Tentpole Trauma

Take one of the most beloved Broadway musicals of all time and give it to the world’s greatest living director, and you’ve got a license to print money, right? Somehow Steven Spielberg’s adaptation o…

Wachowskis' month comes to a close with their 2015 space opera Jupiter Ascending. Warner Brothers banked that the Wachowskis’ Cinderella meets Star Wars original IP would be the next big franchise, a…

Wachowskis' month continues with an epic discussion of all things Matrix! Expectations could not have been higher for the Matrix sequels following the seismic cultural impact of the first genre-defin…

Wachowskis' month continues at a breakneck pace with our discussion of Speed Racer! Teaming the Wachowskis with a classic anime property seemed a grand trophy proposition back in 2008, and the direct…

Tentpole Trauma is celebrating the Wachowskis all month long, starting with perhaps their most audacious film, 2012’s Cloud Atlas. Adapting David Mitchell’s time hopping novel was never going to be a…

Scientology founder L Ron Hubbard’s sci fi epic Battlefield Earth had a light year journey to the big screen, but devoted acolyte John Travolta managed to leverage a big budget adaptation into theate…

Handing Academy Award winner Halle Berry a superhero franchise seemed like a purr-fectly sound idea back in 2004, and her inherent sass and feline beauty seemed ideal for the role of Batman's main sq…

CAROL ANNE! Steven Spielberg and Tobe Hooper’s Poltergeist helped to reinvent the haunted house genre, spawning an 80s horror franchise that stood apart from the slasher wave. But despite a grave-ly …

Coming off of the 2007 remake of Halloween, hopes were high that auteur director and rocker Rob Zombie would deliver another pumpkin-smashing hit. But few were keen on the radical re-invention of ico…

John Carpenter’s low budget smash Halloween set the pace for early 80s horror, and after a successful sequel audiences were primed for more of lead slasher Michael Myers. So it came as an unwelcome s…

Riding the sci fi wave started by Star Wars and Alien, the success of Saturn 3 seemed written in the stars. But despite the presence of 1980’s hottest pinup Farrah Fawcett and screen legend Kirk Doug…

A fantasy film helmed by Muppets maestro Jim Henson, starring and featuring music by rock sensation David Bowie, produced by Star Wars creator George Lucas, should have been a box office smash. Yet w…

Expectations were high for the big budget adaptation of the blockbuster Ubisoft video game, and with Michael Fassbender in the starring role, Assassin’s Creed was poised to kill at the box office. Bu…

The Batman film franchise was operating at peak bat-power following  director Joel Schumacher’s smash hit Batman Forever, and with new caped  crusader George Clooney in the cowl and superstar Arnold …

The prospect of geek idol Edgar Wright tackling an adaptation of Brian Lee O’Malley’s hit indie comic had nerds salivating in the late oughts and hoping for a franchise. But despite strong critical n…

Despite the talents of Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford and visionary director Denis Villeneuve, the long-planned sequel to Ridley Scott’s dystopian classic crashed and burned when it landed at the box of…

Despite its massive cultural footprint and influence over the look of modern blockbuster cinema, Ridley Scott’s sci fi neo-noir epic Blade Runner was not a smash hit when it landed in 1982. The film …