The camera follows Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) as he walks backstage through a line of camera crews, flickering lights, shouting cast members, costume racks, and one very random llama.
Ninety minutes until air time. Ninety minutes until the first-ever Saturday Night Live.
This is the opening sequence for Jason Reitman’s latest film, Saturday Night, about the creation of a legendary form of comedic television, but more specifically, about the immense pressure felt in the ninety minutes leading up to the first-ever live show. Immediately, audiences are thrust into the night’s commotion, as Michaels struggles to create a show that no one (including himself) can seem to explain.
The camera follows Michaels backstage and introduces us to each member of the original SNL cast, including the legendary Garrett Morris.
“It was more so about the energy of the evening,” says Lamorne Morris (no relation), who portrays Garrett in the film. “We were really trying to capture that essence.”
Creatively speaking, Saturday Night is filmed in a lot of what Lamorne calls “oners” — continuous takes filmed as one long shot with all elements of the scene working at once, as opposed to short clips of a few lines at a time. For oners, actors must stay in character for extended periods, remaining committed to the moment even when the cameras aren’t pointing directly at them.
“This man blocked out the whole movie,” Lamorne says of Reitman. “A lot of long, four-minute, five-minute scenes where it’s a well-choreographed dance that you need to have a great dance instructor to put together. And Jason was that dance instructor.”
Lamorne says that being a part of Saturday Night was equal parts thrilling and stressful.
“So you’d be in one scene, and then the camera would be behind you and follow you all the way across to this moment. Then you’re in this scene,” Lamorne explains. “So, you know, that was a fun thing to be a part of; however, it was really stressful in certain aspects because you don’t want them to be like, ‘Okay, we’re on minute three. The scene’s going well… And then Garrett comes in and f**ks his line up.’”
Lamorne said Reitman actually filmed the entire movie with stand-ins first before he brought in the cast.
“You could make another movie,” he jokes.
Lamorne said he was honored to play a living legend who is not only a triple threat but also a historic figure as SNL’s first Black cast member, someone he could learn from, too. Although Reitman didn’t want the Saturday Night cast to spend too much time speaking to their real-life counterparts, he found speaking to Garrett “very beneficial.”
“Workshopping ideas with him — ‘I feel like you had a cigarette in your hand a lot,’ and he’s like, ‘Yes, I did,’ So I was picking up what he was putting down while we were talking.”
Lamorne says he grew up watching Garrett Morris on Martin and The Jamie Foxx Show, but it wasn’t until later in his life that he realized Morris got his start on SNL.
“When it comes down to getting his tics and his rhythm and things like that — just being an actor, being a mimic, you can kind of pick things up by just studying them,” he explains. “Tricky part was [that] you’re playing a character while he’s not performing, but you don’t necessarily have footage of that.”
HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA – FEBRUARY 01: Actor Garrett Morris is honored with a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on February 01, 2024 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Amanda Edwards/Getty Images)
Lamorne spent time going over old interviews and sketches of Garrett, and although the film is a testament to his acting abilities, he says he definitely felt pressure in playing the role of a legend who is still very much alive.
“Especially when it’s someone who has a niece who told you not to eff this up,” he laughs.
Lamorne confirmed Garrett has since seen the film and was “very complimentary” of both his performance and the entire cast.
“That was a big litmus test for me,” he says. “If Garrett likes it, I’m all good with it.”
Check out our full interview with Lamorne below. Saturday Night is in theaters now.
For more upcoming films from Sony Pictures, check out these stories:
Featured image: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – NOVEMBER 15: Lamorne Morris attends the FX’s “Fargo” Year 5 premiere at Nya Studios on November 15, 2023 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images)
The first trailer for Silo season 2 has revealed the survival of Rebecca Ferguson’s Juliette. While the fact that Ferguson’s returning to the series should surprise no one, considering she’s the star of the show, for those folks who haven’t yet watched the first season, you’re in store for one of TV’s most underrated sci-fi series.
Silo is centered on the story of the last surviving people on Earth, ten thousand, give or take, who must live a mile below the surface in the titular structure because the planet has become lethally toxic. What happened to the planet and why these people, in this Silo, carried on was one of season one’s enduring mysteries. Ferguson’s Juliette, a brilliant engineer tasked with keeping the energy-producing drill at the deepest level of the Silo functioning, was ensnared in the mystery after her boyfriend was murdered and she was deputized by the former sheriff (David Oyelowo) for reasons she slowly uncovered toward the season’s climax. The finale ended with Juliette sent into the deadly environment above as punishment for her sleuthing, a fate known as “cleaning,” where, presumably, every other person sentenced as such died.
The season two trailer reveals that Juliette has not dropped dead as previous cleaners had, but the world is as destroyed as the Silo’s powers that be had sworn it was. The revelation in the final shot of season one was that Juliette’s Silo is but one of many, meaning there are thousands upon thousands of other people sequestered in their own claustrophobic worlds, walking distance from where Juliette has spent her entire life, living in their own sunken societies. Juliette’s sacrifice begins to stir the residents of her own Silo into open rebellion as she voyages into new spaces and meets new faces, still dead-set on uncovering the truth.
Ferguson is joined by season one alums Tim Robbins, Common, Harriet Walter, Chinaza Uche, Avi Nash, Alexandria Riley, Shane McRae, Remmie Milner, Clare Perkins, Billy Postlethwaite, Rick Gomez, Caitlin Zoz, Tanya Moodie and Iain Glen. Steven Zahn joins the cast in season two.
Check out the trailer below. Silo season 2 streams on Apple TV+ on November 15.
It’s no secret that co-writer/director Denis Villeneuve’s vision for his two Dune films was exacting and inspired. Arguably, the most technically challenging part of a very challenging film was the climactic early-ish moment when Paul Atreides (Timtohée Chalamet) finally rides one of Arrakis’s colossal sandworms. Speaking at the BFI London Film Festival this past Saturday, Villeneuve revealed just how hard capturing this moment truly was.
Speaking with Ted Lasso star Brett Goldstein, Villeneuve detailed that scene, which he’d previously revealed took 44 days to film and required the “worm unit,” a specialized crew within a crew, to help him pull it off.
“I realized that the way I wanted to approach this, I didn’t want to compromise,” Villeneuve told Goldstein. “Most important with visual effects is, how will you shoot it? And I wanted to shoot it with natural light. And I realized it would take months to shoot it. Each shot was very complex. Each shot took sometimes half a day, sometimes a day, sometimes a week for one shot because of the complexity. If I had done it myself, I would still be shooting.”
One of Villeneuve’s key collaborators on this scene was his producer, and wife, Tanya LaPointe, who he said “understood perfectly my vision.”
Another key collaborator was Greig Fraser, Villeneuve’s cinematographer on both Dune films. In our two-part conversation with Fraser, he highlighted the difficulty of filming that sequence.
“It was such a complicated story, and those action set pieces were very complex,” Fraser continues. “I mean, riding a sandworm is very complex—so I tried to make sure that we were telling the story as concisely as possible, which allowed Denis and Joe [Walker], our editor, to hold on shots as long as possible. So I think the trick, for me, is simplicity. Every shot needed to be as clear as possible. To not confuse the audience with too much handheld or too much messiness, but keep things sharp and clear.”
Director/Writer/Producer DENIS VILLENEUVE and Director of Photography GREIG FRASER on the set of Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE: PART TWO,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo by Niko Tavernise
For more on Warner Bros., DC Studios, Max, and more, check out these stories:
“We tried to do everything we could to make the best sounding movie,” says production sound mixer Steven Morrow about director Todd Phillips’ Joker: Folie À Deux. “Larry’s cinematography is beautiful, and with the amount of effort and time he puts into it, we wanted to put that kind of energy and emotion into our work for the audience and for Todd.”
For the much-anticipated sequel to the Oscar-winning film Joker, the story takes a musical turn as Arthur Fleck finds himself locked up at Arkham State Psychiatric Hospital awaiting trial for violently shooting late-night host Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro). Struggling with his identity, Arthur uses song and music as a means of expression. His life changes after meeting Lee Quinzel (Lady Gaga), with whom he falls head over heels in love.
Morrow reunites with both Phillips and Lady Gaga from when he mixed AStar Is Born, where Phillips served as a producer. In approaching how to record the singing in Joker: Folie À Deux, Morrow and the sound team, which included boom operator Michael Kaleta and utility Bryan Mendoza, worked closely with executive music producer Jason Ruder. The idea was to record all the vocals live. “I actually got a call from Jason early on before they announced Lady Gaga was going to be the female lead,” notes Morrow. “And what we ended up doing is getting everybody comfortable with the songs, finding the rhythm of the songs, and getting the understanding of what songs Gaga was going to do live on set.” What transpired from the early prep was a workflow that allowed them to record the actors singing live without sacrificing the tempo, energy, or emotion of scenes.
Below, Morrow dissects three of the most important sonic ideas in Joker: Folie À Deux.
THE INTERVIEW
Years after the events in Joker, Arthur Fleck is being held at Arkham State Psychiatric Hospital. Comatose from a daily dose of drugs, his frail body shuffles the halls as if a stiff breeze could knock him over. His lawyer, Maryanne Stewart (Catherine Keener), is his only lifeline to potential criminal freedom. Her defense: Arthur has a “split personality.” A step in publically shaping that narrative is an interview between Arthur and high-profile news anchor Paddy Meyers (Steve Coogan). The scene becomes a pillar to revealing who Arthur truly is.
We get all the period microphones from the props department. We don’t mess with a period mic often because trying to make it usable can be difficult for modern moviemaking. There’s so much electrical buzz around sets now with all the LEDs, dimmers, and everything else like that. So, you end up taking an old mic and putting a new mic inside it.
LIVING IN A FANTASY
Arthur discovers himself through song and music, which is explored on-screen through fantasies, including one on a rooftop, inside the courtroom, and at a wedding chapel. The sequences shape the story of his inner self, and to pull them off, collaboration among camera, sound, choreography, and the actors is required to make them transcendent yet immersive.
We knew Lady Gaga was going to do everything live because that’s just how she works. That’s when the music team, Jason, George, and Randall, came up with the idea that Gaga and Joaquin should have their own pianist to play along to the actors singing. This way, the actors could drive the speed of the scene and the speed of the song instead of listening to it on a playback track and trying to keep up with it. Their own pianist allowed them to perform the song how they wanted on each take.
How did you pull it off technically?
Each pianist would play next to us, and we would take the audio from the piano and feed it into an earpiece the actors were wearing. This way, if there was dialogue in a scene, we could record it cleanly and isolate it from the music. We also sent a feed of the actor’s performance back to the pianist so that they could listen to the scene as it was going on because they needed to hear what they were saying as well. Then, we had video monitors for them so they could watch what the camera was seeing.
We also set up a separate monitoring system for the music department with hardline headphones and good video monitors so they could sit in and listen to what we were recording, what we were feeding the actors and the actors’ live performances. We fed any other person who needed to hear the musical performance through Comtex.
What about when Arthur first meets Lee in the music room of Arkham Asylum? There’s another character playing the piano as they sing along. Did you approach recording the sound the same way?
We did it a little differently. In that scene, there’s a baby grand piano that Harley sets on fire later on. We asked the art department to send out the piano to get digitized, which allows you to pull a lever to disengage the keys, but you can still press down on them. So, as the piano is playing, we don’t hear it in the room, but it is being digitized. We can record what they are playing and send it back to the pianist and all the actors in the room with an earwig so everybody can sing along to what’s being played.
A fun thing about that scene is that the pianist who’s playing is actually Lady Gaga’s pianist, Alex Smith, who’s on tour all the time with her. So he’s the one in that scene playing to all the patients.
So that setup allows you to record the piano, the singing, and any dialog separately?
Yes. That was a trick we learned from Gaga on The Star is Born. And so, from that point forward, anytime we do any of these big piano scenes we try to use a digital grand piano. This way, if you actually want them to be playing, they can actually play, and if you want to hear what they’re playing later, we can isolate it. Otherwise the other way is for them to be miming to a dead piano.
One of the original songs written and performed by Lady Gaga is “Folie à Deux,” which plays over a rooftop sequence where they dance together. Do you know that song came about?
That was one of those fascinating moments in the movie because she’s going to be singing, and they’re going to be dancing. It’s this beautiful fantasy sequence. Gaga actually came up with the vocals for that during rehearsal the day before, I believe, and recorded the vocals on a laptop with Noah Hubbell, who’s our audio playback guy. If I recall correctly, she was there during rehearsals then said I have these lines of vocals, let’s record it. They just recorded it using the laptop microphone as a temp track so they could rehearse it. It was one of those movie moments where you have to be ready for anything. And we kind of have everything available all the time because you don’t ever want to scramble.
REVEALING JOKER
When the case against Arthur turns unfavorable, he fires his attorney and chooses to defend himself…as the Joker. This dramatic turn highlights Arthur’s struggle to find his place between reality and fantasy.
We knew going in that each scene would have multiple cameras and a lot of atmosphere, like fog and streaks of light. This looks beautiful, but if you put a boom pole through it, you can see a shadow even if you’re above. So we knew we had to plant radio mics and have radio mics on vocals throughout the whole movie.
Since radio mics sound closer to a subject, how did you bring in the location sounds?
With the courtroom scenes, all the newscaster cameras broadcasting the trial were live cameras filming, so we had to record the dialogue with radio mics. There was no easy way to put a boom in there. So the thing we did to make the space more alive, or any of the sets where there was going to be radio mics, was to plant mics. We had about four in every room, kind of in the corners, to capture the room sound and to give it a little bit more life and distance for moments that seemed a little too close in your ear.
There’s a small moment where Arthur speaks into a courtroom mic on the table where he sits. Did you want to make that practical?
Yes, we thought it’d be good to have that be an actual live mic. So we fed that through a speaker in the room, so that loud feedback thing happened in the courtroom, which we thought was pretty funny. That was kind of our choice, and Todd liked it. So that’s what we went with.
How did you approach the transition between courtroom dialogue and song? For instance, when Arthur sings “The Joker.”
There’s a company called Sound Devices that makes these really small wireless transmitters. But the cool thing about them is you can control the gain or volume that the transmitter is sending back to you remotely. So when Gaga is going to whisper a line and then go into a ballad, we can adjust it on the fly remotely so that the transition from her being super quiet to singing doesn’t crush the mic. This is incredible compared to how we had to do before, where we had to pick and choose what we wanted to sacrifice. With the new systems that are out now, you don’t have to sacrifice quality. I don’t know how we would have done the movie otherwise.
Joker: Folie À Deux is in theaters now.
For more on Joker: À Deux, check out these stories:
Featured image: Caption: (L to r) JOAQUIN PHOENIX as Arthur Fleck/Joker and LADY GAGA as Lee Quinzel in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “JOKER: FOLIE À DEUX,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Niko Tavernise
“The movie is an extension and a further exploration of this idea of our shadow selves as human beings,” Joker: Folie À Deux cinematographer Lawrence Sher tells The Credits. “We all have sides of ourselves that we hide from people. There are also sides we show to people that aren’t really authentic, and that’s what this movie explores.”
Sher, who was nominated with an Academy Award for Todd Phillips’ Joker, returns to collab with the director on a visceral sequel that sees the Crown Prince (Joaquin Phoenix) fall madly in love with Lee Quinzel (Lady Gaga) who gets him in more ways than he could have ever imagined. Music and sound pulsate a story that blurs the line between fantasy and reality as Arthur faces the legal consequences of nonchalantly killing late-night host Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro) under the bright lights of live TV. While the original film was an exploration of a deeply troubled character, Joker: Folie À Deux has Arthur questioning who he really wants to be: Arthur Fleck or Joker…or both.
In photographing the proactive imagery, Sher looked to large-format storytelling, pairing the ARRI Alexa 65 with Nikon, Canon, Leica, Hasselblad, and Arri lenses to evoke visually specific emotions and feelings. For instance, a Nikon 58mm was used primarily for emotionally expressive moments with Arthur. Over the 75-day shooting schedule, nine of them were split between New Jersey and New York to film exteriors at a courthouse located at 60 Centre Street and to return to the now infamous Joker stairs in the Bronx, where production hired local kids from the neighborhood to help on set. Time in New Jersey was spent at the shuttered Essex County Isolation Hospital in Belleville, which stood in for Arkham Asylum. The remaining days were filmed at 8 different stages on the Warner Bros. lot in Los Angeles, which gave creative freedom to the actors and crew in a more controlled environment. What it meant for production designer Mark Friedberg was building sets that supported the free-range approach.
“We don’t really plan out specific shots in advance,” notes Sher. “So what we are really doing is settling in an environment in which we can basically shoot as close to 360 degrees as possible and then discover it in real-time with the actors. So, with each take, we’re trying something different and discovering frames and feelings of what Joaquin or Lady Gaga are doing. So we make adjustments based on them.”
Below, Sher dissects three of the most important visual ideas in Joker: Folie À Deux. Spoilers below.
THE INTERVIEW
Years after the events in Joker, Arthur Fleck is being held at Arkham State Psychiatric Hospital. Comatose from a daily dose of drugs, his frail body shuffles the halls as if a stiff breeze could knock him over. His lawyer, Maryanne Stewart (Catherine Keener), is his only lifeline to potential criminal freedom. Her defense: Arthur has a “split personality.” A step in publically shaping that narrative is an interview between Arthur and high-profile news anchor Paddy Meyers (Steve Coogan). The scene becomes a pillar to reveal who Arthur truly is.
We started everything from the reality of what it would be down to the set build. Todd referenced the famous Tom Snyder interview with Charles Mason, so we started from there and asked what was interesting about it. They did those interviews in a very special way, so that’s what Paddy is doing here with Arthur. He’s putting him in an actual cell with bars behind him and closing the door.
From a practical standpoint, the two cameras that are shooting the interview are live cameras. They would be photographed, so my gaffer, Rafi Sanchez, and I talked about what the units should be because they had to look at the era. We found these Ikegami bodies, which we tested, but instead of shooting with them because we wanted more control over the image, we created a LUT to mimic them. And because we wanted to send a live feed [of the interview cameras] to the monitors that are in the room where Maryanne [Keneer] is watching, we cut the Ikegami bodies in half and hid a RED Komodo inside. One is being operated by our A camera operator Colin Anderson; the other is operated by Home Alone cinematographer Julio Macat because we wanted someone who looks the part.
How did you want to photograph the moment Arthur confronts Paddy about not wanting to know the real him?
Because it’s a set, we were able to take out a section of the wall that you don’t see, and that’s where the B camera is, which I was operating for the scene. It’s on a small crane, and the camera starts with these eye-level shots. If you remember, at the beginning of the movie, when Arthur is being interviewed by a social worker, she asks what he remembers about the night with Murray Franklin. Arthur basically parodies what the woman said, like he’s trying to play the part and be a good soldier, which is what Maryanne wants until he breaks.
Caption: JOAQUIN PHOENIX as Arthur Fleck in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “JOKER: FOLIE À DEUX,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Niko Tavernise
And when Arthur is like, ‘You don’t want to know the truth,’ we go with this powerful low angle, with different lensing than the rest of the shots, to break us out into what is basically an Arthur/Joker struggle. It’s on a Nikon 58mm, which became our workhorse Arthur lens, our intimacy lens. And when he starts singing, we now have a camera with fluidity, which is a big part of it. So we are breaking out of this sort of traditional coverage at eye level into something much more intimate and off-axis.
LIVING IN A FANTASY
Arthur discovers himself through song and music, which is explored on-screen through fantasies, including one on a rooftop, inside the courtroom, and at a wedding chapel. The sequences shape the story of his inner self, and to pull them off, collaboration among camera, sound, choreography, and the actors is required to make them transcendent yet immersive.
Everything about them was very much intentional. Even the way in which we enter the fantasies, the color, where the light is coming from, the production design—everything wants to be as if we are not photographing it but just capturing it as if we walked into a real place.
When he sings “The Joker,” which happens in the courtroom, he’s exploring his shadow self, so what better way to do that than to start in more dramatic shades of all that, including color? The silhouette is the most dramatic separation of shadow and light. First of all, it’s a violent scene. We are already questioning if Harley is good for Joker or is Harley good for Arthur. She’s a potential danger. There’s also the danger and the threat that is at the scene, so that’s why it’s in the same courtroom. But all the lighting is now this underexposed red light as the base with spotlights that expose Joker and Harley within that courtroom. There’s no other lighting on anybody else in the room. It’s just on them, so inherently, it’s about darkness. It’s about danger and threat with the red and violence. And it’s this exploration of their shadow sides of themselves. It’s meant to be a little bit scary.
Caption: (L to r) JOAQUIN PHOENIX as Arthur Fleck/Joker and LADY GAGA as Lee Quinzel in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “JOKER: FOLIE À DEUX,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Niko Tavernise
A similar silhouette theme appears when Arthur and Harley dance on a rooftop as Lady Gaga sings the song “Folie à Deux.”
Yes, the first thing lit on the rooftop is the big moon, which also reveals the shadow silhouette of Harley doing her metamorphosis. And then we reveal Joker coming out of the blue together. They join once they start dancing together. That’s the warmth of their love. So then the color goes warm, and by the end, it goes sort of green.
Caption: (L to r) JOAQUIN PHOENIX as Arthur Fleck/Joker and LADY GAGA as Lee Quinzel in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “JOKER: FOLIE À DEUX,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Niko Tavernise
Juxtaposing the fantasy inside the courtroom is the wedding chapel sequence leading to the song “Gonna Build A Mountain.” What went into your approach?
When we finally get to the chapel where they get married, it is joy and love. We start in this silhouette in the same way we expose where we are slowly through lighting changes. One is a black void with Harley in a white wedding dress, and the other is Arthur in a white suit in a black void. Then, we show the path to join them. She has to walk through this curved walkway that’s lit up and meant to be almost black and white. Then, when the chapel comes on screen in black and white, this beautiful sunset background reveals the warmest light of the whole movie when they kiss. This scene is where they’re actually in the most joyful state in the whole movie.
When the case against Arthur turns unfavorable, he fires his attorney and chooses to defend himself… as the Joker. This dramatic turn highlights Arthur’s struggle to find his place between reality and fantasy.
It’s like he now has the freedom, right? There’s a little camera move when he first reveals himself as Joker. That may be the only time we use Steadicam to give it a little different feel. It has its own inertia, and it’s different from the precision of the crane or dolly, where we can move quite slowly and really precisely.
When he interrogates Gary [Leigh Gill], that’s all Steadicam to give us that full fluidity and full 360 degrees. The set is lit so that Joker can go anywhere, and we actually circle him to create a sense of energy. However, that circling is also a little disorienting because his interrogation of Gary doesn’t go great. It’s a bit of a mess. So the idea is to represent with the camera that he’s searching for ideas that don’t go anywhere. He’s trying to evoke power, but he’s stumbling. Then, when he’s basically in his closing statement, that’s handheld, which we don’t do a lot in the courtroom, so that’s a new piece of language for that part of the courtroom.
Joker: Folie À Deux is in theaters now.
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While it wouldn’t be quite accurate to call Peter an unsung hero in Deadpool & Wolverine, considering he literally shows up to save the day (as Peterpool, of course), Rob Delaney and his dad bod were currently one of the biggest surprises in this summer’s juggernaut success, doing the absolute utmost with his screentime and providing Ryan Ryenolds’ Wade Wilson with the type of buddy he could count on. Now, in a recently released deleted scene, Peter finds his romantic match with Time Variance Authority agent B-15 (Wunmi Mosaku, reprising her role from Loki). We all saw the romantic tension between the two in the theatrical release, but the deleted scene confirms the match.
The new clip gives Peter the love he deserves as he and B-15 share a smooch. Enjoy:
Deadpool & Wolverine officially hit the digital realm on October 1 and boasts more extras, like this deleted scene. It also includes commentary from director Shawn Levy and star Ryan Reynolds, featurettes, and more.
The only Marvel movie of the year was a massive hit, clawing up $1.33 billion since its July 26th premiere. It trails only Inside Out 2 as the top-grossing smash of the year.
Delaney’s first turn as the lovable Peter arrives in Deadpool 2, where he joins the X-Force as the sole member without a single superpower. Yet he did have one thing in common with X-Force members: Bedlam (Terry Crews), Shatterstar (Lewis Tan), Vanisher (Brad Pitt), and Zeitgeist (Bill Skarsgård)—he dies. But, during a post-credits scene, Deadpool goes back through time using Cable’s time travel gizmo and saves Peter. A nation rejoiced, and Peter came up huge in Deadpool & Wolverine. And now Peter has found love.
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The official trailer for the critically acclaimed Conclave has arrived, revealing director Edward Berger’s adaptation of Robert Harris’s book. The film is centered on one of the most covert operations in the world, the selection of a new Pope, a highly secretive, ancient event that draws the world’s attention. The sensational cast includes Ralph Fiennes as Cardinal Lawrence, the man who must preside over the conclave after the sudden death of the Pope. The conclave brings the Catholic Church’s most influential leaders from around the globe inside the Vatican, where they’re sequestered together behind locked doors, to select the person who will next lead the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics.
Fiennes is joined by an exceptional cast that includes Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, Isabella Rossellini, Jacek Koman, and Lucian Msamati. The task of selecting the new Pope goes from tense to dangerous as Cardinal Lawrence starts to suss out secrets that could rock the very foundations of the Church.
Critics have been raving about Conclave since its premiere at the Telluride Film Festival this past August. Tomris Lafly of the AV Clubwrote, “Conclave dares to dream of a kinder, bigger, and more inclusive version of the world—a world where doubt and faith go hand in hand, where one doesn’t have to choose between bad and worse, and absolutism is a sin.” Over at Entertainment Weekly, Maureen Lee Lenker said, “Conclave is packed with unexpected twists and its final reveal is one viewers will never see coming, an increasingly rare occurrence in modern movie-making and the mark of an impeccably crafted thriller.”
Check out the trailer below. Conclave hits theaters on October 25.
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The Peaky Blinders movie just added another charismatic performer who knows his way around post-World War I Birmingham. Stephen Graham, who played Hayden Stagg in the sixth and final season of the smashing BBC series, revealed to Deadline that he’s returning for series creator Steven Knight‘s big-screen continuation, which Knight penned and Tom Harper will direct.
Graham joins newly minted Oscar winner Cillian Murphy, the series and now film’s lead, Tommy Shelby, the head of the Shelby gang. The cast is rounding into starry shape, with Rebecca Ferguson, Barry Keoghan, and Tim Roth already in place.
The film will be set during the Second World War, but that’s about all we know about the plot. Graham is a busy guy, with roles in Steven McQueen’s Blitz, Kelly Marcel’s Venom: The Last Dance, and Disney+ show A Thousand Blows, also written by Knight, all upcoming. He’s also playing Bruce Springsteen’s dad, Douglas ‘Dutch’ Springsteen, in Scott Cooper’s Deliver Me From Nowhere, which will star Jeremy Allen White as the Boss.
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Featured image: LONDON, ENGLAND – OCTOBER 05: (EDITORS NOTE: Image has been converted to black and white) Stephen Graham attends the BFI London Film Festival Opening Night Gala and World Premiere of Roald Dahl’s “Matilda The Musical”, during the 66th BFI London Film Festival, at The Royal Festival Hall on October 05, 2022 in London, England. (Photo by Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images for BFI)
James Gunn and Peter Safran’s new DC Studios is really starting to take shape. With Gunn’s Superman already in post-production and set for a July 11, 2025 release, their studio’s first feature is preparing to soar. Things are also shaping up with Superman’s cousin as director Craig Gillespie’s Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow has recently added Matthias Schoenaerts to the cast to play the villain, opposite Supergirl herself, Milly Alcock. Now, on the TV side, one of the studio’s major first series, Lanterns, has set its two leads. Aaron Pierre has been cast as the Green Lantern John Stewart, joining Kyler Chandler’s Hal Jordan as the two cosmic cops set to start sleuthing on Earth.
Lanterns is a big deal for Gunn and Safran’s DC Studios—it’s their first major TV effort, and Pierre has landed one of the most sought-after roles available, playing a fan favorite and one of DC’s first Black superheroes. Pierre joined Stephan James as the final two performers in the casting process, both taking part in screen tests opposite Kyle Chandler last week, with Pierre getting the nod on Tuesday.
Lanterns is being billed as DC Studios’ gritty crime drama with a True Detective vibe. It will follow the legendary intergalactic cop Hal Jordan as he begrudgingly mentors a young member of the Green Lanterns force, John Stewart. Eventually, Jordan and Stewart find themselves drawn into a dark mystery on Earth where a murder in the American heartland upends everything.
Pierre recently starred in Jeremy Saulnier’s critically acclaimed action thriller that pitted Pierre against Don Johnson in a taut, terrifically acted, and shot pulse pounder. It’s been at the top of Netflix’s charts for three weeks in a row.
Pierre was momentarily going to make a big splash in the comic book realm before plans changed—he was set to star opposite Mahershala Ali in Marvel Studios’ Blade, but the movie subsequently changed, and Pierre moved on. He’s had meaty roles in Clement Virgo’s Brother, Barry Jenkins’ The Underground Railroad, and Garth Davis’ 2023 sci-fi drama Foe. Come this December, Pierre will be roaring in Disney’s Lion King prequel as Mufasa—Barry Jenkins helms this, too.
Chandler is no stranger to hit TV, having starred in Friday Night Lights and Bloodline, and makes a no-brainer choice to play Jordan.
The first two episodes of Lanterns will be directed by James Hawes, a veteran who recently filmed two episodes of Apple TV+’s terrific spy series Slow Horses, led by a brilliant, flatulent old spook named Jackson Lamb, played by a brilliant Gary Oldman. Lanterns is led by showrunner Chris Mundy (Ozark), with Mundy, Damon Lindelof (Watchmen, The Leftovers), and comic book writer Tom King all executive producing and writing.
The Green Lanterns have been around for a long time—the first Green Lantern, Alan Scott, appeared in DC Comics in 1940, created by Martin Nodell and Bill Finger. John Broome and Gil Kane reinvented the character as Hal Jordan in 1959, introducing the Green Lantern Corps and moving the genre from fantasy to science fiction. John Stewart arrived twelve years later courtesy of Dennis O’Neill and Neal Adams, becoming one of DC’s first Black superheroes.
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We’ve heard some of the iconic musical numbers that director John M. Chu has in store for us with his adaptation of Wicked, which will unleash the singing chops of superstars Cynthia Erivo (Elphaba) and Ariana Grande (Glinda), as well as a stellar cast that includes Jonathan Bailey (Fiyero), a young man with singing ability to spare. Those tunes include showstoppers “Popular,” “Dancing Through Life,” “The Wizard and I, “What is this Feeling?” and “Defying Gravity.” Now, Universal has also unveiled a bunch of new images from the film, which gives us a closer look at Elphaba and Glinda’s momentous adventure in Oz.
The new images include looks at the budding friendship between Elphaba and Glinda, Fiyero—a love interest of both Elphaba and Glinda—belting out a musical number, Michelle Yeoh’s Madame Morrible, the headmistress of Shiz University where Elphaba and Glinda meet, Marissa Bode’s Nessarose, Elphaba’s younger sister, Bronwyn James’ Shenshen and Bowen Yang’s Pfannee, Glinda’s friends at Shiz U., and Jeff Goldblum’s Wizard of Oz.
There’s more, including some behind-the-scenes shots of Chu and his stars on set and a wonderful shot of Dr. Dillamond, voiced by Peter Dinklage, a talking goat and university professor.
Wicked is the first big-screen adaptation of the juggernaut Broadway show (which itself was based on Gregory Maguire’s book) and reveals the world of Oz before Dorothy dropped in and changed everything. The adaptation will boast all the power ballads that rocked the Broadway stage and will enroll us at Shiz University, where Elphaba and Glinda cross paths and form an unlikely but profound friendship, one that will change both of their lives forever.
Wicked will enchant theaters on November 22. Check out the photos below.
L to R: Cynthia Erivo is Elphaba and Ariana Grande is Glinda in WICKED, directed by Jon M. ChuCynthia Erivo is Elphaba in WICKED, directed by Jon M. ChuWICKED, directed by Jon M. ChuAriana Granda is Glinda in WICKED, directed by Jon M. ChuL to R: Bronwyn James is Shenshen and Bowen Yang is Pfannee in WICKED, directed by Jon M. ChuCynthia Erivo is Elphaba in WICKED, directed by Jon M. ChuPeter Dinklage voices Dr. Dillamond in WICKED, directed by Jon M. ChuL to R: Cynthia Erivo is Elphaba and Ariana Grande is Glinda in WICKED, directed by Jon M. ChuThe Emerald City in WICKED, directed by Jon M. ChuShiz University in WICKED, directed by Jon M. ChuWICKED, directed by Jon M. ChuL to R: Cynthia Erivo is Elphaba and Ariana Grande is Glinda in WICKED, directed by Jon M. ChuL to R: Marissa Bode is Nessarose and Cynthia Erivo is Elphaba in WICKED, directed by Jon M. ChuAriana Grande is Glinda in WICKED, directed by Jon M. ChuCynthia Erivo is Elphaba in WICKED, directed by Jon M. ChuL to R: Director Jon M. Chu with Cynthia Erivo (as Elphaba) and Ariana Grande (as Glinda) on the set of WICKEDCynthia Erivo is Elphaba, Ariana Grande is Glinda and Director Jon M. Chu on the set of WICKED, from Universal PicturesCenter L to R: Cynthia Erivo (as Elphaba), Director Jon M. Chu, and Ariana Granda (as Glinda) on the set of WICKEDEthan Slater is Boq and Marissa Bode is Nessarose in WICKED, directed by Jon M. ChuL to R: Jeff Goldblum is The Wizard of Oz and Michelle Yeoh is Madam Morrible in WICKED, directed by Jon M. ChuMichelle Yeoh is Madame Morrible in WICKED, directed by Jon M. ChuJonathan Bailey is Prince Fiyero in WICKED, directed by Jon M. ChuL to R: Cynthia Erivo (as Elphaba) and Ariana Grande (as Glinda) with Director Jon M. Chu on the set of WICKED.L to R: Ariana Grande is Glinda and Cynthia Erivo is Elphaba in WICKED, directed by Jon M. ChuAriana Granda is Glinda in WICKED, directed by Jon M. ChuL to R: Cynthia Erivo is Elphaba and Ariana Granda is Glinda in WICKED, directed by Jon M. ChuL to R: Cynthia Erivo is Elphaba and Ariana Grande is Glinda in WICKED, directed by Jon M. Chu
A new Wicked teaser has arrived on a pair of monkey wings and musical notes, boasting a bunch of the iconic songs that fans of the Broadway Musical adore and are clamoring to see on the biggest screen possible when director John M. Chu’s adaptation hits the big screen.
The new teaser dives right into the music, with Grammy-winning, multiple-platinum superstar Ariana Grande’s Glinda clapping her hands and calling out, “Everyone, I have an announcement!” That announcement, for Wicked fans that is, is that tickets are now on sale, and who better to get that message across than Grande and her equally award-laden, multitalented co-star Cynthia Erivo, playing Elphaba, the eventual Wicked Witch of the West. You want to get people excited for your movie? Unleash these two super-talents on some of Wicked’s most beloved musical numbers.
In order of appearance, the tunes you’ll hear in the teaser are “Popular,” “Dancing Through Life,” “The Wizard and I, “What is this Feeling?” and “Defying Gravity.” Previous teasers and trailers have included “Popular” and “Defying Gravity,” but the rest are new.
It is no surprise that Erivo and Grande can sing, dance, and act, but so, too, can Jonathan Bailey. He plays Fiyero, a former Arjiki prince, and is both Glinda’s and Elphaba’s love interest in the story. The man has serious pipes.
Chu’s Wicked is the first big-screen adaptation of the juggernaut Broadway show, which was based on Gregory Maguire’s book and tells the story of what actually happened before Dorothy dropped into Oz and changed everything. As this teaser makes clear, Wicked won’t skimp on the power ballads that rocked the Broadway stage and will take us onto the campus of Shiz University, where Elphaba and Glinda cross paths and an unlikely but profound friendship blossoms. That eventually leasd to a life-changing encounter with Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Jeff Goldblum), which will set off a course of events that, as we know, will become the stuff of legend in The Wizard of Oz.
Joining Erivo, Grande, and Bailey are Michelle Yeoh as Madame Morrible, Ethan Slater as Boq, and Bowen Yang as Pfannee.
Wicked will enchant theaters on November 22. Check out the new teaser here:
Christopher Nolan and Universal had quite the collaboration with Nolan’s Oppenheimer, the critical and commercial smash hit that was nominated for 13 Oscars and won 7, including Best Picture, Best Director for Nolan, Best Actor for Cillian Murphy, and Best Supporting Actor for Robert Downey Jr. Now, Deadlinescoops that Nolan and Universal are reteaming for the director’s next feature, with plans for an Imax release on July 17, 2026.
Deadline‘s scoop includes the nugget that Nolan is eyeing one of his Oppenheimer stars, Matt Damon, as his lead. Damon and Nolan have collaborated twice now; in Oppenheimer, Damon played Leslie Groves, the military man who helped arrange the Manhattan Project that Robert J. Oppenheimer led to build the atomic bomb. Previously, Damon had a brief but explosive role in Nolan’s emotional 2014 sci-fi epic Interstellar, where Damon played Dr. Mann, an astronaut marooned on a brutally cold planet orbiting a black hole called Gargantua. When Matthew McConaughey and his team arrive, Dr. Mann’s true intentions for his distress signal are revealed.
L to R: Matt Damon is Leslie Groves and Cillian Murphy is J. Robert Oppenheimer in OPPENHEIMER, written, produced, and directed by Christopher Nolan.
Nolan’s new project is a state secret, of course. Neither Nolan nor Universal has any comment, but the mid-July release date is similar to the sweet spot when Oppenheimer was released, as well as his 2010 mind-tripper Inception and his most beloved contribution to the superhero world, his 2008 film The Dark Knight.
We’ll share more details about Nolan’s upcoming project when we hear them.
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“You tramped all the way from Minnesota,” says Edward Norton’s Pete Seeger at the opening of the official trailer for A Complete Unknown. “Why is that?”
“I wanted to catch a spark,” comes the answer from a young man named Bob Dylan, played here by an appealingly understated (if still undeniably charismatic) Timothée Chalamet. A Complete Unknown, from director James Mangold and written by Mangold and Jay Cocks, follows one of the most influential and iconic musicians ever produced in the United States, but crucially, aims to capture not Dylan’s entire epic life (at least, up to now), but his early, transformative years in New York City.
The trailer introduces us to a young Dylan finding his way in NYC and meeting some of the era’s most talented performers, both already in demand and those on the rise. One of the most crucial relationships Dylan establishes at that time is with another extremely gifted singer/songwriter, Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro), who at one point says, “Your songs are like an oil painting at the dentist’s office,” to which she replies, “You’re kind of an a**hole, Bob.”
Another important Dylan relationship explored in A Complete Unknown is with his girlfriend, Sylvia Russo (Elle Fanning), a version of his real girlfriend at the time, Suze Rotolo. A Complete Unknown will track Dylan/Baez/Russo’s love triangle and capture the mounting pressure on young Dylan as he begins to resist the desires of the public and the music industry. “Two hundred people in that room, and each one of them wants me to be somebody else,” Dylan says at one point. “I wish they’d just let me be.” When asked what he wishes they’d let him be, he replies, “Whatever it is they don’t want me to be.”
The new trailer also touches upon one of the most seminal moments in 20th-century music history, when Dylan shocked the folk music world by plugging in an electric guitar during his 1965 Newport Folk Festival performance. This did not go over well with many Dylan supporters and festival organizers, although the decision changed Dylan’s life and the music industry as a whole.
A Complete Unknown includes moments that Dylan fanatics will recognize immediately, including his early performances at Cafe Wha? and Hotel Chelsea. The songs, however, will be recognizable to just about everyone, including “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall” and “Girl From the North Country.”
The cast also includes Boyd Holbrook as Johnny Cash, P. J. Byrne as Harold Leventhal, Scoot McNairy as Woody Guthrie, Dan Fogler as Albert Grossman, and Will Harrison as Bob Neuwirth.
Check out the full trailer below. A Complete Unknown rambles into theaters on Christmas Day.
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Will Smith and Michael Bay are reuniting for another breathless action movie.
Smith and Bay are in talks to reteam for the Netflix actioner Fast and Loose. Bay will direct Smith in a movie about a crime boss suffering from amnesia after an attack. The catch? This underworld kingpin slowly starts to learn that he’s actually a CIA agent. The script comes from Eric Pearson, Chris Bremmer, Jon Hoeber, and Erich Hoeber. Deadlinewas the first to scoop the story.
The film was initially slated to be helmed by another director with major action chops—David Leitch—but Leitch ultimately left the project to work on his ode to stunt performers, The Fall Guy, with Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt.
Smith and Bay go way back—they first collaborated on the 1995 action-comedy Bad Boys, in which Smith joined Martin Lawrence as a pair of haggling, heroic Miami cops. Smith and Lawrence have recently reprised the character, with last year’s Bad Boys: Ride or Diebeing their most recent effort.
Ride or Die was a hit, and Smith’s return from the infamous Oscars slap heard around the world in 2022, the year he won his first Oscar for his performance in 2021’s King Richard. After Ride or Die, Smith was in talks to star in the sci-fi feature Resistor, based on novelist Daniel Suarez’s 2014 book “Influx” for Sony, which follows physicist Jon Grady after he and his team discover a device that can reflect gravity that eventually falls into the wrong hands, but has exited the project. Smith was also planning to star in Sguar Bandits, aBoston-set crime thriller from Sicario: Day of the Soldado filmmaker Stefano Sollima, which he and his production company, Westbrook, are still looking to produce.
Bay has taken a brief break from directing. His last time behind the camera was for Universal’s potent, tightly wound film Ambulance, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II. He is, of course, famous for bringing the world of Transformers to the big screen back in 2007, jumpstarting a mega-franchise that includes seven live-action features and this year’s critically acclaimed animated film Transformers: One.
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Featured image: L-r: MEXICO CITY, MEXICO – MAY 31: Will Smith poses during a photoshoot for the movie ‘Bad Boys: Ride or Die’ at Angel de la Independencia on May 31, 2024 in Mexico City, Mexico. (Photo by Hector Vivas/Getty Images). NEW YORK, NEW YORK – SEPTEMBER 17: Michael Bay attends the “Transformers One” premiere on September 17, 2024 in New York City. (Photo by Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images)
Casting director Jennifer Venditti had one of Hollywood’s great chameleons to work with when she was putting together the pieces for HBO’s limited series The Sympathizer. Robert Downey Jr. plays a quartet of characters in Park Chan-wook and Don McKellar’s adaptation of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s 2015 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel as the Oscar-winning performer is in a constant swirl of dramatic action among performers less well-known but all of them entirely game.
The show follows the twisting journey of Captain (Hoa Xuande), a communist operative working as a mole in South Vietnam’s army who ends up escaping to the U.S. alongside his nominal boss, the General (Toan Le). The Captain ends up in California, where he remains embedded in a South Vietnamese refugee community where he monitors and reports to the Viet Cong. It’s a fitting city for the Captain to make a new home—a town built on illusion; the Captain interacts with a bevy of Americans in various positions to aid and potentially abet his machinations. One of those is a CIA operative named Claude (Downey), whom the Captain met in Vietnam; while in the U.S., the Captain comes into contact with ingratiating California congressman Ned Godwin (Downey) and the filmmaker (Downey again), a bearded 1970s auteur.
Hoa Xuande and Roberty Downey Jr. Photograph by Hopper Stone/HBO
Surrounding Xuande, Le, and multiple Downeys is a rotating cast of scene-stealing performers, each perfectly calibrated to the series’ twisty, darkly comedic tone. Venditti, a seasoned casting director who has populated some of the most memorably offbeat casts in recent memory, including two standout films in 2019, the Safdie Brothers’ Uncut Gemsand director Alma Har’el’s Honey Boy, put her years of experience to work when she populated one of the year’s most satisfyingly diverse and delicious series. Venditti takes us through her intuitive process.
When you take on something like The Sympathizer, which comes from award-winning source material, are you taking any cues from Viet Thanh Nguyen’s novel?
Good question. When A24 first contacted me, I had not read the book, but my casting associate, Alan Scott Neal, said it was his favorite book. So he was the person that really was like, “Oh my God, we have to do this. This is amazing.” And so I read the script. I was obviously a huge fan of director Park and had worked for HBO and A24 before, so it seemed like a no-brainer. But the first way in was the script for me, and then I read the book. Then, there were really detailed conversations with director Park and co-showrunner Don McKellar about their visions because they both had very clear ideas of how they envisioned these characters coming to life. Then it’s the process because you can have these ideas of what you’re looking for, and then the process shows you and materializes things in a way you might not have seen.
What materialized for you during the casting process?
Like with Bon [Fred Nguyen Khan], director Park really wanted someone with a physicality to them. Fred had done stunts and martial arts, so you talk about it, and as you look and search and people show up, you start to put it all together. That’s my favorite part of the process: learning about it and then letting it go and allowing the mystery of the search to bring things together. Fred and Hoa had such good chemistry; things like that are very cool when they happen.
oa Xuande, Fred Nguyen Khan. Photograph by Hopper Stone/HBO
So, in a sense, the project reveals what it wants to be.
And it’s interesting, I’m really not that kind of person. One of the things I do like is discoveries, and one of the reasons they might have reached out to me for this is because they knew I was going to have find a lot of people, we weren’t going to find everyone from traditional casting because of the requirements of the script. So there’s some part of me that really likes the mystery and discovery rather than just going with people I already know.
Phanxinê, Fred Nguyen Khan, Toan Le. Photograph by Hopper Stone/HBO
HBO and A24 both have really solid track records for casting really interesting ensembles, whether it’s Mare of Eastown
HBO cares so much about casting; it’s so important to them. So they’re very much involved in the process, and A24 is great like that two, they both have really good taste an they’re great at supporting the process and letting you do what you do best, but they also have great notes. You look forward to their notes because you’re seeing so many people. It’s great to get feedback from people you respect who really take it seriously and have such a good eye as well.
Obviously, for American audiences, you’ve got one of the biggest stars in the business in Robert Downey Jr., not only in the series but in multiple roles. Then you’ve got Sandra Oh, another amazing performer, and then you’ve got all these folks who are lesser known but who more than hold their own. What’s it like mixing these two worlds of performers?
I have a chapter in my book [“Can I Ask You A Question?”] about this called “The Alchemy of Casting,” I do think there’s something beautiful about what happens when you take someone who’s so grounded and clear and experienced in knowing where a scene is going to go and then you take someone with less experience, there’s wild alchemy about that where there’s something about the person who’s not as experienced make it more alive for the more experienced performer, and then the experienced person grounds the other person. And as intimidating as you might think it is for a newcomer to be across from Robert Downey Jr., across the board, what everyone has said is working with him, he’s so generous, he makes you so comfortable, he’s so intuitive, he can feel when you’re not feeling good about it, and he can help drop into that with you and put you at ease.
Is there a specific pairing you’re thinking of?
For example, Toan Le, who plays the General, his story is amazing. He has all these scenes with Robert Downey Jr. and he kills it. People say you’re only as good as your scene partner, and I think Robert being that good lends to the other person. Toan was someone who had wanted to act since he was young, and in his 20s, he’d been in plays, but there just weren’t roles for Vietnamese actors. So he got a day job as a graphic designer for years, and he saw our open call and sent in a tape, and then became a series regular. People always think that only happens for young people and that people aren’t taking risks like that later in life, and he went for it. He’s a great example of someone who really held their own, and Robert really leaned in and supported them.
Toan Le. Photograph by Hopper Stone/HBO
This type of live wire alchemy is really present in many of the movies you’ve cast, especially in the Safdie brothers’ Uncut Gems and Good Time.
It’s magic. When I was young, I didn’t really watch movies or TV; I was obsessed with people-watching, and the Safdies were the same way. A lot of the people that I work with enjoy that, too. For this project, if we could have just found everyone by reaching out to an agency, then we would have done it, but for this project, we had to search high and low because of all the diversity that wasn’t easily available at our fingertips. It was definitely intimidating, but there’s something about aliveness that lends to the magic on the screen. Sandra, too, and everyone said the same about her. We were lucky to have these gracious actors who created a safe space for the newer performers.
Alan Trong, Sandra Oh. Photograph by Hopper Stone/HBO
The Sympathizer is also about performance in a way…
Yeah, it’s meta because the idea is everyone’s an actor in their real lives. Do you know what I mean? This meta thing, I’m casting people to be human to portray a character, but we’re all doing that in our real lives as well.
How long do you feel like it took for you to feel comfortable just knowing during an audition, okay, this is working, or these two people have the right chemistry?
I think sometimes chemistry readings are necessary, but then, Robert Downey Jr. could have chemistry with a dead person [laughs]. Let’s not get it twisted. I’m not really worried about him having chemistry with anyone. There are certain things, like Hoa as the Captain and Fred as Bon, that was kismet in a way. We cast Fred first, and we had no idea that they knew each other and they’re best friends in real life. The beauty of this project is that the cast is so in love with each other. They all have such deep friendships, it happened on set, and it’s continued since then. It’s really cool when it translates past the project. There are a lot of things that are intuitive, and sometimes there are processes where you’re really trying to make it work, and this was one where it was really natural, and everyone seemed to have a really meaningful connection with each other. This was a shared experience to be a part of something so personal and to come together and connect on a deeper level.
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Gotham has never looked quite so seedy and dangerous as it does in HBO’s excellent The Batman spinoff series The Penguin. Shot in and around New York City (unlike previous films in the Batman universe, which have utilized international locations and cities that are not New York to recreate Gotham), The Penguin picks up in the aftermath of the Riddler’s bombing of the city at the end of The Batman, paralyzing large swaths of the cities and leaving whole neighborhoods in ruin. While Batman apprehended the Riddler, another net effect of the Riddler’s war on Gotham was that he took out Carmine Falcone (played in the film by John Turturro), leaving a power vacuum at the top of Gotham’s underworld. Into these dangerous waters swims Oz/Cobb, aka the Penguin (Colin Farrell reprising his role from The Batman), committed to outwitting and outmaneuvering the halfwits running the Falcone family and other wannabe power players in Gotham’s vast, unruly, ununified crime syndicate.
Colin Farrell, Cristin Milioti, Francois Chau. Photograph by Macall Polay/HBO
Yet as The Penguin moved into last night’s third episode, “Bliss,” Oz had struck a shaky alliance with one formidable potential adversary—Carmine’s daughter Sofia Falcone (a dynamite Cristin Milioti). The second episode ended with the two of them agreeing to work together to wrest control of Sofia’s family’s business from her uncle in the aftermath of her brother Alberto’s murder. Oz is hoping that Sofia remains unaware that he’s the one who did Alberto dirty, and episode three delves further into the murky waters of Oz’s plan, with their fragile alliance tested to the breaking point.
“Bliss” not only mucks around in Oz and Sofia’s tortured pasts, but it also maintained an eye on Victor Aguilar (Rhenzy Feliz), the young man Oz forced into servitude. Victor has become Oz’s driver, helpmeet, and oft-threatened surrogate son. He’s also one of the peoples’ whose lives was totally upended by the Riddler’s attack.
Rhenzy Feliz. Photograph by Macall Polay/HBO
Creator Lauren LeFranc has done a masterful job creating a deliciously demented, superhero-free Gotham in which the bad guys seem to be the only ones making moves. Episode 3 was written by Noelle Valdivia from a story developed by LeFranc and directed by Craig Zobel. It was also the first episode in the series to take us back to The Batman and the carnage and chaos the Riddler unleashed, giving us a better understanding of what regular folks like Victor and his family suffered at the hands of that madman’s attack.
A new “Inside the Episode” video from Max gives us a deeper dive into how this installment was crafted, with LeFranc explaining the importance of Victor to the series, Rhenzy himself discussing his character, with thoughts from Farrell, Zobel, and more.
Check out the video here. The Penguin airs on HBO on Sundays at 9 pm.
The City of Brotherly Love is about to show you that its motto can mean meaningful television. Two of the most beloved Philly-set comedies of all time officially have a crossover episode coming—It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Abbott Elementary are about to share a comedic universe.
The revelation came via some teasing social media posts from the two people who would have a say in such a decision—It’s Always Sunny creator and star Rob McElhenny and Abbott creator and star Quinta Brunson. McElhenney posted an image of himself, Sunny co-star Charlie Day, and Brunson outside of the Warner Bros. studio lot for Abbott.
McElhenney wasn’t done there—on Instagram, he shared a shot (in Instagram stories) of Sunny‘s beloved Danny DeVito and Abbott‘s Tyler James Williams and William Stanford Davis.
While McElhenney has been teasing the possibility of a Sunny/Abbott crossover on social media before, Brunson wasn’t giving up anything until Variety‘s “Awards Circuit” podcast, where she revealed the crossover was actually happening. Pressed on whether her show was crossing over with that other, beloved Philadelphia-set comedy, she wouldn’t reveal any details, but she did explain the thinking behind the crossover:
“I’m excited to just shake things up in this way,” she told Variety. “I love TV, everyone knows that, but I love TV moments, and I miss those big TV moments. I remember how exciting they were. Anything I can do with Abbott to help keep that culture alive of fun TV, I will do. So I think this is going to be fun TV.”
The idea first hatched in February, when McElhenney was talking about the now infamous and massive fail of an event, “Willy’s Chocolate Experience,” which was an unlicensed “experience” held in Glasgow based on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that was an experience in that it confused and ultimately angered paying customers—it was held in a thinly decorated warehouse that so disappointed visitors the police were eventually called in. It was this insane scenario that lots of Sunny fans thought was the type of lunacy that the Sunny gang at Paddy’s Pub would conceive of, but McElhenney had an even better idea.
Abbott Elementary‘s fourth season is right around the corner, with the series returning on October 9 at 9:30 p.m. on ABC. As for It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, McElhenney’s long-running, totally insane Philly-set show is currently working on the 17th season, with filming slated to start later in the fall.
Featured image: L-r: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – JANUARY 15: Rob McElhenney, winner of Outstanding Unstructured Reality Program for “Welcome To Wrexham,” poses in the press room during the 75th Primetime Emmy Awards at Peacock Theater on January 15, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images); LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – JANUARY 15: Quinta Brunson, winner of the Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series award for “Abbott Elementary,” poses in the press room during the 75th Primetime Emmy Awards at Peacock Theater on January 15, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)
On Swift Horses director Daniel Minahan has long admired the work of cinematographer Luc Montpellier. “He shot Tales From the Loop, which is one of the best series I’ve ever seen. And [the 2022 film] Women Talking is just a feat of design and performance. So I said to him, ‘Your work is so beautiful and so controlled; I really want to mess it up.’”
Minahan was determined that from the music to the set design to the photography, On Swift Horses, which recently had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, would avoid sentiment and nostalgia in its depiction of queer characters living in the shadows in 1950s America. “I did not want that veil between the characters and the audience. I wanted to put the emotion in the foreground,” he says.
Based on Shannon Pufahl’s 2019 novel, On Swift Horses centers on a seemingly conventional newlywed, Muriel (Daisy Edgar-Jones), and the bond she develops with her brother-in-law, Julius (Jacob Elordi), a mysterious gambler, as both undertake parallel journeys of risk, romance, and self-discovery. Muriel explores another side to her sexuality with Sandra (Sasha Calle), her neighbor in San Diego, while Julius finds passion with fellow gambler Henry (Diego Calva) in Las Vegas.
“It was important to us to not romanticize the period,” says Montpellier. “It’s easy to slip into tropes of romanticism. You needed to feel you were in the room at that time with the characters so you can connect with them. The question became, ‘How do I create a window into the time?’ There were no words then to describe these passions, as LGBT people discovered things.”
Sasha Calle in “On Swift Horses.” Courtesy Black Bear.
To achieve a sense of intimacy, immediacy, and freedom in the motel rooms, casinos, and bars where desire is uncovered and explored, Montpellier shot with a handheld camera to distinguish these from the film’s other, more formal scenes.
Montpellier wanted his camera “almost to be an actor, to create a strong poetic, visual point of view to bring up the context. I don’t want to get in the way of that. I’m proud when the audience reacts to a look that Muriel gives to Julius, and suddenly, you know something is going on. I’m trying to keep an eye open to all of that,” he says. “For the way those scenes are lit, I was leaning into naturalism and honesty with the goal that you felt you were in the room.”
To achieve the mix of light and shadow in the interior scenes, Minahan suggested that Montpellier study not other films but photographs and paintings.
“I did not want to imitate other films,” says Minahan. “The trick of the script is that it has all the tropes of melodrama and noir in this romantic story, and I wanted to find that for ourselves. I wanted to make sure we were not making a pastiche from a fifties film even though that might be fun.” Rather than films from the 1950s, he says, “We looked at documentary photography by Gordon Parks and Bruce Davidson and paintings I admired from the period. Luc and I started sending each other stuff. When he sent me an image from a painter I collect, John Koch, it was one of those moments when I knew I’d chosen the right person to collaborate.”
Will Poulter and Daisy Edgar-Jones in “On Swift Horses.” Courtesy Black Bear.
One particularly memorable scene in the film shows the influence of those visual artists. In the foreground, Julius and Henry are enjoying a close moment in dim light, while in the distance behind them, an atomic test bomb explodes into the night sky above the Las Vegas desert.
“I think of it as the best first date ever, a drink and a bomb,” laughs Minahan. “That image is the cover of the novel; it puts the story in that time period. The visual effects team was so great, but at first, the blast was really big. I said no, the characters would be melting! So they made it 75 miles away in the distance.”
Montpellier looked at “so many images of atomic blasts and people watching with goggles, scarily close,” he says. “It was a kind of innocence. The explosion mimics the fire inside; it’s a symbol of the time, and so it’s a great metaphor. A lot of visual effects were used, but it was also important for me to have practical lighting effects on set so the actors could cue off that. There was a huge lighting rig and wind machine. I wanted to give them what they needed in order to create an environment that allowed them to do their best work.”
The atomic bomb is also symbolic of a complex, post-war era when progress also meant destruction and when the American dream worked for some but certainly not for all. “People were not free in a lot of ways,” says Montpellier. “I love working with filmmakers who want to bring the human condition to light. Dan was so collaborative in beautifully crafting this unconventional love story.”
Featured image: Diego Calva and Jacob Elordi in “On Swift Horses.” Courtesy Black Bear.
One expects Max Minghella to cite the influence of his father, the late director Anthony Minghella (The English Patient, The Talented Mr. Ripley), on his acting and directing career. But it’s Minghella’s mother, Carolyn Choa, who gets the shout-out for her impact on his new film, the body horror comedy Shell, starring Elisabeth Moss and Kate Hudson.
“My mother worked for the British Board of Film Classification from 1984 to 1994, which [like the Motion Picture Association] decided whether a film was PG or R. She’d come home and tell me a bedtime story based on what she read that day. This was when the mid-budget studio movie was most prominent in the marketplace, and it had a tremendous influence on my subconscious and on me as a filmmaker,” says Minghella over Zoom while at the Toronto International Film Festival, where Shell had its world premiere just two weeks after Minghella wrapped the film.
Minghella calls Shell “the kind of high-class popcorn entertainment that doesn’t get made anymore. We have these big-budget, tentpole kinds of movies or smaller films designed for prestige and to win awards, and not much in the middle.”
Despite the sci-fi/horror plot about Samantha Lake (Moss), an actress who tries to stay young by undergoing mysterious medical treatments at a wellness center run by high-powered CEO Zoe Shannon (Hudson), Minghella was drawn to the campy aspects of the script, which he read while in post-production on his first film, Teen Spirit (2018).
Kate Hudson and Elisabeth Moss in “Shell.” Courtesy Black Bear.
“I always saw the movie as a comedy, first and foremost, and a love letter to a period of film history I actually love. It’s a borderline parody of those movies,” he says. “Teen Spirit was a very personal movie; melancholic and introverted and European, all the things that I am. Coming out of that experience, I yearned for something extroverted and American. I love all kinds of movies; it’s my blessing and my curse, I suppose, to be so broad-based, so I was excited about these characters and a movie that existed in this space.”
One can spot traces of those movies all over Shell, from Paul Verhoeven and Brian De Palma, certainly, but even further back, to Alien,The Exorcist, and even Psycho. But along with the visual flair and jump scares, there’s a substantive story about body image and self-worth and the lengths many will go to achieve eternal youth, beauty, and relevance.
“I am turning forty next year. All of us contemplate mortality, vanity, and age,” says Minghella. “It is a totally universal theme. Yet, I am completely allergic to messages in films. I loathe films that are didactic or moralistic. I want to explore ideas without making judgments, and I hope Shell is filled with rich ideas without saying much too loudly.”
As an actor with a long list of credits but best known for The Handmaid’s Tale, it’s perhaps not surprising that Minghella’s cast, especially Moss and Hudson, deliver such memorable performances. Minghella says he wanted both stars from the start.
“I am a nightmare with casting. If my producers were here, they’d tell you that I am very particular. I don’t audition or meet actors. I try to conjure in my head the person I think is right for each role.” On set, he says, his directing style is to give each actor “space to explore, have fun, and feel safe to fail. I think that’s my job. I have been lucky on two movies that I got the actors I wanted. A lot can go wrong when you’re making a movie, but I feel so lucky to at least have the people I wanted saying these words, and they are so gifted they give you more than you can possibly imagine.”
Even though Minghella has worked with Moss for years on The Handmaid’s Tale, he admits he was hesitant to approach her about starring in Shell.
“My biggest fear was that she’d say yes just out of some obligation to do it. Then she started to introduce the notion of working together, and by the fifth time, I said, ‘I do have a script you’d be perfect for.’ I’m so happy she nagged me because now I can’t imagine anyone else as Samantha; I’m amazed by how funny she is. It’s quite a complex comedic performance in its physicality and I had not seen her do that before.”
Rapport and professionalism helped with a tight, low-budget shoot. “It often felt we were trying to squeeze a square peg into a round hole with limited financial resources and time. It always comes down to the cast and crew in the end,” says Minghella, citing Shell DP Drew Daniels as “one of the most extraordinary technicians you’ll come across. He works quickly and without pretension.”
“Lizzie Moss can deliver a perfectly calibrated performance in one take, so it allows you to move faster. I’d rather have more time to explore, but you simply can’t.” He had just three hours to shoot the film’s climactic car chase, for instance, with two hours needed to set up the crash. “Everything needed to be perfect, from the focus puller to the stunt crew. It is a miracle we have a movie, and I am so grateful to so many people for it.”
Featured image: TORONTO, ONTARIO – SEPTEMBER 09: Max Minghella of ‘Shell’ poses in the Getty Images Portrait Studio Presented by IMDb and IMDbPro during the Toronto International Film Festival at InterContinental Toronto Centre on September 09, 2024 in Toronto, Ontario. (Photo by Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images for IMDb)
Arguably the greatest actor of his generation is getting back in front of a camera again.
Daniel Day-Lewis has officially unretired after seven years away to perform in his son Ronan Day-Lewis’s directorial debut, Anemone, from Focus Features and Plan B. The father isn’t just coming back to act in his son’s film—they co-wrote it together—a story about, fittingly, the nuanced relationships of fathers, sons, and brothers and the dynamics of familial bonds. Anemone also stars Samantha Morton, Sean Bean, Safia Oakley-Green, and Samuel Bottomley.
This is Daniel Day-Lewis’s first time in front of a camera since Paul Thomas Anderson’s slow-burn Phantom Thread in 2017. It was ahead of the release of Phantom Thread that he announced his retirement without making a big to-do about it, saying simply he was “grateful to all of his collaborators and audiences over the many years” via a spokesperson.
Vicky Krieps stars as “Alma” and Daniel Day-Lewis stars as “Reynolds Woodcock” in writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson’s PHANTOM THREAD, a Focus Features release. Credit : Laurie Sparham / Focus Features
“We could not be more excited to partner with a brilliant visual artist in Ronan Day-Lewis on his first feature film alongside Daniel Day-Lewis as his creative collaborator,” Focus Features chairman Peter Kujawski said in a statement. “They have written a truly exceptional script, and we look forward to bringing their shared vision to audiences alongside the team at Plan B.”
Earlier this year, Daniel Day-Lewis reunited with his Gangs of New York director Martin Scorsese at the National Board of Review Awards, where the chatter about his possible return was ignited with a shout-out from Scorsese himself: “We did two films together, and it’s one of the greatest experiences of my life,” said Scorsese while accepting the directing honors for Killers of the Flower Moon. “Maybe there’s time for one more. Maybe! He’s the best.”
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – JANUARY 11: (L-R) Yancey Red Corn, Daniel Day-Lewis, William Belleau and Martin Scorsese attend the National Board Of Review 2024 Awards Gala at Cipriani 42nd Street on January 11, 2024 in New York City. (Photo by Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images for National Board of Review)
Ronan Day-Lewis is 26, a filmmaker and a painter, with a debut international solo exhibition opening on October 2 in Hong Kong before traveling to New York and Los Angeles. In his father, he’s getting the only man to ever win three Best Actor Oscars—for Jim Sheridan’s My Left Foot, Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood, and Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln—and who was nominated for two more, Scorsese’s Gangs of New York and Jim Sheridan’s In The Name of the Father.
The Anemone creative team includes costume designer Jane Petrie (The Crown), production designer Chris Oddy (The Zone of Interest), and cinematographer Ben Fordesman (Love Lives Bleeding).
For more on Universal Pictures, Peacock, and Focus Features projects, check out these stories:
Featured image: Daniel Day-Lewis poses in the press room at the 18th Annual Critics’ Choice Movie Awards held at Barker Hangar on January 10, 2013 in Santa Monica, California.
