This just in: The STW Daily brings you all the streaming news that’s fit to (digitally) print for Saturday, June 11th, 2022. Nope by Jordan Peele, The Staircase, and more.
All the Yeps to Jordan Peele and Nope
Universal has dropped a new trailer for Jordan Peele’s latest elevated horror entry, Nope. Peele reunites with Get Out star Daniel Kaluuya for Nope which finds the Oscar winner and Keke Palmer just living a quiet #farmlife in inland California. Nothing to see here. Wait, nope, scratch that. There’s a lot to see here actually, lots of strange things going bump in the night. Deciding the bumps are extraterrestrials come to earth, the sibling farmer duo is determined to get proof of alien life to cash in on the notoriety.
Nope costars Steven Yeun, Michael Wincott, and Brandon Perea. The film hits theaters on July 22, and because it’s a Universal title, it will stream on Peacock, likely hitting in September.
At Least One Viewer is Not a Fan of HBO’s The Staircase
HBO Max’s The Staircase is a scripted drama series based on the true crime documentary of the same name from French filmmaker Jean-Xavier de Lestrade. From 2004-2017, the de Lestrade doc followed the court case of American novelist Michael Peterson who was arrested, tried, and convicted for the murder of his wife Kathleen. After years in prison, Peterson’s conviction was overturned and he was freed.
Peterson invited the documentary crew into his life to document his case to hopefully shed light on what he considered injustices and to help sway public opinion in his favor. But as any subject of any documentary could have told him, when you see yourself presented through someone else’s eyes, you may not like what you see.
Never one to shy away from speaking his mind, Peterson recently announced that he’s unhappy with how he and his family have been characterized in the HBO prestige drama. He also feels like de Lestrade “pimped” him and his story out to HBO for a payday.
From de Lestrade’s perspective, he has stated he got involved with the HBO series because he felt they would make it with or without him, so he thought by signing on he’d have some voice in the editorial direction of the show.
Of concern to Peterson is the way the show has characterized his children, an approach he has said is “egregious” and full of pure “fabrications.” Yet, to create the characters of the miniseries, show runner Antonio Campos used Lestrade’s archived doc footage, meaning the characters that made it onscreen were at least somewhat influenced by Campos’s perceptions of their real-life counterparts. As the early cast members of the Real World were fond of saying when other cast members complained about negative portrayals: “They can only work with what you give them.”
But as art imitates life imitates true crime doc, who’s to say what is the objective “truth?” Judge for yourself by comparing the two. The doc is available to stream on Netflix and the entire drama series is available to stream on HBO Max with the series finale having aired on Thursday, June 8th.