HBO has dropped a new trailer that gives us our first look at some of their most eagerly awaited upcoming series, both returning and brand new. These include season three of The White Lotus, season two of The Last of Us, and the series premiere of the latest Game of Thrones spinoff, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,an adaptation from George R. R. Martin’s novella “The Hedge Knight.”
The trailer ran before the season-season finale of House of the Dragon, and also included the upcoming It spinoff series It: Welcome to Derry, as well as new seasons of The Gilded Age, And Just Like That, Industry, and the fourth and final season of My Brilliant Friend.
New series joining A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms include the first series to come out of James Gunn and Peter Safran’s new DC Studios, Creature Commandos, as well as a DC Studios project that predated Gunn and Safran’s arrival: the Batman spinoff series The Penguin. There’s also the upcoming Dune prequel, Dune: Prophecy, centered on the founding of the secretive and powerful sect, the Bene Gesserit.
Sam Mendes and Armando Iannucci are teaming up with showrunner Jon Brown in the new comedy series The Franchise, while documentarian Alex Gibney’s Wise Guy: David Chase and the Sopranos will explore the life and work of the legendary creator of The Sopranos.
Check out the trailer for HBO’s upcoming slate below.
Here’s the full list of HBO’s upcoming titles provided by Warner Bros. Discovery:
*Indicates a new title debuting in 2025
*A KNIGHT OF THE SEVEN KINGDOMS (HBO Original Drama Series)
*AND JUST LIKE THAT… (Max Original Comedy Series)
CHIMP CRAZY (HBO Original Four-Part Documentary Series)
CREATURE COMMANDOS (Max Original Adult Animated Series)
DUNE: PROPHECY (HBO Original Drama Series)
*DUSTER (Max Original Drama Series)
HARD KNOCKS: TRAINING CAMP WITH THE CHICAGO BEARS (HBO Original Sports Documentary Series)
HARLEY QUINN (Max Original Adult Animated Series)
INDUSTRY (HBO Original Drama Series)
*IT: WELCOME TO DERRY (HBO Original Drama Series)
MY BRILLIANT FRIEND (HBO Original Drama Series)
THE FRANCHISE (HBO Original Comedy Series)
*THE GILDED AGE (HBO Original Drama Series)
THE PENGUIN (HBO Original Limited Series)
*THE PITT (Max Original Drama Series)
*THE LAST OF US (HBO Original Drama Series)
THE SEX LIVES OF COLLEGE GIRLS (Max Original Comedy Series)
*THE WHITE LOTUS (HBO Original Drama Series)
WISE GUY DAVID CHASE AND THE SOPRANOS (HBO Original Two-Part Documentary)
For more on Warner Bros., Max, and more, check out these stories:
Spoiler alert – if you haven’t seen Deadpool & Wolverine yet and have somehow avoided all cameo-related spoilers, you might want to step away from this article.
There’s been a lot written about all the cameos in Deadpool & Wolverine—heck, we’ve written about them, too—but one of the most interesting cameos of all—with respects to Jennifer Garner, Wesley Snipes, Channing Tatum, and Chris Evans (who appears not as Captain America, but as Johnny Storm, from his first appearance in a superhero movie in 2005’s Fantastic Four, the Fox era of Marvel)—belongs to Henry Cavill. Cavill appears as the Cavillerine, a Wolverine variant who beats the stuffing out of Deadpool during the Merc with the Mouth’s recruiting session through the multiverse to find a Logan who can help him save his world.
The cameo works on several levels. First, Cavill has been a popular fan choice for playing Wolverine once Hugh Jackman is really and truly done with the character. Cavill surely looks the part in Deadpool & Wolverine, jacked as he is, sporting a thick beard, and unleashing all the berserker vitality that made Jackman such a perfect choice for the character when he was first cast in the role more than 24 years ago. It doesn’t hurt that he’s wearing a tank top to expose his massive arms and is chomping on a cigar while working on a motorcycle; all very on-brand for Wolverine, especially a younger Wolverine, before the entire weight of the universe is on his shoulders. (That Wolverine can be found in the variant of Logan Jackman plays in Deadpool & Wolverine and in the Logan he played in…Logan.)
Second, Cavill’s appearance as the Cavillerine is also a sly nod to his most famous cinematic sequence of all time (we’re sure fans of his portrayal of Superman might quibble with this, but hear us out), the iconic bathroom fight scene in Mission: Impossible – Fallout. In that scene, Cavill’s nefarious CIA agent August Walker, who’s briefly aligned with Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt during their epic, brutal brawl with Lian Yang’s butt-kicking assassin, does this thing with his arms that has become a beloved meme.
Left to right: Liang Yang and Henry Cavill in MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – FALLOUT, from Paramount Pictures and Skydance.
In Cavill’s brief Deadpool & Wolverine cameo, you notice that he does a very similar move before he clobbers Deadpool, where it looks like he’s loosening or reloading his arms. It’s more or less the same exact movement Cavill did as August Walker in the Mission: Impossible bathroom fight before Walker and Ethan Hunt finally get the upper hand on Yang’s brilliantly resourceful fighter.
Is this reading too much into what might be a bit of muscle memory on Cavill’s part? That argument might hold water, but then you have to factor in that Yang is not only an extremely talented stunt performer but also a stunt coordinator—in fact, he was the stunt coordinator on Deadpool & Wolverine.
It seems much more likely that Yang and Cavill planned this little performative Easter Egg as a nod to their previous, beloved work together, and it also happens to work perfectly in the moment. Although he gets his clock cleaned in the encounter, even Deadpool is gobsmacked over how cool the Cavillerine is.
Here’s the Mission: Impossible Fallout bathroom fight scene. The Cavill shoulder-reload moment comes at the 31-second mark:
For more on Deadpool & Wolverine, check out these stories:
Downey’s fellow Avenger, Jeremy Renner, told US Weeklythat he was floored by the announcement that Downey was headed back to the MCU, but not to play Tony Stark, but rather, the most iconic Marvel villain of all time (with apologies to Thanos), Dr. Doom. Renner was one of Downey’s longtime Avenger teammates, dating back to the very first film, 2012’s The Avengers, yet Downey kept his return a secret from his old buddy. In fact, none of the original Avengers cast were aware—Scarlett Johansson, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Evans, and Chris Hemsworth—that Downey was donning a new mask (but the same task, as he put it) in the Russo Brothers (also returning!) upcoming Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars.
“No! I had no idea. The son of a b***h didn’t say anything to me,” Renner told US Weekly. “We’re good friends. There’s the Avengers family chat. The original six. He said not a peep. I got online and started blowing up his phone like, ‘What’s going on? You’ve been hiding this from us the whole time?’ It’s exciting news. I’m really, really excited about it.”
Renner then revealed that he might be joining Downey in the upcoming Avengers films—the major difference is that Renner would continue portraying Clint Barton/Hawkeye, while Downey’s Dr. Doom would be his adversary. (Not for nothing, Hawkeye and Iron Man fought, too, in the original The Avengers when Loki turned Hawkeye into a mindless minion.) Renner last played the sharpshooter on the Disney+ series Hawkeye.
“You got Downey back in the mix, you got the Russo Brothers back in the mix. This is a direction where Marvel is going to do well,” Renner said. “The Avengers movies have always been fan favorites and there’s so many wonderful characters in them. It’s going to be challenging to get everyone together. But I am excited about it. We’ll see. I think we’ll probably be doing it. It’s all brand new. They just made the announcement. They got to start figuring it out.”
Renner was hospitalized after his snow plow accident in 2023, a horrific scare in which he suffered orthopedic injuries, including eight ribs broken in 14 places, blunt chest trauma, a broken right shoulder, left tibia, left ankle, and more. He’s been in physical therapy and feels that he’s getting back to a place where he can return as Hawkeye, a remarkable achievement.
“I’m always game. I’m gonna be strong enough, that’s for sure. I’ll be ready,” Renner told ET. “All those [Marvel] guys come to my bedside and they’ve been with me all along through this recovery, so … if they want me, they could have me. It would be something.”
For more on all things Marvel Studios, check out these stories:
Godzilla Minus One/Minus Color is now streaming on Netflix.
A trailer for one of the highest-ratest Godzilla movies in history (hailed as one of the best ever by many critics) reveals a meticulously decolorized version of writer/director Takashi Yamazaki’s masterpiece. The colorized version of Godzilla Minus One is the first domestic Japanese Godzilla film in seven years and takes us back to post-war Japan as the iconic kaiju surfaces from the ocean depths to unleash holy hell on a populace still reckoning with the ravages of World War II, a nation that was “baptized in the horrific power of the atom bomb” as the film’s press materials state.
When Godzilla Minus Onearrived on U.S. shores, the reviews glowed as brightly as the titan’s atomic breath. “The result is nothing short of magical: a feast for the eyes, an entertaining epic in every sense of the word,” writes the Washington Post‘s Lucas Trevor. “Godzilla Minus One isn’t just a good Godzilla movie. It’s an excellent Godzilla movie – arguably among the best ever to grace the screen,” says ReelViews James Berardinelli.
The black-and-white version gives us a gorgeous duotone version of Yamazaki’s film, which is a vastly different beast from the American incarnations we’ve seen in Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire,Godzilla vs. Kong(2021) and Godzilla (2014). Minus One takes us back to Godzilla’s roots as a metaphor for Japan’s postwar agony and grief while balancing the beast’s lust for carnage and destruction with a human-level story focusing on the people’s lives beneath Godzilla’s feet.
Godzilla Minus One stars Ryunosuke Kamiki, Minami Hamabe, Yuki Yamada, Munetaka Aoki, Hidetaka Yoshioka, Sakura Ando, and Kuranosuke Sasaki.
Check out the trailer below for Godzilla Minus One/Minus Color.
For more on big titles on Netflix, check these out
We know when Squid Game will return to Netflix…and when it will end.
Netflix’s biggest series of all time is finally returning for season two on December 26. This is a boon time for streaming, with people still home for the holidays. Squid Game executive producer, writer, and director Hwang Dong-hyuk also revealed that the series’ third season will premiere in 2025 and will be its last.
“Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-Jae), who vowed revenge at the end of season one, returns and joins the game again,” Hwang wrote in a press release detailing the series’ upcoming conclusion. “Will he succeed in getting his revenge? Front Man doesn’t seem to be an easy opponent this time, either. The fierce clash between their two worlds will continue into the series finale in season three, which will be brought to you next year.”
Lee Jung-Jae has seen his career explode since the release of the Korean juggernaut series in 2021, when it burst onto the global scene and went on to become the all-time highest-ranking series in Netflix history, earning an astonishing 265.2 million views and a total watch-time of 2.2 billion hours—in its first 13 weeks of release. He has since starred in Disney+’s most recent Star Wars series, The Acolyte, playing Master Jedi Sol. He’ll be joined in season two by returning cast members Lee Byung-hun, Wi Ha-jun, and Gong Yoo. Newcomers include Yim Si-wan, Kang Ha-neul, Park Gyu-young, Lee Jin-uk, Park Sung-hoon, Yang Dong-geun, Kang Ae-sim, Lee David, Choi Seung-hyun, Roh Jae-won, Jo Yu-ri and Won Ji-an.
“I am thrilled to see the seed that was planted in creating a new Squid Game grow and bear fruit through the end of this story,” Hwang continued in his statement. “We’ll do our best to make sure we bring you yet another thrill ride. I hope you’re excited for what’s to come.
Here’s a look at the teaser Netflix just released to announce the premiere date:
For more on big titles on Netflix, check these out:
The news coming out of Comic-Con this past weekend was of the cinematic universe-shaking variety. Robert Downey Jr. returning to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but not as Tony Stark and, instead, as the supervillain Dr. Doom? Check. The Russo Brothers returning to direct Downey in not one but two Avenger films, Avengers: Doomsday (newly retitled and now centering on Downey’s iconic villain), and Avengers: Secret Wars? Check and check. It was a good Con for Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige, who had so many beloved stars to reintroduce and news to report that one could be forgiven for overlooking specific details about another hotly anticipated MCU installment on its way—the long-awaited reboot of The Fantastic Four, which had a heck of a lot more to reveal than just that new title, The Fantastic Four: First Steps.
Feige returned to the stage of Hall H for The Fantastic Four panel, with production on the filming kicking off this past Tuesday, July 30. Director Matt Sharman joined Feige in Hall H, and then, in a surprise, revealed Marvel’s first family on stage together for the first time— 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).
Shakman and the cast shared some tasty details about the film, which will pit the Core Four against the supervillains Galactus (Ralph Ineson) and the Silver Surfer (Julia Garner), who have their sights set on Earth. A real-life Fantasticar then flew over the crowd, emphasizing the retro-future 1960s vibe. 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.
There was another particular detail that Shakman shared that stood out—the design of Ebon Moss-Bachrach’s The Thing, the rock-skinned giant that 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 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.”
Capturing the Thing in a way that both honors the comics and reveals deeper nuances and more biological realism than we’ve seen in the character before will certainly be a challenge, but it’s one the MCU has been doing for a long time. The method for conjuring a realistic Thing will include motion capture technology, the same process that Mark Ruffalo underwent during all his years of playing the Hulk. To this end, Moss-Bachrach 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 Fantastic Four: First Steps touches down in theaters on July 25, 2025.
For more on The Fantastic Four: First Steps, check out these stories:
“And that’s a wrap,” Superman writer/director James Gunn wrote in a post shared early Monday evening. “God bless our cast and crew whose commitment, creativity, and hard work have brought this project to life.”
The image Gunn shared reveals the cast’s first week of shooting in Svalbard, Norway when they began the journey of rebooting the most iconic DC character for Gunn and Peter Safran’s new DC Studios. Superman will be the first major feature from the revamped studio, kicking off what they’re calling “Chapter 1: Gods & Monsters,” a slate of films and TV series that will unveil their vision for a freshly unified DC Universe.
Gunn’s Superman has been an international production, filming in Svalbard, Norway, Cleveland and Cincinnati, Ohio, Atlanta, Georgia, and elsewhere. The film stars David Corenswet as Clark Kent/Superman, Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane, Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor, Wendell Pierce as Perry White, Sara Sampaio as Eve Teschmacher, Edi Gathegi as Mr. Terrific, Skyler Gisondo as Jimmy Olsen, Anthony Carrigan as Metamorpho, Isabela Merced as Hawkgirl, María Gabriela de Faría as The Engineer, and Gunn’s longtime collaborator Nathan Fillion as Guy Gardner.
Corenswet becomes only the fourth person to play Superman on screen, joining Christopher Reeve, who played him from 1978 to 1987, beginning with Richard Donner’s iconic Superman—which inspired Gunn to lop Legacy off his own title—Brandon Routh in a 2006 reboot, and most recently, Henry Cavill for Zack Snyder’s film, beginning with Man of Steel in 2013 and through Batman v. Superman and Justice League.
Superman is set to premiere on July 11, 2025.
Here’s Gunn’s post:
And that’s a wrap.
God bless our cast and crew whose commitment, creativity, and hard work have brought this project to life. I set out to make a movie about a good man in a world that isn’t always so much. And the goodness and kindness and love I’ve encountered on a daily basis… pic.twitter.com/9Y52HEVXpF
Spoiler alert for those of you who haven’t seen Deadpool & Wolverine, which is now playing in theaters.
Channing Tatum spent years trying to get a film made in which he’d star as Gambit, the explosive card-dealing member of the X-Men first created by writer Chris Claremont and artist Jim Lee and introduced in “The Uncanny X-Men” in 1990. Gambit was a key member of the X-Men the beloved 1990s animated series X-Men: The Animated Series that ran from 1992 to 1997 (a sequel series, X-Men: 97, is streaming on Disney+), andTatum worked for four years trying to give the character a proper standalone film with producer Reid Carolin, but the project was scuttled when Disney acquired Fox in 2019. Then, years later, Ryan Reynolds gave him a shot at suiting up as the Louisianan mutant with a knack for conjuring kinetic energy.
Tatum took to Twitter to share side-by-side images of him and Reynolds at Comic-Con—the first was nearly ten years ago, when Reynolds first debuted Deadpool, and the second was this past weekend when Deadpool & Wolverine opened to staggering, record-breaking numbers and Tatum debuted as Gambit in a delightful, fairly meaty cameo.
These pictures are almost 10 years apart to the day. I sat in the audience when Ryan Reynolds showed his first peek of Deadpool 1 to the world and I think I ran back stage right after and found him and I think I just hugged him and was like holy shit you did it man. It’s perfect.… pic.twitter.com/B5viY2f7nl
“I will owe him probably forever,” Tatum said in his post. “Cause I’m not sure how I could ever do something that would be equal to what this has meant to me. I love ya buddy.”
Tatum was one of several high-profile actors to make a cameo in Deadpool & Wolverine, joining Chris Evans (not as Captain America, but as Fantastic Four member Johnny Storm), Jennifer Garner (reprising her role of Elektra), and Wesley Snipes (reprising his role as Blade). Gambit, Elektra, Blade, and Laura (Dafne Keen) are all hiding out in the Void, the cosmic wasteland where the Time Variance Authority sends people they think are a threat to the Sacred Timeline, where villain Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin) rules supreme.
“All things happen for a reason,” Tatum wrote. “I’m so grateful to be in this movie. It’s a masterpiece in my opinion. And just pure bad ass joy. I was literally screaming in the theater. LFG!!”
For more on Deadpool & Wolverine, check out these stories:
Featured image: SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA – JULY 25: Channing Tatum speaks onstage during “Marvel Studios: The Ultimate Deadpool & Wolverine Celebration Of Life” panel during 2024 Comic-Con International at San Diego Convention Center on July 25, 2024 in San Diego, California. (Photo by Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images)
Sing Sing screenwriters Greg Kwedar and Clint Bentley are unusual, even in the world of indies. They immerse themselves in the world of the story they want to tell for years, in this case a drama program in a maximum-security prison. They surround professional performers like Colman Domingo in the case of Sing Sing, with real-life inhabitants of that world, with a seamless naturalism that straddles documentary and narrative filmmaking. And everyone is a full partner in the production. Actors, producers, and crew all get paid the same, and all get the same share of the movie’s revenues. They do this because they think it is fair. More important to them is how literal ownership of the project brings everyone together.
Speaking withThe Credits, Kwedar, who also directed, Bentley, producer Monique Walton, and formerly incarcerated-turned-actors John ‘Divine G’ Whitfield, Sean ‘Dino’ Johnson, and Jon Adrian ‘JJ’ Velazquez talked about what arts programs can do, including how the recidivism rate for participants in the program is just 3 percent, compared to over 60 percent for the rest of the imprisoned people, and more.
Greg, I understand that you worked on this script for many years, and then it suddenly came together for you. What was the turning point?
Kwedar: That didn’t happen until about six years into our development process. The work that Clint and I have done over our careers together inherently takes time because of the process of building stories from the dirt up. We like to spend time in the community, listen, and let the story be born from that. It can take a few years to finally have that happen, to get that breakthrough. You could make a movie about every one of the men in this film, and so in earlier drafts, we tried to do that, telling all the stories. It was a process of finding its focus. Finally, we had this revelation that the best way to speak to the community of this program while having something to really attach to is to tell the story of a friendship. Once that was apparent to us, a lot synthesized from all the years, it literally fell out onto the page in a treatment in about 15 minutes. At the very bottom of that, I wrote, “Coleman Domingo as Divine G.”
Greg Kweder and Colman Domingo on the set of “Sing Sing.” Courtesy A24
You combine experienced, trained, professional actors with cast members who have the real-life experience of the people they are playing but are new to acting, or at least acting on film. How does that work?
Bentley: There’s always an amazing alchemy that happens when we put those two folks together. It’s not just that the trained actor comes in and carries these other folks along. It’s that they both learn from each other and grow from each other in different ways. We saw it on Jockey, and we saw it here a lot of times. There’s something about stepping into drama and dramaturgy, with actors channeling the interiority and depth of these feelings and things happening within the program that help transcend to a higher plane of truth. What’s beautiful about this process is the space for the world to breathe into it and have moments that, we always say, never could have been written but only lived. It’s how those dance together that leads us to an understanding that we couldn’t have arrived at with its independent parts.
Coleman Domingo stars in “Sing Sing.” Courtesy A24.
How complicated was implementing your unusual revenue share and selling it to your financial partners?
Walton: Looking for a fresh idea, it was a compelling invitation. Can we think about this differently? Greg always talked about, let’s fully erase the hierarchy. That affected everything. Even in the structure of a budget, a film budget is typically above or below the line. He said, “I don’t want my budget to have a line. Take it out.” And I was like, “I don’t know how to do that. It’s a program. It’s built that way. You want me to go into the code?” Ultimately, when it’s shared, it’s one of those ideas people start to think about. Because your instinct is like, “Oh, that could never work. But then we did it, and it worked.”
Kwedar: And what that starts to do is migrating a team of artists from an employee to a partner mindset. And once you’re like an actual stakeholder in the work, the transformative act of that has everyone saying, “If I’m ever going to empty the tank on a project, if I’m ever going to put it all on the line, I’ll do it for one that I feel like really belongs to me.” Particularly within this film, the majority of our cast being formerly incarcerated and bringing their own life story to the project, to have literal ownership over their own story, speaks very loudly to all of us in the process of making it, particularly for the men who really lived it.
Bentley: It is not that hard of a pitch to our partners because it’s not like charity. We joke that it’s a table where both capitalists and communists can sit down together and eat from the same plate. It just makes it an easier pitch to investors because you’re not asking them to do something that doesn’t work in their favor. It’s a way of making budgets more approachable in a place where every other budget is inflating so radically it is almost unsustainable; it allows investors to trust the filmmakers, and when the risk is lower, we can be bolder in the work. It actually brings artists and investors together to finally be able to see each other eye-to-eye.
Coleman Domingo stars in “Sing Sing.” Courtesy A24.
How did you first get involved with Rehabilitation Through the Arts?
Johnson: I’m one of the founding members. Someone approached me in the yard and said, “Hey man, we want to get a couple of people together and start a theater program.” I thought it was a joke. Because we’re in a maximum security facility. I’m not running around with tights telling you what to be or not to be, you know? And show you how shallow my understanding of theater was; it was amazing because we came together as a community, and the more we read scripts and got into it, the more we started connecting with one another. We all realized how much we had in common. And it was an escape from the lifestyle of prison. It was an escape mentally, physically, and emotionally, you know.
Coleman Domingo stars in “Sing Sing.” Courtesy A24.
In the film, we see the men’s unconditional support for each other. How is that created through the program?
Whitfield: It was built into the program. As founding members, Dean and I are the architects of our steering committee. So, when we interviewed individuals when they came into the program, we set the stage to let them know that you have to be a risk-taker for new behaviors because we are thinking outside the box. We prepared them and worked on them to make them understand that this was healthy for us and that this was work we had to do. You had to be an adventurous person when you came into RTA. So, it was kind of woven into the whole program. It was a struggle for some. Because it was new behaviors that were totally out of their range or out of their familiarity at the point of the experience. But as time progressed, guys started taking off the layers of the armor, layer by layer. Like peeling an onion, taking it off. It feels a little uncomfortable, but the more you get to the root of it, the guys start to understand.
Coleman Domingo and Clarence Maclin on the set of “Sing Sing.” Courtesy A24
Why do the men in the program call each other “Beloved?”
Whitfield: It was to get away from the n-word that people used even as a term of affection. When you have a historical comprehension of how dangerous and devastating it is and how much harm, destruction, murder, maim, and chaos that’s equated with that word, you have to come up with a way to combat it. And that was our way of trying to combat the use of that word, creating a substitute that would also tell guys that, listen, this word is not socially appropriate. It’s a harmful word. We also did a little more than just use the word Beloved. It is not in the movie, but if someone gets caught using the n-word out of habit, they have to acknowledge that they made a mistake and do 20 push-ups.
What do you want people to learn from this film?
Velasquez: I would love for them to walk away with a deeper understanding of the full and complex humanity of people incarcerated and understand that these are human beings. Human beings, when given the right equipment, the right ingredients, and the right circumstances, change. There is the power within humans to change, no matter where they’re at, no matter what’s going on. We are human beings, and we all can change.
Featured image: Coleman Domingo stars in “Sing Sing.” Courtesy A24.
When she helmed the first episode of Star Trek: Picard in 2020, director Hanelle M. Culpepper made history as the first woman to launch a Star Trek series. She went on to win the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Directing in a Drama Series for that project. This, along with her work on shows like Westworld, The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, Kung Fu, and Star Trek: Discovery, led her to land on the 2023 IndieWire “TV Directors to Know” list. With the release of The Acolyte, for which she directed the 6th episode and the season finale, Culpepper is officially the first director to direct in both the Star Wars and Star Trek episodic universes.
The Acolyte, created by executive producer and showrunner Leslye Headland for Disney+, stars Amandla Stenberg in the dual roles of sisters Osha and Mae. Twins separated in their youth, conflict arises when their home is destroyed after an encounter with Jedis, and Osha is saved by Jedi Master Sol (Lee Jung-jae) and learns the ways of the Force, while Mae is initially believed to have died during the tragedy. Mae’s reappearance and her use of the dark side of the Force to track down those Jedis she finds culpable for her childhood tragedy set the two sisters on a collision course. Culpepper was charged with helming the finale, in which the truth of their childhood tragedy is revealed, and the sisters are forced to make terrible decisions about their own fates and the fates of the characters we have come to know.
Culpepper’s next high-profile project is Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys, for which she directs and acts as executive producer. She also recently shot for Hulu’s upcoming episodic political thriller Paradise City,which reteams This is Us alum Sterling K Brown with its creator Dan Fogelman as the series lead and showrunner.
One of few women of color working consistently in the film and TV industry, Culpepper is steadfast in her commitment to raising up other female filmmakers and diverse voices. This year, she was named the guest artistic director of the AFI’s Directing Workshop for Women. Now celebrating its 50th anniversary, the program is a tuition-free year-long intensive that educates traditionally underrepresented filmmakers.
The Credits spoke to Culpepper about her work on The Acolyte and her incredibly busy 2024.
You made history by directing on the small screen for the Star Trek and Star Wars universes. As a longtime fan, what were you most excited to tackle?
With Star Wars, it was definitely my chance to do a space chase and a lightsaber battle. I was also really excited to work with Amandla. She’s been someone I’ve been a fan of since The Hunger Games, so there was that, too. Just being invited to play in that world was so exciting. With Star Trek, it was probably working with Sir Patrick Stewart and developing the costumes.
Can you talk about the experience of filming Amandla Stenberg as twins in the series?
I’ve had to work with one actor playing two roles quite often. It keeps popping up. In this case, the character had already been established, so Amandla had worked out the physical differences in how they move and that sort of thing. I decided what shots would be with the acting double, which shots would be a techno dolly so that we could have her on both sides, and which ones would end up being a face replacement. For the fight in Episode 8, we knew there would probably be a lot of face replacement, so Amandla had to learn both sides of the fight. She has to shoot both sides, as does her acting body double, who was Shanice Archer. The next big choice is to determine which character Amandla is going to play first because that has a lot of effect in that, even though I come up with a blocking plan, things change organically as they’re in the scene, so if she’s playing one character, you want to make sure the acting double is doing what feels right as well. So I would figure out which one I thought she should play first and run that by her. That became the plan for the day because the hair, costume, and makeup are different, so everyone needs to know. We’d rehearse, and Amandla would watch Shanice, who was amazing. They had a lot of instincts that were completely aligned. which is rare.
What was your experience balancing visual effects with character development in The Acolyte, and how did that differ from your experience working in the Star Trek universe on Picard and Discovery?
There were way more in Star Trek. Alex Kurtzman loves visual effects. On The Acolyte, Leslye really wanted the show to feel like the original first three Star Wars movies, so we used practical effects as much as we could.
Hanelle M. Culpepper on the set of “The Acolyte.” Courtesy Disney+
You have a very big deal project coming up that’s currently in postproduction, Anansi Boys. What can you tell us about the mini-series, which is based on the Neil Gaiman novel and, again, has an actor playing two roles?
It’s supposed to be coming out later this year. It’s been a long time in post. Visual effects were challenging, but we’re all very excited about it. Malachi Kirby was the one that I worked with to figure out both characters, and they feel so distinct, so I really think the audience is going to enjoy meeting both Charlie and Spider. We’ve done some really cool things with bringing stuff like the shadow world to life. What has always been tricky with Anansi Boys is balancing the various tones, which the book has as well. It has romance, comedy, and drama; it’s a family story, a love story, and so many things at once. I feel like we managed to nail it, so I really hope the audiences love the show as much as we all do.
You were named the Guest Artistic Director of this year’s AFI Directing Workshop for Women. What have been your directives there?
First, I was so honored when they asked me. I always want to give back because I credit so much of my career back to being a part of the AFI DWW. I’ve tapped my resources to put together various panels, workshops, and classes, together with the women who are running the program right now and some AFI teachers, to give the eight participating people all the support they need. We’ve been focusing on what they needed leading up to production. I also paired each one with an alum so they have their own mentor and “call a friend.” I’m also their “call a friend” if anything comes up, but I wanted to have someone specific to them. What we’ll do next is really focus on some workshops and panels on the post process, getting your film out there, and growing your career.
What did you learn from your own experience with workshops that you put into practice for the DWW?
One example that really worked well is I remember taking Lesli Linka Glatter’s class on blocking, where she gave us a scene, and we all did our own blocking, and then we saw how she did it. We all had from five to seven shots, but then she showed us her clip and did it in one shot. So with the group this year, they came and said, “we’ve gotten all this great information, but we still feel weak on blocking”, and the timing turned out to be perfect. I was shooting Paradise City, and I had a complicated scene coming up. And so Hulu and Dan Fogelman, the producers of Paradise City, allowed me to give my team one of the scripts, one of the scenes that I was going to shoot, and a floor plan for the set. I gave that to them and told them to come up with their blocking and shot list. We met ahead of time and talked through what everybody did, then we got to go on the set, and they were able to try out their blocking there, and they were able to watch me do my own blocking. They were able to see me go through the process of how I was figuring it out and then stay and watch as I did my rehearsal with the actors. They saw how that changed the dynamic and then saw me working out the shots with my DP. They could see that whole process, and then once the show goes out, they’ll see how that scene ended up getting edited. They loved it, and they learned so much. It was also cool for them to be on the Paramount lot. I was learning the whole time, too. You learn from watching other people think things through. Hearing other perspectives always grows you as a director.
All episodes of The Acolyte are streaming now on Disney+.
While the superhero world got a major surprise this past weekend at San Diego’s Comic-Con with the news that Robert Downey Jr. was returning to the MCU as iconic villain Dr. Doom, there was plenty of news about Dr. Doom’s biggest adversaries, the Fantastic Four, who are getting a reboot from director Matt Shakman. The first bit of news? The Fantastic Four has an official title: The Fantastic Four: First Steps.
The core four headlining First Steps are Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic (Dr. Doom’s obsessed with proving he’s better than Reed in the comics, by the way), 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.
Shakman revealed the new title at Comic-Con, along with a teaser reel, which included a look at the core four in astronaut outfits, a massive spaceship, and a glimpse of the supervillain Galactus, played by Ralph Ineson, hovering over Earth. Then, to the added delight of the audience, Shakman introduced Pascal, Kirby, Quinn, and Moss-Bachrach, who weren’t supposed to be able to be there in person as filming is set to begin in the UK on Monday.
It was also revealed that the Fantastic Four cast will appear in the upcoming Avengers movies, 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.
Joining the core four are Paul Walter Hauser and Natasha Lyonne in undisclosed roles, with Julia Garner set to play Shalla-Bal, a version of Silver Surfer. Thanks to Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige, we know the movie will be a period piece set in the 1960s. Shakman is directing from a script by Eric Pearson, Josh Friedman, Jeff Kaplan, and Ian Springer.
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).
For more on The Fantastic Four, check out these stories:
Spoiler Alert! If you haven’t seen Deadpool & Wolverine yet, you probably want to skip this article.
Deadpool & Wolverine is a bonafide blockbuster. The Ryan Reynolds/Hugh Jackman two-hander pulled past the $200 million mark in its domestic opening, a shocking haul for an R-rated film. In fact, Deadpool & Wolverine bested the previous champion of the R-rated opening weekend, the first Deadpool, which pulled in $133.7 million in 2016. Nobody breaks the fourth wall harder or with more F-bombs than Ryan Reynolds’ potty-mouthed antihero.
Reynolds now has three successful outings to show for rejiggering and rebooting the character (he played a version of Deadpool in 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine, but that was an entirely different, far less funny iteration), but it was a stroke of genius to bring Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine on board. Despite dying at the end of 2017’s Logan—which Reynolds and his Deadpool & Wolverine co-writers Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, and Zeb Wells make great hay about—Jackman’s Logan, well, an iteration of Logan, is hauled from his sad sack universe where he’s a pariah and far from a hero into Deadpool’s storyline to help him save his own world. Their journey, which includes fighting each other in comically brutal fashion before finally taking their aggression out on bad guys, zig-zags across Marvel history and pulls in some well-known faces from previous franchises, some from more than two decades ago, for what was a consistently surprising parade of cameos.
Let’s have a look at the biggest cameos of them all:
Jon Favreau: Favreau’s Happy Hogan is one of the first cameos we get in a flashback scene when Deadpool applies to join the Avengers and is gently but thoroughly rebuffed.
Henry Cavill: In an early, delightful surprise, Cavill turns up as a Wolverine variant, the Cavillrine. He looks very, very right in the role. Cavill was, of course, Superman during Zack Snyder’s run with DC. There’s also all the scuttlebutt over the fact that Cavill does a little nod—via his shoulders and arms—to his most iconic fight scene ever in Mission: Impossible – Fallout in his brief but potent cameo, the moment before he beats the stuffing out of Deadpool.
Chris Evans: But not as Captain America, mind you; instead, Deadpool and Wolverine come across Evans’ version of Johnny Storm, aka the Human Torch, from his very first outing as a superhero in Fox’s Fantastic Four. Deadpool and Wolverine find Johnny in the Void, where a slew of pre-Disney acquisition characters are marooned. (The Void is where the Time Variance Authority drops anyone it deems a threat to the Sacred Timeline, which is why the villain Cassandra Nova, played by Emma Corrin, is there). In the upcoming The Fantastic Four, the Human Torch will be played by Stranger Things star Joseph Quinn.
Tyler Mane: Mane reprises his role from 2000’s X-Men as Sabretooth, Wolverine’s arch nemesis and usually an equal match in a fight. However, when they face off early on in Deadpool & Wolverine, Wolverine decapitates him with a single stroke.
Ray Park: Park returns as Toad, another character from 2000’s X-Men, and alongside Sabretooth is one of Cassandra Nova’s henchmen.
Jennifer Garner: Garner reprises her role of Elektra, the expert warrior and assassin who she played in 2003’s Daredevil, opposite Ben Affleck’s blind superhero, and again in 2005’s Elektra. When Deadpool “pays his respects” to the Marvel characters who apparently haven’t survived in the Void, including Elektra’s former partner in fighting crime, Daredevil, Garner’s Elektra quips, “Oh, it’s fine.”
Wesley Snipes: Snipes reprising his role of Blade was, for us, the biggest surprise of them all. Snipes first played the character in 1998’s Blade and its two subsequent sequels, including 2004’s Blade: Trinity, where he shared the screen with Ryan Reynolds (who played Hannibal King), and the two weren’t, shall we say, best buds back then. Marvel is in the process of rebooting the character with Mahershala Ali, but that’s been slow going, and Snipes even got in a joke about it: “There’s only one Blade. There’s only ever gonna be one Blade.”
Channing Tatum: Okay, perhaps Channing Tatum as Gambit was an even bigger surprise than seeing Snipes, but that’s only because, despite Tatum’s efforts to make that happen, we’ve never actually gotten to see Tatum in the role of the mutant. Deadpool gets in a lot of jokes about having no idea what the Cajun cardsharp is saying.
Dafne Keen: Keen reprises her role as Laura, or X-23, the young mutant that Wolverine sacrifices himself for in Logan. She plays a huge role in this film, as she eventually convinces Logan to stop being a mope and help Deadpool and the rest of the team take on Cassandra Nova.
Blake Lively: As she hinted, Blake Lively is, in fact, Ladypool, voicing the character.
Matthew McConaughey: He briefly voices Cowboy Deadpool, or the Deadpool Kid, the western gun-slinger variant from Earth-1108.
Ryan Reynolds: Yup, Reynolds also played one of the Deadpool variants, Nicepool, whose puppy Dogpool is the apple to the regular, raunchy, rude Deadpool’s eye. Nicepool has long, flowing locks, drives a Honda Odyssey, and is very helpful, calm, and sure enough, Kind. But, alas, he doesn’t have Deadpool’s regenerative abilities, and this proves to be a problem.
Wunmi Mosaku: Mosaku’s Hunter B-15 from Loki appears at the film’s end, helping Deadpool and Wolverine tidy up loose ends after they foil Mr. Paradox’s plot. A romance brews between her and Rob Delaney’s Peterpool.
For more on Deadpool & Wolverine, check out these stories:
It was one of Comic-Con’s biggest, if not the biggest, surprises—Robert Downey Jr. was revealed to be taking on the role of Marvel’s most iconic villain, Dr. Doom, in the two upcoming Avengers movies. Downey was, of course, the face of the Marvel Cinematic Universe for a decade as Iron Man, inarguably the biggest star in a galaxy of them whose performance as Tony Stark in the very first Iron Man catapulted Marvel Studios into the cinematic juggernaut it is today. Downey Jr.’s time as Tony Stark came to a noble end in Avengers: Endgame, as he sacrificed himself to take out Thanos (Josh Brolin) and save the universe. While there have been whispers about whether he’d return to the fold, and he’d even mentioned how he’d be open to it considering how deeply he came to know and love the role of Tony Stark, very few people could have imagined this kind of return. It was a proper shockwave that spread throughout Hall H in San Diego as the crowd and the reporters absorbed the news.
The Downey Jr. shocker followed another major announcement from Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige when he revealed that the Russo Brothers would return to the MCU to direct Avengers 5 and 6 during the end of a Marvel Studios panel at Comic-Con on Saturday. The fifth film, formerly titled Avengers: The Kang Dynasty, has been rewritten and retitled—now it’s Avengers: Doomsday, which makes it clear that Dr. Doom, widely considered the most potent villain in the entire Marvel canon, would finally be making his MCU entrance. The Russo brothers said “there is one very important character required to do Secret Wars justice,” and said they’d need “the greatest actor in the world” to play Doctor Doom. That’s when the Russo Brothers revealed that Dr. Doom would be played by none other than Downey Jr., once again wearing armor but now for a very different purpose, with Downey Jr. taking the stage alongside a bevy of Dr. Dooms. Perhaps this was a meta nod, as there’s speculation that this Dr. Doom will be a Tony Stark variant.
“New mask, same task,” Downey said as he emerged onto the panel’s stage. “What did I tell ya? I like playing complicated characters.”
It will be a while before we know how the Russo Brothers and Marvel plan to use one of the most famous actors on the planet, the face of the MCU for a decade, in a completely new role. What’s more, Victor von Doom is horribly scarred in the comics (although he was healed in the comic iterations of “Secret Wars” in 1984 and 2015), so if Marvel were going with that version of Dr. Doom, they’d be messing with one of the most recognizable faces in the world and the man whose character arc as Iron Man was more or less perfect.
The comics have a lot of rich material to seed any number of potential Dooms for Downey to play with. There was even a 12-issue run of comics in which Dr. Doom became the Infamous Iron Man, in a story by Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev, where he tried to redeem himself in the wake of Tony Stark’s death. Thus far, Downey Jr.’s been confirmed to play Doom in just two films, Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars, but one imagines that Dr. Doom will have some part to play in director Matt Shakman’s upcoming The Fantastic Four, which is the reboot of Marvel’s first family and Dr. Doom’s biggest adversaries.
There’s also speculation that Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars will use the original “Marvel Super Hero Secret Wars” manga as source material. It was on these pages that Dr. Doom became the biggest, worst villain of them all. Dropping Downey Jr. into the first new Avengers film since Endgame as the villain does pose some significant challenges, especially that it won’t give him, or fans, a few films to get to know just who Victor von Doom is and how and why he became Dr. Doom. It’s a challenge Marvel is no doubt willing and ready to accept, and they’re banking on their secret weapon from the original launch of the MCU, the face that launched the movie’s biggest franchise machine.
Avengers: Doomsday is set to hit theaters sometime in 2026.
For more on all things Marvel Studios, check out these stories:
Featured image: SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA – JULY 27: Robert Downey Jr. speaks onstage during the Marvel Studios Panel in Hall H at SDCC in San Diego, California on July 27, 2024. (Photo by Jesse Grant/Getty Images for Disney)
Hall H at San Diego’s Comic-Con has long been the home to some of the biggest moments in the Con’s history—yesterday, it became the undisputed domain of the Merc with the Mouth and the Mutant Berserker.
Deadpool & Wolverine stars Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman, and Emma Corrin (who plays the film’s villain, Cassandra Nova), along with director Shawn Levy and Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige, surprised and delighted Con attendees by turning the panel into a secret screening for the new film.
“We’ve been all around the world with this movie, but the icing on the cake is right here, right now,” Jackman told Hall H. The panel-into-secret-screening was organized by lottery, with those lucky enough to win a ticket getting treated to Marvel’s one and only 2024 release. And that release, already generating a ton of buzz, is the long-awaited cinematic reunion of Reynolds and Jackman, 15-years after their less-than-satisfying battle in 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Now, they’re back in top form, with Reynolds’ Deadpool a much different, much more interesting character than he was in his mute appearance in the 2009 film. Now, Reynolds’ Merc with the Mouth has had two films in his own franchise to become an offbeat beloved member of the larger MCU (officially now, thanks to Disney’s acquisition of Fox in 2019), and Jackman’s Wolverine, inarguably the most popular of the X-Men, has risen from the dead after his beautiful, brutal denouement in James Mangold’s 2017 film Logan to join Reynolds in the team-up fans have been salivating for.
Deadpool & Wolverine opens wide on July 26 and is on pace to land the biggest opening weekend for an R-rated film of all time, tracking for somewhere between $160 to $175 million in North America alone.
Reynolds came to the Con in 2015 to unveil the first Deadpool trailer, and Jackman revealed that he was also there on behalf of 20th Century Fox’s X-Men characters. At the time, Jackman had fully intended to hang up the claws after Logan. Only now, nine years later, the two shared the stage together.
By the time the screening was over, Kevin Feige, always a fan as much as Marvel’s big boss, was certainly feeling the excitement.
A little earlier: Kevin Feige calls the Hall H surprise screening “the best movie experience of my life” while Ryan Reynolds says “it changed his DNA.” #SDCC2024pic.twitter.com/ZE1rmnWNIN
Featured image: SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA – JULY 25: (L-R) Hugh Jackman, Ryan Reynolds, and Shawn Levy speak onstage during Marvel Studios: The Ultimate Deadpool & Wolverine Celebration of Life in Hall H at SDCC in San Diego, California on July 25, 2024. (Photo by Jesse Grant/Getty Images for Disney)
Pedro Pascal and the rest of his Fantastic Four teammates are ready to suit up.
Pascal, who plays Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic in director Matt Shakman’s upcoming reboot, shared the first image of the main cast from the set on Instagram. Pascal’s photo reveals himself and the rest of the core four—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.
In late June, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige confirmed what was hinted at in Marvel’s Valentine’s Day post on Instagram—The Fantastic Four is definitively a period piece set in the 1960s. The illustrated image certainly gave off those vibes, what with the character’s attire, the room decor, and the fact that Ben Grimm is reading a December 1963 issue of Life Magazine. “Yes, yes, very much so. It is a period,” Feige said on Marvel’s podcast. “There were a lot of smart people, who noticed that that cityscape didn’t look exactly like the New York that we know, or that existed in the ’60s in our world. Those are smart observations, I’ll say.”
Director Matt Shakman’s cast includes Julia Garner as the Silver Surfer, Ralph Ineson as the supervillain Galactus, and Natasha Lyonne, Paul Walter-Hauser, and John Malkovich in unspecified roles. This rebooted Four is the first iteration of the superfamily in a decade—previously, Fox produced three films—Fantastic Four (2005), Fantastic Four: The Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007), and a reboot, Fantastic Four (2015). Feige emphasized on the podcast how big a fan of the Fantastic Four he is and how crucial it is to return Marvel’s First Family to the big screen.
“I’m extremely excited by it because I think those characters are mainstays, are legendary pillars of the Marvel Universe that we’ve never gotten to play with or explore in a significant way outside of Doctor Strange: Multiverse of Madness and a few fun teases before, in the way that we’re doing it in that film. So I’m extremely excited for that.”
There’s a ton of excitement over the stellar cast, and in Matt Shakman, Marvel has a director who has experience with the studio, the era, and the material—he did incredible period work on Marvel’s first Disney+ series, WandaVision. Shakman directs from a script by Jeff Kaplan, Eric Pearson, Ian Springer, and Josh Friedman.
The Fantastic Four is set for a July 25, 2025 release.
For more on The Fantastic Four, check out these stories:
Featured image: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – JANUARY 19: Pedro Pascal attends the 26th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards at The Shrine Auditorium on January 19, 2020 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Rich Fury/Getty Images)
As we just celebrated the 55th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing on July 16, director Greg Berlanti’s latest offering is a stylish, charming Space Race rom-com that salutes the 400,000 people who worked on the program. Starring Channing Tatum and Scarlett Johansson (who pulls double duty as producer), Fly Me to the Moon (in theaters now) is based on a story by producer Keenan Flynn and writer Bill Kirstein and crafted by screenwriter Rose Gilroy. A delightful throwback to the classic Hollywood movies of yore, the visually lavish dramedy has a lot going for it, the most compelling of which may be in how it celebrates our commonality rather than our differences.
“It’s wild that we all came together to pull off what was impossible. All these young people—many of the engineers were in their mid-20s—dedicated themselves to a cause. I think it’s a patriotic and non-divisive film that touches on so many themes,” Gilroy says of her feature debut. It captures the sense of idealism and dedication of a generation of American explorers, scientists, and military men who came together to accomplish the impossible. “I was very inspired by NASA and what we had accomplished during the Apollo era. We wanted to highlight the importance of that accomplishment.”
Shot with full cooperation from NASA, the film includes never-before-seen archival footage and input from several flight directors who lived through this monumental time. Although it is not meant to be a historical retelling, Gilroy and the producing team took great pains to research the details so they could include as much real history as possible. “Research is a huge part of my writing process. You can find a lot of great details that really honor the time. At some point, the movie takes a different fictional turn, but it always has that original, fun nugget of truth, which allows for comedy and romance,” she reveals. While all the characters are fictional, many are based on an amalgamation of real-life characters and incidents.
Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum in “Fly Me to the Moon.” Courtesy Sony Pictures.
With eight months to go before what would become the greatest triumph of the Space Age, NASA launch director Cole Davis—Tatum’s true-blue, decorated former Air Force pilot—is under tremendous pressure to deliver when things at Cape Kennedy keep falling apart following years of budget cuts. When we first meet Cole, his no-frills, pragmatic approach is on full display, using a straw broom to detect a liquid hydrogen leak when no one else knows what to do. “I read a lot about NASA’s Wild West culture at the time, the innovative thinking and flying-by-the-seat-of-your-pants mentality that all the flight directors had,” Gilroy says. “In one of the oral transcripts, a flight director mentioned a cowboy Air Force guy who picked up a broom, started testing for the leak, and it caught on fire, so that became the ‘broom method.’ When I read that, I just knew it had to go into the script! It really captured the culture and spirit of the time. I have to credit Greg – he added so much heart to this. In the earlier versions, it didn’t open with that scene. But it’s such a perfect introduction to Cole.”
Channing Tatum in “Fly Me to the Moon,” in theaters now. Courtesy Apple TV+.
Unfortunately, the space program is plagued by waning public support amidst escalating tensions over the Vietnam War. In comes wily marketing maven Kelly Jones (Johansson), who is hired by a shady government official, Moe Burkus (Woody Harrelson), to sell the lunar mission to the citizenry and secure more Congressional funding. Partly based on real-life journalist and NASA consultant Julian Scheer—who developed a plan for media coverage of the space program—the always-resourceful Kelly will stop at nothing to inject much-needed pizazz into the program’s public image.
“NASA’s public affairs really had to market the Moon to the American public. Keenan and Bill initially based Kelly’s character on Julian, and it evolved into marketing,” Gilroy says. “At the time, it was hard for journalists to cover the space program since it was so complex. So, they brought Scheer in, who suggested broadcasting the Moon landing on live television. There was intense debate between him and the flight directors. Even though we took some liberties with how she sells the Moon, the original idea came from real life. Advertising also lends itself to the thematic question of what lines you’re willing to cross just to sell something.”
Scarlett Johansson in “Fly Me to the Moon.” Courtesy Apple TV+
After an adorable meet-cute at the famous Wolfie’s Restaurant, sparks fly between Kelly and Cole. However, her penchant for embellishing the truth puts her at odds with the straight-arrow Cole, who refers to her as a “fancy ad shark.” Johansson was instrumental in shaping Kelly, as Gilroy points out: “Scarlett kept going back to ‘How can they bend towards each other?’ so they can both learn from each other and improve. Kelly starts out standing for nothing—she’ll believe in whatever she’s paid to believe. Then, she meets someone like Cole, who is very genuine and deals with life and death and sacrifice every day. Somehow, they have to get along. What better way for her to learn than to be around people who do the right thing,” she elaborates. Thanks to the effortless chemistry between the two leads, their diverging personalities amplify the humor, drama, and tension. “I’m still pinching myself; Scarlett and Channing are absolutely magnetic, the best chemistry that you could ask for. And they’re so fun together and funny, too!”
After Kelly secures product placement deals from major corporations, Cole refuses to “turn this ship into a flying billboard.” Things get worse when she overrides his operational security concerns to add a 15-pound camera onboard the shuttle for a live telecast of the historic moment. “This really happened,” says Gilroy of the stunt that came from Scheer on the real mission. “It was a real concern that broadcasting a mission from outer space could go horribly wrong.” Part of Cole’s fierce focus and solemn demeanor are driven by the Apollo 1 mishap two years prior, where a flash fire in the command module killed three astronauts on his watch. “Cole represents several real-life flight directors who grappled with the grief and still push through with the looming deadline to launch Apollo 11. They had to fight through their grief to honor the dream,” Gilroy says of the guilt that still consumes him.
Channing Tatum in “Fly Me to the Moon.” Courtesy Apple TV+
Toying with the decades-long conspiracy theories that the Moon landing was faked, Gilroy’s script turns up the heat with dual narrative stakes. Now that the funds are flowing again and the public fully embraces the program, failure is not an option in America’s quest to beat Russia to the moon. So, Moe blackmails Kelly into shooting an Ersatz lunar landing that will replace the broadcast’s live feed (but with audio from the real mission piped in). “The Moon landing has been done so many times, so we took a fun approach to add some tension. You’ve seen it so many times, and yet you don’t know how it’s going to end. It’s the story you know from the perspective you don’t.”
One of the central themes is about the importance of truth and honesty. When they have to convince some Senators to vote for continued funding, Kelly adopts different [fake] accents depending on which one she is wooing at any particular moment. The toughest to win over is the ultra-conservative Senator Vanning (Joe Chrest), who thinks that science is part of the “war on religion in this country” and that NASA’s ships are “punchin’ holes in the sky, disruptin’ God’s work.” This element of the story also takes a page out of history. “At that dinner with Cole and Kelly, the Senator mentions the provocation of pride, alluding to the Apollo 1 tragedy,” Gilroy says. “The debate about how religion factors into the Moon landing was real. There was a Senator—not Vanning and from a different state—who was against the Apollo program, and that included many pastors as well. They blamed science for the floods and other natural disasters occurring at the time because they thought, ‘How could humans dare destroy God’s art?’”
Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum in “Fly Me to the Moon.” Courtesy Apple TV+
“There was a famous press conference, where a pastor grilled the flight directors and engineers about this, and one of them responded with the Bible verse about Jacob’s Ladder,” Gilroy reveals. In the film, Cole ultimately wins Vanning over with his own faith, inadvertently citing one of Mrs. Vanning’s favorite Psalms. “Cole tells him that when the astronauts returned from space after seeing God’s creation from afar, they believe in God even more, not less.” That was a rare moment where Kelly’s slick tactics took a back seat “as Cole wins Vanning over with something real. It’s a powerful moment where Cole makes the point of being honest while Kelly sits next to him sporting a fake Louisiana accent.” As he later says to her, “You can win people over just by being yourself.”
A breath of fresh air with its stirring optimism and aspirational sensibilities, this is the uplifting story we need to remind us of what this country can do when there is true commitment to a shared goal.
For more upcoming films from Sony Pictures, check out these stories:
The first trailer for James Mangold‘s A Complete Unknown has arrived, revealing a glimpse of Timothée Chalamet transforming into Bob Dylan in one of the most intriguing films set to land this winter.
A Complete Unknown was written by Mangold and Jay Cocks, and follows the legendary musician’s early years in New York City, leading up to the era-defining moment, one of the most iconic moments in music history, when the young Dylan shocked the folk music world when he plugged in an electric guitar during his 1965 Newport Folk Festival performance.
The trailer reveals Chalamet’s Dylan in Manhattan, highlighting some spots that all Dylan fans know are a huge part of his history, including Cafe Wha? and Hotel Chelsea. Chalamet sings Dylan’s 1963 protest song “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall,” giving us a taste of his vocal chops. The film will also explore the messy love triangle between Dylan, Monica Barbaro’s Joan Baez, and Elle Fanning’s Sylvie Russo, likely a version of Dylan’s girlfriend at the time, Suze Rotolo.
The cast includes Edward Norton as Pete Seeger, 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 trailer below. A Complete Unknown hits theaters in December:
Here’s the official synopsis:
Set in the influential New York music scene of the early 60s, A COMPLETE UNKNOWN follows 19-year-old Minnesota musician BOB DYLAN’s (Timothée Chalamet) meteoric rise as a folk singer to concert halls and the top of the charts – his songs and mystique becoming a worldwide sensation – culminating in his groundbreaking electric rock and roll performance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965.
For more stories on 20th Century Studios, Searchlight Pictures, Marvel Studios and what’s streaming or coming to
Catastrophic weather struck a chord with moviegoers over the weekend when Twisters blew apart box office expectations and raked in a whopping $81 million for its debut. The action spectacle, directed by Lee Isaac Chung (Minari) and filmed in Oklahoma, stars Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell, and Anthony Ramos as storm chasers determined to study tornadoes by driving right to the edge of wind-torn disaster.
Twisters co-stars six different tornadoes conjured by Industrial Light & Magic’s visual effects and Skywalker Sound staffers, including supervising sound editors Al Nelson and Bjørn Ole Schroeder, previously lauded for their Oscar-winning work on Top Gun: Maverick.
Speaking from Northern California, Nelson and Schroeder recount their first-hand encounters with tropical storms and explain their method for orchestrating Twisters‘ fearsome howls, thumps, and explosions.
Six different tornadoes confront Daisey Edgar-Jones’ Kate, Glen Powell’s Tyler, and Anthony Ramos. How did you capture the sounds and shape the “voice” for each of these tornadoes?
A: I appreciated you terming it that way because it was our intention for each tornado to have a voice and a personality. When we first met with Isaac more than a year ago, he explained that some tornadoes are bigger, and some are smaller. The one in the swimming pool is supposed to be terrifying, but the one in the end is kind of magical. We’re using a lot of the same layers; it’s just a matter of how we lean into them to depict each tornado as a different voice.
In gathering tornado sounds, did you digitally generate audio elements, or is everything analog?
Al: Almost exclusively, everything you hear is organic, whether it’s the pulse from a freight train or low-frequency sounds like helicopters. A horse bellowing might be one thing you would hear. There are some vocalizations in there that are meant to basically sweeten the wind. I also did a bunch of recordings during a tropical storm when I was quarantined in Florida. I cracked open the door, recorded the whipping wind, took that sound, and manipulated it to get these tonalities – –
Wait, sorry to interrupt. You’re saying that during the pandemic you actually…
A: I was on vacation in Florida visiting my folks, and conveniently, this tropical storm came through. When opportunity knocks, you take advantage of it. We got some great wind [sounds] that way.
You just happened to have the right recording equipment?
A: Oh yeah, everywhere I go, I bring recording gear.
Bjorn: [laughing] Yeah.
Al: And in our research, we spoke to people who often describe a tornado as being kind of like a freight train. And then there are variations, such as the howl, the pulse, and the whipping winds, and we added in our debris. I did use some sonic tricks. I’d run sounds through an LFO [Low-Frequency Oscillator] filter, which gave us this pulsing sound. All these very specific layers allowed us to orchestrate each tornado — sometimes more pulse, sometimes more howl, sometimes more debris — depending on what the story needed.
Bjorn: And I have to say Devendra Cleary, our main unit sound recordist, did a fantastic job. When you see the actors’ faces being blown back by the wind, like when Kate can barely open the truck door open, that’s not her acting — there’s this huge fan blasting her with wind. Most of what you hear in the film is production audio captured on set. You feel drawn to the emotions because Isaac had our actors in vehicles — there’s a person on top driving the actors around — but there’s another vehicle in front of them blasting air, blasting debris, throwing stuff at them. Our actors weren’t just in a truck with a blue screen behind them pretending there was a tornado. Then, our team at Skywalker was able to clean up the dialogue, so all that interaction you hear is coming from the set. It’s not ADR [Automated Dialogue Replacement], where the actors re-do their dialogue on a cozy, quiet stage.
Daisy Edgar-Jones as Kate in Twisters, directed by Lee Isaac Chung.
Sometimes, spectacle can overwhelm the characters in big action movies. In this case, it seems like you designed quiet moments that give the characters room to breathe.
Al: The tornado takes up so much bandwidth, but if you’re just loud all the time, you push your audience away. Working with our mixers Pete Horner and Chris Boyes, we found places to “reset.”
Glen Powell as Tyler in Twisters, directed by Lee Isaac Chung.
SPOILER ALERT
The movie builds toward a huge sequence in which a tornado rips through a movie theater, and all hell breaks loose. Could you break down that scene in terms of the audio elements?
Al: There’s so much happening — rain, hail, there’s a truck, a refinery exploding, people screaming and shouting.
Bjorn: An old-fashioned movie playing!
Al: Add to that the trolley car, and on top of that, there’s an EF-5 tornado moving at 200 miles an hour. They’d created such a convincing visual landscape for this tornado; what we tried to do, in combination with the actors, was to tell this story sonically. First, we put together all of the sounds we would need. “This is the sound for the tornado, this is the wind, this is debris, here are the vocals, here’s the truck.” Then what we do editorially is [tell the audience], “Pay attention to this.” We hear Kate’s footsteps, we hear Kate breathing, and there is not a lot of debris or wind as she runs to the truck and opens the door. Then, as she’s driving, Kate gets pelted by rain and hail, but we’ve removed that, and it’s mostly debris hits. Then Kate rides up to the oil refinery, everything stops, the music stops, and you hear the explosion. Then Kate keeps cruising forward, slams on the brake, drills [the truck] into the ground, releases the [sodium] polyacrylate into the tornado, we hear the tornado throb and thump, we cut back to the movie theater, the screen rips open and all we hear is the howl of the wind, and then we’re paying attention to the actors. In the same you’d orchestrate music, it’s like our mixers are dancing, Pete’s saying I’ve got a melody here we’ve got to push. Where’s Kate? Cut to the tornado throb – now let’s go into the cloud, cut to Tyler, more throb, less rain, more hail, less throb; now we need to hear the rip of the screen. Isaac’s telling us, “Oh no, now they’re really done for, there’s a big hole in the theater!” Very specific moments. What we’re doing is telling you, the viewer, what to pay attention to because if you hear rain, wind, music, and everything all at once, you will be overwhelmed. We decide what to put in the speaker to tell you the story.
(from left) Boone (Brandon Perea), Lily (Sasha Lane), Tyler (Glen Powell) and Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones) in Twisters, directed by Lee Isaac Chung.
You guys started working on Twisters in spring of 2023 and finished a couple of months ago. What’s been your takeaway from this experience?
Bjorn: Al and I have been fortunate to work on great projects like Top Gun, and there are similarities here in that Twisters is also a throwback to this type of wonderfully grounded tentpole action film. The science Kate comes up with is experimental but it could be real. Twisters has a basis in reality and that’s what Isaac wanted. He wanted to make something that wasn’t fantastical. He wanted to make something real.
The critical embargo has lifted on director Shawn Levy’s Deadpool & Wolverine, so the professionals are now weighing in on the long-awaited cinematic reunion of Ryan Reynolds’ Wade Wilson and Hugh Jackman’s legendary X-Man. Critics are mostly in agreement that fifteen years after their brief, unbeloved first pairing in 2009’s X-Men: Origins: Wolverine, Reynolds’ rebooted Deadpool, now a swaggering manchild with just as many quips as he has lethal moves, and Jackman’s beloved berserker mutant are a match made in movie heaven.
Empire critic Olly Richards had this to say about Jackman’s return as Wolverine: “While the film is ridiculous, Jackman plays Wolverine just as he always has: brimming with hurt and self-disgust. In a film with a million dick jokes, he manages to deliver a character arc that’s genuinely moving, achieving the greedy honor of a second worthy bow-out.”
The second worthy bow-out that Richards refers to is that Jackman’s Wolverine died a hero’s death in James Mangold’s 2017 banger Logan. Yet, thanks to the flexibility of the MCU’s multiverse and some creative problem-solving by the Deadpool & Wolverine writing team of Reynolds, Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, and Zeb Wells, Wolverine is back in a big way. That’s made possible by the inclusion of Matthew MacFayden’s Mr. Paradox, a member of the Time Variance Authority first introduced in Marvel’s Disney+ series Loki. The film’s big bad is Cassandra Nova, twin sister of the X-Men’s patriarch, Professor X, played with verve by The Crown‘s Emma Corin.
Richards is hardly alone in praising Jackman’s return.
“If you thought Hugh Jackman was incredible in Logan, then brace yourselves for another all-time performance from the greatest comic book movie actor of our generation in Deadpool & Wolverine,” writes ComicBook.com’s Rohan Patel. Vicky Jessop of the London Evening Standardadds, “Yes, please: we’ll take as many Wolverine crossovers as Marvel is willing to dish out, as long as they taste as good as this one.”
Critics are also saying that the film is a big, bawdy boost for Marvel, too.
“[Deadpool & Wolverine] is more amusing and electric—more alive—than any MCU installment in years, and it impressively integrates Deadpool’s distinctive R-rated personality into the decidedly PG-13 franchise,” writes The Daily Beast‘s Nick Schrager.
CNN’s Brian Lowry writes, “Beneath the outlandishness, half-dozen belly laughs, and nerd-centric beats resides sweet nostalgia for the last quarter-century of superhero movies while demonstrating that Marvel Studios possesses the power to laugh at itself.”
Let’s take a look at what some of the critics are saying. Deadpool and Wolverine will be released in theaters on July 26.
“It’s hard to imagine what more you could want from a movie with this pairing. Marvel has found its mojo again.”
Deadpool & Wolverine brings the Marvel mutants into the MCU, in cinemas this week.
LFG, indeed. With an absolutely gonzo energy, Deadpool & Wolverine goes to some surprising places and pays tribute to the Fox Marvel era. But the return of Hugh Jackman is a key reason why this one’s special. https://t.co/Hgu5CeyYRe
#DeadpoolAndWolverine pleasantly surprised me in ways that I am still unpacking. Its few flaws are vastly outweighed by an exhilarating and surprisingly heartfelt story. I truly can not believe that it exists.
While everyone who is even moderately enthused for Deadpool & Wolverine knows—and really, the vast majority of folks going to see the film in theaters are anything but moderately enthused—the Ryan Reynolds/Hugh Jackman two-hander features a lot of epic cameos. Some of these have been revealed, like the return of Dafne Keen’s Laura from James Mangold’s killer 2017 film Logan, which was, of course, the movie that saw Jackman’s Wolverine sacrifice himself for Laura and die a hero.
While the most recent trailer revealed Keen’s involvement (despite her insisting she wasn’t in the film, taking a page from Andrew Garfield’s book from Spider-Man: No Way Home), it merely teased other characters without revealing who plays them. Perhaps no character has intrigued people as much as Lady Deadpool, one of the variants that Wade Wilson (Reynolds, obviously) comes into contact with as he and Wolverine hopscotch through time. The latest trailer gave us our longest look yet at her, which still kept her mostly hidden. What we did see, however, was that Lady Deadpool has long blonde hair. This counts as a genuine clue for a film that’s keeping almost all its secrets close to its claws.
So let’s speculate about a recent Instagram post from Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds’s wife, who shared an image of her on set, fueling speculation she’s the woman behind Lady Deadpool (their hair certainly seems a match.) This could easily be a calculated misdirection meant to throw us off the scent—Marvel is very good at keeping their secrets, so this Lively post could really be about her celebrating women’s influence on Reynolds’ new film and nothing more.
Lady Deadpool is but one of the characters who will feature, however briefly, in director Shawn Levy’s film. The long-awaited pairing of Reynolds and Jackman means that it was almost certainly a film in which any star would want a brief role. Considering the film plays around in the multiverse, thanks to the involvement of the Time Variance Authority (first introduced in Loki), there’s no shortage of potential characters, new and iconic, who could pop up.
We’ll soon find out who’s playing Lady Deadpool and all the other cameos in store for us. Deadpool & Wolverine hits theaters on July 26.
For more on Deadpool & Wolverine, check out these stories:
