The Playlist

The obsessives' guide to contemporary cinema via film discussion, news, reviews, features, nostalgia, movie music, soundtracks, DVDs and more.

Interviews

'Tomb Raider' Reboot & Joe Wright's Live Action 'The Little Mermaid' Get New Writers

By Kevin Jagernauth
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June 13, 2013 11:20 AM
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1 Comment

News

Video games and fairy tales -- yep, it's just another day in Hollywood, so let's get into the mix of this...

By Drew Taylor
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October 19, 2012 4:36 PM
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3 Comments

News

Today at the Austin Film Festival during a panel on Pixar (and writing), Mary Coleman, a senior development executive at the company, announced that Marti Noxon, a former writer for “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Mad Men,” had joined the company on an unspecified project. This is a major development for the notoriously close-knit company, and should at least calm the jangled nerves of animation fans who were surprised and upset by a recent high-profile dismissal.

By Benjamin Wright
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August 7, 2012 3:00 PM
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4 Comments

News

It may be hard to recall now, but there was once a time when director M. Night Shyamalan was coined by Time magazine as “The Next Spielberg,” and the fact that almost everything the helmer touched, starting with 1999’s “The Sixth Sense” seemed to turn to gold, he was certainly becoming the go-to poster boy for blockbuster genre filmmaking in the same vein as the bearded one. Now after a storied series of missteps which includes directing films like “The Happening” and “The Last Airbender,” along with a notoriously humorless approach to looking at his own work, much of the goodwill Shyamalan built early in his career has seemed to all but vanish from even some of his most adamant defenders.

By Kevin Jagernauth
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April 23, 2012 1:40 PM
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4 Comments

News

How do you keep your franchise star happy and in house? Pick up a project to develop for them -- and if it's based on a critically acclaimed, best-selling book then all the better.

By Ryan Sartor
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November 30, 2011 12:21 PM
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1 Comment

News

A little over a week after we sang the praises of screenwriter Marti Noxon (“Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “Fright Night,” “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies”), news has come through that she’s gone over to the dark side, working with Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes on that adaptation of the “Ouija” board game the world’s been clamoring for. It’s unclear if Noxon has taken on this project due to its “gender politics” potential, but we’d guess it has something to do with that Bay money.