From “Better Call Saul” to Better Call for Backup: How Bob Odenkirk and 87North Are Redefining Action Comedy
In just six years, including five of the film industry’s most challenging periods, powerhouse filmmakers David Leitch and Kelly McCormick have founded and grown 87North Productions, making it a formidable force in Hollywood and beyond.
Anchored in the action genre, the production and action design company’s catalog includes the third and fourth John Wick movies, Bullet Train, Violent Night,
“Freakier Friday” Costume Designer Natalie O’Brien on Creating a Four-Way Body Swap
Freakier Friday, directed by Nisha Ganatra, really is freakier than its predecessor, 2003’s Freaky Friday, as the number of characters unwittingly swapping bodies has risen to four. Anna (Lindsay Lohan) and her teenage daughter, Harper (Julia Butters) land in each other’s corporeal forms, while even weirder for the group, Tess (Jamie Lee Curtis) and her step-granddaughter-to-be, Lily (Sophia Hammons) find themselves swapped.
The medium for this switch is a disarmingly hacky multi-hyphenate palm reader,
Inside SNL’s Most Challenging Episode Ever: Director Liz Patrick on the 50th Anniversary Special
On a night filled with laughter, legacy, and magic, Saturday Night Live marked its 50th anniversary with an unforgettable celebration. The milestone episode infused nostalgia that paid tribute to its past with new memorable moments. But what audiences saw on screen is only a fraction of the story. Behind the scenes in the iconic Studio 8H, an enormous production effort had been unfolding for months. From production design, hair, makeup, editing,
From Teenage Pirate Hunter to Global Anti-Piracy Leader: Rajkumar Akella’s Mission to Protect Creative Content
Rajkumar Akella’s mission started almost the moment he joined the entertainment industry, when he brushed up against piracy for the first time.
These days, as the chairman of India’s Telugu Film Chamber of Commerce’s Anti Video Piracy Cell, Akella is leading the fight against piracy globally. Back then, as a teenager trying to turn a dollar, selling taped versions of Indian movie soundtracks and with “youthful energy,” he met with the pirates head-on.
How “The Naked Gun” Writers Dan Gregor & Doug Mand Got Liam Neeson & Pamela Anderson to Embrace Absurdity
Macho cop teams with gorgeous mystery woman to stop evil tech mogul from destroying the world: The plot’s perfectly functional for an action-thriller, but it’s the jokes, not the story, that have pushed The Naked Gun to the biggest action comedy opening of 2025. Writers Dan Gregor and Doug Mand (Crazy Ex-Girlfriend), working with director/co-writer Akiva Schaffer, furnished stars Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson with a firehose of silliness encompassing sight gags,
“Film is Forever”: How Maria Gabriela de Faría Embraced the Pain of Playing “Superman” Villain The Engineer
Maria Gabriela de Faría doesn’t pull her punches—or her spinning blades, for that matter. In Superman, the actress makes Angela Spica (aka The Engineer) fight like an animal, throwing raw punches with unwavering belief in Lex Luthor’s (Nicolas Hoult) idea that no individual should be trusted with superpowers. Whether the Engineer is slicing robots in the Fortress of Solitude or going toe-to-toe with Superman (David Corenswet) in the Cleveland Guardians’ ballpark (outfitted to look like the DC Meteors’
From Bismuth Crystal Rivers to Real Neon Signs: Supervising Art Director David Scott on Designing James Gunn’s “Superman”
David Scott admits that growing up, he was more of a Batman and Spider-Man fan, but after listening to writer-director James Gunn’s pitch for Superman, which has now grossed over $550 million globally, he was excited to support the vision. “It’s infectious when you sit and listen to him talk. I loved everything about it,” says the supervising art director, who has built worlds for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.
Composing Chaos: How Amie Doherty Scored Disney’s Four-Way Body Swap in “Freakier Friday”
There are already two generations of hardcore fans who love Freaky Friday. Gen-Xers and their parents flocked to see Barbara Harris and Jodie Foster for the 1976 release, and in 2003, Disney struck gold again with Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan playing the body-switching mother/daughter duo, bringing millennials into the fandom fold. More than 30 years later, those Gen-X grandparents and Millennial moms and dads are poised to make fans of the youngest among us with a long-awaited sequel to the 2003 film,
“Superman” Composer John Murphy on Electrifying John Williams’ Iconic Score
John Murphy is a composer known for scoring films with dark undertones, whether they’re kinetic and terrifying or haunting and ethereal. To this day, his theme for Danny Boyle’s electric 2002 gamechanger, 28 Days Later, remains a deservedly beloved earworm, while his music for Boyle’s bittersweet 2007 sci-fi stunner, Sunshine, is at turns heartbreaking and inspiring. Now, he’s scored one of pop culture’s sunniest, noblest characters (Zack Snyder’s darker take notwithstanding),
How Director Nisha Ganatra Captured the Real Magic of LA for Lindsay Lohan & Jamie Lee Curtis in “Freakier Friday”
Freakier Friday director Nisha Ganatra is no stranger to showcasing Los Angeles in her work for both the big and small screen. Having helmed episodes of such iconic shows as Transparent, Welcome to Chippendales, and the 2020 feature The High Note, she has a knack for capturing the many faces of the city that is home to Hollywood.
This legacy sequel to the 2003 Disney classic Freaky Friday sees Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan reunite as mother-daughter duo Tess and Anna.
Director Gareth Edwards on Why “Jurassic World: Rebirth” Needed Real Locations & Film Stock to Capture Its Magic
Having already directed Godzilla, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and The Creator, Gareth Edwards is used to fantastical storytelling on an epic scale, as well as handling some of the biggest and best-loved IPs in the history of cinema.
Jurassic World: Rebirth, the seventh installment in the multibillion-dollar Jurassic film franchise, is one of the year’s biggest box office hits both globally and domestically.
Crystal Vision: How “Superman” Production Designer Beth Mickle Built the Fortress of Solitude
Director James Gunn started small with his 2010 micro-budgeted indie film Super, followed by his acclaimed Guardians of the Galaxy films for Marvel. Now, he’s made a crowd-pleasing new version of Superman that’s raked in more than half a billion in global box office since its release earlier this summer. DC Comics’ original superhero returns in a big way, as Gunn’s universe-corraling reboot pits the title character (David Corenswet),
“The Naked Gun” Writer/Director Akiva Schaffer’s Dead Serious Mission to Resurrect the Spoof Comedy
The Naked Gun director Akiva Schaffer is on a quest to bring people back to the movie theaters to laugh—hysterically, if he’s done his job right—and, while he’s at it, to bring the filmmaking process back to Los Angeles as much as possible.
His franchise revival stars Liam Neeson as Detective Frank Drebin Jr., the son of Leslie Nielsen’s iconic Police Squad cop, tasked with solving a murder and saving his department from shutting down.
Flying at 125 MPH to Keep Up With “F1” Cars: Aerial Cinematographer Phil Arntz on the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix Sequence
It was especially fun for aerial cinematographer Phil Arntz to return to Abu Dhabi with his camera pilot, Will Banks, for the climactic racing sequence in Joseph Kosinski’s pedal-to-the-metal epic F1. “I used to live in Dubai around 2012 or 2013, when I did a lot of filming for extreme sports. So, it was nice coming back because many of the crew, like the Shotover technician and the team with the helicopter,
“Paradise” Lost: Directors Glenn Ficarra & John Requa on Crafting the Series’ Most Devastating Episode
In the first part of our conversation with Paradise directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, we talked about how California’s tax incentive program made it easier for series creator Dan Fogelman to shoot both seasons in Los Angeles. Now, let’s get to the most revealing episode, where Secret Service agent Xavier Collins (Sterling K. Brown) finally confronts President Cal Bradford (James Marsden) about the day his life—and the entire world—fell apart.
“Paradise” Directors Glenn Ficarra & John Requa on Crafting the California-Made Emmy-Nominated Thriller
One of only seven TV projects approved for California’s Film and Television Tax Credit Program during the 2022-2023 cycle, Dan Fogelman’s latest offering is an intense amalgamation of a murder mystery, political thriller, and post-apocalyptic survival drama all in one. True to his signature style a la This Is Us, a jaw-dropping twist at the end of the pilot uncovers a multitude of tragic truths and secrets alike.
“The Fantastic Four: First Steps” Director Matt Shakman on Re-Building Marvel’s First Family
While there have been numerous cinematic adaptations of the superheroes known as The First Family of Marvel, The Fantastic Four: First Steps has been lauded by audiences and critics alike as having the team most true to its Marvel origins. The new film takes place in a retrofuturistic version of New York, set in a 1960s-inspired era influenced by the creative genius of the smartest man in the universe. That would be Mister Fantastic,
The Willem Dafoe of Dinosaurs: How “Jurassic World: Rebirth” VFX Supervisor Charmaine Chan Created the Distortus Rex
Charmaine Chan began working at Industrial Light & Magic 18 years ago—it was her first gig out of college, starting off as an assistant technical director and contributing to Michael Bay’s Transformers. Chan stayed on at ILM and continued to work on some of the biggest franchises there are, becoming a digital compositor on Star Wars, Mission: Impossible, and films within the Marvel Cinematic Universe. As her talent sustained her and her capacities grew,
Designer Easter Eggs: “Jurassic World: Rebirth” Costume Designer Sammy Sheldon Differ Reveals the Wardrobe’s Hidden Details
Jurassic World: Rebirth isn’t costume designer Sammy Sheldon Differ‘s first time at the dino rodeo. Having previously worked on Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, the British artisan relished the opportunity to return to one of the highest-grossing film franchises of all time.
Set five years after Jurassic World: Dominion, Rebirth sees Scarlett Johansson’s Zora Bennett lead an expedition into a no-go zone to extract DNA from three prehistoric creatures in the hopes of manifesting a groundbreaking medical breakthrough.
Death Metal Vocals & Brutalized Cabbages: How Sound Designer Johnnie Burn Crafted “28 Years Later” Sonic Terror
Sound designer Johnnie Burn had just won the Academy Award for his dread-inducing contributions to The Zone of Interest when he got a late-night phone call from 28 Years Later director Danny Boyle. “I was drunk at the Vanity Fair party after the Oscar win when someone called from my office in London and handed the phone to Danny Boyle, who was standing in the reception,” Burn recalls.
