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(from left) Violet (Meghann Fahy) and Henry (Brandon Sklenar) in Drop, directed by Christopher Landon. Photo Credit: Bernard Walsh/Universal Pictures Copyright © 2025 Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved. Imagine a night of hesitant hope, a first date after years of solitude. Now, picture that hope shattering, replaced by a chilling dread as anonymous, venomous messages flood your phone. That’s the heart-stopping premise of Drop, a thriller that will leave you breathless and questioning every flicker of charm across the candlelit table. Drop plunges audiences into the elegant, yet claustrophobic world of a widowed mother, venturing back into the dating scene. What begins as a promising evening with a captivating stranger swiftly descends into a nightmarish game of psychological terror. Each chime of her phone signals another insidious message, each word a sharpened blade aimed at her sanity. Is the charming man across from her the source of this digital torment,...

When Christopher Landon was announced as taking over the directorial reigns of the "Scream" franchise from Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gilpin of Radio Silence, it felt like the perfect passing of the torch to a person who was always meant to be at the helm of a Ghostface vs. Sidney Prescott showdown. "Some people don't know this, but one of the reasons why I was so excited to do 'Scream 7' was because I was an intern at the company that made the original 'Scream,'" he told me during an interview with Fangoria Magazine.

It was 1995, and Landon was tasked with reading a spec horror script from an at-the-time unknown writer named Kevin Williamson. It only took him a few pages of reading before he knew he had to convince his supervisor to buy it. Becoming the director of "Scream 7" was the kind of full circle career moment Hollywood loves,...

The box office juggernaut that is A Minecraft Movie shows no signs of slowing down this weekend. So far, it’s performing in line with what we predicted earlier this week, with a superb $80 million weekend and a drop of only 51%, which is a terrific result for a movie that opened as well as it did. The even better news for WB is that with Easter Weekend coming, family audiences will no doubt keep it performing at an incredibly high level. Warner Bros, who looked to be on the verge of calamity just a few weeks ago, should have a great holiday with the well-reviewed Sinners on track for a good opening, too. It really goes to show you that the whole business can pretty much change just on the merits of one unexpected hit at the box office, with no one expecting A Minecraft Movie to blow up the way that it did.

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In their invaluable book "Writing Movies for Fun and Profit," authors Thomas Lennon and Ben Garant (former members of "The State" and writers of hit films like "Night at the Museum" and "Herbie: Fully Loaded") had a few pieces of immutable advice for aspiring screenwriters hoping to make a living in Hollywood. Importantly, they advised that writers should never hang all your dreams on a single screenplay, and they should be able to toss aside a script if it gets turned down. They also advised that writers say, "Yes, I can do that," to every single studio note, no matter how ridiculous. They wanted to ensure that an ambitious should churn out as much work as possible, and worry more about "entertainment" than "art." 

Perhaps most crucially, an aspiring screenwriter should watch "Die Hard" over and over and over again.

“A Minecraft Movie” was assured to reign supreme at the domestic box office in its second weekend, but theaters are also getting buttressed with several more new releases, too. Of those, Angel Studios’ animated biblical film “The King of Kings” is leading the pack, heading for second place ahead of titles from major studios like “The Amateur” and “Drop.”

At the top of the charts, Warner Bros. and Legendary’s “A Minecraft Movie” keeps stacking blocks, notching another $20.5 million on Friday. The comedy adaptation of Mojang’s video game bestseller is expected to earn north of $80 million in its second frame, which would rank as the third-biggest weekend gross of the year behind its own smash $162 million opening and not far off from the $88 million debut of Disney’s “Captain America: Brave New World.” Talk about a block-buster.

Now projecting a drop around 50%, “Minecraft” likely won’t match the superlative...

Saturday Am: It’s the 15th weekend of the box office year, and only the fourth to exceed $100M+ for all titles. The industry needs to cherish this.

True, Warner Bros/Legendary’s A Minecraft Movie is delivering 52% of the $153M frame, still an $80M+ second weekend, but I can’t imagine that any exhibitor is complaining about the diversity or the amount of product in the marketplace. Global running total for Minecraft stands at $434M.

Without A Minecraft Movie, we’d have Angel Studios’ animated Charles Dickens-Jesus movie The King of Kings leading with around $17.6M; which technically as the faith-based distributed predicted, is the best opening for an animated Biblical movie, overpowering the opening of DreamWorks Animation’s Prince of Egypt ($14.5M) 27 years ago. King of Kings gets an A+ CinemaScore, 94% Screen Engine/Comscore PostTrak positive and 83% definite recommend among regular audiences. 59% female leaning due to moms.

If you were to imagine the worst possible first date ever, would it include being blackmailed into killing your date under the threat of your son being murdered? We’d really hope not.

But such is the case for Meghann Fahy in the new movie “Drop.” In it, she plays a single mom headed out on her first date in years. While there, she begins receiving mysterious messages from an unknown numbers, escalating in how menacing they are.

Filmmaker Christopher Landon is the writer-director of the film, following “We Have a Ghost” and hits like “Freaky,” “Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones” and the “Happy Death Day” films.

Here’s what you need to know.

When does it come out?

“Drop” released nationwide on Friday, April 11, 2025.

Is it streaming?

It is not. For now, you can only catch “Drop” in theaters. It is a Universal film though, meaning it’ll most...

The thrilling prequel to Yellowstone, 1923, is not for the faint of heart. Brandon Sklenar plays the rugged Spencer Dutton, and he had to push his limits for this role. He has faced down stampeding elephants, wrestled with lions, and even thrown punches in a gritty underground fight club on a rocking ship.

Brandon Sklenar and Julia Schlaepfer as Spencer and Alex in 1923 | Credits: Paramount+

These intense moments showcase Spencer, played by Brandon Sklenar, as a person shaped by grit and resilience. But amidst all the planned chaos, there was an unexpected incident: a helmet gone rogue that left Sklenar with a lasting mark on his head, which he eventually had to fix with superglue.

1923 actor Brandon Sklenar hurts himself while shooting Brandon Sklenar in 1923 | image: Paramount+

Sklenar’s portrayal of Spencer Dutton is a masterclass in controlled chaos. The character, a war veteran turned adventurer, roams the wilds of 1920s Africa and beyond,...

Christopher Landon is a name that horror fans likely know, but even those who don't know him by name surely know his work. As the writer of most of the "Paranormal Activity" movies before eventually directing "The Marked Ones," Landon has been putting his stamp on the genre for 15 years now. Now, Landon is back with his latest original feature film, "Drop," a contained thriller focused on the date from hell in a tech-gone-wrong scenario.

The film centers on Violet (Meghann Fahy), a widowed mother going on her first date in years. She meets her handsome date Henry (Brandon Sklenar) at an upscale restaurant and shortly thereafter becomes terrorized by a series of anonymous messages on her phone. Violet is quickly instructed to do terrible things on a mystery person's behalf, with her young son and sister at risk of being killed if she doesn't comply.

"Drop" recently premiered at SXSW in Austin,...

The latest from director Paul W.S. Anderson, a new big screen thriller from Christopher Landon, and a film adaptation of a popular horror game are just a few of this week’s new arrivals.

Here’s all the new horror that released April 7 – April 11, 2025!

For daily reminders about new horror releases, be sure to follow @HorrorCalendar.

Say his name, say his name… Rumpelstiltskin is back with a brand new update on the terrifying fairy tale, and the film was released on VOD outlets this past Tuesday.

Andy Edwards (Zombie Spring Breakers, Midnight Peepshow) directed. Hannah Baxter-Eve (Escape), Joss Carter (Tarot) and Adrian Bouchet (The Wheel of Time) star.

Miracle Media previews, “The film breathes new life into the age-old children’s story, with eye-popping, gnarly special effects and a potty mouthed female protagonist who isn’t your typical damsel in distress. With bawdy humour and devilishly delightful visuals, this new...

This week's episode of the Empire Podcast is jam-packed, bumper-sized, stuffed to the gills, rammed etc. etc. and so on and so forth. But, perhaps this week more than any other, we really do mean it as we have a whopping five — yes, Five! — guests on the pod. For starters, Chris Hewitt sits down for chats with two pairs: first, there's Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche, who reunite almost 30 years after The English Patient for this week's quite literally Odyssean drama The Return [24:05 — 38:32 approx]; then, he's back on the junket beat with Rami Malek and Laurence Fishburne, stars of the new spy thriller The Amateur, who reflect upon where they met, their working relationship, and the influence of Event Horizon upon modern cinema. [1:03:32 — 1:17:24 approx.] Finally, making a triumphant return to the Empire pod interviewing fray, Ben Travis has a lovely chat with Christopher Landon, the always affable director of this week's thriller Drop.

The only thing more stressful than having the jitters before a special occasion is having an outside party intensify that wave of anxiety tenfold under the threat of death. In Christoper Landon's superb new thriller "Drop," which /Film's Ryan Scott lauded as a lean, crowd-pleasing ride in his review, Meghann Fahy plays a single mother who finds herself on the first date from hell when she starts receiving a series of threatening airdrop messages. Should she not follow the mysterious figure's specific instructions to kill her date, then her son will die, as will anyone she attempts to warn in the process.

Landon makes the leap from horror-comedy to high tension thriller with ease here, creating a gripping sense of paranoia as our main character grapples with the terrible predicament she's found herself in. You'll see a lot of folks comparing "Drop" to Wes Craven's "Red Eye," and they're not wrong.

Director Christopher Landon has a proven track record for helming zippy fun horror, from the Happy Death Day films to Freaky to last year’s YA horror-lite We Have a Ghost. Landon’s latest, Drop, continues that streak while expanding his oeuvre with a more mature effort that leaves behind the teen slasher gimmicks. This first-date gone wrong thriller serves as the filmmaker’s propulsive, infectious tribute to Wes Craven’s Red Eye, resulting in a highly stylized dramatic thriller that’ll leave you fist-pumping to “Yahtzee!”

Drop opens with a harrowing scene of domestic abuse that not only earns instant rooting interest for heroine Violet (Meghann Fahy) but helps inform the choices she’ll make when faced with unthinkable pressure. Like, for example, her extreme nerves when embarking on her first date since her abusive ex passed. After gentle coaxing and help from her sister Jen (Violett Beane), who...

Christopher Landon is a master at making audiences vacillate between gut-wrenching terror and gut-busting laughter. That’s certainly true of the director’s latest film, “Drop,” which stars “White Lotus” alum Meghann Fahy as a single mother who’s tormented by threatening AirDrop messages while on a first date.

“I loved this idea of making a modern Hitchcock movie where we take this very known type of technology, and we see how it gets turned against us. This item of convenience becomes something else. I think everyone can relate to the idea of being harassed and abused by someone you can’t see,” Landon tells Variety.

With such a heavy plot, the director knew he needed to use the signature comedy fans have grown to expect after films like “Happy Death Day” and “Freaky,” but in a very different way. It starts with the AirDrop messages themselves — at first they feel like teenage pranks,...

Is A Minecraft Movie this quarter’s box office savior? Since Warner Bros/Legendary’s live-action adaptation of the beloved video game hit theaters, box office numbers are looking up! After a record-breaking debut of $300M+ worldwide, A Minecraft Movie makes headlines again as it crosses the $200M mark in domestic dollars. The family-friendly adventure from Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre director Jared Hess mined $7.1M on Thursday, bringing the film’s global total to $343.9M at this posting. Analysts expect A Minecraft Movie to drop by 60% this weekend. However, Minecraft could come in at $65M to maintain the top spot at the box office.

Meanwhile, Angel Studios’ faith-based animated feature, The King of Kings, blessed the box office with $2M in Thursday previews. At the same time, Rami Malek’s spy thriller, The Amateur, targeted a $2M Thursday launch. The Amateur opens in 3,400 theaters today, including 400 IMAX auditoriums, 300 Premium Large Format screens,...

At the junket for “Drop,” Christopher Landon’s new high-tech, Hitchcockian thriller about a single mom (played by “White Lotus” breakout Meghann Fahy) who goes on a date with a handsome stranger (“1923’s” Brandon Sklenar) and gets harassed by someone airdropping her threatening messages, the interview rooms were set up like the restaurant from the movie – a table, plates, silverware, the whole deal. It was a cool approximation of the movie but was also fitting for our conversation with director Christopher Landon, since “Drop” (from Blumhouse and Universal) comes after the director had flirted with a number of higher-profile franchise titles, before choosing this idiosyncratic gem.

“I know, I had all these big franchises that didn’t pan out,” Landon told TheWrap. “I have a franchise curse.”

Just a couple of years ago, Landon was flirting with a pair of big studio projects – a body horror reimagining of “Arachnophobia,” which...

Last Updated on April 12, 2025

The latest from Blumhouse surprised me. Drop is one of those flicks that you step into and realize that you are having lots of fun with. It helps that filmmaker Christopher Landon has crafted a taut little thriller. And he also happened to bring in the right actors. Meghann Fahy and Brandon Sklenar are terrific as a couple on a first date. You have a fancy, top-floor restaurant with one hell of a view. Add to that a series of threatening “airdrops” that send our heroic leading lady on a mission to save her family. It’s an exciting movie that is perfect for a date night. You can check out Chris Bumbray’s take on this engaging surprise here.

Earlier this week, we spoke to the cast and filmmaker behind Drop. First up, we spoke with Christopher Landon about his latest. He talked about bringing...

The new thriller has gotten fairly good reviews, and releases in theaters this week.

The world of dating is hard enough, but Violet’s blind date soon becomes a nightmare that she never imagined facing in “Drop,” the new thriller premiering in theaters on Friday, April 11. We’ll give you more details about the film and let you know when we think you’ll be able to stream it at home below!

Key Details: ➤ Critical darling: “Drop” currently has an 84% on Rotten Tomatoes. ➤ Peacock first: As a Universal-distributed movie, “Drop” will stream first on Peacock. ➤ How long?: A wait of about three months for “Drop” to stream seems likely. Sign Up $7.99+ / month peacocktv.com Watch a trailer for ‘Drop’

“Drop” follows a young woman named Violet (Meghan Fahy), a widowed mother who has been set up on her first date in years. When she meets Henry (Brandon Sklenar), she’s thrilled,...

Brandon Sklenar is arguably the most common fancast for Batman in the Dcu. Alan Ritchson, who also wants to play Batman, is close behind, but Sklenar seems to be the most popular choice.

Sklenar is known for his role in Vice alongside Christian Bale, as well as his role in 192, a spinoff of Yellowstone, and he's now starring in Drop.

Once again, in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Brandon Sklenar has commented on his desire to play Bruce Wayne/Batman in the Dcu.

Sklenar has clearly put a lot of thought into how he would portray the Dark Knight. He recognizes the huge differences between the various on screen iterations of the character when different actors take the role. He wants to put his own thoughts and ideas into the character of Batman.

“Every actor that’s played the role has done a very different incarnation of Bruce Wayne/Batman.

Director Christopher Landon is no stranger to challenging concepts with a high degree of filmmaking difficulty. His 2017 hit “Happy Death Day” was a horror riff on “Groundhog Day,” where he had to present the same events dozens of times with subtle and obvious changes, all while keeping the story clear and the visual style varied. In “Freaky,” Landon crafted a body-switch movie as intricate in its plotting as it is breezily entertaining — a complicated thriller that comes across as simple and effortless thanks to the filmmaker’s meticulous construction and unerring calibration of horror and comedy.

Like Landon’s previous films, his new movie “Drop” is a tonally tricky genre film with a logistical challenge at its center. Set almost entirely in a high-end restaurant, the movie follows widowed mother Violet (Meghann Fahy), who, while on a date, receives a series of threatening texts from someone claiming to have her son.

Disney’s The Amateur and Universal’s Drop lead the new releases in UK and Ireland cinemas this weekend as the two thrillers aim to appeal to those not tempted by Warner Bros mega-hit A Minecraft Movie.

James Hawes’The Amateuropens in 622 locations.Rami Malek stars as a grief-stricken CIA analyst who seeks revenge after his wife is killed in a terrorist attack. Laurence Fishburne, Jon Bernthal and Rachel Brosnahan are also among the cast.

Hawes’ last feature One Life opened on £1.7m in January 2024, going on to gross over £10m for Warner Bros. Malek has been attached to major...

© 20th Century Studios, Universal Pictures & Bteam Pictures Amateur © 20th Century Studios

Rami Malek protagoniza este thriller de espionaje dirigido por James Hawes (director de episodios de Slow Horses y Black Mirror). El que fue galardonado en 2019 por hacer de Freddie Mercury interpreta a Charlie Heller, un brillante pero introvertido criptógrafo de la CIA cuya vida da un vuelco cuando su esposa muere en un atentado terrorista en Londres. Cuando sus supervisores se niegan a actuar, Malek toma cartas en el asunto y se embarca en un peligroso viaje por todo el mundo para localizar a los responsables.

La Cita © Universal Pictures

Christopher Landon (Feliz día de tu muerte) vuelve a la carga, esta vez con un thriller de misterio (concentrándose más en el suspense que en su característico humor). Se estrenó en el Festival SXSW de Austin donde no pasó desapercibida. La historia sigue a una joven madre viuda (Meghann Fahy...

The fault with director Christopher Landon’s new film Drop will not be found within the setup – that is handled effectively enough – nor will it be gleaned via the delivery of said concept – that, too, is competently accomplished. No, the problem with the overall production is present in the simple fact that the stakes for the main character in the film prove so inconsequential for the viewer that the entirety of the film’s proceedings amount to little more than the least entertaining dinner date ever recorded on celluloid.

Meghann Fahy stars as widowed mother Violet who, on her first date in years, meets Henry (Brandon Sklenar) at an upscale restaurant. After the two hit it off after being surprised by how charming and attractive they find each other, Violet begins to receive increasingly more terrorizing texts – or ‘drops’ – on her phone providing her with instructions to kill Henry that...

Horror fans will be rushing to the movie theaters this weekend to see Drop and you might be wondering what to do when the credits start rolling!

Fans who check out movies these days are often expecting something in the credits, so audiences will wonder if they should stick around. Many movies these days, especially ones that are part of a franchise, will include extra footage at the end to tease future installments or to give audiences some bonus content.

So, do you need to stick around after Drop?

Keep reading to find out if you need to wait for a post-credits scene…

We can confirm that No, there is no post-credits scene during the movie Drop, so feel free to leave the theater right when the movie ends without having to worry about missing anything.

Check out photos of Meghann Fahy, Brandon Sklenar, and the rest of the cast at the premiere!

“Drop” is a new live-action mystery thriller, directed by Christopher Landon, starring Meghann Fahy and Brandon Sklenar, releasing April 11, 2025 in theaters:

“…’Violet’, a widowed mother, is on a date with ‘Henry’ when she is terrorized by a series of anonymous messages to her phone.

“The caller instructs her to tell nobody, and follow increasingly malicious instructions…”

Click the images to enlarge…...

Do you enjoy your date night movies with a side of thrills and drenched in fun-loving ambitions? That's Christopher Landon's romantic thriller Drop, about a dangerously awry first meetup. Meghann Fahy and Brandon Sklenar star in the impromptu assassination plot over dinner, which feels 90s coded in its entertaining abandon. Writers Jillian Jacobs and Chris Roach channel Wes Craven's Red Eye, Eugenio Mira's Grand Piano, and Joel Schumacher's Phone Booth. I had the pleasure of attending Drop's world premiere at this year's SXSW film festival, where it put a big ol' movie-loving smile on my face (here's the review to prove it).

A few short weeks later, I found myself in New Orleans at the Overlook Film Festival, eating po' boys and devouring horror movies. Drop brought the house down based on post-screening buzz—I didn't snag a ticket out of respect to other badge...

For creative minds, any idea can turn into an “Eureka” moment, just like Christopher Landon getting Drop‘s idea. The hook of Landon’s upcoming thriller is based on a real event. However, the real event luckily does not involve scary AirDrops, death threats, and a romantic date gone sinister.

A Still from Drop Final Trailer/ Credits: X/ @dropthemovie

The new Meghann Fahy-led thriller will be hitting theaters today, April 11, 2025, where Fahy plays Violet, a widowed mom dipping her toes back into dating Henry (Brandon Sklenar), a charmer she meets at a swanky Chicago spot.

What led to Landon’s digital thriller, Drop? Christopher Landon’s Drop/ Credits: Instagram/ @thechrislandon

Landon has a knack for flipping the mundane into mayhem, and Drop is no exception. Think Rear Window vibes with a smartphone twist where Violet is stuck, scanning the room for her tormentor while pretending everything is fine.

The...

Christopher Landon, known for blending horror and comedy in hits like Freaky and Happy Death Day, was originally attached to Scream 7. The filmmaker is finally speaking out about his sudden departure from the movie.

After Melissa Barrera was fired in November 2023, the fallout quickly turned toxic, and he was forced to step down. The director clarifies that he has no involvement in Barrera’s firing, yet found himself at the center of a storm that ultimately led to his exit.

Melissa Barrera in Scream VI |Credit: Paramount Pictures

Recently, he revealed the emotional toll of the situation, shedding light on the darker side of Hollywood and the intense backlash he faced after Barrera’s firing.

Christopher Landon opens up about his sudden exit from Scream 7

In an exclusive interview with Vanity Fair, Christopher Landon reflects on the turmoil that led to his exit as the director of the highly anticipated Scream 7. Melissa Barrera,...

Anyone who watched the series premiere of 1923 in December 2022 knew right away that movie stardom was an inevitability for Brandon Sklenar. His war hero and big-game hunter character, Spencer Dutton, instantly made him a popular choice among fancasters to lead any number of action and superhero franchises (more on this later). The Taylor Sheridan-penned Western drama series also made a point to give the actor plenty of dramatic and romantic material, opening the door to a trio of films with thematic connections.

Last year, Sklenar played Atlas Corrigan in the box office hit, It Ends with Us, and the drama about an abusive relationship quickly became a lightning rod for controversy due to the off-screen legal contention between star-producer Blake Lively and director-star Justin Baldoni. Sklenar’s character recognized that his childhood friend and first love, Lily Bloom (Lively), was an active victim of domestic violence, and so he...

As Warner Bros./Legendary’s “A Minecraft Movie” looks to prove that its status as a viral phenomenon is not a fluke, a flurry of films from mostly specialty distributors are hitting theaters this weekend, hoping to build word-of-mouth ahead of Palm Sunday. Disney/20th Century’s “The Amateur” and Angel Studios’ “The King of Kings” are among the set of five new releases.

But all eyes, of course, will be on “Minecraft” as it tries to turn the April box office into the pre-summer bonanza that theaters usually see in March. The videos and memes surrounding the film and its screenings have only grown since it topped “Barbie” with a $163 million domestic opening.

At a time when audiences are more selective than ever and are quicker to abandon a film if word-of-mouth about its quality is bad, “A Minecraft Movie” has a rare buzz that is divorced from quality...

With A Minecraft Movie an unexpected runaway smash hit (it opened bigger than Barbie), no one is expecting any of the three major new releases to pose much of a threat to its continued reign at the top of the box office heap. Given how much of a cultural phenomenon it has become, the movie should have no problem grossing about $70 million this weekend, which is what box office forecasters anticipated it would make on its First weekend.

But where does that leave the weekend’s new releases? All four movies – Warfare, Drop, King of Kings and The Amateur – have received decent enough reviews, but none of them really has a chance at opening above the teens. The one most likely to open in second place is Angel Studios‘ The King of Kings, which had a star-studded voice cast and is the highest pre-selling movie for the faith-based studio since Sound of Freedom.

Meghann Fahy and Leo Woodall barely talk about their relationship in interviews and have remained very private since they’ve been linked.

If you don’t know, the 34-year-old actress and 28-year-old actor met on the set of HBO’s The White Lotus season two, which filmed in 2022. They went Instagram official back in February 2024 and showed they were still going strong with photos from their recent vacation.

Now, Meghann has given a rare quote about dating someone in the same industry.

Keep reading to find out more…

While appearing on CBS Mornings to promote her new film Drop, Meghann said, “I think that it’s just really great to be deeply understood. There’s so many weird things about this industry and what we do. I think there’s just something really lovely about being with somebody who really gets that.”...

Think back to the single worst date you’ve ever had. You know, the one that started off bad before devolving into Chernobyl-level disaster, and that was less a missed connection than a full-on derailment? It may not have ended in romance, but it would always be a night to remember in all the wrong ways, not to mention giving you a great story to trot out at parties. Did you retrieve it from the ol’ memory banks? Good. Ok, now ask yourself, to the best of your recollection: Did...

Christopher Landon, who was originally set to direct Scream 7, is revealing what went down amid Melissa Barrera being fired from the film.

In a recent interview with Vanity Fair, Landon spoke about what a “dark and tumultuous experience” Scream 7 was. Barrera, who led Scream and Scream VI, was dropped in November 2023 from the seventh film because of her Israel-Hamas war social media posts.

Landon recalls receiving a phone call from Spyglass Media Group, the production company behind the movie, telling him the news that she was let go. He remembers everything “came tumbling down in an instant.”

And when Barrera’s co-star Jenna Ortega, voluntarily left the film following her being fired, things started to get “highly aggressive and really scary” because people blamed Landon for the situation.

“People were threatening to kill me and my family, to the point where the FBI was getting involved. I got messages saying,...

Following the record-breaking opening weekend for “A Minecraft Movie,” a new slate of blockbusters and indie films are hoping to drum up excitement in April about what 2025 has to offer in the cinema landscape.

Starting with the weekend’s wide releases, Alex Garland has teamed up with veteran Ray Mendoza on “Warfare,” a tense war drama based on the real memories of a group of Navy SEALs during the Iraq War. The cast includes Kit Connor, Charles Melton, Noah Centineo, Will Poulter, Joseph Quinn and Cosmo Jarvis.

Blumhouse is hoping to bring the thrills with “Drop,” helmed by “Happy Death Day” director Christopher Landon. Meghann Fahy stars as a widowed mother who takes a chance on dating again only to start receiving phone messages that threaten her son’s life. Additionally, “Bohemian Rhapsody” star Rami Malek is leading the action thriller “The Amateur” as a CIA decoder who seeks revenge...

Better late than never. Hollywood major studios are catching up with the fact that’s it’s spring break and that there’s an audience out there for movies, not just with Warner Bros/Legendary’s monolithic A Minecraft Movie driving business, set for a second weekend -60% or $65M, but also five wide entries hitting the marketplace before the traditionally lucrative Easter weekend of April 18-20 (that’s when Warners opens Ryan Coogler’s period vampire movie Sinners starring Michael B. Jordan).

Comscore reports that 10% of K-12 schools are off this Friday and 1% colleges, moving to 72% K-12 off, 28% colleges on break on Good Friday, April 18.

Minecraft notched the fourth-biggest Tuesday in April yesterday with $12.7M, after 2019’s Avengers: Endgame ($33.1M), 2023’s The Super Mario Bros Movie ($15.4M) and 2015’s F7 ($13.3M). The running cume through five days (Friday-Tuesday) is $185.4M. Although that’s 9% lower than the first five days...

A Minecraft Moviestarring Jason Momoaand Jack Blackcontinues to dominate the box office after its April 4, 2025, premiere. The Warner Bros. and Legendary Entertainment comedy became the biggest debut of the year after earning arecord-breaking $162.7 million on its opening weekend, and is expected to maintain momentum into its official first week, followed by an expected dump through the second weekend. This, however, still marks the biggest ever opening weekend for a video game adaptation, as AMinecraft Movie has officially surpassed The Super Mario Bros. Movie’s 2023 opening.

As reported by Variety, A Minecraft Movie is expected to see a decline in ticket sales while advancing towards the second weekend, with projections indicating a 50% to 60% decline from the opening due to the debuts of Drop and The Amateur. Despite this, the film is poised to retain strong momentum with exact earnings expected to fall somewhere in the ballpark of $65 million to $82 million. The...

On June 11, 2018, it was announced that genre regular James Wan’s company Atomic Monster was teaming up with Amblin to produce a remake of the 1990 “nature run amok” horror film Arachnophobia – and almost exactly four years later, we heard that that Christopher Landon, director of Happy Death Day and Freaky, would be writing and directing the new take on Arachnophobia. Fourteen months after that, it was announced that Landon was set to direct Scream 7. But, as it turns out, Landon won’t be making either of those movies – and in a new interview with Vanity Fair, he revealed exactly why he stepped away from both projects.

As we all know, Scream 7 completely fell apart around Landon. At one time, it was expected that Scream (2022) and Scream VI leads Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega would be the leads in this sequel as well. But then Barrera was fired from...

Original “Scream 7” director Christopher Landon quit the horror sequel after receiving troubling, upsetting death threats.

In an interview with Vanity Fair published Tuesday, Landon revealed that he received a wave of vitriolic hatred following the departures of original “Scream 7” stars Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega so intense that he felt like he had no choice but to abandon the film’s director’s chair. “‘Scream’ was a very dark and tumultuous experience,” the filmmaker said.

“People were threatening to kill me and my family, to the point where the FBI was getting involved,” Landon, who has two young sons with husband Cody Morris, explained. “The head of security at various studios and the FBI had to examine the threats. It was highly aggressive and really scary.”

When Landon was selected as the director of “Scream 7,” he seemed like a natural choice to take over the franchise. In films like “Happy Death Day,...

Joey King is proving that you can look super chic on the red carpet while wearing affordable clothing!

The 25-year-old actress wore a $45 dress from The Occasion by Old Navy while attending the red carpet premiere for the movie Drop on Tuesday (April 8) in Hollywood.

Joey was at the event to support her friend, who produced the movie!

Instead of wearing clothes from a luxury designer, which often retail for thousands of dollars, Joey chose a dress from Old Navy‘s new line meant to help you “make an entrance.”

The “Fit & Flare Taffeta Cami Mini Dress” features adjustable grosgrain tie straps, a center back zipper, pockets for function and fashion, and smocked bodice side panels for stretch. The dress retails for $49.99, but it’s on sale right now for $44.99, which is 10% off the list price.

Joey completed her look with $158 earrings by Bonheur and a $1,200 ring by Hirotaka.

Disclosure:...

It looks like it's honesty week when talking about Scream 7. Things kicked off with Jenna Ortega revealing that it wasn't scheduling conflicts or a pay dispute that led to her dropping out of the seventh installment, with the real reason being the issues surrounding Melissa Barrera's firing and not being able to make the film with the team she had become accustomed to. Now director Christopher Landon, who was set to helm the seventh entry, is revealing a bit about what happened when he had to exit the project and the end result says a lot about the negative side of the fandom.

During a chat with the Evolution of Horror Podcast, Landon was candid about his exit, and it's easy to see that how the experience turned out still affects him because he really wanted to do the film. However, despite how things turned out, he believes...

The origin story of Drop — the new Blumhouse and Platinum Dunes thriller that sees a widowed mother’s first date upended when she starts receiving anonymous, threatening messages to her phone — began three years ago when its producers were vacationing in Italy.

Cameron Fuller and Sam Lerner were mid-dinner “in a packed restaurant and someone started AirDropping very creepy Shrek memes” to Lerner’s girlfriend Olivia Sui.

“We tried to figure out who it was the entire night, and they kept coming and we couldn’t figure it out,” Fuller, who produced the film with Michael Bay and his father Brad Fuller, told The Hollywood Reporter at the Los Angeles premiere on Tuesday. “The whole meal was about targeting the one person who was doing this. We followed the one person we were 100 percent sure it was to the pool where we could isolate their AirDrop with ours and we’d know it was him,...

Plot: A widowed mother (Meghann Fahy) goes on a date with a handsome stranger (Brandon Sklenar) she’s been chatting with on dating apps. While at dinner, she receives an escalating series of anonymous messages, with them soon revealing that they are holding her sister and son hostage and will kill them unless she poisons her date.

Review: Christopher Landon’s Drop is a slam-bang thriller that absolutely brought the house down at SXSW (which is where I first saw it). A contained thriller in the vein of Wes Craven’s underrated Red Eye, Landon’s film hits all the right notes, giving him a solid, Hitchcock-flavored romp in the vein of his own Disturbia, that should be a big hit from Blumhouse when it comes out next month.

Contained thrillers, where most of the action is limited to one locale, have become increasingly in vogue, but Landon’s...

Meghann Fahy and Brandon Sklenar in ‘Drop’ (Photo: Bernard Walsh © 2025 Universal Pictures)

Over the years, horror juggernauts Blumhouse Productions have built a stable of creatives that they’ve been able to pull from to make their movies. So, what do they get when they team up director Christopher Landon with writers Jillian Jacobs and Chris Roach (Fantasy Island and Truth or Dare)? They get their newest suspense flick, Drop.

Drop is about a young, widowed mother named Violet (Meghann Fahy from The White Lotus) who, in an effort to jumpstart her social life, makes a date on a dating app with a guy named Henry (Brandon Sklenar from 1923). The two meet at a romantic high-rise restaurant, and things seem to be going well. Except for the fact that their date is constantly being interrupted by someone who keeps sending Violet photo drops on her phone. The drops go from annoying to threatening,...

Many will remember that “Scream 7” saw a rather large controversy when Spyglass Media decided to fire franchise actress Melissa Barrera for sharing a tame pro-Palenstine post on social media. That choice eventually led to backlash, with the project’s director, Christopher Landon, exiting, making way for franchise screenwriter Kevin Williamson to replace him as the studio chugged along on the horror legacy film.

Landon spoke with Vanity Fair to promote his latest film, “Drop,” and revealed that he and his family endured abuse and death threats in the wake of the Barrera’s firing by the studio, which led to the involvement of the FBI.

Continue reading ‘Scream 7’: Former Director Christopher Landon Received Death Threats After Melissa Barrera Firing at The Playlist.

Great ideas can strike in the strangest of circumstances. In the case of Drop, it came when Olivia Sui, girlfriend of the film’s executive producer Sam Lerner, received mysterious Shrek memes (of all things) through AirDrop, Apple’s close-proximity file-sharing feature. Swap ogre memes for murder threats and you have director Christopher Landon’s ridiculously fun tech thriller, which stretches its premise to absurd heights befitting of its inspiration.

It starts out innocently enough. Violet (Meghann Fahy) has been out of the dating game for so long that her wardrobe has gone full mum-core. But with the promise of getting Violet’s five-year-old son into bed by 8pm, her sister pushes her to venture out for a first date with photographer Henry (a charming Brandon Sklenar). Over dinner at a fancy high-rise eatery, they flirt despite the nerves — until Violet’s phone buzzes with messages that escalate from weird to deadly.

Dating in the modern world is excruciating hell, obviously but aha, “you don’t even know the half of it!” says “Drop” the silly, far-fetched, but still slightly enjoyable thriller from horror director Christopher Landon.

However, before the entrees, “Drop” delivers the aperitifs of haunting trauma. Emmy-nominated thespian Meghann Fahy, breakout actress of “The White Lotus” season two, stars as Violet, and we’re introduced to her bloody, beaten and starring down the barrel of a gun.

Continue reading ‘Drop’ Review: Meghann Fahy Is Worth The Dating Drama In Otherwise Silly, But Amusing Thriller at The Playlist.

A Minecraft Movie is not just surviving another journey into the Nether this weekend, but it will further establish its dominance at the box office. The film is now projected to make what experts thought it would gross during its opening weekend, further showcasing its potential of becoming the highest-grossing video game movie of all time.

Per the latest box office projections, A Minecraft Movie is expected to gross around $65 million to $82 million, a 50% to 60% decline for its second weekend at the box office. Of course, in fairness to the unexpected success of the film, pundits are also claiming that Minecraft could surpass those numbers and reach a total similar to Barbie's $93 million second weekend. It will easily dominate this week's new titles, which most prominently include 20th Century Studios' The Amateur, which stars Academy Award-winner Rami Malek. Those expected to come well short of those two films include The Faith of Kings,...

Not long ago, director Christopher Landon of “Happy Death Day” and “Freaky” fame was attached to a remake of low-key horror comedy classic “Arachnophobia.”

In fact, the last time TheWrap talked to Landon — around the time of his Netflix movie “We Have a Ghost” — he was coming from a meeting where he was picking out the spiders that would star in his take on the 1990 original.

This didn’t end up happening, as Landon revealed that he is no longer attached to “Arachnophobia.”

While we were chatting with Landon about his excellent new thriller “Drop,” we had to ask – what was his take on “Arachnophobia?”

“I wrote a script that I loved. I actually think it was one of my best,” he explained. “But the problem with that is that you still have to deal with other people who have different opinions about what kind of movie we should be making.

Editor’s Note: This review was originally published during the 2025 SXSW Film & TV Festival. Universal Pictures releases “Drop” in theaters Friday, April 11.

It’s a good thing director Christopher Landon‘s exit from the “Scream” franchise cleared his schedule: The punchy if risible single-location thriller “Drop” delivers a far more pleasurable jolt than any I.P. could have. Here, “The Bold Type” and “The White Lotus” TV comedy breakout Meghann Fahy proves herself a terrific (and Hitchcock-shade-of-blonde) genre actress as a traumatized widow on the worst first date of her life. Luckily, that first date is in the soothing, handsome presence of Brandon Sklenar as a press photographer with baggage of his own.

Running a cool 90 minutes, “Drop” takes place almost entirely in a top-of-the-world kind of high-rise restaurant in Chicago, where Violet (Fahy) is meeting Henry (Sklenar) off a Tinder-like app, and where this appears to be Violet...