Brad Pitt has got the pedal to the metal in the first look at F1, the upcoming racing epic from Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski.
Pitt stars as Sonny Hayes, a coulda-been Formula 1 legend who was on the cusp of greatness in the 1990s before an accident derailed his career. Thirty years later, Sonny’s a has-been, a racer-for-hire speeding off into the sunset of an unremarkable career, when he’s tapped by his former teammate, Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem), to come race for him and his struggling Formula 1 team APXGP. There are several problems, the first and most pressing being that Sonny is considered a dinosaur (at best) by the members of Ruben’s team, especially by Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris), a young driver on Ruben’s team who is not about to bend the knee to some old man. Another problem is the pressure involved—APXGP team is on the verge of collapse, and unless they can pull off a major upset, and unless Sonny and Joshua can learn to be teammates rather than competitors, all of their futures are at risk.
Joining Pitt, Bardem, and Idris are Kerry Condon, Tobias Menzies, and Kim Bodina. Kosinski worked from a script by Ethan Kruger, his collaborator on Maverick.
Speaking with Vanity Fairlast year, Idris talked about how incredible it was to be involved in a film with such cinematic heavyweights:“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.”
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.”
F1 races into theaters on June 27. Check out the trailer below.
For more on Warner Bros., DC Studios, Max, and more, check out these stories:
Featured image: Caption: (L-r) DAMSON IDRIS as Joshua Pearce and BRAD PITT as Sonny Hayes in Apple Original Films’ “F1®,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
There are few careers that could fill an entire season of TV with a single day’s work, but The Pitt proves that the emergency room is a source of endless inspiration. Drama and trauma pump into a Pittsburgh hospital led by attending Dr. Robby (Noah Wyle) over fifteen hours.
Medical dramas aren’t new to the screen – in fact, Wyle is well known for his role as Dr. John Carter on ER. Yet, from the jump, The Pitt refreshes the genre with its real-time approach and compassionate portrayal of the most pressing contemporary health crises. Director Amanda Marsalis(Ozark, Ransom Canyon)wasn’t sure if she was right for the project, but the script quickly won her over.
“I was like, ‘Medical drama? That’s not really my thing.’ I like prestige television. I like Ozark. I like a long dolly shot,” she reasoned. “But I really, really love and respect [executive producer] John Wells. When I read episode 1, I was like, this is awesome, and then when I talked to John and [creator R.] Scott [Gemmill] about how they wanted to make the show, I was just like, ‘Great. I’m on board.”
Each episode depicts one hour in the medical staff’s shift starting at 7:00 A.M. Marsalis helmed four of the season’s most gripping episodes. She and her team choreographed multiple patients and moving parts, establishing the way the E.R. operates.
“Our wonderful production designer, Nina [Ruscio], had built a model of the set. I blocked everything out,” Marsalis explained. “We had the model so that I would place all the beds, and then I would put the scene number on the set, and we would photograph it. We made a book, basically, and passed it out to the ADs so everyone knew where everything should be in every scene. I need to make sure that technically everything is in its place so that we see it and we understand the devastation and heartbreak and pain or horror of something like this.”
Marsalis thrives in planning. She comes in early, ready for the long, fast-paced days.
“I really, really enjoy the mathematical side of directing, which is all of the prep,” she said. “I really think that episodes are made in prep, so that when you get there on a day, most people have the information that they need, and you can all move forward together, making something that you want to make and telling the story that you want to tell.”
Alexandra Metz, Patrick Ball. Photograph by Warrick Page/Max
Although coordinating The Pitt scenes was extremely complex, Marsalis ultimately prioritizes the human interaction. As a photographer for two decades, she finds beauty in everything, even a windowless emergency room. Although The Pitt is unlike any project she’s directed before, she always sets the same standards for her own work.
“My consistency is quality. Ozarkand The Pitt are nothing like each other, but I do think if you watch my episodes, you can tell they’re mine,” she noted. “I really believe in intimacy and that kind of storytelling that you feel very connected.”
12. Noah Wyle, Shawn Hatosy. Photograph by Warrick Page/Max
The Pitt takes place in a teaching hospital where interns and residents are eager for their shot at the most interesting cases. Marsalis’ episodes highlight a wide range of emergencies, such as accidental fentanyl overdose, drowning, and sickle cell crisis. The team did as much research as possible, and consultants were on set to ensure the accuracy of the medical procedures.
“We have Dr. Joe Sachs, who is like our main doctor. He was also on ER,” Marsalis shared. “We had three other doctors with us who helped prep each episode and gave all our medical notes. Plus, we had nurses on set, so our nurses would be like, ‘That’s not how you would do that.’ They have the right to be like, ‘That’s not right. We need to fix it.’”
The doctors engage in occasional flirtation with one another, but they are focused on the medicine. There are no steamy scenes, however, that doesn’t mean that the streamer is without cable-level nudity. Marsalis felt that the realistic, clinical depiction of the human body helped to give weight to the plot.
“One of my favorite things is that we have some nudity in the show,” she noted. “Nonsexual, realistic nudity of what happens to your body whenever you come into the E.R. These people just need to cut your clothes off, or they just need to do whatever, and that just doesn’t matter. It’s medically necessary nudity, and that is just how we show that it’s real. I think it really just helps our understanding of how vulnerable people are when you come there and how much you’re in the hands of these doctors.”
Garcia and Santos start a forearm fasciotomies. (Warrick Page/MAX)
Any realistic depiction of a hospital will also involve a lot of bodily fluids, as the kind country boy Dr. Whitaker (Gerran Howell) discovers. He has the unfortunate luck of seeing multiple patients who soil his scrubs, but every doctor gets messy at some point. One of the most utilized effects was fake blood, and Marsalis said there was no shortage in volume or variety.
“There’s floor blood, there’s mouth blood, there’s dark blood, there’s arterial blood, there’s clothing blood. The amount of different departments involved in blood is just wildly entertaining,” Marsalis laughed. “There was a lot of resetting. You’re like, okay, that was great. Let’s do it again. Let’s start over.”
14. Noah Wyle, Ayesha Harris. Photograph by Warrick Page/Max
An emergency suddenly changes everything during episode 12, “6:00 P.M.,” directed by Marsalis. It’s one of the most stunning hours of TV of the year, giving a terrifying glimpse into the dangerous and difficult conditions surrounding first responders.
The show empathetically portrays the extreme conditions doctors face every day to save lives. Dr. Robby and his team battle normal physical limitations like hunger, exhaustion, and even needing to use the bathroom. They also endure the mental strain of know-it-all parents referring to Google, the grief of losing a patient, or the pressure of mass events like COVID or a deadly shooting. Marsalis has been heartened by the response the show has received from real-life medical professionals.
“We got a really wonderful message from a doctor who was at the shooting in Vegas,” she relayed. “She basically was like, ‘Hey, the PTSD – you did this so, so well.’ The amount of people reaching out – it’s really moving because it’s like a whole population of people who feel seen. Man, I’m grateful for that.”
Marsalis’ episodes explore the emotional and psychological toll on caretakers as they navigate difficult decisions like end-of-life, DNR orders, and organ donation. The Pitt cast and crew faced their own emergency when wildfires in L.A. shut down production for a few days. Marsalis had also recently lost her own father before filming a scene in which adult children come to terms with their parents’ final hours. She recalled wiping away tears between takes of the moving moment. That human connection in a setting that can seem clinical is where the magic happens.
“The Pitt is entertaining and it’s really good storytelling,” Marsalis reflected. “I think the thing that’s really, really lovely about The Pitt is that it’s a show about a bunch of good people who are trying to do right. I love watching The Pitt. I love watching everyone’s episodes. It’s really great and I love Scott, John, and Noah. I think that’s just something that’s really fun about it. It’s just a bunch of people that care, and I think in this day and age it feels really nice to see people that care.”
Ryan Coogler’s latest film, Sinners, made history with a second-weekend box office tally only six percent lower than its opening weekend. Just past its fourth weekend, it crossed the $200 million mark at the domestic box office. Both audiences and critics adore this Southern Gothic vampire thriller, starring Michael B. Jordan as identical twins Smoke and Stack. The pair has just returned to the Mississippi Delta after fighting in World War I and then getting involved with the Chicago mob, the details of which are mostly left to other characters’ conjecture. Looking to open a juke joint for the community that raised them, they sign on their cousin Sammie (Miles Caton), a pastor’s son and blues guitar virtuoso, and buy an old saw mill off a local landowner Hogwood (David Maldonado), who lies to the twins about his Klan membership, but Smoke and Stack learn this vital piece of information anyway, but from a different well of trouble: Remmick (Jack O’Connell), a vampire who comes knocking during the juke joint’s opening night.
Sinners is a horror movie, but it’s also so much more—a moody, atmospheric fantasy and period piece in one, which plumbs the history of the blues, hoodoo, and the Jim Crow South. The twins are inseparable, but distinct. Stack is a swaggering troublemaker with a pissed-off white-passing ex-girlfriend, Mary (Hailee Steinfeld) hot on his tail, but a melancholy hangs over Smoke. We begin to understand why when he visits his estranged wife, Annie (Wunmi Mosaku), at her little shop and abode in the woods. Outside, a fresh bottle of milk is set next to a tiny grave for the couple’s baby daughter.
As Smoke and Stack make their way through the Delta, culminating in the juke joint’s grand opening, production designer Hannah Beachler’s (Black Panther, Creed) exceptional structures, built from the ground up, define each location. At first glance, the spare, light church from whence the twins pluck Sammie couldn’t be more different from Bo (Yao) and Grace Chow’s (Li Jun Li) bustling grocery, but an aesthetic through line connects each of the locations for a historic, coherent sense of the Delta imbued with the fantastical. Beachler, who has worked with Coogler for twelve years on five of his films, has a shorthand with the director, but nevertheless, every project has its own challenges.
We got to speak with Beachler about her historic references, visual guidelines, and working Easter eggs into the sets for Sinners.
The settings are so integral to this story. How did you approach them as a whole?
They were all built entirely from scratch on location, so that was an awesome feat. The first three sets I designed were Annie’s, the church, and the saw mill. I assigned them colors of red, white, and blue. Ryan loves to assign colors to characters, which I run with. Jedediah [Saul Williams] was black, Smoke and Stack were red and blue, and you’ll notice that Mary and Annie have colors. On the outside of Annie’s, there’s a haint blue. I think ultimately, my favorites were the church, the farmhouse, and Annie’s. They each have their own personality, inspired by Dennis Gassner and Tim Burton’s Big Fish, which is very much about these small silhouettes of buildings, leaning and exaggerated in form.
Ryan had talked about Sergio Leone, and these big vistas, Stagecoach and Searchers. It was really about wanting to put these structures on these big horizons so they could stand out, because nothing was big. We didn’t have huge mansions outside of plantations, so the world was very small, and I wanted to keep it that way, but I wanted to exaggerate the shapes.
Caption: MICHAEL B. JORDAN as Smoke and as Stack, in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “SINNERS,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
There’s a very strong coherence from location to location.
Sometimes I put a piece of a set into another set, trying to draw a line between church, spirituality which is Annie and the haint blue, and then red, which is blood and the capitalism of the juke joint and the free spirit there, and how all of those live in juxtaposition to one another. The farmhouse also has a lot of juxtaposition. You’ll notice things around Mary and Stack and Joan and Burt that are all sort of the same things, playing with lines. It was all intentional.
Caption: HAILEE STEINFELD as Mary in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “SINNERS,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
Annie’s abode is really special. What was your inspiration there?
When I started doing my research and digging into the photography of Eudora Welty, I saw a photograph of a woman from a sharecropper family standing outside her house. Her house is just leaning. And it struck me, there’s a huge pile of cotton on her porch. Cotton was king, and that’s what our story was about. [We put] piles of cotton everywhere. We wanted it on the road. You could see it as if it dripped out of the carriages. When Sammie walked through his neighborhood on the plantation, you saw people with it on their porch. There were images from the Library of Congress and the FSA, the Farm Services Administration, in Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana during the 1920s and 1930s that I used for inspiration as well. I went to Clarksdale and talked to older people about the town and what they remembered from their relatives and ancestors. All of those things were really important in building what was a truth that feels like fantasy.
Caption: WUNMI MOSAKU as Annie in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “SINNERS,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
How did you create the barn-turned-juke joint? Was the lighting practical?
I knew I wanted to make it two stories, to tell the story that people lived there at one point. Of course, the kerosene lanterns were practical lighting, and then we had that moment when they jacked the electricity. Autumn [Durald Arkapaw, the cinematographer] really used that as a point of reference for the lighting she put in there. I love working with her. I can be as bold and crazy as I want, and she turns it into a beautiful piece of art. I was listening to a lot of Howlin’ Wolf and Smokestack Lightning, and we stopped where the equalizers stopped in the middle of the chorus. Then, we painted the levels of the equalizer of the song in rust on the back wall. We wanted to bring in the feeling that music is surrounding them. The big light Mary and Stack are in front of looks like a moon, and foreshadows what they become. And the juke joint is where everybody’s world collides, so I brought a little bit of everything [from other sets] into the structure.
Caption: (L to r) MICHAEL B. JORDAN as Smoke, WUNMI MOSAKU as Annie, HAILEE STEINFELD as Mary, MICHAEL B. JORDAN as Stack, MILES CATON as Sammie and OMAR BENSON MILLER as Cornbread in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “SINNERS,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
Did the doubling for Smoke and Stack affect your process at all?
Ryan always said, Don’t let that dictate what you’re doing. The twinning affected us just a little bit when we had to make sure backgrounds matched, but otherwise, we just went for it without worrying too much about that. One place we really did dive into the IMAX of it all was the church. When you’re at the doors of the church and Sammie walks in, I wanted to see rafters, and I wanted them to disappear at a certain point. So we had Autumn’s people out in Los Angeles measuring the height of the bottom of where our rafters sat, with where the IMAX would fall, and how far in we would lose that.
So much of the key action takes place at night. What did that mean for your process?
Put light on it so we can see it! It was wonderful because the way Autumn lit everything, we could utilize the atmosphere and really layer the forest on the location where we built the juke joint. I knew the way we shot it was going to be about capturing silhouettes, the dirt road, and considering how to bring the fog in. Concentrating on shapes and creating a mood in the background was fun.
Caption: (L-r) JAYME LAWSON as Pearline, WUNMI MOSAKU as Annie, MICHAEL B. JORDAN as Smoke, MILES CATON as Sammie Moore, and LI JUN LI as Grace Chow, in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “SINNERS,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
How was shooting in Louisiana?
I’ve been in New Orleans for about 22 years. I knew a lot of the crew and had worked with a lot of them in my early career. We’re right next to Mississippi, and certainly our weather is the same as the Delta. Northern Louisiana is cotton, and southern Louisiana is sugarcane. We were able to use the sugarcane fields when they were low to plant an acre here or there of cotton, and the rest would be tilled in. That was one of the reasons we needed New Orleans; outside of it lay those big landscapes you’re going to get in the Delta, the big sky, and that land forever. That was something Ryan really needed to tell the story of the wealth of that land and the poverty of the people who worked that land. I knew that we could get that [landscape] in Louisiana more so than in any other place.
We shot in Donaldsonville, which was hit hard by economic times, so it was pretty empty. We augmented and filled all of those buildings. Those grocery stores were from the ground up. Our set decorating department made labels for every can. We also had a lot of stuff in there that really spoke to that story of Mississippi and Bo and Grace and the Asian community, how they were able to serve both the white community and the Black community, and dealt with their own hardships as well. There are a lot of little tells on the windows of the grocery stores as to what that world meant. I was so proud we were able to put catfish frying on 70mm IMAX—you don’t see that every day.
The town’s main street had an incredible amount of detail.
I hope people keep seeing things every time they watch it. It’s both a thriller and a commentary on the time and what was happening in Mississippi during Prohibition and Jim Crow. After all these years, I’ve learned to trust how Ryan’s going to tell the story. Really, the best part was the collaboration and working outside of the big studio system we’d worked in previously. It was still a studio, but it was Ryan’s, and that made us free to stretch our own creativity. That’s one of the great things about working with an auteur like Ryan.
Featured image: Caption: MICHAEL B. JORDAN as Smoke in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “SINNERS,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
Thunderbolts* director Jake Schreier is coming off one of the most successful premieres for a Marvel movie in quite a while. His antihero team-up epic, led by Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova (Pugh is starting to feel like the new face of the MCU going forward), has been a critical and commercial hit for the studio. Now, Schreier is in talks to helm Marvel’s X-Men reboot, returning these beloved mutants to the fold after years in the superhero wilderness. Deadline reports that while the dealmaking is still early, Schreier appears to be the top choice to take on the reboot, which already boasts a script by Michael Lesslie.
Thunderbolts* was that rare thing, a superhero movie without any bonafide superheroes that’s centered on the characters’ myriad mental health issues. Pugh’s Black Widow, along with some of Marvel’s most maladjusted misfits, including Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan), John Walker/U.S. Agent (Wyatt Russell), Alexei Shostakov/Red Guardian (David Harbour), Ava Starr/Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), and Antonia Dreykov/Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko), all have major issues they’re trying to sort through. And that’s to say nothing about Bob (Lewis Pullman), who might have them all beat in the troubles department. The point is, Schreier and his team of indie world creators made something unique in the MCU, and he does feel like a fine fit to take on an X-Men movie, considering they’ve always been outsiders who have tried to do their best despite heaps of troubles, both internal and external.
It’s not only the critical and commercial success of Thunderbolts* that’s working in Schreier’s favor—he’s also a very big X-Men comics fan—and the experience of working on Thunderbolts* was positive for both filmmaker and studio. Now, Deadline reports that Schreier has begun turning down other jobs, a sign that it looks like he’s about to land one of the biggest directing gigs in town.
Marvel has long preferred letting directors who have swung and connected on MCU films and series have another crack at even bigger titles. This was how the Russo Brothers went from Captain America: The Winter Soldier to Captain America: Civil War and eventually Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame. Matt Shakman successfully steered Marvel’s first Disney+ series, WandaVision, and landed the coveted job directing The Fantastic Four: First Steps.
Getting a fresh X-Men film onto the big screen is a major priority for both Marvel and the fanbase. The X-Men franchise was Fox’s most marquee Marvel IP, resulting in its most critical and commercially successful superhero films—ten in all if you include the Wolverine spinoff movies. Marvel has already restarted its X-Men phase, with the animated X-Men ’97on Disney+ and, of course, the massive success of Deadpool& Wolverine in 2024. What the studio needs now is a proper X-Men movie to get the gang back together.
Schreier and the X-Men sound like a match made in mutant heaven.
The iconic former Hobbit turned ring-lusting crucial figure in The Lord of the Rings films will be the star of his own movie, with Andy Serkis, the man who portrayed Gollum, returning to direct and star. Serkis’ The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum will open in theatres on December 17, 2027. Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema revealed the release date, which boasts Oscar-winners Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens, the trio who brought The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies to the big screen, as producers on the film.
“It is an honor and a privilege to travel back to Middle-earth with our good friend and collaborator, Andy Serkis, who has unfinished business with that stinker — Gollum!” Jackson, Boyens, and Walsh said in a statement when the film was announced last May. “As lifelong fans of Professor Tolkien’s vast mythology, we are proud to be working with [WBD film chiefs] Mike De Luca, Pam Abdy, and the entire team at Warner Bros. on another epic adventure!”
Serkis will star and direct the film, which is based on a script by Walsh, Boyens, Phoebe Gittins, and Arty Papageorgiou. Jackson, Walsh, and Boyens are producing a second LOTR film, but no director has been named for that project yet.
Gollum isn’t the only one returning to theaters—New Line also announced that the Evil Dead franchise was getting a fresh installment after the success of Evil Dead Rise. Souheila Yacoub is set to star in the joint New Line/Sony Pictures project, which will get a summer release on July 24, 2026.
Finally, Warner Bros. announced that M. Night Shyamalan’s Remain, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Phoebe Dynevor, and Ashley Waters, will hit theaters on October 23, 2026. The original film is a co-creation between Shyamalan and novelist Nicholas Sparks. The intriguing set-up is that Shyamalan and Sparks are both penning a screenplay and a novel based on the same original love story. Sparks’s novel version, “Remain,” will come out on October 7, 2025.
Featured image: CHICAGO, ILLINOIS – APRIL 11: Actor Andy Serkis during C2E2 on the main stage for the “There and Back Again: A Lord of the Rings Cast Reunion” at McCormick Place on April 11, 2025 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Barry Brecheisen/WireImage)
There’s a burning passion brimming in every frame of Ryan Coogler’s action-packed, thematically rich horror film Sinners. Coogler’s gangbusters original film celebrates Black art from the past, present, and future, which spoke deeply to Academy Award–winning costume designer Ruth E. Carter, now a longtime collaborator with Coogler, winning two Oscars for her sensational work on Coogler’s Black Panther and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, creating a masterclass in Afrofuturism, weaving together traditional African aesthetics with Wakanda’s bleeding-edge technology.
For Sinners, Carter was tasked with designing an entirely different world—the Mississippi Delta of the 1930s—as she helped Coogler tell the story of twins Smoke and Stack (played by Michael B. Jordan), who return home to Clarksdale (the iconic location where Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil so he could master his guitar) to open up a juke joint that serves and celebrates the Black community, a proper home for the blues. The twins’ cousin, Preacher Boy (a breakout performance from Miles Caton) is an astonishingly gifted young blues musician, and when his ecstatic music pierces the veil between the past, present, and future, his call is heard by a trio of white minstrel players who also happen to be vampires.
“The whole reason why I am a costume designer is that I feel those same emotions,” Carter told The Credits. “I look at history and look at the pictures of all of these blues greats, look at their vests, cotton shirts, two-tone shoes, and pinstripes and how they traveled around the South and sang their stories. With this setting, how could you not be influenced by all that richness?”
It’s a richness Carter recently spoke to The Credits about when discussing the film’s dynamic ensemble.
Thank God we could honor the written word with a visual story, to express it. I learned long ago that my role as a costume designer is an opportunity for visual storytelling. We have a big bonfire where people are just wildly dancing around. Even the movements in that scene are a mystical presence, so the costumes couldn’t just be costumes from African tradition and then hip-hop. It also had to have a layer of synergy to the story and draw you in even further to the mystical elements of this storytelling.
Caption: MILES CATON as Sammie Moore in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “SINNERS,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
That single transcendent sequence involves Sammie on his 1932 Dobro Cyclops guitar, surrounded by a West African Griot playing a proto banjo, a ’70s guitarist with Jimi Hendrix vibes [played by blues guitarist Eric Gales], a 1980s DJ creating a hip hop beat, West Coast R&B, an African drummer and ancestral dancer, and a modern hip hop dancer—how did you make sure it all fit together?
I worried at first about this dancer and that dancer – how is that going to work together thematically? You know what it means, but you don’t know – in terms of the journey and the editing – how all of that emotion would reach the audience. Even for me, looking at the final edit, it all emerged. And that had to do with color choices, that had to do with actually going out on a limb and being expressive. You see people moving through their clothing, the way it bellows and has a sway, wearing these mysterious masks and these big headdresses…
Your work meshes unbelievably well with how cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw captured that sequence. Most costume designers don’t get to see their work on film anymore, given how often films are shot in digital, especially this size format. What do you think the scope of 70mm and IMAX brings to the costumes?
I have always been a film costume designer. Digital flattened things out. It was a strange perspective, not having the contrast, not having the sultry colors that film can give you. I never really wanted to immerse myself in what digital was able to do; I just wanted to continue to bring in as much detail as I could. And so, when I have the opportunity to work with someone like Autumn – and have film stock and IMAX – it’s revisiting what you always wanted to do and learn the most about, which was how your textures can tell the story and how the cinematographer can capture that richness. So I know I drove my costumers crazy with sweat. Every character has to be sweaty and have some age and weariness because it would be another layer and another character with this film stock.
Caption: MICHAEL B. JORDAN as Smoke in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “SINNERS,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Eli Adé
Let’s talk about your costumers in New Orleans. Anyone whose work you want to spotlight?
Oh my God, Mustapha [Mimis], who took care of Michael B. Jordan. We changed him from Smoke to Stack four times a day, and he had to keep track of all of that. Also, the continuity – it was deconstructing a character who started fully dressed and ended up in a tank top, or ended up fully bloodied. Hats off to Mustapha. Melissa [Swidzinski] ran the whole bloody truck, like walking into a plastic wonderland, because she had to keep the continuity of all the blood. It was a splatter that grew and grew as the story went on, so she had to keep a file of what blood happened when and at what transitional point.
Caption: MICHAEL B. JORDAN as Smoke in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “SINNERS,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
A lot of tracking and multiples on a movie like Sinners, right?
There was a lot of tracking. Sammy and all that he went through – he was dunked in the water. And so, hats off to every set costumer. Caroline Errington was back there sewing all those multiples we needed for all the characters. We had a ton of multiples. Oh my God, I have never done a horror film, and I never knew that this much tracking went on with them.
You all did a beautiful job with Smoke and Stack’s suits. What were the subtle differences between their style?
Everybody loves a gangster for some reason. Smoke was this salt-of-the-earth guy who will come out of the grocery store and shoot you in the butt. He’s no frills. No tie. His clothes are a little bit bigger than Stack’s, who is tailored. They both are wearing wool because they’re coming from Chicago, from the North to the South. My hat’s off to [Michael B.] Jordan for wearing that wool all summer long and never complaining once. It was a blessing because it told the story once they got down South and were newly reunited with their Southern brethren, who were in denim and very Norman Rockwell, kind of Southern cotton. Sammy and Delroy [Lindo], their costumes were basically all they had. There were patches, and they were sweaty and lived-in. But Smoke and Stack – fresh as a daisy.
Caption: MICHAEL B. JORDAN as Smoke and as Stack, in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “SINNERS,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. PicturesCaption: (L to r) MICHAEL B. JORDAN as Smoke, WUNMI MOSAKU as Annie, HAILEE STEINFELD as Mary, MICHAEL B. JORDAN as Stack, MILES CATON as Sammie and OMAR BENSON MILLER as Cornbread in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “SINNERS,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
How did you envision Annie (Wunmi Mosaku)? What authentic qualities did you want to bring to her costume?
The issue of spirituality was strong in this film. Annie is the spiritual leader of the community – and it is a small sharecroppers’ community – but she has her little place. The Haint Blue that she wears is an old Southern traditional blue that is supposed to ward off spirits. We kept her in those tones. When we first meet her, she has multiple layers you’re wondering about. You see a fringe, you see a mojo bag. You see she’s got a chatelaine. She’s carrying the things to work her magic.
Caption: WUNMI MOSAKU as Annie in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “SINNERS,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
How’d that first fitting with Wunmi go?
It was really nice to have Wunmi come to the fitting with knowledge of how she’s going to play the character. She was interested in seeing all the images we had on the walls, of hoodoo worshipers, women who played these roles in cinema, and other mysterious characters with great-looking costumes. We did the spiritual beads – the prayer beads, we called them. She wore a feather headband and a little feather in her hair. She brought them to life with her wonderful portrayal of the character.
What you and Ryan Coogler do so well here is that every character in that juke joint has a story. How did you approach costuming not only the main characters, but all the folks who come to the Juke Joint for a good time, and end up dealing with vampires?
I fall in love with everybody’s costume. It’s not just the actors – it’s background people too. They’re as much a part of this story as our main actors. I give out things like toothpicks. I’m like, “Brother, I think you would be standing here with a toothpick in your mouth. That’s a player’s look.” I go to props and get a whole bunch of toothpicks. And then the next day he’s like, “Hey, can I get a toothpick?” For me, it’s bringing things to life. I work with a strong team, am hands-on, and always watch what’s happening in my group. Pictures are shared – folders that I check all the time – and I tell them what we are going to add and take away. It was important to be authentic. Authenticity is what drives me.
Caption: HAILEE STEINFELD as Mary in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “SINNERS,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. PicturesCaption: (L-r) JAYME LAWSON as Pearline, WUNMI MOSAKU as Annie, MICHAEL B. JORDAN as Smoke, MILES CATON as Sammie Moore, and LI JUN LI as Grace Chow, in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “SINNERS,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
Featured image: Caption: MICHAEL B. JORDAN as Smoke and as Stack, in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “SINNERS,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
Robert Redford, back in 1988, became so obsessed with the late Tony Hillerman’s Leaphorn & Chee novels about Native American cops that he later teamed with Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin, a New Mexico resident, to champion adaptations of the stories. Three years ago, AMC+ + came on board and launched Dark Winds. The show, set in the early seventies, follows tribal cops Joe Leaphorn (Zahn McClarnon), Jim Chee (Kiowa Gordon), and Bernadette Manuelito (Jessica Matten) as they solve crimes on their Navajo Nation turf.
Season 3, which concluded Sunday, April 28, co-stars A Martinez, Jenna Elfman, and Christopher Heyerdahl and follows cases that encompass human trafficking at the border, ketamine-fueled head trips, and corrupt archaeologists. The Peabody Award-winning series, filmed entirely in New Mexico, has already begun work on a new slate of episodes.
Dark Winds showrunner John Wirth, whose resume includes network classics RemingtonSteele and Nash Bridges, checks in from the series’ writers’ room to unpack how he and his team have built one of TV’s most consistently compelling crime dramas.
Can you describe the Dark Winds writers’ room?
We have six writers, four of whom are native. We also have two Navajo consultants who are in the room all the time, so we are telling a detective story, but we run everything through the Native lens.
In the past, Native Americans have rarely enjoyed that level of participation within the TV industry. Are you aiming to make the stories more authentic?
There’s a sense in Indian country that White people have been appropriating their stories for years. To the extent that anyone feels that way about the Tony Hillerman novels, I would just say that it’s important to honor the source material to a degree, but it’s also important to re-appropriate these stories through the eyes of our Navajo characters. Having Indigenous writers in the room really helps us do that.
BTS, Executive Producer Chris Eyre and Jessica Matten as Sgt. Bernadette Manuelito – Dark Winds _ Season 2, Episode 6 – Photo Credit: Michael Moriatis/AMC
Can you give an example?
We were talking about the relationship between Chee and Bernadette, and I went on a whole spree about when I was a younger guy and had a girlfriend and how things worked in that situation. One of our female native writers said, “Well, that’s a good story, but that’s not the way it works in Navajo Nation, which is a matrilineal society. Men and women have different attitudes from people in the White world.” So, that was a case in which my experience as a human being was valid but not quite appropriate for the story we were trying to tell about these two native Navajo characters.
From the start, Dark Winds has explored White justice versus “Indian justice.” How does that framework affect the plot lines?
Our characters are really straddling two worlds. Some Natives call the White world the Over World, so our law enforcement officers are upholding the White man’s law, but since they’re on the Navajo reservation, there’s also Navajo justice. The trick for us is to make the show feel like a cop show but still ground our characters in all things Navajo. As they interact with suspects, relatives of crime victims, and so forth, all of that comes from a Navajo perspective.
Zahn McClarnon as Joe Leaphorn – Dark Winds _ Season 3 – Photo Credit: Michael Moriatis/AMC
SPOILER ALERT
This season, a White archaeologist becomes a suspect in the disappearance of two Navajo boys. How does that case play into the White/Native conflict?
Going back to Season 2, B.J. Vines engineered the death of [Navajo] workers at his well to further his scheme to mine uranium, and one of those workers was Joe Leaphorn’s son. B.J. Vines says to his face, “They’re just six dead Indians. What does it matter?” Same thing here.
Carly Roland as Teddi Isaacs, Christopher Heyerdahl as Dr. Reynolds and Zahn McClarnon as Joe Leaphorn – Dark Winds _ Season 3, Episode 2 – Photo Credit: Michael Moriatis/AMC
It’s a real gut punch when Leaphorn finds a dead boy in the desert with an arrowhead in his mouth, which ultimately connects to an arrogant archaeologist.
I love archaeology and I read Archaeology Magazine, but the truth is, in our show, archaeologists are intruders and interlopers who go into a land, dig up, and, in many cases, take away artifacts and sacred objects that belong to the culture.
Zahn McClarnon as Joe Leaphorn – Dark Winds _ Season 3 – Photo Credit: Michael Moriatis/AMC
The show takes place in the early 1970s, but aside from the old cars and the absence of smartphones and computers, the stories feel quite contemporary. Bernadette, for example, investigates smuggling at the Mexican border.
The more things change, the more they stay the same, as we go back in history and develop stories based on things that actually happened. In Dark Winds, we have a chance to do episodes about what’s going on today through our characters, and that gives the show some of its power, I think. It’s not just a cop show with a plot.
Jessica Matten as Bernadette Manuelito and Bruce Greenwood as Tom Spencer – Dark Winds _ Season 3, Episode 3 – Photo Credit: Michael Moriatis/AMC
Before Dark Winds, you worked on network shows when TV production was centered in California. Were you conscious of the industry’s impact on the local economy then?
I’ve been involved in television for 43 years now, and at least half of that time was in Los Angeles. We didn’t really think back then about what kind of impact our shows had on the economy. But now we’re seeing the city [of Los Angeles] in debt, and a large part of that is because the entertainment industry is going away.
You later worked outside of California in Atlanta, New York, and Canada. What was that like?
I remember running a show in Alberta, Canada, and I always had trouble getting across the border. The immigration officers would take me into the backroom, and one time, this guy was really messing with me. Then his supervisor came in, looked at my passport, and realized I was the showrunner for Hell on Wheels. He turned to the guy and said, “Do you have any idea how much money this man is responsible for bringing into the city? Let him in!”
Does Dark Winds have a similar impact on Santa Fe?
We’ve been shooting there consistently for four years, and it’s a big deal. We hire a lot of people there. Our cast and crew who travel to Santa Fe stay in hotels and rent cars, go out to restaurants, and buy things in stores. All of that has a big impact on the community.
BTS, Crew Executive Producer Chris Eyre and Executive Producer Tina Snow – Dark Winds _ Season 2, Episode 6 – Photo Credit: Michael Moriatis/AMC
Do you feel like you’re getting your money’s worth in terms of locations?
Oh yeah. It’s like you set the camera down, and any way you look is a beautiful vista. We shoot a lot of stuff on our own studio backlot, about 15 acres, and we do travel out to the Navajo Nation to shoot some stuff, too. The scenery is spectacular, the sky is amazing, the light is amazing, the ground, the desert, the flora and fauna. For the fourth season, we’re capturing some beautiful wind events. It’s a whole world, and there’s no other show on TV that gives you the Navajo Nation. It’s very scenic.
Carly Roland as Teddi Isaacs – Dark Winds _ Season 3, Episode 2 – Photo Credit: Michael Moriatis/AMC
Where is your base of operations for Dark Winds?
Near Santa Fe, we’re in an old casino building [Camel Rock Studios].The Tesuque Pueblo reservation built a fancier, more modern casino a mile and a half from this place. It’s not really built to make movies, but we’ve adapted it, so we’re doing fine there.
You have worked on series like Nash Bridges, Remington Steele, and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles in the past. What’s the biggest difference between those shows and Dark Winds?
We make eight episodes of Dark Winds in the same amount of time that we used to make 22 or 26 episodes. We spend so much more time developing each script in the writer’s room, and then making it with the crew and the actors, and then more time in post-production. I worked on some network shows for five, six seasons. When I come across them on TV, I’ll think, “This must have been before my time,” then the credits come up and it says “Written by John Wirth.” Oh my God, I have no memory of this thing at all, just because we were moving so fast trying to get episodes out the door.
BTS, Zahn McClarnon as Joe Leaphorn – Dark Winds _ Season 2, Episode 6 – Photo Credit: Michael Moriatis/AMC
Does the Dark Winds production schedule give you more room to breathe compared to old-school network series?
Yeah, we get to live with each episode longer, which is both more pleasurable and also a more torturous experience because these stories are very hard to figure out. We’re walking the line between the White world, the Native world, White justice, and Indian justice, with all the human frailties and excesses and joys and pleasures to deal with. And then there’s the Navajo overlay, so it can get pretty complicated.
Featured image: BTS, Zahn McClarnon as Joe Leaphorn – Dark Winds _ Season 2, Episode 6 – Photo Credit: Michael Moriatis/AMC
Adapted from the classic romantic comedy of the same name, Tina Fey, Lang Fisher, and Tracey Wigfield‘s The Four Seasons is a contemporary take on a tale as middle-aged as time: the highs and lows of evolving friendships and relationships between friends who have reached the middle innings of life.
The original film was written and directed by Alan Alda and co-starred Alda and Carol Burnett, and it was one of 1981’s biggest box office hits. Reimagined as an eight-part series by executive producers and 30 Rock alums Fey, Fisher, and Wigfield, this version follows three married couples facing life’s inevitable challenges, including one very disruptive divorce, which impacts their tradition of seasonal weekend getaways. Currently streaming on Netflix, The Four Seasons boasts an ensemble cast led by our three couples: Fey as Kate, Will Forte as her husband, Jack, Steve Carell as Nick, Kerri Kenny as his soon-to-be ex-wife, Anne, Colman Domingo as Danny, and Marco Calvani as his husband, Claude.
Here, Fisher and Wigfield explain how Fey’s fandom of the film drew them into a shared vision, the secret weapon in their writers’ room, and why keeping it local paid dividends when filming in New York State and Puerto Rico.
When you take on an adaptation, I imagine you need a compelling reason why this story needs to be retold. What was your vision?
Wigfield: Lang and I were coming to the movie from a very different place than Tina. Tina loved the original film and has been a fan since she was 10 years old. Lang and I love Alan Alda, and I love Carol Burnett, but we had never seen the film. Tina, Lang, and I wanted to do a show. Tina was going to act in it, but we wanted to do something that was a departure from other hard comedies we have written before. We wanted to do something more grounded about real people, middle-aged friends who had been married for a long time, and Tina kept bringing up The Four Seasons. We finally watched it and were like, ‘This is such a great movie to make as a show because the structure lends itself to it.” The reason for ‘Why now?’ is that I think we all feel so much of the television we consume, even the comedies, are people screaming at each other. It’s intense and anxiety-producing, and we were leaning in towards a show that was cozy, where you could take a breath, and that feels human.
Fisher: There are a lot of nods to the movie for people who are fans. Tina took the lead on the most important stuff to her and her favorite parts from the film. We wanted to ensure the show still had drive, plot twists, and cliffhangers at the end of each episode, but that it was enjoyable to watch and gentle in a way we all might need right now. We were all in agreement on what we wanted it to look and sound like.
In addition to the original film, The Four Seasons has elements of other classic relationship movies from the 1980s and 90s, such as St Elmo’s Fire, The Big Chill, About Last Night, and Four Weddings and a Funeral. Did you look outside of the source material for inspiration?
Fisher: We certainly talked about The Big Chill. The idea was exciting to us, and it felt very nostalgic: a show for adults, a show that isn’t Euphoria, that is very decidedly for grown-ups about grown-ups having grown-up problems, but not depraved and sick.
Wigfield: The closest we came up with that was modern was an Alexander Payne film like Sideways.
What did you want to keep from the movie, and what did you want to bring in or change?
Fisher: We knew it would be too slight if we stuck to the original plot and stretched that out over eight episodes. We assembled this incredible writers’ room of people who are mostly this age, who have been in long marriages and had long friendships, and we tried to come up with real-world problems that real couples have. Everything is very human scale. We felt that a lot of the plot that we added was honest to the original film because it was relationship-driven. We were good about policing ourselves because a lot of us have these comedy backgrounds and have done outlandish comedies with big jokes and whatnot, and we were like, ‘This is the tone. These are the parameters of the tone.’ If we would pitch something that was too far out there, we would be like, ‘No, we’ve got to come back to what the vibe of the original film was.’
How did you find the locations? Did you tap into a lot of local expertise?
Wigfield: We had a great location manager, Matt Lamb, who we had worked with before on 30 Rock. It started in the room. Obviously, if you’re doing a show called The Four Seasons, you can’t shoot it in LA; it has to be in a place with real seasons, so we shot the majority of it in the Hudson Valley. It is such a beautiful spot, especially in fall, for highlighting the changes of the seasons. We shot it from September to December, but it was a warm September, so we shot Spring and relied on our production designer, Sharon Lomofsky, and our greens people to put in a bunch of flowers and make it look really springtimey. Rubber hit the road in winter, and Lang had a challenging task with the director of those two episodes because there wasn’t any snow. We achieved it through VFX, laying down snow blankets, and going back and getting pick-up ski shots in January. We filmed summer in Puerto Rico and shot there for two weeks, so that was the big location change.
What about the little record store that features in one of the episodes? Was that a real location?
Fisher: Yes, that record store is in Beacon, New York State, which is so charming and was like our home.
Wigfield: That’s where we all were staying. We were all in this one inn and Airbnbs, so it was like we were on vacation with friends. It was a really lovely experience shooting it.
Was the local community welcoming? Do they get a lot of projects filming up there?
Wigfield: I think they were really excited. We were in the local Beacon newspaper, and it was like, ‘Tina Fey is here..’
Fisher: ‘…and she was nice to her waiter.’ A bunch of sound stages have been built up there because many people are shooting in that area now. People were excited, but they were getting used to it.
Local infrastructure is incredibly important for authenticity. Did you access much local talent in New York State and Puerto Rico?
Wigfield: Yes, and it did help a lot. We were open creatively in terms of summer. We were saying, ‘We wanted to have a fun beach vacation,’ and we left it up to Jerry DiCanio at Universal. Bill Sell, our line producer, worked with local producers in Puerto Rico and other places we looked into. Puerto Rico was chosen because it’s great to shoot there. They have really great crews. Ours was incredible, and they were such pros. It’s hard, and it’s hot. We were shooting outside all day, and it was buggy, too.
Fisher: They know the landscape. When a giant storm cloud would come in, we’d be like, ‘Oh, we’ve got to cancel the day,’ and they were like, ‘No. Five minutes and it will be over,’ and then it would pass. It was the same for the Hudson Valley. We had a lot of local crew there, too, and it makes such a difference, especially if you’re setting your show in these places. It makes it more authentic to use the people who live there.
The Four Seasons has an incredible ensemble cast. How much did having Tina Fey involved help?
Wigfield: That was something Lang and I felt from the very beginning. We’ve both created shows before, and you’re a salesman to everyone: the studio, the network, and every actor you beg to be on it, and no one says yes. There is no friction with Tina from the beginning. The studio and the network really understood this was a special project, and she was passionate about it. They were so supportive from the very beginning, but it’s really great to create something with her. Coleman Domingo is not signing on for Lang and me. So many people who were incredible, and who we wouldn’t have gotten on our own, wanted to be part of the show.
The first (and only) time I visited Boston was when the Yellow Pages were still delivered to neighborhood doorsteps. It was the days of 56 kbps dial-up internet, T9 texting, and MapQuest directions. But it was also an era of extraordinary filmmaking that saw the release of Goodfellas, Schindler’s List, Jurassic Park, Shawshank Redemption, Pulp Fiction, Titanic, Fight Club, and Good Will Hunting, from, at the time, two unheard of writers named Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. The movie follows a troubled genius (Damon) who eventually finds his way with the help of a therapist played by Robin Williams. What made the film for me was an unassuming scene where the two characters sit on a park bench and talk about what makes life worth living. The film fan in me wanted to sit on that very bench. I found out it was located in the Boston Public Garden, but exactly where was a bit of a mystery. With the help of some locals, I was able to eventually find it and relive that scene in my own way.
Today, that bench is part of Boston filmmaking lore and easy to find with modern smartphones, as well as on local tours. Thanks to internet sleuths, finding the locations of your favorite films and television shows is much easier. It’s also a booming part of the tourism industry, with some of the biggest draws being Lord of the Rings tours in New Zealand and Game of Thrones tours throughout Belfast and Croatia.
Capturing that same magic is SetJetters, a mobile app that connects movie-lovers to thousands of film locations from over 900 movies across 47 countries and 600 cities. Its quintet of creators includes Charlie Hartsock, Erik Nachtrieb, Viv Smith, Kate Edwards, and Karl Norsen, who made the travel-inspired map from the movies they love. “I’ve always been fascinated with the idea of film locations and shooting on location, and the travel aspect of that,” says Hartsock, who got his start in Hollywood as an actor before producing films like Crazy, Stupid, Love, starring Emma Stone, Ryan Gosling, Steve Carell, and Julianne Moore. “It’s that moment of emotional connection that you get with a scene, a storyline that you’re immersed in. And that’s the connective tissue that the studio has given to fans by bringing these stories to life. With SetJetters, what we hope to do is make that life continue forever.”
We chat with Harstock and Nachtrieb about giving movie fanatics like me a chance to visit the very spots where cinematic magic took place.
Where did the idea for SetJetters come from?
Charlie: When I was a kid, the film that I watched that impacted me the most was To Catch a Thief. For a small-town Ohio kid, Grace Kelly and Cary Grant in the south of France, there’s not a lot wrong there. That really opened my eyes to the world of Hollywood, acting, and travel. And then the origin of SetJetters came about when, back in 2005, I was hired to shoot a commercial, and it was going to shoot in Japan. It was shortly after Lost in Translation had come out, and the production company booked the entire commercial to almost follow the path of Lost in Translation.
When we got to Tokyo, we stayed at the Park Hyatt Hotel, did karaoke at Karaoke Kan, and shot on the same golf course where Bill Murray has that one quick scene. Every time we got to one of those locations, watching the people’s experiences, this light bulb went off of that emotional connection to a movie you love, and then you’re actually standing in the location.
Yes, for film fans, there is nothing like standing in the same location as one of their favorite characters. I’m curious to know how the core team came together.
Erik: Fast forward to 2018, and my business partner, Viv [Smith], and I met Charlie, and we ended up having a lot in common. Charlie liked the way that we produced things, and he said, You know, I’ve got this kind of show kicking around that I’d like to get going. It was called SetJetters, and the concept was with a host that would go and visit film locations and create a series out of that. And right when we were starting to write something up, COVID hit. And we’re like, holy crap, what are we going to do? And we thought, well, let’s build an app that does that, and a show can come out later.
So with the pivot, how did you approach building the app during the pandemic?
Erik: I have to admit that Charlie, I, or Viv, couldn’t type you one line of code, but we had the concept of the idea, so we started writing it down on paper. Then we recruited Kate Edwards, who is a longtime gamer and a map enthusiast. She consulted for Microsoft, MapQuest, and Google Maps. Then we got hold of Karl Norsen, a senior VP of digital at Edelman, a big ad agency. We all started doing Google documents, chicken scratches, and core loops for the user, figuring out how we would monetize, and put together what we felt we wanted to present to the cinephile or film tourist. As Charlie said, where they can emotionally reconnect with that scene, have that experience in that moment, and then experience everything that we coined beyond the frame.
What makes SetJetters different from searching for the information online?
Charlie: Some websites talk about movie locations and stuff, but what we saw as a company was that void after the production left. They had a footprint on the ground and brought a lot of great jobs for however long production was on the ground. Afterward, it was how those incentives could be recouped at the state level in different ways. People are traveling and going to the locations, and what we decided to do is not just show the fan where it was shot, but also work with the local community on having them have a way to extend that long tail of the tax incentive revenue. So it’s not just shut off in the community when the production leaves, but there’s a tourism stream coming in following that will last forever.
Once you’re at a location, the app offers various interactive content. How did those ideas come about?
Erik: Film tourism has been going on for decades. When social media started, they started posting pictures, and they were editing photos in this split screen, or some people were holding pictures in pictures. And we thought it was better not to reinvent the wheel. Let’s give them what they’re trying to do at home. Let’s create the tools that can help them create what they want to make. So we sat down and figured out how to do that so that they could post on their social media what they wanted and how they wanted from the experience.
I’d imagine those app features are constantly changing.
Erik: Yeah, it’s still evolving in several ways. For instance, you can post a shot sync attached to a scene right now. And then you can make another post for another picture and scene. So we’re looking at ways to create a carousel that’s attached to a scene and a bunch of different ways that they can present it, not only inside of SetJetters, but outside of SetJetters. A lot of social media wants to keep you trapped on the app. We want them to carry this to other social media and spread it around.
ShotSync Camera within SetJetters.
Are there specific features coming?
Erik: We have things like augmented reality on our roadmap. Some people call what we do augmented reality, but it’s not; it’s just a shot sync. But augmented reality and other things that are on our roadmap, where we want places where we want to go with this, you know, where we really want them to be able to do things like, you know, if you’re in a Star Wars scene, you know, hold a lightsaber, so is there a way to drop a lightsaber into the scene, that sort of thing. It’s just responding to what the film fan wants and then taking it a step or two further.
The app also offers unique experiences. For instance, visitors of theOregon Film Trail can scan a QR code and experience locations from the classic 1959 film. That was made possible through a partnership with the state. Can other tourist destinations partner with the app in a similar way?
Erik: This is a question we’ve had for several years. How can a studio, a film office, the tourism board, or a chamber of commerce be a part of this and capitalize? We sat down with the Association of Film Commissioners International about a year ago to write up the best practices because no one really knows where to intersect with film tourism. From that, we will try to suggest a way for the different entities to get involved. Some already have, for instance, our biggest partners, such as film commissions. Film commissions want to measure film tourism for the first time. Our app can collect anonymous, aggregated data for our partners.
Data to help build out experiences, or is there more to it?
Erik: Yes. But for instance, the film offices collect information and repackage it, and they can lobby their legislature to keep or to grow their incentives. And we have partners doing that right now. Oregon has an infographic video built around the data we collected in Oregon in 2023. And it turns out, film tourism brought in almost as much money and revenue to the state as the actual productions did on the ground while they were there. And so now, they can go back and say, look, our tax incentive dollar has created $3 for every one incentive dollar, which they’ve never been able to say before.
How about the studio side?
Erik: It’s more of a marketing play for the studios. We’ve had a couple of studios approach us discussing how we can market to you. People don’t realize that these movies you’ve never heard of, these scenes you’ve never heard of, these old movies you forgot about, are still hugely popular, very popular. People have been migrating to these locations for decades. They watch the film several times a year. And so we’re really revitalizing these aging film libraries around the world. And not just films you see on the bigger streaming areas but the small domestic films and documentaries. We’re revitalizing and giving life to this filmography.
Fans can submit locations to the app for consideration, but what’s your approach to integrating new destinations?
Charlie: We know the studios want to keep their stories and storylines private and surprise their audience, so we don’t release anything pre-production. We don’t release anything until the show or movie drops. Having been a storyteller in Hollywood, I know how important it is to keep that excitement for the fans available. But the minute it comes out, people start looking. A great example right now is White Lotus. Everybody wants to know where it is. There’s an opportunity for not just the big scenes, but all the tiny little local spots. If you’re in Thailand, we’ll tell you where the snake pit is. We’ll let you know where that off-road temple on the back roads at the beginning of the first episode is. We’ll tell you where in town they stood when the gals had to get away from the water guns.
Carrie Coon, Leslie Bibb, Michelle Monaghan. Photograph by Courtesy of HBO
So, for us, we want to activate the location and activate the fan. Not everybody can get to Hollywood and go on the studio tours, but they can find something that was shot in downtown Cleveland and stand where the Avengers stood when they shot Cleveland for New York.
This article is part of an on-going series that brings awareness to businesses and people of the film and television community. SetJetters is a member of theCalifornia Production Collation. You can find more about themhere.
Featured image: The Gooniese, Ecola State Park, Oregon. Courtesy SetJetters.
The official teaser trailer for Squid Game‘s third and final season has arrived, bringing the games to a close with what promises to be the most sadistic season yet. But don’t take our word for it, this was confirmed for us by both the series’ star, Lee Jung-jae, and creator, Hwang Dong-hyuk, when we interviewed both of them last month.
Seasons 2 and 3 were filmed back-to-back, something Hwang felt he had no choice but to do. “After doing season one, I thought, ‘I will never do a series like this again. It’s not humanly possible,” Hwang told us. “As we all know, the show got so much love globally, so I took on the challenge once again to do seasons 2 and 3 all by myself, both writing and directing. I don’t think I’ve ever thought of any other option.”
“In the first season, it becomes really difficult for Gi-hun as these episodes go on, both physically and mentally. I would say that the most difficult game I had to shoot was the last game of the first season, which is Squid Game,” Lee told us. “I think of all of the seasons all together, the most challenging and the most difficult one was the last round that will be seen in season 3. That was the most difficult to shoot.”
The trailer for the third season opens ominously for our players—a coffin with a ribbon tied around it is wheeled into their sleeping quarters. Inside isn’t a corpse, it’s Gi-Hun (Lee), or player 456. His rebellion in season 2 has failed, and it resulted in his best friend’s death, Jung-bae (Lee Seo-hwan), killed by The Front Man (Lee Byung-hun), who had spent the entire season hiding in plain sight as a player in the games. Now, the games continue with Player 456 back in the fold, and they’re about to get even more chilling.
Squid Game has been an absolute juggernaut, with seasons 1 and 2 becoming Netflix’s first and third most-watched series ever (Wednesday is number 2). Will Gi-Hun be able to see his rebellion through and finally bring the Squid Game masterminds to justice? We’ll find out when season 3 streams on Netflix on June 27.
The Gemstones Sunday service has come to an end. After four seasons, Danny McBride’s dark comedy following a dysfunctional televangelist family aired its final episode with a glorious blood-soaked banger. But among the chaos, McBride and company focused its scripture on the series’ revolving theme: a family of unconditional love. And it was at the start of the season, we were introduced to the Gemstones’ family origins through a Civil War era epic with 12-time Academy Award nominee Bradley Cooper playing the OG bible preacher.
The Season 4 premiere was directed by McBride and shot by Paul Daley, who was the cinematographer on more than half of the thirty-six series episodes. Its gritty texture, angelic imagery, and period realism make it one of television’s brightest bottle episodes, at least from my perspective. This, alongside the likes of “Long, Long Time” from season one of The Last of Us, Mad Men’s “The Suitcase,” Breaking Bad’s “Fly,” and Atlanta’s “Teddy Perkins.” Asking McBride about its makeup, the GQ Global Creativity Award winner told me, “I always had the idea that we would go back and show the beginning of who first stepped into this world. And as I started thinking about it, the Civil War felt like something we hadn’t done.”
Bradley Cooper. Photograph by Connie Chornuk/HBO
Visually, McBride wanted to push the imaginative envelope of the episode. “Creating this show, which has been a blast, is because so many people behind the camera are people I’ve known for years,” McBride says. “I know their tastes and I know their sensibilities. And I also know what they’re capable of. So when I’m writing any season, a lot of it is to challenge the people I work with to push ourselves to do something we haven’t done before.”
In conveying tone, the creative team referenced period material along with Edward Zwick’s 1989 war drama, Glory, to make sure every inch of the frame was filled detailed purpose. “There’s nothing comedic about how we do the show,” notes Daley. “It isn’t shot or lit in a comedic way. We shoot it dramatically with style and try to make it look like a major motion picture.” The backbone of the immersive atmosphere came from the production design by Richard A. Wright, who has worked with McBride on Eastbound & Down, Vice Principals, and David Gordon Green’s directed Halloween trilogy starring Jamie Lee Curtis, where McBride served as EP and co-writer. Wright turned a number of practical locations throughout Charleston, South Carolina, into 360° working sets, including the white washed period church where Cooper’s character Elijah is first introduced with the intention to rob the clergy. It’s here where a twist of fate sends the lawless drifter down a path of righteousness.
“Weirdly, finding that church was the hardest part about making that show, because as you can imagine, any church that’s in the South that’s period-appropriate is probably not necessarily wanting a film crew to come in and shoot a minister between the eyes in the middle of the church,” McBride says with a grin. “We found a church about an hour and a half outside of Charleston, and they were willing to work with us because we were going to restore some elements of the church that were in need of repair.”
Josh McDermitt. Photograph by Connie Chornuk/HBO
McBride initially imagined a darker environment. “I remember when I walked with Paul, and it was a lot brighter than I had anticipated the scene to be. It didn’t seem moody, like he’s [Elijah] not emerging from the shadows. Then, as we started to block the scene, it was like, well, he doesn’t need to emerge from the shadows. Maybe it’s this idea of this false sense of holiness, and this guy doesn’t belong here. He’s what’s dark. He’s what’s ominous. And so we came up with the idea that instead of him emerging from the shadows, he rises from a pew. And so that’s how that scene unfolded. We were kind of backed into a corner, and then we figured out a better way to tell the story.”
Bradley Cooper. Photograph by Connie Chornuk/HBO
Shaping the church sequence, Daley punctuated the location with angelic lighting. “We devised a truss rig spanning the length of the church between two Lull telehandlers. The instruments were then underslung on the truss in the center of the windows, and the base of the lifts was covered with branches. This system was necessary to maintain unobstructed window views whilst lighting through those same windows. The beauty is when a light has to move, they all move at the same time so the beam angles remain exactly the same,” he says. Three 18Ks replicated the sun, each able to have its pan, tilt, spot, and flood remotely controlled. “They’re an instrument called an LRX, and it allows you to focus all the instruments very accurately from one spot without requiring multiple electricians in lifts. It’s a very efficient system.”
When Elijah robs the minister (Josh McDermitt), stealing his gold bible, it becomes an important part of Gemstone’s family history and a key story point this season. Production removes the front row of pews and places the preacher’s body on an apple box to frame the unnerving moment, one that spotlights Elijah’s unrepentant behavior.
Ethan McDowell and Bradley Cooper. Photograph by Connie Chornuk/HBO
Another choreographed sequence was a battle where hundreds of men charged an open field of gunfire, cannon, and explosions. It’s full-on war revealed in a visceral one-shot, moving from left to right. “It was Danny’s idea to do that, and it was stunt coordinator Cory DeMeyers who was the genius behind it,” says Daley. The crew utilized a full day of rehearsal, leaving nothing left to chance on shooting day, which took place in Charleston. The sequence culminates with a soldier exploding in the air from cannon fire, before his bloody body is dragged away. “It was quite complicated, we had about 200 feet of dolly track, and we needed it to be motion control because we had to stitch the entire sequence together. Our dolly grip, Philip Dann, was unbelievable; he kept doing the take again and again,” recalls Daley.
Special to the episode are images of soldiers stylized as if they were torn from history books. “We wanted them to look like those silver nitrate photographs. I asked our camera intern to find out what lens was used, and it was a 5mm equivalent, so that’s what we used to match it,” notes Daley. “We were ostensibly grabbing extras without paying any special attention to anything. Those people weren’t pre-selected or anything. The level of detail that went into the hair, makeup, and wardrobe people went into allowed us to do that,” says Daley.
Courtesy of HBO.
In one of the final sequences, Elijah brings a group of slaughtered soldiers back to camp by wagon. The song “For A Day Like Today” by Lee Hazlewood simmers in the background. As Elijah enters the camp, the men run up to him, asking why the Yanks have spared his life. For which he replies, “It wasn’t the yanks that did it. It was God that saved me.” It’s an epiphany moment for the character, who may have started to see the light. A challenge Daley faced was that he had only a few attempts to capture the moment during golden hour. Then, a second hurdle was figuring out a camera move that required extra time mid-scene. “I was stuck and we couldn’t get the camera from where it started to him quickly enough,” admits Daley. “But this is when someone like Bradley comes in. I needed to buy some time for the shot, and he said, ‘What do you need?’ I said, I need three seconds. So that moment when he rides in, he fumbles and drinks from his canteen. That gave us enough time to get the camera into him, where he delivers the line. “It was God that saved me.” When asking McBride if God really did save Elijah, he says, “I think that’s what’s left up to the audience to decide.”
Bradley Cooper. Photograph by Connie Chornuk/HBO
All four seasons of The Righteous Gemstones are available to watch on MAX.
Featured image: Bradley Cooper. Photograph by Connie Chornuk/HBO
Who knew an asterisk packed such a punch? Thunderbolts* rolled into theaters this weekend and just as quickly rolled out a new movie title. The mysterious asterisk that hung on the end of the film’s title left some fans perplexed—that was, until the last ten minutes of the film.
Today, Marvel branding and marketing from billboards to posters to online ticket services have all changed the Thunderbolts* title to the newly revealed real title for the movie: The New Avengers. The cast of the movie were seen ripping off the Thunderbolts* title on one of their posters to reveal The New Avengers just under the surface.
Star of the film Sebastian Stan who plays Bucky (turned Congressman Barnes) was seen replacing his character’s posters around town with the newly donned title as well.
The film focuses on the disjointed team as they work together to save New York once again, this time from Bob/Sentry/The Void and all the dark things they’ve been suppressing as they try to reclaim their lives. This lands the misfits a prime-time spot in front of cameras as the world’s new heroes, whether they liked it or not. The credits roll and we see graphics that detail many headlines that are either poking fun at the “New Avengers” or praising them for their valiant strength.
Moviegoers who stuck around for the classic Marvel post-credits scene flashed forward 14 months to our ragtag squad chatting about their ups and downs as the newly minted “New Avengers.” They complain about not being taken seriously, despite their new name, and they all grapple with some fantastic new visitors arriving from space.
This spin on traditional marketing for a Marvel film follows a lengthy cast announcement for Avengers: Doomsday where viewers watched chairs…yes chairs, for nearly five and a half hours just to see if their favorite character would be making an appearance in the film.
The Thunderbolts* aka The New Avengers will return for Avengers: Doomsday in 2026.
You want to get film nerds salivating? Drop a new trailer for a Spike Lee joint starring Denzel Washington that reveals Lee’s latest, which is a riff on the work of another film legend, Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low. Lee’s film, produced by A24 and set to hit theaters on August 22 before streaming on Apple TV+ (with a world premiere set for Cannes), stars Washington as a music industry titan who is targeted in a ransom plot, moving Kurosawa’s 1963 crime thriller from Yokohama, Japan to New York City. Lee’s film was adapted by Alan Fox, with Washington’s music mogul having to face what should be a fairly easy decision—whether to further his own career or save his kid’s life. Kurosawa and Lee’s films are both based on Ed McBain’s novel “The King’s Ransom.”
The 51-second teaser trailer centers on one of the film’s purest pleasures: hearing Washington rip into his dialogue as he explains what it takes to succeed in his business. This is Lee and Washington’s fifth collaboration. The cast includes Jeffrey Wright, Ilfenesh Hadera, Dean Winters, John Douglas Thompson, and two music superstars—A$AP Rocky and Ice Spice.
Lee has been a longtime admirer of Kurosawa’s work. He brought up the legendary director at the Red Sea Film Festival, where he told the audience that seeing Kurosawa’s iconic Rashomon inspired Lee to make She’s Gotta Have It. “In Rashomon, you have three people who witness a rape, and each gives their own opinion of what happened. In She’s Gotta Have It, Nola Darling has three boyfriends who each see her in a different way,” Lee said at the fest. From the very beginning of my career, I was influenced by Kurosawa.'”
Oscar-nominated performer Jeffrey Wright is no stranger to prestigious HBO dramas—he was a central figure in Westworld—yet it was still a fun jolt to see him, at last, enter the picture in the 4th episode of The Last of Usseason 2, “Day One.”
In the opening scene, Wright appears as a FEDRA soldier during a flashback to 2018 in Seattle’s quarantine zone, 11 years before the current timeline. We’re in an armored FEDRA van where one of the soldiers (Josh Peck) tells an obnoxious story about how one of his comrades assaulted a bunch of citizens he called “voters.” Another soldier, clearly new to the gig of menacing and attacking people he’s nominally supposed to protect, wants to know why they’re called voters. His storytelling comrade derides this question as being beside the point, but that’s when a sager voice speaks up—Wright’s Isaac.
“Cause we took away their rights,” he says.“We took away their right to vote, and somebody started calling them ‘voters’ to mock them. So now you know.”
Josh Peck. Photograph by Liane Hentscher/HBO
There are few actors alive better at playing world-weary wisdom than Jeffrey Wright, and there are few worlds that could make you more weary than the one The Last Of Us presents, a post-apocalyptic nightmare in which the infected are growing more ambitious, more cunning, and therefore more lethal. It’s been a brutal, tragic run for Ellie (Bella Ramsey) in the past few episodes—episode two saw the shocking, cruel murder of her friend/caretaker/cool-if-grumpy father figure Joel (Pedro Pascal), at the hands of an outraged Abby Anderson (Kaitlyn Dever), who lost her own father during Joel’s rampage to save Ellie at the end of season one. One imagines that Ellie, who is now on a quest with Dina (Isabel Merced) to hunt down Abby and kill her, will find out that Joel died because of her, in a way. Not that it’s Ellie’s fault, but knowing her, she’ll likely see it that way.
Back to Wright’s character, Isaac—after schooling the curious cadet on why they call citizens “voters,” the armored van of FEDRA soldiers is stopped by a group of those voters, who may or may not be members of the Washington Liberation Front. The van is surrounded, and Isaac grabs that one curious soldier to go and meet with these voters and see what they want. When he steps out of the van, he tosses a few grenades inside, killing everyone (including the obnoxious storyteller), save the young soldier. “Now make your choice,” Isaac tells him.
Jeffrey Wright, Ben Ahlers, Alanna Ubach. Photograph by Liane Hentscher/HBO
“Day One” was directed by Kate Herron (Loki), and it takes us far outside the punctured citadel of Jackson, Wyoming, to the outskirts of Seattle, where Ellie and Dina continue on Abby’s trail. The city is embroiled in a fight between two factions, the Isaac-led Washington Liberation Front and the Seraphites, a group led by a mysterious prophet. We also learn that Dina is pregnant, and that the news brings Ellie joy. Seeing her happiness at the idea of being a “father,” as Ellie says, she and Dina finally take the next step in their relationship. It was a rare joyous moment in what’s been a grim season thus far.
Eventually, Ellie and Dina take shelter in an abandoned music store (after moving through a Seattle neighborhood that had been festooned with rainbow flags, denoting happier times in the past). “Day One” speaks to a new day for Ellie and Dina, who have finally begun to take their attraction seriosuly after that playful kiss on New Year’s Eve and Dina’s on-again, off-again relationship with Jesse (Young Mazino) seems to officially be off for good (despite the baby being his). When Ellie reveals her musical chops, she grabs a guitar and starts to sing to Dina, love is definitely in the air. It’s one of The Last of Us’s most beautiful sequences, with Ramsey’s haunting version of A-ha’s 1985 hit “Take On Me” creating an unquestionably moving moment for the two young lovers. Here, using old lyrics and a left-behind guitar, Ellie can tell Dina how she really feels.
Bella Ramsey. Photograph by Liane Hentscher/HBO
“All those lessons from Joel,” Ellie tells Dina after the song ends.
“He taught you well,” Dina says.
It’s a sequence that comes straight from the video game The Last of Us Part II, and in the series, it offers a touching portrait of two women falling in love with each other, while canonizing, in a way, the man who brought them together and whom they loved like a father. It’s also not for nothing that “Take On Me” is making its second appearance on the show—the first time we heard it was during Ellie’s mall date with Riley (Storm Reid), which ended in a life-defining tragedy.
This gorgeous scene was offset by a gruesome one—present-day Isaac’s torture of a Seraphite hostage reminds us how awful a world this is. Isaac wants to know when and where the Seraphites plan to attack next. The shackled, naked, badly beaten Seraphite is unbudgeable, however. The fight between the WLF and the Seraphites is a hideous one, and it seems there’s no amount of pain that Isaac can inflict upon his captive that will get him to reveal a thing.
Their exchange is haunting.
“You’re gonna lose,” the hostage tells Isaac.
“Son, we have automatic weapons and hospitals, and you lunatics have bolt-action rifles, bows and arrows, and superstition. So tell me, how are we going to lose?” Isaac asks.
“Every day, one of your Wolves comes to see the truth and takes Her into their heart,” he replies, referring to the Seraphite’s prophet. “Every day. Every day, a Wolf leaves you to take the holy mortification to become a Seraphite. And none of us ever leave to become a Wolf.”
Jeffrey Wright. Photo courtesy HBO.
Wright played Isaac in the video game, too, and he’s a man who has transformed into the very thing he rebelled against FEDRA over. He turned on FEDRA because of the way they dehumanized the people they were meant to protect, and now here he is, doing the same.
Yet the brutality isn’t just the WLF’s game—Ellie and Dina get an eyewitness account of the lengths the Seraphites are willing to go to. They find WLF soldiers in an abandoned news station hanging from the rafters, their guts spilled out. And Ellie and Dina themselves are on a violent mission, thus adding to the ceaseless cycle of revenge. They must scatter, and quickly, when Wolves arrive at the scene of their comrade’s murder.
Bella Rasmey. Photograph by Liane Hentscher/HBO
Ellie and Dina escape to a subway tunnel, pursued by Wolves, and then are met in the dark by an infected horde. Such is life in The Last Of Us—you are either in the fryer or the frying pan (or being burned by a frying pan while shackled). During their mad dash to escape the horde, Ellie reveals her secret to Dina in an attempt to save her—she offers her own arm for an infected to chomp down on, buying Dina the time to clamber over a fence to safety.
Bella Ramsey. Photograph by Liane Hentscher/HBO
Once in a place of relative reprieve, Dina is so shaken by Ellie’s bite that she points her gun at her.
“I would die for you, I would. But that is not what just happened. F**k—I’m immune. I can’t get infected,” Ellie pleads.
Dina eventually comes to believe Ellie when she confesses her pregnancy.
The next morning, as Ellie and Dina discuss all that’s transpired and get deeper into their pasts with each other, explosions in the distance interrupt them. The walkie-talkie they flinched from a Wolf gives the name “Nora,” a member of Abby’s Salt Lake Crew. They now have a proper lead. Considering she’s pregnant, Ellie is concerned about Dina staying on the mission, but Dina isn’t going anywhere.
“Day One” moves the action far north of Jackson and introduces the conflict between the WLF and Seraphites to the story of Ellie and Dina’s vengeance mission. The stakes are much higher. This is definitely Ellie and Dina’s series now, with Dina supplanting the lost Joel as the most important person in Ellie’s life.
Given the type of young woman Ellie has become, that means she’ll do anything, anything at all, to protect Dina and the baby they might share. In more ways than one, Ellie has become very much like Joel.
Featured image: Bella Ramsey and Isabela Merced. Photograph by Liane Hentscher/HBO
The box office weather report for Thunderbolts*was certainly looking good as Jake Shreier’s antihero epic entered its opening weekend. The reviews were very good forwhat Rolling Stone‘s David Fear called the “off-brand Avengers“—the Florence Pugh-led misfits and oddballs who were all tapped from previous MCU outings and thrown together into a fighting force. While Pugh is a certifable star, this collection of dysfunctional Marvel misfits are not as well known or belvoed as the Avengers, and Thunderbolts* might have felt like an MCU afterthought on way to this summer’s splashy, hotly anticiapted reboot The Fantastic Four: First Steps. That has turned out not to be the case. Thunderbolts* is a surprisingly soulful, character-driven return to form for a studio that had dominated the superhero space for years. Now, the box office numbers confirm that Marvel has a hit on its hands.
Thunderbolts* opened to a very solid $76 million domestically, with a whopping $86.1 million overseas, to strike a $162.1 million opening haul. Schreier’s movie, which Pugh called a “bad ass indie, A24-feeling assassin movie” was assembled by a crew of filmmakers with major indie cred, including several veterans from A24 films and series. Those include Schreier himself, who did lauded work on the A24-produced, Netflix-distributed gangbusters dark comedy Beef.Beef creator Lee Sung Jin helped shape the Thunderbolts* script, and then The Bear‘s Joanna Calo came in during production to fine-tune it (Marvel veteran Eric Pearson got the ball rolling with the first draft). The crew included Beef production designer Grace Yun, The Green Knight cinematographer Andrew Droz Palermo, Minari editor Harry Yoon, and Everything Everywhere All At Once composer Son Lux.
The Thunderbolts* are led by Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova, who, along with Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan), John Walker/U.S. Agent (Wyatt Russell), Alexei Shostakov/Red Guardian (David Harbour), Ava Starr/Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), and Antonia Dreykov/Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko) are cornered in a death trap set by the triple agent Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus). Escaping Valentina’s dastardly effort has the odd side effect of forcing these loners to team up to confront their pasts and become a cohesive, or at least functionally collaborative, fighting force. Their pasts and their presents have all been shaped by their particular battles with depression, grief, and innumerable founts of pain. The film also includes Lewis Pullman’s Bob, a crucial figure in the movie (and the MCU’s future—he has a role in Avengers: Doomsday, as do many of the Thunderbolts*), whose mental illness is a major turning point in the film. It’s a rare Marvel film, or superhero movie in general, to center mental illness in the narrative.
Thunderbolts* opened on 4,330 domestic theaters, with a global IMAX haul of $20 million. Thunderbolts* enjoys a robust 95 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, which is the third-highest score for a MCU film, tied with Spider-Man: Far From Home and behind Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (98 percent) and Spider-Man: No Way Home (97 percent). With an A-CinemaScore and 4.5 audience scores on PostTrak exit polls, Thunderbolts* is well-positioned to keep going strong. It also played to an ethnically diverse audience that was “only” 63 percent male, a lower percentage than most Marvel films.
Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, Schreier explained that the Thunderbolts* creative team made a conscious effort to infuse some of that Beef magic into their film.
“With Beef as our North Star, we just really believed that there was an opportunity to tell a story about that internality and still have a lot of comedy and action for something that feels big and universal,” Schreier tells The Hollywood Reporter. “It was always Sonny’s [Beef creator Lee Sung Jin] idea that these kinds of stories are not niche anymore, and even if it feels odd to have a summer blockbuster with that at its heart, it can work and it can make sense.”
It worked, and it makes sense. Audiences helped prove that this weekend.
With critics praising Thunderbolts*ahead of its May 2 release as something decidedly new (and according to its Rotten Tomatoes score, decidedly fresh) in the MCU, director Jake Schreier has opened up the aperture on how he approached his Marvel debut. Schreier is a seasoned, respected indie helmer with a string of critically acclaimed titles to his name. After launching his career with the Sundance hit Robot & Frank in 2012 and following that up with his well-received studio film Paper Towns in 2015, Schreier dabbled in oddball but respected TV series (like Lodge 49) and helmed intriguing music videos for stars like Kendrick Lamar and Haim.
Then came his collaboration with Lee Sung Jin on Jin’s deliciously twisted, Emmy-winning Netflix series Beef.Ali Wong and Steven Yeun led the series as star-crossed Angelenos who escalate a parking lot mishap into an existential feud that takes them both to the brink of madness and death. The show was sensational, blending pitch black comedy with a deep, unflinching look at mental health, and it’s in Beef that we can glimpse the core protein that has pleasantly surprised critics about Thunderbolts*.
Schreier and his creative team made mental health the central issue of their epic antihero team-up movie, taking a page from Beef‘s fearless approach to its central character’s jaded, wounded psyches. The Thunderbolts* (the asterisk means, by the way, that “the Avengers aren’t available”) are led by Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova, who, along with Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan), John Walker/U.S. Agent (Wyatt Russell), Alexei Shostakov/Red Guardian (David Harbour), Ava Starr/Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), and Antonia Dreykov/Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko) are cornered in a death trap set by the triple agent Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), which has the side effect of forcing them to team up to confront their pasts and become a cohesive, or at least functionally collaborative, fighting force. Their pasts and their presents have all been shaped by their particular battles with depression, grief, and innumerable founts of pain. The film’s big bad is Lewis Pullman’s Sentry/The Void, a villain who is given depth and complexity in his own right.
Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, Schreier explained that the Thunderbolts* creative team made a conscious effort to infuse some of that Beef magic into their film.
“With Beef as our North Star, we just really believed that there was an opportunity to tell a story about that internality and still have a lot of comedy and action for something that feels big and universal,” Schreier tells The Hollywood Reporter. “It was always Sonny’s [Beef creator Lee Sung Jin] idea that these kinds of stories are not niche anymore, and even if it feels odd to have a summer blockbuster with that at its heart, it can work and it can make sense.”
In the marketing run-up to Thunderbolts* release, Marvel didn’t shy away from its indie bonafides. Star Florence Pugh said that making the film felt like a “bad ass indie, A24-feeling assassin movie.” Schreier assembled a team of seasoned creative talent who all had a connection to the indie world. Lee Sung Jin helped shape the script, and then The Bear‘s Joanna Calo came in during production to fine-tune it (Marvel veteran Eric Pearson got the ball rolling with the first draft). Folks from Beef and a slew of critically acclaimed A24 films filled out the ranks, including Beef production designer Grace Yun, The Green Knight cinematographer Andrew Droz Palermo, Minari editor Harry Yoon, and Everything Everywhere All At Once composer Son Lux.
“A close personal friend struggles with [depression], and I mapped Sentry’s arc off of a lot of things that he’s experienced,” Schreier told THR. “If you are going to tell a story about something like this, the last thing we want for anyone that struggles, including myself, with what the characters are going through is to feel like we’re being reductive about it or that we’re simplifying it or that we’re saying that it can be even solved. It’s more about the idea that you can bear it with others, but it’s not going to go away.”
With Marvel announcing the cast for Avengers: Doomsday in an unprecedented, five-hour-long reveal in late March that had millions of people looking at a live-stream of chairs, the superhero fatigue theory seems to be falling apart. What people want and have always wanted are good, original movies (even movies based on comic book characters can feel original). This has been evident in the gangbusters response to Ryan Coogler’s sensational original film Sinners. Coogler is, of course, an MCU alum, and it’s apparent in the excitement around Schreier’s Thunderbolts* that audiences are eager to see what an MCU film that takes on new themes in new and interesting ways, while still maintaining its superhero cred by being led by maladjusted costumed vigilantes with powers the rest of us could only dream of.
“Enough people can relate to that now that it doesn’t feel like you’re making something small,”Schreier told THR about the film’s mental health focus. “And then the rest is these actors really bringing themselves to it and finding their own way into it. For me, a close personal friend struggles with this, and I mapped Sentry’s arc off of a lot of things that he’s experienced. So, if everyone involved makes it personal, then I think you can really go far.”
Now that the reviews are out, it looks like Schreier and his cast and crew might be going far. While that asterisk in the title tells us it’s still a little too early to assemble the Avengers, a soulful, searching film about the struggles of the off-brand Avengers looks like exactly what the MCU needs.
In part one of our interview with Sinners cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw, the groundbreaking DP discussed how she leveled up to frame Coogler’s soulful supernatural epic by learning to use the largest film format available. Coogler’s ambitions for his vampire thriller, starring Michael B. Jordan as twin brothers Smoke and Stack, were massive. The brothers return to Clarksdale, Mississippi, after serving in World War I and then taking their talents to Chicago, where they worked for, and then against, the legendary gangster Al Capone. Their goal is to open a juke joint in the delta and turn their ill-gotten cash and liquor into a thriving business that serves their people cold drinks and real blues. So, Arkapaw learned to master 65 mm IMAX image capture, earning the distinction of becoming the first female cinematographer to shoot on the super-sized cameras. She recalls, “Ryan always says on set, ‘Big Movie! Big Movie!’ in a very inspirational, funny way. He did that on Wakanda Forever, too. Ryan has given me opportunities to grow and excel in my craft, opportunities that aren’t often offered to someone like me.”
Now, in the second part of our interview, Arkapaw zeroes in on the film’s instantly iconic Juke Joint music sequence, harnessing moonlight for the Irish vampires scenes, and connecting with her roots in the Deep South during the making of Sinners.
There have been unanimous raves for the Juke Joint sequence, which starts with Preacher Boy Sammie playing his guitar (a 1932 Dobro Cyclops) and singing the blues and somehow morphs into an ecstatic experience of Black music past, present, and future. It includes West African Griot playing a proto banjo, a ’70s guitarist with Jimi Hendrix vibes [played by blues guitarist Eric Gales], a 1980s DJ creating a hip hop beat, West Coast R&B, an African drummer and ancestral dancer, and a modern hip hop dancer, all surrounding Sammie and his dobro. What was involved in bringing together all these different crafts to construct this Sinners set piece?
Bringing together all the different crafts – that’s honestly how the sequence came to life. It was beautifully written on the page, and from the start, Ryan shared with us what the scene meant to him. From there, it became about execution: how to move the camera, how the transitions would work, how to carry the emotion through each beat. There were a lot of logistical challenges to solve. The sequence shifts from an interior stage setup to a full VFX takeover in the roof, and then to an exterior location with the lumber mill burning around them. So yeah, every department was operating at a very high level to pull it off.
We started by drawing out the camera trajectory on a floor plan of the mill, and then moved on to generating a pre-vis with this information. That process really helps everyone visualize the scene in the space and provides meaningful notes. In the pre-vis, we plug in the lens sizes to get a sense of what the camera sees and how it moves through the room. It also serves as a valuable guide for Ludwig Göransson and his team, as well as for the choreographer, helping with musical timing and dance movements. It allows Ryan to see exactly where the shifts in musical style and cultural representation occur, so he can evaluate the transitions and give specific notes.
It’s hypnotic.
Because it’s an emotional, surrealistic shot, we wanted it to have a dreamy, flowing quality, and that’s where Steadicam becomes essential. We shot it on 15-perf IMAX, entirely on Steadicam, with three shots stitched together for the juke interior section. It took a lot of coordination and effort, and I’m really proud of that scene because it’s so original and so distinctly Ryan. Only he could have envisioned it. He has a real gift for writing scenes where we move the camera in ways that are both visually compelling and narratively meaningful, finding powerful ways to say a lot in a short amount of time.
How long did it take to shoot the Juke music sequence?
We shot the interior sequences in one day.
aption: MILES CATON as Sammie Moore in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “SINNERS,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
Wow.
For that music interior day, we brought everyone together beforehand for a rehearsal: the choreographer, the actors, the dancers, and the music team. That way, we had a solid plan going in. Our night exterior crane pullback was shot on a different night, and the burning roof plate was captured on our final day of photography. So if you break it down that way, the whole sequence came together over three separate days.
Sinners delivers this one-two punch when you take us from the juke joint in the woods to the Irish folk music vampires Remmick (Jack O’Connell) lurking outside. Seeing a banjo strapped across Remmick’s back somehow felt creepy.
I love that because the camera, mood, and music are so beautifully married, it’s deeply affecting. The musical cue kicks in after the camera pulls back from Sammie and ends up on the backs of the three vampires, then cuts to their faces and pushes in on Jack’s eyes. And then it cuts to reality, where they walk up to the juke, where we start the “Pick Poor Robin Clean” scene.
Caption: (L to r) PETER DREIMANIS as Bert, JACK O’CONNELL as Remmick, HAILEE STEINFELD as Mary, and LOLA KIRKE as Joan in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “SINNERS,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Eli Adé
In contrast to the warmer light that comes before, the vampires are bathed in this eerie blue moonlight. How did you calculate that shift in mood?
It’s always important to me that shots are grounded in reality, so being in the middle of nowhere, the biggest source of light is the moon. It was a very complex setup for my G&E team. We had a big softbox on a construction crane, with many condors across the river to light the background and add depth. We also used a smaller softbox that we could move around to light the scene directly. During Jack’s Irish dance, there are a lot of actors and movements, so you need to have a broad source. Since they’re all out there in the middle of nowhere, I wanted the main source to be that soft top light. Sometimes, when the actors drop their heads, you lose their eyes in shadow, but I think that adds something to the storytelling. It lets the light guide the emotion in a very dramatic way.
aption: JACK O’CONNELL as Remmick in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “SINNERS,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
You’re aiming for a natural effect?
I’ve worked with my gaffer for over ten years, and we share the same taste and aesthetics. We both aim to craft lighting that feels authentic and never distracts from the story. It can be beautiful and even stylized, but it still needs to feel natural. So for this scene, I wanted the strongest source to be moonlight.
It’s interesting how the lighting shifts tones to reflect the narrative’s twists and turns.
I always appreciate lighting that becomes its own character. Ryan is a bold filmmaker, so he’s not afraid to leave things unseen. That approach is always inspiring to me because I love working with darkness to create drama. Sinners was a perfect opportunity for that, because it blends genres—it’s a vampire story, a gangster story, and more, so we really got to play with darkness and shadow in a meaningful way.
Making Sinners in the state of Louisiana for five months, including 66 days of shooting, were you mindful of the impact a project of this scale has on the local filmmaking community?
Yes, 100 percent. You really do become a part of the community, working with people and creating a kind of temporary family for the time that you’re there. And also just the fact that my family’s from there.
Really?
My great-grandmother was born in Meridian, Mississippi, and my father was born in New Orleans. My family still lives there. My auntie Janis came to set, and Ryan put her in the movie. She appears in the grocery store scene.
No kidding. Where’s your accent?
I grew up in Northern California, in the Bay Area, like Ryan. But once I started working on this movie, I began delving into my family’s ancestry with my aunt. When you collaborate with Ryan, you really dive deep into a lot of different things, and it became important for me to understand my own history and how it connected to our story. As we worked on the film, I kept thinking about my ancestors and how much I wanted to make them proud.
Caption: (L-r) JAYME LAWSON as Pearline, WUNMI MOSAKU as Annie, MICHAEL B. JORDAN as Smoke, MILES CATON as Sammie Moore, and LI JUN LI as Grace Chow, in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “SINNERS,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
They probably wouldn’t have predicted that you would become the first woman DP in history to shoot a feature film on large format cameras.
On Wakanda Forever, Ryan hired me to shoot this epic tale, which carried even more significance following the tragic loss of Chadwick [Boseman]. Ryan emphasized the importance of capturing everything underwater, authentically. Our team set out to build and explore a new world in that film. This time, we shot in large format, and I remember receiving a call from Kodak, informing me that I was the first woman to shoot a film in both 65mm and IMAX formats. Ryan has consistently given me opportunities that have not only shaped my career but also inspired others, especially those who look like me or have yet to receive such opportunities. It’s a responsibility I carry with me every day on set, and I draw tremendous inspiration from it
Over the several months you spent working on Sinners in Louisiana, do you have a favorite memory that sticks with you?
One moment stands out to me with absolute clarity: the farmhouse sequence we shot with the Choctaw—the Native American vampire hunters. We took a black and white photo on the porch with them, and the instant I saw it, it felt like I was looking at a version of myself from the past. It still makes me emotional. I was named after Cheyenne Autumn, a John Ford western, and that day, we captured some incredible IMAX shots on cranes – images of the Choctaw on horseback that felt straight out of a classic western. Ryan gave me the opportunity to shoot that scene in the spirit of the genre I was named after. When my parents gave me that name, I’m sure they never imagined I’d one day become a cinematographer. That moment is one I will carry with me forever.
Caption: Director Ryan Coogler, cinematographer Autumn Arkapaw, and the cast on set in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “SINNERS,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Eli Adé
Audience reaction to Sinners has been through the roof. That must be gratifying.
When you’re on the ground making a film with Ryan, the goal is always to create lasting, emotional images, especially because people who look like us rarely get these kinds of opportunities, at this level, in this format. Our actors were just as inspired and committed; they showed up every day and gave it their all. So it’s incredibly meaningful to see audiences responding to Sinners with such excitement. I was there every day, with my eye on the eyepiece, and I truly felt we were making something special, something rare and important.
The reviews for Thunderbolts*are hitting the internet like so many lightning strikes, and Marvel Studios is very much liking the weather report. Director Jake Schreier’s film about this assemblage of Marvel misfits—Rolling Stone‘s David Fear calls them the “off-brand Avengers“—who were all scooped from previous MCU outings and thrown together like possibly toxic leftover ingredients, has resulted in something satisfying. Thunderbolts* is being hailed as a surprisingly soulful, character-driven return to form for a studio that had dominated the superhero space for years.
The vibe of Thunderbolts* (the asterisk means, by the way, that “the Avengers aren’t available”) has felt different from the start, and something both Marvel and the creatives involved have made clear. Star Florence Pugh said that making the film felt like a “bad ass indie, A24-feeling assassin movie.” The crew of Thunderbolts* certainly speaks to a very different kind of MCU movie—helmer Schreier was the director of the A24-produced, Netflix-distributed gangbusters dark comedy Beef.The Bear‘s Joanna Calo co-wrote the script, while folks from a slew of critically acclaimed A24 films filled out the ranks, including cinematographer Andrew Droz Palermo from The Green Knight, Minari editor Harry Yoon, and Everything Everywhere All At Once composer Son Lux.
Thunderbolts* is led by Pugh’s Yelena Belova, who, along with Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan), John Walker/U.S. Agent (Wyatt Russell), Alexei Shostakov/Red Guardian (David Harbour), Ava Starr/Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), and Antonia Dreykov/Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko) is cornered in a death trap set by the triple agent Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), which has the side effect of forcing them to team up to confront their pasts and become a cohesive, or at least functionally collaborative, fighting force.
Schreier told Empire he was advised by Marvel to make “something different.” He added, “There’s a certain amount of that Beef tone in it that does feel different. There’s an emotional darkness that we brought to this that is resonant, but doesn’t come at the expense of comedy.”
Now that the reviews are out, it’s looking like Schreier and his cast and crew have succeeded. Thunderbolts* strikes theaters on May 2, and while that asterisk tells us it’s still a little too early to assemble the Avengers, for now, it appears we don’t need them.
Check out a quick glimpse at what the critics are saying below:
The appealing cast, scrappy underdog energy & back-to-basics team-up spirit of THUNDERBOLTS* made this for me an unexpectedly fresh Marvel entry with a surprising amount of heart. Florence Pugh is MVP, but Lewis Pullman’s right behind her. My @THR review.https://t.co/6GRBXCVnOC
Here’s my @Screendaily review of the surprisingly moving THUNDERBOLTS*, which is the first Marvel film to have anything meaningful to say about addiction and mental health. https://t.co/ASwJ7ZaVK3
Yes, there are vampires, but Sinners also excels as a period piece, a history lesson, a romance, a drama, an action movie, and a music-driven drama in ways that have made director Ryan Coogler‘s fifth movie the top-grossing original film of the decade. Based on his own script about gangster twins Smoke and Stack (played by Michael B. Jordan) who return to their Mississippi roots with a bag of ill-gotten cash and a plan to start their own juke joint in the middle of the woods, Sinners achieves epic cinematic scope thanks in part to the large-format finesse displayed by director of photography Autumn Durald Arkapaw.
A graduate of the American Film Institute, Arkapaw first worked with Coogler on Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. After completing The Last Showgirl, she learned to master 65 mm IMAX image capture, earning the distinction of becoming the first female cinematographer to shoot on the super-sized cameras. She recalls, “Ryan always says on set, ‘Big Movie! Big Movie!’ in a very inspirational, funny way. He did that on Wakanda Forever, too. Ryan has given me opportunities to grow and excel in my craft, opportunities that aren’t often offered to someone like me.”
Sinners, which received a 98% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and earned $123 million in its first two weeks of release, is also available in IMAX theaters, as well as in conventional formats.
In the first part of a two-part interview, Arkapaw, speaking from her home in Los Angeles, discusses the black and white 1930s photographs that sparked her imagination and how she helped Coogler scale up the scope of ‘Sinner’one camera test at a time.
How did you guys arrive at the idea of shooting Sinners in large format?
Ryan originally wanted to shoot on 16 mm film, but after talking to VFX supervisors, we felt we needed a more stable negative to work with the visual effects and achieve higher resolution in post. So Ryan said 35, and then the studio called and said, “Are you guys considering large format?” This got Ryan thinking along that track, which we explored by looking at 70mm clips at FotoKem. In that theater, looking at the 70 [millimeter] being projected, Ryan stood up and said, “This is what I’ve been missing.”
Caption: MICHAEL B. JORDAN as Smoke and as Stack, in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “SINNERS,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
That must have been exciting.
Once you wrap your mind around that large format, there’s no going back. We did a test out in the desert for the 2.76:1 aspect ratio Ultra Panavision for the scope to show the flat horizon of the Mississippi Delta, and we also looked at IMAX. Ryan put together a little edit after we shot the footage to check the ratio jump [between Ultra Panasonic and the taller 1.43:1 IMAX] and make sure it felt right for the story. That’s how we chose those two formats.
What did you key into in terms of visual references for the look of this movie?
Ryan suggested I check out a book of photographs by Eudora Welty as one of his favorite references. As a DP, I love it when someone gives me photography references. I come from a photography background. I love portraiture and am an emotional shooter. When I operate, it’s about the connection I have with the subject and capturing their soul, regardless of the format. I ordered the book and sent him my favorite pictures [from it]. In prep, Ryan also shared images that Hannah Beachler, our production designer, had presented in her vision board from a 1940s Farm Security Administration project shot on Kodachrome slide film. They had this beautiful saturation and depth.
Caption: (L to r) PETER DREIMANIS as Bert, JACK O’CONNELL as Remmick, HAILEE STEINFELD as Mary, and LOLA KIRKE as Joan in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “SINNERS,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Eli Adé
What about movies?
The Thing came up as a reference. Inside Llewyn Davis is one of his favorite films – obviously, there’s a musical element to that. There Will Be Blood andNo Country for Old Men. We’re both film nerds, so we watch clips and draw from them, but I feel that it’s these photographs of Mississippi rural life that touched me the most.
To capture large-format film images, you need cameras that are physically large and heavy, right?
This format is called Ultra Panavision 70. We used Panavision’s System 65 cameras and Ultra Panatar lenses, which are 1.3x anamorphic lenses. This camera shoots in a 2.76 aspect ratio on 65mm 5-perf film. The cameras weigh 100 pounds, so yes, they are very heavy. They’re the same cameras that Chris Nolan and Hoyte van Hoytema use when they shoot their films, and they were also used on The Hateful 8.
Did the sheer heft of those cameras impact your approach?
The advice we got early on was that it doesn’t matter if the camera is bigger or heavier. Just shoot your movie the way you envision it. We took that to heart because when you’re out there thinking about the character’s emotions and the landscape, you’re not thinking about the size of the camera. There are logistical things you need to work through with your crew and take into account when scheduling your day. But it’s more about “What is the best framing and what’s most important for the story?”
Caption: (L-r) JAYME LAWSON as Pearline, WUNMI MOSAKU as Annie, MICHAEL B. JORDAN as Smoke, MILES CATON as Sammie Moore, and LI JUN LI as Grace Chow, in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “SINNERS,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
The “Mississippi Delta” shots that you filmed in Louisiana evoke an epic scale. How did you figure out where and how to frame the rural settings?
On scouting days, I use an app called Artemis. You input your camera’s technical details, take a reference photo, and it gives you a sense of the framing with those formats. Ryan and I used it to figure out where the wide shots would be and determine which side of the line we’d be shooting from. We map all of this out in pre-production. It’s reassuring to have a clear concept before shooting, though of course, things can change on the day.
The colors are so rich – the blue of the big sky, the greens and whites of the cottonfields. What kind of film stock did you use?
We conducted tests and decided to use KodakVision 3 500T for everything: the 5-perf and 15-perf, for day exteriors, night exteriors, and interiors – everything. By doing that, you get consistency in the grain structure, which I appreciate. Plus, it creates a smoother workflow with the camera department when you stick to the same stock throughout the entire film.
How did you retain the integrity of the colors and shadows when you made prints?
In prep when we printed our camera tests and looked at them in 70 [millimeter] at Imax headquarters, I liked feeling a bit more texture in the day exteriors by using the 500 T. Now, that makes it harder when you’re shooting the higher ASA for day exteriors because you have to put a lot more ND [neutral density filters] on the camera, which makes it more difficult to see through the eyepiece. Shadow detail and density are all about how you expose the film, and I tend to underexpose everything, even day exterior.
Caption: WUNMI MOSAKU as Annie in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “SINNERS,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
The landscape is the backdrop to vivid characters outfitted with smart dialogue and beautiful clothes. How did you make sure those elements would translate well?
We shot costume, hair, and makeup tests, then printed the dailies and viewed them in a theater with the whole team. By choosing this format, Ryan and I wanted the final projected image to stay true to what we had shot, so we printed a lot of material to ensure everyone understood the vision we were after. I had previously worked with [colorist] Kostas Theodosiou at [post-production house] FotoKem on The Last Showgirl, so transitioning into Sinners with him was seamless. Kostas has a beautiful eye for film. Once he understood where I liked my black levels, shadows, and the image density, it became a perfect collaboration. He protected that vision throughout the film. We went through a DI (digital intermediate) workflow because of the VFX used for the twinning aspects. Kostas and I would look at the print together and use it as a reference in our grading process. What you see in the theater always had a ‘hero’ print in mind that we loved. This approach ensured that the image stayed true to the original look of the format, and I believe the audience can feel that consistency.
Caption: MILES CATON as Sammie Moore in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “SINNERS,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
Capturing the actors’ performances had to be a thrill, starting, of course, with Michael B. Jordan as both Smoke and Stack, as well as all the supporting roles, including Delroy Lindo as bluesman Delta Slim.
Yes! I just gasp whenever I hear his name. I had never worked with Delroy before, but he was a joy to be around, and it was beautiful to see what he brought to the camera. All the actors were like that; each one had their own unique presence and magic that was incredibly captivating. But that train station sequence will always be a favorite Delroy moment for me. I remember seeing the first edit and thinking, ‘It’s perfect.’ They’ll likely study that scene in film classes because it’s so beautifully executed. It elevates the world, the performance, the dialogue, and the introduction of Delroy’s character.
Check out part two of our interview with Arkapaw. Sinners is, of course, in theaters now. See it in IMAX if you can.
A24 has revealed the first trailer for Benny Safdie’s The Smashing Machine, which stars Dwayne Johnson as MMA legend Mark Kerr, sporting a prosthetic and an accent in his first turn, potentially marking an intriguing career pivot into prestige films. (Johnson is part of a potential all-star cast for a projected Martin Scorsese-directed gangster film set in Hawaii.)
Kerr was one of the seminal early stars of the UFC, a two-time UFC Heavyweight Tournament Champion who was the central figure in a 2002 HBO doc (also titled The Smashing Machine) which centered on his legendary career and his significant troubles, specifically an addiction to the painkillers he took to endure his chosen profession.
The first trailer showcases at least a partially changed Johnson, who needs no help in the physique department to depict an MMA fighter, but is sporting facial prosthetics and a flatter Ohio accent, creating just enough of a modification that the global superstar does start to get lost inside the character of Kerr. Set to Frank Sinatra’s “My Way,” the trailer not only highlights Johnson’s transformation into Kerr but also Emily Blunt’s performance as his wife, Dawn.
This is not Johnson and Blunt’s first cinematic rodeo, of course—they both starred in Jungle Cruise together—and it was Blunt who connected Safdie and Johnson, after co-starring with Safdie in Christopher Nolan‘s Oppenheimer.
The Smashing Machine is Benny Safdie’s first solo directorial effort. Until now, he has co-directed his previous A24 films, Good Time and Uncut Gems, with his brother Josh.
Speaking with Variety, Johnson has explained what drew him to explore this film with Safdie: “Benny wants to create, and continues to push the envelope when it comes to stories that are raw and real, characters that are authentic and at times uncomfortable and arresting. I’m at a point in my career where I want to push myself in ways that I’ve not pushed myself in the past. I’m at a point in my career where I want to make films that matter, that explore a humanity and explore struggle [and] pain.”
Check out the trailer below. The Smashing Machine hits theaters on October 3.
Featured image: Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt in “The Smashing Machine.” Courtesy A24.
