On this first night of April, we look back at all the wildly appropriate pranks that were actually pranks and not just a bunch of lies about who is going to star in the upcoming Star Wars movies (we’re looking at you, George Takei. For shame.) This includes Variety getting duped bad, Monsters University getting taken over by a rival, an Iron Man suit you can buy and the best possible Taken sequel idea we’ve ever seen. That and more in Movie News After Dark: April Foolpocalypse!
- Variety goes Gaga – The best movie-related prank of the day goes to director Bryan Singer, who tweeted early in the day announcing that Lady Gaga was joining the cast of X-Men: Days of Future Past as Dazzler. While most of us laughed, Variety ran with it. Oh boy… (screenshot courtesy of @KrisTapley)
- Your resident staff is Nic Cage – One ambitious college student changed their residential staff board to pictures of Nicolas Cage. Well played.
- Fear Tech Rulz! – The Monsters University homepage got hijacked by what we can only assume is its rival school, Fear Tech. Probably the most clever marketing prank from any movie studio. Good on ya, Disney.
- Bane Mask Walkie Talkies – ThinkGeek was at it, as always. Like the Tauntaun sleeping bag, one hopes that the demand is high enough to make Bane Mask Walkie Talkies a real thing.
- A real Iron Man Suit – Free delivery in the UK!
- Netflix gets new categories – Hahaha…
- Chappelle season 4 – Our good friends at ScreenRant did pretty well with one of the few interesting made-up entertainment stories of the day. Mostly because this announcement for a Chappelle’s Show fourth season is so absurdly in-depth.
- The best movie news of 1998 – We took one look at what our friends at WhatCulture did today and thought, “hey, that looks familiar.” But even though taking your website back in time isn’t exactly a new idea, they did full it off with gusto. Complete with an awesome Rolling Stone/Sarah Michelle Gellar cover. It takes a lot of work to bring that much cynicism to 1998.
- Taken 3: Family Matters – Funny Or Die went KickstartOrDie this morning, putting together a number of crowd-funded campaigns that we now wish were real instead of the Veronica Mars movie. Spoiler: clicking on any of the donate buttons takes you to a page encouraging you to donate to MakeAWish. That’s a cause we can get behind. Also, this…
