Have you ever wondered what a LEGO Star Wars Summer Vacation movie might be like if it starred Weird Al Yankovic and featured his music? Consider your curiosity satisfied! The first trailer for said movie has arrived, featuring a new tune from Yankovic, and revealing the summer fun to be had by all. LEGO Star Wars Summer Vacation features Yankovic and Yvette Nicole Brown, as well as former Star Wars champs Kelly Marie Tran, Anthony Daniels, and Billy Dee Williams—plus a massive cast lending their voices to the likes of Darth Vader, Emperor Palpatine, and more.
LEGO Star Wars Summer Vacation is set after Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker and is centered on a summer getaway planned by Finn (Omar Miller). The idea is to get the gang together—Rey, Poe, Rose, Chewie, BB-8, R2-D2, and C-3PO—and take a trip on the super swank Halycon, a luxurious Galactic Starcruiser. Sounds fun! Problems ensue, however, including Finn getting separated from the group and coming face-to-face with three Force ghosts: Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker, and Leia Organa, who each have some pretty harrowing stories about botched vacations they’d like to share.
Directed by Ken Cunningham and written and executive produced by David Shayne, LEGO Star Wars Summer Vacation is the kind of family-friend flick you can enjoy with the kids.
Check out the trailer below. LEGO Star Wars Summer will premiere on August 5, 2022, exclusively on Disney+.
Here’s the cast breakdown: Weird Al Yankovic is Vic Vanko; Yvette Nicole Brown is Colvett Valeria; Thomas Lennon is Wick Cooper; Paul F. Tompkins is Rad; Dee Bradley Baker ai Boba Fett; Ashly Burch is the Tour Droid; Kyliegh Curran is Sidero; Anthony Daniels is, of course, C-3PO; Trevor Devall is Emperor Palpatine; Allie Feder is Sy Snootles; Jake Green is Poe Dameron; Matt Lanter is Anakin Skywalker; Ross Marquand is Han Solo; Kevin Michael Richardson is Jabba the Hutt; Matt Sloan is Darth Vader; James Arnold Taylor is Obi-Wan Kenobi; Kelly Marie Tran is Rose; Helen Sadler is Rey Skywalker; Billy Dee Williams is Lando (Holovid); Matthew Wood is Ben Solo; Shelby Young is Leia Organa.
Netflix has just revealed the full trailer for Stranger Things season 4, volume 2, which will deliver a two-part season finale to what has been a chilling, thrilling ride.
In the final episode of the first part of season 4, “The Massacre at Hawkins Lab,” it was revealed that Vecna, the new big bad haunting Hawkins, was actually once a patient of Dr. Martin Brenner (Matthew Modine), much like Eleven (Millie Bobbie Brown), and, in fact, was more or less created by Eleven when the two of them saw their burgeoning friendship devolve into battle. Played by Jamie Campbell Bower, this patient—number one, by the way—had been trying to secretly help Eleven survive Dr. Brenner’s nefarious plans. As season four, volume 1 progressed, we learned that the horror from Eleven’s past that had been hinted—namely, that she’d killed her fellow numbered patients in a gruesome act of vengeance—had actually been carried out by Bower’s patient number one. When Eleven and One battled, she tore open a hole between our reality and the Upside Down where she cast him out. It was there that shed his human skin and became Vecna, the monster that’s been stalking the teens of Hawkins, Indiana all season long.
The new trailer once again uses Kate Bush’s song “Running Up That Hill” as it highlights just how dire things are for our heroes. Take Nancy Wheeler (Natalie Dyer), who now appears to be on Vecna’s radar. Nancy is trapped, at least for the time being, in the Upside Down, with Vecna faulting her for Barb’s death in season one. This is how Vecna gets you, he teases out your guilt, and your fear, and connects directly into your mind. Can Nancy’s friends save her, or can she save herself, before Vecna makes that final, deadly connection?
Things appear at least a little more hopeful for Joyce Byers (Winona Ryder), whose rescue mission with Murray Bauman (Brett Gelman) to break Hopper (David Harbour) out of his Russian prison seems at least initially successful. Meanwhile, Max (Sadie Sink), Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), and Erica (Priah Ferguson) have gotten a few of their friends out of the Upside Down, but the battle against Vecna is now entering what appears to be a deadly endgame.
Stranger Things season 4 has been darker and even more ambitious than previous seasons, which is saying a lot for this show. The series has retained its irrepressible spirit, perhaps best embodied by Dustin’s confidence in his own intellect and the general can-do attitude of its young characters, but the scenes inside the Hawkins National Laboratory, to say nothing of Vecna’s murders, have been decidedly darker than anything we’ve seen before. Volume 2 of season 4 is comprised of two feature-length episodes that might provide the kind of closure we’ve long been dreading—that one of the beloved characters we’ve watched grow before our eyes might meet a grim fate.
Check out the trailer below. Volume 2 arrives on July 1.
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Now this is how you celebrate your 25th anniversary. Jordan Peele’s Nope will help the Alamo Drafthouse crew celebrate their 25th anniversary with an outdoor screening. What’s even better is that the setting for this outdoor cinematic event will mirror the setting of the film, creating an opportunity for viewers to fall even deeper into Peele’s singularly compelling storytelling. Imagine watching Get Out on the lawn of a fancy upstate house, or Us at a carnival in coastal California, because that’s the kind of ripped-from-the-movie setting that Peele’s Nope is getting for its Alamo Drafthouse screening. Nope is set on a horse ranch in a dusty gulch town outside of Los Angeles, and as part of Alamo’s 25th Anniversary Rolling Roadshow celebration, the screening will be held at the Sunset Ranch in Hollywood. Talk about setting the stage for an epic experience.
The screening will take place on Monday, July 25, and includes a hike in the Hollywood Hills, a bit of horseback riding (to the Hollywood sign, no less), and food and beverages inspired by the film. Plus, guests will get exclusive content before the film, commemorative gifts, and “fun surprises.” The screening itself begins at 8:45 pm, with guests seated within a horse corral surrounded by more than 70 horses in their stables. Considering Nope is set on a horse ranch and features terrified horses galloping for their lives away from unexplained aerial phenomena (UAP is the new and approved term from the U.S. Government, but you likely still refer to them as UFOs). Watching Peele’s latest mind-melter about a horse ranch stalked by aliens while surrounded by horses? Yeah, it sounds awesome. And a little terrifying. If you’re in the area and interested in attending, you can find out more here.
Nope finds Peele’s Get Out star Daniel Kaluuya returning as OJ Haywood, starring alongside Keke Palmer as his sister, Emerald, as they try to lure Hollywood executives to use the Haywood Ranch in their films. That’s when a new opportunity arises in the sky, and the Haywood siblings think they might have found a way to make history and a name for themselves in the process. All they have to do is capture, on camera, the greatest shot of all time—proof of extraterrestrial life. Sounds promising! But also potentially deadly. What we can guarantee is that Nope is must-see viewing this summer.
Nope also stars Steven Yeun, Michael Wincott, Brandon Perea, Barbie Ferreira, Terry Notary, Donna Mills, Jennifer Lafleur, Sophia Coto, and Keith David.
Thor has learned a few things about epic team-building speeches in his history with the Avengers. Nobody was better at it than Captain America, as Cap showed again and again, perhaps most memorably in Avengers: Endgame, before the Avengers parted ways on a time-traveling quest to try and save the world. Again. But in Thor: Love and Thunder, it’s the God of Thunder’s turn to give a rousing speech. So how does he do?
Let’s say there are mixed results, and Thor’s flow is thrown off by his insectoid warrior friend Miek’s squeaky scribbling on a whiteboard. Yet the important bits that Thor’s trying to get across, namely that they’re all going to have to fight together to defeat Gorr the God Butcher (Christian Bale) come through. Although Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson) still isn’t moved by Thor’s rhetoric. “We’re all gonna die,” she sighs at the speech’s end. Captain America usually inspired a little more confidence than that, but then again, Valkyrie is a legendary realist.
By now you likely know that Love and Thunder will see the return of Natalie Portman as Jane Foster. Only now, Jane has undergone a bit of a superhero conversion and claims both the magical hammer Mjolnir and the mantle of the Mighty Thor. She’s ripped and ready to kick some butt. The Guardians of the Galaxy are also on hand to pitch in for the fight. Gorr, it seems, is hellbent on taking out all the Gods and Goddesses in the universe, and he’ll stop at nothing to see his vision through. Hence Thor’s call to action for all his super friends to pitch in and help him out.
Check out the new trailer below and see if you’re moved by Thor’s speech. We’re guessing you’ll be tickled by it, and are as excited as the rest of us for Taika Waititi’s sequel. Thor: Love and Thunder hits theaters on July 8.
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Spencer Tracy charmed moviegoers as the original Father of the Bride in 1950. Then Steve Martin reprised the wedding-overwhelmed dad in Nancy Meyer’s 1991 romantic comedy of the same name. Now, Andy García headlines a new reboot playing an old-fashioned Cuban-American patriarch hilariously bewildered by complications that arise when his very modern daughter announces she’s getting married.
Father of the Bride (opening Friday in theaters and on HBO Max), co-starring Gloria Estefan, Adria Arjona, Isabela Merced, Diego Boneta, and Chloe Fineman, marks the English-language debut of Mexican director Gaz Alazraki. In 2013, he wrote and directed hit comedy Nosotros los Nobles, then co-created Netflix’s first Spanish language series Club de Cuervo. Three years ago, Alazraki moved with his wife and two daughters to Los Angeles. “When I finished the last season of Cuervo,” he says, “I told my wife it’s the perfect time to make the Hollywood jump and see how it goes.” It went well. “My agents introduced me to people around the city,” recalls Alazraki, who made an especially favorable impression on Brad Pitt’s Plan B production company. Co-president Jeremy Kleiner sent Matt Lopez’s Father of the Bride script to Alazraki, who subsequently won over Warner Bros. Pictures and landed the gig.
(L-R) ANDY GARCIA and director GAZ ALAZRAKI on the set of Warner Bros. Pictures’ and HBO Max’s “FATHER OF THE BRIDE.” Photo by Claudette Barius
Over the weekend, Alazraki, vacationing in Miami with his family, lounged poolside and discussed Andy Garcia’s Cuban-American heritage, talked about the surprising Gloria Estefan, and described how his own tumultuous wedding helped prepare him for Father of the Bride.
Your Father of the Bride puts a timely spin on this classic story by making Andy Garcia’s Billy character a proud American immigrant. He says “I came to this country with nothing” at least three times over the course of the film.
Five times. [laughing].
Okay, five times. How did the movie’s immigrant theme resonate for you?
Actually, that was my way into the story. When we moved to L.A. three years ago I suddenly started hearing my daughter speaking with a “Valley” accent, calling me “Daddy.” I’d be like “Don’t go there, call me papa.” As a father myself, I’m realizing my kids now are disconnected from the little rituals my family used to impose on us. Do I carry a responsibility to pass that on? Am I being too careless with my past, too careless with what my grandparents worked for, too detached from where we come from?
Caption: (L center-R) ANDY GARCIA as Billy, ADRIA ARJONA as Sofia and GLORIA ESTEFAN as Ingrid in Warner Bros. Pictures’ and HBO Max’s “FATHER OF THE BRIDE.” (PRESS KIT). Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
Like his character Billy, Andy Garcia fled from Cuba to the United States when he was a boy. In prepping the film, did you talk to Andy about his Cuban-American experience?
Yeah. Andy talked about being a first-generation immigrant, his work ethic and working-class values, and how his children didn’t have to struggle the way he did. That opened the door to how this father of the bride is struggling with the zeitgeist of a new generation, which does not think the patriarchy should infantilize women anymore. This central conflict goes beyond the immigrant theme and becomes about where America is today.
Caption: (L-R) GLORIA ESTEFAN as Ingrid and ANDY GARCIA as Billy in Warner Bros. Pictures’ and HBO Max’s “FATHER OF THE BRIDE.” Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
Andy Garcia’s famous for dramatic roles in movies like The GodfatherPart III, The Untouchables, and When a Man Loves a Woman. He’s not really a comedian.
Like, where is the funny right?
Exactly!
The general idea I conveyed to Andy was that he should always be searching for the hidden camera. “Is anyone else seeing this? Am I crazy? What’s going on!” We tooled the script so that every scene tries to be another slap and another slap and another slap.
(L-R) ANDY GARCIA and director GAZ ALAZRAKI on the set of Warner Bros. Pictures’ and HBO Max’s “FATHER OF THE BRIDE.” Photo by Claudette Barius
Billy respects tradition, maybe to a fault, and that provides a lot of comedic friction with both his daughters and his wife.
There’s this great quote, “Tradition is peer pressure from dead people.” Billy comes from this very male-driven, macho society. In the #MeToo era, that makes for a better story, so we wanted that to bleed into the screen. It just felt fitting for Andy, this character who holds dear to tradition and to have him be surrounded by people who stomp on it. Then you just go “roll camera.”
Gloria Estefan does a very convincing job playing Billy’s weary wife Ingrid. Everybody knows Gloria Estefan’s a great singer, but what did you learn about her as an actress?
The first thing you realize about Gloria is that she’s a potty mouth.
Caption: (L-R) ANDY GARCIA as Billy and GLORIA ESTEFAN as Ingrid in Warner Bros. Pictures’ and HBO Max’s “FATHER OF THE BRIDE.” Photo Credit: Claudette Barius
Really?
She swears like a sailor, dude. She’s so poised and classy but then Gloria will blindside you with some of the raunchiest humor. You go, okay this woman has grit, and she’s naturally funny. We just needed to lead with her persona and let Gloria play this strong woman who’s always poking Billy trying to get him to break because she will leave him if he doesn’t.
Father of the Bride takes place in Miami and showcases the Cuban-American community there. How did you integrate Miami into the storyline?
I’ve always loved how Woody Allen used the city [of Manhattan] as a character in his movies, so we took that idea and infused our movie with the Miami vibe. We really wanted to showcase Cuban-American Miami, so we shot in Little Havana where you have all the Cuban shops, Cuban restaurants, salsa joints, and Domino Park. At Domino Park, Billy showed his daughter the world, and taught her grit—that’s why Billy thinks she’s daddy’s little girl.
Caption: (L back-R) ENRIQUE MURCIANO as Junior, GLORIA ESTEFAN as Ingrid, ANDY GARCIA as Billy, RUBEN RABASA as Tio Walter and SEAN PATRICK DAWSON as Junior, Jr. in Warner Bros. Pictures’ and HBO Max’s “FATHER OF THE BRIDE.” Photo Credit: Claudette Barius
Nancy Meyers’ 1991 Father of the Bride takes place against a wealthy backdrop and so does your movie. Was that intentional?
We wanted the affluence in our film to speak to the Nancy Meyers lineage. It’s also because the Cuban American narrative is unique in that it started with upper-class businessmen of Cuba who came to the United States as exiles, by planes, by boats. They thrived. You drive to the Coconut Grove neighborhood in Miami, the women dress in fancy clothes and they’re successful by every measure of the American dream. You don’t get to see that kind of Latino representation in Hollywood. Father of the Bride subverts the stereotype, without us having to make anything up.
Oscar-nominated composer Terence Blanchard contributes a sparkling jazz score that speaks to the characters’ sophistication. What was your brief to Mr. Blanchard?
Andy loves jazz and used to go to music clubs in the poor districts of Miami to listen to it, so jazz feels true to Billy’s character given that he’s this traditional Cuban-American man. That insight opened up what the music should sound like. We temped the movie with some of Terry’s previous jazz work which was a way to convey to him: “Just do you.”
Did you have any Cuban-American musicians in mind as reference points?
Not even, although Andy spoke to Terence about [Cuban-American trumpeter-composer] Arturo Sandoval. The fun thing is that Terence’s usual jazz players played most of the music. Then we brought in this amazing Cuban percussionist, and he just took it to town.
Father of the Bride, in all its incarnations, might feel so universally relatable because nearly every adult has some kind of wedding story, either as a guest or a participant. Was your ownwedding anything like what we see inyour movie?
Before I got married, my mother had the gall to say to my wife, “This is not your wedding.” We went bananas and it became this ever-going loop of fights and fights and fights. Something would anger my wife, she’d tell me, I’d yell at my dad, he’d tell my mom, like a broken telephone game. My dad wanted 1200 guests so we got married an hour and a half away from our home in Mexico City just to bring down the numbers. And yet by the end, it was a fantastic wedding. We had a rabbi singing in Hebrew with a Cuban band playing the background music. When I pitched Warner Bros., I said this is what real weddings are about: fighting with your friends and family all the way to the altar and then you celebrate.
For more on Warner Bros., HBO, and HBO Max, check out these stories:
Featured image: Caption: (L back-R) ENRIQUE MURCIANO as Junior, RUBEN RABASA as Tio Walter (white tux), SEAN PATRICK DAWSON as Junior, Jr., ANDY GARCIA as Billy, GLORIA ESTEFAN as Ingrid, HO-KWAN TSE as Huan (back) and MARTA VELASCO as Caridad “Chi Chi” Gonzalez in Warner Bros. Pictures’ and HBO Max’s “FATHER OF THE BRIDE.” Photo Credit: Claudette Barius.
Talk about a great pairing. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings director Destin Daniel Cretton is teaming with Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Community writer Andrew Guest to create a Wonder Man series for Marvel. Guest will be the head writer of the series, while Cretton will executive produce and possibly direct one or more episodes. While Guest is primarily known for his comedy chops (30 Rock and Marry Me are also on his C.V.), he was also a consulting producer on Marvel’s Hawkeye series on Disney+, which had some of the funniest moments in a Marvel show yet.
Wait, you’re wondering who, exactly, Wonder Man is? Well, he surely doesn’t have the name recognition of DC’s beloved Wonder Woman, or any of his fellow Marvel Avengers like Iron Man or Captain America, but Wonder Man is one of Marvel’s oldest characters.
Introduced in 1964 in “Avengers No. 9,” Wonder Man began his life on the pages of Marvel comics as a villain in the early days of Marvel. However, he was eventually reborn as a hero—and Avenger—in the late 1970s. Wonder Man (also known as Simon Williams) became a founding member of the L.A.-based West Coast Avengers. As The Hollywood Reporterwrites (they scooped this story), Wonder Man became a celebrity in Los Angeles thanks to being an actor and stuntman during the day. His signature look was a turtleneck, red jacket, and shades. At night, he became Wonder Man. You can already see the series in your head—you just have to plug in an actor for the role, as so far there’s no word on who Marvel is eyeing.
What’s more, Wonder Man had a very strong connection to both Wanda Maximoff and Vision. Wonder Man and Vision had a literal connection, supported by “ionic energy,” while he developed romantic feelings for Wanda after Vision was taken apart in a later storyline.
It’s still too early to tell just how Cretton and Guest will play Wonder Man. It could become Marvel’s first truly Los Angeles-based show (imagine how much fun they could have with a superhero celebrity based in Tinsel Town?) Or, considering the growing WandaVision world, with a spinoff series already in the works centered on Kathryn Hahn’s Agatha Harkness, Wonder Man could be more firmly connected to that corner of the MCU.
Currently, Marvel has Ms. Marvel streaming on Disney+, with She-Hulk: Attorney at Law due in August, and the Samuel L. Jackson-led Secret Invasion coming up after that. Needless to say, the MCU’s expansion on TV has been swift (there are at least 6 more shows in development), and Wonder Man will hardly be the last new show we’ll hear about.
Meanwhile, Cretton is also working on Shang-Chi 2 and an adaptation of Gene Luen Yang’s graphic novel American Born Chinese for Disney+.
For more on all things Marvel, check out these stories:
Surprise! Or perhaps it’s not that much of a surprise given the number of Game of Thrones prequels that have been in development, or at least in discussion, at HBO. However, a Game of Thrones sequel focused squarely on the life of Jon Snow? Yeah, that’s big news.
The Hollywood Reporterhas the scoop that HBO is in the early stages of development on a spin-off series that would focus on Kit Harington’s Jon Snow after the events depicted in Game of Thrones. If your memory is a little foggy (massive belated spoiler alert), Game of Thrones ended with Jon Snow having to kill his beloved Daenerys (Emilia Clarke) to save Westeros from her wrath, at which point he eschewed any role in the new world being built in King’s Landing and headed North of the Wall to live with the Wildlings.
Harington would reprise his role, of course, as the noble warrior who discovered towards the end of Game of Thrones that had he wanted, he would have had quite the claim to the Iron Throne (instead, it was decided his brilliant, gifted brother Bran would rule). Jon Snow learned his true name was actually Aegon Targaryen, heir to the Iron Throne, the child of Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark. Because Rhaegar and Lyanna were legitimately married when they conceived Jon, he was a true, rightful heir to the throne. But Lyanna died in childbirth, Rhaegar was killed by Robert Baratheon during Robert’s Rebellion, and Aegon lived his life as the bastard Jon Snow, raised by Ned and Catelyn Stark (although Catelyn was always a little wary of him).
There was arguably no other member of the main Game of Thrones cast who had to put in longer hours than Harington. As THR recalls, the actor endured the 8th and final season’s most arduous stretch, 11 weeks of winter night shoots in Northern Island. Yet Harington is onboard and ready to resume the role that made him famous, night shoots be damned. Considering Jon Snow headed North of the Wall at the end of Game of Thrones, Harington would likely be spending a lot more time in those colder climes.
As THR points out, a Jon Snow-centered series would mean that Game of Thrones’ final season would no longer be the end of the story, and perhaps other characters from the show could find themselves leading their own spin-offs. A Tyrion Lannister series starring Peter Dinklage (with a major role for Jerome Flynn’s Bronn), perhaps? An Arya Stark (Maisie Williams) series? HBO has a massive trove of beloved GoT characters it could expand upon.
Meanwhile, there are prequel series in the works, with the House Targaryen-focused House of the Dragon coming this August 21. This series will look at the clan that eventually led to Daenerys some 200 years before the events in Game of Thrones, and will show how these Dragonlords went from rulers to ruined.
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Have you questioned the nature of your reality lately? If you haven’t, HBO can nudge you towards the existential end of things with the first trailer for Westworld‘s season 4. The ambitious sci-fi series returns after a two-year hiatus, with the robot hosts of the titular theme park now on the loose in the real world—and doing their level best to reorder the hierarchy between themselves and humans. Westworld has been consistently one of the best-looking productions on TV, and even if you’re not a sci-fi fan, the series is a joy to behold (with some incredible performances to boot).
HBO describes season four as a “dark odyssey about the fate of sentient life on Earth,” in case you were wondering how big the stakes were. Really, that logline describes the entire series, which has been fairly bearish on human nature. Your returning favorites include Evan Rachel Wood as the host who started the revolution, Dolores, who tells us at the top of the trailer, “There’s something wrong with the world.” That something is us, in case you were wondering! Joining Wood are Thandiwe Newton as Maeve, Ed Harris as the Man in Black, Tessa Thompson as Charlotte Hale, Luke Hemsworth as Ashley Stubbs, Aaron Paul as Caleb Nichols, Jeffrey Wright as Bernard, Angela Sarafyan as Clementine, and James Marsden, who returns as Teddy Flood. The series comes from showrunners Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy.
“We’re not here to transcend,” the Man in the Black says, “we’re here to destroy.” We know a few folks who will do their best to make sure he’s not the one doing the destroying.
Check out the trailer below. The eight-episode season begins on Sunday, June 25.
The first teaser trailer for writer/director Andrew Dominik’s Blonde has arrived, revealing Ana de Armas as Marilyn Monroe. Dominik’s film is based on the novel of the same name by Joyce Carol Oates and will look at the life of Norma Jeane (Monroe’s birth name), beginning with her difficult childhood and tracking her rise to becoming a global phenomenon whose stardom inevitably cost her everything. It’s safe to say this is one of Netflix’s most eagerly-anticipated films.
The teaser shows just how seriously Ana de Armas took on the task of becoming Monroe, as well as revealing recreations of some of the most iconic Monroe moments. (Yes, the indelible sequence from Billy Wilder’s The Seven Year Itch, when Monroe stands over the subway grate and has her white dress blown upwards by a train passing underneath, is featured.) The song you’ll hear in the trailer comes from one of her biggest hits, Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend, and the moody minute-long look paints a quickly vivid portrait of the loneliness lurking at the heart of Monroe’s celebrity. Her forced laugh at her own reflection in the mirror at the teaser’s end tells the tale.
Yet Blonde will not hew to just the brute facts of Monroe’s life. Like Oates’s book, the film will blur the lines between fact and fiction, exploring the rift that grew between Monroe the actual person and Monroe the mega-celebrity.
“He wanted the world to experience what it actually felt like to not only be Marilyn, but also Norma Jeane,” de Armas said in an interview with Netflix’s Queue. “I found that to be the most daring, unapologetic, and feminist take on her story that I had ever seen.”
Check out the teaser below. Blonde arrives on September 23.
Here’s the synopsis for Blonde:
Based on the bestselling novel by Joyce Carol Oates, Blonde boldly reimagines the life of Marilyn Monroe, exploring the split between her public and private selves. From her volatile childhood as Norma Jeane, through her rise to stardom and romantic entanglements, Blonde blurs the lines of fact and fiction to explore the widening split between her public and private selves. Written and directed by Andrew Dominik, the film boasts a cast led by Ana de Armas and featuring Bobby Cannavale, Adrien Brody, Julianne Nicholson, Xavier Samuel, and Evan Williams.
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When Millie Bobby Brown’s Eleven experiences a flashback a couple of hours into Stranger Things‘ fourth season, sound effects tell the mutant teenager’s nightmarish origins story in a nutshell: thunder, whooshing, whistles, choral voices, more thunder, pistol shots, birds screeching, rumbling, slithering sounds, squishes and thumps flood her head with 50 seconds worth of precision-orchestrated mayhem. In Matt and Ross Duffer’s supernatural thriller, sound effects, melded with Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein‘s throbbing synthesizer music, amplify the misadventures of terror-haunted teenagers from Hawkins, Indiana including best friends Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Will (Noah Schnapp), Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) and Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin).
Stranger Things’ Anywhere USA setting co-exists with The Upside Down, a hellish realm where sinister scientific research has unleashed monstrous predators. The man in charge of the show’s sonic bedlam is sound supervisor Craig Henighan. Oscar-nominated for Roma, he’s previously won three Emmy awards for overseeing Stranger Things audio and continues to lead a sound team that includes Angelo Palazzo, a former musician who now works as the series’ Emmy-winning lead sound effects editor. Henighan, inspired as a kid by Pink Floyd’s immersive record albums, says “I was always the kid with the tape recorder, same with Angelo. Most of the world is visually oriented. We’re some of the people out there who are aurally oriented.”
Taking a break from Stranger Things’ July episodes, Henighan and Palazzo explain how they re-jigger cappuccino makers, squeaky closet doors, and industrial drills to construct the eerie soundscape of The Upside Down and beyond.
Taking Eleven’s flashback as an example, how do you go about designing Stranger Things’ sound-intensive sequences?
Craig Henighan: With Eleven this season, a lot of her flashbacks are from seasons one and two, so I’ll go back and take what we did before and tweak it to make it work within the sequence. While I’m doing that, Angelo is looking at season three, where we had a lot of mud, a lot of squishy blood — Matt and Ross refer to that as the gore season — so we have this library stacked with stuff that Angelo recorded over the years and well look there for hooks that have a strong sonic identity.
One of those hooks is the sickening sound made by the tentacle-like vines that wrap around this year’s monster, Vecna.
Craig: The vines squirming around Vecna are almost a direct descendent of the vines that crept around the Mind Flayer in the mall from season three and just got augmented a little bit. When the big tentacles thrust onto Vecna, you could have made that a regular sound of vines attaching or whatever, but this is Stranger Things — you need to make it larger than life. Angelo wound up putting explosion-y gunshots underneath those vine sounds.
Craig: Sometimes fifty sounds go into one thing! Then the trick becomes, how to make the effects clear and concise so it’s not just a giant roar with a big low end. It’s a lot of work to find frequencies for these peaks and valleys. And you can’t have sounds lingering for too long. The way human hearing works, the more you hear something the more you tune it out so you also need to create negative space. We try to get in and out, make the sounds staccato and punchy, match the cut with sounds we know are going to pop, and give the audience a certain flavor.
A new evil thing this season is the shrieking demobats. How did you make them sound so frightening?
Angelo Palazzo: One of the cool things we did is that Craig has a closet door that makes this high-pitched chittering sound when you open or close it. That inspired me because I also have this super squeaky wooden closet. I recorded my closet door, then tweaked it, so what you hear is this organic, high-pitched wood that chitters at a high frequency and sounds fluttery. That works great when you set it to these ferocious berserk piranha bats moving in a swarm.
Craig: Angelo and I always approach sounds from the non-literal side of things, would you agree Angelo?
Angelo: Yeah, our whole job is messing around with sound. It’s never “see a dog, hear a dog.” You might go: “What else makes a screaming sound? Oh, Craig’s cappuccino maker has this ungodly sound, so let’s record that!” Then it becomes part of the library.
The third episode of this season opens inside a small house that starts shaking to the sound of an enormous earthquake-like rumble. It turns out to be a nearby helicopter landing, but the sound is so deep it transforms what could have been a routine helicopter landing into something much more dramatic. How’d you guys create that earth-shattering rumble?
Craig: We have these microphones called geo-phones that are used for seismic work that you can bury in the ground. Our friend Jacob said some company was boring through a hydrofield in Burbank [California] with a giant drill and he’s like “I want to record this thing,” so he borrowed our geo-phones to get this ultra-sonic low stuff. The reality is that ultra-sonic and television are two worlds that don’t really meet but we were able to find frequencies in these recordings that work on a streaming platform. Then you throw in the rattles and the dishes, and the light pouring through the windows.
Angelo: The whole idea was what would give it a Close Encounters feeling, where something’s going down, shaking the house, people inside are freaking out, but we don’t know it’s a helicopter until we cut to the outside. It’s a moment of tension where you don’t know what’s about to come around the corner, and it’s all sound design telling the story.
How do you know when a sequence is done?
Angelo: When I hand it over to Craig, I’m done. “Okay, your turn!”
Craig: Experience. If it’s 99 percent there, I might walk away and then come back to get that final one percent. Or sometimes you go back and decide “It’s rad, I’m not going to touch it.”
Given the density of these sounds you’ve been describing, it must be tricky to organize all that audio?
Craig: We have probably around 400 odd tracks of sound effects. We have four buckets of regular effects and within each bucket, there are sixteen tracks: eight mono and eight stereo. Then there are four sets of sound design, which is where all the vines stuff goes. And we have a pre-dub that’s called Entity, which is how they referred to the Demogorgon back in 2015, and being superstitious, I haven’t changed it. Then there are 24 tracks of Foley — footsteps and stuff. We’re constantly building our Stranger Things library and there’s still a ton we haven’t even used yet. Like that closet sound, I had that idea like two seasons ago, but it just didn’t formulate until we realized the bats need to be a little squeakier, a little sharper sounding.
You frequently manipulate audio so it sounds like something else. Which tools do you use?
Angelo: I use Radium, a sampler that’s similar to the Synclavier keyboard from the nineties that allows you to perform and manipulate sounds almost like you would with a piano. Over the past few years, Radium’s re-ignited the fun level for me.
Craig: We both have microphones and recorders. Workstation-wise, we’re pretty much based in ProTools. And we’re always looking for new toys. This season I did a lot of feedback.
In Season Four, there’s a grandfather clock that plays a pretty big role, and it has a spooky personality all its own. What went into the “tick-tock” sound?
Craig: That’s a Westminster clock, but I added a cello thrum across every pendulum swing, We also used a gong and a chime the Duffer brothers sent me layered with a couple of chimes I had, and there’s a ripping sound undulating underneath it all.
Angelo: When Craig did the scraping cello thing, it really brought the “tick-tock” to life and gave it a creepy quality.
Craig: That was the goal. I made a really crazy version of the tick-tock clock, which I loved, but it’s one of the few times the guys said, “Ahh, can we just make the clock sound a little more normal?”
To be clear, there’s no human voice in the mix whispering “tick-tock”?
Craig: No. It just has a certain frequency that gives you this psychological feeling. That happens often in sound, where you think it’s something but it’s not. The clock was one of two big things I had to deal with this season. What are we going to do with this clock? And the number one thing was Vecna.
Vecna, being this season’s slimy monster, needs to sound scary when he speaks. Did you model his speech around the actor’s voice?
Craig: I don’t have the plug-in chain in front of me, but the guys sent me dailies with Jamie Campbell Bower, the actor who plays Vecna and for whatever reason, Jamie’s voice and the plug-in chain I hit on worked really well.
If we could nerd out on the technology for a minute, how did you process Bower’s voice to make him sound like a monster?
Craig: I compressed the heck out of it. I added a lot of low-end EQ. Then it goes to my Infected Mushroom plug-in called Manipulator, and I used a pitch shifter or a pitch program from Waves. Then we added some reverb and delay. Our dialogue and music mixer editor, Mark Patterson added his own special sauce and panned it left center right so Vecna’s voice has more width when it needs to.
How did Vecna go over with Matt and Ross?
Craig: The brothers loved it. Vecna was one of those situations where we got it pretty quickly. Bang! I knew enough to back away and not overdo it, which I’ve been super guilty of doing. I go down these rabbit holes…
Angelo: Sometimes you throw all this stuff at an effect and then you wind up pulling things out because you realize it’s just two or three things that make the moment punch, and that’s all you need.
For more on Stranger Things, check out these stories:
Production designer Renee Read is responsible for the look of two of TV’s most successful adaptations over the past two years. For Maid, Read was tasked with helping showrunner Molly Metzler Smith and the rest of the crew adapt author Stephanie Land’s 2019 best-selling memoir “Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive.” The series is centered on Alex (Margaret Qualley), a young woman relying on the Byzantine social services complex to get her and her daughter on their feet. The issue for Alex isn’t just that she’s slipping into abject poverty, but that she’s been emotionally terrorized by her abusive boyfriend and is now homeless, and the only way she can qualify for subsidized housing or childcare is by providing a paystub from a job she doesn’t yet have. Shot in Victoria, British Colombia, Canada, and set in Washington State, Read helped turn Land’s memoir into a riveting narrative.
With Under the Banner of Heaven, Read had an arguably even more daunting task. Showrunner Dustin Lance Black was adapting Jon Krakauer’s 2003 book “Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith,” and Read would need to design three distinct time periods, stretched out over 160 years, in a story that included the origins of the Mormon faith and revolved around a gruesome double murder. The series was filmed during a harsh winter in Alberta, Canada, and is led by Andrew Garfield’s detective Jeb Pyre, whose investigation into the murder of Brenda Wright Lafferty and her baby daughter in the suburbs of Salt Lake City begins to unearth truths about the origins of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that many in the Mormon faith would rather stay buried.
We spoke to Read about the challenges inherent in adapting highly acclaimed, exacting source material, the joys of designing a woman-eating couch, and how one method for clearing snow from a set requires a helicopter and some steady nerves.
Renee Read on location in Alberta, Canada, during production of “Under the Banner of Heaven.” Courtesy FX Networks.
Is your job harder or easier when you have source material to work with?
We approached them so differently that there’s a different answer for each. Having the source material in Maid was a jumping-off point. We wanted to honor Stephanie Land’s experience, but also it’s a shared experience for so many women, so the world-building of that environment was slightly more universal. We were creating an experience that reflects the reality of hundreds of thousands of women who are trying to move through this system. If we’d made it extremely myopic, I think some of the power would have been lost. It’s a story that eighth-graders should watch and elected officials should watch.
One of the remarkable things about Maid is how it’s both disturbingly enlightening and compulsively watchable. How did you and the team manage that?
With John [Wells, executive producer and director of four episodes]’s body of work behind him, he had a real radar for poverty porn, so he helped steer us clear of that if and when we were tempted to get off track. In Molly’s writing, she navigates these themes of darkness, depression, and oppression and mines them for levity and beauty, and she does that through nuance, authenticity, and a fundamental vulnerability.
What was your mandate when designing the sets?
The design of the show had to be exactly that—nuanced, authentic, and precise. I have obsessive-compulsive issues, and that served me well when I’m designing this type of world because there’s not a single object that lands on that set that I haven’t seen ahead of time. John Wells has a similar exacting quality. He’ll open a closet door to see what the clothes inside are, which is beautiful and exactly how I work. Our obsession to all of these details lends itself to a world that you believe in so that it doesn’t feel like television, it feels more like a documentary, but the most beautiful cinematic documentary you’ve ever seen because we killed ourselves to make it real.
Alex’s trailer, designed by Read and her team. Courtesy Renee Read/Netflix.
There is a tremendous amount of beauty on display in Maid, despite Alex’s extremely dire circumstances. How did you balance the natural splendor with Alex’s hardships?
The economy there is a town of haves and have nots. I think many of the most beautiful places in America or Canada, for that matter, because we shot it in Victoria, British Colombia, are tourist economies. For every wealthy tourist who is there to go on a whale watching tour, there are five people supporting their adventure who are living near the poverty line. If we took a deeper look at a lot of the beautiful places in our country, we’d see a similar picture. It’s how tourist economies work. For Maid, we took the tones of the earth and the rocks and the sea and the spruces and the cedar trees and we used all of those in our color palette, inside and out for all of our major character’s homes, so there was that continuity going in and out of those spaces.
So the natural beauty of Alex’s surroundings is almost oppressive in a way?
We were trying to create an environment where the viewer could be consumed by the environment in the way that Alex is being consumed by the environment. She’s literally swallowed by a couch, but before that, she’s being swallowed by the economic environment and the social environment, all of which are visually coming down on top of her, through the forest, she’s continually being socked in by the clouds, she’s up against the ocean. Yes, this landscape is gorgeous, but it’s also unforgiving. So you’ll notice it just gets darker and darker, in textures and tones and wardrobe, until she gets swallowed by that couch.
So let’s talk about that couch sequence.
We were so desperate to avoid it becoming comical, right? It would have been so easy to anthropomorphize the couch, and at the end of this gorgeous episode that Quyen Tran directed. Quyen and I spent a long time figuring out the mechanics of how to do it so that it would be elegant rather than hyperbolic. We built the forest around her trailer from scratch, our greens department was unbelievable, so that she could get lost in that forest. It’s like a west coast monster, it’s supposed to feel scary. So by the time she’s trapped inside her trailer with no options and no money, we were really worried. We considered VFX, but that just wasn’t right for this show. So yeah, we built a man-eating couch. A woman-eating couch. We built a second version of the trailer on a stage, just the back half of it with a portal and a stunt rig inside the couch. Margaret’s up for anything, she was a trooper, and I think it was successful.
Margaret Qualley is Alex in “Maid.” Courtesy Netflix.
Switching gears to Under the Banner of Heaven, a vastly different kind of show, centered on a horrific murder, also based on a best-selling work of non-fiction.
When I got the offer, I went from excitement to terror [laughs]. This show spans 160 years, it has three distinct time periods, and there were 25 to 35 set locations per block. So it’s not an exaggeration to say it was a Herculean effort, week after week. It was an honor to work on the show because Dustin Lance Black’s writing is so intoxicating, and the landscape is Alberta is equally intoxicating, the cast and crew traipsing through the elements was in a small way similar to the way that the Mormon migrants battled across the raw land. My hope is it’s also the same for viewers and they become swept up in the landscape lust that we did.
What were the elements like you when you were filming?
For half of our shoot, we were filming in winter but doubling it for summer in the show. Most of our historical events, including the massacre and Joseph dying, happened during summer. For the massacre sequence, we had an army of people helping to turn winter into summer. We brought down dry steam trucks from oil rigs so we’d have oil rig workers steaming off the snow and then our special effects guys came in with the snowblowers, it was an improvised but precisely orchestrated military operation for days before we shot, and then the night before it would snow. I went up a helicopter with our director of photography and we used the blades of the helicopter to brush the snow off the set, and then send our army in again to remove the rest. It’s a passion project.
Renee Read on location in Alberta, Canada, during production of “Under the Banner of Heaven.” Courtesy FX Networks.Renee Read in the helicopter before a day of filming “Under the Banner of Heaven.” Courtesy Renee Read/FX Networks.
What was your overall design goal?
My overriding goal was to not let the period elements overtake the storytelling. I often find that period art direction can become hyperbolic. This particular journey these characters are on is already stranger than fiction. It didn’t need that, it needed to be precise culturally and temporarily. These things happened, they happened recently, the faith is new, and they’re still happening right now. It’s going on in Utah, Alberta, and in BC where I am right now. It can feel ancient but it’s horrifically present. No matter how tired or insurmountable as it seemed sometimes, when you’re working on material like it lights a fire and you just get up and do it.
The Lafferty Layout. Courtesy Renee Read/FX Networks.The build for the flashback scenes of 1830s Kirtland, Ohio. Courtesy Renee Read/FX Networks.
There were some inevitable comparisons to that other prestige show about Mormons, HBO’s Big Love.
Lance had been on this project for 10 years prior to us landing on the ground in Calgary. That’s ten years’ worth of research, he’d interviewed the main characters in prison, and he visited Colorado City, but the series is primarily focused on the middle timeline of the murders and the repercussions of those murders. We hired a large team of researchers and we thought they’d be with us during prep and the first block of shooting, but once we lifted the lid of this Pandora’s box, we realized we had to keep them on until the last day of shooting.
What did you discover during filming that made that necessary?
No matter what came in through the script pages, the first thing we had to do was learn how the faith was structured and how it worked and who gets to do what, who’s allowed to speak to who, and who can go into what building and how the meeting houses are structured. I mean, it’s thick with ritual in ways that would blow your mind. Imagine becoming literate about something so complex and dense while also prepping for a massive show like this. Lance is a marvel to watch. He knows every single little microscopic detail in his head, and I love it. We were two peas in a pod.
Rarely has awful behavior been accompanied by such beautiful music, but the fictitious scoundrels of Succession have now spent three seasons buoyed by brooding scores from pianist-composer Nicholas Britell. A three-time Oscar nominee, Britell honed his skills at Juilliard and Harvard before becoming the go-to composer for directors Adam McKay (Don’t Look Up), Barry Jenkins (Moonlight, If Beale Street Could Talk), and Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave).
McKay, who executive produces Succession, alerted series creator Jesse Armstrong to Britell’s talents and in 2019, the New York-based composer earned the Outstanding Main Title Theme Emmy award for his simultaneously jaunty, poignant, and ominous music.
For the show’s third season, millionaire mogul Logan Roy (Brian Cox) and his tragi-comically flawed children continue to misbehave, only this year, they end up plotting dark deeds at a sun-dappled estate in Tuscany, Italy.
Speaking from his New York City home, Britell talked to The Credits about the classically-inspired themes and variations that amplified the action in Succession Season Three.
Nicholas Britell. Photo by Emma McIntyre, GETTY Images.
When The Credits interviewed you about your Oscar-nominated If Beale Street Could Talk score, you described this core brass-and-strings concept. In Succession, the music shifts tone from season to season but still feels very much of a piece. Is there a unifying framework behind the Succession sound?
Great question and the answer is yes. With Succession, we imagine each season almost like a movement of a classical symphony. Season one was sort of an allegro, where things are moving quickly and the pieces are being set. Season two is more like an adagio as we follow Kendall’s journey, so there’s a melancholy inwardness to that music. For season three, I told Jesse when we got together early on about how the third movement of a classical symphony might be a kind of scherzo movement, which comes from the Italian word for “joke” and often gives you this off-kilter quality. Season three is very much about instability. We don’t know where the center of power lies, so there’s this swirling nature to the story. That’s why I wrote pieces in three-four time and used triplets—they have this sort of swirling instability that felt right rhythmically for this season.
How did you craft the musical transition from Season Two to Season Three?
A metaphorical bomb goes off at the end of season two. Ending on such a high pitch, where do we go from there? Furioso in F Minor was our way into Season Three.
Once the scripts started coming in, how did you put this scherzo idea into practice?
Knowing there would be a wedding in Italy, and knowing the vicissitudes of these characters, I wanted to somehow weave something Italian in [to the score] without being too on the nose about it. There’s also a certain lyricism and a kind of grandeur this season, more than before, involving the scope of the characters so the music tries to speak to that.
Several pieces echo the main title theme, which earned an Emmy back in 2019 and holds up as one of the finest credit sequences in recent memory. What inspired those callbacks?
The initial theme—and thank you by the way—has become a part of the fabric of the show in the sense that certain pieces I write may turn and curve and wink back to that theme. In the late eighteen century, themes and variations were quite popular. Mozart and Beethoven in particular wrote many variations pieces, so as I dove into this classical framework of the late seventeen nineties, I enjoyed employing the variation idea.
And of course, you created entirely new themes as well. What are some of your favorites?
Il Viaggio, the voyage, has an Italian symphony kind of feel. I wrote Impromptu in C Minor, where you start with one idea and follow where it takes you, continuing through a range of ideas all in one place. The Tuscany Suite I wrote for piano and orchestra. These ideas are actually seeded early in the season but come to the fore later on.
You played piano on all the pieces and conducted a terrific orchestra. What was the instrumentation and how did it differ from earlier seasons?
In season one there’s piano, the 808 drums, sleigh bells, woodwinds, and brass. In season three, I focused on strings and piano. There’s an openness about strings. It can feel serious, it can feel grand, it can feel funny, it can feel light, and it can feel all these things. Woodwinds and brass for some reason ended up feeling funny, especially the oboes. I use woodwinds all the time but every project has its own wavelength and in this case, I couldn’t use them. I’ve found over time that it’s almost impossible to separate orchestration from composition.
Or emotional impact.
Exactly! The sound of your instruments has so much to do with how the music feels. Long story short, strings and piano seemed to feel in the pocket for this season of Succession, and then, for literally the last piece we introduce voices for the first time. Jesse and I talked about, “What is the only thing we haven’t done yet to expand the scope of the sound?” The ending just felt like the right place to introduce [choir] voices, so that’s where I wrote the “Amen” movement.
You kept the lyrics simple.
Very. One word. “Amen.” [Laughing] As opposed to [Kendall’s rap song] “L to the Dog” in season two.
Where did you record the music and which musicians did you collaborate with?
It’s a variety of places and people. I work very closely with my wife. She’s the cellist that you hear, and the musicians are all dear friends of ours. Especially with the pandemic, we could never be in one place, unfortunately. I did a lot of remote conducting.
How big was the orchestra?
It’s about thirty strings. we didn’t necessarily want this huge wall of sound. There’s a kind of classical sound we were going for which is, I don’t want to say nimble, but it’s more clear. Orchestras in the 18th century were of a smaller scale than in the 19th century.
Your arrangements exploit the bottom end of the sonic spectrum to great dramatic effect. How did these robust bass tones synch up with the themes of Succession season three?
You’re speaking to the fact that I love the low end. There are times when you want a delicacy—dolce—Italian for sweetness, but other times you want that really deep bass, to convey the gravitas and the darkness of the story. What has WayStar done over the years? What has Logan done? That demands a depth, a profundity to the sound.
Matthew Macfayden, Sarah Snook, Brian Cox, Kieran Culkin. Photograph by Macall B. Polay/HBO.
Starting with these very specific musical concepts from talking to Jesse, how did you refine your music once the filmed episodes start coming in?
Early on I experiment, I write and play and record ideas to build up a concept base. I send those ideas to Jesse, the editors, and the post team. But until you start getting edited episodes, you don’t really know what’s going to work. Certain things immediately resonate. Elements of the furioso concept worked right off the bat. The Tuscany concepts felt right as the show headed toward Italy and so did this Ricercare piece having to do with Roman’s corporate chicanery. But for me, there’s always this sense of discovery. You just have to dive in and figure it out as you go.
For more on Succession, check out our interview with director Mark Mylod:
The Vietnam Film Development Association (VFDA) was established in July 2019 as a national film commission, and its top priority was fostering international collaborations.
With that in mind, we talk to VFDA chairperson Dr. Ngo Phuong Lan, the former director of Vietnam’s Cinema Department and former head of the organizing committee of the Hanoi International Film Festival (HANIFF). She is also a film critic and an author and co-author of sevenbooks, including “Modernity and Nationality in Vietnamese Cinema” (2005) and “Accompanying the Screen” (1998).
Dr. Ngo Phuong La
COVID-19 started just a few months after VFDA came into existence. The global pandemic has certainly impacted the work of the association. How is it coping during such challenging times?
Fortunately, VFDA took part in a number of important activities in late 2019 before the pandemic hit: the international launch of VFDA and the introduction of new Vietnamese film projects at the Busan International Film Festival in October 2019, and the introduction of filming in Vietnam at the Tokyo International Film Festival in November 2019.
In 2020, VFDA officially joined the Asian Cinema Commission Network (AFCNet – an organization comprised of film commissions and agencies in Asia). VFDA isone of two AFCNet’s members in Vietnam; the other being the Cinema Department.
When Vietnam hosted Warner Bros’ Kong: Skull Island in 2015, it was one of the biggest Hollywood films to shoot in Southeast Asia in recent years. The northern province of Ninh Binh, with its unique limestone towers, waterways, and cave passages, was prominently featured as the mythical home of Kong. What needs to be done to attract more incoming foreign productions of such scale?
We have many strong selling points: a unique landscape that has not been captured on screen; a rich history and diverse culture that can inspire many compelling stories; and inexpensive labor and cost of living.
But the lack of filming incentives is the main reason why Vietnam has not been able to attract big movies after the Kong movie. The Cinema Law has been revised and is expected to be submitted to the National Assembly for approval in mid-2022, in which a number of tax incentives for foreign productions have been proposed.
How can VFDA help?
In the meantime [before the new Cinema Law can be implemented], VFDA has worked with a number of local authorities in Vietnam to develop joint programs to promote filming locations and local brands and develop local incentive packages for film crews. VFDA is also upgrading its website, with the advice of the Motion Picture Association, to provide detailed information on what people need to know about filming in Vietnam. We are actively promoting Vietnam as a filming destination; no agency or organization has looked after this area.
Talking about the Cinema Law, it has been a hot topic in Vietnam that generated plenty of debates. What are some of the issues?
Certain provisions in the Cinema Law are very sketchy and the procedures can be very complicated and non-transparent. There were cases when film permits were granted by the central authority, but were still questioned by local authorities, or a submission was approved by one government agency, but rejected by another agency, and the film project was forced to stop midway. In addition, the procedures for importing and exporting film equipment are slow and complicated.
Under the Cinema Law, full scripts are required to be submitted for approval before production. This is also a barrier for foreign producers. I think it may be more appropriate to review just the movie script summary and the excerpt of scenes to be shot in Vietnam.
Local filmmakers are quite vocal about the outdated censorship regulations in the Cinema Law. Some of them are asking for a well-defined rating system, which will allow films to be shown to different audiences. In your opinion, what kind of changes will bring the most benefits to local filmmakers?
It is necessary to have crystal clear regulations that cannot be inferred or misinterpreted, as well as a film rating system that can classify content for suitable age groups.
The current control mechanism, which requires content meant for digital platforms to be censored before distribution, is controversial. The draft proposal suggests a new regime that allows VOD service providers to self-classify their movies, which is different from the current mechanism applied for theatrical and broadcasting content. It is believed this will create favorable conditions for both domestic and foreign film businesses, and at the same time in line with international practices.
Are there any government incentives in place to support local filmmakers and local productions?
Currently, no significant incentives for local film productions are in place. Every year the government commissions about 40 productions, including documentaries, sci-fi films, and animated films, in addition to two to three feature films. These commissions are to generate content for propaganda purposes as stipulated in the Cinema Law.
Can you tell us how the role of VDFA is different from that of the Vietnam Cinema Department?
The Cinema Department is a state-run agency. It will select local film projects to be funded by the state; approve, classify and license films for distribution; and approve foreign scripts meant to be filmed in Vietnam in collaboration with local Vietnamese partners and submit such scripts to the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism. It is also the organizer of the Vietnam Film Festival and the Hanoi International Film Festival.
VFDA is a social, professional organization – attracting major international productions to film on locations in Vietnam and connecting Vietnamese filmmakers with their international counterparts is our main focus. Our board of directors includes the country’s biggest distribution and production companies from the private sector such as Galaxy Studio, BHD Media, HKFilm, and Studio 68, as well as state-run studios.
Can you name three priority activities of VFDA in the next 12 months?
We will conduct Green Screen Short Film Contest as part of the “Green Screen: Road to Sustainable Development” campaign, which was launched when we signed an MOU [memorandum of understanding] with Netflix in January this year for the development of the local film industry and the creative sector.
Together with international organizations, we will continue to protect film copyright in Vietnam and organize seminars on production, classification, and distribution.
For more stories on filmmakers in the Asia Pacific region, check these out:
This will likely not come as a big surprise at this point, but Top Gun: Maverick has officially become the highest-grossing movie of the year in North America.
The blockbuster return of Tom Cruise as Pete “Maverick” Mitchell in director Joseph Kosinski’s film has now soared to $401.8 million in North American ticket sales. Maverick has flown past Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness ($398 million) to take the top spot and is only the second film in the pandemic era to cross the $400 million mark in the U.S. (the other was Spider-Man: No Way Home.) Audiences have had a massive appetite for Maverick, which utilized real Navy jets in a story that saw Cruise’s Mav teaching a new crop of Top Gun talent for a highly dangerous mission. Connecting to the 1986 original in ways big and small, Maverick managed to avoid coasting on mere nostalgia to become an epic blockbuster in its own right, with an epic cameo (Val Kilmer’s Iceman returns), a thrilling third act, and throughout it all, the astonishment of knowing what you’re watching was real planes doing real maneuvers at G-force inducing speeds.
This news follows Maverick‘s historic opening weekend (the highest-grossing Memorial Day Weekend release of all time), the smallest second-week drop ever recorded for a film that opened at $100 million or more (a mere 32%) , and, Tom Cruise’s best opening in his career.
Whether Maverick can keep the year’s top spot is another matter. There are some very big titles coming out, including two Marvel mega-movies; Taika Waititi’s Thor: Love and Thunder (July 8) and Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (November 11.) Regardless of how long Top Gun: Maverick can retain its perch, the film has been a juggernaut success. It has a decent shot of crossing the $1 billion mark, which would make it the biggest film in Cruise’s career, surpassing his current best showing, 2018’s Mission: Impossible – Fallout ($791 million).
Cruise and the Top Gun: Maverick cast and crew had a need for speed, and that need has been matched, week after week, by eager audiences.
For more on Top Gun: Maverick check out these stories:
Barry cinematographer Carl Herse has his fingerprints all of season three in what is turning out to be a reckoning for the titular hitman (played by co-creator/writer/director Bill Hader). Herse joined the Barry team and lensed five of season three’s 8 episodes (1, 2, 6, 7, and 8) in what has turned out to be the darkest stretch of Barry’s decidedly pitch black journey thus far.
Citing influences as wide-ranging as Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood, the Coen Brothers, and cinematographer Robby Müller’s work in Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas, Herse takes us on a journey through crafting season three’s twisting turns, as Barry’s past stalks him, a fitting consequence of his post-military career as a hitman, and why Bill Hader and co-creator Alec Berg’s approach on Barry helps create a uniquely actor-friendly environment for the stars to shine.
Walk me through some of your initial conversations with Bill Hader about season three?
Bill is an enormous film buff and has very comprehensive knowledge about old films, contemporary films, and foreign films. We prepped this entire season before Covid, and once the shutdown happened, Bill and I spent a ton of time talking about movies and watching stuff, and we shared images that we thought could inform the scenes that we knew we were going to shoot. The writers were also able to use that time to start outlining season 4, which then allowed us to go back and adjust season 3. It’s really just a lot of nerding out, chatting on the phone, and watching movies. This became useful as a shorthand when were filming, Bill could just be like, “remember that scene in Throne of Blood?” and I’d know exactly what kind of lighting he was talking about.
Do you find the approach to Barry inherently different from other shows you’ve worked on?
We try to approach Barry like a long feature film. It’s a very different system, with Bill and Alec [Berg] taking turns directing, rather than a showrunner-based system with different directors coming in each week and being brought up to speed on the style of the show. The great advantage is that Bill and I might come up with an idea that might be re-written in the show. For example, the first scene in season three was shot at dawn, even though it was originally scripted as day. We wanted to make this a super early morning scene that was shot in chronological order, so over the course of the scene, it actually gets brighter and you see the sunrise over the hill. That was because in our conversations, we talked about how we really wanted to see Barry in this very dark place and show the audience what he’s become in the time they’ve been away from the show.
Bill Hader in the episode “forgiving feff.” Photograph by Merrick Morton/HBO
I imagine having the show’s co-writer, co-director, and producer also star in the show makes for a unique filming experience, too?
One thing that happens on this show that I’ve never experienced and that’s the greatest for everyone is we do rehearsals with the actors. Normally, you have a table read where you do one big read-through of the script with the whole cast sitting around the table and the studio or network is there to give notes. On Barry, we do these very small, quiet rehearsals where Bill, Liz Sarnoff (producer/writer), Alec Berg, and myself will go into the room with whoever’s performing in these scenes, whether it’s Stephen Root or Henry [Winkler] or Sarah [Goldberg] and we’ll just run the scenes as if it was a table read, then Bill and Alec will talk about what’s coming in the story, or what might be happening next season that the actors might not be aware of. And through that process, a lot of rewriting happens. And for me, it’s really inspiring because you get a much more emotive performance than you get in a table read. The actors really get into it and start really delivering the lines the way that they’ll probably say them. That’s the best way for me to imagine how I can visually support them, how I might light a scene, and what information we might withhold in a scene.
Sarah Goldberg and Bill Hader. Photograph by Merrick Morton/ HBO.
This might explain, at least in part, why the experience of watching Barry feels different from a lot of shows. Are there technical choices you guys make that you find are unique to the series?
Bill is also extremely good at understanding perspective, subjectivity versus objectivity, and what kind of information he wants to refrain from showing the audience right away. I think there are a lot of great examples throughout the season where we’ll hold on one side of coverage for a very long time and not see the reverse coverage. Bill doesn’t edit on dialogue very often. He edits more on tone and what the audience should be responding to, which is very interesting. Most shows will cut back and forth between whoever’s talking, but we’ll go to great lengths to hold one side of a conversation.
Henry Winkler and Bill Hader in “Barry” season 3. Photograph by Merrick Morton/HBO
How does that method affect the cast and crew?
Like the Coen brothers, Bill really only shoots for the edit. He doesn’t cover himself very much. I think a lot of people are always surprised by how fast we move and how little coverage he shoots. And he’ll even go so far as to shoot the first two lines of dialogue in a wide shot and then just cut and be like, ‘Okay, let’s go in for close-ups.’ I think it really helps because the actors don’t get burned out. Their performance always feels really fresh. A lot of times, if you’re doing a dinner table scene, for example, you have to get every single eye-line and you’re spending seven or eight hours or even several days on it, depending on how long the scene is.
A scene from “Barry” season 3. Photograph by Merrick Morton/HBO
Barry can be very funny, but it’s also relentlessly dark, season three especially. How did you approach this season, which really maps Barry’s descent?
The thing that Bill talks about a lot from a writing perspective is writing honestly. The things that happen to those characters will inevitably result in consequences for them. A lot of times you will have ongoing stories on television where people don’t really change very much. The set-up for Barry has been this crazy journey audiences didn’t really expect, and what was exciting for me about coming into this season was how dark season two got, and how in season three we had an opportunity to lean into that darkness. I know in conversations with HBO, they’ve been really supportive, but there are times when they’re like, ‘Is this a comedy anymore?’ Particularly towards the end of season three, we’re approaching the material honestly, and things do get pretty dark and the jokes become farther apart and fewer in between.
Henry Winkler and Bill Hader. Photograph by Merrick Morton/HBO
How do you translate this journey into darkness visually?
It’s been very exciting for me to work with Bill, work with production designer Eric Schoonover, and try to set up spaces that tonally could feel like the walls are closing in and a dark cloud is forming over our characters. The Coen brothers are a big influence on how to ride that line where something can be deeply tragic and brutal and also funny, all within a short period of storytelling time.
For more on Barry, check out our interview with Bill Hader:
The cathedral wedding in John M. Chu’s Crazy Rich Asians. Diana Prince boldly crossing a World War I battlefield in Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman. Lisa stuck on a zip-line suspended above a raucous crowd in downtown New Orleans, in Malcolm D. Lee’s Girls’ Trip. Cathartic, lovely, or almost distressingly hilarious, these scenes are indelible. What did their directors do to make them tick?
The scene in Malcolm D. Lee’s “Girls Trip” selected for analysis in HBO Max’s “One Perfect Shot.” Courtesy Universal Pictures/HBO Max.
In One Perfect Shot, currently streaming on HBO Max, creator, narrator, and executive producer Ava DuVernay invited six directors into a three-dimensional green screen environment where her team recreated an inventive version of one of their film’s most memorable scenes, allowing the directors to literally step inside to explain how they made their magic. One of the more meta visual experiences currently streaming, the show applies innovative tech via the Unreal Engine to just the right amount of time — at a half-hour, the audience gets an inside look at each director’s process without getting bogged down in minutiae — to meaningfully revisit stunning moments from a variety of contemporary classics. It’s a lot of fun, whether or not you consider yourself a film nerd.
Of course, the trouble with watching Michael Mann break down how he got his gunshot sounds in Heat (the cavern created by Downtown Los Angeles’ skyscrapers was key) is that you’ll find yourself with a whole new set of questions, starting with how Mann seems to be credibly plunged into a stylized yet hyper-accurate version of a scene he shot almost thirty years ago. Handling the visual effects was Craig Weiss, the executive creative director at CBS VFX. He made the case for green screens over LEDs, combining the technology with the Unreal Engine’s capability for instantaneous rendering, for something the directors themselves could experience in real-time. “As the camera moved, the environment moved, and they could walk around and see where things were, so it put them back in that shot, and in that scene,” Weiss says.
Director Michael Mann explains a scene from his film “Heat,” selected for analysis in HBO Max’s “One Perfect Shot.” Courtesy Warner Bros./HBO Max.
But, obviously, the sets and tech from these original scenes are long gone. For Weiss and his team, it was a two-part challenge to recreate them. First came determining where in their scene a director should even be. “When you know you can move anywhere in a virtual environment, where were those areas we wanted to focus on? We had to really design those out,” Weiss says of part two of the recreation process, which began fresh with each of the docuseries’ six directors.
“Some films we had to literally watch the movie, dissect and do a lot of research on the location, look at production photos, and do a lot of our own homework,” says Weiss. “Then some other ones, like Heat, we had the luxury of Michael Mann, who really brought a lot to the table in terms of drawings, layouts, blueprints.” To remake the lush wedding scene from Crazy Rich Asians, Weiss and his team got a ton of background from Nelson Coates, the film’s production designer. “Did they use real grass? Fake grass? Would it die, with all the lamps? It ran the gamut.”
The cathedral wedding scene in “Crazy Rich Asians” selected for analysis in HBO Max’s “One Perfect Shot.” Courtesy Warner Bros./HBO Max.
Consistent across all of the scenes the docuseries features, however, is a stylized version of the background and actors, rather than a photo-real recreation. “More Kandinsky, more Picasso, less Ansel Adams,” is how Rodney Frazier, Executive In Charge Of Production, One Perfect Shot alongside DuVernay, puts it. Weiss and Frazier agree that the style is key to the show’s success. “You can try and fool the audience into thinking the director has stepped back into some amalgamation of their original shot, but it’s more realistic when you don’t try and fool them, when it’s more realistic and you tell them, we made this,” says Frazier. Weiss points out that despite the existence of visual effects companies spending millions of dollars to create digital human likenesses, occasionally successfully, the issue of the uncanny valley remains. “That wasn’t really what we were trying to do. We were trying to give the director a canvas, to go back to that environment and have it look similar, elegant, and pleasing,” he says.
Having achieved that, One Perfect Shot ventures incomparably beyond its source material: Twitter, of all things. First inspired by the account of the same name, the show came about thanks to DuVernay, “the woman who can move heaven and earth,” says Frazier. “I think it came down to giving people more of an insight into what the director is thinking than just the standard stuff you get through PR,” and alongside technical breakdowns on how they achieved their perfect shots, the docuseries dives deep into the directors’ motivations, with, for example, Patty Jenkins and John M. Chu exploring on camera how their family histories influenced the scenes they came to shoot decades later.
JURASSIC PARK (1993)
Cinematography by Dean Cundey
Directed by Steven Spielberg
Production Design by Rick Carter pic.twitter.com/BRu7No6tDx
Weiss’s technological prowess is what gives these settings their verve, providing the six featured directors an immersive setting that makes it possible for them to get into not just the nuts and bolts of their original scenes but the emotional resonance behind them. Frazier jokes that One Perfect Shot might have been the strangest call he’s ever gotten, but once he got into it, it was clear that the technology used to plunge the directors back into their own scenes “better be good enough for them to a, enjoy it, and b, bring up stuff that they want to talk about,” he says. It seems to have worked. “I can’t say who, but a lot of directors have reached out to Ava and said the next time you do this, I’m in.”
The No Man’s Land scene from “Wonder Woman” that director Patty Jenkins selected for analysis in HBO Max’s “One Perfect Shot.” Courtesy Warner Bros./HBO Max.
For more on Warner Bros., HBO, and HBO Max, check out these stories:
The Joker 2 news just keeps getting wilder. Last week we learned that writer/director Todd Phillips had not only written the script for the Joker sequel with his co-writer from the first film, Scott Silver, but he shared an image of star Joaquin Phoenix reading it and that its working title was Joker: Folie á Deux. That title, whose literal translation means “shared madness,” sparked speculation that the Joker’s main squeeze, Harley Quinn—made cinematically iconic by Margot Robbie in a trio of films—would be a major part of the film. Yet Joker takes place in an entirely different universe within the DCEU from the films Robbie’s played Quinn, most recently in Birds of Prey and The Suicide Squad. Now, The Hollywood Reporter scoops that Lady Gaga is in early talks to play Quinn, and, that Joker: Folie á Deux would be a musical.
Phillips and his Joker co-writer Scott Silver have been hard at work on the sequel for a while. Technically, Folie á Deux is a medical term for two or more people suffering from a similar mental disorder. There are no two characters in the DC canon who this describes better than the Joker and Harley Quinn. THR reports that Warner Bros. has finally gotten a look at Phillips and Silver’s script (hence Phillips sharing the image of Phoenix reading it on social media last week), yet the deal for Phoenix to join the sequel isn’t done yet.
This is where Gaga comes in. If she indeed signs on and is playing Quinn, the stage is set for an epic collaboration and would all but guarantee intense interest in the sequel, even for people who stayed away from the original. The origin story of the relationship between the Joker and Harley Quinn is complicated, to say the least. Quinn was originally his psychiatrist at Arkham Asylum, but soon enough she fell in love with him, and the two of them became a demented, highly unstable, and decidedly unhealthy power couple in the Gotham underworld.
As if the idea of a Gaga/Phoenix pairing as one of the most iconic romantic entanglements in the comics world weren’t enough, the fact that THR‘s sources say the sequel will be a musical makes Gaga’s casting even more intriguing. Considering the first Joker was expected to be a modest hit and became a mega-success might make the idea of a musical Joker sequel less wacky for the studio. The original was a moody, highly un-superheroic origin story about a sad clown and would-be stand-up comedian named Arthur Fleck that turned into a box office juggernaut and earned 11 Oscar nominations and two wins, for Phoenix as Best Actor and Hildur Guonadottir for Best Original Score. If it sounds like madness to try and make a musical based on the sordid romance between the Joker and Harley Quinn, it’s the kind of madness many, many viewers will likely share.
Featured image, right to left: Caption: JOAQUIN PHOENIX as Arthur Fleck in Warner Bros. Pictures, Village Roadshow Pictures and BRON Creative’s “JOKER,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Niko Tavernise; LAS VEGAS, NEVADA – APRIL 03: Lady Gaga performs onstage during the 64th annual GRAMMY awards on April 03, 2022 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for The Recording Academy).
We’re getting awfully close to the premiere of co-writer/director Taika Waititi’s Thor: Love and Thunder, so much so that you can get your tickets now. What better way to celebrate this than with a new teaser, which fronts the arrival of Gorr the God Butcher (Christian Bale), a sociopath hellbent on taking out all of the universe’s gods and goddesses. Guess who that includes? Yup, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and the newest Goddess on the scene, Natalie Portman’s Mighty Thor.
Yet it’s not just Thor and Mighty Thor versus Gorr. As the new teaser highlights, the two former lovebirds turned super-powered teammates have friends, notably Valkryie (Tessa Thompson), Korg (Taika Waititi), and the Guardians of the Galaxy. The Guardians on hand are Chris Pratt’s Star-Lord, Dave Bautista’s Drax, Bradley Cooper’s Rocket, Vin Diesel’s Groot, Pom Klementieff’s Mantis, and Karen Gillan’s Nebula. Oh, and not for nothing, Russell Crowe plays Zeus.
What’s so much fun about Waititi’s take on Thor is how he turned the most self-serious Avenger into the funniest, and most fun-loving, and then surrounded him with friends and frenemies as wild as he is. Thor: Ragnarok proved that Waititi creates worlds in which the actors love to play, and with Love and Thunder, he’s promised that he’s never written or directed anything this insane.
Check out the new teaser below. Thor: Love and Thunder hits theaters on July 8.
For more on Thor: Love and Thunder, check out these stories:
Succession director Mark Mylod knows his way around family drama. Mylod’s been with the series since the first season, directing the second episode (the pilot was helmed by co-creator Adam McKay), and is now the most tenured Succession director of them all, with 12 episodes to his credit. He’s also something of an expert when it comes to palace intrigue, considering he’s a Game of Thrones alum, yet he admits that Succession‘s highly-anticipated and ultimately critically acclaimed third season presented some unique challenges.
One of those challenges was that season three would payoff the long-simmering internecine battle between the scheming Roy family that’s been boiling since the pilot. In the season two finale, the oft hapless Kendall Roy (Jeremy Strong) announced to the entire world at a press conference that his father, the fearsome if wounded Logan (Brian Cox) wasn’t just an inept leader of Waystar Royco, he was a criminal. Thus, two seasons and 20 episodes worth of moves and counter-moves, backstabbing and sniping had now officially given away to a father-versus-son blood feud, and Mylod was responsible for four episodes in the third season, including the crucial premiere set mere minutes after season two’s finale.
We spoke to Mylod about the challenges, and joys, of helming creator Jesse Armstrong’s brilliantly baroque family drama, how he approaches working with an ensemble cast, and why authenticity is the key to Succession‘s success.
How did you approach directing the first episode for season 3, which picks up right after season 2’s explosive finale?
The thought process was somewhat driven by fear of failure on my part. We’d made a choice that it was going to pick up ten or fifteen minutes after the end of season two’s storyline, and that really dictated the approach. Because it was apparent to me the challenge was to match the intensity and kick straight away into high gear. The beginning of season two was much less intense, it picked up with more of a slow burn. In season three, we wanted to parachute the audience right back into the level of intensity with the press conference of season two.
At long last, the Roys were finally at war with each other, with family members being forced to choose a side, Logan or Kendall. What were some of the challenges of filming this battle we’ve been waiting for?
My part, in particular, while also trying to shoot in the middle of the pandemic, was to match that intensity. In the writer’s room, we decided the season really was going to be about civil war, and we wanted to ramp this up. This had been the undertone in the first two seasons and now it was outright conflict. So it was a ramping up of scale, which in production terms was tricky to achieve. We were very limited in terms of the number of people we could have on set at that time. As the season progressed, we structured it so that we could scale up in the hope that Covid would drop to the point where we could get more people in the shots. The last two episodes were set in Italy, but we weren’t remotely sure we would be able to shoot in there, so we were running two models, one with production in Italy, and another with production in North America.
Brian Cox, Kieran Culkin, Alexander Skarsgård. Photograph by Graeme Hunter/HBOJeremy Strong. Photograph by Graeme Hunter/HBO
How were you going to play those Italy scenes in North America?
It was quite sad because we couldn’t decide where that would be. Maybe up in Maine, then we thought about going to Rhode Island, but Gilded Age was cranking into production for HBO and we felt we’d be stealing their locations, so we went away from that. We thought about going to Martha’s Vineyard, and then south to Florida, but it all felt like such a stretch for where their mother would get married. Everything kept pushing back to Chianti, Italy.
You’re working with such a talented ensemble cast that we could really just go through the list one by one, but I’d like to start with what it’s like to work with Brian Cox.
Brian Cox’s presence is extraordinary, and as intimidating as he is, when there’s a big scene to shoot, he’ll come to set as nervous as a kitten because he’s so keyed up and wants to get it right.
One of the show’s strengths is the way these actors all seem to thrive as warring siblings, spouses, or in-laws. How do you harness their varied styles and skills?
With this ensemble, a huge part of my job is to facilitate each of those actors who have their own ways of working, and a lot of our scenes are big ensemble scenes. That’s what I get paid for, to set up an atmosphere where they can all thrive and work. It can be tricky, as they do have disparate ways of working. Whatever allowances we make for each other, hopefully, the results speak for themselves. Whatever comes out, the truth is when we’re on set we’re all working towards the same goal.
Jeremy Strong, Kieran Culkin, and Brian Cox. Photograph by Graeme Hunter/HBO
You really got to lean into your ensemble chops with the final two episodes of the season, where we’re charging towards the endgame with either Logan or Kendall coming out on top.
Because season three was about that war, the great dramatic opportunity in episodes eight and nine was to bring them all together, force them into the same space, and let sparks fly. As soon as we got that setup, Jesse [Armstrong] wrote two brilliant episodes, so by that point, we know where the whole season is heading. So through the final two episodes, eight and nine, we’re calibrating the ride of those actors. We tried to play it throughout the season that there was a sense of Kendall being on the rise, particularly at the beginning of the season, then hitting those challenges as the Teflon-coated Logan refuses to be knocked down. Whether it’s Logan wielding his power with the DOJ or something else, he always finds a way to win. As Tom says to Kendall, “I’ve never seen Logan get f*cked.” By the time we get to episode eight, Kendall’s just had this terrible dawning truth that he can never win, he can never beat his father, that’s his fate, he can never escape that gilded cage or his place in the hierarchy. So the tragedy for Kendall is that terrible realization that he will never win.
There was a sense in the beginning that Logan could actually lose, as he began the season looking more than a little vulnerable, too.
Logan’s arc through the season was that we start him at his lowest point in episodes one and two when he’s forced to head off to Sarajevo, then he gradually uses all the grit and experience and power he has to come out as the winner. There’s a Shakespearean inevitability about that, even with the ups and downs, that eventually, Logan will find a way to be the last person standing.
What kind of conversations do you have with Jesse Armstrong about stuff like that, the Shakespearean elements to the series, the patriarchial battles, the specter of aging and losing your power, the toying with your children about who will inherit the throne…
We rarely talk in terms of attempting to compare Succession with Shakespeare because that would be sad [laughs], but, what we do talk about is the dynamics of power, the dynamics of family, and the authenticity of what we’re doing. We’re one step removed from reality because we’re not writing about Rupert Murdock or Summer Redstone, but we’re drawing from that type. So every choice, performance, and location is a reflection of the reality of dynamics of power in modern America and modern capitalistic society.
Much has been made about how Jesse’s British, and that remove has given him more clarity on the subject of America’s capitalistic cruelties than an American might be able to bring to bear. Do you agree with that?
I don’t think it’s the case that we see this clearly because we’re British. The old Churchill thing about how we’re two countries separated by a common language, but in fact, America and England are so similar, and Jesse has a lifelong passionate interest in American culture and politics, he’s incredibly well informed. It’s more a question of his passion for the subject matter. We’re very aware of our limitations as foreigners—I’ve lived in New York for 12-years, but I don’t know the heartbeat of the city as a proper New Yorker, so we put in a lot of work into research, we talk to consultants, we go over every word that an English person would use but not an American, what someone wears, and we speak to the right people and put the work into the end game, which is authenticity. So ultimately I don’t agree that our being British gave us special clarity. Perhaps Ang Lee was perfect for Sense andSensibility because he was looking at the culture from the outside in, but for us, it’s just about doing the work to be as authentic as possible.
Succession was renewed for a fourth season by HBO.
For more on Warner Bros., HBO, and HBO Max, check out these stories:
Netflix revealed a brief but beguiling new teaser for Squid Game and a letter from creator Hwang Dong-hyuk, who teases some season two character reveals. These are the kind of actual details we’ve been waiting for.
You’re well aware by now that Squid Game‘s first season was an international sensation, so there’s been a lot of interest, and speculation, about what Hwang Dong-hyuk would do for season two. Hwang has been hard at work writing the follow-up, and it must have been a whirlwind experience coming on the heels of a first season that took him 12-years to get made. Once Netflix made season two official, we’ve been waiting with bated breath to find out something, anything, about where season two would take us. Now we’ve got some details, and some are better than none.
First, Netflix revealed this animated teaser, which is a close-up of the exceedingly unsettling giant doll that featured so lethally in one of Squid Game‘s twisted takes on a children’s game. In the episode that features this now-iconic giant doll, who is an animatronic version of Young-hee, a popular character in Korean kid’s textbooks, it’s during a game of “Red Light, Green Light.” The rules are simple, when the game leader calls out “green light,” everyone can dash towards the finish line. When the leader calls out “red light,” everyone must freeze. If you’re caught moving, you’re out. In Squid Game, if you were caught moving, you were more than out, as you’re well aware by now.
Then Netflix revealed the letter that Hwang Dong-hyuk wrote for fans. We’ve known that Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) would be returning considering he was the sole survivor of the first games. We also were pretty sure that Front Man (Lee Byung-hun), the operator of the game, would be back. Now we know that there’s a third possible returnee, the slapping man (a fan favorite even though he had a small role), played by Korean star Gong Yoo. He was the recruiter who convinced Gi-hun to participate in the games in the first place over the card-flipping game of ddakji.
Hwang also teased a new threat—Young-hee’s boyfriend, Cheol-su.
