In case you missed the news last night, we got our first glimpse at LeBron James in the Tune Squad jersey during an event for the LeBron James Family Foundation. LeBron is starring in Malcolm D. Lee’s Space Jam: A New Legacy, his sequel to the 1996 classic starring Michael Jordan. In a brief video, we see James walking towards the camera in the Tune Squad’s multichromatic jersey.
There’s a lot of excitement for Lee’s sequel, considering the talent involved. It starts, of course, with James, but includes Black Panther co-writer and director Ryan Coogler, who co-wrote A New Legacy‘s script with his Fruitvale Station collaborator Sev Ohanian. Coolger not only co-wrote the film, but he also produces alongside James. And the score comes from none other than Hans Zimmer and When They See Us composer Kris Bowers. This is a seriously talented squad!
The cast has a bevy of James’ fellow NBA and WNBA superstars—Klay Thompson, Anthony Davis, Chris Paul, Damian Lillard, and Kyle Kuzma from the NBA, and WNBA players include Diana Taurasi and Nneka Ogwumike. Then there’s the acting talent involved, which includes Don Cheadle, Sonequa Martin-Green, Eric Bauza, and Kath Soucie
Check out LeBron below. Space Jam: A New Legacy takes the court on July 16, 2021.
— LeBron James Family Foundation (@LJFamFoundation) August 18, 2020
Featured image: LAKE BUENA VISTA, FLORIDA – AUGUST 10: LeBron James #23 of the Los Angeles Lakers reacts after a basket against the Denver Nuggets during the first half at The Arena at ESPN Wide World Of Sports Complex on August 10, 2020 in Lake Buena Vista, Florida.
Not all film news needs to be bad film news. In what we’re hoping is a sign of optimism and good old business acumen, some of Hollywood’s biggest directors and stars are banking on making their movies in California. While the entertainment industry has been upended by the ramifications of COVID-19 and the shuttering of productions across the globe, there is a slew of big features and intriguing projects planned for production in the Golden State.
The Hollywood Reporterhas the scoop from the California film commission, which announced the five studio films and four indies that were approved to receive tax credits from the state’s incentives program. Those films include Jordan Peele’s next movie, an untitled project that represents the first of his two films in part of his first-look deal with Universal Pictures. Peele’s untitled project will be his third major feature after his masterpiece debut Get Out and his stunning sophomore effort Us. (Peele also produced and co-wrote Nia DaCosta‘s hotly-anticipated reboot Candyman, tentatively due in theaters on October 16.)
Also planning on a big California production are Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame directors Joe and Anthony Russo. The MCU-alums are filming their Netflix action-thriller Gray Man in the state, starring their old pal Chris Evans and Ryan Gosling, for Netflix.
The other projects coming to California include Octavia Spencer’s sci-fi thriller Invasion for Amazon, Jessica Chastain’s drama Losing Clementine (based on Ashley Ream’s novel of the same name), Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s upcoming horror-comedy, and the sports drama Sweetwater, about Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton, the first Black player in the NBA.
THR reports that for Gray Man alone, the state is expected “to bring in an estimated $102 million in below-the-line wages and other qualified expenditures,” which would be second only to Captain Marvel in terms of spending within the state. THR reports that, in total, these nine films are on track to generate nearly $284 million in qualified in-state expenditures. They’re also slated to employ around 1,340 crew members, 342 cast members, and a whopping 14,397 background actors and stand-ins. The total combined number of filming days exceeds a year—374 days worth of shooting. And this, THR adds, doesn’t even include the post-production jobs and revenue the films will bring in.
“After announcing two relocating TV series earlier this month, our new tax credit program continues to get off to a great start with today’s list of film projects,” California film commission executive director Colleen Bell told THR. “Production activity is ramping back up in California amid COVID-19 with safety remaining a top priority, and Program 3.0 is attracting the kind of big-budget films that will generate a considerable amount of jobs and in-state spending.”
Featured image: Writer-producer-director Jordan Peele on the set of his film, “Us.”
Disney is going to make history on September 4. That’s because this is the date they’re releasing Niki Caro’s epic, live-action remake of Mulan on Disney+. Disney decided to offer Caro’s sweeping, stunning film on its streaming platform rather than wait for the situation at theaters to improve. Mulan will be getting a theatrical release, however. Countries where Disney+ isn’t available, or, where theaters have reopened will get to see Caro’s film on the big screen. For the rest of us, Disney+ is the place to catch the action.
In a new TV spot, Disney makes the case that September 4 marks the streaming event of the season.
The new spot effectively shows why so many folks are excited about this iteration of the classic tale. The story is centered on a young woman (Yifei Liu) who disguises herself in order to take her father’s place in the upcoming war with China. Yet what we’ve learned from tracking this film through its production (and reading reviews) is just how technically ambitious these fight sequences are.
“I loved creating the stunt sequences in this film,” Niki Caro said in a previous featurette about the stunts. “The action is explosive.” The action is both relentlessly intense and gorgeously rendered. Watching Liu brandishing her sword, leaping from roofs, and scampering up walls is a joy. There’s a visual elegance to the action, too. “It’s not just action for action’s sake,” Caro said. “It’s all coming from character or from story. Every action is very meaningful. The stunt sequences are epic…You’ve never seen anything quite so extraordinary in your life.”
Mulan also has another major thing going for it; martial arts legends Jet Li and Donnie Yen and Jet Li are on hand to lend their mastery. As for the folks without Li and Yen’s pedigree, stunt coordinator Ben Cooke helped train up the rest of the cast so they all looked like seasoned fighters.
Joining Liu as Mulan, Yen as Commander Tung, and Li as the Emperor are Jason Scott Lee as Böri Khan; Yoson An as Cheng Honghui; and Gong Li as Xianniang.
Caro’s film comes from a screenplay by Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver, Elizabeth Martin, and Lauren Hynek, based on the narrative poem “The Ballad of Mulan.”
For more on Mulan (and as an added incentive to see the film at home if you’re living in the U.S. or Canada), see below:
The documentary BoysState (now streaming on Apple TV+) follows four teenagers navigating a week-long annual program in which a thousand high school seniors in Texas create their own mock government. Winner of the Documentary Grand Jury Prize at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, the film is like a riveting mix of a soap opera, Lord of the Flies, and BreakingAway. TheCredits spoke to directors Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss about the making of BoysState, and its examination of young men coming of age in the time of ‘fake news’ and Trump.
More than just a political film, Boys State offers a window into how young men are growing into adulthood, and the challenges of being a boy at this time in the US. How did that aspect surprise you?
Amanda McBaine: We had these big questions in our heads about the health of democracy, and polarization, and so many things. When we got to Texas, we recognized what an incredible window we had to boyhood in 2018, around when #MeToo and toxic masculinity conversations were happening. Suddenly we saw we had this vantage point into how our young men are growing up in this atmosphere, and to what extent that plays into politics. We saw machismo and fronting, and tribal groupthink. Some of it is very Lord of the Flies. I had a lot of preconceived ideas of what I’d see, and a lot of them were met, but then there was an enormous amount of surprise in the range of masculinity that I saw, and the range of power that empathic leadership had, even in this space.
Jesse Moss: We see two models of leadership, of empathy versus a sort of militant strength. We understand that those are being worked out in national politics in different ways. It’s a kind of struggle of optimism and hope versus a dark cynicism. We hadn’t fully anticipated the degree to which we would have a really valuable prism, or perspective, into this contest of wills and masculine identity formation.
René Otero.Photo Courtesy of Apple
There are some very honest interviews and authentic interactions, some of which came out of the interview room you created.
Moss: As vérité filmmakers, we really prize capturing those dramatic, intimate moments as they happen. That was really the project of this film, but what we recognized was, this is also a really highly performative space, and there might be something happening on the surface that was different from what was simmering beneath. The interview room, which we built as a set, was a way to get our subjects offstage and let them have a moment of quiet contemplation and reflection. We began to learn through the week that what we were seeing wasn’t necessarily what they were feeling. They were struggling and sometimes sharing these very intimate feelings about the moral choices they were confronting as political actors in this space. A whole other level of the story emerged out of those interactions.
McBaine: It was a reflective space, as opposed to a reactive space, and it was essential to their transformation through the week.
What were some of the conscious choices for how the movie was filmed, especially considering you used six different cinematographers?
Moss: They are all artists in their own right, but we very much did have a style guide. One of the challenges of having a big team was making sure everybody was on the same creative page. There was a very intentional look to the film. One of the decisions was to shoot on a prime lens, a 35mm prime, which is unusual for a vérité documentary, where you typically want the flexibility of a zoom. We could move everywhere in the space, which was very exciting, and that meant that we could shoot on the prime lens, a very shallow depth of field, and really isolate our subjects in the frame from the background. That’s important in these sometimes ugly institutional spaces. Also, we shot widescreen, 2.39:1, which is unusual for documentaries, but we were really committed to making a big-screen movie.
Robert MacDougall. Photo Courtesy of Apple
How did you choose your cinematographers?
Moss: They are all part of KameraKollektiv in New York, and they all already had a dialogue with each other, and a shared commitment to the same practice. They were excited by the prospect of working together, which they don’t normally get to do.
All of you working in tandem must have been a powerful experience, given the intensity and chaos of the Boys State program.
McBaine: The collaborative piece could have gone very sideways at certain moments if we weren’t all in sync, like when three of our main characters, who are all being followed by different camera people, end up in the same room together. That means that there are three cameras in the same room, and to shoot that without getting the other cameras in the shot, and to shoot it well and cover it as a scene, really required the kind of beautiful ability to listen to and move with each other. That kind of choreography and level of experience is very rare. They were able to do that, and I can’t explain to you how special that is when you have the right people working with you.
Steven Garza. Photo Courtesy of Apple
In what way was Boys State special to you as filmmakers?
Moss: We are used to owning and controlling every aspect of production and having really small crews. This was a real surrender of ego and a leap of faith.
McBaine: Jesse and I have worked together for 20 years, and we’ve been married for almost as long. We have worked on many films, and generally, it’s Jesse in the field with a camera. It’s very intimate. We shoot it over 2 years, and then we all collect in the writing room over the next year. For this project, we needed everybody to be in the field, including me, and that required a certain kind of letting go of ego. That project, at this point in our career, was kind of wonderful, especially when you trust the people you’re working with on that level. To me, this was kind of a revelation in that way.
Featured image: René Otero in a still image from ‘Boys State.’ Courtesy Apple TV+
Not only did Watchmen top all TV rivals by earning 26 Emmy nominations; the sprawling HBO series also tackled racism in America en route to becoming arguably the most topical drama of the year. Rooted in the horrific 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre of more than 300 Black citizens, Watchmen pits fictional superhero Sister Night (Regina King) against a secret society of white supremacists Hell-bent on taking over the world.
Damon Lindelof (Lost, The Leftovers) created the show as a contemporary sequel to Dave Gibbons and Alan Moore’s 1987 graphic novel. The eye-popping “alternative history” hopscotches over time and space, touching down in Saigon, Harlem, the North Pole, a Hoboken carnival, and a moon of Jupiter. The man charged with assembling all these environments into a cohesive whole is UK-by-way-of-Denmark production designer Kristian Milsted (Killing Eve).
Emmy nominee Milsted spent 11 and a half months in Georgia, where his team eventually commandeered all six soundstages at Atlanta Metro Studios. “It was almost like designing nine stand-alone features,” says Milsted, who joined the production after Mark Worthington designed the pilot episode. (Additionally, David Lee designed Jeremy Irons’ “Europa” sequences on location in Wales).
“For example, episode six is in black and white and uses a completely different language than episode seven, and yet they can’t feel incongruous,” he continues. “In many ways, the show’s quite grounded, being set in Tulsa, but then there’s also this sci-fi element, with teleportation and space travel. One of my big jobs, working with the directors, the DP and Damon [Lindelof], had to do with ‘How do we make Watchmen feel like one show?’, because we didn’t want it to be a Tales From the Crypt type anthology series. For me, it was a great joy being able to solve that puzzle.”
Jake McDorman, Jovan Adepo. Photo: Mark Hill/HBO
Speaking by Zoom from his South London home, Milsted opened up about the real-world inspirations that informed the fantastical world-building of Watchmen, ranging from Spanish radio towers and Leonardo da Vinci to American hamburger chains and Doomsday Preppers.
Regina King stars as anti-racist cop Angela Abar AKA Sister Night, who pretends to run a bakery. But there’s more to it than that?
Sister Night’s kids think she’s starting a bakery on High Street in modern-day Greenwood. That’s her front, but in the back, she has what we call the Night Lair, where she keeps her really cool uniform and the cool-ass car. Angela’s lair is inspired by Nite Owl from the comic. As much as possible, Damon wanted us to take references from the original graphic novel. I’d been a fan of the comic as a kid, and when I got the call to do the show, it all came flooding back.
Visionary billionaire Lady Trieu, played by Hong Chau, runs this huge sphere-shaped compound filled with plants. Why all the greenery?
Lady Trieu vowed to her mother that she would never leave Vietnam, so when she does eventually leave to build the Millennium Clock in Tulsa, Damon’s brief for the compound was, “I want Lady Trieu to sit in the jungle.” The space needed to be impressive and we needed to have jungle permeating the whole structure. We built her compound based on a dome structure inspired by Brutalism architecture and this Italian architect Carlo Scarpa, who built some great structures in Venice. I was there on holiday when Damon called me about working on Watchmen, so that may have come into it.
Concept art by Kristian Milsted. Courtesy HBOMore concept art for Lady Trieu’s compound. Concept art by Kristian Milsted. Courtesy HBOHong Chau, Regina King. Photo by Mark Hill/HBO.
Looming over Lady Trieu’s compound is the Millennium Clock, which dominates the skyline with its soaring, graceful silhouette. What were your real-world references for the Millennium Clock?
I’m giving all my secrets away—there’s an arched radio tower in Barcelona by the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, which looks like an elongated number 2. We made two of those [towers] that came up like that. The Clock was also inspired by Victorian sundials, which show the positions of the planet, and I took a little bit from Jody Foster’s movie Contact. We gave the visual effects teams lots of drawings of what we thought the Clock should look like and they stayed fairly true to the shape.
Tim Blake Nelson’s character Wade, AKA Looking Glass, has this odd bomb shelter in his backyard. What’s that about?
We call it the Squid Shelter. Tim Blake Nelson’s character is terrified about another squid attack since the first one in 1985 completely changed his life. He’s a nervous wreck, and the Squid Shelter is the only place where he can really relax. Tim’s a prepper, like those guys in America who are prepared for any kind of eventual disaster. Tonally, the color scheme was very reminiscent of the graphic novel so we gave the shelter weird blends of tertiary colors, greens, and yellows, purples.
Tim Blake Nelson. Photo: Mark Hill/HBO
And the entrance to the Squid Shelter opens with a wheel?
Yeah, like in a submarine. Sometimes you do something just because it’s cool. Why do a handle when you can have a submarine wheel?
Jeremy Irons as genius scientist Adrian Veidt shot most of his scenes in Wales, but he came to Atlanta to operate the spectacular Steam Punk style catapult that hurls clones hundreds of miles into space. Did that thing actually work?
The catapult was inspired by a Leonard da Vinci design. It seemed to me like such an iconic Watchmen image, with the clock face and the arm looking almost like the dial of a watch face. When I showed the references to Damon, he loved it. The catapult we constructed did mechanically pull back but we couldn’t make the ropes work properly, so it wasn’t a fully functioning catapult. We would have probably killed people if that had been the case because it was quite big, about 22 feet high. But everything you see is real except for the firing of people, which was done with vis effects animation.
Tom Mison, Jeremy Irons. Photo by Mark Hill/HBO
“The Precinct,” where mask-wearing Tulsa cops get their marching orders from the police chief, seems both spooky and majestic at the same time.
I ‘m particularly happy with this very strange police station because it’s shaped like the House of Parliament. You have someone standing at one end speaking, and then two sloped seating areas where all the cops sit in their yellow masks. I don’t like to shock people out of the drama they’re watching, but I do like to challenge the audience.
Concept art by Kristian Milsted. Courtesy HBO
Watchmen has a lot to say about racism and American politics. White supremacists live in Nixonville, an enclave of trailer homes anchored by a giant statue of the disgraced president. What was the inspiration for your Nixon?
Damon liked the idea of Nixon looking like that burger chain.
Concept art by TK. Courtesy HBO
Bob’s Big Boy?
Yeah, Damon wanted Nixon to look like Big Bob. So I found a Nixon caricature with this very big head, holding his hands up in the air and we made a three-D rendering. We sculpted the legs from fiberglass and gave it to visual effects to finish. I worked closely with visual effects supervisor Erik Henry throughout the show. Ideally, we were able to achieve a seamless cross over between design and vis effects because it’s all coming conceptually from one place: Damon’s head.
Featured image: Regina King, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II. Photograph by Mark Hill/HBO
One of the most sought-after roles in all of TV has been filled.
Netflix’s lush period drama The Crown has two more seasons to go. This past season introduced the great Olivia Colman as Queen Elizabeth, stepping in to replace the also splendid Claire Foy as the Queen in middle age. Now, the role that fans have been waiting to see filled—that of the Queen’s most famous in-law of them all, Princess Diana—has been cast. Rising star Elizabeth Debicki will play Princess Di, the iconic royal whose life was cut short in a tragic car accident in 1997. Debicki stood out in a crowd in Steven McQueen’s underrated 2018 heist flick Widows, and co-stars in Christopher Nolan’s upcoming Tenet.
The Crown‘s final two seasons won’t begin production until sometime next year. This means fans of the show—and they are legion—will have a two-year gap between seasons four and five. We’ve been following the trials and tribulations of the royal family since 1947. Season four takes us up to 1990, with Margaret Thatcher (Gillian Anderson) stepping down as Prime Minister, and Princess Diana (Emma Corrin for this portion) marrying Prince Charles (Josh O’Connor). But for the final two seasons, Debicki will step into the role.
Here’s how the show’s official Twitter account made the news public:
Elizabeth Debicki will play Princess Diana in the final two seasons of The Crown (Seasons 5 and 6). pic.twitter.com/Z3CjHuJ56B
For the final two seasons, Debicki will be joining Imelda Staunton (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix), who will be taking over for Olivia Colman as Queen Elizabeth, Jonathan Pryce (The Two Popes) as Prince Philip, and Lesley Manville as Princess Margaret.
Debicki as Princess Di is one of those casting choices that, once made, you feel like it couldn’t have gone any other way. She more than held her own with the great Viola Davis in Widows, and nearly stole The Great Gatsby in every scene she was in (she played Daisy’s fearless friend Jordan Baker). Things always get more interesting when Debicki is on screen, which is more or less what happened with the Royal family once Diana Frances Spencer became Princess Di. Imagining Debicki as Di, a transformative, globally beloved, and ultimately tragic figure, is exceedingly easy.
Featured image: VENICE, ITALY – SEPTEMBER 07: Elizabeth Debicki attends “The Burnt Orange Heresy” photocall during the 76th Venice Film Festival at Sala Grande on September 07, 2019 in Venice, Italy. (Photo by Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images)
You will have precisely 24-hours to enjoy DC FanDome, the epic virtual event coming to your computer screen on August 22. This Warner Bros./DC mega-event is essentially doing a lot of the work that usually gets done during San Diego’s Comic-Con. All your favorite DC superheroes, more or less, will be on hand. There will be panels, previews, teasers, trailers, and more from some of the biggest upcoming films. We’re talking Matt Reeves’ The Batman. We’re talking Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman 1984. We’re talking Zack Snyder’s Justice League. We’re talking James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad.
The event begins promptly at 1 pm ET on August 22. Some highlights include:
Things kick off with a Wonder Woman 1984 panel at 1 pm ET. You’ll have co-writer/director/producer Patty Jenkins and stars Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Kristen Wiig, and Pedro Pascal on hand. The panel will include brand new footage.
There will be a 30-minute panel for James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad at 3 pm ET, including writer/director Gunn and his epic cast. What’s more, they’ll be taking part in a “Squad Showdown” which will test their Suicide Squad knowledge. Maybe we’ll also finally find out who’s playing who!
At 5:45 pm ET Zack Snyder will take part in a panel where he’ll discuss all things Justice League, including the long road to getting his hotly-anticipated cut of the film in front of viewers.
At 6 pm ET none other than Dwayne Johnson will take part in a Black Adam panel to discuss his starring role in the upcoming film. Expect a few surprises!
Brace yourself for The Batman panel at 8:30 pm with writer/director Matt Reeves. We will almost definitely be getting our first glimpse of the film.
Folks, this is but a taste of a massive menu of virtual options. For the full schedule, check out all things FanDome at the official site, dcfandome.com.
Featured image: An image from writer/director Matt Reeves ‘The Batman.’ Courtesy Reeves/Warner Bros.
This summer we had the pleasure of interviewing both actress/producer Laverne Cox and writer/director Justin Simien. Both of these ultra-talents mentioned Bad Hair, Simien’s upcoming horror film which he wrote and directed, and in which Cox plays Virgie, a hairdresser who gives Anna (Elle Lorraine) a cut she won’t soon forget. Now, Hulu has dropped the first official teaser for the film, giving us a glimpse of what had Cox so excited about this film when we spoke to her.
The conceit is this—Anna is a young woman starting out in the world of music television in 1989. She really wants to be successful, yet believes the only way to do this is to straighten her natural hair so she’s more “appealing” to larger swath of the TV-watching public. Yet her weave has other ideas. From this simple premise, Simien weaves a horror-comedy that has plenty to say about what it’s like to be a Black woman, then and now, with a powerhouse lead performance by Lorraine.
Simien’s gathered up an incredible cast. Joining Cox and Lorraine are Vanessa Williams, Lena Waithe, Jay Pharoah, Blair Underwood, James Van Der Beek, Usher, and Kelly Rowland. This brief look at Bad Hair is still plenty full of off-kilter imagery, amazing costume and production design, and great sound cues.
Bad Hair hits Hulu on October 23. Check out the teaser below:
Here’s the official synopsis from Hulu:
In this horror satire set in 1989, BAD HAIR follows an ambitious young woman (Elle Lorraine) who gets a weave in order to succeed in the image-obsessed world of music television. However, her flourishing career comes at a great cost when she realizes that her new hair may have a mind of its own.
The film stars Elle Lorraine, Vanessa Williams, Lena Waithe, Laverne Cox, Jay Pharoah, Kelly Rowland, Blair Underwood, James Van Der Beek and Usher Raymond.
BAD HAIR is written and directed by Justin Simien. Simien also serves as a producer alongside Julia Lebedev, Angel Lopez, and Eddie Vaisman. Executive Producers include Leonid Lebedev, Oren Moverman, and Alex G. Scott. The film is produced by Sight Unseen in association with Culture Machi
Featured image: Sistah Soul (Yaani King Mondschein), Annie (Elle Lorraine) and Brook-Lynne (Lena Waithe), shown. (Photo by: Tobin Yellan/Hulu)
The first trailer for director Antonio Campos’ The Devil All The Time builds to a feverish climax, like a great oratory from a preacher, if you will. The film, based on Donald Ray Pollock’s 2011 novel of the same name, tracks Arvin Russell (Tom Holland), a decent young man living in Knockemstiff, Ohio in the decades following World War II. Knockemstiff is the type of place that preys on decency, and Arvin is more or less surrounded by predators.
Holland’s surrounded by a killer cast, notably Robert Pattinson as the sinister preacher Preston Teagardin, Jason Clarke, and Riley Keough as the twisted couple Carl and Sandy, and Sebastien Stan as the crooked cop Lee Bodecker. Holland is venturing way, way outside the MCU on this one.
Holland’s Arvin Russell has lost both his parents (Bill Skarsgård and Haley Bennett) and The Devil All The Time follows Arvin’s attempt to make it a changing world in a place that doesn’t seem to want to change at all. Campos adapted the book with this brother Paulo Campos, and the trailer paints a vivid portrait of a specific time and place, with quality actors getting to take a big bite out of a period piece thriller, which is usually a joy for such skilled performers.
Here’s the first trailer for The Devil All the Time. The film will be released on September 16th on Netflix.
Here’s the official synopsis from Netflix:
In Knockemstiff, Ohio and its neighboring backwoods, sinister characters — an unholy preacher (Robert Pattinson), twisted couple (Jason Clarke and Riley Keough), and crooked sheriff (Sebastian Stan) — converge around young Arvin Russell (Tom Holland) as he fights the evil forces that threaten him and his family. Spanning the time between World War II and the Vietnam war, director Antonio Campos’ THE DEVIL ALL THE TIME renders a seductive and horrific landscape that pits the just against the corrupted. Co-starring Bill Skarsgård, Mia Wasikowska, Harry Melling, Haley Bennett, and Pokey LaFarge, this suspenseful, finely-woven tale is adapted from Donald Ray Pollock’s award-winning novel.
Last week it was the brand new Crabsuit, this week, it’s the High Camp Bio Lab. Things are really cooking on the set of Avatar 2 in New Zealand, and producer Jon Landau is making sure we’re being kept up to speed on director James Cameron’s long-simmering sequel.
Cameron is genuinely obsessed with the natural world. This was evident in his box-office smashing Avatar, released in 2009 and revealing the Na’vi tribe and their lush planet of Pandora. Avatar 2 and the rest of the sequels (he’s planning on capping his quintet with Avatar 5) will bring to bear all the latest technology and everything Cameron has learned in the past 11 years since the original film came out. That’s why nearly every image we see from set looks something like this:
From the set of the Avatar sequels: Last year during underwater performance capture, still photographer Mark Fellman snapped this photo of @BritainDalton, who plays Lo’ak. pic.twitter.com/0pBt8wwAqa
When Avatar 2 finally does premiere, on December 16, 2022, we only know a few things for certain. The cast includes returning stars Sigourney Weaver, Joel David Moore, Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Dileep Rao, Stephen Lang, and Matt Gerald. New cast members include Kate Winslet, Edie Falco, Michelle Yeoh, Vin Diesel, Jemaine Clement, and Oona Chaplin. And we have this bit of plot information from Landau:
“This is the story of the Sully family and what one does to keep their family together. Jake and Neytiri have a family in this movie, they are forced to leave their home, they go out and explore the different regions of Pandora, including spending quite a bit of time on the water, around the water, in the water. I think, why do people turn to entertainment today, more so than ever? I think it’s to escape, to escape the world we’re in, to escape the other pressures they have in their lives…I think with Avatar, we have an opportunity to allow people to escape to an incredible world with incredible characters that they will follow, in much the same way as Peter Jackson was able to do with Lord of the Rings, so that’s what we’re looking forward to doing.”
The tentative release dates for the rest of the films are as follows: Avatar 3 on December 20, 2024, Avatar 4 on December 18, 2026, and Avatar 5 on December 22, 2028.
Hanna editor Morten Højbjerg cut the first two episodes of season one of creator David Farr’s relentlessly action-packed Amazon series, which was adapted from Joe Wright’s 2011 film (which Farr wrote) that starred Saoirse Ronan in the title role. In the series, Esme Creed-Miles takes over for Ronan as the titular young girl with a certain set of extraordinary skills not usually found in youngsters. Instead of planning sleepovers, doing homework, or arguing with siblings, Hanna is a forest-raised young woman who counts among her antagonists an off-book CIA agent and, in season two (two episodes of which Højbjerg also cut), a pesky drone.
“That film was definitely one of the reasons why I got attracted to the project,” Højbjerg says. “The thing is, it’s never interesting or very rewarding to copy something that already exists. Especially for a guy like [series creator] David Farr. So I think the opportunity here was to really expand the universe when you have these extra hours of drama instead of a compact feature film.”
Esmé Creed-Miles as “Hanna” in HANNA Season Two on Amazon Prime Video. Amazon Studios, Prime Video, Christopher Raphael
Højbjerg revealed that Farr actually conceived of Hanna as a TV series before the feature film. But back in 2011, there weren’t as many options to make a show like this. Yet even by today’s standards, Hanna still stands out. The action is brilliantly conceived, executed, and cut. This action often involves women, especially Creed-Miles’ resourceful, tough-as-nails Hanna. And beneath the surface, there’s a surprisingly tender drama.
“It’s not just a thriller,” Højbjerg says. “Of course, the main engine in terms of the pacing and how it flows on the screen is a thriller, but underneath that, there’s this coming-of-age story, identity questions, and a lot to do with daughters and mothers as well. So much of it is from a female perspective, and I think it’s amazing and something we need a lot more of.”
Esmé Creed-Miles as “Hanna” in HANNA Season Two on Amazon Prime Video. Amazon Studios, Prime Video, Christopher Raphael
Højbjerg’s job is, in essence, to get inside Hanna’s head. “Something I think about a lot when I’m working on this show is that it’s so much about identity,” he says. “I’m kind of in that headspace of Hanna. For her, it’s not about the action and the thrills and the drama—all that stuff kind of happens to her—for her, it’s about finding herself and finding out why she’s different from everybody else in this world.”
Editors absorb more of a given series or film’s story than any other member of the crew, save for perhaps the director. Everything that everyone on set has done ultimately flows through them. This presents a mammoth responsibility, but also opportunities galore to help shape the story. “When you’re looking from the outside, you look at the job of editing as the physical editing,” Højbjerg says. “You tend to classify the job of editing as the actual edits you can see. But what you tend to spend your time on, I think, is that you’re the channel of all these elements, from a crew of sometimes hundreds of people who are all brilliant in one specific thing. Whether it’s the cinematographer or costume designer or set director, everybody is doing one little piece of the puzzle, and you and the director are the only people in the process that gets all of that work, sometimes years of work, and you have to filter it and channel it somehow and organize it as well. You’ve got to make all these decisions, it becomes much more of a re-writing process, I guess, then an actual, physical cutting job.”
For an aspiring editor, Højbjerg says what you need to know is your job is very much about asking questions. Why is a character doing this instead of that? Why is Hanna going out that door? Why is she looking at this person in this way? “Sometimes, if the answer is because it says so in the script, then you know that it’s not valid, that something’s wrong,” he says. “You need to find the answers. Then the actual cutting of a scene, that comes naturally, but it’s a second thing from all the thinking and question-asking that editing is actually about.”
One of Højbjerg’s challenges in the series is cutting scenes that have unfinished visual effects. He refers to these scenes as the infamous blank piece of paper that faces every writer at the start. “In the second season, first episode, we had Hanna and Clara (Alba Paredes) in the forest being chased by a drone. And the drone didn’t exist,” he says. “They shot Hanna and Clara in the elements, running and trying to hide from the drone, [filming] clean plates of sky and trees and different camera movements. At that point, no one knew what this drone would look like. That’s something we invented while editing.”
How’d an editor with no visual effects software, or training, invent a drone? By using sound. “You can sound design your way out of a lot of problems. Especially here, when you have to build a sequence that’s supposed to be really suspenseful and scary and you have the whole half of the scene missing, you can start playing with sound effects,” he says. “So in your head, you think maybe [the drone] is this size, so then it can go a bit low to the ground because if it’s too big it would have to stay above the trees, which would be boring. So far, so good. Then you start playing with sound to create distance, now it’s coming from left to right, or now it’s coming from the back of the shot towards us, and you can pan up and down with the sound. If you do a good job with the sound effects, it’s almost like you can see the drone when it’s not even there. It’s kind of fascinating I think, how much you can tell the story with sound effects.”
Then there’s the meat-and-potatoes of Hanna‘s appeal, the action. Højbjerg says that for those sequences, an editor is usually working with almost overwhelming amounts of material. “You need a lot of footage because you need to be able to always go to other angles for storytelling and for pace and rhythm,” he says. “What I tend to do is be very intuitive, sort through the material, organize it, and get an overview so you can find other things when you need it. You start by identifying all the good parts. Don’t think too much about why you like them or how they would fit. Don’t chase the results, just keep breathing, and take it easy.”
It might sound like a counterintuitive approach to cutting breathtaking action, but it’s clearly working for Højbjerg and it’s working for Hanna, too.
Hanna season two is currently streaming on Amazon.
Featured image: Esmé Creed-Miles as “Hanna,” (left) and Yasmin Monet Prince as “Clara” (right) in HANNA Season Two on Amazon Prime Video. Photo Credit: Chris Raphael/Amazon Prime Video
How do you cast a show where most household name actors play themselves and entire scenes are based on improv? Well, it’s complicated. To get on Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, now in its 10th season and booked to begin shooting Season 11 come fall, coronavirus permitting, you need to be funny, but you don’t have to be funny, and you definitely can’t seem to be trying to be funny. On actors who make it to an in-person audition, “they don’t have to be haha-funny, ever,” said Allison Jones, the casting director known for discovering, among others, Jonah Hill and Seth Rogen, in the course of shaping casts that came to be the signature of directors like Paul Feig and Judd Apatow. On Curb, “to be as real as possible is what they want because the situations and the characters are so ridiculous and confrontational with Larry—so much so that Larry just loves to see what these gifted people come up with. And usually, it’s fricking hilarious,” she added.
Richard Lewis and Larry David. Photograph by John P. Johnson/HBO
Jones and her associate of over a decade, Ben Harris, are nominated for an Emmy for their work casting Curb’s 10th season, bringing in actors like Isla Fisher as a professional crier, Rebecca Romijn for the role of an unimpressed doctor’s office manager, and Nick Kroll as a smarmy maitre d’ of a restaurant that segregates pretty and ugly customers in separate sections (no matter whom he eats with, David’s only recourse out of the unattractive section is blackmailing Kroll). Highlights among celebs who play themselves, or at least, versions of their own names, include Jon Hamm, Laverne Cox, Clive Owen, and Mila Kunis.
David causes outrage at an awards ceremony when he ducks Cox’s on-stage hug after she’d privately advised him she had a cold, inadvertently turns Hamm, shadowing him for a role, into an obnoxious version of himself, and inspires Kunis to open a jewelry store out of spite. For Jones and Harris, casting people as themselves is an involved process with the actors, writers, David, actor/producer Jeff Garlin, and director Jeff Schaffer. “I think half of them Larry knows, so he calls or texts them. And then a lot of the people playing themselves have expressed an interest in being on the show,” said Jones, remarking that at David’s level of fame in the comedy world, even when she and Harris do have to call an agent for a particular star, “we don’t get many no’s on Curb.”
Though the politically incorrect hit is eternally popular for cameo opportunities, Jones and Harris mentioned that a prior season had one role in particular, which went unnamed in our interview, get passed on by a few squeamish actors. “We’ve had these great actors do some questionable things, and play questionable characters,” Jones admitted. As for organizing who appears on Curb under their own names versus in a fictional role, there’s no particular system in place, with Schaffer, Garlin, and David “pretty cool with just getting the funniest person for the role,” said Jones, though “some people, oddly enough, don’t want to play themselves.” Vince Vaughn, for example, joined the cast as Freddy Funkhouser, half-brother to Marty Funkhouser (the show’s inimical Bob Weinstein, who passed away last year), but had years ago declined an ask to come on as himself during a poker game.
Whether playing themselves or other people, what matters most for an actor trying to get on Curb is striking that balance between being funny while not being required to be funny and definitely not appearing to try to be funny.“The minute you’re trying to be funny, [Larry, Jeff, and Jeff] see through that and they don’t want to do that,” Jones said. On top of those directives, given that so much of the show’s humor comes out of improvisation, actors have to be able to riff with David right off the bat. Hopefuls are given a scenario but no lines, explained Jones. “Larry’s in there, and they have to go from there. And a lot of times that’s what you end up seeing in the show.” Harris pointed out that this can be intimidating for the actors, but they both agreed that when it works, the casting room feels like a three-hour version of the show itself. “Larry is not intimidated by someone who’s as funny as he is—he wants that to be the case,” Jones said, recalling that “when J.B. [Smoove] came in, he was Leon from the second he came in. And he’d invented this hilarious character. Larry couldn’t get through the audition, it was so funny.”
Some bigger names have passed on Curb because they just don’t do non-scripted work, and on the flip side, there have been improv pros who flopped. “Every once in a while we get somebody who’s an excellent improviser, and they just bomb, because they’re so nervous just to be auditioning with Larry,” Harris mentioned. However, the most complicated casting prospects throughout Curb’s run are Larry’s paramours. “It’s always hard to find a love interest for Larry. Always. I don’t know why, but it’s a fine line with age, vibe, who’s too famous,” said Jones. “It’ll start with a list” of about 50 names, Harris added, “and we go around in circles sometimes.” Which, when you really think about trying to pair off television’s pettiest curmudgeon, seems entirely fitting for Curb’s trickiest role to fill.
Featured image: J.B. Smoove, Larry David. Photograph by John P. Johnson/HBO.
Well, this is making us miss movie theaters even more. Again. Hans Zimmer, one of the greatest living film composers, has taken Netflix’s iconic “Ba-dum” sound and given it a proper extension for when a Netflix movie plays in theaters. You know the sound. The “Ba-dum” is what greets viewers as you settle in for a Netflix series or film, that two-note thump that augers in some serious Netflix and chill time. The brief sound, which now has a Pavlovian effect on millions of people (signaling, among other things, leisure time, life-avoidance time, and, of course, binge time), and it has a rich history—the sound originally comes from Kevin Spacey’s Frank Underwood knocking on the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office in House of Cards. In 2019, the streaming giant had finished up spending two years revamping the short intro, adding those bars of vertical light we’re now used to seeing, to give their intro a little more oomph.
SOME PERSONAL NEWS: Starting today there’s a new logo animation before our originals. It shows the spectrum of stories, languages, fans, & creators that make Netflix beautiful — now on a velvety background to better set the mood.
They did this to give their original films and series the necessary visual and aural signature that hey, this is a Netflix original. HBO has long understood that pausing for a moment before the show starts to hype the brand is all a part of the anticipatory fun. Now, Netflix has deployed none other than Zimmer to make sure when one of their films plays in theaters (eventually), the company will take a moment to properly laud themselves with a touch of sonic gravitas.
First, have a listen to the work Zimmer has done extending Netflix’s soundmark to give it some serious cinematic drama:
The Netflix “ta-dum” soundmark is one of the all time greats, but doesn’t work as well in a theater because it’s only 3 seconds long.
So Netflix commissioned Hans Zimmer to extend it for theaters and … it’s … so … good.pic.twitter.com/RGw26vCAGY
Zimmer’s been a famous composer for a long time, but for most of us film lovers, he really became a household name with his work on Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy. He also came up with, among a ton of other earworms, that dreamy deep wash of sound for Inception that let you know this movie was going places none before had gone. Zimmer knows how to build a crescendo. Here, he’s giving us a more traditional, but still beautiful, rush of sound leading into the very simple, very effective “Ba-dum” that we’ve grown to love (and rely on).
Featured image: TORONTO, ON – SEPTEMBER 08: Hans Zimmer attends the “Widows” premiere during 2018 Toronto International Film Festival at Roy Thomson Hall on September 8, 2018 in Toronto, Canada. (Photo by Presley Ann/Getty Images)
It’s time to start singing the Fresh Prince theme again (and really, why did we ever stop?). In a piece of fantastic news, The Hollywood Reporterhas the scoop that Will Smith and Morgan Cooper, the creator of the viral YouTube trailer Bel-Air, are teaming up to adapt Cooper’s vision of a dramatic version of the iconic NBC comedy. THR writes that Bel-Air is being described as a dramatic riff on the comedy that turned Smith into a household name, in which he played a kid from a rough Philly neighborhood who, at the behest of his mother, finds himself moving in with his Uncle Phil and Aunt Viv in Bel-Air.
The original series ran for six seasons on NBC, from 1990 to 1996. Smith was joined by a really strong supporting cast. The Banks family was cast, to a character, perfectly. James Avery as Uncle Phil, Janet Hubert, and then Daphne Reid as Aunt Viv, the hysterical Alfonso Ribeiro as Carlton, Tatyana Ali as Ashley, Karyn Parsons as Hilary Banks, and Joseph Marcell as their butler Geoffrey. It was a broad comedy, but also unlike anything else on TV at the time. People loved this show for good reason and not just Carlton’s dance moves.
Perhaps nobody absorbed The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air quite as deeply—and creatively—as Morgan Cooper. His Bel-Air has been quietly in the works for more than a year, THR reports. Here’s the clip that started it all back in 2019 and got Smith’s attention:
Now Cooper has turned his dream into a reality. After conceiving the project and directing the dynamite trailer, he’ll be co-writing the script, directing, and executive producing the new series. Bel-Air is being shopped to the big streamers, and Smith’s Westbrook Studios and the original producers (who include Smith, Quincy Jones, Benny Medina, and original creators Andy and Susan Borowitz) at Universal TV will co-produce. There are more big names coming aboard. Chris Collins, an alum of The Wire and Sons of Anarchy, will serve as showrunner and executive producer. He’ll also be co-writing the script with Cooper. Sounds fairly incredible, right?
While we wait to find out more about Bel-Air, we can dip back into the series that started this fantastic mini news cycle; The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air is currently available for streaming at HBO Max.
Featured image: TAIPEI, TAIWAN – OCTOBER 21: Will Smith attends the Paramount Pictures “Gemini Man” Taipei Press Conference at Mandarin Oriental Hotel on October 21, 2019 in Taipei, Taiwan. (Photo by Ashley Pon/Getty Images for Paramount Pictures)
Director Laura Terruso’s Work It, which premiered on Netflix on August 7, is something of a love letter to hip-hop. In the film, a straight-A high school senior Quinn (Sabrina Carpenter) wants nothing more than to go to Duke. She wants to become a Blue Devil so bad, in fact, that she responds to her college interviewer’s offhanded comment that she appreciates dance with a lie, claiming she’s also a dance lover. Reader, she’s not. Thus begins Quinn’s mission to learn how to dance, requiring her to assemble a rag-tag team of expert movers-and-shakers. Ans voila; here’s the conceit of Terruso’s joyous late-summer film. In a new video just released by Netflix, we see some of the best dance sequences from a film full of them.
The moves in Work It look great because Terruso has assembled a cast that can really dance. Quinn’s best friend Jas (Liza Koshy) and the hotshot Jake (Jordan Fisher) teach her how to move—in real life, Koshy and Fisher are top-flight professional dancers. Work It utilizes their skills, and many others, while also having loving fun with the high school dance genre itself—there’s a reference to Channing Tatum and Step Up, for example.
Mostly, though, Work It lets its own moves speak for itself. You can how well those moves work in the video below:
Here’s the official synopsis from Netflix:
When Quinn Ackerman’s (Sabrina Carpenter) admission to the college of her dreams depends on her performance at a dance competition, she forms a ragtag group of dancers to take on the best squad in school…now she just needs to learn how to dance.
If you haven’t yet watched Beyoncé’s Black Is Kingon Disney+, this new teaser is designed to seep, image after beautiful image, into your frontal lobe until you decide to watch it. It’s a gorgeous sprint through some of Black Is King‘s most arresting images. Like a perfectly crafted remix, the teaser samples from the work of Beyoncé and her vast, prodigiously talented creative team and hooks you in. In short, it’s irrefutably beautiful. If you still haven’t seen the film yet, this is the push you need:
Black Is King premiered on Disney+ on July 31, after Bey surprised us with the film’s existence only a month or so prior. We didn’t know all that much going in, working off of the teaser and trailer she revealed. Everyone started putting the pieces together as more information trickled out. Beyoncé had assembled an international who’s who of rising talent and confirmed stars. Bey wrote, directed, and executive produced this project, based on her music from her album “The Lion King: The Gift,” which she crafted for 2019’s live-action The Lion King.
Beyoncé from “Black Is King” photo by Travis Matthews
As for her collaborators, the list is long and unpredictably impressive. Ghanaian-Dutch filmmaker Emmanuel Adjei and Grammy-winning writer and photographer Ibra Ake, Nigerian filmmaker Dafe Oboro, Ghanaian-American photographer, and filmmaker Joshua Kissi, French filmmaker Alexandre Moors, multi-disciplinary artist Julian Klincewicz, director/writer Derek Milton, filmmaker Meji Alabi, and South African cinematographer Deon Van Zyl. Familiar faces, from Jay-Z to Lupita Nyong’o to Kelly Rowland appear, too. Black Is King took a year to create and was shot in West Africa, South Africa, New York, Los Angeles, London, the Grand Canyon, and Belgium.
The result of all this is a one-of-a-kind film. As the teaser is a reminder that there’s only one Beyoncé, and thankfully, she likes to surround herself and revel in the talent of others.
Featured image: Black Is King key art. Courtesy Walt Disney Studios
The pull of the Red Planet is such that it could qualify as its own Martian genre, which itself would encompass everything from horror to heartfelt, reality-based to rococo. From Ridley Scott’s The Martian to Andrew Stanton’s John Carter to Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks! to Simon Wells Disney animated Mars Needs Moms, we keep going back to our nearest planetary neighbor, with a staggeringly diverse set of results. Even in movies about other planets, like James Gray’s haunting Ad Astra (the ultimate destination was Neptune), Mars often steals the show. (The “Space Pirate” scene in Ad Astra, set on Mars, was simply epic.)
Which brings us to Netflix’s upcoming series Away, starring Hilary Swank as astronaut Emma Green, who is prepping to leave her husband (Josh Charles) and daughter (Talitha Bateman) to lead an international crew on the first mission to Mars. As with the more serious-minded Mars-centric films, Away focuses on the human drama inherent in any mission to the planet—Emma will be leaving her family for three years in order to make the journey. What’s exciting about Away, along with the great cast (more on them in a second) is that the series format will offer a chance to really dig into the ramifications of traveling 55.6 million miles away from Earth.
Away comes from creators Jessica Goldberg and Andrew Hinderaker. Joining Swank are Ray Panthaki, Mark Ivanir, Ato Essandoh, Ato Essandoh, Adam Irigoyen, Ray Panthaki, and Vivian Wu. Away is set to take flight on Netflix on September 4. Check out the trailer below:
Here’s the official synopsis from Netflix:
From Executive Producer Jason Katims, the Netflix series Away is a thrilling, emotional drama on an epic scale that celebrates the incredible advancements humans can achieve and the personal sacrifices they must make along the way. As American astronaut Emma Green (Hilary Swank) prepares to lead an international crew on the first mission to Mars, she must reconcile her decision to leave behind her husband (Josh Charles) and teenage daughter (Talitha Bateman) when they need her the most. As the crew’s journey into space intensifies, their personal dynamics and the effects of being away from their loved ones back on Earth become increasingly complex. Away shows that sometimes to reach for the stars, we must leave home behind. Created by Andrew Hinderaker, the series is executive produced by showrunner Jessica Goldberg, Jason Katims, Matt Reeves, Andrew Hinderaker, Edward Zwick, Hilary Swank, Adam Kassan, and Jeni Mulein.
With this year’s Comic-Con reduced to an online event that, try as it might, could never satiate the appetite millions of fans have for Hollywood’s superhero industrial complex, DC’s FanDome Event promises to do its level best to make up for it. The lineup for FanDome—heading your way, for free, on August 22—is truly massive. So who will be there (virtually), you wonder? Check out the full lineup in this mesmerizing tweet from DC Comics. Just don’t blink.
Catch all that? Yeah, we didn’t either the first time around, but after pausing and absorbing the list of names, we’re fairly confident this event is going to be amazing. And, we’ll likely get all those juicy reveals we’re used to getting at Comic-Con. We’re talking about the trailers, the teasers, the announcements of upcoming projects, and more. With many of the stars from Warner Bros. and DC’s biggest upcoming films all more or less accounted for here, FanDome promises to deliver a superhero bounty.
A brief glimpse at who you can expect to take part in FanDome: Wonder Woman 1984 star Gal Gadot, writer/director Patty Jenkins, and co-stars Chris Pine, Pedro Pascal, and Kristen Wiig. The Suicide Squad writer/director James Gunn and the film’s stars, including Idris Elba and Margot Robbie. Justice League writer/director Zack Snyder. Black Adam star Dwayne Johnson. The Batman writer/director Matt Reeves and star Robert Pattinson. The Flash star Ezra Miller. Sure, this won’t be quite the same as seeing all these folks take over Comic-Con’s Hall H in San Diego, but this is a seriously potent roster of talent, representing some of the biggest upcoming films out there.
Again, FanDome is free and will take place in a single, 24-hour long sprint. You can find out everything you need to know at DCFanDome.com (and there’s a lot to know). And of course, whenever a trailer or a teaser drops, we’ll share it as quickly as we can.
As we approach Warner Bros. and DC’s epic virtual FanDome event on August 22, we’re starting to get some juicy details on upcoming films. One of those films is Zack Snyder ‘s Justice League, arguably HBO Max’s most hotly-anticipated title.
The tentatively titled Zack Snyder’s Justice League will feature a brand version of the villain Steppenwolf (played by Ciarán Hinds), who was the big bad in the original, Joss Whedon co-directed version of the film that came out in 2017. Snyder has made it clear he intends to reveal a completely different version of the film in nearly every regard, and that apparently includes giving us this fresh version of the warmongering supervillain.
Snyder shared his new version of Steppenwolf on the VERO app. Not only did Snyder drop this juicy image, but he also added a spirited caption: “Just working today. Pulled this out of the editorial. Sorry he’s low-resolution, but I’ve seen him in all his hi-res glory and he’s a thing to behold. Quick question… how many f**ks do you think he gives???”
The new-look Steppenwolf. Courtesy HBO Max.
Steppenwolf will be joined by another major supervillain in Zack Snyder’s Justice League—Darkseid. Snyder already teased Darkseid in a tweet, and we know he’ll have an important part to play in this story. He’ll be played by Ray Porter.
Zack Snyder’s Justice League might bear the director’s name, but he’s hardly alone in bringing this thing together. His wife and producer Deborah Snyder has been a major player here, and the original cast and postproduction crew are coming back, too. The cast will be recording new dialogue, and the original postproduction crew has a boatload of VFX, scoring, and editing work that will be necessary to make Zack Snyder’s Justice League a reality.
“ReleaseTheSnyderCut first became a passionate rallying social media cry among fans in 2017 and has not let up,” Warner Media said in a press release when they revealed the film was actually happening. “From countless press articles and hundreds of thousands of social media mentions, it became a powerful global movement among cinephiles and comic book fans.”
That global movement made Zack Snyder’s Justice League possible. We’ll see what Snyder and his team have cooked up when it finally bows next year on HBO Max.
Featured image: The Snyder Cut is real. Zack Snyder’s Justice League is coming to HBO Max. Courtesy Warner Bros./HBO
The news that Little Woods and Candymanwriter/director Nia DaCosta will be helming Captain Marvel 2 was that rare occurrence of receiving a piece of purely joyous information. For admirers of DaCosta—that list is long and growing—her nabbing the job means that the sky (and cosmos) is the limit for where Marvel’s most potent superhero might go next. Yet savvy fans of the Captain Marvel franchise, both within the MCU and especially those familiar with writer Kelly Sue DeConnick’s beloved run in the comics, have an idea of where DaCosta might be taking the half-Kree superhero.
As Richard Newby writes in a must-read piece for Captain Marvel fans in The Hollywood Reporter, DaCosta’s unique storytelling gifts and perspective as Marvel’s first Black female director perfectly position her to take on Captain Marvel 2, as it will likely deal with the fallout from Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) leaving Earth and those, specifically one aspiring pilot, she left behind. The sequel is being written by WandaVisionstory editor Megan McDonnell. As Newby points out, we already know that WandaVision will feature the return of Monica Rambeau (now an adult and played by Teyonah Parris, who also stars in DaCosta’sCandyman), who we last saw as a child in Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck’s Captain Marvel.
In Captain Marvel, Monica (played by Akira Akbar) was the daughter of Carol’s best friend and fellow pilot Maria Rambeau (Lashana Lynch). Monica not only looked up to Carol—better known as Captain Marvel, of course—but she also intimated her own desire to become a world-class pilot like her mom and Carol. The relationship between Carol, Maria, and Monica was central to Captain Marvel, and will almost assuredly be explored further in the sequel.
It’s assumed that Teyonah Parris will have a big role to play in DaCosta’s Captain Marvel 2. She’s already making her debut in the MCU on WandaVision, she has a working relationship with DaCosta, and, the groundwork for her character becoming a superhero in her own right has already been laid by Kelly Sue DeConnick’s aforementioned “Captain Marvel” comic run.
One possibility DaCosta could explore is how Carol’s decision to leave Earth at the end of Avengers: Endgame affects not only the planet but Monica herself. Now that Monica is an adult living in contemporary America, she’ll have her own opinions on Carol’s choice to leave a planet so clearly in need of her powers. As Newby points out, there are fascinating possibilities here between Monica and Carol, the former a Black woman living in an unjust world that the white (half-Kree, sure, but still) Carol is able to simply leave whenever she wants.
Challenging Carol’s decision to leave, creating tension between two characters who love each other but are operating from different planets (both figuratively and literally), and exploring both race and womanhood in America today—all of this is rich material for DaCosta to explore. “DaCosta has a lens into this universe that no other Marvel director before her has had,” Newby writes, “and given Brie Larson’s commitment to lifting up the voices of Black women, Captain Marvel 2 has a chance to explore a subject that no other superhero movie has been able to do before.”
It should go without saying, but it must repeatedly be said—representation matters. With DaCosta at the helm of Captain Marvel 2, we’ll benefit hugely from seeing how much it matters and much more interesting and expansive the stories we tell become.
