Hans Zimmer Protégé Guillaume Roussel on Composing the “Black Beauty” Score Remotely
The good news for Guillaume Roussel: this spring he fulfilled a lifelong dream by working with the London Symphony Orchestra. The bad news: he had to supervise the Black Beauty recording sessions from his garage in Los Angeles due to COVID-19 travel restrictions. “It was just after lockdown, so the big frustration came because I was not able to fly to London for the sessions,” says Roussel. “Fortunately, my good friend Gavin Greenaway conducted and did a great job.”...
Welcome to Studio Babelsberg’s Rainbow Stage—A Tribute to Lana and Lilly Wachowski
“I’ll show these people what you don’t want them to see. A world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible.” Neo (Keanu Reeves), The Matrix, 1999
To honor the groundbreaking filmmakers Lana and Lilly Wachowski and simultaneously promote a message of tolerance, respect, and diversity, Germany’s Studio Babelsberg in Potsdam recently renamed its largest sound stage the Rainbow Stage (its previous title was number 20 of 21)...
The Stage is Set for “The United States vs. Billie Holiday”
Growing up in Baltimore as a young Black boy, one of my fondest memories of my beloved city is Lexington Market. I recall as a young boy walking with my mom past the famous indoor market and down West Lexington Street and seeing this beautiful mural of local black artists. One of the artists included in this mural was the legendary Billie Holiday. I was in awe of her beauty. As I got older, I was introduced to her music,...
Documentarian John Dower on “The Mystery of D.B. Cooper”
In 1971, a Boeing 727 flying out of Portland, Oregon was hijacked by a single middle-aged man, operating under the name Dan Cooper. Clad in black, wearing dark sunglasses, and using a bomb in a briefcase as leverage, Cooper demanded four parachutes but only $200,000, and he let the flight’s passengers go in Seattle, where the cash and parachutes were brought aboard. After demanding the pilots fly to Mexico City, he opened the aircraft’s back door over the woods in Washington State,...
Lady Gaga Joins Brad Pitt & Zazie Beetz in Thriller “Bullet Train”
Well, the cast for this film is absolutely bonkers. Deadpool 2 and Atomic Blonde director David Leitch’s Bullet Train has just called Lady Gaga onboard. Leitch, an verified master of the action sequence, has assembled an incredible cast for this film. The Oscar-winner and multi-talented superstar joins Brad Pitt, Zazie Beetz, Brian Tyree Henry, Aaron Taylor Johnson, Joey King, Andrew Koji, Masi Oka, and two-time Oscar-nominee and one of the best character actors working,...
Netflix’s “Malcolm & Marie” Starring Zendaya & John David Washington Gets Oscars-Friendly Release Date
There’s a new Oscar-hopeful on the docket. Writer/director Sam Levinson’s Malcolm & Marie, starring two of the most sought-after stars working right now, Zendaya and John David Washington, will be released on Netflix on February 5, 2021. Levinson, Zendaya, Washington, and their crew teamed up to shoot Malcolm & Marie while in quarantine earlier this year. With this release date, the drama is now eligible for the upcoming Academy Awards. It now seems possible that Netflix has a bounty of potential Oscar-nominated films on their hands;...
New “Wonder Woman 1984” Trailer Reveals Christmas Day HBO Max Release
In fairly major news on the release front, a new Wonder Woman 1984 trailer reveals that Diana Prince (Gal Gadot) will be returning to our screens—at long last—in both theaters and streaming on HBO Max on December 25. Director Patty Jenkins’ long-awaited sequel will be available at no extra cost to HBO Max subscribers.
In case you haven’t been following the release status of Wonder Woman 1984, the film premiere date has been delayed three times now due to COVID-19...
First “Scream 5” Images, Title & Release Date Revealed As Sequel Wraps Production
And that’s a wrap, folks! The fifth Scream in the franchise—which we’ve been calling Scream 5 all this time—has wrapped filming. To announce the end of principal photography, original Scream scribe Kevin Williamson took to Twitter to share some photos from set and reveal the film’s title and release date. You ready for this? It’s called Scream! It’ll debut in theaters on January 14, 2022.
The Scream crew managed to wrap production in Wilmington,...
The Trailer for “The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone” Pulls us Back in
In case you missed this bit of news yesterday, Paramount released the trailer for The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone. If you haven’t been following the slow-burn buildup to this re-release (of sorts) to co-writer and director Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather Part III, you might be surprised to learn about this film. The Death of Michael Corleone is, in fact, The Godfather: Part III—but—it’s been re-edited,...
“Run” Cinematographer Hillary Spera on Creating Hulu’s Breathless Thriller
Co-writer and director Aneesh Chaganty’s Run moves like a thoroughbred thriller thanks to all its constituent parts working in perfect unison. The stellar cast, led by Sarah Paulson and newcomer Kiera Allen, Chagnaty’s lean script, co-written with Sev Ohanian, and Chagnaty and his crew’s exacting execution. The film is centered on the too-close-for-comfort relationship between a mother in daughter—Diane (Paulson) is a zealously devoted guardian of her daughter Chloe (Allen), who is paralyzed from the waist down and also deals with a variety of other ailments,...
Zack Snyder Reveals New “Justice League” Teaser With Fresh Footage
Behold—a new black-and-white teaser for Zack Snyder’s Justice League. We’ve already seen a colorized version of this teaser, but then again, not quite this teaser. The latest gives us some fresh footage from Snyder’s upcoming film, which will air on HBO Max as a four-part miniseries. Assuming that if you clicked on this story you’ve been paying some attention to the winding road that got us here, this version of Justice League will not only be different from the Joss Whedon-directed version we saw in 2017 but includes new footage from recent reshoots with the cast...
Documentarian Nathan Grossman Captures a Teenage Icon in “I Am Greta”
Swedish documentarian Nathan Grossman made a leap of faith in 2018 when he decided to film an unknown 15-year-old with a sign staging a one-person strike outside the Stockholm Parliament in order to bring attention to the global climate crisis.
Over the course of 18 months of filming, Greta Thunberg became an international figure and an icon to an increasingly energized youth movement around the world demanding immediate action to address climate change. Grossman, who lives in Stockholm,...
James Gunn Reveals Sylvester Stallone Has a Mysterious Role in “The Suicide Squad”
We already knew that James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad had an insane cast, but now the writer/director has revealed another big star is on board. Gunn took to Twitter to share a photo of himself and old pal Sylvester Stallone—the two collaborated on Gunn’s The Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 2—to let us know Stallone’s a part of The Suicide Squad cast. He joins A-listers like Margot Robbie, Viola Davis, and Idris Elba,...
“Let Them All Talk” Trailer Reveals Meryl Streep & Steven Soderbergh’s Latest Collab
There is so much pleasure to be derived from this look at Steven Soderbergh’s upcoming Let Them All Talk. First and foremost, it’s watching this sensational cast, led by Meryl Streep as a well-known author embarking on a girls’ trip with her former best friends (played by Dianne Wiest and Candice Bergen) with her nephew, played by Lucas Hedges, along for the ride. The ladies plus nephew board the Queen Mary II to take a leisurely cruise and reconnect...
Editor Marco Capalbo on Cutting Werner Herzog’s Cosmic New Doc “Fireball”
Editor Marco Capalbo has been working with the inimitable German director Werner Herzog for the past eight years, most recently on Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds, which premieres on Apple TV+ on November 13. We chat with Marco, who specializes in editing documentaries, about tackling the vast subject matter of meteors, comets and their influence on ancient religions, and how he looks for those “Herzogian moments” that make Herzog’s documentaries unique.
The way that you’ve found that balance between the scientific,...
“Inside Pixar” Premieres Tomorrow on Disney+
While a lot of the oxygen around Disney+ series understandably gets suctioned into the engines of the Falcon Crest (we’re making a joke about The Mandalorian‘s massive popularity, gang), the streaming channel has had some really excellent documentary series, too. From Into the Unknown: Making of Frozen 2 to Magic of Disney’s Animal Kingdom, Disney+ has offered viewers fascinating inside looks at some of these beloved franchises. You can add to that list the upcoming Inside Pixar, ...
Producer Brad Feinstein Moves Audiences With Dramas “Jungleland” and “Dreamland”
Although only a few years old, Romulus Entertainment already boasts an admirable slate of what founder and CEO Brad Feinstein describes as “socially conscious prestige dramas and action thrillers” — City of Lies, Driven, and American Woman, to name just a few. The roster is also a lengthy one: At the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival, Feinstein noted in an interview that the company had produced 12 films in just 24 months. The goal moving forward,...
Danai Gurira to Play Shirley Chisholm in New Film
The timing for this feels perfect. Black Panther and The Walking Dead star Danai Gurira is set to star in The Fighting Shirley Chisholm from director Cherien Dabis. The film will track Chisholm’s groundbreaking run for president in the 1972 election. Chisholm was also the first Black woman ever elected to Congress, in 1968, and the first woman to run for the Democratic Party’s nomination. Chisholm’s campaign strategy centered on the energy and engagement of younger voters,...
Writer/Director Francis Lee on His Hard Scrabble Love Story “Ammonite”
Writer-director Francis Lee’s acclaimed 2017 debut feature God’s Own Country and his follow-up, Ammonite (Neon), unabashedly center on queer, working-class characters. So it may come as a bit of a surprise that Lee cites 1980s studio movies as among his all-time favorite films.
“In my head, when I’m making my films, I’m making my version of An Officer and a Gentleman or Pretty Woman or Working Girl;...
Jordan Peele’s Next Horror Movie Set for 2022 Release
You know you’ve reached a career pinnacle when just the announcement of the date of your next film excites film lovers and film writers in equal measure. (Yes, the Venn diagram for film lover and film industry writer would just be a single circle encompassing both.) Such is the career point at which Jordan Peele finds himself. While Peele is a producing and co-writing dervish on hotly anticipated films like Nia DaCosta‘s Candyman (he produced and co-wrote the script),...
