From Forbes : A ‘Super 8’ Sequel? J.J. Abrams Has Ruled It Out, But The Cast Is Open To Revisiting Their Characters

Super 8, J.J. Abrams’ most personal film to date, celebrated its 10-year anniversary earlier this month. To celebrate the milestone, I caught up with nearly everyone involved with the production (including Abrams himself) for a special retrospective on the coming-of-age film that tips its hat to the iconic Spielberg/Amblin movies of yore.

Now that we’re a decade on from the project’s release, I asked Abrams if he had any interest in revisiting the world of Super 8 in any capacity — whether it be in the form of a direct sequel or something only tangentially connected (à la the producer’s anthological Cloverfield universe).

“I don't think so — that movie feels like a beginning, middle, and end to me,” Abrams said. And you really can’t blame him for feeling that way. Super 8 works best as a standalone tale of love, loss, aliens, and most importantly, filmmaking.

With that said, I couldn’t help but ask some of the cast members where they’d like to see their characters as adults if “Super 9” (it definitely wouldn’t be called that) was to become a reality. After all, there is most definitely is a precedent for a group of friends reuniting as adults after going through a shared supernatural experience as kids.

Stephen King established the ground rules with the Losers Club in It — a novel that’s helped fuel the recent boom of ‘80s nostalgia (projects like Stranger Things owe as much to King as they do to Spielberg and even Super 8, which was ahead of the retro curve by a good six years).

“Before he [Abrams] finished his sentence, I would say, ‘Whatever you wanna do, I’m in.’ I would absolutely do that,” Joel Courtney, who played Super 8’s doe-eyed protagonist, Joe Lamb, tells me. “For Joe…I would just want to see him continuing to grow. Mostly just having a relationship with his father and for his sake, I hope Alice [Elle Fanning’s character] is in there somewhere. Some sort of relationship. Or maybe they broke up and she got with Charles. Who knows?”

“I think I’d be amazing to get the gang back together,” adds Riley Griffiths, who played Joe’s best friend, Charles Kaznyk. “I would hope to see Charles still doing his thing! Maybe making a professional version of The Case and bringing Martin back as the lead once again. I think that would be hilarious. The whole incident no doubt left a profound impression on his life and I would assume his filmmaking would reflect that. It would be fun too see if his bossiness has carried over/became problematic in his adult life and to watch him work through that.”

Gabriel Basso, who portrayed the nebbishy Martin, says he’d “like to see him be more comfortable with his own weakness and character.”

“Just because he was sort of quiet and freaked out a lot and got punked a lot,” the actor continues. “I think it’d be cool if he came back and he was just the same guy, but his weaknesses [wouldn’t be] as glaring. He’d have that gnarly scar from when the tank blew up the house and he’d know there were aliens. So his understanding of putting his life in context of what it is wouldn’t bother him that much. I just think it’d be cool to see someone who’s like, ‘Yeah, f*** you, I know aliens exist.’ He sort of has a trump card on anyone giving him crap about his glasses or whatever.”

And what of the group’s resident pyromaniac, Cary — played by Ryan Lee? “I’m in. I would never tell J.J. ‘No,’” Lee says. “I would love to see Cary with all of his fingers still intact. I would love to maybe see that he got a haircut. And yeah, maybe Cary settled down and went the more traditional route. Not so sustainable with all the fireworks.”

From Cultured Magazine : From Beginner’s Luck to Rom-Coms, Joel Courtney Stays Curious

Sarah Harrelson: What was your first acting job?

Joel Courtney: Super 8 (2011).

SH: And you were the lead!

JC: It was actually my first audition. I was 14 years old. My end-all, be-all goal for the summer was that I would get a commercial and make 100 dollars. And then I auditioned for Super 8 and they basically asked me not to audition for anything else because they didn’t want me on the market for other work. I ended up doing something like 13 callbacks over the span of three months. It was hysterical. I remember that when I finally booked the job I was already a week into eighth grade and was like, “No, you guys are too late!”

SH: Even though you were very young, were you at any point nervous about getting it? Did you understand how big a role that was?

JC: I knew that J.J. Abrams had done Alias (2001-2006) and Lost (2004-2010) and I was a huge fan of his work. I was 14 so I was watching all those shows with my brothers and my dad. When I auditioned, J.J. actually walked in from like a side office and came over to see me. My dad’s jaw hit the floor. It was a secret that J.J. was the director for the project. I still didn’t really appreciate the gravitas of the situation that I had stumbled into, and that was an extremely good thing.

SH: And is there anything that you learned on that set that you still implement?

JC: There was so much that I learned on set that it’s hard to lock down one thing, but maybe the notion that curiosity is king.

SH: Gucci is celebrating its 100-year anniversary. If you live that long, how would you celebrate your 100th birthday?

JC: Surrounded by family. I’d probably want to do some sort of costume party from 100 years ago and really just appreciate the people who have been around me. Also, Gucci, 100 years! Let’s go!

From DigitalSpy : The Kissing Booth star returns to Netflix for new rom-com

The Kissing Booth star Joel Courtney is returning to Netflix for a brand new romantic comedy project called Players.

The Hollywood Reporter announced the new casting, which includes Courtney, Work It's Liza Koshy and Ibiza's Augustus Prew. The three of them are joining previously announced cast members Gina Rodriguez (Jane the Virgin), Damon Wayans Jr (New Girl), and Tom Ellis (Lucifer).

The movie will focus on a sports writer played by Rodriguez, who hooks up with players without creating emotional attachments, but ends up falling for one of the people she gets with, played by Ellis.

Trish Sie, who previously directed Pitch Perfect 3, will get behind the camera for this one, while Rodriguez is serving as one of the producers.

Earlier this month, Rodriguez starred in a dystopian thriller for Netflix called Awake. We at Digital Spy thought that the movie, which featured the star as a former soldier turned drug-dealing mum, was full of overt religious symbolism and unnecessary violence, but was also rather boring.

If you have seen it and want to make sense of the ending, we've got you covered.

Meanwhile, the third and final Kissing Booth movie will be premiering on Netflix in August and bring an end to all of the personal and emotional dramas for Elle, Noah and the rest of the gang.

From The Hollywood Reporter : Liza Koshy, ‘Kissing Booth’ Star Joel Courtney Join Gina Rodriguez in ‘Players’

'Lord Of The Rings' actor Augustus Prew is also joining the Netflix movie.

Liza Koshy, Joel Courtney, and Augustus Prew— who star in Work It, The Kissing Booth, and Ibiza, respectively— are returning to Netflix for upcoming rom-com Players.

They join the previously announced Gina Rodriguez, Damon Wayans Jr., and Tom Ellis.

The project follows New York city sportswriter Mack (Rodriguez), who has spent years devising successful hook-up “plays” with best friend Adam (Wayans Jr.) and their crew, but when she unexpectedly falls head-over-heels for one of her targets (Ellis), they all must learn what it takes to go from simply scoring to playing for keeps.

Pitch Perfect 3 director Trish Sie will helm from a script by Whit Anderson.

Marc Platt and Ryan Christians for Marc Platt Productions, with Ross Dinerstein for Campfire. Rodriguez and Molly Breeskin for I Can and I Will Productions will executive produce, with Ross Girard for Campfire and Sophia Lin.

Koshy is repped by CAA, Carter Media Group, and Hansen Jacobson. Courtney is repped by Gersh, Authentic, and Myman Greenspan. Prew, who is set for Amazon’s splashy The Lord of the Rings television series, is repped by CAA, the U.K.’s Curtis Brown and Authentic.

From Vulture : J.J. Abrams’s Super 8 Was Ahead of Its Time

Here are a few things that the film Super 8, released June 10, 2011, can now do: Enroll in fifth grade, exchange a tin-anniversary gift, and assert its rightful status as the most overlooked film of the decade. The family-friendly J.J. Abrams sci-fi epic, now with 20 percent more lens flares* (*citation needed), turns 10 this month, marking a full decade of its under-appreciation. Super 8 has fallen out of our cultural consciousness over time, but it deserves a rewatch. For starters, the plot offers a classic setup: On an idyllic summer evening in 1979, a few AV-club-type kids making a zombie movie (on Super 8 film, oh-ho!) witness a train crash. It seems like the train was intentionally derailed to release something, but … what? And why? It’s up to our young heroes to uncover the truth before it takes out their entire town.

Super 8 expertly deploys tropes that tug on the heartstrings. On paper, it would seem like there are almost too many of them: the loss of a parent, a strained father-son relationship, beef between the local cop and the town ne’er-do-well, fishy military operations, a monster with unclear motives, the kids biking everywhere, no one listening to the kids … you know how it goes. But it all just works. That’s largely thanks to its familiar suburban setting and superb performances from young actors like Joel Courtney (in his first-ever role) and a mesmerizing Elle Fanning. The friendships feel genuine and the conflicts honest, and the tension between Joe (Courtney), still missing his mother, and his father, the town deputy (Kyle Chandler), is compelling. What’s more, the script is funny, but not overly so; it’s warm and even laugh-out-loud at times without being too quippy or relying on shtick. Era-perfect details enhance its familiarity: The hairstyles, technology, costuming, and cars all signal a specific pocket of time, lending an intentionally Spielbergian layer to the proceedings. As the film draws to its emotional, dazzling climax, it’s reminiscent of E.T. or Close Encounters of the Third Kind in ways that feel earned. It’s like a summer blockbuster made in a lab.

What sells it more than anything? The genuine look at the monster. Many looks, in fact. 2008’s Cloverfield, a found-footage film produced by Abrams, was not as good about that. While Abrams neither wrote nor directed Cloverfield, he was the highest-profile producer attached to the film at the time, and marketing certainly led audiences to believe that it was his work. Those who were disgruntled by the lack of a Proper View Of Cloverfield Monster (reportedly sacrificed to preserve the film’s chaotic realism) may have been less interested in another Abrams-backed creature feature so soon after. In fact, by 2010, he had been obliged to clarify that the films weren’t related. Fortunately, he learned from Cloverfield’s missteps and crafted a truly breathtaking dude for Super 8. Finish off the movie’s astonishing visual effects with some masterful editing and set it all to a moving score and you’ve got what has to be the most overlooked film of 2011. Not even a nod for sound mixing at the Oscars? How come, Chief Willoughby?

Admittedly, it’s not perfect. There are few people of color present in Super 8, which is disappointing and limiting. And society has progressed past the need for a dead mom as shorthand for childhood trauma. Sure, Occam’s razor would suggest that if a film isn’t popular, it probably isn’t good. However: Isn’t it just as possible that it was ahead of its time? Consider that five years after Super 8 was released, the Duffer bros. project Stranger Things exploded out of Netflix and into worldwide domination. Set a handful of years after Super 8 but still in small-town America, Stranger Things was an homage-laden sci-fi series starring a group of misfits, all unknown, who solve an otherworldly mystery kick-started by a secretive military operation gone awry. The Demogorgon’s look even evokes the Super 8 monster’s. So maybe audiences just weren’t ready for Super 8 in 2011. But after the year our own world just experienced in the proverbial Upside-Down, it’s time to shun the cynical and embrace the wholeheartedly optimistic.

To be fair, we didn’t fail the movie entirely back then. Roger Ebert gave Super 8 3 ½ stars, and it holds a ripe score of 81 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. Mop-top lead Courtney now appears in Netflix’s The Kissing Booth series, and the younger Fanning is a compelling (and unexpectedly offbeat!) movie star. Even AJ Michalka, who has a small but fun role, is agin releasing music again with her sister, fellow actor and musician Aly Michalka. And, of course, the fall after Super 8 was released, Chandler took home an Emmy for his role as Coach Taylor in Friday Night Lights. But the fact remains: We simply do not talk about this film enough! It’s by turns cozy, nostalgic, spooky, and wholesome, and much like the monster at the center of it all, it just wants a little more of our love. Hey, that’s not a spoiler. You’ve had ten years to watch it.

Super 8 is streaming on Paramount+.