A slightly grim way to celebrate Friday, Paramount Pictures! And yet, also an undeniably enjoyable one—the studio has released this nearly five-minute supercut of every single one of Jason’s kills in the eight original films in the Friday the 13th franchise. That’s a lot of killing, from the very beginning in director Sean S. Cunningham’s 1980 original when Camp Crystal was the chief location, all the way to New York City when Jason Vorhees does like the Muppets and takes Manhattan. Slightly softening this undeniably gruesome kill reel is the music—watch Jason slaughter a bunch of innocents to a peppy jingle best suited for a 1970s soap commercial!
The supercut totals a whopping 32 kills across 8 films. Remarkably, the franchise released a new movie every single year of the 1980s except 1987. Here are the films the video pulls from Friday the 13th (1980), Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981), Friday the 13th Part III (1982), Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984), Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (1985), Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986), Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988), and Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989).
Not included in this killing spree are the four films released after the 80s—Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993), Jason X (2002), Freddy vs. Jason (2003), and Friday the 13th (2009).
So, happy Friday the 13th, all!
For more films coming out from Paramount, check out these stories:
Want to get people hyped for your movie? Releasing an epic track from DJ Snake, Rick Ross, and Rich Brain should do it. This is what Marvel Studios has done with “Run It,” a new track from the Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings soundtrack from the aforementioned trio. The last time an MCU film had a soundtrack this boss was back in 2018 when Ryan Coogler sprung Black Panther on the world.
Director Destin Daniel Cretton’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is one of Marvel’s most intriguing Phase 4 films, expanding the universe with brand new characters—most crucially introducing the MCU’s first Asian superhero—while also connecting some of the dots laid down since the very first film in the franchise, 2008’s Iron Man.
The film is centered on an epic family feud in which our hero, Shang-Chi (Simu Liu), is pitted against his overbearing, super-powerful father Wenwu (Tony Leung), the leader of the criminal syndicate called the Ten Rings. This is where our main connection to Iron Man is made—the Ten Rings is the same organization that kidnapped Tony Stark and demanded he make them weapons in the MCU’s first film, thus setting off a chain of events that will lead to, well, just about everything.
Wenwu isn’t merely a tough dad and criminal—he’s also one of Marvel’s most iconic villains, the real Mandarin. All you MCU fans know why we have to use the qualifier“real,” but for the Marvel-agnostic, here’s the reason—in Iron Man 3, Ben Kingsley was billed as the film’s villain, the Mandarin, but it was a fakeout. He was a drunk actor impersonating the Mandarin at the behest of the film’s real villain, Guy Pearce’s Aldrich Killian. Shang-Chi, his friend Katy (Awkwafina), and his estranged sister Xialing (Meng’er Zhang) will be teaming up to try and take down the Ten Rings and the real Mandarin, a task that will have implications for the MCU going forward.
Cretton directs from a script he co-wrote with David Callaham and Andrew Lanham. Joining Liu, Awkafina, and Meng’er Zhang are Fala Chen, Meng’er Zhang, Florian Munteanu, Ronny Chieng, and the great Michelle Yeoh.
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings hits theaters on September 3. Check out the song here:
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What do you get when you add Tom Hanks, a robot, and a dog together? The word yes. Also the movie Finch, from Game of Thrones director Miguel Sapochnik and based on an original script from Craig Luck and Ivor Powell. Apple has just revealed the first image from the film (see above), showing Hanks, the robot Jeff, and the dog Goodyear.
Finch has some Castaway vibes, in that Hanks is once again playing a man navigating the world alone. Whereas in Castaway, Hanks’ marooned FedEx logistics executive had to make do with turning a volleyball into a companion (miss you, Wilson!), at least in Finch his friends can actually respond to him. Hanks plays a guy who’s one of the few survivors of a catastrophic “solar event,” living in a bunker with Goodyear for the past ten years. Where does the robot Jeff come in? Well, Hank’s character is a robotics engineer and, fearing what will happen to Goodyear when he’s gone, he builds a robot to look after him. That robot (voiced by Caleb Landry-Jones) calls himself Jeff. Yeah, we’re sold.
Finch marks Hanks’ second collaboration with Apple, after last year’s Greyhound, and premieres exclusively on Apple TV+ on Friday, November 5.
Here’s the synopsis from Apple:
In “Finch,” a man, a robot and a dog form an unlikely family in a powerful and moving adventure of one man’s quest to ensure that his beloved canine companion will be cared for after he’s gone. Hanks stars as Finch, a robotics engineer and one of the few survivors of a cataclysmic solar event that has left the world a wasteland. But Finch, who has been living in an underground bunker for a decade, has built a world of his own that he shares with his dog, Goodyear. He creates a robot, played by Jones, to watch over Goodyear when he no longer can. As the trio embarks on a perilous journey into a desolate American West, Finch strives to show his creation, who names himself Jeff, the joy and wonder of what it means to be alive. Their road trip is paved with both challenges and humor, as it’s as difficult for Finch to goad Jeff and Goodyear to get along as it is for him to manage the dangers of the new world.
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Featured image: A man (played by Tom Hanks), a dog and a robot (played by Caleb Landry Jones) form an unlikely family In “Finch,” premiering exclusively on Apple TV+ on Friday, November 5.
Taika Waititi has a tremendous amount going on at the moment. The writer/director/actor will next be seen in director Shawn Levy’s Free Guy, where he blessedly got a break from the writing and directing duties to simply co-star in the film with Ryan Reynolds and Jodie Comer. Waititi plays the film’s villain, a loathsome tech bro named Antoine. Not that acting isn’t work, of course, but when you consider what else Waititi has going on, you’d be excused for thinking it must have felt like a break.
Waititi just wrapped filming on Thor: Love and Thunder, his follow-up to the film that made him a bonafide directing star, 2018’s Thor: Ragnarok. This has allowed him to start focusing on another little project, his Star Wars film. Speaking with Wired, Waititi was able to dish just a bit about where that project’s at and what he’s feeling thus far.
“It’s still in the ‘EXT. SPACE’ stage,” he tells Wired, a reference to a script just being started. “But we’ve got a story. I’m really excited by it because it feels very me.” When Wired asked how he was able to marry his tone and style—irreverence, wit, endless shenanigans—to the more earnest Star Wars universe, Waititi wasn’t concerned. “I tend to go down that little sincerity alleyway in my films,” he said. “I like to fool the viewer into thinking ‘ha it’s this’ and then them going, ‘Damn it, you made me feel something!’”
Feeling something sounds like it was also on his mind when he was crafting Thor: Love and Thunder, which he has said is the craziest film he’s ever done. Not only has Waititi promised that Love and Thunder is going to be insane, but it’ll also do something no one was counting on. “What I wanted to do from the beginning was to ask: ‘What are people expecting the least from this franchise?’” he told Wired, “Oh, I know – a full-blown love story!”
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It’s always special when one peer praises the work of another. Such is the case with Oscar-winning director Chloé Zhao, fresh off becoming the first woman of color to win a Best Director Oscar (and see her film, Nomadland, win Best Picture), praising fellow director Denis Villeneuve’s work in his upcoming film Dune. IndieWire has the scoop, via Sight & Sound, that Zhao saw Villeneuve’s highly-anticipated sci-fi epic ahead of its world premiere on September 3 at the Venice Film Festival. Zhao is a member of the festival’s jury, so screening Dune was a part of her job. Sight & Sound was on hand to interview her for their September 2021 issue and asked her for her thoughts about the future of cinema. Fresh from seeing Villeneuve’s epic, she seemed to be cautiously optimistic, at least about the state of cinema’s creative talent and ambition. The note of caution has to do with seeing filmmakers work in the arena they were designed for—movie theaters.
“It gives me hope that a filmmaker like Denis is able to really harness his vision and put together something that’s so incredible, so cinematic,” Zhao told the magazine. “I’m just blown away by the experience I had in that room. But I’m terrified about how many people are or aren’t going to have that experience like I did, in a theatre, and what that means for the future.”
Dune is due for a theatrical release on October 22—as well as a streaming release on HBO Max the same day. Villeneuve is not a fan of this strategy—few filmmakers are—and it seems Zhao feels similarly. The film, Villeneuve has written, was made for the theater, it’s “about cinema and audiences,” he wrote in an impassioned essay. It’s the type of epic that demands a big screen, a big, state-of-the-art sound system, and total immersion. Movies like Dune are meant to be more than just seen, they’re meant to be experienced, and that can only be done inside a darkened theater.
This is why we’ll be listening to Chloé Zhao and seeing Dune on the biggest screen possible, and we’ll be doing the same for her next film, another kind of sci-fi epic, when Zhao’s first Marvel movie Eternals lands in theaters on November 5.
For more on Warner Bros., HBO, and HBO Max, check out these stories:
Featured image: Caption: JASON MOMOA as Duncan Idaho in Warner Bros. Pictures’ and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary release. Photo Credit: Chiabella James.
Samuel L. Jackson has shared an image from the set of The Marvels, the sequel to 2019’s Captain Marvel that’s being helmed by rising star Nia DaCosta. Jackson took to Instagram to share an image of his Marvel alter ego Nick Fury’s facial hair, going heavy on the puns in his caption. “Guess what time it is,” Jackson writes. “Back in the box, just in the Nick of time!” Bless him.
Jackson’s post confirms, for the first time, his involvement in the sequel. Not that it was seriously in doubt—Nick Fury was a major part of Captain Marvel, where he teamed up with Brie Larson’s Carol Danvers to uncover a sinister alien plot. We also learned how Nick Fury lost that eye and gained his iconic eyepatch (super belated spoiler alert—it was the cat’s fault), so it’s nice to know Fury’s back, one eye short but one step closer to becoming the all-knowing super S.H.I.E.L.D. agent.
There’s a ton of excitement around The Marvels for a lot of reasons. One is Nia DaCosta, whose Candyman is hitting theaters in just a couple of weeks (August 27) and is one of the most exciting young directors out there. Another is the tremendous cast. The Marvels will be true to its title by teaming Larson’s titular superhero with some seriously strong women—Teyonnah Parris’s Monica Rambeau (last seen in Marvel’s Disney+ series WandaVision) and newcomer Iman Vellani as Kamala Khan, who has her own Disney+ series, Ms. Marvel, coming next year.
And of course, the team wouldn’t be complete without Nick Fury. It’s nice to know one of the MCU’s most clutch characters is back in the box.
The Marvels is slated for a November 11, 2022 release.
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It’s pretty rare for a director, let alone the stars of a blockbuster film franchise, to take the time to celebrate the work of the first assistant director, but that’s precisely what happened with the Mission: Impossible – 7 team. Director Christopher McQuarrie gathered the film’s big stars to celebrate first AD Mary Boulding for “gracefully managing the impossible” during production for the franchise’s seventh installment. McQuarrie’s Instagram post places Boulding front and center, backed from left to right by Esai Morales, Simon Pegg, Tom Cruise, McQuarrie himself, Rebecca Ferguson, and Ving Rhames.
There really and truly could not be a finished film without the first AD. They work with the director to plan the entire film schedule, work with all the department heads to keep the shoot running smoothly, and essentially keep the film from falling apart by managing the smallest details, the biggest snafus, and the personalities of the entire cast and crew. While the director has the final say on all creative decisions, the first AD’s monumental job of coordinating and wrangling and problem-solving makes the director’s job possible. When there’s an issue on set, it’s often the first AD, not the director, that a cast or crew member will seek out.
Now, imagine the above job in our current pandemic era and increase the difficulty tenfold. Mission: Impossible – 7 specifically has had a tough shoot, with the production shut down multiple times due to the pandemic and a crew member testing positive for COVID-19. This would be difficult to handle on any film, but for a production as massive and complicated as a Mission: Impossible film, Mary Boulding’s work was that much more intense.
Boulding’s no stranger to epic sets—there’s a reason she has this job. She’s been the first AD on some of the most complicated films of the last few years, from Sam Mendes’ meticulously crafted World War I epic 1917 to J.J. Abrams’ Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. It’s wonderful to see a director and the cast, especially on a film as star-studded as Mission: Impossible – 7, celebrate the work of a fellow crew member, and in this case, shed a little light on one of the most important and least discussed roles.
Check out McQuarrie’s post below. Mission: Impossible – 7 is set for a May 27, 2022 premiere—thanks in no small part to Mary Boulding.
Featured image: Left to right: Director Christopher McQuarrie, Simon Pegg and Tom Cruise on the set of Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation from Paramount Pictures and Skydance Productions
Laden with special effects, big-name stars, and an audacious high concept, WandaVision represented a big swing for Marvel Studios when it debuted in January on Disney+. The bet paid off. Creator Jac Schaeffer’s series quickly became one of the season’s most talked-about new shows and it’s now validated all that buzz with a whopping 23 Emmy nominations. The hook? Superheroic witch Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) and android Vision (Paul Bettany) disguise themselves as man and wife living sitcom-perfect lives in small-town New Jersey. Juxtaposed against the couples’ seventies-styled retro innocence is a nefarious supernatural scheme that threatens to destroy Wanda and Vision’s safe harbor in the aftermath of 2019’s cataclysmic Avengers: Endgame. Oh, and one more twist—Vision died in Avengers: Infinity War, so his presence in WandaVision was all the more mysterious.
Helping to jolt crimson-headed Vision from one dimension to the next is Toronto VFX company Monsters Aliens Robots Zombies (MARZ), which earned visual effects nominations for WandaVision as well as Netflix series The Umbrella Academy. Launched in 2018, MARZ uses artificial intelligence to deliver movie-quality effects on TV budgets.
Visual effects supervisor Ryan Freer and MARZ Chief Operating Officer Matt Panousis checked in with The Credits to talk about Bettany’s chin, Vision’s cape, and other transformational tricks of the computer-generated trade.
Congratulations on your Emmy nominations for The Umbrella Academy and especially for WandaVision, which marks the first time you worked for Marvel. How did you get the gig?
Ryan: We did a test for Marvel doing our version of a shot from Avengers: Age ofUltron, where Vision’s basically being born. Marvel gave us the [background] plate and some assets that had been done already by another vendor and asked us: Can you do this? We’d just done a bunch of head replacement stuff on HBO’s Watchmen so we were able to create the shot to their standard, and that got the ball rolling.
Matt: The big caveat there is not just “can you do it?” but can you do it on a [shorter] TV timeline and [lower] budget. Marvel’s the epitome of premium episodic television so there was a lot of work that went into it getting the shot where it needed to be.
How did this sitcom-inspired version of Vision differ from the big screen character?
Ryan: In the movies, he’s very calm and collected but in our show, Vision does funny slap-sticky things. The director [Matt Shakman] and even Paul Bettany didn’t know if Vision being goofy was going to work. Also, we’ve never seen Vision in black and white, we’ve never seen him in the seventies. These are things we worked really hard with Marvel to perfect.
Details are so important in making visual effects seem believable. What are some more subtle aspects of Vision that you guys obsessed over?
Ryan: One of the little things people don’t notice is that Vision has eyelashes in our show, which he does not have in the movies. Another thing is that Paul Bettany has a very large chin, but Vision has a small chin. We got a lot of notes from Marvel: “Vision’s chin looks too much like Paul’s chin!” When you’re watching the show, you may not see it, but you feel it.
L-r: Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany in ‘WandaVision.’ Courtesy Marvel Studios/Disney+
People definitely notice each time Paul Bettany’s human-looking character morphs into his true android self. How did you design those visual effects?
Ryan: In one of the black and white episodes, we did a transformation of Paul going from a synthezoid to a person and sent it to Marvel. They said it looks great but we want it to be cheesy and retro like it’s from the fifties. So we did a couple of versions back and forth and wound up landing on this very glittery I Dreamed of Jeannie kind of thing. It’s funny because usually, you’re not supposed to notice the CG effect, but here, we threw in a visual effect from the era and blended multiple [styles of] visual effects on top of each other.
There’s also an old-school vibe when we see voltage flickering across Vision’s face. What inspired that look?
Ryan: In the [1982] movie Tron, they would actually cut some of the film and expose the light behind it to get the effect. That’s the kind of technology they had back then, so we took a lot of reference from that, which was super fun.
Just to be clear, Vision’s beet-red head is computer generated?
Ryan: The only thing we’re pulling from Paul’s acting is his eyes, his nose, and his mouth. That’s it. Everything else is CG whenever you see Paul Bettany as Vision, with no ears.
Paul Bettany as Vision in Marvel Studios’ WandaVision. Courtesy Marvel Studios.
How did you create the digital skin to make the human actor looks like the superhero Vision?
Ryan: We’d receive footage of Paul Bettany wearing a bald cap, ears sticking out, and he’s got tracking markers all over his face and neck. We remove the markers with an in-house removal system driven by AI, because paintwork, especially track marking removal, can be very costly. Once we have a solid track of that CG head, we align the shoulders so it lines up properly. Then the animators go and create his jaw, his eyebrows, they knock out the ears, they smooth the skin, they’re adding these very fine panels on top of his cheeks and adding a gem on his chin. Everything has to be rock solid because if something starts jittering or not moving with his facial expression, then you lose the performance and that’s the most important part.
Matt: We’ve made heavy investments in artificial intelligence to get things done faster. AI has ended up saving the client hundreds of thousands of dollars and tons of time, about a day of savings per shot. Multiply that across 400 shots that we did for the show and it adds up to about 400 artist days that are effectively gone.
Vision likes to levitate. How did you pull that off?
Ryan: The big episode six Halloween scene, where Vision transforms and flies up into the sky, was probably our most technically difficult shot. The entire ground [showing a nighttime vista of suburban Westview] is a digital map painting. They put Paul in a rig against a green screen all done up in his costume and makeup. When he flies up, the camera rotates around him, but we ended up going full digital-double with the body, which gave us a lot more control. And one of the cool things about Vision is that his cape is entirely CG because a [real] cape has a mind of its own, the way it ripples. You can’t get it to act the way you want.
Elizabeth Olsen as Wanda and Paul Bettany as Vision in Marvel Studios’ WandaVision. Courtesy Marvel Studios.
I imagine you had an entire team devoted to Vision’s CG cape?
Ryan: Within our pipeline, we have a department that brings in the [background] plates, we have tracking, layout, animation, effects which is where the cape would be done, a lighting department, compositing. Each department has its own lead, so every small detail is looked at closely.
Ryan, how did you train to become the guy who supervises everybody’s work?
Ryan: l wanted to do something in the arts but I was also a computer nerd so I went into computer animation, took a three-year program at Durham College in Ontario, and loved it. Out of school, I did animation, motion graphics, visual effects — I’ve dabbled in everything enough to develop an eye for making things look good and understanding how to not make things look bad basically. I call myself more like a glorified generalist.
Matt: When Ryan looks at something, he can see things that the artists can’t see.
Ryan: A lot of it has to do with timing because every shot is based on reality – – until it’s not. Many times I’ll tell my team “That’s moving too fast,” or “It’s too slow.” If it doesn’t look right in the shot, you might have to cheat things for the camera whether it’s based on reality or not.
It’s no surprise that a Martin Scorsese movie will have a killer cast, but we’re especially enthused about how the ensemble is shaping up for the legendary director’s next picture (as he calls them.) The latest addition to the cast is John Lithgow, who joins Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, and Jesse Plemons (to name a few) in Killers of the Flower Moon. Lithgow will play a prosecutor in Scorsese’s crime drama, drawn from ace investigative journalist David Grann’s book. The story is centered on the murders of members of the Osage Nation in the 1920s—the tribe was living atop a vast oil reserve discovered on their land, and the killings were, of course, not unrelated.
The investigation into the serial murders eventually helped establish the FBI and is considering a foundational moment in America shedding its frontier past for something at least nominally aimed at law and order. Screenwriter Eric Roth adapted Grann’s book, which is not Grann’s first book to find its way to the big screen. His must-read tale of adventure and catastrophe in the Amazon, The Lost City of Z, was turned into a criminally underrated movie by James Gray. Scorsese seems ideally suited to tackle the sweeping frontier epic that Killers of the Flower Moon promises to be.
Lithgow is a welcome presence in any film or series he’s in, whether he’s playing someone irresistibly lovable (as he did in Love is Strange) or someone loathsome and despicable (as he did when he played Roger Ailes in Bombshell). In Killers of the Flower Moon, he joins a potent cast and one of cinema’s true living legends in what will be a can’t miss experience for film lovers.
Killers of the Flower Moon is currently filming in Oklahoma.
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Featured image: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – JANUARY 19: (L-R) Leonardo DiCaprio and John Lithgow attend the 26th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards at The Shrine Auditorium on January 19, 2020 in Los Angeles, California. 721407 (Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for Turner)
The premise of Marvel’s latest Disney+ series, What If…? is catnip for Marvel fans. Narrated by a celestial being called the Watcher (voiced by Jeffrey Wright, no less), the series asks us to consider what might have happened in the Marvel Cinematic Universe had different decisions been made at crucial moments by the characters we have come to know over the last 12-years. Based on a Marvel comic series of the same name (which remixed moments in the comics canon), What If…? promises to give the MCU The Twilight Zone treatment, offering not moral parables starring superheroes by making us look afresh at the choices they made—and didn’t make—and what could have been had they done things differently.
So how is it? Disney+ has released the first three episodes for critics, and the early reactions are positive The most surprising theme in the reviews is that What If…? might actually be the easiest Marvel show on Disney+ for non-diehard MCU fans to enjoy, while simultaneously offering the diehards all those in-jokes and deep cut canon references they love.
Here, then, is a spoiler-free glimpse at what the critics are saying. What If…? premieres on Disney+ on August 11.
Bob Strauss, The San Francisco Chronicle: “And when things get crazy — as they do at cosmic scale in each episode so far — an almost Lovecraftian level of fearsome grandeur fills the screen.”
Liz Shannon Miller, Collider: “Core to the three episodes provided to press is the notion that the divergence points of all these alternate realities are created by human choice — a person presented with two options, and picking the alternate one. That they do this without knowing just how seismic a change they’re making speaks to that inevitable truth of being human: consequences are sometimes quite hard to see in the moment.”
Tyler Hersko, IndieWire: “Longtime franchise fans will undeniably get the biggest kick out of the references and in-jokes in the animated anthology series — which questions what would’ve happened at various pivotal moments of the Marvel Cinematic Universe if certain events played out differently — but the self-contained stories aren’t so convoluted they’ll turn off more casual viewers.”
Charles Pulliam-Moore, Gizmodo: “Regardless of what goes down with Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, What If exists in a space of pure possibility where basically anything could be on the table and explored from a variety of angles. “
Josh Wilding, ComicBookMovie.com: “An instant animated classic, What If…? delivers world after world of endless possibilities you need to explore, and if what we see from these first three chapters is any indication, Marvel Studios has delivered a mind-bending MCU masterpiece.”
Danielle Solzman, Solzy at the Movies: “What If…? may be animated but at the end of the day, this series is still canon and essential viewing.”
Tessa Smith, Mama’s Geekly: “Marvel’s very own version of the Twilight Zone, What If…? gets dark with some unexpected twists and turns as we dive headfirst into the multiverse.”
Who would have expected an earnest tale of an American football coach brought on to mind an English soccer team to be the pandemic’s breakout hit? Created by Jason Sudeikis, the titular star of Ted Lasso, the show’s joyful brand of storytelling is up for Emmy awards across the board.
Relentlessly upbeat, armed with a bottomless well of musical and literary trivia and a penchant for encouraging heart-to-hearts, Coach Lasso starts his new job up against a deep trench of chilly British resistance and a pickle of a losing team. AFC Richmond’s rabid fans hate Ted. His boss, Rebecca Welton (Hannah Waddingham), is secretly trying to crater Richmond as revenge on her philandering ex, Rupert (Anthony Head), an effort that revolves around undermining Ted and his number two, Coach Beard (co-creator and writer Brendan Hunt) however she can. The team’s most competitive hope, star player Jamie Tartt (Phil Dunster) can’t see past his reflection in the mirror. And surly has-been Roy Kent (Brett Goldstein) is the human opposite of the crooked “believe” sign Ted tapes up in the locker room.
On the flip side, it isn’t hard to win over Keeley (Juno Temple), a cheery WAG type working on outgrowing merely being famous for being almost famous. The pair of coaches easily earn kit man Nate’s (Nick Mohammed) instant devotion just by remembering his name. Stoic local pub mistress Mae (Annette Badland) backs Ted and Coach Beard against her more hooligan-like customers and offers counsel where she can. Despite his challenges, Ted’s insular little corner of London is an increasingly cozy place, populated by a spot-on ensemble cast that has Emmy-nominated casting director Theo Park (Master of None, Far From the Madding Crowd) up for an Emmy. We had the chance to speak with Park about who she cast first to set the group in motion and how she found actors who could credibly double as Premier League soccer players.
Kola Bokinni, Nick Mohammed, Brett Goldstein, Billy Harris, Toheeb Jimoh, Stephen Manas and Cristo Fernandez in “Ted Lasso,” now streaming on Apple TV+.
What kind of character do you start with on a project like this?
We started with Rebecca because obviously, she’s the female lead. In fact, I was brought on a little bit earlier than I think I would normally have been brought on, to really spend some time trying to find her. And Jason and Brendan came over to London to meet a whole load of women, so that was where we started. When we had her, we then moved on to the rest of the Diamond Dogs, as they are now called, and Keeley, and then the team.
Hannah Waddingham and Jason Sudeikis in “Ted Lasso,” now streaming on Apple TV+.
Was Jason Sudeikis heavily involved with the casting process?
Oh, yeah. He’s heavily involved throughout. He has the final say on everybody and watches every tape I send him — with a bit of nagging!
Juno Temple as Keeley, the WAG with a heart of gold, is pitch-perfect. Was this a tough role to cast?
We struck gold with Keeley. We saw loads of actors, really great actors. Juno wasn’t someone I immediately thought of, because to me, she is not WAG-y. I’ve known Juno for a long time, and she is not from that sort of world at all — she’s what you might call posh in real life. But doesn’t she do it so brilliantly? She was Jason’s idea. Jason had met her, and he said what about Juno? We said, god yeah! Do you think she’ll do it? He talked to her, [used] powers of persuasion, and she said yes. How lucky are we? She’s totally brilliant.
Juno Temple in “Ted Lasso,” now streaming on Apple TV+.
For what did you look for first — acting skills or soccer aptitude?
That was a two-pronged attack. We’d audition them — this was pre-COVID so we were actually allowed to meet them in the room — and we’d ask them to then send us a tape of their football skills. So they’d go out and have fun with their friends in the park and then send us a little tape, so we could see what they could do. And then Cristo Fernández, as it turns out, was an ex-pro-footballer from Mexico, so his football skills tape was one of the best things I’ve ever seen in my life.
Cristo Fernández in “Ted Lasso” season two, now streaming on Apple TV+.
The team also had to be cast as something of its own ensemble within an ensemble cast.
It was quite organic, really, how it all came together. We just managed to cast really good actors who also played football. They were available to us. It was a bit of a search but it was a really interesting one, and we pulled it together.
Kola Bokinni, Nick Mohammed, Brett Goldstein, Billy Harris, Toheeb Jimoh, Stephen Manas and Cristo Fernandez in “Ted Lasso,” now streaming on Apple TV+.
And were you a soccer fan before you started working on Ted Lasso?
Not really. In my twenties, I sort of had to watch it because I lived with a bunch of blokes. One of them supported West Ham, the other one Arsenal, the other one Tottenham, and the other one — I think Crystal Palace. I lived with four guys and they all supported different London football teams. So I watched a lot of football then, but I haven’t really been into it, no. Brendan [Hunt] is a football guru, so if I had any questions I’d just ask him. I had no idea!
Was there anyone particularly hard to find?
Dani Rojas, as written, was the Jamie Tartt role. He was originally written as the arrogant star player [but from South America], so we tried really hard to find this arrogant star player and we just couldn’t. We looked in America, we looked in Europe, we looked here in London and we didn’t find anybody. In that search, we found Cristo Fernández, who wasn’t right, because he’s just the opposite of that — he’s so buoyant, full of life, and sweet and gorgeous and lovely. I said, what about Phil Dunster, who’s a Brit, but isn’t he fantastic? And so they re-wrote the Dani Rojas part to Jamie Tartt for Phil Dunster, because he was just so terrific. And then they kept Cristo Fernández for a new, fresh role, Dani Rojas. That was quite interesting. I loved that they tailored their characters to actors that we met.
Phil Dunster in “Ted Lasso,” now streaming on Apple TV+.
And once you had Rebecca, what was the process like to cast Rupert?
I knew from day one that it should be Anthony Head. It took the producers a while to get to that. We talked through ideas and names and actually, Jason didn’t know Anthony Head, so I had to send him quite a bit of material. He was blown away. And he was just perfect and amazing in every way.
Anthony Head in “Ted Lasso,” now streaming on Apple TV+.
Likewise, Jeremy Swift as Higgins is just right.
I think that was unanimous. I brought in, I don’t know, a dozen people for Higgins. In fact, Nick Mohammed [who plays Nate] originally read for Higgins. I think that was quite unanimous, they were like it’s him, it’s Jeremy Swift, he’s so great.
Hannah Waddingham and Jeremy Swift in “Ted Lasso,” now streaming on Apple TV+.
Overall, was your sense of the casting process that it was fairly standard or unusual?
Every project is different — how you cast it, how it’s achieved. It was exciting. Especially having to find the footballers, since that’s something I’ve never done before. What was also really exciting about it, and maybe a little bit different, is that the producers and Jason didn’t really know many Brits, so I was just introducing them to all these fantastic comedy actors. They got really excited about it, and that was thrilling. We didn’t have to have any names, we just had to get the best people for the roles.
Featured image: Brendan Hunt, Jason Sudeikis and Nick Mohammed in “Ted Lasso” season two, now streaming on Apple TV+.
You’re going to be seeing a lot more of the talented Yahya Abdul-Mateen II in the future. The rising star, appearing next Nia DaCosta‘s highly-anticipated Candyman on August 27, is set to star director Steven Caple Jr.’s By All in what could end up being the beginning of a new franchise. (Caple Jr. last directed Creed II for Warner Bros. and is now working on Transformers: Rise of the Beasts for Paramount, which is set for a July 2022 release.)
The Hollywood Reporterdelivered the scoop that Abdul-Mateen II has signed on to the dystopian crime thriller, being developed by Legendary Entertainment and the Gotham Group for Warner Bros., the studio where he’s starting to make a home for himself. He’s currently filming Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, where he’s reprising his role as Aquaman’s nemesis Black Manta. (He prepared hard for the role, as you can see.) He’ll also be appearing in Lana Wachowski’s The Matrix 4 as well as George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road prequel Furiosafor Warners. And, he’s also set to star in the action film Emergency Contact for the studio, which is being produced by Dwayne Johnson. So yeah, the guy’s not only busy, but he’s building quite a roster there.
By All will find Abdul-Mateen II playing Donte, a man navigating a dystopian world where justice is crowd-sourced (there are no police) in the aftermath of personal tragedy and trying to find his way in the world. THR reports that what drew him to the material was its topical resonance, a thriller about power imbalances in communities and how the havoc they unleash on families.
But first up is Candyman, which has been delayed due to the pandemic, a film in which we’ll get to see the work of two rising stars, Abdul-Mateen II and DaCosta.
Featured image: Featured image: Yahya Abdul-Mateen II in ‘Candyman.’ Courtesy Universal Pictuers/MGM
Writing a biopic is no easy task, particularly when the subject is an international icon who was a very private person. Indeed, crafting the screenplay for Respect, the highly anticipated drama chronicling Aretha Franklin’s rise from the church choir to the global stage, proved challenging, as well as rewarding, for Tracey Scott Wilson. But the fledgling feature film screenwriter, with an award-winning background in both theater and television (she co-executive produced Fosse/Verdon, The Morning Show, and The Americans, also writing for the last) was thrilled to delve into the details and tell the story of the Queen of Soul.
Respect, directed by Liesl Tommy and starring Jennifer Hudson, moved swiftly through production. Wilson was brought on in May 2019 to take over from Callie Khouri, who had to step down due to professional obligations, and shooting began just five months later. She and Tommy have been friends since they met at a New York Theatre Workshop Fellowship in the late 1990s and welcomed the opportunity to work together on the film. Respect hits theaters on August 13.
The Credits chatted with Scott about how she approached the project, what she learned that surprised her and how she especially empathized with Franklin. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
The film starts in church and ends in church. Did having these bookends help you frame the story?
It was actually really essential because the scope of her life was just huge, and having that frame also helped us to understand what the arc of the story was, which was how does one of the greatest voices of all time find her voice, how does she become the Queen of Soul? And so having that frame really helped to narrow down all the options that we had because we were just trying to answer that one question.
Did you have any input from her family, such as her niece Sabrina Garrett Owens?
We did have [her cousin] Brenda and her niece Sabrina. They both came to the set, they both gave us access, the cast had access to them. We were allowed to ask anything that we wanted, so they were very instrumental and very helpful to us in getting the details right.
That’s funny because I was actually looking over the drafts I had the other day and I don’t know, I stopped counting at around 20.
The film takes us from her childhood through her international stardom. I read it was important to both you and Liesl Tommy to create a meaningful story about a young, privileged Black girl’s life.
Yeah, because a lot of times, the way that biopics go, the singer grows up in a very poor environment and then rises up. But Aretha grew up in a very privileged, middle-class background and had access to the musical stars and geniuses of her day, political as well, just hanging out in her living room. So it was just very important to show how all of those influences helped to frame her, politically and personally. I think one of the things that helped us to crack it was looking at this character named Aretha as opposed to Aretha Franklin, the icon. So this is 10-year-old Aretha whose father is a very famous minister and who knows all these important political and cultural people and looking at her as that, as opposed to somebody who is already fully formed Aretha Franklin.
Skye Dakota Turner stars as Young Aretha Franklin and Audra McDonald as her mother Barbara in RESPECT. A Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures film. Photo credit: Quantrell D. Colbert
It’s interesting that you looked at her as a character in the film, but it still must be daunting to write about a real person. I would imagine there’s extra pressure to get things right in addition to telling a great story.
Yes, and especially somebody like her, because I grew up listening to her. We worshipped her in my family. So that’s when I had to stop thinking about her as Aretha Franklin and just think about her as this person named Aretha because otherwise, it’s overwhelming. And I watched a lot of music biopics, like a lot of them. For whatever reason, I don’t know why, musicians have very similar trajectories to their lives. And so it was just very important to make it specific to her experience growing up during this time because you don’t want to say this happened and then she did this. You want to avoid it becoming a Wikipedia page.
Actor Jennifer Hudson and director Liesl Tommy on the set of RESPECT. A Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures film. Photo credit: Quantrell D. Colbert
Was there anything that was particularly tricky to write?
I think a lot of it was really challenging to write about because she was a very private person. So it was a lot of research to pull it together and make connections that weren’t just necessarily laid out — things that her sisters said about her, things that other people observed about her — because she kept everything so close to the chest. Her relationship with [her first husband and manager] Ted White, and making that a real love affair, was actually one of the biggest challenges that I had.
(ctr) Marlon Wayans stars as Ted White and Jennifer Hudson as Aretha Franklin in RESPECT, a Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures film. Photo credit: Quantrell D. Colbert
Audiences will learn about her activism and feminism, and her support of organizations like the Black Panther Party, the Black Power Movement, and Free Angela (Davis) Movement. Also, that “Respect” was written and originally recorded by Otis Redding, and then became an anthem for feminism. What did you learn about her that surprised you?
Basically everything. My grandmother used to listen to Rev. Franklin’s sermons, so I knew of her father, I knew of his church, but I really did not know the musical education that she and her sisters were exposed to. I didn’t know that she had traveled with her father, singing at such a young age. I didn’t know her sister, Carolyn, was a lesbian, or how close she was with her sisters. I didn’t know what an influence Rev. Franklin was on Martin Luther King Jr., and how much she influenced him and how much she meant to him. She just grew up in this political household, so politics to her was like singing, and singing to her was like breathing. The idea of giving back and the idea of working for the community was just something that was instilled in all of them.
Jennifer Hudson stars as Aretha Franklin and Forest Whitaker as her father C.L. Franklin in RESPECT, a Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures film. Photo credit: Quantrell D. Colbert
The movie also focuses on how she broke from her father to find her voice. You are also the daughter of a preacher, so you could truly empathize. What impact did this shared world have on your storytelling?
Well, I understood what it’s like to be a preacher’s kid and to grow up and have friends who were other preachers’ kids and be under a harsh spotlight. I know what’s that like to be in that orbit and to feel the pressure, but to also be in awe of your father and the way he can speak and command the room. I think Aretha took some of those things that she learned from her father and brought that into her performance. Of course, her father had what would be the equivalent of a mega-church today and was very much ahead of his time. When you have the church in you, it never leaves you, no matter how much your faith changes or evolves. It’s just in you forever.
How was it like to work with Liesl in this medium as opposed to the theater?
I loved it, are you kidding me? For this to be both of our first movies, we’re constantly pinching ourselves. I want to keep doing it. It’s kind of remarkable, the resources that you have and the amount of storytelling that you can do, it’s just great. But I think our theater collaboration helped us with this collaboration, because Liesl brought a lot of the tools that she used in theater to the film, and I think to its great benefit.
Featured image: Jennifer Hudson stars as Aretha Franklin in RESPECT. A Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures film. Photo credit: Quantrell D. Colbert.
James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad is a film filled with highly ambitious, no-holds-barred set pieces, nearly all of which are done with practical effects. It’s a story that takes the characters into all kinds of physical environments as they work together to achieve their objective without dying in the process. Collaborating with Gunn to help make his vision a reality onscreen is production designer Beth Mickle. The Credits spoke with Mickle about how she got this high-profile gig, the inspiration of 70s war movies, and how she followed Gunn’s directive to turn up the volume on color with each successive scene of the film.
It’s clear you and James Gunn work really well together, and the proof is in the finished film. You’ve also a part of Guardians of the Galaxy 3. How did you first connect?
I just absolutely owe everything to James being such an open-minded and inclusive director. I had interviewed for one or two Marvel movies over the years, and I just didn’t have the big-budget experience. Then James was looking for somebody for Guardians of the Galaxy 3, and I think the usual suspects were all put forward to him. To his credit, he just said, ‘No, I want to try somebody out-of-the-box, who’s fresh and new. Also, I want to have more representation.’ He was aware of the importance of having female department heads and being inclusive. An executive at Marvel suggested me to him as the dark horse, out-of-the-box, indie girl. And man, to his credit, he just took a massive leap of faith on me for Guardians 3 back in 2018 and plucked me out of a hat, and it just changed my life. It’s just the kindest, boldest, and most generous decision that a director could make. We were only on that for a few short months, but he and I stayed in touch. I just said, ‘I’d just give anything to have the opportunity again,’ and he came right back and told me ‘We’re getting another one lined up soon, so hang tight.’ Only a few months later, I was already starting on The Suicide Squad. It was just the best experience ever.
The Suicide Squad is inspired by 70s war films. Lots of practical effects were used, in part to achieve that feel. The movie is also described as having a war-like magical realism. How did that factor into your production design?
With the war-like aspect, a lot of it was going to be the way that we covered the scenes. We really wanted the camera to be right in there, right next to these warriors or soldiers, going through these battles. Instead of the wide, sweeping scenes where you’re not actually in the sand and in the dirt with them, we wanted to avoid that, and really get a bit gritty and down and dirty with each of our heroes. We wanted to make everything feel really grounded and very relatable. A lot of superhero movies go for big and grand, and being relatable isn’t always a priority. But on this one, we wanted the jungles to feel real, not the Hollywood version of a jungle or the Disney version of a jungle. We wanted it covered in mud and dust and dirt.
How’d you go about doing that?
We had a bunch of old, dead trees, and dead palms laying on the sides, so it felt like it was raw and untouched. With all of our outdoor builds, the beach build, and the jungle build, we really tried to make sure it did feel like Platoon or Apocalypse Now, and that it felt like we actually went to one of these forgotten islands and shot in their forest just as it was. Now watching it, I’m really happy with the way we did it. The way Henry Braham, our DP, lit it and shot it, I really think it feels like we went into a wild jungle and filmed these crazy actions scenes. Meanwhile, they were all filmed on Stage 17 in Pinewood Studios!
The shifts in color palette really informed the movement of the characters through the story. Can you take us through the way the colors shift and the decisions for the choices in different parts of the movie?
That was one of James’s earliest directives, which we really loved and dove right into. We wanted to start with it feeling really gray and monochromatic and drab, while they were in the United States in these familiar places. The idea was start there, and then just keep turning the volume up with every single scene. So we really tried to adhere to it even all the way down to the Osprey aircraft that they’re in, on their way to Corto Maltese. Actually, it arrived with a lot of red and yellow paneling on the inside and was really colorful. We went in and covered up a lot of that color with gray panels. They haven’t reached Corto Maltese yet, so we only wanted a little bit of color.
When they actually do land and get into the forest, then the greens start to pop and we have little bits of color starting to come in. On the beach and in the jungle, it turns up a little bit more. Then at the palace, it becomes fully charged, and we get really vivid, saturated colors. We keep turning up the volume all the way to that last battle scene on this gorgeous, sprawling boulevard in Colón, Panama, which we chose specifically because it was just like a rainbow of colors going up and down the street that just existed there, and it couldn’t have been more vivid or more saturated. It felt like to bookend our movie with this opening gray prison, and then this wildly colorful and vivid street scene at the end, it felt like that was exactly the progression we were trying to give the audience.
The scenes with Harley in her red dress against the colors of the presidential palace are visually stunning. What was the process of developing that environment bearing the dress in mind?
The color of her dress really drove every decision that happened inside of that palace, and I’m so happy and proud of the results. We knew there was going to be this really vivid bright red dress. Before we knew it, I had actually been thinking of the palace being in these red wine and gold tones. When we found that there would be a bright red dress, I went back and started pulling all these great colors that would be a really beautiful backdrop and contrast with the dress. One of my favorite colors on the planet is a really rich turquoise. It was the best and richest tone to really offset the color of the dress. One of my favorite moments I’ve ever had in my career on a set was watching Harley come in, in that red dress, and do that first take running through the palace, from the green into the blue space. She just stands out like a jewel, which was just our goal from the beginning, so I couldn’t be happier.
How is The Suicide Squad unique in all your projects as a production designer? What do you take away from it as an artist?
It was by far the biggest film of my career that I’ve ever been fortunate to do. It’s just what happens when you have resources like that, where you’re able to design every inch of the movie, and you have amazing concept artists and art directors, and a massive set decoration team to really help make everything just as it should be within the frame, versus pretty much every other movie outside these giant projects, where you’re always making concessions. There are compromises and sets that just can’t be what you want them to be because you just don’t have the money, or you can’t travel to that location. The Suicide Squad was so set apart because we really could pull off pretty much everything that we wanted and that we set out to do. The possibilities just become endless in the best way possible.
The Suicide Squad is in theaters and on HBO Max. Streaming through September 5th.
For more on The Suicide Squad, check out these stories:
It’s officially The Suicide Squad day, with writer/director James Gunn’s long-awaited film finally in theaters and streaming on HBO Max. Gunn has promised that there will be real stakes for his misfits, and it’s the unpredictability of who will live and who will die that earns The Suicide Squad its title. As the reviews have noted, however, what elevates the film from gleeful nihilism is the fact that Gunn’s created characters who will, eventually, grow to care about each other. At least some of them, that is.
In a recent featurette released by Warner Bros., the stakes are made plain. “Amanda Waller is willing to sacrifice all of these lives for the betterment of mankind,” Gunn says at the opening. Amanda Waller is the government operative played by Viola Davis, one of the few returning characters from David Ayer’s 2016 Suicide Squad. Waller has once again assembled a crack team of anti-heroes, lunatics, one talking shark and some straight-up villains to help save humanity. In this case, it’s to destroy all traces of “Project Starfish,” which has something to do with Starro the Conquerer, a massive alien starfish as big as a building.
“They did say, ‘You can kill whoever you want,'” Gunn says of Warner Bros., the studio behind the film. The writer/director has made it clear he took them up on that offer. At long last, we can finally find out just who survives this suicide mission, and we know the characters whose lives are at stake are a pretty awesome of oddballs.
Returning from Ayer’s film along with Davis are Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn, Jai Courtney’s Captain Boomerang, and Joel Kinnaman’s Rick Flag. The new characters include Idris Elba as Bloodsport, Sylvester Stallone as the voice of King Shark, John Cena as Peacemaker, Peter Capaldi as the Thinker, David Dastmalchian as Polka-Dot Man, Daniela Melchior as Ratcatcher 2, Michael Rooker as Savant, Alice Braga as Sol Soria, Pete Davidson as Richard “Dick” Hertz/Blackguard, Nathan Fillion as T.D.K., Sean Gunn as Weasel, Flula Borg as Javelin, and Mayling Ng as Mongal.
Check out the new featurette below. The Suicide Squad is in theaters and on HBO Max now.
For more on The Suicide Squad, check out these stories:
For more on Warner Bros., HBO, and HBO Max, check out these stories:
Last week we took our first look at what the critics were saying about The Suicide Squad. Now, with the film opening today in theaters and premiering on HBO Max, we’ve updated our round-up. The increase in reviews has only bolstered the initial takes from last week—writer/director James Gunn has hit a home run in his first outing for the DC Extended Universe.
The reviews expand on the rapturous early buzz and reveal a filmmaker who may have found the perfect outlet for his particular gifts, even more so than his Guardians of the Galaxy franchise, which also features a motley crew of misfits, but those are Marvel misfits and are decidedly a kinder bunch. With The Suicide Squad, Gunn was able to channel some of the chutzpah his early horror films had, and the result is a gory, yet surprisingly tender film.
Gunn’s film borrows a few characters from David Ayer’s 2016 Suicide Squad and then goes its own way, eschewing that film’s dark and muddy tones for something bright, bold, and gonzo. Gunn has made it clear Warner Bros. gave him carte blanche to take The Suicide Squad in whatever direction he saw fit, which meant creating real stakes for the characters. The Suicide Squad earns its title by disposing of characters you might assume will survive.
The returnees from Ayer’s 2016 film include Amanda Waller (Viola Davis), back to once again recruit a stable of wildcards from DC’s deep bench of lovably weirdo characters. She tasks them with a mission to the island of Corto Maltese, where they must destroy every trace of “Project Starfish.” Another returning champ the previous film’s breakout star, Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, and she and Davis are joined by fellow alums Jai Courtney as Captain Boomerang and Joel Kinnaman as Rick Flag.
The newcomers include big stars and ace character actors. For stars, you’ve got Idris Elba as Bloodsport, Sylvester Stallone as the voice of King Shark, and John Cena as Peacemaker. For great character actors, you’ve got Peter Capaldi as the Thinker, David Dastmalchian as Polka-Dot Man, and Michael Rooker as Savant. There are more! Alice Braga as Sol Soria, Pete Davidson as Richard “Dick” Hertz/Blackguard, Nathan Fillion as T.D.K., Sean Gunn as Weasel, Flula Borg as Javelin, and Mayling Ng as Mongal.
Now that we’re properly up to speed, let’s get to the reviews, which are spoiler-free, of course. Links are included if you’re the kind of moviegoer who likes to read the reviews first:
Soren Anders, Seattle Times: “Gunn masterfully mixes humor and bloodshed and manages to give a surprising number of characters room to develop their personas. And when it comes to staging set pieces, he’s at his best.”
Jake Cole, Slant Magazine: “Throughout, James Gunn renders the half-grim, half-absurdist nature of the Suicide Squad with delightfully bloody abandon.”
Katie Rife, AV Club: “In many ways, the gleefully profane, anything-goes mayhem of The Suicide Squad feels like a mega-budget version of the Troma Studios productions that gave Gunn his start. And thank goodness for that.”
Dan Jolin, Time Out: “Gunn gels it together with a wicked sense of humor and an evident affection for his characters who, though not so endearing as his Guardians of the Galaxy, are a hoot to hang around with.”
Olly Richards, Empire Magazine: “When Gunn took on Guardians Of The Galaxy, he turned nonsense into gold for Marvel. By giving The Suicide Squad the same sense of mischief and an equally surreal streak, he’s done the same for DC.”
John Defore, The Hollywood Reporter: “Not only does it find the nastily enjoyable vibe that eluded its predecessor, but it also tells a story worth following — while balancing its most appealing character with others whose disposability (they aren’t sent on suicide missions for nothin’) doesn’t prevent them from being good company onscreen.”
Hoai-Train But, /Film: “Warner Bros. has prided itself in making “director-driven” DC superhero movies, and rarely has that directive paid off as gloriously as it has with James Gunn‘s The Suicide Squad. “
Matt Goldberg, Collider: “By using villains instead of heroes, The Suicide Squad allows Gunn to make a comic book movie with life-and-death stakes and the freedom to have his characters do some truly gnarly things and skip away from our moral judgments. While your typical heroes have to worry about clearing the city and saving civilians, with James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad, you get characters who sometimes relish getting their hands dirty if that’s what it takes to get the job done.”
Owen Gleiberman, Variety: “The Suicide Squad” gets it right, honing that rogue attitude to a much sleeker edge of outrage. It’s a team-of-scruffy-cutthroats origin story that feels honestly dunked in the grunge underworld, and shot for shot it’s made with a slicing ingenuity that honors the genre of The Dirty Dozen (and also, in a funny way, Ghostbusters).:
For more on The Suicide Squad, check out these stories:
Marvel Studios has released a brand new Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings video, only it’s nothing like what we’ve seen thus far. Instead of getting a teaser or trailer showing us the action in director Destin Daniel Cretton’s film, the new video, titled “Most Likely To,” gives us a taste of the chemistry between three of the movie’s stars. On hand are Simu Liu, the titular Shang-Chi, and his co-stars Awkwafina (she plays Katy, Shang-Chi’s oldest friend) and Meng’er Zhang (she plays Xialing, Shang-Chi’s estranged sister). The three offer their takes on who among their characters is “Most Likely To,” say, start a fight (it’s Xialing, fyi.)
The film is centered on an epic family feud. Shang-Chi is rebelling against his father, Wenwu (Tony Leung), the leader of the criminal syndicate called the Ten Rings. This is the same organization that kidnapped Tony Stark in the first Iron Man. Wenwu also happens to be one of Marvel’s most intriguing villains, the real Mandarin. The qualifier “real” is necessary because of the shenanigans in Iron Man 3, in which Ben Kingsley was impersonating the Mandarin at the behest of the film’s real villain, Guy Pearce’s Aldrich Killian. Shang-Chi, Katy, and Xialing will be teaming up to try and take down the Ten Rings, a task that will have implications for the MCU going forward.
Cretton directs from a script he co-wrote with David Callaham and Andrew Lanham. Joining Liu, Awkafina, and Meng’er Zhang are Fala Chen, Meng’er Zhang, Florian Munteanu, Ronny Chieng, and the great Michelle Yeoh.
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings hits theaters on September 3. Check out the teaser here:
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South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone have inked a massive new $900 million deal that will include 14 new films created exclusively for Paramount+, two a year, starting this year. The deal also includes the renewal of South Park through season 30—2022 is the landmark show’s 25th season (the show premiered on Comedy Central on August 13, 1997.)
Ther previous South Park film, 1999’s South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, is currently on HBO Max, as is the series’ entire library. The Hollywood Reportergot the scoop that the first two films Parker and Stone are doing for Paramount+ are really one big story broken into two parts.
MTV Entertainment Studios chief Chris McCarthy had this to say in a statement: “Franchising marquee content like South Park and developing new IP with tremendous talent like Matt and Trey, is at the heart of our strategy to continue growing Paramount+.”
“Comedy Central has been our home for 25 years and we’re really happy that they’ve made a commitment to us for the next 75 years,” said Parker and Stone in a statement. “When we came to ViacomCBS with a different way to produce the show during the pandemic, Chris (McCarthy), Nina (Diaz), Keyes (Hill-Edgar) and Tanya (Giles) were immediately supportive and enabled us to try something new that turned out to be really well received. We can’t wait to get back to doing traditional South Park episodes but now we can also try out new formats. It’s great to have partners who will always take a chance with us.”
For more films coming out from Paramount, check out these stories:
“Reality is not a straight line,” Jeffrey Wright’s The Watcher says at the top of this new What If…? featurette. “Every passing moment is a chance for a new offshoot. A new variation. In fact there are more realities than you can possibly fathom.”
This is as good a synopsis as any we’ve heard about Marvel Studios’ first-ever animated series What If…?, which was inspired by a line of comics of the same name that explored alternate realities within the Marvel comics universe. For Marvel Studios’ new Disney+ show, those alternate realities will be based on the events we’ve witnessed in the last nearly dozen years of the Marvel Cinematic Universe., beginning with 2008’s Iron Man. That includes imagining what if it was Peggy Carter, not Steve Rogers, who became the First Avenger. Jeffrey Wright’s the Watcher plays our host of sorts, able to look across the entirety of the multiverse and see all the potential what ifs.
The Watcher’s visibility into the various timelines will include a huge swath of the MCU, and the series features the voices of more than 50 MCU cast members who reprise their roles, including Angela Bassett, Benedict Cumberbatch, Benedict Wong, the late Chadwick Boseman, Chris Hemsworth, Danai Gurira, Mark Ruffalo, Michael B. Jordan, Michael Douglas, Paul Bettany, Paul Rudd, Samuel L. Jackson, and Tom Hiddleston.
Check out the featurette below. What If…? premieres on Disney+ on August 11.
Here’s the synopsis for What If…?:
Marvel Studios’ “What If…?” flips the script on the Marvel Cinematic Universe, reimagining famous events from the films in unexpected ways. Creating a multiverse of infinite possibilities, “What If… ?” features fan-favorite characters, including Peggy Carter, T’Challa, Doctor Strange, Killmonger, Thor and more. Debuting exclusively on Disney+ on Aug. 11, 2021, “What If… ?” features of voice of Jeffrey Wright as The Watcher. Marvel Studios’ first-ever animated series also features the voices of a host of stars who reprise their iconic roles in the MCU—though their characters’ journeys promise to be wildly unique. “It’s an anthology,” says executive producer Brad Winderbaum. “The Watcher introduces us each week to these alternate storylines— each a kind of cautionary tale in the spirit of ‘The Twilight Zone.’ We bounce around genres and tone—some episodes will be dramatic; some will be tragic or comedic.”
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If you’re a character in a movie and are planning on pulling off a little light B&E (breaking and entering), pick anybody else’s place but the house of Norman Nordstrom (Stephen Lang). Then again, there’d be no movie without some misguided folks’ barging in on Norman’s quiet life. In the first Don’t Breathe, a surprise hit from director Fede Alvarez, based on a script he co-wrote with Rodo Sayagues, it was some silly teenagers trying to take advantage of a blind old man and rob him. Now, here comes a restricted trailer for the sequel, directed this time around by Sayagues, and based on a script he co-wrote with Alvarez, which ups the ante considerably. This nifty little handoff means that there’s a good bet Don’t Breathe 2 will take the visceral terror ginned up in the original film and push it.
In the original film, Lang’s Norman Nordstrom was just a quiet, aging blind man living alone when those aforementioned teenagers attempted to burglarize his home, figuring a blind man would be an easy mark. Yeah, it didn’t work out so well for them. In the sequel, the people breaking into Norman’s house are well aware how dangerous he is. These are not a bunch of bungling would-be burglars—these are men there to hunt Norman and snatch the little girl (played by Madelyn Grace) who’s living with him. How did you think they’ll fare?
Joining Lang and Grace are Brendan Sexton III, Rocci Boy Williams, Christian Zagia, Bobby Schofield, Adam Young, and Diaana Babnicova.
Check out the trailer below. Don’t Breathe 2 hits theaters on August 13.
Here’s the brief synopsis for Don’t Breathe 2:
The sequel is set in the years following the initial deadly home invasion, where Norman Nordstrom (Stephen Lang) lives in quiet solace until his past sins catch up to him.
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