“Project Hail Mary” Composer Daniel Pemberton’s Mad Scientist Approach to the Ryan Gosling Hit

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Given the right project, Daniel Pemberton plays a bit like a mad scientist as a film composer. He’s scored an array of films, but when the scale of a project like Project Hail Mary comes calling, Pemberton becomes – in his own words – an explorer.

As Grace (Ryan Gosling) and his alien pal Rocky (James Ortiz) journey through the unknown in space to save their planets, the composer went on his own path of discovery. “The parallels are quite close,” Pemberton says. “In the sense of he’s having to work out what he’s doing and how he’s going to get out of this, and I’m doing the same, which does feed into the feeling of the film. Hopefully, you don’t feel that – ‘I don’t know what I’m doing’ – but there is an element of me trying to work my way out of this conundrum of how do we make this feel very different?”

The composer behind Project Hail Mary recently spoke with The Credits about how he reached his own destination and made Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s adventure film sound both deeply alien and incredibly human.

 

When Grace and Rocky are in the upper atmosphere of Adrian and fighting to collect samples, how would you want to build suspense over the course of the seven-minute track? 

It’s a long, long cue. “Time Go Fishing” comes from the very first discussions we had about this film. We had this sort of joke, half a joke, about trying to score the whole film on a wood block. I was like, “That will never happen.” That cue starts on a single piece of wood. I wanted to build a cue that started from almost the smallest thing to the biggest thing. It does really start with the smallest thing in the orchestra, which is just someone tapping a piece of wood, and it builds and builds and builds. 

 

What effect did you want to achieve with that build? 

The dynamic shape of a movie is very important to me, like where things are, what comes before, and what comes afterward. It’s the first time we get something with that level of threat and tension. What I wanted to do with that is once it starts, you never get a release as the audience until he’s finally on the ship. And so, it’s important for me to pull the audience in and lock them in so they can’t escape. Pretty much every instrument in the score on that cue. It builds and builds and builds. 

How many instruments are in that track? 

We’ve got woodblocks. We’ve got a whole host of weird percussion that I recorded in a warehouse in LA. We’ve got an electric cello. We’ve got a brass section. We’ve got a string section. We’ve got a choir. We’ve got guitars. What else have we got? A bunch of school kids clapping and stamping, that’s a big part of it. Some messed-up electronics. Every single idea is in this film in that cue.  

One idea is an audible human touch in the score, right?

I’d be recording bowls of water. I’d be tapping my fingers in a bowl of water to accentuate certain sounds in a way that you’re not even going to consciously notice, but it’s going to make them feel a bit different. Even the woodblocks you hear at the beginning of “Time Go Fishing,” if you listen really closely, you can hear my fingers tapping the floor of Air Studios. I wanted to get a more human touch rather than it being hit with a stick. 

Those are such fitting thematic choices for Project Hail Mary. When you first delved into the story, how did you want your choices to reinforce the themes of the film? 

Two things. We all wanted to really connect the audience with humanity. Grace represents humanity’s last chance. We wanted the audience to connect subconsciously with that, with earth, and not with the sort of sci-fi space world. I want to make a score that feels very tactile. So that would be woods, metal, glass, water, voice, and touch. 

What’s the second part that was very important to you from the beginning? 

I want a sense of imperfection because one of the things that is fascinating about this film and of science in a way, the world is imperfect. Cellular organisms are a big part of this film. They are always quite different, with slight mutations and abstractions. I wanted abstraction, mutation, and imperfection subtly within the score. I didn’t want it to feel slick. What would the purpose be of making it slick? It would sound like a Hollywood film, but that’s just repeating what people have done before. I wanted to do something that would, in some ways, not confuse the audience but would give them a different experience. 

What experience were you aiming to give them? 

It makes them really think about the world, the story, and the characters. Because I think when you do something that is different, and if you can still support the emotional beats and the story beats, then it’s really effective because you, as the audience, think about it more because you don’t know what you’re being told to think. 

Are there any tracks in particular that really highlight those imperfections you wanted?

In terms of crazy tracks, I’d say there’s one called “Erratic Maneuver Detected,” which is the sort of cat-and-mouse bit when Rocky’s ship first turns up. It felt like one of the most bonkers pieces of action scoring I’ve ever done. I was writing that and working in an edit suite next to Phil and Chris’s edit suite in LA. I remember being like, “Guys, you’ve got to hear this. You’re either going to think this is brilliant or I’m going to get fired.” And of course, Phil and Chris, being Phil and Chris, they loved it, because it’s very different. 

Given some of the scores you’ve done, like Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, it says a lot that you consider that one of the craziest tracks you’ve done.

It’s got all the voices going, “Oh,” and they all double with woodwinds. With the woodwinds, I sometimes try to add slight microtonal tuning to make them sound less clean. You’ve got the steel drums. At one point, I wanted to do a lot of this score on steel drums.

They didn’t fit?

Some things it works really well for. We’ve got these huge oil drums, like massive ones, and they sounded great, but when you started playing them higher up, it started sounding like The Little Mermaid. Now there’s nothing wrong with The Little Mermaid. It’s a fantastic score. I just didn’t want us to feel like The Little Mermaid. When they’re big, they sound great and feel like the ship, because the ship already has sort of metal and tech. Rockets are pretty visceral environments because they’re not these super clean, white iPod spaces. They’re mashed-up bits of technology all shoved together with a lot of metal and other stuff. 

How did Rocky inspire your work? How’d you want to give him a voice within the score? 

Rocky’s voice is a big part of this score with his playfulness. I used a lot of manipulation. I did a lot of work with vocalists early on in the research and development phase to try to make unusual sounds. I’d resample those and turn them into instruments that I could play expressively, which took a long time. But then that gave you a tone to voices that was unexpected. It’s very helpful because you sort of don’t know what it is. It sounds like a voice, but it doesn’t quite. And so, it has an alien nature to it, which again, helps subconsciously reinforce that this is a different life form from one we used to. 

Project Hail Mary is, maybe first and foremost, a platonic love story between Grace and Rocky. As big as the score is, how personal is it to you as well?

There are some cues there which are very personal to me, to experiences in my life, and I’ve just pulled on them to write those, especially the saying goodbye one. It’s saying goodbye to someone you might never see again. It’s interesting, pulling on your own experiences and trying to put those in a film about a guy saying goodbye to a rock in a spaceship. 

Does it come more naturally than it sounds? 

Finding the language for the film took a long time. Every film I do, I try to make sound and feel quite different, which is exciting for me, but it can be a very time-consuming process. Every now and again, I’ll do a film, it’s like, I know what I’m doing, and I can write straight away. Project Hail Mary takes a huge amount of discovery. I liken it to being an explorer, and you’re going somewhere to find a new land, but you don’t have a map. Once you’ve got a map, it’s easy. You’re like, “We’re going that way.” But you don’t know if there’s anything over there, and you might be, so you need to go in that way. It’s a gut instinct that that’s the right way to go. 

A very personal scene in the film is Grace on a space walk – the astrophage space scene, as it’s called. He takes a moment for himself. Your cue, titled “A Moment,” is perfect. How’d you want to support the awe and wonder Grace experiences in that scene? 

“A Moment” is probably my favorite bit in the whole film. It was very important to me that the emotion in that scene was powerful. To get to that point, it’s all in some ways about the musicality of the cue before the reveal. When the reveal lands, it pulls a curtain back to reveal something amazing. Sometimes you have cues that are slow builds towards a moment. This is a gradual build, and then it just explodes, which only really works because of what you’ve laid up before. 

It’s beautiful.

I called it like the big IMAX moment. For me, I was always like, “This is the big IMAX moment. This is why you’re going to see it in IMAX – for this one moment.” It was a lot of work to get it feeling quite simple. I want that cue to feel very beautiful and very simple and not overly thought out, but it’s not. It’s quite complicated. 

Project Hail Mary is in theaters now.

Featured image: Ryan Gosling stars as Ryland Grace in PROJECT HAIL MARY, from Amazon MGM Studios. Photo credit: Jonathan Olley © 2026 Amazon Content Services LLC. All Rights Reserved.

From “Handmaid’s Tale” to “Scarpetta”: Costume Designer Ane Crabtree’s Visceral Approach to Character

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“Everything began with Patricia Cornwell’s words,” says three-time Emmy-nominated costume designer Ane Crabtree about the making of Scarpetta, an eight-episode crime thriller adapted from the 1990 novel Postmortem by series creator Liz Sarnoff, now streaming on Prime Video. “I always try to start with the purity of the creator’s words, and I have such a beautiful working relationship with Liz that I can ask her anything.”

Crabtree, born in South Dakota and raised in Kentucky, studied at the University of Evansville in Indiana before continuing her fine arts education at its U.K. sister school, Harlaxton College, and later attending New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology. Her background brings a unique perspective to her costumes – a purpose-filled fusion of artistry, style, and detail. Her most recognized work to date is The Handmaid’s Tale, in which her interpretation of Margaret Atwood’s blood-red robe and “wing” has become a symbol of women’s oppression. The costume is on permanent display at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.

The Handmaid's Tale.png
“The Handmaid’s Tale.” Courtesy Hulu.

Scarpetta, which has been renewed for a second season, gave the designer a chance to reconnect with her roots while inspiring a fresh perspective on costumes. “As a woman from the South on this show that has been particularly helpful, but everything really becomes this beautiful stew in the fittings,” she tells The Credits.

Nicole Kidman stars as Kay Scarpetta, a reinstated chief medical examiner of Virginia. Opposite is husband and FBI profiler Benton Wesley (Simon Baker), older sister Dorothy (Jamie Lee Curtis), Dorothy’s husband (and former detective) Pete Marino (Bobby Cannavale), and Dorothy’s daughter Lucy (Ariana DeBose). They all live together, and as one can imagine, there’s plenty of family dynamics (and trauma) playing out. Central to the story is a mystery linking Kay’s past and present, unfolding across dual timelines – modern day and her first stint as the Commonwealth’s forensic pathologist in 1998. Flashbacks feature different actors, including Rosy McEwen as Kay, Hunter Parrish as Benton, and Jake Cannavale as Pete. Crabtree designed looks to span both periods.

 

“It sounds a bit method, and I don’t think it’s a negative point, but I wanted to create the whole of their closet as if they are real people,” Crabtree suggests. “There’s a level of intensity that you want to get correct that helps the actor. You’re not playing Kay Scarpetta. You are Kay Scarpetta.” The approach, at least from Crabtree’s viewpoint, allows the actor to look into the mind of the character. For Kay, she blended backstory, regional influences, and period fashion to create her looks.

Kay Scarpetta (Nicole Kidman). Credit Connie Chornuk/Prime. Copyright: Amazon MGM Studios

“I wanted both Kays to have this sense of a longing for the fineness of men’s tailoring that she saw in her father,” she notes. [Part of Kay’s character is witnessing her father’s murder.] “There’s a kind of attention to presenting oneself that Kay has throughout all timelines, but it’s really the idea of a hardworking family. It’s every immigrant’s story, right? But from an Italian man’s point of view. Kay 1998 and Kay 2026, she’s dressing like [actor] Cary Grant [North by Northwest]. She’s the woman who’s dressing like a male lead, not because I want her in men’s clothes, but her father passed, and a single mother raised her in the ‘70s when feminism was huge. And so her mother was this strong character, but she’s got her sense of style.”

Past Kay (Rosy McEwen) and Past Marino (Jake Cannavale) in SCARPETTA SEASON 1 Photo Credit: Connie Chornuk / Prime © Amazon Content Services LLC

The 1998 version of Kay drew some of its detailing from social expectations. “The first time we see Kay in 1998, I wanted to give the character a feeling of having to fit in these boxes that society in that time in the South, in Virginia, would expect in terms of presentation. But her trench coat isn’t perfect. It doesn’t fit her well. She got that off the rack because she thought she needed one good coat to keep in the car at all times. She’s not someone who spends a lot of money on clothes and probably has had her stuff for many years.”

Kay’s look in the first episode as played by Rosy McEwen. Courtesy Ane Crabtree/Prime Video.

Those same influences echoed into the modern-day version of Kay. “Throughout the season, I wanted the color of dried blood in her look,” she says. This extended to Kay’s trench coat, which the designer added a notable touch to its lining. “I like visceral feeling fabrics and visual things for actors because it can help them, and so, there’s a lining of blood,” she says. “She’s reminded of her father’s death, which was quite bloody, and it’s the reason why she wants to solve these puzzles her whole life. She wants to sort of give integrity and respect to these people who’ve passed away, including her father. But it’s always a reminder. And so whether it’s the lining inside of her coat, or the color that envelops her, it’s almost like a stain. You can never get away from it.”

The blood splattered lining. Courtesy Ane Crabtree/Prime Video.

With Kay’s husband, Benton, his color palette transitions from bright white and creams in his past to darker shades of gray and black, reflecting his trauma as a child. “There’s a fine line between madness and genius, and I’m certain that Benton has that,” notes Crabtree. “He’s still struggling on his own with that, and so his clothing is usually very correct. Everything fits like a glove, but maybe his collars start to turn a little bit up, almost like a demon has taken over. It’s like those people who always have their mask on, and maybe that mask is trying to be a good human, trying to be a Southern gentleman, but they can’t contain themselves.”

Mood board/look book for Benton. Courtesy Ane Crabtree/Prime Video.

Knowing the series has two full seasons is helping Crabtree shape the wardrobe. “For me, it’s a real search for the bones of the character before we even begin to add the clothing… The psychology of their childhood is more important to me than what they wear. And from that, I create what they wear. So what I’m doing for season two is adding a bit more pathos. I’m trying to add more wrinkles to show that things are not perfect when you’re going through madness, or a family falling apart, or a murder that you can’t solve for 28 years. I think it’s really important for the actors, for me, for Liz, and for the integrity of the story to come through.”

Scarpetta is available now on Prime Video.

 

 

 Featured image: Detective Pete Marino (Bobby Cannavale), Kay Scarpetta (Nicole Kidman). Connie Chornuk/Prime. Courtesy Amazon MGM Studios.

Showrunner Bill Lawrence Breaks Down “Rooster,” Steve Carell’s Charm, and the Art of the Perfect Pilot

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In a welcome return to comedy, years after famously playing clueless manager Michael Scott in The Office, Steve Carell can now be seen slipping off roofs, getting drunk, talking smack in sauna rooms, and being insulted by liberal arts students in Rooster. Filmed in Los Angeles, Rooster (Sundays on HBO), co-created by Bill Lawrence and Matt Tarses, casts Carell in the role of action-adventure novelist Greg Russo, who becomes writer-in-residence at the East Coast college where his daughter (Charly Clive) teaches. Lawrence, one of TV’s most prolific showrunners, also juggles Shrinking, the Scrubs revival, Ted Lasso, and Bad Monkey, along with six greenlit productions currently in the works.

“I just love the world-building aspect of television,” Lawrence tells The Credits. “I love dropping the audience into a world that feels new. It can be familiar, it can be nostalgic, it can be futuristic, but just being able to fill out the edges and have it feel authentic and lived in – that kind of stuff always makes me happy.”

During a visit to New York, Lawrence unpacks Rooster inspirations, including the “aw-shucks” Florida novelist Carl Hiaasen, and shares his fondness for the big star who’s actually nice off-camera.

 

Congratulations on Rooster. The show is so funny, clever, and charming.

Oh, thanks, man.

I read somewhere that Steve Carell called Rooster one of the best pilot episode scripts he’s ever read. That must have been gratifying for you?

It was amazing. This show kind of started with the fact that Matt and I just desperately wanted to work with Steve.

Did you know Steve personally before casting him in Rooster?

No. I’d met him here and there, but generally speaking, you can’t find a comedy writer who doesn’t fantasize about Steve Carell saying stuff that they wrote. When Matt and I decided to live in this world of college and have someone kind of playing the author Carl Hiaasen, Steve was just that guy.

Steve Carell and Bill Lawrence on the set of “Rooster.” Courtesy HBO

Some famous people can allegedly be jerks when the cameras aren’t rolling. What’s Steve Carell like offstage?

He’s nice in real life. To have someone you admire professionally so much as an artist turn out to be the exact way you’d hope they would be – that was an added bonus. 

Your shows always feature likable performers, going back to Spin City with Michael J. Fox, Ted Lasso with Jason Sudeikis, Jason Segel in Shrinking, and now Steve Carell in Rooster. No matter what kind of trouble his Greg Russo character gets into, Carell keeps the audience on his side.

Steve radiates goodwill, so that buys you the ability to have his character stumble into many situations that become part of the fun for us comedically.

Steve Carell in “Rooster.” Courtesy HBO.

Given your track record and current workload, you obviously know how to craft a compelling pilot script. Boiling it down, what do you see as the key ingredients?

Part of it is that you have to deliver a lot of exposition and get to know the characters. And with Rooster, because Steve’s such a generous actor, he wanted a true ensemble show. Then it really became about making sure people got to know a myriad of characters who would all have their own arcs and stories.

 

So even though all roads in Rooster ultimately lead to Steve Carell’s Greg, you have to make sure each of those roads—those characters—is interesting in their own right?

Yeah. I hope people come out of the first few episodes going, “I wonder where the former married couple, played by Charly Clive and Phil Dunster, I wonder where that road ends? I wonder whether Danielle Deadwyler’s character [poetry professor Dylan] can get a voice at the school and be heard the way she wants? I wonder how it goes for that affable kid student who’s not sure he even belongs at the school?”

Danielle Deadwyler and Steve Carell in “Rooster.” Courtesy HBO.

Tommy – he’s great.

That kid, Maximo [Salas], who plays Tommy, is so good that we ended up writing more for him just to see how he led his life. I think these are all kinds of interesting arcs. Even the secondary characters like Annie Mumolo, who plays the assistant, or Robby Hoffman, the roommate, and Rory Scovel, the cop – they all have their own lives. In the old network television days, these “side characters” just came in to deliver exposition and be kind of rich comedically. But being dropped into a world like Rooster, I want it to be funny, but I also want it to have some heart.

Rory Scovel, Steve Carell, and Maximo Salas. Courtesy HBO.

You mention Florida novelist Carl Hiaasen as the inspiration for Steve Carell’s character. You got to know Hiaasen while adapting his “Bad Monkey” book as the basis for your Vince Vaughn series?

Yeah. Carl’s this kind of quintessential “aw shucks” everyman who’s kind of awkwardly trying to find his way. When we met, I thought, “Wow, it’d be fun to [have Steve] play a guy like him who’s accomplished so much but is still maybe not completely sure what his life should look like.” College is the place you go to kind of reinvent yourself and decide who you’re gonna be for the rest of your life, which the students and the young people are doing. But who’s to say a guy in his late 50s, like Greg, can’t do it too?

Steve Carell and Danielle Deadwyler in “Rooster.” Courtesy HBO.

Speaking of the college experience, you attended William & Mary, but you also have a personal connection to the fancy Sarah Lawrence College in New York, right?

Sarah Lawrence is my great-great-grandma. In real life, I’m William Van Duzer Lawrence the fourth, and the main admissions building [at Sarah Lawrence College] is the original William Lawrence’s home. There’s a big painting of a guy that looks exactly like me, except he’s balding and has mutton chops. I didn’t have the courage to go [to school] there because I couldn’t imagine being in the spotlight. And not only am I tied to a small East Coast liberal arts institution, but Matt Tarses – his whole family went to Williams [College] in Massachusetts. Steve went to a small college as well, where he played hockey. So that was a big influence.

In Shrinking, the dad has issues with his daughter. On Rooster, the dad has issues with his daughter. Are we seeing a pattern there?

You know what? I write about stuff that I know. The conflict in Shrinking between Jimmy and his teen daughter resulted, first and foremost, from the grief of his wife’s death, so it’s a lot about grief and forgiveness, but do I write relationships that are familiar to me? Yeah. Look at Liz and Derek in Shrinking. That feels very familiar to me in my own marriage and not just ’cause my wife [Christa Miller] is playing Liz.

Steve Carell and Charly Clive. Courtesy HBO.

In the case of Rooster, the heart of the story centers on this contentious father-daughter relationship.

Well, Rooster is more personal because my daughter’s out in the world. She’s a successful singer, off in Europe performing now, and I want to be wherever she is, protect her from bad things, and take care of her. And not only does she not want that, but she shouldn’t want it. Steve, Matt, and I shared some common ground in that we all have daughters about the same age – mine’s 25, Steve’s just graduated from college, and Matt’s daughter also graduated from college. We’re all trying to navigate what our lives are supposed to look like while still wanting to be intrusively involved in our daughters’ lives, even though they don’t really need us that way anymore.

 

Rooster is shot in California, and so is Shrinking. You like making shows in and around L.A.?

It matters to me so much. At the [Rooster] premiere, a few of us celebrated having worked together on Spin City – – Alan Ruck and Connie Britton were in that show, and Rooster‘s Cabot McMullen was the production designer. We’ve all worked together for, like, 31 years now. And that shorthand makes it a little easier to put on shows because you have so many people watching your back. 

Charly Clive, Connie Britton, and Steve Carell. Courtesy HBO.

Getting to work with people you’ve come to know over the years…

It’s selfish. Wanting to be in California working with the same craftspeople and camera department, the same grips and wardrobe, the same production designer – that safety net of people is a gift for our company. We make Shrinking in L.A. and shoot the exteriors in and around Pasadena and Altadena, which we love and support. Rooster is a New England college show, but we shot it here, at College of Pacifica [in Stockton], Occidental College, and USC [in Los Angeles]. We cribbed off their campuses and made it look like fall and winter. I’m doing my darndest to keep production in L.A. because it’s still the hub of the industry for me.

 

Featured image:  Steve Carell, Bill Lawrence, and Danielle Deadwyler on the set of “Rooster.” Courtesy HBO

Amy Madigan’s Oscar-Winning Horror Turn Gets Its Own Film With “Aunt Gladys” Prequel

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When Amy Madigan won an Oscar for her haunting performance as Aunt Gladys in Zach Cregger‘s Weapons, the victory was extra sweet for horror fans, who finally saw a knockout performance from the genre get the recognition it’s so richly deserved. Now, Madigan’s malicious Gladys is getting her own film with Aunt Gladys, the working title for Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema’s prequel, with Cregger returning to direct and co-writing a script with screenwriter Zach Shields (Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire).

The prequel has been in the works for months, following Weapons’ massive box-office success (it grossed $270 million worldwide) and Madigan’s win for Best Supporting Actress. Madigan didn’t just win the Oscar; she also scooped up the SAG-AFTRA Actors Award, the Critics Choice Award, and was nominated for a Golden Globe. All for playing the parasitic witch at the dark heart of the horrors unfolding throughout Maybrook, Pennsylvania, where all but a single child vanish from the same class on the same night at exactly the same time.

Madigan was enthusiastic, if realistic, about reprising her Oscar-winning role at the ceremony. “We know how long stuff takes,” she told the press at the ceremony. “We know what this business is like, and nothing’s real until it is, and timing and all those things. But if it worked out, that would be great, because I trust Zach [Cregger], and he’s got a lot of wacky ideas.”

Madigan’s portrayal of Gladys was one of those rare instantly iconic performances, with a deranged look (those ginger curls, gonzo glasses, and smeared lipstick) and over-the-top, unsettling grandma energy that hid her transgenerational witchery. Madigan’s big Oscar night buoyed a genre that has long been box office gold but often dismissed at awards ceremonies, despite some killer performances in recent years that were deserving of recognition (Toni Collette in Hereditary comes to mind).

Cregger’s next film, Resident Evil, is slated for a September 18, 2026, release. Shields wrote Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, is a consulting producer on Apple TV’s Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, and co-wrote previous Godzilla films Godzilla vs Kong and Godzilla: King of the Monsters. 

Featured image: Caption: AMY MADIGAN as Aunt Gladys in New Line Cinema’s “Weapons,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures

Inside Composer Hildur Guðnadóttir’s Bone‑Crushing Score for “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple”

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Hildur Guðnadóttir went full method with 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (available digitally and streaming on Netflix). In addition to playing a mammoth horn on the score, the kind prepped and ready for a battle cry, the composer played bone instruments for the superbly crafted horror film. For her second collaboration with filmmaker Nia DaCosta, following Hedda, Guðnadóttir also went metal. 

For the film’s villain, the satanic Jimmy (Jack O’Connell), she went with strings of terror. As for the film’s hero, Dr. Kelson (Ralph Fiennes), she wanted sounds of beauty for the hopeless, infected world. The score clashes and roars, as if the audience is in the belly of the beast. 

It’s another intrinsic piece of music from the Academy Award-winning composer, known for Chernobyl, Joker, and Tár. Recently. The artist took The Credits behind the scenes of scoring DaCosta’s thrilling film, the second in a planned trilogy from writer Alex Garland and producer/director Danny Boyle.  

 

You find it helpful to draw when you’re starting a score, so what were your drawings like for 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple?

I don’t think I did any drawings for this one. When I read the script, I had this feeling of wanting to do something very elegant and baroque-connected. I spoke to Nia, and she had that same feeling. We wanted to work with the string orchestras to have some very elegant string music. 

Did you want any inelegant strings for the horror as well?

My God, yes. I really love how there’s always been bands that are connected to the films and the music. I was working with my metal band, Osmium, when I got the script. We were working on our new album, and I thought, ‘Oh my God, Osmium was going to be perfect for this less elegant zombie attack moment.’

How does your experience in metal music, in terms of getting a reaction out of an audience, influence your score?

I really like metal music, and I’ve been playing for a long time. There’s a doom metal band rather than drone metal, called Sunn O))), that I’ve played with for a long time. I’ve always worked a lot within the experimental music scene. I’ve worked with a lot of people in the industrial music scene. So, pretty loud music for a lot of my musical life, so that comes naturally to me.

You have an exhibit at the Academy Museum, where you enter a dark room and experience your music, and it’s a quiet but intense experience. It’s hard to explain its full effect, but do you always want music to speak to the subconscious?

I do seek that out. Music is so powerful in that aspect. Music has such immense, direct access to our subconscious. I’m interested in how music can transform a space that you’re in, whether that’s a physical space or a psychological space. When you’re going out running, and you need energy, you can listen to an upbeat piece of music, and it gives you energy. If you want to go the other direction and relax and come down a bit, music can be very helpful in that way, too.

How have you strived for a similar effect in your work?

In films like Tár, you can’t really even hear the music, but it is working on such a subconscious level. I’m trying to go in through the back door and access those places in the subconscious to bring you into the story.

What did the Bone Temple itself give you? How did you want to define that location? 

I was keen on having the texture of the bones in the music. There’s such a specific texture to bones when you make any sound with them. Actually, most instruments that are not strings or metal are made from bones. All the percussion is played on actual bones. I did all these bone flutes. One of the main instruments is this horn [displays a laughably gigantic horn].

Ralph Fiennes in “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple.” Courtesy Sony Pictures.

That is so metal, Hildur. 

[Laughs] That is pretty metal. It is very different from plastic, steel, glass, or anything else, which has a much more pointed texture when you bang on it. Bones somehow have a rounder and richer texture. Maybe no one else is going to hear it like that, but I think even in that crazy horn situation, when you blow into it, it’s clearly not an English horn or a French horn. There’s this roundness to the texture that I love. I wanted to bring this elemental, weird, textural feeling into the score because that’s what I was getting from the temple itself. I wanted it to be kind of tribal and elemental. I really didn’t want it to sound fancy or produced. I wanted it very raw. 

Jimmy and his followers are almost like Peter Pan and the lost boys gone wrong in the apocalypse. Did you want any childlike sounds for them? 

I think a lot of this process of making these sounds was very childlike. When I was making the bone instruments, it was like, how do I make a sound out of this? How do I make this work? What if I go this way or that way? The whole process was pretty childlike because: how can I bang this instrument without covering myself in bone marrow? [Laughs] 

Composer Hildur Guðnadóttir working on “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple.” Courtesy Sony Pictures

Your blood went into the score. 

There literally was. I think that was probably the childish part of the score, just me. 

We spoke when Joker was released in theaters, shortly before you won the Academy Award for it. At the time of the interview, you said you weren’t very good at talking about music. Over the years, with more projects and accolades, how has how you talk about music evolved?

In the beginning, when I was doing press for Joker, I was so unused to talking about music. I’d been doing music for 15 years or whatever. By that point, no one had really shown that much interest in what I was doing. All of a sudden, when Joker happened, it was like this crazy bang. And all of a sudden I had to do all these interviews and stuff, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, I’m not used to talking about this.’

You almost do a job like this to not talk to people. 

[Laughs] Exactly. I don’t know if I’m great at explaining music. I still think it’s hard to formulate in words the power of music or the effect of music. I think that is still best done through music, but I’ve definitely come to enjoy the process of talking about stories, collaborations, and ways of exploring themes and communicating. For me to learn this other way of communicating through words with people, I don’t know, I guess I’m a little bit better at it. Words come a little bit more easily [Laughs].

I actually thought you were better at talking about music than you gave yourself credit for at the time.

Thank you. It’s also been what, seven years since Joker came out? So, I’m speaking to a lot of students and people who were maybe starting to write music at that time, who were moved by something that I was doing or saying at the time. Sometimes they share what that has meant to them. 

That’s great.

When you start feeling that people are listening to what you’re saying, whether it’s in music or words, that’s really moving. I think that’s the point of creating anything: to hope that you inspire someone else to create something. That’s, of course, why I love so much listening to music or seeing art or films, because it inspires me to create more. It moves me, and then I want to say something else. You hope you can, in some way, be part of that ecosystem that inspires others to create something. 

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is streaming on Netflix and available on digital. 

Featured image: Composer Hildur Guðnadóttir working on “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple.” Courtesy Sony Pictures

“Supergirl” Trailer: Milly Alcock’s Kara Zor‑El Goes Rogue to Save Krypto—and Herself

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The official trailer for director Craig Gillespie’s Supergirl opens with a concerned Clark Kent (David Corenswet) checking in on Kara Zo-El (Milly Alcock). Kara is Clark’s hard-partying cousin, who keeps bouncing from one planet to another. “I’m just worried that you’re not going to find your stride here if you keep going off-world all the time, Kara.” Kara glares at Clark, who’s in his full Superman regalia, the beacon of light on Earth, a young man who appears to be Kara’s polar opposite. “I’m worried you’re not going to find your people,” Clark says. “That’s the thing, Clark—I have no people,” Kara replies. She does have a dog, though, the redoubtable Krypto, who was such a big part of James Gunn’s table setter, Superman. 

Supergirl is going to be a very different kind of movie than Superman, because Kara is a very different kind of hero than Clark. The official trailer reveals the events that put the film into motion, and it’s all about Krypto. The dog is all the family Kara has, and when he’s shot with an alien dart with only three days to live, unless Kara can track down the shooter and get the antidote, Krypto will die. This is something that Kara cannot abide.

In her travels to find the antidote, Kara runs into Ruthye Marye Knoll (Eve Ridley), a young girl whose entire family was killed by Krem of the Yellow Hills (Matthias Schoenaerts). Kara now faces a choice she’s not quite used to: she can help Ruthye and become, like her cousin, a proper superhero, or go her own way. As the official trailer makes clear, Kara will fight for Ruthye, she’ll fight for Krypto, and she’ll do her damndest to save the day. In the process, she runs across Lobo (Jason Momoa), marking Momoa’s re-entry into DC as the interstellar mercenary and bounty hunter, a far darker character than Momoa’s long run as Aquaman.

The script comes from Ana Nogueira and was inspired by Tom King and Bilquis Evely’s comic-book miniseries “Supergirl: Women of Tomorrow,” which doesn’t shy away from Kara Zor-El’s rougher edges.

“This is really an anti-hero story,” said Gillepsie at a press event in New York. “She’s got a lot of demons, a lot of baggage coming into this, which is very different from where Superman is in his life.”

Check out the official trailer below. Supergirl hits theaters on June 26.

For more on Supergirl, check out these stories:

“Supergirl” Super Bowl Teaser Reveals Milly Alcock’s Party-Hard, Truth-Telling Kara Zor-El

Meet Milly Alcock’s Messier, Mightier Kara Zo-El in Wild First “Supergirl” Trailer

“Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow” Casts Matthias Schoenaerts as the Villain

Featured image: Caption: Milly Alcock as SUPERGIRL in DC Studios’ and Warner Bros. Pictures’ “SUPERGIRL”, a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

“Paradise” Supervising Location Manager Duffy Taylor on Building a Post‑Apocalyptic World—Without Leaving California

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When we left Dan Fogelman’s post‑apocalyptic thriller Paradise last season, Secret Service agent Xavier Collins (Sterling K. Brown) learned that his wife, Teri (Enuka Okuma), is still alive—three years after an extinction‑level event forced 25,000 hand‑selected Americans underground. The titular city of Paradise, engineered and controlled by tech billionaire Samantha “Sinatra” Redmond (Julianne Nicholson), promised safety and order. Outside its walls, survival is far messier.

One of the show’s quiet marvels is how expansive and geographically far‑flung Paradise feels—despite being filmed entirely in California. Both seasons were produced in‑state thanks to $15.5 million from the California Film & Television Tax Credit Program, supporting $76 million in qualified expenditures across 96 shoot days and employing roughly 450 cast and crew members.

For supervising location manager Duffy Taylor, that mattered deeply.

“I’m really grateful to the state of California for the tax credit program,” Taylor says. “To be able to work and then go home at night and see our families—there are a lot of grateful Angelenos and Californians who are super stoked about that.”

Taylor spoke with The Credits about turning Southern California into Memphis, Colorado, and underground bunkers; the unsung vendors who make large‑scale television possible; and why California remains one of the most versatile places to film—period.

 

What makes filming in California unique?

California is very diverse. It offers so many opportunities to film different textures and landscapes—urban, residential, agricultural—and we have the ocean, lakes, and mountains too. You can duplicate many areas very well here.

How big is your team? Are they mostly local?

They’re all local—within about 30 miles of Paramount, where our base is. I have 12 core team members daily, but we can grow to 15 or 20, depending on the number of locations. They’re spread across Long Beach, Huntington Beach, Torrance, Fontana, Westlake, and the Valley.

PARADISE – “A Holy Charge” – Xavier and Annie travel to Atlanta, contrasting life in this new world and the one he left behind in the bunker. (Disney/Ser Baffo)

Large productions rely on an entire ecosystem of vendors. Who were some of the unsung heroes on Paradise?

I manage anywhere from 2 to 4 layout board guys, depending on the scale. Our AC vendors keep everyone comfortable during the day and bring heaters at night. Waste disposal is critical. I also oversee security, which can scale from seven officers to twenty, depending on how many locations we’re filming.

What are some vendors people wouldn’t expect to be essential?

We film in a lot of open spaces and wild lands, so we use a company called Snake Wranglers. They check for venomous snakes, identify bee nests and yellow jackets, and even help steer skunks away. Honestly, I can’t think of anything that would shut a set down faster than a skunk. So they’re really wildlife management, and they’re essential.

PARADISE – “A Holy Charge” – Xavier and Annie travel to Atlanta, contrasting life in this new world and the one he left behind in the bunker. (Disney/Gilles Mingasson)

Are Angelenos more jaded about hosting productions?

Some are, but overall, that hasn’t been my experience. It’s much easier to bridge the gap between production needs and neighborhood understanding here. We focus on making it mutually beneficial and taking care of the communities we film in.

Season 2 opens with Annie alone inside Graceland after the collapse of the world. Where was that filmed?

That entire sequence was filmed in California using seven locations. The interiors were shot in Hancock Park and Windsor Square. The exterior was in Glendale, where we augmented it with sets and visual effects. The gates and cemetery were in Westlake, and the museum interiors were in Woodland Hills, inside an old Porsche dealership. We call that “Frankenstein‑ing”—assembling different parts to create a complete world. Watching it come together felt like a real achievement.

PARADISE – “Graceland” – Annie (SHAILENE WOODLEY) is a tour guide in Memphis, Tennessee, when the world ends. Her survival in the ensuing years after The Day is revealed as well as her encounter with a traveling group of survivors. (Disney/Ser Baffo)

Gary’s underground post‑office bunker is a major part of the season. How was that built?

That was shot at RSI Pomona, which is run by Cal Poly. It’s a very diverse, film‑friendly movie ranch. We carved out areas to create the bunker compound and paired it with a separate interior location. One of the complications was doing snow in 90‑ to 100‑degree heat. The snow was created by special effects coordinator Blair Foord, who’s incredible. Hollywood Ice supplied massive blocks of ice, which were chipped and blown across the set to create real on‑camera snow.

PARADISE – “The Mailman” – Xavier meets Gary (Cameron Britton) and learns how Teri (Enuka Okuma) survived the three years since The Day. (Disney/Anne Marie Fox)

How does the snow not melt immediately?

Once you build up enough layers, the internal temperature stays relatively low. You lose some surface melt, but we kept replenishing throughout the day. It’s fun in a slightly insane way.

Later in the season, Xavier chases Teri along a functioning train line. Where was that filmed?

That was shot in Fillmore, about an hour and twenty minutes northwest of Los Angeles, on tracks operated by Northern Sierra Railway. It’s one of the few places where you can actually close an active railway and choreograph scenes with real trains.

PARADISE – “Jane” – Xavier and Gary set their plan in motion. Back in Paradise, Sinatra takes action, while Gabriela follows a new lead, and Jane’s past is revealed. (Disney/Gilles Mingasson)

Are those real, operational train cars?

Yes—they took active trains offline for filming. Shooting with moving trains is like playing Tetris on steroids. You’re constantly repositioning cars and engines. But anytime you get to work with planes, trains, or automobiles, it’s exciting.

Just before the finale’s destruction of Paradise, Sinatra rides an underground train alone toward another bunker. Where was that filmed?

That was a combination of stage work and locations, including an old Ace Beverage building east of the L.A. River, near Fourth Street.

You’ve been filming in California for decades. Has that long history helped on a show like this?

I moved to Los Angeles in 1989 and started in production as a PA. A lot of my early education was just learning the city—doing pickups, deliveries, scouting, and driving everywhere. We have an incredible executive producer in Steve Beers, who’s been filming here forever. When someone like Steve says, “Oh my God, I never knew this was here,” I feel like I’ve won a gold medal. Those moments are some of my favorites. After all these years, California can still surprise you—and that’s what I love about this job.

Both seasons of Paradise are streaming on Hulu.

Featured image: PARADISE – “A Holy Charge” – Xavier and Annie travel to Atlanta, contrasting life in this new world and the one he left behind in the bunker. (Disney/Anne Marie Fox) STERLING K. BROWN

Diablo Cody Explores Female Rage, Late-Stage Capitalism, and Cult Legacies in “Forbidden Fruits”

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Diablo Cody has spent her career writing women who are too loud, too angry, too horny, too funny, and often far more honest than pop culture has often known what to do with. From Lisa Frankenstein to Tully to Jennifer’s Body and Juno, her work has examined the messy power dynamics of girlhood and desire long before the culture caught up. With Forbidden Fruits, a razor-edged horror-comedy set inside a mall and fueled by toxic female friendship, Cody finds herself working in a moment finally primed for what she’s been saying all along.

In conversation with The Credits, she reflects on being “ahead of her time,” the healing after Jennifer’s Body’s critical reversal, the enduring pull of queer subtext, and why the mall remains both a temple and a hell for young women.

 

Many of your films center on women. What drew you to this particular script?

This felt like a no-brainer to me. Even before I heard the pitch, I was informed of what the basic concept was going to be, and I was like, ‘A coven in a mall! Toxic female friendships!’ I already had a feeling that it might be up my alley. And then, when I heard Meredith and Lily’s pitch, I was immediately enthusiastic and just thought, “I see the vision.” And this is the kind of thing that I like to attach my name to. I like to be involved in projects like this. And it’s also — for many years, it was a struggle to get projects like this made and seen. And now I feel like we’re in a different zeitgeist, and so, it’s very rewarding to know that there is a place in culture for a movie like Forbidden Fruits, because I don’t know if that was the case 20 years ago.

It does feel like a lot of your movies, like Jennifer’s Body, were ahead of their time. Whereas now, people are calling them a cult classic.

That’s been really, honestly, astonishing. I was not expecting that to happen. That movie was such a painful memory for me for so long because it was just savaged by critics when it came out. It flopped. I mean, everything that could have gone wrong with Jennifer’s Body did until, you know, it was discovered by this new generation of viewers, and so that’s been very healing.

 

I wanted to talk about the queer subtext in a lot of your films, including Forbidden Fruits. Is that something that, within your creative process, you go into thinking, ‘I want this to be part of the film.’ Or does it just happen naturally?

It just kind of finds its way in. I would say, with the exception of the Jennifer’s Body sequel that I’m working on right now. I really made a conscious choice to have a lot of queer characters in that movie to salute our audience. But typically, no, it’s really just an organic thing. I mean, the writing process for me … I find that those themes tend to just kind of weave their way in. It’s almost like a mystical process for me. So there’s very little that happens that’s calculated.

I saw that Forbidden Fruits was filmed in the same mall as Mean Girls.

I know—that was serendipitous. It’s so cool. I mean, even the, you know, the fountain for Mean Girls is gone now, but we rebuilt the fountain for Forbidden Fruits. So, yeah, there was definitely the spirit of Mean Girls among us.

Lola Tung is Pumpkin in “Forbidden Fruits.” Courtesy IFC.

Can you talk about what the mall setting means for the film’s overall theme and how these girls are essentially trapped in their own reality?

I mean, the movie is about late-stage capitalism in a lot of ways, and the ways that — I think now more than ever, people connect through their possessions, which is strange, I guess I can blame social media for that one. And Gen Z, I think, is more fixated on aesthetics than any prior generation — at least in my observation, I’m sure somebody could prove me wrong. But yeah, the mall feels like an appropriate place for all this to go down, and also, just like the very intimate, heightened, charged setting of a dressing room. I love that they have those confessional moments in the mirror. I grew up going to the mall, and I feel like some of my most vulnerable self-hating moments went down in the back of mall stores. And so it’s kind of a temple and a hell for young women.

Lili Reinhart and Meredith Aollway (Director) behind the scenes of Forbidden Fruits. Photo: Sabrina Lantos

There were a lot of different themes in this film: female rage, toxic female friendships, late-stage capitalism — like you mentioned — what were the initial conversations like on the production end of what the end result message was going to be?

Well, I think, you know, this movie was based on a beautiful play that was written by Lily Houghton, and she had a very clear vision for what this movie needed to be both tonally and thematically. The question was whether they could pull it off. Because this is a very tricky tightrope to walk. When you have comedy elements, when you have horror elements, and you’re talking about feminism. But they pulled it off. But in terms of what we wanted it to be about, I mean, that’s the fun thing about making a movie like this—that’s a little bit offbeat. You’re not going, ‘Okay, this is what it’s about. It’s about this guy who needs to get home to his son.’ It’s about a lot of things. So, yeah, it’s a little bit messy, but it was also such a beautiful challenge.

One thing I thought was interesting was that you guys have Gabrielle Union in the film, but the audience never actually sees her. What was the thought process behind that decision?

Well, the character of Sharon has always been an enigma from the very first draft of the movie. It’s an interesting decision for sure. Sharon is — I think the metaphor is pretty clear — like a god-like figure, the manager. So I think having her be unseen is definitely like a choice.

I’m always interested to know what does and doesn’t make it into the final cut. Was there anything from your perspective that you felt strongly about including that didn’t make the final cut?

I don’t think there’s anything that didn’t make it into the cut that I wanted, which is surprising, because usually I have a laundry list that I’m angry about. Usually, I carry a lot of bitterness with me, but not in this case. For me, I wanted to make sure that all the micro moments between the girls stayed intact, because there are moments in this movie that may not push the story forward, but they push the relationships forward, and sometimes those are the moments that are hardest to protect. Because when you’re making cuts, it’s like, ‘Ok, would the movie still make sense without this scene?’ Yes, it would. But it would be a little less special.

Alexandra Shipp, Lili Reinhart, and Emma Chamberlain in “Forbidden Fruits.” Courtesy IFC.

Do you have a specific example?

A lot of the interactions between Cherry and Apple, I love. I love the relationship between them; it is so poisonous, and it is also, like, sexually charged. There are a lot of those moments between them where Apple is kind of degrading Cherry, and I’m glad that we have them all.

A lot of your fans admire that you tend to stray from the mainstream and pursue projects that interest you. Is that something you’ve always strived for?

I wish I could say that’s been deliberate, but it’s really just kind of wound up that way because I have tried to take on more mainstream projects, because financially that would make sense. So I’m certainly not like, ‘I refuse to sell out, I’m only going to make these weird ass movies.’ I have tried to sell out unsuccessfully. I couldn’t tell you how many movies… I think about eight movies I’ve written that have been produced. This doesn’t count stuff I’ve produced by other writers. But all the movies I’ve personally written that have gotten made have been on spec, meaning nobody hired me to do it; it was my own idea, and I was excited about it, and I did it because I was excited to write it. Whereas, none of the stuff I have ever been hired to write — and there has been a lot — has gotten produced. Which is nothing to be proud of. It means that I’m clearly failing at the assignment. But I do find that curious.

Is there a dream project you’ve always wanted to make?

I would love to write a full-on, balls-to-the-wall comedy, where it’s like, how hard can I make people laugh? I would really like to do that, and I think that I have the ability to do it, and I am kind of working on that right now.

Check out the full video interview here:

Forbidden Fruits is in theaters now.

Featured image: AUSTIN, TEXAS – MARCH 16: Diablo Cody attends the premiere of ‘Forbidden Fruits’ during the 2026 SXSW Conference and Festival at The Paramount Theatre on March 16, 2026 in Austin, Texas. (Photo by Marcus Ingram/Getty Images)

Writer/Director Kirill Sokolov on Zazie Beetz, Cult Mayhem, and the Nine Circles of Hell in “They Will Kill You”

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Director Kirill Sokolov’s action-horror-comedy They Will Kill You stars Zazie Beetz as Asia Reaves, a sympathetic ex-convict who turns up in the pouring rain at the front door of the Virgil, a creepy if grand apartment building where she’s expected to start work as a maid. Greeted by Lilith (Patricia Arquette), the building’s superintendent, Asia’s new job is sinister from the start, with something crawling in her bedroom’s air duct and one of the building’s residents, Sharon (Heather Graham), ominously telling her, “We need you strong.” The strength is clearly not for mere mopping and dusting. Asia’s walked into a Satanic cult, the Virgil is inescapable, and its residents are out for blood.

For Asia, the cult is both a threat to life and limb and, more importantly, a hindrance to her real aim, reuniting with her estranged younger sister, Maria. While Asia was in prison, she learned to fight, and Sokolov turns the story into a range of fun, violent hijinks, but the heart of They Will Kill You is the sisters’ relationship and the very different ways they react to landing in the same dire circumstances.

Caption: (L-R) Director KIRILL SOKOLOV and MYHA’LA as Maria in New Line Cinema/Nocturna’s “They Will Kill You,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Graham Bartholomew

We had the chance to speak with Sokolov about drawing on references from Hong Kong action cinema to Rosemary’s Baby, working with stars like Beetz and Arquette, and modeling the Virgil after the nine circles of Hell in Dante’s Inferno.

Caption: (L-R) ZAZIE BEETZ as Asia and Director Kirill Sokolov in New Line Cinema/Nocturna’s “They Will Kill You,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Graham Bartholomew

What was your inspiration for the script?

Around ten years ago, my wife and I rented an apartment in a strange sixteen-floor building. In a week of living there, we understood that we were the only two people younger than sixty-five. And then at some point, I did construction on the kitchen, and I moved the kitchen cabinet, and there was a huge hole leading to my neighbor’s apartment. That was so strange. We started this running joke that we live in a cult, and at some point, they will come and sacrifice us. I fully forgot about it until a couple of years ago, I re-watched Rosemary’s Baby, like, wait a second, it’s exactly where I was. And from [there] I pitched this idea to Alex Litvak, my co-writer.

Caption: HEATHER GRAHAM as Sharon in New Line Cinema/Nocturna’s “They Will Kill You,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
Caption: (L-R) Director KIRILL SOKOLOV and ZAZIE BEETZ as Asia in New Line Cinema/Nocturna’s “They Will Kill You,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Graham Bartholomew

How did the Rosemary’s Baby inspiration inform what we see on screen?

We knew we would start the movie like Rosemary’s Baby, then take a hard left and break all audience expectations, trying to surprise them as much as possible. It was a big inspiration, and in some design decisions, there are some references. These hallways, they’re very different, but you can see touches and elements that refer to that [film].

Caption: ZAZIE BEETZ as Asia Reaves in New Line Cinema/Nocturna’s “They Will Kill You,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Courtesy Warner Bros.

What were your main directives for the interior of The Virgil?

When we wrote the script, it was called Nine Floors of Hell, which sounds like a terrible B-movie, but the idea was that each floor of this building refers to Dante’s Inferno and to a specific circle of hell. Thematically, each floor has its own unique texture, symbols, patterns, and colors. The first floor is Limbo, for newcomers, and where the maids live. And then we move on, and you understand it’s gluttony and lust, until we get to the ninth floor, which is basically a frozen lake where Satan waits. It was interesting to come up with this very clear system of symbols that helps us to find the visual language and structure of the building. We thought about it on the script level, and then Jeremy Reed, our production designer, integrated those elements into the sets, and I think it worked out pretty well.

Caption: PATRICIA ARQUETTE as Lily Woodhouse and cast in New Line Cinema/Nocturna’s “They Will Kill You,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures

Did you always envision Zazie Beetz as Asia?

I hoped for her because I’m a huge fan, and I’m a huge fan of Atlanta. People look at this genre like it’s easy to make, but you face so many challenges when making this type of movie because your actors must switch from dramatic to funny moments, sometimes within a single scene. And to keep both genres together, it’s a very rare skill, and Zazie does it perfectly. I was so happy that she agreed to this project. But outside of this, she also has the incredible physicality we were looking for to go through all that crazy action. I love old school action movies, Hong Kong and Japanese, when you use a lot of wide shots, when you see how actors do their stunts. Zazie trained, and she prepared so well. Now looking back, I can’t imagine anyone else.

 

How did Asia’s character influence the action?

How your character talks is the way your character fights, and through the way the character fights, you can understand a lot about them. And so we build it like, okay, she doesn’t know technique. She’s not a kung fu fighter, she’s like a street kid. She knows how to throw a punch. She knows how to be beaten, so she’s not afraid of it. And she’s against people who didn’t fight at all. There are a lot of them, they’re full of rage, but they’re clumsy, and they’re afraid of it, and they don’t know how to fight. And from that, you build up a lot of comedic moments and something new, fresh, and exciting.

Caption: ZAZIE BEETZ as Asia in New Line Cinema/Nocturna’s “They Will Kill You,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures

How much of a role did you want camp to play in the film?

I’m a huge fan of anime. I appreciate anime for the freedom it gives you as an artist and storyteller. You can go in very wild directions, and somehow it will work. This is the craziest movie I’ve done, and I was wondering how much freedom we could have telling this story, because it’s a classic. It was interesting how far we could push, so it still works. I hope it still works. We almost step into fairytale territory when we have rolling eyeballs, when we have a satanic, possessed pig head. But if you look at it like [Hans Christian] Andersen or the Grimm Brothers, it’s absolutely okay.

Caption: ZAZIE BEETZ as Asia in New Line Cinema/Nocturna’s “They Will Kill You,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Graham Bartholomew

Did the humor or camp factor affect how you portrayed the action?

A big thing about this movie, which I hope fans will appreciate, is its practical aspect. We spent a lot of time on prosthetics, dummies, and puppets, and I think that’s part of the campiness, but a nice one. Because it was made on purpose, and to have this old-school flavor of the Eighties and Nineties movies I grew up on, which I love and appreciate. Sam Raimi was a big inspiration for me throughout my life, and his approach —funny horror elements and sometimes silly, clumsy dummies —was charming in a way; we tried to lean on that a lot.

Caption: (L-R) HEATHER GRAHAM as Sharon, TOM FELTON as Kevin, and cast in New Line Cinema/Nocturna’s “They Will Kill You,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures

How was working with Patricia Arquette?

It was just a joy. I was very lucky with all of my cast. They put a lot of love, trust, and effort into this movie. It’s funny, with Patricia, I grew up watching her in the movies—I love movies partly because of her work. So for me, the most challenging [thing] was accepting the idea that we actually work together and that I have to somehow direct her. She’s wonderful. She did everything with such courage. Three, five takes, she does perfectly. I have it, and then [she says] “Let me do two more takes, just something fun.” And she does really crazy things, super unexpected. I understand where it comes from, but it’s so weird. When we started cutting the movie slowly, I used those takes once, twice, and now it’s, like, seventy percent of her shots in the movie are from those last two takes, which I thought I would never be able to use. That’s a master at work, because she felt the nature of the movement and texture, and she gave me much more than I could even think about.

Caption: (L-R) Director KIRILL SOKOLOV and PATRICIA ARQUETTE as Lily Woodhouse in New Line Cinema/Nocturna’s “They Will Kill You,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Graham Bartholomew

They Will Kill You is in theaters now.

Featured image:  Caption: ZAZIE BEETZ as Asia in New Line Cinema/Nocturna’s “They Will Kill You,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Graham Bartholomew

 

 

Amazon MGM’s “Project Hail Mary” Has One of the Best Second Weekends in Modern Box Office History

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Amazon MGM Studios’ Project Hail Mary just had a stellar second weekend at the box office, officially passing Creed III as the studio’s most successful film at the box office. The Ryan Gosling-led film, which features Gosling in space forming a world-saving bond with an alien he names Rocky, has now soared past the $300 million mark to become the top-grossing film of 2026 to date.

Directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller and adapted from Andy Weir’s novel by screenwriter Drew Goddard (who was nominated for an Academy Award for adapting Weir’s The Martian for Ridley Scott), Project Hail Mary had one of the best second weekend holds in recent film history, besting massive, Oscar-winning films like Oppenheimer and Dune: Part 2. Project Hail Mary dropped just 32 percent in its second weekend, better than Oppenheimer‘s impressive 43 percent drop in 2023 and Dune: Part 2‘s 44 percent dip in 2024.

Project Hail Mary was fueled by strong reviews and excellent word of mouth.

“In the most purely pleasurable movie so far this year, Ryan Gosling has a blast as a science guy who rockets into space to save all our asses with jolts, jokes, and smarts that won’t quit,” wrote critic Peter Travers.

“For all its bells and whistles, Project Hail Mary is also a lovely, bittersweet character study, a pas de deux between man and alien that elicits a surprising amount of emotions by the time the credits roll,” writes Odie Henderson of the Boston Globe.

“I do this job because in my heart I believe that movies are the culmination of every art form developed by humans, the greatest storytelling mechanism ever developed. Project Hail Mary makes use of every part of that storytelling capacity,” writes critic Nell Minow.

“At once zippy and emotionally wrenching, the film performs a similar balancing act as its leading man,” says The Reveal‘s Keith Phipps.

The film is now sitting at a 10-day domestic haul of $164.3 million, with another $136.2 million overseas, for a global total of $300.8 million. Its domestic launch of $80.6 million in its opening weekend was the second-best in a decade for a non-sequel, non-franchise title, just behind Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, which netted $82.5 million.

The film’s charms are aplenty, including Gosling starring as a nerdy, witty biologist whose career is not exactly rocketing when he’s tapped by the head of an international consortium, Eva Stratt (the great Sandra Hüller) to go on a dangerous mission to stop the sun from mysteriously dimming. This mission, which Gosling’s character, teacher Ryland Grace, accepts, comes as quite a surprise to him when he wakes up aboard a spaceship, having forgotten it all, alone with a dead crew. Only he learns he’s not all alone—hurtling through space beside him, on its own mission, is an alien attempting the same feat, and Ryland and Rocky, as he’s freshly dubbed, will need to work together to make the impossible possible. It’s a feel-good movie made with fine performers and an ace crew, all of which has been rocket fuel at the box office.

There’s now talk of a potential sequel, but it would require Weir to write a follow-up book (the author says he’s got some ideas).

Featured image: Ryan Gosling stars as Ryland Grace in PROJECT HAIL MARY, from Amazon MGM Studios. Photo credit: Jonathan Olley. © 2025 Amazon Content Services LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Lisa Kudrow and Michael Patrick King on the Long-Awaited Comeback of “The Comeback”

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The Comeback season 3 follows Lisa Kudrow‘s self-absorbed godmother of cringe, TV actress Valerie Cherish, as she tries to make Hollywood’s first AI-generated sitcom. Created by Kudrow and Michael Patrick King (Sex and the City), this hilariously bleak comedy (Sundays on HBO Max) pictures a near-future in which a slick network executive (Andrew Scott) talks Valerie into headlining a corny series shot the old-fashioned way—in front of a live studio audience—but written in a radically new way; by an unseen artificial intelligence program nicknamed Al.

At a recent press conference, The Credits asked Kudrow and King about filming The Comeback on the historic Warner Bros. lot, where Friends was shot. “It felt great,” King said. “We had two old-fashioned, beautiful sound stages on the Warner Bros. lot. I’ve done a lot of shows here, so it was fun for me. Lisa’s done shows here, so it was fun for her. And the crew was beyond happy to come to work and have that gate go up in their hometown and do what those sound stages are made to do, which is create entertainment.”

Speaking from Burbank, executive producers Kudrow and King addressed reporters’ questions about AI in Hollywood, widespread desperation, and their reasons for reviving The Comeback after a 12-year hiatus. (edited and condensed for clarity).

 

What was the key element that made you want to go back to work?

King: The key was Valerie’s being cast in the first multi-cam [sitcom] written by AI. That was red meat enough for us. Sorry if there are any vegans here. But, um, that was the red meat that got us to jump over the risk.

What is it about this moment in Hollywood that screamed out to you, “We need Valerie”?

Kudrow: Just as reality TV was the almost-extinction event at the time for scripted television [in Season 2 of The Comeback], it’s the same feeling now about AI. We felt that the world may have escalated to the point of desperation that Valerie was in during the first season [of The Comeback]. People are desperate to get a job and keep a job, and, as you age, you have to think about “How am I coming across? Can I get hired?” A lot of the characters this season are clinging and still reaching for job identity and recognition. All of them, really.

Laura Silverman and Lisa Kudrow in “The Comeback.” Courtesy HBO.

Casey Bloys, the chairman of HBO, quickly gave the project a green light. Did you feel an urgency to tell the story [of an AI sitcom] before reality overtook it?

King: We said, “Here’s the idea,” and Casey said, “Yes. Now.” It was very much [make the show] as fast as you can. All through the writing process, every time something else [in the news] would be touching [on] AI, we would panic. Our goal was to get on the air before a studio admitted they were using AI.

This season, there are a couple of Friends references. How did you decide to put those in?

Kudrow: Couldn’t help it. We were shooting on the Friends stage, and it felt like there was an easy joke there [with the plaque outside Stage 24 inscribed with the names of classic shows filmed inside].

King: Valerie was only looking at the movies on the plaque. She didn’t even see the TV shows.

Kudrow: Like, [in Valerie Cherish voice] “We’re gonna be the first hit for Stage 24!”

Lisa Kudrow in “The Comeback” season 3. Courtesy HBO.

What is it that has made you dedicate your lives to making people laugh?

Kudrow: I’m used to hearing “What pathology is it that leads you to make people laugh?” [laughter]. There’s just nothing better than making people laugh. What’s better than laughing? It’s so healing, it’s so cathartic, it’s so, I don’t know, satisfying. The things that make us feel the best are the things we do for others, right?

King: I like the idea that we can take something that’s a little dark and elevate it to something a little bit lighter.

L-r: Lisa Kidra, Ella Stiller, and Jack O’Brien. Courtesy HBO.

Is the show a way to take jabs or protest things you don’t like about the industry? Seth Rogan said it was very cathartic to make The Studio. Is it like that for you, too?

Kudrow: It certainly was the first season. There was so much information from Michael and the writers’ room about the system of it all.

King: Greg Mottola directed an episode of the first [Comeback] season…where Valerie goes to the studio late at night with cookies to surprise the writers, and she sees some untoward behavior, very 2004 behavior in the writing room. He said to me, “This is outrageous.” And I looked at him and said, “This is a documentary.”

Kudrow: The writers’ rooms could be really rough. Rough. Very rough. Even back in the day, I honestly felt like “Yeah, they’ve got to blow off steam.”

King: Hollywood’s just a great circus arena. So many people want to be in the spotlight that it’s a good cautionary tale for us, about having an ego versus being a person. And I feel like Hollywood’s maybe become a little more grounded now, the egos are checked a little more, because there’s so much competition. Work is not guaranteed. Nothing’s guaranteed for anybody. The excesses are going away. It used to be 23 writers in a writing room for 23 episodes, and then, when we went to premium cable, it was down to one writer writing a show for eight episodes, and now the river just keeps shrinking, so it’s feeling scary, which makes it funny. As long as we all survive. 

Lisa, what was it like stepping back into Valerie’s shoes after all these years?

Kudrow: It felt a little tight, I have to say, stepping in, and I had to let it stretch out. I think I just didn’t trust myself, which can happen to me, and it’s really stupid. But after a week or two, yeah, it’s fine.

How has Valerie changed since Season 2?

Kudrow: She aged ten years.

King: And it wasn’t just, “How did she age?” Valerie’s won an Emmy, there’s slightly more confidence, but still the desperation because…remember, the strike? There was nothing happening, and after the strike, it was like, “Great, everyone’s going back [to work],” and there’s nothing.

Kudrow: So Valerie’s been adrift for a few years when we meet her again.

King: Which is right where we want her.

Valerie accepts [what others would see as] humiliation or being mistreated. What do you take from Valerie in that sense?

Kudrow: I think it’s a strength. When people would say [about The Comeback] “Oh, my God, how did you play [all that] hurt?” Especially the first season. “That must have been so hard to be Valerie.” And it wasn’t at all. I mean, I never felt terrible. Is Valerie Cherish that delusional, that she just believes the reality she’s creating? I kept asking myself, like, “Why does [Valerie’s humiliation] hurt everyone so much? She’s fine. That caused some confusion for me, but look, I admire someone—it’s sort of like Phoebe too—somebody who just “Here’s how I see the world, and you don’t have to agree.” I don’t know. Now I’m just gibber-jabbering.

Lisa, how would you react to Valerie’s situation when the news leaks [about her sitcom being written by AI] and the industry turns against her?

Kudrow: You take a deep breath, try to regroup, and go to work. You know, on Friends, there was this huge backlash period where everyone hated us. We were overexposed. And we got together and just said, “All right, we have to [put our] heads down, stop doing press…deal with what our actual job is, which is to say the words and do the show. [With Valerie Cherish in Season 3], it’s kind of the same. At first, she says, “I’m not going to do the step-and-repeat [red carpet] because it’s panic,” but also, it’s just going to bring bad press to the show.

Did you develop a litmus test for how to know when things get too bitter or skirt the line?

King: We feel it as we’re going. In the first season, we had no clue what the reaction to Valerie would be, and people were like, “Ow!” In the second season, people were sort of like, “Oh, we get her.” So, this season, we were like, “How are we gonna give them an ‘ow!’ every now and then,” because the audience likes that. “Oh, s***, where’s this going?” So there are some things that are right at the edge, and then Valerie’s always gonna bounce right out of it.

Kudrow: But I feel like, also, just as time’s gone on, that first season is not as cringe as it was in 2004. Thanks, Housewives of Everywhere. It’s a Rorschach test. If you’re looking at [The Comeback], how you perceive the world is going to generate the scale of intolerability or hilarious laughter. 

For more on Warner Bros., DC Studios, HBO, and more, check out these stories:

Mahershala Ali Enters the “Task” Force: HBO’s Brad Ingelsby Drama Adds Two‑Time Oscar Winner

“The Bride!” Prosthetics Wizards Jason Collins and Scott Stoddard on Turning Christian Bale into Frankenstein

How Composer Hildur Guðnadóttir Brought Tension, Electricity, and Love to Maggie Gyllenhaal’s “The Bride!”

Featured image: Lisa Kudrow in “The Comeback” season 3. Courtesy HBO.

A New Generation Heads to Hogwarts in HBO’s First “Harry Potter” Trailer

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The gang is heading back to Hogwarts.

HBO revealed the first trailer for Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, its ambitious new series that will bring viewers back to the Wizarding World this Christmas. The first look at the series, from showrunner Francesca Gardiner and director Mark Mylod, finds Harry (Dominic McLaughlin) living in the cupboard under the stairs at the Dursleys’ house, the Muggle family that includes his bully-of-a-cousin, Dudley (Amos Kitson). The haircut he receives from Aunt Petunia (Bel Powley) delivers two pieces of childhood trauma: it’s painful, and she tells him he’s not special. We know the truth, and an acceptance letter to Hogwarts proves it.

Harry’s arrival at Hogwarts will, of course, change his life. He learns about the Wizarding World he belongs to and discovers a bit about his deceased parents. On the train to Hogwarts, Harry meets the two most important people in his life: Ron (Alastair Scout) and Hermione (Arabella Stanton). Once at the iconic school, we find Harry unwrapping a Quidditch broomstick and get a few looks at some of the people who will further shape his life: Dumbledore (John Lithgow), Draco Malfoy (Lox Pratt), and Mr. Ollivander (Anton Lesser).

Finding the cast for the new series was no less daunting than when J.K. Rowling’s books were first adapted for the big screen (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was released on November 16, 2001, in the U.S.), and the effort was led by casting directors Lucy Bevan and Emily Brockmann. The cast also includes Paapa Essiedu as Severus Snape, Janet McTeer as Minerva McGonagall, Nick Frost as Rubeus Hagrid, Katherine Parkinson as Molly Weasley, Johnny Flynn as Lucius Malfoy, Leo Earley as Seamus Finnigan, Alessia Leoni as Parvati Patil, Sienna Moosah as Lavender Brown, Daniel Rigby as Vernon Dursley, and Bertie Carvel as Cornelius Fudge.

The series will adapt one book per season, unfolding as a seven-part epic. Check out the trailer below. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone premieres on HBO on Christmas.

For more on Warner Bros., DC Studios, HBO, and more, check out these stories:

Stephen Colbert’s Wizardly Next Act: Co-Writing a New “Lord of the Rings” Movie

Inside the Creative Engine of “The Pitt”: How Four Writers Built on a Breakout Hit

Mahershala Ali Enters the “Task” Force: HBO’s Brad Ingelsby Drama Adds Two‑Time Oscar Winner

Featured image: Dominic McLaughlin. Photograph by Aidan Monaghan/HBO

How Editor Jake Roberts Cut the Thrilling Iron Maiden Sequence in “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple”

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28 Years Later: The Bone Temple—which is available on digital now and arrives on Netflix on March 31—is a cinematic joyride for horror fans. The sequel is a visceral experience with substantial thematic weight crafted by filmmaker Nia DaCosta, who captures the beauty and terror of screenwriter Alex Garland’s post-apocalyptic England. What will go down as one of the most exhilarating horror movies of the year was edited by an artist whose personal taste doesn’t lean toward horror: Jake Roberts. Roberts is the editor behind Brooklyn, Hell or High Water, and two previous Garland projects, Civil War and Devs.

The themes of 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple ultimately struck a chord with the editor, who always aims to put himself in the audience’s perspective. Roberts cut this middle chapter in Danny Boyle and Garland’s proposed trilogy with precise, character-focused chutzpah, giving it its own steady pace and kinetic feel. Roberts framed the chaos of the battle between man and infected, as well as between belief and science, by ensuring every scene was informed by the energy and performance of the talented ensemble cast.

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple follows atheist survivor Dr. Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) and satanist Jimmy (Jack O’Connell) as they go toe-to-toe in an existential, pestilential battle royale. Their feud is amplified in all its glory during a musical set-piece in which Dr. Kelson performs a fiery show as the devil to convince Jimmy’s young followers that their leader is the son of Satan. Iron Maiden’s “Number of the Beast” blasts in the skull temple. It’s a metalhead’s dream sequence, in which dance and horror become one with graceful bombast.

Recently, Roberts spoke with The Credits about editing the crowd-pleasing sequence, which has left audiences clapping in pure satisfaction.

 

What was your first impression of the Iron Maiden dance sequence? 

Sometimes you read a script, and you think, God, it’s going to be so exciting to see how they do this. In this case, it was exciting, but also, how the hell do you pull off the expectation that Alex is writing into the stage directions? One of my first questions to Nia when I met her was, “Can Ralph actually sing?” In the script, it was staged that Kelson would be singing this falsetto over the track, and Nia was like, “Actually, I don’t know.” As it turned out, we didn’t lean into that aspect of it too much. We blurred the lines between the extent to which he’s lip-syncing or singing along with it. It was a complicated sequence to cut. I think it was shot over three nights.

Ralph Fiennes in “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple.” Courtesy Sony Pictures.

DaCosta and the crew shot Ralph Fiennes’ perspective for that sequence first, right? 

We shot Ralph’s direction first, so you got the performance first. I didn’t actually know what the look was going to be like. The look was very different from what was written. He was supposed to be in a white suit, but the look was instantly very strong. Then, the extent to which he threw himself into it and his commitment, I was like, “Okay, great. We’ve got a performance.” What I was trying to do with the performance was not cut too much, so it felt authentic in the edit.

 

What plays as authentic to your eye in that instance? 

I’m trying to let as many shots be unbroken for at least five, six, or ten seconds so the performance comes through. It’s not about editorial trickery. But when we cut back to Jimmy’s shots, I was trying to squeeze in as much narrative as possible because you’ve got five perspectives in play at once.

Jack O’Connell in “The Bone Temple.” Courtesy Sony Pictures

You also have to help create an almost transcendent experience for Jimmy’s young followers. 

It’s about selling an idea written into the script: in Alex’s mind, these kids have never even heard amplified music in that way. The spell being created for them is more profound than it would be for a modern audience. You’re trying to tell all of those stories while working within a strict time base. Kelson has to throw the torch and the fire by this point, so there are only 38 seconds to work before that.

So you’re spinning many plates.

Yes. You’re trying to spin all the plates simultaneously and keep it overwhelming enough that the audience doesn’t start asking questions that pile up too quickly. You’ve got to keep the suspension of disbelief alive. The goal was to maintain shock and awe, putting the audience in a position somewhat similar to the Jimmys. Even if you’ve seen some images or marketing before, it should still feel like a shock.

 

You cut music videos for a few years. How did your expertise there inform the Satanic dance sequence?

I saw a comment saying, “Best music video I’ve ever seen.” I did cut music videos for a couple of years, so I treated it like that in some ways. It wasn’t a live performance; it was played to the same track each time. We had two cameras pointing in Ralph’s direction for each run, and they probably ran it six times. I’d have 12 takes of varying lengths of Ralph performing just for the first section, and then a similar number for the other shots. Probably two of each lens size.

What are you looking for in those takes?

I’m looking for where Ralph is best in time and with the body movement that matches the camera movement. We’d have 12 to 14 takes in various sizes. Sometimes there’s one section of the track where only one take was perfectly timed with the camera. Decisions are sometimes made for you in that sense; other times, you have 12 good bits all vying for the same moment. You choose based on: Have we been this wide yet, and is this a good moment to be this wide? Some editorial choices are dictated by practical considerations. Then you build the other shots around areas where you have more choice to create variance or impression. For the mega wides, the big top shot with the fire rings, there were just two drone takes.

Ralph Fiennes in “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple.” Courtesy Sony Pictures.

How did cutting during production help the sequence reach its full potential? 

It was vital to know that it worked while we were still on location at night. If something had been missed or didn’t work, there was a chance to pick it up. It was the hardest sequence, and it was relatively early in the shoot. Being able to send a cut to Nia and the producers and say, “We’ve got this in the can, and it works,” was a morale boost. I worked hard on it during the first four days of the shoot. Nia and I refined it together, but it didn’t change much from the first assembly because I’d done a thorough job the first time to reassure everyone we had it.

Did the Iron Maiden song itself, “Number of the Beast,” inspire you through the process? Was the bass or the guitar ever driving certain cuts?

I was taking my cues from Ralph. I focused on finding the absolute best bits of his performance and framing those to showcase them. That informed the other choices. The guitar was part of it, but the editing was based on where Ralph’s energy and the camera energy matched best. Ralph was the guitar I was getting into. 

28 Years: The Bone Temple arrives on Netflix on March 31.

Featured image: Ralph Fiennes and Jack O’Connell in “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple.” Courtesy Sony Pictures.

From Bauhaus to Frankenstein: Production Designer Karen Murphy’s Radical World-Building in “The Bride!”

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For production designer Karen Murphy, one of the perks of the job is all the history lessons. The Oscar-nominated production designer behind Elvis returns to the past with The Bride! — immersing herself in photography and modernist architecture from the 1930s. Solarized portraits by Man Ray and the avant-garde photography of Marianne Brandt were among the many influences on her work in writer/director Maggie Gyllenhaal’s monster romp.

The artist began her career as an architect. She studied in Sydney, Australia, before ultimately joining Catherine Martin’s art department on Moulin Rouge! and became a frequent collaborator of Baz Luhrmann. After her days as an art director on The Matrix and Star Wars franchises, she went on to become the production designer on films such as A Star Is Born and Queen & Slim.

For The Bride!, Murphy creates a lived-in, crumpled, and imperfect yet forward-moving world for Ida (Jessie Buckley). Following her resurrection at the hands of Dr. Euphronius (Annette Bening), she goes on a journey of self-discovery and violence with her love, Frank (Christian Bale). Ida experiences the wonders and wickedness of Chicago, New York City, and life on the road, all of which Murphy crafts with history and style. 

Here’s how the talented world-builder set the stage for Gyllenhaal’s electric second film.

The film was shot extensively in New York, so how was it turning the Big Apple into Chicago?

In the end, we didn’t use a huge amount of New York for New York. We built a lot of sets, but we were trying to find the Euphronius house. The minute I started reading the script, I was just thinking about the 1930s. To me, the 1930s are a real time of change. The US was a little late to international architecture, such as modernism, because it was still stuck in the revival period through the 1920s. When a lot of the European immigrants started coming over in the ’30s, it’s when things really started to change.

Where’d you find the exterior for Dr. Euphronius’ house?

I thought we wouldn’t find a single piece of modernist architecture on the exterior of Euphronius’s house. There are examples of 1930s houses in New York City, but the problem with those is that they already look old. They should have been brand new during this period. We went up to Riverside Drive, near Columbia University. There are many larger homes in that revivalist or early 20th-century style. We found a gothic revival house on a corner, and I knew we needed a corner for these iconic shots. 

Warner Bros. Pictures THE BRIDE! A Warner Bros. Pictures release. Copyright © 2026 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All rights reserved.

It’s a nice mix of the past and the future, especially with its tower. 

I was always going to put something modern on top of it. We could imagine this modernist thing Euphronius did to the top of the house in the late ’20s, early ’30s. She’s got this old house that’s sort of falling down, and then she’s put all these modernist elements within it.

What about the interior of Dr. Euphronius’s house and lab? When you read a character such as her on the page, how do you want the space to tell her story?

In the movie, they mention a black hole. It was a period when quantum physics was discussed. We were leading up to the Manhattan Project and the atomic bomb. It was this incredible, verdant period of science, design, and art. That’s what got me going. Who is this woman? She is writing books on singularity, which is maybe a little anachronistic, in that those were written later. This woman is a woman of science, but I bet she’s friends with all these photographers, these women who were coming up in art and design out of Europe.

Caption: (L to r) Annette Bening as Dr. Euphronious, Christian Bale as Frank and Jessie Buckley as The Bride in Warner Bros. Pictures THE BRIDE! Photo Credit: Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

Such as?

Florence Henri and people like that, who were doing contemporary things with photography. Eileen Gray, the Irish designer who worked alongside Le Corbusier, was doing her own furniture and design. I kept thinking of these women on the cutting edge of international design at the time. To me, that’s Euphronius. Her place is filled with all of her friends, all these people. Even the teacups she’s using at the table are these avant-garde, Art Deco, clear, translucent teacups. Everything that had to do with her world was about now and modernism in terms of the ’30s.

Caption: (L to r) Annette Bening as Dr. Euphronious and Jeannie Berlin as Greta in Warner Bros. Pictures THE BRIDE! A Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

Maggie Gyllenhaal wanted to create a punk piece of art. You can especially see that in the underground club. How’d you want to go more punk with that setting? 

One of the first times we were able to really dig into the punk of it all was when Frank walked past that underground club. When they later go into that club, The Bride connects with that. She wants to go there. To us, that was a place like, if you know, you know. It’s a bit like the Mud Club in Tribeca in New York, or the Caravan Club, which was a queer club [in London] that got shut down in the 1930s. I found all these old photographs of the Caravan Club and then mashed that up with these New York underground clubs from the 1980s, where misfits and weirdos would go. 

Caption: (L to r) Christian Bale as Frank and Jessie Buckley as The Bride in Warner Bros. Pictures THE BRIDE! Photo Credit: Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

What about the graffiti and colors you wanted for the club?

There’s graffiti, but it was 1920s, ’30s graffiti. The music is also slightly anachronistic. Everything that was going on in that space, design-wise, costume-wise, music — everything bleeds into that territory between the punk aesthetic of the 1980s and the subversive nature of the 1930s. These underground clubs that were in existence that you read about, but really, they existed for maybe a year or two before they were shut down, and everyone was arrested.

aption: (L to r) Jessie Buckley and Director Maggie Gyllenhaal on the set of Warner Bros. Pictures THE BRIDE! A Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Photo by Niko Tavernise

Where’d you source some of those club photographs? How else did they inspire your work?

The National Archives in the UK have photographs of the Caravan Club. There are very few of them, just black and white, but they’re great. They’re so evocative because they look like photographs taken after a night there. There are drinks on these tables, pieces of tapestry fabric hanging from the wall in this tiny space. There’s also hand-built furniture, so we went for that aesthetic. My set decorator, Rena DeAngelo, and I focused on making that space feel DIY. They had taken over a space and made it their own, this underground club, which is exactly the vibe of the Caravan Club.

You got to make Times Square your own, which sounds like great wish-fulfillment for a former architect. Did a part of you think, ‘I want to make a ’30s Times Square that I want to step into?’

We were trying to bring some of the European influence into it. If you look at all the Times Square equivalents around the world — Piccadilly Circus, or parts of Berlin, or Paris — there is so much neon signage and color and modernism in those cities. Everyone knows what Times Square looked like at the time. There are plenty of photographs of it. There’s even old footage of it, blinking lights and all of that. We were trying to retain that, but we also wanted it modern, our own thing, because no one can shoot in Times Square these days. We had to create a backlot, and we needed the cinemas to be where they needed to be for the action and story. It’s a mismatch of ideas. It’s run-down, but it’s still this incredible, bright space of cinema and creativity.

The Bride! is in theaters now.

Featured image: Caption: Jessie Buckley as The Bride in Warner Bros. Pictures “THE BRIDE!” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

Stephen Colbert’s Wizardly Next Act: Co-Writing a New “Lord of the Rings” Movie

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Talk about conjuring up a great new gig—Stephen Colbert and Peter Jackson revealed that The Late Show host and longtime “Lord of the Rings” super-fan is penning a new Lord of the Rings film. Colbert will co-write the script with Oscar-winner Philippa Boyens and Peter McGee, which will follow Andy Serkis’ The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum, which is scheduled to start production in New Zealand later this year. 

The surprise news came courtesy of an Instagram post in which Peter Jackson revealed Colbert’s involvement.

“The thing I found myself reading over and over again were the six chapters early on in The Fellowship [of the Ring] that y’all never developed into the first movie back in the day,” Colbert said in the video. “It’s basically chapters ‘Three Is Company’ through ‘Fog on the Barrow-downs,’ and I thought, ‘Oh wait, maybe that could be its own story that could fit into the larger story. Could we make something that was completely faithful to the books while also being completely faithful to the movies that you guys had already made?’…And I started talking it over with my son Peter, who’s also a screenwriter, and we worked out what we thought would work, especially as a framing device for that story. It took me a few years to scrape my courage into a pile to give you a call, but about two years ago, I did. You liked it enough to talk to me about it, and ever since then, the two of us have been working with the brilliant Philippa Boyens on how to develop this story.”

This is the first big move Colbert has announced since he revealed last year that The Late Show was being canceled, and will air its final episode on May 21.

The film that Colbert, Boyens, and McGee are penning has a current working title of The Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past, and will follow Serkis’ The Hunt for Gollum, which will feature not only Serkis’ return as the titular ring-obsessed former hobbit, but Ian McKellen as the wizard Gandalf and, potentially, Elijah Wood as Frodo Baggins. Kate Winslet has joined the cast in an undisclosed role.

The synopsis for the script Colbert, Boyens, and McGee are working on reads: “Fourteen years after the passing of Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin set out to retrace the first steps of their adventure. Meanwhile, Sam’s daughter, Elanor, has discovered a long-buried secret and is determined to uncover why the War of the Ring was very nearly lost before it even began.”

Meanwhile, The Hunt for Gollum is set between The Hobbit trilogy and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and follows Aragorn and Gandalf’s quest to find Gollum and learn more about Bilbo’s ring, the most consequential piece of jewelry in the history of Middle-earth. The Hunt for Gollum is due in theaters on December 17, 2027.

Featured image: WEST HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA – SEPTEMBER 14: Stephen Colbert attends the Apple TV+’s Primetime Emmy Party Red Carpet at Ysabel on September 14, 2025 in West Hollywood, California. (Photo by Tommaso Boddi/Getty Images)

Inside the Creative Engine of “The Pitt”: How Four Writers Built on a Breakout Hit

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When The Pitt burst onto the scene on January 9, 2025, the airwaves were a veritable emergency waiting room, packed with medical shows. New series last year alone included St. Denis Medical, Doc, and Pulse. Returning shows included the 21st season of Grey’s Anatomy, the 10th season of Chicago Med, and the 8th season of 9-1-1. We had plenty of doctors and nurses staffed and ready to go. Granted, The Pitt boasted a slew of ER alums in creator/showrunner R. Scott Gemmill, actor/executive producer/writer/director Noah Wyle, director/executive producer John Wells, and writer/producer/doctor Joe Sachs, but even that pedigree of talent was no guarantee of success. The series, however, beginning with the premiere episode “7:00 A.M.,” was a tour de force of narrative immersion and emotional immediacy. People all over the country were hooked. It wasn’t just the best medical show on TV; it was one of the best dramas, period.

Plunging viewers into a single, relentless 15-hour shift in a Pittsburgh hospital, The Pitt offered a bracing, intimate portrayal of the staff and the patients they do everything they can for. With Wyle surrounded by veteran actors and newcomers alike—kudos to casting directors Cathy Sandrich Gelfond and Erica Berger—the series earned every one of its 13 Emmy nominations and five wins, including Outstanding Drama Series, Lead Actor (Noah Wyle), Supporting Actress (Katherine LaNasa), and Guest Actor (Shawn Hatosy). The show’s ambitious structure, which frames the action in real time, meant high stakes for all involved, demanding a level of continuity rarely attempted in a television series.

To that end, we wanted to talk to a few of the people responsible for maintaining that continuity and creating the intimacy and harrowing realism that make The Pitt such a standout. We once again got to speak with writers Cynthia Adarkwa and Valerie Chu, and were able to include their fellow scribes, Danny Hogan and Kirsten “Cookie” Pierre-Geyfman. 

This talented quartet discusses how they approached the challenge of following a breakout debut, what actually happens inside The Pitt’s writers’ room, and how personal experience, medical research, and current events shape a show that feels urgently of the moment.

To start, I’d love to go around and have everyone share a bit of background—how you found your way into The Pitt.

Hogan: I was the script coordinator for the first two seasons. I’m originally from San Diego, grew up in a family of surfers and scientists, and that’s sort of been my worldview ever since. Before scripted TV, I worked at National Geographic and Discovery as a story developer and AP. I worked my way up through the writers’ room ladder—assistant, script coordinator—on a few shows, including the Gossip Girl reboot, and then very serendipitously landed on The Pitt. It’s been magic ever since.

Pierre‑Geyfman: I served as the writers’ assistant for the first two seasons. I was born and raised in the San Fernando Valley—there’s only one Valley, by the way. I started out in representation, working in the mailroom at an agency, realized pretty quickly I needed to get out of there, and eventually found my way into the room on The Pitt, which I’m very grateful for.

Adarkwa: I’m from Silver Spring, Maryland—born in D.C., raised in Maryland. I studied writing at SCAD and took a bit of a roundabout path into TV. I started as a PA in reality TV and realized that wasn’t where I wanted to be. I used social media to connect with writers and landed a job as a writer’s assistant, including on Sweet/Vicious at MTV. From there, I staffed on Legacies, then worked on another John Wells show, Emperor of Ocean Park, right before the strike. That relationship led me to The Pitt, and I’ve been here since season one.

Chu: I went to USC for film school and studied screenwriting. I worked my way up as an intern, PA, and showrunner’s assistant, and I was lucky to work for two incredible women of color who gave me freelance episodes early on. My last assistant job was on Better Call Saul, which felt like getting an MFA in writing. I honestly thought I might never make the staffing jump—it’s such a tough business—but The Pitt was the first time I worked with John Wells Productions, and they were open to bringing in writers who hadn’t worked with them before. That’s how I landed here.

Making that leap into the writer’s room and being on staff is a formidable transition.

Chu: It’s such a hard business, and I know so many incredibly talented people who just haven’t gotten there—not because of ability, but because of timing or access. That’s why The Pitt was so meaningful to me. I’d always heard that John Wells Production tend to work with people they already know, so the fact that they were open to bringing in writers who hadn’t worked with them before—it really mattered. It felt like someone opening a door that doesn’t always open.

 

Season One felt like it came out of nowhere and became a phenomenon. Season Two didn’t have that luxury. Before breaking the story, what were the conversations with Scott [Gemmill] and John [Wells] about how to approach the follow-up?

Adarkwa: A big part of the conversation was acknowledging that sophomore seasons are tough. We wanted to highlight what worked in season one without replicating it exactly. You can’t do another mass-casualty event—that’s not something that happens every day. The question was: how do we get the same juice without copying ourselves?

Chu: Scott really emphasized keeping our heads down and doing the work. Not trying to one-up ourselves—just telling the best story we could.

Hogan: We also got a little lucky. We were already deep into breaking season two when the show really exploded, so it was too late to let it get into our heads. We were already in the weeds.

Pierre‑Geyfman: Character-wise, it was freeing. Ten months had passed in the story, which allowed things to happen off-screen. The challenge became how to seed that naturally without exposition. Langdon [Patrick Ball] became a great audience surrogate because he hadn’t been there for those ten months. My husband said something really interesting when we watched the first episode of season two together. He said it felt familiar—like coming home—but also different. And I think that’s because we’re more comfortable now. We’re not introducing everyone from scratch anymore. We know these characters, we know the world, and that confidence shows up on screen.

 

For readers who will never step foot in a writers’ room, can you walk me through what yours actually looks like? How does the work get done?

Chu: We’re all in a room together on the Warner Bros. lot, sitting around a big conference table, surrounded by whiteboards. We start with a discussion—literally just talking. Scott usually comes in with his big tent poles, and then we talk through every character: where we left them, where we pick up ten months later, and what’s possible within 15 hours of real time.

Hogan: It’s very macro at first—story, pacing, structure—then it gradually becomes micro. We break out episodes, mini-arcs, and patient stories.

Pierre‑Geyfman: We also have a physical map of the hospital. Danny and I are always tracking where patients and characters are. Writing the show is like choreographing a 15-hour stage play—single location, continuous time. The logistics matter as much as the dialogue.

Adarkwa: And nothing is set in stone. We’re constantly erasing and rewriting. Scott is very flexible—there’s no rigidity. We’re always asking what’s best for the characters.

The whiteboard from inside the writers’ room. Courtesy HBO Max/Warner Bros.

One thing the show does beautifully is explore different medical personalities—ER doctors versus surgeons, for example. Is that something you talk about deliberately?

Adarkwa: Absolutely. We talk about it a lot. It’s a mix of personality and specialty. ER doctors tend to thrive on adrenaline and improvisation. Surgeons can have a very different energy.

Chu: We also talk to a lot of medical experts, and it’s fascinating to hear how different specialties perceive each other. That helps us build characters that feel real without leaning too hard on stereotypes.

Alexandra Metz, Isa Briones. Photograph by Warrick Page/HBO Max

You’ve said before that writers are encouraged to bring their personal lives into the room. How does that shape the show?

Adarkwa: I think a writer’s job is to bring their life experience to the table. This season, I got to tell a story about Black women and eating disorders—something I felt passionate about. Healthcare touches everyone’s life, so the show naturally allows for that kind of personal storytelling. That was in episode four. I also wrote an episode later in the season that touches on something else very personal to me. Being in a room where that kind of vulnerability is welcomed makes a huge difference. You feel safe bringing those stories to the page.

Chu: The subject matter really helps. On other shows, there’s sometimes no way to bring in your personal experience. Here, it feels both safe and encouraged.

The show feels incredibly current—sometimes eerily so. How intentional is that?

Hogan: Very intentional. We’re all constantly sharing articles, medical studies, and journalism. Everyone’s doing their homework. One of the most meaningful things I’ve heard from viewers is that they’re just trying to root for good people right now. There’s so much happening in the country, and people respond to watching competent doctors doing their best within a broken system. We don’t control timing—we just try to do the work honestly—but sometimes those things line up in ways you couldn’t predict. That’s been really humbling to witness.

Chu: We sometimes debate whether something will still be relevant when the show airs—and often it ends up being even more relevant than we expected.

Adarkwa: We try to focus on the human impact rather than overt politics. We don’t want to knock people over the head—we want to show the real-world consequences.

 

Last question: if you had to go to the ER, which doctor would you not want treating you?

Pierre‑Geyfman: Joy [Irene Choi]—only because I really need a good bedside manner.

Hogan: Garcia [Alexandra Metz]. If she’s there, something very bad has happened.

Garcia arrives with Mosley. Robby takes over and cuts Debbie’s lower leg. (Warrick Page/HBOMAX)

Adarkwa: Ogilvie [Lucas Iverson]. I love him, but no.

Chu: Also Ogilvie. Double down.

Lucas Iverson is Ogilvie, and Fiona Dourif is Dr. McKay. Photograph by Warrick Page/HBO Max

Featured image: Alexandra Metz, Patrick Ball, Noah Wyle, Gerran Howell, Amielynn Abellera. Photograph by Warrick Page/HBO Max

“Project Hail Mary” Sound Designers Erik Aadahl and Ethan Van der Ryn on Creating Rocky’s Alien Language

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In the blockbuster space adventure Project Hail Mary (in theaters now), a sentient rock from an alien planet introduces itself to Ryan Gosling’s science teacher-turned astronaut with a succession of growls, gurgles, clucks, chirps, and chitters. The dog-sized chunk of material, which has no face, five arms and no name until Grace anoints him “Rocky,” uses a language devised by Oscar-nominated sound designers and supervising sound editors Erik Aadahl and Ethan Van der Ryn (A Quiet Place, The Creator), who experimented for months before arriving at a vocabulary that pleased their famously exacting directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller (the script was written by Drew Goddard, adapting Andy Weir’s novel of the same name—Goddard was nominated for an Oscar for adapting Weir’s The Martian).

Like Lord and Miller, Aadahl and Van der Ryn work as a team. “Chris and Phil might not always agree on something, but that forces them to find something better than what either one of them would have done on their own,” says Aadahl. “In a way, their relationship as directors is very similar to ours, where there’s a kind of alchemy that creates something better than the sum of the parts.”

Speaking from their studio in Burbank, California, Aadahl and Van der Ryn describe the ancient instruments, whippoorwill cheeps, jugs, and other ingredients that shape Rocky’s alien speech.

 

Audiences are turning out in droves for Project Hail Mary—a feel-good movie about the future!

Erik: How rare is that? It feels like it’s needed. It feels like the right time.

What was your creative brief from directors Lord and Miller?

Ethan: Let me start by saying that I read Andy Weir’s [2021] book and saw that this alien creature language is musical, literally scripted in quotations as quarter notes and eighth notes. I was trying to decode what that would sound like and thought, “Man, whoever winds up doing the movie of this book is gonna have their job cut out for them.” Flash forward to us being invited to be the sound designers on Project Hail Mary. I was like, “All right, here we go!”

Erik: The alien’s music-based language uses tones and harmonies. When Rocky gets more agitated, his pitch goes up; when he’s more grave and sincere, his pitch goes down. There was one description saying his deeper notes were “whale” so we used the humpback whale, and then the higher notes could go up into the piccolo range. We started with reed instruments because they can be expressive, allowing Phil and Chris to direct us in our performance of these things in the same way he would direct actors. But then we wound up jettisoning most of the reed instrument lexicon.

Why?

Erik: They didn’t go for the piccolo.

Did you use any electronic elements?

Ethan: No. A strong part of Chris and Phil’s brief was not to have it be electronic at all, so we purposely stayed away from all electronic sounds. But what we found is that some of the most organic sounds, for instance, bird calls, can feel electronic. We’d be reviewing a scene, and Phil would say, “That sounds too electronic,” and we’d be like,” Oh, that’s just a whippoorwill.”

Ethan: When you play some of these organic sounds out of context, they start to feel a little electronic. There’s no rhyme or reason for it.

Erik: The direction from Chris and Phil was that they wanted it to sound like there was a film crew on the ship, capturing these things as if it were a nature documentary. All of Rocky’s sounds needed to feel like they were coming out of him naturally. We found that flute-based instruments had a natural breath to them, and even found a flute inventor who came up with a bunch of different types of instruments, but ultimately, the winner was an ocarina, which you hear a lot in this movie.

 

The ancient potato-shaped instrument made from clay?

Erik: Yeah. The ocarina has an exotic note structure and a breath that feels very alive. To bring even more aliveness, we had one of our sound designers, Dave Whitehead, place transducers on slabs of granite to enhance resonance. Then we rerecorded it to add another layer of realism, as if the sound were coming from this carapace of heavy stone. Ethan and I love to experiment in that way to see how deep we can go.

 

In building the language, did each tone have a specific meaning throughout the film, or was it more random?

Erik: Rocky’s Eridian language includes 250 words and concepts he uses in the film. Our lead assistant kept a database: “What are the most used words, what are the least used words?” At the end of the process in the mixing stage, Chris might go, “Rocky’s word for ‘sleep?’ Let’s try some different options.” So then we’d create new words for “sleep,” choose one, and apply it at 34 minutes into the movie, 56 minutes into the movie, and again at 87 minutes into the movie.

Ethan: We didn’t take any shortcuts. Whether it’s a gurgle, a tone, or a combination of tones, we wanted it to be an actual living, breathing language.

Erik: One of the first words we really wanted to lock down was “Question” because in English, if you have a question, you might just raise the pitch on the last note, like, what is your name? implies a question, right? Rocky would literally say “question” at the end of a question. For that, his word was… [Erik makes a fast-rising clucking sound].

 

Smooth. 

Ethan: And Rocky says the word “question” in dozens of different ways, depending on the context, so it might be deeper when he’s very serious. It might be a jug.

A jug?

Erik: Yes, an earthenware jug that Chris brought to the studio one day. He said, “I have a gift for you guys,” and went into his trunk, pulling out a big jug. You fill it with water to different levels to get different pitches out of it. And that’s what we performed here in the studio, to get some of the bass notes.

Ocarina, jug… what were some other instruments behind Rocky’s “voice”

Erik: The performed musical instruments would include the jug, ocarina, didgeridoo, contralto flute, and contralto clarinet, for when he’s more agitated. And then there’s the animal world. My favorite is the solitaire bird, which is one of the ingredients in the word for the name “Rocky” in his Eridian language.

Ethan: Avian brains are a lot quicker compared to our brains. If you record birdsong at a high resolution and slow it down, you get so much information in every second—there’s such a beautiful, invisible world in there.

Erik: And that’s part of the fun of being a sound designer: you can delve into that secret sonic world of nature and then use it in a movie that deserves it.

 

Rather than being a CGI creation, “Rocky” is a physical puppet on set, operated and eventually voiced by puppeteer James Ortiz. Were you guys also on set, “performing” the alien sounds?

Erik: No, that all happened in post-production.

On a tangent here, Erik and Ethan, why are you a team? Typically, there’s one single department head in charge of sound, whereas you two collaborate as equal partners. How did that happen?

Ethan: We met on Transformers, so we’ve been working together for twenty years. I think the reason it’s lasted so long is that we have a very similar aesthetic. We like to do the really hard stuff, and we want to give ourselves goosebumps. We have no fear of throwing away work if it’s not hitting that [level].

Being based in L.A., are you mindful of the impact that post-production on a big movie like Project Hail Mary can have on the local filmmaking economy?

Erik: 100 percent. The past few years have obviously been rough, with so much production moving out of LA and out of state, mostly for tax-rebate reasons. It’s been affecting everyone, but we’re hopeful that something can be done, at the state and federal levels, to make it more economically competitive for shows to stay here. Fortunately, all of the post-production on Project Hail Mary was done here in Los Angeles. Our studio is based in Burbank, so sound design was done here, and all mixing was done at Sony in Culver City.

You guys immersed yourselves in the world of Project Hail Mary for months. What’s your takeaway from that experience?

Erik: At its core, Project Hail Mary is about communication, and sound is communication. It’s how we connect as humans, how we understand each other, how we can truly empathize and collaborate and work together to make a better world. I love the optimism in this story where sound is the centerpiece of that noble endeavor. 

Project Hail Mary is in theaters now.

Featured image: Ryan Gosling stars as Ryland Grace in PROJECT HAIL MARY, from Amazon MGM Studios. Photo credit: Jonathan Olley © 2025 Amazon Content Services LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Mahershala Ali Enters the “Task” Force: HBO’s Brad Ingelsby Drama Adds Two‑Time Oscar Winner

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Mahershala Ali is ready to join forces with Mark Ruffalo in Brad Ingelsby’s excellent Task for season 2.

Ingelsby’s crime drama bowed in 2025 to critical acclaim—it follows his also-superb Mare of Easttown, which starred Kate Winslet doing the absolute best Philadelphia-area accent of all time—credibly cementing Ingelsby the king of gritty Delaware County dramas.

Task season 1 followed the parallel lives of two men who would eventually collide in dramatic and heartbreaking fashion. FBI Special Agent Tom Brandis (Ruffalo) is a former priest and alcoholic hiding behind a desk, lost in the tragic, accidental murder of his wife at the hands of his son, Ethan. Tom is eventually pulled back into the field, where his path will cross with Robbie Prendergrast (Tom Pelphrey), a garbage truck driver who moonlights as a robbery crew chief, robbing drug stash houses led by the biker gang the Dark Hearts.

It was a riveting season, complete with double and triple crosses, anchored by moving performances from Pelphrey and Ruffalo, and Ingelsby’s sense of place, which grounded the plot in the specifics of living on the margins of the greater Philadelphia area. Ali will add even more gravitas to a great ensemble cast, which last season included Fabien Frankel, Emilia Jones, Thuso Mbedu, and Silvia Dionicio. The logline for season 2 reads: “Tom Brandis (Ruffalo) takes the helm of a new task force, but the deeper the operation runs, the harder it is to tell who’s the target.”

Ali is set to star as Eddie Barnes, “a seasoned and well-respected DEA agent in Philadelphia whose team comes into conflict with Tom’s unit.”

Ali has a track record with HBO, having starred in season 3 of the hit anthology series True Detective. He’s also a two-time Oscar winner, first for Best Supporting Actor for his stellar work in Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight, and the second for Best Supporting Actor in Green Book.

Task season 2 is currently expected to premiere on HBO in late 2026.

For more on Warner Bros., DC Studios, HBO, and more, check out these stories:

“The Bride!” Prosthetics Wizards Jason Collins and Scott Stoddard on Turning Christian Bale into Frankenstein

How Composer Hildur Guðnadóttir Brought Tension, Electricity, and Love to Maggie Gyllenhaal’s “The Bride!”

Denis Villeneuve on Filming “Dune: Part Three” as a “More Tense, More Muscular” IMAX Film

Featured image: PALM SPRINGS, CALIFORNIA – JANUARY 03: Mahershala Ali attends the 37th Annual Palm Springs International Film Awards at Palm Springs Convention Center on January 03, 2026 in Palm Springs, California. (Photo by Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for Palm Springs International Film Society)

From Page to Orbit: Screenwriter Drew Goddard on Adapting “Project Hail Mary” for the Big Screen

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As much as critics love the film adaptation of Andy Weir’s bestselling high-stakes science fiction thriller Project Hail Mary, early screenings have shown audiences are loving it even more. The crowd pleaser has garnered a nearly unheard-of 95% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. That’s great news for theaters around the country—Project Hail Mary delivered on its promise this past weekend, opening to an A+ year-best $80.5 million domestically, the best-ever opening for Amazon MGM Studios.

Ryan Gosling stars as the film’s lead character, Ryland Grace, a doctor of molecular biology and a middle school teacher who wakes up in space with no memory. In time, he gets flashes of his past and slowly recalls his mission, which is to solve why a mysterious substance is killing suns across the galaxy and threatening life on Earth. He thinks he has to decipher the solution alone until he discovers an alien with the same task. Can Grace and the alien he names ‘Rocky’ save their worlds by working together? 

Andy Weir sent his manuscript of Project Hail Mary to Ryan Gosling even before the book was published, asking him to act as producer for the film adaptation. Gosling said yes, and immediately brought on Academy Award-winning directing team Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, The Lego Movie). They so wanted screenwriter Drew Goddard, Academy Award-nominated for The Martian, also adapted from a Weir novel, that they waited until he was available to begin production. The Credits spoke to Goddard about bringing this newest Weir success to the screen while maintaining the humor, pathos, and heart that made the book such a global fan favorite. 

 

In Project Hail Mary, Grace’s character arc plays out backwards, and in both the book and the film, we learn things at the same time Grace does. Can you say what you can about how that affected how you wrote and developed the film’s emotional arcs? 

The book follows the same structure as the movie, with our main character, Grace, waking up on a spaceship and having little memory of how he got there. We’re telling the story both in the past and the present. He’s trying to figure out what he’s supposed to do on that spaceship, and his memories are slowly coming back to him over time. At a certain point in the book, about two-thirds of the way through, he remembers what happened. I remember when I read it, the hair stood up on the back of my neck, and I thought, “Oh, I have to do this movie.” I loved it. I also knew it was the sort of thing that had to be protected, because I’ve done this enough now as a screenwriter to know the interesting things tend to get squeezed out if you’re not careful, because they’re different, and this was different. The first conversation I had with Andy, Chris, and Phil was that we have to protect that at all costs, because that is one of the 10 things that make this story thrilling and unique. We really built around those big moments, and that was the biggest of them.

Project Hail Mary author Andy Weir on the set of PROJECT HAIL MARY, from Amazon MGM Studios.
Photo credit: Jonathan Olley © 2026 Amazon Content Services LLC. All Rights Reserved.

It’s about the past and present informing each other, and, by extension, the audience. 

Right. One of the things I loved about this story is that it appears that we’re just doing a standard flashback structure, but slowly but surely, it becomes clear these aren’t just flashbacks. It’s a conversation between the past and the present that speaks to a larger truth about the meaning of life. What does life mean without interaction with the other? What does it mean to look outward rather than inward? These are all big themes that become part of the conversation between past and present in the film.

Another beauty of the film is that it realistically portrays the teacher as a superhero, someone who might save the world. 

This movie adaptation is just filled with the joy of teaching. I mentioned that the big reveals were the first things to make the hair on the back of my neck stand up. The other thing that made my heart swell when I read the book was that Grace is a school teacher. He’s not that square-jawed hero. My mom has been teaching school for 50 years, and I think we should all jump at any chance to celebrate teachers. I was so excited to tell a story of a teacher saving the world, flying around on spaceships, and interacting with aliens, and it’s so perfect for the big themes of this movie. What I love about teachers is that they all love learning. You can’t be a great teacher if you don’t love your students, right? That suggests that, as a teacher, you’re already reaching out to others. That’s what’s happening in this movie. It’s about communication and teaching, but the roles of student and teacher often switch back and forth. That’s part of the joy of this. We’re all teachers and students, should we choose to be. 

Ryan Gosling stars as Ryland Grace in PROJECT HAIL MARY, from Amazon MGM Studios.
Photo credit: Jonathan Olley © 2025 Amazon Content Services LLC. All Rights Reserved.

These characters aren’t going to get where they need to go without being open and curious with each other. 

They’re not going to survive unless they figure out how to empathize and see the world from the other’s point of view. They have to learn about each other to survive in this movie. I would take it even further: it’s not just that they have to teach, but that good teachers have to learn. Good teachers have to love teaching, and they have to love learning. That love becomes the emotional soul of the movie.

Rocky’s character is described by Grace as a dog-sized spider made of rocks. What were the challenges of having a sympathetic protagonist with those characteristics?

Every day I was grateful that I had Chris and Phil. Even when I first read the book, Chris and Phil were already attached, so I knew I’d be working with them.  I’ve known them for two decades, and I don’t know anybody else who could have pulled off Rocky. He’s a spider-rock crab that can’t exist in our atmosphere. That alone makes it challenging. He doesn’t have a face, and speaks in whale songs, but I knew Chris and Phil could pull it off, because they have this background in the animation world, and there’s nothing they can’t do. Their brains don’t accept the constraints that our brains would. I’m thinking about what the story might look like when we’re standing on set, whereas they treat the set the way they treat their animation, which is, “if we can dream it, we can make it. Let’s just figure it out.” That’s thrilling to be around. They treated Rocky like this three-dimensional character, not thinking about a green screen. The CGI version exists to do things a puppet can’t do, but the design of the puppet, the puppet itself, and the puppeteers are just exquisite. It really was this magical work that I still don’t know how they pulled off.  

 

How did you develop the relationship between Grace and Rocky? It’s so central to the story. 

The most important part was not to make it easy. We had to start with the basics. How do you describe counting or sharing math with a character that doesn’t have eyes? The very challenges to that are going to be the point, which is that communication and empathy are not always easy; they become more satisfying through the struggle. That was key to us. 

Project Hail Mary got incredible reviews, which energized audiences, but why do you think people should see this film, and see it in theaters?

Well, it’s about one person and one alien from opposite ends of the galaxy coming together to find common ground. It’s bristling with empathy, compassion, care, and kindness. It speaks to a lot of things that make us human and that are worth celebrating right now. All of us involved in making this love movie theaters, but it falls on us as filmmakers to give you a reason to go see Project Hail Mary on the big screen. We tried to make it as thrilling as possible, but also as emotional an experience as you can have, because your time is valuable and we want you to have a wonderful time in the theater. Our goal was to make you feel what readers of the book felt. We’re going to make you laugh, and we’re going to break your heart. We’re going to celebrate some of the lovely qualities that bring us together, like empathy, like compassion, and give you a good time at the theater.

 

Project Hail Mary is now in theaters nationwide. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ryan Gosling Goes Interstellar as “Project Hail Mary” Delivers Amazon MGM Studios’ Biggest Opening Ever

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Ryan Gosling has officially blasted into orbit with Project Hail Mary, launching Amazon MGM Studios’ sci-fi epic into historic territory with a stellar $80.5 million opening weekend at the box office, marking the best start for any movie this year, and Amazon MGM Studios’ biggest opening ever.

Previously, Amazon MGM Studio’s best opening was 2023’s Creed III, which saw Michael B. Jordan returning to the ring for his third bout as Adonis Creed. Project Hail Mary also bested this past February’s Scream 7, which opened to $63 million.

Project Hail Mary is directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, adapted from Andy Weir’s novel by screenwriter Drew Goddard, who also adapted a previous Weir novel for Ridley Scott’s The Martian. Gosling stars as teacher Ryland Grace, sent on a potential suicide mission to try and stop a mysterious substance that’s killing the sun. Grace discovers he’s not alone in his pursuit—there’s an alien ship on the same mission —and his bond with his unexpected travel partner could be the key to saving both their planets.

“In the most purely pleasurable movie so far this year, Ryan Gosling has a blast as a science guy who rockets into space to save all our asses with jolts, jokes, and smarts that won’t quit,” wrote critic Peter Travers.

“For all its bells and whistles, Project Hail Mary is also a lovely, bittersweet character study, a pas de deux between man and alien that elicits a surprising amount of emotions by the time the credits roll,” writes Odie Henderson of the Boston Globe.

“I do this job because in my heart I believe that movies are the culmination of every art form developed by humans, the greatest storytelling mechanism ever developed. “Project Hail Mary” makes use of every part of that storytelling capacity,” writes critic Nell Minow.

“At once zippy and emotionally wrenching, the film performs a similar balancing act as its leading man,” says The Reveal‘s Keith Phipps.

Based on stellar reviews like those above and strong word of mouth, Project Hail Mary was a hit in the States and overseas, racking up $60.4 million across 82 markets, bringing the total to $140.9 million thus far.

“We believe deeply in the Hail Mary, and it’s clear audiences do as well,” says Amazon MGM’s distribution chief, Kevin Wilson. “What we’re seeing in theaters — the energy, the exit scores, the word of mouth — is everything we believed this film would deliver.”

It’s a great start to the year for Amazon MGM Studios, with 2026 marking the first time they’ll have a full theatrical slate—13 films in total. Next up for the studio is the June release of Masters of the Universe, an adaptation from a popular cartoon and toy line. The film features Nicholas Galitzine as He-Man trapped in a cubicle in corporate America. That is, until he finds his sword (held in a toy store by a giant plastic He-Man-like mannequin), which leads him to his ancestral homeland of Eternia, where danger awaits. As do friends, including Duncan/Man-At-Arms (Idris Elba), Roboto (voiced by Kristen Wiig), Cringer/Battle Cat (He-Man’s loyal house cat that turns into a mighty tiger), and Teela (Camila Mendes). He-Man will need all the help he can get when he sees who he’ll be facing—the skull-faced sorcerer Skeletor (Jared Leto) and his forces.

Featured image: Ryan Gosling stars as Ryland Grace in PROJECT HAIL MARY, from Amazon MGM Studios. Photo credit: Jonathan Olley © 2025 Amazon Content Services LLC. All Rights Reserved.