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You can almost literally see the wheels spinning in Wes Craven’s head while watching Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, which both makes it unbelievably fascinating and also, at the same time, not quite a fully formed idea. Now, the fully formed idea would come two years later with Scream, but while watching Wes Craven’s New Nightmare the seeds of something wonderful had been planted. And it makes perfect sense New Nightmare under-performed at the time. Not putting the words “Elm Street” or “Freddy” into the title of a Nightmare on Elm Street movie is certainly … bold (though, originally it did have a Nightmare on Elm Street title), but there’s no way that helped the box office. (Also not helping, being released the same day as Pulp Fiction.)

Craven hadn’t directed a Nightmare on Elm Street movie since the original ten years before. It’s a little startling to watch that first one compared to the others. Freddy, referred to as “Fred” Krueger in the first installment, doesn’t yet have his trademark deep voice, certainly doesn’t have as many “jokes,” and his really disturbing backstory is discussed in much more detail. In the ten years since Craven had directed A Nightmare on Elm Street, Freddy Krueger had become basically a cartoon character, coming up with elaborate and wacky schemes to kill his victims, usually followed by a one-liner. But by the time of Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare (the only Nightmare movie I saw in theaters), the formula was stale. Freddy’s antics and jokes were stale and, now, just resorted to using the word “bitch” a lot.

Actually, a lot of the “A-list” horror franchises were getting stale at the time.* By the time New Nightmare was released, Jason Vorhees had been to Manhattan and Hell. And even those titles were misleading. In Jason Takes Manhattan, yeah, Jason eventually makes it to New York City, which look a lot like Vancouver – but not until the third act of the movie after spending the first two-thirds basically watching Jason people stab a bunch of people on a boat. (Though this movie does feature Jason punching someone so hard his head flies off.) In Jason Goes to Hell, we never once see Jason in Hell. In fact, we barely see Jason at all. It’s kind of weird out of the original 11 Friday the 13th movies, Jason Vorhees is basically not in three of them. Hey, but at least Friday the 13th was trying something kinda fun and stupid (Jason eventually goes to space). On the other side, the Halloween movies decided, after the incredibly fun and weird Halloween III: Season of the Witch, to double down, and get bogged down, on the lore of Michael Myers and dig deep into cults and rituals and Michael’s psychic family members. Finally, Paul Rudd shows up in the sixth installment, Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers to end all this.

*Having said all that, at the time all of this seemed stale, but it’s all come around to being fun again. I have nothing against “elevated horror,” but sometimes I just want to watch Jason Vorhees go around and kill a bunch of people. Also, just like action movies of the era, it’s kind of surprising how good these movies look compared to the grey, CGI-heavy movies of today. Even the Friday the 13th movies are bright and colorful. Also, I think this is why David Gordon Green’s Halloween movies are so dividing. They really do borrow the spirit of an earlier era, which is going to play odd to viewers today expecting something meaningful. These movies are all stupid! But also that’s their charm. Also, speaking of Jason, I understand the lawsuits and disputes over ownership, but come on? How has it been 14 years since we’ve seen Jason Vorhees? The 2009 reboot made a lot of money! Let’s get Jason going again!

So obviously Craven was fed up with the current state of horror – or, at least, his contribution to horror – and wanted to drastically change things. (It is weird to watch, say, A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master and realize that movie technically spawned from the same person who made The Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes.) The main concept of Wes Craven’s New Nightmare is a little disjointed between making fun of clichés and the supernatural, but the main concept is Freddy Krueger escapes the movie world and starts haunting and harassing Heather Langenkamp, who played Nancy Thompson in the first movie and the third movie, Dream Warriors. (As an aside, when I went to high school in a suburb of Kansas City, I lived two houses away from a girl named Nancy Thompson. In retrospect, it’s weird this wasn’t brought up more often. Then again, no one really wanted to take their chances with Freddy so maybe it wasn’t.) To the point, Langenkamp starts getting strange and aggressive phone calls, just like the Scream movie made famous. Langenkamp then seeks out both Craven and Robert Englund for help and advice. (Englund is particularly great in this movie playing himself. Also, I wish more people knew the original V miniseries today, and V: The Final Battle, because Englund is really great as a nice alien who is against eating humans. I can’t condone the actions of Freddy Krueger, but here I do agree with Englund’s character … eating humans is bad.)

I mean, look, people still love Scream. There have been two new Scream movies in the past two years. It’s remarkable there’s a movie where the creator of Scream is work-shopping Scream, using Freddy Krueger. It’s so fascinating and for whatever reason, like a lot of people I think, I had avoided it. (For me, before the pandemic, I was a “I hate horror movies” person. Then, with not much else to do, I kind of got into them. Not the more modern “jump scare*” variety, but the stuff that people would consider “fun.” So I am catching up still on a lot of horror.) The end result is New Nightmare is a very strange movie. And it works on a “what on Earth is this?” type movie, but I could also see how the meta tone of the whole thing, combined with actual supernatural elements, would fly over the heads of people in 1994. It would be like watching the first Scream and out of nowhere Ghostface has actual powers.

(*Some people seem to get offended having some movies classified as “jump scare,” but I’m sorry that’s what they are. That doesn’t mean they aren’t good, it just means they “aren’t for me.” Horror movies from the ’80s or ’90s would have one or two good jump scares. Now it’s nonstop and I find it unpleasant, but I also understand why people accustomed to nonstop jump scares might find movies without them not as exciting. Whatever!)

Two years after New Nightmare, Craven would just keep all the meta aspects of Wes Craven’s New Nightmare and ditch the supernatural elements and he made yet another movie that is now six movies deep into the franchise (just one less than Elm Street‘s original run. We can pretend the 2010 reboot doesn’t exist, though it did make a lot of money). Wes Craven’s New Nightmare is a gift to Scream fans that maybe don’t even realize it’s right there to be discussed and dissected. Anyway, that’s the point of all this … if you at all like Scream, you should watch Wes Craven’s New Nightmare.

You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.

When Gucci Mane chose Breath Of Fresh Air as the title for his newly released album, he meant it. The 24-track double-album features several artists, such as 21 Savage, Lil Baby, J. Cole, Roddy Ricch, and the late Young Dolph, but T.I.’s surprise appearance at the Gucci Mane & Friends concert at Atlanta’s The Tabernacle on Tuesday (October 17) was, in some ways, more notable.

As seen in videos circulated by longtime hip-hop journalist and Rap Radar host Elliott Wilson, Gucci Mane teed up Tip’s appearance as doing “something special for the city” and showing everyone that their beef is firmly behind them. T.I. performed “24’s.” At one point, Gucci Mane and T.I. verbalized their respect for each other and sealed it with an on-stage dap.

In the wake of this feel-good moment, outlets such as HipHopDX and Vibe retraced the origins of Gucci Mane’s now-squashed beef with T.I. Most everyone agrees that it started in 2012 because T.I. aligned with Jeezy, another long-standing rival of Gucci Mane’s. Then, in April 2018, T.I. took to Instagram to dispute Gucci Mane’s claim about inventing trap music.

“Ok,so…. AGAIN for the slow ones in the back…,” T.I. captioned a screenshot of the Wikipedia page for his 2003 Trap Muzik album. “August 19th,2003 Birth of Trap Muzik & Only fools dispute facts!!! FOH wit that Christopher Columbus ass… ‘Look what I discovered,even though they was already here’ ass sh*t!!!! WITCHO GOOD CAPPIN ASS”

“A source close to the situation tells TMZ Hip Hop both superstars have long moved past their previous round of diss exchanges from years ago,” TMZ relayed on Wednesday (October 18). “They both were co-headliners for the recent Legendz Of The Streetz tour and mended the fences, which didn’t take much doing.”

TMZ’s reported timeline matches up with T.I. naming Gucci Mane and Jeezy to his Mount Rushmore of trap music with AllHipHop in August. Not to mention, in July 2020, T.I. and Jeezy expressed their desire to call a truce with Gucci Mane for the sake of trap music.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

When the International Olympic Committee announced flag football would be among the sports added to the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, the immediate question from many was whether NFL players would be allowed to participate.

The answer for now is “maybe,” with the NFL not ruling out the possibility but noting they have to work through some logistics before giving players the green light. NFL executive vice president Peter O’Reilly told Front Office Sports they’ve seen the desire from players since the announcement was made, but have to talk through everything to understand the risks, timeline of when guys would need to be available, and more.

“We understand the desire,” O’Reilly said. “We think it’s a great opportunity, because the player interest is real and palpable. There’s a desire to work through with these stakeholders and get to that outcome for July [2028].”

“Clearly in the leadup to the announcement, and then [Monday], there was a lot of excitement, as you might expect, from great NFL athletes and NFL legends who love the idea of representing their country on an Olympic stage,” O’Reilly said.

The concern, of course, is with players potentially getting hurt in the summer leading into the season — although one could argue they’d be just as likely to get hurt doing individual workouts as they would playing flag football. Still, that’s going to be the thing they have to navigate with teams and the NFLPA (hence the “stakeholders” quote), but it would be very fun to see NFL players able to represent their countries on the Olympic stage.

Football players have never had that opportunity, and there are plenty of speedsters around the league who would be very fun to watch in a flag football setting. That said, NFL players would need to learn some new rules (like avoiding flag blocking) to be able to succeed at a sport that’s closely related but has some key rule differences to tackle football — but the new Pro Bowl flag football games offer a little introduction to all of that.

Jada Pinkett Smith continues her whirlwind book tour filled that’s been fully loaded with bombshell revelations like she and Will Smith secretly separated in 2016, but also, surprise, they got back together after he slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars. As always seems to be the case, we learned way too much about the overly-dramatic couple and were repeatedly reminded that Jada used to date Tupac in case anyone could have possibly forgotten.

Naturally, there’s no end in sight to this circus, which was punctuated on Wednesday night by Will making a “surprise” appearance at Jada’s book signing event in Baltimore. The Fresh Prince star took the stage to gush about his wife.

“I just really wanted to come out and just be here and hold it down for you the way you have held it down for me,” Will said via The Baltimore Sun. “We have had a very, very long and tumultuous [relationship]. We call it ‘brutiful.’ It was brutal and beautiful at the same time.”

According to the Sun, it was an “emotional, romantic speech” that left Jada covering her mouth on the side of the stage. The moment seemed “designed to quash public speculation” that their marriage is over. Speculation that Jada started, by the way, but who’s counting?

“Will and me are good,” Jada later said during an on-stage discussion. “All the people who don’t understand and got something to say are just going to have to fall in line.”

(Via The Baltimore Sun)

Earlier this year, BTS had a limited theater run for their BTS: Yet To Come In Theaters concert film. Now, fans who couldn’t make it will get to experience the new version, BTS: Yet To Come, as it heads to streaming. Here’s what to know about the release date.

BTS: Yet To Come will be out on November 9 in 240 countries with Prime Video access. For fans in Japan, the film will be out just a few weeks later, with a streaming release date starting December 1.

“We are thrilled to partner with Hybe in welcoming BTS: Yet To Come to Prime Video,” David Simonsen, director of Prime Video in Southeast Asia, said in a statement. “We know the popularity of high-quality Korean content worldwide, and we look forward to delighting consumers around the globe with BTS: Yet To Come. We are excited to see the concert movie and this genre find new audiences from different countries on Prime Video.”

The movie is centered around BTS’ free performance from last October. The band took the stage at Asiad Main Stadium in Busan, South Korea, as the city was seeking a World Expo 2030 bid, according to Deadline.

While the band is on hiatus, fans can still expect to hear them perform “Dynamite,” “Butter,” “RUN,” “MIC Drop,” “Yet To Come (The Most Beautiful Moment),” and more, from the comfort of their homes.

Bullying is a huge problem. According to DoSomething.org, 1 in 5 students ages 12-18 in the United States are bullied during the school year, and approximately 160,000 teens have skipped school because of bullying.

So when Randy Smalls of South Carolina discovered that his teenage daughter was making fun of a classmate over her clothes and makeup, he took swift action.

Smalls instantly felt sympathy for Ryan Reese, a seventh-grader at Berkeley Middle School, having been bullied in his youth. So he took money meant for his daughter and went on a shopping spree with Ryan to get some new clothes and a makeover.

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Smalls’ wife and Ryan’s mother Richauna Reese are friends, but they weren’t aware of the bullying until recently. The families got on the phone after speaking to Ryan, and Smalls asked if he could take Ryan to buy new clothes and get a makeover at the beauty salon.

Smalls used money initially intended to buy his 13-year-old daughter some new clothes, but after learning about her bullying, he decided to spend the money on Ryan instead.

“I say, ‘When you laugh along, you’re co-signing the bullying,” Smalls told Yahoo News.

“My daughter was upset, especially because she is into fashion,” he said. “So she came with us and helped pick out Ryan’s new clothes.”

While his daughter was at church, Smalls took Ryan to the beauty salon and paid for twice-a-month appointments until the end of the year.

After hearing about the good gesture, local salons have also offered to keep Ryan looking stylish for the next few months.

Richauna, Ryan’s mother, told Yahoo News that her daughter was struggling after the recent deaths of her father, grandfather, and aunt, as well as non-epileptic seizures caused by the stress.

The shopping trip has helped Ryan immensely. “I wasn’t expecting it. I just started to cry. It (the bullying) was really sad for me because I had lost my grandpa, father, and aunt, and it really took me deep down in my depression,” Ryan explained.

“This is the first time I have seen a parent take such a stance on bullying,” Richauna added.

Smalls was overwhelmed by the response and says that it’s helped his daughter see her mistake.

“I didn’t expect for this to get big but I’m glad if other parents [can learn from it],” Smalls said. “My daughter learned her lesson.”

“As parents, we have to take responsibility for what our children do,” Smalls told ABC’s Strahan, Sara, and Keke. “We can teach our children, but when they go and are around other children they can veer off a little bit. When situations like this happen, we have to take action and be the parent and not the friend.”

And the pair seem to be getting along better for the experience. “They’re cool now,” Richauna said.

Watch to young girls break down the story in this adorable YouTube video:

This article originally appeared on 12.4.19

Hocus Pocus initially underperformed at the box office before becoming a Halloween-season classic among millenials. But maybe it would have been an immediate hit if it starred Leonardo DiCaprio.

The Killers of the Flower Moon actor technically auditioned for the lead male role as Max in Hocus Pocus, but he was off limits to actually starring in the Disney film. “[My casting team] called me up,” director Kenny Ortega told Entertainment Weekly, “and said, ‘We’re sending someone in, but you can’t have him.’ They said, ‘We want you to know who he is, we want you to meet him, he’s agreed to come in to meet you, but he can’t do the role. He’s being offered a movie with [Robert] De Niro and What’s Eating Gilbert Grape.’”

This was pre-Titanic Leo, but he was already famous (to fans of endearingly corny ABC sitcoms, at least) for playing Luke on Growing Pains. “He came in, and he was just amazing — so extraordinary and unique — he came and he was stressed,” Ortega recalled. “He said, ‘I feel bad that I’m here because I can’t do this, because I’m really focused on these other things,’ and I said, ‘Understandably.’ We shared a sandwich together. He was super cool.”

Ortega did not reveal what kind of sandwich it was. Leo seems like a bison liver on rye kind of guy. Anyway, the part ended up going to Omri Katz, who later retired from acting and now works as an “ambassador of the cannabis culture.” It’s more legit than being a vaping ambassador.

(Via Entertainment Weekly)

d4vd might have tipped Uproxx off to “Call Me Revenge,” his collaborative single with 21 Savage for Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare III.

“I want to leak too much, but I literally just left a meeting about gaming,” d4vd told Uproxx’s Wongo Okon in an interview published on September 8. “I’m working a lot on Fortnite stuff, the new Fortnite season is dropping, and everybody’s on the game again. Gaming is going back on the radar. Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare III is dropping. I’m working hand in hand and being more in the gaming space and telling a story because that’s where I came from. I’m more of a gamer than a musician; it’s telling that story even more. I’m working on scoring and a lot of soundtracking, too.”

21’s “Call Me Revenge” featuring d4vd hit streaming services on Thursday, October 19. Per press release, it marks 21 Savage’s first original material as a solo artist since 2020’s “Secret” with Summer Walker.

“21 Savage will also star in an upcoming Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare III trailer, and Call Of Duty players can access 21 Savage as an operator in the game now and carry over the playable skin and their progress from Modern Warfare II to Modern Warfare III when it launches on November 10,” the release states. You can pre-order the game here.

In “Call Me Revenge,” d4vd’s smooth vocal runs perfectly complement 21 Savage’s confident flow about loyalty (“Keep my enemies closer / Than I keep my friends / Gotta get my payback / Been on that since way back”) and resiliency (“You gon’ shed blood if you made me shed tears”).

While it’s been three-and-a-half years since 21 dropped “Secret,” he hasn’t fallen off in the slightest — dropping joint albums Savage Mode II with Metro Boomin and Her Loss with Drake. Each project hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200. Meanwhile, d4vd has released two 2023 EPs, Petals To Thorns and The Lost Petals, and is opening on the second leg of SZA’s SOS Tour.

Below, listen to “Call Me Revenge,” see its cover art, and check out 21 Savage’s upcoming European and UK tour dates.

11/14 — Paris, France @ Zenith Paris La Villette
11/16 — Dusseldorf, Germany @ Mitsubishi Electric HALLE
11/17 — Zurich, Switzerland @ THE HALL
11/19 — Berlin, Germany @ Max-Schmeling-Halle
11/21 — Amsterdam, Netherlands @ AFAS Live
11/23 — Manchester, UK @ Depot Mayfield
11/24 — Birmingham, UK @ Forum
11/30 — London, UK @ The O2

Gwyneth Paltrow is currently on a tour of sorts to promote her “accessible” beauty care line (“good. clean. goop”). In doing so, she did suggest that there would be a day when she would evaporate from public view after selling the goop business. First, however, she decided to weigh in on the Nepo Baby controversy, and surprisingly, Gwyneth (who is the daughter of director Bruce Paltrow and actress Blythe Danner) sees no problem with children of famous people following in their parents’ footsteps.

She, of course, ignores the point that people often make about Nepo Babies, which is that they have an easier leg up into a lucrative career like showbiz, where public perception and visibility mean everything. And Gwyneth seems to think that the profession doesn’t matter when children go into the same field as their parents. Here is precisely what she told Bustle when the subject of her daughter, Apple Martin (who, to be clear, does not appear to want to be in show business), was brought up:

Now there’s this whole nepo baby culture, and judgment that exists around kids of famous people. She’s really just a student, and she’s been very… She just wants to be a kid and be at school and learn. But there’s nothing wrong with doing or wanting to do what your parents do. Nobody rips on a kid who’s like “I want to be a doctor like my dad and granddad.” The truth is if you grow up in a house with a lot of artists and people making art and music, that’s what you know, the same way that if you grow up in a house with law, the discussions around the table are about the nuances of whatever particular law the parents practice. I think it’s kind of an ugly moniker.

Paltrow did stress that Apple is a “very private person” when asked if she would ever model for goop. She’s concerned for her children, but Gwyneth also could have framed the conversation differently, given that she is arguably a Nepo Baby herself. However, this is not a terribly surprising outcome because Gwyneth has shown herself to not really be in touch with civilian struggles. A handful of years back, Gwyneth took the Food Stamp Challenge and bought a bunch of limes along with a few staples meant to last a week. She later admitted to caving in and enjoying some chicken and licorice.

Yet at least Gwyneth realizes that a survivalist reality show isn’t a feasible career leg for her. Baby steps.

(Via Bustle)

BTS recently announced that their concert film titled BTS: Yet To Come is heading to streaming. Given that the band is on an indefinite hiatus as the members complete their mandatory military service, this allows fans to still feel connected with their favorites.

While it previously had a limited run in theaters earlier this year, the movie will now be available for all to stream on Amazon’s Prime Video platform. Starting November 9, it will be available in 240 countries. Japan will be able to watch it starting December 1.

“We are thrilled to partner with Hybe in welcoming BTS: Yet To Come to Prime Video,” David Simonsen, director of Prime Video in Southeast Asia, said in a statement. “We know the popularity of high-quality Korean content worldwide, and we look forward to delighting consumers around the globe with BTS: Yet To Come. We are excited to see the concert movie and this genre find new audiences from different countries on Prime Video.”

BTS played their biggest hits for free last October at the Asiad Main Stadium in South Korea, which held around 50,000 people — plus fans waiting outside who tried to catch a glimpse of the show. At the same time, it was also livestreamed through WeVerse. However, many fans reported lagging and poor quality.

Thankfully, many will get another chance to watch BTS: Yet To Come as many times as they want when it arrives on Prime Video.