It’s official—a new Marvel superhero is joining the MCU, and he’s one of the most powerful in the entire Marvel canon. Deadlinereports that Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 writer/director James Gunn has added Will Poulter (Midsommar) to the cast as Adam Warlock.
Gunn shared the news via Twitter on Monday. “Welcome to the Guardians family, Will Poulter,” Gunn wrote. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 begins filming in a couple of weeks, and the revelation that Poulter is joining as the mega-potent Adam Warlock is some serious late-breaking casting news.
As you guys know I often strike down false rumors, so… um…
Poulter is a great actor who has disappeared into some meaty roles you might not recall off the top of your head. He was sensational alongside Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy in Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s 2015 masterpiece The Revenant, as well as in Ari Aster’s 2019 horror film Midsommar. He’s currently starring in Hulu’s limited series Dopesick.
Guardians of the Galaxy fans and MCU-heads have been waiting for Warlock’s arrival since 2017 when his pending arrival was teased in the mid-credits scene in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. He was created by Ayesha (Elizabeth Debicki), the leader of the Sovereigns, with the express purpose of destroying the Guardians. In the comics, Adam Warlock was created in a cocoon (as he was in the mid-credits teaser) and is, more or less, the perfect specimen. His powers, which include super-strength, flight, energy manipulation, and regeneration, rival any Marvel character. Needless to say, he’ll be a very formidable opponent.
Poulter joins the mainstays of the Guardians cast—Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Karen Gillan, Pom Klementieff, Bradley Cooper (as the voice of Rocket), and Vin Diesel (as the voice of Groot).
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is set to land in theaters on May 5, 2023.
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Featured image: HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA – JUNE 24: Will Poulter attends the premiere of A24’s “Midsommar” at ArcLight Hollywood on June 24, 2019 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Amy Sussman/Getty Images)
At the top of this new Eternals featurette, Dane Whitman (Kit Harrington) asks the right question of Sersi (Gemma Chan), one of the titular, immortal, hugely powerful Eternals. The question is simple: “Why didn’t you guys help fight Thanos? Or any war or all the other terrible things throughout history?” As MCU viewers, we all know that Thanos snapped half of all living things out of creation in Avengers: Infinity War, and that the Avengers assembled, as is their wont, to snap everyone back and take out Thanos in Endgame. During all of that time, and during all the countless other “terrible things” that Dane mentioned, the Eternals have been here, doing nothing. “We were instructed not to interfere in any human conflicts unless the Deviants were involved,” Sersi answers him. So Dane follows up with the next most pressing question—instructed by who?
In the new featurette titled “In The Beginning,” we get the deepest dive yet into the mythology undergirding Oscar-winner Chloé Zhao’s Eternals. The film, Marvel president Kevin Feige tells us, will explore the very beginnings of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Set after the events of Endgame, the film will plunge is into the post-snap-back world, with all those who’d been snapped out of existence now back, but we’ve got company—the Deviants are headed our way. Out of the frying pan and into the fryer for humanity. At long last, the Eternals are ready to spring into action.
We learn in the featurette, courtesy of Gemma Chan, that the ten Eternals are roughly divided into two camps; the thinkers (Chan’s Sersi, Salma Hayek’s Ajak, Brian Tyree Henry’s Phastos, Barry Keoghan’s Druig, and Lia McHugh’s Sprite) and the fighters (Richard Madden’s Ikaris, Lauren Ridloff’s Makkari, Angelina Jolie’s Thena, Ma Dong-seok’s Gilgamesh, and Kumail Nanjiani’s Kingo).
Much like the Avengers, the Eternals are both massively powerful and also perpetually dysfunctional as a family unit. The featurette boasts brand new footage and puts Zhao’s vision front and center, hinting at how her atypical approach, as explained by Hayek, has created a one-of-a-kind Marvel film.
Check out the new featurette below. Eternals hits theaters on November 5.
So declares drag queen Eureka O’Hara on the new season of HBO’s Emmy-nominated unscripted series We’re Here. Even the most diehard skeptic will find it hard to disagree with her.
Season 2 of We’re Here launches today and coincides with National Coming Out Day, which celebrates the act of coming out as LGBTQ and reassures those who cannot that they are loved.
It’s a fitting national celebration to mark. In each episode of We’re Here, three extremely confident and colorful drag stars – Bob the Drag Queen; Eureka; and Shangela – descend upon a different conservative small town. Their mission: transform three locals into fabulous drag queens for a one-night-only public performance. Some of the queens’ “drag daughters,” as they’re known, are LGBTQ people struggling for acceptance from their families or from themselves; others are allies who want to make a joyous public statement in support of someone LGBTQ in their lives.
Eureka, Shangela, Bob the Drag Queen. Photograph by Connie Chornuk/HBO
Over the course of the drag makeovers, the three queens, all seasoned RuPaul’s Drag Race veterans, help their drag daughters confront their issues, reach out to friends and family, and, ultimately, experience the unbridled love of local audiences and loved ones, who cheer wildly as the newly minted glamazons strut and lip-synch under massive wigs, eyelashes and heels.
“The ability to be freed to inhabit and celebrate another part of yourself and be given permission to do that, and do it in such a public way and yet still feel safe, I think, is very uniquely empowering,” says Peter LoGreco, who directs and executive produces.
The first season of We’re Here dropped in Spring 2020 in the midst of the first COVID-19 lockdown, and then later, nationwide street protests against racism and police violence. If it wasn’t quite a watercooler show, television critics raved, a clutch of award nominations rolled in, it found an audience, and HBO renewed it by June.
As critics have observed, We’re Here seems like standard queer reality-TV makeover show (if such a thing could be standard), but each episode generates the raw emotions that are the hallmark of great documentary television and film. That’s no accident.
Shangela, Bruno. Photo courtesy HBO.
Director LoGreco comes from a documentary background and pushes first and foremost for authenticity in every step of making the show. That starts with casting. Says LoGreco, “It’s a very specific instruction to everyone involved not to lead with the show. One of the hardest criteria to get over when casting someone is [that person] wanting to be on TV. I want people who don’t want to be on TV. That can create other, different challenges because people can start out really reticent, but it can also make the journeys that they go on that much more meaningful.”
Some unscripted shows loudly announce casting – “Hey! We’re making a TV show, do you want to be on TV?” as LoGreco puts it. We’re Here starts with extensive research and the production team invests significant time on the ground in order to grasp a particular small-town culture and community. Eventually, they find their way to the people who truly could use a visit from Bob, Eureka, or Shangela.
Eureka, Marvin Brown, Noah. Photo courtesy HBO.
LoGreco spent a week in Selma, Alabama, during the pandemic shutdown. “There is no substitute for being on the ground, as social media savvy as everyone [on the casting team] is. ‘Oh, wow, well, you’re actually willing to show up here in our little town and walk through the door? So now I’m going to tell you about this person that I know.’ We’ve encountered that more than I ever thought,” he says.
The effort shows. We’re Here does a remarkable job of highlighting stories of overlapping identities often overlooked in media: A black lesbian tattoo artist fighting for her place in a white male-dominated business in Spartanburg, South Carolina; a Tejano youth in Del Rio, Texas, exploring transgender identity while craving acceptance from a traditional, if loving, family; a young gay Tunisian in Evansville, Indiana, who was granted asylum from persecution and wants to celebrate his sexuality.
Bob the Drag Queen and Esael. Photograph by Jessica Perez/ HBO
“It’s important to take some risks in terms of the [subjects] that you choose to work with and push a little further – otherwise it becomes difficult to have the level of diversity that we’ve had, and intersectionality. Trying to find people who represented queer identity front and center but also had another significant facet of their identity was an important part of how we could show their journeys are not monolithic. That’s been a gratifying part of deepening the storytelling this season,” LoGreco says.
During shooting, We’re Here crews walk a fine line. On the one hand, the 12 or 14 core footage-capture shooters are looking to be as unobtrusive as possible as they shoot intimate scenes between friends and family. On the other hand, the show subjects need to start having fittings for the climactic drag show more or less from Day One. An enormous design team conceptualizes and oversees the drag performances.
“We joke about the fact that we feel like we’re making two or three different shows within the scope of a [seven or eight day] shoot and planning differently for each of them, and yet they all have to attempt to integrate,” says LoGreco. The crew swells to around 75 to 80 people on the day of the drag show, which features elaborate hair and makeup, sets, backup dancers, and attention-grabbing costume changes.
Joseph and Shangela. Photograph by Connie Chornuk/HBO
The drag shows, which take up the last quarter or so of each episode, deliver a satisfying payoff. One reason they work so well is their specificity. Performances are tailored to the stories and communities of the first-time drag queens.
In a performance from Episode 3, for example, Esael, a young Mexican-American who comes out as gay to his mother and father over the course of the episode lip-synchs to a song by Mexican pop icon Thalía. Says LoGreco, “When he heard he was doing a Thalía song, he was like, ‘Ehhh, I don’t know, my Mom listens to that,’ and we were like, ‘Exactly!’ We didn’t plan this, but she sings every word while he is lip-synching. She’s probably lip-synching better than he is, and people were going crazy. [The drag show is] not just fun and loud and hot, but it’s also story.”
And that’s why, at least in part, on We’re Here, drag heals the world.
Bob and Esael. Photograph by Johnnie Ingram/ HBO
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Some new Eternals footage is available for your viewing pleasure as we inch ever closer to the release date for Oscar-winner Chloé Zhao’s first Marvel film. The new spot, titled “Change,” directly links to the events in Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame, making it clear that although the Eternals weren’t active when the Avengers were fighting Thanos to save the world, they were, of course, quite aware of the problem. Salma Hayek’s Ajak, one of the titular immortal beings embedded quietly on Earth, describes how Thanos’s homicidal quest to eradicate half of all life (and then all of it in Endgame) has brought Earth to the attention of the Deviants. Now, the Eternals, who had up until this point been quietly biding their time, need to spring into action to defend the planet from the Deviants, a race of equally powerful immortals created by the very same beings who made the Eternals, the Celestials.
“Humanity once believed we were Gods,” Ajak says at the halfway point of the new TV spot, “with what this planet now faces, they will believe again.” To further connect to the heroism of the Avengers, Ikaris (Richard Madden) even steals their line and modifies it, saying “Eternals assemble,” as these interstellar superheroes gather to fight the Deviants and save humanity.
Eternals hits theaters on November 5. Check out the new spot below.
Timothée Chalamet took to Twitter and Instagram on Sunday to share the first look at himself as the iconic chocolatier Willy Wonka for director Paul King (Padding, Padding 2)’s upcoming origin story Wonka. Looking equal parts dapper and daffy, Chalamet seems like the obvious choice to play one of Roald Dahl’s most famous creations as a young man. “The suspense is terrible, I hope it will last,” Chalamet wrote as a caption for his Instagram image, quoting one of Willy Wonka’s deathless lines from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971), where he was played with nimble lunacy by the great Gene Wilder.
Principal photography recently began in London, with a stellar cast supporting Chalamet, including Olivia Colman, Keegan-Michael Key, Sally Hawkins, and Matt Lucas. The film has been described by Warner Bros. as a “vivid, mythical beginnings of the imaginative young inventor before he becomes the renowned scrumdiddlyumptious Mozart of chocolate.”
Wonka is due in theaters in March of 2023. Check out Chalamet as the man with the master chocolate plan in his hand below.
Featured image: NEW YORK, NEW YORK – SEPTEMBER 13: Co-chair Timothée Chalamet attends The 2021 Met Gala Celebrating In America: A Lexicon Of Fashion at Metropolitan Museum of Art on September 13, 2021 in New York City. (Photo by Theo Wargo/Getty Images)
And so we’ve come to the end. Daniel Craig’s final mission as James Bond in No Time To Die is now in theaters. By now you’ve likely heard all about Craig’s swan song as her Majesty’s most quarrelsome, effective double-o agent in director Cary Fukunaga’s thrilling epic. No Time To Die is the 25th film in the Bond franchise, five of which belong to Craig himself. His casting at the time was something of a surprise—a bruising blonde?—but now it looks like an absolute coup. While Craig himself joked to the New York Timesthat perhaps he’ll be remembered as “the Grumpy Bond,” you and I know that won’t be the case. Craig will be remembered as the first Bond to shrug off the dapper affectations and center his performance on what such a dangerous, duplicitous career might actually do to a human being. This shift from embodying the ideal of James Bond to what a modern, haunted double-O agent might actually be like was made clear in this perfect little moment from Craig’s first film in the role, Casino Royale.
While Craig’s Bond might not care whether his martini is shaken or stirred, he certainly has cared about how his brutal work affects the people he loves, from Vesper Lynd (Eva Green) in Casino Royale to Madeline Swann (Léa Seydoux) in both Spectre (2015) and No Time To Die. As No Time To Die cinematographer Linus Sandgren told us about Craig’s interpretation of the immortal character, “The thing Daniel brings to the Bond franchise is this depth of emotion, where he’s able to express loss and grief and love.”
With this in mind, we’re taking a photographic stroll through Craig’s five films as Bond, from Casino Royale (2006) to No Time To Die. There’s never been a Bond like him, and as the most tenured 007 of all time, Craig has earned the epic sendoff he’s getting.
Casino Royale (2006)
His first mission as 007, Craig’s Bond sets out on a secret mission to take down a private banker funding terrorists in a high-stakes game of poker at the Casino Royale in Montenegro.
Bond’s next mission finds him trying to track down and stop a mysterious organization (known as Quantum) trying to stage a coup d’état in Bolivia to seize control of their water supply. He’s also on a revenge mission for the death of his former lover, Vesper Lynd.
Sam Mendes stepped in as director on the most emotional of Craig’s Bond films to date. Here, Bond’s relationship with M (Judi Dench) is at the center of the action, when her past comes back to her haunt her. MI6 itself comes under attack, with both Bond and M’s past caught up with the future of their spy agency.
Eve (Naomie Harris) presents Bond (Daniel Craig) with a gift from M in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures/Columbia Pictures/EON Productions’ action adventure SKYFALL. Photo by Francois Duhamel.Daniel Craig and Judi Dench in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures/Columbia Pictures/EON Productions’ action adventure SKYFALL. Photo by Francois Duhamel.Daniel Craig stars as James Bond in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures/Columbia Pictures/EON Productions’ action adventure SKYFALL. Photo by Francois Duhamel.Daniel Craig (left) and Ola Rapace in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures/Columbia Pictures/EON Productions’ action adventure SKYFALL. Photo by Francois Duhamel.Daniel Craig and crew on the set of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures/Columbia Pictures/EON Productions’ action adventure SKYFALL. Photo by Francois Duhamel.Daniel Craig stars as James Bond in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures/Columbia Pictures/EON Productions’ action adventure SKYFALL. Photo by Francois Duhamel.
Spectre (2015)
With M gone, a rogue Bond finds himself trying to uncover the existence of a terrorist syndicate unlike any he has ever faced, Spectre. Bond comes face-to-face with the man who has been “the author” of all of his pain and meets his new love, Madeline Swann (Seydoux) in the process.
Daniel Craig stars as James Bond in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures/Columbia Pictures/EON Productions’ action adventure SPECTRE. Photo by Jonathan Olley.Daniel Craig on the set of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures/Columbia Pictures/EON Productions’ action adventure SPECTRE. Photo by Jonathan Olley.Daniel Craig and Léa Seydoux in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures/Columbia Pictures/EON Productions’ action adventure SPECTRE. Photo by Jonathan Olley.Bond (Daniel Craig) runs along the rooftops in pursuit of Sciarra in Mexico City in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures/Columbia Pictures/EON Productions’ action adventure SPECTRE. Photo by Jonathan Olley.
No Time To Die (2021)
After defeating threats from both within the British government and without, Bond has left active service. It doesn’t last. He’s pulled back into a fresh mission when old pal and CIA agent Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright) asks for his help in taking on the most dangerous adversary he’s ever faced.
“Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that you were so sure is real? What if you were unable to wake from that dream? How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world?”
You might recall these lines from the original The Matrix, spoken by Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) to Neo (Keanu Reeves) in the film that changed the game for not only sci-fi films going forward, but for what was possible to depict on screen. The effects alone would have made The Matrix a major moment in film history, but it was the story of a terrifying reality beneath the glossy, workaday dream-world we all believe is real that captured the attention of millions. Lana and Lilly Wachowski’s The Matrix wasn’t just an epic sci-fi blockbuster that revealed “bullet-time” visual effects technology to the world, it was also a deeply felt story about the human mind, the capacity for every individual to break free from the prison of comforting conformity and see the world for what it really is.
Then, of course, there were the iconic performances. Fishburne, Reeves, and Carrie-Anne Moss, as Trinity, were the film’s stars. But you’ll recall, as you watch this new featurette from Warner Bros. on the legacy of The Matrix, just how many great performers populated Lana and Lilly Wachowski’s film. Hugo Weaving was pitch-perfect as the malevolent Agent Smith, but so, too, was Jada Pinkett Smith’s Niobe and the wisecracking Joe Pantoliano as Cypher. “Buckle your seatbelt, Dorothy, because Kansas is going bye-bye,” Cypher says to Neo, and he was right. Only the rest of us were on that trip with Neo, too.
Carrie-Anne, Moss Laurence Fishburne, and Keanu Reeves standing against brick wall in a scene from the film ‘The Matrix Reloaded’, 2003. (Photo by Warner Brothers/Getty Images)
In the new featurette, the cast of The Matrix Resurrections reflects on what the original film meant to them. Original and current stars like Reeves and Moss offer their perspective on how the film changed their lives, while newcomers recall reacting to the film the same way you and I did. “I left the movie theater just knowing things were going to be different in my life,” new cast member Eréndira Ibarra says. “You can’t quantify how much it changed the world,” adds Jessica Henwick, who plays Bugs in Resurrections. “The best and most iconic thing I remember is Neo dodging the bullets,” says Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, who has a big role in the upcoming film.
The cast makes the point that elements of The Matrix have become so deeply embedded in our culture you might forget that they sprung from the film in the first place. Whether it’s a reference to the red pill or the blue pill, or someone simply mentioning “a glitch in the Matrix” to describe something weird happening, the original film really did have a massive, lasting impact. This is why there is so much excitement to see what Lana Wachowski has cooking with The Matrix Resurrections.
Check out the featurette below. The Matrix Resurrections hits theaters on December 22.
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Featured image: Caption: (L-r) CARRIE-ANNE MOSS as Trinity and KEANU REEVES as Neo/Thomas Anderson in Warner Bros. Pictures, Village Roadshow Pictures and Venus Castina Productions’ “THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
If you were hoping to get a peek at new footage from The Batman, the new DC FanDome trailer has the goods and more. Not only do we get a brief glimpse at Robert Pattinson’s Batman and Zoë Kravit’s Catwoman, but the trailer includes the first footage we’ve seen from The Flash and Dwayne Johnson’s big entrance into the DC superhero world in Black Adam. This makes sense considering DC FanDome is going to be chock-a-block with major reveals from some of the biggest films and series coming out in the next year and more. Cast and crew from the above-mentioned films, as well as a slew more, will be on hand for the big event, which will be held on October 16.
The trailer not only features brief moments from those huge films, but also teases DC’s near future on television, both within the Arrowverse and beyond it. You’ll see scenes from The Suicide Squad spinoff series Peacemaker, as well as Titans, Stargirl, Doom Patrol, and Naomi. There’s also a glimpse at some games, including Rocksteady’s Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League and Warner Bros. Games Montréal’s Gotham Knights.
We’ll be covering the FanDome event when it arrives, where we’ll be sure to get much deeper looks at The Batman, The Flash, Black Adam, and more.
Check out the trailer below.
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We’re less than a month away from Oscar-winning director Chloé Zhao’s eagerly-anticipated Eternals, her first MCU film. Zhao’s cosmic epic is centered on the titular group of immortal beings who have been embedded on Earth for millennia and who, the events of the film will show, are finally ready to step into the spotlight to defend humanity. They include Angelina Jolie’s Thena, Salma Hayek’s Ajak, Richard Madden’s Ikaris, Gemma Chan’s Sersi, and Brian Tyree Henry’s Phastos. Who are the Eternals defending us from? The Deviants, a shadowy, extremely powerful race of humanoids whose history stretches as far back as the Eternals themselves. We’ve seen glimpses of how Zhao and her creative team approached the Deviants in the trailers, and now a new batch of photos gives us a closer look at these sinister pre-human destroyers.
The Deviants exist as a kind of photo negative of the Eternals. In the Marvel comics, both the Eternals and Deviants were created by the Celestials (another race of superbeings), who split the two races into very definitive, and different-looking, groups. The Eternals are blessed, so to speak, with not just immortality but also beauty. The Deviants, by contrast, are monstrous—in the comics, they have “destabilized DNA,” which allows them to change shape and possess incredible powers. The Deviants are led by Kro, an ancient, wise, brutal shapeshifter who happens to have a longstanding relationship with Thena (Jolie), in both the comics and the film.
The Deviants are such a serious threat to humanity that the Eternals literally sat out the Avengers’ big battles with Thanos. Think about that, while half of all living species were snapped out of existence (and then snapped back, of course, in Avengers: Endgame), this immortal race of superheroes did nothing. This suggests that the Deviants are even worse, which sets up Eternals to be a sweeping, everything’s-hanging-in-the-balance level MCU installment, rather than the more “modest” stand-alone films in which, say, a supervillain only wants to vanquish a superhero and perhaps take control of a crime syndicate (or a country). The Deviants present a mortal threat to all of humanity, and as seen below, they’re a mix of the cosmic and the beastly.
Eternals hits theaters on November 5. Check out the new images below.
In No Time to Die, Daniel Craig gets two hours and 43 minutes to show James Bond fans what they’ll be missing once he exits his five-movie run as the world’s most enduring British spy. Following Craig’s every step, car chase, and explosion along the way is Swedish DP Linus Sandgren. “It was important in this film to make sure that we bookend Daniel Craig’s chapter of Bond in an exciting way,” says Sandgren. Acclaimed for his Oscar-winning cinematography on La La Land as well as American Hustle and NASA spaceepic First Man, Sandgren joined director/co-writer Cary Fukunaga, cast and crew on a globe-hopping seven-month production filmed in Norway, Italy, Jamacia, London, Scotland, and the North Atlantic Faroe Islands.
Co-starring Rami Malek, Léa Seydoux and Ralph Fiennes, and Lashana Lynch as the first Black female 007,No Time to Die offers plenty of spectacle, augmented in some theaters as the first Bond movie to be filmed partially in IMAX. But Sandgren takes just as much pleasure in capturing smaller moments. Speaking from his home in Los Angeles, Sandgren offers his take on the cinematic virtues of location-hopping, the beauty of handheld camera work, and the pleasures of capturing Daniel Craig’s emotional range in all his Bondian glory.
In the best Bond tradition, No Time to Die hops all over the place. How did all these locations impact the cinematography?
In a global adventure like this, locations give you a great opportunity to travel and put the plot into whatever location fits the story, and the cinematography is crucial for the emotions to come through. That’s how I like to think about it. I don’t like to think of cinematography so much technically. It’s about emotions and feelings. Thrills, joy, laughter, humor, you always try to relate the imagery to these emotions.
Another Jame Bond tradition: the big set piece at the beginning usually features 007 in some spectacular action sequence. Here, we open on a mother and daughter in Norway with Bond nowhere in sight. It’s quite a contrast in scenery when Bond then makes his appearance.
We wanted to go from this horrific incident in a cold, icy location where we make you really feel the isolation through the cinematography. And then we cut to [coastal Italian village] Matera, which is hot, sunny, and the complete opposite of the snow. Matera’s this very romantic setting, which we captured by shooting at sunset, through dusk to twilight. Cary was very eager to have the story jump each time to a new place.
Next day it’s the same location but a totally different vibe. How did you achieve that?
The morning starts out very romantic as well, but suddenly changes into the worst location you could be in if you’re being chased because you’re going to hit your head really hard against these hard rocky walls in this location that just a minute ago seemed so romantic. For the chase, the light becomes very bright and harsh scary. We also go from sweeping, picturesque visuals to much more handheld [camera work] which gives us this raw, brutal imagery for the action.
Bond’s first mission targets a Cuban nightclub (filmed in Jamaica). What kind of atmosphere did you want to render through your cinematography?
The exotic streets of Cuba we decided to shoot in twilight. Then later at night, they travel out to sea in the boat and we shoot that dark blue, not black night, so you can still have a little bit of light in the sky. Even when something’s monochromatic, it’s always more interesting when there’s color. And a big part of the film’s visual [style] is that we intended it to be colorful.
You shot on actual film stock, which is pretty rare these days. How did that choice affect the way you shaped your color palette?
Nothing was forced on the color during post-production. By capturing everything on film stock, the lighting color temperatures we worked with made each location feel distinct and also helped set the mood we were trying to create for that scene.
So what you shot is what you got, as opposed to digital, where filmmakers often modify the color in post-production?
Making No Time to Die, my intention is that whatever we shoot in-camera, on set, should come back the next day and that is what the film should look like ever after. I’m disappointed if it does not look the way I lit it and captured it in the camera. But sure, when I shoot digital, like on La La Land for example, you use look-up tables to create a distinct look and then you proof-process the footage to get a smoother, softer contrast. But in this case, we did our tests, shot on film, and processed our film stock in the normal way.
No Time to Die features a lot of epic wide shots. What format did you use?
We shot anamorphic 35 mm as the base for our story, and then we filmed certain sequences with IMAX cameras. If you see these scenes in an Imax theater, the image opens up below and above your head as a way of giving the audience an additional experience of immersive-ness.
You’ve previously worked with intense actors like Ryan Gosling in La La Land and Christian Bale in American Hustle. Viewed through your lens, what is it that makes Daniel Craig so appealing as a screen presence in this, his final Bond film?
He has such a range. Daniel can be charming and witty but he also has the ability to kill a lot of bad guys. And then he can also be very soft or emotionally sensitive. The thing Daniel brings to the Bond franchise is this depth of emotion, where he’s able to express loss and grief and love. As a cinematographer, I’m always thinking “What is this scene about?” Sometimes it can get so emotional that you almost want to be a little bit behind the actor in certain scenes because you want to be respectful and watch him in a more effective way than if you have him looking right into the camera.
With five Bond movies now under his belt, Daniel Craig at this point probably serves as an all-around creative partner as well as an actor.
Definitely. He’s very much a filmmaker, involved in discussions on set. And as an actor, he’s very professional. Daniel knows where the cameras are, he knows where to face himself to catch the light in his eye to look more heroic.
Yet he never seems self-conscious. When Daniel Craig shifts into fight mode, do you approach the camera work differently from his more intimate scenes?
When Daniel’s in danger, we oftentimes work with handheld cameras. He picks something up. Cut. There’s a gun. Cut. He’s smart, swift, and very effective.
No Time To Die is in theaters on November 8.
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You might have heard that Michael Keaton is reprising his role as Batman in director Andy Muschietti’s upcoming The Flash. Now, you might expect that Keaton would require a new Batsuit from the one he wore in Tim Burton’s iconic Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992), but you’d be wrong. During an interview on last night’s The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, Colbert asked Keaton if he had to still try on the old Batsuit, would it still fit? “I’ve already done it,” Keaton said, explaining that The Flash‘s costume department didn’t have to adjust the suit at all. The man still has the same dimensions as he did 30 years ago.
The little we know about The Flash is very exciting. Both Keaton and Ben Affleck will appear as Bruce Wayne, in alternate timelines, as Ezra Miller’s titular Flash meddles in the multiverse. The film is inspired by the “Flashpoint” comic-book storyline, which explores multiple universes in which different Batman’s are plying their trade in different Gothams. Muschietti directs from a script by Bumblebee and Birds of Prey scribe Christina Hodson and the story involves not only Keaton and Affleck but other superheroes like Supergirl (played by Sasha Calle) and, intriguingly, Aquaman’s father Tom Curry (Temuera Morrison).
Check out Keaton describing his Batsuit-svelte body with Colbert in the clip below. The Flash is due in theaters on November 4, 2022.
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Featured image: Featured image: Michael Keaton attends the premiere of Columbia Pictures’ “Spider-Man: Homecoming” at TCL Chinese Theatre on June 28, 2017 in Hollywood, California. Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images)
In a new TV spot for Marvel’s upcoming Eternals, one of their members claims they’re “the greatest warriors the world has ever known.” That would be Kingo (Kumail Nanjiani), talking to a cameraman and doing a pretty serious bit of self-promotion. The claim seems a little hyperbolic considering the Eternals were a no-show while the Avengers were fighting Thanos and his intergalactic hordes. The Eternals didn’t just sit one fight out, they sat out three catastrophic brawls with Thanos when you add up Avengers, Avengers: Infinity War, and Avengers: Endgame. They also didn’t pop up to help out in Sokovia when the Avengers were fighting Ultron.
What we’ll learn in director Chloé Zhao’s Eternals is that these literal superbeings were sitting out those fights because they have been tasked with protecting humanity against the Deviants and the Deviants alone. We’ll find out just how bad those Deviants are—and why they’re more dangerous than even Thanos—when the action of Eternals gets underway.
The new footage reveals some of the Eternals’ abilities, and they do seem like a pretty fearsome bunch. Those powers include laser eyes from Ikaris (Richard Madden), extreme strength from Gilgamesh (Don Lee), and the universe’s most killer sword from Thena (Angelina Jolie). There’s a tremendous amount of excitement swirling around Eternals considering the bonkers cast and the fact that Oscar-winner Chloé Zhao directed the film.
Joining Nanjiani, Madden, Jolie, and Lee are Gemma Chan, Brian Tyree Henry, Salma Hayek, Barry Keoghan, Kit Harrington, Lauren Ridloff, and Lia McHugh star.
Check out the new TV spot below. Eternals arrives in theaters on November 5.
In The Guilty, Jake Gyllenhaal plays a cop demoted to answering 911 calls while he awaits trial for an unspecified crime he committed eight months prior. He never leaves the call center, yet finds himself snared in an ongoing abduction when the call comes in over the transom. Joe is already in a bad state, upset about his strained home life and an LA Times reporter who won’t stop calling, but his distress skyrockets when he gets a call from Emily (Riley Keough), who tearily hints she’s being kidnapped.
Emily is in a white van with Henry (Ethan Hawke), whom we learn is her husband, while their two children are home alone in LA. Joe counsels Emily, connives a way to get Henry’s license plate number, and orders a wellness check on young Abby and Oliver. But the whole unexpected operation falls apart, with the film’s sound design doing the heavy lifting in terms of standing in for the action in and around the van as well as conveying the characters’ deepening psychological distress. For supervising sound editors Mandell Winter and David Esparza and their team, everything had to be created from scratch. “Antoine [Fuqua], our director, and Jason Ballantine, our picture editor, really wanted to paint that mind’s eye for the viewer so that they don’t see what’s happening but they still understand what’s occurring on the other side of the phone,” said Esparza, whether it was walking into a room and being attacked by a dog, or driving a car in a windstorm with a wildfire blazing.
But the sound team was working without a standard production track. And because the film was shot during the height of the pandemic, Gyllenhaal was the only cast member on set. “We had 13 different remote recording rigs that were out in the field with actors at their homes, hotels, or wherever they happened to be,” Winter said. “And then we took all of that material and tried to make sense of it all.” The biggest challenge was creating the reality of the phone calls, sometimes working with what was indicated in the script and sometimes coming up with it entirely in post. “All those little moments and sounds that aren’t voice that you hear over the phone were carefully thought about, planned out, plotted, and individually placed in,” Esparza said.
To create a sense of foreboding, individual sounds were heightened, like the fizz in a glass of seltzer, added, or pulled from the call center altogether. “Antoine really likes using tinnitus as a device to get inside of a character’s head,” Esparza said. “There are a couple of times when Joe’s talking to Ethan Hawke’s character and they bring up the court case, and we just suck all the sound out of the room to give more weight to that moment.”
Sound teams usually get a fraction of the time the rest of production takes, but this was an unusual, all-remote shoot that lasted all of 11 days — “Antoine parked a block away and then Jake ran up a ladder and talked over a fence to him, when they needed to be closer together to be able to talk,” Winter recalled. He and Esparza credit post-production supervisor, Marisa Clayton, for supporting the time they needed, and their crew, for making the operation come together. They also worked unusually early with Marcelo Zarvos, the film’s composer, to intertwine elements of the sound design with the music. As Emily’s situation worsens, the van’s windshield wipers or bumps in its suspension are mixed with the music’s spare composition to a chilling effect.
“There are three locations, basically. But on the other end of the phone, we’re in a dozen different places,” Esparza pointed out. “Having all worlds up at the same time becomes very confusing very quickly,” so the team also used sound to indicate scene changes. Even as you’re watching Joe visually panic or get angry in the 911 call center, you find yourself emotionally in the van with Emily, processing her fear of Henry. But The Guilty is more than rote abduction thriller, with the biggest surprises coming in terms of where real guilt lies. The twists are good, and made even better thanks to the sound design, which manifests the film’s complicated storytelling into something immediate and palpable.
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No Time To Die is nigh. The hotly-anticipated final film for Daniel Craig as James Bond arrives in theaters in the U.S. on October 8 after a stellar international opening. The 25th film in the venerable franchise finds Craig’s Bond pulled out of retirement for one last mission, this time against an opponent, Safin (Rami Malek) whose sociopathic designs are both global in implication and personal in their application. He wants Bond to suffer (with the rest of humanity along for the miserable ride), and thus far, the critics have hailed director Cary Fukunaga’s film—the longest in Bond history—as an emotional thrill-ride and a worthy sendoff for Craig. Now, a bunch of new images, both stills from the film and behind-the-scenes shots reveal Bond’s main adversary, his allies, and the team that put the whole film together.
Featured below are shots of the new double-o agent on the scene, Nomi (Lashana Lynch), as well as Bond’s longtime colleagues in MI6 Moneypenny (Naomie Harris), M (Ralph Fiennes), and Q (Ben Whishaw). You’ll also see Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux), who is connected to Safin, and newcomer Paloma (Ana de Armas), a key figure in Bond’s pursuit of the mad man.
After several pandemic-related delays, audiences appear extremely eager to go on another mission with cinema’s iconic super spy. Thus far, No Time To Die has been drawing massive crowds overseas, with a robust opening weekend in 54 markets. Hopes are high that Bond fans, movie fans, and folks who just want to see an epic blockbuster on the big screen will feel the same in the U.S. In a few days, we’ll find out.
Where did Tony Soprano come from? In The Many Saints of Newark, director Alan Taylor’s prequel to the HBO series, the show’s creator, David Chase, revisits a bygone Newark to give us Tony’s formative years via mid-century period piece. “Tony starts out as a six-year-old, and by the second time period, he’s a teenager,” says Kramer Morgenthau, the film’s cinematographer. As such, “there was the 1960s and then it goes into the 70s, and there are different looks for each time.”
Throughout the film, which finally brings the original Soprano’s cinematic-quality legacy to the actual big screen, Morgenthau used lookup tables to digitally recreate the feeling of Kodachrome and Ektachrome film stock. “As a cinematographer on the prequel, I wanted to honor some of the language of the show, but our film is very much a visual departure,” he pointed out. “It’s a period piece, so it has a very different vibe.” And the aesthetic of Newark’s Italian-American North Ward neighborhood in the 1960s was hardly an exact reflection of its own period. “The characters are much more rooted in the 50s than what was happening in the 60s because they’re gangsters. They’re not trendy guys,” Morgenthau said.
Caption: (L-r) RAY LIOTTA as “Hollywood Dick” Moltisanti, JOEY COCO DIAZ as Buddha, COREY STOLL as Junior Soprano, SAMSON MOEAKIOLA as Pussy Bonpensiero and BILLY MAGNUSSEN as Paulie Walnuts in New Line Cinema and Home Box Office’s mob drama “THE MANY SAINTS OF NEWARK,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Barry Wetcher
On that note, the grain from Kodachrome film stocks of yore which the cinematographer and his team emulated also emerged even earlier than the time period at hand, even if they were still in use in the 1960s. It’s when the film hits the 1970s that “we went into the Ektachrome feeling — more pastel, more desaturated. They’re being affected by the change that had happened in the 60s,” with the sprawling Soprano-Moltisanti clan finally forced by outside events to catch up with the world around them.
Caption: (L-r) MICHAEL GANDOLFINI as Teenage Tony Soprano, MICHELA DE ROSSI as Giuseppina Moltisanti and ALESSANDRO NIVOLA as Dickie Moltisanti in New Line Cinema and Home Box Office’s mob drama “THE MANY SAINTS OF NEWARK,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures and New Line Cinema
The era’s social upheaval is central to the film. Young Tony (played by William Ludwig as a child and by the late James Gandolfini’s son, Michael, as an adolescent), is enamored of his uncle Dickie Moltisanti (Alessandro Nivola), who jokes, cajoles, and absolutely runs his clan. Dickie’s dealings also see him working on and off with Harold McBrayer (Leslie Odom Jr.), who runs organized crime over on his side of Newark. But when something goes horribly wrong in Dickie’s world, he uses the uprising in Harold’s community as a cover. Over four days in July 1967, Newark was gripped by race riots after the police arrested and beat a Black cab driver, and a rumor quickly spread that they’d murdered the man, John William Smith. The Many Saints of Newark captures the real pain and chaos of a city in flames, as well as the film’s version of how the local Italian mafia used the events to make hay.
Caption: (L-r) Director ALAN TAYLOR and creator/writer/producer DAVID CHASE on the set of New Line Cinema and Home Box Office’s mob drama “THE MANY SAINTS OF NEWARK,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Barry Wetcher
“We studied the newsreels of what happened in Newark, and what was happening then was very shockingly similar to what was happening in the last year in the United States,” Morgenthau said. But “Newark today doesn’t look like what it was back then. We had to go to other parts of the New York Metropolitan area,” to shoot, which included Bay Bridge, Brooklyn, Richmond Hill, in Queens, and parts of the Bronx, Yonkers, and Westchester. Much of the movie was shot on location, with Morgenthau crediting production designer Bob Shaw as well as Taylor and Chase for meticulously making it work.
Caption: (L-r) LESLIE ODOM, JR. as Harold McBrayer and GERMAR TERRELL GARDNER as Cyril in New Line Cinema and Home Box Office’s mob drama “THE MANY SAINTS OF NEWARK,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures and New Line Cinema
“David Chase was a huge presence on the set and the godfather of the whole series. If it didn’t look right to him, if it didn’t feel like New Jersey, if it didn’t smell like New Jersey, he wasn’t interested in it,” Morgenthau said. Chase, who drew from childhood memories in creating the film, would have even preferred to shoot in New Jersey, but in terms of the filmmaking itself, “Alan, the director, and I were very much allowed the freedom to frame it, light it, shoot it, design the shots,” as long as the tone felt right.
Kramer Morgenthau on the set of ‘The Many Saints of Newark.’ Courtesy Warner Bros.Caption: (L-r) JOEY COCO DIAZ, director ALAN TAYLOR and ALESSANDRO NIVOLA on the set of New Line Cinema and Home Box Office’s mob drama “THE MANY SAINTS OF NEWARK,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Barry Wetcher
“It was a big honor to be asked to shoot the Sopranos prequel,” Morgenthau said, particularly given that the original series is now a piece of Americana. Against a heady, lightly desaturated backdrop of row houses, funerals, beauty parlors, and gangly kids running to the ice cream man on a hot summer day, indigent young Tony slouches his way toward adulthood. He avoids his unpredictable mother, Livia, (Vera Farmiga), yet he’s unquestioningly loyal to his disarming, murderous uncle Dickie. How did Tony become the iconically depressed, violent, therapy-going family man-cum-mafioso he grew into? The Many Saints of Newark paints a pretty clear picture.
Caption: (L-r) MICHAEL GANDOLFINI as Teenage Tony Soprano and ALESSANDRO NIVOLA as Dickie Moltisanti in New Line Cinema and Home Box Office’s mob drama “THE MANY SAINTS OF NEWARK,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Barry Wetcher
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Featured image: (L-r) MICHAEL GANDOLFINI as Teenage Tony Soprano and JON BERNTHAL as Johnny Soprano in New Line Cinema and Home Box Office’s mob drama “THE MANY SAINTS OF NEWARK,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo by Barry Wetcher.
Yesterday we got a fresh look at director Chloé Zhao’s Eternals in a new TV spot that revealed some of the titular superheroes’ abilities. Now, we take a look at a bunch of new photos, including some compelling images of alien spacecraft, in one of the most eagerly anticipated films of the year.
Zhao’s millennia-spanning epic focuses on the titular Eternals, a race of immortal beings who have been embedded quietly on Earth, helping shape its history and civilizations without bringing too much attention to themselves. Their main quest has been one of patient vigilance, to wait for the arrival of the Deviants and protect humanity should they appear. Obviously, the Deviants will appear, which means the Eternals must come together and fight off the gravest threat to the world since, well, Thanos snapped half of all creation out of existence (thanks to the Avengers, that half got snapped back into reality). It was all of that drama with Thanos that drew the Deviants to Earth.
The new images give us fresh looks at the film’s fantastic ensemble. You’ll see Gemma Chan’s Sersi, Lauren Ridloff’s Makkari, Kumail Nanjiani’s Kingo, Lia McHugh’s Sprite, Barry Keoghan’s Druig, Salma Hayek’s Ajak, Kit Harrington’s Dane Whitman, Richard Madden’s Ikaris, Angelina Jolie’s Thena, and Don Lee’s Gilgamesh. It’s an epic cast for one of Marvel’s most intriguing Phase 4 films.
Eternals hits theaters on November 5. Check out the new images here:
If you were curious about the tone in James Gunn’s upcoming The Suicide Squad spinoff Peacemaker, this clip from the upcoming HBO Max series will set you straight. John Cena reprises his role from the film as the titular Peacemaker, the peace-obsessed superhero who will stop at literally nothing to achieve it, including hurting everybody in sight. The clip shows us Peacemaker meeting his new colleagues for dinner, but the beefcake shows up in full “cos-play” look, wearing the shiny helmet, red top, and white paints. Those new colleagues are not only aghast that he walks around like that in public, but that he’s got a bald eagle in the back seat of his car (named Eagle-y, no less).
The clip is also chock-a-block with F-bombs. Clearly, Gunn is having a blast with the format here, which gives him more time to focus on the insanities (and inanities) of the superhero life by putting one of them in the midst of a bunch of wisecracking normies. Those wisecrackers at the restaurant are John Economos (Steve Agee), Leota Adebayo (Danielle Brooks), Emilia Harcourt (Jennifer Holland), and Clemson Murn (Chukwudi Iwuji).
Gunn pitched HBO the concept for the series in the midst of working on The Suicide Squad, believing there was more story to tell around Cena’s living paradox of a character. This clip shows that Gunn is brought his trademark irreverence to the show and that even if Cena’s titular superhero manages to keep the peace (by creating chaos), he’s still going to get made fun of for dressing like that.
Peacemaker arrives on HBO Max this January. Check out the clip below.
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“Gods, kings, fire, and blood.” These are the first words we hear spoken in the House of the Dragonteaser, the long-awaited prequel to Game of Thrones that focuses on House Targaryen. Set 200-years before the flagship series, when Dany, Jon Snow, and the rest of the Westeros battled for that spiky throne, House of the Dragon will track the Targaryen clan and reveal how these dragon-lords ended up conquering Westeros. This is the very first footage we’ve seen from the series, revealing a production that looks (unsurprisingly) as ravishing as Game of Thrones did, with swordplay, palace intrigue, and a briefly glimpsed dragon all on offer. Has it really been over two years since Game of Thrones aired its finale? Indeed it has.
The series comes from co-creators Ryan J. Condal and “A Song of Ice and Fire” author George R. R. Martin, with Game of Thrones alum Miguel Sapochnik as co-showrunner (along with Condal) and director of the pilot and other episodes. House of the Dragon will explore the contentious Targaryen brood as they not only rule Westeros but fight amongst themselves in what will end up becoming a civil war, known as the ‘Dance of Dragons.’
“Dreams didn’t make us kings,” Matt Smith’s Prince Daemon Targaryen says at the end of the teaser, “dragons did.” There’s little doubt House of the Dragon will draw many Game of Thrones fans back into their scaly clutches.
House of the Dragon comes to HBO Max in 2022. Check out the teaser below:
And 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
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When writer David Chase created HBO’s The Sopranos in 1999, he ushered in the age of what is now fondly known as Peak TV. Often staged by director Alan Taylor, Chase’s contemporary crime drama, led by the late James Gandolfini as mob boss Tony Soprano, picked up 111 Emmy nominations including 21 wins by infusing a crew of New Jersey Mafiosi with gritty eloquence, Shakespearean-level betrayal, homicidal rage, family dysfunction and loads of psychological nuance. In The Many Saints of Newark (now playing in theaters and on HBO Max) Chase reunites with Taylor on a big-screen prequel set in the late sixties and early seventies when Tony Soprano came of age. Taylor says,“It’s funny because, with The Sopranos, David Chase’s brilliant idea was to take the classic America gangster story, put it on the small screen and make it contemporary. Now we’re undoing all that cleverness by putting the story on the big screen and making a period film.”
Speaking from his Brooklyn home, Taylor details how he shaped the prequel’s fiery performances, explains what it was like working with the intimidating Ray Liotta, and how Micahel Gandolfini won him over before filming began by delivering a heartfelt dinner speech.
Caption: (L-r) Director ALAN TAYLOR, ALESSANDRO NIVOLA and MICHELA DE ROSSI on the set of New Line Cinema and Home Box Office’s mob drama “THE MANY SAINTS OF NEWARK,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Barry Wetcher
The world of the Sopranos looks beautiful on the big screen. How did you stage the story so it feels cinematic in scope?
I thought long and hard about the spirit of The Sopranos in building this big-screen experience. We tried to be epic in places while also making it continuous with the show by using this spartan, clean visual language I learned from David Chase. He didn’t like any affectations or prettifying on the show, and we wanted that kind of rigor in the movie as well. We do have surreal, strange, beautiful things in this movie as well, but it’s captured in a sort of straight-ahead way.
Caption: (L-r) RAY LIOTTA as “Hollywood Dick” Moltisanti, JOEY COCO DIAZ as Buddha, COREY STOLL as Junior Soprano, SAMSON MOEAKIOLA as Pussy Bonpensiero and BILLY MAGNUSSEN as Paulie Walnuts in New Line Cinema and Home Box Office’s mob drama “THE MANY SAINTS OF NEWARK,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Barry Wetcher
A simple approach works well when the performances are so strong, especially from Alessandro Nivola as Young Tony’s hothead uncle Dickie. It feels like he’s the guy driving the narrative.
I’m glad you highlight that. A lot of people probably come to this film thinking it’s going to be Tony’s origins story first and foremost, but this is very much Alessandro’s movie because all the storylines connect to him. On the TV show, Jim Gandolfini was the pillar because he managed to be smart, sexy, dangerous, psychotic, funny, damaged, sympathetic all at once. That’s the way I thought about Dickie. We had to find someone who could do all that and when Alessandro put himself on tape it was flawless: the voice, the range, the mannerism, the energy.
Caption: ALESSANDRO NIVOLA as Dickie Moltisanti in New Line Cinema and Home Box Office’s mob drama “THE MANY SAINTS OF NEWARK,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures and New Line Cinema
How did you harness all those elements when Nivola showed up on set?
He did so much prep, I just tried to keep him on the rails with what I’d fallen in love with in his audition. Alessandro has a sometimes unnerving process of starting and re-starting a scene, which can take other actors time to get used to. I think he picked up some things from De Niro in the way he works, and it paid off.
In terms of casting, the big hook has to do with James Gandolfini’s son Michael taking on the role of a teenaged Tony Soprano. How did that happen?
We looked at teenagers in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago but David had the idea in the back of his mind about putting Michael in the movie. I was wary because I’d never seen Michael act before and beyond that, he’s lost his father. Can we really ask him to come in and immerse himself in this project? But Michael auditioned and did great. We had a kickoff dinner with the cast and crew where he thanked everyone “for giving him a chance to say hello to his father again and goodbye to his father again.” There was not a dry eye in the house.
Caption: (L-r) MICHAEL GANDOLFINI as Teenage Tony Soprano and ALESSANDRO NIVOLA as Dickie Moltisanti in New Line Cinema and Home Box Office’s mob drama “THE MANY SAINTS OF NEWARK,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Barry Wetcher
What did you do to shape Michael’s performance?
More often than not, my guidance was not to make sure he feels like Tony but to pull him back from being too much like the character his father played and focus on the fact that Tony [at this time] is still unformed, he’s still sensitive and soft. Until the end of the film, he’s this kid who’s concerned about his mom, looks up to his uncle for guidance, and is getting the worst parenting ever.
The Many Saints of Newark COURTESY OF BARRY WETCHER/WARNER BROS. ENTERTAINMENT INC.
New Jersey in the movie feels different from the New Jersey we know from the series. What changes when we go back in time and what remains the same?
The big things stay the same: The tone, the balance of violence and humor, the quality of the performances. But a lot of things changed. The show was late-twentieth-century New Jersey tacky. For the movie, we have better suits, better cars, better music, nicer dresses on the woman. We’re seeing these visuals through a golden age filter because that’s how Tony remembered it. My favorite line in the series is when Tony says “I feel like I came in at the end of something.” But of course, of course, it’s The Sopranos world so we start out romanticizing the past and then obliterate any sense of romance as soon as we set up the story.
Caption: (L-r) JOEY COCO DIAZ, director ALAN TAYLOR and ALESSANDRO NIVOLA on the set of New Line Cinema and Home Box Office’s mob drama “THE MANY SAINTS OF NEWARK,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Barry Wetcher
That sense of vintage glamor is personified by fresh-off-the-boat Mafia wife Giuseppina played by Italian actress Michela De Rossi.
Isn’t she something? David and I went to Rome and cast Michela there. She knows how to be funny but there’s a real spark and intensity to her character. She’s very different as an actor from Alessandro. He’s very internal in his process, whereas Michaela changes everything she does in a scene based on what the other person’s doing. She had very little English when she came over to make the movie.
Caption: (L-r) MICHAEL GANDOLFINI as Teenage Tony Soprano, MICHELA DE ROSSI as Giuseppina Moltisanti and ALESSANDRO NIVOLA as Dickie Moltisanti in New Line Cinema and Home Box Office’s mob drama “THE MANY SAINTS OF NEWARK,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures and New Line Cinema
Giuseppina makes a big impression on Black numbers runnerHarold (Leslie Odom Jr.), who draws the viewer into the 1967 Newark race riots. What was it like re-creating this historic event, complete with fires and tanks rolling down the street?
Working with production designer Bob Shaw, we took over two or three blocks of Newark and transformed it to match the period. That was exciting but the peril comes in not getting it right. Everything you see in the film is grounded in research, including the young black child getting shot by the police, who wound up on the cover of Time magazine. At that location, people who’d grown up during that time had tears in their eyes, telling us “That’s exactly the way it looked, that’s how it felt.”
Caption: (L-r) Director ALAN TAYLOR and creator/writer/producer DAVID CHASE on the set of New Line Cinema and Home Box Office’s mob drama “THE MANY SAINTS OF NEWARK,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Barry Wetcher
All the mob guys are racists including the Goodfellas-famous Ray Liotta in the role of Dickie’s brutal father.
Yeah, a Nasty alpha male. I was really keen on casting Ray because — I don’t want to give anything away but in Ray, we get this powerful performer who carries this whole mythology of gangsterism from [Martin] Scorsese, and then we’re playing against that as well.
Caption: (L-r) JOEY COCO DIAZ as Buddha, RAY LIOTTA as “Hollywood Dick” Moltisanti and JOHN BORRAS as Bishop in New Line Cinema and Home Box Office’s mob drama “THE MANY SAINTS OF NEWARK,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Barry Wetcher
Ray Liotta seems so menacing on screen. What’s he like to work with?
Ray looks like he could bite your head off but he’s nice, unpretentious, and funny. Although he does have a few rough edges. There was one scene where he and I got a little bear-ish with each other.
You contributed to the birth of Peak TV era by directing Mad Men, Game of Thrones, The Sopranos, Deadwood, Nurse Jackie, Sex and the City, and Six Feet Under. Then you took a shot at blockbuster movies. Why?
I came out of film school thinking I only want to do movies and TV is stupid. David thought the same thing so it’s ironic that he gave birth to the golden age of TV and I rode in on that work he created. Then TV got bigger and bigger, Game of Thrones led to a couple of opportunities that I couldn’t say no to so I jumped into these blockbusters working with budgets I’d never had before.
You directed Thor: The Dark World and Terminator: Genisys. How did that go?
It did not work out. I loved the actors and respect the hell out of Marvel and the source material for Terminator. Thor made tons of money and my terminator was the second biggest grossing Terminator movie of all time, so yay. But it was no fun. By the time I staggered out of that experience, I’d lost the joy of movie-making. I’d forgotten why I wanted to be a director. It became a matter of going out into the wilderness, doing some small things, going back to Game of Thrones. Then when David called about doing The Many Saints of Newark, it became sort of a redemptive act of coming back to life again as a director.
Newark includes locations and references from the series that will surely be appreciated by hardcore Sopranos fans.
Going back to Satriale’s butcher shop felt good, [representing] the idea that some things just don’t change. And of course, Holsten’s diner carries weight because of where the TV series ends up, so that’s a nice echo. But we didn’t really do many easter egg-y things except for when Junior comments on whether Tony has the makings of a varsity athlete. The other thing we carried deliberately from the show is the food. We made sure to service the food a couple of times,
It’s intriguing to see Tony’s bitter mother Livia (Vera Farmiga) and the conniving Junior (Corey Stoll) as young adults, but John Magaro’s take on a 25-year old Sylvio, originated by Steve Van Zandt, really jumps out.
John spent a lot of time with Steve Van Zandt and sort of absorbed Sylvio that way. At the premiere in New York last week, spontaneous applause broke out when he walks across the room doing the perfect Sylvio in the way he pitched his voice and hunched the shoulders.
So many performances in Many Saints of Newark seem to forecast what the characters will become thirty years down the line. It’s like the philosopher says: “Character is destiny.”
Which again, I would hammer back into the main theme. These people are locked into who they are. We may tell ourselves that we can look at our bad habits and liberate ourselves, but in our film, the characters are fully formed. There’s a real inevitability as to where they’re going in life.
Featured image: Caption: (L-r) ALESSANDRO NIVOLA, MICHAEL GANDOLFINI and director ALAN TAYLOR on the set of New Line Cinema and Home Box Office’s mob drama “THE MANY SAINTS OF NEWARK,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Barry Wetcher
Daniel Craig’s final mission as 007 is breaking records. No Time To Die, the 25th installment in the deathless spy franchise, cruised to a $119.1 million opening weekend overseas from 54 markets. This is a very healthy number in our pandemic-stricken era, and further fuels hope that Bond’s big business abroad and the record-breaking opening of Venom: Let There Be Carnage in the U.S. points to a public finally ready to return to theaters.
No Time To Die is the first big Hollywood film of the pandemic era to break the $100 million threshold without opening in China. The film, from director Cary Fukunaga, finds Bond pulled out of retirement to face his most ghoulish, ruthless adversary yet, Safin (Rami Malek). It’s the longest Bond movie in the franchise’s history, and it seems audiences are more than happy to spend more than two-and-a-half hours in Bond’s company.
No Time To Die had the third-biggest weekend of any Bond film ever in the U.K. and Ireland, and the sixth biggest for any film there. This robust performance is welcome news for British exhibitors, who had made it clear a lot was riding on James Bond’s broad shoulders. In Imax theaters, No Time To Die had the best opening for any Bond film ever in 24 countries, including Italy, Sweden, Japan, and Germany.
“This was a huge team effort by all. The filmmakers delivered an outstanding film and we are very proud to play a part in this result with MGM and EON,” Universal International’s distribution chief Veronika Kwan Vandenberg told Variety. She said that Barbara Broccoli of Eon was a “huge supporter of the theatrical experience, and it’s very gratifying to see the film achieve such heights during the pandemic.”
This healthy international haul sets up No Time To Die for its North American premiere on October 8.
