Movie Wars

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Screenwriter and producer Adam G. Simon (Man Down, Point Blank, Riff Raff, HBO's One Day In October) returns to Movie Wars from Brazil to talk about the Shia LaBeouf fallout, how Hollywood producers inflate movie budgets, and his directing debut, "Under."
Adam built his first film as a director around Shia LaBeouf. Then came New Orleans, an arrest, and $3.5 million in financing walking out the door. He tells it from his side: the flights, the unanswered texts, the night at TIFF he got Shia onto a stage, and why he still calls him one of the best actors working.
From there it turns into a two-and-a-half-hour education in how movies actually get made. A sales company values a film by the names attached and never reads the script. An $8 million budget becomes $30 million. A movie with 45 producers is a warning sign. And the crew pays for all of it.
Along the way: making peace with Frank Grillo, the Man Down scene that went from script to screen untouched, why Man on Fire and RoboCop are Jesus movies, Star Wars as an orphan story, Fury Road, The Grey, AI-written screenplays, and Kyle’s southern noir novel The Reclaimers, set in an abandoned Arkansas bomb town.

Check out Adam's new production company: https://www.s2lentertainment.com/
Adam's site: https://adamgsimon.com/
Follow Adam and S2L on Insta @adambelgabe and follow S2L @s2l_entertainment

Support Kyle's path to publishing his first novel by signing up for a free audio/written short story at https://kylecastro.co/
Movie Wars goes solo on the American Psycho remake: a thought piece on the Luca Guadagnino version, the casting, and the near-impossible job of putting Bret Easton Ellis on screen honestly.
Kyle has read American Psycho twice, counts Ellis among his favorite authors, and still thinks Mary Harron's 2000 film might be the rare adaptation that improves on the book, mostly by finding the comedy and fighting for Christian Bale when nobody else wanted him. So the new version has a strange job in front of it. Luca Guadagnino is directing, Scott Z. Burns is writing, Lionsgate is behind it, and the word out of the production is that it will not be a remake, reboot, or sequel, but its own more erotic and more faithful reading of the source material. That raises the question this episode circles: how do you honestly adapt one of the most brutal, most interior novels ever published without either mortifying the audience or sanding off everything that made it dangerous? Kyle works through the casting churn (Austin Butler attached and then loosened, Patrick Schwarzenegger floated, and why following Bale is a poisoned chalice), the gender-swap rumor that got denied, why the yuppie and unguarded-capitalism themes may hit harder in 2026, and what transgressive fiction and cold surfaces mean for whether a plotless trip through Patrick Bateman's head can carry a movie. No spoilers for the book's ending, though he warns you it is nothing like the film's.

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KEYWORDS: American Psycho, American Psycho remake, Luca Guadagnino, Bret Easton Ellis, Patrick Bateman, movie podcast, film analysis, movie review podcast
#AmericanPsycho #MovieWars #LucaGuadagnino #FilmPodcast

Luca Guadagnino, Scott Z. Burns, Lionsgate, Austin Butler, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Bret Easton Ellis, Mary Harron

Tom Cruise. Brad Pitt. Matt Damon. Ben Affleck. They all passed. So we got Brendan Fraser and his perfect bangs, and somehow it made $400 million.
This week Kyle and Seth bring back comedian Dustin Chaffin for a second round — and yes, they were already laughing before they hit record. The topic is The Mummy (1999), a movie that Roger Ebert himself said he couldn't defend on a single technical level and still couldn't stop enjoying. That about sums up the energy of this episode.
We get into why Brendan Fraser plays every scene — the smart ones, the scary ones, the romantic ones — with the exact same expression, what it means that 0% of this movie was filmed in Egypt, and why the cat scene breaks the whole internal logic of the film. We also cover the genuinely wild production history: Clive Barker, George Romero, and Wes Anderson were all attached at various points, the Super Bowl ad that saved the box office, and the fact that Fraser spent seven years in and out of hospitals after the trilogy destroyed his body. Tom Cruise would've walked it off.
Also: living in your car as a touring comedian, cruise ship audiences choosing between comedy and Harry Potter trivia, and one nighter and a Camry as a legitimate lifestyle.
New episodes every week. Subscribe so you don't miss the next one — and if you're enjoying Movie Wars, leave us a review. It genuinely helps.

Marianna's favorite horror movie. Kyle and Seth's most complicated relationship with a film this year. Cabin in the Woods doesn't fit neatly into any box — and that's exactly the point.
This week we're digging into Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon's 2012 genre-bending masterpiece, a movie that somehow functions as a straight-up horror film, a loving send-up of every horror cliché you've ever seen, and a genuinely sharp piece of social commentary — all at the same time. We debate whether it actually works as horror, why the corporate facility subplot might be the most interesting thing in the movie, and what it means that ancient gods demanding blood sacrifice is played for laughs and it works.
We also get into the production chaos — this thing sat on a shelf for three years and still landed — and why Bradley Whitford might be low-key the MVP of the whole thing.
Fair warning: this one gets a little philosophical. When a movie is about horror more than it is horror, where does that leave you as a viewer? We have thoughts. Lots of them.
New episodes every week. Subscribe so you don't miss the next one — and if you're enjoying Movie Wars, leave us a review. It genuinely helps.

Quote me on this: The Naked Gun is the greatest comedy film ever made. I've been saying it for years and I'm saying it again on this episode — and I dare anyone to prove me otherwise.
Kyle, Seth, and Marianna break down the 1988 ZAZ masterpiece that somehow came from a TV show that got cancelled after four episodes, built a legacy on dramatic actors who'd never told a joke in their lives, and produced a movie that is still zinging people decades later. Every single line is a joke. Every credit is a gag. Every prop is a setup. It never lost its fastball.
We get into what made Leslie Nielsen a comedic genius — and why it took 40 years for Hollywood to figure that out. We cover the casting philosophy (no comedy experience required, in fact preferred), the behind-the-scenes chaos of trying to keep a straight face for 40+ takes, and the wild fact that the MLB actively pushed the Mariners specifically because they were, quote, "a really weak franchise." We also talk OJ — because you can't do this movie without talking OJ — and land somewhere honest on the question of separating art from the guy who almost didn't make it to filming the sequels.
Plus: Leslie Nielsen's fart machine. His funeral. His casket. You'll understand when you get there.
The War Zone verdict at the end is pretty unanimous — which almost never happens — and if you've never seen this movie, fix that before you listen.