Oscar-Nominated VFX Supervisor Paul Lambert on Infrared Insanity in “Dune: Part Two”

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In the first part of our conversation with Oscar nominee Paul Lambert, the visual effects supervisor of Dune: Part Two emphasized the benefits of utilizing as many of the practical shots as possible to maximize believability. A veteran of more than 25 years, he is aware that his best work may well go unnoticed: “My goal with visual effects is more about trying to hide everything I do than to make it stand out.” Today, he takes us into the black-and-write gladiator fighting sequence shot in infrared and how the thrilling worm-riding sequences were accomplished.

Caption: AUSTIN BUTLER as Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen in Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE: PART TWO,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures

How long did it take to complete VFX on this sequel?

22 months for me, from soft prep through prep, the shoot, and into post.

How big was your team?

Hundreds. I dealt directly with supervisors from each place—two supervisors at DNEG, one each at Wyley Co, Territory Studio, MPC, and RodeoFX. And each of them potentially had hundreds working for them across Vancouver, the U.K., Sydney, and Mumbai.

In the opening scene, Paul and Lady Jessica are hunted down by Harkonnen soldiers along these mountains on the desert planet Arrakis. At one point, the soldiers float up a rock face. How was that done?

We used six or seven different locations because of the light and the rock structure, so it was tricky maintaining continuity. Our stunt coordinator found positions in the sand that would work with cranes so that we could lift each soldier up on a big rope. They ran, and we took them as far as we could before it transitioned into CG. Rather than completely CG, we try to keep as much of it practical as possible until it doesn’t work, then we change to a digital version, which then goes up the mountain. When we’re looking down, we’re still pulling the Harkonnen soldiers up, but the ones further down are digital because we’ve just pushed the ground away to make it look like it’s a lot higher. For safety reasons, that was shot a lot closer to the ground.

Director of Photography GREIG FRASER on the set of Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE: PART TWO,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release.
Photo by Niko Tavernise

In the gladiator battle sequence, Fyed-Rautha (Austin Butler) fought under the black sun on Geidi Prime, and that black-and-white sequence was shot in infrared (“IR”), right?

Yes, that was an interesting one. It was one of the first things we did in Budapest. Denis wanted this otherworldly look for the world of Geidi Prime, and he and [cinematographer] Greig [Fraser] came up with this idea of doing everything in IR. It’s a very bold move because you can’t undo this once you’ve modified the cameras and taken out all the filters. You have to shoot in a very particular way. Greig shot everything to test every scenario. On one of the tests, two crew members were each wearing a black T-shirt, but through IR, one of them turned white, and the other one stayed black—it was impossible to figure out with the naked eye how and when the colors would change. When the costume department ran all their costumes through IR, one of the Baron’s black suits and Bene Gesserit’s black costume turned white. Denis absolutely loved it. I even tested the gaffer tape.

 

How did shooting in IR change your process?

That particular sequence was such a high-contrast view—we had white sand on the ground that we shot outside on sunny days in Budapest against the dark shadows, so there was massive contrast. I was worried about putting the stadium around them. But we were able to keep the shadows—every shadow you see in that sequence is the original shadow, except we’ve changed some of the shapes. We kept that because when you start changing something super high contrast, your eye picks up on it, and it no longer looks believable. We didn’t want to break the integrity of the image. Denis never wants a visual effect that takes you out of the movie. If we need to adapt something so it doesn’t make the visual effects stand out, we do that. And that’s a very rare thing. Another interesting thing that happened was that one of the soldiers fighting Fyed was covered in tattoos, and we could see it in IR, even after hair and makeup had painted them out. That didn’t fit the aesthetic of the film, so I had to deal with that in post. The tattoos were on his whole chest, arm, and back. It was quite complicated and took months to fix.

Shooting in IR. Lea Seydoux. Courtesy Warner Bros.

Now, let’s dig deeper into that first insane worm-riding sequence with Paul.

We spent a long time trying to find a dune for that sequence. Once we found it, there was a particular time of day when we could replicate the top section of that, when Paul is running and collapses down the dune. Our special effects supervisor set up three metal tubes in this smaller dune that we had created so the stunt guy could run along the ridge and get pulled and fall into the dune. Then, I extended the dune using aerial plates to make it feel as if we were way the heck higher. Because we were chasing the light, we could only do that at dawn. That took four attempts: we went back to the same spot on four different days to pull this off.

Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) waits for a sandworm in “Dune: Part Two.” Courtesy Warner Bros.
High shot of Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) waits for a sandworm in “Dune: Part Two.” Courtesy Warner Bros.

Your VFX team also had to chase the light with the rest of the crew.

Yes, visual effects had to capture that same time of day, so we can replicate that using other plate photography and CGI to match it exactly. This way, you buy that this huge worm has just crashed through this dune. [Special Effects Supervisor] Gerd [Nefzer] and [production designer] Patrice [Vermette] built a section of the worm in this sand-colored enclosure. The gimbal on it allowed us to change angles on it quite violently and spin it around. The crew who shot this sequence—we called them the “worm unit”—was run by [producer] Tanya Lapointe, and they could only shoot on sunny days. So it took a good few months to shoot that; sometimes, one shot would take a few days.

Riding a sandworm in “Dune: Part Two.” Courtesy Warner Bros.
The sandworm up close. Courtesy Warner Bros. Part Two.

Riding on this practical worm and being blasted with dust the entire day gave us some continuity issues. The stunt guy’s stillsuit was completely orange by the end of the day. So, in post, we extended some of the backgrounds and the worm, adding additional dust and all the helicopter plates. Because we had such a good capture, it’s kinda hard to mess up. But it was still a tricky sequence to integrate, and it took a long time to make it all look believable. It’s super rare to have that kind of time for a sequence like that.

Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) waits for a sandworm in “Dune: Part Two.” Courtesy Warner Bros.

Fremen warrior Chani (Zendaya)—and Paul’s romantic partner—also has a worm-riding scene. Was that handled like Paul’s sequences?

For that 30-second shot where Chani runs through a crowd while beating everybody up, we motion-captured the stunt performers doing all of that fighting. So that’s all digital until the very end when she turns into the camera, and we shot that in the desert with Zendaya. By having something real shot, we could back-time everything to fit that. Something that doesn’t usually happen is we brought Greig Fraser back in deep into the post so that he could take a virtual camera and see all the CG in front of him. Then, he re-photographed that particular move. Even though it was all CG, Greig actually did the photography for that all-CG shot. When you’re able to bring the DP back into post, it makes all the difference.

Zendaya is Chain in “Dune: Part Two.” Courtesy Warner Bros.

 

Nominated for five Academy Awards, Dune: Part Two is available for streaming on MAX and PVOD.

“The Brutalist” Producers on the Demands and Delights of Building a Masterpiece

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“Everybody was paddling in the same direction to support Brady’s vision, from the producers, the cast, the crew,” says The Brutalist producer Nick Gordon. “It’s a very special movie, and we’re glad it’s connecting with audiences in the way that it is.”

On a call with Gordon and fellow producer Trevor Matthews, the tandem behind Brookstreet Pictures explained how they helped director Brady Corbet create his masterpiece. At Brookstreet, Matthews serves as founder and CEO, and Gordon serves as president. Since 2004, they’ve produced over a dozen films, including Michael Keaton’s directorial debut Knox Goes Away (2023), a twisting tale about a contract killer with onset dementia. For The Brutalist, they helped deliver a three hour and 35 minute (15 minutes of which is a planned intermission) VistaVision epic that follows László Tóth (Adrien Brody), a Hungarian Jewish architect and Holocaust survivor who emigrates to post-war America to rebuild his career and reconnect with his wife (Felicity Jones). Its director, Brady Corbet, won the prestigious Silver Lion Award at Venice. Since the film debuted on the Lido, it’s received plenty of award season attention with three Golden Globes Awards, 9 BAFTA nominations, and 10 Oscar nominations, including best picture, directing, multiple acting nods, cinematography, score, and production design.

But with success, The Brutalist has received some online criticism over its use of generative AI, a discourse stemming from an article on production news outlet RedShark where editor Dávid Jancsó discussed the use of Respeecher, a generative voice tool, to “perfect” the Hungarian dialogue appearing in the film. Corbet released a statement on the matter, saying, “Adrien and Felicity’s performances are completely their own. They worked for months with dialect coach Tanera Marshall to perfect their accents. Innovative Respeecher technology was used in Hungarian language dialogue editing only, specifically to refine certain vowels and letters for accuracy. No English language was changed. This was a manual process done by our sound team and Respeecher in post-production. The aim was to preserve the authenticity of Adrien and Felicity’s performances in another language, not to replace or alter them, and done with the utmost respect for the craft.”

(L-R) Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones. Credit: Courtesy of A24

Corbet also pushed back on the use of generative technology during a sequence at the very end. “Judy Becker and her team did not use AI to create or render any of the buildings. All images were hand-drawn by artists. To clarify, in the memorial video featured in the background of a shot, our editorial team created pictures intentionally designed to look like poor digital renderings circa 1980.”

Asked about the situation, Matthews and Gordon agree that it’s been “overblown.” “It’s a three-and-a-half-hour film, and there are only a few moments where actual Hungarian is spoken. And not a second of either Felicity or Adrien’s spoken English with a Hungarian accent was touched,” says Gordon. Matthews added, “It’s kind of a shame. Aside from the fact that Adrien and Felicity worked so hard to develop those accents and create a believable performance—neither one of them spoke with a Hungarian accent—and so they developed one through hard work and dedication to the character for months. This is like talking about seconds of a microsecond.”

Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones. Courtesy 24.

Brookstreet joined The Brutalist producing team in 2020. “This was a project that had come out of a deal with Andrew Lauren Productions because they had been involved with Vox Lux [a film directed by Corbet starring Natalie Portman as a popstar prodigy who survived a mass school shooting]. They were looking for partners, so we came on,” says Gordon. “We built the structure that got the film made.”

Discussing their motivation, Gordon says, “We like to think of ourselves as cinephiles, and we believe in championing these tougher films because these are the movies that we grew up on. We try to build every movie where we can see a path of breaking even for the investors, and if we can do that, you take the risk. It’s not a decision that happens overnight. You’re chipping away, and you’re adding pieces. As we were putting the cast together, putting the crew together…when you bring in Judy Becker, Daniel Blumberg, and Lol Crawley to the table and you’ve got Adrien Brody, Guy Pearce, Felicity Jones, and Joe Alwyn…you’re like, we have to make this. We’d be insane not to, right?”

(L-R) Adrien Brody, Guy Pearce. Credit: Courtesy of A24

Helping move the project forward was the “phenomenal script” from Corbet and Mona Fastvold. “It was one of the best scripts we ever read. It just screamed quality. And Brady’s vision and his ability to communicate it and attract the right people to get involved was premium on every level,” says Matthews.

A producing hurdle was finding creative ways to maximize the money meant to go on screen, a budget Corbet says was $10 million. “Every department needed to be lean, and that applied to the producing team as well,” says Gordon. “We had to find the right places to maximize the tax credits and soft money but not sacrifice anything creatively. The great thing about Hungary is it’s almost trapped in the 1950s in a way due to the very traumatic and serious events that have historically happened there. The architecture and look of the locations and buildings that we found fit perfectly.” The producing team packaged together multiple tax rebates to stretch budgets. “We put together not just one tax rebate but two by making an international co-production. We had to try to create a post-production deal,” notes Matthews. “This film is not overtly commercial when you pitch it, so it was a real challenge. Without Brady’s understanding of the creative and exactly what he needed and what he didn’t need, we wouldn’t have been able to pull it off.”

Guy Pearce. Credit: Courtesy of A24

Following its Venice premiere, The Brutalist struck a reported deal around $10 million with A24, the distributor turned studio behind Ladybird, Midsommar, Uncut Gems, and Academy Award best picture winners Moonlight and Everything Everywhere All at Once.

“A24 is the cream of the crop, so we were lucky to be in the position we found ourselves in coming out of Venice. It felt like a total game changer because we were the belle of the ball,” notes Gordon. However, the A24 name wasn’t the only deciding factor. “When you’re talking about the release and distribution of something you’ve worked so hard on for so many years, there are a lot of factors,” says Matthews. “Of course, you want the investor group to get their money back, but that’s definitely not the only consideration. It’s about which company is the most motivated, the most excited about the potential for the movie, and what they’re willing to do to bring it to its intended market. Sometimes, you may have two or three very comparable companies that are all highly capable of doing the job. But one’s saying the right thing and is hungrier than the others to help bring the film to the market. And that’s motivating for us.”

Adrien Brody in “The Brutalist.” Courtesy of A24

Another factor was that A24 had no intention to change the film in front of them. “This is a very filmmaker-driven piece, and A24 supported Brady’s vision,” says Gordon. “I’ve said this in other interviews, but we really do throw the word visionary around lightly these days. But with Brady, it 100% applies. He not only had every shot of the film in his head but the storyline of how this would meet the world.”

(L-R) n/a, Joe Alwyn, Guy Pearce, Stacy Martin, Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones, Raffey Cassidy. Credit: Courtesy of A24

Asked what’s next for Brookstreet, Matthews says, “We’d love to keep doing what we’re doing and, of course, scale it up. We’d love to go from one movie a year to two or three a year. And we’d love the quality of the partners and artists that we work alongside to continue to be at this caliber. Making both Knox Goes Away and The Brutalist kind of back-to-back definitely put some new tools in the toolkit. It showed us what we’re capable of and what we can achieve. We definitely want to roll up our sleeves and put our skills to use and keep trying to make meaningful and important cinema.” Their next film set for theatrical release is Mr. Burton, a biopic about famed Welsh actor Richard Burton.

The Brutalist is in select theaters now, and video is on demand. 

 

Featured image: Alessandro Nivola and Adrien Brody. Courtesy A24.

Oscar Nominated VFX Supervisor Paul Lambert on Turning the Worm in “Dune: Part Two”

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Just nominated for his fourth Oscar for Dune: Part Two, VFX Supervisor Paul Lambert is a three-time Oscar winner—for Damien Chazelle’s First Man and two of director Denis Villeneuve’s films, Blade Runner 2049 and Dune: Part One. Having now worked on three of Villeneuve’s films thanks to Part Two, he has developed a shorthand with the director that makes overseeing hundreds of visual effects staff across multiple VFX houses go as smoothly as possible. “We have a very similar sensibility. We had an instant connection on the set of Blade Runner 2049,” Lambert says. “There was a day when we were both watching the screen, and he started talking about negative space, what he saw, and what it meant to him. That’s when I knew he’s a visionary director.”

We recently talked to Lambert about the exhilarating sequel that picks up after the House of Atreides was defeated by the Harkonnens following a devastating ambush in Part One. Once the heir, Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet), and his mother, Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), find refuge with the Fremens on the desert planet Arrakis, they combine forces to mount an insurgency against the Harkonnens’ tyrannical rule.

 

What makes Denis’ projects so much fun to work on?

The great thing about working with Denis is there aren’t any big egos. Everybody’s trying to do their best work, which always benefits me because I need the best in order to augment what’s been shot.

I’ve read that Denis likes to shoot practically as much as possible. How do you avoid using synthetic light to match the natural light captured in the practical shots?

We never intended to replicate the desert light in a studio, even though it would’ve been so much easier. Denis wanted natural light, so we had to chase the sun. Scenes that required sunset meant we had to keep going back to the same spot every day at the same time until we got it.

Riding a sandworm in “Dune: Part Two.” Courtesy Warner Bros.

How much of the action sequences were extended from real shots versus entirely created digitally?

We try to add to the plate photography rather than replace it. I’m a big believer that VFX shouldn’t try to change too much. When we’re on the sand dunes, we had a lot of helicopter plates, with the helicopter flying really low to sweep across the sand. Then, we sped those up. When we had to turn the sandworm during a sequence, it was too dangerous to fly a real helicopter straight towards the dune. So, that dune was a CG dune placed on top of the aerial plate.

High shot of Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) waits for a sandworm in “Dune: Part Two.” Courtesy Warner Bros.
Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) waits for a sandworm in “Dune: Part Two.” Courtesy Warner Bros.

Whenever the worm travels through or crashes into the sand, we changed that section of the dune. If you can retain things in the plate, when you’re doing extensions, you always have the reference point of what was there in the first place, as opposed to never going into the desert and making it all up [digitally], because then, you’re spending all your time trying to make something believable. But if you shoot practical and then augment what you’ve shot, you’re already in a place where things are believable. So even though we had a multitude of shots that were CG, we always had a plate first, so we knew the amount of light, shadow, contrast range, etc. I always compare it to the plate, and if it feels different, then it gets kicked back.

Caption: A scene from Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE: PART TWO,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures

What are the major differences compared to Part One?

Since this story comes directly after Part One, you might assume it’s plug-and-play with everything we had created for the first one. But absolutely everything changed! I think there’s one shot in Dune Two that uses the original ornithopter from Dune One. Every set is in a different place now. The ornithopters became Harkonnen with the design change, so we had to build that digitally. The Harkonnen troop carrier was even bigger, and we built that digitally, too.

Ornithopter in “Dune: Part Two.” Courtesy Warner Bros.

We barely saw the sandworms in Part One, but now we have several pulse-pounding worm-riding sequences with Paul on Arrakis.

Since we now have Paul riding on the worm, you see its skin so much closer. So, that was redone at a much higher scale. The art department built a version of the worm with a gimbal on it for the stunt performer, Paul (Chalamet) or Chani (Zendaya), to ride on it. We could twist it around and turn it towards the sun and get all that motion. We spent a month in Jordan and another month in the UAE, compared to seven days on the first film. 

Riding a sandworm in “Dune: Part Two.” Courtesy Warner Bros.

When Paul, Chani, and the Fremens take out the spice crawlers, that was all done in the UAE. For that, we had to build roads and concrete plates in the desert to use the cranes and tractors. Each leg on the spice crawler is a tractor with an art department leg that we moved around to get the correct shadows when the actors ran in between the legs. Then, I extended that out.

Attacking the spice crawler. Courtesy Warner Bros.
Attacking the spice crawler. Courtesy Warner Bros.
Attacking the spice crawler. Courtesy Warner aBros.

Speaking of sandworms, when the water master extracts the Water of Life from the baby sandworm, was that special effects or fully digital?

That was done with a practical puppet and three puppeteers with sticks and a string pulling on the puppet worm. We painted out the people in the frame and added a bit of compression to the worm skin, to make it look more like an accordion.

Lady Jessica is pregnant with baby Alia, and they communicate telepathically from inside the womb. Is that all CGI or some form of animatronic/special effects?

Baby Aliyah was a prosthetic in liquid inside a glass tank. We spent a long time coming up with the combination of the liquid, light, and movement to make that work. We shot hours of that footage to have her move in a realistic way. Then we changed her eyes in CG just to add the small sub-blink. That was a great collaboration between the practical and the digital—it’s always about what’s best for the shot.

Check back tomorrow for part two of our chat, where Lambert goes into more detail on the epic worm-riding sequences and how shooting in infrared presented an unexpected challenge.

Featured image: A shot of the sandworm during digital construction in “Dune: Part Two.” Courtesy Warner Bros.

The Bad Guys Assemble in Meaty “Thunderbolts” Super Bowl Trailer

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Marvel’s antiheroes unleashed a new trailer during Sunday night’s Super Bowl (in which the Philadelphia Eagles decimated the Kansas City Chiefs). The Super Bowl trailer for Marvel’s Thunderbolts is set to Starship’s “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now,” with Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova/Black Widow feeling a lot less confident then we’ve seen her in the past. In fact, she needs her fellow ‘Bolts to give her a pep talk and get her head back in the game.

“We can’t do this. No one here is a hero,” Yelena says, but her dear old dad, David Harbour’s Alexei Shostakov/Red Guardian, has some wisdom for her: “Yelena, when I look at you, I don’t see your mistakes. That’s why we need each other.”

The Thunderbolts team is made up of Pugh’s Black Widow butt-kicker, her dad, the Red Guardian, and a slew of Marvel villains who have just enough moral flexibility to do good. Or, at least, be a little better than the even worse guys. Those include Sebastian Stan’s Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier (although to be fair, he’s been a good guy for a while now), Hannah John-Kamen’s Ghost (from the first Ant-Man), Olga Kurlyenko’s Taskmaster (from Black Widow), and Wyatt Russell’s John Walker (from The Falcon and the Winter Soldier).

So, who assembled this bad dream team? You can thank Julia Louis-Drefyus’s Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, who believes that the world is not made up of good guys and bad guys, a very pedestrian and naive way to look at things. In her sage estimation, there are bad guys, like our Thunderbolts, and there are worse guys. The bad guys are then, ipso facto, potential heroes. The worse guys need to be dealt with. 

Directed by Jake Schreier, Thunderbolts is the MCU’s first proper villains-own-the-day team-up flick, like what Warner Bros. had with The Suicide Squad, and comes from a script by Black Widow writer Eric Pearson.

Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige joked way back at D23 in 2022 when Thunderbolts was introduced that the team must be pretty rough around the edges when “beloved Winter Soldier is the most stable among them.” 

Thunderbolts is due in theaters on May 2, 2025. Check out all the Super Bowl trailer below:

For more on Thunderbolts, check out these stories:

Marvel Reveals First “Thunderbolts” Trailer Unleashes the Bad Guys on the Worse Guys

Florence Pugh Plays By Her Own Rules in Set Video From Marvel’s “Thunderbolts”

Marvel Studios’ “Thunderbolts” Eyeing “Top Gun: Maverick” Star Lewis Pullman for Big Role

Featured image: (L-R) Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), John Walker (Wyatt Russell), and Red Guardian/Alexei Shostakov (David Harbour) in Marvel Studios’ THUNDERBOLTS*. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. © 2024 MARVEL.

Brad Pitt Gets Behind the Wheel in “F1” Teaser Released During Super Bowl

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Brad Pitt is suited up and strapped in for the first look at F1, unleashed during the Philadelphia Eagles domination of the reigning champs, the Kansas City Chiefs, during Sunday night’s Super Bowl.

F1 stars Pitt as Sonny Hayes, a former driver who returns to Formula 1 alongside Damson Idris as Joshua Pearce, his teammate at APXGP, a fictional team on the circuit. The feature, from Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski, was shot during actual Grand Prix weekends, as Sonny and Joshua’s team competes against the titans of the sport. Kosinski worked from a script by Ethan Kruger, his collaborator on Maverick. 

Idris was candid in a conversation with Vanity Fair last year about what it was like for him to film F1.  “I look to my left, it’s Brad Pitt. I look to my right, it’s Javier Bardem. I look at my hands, they’re shaking. And we shoot all of this epic stuff, and all the amazing drivers are there, from Lewis [Hamilton] to [Max] Verstappen to everyone.”

The experience was incredible but also exhausting, Idris told VF, shooting inside of race cars in Abu Dhabi. “I was in the car for 45 minutes today. It sounds normal, but it’s not. It’s very hot out here. You’re strapped in, sweating through the helmet. You lose so much weight.”

Idris also told VF that Pitt is a legitimate racecar driver. “Talk about a superstar. His humility is second to none. I don’t know if people know this, but he is really good behind that car. Really good. Too good, almost. He makes me nervous how good he is.”

Idris was equally enthused about working with Kosinski. “He is a director’s director. He is the epitome of cinema in my opinion. The feeling I felt when I walked out of Top Gun was how I felt when I was a kid and I watched E.T. or Star Wars. Those movies are just defined by one thing: entertainment. Everyone, no matter what your background, could come and watch this film.… His process is amazing.”

Joining Pitt and Idris are Kerry Condon, Tobias Menzies, Kim Bodnia, Sarah Niles, Joseph Balderrama, Rachel Waters, and Javier Bardem.

F1 races into theaters on June 27. Check out the teaser below.

For more on Warner Bros., DC Studios, Max, and more, check out these stories:

Mike White Promises a Much Darker Season of “The White Lotus”

Ryan Coogler Unpacks the Ferocious Trailer For his Genre-Fluid New Film “Sinners”

Death Stalks the Vacationers in “The White Lotus” Season 3 Trailer

New “Superman” Teaser Sets Up an Epic Showdown With a Confident Lex Luthor

Featured image: Brad Pitt is Sonny Hates in “F1.” Courtesy Warner Bros.

“Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” Launches Tom Cruise Into the Super Bowl

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If this is Tom Cruise’s last mission as IMF Agent Ethan Hunt, he chose an auspicious time to unleash a furious new look—in the midst of the Philadelphia Eagles prime time demolition of the reigning champs in the Kansas City Chiefs during the Super Bowl. The game wasn’t close, but Ethan’s hunt (pun intended) to secure a rogue AI and save the world is balanced on a knife’s edge.

The fresh look at Cruise’s 8th mission in the decades-old franchise, which began with 1996’s Mission: Impossible and has become arguably the greatest showcase for practical stunts in the history of cinema, holds little back. Cruise and Co. have been teasing each installment’s defining stunt for nearly a decade at this point, from Cruise hanging off the side of an Airbus A400m in Rogue Nation to his record-breaking HALO skydive and his mastery of helicopter piloting in Fallout. 

So what’s the lunatic stunt that Cruise, director Christopher McQuarrie, and longtime stunt coordinator Wade Eastwood have cooked up this time? All we know thus far is it involves Cruise once again hanging on for dear life to an aircraft, this time, an upside-down propeller plane.

Cruise is joined by longtime IMF partners Ving Rhames as Luther Stickell and Simon Pegg as Benji Dunn, his two closest compatriots. The cast also includes Hayley Atwell as Grace, Esai Morales as the bad guy Gabriel, Henry Czerny as Eugene Kittridge, Pom Klementieff as Paris, Vanessa Kirby as the White Widow, and Hannah Waddingham, Nick Offerman, Katy O’Brian and Tramell Tillman.

So is this Cruise’s actual final mission? He hasn’t been completely convincing either way, telling Empire “You gotta see the movie,” when asked if it was his last go-round as the unkillable agent. “It’s a hard thing for me to discuss at the moment because it really is something that you have to experience.”

Dead Reckoning left us with a very dramatic cliffhanger, with Ethan and his team doing battle against The Entity, a rogue AI that is threatening global security. The key to the AI was a literal key, one that could control or destroy the Entity, which Ethan and his team finally secured by the end of the film. Yet, Dead Reckoning ended with a reveal of a sunken submarine loaded with secrets, the AI’s original resting place, teasing audiences that Ethan’s fight to control the Entity and secure the planet was only just the beginning.

Check out the new Big Game spot below. Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning arrives May 23, 2025.

 

Featured image: Tom Cruise plays Ethan Hunt and Simon Pegg plays Benji Dunn in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning from Paramount Pictures and Skydance.

“Emilia Pérez’s” Oscar-Nominated Cinematographer Paul Guilhaume on Finding the Light in the Darkness

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By now, you’ve either seen or definitely heard about Emilia Pérez. If you haven’t yet seen the film, then likely the first thing you heard was about its accolades—it’s the most Oscar-nominated film of the year, 13 in all. The other story that you’ve definitely heard about is the attention swirling around Emilia herself, Karla Sofía Gascón, the Oscar-nominated star of the film, who is at the center of controversy over her offensive, now-deleted social media posts that have drawn outrage and led to several apologies from Gascón. Before these hurtful comments came to light, what people were drawn to was a film made up of and performed by some immensely talented people who were elevated not only by Gascón’s performance (she’s the first transgender woman to be nominated for best performance by an actress), but by performances by her Oscar-nominated counterpart Zoe Saldana, a perfectly cast Selena Gomez, and a filmmaking team that cohered to get Pérez nominated for Best Picture, along with nominations in a slew of craft categories, including makeup and hairstyling, original score, original song, adapted screenplay, sound, and a best director nomination for Jacques Audiard.

For those still not clued into what swept Emilia Pérez through this whirlwind Oscar season and why it’s been such a hot topic even long before the controversy, here’s the plot sketch: a seasoned cartel leader transitions to live as a woman, then partners with the lawyer who made it possible in order to take on an entirely new moral identity in a libretto-meets-film noir from aforementioned French director Jacques Audiard (A Prophet, Paris, 13th District). Zoe Saldaña stars as lawyer Rita, and when we first meet Gascón, she’s the cartel kingpin Manitas. After winning a high-profile but morally dubious murder case, Rita is enlisted to help Manita’s transition and disappear, then move her client’s wife, Jessi (Selena Gomez), and children safely to Switzerland.

Karla Sofía Gascón as Manitas (left) and Zoe Saldaña as Rita Moro in Emilia Perez. Cr. Shanna Besson/Pathé © 2024.

“The movie had been looking for its own identity. It was drifting [between] so many possibilities. At one point, it was almost two projects, one with music, one without,” said Paul Guilhaume, Audiard’s Oscar-nominated cinematographer, who also worked with him on Paris, 13th District and The Bureau. After multiple screen tests and scouting in Mexico, Audiard arrived at the idea of making Emilia Pérez an opera and film in one. “He wanted to take the film away from reality and not make anything that would be too anchored into social or geographical reality,” said Guilhaume. Visiting clinics in Bangkok and Tel Aviv, scenes punctuated by musical numbers theatrical yet poignant, Rita completes her client’s mission, then expects never to see her again. But Emilia emerges at a dinner in London to seek out Rita’s help again. She needs her children back and entrusts Rita to be the fixer to deliver them. Jessi and Rita will be introduced to her household in Mexico, where she will be introduced as the children’s aunt.

Emilia Pérez. (Featured L-R) Zoe Saldaña as Rita Moro Castro and Karla Sofía Gascón as Emilia Pérez in Emilia Pérez. Cr. Netflix © 2024.

Audiard, Guilhaume, and the VFX team progressively adjusted the film’s aesthetic, always looking for a balance between the studio setting and a sense of realism. “This was how the project itself guided its own aesthetic,” Guilhaume said. Its beating heart is the musical numbers, which vary widely in their stylistic approach. Back in Mexico and focused on anti-cartel work, for example, Rita takes the stage in an electrifying solo performance at a charity gala.

 

“She had to take control of the film, and visually, this translated to taking control of the lighting. She points it in different directions in space. She takes control of the camera, which seems to be almost magnetized to her face, following her movements,” Guilhaume explained. At each juncture, the story drove the idea of how to film, particularly in terms of the musical elements. “A very important thing in Jacques’ mind was that the movie would be a musical where the story is incorporated in the songs, as opposed to a story that would develop, and then we reach a musical and dance moment that just sums everything up,” the cinematographer said.

Emilia Pérez. Zoe Saldaña as Rita Moro Castro in Emilia Pérez. Cr. Shanna Besson/PAGE 114 – WHY NOT PRODUCTIONS – PATHÉ FILMS – FRANCE 2 CINÉMA © 2024.

Emilia Pérez also has a distinctly different feeling in the first and second acts—the former is dark and gritty, and the second, as the women expose the cartels’ sins, is itself comparatively flooded with light. “As a DP, when you receive a script, and you have a fourth of the film, or maybe more, happening at night, you are really thrilled. But then come all the problems and the questions. How do we tell the story with the right amount of darkness but still keeps some energy?” Guilhaume said. He and Audiard achieved this by using almost entirely practical lighting in the studio setting where the film was primarily shot. In addition to creating contrast and richness, “it brings us an image that’s very dynamic, because when the camera moves, it captures a subtle flare or a shift in the contrast, it creates little accidents which can be what we miss when we film in a studio,” he said.

Édgar Ramírez as Gustavo in Emilia Pérez. Cr. PAGE 114 – WHY NOT PRODUCTIONS – PATHÉ FILMS – FRANCE 2 CINÉMA © 2024.

The film also balances theatricality with realism through movement. Whether it’s the lighting, camera, or what the actors are doing, Guilhaume explained, “the key thing is to find movement and energy in each frame, sequence, and act of the film.”  

Emilia Pérez. (Featured) Cinematographer Paul Guilhaume on the set of Emilia Pérez. Cr. PAGE 114 – WHY NOT PRODUCTIONS – PATHÉ FILMS – FRANCE 2 CINÉMA © 2024.

Even in the editing, “you can see that they subtly guide your eyes from one side of the screen, and then next cut, the eyes are starting from the same place. It keeps the audience on their toes in terms of movement,” he said. For Guilhaume, this temporal approach to Emilia Pérez was a new aspect of his cooperation with director Audiard, an acclaimed director as hard to categorize as the project itself. “He’d rather take huge risks on each project than do what he’s already known to be good at. He totally could have done A Prophet all of his life, you know? But he just kept on reinventing himself.” Guilhaume said. “In the process, he’s going in a direction where we don’t know anything, but we’re going to find it.”

For more on Emilia Pérez, check out these stories:

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Featured image: Emilia Pérez. (Featured) Selena Gomez as Jessi on the set of Emilia Pérez. Cr. PAGE 114 – WHY NOT PRODUCTIONS – PATHÉ FILMS – FRANCE 2 CINÉMA © 2024.

Rihanna Has Entered Her Blue Era in First “Smurfs” Trailer

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Ladies and gentlemen, Rihanna has entered her blue era.

Director Chris Miller’s Smurfs has the most potent possible Smurfette leading the new movie—yes, Rihanna—and she’s front and center in the first trailer for the film.

While Rihanna is undoubtedly the biggest star in just about any room or scene she’s in, animated or not, the heart of the Smurfs is the entire village of characters created by the Belgian comic artist and writer Peyo. Miller’s Smurf, packed with A-list talent, derived its inspiration from Peyo,who the director spoke about during a presentation last year at the Annecy Animation Festival in June. “The DNA in Peyo’s original drawings guide so many creative choices in the film. It’s the blueprint for the kind of film I want to make. All of the action lines and thought bubbles from the comics are going in the movie, and the comics have inspired the style of animation to be fun and buoyant, with plenty of squash and stretch.”

As for Rihanna, her presence on The Smurfs goes beyond just playing the beloved Smurfette—she’s also a producer and has written, produced, and sung new original songs that guide the film.

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Rihanna is joined by a very talented cast, including Nick Offerman, Natasha Lyonne, Daniel Levy, Amy Sedaris, Nick Kroll, James Corden, Octavia Spencer, Hannah Waddingham, Sandra Oh, Alex Winter, Billie Lourd, Xolo Maridueña, Kurt Russell and John Goodman.

Miller’s Smurfs follows decades of popularity for the little blue humanoids and their mushroom-shaped houses, from their 1980s cartoon TV series to Sony’s 2011 The Smurfs that featured Katy Perry as Smurfette, and the sequel, Smurfs: The Lost Village, where Demi Lovato stepped into the Smurfette role.

Miller directs from a script by Pam Brandy. Smurfs hits theaters on July 18.

Here’s the official synopsis for Smurfs:

When Papa Smurf (John Goodman) is mysteriously taken by evil wizards, Razamel and Gargamel, Smurfette (Rihanna) leads the Smurfs on a mission into the real world to save him. With the help of new friends, the Smurfs must discover what defines their destiny to save the universe. SMURFS features an all-star voice cast including Rihanna, James Corden, Nick Offerman, JP Karliak, Daniel Levy, Amy Sedaris, Natasha Lyonne, Sandra Oh, Octavia Spencer, Nick Kroll, Hannah Waddingham, Alex Winter, Maya Erskine, Billie Lourd, Xolo Maridueña with Kurt Russell and John Goodman.

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Featured image: LAS VEGAS, NEVADA – APRIL 27: Rihanna speaks onstage, promoting the upcoming Smurfs film, for the Paramount Pictures presentation during CinemaCon 2023, the official convention of the National Association of Theatre Owners, at Caesars Palace on April 27, 2023 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images for CinemaCon)

“Presence” Screenwriter David Koepp on Writing a Ghost Story Told by the Ghost

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One of the unwritten rules of screenwriting is you don’t put camera direction in the script. It’s about the worst possible move for a writer, a serious no-no in Hollywood, and the number one way to guarantee your work never gets produced. But in the case of Presence, a new, propulsively effective haunted-house movie with a twist, it was possible for the screenwriter David Koepp to put such objections aside and embrace the visual possibilities because the camera, in this story, also happens to be the title character. Both are referred to as “we” in the script.

“I’ve written POV shots, of course,” said Koepp, one of the busiest and most highly regarded screenwriters in Hollywood. “But I’ve never written a whole movie from one limited point of view. The presence itself, played by the camera, is in every single scene.”  

The idea for Presence, in theaters now, came from Steven Soderbergh, whose mother was a parapsychologist; she even looked like Beatrice Straight in Poltergeist. Soderbergh self-financed the production and shot and directed it. It’s the second collaboration (following KIMI, a 2022 tech-thriller with Zoe Kravitz) for the longtime friends.

Presence involves a family that moves into a house inhabited by an unknown spirit. Weird, supernatural stuff ensues following a recent death, and the family unravels as secrets are kept and exposed. Lucy Liu is the steely mother, who seems to be moving funds around in ways that aren’t entirely legal, dotting on her high school-athlete son (Eddie Maday), and ignoring her sad and confused teenage daughter (Callina Liang), who’s suffered a recent trauma. The father (Chris Sullivan) makes an effort to be the responsible parent but is too weak and fearful. The entity doesn’t know why it’s there or who these people are, but we start to think something may have happened in the house. It’s a tightly constructed story that all takes place in one location (each scene is shot as an oner), and there’s an undercurrent of mounting dread.  

When it debuted at the Sundance Festival, Presence received rave reviews and a few buzzy headlines after some people at the screening walked out, too frightened to stick around for the finale of the 85-minute movie. Neon, the hip indie distributor, swooped it up for $5 million.

A tightly-wound, smaller-scale movie that gives you the shivers is a nice change of pace for Koepp, whose credits are lined with titles that tend to fill popcorn buckets, not festival lineups. Pick a title: Carlito’s Way, the original Mission: Impossible and Spider-Man movies, and Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds. After breaking into the movies in 1989 with Apartment Zero, a Polanskian thriller set in Argentina that he co-wrote and produced, Koepp has continued to work at a breakneck pace. He once had eight of his screenplays made into films over a five-year period. 

His next film, Black Bag (out March 14 and also directed by Soderbergh), is a spy story about a married couple, played by Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender. This summer will have Jurassic World Rebirth, Koepp’s first return to the franchise since writing the original Jurassic Park movie and its sequel, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, both directed by Spielberg. Koepp said, “Rebirth is a little more like the tone of the very first movie.” He’s also written a new U.F.O. movie for Spielberg that’s in pre-production.

Our conversation, which covered his fears as a parent, the movies that deserve more recognition from the Oscars, and why hope is one of his hallmarks, has been edited and condensed. 

 

What kinds of reactions have you gotten to Presence?

They’ve been great. I’ve had a chance to see it with different audiences because it’s played at several festivals, and there’d be Q&As, so I’d end up watching the movie many times, and it plays one of my favorite ways. Unless you have a comedy where you really want to hear people, rapt attention is the best you can ask for, and that’s what it’s getting. But the calls and emails I’ve gotten from friends who’ve seen it, they’ve also been surprised. They find it quite emotional and moving, and that made me happy because it felt that way to me when I was writing it.

Much of the talk surrounding the movie has been about its POV format: the camera is the ghost. What’s the trick to writing for a character we can’t see?

Accepting that it is a character, and it’s got to be fleshed out in your mind. In the pages that [Soderbergh] sent me when he first had the idea for the movie, there would be these little moments where the presence retreats into a closet. And I said, okay, it’s shy, it’s jumpy. So then I had to keep in mind that the movie isn’t a four-character piece; this is a five-character piece, and the presence itself, played by the camera, is in every single scene. We do not see this character, but we experience the film as that character. And so, if you watch the film a second time, you see the presence getting emboldened as the movie goes on. From that opening shot, it’s very anxious and confused as it searches an empty house. Then a family comes in, and it’s drawn to them, the daughter in particular, and it gets braver. But then it gets frightened, and then it slowly learns it can maybe manipulate events a little bit.

L-r: Lucy Liu, Eddy Maday, Callina Liang, and Chris Sullivan in “Presence.” Courtesy Neon.

You said writing this kind of movie meant writing about your own fears as a parent. So how much of you is in the dad?

I certainly related to him. I have [a family], and raising four kids is a pretty wild ride. Certainly, his fears about what’s out there are very real fears I share. So, I don’t know. Quite a bit, probably.

[Start Spoiler Alert!] The issue of control looms large in this story. One scene that stuck with me is when the daughter and a guy-friend (West Mulholland) go up to her bedroom. Although he’s reassuring her that she can decide how it all goes with them, we get the sense that this guy is someone to stay away from.

Well, he’s full of shit. Ryan is a manipulator and a user of the worst kind. Certainly, for a number of years, there’s been a great deal more sensitivity to the notion of consent, particularly sexually, and I think Ryan has picked up all that lingo, and he’s using it to further his own aims, which are not so pure. 

West Mulholland as Ryan and Callina Liang as Chloe in “Presence.” Courtesy Neon.

When you and Soderbergh were developing Presence, how did you see this film taking shape? Were you very clear about the stuff you didn’t want in the movie?

So much was dictated by location and budget. We wanted it to be all in one house, partly for aesthetic reasons and partly for budgetary ones, because Steve was paying for the movie himself, and $2 million is gone before you know it. We also weren’t particularly interested in jump scares. This is not a scary movie; it’s an eerie movie, filled with dread, and it’s quite unsettling, a really intense experience. The last 15 minutes are hard for me. In some of the screenings, I leave early because I just don’t want to go through that every time.

I noticed the idea of hope tends to come up in your screenplays. In your first film, Apartment Zero, there’s a character who talks about hope for their building’s occupants, and when doing press for Stir of Echoes, a murder mystery movie, you said the belief that ghosts exist is hopeful.

Of course, I’ve written a bunch of dark stuff, but what’s wrong with hope? It’s that great last line from “The Count of Monte Cristo,” you know, “all of human knowledge can be summed up in two words: wait and hope.” I think on a good day, I remember that when stories are hopeful, they can touch us, and that’s worth remembering.

The New Yorker once ran a piece on you with the headline:  “David Koepp is a Very Nice Screenwriter. Really.” Does that mean you’re the type to welcome studio notes?

Sometimes. I think as the budget goes up, the number of notes you get and the number of sources they come from increases, and you do have to listen. It doesn’t mean you have to take the note. Your responsibility is always to write the best possible movie. My general credo is that if it makes a movie better, I’ll absolutely take that note. But I’ve learned in all the years that the best response you can have to any note is, “That’s interesting. Let me think about it.” And you should stop and do it.

What’s a common note you get?

“More sympathy for the guy,” meaning whoever. Also, “higher stakes in the third act.”

Do you have a favorite note?

On Jurassic Park, [Spielberg] gave me a great note. We were working on outlines in treatment form, and I think he called after the first draft and said, “Wait, aren’t we supposed to be having fun?” Because I had made it all dower and unpleasant. That was all he had to say. It was like, Yeah, wait, let me do a quick pass on this and get it back to you. Movie scripts are like planning a rocket launch. If you’re off by just a bit, you miss the moon by 10,000 miles. So, a little course correction like that is really useful.

Who inspires you as a screenwriter?

Well, my favorites are Bo Goldman (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), who’s no longer with us but boy, did he have great ideas. You can’t write in his style, but the sort of freshness of his approach, the idea of the reversal — that things pivot in the middle of a scene — those are great traits. Larry Kasdan (Raiders of the Lost Ark), I love and admire. Those were probably my heroes. My sometime writing partner, John Kamps (Premium Rush), inspires me. I think he has great insights into people.

We know you like that movie game where people guess the film based on the names of the three actors who appear in it.

Yeah. Oh, you got a hard one, don’t you?

Here’s what I got for you: Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor, and Coleman Domingo.

[Laughs.] Well, it’s an untitled movie, but you almost got me. You’re describing the exciting Steven Spielberg film that starts shooting in four weeks. (Koepp wrote the screenplay.)

It’s the new UFO movie you wrote for Spielberg that’s going to be filmed in New Jersey. We take it you’ve been sworn to secrecy, but maybe you could tell us if the movie has anything to do with the recent drone sightings that alarmed lawmakers and local officials? 

Yeah, that was us, actually. It was just a test shoot. We’re very sorry.

Seriously, is there anything you could tell us?

Not only have I been sworn to secrecy, I’ve been reprimanded for not adhering strictly enough to the secrecy.

Okay, we get it. Spielberg did feed you to the dinosaurs for your cameo in The Lost World: Jurassic Park.

Yeah, there’s some hostility there. No, I understand and respect the fact that Steven works very hard to make things surprising, and that’s a lot of creative value. So I’m not going to mess with it.

About that cameo, so did you actually write your own death into the script?

Yeah, [laughs] I thought it’d be really fun. I had myself in mind from the beginning and pitched myself very hard when I turned in the script.

How did your character intro read?

Well, because a lot is going on at that point in the movie, there isn’t time for a full description. I just said, ‘Some people are running down the street. One of them, an UNLUCKY BASTARD, turns left and tries to run into a store.’ So “Unlucky Bastard,” being my favorite character name, was me.

 

Did you like being in front of the camera?

It gave me so much respect for actors. I had to do like 12 takes and I hurt my elbow. All that waiting around, making sure you save enough energy for 4:00 in the morning, when it’s your moment. I learned a lot that I hadn’t imagined I’d learn.

The Academy Awards are coming up. Would you like to share your pick for best screenplay?

I just loved A Real Pain so much. I thought it was beautiful. I’d like to see that win for best original screenplay.

 

 

Featured image: Callina Liang as Chloe in “Presence.” Courtesy Neon.

“Jurassic World Rebirth” Trailer: Scarlett Johansson & Jonathan Bailey Try to Survive a New Era of Dinosaurs

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The first trailer for Jurassic World Rebirth has arrived. unleashing a new era of dinosaurs and the star power of Scarlett Johansson, Jonathan Bailey, and Mahershala Ali in the seventh film in the franchise.

Jurassic World Rebirth is set five years after the events of Jurassic World Dominion and involves a dangerous mission taken on for a potentially world-changing breakthrough. Here’s the official synopsis: “The planet’s ecology has proven largely inhospitable to dinosaurs. Those remaining exist in isolated equatorial environments with climates resembling the one in which they once thrived. The three most colossal creatures within that tropical biosphere hold the key to a drug that will bring miraculous life-saving benefits to humankind.”

Who will extract those potentially life-saving benefits from the three most colossal creatures within this wildly dangerous biosphere? Enter Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson), a covert operations expert who’s contracted to locate those dinosaurs and secure those DNA samples. She’s joined by Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali), a man who knows how to get people and things out of places they shouldn’t be, and paleontologist Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey). This scientific genius will have his mettle tested in an environment he is likely unprepared for.

This mission won’t go smoothly, of course—Zora’s team comes into contact with a civilian family whose boating expedition was capsized by marauding aquatic dinos. Now, Zora, her team, and the family are then stranded on an island. This means epic encounters with colossal creatures of air, land, and sea, with the team rappelling down cliffs, stalked by mosasaurs in the water, raptors on the land, and a whole lot more. The island they end up on was once the research facility for the original Jurassic Park. As Bailey’s Loomis explains, it’s where the worst of the worst were kept, the dinosaurs who were too dangerous to expose to the public.  

The film comes from director Gareth Edwards, from a script written by David Koepp. The cast also includes Rupert Friend, Ed Skrein, Mahershala Ali, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Luna Blaise, Philippine Velge, David Iacono, Audrina Miranda, and Bechir Sylvain.

Check out the trailer below. Jurassic World Rebirth roars into theaters on July 2, 2025.

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Featured image: L to R: Luna Blaise and the T-Rex in JURASSIC WORLD REBIRTH, directed by Gareth Edwards

Retro Easter Egg Hunt: “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” Trailer Breakdown

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By now, you’ve seen the trailer for director Matt Shakman’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps, probably the most eagerly-anticipated MCU film of the year, given how long the Core Four have been gone. The Fantastic Four are, in fact, making their Marvel Cinematic Universe debut since that now ancient acquisition of 21st Century Fox by Disney way back in 2019. That acquisition gave Disney the film rights to Deadpool (hello, Deadpool & Wolverine), the X-Men, and the Fantastic Four, and more.

Shakman’s film, due this July 25, is a big deal to both Marvel fans and Fantastic Four aficionados, as they represent Marvel’s First Family, created by Marvel Comics legends Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in 1961, ushering in a new level of realism to the comics medium. Sure, we’re still talking about characters that can catch fire and fly, become invisible, stretch their bodies to nearly any length or into shape, and are, well, a rock monster, but the Fantastic Four are Marvel’s Royal Family.

The Core Four are played by Pedro Pascal (Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic), Vanessa Kirby (Sue Storm/The Invisible Woman), Joseph Quinn (Johnny Storm/The Human Torch), and Ebon Moss-Bachrach (Ben Grimm/The Thing). The trailer revealed the film’s style and setting in a retrofuturistic 1960s New York City that might not be the same New York City we’ve seen so many times in previous MCU films.

The trailer hints at how these four good friends were, at one point, regular astronauts, but after a cosmic mishap during a mission, they returned to Earth with superpowers and became the Fantastic Four. In First Steps, we know they’ll eventually tangle with a galactic brute appropriately named Galactus (Ralph Ineson), a world-eating supervillain who we spied at the end of the trailer. We did not see Julia Garner’s Silver Surfer, however, Galactus’s mercury-quick herald, but we know she’s in the film.

Let’s take a quick tour of what we saw, including making one very big assumption about a mystery character played by John Malkovich:

Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic

Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic in 20th Century Studios/Marvel Studios’ THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios/Marvel Studios. © 2025 20th Century Studios / © and ™ 2025 MARVEL.

We got a sense of just how smart Reed Richards is in the trailer—the above shot is cinematic shorthand for how you depict vast intelligence; put your character in front of a chalkboard filled with very long and complicated equations. Fantastic Four fans also know that Reed was once the envy of another smart guy, Viktor Von Doom, who will be appearing for the first time in the MCU, played by Robert Downey Jr. no less, in Avengers: Doomsday. Those two will inevitably tangle in Doomsday and the follow-up Avengers film, Avengers: Secret Wars. But that’s for later. For now, what we didn’t see in the trailer was Reed Richards taking the form of Mister Fantastic and showing off his brain-melting elasticity. We’ll see that soon enough.

Sue Storm/The Invisible Woman

Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm/Invisible Woman in 20th Century Studios/Marvel Studios’ THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios/Marvel Studios. © 2025 20th Century Studios / © and ™ 2025 MARVEL.

The trailer makes quick work of showing us how Reed Richards and Sue Storm are the heart of the team and in love (they share a passionate kiss). Her powers include not only invisibility but also the ability to create force fields. It’s Sue who gets to deliver the Fantastic Four’s ethos in the trailer by saying, “Whatever life throws at us, we face it together — as a family.”

Ben Grimm/The Thing

(L-R) Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Ben Grimm/The Thing and H.E.R.B.I.E in 20th Century Studios/Marvel Studios’ THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios/Marvel Studios. © 2025 20th Century Studios / © and ™ 2025 MARVEL.

Ebon Moss-Bachrach’s The Thing is a sight to behold, the product of a tremendous amount of work by Shakman and his team to make sure Ben Grimm’s transformation into a rock monster looked as realistic as it could be.

 “We want to be true to comics, but we also want to be true to life,” Shakman said during The Fantastic Four Comic-Con panel. “We talked to scientists, we talked to animal experts, we talked to everybody. We went out into the desert to find the best rock to make the Thing right.”

Honoring the Thing’s comics roots while finding a way to infuse as much biological realism as possible is something the MCU has done quite a few times. See, the Hulk. Ebon Moss-Bachrach’s transformation into the Thing involved motion capture technology, the same process that Mark Ruffalo underwent during all his years of playing the Hulk. Moss-Bachrach even received a very helpful message from Ruffalo: “I got a really nice text message from Mark Ruffalo just to demystify the process of motion capture because I’ve never done it before,” Moss-Bachrach said. “He sent a long, generous text message taking a way a bit of how I was scared of the technology.”

Ben’s transformation into The Thing is also the most tragic superhero origin story for any of the Core Four—in the comics, he long struggled with his appearance and how it kept him apart from other people. This is why he wore a trench coat and a hat all the time, which he also does in the trailer. Ben eventually finds love with a blind sculptor named Alicia Masters, and fans have already speculated she’ll be played by Natasha Lyonne in the film.

Johnny Storm/The Human Torch

Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm/Human Torch in 20th Century Studios/Marvel Studios’ THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios/Marvel Studios. © 2025 20th Century Studios / © and ™ 2025 MARVEL.

Johnny Storm is Sue’s younger brother, and the fact that his accident in space turned him into the Human Torch fits well with his hotheaded nature. We get to see him in fully flamed form in the trailer, zipping around in a blazing path through the canyons of the Manhattan skyline and then up into space.

H.E.R.B.I.E.

The friendly sauce-making robot cooking dinner alongside The Thing in the trailer is H.E.R.B.I.E., Reed Richards’ Humanoid Experimental Robot B-Type Integrated Electronics. H.E.R.B.I.E. is one of the many robots that have either aided or fought against Marvel’s geniuses and superheroes, from Vision to Ultron. H.E.R.B.I.E. is definitely in the friend category, and adorable, no less.

Galactus

Toward the trailer’s end, we see Galactus, one of the longest-standing Marvel villains around, hovering over the Statue of Liberty. This cosmic crusher was created in 1966 by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, and Mark Gruenwald, starting love as a mortal man but becoming a cosmic entity who needs to eat planets to stay alive. We didn’t get a peek at his surfboard-riding herald, the Silver Surfer, but we can expect her in the movie.

John Malkovich’s mystery character

There has obviously already been plenty of speculation online about who Malkovich’s mystery bearded character is, with the most plausible presumption, to our ears, anyway, landing on the villain Ivan Kragoff/the Red Ghost, a nemesis of the Fantastic Four from the comics. Kragoff was a Soviet scientist who replicated the Core Fore’s celestial mishap and gained the ability to become intangible. He also raises an army of super apes whose powers match those of the Fantastic Four. Keep in mind this is still only speculation until we get confirmation from someone from the film or Marvel, but it’s a good guess.

The Baxter Building and Fantsticar

The Baxter Building is one of the main settings in the trailer, the official residence of the Fantastic Four. It’s another iconic Manhattan skyscraper and the Core Four’s HQ, not so dissimilar from the Avengers Tower, which might not ever exist in this particular universe.

The Fantasticar is also spotted in the trailer—or, at least, it sure looks like it could be the Fantsticar. The gorgeously sleek, retro-perfect blue speedster has a 4 logo on the front, so we’re safe in assuming it is. The car even popped up briefly in Deadpool & Wolverine. 

The Fantastic Four: First Steps launches into theaters on July 25, 2025.

For more on The Fantastic Four: First Steps, check out these stories:

First “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” Footage Revealed Ahead of Trailer Drop

First “The Fantastic Four: New Steps” Trailer Reintroduces Marvel’s First Family to MCU

First Images From “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” Arrive Alongside Teaser

Featured image:(L-R) Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Ben Grimm/The Thing and H.E.R.B.I.E in 20th Century Studios/Marvel Studios’ THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios/Marvel Studios. © 2025 20th Century Studios / © and ™ 2025 MARVEL.

“September 5” Production Designer Julian Wagner on Recreating the 1972 Olympic Attack From the Inside Out

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Named after a day that will live in infamy, September 5 (in theaters now) recounts the terrorist attack that killed 11 Israeli athletes during the 1972 Munich Olympics, as told from the perspective of ABC Sports broadcasters led by Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard) and Geoff Mason (John Magaro). Confined largely to their studio control room, purpose-built just a few yards from Olympic Village, journalists watched the attack in horror, scrambling to capture the tragedy with now-antiquated gear yoked to then-new satellite technology. The ABC Sports team’s abrupt pivot to hard news reached an estimated 900 million viewers worldwide.

Directed by Tim Fehlbaum and co-starring Ben Chaplin and Leonie Benesch, September 5 blends archival footage with meticulous re-creations of ABC’s studio, no longer standing, overseen by production designer Julian R. Wagner. “I knew the basic facts of the tragedy but had no idea about the journalistic work,” Wagner tells The Credits. “Learning about it changed my perspective on this tragedy. I would say the Munich attack marked the beginning of modern terrorism.”

Speaking from a German village where he sometimes lives, Wagner talked about crafting a claustrophobic space and filling it with an enormous collection of vintage devices from around the world.

 

In reconstructing the coverage of this horrific event, how did you manage a responsibility to get the details right with the demands of the production?

Standing on the ground at the Olympic Village for the first time, we all felt a huge responsibility not only to the authenticity and accuracy of the space but also to the victims. Tim and I had worked before on a science fiction movie The Colony, where we created a new future world. For this project, he asked me, “Can you do the opposite and make something completely authentic?” But it wasn’t just about replicating history. I had to support the emotional work by designing this small, contained space in a way that really conveys the story.

Concept art for the production studio. Julian R. Wagner/Paramount Pictures

Can you give an example of how you reshaped the space?

The set in the center of the studio is called the VTR [Video Tape Recorder] room. In reality, there were several very small rooms without windows, with one machine per room. This is nothing you can show [cinematically] so we designed one big room, a bit like a NASA control room, with huge windows. This was different from the reality, but this way you could see what was going on there.

Julian R. Wagner/Paramount Pictures

How about the control room?

That huge monitor wall was stationary in 1972, but we made it movable so that if we moved it even an inch, you could make the cast feel a bit more trapped against the wall. It’s a matter of centimeters, but all those little details made a difference.

Courtesy of Julian R. Wagner/Paramount Pictures

The control room is packed with buttons, switches, and archaic TV monitors. At the time, they were state-of-the-art, but now, these devices would look right at home in a museum. How did you amass all this vintage gear?

It was a long journey to get all that stuff, but there was no question that the props had to be precise and accurate. For example, we didn’t use modern screens, which would have been much easier, because we wanted that real feeling of the old curved monitors. The producer Geoffrey Mason [portrayed in the film by John Magaro] gave us photographs of the crew, so we had all these fragments, like a giant puzzle, of what the room looked like. We put together a giant mood board just for devices, and then our great production buyer, Johannes Pfaller, went to museums, private collectors, and hidden basements and found these pieces. We also talked to a technician from the old days who told us about this collector of old machines in the Netherlands so we went there, we went to Italy, the Czech Republic, collectors in the states.

L-r, Gladys Deist (Georgina Rich), Hank Hanson (Corey Johnson,
Geoff Mason (John Magaro), Jacques Lesgardes (Zinedine Soualem) star in Paramount Pictures’ “SEPTEMBER 5,” the film that unveils the decisive moment that forever changed media coverage and continues to impact live news today, set during the 1972 Munich Summer Olympics.

You built the September 5 interiors on a soundstage in Munich. When all these devices arrived at Bavaria Studios, were they ready to go?

No, far from it. Those VTR machines, which transfer analog into broadcast signals, are huge monsters that weigh a ton, and none were functional. They were so big we had to put the machines in place first and then build the room, closing the walls around them. And you can’t just plug them because they’d probably explode. Also, these machines are very loud, so you can’t run them on set. To make the machine quiet, we had technicians and prop makers sitting there day and night re-wiring miles of cables.

Paramount Pictures’ “SEPTEMBER 5,” the film that unveils the decisive moment that forever changed media coverage and continues to impact live news today, set during the 1972 Munich Summer Olympics. the film that unveils the decisive moment that forever changed media coverage and continues to impact live news today, set during the 1972 Munich Summer Olympics.

Did you have access to blueprints for the original ABC Sports studio?

We found blueprints, which helped, but the floorplan we created was different because our DP, Markus Förderer, and Tim wanted to follow the actor from one room to the next like a documentary team and go 360 degrees with the flow of action. This was a 100 percent continuous set. It was cramped.

 

How did you make room for lighting rigs?

We integrated the lighting within the set, which happened because of this very close collaboration between the gaffer, the DP, and me.

What kind of team do you assemble to make all the gear look right and function correctly?

We had two technicians, two prop makers, two set dressers, and two consultants who came from that time in the early seventies and worked with us in the studio refurbishing these devices. They all worked night and day shifts because we only had six weeks for the build, the devices, the set decoration, the painting, and everything else. It was crowded!

Most of the action takes place in the control room, but in one exterior sequence, terrorists have transported their hostages to the airport, and interpreter Marianna [Leonie Benesch] goes outside to report. How did you set up the airport environment?

We couldn’t access the original airport because it’s a military base. This was a night scene filmed on handheld cameras, and we needed one shot of people rushing over this field with the airport in the background, so we did a very basic analog trick that plays with false perspective: we simply recreated the airport in Photoshop and printed it on cardboard, cut it out and put it on the field. Markus ran between these tanks with his camera, following a crowd of people toward this prop we’d made, and that was it. Tim, Markus, and I really like in-camera solutions rather than just saying, “Shoot something in a field and do the rest in post.”

Courtesy of Julian R. Wagner/Paramount Pictures

September 5 shows journalists at their best, working as a team. Did the making of this film reflect that same kind of spirit?

The production itself was a collaboration like I’ve never seen before. Everyone was passionate, and producers came on set every day. Tim has a very strong vision but leaves everyone space to fill this vision with their own creativity. It’s a beautiful way to work, and I think you can feel that in the movie.

For more films and series from Paramount and Paramount+, check out these stories:

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Featured image: At left, facing others in Control Room, Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard), at the Contol Room table, Marvin Bader (Ben Chaplin), Geoff Mason (John Magaro), Jacques Lesgardes (Zinedine Soualem), Hank Hanson (Corey Johnson), standing, Carter (Marcus Rutherford), Gladys Deist (Georgina Rich) and Marianne Gebhard (Leonie Benesch) star in Paramount Pictures’ “SEPTEMBER 5,” the film that unveils the decisive moment that forever changed media coverage and continues to impact live news today, set during the 1972 Munich Summer Olympics.

First Images From “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” Arrive Alongside Teaser

Posted on by babrams

The first teaser for The Fantastic Four: First Steps was launched onto the internet this morning, and the official countdown even occurred, with the central cast, at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. There, stars Pedro Pascal (Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic), Vanessa Kirby (Sue Storm/The Invisible Woman), Ebon Moss-Bachrach (Ben Grimm/The Thing), and Joseph Quinn (Johnny Storm/The Human Torch) hit the retro-looking launch button and we were off.

It was a fitting intro to the trailer itself, which revealed director Matt Shakman’s vision of a retro America was a stellar choice to take on the period piece, having done period-perfect work spearheading Marvel’s very first Disney+ series, WandaVision. The trailer’s vibe is pleasingly retro, from the Fantastic Four’s stellar Baxter Building (where the Core Four have dinner every Sunday at 7, no matter what, as Pascal’s Reed Richards informs us), and H.E.R.B.I.E. the robot, who is helping Ben Grimm prepare dinner.

The teaser includes a moment when Mr. Fantastic recalls the first time the Core Four launched into space before Ben was a rock, Sue was invisible, and Johnny caught fire. “Ben has always been a rock,” Sue Storm says, “and Johnny is Johnny, and I’m right here. Whatever life throws at us, we face it together — as a family.” It’s a touching sentiment in a film that looks unafraid to deal with such emotions and is set in a period when hope felt like a more abundant resource.

Along with the teaser, Marvel has revealed a few photos to whet our appetite for the film, which arrives in theaters on July 25. Those photos include Johnny Storm looking lost in space, the Thing and H.E.R.B.I.E. preparing dinner, Reed Richards on a chalkboard, and the Core Four suited up and ready to roll. Our featured image is of Kirby’s Sue Storm, looking to be prepared to lose her identity as she becomes invisible.

Let’s have a look at those photos:

Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm/Human Torch in 20th Century Studios/Marvel Studios’ THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios/Marvel Studios. © 2025 20th Century Studios / © and ™ 2025 MARVEL.
(L-R) Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Ben Grimm/The Thing and H.E.R.B.I.E in 20th Century Studios/Marvel Studios’ THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios/Marvel Studios. © 2025 20th Century Studios / © and ™ 2025 MARVEL.
Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic in 20th Century Studios/Marvel Studios’ THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios/Marvel Studios. © 2025 20th Century Studios / © and ™ 2025 MARVEL.
(L-R): Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Ben Grimm/The Thing, Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm/Invisible Woman, Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic and Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm/Human Torch in 20th Century Studios/Marvel Studios’ FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios/Marvel Studios. © 2025 20th Century Studios / © and ™ 2025 MARVEL.
Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm/Invisible Woman in 20th Century Studios/Marvel Studios’ THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios/Marvel Studios. © 2025 20th Century Studios / © and ™ 2025 MARVEL.

For more on The Fantastic Four: First Steps, check out these stories:

First “The Fantastic Four: New Steps” Trailer Reintroduces Marvel’s First Family to MCU

First “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” Footage Revealed Ahead of Trailer Drop

Featured image: Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm/Invisible Woman in 20th Century Studios/Marvel Studios’ THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios/Marvel Studios. © 2025 20th Century Studios / © and ™ 2025 MARVEL.

First “The Fantastic Four: New Steps” Trailer Reintroduces Marvel’s First Family to MCU

Posted on by babrams

The first trailer for Marvel Studios’ The Fantastic Four: First Steps has taken off, broadcast live from the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, where the cast was on hand to celebrate the launch of the long-awaited reboot of Marvel’s first family. First Steps will kickstart Marvel’s Phase Six, and we’ve now got our first look at what Marvel and the First Steps team have been cooking in this retro vision.

The central quartet comprises Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic, Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm/The Invisible Woman, Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Ben Grimm/The Thing, and Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm/The Human Torch. Director Matt Shakman was a stellar choice to take on the period piece, having done period-perfect work spearheading Marvel’s very first Disney+ series, WandaVision. Here, he directs from a script by Peter Cameron, Josh Friedman, and Jeff Kaplan.

The trailer reveals our heroes before and after their transformations, including a first look at Ebon Moss-Bachrach fully transformed as the Thing, which was a labor of love via motion capture and some very good advice from Mark Ruffalo, who, of course, played the Hulk throughout several phases of MCU. We see the Four headed off on a mission into space, where they’ll be facing some major threats. We also get the Core Four’s motto, delivered by Kirby’s Sue Storm: “Whatever life throws at us, we face it together — as a family.”

The threats the family will face include the supervillains Galactus (Ralph Ineson) and the Silver Surfer (Julia Garner), who have their sights set on Earth. We also know that the Fantastic Four won’t just deal with those two for long. While The Fantastic Four was a major focus for Marvel at Comic-Con, so, too, was the announcement that revealed that Robert Downey Jr. was returning to Marvel as Dr. Doom in the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars. We now know that Downey will be the big bad in both those films, but little is known about how he might factor into The Fantastic Four: First Steps, if it all, given that Ineson is playing the film’s villain.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps will open Marvel’s Phase Six on July 25, 2025. Also set to premiere are Blade (November 7, 2025), Avengers: Doomsday (May 1, 2026), and Avengers: Secret Wars (May 7, 2027).

Check out the official teaser for The Fantastic Four below:

For more on The Fantastic Four: New Steps, check out these stories:

First “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” Footage Revealed Ahead of Trailer Drop

How “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” Team Aimed to Get The Thing’s Look Just Right

“The Fantastic Four” Gets a New Title, Will Appear in Next Two “Avengers” Films

Featured image:

First “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” Footage Revealed Ahead of Trailer Drop

Posted on by babrams

We open with giggling children in mid-20th-century America, racing through the city streets to arrive at a storefront window where, behind the glass, are a series of rabbit-eared television sets. On all the TVs, we see footage of the United States space program, including a “Prepare 4 Launch” alert on the central TV. Marvel Studios has dropped this little teaser to hype The Fantastic Four: First Steps’ larger trailer reveal coming tomorrow, Tuesday, February 4.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps will finally reintroduce Marvel’s First Family to the big screen, with the new superheroic quartet now played by Pedro Pascal (Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic), Vanessa Kirby (Sue Storm/The Invisible Woman), Joseph Quinn (Johnny Storm/The Human Torch) and Ebon Moss-Bachrach (Ben Grimm/Thing).

Have a look at the teaser here:

The Fantastic Four: First Steps is directed by Matt Shakman, who did excellent work spearheading Marvel’s very first Disney+ series, WandaVision, which was also a period piece—only one that cycled through periods on an episode-to-episode basis. First Steps will pit the Core Four against the supervillains Galactus (Ralph Ineson) and the Silver Surfer (Julia Garner), who have their sights set on Earth. During the reveal at Comic-Con (when it was announced that Robert Downey Jr. was returning to Marvel, this go-round as Dr. Doom, in the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday), Shakman also shared a teaser reel of the film, which showed the Core Four’s astronaut outfits, a massive spaceship, and a glimpse of Galactus hovering over Earth. The film’s score will come from Oscar-winner Michael Giacchino.

We’ve learned a bit about the new look of Fantastic Four, including the design of Ebon Moss-Bachrach’s The Thing. This rock-skinned giant has been played in the past by Jamie Bell in 2015’s Fantastic Four and Michael Chiklis in 2005’s Fantastic Four and 2007’s Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. The technology has improved so vastly since the last two iterations of the Thing that Shakman and his creative team knew they were coming in with an ability to render him more realistically than ever before.

“We want to be true to comics, but we also want to be true to life,” Shakman said during the Comic-Con panel. “We talked to scientists, we talked to animal experts, we talked to everybody. We went out into the desert to find the best rock to make the Thing right.”

The method for conjuring a realistic Thing included motion capture technology, the same process that Mark Ruffalo underwent during all his years of playing the Hulk. At Comic-Con, Moss-Bachrach revealed that he’d received a very helpful message: “I got a really nice text message from Mark Ruffalo just to demystify the process of motion capture because I’ve never done it before,” Moss-Bachrach said. “He sent a long, generous text message taking a way a bit of how I was scared of the technology.”

The Thing and the rest of his fellow Four will factor into the upcoming Marvel phases in a major way, with their inclusion for Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars already confirmed.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps touches down in theaters on July 25, 2025.

Featured image: Featured image: THE FANTASTIC FOUR. © 2024 20th Century Studios / © and ™ 2024 MARVEL.

Issa Rae on the Importance of Filming “One Of Them Days” on the Streets of Los Angeles

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In its opening weekend, One of Them Days earned back nearly all of its $14 million dollar budget, cementing its status as a comedy hit, the number two spot at the box office, and led many on social media in a rallying cry for more Black, female-led comedies. One of Them Days is centered on friends and roommates Dreux (Keke Palmer) and Alyssa (SZA), who find out that Alyssa’s boyfriend has blown their rent money, forcing the duo into a race against the clock to avoid eviction while keeping themselves from going inside and losing each other in the process.

Enter Issa Rae. 

“When you see one, you’re like, ‘Why aren’t there more of these?’” Rae says. “Why hasn’t the last buddy comedy been since B.A.P.S.? … It’s just been 30 years since we’ve had this, and if it works—why is it always considered a risk to do so?”

Rae has spent her career uplifting marginalized voices in the film and television world. And One of Them Days is no exception. 

The film itself was born out of a lab program aimed at “identifying five new writers” and spearheaded by Rae’s own production company, ColorCreative, in collaboration with SONY. Syreeta Singleton (who also collaborated with Rae for HBO’s Rap Sh!t) submitted a treatment (a film outline) and was ultimately picked to develop it further into a script. 

“We had Black writers, we had Latino writers, we had Asian writers — we had so many different, varied backgrounds,” Rae explains. “So it’s also just exposing myself and the industry to stories we wouldn’t see otherwise.”

Keke Palmer and SZA in Tri-Star Picture’s ONE OF THEM DAYS (Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures)

It’s a challenge making movies, “period,” but “it’s a triple challenge to get movies with underrepresented leads made.” After Singleton’s treatment was chosen, it took seven years for the concept to be greenlit and made into a movie. 

“All the odds are against you constantly,” Rae says.

Filmmakers know that shooting in Los Angeles is an expensive endeavor, but Rae says they ran into a few other problems while filming in the City of Angels  — gangs. 

“There was one day where we got literally shut down while we were shooting on Crenshaw [boulevard] on our last shot,” Rae says, laughing. “Lawrence is still sad about this; he had set up the perfect golden hour… And then a couple of affiliated members came up and were like, ‘Shut this shit down,’ and we were like, ‘But we got permission’… We had to put it on a reshoot date, and then they came back the next day because we were like, ‘What the fuck? We have a connection.’ He was like, ‘Oh, that was a mistake.’ And then the gang members apologized to us like, ‘Oh, that’s our bad, y’all can come back anytime.’”

SZA and Keke Palmer in Tri-Star Picture’s ONE OF THEM DAYS (Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures)

Rae says stories like these are reminders of the “privilege of being able to shoot in the communities that we represent.” 

As an L.A. native, Rae’s projects often romanticize city life and feature recognizable L.A. staples. The Baldwin neighborhood setting for One of Them Days — the “Jungles” (or “Jungle,” depending on who you ask) — is a historic Los Angeles neighborhood but often seen in a “negative light.”  

“It was always forbidden for me to go there when I was younger,” Rae says.

For Singleton, it was important that the film depicted a different side of that neighborhood. 

“She had friends there, and she kind of wanted to showcase the humanity and the people that lived in that area,” she says. “You can’t tell this story, at least in my eyes and being an L.A. native, without actually shooting in these neighborhoods. We got real-life background actors who were from the neighborhood, and we were able to patronize the businesses around. And it just felt special to be in the essence.”

Keke Palmer and SZA in Tri-Star Picture’s ONE OF THEM DAYS (Photo by Anne Marie Fox)

Keke Palmer’s character, Dreux, also works at NORM’s Restaurant, a well-known diner on La Cienega Boulevard. 

But filming a movie set in your hometown while trying to be respectful of an active natural disaster proved difficult.  

“To try to market a film when people have lost their homes, in the very city that you’re showcasing…that was something that we discussed through and through, and then we canceled our premiere as a result to be sensitive,” Rae says. “And even in marketing the movie…you need levity. So, to provide the movie free of cost as an opportunity for levity was also something that we discussed. And other people in the L.A. community also stepped up, and they did the same. So if it could be a less than two-hour bomb for you to forget about the horrors that have transpired because of these fires, I’m happy we could be that for some people.”

Keke Palmer and SZA in Tri-Star Picture’s ONE OF THEM DAYS (Photo by Anne Marie Fox)

While a comedy, One of Them Days has a profound ending message of community. Rae says although it went through various alternate endings, the overall community message was always part of the script. 

“The heart of that was still in Syreeta’s original script.”

As a revolutionary in film and television, Rae has tried her hand at acting, writing, and production. After conquering the television world with the success of her five-season HBO series, Insecure, she has her sights set on filmmaking. She has an upcoming project in May that she can’t “talk about” yet and an appearance in an episode of Black Mirror. 

“I’m definitely trying to do more films,” she says. “I’m still writing for TV, but I’m really, really excited about the success of this film and, hopefully, what other opportunities it’ll bring, especially in the comedy space.”

 

For more upcoming films from Sony Pictures, check out these stories:

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Featured image: Director Lawrence Lamont, Producer Issa Rae and Keke Palmer on the set of Tri-Star Picture’s ONE OF THEM DAYS (Photo by Anne Marie Fox)

“M3GAN” 2.0 Trailer Delivers a Jolt During the Grammy’s

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She walks in on patent red leather shoes. You can tell by her gait who this is. But it’s when she starts to dance to Chappell Roan’s “Feminomenon” and promises you really know. Perhaps you bow your head a little bit. On the screen, the text reads, “This b*th is back.” This first glimpse at M3gan 2.0 arrived during the Grammy’s, appearing shortly after Roan took the stage to perform “Pink Pony Club.”

Director Gerard Johnstone returns to the franchise two years after M3GAN‘s rampage in the surprise smash hit original. Only this time, M3GAN’s creator, Gemma (Allison Williams reprising her role and also producing on the film), is forced to resurrect the four-foot-tall artificially intelligent robot killer to try and keep something even worse from happening.

M3GAN, which stands for Model 3 Generative Android, followed young Cady (Violet McGraw), whose parents died in a car accident and who was left in the care of her overworked but brilliant robotics engineer aunt, Gemma. Eventually, Gemma introduces Cady and M3GAN, her new companion and protector, but things go absolutely batty shortly thereafter. It turns out that M3GAN took her role of “protecting” Cady way too seriously. Bodies started dropping. M3GAN was loco. 

Two years after M3GAN went rogue and turned into a killer, Gemma has become a high-profile author and advocate for government oversight of A.I. Cady, meanwhile, is now a teenager, and she begins to rebel against Gemma’s strict, overprotective rules. The meat of M3GAN 2.0 will center on the aftereffects of a powerful defense contract stealing the underlying tech for M3GAN to create a military-grade weapon known as Amelia (Ivanna Sakhno; Ahsoka, Pacific Rim: Uprising). But the military is about to learn the lesson Gemma and Cady did so painfully—soon enough, as Amelia’s self-awareness increases, taking orders from humans begins to feel unecessary. In fact, humans themselves begin to seem unnecessary. What’s a military-grade robot girl to do in that case but start cleaning the board of her perceived adversaries. 

Sensing a potentially catastrophic situation, Gemma steps into the breach to resurrect M3GAN (Amie Donald, voiced by Jenna Davis), newly empowered with some upgrades,  making her faster, stronger, and more lethal, to square off with Amelia. “As their paths collide, the original A.I bitch is about to meet her match,” Universal’s synopsis reads.

Check out the teaser here. M3GAN 2.0 slays on June 27.

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Featured image: The M3GAN 2.0 Poster. Courtesy Universal Pictures.

Mike White Promises a Much Darker Season of “The White Lotus”

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The White Lotus creator, Mike White, has been refreshingly candid about what the thematic framing has been around the first two seasons. Season one, set at the titular resort’s Hawaii location, was about money, White has said. Season two, set in Sicily, was about sex. Each season, however, dealt a deliciously dark twist at its end, with season one’s hotel manager, Armond (a perfectly cast Murray Bartlett), meeting a grim fate, while season two kicked off by letting viewers know it would end in death, and then delivering on that promise with gusto—and dispatching the beloved Jennifer Coolidge’s Tanya McQuoid, along with a boat full of her would-be assassins.

This makes his comments about season three even more interesting. Speaking with Time, White teased that this upcoming season, set in Thailand, would be considerably darker than the previous two. In fact, “much, much darker.”

 “I do feel like the other seasons were a rehearsal for this one,” White told Time, from Phuket, Thailand, the set of season three. “If you’re in some place where it’s a different culture, different language, different vibe, and you’re also dealing with heavy personal things [there are moments where] you feel like, ‘Should I just walk into the water?’”

White also said that while Coolidge delivered the most iconic sustained performance of the first two seasons, appearing in both, he’s hopeful there are characters in season 3 that can match her. “How do you go about replacing Jennifer?” White asked Time. “It’s not just the creative part, but she’s a very good friend and also a big part of the show just as a person. I’m not friends with the cast the way that I’m friends with Jennifer. But there’s definitely some performances I feel rival her as far as hopefully iconic performances.”

The characters in the first two seasons certainly had their share of existential crises. Fraying marriages, fraying relationships between parents and their children, fraying friendships, a creeping sense of dread that the glitz and the glamour of an expensive life don’t equate to happiness. A creeping sense of dread, if you’re Tayna McQuoid, that someone is trying to kill you. In the season three trailer, we meet a trio of friends who have come to Thailand to unwind—Leslie Bibb as Kate, Carrie Coon as Laurie, and Michelle Monaghan as Jaclyn—but the tension is teased as the old friends reckon with who they’ve become. We got a shot of Walter Goggins as Rick getting romantic with his girlfriend, Aimee Lou Wood’s Chelsea, but glimpses at their relationship later in the trailer spell trouble.

Carrie Coon, Michelle Monaghan, Leslie Bibb. Photograph by Fabio Lovino/HBO
Walton Goggins, Aimee Lou Wood. Photograph by Fabio Lovino/HBO

Goggins revealed to Time that Rick is in bad shape when he gets to Thailand. “He is angry, and he’s bitter about the hand that life has dealt him,” Goggins said. 

The official trailer includes glimpses at all the major players, including Jason Isaacs as Timothy, a wealthy businessman traveling with his wife, Victoria, played by Parker Posey, and his daughter Piper, played by Sarah Catherine Hook. Timothy’s got some major issues at work, serious enough that he thinks he might be going to prison. 

“They’re all in some kind of hurt,” White said of season three’s guests. “Like, they’re all dead, but they don’t know it. … because it’s dealing with these existential tropes of facing into the nothingness of self [and] Buddhist themes that have life and death and ethical aspects, [the season] just got more heavy.”

White said that he’s had a tough year himself, which inspired him to explore the existential crises that come for us all.

“It’s been a hard year for me personally,” White said. “My parents are getting older, and there’s a lot of stuff going on at home that’s not fun.”

Season three was filmed at the Four Seasons Koh Samui, a lavish, lush property that draws wealthy visitors from around the world. There was record-breaking heat during the production, and the filming schedule made it so life started imitating art. The cadence was two weeks of filming breakfast scenes, then two weeks of lunches, then two weeks of bedroom drama, and finally, two weeks at sea. The cast then just naturally bonded with their onscreen travel buddies.

“The distance is really disappearing between fiction and reality because we’re living in the show. It’s so weird. It’s all very meta,” Aimee Lou Wood told Time.

Initially, White had intended to film season 3 in Japan, but eventually, Thailand became the more attractive option for ease of production. Yet it was his own bout with mortality that gave White the arc of season 3. All it took was being hospitalized with severe bronchitis.

“I didn’t sleep for like two nights, and by the next morning, I was like, ‘I think I have the plot.’ The season is pretty much what happened that night.” White had fever dreams and was ultimately put in a nebulizer, a device that converts liquid medications into a mist that can be inhaled. “I felt like I had the ending. And so I was like, ‘I guess we’re shooting in Thailand.’”

White has filmed in Thailand before, but not as a creator or director—as a contestant on the 14th season of The Amazing Race. That season was set in Phuket, and White and his father, Mel, were sequestered in Koh Samui. “I would’ve hated to have gone through the rest of my life having some bad association with Thailand,” said White, and filming The White Lotus season 3 there changed that for him.

“It has this paradisiacal but surreal feeling,” White said of filming season 3 there. “Embedded into the show is a little bit of Hotel California — you can check in, but you can never leave.”

Morgana O’Reilly, Arnas Fedaravičius, Christian Friedel, Dom Hetrakul, Lalisa Manobal. Photo
December 16, 2024. Photograph by Fabio Lovino/HBO

For more on The White Lotus, check out these stories:

Death Stalks the Vacationers in “The White Lotus” Season 3 Trailer

The Vacation Continues: “The White Lotus” Renewed For Season 4

“The White Lotus” Season 3 Trailer Unveils a Starry Cast on a Dark Path in Thailand

Featured image: Walton Goggins. Photograph by Fabio Lovino/HBO

Netflix Unveils 2025 Slate: “Stranger Things,” “Squid Game,” “Happy Gilmore 2” and More

Posted on by babrams

Netflix unveiled its 2025 slate with some big name appearances (Tina Fey, John Mulaney, Ben Affleck, and the Duffer Brothers) for their “New on Netflix” presentation and unleashed a brilliant sizzle reel to hype their offerings.

The streamer had a banner 2024, with its feature Emilia Pérez locking up a whopping 13 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Lead Actress (Karla Sofía Gascón, the first transgendered nominee in the Academy’s history), Actress in a Supporting Role (Zoe Saldana), Cinematography, Adapted Screenplay, and more. All to say that in 2025, Netflix has its sights on prestige dramas and potential blockbusters. Films like the sequel to The Old Guard and Rian Johnson’s third installment in his Knives Out franchise certainly qualify as potential blockbusters.

Other big features slated for 2025 include Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, Tina Fey’s new comedy The Four Seasons, and the Ben Affleck and Matt Damon crime thriller RIP.

On the TV side, the Duffer Brothers were there to promote the fifth and final season of their juggernaut series Stranger Things, while the biggest hit in the streamer’s history is back for a second round with season 3 of Squid Game. 

The new sizzle reel Netflix has put together to promote their 2025 slate has a nifty premise—a young woman stuck at a boring meeting at work tries to quietly look at Netflix’s offerings on her phone. The Ta Dum gives her away, and before she knows it, she’s levitating in the air while the theme for Stranger Things kicks in. That’s when things get truly freaky—she’s walloped by a demogorgon and crashes through the walls only to get onto her feet wearing one of Squid Game’s contestant’s uniforms (she’s wearing number 025, naturally). The reel continues in this fashion, cleverly sending the young woman through Netflix’s slate in a series of costume and set changes, from season 2 of Tim Burton’s Wednesday to season 6 of Kobra Cai to a rooftop cafe for a momentary break with season 3 of Emily in Paris.

The young woman’s journey is only getting started—she jumps, runs, mounts a horse, and brandishes a hockey stick through teasers for Rian Johnson’s aforementioned third installment of Knives Out, season 4 of The Witcher, and Adam Sander’s long-awaited sequel Happy Gilmore 2. It’s an excellent way to hype up your film and TV slate.

Check out the sizzle reel here:

Featured image: Featured image: Lee Jung-jae in Squid Game. Photo by Juhan Noh. Courtesy Netflix; Wednesday. Jenna Ortega as Wednesday in episode 206 of Wednesday. Cr. Bernard Walsh/Netflix © 2024; Adam Sandler in “Happy Gilmore 2.” Courtesy Netflix.

Super Bowl Trailers: Marvel’s “Thunderbolts,” “Jurassic World: Rebirth” and Tom Cruise’s Latest “Mission: Impossible” Expected

Posted on by babrams

The Super Bowl is the most-watched television broadcast in the United States every year. In 2024, the Kansas City Chiefs clash with the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl LVIII (58 for the Roman numeral illiterate) drew an average of 123.7 million viewers across linear and streaming services in the U.S. alone. The big game is also broadcast in over 130 countries in more than 30 languages worldwide, and it functions not just as the year’s biggest TV draw but as a bonafide cultural event that includes a raucous halftime show with a rotating cast of musical icons. Oh, and of course, for audiences in the U.S. and those watching through U.S. streaming services abroad, it boasts the most highly anticipated commercials of the year. And a portion of those commercials are made up of trailers for some of the year’s biggest movies. Last year, those included trailers for Deadpool & Wolverine and Wicked, both of which became blockbusters.

This year’s crop of trailers will likely come from three studios—Disney, Paramount, and Universal—who are currently the only ones on record who have paid for the pricey 30-second spot on Fox to reach the assured massive audience. This year’s big game is a rematch of the 2023 battle between the Philadelphia Eagles and, yes, those Kansas City Chiefs again, the latter going for a historic third consecutive Super Bowl title. This rematch for the ages will likely bring the following trailers for your viewing pleasure, which will air pre and mid-game.

Disney is typically a very big player during the Super Bowl, and it has plenty of 2025 releases that would fit the bill for a trailer. Snow White (March 21), Lilo & Stitch (May 23), and Pixar’s Elio (June 13) are all possibilities. Deadline reports that Disney will unveil two of their three Marvel movies bowing this year, so their choices are between Anthony Mackie’s first stand-alone Marvel feature in Captain America: Brave New World (February 14), the antiheroes unite movie Thunderbolts (May 2), and the hotly-anticipated, long-awaited Marvel reboot of The Fantastic Four: First Steps (July 25), which stars Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach as the superhero quartet.

Universal’s offerings will likely unleash Dean DeBlois’s live-action adaptation of his very own How to Train Your Dragon (June 13) and the Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, and Jonathan Bailey-led Jurassic World: Rebirth (July 2) from director Gareth Edwards.

The word is that Paramount will punch their ticket with the Jack Quaid comedy Novocaine (March 14), the Rihanna-led Smurfs (July 18) animated musical, and the Tom Cruise-led Mission: Impossible – Final Reckoning (May 23).

Of the studios who are sitting out the big game, perhaps the biggest surprise is that Warner Bros. isn’t letting a trailer for James Gunn’s Superman (July 11) fly, but they did release a Superman spot during the NFC and AFC championship games.

The one thing you can be sure of is that the trailers that air during the Super Bowl are usually the most-watched on social media 24 hours after the game. It’s the kind of advertising that money can obviously buy, but the money usually seems worth it.

Featured image: Mahershala Ali is Duncan Kincaid in JURASSIC WORLD REBIRTH, directed by Gareth Edwards