The reviews are now coming in after the Embargo is lifted and they’re bad. Some of the lowest ratings of the entire Scream series on Rotten Tomatoes currently exist with critics lampooning the film such as The Daily Beast calling it shockingly terrible.
The
Hollywood Reporter‘s review was one of the more negative takes on the new film, writing, “The overfamiliarity would be more palatable if the dialogue were as fresh and funny as it was in the early installments, or if the kills were more creatively staged. But there’s a rote quality to the proceedings that makes Scream 7 feel like a slog despite its high body count and copious gore.”
The film is probably largely review-proof, with the movie expected to open around $60 million globally for the second-best start in the franchise..
But just because it may have a successful box office doesn’t mean it would be a good movie.
Dozens of pro-Palestine protesters marched outside the Los Angeles premiere for Scream 7 on Wednesday night.
Some demonstrators could be seen waving Palestinian flags, while others were holding signs that read “Cancel Paramount+” and “Stand For Free Speech Boycott Scream 7.” The group could also be heard chanting “Boycott Scream 7” and “Free, free, free Palestine,” while some played drums and trumpets.
The premiere took place at the Paramount Studios lot; however, the protests could only be faintly heard from the red carpet, where the film’s stars, like Neve Campbell and Courteney Cox, were posing for photos.
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About 25 demonstrators were seen positioned around the lot with flags, drums and bullhorns. They were heard chanting phrases like “Paramount, Paramount, what do you say?” and “Palestine will live forever!”
The protest was led by Entertainment Labor for Palestine, CODEPINK LA, Musicians for Palestine, and Jewish Voice for Peace-Los Angeles. The activists on the scene were also pro-Melissa Barrera, the actress who has been vocal in her support for Palestine.
In November 2023, Spyglass Media Group slashed Barrera from reprising her role in the seventh installment of the film after she expressed support for Palestinians in the Israel-Hamas war. The production company behind the film said in a statement that they had “zero tolerance for antisemitism or the incitement of hate in any form” and dropped her.
A group of pro-Palestinian protesters march outside of the LA premiere of Scream 7 tonight in front of the Paramount lot pic.twitter.com/i5umQH7uQf
Mel Gibson is consulting with excommunicated Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò — who has called the late Pope Francis “a servant of Satan” — for the “The Resurrection of the Christ,” his follow up to 2004’s “The Passion of the Christ” that is currently still shooting in Italy.
Viganò, who is the Vatican’s former ambassador to the United States, was excommunicated in 2024 for refusing to recognize Pope Francis’ authority and rejecting the Second Vatican Council that modernized the Roman Catholic Church. He has repeatedly referred to Francis as a liberal “servant of Satan” and a “false prophet” in public statements. Viganò is also known to be a big fan of U.S. President Donald Trump, a critic of gay rights and a supporter of anti-vaccine positions
Deadline is among those reporting that this weekend there’s expectations that 28 Years Later will unseat Avatar from the box office.
It’s a four-day weekend for Hollywood and there’s hopes that the newest zombie flick will make more than 20 million. And you know what, the movie Primates didn’t do half bad last week so maybe in these cold January weeks we still love and have that affinity for horror.
Bone Temple releases Wednesday in the UK, France, Belgium and Indonesia, then in Australia/New Zealand, Brazil, Germany, Mexico, Italy, Netherlands and Saudi Arabia on Thursday, followed by Japan, Poland and Spain on Friday. That’s a 98% offshore footprint, except Korea and Thailand…
James Cameron’s third sci-fi epic has added $65.6 million internationally and $86 million globally in its fourth weekend of release, bringing its overseas tally to $888 million and global total to $1.23 billion. Although a box office juggernaut, “Fire and Ash” is trailing the first two films, 2009’s “Avatar” and 2022’s “The Way of Water,” at this point in its run.
“Zootopia 2” has remained a box office force since Thanksgiving, with $30.8 million overseas and $40.9 million worldwide in its seventh weekend in theaters..
MORE.. Good jeans..
Lionsgate’s psychological thriller “The Housemaid” is about to surpass $200 million globally. The film has generated $25.5 million from 66 overseas territories, including a No. 1 bow in the United Kingdom with $23.7 million. So far, the R-rated film, adapted from Freida McFadden’s popular book and starring Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried, has become a breakout hit with $98.3 million internationally and $192.5 million worldwide after four weekends of release.
On New Year’s Eve, Stranger Things: The Finale debuted simultaneously on the streamer and in roughly 600 cinemas — more than a third belonged to AMC, the country and world’s largest chain — before holding encore showings throughout New Year’s Day. At AMC alone, the theater giant said that The Finale earned $15 million from the $20 food and beverage credits purchased.
The total summation for all theaters showing may have been near $30 mil.. a true cultural moment..
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Netflix didn’t have to worry about reporting grosses for Stranger Things, since fans reserved a seat by purchasing a concession voucher directly from the theaters.
AMC and Cinemark Theatres both charged $20, plus fees in certain instances.
Regal Cinemas and several others charged $11, a reference to the name of the show’s lead character.
Earlier this week, the Duffers said on social media that 1.1 million vouchers had been sold. By New Year’s Day, Steve Buck’s leading research and exit polling firm EntTelligence showed admissions at 1.3 million…
Maybe not number one, that was Avatar.. but she bounced into a strong showing in the Housemaid…
The Housemaid opened to an estimated $18.9 million in the U.S., good enough for third place on the charts behind the animated, faith-based movie David ($22 million). The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants also opened to $16 million, making it a very healthy weekend overall. But back to the topic at hand, Feig’s latest broke through the noise and, against a reported $35 million budget, is well-positioned to become a theatrical hit.
There’s been so much of a veil of secrecy surrounding this new Steven Spielberg movie that even now, with the trailer finally revealed, it still feels like we’re not getting the full story of what this film is really about. That said, we definitely know more than we did before.
And apparently, this is officially a summer event movie.
The film is titled Disclosure Day, and it stars Emily Blunt as a Kansas City TV meteorologist. She’s joined by Josh O’Connor, who plays a passionate UFO whistleblower.
Here’s the official description:
“An uncanny exploration of an alien invasion as initially experienced by a meteorologist (Emily Blunt) and a passionate UFO whistleblower (Josh O’Connor) who want to share the truth with the world all at once.”
The movie hits theaters on June 12, 2026.
The trailer is genuinely cool—we’ll link it below—and after watching it, I think it’s fair to say this could end up being the most hyped movie of 2026. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll be the best movie of the year… —or, on the other hand, it could turn out to be one of the best films Steven Spielberg has ever spearheaded.
Either way, I can’t wait to see more. Because based on what we’ve seen so far, this looks really promising.
Picture it: November 1984.. Ronald Reagan just won re-election handily.. the nation was fearing a beat in the woods but raising the flag in patriotism… The chill is in the air. Christmas gifts are getting scooped up at those 1980s malls where the speakers are blasting 1980s music at a volume that feels illegal now. And right there, near the food court, near the arcade, you catch a glimpse of the movie times. Because maybe… just maybe… in the middle of the hustle, you’ll buy yourself a break. A breather. One big-screen, Hollywood-ish escape.
In Cressona PA you see Prince and Purple rain.. but there is another one..
Silent Night, Deadly Night.
How bad could it be?
You show up, ready for a cheesy seasonal slasher… and you find out you stand no chance. The movie’s getting pulled. Not “it’s selling out.” Not “we don’t have your showtime.” Pulled, as in: some theaters won’t run it, and the distributor starts backing away like it touched a hot stove.
Because in 1984, people stood their moral ground… and this was a national argument.
What makes it funny (in a dark way) is that today we live in an era where Christmas horror is practically its own aisle. We’ve got full-on gore carnivals, movies that treat the holidays like an excuse to paint the walls. Even Terrifier 3 was out here reminding everyone that December can be a bloodbath if a filmmaker wants it to be.
So in 2025, Silent Night, Deadly Night almost looks… gentle. Like a troublemaker from a different generation.
But in 1984? People didn’t see it as quaint. They saw it as a threat.
When “Killer Santa” hit daytime TV
A big part of this firestorm wasn’t even the movie itself but it was in big part, the marketing.
TriStar ran TV spots that mashed up holiday cheer with the image of a Santa figure doing what Santa is not supposed to do—breaking in, weapon in hand, violence implied. And the big mistake? Those ads didn’t just run late at night for adults. They landed in daytime slots, when kids were watching.
THIS was the ad that ill-fated the film:
That’s the part people forget now: the outrage wasn’t abstract. It was parents seeing the commercial in the middle of normal life and concerned their child saw Santa with an axe.
And then it became organized really fast.
Variety reported protests in Milwaukee from a group calling itself Citizens Against Movie Madness, led by local mothers. The protests spread—New York, the Bronx, Brooklyn—signs and chants and that old-school civic energy that feels almost extinct today. The leader was Kathleen Eberhardt, then 32.
Stations reacted too. According to reporting summarized in Vulture’s deep dive on the controversy, at least some TV outlets moved the commercials to late-night, and others yanked them altogether.
Then the cultural heavyweight moment hit: Siskel and Ebert went after the movie hard on TV, and Gene Siskel aimed directly at the people behind it, calling the profits “blood money.”
Suddenly, the controversy wasn’t a local protest story. It was national, loud, and embarrassing for a “respectable” distributor.
We were even led to believe that a that a Lewisburg woman saw a TV spot for the movie during ‘afternoon cartoon hours.’ She didn’t recall the station.. sounds like an automatic urban legend to me.
In 1980 a movie called CHRISTMAS EVIL featured an ax wielding Santa.. No outrage. But that is because the advertising campaign just was not there like it was for Silent Night Deadly Night..
The other brutal truth: it started dropping at the box office
Now here’s the other piece that matters, and it’s less romantic than the protest narrative:
But it was also facing a huge problem: It was released the SAME WEEKEND as NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, a movie that was more widely accepted and not protested. It was just a child predator with knife fingers. Not Santa.
TriStar publicly started wobbling right around then, talking about whether it would even be “commercially viable” to keep rolling it out.
And once a studio starts speaking in that careful corporate language, you can feel the exit coming.
The pullback was real enough that the Associated Press was describing it bluntly: TriStar was dropping the film from U.S. distribution after protests and poor early earnings.
And one of the protest organizers, Kathleen Eberhardt with Citizens Against Movie Madness, celebrated the decision with the kind of quote that sounds like it belongs in a time capsule: “Wow. I think it’s great.”
The irony: pulling it probably helped create the legend
Here’s what I love about this story, even if the movie itself is… let’s be honest… not exactly Oscar bait.
In 1984, people talked about it like it was the end of civilization. We already had Jason slashing through forests
In 2025, it’s basically a campfire tale about a moral panic—an artifact from a time when Santa still had a kind of cultural protection around him, like you could get grounded just for disrespecting the concept.
And the greatest irony? By pulling it, they may have cemented it.
Because there’s a difference between a throwaway slasher and a forbidden slasher.
If TriStar had just let it play, it might’ve come and gone like a hundred other low-budget horror flicks. But once it became “the movie they tried to stop,” it picked up that outlaw aura. People love a thing more when someone tells them they shouldn’t have it.
And that’s exactly what happened over time.
The film grew into a cult item, spawned sequels, and eventually inspired a remake in 2012 (titled Silent Night) and the newest 2025 incarnation..
So 40 years after the chaos of the citizens against movie madness … angry moms … TV ads during cartoons (it that really even happened), SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT has become an annual Christmas much watch.. not because it is a great movie. But because it is just that bad.
Steven Spielberg is reportedly making a new movie, and if the rumors are true, it’s going to rock the world of UFO enthusiasts — or at least get their hopes way up. Of course, a lot of that could simply be marketing hype mixed with existential wish-casting. But if there’s anyone who could stir that kind of anticipation, it’s Spielberg. After all, this is the man behind Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial — films that didn’t just entertain people, but quietly rewired how an entire generation thinks about alien contact.
The recent UK Telegraph article describing the project leans heavily into a familiar narrative within UFO culture. One story that always resurfaces is the alleged White House screening of E.T. for Ronald Reagan. Supposedly, when the film ended, Reagan stood up and said — maybe joking, maybe not — that there were people in the room who knew that everything they had just watched was true. Whether that moment actually happened exactly as described almost doesn’t matter anymore. It’s become part of the mythology.
The new Spielberg film itself is still wrapped in secrecy, but one detail from the article jumped out at me — and I had completely forgotten this — a significant portion of it was filmed in New Jersey. That immediately brings to mind the so-called New Jersey drone sightings that dominated headlines just a year ago and then vanished entirely. Not even below the fold — just gone. But if you talk to people in New Jersey, you’ll hear that the drones never really stopped. They’re reportedly still seen regularly. They’ve just become so common that no one talks about them anymore. Like planes in the sky.
That’s part of what makes this Telegraph article so fun, and what makes this Spielberg project so intriguing. There’s even a rumor floating around — clearly conspiracy-theory territory — that a real alien might “star” in the movie. Obviously, that’s not happening. For one thing, it would probably violate every Screen Actors Guild rule imaginable, not to mention require the creation of an entirely new galactic union chapter. Unless, of course, the alien is playing itself. Or themselves. Or itself. The grammar alone would be a nightmare.
THE TELEGRAPH MOCKS:
Tinfoil hat wearers have reacted with characteristic calmness and sagacity to the news that Spielberg is returning to his sci-fi roots with his new production, filming of which was completed in the summer. It is said to have had several working titles, including The Dish and Non-View, but is now reported to be called Disclosure.
The new name, if it is correct, would provide “evidence” for the conspiracists that Spielberg knows more than he is letting on – “disclosure” being a key term for the alien truthers. They hold that the American authorities have secret information about UFOs and extraterrestrial life and want it to be publicly revealed, in a process they term “disclosure”.
Chris Ramsay, a Montreal-based magician who has a YouTube channel devoted to UFO theories, went viral with a tweet in which he most clearly set out the conspiracists’ thinking about Spielberg’s new film. Like any good conspiracy theorist, he described his thesis as something “that’s so crazy it just might be brilliant”.
Still, the idea is entertaining. And beneath the humor is a more interesting possibility: that Spielberg, over decades of filmmaking, may have become acquainted with enough people in enough rooms to suspect that something is going on. That maybe Reagan wasn’t joking. That maybe E.T. wasn’t just a children’s movie, but a soft disclosure story told in the safest way possible.
Regardless of what ultimately comes of this new film — whenever it’s released, and whatever it ends up being called — the anticipation is already enormous. The marketing machine seems primed, the speculation is growing, and expectations are high. We have little doubt the movie will be good. And even if it isn’t…
