As the longest-running sketch comedy show in US television history, Saturday Night Live has not only shaped generations of comedians and cultural commentary, but it’s also become an institution for live performance. Some of its most iconic moments are when cast members can’t help but laugh themselves. But behind the humor is a bustling backdrop of production design, costumes, hair, makeup, lighting, and camera work that makes the magic happen.
For SNL50: The Anniversary Special, Studio 8H turned into a living museum of sketch comedy, where its director, Liz Patrick, helmed a love letter to live television with the help of a cast and crew to make it all possible. Every beat was choreographed, every set was imagined to its full potential, and every sketch was fine-tuned for maximum entertainment.
Below, production designer Leo Yoshimura, speaking on behalf of his team, and the entire editing team, made up of film unit editors Ryan Spears, Paul Del Gesso, Christopher Salerno, and editors Daniel Garcia, Sean McIlraith, and Ryan McIlraith, relive the historic episode and share how they recreated and shaped five decades of comedy, celebrity, and musical performances into one epic live event.
The production design team: Akira “Leo” Yoshimura, production designer, N. Joseph DeTullio, production designer; Patrick Lynch, art director; Melissa Shakun, art director; Charlotte Hayes Harrison, art director; Sabrina Lederer, set decorator.
How did the team start planning for the episode?
As best as I can remember, Joe DeTullio and I started work on the 50th anniversary special in June 2024. The 49th season had just ended, and we both felt that the summer would be a good time to work on some visual ideas for the show. I think, as we discussed, the show became clearer to me that ‘simpler was best’ and what the audience would immediately recognize as Saturday Night Live was more important than historically acknowledging 50 years of scenery.
How did you decide on a visual theme for the special?
We had to add 150 more seats to our Studio 8H, which can accommodate 325 for an evening performance. Early in July, Joe and I decided to use the signature look of New York’s Grand Central Station. This had been our signature look for many years, and we realized that an audience would remember “where they were” and “what show they were watching” if we used New York’s Grand Central Station as a visual anchor.
SNL50: THE ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL — Pictured: Chris Rock during goodnights & credits on February 16, 2025 — (Photo by: Virginia Sherwood/NBC)SNL50: THE ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL — Pictured: (l-r) Lin-Manuel Miranda, Jon Hamm and Alec Baldwin during the Audience Q&A sketch on February 16, 2025 — (Photo by: Todd Owyoung/NBC)
Were there any sets you wish you could have seen again for SNL50?
In retrospect, I wish that we could have recreated two sets: the very first SNL sketch, The Wolverines, two walls with painted wallpaper, two chairs, and an old, worn rug. And one other, our first home base, a basement club in New York. All the rough brick textures, the rickety wooden stairs, and a meaningful collage of antique artifacts. And the real brick homebase platform that was positioned in the center of our studio, with an artist studio skylight above it.
What moment from the episode stood out for you?
We first learned about the musical guests before the comedy sketches. I loved the idea of Paul Simon and Sabrina Carpenter. Old and young. Simply done on our homebase. This was a tribute to our show, a moment of great television. ‘Homeward Bound” was their song.
Editing SNL50
How did you approach editing the archival footage to create the Physical Comedy tribute?
Editing team: The 50th Anniversary and, in particular, the Physical Comedy tribute was the culmination of not only SNL’s storied history, but it also brought together so many of those who have worked on the show both in front and behind the camera over the years.
Our post supervisor, Matt Yonks, made sure all of the episodes were digitized and at the ready, and then our post coordinator, Rachel LaBianca, with the help of assistant editor Katie Higgins, started digging through the seasons and stringing out the footage by category and cast member. From there, it became a workflow of passing pieces between editors, each one focused on a different aspect or section, then bringing it all together to make this piece.
We knew the final video probably couldn’t be much longer than four minutes, so the cut started out very long and over the days leading up to the show, we whittled it down to its final form. It was overseen by Oz Rodriguez, who served as the show’s creative director, and he was instrumental in curating the final clips, features, and putting us all to work on different aspects of the piece.
Chevy Chase and Chris Farley set the tone for physical comedy at SNL. Did the team feel it had to jump off with Chase?
The opening section with Chevy Chase was really the only possible way to start this piece. An original cast member, the first breakout star from the show, and arguably the person most known for their physicality, we felt proud that this pre-tape was the moment in the anniversary special to give him his flowers. Ryan Spears found that Cold Open from the first season, where Chevy tells Lorne he’s not going to do a fall, which was the perfect setup to ignite this high-energy edit.
Do you have a favorite moment from the clip?
The moment that is definitely our favorite, though, is the section with Molly Shannon. Watching all of the Mary Gallagher sketches from her tenure, she is literally tossing herself full blast into metal fold-up chairs, through walls, and onto tables. She is a force of nature, and while audiences typically associate SNL’s physical comedy with Chevy Chase, Chris Farley, or John Belushi, we wanted to remind audiences of one of the greatest ever to do it. She went through a lot of pain to earn your laughs!
SNL50: THE ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL — Pictured: (l-r) Molly Shannon Molly Shannon as Sally O’Malley and Emma Stone during the Intro Physical Comedy sketch on February 16, 2025 — (Photo by: Todd Owyoung/NBC)
Featured image: SNL50: THE ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL — Pictured: (left) Steve Martin during the monologue on February 16, 2025 — (Photo by: Chris Haston/NBC)
When Saturday Night Live first aired in October 1975, no one could have predicted it would become a cornerstone of American culture. Now, five decades later, Lorne Michaels and company have celebrated another milestone with SNL50: The Anniversary Special, a three-hour telecast directed by Liz Patrick, which brought together Studio 8H legends onto one stage.
With a star-studded cast that included current performers, alumni, and surprise guests, the hair and makeup departments faced one of their most ambitious challenges to date. Led by hair department head Jodi Mancuso and makeup department head Louie Zakarian, the teams brought back a number of beloved characters, their specific looks intact. With a little bit of precision and creativity, the glam squads looked to custom wigs, bald caps, and prosthetics to help performers slip seamlessly back into characters some hadn’t played in decades – all of which required a complete transformation under a very tight turnaround.
Below, Mancuso and Zakarian sort through the blur of brushes and tools to share how they brought back some of SNL‘s most beloved characters, one perfectly coifed wig at a time.
HAIR
The hair department consisted of: Jodi Mancuso, department head hairstylist; Cara Hannah, key hairstylist; Inga Thrasher, hairstylist; Amanda Duffy Evans, hairstylist; Chad Harlow, hairstylist; Gina Ferrucci, hairstylist; Brittany Hartman, hairstylist; Katie Beatty, hairstylist; makeup – entire special.
Jodi, with so many eras and iconic characters, when did you start hearing about sketches so you could manage the inventory?
I started to hear sketch ideas along the way. I also had a few meetings about what the possibilities could be. So I had my team prepare for all of it! We truly did not have anything solid until that week. My department and wigshop prepared over 80 wigs for the Friday music special and the three-hour live 50th special.
SNL50: THE ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL — Pictured: (l-r) Aidy Bryant, Jon Hamm, Kate McKinnon, Will Forte, Woody Harrelson during the “Close Encounter” sketch on February 16, 2025 — (Photo by: Chris Haston/NBC)
What hurdle did your team have to overcome?
One of the biggest challenges was that we did not have a full dress rehearsal. So you just gave it to wig gods in the hopes it would all go smoothly. We also tried not to damage the guests’ hair, as most had just stepped off the red carpet, been pulled from the audience to perform, and then had to return looking the same.
That doesn’t sound easy to achieve.
One of my favorite moments was Meryl Streep! She is just so laid back, professional, and just a lovely human. I put her wig for Close Encounters in her dressing room for rehearsal. I told her I would be back to put it on her for her sketch. I went back to put the wig on, and Meryl and the wig were gone! I giggled, knowing she put it on herself, and when I saw it on her, she did a great job of it. I asked her if she was available to work in the hair department! She said ‘oooh, that sounds like fun.’
Were there any specific looks that you felt a special responsibility to get exactly right?
The Bronx Beat wigs are especially close to my heart. The sketch originally was based on me. I designed those wigs for my friends Amy and Maya, knowing that Mike Myers’ Linda Richman was going to be in it! I was so excited to see these two worlds collide. It was a lovely SNL moment for me.
MAKEUP
The makeup team: Louie Zakarian, department head makeup artist; Jason Milani, key makeup artist; Amy Tagliamonti, key makeup artist; Rachel Pagani, makeup artist; Young Bek, makeup artist; Stephen Kelley, makeup artist; Joanna Pisani, makeup artist.
Louie, with the longer runtime, how did the team approach coordinating the makeup?
Unlike a regular season episode, there would be no dress rehearsal this time. We had to time the changes from a loose rehearsal without most of the cast that would eventually be in the sketch. Everything was prepped in advance and staged in the makeup room to be ready to apply.
What was the most challenging transformation to pull off?
In the John Mulaney musical number, there were a number of cast members who would be playing political characters needing four or five bald caps and facial hair. We had to time out the application of each of these make-ups. In the case of Kate McKinnon as Rudy Giuliani, I had to omit certain parts of the make-up (like the cheeks prosthetics) I usually do because there would not be enough time to apply and remove them all. There was also a bald cap on Emil to make him look like De Niro from Taxi Driver.
The Close Encounter sketch saw Pedro Pascal and Woody Harrelson with Meryl Streep popping in. Is the best approach to keep things simple with their characters?
That character is always best when downplayed. Less is really more for sure, and once Kate gets into it, it’s magic. Meryl was a late addition; I believe I didn’t know about her until that day, but I coordinated with her and had her make-up slightly toned down.
Featured image: SNL50: THE ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL — Pictured: (l-r) Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph, and Mike Myers as Linda Richman during the “Bronx Beat” sketch on February 16, 2025 — (Photo by: Theo Wargo/NBC)
In just six years, including five of the film industry’s most challenging periods, powerhouse filmmakers David Leitch and Kelly McCormick have founded and grown 87North Productions, making it a formidable force in Hollywood and beyond.
Anchored in the action genre, the production and action design company’s catalog includes the third and fourth John Wick movies, Bullet Train, Violent Night, The Fall Guy, Nobody, and now its sequel.
The sequel sees Bob Odenkirk reprise the role of ex-government assassin and family man Hutch Mansell, who leaves his double life behind in suburbia and heads off on a family vacation. However, trouble follows, and before too long, a chain of events unravels secrets about the pasts of both him and his wife. As well as Odenkirk, Nobody 2 boasts a starry ensemble cast that includes Connie Nielsen, John Ortiz, RZA, Colin Hanks, Christopher Lloyd, and Sharon Stone.
Here, McCormick and Leitch explain the secret of their successes both on screen and as a business, tapping into Canada’s amazing creative talent base, and more.
87North continues to grow and evolve. What is the key to your success?
David Leitch: We try to make audience pleasers and put the audience first. Are they going to enjoy this? Is it going to be an entertaining ride? Is this worth going to the theater for? We also focus on material that features a relatable, iconic character in the middle. When you look at Hutch in the Nobody movies, Santa in Violent Night, or The Fall Guy or Bullet Train, they’re action movies and sometimes comedies, but they’re always character films. There are many actors who get to chew up the scenes, delivering great character work and connecting with the audience. When you do that, you set yourself up for potential sequels because people want to go on continuing adventures. That’s where our brand is focused.
Kelly McCormick: We have a style book and pillars. It’s about boldness and being entertaining. These commitments guide our choices, keeping us focused on what to do and what to avoid, and ensuring we stay true to our values. We also want to be good partners to everybody in the process, from the creatives to our financiers and studio partners. We’re thoughtful across the board.
(from left) Brady Mansell (Gage Munroe), Sammy Mansell (Paisley Cadorath), Hutch Mansell (Bob Odenkirk), David Mansell (Christopher Lloyd) and Becca Mansell (Connie Nielsen) in Nobody 2, directed by Timo Tjahjanto.
For Nobody 2, you created Midwestern Americana in Winnipeg, Manitoba. You made the first film there, too. What was the draw to return?
McCormick: We love Winnipeg. We’ve created a film family there. Before we got there, they mainly made Hallmark movies. Now that we’re going into our fifth picture there, we’ve grown a team of action filmmakers who will turn down other projects to work on ours, even if they’re offering them more salary. It’s amazing. They’re a loyal bunch of committed, dedicated artists and skilled crafts people who want to give it their all. Also, they want to stay in Winnipeg. They love it there. What we did best in Nobody 2 was to make it seem like we weren’t in the same place. That was down to the impressive work by the production designer, our locations team, and our commitment to finding things we had never seen before in Winnipeg. The carnival is about 20 minutes out of town. It’s a real water park and that is a summer carnival. We ended up having to shoot after they were finished with their summer season. We extended their rental for about two weeks, and they fed us with cotton candy. It was great fun.
Sharon Stone as Lendina in Nobody 2, directed by Timo Tjahjanto.
Is everything there that you need?
McCormick: Depending on the movie, we bring in three to five stunt teams, some of whom are from other places in Canada. However, there is a crew of stunt performers we use in Winnipeg called Skene Stunts. We’re building a little bit of strength there, too, and giving people another reason to get into the business and hone the craft as locals. We typically bring in a DP, who then utilizes the rest of the team we’ve built there. The operators and the assistants are running our DPs on other projects, too. Our films have such a specific look that we add a DP that we’ve worked with before every time.
Does filming in Canada give you more bang for your buck?
McCormick: Between the incentives and the exchange rate, it’s almost unbeatable for this size film, and especially when you don’t need a specific landscape in any way. They are film-friendly, and they want the work. When we shot Nobody 2, there were four other films there. They are partly growing because of the exposure they’ve had because of us. There are other things too, but they’re doing it right, and the unions are really helpful.
You continue to grow the 87North team in the US. Is 87North Canada part of the evolution?
McCormick: We do have a little postage stamp in Vancouver. After Deadpool 2, we put a little plot there. We do all of our post on these little movies there. We have a hub and a couple of stunt performers that we work with regularly.
Leitch: Having been a stunt performer for so long, during the heyday of my career, I worked all over the world. We weren’t making movies in the States at that time, so I have connections to stunt teams all over. When we go to different places, we reconnect with old friends who are fostering young stunt performers. One of our unique skills is that we have access to that international base.
Italy was discussed as a possible location for Nobody 2, but the family headed to the Midwest. Could we see Nobody 3 go international and utilize that creative network?
Leitch: You’re right, we had talked about that in the beginning. In the first film, they mentioned their vacation in Italy; however, we focused on making it more of an Americana experience in this one, but nothing’s off the table. When you create such a lovable, relatable character, the world is our oyster in terms of where we want to take it. It’ll be a case of getting the team together and brainstorming something fun the audience will love.
McCormick: The family is at the core of both movies. We’ve grown Connie’s character, Becca, and RZA’s Harry in this movie, and honestly, the kids, too, to the point where I wonder what we can do with them next. It’s about how they’ll fall out of sync, and we’ll bring them back together. We can do that in many places and various ways.
RZA as Harry Mansell in Nobody 2, directed by Timo Tjahjanto.
Movies like Nobody 2 still work on streaming, but they play best in theaters. How can we consistently bring audiences back to the movies?
Leitch: There are a lot of people with a lot of different interests scratching their heads, including the theater owners, the studios, and the filmmakers. We all want this to happen. It’s a combination of several factors. We need to make entertaining films. We need to make diverse films across different genres to attract audiences. We’re alienating all these other people and their genres. To do all that costs money, so the studios have to reconcile that with their advertising budgets. Then, the theater owners have to make the theaters comfortable and make those experiences worth the $100 that it takes to bring a family. All those conversations have to happen within the industry, and everyone has to do their part to keep this thing alive. It’s not one-sided.
Audiences are increasingly savvy when it comes to picking how the movie they are seeing is being presented, whether that is IMAX or Dolby. Is it heartening to know they understand and appreciate that?
Leitch: It is because you put a lot of effort into all the details. When you’re working in post with your great sound team, the visual effects team, or your great colorist, you’re doing it because you want it to be experienced on the highest quality system. There are hours and hours of people’s lives that go into making that experience and enhancing it. It’s exciting to see the blacks being super black, to experience Dolby Surround Sound, and see large formats, all of which can only happen in the theater.
What does the future look like for 87North?
McCormick: We will have made six films by the end of this year, which will be released over two years. We are moving on to Violent Night 2 from our current location in Pittsburgh, where we’re making a movie, and we’ve got some exciting things lined up for next year. Honestly, we feel incredibly fortunate to be making movies, and we’re working hard to be thoughtful about the ones we choose, ensuring they’re worthy of both theatrical release and your time.
Freakier Friday, directed by Nisha Ganatra, really is freakier than its predecessor, 2003’s Freaky Friday, as the number of characters unwittingly swapping bodies has risen to four. Anna (Lindsay Lohan) and her teenage daughter, Harper (Julia Butters) land in each other’s corporeal forms, while even weirder for the group, Tess (Jamie Lee Curtis) and her step-granddaughter-to-be, Lily (Sophia Hammons) find themselves swapped.
The medium for this switch is a disarmingly hacky multi-hyphenate palm reader, Madame Jen (Vanessa Bayer), although the real culprit is the four characters’ intractable domestic strife. Anna is a single mom by choice, now engaged to Lily’s father, Eric (Manny Jacinto). Lily is English and does not want to be in Los Angeles, much less have her late mother imminently replaced. Harper is a checked-out surfer with limited patience for her mom and absolutely none for her arrogant future stepsister. Tess, having ingested a major chill pill in the last movie, is still pretty cool—her worst faults are being a bit too helpful at “co-grandparenting” and trying to on-the-spot psychologize everybody into harmony.
Costume designer Natalie O’Brien (No One Will Save You, Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon) makes it easy to follow this four-way switcheroo through the characters’ looks. Being trapped in Tess’s body doesn’t dampen Lily’s outré fashion, while Harper, as her mother, clads herself in fashion ranging from diffident tomboy to confused vamp (the latter out of necessity, as the girls try to break up their parents). With the older women steering the ship, the younger girls transform into toned-down, neatly presented versions of themselves.
We spoke with O’Brien about developing Anna’s cool mom style with Lohan, bringing in references to the first film, and getting Curtis into the Y2K fashions so inexplicably adored by a certain Gen Z cohort.
How did you develop Anna’s look, and was Lindsay Lohan involved?
She is a big collaborator. She is also very tactful and smart, and she knows where her character goes. We knew we wanted to keep her rocker mom vibe, but we didn’t want it to be as hardcore as she was when she was a teen. It has to flatten out, and she has to be a mother as well. Music is in her bones, and it’s still something she does as her job. Her three-piece pink Frankie Shop oversized blazer look with the vest was something that felt David Byrne-esque, musically inspired, but also like a boss and cool mom at the same time. It also showed a nice switchover for when we see Harper in her lavender look with the vest. Their looks become congruent. You’re trying to trickle these different pieces in, so that when they do the switch, it’s like a perfect ice cream swirl.
How did placing Easter Eggs and any other references to the first movie play into the looks you developed for the sequel?
We didn’t want to hit people over the head with it, because it’s such an iconic film already. Obviously, it’s nice to put little bits in there. But no matter what, there will be no recreating Freaky Friday, the original. One of the only pulls that I wanted to do was the original Diane von Furstenberg dress that we put on Bess, who is Chad Michael’s love interest later on. That was a big one, and that was a hunt to find. There’s also a little moment when you see Anna playing Harper in this black asymmetrical dress, it is Isabel Marant. That was a similar structure to when she’s playing guitar with Pink Slip on the stage. I wanted to put in little peeks and nods.
Lily, the aspiring fashion designer, is all new. What did you want to convey with her outrageous outfits?
I think that the amount of stuff that she has in her clothing is masking something, in a way. It’s kind of [like], “Whoa, this is me. Look at this, but don’t question some things, because I don’t know if I’m open enough to show you.”
There was a clear sense that Tess retained the lessons of the first film. How did you bring that into what she wore?
It was important for her to feel a little bit cooler, a little bit more like she’s gotten into her own skin, 20 years later. I wanted her to be cool, affluent, and a touch bougie with her cashmeres and her scarves. You see a lot of that at the Brentwood Country Mart, this place in LA that’s a very put-together, California, hip spot. It was important, because she had switched with a 15-year-old already, so that stays. And at the end of the film, you have her with Lily’s inspiration, totally changing the way that she is both psychologically and through her styling and her wardrobe. I wanted to do that with everybody at the end. They all absorbed a part of their switched character and their switched persona, and it changed them. It paved the way for them to be a better version of themselves.
How did you figure out the level of fashion you wanted to use to depict Lily navigating the world in Tess’s form?
Jamie did not love everything that she was in, but that’s the perfect thing, because if she is comfortable in her outfit, you are not playing a 15-year-old girl. You have to be very uncomfortable and out of place to feel like you are Lily trapped in this sixty-something-year-old body. The costuming is storytelling. It helped us find the characters and let them find their characters. So let’s say, the pink dress. We made that dress. It’s very loud. It’s very Y2K. It’s also an homage to Trading Places. Jamie and I were talking about it, and I said, ”Okay, show me the body parts you want to hide. Talk to me about the things you’re okay with seeing. And let’s still make it look chic and young and loud for this moment that you have a monumental conversation with everybody at the table.” Because her conversation is loud, her voice is loud, so we wanted to turn it up. We also Easter egg it in the beginning and show that it’s something that she wears as a Spice Girl. It’s the same dress that’s on the postcard.
And the volume only turns up even more when Lily-as-Tess is forced into a pickleball tournament.
Jamie asked Josh [Bramer, the prop master], because she’d worked with him before on Everything Everywhere All At Once, to get the mouth guard and all the other stuff, all in pink. I was going back and forth, showing him our photos. Jamie put it all together, and it was drop-dead hilarious. We had a lot of fun. I know it was out of her comfort zone. But I even saw her at the premier afterwards, and she was like, “You know, I didn’t like the outfits, but it all worked.” It was strange and bizarre, but it made sense.
Speaking of fun and bizarre, wow, did you pull off the big food photo shoot scene for Ella (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan)?
With the beautiful costume houses of LA, we are able to capture these things that are available to us. I really wanted to honor that, in a way. I was thinking about how a stylist would think of what this photo shoot would be. First, we knew that her album was [called] “Hungry.” So, we made it all food-oriented. I wanted to find as many food-style walkabouts—these costumes that you can get in—as we could get. I had found the cake, and we bedazzled it, adding more roses and flowers. And then we just went to town. We had hot dogs, we had strawberries, we had the grapes, and we made the teddy bears. We had some Christian Siriano pieces. That was a wild day. It was about 15, maybe 20 changes altogether for everybody.
On a night filled with laughter, legacy, and magic, Saturday Night Live marked its 50th anniversary with an unforgettable celebration. The milestone episode infused nostalgia that paid tribute to its past with new memorable moments. But what audiences saw on screen is only a fraction of the story. Behind the scenes in the iconic Studio 8H, an enormous production effort had been unfolding for months. From production design, hair, makeup, editing, and everything in between, SNL50: The Anniversary Special became the iconic show’s biggest collaborative effort ever, capturing an episode worthy of five decades of history.
Helmed by Liz Patrick, the technical challenge for the crew was planning a three-hour special without a traditional dress rehearsal that the weekly show receives. Special sets were constructed, hair and makeup faced the daunting task of transforming performers into characters spanning eras, archival material was reimagined, and returning alumni were blended with current cast members in a tribute to the show’s evolution.
Below, Patrick discusses how the team prepared for the historic night and the sketch that the director looked forward to the most.
In terms of prep, how did this special compare to others in the past?
The 50th anniversary special presented several challenges, including limited set storage, set transitions, camera traffic, and reduced shooting areas. These issues stemmed from the need to accommodate additional tiered seating for former cast members and celebrities in Studio 8H, as well as an extra music performance stage. When preparing to direct the 50th special, I went back and did some research and watched the 25th and 40th anniversary specials that were done before I arrived at SNL in the fall of 2021. While watching again from a director’s point of view rather than as a fan, I started to think this show might actually be easier than a regular show for us.
Really?
I quickly realized I was wrong; the 50th was going to be one of the most challenging shows. We doubled the number of live sketches, most of which were in large three-wall sets. This made all the transitions for sets and cameras more difficult, especially with the obstacle of our seating bleacher.
How did you approach it technically?
Our typical camera complement for our show is four pedestal cameras and a Chapman crane. Sometimes we bring in a handheld camera, a steadicam, or a robotic camera for a specialty shot if the creative in a sketch lends itself to needing such a shot. Due to the limited depth in certain shooting areas of the special, we employed handheld cameras on wheels with a wide lens. This allowed us to capture the entire set within our frame, without the need for a pedestal camera to impede the set and take away space from the cast and guest actors.
How did rehearsal help to put all the puzzle pieces together?
On our first rehearsal day without actors, I had limited sketch ideas and scripts, but we set up and looked at each set, figuring out which camera complement would work in each setup for each sketch. Our staging crew, camera operators, utilities, and stage managers worked so hard and were instrumental in helping me figure out this puzzle.
We also had to take into consideration where we were in the show before the sketch and where we were going next in the show. All in hopes the running order of the show would t change too much. Having this day was so crucial for us to have to get the ball rolling before bringing in cast and guest stars for rehearsals.
Did you sketch a scene you were looking forward to directing?
There were so many great moments of the 50th. From Meryl Streep in Close Encounter, Robert DeNiro in Debbie Downer, to Will Ferrell in his short shorts for Scared Straight. Some of the most special for me were working with the former cast members, guest stars, and former writers whom I’ve admired for years.
When Bronx Beat got combined with Coffee Talk, I jumped with excitement. Maya Rudolph and Amy Poehler are two of my all-time favorites, and then to add Mike Meyers to the mix as Linda Richmond was surreal. Growing up, one of my favorite sketches was the Coffee Talk sketch that included Mike as Linda Richmond, Madonna as Linda Rosenberg, and Roseanne Barr as Liz’s mom. At the end of the sketch, Barbara Streisand makes a surprise cameo behind Mike and Madonna. This moment is priceless, and I feel like we paid homage to it in the 50th when Mike popped up as Linda Richmond behind Amy and Maya in Bronx Beat. It felt like we were creating another SNL moment.
What did it mean for your career to be picked to direct this episode?
I’m extremely grateful and honored to be given the opportunity to direct this series and now the 50th anniversary special. I’ve worked on so many cool pop culture shows in my career, and this one will go down in history as one of my favorite accomplishments. I’m a lifelong fan of SNL. I grew up watching this show. I started my TV career in NYC before heading off to LA, and to get to return to NYC to work on this iconic show and the 50th special means everything to me. It’s a real pinch-me moment.
Things were quiet in Gotham when it came to news about Matt Reeves’ The Batman sequel for quite some time. Sure, we had the sensational spinoff series The Penguinto sink our beaks into, giving us a deep dive into Gotham’s criminal underworld via Colin Farrell’s Oz Cobb and his equally standout screen partner, Cristin Milioti, whose Sofia Falcone was as cunning and ruthless as Oz. But when it came to news about when Robert Pattinson would be donning the cape and cowl again in The Batman Part II, we waited quite a while for confirmation, despite DC Studios co-chief (and Superman writer/director) James Gunn promising us Reeves was onto something good.
Then last week, we got that confirmation—The Batman Part II would be hitting screens in 2027, with Reeves having completed his script this past June. Now, Jeffrey Wright has offered even more news to Den of Geekabout the script, shedding specific light on how his Gotham PD detective Jim Gordon’s role will expand in the sequel.
Wright was speaking to Den of Geek about his upcoming part in Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest, starring Lee’s longtime collaborator Denzel Washington. When asked about where things stood with The Batman Part II, Wright admitted that he hasn’t read Reeves’ script yet himself. But, he said, “I’ve heard some things.”
What we already knew about Reeves and co-writer Mattson Tomlin’s script was that James Gunn read it and said, “It’s great,” and that production had been approved to begin in early 2026. Yet Wright did offer this morsel:
“I’m liking what I’m hearing,” he told Den of Geek. “And I have huge respect for Matt’s Gotham-building skills. So I’m excited to jump in there and read what he has, which I’m sure will be rich and satisfying to play, and ideally for audiences to take in as well.”
Wright’s version of Gordon was a proper detective (as Gary Oldman’s Jim Gordon was at the start of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy—he’s promoted to Commissioner after the Joker kills the former holder of the office in The Dark Knight), working alongside Pattinson’s Batman to try to unpuzzle the Riddler’s (Paul Dano) sadistic game. Reeves was adamant that in his Gotham, Batman is a vigilante detective of sorts, and in Gordon, he’s got his unofficial partner.
While there’s no word on what the script’s actually about, it seems likely that a few stars from The Batman will return alongside Pattinson’s Batman and Wright’s Gordon, including Farrell’s Oz Cobb, Zoë Kravitz’s Selina Kyle, and Andy Serkis’s Alfred. One question on fans’ minds is whether a certain Arkham prisoner who had a very small role in the film will have a larger one in Part II…that would be Barry Keoghan’s laughing lunatic. Perhaps you could guess who he was supposed to be?
After the rapturous opening few weeks for the writer/director/studio chief’s Superman, which officially kicked off the feature film portion of his new DCU, the DC Studios co-chief was in New York for the second season premiere of Peacemaker alongside star John Cena.
Before we get to what Gunn and Cena had to say about how the second season of Peacemaker connects to the broader DCU, first, let’s touch upon Gunn’s update on his Superman world that he’s building out. “I’ve already finished the treatment for the next story in what I’ll call the Superman Saga,” Gunn told The Hollywood Reporter at the Peacemaker season two premiere. “The treatment is done, which means a very, very worked-out treatment. I’m working on that and hopefully going into production on that not too far away from today.”
That would be a quick turnaround, considering Superman is still in theaters. This means that for the new legion of fans of David Corenswet’s Man of Steel, and the world of metahumans and villains Gunn built out for Superman, the sequel would arrive sooner than expected.
As for Peacemaker, Gunn and Cena were on hand in the Big Apple alongside Gunn’s DC Studios co-chief Peter Safran. “I don’t think there’s anything I’ve ever done that I love more than this season,” Gunn told THR about Peacemaker season two. And for this season for Cena’s beefy, conflicted antihero Christopher Smith, the stakes are raised as his fate becomes intertwined with the larger unified DC universe that Gunn and Safran are building out.
“It’s a big part, definitely Superman leads directly into Peacemaker; it should be noted that this is for adults, not for children, but Superman leads into this show and then we have the setting up of all of the rest of the DCU in this season of Peacemaker, it’s incredibly important,” Gunn told THR on the carpet. “Lots of guest stars coming up, lots of characters that are showing up that we’ve already met in Superman. I don’t think there’s anything that I’ve ever done that I love more than this season of Peacemaker, so I’m so excited for people to see it.”
In case you missed it, Cena’s Peacemaker appears in a post-credits scene in Superman, appearing on a talk show to critique the Man of Steel. Now, Cena said, Peacemaker season two will fully lean into Gunn and Safran’s vision for a fully interconnected DCU. “Instead of standalone properties, all of the DCU is now connected, as you saw Peacemaker show up in Superman,” Cena said on the red carpet. “I think what you see in season two is just a forward of that narrative. That whole DCU through line—it takes the 11th Street Kids through their next adventure, but it also has a lot to do with the DCU going forward.”
Cena is joined in Peacemaker by Danielle Brooks, Jennifer Holland, Freddie Stroma, Steve Agee, and Frank Grillo.
Season two starts streaming on Aug. 21 on HBO Max.
For more on all things Superman, check out these stories:
Featured image: James Gunn, John Cena at the HBO Max Original Series “Peacemaker” Premiere held at AMC Lincoln Square on August 13, 2025 in New York, New York. (Photo by John Nacion/Variety via Getty Images)
Rajkumar Akella’s mission started almost the moment he joined the entertainment industry, when he brushed up against piracy for the first time.
These days, as the chairman of India’s Telugu Film Chamber of Commerce’s Anti Video Piracy Cell, Akella is leading the fight against piracy globally. Back then, as a teenager trying to turn a dollar, selling taped versions of Indian movie soundtracks and with “youthful energy,” he met with the pirates head-on.
“I gathered courage and actually confronted them, and it really paid off,” says Akella, smiling at the memory. “Over a period of time, I could actually claim that I could convert some of those hard-core pirates into legit businesses.”
It was an experience that helped set Akella’s life in motion. Throughout his career, he has witnessed the evolution of the fight against piracy from a physical approach, involving raids, arrests, and the confiscation of DVDs, to a primarily online effort that tracks the global movement of data.
In 2016, Akella was handed the MPA Asia-Pacific Copyright Educator (ACE) Award, which recognized his work in helping industry players in India protect their content. Today, speaking from his home in Hyderabad, Akella reflects on how the very nature of piracy has evolved, as have the methods he uses to fight it.
Receiving the Asia Pacific Copyright Educator (ACE) Award from the Chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America, Senator Chris Dodd, in Hong Kong. 2016.
How has piracy in the Indian film market evolved over the years?
When Eega, directed by S. S. Rajamouli, was released [in 2012], we went to a particular cinema in a Tier 2 city in the erstwhile state of Andhra Pradesh, and we found through forensic watermarking that actually the cinema operator was facilitating cam-cording. We shut down the theater as a strong message to such offenders and all the pirates that nobody can encourage piracy in any manner.
By the time Baahubali: The Beginning was released in 2015, by the afternoon of the opening day, piracy had already broken out. It was devastating for the director, the producer, and everybody. By then, we already had a mechanism of tracking down the IP addresses, but [the pirates] had already wizened up. All these pirates were already using other methodologies to hide their identities.
What we’ve found, when we put all the information together, is that this was a global network. Some people were in Jabalpur, Pune, Delhi, Chennai, Gwalior, Mumbai, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Paris, Nepal, Pakistan, and so on. This shows how complicated the landscape of piracy has become. It’s not happening from one place anymore; it’s not very simple anymore.
Why do you think people use these sites?
The biggest motivator for movie piracy is that people want to watch the content immediately after it is released. That is the biggest motivator for pirates: we have a six- to eight-week window for the OTT release, and people won’t wait that long. This sense of urgency to consume content is actually a boon and a bane for the movie industry.
Secondly, and even more importantly, the perception, or rather the misconception, that pirated content is free. But that is the biggest fallacy. There is nothing free in the world. The so-called “free” pirated content comes with a huge cost, in the form of people’s personal data or identity, which they are largely unaware of or tend to ignore.
Could you share one of the most memorable or impactful operations you’ve been involved in?
We had started an international film distribution company with offices in the United States, Singapore, and Hyderabad in 2002. One of the first films we launched in the DVD format was Sampoorna Ramayanam [1972], based on the great Indian epic. We had acquired the home video rights at a steep price, as it was a very prestigious project. The DVD technology was evolving, and this was probably the first ever DVD from India with multiple language soundtracks and multiple language subtitles. We invested a great deal of time and effort in compiling the various soundtracks and struggled for several months to complete the translations into numerous Indian and foreign languages.
But then, before we could even fully market or monetize the DVDs, piracy came as a shock and ate into our rightful revenues. It was heartbreaking. It was more than money. Around that time in Chicago, we noticed a group of pirates engaged in pirating DVDs. We had invested our heart and soul, along with our hard-earned money, in creating world-class DVDs of Telugu content, only to see people pirate them unscrupulously in an instant.
Soon, we engaged a Copyright Attorney in New York and then conducted a raid in Chicago in 2003, with the help of Homeland Security. We actually confiscated a massive haul of pirated DVDs – about 97,000 DVDs – belonging to not just us but several copyright holders.
You helped set up the Anti-Video Piracy Cell for the Telugu Film Chamber of Commerce (TFCC) in 2005, and it has been a key player in the fight against piracy in India. Could you speak to some of the key initiatives and programs the TFCC has implemented?
When I shared insights of this experience with the thought leaders in the Telugu film industry, they could see the long-term implications of the piracy menace. I said no individual can actually address this issue; this has to be an industry issue. So we set up what was then the first-ever dedicated Anti-Piracy Cell by the movie industry in India in 2005.
Around 2010, I was selected as the chairman of the anti-piracy cell, and that was the time when online piracy emerged. We could see that this is going to be the future, so we need to engage professionals to tackle this issue. Up until then, we had about 15 retired cops to tackle piracy, targeting physical pirates and prosecuting them. We had conducted over six thousand anti-piracy raids. But today, if you really look at it, rather than dealing with physical pirates, we have the digital pirates everywhere.
Does that make the job harder?
Conceptually, it’s easier when you have the political will, stakeholder cooperation, and collaboration, because when it is online, everybody leaves a digital trail – they have a digital footprint. You have to convince the governments of the day that this is a serious crime, as the general perception is that piracy is a victimless crime, and all that. It’s not true. There are so many hundreds and thousands of people impacted by this. In just the Telugu film industry alone, there are over 15,000 daily wage workers, and across India, this number runs into hundreds of thousands.
With Mr Ramesh Sippy , Legendary Indian Film Maker, Uday Singh – Managing Director – MPA – India.
How has the focus of the work that you do changed?
If somebody is committing a crime, they must be punished, of course. But that is secondary, because the legal process and convictions take a very long time. As an industry, our primary concern is ensuring we can optimize our legitimate revenue. That really belongs to the Creator, the producer, the content maker.
Most content creators can’t afford the legal battles. For them, true justice is when they can deter people from distributing or consuming pirated content. So we thought, instead of waiting for convictions post facto, we should proactively initiate measures to stop piracy before it damages prospects. The challenge is to make the Government appreciate the urgency, time sensitivity, and gravity of the issue. Because for the creator fraternity, justice delayed is justice denied.
At India’s recent World Audio-Visual and Entertainment Summit (WAVES), you were part of a panel discussing international perspectives on content protection. What did you share about India and its market for international content?
One thing now is that every piece of content we create has the potential to reach a global audience. There is nothing like ‘This will only cater to this particular audience.’ There is no longer that concept; it’s passé. Any piece of content you create has the potential to reach a global audience. So basically, you need to protect your content wherever it goes.
You know, today in India, there are about 30 million Japanese anime fans – 30 million! And there are about 15 million fans of K-dramas and K-pop. And in fact, in some regions of India, the audiences aren’t even familiar with Bollywood or Indian stars; they only watch K-drama and K-pop; they’re more popular than that, it’s crazy! Likewise, Indian content is becoming increasingly popular even in non-traditional markets and among audiences beyond the diaspora.
At a panel discussion on Piracy at the World Audio Visual Entertainment Summit ( WAVES ) Mumbai 2025, with Dawn Barriteau – VP – Alliance For Creativity and Entertainment , Ho Fai – VP Content Protection Legal – ACE, Mr Tatsuya Otsuka – CODA – Japan, Itae Choi – Executive Director, Korea Copyright Overseas promotion Association , South Korea , Film Maker Jihè Lee Liribridge – South Korea
In your view, what are the most promising areas for cross-border collaboration?
We soon realized the necessity for global and cross-border collaboration with the advent of online media. So we [the Telugu Film Industry] were the first to sign an MOU [Memorandum of Understanding] with the Motion Picture Association and ever since have done several significant joint campaigns against piracy. And now with the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), we are working even more closely.
The idea is to bring all the industries across India and the globe together, to constantly stay connected, share actionable information and knowledge, and evolve strategies together, and be able to impress upon the governments, wherever we are, to go after these pirates. Unfortunately, the trend has always been that the bad guys use technology better than the legit guys, be it offshore hosting companies, cryptocurrencies, or using AI.
Secondly, the most exciting thing that has happened in the digital era is that everybody is a creator, making some form of creative content, be it reels, music, songs, micro movies, and so on. Right now, I think it’s one of the best times for any creative process. And if we can put in place these checks and balances, and a very robust mechanism to deal with piracy, then it is the golden age for every creator.
What are you seeing in terms of the pirates expanding into other forms of criminal activity?
Today, it is not just about piracy; they’re also stealing your identity. Recently, experts have observed that about 70 per cent of all cybercrime originates from digital piracy, as it often seems harmless to people. But the fact is, piracy is used as a bait, as a trap to steal people’s identities, to infringe on data privacy, and to spread malware, which will then lead to online fraud, financial scams, and other cybercrimes.
In India, identity theft is a huge threat. We have recently seen the notorious “digital arrest” scam in India. They are looting millions and millions of dollars from gullible people because they are stealing their identities and they are actually using it, or misusing that information, to threaten them and extort money. This is all happening because if it’s a very innocuous pirate site, you might want to watch a popular movie or series, but in the process, they’re stealing your data, your privacy, and your identity. This issue is morphing into many complex problems for society as a whole, which is why it’s crucial that we work together against it.
For more interviews with filmmakers, producers, and industry professionals taking big swings in Asia, check these out:
Since 2002, the Hollywood Professional Association (HPA) has been committed to supporting and advancing the media and entertainment industry. Renowned for events like the HPA Tech Retreat, where professionals discuss the intersection of creativity and cutting-edge workflows, and the HPA Awards, which celebrate groundbreaking artistry and innovation across the entertainment industry, the association plays a vital role in facilitating knowledge and fostering collaborative environments to move the industry forward.
It’s through these engaging events that have sparked other HPA initiatives, including the Young Entertainment Professional (YEP) and Women In Post (WIP), both of which bring forward thoughtful insights and conversations, allowing working professionals to stay informed, build connections, and gain new skills that will shape the future of the industry. In January of this year, Kari Grubin stepped into the role of acting HPA President, with a goal to keep the organization at the industry’s forefront, stating: “HPA will continue to be a conduit for our community to grow, reach out for new opportunities and adapt.”
We connected with Grubin, a long-standing board member, who in her time launched the WIP program in 2011 and co-created the YEP, which, according to the HPA has mentored 200 up-and-coming industry professionals, to ask how the HPA is adapting to industry trends, how their programs are evolving, and the impact of California’s new film tax incentive.
Kari Grubin
How would you describe the HPA to anyone not familiar with the organization?
We are representatives of the media supply chain: the strategists, creatives, executives, and business owners who help content creators tell their stories. That can mean many things, including implementing the best process or workflow, identifying the right tools and people to execute it, or developing the necessary technologies. HPA is all about building community and connection through the events we produce. The HPA community is critical to the entire lifeline of making content, and it takes a village. Building that community and shining a light upon it, with a focus on knowledge exchange and recognition, has been our mission for the last 25 years.
As HPA president, have you set any goals to expand the organization that you felt were missing?
When the opportunity arose to become president, I thought about how I could continue that legacy of making the HPA accessible to more people, where they could have a space and a community to learn, grow, solve problems, and collaborate. It’s important to me that HPA supports an industry that’s experiencing a colossal transition. I want to continue helping our community and focus on our members in a way that creates a safe space for conversations to expand and grow.
HPA’s Young Entertainment Professional event at the Academy Museum. Courtesy HPA.
The HPA offers several roundtable discussions and industry expert panels that anyone in the industry can attend. Can you talk about some of those initiatives?
HPA’s NET (Networking Education Technology) roundtable events are extremely popular. They put subject matter experts, many of whom are directly involved in pressing industry issues, in conversation with attendees. Inquiry, information, and ideas flourish at NET events, all while people are connecting. The NET roundtable events are designed so that attendees move three times to different tables and talk with subject matter experts who are leading the tables on different topics. It’s a really diverse and highly engaged set of conversations.
Round table discussions. Courtesy of HPA
Women In Post (WIP) is a great initiative. How has the program evolved, and what can future attendees expect?
Women In Post has evolved, and HPA has nurtured it to become a profoundly vibrant part of the organization. I would say that at any WIP event, you can expect to hear from and meet women who are defining (or redefining) their organizations or companies. WIP events, such as lunches during the year, the HPA Tech Retreat Women In Post lunch, and other mixers, put interesting and accomplished women in the spotlight and are phenomenal networking events.
HPA WIP lunch. Courtesy of HPA.
For those first stepping into the industry, the HPA created Young Entertainment Professionals (YEP). How has the program evolved?
Young Entertainment Professionals provides a place for people who are in the first 10 years of their career to participate in the organization, see its value, and build their own networks amongst each other. They are the future of the HPA, and over the last couple of years, it’s grown. Since its launch, over 200 YEPS have gone through the program. Each year’s class is about 35 YEPs matched with industry mentors. Initially, Young Entertainment Professionals was about people in a specific age range, but we updated the requirements to be about the first 10 years of their media supply chain career, opening a space for more people to participate.
The HPA Tech Retreat is one of the organization’s headliner events – the most recent taking place in February 2025. What trends came out of the discussions?
AI remained a big topic at this year’s Tech Retreat, and it will continue to be as it is leveraged and normalized throughout our pipelines. Progress happens regardless of whether we are in favor of something in particular or not. Our community is starting to embrace, learn, and understand the benefits and dangers. There are numerous questions on the legal front regarding provenance and other methods to protect intellectual properties.
Another big conversation at the Tech Retreat was focused on the new definition of media creation. What does it look like from what was formerly the traditional broadcast side, and leveraging through multiple distribution networks? And what are the tool sets around the content creators? There’s a bit of a misnomer around non-traditional productions. Production encompasses all types of content creation, whether it’s a YouTube influencer or the more traditional episodic and feature content. It all takes planning and execution. When the team from MrBeast discussed The Beast Games pipeline at this year’s Tech Retreat, they explained the immense size of the production, including the amount of local storage needed, which was massive, truly insane. And so, while there are different ways of telling stories, you still need to set up a process to tell those stories by having the right tools in place, but in a slightly different way.
Since you mentioned AI, does the HPA have a viewpoint on the topic?
It’s important to distinguish generative AI from process-improvement AI and tools that enable entirely new possibilities. We’ve been using AI tools for a long time. And the one thing that’s really challenging in the conversation is that everybody, in some form or another, is interacting with AI tools online, whether it’s shopping or social media. I think we’ll start to see what AI tools are being used to tell stories and how people are leveraging them to do things that they can’t accomplish with other tools, rather than just focusing on tools based on generative AI functions.
That makes sense.
HPA is always going to look at tools and technologies and evaluate those tools based on the actual function, how to leverage the tool, and bring that visibility to our community. HPA is here to recognize innovation, but we are also about protecting people who create and own content. How can we make it transparent and visible to our members, so they understand what they are getting when using an AI-based tool?What does that mean?
When people think of AI right now, they’re usually thinking of Large Language Models like ChatGPT.
If you’re going to query an AI tool like a public-facing LLM, you’re taking a big chance. Intellectual property could potentially be used as a source for other purposes or even stolen. But if you’re building or using a private AI tool that only queries within your private network, then that’s different. It is up to each individual to decide what is the best decision for their particular needs. We do not judge anyone for the decisions they make, but we help them protect themselves. HPA is 100% supportive of intellectual property rights throughout the process.
You’re also part of the Trusted Partner Network (TPN) team. Can you share more details about TPN’s mission?
Trusted Partner Network (TPN) is a global, industry-wide content security initiative that the Motion Picture Association wholly owns. TPN provides programming intended to address security in various contexts and at different points in the content pipeline. These include: the MPA Content Security Best Practices, which are maintained by TPN and establish a single benchmark of minimum security preparedness for content industries; TPN security assessments, which measure a Service Provider’s current security status against the MPA Best Practices; and TPN+, a proprietary software application and global registry of industry Service Providers, which enables them to securely and seamlessly share their security information with Content Owners.
The California government passed its latest California Film Tax Incentive Program, which increased the cap to $750 million. What are your takeaways from what passed, and what are you hoping for future incentives?
This new funding is a critical lifeline for not just the media industry, but all the ancillary businesses in California, which are intrinsically tied to the health of our business. I was proud to join so many other participants in California’s media creation supply chain to lobby for more financial support for our entire industry. Under the leadership of the MPA and California Production Coalition, I hope to see more direct support for postproduction, visual effects, and the other professional services that take place later in the production process. I would like to see how we can work together to create more incentives on a national level.
Before we let you go, how can someone join or get involved with the HPA?
Over the last few years, we have expanded what HPA membership looks like. Obviously, there’s always individual membership, and it’s easy to go to the website and join. But we also needed to provide additional support for companies to have a way to be involved. No matter what size or at what level a company joins, its employees get an inherent membership.
This article is part of an ongoing series that raises awareness about the businesses and individuals in the film and television community. HPA is a member of the California Production Collation. You can find more about the organization here.
Macho cop teams with gorgeous mystery woman to stop evil tech mogul from destroying the world: The plot’s perfectly functional for an action-thriller, but it’s the jokes, not the story, that have pushed The Naked Gun to the biggest action comedy opening of 2025. Writers Dan Gregor and Doug Mand (Crazy Ex-Girlfriend), working with director/co-writer Akiva Schaffer, furnished stars Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson with a firehose of silliness encompassing sight gags, puns, bawdy banter, tone-deaf interrogation scenes, and ludicrous fight sequences spoofing three decades’ worth of action movie cliches.
Mand, who previously worked with Gregor and Schaffer onChip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers, says,“The whole name of this movie is, find a trope, make fun of the trope.”
Rebooting the original 1988 Naked Gun from David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker, Neeson plays the son of Leslie Nielsen’s famously accident-prone L.A. cop Frank Drebin, with Anderson, Danny Huston, and Paul Walter Hauser rounding out the cast.
Speaking from their offices in Los Angeles, Gregor and Mand unpack the joke-writing process that gave rise to a magical owl, a sexy snowman, Neeson’s 10-year-old schoolgirl disguise, and Anderson’s nickname Cherry Roosevelt Fat Bozo Chewing Spaghetti.
Not to get all fancy, but what you’ve done in The Naked Gun brings to mind the 1941 Preston Sturges movie Sullivan’s Travel about a director who wants to give up comedy and start making socially significant message films only to realize, when he sees regular folks laughing in theaters, that goofy slapstick also serves a valuable purpose, especially during hard times.
Gregor: What does that have to do with what we’re doing? We’re making a drama, Hugh, we’ve made a very serious cop drama.
Well,it just seems that people could use a good laugh right about now, and based on the reactions to The Naked Gun, mission accomplished.
Gregor: Thank you.
The sheer volume of jokes in The Naked Gun is something to behold. What was the process behind generating this volume of comedy?
Gregor: We met at Akiva’s office every day for months. First of all, we had to make sure the story was good enough so that the plot makes sense and you care about the characters. The more people think, “Oh, the story’s whatever,” that makes me feel great, because that means we did our job and left all this room for the comedy to shine. But if the story’s no good, then the comedy also suffers.
Mand: Once we made sure the story was right, we pitched jokes, scenes, and set pieces, and then wrote and rewrote them. We had a writer’s assistant named Melissa Aron, so she’d take down notes and pitch ideas herself. We wanted it to feel like a writer’s room.
So you have the script on paper. Then you show up on set and…
Mand: The benefit of having Liam Neeson is that he is such a good actor that every first take was pretty much perfect. We didn’t have to do the scene over and over, so now we could try different things. We would feed Liam different lines and he would look at us like we were psychotic: “What the hell is even coming out of your mouth?” He’d proceed to say the line, the crew would laugh, and he’d say, “I guess it was good.” Some of those really weird jokes that we’d written, they’d yell cut, and he’d say [gruff Liam Neeson imitation] “I’m Oscar Schindler, damn it, what’s happened to me!”
Neeson makes his entrance disguised as a schoolgirl in order to stop a bank robbery. As an actor best known for playing an ass-kicking vigilante in the Taken movies, seeing him about to fight in a little plaid dress feels like quite the departure. How did you come up with that bit?
Mand: It’s actually from Taken, when Liam’s character infiltrates this whole party of bad guys. We had this idea of “What’s the stupidest way that Frank could infiltrate our bank heist? And then when he pulls off the [little girl] mask [to reveal himself], that’s from Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible.
Liam Neeson plays Frank Drebin Jr. in The Naked Gun from Paramount Pictures.
When Frank introduces Danny Huston’s villainous Richard Cane to Pam’s character Beth, he makes up a fake name on the spot. Looking around the club, he sees a cocktail and a painting on the wall, so she’s “Cherry Roosevelt…
Mand:Fat bozo chowing spaghetti.
Pamela Anderson plays Beth Davenport in The Naked Gun from Paramount Pictures.
And from then on, Beth is known to the bad guy as Cherry Roosevelt Fat Bozo Chowing Spaghetti. Besides the Femme Fatale tradition, how did you figure out what to make fun of?
Mand: The original Naked Gun was building off their Police Squad[TV comedy], which was building off tropes from fifties and sixties TV procedurals like Dragnet. That meant we had 30 years of new material to spoof with all the action and detective movies that have happened in the interim since the last Naked Gun.
Gregor: First and foremost, we sat down and watched the Bonds, the Mission Impossibles…
Gregor: John Wick, especially. When you watch those fight scenes, you go, “This is impossible. We have to use this!” Nonsensical physics in fight scenes is new because of CGI and advances in the stunt community which have created a whole new template for what stunts can look like.
Which would explain how Liam Newsom at one point literally rips the limbs off the bad guy…
Mand: Two arms.
Liam Neeson plays Frank Drebin Jr. in The Naked Gun from Paramount Pictures.
And then start beating the man with his own dismembered arms?
Mand: You are correct. You did not imagine that.
What’s the deal with Frank constantly being handed cups of coffee?
Gregor: You see it in probably half of the Law & Order cold opens when the detectives show up [at a crime scene] and they get handed coffee. We had the idea of giving Frank bigger and bigger cups of coffee, and then someone hands Frank coffee through the window of his car while he’s driving on the Pacific Coast Highway. We came up with that on set, kind of a nod to green screen driving, when it used to be obvious that they were just moving backgrounds and bumping the car up and down.
Mand: It’s a nod to the ridiculousness that he’s not really driving a car, and the physics of him getting coffee through the window while he’s driving only heightened the joke. That hand, I believe, belonged to our prop master. I remember when we filmed the driving coffee cup, people on set were going, “Oh my god, that is so stupid.”
Gregor: Which is exactly what you want to hear.
Pamela Anderson’s scat singing becomes truly deranged when she takes the stage at the villain’s nightclub. We expect Beth to perform some kind of sexy torch song, but instead, she unleashes bebop pandemonium. Where did that come from?
Man: When Akiva first met Pam, he learned that she’d been in a scat jazz band in like eighth grade, and he thought that was amazing. So from there, it was just about different iterations of how far we can go from Beth being sultry to completely unhinged.
Speaking of unhinged, please explain the hilariously weird montage when Frank and Beth build a sexy snowman during their romantic getaway to the tune of the power ballad “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now.”
Gregor: The original Naked Gun has this iconic full-body condom montage, and we knew we could not beat that, so we had to do something very different. We started talking about doing a horror interlude. Akiva went home that night and had this dream, came back the next day, and, pretty much verbatim, that’s what you see in the movie. It came whole cloth out of Akiva’s brain in a bit of sleep.
How did you react when Akiva told you his idea?
Mand: Gregor and I just looked at him: “Yep.” Sometimes that’s the gift of having a partner.
SPOILER ALERT
Toward the end of the movie, an owl channeling the spirit of Frank’s dead father carries him through the air to help save the day. How did you dream up that flight of fancy?
Mand: We got a studio note about wanting us to dig into the “emotions” and make this relationship between Frank and his father more heartfelt and central to the story. We thought, eh, it’s belabored and exhausting to us. So honestly, the owl was our way of dressing up what felt like a relatively unhelpful studio note: Let’s make fun of it.
Gregor: We had a lot of fun playing with that bit until you realize you have to hire an actual owl, and then your life becomes terrible from dealing with real birds.
Featured image: Liam Neeson plays Frank Drebin Jr. and Pamela Anderson plays Beth Davenport in The Naked Gun from Paramount Pictures.
“Putting the suit on feels different this time,” Tom Holland says at the top of a new video from day one on the set of Spider-Man: Brand New Day. One new element for Holland’s fourth spin as Peter Parker is that the Brand New Day set marks the first time fans have been on the set, and as you’ll see in the video, it made for some very special moments.
We see Holland suited up as Spider-Man riding on top of an armored vehicle that he rips the hatch off of (could Jon Bernthal’s The Punisher be in there?). A little boy dressed as Spider-Man gets a very special photo with Holland. We also get a glimpse of director Destin Daniel Cretton as he and Holland embrace at the start of the shoot.
GLASGOW, UNITED KINGDOM – AUGUST 3: (UK OUT) Tom Holland is seen on the set of ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ on August 3, 2025 in Glasgow, Scotland. (Photo by MEGA/GC Images)
This follows the reveal of Spidey’s new suit, which boasts a larger spider symbol on his chest. This is Holland’s fourth adventure after suiting up in Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), Far From Home (2019), and No Way Home (2021), which unleashed three Peter Parkers on a single universe, with Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield reprising their roles as they try to help Holland’s Peter Parker keep his universe from imploding.
Mark Ruffalo is returning to the MCU fold in Brand New Day as Bruce Banner/The Hulk, with Bernthal’s The Punisher and newcomer Sadie Sink (the speculation is that Sink is playing a young version of X-Men heroine Jean Grey, as we know the X-Men are majorly back in the MCU fold now.)
Cretton directs from a script by Erik Sommers and Chris McKenna, the long-tenured scribes on all of the Holland-led Spider-Man films. Their script for No Way Home had Peter having to wipe the memories of everyone he loves, including MJ (Zendaya), to keep his identity a secret, thus willingly ending his relationships and essentially isolating himself to protect them. The plot details for Brand New Day are, of course, being kept well webbed up.
Check out the video from the set. Spider-Man: Brand New Day is due in theaters on July 31, 2026.
Featured image: GLASGOW, UNITED KINGDOM – AUGUST 3: (UK OUT) Tom Holland is seen on the set of ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ on August 3, 2025 in Glasgow, Scotland. (Photo by MEGA/GC Images)
Maria Gabriela de Faría doesn’t pull her punches—or her spinning blades, for that matter. In Superman, the actress makes Angela Spica (aka The Engineer) fight like an animal, throwing raw punches with unwavering belief in Lex Luthor’s (Nicolas Hoult) idea that no individual should be trusted with superpowers. Whether the Engineer is slicing robots in the Fortress of Solitude or going toe-to-toe with Superman (David Corenswet) in the Cleveland Guardians’ ballpark (outfitted to look like the DC Meteors’ home), she battles with ideals as well as fury.
To play half-machine, the nanotechnology empowering her is also eating away at her humanity, Gabriela de Faría transformed into a fighting machine. “Everything I did in the movie was so physical that it changed the way I acted,” she told The Credits. “It gave the character that frustration, that fear, because I was feeling it, too.” Though Superman isn’t her first comic book gig — she previously starred in SyFy’s Deadly Class — it’s by far her most transformative role to date.
Gabriela de Faría began as a child actor in Venezuela and went on to star in telenovelas, often performing 40 scenes a day. In other words, she was no stranger to the discipline Superman required.
As hard-hitting as The Engineer is, it always looks like there’s pain there behind the punches. How much did her physical discomfort, not just her strength, drive your acting choices?
That was a conversation I had with James at the beginning. This isn’t a movie about the Engineer — it’s about Superman. The other characters are there to support his story. My character, specifically, supports Lex. But James has big plans for every character, so I needed to give the audience a glimpse into the Engineer’s mind and soul, even though the story isn’t hers. She sacrificed herself to become a metahuman for the greater good. Every time she connects with a machine, she loses a bit of her own humanity. I asked James, “What does it feel like when she connects to the Fortress of Solitude’s computer? It’s a foreign technology – alien.” We came up with this body language to have something to work with in those scenes. It’s painful because it’s not natural.
Playing a soldier with nanotechnology in their body, what training and prep is required?
I worked out with the trainer DC gave me, Paolo Mascitti, for eight months before filming. I prepped from the outside in, reading the comics and doing all the research. My main focus was to gain those physical abilities, to look the part. I wasn’t a good fit when I started. The first couple of months, my body didn’t change. I wasn’t feeling any stronger, but I still had to show up every day, afraid of not achieving my goal, but still going. While I was at the gym, going through all of that in my mind and my body, I thought of the Engineer. I would send James pictures of me on the treadmill with different options for how she would walk.
How would she walk? How would she throw a punch?
The nanotechnology weighed her down. I would work out with my stunt team later on, holding dumbbells to make it require effort. And then — God loves me so much — he gave me a tight, stiff suit. The Engineer’s suit was 3D-printed leather. I had to fight my suit every time I wore it, which is 95% of the movie. It helped create the awkward movement.
When you’re weight-training, do you approach acting similarly, treating scenes like goals to hit? In other words, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s approach to acting is like scenes being reps.
Every character requires a different approach. But I always start by finding a big-picture goal, an overall objective for the entire movie. Then I break each scene down into smaller objectives that build toward that larger goal. There’s no way for me to go for a scene objective without figuring out the big one first. It’s step by step. And so, in that sense, I guess Arnold and I have the same technique [Laughs].
[Laughs] What other questions did you have for James Gunn? How else did you want to help him tell Superman’s story?
I know that when somebody writes a piece of dialogue, it’s there for a reason. Usually, actors — we are guilty of being so self-absorbed that we want to shine in a way we think is good for us, but maybe doesn’t serve the picture. I’m aware of not doing that, so that’s why I said earlier, “The Engineer — it’s not her story. She’s here to elevate Lex’s journey.” How can I do that in a way that – yes, helps me shine as an actress, because at the end of the day, I am an actor – but also help the filmmaker? If I help the filmmaker, the filmmaker is going to help me, and everything is going to be told in a way that’s great for the audience. We’ve all worked with actors that are not necessarily team players, and that’s painful. I’ve been guilty of that, for sure, in my career, but I never want to be that.
Caption: (L to r) NICHOLAS HOULT as Lex Luthor, DAVID CORENSWET as Superman and Director JAMES GUNN in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “SUPERMAN,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Jessica Miglio
Thousands of people are telling this story, given the scale of production. Any crew members you’d like to credit?
The stunt team is so essential to our work. They make us look amazing when we can do the moves. More than that, they taught with patience and believed in me. They were so sure I was going to be able to do most of my stunts. The wire people — the riggers — the ones that make you fly, they became my safety net, alongside my stunt double, Angela. I’m afraid of heights and speed, and they knew it. When they were about to propel me forward fast and high, they were behind me, grabbing at my ankles, pumping me up: “You’ve got this, you’ve got this!”
For the baseball stadium set-piece, what did you and the stunt team want to accomplish with that fight?
There are a couple of moves that took me months to accomplish, and I had real nightmares with those moves. There’s a slide where she is unconscious for a second, and then she sees Superman and Ultraman fighting above her, and she tracks them, and then she slides really fast and then does crazy shit. It was so difficult to accomplish that James’s wife, Jennifer, would ask, “Did you dream about this slide?” I did, because it’s so difficult. During that particular baseball fight, the riggers were there listening to Video Village and would be like, “They like it more every time. Don’t worry, you’re almost there.”
Maria Gabriela de Faría on the set of “Superman.” Courtesy Warner Bros.
How did you and David Corenswet tackle the challenge of those stunts together?
There’s another slide where I’m on top of David, and we flip over, then keep sliding. We rehearsed separately at first, but when we did it together, it just wasn’t working because of our weight differences. David is huge – I was tiny. Whenever we flipped over, we would be flying to the sides. It didn’t work. I was frustrated and asked David, “What can I do to make this better for you?” He’s like, “Just let it wash over you. It’ll happen.” That’s the approach I took after. We overthink things, I’m type A and want to get it right away, but the body needs time. You’re not a machine. Let your body get used to the movement, and then it’ll happen.
Was it satisfying when you saw that the editors didn’t cut the action to death?
At the same time, the Fortress of Solitude fight, that’s two seconds [Laughs]. It took us months to rehearse and prep, and then I’m like, “It’s over? Sh*t.” You’re working on so many things. I’m splicing one of the robots, and to do that, I slice with my tail tucked in — because I’m Latina and my butt’s always sticking out — but my tail tucked in, that took me weeks, and it’s a fraction of a second [Laughs]. But it’s how it is. It has to look perfect, so it takes what it takes.
[Laughs] To conclude with Arnold — on the set of Conan the Barbarian — he mentioned pain, and [director] John Milius said, “Pain is momentary – film is eternal.”
[Laughs] Oh my God, I watched that [Arnold] documentary a week before filming. It was inspiring. I’m like, “Yes, Arnold — that’s what I’m doing.” I was going through so much pain. I have tiny little scars from wearing the harness for so long, and those are f**king battle scars. I love them. I’m proud of them, because film is forever.
Featured image: Caption: (L to r) MARÍA GABRIELA DE FARÍA as The Engineer, SARA SAMPAIO as Eve and NICHOLAS HOULT as Lex Luthor in DC Studios’ and Warner Bros. Pictures’ “SUPERMAN,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
David Scott admits that growing up, he was more of a Batman and Spider-Man fan, but after listening to writer-director James Gunn’s pitch for Superman, which has now grossed over $550 million globally, he was excited to support the vision. “It’s infectious when you sit and listen to him talk. I loved everything about it,” says the supervising art director, who has built worlds for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Ad Astra, and Tron: Legacy.
Color and tone were flashpoint subjects for Gunn as he wanted to break away from Zack Snyder’s darker, moodier Man of Steel (2013) and paint his own vibrant vision.“Early on, they looked at a bit of a subtler, almost period look like JFK (1991). But as we tested and started playing around with the suit from our costume designer Judianna Makovsky, who is a master at what she does, it evolved,” says Scott. What helped inform the decision-making was bringing color swatches on scouts. “Judianna would lay out all the colors, faded blues, bright blues, reds, and everything in between. They took them up to Norway and looked at them in the snow, they took them to Cleveland and looked at them in the Hall of Justice…and it was just like, what’s the best color?”
Below, Scott discusses how palette influenced design, his creative tag-team with production designer Beth Mickle, the frosty magic behind Superman’s icy home planet, and what it took to cook up that crazy anti-proton river.
What did James Gunn express during those initial production meetings that helped to guide palette and tone?
When we sat down with James, he likes to get everybody around the table and give his conceptual take on what he thinks about this whole thing. And nobody is a bigger Superman fan than him, so he had a great pitch. James wanted it to be like the comics, colorful and exciting. It’s about hope and the good in all of us.
With those ideas in mind, what is the workflow between you and production designer Beth Mickle?
Conceptually, Beth starts first, and I’m her second. We have a really good relationship and have done a number of shows together. It’s a bit of a back-and-forth thing between us. She starts and does a very high-level deep dive into the script for the big sets, the challenges, and the mood of the whole thing. We ask things like, is it going to be bright and colorful? Is it going to be primary colors? Is it going to be more subtle? And in this particular case, it really was about color because you want it to look like a comic book.
With a film of this size and budget, how did you and Beth divide and conquer?
We kind of have different roles. She’s at the very top, and all designs run through her. And with the art department, the way it breaks down is you become an assistant art director, then an art director, and then a supervising art director, and oftentimes it can get less artistic as you go. So when you get to the top, it’s more budgets, timeline, scheduling, and build. The practical. But I do love that too! And we’re a sounding board for each other so we’re always sharing ideas.
Caption: DAVID CORENSWET as Superman in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “SUPERMAN,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release.
What visual references went into making Fortress of Solitude?
That was built at Trilith Studios in Atlanta on a 40,000 square foot stage that we filled to the brim. The original design is so iconic, but we asked ourselves, how do we make this better? So we wanted to do something different, but not too different, and Beth came up with the idea of it having more of an organic shape. It was driven by the idea that ice grows off itself. It’s not like everything grows at one time. Ice grows, and then melts, and then something new grows. She wanted to capture that frozen-in-time moment, so she explored the water crashing against rocks and how, when it hits, it creates these interesting sprays. We were picturing what that would look like if it actually froze in motion like that.
We built the entire interior up to about 24 feet high, and then everything above that was all CG. But most everything down below that line was in camera. The crystals were made out of resin. And if you notice, looking back at the first film [Superman: The Movie, 1978], the ice crystals are solid white instead of looking like actual clear ice. That was the biggest challenge. It’s very easy to carve out Styrofoam and make these big crystals covered in snow. That’s the easy way out. But doing real translucency, where light can come through the crystals, was the biggest challenge. We experimented a lot to get to the point where we were happy.
Caption: NICHOLAS HOULT as Lex Luthor in DC Studios’ and Warner Bros. Pictures’ “SUPERMAN,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
How did the team create the exterior world when Superman first crash-lands in the snow?
They shot that whole sequence in Norway, and they actually dragged Superman in the snow by his cape up there. Beyond a few approach shots, we did a number of plates for Superman flying on location. We didn’t build anything practically in Norway. Stephane Ceretti was our visual effects supervisor, and he obviously pieced the whole sequence together between location and stage. We did build the giant Superman door on stage that they walk up to, which really moved.
Playing in the background is a ton of graphic design and motion graphics. How did you want to stylize the new organizations of the Daily Planet, GBS News, and Sphere News?
The Daily Planet had been established, so we drew from what existed. But with GBS and Sphere, we had a more level playing field. Aesthetic wise, we wanted Sphere to kind of have an upscale look that was hip and more a cutting edge show that’s glossy and the lighting is great. The background has a big city view. And then GBS, we wanted it more straight-up news that was strictly reporting facts.
Caption: RACHEL BROSNAHAN as Lois Lane and SKYLER GISONDO as Jimmy Olsen in DC Studios’ and Warner Bros. Pictures’ “SUPERMAN,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Photo by Jessica Miglio
What about the graphics in Lex Luthor’s control room as he fights Superman?
Those happened with a company called Compuhire, which is a UK motion graphics company. They also worked on Guardians for us. We brought them on early to have an initial meeting with Beth and me to talk about all the needs. We knew we wouldn’t have everything 100% ready on day one, so we used generic graphics on screens for the background instead of a blue screen. This was because the fewer blue screens you have, the better it is for the budget. Then, for specific shots where the camera is looking at a screen, we have more detailed graphics that could also be replaced in post.
Caption: (L to r) NICHOLAS HOULT as Lex Luthor and DAVID CORENSWET as Superman in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “SUPERMAN,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Jessica Miglio
Did the team want those Lex Luthor graphics to stand out differently from others in the film?
The color palette in Lex’s world was all about green, with little hints of green marble and black. We were trying to work some purple in, which is what the comics are all about, but we ended up doing more of a limited palette. So we went with green and a brown and kind of a dirty orange look to those screens. We also pulled back out of the futuristic look into a little more, subtler, timeless sense to it.
Another sequence sees Superman clash inside a baseball stadium that was filmed inside the Cleveland Guardians’ ballpark. How did you transform it into the Superman world?
We didn’t want to see any real brands or real-world products. So the Meteors are the DC baseball team, and things like Coca-Cola became Soda Cola. Everything you see in the film is some Easter egg from the comic books. We had a digital archivist, P.J. Correa, who is as big a comic book fan as you can be, go through everything with our researcher, Samantha Avila, to build an inventory of things. Like, here’s an insurance company, a bank, here’s food companies, and drinks, all from the DC lore. We created a whole universe that doesn’t exist. James, early on, wanted everything to be from our own fictional metropolis world.
(L to r) NICHOLAS HOULT as Lex Luthor, DAVID CORENSWET as Superman and Director JAMES GUNN in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “SUPERMAN,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Jessica Miglio
So with the stadium, our team went there with our art coordinator, Molly Flick, who went through and figured out what we had to cover. Then with Beth, we figured out the budget of how much we could cover and ended up doing the first level of where the outfield stands were, and then everything above that was all in post.
In one climactic sequence, Superman is stuck in an anti-proton river and being sucked towards a giant black hole. This is all part of the Pocket Universe Lex Luthor created to imprison his enemies. What influenced the look?
We spent countless illustrator hours working on developing different looks. We knew it needed to be otherworldly. We knew it needed to be a river. We knew it needed to have the prison. So we knew what the elements were, but what’s the aesthetic of the whole thing? So while Beth was doing the Fortress, both of us were driving the illustrators and coming up with wonderful solutions that any one of them would be great. In the end, the river was all based on a bismuth crystal.
Caption: DAVID CORENSWET as Superman in DC Studios’ and Warner Bros. Pictures’ “SUPERMAN,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
While you were shooting in Ohio and Georgia, did you connect with local vendors to create artwork on the production?
The fun part of the job is going out on location, and in Cleveland in particular, to work with the film community. So for one, we knew we wanted to make real neon signs, and because of how big they can be, it often makes more sense to do them on location. We ended up working with a historic sign-making company that is one of the few companies left in the city that does real neon. It was great to work with all these people who are excited about the project. And that was the best thing about Cleveland. They know that Superman was invented there, and they were excited to be included. And all the credit goes to James and the producers. They made a genuine effort to engage the city and do everything right to honor the project. I think you can see the care everybody put into it. I certainly felt the heart of the whole thing when we finally saw it completed!
Runaway production in California accelerated in recent years as films and TV shows took advantage of tax credits offered by other states and countries. Shut downs caused by Covid and strikes didn’t help matters, nor did the fires that raged through Los Angeles in January. To help reinvigorate Hollywood, the state of California in July passed a $750 million tax rebate program that rewards productions with cash incentives to stay in L.A. This is great news for the many, many filmmakers and TV creators who live in the state and want to work there.
Even without the expanded tax credits in place, prestige TV series this year have been leading by example: Emmy-nominated shows The Pitt, The Studio, Paradise, Abbott Elementary, and Shrinkingare all filmed in Los Angeles County. The Credits spoke to key talents for three of these productions about how they create high-end television in Southern California while still earning a profit for their networks.
PARADISE – “Agent Billy Pace” – The citizens of Paradise celebrate at the annual carnival. Xavier and Billy delve deeper into their investigation. (Disney/Brian Roedel) PERCY DAGGS IV, STERLING K. BROWN, ALIYAH MASTIN
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER JOHN HOBERG, PARADISE (nominated for four Emmys)
Hoberg previously wrote or produced series including American Housewife, Black-ish, and My Name Is Earl.
You came to Hollywood in the late nineties. How have you seen things change?
I remember when my wife and I co-wrote a show called Gallivant and went to England to shoot it in 2014 – that was a rare treat. Now I wish for the days when everyone stayed in L.A., and the lots were filled, and you’d go to the cafeteria and run into friends from other shows. Now, the downturn in the number of shows means a lot of my friends are between jobs or they’re going off to New York or Atlanta.
Paradise creator Dan Fogelberg and star Sterling K. Brown came from the hit series This Is Us, which presumably earned them enough clout to shoot in California, even though the story takes place in Washington, D.C., and the Rocky Mountains.
Dan’s crew from This Is Us had been together for five years, so that was important, Steve Beers, his producer, is an L.A. guy, shooting on the Paramount soundstage was important so I think Dan Fogelberg and Sterling K. Smith were like “We’re shooting this in L.A,” almost like “This is the price of the show.”
PARADISE – “The Day” – Sinatra and Xavier confront the past, returning to the harrowing day that brought them to Paradise. (Disney/Brian Roedel) JAMES MARSDEN, STERLING K. BROWN
And then it becomes about making the numbers work?
There was a lot of discussion about how to do it on budget, and the more we looked around, the more we realized everything we needed was here. We had flashbacks for [Jon Beaver’s character] Billy Pace that take place in the Colorado mountains, and we shot that at Frazier Pass [in neighboring Ventura County]. Our location guy, Duffy Taylor, is an encyclopedia of Los Angeles locations, and he can find anything. The White House South Lawn is actually the Arboretum in Pasadena.
PARADISE – “The Day” – Sinatra and Xavier confront the past, returning to the harrowing day that brought them to Paradise. (Disney) STERLING K. BROWN
It clearly helps to have a wealth of locations to choose from.
There are also people eager to get film money for locations, so there are lots of places that say, “Yes, please film here, we would love it.”
What was it like when you first started shooting Paradise in early 2024 on the Paramount lot?
When we did our first season at Paramount, the lot was feeling kind of empty. You’re supposed to feel the smell of pine wood being freshly cut because they’re building sets, you’re supposed to see the hustle and bustle of people in costumes wandering around everywhere, you want be stepping back so you don’t get hit by a rolling set. That’s what you want to see. Things are picking up now and we’re starting to hear a lot of hammers again, which is good.
LOCATION MANAGER DAVID FLANNERY, SHRINKING (nominated for 7 Emmys)
Flannery grew up in L.A.-adjacent Pasadena and previously managed locations for Based on a True Story and the Saved by the Bell reboot.
At a time when so many other projects go out of state, why was it essential to make Shrinking in Pasadena and Altadena?
Whether you know it or not, Pasadena has shown up in thousands of movies. It shows over the decades, particularly for its architecture — Arts and Crafts, Spanish, mid-century, and colonial. Not only that, but these communities have older growth trees and more space around the houses. But Shrinking is interesting because we don’t shy away from being here. When we film the bench scenes in Pasadena’s Central Park, where Harrison Ford and Jason Segel meet, we don’t have to change street signs to say “We’re in Indiana.” Our characters go to the Rose Bowl, and we show the sign. People have filmed at the Bowl so many times, but then they put in CGI to make it seem like you’re in Pittsburgh or New York or whatever. As someone who grew up here, it’s just freeing as a filmmaker to show off this part of the world. Locations don’t drive the story in Shrinking, but by setting the series in a very real place, it helps tell us who the characters are and what kind of world they live in.
Harrison Ford and Jason Segel in “Shrinking.” Courtesy Apple TV+
In some ways, Pasadena has this pleasant Anywhere U.S.A. quality, but Jason Segel’s character Jimmy spells out the specifics right at the start of the series.
In the pilot episode, Jimmy parks his car on the curb, and his Black friend Sean is like, ‘What are you doing?’ Jimmy tells Sean, “Don’t worry, I’m a white doctor in Pasadena; the cops will probably take it back to my house for me.”
You’re fortunate to be working on a hit show, but how have you seen the general slowdown affecting your fellow creatives?
I’m a Teamster. We have drivers, dispatchers, animal wranglers, casting – these are blue-collar jobs done by everyday, salt-of-the-earth people who save money, put it back into the economy, buy a house, and coach their kids’ softball games. So, for the hundreds of people who don’t get staffed on a show, they either have to travel somewhere else or ride it out. That’s been difficult.
As if Covid and strikes weren’t enough, the January wildfires devastated Altadena and parts of Pasadena, which means Shrinking now needs to contend with a new environment. How have you guys addressed the fires in terms of production?
Because so much filmmaking [for Shrinking] happened in Altadena and Pasadena, it’s been important for us to go into those communities that have been affected and make sure people there understand that we are partners in all this. I live in Pasadena, but I was displaced from my house due to the fire, so now I’m living in a temporary home in [nearby] Mount Washington. L.A. County and the City of Pasadena recognize that the rebuild effort will be closely tied to the success of filmmakers returning to the area.
Jason Segel in “Shrinking.” Courtesy Apple TV
CREATOR/SHOWRUNNER R. SCOTT GEMMILL, THE PITT (nominated for 13 Emmys)
Gemmill previously produced ER, JAG, and NCIS: Los Angeles.
Scott Gemill on the set of “The Pitt.” Courtesy HBO.
Because it’s essentially a single-location drama, The Pitt could have been produced in any state or country equipped with quality soundstages, but you chose to shoot in L.A. County on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank. Why?
I think it’s important! When I was younger, Hollywood was the place you came to make movies and TV. Sadly, it’s not the epicenter it once was. This is the first show that Noah [Wylie]’s done since he left ER in 2005 that’s been shot in Los Angeles. Think about how long that’s been! He’s worked in Toronto, Vancouver, and Louisiana, which are great places, but I think this is where we do our best work. L.A. is also where we have our best craftspeople.
How do your relationships with the local crew affect the quality of the show?
Filming out of state, you’re hiring new crews, working with people you don’t know—nothing wrong with that—but on this show, there are a lot of people we’ve worked with in the past, so we have a shorthand and we work really fast. In a way, that translates into the nature of the show itself, which has a lot of kinetic energy.
How did you persuade HBO to keep production in L.A.?
From day one, we figured we would shoot it here, and there was never a battle because our show is very affordable in that it’s only one set. Since we don’t have to go out to shoot on location, we can offset a lot of costs that maybe would have been saved by going elsewhere [out of state].
Ned Brower, Patrick Ball, Noah Wyle, Tracy Ifeachor.
Noah Wylie, who lives in Los Angeles, must have been bullish on shooting locally?
Absolutely. We all were. We want people to come to work, go home, and spend time with their families. That’s not always the case [in states] where there may be a cost benefit, but there’s also a deficit in quality of life.
California recently passed a new tax credit program. Do you believe it will make a difference?
I think it’s a start. For California not to have had a good tax credit all these years seems incomprehensible. There’s a reason these other places became more popular, and in some ways, it was our fault. I don’t know if people took it for granted that the industry would always be here, but we’ve taken a beating, exacerbated by Covid and the strikes. Business has not completely bounced back by any means. I still know a lot of people who are not working and want to work, but the shows aren’t there right now.
You previously produced NCIS: Los Angeles, which included numerous exterior locations throughout the city. Now with The Pitt, it looks like nearly everything you need is within walking distance from your office.
That’s the Mill [creative compound] behind me [pointing back toward the window of his office]. I can just walk through the Mill and I’m on set, so I can visit The Pitt multiple times a day, or walk down the hall here, pop my head in the door and see my production designer, my set tech, my prop master, and have conversations that solve problems before they become a problem. When you don’t have that kind of immediacy, things can slip through the cracks. Being able to interact with your team in person and being physically close to production – that’s the best scenario.
When you have proximity to talent…
And other shows too. The Studio shoots on Warner Brothers as well, they’re [on the floor] right above us. The energy you get just from being on a movie studio lot where you see writers and actors and crew people – it’s a great environment.
Featured image: Isa Briones, Tracy Ifeachor, Noah Wyle. Photograph by Warrick Page/Max
The talented actor is well-regarded for not only playing villains, however, although he’s been aces in roles where his brawn has been used to aid his brutish beliefs, specifically in Denis Villeneuve’s Dune and Dune: Part Two. Yet Bautista’s been just as good playing more complicated brawlers, like he did in Villeneuve’s Blade Runner: 2049 and M. Night Shyamalan’s Knock at the Cabin. Yet for Amazon MGM’s upcoming Highlander remake, Bautista will use his considerable physical presence to play the raging immortal barbarian The Kurgen, a warrior who has been slaying other immortals across time and absorbing their essence. In the original film, the great Clancy Brown played the role.
Bautista will be pitted against Henry Cavill’s Medieval Scottish Highlander Connor MacLeod, another immortal warrior who learns about his abilities and has his skills honed by the swordsman Ramirez. In the original film, Christopher Lambert played MacLeod and Sean Connery played Ramirez. In the remake, Cavill is joined by Russell Crowe as Ramirez.
This isn’t Bautista’s first shot at playing The Kurgen—back in 2015, he was circling the role in a version that was to be directed by Cedric Nicolas-Troyan for Summit Entertainment. Now, Bautista will be battling Cavill in a film from John Wick veteran Chad Stahelski, based on a script by Michael Finch.
Bautista has worked with Amazon before—he starred in the action comedy My Spy and its sequel, and will be seen in the action comedy The Wrecking Crew with Jason Momoa. He’s also in talks to join Jake Gyllenhaal in Amazon’sRoad Housesequel.
Highlander is slated to begin filming at the end of September.
Featured image: Caption: DAVE BAUTISTA as “Beast” Rabban Harkonnen in Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE: PART TWO,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Niko Tavernise
Happy days are here again for fans of Matt Reeves and Robert Pattinson’s The Batman, and we are legion.
The Batman Part IIwill begin filming early next year, with Reeves’ script for the sequel completed this past June. The goal is to get The Batman Part II into theaters on October 1, 2027. The news was revealed in a letter to shareholders on Thursday, and it included information about the upcoming DC Studios slate, both in and outside of Gotham.
Reeves and Pattinson’s original The Batman bowed in 2022 and was a critical and commercial hit, grossing over $770 million worldwide. It also spawned HBO’s Emmy-winning The Penguin, which continued the story of Colin Farrell’s Oz Cobb that first began in The Batman. The series gobbled up 24 Emmy nominations.
Pattinson’s got a lot of meaty roles on the books right now—he re-teamed with Christopher Nolan, after co-starring in Tenet, for Nolan’s adaptation of The Odyssey, and he’ll be a major part of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Messiah. Yet for fans of Pattinson’s portrayal of Bruce Wayne, they’ve been waiting—not altogether patiently—for official confirmation that The Batman sequel was in the works, and now, three years after Pattinson’s last swing through Gotham, they’ve got it.
As for those DC Studios projects set outside of Gotham, the shareholder letter confirmed that Superman writer/director and co-chief of DC Studios, James Gunn, is working on Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow (2026), Clayface (2026), and the next Wonder Woman. Gunn and DC are currently flying high after Superman wowed audiences and critics alike.
And Gunn has been a vocal supporter of Reeves when frustrated fans protested the gap between The Batman and the pending sequel. As Gunn reminded them on social media, sequels often take a long time to write when you want to get them right.
“To be fair, a 5-year gap or more is fairly common in sequels,” Gunn wrote online. “7 years between Alien and Aliens. 14 years between Incredibles. 7 years between the first two Terminators. 13 years between Avatars. 36 years between Top Guns. And, of course, 6 years between Guardians Vol 2 and Vol 3.”
“Let the guy write the screenplay in the amount of time he needs to write it. That’s just the way it is. He doesn’t owe you something because you like his movie. I mean, you like his movie because of Matt. So let Matt do things the way he does.”
There are already two generations of hardcore fans who love Freaky Friday. Gen-Xers and their parents flocked to see Barbara Harris and Jodie Foster for the 1976 release, and in 2003, Disney struck gold again with Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan playing the body-switching mother/daughter duo, bringing millennials into the fandom fold. More than 30 years later, those Gen-X grandparents and Millennial moms and dads are poised to make fans of the youngest among us with a long-awaited sequel to the 2003 film,Freakier Friday.
The movie features returning stars Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan, and features a number of other cast members from 2003 reprising their roles. Director Nisha Ganatra helms a story in which not only mother and daughter switch bodies, but the grandkids do, too, making it a four-way swap. Of course, mayhem, misidentification, and misadventures ensue.
Ganatra is known for incorporating a lot of music into her films (see The High Note), and Freakier Friday is no exception. There are 29 songs spanning a variety of genres on the soundtrack, and the movie includes an appearance by the band Pink Slip playing their song “Take Me Away,” made famous in the 2003 film. It was composer Amie Doherty’s job to weave all those musical styles and genres together in a cohesive way, while amplifying the film’s heart and emotional center in the Freakier Friday score. Doherty spoke to The Credits about how the music she created took shape and how she brought Nisha Ganatra’s vision to musical life.
How did you get connected with Nisha Ganatra?
It was through the film music team at Universal. I had done the Universal Scoring Program and scored Spirit Untamed. I worked with them on that, and then a few months after Spirit finished, her film The High Note came up, and they needed a composer for a quick turnaround. They thought of me, and that’s the thing about the Universal Composers Initiative. It’s just so supportive. They aren’t doing something performative with it, or just trying to look good to the outside, they are genuinely wanting to support women and people of color and people with diverse backgrounds. They put their money where their mouths are. Every person who has been part of the program has been hired by Universal.
Amie Doherty at Abbey Road. Courtesy Walt Disney Studios.
And they introduced you to Nisha?
Yes, they said they’d love for Nisha to meet with me, and then the following day, she asked me to score the movie. We just had a great time working together, and really connected as creators. After that, I scored a short film for her called Rise that premiered at Sundance in 2023. It was another amazing project supporting women, a short documentary. When it came time to do Freakier Friday, she just called me out of the blue last March. I didn’t even know what the project was. She just said, “Hey, I have this new film at Disney, and I told them we’d definitely need you on the project.” I told her I was ten toes in, not even knowing the project. I hung up the phone and realized I didn’t even ask what it was. I texted her and asked, she told me it was Freakier Friday, and I was floored. It was a film I watched a lot when I was a kid, so that just made it incredibly exciting from day one.
It was so much fun, but the thing about this movie, much like The High Note, is it’s very song-heavy. With Freakier Friday in particular, I think 29 tracks on the soundtrack aren’t score. There’s everything on there from The Spice Girls to Chappell Roan, some really nostalgic pieces mixed with very modern pieces. Trying to figure out the score and how to blend that all together to create a cohesive world was part of my job, as well as to convey the emotion. The songs are used to bring a lot of energy, and to give the movie that nostalgic vibe in some places, and modern in others, to establish and reference the older two characters and the younger two in this movie, so the score was there to help with the emotional beats, first and foremost.
How did you collaborate with Nisha and her team in creating this score?
I initially went and worked on my own because I came in so early. I got the script and the dailies, and they started sending me early edits. We had decided to focus on the bonding theme, this family theme, as the main one for the film. I went away and worked on that, and sent it back to Nisha. We tried it against a few scenes and worked on it back and forth. It was amazing to have that time, which was not something I had on The High Note, on which I had a total of six weeks. On Freakier Friday, I had months. It was so nice to have that time to play with ideas and get feedback, and give Nisha and her team time to get used to it and see how they felt about it. Once we had the themes, it was just a matter of me going through and scoring every single scene, but always based on the emotion of the moment.
There are scenes with Madame Jen (Vanessa Bayer), the psychic in the film, and she’s absolutely hilarious. Nisha wanted to make sure she had a unique musical vibe. We played around with a lot of kooky, off-the-wall ideas until we landed on something that fit the character perfectly. I think there was a suggestion from Nisha and the editor Eleanor Infante that we’d use some bagpipes for a finish. Originally, I had done some world instruments, then they thought it would be fun to lean into her Scottish heritage. I also added some whale and dolphin noises, if you listen carefully, because it’s subtle.
And there’s quite a wide range of sounds and genres within your score as well.
In terms of palette, we definitely pulled some ideas from the songs, like there are some punk rock elements that touch on Lindsay Lohan’s band in the first film, so I wanted to play with that a bit. We also have orchestral themes and recorded with a beautiful string orchestra here in LA. I have some modern beat electronic stuff in there, as well. It’s a mishmash, but the idea was to tie it all together and make one cohesive, unified whole.
It’s always wonderful to have live instruments in the score, which is not as common as it used to be.
Yeah, we used just strings on this one, which we recorded at Warner Brothers with a 40-piece string section. We did it with just one day of recording, and to Disney’s credit, they made sure it happened, because it’s a Disney movie, so they wanted that beautiful, polished Disney warmth. You really need strings to do that. They were committed to it, so we had some of the best players in the world.
How did this project stretch you as an artist?
On Freakier Friday, I had to step out of my comfort zone to incorporate modern synth elements into the score, mixing them with traditional string sounds. That definitely stretched me, but I’m really loving working that way, trying new things. I love the energy of it.
Freakier Friday is in theaters on August 8 nationwide.
John Murphy is a composer known for scoring films with dark undertones, whether they’re kinetic and terrifying or haunting and ethereal. To this day, his theme for Danny Boyle’s electric 2002 gamechanger, 28 Days Later, remains a deservedly beloved earworm, while his music for Boyle’s bittersweet 2007 sci-fi stunner, Sunshine, is at turns heartbreaking and inspiring. Now, he’s scored one of pop culture’s sunniest, noblest characters (Zack Snyder’s darker take notwithstanding), Superman, whom he brings to the screen with strings of bravura and romance.
Superman is not Murphy’s first collaboration with writer/director James Gunn; the two teamed up for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and The Suicide Squad. Gunn isn’t shy about letting music tell his stories, allowing Murphy’s score to soar and riff, which included playing John Williams’ iconic Superman theme on an electric guitar. The composer brings elegance and playfulness to Superman’s (played by David Corenswet) journey, whether he’s saving Boravia or Metropolis from Lex Luthor’s (Nicolas Hoult) machinations, while fighting to maintain his identity and protect his love for reporter Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan).
Murphy scored pieces of music before seeing a single frame of the film. When Gunn shot scenes, he played the composer’s music. For Murphy, who co-composed with David Fleming, it was a process that sometimes made him forget he was scoring a movie as gigantic as Superman. “The story is everything,” Murphy told The Credits. “We’re not scoring to picture. We’re scoring a story. That’s what we do.”
What was that first experience like of playing the John Williams theme? What was your ambition in tackling a classic?
It’s funny, there was no grand idea of, oh, wouldn’t it be awesome to put this iconic theme on guitar? I was just playing around with it. I kind of played it in that bombastic, Hendrix Star-Spangled Banner style for fun. After playing that, I thought, God, could I get away with this? Am I going to go to Composer Hell here for daring to put such a beautiful, iconic theme on guitar? So I did a version of it with [musician] Tyler Barton, and we sent it to James, and it ends up being the first sound you hear on the first trailer, which I wasn’t expecting. The thing with this movie is that it goes back to that pure sense of wonder, so there was always a feeling that we would have some fun and keep that sense of wonder. Ideas like playing the John Williams theme on electric guitar — we wouldn’t have gotten away with that on a certain type of movie. With this movie, we thought, let’s try it and see.
The score in general is often quite gentle for a superhero movie. The track “The Real Punk Rock” is a good example of that, when Superman explains what’s truly punk rock to him. How’d his monologue inspire your score?
One of the first of the original themes I wrote was the love theme. I don’t panic, but I always go, God, I’ve got to write a love theme. I tend to err toward the darker side of the story in a movie, or toward darker movies overall. I don’t get up in the morning and listen to love themes, let’s be honest. So, I wrote two themes for James. One was this big epic, golden-era, Max Steiner–type love theme. I was quite proud of myself for digging that one out, but I thought I should do something a bit more modern and minimal. So, I did the one that ended up in the movie, which was a gentle, filtered guitar. The idea was that it was going to be kind of like a Sigur Rós, Mogwai–type thing.
What’d you think when James chose to go with the more gentle track than the grand, Max Steiner–type epic track for that scene?
I was sure he was going to go for the big orchestral romance, but when I saw the movie for the first time, it all made sense. At the beginning of their relationship, it’s not grand. The movie starts right as they start dating, so they’re awkward with each other, not sure how they feel about each other. And so, it made sense why James went for the more minimal one. It was a motif that could grow. By the time you hit the conclusion of that theme, and the scene toward the end where they’re floating, then it becomes grand and makes sense then.
How’d Lex Luthor on the page influence your theme for him? The scratchy guitar for him contrasts so well with Superman’s elegance.
The minute you establish something — the way the guitar became the Hendrix Star-Spangled Banner–type, John Williams motif — then your next thought is, well, how can I contrast that? What would be the way to battle with that in certain moments? It’s having that dirty, kind of Pablo Honey–type guitar, which is kind of nasty, relentless, and grimy. For Luthor, that was a perfect foil. My daughter, Molly Murphy, actually co-wrote the “LuthorCorp” theme.
On the flipside, the track “Metropolis” — that’s Superman and the city together, as one. How did you want that track to tell the character and location’s story?
That started off as one of the first conversations with James, who had it in his head to explore the possibility of using the original John Williams theme. I’m not sure he knew how I would react to that, because normally, as a composer, you’re like, “Why do you need somebody else’s theme? I’ll write it.”But because of what it is, I was like, “Whoa, that would be amazing, if we can find our own sound for that.” But that guitar thing at the end in “Metropolis” was actually part of a longer version that was me messing with the original John Williams theme. That section never got used at that moment. In the end, it was just my vision, and Dave [Fleming] added all the beautiful strings and changed some chords. So, that was a proper collaboration between me and Dave.
How else did the track evolve?
It was originally my way of trying to see if I could do a Radiohead–type acoustic version of the John Williams theme. It never went into that section, but it’s cool. One of the reasons I love using the acoustic guitar in films is that it’s one of the most grounded instruments. You have all this cinematic noise — bangs, crashes, and pyrotechnics of the orchestras and choirs — but the minute you come down to someone strumming an acoustic guitar, it brings you emotionally close. It gave us the feeling that everything had returned to some semblance of normalcy. What Dave added with the strings gave it that sense of finality as well, that this chapter of the story is closing now.
What about John Williams, the craftsman and technician, influenced you while scoring Superman?
Nobody comes close when it comes to articulating his themes and how they develop. It’s almost pure math. It’s so perfectly executed. If there’s a film that’s got one of John’s scores, I always — no matter what movie it is — if it’s on TV, I’ll stop and listen. A master craftsman. How he can take a motif and effortlessly drag it out into another emotion — it’s almost the way when you listen to Bach, and you just almost get that sense of divine-like effortlessness. You don’t get that with Mozart or Beethoven so much, or I don’t. But with Bach, you get that sense of this is just effortless, and it’s how it’s meant to be.
You pay good respect to the original Superman theme. You won’t be going to composer hell, as you feared.
What was funny was that I did everything I could to kind of destroy that motif. I thought, well, where does it break apart? I put it in minor key, and it was awesome. And then I slowed it down. I did a doom version. I did a punk version. No matter what I did to it, no matter what I played it on, how much I slowed it down, what chords I put underneath it — it was still the Superman theme. My God, it’s the most bulletproof motif ever written. Genius in simplicity. Whatever you do to that motif, the fact that it still feels like the Superman theme is mind-blowing.
Featured image: DAVID CORENSWET as Superman and RACHEL BROSNAHAN as Lois Lane in DC Studios’ and Warner Bros. Pictures’ “SUPERMAN,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
Matt Smith is going from Westeros to a galaxy far, far away.
The House of the Dragon star is joining Shawn Levy’s Star Wars: Starfighter in a villain role. He’ll be sparring with Ryan Gosling, the film’s star, and Mia Goth, whose casting was announced this past June. Smith isn’t exactly new to the Star Wars franchise, however—he was considered to appear in J.J. Abrams’ 2019 trilogy capper Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. While Smith didn’t get to make his Star Wars debut there, one imagines he’ll have an even meatier role here in Levy’s stand-alone film.
Smith’s villain will be one of several, The Hollywood Reporterscoops, with casting now moving into high gear. The details on the film’s plot are still being kept in carbonite, but the initial news about the project first broke at the Star Wars Celebration in Tokyo this past April, and along with it, some key details. Starfighter is set five years after the events in Abrams’ The Rise of Skywalker, which had been billed, at the time, as the end of the Skywalker Saga that first began with George Lucas’s 1977 Star Wars IV: A New Hope, although a new Star Wars film starring Daisy Ridley is in the works. Star Wars: Starfighter has set a May 28, 2027, release date.
“There are many rumors, some true, some not. This is not a prequel. This is not a sequel. It’s a new adventure,” Gosling said at the Tokyo event. “It was a great process. This is no longer a Star Wars movie in development. This is a Star Wars movie we’re making this fall! This script is so good. It’s filled with so much heart and adventure, and there just really is not a more perfect filmmaker for this particular story than Shawn.”
Smith has been one of the marquee stars in Ryan Condal’s Game of Thrones spinoff House of the Dragon. He’ll next appear in Darren Aronofsky’s Caught Stealing, starring opposite Austin Butler, as well as the limited series The Death of Bunny Munro.
“Being here and seeing all of you [makes it] more inspiring to do it,” Gosling said during the Star Wars Celebration. “There’s so much creativity and imagination in this room, and there’s so much love. It’s such a great reminder of how much movies can mean to us, specifically how much these movies mean to us. The force is a mysterious thing, but, as I’m here, the force is the fans. All we can hope for is, ‘May the fans be with us.’”
Gosling and Smith have a potent third cast member among them in Mia Goth, who has two massive movies on the horizon–she’ll next be seen in Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, playing Victor Frankenstein’s (Oscar Isaac) fiancé, Elisabeth, and after that, she’ll appear in Christopher Nolan’s The Odysseyin an undisclosed role.
Featured image: Matt Smith in “House of the Dragon.” Courtesy HBO.
Freakier Friday director Nisha Ganatra is no stranger to showcasing Los Angeles in her work for both the big and small screen. Having helmed episodes of such iconic shows as Transparent, Welcome to Chippendales, and the 2020 feature The High Note, she has a knack for capturing the many faces of the city that is home to Hollywood.
This legacy sequel to the 2003 Disney classic Freaky Friday sees Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan reunite as mother-daughter duo Tess and Anna. Once again set in LA, 22 years after their initial body swap, Lohan’s Anna now has a daughter and is about to add a stepdaughter. As two families merge, something supernaturally familiar happens to the young women, and chaos and hilarity ensue.
Here, Ganatra explains why Freakier Friday needed to film in LA, the impact of the wildfires, and how they used particular lenses to capture the aesthetic of iconic teen movies.
Freakier Friday is set in and around LA and was filmed there. Why was that vital for you?
It was so important because it is an LA story. We got permission to shoot in LA, which is amazing, but it is a love letter to the city. LA is such a beautiful place, and I have never seen certain parts of it captured on film. We all see the car commercial with the ocean, or certain aspects of LA like the Beverly Hills palm trees, but it’s one of the only cities that I’ve lived in that has a mountain range running right through the middle of it. It’s beautiful. It has so much diversity, both in the people and places. It is urban versus nature. It was incredible to explore the city, but it then became a sad reality, as much of what we captured has disappeared due to the fires. I’m glad we got to film in Altadena, Pacific Palisades, and Malibu, but it’s heartbreaking that so much of that is gone.
How much of what we see in the movie is no longer there?
Unfortunately, a lot of things. The pickleball court was at the Altadena Town and Country Club. The house itself, the Coleman house, is gone. All around the beaches, those shots of driving through Pacific Palisades, all of those neighborhoods are gone. They were devastated. Jamie did a really beautiful 60 Minutes segment about it, showed where the devastation was, and how we had it captured in the film. It has been heartbreaking.
You have shot a lot of TV shows and films in LA. As a city on film, LA is a character in its own right. How do you find the right version of her for each project?
That is so beautifully put. LA is her own character, and there are so many versions of LA, but I think for this movie, the right version was all of her. It was about showcasing the beauty, nature, from Downtown to the beaches. Whenever anybody in the movie has an emotional moment where they are reckoning with something, I wanted them to go to nature, so it was a lot of sitting on the beach, getting in the water, and also tumbling around, figuring out where you are in life and what’s going on with it. If you’ve grown up in LA, you’ve had moments where the waves have taken you, and you think, ‘This is it.’ Right when you think it’s over, it throws you to the top, and you get a breath of air, and you’re like, ‘Oh, I’ve got another chance to do this.’ This movie is like that tumbling. The camera tumbles when it’s coming away from Jamie, Lindsay, and the girls as they switch places, and it tumbles in the waves with them. The idea of switching and moving through life in a circle is one of the visual themes.
The visual tropes of LA, such as the Hollywood sign and places like the Hollywood Bowl, are given lip service, but you lean into locations that are iconic to LA locals. How and why did you pick those?
The Record Parlour on Selma Avenue is a great example. We did put a coffee shop in it because that’s my fantasy record store. I love that record store so much; all they’re missing is some coffee, so we can hang out and listen to stuff. It was a case of asking, ‘How do we find a cool place where Jake would work?’ I adore Amoeba Music in Hollywood too, but it is gigantic, whereas The Record Parlour is cool and intimate. We pretended it was Downtown, so apologies for that. It was inspired by the first film, when they did the 18th Street Coffee Shop. They shot that whole movie on the Westside, and I think in proximity to Jamie Lee Curtis’s house, but for this one, she was game to travel a little bit. Because of that, we went and found all the LA spots where everybody loves hanging out, and that you usually don’t get to see a movie. It was pretty inspiring.
There was also a lot of filming in Koreatown, notably at The Line LA hotel, where the engagement party is held, and Eric’s restaurant. You renamed their rooftop restaurant, Openaire. Were most locations good to go or do you need to do much set building?
When it comes to the sets themselves, you spend a lot of time picking them carefully. The Line LA is a very music-centric hotel. Whenever you have to meet with someone in the music industry who wants to have a career in acting, that meeting, for me, has always been at The Line LA. Break Room 86 is also there, but it was the hardest location to find and took the longest. We were asking, ‘Where would Anna have her bachelorette party? What has enough magical elements to it that a switch would happen there?’ We found that near the end.
Many crew members and creatives in LA have been out of work. Did you have the pick of the crop?
It sounds awful to think, ‘How did it benefit me?’ but it did. The thing you get in LA and New York that you don’t get elsewhere is that the talent lives here. It’s a lot easier to say, ‘Will you come play with us for a day?’ when it is somebody who is driving from home, and they get to go home at the end of the day. There are so many people here, so many artists in the city. We got the best crew. It benefited us in terms of light and the beauty of LA, and how we could capture that. It also helped in terms of the music. We have a full concert in the movie, and we have the best band, technicians, and lighting crews at The Wiltern. It’s an incredible venue. The locations and the look added to the authenticity of this being an LA story. We also got to film in real recording studios that bands have been in. Everything about it feels more real.
You touched on the light in LA. The palette and the color of Freakier Friday feel very contemporary but also very similar to the original movie.
A lot of that is the natural California light, but Ferris Bueller’s Day Off informed the lensing we picked, and a lot of the films from the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s. We even went with the 1.85:1 aspect ratio because I wanted it to feel like the classic studio films that we grew up with. There’s a little more grain in the lenses, so you feel like it’s new and nostalgic all at the same time. I hope it’s not super obvious to audiences, but just a feeling you get.
