The first teaser for The Fantastic Four: First Steps was launched onto the internet this morning, and the official countdown even occurred, with the central cast, at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. There, stars Pedro Pascal (Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic), Vanessa Kirby (Sue Storm/The Invisible Woman), Ebon Moss-Bachrach (Ben Grimm/The Thing), and Joseph Quinn (Johnny Storm/The Human Torch) hit the retro-looking launch button and we were off.
It was a fitting intro to the trailer itself, which revealed director Matt Shakman’s vision of a retro America was a stellar choice to take on the period piece, having done period-perfect work spearheading Marvel’s very first Disney+ series, WandaVision. The trailer’s vibe is pleasingly retro, from the Fantastic Four’s stellar Baxter Building (where the Core Four have dinner every Sunday at 7, no matter what, as Pascal’s Reed Richards informs us), and H.E.R.B.I.E. the robot, who is helping Ben Grimm prepare dinner.
The teaser includes a moment when Mr. Fantastic recalls the first time the Core Four launched into space before Ben was a rock, Sue was invisible, and Johnny caught fire. “Ben has always been a rock,” Sue Storm says, “and Johnny is Johnny, and I’m right here. Whatever life throws at us, we face it together — as a family.” It’s a touching sentiment in a film that looks unafraid to deal with such emotions and is set in a period when hope felt like a more abundant resource.
Along with the teaser, Marvel has revealed a few photos to whet our appetite for the film, which arrives in theaters on July 25. Those photos include Johnny Storm looking lost in space, the Thing and H.E.R.B.I.E. preparing dinner, Reed Richards on a chalkboard, and the Core Four suited up and ready to roll. Our featured image is of Kirby’s Sue Storm, looking to be prepared to lose her identity as she becomes invisible.
The first trailer for Marvel Studios’ The Fantastic Four: First Steps has taken off, broadcast live from the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, where the cast was on hand to celebrate the launch of the long-awaited reboot of Marvel’s first family. First Steps will kickstart Marvel’s Phase Six, and we’ve now got our first look at what Marvel and the First Steps team have been cooking in this retro vision.
The central quartet comprises Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic, Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm/The Invisible Woman, Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Ben Grimm/The Thing, and Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm/The Human Torch. Director Matt Shakman was a stellar choice to take on the period piece, having done period-perfect work spearheading Marvel’s very first Disney+ series, WandaVision. Here, he directs from a script by Peter Cameron, Josh Friedman, and Jeff Kaplan.
The trailer reveals our heroes before and after their transformations, including a first look at Ebon Moss-Bachrach fully transformed as the Thing, which was a labor of love via motion capture and some very good advice from Mark Ruffalo, who, of course, played the Hulk throughout several phases of MCU. We see the Four headed off on a mission into space, where they’ll be facing some major threats. We also get the Core Four’s motto, delivered by Kirby’s Sue Storm: “Whatever life throws at us, we face it together — as a family.”
The threats the family will face include the supervillains Galactus (Ralph Ineson) and the Silver Surfer (Julia Garner), who have their sights set on Earth. We also know that the Fantastic Four won’t just deal with those two for long. While The Fantastic Four was a major focus for Marvel at Comic-Con, so, too, was the announcement that revealed that Robert Downey Jr. was returning to Marvel as Dr. Doom in the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars. We now know that Downey will be the big bad in both those films, but little is known about how he might factor into The Fantastic Four: First Steps, if it all, given that Ineson is playing the film’s villain.
The Fantastic Four: First Steps will open Marvel’s Phase Six on July 25, 2025. Also set to premiere are Blade (November 7, 2025), Avengers: Doomsday (May 1, 2026), and Avengers: Secret Wars (May 7, 2027).
Check out the official teaser for The Fantastic Four below:
For more on The Fantastic Four: New Steps, check out these stories:
We open with giggling children in mid-20th-century America, racing through the city streets to arrive at a storefront window where, behind the glass, are a series of rabbit-eared television sets. On all the TVs, we see footage of the United States space program, including a “Prepare 4 Launch” alert on the central TV. Marvel Studios has dropped this little teaser to hype The Fantastic Four: First Steps’ larger trailer reveal coming tomorrow, Tuesday, February 4.
The Fantastic Four: First Steps will finally reintroduce Marvel’s First Family to the big screen, with the new superheroic quartet now played by Pedro Pascal (Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic), Vanessa Kirby (Sue Storm/The Invisible Woman), Joseph Quinn (Johnny Storm/The Human Torch) and Ebon Moss-Bachrach (Ben Grimm/Thing).
Have a look at the teaser here:
The Future Foundation invites you to take your first steps into a fantastic new era.
The Fantastic Four: First Steps is directed by Matt Shakman, who did excellent work spearheading Marvel’s very first Disney+ series, WandaVision, which was also a period piece—only one that cycled through periods on an episode-to-episode basis. First Steps will pit the Core Four against the supervillains Galactus (Ralph Ineson) and the Silver Surfer (Julia Garner), who have their sights set on Earth. During the reveal at Comic-Con (when it was announced that Robert Downey Jr. was returning to Marvel, this go-round as Dr. Doom, in the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday), Shakman also shared a teaser reel of the film, which showed the Core Four’s astronaut outfits, a massive spaceship, and a glimpse of Galactus hovering over Earth. The film’s score will come from Oscar-winner Michael Giacchino.
We’ve learned a bit about the new look of Fantastic Four, including the design of Ebon Moss-Bachrach’s The Thing. This rock-skinned giant has been played in the past by Jamie Bell in 2015’s Fantastic Four and Michael Chiklis in 2005’s Fantastic Four and 2007’s Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. The technology has improved so vastly since the last two iterations of the Thing that Shakman and his creative team knew they were coming in with an ability to render him more realistically than ever before.
“We want to be true to comics, but we also want to be true to life,” Shakman said during the Comic-Con panel. “We talked to scientists, we talked to animal experts, we talked to everybody. We went out into the desert to find the best rock to make the Thing right.”
The method for conjuring a realistic Thing included motion capture technology, the same process that Mark Ruffalo underwent during all his years of playing the Hulk. At Comic-Con, Moss-Bachrach revealed that he’d received a very helpful message: “I got a really nice text message from Mark Ruffalo just to demystify the process of motion capture because I’ve never done it before,” Moss-Bachrach said. “He sent a long, generous text message taking a way a bit of how I was scared of the technology.”
The Thing and the rest of his fellow Four will factor into the upcoming Marvel phases in a major way, with their inclusion for Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars already confirmed.
The Fantastic Four: First Steps touches down in theaters on July 25, 2025.
In its opening weekend, One of Them Daysearned back nearly all of its $14 million dollar budget, cementing its status as a comedy hit, the number two spot at the box office, and led many on social media in a rallying cry for more Black, female-led comedies. One of Them Days is centered on friends and roommates Dreux (Keke Palmer) and Alyssa (SZA), who find out that Alyssa’s boyfriend has blown their rent money, forcing the duo into a race against the clock to avoid eviction while keeping themselves from going inside and losing each other in the process.
Enter Issa Rae.
“When you see one, you’re like, ‘Why aren’t there more of these?’” Rae says. “Why hasn’t the last buddy comedy been since B.A.P.S.? … It’s just been 30 years since we’ve had this, and if it works—why is it always considered a risk to do so?”
Rae has spent her career uplifting marginalized voices in the film and television world. And One of Them Days is no exception.
The film itself was born out of a lab program aimed at “identifying five new writers” and spearheaded by Rae’s own production company, ColorCreative, in collaboration with SONY. Syreeta Singleton (who also collaborated with Rae for HBO’s Rap Sh!t) submitted a treatment (a film outline) and was ultimately picked to develop it further into a script.
“We had Black writers, we had Latino writers, we had Asian writers — we had so many different, varied backgrounds,” Rae explains. “So it’s also just exposing myself and the industry to stories we wouldn’t see otherwise.”
Keke Palmer and SZA in Tri-Star Picture’s ONE OF THEM DAYS (Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures)
It’s a challenge making movies, “period,” but “it’s a triple challenge to get movies with underrepresented leads made.” After Singleton’s treatment was chosen, it took seven years for the concept to be greenlit and made into a movie.
“All the odds are against you constantly,” Rae says.
Filmmakers know that shooting in Los Angeles is an expensive endeavor, but Rae says they ran into a few other problems while filming in the City of Angels — gangs.
“There was one day where we got literally shut down while we were shooting on Crenshaw [boulevard] on our last shot,” Rae says, laughing. “Lawrence is still sad about this; he had set up the perfect golden hour… And then a couple of affiliated members came up and were like, ‘Shut this shit down,’ and we were like, ‘But we got permission’… We had to put it on a reshoot date, and then they came back the next day because we were like, ‘What the fuck? We have a connection.’ He was like, ‘Oh, that was a mistake.’ And then the gang members apologized to us like, ‘Oh, that’s our bad, y’all can come back anytime.’”
SZA and Keke Palmer in Tri-Star Picture’s ONE OF THEM DAYS (Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures)
Rae says stories like these are reminders of the “privilege of being able to shoot in the communities that we represent.”
As an L.A. native, Rae’s projects often romanticize city life and feature recognizable L.A. staples. The Baldwin neighborhood setting for One of Them Days — the “Jungles” (or “Jungle,” depending on who you ask) — is a historic Los Angeles neighborhood but often seen in a “negative light.”
“It was always forbidden for me to go there when I was younger,” Rae says.
For Singleton, it was important that the film depicted a different side of that neighborhood.
“She had friends there, and she kind of wanted to showcase the humanity and the people that lived in that area,” she says. “You can’t tell this story, at least in my eyes and being an L.A. native, without actually shooting in these neighborhoods. We got real-life background actors who were from the neighborhood, and we were able to patronize the businesses around. And it just felt special to be in the essence.”
Keke Palmer and SZA in Tri-Star Picture’s ONE OF THEM DAYS (Photo by Anne Marie Fox)
Keke Palmer’s character, Dreux, also works at NORM’s Restaurant, a well-known diner on La Cienega Boulevard.
But filming a movie set in your hometown while trying to be respectful of an active natural disaster proved difficult.
“To try to market a film when people have lost their homes, in the very city that you’re showcasing…that was something that we discussed through and through, and then we canceled our premiere as a result to be sensitive,” Rae says. “And even in marketing the movie…you need levity. So, to provide the movie free of cost as an opportunity for levity was also something that we discussed. And other people in the L.A. community also stepped up, and they did the same. So if it could be a less than two-hour bomb for you to forget about the horrors that have transpired because of these fires, I’m happy we could be that for some people.”
Keke Palmer and SZA in Tri-Star Picture’s ONE OF THEM DAYS (Photo by Anne Marie Fox)
While a comedy, One of Them Days has a profound ending message of community. Rae says although it went through various alternate endings, the overall community message was always part of the script.
“The heart of that was still in Syreeta’s original script.”
As a revolutionary in film and television, Rae has tried her hand at acting, writing, and production. After conquering the television world with the success of her five-season HBO series, Insecure, she has her sights set on filmmaking. She has an upcoming project in May that she can’t “talk about” yet and an appearance in an episode of Black Mirror.
“I’m definitely trying to do more films,” she says. “I’m still writing for TV, but I’m really, really excited about the success of this film and, hopefully, what other opportunities it’ll bring, especially in the comedy space.”
For more upcoming films from Sony Pictures, check out these stories:
Featured image: Director Lawrence Lamont, Producer Issa Rae and Keke Palmer on the set of Tri-Star Picture’s ONE OF THEM DAYS (Photo by Anne Marie Fox)
She walks in on patent red leather shoes. You can tell by her gait who this is. But it’s when she starts to dance to Chappell Roan’s “Feminomenon” and promises you really know. Perhaps you bow your head a little bit. On the screen, the text reads, “This b*th is back.” This first glimpse at M3gan 2.0 arrived during the Grammy’s, appearing shortly after Roan took the stage to perform “Pink Pony Club.”
Director Gerard Johnstone returns to the franchise two years after M3GAN‘s rampage in the surprise smash hit original. Only this time, M3GAN’s creator, Gemma (Allison Williams reprising her role and also producing on the film), is forced to resurrect the four-foot-tall artificially intelligent robot killer to try and keep something even worse from happening.
M3GAN, which stands for Model 3 Generative Android, followed young Cady (Violet McGraw), whose parents died in a car accident and who was left in the care of her overworked but brilliant robotics engineer aunt, Gemma. Eventually, Gemma introduces Cady and M3GAN, her new companion and protector, but things go absolutely batty shortly thereafter. It turns out that M3GAN took her role of “protecting” Cady way too seriously. Bodies started dropping. M3GAN was loco.
Two years after M3GAN went rogue and turned into a killer, Gemma has become a high-profile author and advocate for government oversight of A.I. Cady, meanwhile, is now a teenager, and she begins to rebel against Gemma’s strict, overprotective rules. The meat of M3GAN 2.0 will center on the aftereffects of a powerful defense contract stealing the underlying tech for M3GAN to create a military-grade weapon known as Amelia (Ivanna Sakhno; Ahsoka, Pacific Rim: Uprising). But the military is about to learn the lesson Gemma and Cady did so painfully—soon enough, as Amelia’s self-awareness increases, taking orders from humans begins to feel unecessary. In fact, humans themselves begin to seem unnecessary. What’s a military-grade robot girl to do in that case but start cleaning the board of her perceived adversaries.
Sensing a potentially catastrophic situation, Gemma steps into the breach to resurrect M3GAN (Amie Donald, voiced by Jenna Davis), newly empowered with some upgrades, making her faster, stronger, and more lethal, to square off with Amelia. “As their paths collide, the original A.I bitch is about to meet her match,” Universal’s synopsis reads.
Check out the teaser here. M3GAN 2.0 slays on June 27.
For more on Universal Pictures, Peacock, and Focus Features projects, check out these stories:
The White Lotus creator, Mike White, has been refreshingly candid about what the thematic framing has been around the first two seasons. Season one, set at the titular resort’s Hawaii location, was about money, White has said. Season two, set in Sicily, was about sex. Each season, however, dealt a deliciously dark twist at its end, with season one’s hotel manager, Armond (a perfectly cast Murray Bartlett), meeting a grim fate, while season two kicked off by letting viewers know it would end in death, and then delivering on that promise with gusto—and dispatching the beloved Jennifer Coolidge’s Tanya McQuoid, along with a boat full of her would-be assassins.
This makes his comments about season three even more interesting. Speaking with Time, White teased that this upcoming season, set in Thailand, would be considerably darker than the previous two. In fact, “much, much darker.”
“I do feel like the other seasons were a rehearsal for this one,” White told Time, from Phuket, Thailand, the set of season three. “If you’re in some place where it’s a different culture, different language, different vibe, and you’re also dealing with heavy personal things [there are moments where] you feel like, ‘Should I just walk into the water?’”
White also said that while Coolidge delivered the most iconic sustained performance of the first two seasons, appearing in both, he’s hopeful there are characters in season 3 that can match her. “How do you go about replacing Jennifer?” White asked Time. “It’s not just the creative part, but she’s a very good friend and also a big part of the show just as a person. I’m not friends with the cast the way that I’m friends with Jennifer. But there’s definitely some performances I feel rival her as far as hopefully iconic performances.”
The characters in the first two seasons certainly had their share of existential crises. Fraying marriages, fraying relationships between parents and their children, fraying friendships, a creeping sense of dread that the glitz and the glamour of an expensive life don’t equate to happiness. A creeping sense of dread, if you’re Tayna McQuoid, that someone is trying to kill you. In the season three trailer, we meet a trio of friends who have come to Thailand to unwind—Leslie Bibb as Kate, Carrie Coon as Laurie, and Michelle Monaghan as Jaclyn—but the tension is teased as the old friends reckon with who they’ve become. We got a shot of Walter Goggins as Rick getting romantic with his girlfriend, Aimee Lou Wood’s Chelsea, but glimpses at their relationship later in the trailer spell trouble.
Carrie Coon, Michelle Monaghan, Leslie Bibb. Photograph by Fabio Lovino/HBOWalton Goggins, Aimee Lou Wood. Photograph by Fabio Lovino/HBO
Goggins revealed to Time that Rick is in bad shape when he gets to Thailand. “He is angry, and he’s bitter about the hand that life has dealt him,” Goggins said.
The official trailer includes glimpses at all the major players, including Jason Isaacs as Timothy, a wealthy businessman traveling with his wife, Victoria, played by Parker Posey, and his daughter Piper, played by Sarah Catherine Hook. Timothy’s got some major issues at work, serious enough that he thinks he might be going to prison.
“They’re all in some kind of hurt,” White said of season three’s guests. “Like, they’re all dead, but they don’t know it. … because it’s dealing with these existential tropes of facing into the nothingness of self [and] Buddhist themes that have life and death and ethical aspects, [the season] just got more heavy.”
White said that he’s had a tough year himself, which inspired him to explore the existential crises that come for us all.
“It’s been a hard year for me personally,” White said. “My parents are getting older, and there’s a lot of stuff going on at home that’s not fun.”
Season three was filmed at the Four Seasons Koh Samui, a lavish, lush property that draws wealthy visitors from around the world. There was record-breaking heat during the production, and the filming schedule made it so life started imitating art. The cadence was two weeks of filming breakfast scenes, then two weeks of lunches, then two weeks of bedroom drama, and finally, two weeks at sea. The cast then just naturally bonded with their onscreen travel buddies.
“The distance is really disappearing between fiction and reality because we’re living in the show. It’s so weird. It’s all very meta,” Aimee Lou Wood told Time.
Initially, White had intended to film season 3 in Japan, but eventually, Thailand became the more attractive option for ease of production. Yet it was his own bout with mortality that gave White the arc of season 3. All it took was being hospitalized with severe bronchitis.
“I didn’t sleep for like two nights, and by the next morning, I was like, ‘I think I have the plot.’ The season is pretty much what happened that night.” White had fever dreams and was ultimately put in a nebulizer, a device that converts liquid medications into a mist that can be inhaled. “I felt like I had the ending. And so I was like, ‘I guess we’re shooting in Thailand.’”
White has filmed in Thailand before, but not as a creator or director—as a contestant on the 14th season of The Amazing Race. That season was set in Phuket, and White and his father, Mel, were sequestered in Koh Samui. “I would’ve hated to have gone through the rest of my life having some bad association with Thailand,” said White, and filming The White Lotus season 3 there changed that for him.
“It has this paradisiacal but surreal feeling,” White said of filming season 3 there. “Embedded into the show is a little bit of Hotel California — you can check in, but you can never leave.”
Morgana O’Reilly, Arnas Fedaravičius, Christian Friedel, Dom Hetrakul, Lalisa Manobal. Photo December 16, 2024. Photograph by Fabio Lovino/HBO
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Netflix unveiled its 2025 slate with some big name appearances (Tina Fey, John Mulaney, Ben Affleck, and the Duffer Brothers) for their “New on Netflix” presentation and unleashed a brilliant sizzle reel to hype their offerings.
The streamer had a banner 2024, with its feature Emilia Pérezlocking up a whopping 13 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Lead Actress (Karla Sofía Gascón, the first transgendered nominee in the Academy’s history), Actress in a Supporting Role (Zoe Saldana), Cinematography, Adapted Screenplay, and more. All to say that in 2025, Netflix has its sights on prestige dramas and potential blockbusters. Films like the sequel to The Old Guard and Rian Johnson’s third installment in his Knives Out franchise certainly qualify as potential blockbusters.
Other big features slated for 2025 include Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, Tina Fey’s new comedy The Four Seasons, and the Ben Affleck and Matt Damon crime thriller RIP.
On the TV side, the Duffer Brothers were there to promote the fifth and final season of their juggernaut series Stranger Things, while the biggest hit in the streamer’s history is back for a second round with season 3 of Squid Game.
The new sizzle reel Netflix has put together to promote their 2025 slate has a nifty premise—a young woman stuck at a boring meeting at work tries to quietly look at Netflix’s offerings on her phone. The Ta Dum gives her away, and before she knows it, she’s levitating in the air while the theme for Stranger Things kicks in. That’s when things get truly freaky—she’s walloped by a demogorgon and crashes through the walls only to get onto her feet wearing one of Squid Game’s contestant’s uniforms (she’s wearing number 025, naturally). The reel continues in this fashion, cleverly sending the young woman through Netflix’s slate in a series of costume and set changes, from season 2 of Tim Burton’s Wednesday to season 6 of Kobra Cai to a rooftop cafe for a momentary break with season 3 of Emily in Paris.
The young woman’s journey is only getting started—she jumps, runs, mounts a horse, and brandishes a hockey stick through teasers for Rian Johnson’s aforementioned third installment of Knives Out, season 4 of The Witcher, and Adam Sander’s long-awaited sequel Happy Gilmore 2. It’s an excellent way to hype up your film and TV slate.
The Super Bowl is the most-watched television broadcast in the United States every year. In 2024, the Kansas City Chiefs clash with the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl LVIII (58 for the Roman numeral illiterate) drew an average of 123.7 million viewers across linear and streaming services in the U.S. alone. The big game is also broadcast in over 130 countries in more than 30 languages worldwide, and it functions not just as the year’s biggest TV draw but as a bonafide cultural event that includes a raucous halftime show with a rotating cast of musical icons. Oh, and of course, for audiences in the U.S. and those watching through U.S. streaming services abroad, it boasts the most highly anticipated commercials of the year. And a portion of those commercials are made up of trailers for some of the year’s biggest movies. Last year, those included trailers for Deadpool & Wolverine and Wicked, both of which became blockbusters.
This year’s crop of trailers will likely come from three studios—Disney, Paramount, and Universal—who are currently the only ones on record who have paid for the pricey 30-second spot on Fox to reach the assured massive audience. This year’s big game is a rematch of the 2023 battle between the Philadelphia Eagles and, yes, those Kansas City Chiefs again, the latter going for a historic third consecutive Super Bowl title. This rematch for the ages will likely bring the following trailers for your viewing pleasure, which will air pre and mid-game.
Disney is typically a very big player during the Super Bowl, and it has plenty of 2025 releases that would fit the bill for a trailer. Snow White (March 21), Lilo & Stitch (May 23), and Pixar’s Elio (June 13) are all possibilities. Deadline reports that Disney will unveil two of their three Marvel movies bowing this year, so their choices are between Anthony Mackie’s first stand-alone Marvel feature in Captain America: Brave New World(February 14), the antiheroes unite movie Thunderbolts(May 2), and the hotly-anticipated, long-awaited Marvel reboot of TheFantastic Four: First Steps (July 25), which stars Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach as the superhero quartet.
Universal’s offerings will likely unleash Dean DeBlois’s live-action adaptation of his very own How to Train Your Dragon (June 13) and the Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, and Jonathan Bailey-led Jurassic World: Rebirth(July 2) from director Gareth Edwards.
The word is that Paramount will punch their ticket with the Jack Quaid comedy Novocaine (March 14), the Rihanna-led Smurfs (July 18) animated musical, and the Tom Cruise-led Mission: Impossible – Final Reckoning(May 23).
Of the studios who are sitting out the big game, perhaps the biggest surprise is that Warner Bros. isn’t letting a trailer for James Gunn’s Superman(July 11) fly, but they did release a Superman spot during the NFC and AFC championship games.
The one thing you can be sure of is that the trailers that air during the Super Bowl are usually the most-watched on social media 24 hours after the game. It’s the kind of advertising that money can obviously buy, but the money usually seems worth it.
Featured image: Mahershala Ali is Duncan Kincaid in JURASSIC WORLD REBIRTH, directed by Gareth Edwards
Emilia Pérez made history by casting Karla Sofía Gascón, the first transgendered woman to be nominated for a best actress Academy Award. The musical melodrama from director Jacques Audiard centers on Gascón’s portrayal of Mexican cartel boss Manitas, who undergoes surgery to begin a new life as Emilia. Nominated for an astonishing 13 Oscars, the film, co-starring Zoe Saldaña (also nominated for best supporting actress), Selena Gomez,and Adriana Paz, hinges on the handiwork of chief makeup artist Julia Floch-Carbonel and her colleagues, including co-chief Simon Livet, makeup special effects head Jean-Christophe Spadaccini and artistic director Virginie Montel. They crafted before-and-after makeovers so convincing that Mantias’ wife Jessi (Gomez) fails to recognize her ex-husband after he’s transitioned to become “Aunt Emilia” to the couple’s two children.
Speaking from Lille in northern France. Floch-Carbonel, who previously did the makeup for French cross-dresser thriller Dogman, explains how Catherine Deneuve, rapper Post Malone, and The Wrestler-era Mickey Rourke inspired Gascón’s contrasting identities in Emilia Perez.
SPOILER ALERT
Your makeup has such a dramatic impact when Emilia Perez appears for the first time at a fancy London dinner party. She’s sitting right next to Zoe Saldana’s lawyer character, Rita, who has no idea “Emilia” used to be the gangster she knew four years earlier. How did you effect that transformation?
It was really important for me to take care of Karla’s beauty and really important for her, so we wanted to make Emilia seem like an apparition, a movie star.
And this glamor would stand in contrast to Manitas, right?
That was our main job. We searched for a long time because we did not want to go with the obvious [choices].
Avoiding the “obvious” meaning…
We are French. We don’t do musicals. So, at first, we went a little bit classical Narcos seventies, curly hair, brown, but then Jacques said, “No, he’s not scary enough. I want scary.” So, I thought about Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now, where there’s a lot of shadow. We never see Manitas in the daylight because he’s part of the night, and so he reminded me of Marlon Brando’s craziness. Our artistic director, Virginie, was inspired by the rapper Post Malone. I was more into Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler, with the long hair and the fake tan. I wanted someone who fought a lot but who had a lot of coquetry.
A man who can fight but also understands coquetry — an unusual combination.
It’s not that common, sadly, but yes, it somehow works here as something we’ve never really seen before.
One of the musical numbers celebrates “rhinoplasty” along with the other surgeries that would help explain how Emilia’s face looks different from Manitas’s.
It was prosthetics for Manitas’ nose, the cheeks, the [skin] texture from the amazing Jean-Christophe Spadaccini, whom I work with a lot. We added a tattoo, we added a grill [for the teeth], and then I made the forehead as long as possible.
Manitas’s skin looks kind of rough.
The skin was a prosthetic with the texture of old acne. From there, I could go in with the shadow and make his eyes look closer because eyes that look closer together feel more masculine, and for women, it’s wider. And I created makeup to make it thicker above the eyebrow. That’s one of our tricks. It’s all about finding the little things.
Manitas wears a beard, but it’s not very bushy.
The bear is not bushy because it would have covered too much of the face, which we did not want to hide like some costume trick. And also, we took off the moustache. Without the moustache, Manitas almost looked like some crazy Isis extremist.
Manitas also has grungy black hair — is that a wig?
No, that’s Karla’s own hair, with a lot of texture that we put in. I also put a lot of thinning color there to make [the hairline] as far [back] as we could. We tried this instead of the wig, and it worked.
It’s interesting that the pivotal scene where Manitas tells Zoe Saldana he wants to be a woman happens in his trailer at cartel headquarters.
When Karla’s talking as Manitas to Zoe, she’s in her trailer, trapped, just as Manitas is trapped in masculinity, trapped in this male presentation and violence, trapped at the end of the movie in a car. But she wants to express love.
When did you start working with Karla on her characters?
I met Karla a few months before shooting. She trusted me right away because she liked what I’d done in my other work.
You mention Post Malone and others as visual reference points for Manitas. Who inspired the Emilia Perez look?
It was really inspired by Catherine Deneuve. In France, we love her. She’s beautiful, she’s a lady. She’s got something for every woman, every mother. That’s why I found this ash-blonde wig that would help Karla and myself figure out the makeup.
The makeup itself seems pretty subtle.
We start with [heavy] beauty makeup, and then we go lighter and lighter and lighter. I really love it when Emilia is at home with her kids. To me, that’s when she’s most beautiful. The main thing for Emilia is that Jacques wanted soft and modern. In real life, Karla’s beautiful, she’s fierce, and she has power. Because this is a French film, Jacques wanted that classical beauty.
Emilia Pérez. (Featured) Karla Sofía Gascón as Emilia Pérez in Emilia Pérez. Cr. PAGE 114 – WHY NOT PRODUCTIONS – PATHÉ FILMS – FRANCE 2 CINÉMA.
Selena Gomez also takes quite a journey with her Jessi character, going from a traditional drug cartel boss wife to a sophisticated widow. How did you design her look for the first portion of the film?
In the first draft, she’s the wife of Manitas, so it’s what we, as French people, imagine as classical Mexican: brunette, long hair, curly nails, colorful fabrics, and sexiness. Four years later, Jessi’s a widow and more independent, living with her kids in Switzerland. She’s got the money and the power and gets to choose for herself so she became with this blonde, like Debbie Harry — that’s the inspiration. We all know Selena Gomez is a brunette, so what makes the wig work is that it has dark roots. Compared to the beginning of the film, when Jessi has fake eyelashes and dark eyeliner, she’s less girly and more elegant four years later. And she’s become a lover again. She’s not just a mom and a wife anymore. She’s free. And that’s the thing in this film. Emilia, Jessi, Epifania, Rita — everyone goes through a journey.
Not every movie director can claim “auteur” status, but Jacques Audiard truly seems to be the “author” of his uncompromising films, from The Beat that My HeartSkipped to The Prophet and now Emilia Perez. What’s he like to work with?
Jacques is a real artist who always speaks poetically. He’s got a lot of shimmer. Also, Jacques is very comfortable with his masculine and feminine sides. He collaborates with a lot of women surrounding him, like Juliette Welfling, who does his editing, and artistic director Virginie Montel. Jacques questions his vision all the time, and he’s always pushing. I love it.
Emilia Perez is streaming on Netflix.
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Featured image: Emilia Pérez. (L-R) Karla Sofía Gascón as Emilia Pérez and Zoe Saldaña as Rita Moro Castro in Emilia Pérez. Cr. PAGE 114 – WHY NOT PRODUCTIONS – PATHÉ FILMS – FRANCE 2 CINÉMA.
We’d like to humbly suggest an early Golden Trailer Award nomination for the official look at Ryan Coogler’s Sinners.Coogler’s latest collaboration with his muse, Michael B. Jordan, is a ferocious “genre-fluid” epic that finds twin brothers (both played by Jordan) returning to their hometown in the Jim Crow-era South to start afresh. Instead, the twins find something truly terrible waiting for them there.
The trailer, at nearly three minutes long, is a relentless rush of lush imagery and period detail that puts Elijah and Elias Smoke (Jordan and Jordan) back in the warm embrace of a town that seems to offer every delight known to man, suffused with music and pleasure and the people they love. That’s when the trouble starts. The most clarifying words in the trailer double as the film’s calling card—”You keep dancing with the devil, and one day he’s gonna follow you home.”
A raucous party at the 1:13 mark is interrupted by a couple of white party crashers who have clearly come looking for trouble. They’re not just looking for trouble; they are trouble incarnate. It’s only twenty seconds later when we see one of them, his face covered in blood, fresh from feeding on someone. Yeah, these appear to be vampires.
At a virtual press conference for the trailer’s launch, Coogler said that although they are indeed vampires in the movie, his period piece goes beyond the gothic bloodsuckers.
“The film is very genre-fluid,” Coogler said. “It switches in and out of a lot of different genres. Yes, vampires are an element, but it’s not the only supernatural element in the movie. The film is about more than just that.”
Coogler said his movie explored the culture and music of the blues, including the way musicians in the film channel magic. Coogler revealed that the film is his most personal to date (his work includes, of course, two Black Panther movies for Marvel and the Creed franchise for Warner Bros.) and allowed him to explore his own ancestral roots in Mississippi.
“It’s a world that my grandparents were a part of,” he said of the setting, “A time that is overlooked in American history.”
This included Coogler talking to his nearly 100-year-old grandmother and paying tribute to his beloved uncle, who passed away while Coolger was in post-production on Creed in 2015.
“I’m blessed to have found this medium that I can work out deep philosophical and existential questions that I may be struggling with while contributing to an art form that means so much to my family,” Coogler said. “Each film brings me closer to understanding myself and the world around me.”
Coogler also said that his friends, the filmmaking twins Logan and Noah Miller, helped him with the movie, including Jordan’s portrayal of the twins Elijah and Elias. Coogler and his cinematographer, Autumn Durald Arkapaw, shot the film on 65mm and got advice from none other than Christopher Nolan and his wife and producing partner Emma Thomas, two of the most experienced large format filmmakers alive. Coogler used a combination of Ultra Panavision and IMAX photography to immerse audiences as deeply as possible in the action.
Coogler’s longtime composer, Ludwig Göransson, is also an executive producer on the film thanks to the influence of his musical expertise on a very music-drenched film. Göransson was on set every day and helped scout the blues trail in Mississippi, which is such a big part of the film’s heart and soul.
The experience Coogler hopes to deliver to audiences is that old-school, unbeatable sensation of having no clue what will happen and being totally, blissfully immersed in what’s happening on the screen. “It’s a love letter to the experience of watching an exhilarating movie in a packed house full of strangers, not knowing what’s going to happen next,” he said. “So many incredible films have given me that feeling, so I wanted to try my hand at giving it back to audiences.”
Sinners hits theaters on April 18.
Featured image: Michael B. Jordan and Robert Perry Bierman in “Sinners.” Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures.
The season finale of Yellowstone, the modern-day Western saga that became a cultural touchstone, aired in December. Audiences didn’t have to wait long for creator Taylor Sheridan’s next project, Landman, the first season of which was released even before Yellowstone bowed on Paramount+. Billy Bob Thornton stars as Tommy Norris, a West Texas oil company operations manager (or landman), who, over the course of a single week, tries to stop a never-ending train of crises before they spin out of control.
The Dutton family dynamics were the beating heart of Yellowstone. In a similar fashion, in addition to workplace fatalities, lawsuits, and cartel threats, Landman’s action turns on Tommy’s relationship with his ex-wife, Angela (an indomitable Ali Larter), and children, high school cheerleader Ainsley (Michelle Randolph) and college dropout Cooper (Jacob Lofland). In each show, the main characters sport distinct looks that help define their role both among their kin and within the society they inhabit, and for that, credit goes to hair department head Tim Muir.
Working alongside the hair and makeup teams, each show brought its own continuity challenges. Yellowstone had a two-year filming gap in the show’s final season, while Landman was shot over the course of six months but takes place in about a ten-day span. We spoke with Muir about maintaining continuity in each show, working with redacted scripts, and using hair as a way to convey a place in society.
For Yellowstone, what did getting only redacted scripts mean for the hair department?
I worked on Marvel as well, so I understand what that looks like, but this was way beyond what I had ever dealt with as far as redacted goes. They really wanted Yellowstone to be super hush-hush because it was the last season. We went into a room and got the script read to us, and then that was it. There were no dailies, no sides in the morning, no nothing. We took notes on what was read to us, and that’s how we did the show.
Kelsey Asbille in “Yellowstone.” Courtesy Paramount+.
And then you dealt with the gap in Season 5. How was that for you?
A lot of our cast was on other shows or had started other shows. We were adding extensions and also using wigs so that they could keep their looks for other shows.
Jennifer Landon on “Yellowstone.” Courtesy Paramount+
Out of all the Yellowstone characters, Beth’s dramatic arc seems reflected in her hair the most. How did you pull that off?
When you’re introduced to Beth, you know that she’s very strong and she’s got this presence about her. She’s very cutthroat when you first see her in that boardroom. And then, when she goes to the ranch, you start to notice her secrets and her pain and hurt. So she becomes a little more disheveled, a little more undone, which I love. She also doesn’t really have that idea of what beauty is. She had a whole house full of men because her mom died when she was very young. And so what she knows is just what she’s put together, what she finds beautiful and sexy. And then she’s always got very heavy bangs. She never wants people to know that she could have a weakness. She wants to look fierce and scary. She also doesn’t want them to see the hurt and pain that she has because that could be used against her.
L-r: Kelly Reilly as Beth Dutton Kevin Costner as John Dutton on “Yellowstone.” Courtesy Paramount+
How did you approach hair length for men in Yellowstone? There’s a wide variety.
Kayce has longer hair.He’s my modern-day Tristan of the show. He’s not quite native and not quite a cowboy with his look; he’s between his wife’s side and his family’s side. So, I keep him a little longer and shaggier throughout the show. But if you look at Jamie, Jamie’s very clean cut. Rip is shaggy, but he’s pretty short. It just depends on the person and what their character brings to the show. And if someone comes into the show and they have longer hair and it works for the character, sometimes if it ain’t broke, I don’t fix it.
L-R: Luke Grimes as Kacey Dutton and Kelly Reilly as Beth Dutton on episode 512 of Paramount Network’s YellowstoneL-R: Wes Bentley as Jamie Dutton and Wendy Moniz as Governor Perry on episode 509 of Paramount Network’s Yellowstone
How do you research shows like Yellowstone and Landman?
Wherever the story takes place, I do my research. I go through the town, and I see what the townspeople are like. I go to the bigger cities to see what that might look like. I was fortunate enough to live in Utah for a little while. In the beginning, you see Beth in a boardroom in Utah. I know what that looks like. People can come from anywhere, but they tend to start to conform to wherever they land. Taylor’s a really great writer, so he gives you a very detailed description of who these people are and where they come from in the script, which helps. Then I work with the makeup artist and the costume designer, who are wonderful, to build these characters together.
Tim Muir working on Ali Larter on the set of “Landman.” Courtesy Tim Muir/Paramount+
In Landman, we really get a sense of Texas oil country hierarchy through the characters’ hairstyles. How did you approach that?
Right now, I live in Texas. I’m fortunate, I have four children, [including] a 17-year old daughter. I get to see what that dynamic looks like. For Michelle Rnadolph’s Aynsley’s character, she’s the typical long, big-haired, blonde Texas cheerleader. Ali Larter’s Angela is very sexy and beautiful but very over the top; bigger is better in Texas.
Tim Muir working on Michelle Randloph on the set of “Landman.” Courtesy Tim Muir/Paramount+
As far as Demi Moore and Jon Hamm’s characters, they come from oil money. I know a lot of people in the oil industry. I pulled from all of those looks to create their looks. The way Taylor describes Ariana [Paulina Chavez] is very naturally beautiful. I love natural texture. If we can play with it, I prefer it. I felt keeping her hair curly was just a really beautiful idea of who she is. Billy Bob’s character, he’s the second in command but runs the show. He’s constantly working, constantly on, and always has got a hat on. He’s kept, but unkept. So his hair is a little disheveled all the time because he’s always getting into something, and he’s working out in the heat and the humidity. It’s the same with his son. He’s always on the rig. I went and looked at what that looks like—I got to see a lot of Texas.
Ainsley and Angela’s tresses are truly impressive. Are those extensions?
They have a lot of hair, and I never give away my secrets.
Tim Muir working on Michelle Randloph on the set of “Landman.” Courtesy Tim Muir/Paramount+
Landman’s first season was shot over six months, but the story arc takes place over about ten days. How did you keep the hair consistent?
You see how blonde Angela and Ainsley are. We had to color them every week to every week and a half. And keeping that healthy is very hard. I had to do a lot of treatments, a lot of making sure that I was using very good quality colors and lighteners to be able to keep those looks up without damaging their hair.
Tim Muir and Billy Bob Thornton on the set of “Landman.” Courtesy Paramount+
What kind of team did you bring on for some big scenes with hundreds of local extras, like football games and the patch party?
I have a wonderful background team. I have a wonderful team in my trailer, as well. I couldn’t do it without them. I’m really big on storyboarding. When I create a look for a show for hair, I will storyboard all of the different sections and types of people that we do so that when the background comes in, they have a very good idea of where I’m going. And I’m a person who hires the best of the best. I love working with people who have the same creativity, and I know I can trust that if I give them a photograph, they know how to create that and bring that to life. Because we are working on a union show, every stylist that we hire has to be a union hairstylist. They are a union in Texas, and we have a lot of Texas hairstylists who work with us.
Yellowstone and Landman are currently streaming on Paramount+.
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The premise of Hallmark Channel’s One Royal Holiday is as cozy as a snowy Christmas morning—Anna (Laura Osnes) helps a mother and son who are stranded in a blizzard, only to discover the pair are actually royalty. Gabriella and James Galant (played by Victoria Clark and Aaron Tveit) are members of the Royal Family of Galwick, yet they’re (very fancy) ducks out of water in Anna’s hometown. It’s up to Anna to show the Galants what a Christmas in Connecticut is all about, with a little help from her father’s Inn at Woodstock Hill. In the process, Anna will help the Prince open his heart and find himself. Love is in the air, and the setting couldn’t be more picture-perfect for this mismatched pairing to find out they’re actually meant for each other.
James and Gabriella Gallant (Aaron Tveit and Victoria Clark) arrive in Connecticut. Courtesy Hallmark.Anna (Laura Osnes) shows James (Aaron Tveit) some holiday cheer. Courtesy Hallmark.
The cast of One Royal Holiday is led by Broadway stars (Osnes, Tveit, and Krystal Joy Brown, who plays Anna’s friend Sarah), and while the location of One Royal Holiday might be a few hours from the Great White Way, it provides just as compelling of a stage for the heartfelt story. The film was shot primarily at the Inn at Woodstock, a gorgeous bed and breakfast near the quaint town of Putnam, Connecticut. Filmed at the Inn in 2020, One Royal Holiday played a huge role in keeping the historic house going—it was originally constructed in 1816—in a very difficult time.
“We were really hurting, and the film essentially saved the Inn at Woodstock,” says current owner Doug Woodward. “If they hadn’t shot the movie here, I don’t think you and I would be having this conversation right now. One Royal Holiday was really one royal savior at the end. The influx of money they provided was huge.”
The Inn at Woodstock.
One Royal Holiday was filmed at the Inn during the pandemic’s early days in the summer of 2020, helping the Inn when businesses big and small were facing the possibility of closure. “It was like the hottest it’s ever been in Connecticut,” Woodward recalls. “It felt like it was 140 degrees with seven thousand percent humidity, and you’d drive by the Inn, and there was just fake snow everywhere. Bizarro world. They took all the rooms for 45 days; they served a hundred and three people a day, three meals a day.”
The meals alone were a Herculean effort by the Inn staff. Chef Katie Collins, who worked on-site, fondly recalls the long hours and late nights on a movie set that also happened to be her work place.
“I was on site while they were filming, and I was there from about 12 pm to 4:30 am on weekdays and 9 am to 6 pm on weekends,” Collins says. “I was mainly in the kitchen cooking meals for the cast and crew. We ended up filming a lot at night, so breakfast was at 5 pm, lunch was around midnight, and dinner was around 5 am. We had over 100 cast and crew on a regular day, sometimes more with extras, and at least 30 of them had allergies or needed specialized diets.”
At a time when the Inn might have been more or less empty and the staff working in skeleton shifts, it was, instead, a hive of creative activity. While each day provided challenges and satisfactions, Collins has a few standout memories from the production, including a big party on the Fourth of July.
“We had a barbecue with fireworks later in the evening, and it was fun talking with the cast; we had to all stay on-site with COVID testing every three days and weren’t really allowed to leave the premises, so we all really got to interact with each other,” she recalls. “They also ended up filming in the kitchen, and I even got to have some of my food on film!”
The lasting impact One Royal Holiday has had on the Inn is measured in big and small ways, as well as in meaningful interactions with guests who are fans of the film.
“The crazy thing is, we’re now four years removed, and at least once a month, we get guests specifically because of the movie,” says Woodward. “One mother and her daughter came in because of the movie, so I found the old boards [detailing the Inn’s layout and which rooms are booked], and the next day, I came back in and showed them where the cast had their breakfast and dinner, and where the Christmas tree was and where everyone stayed, and they were very smitten. Continuously, we get people specifically because of the movie.”
The Inn decked out for Christmas—in July—for “One Royal Holiday.” Courtesy Hallmark.James (Aaron Tveit) is ready to get into the Christmas spirit with Anna (Laura Osnes). Courtesy Hallmark.
Collins agrees with Woodward that One Royal Holiday was a major boon then and now.
“The film definitely helped the Inn stay open during COVID-19,” she says. “It helped us keep all our employees working with the mandates in place. In the long term, we have seen quite a few people coming in and mentioning they saw the movie, and that’s why they came there. Many of our guests are very interested in discussing how it was filmed.”
Even the aesthetics of the Inn itself got a boost from the production. The usual procedure when a film shoots on location in a place like the Inn is that any cosmetic changes made for the production are temporary, and everything is restored to exactly how it was when the shoot is over. However, for the Inn, which was set to undergo a change in ownership at the time, the production’s set design needs actually proved to be a big bonus.
“Our front living room is now green because Hallmark painted the wallpaper over it to make it look right for the movie, and it looks fantastic,” Woodward says. “So, we got a free update of our front living room from Hallmark.”
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Featured image: “One Royal Holiday.” James (Aaron Tveit) gives Anna (Laura Osnes) a gift on Christmas while Sarah (Krystal Joy Brown) looks on. Courtesy Hallmark.
“By the end of the week, you will be an entirely different person,” promises a staff member at the Thailand location of the White Lotus resort in the official trailer for season 3. Mike White’s killer comedy returns, and this meaty, nearly three-minute look spells out big trouble in Thailand for our vacationers and the assorted resort staff tasked with taking care of their impossible needs.
“What happens in Thailand stays in Thailand” is the next promise we hear, this from the trio of friends (Leslie Bibb as Kate, Carrie Coon as Laurie, and Michelle Monaghan as Jaclyn) who have come to Thailand to unwind. Yet tension between them mounts as these old friends reckon with who they’ve become. We also get a shot of Walter Goggins as Rick getting romantic with his girlfriend, Aimee Lou Wood’s Chelsea, but romance isn’t the focus of season 3.
That’s made evident when a quick glance at a gun at the 25-second mark indicates what White promised a while back, that season 3 would deal more directly with death (season one was focused on money, season two on sex, although both featured the demise of major characters). Speaking of season one, the one returning cast member for season 3 is Natasha Rothwell, who reprises Belinda Lindsey, the spa manager from the Hawaii location.
The official trailer includes glimpses at all the major players, including Jason Isaacs as Timothy, a wealthy businessman traveling with his wife, Victoria, played by Parker Posey, and his daughter Piper, played by Sarah Catherine Hook. The trailer reveals that Timothy’s got some issues at work, serious enough that he thinks he might be going to prison. Cue the next shot of a masked robber pointing the aforementioned gun.
“Everyone comes to Thailand because they’re hiding from someone, or they’re looking for someone” is another important bit of voice-over from the new look. So, too, is Belinda’s reply to “Go big or go home, right?” Seated at a table at the resort, she retorts, “Mmm hmm…in a goddam body bag.”
Here’s the full cast list: Leslie Bibb, Carrie Coon, Walton Goggins, Sarah Catherine Hook, Jason Isaacs, Lalisa Manobal, Michelle Monaghan, Sam Nivola, Lek Patravadi, Parker Posey, Natasha Rothwell, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Tayme Thapthimthong, Aimee Lou Wood. Additional cast includes Nicholas Duvernay, Arnas Fedaravičius, Christian Friedel, Scott Glenn, Dom Hetrakul, Julian Kostov, Charlotte Le Bon, Morgana O’Reilly, and Shalini Peiri.
Check out the trailer below. The White Lotus season 3 arrives on HBO on February 16.
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Christopher Nolan is following his critical and commercial smash Oppenheimer with a look at another historical figure, and one who’s even more mythic than the man once dubbed the American Prometheus. Nolan’s adapting Homer’s The Odyssey for Universal Pictures, and he’s doing so with another of his stellar casts, his ace producing partner (and wife) Emma Thomas, and the use of new IMAX film technology. Also goats.
Nolan’s take on Homer’s epic tale of Odysseus’s long-delayed journey home will be partly shot on the Sicilian island Favignana, Varietyscoops. Also known as “goat island,” Favignana is where scholars believe that Homer’s hero Odysseus came ashore with his doomed crew to feast on barbecued goats and sure up their provisions for the voyage home. Favignana is part of the Aegadian Islands, situated roughly 11 miles west of the Sicilian coast.
Nolan and his longtime collaborator, cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, will be deploying new IMAX film cameras for the shoot that are 30% quieter and lighter due to their carbon fiber construction. These lighter cameras will enable Hoytema and Nolan to capture more shots than would have been possible with the older, heavier models. It will also help them deal with the fact the older IMAX cameras made certain scenes more difficult to hear, which was especially an issue for Nolan, considering he doesn’t like to use automatic dialogue replacement (ADR), a traditional technique for filling in dialogue later for a scene that’s a little too loud or sonically chaotic on set.
Variety also learned from their sources that Nolan will likely film some of The Odyssey in Sicily’s Eolian islands, while previously announced non-Sicilian locations include Morocco and the U.K.
The cast for Nolan’s upcoming mythical epic includes Lupita Noyong’o, Matt Damon, Robert Pattinson, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Zendaya, and Charlize Theron. Their specific roles have not yet been announced.
Homer’s “The Odyssey” takes readers on the decade-long, torturous journey of Odysseus following the Trojan War as he tries to return to his home island of Ithaca and his wife, Penelope, and son Telemachus. The Gods have other plans for Odysseus, however, and throw all manner of horrors his way, eventually taking the lives of every member of his crew and pitting Odysseus’s wits and persistence against some formidable adversaries, including Circe and the one-eyed giant, Polyphemus. If you’re looking for a good, modern translation of the book, we suggest Emily Wilson’s “The Odyssey,” which is crystalline and vibrant—she writes it in iambic pentameter verse—yet still retains the subtle weirdness of Homer’s tale.
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Before the Philadelphia Eagles eventual romp over the Washington Commanders on Sunday, January 26, the Birds faithful roared as a bald eagle soared down from the rafters of Lincoln Financial Field. It’s how the Eagles kick off their home games before the actual games, giving their fans a look at the real-life manifestation of their majestic mascot. It was during the game, however, that another majestic beast soared through the air in a new look at David Corenswet as Superman. What better time to unleash a new Superman teaser than during the NFC Championship game, when millions of folks are glued to the TV? And while Corenswet once again looked the part in this 30-second taste of what’s to come, soaring through the icy canons of the Arctic and saving little girls from certain death, it was a shot of his arch nemesis, Nicholas Hoult’s Lex Luthor, striding off his high-tech jet in a high, fur-collared (and no doubt expensive) jacket and aviators, a snowy landscape reflected in their mirrors, that was the moment. Is Lex on the march looking for Superman’s Fortress of Solitude?
The new teaser provided some familiar shots from our first glimpse at writer/director James Gunn’s hotly-anticipated table setter for his new-look DC Studios, including Superman saving a little girl in the middle of an explosion, Superman kneeling over a destroyed robot who many people are speculating is Kelex, his a Kryptonian servant droid who is Superman’s last connection to Krypton, and Krypto, Superman’s super-dog.
The Lex Luthor moment is the most compelling shot of all, however, as it gives us a sense of how Hoult and Gunn approached the iconic villain. While it’s only a brief look, Hoult seems to be giving his Luthor the gravitas and confidence we saw in arguably the most iconic cinematic iteration of the character, Gene Hackman’s portrayal of Luthor in Richard Donner’s seminal 1978 film Superman. For older generations, Hackman’s scheming, darkly dreaming Luthor was the definitive portrait of Superman’s wily, ruthless foe. In Zack Snyder’s world, which began Henry Cavill’s run as Clark Kent/Superman, Jesse Eisenberg plays Luthor in the 2016 film Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice as a kind of Mark Zuckerberg-esque vengeful nerd whose brilliance is equaled by his rage and poor foresight (he unleashes a reborn General Zod in the form of the monstrous Doomsday, nearly destroying Metropolis and himself).
Gunn’s Superman boasts a stellar cast, including Rachel Brosnahan as the irrepressible Lois Lane. The world Gunn has built for Superman is one in which the Man of Steel is hardly the only superbeing or metahuman on the planet. Superman will be mixing it up with Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced), Guy Gardner/Green Lantern (Nathan Fillion), Metamorpho (Anthony Carrigan), Mr. Terrific (Edi Gathigi), Eve Teschmacher (Sara Sampaio), and his cousin, Kara Zor-El/Supergirl (Milly Alcock).
Check out Luthor’s confident stride and Superman in flight in the new teaser below. Superman soars into theaters on July 11, 2025.
The 97th Oscars arrive on March 2, and this year’s telecast will feature a more unsettling list of bloody, scary films than in recent history.
Writer/director Robbert Eggers’ chilling, gorgeously wrought Nosferatu has been nominated for four Oscars: Best Costume Design, Best Cinematography (Jarin Blaschke), Best Makeup & Hairstyling (David White, Traci Loader, and Suzanne Stokes-Munton, and Best Production Design (Craigh Lathrop, Set Decorator Beatrice Brenterová). Writer/director Coralie Fargeat’s body horror freakout The Substance was nominated for 5 Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director for Fargeat, Best Actress in a Leading Role for Demi Moore, Best Makeup & Hairstyling, and Best Original Screenplay for Fargeat. Director Fede Alvarez’s Alien: Romulus, a rare interquel set between Ridley Scott’s original and James Cameron’s Aliens, got an Oscar nom for Visual Effects. Magnus von Horn’s The Girl With the Needle received its nomination for Best International Feature.
Horror movies haven’t historically enjoyed a ton of recognition come awards season. Horror fans have long lamented that their favorites are often beloved by millions, usually reliably get returns for their respective studios, and make the most of one of the most elastic, creative genres, yet rarely have any hardware to show for it. The 1992 Academy Awards were a Buffalo Bill-sized exception when Jonathan Demme’s iconic The Silence of the Lambs won 5 Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director for Demme, Best Actor for Anthony Hopkins, and Best Actress for Jodie Foster.
This year has been different. Fargeat’s The Substance shocked and delighted audiences with its tale of how far an aging female star will go to remain relevant. Demi Moore’s scorching performance led to a Golden Globe for her—her first ever nomination, let alone win, in a long career—and her Oscar nom now confirms the film’s potency.
Eggers’ Nosferatu is perhaps the least surprising member of the group considering the subject’s rich cinematic history and Eggers’s well-established reputation as a master architect of brilliant, off-kilter movies, from The Witch to The Lighthouse to The Northman. It was actually surprising it didn’t get a Best Picture nod, considering how well it was received, but Eggers is no doubt thrilled his creative team has been given their due. His longtime cinematographer Jarin Blaschke and production designer Craig Lathrop got nominations, alongside makeup designer Traci Loader, hair designer Suzanne Stokes-Munton, and set decorator Beatrice Brenterová. All richly deserved for a period piece whose terror was partly derived from how real it felt.
For Fede Alvarez’s Alien: Romulus, the single nomination for visual effects is still a xenomorphic feather in his cap, and he could credibly claim he pulled off the best installment in the recent reboot of the Alien franchise. Alvarez’s tight, twisted tale hit that sweet spot first created by Scott and then revved up by Cameron. In Cailee Spaeny, Alvarez found a next-generation Ripley (named Rain), honoring the great Sigourney Weaver’s trailblazing heroine in the first two films. The visual effects team of Eric Barba, Nelson Sepulveda-Fauser, Daniel Macarin, and Shane Mahan did stellar work, giving these interplanetary monsters and settings the jaw-dripping terror required.
Finally, Magnus von Horn’s black-and-white The Girl With the Needle is loosely based on the true story of Danish serial killer Dagmar Overbye and follows Karoline (Vic Carmen Sonne), a young, unemployed pregnant woman in 1919 Copenhagen who encounters Dagmar and his underground adoption agency, which seems to her, initially, like exactly the kind of compassionate solution mothers in need require. Karoline finds out the agency is anything but compassionate.
The 2025 Oscars are led by writer/director Jacques Audiard’s musical Emilia Pérez, with 13 nominations, followed by director Brady Corbert’s historical epic The Brutalist and Jon M. Chu’s musical juggernaut Wicked, each with 10 nominations. Close behind are Edward Berger’s Vatican-set thriller Conclave and James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown, a look at Bob Dylan’s early years in New York, with eight a piece.
Yet it’s nice to know that these esteemed films, along with Sean Baker’s Anora, Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two, RaMell Ross’s Nickel Boys, and Walter Salles’ I’m Still Here, excellent films all, will be joined by those core four horror films representing the genre at this year’s Academy Awards. Somewhere, the original Xenomorph is nodding happily in her hive mound.
Your 97th Oscar nominees are here. The full list of the nominees is below, but let’s hit some of the high notes immediately—your ten Best Picture nominees are Anora,The Brutalist, A Complete Unknown, Conclave, Dune: Part Two, Emilia Pérez, I’m Still Here, Nickel Boys, The Substance, and Wicked.
For Actress in a Leading Role, the nominees are Cynthia Erivo for Wicked, Karla Sofía Gascón for Emilia Pérez, Mikey Madison for Anora, Demi Moore for The Substance, and Fernanda Torres for I’m Still Here.
For Actor in a Leading Role, the nominees are Adrien Brody for The Brutalist, Timothée Chalamet for A Complete Unknown, Colman Domingo for Sing Sing, Ralph Fiennes for Conclave, and Sebastian Stan for The Apprentice.
Rachel Sennot and Bowen Yang revealed this year’s Oscar nominations following several delays caused by the Los Angeles wildfires. The nominations were delayed twice after the Academy extended the voting window for its members following the horrific wildfires—originally, the nominations were set for January 17—and the Academy is also donating the $250,000 that it had planned to spend on the Oscar Nominees Luncheon to help Angelenos affected by the wildfires. The studios, relief organizations, the Los Angeles Fire Department, and more have been raising money for recovery efforts and the communities affected.
Academy voting begins on February 11 and concludes on February 18. The 97th Oscars telecast will be broadcast live on ABC on March 2 at the Dolby Theater in Hollywood, with Conan O’Brien hosting.
Featured image: NEW YORK – FEBRUARY 25: Overview of Oscar statues on display at “Meet the Oscars” at the Time Warner Center on February 25, 2010 in New York City. (Photo by Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images)
The White Lotus Season 4 has been officially greenlit by HBO before the first episode of Season 3 has aired. Variety reports that Mike White’s razor-sharp satire will return, with production likely to begin in 2026. There’s no indication yet where the fourth season will take place and whether any cast members will return (Natasha Rothwell, an alumnus from Season 1, is returning for the third season). HBO and Max chief Casey Bloys revealed that White pitched ideas for season 4, and presumably Bloys liked what he heard. Given White’s track record and the critical and commercial success of the series (It’s won 15 Emmys over its first two seasons), the renewal for a fourth vacation makes complete sense.
Season 3 arrives on February 16. We got a look at the first trailer forseason 3 back in mid-December, revealing a new cast (save for Rothwell) dining, drinking, and possibly dying at the resort’s Thailand location. Once again, White’s gathered a killer ensemble.
The new season’s guests include a girl’s trip trio in Leslie Bibb as Kate, Carrie Coon as Laurie, and Michelle Monaghan as Jaclyn, a wealthy businessman traveling with his wife and three kids portrayed Jason Isaacs as Timothy, Parker Posey as his wife Victoria, and Sarah Catherine Hook as their daughter, Piper, the aforementioned Rothwell returning as Belinda Lindsey, the spa manage from the Hawaii location, and Walter Goggins as Rick and Aimee Lou Wood as his girlfriend, Chelsea.
White has previously described the Hawaii-set season one as primarily about money, the Sicily-set season two primarily about sex, and now, season three will flirt with death. The trailer revealed the reliably self-involved guests handling a grab bag of anxieties that they’ve lugged to Thailand in the hopes of off-loading them, including a brief shot of a robbery that is certain to go wrong.
Here’s the full cast list: Leslie Bibb, Carrie Coon, Walton Goggins, Sarah Catherine Hook, Jason Isaacs, Lalisa Manobal, Michelle Monaghan, Sam Nivola, Lek Patravadi, Parker Posey, Natasha Rothwell, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Tayme Thapthimthong, Aimee Lou Wood. Additional cast includes Nicholas Duvernay, Arnas Fedaravičius, Christian Friedel, Scott Glenn, Dom Hetrakul, Julian Kostov, Charlotte Le Bon, Morgana O’Reilly, and Shalini Peiri
The White Lotus is open for business on HBO on February 16.
For more on Warner Bros., DC Studios, Max, and more, check out these stories:
A World War II refugee architect and a robber baron meet in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, and modernist design history is made. The premise of The Brutalist, a 3.5-hour critical darling and Golden Globe winner from writer/director Brady Corbet, is as American as apple pie. But from the moment Holocaust survivor Làszló (Adrien Brody) pulls into New York Harbor, the film was shot in Europe. Working primarily in and around Budapest, production designer Judy Becker (Carol, Brokeback Mountain) beautifully transformed the city into mid-century American urbanity.
Becker’s worked on plenty of “wrong place, wrong time” projects in her career. “I don’t think it was more challenging than other period movies I’ve done,” Becker said. Whereas US cities have rapidly gentrified, she was able to use a large industrial area in Budapest for scenes in New York and Philadelphia. For his assimilated cousin Attila’s (Alessandro Nivola) furniture store, where Làszló first lives and works stateside, the production designer scouted a single Budapest building that had never before been filmed.
Alessandro Nivola and Adrien Brody. Courtesy A24.
To lay out the shop, Becker’s set decorator, Patricia Cuccia, drove across Canada sourcing mid-century furniture off Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace, shipping it off to Hungary along with vintage American wallpaper from an independent US source Becker prefers to keep a trade secret, but has relied on for 20 years. “She somehow manages to restock, and I don’t know how she does it,” she said. These staid elements became the stylistic foil to both Làszló’s celebrated past and his present ambitions. He takes over Attila’s shop’s windows with a modern, Brutalist desk made of pipe and webbing, which Becker designed herself. She was inspired by Bauhaus tubular steel forms as well as the American furniture surrounding Làszló. “We took drawers from one of the pieces of furniture in the store, sanded off some of the detail, but kept the hardware on,” Becker said, embracing the idea that Làszló, at that point in time, would have been inclined to reuse materials as well as influenced by his environment. “I also felt that after his experiences, he was a little depleted creatively, so he had his roots in the Bauhaus, but then was starting again with what was around him.”
Alessandro Nivola in “The Brutalist.” Courtesy A24.
Làszló’s breakthrough opportunity arrives at the store in the form of Harry (Joe Alwyn), the son of local magnate Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce). Harry commissions Làszló and Attila to renovate his father’s library, which Làszló transforms from a dark, haphazard space into a light-filled room distinguished by built-in rows of modernist shelving closed with a nifty, minimal, swinging door mechanism. In the script, the renovation was described as modern, with a flower opening, which Becker could picture, “but it was hard to see how it would practically work in a space. And Brady wasn’t attached to that particular implementation,” she said. Becker had the idea on the spot to change the shape of the room with a forced perspective via angled wall cabinets.
Guy Pearce and Joe Alwyn. Courtesy A24.Adrien Brody and Joe Alwyn. Courtesy A24.
Even though it first meets with Harrison’s rage, the library is a masterpiece. A steely WASP used to getting his way, Harrison plucks Làszló from his blue-collar job to embark on a grand joint endeavor—a legacy-cementing institution on a hill, combining church, community center, sports hall, and screening room. Becker began working on the Institute before she even officially signed onto the film. Corbet and the producers “knew we weren’t going to build the whole thing, but they wanted to express that some of the Institute was being built. And in order to do that, they needed a design,” she said.
Adrien Brody in “The Brutalist.” Courtesy A24.Adrien Brody and Guy Pearce. Courtesy A24.
One of the hardest aspects of designing the Institute was incorporating Làszló’s influences, which included his experience in concentration camps. Recalling a synagogue in her hometown, Becker first envisaged subtly incorporating the Star of David into the design, for which she was otherwise inspired by crematoriums, factories, and the work of Japanese architect Tadao Ando. It was difficult to make it work. “Instead, I went full-on with the cross. And that was partly aided by looking at the concentration camp layouts because they were all laid out in a T-intersection, with the barracks on one side,” Becker said. Having also observed that in Central and Eastern Europe, where Làszló hails from, window mullions are often in the shape of a cross, the production designer tied this element to the character’s personal history. “I’ve always found that very interesting, that for Làszló, as a Jew, he was living in that environment, then he’s in a concentration camp, then he is asked to build a church,” she said. For the Institute’s final design, Becker incorporated raised sections that form a cross that’s only visible from above.
With the help of Harrison’s lawyer, Làszló brings his wife, Erzsébet (Felicity Jones), and niece, Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy), to Pennsylvania. Harrison abandons the Institute’s construction after a train carrying materials for it derails, firing everyone. Work eventually resumes, but Harrison, seeing Làszló on a helpless course of self-destruction, violently brutalizes the architect in a marble quarry. Despite this, the project gets done, and in an epilogue, Làszló’s lifelong career is celebrated in Venice, with no Van Burens to be seen. Becker designed the Institute’s entrance to be intentionally claustrophobic, with a narrow hallway separating the rooms on either side. “But gradually, as the hallway went on, it opened up into the church, and after that, there was an exit out that led to freedom,” Becker said, an exit that seems metaphorical not just to Làszló’s escape from Europe, but his survival of Harrison, the film’s other brutalist.
Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones. Courtesy 24.
The Brutalist is in theaters now.
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If you want your Star Wars movie to go into production faster than the Millennium Falcon making the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs, casting Ryan Gosling would probably be the way to go.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Gosling is very much in play for Deadpool & Wolverine director Shawn Levy’s upcoming Star Wars film. While most firm details about upcoming Star Wars films are kept frozen in carbonite and locked deep within the lava mines of Mustafar, THR has the scoop. While Levy’s been working on his Star Wars project since 2022, he’s also very busy with other projects, including a boy band movie at Paramount that would have reunited him with Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman. Then Gosling’s interest in his Star Wars project changed the cinematic galaxy. Levy’s mysterious Star Wars movie would have massive momentum if a deal with Gosling was struck.
Levy has been developing the project alongside writer Jonathan Tropper, a longtime collaborator who worked with Levy on films like This is Where I Leave You and The Adam Project. Tropper has been working on the Star Wars script for a year, yet there’s no word on where along the long galactic timeline the film would be set, whether it’s about Jedis, Sith, or neither of the above. What is known is that it will not be connected to the Skywalker Saga, the nine-film epic that began with George Lucas’s 1977 Star Wars IV: A New Hope and concluded with J.J. Abrams’ 2019 Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.
Another known detail about Levy’s movie is that it would be a standalone feature. Gosling’s involvement would certainly make it one of the most marquee upcoming Star Wars films, which includes The Mandalorian & Grogufrom director Jon Favreau, which stems directly from Favreau’s The Mandalorian Disney+ series and will be the first new Star Wars film in years when it bows on May 22, 2026.
Gosling has been in his fair share of mega-blockbusters, of course—this is Ken we’re talking about—but he’s never been in a franchise film like this. One has to believe that the Force would approve of Gosling’s first marquee franchise being set in a galaxy far, far away.
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Featured image: BERLIN, GERMANY – APRIL 19: Ryan Gosling attends the Berlin premiere of “The Fall Guy” at UCI Luxe Mercedes Platz on April 19, 2024 in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by Gerald Matzka/Getty Images)
