Concert News

Swedish rock band Ghost invites Houston to dance macabre on new tour

Swedish rock band Ghost will play at Toyota Center on August 16, 2025.

Photo by Ryan Chang

Billed as a "theatrical rock band," Swedish group Ghost will embark on its biggest world tour to date in 2025, including a stop at the Toyota Center in Houston on Saturday, August 16, 2025.

Starting on April 15 in the United Kingdom, Ghost will play more than 50 shows around the globe over the course of five months. In addition to Fort Worth, they will also play in Austin on August 14 and Fort Worth on August 15.

Ghost are no strangers to North America; they also came to Dallas, Austin, and Houston in 2023 in support of their 2022 album, Impera.

They released a feature-length concert film from that tour, Rite Here Rite Now, this past July, which was recorded during their shows in Los Angeles.

Impera was the band's fifth album overall, a career that has seen them notch four No. 1 albums in their native Sweden. Impera was their highest-charting album in the U.S., coming in at No. 2 on the Billboard 200.

They've also been mainstays on the Mainstream Rock chart, with five of their songs going to No. 1, most recently "Call Me Little Sunshine" in 2022.

Tickets for the U.S. dates will be available starting with a Citi presale beginning on Tuesday, October 29 at 10 am. The artist presale will begin two hours later at 12 pm.

Additional presales will run throughout the week ahead of the general on-sale beginning on Friday, November 1 at 10 am at ghost-official.com.

GHOST WORLD TOUR 2025 DATES

Tue Apr 15 – Manchester, UK – AO Arena
Wed Apr 16 – Glasgow, UK – OVO Hydro
Sat Apr 19 – London, UK – The O2
Sun Apr 20 – Birmingham, UK – Utilita Arena
Tue Apr 22 – Antwerp, BE – Sportpaleis
Wed Apr 23 – Frankfurt, DE – Festhalle Frankfurt
Thu Apr 24 – Munich, DE – Olympiahalle
Sat Apr 26 – Lyon, FR – LDLC Arena
Sun Apr 27 – Toulouse, FR – Zénith Toulouse Métropole
Tue Apr 29 – Lisbon, PT – MEO Arena
Wed Apr 30 – Madrid, ES – Palacio Vistalegre
Sat May 3 – Zürich, CH – Hallenstadion Zürich
Sun May 4 – Milan, IT – Unipol Forum
Wed May 7 – Berlin, DE – Uber Arena
Thu May 8 – Amsterdam, NL – Ziggo Dome
Sat May 10 – Lodz, PL – Atlas Arena
Sun May 11 – Prague, CZ – O2 Arena
Tue May 13 – Paris, FR – Accor Arena
Wed May 14 – Oberhausen, DE – Rudolf Weber-ARENA
Thu May 15 – Hannover, DE – ZAG Arena
Sat May 17 – Copenhagen, DK – Royal Arena
Tue May 20 – Tampere, FI – Nokia Arena
Thu May 22 – Linköping, SE – Saab Arena
Fri May 23 – Sandviken, SE – Göransson Arena
Sat May 24 – Oslo, NO – Oslo Spektrum
Wed Jul 09 – Baltimore, MD – CFG Bank Arena
Fri Jul 11 – Atlanta, GA – State Farm Arena
Sat Jul 12 – Tampa, FL – Amalie Arena
Sun Jul 13 – Miami, FL – Kaseya Center
Tue Jul 15 – Raleigh, NC – Lenovo Center
Thu Jul 17 – Cleveland, OH – Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse
Fri Jul 18 – Pittsburgh, PA – PPG Paints Arena
Sat Jul 19 – Philadelphia, PA – Wells Fargo Center
Mon Jul 21 – Boston, MA – TD Garden
Tue Jul 22 – New York, NY – Madison Square Garden
Thu Jul 24 – Detroit, MI – Little Caesars Arena
Fri Jul 25 – Louisville, KY – KFC Yum! Center
Sat Jul 26 – Nashville, TN – Bridgestone Arena
Mon Jul 28 – Grand Rapids, MI – Van Andel Arena
Tue Jul 29 – Milwaukee, WI – Fiserv Forum
Wed Jul 30 – St. Louis, MO – Enterprise Center
Fri Aug 01 – Rosemont, IL – Allstate Arena
Sat Aug 02 – Saint Paul, MN – Xcel Energy Center
Sun Aug 03 – Omaha, NE – CHI Health Center
Tue Aug 05 – Kansas City, MO – T-Mobile Center
Thu Aug 07 – Denver, CO – Ball Arena
Sat Aug 09 – Las Vegas, NV – MGM Grand Garden Arena
Sun Aug 10 – San Diego, CA – Viejas Arena
Mon Aug 11 – Phoenix, AZ – Footprint Center
Thu Aug 14 – Austin, TX – Moody Center
Fri Aug 15 – Fort Worth, TX – Dickies Arena
Sat Aug 16 – Houston, TX – Toyota Center
Wed Sep 24 – Mexico City, MX – Palacio de los Deportes

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Movie Review

Meta-comedy remake Anaconda coils itself into an unfunny mess

Photo by Matt Grace

Jack Black and Paul Rudd in Anaconda.

In Hollywood’s never-ending quest to take advantage of existing intellectual property, seemingly no older movie is off limits, even if the original was not well-regarded. That’s certainly the case with 1997’s Anaconda, which is best known for being a lesser entry on the filmography of Ice Cube and Jennifer Lopez, as well as some horrendous accent work by Jon Voight.

The idea behind the new meta-sequel Anaconda is arguably a good one. Four friends — Doug (Jack Black), Griff (Paul Rudd), Claire (Thandiwe Newton), and Kenny (Steve Zahn) — who made homemade movies when they were teenagers decide to remake Anaconda on a shoestring budget. Egged on by Griff, an actor who can’t catch a break, the four of them pull together enough money to fly down to Brazil, hire a boat, and film a script written by Doug.

Naturally, almost nothing goes as planned in the Amazon, including losing their trained snake and running headlong into a criminal enterprise. Soon enough, everything else takes second place to the presence of a giant anaconda that is stalking them and anyone else who crosses its path.

Written and directed by Tom Gormican, with help from co-writer Kevin Etten, the film is designed to be an outrageous comedy peppered with laugh-out-loud moments that cover up the fact that there’s really no story. That would be all well and good … if anything the film had to offer was truly funny. Only a few scenes elicit any honest laughter, and so instead the audience is fed half-baked jokes, a story with no focus, and actors who ham it up to get any kind of reaction.

The biggest problem is that the meta-ness of the film goes too far. None of the core four characters possess any interesting traits, and their blandness is transferred over to the actors playing them. And so even as they face some harrowing situations or ones that could be funny, it’s difficult to care about anything they do since the filmmakers never make the basic effort of making the audience care about them.

It’s weird to say in a movie called Anaconda, but it becomes much too focused on the snake in the second half of the film. If the goal is to be a straight-up comedy, then everything up to and including the snake attacks should be serving that objective. But most of the time the attacks are either random or moments when the characters are already scared, and so any humor that could be mined all but disappears.

Black and Rudd are comedy all-stars who can typically be counted on to elevate even subpar material. That’s not the case here, as each only scores on a few occasions, with Black’s physicality being the funniest thing in the movie. Newton is not a good fit with this type of movie, and she isn’t done any favors by some seriously bad wigs. Zahn used to be the go-to guy for funny sidekicks, but he brings little to the table in this role.

Any attempt at rebooting/remaking an old piece of IP should make a concerted effort to differentiate itself from the original, and in that way, the new Anaconda succeeds. Unfortunately, that’s its only success, as the filmmakers can never find the right balance to turn it into the bawdy comedy they seemed to want.

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Anaconda is now playing in theaters.

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