Movies
‘The Predator’ Will Have a “Wicked Sense of Humor”
One of the more exciting pieces of The Predator ensemble is Sterling K. Brown, who was flawless in FX’s “The People v. OJ Simpson”. He’s next bringing his acting chops to Fox’s Predator remake, which is currently filming in Vancouver under the direction of Shane Black.
Black is the genre king of character development, bringing some of the best characters to life in films like Predator and Die Hard, to the more recent Iron Man 3. According to Brown, Black has given The Predator some life, injecting what he calls a “wicked sense of humor” into the sequel.
“Shane has his whole take on it and it’s very different than the original Predator,” Brown tells EW. “It’s got a really wicked sense of humor to it, which I love about it. And it’s got a real camaraderie amongst the main characters that I think folks will be attracted to. That’s pretty much all I can say.”
What Brown is explaining is that the film has an ensemble who are both fun and relatable. Many films have tried to emulate the films of the 80’s, but haven’t been able to crack the code. It’s not an easy feat to make all of a film’s characters likable, especially because it not only takes excellent writing but also casting to perfection. One false move and it all falls apart. If anyone can pull this off, however, it’s Shane Black…
“I’m a huge fan of ‘Predator’, and, of course, everybody loves Jesse the Body [Ventura] and Arnold [Schwarzenegger] and Carl Weathers and Bill Duke,” added Brown. “My friends at Stanford used to tease me — being the dark-skinned African-American man that I am — they’d say, ‘Yo, man, you’re going to start getting all [those] Bill Duke roles when you get older.’ And I was like, ‘I don’t look anything like Bill Duke, you guys can kiss my ass.’ So then I booked this movie and I told them and they’re like, ‘Dude, do you even realize that you’re now Bill Duke???’ And I had to go tell them to kiss my ass all over again.”
Edward James Olmos (“Dexter”, “Battlestar Gallactica”) recently joined the cast, which includes Boyd Holbrook, Room breakout Jacob Tremblay, Keegan-Michael Key, Trevante Rhodes, Thomas Jane, Alfie Allen, Yvonne Strahovski and Olivia Munn. Jake Busey also has a role, following in his father’s footsteps.
The movie once again features unsuspecting humans who slowly realize that fierce hunter-aliens are in their midst, this time in what could be a suburban setting.
Black is directing from a script he co-wrote with Fred Dekker.
Fox has already staked out a August 2, 2018, release date.
The trailer for Ti West’s upcoming adaptation of A Christmas Carol raised a lot of eyebrows when it dropped earlier this week. While plenty of folks initially dismissed Ebenezer as a derivative project meant to cash in on the recent wave of unnecessary prequels that expand the backstory of beloved characters (such as 2023’s Wonka), Charles Dickens’ original novel already made a point of exploring Ebenezer Scrooge’s origins in detail – meaning that this new film is likely just a particularly faithful adaptation of the source material under a different name.
Couple that with the fact that the movie is being helmed by a genuine horror auteur and I think it’s safe to say that the latest iteration of the first modern ghost story is in good hands.
That being said, one detail that immediately jumped out at me during the brief teaser (other than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to Johnny Depp’s iconic bedroom death scene from the original A Nightmare on Elm Street) is the fact that many of Ebenezer’s ghosts appear to have been directly lifted from the iconic John Leech illustrations that accompanied the first edition of Dickens’ novel.
Here are a couple of stills from the trailer compared to the original artwork:
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
The Phantoms in ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘Ebenezer’
Marley’s Ghost in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
Mainly working with old-school wood and steel engravings that would later be transferred to print, Leech was instrumental in crafting the iconic look of history’s most influential phantoms – especially since Dickens is said to have been deeply involved with the creation of these so-called “comic illustrations.”
And since the novel is commonly said to have popularized spiritualism in Victorian England, much of the ghostly iconography that we still see in genre media to this very day (including some of Ti West’s previous films) can be traced back to the author’s partnership with Leech.
Ebenezer won’t be the first A Christmas Carol adaptation to borrow heavily from these designs, but I can appreciate how Ti West is incorporating an important part of horror history into his latest film.
Ebenezer will be available in theaters starting November 13.
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