News Holes Holes: Agatha All Along Showrunner Jac Schaeffer to Direct Pilot of Gender-Swapped Adaptation The showrunner, Liz Phang, has worked on Yellowjackets and Foundation. By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on February 21, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share Louis Sachar’s 1998 book, Holes, is getting a series adaptation at Disney+ and now has Agatha All Along and WandaVision showrunner Jac Schaeffer on board to direct the pilot. Variety broke the news of Schaffer’s involvement, with the project mirroring the events of Sachar’s story, except the protagonist is now a girl who, according to the official logline, is “sent to a detention camp where the ruthless Warden forces the campers to dig holes for a mysterious purpose.” In addition to Schaeffer directing the pilot, Liz Phang—whose previous credits include writing and/or producing Yellowjackets, The Strain, Foundation, and Locke & Key—will be showrunning the project. Alina Mankin (Lodge 49) is also a writer and executive producer. This isn’t the first adaptation of Holes, of course. Back in 2003, a film version came out starring Shia LaBeouf as the lead, with Sigourney Weaver, Khleo Thomas, Jon Voight, Tim Blake Nelson, Patricia Arquette, Dulé Hill, and Eartha Kitt on the call sheet as well. Drew Goddard is executive producing this Disney Branded Television version of Holes and teased to Variety that the creative team has “done a wonderful job capturing Louis Sachar’s unique spirit. To say much more about what they have in store would spoil all the fun.” The project was just greenlit in January, so no news yet on casting or when the pilot will go into production.[end-mark] The post <i>Holes</i>: <i>Agatha All Along</i> Showrunner Jac Schaeffer to Direct Pilot of Gender-Swapped Adaptation appeared first on Reactor.

News Clown in a Cornfield Clown In a Cornfield Does What It Says on the Tin I don’t wanna be friends with Friendo. By Molly Templeton | Published on February 21, 2025 Screenshot: Shudder Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: Shudder I cannot really think of a reason why the world needs more killer clowns, but Clown in a Cornfield still has one thing going for it: It’s from Eli Craig, the director of Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, which was more fun than it had any right to be, conceptually speaking. The movie is based on the books by Adam Cesare, and the synopsis is straightforward: “Kettle Springs is already dying—until Frendo, a symbol of the town’s success, decides to speed up the process. Blood will spill, and no one is safe.” “Blood will spill.” It’s so passive! The blood does not decide to spill itself. Friendo spills it. The clown spills the blood. You know how this works. Also, corn syrup is evil. But that seems beside the point, here, other than that the corn syrup factory in the small town is somewhat ominous. Poor Quinn (Katie Douglas, of Ginny & Georgia) moves to this small, dying town, only to face a lot more death than she presumably expected. Clown in a Cornfield also stars Carson MacCormac (Shazam), Aaron Abrams (Hannibal), and Kevin Durand (Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes). Meet these new children of the corn on May 9th.[end-mark] The post <i>Clown In a Cornfield</i> Does What It Says on the Tin appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV Severance This One’s In Tents: Severance, “Attila” Time to eradicate childish folly! By Molly Templeton | Published on February 21, 2025 Image: Apple TV+ Comment 0 Share New Share Image: Apple TV+ The corn is very special, and this is all spoilers. So let’s get to it. You know, there was a moment, earlier this season, where I kind of felt for Helena Eagan. She clearly is not in control of her life, no matter what she likes to say. She had no choice in having her innie sent back to the severed floor once her deception was revealed. Her father loathes her for reasons unknown. I thought, maybe she’s the weirdo outcast in this family? Maybe there’s a story here?  Now I think she might just be a monster. Severance is about a lot of things—so many times that every time I see the sentence “Severance is about” it ends a different way. But one of those things is the way that work asks, and sometimes requires, that we fracture ourselves, hiding bits of who we are, behaving in ways that are alien to us, prioritizing things about which we don’t care at all in our lives outside of the office. In some ways, this can be harmless and sometimes it’s a choice: I don’t put my whole personality on display in an office job because it’s none of those people’s business who I am. When you make the choice for yourself, it’s about privacy. When work makes it for you, it’s about a whole lot of other things: Power, control, capitalism, the inconvenience of people’s personalities, corporate secrets, to name a few. Where Severance is concerned, we don’t really know. What about MDR is so secret that people can’t know about it outside the office? What is it about the goat room? What is it about optics and design? Why are all these things hidden? It’s easy for me to get caught up in all the character interplay and forget to look at that bigger picture: Why invent severance in the first place? You don’t invent something like this out of concern for people. You invent it so you can do whatever you want to people without the world knowing. What is it that Lumon needs to hide?  Image: Apple TV+ Helena, in this episode, is not hiding. She is casually, terrifyingly present in the restaurant scene with Mark. I watched that scene with my hands over my mouth like it was a horror movie. Her pretend casual vibes. Her joking that isn’t joking. The way she tosses off, “I’m like the head of the company.” (Are you, though?) The way she watches him, searching for any clue that he knows what they did. And the clear kick she gets out of his ignorance. The whole thing is a power trip, including calling Gemma by the wrong name. She’s a predator and we are watching her play with her food. And she kept referring to the OTC as “the other night.” I am hung up on this timeline. The ORTBO was over the weekend; Mark referenced that in “Trojan’s Horse.” Was the OTC only the week before that? How compressed is time in this season? Or is she trying to refer to the ORTBO, to see if he knows, somehow, that she was there? Do they know Mark is trying to reintegrate? Are they letting it happen? What is her evil deal? What kind of threat is offering to take him home to father, anyway? The way Helena looms over the first scene with Mark and Helly this episode is also awful. I’m glad the show didn’t drag out the moment of letting Helly know what really happened, because that kind of forced lack of communication is such a cliché, and all these characters have going for them is their communication with each other. They don’t know much, but what they know, they share. Except for Dylan, still keeping family visit time a secret. Also: “We shared vessels.” What Lumon handbook horror is this turn of phrase? It sent me into a spiral about what innies actually know. They don’t have memories of their lives outside the severed floor, but they know about things. They have concepts of things. They have all their language skills, but then again, innie Mark doesn’t know what a deviated septum is. Where is the line? If it’s personal, do they not know it, but if it’s factual, they do? Wherever that line is, Helly knows about the tent, because innie Mark, a genuinely good dude, tells her about it. It was hard for me to watch him apologize when what happened was not his fault; it was satisfying to watch him come to the conclusion that Helena tricked them both. Which she did. She sexually assaulted both of them, in a very real way. Helly’s reaction is heartbreaking and real, and feels so true: She doesn’t want to be touched, she needs to be alone, she has to process. And then she decides she wants to experience vessel sharing for herself.  Image: Apple TV+ This could have been handled so poorly, but it works; it works because Britt Lower and Adam Scott are so gentle with each other in those scenes, from Helly’s anger, to reclaiming her body and wanting to make her own memories, to the very clear consent, to the tousled, sweet walk down the hallway afterward. It works because the writing is spot-on, and because the creative team symbolically clears the decks for the two of them: They get empty halls, blank walls, a clean slate, a reset conference room with makeshift tents. (All hail director Uta Briesewitz and writer Erin Wagoner.) The only bit of theorizing I think you can possibly do in that moment is note that those desks were designed for two people. It was a very faint bit of foreshadowing, maybe, when we first saw them, earlier in the season. (Also, they’re purple.) The gentleness continues right up until Mark starts bleeding—and what gets them Miss Huang’s attention is not their erotic entanglement but Mark’s secret reintegration, messing with his brain. The shift from that scene with Nurse Huang back to Mark’s basement is masterfully done, disconcerting and jarring, just as it would be for Mark.  Mirror imagery is building this season; last week there was that gorgeous shot of two Hellys in the bathroom with Mark, and this week we get the whole MDR team, duplicated in the kitchen mirror, all of them dealing with situations created by innie/outie crossover. Dylan’s wife is basically using his innie as relationship counseling, and hiding it from his outie. Mark is being stalked by his innie lover’s terrifying outie. Helly and Helena are at each other’s mercy in strange, strange ways. Even Miss Huang gets a reflection in her new hairdo: her side part and single barrette have changed to a middle part with mirror-image barrettes.  And then there’s Milchick’s mirror. His penance is haunting, the stuff of a different kind of horror movie. The shaking of his hands after her perfectly applies all those paper clips; the way his voice turns into a growl as his natural phrasing about eradicating childish folly devolves into “Grow up” and then, horribly, just “GROW.” His performance review booklet is there at his side, but it remains not entirely clear whether this is assigned penance or something he has independently decided to do to correct what Lumon sees as the errors of his ways. His performance review itself already included hours of unseen atonements. Is this extra credit? Is there someone on the other side of that mirror? Image: Apple TV+ A third of the way through this episode, I thought maybe it was going to be the breather, the comedown after all the chaos and revelations of the first half of the season. And then I was proven wrong, over and over again. “Attila” is probably 85% two or three people having a conversation, and yet it’s riveting. At multiple times it feels like horror: Helena stalking Mark, but also the reintegration scenes, the way Mark repeats “I remember,” the terrifying hole in the back of his head (that I really think would have bled a lot more!!! But I’m not a medical professional). The way the episode uses sound, from the prominence of Mark’s bubbling fishtank in the first scenes to the way the world sounds as he struggles through the chip-flooding procedure—this show is never less than stellar, but an episode like this really puts the spotlight on the precise way the small parts add up to a whole. Two people talking can be boring and static, or it can be shifting camera angles, Rehgabi eating frosting from a tub, Mark and Helly in a cramped bathroom stall they don’t even need to be in.  It’s gorgeous, claustrophobic, color-saturated, and meticulous. I am not a design geek, but even I can see how the swaths of color, the monochrome spaces, the halls and big rooms serve to isolate the characters, to make them pop against their surreally simple backgrounds. There is always more space than body, because they are so small, compared to Lumon. Each person’s area of control is tiny. Smaller than their own body, in some ways. And then there are Burt and Fields. I have been dying to get to this moment, and it was nothing like I ever would have expected or could have guessed. From the moment Irving steps into that house, everything is off. The house is so nice. Then Fields appears, cooking, and it’s John Noble, and listen: An entire generation, or probably at least two, strongly associates John Noble with Denethor, specifically with that distressing eating scene. You put John Noble in a kitchen and we’re all going to flinch, reflexively. Image: Apple TV+ And flinch I did. But I’m obsessed with the entirety of their evening, with the little slips and the moments of discomfort and the way outie Irv seems moderately comfortable, all things considered. (“What’s mine’s yours” is a wild thing to say to your dinner guest, in this context!). The introduction of religion (other than Kier’s) into the series adds a wrinkle, though I do not know enough about Lutheranism to say if the beliefs espoused here make any sense, or are weirdly warped or tweaked to fit the Severance world. Or if they’re just saying “Lutheran” because it has some letters in common with “Lumon” and this is all some very roundabout Lumon ploy to encourage severance by using heaven as bait.  What I do I know is that as far as philosophies go, we get both “innies have their own souls” and “innies can go to heaven distinct from their outies,” which is enough to make my head do a small explosion. And that’s before the bomb drops in the form of Fields’s slip about how long Burt worked at Lumon.  No one believes that was a mistake, right? We are now faced with the likely reality that sweet, lovely innie Burt has a conniving, old-school Lumon outie. (If he was having drinks with a Lumon partner, he certainly wasn’t severed.) Burt may have worked at Lumon before severance. Burt maybe, for all we know, retired, then went back to Lumon to work on the severed floor entirely because Fields wants to see him in heaven. And someone certainly told Drummond that Irving’s house was going to be empty that evening. (Drummond who has a whole ring of keys, seems to be looking for Burt’s address, and is notably not being barked at by Radar the dog.) This could be a major red herring, but the timing is very suspicious, as is the look on Burt’s face at the end of the night.  Image: Apple TV+ But why tell Irving, a virtual stranger, any of this? Why invite him over at all? Is Fields the relative angel he seems—he seems pretty confident he’s going to heaven—or is this all a fiction to intrigue Irving on the matter of his own innie soul? John Noble plays this whole scene so interestingly, so open and yet sly at once; his outburst about whether Burt and Irv might have had sex seems genuinely the words of an emotional man, but everything he does also feels controlled and calculated. Even the way they call each other “Attila” feels like part of a play they are putting on for an audience of one. And absolutely nothing fazes Irv in the least. (Not even the way the fire burns constantly behind Burt, reminding us that he’s done something that makes him so certain he’s not going to heaven.) It feels worth noting that the episode ends with the close of this scene, with Irving leaving Burt’s—even though forcefully reintegrated Mark has just collapsed on the floor, his two worlds meeting in his mind and in his house, as Devon and Reghabi cross paths for the first time. Outie Mark has had a very stressful couple of days, with the two halves of his mind starting to collapse in on each other, and on top of that, he may just have realized/discovered that his innie slept with his boss. His creepy, stalking boss. Adam Scott has to cover some wide ground this week, from his emotionally battered self at the outset, talking about bargaining, to his physically tattered self at the end, possibly having a seizure.  There’s an interesting parallel in how Lumon will do anything, even send Helena Eagan’s innie back to the severed floor, to get innie Mark to finish his work—while on the outside, outie Mark is spurred, by the presence of Helena Eagan, to finish reintegration. Which, by the by, why does Rehgabi suddenly have a new idea for how to do that? Why is she so intense about Gemma and the black hallway? How does she even know about the black hallway? What’s in it for her, anyway? And is Mark going to go to work tomorrow? Poor Helly is going to be stressed, again, if he doesn’t show.  Fortune Cookies “Did everyone sever their balls in the elevator this morning?” This line is designed to make us all wonder how we ever thought Helena was Helly, and it does the job admirably. Helly complaining that Helena dresses her, like a baby, makes that scene of her taking off her ugly pumps just that much more affecting: removing the discomfort Helena has put her in, in a small way that she can control. But the fact that she’s wearing nylons feels like another wrinkle in the what-era-are-we-in question. The question of Miss Huang’s fellowship, and what the heck Wintertide might be, is intriguing! And I’ve got nothing; please share with me all of your theories.  “Wintertide” just means “wintertime” according to Merriam-Webster, which brings me back to Kier, PE’s eternal winter situation. If Mark finishes Cold Harbor, will it be spring? I wonder if Drummond has another temper tattooed on his right hand. Actually, I wonder if he has all four, all over his body. We want to know what Devon was going to say about the rich lady from baby camp, right? The corn is very special. No one did any work this week, did they.[end-mark] The post This One’s In Tents: <i>Severance</i>, “Attila” appeared first on Reactor.

Excerpts Science Fantasy Read an Excerpt From Idolfire by Grace Curtis An epic sapphic fantasy roadtrip inspired by the fall of Rome… By Grace Curtis | Published on February 21, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from Idolfire by Grace Curtis, a character-driven science-fantasy road trip book with sword fights and a slowburn romance—out from DAW on March 11th. On one side of the world, Aleya Ana-Ulai is desperate for a chance. Her family have written her off as a mistake, but she’s determined to prove every last one of them wrong.On the other, Kirby of Wall’s End is searching for redemption. An ancient curse tore her life apart, but to fix it, she’ll have to leave everything behind.Fate sets them both on the path to Nivela, a city once poised to conquer the world with the power of a thousand stolen gods. Now the gates are closed and the old magic slumbers. Dead—or waiting for a spark to light it anew… “You” PAY ATTENTION. Pay very close attention. This is how a city is born. This is also how you are born, because you and this city are one. A single creature. An enfolded whole, more than coexisting. You and the city are the same being.  Aren’t you? Anyway. The story goes like this. A princess from a distant land (it doesn’t matter which) was fated to give birth to a great hero, and so her father, fearing he would be usurped by his grandson, forbade her to marry. But he couldn’t stop her from looking out of her window and  seeing the young soldier who paraded past each day in the courtyard. They married in secret and soon she was pregnant with his child.  (The story does not touch on what she was thinking, how she ever hoped to hide that pregnant belly from her father. And you can remember jokes about this part of the story, boys with half a blanket stuffed beneath their tunics saying in a girlish falsetto, “Oh no, Father, ’tis not a child, I have only gorged myself too much at dinner.” You all fell about laughing.)  Buy the Book Idolfire Grace Curtis Buy Book Idolfire Grace Curtis Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget There was a short period of marital bliss until the news inevitably reached the king. Of course, he was furious. The young soldier was executed despite the princess’s tearful pleas.  (Perhaps she thought there would be no need to keep the lie going forever, that the king would be moved by the conviction of his daughter, that he would show mercy on this small family once he saw how truly in love they were. Silly girl.) The king could not bring himself to kill his only child, and so he ordered her cast out into the wilderness. By now she was very pregnant indeed. Heartbroken and weeping, she wandered barefoot for many miles and fell down dead at the bank of a river. But the baby lived on. It was birthed from the corpse, squalling, slimy and horribly alive. A snake came along and tried to make a meal of the child, but the child bit first and suckled at the wound as he would a mother’s breast. A passing farmer found the boy soon after with his mouth still clasped on the serpent’s tail. The name of the princess is lost to history…  (Lost forever, though during your reign you will devote vast resources to trying to find some trace of her, this girl, who you can see in your dreams sometimes, her upper half in sleeping repose with a hand outstretched toward the water’s edge, her lower half a blur of shit and gore.) …but the son was called Nivelus and immortalized himself by founding a city on the bank of the river where he was born. He called the city Nivela. This is you. Part and parcel, blood and brick. Soul and city, forever intertwined. There is another story, one of a brigands’ camp that swelled over time with plundered wealth, and of a first generation born through kidnap and rape. But that story is whispered, not inscribed in stone. Excerpted from Idolfire, copyright © 2025 by Grace Curtis. The post Read an Excerpt From <i>Idolfire</i> by Grace Curtis appeared first on Reactor.

News paradise Hulu Gives Paradise a Second Season By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on February 20, 2025 Credit: Hulu/Disney/Ser Baffo Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Hulu/Disney/Ser Baffo There will be more trouble for us to watch in Paradise. Today, Hulu announced (via Variety) that Sterling K. Brown will continue to play U.S. Secret Service agent Xavier Collins in a second season. The show, which also has James Marsden playing a U.S. President who is found murdered in his private residence in the first episode, has done well enough to garner more episodes. Here’s the official logline for the show: Paradise is set in a serene community inhabited by some of the world’s most prominent individuals. But this tranquility explodes when a shocking murder occurs and a high-stakes investigation unfolds. I’m also going to put the show’s original trailer here, for those interested, and will then tread into spoiler territory… Okay, you with me? The second trailer Hulu released above teases a little bit about why this show might be relevant to Reactor readers. Read below for spoilers on exactly why this show is genre! At the end of the first episode, we find out that Xavier and twenty or so thousand people are the last of humanity living in an underground city after some undisclosed event makes life on the surface of the planet uninhabitable. The first season jumps timelines to before and after this catastrophic event, as it delves into the mystery of who killed the President and why. In addition to Brown and Marsden, Paradise stars Julianne Nicholson, Sarah Shahi, Nicole Brydon Bloom, Aliyah Mastin, and Percy Daggs IV. Dan Fogelman (This Is Us) is an executive producer, along with Brown, John Requa, Glenn Ficarra, John Hoberg, Jess Rosenthal, and Steve Beers. Season one of Paradise is currently streaming on Hulu, with the season finale premiering on Tuesday, March 4, 2025. The full first season will also being airing on ABC, starting with the first episode on April 7, 2025 at 10:00 p.m. ET. [end-mark] The post Hulu Gives <i>Paradise</i> a Second Season appeared first on Reactor.