Beginning on November 12, Disney+ subscribers will be able to tap into some of the sensations of seeing a movie on the biggest screen of them all by using the streaming service’s new IMAX expanded aspect ratio. For a select list of Marvel Cinematic Universe films, the new capability will allow you to watch your favorites like Black Panther, Captain Marvel, Thor: Ragnarok, or Avengers: Endgame in the expanded ratio, creating at least an approximation of the experience of watching a Marvel film on the biggest screen available. Many Marvel films are at least partially shot with IMAX cameras, or with IMAX’s expanded aspect ratio in mind, so this ability to unlock that aspect ratio for your TV is intriguing.
The announcement is part of Disney+’s build-up to November 12, or Disney+ Day as they’re billing it, which coincides with the release of Shang-Chi and The Legend of the Ten Rings on the streaming service. What’s more, Disney+ promises a bunch of new reveals like IMAX Enhanced, with new content from not only Marvel, but Disney, Pixar, and Star Wars. If you’re curious why November 12 was chosen as Disney+ Day, it’s because it marks the day that Disney+ launched, in 2019, and will also be the day the service becomes available in South Korea and Taiwan.
Check out the IMAX Enhanced announcement video courtesy of Marvel, and check back with us throughout the week for more news on Disney+ Day.
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Sure, if you were producing a major film with a ton of expectations, you’d likely strike a positive note to journalists after seeing the first cut of said film. Yet, Black Adam producer Hiram Garcia really and truly seems hyped about the film, and his enthusiasm feels plenty warranted. Black Adam is going to introduce Dwayne Johnson to the DCEU as the titular antihero with some immense powers. There’s a reason that the current logline for the film is “The hierarchy of power in the DC Universe is about to change.” The character is that potent. We got our first glimpse of Johnson as Black Adam via this clip revealed at the most recent DC FanDome Event. Black Adam is not the guy you want to threaten, it turns out. The clip also introduced to members of the Justice Society, who will be featured in the film—Hawkman (Aldis Hodge), Doctor Fate (Pierce Brosnan), Cyclone (Quintessa Swindell), and Atom Smasher (Noah Centineo).
Back to producer Hiram Garcia—he was speaking to Colliderabout his most recent film, Red Notice, also starring Johnson, when the conversation turned to Black Adam. Garcia revealed that he had seen director Jaume Collet-Serra’s first cut. Keep in mind that Black Adam has a long way to go in post-production. Editing alone is a painstaking, and often painful, months-long process in which the editor and director will have to make some very hard choices. The film’s special effects, color correcting, score, and much more besides all need to be added and perfect. And yet, seeing this very rough initial assemblage still had Garcia thrilled. Here’s what he had to say:
“Granted, the movie’s in a stage where there are no effects done. It’s so fresh after filming. But anytime the movie is that entertaining and good in that raw of a form, it makes us very confident. So [we’re] really excited with where the movie is. Jaume has done such a good job. The movie is big. It’s fun. DJ was born to play Black Adam — [I’ve] got to tell you, if there was ever anyone who is just perfect for this role, it’s him. Then seeing him with the rest of the JSA and all those characters and Pierce [Brosnan] and Aldis [Hodge] and Quintessa [Swindell] and Noah [Centineo], it’s a ‘Pinch me’ moment. It was one of the most fun movies we’ve ever made and also just the coolest to be making something on this scale and with a character who’s going to have this much of an effect on the DC Universe. It’s really been awesome, and I think you’re really going to dig it.”
As for when we can expect a proper trailer for the film, Garcia counseled patience. “I’m not going to give a timeline yet because I don’t want to get people excited and crazy when we’re not fully locked in. But we’re in the works. It’s all in motion, but, obviously, this is a very heavy visual effects movie, so there’s a lot of visual effects that are in the pipeline right now that we’re getting going. But that first trailer is going to be good, trust me when I say that.”
Spencer (opened on Friday, November 5) casts Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana, rumored to be “cracking up” when she reluctantly joins the royal family in an enormous countryside manor for a tense Christmas holiday. The movie, directed by Pablo Larrain, describes itself as a “Fable from a true tragedy.” To that end, screenwriter Steven Knight used facts gleaned from the 1991 gathering to devise a fervid psychodrama that takes place largely inside Diana’s head. “I wanted this whole thing to feel like a fairy tale,” he says, “And most fairy tales are usually horror stories as well. Spencer is most certainly that; it’s a princess captured in a castle.”
Kristen Stewart is Princess Diana in “Spencer.” Courtesy Neon.
Nearly everything in Spencer happens in or around Sandringham Estate in rural Norfolk. Comforted only by her lovely sons and a sympathetic dresser, Diana contends with hallucinations, flashbacks, ghosts, a chilly mother-in-law (Stella Gonet), a distant husband (Jack Farthing), and bulimia as she struggles to make a life-changing decision.
Speaking last week from his home in England shortly after watching the just-completed series finale of his BAFTA-winning Peaky Blinders show, Knight explains why he doesn’t like to read books about Diana Spencer, explains the metaphorical power of an over-the-top feast, and recalls the one royal family experience that brought him to tears.
Spencer starts with food. We see trucks full of provisions getting unloaded with military precision into the castle’s gleaming kitchen. It’s an impressive spectacle, but why start with food?
I took these facts about the food being delivered by military vehicles to show the weaponization of food. Imagine Diana with her [bulimic] condition, where the whole Christmas period is a series of encounters with food? I’ve seen the menus. It is an unbelievable amount of food. And the fact that you’re weighed when you arrive at Sandringham Estate, that is truth. So without stepping away from the facts, I wanted to use all this food to establish the idea that members of the family, as a consequence of their birth, are obliged to absorb, to take, to accept. But what Diana can’t do is to take it in and keep it. She spits it out. The food is almost a metaphor for how she regards royal obligations.
The clothes in this film also play a big role in defining Diana’s situation. It’s only a three-day visit, but her bedroom has a wardrobe rack holding dozens of immaculate outfits affixed with tags telling her exactly when and where she will be wearing each gown.
Again, that is fact. From the moment she decided to marry Charles, Diana was observed by the world for what she wore — her outward appearance — so there is Diana the external, and then there is our subject, which is Diana the internal. The soul within. The clothes represent the way the external [appearance] is controlled to the nth degree, but the internal cannot be controlled. And that’s the conflict.
Kristen Stewart is Princess Diana in “Spencer.” Courtesy Neon.
Even though she’s surrounded by rich food and fabulous clothes, Diana’s miserable. Some people might ask “Why is she complaining?”
What Diana wants is freedom. WhenSally Hawkins’ character Maggie, Diana’s dresser, says to her “You’re a princess, you’ve got all this money, you’ve got pearls and everything” — that is certainly a point of view lots of people have. But, you know, be careful what you wish for.
Kristen Stewart is Princess Diana in “Spencer.” Courtesy Neon.
You give Prince Charles one great scene with Diana, but a conventional bio-pic would likely show more interactions between Diana and her husband. Why not write Prince Charles a bigger part?
I didn’t want this to be about a marriage. I wanted it to be about Diana. I wasn’t interested in establishing the characters from the rest of the family. And also, there are pitfalls to representations of Charles. I wanted to make sure that he didn’t come out of it looking like a villain, because he’s not.
Prince Charles shares bitter insights about what it means to be a royal when they’re facing each other from opposite sides of a pool table. How does his point of view impact Diana?
He reminds her, “We have to be two people.” Charles understands that his family’s been born into a position where they have obligations and duties. He tells her that when you are on view, you have no choice. You cannot behave like a human being. Charles is there for a specific reason, to move Diana’s situation forward so she’s closer to making her decision.
There must be hundreds of books about princess Diana but you didn’t read any of them. Why not?
I find that history books look for patterns and make it look as if everything that happened was inevitable. Anything that does not fit the pattern is ignored, whereas present time day-to-day life is chaotic. That’s why I wanted to get first-hand accounts of Diana’s real life. And of course, as with anybody’s real life, the facts are way weirder than what you could think of.
Kristen Stewart is Princess Diana in “Spencer.” Courtesy Neon.
So you interviewed people that knew Diana personally. Who did you speak to?
All the conversations I had were on condition of confidentially so I can’t be specific about any individuals, but with the help of a researcher and some people that I knew, I was able to track down the people I needed to speak to. I found an incredible amount of empathy for Diana among the staff. They really hoped she would succeed.
After spending time with people who spent time with Diana, what did you learn about her that you didn’t know before?
Even though Diana was born into an aristocratic family, she was not ready for the rigors of royalty and she could not absorb it. So what I got from talking to these people was being able to see Diana, the real person, without any reflected glory. You’re not getting the icon. You’re getting the human being who goes into the kitchen at two in the morning to eat a chicken drumstick.
L-r: Kristen Stewart is Princess Diana, Freddie Spry is Harry, and Jack Nielen is William in “Spencer.” Courtesy Neon.
Spencer marks the first time you’ve collaborated with the director Pablo Larrain. When you guys got together, how did you two conceptualize the story?
Neither of us wanted to do a biopic where you’re already given a beginning, middle, and end. You don’t have much freedom. What I wanted to do was to pick a relatable situation: It’s Christmas, you’re with the family, there’s tension. A lot of us know that feeling. Then you take a snapshot and hope that if you limit geography, if you limit time, you can intensely scrutinize the central character and hopefully get to the human being.
Was it exciting for you to drill into Diana’s headspace and tell this story from her point of view?
Yes, that was exactly the mission. Diana spent her life being observed. Rather than doing that, we wanted to show what she sees. We’re not looking at her. We’re looking from her and seeing the things that are going on around her. This gives you the permission to write the fable, to see the ghosts, to feel the mythical elements.
Kristen Stewart is Princess Diana in “Spencer.” Courtesy Neon.
You created the much-loved Peaky Blinders, which deals with working-class criminals from the 1920s. I wouldn’t necessarily peg you as being a royal watcher. Before you took on Spencer, had you considered writing a screenplay about Princess Diana?
It was the furthest thing from my mind. I had not been preoccupied with Princess Diana apart from the fact that when she died, on the day of the funeral I was in Canada working. I got up early, put on the TV, and watched the funeral. As a student of English-ness, which I think I am, I saw something I thought would never happen: the gates opened, the funeral cortege emerged and I saw ordinary English people wailing, sobbing in a way I didn’t think English people would ever do. With the cannons firing, it was the most powerful piece of drama. And I thought, “What has she done to make this happen to English people and why am I sitting here in a Canadian hotel room with tears in my eyes.?” So when Pablo suggested doing something about Diana, I thought, maybe this film can be a way of exploring what the hell happened.
Featured image: Kristen Stewart is Princess Diana in “Spencer.” Courtesy Neon.
How many milestones does Oscar-winning director Chloé Zhao’s Eternals contain? Many. Zhao’s millennia-spanning epic centered on the titular band of immortal beings protecting the planet against their evil siblings (of sorts) the Deviants features characters and situations never before seen in a Marvel movie. These include the first deaf superhero, Makkari (played by deaf actress Lauren Ridloff), the first gay kiss, between superhero Phastos (Brian Tyree Henry) and his husband, Ben (Haaz Sleiman), and the first South Asian superhero, Kingo (Kumail Nanjiani, who is Pakistani). These milestones are major and point to a Marvel Cinematic Universe that is becoming more diverse, in cast, crew, and narrative, as it continues its unstoppable expansion.
Eternals has finally arrived in U.S. theaters, after delays due to the pandemic, and the cast is the most diverse in Marvel history. Joining the aforementioned actors are performers from all over the world, including Mexico (Salma Hayek, who plays Ajak), Lebanon (the above mentioned Sleiman), South Korea (Don Lee, who plays Gilgamesh), India (Harish Patel, who plays Karun), Ireland (Barry Keoghan, who plays Druig), the U.K. (the British Gemma Chan and Kit Harrington, who plays Sersi and Dane Whitman, respectively, and the Scottish Richard Madden, who plays Ikaris), and the United States (Angelina Jolie, who plays Thena).
“In the beginning, I admit I was terrified,” Ridloff told ABC News, through an American Sign Language translator. “It was almost like I couldn’t get out of bed. I was so overwhelmed with the responsibility of being the first and only deaf superhero. How do I even start to represent people and a community?”
Ridloff’s character Makkari, who possesses super speed, was a muscle-bound white man in the comics. She told ABC News she found her way into the character through an epiphany she had, appropriate for Makkari’s skill set, while jogging.
“I realized when I started talking about me and when I started using pronouns like ‘I’ rather than ‘we,’ that’s how I can be my most authentic self. I can tell my own story, and I can allow people to decide if they identify and relate to me. With that understanding, I feel so much more comfortable in my role.”
Now that Eternals has finally arrived, Ridloff and the rest of the cast are officially in the Marvel Cinematic Universe canon. Considering how deftly the MCU threads its characters through its many-tentacled film and TV slate, these new, more diverse superheroes are the future.
“I’m not going to be the only deaf superhero in the MCU,” Ridloff told ABC News. “We’re going to have another one joining very shortly, which I’m thrilled about.”
Universal’s adaptation of the hit Broadway musical just landed two phenomenal stars. Wicked will be led by Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, as Elphaba and Glinda respectively, in Crazy Rich Asians director Jon M. Chu’s adaptation of the Broadway juggernaut. Wicked has been dazzling theater-goers since it debuted on Broadway in 2003, and has since become one of only three shows in history to surpass $1 billion in ticket sales.
The musical is an adaptation itself, based on the novel of the same name by Gregory Maguire. Wicked gives us a very different perspective on The Wizard of Oz, telling the story of the friendship between Elphaba, better known as the Wicked Witch of the West, and Glinda the Good Witch. The lush, nuanced world Maguire created, especially the nuanced, decidedly more complex relationship between the Wicked Witch of the West and the Good Witch, has been catnip for readers and theater fans alike. The Broadway show boasted music and lyrics from Stephen Schwarts and a book from Winnie Holzman.
The film adaptation has nabbed two ferociously talented leads. Erivo is already a film star, a two-time Oscar nominee for her work in Harriet (2019). She also made a big splash on the small screen, recently nominated for an Emmy for playing Aretha Franklin in Genius: Aretha. She also has a Grammy and a Tony on her awards shelf for her work on The Color Purple.
Her counterpart in the film is one of the biggest pop stars on the planet. Grande has two Grammys, five platinum records, and a legion of fans all by the age of 27. With 35 billion streams she is also Spotify’s most-streamed female artist of the past decade. She’s making her film debut in Adam McKay’s upcoming Don’t Look Up.
The stars shared the news on their Instagram accounts:
Featured image: L-r: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – SEPTEMBER 19: (EDITORS NOTE: Image has been converted to black and white.) Cynthia Erivo attends the 73rd Primetime Emmy Awards at L.A. LIVE on September 19, 2021 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Rich Fury/Getty Images). LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – JANUARY 26: Ariana Grande is seen at the GRAMMY Charities Signings during the 62nd Annual GRAMMY Awards at STAPLES Center on January 26, 2020 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Robin Marchant/Getty Images for The Recording Academy)
We’ve known ever since it was first revealed that writer/director Matt Reeves had a script about a younger Batman that the reboot was going to give us a different version of Gotham’s iconic Caped Crusader. As Reeves’ project came more fully to light, especially after he described it as a noir detective story, excitement grew. Then, the casting of Robert Pattinson as Bruce Wayne cemented, at least in the mind’s eye, of a very different Batman indeed. Pattison has become one of the most interesting actors of his generation, and the idea of him portraying a young, raw Batman was compelling.
Now, we have even more information about the tone and tenor of The Batman, courtesy of a new synopsis on the Warner Bros. United Kingdom website. As we’ve seen in the trailers, but here spelled out in black and white, The Batman will reveal a young Bruce Wayne just at the beginning of his work as Batman, but in a bad mental state and battling a very bad man. Crucially, The Batman isn’t in an origin story, per se. Yet, as the new synopsis makes clear, it will reveal the origins of Bruce Wayne’s torment, and why his journey takes him to places as dark as the mind of the man he’s hunting, Paul Dano’s The Riddler.
Here’s the new synopsis:
THE BATMAN is an edgy, action-packed thriller that depicts Batman in his early years, struggling to balance rage with righteousness as he investigates a disturbing mystery that has terrorized Gotham. Robert Pattinson delivers a raw, intense portrayal of Batman as a disillusioned, desperate vigilante awakened by the realization that the anger consuming him makes him no better than the ruthless serial killer he’s hunting.
That serial killer, we’ve known for a while, is Dano’s Edward Nashton, aka The Riddler. The last trailer revealed not only Batman’s dark side—we see him manhandling people with evident rage—but the worry he’s causing others, like Alfred (Andy Serkis), and Selina Kyle/Catwoman (Zoë Kravitz). Pattison can do raw and intense with the best of them, and it will be very interesting to see his Bruce Wayne contend with the anger that’s devouring him, from the murder of his parents to the ruthlessness of The Riddler.
Considering the wealth of talent on both sides of the camera, this new synopsis will only make the curious and the committed alike more excited. The Batman hits theaters on March 4, 2022.
Gal Gadot is ready to get her evil on. Deadlinescooped and Varietyconfirmed that Wonder Woman herself is in final negotiations to play the Evil Queen in Disney’s live-action adaptation of Snow White, starring opposite Rachel Zegler, the star of Steven Spielberg’s upcoming West Side Story, who was cast as the princess June. Considering Gadot became a superstar playing the thoroughly good, heroic Diana Prince, better known as Wonder Woman, getting to play an iconic, decidedly evil character will allow her to expand her range.
Disney’s live-action Snow White will be directed by Marc Webb (The Amazing Spider-Man, 500 Days of Summer), with production slated to begin in 2022. The adaptation has been in the works since 2016, alongside a few other major remakes for Disney. Among them is The Little Mermaid starring Halle Bailey and Pinocchio with Tom Hanks.
The original fairytale comes courtesy of the Brothers Grimm and is centered on an orphaned princess living with her stepmother, the Evil Queen, who tries to poison her. Luckily for Snow White, seven friends appear—dwarfs, you probably recall—to help her escape the Evil Queen’s clutches. The first time we saw the Evil Queen on screen was in Disney’s very first animated feature, back in 1937. The film depicts the Evil Queen, jealous of Snow White’s beauty, trying to trick her into eating that poisoned apple. Even folks averse to fairytales know the Evil Queen’s iconic line—”Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest of them all.” It’s one of the more deathless quotes in cinematic history, and those words will now belong to Gal Gadot.
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It was producer-director-writer Sam Mendes who introduced writer Krysty Wilson-Cairns to director-writer-producer Edgar Wright. “He thought we’d be very good friends. We’ve got a quite similar sense of humor and a passion for filmmaking,” says Wilson-Cairns, who knew Mendes from working on the Showtime series Penny Dreadful and went on to co-write with him the Oscar- and Writers Guild of America-nominated original screenplay for the WWI drama 1917.
Mendes was spot on. With their shared sensibilities, she and Wright became not just pals, but eventually co-writers themselves, penning the artsy, mind-bending psychological horror-thriller Last Night in Soho. The film follows fashion-school student Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie), as she adjusts to big-city life while studying in London. Quite fascinated by the 1960s, she is mysteriously transported each evening from her one-room apartment back to that decade, where she connects metaphysically with aspiring singer Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy). What begins as a fun and exciting escapade, however, soon turns into a frightening and evil encounter. Rounding out the cast are Matt Smith, Terence Stamp, and, in her final role, the late Diana Rigg.
The Credits chatted with Wilson-Cairns — named a Variety “Screenwriter to Watch” in 2019 and a Forbes “30 Under 30” in Hollywood and Entertainment in 2017 — about collaborating with Wright, drawing on her personal experience with Soho, and being inspired by an iconic TV show. This interview has been edited.
Edgar Wright had the idea for this film for a decade. When heapproached you about collaborating on the script, how developed was the story, and what was your first impression of it?
Well, the first time I actually heard the idea was before he approached me. We went on a night out in Soho. I used to live over a strip club in Soho, worked in a bar in Soho, and Edgar had obviously this idea set in the city part of Soho, which was my home turf. And so we went on a bar crawl and ended up at the end of the night in this sort of dingy, basement pub where he told me the story for the first time. He was telling me as just writer to writer, not necessarily as a collaborator, and I loved it. It really stayed with me. And then when I came on board, I suppose the big change really was that originally the ’60s scenes were silent with just music, and I had a sort of inkling, and Edgar agreed with it, that for the audience to fall in love with Sandie the way Ellie falls in love with Sandie, that you need to hear her speak, you need to see her charm and her charisma and how she walks across the room, her ambition. And so that was all added in the very early stages of building it.
In addition to Sandie having lines, I read that you also pushed for her to do an audition.
Yeah, I think originally there were only maybe three ’60s dream sequences and a much more traditional structure. Knowing how much fun it is to play with structure, I thought that the first act should feel longer and that the audience needed a bit more time to want to go back to the ’60s, to want to live in that world. A dream that was very positive in the early stage, and Sandie’s story was to have her career progress at the same time that Ellie’s fashion college is getting better. So to run the two in tandem just a little bit longer, I pushed for an audition scene. Edgar loved it and I think before I’d even finished the thought, he was like it’s going to be “Downtown,” because he’s got such an amazing talent for the way music can be used on screen. And it’s great, because I don’t (laughs).
How did all your personal experiences with the location help with the storytelling? And did you have to do much research on the 1960s?
There was so much research done before I actually came on board. This incredible researcher, Lucy Pardee, who actually won a BAFTA for casting, was absolutely extraordinary. She had created this document that was all about Soho in the ’60s and not necessarily, oh, this was what the 60s were like, but actually speaking with people and getting their firsthand accounts of living through that decade in Soho and living in Soho today. So that was really a tremendous document to have. And I think also having lived in Soho for a huge part of my life and having worked in that bar, The Toucan — when you become a bartender people tell you all their deep, dark secrets and you can overhear the craziest conversations — I had done weirdly a lot of research for this project just by living there all those years. Even though Soho was dangerous and quite sinister sometimes, it was sort of a place of endless possibility to me and that got under my skin. So to get to then put it on film in a way that feels very personal and real to me, just like nostalgia of my own life, it was very joyful.
Which character was more challenging and/or fun to write, Eloise or Sandie?
Oooh, you ask me to pick between my favorite children. Eloise, a lot of her stuff was based on the younger version of me and the younger version of Edgar. You know, these young adults that came to London with a dream and went to film school or art school and were so outclassed and outgunned at every stage, and felt very lost and really alone and super uncool. So I think writing her, maybe that was a bit cathartic. And I suppose Sandie — weirdly for me, I grew up watching a lot of The Avengers. I used to watch the reruns on BBC4 with my mum, and Emma Peel was the first female superhero I had ever seen and the first woman in her own right who was just powerful, enigmatic, smart, and unapologetically brilliant. I remember when I was writing Sandie I was thinking about when I was young, who did I want to be and what qualities did I admire in a woman when I was trying to find myself, wanting to emulate. I suppose I drew in a lot of that. Sadly, I’m not an Avenger. I tried really hard.
Tell me about writing for what you’ve described as “camera trickery,” since special effects are a big part of this film.
Well, the challenge in a script is to always make it about the characters and never get bogged down in technical babble. I really believe that the script should include all the visuals that are really crucial to the audience’s understanding of the characters, or anything that unlocks the characters, 1917 case in point. But with this, knowing how much the mirrors and the switching back and forth and the dream-like quality play — I mean I would never put camera tricks in the script, I never will, but Edgar took great pains to explain to me that first Café de Paris sequence, he probably had to explain that to me 40 times before I was like, oh, I get it — that lets me understand the mechanism for that shot, how it should play. Because ultimately, when you’re reading a script, I think the reader should play the film in their mind, and so I need to know where the film cuts, how it moves, where the camera’s gonna be, as much as the director does.
So how would you describe this film and its underlying themes? Edgar has talked about the drawbacks of nostalgia and that the past should not always be romanticized. And I believe you’ve talked about the exploitation of women.
It’s about both those things, and I think those things really go hand in hand. When you first think about the ’60s, you think about the swinging ’60s, you think about Princess Margaret with the Rolling Stones and Carnaby Street and the mini-skirt, and you think about it as a very progressive time for women. All these things are building and you think, wow, it would be pretty nice to go back there. But then when you actually do the research, when you see behind that rose-tinted glass, you suddenly find that there are all these issues. There’s toxic masculinity, there’s persecution of women, there’s exploitation of women. And the thing that really struck me was that all the problems that those women faced in the ’60s we still face today, some to a lesser extent. And that’s why I think making these films, making genre films, making horror films, you should really write about something that scares you.
In Oscar-winning director Chloé Zhao’s upcoming Eternals, the villains looking to demolish humanity are even older and more broadly destructive than the Mad Titan. As a new video from Marvel explains, our heroic (if scattered) Eternals are gathering to defend the planet from the Deviants. Who are the Deviants? Well, they’re an “ancient race of monstrous predators that wipe out the intelligent lifeforms on each planet they inhabit.” At least Thanos’s original plan only involved eradicating half of all life?
What’s intriguing about the Deviants is that they are like the photo negative of the Eternals—they’ve existed for just as long as those ancient immortal beings, and were created by the same cosmic quorum (so to speak), the Celestials, “the architects of all life across the universe.” The Deviants destroy, the Eternals defend, and thus you have the new, supercharged power dynamic in the MCU.
Another interesting tidbit about the battle at the heart of Eternals is that this isn’t the first time these two intergalactic siblings have clashed. The Eternals already defeated the Deviants on Earth once, and then they stayed put to protect against any future attempt by their evil twins. The Deviants were always the only thing that could get the Eternals to unite—up until their second attempt on Earth, the Eternals had to stand by as Thanos nearly obliterated everyone and everything in Avengers: Endgame.
Alas, the Deviants are back, which means the Eternals are ready to step out from the shadows.
Check out the new video below. Eternals hits theaters on November 5.
In The Harder They Fall, now streaming on Netflix, director Jeymes Samuel (who also co-wrote and scored the film) revisits the deserts, saloons, and lonely train cars of the Old West. Taking names if not the exact stories of real people from the region’s history, the film follows Nat Love (Jonathan Majors) as he searches for Rufus Buck (Idris Elba), a villain’s villain who opens the film by murdering Nat’s parents and carving a cross into the young Nat’s (Anthony Naylor Jr.) forehead.
Working with Stagecoach Mary (Zazie Beetz, here reinvented as a youthful performer) and Bass Reeves (Delroy Lindo), taking a break from his career as a lawman and still the most upright of the bunch, Nat’s group assembles in colorful, classically Western frontier towns as they track down Buck. Buck, meanwhile, has long been caught — he’s in the process of being transported west by train, under a group of white soldiers moonlighting as his jailers. But his posse is on the move to free him, with the scene comprising one of the film’s most memorable set pieces (among a number of images ready to double duty as still art). The bandit’s right hand, Trudy (Regina King) rides onto the tracks, getting into one of the more regal games of chicken ever played and forcing the train to stop. She, Cherokee Bill (LaKeith Stanfield), and the rest of the group work their way from car to car until they get their man. With Rufus freed, all hell breaks loose, and the chase begins.
Buck’s crew forcibly takes over a town. Nat’s posse robs a bank. The bad blood between the two factions climaxes with a take-no-prisoners shoot-em-out. The Harder They Fall abandons any cloyingly obvious division between bad guys and good, while making the most of classic Westerns’ scenically vast scope. The movie’s take on violent outlaw justice is set against a stunning visual backdrop, from desert set pieces and historic trains to the shiny lighting of an all-white bank, seemingly a send-up of heaven itself. We spoke with the film’s cinematographer, Mihai Malaimare Jr. (The Master, Jojo Rabbit), about working on location in New Mexico, the sources of visual inspiration he shared with director Samuel, and intentionally taking certain scenes over the top.
How did you work out what you wanted to keep from old Westerns versus aspects you to leave behind?
We had conversations really early on, Jeymes and I, and we realized we wanted to do something very different. But there’s also something to paying tribute to the genre. Not only that, there is a certain framing that you will find yourself forced into by cowboy hats and gun-belts. By using anamorphic lenses — because some of them, they fall off so much from the edges — you’re also forced into framing characters dead center. It’s something that stylistically is very Western.
The symmetry is stunning — for example, Trudy astride a horse on the train tracks. Were these images intentional, or purely a result of the framing necessitated by the lenses?
One of our main references is this amazing painter called Kadir Nelson. He actually has a painting with a soldier on a horse. For our first meeting, Jeymes brought those visual references. At the time, I didn’t know too much about Kadir Nelson, and I started looking into his work. It’s very interesting, because a lot of times I’m trying to stay away from using references from other movies. I find myself attracted to still images or paintings, and the reason is, those were made to be looked at for hours, whereas still motion was made to work in conjunction with other stills and create a sequence. Sometimes they do have the same quality, but I find it’s easier to just go through paintings and stills. We also found an amazing book called “Congo Tales.” It’s this photographer called Pieter Henket. He shot, on large format, popular tales from Congo. The lighting is quite theatrical but it has a certain beauty in it, and the color and the patterns he’s using were so similar to what we wanted to achieve for The Harder They Fall. Those were our two main references. And both Jeymes and I, we both love symmetry. So it wasn’t hard to go that route. Certain vistas, characters, horses, they all kind of push you into that symmetry, more or less.
The scenes feel vast and theatrical, but plenty of people will be watching on Netflix. Did you try to adjust the cinematic aspect for home viewing?
A little bit, but we’re trying to meet in the middle. Now, thinking about it, people have started having bigger and bigger screens, and it’ll be a 2-4-0 aspect ratio, how we intended it, even on a smaller TV. If you think that way, then it’s like, you learn to live with it. The only thing you can hope is that people won’t be watching on their phones.
Where did some of the more over-the-top lighting come from? The all-white bank comes to mind.
I remember when we saw the first sketches from Martin, our production designer, we realized how amazing it could be. When Jeymes asked for only white horses and white gravel on the ground, I remember starting to laugh so much, because I knew it would be such an amazing scene. It’s still one of my favorite sets. I think it played so well. Only afterward I realized it would be a little bit of a struggle to photograph that in harsh sunlight. But I think it was totally worth it.
Does shooting on location have an impact on your own process?
It does. The huge advantage is that when you’re on a stage, you always try to replicate reality and try to figure out how if the sun hits this window, how will it look? For us, it was easier because being on location, even on the train, and scouting those locations multiple times, you observe how the sun hits certain areas. You try to replicate it and keep it consistent, but you get a lot of ideas by having a real set in the middle of nowhere.
In certain shots, but it gets a little tougher. New Mexico is fabulous, but you’re dealing with quite a bit of wind and clouds moving really fast, so you can’t count on it for a longer scene. For small moments we did use natural light as much as possible. For the train, we observed it to light it, then we covered the sun to bring in our big lights to replicate that. I think we spent almost three days for those three train cars — we needed consistency.
THE HARDER THEY FALL: BEHIND THE SCENES with MIHAI MALAIMARE (DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY). Cr: DAVID LEE/NETFLIX
Obviously, there’s a lot of brutality. Did you frame and light this in a way to highlight it?
There were certain things that were storyboarded and really precise, like the first scene after the credits with RJ [Cyler, playing Jim Beckworth] and Edi [Gathegi, playing Bill Pickett]. That was pretty heavily storyboarded because Jeymes was particularly into the way we wanted to capture the horseback riding. One thing he told me was that it’s interesting in westerns, you usually don’t get a feeling of how dangerous it is to ride a horse. We knew we wanted to place the camera as close to the horses as possible. The storyboards help, because you start visualizing all that, including the violence and the placement of the camera, and how much you want to emphasize certain things. But for other scenes, we just watched the rehearsal, then tried to take it from there. It’s challenging but interesting. For us, we know right away that nothing is real, we’re trying to make it look real, so you kind of take yourself out of that perspective and into the audience where you see it for the first time.
More than 14-years ago, The Sopranos came to an end on June 10, 2007, in one of the most iconic finales in TV history. Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) is at Holsten’s restaurant in New Jersey, seated around a table with his family. There’s his wife Carmela (Edie Falco) and son A.J. (Robert Iler). And in comes Tony’s daughter Meadow (Jamie-Lynn Sigler), running a little late, but Tony’s thrilled to see her. The family’s all here, and Tony picks a song on the tableside jukebox to pair with the onion rings they’re sharing, Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’. on the tableside jukebox. The onion rings looked perfect, the family looks, briefly, content, yet we know this is the end of The Sopranos, and we also, perhaps for the first time, feel what it’s like to live inside Tony’s head. Every time the bell chimes signaling a new person walking through the door, every man who walks past the table (one man in a trucker cap who looks—only on your second, fourth, or eighth viewing— slightly suspicious), we feel a jolt. Even though Tony seems happy it’s nonetheless tense, because he’s a mob boss out in the open, and that’s a dangerous place for him to be. And then, in the midst of this joyous family meal, the screen cuts to black. Tony’s fate becomes a source of lasting intrigue, speculation, deep dive internet theories, and endless questions. And most of this agita, created because people don’t have a definitive answer about Tony’s fate, is directed at The Sopranos creator David Chase. Now, it seems, Chase has finally given us an answer.
Chase sat down with The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg in front of a theater full of students at Chapman University (where Feinberg now teaches) to screen and discuss The Many Saints of Newark, the Sopranos sequel that features a young Tony Soprano (Gandolfini’s son, Michael) and the family and city that shaped him. The full interview is a fascinating deep dive into how The Sopranos came to be, all the possible ways it might not have happened, and all the talented people, the late Gandolfini especially, who turned Tony Soprano into a television legend and helped make The Sopranos one of the best shows in history. But about that ending…
Feinberg asked Chase about the 2018 book “The Sopranos Sessions” by Matt Zoller Seitz and Alan Sepinwall, who at the time of the show wrote for the New Jersey Star-Ledger, the paper Tony used to read. In the book, they interview Chase and, of course, they ask him about the infamous cut to black. Here’s what Chase said at the time, “Well, I had that death scene in mind for years before.” Since then, Chase hasn’t confirmed whether this meant Tony does die at the end of the Sopranos or whether he was talking about another scene he never wrote, or whether he simply slipped. Feinberg asked him if this was a slip of the tongue.
“No,” Chase says, confirming, once and for all, that Tony does in fact get killed in Holsten’s. He goes on:
“Because the scene I had in my mind was not that scene. Nor did I think of cutting to black. I had a scene in which Tony comes back from a meeting in New York in his car. At the beginning of every show, he came from New York into New Jersey, and the last scene could be him coming from New Jersey back into New York for a meeting at which he was going to be killed.”
But Chase eventually changed his mind about the location of where Tony was going to meet his maker while he was driving his car.
“But I think I had this notion — I was driving on Ocean Park Boulevard near the airport and I saw a little restaurant. It was kind of like a shack that served breakfast. And for some reason I thought, ‘Tony should get it in a place like that.’ Why? I don’t know. That was, like, two years before.”
The shock that viewers felt at the ending, the almost pleading neediness for a definitive answer, wasn’t what really annoyed Chase, he told Feinberg. What annoyed him was that after six seasons and all those years spent with Tony Soprano, people wanted to see him die.
“They wanted to know that Tony was killed. They wanted to see him go face-down in linguini, you know? And I just thought, ‘God, you watched this guy for seven years and I know he’s a criminal. But don’t tell me you don’t love him in some way, don’t tell me you’re not on his side in some way. And now you want to see him killed? You want justice done? You’re a criminal after watching this sh*t for seven years.’ That bothered me, yeah.'”
The finale of The Sopranos was a definitive moment in American culture, the rare TV show that not only shocked viewers with its last breath but tapped into deeper needs for narrative closure and, if you agree with Chase, the ability to enjoy, even love a character as bad as Tony Soprano, but then also want to see him punished. It has maintained its hold on the broader cultural landscape ever since. The Sopranos, even after all these years, never seems far from the conversation when you talk about TV. It is, along with The Wire, considered not only one of the best shows of all time, but the show that begat the entire era of auteur television, where what you watched in your living room could be as compelling, as surprising, as beautifully shot and acted as anything on the big screen. It could make you wonder, for years, what really happened to a mobster at the very end, even if deep down you always knew.
You just needed it confirmed.
For more on The Many Saints of Newark, check out these stories:
Featured image: The Sopranos (P621) “Made In America” 03-22-2007. Director: David Chase DP: Alik Sakharov. Scene 61-63-65-67 (int) Holsten’s Diner
“The gang shows up for family dinner.” James Gandolfini (Tony Soprano), Edie Falco (Carmela), Robert Iler (Anthony Jr.). Photo Credit: Will Hart / HBO
Sony’s Spider-Man Universe is alive and biting, made evident by the official trailer for Morbius, starring Jared Leto as a doctor with a severe case of bloodlust. Morbius will soon join Venom in Sony’s expanding Spider-Man Universe (once called Sony Pictures Universe of Marvel Characters), offering audiences a potential web of interconnecting stories starring Spidey and the gang of antiheroes. In fact, Morbius makes a great Venom joke at the very end of the trailer.
Leto plays Dr. Michael Morbius, a brilliant, Nobel Prize-winning scientist who has a rare blood condition he’s been trying to cure himself of for ages. What Dr. Morbius ends up doing, however, is turning himself into a “living Vampire,” imbued with superhuman abilities but, alas, some nasty tendencies to boot. We’ve seen a few glimpses of Leto as Dr. Morbius before, but this new trailer offers the longest look yet what the good doctor’s life is like both before and after the transformation into his alter ego. The trailer muddies the water, in a good way, on just how much of an antihero Morbius will be. You’ll see a glimpse of the “Daily Bugle,” that hometown paper that often covers the exploits of Spider-Man, showing that Morbius has been arrested for “vampire murder.” We also get Jared Harris’s character asking Morbius straight up whether he’s planning on healing the world or destroying it. That question will animate Morbius.
Joining Leto and Harris are Matt Smith, Adria Arjona, Tyrese Gibson, and Michael Keaton, who is reprising his role as Spidey villain Vulture. Director Daniel Espinosa is working off a script from Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless.
Check out the trailer below. Morbius hits theaters on January 28, 2022.
For more upcoming films from Sony Pictures, check out these stories:
Yesterday we got the first trailer for The Book of Boba Fett, revealing the upcoming Disney+ series centered on the iconic bounty hunter’s return to his old hunting grounds. Now, Disney+ has released a handful of new images and a new poster, giving us a few more glimpses at Boba’s big return to Tatooine, the planet once ruled with a blubbery fist (of sorts) by Jabba the Hutt.
Teased during an end-credits scene during the finale of The Mandalorian season 2, The Book of Boba Fett will be centered Boba’s return to Tatooine, where he once made his living working forthe planet’s undisputed crime lord, Jabba. As we all know, Jabba’s been dead a long time (he was choked out by Leia in Return of the Jedi), and now Boba Fett has miraculously returned himself (here’s hoping we get a flashback to how he survived being thrown into the Sarlacc pit by Luke, also in Return of the Jedi), and he’s got some ideas for power-sharing among the surviving underworld bosses. He’ll have help in the form of mercenary Fennec Shand (Ming-Na Wen), and he’ll need it—Tatooine’s thriving crime world doesn’t look prepared to accept, or believe, the legendary bounty hunter comes in peace.
The new images tease Boba, Fennec, and the colorful cast of criminals who will populate The Book of Boba Fett—including Jennifer Beals in a new role.The series is executive produced by The Mandalorian creator Jon Favreau, directors Robert Rodriguez and Dave Filioni, and Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy. Your directors are Rodriguez, Favreau, Filoni, and Bryce Dallas Howard.
The Book of Boba Fett hits Disney+ on December 29. Check out the new images below.
Here’s the official synopsis for The Book of Boba Fett:
The Book of Boba Fett, a thrilling Star Wars adventure teased in a surprise end-credit sequence following the Season 2 finale of The Mandalorian, finds legendary bounty hunter Boba Fett and mercenary Fennec Shand navigating the galaxy’s underworld when they return to the sands of Tatooine to stake their claim on the territory once ruled by Jabba the Hutt and his crime syndicate.
The Book of Boba Fett stars Temuera Morrison and Ming-Na Wen. Jon Favreau, Dave Filoni, Robert Rodriguez, Kathleen Kennedy and Colin Wilson are the executive producers. Karen Gilchrist and Carrie Beck serve as co-executive producers, with John Bartnicki producing and John Hampian as co-producer.
The Harder They Fall, Netflix’s addition to the world of Westerns from director-writer Jeymes Samuel, is not a monochromatic throwback set on the dusty frontier. Honoring the names of historical characters like Nat Love (Jonathan Majors) and Stagecoach Mary (Zazie Beetz) while leaving most of their actual histories behind, the film is centered around a complicated, fictional rivalry between two outlaw gangs seeking revenge and vying for control of a frontier town called Redwood. It’s a period piece with a modern twist, as well as a kaleidoscopic action movie.
For costume designer Antoinette Messam, Samuel had a mandate — the costumes were very much not supposed to be a throwback. “My director was like, I’m not making a dusty, dirty cowboy movie, and I want color,” she recalls. Working with production designer Martin Whist to develop the film’s overall palette, for Messam, the costumes were like puzzle pieces to fit the distinct moods of Douglastown and Redwood, the two frontier towns where most of the action takes place. In the former, Nat pays a visit to Stagecoach Mary’s rollicking saloon, meets up with Bass Reeves (Delroy Lindo), and sets his plot against Rufus Buck (Idris Elba) in motion. Buck, meanwhile, rescued from prison and US Army soldiers by Trudy (Regina King) and the rest of their posse, is headed to Redwood, a wealthy town where he plans to take control.
In Douglastown, “I wanted you to see the African influence, Asian influence, the Native Indian influences in that town. It’s much more rustic, much more earthy,” said Messam. “And then on the flip side, the other Black town, Redwood, it’s affluent, it’s colder, it’s a merchant town. You don’t see that camaraderie as much. You see it in the saloon, but who do you see it with? Ladies of the night with the guests.” For the courtesans of each location, Messam did a deep dive into historic frontier looks. Some spent the workday in not much more than “a coat over their pantaloons and corset. Then there are others who look very refined and dressed,” she said, pointing out that the job was one of few options available to women who weren’t wives. “I tried to split it — it was important to me that these women did not look like they didn’t care about themselves.”
History and modernity also mix in the main characters’ primary looks. “In order to give a silhouette that I thought worked for this movie, I picked between 1870 and 1890, which is just the tail end of Victorian,” Messam explained, just before the era of huge sleeves on women’s dresses and men in suits instead of long frock coats came into fashion. “For the women, I wanted the lines lean. Any earlier, the skirts were too big and any later, you’d have the very definitive sleeve and high neck.” Where costumes do look contemporary modern at first glance — say, Trudy astride a horse in a long denim jacket — history comes through in the garment’s cut. “It’s just leaned out and not fussy, because [Trudy is] not a fussy character. The denim jacket is absolutely a riding coat, it’s just made out of denim,” Messam said.
Fabrics, in general, were crucial, with the costume designer and her team recreating most of the main characters’ outfits in stretch in order to accommodate the action. Even despite a no-dust mandate, dust organically made its way onto everything, thanks to primarily shooting on location in New Mexico. As for who was purpose-built versus bought, viewers might be surprised. “I got Jonathan Majors early, and he was the anchor, so we built him head to toe — hats right down to the boots,” Messam said, but other characters, like Trudy, were clad in a mix of designer and high street pieces. The film’s production started before the pandemic, stopped, and thanks to cast changes in the interim, Messam’s team wound up split between outfitting actors in Los Angeles and on set in New Mexico, with Messam doing her first-ever virtual fittings before being able to tweak garments in person.
When a couple members of Nat’s posse need to rob a bank, we see our first white Western town, here depicted in over-the-top sunlight and almost entirely white-hued set design. For the local residents, Messam’s thought was, “let’s desaturate the clothes, strip the color away, and have some texture against Martin’s stark white set.” Armed and disgruntled about being clad for the first time in women’s clothes, Cuffee (Danielle Deadwyler) pops even more in her blood-red dress.
The scene also has another function, as a visual reminder to viewers of the historically inaccurate sea of white faces they might recall from vintage Westerns. Having grown up on Westerns herself, Messam pointed out that as a kid, “back then it didn’t seem that this was weird,” given that that was all the genre offered. “Then as you get older and do your research, you realize, hold on, up to 40% of the cowboys were Black.” And while they weren’t cowboys, in her own research, the costume designer stumbled on a rare photograph and a moment of documentation kismet. It’s an image of a stately 19th-century Black couple, businessman James Davis and his wife, Sarah Forbes Bonetta, likely photographed due to Bonetta’s status as Queen Victoria’s goddaughter. He’s in a long frock coat, she’s in a full skirt with a lean bodice, both silhouettes you see reflected in The Harder They Fall. It was “an image that was perfect for Redwood,” Messam pointed out, and when I shared it with my director, I found out it was Jeymes’ ancestors.”
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A new Morbius teaser from Sony Pictures asks us “Who is Morbius?” It’s a question quite a few folks might have, considering Dr. Michael Morbius (Jared Leto), and his thirsty alter ego Morbius, is not the most well-known Marvel character. The new teaser lets Leto himself describe what drew him to the character, and reveals how Morbius, like Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) and his alien symbiote Venom, is a superhero not totally in control of his powers.
Leto describes the role as “very intense” and physical, with the character experiencing the full gamut of physical manifestations, from pale, thin, and sickly, to pale, powerful, and monstrous. One thing we’re sure Spider-Man and Venom fans will pick up on is Leto’s parting comment in the video about his character’s future in Sony’s expanding Spider-Man universe—he said there’s a “web” of opportunity, hinting at the potential crossover between Spider-Man, Venom, and his bloodsucking Morbius.
Morbius is directed by Daniel Espinosa. Joining Leto are Matt Smith, Michael Keaton, Jared Harris, Adria Arjona, Tyrese Gibson, and Corey Johnson.
Morbius hits theaters on January 28, 2022.
Check out the teaser below.
Here’s the official synopsis for Morbius:
One of Marvel’s most compelling and conflicted characters comes to the big screen as Oscar® winner Jared Leto transforms into the enigmatic antihero, Michael Morbius. Dangerously ill with a rare blood disorder, and determined to save others suffering his same fate, Dr. Morbius attempts a desperate gamble. What at first appears to be a radical success soon reveals itself to be a remedy potentially worse than the disease.
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Buckle up, Boba-heads, because Disney+ has just revealed the first trailer for The Book of Boba Fett, and it delivers. Our longest look at the series yet opens with a delightfully weird alien arachnid in the desert, and then gives us our first glimpse of the man himself (played by longtime Fett performer Temuera Morrison), sans helmet, now returned to Tatooine and the land that his former employer Jabba the Hutt once ruled. The trailer reveals Boba Fett is hoping to gain a leadership position on the planet’s lucrative black market and share in the underworld’s profits, profits once gobbled up by Jabba, but his fellow bounty hunters and assorted criminal bosses don’t seem amenable to Boba’s proposal just yet.
The legend of Boba Fett has only grown since his small but crucial role in the original Star Wars trilogy. A bounty hunter who at one point took possession of Han Solo’s frozen-in-carbonite body, the be-masked Boba was an instant fan favorite, but his presumed death after he was tossed into the Sarlacc pit by Luke Skywalker in Return of the Jedi felt to many fans a lame sendoff for such a cool character. Boba made an appearance in George Lucas’s prequel trilogy, but it wasn’t until The Mandalorian did we get to catch up with him after he miraculously survived the Sarlacc pit. The Book of Boba Fett will show us how that was possible, and what the bounty hunter has been up to since the events in the original trilogy.
Director Robert Rodriguez promised Colliderthat the series is “going to blow your mind. That’s all I can say. That’s all I can say. I can talk it up all I want because I know it over-delivers. It way over-delivers. So you’re going to be, people are going to be so pumped up when they see it.” After seeing this trailer, we believe him.
Check out the trailer below. The Book of Boba Fett hits Disney+ on December 29.
Here’s the official release from Disney+:
“The Book of Boba Fett,” a thrilling Star Wars adventure, finds legendary bounty hunter Boba Fett and mercenary Fennec Shand navigating the Galaxy’s underworld when they return to the sands of Tatooine to stake their claim on the territory once ruled by Jabba the Hutt and his crime syndicate.
“The Book of Boba Fett” stars Temuera Morrison and Ming-Na Wen. Jon Favreau, Dave Filoni, Robert Rodriguez, Kathleen Kennedy, and Colin Wilson are the executive producers. Karen Gilchrist and Carrie Beck serve as co-executive producers, with John Bartnicki producing and John Hampian as co-producer.
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Thanks to an alien symbiote and his human host and one of cinema’s most enduring franchises, October has become the high-grossing month of the year for the first time in modern history. Venom: Let There Be Carnage and Daniel Craig’s final turn as James Bond in No Time To Die helped super-boost the month in the opening weeks, while Halloween Kills and Dune came in huge in the middle and towards the end of the month. All told through October 31, the month generated a whopping $637 million in the United States and Canada, according to Comscore. This pushed October past the previous winner July, which had a $583 million haul.
October’s smashing success makes sense on a lot of levels. Four big movies dropping while the Delta variant of COVID-19 was waning in power helped turn our most theatrical month, where kids and adults alike get to play make-believe, into a hit at the theaters. The second half of 2021 has been a large improvement over the first for the film industry, with big-budget movies finally getting theatrical runs as the movie theater industry starts to bounce back. A strong October has raised hope that the trend will continue into the holiday season, with some big movies still on the docket. Those include Sony’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife and Spider-Man: No Way Home, Marvel Studios’ Eternals, and 20th Century Studios’ West Side Story.
Meanwhile, No Time To Die is about to make history and overtake Avengers: Endgame in the U.K., making it the 5th highest-grossing film of all time there.
Things are looking up across the cinematic landsacpe. Here’s to hoping these trends continue into 2022.
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With Dune 2 now official, desert power continues exerting itself over our cinematic landscape. Dune gobbled up another strong week and weekend at the box office, adding $15.5 million domestically, and another $21 million overseas, bringing its global total to a sturdy $292.1 million.
Writer/director Denis Villeneuve’s emphatic adaptation of Frank Herbert’s 1965 sci-fi doorstopper has been a big hit for Warner Bros. in this pandemic-stricken era, becoming their most successful release under their temporary theater-and-HBO Max-simultaneously plan. Not only have plenty of people seen Villeneuve’s vision on the big screen, but IMAX ticket sales in particular have been robust. This makes sense considering Dune is a sweeping cinematic experience in which location filming in places like Jordan’s Wadi Rum desert make for a mind-blowing treat when seen on a big screen, especially IMAX. Villeneuve once compared watching Dune at home to trying to drive a “speedboat in your bathtub.” Plenty of people did drive their speedboat in their bathtubs, but many more chose to see the film in the theater.
Caption: (L-r) Director DENIS VILLENEUVE and JAVIER BARDEM on the set of Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Chiabella James
We’ll be returning to the desert planet of Arrakis with Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet), Chani ( Zendaya), Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), Stilgar (Javier Bardem) and more in Dune 2, which is slated for an October 20, 2023 release.
Featured image: Dune theatrical poster. Warner Bros. Pictures’ and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary release. Photo: Chiabella James
The official trailer for The Witcher season 2 is nearly three minutes of epic action and monstrous intrigue. It’s fair to say that the upcoming season looks even more sweeping and sumptuous than the first. Geralt (Henry Cavill) is no longer alone—he’s got Princess Cirilla (Freya Allan) in his care now—although from this much longer look at the new season, it seems Ciri is ready to fight for herself. In one moment in the trailer, we watch Cirilla accept a weapon from Geralt. It seems safe to assume the two of them will be fighting side-by-side.
Season one explored the brutal journies of our three leads—Geralt, Yennefer (Anya Chalotra), and Princess Cirilla. These three were always on a collision course towards each other, and by the end of the season, Geralt and Cirilla were together, but Geralt and Yennefer had fallen out, and Yennefer had nearly sacrificed herself to save her fellow witches. While season 2 will see Geralt and Cirilla (known as Ciri) on the monster-slaying path together, Yennefer has her own troubles to contend with.
A slew of new characters will be on the scene, including Kristofer Hivju as Nivellen, Graham McTavish as Dijkstra, Cassie Clare as Philippa, Simon Callow and Liz Carr as detective agents Codringher and Fenn, Chris Fulton as Rience, and Adjoa Andoh as Nenneke.
Lauren Schmidt Hissrich returns as showrunner for the second season. The Witcher returns to Netflix on December 17, 2021.
Check out the trailer below:
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It’s that time of year where people gather around screens to watch stories that convey the vivid glow of the season, and the unforgettable gatherings they bring.
Yuletide lights? Hanukkah latke feeds? A Secret Santa party? No, think more along the lines of glinting blood, the glow from a flaming church with vampires huddled inside, or a town’s lynch mob futilely pursuing a supernaturally charged serial killer.
Welcome to the sights and sounds of Halloween.
And just as cinematographers, production designers, and costumers find part of their craft dedicated to imagining “Christmas in July,” working months ahead to deliver warm and fuzzy end-of-year fare to theaters, and streamers like Netflix and Hallmark, so too does “autumn come early,” for those creating chills and sleepless nights for the burgeoning horror market.
With Halloween (and its Janus Faced-twin, Dia de los Muertos) upon us, we caught up with two practiced cinematographers in the horror genre: James Kniest, shot stream-til-you-scream projects like The Haunting of Bly Manor and Into the Dark, also collaborating with writer/director Mike Flanagan on films like Hush, with additional photography on current hit Midnight Mass, whileToby Oliver, ACS, famously lensed Get Out, along with the Happy Death Day movies, and the upcoming vampirically-themed Day Shift.
DP Toby Oliver ACS on “Insidious Ch 4,” Oct 2016 by Justin Lubin.James Kniest on set on “The Haunting of Bly Manor.” Courtesy Netflix.
We asked both what made shooting horror different from filming say, family dramas, thrillers, or anything else — other than more chiaroscuro shadows and keeping your lenses out of the way of exploding blood gussets.And was it something they always wanted to do?
For Oliver, shortly after shooting the slasher sequel Wolf Creek 2 in his native Australia, he made the big move. “I relocated to the United States, followed opportunities, and essentially fell into the horror genre,” he says. “I worked with Blumhouse Productions on multiple films over the next few years. Rather than being in my sights from the beginning, I came to horror later in my career and I find the genre lends itself to some of the most dynamic and expressive cinematography I’ve had a hand in.”
“Insidious: The Last Key.” (2018) Courtesy Blumhouse/Universal Pictures.
Kniest also says that while he didn’t “set out to do horror content, I’ve always been drawn to darker films, photography, and art in general, both in content and style.”
As for achieving that style, Kniest says that “camera language plays a very discernable role in creating a ‘tone’ and includes not only the lenses — both the aesthetics of the glass and the focal lengths — but how the camera moves (or not) and how scenes are framed. I like to move the camera a lot, often subtlety, in an effort to create some poetry of motion.”
Perhaps a kind of “free verse,” or as Oliver says, “with horror, the cinematographer has a certain freedom to be more expressive and more extreme with the look, the lighting, camera angles, and camera motion compared to other genres. Horror relies on the power of cinematography the most to create the overall experience for the audience. I rely on darkness. When I was working with Adam Robitel on Insidious: The Last Key, he and producer Leigh Whannell were interested in achieving the absolutely ‘only just visible’ darkest image before it was technically unusable in the film. As the DP it can be nerve-wracking working at such minimal exposure. On a broader level in a horror film, it is what you don’t actually see clearly that is the most frightening.”
Kniest echoes that, saying “many ‘horror’ films rely on restricting what the viewer sees. Tension remains by letting things fall off into the darkness or not showing what is around the corner. I enjoy crafting what’s in the frame and especially what is not in the frame.”
“I might frame up our protagonist in a medium close-up with an abnormally big negative space in the frame behind them, allowing the audience to imagine something could burst into that empty space any second,” Oliver says about what is there. “Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. That is suspense. Darkness, silhouette, and obscurity are all tools in the box, as is the composition of unsettling frames designed to feel uncomfortable or lopsided.”
Kniest notes, though, that the literal tools are usually the same as with any other genre or type of story. “All that matters is how they are employed. There are a million different ways to accomplish the same thing. There aren’t any right or wrong answers per se. It all comes down to what is achievable, and does it serve the story. As of late, LED technology has really made a difference in the amount of power needed and the lack of heat on set now. Many LED lighting tools are wirelessly controlled and can be dimmable; almost any color in the rainbow can be easily and quickly achieved. I rarely find myself using gels like I used to.”
He also doesn’t shoot on film anymore but misses it “for a myriad of reasons. I miss the etiquette of the film being precious and everyone on set being 100% ready to shoot along with stopping when a mag rolls out to make minor adjustments. I miss the alchemy of it and the anticipation of dailies for sure. I miss the subtleties of the texture.”
And it’s that mixture of subtleties, and their stark, hair-raising, opposites, that make for a horror classic — keeping the audience, as Oliver says, constantly unsettled. So which films have inspired them in how they approach their own work in the genre?
Kniest observes that a lot of films not originally considered horror might be viewed that way now. “The lines have blurred so much lately,” he says.”While some classics like The Exorcist, Rosemary’s Baby, Suspiria, and The Shining left indelible impressions on me, some of my favorites include Se7en, Cape Fear, (both, especially the 1991 version), Alien, Silence of the Lambs, and even Jaws. And I absolutely dug The Twilight Zone as a kid.”
American actor Richard Dreyfuss (left) (as marine biologist Hooper) and British author and actor Robert Shaw (as shark fisherman Quint) look off the stern of Quint’s fishing boat the ‘Orca’ at the terrifying approach of the mechanical giant shark dubbed ‘Bruce’ in a scene from the film ‘Jaws’ directed by Steven Spielberg, 1975. The movie, also starring Roy Scheider and Lorraine Gary, was one of the first ‘Summer Blockbuster’ films. (Photo by Universal Pictures courtesy of Getty Images)
Oliver also mentioned The Shining (“I don’t think you can do much better than referencing a master like Kubrick”) and Alien, calling it an “object lesson in how to shoot a monster movie.” There are more recent examples Oliver found thrilling. “I was inspired by John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place, and Jonathan Glazer’sUnder the Skin for incredible tension or foreboding creepy atmosphere and weirdness,” he says. “Most of the directors of my favorite horror films aren’t necessarily specialists in the genre. They’re great visual storytellers first and foremost who happened to try their hand at making great horror films.”
And happily, spookily, for us, Oliver and Kniest, behind their respective lenses, keep making them, too.
Featured image: Daniel Kaluuya in Get Out (2017). Courtesy Universal Pictures
