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We’re all eagerly anticipating Netflix’s Wednesday, director Tim Burton’s modern take on the iconic The Addams Family characters. Sadly, Wednesday won’t make her debut in time for Halloween this year. (You know those Addams folk, always fashionably late). Instead, Netflix will drop the Jenna Ortega-starring series on November 23. Which, of course, falls on a Wednesday.
But to give us something creepy and kooky during this spooky season, Netflix has released another trailer for Wednesday, and it gives us our first look at one of the major members of the Addams clan: Uncle Fester. None other than Fred Armisen plays the character. We can’t think of anyone to better fill Christopher Lloyd’s heavy black boots. You can watch the new trailer for Wednesday below.
The trailer gives us more glimpses of Wednesday’s iconic parents, Gomez and Morticia. Not to mention a deeper look into Wednesday’s new home, the Nevermore Academy. The footage previews even more of the freakishly weird students who populate the school grounds. We already knew from the previous trailer that the school has students who are vampires and gorgons. But it looks like there’s a werewolf pack too. We’re not sure what the kids with no faces are supposed to be, but they sure freak us out.
Aside from our first look at Armisen as Fester Addams, the other important trailer reveal is our first look at Christina Ricci, who plays Marilyn Thornhill. Ricci, of course, played Wednesday Addams in the two Addams Family moves from the early ’90s. Despite what many people still assume, Tim Burton didn’t direct either of those movies, even though they really seem like early Burton films. But, Ricci has a history with the Beetlejuice director, having starred in Sleepy Hollow in 1999. She was the best part of the ’90s films, so we’re glad she’s still part of the Addams Family family.
Wednesday‘s 10-episode first season arrives on November 23.
The post The WEDNESDAY Trailer Reveals Fred Armisen as Uncle Fester appeared first on Nerdist.
We’re all eagerly anticipating Netflix’s Wednesday, director Tim Burton’s modern take on the iconic The Addams Family characters. Sadly, Wednesday won’t make her debut in time for Halloween this year. (You know those Addams folk, always fashionably late). Instead, Netflix will drop the Jenna Ortega-starring series on November 23. Which, of course, falls on a Wednesday.
But to give us something creepy and kooky during this spooky season, Netflix has released another trailer for Wednesday, and it gives us our first look at one of the major members of the Addams clan: Uncle Fester. None other than Fred Armisen plays the character. We can’t think of anyone to better fill Christopher Lloyd’s heavy black boots. You can watch the new trailer for Wednesday below.
The trailer gives us more glimpses of Wednesday’s iconic parents, Gomez and Morticia. Not to mention a deeper look into Wednesday’s new home, the Nevermore Academy. The footage previews even more of the freakishly weird students who populate the school grounds. We already knew from the previous trailer that the school has students who are vampires and gorgons. But it looks like there’s a werewolf pack too. We’re not sure what the kids with no faces are supposed to be, but they sure freak us out.
Aside from our first look at Armisen as Fester Addams, the other important trailer reveal is our first look at Christina Ricci, who plays Marilyn Thornhill. Ricci, of course, played Wednesday Addams in the two Addams Family moves from the early ’90s. Despite what many people still assume, Tim Burton didn’t direct either of those movies, even though they really seem like early Burton films. But, Ricci has a history with the Beetlejuice director, having starred in Sleepy Hollow in 1999. She was the best part of the ’90s films, so we’re glad she’s still part of the Addams Family family.
Wednesday‘s 10-episode first season arrives on November 23.
The post The WEDNESDAY Trailer Reveals Fred Armisen as Uncle Fester appeared first on Nerdist.
Happy Mike Flanagan season!
Yes, it’s that magical time of year when we get another entry into the Mike Flanagan Cinematic Universe.
This month the Flanaverse expands with the writer-director’s Netflix series, The Midnight Club, adapted from the 1994 YA novel of the same name by prolific author Christopher Pike, who also serves as executive producer. Co-created by writer-producer Leah Fong (The Haunting of Bly Manor), the series follows a diverse group of terminally ill teenagers and their nightly meet-ups to scare each other with thrilling tales of ghosts, witches, and serial killers. But how do you scare someone whose reality is already terrifying?
Set in 1994, we begin the series with Ilonka (Iman Benson), an ambitious and intelligent high school senior and future student of Stanford University. A thyroid cancer diagnosis gets in the way of her ivy league dreams, forcing her to change course. But as a generally optimistic young woman with a penchant for planning, she does her own research and finds Brightcliffe, a place where young people have more agency over how they spend the rest of their time. Decades ago, one cancer patient was miraculously cured on hospice grounds, and Ilonka hopes the same can happen to her.
Ilonka’s foster dad Tim (Matt Biedel), one of the sweetest on-screen parents I’ve ever seen, reluctantly drives her to the hospice run by the mysterious Dr. Georgina Stanton, played by horror royalty Heather Langenkamp. She’s joined by Midnight Mass alums Zach Gilford as Mark, a kind nurse practitioner, Samantha Sloyan as Shasta, Brightcliffe’s naturopathic neighbor, and Rahul Kohli in a guest role that I won’t spoil.
Ilonka meets her new family away from family and fellow terminally ill teens — Kevin (Igby Rigney), Anya (Ruth Codd), Spencer (William Chris Sumpter), Natsuki (Aya Furukawa), Sandra (Annarah Cymone), Amesh (Sauriyan Sapkota), and Cheri (Adia). On her first night, Ilonka finds them in the hospice’s gorgeous and well-stocked library. This is where the titular Midnight Club gathers and tells stories, or as Natsuki commands, “Make ghosts.” Each story is personal to the storyteller, stories that reflect their own anxieties, adding in supernatural elements to heighten each tale. Executive producer Trevor Macy tells Netflix, “We’re all just stories in the end. When you live on in the heart of someone else, you live on. And that’s something that’s really resonant for these kids.”
Similar to how Bly Manor incorporated other stories by Henry James, The Midnight Club also includes other Pike works like The Wicked Heart, Road to Nowhere, and Witch. With all the stories within the main story, the series can go into different genres from black-and-white noir mysteries to science fiction thrillers with cyborgs. These mini movie-like sequences are crafted by a slew of talented directors with backgrounds in the YA and horror genres, including Michael Fimognari (To All the Boys: Always and Forever), Emmanuel Osei-Kuffour (Black Box), Axelle Carolyn (American Horror Story), Viet Nguyen (Chilling Adventures of Sabrina), and Morgan Beggs (Once Upon a Time).
But there’s more to the club than exchanging stories. The members have a pact that if/when one of them dies, that person will make contact from the other side. Flanagan tells Vanity Fair, “The engine of the first season for us is these kids really want some kind of reassurance that their lives aren’t really over.” (There will be more than one season!) Along with reconciling with their mortality, the group goes through typical teenage issues. Being young is confusing and painful enough without imminent death looming over you, but they have to juggle it all.
As with his previous projects, Flanagan expertly balances humor with tragedy and scares. Bly Manor’s Dani Clayton (Victoria Pedretti) is one of the funniest, most relatable (and adorable), heartbreaking characters he’s created so far. And this new group of rich, unique characters has similar qualities. Given the heavy subject matter, the story is naturally bleak, but there are still moments of levity. A sense of humor helps when facing certain death, especially of the dark and morbid variety.
The beautiful Vancouver setting has a similar feel to it as Midnight Mass. Brightcliffe is surrounded by lovely greenery and crashing waves. Its interior is perfectly eerie, with its dim lighting and detailed set design. And let’s talk about the music. As soon as I heard the ominous version of “Possum Kingdom” by Toadies in the trailer I knew this series would have an excellent ’90s soundtrack. The Newton Brothers (Midnight Mass) use ’90s grunge classics to set the overall tone for a series about dying teenagers who have reasonably intense emotions that go beyond regular angst, with each teen’s stories having their own atmospheric sounds.
Each character’s personal journeys are handled with such care by the creators and actors, not just for cancer patients but for queer, disabled, and BIPOC. The majority of the cast is made up of exciting young talent. Some we’ve seen before, like Annarah Cymone and Igby Rigney from Midnight Mass, but for many, this is their debut. The brilliance of The Midnight Club is owed to the diversity in front of and behind the camera. Adult me loves seeing so many Black and Brown faces leading a horror series, but young me would’ve been over the moon. Representation matters.
The Midnight Club is a beautiful, haunting story about loss, life, faith, fear, love, sadness, and hope. In addition to a stellar ensemble cast of emerging actors alongside Flanaverse mainstays and an iconic scream queen, the writer-director’s signature blend of spine-chilling horror and dramatic character study makes The Midnight Club an absolute must-see for horror aficionados, Flanagan admirers, Pike fans, and just anyone who loves exceptional storytelling. Mike Flanagan doesn’t miss.
Hopefully, this time next year, I’ll be gushing about his next project, The Fall of the House of Usher!
All 10 episodes of The Midnight Club are currently streaming on Netflix.
Screenwriter Gary Whitta (who was also formerly a game developer) has a unique origin story when it comes to how he built his community on the popular gaming livestream app Twitch.
Whitta started working in Hollywood as a filmmaker and screenwriter working on such films as The Book of Eli, After Earth, and Star Wars: Rogue One. And while these are incredibly impressive projects we have all come to know and love, sometimes the finished product is not quite what the screenwriter originally envisioned. There are also times in Hollywood where projects get picked up but also get dropped or stalled. Whitta elected to take ownership of his projects from start to finish without the status quo of Hollywood gatekeepers to compromise his artistic vision. He has taken to Twitch, the popular live streaming gaming platform, to fuel his artistic vision in a myriad of ways.
BGN sat down to chat with Gary Whitta at TwitchCon, inside of the San Diego Convention Center, to discuss his career on the platform and about his talk show Animal Talking — a virtual talk show with a similar format as a late night show, complete with guests and performances. He has had a ton of guests on, ranging from Selena Gomez to Brie Larson to Sting.
For Whitta, integrating Hollywood with gaming was a good opportunity for him. He says, “I’ve been fortunate to have to have these two back-to-back careers where I essentially got to do both of the hobbies that I had growing up.” Able to do these hobbies professionally, he’s a self-described video game nerd and movie geek. Both of these industries were a part of his DNA.
Whitta also describes both gaming and some aspects of Hollywood as being a Venn diagram of nerd culture.
“If you’re into Star Wars and Marvel, you’re probably also into Minecraft and Fortnite and all of these things kind of collapse into one,” Whitta says. When Twitch came along, he thought it was a good opportunity to try and combine those two interests. Like most people did on Twitch at the time, he started with playing games on the livestream platform. At the time he joined, Twitch wasn’t what it is today and didn’t expand to incorporate music and other kinds of content creation. It still was primarily known as a place where people play video games.
A light bulb moment happened for Whitta when a film he worked on, The Book of Eli, made its debut on another streaming giant platform — Netflix. There were all of these special features for the film, but the studio never put out audio commentary for the movie. Whitta decided to provide commentary since he had some knowledge about it (he did work on the film after all). He says, “I had this idea to try to use Twitch in a slightly different way, which was to kind of do a live-watch.” While live-tweeting isn’t a new phenomena, conducting a live-stream watch via Twitch certainly was for Whitta and his community of followers. This was also uncharted territory for him as a screenwriter on Twitch talking about movies and doing Q&As. Fans could learn in real time the fundamentals of screenwriting while watching a movie on Netflix.
The self-admitted streamer confesses that he’s very active on Twitter and social media. “I’m pretty much a homebody and I don’t get out much,” he says. “Twitch is a way to connect with people.” His virtual talk show Animal Talking blew up during the pandemic, which was a time many people grew their platforms as online creators.
Twitch is a place that offers many options for content creators such as categories like just chatting, cooking, or comedy. Whitta thinks that gaming will remain the cornerstone of the platform; however, he does believe the platform is branching out in other ways.
In addition to his work as a screenwriter, streamer, and former game developer Whitta has also created an audiobook podcast called Gundog: a sci-fi apocalyptic alien invasion thriller featuring Shannon Woodward (Westworld, The Last Of Us Part II) and Troy Baker (The Last Of Us Part II), with music by composer Austin Wintory (Journey). The story is full of giant robots and alien invasions, so Whitta is sticking to his sci-fi roots with this project.
If there is one thing to take away from Whitta’s story, it is that he used what he knew to build a community on Twitch and was authentic with his approach. He took something as simple as doing a live-watch of a movie that he worked on and answered questions from his community about that film to keep them engaged and build an audience. While his path started with gaming, ultimately it has led him to other areas.
You can follow Gary Whitta on Twitch at his channel GaryWhitta.