Exciting news coming from Marvel Studios. In case you missed it, at the end of last week the news broke that director Julius Onah would be taking on Captain America 4, which will see Anthony Mackie continue his role as the new Cap after his intense struggle, both internally and with a sect of juiced up revolutionaries hellbent on remaking the world order in Marvel Studios’ The Falcon and the Winter Soldier on Disney+. That series ended with Sam Wilson finally accepting the shield, and in doing so launched a brand new era for Captain America, the character and the franchise.
Onah, a Nigerian-American filmmaker, directed 2018’s monster-in-space actioner The Cloverfield Paradox, as well as the critically acclaimed Luce in 2019, an adaptation of J.C. Lee’s play. Onah also just co-wrote a Jean-Michel Basquiat biopic Samo Lives, which he’ll direct, and has the upcoming thriller Bad Genius on his slate, in which he’s credited as writer and director. He’s also got an intriguing TV series in the works, The American Throne, for Universal Content Productions. Throne will center on a white royal family who lords over a contemporary America that was founded as a monarchy. The problem for these royals is the King is hiding a secret—a black son who is the true heir to the throne.
The multi-talented Onah seems like a great fit for Captain America 4, which will see Mackie’s Sam Wilson now fully vested as Captain America. This was a mantle he was very reluctant to take on during most of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier‘s storyline, and he was even initially overlooked in favor of John Walker (Wyatt Russell), a highly decorated and highly unstable veteran who ended up becoming something of a monster behind the shield. While the script for Captain America 4 is a Marvel state secret, we do know that Falcon‘s creator Malcolm Spellman wrote it alongside series staff writer Dalan Musson.
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Thor: Love and Thunder has just notched the best opening weekend in the franchise’s history. Co-writer/director Taika Waititi can now rest assured that his singular vision for the God of Thunder is shared by millions, as Love and Thunder took in a massive $302 million global haul this past weekend. Chris Hemsworth is also now the first actor in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to have four standalone films in the MCU, and after Love and Thunder‘s thunderous opening weekend (apologies), there’s no reason to think we won’t be seeing a Thor 5.
The breakdown for Love andThunder‘s opening haul is impressive. The 29th film in the MCU took in $143 million in the domestic box office, the third-best opening during the pandemic era, behind Spider-Man: No Way Home‘s $260 million and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness‘s $187.4 million. The additional $159 million that Love and Thunder earned overseas launched it north of $300 million for its total opening weekend haul.
There was massive interest in Love and Thunder thanks to the breath of fresh air that Waititi breathed into the franchise with his colorful cosmic epic Thor: Ragnarok back in 2017. With Love and Thunder, Waititi brought Natalie Portman back to the franchise as Jane Foster, after she sat out the trippy happenings in Ragnarok. Only this time, Portman’s Foster was doing double duty as the Mighty Thor, the six-foot-tall superwoman capable of wielding Thor’s magical hammer Mjolnir. Love and Thunder also boasted a delicious turn from Christian Bale as the film’s villain, Gorr the God Butcher, who is intent on taking out all the gods and goddesses, Thor and Mighty Thor included, in the universe.
Love and Thunder bested Ragnarok‘s opening by quite a margin—Waititi’s first Thor film took in $122.7 million in 2017. Prior to that, the first Thor film took in $65.7 million in 2011, followed by Thor: The Dark World in 2013, which brought in $85.7.
One imagines a thunderous round of applause for Waititi and the rest of the Love and Thunder cast and crew coming from Marvel Studios HQ.
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Co-writer/director Taika Waititi’s Thor: Love and Thunder is finally out today, which means the whole world finally gets to see Natalie Portman’s return as Jane Foster, and, more to the point, her transformation into the Mighty Thor. If you haven’t been following Portman’s return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, we can summarize it very quickly. Portman co-starred in the first two Thor films as the scientist Jane Foster, who was also Thor’s love interest and was also often in need of saving. But Portman wasn’t a part of Taika Waititi’s first MCU film, the game-changing Thor: Ragnarok, and it seemed her time with the MCU might be in the past. But Waititi and his Love and Thunder co-writer Jennifer Kaytin Robinson had other ideas.
Waititi and Robinson wanted to write a film based on writer Jason Aaron’s “Mighty Thor” comic series, in which Jane Foster ends up becoming Mighty Thor, capable of wielding the magical hammer Mjolnir. Waititi saw a way to get Portman back—only this time, she wouldn’t be a damsel in distress, she’d be a superhero causing distress for any bad guy or girl who got in her way.
Long story short, Portman said yes, and now she’s making what has to be the most significant return in MCU history. There was, of course, no question that Portman could handle any new role Waititi threw at her, but there was the question of how, exactly, they were going to get the 5’3″ Portman to credibly look like the six-foot-tall Mighty Thor. Sure, there’s seemingly nothing that can’t be done on a movie these days, but the answer of how they jacked up Portman’s height is pretty wonderful. They went analog.
As Portman told Variety, the crew built a path, or “deck,” that Portman would walk on that was a foot off the ground so that when she was walking alongside Chris Hemsworth’s Thor, they were eye-to-eye. Tessa Thompson, who plays Valkryie, laughed at the memory. “They would call it a deck, but depending on the accent, sometimes it sounded like something else,” she told Variety. “Because we’re all children.”
“It was actually one of our running jokes,” Portman told Variety. “They’d all have to navigate my deck!”
Considering Portman’s Mighty Thor is often in scenes with the 6’3″ Hemsworth, it wasn’t necessary to make them the same height, but getting Portman close was paramount. All it took was a little deck, some post-production wizardry to erase it, and voila, Mighty Thor walks tall. You can see Portman’s transformation in theaters everywhere.
Steven Yeun is re-teaming with Parasite director Bong Joon Ho on one of the most intriguing films currently in development.
Deadline reports that Yeun, who had a crucial role in Bong Joon Ho’s excellent 2017 film Okja, has joined the cast of Bong’s untitled sci-fi project for Warner Bros., which already includes Robert Pattinson, Naomi Ackie, Toni Collette, and Mark Ruffalo. The film is based on the novel “Mickey7” by writer Edward Ashton, published this past February, about the titular protagonist who works as a “disposable employee” on a dangerous mission. Being a disposable employee is, as it sounds, a tough job. Mickey7 works on a human expedition setting out to colonize the frozen planet of Niflheim, and his role is to step in on any mission that’s deemed too dangerous, or borderline suicidal, and sacrifice his body for the cause. The reason is that Mickey7 can regenerate a new body, with “most of his memories intact,” but after six deaths, the deal is that a replacement clone will take over. Only in “Mickey7,” our hero refuses to let Mickey8 take over.
Yeun is coming off his Oscar-nominated performance in Minari, and will be seen next in Jordan Peele’s highly-anticipated Nope, starring alongside Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer. He’s also got another Netflix film coming, the dramedy Beef co-starring Ali Wong.
This is the first feature for Bong since his 2019 masterpiece Parasite became a global phenomenon and dominated the 92nd Academy Awards, becoming the first non-English-language film to win Best Picture. Getting cast in his follow-up film would be high on any actor’s list, so it’s no surprise the ensemble shaping up for this untitled project is so stellar.
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Charlie Cox and Vincent D’Onofrio—not enemies in real life, mind you—will be making an appearance as Daredevil and Kingpin respectively in Marvel’s upcoming Disney+ series Echo. The series will be centered on Alaqua Cox’s Maya Lopez, the breakout star from Marvel’s Hawkeye, and a woman who has every reason to loathe Kingpin as much as Daredevil does.
Cox and D’Onofrio had great chemistry as the superhero and supervillain of Netflix’s Daredevil (it ran on Netflix from 2015-2018) and quickly became fan favorites. D’Onofrio’s Kingpin (aka Wilson Fisk) appeared in seasons one and three, while Cox appeared as the titular superhero in the three seasons of the series, and then again in 2017’s The Defenders, which teamed him up with the other core Marvel superheroes on Netflix.
Daredevil was canceled in 2018, and Cox and D’Onofrio could have both been forgiven for assuming that their superhero and supervillain days, at least in those roles, were done. But then Disney+ launched, and one of the major draws of the new streamer (along with having all your favorite Star Wars films and shows in one place) was the fact that Marvel Studios would produce TV series for Disney+ that would be firmly connected to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Suddenly, all sorts of options were on the table.
Cox then appeared as Matt Murdock (Daredevil’s civilian name) in 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home, playing Peter Parker’s attorney. Meanwhile, D’Onofrio’s return as Kingpin was one of the big twists in Marvel’s Hawkeye, as he was the main mover making life miserable for Jeremy Renner’s semi-retired Avenger and making a lifelong enemy of Alaqua Cox’s Maya Lopez. When Disney moved the Marvel Netflix shows, including Daredevil, to Disney+, and ordered a new Daredevil series, the Cox/D’Onofrio return was all but assured.
Yet the news that Charlie Cox’s Matt Murdock will appear Echo is intriguing. The series will follow Maya Lopez in the aftermath of her journey in Hawkeye, with her life leading a New York gang more or less unraveled after tangling with Kingpin at the series conclusion after the murder of her uncle. Maya will be heading to her hometown, and at some point in the series, Charlie Cox’s Matt Murdock will appear as he searches for a former ally. There’s word that said former ally will be Krysten Ritter’s Jessica Jones, which would get Marvel part of the way towards reintroducing their crop of supes from Netflix, which includes Mike Colter’s Luke Cage, Jon Bernthal’s Punisher, and Danny Rand’s Iron Fist.
It’ll be a hoot to see Daredevil and Kingpin on screen together again—whether that happens first in Echo or in Daredevil‘s 4th season is still anybody’s guess.
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Writer/director David O. Russell returns with a dream of a cast for his latest feature Amsterdam, which has the buzzy energy of his 2013 crime caper American Hustle. Here, Russell trades American Hustle‘s late 70s for the 30s with a wild story based on historical fact, but which carries the auteur’s trademark zest and A-list stars. Amsterdam is centered on three friends, played by Margot Robbie, John David Washington, and Christian Bale, who met during the war. Washington and Bale’s characters were soldiers, Robbie’s a nurse, and what came of their chance meeting was an enduring friendship that would sustain them even when they were smack dab in the middle of a shocking secret plot and a murder accusation.
“We formed a pact and we swore to protect each other no matter what,” Bale’s character narrates, and protect each other they will need to do when they’re accused of killing a man.
The cast, as is the case with all of Russell’s films, is outlandishly talented. The main trio is joined by Chris Rock, Rami Malek, Mike Myers, Anya Taylor-Joy, Michael Shannon, Timothy Olyphant, Zoe Saldana, Andrea Riseborough, Taylor Swift, and Robert De Niro. Our three friends will need to enlist a friend of the deceased (De Niro’s character), their wits and charms, and some good luck to survive the pickle they’re in. “This is becoming a lot larger than any of us,” Robbie’s character says, and from the verve of the trailer, you can almost feel the manic energy that will enliven Russell’s tale.
This is Russell’s first film since 2015’s Joy and seems very much in his wheelhouse. Like American Hustle and Silver Linings Playbook, he excels at utilizing the gifts of his sprawling, talented casts and fostering electric chemistry between his actors.
Check out the trailer below. Amsterdam hits theaters on November 4.
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The series Obi-Wan Kenobi concluded to great acclaim, especially for star Ewan McGregor’s emotional performance in the title role, Moses Ingram’s intensity as Inquisitor Reva, and the astonishing cat-and-mouse game between Obi-Wan and his former protogé, Darth Vader. Speaking of Vader, Hayden Christensen returned to the role and gave a haunting performance, creating a richer, more tragic character arc for one of the greatest villains of all time. As with other Star Wars projects for the small screen, the attention to world-building and character development has been met with appreciation and enthusiasm by fans of the franchise.
Integral to that world-building is the dramatic score, which not only took inspiration from the work of Star Wars musical mainstay John Williams but actually included a new theme for Obi-Wanthat Williams composed for the series. It is Natalie Holt, however, who is responsible for the score as a whole. Holt, who recently created the music for Loki, is proud of the work she has done as the first female composer hired for a live-action Star Wars project. The Credits spoke to her about what it felt like to walk in the footsteps of John Williams, the tonal darkness of Darth Vader, and the musical mysteries of the nose flute.
John Williams created the theme for Obi-Wan, the only character for whom he hadn’t yet written a theme, and the show uses his classic “Imperial March” in the 6th episode. How did those pieces influence your work on the score?
When I first came on board the project, we weren’t sure if we were allowed to use any of the John Williams themes. Deborah Chow, the director, had wanted to try and do something a bit different, something very minimal for Obi, because she felt like he’s alone in the desert and in this lonely place. She wanted his score to just be very reflective and emotional and simplistic to reflect his environment. We had been working on some ideas, just away from the Star Wars kind of tradition. John Williams wrote a theme for Obi-Wan, and he watched it through and gave us permission to use his “Imperial March” in Episode Six, so that was fantastic. That became our tentpoles for the show, really, working with his colors and with his kind of orchestral forces, just adding a few new elements. The Inquisitors were away from tradition. With Vader, I did use the rhythm from the “Imperial March” on percussion underneath. Deborah wanted something really visceral, getting into his anger and hatred and his mental state, so his theme was quite sound design-y. There’s a hunting horn, and the low end of the double bass is slowed down, all to create lots of horror and dread in the Vader piece.
What was the experience of working with Bill Ross, a longtime collaborator with John Williams, who created the end credits and some of the cues?
It was just a very different work process because John and Bill Ross have been involved with Star Wars for 40 years. John doesn’t do demos. He writes everything, all his scores, by hand, and he uses a stopwatch. Deborah didn’t get to hear what they’d done until they were recording, and I got a piano sketch of the Obi-Wan Kenobi theme, but I didn’t get to hear what Bill was doing, it was just separate from what I was doing, so we were kept in the dark a little bit. It was an unusual process and a very tight turnaround. In episode one, we hadn’t heard it all together until the dub, and it was kind of a miracle and incredible that it fits together.
How do frequencies and sonic textures play a part in separating and individuating the characters?
Frequency was something I was thinking about with the dark, evil forces within the soundtrack. The Inquisitors were separated or defined by being more modern. There are synth and unusual textures that are quite rhythmic and driven. With Vader, I wanted him to be right at the low end, so I was pitch-shifting instruments down even lower than they would usually be. The stormtroopers are in the mid-range, and they are more militaristic, with snare drums. Their theme is probably the most Star Wars thing I got to write. The Leia theme I wrote, when she runs out of the forest, they wanted that to feel quite modern, not like a Disney princess. They wanted lots of energy. That kind of sound wasn’t what I initially wrote for her, I did about 15 versions of the Leia theme to get to the right place. Initially, I did something more with solo flute, like her adult theme. Kathleen Kennedy also had to okay that Princess Leia theme, so it went back and forth.
Can you talk about specific choices in instrumentation viewers can listen for in differentiating and giving sonic voice to the different planets?
For Alderaan, that was a really hard sound to find, because it’s a beloved, mystical, holy place that gets destroyed in A New Hope. Deborah had this vision for it. She felt like the Organas are like the Obamas. They’re not pomp and circumstance royalty, they’re royalty for the people, and very socialist, so she didn’t want a royal fanfare or anything like that. She was suggesting also that maybe there’s something Latin American about Alderaan. We tried that and it just didn’t work for the visuals. Then we tried synths, with a kind of modern, green energy, high-tech feeling like Blade Runner, but that also didn’t work. It ended up being a mixture of orchestral and synth, but a little bit regal. There were many, many versions of the Alderaan theme.
And for the planets Daiyu and Mapuzo?
Daiyu was more like those Asian night markets with sounds like Indonesian gamelan and dulcimer as well, which you wouldn’t usually hear together. Daiyu had this 5/4 rhythm. When you have a 5/4 rhythm, it feels like it never quite lands, and it’s always tripping on itself. That felt like it was drawing Obi into Daiyu and into the mystery of the planet and he can’t find his feet there. With Mapuzo, that was the nose flute. My assistant, Andreas Gutuen Aaser, was given a nose flute from his sister for Christmas. It’s a plastic toy, and it sounds so weird. It doesn’t sound like it’s made of plastic. That was really the signature sound of Mapuzo, this weird nose flute that Andreas got for Christmas from his sister.
You scored The Princess before you worked on Obi-Wan Kenobi. What kinds of elements of your personal aesthetic can we hear in that score?
It was such a different project, totally pace-y and full-on energy, and had a punk rock kind of funky soundtrack with loads of electric guitars played by Jack Halama. I also worked with this Canadian throat singer called Tanya Tagaq, and she sounds so unearthly and strange. It’s very rhythmic, and that was for the fight sequences with Moira, played by Olga Kurylenko. There are a lot of medieval instruments in there as well, and big orchestral guitars, then we had a lady who just played this huge collection of medieval bagpipes and recorders. The score is just a mash-up of those elements.
You’ve composed for Star Wars, Marvel, and you’re about to work on DC’s Batgirl feature film. What kinds of scores would you like to tackle in the future?
I loved being able to watch Obi-Wan Kenobi with my daughter. That was so special and happens rarely. It’s really important that she knows what my job is, and she gets to see it and understand, and know what I do. She loves Obi-Wan Kenobi as well, so that’s been really nice to share that with her, so maybe some animation, that would be next on my list. Whatever I work on, though, I’ll never forget how lucky I am doing what I love for a living.
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We’ve got our first look at the Viola Davis-led The Woman King, one of the most intriguing films coming out this fall. This trailer is a thrilling glimpse at director Gina Prince-Bythewood‘s epic, which is based on true events that took place in the Kingdom of Dahomey, a powerful state on the African continent in the 18th and 19th centuries. Prince-Bythewood wrote the script with Dana Stevens (based a story from Maria Bello), and she’s surrounded Davis with a stellar supporting cast that includes Thuso Mbedu, Lashana Lynch, Sheila Atim, Hero Fiennes-Tiffin, and John Boyega. At Sony’s CinemaCon event, Davis joined Prince-Bythewood on stage and said that The Woman King was her “magnum opus.”
The Woman King is centered on the real-life female military group called the Mino (in the film, they’re called the Agojie) who protected the Kingdom of Dahomey (in West Africa) for 300 years, from around 1600 to 1904. Davis plays General Nanisca, the leader of the Agojie and the inspiration for the Dora Milaje in Black Panther.
Here’s what Davis said about The Woman King to Vanity Fair:
“I’ve never had a role like this before. It’s transformative. And to be a producer on it, and to know that I had a hand in bringing it to fruition. […] There’s always a vision you have for your career, but there are very few roles as an actress of color. Dark skin with a wide nose and big lips. I’m just gonna continue to say it. Those stories are extraordinarily limited. […] I knew what it would mean to us as Black people. Something that has never been done before. And what it would mean for Black women sitting in that movie theater. The responsibility is really high.”
The trailer is riveting. Davis commands each and every film she’s in, so no surprise there, but what you’ll also see here is why Gina Prince-Bythewood is becoming such a sought-after director. After proving her action chops in her epic Netflix feature The Old Guard, Prince-Bythewood is working with her biggest canvass yet, and the trailer will excite fans of Davis, fans of historical epics, and fans of sweeping epics as well.
Check out the trailer below. The Woman King hits theaters on September 16.
Here’s the synopsis for The Woman King:
The Woman King is the remarkable story of the Agojie, the all-female unit of warriors who protected the African Kingdom of Dahomey in the 1800s with skills and a fierceness unlike anything the world has ever seen. Inspired by true events, The Woman King follows the emotionally epic journey of General Nanisca (Oscar®-winner Viola Davis) as she inspires the King to take on the enemies determined to violate their honor and destroy their way of life. Some things are worth fighting for…
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From the get-go,Netflix hit Stranger Things has excelled in the art and craft of needle drops. Encompassing eighties classics from David Bowie’s “Heroes” in Season One to “Everlasting Love” in Season Three, song choices curated by three-time Emmy nominated music supervisor Nora Felder have consistently amplified the characters’ emotions to uncanny effect.
But nothing in Stranger Things’ previous hit list prepared audiences for this summer’s zeitgeist-smashing anthem “Running Up That Hill.” Recorded in 1985 by British singer-songwriter-producer Kate Bush, the track drives Episode Four’s heart-rending montage featuring Max (Sadie Sink) as she fends off the monster Vecna. Viewers were swept away by the psychodrama and propelled “Running Up That Hill” to the top of the charts 38 years after its release. A video of the sequence posted on YouTube has generated more than ten million views and counting.
Like many viewers of Stranger Things, the series’ music editor Lena Glikson had never heard “Running Up That Hill” until she was tasked with synching the song to the picture. She explains, “I didn’t grow up in America so certain songs in the show that were internationally famous I definitely recognized, but some of the songs, like “Running Up That Hill,” were completely new to me.”
A Russian native, Glikson played piano and sang from an early age, moved to the U.S. to study film composing at Berklee College of Music, then found her way to Los Angeles, where she worked her way up to become a music editor on Joker and A Star Is Born before joining the Stranger Things team for Season Four. Speaking from her Los Angeles home, Glikson talked about cutting “Running Up That Hill,” making the move from Russia to Hollywood, and working with the Duffer Brothers to “massage” Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein’s Emmy-winning synth scores.
Vintage pop songs are embedded in Stranger Things’ DNA but “Running Up That Hill”introduced Kate Bush to a whole new audience, including yourself. What was your reaction when you first heard the song?
I loved it. Just the fact that “Running Up That Hill” is so unique, we had to make sure that it plays beautifully so there were many many revisions I did just to make it fit the picture. [Producer] Shawn Levy, who actually picked the song, and the Duffer Brothers and the picture editor Dean Zimmerman—they all had to agree on the way it should sound within the episode, so there was a long process in getting to that point.
My job was to massage the edits and so all the cuts match the picture 100 percent. For me, it was also about creating the build toward the end, because it’s not only the song—there are additional orchestral stems composed by Rob Simonsen and recorded by the London Contemporary Orchestra. Dean created a little mock-up and then building in additional tracks from these different stems, and different orchestral instruments, became a big part of my job. Especially during the [flashback] montage with Eleven and Max, it was very emotional for me because I really love those characters.
At the end of the sequence, this quiet piano solo reprises the song’s melody as the sun sets. Was it exciting to edit that shift in dynamics?
One of the arrangements already contained those piano notes, which sound so gentle, so delicate. They have a lot to do with who Max is and bring us back to the essence of her character in a way. Especially in this scene, the dread, the pain, and then the fact that she got saved — I was so worried about Max not coming back to life, it’s an amazing moment to hear how this quiet piano brings such a tumultuous scene to a close.
Besides working on “Running Up That Hill” and songs like “Psycho Killer,” Journey’s “Separate Ways” and The Cramps’ “I Was a Teenage Werewolf,” you also edited scores by Emmy-winning composers Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein. What was that like?
Working with Kyle and Mike was very interesting because they don’t come from the film world; they come from a band. That gives them a certain kind of flexibility about trying different things. I interacted with them quite a lot because I was kind of the bridge between the Duffer Brothers and the composers, to make sure Kyle and Mike knew exactly what they wanted. I’d translate the brothers’ notes into musical language, technical stuff like “Let’s use sixteenth notes here instead of quarter notes.”
Those pulsating sequencers create such a spooky vibe.
In terms of tone, it’s pretty dark, for sure. And even though we all know Stranger Things for having lots of synth music, I also cut some nice classical pieces. For instance in Episode Six when everyone’s playing at Suzie’s house, we have Violin Concerto in D Major by Korngold playing on top of that scene. I loved cutting that to make sure it lines up with all the little changes. I also cut a long piece by Philip Glass when Nancy’s walking through Victor Creel’s s house.
That’s a thoughtful tip of the hat, given that Glass pioneered the style of sequencer-based music that Kyle and Michael specialize in for the show.
Yeah.
Long before Stranger Things came along, you studied piano and voice from the age of six in your hometown of Voronezh, Russia. Then you got into Berklee College of Music, one of the best music schools in the United States. How did that happen?
I wanted to become a jazz singer and I also acted in musicals. I figured the best place to embrace this culture was the United States.
Musical theater! What was your favorite role?
I was part of a company that did original music by this incredibly talented composer from Kyiv and a director from St. Petersburg. My favorite role was playing the godmother in our vampire remake of Cinderella called Halloween Story. It was pretty dark.
Evil characters are so fun to play.
Oh yeah. And what I do now on the post-production side as a music editor—part of why I’m able to do movies like A Star is Born is that I have that background as a vocalist. I know how your face looks when you sing a certain sound and what the vocal position is, so doing lip-synch for musicals is my huge specialty.
How did you transition from Berklee to Hollywood?
After graduation, I came to Los Angeles, sent out sixty or seventy applications, and got a wonderful internship with music editor Nick South who’s worked a lot with composer Rolfe Kent on romcoms like Freaky Friday and Illegally Blond. Nick taught me all the key command shortcuts and talked about the diplomatic parts of our job, like, literally, how to write an email. After a couple of months, he offered me a position as an assistant in his studio, which I did for a year and a half.
And now you can add Stranger Things to your resume. What’s the key lesson you’ve learned along the way about what it takes to be a good music editor?
It’s a hard skill to develop because you only learn by practicing, cutting, temping, tracking, and assembling things to fit the scene better. You have to serve the picture. Sometimes there are tiny things you do to make the cut work, like a tiny bit of time-stretching so the downbeat happens exactly on the cut. It’s a very kind of OCD type of work to make sure everything’s perfect. And of course, you’re talking to the director or showrunners so you understand the emotional content of the scene. It’s always about empathy.
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Move over Squid Game, you’ve got company. Stranger Things season 4 has now become the first English-language series, and only the second ever after the South Korean juggernaut, to cross the billion-hour viewing mark, Netflix says. With the final two episodes of season 4 released this past July 1, the show raced past that billion-hour threshold, reaching 1.15 billion hours of viewing time over season 4’s first 28 days of release.
The breakdown looks like this: The first seven episodes gobbled up 930.32 million hours over their first 28 days, and then the feature-length episodes eight and nine banked another 221 million hours. Worldwide, folks watched 301.28 hours worth of Stranger Things 4 between June 27 and July 3. These numbers are insane.
Squid Game remains the king, with 1.65 billion hours worth of viewing time in its first 28 days. Yet its grip on the title for most-watched Netflix series ever isn’t ironclad. Netflix has three weeks left to match or surpass it. The reason is the way the streamer adds viewing time on series that split their seasons, as Stranger Things has done for season 4, and Ozark just did their 5th and final season—they had the viewing time of the second batch to the 28-day total.
Stranger Things 4 gave viewers two epic final episodes, adding up to nearly 4 hours of Upside Down madness. Stranger Things 4 has now made history several times over, including notching the biggest debut weekend (according to Netflix’s metrics), and Nielsen’s highest weekly viewing tally in the U.S.
The only series that seems like it’s got a shot at topping Stranger Things 4 is Stranger Things 5.
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A mysterious ball of light arcs across the sky at the start of a new teaser for Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. While the light itself isn’t explained in this bite-sized glimpse at the streamer’s upcoming fantasy epic, it does light the path towards the real sneak peek now available for Amazon Prime subscribers. There’s every reason to believe that the concern on the faces of the Middle-earth residents as they watch the light burn across the sky is warranted.
The sneak peek then revisits that streaking ball of light, with The Rings of Power cast, made up of a large ensemble playing various factions on Middle-earth, seeming to have their concern confirmed when the light makes contact with the ground in the distance. It feels very Eye of Sauron if you ask us. The folks of Middle-earth know not to trust things that appear out of nowhere.
The Rings of Power will take us back to J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth, that infinitely rich literary creation, meticulously constructed by the brilliant Brit, and famously conjured back to life by Peter Jackson in his Lord of the Rings and Hobbit trilogies. Amazon’s series, developed by Patrick McKay and John D. Payne, is set thousands of years before Bilbo Baggins first went on his fateful quest in The Hobbit, and will concern itself with a time before there was just the One Ring of power to rule all of Middle-earth, but multiple, made for the three Elven-kings, seven for the dwarves, and nine for mortal men. Oh, there was one more ring, the one that fueled the quests and battles in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. In fact, the aforementioned worst of the worst in both Tolkien’s “LOTR” and “The Hobbit” stories as well as Jackson’s adaptations, the evil sorcerer Sauron, will make his presence felt in the Amazon series, too.
The cast includes many up-and-coming performers playing a mix of new characters and younger versions of Middle-earth legends. Those include Morfydd Clark (playing a young Galadriel), Robert Aramayo (playing a young Elrond), Owain Arthur (as Prince Durin IV), Maxim Baldry (as Isildur), Nazanin Boniadi (playing Bronwyn), Ismael Cruz Córdova (as Arondir), Charles Edwards (as Celebrimbor), Sir Lenny Henry (as Sadoc Burrows), Markella Kavenagh (as Elanor ‘Nori’ Brandyfoot), Tyroe Muhafidin (as Theo), Sophia Nomvete (as Disa), Megan Richards (as Poppy Proudfellow), Charlie Vickers (as Halbrand), Benjamin Walker (playing High King Gil-galad), and Daniel Weyman (as The Stranger). The cast also includes Sara Zwangobani, Cynthia Addai-Robinson, Trystan Gravelle, Ema Horvath, Joseph Mawle, Lloyd Owen, Dylan Smith, and Leon Wadham.
Check out the teaser for the sneak peek below, and then for you Amazon Prime subscribers, watch the sneak peek itself here.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power arrives on September 2.
Here’s the official synopsis for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power:
Beginning in a time of relative peace, we follow an ensemble cast of characters as they confront the re-emergence of evil to Middle-earth. From the darkest depths of the Misty Mountains, to the majestic forests of Lindon, to the breathtaking island kingdom of Númenor, to the furthest reaches of the map, these kingdoms and characters will carve out legacies that live on long after they are gone.
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Epic guitar riffs from Guns N Roses? Check. Even more insanity than Thor: Ragnarok? Check again. A full-throated cosmic adventure that pivots from gleeful lunacy to heartfelt emotions? Check and check. One of the best villains in any recent Marvel film? A final check. Co-writer and director Taika Waititi has been roundly praised for breathing new life into the Thor franchise in his first go-round with Ragnarok back in 2017, and now, with Love and Thunder, he went bigger, bolder, and with more heart. And for the most part, critics are enamored with the results.
A quick explainer on the plot for Love and Thunder before we move onto the reviews. Thor (Chris Hemsworth, naturally) has grown a bit tired of the superhero life, and as Love and Thunder begins, he’s on a vision quest of sorts to find some inner peace. This plan will, of course, get thrown way off track when a new supervillain named Gorr the God Butcher (a having-the-time-of-his-life Christian Bale) shows up intent on taking out all the gods and goddesses in the universe. That will include the God of Thunder, who turns to some trusted friends to help him beat the new big bad. Those friends include Valkryie (Tessa Thompson), Korg (Waititi), the Guardians of the Galaxy, and the most important “new” addition—Jane Foster (Natalie Portman.) We had to put “new” in quotes because as you Thor scholars know, Portman’s Jane Foster was in the first two films in the franchise as Thor’s love interest. Now she’s back, only she’s a changed woman. Meet Mighty Thor, capable of wielding the magical hammer Mjolnir and nobody’s shrinking violet.
Now that you’re up to speed on the bare-bones plot outline, let’s have a stroll through those reviews, shall we?
Brian Truitt of the USA Today writes that the film is “a superhero romantic comedy with plenty of rippling biceps, an unshakable love for 1980s action movies and heavy metal, and most importantly, a big goofy heart.”
Thor: Love and Thunder is a super-fun superhero romantic comedy with magic, music, muscle and surprising depth. (I dug it.) https://t.co/OfTTahC9t8
The Daily Telegraph‘s Robbie Collin zeroes in on Bale’s performance, and the chemistry between him and Hemsworth: “Bale gives the series its best villain in years. He and Hemsworth make surprisingly natural screen partners, while Portman embraces the soap-operatics of her role…”
I’ve said it before (ᵉˣᵉᵐᵖᵗⁱᵒⁿˢ ᵃᵖᵖˡʸ) and I’ll say it again: hooray for Taika Waititi! https://t.co/QH4P3smU0Z
The New Post‘s Johnny Oleksinski seconds those thoughts on Bale’s performance. “The Marvel Cinematic Universe’s best shot at Oscar glory has arrived in the form of Christian Bale’s ferocious Gorr the God Butcher.”
Empire Magazine‘s Ben Travis writes “Weirder than Ragnarok, but incredibly sincere in its outlook, Taika’s Thor-quel is a big, beautiful blast. You’ll love it, and probably thunder it too. What a classic Thor adventure!”
Thrilled to have reviewed Taika Waititi’s best movie since Hunt For The Wilderpeople 👇🏻 https://t.co/Q3LpA9WT1E
YouTube‘s Perri Nemiroff writes that Love and Thunder is a “high-energy romp that highlights Taika Waititi’s exceptional handle on blending humor and heart.”
The Irish Times‘ Donald Clarke says “For much of the time, the Love and Thunder audience will extract as much fun as the cast seem to be having (if that is possible).”
Many critics have noted how Waititi didn’t just go for the belly laughs here, but also wanted to create an emotional epic. As KiMi Robinson of the Arizona Republic writes, “Love and Thunder doesn’t take itself seriously, employing soap-opera-like acting and gags throughout. The more dramatic scenes are set apart in their tone and coloring, which has striking results.
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As much fun as it must be to play Thor or Valkryie or Korg or even Miek in writer/director Taika Waititi’s candy-colored vision for Thor: Ragnarok and now Thor: Love and Thunder, Christian Bale looks like he had an extra good time playing the new film’s big bad. Bale plays Gorr the God Butcher, a ghostly pale sociopath hellbent on obliterating all gods and goddesses from the universe. In a new teaser for Love and Thunder, we get to see some new Gorr moments as he sets his sights squarely on the God of Thunder, and Bale looks like he’s having the time of his life.
Not that Thor (Chris Hemsworth, of course) and his assorted pals aren’t also having a hoot. Love and Thunder promises more glorious insanity courtesy of Waititi’s go-for-broke approach with the franchise and the insanely talented ensemble on hand. That includes the Guardians of the Galaxy, Tessa Thompson’s aforementioned Valkryie, Waititi’s very own Korg (a rock monster that Waititi plays in a motion-capture suit), and the return of Natalie Portman as Jane Foster. You likely know by now that Jane has changed—she’s now Mighty Thor, capable of wielding the magical hammer Mjolnir—and she has a huge part to play here.
Yet the new teaser also reminds us how fun it is to play the villain. Bale, looking like a demented wraith in desperate need of a trip to the dentist, is investing his particular brand of intensity into Gorr and looks delighted to be doing so. In Thor: Ragnarok, Hemsworth’s God of Thunder had his work cut out for him fighting Cate Blanchett’s Hela. Blanchett, of course, is one of the great performers of her generation, so it makes sense that for the sequel, Waititi tapped another stellar performer in Bale.
Check out the teaser below. Thor: Love and Thunder arrives in theaters on July 8.
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This December marks a major moment in James Cameron’s career, with his long-awaited sequel to his 2009 game-changer Avatar hitting theaters. Avatar: The Way of Water will take audiences back to Pandora, the marvel of a planet Cameron conceived that required cutting-edge technology to create way back when. Now, 13 years later and mere months from The Way of Water hitting screens (which will no doubt be another visual marvel), Cameron has revealed to Empire Magazine that he might be handing off the directing duties to someone else for the final two films in the franchise.
Avatar: The Way of Water arrives on December 16, 2022. Following that, the third Avatar film is slated for a December 2024 release, as Cameron filmed it back-to-back with The Way of Water. Yet Cameron has two more Avatar films planned, neither of which have gone into production, and those are the films he told Empire he might be handing off.
“The Avatar films themselves are kind of all-consuming,” Cameron told Empire. “I think eventually over time – I don’t know if that’s after three or after four — I’ll want to pass the baton to a director that I trust to take over, so I can go do some other stuff that I’m also interested in.”
But then he added: “Or maybe not. I don’t know.”
ORLANDO, FL – MAY 24: Wes Studi,Joel David Moore,Sam Worthington,Stephen Lang,James Cameron,Zoe Saldana,CCH Pounder,Sigourney Weaver and Laz Alonso attends the Pandora The World Of Avatar Dedication at the Disney Animal Kingdom on May 24, 2017 in Orlando, Florida. (Photo by Gustavo Caballero/Getty Images)
Cameron feels very close to his Avatar franchise, which speaks to a lot of the issues that are near and dear to his heart.
“Everything I need to say about family, about sustainability, about climate, about the natural world, the themes that are important to me in real life and in my cinematic life, I can say on this canvas,” he told Empire.
Then he added this bit about the fourth film in the franchise, which is extra intriguing when you consider he might be handing it off to someone else to direct.
“Movie four is a corker. It’s a motherf**ker,” he said. “I actually hope I get to make it. But it depends on market forces. Three is in the can so it’s coming out regardless. I really hope that we get to make four and five because it’s one big story, ultimately.”
The broad strokes of Elvis’s (Austin Butler) life are all there in Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis — the precarious childhood, Army stint, loss of his beloved mother, marriage to Priscilla (Olivia DeJonge), glittering Las Vegas residency masking a perilous personal descent. But this isn’t a biopic. Rather, the director’s first feature since 2013’s The Great Gatsby is also an electrifying tale of rags to riches to ruin, this time set to a compelling score mixing the best of the King’s musical catalog with unexpected contemporary bops.
At two hours and 40 minutes, Elvis keeps with a trend for longer and longer epics from today’s marquee directors, but the pace never wanes, thanks in large part to the skill of Jonathan Redmond and Matt Villa, Luhrmann’s longtime editors (this is Redmond’s fifth project with the director and Villa’s fourth). Much of Elvis’s career highlights and musical background are explained through vigorous yet logical montages and intercut sequences that ultimately help make sense of his often self-defeating dependency on his slimy manager, “Colonel” Tom Parker (Tom Hanks, in ample prosthetics), and his eventual slide into exhaustion and drug dependency.
Villa and Redmond’s work began five years ago, collaborating with the director and the rest of his creative team to pitch the film to the studio and the actors before a script was even written, with certain sequences, like a young Elvis’s nearly religious exposure to gospel and blues, making it from storyboard to final cut pretty much intact. Other aspects were decided all under one roof on Australia’s Gold Coast, where the editing, visual effects, and music teams worked through extensive trial and error to determine which of Elvis’s catalogue best worked and where to auditorially augment key off-stage moments from his life.
“Baz always had lists of songs on his wall, some of them headed ‘how could we not include this in the film?’” Redmond says. We had the chance to speak with the editors about their long involvement with this project, restraint with archival footage, and taking the film down to its final length, no matter the difficulty.
What were some of the earliest ideas that made it through to the film’s final cut?
Redmond: One good one would be starting the movie with the song American Trilogy and Elvis collapsing on stage. That is something that just happened to be in our original pitch reel. Baz really liked it because the song is so powerful, Elvis is so incredible, and the split-screen, we did that way before that was in the script, and Baz always felt it put a smile on people’s faces and it’s an exciting place to start the film. The end as well, with Unchained Melody over it all, is something we developed very early on using the original footage of Elvis.
So you always knew you’d be editing in some original footage?
Villa: It’s peppered in there. It was always the intention to use a lot of stock footage, not necessarily of Elvis, to sort of beef up the footage that was there — the audiences, the screaming fans, the exteriors of the International Hotel, and so forth. There may be more Elvis in there than you saw.
Redmond: There are quite a few blink-and-you-miss-it moments. We aimed for a more subliminal thing than an outright cut to Elvis in the middle of the movie.
Villa: We toggled throughout the process as to whether we cared about that or not. Do we mind if the audience sees the real Elvis, or would we prefer them not to? We hedged our bets and put them in there, a little subliminally.
Redmond: Obviously part of the contract with the audience is making Austin Elvis Presley, and Austin is a force of nature, so he did a very good job of that himself. The last thing we wanted to do was confuse the audience by having too much of the real man. We didn’t want to take the audience away from Austin after the audience had signed that contract.
The editing really highlights Elvis’s increasing distress. How did you manage that?
Villa: One of the sequences we went back to time and again was what we call the burning love montage, which is when we kick it off with the wonder and aura of his touring around, and everyone’s excited by his shows, and then throughout that sequence, we see his decline. It was just a case of trial and error, but certainly, it was always in that section of the film. The marriage breakup and his shooting out TVs in his hotel room, and being with another girl, they all exist in a longer form. We were struggling with the length and had to bring it down, so condensing all those things into one montage of decline was where we ended up.
Caption: AUSTIN BUTLER as Elvis in Warner Bros. Pictures’ drama “ELVIS,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Hugh Stewart
Redmond: Baz always described the International Hotel as a golden cage for Elvis, so coming back to that and giving a sense of Elvis being trapped, one of the most powerful moments for me is he’s in bed there with another girl, on the phone, and he says, can you give my little girl a hug. I always find that heartbreaking. It shows a man hitting rock bottom. As Matt said, it was a tricky sequence to put together in the time allowed, because we had full scenes there that were very powerful.
Caption: (L-r) AUSTIN BUTLER as Elvis and HELEN THOMSON as Gladys in Warner Bros. Pictures’ drama “ELVIS,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
The film really gives us a sense of the stages of Elvis’s life. Did you take a consistent approach to each phase, or have different rules for different stages?
Villa: Not necessarily editorially, I don’t think. A lot of the success of that lay at the feet of Austin, who was so incredibly able to play a young man, the Hollywood years, and then an older guy. He was a joy for John and me to cut. I think the only stylistic thing we were always cognizant of for the different periods of his life was the style of montage we chose. You’ll remember when he was going on tour in the 50s, it was a montage with superimpositions and overlays and things bleeding into each other, which was very much the style of that era of filmmaking. Then you go to the 60s and there were colorful graphics whizzing around. Then we go to the 70s and there are more split screens, which was partially a 70s style but very much an Elvis style. As far as giving the film a look per period, that was probably where we concentrated our efforts. But as far as the rhythming, not necessarily.
Redmond: And to just add on, Baz was kind of aiming for 50s montages or 70s split screens, but it was always the 50s montage plus. Baz wanted to take these things into the 21st century and add his visual flair and style to these cinematic devices. So that was challenging but also a lot of fun.
Did you wind up doing a lot to prep, in terms of watching Elvis footage, his own movies, recordings of his concerts, and so on?
Redmond: When we were putting together a pitch to the studio, part of that was an audio-visual presentation, and that involved researching a lot of materials — both his concert films, obviously, his dramatic musical films, but there were also a lot of documentaries on Elvis, so doing a deep dive into that. We really spread the net very wide in our approach to the visual and musical research, which was a lot of fun. I grew up with Elvis as the cultural wallpaper of my youth. He was the King of Rock and Roll, but I didn’t know why. Digging into that was a really exciting learning curve. I had a rapid, newfound appreciation for his music.
Villa: I totally agree. I always knew Elvis more for the goofy movies and the Vegas years, but I learned a lot from this film about the impact he had on culture in general.
When it came to the final edit, it also seems like a journey through an incredible array of raw material.
Villa: I would just add that in terms of putting this film together, just the way Baz shoots, he shoots a lot of material. I’m sure John would agree that it was a monumental task putting it together. It was all great material and there’s a much longer version of this film existing. One of the big challenges — and I’d like to think we succeeded — was in bringing what was a four-hour, 20-minute assembly down to the current length. It was a shame to throw away some maybes. There were some more dramatic scenes that, as we worked our way through, were wonderful but didn’t keep on point with Elvis’s and the Colonel’s relationship with each other, so they had to go. It was a great journey, this film, because we were very much spoiled for choice in the material we had to work with.
Featured image: Caption: AUSTIN BUTLER as Elvis in Warner Bros. Pictures’ drama “ELVIS,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
Taika Waititi has more to do with turning Thor into the funniest Avenger than just about everybody not named Chris Hemsworth (and even Hemsworth might agree that Waititi deserves a pinch more credit). But the funny, abundantly talented Waititi isn’t one to go scarfing around for credit. In a new video released by Marvel Studios, “A Taika Waititi Adventure,” Hemsworth and the Love and Thunder cast and crew have a little fun with their director. But really, they’re here to shower him with praise, and we get some fresh looks at Waitit’s long-awaited sequel.
The new video opens with Hemsworth announcing they’re about to film the first shot of the day, and they’re giving a young up-and-comer named Taika a chance to direct. “This one over here is going to direct for one day and we’re going to see how he goes,” Hemsworth says. “How exciting!” Waititi enthuses.
The new look at Love and Thunder lets Waititi himself explain what he was going for with his Thor: Ragnarok sequel, the film that changed both Thor and the MCU forever. “It’s just so loud and in your face and flamboyant,” Waititi says of his follow-up. Here’s the thing—as amazing as it would be to make a movie, filmmaking is a long, arduous, often exhausting process. Now watch this video, and ask yourself if these folks don’t look like they’re having the times of their lives. Yes, filming a massive blockbuster like Love and Thunder took a tremendous amount of work but watching Waititi call out “3, 2, 1…scream” and seeing the cast answer his call looks fun. So, too, does the swordplay, and the general atmosphere on set seems joyous.
“Taika’s like a big kid,” Hemsworth says. “A sort of genius child. There’s this imagination that is second to none.”
“Taika’s a very bloody original filmmaker,” Christian Bale adds. Bale is making his MCU debut as the film’s villain, Gorr the God Butcher. “He’s mind-blowingly talented.”
Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige adds that there’s another ingredient in the Waititi secret sauce—heart. Love and Thunder has love right there in the title, and the film promises more than just superhero hijinx, there’s a love story here, and a story about friendship.
“When we first came up with Love and Thunder, I thought, yeah, the fans will really freak out about this,” Waititi says at the end of the video. We’re guessing he’s right.
Check out the new look below. Thor: Love and Thunder opens on July 8.
For more on Thor: Love and Thunder, check out these stories:
That distant roar you hear is the approach of Godzilla and King Kong. Okay, the roar might be a little faint as they’re not that close, but, at least we can now see them coming. Warner Bros. and Legendary have announced the theatrical release plan for two of the biggest upcoming films, and that includes the Godzilla vs. Kong sequel.
Let’s start with the film that arrives first. Co-writer/director Denis Villeneuve’s follow-up to his beautifully wrought Dune is now coming out a month later than expected, but for a very good reason. Dune: Part Two will arrive on November 17, 2023, a slight move from the original release plan of October 20. The extra cushion that’ll give Villeneuve and his talented post-production crew might be minimal, but, it means that the sequel will play over the Thanksgiving holidays. Dune not only did brisk business (more than $400 million globally despite coming out during the pandemic), but it was also a critical darling, nabbing six Oscars.
For director Adam Wingard’s Godzilla vs. Kong sequel—and if you watched that film, you know that the upcoming movie could be more of a team-up rather than a battle royale—is now slated for theaters on March 15, 2024. Godzilla vs. Kong was a hit despite coming out in March of 2021 and via a day-and-date release on HBO Max before vaccinations had been widely distributed.
Dune: Part Two features a sprawling, A-list cast. Returning stars include Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, and Javier Bardem. Newcomers include Florence Pugh, Austin Butler, Christopher Walken, and Léa Seydoux.
There’s no word yet on the cast for the Godzilla vs. Kong sequel save for the involvement of its two main stars, Godzilla and Kong.
Featured image: Caption: (L-r) GODZILLA fights KONG in Warner Bros. Pictures’ and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “GODZILLA VS. KONG,” a Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures
Cameron Diaz has chosen the aptly titled film Back in Action to come out of retirement. Diaz is joining co-star Jamie Foxx in Horrible Bosses director Seth Gordon’s film.
Jamie Foxx broke the news via Twitter, with a little help from NFL star Tom Brady, who knows a thing or two about coming out of retirement. “I was talking to Jamie, and he said you needed a few tips on how to unretire. And I am relatively successful at unretiring,” Brady says in the video. Brady, if you aren’t a football fan, retired from the NFL only to quickly un-retire two months later to announce he’ll be back with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers next season.
Cameron I hope you aren’t mad I recorded this, but no turning back now. Had to call in the GOAT to bring back another GOAT. @CameronDiaz and I are BACK IN ACTION – our new movie with @NetflixFilm. Production starting later this year!! 🦊🐐 pic.twitter.com/vyaGrUmbWb
Diaz and Foxx have appeared onscreen together before, most recently in Annie, the last film Diaz made. They also co-starred in Oliver Stone’s football-centric Any Given Sunday. For Back in Action, they’ll be leading a film written by director Seth Gordon and Neighbors screenwriter Brendan O’Brien, but there’s still no word on what that story’s about.
Diaz had decided to leave the filmmaking business—at least temporarily—because she wanted her time back. She told Gwenyth Paltrow that she’d realized she had “handed off parts of my life to all these other people,” and wanted those parts back. It sounds as if the idea of re-teaming with Foxx and working on Back in Action made enough sense to her to get back in the game. She’s had a robust film career, and even if Back in Action proves to be a one-time return, it’ll be great to see Diaz in a film again.
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If you closed your eyes, could you picture the hardware on your kitchen cabinets? The knobs on your bathroom sink? When is the last time you stopped to notice your surroundings? Marcel the Shell (Jenny Slate) appreciates all the small things because to him, they’re very, very big.
The star of the viral videos, created by Jenny Slate and Dean Fleischer Camp, is used to oversized adventures, but he is finally making his big screen debut. Production designer Liz Toonkel is intimately acquainted with every corner and dust bunny that makes up the wondrous world of Marcel the Shell with Shoes On. “It’s so easy as humans to ignore so much detail,” Toonkel noted. “I think that’s a really special thing about the film, that it’s pointing out all these little things we don’t notice. It actually makes me emotional to think about.”
You might imagine a one-inch shell would live on a beach or in a mini model home, but that isn’t this shell’s style. What makes Marcel so endearing is his nonplussed attitude toward maneuvering in a world that isn’t made for him. “Basically, everything in Marcel’s world is something from the human world that he and his community have repurposed,” Toonkel explained. “That’s part of what I really enjoy about being a production designer. Just really trying to interrogate the things we have around us and how we could repurpose them into his world.”
Marcel’s size may put him at a disadvantage, but his strength lies in his adaptability. With only one eye and two shoes, Marcel makes his way in the world with endless imagination. “It was just sort of asking what are the objects that he and his community would be able to manipulate and would be functional for them,” Toonkel explained. “A lot of it was Marcel and his peers. They don’t have hands. They don’t have arms. Everything has to be with their mouth or their feet. How could they get around? How could they take something and turn it into something else with their abilities?”
Marcel the Shell With Shoes On. Courtesy A24.
A baseball card can become wall art, a candy wrapper can be a parachute, and a coffee filter can be the hot air balloon that carries Marcel into the world. “A lot of the things are maybe forgotten things in the world of the people who had lived there,” Toonkel pointed out. “An old piece of bread or an old piece of jewelry they stopped wearing. It’s beautiful that these things get repurposed by these other beings and they still continue to have a life.”
Marcel is resourceful, curious, optimistic, but also lonely. It has been two years since the fellow shells in his family mysteriously vanished. Only his grandmother, Connie (Isabella Rosselini), and pet lint, Alan, remain. “We definitely talked a lot about creating spaces where you could feel the emptiness or abandonment,” Toonkel said. “Getting to see the abandoned homes of the other shells that used to live in the house and feeling that negative space of where things used to be or where there used to be a more lively community like Nana Connie’s garden. Now she’s dealing with all of that by herself. There’s no one else to help.”
Nana (Isabella Rossellini) and Marcel (Jenny Slate) in “Marcel the Shell With Shoes On.” Courtesy A24.
Documentarian Dean (Dean Fleischer-Camp) turns his lens on Marcel as he ventures out to discover the truth about his long-lost community. If everything in his human sized home seems unwieldy, the outside world is a bombardment. “True to life, that’s pretty overwhelming,” Toonkel said of Marcel’s adventure. “At first it’s exciting, but it’s also overwhelming.”
Marcel’s quest turns him from anonymous shell into an overnight sensation. “There’s a lot of transformation that happens at the house once Marcel feels like there are too many eyes on him. I feel like the film really portrays a very true reflection of what it’s like to be famous, or for that to happen overnight.”
Lesley Stahl in a scene from “Marcel the Shell With Shoes On.” Courtesy A24.
A lot of things seem enormous in the shell world, but the magic behind Marcel the Shell With Shoes On is the most monumental feat of all. Toonkel and her team straddled the real world of live-action and the imaginary realm of animation. Every location featuring an animated scene had to be recreated as a secondary set for animators to capture the shell characters. “Basically, if there was a three-foot radius around Marcel, everything in that three-foot radius we had to have a copy of for them to use with the stop-motion,” Toonkel explained. “We had to go through the house and make a replica of the floor or make a replica of the cabinet and all these pieces. It really was being super detail oriented and making sure we had an archived copy of whatever Marcel was interacting with.”
An image from “Marcel the Shell With Shoes On.” Courtesy A24.
All the duplicates had to be recreated with precision and the items had to be handled with care. “We had a spreadsheet, then it went to cold storage to wait for the stop-motion shoot because we didn’t want heat to mess up the paint or break the glue on something. It was a lot of work, the logistics of that for sure.”
Stop-motion animation is exceedingly tedious and highly susceptible to a choppy finish. Toonkel and her team were challenged to make Marcel’s actions appear as seamless as possible. Luckily, Toonkel was able to draw some visual tricks from her experience as a magician. “It was really important to Dean and Kirsten Lepore, the animation director, that we avoided that, so it felt really real,” Toonkel said of the usual stop-motion pitfalls. “That meant every time Marcel had to push a credit card, we had to get it to push with nobody being there. When you watch the movie, you won’t notice these things at all. But every time Marcel throws a berry or pulls a lever, we had to puppet all of that and figure out how to do it without anybody being there.”
An image from “Marcel the Shell With Shoes On.” Courtesy A24.
Like so many long-awaited productions, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On was halted during COVID shutdowns. The film’s live action portions were shot three years ago, but the animation had to be shut down and reopened. “I think the movie couldn’t come out at a better time,” Toonkel said. “It in such an odd way relates to so much of what we’ve been through with the pandemic and just the loneliness and the isolation and the needing of community. I feel like it was meant to happen now. Dean and Jenny have been trying to make this movie for so long. It’s kind of when it should have come out and I think that’s special.”
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is now playing in theaters now.
For more on Marcel The Shell With Shoes On, check out this interview:
Bond 26 is coming a little sooner than we expected. Following the epic sendoff for Daniel Craig with 2021’s No Time To Die, Craig’s 5th and final assignment as James Bond, we figured it might be a long time until a new Bond would be coming our way. Happily, that appears not to be the case, as series producer Barbara Broccoli says we can expect a new Bond in the near-ish future.
Deadlinehas the scoop. Broccoli says that the next 007 is coming, but, it will be “at least two years.” What’s more, they haven’t yet begun the search for an actor to replace Daniel Craig, “because it’s a reinvention of Bond.”
At least two years might sound like a long time if you’re eager to get back into the Bond business immediately, but considering there was a six-year gap between the last two Bond films, Spectre (2015) and No Time To Die (2021), it’s actually surprisingly quick.
Broccoli was speaking to Deadline at a celebrity-packed private event in London to honor her and her brother, Michael G. Wilson, for their British Film Institute Fellowships. Broccoli wasn’t about to divulge who she was eyeing to take up the Bond mantle from Craig, but she offered some very intriguing insight into the process of finding the next Bond.
“Nobody’s in the running,” she said to Deadline. “We’re working out where to go with him, we’re talking that through. There isn’t a script and we can’t come up with one until we decide how we’re going to approach the next film because, really, it’s a reinvention of Bond. We’re reinventing who he is and that takes time. I’d say that filming is at least two years away.”
This is the most we’ve heard from Broccoli on the thinking behind replacing Craig. A “reinvention” suggests, well, a ton of possibilities. Let your speculative powers fly on what this reinvention might look like, but one thing for certain is that getting cast as the next Bond is a career-defining turn, and following Craig’s five-film embodiment of her Majesty’s most iconic spy will not be easy.
For more on No Time To Die, check out these stories:
