Exclusive: Find Out Who's in Talks to Star in the Duffer Brothers' New Netflix Series 'Something Very Bad...'

Happy Friday, folks!

I hope everyone had a Happy Halloween last night. I felt very fortunate to have been invited to go “Trick or Treating” with my bestie and his two little boys, who dressed as a baseball player and Spider-Man, respectively. I threw on a black t-shirt and ripped jeans and went as Wayne Campbell from Wayne’s World, having donned the same wig to dress up as Coop from Wet Hot American Summer a couple of weeks earlier.

Wednesday night was Devil’s Night, so as soon as I got home, I cued up The Crow on Paramount+ and “fired it up,” as I do my best to rewatch that one every Oct. 30. It remains the greatest comic book movie ever made — full of stunning gothic visuals, countless quotable lines, and a star-making performance from Brandon Lee. R.I.P.

I have no idea what audiences are supposed to see this weekend — the new releases are Sony’s Here, Apple’s Blitz, and Searchlight’s A Real Pain — but it sounds like they’re already deciding which Hollywood blockbuster to see with their families the weekend before Thanksgiving.

According to early tracking, Universal’s Wicked is pulling ahead of Paramount’s Gladiator II, with Jon M. Chu’s musical poised to open to $85 million and Ridley Scott’s sequel looking at an opening around $65 million.

Add ‘em up and you’ll get the $150 million opening that Disney expects from Moana 2 over the five-day holiday weekend, as the animated sequel will sail into theaters on Nov. 27 — just five days after Gladiator II and Wicked. Gulp!

That said, those two movies are right where they need to be at this point, and if Wicked is as good as the early bird crowd says it is, I could see that figure inching closer to $100 million. But we’ll see about that…

A quick TOLDJA! before we begin, as Deadline reports that Amazon MGM Studios won the big auction for American Speed, which will pair Tom Holland and Austin Butler — as I first reported back in September. They’ll play two of the three Whittington brothers — racecar drivers who got caught up in a drug-smuggling scandal in the ‘80s. Dan Wiedenhaupt is writing the script for Oppenheimer producer Charles Roven, and though there’s no director attached as of now, I’m sure there are plenty who are salivating over the prospect of landing this high-profile job.

Tonight, I reveal the female lead in the Duffer brothers’ new Netflix horror series from creator Haley Z. Boston.

There are also items about Tom Cruise’s Days of Thunder sequel, a trio of live-action Lego movies in the works at Universal, the three new movies that Ben Mendelsohn signed on to this week, Russell Crowe’s return to the Roman Empire, and the Cliffhanger reboot that’s missing Sly Stallone. Plus, my thoughts on the trailer for Sony’s slasher movie Heart Eyes.

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