FOLLOWING FILMS - Podcast, Movies, Music, and More

  Welcome back to the Following Films Podcast. I’m Chris Maynard. Every once in a while, a movie comes along that refuses to fit into a neat little box. It doesn’t care about genres, and it certainly doesn't care about playing it safe. That’s exactly what writer-director Tyler Cornack has delivered with Mermaid. Released by Utopia, this film is a sun-drenched, deeply surreal piece of indie cinema centered on a desperate Florida man who discovers a wounded, reptilian mermaid and decides to shield her from a ruthless world. It’s bizarre, it’s beautiful, and it features a brilliant ensemble cast—including today's guest. You know him from massive blockbusters, definitive political satires, and decades of unforgettable character work in projects like Veep, Dave, and Transformers. In Mermaid, he steps into the frame to play Keith, a calculating, menacing figure who serves as a massive threat to our main characters. The phenomenal Kevin Dunn is on the show today. It’s a loose, insight...

The first season of Prime Video’s Fallout defied the historical curse of video game adaptations, achieving what many thought impossible by capturing the exact tonal tightrope of the franchise. Showrunners Graham Wagner and Geneva Robertson-Dworet perfectly balanced horrific, hyper-violent post-apocalyptic dread with a chipper, mid-century retro-futuristic dark comedy. Season 2 takes this established playground and aggressively ups the ante, moving the narrative cross-country from the irradiated ruins of Los Angeles to the iconic, sun-bleached dangers of the Mojave Wasteland and New Vegas. This sophomore outing is bigger, bloodier, and considerably more ambitious. Yet, as the show expands its world to juggle complex faction politics and staggering Pre-War lore, it faces a classic sequel dilemma of whether a series can maintain its tight character focus when the sandbox around it becomes this overcrowded. The answer is a resounding, if occasionally messy, yes. At the beating, irradiated ...

The Ghostface masking era enters its next physical chapter this summer. Submersive Media has officially announced that Scream 7, the latest installment in the iconic slasher franchise, is carving its path onto home video. Fans can add the film to their shelves on June 16th, with options including a standard 4K UHD, a highly anticipated Limited Edition 4K UHD Steelbook, and a standard DVD release. Following its theatrical run earlier this year, the film marks a significant milestone for the franchise, bringing original scribe Kevin Williamson behind the camera as director. Working from a screenplay by Williamson and Guy Busick, with a story by Busick and James Vanderbilt, Scream 7 pivots the narrative focus squarely back to the franchise's ultimate final girl, Sidney Prescott.   The story picks up with Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) attempting to maintain the quiet, protected family life she fought so hard to build, far away from the blood-soaked legacy of Woodsboro. That peac...

When I Love Lucy premiered on CBS on October 15, 1951, television was still a nascent, regional medium experimenting with its own identity. By the time the show wrapped its six-season run in 1957, it had not only conquered the American cultural landscape but had practically written the blueprint for the modern situational comedy. More than seven decades later, the series remains an astonishingly durable piece of pop culture, transcending mere nostalgia to exist as a masterclass in comedic engineering. At the center of this enduring success is the brilliant, chaotic friction between Lucy Ricardo, an ambitious, star-struck housewife with an insatiable desire for the spotlight, and her husband Ricky, a hot-tempered Cuban bandleader whose pragmatic stability is constantly tested by his wife’s schemes. Backed by their practical, older landlords and best friends, Fred and Ethel Mertz, the quartet formed a comedic ensemble that has never truly been replicated. To appreciate I Love Lucy full...

  Welcome to the Following Films Podcast. I’m your host, and today we are diving into a project that is a must-see for anyone interested in lost cinematic history. One notable entry of the silent era is the loss of Lon Chaney’s 1922… classic? A Blind Bargain. For decades, it has lived only in production stills and the imaginations of horror historians. But our guest today has done something much more ambitious than a simple remake. Paul Bunnell has reimagined this macabre tale, transporting the gothic dread of the original into a stylized, 1970s landscape. The film follows a desperate young man who, driven by the need to save his mother, strikes a devastating deal with an unhinged physician. It’s a story of twisted experiments, moral decay, and the high price of hope. We’re going to talk about the challenges of reviving a "lost" story, the influence of the man of a thousand faces, working with Crispin Glover, and the process of bringing this dark vision to life. A Blind Barga...

Ultraman: Towards the Future (1990) When we talk about the sprawling legacy of Tsuburaya Productions, the early 1990s often feel like a forgotten frontier. After Ultraman 80 ended its run in 1981, the franchise went into a sort of live-action hibernation on television. The silence was finally broken not in Tokyo, but in the rugged landscapes of South Australia. Ultraman: Towards the Future (known in Japan as Ultraman Great ) stands as a fascinating anomaly: a high-concept, environmentally conscious co-production that attempted to westernize the Giant of Light without stripping away his soul. The series opens with an ambitious scope. Astronauts Jack Shindo and Stanley Haggard are exploring the surface of Mars when they witness a titanic struggle between a silver giant and a grotesque, pulsating entity known as Gudis. This isn't just a monster-of-the-week; Gudis is a sentient virus, a cosmic cancer that seeks to assimilate all life. When Stanley is killed and Jack is left strand...

Focus Features has officially announced that the upcoming romantic comedy Finding Emily will arrive in theaters nationwide on August 28th. The film, which blends the high-stakes energy of campus life with the unpredictable chaos of modern romance, looks to be a late-summer highlight for audiences seeking a mix of humor and heart. Finding Emily follows a classic "meet-cute" gone wrong. When a lovesick musician is handed the wrong phone number for the girl of his dreams, he doesn’t just give up. Instead, he enlists the help of a focused, no-nonsense psychology student. What begins as a targeted search soon spirals into a hilarious, campus-wide frenzy. As the duo navigates the social hierarchies and eccentricities of university life, they find their own ambitions and their feelings for one another put to the ultimate test.

Welcome back to another episode of the Following Films podcast. I’m your host, Chris Maynard. Today on the show, we’re diving into a genre that feels like it’s been missing from the multiplex for far too long: the warm-hearted, 80s-style coming-of-age comedy. My guest is the legendary Bobby Farrelly, who is here to talk about his latest film, Driver's Ed. In the film, a group of teens hit the road in a stolen driver’s ed car, racing against time to help a lovesick high school senior (Sam Nivola) track down his college-freshman girlfriend and win her back. In 24 chaotic hours, they’re chased by school security and the cops, shot at by small-time crooks, and somehow adopt a three-legged cat. Also starring Kumail Nanjiani and Molly Shannon.  Driver's Ed hits VOD this Friday, and honestly, it’s a breath of fresh air. It has that genuine heart and nostalgic energy that reminds you why we fell in love with these kinds of stories in the first place. Bobby and I get into the nuts and b...

There is something inherently cinematic about the isolation of a summer camp. It’s a setting that has been a staple of the genre for decades, but writer-director Avalon Fast looks to be charting a different path with her latest feature, CAMP. Following the buzz of her previous work, Honeycomb, Fast is returning to the screen with a story that seems to trade traditional slasher tropes for something more atmospheric and emotionally resonant. Dark Sky Films has officially announced that CAMP will arrive in theaters on June 26th. The film centers on Emily (Zola Grimmer), a young woman carrying the immense weight of two early-life tragedies. Seeking a reprieve from her guilt, she takes a job as a counselor at a summer camp designed for troubled youth. While she initially finds a sense of community and forgiveness among her fellow counselors—played by Alice Wordsworth and Cherry Moore—the peace is short-lived. A whispering voice from the surrounding woods begins to pull at Emily, threatening...