” I was like, “There’s no “in” to go back to!” The entire thing was burned. So, it certainly is one of the more memorable set moments, I would say. What happened after it burned down? BLACK: Who got fired? DOWNEY: It was just a big insurance claim. Actually, the special effects, the spray they were using was not correct, and it was building it up as opposed to a flame-retardant thing. So, we just had to pivot, as you often have to do in production, and find other things to shoot. We were near the end of the shoot, which was good. I mean, we were burning the house down anyway, but yeah, it was pretty crazy. I’m very happy that everyone made it out without injuries. DOWNEY: Yeah, I don’t think I’d tell the story if it were dark.
Shane Black Is Still Waiting for the Shoe to Drop After ‘Lethal Weapon’

“I suffer from imposter syndrome of the first order.”

Mel Gibson and Danny Glover holding guns while looking at the camera in Lethal Weapon.Image via Warner Bros.

Shane, I want to jump backwards for you. Very early on, when you were 22 years old, I believe, you sold the script for Lethal Weapon, and you sold it for a lot of money for a 22-year-old. What do you remember about that time, and seriously, what is it like as a 22-year-old to sell a movie like that? It’s crazy. BLACK: It is crazy because I suffer from imposter syndrome of the first order, which is to say that every time I finish a script, I think, “Okay, I’ve written the last funny line I’m ever going to write.” How I did that, I don’t know. It seems to work. I don’t know why or how I did it. I can’t do it again. So, all these things would combine. So when I sold something, there’d be sort of a head scratch, looking for the guy who wrote the script that’s worth so much money to somebody. But then, it shifts, because then they try to change something, and it’s like, “Don’t you fucking touch that!” Because now you go, “Oh, I guess I do believe in it now.” So, it’s one of those things where you start with this kind of misguided passion. You write a script, you doubt yourself, and gradually you come to fall in love with and accept, about, I’d say, two weeks in, three weeks in, “I can do this again. I know how to do this.” That, to me, is what was unique about that time, was having to fight my way past the considerations of having made way too much money for someone my age, and say, “Okay, I can do this again. It wasn’t a fluke.” Because everyone would look at me like, “Yeah, what the hell do you think? We’ve been working at this for 10 years.” That’s the thing. Someone says, like, “I saw that show Charles in Charge, and that’s terrible. My writing is at least as good as that. I should be in TV!” So you’re saying that your slightly less shitty writing qualifies you, that they owe you a job? Because mediocrity is your goal. Just anything that you can get over on people. To me, it has to be great, and it has to be your best work. So, to me, the imposter syndrome was a killer because I always thought, “I’m not doing my best work.” But I had people to help me, like one guy who’s in the audience that I’ll introduce. He’s a wonderful director named Peter Hyams, who directed films like Capricorn One, Outland, 2010 [The Year We Make Contact], and he was my mentor for many years. If you hear me say something that sounds quaint and sort of pithy, it’s probably from him. I’m a fan of your work, also.
Shane Black Explains the Significance of Christmas in His Films

He was first inspired by a Robert Redford movie.

Joe Turner (Robert Redford) on the phone in ‘Three Days of the Condor’Image via Paramount Pictures

Why is it that you love putting Christmas in all your movies? BLACK: You could probably answer for me at this point. It’s because Christmas offers a sort of arena, doesn’t it? A sort of hush at the end of the year when lonely people are lonelier. The sense of an outsider looking in through a glass window with people who implicitly got a memo he skipped of how to just sort of live in the daily weeds of life — meet relatives, enjoy dinner, laugh and drink with friends — and a Christmas that seems all but unattainable to the guy outside in the snow. And yet, against the backdrop of people passing and singing and chatting, this person must then find his own personal version of Christmas, and it’s always going to be a weird, dark sort of dive that comes up with something that’s a little more precious because he had to dig deeper for it, those little nuggets of Christmas. In Los Angeles, I was walking late at night with the wind blowing, and there was a little plastic candle of the Virgin swinging on a line from a Mexican lunch wagon, and I looked at it in the dark like a beacon. I thought, in its own way, that’s so moving, this little blowing, cracked plastic Virgin. It’s as impressive and powerful in its own way as the 40-foot-tall Christmas tree on the lawn of the White House. So, I just love the sense of shared experience, the sort of retrospective it gives us, where we’re asked to take stock and look back on our lives. Also, I first saw it and its use in Sydney Pollack’s film Three Days of the Condor, and I thought it just had some magic to it. Now I don’t want to do it anymore because once you start to notice, like he asked that question, it’s like, okay, you noticed, and now it’s a one-trick pony. I gotta get the hell rid of it. This movie, I didn’t want to do Christmas, but I wanted to do winter in New York, so, okay, we can set it in February, or we could just do Christmas. Jules, I do have an individual question for you. I am a huge fan of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. I’ve spoken to Roger Deakins about this, and Andrew [Dominik], and Roger was very specific with me about how he saw a longer cut of the film that was an extra 30 or 45 minutes, and how he loved that version. What are your thoughts on the longer version, and how the hell can I and everyone else in here watch it? DALY: I don’t even know if it exists. I think we ended up cutting the better movie. I do. I think that Andrew will always go long, in a beautiful way. It’s hard for him to get rid of anything that he loves, and so he held on tight to it for a long time. But we collectively, with Brad [Pitt], with Ridley [Scott], with Dede [Gardner], came to the conclusion of the best movie. Sure. I would still love to see the deleted scenes. DALY: Let me look. I’m moving next week, so I’ll look for you.

Play Dirty producer Jules Daly smiling and holding a microphone at a Q&A.Image via Trent Barboza

I swear to you, if you tell me I can see them, I will watch them tomorrow. The second you let me know. DALY: Okay. Deal. BLACK: Jesus Christ, dude, relax. [Laughs] I love that film.
Shane Black Is the Expert on Experts

The writer-director credits his passion to author Donald E. Westlake.

Play Dirty writer-director Shane Black talking into a microphone on stage at a Q&A.Image via Trent Barboza

Jumping into why I get to talk to you guys tonight. Shane, you’ve been talking about this for a long time. What is it about Parker that has had like, “I need to make this?” And what was it about the material for both of you guys that was like, “I want to be involved?” BLACK: There’s a kind of old-school sentiment, a feeling in the bones, that comes from when I read these books, I cut my teeth on this since I was literally nine, 10 years old, and this type of fiction, and the dance it represents between the author and the audience. [Donald E.] Westlake is the mystery writer. He’s the one that the people who sell a lot more books go to and say, “You’re the real one.” If you go to a mystery writer and say, “You’re a bestseller writer, who do you read?” They’ll go, “Come here. See, the good stuff behind the bar is Donald Westlake.” If you don’t know him, read him. It’s like a fine bourbon, this guy. He’s been writing for years. He died in 2008, and it’s a legacy that I get to be a part of. All these films that portrayed Parker in their various names, it’s our iteration of it. This woman, she’s so influential to me. I want to learn from her, so ask her something. She can talk, and I will learn. DOWNEY: Well, I can answer that. I love an expert; that’s why I love working with Shane. I’m sure you could tell if you weren’t already a fan of his, even in the few minutes you’ve been listening to him, he knows his shit. When it comes to this genre or this series of books, or honestly, all the Donald Westlake ones, including the ones he’s done as Richard Stark, which is what we took the Parker character from, he knows exactly how to cherry-pick the best things from it, the best lines of dialogue, and he does this with Chuck and Anthony [Bagarozzi], who he writes with, who are also amazing. BLACK: Let’s call out Chuck, the co-writer. Chuck Mondry. DOWNEY: What I think Shane has in common is that Parker, too, is an expert, and so I think you have an expert writing on an expert, and that’s just, like, double the pleasure for me. But I’ve known Shane a long time. We did a little movie together called Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. I remember we actually shot some at his house. I’d actually been to parties at his house in my younger years before that, and he has just bookshelves filled with all of these kinds of pulp novels, and he just knows this stuff like the back of his hand. He knew exactly what he wanted to do with this version of it. I got to be sort of a proxy to his work on Iron Man 3, and the way he shapes dialogue, the way he shapes character dynamics, and the crazy twists and turns that are only Shane, I was very excited to see how he was going to take the expert that is Parker as a character and bring him to life. So, I was just thrilled. BLACK: Jesus, thank you, Susan. DOWNEY: Did you learn anything, Shane, or did you just get really embarrassed? BLACK: You just sprayed me with my own scent, basically. DOWNEY: It’s a producer’s job some of the time.

Play Dirty executive producer Susan Downey smiling and talking on stage at a Q&A.Image via Trent Barboza

Jules, talk a little bit about what it was about this material that said, “I want to be involved.” DALY: Not that it wasn’t the material, but it was Shane for me. They seem to like you. DALY: Who writes like Shane Black? I mean, there are a couple of other good writers in town… DOWNEY: Chuck and Anthony. BLACK: Blessed. We are blessed. I am. I’ve been in this business for 40 years, and others have come and gone. When she says that, I’m well aware of the ticking and fleeting time. The fact that I’m still here, I’m not the world’s greatest writer, like you say, I’m just lucky, so blessedly lucky, to have an opportunity still to do this. And hopefully, if this succeeds, I’ll do it again. If it doesn’t, I love you all. Goodbye. DALY: Very dramatic. I’m confident you’re going to be doing this again. I’m very confident.
‘Play Dirty’ Puts a Cinematic Spin on Westlake’s Parker

“It’s the only thing that hasn’t been done. Let’s try it.”

Mark Wahlberg as Parker crouching and leaning against a car in Play Dirty.Image via Prime Video

So I love it when things happen that I’m not expecting, and the opening of this movie has things that I was not expecting. Talk a little bit about the twists and turns of the beginning and the horse race. That shit’s crazy. BLACK: We wanted to do it slightly different. The Parker books are wonderful, but they’re like popcorn. They’re skinny; you read one in the afternoon or a day, and then you read more. And after four of them, you sort of get a sense of this entire world, this backstage dance of a professional thief and his partners. So, what’s missing in any individual book is a scale. Even the movies. I love all the Parker movies that have been made, but it’s usually a bank heist, it’s an armored car, they’re up against a hitman, or it’s a jewel heist. We wanted to craft a slightly more cinematic and larger version without compromising, hopefully, the sense of who Parker is. There’s always going to be the purist who says, “You suck. You blew it. Parker doesn’t smile. There are no jokes. Fuck you!” And maybe there’s someone in the audience tonight, but we wanted to just make it lively. There are so many gloomy mood pieces about criminals these days, and Westlake, even the Parker books, are gritty, and as cruel as they can be, they’re supposed to be fun. It’s supposed to be a pact between Westlake, the author, and the reader of a cat-and-mouse, and so that’s why we scaled it up. It’s like, “It’s the only thing that hasn’t been done. Let’s try it.” Every production that you work on, there’s always going to be individual challenges you have to overcome. With this, what were some of the big challenges you guys had to overcome behind the scenes in terms of getting the green light? I know that you’ve been working on it for a while, and it’s been in development for a while. DOWNEY: Honestly, a green light is typically a budget conversation. It’s, “How are you going to mount this in a responsible way for the proper price?” And this did bring that challenge. This is a Christmas movie set in New York City that, to do it, Jules had to find a way to make Australia in the summer work. Now, we did get additional photography in New York for a few key things, which was always part of the production plan, but I would say that that was probably the biggest challenge.

Mark Wahlberg and Rosa Salazar wearing jackets while their backs face a car on fire in the street as Parker and Zen in Play Dirty.Image via Prime Video

DALY: Definitely. I read something today that referred to our end scene in the movie, in New York, as a CG shot. So, is that a compliment or not a compliment? Because we shot in New York. BLACK: Well, this is the problem with the internet. They hear the little snippets. They hear it’s shot in Australia, so “I know. I know. Me, me, me. I know it was shot in Australia, so I’m going to go online and wax poetic about how everything…” I wish people would read more than one thing before they become an expert on the thing that was talked about in what they read. DOWNEY: Yeah, that was Times Square. That was Radio City. Those are real. DALY: We were in New York. DOWNEY: That was actually Brooklyn Alley. DALY: Yeah, at one point. BLACK: The actors were all CG, though. I’m going to tiptoe as I ask this question. This film shows what happens when a bullet goes through an ear. I don’t know if anyone’s picking up what I’m saying. Again, I’m not mentioning any words, but I’m just curious, when did you write this? Was it before or…? BLACK: Oh, God, yeah. When was that? That shot occurred in the year of the election, right? 2024. We wrote that in 2023. So don’t go linking me to that shit! I didn’t say any names. I was just asking. Just talking about how damage happens when bullets go through ears.
‘Play Dirty’s Opening Credits Were Designed With a Bond Legend

It’s also packed with Easter eggs for the movie.

Everett Collection 

So, the opening credits of the film are really cool. Can you talk about how that came about and why you wanted to do them? BLACK: These guys made it come about. I said I wanted to do a credit sequence, not necessarily Bondian, and they got me the guy who does the best Bond ones. DALY: Danny Kleinman. BLACK: Danny Kleinman, who did Skyfall, the greatest pre-credit sequence ever in a movie, with that beautiful song by Adele. She got him to do what we could afford, which was a cartoon, but still great. [Laughs] DALY: But you guys had so much fun doing it together, you and Danny, right? Shane and Danny definitely built that sequence together. It was fun because we didn’t do that sequence until after we’d been shooting the film. BLACK: But you guys made it happen. I said it, and you said, “Well, let’s see what happens, because we don’t know where the money’s going to be.” And then you came back and said, “If you want it, you got it.” God bless you both. DOWNEY: That’s the way it works. But it was because it was important. You wanted to set the tone, and it was really a way to set the tone. There are wonderful, essentially, Easter eggs in it. When y’all go back and watch it again on Amazon, you get to see that there are so many pieces of the plot that ultimately unfold that are kind of hinted at, which you don’t know that, it just looks beautiful, and there’s great music, and it’s interesting and all that. But it was quite clever, and it really did set the mood and allowed, also, that time cut without it just being a cut to black. I think one of the reasons the film works so well for me is your supporting cast. I even really, really loved Nat Wolff’s performance. I’m curious how much with him was in the script and how much did he add a little flair on set because he delivered. DOWNEY: His big contribution, which he takes great pride in, was the neck brace. He requested the neck brace. BLACK: I think what he does is just live in the moment and sees what happens, and that’s the best acting advice you could give. You study the role, you figure it out, you learn the beats, you learn the dialogue, you think about your character, you live it. Then, when you step on stage, you forget everything and just live in the moment. Now you’re in the now. And that’s what he would do. He would just react and be in the now. So, that’s what I think made him so great.

Nat Wolff in Play DirtyImage via Prime Video

Talk a little bit about the rest of the supporting cast, because it really lives or dies with these other actors, Rosa [Salazar], LaKeith [Stanfield], and [Keegan-Michael Key]. How did you decide on this cast? I’m always curious behind the scenes about how much the studio is saying, “We would like to put these people in the movie.” How does that all get figured out? BLACK: No studio. DALY: No, they left it to Shane. Of course, there are budget reasons. BLACK: They said, “We can’t afford these guys.” [Laughs] DALY: But I will say that, maybe more than any director, and don’t be shy about this, every actor wants to try to be in a Shane Black movie. So, it was actually really easy to cast this movie, because everyone wanted to be in it. It was sometimes an availability thing, sometimes a budget thing, but we had a plethora of choices, and I think we landed right with our team, with our group. BLACK: Also, because of Australia, we had to add a couple of people who actually were registered in Australia in their version of SAG to get our rebate. So, we found Chai [Hansen] and Claire Lovering. They’re wonderful. Who loves Stan in the movie? That guy is on the most popular show in Australia right now, where he plays a merman. So, let’s get him over here. I love talking about editing because it’s where it all comes together, so talk a little bit about what it was like when you guys first got in the editing room and how the film possibly changed as a result of showing it to friends and family? BLACK: Well, I had these two helping, and that helps because the edit is where everything comes down. Look, if you hear a film wraps, “wrapped photography,” and you think, “Wow, they’re done now.” No, it’s like, “Wow, 15% there.” Because shooting a film is just shopping. You get the ingredients — you get your cucumber, your tomatoes, your lettuce, your croutons. Then you’ve got to go cook it, and the edit is the cooking process. We had three or four cooks. DALY: We also had Chris Lebenzon. BLACK: Oh, and Chris Lebenzon, the greatest editor ever. He’s probably my favorite editor ever. DOWNEY: He’s fantastic. He’s always willing to try stuff. I love the edit, as well. You really get to see things come to life, and you have to try things, you have to bring things down. It’s like a great puzzle because you’re just like, “What if we just took that little piece out,” and all of a sudden everything falls. It’s like a whole different rhythm comes into play. You can try things. And when you do have a good editor and when you do have an open-minded director, there are many possibilities. Sometimes you’re like, “Something’s not working. Here’s what we’re going for.” And then by tomorrow morning, your editor might have, like, three different versions to show you of something, just to see what we could do. So, it’s actually really fun. There’s a bit of discipline you have to do to it because you have to adhere to the time, but within that, there’s a lot of opportunity to play. BLACK: And we’re talking about like, “Give me two less frames here. Put three back over here,” because it’s that chancey. DOWNEY: I remember the scene after he drops Nat out. You stayed with Nat, initially, and you saw him get up and this and that, and then you kind of went inside, and then you were with Mark [Wahlberg] when he heard it. And we said, “What if we didn’t do that? Just stay with Mark, and he hears it in there for the first time.” I don’t know how it played tonight, but it usually gets a laugh. BLACK: Yeah, it plays like a Python bit. He walks away, and the guy goes, “I’m not dead!” DOWNEY: [Laughs] But it’s those kinds of things. It’s, “Whose point of view do you stay in?” Because if you’ve covered it, you’ve got a lot of options.

Claire Lovering, Rosa Salazar, Keegan-Michael Key, LaKeith Stanfield, and Mark Wahlberg in Play DirtyImage via Prime Video

That’s the reason why I love talking about editing, because that changes the entire scene, whether or not you are on which person. Sometimes, a shot that you remove changes everyone’s perspective on a character. For example, without going into spoilers, in the third act, somebody gets shot, and it’s off-screen, and the way you feel about a character might be different if you saw it being done. BLACK: Exactly. It’s like a piece of film that goes from here to, like, a mile away, and you get to walk along and tinker. There was always a guy in my neighborhood at midnight, he’d have his garage door open and a car in there, and he’s making noise and playing fucking music. Now I understand the tinkering, and it’s night, and, “Oh, shit, do I have to go home?” Because you’re just tinkering. It’s infinitely obsessive. It’s good for obsessive people. I’m a recovering alcoholic; I used to be obsessed with, “Where am I going to get my next drink?” I just shifted it over here. So, hopefully this works. DOWNEY: You know what Robert always says? I think he got this from [Jon] Favreau; it’s a very Favreau statement. Certain people, and I’m definitely one of them, like to pick fly shit out of pepper. That’s the phrase, and I am definitely one of those people. BLACK: Details.
‘Sherlock Holmes 3’ Would Take the Franchise in a “Different Direction”

The trio share what’s in the works for the future.

Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law chat on the street as Sherlock and Watson in 2009’s Sherlock Holmes by Guy Ritchie.Image via Warner Bros.

We’re almost out of time, and I’m going to go down the line because I just have a few individual questions, if you don’t mind. Susan, what can you tease about what’s coming up at Team Downey? DOWNEY: Well, if all goes according to plan, we have actually a little psychological horror movie that we’re hoping to be doing before the end of the year, based on Paul Tremblay’s bestselling novel, A Head Full of Ghosts. You guys made two really good Sherlock Holmes movies, and I’m just curious, how close did you guys ever get to the starting line of a third one, or has the script never been there? Or was it scheduling? What ended up happening? BLACK: Is it upcoming? DOWNEY: God, that is loaded. How much do I give? We came pretty close at one point, and I think I am grateful that we didn’t make that version of it. I won’t go into what that was, which isn’t meant to sound cryptic. It just didn’t work out timing-wise, because we couldn’t get it in before Jude [Law] was going to be unavailable. I think it was a good thing that we all stepped back. And then there was a big old pandemic and all that kind of stuff. I would love to bring a third Sherlock to the world. I really would. And we’ve been playing with it for a long time. We’ve been talking about a slightly different direction. It’s always been kind of set in America, and whether that’s a good idea or not, I’m not sure, but I love it. I love that idea. So, I would just love to do it. It’s just hard. It’s been a while, the bar is really high, or at least Robert [Downey Jr.] has set the bar really high, so I don’t know. Do you guys want to see a third Sherlock? BLACK: Or a fourth Iron Man. DOWNEY: Double header. I have so many things to respond to that one. Jules, you are doing two projects that I’m very curious about. One is Matchbox, and it’s being directed by Sam Hargrave, who’s done the Extraction movies, and I believe it’s his first thing outside of Extraction. And you have John Cena as your lead. What can you tease people about it? DALY: It’s Matchbox on steroids, I would say, action-wise. I would definitely say it’s the best and most fun action movie I’ve ever made in a PG-13 way. Cena was great. He was great with Jessica Biel. They’ve got this incredible chemistry, and it’s just a whole lot of fun, with stunts that are pretty off the charts. With Sam Hargrave directing, there are going to be stunts that are off the charts? I am shocked. BLACK: What’s the other one? I’m curious about War Party, which is Andrew Dominik again. It says “plot unknown.” It’s described as an adventure film about Navy SEALs with Tom Hardy. DALY: Tom Hardy is no longer attached to that one. He kind of aged out. This happens. I don’t know, it’s hard because it’s a true story about a Navy SEAL, and he’s been struggling with how he tells that story with Andrew. So, it’s still in play. Got it. Thank you for the update. Shane, the most important question I have of the night: what are you currently writing or working on? Because as a fan of yours, I’m curious what’s going on behind the scenes. BLACK: I’m hoping to be lucky enough to write an original script that someone gives me the money to sort of control and make, per my own vision of it and my own standards for it. So in other words, I gotta keep the budget to, like, $20, not $150. If I can make a movie that’s tough and character-driven and also whimsical and hysterical and underwater and supernatural and outer spacey, whatever it is, I just know that there’s a whimsical kind of thing about the death of magic and life that I want to write. Could someone write it for me, please? Whatever comes out, I’ll know, because now that this beast is lumbering away, it’s out of its cage, and I’m waving goodbye to Parker. It’s time to go and get the cabin and start writing something new. You’ve written a bunch of scripts throughout your career, and I’m sure a number of them haven’t been made. If you could get the financing to make something that has not been able to get off the ground for whatever reason, what’s that one script that’s in the desk that you would really love to bring to life? BLACK: There’s an old piece I did, neither version worked, but there’s a version that could, a vintage 1980s version, set in the ‘80s, of Shadow Company, the very first script I ever sat down and wrote. It could be scary. It could be really creepy. And it could be about a generation having stepped away, given the passage of time and the reflection and the retrospective that gives us about Vietnam. I’d love to do, potentially, a Vietnam horror film again. The last one I can think of was House, right? Vietnam horror. Oh, Jacob’s Ladder.

Release Date

October 1, 2025

Runtime

125 Minutes

Director

Shane Black

Writers

Donald E. Westlake, Shane Black, Anthony Bagarozzi

Producers

James W. Skotchdopole, Jules Daly, Marc Toberoff, Robert Downey Jr.

Coyotes is set in Los Angeles, where we are quickly told that the recent wildfires have pushed desperate coyotes into the suburbs. That’s important knowledge to have, because no matter what might happen next, the coyotes aren’t just there to be simplistic monsters. Instead, they’re a product of our real world who have been pushed out of their environment. No matter how much carnage they cause, we’ll still feel sorry for them, which makes Coyotes more than a mindless creature feature. Living in a nice home on the hillside is Scott (Long), a successful comic book writer, his wife Liv (Bosworth), and their teenage daughter Chloe (Mila Harris), a girl who is no longer a kid and doesn’t want to be on her parents’ hip all the time anymore. Thankfully, Coyotes doesn’t turn Chloe into some predictable trope who is a jerk to her parents, only to remember that she loves them when shit hits the fan. This family is not at all perfect, with Scott’s busy schedule leaving his devoted wife lonely, but these people care about each other. There are no played-out tropes with infighting, affairs, or anything of the sort. They’re a traditional family who have their issues, yet still love one another deeply. Because of this, we will cheer them on when the creatures attack. And attack the coyotes do! They come at night, causing the family, along with their over-the-top neighbors, to fight for their lives. Who will still be alive when morning comes?
‘Coyotes’ Great Effects Keep It From Being B-Level Schlock

Making a horror comedy about killer coyotes could have gone off the rails fast if the wrong choices were made with the monsters. Coyotes had the easy opportunity to make such a common animal more terrifying by portraying them as bigger or having them do things that would be impossible, thus making the plot implausible. But, thankfully, it resists that temptation. Like in the real world, the coyotes here are desperate and angry animals who hunt in packs and have targeted this house. The film’s fear comes from trying to figure out why they won’t leave these particular people alone, which is not given away until the very end in an admittedly lackluster reveal. Don’t worry, this isn’t a case of them being super coyotes with some absurd powers. There is one scene where a coyote is smart enough to open a door like it’s a velociraptor in Jurassic Park, but that’s as wild as their abilities get. They are scary in their numbers and the depths of their rage, not through some wild backstory or biological twist. Obviously, the creatures in Coyotes can’t be real animals, as they are put in many dangerous and violent situations, so the film has to rely on CGI. Fifteen to 20 years ago, this could have been a disaster with some very cartoonish furry villains, but thankfully, technology today has made them look rather lifelike. The effects don’t always hold up in day scenes, so the coyotes are mostly roaming at night, presenting them as a serious threat without being some sort of schlocky werewolf or exaggerated beast. This isn’t a purposely awful comedy in the vein of Sharknado, but a flawed horror film that really tries with its scares and puts the comedy all on its human protagonists instead of the monsters.
There Is Not Enough Fear or Laughs To Make ‘Coyotes’ a Successful Horror Comedy

The silhouette of a coyote with a house on fire behind it in ‘Coyotes’Image via Aura Entertainment

One scene has sex worker Julie (Brittany Allen) trying to compare what they’re going through to that movie about the birds that attack people out of nowhere. The joke is that she can’t recall that the movie is actually called The Birds, but it’s an apt description. No, Coyotes does not compare to Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece, yet it has the same beats. Everyday animals attack in a horde with no explanation, and residents of a town barricade themselves inside their homes as the creatures fight to get in. Coyotes immediately tells us that it’s going for a lighter tone by introducing all of its characters with animated, superhero-like name cards. This might make it easier to remember who everyone is, but that still doesn’t save the movie’s most glaring issue: there are way too many supporting characters. Name cards are given out to coyote fodder who are introduced simply to be killed two minutes later. Colin Minihnan would have been better off focusing on Scott, Liv, and Chloe, rather than jumping back and forth between them and characters we don’t care about. Julie is a funny enough character, but the next-door neighbor, Trip (Norbert Leo Butz), is so over-the-top as the rich guy with his gold gun and wild antics that he takes you out of the tension. Coyotes also introduces a rat exterminator named Devon (Keir O’Donnell), and with his sweaty hair, big glasses, and awkward mannerisms, it feels like the movie is going for a John Goodman clone from Arachnophobia. That could have been fun, then Devon disappears for the vast majority of the movie, only to show up when nothing matters. What was the point of even writing his character if he had no use in the second and third acts? Colin Minihan does do an adequate job of crafting suspense, with a few spectacular shots (the silhouettes of coyotes growling with flames behind them are astounding), and one gore shot in particular is something you haven’t seen before. Still, this movie can only bite so deep. Killer coyotes aren’t all that scary, and the comedy of the supporting characters feels forced and overly written. Kudos to the crew for coming up with a premise and refusing to send it off the rails into fantastical absurdism. Still, just because you keep the plot grounded doesn’t mean that there is enough to keep up the tension. The poster for Coyotes says “Eat the rich,” yet there is nothing political to sink your teeth into. This is a minor creature feature, one with no huge flaws, but without many riveting aspects to really recommend it either. Unlike its killer creatures, Coyotes is fairly harmless. Coyotes releases in theaters on October 3.

Release Date

October 3, 2025

Director

Colin Minihan

Writers

Daniel Meersand, Nick Simon, Tad Daggerhart

Producers

Jib Polhemus, James Harris, Nathan Klingher

Pros & Cons

The CGI effects make the coyotes look likelike, especially at night.
There are several great shots of the coyotes with fire building behind them.
The monsters are kept as realistic animals and not over-the-top villains.
The lead family is simply written as three people who care about each other without adding it dramatic subplots.

The supporting characters are thin and too unrealistic to care about.
Many of the comedic moments fall flat.
The scare factor of coyotes has a ceiling no matter what you do.