There‘s a new gay icon in Hollywood currently enjoying a moment of enhanced visibility. If you find Ellen too squeaky-clean, Neil Patrick Harris too eager-to-please, or Lance Bass too Lance Bass, then you’re in luck, because a new LGBT champion has emerged from the shadows to capture the hearts of millions. He’s here, he’s queer, and he wants to eat the child that cracked open his cursed pop-up book: good citizens of the Internet, the Babadook has burst out of the closet, and he’s hungry.
What’s more exciting than a bold, accomplished feature debut from a director with vision and something to say? The non-rhetorical answer to that rhetorical question: the movie they make afterward. In 2014, Jennifer Kent wowed audiences with her fully-formed horror parable The Babadook, mining the frustrations of single motherhood for chills and creating a memorable monster along the way. (Whether the Babadook is indeed homosexual remains a topic of heated debate in some extremely specific online communities, however.) Now, her next challenge will be proving that her initial success wasn’t a fluke. And today brings the news that she’ll re-prove her filmmaking bona fides with a sophomore project titled The Nightingale.
The controversy surrounding Paul Feig’s Ghostbusters reboot seemed like it might have a silver lining; isn’t Hollywood’s diversity problem improving if we’re arguing about a major summer blockbuster starring four women? Sadly, the answer is no. But on the heels of a new study that proves Hollywood has made excruciatingly little progress on the diversity front, a group of anonymous female film executives have formed The Alice Initiative, which puts the spotlight on up-and-coming female directors to encourage and support gender diversity behind-the-scenes.
Not long ago, Kevin Feige assured fans that Marvel would reveal the director and star of Captain Marvel most likely before the end of summer, if not the fall at the latest. Following yesterday’s report that Oscar-winner Brie Larson is in early talks for the title role comes word of two directors on the list of contenders to helm Marvel’s first solo female superhero film.
After making her directorial debut with the intensely great The Babadook, we’ve all been waiting to see what Jennifer Kent would do next. The Australian director has selected her next project, and no, it’s not a superhero movie (thank goodness) — it’s Alice and Freda Forever, based on the book by Alexis Coe, which tells the true story of the love between two young girls in Tennessee…and the murder that ended it.
‘The Babadook’ is undoubtedly the scariest film of the year—not only that, but it’s also one of the best films of 2014, garnering acclaim from critics and audiences alike. The film, which is currently in theaters and on VOD, features a highly original and disturbing new movie monster in the titular and sinister Babadook. And just when you thought you were free of the terrifying monster, he’s back in a new animated Christmas greeting, to wish you a very chilling holiday.