Sony Pictures screened Ghostbusters: Afterlife for critics as part of their CinemaCon event, giving us a very early taste of what to expect for a film that doesn’t premiere until November 11 (after repeated delays due to the pandemic). Obviously, full reviews will be embargoed for quite some time, but these early reactions are an indication of how writer/director Jason Reitman approached this sequel to his dad’s two iconic 1980s films.
As a brief refresher, let’s go back to Ivan Reitman’s Ghostbustersin 1984, which for a generation of kids was one of the major movie events of our childhoods. We waited a full five years for the sequel, Ghostbusters II, in 1989, and then that was it. It wasn’t until Paul Feig rebooted the franchise in 2016 did we get to inhabit a world of the Ecto-1, ectoplasm, and ghouls, but that film, while a hoot, wasn’t directly connected to Reitman’s original two films (it included some of the film’s stars, but as themselves).
This brings us to Jason Reitman‘s film, which is directly connected to the events in his dad’s movies, and will include some of the original cast—Bill Murray, Dan Ackroyd, Ernie Hudson, Sigourney Weaver, and Annie Potts. They join the film’s main stars, Carrie Coon as mom Callie, Finn Wolfhard as her son Trevor, and McKenna Grace as her nerdy, slightly distant daughter Phoebe. When the family moves to a farm in Nebraska once owned by none other than Egon Spengler (the late Harold Ramis from the original films), their lives are about to be changed forever. They find a lab in the basement, as well as the iconic Ecto-1, the 1959 Cadillac Miller-Meteor Futura Duplex, and thus the events of Ghostbusters: Afterlife begin. A local teacher played by Paul Rudd gets involved in the action, which includes two of the original film’s most famous creations, Slimer the goblin, and multiple miniature versions of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.
So, let’s see how Reitman managed fan expectations, his father’s legacy, and creating a new entrant to the franchise that can stand on its own. Not an easy task, but these early reactions indicate he pulled it off.
Ghostbusters: Afterlife is the Ghostbusters sequel that I’ve been waiting all my life to see. It is nostalgia done right. A perfect blend of classic Ghostbusters moments with a fresh & unique twist for a whole new generation to enjoy. I got goosebumps. #GhostbustersAfterlifepic.twitter.com/lOAtbMQedf
Ghostbusters: Afterlife … Wow! Was not expecting how heartfelt it is. It has a very childlike Spielberg vibe to it. And @JasonReitman is extremely loyal to the original. #CinemaConpic.twitter.com/APyHMzEuYd
Surprise #GhostbustersAfterlife screening just blew the roof off #CinemaCon. LOVED IT. This movie meant everything to me – an emotional sequel that is guaranteed to be almost indecipherable to outsiders. This is what the fans have been waiting for. I WOULD DIE FOR MUNCHER
— Rebecca #FullyVaccinated! Murray (@becmur) August 24, 2021
Yes, Ghostbusters: Afterlife screened at CinemaCon. Yes I saw it. Yes, it’s very good. Yes, this is the true Ghostbusters sequel you’ve been waiting for. It does have a lot of callbacks but it’s a nostalgic homage for the franchise. #GhostbustersAfterlife#CinemaConpic.twitter.com/iqDqGiC5bM
#GhostbustersAfterlife was really great. As someone who wasn’t a massive of #Ghostbusters I had so much fun even without understanding the references. A ton of heart with a great cast. New and old fans are going to love it. Stay through the credits! #CinemaConpic.twitter.com/Gc3oySIXOa
— Kａiｔlyn Βоｏｔｈ✈ #CinemaCon (@katiesmovies) August 24, 2021
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The first trailer for Spider-Man: No Way Home revealed that Peter Parker’s about to have the strangest adventure of his life. Yes, pun included (Benedict Cumberbatch’s Doctor Strange is a major player in the new film), but also, we mean it. Even though Peter Parker has, before even graduating high school, traveled to distant planets and fought intergalactic psychopaths (paging Thanos), none of his adventures were as mind-meltingly bizarre as what he’s about to experience in No Way Home. Sony Pictures has released a few new photos from the film, revealing Peter’s multiverse madness.
The reason for that is primarily Doctor Strange. Peter seeks out the good Doctor’s help after the events from the last film, Far From Home, put him in the unenviable position of being a public pariah. When Peter fought and defeated the fame-hungry lunatic Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal) in Far From Home, his victory came at a great cost—Mysterio not only framed Peter for his murder but revealed Peter’s identity to the world. Thus, when No Way Home begins, everyone knows that Peter Parker is Spider-Man. What’s worse is that everyone believes Mysterio and thinks Peter’s a murderer, and this means the lives of the people Peter loves—Aunt May (Marisa Tomei), Ned (Jacob Batalon), and MJ (Zendaya) are all upended, too.
This is where Doctor Strange comes in. Peter enlists the Sorcerer Supreme’s help by asking if he can cast a spell that will reverse Mysterio’s reveal. Although he’s told not to do this in no uncertain terms by Wong (Benedict Wong), Doctor Strange feels a deep kinship to Peter considering all they’ve been through. Plus, he likes a good challenge. So, he agrees, and the result is that Peter is flung into the multiverse, or, more accurately, the multiverse is unleashed on Peter (and the world), and this is when things get really strange. Enter another doctor, no less strange but much less good—Alfred Molina’s Doc Octopus from Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2 when Toby Maguire was Peter Parker. But he’s not the only villain from previous Spider-Man films who will appear. Jamie Foxx’s Electro will also make an appearance, from The Amazing Spider-Man 2, when Andrew Garfield was Spidey.
And finally, the supervillain who helped start it all appears to be making his return. We’re talking about Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin from Sam Raimi’s 2002 Spider-Man. The new trailer all but confirms his return, as we hear the Goblin’s laugh and see one of his pumpkin bombs roll across the street once the multiverse is unleashed.
Spider-Man: No Way Home hits theaters on December 17. Check out the first images from the film here:
L-r: Peter Parker (Tom Holland), MJ (Zendaya), and Ned (Jacob Batalon) in “Spider-Man: No Way Home.” Courtesy Sony Pictures.Ned (Jacob Batalon), Peter Parker (Tom Holland), and MJ (Zendaya), and in “Spider-Man: No Way Home.” Courtesy Sony Pictures.Peter Parker (Tom Holland), Ned (Jacob Leeds) and MJ (Zendaya), in “Spider-Man: No Way Home.” Courtesy Sony Pictures.Benedict Cumberbatch is Doctor Strange and Tom Holland is Peter Parker in Spider-Man: No Way Home. Courtesy Sony Pictures.Tom Holland is Peter Parker in Spider-Man: No Way Home. Courtesy Sony Pictures.Benedict Cumberbatch is Doctor Strange and Tom Holland is Peter Parker in Spider-Man: No Way Home. Courtesy Sony Pictures.
Here’s the synopsis for Spider-Man: No Way Home:
For the first time in the cinematic history of Spider-Man, our friendly neighborhood hero is unmasked and no longer able to separate his normal life from the high-stakes of being a Super Hero. When he asks for help from Doctor Strange the stakes become even more dangerous, forcing him to discover what it truly means to be Spider-Man.
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For the first time ever in a Spider-Man film, everyone’s favorite web-slinger is no longer working undercover. Sony Pictures has revealed the first trailer for director Jon Watts’ Spider-Man: No Way Home, revealing that the repercussions from Spidey’s exposure at the end of Spider-Man: Far From Home will have major implications in the new film. If you’re having trouble recalling what happened at the end of Far From Home, considering it feels like several millennia since its’ 2019 release, here’s a quick synopsis—Jake Gyllenhaal’s fame-hungry, power-mad Mysterio revealed Spidey’s identity and set Peter Parker up as a cold-blooded killer simultaneously. It was a massive one-two punch that, as mentioned, has now revealed Parker’s identity for the first time in Spidey film history.
The frame job Mysterio did on Peter Parker isn’t just hurting him. The trailer reveals how everyone in Peter’s world—Aunt May (Marisa Tomei), Ned (Jacob Batalon), and MJ (Zendaya) are now all under the harsh glare of Peter’s newfound scrutiny. New York City seems to be turning on him (you might notice someone in the crowd holding up a sign calling Peter the devil), and Peter needs to find a way out. Or, to use the parlance of the trilogy’s titles—a way home.
Enter Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch). Peter seeks out the good Doctor for guidance and help, a role that used to be filled by Tony Stark, but we all know Tony’s gone thanks to sacrificing himself to save the universe in Avengers: Endgame. Peter is wondering if Doctor Strange can make it so Mysterio never revealed his identity, and when the Sorcerer Supreme agrees, Spider-Man: No Way Home is launched into its multiverse madness, where Peter’s attempt to lead two lives ends up bringing back one of the best villains of any Spider-Man movie, Alfred Molina’s Doc Octopus, from Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2 when Tobey Maguire was Spidey. And he’s not the only villainous blast from the past—Jamie Foxx’s Electro, from The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (during Andrew Garfield’s run as Peter Parker) will also burst on the scene.
And there’s one more supervillain expected to emerge. You’ll notice a familiar laugh when the multiverse is unleashed, and a familiar weapon, the pumpkin bomb, roll across the street. Yup, that’s Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin, the villain who started it all in Sam Raimi’s 2002 Spider-Man.
Check out the trailer below. Spider-Man: No Way Home swings into theaters on December 17.
Here’s the synopsis for Spider-Man: No Way Home:
For the first time in the cinematic history of Spider-Man, our friendly neighborhood hero is unmasked and no longer able to separate his normal life from the high-stakes of being a Super Hero. When he asks for help from Doctor Strange the stakes become even more dangerous, forcing him to discover what it truly means to be Spider-Man.
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The quality of the action in director Destin Daniel Cretton’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is one of the aspects that the critics, in spoiler-free early reactions, have raved about. Whether it’s Shang-Chi (Simu Liu) fighting Razor Fist (Florian Munteanu) or Shang-Chi facing off against his own father, Wenwu (Tony Leung), the fight choreography is next level. A new behind-the-scenes featurette just released by Marvel gives us the best look yet at what makes the action in Shang-Chi so sensational.
Shang-Chi is more closely connected to martial arts than any MCU film in history. Tai Chi, Wing Chun, and other regional practices are all harnessed to create a signature style. But it’s not just the fact that Shang-Chi, Wenwu (also known as the Mandarin), Razor Fist, Jiang Li (Fala Chen), and Xialing (Meng’er Zhang) are all martial arts experts that makes Shang-Chi‘s action so relentless—it’s that Cretton, his stunt performers and coordinators, the film’s effects department, and the actors were all committed to creating a Marvel film that was as unique as it was thrilling.
And yet Shang-Chi is a Marvel movie, as Simu Liu himself notes at the top of this new video, which means that all this action unfolds in a story that pushes the MCU deeper into Phase 4. (It’s the second film in the new phase, following Black Widow). One sequence, in particular, comes into sharper focus here (pictured in the above image)—an epic fight on a moving bus. Fight coordinator Andy Cheng, director Cretton, and Liu himself describe just how wild the sequence is, with the bus careening down San Francisco’s iconic, and insanely steep, hills as Shang-Chi fights off some bad guys, including the no joke bruiser Razor Fist.
Check out the video below. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings hits theaters on September 3.
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Just how powerful are the ten rings? In a new video released by Marvel, the power of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings titular magical trinkets are said to be more potent than any force in the universe. When this statement is made by Michelle Yeoh’s Ying Nan, who do we see? The assorted Avengers, including one very ticked off Hulk, making plain just how much power the MCU’s newest member, Simu Liu’s Shang-Chi, will wield.
By now you’ve likely heard that the early reactions to director Destin Daniel Cretton’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings have been raves. Cretton and his star, Liu, are introducing the MCU’s first-ever Asian superhero, adding extra weight to the already tall order of creating a moving, momentous single film that needs to exist within, and expands upon, the massive Marvel Cinematic Universe. That they’ve succeeded is exciting enough, but what’s more, the critics are suggesting that the film not only stands on its own but feels like a new kind of Marvel movie. With Chloé Zhao’s Eternals, due out on November 3, already creating buzz as being something new in the MCU, you can’t help but be excited at the way this juggernaut cinematic mega-franchise is expanding.
Check out the video hinting at the ten rings power here:
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings centers on a ferocious family struggle. Shang-Chi (Liu) is trained by his father, Wenwu (Leung) from a young age to become a peerless fighter, yet once he comes of age, he refuses to join the mysterious Ten Rings Organization—the very same shadowy syndicate that once kidnapped Tony Stark—creating a power struggle between his powerful father and the budding could-be superhero. Wenwu is not merely the leader of a criminal organization—he is the real Mandarin, one of Marvel’s most iconic supervillains, and the fight brewing between father and son will have massive implications for the larger MCU.
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HBO has teased the third season of their hit series Succession via Twitter, revealing that the nest of vipers known as the Roy family is returning in October.
Things were looking very dire for the billionaire bad boys and girls of the Roy family when we last left them in season two’s cliffhanger for a finale. The long tortured firstborn son Kendall (Jeremy Strong) had turned the screws on his father, Logan (Brian Cox) once again, this time in a way far more significant than merely trying to wrest control of Waystar RoyCo from his old man. Kendall held a press conference where not only did he reveal his plans to take over the family company, but to blame his father for the criminality and culture of abuse that has plagued the massive company for decades. This was hardly the “blood sacrifice” that Logan had demanded of his son—Kendall was supposed to take the fall for the company’s misdeeds, which were all laid bare after a series of disastrous congressional hearings in season two revealed to the world just how venal Waystar RoyCoy is. “This is the day his reign ends,” Kendall said in front of the cameras. Logan, watching this all unfold live from his yacht, had the hint of a smile at the edge of his lips—his son had finally become a man. Which means that now Logan can destroy him.
The returning cast members joining Strong and Cox are Sarah Snook (Shiv Roy), Kieran Culkin (Roman Roy), Alan Ruck (Connor Roy), Nicholas Braun (Cousin Greg), Matthew Macfadyen (Tom Wambsgans) and J. Smith-Cameron (Gerri Kellman). New cast members include Adrien Brody, Alexander Skarsgård, Sanaa Lathan, Linda Emond, Jihae Kim, Hope Davis, Dasha Nekrasova and Ella Rumpf.
“Ambushed by his rebellious son Kendall at the end of season two, Logan Roy begins season three in a perilous position, scrambling to secure familial, political, and financial alliances. Tensions rise as a bitter corporate battle threatens to turn into a family civil war.”
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Yesterday Marvel Studios released the final trailer for Oscar-winner Chloé Zhao’s first-ever MCU film Eternals, and it was as sweeping, lush, and epic as we’d hoped. It also revealed quite a bit more of the film’s plot than we’ve gotten before.
The film’s titular superheroes, the Eternals, came to Earth some 7,000 years ago to protect the planet from a vicious threat—the Deviants. Eternals promises to expand the MCU in ways no other Phase 4 film will because its central characters have been so outside the MCU. And what’s more, the film’s look, more epic fantasy and Western than any previous Marvel film, plays to Zhao’s considerable strengths as a filmmaker. In short, Eternals promises to be a completely new kind of MCU film.
This not-quite-Marvel look makes sense given that Chloé Zhao has a very particular visual style and she’s deployed it, or perhaps expanded it, to encompass the cosmic doings of her superhero and supervillain characters. While Eternals is clearly the biggest film Zhao’s ever done, the heart of the story is right in her strike zone. It’s focused on a group of characters—yes, they’re ancient and supernatural—but they’re still people meeting their destinies, dealing with fracture relationships, trying to do what’s right, all against the spectacular backdrop of a planet in crisis. Her films have all had a grandeur to them, even when focused on single characters leading decidedly un-superheroic lives. From a young Native American girl on a reservation in Songs My Brothers Taught Me (2015) to a story about a group of Americans living a nomadic existence in her Oscar-winning Nomadland (2020), Zhao’s films have always looked lush and felt big because to her, every life is of colossal importance.
The final trailer gave us a sense of these supernatural characters dealing with loss, distance, and the effects of time. The Eternals have been spread out as they’ve patiently waited, and watched, and not meddled in human affairs (even when Thanos snapped half of all creation out of existence.) It’s not until the repatriation of all those lost souls in Avengers: Endgame did the Deviants stir, thus girding the Eternals into actions.
What’s so exciting is unlike every Marvel movie of the last decade, practically no one outside of people with deep knowledge of Marvel’s comics canon knows who these characters are, which gives Zhao more room than the directors of more MCU-snug films have had in the past. While the cast is incredible and largely very well known, the characters they play will be brand new to us. And yes, while there is mention of Thanos and the Avengers in the Eternals trailers, everything we’ve seen thus far feels just as much like an epic fantasy film, say a Lord of the Rings, then it does a Marvel movie.
But of course, it is a Marvel movie, and how Zhao and her creative team have connected Eternals to the MCU will be one of the intriguing things to watch for. Seeing how this sensational cast takes on introducing us to a whole new roster of superheroes will be but part of the fun. That cast includes Angelina Jolie, Richard Madden, Gemma Chan, Kumail Nanjiani, Brian Tyree Henry, Salma Hayek, Barry Keoghan, Kit Harrington, Lauren Ridloff, Don Lee, and Lia McHugh star.
Eternals is due to hit theaters on November 3, and it’s sure to jolt the MCU in a way we’ve never seen before.
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We’ve already heard how seriously good director Destin Daniel Cretton’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of The Ten Rings is, and one of the many facets of the film the critics called out for praise is the film’s soundtrack. In fact, time and time again critics wrote that not since Ryan Coogler’s 2018 game-changer Black Panther has an MCU film had this killer of a soundtrack. Now, Marvel Studios has revealed another song from Cretton’s epic, “In The Dark,” by Swae Lee, featuring Jhené Aiko. This comes a week after we heard the first full track from the film, the banging “Run It”, by DJ Snake, Rick Ross, and Rich Brain.
“In The Dark” is smooth and soulful where “Run It” was nervy and adrenalin pumping. The song speaks to the softer side of Shang-Chi and the Legend of The Ten Rings, which focuses on a family feud for the ages. Marvel’s first-ever Asian superhero, Shang-Chi (Simu Liu), was raised to be a peerless fighter by his powerful father, Wenwu (Tony Leung), the leader of the criminal syndicate the Ten Rings. Wenwu goes by another name, the Mandarin, one of Marvel’s most iconic supervillains, and one of (but not the only) narrative threads in the film will find the father trying to impose his will on his son, and the son rebelling. Shang-Chi wants nothing to do with the Ten Rings, and he’ll need the help of an old friend (played by Awkwafina), and an estranged sister (played by Meng’er Zhang) to bring the Ten Rings down.
Check out the track below. Shang-Chi and The Legend of the Ten Rings hits theaters and Disney+ on September 3.
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“The art within Candyman is definitely about devolution to mirror his psychological descent,” says co-writer and director Nia DaCosta at the top of this new video. DaCosta’s film, co-written with Jordan Peele, is centered on Yahya Abdul-Mateen II’s Anthony McCoy, a talented artist looking for inspiration. This search will lead him to some seriously dark places. McCoy, along with his girlfriend Brianna (If Beale Street Could Talk‘s Teyonah Parris), moves into a luxury condo in Chicago where the Cabrini towers once stood, and where decades ago the legendary Candyman once terrorized people in the 1992 original. McCoy thinks he can use this dark history to influence his art, but instead, Candyman’s power reaches far beyond mere artistic inspiration.
To credibly create McCoy’s increasingly dark artwork in the film, DaCosta did the most sensible thing possible—she turned to real artists. “It seemed critical that there were actual artists in the film, and works that had social relevancy,” says producer Ian Cooper. To that end, DaCosta and her team deployed artists Arnold Kemp, Cameron Spratley, and Sherwin Ovid to create McCoy’s art, tracking his work’s increasing intensity as he becomes more obsessed, and then possessed, by the legend of Candyman.
Check out the video below. Candyman hits theaters, at long last, on August 27.
Here’s the official, fulsome synopsis from Universal Pictures:
This summer, Oscar® winner Jordan Peele unleashes a fresh take on the blood-chilling urban legend that your friend’s older sibling probably told you about at a sleepover: Candyman. Rising filmmaker Nia DaCosta (Little Woods) directs this contemporary incarnation of the cult classic.
For as long as residents can remember, the housing projects of Chicago’s Cabrini Green neighborhood were terrorized by a word-of-mouth ghost story about a supernatural killer with a hook for a hand, easily summoned by those daring to repeat his name five times into a mirror. In present day, a decade after the last of the Cabrini towers were torn down, visual artist Anthony McCoy (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II; HBO’s Watchmen, Us) and his girlfriend, gallery director Brianna Cartwright (Teyonah Parris; If Beale Street Could Talk, The Photograph), move into a luxury loft condo in Cabrini, now gentrified beyond recognition and inhabited by upwardly mobile millennials.
With Anthony’s painting career on the brink of stalling, a chance encounter with a Cabrini Green old-timer (Colman Domingo; HBO’s Euphoria, Assassination Nation) exposes Anthony to the tragically horrific nature of the true story behind Candyman. Anxious to maintain his status in the Chicago art world, Anthony begins to explore these macabre details in his studio as fresh grist for paintings, unknowingly opening a door to a complex past that unravels his own sanity and unleashes a terrifyingly viral wave of violence that puts him on a collision course with destiny.
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Anthony Mackie is picking up the shield again, as we hoped (and expected) he would. The newly minted Captain America, fresh from taking on the mantle of Cap in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, is officially returning to the role for Captain America 4. What’s more, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier creator Malcolm Spellman is co-writing the script.
Mackie’s ascension as a flying Captain America in Marvel’s Disney+ series was a long-in-the-making coronation for the talented, hard-working actor. As Sam Wilson, aka The Falcon, Mackie made his first appearance in the Russo Brothers’ excellent Captain America: The Winter Soldier in 2014. Sam Wilson has figured into five MCU films in total, including backing the original Cap (Chris Evan) in Captain America: Civil War, and then accepting the iconic shield from him at the end of Avengers: Endgame. All the action in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier took place in the aftermath of Endgame, with Sam initially rebuffing Cap’s offer and refusing to take on the role of Captain America. That all changed when the man who did eagerly accept the responsibility, John Walker (Wyatt Russell), broke bad.
Varietyreports that Spellman will be co-writing the film with his Falcon and the Winter Soldier staff writer Dalan Musson. There’s no director yet attached, and casting, aside from Mackie, is still unknown. Yet Sam Wilson’s buddy, Sebastian Stan’s Winter Soldier, seems like a likely addition to the cast.
Captain America 4 will likely not see theaters until 2023, or perhaps later. Marvel’s upcoming slate is packed, with Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and Eternals coming out this year, and Spider-Man: No Way Home, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Thor: Love and Thunder, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and The Marvels all due in 2022.
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And now we finally have our first really good look at Chloé Zhao‘s Eternals. Marvel Studios has just released the final trailer for Zhao’s first MCU film, and it’s unsurprising that it looks ravishing—Zhao has made her name, in part, by creating films that are rich in visual splendor as they are in character depth and nuance. But the final trailer offers more than just a good look, it tells us more about the storyline.
The film is based on a comic series by the legendary Jack Kirby, centering on the titular Eternals, a group of nearly immortal beings who have been tracking the trials and tribulations of us wee Earthlings. These powerful beings have never—until now—really interfered in human affairs. The Thanos snap, in Avengers: Infinity War, eradicating half of life in the universe, certainly got their attention. Then, the sudden repatriation of all of those lost souls in Avengers: Endgame created “the necessary energy for the emergence to begin,” Salma Hayek’s Ajak explains. “How long do we have?” Richard Madden’s Ikaris asks. Her response? Seven days.
Finding out what that emergence is, and why it’s going to force the Eternals into action, is what Eternals is all about. This band of superpowered beings arrived on Earth 7,000 years ago to protect humans from the Deviants. The emergence triggered by the snap-and-repatriation of all those lifeforms is the arrival of those Deviants. This is the reason the Eternals must spring into action now, and it was the lack of Deviant involvement that kept them, on orders from upon high, from helping humanity in the fight against Thanos or any of the other awful wars and catastrophes that have befallen this little blue planet.
So, the stakes in Eternals are massive, and the cast is incredible. Angelina Jolie, Richard Madden, Gemma Chan, Kumail Nanjiani, Brian Tyree Henry, Salma Hayek, Barry Keoghan, Kit Harrington, Lauren Ridloff, Don Lee, and Lia McHugh star.
Check out the trailer below. Eternals hits theaters on November 5.
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After F9 helped jumpstart the theatrical box office this summer with a big haul both domestically and internationally, it should surprise absolutely no one that F10 is in the works. Entertainment Weeklybroke the news about the release date, revealing that Fast & Furious 10 is set to roar into theaters on April 7, 2023, with Justin Lin back to direct. Vin Diesel had revealed to EW previously that Fast 10 and 11 could possibly be filmed back-to-back, putting this venerable franchise, after more than two decades, over the finish line. “Just wait for 10,” Diesel told EW. “Let’s just say, the fact that you guys know that the studio is saying we can’t cover all this ground that needs to be covered in just one movie, you can only imagine what is to come.”
Likely joining Diesel in F10 are franchise stalwarts Michelle Rodriguez, Jordana Brewster, Tyrese Gibson, Chris Bridges, and Sung Kang. Newcomer John Cena hasn’t said whether his character, Jakob Toretta (brother to Diesel’s Dom) will return, and it’s been widely reported that Dwayne Johnson is out. But there’s one other big name likely making his return—spoiler alert—Jason Statham’s Deckward Shaw. If you caught F9 and stuck around for the mid-credits scene then you saw Statham’s surprise return, and the promise of a showdown between his Deckard Shaw and Sung Kang’s Han.
Despite all the insane stunts in F9, the franchise thrives off a can-you-top-this mentality, which means that, somehow, F10 will be even crazier. This is despite the fact that F9 saw two members of Dom’s family—with Tej (Chris Bridges, aka Ludacris) and Roman (Tyrese Gibson) get launched into flippin’ space.
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Featured image: Han’s Toyota Supra (left) and Dom’s Dodge Charger (right) attempt to stop the monstrous three-section armored vehicle dubbed the Armadillo in F9, co-written and directed by Justin Lin. Courtesy Universal Pictures.
Writer/director Denis Villeneuve’s Dune might not have even hit theaters yet, but that hasn’t stopped him from getting to work on the sequel. Villeneuve’s long-awaited adaptation of Frank. Herbert’s colossal, best-selling sci-fi novel is slated to finally bow this October, after making its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival next month. (Not for nothing, fellow filmmaker and Venice juror Chloé Zhao has already seen it and was blown away.) Villeneuve has long made it clear that he had no intention of trying to capture the immensity of Herbert’s vision in a single film, so, despite Dune being delayed due to the pandemic, and Warner Bros. having not yet officially green-lit the sequel, he’s working on the script.
In an interview with GamesRadar, Villeneuve said he’s optimistic that the sequel will go into production. What’s more, he’s having a blast. “I’m writing [Part Two] now, and I feel like I’m eight years old again. That’s very uncommon for me. It’s the first time I’ve experienced it where I’m watching one of my movies, and I have a moment of deep gratitude, of deep joy, and I say, ‘Thank you, life, for having allowed me to bring that to the screen.’ [laughs] I don’t know how other people will feel about it. But me? Denis Villeneuve when he was 14 years old? Thank you.”
As has recently been reported, Zendaya’s character Chani will be the center of the sequel, taking over the story’s focus from Timothée Chalamet’s Paul Atreides. Chalamet is set to return for the sequel in some capacity, but obviously all plot points will be jealously guarded. Considering Villeneuve has been planning on a two-part Dune this entire time and the reactions to part one, not only from Chloé Zhao but Warner Bros. executives, have been overwhelmingly positive, he’s confident it will happen.
“Everybody at Warner Bros and Legendary, they are 100 percent behind the project,” he told GamesRadar. “They feel that it would need a really bad outcome at the box office to not have a Dune: Part Two, because they love the movie. They are proud of the movie, so they want the movie to move forward. And they still did half of it.”
We’ll see the first half of his vision soon—Dune is slated to hit theaters and HBO Max on October 22.
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Featured image: Caption: (L-r) ZENDAYA as Chani and TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET as Paul Atreides in Warner Bros. Pictures’ and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures
“Frankly, in the back of my head, I always thought, ‘I bet I could go back and nail [Batman].’”
This is what Michael Keaton tells The Hollywood Reporterin a new feature profile, reflecting on the character that turned him into a massive star in 1989. Keaton first played the Caped Crusader in Tim Burton’s game-changing Batman, which reignited audiences love for the larger-than-life superheroes that have now come to dominate pop culture again. Keaton reprises the role of Bruce Wayne in Andy Muschietti‘s The Flash, marking the first time he’s stepped into the cape and cowl since Burton’s Batman Returns in 1992. Keaton famously turned down playing Batman a third time after that—until now.
At the time Burton cast Keaton, it was a somewhat controversial choice and not immediately understood by executives. “I had met lots of the square-jaw type of actors, but it’s like, well, why does somebody need to dress up like a bat?” Burton told THR. “They don’t look like Arnold Schwarzenegger, they’re not a big action hero. They’re somebody who’s intelligent and kind of screwed up. And Michael has such an intensity that it’s like, ‘Yeah, I could see that guy wanting to dress up as a bat.’ It’s all rooted in psychology, Jekyll and Hyde and two sides of a personality, light and dark, and he understood that.”
Burton was right. Keaton was excellent in the role, and both Batman and Batman Returns were huge hits—but then he stepped away, right when most actors would see they had an unbeatable franchise on their hands and cash in.
“Look, he had a franchise character in Batman, but he stepped away from it because he wanted to pursue other characters, as big as that was,” director Barry Levinson tells THR. “He has a yearning to try things as opposed to worrying about, ‘What is my identity in the film world?’”
So what brought him back? First and foremost, it was Birds of Prey writer Christina Hodson’s script for The Flash, which finds Ezra Miller’s supersonic superhero obliterating the laws of physics and crashing into parallel universes, which allows him to come into contact with various versions of DC superheroes. This means not only Keaton’s Batman but Ben Affleck’s, too.
“Frankly, in the back of my head, I always thought, ‘I bet I could go back and nail that motherf**ker,’ ” Keaton tells TRH. “And so I thought, ‘Well, now that they’re asking me, let me see if I can pull that off.’”
Keaton had to read the script multiple times to wrap his head around the multiverse concept. Once he understood it, it clicked. “What’s really interesting is how much more I got [Batman] when I went back and did him. I get this on a whole other level now. I totally respect it. I respect what people are trying to make. I never looked at it like, ‘Oh, this is just a silly thing.’ It was not a silly thing when I did Batman. But it has become a giant thing, culturally. It’s iconic. So I have even more respect for it because what do I know? This is a big deal in the world to people. You’ve got to honor that and be respectful of that. Even I go, ‘Jesus, this is huge.’”
We recommend you read the full profile here. The Flash is due in theaters on November 4, 2022.
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)
The first images from The Crown season 5 reveal the season’s three most prominent new faces—Imelda Staunton is your new Queen Elizabeth (taking over for Olivia Colman), Dominic West is your new Prince Charles (taking over for Josh O’Connor), and Elizabeth Debicki is your new Princess Diana (taking over for Emma Corrin.) The newcomers are all stellar performers, which is par for the course on this remarkable show. Every two seasons, as the royals age, the cast turns over, and every two seasons you think, well, how can the newcomers compete with how well, say, Claire Foy played Queen Elizabeth? Olivia Colman managed, just as Imelda Staunton will.
Yet the biggest draw for season five will certainly be Debicki as Princess Diana. Season four showed us just how bad things were between Charles and Diana (and what a particularly cossetted, cold figure young Charles could be), and season five will deal with their relationship’s end, and, quite possibly, Diana’s tragic death. Season four was also primarily preoccupied with another battle of will and wits—between Queen Elizabeth and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (Gillian Anderson). With Thatcher out of power by the time season five kicks off, the Queen will have her sights set on not only the sundering relationship of her eldest child and the heir to the throne but the Commonwealth’s myriad issues.
Netflix hasn’t released any details or a synopsis for season five, just the following three images thus far, so the above is still technically speculation. Joining Staunton, West, and Debicki are Jonathan Pryce as Prince Philip and Lesley Manville as Princess Margaret. Check out the images below. We don’t know the exact premiere date of season 5 yet, but it’s expected to arrive on Netflix in 2022.
Dominic West is Prince Charles in “The Crown.” Courtesy Netflix.Imelda Stanton is Queen Elizabeth in “The Crown.” Courtesy Netflix.Elizabeth Debicki is Princess Diana in “The Crown.” Courtesy Netflix.
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The first reactions to director Destin Daniel Cretton’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings are making the rounds on social media, and they are going to get you hype. Marvel’s first-ever Asian superhero was always in good hands with a director of Cretton’s ability and a star, in Simu Liu, with charisma to spare. Yet it’s still exciting to see these rave mini-reviews rolling in. Quite a few folks are saying Shang-Chi has the best fight sequences of any Marvel movie, which is quite a statement, and the cast, from Liu to Awkwafina to international treasures like Tony Leung and Michelle Yeoh are getting heaps of praise.
The film centers on an epic family struggle. Shang-Chi (Liu) is trained by his father, Wenwu (Leung) from a young age to become a skilled assassin, yet he goes against his father’s wishes and refuses to join the mysterious Ten Rings Organization—the very same shadowy syndicate that once kidnapped Tony Stark—and goes his own way. But Wenwu won’t be so easily dismissed, the man is the real Mandarin, after all, and the fight brewing between father and son will have massive implications for the larger MCU. The story is also much larger and deeper than just a generational battle, which you’ll glean from the social reactions.
Joining Liu and Leung are Awkwafina as Shang-Chi’s longtime friend Katy, Meng’er Zhang as Shang-Chi’s estranged sister Xialing, Fala Chen as Jiang Li, Florian Munteanu as the mercenary known as Razor Fist, and the aforementioned Michelle Yeoh as Jiang Nan.
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings will hit theaters exclusively on September 3 for 45-days, after which it will also be available to stream on Disney+. One thing the reviews make clear—and it should be obvious by now—a film like Shang-Chi was designed for the theater.
Onto the social reactions!
Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings is PHENOMENAL. Get hyped. Even fight scene/action sequence is better than the last. @SimuLiu fully embraces the marvel superhero role. Amazing imagery. Killer soundtrack. You’ll want to see this on the big screen. #shangchi
SHANG-CHI is such a fun ride & it kicks into overdrive right from the jump! Trust when I say they do NOT hold back on the action.
The best parts r the authentic touches Daniel put in along w/ some jump outta ur seat cameos.
Oh and 2 words ladies:
Florian Munteanu. *fans face*
— 🍅Jacqueline🍅 PRE-ORDER OUR BOOK TODAY!! (@THATJacqueline) August 17, 2021
Those #ShangChi action set pieces are STUNNERS. Choreography, cinematography, costume design, VFX – all on point and come together to make those fights MCU standouts. pic.twitter.com/ZfbT66XXsb
#ShangChi is awesome. This movie hits all that Marvel does well (pacing, humor, character) and adds action like we’ve never seen from the MCU before! 👏🏻👏🏻
Lots of people are about to have a new favorite Marvel hero.
#shangchi is like no Marvel movie you’ve seen. Love that it opens the door to a new world that I can’t wait to see more of. @SimuLiu literally kicks so much ass and he is perfectly cast. Got to see it in @imax tonight and this is how you want to see it. Looked and sounded perfect pic.twitter.com/43SaSxfx3m
#ShangChi has some of the best fight scenes of any MCU movie, sometimes thrilling, other times just stunningly beautiful. @SimuLiu & @awkwafina are a fantastic pairing.
#ShangChi is fantastic. It’s full of INCREDIBLE, beautifully choreographed fight scenes and full of badass women. Get ready to know Simu Liu’s name if you don’t already. Marvel has another hit on its hands. pic.twitter.com/3efV1kzJ7O
#ShangChi is an absolute triumph, unexpectedly spiritual and emotionally complex, with some of the very best action in the MCU. @SimuLiu is your new favorite Avenger and the movie’s myriad influences (everything from Jackie Chan to Hayao Miyazaki) pay off big time). Astounding.🐉 pic.twitter.com/72Yubnb4KV
#ShangChi kicked ass! Come for the killer fight scenes, dark mysticism, and martial arts mayhem, but stay for the thoughtful rumination on family, grief, and legacy.
The whole cast is terrific! Simu Liu is a superstar. Tony Leung and Michelle Yeoh are international treasures. pic.twitter.com/Rt7QAWK1T3
In many ways, of all the spinoffs and series that have been born from the original vision George Lucas had for Star Wars, perhaps none are intriguingly matched as Disney+’s upcoming short film collection Star Wars: Visions. That’s because the 7 shorts are the galaxy’s first-ever rendering in Japanese anime, which is in keeping with the spirit of Lucas’s vision for the original trilogy and of his Star Wars galaxy writ-larger. Now, a new trailer from Disney+ reveals the short film collection, each hailing from a legendary Japanese anime studio. The Star Wars galaxy has long used the films of iconic Japanese director Akira Kurosawa as an influence, to say nothing of Japanese mythology and iconography, and these seven films promise to explore those connections in the unique style of each studio.
The seven studios are Kamikaze Douga, Geno Studio (Twin Engine), Studio Colorido (Twin Engine), TRIGGER, Kinema Citrus, Science Saru, and Production I.G. The new trailer reveals some moments from their films, including The Duel (pictured above, The Ninth Jedi, The Elder, and The Twins. For anime fans, this collection is a no-brainer. For anime and Star Wars films, Star Wars: Visions might seem too good to be true. It’s not. It’s coming next month.
Check out the trailers—one in the original Japanese, the second dubbed in English—below. Star Wars: Visions debuts on Disney+ on September 22.
Here’s the synopsis for Star Wars: Visions:
Seven Japanese anime studios bring their unique talent and perspective to “Star Wars: Visions”—a collection of animated short films that will stream exclusively on Disney+.
The anime studios are Kamikaze Douga, Geno Studio (Twin Engine), Studio Colorido (Twin Engine), TRIGGER, Kinema Citrus, Science Saru, and Production I.G. Each studio will use their signature animation and storytelling styles to realize their own visions of the galaxy far, far away.
As a first formal venture into anime, each “Star Wars: Visions” short bears a unique Japanese sensibility, which in many ways aligns with the tone and spirit of Star Wars storytelling. From the beginning, stories told in the Star Wars galaxy have counted Japanese mythology and the films of Akira Kurosawa among their many influences, and these new visions will further explore that cultural heritage through the unique animation style and perspective of each anime studio.
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Featured image: Ronin (voiced by Masaki Terasoma in Japanese and Brian Tee in English) in a scene from “Star Wars: Visions” short “The Duel,” exclusviely on Disney+. Courtesy Lucasfilm & Disney+
“I’ve always been fascinated with urban legends,” Candyman co-writer and producer Jordan Peele says at the top of this new behind-the-scenes video released by Universal Pictures. “Candyman,” Peele continues, “is the patron saint of the urban legend.” Peele co-wrote the script with rising star Nia DaCosta, who directs the film. DaCosta says that while growing up, Candyman wasn’t just attached to the 1992 film from director Bernard Rose, it was a real urban myth she heard as a kid. “For us, Candyman was a demon ghost-man killing people in the projects,” DaCosta says.
Candyman is one of 2021’s most eagerly anticipated films, and like so many films, it was delayed because of the pandemic. One of the best TV spots for any film in 2020 was the gut-punch of a prologue that DaCosta shared with the world on June 17 of that year. Exactly a year and a day later, DaCosta was back, sharing a different kind of message, but one equally potent. DaCosta delivered the message the day before Juneteenth—now an officially recognized federal holiday—to discuss what the day means to her and how it relates to her upcoming horror film.
“I was thinking a lot about the duality of the Black experience, and how it relates to America,” DaCosta said in her Juneteenth message. “At once it’s this place of great hope, which I think is what Juneteenth represents in one way, it’s a celebration of us, of life and freedom and possibility. On the other side, it’s incredibly difficult and there’s a lot of pain and they kind of walk hand in hand. I think that’s something about this film as well, there’s still this sort of bittersweet hope.”
In the new video, DaCosta reflects on Candyman‘s timelessness.“Candyman is so perennial,” she says. “We’re talking about cycles of violence and how history repeats itself, and how we collectively process trauma through stories. It’s always time to tell a story like Candyman.”
Check out the video below. Candyman hits theaters, at long last, on August 27.
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Disney’s latest blockbuster based on a ride, director Jaume Collet-Serra’s Jungle Cruise, is a banter-filled romp down the Amazon. Blue-blooded adventurer Lily (Emily Blunt) drags her fusspot brother, MacGregor (Jack Whitehall), to South America in pursuit of the petals of an all-powerful healing tree. Their guiding trinket is an arrowhead, pilfered with great difficulty from a retrograde London men’s scientific society. Upon landing on the other side of the world, the pair wind up in the hands of riverboat captain Frank (Dwayne Johnson), a debtor prone to horrendous puns but an otherwise upstanding fellow. The group is plagued by trouble from the start, but Lily is determined to fulfill her adventurer father’s incomplete mission.
Competing factions have equally virulent but less altruistic interest than Lily in the magical flora. For a group of zombie 16th-century conquistadors, the petals are their solution to return to the living and wreak revenge on the entity that cursed and bound them to the river. A marauding German prince, Joachim (Jesse Plemons), sees the petals as the key to Germany’s wartime success (it’s 1916, and World War I is raging across the ocean). But it takes Lily’s gumption and Frank’s grouchily proffered support to unlock the secret of the tree, an event that takes place in a giant underwater puzzle.
The scene is only a few minutes long but the plot hangs in its balance. Underwater cinematographer Ian Seabrook (Old, In the Shadow of the Moon), shot Blunt and Johnson in one tank for the moments above the water’s surface, avoiding a huge vacuum intake valve creating an artificial current. “I was told by the marine coordinator ‘don’t go anywhere near that,’ because that’ll just suck you right underwater,” Seabrook said. Below the surface of the water, in the production’s second tank, Lily’s goal is to get back up as fast as she can — solving the puzzle causes it to rise out of the water. Seabrook held on to 80 pounds of camera and housing in order to get the shot, in which Lauren Shaw, Blunt’s underwater double, was locked into the puzzle with one small top opening to escape. “They did have a spare air tank in there for her, but she never used it,” Seabrook said of Shaw, who didn’t even need to use a regulator to breathe during rehearsals.
“The set itself was an overhead environment and it was confined. So when she’s moving the puzzle pieces around, [Shaw’s] really got her back against the wall. And she’s got something over her head. So she’s holding her breath while doing all that, using her feet, and doing whatever else she was doing. She was spectacular,” the underwater cinematographer added. For these crucial scenes, Seabrook also spent plenty of time holding his breath while plying his craft. The shots were 15 to 30 seconds, with preparation to get everything down bringing the time spent underwater to about a minute (all the underwater scenes were shot over the course of a week and a half). The process looks different in, say, the open ocean, but “oftentimes, when we’re in these smaller sets, if you wear an oxygen tank, you’re smashing into everything, you’re going to wreck the set, and you don’t have the mobility,” he said.
The underwater cinematographer was first called to his unusual line of work as a child, holding his breath watching Sean Connery swim through a shark-infested estate in Thunderball. He later began his career as an underwater photographer, progressing to underwater cinematography, a field in which the camera comes first despite the unusual physical demands. “The job entails composition and lighting and grip work and breath-hold and your diving skills have to be second,” Seabrook explained. “You can’t even look at anything. You have to concentrate on the shot, otherwise, you’ll be flailing.” Despite the jocular vibes, there’s no room in Jungle Cruise for heroine Lily and her sidekick Frank to flinch, and behind the camera, it was the same, whether above the surface of the river or below.
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Zak Penn started his career on a high note when he sold his first script at age 23 and landed Arnold Schwarzenegger as the star. The thrill didn’t last long. Last Action Hero got re-written, Penn was relegated to a “story by” credit and the would-be blockbuster flopped at the box office.
But Penn survived the ignominy and 28-years later, he’s become an expert at crafting tentpole action epics like The Incredible Hulk, The Avengers, X-Men: The Last Stand, andSteven Spielberg’s recent Ready Player One. In the case of Free Guy, now in theaters, Penn came on board to sharpen Matt Lieberman’s initial screenplay into final form. The film, directed by Shawn Levy (Night at the Museum) stars Ryan Reynolds as a minor video game character who realizes he’s merely an extra in somebody else’s creation after he meets the avatar of his dreams, Molotov Girl, aka Millie (Jodie Comer of Killing Eve fame). Together, Guy and game developer Millie fight to bring down egomaniacal mogul Antwan (played by Jojo Rabbit and Thor: Ragnarok director Taika Waititi).
While Free Guy takes place mostly within a virtual video game world, Penn aimed to make the story accessible to non-gamers. He says, “I have no idea what a “collision match” was before I worked on this and I really didn’t care because here’s the thing: Free Guy is more about using the background of the world of gaming as a place to tell a story about these characters. Fundamentally, Guy could have been trapped anywhere.”
In New York City to attend the Free Guy premiere, Penn got on the phone with The Credits and talked about story architecture, Elf as inspiration and action that has consequences.
The Free Guy script has been floating around since 2016. How did you first get involved as a co-writer?
Shawn Levy called me directly and he’s like, “I have this script and I know you’re going to say no to re-writing it but will you just read it for me?” And I said, “Okay but why do you think it’s going to be a no?” and Shawn said, “Coming off of Ready Player One I doubt if you’ll want to do it.” Then I read the script and I was like “This is nothing like Ready Player One.” Yes, there’s a big video game-y reference, but Ready Player One is about real people sent to the future, it’s about nostalgia. Free Guy actually reminded more of Last Action Hero, or the Will Ferrell movie Elf, or any number of movies where you’re dealing with this almost mythological character living in his own world. I told Shawn not only am I interested but I’ve written this type of movie before and I’ve seen it get destroyed so I know where the stress fractures are.
Free Guy draws on a lot of different genre traditions. How did you develop the story architecture to make sure all these disparate elements came together in a cohesive way?
I’ve been doing this for 31 years so I’ve got an understanding of how movies should be structured. It’s very hard to pull off a good movie without good architecture, so it’s not like we just improvised a bunch of stuff and threw it up on the screen. Free Guy is intricately plotted with multiple types of stories running through it. My job was to kick the girders of the architecture and say, hey I think this building’s going to fall down over here; you’ve got to fix this thing or it’s going to tilt over.
What kinds of fixes did you have in mind?
One of my notes to Shawn and Ryan was that Millie’s really the main character, not Guy. Most actors would be “What?! Definitely don’t hire him!” But Ryan was like, “You’re a hundred percent right. I’ve been approaching as if it’s all from Guy’s perspective but the audience needs a way in, and that’s Millie.” It had nothing to do with “The audience wants to see a female lead.” It was about fixing the underpinnings of the story.
You’ve previously written ensemble-driven movies like X-Men: The Last Stand and The Avengers. Did those experiences impact your approach to the multiple storylines in Free Guy?
It’s actually easier to write for ensembles, particularly X-Men, because any time the story gets boring you can just cut away to another subplot. Free Guy does not have that luxury because all of our subplots run through the main characters.
Can you summarize those subplots?
First, there’s a villain who’s done something bad to our heroes so they have to join forces and stop him. That’s a familiar one and something I know a lot about because I’ve written a lot of movies. Then there’s a romantic subplot which I won’t give away entirely, but it’s a bit of a triangle and not exactly what you think it is. You’ve also got the classic story about a person trapped in his own life trying to assert his fate, which you see in everything from Terminator and The Matrix to Lawrence of Arabia. It’s a strong thread for Ryan’s character Guy: “I’m not a background character, I can be something more.” Then there’s the bizarre “Thing that’s not supposed to be alive coming to life” idea, which is a genre unto itself about magical characters that shouldn’t exist, like Elf, which I think is one of the most charming comedies of the past twenty years. It’s Will Ferrell being funny but it’s also Will Ferrell being innocent and sweet. The first time I heard Ryan read his lines, he wasn’t the wise-cracking Deadpool-y character who’s showing everybody up. In Free Guy, Ryan’s a complete underdog who doesn’t understand anything. He’s desperate to learn even though he’s often the butt of the joke. Ryan wanted to lean into that hard.
And then there’s Millie, the idealistic game designer who’s bitter about having her ideas stolen by Antwan, the hack video game executive.
What I tried to bring to Millie is someone who’s clouded by anger over what has happened to this creation of hers that she put so much into. It’s frustrating for her to see it turned into, lets be honest, a buggy, not very good game. So a lot of scenes are thinly veiled references to the creative process and how creators deal with this big industry that steam rolls over them.
That’s a lot of story to keep track of.
And I’m probably missing one or two. But getting back to the point about architecture, Free Guy is not a simple building. It’s a complex structure with a lot of different stories running through it and they all have to be set up and paid off properly and intersect at the right times. On what page does Millie gets introduced? At what point does Millie figure out who Guy actually is? When does Guy figure out who he is? That’s when you have to put [the scenes] up on cards and figure out “This is why you’re not getting the thing you need from that subplot because you stepped on it over here and the audience won’t care anymore because they’ve already heard it three times.” That’s the heart of being a Hollywood screenwriter who re-writes stuff. I’m glad not everyone can do it. It’s taken me many years to develop that skill.
Action sequences also play a big role in Free Guy. Do you ever think “Oh, I’ve gone for eight pages with people just talking so now I need to throw in some action?
Not at all. What you need from action is a turn for the character. If it’s just Guy being chased – – he dodged this, he dodged that – – and nothing happens to change his circumstances, then you’re going to get bored. Steven Spielberg made this point to me on Ready Player One. He said any time it seems like the characters are stopping the story to talk, put that dialogue in a scene where a lot of action’s happening because they shouldn’t be separate. They should be part of a whole.
Decades ago working with Spielberg, you learned a lot about action movies by researching Last Action Hero, which you wrote in college and sold when you were only 23 years old. How did that happen?
I wrote Last Action Hero with my then-writing partner Adam Leff at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. Everyone warned us “Don’t write a movie about movies, don’t mix genres.” But we spent five months in a room researching every action movie ever. Then we wrote the script, sent it out, got an agent, he sold it immediately and Arnold Schwarzenegger signed on to do it. Next thing you knew we were on a roller coaster at 140 miles an hour. “How did we get on there?!” The rest of it was about navigating the fact that Last Action Hero turned out to be a huge bomb.
Last Action Hero got re-written by other people and you weren’t happy with the result. Now, you’ve become the guy who comes in to re-write someone else’s script. Is that weird?
I have a long history of writing originals and being on the other end of this [process], there’s nothing more painful than being the person who writes something and then watches as your involvement is erased and your credit is reduced. I’ve seen a lot of people be jerks because they’re insecure and try to grab all the credit. But as writers, I think we have a duty to back each other up. For me, it’s a pleasure to say that Free Guy was a spec script written by Matt Lieberman to the extent that people could see the movie as soon as they read it. That’s the backstory. This movie began in Matt’s brain.
