Fall Adaptation Preview

Summary

Book Riot – The Podcast

Episode: Fall Adaptation Preview
Release Date: August 20, 2025
Hosts: Jeff O’Neal & Rebecca Schinsky

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Overview

In this timely episode, Jeff and Rebecca dive into the stacked lineup of fall 2025 book-to-screen adaptations—covering movies, miniseries, and even stage-to-screen projects. Their discussion ranges from cozy mysteries and Oscar hopefuls to a new spin on classic tragedies and buzzy genre reboots. Fans of literature, film, or both will find lively opinions, in-depth industry context, and some hot takes on trailers, directors, and what’s likely to hit with audiences.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Stage for Adaptation Season

• Jeff and Rebecca agree summer was light on standout adaptations (“nothing to watch this summer,” Rebecca, 01:36), but fall's calendar is “stacked.”
• Adaptation-heavy fall aligns with Oscar-bait strategy: “Oscar contenders tend to come out [now], and a lot of Oscar contenders historically are based on books.” (Rebecca, 02:30)

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2. Big-Name Series Returns: Slow Horses Season 5 (September 24)

• Notable as an adaptation mainstay: “This is just what we drag out every fall to make ourselves feel better.” (Jeff, 02:51)
• Gary Oldman and Kristin Scott Thomas return, with new cast members joining.
• Rebecca reiterates its appeal for both spy lovers and the uninitiated; it’s “clever, funny, sometimes crude” (03:26).
• “They’ve been pumping them out… We get the fall and we get the spring.” (Rebecca, 03:05)

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3. Netflix Cozy Mystery: The Thursday Murder Club (August 26)

• Jeff deems it one of the surest bets in recent memory—a “High Floor, Low Ceiling” franchise, suggesting reliability rather than riskiness (03:35).
• Starring Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley, and Celia Imrie; directed by Chris Columbus.
• Chris Columbus’s track record as “reliably family-friendly” and capable with valuable IP is discussed at length—“Chris Columbus is who you get when you don’t get Ron Howard. Competent filmmakers: Are they gonna blow your doors off? Probably not. Are they gonna screw it up? Also, probably not.” (Jeff, 06:18)
• Rebecca is won over by the trailer: “This trailer looks charming as shit. Like, I will be watching this.” (05:23)
• Boomers will flock to it: “I sent a missive out to the boomers out there … and let me tell you, the boomers know.” (Jeff, 07:21)
• The fifth book in the series, The Impossible Fortune, drops in September—timed for binge-watchers to roll right into reading. (Rebecca, 06:46)

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4. Dark Comedy Remake: The Roses (formerly War of the Roses)

• New adaptation, gender-flipped with Olivia Colman (as a star chef wife) & Benedict Cumberbatch (as stay-at-home dad).
• Tone shift from the 1989 “dark and spiky” original: “This looks like a farce.” (Rebecca, 09:46)
• Script by Tony McNamara (Poor Things), aiming for more comedy: “What if we took this idea but made it funny instead of really dark and kind of thrillery?” (Rebecca, 09:47)
• Big question: Is divorce still a compelling subject? “I feel like the divorce as subject for art making is a little played out and you need to be like Leslie Jamison level sentence writer.” (Jeff, 11:28)
• Rebecca’s main take: “This looks like an airplane movie to me.” (12:35)
• Paperback tie-in has an endorsement from Gillian Flynn, which the hosts consider very appropriate. (Rebecca, 10:38)

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5. Artful Gay Historical Drama: History of Sound (September 12)

• Based on Ben Shattuck’s short story, starring Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor.
• The pitch: Two young men in WWI travel the US recording voices/music—and fall in love. “You don’t do any better than those guys right now.” (Rebecca, 12:59)
• Jeff notes the trade-off typical in period LGBTQ+ dramas: “The trade off is that it doesn’t really wrestle with the now… You have the immediate pathos of, wow, things were so hard then.” (Jeff, 13:02)
• Rebecca’s all in: “I’m gonna go see anything that Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor are in together. That’s a good use of my 10 bucks a month movie pass.” (Rebecca, 14:18)

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6. The Big Literary Prestige Event: One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson adapts Pynchon’s Vineland)

• Touted as “the adaptation of the season” (Jeff, 14:38).
• PTA adapts an “extraordinary, literary, and surreal” Thomas Pynchon novel — “It’s both heady and bawdy, zany and intellectual, all at the same time.” (Jeff, 17:56)
• Leonardo DiCaprio stars; trailer shows him “having the time of his life” (Rebecca, 20:47).
• The big question: Read the book first, or after? “My intuition is… there’s a real chance they are distinctly different works and that hopping from one to the other may be interesting, but I don’t know how illuminating it will be.” (Jeff, 21:00)
• PTA likely to take liberties: “Even when a movie is better than the underlying source material, it rarely is a deepening. It usually is a simplification and a clarification.” (Jeff, 21:00)

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7. Notable October-November Adaptations

Ballad of a Small Player (Netflix, October 15)

• Colin Farrell stars as a gambler in Macau, with Tilda Swinton. Directed by Edward Berger (All Quiet on the Western Front). Blind-watch confidence: “This is a very easy press play for me.” (Jeff, 23:13)

Hedda Gabler (Theatrical, date TBA)

• Modern adaptation starring Tessa Thompson and Imogen Poots, directed by Nia DaCosta. Jeff contextualizes: “Hedda Gabler and Lady Macbeth might be the two canonical female roles in Western theatrical experience.” (23:15)
• Rebecca highlights resonance with “desperate housewife” themes and feminist literary history. (24:37)

Nuremberg (November 7)

• Based on nonfiction, The Nazi and the Psychiatrist. Cast: Russell Crowe, Rami Malek, Michael Shannon.
• Rebecca on Shannon: “Michael Shannon, obsessed with R.E.M… I love Michael Shannon in anything.” (26:53)
• Drama between scene-chewer titans Crowe and Malek anticipated: “Rami Malek interviewing as a psychiatrist interviewing Nazi war crimes—I could find myself being very compelled by his eyes and his sort of affect and that whole tension thing.” (Jeff, 27:48)

Train Dreams (Dennis Johnson, November 7 theatrical, Netflix November 21)

• Quiet, literary Americana starring Joel Edgerton. “Train Dreams is extraordinarily good… It is short, so even if you don’t like it, it’s gonna be over.” (Jeff, 30:54)
• Adapted by the Sing Sing (Oscar-nominated) script team, highly endorsed by Jeff: “You would like this book. I don’t think there’s any question about that.” (30:40)

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8. Blockbusters, Reboots, and IP Adaptations

The Running Man (Stephen King, November 7)

• Action reboot starring Glen Powell, Josh Brolin, Lee Pace.
• “It actually trends a lot more toward the Hunger Games...” (Jeff, 32:40)
• “This looks like fun. I will not have problem getting myself to see this.” (Jeff, 33:37)
• Glen Powell’s star trajectory discussed; both expect him to do well.

Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein (Netflix, November, date TBA)

• Stacked cast (Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi, Christoph Waltz, Mia Goth), but trailer worries both hosts.
• Jeff: “Frankly, the trailer looks pretty bad. So that’s where I am on Frankenstein.” (34:54)
• Rebecca’s skepticism: “A piece of art that has been worked over for that long often does not come out well.” (35:33)
• Release date ambiguity spurs further doubt: “If it were great, I think they’d put it out right before Halloween…” (Rebecca, 36:49)

Wicked: For Good (November 23)

• Second half of the beloved musical adaptation.
• New songs teased; hosts wonder if excitement can match last year’s hype: “The real draw here…is we have new songs.” (Jeff, 39:12)
• Tween audience is “fit to be ready.” (Jeff, 39:00)
• Enduring fanfare anticipated—“A lot of juice behind [it]” (Jeff, 40:19)

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9. Oscar Bait and Literary Adaptations

Hamnet (Theaters December 12)

• Adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s hit novel about Shakespeare’s family, starring Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley, helmed by Chloe Zhao.
• “Hamnet looks fantastic. I think both those will be really solid moviegoing experiences.” (Rebecca, 53:17)
• Jeff recommends reading the novel before seeing the film. (42:58)

Die My Love (Nov 7)

• Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson star; based on Ariana Harwicz novel.
• Rebecca’s take: “The two and a half minute trailer… looks like a theater class warm-up exercise. But it was compelling.” (51:38)

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10. Holiday Season Genre Fare

The Housemaid (Christmas Day)

• Adapted from Frieda McFadden’s viral thriller, starring Sydney Sweeney and Brandon Sklenar.
• Rebecca questions its suitability as a Christmas movie for multi-gen families: “That is a challenging thing, if you have multiple generations, you got to pick a movie…” (46:59)
• Sydney Sweeney’s ubiquity discussed: “She’s everywhere. And that’s good exposure for her face on a movie poster.” (Rebecca, 47:56)
• Jeff wonders if this is her shot to become a box office headliner: “This could be a franchise.” (Jeff, 48:15)

Honorable Mentions

• Regretting You (Colleen Hoover), Verity (Anne Hathaway attached), and Devil Wears Prada 2 (Anne Hathaway returns).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “This trailer looks charming as shit.” — Rebecca (05:23), on Thursday Murder Club
• “It’s both heady and bawdy, zany and intellectual, all at the same time.” — Jeff (17:56), on One Battle After Another
• “Who's like, I want to go see people fight comedically about divorce?” — Jeff (11:44), on The Roses
• “The Oscar’s love Shakespeare.” — Rebecca (41:21), on Hamnet
• “In my experience, even when a movie is better than the underlying source material, it rarely is a deepening. It usually is a simplification...” — Jeff (21:00)
• “Michael Shannon, obsessed with R.E.M… I love Michael Shannon in anything.” — Rebecca (26:53)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Timestamp | Topic/Segment | |-----------|------------------------------------------------------| | 01:21 | Episode starts, hosts introduce adaptation theme | | 03:05 | Slow Horses season 5 preview | | 03:54 | Thursday Murder Club detailed breakdown | | 07:47 | The Roses (War of the Roses reboot) | | 12:40 | History of Sound | | 17:56 | One Battle After Another/Vineland | | 23:13 | Ballad of a Small Player | | 23:15 | Hedda Gabler modern adaptation | | 26:25 | Nuremberg (Crowe, Malek, Shannon) | | 29:16 | Train Dreams | | 32:05 | The Running Man reboot | | 34:54 | Frankenstein (del Toro) | | 39:12 | Wicked: For Good | | 42:58 | Hamnet | | 47:56 | The Housemaid | | 51:38 | Die My Love (Lawrence/Pattinson) | | 52:19 | Confidence picks, predictions, hosts' curiosities |

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Final Thoughts & Picks

Most Confident Picks for Success:

• Rebecca: One Battle After Another & Hamnet (“I think both of those will be really solid moviegoing experiences.” 53:17)
• Jeff: “I have Vineland one.” (54:02); also excited for “Ballad of a Small Player” (54:02)

Biggest Curiosity:

• Rebecca: The Roses ("...it just looks so different from the source material and it's hard to tell from the trailer exactly what it's going to be...high curiosity level," 55:23)
• Jeff: Train Dreams ("They take away my card if I don't say Train Dreams," 56:01)

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Tone & Style

• Smart, playful banter with deep dives into adaptation and literary culture.
• Hosts offer both industry insights and personal, relatable reactions (“airplane movie,” “fit to be ready”).
• Notes of affectionate skepticism and genre fandom throughout, never shying from strong opinions.

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Summary for Non-Listeners

If you haven’t listened, this episode is your perfect cheat sheet on what to read and watch—and which adaptations might be overhyped. Jeff and Rebecca bring the wit and expertise of industry insiders with the enthusiasm of lifelong fans, mixing literary criticism, Hollywood analysis, and candid, sometimes spicy takes on the season’s biggest projects. Whether you want a cozy murder, a Shakespearean weepie, or Oscar buzz bait, you’ll come away with sharp context, plenty of recommendations, and more than a few laughs.

Transcript

[Rebecca Schinsky]

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[Jeff O'Neill]

This is the Book Riot podcast. I'm Jeff O'. Neill.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And I'm Rebecca Schinsky.

[Jeff O'Neill]

We're talking adaptations because it's fall. I mean, it's basically fall. We're just sort of stumbling out of of August here at this point. 12 days, it's going to be Labor Day. We're done. We're toasted.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Like, nothing to watch this summer. And I have been very sad about it. And the fall is stacked. Like, I did not realize how stacked the fall is until I started making notes for this a couple of days ago. We're gonna have some good movie time coming up.

[Jeff O'Neill]

You know, it's been like at the beginning of the season, of the summer season, there's like, movies are back, things are doing well, and then Fantastic Four kind of underperformed like Superman did okay. A lot of people talk about Superman didn't do that great.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

The last Mission impossible was a 3 and a half hour long slog in May.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Jurassic park did okay. They all just sort of did okay. Weapons is getting a lot of heat. But fall is really where our interests lie because it is adaptation season. Like, it's like the locusts come out in the summer, the adaptations hatch. They've been in larval form since last October, and they're coming out now.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And this is when Oscar contenders tend to come out. And a lot of Oscar contenders historically are based on books. I think there are some strong shots among the ones we're talking about today. Certainly people who look like they're positioning themselves for an Oscar run, some really familiar, beloved properties and also some stuff that was pretty new to me and I think will be new to listeners.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So at this point, it seems crazy that we're at season five of slow horses time. September 24th. This gets honorable mention. We've talked about a lot. Slow Horse is now warhorse. This is just what we drag out every fall to make ourselves feel better.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And they. Well, they do two a year. Two seasons a year. We get the fall and we get the spring. So we're really only in like the third year of our love for slow horses. But they've been pumping them out. Gary Oldman, Kristen Scott Thomas, a whole bunch of other great folks.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Jack Loudon, he's sort of almost a household name at this point. He's in all kinds of stuff all over the place to see if you.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Like spy things or even if you think you don't quite like spy things, but you're open to a clever, funny, sometimes crude one. It's really, it's a really good time.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. We're going to kick off the fall season in August because Katabasis, I guess, broke the seal on this because October, August 26th, that's when it comes out. Thursday, Murder Club, which has to be one of the more, I don't know, sure Fire, High Floor, Low Ceiling adaptations we've had in quite some time.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yes. Yeah. This is coming to Netflix. It stars Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley and Celia Emery in a supporting role. I recognized her, her from playing Sam's mom on Better Things, which she was really, really terrific and funny and of course, based on the Richard Osmond books that you love. Directed by Chris Columbus. I don't know if you've heard of him. Jeff.

[Jeff O'Neill]

This is High. High Ceiling. Low Floor is Chris Columbus's middle name.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. Home Alone 1 and 2, Adventures in Babysitting, Mrs. Doubtfire and the first two Harry Potter movies, however you feel about them or however you feel about jkr. Chris Columbus did a thing with those movies.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I feel like I'm. Because I think he also did Night at the Museum as well. And I feel like all of these movies we're talking about Maybe save for Adventures in Babysitting, which I haven't seen in a million years. Like, it's hard to give Chris Columbus the credit for them because Home Alone 1 and 2 is John Hughes and Culkin in Macaulay Culkin. Like, that's where the magic lies in that Mrs. Doubtfire. I don't have to tell you, a child of the 90s, that ad is the Robin Williams Show. You just point the camera and get out of the way.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It really is.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And the first two Harry Potter movies, I have some affinity still for those because I watch them, but they're generally like kind of the worst of directed. Like we say we get Cuaron in the third, we're like, oh, like David Yates in the. Like, oh, this is what it could look like. So yeah, but you know, like I. Underrated. But they're all good. I mean these are all good movies. So I'm not sure what to do.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, he's reliably family friendly. He's trustable with a big valuable property like a Home alone or a Mrs. Doubtfire or. Or the Thursday Murder Club. This. I have not read these. I'm not sure I'm ever going to like devote the book time to them. But this trailer looks charming as shit. Like, I will be watching this. Putting it out on the Thursday before Labor Day weekend is such a smart decision on Netflix's part. I will absolutely be just having myself a little marathon.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I would be very surprised if this doesn't become an ongoing franchise a la knives Out. But yeah, the turnaround time a bit lower because the things are done and it's just not as nutty. Right. Like you've got now. These are returning characters. I don't mean to spoil anything for everyone, but most of these characters are going to turn time after time. They could slow horses and this does to a year. I don't know that they should. Maybe I'm being too hard on Chris.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Well, there's what, four books out in the Thursday Murder Club? Maybe the fifth is coming out, sir.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I now get confused because there's a second series that has one or two and there might be a standalone from Richard Osmond. I'm not sure. I read a Q and a long interview actually with Ron Howard in New York magazine last week. Like, man, I like a lot of Ron Howard movies without really being identified the Ron Howard style. I feel like Chris Columbus is who you get when you don't get Ron Howard. That's kind of the like competent filmmakers. Are they gonna blow your doors Off? Probably not. Are they gonna screw it up also? Probably not.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And I think that's exactly right for something like the Thursday Murder Club. Like, this is a book. It's a crowd pleaser. It's kind of cozy. You don't need to have the blur the blowers down and the doors blown off. Say that five times fast. It's. I think that he's exactly the right kind of a director for something like this. And the new entry in the Thursday Murder Club series is called the Impossible Fortune. The book comes out September 30th, so you can cruise from watching the first season into. If you pick up the books, you go in a little reading binge. You got some time before the fifth one comes out in September. But I think this is just so smart.

[Jeff O'Neill]

The casting is incredible, I can tell you. I sent a missive out to the boomers out there. You know, a little, you know, I got a, I got a carrier pigeon with a little note and I said, do you guys know that this is coming? And let me tell you, the boomers know.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

They know. They're ready.

[Jeff O'Neill]

They're logged in. They got off their, their grandkids Netflix account. They've got their own now.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Put down the farmville.

[Jeff O'Neill]

They've got the recliners all ready to lounge and they're ready for Thursday Murder Club. So I think it's going to do quite well.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Sounds like a good time.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I don't know. I don't know why you remake War of the Roses but then call it the Roses. So this is a really Warren Adler's most famous book about a divorce that goes very wrong. I feel like the 80s, the, the late 70s into the late 80s were prime divorce movie times. And this kind of got lost in like the Kramer vs. Kramers of the world or what's the. The Julia Roberts one. My other mom. My other sister. My mom's sister. Stepmom. Stepmom.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Oh, stepmom. Yes. Yeah, that's a mid-90s.

[Jeff O'Neill]

We really don't get a good old fashioned hand wringing. Boy, does divorce suck movie in a while. And I don't know, it's because it's been so normalized or how much, you know, how many stories of bad divorce are there really? Maybe there's not that many, honestly. It's all kind of the same banal tragedy.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Women got the right to have credit cards without their husband's signatures on them in the mid-70s, and it wasn't a long path from that kind of financial freedom to like a boom in both Also, the pill comes out in the 70s and Roe vs Wade and women get freedom and so divorces become, you know, more common. Warren Adler's book is from late 70s, early 80s, and the original adaptation came out in 1989 starring Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner. And it's like, it is dark and spiky, like they hate each other. It's pretty violent.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's like more of an erotic thriller almost, except they really hate it. Like they already know each other and hate each other.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

They really hate each other. And it is just, it's bonkers. Like they are literally swinging from the chandeliers trying to kill each other. She locks him in the sauna in their house. Like just. It goes to the next level. The new adaptation, I think you call the, the new version, the new spin on it, the Roses number one. Because you can get Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman together on screen to just have a great time. And it looks much more comedic. Like, this looks like a farce.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yes.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. Like Tony McNamara who wrote Poor Things, wrote it. It's directed by Jay and this would be a big step up for him. And I think Tony McNamara just had a good time about, like, what if we took this idea but we made it funny instead of, you know, really dark and kind of thrillery. The trailers look like a really good time. I've seen this trailer every time I've gone to the movies in like the last four months. They are really trying to make it into a thing.

[Jeff O'Neill]

This feels like a movie from the early 2000s to me. I, I just don't.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Maybe rom com vibes almost.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I don't know. Someone must have written a check and they had the property and let's make this happen. And again, it's not that expensive to make because it's going to be practical effects of like throwing knives in the kitchens and stuff. And while Cumberbatch and Coleman are very well known, they're not 20 million dollar quote people. Like these people like the word. So he could probably make it pretty affordably.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

They're gender flipping some of it. In the original, the husband is the big breadwinner, has the fancy job and he's divorcing his wife and she is trying to, you know, get money and financial support from him. In the new spin, Olivia Colman is a success chef and Benedict Cumberbatch is a stay at home dad. His career has stalled and they're sort of fighting it out. So they're doing a couple different things both tonally and with the setup. Of this. They're also reissuing the paperback. Like, there's a brand new paperback with a Gillian Flynn blurb on it, which, like, if anybody is qualified to blurb a dark book about marriage, it's Gillian Flynn. But if you go see the Roses, at least if the movie looks as funny and, like, comedic as the trailer makes it out to be, and then you read the book, which is pretty dark and twisty, that's a journey to take a person on.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I just. I feel like the divorce as subject for art making is a little played out and you need to be like Leslie Jameson level sentence writer. You've got to have something like a.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Bombach marriage story situation. Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And then you just make it ugly. And I mean, in a lot of way, that's the War of the Roses for the modern era American story. Very much so. I just don't. I don't. Who's like, I want to go see people fight comedically about divorce. Like, I just don't get who this is. I have a super hard time imagining it.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

When I went to see Eddington, I went with a friend who's going through a divorce. And this trailer played and they were like, that looks cathartic. But that's like people presently going through divorces is a pretty small audience to be catering to.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I mean, there's a lot. But, yeah, it doesn't seem like enough to make now. Maybe if it really becomes sort of weirdly missed out. Fire two is also a divorce movie, but it's not, you know, principally the Sally Field and Robin Williams going at it. But maybe as an arena for the comic. I don't know. It seems I will. I like both these people. I don't mind the trailer. I have a hard time figuring out when I'd ever press play on this. But that's.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

This looks like an airplane movie to me. I feel like I will watch this on a flight sometime.

[Jeff O'Neill]

History of sound. September 12th. Now we're into September, based on a short story by Ben Shattuck. And this has sort of the. Who you get for a movie like this. You get Paul Mescal and Josh. Like, don't you think they got their first choices almost in looking at what this movie looks like?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

The pitch. Do you know this short story? I don't.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I've never read it. I only know it because of the blurb now.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. It's two young men during World War I who set out to record the lives, voices and music of American countrymen. And also they fall passionately in Love with each other. Like the poster for it has them sort of snuggled up with their cheeks touching. Boy oh boy. And Chris Cooper narrates it. I'm just a billion percent in. I watched the trailer. Paul Mescal and Josh o'. Connor. You don't do any better than those guys right now.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. I mean again I think in the we get we're getting an awful lot of historical gay love stories which is great. But kind of like the problem with all. Not the problem. The trade off of all historical fiction is that it doesn't really wrestle with the now. Right. It sort of sets these things in a different past. You have the immediate pathos of wow look, you know, things were so hard then like Brokeback. We've been doing this since Brokeback Mountain, probably since before. But Brokeback really be the one where we set in sort of this time that is familiar but distant enough that we don't have to wrestle with issues of modern homosexuality or American gender politics. Everything that's going on right now, which is its own mess. I'm sure it's going to be beautiful. I don't know if I'll watch this one. It's gonna need to get great notices. I mean my bar for pressing play is very high at this point for.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah and I'm pretty excited about this one and it will be overtly about art which is, you know, something that we both appreciate. I'm gonna go see anything that Paul Mescal and Josh o' Connor are in together. Like that's a good use of my 10 bucks a month movie pass.

[Jeff O'Neill]

The next this I think this is the adaptation of the season. Would you agree I guess with that tease we'll do a sponsor break and then come back.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

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[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

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[Jeff O'Neill]

Foreign.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Today's episode is brought to you by Natalie R. Allen, author of the Royal Mask. Now, if you're in the mood for a little post apocalyptic realness kind of a trend these days, this book is for you. In a drowned world now known as the United Islands, Selene reappears after six years of being presumed dead with no clear memory of what happened, only to be thrust into a royal family she's never known in a court full of secrets. The only person who truly sees her as luck her adopted stepbrother second in line for the throne and the one connection she can't afford to feel as rebellion brews an enemy circle Celine must uncover the truth of her past and choose who to trust before the crown costs her everything. So this is a fierce, emotionally charged coming of age story set in a post apocalyptic royal court full of lies and legacy. Ooh, that's a lot going on and I'm here for it. It's also a slow burn, high stakes romance for readers who love court politics, royal tension and forbidd Just so you know it's me, I'm readers. Make sure to check it out. And thanks again to Natalie R. Allen, author of the Royal Mask, for sponsoring this episode.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So this is one battle after another by Paul Tom Paul Thomas Anderson's loose or not so loose adaptation of Thomas Pynchon's Vineland, which is novel that was came out in 1990, set in 1984 during Reagan's reelection and there's a bunch of flashbacks, back and forth with characters growing up in the 60s and sort of dealing with that revolutionary spirit that has been abandoned, aborted, defanged, sold out, however else you want to put it, as the, you know, get through the post Nixonian Republican era war on drugs. Like, a bunch of stuff goes on. And it's been a while since I've read this and I watched the trailer. I mean, a pinch in. I mean, I don't know if this is starting Leonardo DiCaprio. And we get Del Terro doing del Benito del Toro things, but it's these. These zany people who get caught up in various ideologies, get in wild situations. It's both heady and bawdy, zany and intellectual, all at the same time. I am very interested to see what Paul Anderson, Paul Thomas Anderson, does with this, because I'm gonna be very careful about this, what I say here. This book is firing on a lot of different levels. It's extraordinary, literary and surreal and save. I think Magnolia is a very fine movie. I think Boogie Nights is a very.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Fine movie zone you're in here.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I think this movie is way more complicated than anything he's done, just way. And maybe stripping it down. And it's gonna be DiCaprio looking for his pregnant wife who's run off and, you know, kind of navigating the world, which is great, a great time, but, boy, it's. It's a very difficult. It's a very difficult adaptation. Rebecca, I'm not sure what else to say.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, I've not read the book. I've actually been trying to decide if I'm going to read the book before I see this or if I just want to have the film be its own experience. And this might be one of the ones where it's better to see the movie first and then go back and see what the book is, because it sounds like there's the potential for there to be quite a bit of space between the original and what Paul Thomas Anderson has done here. The trailers are almost all exclusively Leonardo DiCaprio running around with his daughter, trying to find the mother that ran off when she was a baby. You know, mom was a 60s radical, but then ran off with a narc, and Leo is losing his mind. And I have gathered that they're in some sort of, like, alternate 1984 anarchic situation. But Leonardo DiCaprio looks like he's having the time of his life.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I mean, around being kind of a dope, shooting machine guns like that. Looks like a lot of Fun to do at this point.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

What do you think about See it first, read it first on this one.

[Jeff O'Neill]

My intuition is that it. There's a reason it's not called Vineland. I think he's going to take some elements and do some of the stuff. But the book is pretty grabbing, Anderson, for all of his even Magnolia. The threads come together pretty intense, like really come together at the end of that movie. And I think it was a little more morally ambiguous. The end of. I mean, I don't want to give anything away, but I find it hard to believe he's gonna just sort of adapt what Pynchon did in Vineland. I could be wrong and I'm not even sure that's wrong, honestly, I don't know. But I feel like there is, there's a real chance that they are distinctly different works and that, you know, hopping from one to there may be interesting, but I don't know how illuminating it will be on one or the other to see them both. But that's I, I'd love to be wrong that it's like it really adds to, builds upon, enriches and deepens. In my experience, by and large, even when a movie is better than the underlying source material, it rarely is a deepening. It usually is a simplification and a clarification. So it makes for a better movie, but tends to be tidier, tends to be less messy. And Pinschin is certainly not tidy. That's the last adjective he use to. I think, I think Rushdie called him the invisible man. So the invisible man is not tidy.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Interesting.

[Jeff O'Neill]

All right, I put in the next one.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, I don't know this next one.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So it's Colin Farrell as a small time gambler and who meets someone in Macaulay and that someone I believe is Tilda Swinton here. And it's based on a 2014 novel for Netflix. October 15th. The director is Paul Berger, who last made a splash on Netflix with his adaptation of Eric Ramir. Remarks, all quiet on the Western front. I don't know the underlying source material. I read a little bit about it. But Colin Farrell being a small time gambler and having a great time in Macau, I mean, I don't think I need much more than that. Yeah, I don't need much more than more than that here. So I've never heard, I'd never heard of this before this, but Netflix. October 15th. This is a very, very easy press play for me. I don't have to get out of my theater. I don't have to get on My chair. I can just go. Go see that. So that's right. Next.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, next one's. You too. Next couple, actually.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So this is. I'm throwing in theater here because Hedda Gabler is, you know, one of the great stage, you know, kind of the recurring. And Hetta Gabler is one of the. Maybe with Lady Macbeth. Those who know the boards better than I do tell me. But I feel like Hedda Gabler and Lady Macbeth might be the sort of two canonical female roles in Western theatrical experience. There's probably some other. I'm not. I mean, there's other major roles, but those two, like, people want to play those. They keep coming back to play those. Like, those are really juicy. And this one is a modern adaptation starring Tessa Thomason and Imogene Poots, directed by Nia DaCosta, who directed the Marvels and sort of been an IP.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Interesting.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It is about a. Like this. A desperate house. A desperate housewife. Like, the tyranny of the. The housewife here. Which is another interesting time for this. To return to this, because we don't hear about the Desperate Housewife right now. I know they're still out there. What we hear about is the trad. Wife influencer. Like, if anything, there's this romantic facade of a construction of. To be a housewife. So I think this is extremely interesting time to see a version of pedagogy.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

They sort of flow into each other. Right. Like, you have a period of romanticizing women being at home and in this domestic realm, and then you end up with the problem that has no name. Thank you, Betty, for Dan. And then you are pretty quickly Betty Draper. And we then get criticism of it. Hedda Gabler, iconic. I first read it in a women's studies drama class in college. Like, and you read it or. I don't even. Maybe not even all drama, but you read it next to, like, the yellow wallpaper and sort of like similar early write, earlier writings that had feminist tinges to them. And of course, interesting for that to come from that time period written by a man. Yeah, but Ibsen was in that business.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I mean, kind of going back to the divorce novel, like the House, the. The. The Ennui, the Despair of the Housewife. Was Betty Draper our last sort of cultural example of that. Like, what. Where. What. Where have we been at culture as sort of cultural representation of the. Of the Housewives? We don't get many modern representations of that. If anything, the modern TV or movie experience goes out of the way to avoid representations of women in that role. Which I think is laudable to some. I mean laudable in that you don't want to pigeonhole those people.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Right.

[Jeff O'Neill]

But also doesn't capture this experience. A lot of people still have like the patriarchy dead. Rebecca, I don't know if you've heard. I also checked with the boomers about that.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Oh, well, I don't know what kind of news you're getting that way, but. Well, I'm familiar with. With this fact of our. Our modern life.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So I. I think that's interested in that. Quite interesting. I'm guessing this can be art house. Probably not a high budget. You know, maybe it's set in. I'd be curious to see where they're gonna set this. An interesting role for Tessa Thompson. I really like her.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

So it's really interesting to see the directions her career has gone.

[Jeff O'Neill]

We get award level movies and then we also get award bait. Right. And I haven't seen a frame of this. But there's an award bait quality to Nuremberg. Coming to theaters November 7th. Starring Russell Crowe, Rami Malek and Michael Shannon. I'd watch Michael Shannon do anything. A lot of people.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Absolutely.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I love. In fact, I think he's weirdly under you. Anyway, that's a different.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Do you know he has an R.E.M. cover band?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yes.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. Michael Shannon, obsessed with R.E.M. like travels around doing R.E.M. cover stuff. Really. There's a great long interview with him from the bitter Southerner.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I love Michael Shannon and anything I find myself drawn to him. He's not going to play one of the. The two main roles. It doesn't sound like it's based on a nonfiction book called the Nazi and the Psychiatrist about Herman Goering during the nuring world tries talking to a psychiatrist. And that psychiatrist we played by Rami Malek now.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Interesting.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Both Rami Malek and Russell Crowe are no stranger to scene eating. Scene stealing Oscar kind of performances. You know, Crowe, it's been a while since we've seen Crow like nominated for something. I can imagine if this is good or even decent there being a all Russell Crowe. Russell Crowe is Ervin Goering. Let's go.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And it's a different kind of Oscar attempt for Rami Malek after the Freddie Mercury performance.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Right. And then he took his. He took his stab at being an action hero in the Amateur. I'm not sure that went very well. But Rami Malek interviewing as a psychiatrist interviewing Nazi war crimes. I can find. I could imagine myself being very compelled by his eyes and his sort of affect and that whole tension thing. Going on there.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Big energy on both of them. And I would imagine the scenes with them together will be really wonderful to watch.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And then Michael Shannon will just come in and steal the show as, like a prosecutor or something like that.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

You know what that series that Robert Downey Jr. Did on HBO, the adaptation, the Sympathizer, where he played, like seven roles. Michael Shannon is maybe the only actor that I would trust to do that. Like, you need somebody to come in who's a great character actor and do, like, seven different things. It's not advisable for anybody, but, like, if you have to, I think Michael Shannon is the top of my list.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I'm going to politely disagree there because I feel like Michael Shannon is always Michael Shannon. Even he's playing like, General Zod. Like, he's got that big head and that very similar affect and delivery. Like he's a version of Michael Shannon.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

But it's kind of like always Christopher Walken.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, there's just something about his delivery that he either wants to murder you or interview you for a magazine. Like, there's something about that I don't. I don't quite understand. I will watch him do whatever the next one. I didn't know. I didn't know this existed until I opened this.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I didn't either. I found out when I was researching it this week. Train Dreams coming to theaters November 7th. Limited run in theaters, and then it's hitting Netflix on November 21st. This is based on the novel by Dennis Johnson. It's a portrait of a logger and railroad worker who leads a life of unexpected depth and beauty in the rapidly changing america of the 20th century. It's written by Clint Bentley and Greg Kuidar, who wrote the Sing Sing script, which was highly acclaimed and nominated for best adapted screenplay, stars Joel Edgerton, who I think most recently of Dark Matter. He was Tom Buchanan in Baz Luhrmann's Great Gatsby adaptations. So, like Joel Edgerton, no stranger to the adaptation, Clifton Collins Jr. And Felicity Jones, I've missed this. This is a lacuna in my reading life. I've not known to Dennis Johnson, but the trailer for this makes me want to read the book, which is maybe the highest compliment you can.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Train Dreams is extraordinarily good. It is also once Infinite Jest island sank into the ocean and with David Foster. Well, and all the MFA and lit guys, we all. I mean, sorry, migrated. All they all telling. They all got in live bugs and we paddled like our lives depended on it to Dennis Johnson. Peninsula.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

For all of the performative males that are listening. Since now we're on that meme, pick up your copy of Train Dreams.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's really terrific. It is. You would like this book. You would like this book. I don't think there's any question about that. It's short. It's short. So even if you don't like it, it's gonna be over.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Great. Almost heard about it for years.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Is it a novella? I don't remember. What's the page count on this thing? 116 pages, so it can't see it.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Love to see it.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And I think novellas make for wonderful movies, by the way. That's another thing I would say. Is this the most. This has to be. Well, Jesus's Son. I'm just looking on Amazon for you, Rebecca, in terms of, like, where these are in the Dennis, Johnny, Dennis. Jockey Dennis Johnson pecking order. And I'm only looking at number of reviews, so take that for what you will. But Train Dreams, we're looking at 30,000 reviews. And, like, the next biggest one is Jesus's Son, which is a short story collection also with 2000.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

So pretty good for a dude in the literary zone.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Oh, I'm sorry. Goodreads. I was looking at Goodreads. I'm confusing. Anyway, Train Dreams is still. I'm in the most popular.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It looks lovely and quiet, and I love a lovely, quiet literary situation.

[Jeff O'Neill]

When Tree of Smoke. When Tree of smoke came out, 2007, I was in grad school. I was living in New York, and I'm like, I'm in it now. I know. I'm. I know to be excited for a Dennis Johnson, and I like this. Yeah. Anyway.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, that's about as far spiritually as you can get from the next one, which is the Running man, coming to theaters in November 7th. Based on the Stephen King novel starring Glen Powell, Josh Brolin, Lee Pace. Ain't nobody gunning for Oscars on this one, but we're all gonna have a great time. And if you don't know the pitch, it's about a man who joins a game show where contestants that are allowed to go anywhere in the world are pursued, sued by hunters that are hired to kill them. If this sounds familiar, it's because there was an adaptation starring Arnold schwarzenegger in the 80s that also looks like it could not be any more different.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Super dark, much more dystopian. Right. It actually trends a little. A lot more, really, frankly, towards the Hunger Games. Whereas this looks like. I. I'm not. It's like Twister. Twisters plus Hunger Games gives you running mid or ready? Player one, maybe. Is that maybe?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. It doesn't look scary.

[Jeff O'Neill]

No, no, no, no. So, Glenn, I mean, the. It sounds like this one is much more true to the original Stephen King story. A little bit of change, but like someone who's really down on their luck, needs money for medical treatment, signs up for this thing where I think in the Schwarzenegger one, he's like a cop who gets busted and needs to like, it's very like military industrial complex sort of situation where this one is much more of a John Q. I need my. My daughter needs the good stuff and I can't afford it. And so we're going to enter this. But this looks like fun. I will not have problem getting myself to see this.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Not at all. It's going to be a great time.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It does this. So with the success of Twisters, we had. We decided that Glen Powell ester rive. Like bourgeois nouveau, like. Or do we need to see it again? Do we need to see, like, how consistent do we need to be with this kind of. I think this kind of stuff?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I think the people have decided that Glen Powell has arrived. He had Twisters, which did well. He was in that rom com with Sydney Sweeney. That was fine. Like, that's a. That's a plane movie if ever I've seen one. But the people like Glen Powell. I think that we're. We're in the. Not even Powell is on. It's like this is the first run of Powell going big. But I think Glenn Powell is an established movie star.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. I have no sense of what this will do at the box office. None. I. It could do fairly well. I have. I can't imagine it's going to do like, IP level business. Like, we've seen the big Marvel and superhero tentpole stuff, even Twisters, or it doesn't have the. I don't think the original has a. The same belovedness of the original Twister or of Top Gun, which Glenn Powell was in. That's a little hard to calibrate what my expectations are for this movie.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Not as much nostalgia for this one as Twisters, for sure.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It feels like to me, three years ago this would have been on Apple TV or Amazon Prime. Like, this is the. Glenn Powell is now getting the fun Chris Pratt rolls, which is interesting to see. I don't know how to feel about the Guillermo del Toro Frankenstein. I like del Toro. I like Oscar Isaacs. I'm fine on Elordi. He's not one of my dudes. I like Christoph Waltz. I like Mia Goth. I've also seen a whole bunch of Frankenstein adaptations and frankly the trailer looks pretty bad. So that's where I am on Frankenstein, coming on Netflix in November.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Frankenstein is Frankenstein, you know, like, it's really hard to find a new angle on it. Del Toro has been working on this for like 10 or 15 years in some capacity. And more often than not, in my humble opinion, a piece of art that has been like worked over for that long often does not come out well. They tend to not be great. When it's like, I've been toiling over this for 15 years. I don't know. The last time I read a book where I heard the person worked on it for a decade and I read it and was like, you know what? Bang up job.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Is this a follow up to Pinocchio? Like, is that the last thing he did is the stop motion Pinocchio?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Oh, I don't even know. That's a great.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Which was also a Netflix original, that one. I can imagine taking 15 year olds because that little wooden boy, you got to move every one of his digits and all that stuff.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I don't know what's up with the promo for this. Like we are recording this on August 19th and they have not yet put a hard release date for it out. It just says Netflix November 20th.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's not done that they're still there was just putting the bolt in Jacob Elordi's neck or something.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

There was just a first look behind the scenes, like still photos. Only thing in Vanity Fair a couple weeks ago.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I mean there is a trailer. Maybe it's not good. They're trying to decide whether to make it a Thanksgiving thing or not.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's possible that they're slow rolling it. If it were great. I think they put it out right before Halloween and like really get into horror season. But that it's November 2025. Shruggy man. TBD is definitely raising some questions.

[Jeff O'Neill]

They may have another problem. Maybe this is a more positivist or at least not as negative. Is that they've got the stranger things meteor coming Thanksgiving and what are you doing? Are you gonna put this out the weekend before Thanksgiving? I don't know. That seems strange and I agree with you. This. This seems tailor made for a stay at home and put on a scary movie for the Halloween's on a Friday this year. Put it on perfect and people gonna walk. Very, very strange. I am not excited. I will. This is another one. Well, I will not Be firing this up unprepared in terms of that. It's good. Like, I'm not taking my. I'm not rolling the dice with my time on this quite yet.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. I need to hear some confirmation that this is worth it.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Whether or not I liked the first installment of the Wicked, I will be there because my daughter and her friends are all into this. I do have much affinity for the stage play, the stage production of Wicked, the sequel, of course. Sequel. The second half, not really a sequel. Coming to theaters November 23rd. I wonder if that's also something they're thinking about for Frankenstein, because you got Stranger Things the next weekend. You got Wicked. Like the genre, which friendly. Like the fantastical, friendly folks. They might be booked up for a.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

While there that weekend of the 23rd. Like the wicked heads will be out.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yes.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

With their tutus dresses.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. They've got their green.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

A lot of pink tool. A lot of green tools. Things are happening. So, yeah, Wicked for good. I'm really curious how big of a sensation this will be against the first one. Like, I. I think there's genuine enthusiasm for it, but like that pent up eagerness to see this show that you loved finally come to life on screen. I wonder how much of that just came out last year when the first one happened. And like, maybe folks will go, but they won't be as dressed up or it won't be as big of a deal. Or is it like Taylor Swift, where every tour is just as exciting for the fans? I don't know.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I sent off a countermanding missive to the tweens because I also have. I have inveigled myself into the tweens. And let me just tell you, they're fit to be ready.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Okay.

[Jeff O'Neill]

The ones in my orbit, they are. They're ready to go. The real draw here and not the real draw. A bonus draw. A wild card, let's put it this way, is we have new songs in the second half because as you note here, the second half of the show doesn't have. It has one of the top six songs of the whole. A whole musical. And it's much, you know, for Good is a beautiful song and quite moving, but it's not a showstopper in quite the same way as some of those other things I've heard that Stephen Schwartz has created. Maybe, maybe a couple of new songs and I would imagine the brief was for him or for the whole production. We need a defying gravity level, a big moment, as you know, as the denouement comes the real draw of the second half is like the separation. Right. Like this is a quite sad story and you get some reveals and other things going on. We spoiled it for some of the tweens who were dying to know how Wicked Ends. Hadn't seen it. And I'll just say they were blown away by actually what goes on here. I'm not sure for good or for ill. But they were quite surprised about how.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

This thing wraps up fun to get to do that.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I think. I think there's a lot of. There's a lot of juice behind.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

All right.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Wicked for good. This is my Super Bowl. This is my number. I mean Vineland is almost too easy, right? PTA for the 40 year old dudes. Like that's too easy.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And Maggie, copy of Train Dreams at.

[Jeff O'Neill]

The door about, you know, Shakespeare's wife and son who died whose name was Hamnet. I still we need to do we need to send out flyers that this is true that Shakespeare's son who's died, his name is Hamnet.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I'm gonna have some fun doing like info short form videos of like two truths and a lie about Hamnet. And one of them is the son's name is Hamnet. Paul Mescal coming back again this season. He's playing Shakespeare. Spear. Let's talk about Oscar runs. Yeah. Jesse Buckley.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Does it get. Does it get sucked up because he's got two Oscar bait roles with History of the Sound. This happens from time to time.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Or will Hamnet just totally eclipse History of Sound? Which I think is very possible. The Oscars love Shakespeare.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. Chloe Zhao coming off the Eternals, but probably best known for Nomadland. The novel is wonderful. I don't know if I name checked. Maggie o' Farrell here. Jessie Buckley, the wonder. I mean speaking of maybe not the. The lady Michael Shannon for me because her totally energy is different, but she seems to have exquisitely interesting taste. She doesn't show up in like weird schlocky stuff. And always a magnetic screen presence. I. I've had a little bit enough of Mezcal of late. I. I kind of wish I'm not sad to see him here as Billy Shakes, but it feels a little on the nose and. And I would have taken Josh. My Shakespeare is Joseph finds my young Shakespeare is Joseph fine. So I'm not sure what Mezcal's got up.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And that's a Shakespeare in Love reference. Friends, if you have not seen Shakespeare in Love, go back. I think it might.

[Jeff O'Neill]

We do a patreon about Shakespeare in Love at some point.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Oh, that would be fun.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's got Weinstein stank all over. But maybe with some time we can, we can say, you know what? There's got to be some. There's got to be some room for Ben Affleck saying, gentlemen, upstage, ladies downstage over and over again, being confused about where she is. I was gonna show that to my kids the other day and they would seem lukewarm on the trailer, but it was.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

They might be just a little young for it. I think I was like early high school when it came out, and it was perfect. Yeah, that's perfect. Yeah. I'm very excited. For Hamnet. Theaters December 12th. I've not read the book, but I think this one is gonna be one that I pick up before I go. I just miss it.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I would recommend it.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I love Maggie o'. Farrell. I just missed this one when it came out. It sounds terrific.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

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[Jeff O'Neill]

You say you'll never join the Navy, that you'd never track storms brewing in the Atlantic, and skydiving could never be.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Part of your commute.

[Jeff O'Neill]

You'd never climb Mount Fuji on a port visit, or fly so fast you break the sound barrier. Joining the Navy sounds crazy. Saying never actually is. Start your journey at navy.com, america's Navy, forged by the sea.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And then on Christmas Day, a real crowd pleaser for the whole family. The Housemaid, adapted from the novel by Frieda McFadden, starring Sydney Sweeney and Brandon Sklenar, who I most recently saw playing the third corner of the love triangle in It Ends With Us. He's like the childhood boyfriend who returns and saves.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That's who that guy. I didn't see that, but I saw that. That's who that guy is.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. Directed by Paul Feig. And this is very out of left field for Paul Feig's oeuvre. Okay, well, people know the Housemaid. I see it all the time when I travel.

[Jeff O'Neill]

They do know this. Are they going to go out on Christmas Day? Is there a Christmas movie, though?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I don't. I mean, I don't know. I have not read them, so I don't know where this falls in the Matrix of like, is it clean enough that you could go see it with the whole family?

[Jeff O'Neill]

I think so. I haven't read it, but I've read about the freedom stuff.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

That is a. That's a challenging thing. If you have multiple generations, you got to pick a movie to go see on Christmas or like right around the holidays and you're looking for something that's engaging and doesn't have.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Everyone's going to be saying Avatar. That's the thing. It's counter programming against Avatar. So I don't know, is it for the women who don't want to go see? I mean, I hate to paint with the Hollywood brush, but that's how they think of this counter program.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Maybe it is.

[Jeff O'Neill]

If this, if this was a Colleen Hoover joint Which is like explicitly like a romance, like a love story, lowercase R. Well, depends on which Hoover you're signing up for. But if it was more of a love story, I don't know that this had this. But it also has a mystery element. And do you think. Let me put it to you this way. Do you think the producers or the housemaid right now are super jazzed that Sydney Sweeney is the star of this? Forget what you say about how good she is at things. No, it's not about that right now.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

No. But she's everywhere.

[Jeff O'Neill]

She's everywhere.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

She's everywhere. And that's good exposure for her face on a movie poster. And I think it's only a very small corner of extremely online people that have determined that the way that she is everywhere right now means something like, big and like something significant and terrible.

[Jeff O'Neill]

About because she is a famous person, she is a celebrity, but she's not really a movie. Like, carrying a movie like this where she's the headliner. Like, this is my sense of like, this was going to be her big. Like, well, she can carry a genre movie by myself. And this could be a franchise, the.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Rom com genre breakout with what Anyone but you. That was the one with Glenn Powell and.

[Jeff O'Neill]

But that was just okay, right? People?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It was just okay.

[Jeff O'Neill]

They're not like. It's not like you're making the Housemaid.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Are you thinking it's going to be anything beyond just okay?

[Jeff O'Neill]

I think you might be thinking it's Grisham. Like, it's those book. These books are as popular as you could imagine it being. Their Pelican Brief or the Firm or something like that. I could very much imagine.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Well, that's not. It's not serious actor casting. At least that would convey that they were gunning for that.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Well, I mean, Glenn Powell. I mean, sometimes you take a shot at someone, right? I mean, and see what happens. I'm very curious to see. I can actually imagine this being pretty entertaining, I'll say that.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. There is a Colleen Hoover this season. It's in our honorable mentions. Regretting you comes out.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Do you think they're stoked to be producing a Colleen Hoover movie right now? Where. Where is the Colleen Hoover hive right now? What are they doing?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I haven't heard from the Coho fans in quite a while and we still have not heard about any new Colleen Hoover books. There were deals signed in the midst of.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Anne Hathaway is going to be an adaptation of Verity, which I think a lot of people really like that book.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And that One has a, like, literary angle to it as well, I think.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Is it a thriller? I don't. It's eluding me off the top of my head.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, I wrote about it in Today in Books when she was cast in it, but that was months and months ago. And right now Anne Hathaway is busy starring in that other literary adaptation, the Devil Wears Prada, too. I called the Millennials and we are.

[Jeff O'Neill]

All ready for that one. Are they getting their. Their.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I have queued up. Suddenly I see and I'm ready.

[Jeff O'Neill]

The accessories are going to be just off the chain. And then Jennifer Lawrence looks like she's making a run at a trophy here with this. What I've been reading about Die My Love sounds like a pretty intense deal.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. Die My Love is based on the novel by Ariana Horowitz, which I'm not familiar with, that hits theaters November 7th. Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson. I watched the trailer for this and the two and a half minute trailer for it is them in like a beautiful field of like, wild grasses and flowers, and they are crawling on hands and knees, acting like big cats kind of nuzzling each other. And they make out a little. And then he says, do you want to get married? And the pitch is like that. It's about a woman living in a rural area, trying to stay sane, living out here with her family by herself. And that pitch against the like, very artsy. It looks like a theater class warm up exercise. Like, imagine that you're animals and you're. You're pacing your lions and you're pacing around and you're gonna flirt with each other. And I have no idea what this trailer is supposed to say to me about the rest of the film, but, like, it was compelling.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Watching Jennifer Lawrence wins an Oscar for this. Amy Adams is gonna be so mad. I just. I already. I turned into a dog and you.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Just crawled around like an animal.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Robert Pattinson. I don't even remember who my guy was.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, the guy. The guy in Night was inconsequential. I do not remember who played the.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Tough beat for that guy. It wasn't called Night, dude. So there you go. You kind of know what you're getting. Okay, let's do this. Highest confidence level in the project doesn't mean it's going to be like the art, but for what it is.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Mm.

[Jeff O'Neill]

What has the chance of being. We're taking slow horses off.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Not. Not available. We have too much data here. What is going to be the sort of the most successful version of itself.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Do you Think version of itself not most successful, like Adaptation.

[Jeff O'Neill]

We're not putting Head against. We're not putting Heada and Thursday Murder Club in the same sort of thing. They're not trying to do the same thing for what they're trying to do. Who's going to do it best?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I mean, I think Thursday Murder Club is going to do real well, but it feels like that's a different zone here because it's one of the only TV shows we're talking about. Yeah, my tie is probably one battle after another up against HamNet. That PTA doesn't really do us wrong. I won't know if it's not a faithful adaptation of Vineland, but I'm going to have a good time watching a Paul Thomas Anderson movie. And Hamnet looks fantastic. Fantastic. I think both of those will be really solid moviegoing experiences.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And looking at the trailer for the Thursday Murder Club, I think it has a high ceiling or a high floor. The low ceilingness of it is. It's charming. But like, is only Murders at the building, in the building at a retirement home, all that. Is it that exciting? I mean, it'll be fun. It's on Netflix. It's going to be.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And that's kind of the point.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Metamuc. But like, is that the best?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Right?

[Jeff O'Neill]

But like, that's not the best version of something. Like Knives out is better than this. Like more inventive, but in the same space.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And only Murders is more. At least in my personal zone where there is some dry wit, there's some humor, it's pretty clever. And Thursday Murder Club looks a little more straight ahead cozy to me.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Is that a good gonna be. It's gonna be Murder She Wrote with Five People, which again is going to be a lot of fun. But like the degree of difficulty in the stakes are just sort of low. So, I mean, this is also kind of speaking to what I'm looking for. I think I have Vineland one. There's something about Ballad of a Small Player that again, I think it's going to be a small kind of Colin Farrell focused thing. But when was the last time, like the Banshees of Inishearin or the Penguin, where someone's like, let's get Colin Farrell as the thing that we're going to be looking at for two hours and it went sideways. I can't remember the last time Colin.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Farrell, I think he might be underappreciated in that way. And he's making really interesting choices against what I would have expected he would.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Do in his he had some tough times and he's a very good looking guy and I think he got maybe typecast as Brad Pitt 2 where he's more the character actor of Brad Pitt than the F1. No, I'm serious. The F1.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. No, that's right.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Kind of Brad Pitt guy.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

So give him some movies.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Give him some dice and a problem in a. In a. In Macau and I think Tilda Swinton.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Like always fun to watch. Always interesting.

[Jeff O'Neill]

In terms of my greatest curiosity, how about this the one you're most interested to see. Not just like but like how it play like what what it is, like.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

What it turns into. I think the roses because it just looks so different from the source material and it's hard to tell from the trailer exactly what it's like going to be that it could be a great time and it could also be very like okay, that's. I have a high curiosity level about. I feel like I just know I'm going to love the History of Sound. So I'm not curious about how that's going to go. Maybe I'll be surprised. Probably those and what's going on with Frankenstein?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Oh like a rubbernecking sort of curiosity.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Will it be a train wreck?

[Jeff O'Neill]

I think for me it's train dreams. They take away my card if I don't say train dreams. If I've got to pay my dues.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Well, we wouldn't want that to happen.

[Jeff O'Neill]

No, that'd be terrible to get out of that. All right, this is fun. Rebecca.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's a good time.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Shoot us. Email podcastookriot.com if we maybe mistook Weathering Heights for Jane Eyre. Not that we would ever do something like that.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

So generous of you to say. We there when it was fully I.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Threw myself on the Patreon grenade and you came in and took my corpse off and said that's my grenade.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I just want to own my pathological resistance to all things Bronte. I made a mess of that in like five ways last week.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I should know if it's Bronte or Austin related. I need to check my. I need to check the LLM. Make sure we haven't hallucinated something.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I have cleared it up. There is not a mad woman in the attic in Wuthering Heights and different Brontes wrote Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Did you know that's up there with Hamnet that the Bronte sisters wrote Wuthering Heights and like it's kind of unbelievable. You can't make. You couldn't make that up yeah, it's.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Like if Jane Eyre. If Jane Austen had a sister who were also a, you know, best selling.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Now just be careful. You cannot give away $100,000 advance ideas like Jane Austen's Sister because we've done Shakespeare's Sister. We've done all this stuff before.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I'm giving that one away for free. I'm still. I'm gonna wait here for my book deal on the book for Men about how to text back. That's where I'm planting my flag.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, just text back podcastride.com bookride.com Listen, what are we doing on the page? Oh, Half Baked Ideas is coming up next. And then we recorded Deals Deals Deals last week and that's coming out soon. But that's what's coming up in the Patreon for your late summer listening pleasure. Rebecca, I will see you streaming movies in my pajamas. I will not see you. But we can, we will be spiritually.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

We'll be there together. Thanks so much for listening today. We hope you'll enjoy this audiobook Excerpt from Villains Are Destined to Die, the novel by Gwen Gaool from ize Press. Visit ezepress.com for more info.

[Narrator of Villains Are Destined to Die Excerpt]

The love child of a rich conglomerate family. A wistful premise, especially if said child is a girl. In novels and TV dramas, these girls would be the protagonists of their very own Cinderella stories. But real life is nothing like fiction. After my mother passed away, I suddenly found myself with two half brothers. We were far from a picture perfect family, though. The two of them harassed me nearly to death, never giving me a moment's peace. Ignoring, deriding, or cursing at me was an everyday occurrence. They screwed with my food and living space and ruined my school years. Asshole number two, the younger of my two older half brothers was close in age to me, so I had the pleasure of attending the same school as him for a year. A year in which he promptly incited the other students to ostracize me. Even after he graduated, things didn't improve. In fact, they got worse. My father's first wife died from a chronic illness long before I was born, but you wouldn't know that from the way my lunatic half brothers treated me. It was as if I'd killed her myself and this was their revenge. It got so bad that even I sometimes had my doubts, wondering if I truly deserved this. Thoughts like maybe I placed a curse on their mother while I was only a sperm cell in my father's body. Why else would they treat me like scum? I actually preferred the days when I'D lived in a cramped studio apartment with my mother, even though we'd barely had a cent to our name. In that house, after all, I was worse than a nobody, and it showed. I lost weight rapidly, and I gained new wounds and scars, almost like some kind of sick compensation for my weight loss. My father, the man responsible for bringing me into the household, didn't seem to care at all. Why didn't you just send me to an orphanage instead? I so badly wished to vent my anger and frustration, but no one would listen. For better or for worse, I'd been raised by a poor single mother, and I tended to resign myself to things and give up pretty quickly. It wasn't any different once I moved. I soon came to accept that there was no point in craving affection and attention from people who treated me as if I were less than an animal. With no money and nowhere else to stay, I had little choice but to keep living in those horrible conditions. Still, all throughout high school, I applied myself single mindedly to my studies. And after graduating, I was able to get into one of South Korea's most prestigious universities. Those years of working my butt off weren't out of some desire for acknowledgment from my half brothers or my father. No, that was my escape plan from that hell of a house. And I succeeded. I still remember the day I received my acceptance letter, running to my father with a bright smile on my face for the first time ever.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Father. Father, look. I'm in. I got accepted.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Yes.

[Narrator of Villains Are Destined to Die Excerpt]

And you didn't come here just to tell me that, did you? My father hadn't offered so much as a single word of congratulation, even after seeing the elation on my face. But that was okay. I hadn't been looking for congratulation either. Please let me move out. I want to live on my own, close to campus, so I can focus on school. I don't think that's asking for too much. My father's indifferent stare had scrunched up as if my request had taken him aback. Still, I'm sure this is as beneficial of a proposition to him as it is to me, I thought. After all, his nuisance of a daughter is offering to rid the house of her presence. Of her own volition, no less. Very well. I'll have things arranged. And like that, I'd achieved the escape I'd been dreaming of. Though I hadn't faced any opposition, the move was not without hiccups. My father made the absurd decision to leave the preparations to asshole number one, his eldest son, which meant. I ended up living in a half basement room covered in mold, but even that couldn't get me down.