The People’s Joker Update; Outsmarting Agatha Christie; More Blade Runner

What happened to The People’s Joker; how the new film See How They Run outsmarts Agatha Christie; Amazon launches a Blade Runner 2099 limited series with Ridley Scott on board. All in today’s Movie News Rundown.

Out Today: Ti West’s horror-slasher Pearl starring Mia Goth, Brett Morgen’s IMAX David Bowie documentary experience Moonage Daydream, and Gina Prince-Bythewood’s historical drama The Woman King starring Viola Davis and John Boyega.

Outsmarting Agatha Christie: The mystery author wrote a tricky clause into her contract for The Mousetrap to keep the play from ever providing the basis for a movie… until now. Here’s Josh Encinias talking with See How They Run director Tom George about how his new mystery film, Sam Rockwell and Saoirse Ronan, gets around Christie’s clever ploy. 

And Of Course: You can check out our Ti West interview here.

Update on The People’s Joker: Director and star Vera Drew has released a statement explaining what’s going on with rights issues surrounding her queer Joker parody movie, and why its additional screenings got pulled from TIFF after it premiered.

The Statement: “A media conglomerate that shall remain nameless sent me an angry letter (misreported as a ‘cease and desist’) pressuring to not screen. Any other film festival would have pulled us immediately, but after being fully transparent with TIFF, we agreed to premiere as planned while scaling back our later screenings to mitigate potential blowback. It was disappointing (especially since I went to great lengths with legal counsel to have it fall under parody/fair use) but I made this choice to protect our film’s future and to protect our new friends at TIFF who have been some of TPJ’s biggest advocates,” Drew wrote on Twitter. “The People’s joker will screen again very soon at several other festivals worldwide. We are humbly seeking a distribution partner who believes in what we are doing, will protect us, and will eventually help us make this film accessible to trans people and their families everywhere. FREE THE PEOPLE’S JOKER.”

More Blade Runner: Amazon is making a new Blade Runner 2099 limited series that will take place 50 years after the events of Blade Runner 2049, Denis Villeneuve’s sequel to the original 1982 film, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The Amazon series will be produced by Ridley Scott, who directed the original starring Harrison Ford.

Also: It’s the 40th anniversary of Blade Runner this year, and some theaters are doing anniversary screenings. How fun!

“Life Is Moving at Six Million Miles Per Hour”: That’s how Timothée Chalamet describes his present reality of being a gigantic movie star. “It felt like every dream came true, exponentially,” he told British Vogue in its new cover story.

Hamptons Film Festival Slate: The rest of the slate for the Hamptons Film Festival has been announced, and the closing night film is SR., Chris Smith’s tender portrait of Robert Downey Sr.’s life and career. Smith collaborated with Robert Downey Jr. to make the film about his father, who died in July 2021. HIFF 2022 will also feature Sarah Polley’s Women Talking as a centerpiece film. Based on the novel by Miriam Toews, the movie follows a group of women in an isolated religious community who begin to reconcile their reality with their faith. It stars Claire Foy, Rooney Mara, Jessie Buckley, Judith Ivey, Ben Whishaw, and Frances McDormand. See the full program here and get tickets here.

Main Image: Harrison Ford in the original 1982 Blade Runner.