WIRE Buzz: Blumhouse remaking Black Christmas; Black Mirror drops Ashely O video; more

One of the greatest seasonal horror films of all time is getting a reimaging courtesy of Blumhouse. 

Jason Blum's production company, which in recent years has brought us everything from Get Out to last year's hit sequel to Halloween, announced Thursday that its previously unannounced December 2019 release is indeed a remake of Black Christmas, the 1974 slasher classic starring Olivia Hussey and Margot Kidder.

Here's the official synopsis of the film from the studio: "Hawthorne College is quieting down for the holidays. One by one, sorority girls on campus are being killed by an unknown stalker. But the killer is about to discover that this generation’s young women aren’t willing to become hapless victims as they mount a fight to the finish."

And here's the wonderfully evocative teaser poster.

Universal Pictures

Sophia Takal (Always Shine) is directing and co-writing Black Christmas. April Wolfe (Widower) is the other half of the screenwriting duo for the project, which is described as a "bold new take" on the original film that, from the sound of it ("this generation's young women"), could possibly work the first movie into its backstory. Imogen Poots (Green Room), Aleyse Shannon (Charmed), Brittany O'Grady (Star), Lily Donoghue (The Goldbergs), and Caleb Eberhardt (Choir Boy) will star.

The original Black Christmas, directed by Bob Clark, was released in 1974 and has since become a cult classic credited as one of the precursors of the modern slasher, with particular credit given to its first-person shots from the point of view of the killer and the creepy phone calls the unknown murderer makes to the sorority house where he stalks his victims. A remake that attempted to flesh out the killer's backstory was released in 2006, but was not well received.

Now Blumhouse is attempting to reinvent yet another horror classic. Will they pull it off this time?

Black Christmas hits theaters Dec. 13.

If Black Mirror fans have learned anything from the dark sci-fi anthology series, it's that they should be careful what they wish for. Thankfully, we don't live in the Black Mirror universe (yet), so sometimes asking for something on social media means you get some fun out of it.

That's what happened this week when the official Black Mirror Twitter account teased that it would soon release the video for "On a Roll," the hit song performed by pop star Ashley O (Miley Cyrus) in "Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too," the third and final episode of the just-released fifth season of Black Mirror.

In the episode, Cyrus stars both as the pop star — who's trying to get out of a contract with her manager and aunt while her life seems to be falling apart — and as an AI version of her given to a girl named Rachel (Angourie Rice) for her birthday. "On a Roll," a pop song set to the melody of Nine Inch Nails' classic "Head Like a Hole," appears throughout the episode in the form of clips from the video. But now we have the whole thing!

Listening to the song while remembering the original NIN lyrics ("Bow down before the one you serve/You're going to get what you deserve") is unnerving enough, but then the video just makes it weirder with bathtubs full of pink liquid and a frame that keeps periodically cracking, much like the Black Mirror title card.

Now we just have to wait and see if we'll ever learn more about the next phase of Ashley O's career after the episode.

In just a few weeks, director Jason Reitman plans to start shooting his still-untitled sequel to Ghostbusters, a film that will apparently both follow up and pay tribute to the original two films directed by his father, Ivan Reitman, and starring Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, and Ernie Hudson as the titular team who ain't afraid of no ghosts.

We still don't know what to expect from the plot of the film, though we do know it will feature a group of new actors including Mckenna Grace, Finn Wolfhard, and Carrie Coon. We've also heard that we might be able to expect appearances from Aykroyd, Murray, and Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters II co-star Sigourney Weaver in the film, lending even more legacy to what was already an intriguing legacy project within the Reitman family. Though we don't know the story, the new director has at least shed a little more light on exactly what inspired it.

Speaking at Ghostbusters Fan Fest over the weekend (via CinemaBlend), Reitman explained the single image that inspired him to start working on the film.

"We wanted to make a love letter to the original movie. And this is a story that I ... again, I did not expect to be making a new Ghostbusters movie. I thought I was going to be this indie dude who made Sundance movies. And then this character came to me. She was a 12-year-old girl. I didn’t know who she was or why she popped into my head, but I saw her with a proton pack in her hand," Reitman said. "And I wrote this story. This story began to form over many years, actually. It started with a girl and all of a sudden it was a family. And eventually I knew this movie that I needed to make, that I needed to write."

Thousands of kids all over the world have picked up homemade proton packs (including Wolfhard, who went as a Ghostbuster for Halloween in Season 2 of Stranger Things) in the years since Ghostbusters was released, so that's a great image to start with. The idea that it would then build into a family film adds another layer of intrigue to Reitman's still-mysterious project.

The new Ghostbusters film, from Reitman and screenwriter Gil Kenan, is scheduled to hit theaters July 10, 2020.