Film & TV
RMN dispatches tagged Film & TV.
You Don’t Have to Remember a Place to Inherit Its Memory
Reported Feature
Middle-school filmmakers documented the nearly century-old Maplewood Theater at the exact moment one generation’s nostalgia is becoming another generation’s local history.
New Jersey Is Turning Its Movie History Into Tourist Attractions. Why Do Fans Want to Visit Fictional Places?
Reported Feature
A definitive visitor guide to the Garden State’s new official film trails — from Camp Crystal Lake and the Quick Stop to the mansion in Annie, the carnival site in Big and Atlantic City’s cinematic landmarks.
Adults Want Halloween to Be a National Holiday. They’d Just Rather Stay Home.
Reported Feature
New research from New Jersey-based Ferrero finds that 58% of American adults want Halloween recognized as a national holiday, even as a quiet night with candy and a favorite movie becomes the preferred celebration.
The Vampire Diaries Stars Reunite in New Jersey for Vampire Fan Weekend October 24–25
Event Hanover Marriott · Whippany, New Jersey
The Salvatore brothers are returning to New Jersey this October, as Ian Somerhalder and Paul Wesley headline Creation Entertainment’s Vampire Fan Weekend at the Hanover Marriott in Whippany on Saturday, October 24, and Sunday, October 25, 2026.
Xena and Gabrielle Are Coming to New Jersey as Salute to Xena Convention Sets 2027 Dates
Event Hanover Marriott · Whippany, New Jersey
Lucy Lawless and Renée O’Connor headline a three-day fan gathering at the Hanover Marriott in Whippany, February 5–7.
In Maplewood, Watching Rocky Horror Still Means Performing Rocky Horror
Event Burgdorff Center for the Performing Arts · Maplewood, New Jersey
The Maplewood Strollers will bring The Rocky Horror Picture Show to the Burgdorff Center with a live Cosmic Light Cabaret shadowcast, audience participation and the ritual that turned a movie into something audiences have been rebuilding for half a century.
State Theatre New Jersey Pairs Pirates and Star Wars With Live Symphony Performances in 2027
Event State Theatre New Jersey · New Brunswick, New Jersey
The New Jersey Symphony will bring two blockbuster film scores to life in New Brunswick, first with Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl in February and then a 50th-anniversary presentation of Star Wars: A New Hope in May.
The Black Pearl Sails Into New Brunswick With a Full Live Orchestra
Event State Theatre New Jersey · New Brunswick, New Jersey
New Jersey Symphony will perform Klaus Badelt’s swashbuckling score live as Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl plays on the big screen at State Theatre New Jersey.
Alton Brown Brings Food, Science and a Little Mayhem to State Theatre New Jersey
Event State Theatre New Jersey · New Brunswick, New Jersey
The longtime Good Eats host comes to New Brunswick Oct. 24 for a more intimate live show built around demonstrations, music, storytelling and the kind of kitchen curiosity that made generations suspicious of Uni-taskers.
Star Wars Turns 50: New Jersey’s 2027 Celebration Is Already Taking Shape
Event New Jersey
A restored version of the 1977 theatrical release, four live-orchestra screenings, a Kevin Smith Marvel crossover and a brand-new Star Wars movie arriving on anniversary weekend are already on the calendar, and the flood of 50th-anniversary events has barely begun.
New Jersey ParaUnity Expo Brings Ghost Hunters, Cryptids and the Unexplained Back to Woodbridge
Event Woodbridge High School · Woodbridge, New Jersey
The 12th annual gathering returns Nov. 7 with paranormal television personalities, investigators, cryptid researchers, free lectures, exhibit rooms, vendors and a full day built around the strange corners of curiosity.
Rocky Horror at State Theatre NJ Got Weird in All the Right Ways
Reported Event State Theatre New Jersey · New Brunswick, New Jersey
Barry Bostwick, the Friday Nite Specials shadow cast, a fully committed crowd and a polished VIP after-party made Saturday night one of the best Rocky Horror experiences I have seen anywhere.
Lambertville Knows How to Do Halloween: ACME Screening Room Brings Its Film Festival Back for a Fifth Year
Event ACME Screening Room · Lambertville, New Jersey
The Lambertville Halloween Film Festival returns Oct. 16-18 with juried horror shorts, a full-scale Monster Bash and the New Jersey premiere of a new Vincent Price documentary - all built around one of the town's most distinctive cultural spaces.
NJ Horror Con Dispatch: Ketchup, Karma and the Filmmakers Sharing a Space
Reported Event Delta Hotels Woodbridge · Iselin, New Jersey
A conversation with John Theissen Jr. and Danielle Francis revealed something bigger than two genre films: a small independent filmmaking ecosystem where directors, actors, editors and makeup artists keep showing up for one another.
NJ HorrorCon Dispatch: Michael Jayne Is Growing Something Strange in Mays Landing
Reported Event Delta Hotels Woodbridge · Iselin, New Jersey
A conversation with the Big Damn Films filmmaker turned into one of the convention's most interesting discoveries: ARBOR DAY: The Root of Evil, a South Jersey horror project shaped by recovery, persistence and the urge to make something entirely his own.
NJ Horror Con: I Came for the Horror, Stayed for the People Making It
Reported Event Delta Hotels Woodbridge · Iselin, New Jersey
At the tail end of a nor'easter, the hardest part of the day was getting from the car to the door. Once inside, NJ Horror Con was a dense, strange, funny reminder that the best convention stories are often the ones you never planned to find.
Clerks: Open All Night 3 Recap — Kevin Smith, a Nor’easter, and Fans From Across the Country
Reported Event SModcastle Cinemas · Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey
At Clerks: Open All Night 3, fans crossed the country and a nor’easter to spend the night inside a movie that has evolved into something bigger: a participatory ritual, a community, and a place people can still go.
Will Shat. Raisin Bran Finally Finds the Joke It Was Always Waiting For
Reported Feature
For a kid whose sugar options were tightly rationed, Raisin Bran was the loophole. Decades later, William Shatner is helping the famously sensible cereal discover that grown-up does not have to mean boring.
Are You 4imprint Certain?
Reported Feature
When an Ad Slogan Escapes the Commercial
The Monsters Are Checking In: NJ Horror Con Takes Over Iselin This Weekend
Event Delta Hotels Woodbridge · Iselin, New Jersey
The three-day convention and film festival returns Sept. 25-27 with Susan Sarandon, Kevin Smith, horror favorites, indie films, vendors, panels, cosplay and a whole lot of room for the unexpected.
Smodcastle Makes Avengers: Doomsday an Opening-Night Watch With Kev
Event SModcastle Cinemas · Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey
Marvel’s biggest 2026 movie reaches Smodcastle on Thursday, Dec. 17, with Kevin Smith in the room for a Watch with Kev screening one night before the film’s official Dec. 18 release date.
Rocky Horror Was Never Just a Movie
Culture
The many lives of a cult classic that keeps changing shape
The Pen Pal Is Back — and This Time It Comes With a Movie Tie-In
Reported Feature
BIC, DreamWorks Animation and We Are Teachers are using handwritten letters to connect U.S. elementary students with peers in the Philippines. The project is part literacy exercise, part cultural exchange and part branded campaign, which makes it a particularly 2026 experiment in what analog connection is worth.
Clerks Became a Place You Can Go
Reported Event SModcastle Cinemas · Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey
Clerks: Open All Night 3 is not really about gaining access to three movies. It is about what happens when a movie becomes a destination, a pilgrimage and eventually a ritual people are willing to reorganize an entire night around.
The Dog Doesn’t Know It’s October 3
Reported Feature
CESAR’s pink Mean Girls tie-in is a small, silly and revealing example of what happens when an internet ritual becomes a physical object, and the family dog gets recruited into the bit.
We Took the Audience Out of Audience Testing
Reported Feature
iScreeningRoom’s new AI can watch an unreleased film, predict how viewers will react, and recommend edits without a test audience seeing a frame. The technical pitch is efficiency. The cultural question is what happens when creators start making work for a simulation of us.
The Wolf Man Has Joined the Wine Rack
Reported Feature
19 Crimes is adding The Wolf Man to its fourth annual Universal Monsters collection, turning a bottle of wine into something closer to seasonal shelf art for people who still have a soft spot for black-and-white monsters, glowing labels and a good Saturday-night horror ritual.
Westfield Doesn’t Have to Borrow Halloween. It Has Charles Addams.
Event Westfield · Union County, New Jersey
AddamsFest returns for a ninth October with art, cemetery tours, storefronts, a floating family house, a 1991 movie night and a town using its own history as something more interesting than seasonal decoration.
The Batmobile Is Coming to Princeton. This Time, the Mission Is Memory.
Event Brandywine Living at Princeton · Princeton, New Jersey
Brandywine Princeton is turning Batman Day and what would have been Adam West’s 98th birthday into a fundraiser for the Alzheimer’s Association New Jersey Chapter — with Batman, Catwoman, a Batmobile, live music and the kind of pop-culture memory that can still connect generations.
Ricky and Julian Are Coming to the Calgary Sport Card Expo. The Cards Can Wait.
Reported Feature
The Sept. 18-20 show at Calgary’s Genesis Centre is bringing the Trailer Park Boys duo into a collectibles weekend built around autographs, memorabilia and the increasingly blurry line between sports fandom and pop culture.
Urban Operas Is Betting That Specificity Can Be a Streaming Strategy
Reported Feature
Mann Robinson’s new mobile-first platform enters a booming microdrama market with a narrower proposition: Black stories should not have to live as a category inside someone else’s service when they can become the foundation of one.
Behind Every Scream Is Somebody Building the Room
Event Voorhees Hall · Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey
The Fright Stuff, Mike Meyer's documentary about America's haunted-attraction world, comes to the New Jersey Film Festival at Rutgers on Sept. 12, looking past the jump scare to the builders, performers and obsessive craft that make an entire seasonal culture work.
Adam Sandler Is Filming All Over New Jersey. Again.
Culture
Grown Ups 3 has moved through suburban streets, downtown business districts, restaurants and a Shore amusement park. The more interesting story is not that Hollywood showed up. It is that New Jersey increasingly knows what to do when it does.
The Past, Remastered
Culture
AI can make a street filmed in 1911 move like it was shot yesterday. It can color the coats, sharpen the faces, smooth the footsteps and manufacture the frames between them. The result may feel more real. That does not mean more of it is true.
Montclair Film Festival Sets Its October Return as the 15th Edition Approaches
Event The Clairidge · Montclair, New Jersey
The lineup is still under wraps, but the dates are set, the ticket calendar is in place, and Montclair Film is preparing to turn the town into a ten-day movie destination once again.
From Khan to Kirk: New Jersey Marks 60 Years of Star Trek
Event New Jersey
The statewide anniversary calendar now stretches from restored films and fan dinners to library celebrations, a symphonic concert, musical parody and William Shatner himself. For one franchise, New Jersey has found a remarkable number of ways to say happy birthday.
Bound Brook Goes to Warp for a Three-Part Star Trek Celebration
Event Brook Arts Center · Bound Brook, New Jersey
Brook Arts Center is marking Star Trek’s 60th anniversary with a film, a symphonic voyage and a New Jersey-premiere musical. Then William Shatner brings The Wrath of Khan to State Theatre New Jersey in January.
The New Jersey Film Festival Opens a Month-Long Window for Independent Film
Event Voorhees Hall · Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey
The 45th bi-annual fall festival begins tonight at Rutgers and runs through Oct. 4, mixing in-person screenings, 24-hour streaming windows, filmmaker conversations, free workshops and an audio-visual concert.
When the Biopic Becomes a Room
Culture
David Bowie’s newest documentary does not ask an audience to sit in front of a screen. It surrounds them with photographs, music and spatial sound. Across museums, festivals and immersive venues, the life story of an artist is beginning to escape the rectangle.
Rocky Horror Is Ready to Do the Time Warp Again in New Brunswick
Event State Theatre New Jersey · New Brunswick, New Jersey
Barry Bostwick joins a 4K screening, live shadow cast and full audience-participation night at State Theatre New Jersey on Oct. 3.
Open All Night: Kevin Smith Brings Clerks Back Home
Event SModcastle Cinemas · Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey
On September 25, SModcastle Cinemas will run the entire Clerks trilogy through the night, with Kevin Smith in the room. The marathon is part nostalgia, part endurance test, and part reminder that very few filmmakers remain this accessible to the people who grew up with their work.