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“The Last Drive-In With Joe Bob Briggs” Will Return for a Super-Sized Sixth Season

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Joe Bob Briggs and Darcy will return in an upcoming sixth season of their hit Shudder series “The Last Drive-In With Joe Bob Briggs,Deadline has exclusively reported today.

The even better news? It’ll be a “super-sized” season! Deadline explains, “The new season will see Briggs host and dissect more than 30 films, which is a new record.”

Additionally, “The world’s foremost drive-in movie critic, Briggs will next be back for two Halloween-themed specials in October, a holiday special in December, and a Valentine’s Day special in February, before transitioning to a new series format in March 2024.”

What is this “new format,” you ask? Deadline notes that “The Last Drive-In” will spotlight one movie every other Friday night, versus the double features we’ve become accustomed to.

“As everyone knows, you should never invite me into your home, because I always show up,” Briggs jokes to Deadline. “Shudder has graciously invited me to stick around for a sixth year, and I intend to use that kindness to haunt your phones, laptops and big-screen TVs with the most ghastly examples of perversity in the history of cinema. Plus a few old jokes and some celebrity guests who will still return our phone calls. Put it all together and it spells PARTAY.”

AMC’s Courtney Thomasma adds, “We’re delighted to bring Joe Bob, Darcy and the rest of The Last Drive-In Team back for our biggest season yet of crazy, scary and crazy-scary movies and specials, with the most entertaining commentary on TV. Joe Bob will be hosting more movie nights than any previous season and we can’t wait to continue the Friday night party.”

For the last few years now, “The Last Drive-In” has been bringing horror fans together for Friday night double features that dominate all of our Twitter feeds with lively conversations.

The series is produced by Matt Manjourides and Justin Martell and directed by Austin Jennings.

Writer in the horror community since 2008. Editor in Chief of Bloody Disgusting. Owns Eli Roth's prop corpse from Piranha 3D. Has four awesome cats. Still plays with toys.

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Stephen King’s ‘The Institute’ – Mary-Louise Parker & Ben Barnes Starring in TV Series

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Published in 2019, Stephen King‘s novel The Institute is getting a TV series adaptation from MGM+, with Deadline reporting today that the project has been given a series order.

Ben Barnes (Shadow and Bone) and Mary-Louise Parker (Weeds) will star.

The Institute comes from director/executive producer Jack Bender (Lost, Mr. Mercedes), writer/executive producer Benjamin Cavell (Justified, The Stand) and MGM+ Studios.

In the eight-episode series, When 12-year-old genius Luke Ellis is kidnapped, he awakens at The Institute, a facility full of children who all got there the same way he did, and who are all possessed of unusual abilities. In a nearby town, haunted former police officer Tim Jamieson (Barnes) has come looking to start a new life, but the peace and quiet won’t last, as his story and Luke’s are destined to collide.” The website notes that Parker will play “Ms. Sigsby, the charming but iron-willed director of the Institute and a true believer in its awful mission.”

“I’m delighted and excited at the prospect of The Institute, with its high-intensity suspense, being filmed as a series,” King said. “The combination of Jack Bender and Ben Cavell guarantees that the results will be terrific.”

“We are thrilled to have the opportunity to work again with Stephen King. And The Institute, based on his critically acclaimed novel, is an exciting addition to the MGM+ original series slate,” said Michael Wright, head of MGM+. “There is no creative team I would trust more to bring the book to life than Jack and Ben, whose creative vision and love of Mr. King’s voice, will bring this thought-provoking and gut-wrenching story to life, in the engaging, cinematic, and thrilling style MGM+ viewers expect.”

Here’s the novel’s full synopsis, via Amazon:

As psychically terrifying as Firestarter, and with the spectacular kid power of ItThe Institute is Stephen King’s gut-wrenchingly dramatic story of good vs. evil in a world where the good guys don’t always win.

In the middle of the night, in a house on a quiet street in suburban Minneapolis, intruders silently murder Luke Ellis’s parents and load him into a black SUV. The operation takes less than two minutes. Luke will wake up at The Institute, in a room that looks just like his own, except there’s no window. And outside his door are other doors, behind which are other kids with special talents—telekinesis and telepathy—who got to this place the same way Luke did: Kalisha, Nick, George, Iris, and ten-year-old Avery Dixon. They are all in Front Half. Others, Luke learns, graduated to Back Half, “like the roach motel,” Kalisha says. “You check in, but you don’t check out.”

In this most sinister of institutions, the director, Mrs. Sigsby, and her staff are ruthlessly dedicated to extracting from these children the force of their extranormal gifts. There are no scruples here. If you go along, you get tokens for the vending machines. If you don’t, punishment is brutal. As each new victim disappears to Back Half, Luke becomes more and more desperate to get out and get help. But no one has ever escaped from the Institute.

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