Contagion Star Kate Winslet Wants You to Help Stop the Spread of COVID-19

Studios, stars, and now the cast of one of the best films ever made about a pandemic have come together to deliver PSAs about the spread of COVID-19. Steven Soderbergh’s 2011 film Contagion is a deeply chilling thriller, and also a realistic glimpse at how healthcare professionals, government officials, and regular people try to deal with a global pandemic. Writer Scott Z. Burns researched the film by going to the CDC and learning first-hand how they handle pandemics,...

Go Inside Warworld, Westworld’s New WWII-Themed Park

It feels like several years ago when we interviewed Westworld cinematographer and director Paul Cameron about the series’ ambitious third season (it was actually only 11 days ago). Since then, the world has gotten significantly scarier thanks to the spread of COVID-19, which makes Westworld‘s third season, fully wrapped long before the pandemic hit, extra comforting right now. That is, as comforting as HBO’s wildly ambitious, consistently intense sci-fi series can be...

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness Continues Remote Pre-Production

The entertainment industry has seen productions freeze as COVID-19 has spread across the globe. Some of the biggest productions going at the moment, from Warner Bros. The Batman and The Matrix 4 to Paramount’s Mission: Impossible 7 to Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings have shut down. As of now, with the situation around the world so fluid, there is no expectation that productions can start up again until at least mid-May,...

All The Recent Releases You Can Watch Now

We’ve been covering the effects that COVID-19 has had on the entertainment industry. These stories have included news about production shutdowns to delayed premieres, from interviews with filmmakers on current and stalled projects to how the industry is helping citizens and the healthcare industry alike.

Another novel scenario that the global pandemic has created, another one on the positive end of the spectrum, is that studios are making their recent releases available on digital platforms early...

Star Trek: Picard Director Hanelle Culpepper Makes History (And a Home in Space)

With news of rising numbers of COVID-19 infections and the economic fallout the disease destined to come with it, everyone is looking for watch lists for some quality home entertainment. Highly recommended by critics and viewers alike is CBS All Access’s Star Trek: Picard, which has been the most-watched original series to date for the streaming service. The first three episodes of the series were helmed by director Hanelle Culpepper, whose credits range from superhero action adventures to thrillers,...

Watch the Trailer for Solar Opposites From Rick and Morty Co-Creator

We could all use a laugh in these dire times, and there have been few shows on TV that so reliably elicit actual LOLs than Rick and Morty. So, the news that Rick and Morty co-creator Justin Roiland and writer Mike McMahan have a new animated series coming to Hulu is manna from outer space. Behold the first teaser for Solar Opposites, Roiland and McMahan’s alien comedy. The voice cast is bonkers,...

The Walking Dead & Better Call Saul Director Bronwen Hughes Talks Drama, Real & Imagined

“For the two months leading up to this moment, I was writing. I was already leading an isolation style life,” says writer/director Bronwen Hughes. Her usually intense TV directing schedule had this lull so she could complete a screenplay for a feature (a spy thriller she’s sending off to a major studio, she’d say no more), and then the world changed.

“Well, every physical shoot I’ve had or have, booked or about to book, was wiped off the map,”...

Patty Jenkins & Gal Gadot Share New Wonder Woman 1984 Animated Poster & Words of Hope

The production and premiere delays due to the spread of COVID-19 have been unprecedented, but that, of course, doesn’t mean that we’ll never be seeing these films. What we are dealing with is a tremendous amount of uncertainty; the novel coronavirus does not have a finale date, so nobody knows for sure just when we’ll have this under control and it will be safe for all of us, including the studios, filmmakers, their casts and crew, and theater owners and employees can go back to work...

Rian Johnson & Edgar Wright Share Their Favorite Musicals & Comedies

While we all deal with the massive changes that the spread of COVID-19 has thrust upon our daily lives, there has been no shortage of watch lists to get us through our socially distanced reality. Initially, most of these lists were focused on films and television series that touched upon pandemics, epidemics, and the post-apocalyptic. You could find Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion and Wolfgang Peterson’s Outbreak and Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later on many of them...

Costume Designers Guild to Sew Masks for Hospitals

With critical medical supplies in short supply, the Costume Designers Guild is currently rallying its members to step into the breach to help sew masks for hospitals dealing with the spread of COVID-19. Salvador Perez, president of the Costume Designers Guild, told Variety, “We are organizing all our members from local 892 and local 705 costumers who can sew, to manufacture masks for hospitals. It will be good to keep busy and help the community.” This followed a conference call with the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees,...

Silent Sunday Nights Host Jacqueline Stewart’s Easy Going Film Expertise

Jacqueline Stewart is a film scholar, researcher, author and archivist. But when she gets before the cameras as the host of Silent Sunday Nights on Turner Classic Movies (TCM), she’s once again a kid watching movies late into the night with her aunt Constance.

“I was obsessed with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movies as a kid. They always seemed to be on TV the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, late at night...

Read Christopher Nolan’s Passionate Piece on the Importance of Movie Theaters

You could hardly ask for a more passionate advocate for the importance of movie theaters than writer/director Christopher Nolan. The auteur of such epic, must-see-it-in-the-theater films like Inception, Interstellar, and, of course, The Dark Knight trilogy penned a passionate plea for the importance of movie theaters in the Washington Post as we face theater and production closures due to the spread of COVID-19. Nolan has long been an advocate for the movie theater experience...

How Costume Designer Jeriana San Juan Helped Shape HBO’s The Plot Against America

These are trying times. When The Wire creator David Simon and his longtime collaborator Ed Burns set out to adapt the late, legendary novelist Philip Roth’s terrifyingly prescient 2005 novel “The Plot Against America,” they were doing so in a pre-pandemic world. At first, Simon and his team were “merely” adapting a novel that seemed, with eerie clairvoyance, to peer around the bend of time into our present day. The book envisions a truculent presidential candidate rising to power on an America First platform,...

Our In-House Former Movie Critic Submits An Epic Watch List for Trying Times

For reasons entirely to do with this crazy life we’re all living right now, I find myself revisiting the final scene of the great Three Days of the Condor. You know, the Robert Redford thriller that came out, like, before electricity. In the movie, Redford’s a CIA analyst who knows too much, and the CIA is hunting him down. In this climactic scene, he informs an adversary, played by Cliff Robertson, that he has a gun in his coat pocket and that he needs to walk with him for a little bit...

Grey’s Anatomy Donating Gloves & Gowns to Fight COVID-19

With the rapid spread of COVID-19, people all across the globe are trying to do their part. This includes people with symptoms who are self-quarantining, the tens of millions of folks practicing social distancing, and the efforts of individuals and charities alike to lending a helping hand—in whatever way they can—to support people in even greater need. As we all learn how to live under novel, legitimately terrifying circumstances, no industry or group of people are working harder than our healthcare providers...

DP Kira Kelly on Lensing Netflix’s Self Made Followed by a Sudden COVID-19 Furlough

Self Made, Netflix’s four-episode biopic on Madam C.J. Walker (Octavia Spencer), the businesswoman, philanthropist, and first female American self-made millionaire, traces Madam C.J.’s late 19th-century rise from washerwoman to the successful founder of a haircare empire staffed by and made for African-American women. The production contrasts vibrant, colorful historic sets and costumes with a contemporary soundtrack, for an immersively satisfying period series that feels completely modern.

“Even before I got the job, the showrunners were very clear that they did not want a monochromatic,...

New iPhone-Filmed Conan Episodes Will Return on March 30

We’ll take all the good news we can get at this point. We all know that with the spread of COVID-19, productions are shutting down throughout the entertainment industry. That has included every late-night talk show. Late night hosts are still producing content, mind you, often in an effort to help viewers understand the importance of social distancing and to offer a little levity in this time of crisis. Now we’ve got the very welcome news that one late-night host,...

Here’s James Gunn’s Blessedly Pandemic Movie-Free Quarantine Watch List

With so many people at home right now, doing their part to help flatten the curve of COVID-19 by social distancing, watch lists have flooded the internet. Many of these watch lists are focused, understandably, on films and TV shows that deal with pandemics and other world-changing catastrophes. One of the most cited films on these lists is Steven Soderbergh’s genuinely terrifying Contagion (now available on Hulu) from 2011. Written by Scott Z. Burns, who researched the film by going to the CDC and learning first-hand how they handle pandemics,...

The Below-the-Line Talent Who Make the Films & Shows we Love

With the spread of COVID-19 affecting the entertainment industry in unprecedented ways, below-the-line filmmakers are facing the prospect of weeks, or months, without income, some without health insurance or paid sick leave. These are the folks who make the films and television shows we love possible. They’re costume designers and assistant directors, gaffers, grips, and animators. They’re makeup artists and hairstylists, they’re art directors and location scouts, they’re the people who design the sets, tailor the clothes, block the shots,...

Watch the First 10 Minutes of The Skywalker Legacy Documentary

We’ve all got way more time at home on our hands at the moment. While we practice social distancing responsibly, it’s nice to have as many entertainment options as possible. Disney has made the first 10-minutes of The Skywalker Legacy documentary available online, which we’ve embedded below for your viewing pleasure. This sneak peek comes on the heels of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker becoming available for digital download yesterday,...