Dex Parra

Gone are the days of the low-stakes, crowd-pleasing studio comedy. Maude Apatow, eldest daughter of writer-producer powerhouse Judd Apatow (Knocked Up, This Is 40), might well revive the genre with her directorial debut Poetic License, an intergenerational romp about a soon-to-be empty nester played by Apatow’s mother, Leslie Mann.

“Until death do us part” might come sooner than expected, if everything goes according to plan. In Over Your Dead Body from director Jorma Taccone (MacGruber, The Lonely Island), Dan (Jason Segel) is a washed-up screenwriter married to an unsuccessful theatre actress, Lisa (Ready or Not final girl Samara Weaving). Dan has an elaborate scheme to kill Lisa on a weekend getaway to a cabin upstate, but things go awry when, as it turns out, Lisa is also secretly plotting to dispose of Dan.

If you’re going to make the greatest movie of all time, you’ll need explosions, guns, fight scenes, car chases, girls, and elves (if you want to live up to The Lord of the Rings). At least, that’s the movie that backyard stuntmen Clay, Lance, and Sander intend to make in ode to their fallen friend.