We already had a major surprise this morning with a new Ryûsuke Hamaguchi film, “Evil Does Not Exist,” coming out of nowhere and landing right into Venice competition.

There were many wondering why Emerald Fennell’s “Saltburn” did not show up inside the Toronto and Venice lineups.

The hoards are out in full force today due to Venice selecting Roman Polanski, Woody Allen and Luc Besson’s new films. Their calls for cancellations have failed, they are now deep in meltdown mode. It’s wonderful to witness.

A secret film, running 75 minutes long, starring Travis Scott, will be released in select theaters on Thursday. This news has come out of nowhere and I don’t see anyone reporting on it, yet.

This morning, critic Karina Longworth tweeted about a rather honest passage in THR’s Venice lineup piece, she wrote:

Things are moving in strange directions for Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Poor Things.”

Well, Venice just ate TIFF’s lunch. Wow. The 80th Venice Film Festival announced its lineup this morning and the surprises kept coming.

My heart sank this morning when I opened my inbox and noticed a message that described an “impending” release date change for Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Poor Things.”

Now, we have a Bloomberg report claiming that Waititi’s film might again have its theatrical release delayed by Searchlight Pictures, this time due to the SAG strike. This film is absolutely cursed.

Raimi’s fourth Spider-Man project came very close to being made in the late aughts, with Sony even pushing it into pre-production mode.

There hasn’t been a great horror movie so far this year, but that will change this coming Friday when an A24-distributed indie is released.

I already had my eye out for Kitty Green’s “The Royal Hotel,” but now it’s certainly got my attention. The first official photo of the film can be seen above.

The Toronto International Film Festival has announced its Gala and Special Presentations sections. The glaring omissions are Sofia Coppola’s “Priscilla,” Michael Mann’s “Ferrari” Emerald Fennell’s “Saltburn,” Jeff Nichols’ “The Bikeriders” and Bradley Cooper’s “Maestro.”

Here’s Paul Schrader, who couldn’t get a ticket to a sold out Barbie screening and decided to watch “Sound of Freedom” instead.

The impact of the actors' strike, according to Venice director Alberto Barbera, will be very limited.

Quentin Tarantino took the bait and did a “Barbenheimer” double bill this weekend.

Today, the numbers have stayed put for “Barbie,” it’ll open at around $155 million, but “Oppenheimer,” fueled by “Barbenheimer” is set to gross $80 million this weekend. The biggest non-Batman opening of Christopher Nolan’s career.

Screen Actors Guild national executive director and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland believes the strike could keep going until next year:

It’s certainly a challenging film, a 180-minute film about men talking science in rooms, but elaborately constructed and with a slew of strong performances. You can read my review here. Now it’s time for our readers to chime in with their thoughts.

I gather many of our readers have seen the film now. A core part of the audience has been dressing up in pink to watch it in theaters, did you do the same? Actually, maybe don’t mention that in the comments section below.