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Joe Bob Briggs Quits ‘Fangoria’ Over Donaghey Controversy

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Joe Bob Briggs

Horror movie host and columnist Joe Bob Briggs has decided to part ways with Fangoria and Rebeller. The Texan has abandoned ship as have many other brands associated with the publications because of a recent controversy surrounding conservative parent company Cinestate.

Cinestate acquired Fangoria back in 2018 and re-introduced the glossy to newsstands in physical form after a three-year hiatus.

The trouble started when Cinestate producer Adam Donaghey was arrested in April on child rape allegations made by an actress he worked with. Donaghey was hired by Cinestate in 2017 and from there produced some notable genre films such as  VFW and Satanic Panic. 

Donaghey already had an alleged reputation of being a scoundrel before he started work producing A Ghost Story, the existential 2017 supernatural film from A-24.

According to The Daily Beast, the rape occurred before the filming of A Ghost Story. But his reputation followed him as he ventured onward with projects made under Cinestate.

The Daily Beast article highlights a statement made by Jeff Walker, a local Dallas filmmaker, about on-set discussions made by fearful women about Donaghey:

He recalls them saying, “‘Adam was a creep and to stay away from him,’ as one person put it. ‘It’s a freelance culture and there’s a lot of fear that you’ll never work again, so it’s difficult for people to talk about,’ explains Walker.”

Stories of sexual harassment regarding Cinestate’s sets ran rampant throughout the Texas filmmaking industry, but according to The Daily Beast article, “two people who turned ‘a blind eye to it’ were Cinestate founder Dallas Sonnier and his producing partner Amanda Presmyk.”

This brings us back to Fangoria (again a Cinestate product), which posted a statement on Twitter about the whole situation.

https://twitter.com/FANGORIA/status/1270025604184838146

 

Apparently Joe Bob Briggs is not happy with Cinestate’s lack of accountability and Tweeted his resignation on June 9.  Briggs has been a contributor to Fangoria since late 2019, but is not without controversy himself.

The 67-year-old actor and comedian was once under fire for derogatory statements he made regarding African Americans.

The emcee returned to horror movie hosting in 2018, for Shudder’s Last Drive-In now in its second season.

We at iHorror hope that Fangoria can survive this blow to their otherwise good reputation and flourish under different circumstances.

Photo: joebobbriggsofficial

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‘Evil Dead’ Film Franchise Getting TWO New Installments

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It was a risk for Fede Alvarez to reboot Sam Raimi’s horror classic The Evil Dead in 2013, but that risk paid off and so did its spiritual sequel Evil Dead Rise in 2023. Now Deadline is reporting that the series is getting, not one, but two fresh entries.

We already knew about the Sébastien Vaniček upcoming film that delves into the Deadite universe and should be a proper sequel to the latest film, but we are broadsided that Francis Galluppi and Ghost House Pictures are doing a one-off project set in Raimi’s universe based off of an idea that Galluppi pitched to Raimi himself. That concept is being kept under wraps.

Evil Dead Rise

“Francis Galluppi is a storyteller who knows when to keep us waiting in simmering tension and when to hit us with explosive violence,” Raimi told Deadline. “He is a director that shows uncommon control in his feature debut.”

That feature is titled The Last Stop In Yuma County which will release theatrically in the United States on May 4. It follows a traveling salesman, “stranded at a rural Arizona rest stop,” and “is thrust into a dire hostage situation by the arrival of two bank robbers with no qualms about using cruelty-or cold, hard steel-to protect their bloodstained fortune.”

Galluppi is an award-winning sci-fi/horror shorts director whose acclaimed works include High Desert Hell and The Gemini Project. You can view the full edit of High Desert Hell and the teaser for Gemini below:

High Desert Hell
The Gemini Project

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‘Invisible Man 2’ Is “Closer Than Its Ever Been” to Happening

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Elisabeth Moss in a very well-thought-out statement said in an interview for Happy Sad Confused that even though there have been some logistical issues for doing Invisible Man 2 there is hope on the horizon.

Podcast host Josh Horowitz asked about the follow-up and if Moss and director Leigh Whannell were any closer to cracking a solution to getting it made. “We are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” said Moss with a huge grin. You can see her reaction at the 35:52 mark in the below video.

Happy Sad Confused

Whannell is currently in New Zealand filming another monster movie for Universal, Wolf Man, which might be the spark that ignites Universal’s troubled Dark Universe concept which hasn’t gained any momentum since Tom Cruise’s failed attempt at resurrecting The Mummy.

Also, in the podcast video, Moss says she is not in the Wolf Man film so any speculation that it’s a crossover project is left in the air.

Meanwhile, Universal Studios is in the middle of constructing a year-round haunt house in Las Vegas which will showcase some of their classic cinematic monsters. Depending on attendance, this could be the boost the studio needs to get audiences interested in their creature IPs once more and to get more films made based on them.

The Las Vegas project is set to open in 2025, coinciding with their new proper theme park in Orlando called Epic Universe.

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Jake Gyllenhaal’s Thriller ‘Presumed Innocent’ Series Gets Early Release Date

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Jake gyllenhaal presumed innocent

Jake Gyllenhaal’s limited series Presumed Innocent is dropping on AppleTV+ on June 12 instead of June 14 as originally planned. The star, whose Road House reboot has brought mixed reviews on Amazon Prime, is embracing the small screen for the first time since his appearance on Homicide: Life on the Street in 1994.

Jake Gyllenhaal’s in ‘Presumed Innocent’

Presumed Innocent is being produced by David E. Kelley, J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, and Warner Bros. It is an adaptation of Scott Turow’s 1990 film in which Harrison Ford plays a lawyer doing double duty as an investigator looking for the murderer of his colleague.

These types of sexy thrillers were popular in the ’90s and usually contained twist endings. Here’s the trailer for the original:

According to Deadline, Presumed Innocent doesn’t stray far from the source material: “…the Presumed Innocent series will explore obsession, sex, politics and the power and limits of love as the accused fights to hold his family and marriage together.”

Up next for Gyllenhaal is the Guy Ritchie action movie titled In the Grey scheduled for release in January 2025.

Presumed Innocent is an eight-episode limited series set to stream on AppleTV+ starting June 12.

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