Free Republic

Three years after The Exorcist franchise spectacularly fell apart for Universal, the iconic horror property is set to return under writer-director Mike Flanagan with a new film starring Scarlett Johansson. Below is the first teaser trailer for The Exorcist: Martyrs, which is described as “a radical new vision of the most terrifying title in the history of cinematic horror.” In the film, Johansson stars as NYPD homicide detective Julie Miller, who investigates a murderer called Father Sunday (John Leguizamo), a priest (Chiwetel Ejiofor), and a new slew of killings that threaten Miller’s 12-year-old son (Jacobi Jupe). Flanagan is the prolific...

One week after “Motherless Brooklyn” disappointed the box office, Warner Bros. has yet another flop in the form of “Doctor Sleep.” The Mike Flanagan-directed horror film based on Stephen King’s “The Shining” sequel was tracking for a debut in the $25 million range, but its opening weekend came in well below that mark with a dismal $14 million total. While “Doctor Sleep’s” $50 million production is a saving grace, Deadline reports the film is expected to lose between $20 million and $30 million for Warner Bros. “Doctor Sleep” now joins “The Goldfinch,” “Gemini Man,” and “Terminator: Dark Fate” as one...

In the Wayne-Westland Community Schools, high school math teachers are the lowest paid as a group and make on average almost $25,000 less a year than the physical education teachers. The high school science teachers make $11,000 less than the district’s gym teachers on average. The salaries are set by a six-year teacher’s contract Wayne-Westland agreed to in 2008 and runs through 2014. The salary schedule determines pay solely by years of experience and education background. On average, physical education teachers were the highest paid group and made $78,675 a year. Teacher gross salaries can also include pay for extracurricular...

The early morning-after speculation proved true. Suicide. And those with direct and indirect interest, his actual and his baseball family alike, must wonder. What drove Mike Flanagan–once a tenacious but abundantly-humourous Baltimore Orioles pitcher, eventually a team coach, broadcaster, and executive who withstood the heat in and for Peter Angelos’s chameleonic kitchen–to leave himself with a bullet in his head, to be found dead on a trail of his property at 59. What drives a man who knew himself, laughed at himself, analysed where others might condemn, thought where others might explode, and taught a proud city bedeviled by its...