You’ll be excused if you missed Netflix’s little Halloween treat for The Witcher fans this past Saturday night. The streaming giant released a “Geralt’s Monster Mash” video on Halloween highlighting a lot of the accursed creatures Geralt of Rivia (Henry Cavill) had to contend with in season 1. Yet if you watched closely—or read Netflix’s social copy—you were clued into a couple of monsters we haven’t met yet. Yup, two new beasts were revealed in the video, a subtle but still substantive nod towards the fun to come.
Netflix revealed Geralt’s newest non-human adversaries across their social media channels. Here’s what they had to say on Twitter:
Monsters big and monsters small, sharpen your swords and slay them all… if you can spot them. pic.twitter.com/M3N0ZmG055
On Instagram, they captioned the video with “This is not a trick, there are two treats to be found here.” Then finally on YouTube, which we’ve embedded below, they wrote; “The White Wolf takes Halloween as a personal challenge. But keep your eyes peeled for a few sweet treats… you won’t want to miss what’s hidden.”
You’ll find the new monsters at the 0:15 second and 0:30 second mark, although the first of them is really well hidden. You try and figure out what’s slithering through the grass at the 0:15 mark, while at the 0:30 second mark we’re treated to a trio of skulls wearing tattered clothing. This series loves its monsters, so you can be sure that there’s a whole lot of these two particular beasts to come.
We’ll know more when The Witcher returns in 2021. For now, enjoy these brief glimpses at the ghoulish festivities to come, and we hope you had a Happy Halloween.
Here’s the synopsis for season 2:
Convinced Yennefer’s life was lost at the Battle of Sodden, Geralt of Rivia brings Princess Cirilla to the safest place he knows, his childhood home of Kaer Morhen. While the Continent’s kings, elves, humans and demons strive for supremacy outside its walls, he must protect the girl from something far more dangerous: the mysterious power she possesses inside.
The biggest reveal in this brand new Halloween Killsteaser is that Judy Greer’s Karen is still wearing that Christmas sweater from two years ago! Okay, there are juicier things happening in this glimpse at David Gordon Green’s follow-up to his sensational 2018 Halloween sequel of John Carpenter’s iconic 1978 original, namely that Karen and the indomitable Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) are once again facing the unkillable killing machine that is Michael Myers. And we’ve got a look at the adult version of Tommy Doyle, here played by Anthony Michael Hall.
By now you know that Halloween Kills was originally slated for release this October, but, alas, all our hopes and dreams for this year have come to naught. Now, we can expect to see Green’s follow-up on October 15, 2021. This potent but short teaser plops us down in Haddonfield, where Laurie is once again forced to play town crier. She’s warning everyone that Michael is back for blood, and we see The Shape pick up his mask, meaning all hell is about to break loose.
There’s a victim in this teaser—we’re assuming someone not any of the major characters—and shots of Laurie and her granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) readying for battle. We also see one of the original actors in Carpenter’s 1978 classic, Nancy Stephens, playing Marion Chambers for the fourth time. The shot we see of her here is a direct callback to the first film—someone smashes through her car window, the same thing that happened when she met Michael all those years ago. And Stephens isn’t the only original Carpenter alum on hand; Kyle Richards, who was a youngster when she played Lindsey Wallace in the first Halloween, is back to reprise that role, too.
The teaser’s a hoot, and promises (we hope) better things in 2021. Check it out below:
Featured image: In “Halloween,” JAMIE LEE CURTIS returns to her iconic role as Laurie Strode, who comes to her final confrontation with Michael Myers, the masked figure who has haunted her since she narrowly escaped his killing spree on Halloween night four decades ago. Photo Credit: Ryan Green
The haunted house has been a staple of the horror genre since the early days of silent films. There’s just something about creaky doors and shadows dancing around in dimly lit hallways that send shivers up our spines — especially when it’s a dark and stormy night.
And with most of us homebound for Halloween, what better time to celebrate the haunted house?
“You never know what’s around the corner,” says production designer Sophie Becher during a zoom interview. “So when you walk into a room, you’re on alert. The power of a space and the power of the imagination within the space is so exciting. Everybody has his or her own interpretation of what’s behind that door.”
Sophie Becher on the set of ‘You Should Have Left.’ Courtesy Universal Pictures.
Becher speaks from experience. She was instrumental in creating the eerie mood for You Should Have Left, this year’s unique reinvention of the horror house movie. Written and directed by David Koepp and based on Daniel Kehlmann’s novel of the same name, its unsettling domicile is an ultramodern estate in the remote Welsh countryside. Retired banker Theo (Kevin Bacon) and his much younger wife Susanna (Amanda Seyfried) think it’s the perfect getaway. But soon after arriving with their daughter Ella (Avery Essex), the family quickly discovers the house is more suited for nightmares than rest and relaxation. It also may be specifically haunting Theo because of a dark secret he holds.
Kevin Bacon and Amanda Seyfried in ‘You Should Have Left.’ Courtesy Universal Pictures.
Filled with doors that appear out of nowhere, hallways with twists and turns, and stairways that lead to hidden places of terror, Becher says the film was a lot of fun to design. She likens the challenge to solving a Rubik’s cube.
“I absolutely loved this project because the house is such a predominant character,” Becher says. “When you often do films, you’ve got several locations so you don’t have the chance to really make such a bold statement. The house needed to change and morph depending on where the particular inhabitant was in his or her mental state — corridors had to grow longer, doors had to appear in the middle of the walls, floors had to slope, the interior had to be bigger than the exterior —nothing about the house makes sense.”
Realizing this haunted house was unlike any seen before, Becher turned to the art world for inspiration. She was drawn to the work of installation artists such as Doug Wheeler, James Turrell, Yayoi Kusama and Dan Flavin.
“They work with light and projection to show how you can change the shape of things. I was fascinated by that,” continues Becher. “I worked initially as a sculptor and then a theatrical designer, so I’m used to the power of suggestion and I wanted to make the spaces adaptable so that they could suddenly become incredibly creepy when the lighting changed.”
Becher strategized with cinematographer Angus Hudson to enhance the fear factor. She paid extra attention to sound, choosing hard surfaces that could generate jolts when a glass shattered or a chair crashed to the floor.
Limiting her palette, Becher stuck mainly to black and white, incorporating muted tones through the sparse furniture that reflected the colors of the Welsh mountains. She believed that the more the people stood out, the more ominous it would be. “The idea was that the main things that changed apart from walls, etc. were the colors and light within the spaces,” she adds. “I looked at modern and mid-century architecture and thought about how vast, empty spaces and the use of light can create an incredibly dramatic effect without needing the predictable props of a horror film.”
Kevin Bacon in ‘You Should Have Left.’ Courtesy Universal Pictures.
Her theatre days made Becher an expert at shifting stage scenery. She designed sets that could move as the camera was rolling. The result was spooky changes that appear seamless. For example, when Theo glances away from a row of bookshelves, a door appears in the middle of them when he looks back seconds later. Becher made it happen by rigging the center bookcase so it could be pulled up and out of sight instantaneously.
Kevin Bacon in ‘You Should Have Left.’ Courtesy Universal Pictures.
During her research, architect John Pawson caught Becher’s eye. His work was a big influence on her moody interiors. Much to her delight, when the production decided on the house to use for exteriors, it turned out that it had been designed by Pawson.
By thinking out of the box, Becher helped generate one of the year’s best thrill rides. She hopes others will do the same when the script calls for a house that’s haunted.
“Don’t go into clichés, go for the unexpected, turn things on their head,” says Becher. “If you go into a creepy house, you expect it to be creepy. What’s way more scary is to go into a normal house that starts to play with your imagination.”
In addition to You Should Have Left, we select some of our favorite haunted houses worth adding to your watch list.
The Haunted House (1921)
Buster Keaton and frequent collaborator Edward F. Cline established many of the tropes of the genre in this inventive horror house comedy that includes trap doors, a living chair, and a staircase that transforms into a ramp.
The Old Dark House(1932)
In between Frankenstein and The Invisible Man, director James Whale put his stamp on the genre with this stylistic tale that starts with a rainy night and leads to a spooky house filled with unsettling occupants, including Boris Karloff, as an ominous mute butler.
House on Haunted Hill (1959)
How do you make a haunted house scarier? Add deadly booby traps! That’s exactly what Vincent Price does to terrify his unsuspecting guests in this classic from horror master William Castle.
Psycho (1960)
“You are expecting something to happen when you first see the house,” observes Becher. “The house acts as an aid in Hitchcock’s buildup of the suspense. In spite of the fact that Psycho is also a psychological horror, it’s different because you immediately feel that the house on the hill is haunted, creepy, and weird.”
The Haunting (1963)
Based on Shirley Jackson’s 1959 novel The Haunting of Hill House, this chiller from director Robert Wise serves up a parade of the paranormal as it demonstrates just how scary a gothic manor can be.
The Amityville Horror (1979)
Perhaps because this is based on a true story, or maybe it’s the windows with evil eyes that blink, you’ll likely have chills running down your spine as you watch James Brolin as patriarch George Lutz lose it and hunt down his wife (Margot Kidder) and family with an ax.
The Shining (1980)
“It’s the seminal film just aesthetically and psychologically,” observes Becher.“It’s a piece of genius. You just see what Kubrick did and the maze and the state of mind. I could watch it again and again.”
Poltergeist (1982)
Producer/writer Steven Spielberg and director Tobe Hooper prove that a house doesn’t have to be old and creaky to be scary. A ghostly invasion of an unassuming suburban home begins through the television with one of the decade’s most effective taglines… “They’re here!”
Crimson Peak (2015)
Production designer Thomas E. Sanders delivers one of the genre’s most magnificent haunted houses in Guillermo del Toro’s richly drawn tale that sees its title space literally attack its occupants. “Though the house is very much a main character in this film, it’s much more of a Gothic horror,” adds Becher. “The house was exquisitely designed but very much in a different architectural vein to the house I built.”
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Margaret Thatcher (Gillian Anderson)’s arrival in season 4 of The Crown is getting lots of folks very, very excited. For the members of the press who have seen screeners of The Crown season 4, there’s already consensus that she’s absolutely phenomenal as Margaret Thatcher.
I’ve watched the screeners for this season and yeah Gillian is gonna win all the awards https://t.co/Z4F4V0JuCh
In season 4’s official trailer, just released from Netflix, we’re treated to the dynamic that will be central to the series going forward—between Anderson’s indomitable Prime Minister and Olivia Colman’s steady, steely-eyed Queen Elizabeth. The drama begins immediately, with Thatcher remarking that she and the Queen have enough respect for one another that they can “ask ourselves some of the bigger questions—woman to woman.” The Prime Minister goes on to point out that they’re just about exactly the same age, only six months separates them. “Oh,” the Queen replies, “and who is the senior?” Thatcher’s response? “I am. Now.”
Yeah, this is about all we need to see to know that The Crown‘s upcoming season has a very good chance of being the best yet. And that’s saying something for a show that’s been this consistently excellent. Watching Anderson and Colman square off as the two most consequential figures in the United Kingdom’s 20th Century is going to be a hoot.
Check out the trailer below. The Crown season 4 premieres on Netflix on November 15.
Here’s season 4’s synopsis from Netflix:
As the 1970s are drawing to a close, Queen Elizabeth (Olivia Colman) and her family find themselves preoccupied with safeguarding the line of succession by securing an appropriate bride for Prince Charles (Josh O’Connor), who is still unmarried at 30. As the nation begins to feel the impact of divisive policies introduced by Britain’s first female Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (Gillian Anderson), tensions arise between her and the Queen which only grow worse as Thatcher leads the country into the Falklands War, generating conflict within the Commonwealth. While Charles’ romance with a young Lady Diana Spencer (Emma Corrin) provides a much-needed fairytale to unite the British people, behind closed doors, the Royal family is becoming increasingly divided.
Written by Peter Morgan, The Crown‘s fourth season also stars Helena Bonham Carter as Princess Margaret, Tobias Menzies as The Duke of Edinburgh, Josh O’Connor as Prince Charles, Erin Doherty as Princess Anne, Emerald Fennell as Camilla Parker Bowles, Marion Bailey as the Queen Mother, Georgie Glen as Lady Fermoy, Tom Byrne as Prince Andrew, Angue Imrie as Prince Edward, and Charles Dance as Lord Mountbatten.
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Back another lifetime ago, writer/director Remi Weekes‘ His House celebrated its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival this past January. Netflix quickly acquired it, and the future was looking bright for the talented filmmaker and his debut feature. You know what happened next.
Yet here we are, months later and living in our nightmarish world, with Weekes’ stunning horror film set to debut on October 30. “I’m excited,” Weekes said from London when I asked him what it felt like to finally see his film released into the wild, “It’s great. During Sundance, my answer was, ‘I’m exhausted and I never want to talk about this film again, but with all the time that’s passed, and with being at home so long, I’m excited again.”
Weekes’ film ingeniously takes one of the most problematic aspects of the haunted house genre—why don’t the characters just leave?—and makes it one of his story’s most heartbreaking elements. His characters, Sudanese refugees seeking asylum in a small English town, cannot leave the house or they risk violating the terms of their asylum seeker’s status. Embodied in a pair of phenomenal performances by Wunmi Mosaku (recently stellar in HBO’s Lovecraft Country) and Ṣọpẹ Dìrísù (Humans), Rial and Bol’s journey to get to England is terrifying and tragic, yet they arrive determined to carve out a life for themselves. Being placed in a beaten-down house in a drab English town is, they hope, the first step on the road to rebuilding their lives. Despite the fact they learn the house is haunted, Rial and Bol are essentially forced to stay by state decree.
“When we were writing it, through the whole process, we were doing so much research, reading papers about immigration into England,” Weekes says. He worked on the story with Felicity Evans and Toby Venables, piecing together the dehumanizing rules of the immigration process into a narrative. “What helped me craft this story was when I read about how, when you’re given accommodations, you have to follow these draconian rules. You can’t leave the house, you can’t get a job, you’re given this small amount of money to live on. For asylum seekers, this is a really traumatizing thing, a really cruel punishment to come into a country trying to understand what the next phase in their life is. I found it quite fascinating from a story perspective, because you’re forced to live in this house full of your traumas, and that was the moment I found the core of the film.”
Weekes not only entrapped his characters in their increasingly deadly house due to the actual rules of asylum-seeking but also through Rial and Bol’s heartbreak over what happened during their terrifying journey to England. Spoiler alert. They lost their daughter along the way. This tragedy only increases their determination to make a fresh start in their new home no matter the costs.
And then there are the terrors beyond their front door. The dreary English town they’ve been resettled in is a nest of racism, both subtle and overt. From the freezing detention center they’re sequestered in upon their arrival to the panicky, suspicious glances of the townspeople, Rial and Bol are constantly being asked to prove their humanity. Their predicament is made clear in every way imaginable; their resettlement in England is provisional, at best.
Coming from commercial work, Weekes’ feature directorial debut is assured, yet he says he was plenty spooked himself taking on such a meaty, difficult story. “It was a pretty terrifying, pretty surreal experience. I was fortunate that I was surrounded by really talented and experienced people who were really patient with me, and everyone wanted to make the same thing,” he says. “It also helped we were all spending time in the same space. It almost felt like summer camp. On set every day, we’d hang out, we all liked each other. That really helped. It just felt like a pleasure to be on set every day.”
As the night terrors increase in Rial and Bol’s temporary housing—flickering lights, stained walls, strange noises, and, eventually, terrifying visions—they begin to piece together where the source of this anguish might be coming from; a witch from their homeland. Yet knowing their social worker (Matt Smith) will never believe them, Bol claims the house is being pestered by rats and requests a relocation based on that. You can imagine how well this goes over. Bol and Rial should be grateful for their lodging, nothing more. Throughout the film, Dìrísù and Mosaku’s performances are a wonder. Switching back and forth between Dinka and English, they vividly conjure an intimate relationship perpetually on the brink. Their ability to toggle back and forth between resilience and terror, calculation and paranoia are astonishing.
“I felt something special was happening,” Weekes said of seeing the performances day in and day out. “I joked and said, no matter what, at least I have two amazing performances on screen. The days where the actors are together were my favorite days on set. Seeing them spar was so much fun.”
Although never named in the film, Weekes says the town they shot in was actually Tilbury, in Essex. “We shot on location for two weeks in Tilbury. We chose a house we liked then recreated it on the set in a studio in West London, where we shot for another three weeks. Then we did a week in Morocco for the Africa set,” he says. Most of the effects were practical, too, and they even shot in a big tank in a studio for the scene where Rial, Bol, and their daughter flee for England.
Weekes and his editor Julia Bloch brought the film across the finish line. “It was a really long edit, this was the kind of film where when you’re editing, you’re just having a conversation throughout about whether a particular moment was too much horror or too much drama,” Weekes says. “It was a pretty constant conversation during post-production working out where the line is.”
Ultimately, Weekes managed to draw the line beautifully, one that cut across the classic horror staples of the haunted house story, and the equally ingrained institutional and systemic horrors that are all too real, and far more pervasive than things that go bump in the night.
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“Bounty hunting is a complicated profession,” the Client (Werner Herzog) says at the start of this season one recap of The Mandalorian. And indeed, it is. Jon Favreau’s juggernaut live-action Star Wars show explored that profession, via the work of the Mandalorian (Pedro Pascal). The result was a massive success for Disney+ and a slew of Emmy Awards. And like a gift from the Armorer (Emily Swallow) herself, The Mandalorian season two premieres on October 30, which means that now is the time to relive season’s one joyous, Baby Yoda-fied excitement in under two minutes in this season one recap video.
We’ve got Mando (Pedro Pascal) accepting a new bounty mission, finding out that the bounty is a child (or, in The Mandalorian parlance, The Child, or, in the entire internet’s parlance, BABY YODA), changing his life forever. We’ve got Mando’s many battles in his quest to keep Baby Yoda alive. We’ve got Mando’s introduction to a new friend in Cara Dune (Gina Carano) and his reliance on old acquaintances like Greef Karga (Carl Weathers). We’ve got the late-season arrival of his newest enemy, Moff Gideon (Giancarlo Esposito). We’ve got the Falcon Crest, the surprisingly heroic assassin droid IG-11 (voiced by Taika Waititi), and jet packs galore. In short, this recap distills everything you loved about season one and simultaneously fires you up for season two.
Check out the recap video here:
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If you never read Aravind Adiga’s Man Booker Prize-winning 2008 novel “The White Tiger”—and you still should—director Ramin Bahrani’s adaptation offers another way to experience Adiga’s phenomenal, searing story. Bahrani, the talented director behind 2014’s home foreclosure drama 99 Homes, adapted the book himself, and he’s populated his cast with both major and up-and-coming stars. Those include your three leads—rising talent Adarsh Gourav, Priyanka Chopra, and Bollywood star Rajkummar Rao. This is one of the rare cases where it really seems like Bahrani was the only choice to adapt this story—Adiga dedicated the novel to him upon its publication.
The White Tiger looks squarely at India’s caste system through the lens of a driver named Balram Halwai (Gourav), a poor villager who works his way into what to him, at the time, is a dream job—being a driver for the wealthy Ashok (Rao) and his wife Pinky (Chopra), newly returned from America. While Ashok revels in the wealth his father created and the power it gives him over people like Balram, Pinky grew up in America and holds a dim view of India’s rigid caste and class system. The White Tiger charts Balram’s journey within India’s rigid master-servant dynamic as he outwits and outmaneuvers his “masters” on his way into power.
Adiga’s book was a massive success, but it was also controversial in India. Hence the 12-year wait for his friend Bahrani to finally be able to adapt the book. “Aravind and I went to college together at Columbia University and for 20 years he has been one of my closest friends,” Bahrani told Deadline. “When I made my first film, Man Push Cart, he was a journalist and it gave him the push to go back to India and get his first novel done. He sent me rough drafts of ‘The White Tiger’ and I thought, he is such a great writer of characters and such a great thinker. He is dealing with heavy issues, but he made it so funny and entertaining, the character recounting his story in first-person narration in a letter to this Chinese premier on his way to India to learn what it means to be an entrepreneur. It totally destabilizes the white Western world; Aravind so smartly predicted where things were headed.”
The results of this friendship are now evident in this first trailer, which is flatly thrilling. The White Tiger is executive produced by Chopra and Ava DuVernay. It was filmed with an Indian crew in New Delhi, Bangalore, Dhanbad, and Agra. It’s due in select theaters in December and on Netflix in January.
Check out the trailer here:
Here’s the official synopsis:
Balram Halwai (Adarsh Gourav) narrates his epic and darkly humorous rise from poor villager to successful entrepreneur in modern India. Cunning and ambitious, our young hero jockeys his way into becoming a driver for Ashok (Rajkummar Rao) and Pinky (Priyanka Chopra Jonas), who have just returned from America. Society has trained Balram to be one thing — a servant — so he makes himself indispensable to his rich masters. But after a night of betrayal, he realizes the corrupt lengths they will go to trap him and save themselves. On the verge of losing everything, Balram rebels against a rigged and unequal system to rise up and become a new kind of master. Based on the New York Times bestseller and 2008 Man Booker Prize-winning novel.
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Featured image: TORONTO, ONTARIO – SEPTEMBER 07: Actress Priyanka Chopra Jonas of ‘The Sky Is Pink’ attends The IMDb Studio Presented By Intuit QuickBooks at Toronto 2019 at Bisha Hotel & Residences on September 07, 2019 in Toronto, Canada. (Photo by Rich Polk/Getty Images for IMDb)
Those who work in the arts have an innate ability to invoke emotions through their work— to cause an audience to connect with a certain theme or issue. But what if that issue is the inevitable destruction of the planet told through the life story of one famed historian and world traveler? That was the daunting task presented to Oscar-winning composer Steven Price (Gravity, Suicide Squad, Baby Driver).
David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet serves dual purposes as both Attenborough’s witness statement — his plea to humanity to save the Earth — and an autobiography of sorts.
The production of palm oil continues to be a major driver of deforestation of some of the world’s most biodiverse forests, destroying the habitats of critically endangered species like the orangutan. Image taken from David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet. Credit: Netflix
“I was really keen to work out what David would want because we’d done these big sweeping things as part of the natural history shows and this was a very different sort of thing, much more intimate,” Price recalls. “I basically found out his taste in music and that’s chamber music.”
Chamber music is a form of classical music composed with only a small group of instruments. The strong, solo piano notes and eerily, beautiful string instruments scattered throughout the film somehow manage to create both this overwhelming sense of dread, while also reminding viewers that all hope is not yet lost. Price knew he had an opportunity with this film to tell Attenborough’s story and wanted to do him justice.
“The mix in the middle of the film where he kind of reached his lowest ebb and you see him just looking as sad and depressed as he feels—we’ve never seen him like that,” Price says. “Those just felt like such delicate moments and such a rare moment of honesty of him really putting himself in front of the camera like that.”
Musically, the film ebbs and flows so smoothly that it feels as if you’re watching a concerto. There are moments of deep sorrow and then minutes of pure joy, followed again by an overwhelming sense of guilt. The key for Price in successfully articulating the film’s message was to create one “ really simple through line” that followed Attenborough throughout his life and into “his vision for the future.”
“I wrote the film start to finish, and it felt like his life was flashing before my eyes as I did it,” Price notes.
Regardless of all the other production concerns with Life On Our Planet, Price’s main worry was that “Sir David” enjoyed the musical composition he created.
“I was always very nervous, I wanted David to like it,” Price said. “And then we did a screening just for the filmmakers a few months before the film came out and we watched the finished thing and at the end of it he said he liked the music and it was like ‘Oh, thank God.’”
Ensuring a satisfactory score for David Attenborough’s witness statement is intimidating, but less intimidating than capturing the sound of a young girl’s journey to the magical world of Lunaria. Over the Moon, Price’s latest project which Netflix released Oct. 23, tells the story of a genius, young Chinese girl, Fei Fei, who builds a rocket to the moon to chase after the legendary moon goddess Chang’e.
One of the pivotal scenes in the film is when Fei Fei finally succeeds in flying to space and enters into the wonder that is Lunaria.
“Lunaria is my favorite bit of the film,” Price says humbly. “That was the one I was most terrified about when we were doing it because if you didn’t get that one right then the whole thing didn’t work.”
It’s safe to say that Price got it right. The “buzzing” and “fizzing” sounds that he worked so hard to capture perfectly complement the glowing, neon colors that illuminate Lunaria. Interestingly, the most challenging part of the film to compose (Fei Fei’s entrance into Lunaria) was also the first section Price completed.
“Around last Christmas I had obviously come up with the tune for that and came in this room and just recorded a little demo, and it was just me playing the piano and I’m playing the guitar and I’m whistling,” Price says. “And I found it quite recently and it’s all kind of there but in this really fragmented sort of way.”
Like any composer, Price knew the real challenge would be to put that “little demo” up against the film itself. Lucky for him, it worked splendidly.
“All of the colors as they added in the animation and the way the light would work— and they’d add a different layer of lighting each time I’d get a new version of the picture,” he explains. “They all started to influence how it sounded.”
Unlike action movies that need to be cut and edited over and over again, with composers constantly being sent updated versions, animated films allow composers more freedom in that their work can be finalized sooner and then perfected over time — one of the reasons Price was so eager to get into animation.
“It felt like I could get a piece of music working and then I could spend ages kind of polishing it and changing the textures and finessing it in a way that you don’t really get time to do on a live action,” Price says.
Composing for an animated movie wasn’t the only dream that Over the Moon fulfilled for Price, the other: working with famed director Glen Keane.
Keane, whose long legacy in animated film credits him with masterpieces such as The Little Mermaid, Tarzan, Beauty and the Beast, Tangled, and other such great popular classics, gave Price some very specific direction.
“Glen was like, ‘Watch her [Fei Fei] eyes, always watch her eyes because that’s what’s going on with her,’” Price recalls.
Price wanted to create sounds and songs that embodied Fei Fei’s character, but that also did justice to the rich cultural history and Chinese legend Over the Moon is based on.
“I didn’t want to do a score where it felt like a cliché, so I kind of went with a more textural approach with that as well,” Price says, explaining his creative process. “I recorded a lot of Chinese instruments at the start and then manipulated them and stretched them, so all those textures that are shifting around in Lunaria are born off the Chinese instrumentation, but they’re kind of central to the fabric of the score.”
The overall result of Price’s work is a film that captures the innocence and marvel of youth, the inevitability of loss, and the magic on our planet and beyond.
Many fans of 1996’s The Craft still watch it with great regularity. Now writer/director Zoe Lister-Jones brings a new story, The Craft: Legacy, told very much through the female lens. Though inspired by the original, Legacy speaks to a new generation of young women wishing to stand in their power, be they Wiccan or not. Starring young actors Cailee Spaeny, Gideon Adlon, Lovie Simone, and Zoey Luna, all of whom are poised to become huge stars, and featuring David Duchovny and Michelle Monaghan, The Craft: Legacy is very much of this moment. It examines, among other things, the spectrum of gender expression, individuality as power, and the value of a supportive sisterhood. It is also witchy in the best possible ways. So much so that Lister-Jones made sure, through consultants, that traditions of witchcraft from across the world were accurately represented. The Credits spoke to Lister-Jones about creating an entertaining genre film that is also infused with powerful messages. The Craft: Legacy premieres On Demand on October 28.
(l-r) Executive producer Natalia Anderson director/writer Zoe Lister-Jones and executive producer Bea Sequeira observe the monitors on set of Columbia Pictures’ THE CRAFT: LEGACY.
The four characters in the coven are each connected to an element, and that is woven through the production design and costuming. How did you collaborate on that and other aspects of witchcraft for the film?
I worked with Pam Grossman in the writing of the script, who is a practicing witch, and also a historian of witchcraft. She helped me come up with the elements that each girl would embody, and then I collaborated with my costume designer Avery Plewes, who is really brilliant, to put those elements into each witch’s wardrobe. Lilly is water, and you’ll see her dressed in a lot of blues and tie-dyed prints. She also wears a lot of pearls as a motif throughout the film. Tabby, whose element is fire, is wearing a lot of reds and oranges. You can sometimes even see flame insignias on her wardrobe. Actually, Avery and my production designer Hillary Gurtler worked really beautifully together inter-departmentally. They each chose crystals that our coven members would have, and Avery even hand-sewed those onto costumes. In the “Two Truths and a Lie” scene, you’ll see malachite, which is the crystal associated with Lourdes’s character, sewn onto the bottom of her jeans. There was just so much care and thought put into the production elements, and I’m so grateful to have worked with such incredible visionaries, who, yes, just happen to be women.
You’ve been committed to having female crewmembers and department heads.How has having a gender-balanced crew made a difference in the finished product of the film?
Yes. On my debut feature Band Aid, my crew was made up entirely of women, and so I brought a number of those women onto Craft: The Legacy: my cinematographer Hillary Spera, my production designer Hillary Gurtler, my producing partner Natalia Anderson, and my editor Libby Cuenin. Hillary Spera and I just have the most wonderful working relationship, and I think that, for me, it’s very important in telling women’s stories, to have a woman behind the lens. It’s something that’s all too rare in our industry. The intuition that Hillary brings to her craft is so singular, and we have such an incredible symbiosis as creators together. Our collaboration is always something that is both exciting and really nourishing for me.
(l-r) Lourdes (Zoey Luna) Frankie (Gideon Adlon) Tabby (Lovie Simone) and Lily (Cailee Spaeny) sit at the back of the classroom during sex ed class in Columbia Pictures’ THE CRAFT: LEGACY. Photo by Rafy Photography.
Your introduction of menstruation as something both demeaning in a patriarchal culture and powerful for women, sets the tone, in a way, for the coven. Can you talk about that and other elements you included in the story relating to the divine feminine?
I think menstruation is part of a larger conversation around how often women are shamed for their sexuality, and how damaging that is, to not just a young woman’s life. The reverberations of that shame live on in women forever. I wanted for that to be the catalyzing event in the film, where we were brought into Lilly’s shame so that that shame could be ameliorated by the young women who are there to support her in her moment of need. They have all been in the same situation. They’ve all been bullied, and all been othered. Throughout the film, we see the ways in which these women have taken their pain and have turned it into their power.
(l-r) Lourdes (Zoey Luna) Frankie (Gideon Adlon) Tabby (Lovie Simone) and Lily (Cailee Spaeny) perform rituals and talk about being cautious with their gifts in Columbia Pictures’ THE CRAFT: LEGACY. Photo by Rafy Photography.
The way women accept their own power is a very important aspect of The Craft: Legacy.
A big theme throughout the film is the phrase ‘your difference is your power.’ As a young woman, I was a so-called weirdo. I shaved my head when I was in 7th grade. I wore polyester leisure suits that I would buy at thrift stores, so I was really bullied. I was often misgendered, and I was isolated and in a lot of pain, so I tapped into a lot of my inner wounded child in developing this story. There is a duality for a woman, where during adolescence, she is immediately hyper-visible to men in a way that can feel quite terrifying. She wants to turn invisible in some ways, and yet is still grappling with her own sexuality. I think this genre was a really exciting opportunity for me to look at that moment in a young woman’s life, and of course, I’m including trans women in that, to look at what that moment feels like, and to crystallize that moment, and give these women an opportunity to embody their difference and alchemize it into power.
You have said “any brand of feminism that excludes trans voices is not feminism.” What was the experience of developing the character of Lourdes, who is trans, and how did Zoey Luna add to it?
It was intentional that her trans identity was important, but also didn’t have to define her narrative, and Zoey was incredibly generous in talking to me about her own life and any parallels she might find with the character. Zoey herself is an activist and is so gracious in the way that she talks about trans inclusivity and identity politics in that realm. She just brought so much effervescence and spunk to this character. She is so inherently charismatic and has such an amazing screen presence, and her humor is so singular. I’m so grateful that we found her, and that she deepened Lourdes and brought her off the page in such an incredible way.
You had a trans inclusivity seminar onset. What was that like?
Scott Turner Schofield was our trans inclusivity consultant. On most productions, you have a sexual harassment seminar, so following ours, Scott gave a trans inclusivity seminar, which was so transformative. I believe it should be mandated on every set, even if there isn’t a trans character or actor involved. Because Scott is a trans man himself, he spoke to all of us about the power of language, and that even if one’s intention is not to harm, certain micro-aggressions are deeply harmful. He told us his own stories, and it just enlightened so many of our crewmembers, myself included. Scott continues to be an incredible resource because we all still have so much to learn when it comes to inclusivity.
Featured image: (l-r) Lourdes (Zoey Luna) Frankie (Gideon Adlon) Tabby (Lovie Simone) and Lily (Cailee Spaeny) practice their rituals in the woods in Columbia Pictures’ THE CRAFT: LEGACY. Photo by Rafy Photography.
And now we’ve got our first look at George Clooney’s upcoming sci-fi film The Midnight Sky—as promised, Netflix has dropped the full trailer this morning. The film features Clooney as a lonely scientist named Augustine, marooned in the Arctic after some kind of global catastrophe. Augustine is trying to reach the Ether, a spaceship that “we hoped would be our future,” Augustine says, “I have to warn them about the conditions on Earth.”
From here, the trailer for The Midnight Sky delivers a few morsels of information. The catastrophe that befell Earth started “as a mistake,” and Augustine’s mission is to try to get to an antenna so he can warn the Ether that things on the planet are bad and they shouldn’t come home.
The Midnight Sky is based on the novel “Good Morning, Midnight” by Lily Brooks-Dalton, and was adapted by The Revenant co-writer Mark L. Smith. Clooney’s joined by a small but stellar cast, including Felicity Jones, Kyle Chandler, David Oyelowo, Tiffany Boone, and Demián Bichir.
Clooney is an excellent director, and with what appears to be a stripped-down post-apocalyptic sci-fi film that will focus on a handful of characters dealing with issues as weighty as life, death, and time, The Midnight Sky warrants inclusion onto anybody’s watch-list.
Check out the trailer below. The Midnight Sky hits select theaters in December and Netflix on December 23.
Here’s the official synopsis from Netflix:
This post-apocalyptic tale follows Augustine (George Clooney), a lonely scientist in the Arctic, as he races to stop Sully (Felicity Jones) and her fellow astronauts from returning home to a mysterious global catastrophe. Clooney directs the adaptation of Lily Brooks-Dalton’s acclaimed novel Good Morning, Midnight, co-starring David Oyelowo, Kyle Chandler, Demián Bichir and Tiffany Boone.
It’s been 23-years since we’ve seen a proper take on the incredibly gifted performer Selena Quintanilla. That was in writer/director Gregory Nava’s 1997 film Selena, in which a young Jennifer Lopez starred as the Texas-born Tejano singer whose career was only just getting started when she was tragically murdered a few weeks shy of her 24th birthday. Now, Selena Quintanilla is getting an even more fulsome look in an upcoming series from Campanario Entertainment and Netflix. Selena: The Series stars The Walking Dead‘s Christian Serratos in the titular role, and includes an incredible cast of Latinx performers, from a bevy of Latinx writers and crew, and comes with the blessing of the Quintanilla family themselves. Netflix has released the full trailer, revealing Serratos’ as the young star discovering her latent talent, and delivering one of her most iconic songs, “Como la Flor.”
Selena: The Series stars a lot of excellent performers, including Gabriel Chavarria, Ricardo Chavira, Noemí Gonzalez, and Seidy López. The series comes from Moises Zamora (Star), who also serves as executive producer alongside Jaime Dávila, Rico Martinez, Hiromi Kamata (The Exorcist), Simran A. Singh, and, crucially, Suzette Quintanilla—Selena’s sister and drummer.
Check out the trailer below. Selena: The Series bows on Netflix on December 4.
For more on Selena: The Series, check out these stories:
Tami Reiker has had a very busy year. She was the cinematographer on Gina Prince-Bythewood‘s The Old Guard, one of the most-viewed movies ever on Netflix, and just finished work on One Night in Miami,Regina King’s feature debut as a director. The fact-based story is about the night four friends, Malcolm X, Jim Brown, Cassius Clay, and Sam Cooke spent together on February 25th, 1964, and has received rave reviews on the festival circuit, most recently at the Middleburg Film Festival. Bought by Amazon, it is slated for theatrical release on December 25th, and will launch on the streamer on January 15th, 2021.
The Credits spoke to Reiker about collaborating with Regina King and capturing the look and feel of this iconic moment, between these iconic men, on film.
Behind the scenes of ONE NIGHT IN MIAMI. L-r: Tami Reiker and Regina King. Photo: Patti Perret. Courtesy of Amazon Studios
You and Regina King worked with a lot of reference material to build this story.
Regina is incredible to work with and a great collaborator. She has very definite ideas of what she wanted the film to feel like. She really wanted to stick close to the historical references, and we really studied those, wanting to keep very close to what the actual Hampton House looked like. You can see in the film, we were duplicating real images, like Cassius Clay in the swimming pool or the diner, or with Sam on Johnny Carson. There’s footage of when he performed that night and what that looked like.
Leslie Odom Jr. stars in ONE NIGHT IN MIAMI. Photo: Patti Perret/Amazon Studios
So the Hampton House was based on the vintage photos of the original hotel?
It was a recreated set that we made in New Orleans. We had a lot of references from what it looked like at the time. The actual hotel looks quite different now because it’s been renovated. The production designer [Barry Robison, with additional work by Page Buckner] found an incredible, run-down hotel, about an hour outside of New Orleans, that he transformed to feel and look like the Hampton House.
Your crew members were mostly from New Orleans?
Yes. One thing that makes me really proud to have worked on One Night in Miami, and something that is really important to Regina, is that we hit 70% diversity with the crew. It’s important to her and to me, and it’s important to Gina [Prince-Bythewood], too, on all her shoots, and on One Night in Miami, we did it. New Orleans has a fantastic group of people to build a crew with. We got the best.
What did you learn on The Old Guard that helped you on One Night in Miami?
They were both shot with an Alexa 65. Using the Alexa 65 on The Old Guard, I just totally fell in love with the large format and suggested to Regina that it would be incredible for this film. She had used the Alexa 65 on If Beale Street Could Talk, and that was also a small film. I knew it wasn’t in our budget, but I went to every rental here in Los Angeles, and presented my case, and gave them my script and Regina came by to visit, and they were amazing. They worked with us to make it so we could afford it.
So with the Alexa 65’s large format, you also used Prime DNA lenses for softness. Can you talk about what those do, in terms of achieving the look you’re after, and selling the story?
With the large format, you just have so much more information. The center is three times the size of the Alexa Mini. The fall-off for the Prime DNA, when you shoot wide open, you have a much more shallow depth of field, so it all just presents a creamier, more film-like look. We also shot with the Bronze Glimmerglass #1 filter, which added to the softness. You always have to take away that video edge. I am a huge fan of shooting digitally. I love it, but you do always have to fight that sharp edge it gives you. I had used a Glimmerglass on The Old Guard, but I’d never used a Bronze, which was beautiful. It was beautiful on the men’s skin. It just had this incredible warmth to it. That glow, that warmth of the movie, it’s the lighting, the wardrobe, and the makeup, but it’s also that Bronze Glimmerglass. It made a huge difference.
Eli Goree stars in ONE NIGHT IN MIAMI Photo: Patti Perret/Amazon Studios
Scenes in Hampton House Hotel feel both expansive and claustrophobic. It’s an interior location, at night, with a variety of skin tones. Talk about filming in that room, and your part in bringing life and color to it.
Definitely the biggest challenge in the film was the amount of dialogue in such a small space, with 10-page scenes of wall-to-wall dialogue. Regina and I, in our early talks, discussed how we wanted to keep the camera floating and moving, and not have it be static. The whole film is either hand-held, or floating on the jib arms. We had two 12-foot jib arms that were manually operated, not on a hothead, not on wheels. The operator was standing with the camera so they could float it right and left, or up and down, or in between characters. We had every window popped, every picture frame had a hole behind it, so one of the cameras could be poking through and always keep this floating movement. We decided to shoot whole 10-minute takes, or however long the entire scene was. First we would shoot the master, and that would help us decide the coverage of how we would float from character to character. Each time, we’d do a 10 or 15-minute take, which the actors loved. There was just so much experimentation, and there were so many discoveries as we were shooting.
It sounds difficult to pull off!
It was a challenge for everyone. Imagine the boom operator, the focus puller, everyone is memorizing 10 minutes of where they’re moving around the room, and who is talking, but everyone on the crew was so into this film. They just loved it. Regina really brought this energy that drove everybody. We had a lot of very long nights, but when you have a director and actors that are so dedicated, your crew is 100% onboard.
Aldis Hodge in ONE NIGHT IN MIAMI Photo: Patti Perret/Amazon Studios
Working with Regina, what is one example of collaborating in problem-solving?
When you’re shooting a movie with a lower budget, there’s constantly something you’re trying to figure out how to accomplish that’s cost effective, but also done your way. At the hotel, we both really wanted to shoot outside, on the roof. We didn’t want to shoot on green screen, but there were limitations, because there was nothing really around there. It was 10 miles from Miami, and it was all 2-story buildings, and any real roof we investigated, they said the actors would have to be on wires for safety. That was never going to work, so we came up with this idea that we would shoot in the parking lot, and we made a roof out of shipping containers. We put a black guardrail around it, because even though it was 10 feet high, it was still too dangerous for crew and cast to be up there. So we collaborated together, and problem-solved how we could shoot outside at night. There was nothing around. We were an hour from New Orleans. I placed neon signs, and little bits of color outside in the fields, so you would get the feeling that there was life out there, or a road out there, and that you were still in Miami.
What stands out as the best part of working on One Night in Miami?
Working with Regina, seeing her dedication and the amount of energy she has, is mind-blowing. Being present to watch the incredible performances by the cast was a highlight, too. Listening to Leslie sing was like being at your own personal concert. Working on a movie with a universal message was the best part, though, as part of the conversation of what’s happening right now. This story from 1964 is relevant to this moment in history.
Featured image: (L-R) Leslie Odom Jr., Eli Goree, Kingsley Ben-Adir and Aldis Hodge star in ONE NIGHT IN MIAMI. Photo Courtesy Amazon Studios.
Okay, so the footage is as sparse as the arctic setting depicted, but it’s exciting nonetheless to get our first peek at George Clooney’s upcoming sci- film for Netflix, The Midnight Sky. The teaser consists of some attempted radio communication from a scientist named Augustine (Clooney), marooned in the arctic, and a shot of Augustine trudging through his lonely, ice-covered world. The Midnight Sky is based on Lily Brooks-Dalton’s book and was adapted by Mark L. Smith. Smith knows a thing or two about adapting tales of frozen landscapes and fights for survival—he co-wrote The Revenant with director Alejandro G. Iñárritu.
While the teaser boasts a mere 20-seconds worth of footage, it does clue reveal that the full trailer drops tomorrow morning, with the film itself due on Netflix this December. The Midnight Sky is centered on Clooney’s marooned scientist Augustine trying to stop Sully (Felicity Jones) and her crew from returning home after a global catastrophe. Joining Clooney and Jones are David Oyelowo, Kyle Chandler, Tiffany Boone, Demián Bichir, and Caoilinn Springall.
Discussing the film at the London Film Festival screen talk, Clooney revealed that The Midnight Sky was shot on 65mm. This was done, in part, to show the film on IMAX. For now, we’ll be happy just to see the full trailer.
This post-apocalyptic tale follows Augustine (George Clooney), a lonely scientist in the Arctic, as he races to stop Sully (Felicity Jones) and her fellow astronauts from returning home to a mysterious global catastrophe. Clooney directs the adaptation of Lily Brooks-Dalton’s acclaimed novel Good Morning, Midnight, co-starring David Oyelowo, Kyle Chandler, Demián Bichir and Tiffany Boone.
Big news over the weekend—Marvel Studios’ Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings wrapped filming, the first-ever MCU movie with an all-Asian cast. We know this thanks to some exuberant social media posts from the film’s director Destin Daniel Cretton and its star Simu Liu. Each took to Instagram, and Liu released a passionate statement on Facebook, too, about wrapping production on their film for Marvel’s Phase 4.
Cast and crew finished filming down in Sydney, Australia. We’ve recently learned that Shang-Chi‘s release date has been pushed back to July 2021. It follows Cate Shortland’s Black Widow, recently moved to May 2021, and Chloé Zhao’s The Eternals, which moved to November 2021. Both Liu and Cretton seemed understandably enthused about finishing production—mid pandemic no less—on Marvel’s first Asian-led, Asian-directed epic.
The Wrapalso shared an impassioned Facebook post from Liu, who hails Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings for breaking a major barrier for Asian performers and creators:
“That’s a wrap on Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings! Nine months from now we will break records and make history as the first superhero movie to feature an ALL-ASIAN cast that kicks so much ass it’s not even funny. Well, that’s a lie; actually, it’s quite funny, too. For all of us who have been hated for the color of our skin, or been made to feel less than because of it, NO MORE. This is OUR movie and it will be IMPOSSIBLE for Hollywood to ignore us after this.”
Joining Liu in the cast are Michelle Yeoh, Awkwafina, Florian Munteanu, Fala Chen, Tony Chiu-Wai Leung, and Ronny Chieng. With production wrapped, we can now start waiting for the first teaser.
For more on Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, check out these stories:
Featured image: SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA – JULY 20: Simu Liu of Marvel Studios’ ‘Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings’ at the San Diego Comic-Con International 2019 Marvel Studios Panel in Hall H on July 20, 2019 in San Diego, California. (Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for Disney)
One of television’s most beloved series, a cult favorite among sci-fi fans, is finally getting a proper big-screen adaptation. Longtime X-Men scribe, producer, and recently director (Dark Phoenix) Simon Kinberg will be writing and producing Battlestar Galactica for Universal. The Hollywood Reporterscoops that Kinberg and producer Dylan Clark will be adapting the nuanced series about humans on distant planets trying to outrun the sentient machines hellbent on destroying them. Clark has been trying to get the adaptation off the ground for years, and it sounds as if with Kinberg aboard, this long-awaited leap from the small screen to big is finally happening.
“Battlestar Galactica is one of the holy grails in science fiction, and I couldn’t be more excited about bringing something new to the franchise while honoring what’s made it so iconic and enduring,” said Kinberg in a statement. “I’m so grateful that Dylan and my partners at Universal have trusted me with this incredible universe.”
Battlestar Galactica has a rich history. Its first incarnation came in 1978, in Glen A. Larson’s series that focused on human colonies spread out over the galaxy, fighting to survive against the Cylons, sentient machines with a taste for species eradication. The humans flee on starships, with the Galactica leading the way, and search for the mythic colony called Earth. The show had but one season and was off the air by 1979, yet it cut deep. Less space opera than Star Wars, Battlestar was a sinewy, survivalist tale.
Cut to 2004, when Ronald D. Moore picked up where Larson left off. This Battlestar Galactica lasted for four glorious seasons, with the crew of the old Galactica once again on the run from the Cylons, searching for the fabled 13th colony, Earth. A whole new generation of fans fell in love with the series. A third iteration of the Battlestar is currently in the works from Mr. Robot creator Sam Esmail. Kinberg and Clark’s big-screen adaptation, however, will be the first for the show.
Meanwhile, one of the many projects Kinberg has going is his upcoming The 355 for Universal. This female-centered spy thriller has an incredible cast, including Jessica Chastain, Lupita Nyong’o, Diane Kruger, Penelope Cruz, and Fan Bingbing. It’s scheduled for a Jan 15 2021 release.
Featured image: Director Simon Kinberg and Michael Fassbender on the set of Twentieth Century Fox’s DARK PHOENIX. Photo Credit: Doane Gregory.
Director Paul Greengrass and Tom Hanks delivered one of the more riveting films of the early 2010s with 2013’s Captain Phillips, which took on the true story of Captain Richard Phillips and the 2009 hijacking of the MV Maersk Alabama, which he captained, by Somali pirates. It was the first hijacking of an American cargo ship in 200-years, and in Greengrass and Hanks’ hands, Captain Phillips retold that story in a taut, breathtaking way. Now the duo is back with a very different kind of film—News of the World—which sees Hanks playing a very different kind of captain. Universal has released a brand new, fulsome trailer that reveals Greengrass and Hanks’ sweeping western.
News of the World centers on the story of Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd (Hanks), a Civil War veteran trying to take a 10-year-old Johanna (Helena Zengel) to her aunt and uncle. Johanna was taken by the Kiowa people years ago and was raised as one of their own. Now Kidd tries to reunite her with her family, embarking on a perilous journey across a harsh landscape. Johanna isn’t eager to go on the journey to begin with, and the dangers awaiting them as they travel are numerous.
Greengrass assembled a great crew for this film, including costume designer Mark Bridges, composer James Newton Howard, andDP Dariusz Wolski.
News of the World is slated for a Christmas Day theatrical release (we’ll see if this sticks), but for now, check out the trailer for yourself.
Here’s the synopsis from Universal Pictuers:
Five years after the end of the Civil War, Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd (Hanks), a veteran of three wars, now moves from town to town as a non-fiction storyteller, sharing the news of presidents and queens, glorious feuds, devastating catastrophes, and gripping adventures from the far reaches of the globe.
In the plains of Texas, he crosses paths with Johanna (Helena Zengel, System Crasher), a 10-year-old taken in by the Kiowa people six years earlier and raised as one of their own. Johanna, hostile to a world she’s never experienced, is being returned to her biological aunt and uncle against her will.
Kidd agrees to deliver the child where the law says she belongs. As they travel hundreds of miles into the unforgiving wilderness, the two will face tremendous challenges of both human and natural forces as they search for a place that either can call home.
News of the World is directed by Greengrass (the Bourne films, United 93) from his screenplay with Luke Davies (Lion), based on the National Book Award finalist and best-selling novel by Paulette Jiles. The film is produced by Gary Goetzman (Mamma Mia! franchise, Greyhound), Gail Mutrux (The Danish Girl, Donnie Brasco) and Gregory Goodman (22 July, 8 Mile). The executive producers are Steven Shareshian and Tore Schmidt. The film’s music is by eight-time Academy Award® nominee James Newton Howard.
Featured image: (from left) Johanna Leonberger (Helena Zengel) and Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd (Tom Hanks) in News of the World, co-written and directed by Paul Greengrass. Photo Credit: Bruce Talamon/Universal Pictures
When we attended the Savannah Film Festival in 2018, one of the filmmakers we covered was Otoja Abit, an actor who had roles in television series (The Defenders, The Night Of) and film (Stonewall), who was in Savannah to screen his short, Jitters. The 12-minute film centered on Abit’s central character, a man undergoing some last-second concerns in the moments before his wedding. “It’s hard to get a feature film made unless you have a short film, especially as a first-time filmmaker,” Abit told us at the time. So Jitters was that short film, which revolved around a delicious twist. Spoiler alert! The groom (played by Abit) is telling his male best friend about the woman who got away in the back of the Church, while his family and friends gather in the pews to watch him getting married. Once he’s told his story and is ready to get married, the viewer finds out that his male best friend is actually his fiancé. In a brief 12-minutes, Abit has told a potent, beautiful story about two men getting married in a church.
Cut to today—Abit has not only written a new feature film, A New York Christmas Wedding, but he’s directed it, produced it, stars in it, and will see it premiere on Netflix this November 5. The film is centered on a proposed Christmas Eve wedding between Jennifer Ortiz (Nia Fairweather) and David Wilks (Abit). Plans change when Jennifer is visited by the Angel of Death (Cooper Koch) and shown the life she could have led had she not denied her true feelings for her childhood friend Gabrielle (Adriana DeMeo).
Before A New York Christmas Wedding found a home at Netflix, Abit relied on festivals to get his film out there. A considerable challenge in a pandemic-stricken country, yet thanks to his tenacity and the flexibility of the festival circuit to adapt to our current world, A New York Christmas Wedding had a great run. “It would have been great to be at festivals to talk to people, but right now we just want the film to get out to as many people out virtually so when we go into distribution, we have that whisper campaign that we do have a built-in audience,” Abit told us in the middle of the run.
His campaign worked. His film played at the American Black Film Festival, the New York Latino Film Festival, Urbanworld Film Festival, Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival, and the Tallgrass Film Festival. For the Martha’s Vineyard African American Festival, co-founded by Stephanie and Floyd Rance, the latter of whom worked with Spike Lee, Abit’s feature joined a slew of others for Facebook-hosted screenings. In a normal year, the Rance’s host the festival in Martha’s Vineyard while also having screenings at a theater in Denver for people who can’t make the trip East.
As he’d planned, A New York Christmas Wedding came together on the strength of Abit’s short film, Jitters. “So what happened first was our main producer, Kory Apton, works at a company called Conglomerate Media, and she saw Jitters and enjoyed it, and were very surprised by the LGBTQ subtleties,” he says. “So Kory asked if we could incorporate that kind of story into a holiday film.” Abit mentioned a recent scenario in which The Hallmark Channel aired a same-sex couple kissing in a commercial (for Zola, a wedding company) and there was a backlash, so they pulled it down, stating at the time they do not accept ads “that are deemed controversial.” “Then the LGBTQ community responded, and asked them to look at their programming and realize they have no stories representing their community or minorities in the lead,” Abit says. “Kory then gave me four points to focus on, Christmas, wedding in a church, New York City, and an LGBTQ couple. I whipped up a treatment, then Kory and I worked out the story for a couple of months, and from there we were shooting a couple of months later. It happened very, very fast.”
Gabby & Jennifer alter
Taking on what should be a mainstream idea but still sadly isn’t—a wedding story set around the holidays and featuring LGBTQ+ characters—is in keeping with what Abit did with Jitters. Back in 2018, he told us that having a film centered on a Black man actually emoting and talking through his feelings—let alone a gay Black man—was what surprised and intrigued viewers and future collaborators. Jitters co-starred veteran actor Jason Patric, who Abit met while assistant directing on the Broadway play The Championship Season, where he also worked with Kiefer Sutherland, Chris Noth, Brian Cox, and Jim Gaffigan. Noth has a role in A New York Christmas Wedding. When we spoke to Patric back in 2018, he said that Abit’s attention to detail while working on The Championship Season, his learning “every single word of dialogue in the entire three-act play” proved to him that he had what it took to translate that into a modern feature film.
“I was writing about love and the two lead characters happened to be female,” Abit says about scripting his feature. “I was focusing on a storyline that normalizes love. With Jitters, people were moved to see two men getting married in a real church and how it looked so normal, so I wanted to keep the same sentiment in this film.”
Noth’s character, a priest who is progressive about same-sex marriage, is based on a real priest Abit knows. “He actually had notes about Chris’s character, and he was very supportive of this same-sex story. Then months later, while we were in post-production, he was removed from the ministry because the higher-ups at the church felt he was too progressive. Like the Pope said a couple of days ago that you should love LGBTQ kids for who they are. Some young LGBTQ people stop going to church because they feel the church is against them, but then there are people like this priest who really do accept people as they are. People have seen Chris’s character and think, wow, what a great character—but he’s based on a real person.”
Chris Noth and Otoja Abit.
Abit couldn’t have known—although he might have predicted—that the Pope would, weeks after we spoke, voice his support for same-sex civil unions. A New York Christmas Wedding will premiere in a changing world (and two days after the presidential election, hopefully, a very changed world), one in which Black and LGBTQ+ creatives are finally getting to tell their own stories, and the head of the Roman Catholic Church is, if incrementally, pushing his followers to see the humanity and love in LGBTQ+ relationships that’s so plain to the rest of us.
That sound you hear is tens of thousands of “Snyder Cut” Justice League fans going nuts. The Hollywood Reporterhas multiple sources that confirm that Jared Leto will be reprising his version of the Joker in Zack Snyder’s upcoming Justice League for HBO Max. Leto played the iconic supervillain in David Ayer’s 2016 Suicide Squad, and now THR says Leto has joined Snyder as he shoots additional footage for his long-awaited “Snyder Cut,” his vision for the 2017 superhero team-up film he had to leave in the middle of production. Leto’s involvement in the film is truly surprising, as in no previous mention or reporting on the slow-boil build-up of the “Snyder Cut” ever mentioned including the Joker in the story, let alone Leto’s version of him. Yet when you unpack the particulars, it starts to make sense.
Zack Snyder’s Justice League will ultimately land on HBO Max in 2021 in four installments. Snyder and his team are currently filming the reshoots now, including with Ben Affleck, Amber Heard, and Ray Fisher. THR‘s scoop of Leto’s involvement kicks the door wide open on just how narratively ambitious Snyder might be getting with his chance to reveal the Justice League of his dreams. Letos’ Joker had no part in the original 2017 film, and his inclusion begs the question of just how expansive these reshoots will be. Yet there is a key connection between Leto’s Joker to Snyder’s upcoming film—Snyder and his wife and partner Deborah Snyder were executive producers on Ayer’s Suicide Squad. That film was supposed to shepherd the expanding DC Extended Universe, although now James Gunn stepped in to reboot that franchise (for his upcoming The Suicide Squad) and it was thought Leto’s version of the Joker was done. (In one aspect, Ayer’s Suicide Squad did push the DCEU forward—it launched Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn into her own spinoff for Warner Bros.).
It’s all terribly intriguing. Zack Snyder’s Justice League is due on HBO Max sometime in 2021, and Leto’s infamous take on Gotham’s Clown Prince of Chaos will be a part of it.
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The official trailer for David Fincher’s Mank is here, and it looks as sumptuous as the teaser, only now with way more meat on the bones. Mank is Fincher’s first feature film since 2014’s Gone Girl—and in Fincherian fashion, it looks as taut and tense as a violin string. Making matters even more intriguing, Fincher’s film is based on a script from his father, Jack Fincher, and is centered on the legendary screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman), a talented but tortured soul battling alcoholism, a gambling addiction, and the pressure of trying to script what will become one of the most groundbreaking films ever made. That film is Orson Welles’ 1941 masterpiece Citizen Kane. The making of that film is the stuff of legend, and now that legend has a phenomenal director, cast, and crew to dramatize it.
“What is it a writer says? Tell the story you know,” a man says to Mank, who hears this bit of encouragement while laid up in the hospital. And the world that Mank knew was that of an outsider’s glimpse into the halls of power and prestige, which included newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, one of the most powerful men of his day. Mankiewicz knew Hearst socially, and along with the wunderkind director Welles, crafted their ingenious script around their Hearst-like central figure, Charles Foster Kane, and populated their story with characters pulled right out of Hearst’s life. Those included the character of Susan Alexander Kane, who was based on Hearst’s real-life mistress Marion Davies. The trailer reveals just how much pressure Mank was under, and how dangerous it was to mess with a man like William Randolph Hearst. Once Citizen Kane was released, Mankiewicz’s relationship with Hearst was over for good, and Hearst was so furious he forbade any of his newspapers from mentioning the film. It wouldn’t matter—Citizen Kane was a masterpiece.
Mank features an incredible cast surrounding Oldman, including Amanda Seyfried as Marion Davies, Tom Burke as Orson Welles, and Charles Dance as Hearst (it’s impossible to imagine any actor better suited for the role than the man who played Tywin Lannister on Game of Thrones.) Fincher’s Mindhunter DP Erik Messerschmidt and his trusty composing duo of Trent Reznor and Atticus Finch are on board as well.
Check out the official trailer here. Mank hits select theaters this November and premieres on Netflix on December 4.
Here’s the brief synopsis from Netflix:
1930s Hollywood is re-evaluated through the eyes of scathing social critic and alcoholic screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz as he races to finish the screenplay of Citizen Kane for Orson Welles.
Featured image: David Fincher’s MANK is a scathing social critique of 1930s Hollywood through the eyes of alcoholic screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman) as he races to finish the screenplay of Citizen Kane for Orson Welles. Gary Oldman on the set of Mank. Cr. Nikolai Loveikis.
While director Justin Lin is currently hard at work in postproduction on F9, Deadlinereports that Lin will also be directing the final two films in the epic saga. Universal Pictures will wrap up the franchise after Lin brings that final two films—10 and 11—to a close. The Fast & Furious franchise is the highest-grossing series in the studio’s history—beating out Jurassic Park, no less. Lin will steer the franchise to its close as its’ most tenured director, with F11 becoming his 7th Fast & Furious installment.
While little is known at this point what those final two films will entail, Deadline‘s Mike Fleming Jr. rightly speculates that they’ll likely tell one massive story, focusing on the series’ central star, Vin Diesel, and his assorted “family”—Michelle Rodriguez, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, Tyrese Gibson, Jordana Brewster, Nathalie Emmanuel, and Sung Kang. Meanwhile, we already know that F9 involves Charlize Theron’s Cipher, and includes some major stars making their first appearance, including Helen Mirren playing a woman named Magdalene Shaw, John Cena as Jakob Toretto (yup, he’s related to Diesel’s Dominic Toretto), and newcomers Cardi B and Reggaeton superstar Ozuna.
The question on everybody’s mind now that Fast & Furious is racing to a close is whether we’ll be seeing Dwayne Johnson’s Luke Hobbs and Jason Statham’s Deckard Shaw in the final two films. These two longtime Furious castmembers took a turn into their own spinoff, Hobbs & Shaw, and it’s widely known that Johnson and Diesel had some issues before that. Yet what more epic way to cap this full-throttle franchise than bringing back not Johnson and Statham for the last two films? And while we’re at it, why not Wonder Woman herself, Gal Gadot, who appeared in Fast & Furious (2009), Fast & Furious 6, and Furious 7 (2015)?
It was nearly two decades ago in 2001 when Diesel and Paul Walker launched the franchise in 2001. Walker tragically died in 2013, and the Fast & Furious gang, from that first, scrappy film, and through the tragedy of losing Walker, has become one of the most successful franchises in film history. And while there are only two more movies left in this particular series, there are already plans for spinoffs and TV shows. Family is forever.
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Featured image: MIAMI, FLORIDA – JANUARY 31: Justin Lin attends “The Road to F9” Global Fan Extravaganza at Maurice A. Ferre Park on January 31, 2020 in Miami, Florida. (Photo by Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images)
