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Physical media culture is alive and thriving thanks to the home video tastemakers hailing everywhere from The Criterion Collection to Kino Lorber and the Warner Archive Collection. Each month, IndieWire highlights the best recent and upcoming Blu-ray, DVD, and 4K releases for cinephiles to own now — and to bring ballast and permanence to your moviegoing at a time when streaming windows on classic movies close just as soon as they open.

The summer movie season is around the corner, though Ryan Coogler’s box-office wonderment “Sinners” has certainly taken a headstart bite out of it. It’s already grossed $168 million worldwide and is still climbing, though “Thunderbolts*” — receiving more praise than usual for recent Marvel titles — looks to dethrone it as the weekend’s top film.

That said, if you’re looking to not leave your sofa this month or are fatigued by scrolling through streaming offerings, there are some...

Amidst diminishing box-office returns in the blockbuster landscape, certain studios have been leaning hard toward run-of-the-mill horrors, made on a modest budget, and are often quick to recoup their money. This, in turn, has contributed to an overabundance of critically panned horrors, filled with cheap scares that have been the norm since The Conjuring‘s success.

This isn’t to say there haven’t been some absolute bangers in recent years, as in addition to Sinners‘ triumph at the box office, a remake of one 1981 classic remains in work, which to this day can give viewers nightmares.

Possession‘s psychological dread and body horror can make for a tough watch Possession | Credit: Gaumont

The ’80s were a significant era for horror, ranging from slashers to psychological horrors. Even though not every release from that era has translated well into modern times, this is certainly not the case with Possession. Instead...

Director Andrzej Żuławski’s 1981 horror film Possession is so unique, it’s difficult to imagine anyone even attempting to remake it. The mind-bending creature feature was a reflection of the issues Żuławski was dealing with at the time; his marriage had ended in a devastating divorce, he was driven out of his home country of Poland because the Communist government didn’t approve of his filmmaking endeavors, and Possession was his way of purging dark emotions. It’s not something that can be replicated – but Parker Finn, the writer/director of Smile and the upcoming Smile 2, has an approach to the material that he wants to share with the world. It was announced earlier this year that Finn will be writing and directing a Possession remake, with Robert Pattinson producing through his company Icki Eneo Arlo. (Whether or not Pattinson takes an acting role in the film will depend...

Fans of Andrzej Żuławski’s 1981 psychological horror movie Possession weren’t exactly thrilled to learn that a remake is on the way from Paramount and Smile filmmaker Parker Finn, but director Razka Robby Ertanto beat the remake to the punch with Possession: Kerasukan.

The loose Indonesian remake of the cult horror film has quietly been available to stream on Netflix for months.

The synopsis reads the same, “Returning from military duty, Faris is shocked to learn that his wife wants a divorce. He decides to investigate and discovers a sinister secret.”

Żuławski’s film recently received a new 4K restoration, “Banned upon release in 1981, Żuławski’s stunningly choreographed nightmare of a marriage unraveling is an experience unlike any other. Professional spy Mark (Sam Neill) returns to his West Berlin home to find his wife Anna (Isabelle Adjani) insistent on a divorce. As Anna’s frenzied behavior becomes ever more alarming,...

A prodigal son returns to his village at the beginning of Janusz Zaorski’s biting satire – an adaptation of Edward Redliński’s novel. Marian Grzyb (Marian Opania) arrives with a mission: to lead the residents of Wydmuchowo out of darkness and into modernity. The peasants aren’t convinced at first, but by the end, they’ll prove capable of beating him at his own game.

The film was produced by Pryzmat, one of several film collectives in socialist Poland. The group (‘zespół’) was later dissolved over alleged financial negligence and mismanagement during the production of Andrzej Żuławski’s sci-fi art epic On The Silver Globe.

Zaorski, present at a screening at Warsaw's Timeless Film Festival 50 years after the film’s premiere, offered up a few playful key phrases: ‘village within a city’, ‘city within a village’. But it’s perhaps more illuminating to turn to the words of another filmmaker.

“I can’t exist by myself because I’m afraid of myself, because I’m the maker of my own evil.”

Divorce is hard under the best of circumstances. Though the dissolving marriage may be toxic, you’re still saying goodbye to an envisioned life and a future you now know will never be. This legal breakup often means untangling shared households, identities, and lingering trauma. And it can be especially difficult for children of the relationship.

No horror film explores this particular experience like Andrzej Żuławski’s Possession. Banned for many years in the UK, this distressing film packs a spectrum of powerful emotions into the story of two young parents on the brink of divorce.

Anna (Isabelle Adjani) wants a divorce. Her spy husband Mark (Sam Neill) has just returned from a secret mission to find that their marriage has fallen apart. As their lingering emotions overflow, Mark...

Noted…don’t try to scare Robert Pattinson.

During a recent conversation with his Mickey 17 director, Bong Joon Ho for GQ, the actor opened up about the reason why he “can’t watch horror movies anymore” as an adult.

“I used to watch a lot of dark stuff when I was younger and think like, ‘Yeah, this is cool.’ And now, I’m too sensitive,” he admitted. “It’s strange, you’d think it would go the other way round. As you get older, you become less frightened of these [films]. I can’t watch horror movies anymore.”

While Bong questioned if it was because the actor “became a dad,” Pattinson confessed with a laugh that his fears surrounding horror films “happened before that though.” The actor shares a baby girl with girlfriend Suki Waterhouse.

The Twilight star later recalled a moment when he got “very frightened” recently, leading him...

Robert Pattinson participated in a GQ video interview with his “Mickey 17” director Bong Joon Ho and revealed that he’s become “too sensitive” to horror movies as an adult. The actor was recently required to watch a horror movie before meeting a director for a new project, and it resulted in Pattinson sleeping with knives because he was so scared of a home invasion.

“I used to watch a lot of dark stuff when I was younger and think ‘yeah, this is cool’. And now, I’m too sensitive,” Pattinson said. “It’s strange, you’d think it would go the other way round. As you get older, you become less frightened of these [films]. I can’t watch horror movies anymore.”

Bong Joon Ho speculated that Pattinson’s new resistance to horror movies might be “because you became a dad.” Pattinson had his first child with fellow actor Suki Waterhouse in March 2024. However,...

The Possession episode of Revisited was Written and Narrated by Vannah Taylor, Edited by Paul Bookstaber, Produced by Tyler Nichols and John Fallon, and Executive Produced by Berge Garabedian.

Critics once called it “too vulgar for arthouse, too pretentious for grindhouse.” A body horror film that’s not really horror, the most depressing break-up movie, a socio-political drama that ends in apocalyptic hysteria. It is hard to believe that this is all contained into one film. The most bizarre psychological thriller you can lay your eyes on is a horrifying and captivating film that oozes chaos and defies categorization: Andrzej Zulawski’s 1981 cult film, Possession.

Zulawski was a Polish film director born in Soviet Ukraine but moved to France after his film The Devil was banned by the Polish government and landed him in jail. His next film was again halted by authorities, causing him to lose his right to...

Quick Links Marriage Is the Real Horror In Possession The Subway Scene Informs the Best Nosferatu Performance Marriage Is More Complicated Than Love and Hate

Over a century after Nosferatu’s debut, Robert Eggers resuscitates the classic story. Originally premiering in 1922, F.W. Murnau’s German Expressionist film was an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula that caused an uproar. The Stoker estate demanded that all copies of the film be destroyed, and if it weren’t for one rebel in the production, viewers would have no evidence of the film to this day. Similar to the source material, Nosferatu follows a lawyer who unknowingly starts a chain reaction of destruction. After signing a real estate deal, Count Orlok stalks the human Ellen, with whom he has a connection. Eggers takes a largely simple story and turns it into a psychosexual drama.

This wouldn’t be a possibility without the...

It’s not hyperbole to suggest that Robert Eggers has spent decades thinking about Nosferatu. In elementary school in New Hampshire, the filmmaker saw a picture of Max Schreck as Count Orlok in F.W. Murnau’s 1922 silent classic Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror and “lost my mind.” After he became obsessed with the film on VHS, a teenage Eggers directed a black-and-white stage version of Nosferatu, complete with actors painted in black and white. In 2016, after Eggers’ breakout film, The Witch, immediately made him a name to watch among cineastes, Eggers said he hoped to make Nosferatu his follow-up feature.

However, almost a decade passed before Eggers made Nosferatu. The wait has been worth it for the filmmaker and fans.

“The reaction has been pretty overwhelming. Even before the movie was released, it has just been a lot bigger than anything I’ve ever been involved with in terms of marketing,...

Nosferatu took a bite out of the box office over the Christmas weekend. The gothic horror remake of the 1922 silent film of the same name managed to almost recoup its entire production budget after only five days in theaters.

Ahead of its theatrical release on Christmas Day, Nosferatu was projected to gross $25 million over its five-day opening weekend, which would have been a good debut for the $50 million-budgeted movie. However, per Variety, Nosferatu managed to exceed box office expectations, earning $21.1 million just over the traditional three-day weekend. Once the Christmas and Boxing Day ticket receipts were added, Nosferatu's debut grew to a remarkable $40.3 million. Nosferatu's ticket sales also rank as the biggest Christmas Day launch and weekend haul for a genre film, surpassing the previous record holder: Robert Rodriguez's The Faculty (1988).

Related Wicked Adds 2 New Box Office Milestones Ahead of Digital Release

Wicked knows a lot about being popular.

This article contains some spoilers for "Nosferatu."

For the most part, a trend that emerges during any particular year of cinema doesn't have anything genuinely competitive about it. Sure, there may be the "Dante's Peak" and "Volcano," "Deep Impact" and "Armageddon" years, where highly similar projects are developed to compete with each other, but most trends that occur are less about an intentional duel and are more an indication of where the culture's head is at. Remember 2017, when a John Denver song turned up in no less than five separate movies? While there's no one catch-all explanation for such a thing happening, it's intriguing and potentially illuminating to identify the trend and see what, if anything, it speaks to in the contemporary real world.

When identifying a trend in art, especially cinema, it's important to remember that films are made on a time delay — the movies of 2024 were shot, for the most part,...

We’re less than two weeks away from finally getting to see Robert Eggers' Nosferatu on the big screen, and to say we’re sitting on pins and needles would be an understatement. Thus far, the vampire flick has been earning high praise all around, and is Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes with a 93%. Called the "horror movie of the year" by director Fede Álvarez, many are highlighting the amazing performance of Lily-Rose Depp, who, as it turns out, took inspiration from a cult-classic 1981 thriller.

Speaking with IndieWire ahead of the premiere of Nosferatu on Dec. 25, Depp told the outlet that when it came time to play Ellen, she looked to another actress that had portrayed the same role in Werner Herzog’s 1979 film: Isabelle Adjani. However, as great as Adjani was in Herzog’s take on the vampire, it wasn’t that performance that Depp zeroed in on, but...

Lily-Rose Depp is emulating another Ellen Hutter (and another French starlet) for her breakout turn in Robert Eggers’ “Nosferatu”: Isabelle Adjani. In a recent interview, Depp told IndieWire that, while Adjani’s portrayal of Ellen Hutter in Werner Herzog’s 1979 feature “Nosferatu the Vampyre” no doubt was a touchstone for her own take on the fictional character, it was Adjani’s “Possession” performance that directly inspired Depp’s standout role.

“I thought a lot about ‘Possession,’ of course,” Depp said. “Isabelle Adjani has an incredible and iconic performance in that. She also was an Ellen of the past [in Werner Herzog’s 1979 ‘Nosferatu the Vampyre’] and so I was very honored to carry the French girl Baton to play Ellen in this version. She’s an actress that inspires me a lot.”

Adjani’s career became synonymous with Andrzej Żuławski’s 1981 thriller “Possession,” in which she starred as a woman who descends into...

Parker Finn's horror sequel, Smile 2, has officially set its streaming release date after an impressive run in theaters.

Per Variety, Smile 2 will land on Paramount+ on Dec. 3. The film is also available to rent or purchase through VOD platforms such as Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, and Fandango at Home. For physical media enthusiasts, Smile 2 will be available on 4K Blu-ray steelbook and DVD starting Jan. 21, 2025. Finn's directorial debut, Smile, is also available to stream on Hulu and Paramount+ for those who want to catch up on the exciting new horror franchise.

Related Is Rose in Smile 2? The Sequel to Parker Finn's Horror Hit Provides a Grisly Answer

After meeting a tragic, fiery fate in Smile, Parker Finn's Smile 2 has an intriguing way of addressing what happened to the curse-ridden Rose Cotter.

Similar to the first film, Smile 2 was yet another success for Finn,...

In recent months, we’ve learned that Silver Linings Playbook Oscar winner Jennifer Lawrence, The Batman star Robert Pattinson, and The Book of Clarence‘s Lakeith Stanfield have the lead roles in the thriller Die, My Love, which is coming our way from We Need to Talk About Kevin and You Were Never Really Here director Lynne Ramsay. Now, Deadline and World of Reel have unveiled the first images from the film, and they give us a look at the characters played by Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson. One of the images can be seen above, and the other two can be found at the bottom of this article.

Scripted by Ramsay and Enda Walsh, Die, My Love is said to be “set in a remote forgotten rural area,” with the story centering on a mother who struggles to maintain her sanity as she battles with psychosis. The story is...

Related Images invites readers behind the scenes and into the sketchbooks of working filmmakers to learn more about their creative processes.Elizabeth Sankey’s Witches is now showing exclusively on Mubi.Witches.Title cards are an underappreciated art and a powerful tool for every director. They can punctuate a moment, make it more comic, shocking, or beautiful. They can hold your hand and lead you sweetly down the garden path of the story you’re about to experience, or they can undermine your expectations and throw you for a loop. Even their placement in the runtime can have a huge impact. In the black-metal revenge thriller Mandy (2018) Panos Cosmatos waits 75 minutes before abruptly kicking his title card onto the screen. Conversely Luca Guadagnino places the card for Call Me by Your Name (2017) at the end of the film to enhance Elio’s heartbreaking stare into the fire, intensifying his crushing...

Since its release, Smile 2 has earned loads of praise from critics and racked up some impressive box office numbers. While director Parker Finn has been toying with the idea of a third installment, he does have one condition that needs to be met first.

"I think there are a lot of interesting roads that any future Smile could go down. For me, I love all the stuff that goes bump in the night, and all the really frightening things of the big concept of Smile," Finn told Collider. "But really, for me, Smile is a vehicle to tell really intense and hopefully thoughtful character stories, and so I'd wanna make sure, regardless of if more than one person might have it, that we still find a way to really invest intimacy into the storytelling. That's super important to me. But I think there are some really interesting tricks still up the sleeves of Smile.

Inspired by Andrzej Zulawski’s cult horror, Possession, the Indonesian horror drama Possession: Kerasukan, directed by Razka Robby Ertanto, is visually enticing; however, it doesn’t have that standout quality. The supernatural is not convincing, and while the idea is impactful, it feels forced visually. At times, things unfold too conveniently, and there are scenes that are not executed well, but the message at the core of the film is well conveyed. Faris and Ratna were in a loveless marriage. They were so entangled in their emotional mess that their son, Budi, was often ignored. Faris was a Navy man, and he had to stay away from home for months at a time. Ratna was a writer, and she’d recently been working on a play. She had decided to divorce Faris as soon as he returned home. Ratna’s decision to divorce him left Faris shocked. He refused to...

While there aren’t any movies quite like Coralie Fergeat’s “The Substance,” there are plenty of over-the-top horror films about transformation, incredibly weird science, shared identities and losing your damn mind, like the 1981 cult movie “Possession,” pretty much every David Cronenberg movie, as well as offerings from Ken Russell, Peter Strickland, Julia Ducournau and Ari Aster.

Expect screaming, exploding heads, lots of blood and some of the most insane endings ever.

Isabelle Adjani and Sam Neill in “Possession” (Credit: Gaumont) Possession (1981)

Isabelle Adjani has the mother of all freakouts in a subway in this role that earned her a César for Best Actress (the French equivalent of the Oscars) and Best Actress at the Cannes Film Fest that year, but that’s not even the most mind-blowing part of the movie form Polish director Andrzej Żuławski. She’s also cheating on her husband (Sam Neill) with something that isn’t really human.

Smile 2 writer-director Parker Finn has outdone himself once more.

It’s rare for a horror sequel to surpass its hit predecessor, but Finn’s second installment has done exactly that with critics and audiences. It’s also on pace to exceed Smile‘s opening weekend box office of $22.6 million from two years ago. In any event, Smile 2‘s success shouldn’t come as too big of a surprise since Ohio native Finn already defied the odds with his feature directorial debut. The 2022 horror film about a curse that’s passed on through an unsettling smile was originally made for Paramount+, but as soon as its first test screening brought the house down, the Sosie Bacon-led film pivoted to theatrical, grossing $217 million on a $17 million budget.

Finn immediately engaged in sequel talks following his end-of-September opening weekend, but instead of picking up right where he left off with Kyle Gallner...

When writer/director Parker Finn made the inventive and terrifying horror film “Smile” in 2022, he never intended it as the beginning of a franchise. “I wrote that film to be self-contained and its own cathartic story,” Finn told IndieWire. “Also, I’m not nearly a big enough egotist to think that people were going to want a sequel.” Finn says he never thought of himself as a “sequel guy” anyway. “I think a lot of sequels get made for the wrong reasons and are incredibly cynical.”

Yet now Finn has made not only one of the best sequels in recent memory but one of the best horror films period, a rare follow-up that expands upon and deepens the mythology of its predecessor — think “Aliens” or “Terminator 2.” “Smile 2” retains the core concept of the original film, in which an unstoppable supernatural force travels from person to person and ultimately...

We first get a sign that trouble is afoot in the patch of suburban France where David Moreau’s MadS is set when a bandaged, mutilated woman (Sasha Rudakova) aggressively hops into 18-year-old Romain’s (Milton Riche) car after he pulls over to the side of the road. As Romain heads toward the nearest hospital, the woman, who’s unable to speak, is manic and paranoid, constantly looking behind her to see if she’s being followed.

Of course, Romain isn’t in the best state of mind himself, having just snorted a couple lines of a new party drug in preparation for a night out with friends to celebrate their recent high school graduation. As the woman becomes completely unhinged, wildly flailing about the speeding car and eventually stabbing herself in the neck multiple times, a transference seemingly occurs between her and Romain, though it’s difficult to tell...

Director Andrzej Żuławski’s 1981 horror film Possession is so unique, it’s difficult to imagine anyone even attempting to remake it. The mind-bending creature feature was a reflection of the issues Żuławski was dealing with at the time; his marriage had ended in a devastating divorce, he was driven out of his home country of Poland because the Communist government didn’t approve of his filmmaking endeavors, and Possession was his way of purging dark emotions. It’s not something that can be replicated – but Parker Finn, the writer/director of Smile and the upcoming Smile 2, has an approach to the material that he wants to share with the world. It was announced earlier this year that Finn will be writing and directing a Possession remake, with Robert Pattinson producing through his company Icki Eneo Arlo. (Whether or not Pattinson takes an acting role in the film will depend...

Apocalypse Now: Four Sci-Fi Parables by Piotr Szulkin is now showing on Mubi in many countries.O-Bi, O-Ba: The End of Civilization.When considering the complex and fraught history of Polish science-fiction cinema, one may quote the first words of Stanisław Lem’s novel Eden, which opens a mature period of his writing: “There was a miscalculation.” Between government censorship and long periods of economic recession, the genre was bound to fail.The first Polish sci-fi films were shorts made for TV through the 1960s and ’70s. These films were beloved by TV audiences and often very funny, but they were made with shoestring budgets and did not screen in cinemas. A notable early attempt at creating an ambitious science-fiction film was Andrzej Żuławski’s On the Silver Globe (1988), which aimed for a grand, epic canvas. Because of the Space Race, both Polish politicians and audiences had high expectations for this film.

Exclusive: Venice Critics’ Week title Don’t Cry Butterfly has been boarded by Cj Cgv Vietnam for distribution in Vietnam.

Affiliated with Korea’s Cj Group, Cj Cgv Vietnam also distributed the Vietnamese-language Camera d’Or winner Inside The Yellow Cocoon Shell last year.

Don’t Cry Butterfly follows a 45-year old housewife, Tam, who learns through live TV that her husband is having an affair. Turning to mystical means, she then attempts to voodoo her husband back into love.

The debut feature by Duong Dieu Linh will have its world premiere at the Venice Critics’ Week on September 3 before arriving at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 10.

Don’t Cry Butterfly is a Vietnam-Singapore-Indonesia-Philippines co-production. Korea’s Barunson E&a picked up world sales rights to the title ahead of the Cannes market this year.

“The idea for this feature started 10 years ago, when I came back to Vietnam to make my first short film,...

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Crossing (Levan Akin)

There’s no description of Levan Akin’s Crossing that won’t make it sound like the kind of feel-good dramedy which would have taken Sundance by storm in 2006. It has all the key ingredients: an inter-generational friendship forged between a curmudgeonly retired teacher and a young burnout desperate to escape his hometown; an epic road trip where they come to understand each other more; and the older of the two confronting her internal bigotry as they search for her transgender niece. Above all, any description makes this sound like the worst kind of LGBTQ story, which we finally seem to have moved past as a culture––the story of queer people aimed firmly at a straight audience. It...

We found out last month that Silver Linings Playbook Oscar winner Jennifer Lawrence and The Batman star Robert Pattinson have the lead roles in the thriller Die, My Love, which is coming our way from We Need to Talk About Kevin and You Were Never Really Here director Lynne Ramsay. Now Deadline reports that Lakeith Stanfield – whose credits include The Book of Clarence, Atlanta, Sorry to Bother You, Judas and the Black Messiah, The Harder They Fall, Haunted Mansion, Short Term 12, Knives Out, Selma, Uncut Gems, Death Note, The Girl in the Spider’s Web, The Changeling, War Machine, Straight Outta Compton, and Get Out (pictured above) – is in final negotiations to join Lawrence and Pattinson in the cast.

Scripted by Ramsay and Enda Walsh, Die, My Love is said to be “set in a remote forgotten rural area,” with the story centering on a mother who struggles to maintain...

Deadline reports that Robert Pattinson and Zendaya are in early negotiations to star in The Drama, a new movie from Dream Scenario writer/director Kristoffer Borgli for A24.

Plot details are unknown, but the story is rumoured to revolve around a “romance that takes an unexpected turn before a couple’s big day.” That unexpected turn could be just about anything. I’m down. After the success of Dream Scenario, which starred Nicolas Cage as a man who keeps appearing in other people’s dreams, A24 was keen to work with Borgli again. Zendaya showed a lot of interest in the project, and with Robert Pattinson also involved, the studio is making this a top priority.

Related Robert Pattinson in talks to star alongside Jennifer Lawrence in Die, My Love

Both Zendaya and Pattinson have very busy slates. Zendaya is finally expected to start working on Euphoria season 3 early next year.

Deadline reports that Robert Pattinson is in negotiations to star alongside Jennifer Lawrence in Die, My Love, a thriller set to be directed by Lynne Ramsay (You Were Never Really Here).

The film is set in a remote, forgotten rural area and follows “a mother who struggles to maintain her sanity as she battles with psychosis.” It’s not known who Pattinson will play in the movie, but you would expect Lawrence to play the mother. In addition to directing Die, My Love, Ramsay also co-wrote the script with Enda Walsh (Small Things Like These). Lawrence will produce alongside Martin Scorsese, Justine Ciarrocchi, and Andrea Calderwell.

Related Possession remake from Smile director is set up at Paramount Pictures

Pattinson will next be seen in Mickey 17, a sci-fi movie written and directed by Bong Joon-ho based on Mickey7 by Edward Ashton. “Whenever there’s a mission that’s too dangerous...

The Possession remake will be directed by Smile’s Parker Finn, adding up to an attractive package for Paramount as it seeks to add to its stable of horror projects.

Following a bidding war in June, Paramount has snapped up what it hopes will be a sizeable horror hit in the form of Possession. It’s a remake of the cult 1981 psychological horror movie written and directed by Polish filmmaker Andrzej Żuławski.

As well as the remake possessing some of the original’s status, the project also has some serious star power attached to it in the form of Robert Pattinson, and a coveted director in the horror genre too.

Parker Finn is that director, and ever since Smile became one of 2022’s surprise hits, the studio has endeavoured to keep him at Paramount. While the horror genre might not have enjoyed as much success in 2024, it has been perhaps...

Director Andrzej Żuławski’s 1981 horror film Possession is so unique, it’s difficult to imagine anyone even attempting to remake it. The mind-bending creature feature was a reflection of the issues Żuławski was dealing with at the time; his marriage had ended in a devastating divorce, he was driven out of his home country of Poland because the Communist government didn’t approve of his filmmaking endeavors, and Possession was his way of purging dark emotions. It’s not something that can be replicated – but Parker Finn, the writer/director of Smile and the upcoming Smile 2, has an approach to the material that he wants to share with the world. It was announced last month that Finn will be writing and directing a Possession remake, with Robert Pattinson producing through his company Icki Eneo Arlo. (Whether or not Pattinson takes an acting role in the film will depend on the script and his schedule.

We had learned last month that Andrzej Żuławski’s 1981 psychological horror movie Possession is getting a remake from Smile writer/director Parker Finn, with Robert Pattinson attached to produce the fresh take. The project had caused a bidding war among major studios including A24, Netflix, Paramount, Sony, and Warner Bros., and it sounds like Paramount has landed the hot package.

According to a brand new report this week from The Hollywood Reporter, Paramount Pictures is now in final talks to acquire the Possession remake package.

Parker Finn is writing, directing and producing, with Pattinson also producing. THR notes, “[Pattinson’s] acting involvement will be clarified down the road as the script and schedules develop.”

THR reminds, “Set in West Berlin, the original Possession starred Sam Neill as a spy who returns home from the field to his wife (Isabella Adjani) and son. All is not quiet on the marital front, as the...

Paramount Pictures is closing deals with Robert Pattinson and Smile filmmaker Parker Finn to tackle a remake of Possession, the cult 1981 psychological supernatural horror movie written and directed by Polish filmmaker Andrzej Zulawski.

The deal is being made in the shadow of the landmark transaction that saw parent company Paramount Global agree to be acquired by a consortium led by Skydance. That deal will take about a year to complete, including clearing regulatory hurdles.

The Possession pact is personal for Paramount CEO Brian Robbins and motion picture co-heads Daria Cercek and Michael Ireland, who fought hard to keep Finn in the Paramount family. He’s a homegrown talent, with Smile becoming a surprise hit at Paramount in 2022.

Finn will write the script, direct and produce via his Bad Feeling banner. Pattinson will produce via his production company Icki Eneo Arlo. His acting involvement will be clarified down the road as the script and schedules develop.

Robert Pattinson excels as Batman in "The Batman," but a third film in the series may not happen. Pattinson is working on exciting non-superhero projects like "Mickey 17" and "Possession," and he seemingly doesn't need "The Batman" to succeed. DC Studios faces uncertainty about the future of "The Batman" trilogy under new leadership.

Robert Pattinson wasn't everyone's first choice to play Bruce Wayne in Matt Reeves' The Batman, but he proved to be an excellent Batman once the movie debuted, which makes the fact that a third film might not happen all the more tragic. The 2022 superhero movie was yet another attempt by DC Studios to reboot the popular antihero character, and it was much more well-received than the previous films featuring Ben Affleck as Bruce. The Batman was a box office triumph, having grossed $771 million against a $185200 million budget, resulting in the development of a sequel.

The Batman received three Oscar nominations Best Sound,...

Following up Wendell & Wild, animation wizard Henry Selick is planning to return to the world of Neil Gaiman with an adaptation of The Ocean at the End of the Lane. “Instead of a child going to this other world with a monstrous mother, it’s a monstrous mother who comes into our world to wreak havoc on a kid’s life,” Selick told Variety, contrasting the film with his previous Gaiman adaptation Coraline. Gaiman’s 2013 novel follows “an unnamed man who returns to his hometown for a funeral and remembers events that began forty years earlier.” Selick is currently shopping the project around, so hopefully we’ll have distribution news soon.

While Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem was recently adapted by Alexander Woo, David Benioff, and D.B. Weiss for the Netflix series, a feature adaptation is now in the works from Zhang Yimou. As reported at the Shanghai International Film Festival,...

Is the hype on “Smile 2” starting? Paramount at least wants to incite the process, as Total Film reports the studio has begun its viral social media campaign for Parker Finn‘s horror sequel. Don’t believe us? Head over to Instagram and X to check out a fan page for the fictional pop star Skye Riley and see for yourself.

Read More: ‘Possession’: Robert Pattinson To Team Up With ‘Smile’ Director Parker Finn For Remake Of Andrzej Żuławski’s 1981 Cult Classic

The new marketing campaign highlights the horror movie’s new main character, played by Naomi Scott, and her latest chart-topper “Blood In White Satin”.

Continue reading ‘Smile 2’ Teasers: Paramount Begins Its Marketing Campaign For Its Upcoming Horror Sequel On Social Media at The Playlist.

While Robert Pattinson fans await his big screen return next January in Bong Joon-ho‘s “Mickey17,” a new upcoming project of his looms on the horizon. And it’s a doozy, a risky venture that has Hollywood’s top studios in a frenzied bidding war. So, what is it? THR reports Pattinson will star in a remake of Andrzej Żuławski‘s 1981 film “Possession,” widely regarded as one of the best supernatural thrillers ever.

Continue reading ‘Possession’: Robert Pattison To Team Up With ‘Smile’ Director Parker Finn For Remake Of Andrzej Żuławski’s 1981 Cult Classic at The Playlist.

After delivering the biggest 2022 horror film, Smile, filmmaker Parker Finn is prepared to bring a remake of one of the most controversial horror films from the 1980s, Possession. Reportedly, Finn will collaborate with The Batman fame Robert Pattinson for the upcoming remake of the 1981 classic.

A still from Possession | Oliane Productions

Possession, starring Sam Neill and Isabelle Adjani, was a bizarre horror drama that featured a failing marriage between an international spy and his wife. But things take a wild turn as we discover that the story has everything strange – from doppelgangers to an awful Lovecraftian tentacled creature.

While Robert Pattinson is confirmed to produce the film, he is also likely to lead. His association with the film also assures the fans that the actor is trying hard to leave his past image.

Robert Pattinson may play one of the strangest roles in his career

Robert Pattinson as Edward Cullen...

The 1981 cult horror Possession is in the process of being remade by Smile director Parker Finn. Robert Pattinson will star, and the whole project has sparked a bidding war.

Here’s an odd bit of news. Parker Finn, the writer-director who scored a huge hit with the 2022 horror Smile, is embarking on a remake of the 1981 cult film, Possession. He’s roped in Robert Pattinson to star, and the whole package seems to have sparked some sort of frenzy in Hollywood’s air-conditioned offices.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Finn’s Possession pitch has attracted the interest of A24, Netflix, Paramount and Warner Bros, with executives saying that the filmmaker’s “batshit” yet commercial idea for the remake is so enticing that yet more studios may join the bidding war.

Written and directed by Polish filmmaker Andrzej Żuławski, Possession is so unusual that it almost defies categorisation. It stars Sam Neill...

What do you get when you cross the star of The Batman, the director of Smile, and one of the most shocking cult horror movies of the 80s? Well, we'll soon be finding out. In an unexpected but not at all unwelcome development, THR is reporting that Robert Pattinson is gearing up to produce a remake of Andrzej Żuławski's classic 1981 chiller Possession, with Parker Finn — who's currently in post-production on Smile 2 — set to write and direct.

For those unfamiliar with the original film, Żuławski's West Berlin-set psychological supernatural horror (try saying that twice as fast) stars Sam Neill as a spy who suspects his wife (Isabella Adjani) might be having an affair. Suffice it to say infidelity and marital woe winds up being the least of the couple's worries as their impending divorce catalyses a destructive cycle involving murder, doppelgangers, and, er, a full-on nightmare fuelling tentacled alien creature.

Robert Pattinson is stepping into the horror genre in a big way with a proposed remake of the cult classic 1981 film Possession from Polish filmmaker Andrzej Żuławski.

According to an exclusive from The Hollywood Reporter, Pattison is working with Smile and Smile 2 director Parker Finn on the project, which is currently in development, with Finn set to write the script, direct, and produce. Pattinson will also produce, but it's unclear if he will star in the project or not. More details will be revealed once the script is finalized.

Film execs are already eager to get their hands on this buzzy project, with some calling the proposed pitch a very "out there" story with commercial success.

Considering the hype and acclaim received by the recent big studio horror film The First Omen, it's a good sign that execs might be more willing to take a chance on horror movies that...

THR reports that Robert Pattinson is teaming up with Smile director Parker Finn for a remake of Andrzej Żuławski’s Possession.

The original 1981 film stars Sam Neill as an international spy who returns home to find that his wife (Isabelle Adjani) wants a divorce. Throw in infidelity, murder, abuse, and a bizarre tentacle creature, and you’ve got the makings of one hell of a movie. Possession is not to everyone’s taste and critics didn’t know what to make of it upon its initial release, but it has developed quite a cult following over the decades.

It’s still early days, but Parker Finn will write and direct the Possession remake. Robert Pattinson is set to produce through his Icki Eneo Arlo production company, but THR’s report states that “his acting involvement will be clarified down the road as script and schedules develop.” One would imagine him...

“Because you say ‘I’ for me…” and, apparently, because Hollywood said, “Here’s yet another cult classic we can now remake for profit.” It was inevitable that in the recent years since Andrzej Żuławski’s 1981 “Possession” has risen in status, a remake would come.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, actor/producer Robert Pattinson and “Smile” writer/director Parker Finn are attached to remount the body horror divorce nightmare that starred Sam Neill and Isabelle Adjani as a couple coming apart. Per THR, studios including A24, Netflix, Paramount, Sony, and Warner Bros. are engaged in a bidding war over the project, with meetings set to take place this week.

IndieWire has confirmed Pattinson’s involvement under his producing banner Icki Eneo Arlo; he’s not yet attached to star. No word yet from Parker Finn’s team.

“Possession” is a film now arguably more famous for the TikToks and internet memes...

Andrzej Żuławski’s 1981 psychological horror movie Possession is getting a remake from Smile writer/director Parker Finn, THR reports today, and actor Robert Pattinson is set to produce.

Finn is currently attached to write and direct the remake, which has reportedly caused a bidding war among A24, Netflix, Paramount, Sony, and Warner Bros.

The project is still in its developmental early stages, meaning no plot or casting details are in place as of yet. But the original film is a strangely told narrative about an international spy and his intense relationship with his wife, it’s a haunting dissection of the dissolution of a relationship and the strange love affair the wife develops with a tentacle creature.

Leads Sam Neill and Isabelle Adjani in the 1981 film devote every fiber of their being to their roles, and I don’t know that anyone has so fully committed themselves to their role as Adjani since.

Smile filmmaker Parker Finn is venturing into alien territory.

Finn has quietly teamed with Robert Pattinson to remake Possession, the cult 1981 psychological supernatural horror movie written and directed by Polish filmmaker Andrzej Zulawski.

The project has engaged the town’s attention, with a bidding war breaking out among A24, Netflix, Paramount, Sony and Warner Bros. The process is in the early stages, with meetings taking place this week, according to sources, and other companies may enter the fray.

Finn is attached to write the script, direct and produce via his Bad Feeling banner. Pattinson is producing via his production company Icki Eneo Arlo; his acting involvement will be clarified down the road as the script and schedules develop. Also producing is Vertigo Entertainment’s Roy Lee, who helped produce Zach Cregger’s breakout Barbarian.

Set in West Berlin, Possession starred Sam Neill as a spy who returns home from the...

Editor’s Note: This review was originally published during the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. Mubi will release “The Substance” in theaters September 20.

An immensely, unstoppably, ecstatically demented fairy tale about female self-hatred, Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance” will stop at nothing — and I mean nothing — to explode the ruthless beauty standards that society has inflicted upon women for thousands of years, a burden this camp-adjacent instant classic aspires to cast off with some of the most spectacularly disgusting body horror this side of “The Fly” or the final minutes of “Akira.”

If the “Revenge” director’s immaculately crafted debut tried to dismantle male toxicity with a shotgun blast square to the balls, Fargeat’s Cannes-approved follow-up turns that same attention inwards, allowing her to take aim at both the pointlessness she’s been conditioned to feel as a forty-something woman, and also at the resentment she’s been conditioned to feel toward her younger self.

The best festivals point to the future, capture the zeitgeist, or honor the past. At Locarno in 2015, you could have had all three: Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Happy Hour (his first time premiering in a major competition), Chantal Akerman’s No Home Movie (the director in attendance just months before she died), and Hong Sangsoo’s Right Now, Wrong Then (a mid-career masterpiece), all played. So did Rick Alverson’s Entertainment, the final film of Andrzej Żuławski, and the directorial debut of Josh Mond, at the time best known for producing Martha Marcy May Marlene for Borderline, a company he established with Sean Durkin and Antonio Campos in 2003. Mond’s debut James White featured Cristopher Abbott’s first lead role and (one year before dazzling in A Quiet Passion for Terrence Davies) a Cynthia Nixon performance that made you sit up and take note. It won a prize in Locarno and another at Sundance.

On the indie side of filmmaking life, Sean Price Williams has seen it all. He’s worked with the Safdies, Alex Ross Perry, Nathan Silver, Robert Green, and Athina Rachel Tsangari, and often more than once. He’s the premier chronicler of New York City independent movies behind the camera, typically shooting on celluloid, and bringing surreal, gritty poetry to character-driven stories that feel on the ground like portraits of versions of ourselves.

One of the most unabashedly movie-loving cinematographers working today, Williams last year moved to directing for the sprawling, scratchy-edged tale of East Coast youth, “The Sweet East,” which remains in theaters and features stars like Jacob Elordi, Simon Rex, Jeremy O. Harris, and Ayo Edebiri.

But even more recently than that directorial debut, he released a “1000 Movies” book via Metrograph Editions, a simple, unadorned paperback that offers, rather than commentary, pages listing his favorite essential films and...