“The Wheel of Time” Cinematographer David Moxness on Lensing Amazon’s Lush Fantasy Epic

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Amazon Prime’s sprawling sci-fi saga The Wheel of Time was one of the streamer’s big hits in 2021, and also one of its biggest swings. Adapted from Robert Jordan’s sweeping fantasy novels (14 in all), The Wheel of Time arrived on Prime and swiftly became the most-watched series premiere of 2021 and one of the top 5 series launches for Prime Video, ever. The interest stemmed from the love for Jordan’s source material, but it was maintained by the level of craft that went into nailing the adaptation.

One of the keys to the series’ success was cinematographer David Moxness, who helped give creator Rafe Judkins’ The Wheel of Time an appropriately sumptuous visual palette. The story is centered on the fateful journey of Moiraine Damodred (Rosamund Pike), a member of the Aes Sedai, an all-female order of enchanters with magical abilities to spare. Moiraine, as is the wont of many fantasy protagonists before her (looking at you, Bilbo and Frodo), goes on a quest to Two Rivers to find the incarnation of the Dragon, a mysterious (and portentous) figure that signals the end of an age. The tricky part? Moiraine doesn’t know which one of the young locals in Two Rivers might be the Dragon.

Soon enough, Moiraine and some potential saviors are forced to flee Two Rivers and head for the Aes Sedai stronghold. It’s the journey to Aes Sedai that makes up most of season one, and there are enough twists, turns, jaw-dropping visuals, monsters, magic, and massive battles along the way to make The Wheel of Time the most satisfying post-Game of Thrones, pre–The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power epic.

We spoke to Moxness about turning the book’s descriptions of visual splendor into actual visual splendor, lighting a world lit only by fire, and managing all this while shooting in some very difficult locations.

How did you begin to conceptualize how this massive fantasy world Robert Jordan created could be adapted for the small screen?

It was a big undertaking to be sure. One of the first things I did when I found out about the series was I downloaded the audiobooks and was immediately captured by how big of a world it was. The way Robert Jordan wrote the material was so visual, with so much detail about the different characters and different worlds. I was bombarded with images in my mind about what this world was and could be. It was pretty obvious to see this was going to be a real epic.

Where did you do most of your shooting?

We were based out of Prague, where our offices, studios, and stages were there, but we shot largely out in the countryside outside of Prague. All in and around the Czech countryside, then also in Slovenia and Croatia, and we had a unit shoot some stuff in Spain. We were with such great people and shooting in the Czech Republic was amazing. The international crews from all over were fantastic. It really shows what a wonderful thing we do, technicians and artists come from all over the world, and we can all get together and come together so quickly and collaboratively.

"The Wheel of Time." Photo by Jan Thijs. Courtesy Amazon Prime.
“The Wheel of Time.” Photo by Jan Thijs. Courtesy Amazon Prime.

A lot of the series involves characters on the move in natural environments, how did you approach shooting in these challenging places?

Our characters and actors are on horses a lot, and it’s a lot more difficult to film those scenes. There are safety concerns for the actors and for the horses, and some of the journeys were quite lengthy, in terms of scene length or the length of the take. It was tricky, we used different approaches for each moment based on what type of shot we needed and the environment we were in. We were often in very mountainous or forested areas, which are difficult to work in during the best of times. We had a large electric ATV-type of vehicle that we rigged and mounted the camera on and used that to track our characters. Sometimes we’d use a cable cam strung between trees to follow along, and other times we’d use a Steadicam operator on the ground tracking along with them. It all depended on the shot. It’s amazing the technology that exists now, and we have skilled technicians to rig those kinds of techniques.

Rosamund Pike is Moiraine Damodred in "The Wheel of Time." Photo by Jan Thijs. Courtesy Amazon Prime.
Rosamund Pike is Moiraine Damodred in “The Wheel of Time.” Photo by Jan Thijs. Courtesy Amazon Prime.

Tell me a bit about some of the techniques you deployed to capture what’s arguably one of the most ambitiously shot series since Game of Thrones?

One piece of technology was a high-speed BOLT motion control sequence, which allows for high camera rotations for one sequence. It’s a motion-controlled arm system that goes on a set of rails like a dolly track, and you mount the camera to the robotic arm that you can control with a computer. It’s all very quick and precise, and you can program the camera so it will go to the same exact same position every time. We used the Phantom 4K flex camera, which can go at an extremely high speed, and we used this for the battle sequence for the opening of episode seven.

 

What were some of the other most challenging sequences for you?

Obviously, the epic battle sequence in episode one. That was the first large-scale piece that we did with so many performers, and stunt performers, and it was such a lengthy sequence—it lasted all at night. It was a big undertaking. Even the epic landscape work we did in Slovenia was challenging. It was a very difficult location to get to, but very rewarding in the end. We went in on trucks, then 4X4 quads, then we walked the rest of the way. We were sort of in the Italian Alps, very close to the Italian border, high up in the mountains. It’s kind of like shooting an IMAX National Geographic piece. You can’t drive across a parking lot and start filming, but the reward of being able to photograph those types of areas is phenomenal. There’s a real vibe and feeling that I think comes across in the work when the environment is real. I give a lot of credit to our creators to allow us to shoot this practically in those locations. All our digital manipulation in those scenes are enhancements to extend the mountains higher and further, but all the base photography was real. I think it was a real gift to be able to do that.


The fantasy saga is set in a world without modern lighting—how did you mimic natural light?

Yeah, in our world there are no contemporary light sources, it’s all candles and flame. Much of it came down to camera and lens choice. Augmenting our camera lighting effects to blend and compliment the source the imagery was coming from, whether the source was a flame, the moon, or the sun.

L-r: Peter Franzén (Stepin) and Zoë Robbins (Nynaeve al'Meara.) Credit: Jan Thijs. Courtesy Amazon Prime.
L-r: Peter Franzén (Stepin) and Zoë Robbins (Nynaeve al’Meara.) Credit: Jan Thijs. Courtesy Amazon Prime.

Your background includes lensing for series like Smallville for the CW, Lethal Weapon on Fox, and ABC’s Whiskey Cavalier, but what was it like taking on a fantasy series of this size and scope?

I got into fantasy more as I was going. I have a pretty eclectic background. A lot of sci-fi and different things, but nothing to this scale of the fantasy genre, so that was really refreshing to dive headfirst and take on this amazing world.

On a scale of one to ten, where would you put the level of challenges filming The Wheel of Time presented?

It was an eleven. It was a big undertaking, but we had an amazing team, our writers, our creator, the cast was phenomenal, and our crew was just terrific. Everybody was on board and really dedicated But we couldn’t have done it without the strong film crew we had. I’m proud of it, we really wanted to put our own stamp on this, and one thing we wanted to do is lean into color in this show because color is a very important thing for these characters. It’s easy to get into a desaturated, cool, bluish tone to the work, but we kept colors in our palette. It’s easier said than done, but I’m very happy with where we ended up.

The Wheel of Time season one is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

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“The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” Trailer Reveals a True Epic

Sundance 2022: “Master” Cinematographer Charlotte Hornsby on the Fest’s Breakout Horror Film

Featured image: L-r: Zoë Robbins, Barney Harris, Daniel Henney, Rosamund Pike, Madeleine Madden, Marcus Rutherford, and Josha Stradowski. Courtesy Amazon Prime.

Getting Intentional With Jeanne Mau, SVP of TV Programming Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at NBCUniversal

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Jeanne Mau joined NBCUniversal only seven months ago, in a new position that was tailor-made for her skill set and experience. The former Senior Vice President of Global Inclusion at ViacomCBS is now NBCUniversal’s Senior Vice President of TV Programming Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. Mau’s position has her overseeing diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives across NBCU’s vast television and streaming brands. It’s a thrilling opportunity for someone who has been doing the work for 20-years. 

“It’s a little like running a start-up,” Mau says about the new role. “It’s really about listening and learning, and figuring out where some of the blind spots are and how to lean in and agitate some of the systems that are in place so that we can enact meaningful change.”

Mau’s positioned to help NBCU enact meaningful change across a portfolio that includes NBC, Syfy, E!, Bravo, USA, Universal Kids, and Peacock, as well as content produced by Universal Studio Group, which comprises Universal Television, Universal Content Productions (UCP), Universal International Studios and Universal Television Alternative Studio. That’s a tremendous amount of potential reach, across a wide swath of the demographic, for Mau to tap into.

We spoke to Mau about leveraging her 20-years worth of experience in the D, E, & I space at NBCU, her feelings about the state of the industry’s efforts right now, and what keeps her optimistic about the future. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Let’s start with your current role, which NBCU recently created. Can you unpack your day-to-day for me?

Absolutely. So my role is about 7 months old, it’s like any new relationship. The biggest luxury I’ve got is I’m coming at this with D, E, & I experience, but no NBCUniversal experience, so I get this really great seat at the table to sit and listen and learn and see where we can make meaningful changes that are super intentional.

Speaking with people in your position and with your level of experience, I hear the word “intentionality” pretty consistently. Can you elaborate on that?

It’s about creating programs that have high yields. It’s about being in spaces where we can have conversations as it relates to casting and marketing and development when scripts are in the process of being made. Where I come in is with the experience of understanding that, one, let’s not do anything in haste. Let’s not feel like we have to get in front of it and make decisions quickly. It doesn’t necessarily serve the cause if we just do things with a snap reaction. Instead, how do we be intentional? Is this program to service tomorrow or to service five years from now? How do we look at inclusion from a long-term perspective where we can build equity in spaces where it’s sustainable and there’s high retention? 

How do you build those sustainable programs? 

We’re putting people and mechanisms in place so that we can yield success more than we can yield the result of whatever checking off the box is. So really it’s about strategic perspective. How do we look at what’s been working, amplify that, and tease out what’s not working? It’s saying I’m not going to put that person in that position, despite the fact that it’s going to help a number, unless I can ensure his or her success. It can never be a one-off. The one-off sets us even further back when they don’t succeed. It needs to be methodical and intentional. Sometimes it’s slower than people would like it to be, but at the end of the day, if I can build a trajectory over five years and launch three careers, that’s the game I’m in. The long game. 

A process question for you — how do you manage your days when your remit is so large?

One is to be flexible and be able to pivot. Another is always looking for feedback on how we can be better and empower the team to be better. Then it’s hiring team members who know more than I do. On my team, no one else comes from the D, E, & I space that I do, they come from unscripted, marketing, from all these different perspectives which I think makes us better. Then we figure out mechanisms to make it work for the company. And finally, ensuring that the company is aware that this department isn’t going to fix this problem, we’re going to walk alongside everyone else to fix the issue. 

That’s probably a necessary point to make, that the D, E, & I team can’t be responsible for fixing this massive, entrenched problem within our society.

How do we solve systemic racism with a department of 6 or 7 people? It’s really about how to become more collective as we approach what the challenges are and how do we support that? How do we support our teams from scripted to unscripted, from streaming to linear?

Do you feel the conversations you’ve been having throughout your career about the importance of D, E, & I have gotten easier in the last few years? Or at least that there’s less resistance to it?

I don’t know if it’s a matter of easier versus harder, but rather it’s a matter of earlier versus later. I think they’re having these conversations early on now. We want to cast somebody diverse, but we have to make sure you have mechanisms in place for hair and makeup, and writers in place that represent the stories you want to tell with the cast you just signed on. So it’s happening sooner rather than later. We still have to sell to some degree, but it’s gotten easier. 

And part of your role is getting other departments within NBCU on this same page?

Right. It shouldn’t happen in a silo, or just in my department. Companies need to be bought in and see they’ve got skin in the game, so that our creative execs, our production execs, and our casting execs are bought in early. What we’re doing in this space is trying to modify behavior—who we hire, what stories we tell, who we put in our shows, how we market a show—all of this goes back to how do we modify behavior in terms of how people do their jobs. It’s having these inclusion conversations early on in the process rather than on the back end after the show has been shot and we start to have this conversation in post-production. 

Let’s get into some of the many programs you’re spearheading. If you were to tease out a couple of the programs that you feel are emblematic of the work you do, what might they be?

The first one is the writer’s program because everything starts in that room. The stories that we’re telling will eventually dictate who we’re casting. Our writer’s program has been around for a very long time, and I picked up the reigns from Karen Horne, and now it’s about how we reimagine what this is from an onboarding perspective so we’re teaching them a lot of the soft skills in the business, like how to find an agent and manager, and really setting them up for success.

How do you do that?

We put them through a series of workshops and then staff them on shows that we believe are going to be sustainable and they’ll have two or three years of opportunities to move up within the ranks. At the end of the day, we can have writer’s programs where we’re launching careers left and right, but we want leaders who have seats at the table who can dictate what stories are told, and then can come and develop for us in five to seven years. So I’m really, really proud of what the writer’s program is and what’s going to be.

Another great program is Female Forward. We just announced that we’re partnering with Telemundo to help launch careers for two Latinx female directors who want to direct television. That’s really important, especially since we know historically directors were primarily men, so to know we’re helping launch careers for females and people of color to work in this space, sustain themselves, and eventually go on to direct pilots? That’s really important. 

How do you feel about the way things are going in this space now? I imagine you wouldn’t do this work if you didn’t feel some optimism? 

Absolutely. These roles where I get to sit at the table in order to question the system and enact change didn’t exist ten years ago. Now that they do, it informs me that companies are putting seats at the table so we can be present, make change, and figure out systems that are going to work in favor of the company, in favor of the industry, and in favor of the D, E, & I landscape. So I have to be optimistic. It’s tough enough to do the job itself, but I’m super optimistic about what we can do collectively. 

From a gender parity perspective, which is a big part of your work, do you feel the same level of optimism? 

We partnered with the Geena Davis Institute to better understand where the marketplace has been, where it is currently, and how we need to move forward. Only five or ten years ago, it was, ‘We have our 20 male directors, now we need our two women.’ Times have changed and I think having the conversations and asking the question at the front end allows you to find really great talent. You’re thinking about it comprehensively and intentionally as it relates to what directors we’re hiring, what stories we’re telling, and empowering our casting to understand that roles of leadership should be occupied by women as much as they’re occupied by men. 

This interview is part of the Motion Picture Association’s ongoing, decade-long Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion program, with many more interviews and initiatives to come. 

Featured image: Jeanne Mau. Photo Credit: Maarten de Boer/Universal Studio Group

“Game of Thrones” Prequel “House of the Dragon” Premiering in August

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HBO has revealed that their long-awaited Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon arrives on Sunday, August 21, on HBO and HBO Max. Based on George R. R. Martin’s “Fire & Blood” series, House of the Dragon will explore the rise of House Targaryen, and is set 200 years before the events of Game of Thrones. Along with the long-awaited reveal of the release date, HBO has revealed a bunch of new photos from the series.

The series comes from co-creators Ryan J. Condal and George R. R. Martin. Game of Thrones alum Miguel Sapochnik serves as co-showrunner (along with Condal) and director of the pilot and other episodes. House of the Dragon will follow those legendary dragon-lords in House Targaryen as they reign over Westeros during a contentious, dangerous time. Their internal battles will eventually end up becoming a civil war, known as the ‘Dance of Dragons.’

Check out the new images here:

Milly Alcock as Young Rhaenyra, Emily Carey as Young Alicent
Milly Alcock as Young Rhaenyra, Emily Carey as Young Alicent. Photograph by Ollie Upton/HBO
Fabien Frankel as Ser Criston Cole. Photograph by Gary Moyes/HBO
Emma D’Arcy as Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen. Photograph by Ollie Upton/HBO
Matt Smith as Prince Daemon Targaryen. Photograph by Ollie Upton/HBO
Sonoya Mizuno as Mysaria. Photograph by Ollie Upton/HBO
Rhys Ifans as Otto Hightower. Photograph by Ollie Upton/HBO
Paddy Considine as King Viserys Targaryen. Photograph by Ollie Upton/HBO
Olivia Cooke as Alicent Hightower. Photograph by Ollie Upton/HBO
Steve Toussaint as Lord Corlys Velaryon, Eve Best as Princess Rhaenys Targaryen. Photograph by Ollie Upton/HBO
Steve Toussaint as Lord Corlys Velaryon, Eve Best as Princess Rhaenys Targaryen. Photograph by Ollie Upton/HBO

Here’s the official featured cast list from HBO:

Emma D’Arcy as Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen: The king’s first-born child, she is of pure Valyrian blood, and she is a dragonrider.  Many would say that Rhaenyra was born with everything… but she was not born a man.

Matt Smith as Prince Daemon Targaryen: The younger brother to King Viserys and heir to the throne.  A peerless warrior and a dragonrider, Daemon possesses the true blood of the dragon.  But it is said that whenever a Targaryen is born, the gods toss a coin in the air…

Steve Toussaint as Lord Corlys Velaryon, “The Sea Snake”: Lord of House Velaryon, a Valyrian bloodline as old as House Targaryen.  As “The Sea Snake,” the most famed nautical adventurer in the history of Westeros, Lord Corlys built his house into a powerful seat that is even richer than the Lannisters and that claims the largest navy in the world.

Olivia Cooke as Alicent Hightower: The daughter of Otto Hightower, the Hand of the King, and the most comely woman in the Seven Kingdoms. She was raised in the Red Keep, close to the king and his innermost circle; she possesses both a courtly grace and a keen political acumen.

Rhys Ifans as Otto Hightower: The Hand of the King, Ser Otto loyally and faithfully serves both his king and his realm. As the Hand sees it, the greatest threat to the realm is the king’s brother, Daemon, and his position as heir to the throne.

Wil Johnson as Ser Vaemond Velaryon: Younger brother to Coryls Velaryon and commander in the Velaryon navy

John Macmillan as Ser Laenor Velaryon: Son of Corlys Velaryon and Rhaenys Targaryen

Savannah Steyn as Lady Laena Velayron: Daughter of Corlys Velaryon and Rhaenys Targaryen.

Theo Nate as Ser Laenor Velaryon: Son of Corlys Velaryon and Rhaenys Targaryen

For more on House of the Dragon, check out these stories:

New “House of the Dragon” Video Teases HBO Max’s “Game of Thrones” Prequel

“Game of Thrones” Prequel “House of the Dragon” Reveals First Teaser

HBO Reveals First Images From “House of The Dragon”

Featured image: Fabien Frankel as Ser Criston Cole. Photograph by Gary Moyes/HBO

How “Morbius” Production Designer Stefania Cella Creates a Brooding Vibe

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Stefania Cella has suddenly become one of Marvel’s favorite production designers, more than happy to sink her teeth into Jared Leto’s much anticipated rogue scientist saga Morbius (opening April 1). She also designed the studio’s Moon Knight (March 30) and, at the moment, Cella’s in Atlanta working on Marvel’s much-anticipated Blade reboot. 

Immersing herself in comic book IP has been “challenging,” says Cella, who’s quick to acknowledge a complete lack of experience in the superhero genre when director Daniel Espinosa first approached her about working on Morbius. “I was coming into a territory I did not know but after a little while, my fear — ‘Oh my God, do I have to do a superhero?’ — went away. No. I need to do a man. It’s like when Christopher Nolan did Batman Begins, he made him very human.”

Before catching on with Marvel nearly four years ago, Cella studied acting in her native Milan, honed her design skills alongside director Paolo Sorrentino in his Oscar-winning The Great Beauty, moved to Los Angeles, put her stamp on Johnny Depp period Mafia thriller Black Mass and took a big swing with Alexander Payne’s high concept Downsizing, which had her overseeing the construction of humongous microwave oven that made Matt Damon look like he’s ten inches tall. 

It’s a wide range of work filled with flawed characters and in that sense, Cella sees Morbius as sharing common ground with her previous films. She explains, “In making Morbius, Daniel wanted to be surrounded by people who understood what it meant for our Michael Morbius character to have doubts, to make mistakes, to be someone who’s anchored in the real world.”

Speaking from Atlanta, Cella goes deep on scouting London for New York, putting together Morbius’ spooky container ship laboratory and looking at “The Great Gatsby” as inspiration for the villain Milo (Matt Smith)’s stupendous Manhattan brownstone.

You’ve designed some terrific movies but nothing on the scale of Morbius. Did you feel well-suited to the superhero genre? 

The reason I was chosen to do Morbius was exactly that I had never done this before. Daniel wanted someone who wasn’t familiar with the comic book world and could be a more realistic world. Movies like Black Mass and White Boy Rick were dark in a certain way, very underground, and certainly, the films I’ve made with Paolo Sorrentino can be surreal, but they’re also very real. I think that’s why Daniel thought of me for Morbius. He wanted it to be dark but also very real.

Unlike superhero franchises that have been around for a while, this is the first Morbius movie. Did you find that appealing? 

Oh yes, because it’s a new character coming to the screen, which meant everything was going to be built [from scratch]. His place in society and where he lives, where he operates, and why – – it was all very open. I came in six months early to visualize stuff when the studio was still figuring out: “How bad is he? How dark is he?” It wasn’t like “This is it.” It was “Let’s figure it out together.”  

Dr. Michael Morbius (Jared Leto) in Columbia Pictures' MORBIUS.
Dr. Michael Morbius (Jared Leto) in Columbia Pictures’ MORBIUS.

You put together a presentation, Daniel liked it, Marvel hired you and then you wind up scouting locations in England. What was that like?

At first, it was supposed to be [filmed] somewhere in the United States. Then the producers were like “Can you please go and see if we could do it in England?” The first time I went to London in July 2018, I saw this new building near the Barbican. I fell in love with one detail in that building which carried through to the entire idea of Morbius’ lab.

What detail?

It was the tile, a very modern use of timeless old material. I didn’t want to use it without asking permission, so I went to the architect’s firm and said I want to use this detail in our movie and he went “Oh my god, I’ll give you all the pieces you want!” That’s how it works sometimes with production design. You don’t know what you’re looking for until you see it. 

Jared Leto in "Morbius." Courtesy Sony Pictures.
Jared Leto in “Morbius.” Courtesy Sony Pictures.

You found UK locations to swap in for New York City. Where did you shoot those those scenes?

We went to Manchester, which looks very much like DUMBO [Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass]. We also found a neo-classical house in England pretending to be in Greece because thank God English colonialism architecture was everywhere in Europe, including the Mediterranean, where Morbius lives as a child. Most of the time for me, going around and scouting is what makes me understand what something should look like.

That container ship where Morbius conducts his experiments looks like an intriguing environment. How did you put that together?

I went to Liverpool and asked to go inside one of these gigantic container ships. I took pictures and we built it like that at Pinewood Studios, but a little bit smaller. And for the corridor [sequences], we shot that in an old World War II battleship docked on the River Thames.

 

Morbius’ rival Milo, played by Matt Smith, has a whole villain vibe going on in his Upper East Side apartment. What did you want to express about Milo through your design?

That Milo is bored, he’s sophisticated, he collects a lot of stuff without any particular interest. He’s the Great Gatsby of our time. It’s also about this fear of dying. SPOILER ALERT: Having a terminal disease, Milo’s going around the world collecting things before he doesn’t know when he is going to die.

What inspired the décor in Milo’s home?

One day early in prep I went to the Tate Modern in London and there was this fantastic painting. It was a pink wall as if somebody took a painting away there was a faded area, but it was actually a proper art installation. So we did the walls of Milo’s apartment with all these faded areas, you might not even notice, and then we gave him this chic, go-around-the-world type of house with African pieces. 

Did you have any other references?

I looked at The Book of Chic by the famous interior designer Miles Redd, who collected all these pictures around New York. I just mashed them all together. And also, Elaine’s, the famous Manhattan restaurant, had black and red zebra [patterned] wallpaper. I used that but different colors. 

Very much a one-percenter environment. 

One percenter, yes. I went fully Vanderbilt—Anderson Cooper Vanderbilt—New York.

Your production design helps sell that dramatic showdown at the end. What was your approach there?

We went from above the city down into the belly of the city. There had been talk early on about having the ending take place at Central Park. Daniel and I were like: “What?” It just wouldn’t make sense because we wanted it well-defined, to be at night, and very dirty.

Dr. Michael Morbius (Jared Leto) in Columbia Pictures' MORBIUS.
Dr. Michael Morbius (Jared Leto) in Columbia Pictures’ MORBIUS.

In an era when green screen backgrounds play such a big role, it’s great to see so many real locations and built sets. Is that kind of physical foundation important to you as a designer?

I feel very strongly that there needs to be a balance between building things on a backlot that you can intercut with good locations. Twenty percent of the production design is about finding the right places to balance everything out. On Downsizing, we built everything, so that was my first big one, and I built a lot for Paolo. Then last year I did Moon Knight in Budapest for Marvel, which was probably the biggest [build]. But I still push to shoot on locations. We went to Jordan for Moon Knight because I don’t want to confine myself to just the soundstage. 

Working on Morbius, did you get a chance to spend time with Jared Leto?

He’s fantastic. We talked a couple of times when we were prepping but once filming begins Jared stays in character so you just need to stay away and leave him alone. I’m not the type to go over and chit-chat.

You’re in Atlanta now working on the Blade reboot. Can you talk about what you’re going for as far as the general spirit of the project? 

I don’t think I can. I don’t think I can say anything. I can’t. Except, you know, it’s Mahershala Ali. He’s going to be the coolest of the cool.

 

For more on Morbius, check out these stories:

New “Morbius” Video Promises the Official Opening of the Sony/Marvel Multiverse

New “Morbius” Look Reveals the Marvel Antihero’s First-Ever Screen Appearance

The Final “Morbius” Trailer Reveals Jared Leto’s Entrance Into the Spider-Man Universe

New “Morbius” Video Reveals Jared Leto’s Vampire Antihero

 

Featured image: Dr. Michael Morbius (Jared Leto) in Columbia Pictures’ MORBIUS.

New “House of the Dragon” Video Teases HBO Max’s “Game of Thrones” Prequel

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A new short video revealed by HBO Max teases their hotly-anticipated Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon. “Gods, kings, fire, and blood” we hear over the images of some of the series’ key players, including Paddy Considine’s King Viserys Targaryen, Matt Smith’s Prince Daemon Targaryen, Olivia Cooke’s Alicent Hightower, and Rhys Ifans’ Otto Hightower. These are the same words we heard in the first teaser, which gave us a glimpse of the first Game of Thrones spinoff to make it through production.

House of the Dragon focuses on House Targaryen some 200-years before the events in the flagship series and will track how the dragon-lords ended up conquering Westeros. This series promises, among other things, as much palace intrigue as you can fit into a single show, centered as it is on one of the most potent, unstable lineages in “A Song of Ice and Fire” author George R. R. Martin’s massive realm. 

The series comes from co-creators Ryan J. Condal and George R. R. Martin, with Game of Thrones alum Miguel Sapochnik serving as co-showrunner (along with Condal) and director of the pilot and other episodes. House of the Dragon will explore House Targaryen as they reign over Westeros in a contentious, dangerous time. Their internal battles will eventually end up becoming a civil war, known as the ‘Dance of Dragons.’

House of the Dragon comes to HBO Max in 2022. Check out the new video below:

Here’s the official featured cast list from HBO:

Emma D’Arcy as Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen: The king’s first-born child, she is of pure Valyrian blood, and she is a dragonrider.  Many would say that Rhaenyra was born with everything… but she was not born a man.

Matt Smith as Prince Daemon Targaryen: The younger brother to King Viserys and heir to the throne.  A peerless warrior and a dragonrider, Daemon possesses the true blood of the dragon.  But it is said that whenever a Targaryen is born, the gods toss a coin in the air…

Steve Toussaint as Lord Corlys Velaryon, “The Sea Snake”: Lord of House Velaryon, a Valyrian bloodline as old as House Targaryen.  As “The Sea Snake,” the most famed nautical adventurer in the history of Westeros, Lord Corlys built his house into a powerful seat that is even richer than the Lannisters and that claims the largest navy in the world.

Olivia Cooke as Alicent Hightower: The daughter of Otto Hightower, the Hand of the King, and the most comely woman in the Seven Kingdoms. She was raised in the Red Keep, close to the king and his innermost circle; she possesses both a courtly grace and a keen political acumen.

Rhys Ifans as Otto Hightower: The Hand of the King, Ser Otto loyally and faithfully serves both his king and his realm. As the Hand sees it, the greatest threat to the realm is the king’s brother, Daemon, and his position as heir to the throne.

Wil Johnson as Ser Vaemond Velaryon: Younger brother to Coryls Velaryon and commander in the Velaryon navy

John Macmillan as Ser Laenor Velaryon: Son of Corlys Velaryon and Rhaenys Targaryen

Savannah Steyn as Lady Laena Velayron: Daughter of Corlys Velaryon and Rhaenys Targaryen.

Theo Nate as Ser Laenor Velaryon: Son of Corlys Velaryon and Rhaenys Targaryen

For more on Game of Thrones spinoffs, check out these stories:

“Game of Thrones” Prequel “House of the Dragon” Reveals First Teaser

HBO Reveals First Images From “House of The Dragon”

An Animated “Game of Thrones” Series Under Consideration at HBO Max

“Game of Thrones” Prequel “Tales of Dunk and Egg” in Development at HBO

Featured image: Emma D’Arcy as “Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen” and Matt Smith as “Prince Daemon Targaryen”. Photograph by Ollie Upton/HBO

An “It” Prequel Series May Haunt HBO Max

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Pennywise the Clown may be coming into your living room. Variety has confirmed that an It prequel series is in the works at HBO Max, currently titled Welcome to Derry. The series will be set in the 1960s and lead up to the events in director Andy Muschietti’s 2017 film It: Part One, which itself was based on Stephen King’s sprawling, massively influential horror novel.

Welcome to Derry will be a Pennywise origin story, showing us how the supernatural, psychopathic clown came to be. Muschietti, who directed both of the recent, critically and commercially successful It films will executive produce alongside Barbara Muschiett and Jason Fuchs. Variety writes that the Muschiettis and Fuchs developed Welcome to Derry‘s story and that Fuchs will pen the script, with Andy Muschietti directing the first episode if HBO Max greenlights the series.

Welcome to Derry could become another example of HBO Max creating a series based on a big Warner Bros. film franchise. The streaming service is currently in production on a series starring Colin Farrell as the Penguin, the role he recently played in WB’s massively successful The Batman from director Matt Reeves. Then there’s another HBO Max series in the work based on Denis Villeneuve’s Oscar-winning Dune, centered on the mysterious sect known as the Bene Gesserit who were embodied in the film by both Rebecca Ferguson’s Lady Jessica and Charlotte Rampling’s Reverend Mother Mohiam.

Muschietti’s two It films were hugely successful, grossing over $1.1 billion in total global box office, and reinvigorated interest in King’s multigenerational tale of Pennywise’s torment of Derry, Maine, and the kids, and then their adult versions, banding together to try and stop him. Now we might get a chance to see how Pennywise came to be.

For more on It, check out these stories:

How Cinematographer Checco Varese Harnessed Darkness in It: Chapter Two

It: Chapter Two Composer Benjamin Wallfisch on Scoring Pennywise’s Final Act

For more on HBO Max, check out these stories:

“Winning Time” Costume Designer Emma Potter on Making Magic With the Lakers

“Winning Time” Writer Rodney Barnes on Scripting HBO’s Fast-Breaking Lakers Series

Colin Farrell’s “The Penguin” HBO Max Series Reveals Fresh Details

“The Gilded Age” Cinematographer Manuel Billeter on Lighting Old Money & New

Featured image: Caption: BILL SKARSGÅRD as Pennywise in New Line Cinema’s horror thriller “IT CHAPTER TWO,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Brooke Palmer

Sharon Stone Will Play The Villain in DC’s “Blue Beetle”

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The DC universe has just added another legend. Sharon Stone is joining DC’s upcoming Blue Beetle as the villain, The Hollywood Reporter confirms. The last time Stone ventured into a superhero film was another DC entry, in 2004’s Catwoman starring Halle Berry. In Blue Beetle, Stone will play a new character, Victoria Kord.

Blue Beetle will be led by Cobra Kai‘s Xolo Maridueña in the title role of the teenager Jaime Reyes who becomes a superhero after he comes into contact with alien armor. The film will be helmed by Charm City Kings director Angel Manuel Soto from a script by Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer. Blue Beetle is DC’s first to star a Latino hero, and will be one of Warner Bros. big releases in 2023.

The Wrap has also confirmed that Stone and Maridueña will be joined by Mayans M.C. actor Raul Max Trujillo, who will be playing Carapax the Indestructible Man. Carapax is derived from the comic book character Conrad Carapax, an archeologist who can mind-meld with a robot. Trujillo has had roles in both Sicario films after first bursting onto the scene as the main antagonist in 2006’s Apocalypto.

Blue Beetle is due on August 18, 2023.

For more on DC, Warner Bros., HBO, and HBO Max check out these stories:

“The Batman” Deleted Scene Reveals a Major Confrontation With SPOILER ALERT

Oscar-Nominated “Dune” Screenwriter Jon Spaihts on Decoding Frank Herbert’s Tome

Oscar-Nominated “Dune” DP Greig Fraser on Taming an Epic Sci-Fi Beast

“Dune” Oscar-Nominated Sound Team on Sandworms, Ornithopters & More

How “The Batman” Batsuit Designers Went Lean & Mean

“The Batman” Cinematographer Greig Fraser on Finding Light in the Darkness

Featured image: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – FEBRUARY 09: Sharon Stone attends IMDb LIVE Presented At The Elton John AIDS Foundation Academy Awards Viewing Party on February 09, 2020 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Rich Polk/Getty Images for IMDb)

Chatting With WarnerMedia’s Senior Vice President of Equity & Inclusion Karen Horne

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Karen Horne has been working to amplify the voices of underrepresented communities for more or less her entire career. WarnerMedia’s Senior Vice President of Equity and Inclusion Programs has been creating results-oriented programs across a wide swath of the entertainment, sports, and news divisions for more than two decades. “I’ve always wanted to work in this field,” Horne says of her work. “Also, I’ve never had a plan B.”

The pipeline programs Horne has implemented at WarnerMedia since 2020 alone have been crucial, yet they represent just a fraction of her body of work. Tapping her vast experience across all sectors of the media industry, Horne has been able to guide WarnerMedia’s approach to recruiting talented newcomers from communities that have historically been overlooked and provide opportunities to WarnerMedia’s vast enterprise that would have been impossible only a few years ago.

Horne’s approach goes far beyond mere funding. It’s about mentorship, first and foremost, providing invaluable access for those in the programs to top creatives working across WarnerMedia’s many divisions. Owing to the size and scope of WarnerMedia’s reach, Horne has also been able to pioneer programs that extend into areas that haven’t traditionally benefited from this kind of approach, including animation, games, news, and sports.

In the United States, there has been a major focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion across the entertainment industry — realizing the need to have our industry writ large start actually looking like our multiethnic, racially diverse country itself — which was accelerated by the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd in a four-month period in early 2020. For Horne, this has been a career-long directive, one she’s pursued at ABC, NBCUniversal, Nickelodeon, Walt Disney Studios, and more.

Thus, Horne’s uniquely positioned to provide insight into the current diversity, equity, and inclusion landscape and shed light on the importance of gender parity across all sectors of the news, sports, and entertainment world. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

I wanted to briefly start at the beginning of your career—what inspired you to get into this business?

I wanted to be a Diane Sawyer type, someone who is this huge journalist. In my senior year of college, I got a job working at ABC in New York, and I worked for ABC sports. I’m a huge sports fan and loved every minute of it. I worked for a rising star in the company who was promoted and named Executive Vice President of the network, which allowed me to work with the news division and Prime Time. Then he was asked to be president of ABC Entertainment, and he moved me from New York to Los Angeles. While working with him at ABC, I worked on all the creative sides.

And it was back then that you started the work you’ve been doing ever since? 

When he was promoted again and moved back to New York, I stayed in Los Angeles and ran a not-for-profit film organization called the Black Filmmaker Foundation. It really cemented my love for finding and nurturing new talent. During that time, I also sold and developed a series for HBO, an adult comic book adaptation of Spawn. Then, before that series premiered, I had my first child, and Disney called me about running what is now the ABC Disney Writing Fellowship and Directing programs. I was at Disney for a while, before going to Nickelodeon where I created their talent development programs. Then I went to NBCUniversal for ten and a half years. Some of the programs and initiatives we started at NBCU were considered, at that time, the gold standard in the industry. 

One of those initiatives that I’d love for you to walk me through was the creation of the Late Night Writer’s Workshop.

I’ll tell you how it started—I was actually on a panel right after the Vanity Fair article came out about David Letterman and the lack of women and diverse voices in Late Night television. During the panel, someone said that although I worked at NBCUniversal, I shouldn’t be asked about that lack of diversity, and I thought, ‘That’s right, it’s not what I do, but why not?’ I’d had tremendous success in immersing diverse voices in our Prime Time space, so why can’t I do that in Late Night? So I went to our Late Night team and HR and finance departments and said I wanted money for this, and I asked if we could do it. They said absolutely, and the work we ended up doing there really changed the landscape of Late Night television.

A lot of comedy stars have come out of that program.

I’ll give you just one name, Jenny Hagel, who does “Jokes Seth Can’t Tell” with Amber Ruffin on Late Night With Seth Meyers. She’s a gay Latina woman who came out of our program. We have people on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, we had someone who’s running The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. The changes we made by bringing women and men from underrepresented and untapped spaces have really helped. I’m super proud of it.

 

What does it feel like to have been working in this space for as long as you have and to see, now, a real, industry-wide effort on D, E, & I, especially after the murders Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd?

I say this frequently, but it’s the truth—before this was ever a part of my title, it’s always been a part of my DNA. Growing up as a young bi-racial kid in New Jersey with a single mom, I was always very proud of the fact that my Black mom raised me. It’s always been very important to me that voices who haven’t been given a seat at the table have this opportunity. I think in terms of the reaction to George Floyd’s murder and the protests after, the work that we were doing wasn’t ignited but really accelerated by it. It accelerated what our efforts at WarnerMedia were going to be and provided us an opportunity to really address systemic racism in our industry. It’s up to us to find ways to go about healing those wounds, and it’s not just about slapping another bandaid on it or slapping a quota on something. It’s really to make sure we’re going in and changing the systems and listening to our talent, understanding their viewpoint, and acting accordingly. 

WarnerMedia is a massive company with so many divisions—how do you approach your work when you have such an abundance of potential opportunities for placing people?

It’s given me the amazing opportunity to work in news, to work in sports, to work in animation, to work with networks and streaming properties, to with our theatrical teams. The work I’m doing now is just a perfect culmination of my career. My overall strategy is you have to really think about the way you do the program. I don’t want to do a program to just say we’ve done something that doesn’t have a result. So looking at our content and the equity and inclusion efforts across WarnerMedia, I wanted to look at where there was a demand in our company that we could fill and bring in more underrepresented voices. Through that, we recognized that not only do you always need entry-level writers, but it can take at least 12 years to create your own content, so we recently created a showrunner’s program that I’m super proud of. We want people to know they can not only start their careers at WarnerMedia, but they can continue to grow their careers here.

Can you describe the programs you’ve created in the animation space in particular?

We created an animated shorts program that will allow creators to have shorts produced that will have the chance to air on HBO Max. We’re also working with DC Comics to help create the Milestone Initiative. Milestone Comics was created by four black creators, and we know that comics are one of the first things that children consume, and they’re often not diverse or they’re drawn in a way that marginalizes people, especially women. So we created the Milestone Initiative that targets specifically Black writers and creators and artists, and they’ll be taught through DC how to work in our industry.

How do you feel about the state of the industry’s D, E, & I efforts in general?

I will say that I’m an eternal optimist. I always try to put myself out of work. While I’m always enthusiastic about our direction, I do feel like we live in a world that will continue to give us reason to examine the work we’re doing. I’m very happy that I work for a company that’s not just about checking a box or throwing money around. I’m adamant that the things we do for our organization launch peoples’ careers and allow them to be exposed to our creative team, whether it’s the head of HBO or HBO Max speaking to our writers. That’s more important than just throwing money at something. 

Final question, seeing how this will be published right at the end of Women’s History Month, I’m curious what your thoughts on gender parity across the industry are?

When I started there weren’t a lot of women in executive roles in our industry, or as producers or showrunners. Now, Ann Sarnoff is the head of Warner Bros. Studios, Channing Dungey is the head of Warner Bros TV,  Sarah Aubrey is the head of original content at HBO Max, Christie Haubegger, my boss, is the head of Comms and the Chief Inclusion Officer at WarnerMedia, and our current CFO is Jenny Biry. So, I look at our company alone and the gender parity is great.

I will say to you that I often feel that in our ongoing efforts towards gender parity, we can sometimes forget the need for diversity as well. So I love it when gender parity is married to those who are underrepresented. I’m happy where it’s all heading, and my hope as we look deeper into it is that we don’t forget the need within gender representation to keep bringing in those underrepresented voices who haven’t had the opportunity. It’s my job to make sure we’re hearing stories we haven’t heard before.

This interview is part of the Motion Picture Association’s ongoing, decade-long Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion program, with many more interviews and initiatives to come.

Featured image: Karen Horne. Courtesy WarnerMedia.

New “Top Gun: Maverick” Trailer Sees Tom Cruise Back in the Danger Zone

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Pete “Maverick” Mitchell might be not a young hotshot flyboy anymore, but the dude can still go Mach 4 with his hair on fire. Maverick is played, of course, by Tom Cruise, who returns to the role that made him an international superstar way back in 1986 when the original Top Gun took flight. Paramount Pictures has released a new trailer for Top Gun: Maverick, which opens with a bunch of hotshot young flyboys and girls showing off and peacocking in front of each other, just as the lads did back in 86′. It’s Monica Barbaro young pilot—call sign “Phoenix”— who asks the pertinent question; considering they’re the best of the best, “who the hell are they gonna get to teach us?” Yes, who? Well, we have one idea.

Enter Maverick, who returns to teach these young Navy hotshots a thing or two. Since we last saw Mav, he’s left the Navy and become a test pilot, eschewing what could have been a successful career of rising through the Navy ranks to remain in the place he’s most at home—a cockpit. He’s tapped by the Navy to teach these Top Gun graduates a thing or two before they take on a specialized mission “the likes of which no living pilot has ever seen.” One of those pilots has a deep, personal connection to Maverick—his name is Lt. Bradley Bradshaw (Miles Teller), call sign “Rooster,” and he’s the son of Maverick’s late friend Lt. Nick Bradshaw, better known as “Goose” (Anthony Edwards). Thus Maverick is forced to face the son of the friend he lost in Top Gun during a disastrous flight, the friend whose death he blamed himself for.

And guess who summoned Maverick back into the Navy fold? None other than Admiral Kazansky himself. If you’re struggling to place why that name is important, we’ll give you Admiral Kazansky’s call sign: “Iceman.”

Top Gun: Maverick comes from director Joseph Kosinski, based on a screenplay by Ehren Kruger, Eric Warren Singer, and Cruise’s longtime Mission: Impossible collaborator Christopher McQuarrie. The set-up ties in Maverick’s former exploits, his old wounds, his old friends, and places them all in conflict with the new crop of talent and the unusual, dangerous mission he’s there to prep them for. One imagines that by the time that mission takes place, Maverick might find himself back in the cockpit of a Navy fighter jet.

Check out the new trailer below. Top Gun: Maverick zooms into theaters on May 27.

For more films coming out from Paramount, check out these stories:

Writer/Director Jared Frieder’s Long Journey to Make “Three Months” Starring Troye Sivan

J.J. Abrams Says “Star Trek 4” Happening With Chris Pine, Zoe Saldana, Zachary Quinto & More

“Mission: Impossible 8” Will Be Tom Cruise’s Last (and Craziest)

Featured image: Tom Cruise plays Capt. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell in Top Gun: Maverick from Paramount Pictures, Skydance and Jerry Bruckheimer Films. Credit: Scott Garfield. © 2019 Paramount Pictures Corporation.

“Moon Knight” Early Reviews Highlight Fresh, Funny, & Ambitiously Unique Marvel Series

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The reviews for Marvel’s Moon Knight are starting to make their way online. One of the key takeaways thus far is that Marvel Studios has once again delivered an entirely different series, in tone and tenor, than what came before it. Beginning with WandaVision, the very first live-action series on Disney+, it’s been clear that while each new show is a card in the massive MCU deck, they are also unique specimens shaped by the talents and passions of their cast and crew. WandaVision proudly bore the imprint of director Matt Shakman, who comes from the theater world, and showrunner Jac Schaeffer. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier‘s mapping of a uniquely American pathos, including intractable racism and an obsession with symbols (like Captain America, who is “supposed” to be white), was envisioned by creator Malcolm Spellman. Each series has been like this, an extension of the preoccupations and interests of its guiding lights, yet connecting to the massive Marvel universe from which its characters sprang.

This brings us to Moon Knight, starring Oscar Isaac as the mild-mannered giftshop employee Steven Grant. Unlike all the previous series that have already appeared on Disney+ which boasted characters established in MCU films, including Loki and Hawkeye, audiences haven’t seen Isaac’s Steven Grant before. Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige and the Moon Knight creative team, which includes head writer Jeremy Slater and directors Justin Benson, Mohamed Diab, and Aaron Moorhead, were relying on Isaac’s considerable chops to introduce us to a very different kind of Marvel superhero. It always seemed like this was a safe bet, and the reviews thus far bear that out.

Steven Grant suffers from Dissociative Personality Disorder, marking the first time Marvel has taken on a character with legitimate mental health issues (although it could be argued that most of their superheroes and all of their villains suffer from some form of mental health distress). Steven Grant spends his days working at the giftshop (he considers himself an amateur Egyptologist), and spends his nights chained to his bed so he doesn’t, yet again, wake up somewhere he’s not meant to be. This is because unbeknownst to Steven when the show begins, he’s also a mercenary named Marc Spector, who himself is a superhero named Moon Knight, taking his marching orders from the Egyptian god of the moon, Khonshu. It’s a doozy of a set-up, introducing a character with two personalities and three identities, a host of unique skills, and offers a crash course in Egyptian mythology to boot.

Joining Isaac are Ethan Hawke as the series’ villain, the enigmatic Arthur Harrow, May Calamawy as Lalya El-Faouly, F. Murray Abraham as the Egyptian god Khonshu, Gaspard Ulliel as Anton Mogart, and Fernanda Andrade as Wendy Spector.

So, how does Moon Knight come together as a series? Let’s take a spoiler-free stroll across the critical landscape.

Variety‘s Daniel D’Addario writes that Moon Knight is “an adventurous limited series” that has “a freshness to it that’s enticing even for those outside the fandom.”

The San Francisco Chronicle‘s Bob Strauss says that “Moon Knight is all about reveling in controlled chaos, as well as superb acting, satisfying action, meticulous production design and measured strains of comedy and horror.”

Paste‘s Terry Terrones writes that Moon Knight “perfectly blends multiple genres, with a unique mashup giving the series an eccentric vibe that audiences will love.”

Empire‘s James Dyer writes that the series is “Fresh, funny and occasionally batsh*t, Moon Knight is an MCU departure in both topic and tone, spicing the superhero formula with a cocktail of comedy-horror and a twist of old-school adventure.”

The Telegraph‘s Bejji Wilson says that “Moon Knight is both simple, and yet complicated entertainment. It works on many levels and it’s right up there with Wandavision as Marvel’s most Marvellous TV show to date.”

Sounds like a series worth exploring, even if you’re not coming into it with a working knowledge of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This is the benefit of getting someone like Isaac in the lead role, and surrounding him with such a talented cast and crew.

Moon Knight arrives on Disney+ on March 30.

For more on Moon Knight, check out these stories:

How Oscar Isaac Figured Out How to Play His “Moon Knight” Character

New “Moon Knight” Clip Reveals Ethan Hawke’s Villain Arthur Harrow

New “Moon Knight” Video Reveals Marvel’s Most Twisted New Superhero

“Moon Knight” Reveals Mind-Bending First Clip

Featured image: Oscar Isaac as Moon Knight in Marvel Studios’ MOON KNIGHT. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. ©Marvel Studios 2022. All Rights Reserved.

Chris Hemsworth Shares “Extraction 2” Update Including Insane Helicopter Stunt

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Director Sam Hargrave and star Chris Hemsworth teamed up for one of the most satisfying action films in recent years with Extraction in 2020, a nimbly directed, relentless action-thriller that deployed Hemsworth as a brutally effective, morally adrift mercenary with the unimprovable name of Taylor Rake. The story was centered on Rake taking on a job to rescue a crime lord’s son—lucrative work, but insanely dangerous. At the end of the film, it seemed like Rake was dead (he was shot up and fell off the side of a bridge), but…then Netflix revealed the mercenary was alive and well, as was Extraction 2.

So now, Hargrave, Hemsworth, and the gang are back for the sequel, with the latter providing some timely updates. The latest news from Hemsworth? He’s wrapped his portion of filming, while the film itself has several more weeks to go. In a new video that Hemsworth posted to Instagram, we find out that one of Extraction 2‘s big set pieces involves a helicopter landing on a moving train. Considering the first film’s stunts were so exquisitely crafted (Hargrave is a former stunt coordinator himself), you can bet that the sequel will up the ante in every possible way. They’ll need to top the insane, 12-minute-long car chase in the original, which was truly one of the best action sequences of the last few years.

Check out Hemsworth’s video below. Extraction 2 is due sometime in 2022.

For more on Extraction 2 and Extraction, check out these stories:

Chris Hemsworth Teases Intense “Extraction 2” Action Scene

Makeup Artist Matteo Silvi Tries to Rough Up Chris Hemsworth in Extraction

For more on big titles on Netflix, check these out:

Oscar-Nominated “The Power of the Dog” Editor Peter Sciberras on Building Unbearable Tension

New “Stranger Things” Season 4 Images Tease Deeper, Darker Horror Vibes

Featured image: Director Sam Hargrave and Chris Hemsworth on the set of ‘Extraction.’ Photo by Jasin Boland/Netflix.

Marvel Reveals New “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” Photos

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We’ve got a fresh look at director Sam Raimi’s highly-anticipated return to Marvel moviemaking, folks. Four new images for Raimi’s upcoming Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness have arrived, revealing a few of the good Doctor’s allies in his coming battle with forces that might, at last, be beyond his control. Let the MCU experts dissect these new images for clues to the upcoming saga, which includes our first glimpse at Xochitl Gomez, an MCU newcomer playing the superhero America Chavez.

The four new shots include Doctor Strange himself (Benedict Cumberbatch, of course), Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen), Wong (Benedict Wong), and America Chavez. Each shot finds our heroes looking deeply concerned. Yet the images are a careful bunch—it’s difficult to discern anything more than their principal subject, leaving the mysterious Multiverse of Madness plot firmly in a realm beyond our current perception.

Raimi directs from a script by Michael Waldron, and we know that Multiverse of Madness will follow the epic events in Spider-Man: No Way Home, when Doctor Strange tried to do Peter Parker a solid and ended up unleashing the multiverse, with its multiple Spider-Man and bygone villains from their realms along with them. We also know, thanks to previous trailers, that Strange will be up against forces that are greater than any he’s previously faced, which is saying a lot considering the man fought Thanos.

We’re still waiting for an image of Patrick Stewart, who returns to the MCU after playing Professor X in a slew of X-Men movies and then (spoiler alert) dying in James Mangold’s taut, tense Logan. The context surrounding Stewart’s return, like just about every other part of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, is being held as a state secret.

Needless to say, people are very excited to see Raimi back directing a Marvel film. This is the man who directed the original Spider-Man trilogy and helped remake the superhero film world. We’ll share more when we know more.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness hits theaters on May 6. Check out the images below.

Xochitl Gomez in in "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness." Courtesy Marvel Studios.
Xochitl Gomez in in “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.” Courtesy Marvel Studios.
Benedict Wong in “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.” Courtesy Marvel Studios.
Elizabeth Olsen in in "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness." Courtesy Marvel Studios.
Elizabeth Olsen in in “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.” Courtesy Marvel Studios.
Benedict Cumberbatch in "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness." Courtesy Marvel Studios.
Benedict Cumberbatch in “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.” Courtesy Marvel Studios.

For more on Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, check out these stories:

“Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” Official Trailer Reveals Colossal Squid Monster

New “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” Synopsis Teases Mysterious New Villain

Director Sam Raimi on Watching “Spider-Man: No Way Home” & the Status on His “Doctor Strange 2”

Featured image: Benedict Cumberbatch in “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.” Courtesy Marvel Studios.

“CODA” Wins Best Picture at a Wild Oscars

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Well, we’d be living in a better world if the 94th Academy Awards would be remembered for CODA‘s remarkable Best Picture win. It was five years ago when we wrote about what we believed at the time was the most shocking night in Oscars history. That was when Damien Chazelle’s La La Land was announced as the Best Picture winner only for the world to find out, moments later, that actually, the real winner was Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight. It was madness—or so we thought. In case you didn’t watch last night’s Academy Awards (and are only now getting online), here’s the big thing everyone is talking about—Chris Rock made a joke about Jada Pinkett Smith, and Will Smith, her husband, walked on stage and slapped him. (After which, Smith sat back down and yelled at Rock. You can find the transcripts of those comments literally everywhere.)

This will be the talk of the town for a long, long time, and you can already find tens of thousands of tweets, hundreds (if not thousands of articles), and celebrities themselves weighing in. Let’s refocus on the actual awards, but acknowledge that the above is likely going to overshadow the winners, which is a bummer. That includes Smith himself winning a well-deserved Best Actor Oscar for his sensational performance in King Richard. Smith’s slap of Rock also came right before his fellow Philly native, Amir ‘Questlove’ Thompson, won his first Oscar for directing Summer of Soul, about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival. Questlove came on stage more or less right after the incident, and in any other moment, his moving, tear-filled speech would have had the audience rapt.

The aforementioned win for CODA, about Ruby (Emilia Jones), the only hearing child in a deaf family who finds herself having to choose between her dreams and her fears of abandoning her parents in a time of desperation, was nearly as surprising (and satisfying) as Parasite‘s epic Oscars sweep two years ago. The Apple+ film, from writer/director Siân Heder (who also won for Best Original Screenplay) and starring the iconic Marlee Matlin, was regarded as a longshot at best. Yet a few hopeful signs were there all along, like the film’s excellent cast winning best ensemble at the SAG Awards and the fact that it offered a more hopeful, less polarizing alternative to the favorite, Jane Campion’s austere, darkly gorgeous The Power of the Dog. To see the hearing audience use the applause that deaf people deploy—waving their fingers in the air—to cheer CODA‘s Best Picture win was a deeply moving moment after a night that got wildly derailed. They’d learned this technique by the time of CODA‘s big win thanks to previous wins by writer/director Heder and Troy Kotsur, the first deaf man to win an acting Oscar after he took home Best Supporting Actor.

HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA - MARCH 27: (L-R) Ariana DeBose, winner of the Actress in a Supporting Role award for ‘West Side Story’, Troy Kotsur, winner of the Actor in a Supporting Role award for ‘CODA,’ and Jessica Chastain, winner of the Actress in a Leading Role award for ‘The Eyes of Tammy Faye,’ pose in the press room at the 94th Annual Academy Awards at Hollywood and Highland on March 27, 2022 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by David Livingston/Getty Images )
HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA – MARCH 27: (L-R) Ariana DeBose, winner of the Actress in a Supporting Role award for ‘West Side Story’, Troy Kotsur, winner of the Actor in a Supporting Role award for ‘CODA,’ and Jessica Chastain, winner of the Actress in a Leading Role award for ‘The Eyes of Tammy Faye,’ pose in the press room at the 94th Annual Academy Awards at Hollywood and Highland on March 27, 2022 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by David Livingston/Getty Images )

Denis Villeneuve’s Dune was the night’s most celebrated film, notching six wins, including for cinematographer Greig Fraser and editor Joe Walker. Jane Campion won Best Director for her haunting western The Power of the Dog, marking the first time in Oscars history the category has been won by a woman two years in a row. (Chloé Zhao won last year for Nomadland.) Campion is also the first woman to be nominated for Best Director twice.

Jessica Chastain won Best Actress for her work in The Eyes of Tammy Faye, while Ariana DeBose took home the Best Supporting Actress trophy for her dazzling turn as Anita in Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story. DeBose becomes the first openly queer woman of color to win an Oscar in any acting category.

It was a wild night, complete with historic wins, moving acceptance speeches, and nods toward Russia’s catastrophic and unprovoked war against Ukraine. It was a night where a beautifully wrought, smaller-scale film focused on a community rarely recognized in film took home the top prize. Careers were defined and changed for the better, but the sound likely ringing in everyone’s ears remains Will Smith’s shocking slap.

For the full list of winners, click here.

For more on Oscar winners and nominees, check out these interviews:

“Dune” Oscar-Nominated Sound Team on Sandworms, Ornithopters & More

How the Oscar-Nominated “tick, tick…BOOM!” Editors Evoked the Excitement of Live Theatre

Oscar-Nominated “Dune” DP Greig Fraser on Taming an Epic Sci-Fi Beast

Oscar-Nominated “Dune” Screenwriter Jon Spaihts on Decoding Frank Herbert’s Tome

Oscar-Nominated Re-Recording Sound Mixer Paul Massey on “No Time To Die”

“Flee” Director Jonas Rasmussen on His Historic Triple Oscar-Nominated Doc

Oscar-Nominated “The Power of the Dog” Editor Peter Sciberras on Building Unbearable Tension

“The Eyes of Tammy Faye” Oscar-Nominated Hair & Makeup Team on Helping Chastain Channel Faye

Featured image: HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA – MARCH 27: (L-R) Patrick Wachsberger, Eugenio Derbez, Sian Heder, Marlee Matlin, Troy Kotsur, Emilia Jones, Daniel Durant, Amy Forsyth, Philippe Rousselet, and Fabrice Gianfermi, winners of the Best Picture award for ‘CODA’, pose in the press room at the 94th Annual Academy Awards at Hollywood and Highland on March 27, 2022 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by David Livingston/Getty Images)

“The Batman” Deleted Scene Reveals a Major Confrontation With SPOILER ALERT

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Riddle me this—who might be the most unexpected person Batman (Robert Pattinson) might turn to for help in capturing the Riddler (Paul Dano)? How about the Joker (Barry Keoghan)? In a new deleted scene revealed by writer/director Matt Reeves, Batman visits Gotham’s most notorious Clown Prince of Chaos in Arkham asylum to seek his help in catching the latest psychopath to terrorize the city.

Reeves has even created his own series of riddles on this website which, if answered correctly, lead to the deleted scene.

“What’s interesting is that the reason that Joker’s in the movie is there was actually another scene that was earlier,” Reeves told IGN. “And because the movie is not an origin tale for Batman, but it’s his early days, it really is an origin tale for the Rogue’s Gallery’s characters. And for me, I think [it’s] this idea that the Joker is not yet the Joker, but they already have this relationship.”

Reeves drew from a few sources of inspiration for his take on the Joker, including the classic silent film The Man Who Laughs. He tapped expert makeup effects guru Mike Marino to help design the Joker’s look. In the end, the Joker has but a small part to play in The Batman, but as this clip shows, the relationship between Batman and the Joker is already developed and means we’ll likely be seeing more of Batman’s most twisted, troubled foil in the future.

Check out the scene here. The Batman is in theaters now.

For more on The Batman, check out these stories:

How “The Batman” Batsuit Designers Went Lean & Mean

“The Batman” Cinematographer Greig Fraser on Finding Light in the Darkness

Colin Farrell’s “The Penguin” HBO Max Series Reveals Fresh Details

“The Batman” Soars to Epic Opening Weekend

Featured image: Caption: Caption: (L-r) ROBERT PATTINSON as Batman and JEFFREY WRIGHT as Lt. James Gordon in Warner Bros. Pictures’ action adventure “THE BATMAN,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Jonathan Olley/™ & © DC Comics

“The Eyes of Tammy Faye” Oscar-Nominated Hair & Makeup Team on Helping Chastain Channel Faye

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Come this Sunday at the 94th Academy Awards ceremony, Linda Dowds, Stephanie Ingram, and Justin Raleigh may all win their first gold statuette for hair and makeup. The makeup department head, hair department head, and head special makeup effects artist, respectively, are nominated for The Eyes of Tammy Faye, the biopic starring Jessica Chastain, nominated for lead actress, and Andrew Garfield as the renowned and scandal-ridden evangelists Tammy Faye and Jim Bakker. The team has already received BAFTA and Critics Choice Awards, among other accolades.

While the film was Raleigh’s first collaboration with his teammates (and with Chastain), Dowds and Ingram have worked with the three-time Oscar contender on some 15 films and are currently helping to create her look for a miniseries about country singer Tammy Wynette. 

“It’s pretty spectacular and very surreal,” remarks Ingram about the industry nod.

The Tammy Faye project was meant to launch a few times, reveals Dowds, so the team had extra time for homework, which involved drawing from footage, album covers, articles, books, clips from the Bakkers’ PTL show, and more. Chastain had acquired rights to adapt the documentary of the same name many years earlier and had her own “Tammy treasure trove,” which she shared with them.

Jessica Chastain as "Tammy Faye Bakker" in the film THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE. Photo Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2021 20th Century Studios All Rights Reserved
Jessica Chastain as “Tammy Faye Bakker” in the film THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE. Photo Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2021 20th Century Studios All Rights Reserved

The film also necessitated research into the periods in which it is set, says Dowds. “What were the makeup colors of the time? What were the styles? What were the looks?” she points out, later noting that the documentary was particularly helpful in adding to the visual binders and boards created by the team to capture imagery and refer to their combined knowledge about the Bakkers and those years.

Among the pearls was Tammy Faye’s take on her own signature look, for which she applied mascara on fake eyelashes, embraced all things color, and used drugstore cosmetics. “She loved pinks and she was very ‘matchy-matchy,’” Dowds adds. “And then she moved into darker tones and the burgundy wigs, and the rich reds and plummy tones translated into her lips and nails, and her eyes became darker and that’s where she did her tattoo makeup. So I think overall there were three stages in the types of palette tones that I used. But she gave that to me; she showed me the way very, very much so.”

Jessica Chastain as "Tammy Faye Bakker" and Cherry Jones as "Rachel Grover" in the film THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE. Photo Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2021 20th Century Studios All Rights Reserved
Jessica Chastain as “Tammy Faye Bakker” and Cherry Jones as “Rachel Grover” in the film THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE. Photo Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2021 20th Century Studios All Rights Reserved

For Ingram, much consultation was conducted with Chastain to fashion a dozen wigs in a variety of styles, shades, and lengths that accurately represented Tammy Faye’s radically changing coifs over the years — including one wig worn underneath another that bared the character’s sparse hair. With the exception of one, all the wigs were made from human hair.

Jessica Chastain in the film THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE. Photo by Daniel C. McFadden. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2021 20th Century Studios All Rights Reserved
Jessica Chastain in the film THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE. Photo by Daniel C. McFadden. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2021 20th Century Studios All Rights Reserved

Prosthetics also played an integral role in transforming Chastain and Garfield, who portray the Bakkers in their youth and then through the ensuing decades. Raleigh had roughly six weeks to pull it all together and did a lot of the initial conceptual work using ZBrush in Photoshop, a 3D digital sculpting program. He complemented this with traditional clay sculptures to home in on the anatomical aspects for likeness and age progression.

Andrew Garfield as "Jim Bakker" and Jessica Chastain as "Tammy Faye Bakker" in the film THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE. Photo Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2021 20th Century Studios All Rights Reserved
Andrew Garfield as “Jim Bakker” and Jessica Chastain as “Tammy Faye Bakker” in the film THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE. Photo Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2021 20th Century Studios All Rights Reserved

Three stages of silicone prosthetics were required, and during the process, Raleigh would fly back and forth between the set in North Carolina and his studio in Los Angeles to make adjustments. Stage one for Chastain involved fuller cheeks, a chin appliance to fill in her dimple, and invisible tape to pull up the tip of her nose; for stage two, which addressed Tammy Faye’s weight gain, a full neck, chin piece, upper lip appliance, and larger cheeks were applied in addition to the tape on the nose; and for stage three, no nose tape, but all else from stage two as well as the back of the neck and stretch and stipple aging technique around the eyes, on the forehead and in between the furrow of the brow (and on the hands). Garfield is similarly in prosthetics throughout the film.

Jessica Chastain as "Tammy Faye Bakker" in the film THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE. Photo Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2021 20th Century Studios All Rights Reserved
Jessica Chastain as “Tammy Faye Bakker” in the film THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE. Photo Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2021 20th Century Studios All Rights Reserved

“There was really no time for hiccups at all. We had to be very efficient and very on top of it,” Raleigh says, noting that shooting in continuity was beneficial. “I think we just had the luxury of Jessica and Andrew really wanting to develop the characters in continuity and feel that progression themselves from an actor’s standpoint … whereas normally a lot of times we would be bouncing between multiple different timelines on some shows.”

Ingram agrees “it was lovely to shoot in continuity,” but for her work she adds that “in a project of this size, the only way to attack it and to be on the ready is to have everything basically approved, that Jessica be happy, and have the wigs set and prepped, ready to be used in any situation.”

Andrew Garfield as "Jim Bakker" in the film THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE. Photo Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2021 20th Century Studios All Rights Reserved
Andrew Garfield as “Jim Bakker” in the film THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE. Photo Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2021 20th Century Studios All Rights Reserved

Dowds, too, enjoyed the linear transitions and found watching Tammy Faye “grow in her world” advantageous. When it came to the evangelist’s larger-than-life appearance, Dowds references the late-night talk shows’ mocking depictions and says the team was careful not to cross the line into caricature. “We all had a lot of dialogue and conversation about how do we get there and not push to that other side. So we were very thoughtful about her all the time, and because everything flowed in that kind of following the time periods, I think it was really helpful for that.”

Jessica Chastain as "Tammy Faye Bakker" and Andrew Garfield as "Jim Bakker" in the film THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE. Photo by Daniel McFadden. © 2021 20th Century Studios All Rights Reserved
Jessica Chastain as “Tammy Faye Bakker” and Andrew Garfield as “Jim Bakker” in the film THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE. Photo by Daniel McFadden. © 2021 20th Century Studios All Rights Reserved

Time in the hair and makeup chair for the actors ranged from around two hours for stage one to around four-and-a-half hours for stage three. And while the team worked symbiotically to master the process, the task to craft the characters’ looks overtime was daunting.

“Everyone knows what Jessica and Andrew look like. Anyone can go look up what Jim and Tammy look like, so how do you create a successful and subtle, realistic version of those characters that never become garish, especially with Tammy because her makeup is so intense.” offers Raleigh.

“It was just constant communication [among the team],” he adds. “And we never wanted the makeup to pull you out of the performance. I think that was the key part. So there was always a balance and Jessica was a great guiding force in that as well, because I think she would feel like if it was too much or not enough, she would help push us and guide us.”

Tammy Faye loved her look and makeup was her trademark, emphasizes Dowds. For her, the biggest challenge “was to, one, make sure that we honored her love of makeup, we honored her love of color and the ‘matchy-matchy’” and to never go over the top. 

“The second thing was that she was a real-life person, so we wanted to be as authentic as possible and also respectful. With everything that went on around her, that she stood her ground, she said, ‘this is me.’ She was the best person that she could be every day. I believe she really was such an empathetic and incredibly strong person and stood her ground like that. I wanted every day, people to walk away [after] seeing the film [to know] that we had done everything that we could to say, ‘look at this incredible woman’ and to value her.”

 

For more interviews with Oscar nominees, check out these stories:

Oscar-Nominated “Dune” Screenwriter Jon Spaihts on Decoding Frank Herbert’s Tome

Oscar-Nominated Re-Recording Sound Mixer Paul Massey on “No Time To Die”

“Flee” Director Jonas Rasmussen on His Historic Triple Oscar-Nominated Doc

Oscar-Nominated “The Power of the Dog” Editor Peter Sciberras on Building Unbearable Tension

Featured image: Jessica Chastain in the film THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE. Photo by Daniel C. McFadden. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2021 20th Century Studios All Rights Reserved

Oscar-Nominated “The Power of the Dog” Editor Peter Sciberras on Building Unbearable Tension

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Jane Campion’s tense, character-driven Western, The Power of the Dog, is a critical favorite and Oscar frontrunner. The film’s vast landscapes (shot in New Zealand, much to the chagrin of actors not involved with the movie) are a backdrop to a slow-moving family melodrama: sweet and earnest George (Jesse Plemons) marries widowed Rose (Kirsten Dunst), bringing out the worst in Phil (Benedict Cumberbatch), George’s volatile, curiously standoffish brother. 

The brothers are also partners in a successful ranch, and Phil suspects, incorrectly, that Rose is only after their money. He belittles her, driving her to clandestine alcoholism while tormenting her son, Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee), whom he deems overly weak and effeminate. But a connection between Phil and Peter, a medical student, unexpectedly begins to sprout, even as Rose’s relationship with her churlish brother-in-law further sours. 

Based on a 1967 novel by Thomas Savage, The Power of the Dog has been a hit for Netflix in terms of both household streaming and making the annual top-ten lists of dozens of critics, and the film is a worthy follow up to Campion’s last hit, the subtle crime drama Top of the Lake. Working together on this quiet Western, Campion was “incredibly collaborative and she also totally understands her material in a way that is incredibly impressive, so it was a total joy,” Oscar-nominated film editor Peter Sciberras (The King, War Machine) told us. We got to speak with Sciberras about the stunning setting, building the film’s tension in the editing room, and the fun of cutting awkward set pieces.

 

How did the landscape inform the editing process?

We do use a few landscapes, but it was so entwined with the coverage of the characters, which was a beautiful way of framing the film amongst these epic hills and really vast fields. It was such a perfect location. I know Jane and Ari [Wegner, the film’s cinematographer] spent so long scouting that region and looking to find a place where you could look in any direction and not see anything. There was barely a building that had to be painted out, so it was kind of a perfect place in the world to film it. Jane’s just so incredible at framing characters in a landscape. I don’t think I’ve quite met anyone else who reacts to landscape in the same kind of emotional way. She really feels the atmosphere of a place in an amazing, singular way. It was just a joy for me to work in that world, her world, essentially. Jane’s films are all about atmosphere and feeling and character. A lot of the job in the edit suite is reacting to what Ari and Jane had done and making the most of that. 

THE POWER OF THE DOG BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH as PHIL BURBANK in THE POWER OF THE DOG. Cr. KIRSTY GRIFFIN/NETFLIX © 2021
THE POWER OF THE DOG BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH as PHIL BURBANK in THE POWER OF THE DOG. Cr. KIRSTY GRIFFIN/NETFLIX © 2021

When we get up and close with this group of characters, there are scenes, like the dinner party in chapter three, which are exquisitely awkward. Those must have been interesting to edit. 

I mean, Jesse Plemons is maybe the master of awkwardness. His material is so fun to cut. And it was really important to the story that these two characters were relying on Phil to be their charming, gregarious ranch-owner, because that’s not George’s role and never has been. So the awkwardness was not only fun but really crucial to show they’re relying on Phil to save the day with the governor. Even though Phil doesn’t want to be part of that world, necessarily, he’s very good at it, and George is not. And the sauce bottle moment is one of my favorite parts, when George reads the sauce bottle to break the ice with Rose when he first arrives. 

THE POWER OF THE DOG : KIRSTEN DUNST as ROSE GORDON in THE POWER OF THE DOG. Cr. KIRSTY GRIFFIN/NETFLIX © 2021
THE POWER OF THE DOG : KIRSTEN DUNST as ROSE GORDON in THE POWER OF THE DOG. Cr. KIRSTY GRIFFIN/NETFLIX © 2021

Were the chapters on the page, or did they come in later?

That came in maybe halfway through the edit. It was kind of in the script. There was a sense there were breaks. And you could definitely get a sense of the source material, the novel, in the way the script was structured, but putting the chapters in gave you a really concrete way to communicate to the audience okay, we’re switching views, we’re switching gears. For me, as the person responsible with Jane for the structure, it felt like a real turning point in the edit, where the second they went in, you could feel the film just totally embraced them. It really helped you with the amount of time that had passed, being in a new character’s point of view. It just allowed you to accept it as an audience a little easier, since it’s structurally quite an ambitious film. It also helped in crafting these beautiful peaks in tension. Every chapter ends on a high. One of them is Phil with the horse before we meet Rose with Peter in the boarding house where he’s going to school. It’s these peaks of anger, or Rose having her first drink at the dinner party after a total disaster. It’s just created these real cliffhangers. You could feel that the audience would be searching for where they were and wouldn’t be just as happy to go with what came next.

THE POWER OF THE DOG (L to R): KODI SMIT-McPHEE as PETER, BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH as PHIL BURBANK in THE POWER OF THE DOG. Cr. KIRSTY GRIFFIN/NETFLIX © 2021

Did you read Thomas Savage’s original novel, by the way?

I kind of make a point not to read it, just to deal with Jane’s interpretation of it, and not be filling in gaps or anything like that. Too much information can be bad for an editor.

How did the pacing of the film affect the editing process?

Jane and I talked all the way through about being really economical with the film and not letting the characters lead the story, and not trying to force it too much. So when there was an amazing internal landscape happening for a character, we felt like we could spend the time and just really get close to the character, get in their head. There are certain shots of Phil on the bed, listening to Rose and George next door for the first night, and that’s a long close-up, which is not that common these days. It’s quite a minimal film in that way. We really wanted to give the characters the space to be known, to strip back layers, and slowly reveal them. It felt like the pace was such a huge part of that. We never felt like we wanted to rush. Although Jane always talked about momentum building, it was more an emotional momentum and a kind of ratcheting of tension and expectation, rather than a literal cutting faster kind of momentum.

THE POWER OF THE DOG (L to R): BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH as PHIL BURBANK, JANE CAMPION (DIRECTOR,PRODUCER) in THE POWER OF THE DOG. Cr. KIRSTY GRIFFIN/NETFLIX © 2021
THE POWER OF THE DOG (L to R): BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH as PHIL BURBANK, JANE CAMPION (DIRECTOR,PRODUCER) in THE POWER OF THE DOG. Cr. KIRSTY GRIFFIN/NETFLIX © 2021

It must have been interesting working to build the tension in this film because it often seems like it was about making the audience be a little patient. 

Yeah, absolutely. And the anticipation is where the tension comes from, both the anticipation of the threat of violence with Phil’s character and the anticipation of a first kiss. It was all about prolonging these moments that were imbued with this inherent human tension and just sustaining them as long as we could and reveling in these moments. The barn scene at the end is probably one of my favorites for that reason. On the other hand, the banjo-piano duel is another one and a far different kind of tension. The tension is coming from so many places in this film, which I think is quite rare. It goes from a threat kind of tension, more in a psychological thriller way, to a romantic tension, a sexual tension, which is a whole different feeling. The way that morphs and changes, and it both happening at the same time for quite a lot of the film, it was beautiful to play with. 

THE POWER OF THE DOG (L to R): BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH as PHIL BURBANK, KODI SMIT-McPHEE as PETER in THE POWER OF THE DOG. Cr. KIRSTY GRIFFIN/NETFLIX © 2021 Cross City Films Limited/Courtesy of Netflix
THE POWER OF THE DOG (L to R): BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH as PHIL BURBANK, KODI SMIT-McPHEE as PETER in THE POWER OF THE DOG. Cr. KIRSTY GRIFFIN/NETFLIX © 2021 Cross City Films Limited/Courtesy of Netflix

 

For more on The Power of the Dog, check out these stories:

“The Power of the Dog” Costume Designer Kirsty Cameron on Highlighting Harsh Beauty

“Power of the Dog” Cinematographer Ari Wegner on Finding the Light in Jane Campion’s Mythic Western

 

Featured image: THE POWER OF THE DOG: BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH as PHIL BURBANK in THE POWER OF THE DOG. Cr. KIRSTY GRIFFIN/NETFLIX © 2021

 

 

How Oscar Isaac Figured Out How to Play His “Moon Knight” Character

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Oscar Isaac didn’t leap at the chance to join the MCU. Not that Isaac was against finding a home in the most successful interconnected film and TV universe ever created out of hand, but he’d just completed a slew of major productions. First, he wrapped Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker in 2018. Then, despite wanting to take a break, he couldn’t resist joining Denis Villeneuve’s Dune to play Duke Leo Atreides in January 2019. That led to the beginning of 2020 when he felt compelled to get on board Paul Schrader’s The Card Counter. It was after all that when the opportunity to join the MCU appeared in the fall of 2020 to play Steven Grant in Moon Knight. 

“I had so much hesitation. So much,” Isaac told The Hollywood Reporter during a press junket for Moon Knight. “I was like, ‘I just finally got out of a long time of being a part of the Star Wars universe,’ which I loved doing, but it definitely took up a lot of my time. So I was excited to get back to more character studies and smaller films.”

Yet Isaac was intrigued by Steven Grant, a very unique kind of Marvel superhero. Steven thinks of himself merely as a museum gift shop salesman leading a boring life, yet soon he discovers he’s got Dissociative Identity Disorder and actually shares a body with a mercenary named Marc Spector. Marc Spector is also Moon Knight, a superhero who takes his commands from Khonshu, the Egyptian god of the moon and vengeance. This meant Isaac would get a chance to play two characters in one, an irresistible challenge.

How did he manage the many scenes in Moon Knight when Steven and March have to contend with each other? He called a trusted source, his younger brother Michael Hernandez, an actor.

“So he came out, and he would play whichever character I wasn’t playing in the moment,” Isaac tells THR. “Without giving too much away, as it goes on, [Marc and Steven] share the screen with themselves. So, sometimes, I’d have to arrive on set and decide which character I wanted to play first. And I’d rehearse it as that character, and then I’d play the other character and give notes to my brother. And then I’d figure out the blocking, the energy, all of that stuff, and make those decisions before cameras rolled, which is tough. Usually, as an actor, the thing that you really look forward to is the unexpected. An actor across from you does something different, and you react. That’s how you find spontaneity. So that was one of the big technical challenges of the show.”

Oscar Isaac as Steven Grant/Marc Spector in Marvel Studios' MOON KNIGHT. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. ©Marvel Studios 2022. All Rights Reserved.
Oscar Isaac as Steven Grant/Marc Spector in Marvel Studios’ MOON KNIGHT. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. ©Marvel Studios 2022. All Rights Reserved.

The technical challenges proved worth the effort and gave Isaac a way into an intriguing character that found him at an unexpected time. And Isaac is hardly alone as a newbie to the MCU—he’s joined by F. Murray Abraham as Khonshu, Ethan Hawke, as the villain Arthur Harrow, and rising star May Calamawy as Layla El-Faouly. Moon Knight is directed by Mohamed Diab, Justin Benson, and Aaron Moorhead, and comes from head writer Jeremy Slater.

Moon Knight arrives on Disney+ on March 30.

For more on Moon Knight, check out these stories:

New “Moon Knight” Clip Reveals Ethan Hawke’s Villain Arthur Harrow

New “Moon Knight” Video Reveals Marvel’s Most Twisted New Superhero

“Moon Knight” Reveals Mind-Bending First Clip

Featured image: Oscar Isaac as Mr. Knight in Marvel Studios’ MOON KNIGHT, exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. ©Marvel Studios 2022. All Rights Reserved.

“Flee” Director Jonas Rasmussen on His Historic Triple Oscar-Nominated Doc

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Director Jonas Rasmussen remembers being a kid in Denmark and watching television news in 1990 when the first McDonald’s opened in Moscow, supposedly signifying a brave new world of post-Soviet capitalism. Rasmussen never could have imagined that the Afghan refugee standing just outside of the camera range would one day star in his acclaimed documentary Flee. The only movie in Oscar history to be triple-nominated in Best Foreign Language, Best Documentary, and Best Animation categories, Flee blends animation with bits of archival video footage to illustrate Amin Nawabi’s harrowing journey to freedom.

Visualized through a series of flashbacks, Amin Nawabi — not his real name — experiences a happy childhood that turns nightmarish when he escapes from Taliban-ruled Afghanistan after his father was abducted and never seen again. Today, Amin’s a successful scholar, happily married to his boyfriend and living without fear of reprisals in rural Denmark. 

Rasmussen previously produced non-fiction radio stories and shot the 2015 true crime doc What He Did. Speaking from his home in Copenhagen, the filmmaker talks about taking a deep dive into animation to transform his friend’s painful memories into a riveting documentary.

Documentary makers traditionally try to maintain some kind of “objective” distance from their subjects, but Flee succeeds in part because of your personal relationship with Amin. How did you two meet?

The first time I saw Amin, he was on a train, very well dressed so he really stood out. To my surprise, he got off the same stop. It turned out he lived with a foster family in my little village. A while later we started meeting up every morning at the bus stop on the way to school. That’s where the friendship started. 

In Flee, you appear as an animated version of yourself, the filmmaker, interviewing Amin. At one point, you even let him crash at your home when he’s going through a rough patch. It all feels very personal.

Because Amin’s story is seen from inside a friendship, we see that he’s not just a refugee. He’s also an academic, he’s also gay and a house owner and a cat lover, and all these things. I’ve known Amin for 25 years now, so it’s a much more open, nuanced conversation than you would normally get.

Amin and the director in "Flee." Courtesy Neon.
Amin and the director in “Flee.” Courtesy Neon.

Amin’s lying on a couch with his eyes closed as you question him about his traumatic past. In some ways, it’s not unlike a psychotherapy session in the United States. 

I have a background in radio documentaries and that’s where I learned this interview technique: you have your subjects lay down, close their eyes and talk in the present tense. They start to see memories and remember details in very descriptive ways so instead of just re-telling it, you’re re-living it. Amin had been carrying around all these secrets and memories for so many years, and with this way of talking, the past came alive. 

Amin in "Flee." Courtesy Neon.
Amin in “Flee.” Courtesy Neon.

Flee‘s three Academy Award nominations are pretty remarkable given that it’s the first time you’ve made an animation feature. How did you get started?

I was invited to an animation workshop in 2016 to talk about documentary ideas. I’d been thinking of making something with Amin for many years but hadn’t found the right form. [At the workshop] I realized Amin could be anonymous behind animation. He could talk about these traumatic experiences without being in the public eye or have people walk up to him and ask “What was it like being on that sinking boat?” In the end, that [animation format] is what enabled Amin to open up and say, “Okay, let’s do it.”

You recorded about 20 interviews with Amin over the span of four years. How did that raw audio material become animated?

Early in the process, we went through the broad strokes of his journey, going back and forth between memories and being in the present time. I’d write dialogue for sequences based on what he said and from there, the format together came quite early in terms of mixing archival footage with these different styles of animation.

 

Flee now and then intersperses news footage amid the animation.

The documentary footage serves as a reminder that the reason Amin had to flee is because of this world that we all belong to. I remember sitting at home watching the opening of the first McDonalds in Moscow on TV, so we included that when I learned that Amin had been there. 

Off to the side getting his watch confiscated by corrupt Moscow cops.

He was really caught up in this fight between communism and capitalism, and that was the perfect metaphor. Authenticity was the keyword for the animation. We wanted Afghanistan in the eighties to look like Afghanistan during that time, Moscow in the nineties should look nineties. So we’d see what buildings looked like and re-draw them so that the animation belongs to the same world as the actual footage. It was important to remind people that this isn’t like Disney. It’s a story about a real person and a real voice. 

Your animators developed a dark, impressionistic style to illustrate Amin’s most intense experiences. What was the idea behind that decision? 

When Amin’s voice would slow down and he’d lose words, it no longer became about what things look like — it’s about an emotion he has inside. We needed to see that expressed in this more abstract, surreal style of animation. All along it was about listening to his voice and being as supportive and real as possible. 

SPOILER ALERT

Flee uses that surreal style to illustrate a nightmarish chapter of Amin’s story when he and his family try to sneak into Sweden on a boat that starts leaking in the middle of the North Sea. They can’t swim, and suddenly a Norwegian cruiser shows up and everybody thinks they’re going to be saved. Instead. . . 

Norway calls the border patrol and Amin gets dragged to Estonia and put in this worn-down refugee camp—basically, prison. I felt almost like one of those Norwegian tourists taking photos and just passing by. And then being a young teenager in a refugee camp, not knowing if he’s going to stay there for the rest of his life. That was a real gut punch to me. I’d known him for all these years, and I had no clue.

Amin and his mother in "Flee." Courtesy Neon.
Amin and his mother in “Flee.” Courtesy Neon.

He’d gone through all of this while you’re enjoying a normal childhood in a western democracy.

When I went through all the interviews and put together the transcripts, what really hit me was how alike our lives had been up to a certain point. As kids we listened to the same music, we liked the same films. He played volleyball, I played soccer. Then all of a sudden he’s thrown into this crazy flight and goes through all these horrible things before he arrived in my hometown. And I continued playing soccer and listening to music and watching films as I’d always done. Amin’s life gave me perspective on my own story. I felt really lucky.

Amin finally arrives safe and sound in Denmark, but it’s not exactly a happy ending. Flee also deals with emotional damage suffered by Amin in the years that followed.

Amin kept all these secrets about his past which meant he had to keep a certain distance from people. He’d been my friend for 20 years when we started doing this and I had no clue how much this story affected him. That’s one of the fascinating things about human beings. They carry around so much that you never see. Amin’s successful in so many ways now, but he’ll be marked for the rest of his life by what happened to him.

How did Amin react when first saw this animated version of his life? 

It was a very emotional experience. I showed Flee to Amin at his place. We sat down and watched the film on a computer. When it was over he turned to me and said. “I can’t separate myself from the craft of making a film, so you’ll have to ask someone else if it’s good.” But when we went to Sundance with Flee, he saw how well people responded to the universality of his story. That was meaningful for him. Amin, growing up, didn’t have many movies he could relate to. Now he has a chance to share his own story with millions of refugees around the world. 

Art director Jess Nicholls and the animators at Sun Creatures Studio transformed Amin’s audio recollections with great flair. Coming from your background in radio and video-based documentaries, how did you react to their contributions? 

I was blown away. I had no experience whatsoever with animation so these artists kind of took me by the hand and taught me so much. When you see them draw something, it’s a little bit like watching people who can sing well: these beautiful things come directly out of their bodies. For me, I felt lucky to work with such amazing artists. 

For more interviews with Oscar nominees, check out these stories:

How the Oscar-Nominated “tick, tick…BOOM!” Editors Evoked the Excitement of Live Theatre

Oscar-Nominated “Dune” DP Greig Fraser on Taming an Epic Sci-Fi Beast

Oscar-Nominated “Dune” Screenwriter Jon Spaihts on Decoding Frank Herbert’s Tome

Oscar-Nominated Re-Recording Sound Mixer Paul Massey on “No Time To Die”

Featured image: Amin and Kasper in “Flee.” Courtesy Neon.

Oscar-Nominated Re-Recording Sound Mixer Paul Massey on “No Time To Die”

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“When I started out, I had no objective whatsoever to become a re-recording mixer,” says Paul Massey, who may well be the most accomplished accidental Oscar winner in history. Growing up in London, Massey played trumpet in wedding bands, worked at a recording studio and then, he says, “I made a slow, totally unintentional transition to film post-production.”

Like Ridley Scott, one of his most frequent collaborators, Massey, Academy Award winner for Bohemian Rhapsody, moves briskly from project to project. Last year alone he mixed six movies, including Summer of Soul, House of Gucci, and The Last Duel. He’s just finished juggling Morbius and The Lost City. Then there’s the 2021 blockbuster No Time to Die, which earned Massey his tenth Oscar nomination. Amid all the kudos, this soft-spoken Englishman likes to maintain an even keel and share credit where it’s due. “I certainly hope to not bring drama to the sessions,” he laughs.”There are enough characters in the movie industry that I don’t need to be one.”

Speaking to The Credits from the Fox studio lot in Los Angeles, Massey de-constructs No Time to Die‘s opening sequence, explains why he’s never met a director quite like Morbius filmmaker Daniel Espinosa and addresses why movie dialogue these days has become increasingly hard to understand.

 

You’re Oscar-nominated for No Time to Die sound along with four other guys — Simon Hayes, Oliver Tarney, James Harrison, and Mark Taylor. Within that division of labor, what exactly do you do in your capacity as a re-recording mixer?

I always work on the music and dialogue side of things while another sound remixer handles sound effects, foley, and background. After everything’s been shot, I clean up the dialogue tracks, get rid of background noises, hums, mic bumps. Then I add ADR — automated dialogue replacement — which we record in an isolated studio environment. I then have to make the ADR match the grittier, noisier, more guttural feeling of production dialogue. For a couple of weeks, I go through all of this and prepare what might be hundreds of tracks into a usable group I can then move forward into the final mix with the director and the other sound remixer. That’s when we get into the broad strokes and find ways to make these sequences work emotionally for the audience.

No Time to Die features a lot of big action intermingled with dialogue and Hans Zimmer’s score. What were your most challenging sequences to mix?

In the opening, Bond goes to a gravesite where a bomb goes off and he suffers a loss of hearing. James Harrison designed this brilliant sequence of sound effects that took the top end off of everything so it sounds like you’re underwater. This music cue from Hans [Zimmer] came in very close after the explosion but it didn’t feel right to have the music playing in full fidelity, so I had to put that music cue underwater as well.

Credit: Nicola Dove © 2019 DANJAQ, LLC AND MGM. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
James Bond (Daniel Craig) and Dr. Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux) drive through Matera, Italy in
NO TIME TO DIE, a DANJAQ and Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures film. Credit: Nicola Dove © 2019 DANJAQ, LLC AND MGM. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

How did you mix the music so it feels “underwater”?

It was mainly EQ [equalization] and compression on certain instruments to keep things initially within a very small dynamic window. Then you [gradually] open up the EQ, hopefully bringing the audience back in tune to the moment where everything’s back in full fidelity as it should be. 

That crazy chase in Norway had to be tricky as well?

Mark Taylor did a fabulous job on the sound effects when Bond and Madeleine get chased off-road by helicopters, motorbikes, and cars. It’s tremendously exciting but you can’t just let it go full bore for five or seven minutes. We carefully picked where sound effects would lead for the first half of the sequence. Then we mixed it so the sound effects diminished and the music took over as Bond got out of that situation.

 

You just finished mixing Morbius, working for the first time with director Daniel Espinosa,

He has a memory like I couldn’t believe.

Memory?

He’s the only director I’ve ever worked with where you’ll playback a reel for twenty minutes and Daniel doesn’t write a note, not one. Then, purely by memory, Daniel starts giving you notes to address, and he’ll give you the time code too! He’ll be like “At two point five minutes there’s a line of dialogue that’s getting lost.”

Wow.

You can almost see him playing back the film in his head. I’ve never met anyone like him. Daniel brought a lot of his personality to the film, which is not a typical action movie. There are a lot of character and dramatic scenes and interest between actors.

In Morbius, a medical experiment goes haywire and Jared Leto’s character develops “echolocation” abilities so he can hear like a bat. That superpower must have been interesting to work on?

Allan Holmberg, the sound supervisor, did an amazing job with the echolocation effects so the audience will understand the distances that Morbius can perceive over a city landscape from high atop a skyscraper. You can hear the sirens and cars and other activities of a large city, but what is Morbius actually honing in on?

 

This month you received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Cinema Audio Society honoring a career that began in the pre-digital era when everything was done analog, on tape. How has digital impacted your approach?

Digital is much cleaner, no question. And digital programs now have so many plug-ins, you can really put things under a microscope, which can be a massive advantage. However, I think a lot of mixes now suffer from too much of that manipulation. If the director or you as the mixer want to get into the weeds on every little frame, every second of a performance, you can, but in doing so you run the risk of flattening things out. 

If I understand correctly, you take your own digital mixer from job to job?

I own an MPC5 Harrison Console, which is their flagship model. I’ve also now purchased two smaller versions of that which I keep in flight cases. The consoles have what they call “toys,” which I am completely dependent on. Compression, noise reduction, de-essing [to remove sibilance] — everything I do to dialogue goes through my Harrison. I have one rig in a flight case here in L.A. that I move from facility to facility, and I have a smaller one in London when I’m working there.

Having a familiar work environment no matter where you travel must be nice?

The consoles enable me to be consistent in getting as much of a rich full sound as possible, even within a relatively narrow dynamic window so that you don’t lose dialogue later. They also have fantastic music plug-ins for Pro Tools that elevate the sound of drums and bass and vocals to a degree I never could have done five years ago. 

You talked earlier about how movie sound sometimes gets flattened, and that raises the issue of inaudible dialogue. Do you think it’s been getting harder to understand what actors are saying?

There’s a tendency toward dialogue being less understood. Some of it can be attributed to the flattening out of a film. Some of it might be coming from the director. But if we’re talking about streaming, there are so many formulae now that we as re-recording mixers often never even listen to [lower-resolution] downmix file conversions. We have to meet LKFS [Loudness, K-weighted, relative to full scale] LKFS standards in terms of how loud a show has to be from beginning to end. It’s a narrow window, and sometimes that can lead to a further flattening out of dialogue. I had a film a couple of years back that was completely within spec and played great on Netflix, but when I played it on my Apple TV at a different location, the bandwidth was reduced. It’s just another left turn that we don’t have control over.

That must be frustrating for filmmakers.

I know that Ridley always wants the dialogue heard very very clearly. And when I worked with [producer] Jerry Bruckheimer in the past, his notes were almost always about dialogue.

Even with all those explosions his movies are famous for?

Yes, and I applaud him for that. If you intentionally have a line of dialogue you don’t want the audience to understand, then make that clear. Don’t make it so people are going: “What did he say?” That’s something you don’t want to hear from an audience.

 

 

For more on No Time To Die, check out these stories:

“No Time To Die” Editor Tom Cross on Cutting to the Chase

“No Time To Die” Costume Designer Suttirat Anne Larlarb on Building the Apex Tuxedo

“No Time To Die” Costume Designer Suttirat Anne Larlarb on Dressing Bond’s Allies & Adversaries

Oscar-Nominated “Dune” Screenwriter Jon Spaihts on Decoding Frank Herbert’s Tome

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For Dune‘s Oscar-nominated screenwriter Jon Spaihts, the opportunity to help Denis Villeneuve find a way to crack the elusive code to adapting Frank Herbert’s magisterial, meaty sci-fi tome came at a funny time. “I’d decided I wanted to focus on a personal project that I’d direct myself, so I told my reps, ‘No new jobs,'” Spaiths says. “Then my agent called and said Denis Villeneuve is doing Dune, and I said, ‘Get me in a room as fast as possible.'”

Spaihts’s agent delivered, and within the blink of an ornithopter’s blade, he was discussing Herbert’s iconic novel with Villeneuve. “I was saddled up within a week,” Spaihts says. “Eric Roth had already come on board, and he’d done a couple of drafts, then Denis, who is a fine writer in his own right, had done a pass on that and created a hybrid draft, and that’s what I was shown. It had a clear directorial vision and was full of great stuff.”

The interstellar narrative sweep of Herbert’s “Dune” is contained within a classic coming-of-age tale, albeit one set on distant planets and amidst an ongoing power struggle between the warring Houses at the top of the cosmic pecking order. Yet fans of Herbert’s “Dune” know that nested within that coming-of-age story is a vast universe of political intrigue, a saga that leaps through space-time and concerns itself with, among other things, environmental destruction, totalitarianism, colonization, cognition, fate versus free will, and a whole lot more besides—plus sandworms.

Caption: Escape from a sandworm in Warner Bros. Pictures’ and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures
Caption: Escape from a sandworm in Warner Bros. Pictures’ and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures

“I went back to the novel and tore it apart. I  underlined, I filled the book with post-it notes until it looked like a pom-pom, then I did a clean adaptation straight from the novel of the first half,” says Spaihts. “Then, I sat that down side by side with the Roth/Villeneuve draft and imported all the big inventions from there, especially any time Denis’s muse was in full effect with visual storytelling, and created a composite draft from that.”

After that, Spaihts went on the road with Villeneuve to keep working—and working—until their draft was airtight. He calls this process, which took place first in Montreal and then in Budapest as Villeneuve and his Dune team were deep in pre-production, their “intense collage period.”

“I checked in a hotel near him, then we’d talk story in the morning, then again at lunch, then at 2 or 3 he’d go to prep on directing, and I’d keep writing until midnight or so,” Spaiths says. “Then we’d start it all over again, for a week or ten days. By that point, we could think as one mind because we were in constant contact, so I never had to guess at what he was thinking. We were, therefore, able to turn around an approved draft in the space of a week or 10 days, and we did that four or five times.”

One of the key early decisions that helped solve a major riddle for adapting Herbert’s tome was not attempting to stuff the entirety of the intergalactic machinations into a single feature-length screenplay. In fact, it might have been the key decision. Yet it was hardly as simple as cutting the book in half.

“That was a bit of a high wire act,” Spaihts says of breaking the story into two parts. “Everyone’s adaptation will require streamlining, but stuffing something as big as Dune into a single feature, you’d have to cut so much that the essence would be harmed. But, at the outset, I did not see with certainty how’d we get two satisfying arcs out of those two parts. That decision in our case had two components. One was there’s a big villain storyline that fans of the book will know, that we shoved into part two.” (Austin Butler is currently high on the list to play that villain, Feyd-Rauth Harkonnen.) “The point at which Dune: Part One ends, with Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) and Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) off into the desert, fans of the book would know we’d already have met Feyd in a bravura scene in a fighting arena. But that would have felt extraneous in the movie we were writing, so we shoved that into the future to make that character essential to part two. That makes Part One more cleanly the Greek tragedy of House Atreides, their hubris, their earnestness, and the betrayal that brings them down.”

Caption: (L-r) REBECCA FERGUSON as Lady Jessica Atreides, ZENDAYA as Chani, JAVIER BARDEM as Stilgar, and TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET as Paul Atreides in Warner Bros. Pictures’ and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary release. Photo Credit: Chiabella James
Caption: (L-r) REBECCA FERGUSON as Lady Jessica Atreides, ZENDAYA as Chani, JAVIER BARDEM as Stilgar, and TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET as Paul Atreides in Warner Bros. Pictures’ and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary release. Photo Credit: Chiabella James

The main thrust of Part One is that House Atreides, led by the honorable if hubristic Duke Leto Atreides (Oscar Isaac), is summoned by the Emperor to take up residency on the dangerous, resource-rich desert planet Arrakis to manage the crucial Spice trade. The entire Atreides clan, including the princeling Paul and his mother Lady Jessica (a member of the powerful Bene Gesserit sect), arrive on Arrakis, but it’s a set-up. They’ve displaced House Harkonnen, the brutal plunderers who had been running Arrakis and menacing and murdering the native Fremen. House Harkonnen then starts a war with House Atreides. Duke Leto is assassinated, Paul and Lady Jessica go on the run, and it’s the Fremen (and their connection to the planet’s colossal sandworms) who Paul and Jessica turn for help.

Caption: A scene from Warner Bros. Pictures’ and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures
Caption: A scene from Warner Bros. Pictures’ and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures

“There’s a very tempting breakpoint in the novel where a lapse of several years go by, and that would have been perfect to be our end of Part One, but in practice that would have meant Paul and Jessica meeting the Fremen and of starting a new life,” Spaihts says. “In the end, it felt better to break our story off at the moment where Paul is leaving the world of Great Houses and entering the world of the Fremen and the great desert.”

One potential trap that exists in the kind of intense writing process Spaihts and Villeneuve engaged in is that you might lose an early ah-ha moment in all that relentless re-writing. Spaihts was on guard for that.

“One of the prime perils is that the first drafts often have a magic to them because they’re created in isolation by a writer chasing an emotional rush, chasing a feeling, and even if they have clunky flaws, there’s a magic or music. It’s very easy to hammer that music out as you try to fix the things that are less than perfect,” he says. “The way you keep the music alive is by a difficult or essential exercise, which is exerting ownership over any changes that you have to make before you make them. Because if you’re told to do things to do the script you don’t agree with or understand, you’ll be hammering the life and passion out of the draft. You have to sit with the things you’ve been asked to do and internalize them and find a way to make them yours as if you had these ideas yourself. Then, you can pursue them with the same sense of music and thrill-seeking that drove you through the first draft. If you can do that, your work will stay good.”

Caption: (Far left) REBECCA FERGUSON as Lady Jessica in Warner Bros. Pictures’ and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary release. Photo Credit: Chiabella James
Caption: (Far left) REBECCA FERGUSON as Lady Jessica in Warner Bros. Pictures’ and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary release. Photo Credit: Chiabella James

Another challenge was figuring out which pieces of Herbert’s highly-detailed universe needed to be in the film, which could be abandoned, and how to know the difference between the two.

“There is so much world-building to be done, you could spend your entire film just doing that,” Spaihts says. “We knew we had to be economical with the lore of the world and its rules. When we felt like some scenes could feel a little bit like schoolwork, we cut. The guiding compass was the personal experience of Paul Atreides and his mother and father. It’s the heart of the book and the movie, the motor that carries this film. We could explain the guild and the monopoly on international travel and the Emperor and the Imperium and the swordmasters and on and on, but most of it isn’t essential to following the story. What we did was touch upon the mystical elements to ensure fans knew we knew, and build the movie on those bones without encumbering newcomers with all that myth.”

For those of us who haven’t read Herbert’s “Dune,” you might assume some of the most striking visual moments in the film are pulled directly from its pages, but that’s not the case. There were plenty of inspired, deliciously weird touches that were Villeneuve’s invention. One such moment is when Duke Leto, in his dying breath, bites down on a poisonous capsule in an attempt to kill the evil Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård). The Baron survives, barely, and we next finding him “clinging to the ceiling like some creepy spider,” as Spaiths describes. “That’s all Denis. Likewise, when the Baron in that decontamination chamber recuperating, that’s Denis inventing, those bare his distinctive visual touches.”

Stellan Skarsgård as the Baron in "Dune." Courtesy Warner Bros.
Stellan Skarsgård as the Baron in “Dune.” Courtesy Warner Bros.

Perhaps the greatest example of Spaihts’ work is that he was able to take a novel that is filled to the gills with internal monologues and make it visual.

“In many of the great crises of the book, the hero is very still, doing nothing,” Spaiths says. “For example, when Paul’s hand in the Pain Box, he does nothing, or when the hunter-seeker comes into his room, he can’t move or speak. In the novel, it’s an opera of interior monologues, which is impossible in cinema. We had to craft the scenes before that do the work of the interior monologues.”

In the end, Spaihts was able to help to visualize the monologues and break the novel’s many-tentacled narrative into two clean parts. The result is the rare sci-fi epic that’s both majestic and deeply personal, sweeping and yet spare.

“We were breaking off when the novel was in mid-stride, so teasing out the strands of the character journeys and defining the arc of Part One so it felt like it arrived at a conclusive moment, but still beckoned to one exciting future yet to come, was the biggest challenge,” he says.

Challenge met. Dune: Part Two begins production this summer.

For more on Dune, check out these stories:

“Dune” Oscar-Nominated Sound Team on Sandworms, Ornithopters & More

Oscar-Nominated “Dune” DP Greig Fraser on Taming an Epic Sci-Fi Beast

Oscar-Nominated “Dune” Editor Joe Walker on Finding Intimacy in a Sci-Fi Epic

“Dune” Hair & Makeup Department Head Donald Mowat’s Delightful & Disturbing Designs

Featured image: Caption: (L-r) TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET as Paul Atreides and OSCAR ISAAC as Duke Leto Atreides in Warner Bros. Pictures’ and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures