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Morandi Bridge Collapses Two Years After Professor Predicts a Similar Disaster

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Morandi Bridge Disaster

Emergency services are rushing to clear the scene of a massive highway bridge collapse in northern Italy. The raised Morandi Bridge highway – which connects Italy and France – was once hailed as an engineering masterpiece. With heavy rains and poor structure support to blame, how could a engineering masterpiece have failed? An Italian engineering professor looks to have predicted this catastrophic disaster two years ago.

Unlike something out of the Final Destination franchise, the Morandi Bridge disaster actually took place. At around 12 p.m. August 4, Italian state police reported that a 650-foot section of the Morandi Bridge had collapsed, sending rubble and at least 35 cars crashing down 45 meters. The bridge stretches over half a mile and dangles 300 feet over the northern town of Genoa, Italy.

Morandi Bridge Highway Collapse

via Telegraph India

Designed by Riccardo Morandi and completed in 1968, the bridge was an engineering masterpiece of its time. However, the popular highway has had its share of problems. During the 1980s-1990s, the Morandi Bridge underwent extensive maintenance.

According to News, maintenance was being conducted on the bridge when the incident occurred. Eyewitnesses captured the moment on camera, saying that heavy rainstorms and a lightning strike were also to blame. This all occurring on the eve of major Italian holiday, Ferragosto.

Italy’s Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte told CNN at least 22 people are dead and 16 are injured. Nine are badly injured. Separately, the office of the governor of the Liguria region said 26 people have died.

The “masterpiece of engineering” was a structure Antonio Brencich eventually knew was going to fail. An engineering professor at the University of Genoa, Brencich spoke on the issue back in July of 2016. He warned about the constantly maintained and uneven structure outweighing the cost.

“The Morandi Bridge is referred to as a masterpiece of engineering. In reality it is a bankruptcy,” he said in an interview with Italian TV channel primocanale.it according to The Chronicle. “That bridge is wrong. Sooner or later it will have to be replaced. I do not know when……There will be a time when maintenance costs will exceed those of reconstruction, and then we will have to proceed with the replacement.”

While the exact cause of the collapse is still under investigation, Prime Minster Conte has praised the hundreds of rescue workers. “It is shocking to see the twisted metal and the bridge collapsed with victims who were extracted,” said Prime Minster Conte to NewsTalkZB. “(It’s a) very bad time with the collapsing of the bridge which was not absolutely unexpected. But we don’t know the reason.

While newspapers have scrutinized the bridge in the past for underfunding, Prime Minster Conte promises change.

“My role as the mayor is to make sure we have the correct infrastructure for the city and make sure that from the government we get the right amount of money in order to be able to set up the new infrastructure as soon as possible.”

Expected to rise is the death toll as a number of people are still missing. Four people have been pulled from the wreckage and transported to hospitals.  Genoa officials have declared two days of mourning.

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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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