Hamilton Movie Will Premiere on Disney+ a Full Year Earlier Than Planned
Good news is few and far between these days, so we’ll take it where we can get it. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is good news. The movie version of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton is arriving on Disney+ a full year (and change) earlier than originally planned. Hamilton will now stream on July 3, 2020, instead of the originally slated release of October 15, 2021. Miranda himself shared the news on Twitter:
It’s only a matter of time…
With Her Amazon Directing Gig on Hold, Indian Filmmaker Tannishtha Chatterjee Embraces Other Creative Pursuits
It’s often two-thirty in the afternoon before actor, writer, and director Tannishtha Chatterjee finds time to turn her attention to creative pursuits. “Till lunchtime…I’m cooking, cutting vegetables, cleaning, dusting and bathing Radhika.”
Radhika is Chatterjee’s four-and-a-half-year-old daughter. For the last six weeks, it’s been just the two of them tucked away in her Mumbai apartment. “She’s actually become quite independent in the last one and a half months. She’s learned many new things.
Erica Mūnoz on Producing & Starring in HBO’s Undocumented Immigrant Story Long Gone By
Just premiered on HBO, Long Gone By is the story of the hardworking single mother and undocumented immigrant Ana, played by Erica Mūnoz, who is trying to create the best life for her brainy teen daughter Izzy (Izzy Hau’ula) in their adoptive small town of Warsaw, Indiana. When a deportation order demands Ana return to Nicaragua, it puts not only her own future in jeopardy, it makes Izzy attending Indiana University nearly impossible.
Caitlin Moran on Adapting Her Own Novel How to Build a Girl
The girl in Caitlin Moran’s rowdy coming of age comedy How to Build a Girl, which the popular British author adapted from her 2014 semi-autobiographical debut novel, is so uniquely larger than life that finding the right actress proved problematic — at least for a while. The film is now available on-demand.
“We scoured Britain trying to find a British actress who could do it,” says Moran from her home in London where she’s “been in lockdown for weeks so just talking to another human being that isn’t someone I gave birth to or someone I married is a genuine thrill,” she says.
Composer Vivek Maddala Underscores Discrimination in Asian Americans Documentary for PBS
The versatile composer Vivek Maddala recently shifted gears from his zany Emmy-winning music for Cartoon Network series The Tom and Jerry Show to score PBS’ somber documentary Asian Americans (debuting May 11). A musical prodigy, Maddala enrolled in Boston’s prestigious Berklee College of Music at age 15 with dreams of becoming a jazz drummer but switched to electrical engineering at Georgia Tech before earning a graduate degree in applied physics.
Andy Serkis Reveals Interesting Nuggets About The Batman
Like every other major production, filming on Matt Reeves‘ hotly-anticipated The Batman was suspended in mid-March. Reeves and his talented cast and crew had begun production in London and had filmed around 25% of the total feature before production had to be shut down due to the spread of the novel coronavirus. The Batman is now slated for an October 1, 2020 release date—which we argued was the perfect time to unleash the new Batman on the world.
Behold the The King of Staten Island Trailer From Pete Davidson & Judd Apatow
The combination of Saturday Night Live‘s most offbeat cast member, the lovable if occasionally troubled Adam Davidson and comedy’s most reliable, sturdy father figure, writer/director Judd Apatow seems like a perfect match. Apatow has nurtured the career of a slew of promising comedic talents, including Seth Rogen, Amy Schumer, and Kumail Nanjiani. With Davidson, Apatow’s steady hand has found perhaps the perfect live wire.
The two teamed up for The King of Staten Island,
Spike Lee Reveals Poster & Release Date for His Netflix Movie Da 5 Bloods
You have to love a surprise Spike Lee film announcement, which is what the news of Da 5 Bloods will be for most folks. Lee teased his new Netflix film in a Tweet, revealing both the poster and the June 12 release date. The film tracks four African-American Vietnam veterans who return to the country to search for the remains of their squad leaders. Also, to try and track down some buried treasure.
How Filipino Filmmaker Keith Sicat is Using Quarantine to Help Fellow Filmmakers (And Entertain Himself in the Process)
“The beautiful thing is, you have to keep occupied right?” So says Filipino writer/director Keith Sicat, speaking from the six-week-long lockdown in Manila.
With three projects primed to go into production at the beginning of the year, Sicat now spends in time between project development, teaching filmmaking, and keeping his creative juices flowing on mini-projects with his young sons. “We started animating his toys, doing stop motion stuff around the house. It was something really fun and it was creative.
How Production Designer Anne Seibel Built a Jazz Club From Scratch in Damien Chazelle’s The Eddy
Contrasting the difficult lives of professional jazz musicians with their joyous, airy music, Damien Chazelle’s (Whiplash, La La Land) new Netflix series The Eddy turns on the personal and professional drama surrounding a titular jazz club in Paris’s down-to-earth 19th arrondissement (premiering on Friday, May 8). A legendary jazz pianist, it’s Elliot’s (André Holland) job to run the struggling club’s musical program until he unexpectedly inherits a backstage mess from his business partner,
Westworld and Snowpiercer Cinematographer John Grillo on Crafting Dueling Apocalypses
Right before lockdown and social distancing began in earnest, we had a chance to talk with notable cinematographer Paul Cameron about his return to Westworld, for which he not only shot the pilot but returned to film the just-concluded season’s opening episode and to direct the fourth.
He kept singing the praises of John Grillo, his cinematographer for that fourth installment, “The Mother of Exiles,” replete with action-strewn set pieces,
Actress Tamlyn Tomita on Star Trek: Picard, Celebrating Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, and More
Actress Tamlyn Tomita was one of the four panelists in our first-ever virtual Film School Friday event this past April. Tomita appeared alongside (remotely, of course) Fear the Walking Dead and 9-1-1: Lone Star cinematographer Andrew Strahorn, Watchmen scribe Stacy Osei-Kuffour, and Game of Thrones and Westworld composer Brandon Campbell. The panel discussed, among many topics, the collaborative nature of film and television,
Tom Cruise Plans to Be The First Person to Film an Action Movie in Actual Outer Space
Tom Cruise loves to do crazy stunts. Despite being one of Hollywood’s biggest stars for four decades now, Cruise has made it his mission (pun intended) to perform a lot of his own stunts, and many of them have been full-tilt bananas. Holding onto the side of a plane as it took off? Check. Free-climbed the tallest building in the world? Check. Piloted his own helicopter during a fantastically insane chase in the last Mission: Impossible movie?
Black Panther Co-Writer Joe Robert Cole on Writing & Directing His New Netflix Feature All Day and a Night
“Great stories have great characters, and the key to great characters is empathy,” says writer-director Joe Robert Cole, whose latest film, All Day and a Night, is now streaming on Netflix. “Every film, television show, or story that I work on, I approach from character first and let that lead the way.”
All Day and a Night is a young black man’s coming of age drama,
It’s Official: Taika Waititi Will Co-Write & Direct a Star Wars Movie
Perhaps the biggest surprise to come from yesterday’s official Star Wars May the 4th holiday was the news that Thor: Ragnarok writer/director Taika Waititi, fresh off winning an Oscar for his Jojo Rabbit script, is officially co-writing and directing a new Star Wars film. Waititi will be co-writing the script with Krysty Wilson-Cairns, who herself is coming off an Oscar nomination for co-writing 1917 with director Sam Mendes.
9-1-1: Lone Star Cinematographer Andrew Strahorn on Sitting Tight
Cinematographer Andrew Strahorn recently took part in our first ever Film School Friday event, in which he joined Stacy Osei-Kuffour, a writer on HBO’s stellar Watchmen, composer Brandon Campbell, whose work includes Game of Thrones, and actress Tamlyn Tomita, who recently starred as Commodore Oh on the critically acclaimed Star Trek: Picard. Strahorn himself had been a very busy man,
Hollywood Production Designer Matthew Ferguson Helps Build Ryan Murphy’s Gorgeous Alternate History
Ryan Murphy’s Netflix limited series Hollywood has all the glitz and glamor of 1940s Hollywood but with an alternate spin on history. We chat with production designer Matthew Ferguson about the challenge of getting the period details right and finding the balance between fact and fiction. The show debuted this past May 1 on Netflix.
Murphy and his team envision an alternative history of Hollywood in 1947,
May the 4th Be With You on This Star Wars Day
Happy Star Wars Day, folks, and May the 4th be with you. Today is the first day in history that you can now stream all 9 films in the Skywalker Saga in one place—Disney+. You may also want to brush up on what makes May the 4th a Star Wars holiday. A quick history lesson: the apocryphal story is that the first reference came on May 4,
Costume Designers Revive Late Forties Glamour for Ryan Murphy’s Hollywood
Writer-producer Ryan Murphy and his team envision an outrageously optimistic alternative history of the movie business in 1947 via their new show Hollywood. Debuting May 1 on Netflix, the period melodrama boasts a huge ensemble headed by David Corenswet as a fresh-faced actor who works as a gigolo before getting his big break. Along the way, he meets a black screenwriter/prostitute (Jeremy Pope), the voracious wife of a studio boss (Patti LuPone),
New Photo From The Set of Avatar 2 Reveals Sigourney Weaver
Doctor Grace Augustine is back. Well, okay, not entirely. The great Sigourney Weaver is back for James Cameron’s Avatar 2, despite her character dying in Cameron’s 2009 original Avatar. Weaver was one of the marquee names assembled for the ever-ambitious director’s massive Avatar sequels, we just don’t know in what role. Now, a new image from producer Jon Landau shows Weaver back in the saddle,
