AwardsWatch Podcast #205: Reviewing ‘The Exorcist: Believer’ and Our Favorite/Least Favorite Franchise Remakes and Reboots

On episode 205 of The AwardsWatch Podcast, Executive Editor Ryan McQuade is joined by AwardsWatch contributor Zach Laws talk about their Top 5 favorite, and least favorite, franchise remakes/reboots.

Before getting into the Top 5 for this week, Ryan announced the winner of the 2023 Summer Movie Draft, which ended up being a very close finish when the numbers were all added up, showcasing a lot of interesting lessons learned to be going forward into next year’s draft. Once the winner was announced, Zach briefly talked about his review of The Exorcist: Believer, which was the inspiration for the Top 5 this week. As it seems to be another bad horror remake/reboot for director David Gordon Green, it made for an interesting idea to look some of the best franchise remakes/reboots and what makes those work so well, as well as look at the ones that didn’t work out and set back their intellectual properties further than before. Ryan list covered a wide range of films and genres, while Zach primarily stayed in the horror genre for his selections, which included for both of them Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Thing, The Mummy, Ocean’s Eleven, Casino Royale, The Fly as examples of their favorites, and Man of Steel, Fantastic 4 (2015), Jurassic World, Alice in Wonderland, and the recent Halloween reboot as films that were their least favorite attempts at making a franchise relevant again.

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This podcast runs 1h47m. We will be back in two weeks to recap the AFI Film Festival and give our thoughts on the latest film from Martin Scorsese, Killers of the Flower Moon. Till then, let’s get into it.

Music: “Modern Fashion” from AShamaleuvmusic (intro), “B-3” from BoxCat Games Nameless: The Hackers RPG Soundtrack (outro)