Producer Hsinyi Liu on Forging a Path From Taiwan to “Fleabag” & “The Ballad of Wallis Island”
Moving halfway around the world to live and work in a different culture and language presents inevitable challenges, but there is also a wealth of opportunities available to those who leave the familiar behind and immerse themselves abroad. This was the case for Taiwan-born and raised producer Hsinyi Liu, who learned the joys available to those willing to make the leap when she relocated to London more than two decades ago.
In an attempt at a compromise between her family’s expectations of a financially stable career and her own creative impulses,
Reel Returns: Connecticut’s Film Investment Fuels Economic Growth in a Competitive State of Play
The evening before my conversation with Jonathan Black, a co-founder of the Connecticut Film and TV Alliance (CTFTVA), he was attending a hearing in Hartford. The Finance, Revenue, and Bonding Committee was listening to public testimony on Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont’s proposed film tax credit cut from 30% to 25%, a move that could strike a devastating blow to the state’s film and television community.
Black, a Georgia native, has roots in Hollywood,
Battle Tested: Leonardo DiCaprio Fronts First Look at Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another”
One day after Warner Bros. announced the official title for Paul Thomas Anderson’s mysterious new movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio, One Battle After Another, the studio dropped the first teaser.
While you won’t glean much from this brief 21-second blast, you will at least get a sense of the mood of Anderson’s latest. It couldn’t be further from his last film, Licorice Pizza, his dreamy look back at the San Fernando Valley of the 1970s (where and when Anderson grew up),
Unveiled: Paul Thomas Anderson’s Enigmatic Leonardo DiCaprio Film Lands Official Title & Date
We finally have some clarity—a keyhole’s worth—about Paul Thomas Anderson’s mysterious new film starring Leonardo DiCaprio.
Warner Bros. announced on Wednesday that Anderson’s film has gotten a slight bump in its release schedule from August 8 to September 26. This moves the film from the summer blockbuster season into the typical awards contender release window. This would make sense for an Anderson film, given how singular and lauded the auteur’s work is, from his most recent release,
Ana de Armas and Keanu Reeves’ John Wick Spar in Lethal New “Ballerina” Trailer
Eva Macarro, meet John Wick.
Ana de Armas has entered the John Wick universe, so it’s fitting her character, Eva Macarro, faces off against the man himself. At the 1:45 mark in this new trailer, Eva and John have a snowy encounter in which neither are backing down. The reason Wick is alive here despite having met his fate in John Wick: Chapter 4 is because Ballerina is set during the events of John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum.
Colin Farrell in Talks to Enlist in “Sgt. Rock,” Luca Guadagnino’s DC Studios Film
Colin Farrell is no stranger to DC Studios—he has delivered hours and hours of scene-stealing work as Oz Cobb, first in Matt Reeves’ The Batman and then in Max’s critically acclaimed spinoff series The Penguin. His performance as Gotham’s most cunning criminal in The Penguin delivered Farrell a SAG Award, Golden Globe, Critics Choice Award, and Saturn Award. Now, he’s circling a different kind of project for DC as he’s in talks to star in Luca Guadagnino’s Sgt.
“Mickey 17” Production Designer Fiona Crombie Creates a Playful Pattinson-Verse for Bong Joon Ho’s Black Comedy Space Epic
The underdog hero of Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17 is sweetly naive everyman Mickey (Robert Pattinson), a failed macaron shop owner on the run from a bloodthirsty creditor in the year 2054. Mickey finds a way out of his predicament, but it’s bleak—he signs up as an Expendable, a human test subject for a space mission whose sole purpose is to die in not one but many gruesome experiments, having turned over the rights to his DNA to be infinitely reprinted for any and all of the mission’s needs.
“Snow White” Early Reactions: One of the Best Live-Action Remakes to Date
The first reactions to Disney’s Snow White are here, and the scuttlebutt is that director Marc Webb and his stars Rachel Zegler (Snow White) and Gal Gadot (the Evil Queen) have delivered one of the best live-action remakes to date. This is quite the turnaround after a few shaky weeks leading to the film’s premiere, with the online chatter surrounding Snow White having to do with everything but the film itself.
SXSW 2025: Tapping Into Texas’s Vast Potential to Become the Next Cinematic Frontier
This year’s SXSW film festival in Austin blew into town with a considerable tailwind of enthusiasm for the Lone Star state’s film and TV future. Every state in the union can claim unique cultures, geographies, and mythologies, but there’s no disputing that Texas looms very large in our collective cultural imagination. It’s a state that takes very seriously the notion that it’s really a country.
Texas’s hold on our imagination is evident in how many great films and TV series are set there (whether they’re actually filmed there or not—we’ll get to that in a second),
From the Upside Down to the MCU: “Stranger Things” Star Sadie Sink Joining Tom Holland in “Spider-Man 4”
It’s official—Spider-Man 4 is in full swing.
In a big bit of casting news, Stranger Things star Sadie Sink is joining Tom Holland in the fourth installment of Holland’s run as Peter Parker. Deadline reports that while Sink’s role is not yet known to the public, they’ve gone ahead and posited an intriguing possibility—that she will play legendary X-Men mutant Jean Grey.
Following “Ballerina,” a Fifth “John Wick” Movie Has Been Confirmed
John Wick will never die.
And by “John Wick,” we might not necessarily be referring to the man himself, as played by Keanu Reeves in the first four films. By all accounts, Reeves’ nearly indestructible assassin died a noble death at the end of the last installment, John Wick: Chapter 4. We knew we’d be given another glimpse at the man in the upcoming spinoff, Ballerina, which stars Ana de Armas as Eva Macarro as she begins training as an assassin in the traditions of the Ruska Roma.
“Thunderbolts”: Marvel’s Wild Card Mixes Antiheroes and Indie Talent From A24 & More
Recently, Florence Pugh, one of the stars of Marvel’s upcoming antihero epic Thunderbolts, said the Marvel Cinematic Universe installment was very unlike your average MCU addition. In fact, Pugh told Empire that Thunderbolts feels much more like an indie film.
“It ended up becoming this quite badass indie, A24-feeling assassin movie with Marvel superheroes,” Pugh told Empire.
This isn’t just one of the film’s marquee names trying to give her movie an edge at the box office.
SXSW 2025: Dan Farah’s “The Age of Disclosure” Stuns Crowd With Shocking Alien Doc
Festival crowds are notoriously exuberant—it can be hard to get a real read on a film’s potential for broader success or acclaim even if the first time it plays for a crowd at a film festival results in cheers and guffaws. Yet sometimes, for some films, a festival crowd’s excitement is as precise an indicator for a film’s impact as you need. This was the case here in Austin this past Sunday, when director Dan Farah showcased his doc The Age of Disclosure for the first time ever to a crowd.
SXSW 2025: 11 Intriguing Film & TV Premieres Highlight a Big Time Festival Lineup
Hello from Austin!
This year’s SXSW Film & TV Festival is extra star-studded and jam-packed with exciting titles. This is due, in large part, to the fest not coinciding with the Oscars, as it has for the past few years. As always, SXSW is chock-a-block with screenings—an adventurous and inexhaustible attendee has 111 films and 17 series to choose from—and some very big stars and a ton of intriguing filmmakers and TV creators are on hand to showcase their work.
From Wings to Stars: Costume Designer Gersha Phillips on Redesigning Captain America
Gersha Phillips is no stranger to the kind of immediately recognizable costumes that tell a viewer immediately what world she’s in, like the intergalactic looks and Starfleet designs she crafted for the recent Star Trek feature Section 31 and the Star Trek series Discovery and Strange New Worlds. Skewing to the realism side of the closet, Phillips has designed the duds for My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 and director Gina Prince-Bythewood’s historical epic The Woman King.
From “Elf” to “Blue Bloods”: Veteran Producer Santiago Quiñones on the Unique Advantages of Filming in New York
Santiago Quiñones was a co-executive producer on Blue Bloods, CBS’s long-running police procedural that followed the Reagan family through their dynastic run within the NYPD. Quiñones, a born and bred New Yorker, joined the show assuming that, like previous projects, he might be moving on after a little while for another opportunity. Instead, he stayed for a decade, which kept him home alongside his family as his children grew and his colleagues became extended family members.
“Captain America: Brave New World” Composer Laura Karpman Crews a New Beat for a New Cap
The Academy Award-nominated composer Laura Karpman is now a consistent voice in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. She scored Ms. Marvel, The Marvels, and What If? Now she adds Captain America: Brave New World to her impressive resume, which also includes American Fiction and Lovecraft Country.
In the tradition of Captain America movies, a conspiracy is afoot.
“Anora” Completes Its Cinderella Story With Fairy Tale Oscars Night
The 97th Oscars ended up being a true fairy tale story for writer/director Sean Baker’s Anora, with Baker capping an already magical night after winning Oscars for Best Original Screenplay, Best Editing, and Best Director—in which he gave a rousing acceptance speech defending the unparalleled experience of the theater experience—by seeing Anora take the top prize, Best Picture. For good measure, Anora‘s Cinderella herself, Mikey Madison,
Brazilian Sociologist & Film Expert Ana Paula Sousa on the Power & Promise of the Oscar-Nominated “I’m Still Here”
One of the most striking scenes in Walter Salles’ I’m Still Here does not depict any of the violence instilled by the military regime that ruled Brazil for over two decades; nor does it show the despair of having a loved one vanish without a trace, while those so obviously responsible unashamedly deny any involvement.
Rather, it is the scene where Eunice Paiva (Fernanda Torres) is being photographed with her children for an article in the national magazine Manchete.
From “Day of the Jackal” to “Captain America: Brave New World”: DP Kramer Morgenthau Breaks Down 70s Thriller Inspiration
Sam Wilson returns in director Julius Onah’s Captain America: Brave New World, here to take on twin domestic threats. Sam (Anthony Mackie) and his sidekick (and replacement as the Falcon) Joaquin (Danny Ramirez) have been sent to Mexico to stop Sidewinder (Giancarlo Esposito) from making an illegal sale. Sam and Joaquin recover the items but lose Sidewinder. The pair then head home to train with Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly), a former super soldier introduced in the Disney+ series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier,
