“There’s a romance to Arthur in the first film, like when he dances in the bathroom, Arthur has music in him, and that was a logical leaping off point for the sequel,” says Joker: Folie à Deux co-writer/director Todd Phillips about Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) at the start of a new featurette on the upcoming sequel’s music.
“We started talking about music very early on,” star Joaquin Phoenix adds. “We wanted it to feel dirty in a way that people don’t typically see. We had to perform live and perform the songs that maybe weren’t the most beautiful renditions…but there was something very exciting about that.”
So what are the songs? The Folie à Deux team isn’t telling, but Phillips reveals that the film’s music is stuff that Arthur would have grown up listening to, songs that his mom (played in Joker by Frances Conroy) would have played.
“There’s music within him; it’s messy, chaotic, it’s expressing the complexity of love, and in a way brings Arthur to life,” says co-star Lady Gaga, someone who knows a thing or two about a tune. Gaga plays the Joker’s main squeeze, Harley Quinn, and her casting gave the music-mad sequel a multitalented superstar who will lend her very real vocal chops to the story of their romance.
We learned, via Variety, that Folie á Deux will unveil at least 15 reinterpretations of well-known songs, with a few possible new songs thrown into the mix. “Details regarding who would pen the tracks or sing the numbers are unknown,” Variety‘s Clayton Davis wrote. “We do know, according to sources, Hildur Guðnadóttir, the Oscar-winning composer of the first Joker film, is said to ‘infuse her distinctive, haunting [music] cues’ into each number.”
Along with this new featurette, we also got a fresh teaser, giving us a new glimpse at the return of Phoenix’s sad sack comedian turned killer clown. The new look pits reality versus the Joker’s delusion and Gotham’s madness. The fact is that Arthur, posing as Gotham’s representative for the downtrodden, is actually a murderer. “His depraved acts of violence led to rioting by his followers, and they’re still willing to commit acts of violence in his name,” the teaser reveals. We have a hunch Arthur won’t spend any time in Folie à Deux repenting, but he will be carrying a tune, on or off key.
It’s a bold choice to pivot from the overwhelming successful formula of the original Joker, a realist, decidedly dark, R-rated psychological portrait of a man succumbing to his own madness, into a jukebox musical. Yet, the original Joker was bold in its brutally unheroic, Batman-less vision of a Gotham careening off the rails while an isolated, angry man was dancing in the rain.
Check out the new teaser below. Joker: Folie à Deux arrives on October 4.
Featured image: Caption: (L to r) JOAQUIN PHOENIX as Arthur Fleck/Joker and LADY GAGA as Lee Quinzel in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “JOKER: FOLIE À DEUX,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Niko Tavernise
In a moody new teaser for HBO Max’s The Penguin, we’re taken back to the gritty, grimy streets of Gotham as envisioned by Matt Reeves in his excellent 2022 film The Batman, which introduced Robert Pattinson as the new Caped Crusader and which included a standout performance from Colin Farrell as Oswald Cobblepot, the rotund gangster better known as the Penguin.
The teaser makes it clear that The Penguin exists in a dark, crime-infested Gotham caught in a dangerous moment. Batman and his ally in the Gotham Police Department, Jim Gordon (Jeffrey Wright), had spent the better part of The Batman trying to catch the Riddler (Paul Dano), while Gotham’s powerful underworld was run by Carmine Falcone (John Turturro). When the Riddler took out Falcone, he left a power vacuum at the top of Gotham’s criminal pecking order that the Penguin was all too eager and capable to fill. The Penguin will follow his attempt to swim to the top of the criminal food chain.
Things won’t be easy, however, for Oswald as he tries to control a shadowy world of gangsters, especially Carmine Falcone’s daughter, Sofia (Cristin Milioti), freshly freed from Arkham Asylum and not one to so easily hand over power. Gotham’s mean streets are unforgiving, even for someone as cunning and power-hungry as Oswald Cobblepot.
Cristin Milioti is Sofia Falcone and Colin Farrell is Oswald Cobblepot in “The Penguin.” Photo courtesy of Max.
Joining Farrell and Milioti are Clancy Brown as Salvatore Maroni, Shohreh Aghdashloo as Nadia Maroni, Carmen Ejogo as Eve Karlo, and Michael Kelly as Johnny Vitti.
Check out the teaser here:
Whoever runs the streets, runs Gotham.
The new HBO Original Limited Series #ThePenguin premieres September 19 at 9pm ET on Max, and then Sundays at 9pm ET starting September 29. pic.twitter.com/lYTNG7keIi
With Agatha All Along, Marvel Studios’ latest Disney+ series is directly connected to its very first—the stunning period piece WandaVision, which tracked Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen)’s witchy work in resurrecting her lost love, Vision (Paul Bettany) by mesmerizing an entire town in New Jersey. Wanda’s sweet, bubbly neighbor Agatha (Kathryn Hahn) seemed another piece in Wanda’s dimensional chess match, easily moved and manipulated. Yet for fans of WandaVision, we learned that wasn’t the case at all—Agatha turned out to be a powerful sorceress in her own right and was only vanquished (briefly, it turns out) at the very end in a climatic battle with Wanda and Vision.
For the latest look at Agatha All Along, we’re taken back to the events of WandaVision, where Agatha Harkness finally revealed her powers and asked for something simple in return: for Wanda to hand over her own magic to “someone who knows what to do with it.” Wanda declined, and the fireworks followed.
In defeating Agatha, Wanda locked her in Westview, the town frozen in happy compliance with Wanda’s spell. Agatha was stripped of her witchy abilities and re-rendered the obliging neighbor and housewife. Yet Agatha All Along finds our anti-heroine back on the prowl, newly invested with powers and on a mission, with a coven of other discarded witches, to reclaim the power they believe was taken or denied them.
Agatha All Along tracks Agatha as she attempts to complete the Witches’ Road, a brutal gauntlet of trials that, should one make it to the end, reward them with all she’s missing. Joining Hahn in the cast are Sasheer Zamata, Ali Ahn, Maria Dizzia, Paul Adelstein, Miles Gutierrez-Riley, and Okwui Okpokwasili, with Debra Jo Rupp, Patti LuPone, and Aubrey Plaza.
WandaVision showrunner Jac Schaeffer leads the new series in the same role and serves as director of the pilot episode.
Check out the featurette here. Agatha All Along streams on Disney+ on September 18.
For all things Marvel Studios, check out these stories:
About 15 years ago, I was editing a magazine out of this small audio shop off Cahuenga Blvd. in Los Angeles, and in walked Giovanni Ribisi. At the time, the actor was already ten years removed from one of movie history’s most harrowing death scenes in Saving Private Ryan and was coming off the recent billion-dollar success of Avatar. But Ribisi wasn’t there for anything acting-related. He was looking for an audio cable for a recent camera purchase. The drop-in turned out to be just one piece in a decade and a half-long attraction he had to work behind the camera. Ribisi would go on to shoot short films and music videos but wouldn’t step into his first feature film cinematographer role until writer-director JT Mollner’s must-see horror thriller Strange Darling.
Giovanni Ribisi on the set of “Strange Darling.” Courtesy Magenta Light Studios.
The two met through a mutual friend, and after sharing a love for celluloid, Mollner would casually send Ribisi scripts. Strange Darling (which had a different title at the time) caught his attention. I asked Ribisi if an emotional connection to the characters made him react the way he did. “For me, it was not necessarily as much of an emotional connection to the characters as much as it was to the overall form and writing that jumped off the page to me. I think I’ve said this before, but within 15 minutes, I was calling him and begging him to be involved in the project.”
After watching Strange Darling you’ll understand why Ribisi wanted to be part of the film. Mollner’s story takes place over six chapters and follows two characters – The Lady (Willa Fitzgerald) and The Demon (Kyle Gallner) – on a bloody path of lust (and possibly love) but through an unconventional lens that exploits horror tropes while pulling the rug out from underneath you several times. But the plot twists are not gimmicky. There’s an undeniable weight to them that deepens the story. And making it all work is how the narrative unfolds in a nonlinear timeline. Ribisi agrees.
“Many people will discount a nonlinear plot structure because it’s been done before, and it’s very, quote-unquote, Tarantino-esque. But this [script] set itself apart from that. This was a version of deconstructing a timeline without emulation of other movies. And I think going back to character, the structure and the sequence of Strange Darling, as it was written, really spoke to the impetus or a certain deep character DNA that, for me, it was just undeniable.”
Giovanni Ribisi and JT Mollner on set. Courtesy Magenta Light Studios.
Also undeniable is the rich imagery, and the movie makes a point to tell the audience why it is with an opening title card that says Strange Darling was shot on 35mm film. The choice of celluloid adds to the darkness bubbling up throughout the entire movie. Vivid primary colors connect a certain veracity to the characters. Red plays to the chaos and uncertainty, while blue fuels the intimacy between them. The former can be found in almost every scene, from the costumes and wigs to the color of a car or the walls of a room – all simmering a visual fire.
Willa Fitzgerald in “Strange Darling.” Courtesy Magenta Light Studios.
“With red, there’s a lot of symbolism. Vittorio Storaro [Italian cinematographer] gets really deep into color and symbology, which some people discount, but I think it’s incredible. We just wanted to have something very striking, and also, it was just purely a reactionary decision in the sense that we want to do what everybody else is not doing.” Red illuminates a sense of strength to The Lady character as well. “She’s a very powerful woman,” says Ribisi. “She doesn’t do things in a mild way. Not to say that she’s not nuanced, but when she goes, she goes.”
Willa Fitzgerald is the Lady and Kyle Gallner is the Demon. Courtesy Magenta Light Studios.
In a scene where the two characters first meet, they have a deep conversation while sitting in a truck under thick blue lighting. “For me, it’s one of my favorite scenes, not for the photography but because of the actors. It’s an eight-and-a-half page scene, and after all that unrest in the beginning, I fall in love with them. I get seduced especially by her, and I’m rooting for them,” he says. “We took about two days to shoot that on a soundstage, and I wanted to shoot it so I could get a thousand-foot mag right up to her face and his face, but we couldn’t get approved removing the front engine compartment and windshield off. We were going to put them in these black holes and surround them with blue light. But at the end of the day, I’m glad that it worked out like where we ultimately decided to shoot French overs.”
When asked if he has an actor’s intuition when it comes to cinematography, Ribisi shares that he “approaches photography from an intuitive character perspective.” “It’s purely the thing that fascinates me. You look at Harris Savides, and according to the legend, he used to say, ‘I don’t like actors, I like environments.’ And then you have other people who are really focused on faces. I remember working with Janusz Kaminski [Saving Private Ryan] before we went off to the bootcamp, and Janusz, who I didn’t know at the time, came in and was sitting down and I was like, ‘Oh, who are you? And he said, ‘I’m the cinematographer.’ And he was just hanging out, looking at our faces just sort of studying. And it was just wonderful. I’ll never forget that. So, from a cinematographer’s perspective, I want to understand what the character is experiencing. And I either want to get out of the way of what the actor is doing and simply let the actor do it or if there’s something that we can contribute to do that. It becomes an intuitive thing so I can’t help but look at it through the proverbial and literal lens like that.”
Strange Darling is in theaters now.
Featured image: Willa Fitzgerald in “Strange Darling.” Courtesy Magenta Light Studios.
Universal Pictures has invited you back to the world of dinosaurs living in our midst.
Their latest Jurassic World film now has an official title, a revealed plot, and two brand-new images. Director Gareth Edwards is at the helm of Jurassic World: Rebirth, which stars Scarlett Johansson, Jonathan Bailey, and Mahershala Ali, all of whom are pictured in the new images.
Jurassic World: Rebirth is set five years after the events of Jurassic World Dominion. “The planet’s ecology has proven largely inhospitable to dinosaurs. Those remaining exist in isolated equatorial environments with climates resembling the one in which they once thrived,” the film’s press notes state. “The three most colossal creatures within that tropical biosphere hold the key to a drug that will bring miraculous life-saving benefits to humankind.”
You know what this means—our stars will have to locate those dinosaurs and secure those DNA samples, and herein is where adventure awaits. Johansson plays covert operations expert Zora Bennett, who is contracted to lead a team on a top-secret mission to locate and procure those samples from the world’s three most massive dinosaurs. Ali plays Duncan Kincaid, Zora’s trusted team leader, and Bailey plays paleontologist Dr. Henry Loomis. There’s a hitch in the operation; however, when Zora’s team comes into contact with a civilian family whose boating expedition was capsized by marauding aquatic dinos. Zora, her team, and the family are then stranded on an island “where they come face-to-face with a sinister, shocking discovery that’s been hidden from the world for decades,” the press notes read.
Mahershala Ali is Duncan Kincaid in JURASSIC WORLD REBIRTH, directed by Gareth Edwards
Johansson, Ali, and Bailey are joined by Rupert Friend (Homeland, Obi-Wan Kenobi), who appears as Big Pharma representative Martin Krebs, and Manuel Garcia-Rulfo (The Lincoln Lawyer, Murder on the Orient Express), who plays Reuben Delgado, the father of the shipwrecked civilian family. Luna Blaise (Manifest), David Iacono (The Summer I Turned Pretty), and Audrina Miranda (Lopez vs. Lopez) play Reuben’s family. The film also features, as members of Zora and Krebs’ crews, Philippine Velge (Station Eleven), Bechir Sylvain (BMF), and Ed Skrein (Deadpool).
Edwards directs from a script by the original Jurassic Park and Lost World: Jurassic Park scribe David Koepp, based on characters created by Michael Crichton. The film is produced by longtime Jurassic producers Frank Marshall and Patrick Crowley and executive produced by Steven Spielberg, Denis L. Stewart, and Jim Spencer.
Jurassic World: Rebirth is set to hit theaters on July 2, 2025.
For more on Jurassic World, check out these stories:
Featured image: L to R: Jonathan Bailey as paleontologist Dr. Henry Loomis and Scarlett Johansson as skilled covert operations expert Zora Bennett in JURASSIC WORLD REBIRTH, directed by Gareth Edwards.
For her feature directing debut, actor-turned-director Zoë Kravitz (Big Little Lies, The Batman) has chosen a visually luscious, sinister psychological thriller, which she co-wrote with screenwriter E.T. Feigenbaum. Exploring themes ranging from trauma and misogyny to sexual exploitation and greed, Blink Twice also shines a light on the vast chasm between the haves and have-nots. Cocktail cater-waitresses Frida (Naomi Ackie) and roommate Jess (Alia Shawkat) are struggling to make ends meet when they are lured by the seemingly endearing and handsome tech mogul, Slater King (Channing Tatum), to his unlimited, all-expense-paid party vacation on his private island.
And here is when you heed the cautionary notion of “when it seems too good to be true, it usually is.” Sure enough, as soon as they arrive at Slater’s palatial hacienda, everyone is “invited” to surrender their smartphones, you know, to get the most out of this heavenly retreat. When champagne-filled days by the pool bleed into wild hedonistic nights, some of the female guests begin to lose track of time, and with that, large swaths of their collective memory. But when Jess goes missing, the terrifying truth behind the façade unravels.
Production took place at the Hacienda Temozon Sur in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, where production designer Roberto Bonelli (Madame Web, The Romanoffs) crafted the sumptuous set. We spoke to Bonelli about crafting the look for Kravitz’s trippy, twitchy thriller.
Zoë Kravitz set out to make a psychological thriller that feels bright and beautiful. How did that influence your color palette to foreshadow what’s really going on at King’s private island?
The colors set a tone and mood, creating suspense and anxiety. There are a lot of greens naturally in the hacienda, and we took some of that into the interiors and added them to the pillows and deck chairs.
There is a lot of focus on bright red, for instance, in the flowers and the raspberries floating in the glasses of champagne. What does this mean?
Yeah, we have a lot of red from the building, the flowers, the red chair in Slater’s room, and other props. Yellow was the secondary color. The blue here is more like the reds in other films—it’s a warning color subliminally telling you that something’s off.
The crimson flower is very prominent. It shows up as décor in the ladies’ bedrooms, but it’s also related to the memory wipe. What kind of flower is it?
At first, we stumbled upon a local hibiscus—the Hibiscus tiliaceus—which was imported to the Yucatán many years ago. But it was too complicated to use: it’s yellow in the morning, turns red in the afternoon, and falls off the tree by evening. We thought about making a fake version using latex but ended up using this lily from a local market two hours away in Mérida. We had to alter them by pulling out some of the center bits and dipping them in curry powder—because we didn’t want to paint them—so it would get that ochre yellow interior, like pollen. We wanted it to be special and recognizable since it’s supposed to only grow on the island.
The cast and some of the crew actually stayed at the hacienda during production. How did that work as you prepped the location?
We stayed there when we first went scouting. Then, I came in with the construction crew, then it was the set decorators, the ADs, and the producers. By the time the cast arrived, we moved out since it couldn’t fit all of us. So, we all got to stay there to get a feel for the space, which was really interesting. It was a functional hotel and we just booked it for the shoot.
How did your team transform the hacienda into a dreamy yet eerie mansion on a remote island?
We prepped in warehouses for two weeks. Then, a week of rehearsals, test shoots, and pre-lights before filming there for six weeks. After that, we had a week to get it back in order. We got rid of everything that showed it was a hotel—all the signage, safety rails by the pool, etc., changed the area surrounding the pool and added big marble slabs. We designed our own deck chairs because we wanted something casual that didn’t look like it was in a hotel. The façade in the pool had too much red, so we put a wall up with greens and the red flowers. We painted all the rooms, all the interiors and bedrooms, and did some work to the ceiling where the dinner area is to hang those heavy lamps. So, it was quite a challenge to get it all back to a fully operating hotel just one week after we wrapped.
The film is visually stunning with vibrant colors and gorgeous visuals. How did the hacienda reflect Slater’s sadistic ways?
The hacienda has been around since the 19th century, so it has more history and culture than a modern mansion to reflect that Slater is pretending to be reformed. He claims he’s not this yuppie anymore, but someone who appreciates culture and art. It wasn’t just about decorating with good taste, it also has to reflect that it’s all fake. Slater would’ve definitely had a designer. So, I invented this alter ego designer who came up his décor. When Slater’s guests first arrive, they’re wowed by everything because it looks very tasteful, but gradually, we know that something’s off.
Slater’s friend and personal chef, Cody (Simon Rex), serves up delicious couture meals every evening. So much happens at those dinners. How did you set the stage?
That was in the open space in the industrial section of the hacienda. The food is supposed to be overly pretentious—local ingredients from the island, the chickens that Slater raises at the hacienda, exotic fish flown in from everywhere in the world, and some of the desserts are reimagined based on childhood favorites, like Cody’s “pop rocks in a tangerine mojito sorbet.” The presentation was minimalist but graphic. During two of the dinners, they have a blackout. When it’s lit by candlelight, the colors need to be stronger. So, we developed dishes that were yummy-looking, but also very graphic to impress the guests.
What about that red chair in Slater’s room—why was he so obsessed with it?
That’s his latest impulse purchase, which is a little pretentious. He gets frustrated because it doesn’t fit with anything. It needed to look like a designer chair, over-the-top and recognizable. But since bad things happen in and around it, legally, it couldn’t resemble any existing designer chair. So, it was quite challenging to design. It’s kind of designed by my alter ego, who’s really pretentious, but that’s not me.
For all the furniture, planters, and bits and pieces around the set, I had a wonderful team, including the fantastic set decorator, Paula Enriquez. We built the dinner table and chairs around it, the lamps—all this was in close development with my set decorator and Paula’s team. We bought a lot of the pieces locally too.
Frida is perplexed when she encounters the room with shelves of red gift bags. Was that in the hacienda?
Yes, that room is set inside a traditional Mayan construction, which are huts with stone walls and a thatch roof. We built this showcase bookshelf, put some milky Plexiglass at the end, and then lit it up from behind.
How much of this was shot in the hacienda versus on a soundstage?
We built Slater’s office and foyer on a soundstage in Mexico City, including part of the terrace where a lot of things happen. That space didn’t exist in the hacienda. It was a great opportunity to add our own colors and come up with cool floor designs. You may notice that the blue and white chessboard that a couple of the characters were playing with has the exact same color pattern as that room.We added these subliminal clues.
What was in Frida’s room/bungalow to foreshadow what Slater and his sick pals are really doing to these women?
We wanted to maintain the originality and minimalist style of the hacienda, but also make it luxurious. The bathroom is the most important aspect since many things happen there. We painted and cladded it with a local marble from the Yucatán, which has this creamy, warm marble look. We put in a fake floor because there’s a lot of falling around on it, and we matched it to the marble on the low walls. The first thing that sprang to my mind was her room should be blue, which played well with the facial masks the women had at the spa. This is when you realize that something is off, whenever blue comes up.
Blink Twice is playing in theaters now.
For more on Amazon Prime Video, check out these stories:
Twenty-six years after Tim Burton and Michael Keaton delivered their roguishly charming 1988 horror comedy, the dynamic duo, along with other original Beetlejuice stars Winona Ryder and Catherine O’Hara, were on hand in Venice to unveil their long-awaited sequel, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. The wait was worth it.
VENICE, ITALY – AUGUST 28: Willem Dafoe, Monica Bellucci Justin Theroux, Catherine O’Hara, Winona Ryder, Tim Burton, Michael Keaton and Jenna Ortega attend a photocall for the movie “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” during the 81st Venice International Film Festival at on August 28, 2024 in Venice, Italy. (Photo by Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images)
Burton and his cast were welcomed to Venice with a boisterous standing ovation in Venice before their film’s world premiere on Wednesday night. Burton, Keaton, Ryder, O’Hara, and newcomers Jenna Ortega, Monica Bellucci, Justin Theroux, and Willem Dafoe were on hand.
Warm reception for Beetlejuice here at #Venezia81 as Tim Burton and crew receive nearly 4-minute standing ovation for the Warner Bros. sequel. Here’s Burton, Jenna Ortega, Winona Ryder, Monica Bellucci, Justin Theroux, Willem Dafoe and the man himself, Michael Keaton, receiving… pic.twitter.com/zoaYtJ8b9I
Beetlejuice became a cult classic, another Burton stunner that was one of the films that defined 1980s cinema. Getting the gang back together for a reunion was so sweet, they had to name it twice. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice finds Keaton returning to the trickster spirit he inhabited, once again unleashing his debauched ghoul-ery on Winona Ryder’s Lydia Deetz and Catherine O’Hara’s Delia Deetz now that the Deetz’s have returned to Winter River decades later. Only there are new Deetz’s for Beetlejuice to play with—Jenna Ortega’s Astrid Deetz, Lydia’s daughter, is forced to learn the hard way about her mother and grandmother’s very agile and talkative skeleton in the closet.
The Deetz family has returned to Winter River following a tragedy. Lydia is still haunted by her experience with Beetlejuice two decades ago, but like she was as a teen, the rebellious Astrid discovers the mysterious model of the town in the attic and is prepared to follow in her mother’s footsteps and conjure the trickster demon’s spirit from the underworld.
The critics seem as delighted as the Venice crowd was. “Tim Burton is great again! His latest, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice isn’t just a nostalgic retread — it’s a jolting reminder of what makes the director so darkly seductive,” writes New York Magazine. “Michael Keaton seems to have more energy than he did 35 years ago, bouncing off the purgatorial walls with hilarious gusto,” writes Empire Magazine.
Tim Burton is great again! His latest, ‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,’ isn’t just a nostalgic retread — it’s a jolting reminder of what makes the director so darkly seductive. https://t.co/wdv06iABEC
#BeetlejuiceBeetlejuice Review: “It’s rewarding to have Tim Burton back in full creative command of the humor, the fantastical imagination and the gleeful morbidity on which he built his name”
Burton directs from a screenplay by Alfred Gough & Miles Millar (Wednesday) and a story by Gough & Millar and Seth Grahame-Smith, based on characters created by Michael McDowell and Larry Wilson. Burton’s creative team includes longtime collaborators like four-time Oscar nominee composer Danny Elfman, who worked on the original Beetlejuice and a slew of other Burton classics like Scrooged (1988) and Batman (1989), and four-time Oscar-winning costume designer Colleen Atwood, whose work with Burton includes Edward Scissorhands (1990) Sleepy Hollow, (1999) Sweeney Todd (2007),and Alice in Wonderland (2010), which won her one of her Oscars. Burton also deployed members of his Wednesday team, like production designer Mark Scruton and editor Jay Prychidny, as well as creature effects and special makeup FX creative supervisor Neal Scanlan. Hair and makeup designer Christine Blundell gave Beetlejuice his signature dead-but-lively looks.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice haunts theaters on September 6.
Featured image: Caption: MICHAEL KEATON as Beetlejuice in Warner Bros. Pictures’ comedy, “BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Parisa Taghizadeh
In the last installment of our conversation with Deadpool & Wolverine’s second unit director and stunt coordinator George Cottle, we covered the hysterical dance/action opening sequence and what it took to shoot the bone-crunching brawl inside a real Honda Odyssey minivan. Smashing box office records on every level—the first R-rated movie to open domestically over $200 million, the sixth biggest domestic opening of all time—the film joined the billion-dollar club just 23 days after opening in theaters, surpassing Joker to become the highest-grossing R-rated movie worldwide.
Deadpool’s effort to save his universe takes him and his unlikely buddy Wolverine to the Void, a wasteland where useless things go to rot. Echoing the repercussions from the real-life Disney-Fox merger, this is where we find the superheroes from many of the Fox Marvel films, which allowed for a string of stunning cameos, callbacks, and Easter eggs. Some of these include Wesley Snipes’ surprise return as Blade (after 20 years!), Channing Tatum’s deliciously wacky turn as Gambit, and Jennifer Garner’s sai-wielding assassin Elektra. Another cameo that was a real shocker was Henry Cavill’s ephemeral appearance as Cavillrine!
Cottle breaks down how they handled all that cameo madness.
Now let’s get to the wild cameos that thrilled fans. What went into choreographing the action with Gambit, Blade, Elektra, and X-23 (Dafne Keen) as they battled in the Void?
We had endless meetings with Shawn and Ryan about where we wanted to go with the characters, and Zoom calls with Channing and Wesley about what angle they wanted us to take. It was really tricky because these were all spoilers. So, whenever we were doing stunt rehearsals, we had to be so careful. Blade is iconic and Gambit is so distinctive with his deck of cards. When a couple of the stunt guys heard we were designing a scene with throwing cards, they immediately knew it was Gambit! So, trying to control that was difficult. We chipped away at that sequence with four to six stunt guys, shot little fight clips, and added the visual effects before taking it to Shawn and Ryan. For the stunt viz, we brought in 50 stunt people, including the leads’ doubles, and shot for a week to come up with five minutes of footage. Then, the editors worked their magic with our viz to narrow it down to what we really needed to get [with the actors on main unit].
How long did you have the actors for this sequence?
A week for the main unit shoot. So, we had to be surgical in how we shot and edited it, and the way Josh [McLaglen] our first AD had to schedule it so that not one second was wasted with our heroes. As soon as Jen, Wesley, Channing, and Dafne heard that this was going to happen, they started training. We shot little stunt rehearsals for them to practice and they did it on their own time. They worked tirelessly to get these routines down. By the time they got to London for the week of rehearsals, they already looked so bloody amazing. We just fine-tuned it and were ready to shoot.
What was it like to work on Blade’s sequences?
Blade was so influential to me when I was a kid. I saw it the first week it was released. Things like the Blade boomerang and the way he shot and pinned the guy to the wall, I really wanted to bring those moments into this.
Channing had a really good understanding of the character and helped bring him to life. We knew he wanted to use the cards and the bo-staff—in the comic book, he can split the staff. Gambit is incredibly acrobatic and Channing is one of the most talented physical performers for an actor that I’ve ever worked with. What he brought to the table was incredible.
How do you make sure the action makes sense for the characters while also moving the story forward?
That’s a very good point. We wanted to get as much of it in-camera as we could—I don’t think there was any of the fights that we didn’t capture in-camera. So much of it was driven by the characters, Ryan and Shawn really wanted to pay tribute to these incredible characters that fans have admired for years. We’d get texts from them of images from a comic book of something they wanted to incorporate. When I showed it to the stunt guys, some would know which issue and which page that came from! Even down to the Wolverine run, where he digs his claws and feet into the ground and kind of gallops on all fours, being able to bring that to life was such a fun moment. Grounding these characters makes it so much more visceral and real, you feel like you’re there with these characters.
When Deadpool and Wolverine go up against Deadpool Corps on the street and through the bus, how was that accomplished?
We shot it as a owner [a scene shot without cuts] and did that over a week on a 150-foot track with a remote camera rig. We shot it in four parts because there were over 100 people in that sequence and we didn’t have 100 stunt people and 100 Deadpool suits. So, we did it in waves of 40 people, in a way that we’d be able to stitch it together like one giant take—we shot it almost like a play. From the beginning to the back of the bus, the whole thing stitched together as one take. The fight you see was what we shot, they just picked the best parts.
How did you manage the choreography and training for something with so many moving parts?
Once we started filming, Alex and Dan were on set every day working with the actors. Whenever they had a spare moment, Liang and the other stunt coordinators worked on it on and off for maybe five or six weeks. Once we were within striking distance, we picked a week where second unit wasn’t filming and did a full stunt viz with 50 stunt people and the stunt doubles as a proof of concept. Ryan and Shawn loved it! Ryan sent me a very lovely text about how happy he was—that’s exactly what he’d imagined since the first Deadpool, including the song (Madonna’s “Like A Prayer”). His ability to dream these things up and work with Shawn to elevate them to the next level is just incredible. Bringing that sequence to life meant a lot to us.
Deadpool & Wolverine is playing in theaters now.
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Deadpool himself, Ryan Reynolds, has confirmed that Channing Tatum’s card-slinging superhero Gambit survived the climactic clash at the end of Deadpool & Wolverine. Reynolds shared a deleted scene on social media, proving that Gambit made it through the battle at the film’s end that included a host of other long-ago discarded superheroes, including Jennifer Garner’s Elektra, Wesley Snipes’ Blade, and Dafne Keen’s Laura/X23.
Gambit, Elektra, Blade, and Laura joined Deadpool and Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) to face off against Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin) in the Void, with Nova boasting her own army of mutants and superheroes from films past. It was a heroic choice on Gambit and the team’s part, as they were working to draw lethal attention to themselves and give Deadpool and Wolverine enough time to save their own timelines, essentially sacrificing themselves for a future none of them would see. Well, now we know Gambit made it, and the future is, if not bright, at least visible. Might Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige have plans to give Gambit some screen time in an upcoming MCU film? Tatum’s turn as Gambit was a major crowd-pleaser, and Tatum is beloved, so the stars finally seemed aligned for this to happen.
The deleted scene Reynolds shared shows Gambit walking through a bunch of slain henchmen as the camera pans up in time to catch him turning around and grinning. Brief, sure, but also undeniable proof Gambit made it. It’s well-known that Tatum tried to get a Gambit move off the ground for years, but the dream more or less died when Disney acquired 21st Century Fox in 2019. Or so we thought. The fact that Gambit survived the lunacy of Deadpool & Wolverine, and Tatum’s turn as the Louisiana-born mutant became so iconic, means we shouldn’t yet count out his appearance in an upcoming MCU film.
Tatum was grateful to Reynolds for giving him the chance to finally play the character. In his own social media post on the weekend Deadpool & Wolverine burst into theaters, he shared his gratitude:
“[Reynolds] fought for me and Gambit. I will owe him probably forever. Cause I’m not sure how I could ever do something that would be equal to what this has meant to me,” Tatum wrote. “I love ya buddy. Shawn Levy as well. Truly such a brilliant creator on every single level. All things happen for a reason. 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!!”
Reynolds has made it clear he’s rooting for Tatum to play Gambit a whole lot more. In a post on Twitter, Reynolds expressed how intriguing of a character Remy LeBeau/Gambit is, and how nobody on the planet could do Gambit justice better than Tatum:
Gambit is a guy Chan was born to play. His story is similar to mine in that he spent a decade trying to put the most comic-accurate version of Gambit on the big screen. Remy LeBeau is grafted to his soul and needs to come out and deal. And Gambit found his author in Chan. He’s… pic.twitter.com/9Hz7qbZ85S
Keanu Reeves has entered the fastest movie franchise not named Fast & Furious.
The official trailer for Sonic the Hedgehog 3 has sped online, unleashing the superstar as the character Shadow. Reeves is trading in his signature black suit from John Wick for the black fur of the speedy hedgehog who was first introduced in 2001’s Sonic Adventure 2 as a character who’s just as fast as Sonic, but with a far rougher edge.
We first learned about Reeves’ involvement back in April, when Paramount revealed that Sonic’s longtime adversary Dr. Robotnik (Jim Carrey), vanquished at the end of Sonic 2, is now deploying Shadow to take on Sonic (voiced by Ben Schwartz).
Reeves is an actor that it’s extremely easy to root for, so it will be fun and funny to hear him voice the edgy, villainous Shadow. Director Jeff Fowler returns, having helmed the previous two installments, with James Marsden returning as Sonic’s human buddy Tom Wachowski, and Idris Elba reprising Knuckles.
Check out the trailer here. Sonic the Hedgehog 3 revs into on December 20.
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Netflix has released a nearly two-minute sneak peek at a scene from its upcoming animated series Terminator Zero, an eight-episode expansion to the iconic sci-fi franchise.
The sneak peek is a highway standoff in which a soldier sent back from the future to protect scientist Malcolm Lee (voiced by André Holland) rams her truck into what appears to be a worker on the bridge, smashing him and the car behind him over the railing. Is this just wanton murder? Not quite. And the worker surely isn’t dead, nor is it a human at all, he’s another time-traveler, a part-machine assassin sent back in time to kill Malcolm before he can create a rival artificial intelligence system, known as Kokoro (voiced by Rosario Dawson), to the dominate Skynet system.
Terminator Zero comes from Mattson Tomlin, who told Netflix’s Tudumthat he was inspired by James Cameron’s first two films in the franchise, The Terminator (1984) and Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991). “Why are we still talking about this franchise 40 years later?” Tomlin said to Tudum. “You strip away killer robots, you strip away Judgment Day, what do you have left? You have stories about families.”
Terminator Zero is partly set in 2022 during a raging war between the few human survivors of the machine apocalypse and partly set in 1997, when the artificial intelligence Skynet became self-aware and started its war against humanity. Joining Holland and Dawson in the cast are Timothy Olyphant as the Terminator, Sonoya Mizuno as Eiko, a resistance fighter sent back in time to stop Malcolm from creating Kokoro, and Ann Dowd as the Prophet, a philosopher who guides the human resistance in the future.
Check out the sneak peek below. Terminator Zero arrives on Netflix on August 29.
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“Suck it Fox, I’m going to Disney World!” So declares our favorite fourth-wall-breaking antihero, Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds), in Shawn Levy’s hilariously meta threequel, Deadpool & Wolverine, which is back in the #1 spot domestically for the fourth weekend. With Deadpool’s signature brand of acerbic sarcasm and self-deprecating humor, the raunchy action comedy often references the aftermath of the 2019 Disney-Fox mega-merger, which led to the titular duo landing under the Disney banner. After six long years, the deliriously ludicrous, potty-mouthed mercenary is back; this time, in a team-up made in Marvel heaven, [spoilers] he resurrects longtime rival—Hugh Jackman’s mercurial adamantium-clawed Wolverine—from the dead to help him save his own universe from extinction.
A veteran of Marvel films including Black Panther and Spider-man: Far from Home, second unit director and supervising stunt coordinator George Cottle is in awe of the truly collaborative effort on the most anticipated Marvel team-up since the Avengers films. “I’ve never had such a collaborative effort on a movie. Shawn and the editors [Shane Reid and Dean Zimmerman] were so welcoming in the editing suite. I think it really paid dividends. We’d be watching a clip, and then get up and fight each other in front of the screen to brainstorm ideas to make it even better—maybe if we do this, how about if he grabbed his head and smashed it here? Someone’s videoing it while we do that; the next day, we’re doing that sequence on set. It was so much fun!” Cottle remarks. “It was a true highlight for me, being in an editing room with a director of Shawn’s caliber, and watching the editors work their magic.”
We spoke to Cottle about honing the stunts, harnessing the madness, and how you film two superheroes having an epic brawl inside a Honda Odyssey.
What’s unique about the Deadpool films is their appeal beyond the core comic book and diehard MCU fans. Did you grow up reading the comic books?
No, but many on my stunt team are huge comic book fans, and they were losing their minds. They really appreciated how true, loyal, and respectful Hugh, Ryan, and Shawn were towards the comics, really leaning into what the fans wanted. For instance, it didn’t occur to me that Wolverine had never worn the correct suit [in the previous films], which blew my mind.
You’ve said this movie is the clash of two fighting titans. What were some of the early conversations about choreographing the action?
Early on, I knew everything was going to be based around fights—there aren’t any big car chases, water, or aerial sequences. So, I pulled together an amazing fight team that could truly elevate the fights. The incredibly talented fight coordinator, Alex Kyshkovych, was also Ryan’s double—he was a double on the first two Deadpool movies. He’s a massive comic book fan and absolutely loves Deadpool. Sometimes, it’s hard to get him out of the suit. [Laughs] Dan Stevens, Hugh’s double who has doubled for him on five of the X-Men/Wolverine movies, has an incredible understanding of the way Wolverine or Hugh moves. They have a great personal connection with their actors. Over the many years, they’ve talked about, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool to do this stunt or that? Or, on page 32 of issue four of the comics, he did this!’ They geek out over it. They’re two of the best fight performers in the world. So, having their knowledge was priceless.
On a very stunt-centric film like this, how many stunt coordinators did you have?
Especially on such a massive undertaking, I almost needed three of me to make it all work. So, I brought on two more—Liang Yang [from the epic bathroom brawl in Mission: Impossible – Fallout] and [assistant stunt coordinator] Andy Lister. Just watch both of their showreels on YouTube, it’ll blow your mind. We also had Colin Follenweider, who has worked with me for many years and worked on endless X-Men movies. They did such a world-class job. I’ve known both Liang and Andy for 20 years, they’re sword fight and knife fight legends. Once I brought them into the mix with Alex and with Dan, I mean, the fights speak for themselves.
12 or 14 weeks of prep before shooting. It was a very short schedule—we only had about 70 days. But halfway through, the movie got shut down because of the SAG strike. I think the main unit was low 70s and the second unit was 30-40 days.
The opening sequence got me fired up! All the meta-jokes about the Disney-Fox acquisition made it so much funnier, especially since in a previous career, I was at Fox during the acquisition and transition period.
No way! It’s great that it resonated so much with you. Ryan and Shawn wanted an early proof of concept of the opening sequence and Alex ran with it. We had daily calls about different ideas and he would video and edit it, then nail it down with Ryan and Shawn. Once we got to the UK, we had eight weeks of prep with the stunt team.
Was the sublime dance portion always meant to be in the opening sequence?
That came in after principal photography ended. It almost feels like it could’ve been a Ryan Reynolds lightbulb moment of how to make it even more amazing. They did that during 4-5 days of reshoots in New York.Originally it wasn’t going to be that song [NSYNC’s ‘Bye Bye Bye’]. Shawn and Ryan were in the editing room every day with the editors fine-tuning. It was a labor of love; they wouldn’t stop until it was perfect.
It’s one of the most effective opening sequences—not only does it seize your attention right out of the gate—it sets Deadpool’s trademark comically hyper-violent tone.
Shawn and Ryan encouraged me to lean into the violence—show us every crazy or violent idea, and be as out there as you want. When it’s PG or PG-13, you can only do so many headbutts, show so much blood, you can’t stab people where you see skin. But Deadpool was the other end of the spectrum—it was how violent can you make this? When Deadpool played with the adamantium claws and started stabbing himself and then stabbed one guy in the back and the other in the front—we came up with that. I thought there was no way they’d let us do it, but they thought it was hilarious. Ryan and Shawn’s ability to read the audience and give them what they want is fascinating. I was lucky enough to sit in the editing room and just watch them put pieces of the puzzle together. It was such a treat.
Great action cinema gives fans something they haven’t seen before like two 6’2” superheroes beating the crap out of each other inside a Honda Odyssey minivan. Was that really shot inside a minivan?
That was one of my favorites! It was Shawn’s idea. A lot of the fights here are in big, open spaces. So why not go the other end of the spectrum—have a fight in a tiny, confined space? It was all shot in a car that size, we did not build an oversized car. We cut out some of the panels just to get the big movie cameras into those positions, but the parameters and the fight always stayed within the dimensions of a real Honda Odyssey.
What went into choreographing something so wildly kinetic in that confined space?
Ryan and Hugh are both big guys, especially in those suits. We padded the insides because they and their stunt doubles were shooting inside that car for over a week. Shawn shot it and we did some pickups on second unit. The blood, sweat, and tears that went into it, everybody brought their A-game. Hugh, Ryan, Alex, and Dan just crushed it. And the DP George Richmond was in there with them too. They shot a lot BTS for that—I can’t wait for that to get out. We shot that pretty early on, so the high bar was set for the rest of the shoot.
Check out part two of our interview with Cottle, including what went into choreographing the top-secret cameos!
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We had the pleasure of hosting two panels this year—check out our first panel here— ahead of the 2024 Emmy Awards, which will be held live on ABC on Sunday, September 15, from 8-11 ET. For our second panel, our Emmy nominees came from a wide-ranging group of shows—Lessons in Chemistry‘s ace director Millicent Shelton, nominated for directing episode 6, “Poirot,” Shōgun‘s visual effects supervisor Michael Cliett, nominated for the entire series, The Tattooist of Auschwitz‘s composer Kara Talve, nominated for episode 1, for original music and lyrics for her song “Love Will Survive,” which she worked on with Hans Zimmer, Walter Afanasieff, and Charlie Midnight, and Only Murders in the Building‘s ace editors Shelly Westerman and Payton Koch, nominated for season 3’s most deliciously zany episode, “Sitzprobe.”
Director Millicent Shelton was able to tell us about capturing multiple decades and their varying looks in her stellar work in Lessons in Chemistry. This period piece, set primarily in the 1950s, tracks a budding chemist named Elizabeth Zott (Brie Larson), who is thwarted in her work by male colleagues who put politics and patriarchy above credible scientific achievement, forcing Elizabeth into unfamiliar territory—television.
The Tattooist of Auschwitz is centered on the real-life story of Lali Sokolov (Jonah Hauer-King), a Jewish prisoner forced to tattoo ID numbers on prisoners’ arms in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp during World War II, and the woman he met there and fell in love with. Composer Kara Talve’s got her own incredible story to go with her sensational work on the series—a piano Talve used in her Emmy-nominated compositions came from her grandmother, a woman who survived the Nazi invasion and takeover of Paris by hiding in her piano teacher’s apartment. Her piano teacher, working with the French resistance, hid Talve’s grandmother—9 at the time—for the duration of the war. When her grandmother was in her 20s and came to America, she brought the piano, which Talve inherited and made the centerpiece of the score.
Visual effects supervisor Michael Cliett wasn’t just tasked with capturing some of the biggest, boldest moments in the visually astonishing Shōgun but also the quieter sequences set in 17th-century Japan with passionate attention to the tiniest details. Cliett’s meticulous work befits a series that garnered 25 nominations in all, leading all shows.
And finally, for the zany, insanely lovable joyride that is Only Murders in the Building, editors Shelly Westerman and Payton Koch have a reasonable claim that they cut the craziest episode in the series thus far, the emotional rollercoaster that was season 3’s eighth episode, “Sitzprobe,” when Oliver’s (Martin Short) musical, which features his friend Charles-Haden Savage (Steven Martin) in an impossible lead role meant to recite an ear-wormy but mind-meltingly daft song, is set to unravel along with Oliver’s health.
We had the pleasure of hosting two panels this year—check out our second panel here— ahead of the 2024 Emmy Awards, which will be held live on ABC on Sunday, September 15, from 8-11 ET. Like last year, we sat down with some nominees from some great, disparate, challenging shows. In our first panel, Planet Earth III composers Jacob Shea and Sara Barone (nominated for episode 6, “Extremes”), editors Varun Viswanath and Patrick Tuck from the critically acclaimed winning series Reservation Dogs, and the documentary Escaping Twin Flames executive producer/co-creator and co-showrunner and editor Inbal B. Lessner and editor Kevin Hibbard.
These projects couldn’t really be more different, yet each had crucial stories to tell and excelled at presenting those stories in challenging, surprising ways. Planet Earth III, narrated and led by the indispensable Richard Attenborough, takes us on another astonishing tour of our ferocious, fragile, impossibly beautiful planet. The Planet Earth series works at a scale that is commensurate with its subject matter. Yet, its joys and astonishment have grown bittersweet, watching as we do with the awareness of the often depressing state of our global response to global warming. For composers Jacob Shea and Sara Barone, matching the scenes of intense beauty with the right music and tone was a challenge in scale, too—the footage was captured over many patient years of observations; these incredible Emmy-nominated composers had far less time to find the perfect note to capture an unforgettable sequence of images. They’re nominated for their work for episode 6, “Extremes,” which reveals the incredible ways that animals survive in the most inhospitable places on the planet, from deep subterranean caves to boiling deserts and frozen mountain summits.
For Sterlin Harjo’s critically acclaimed Reservation Dogs, which tracks four Native American teenagers’ lives as they grow, grow apart, and come back together again on a reservation in Eastern Oklahoma, editors Varun Viswanath and Patrick Tuck earned their Emmy nod for the toughest episode of them all, the series finale. Viswanath and Tuck took on episode 10, “Dig,” which brought every character from the world of Reservation Dogs back together again in one beautiful, bittersweet coda.
The task on hand for Escaping Twin Flames executive producer/co-showrunner/editor Inbal B. Lessner and editor Kevin Hibbard was doubly difficult—not only did they have to do their jobs to craft the tightest, truest possible version of the story of the victims of Jeff and Shaleia Divine, the Twin Flames Universe leaders who prey on people looking for love by promising to match them harmonious, perfectly paired partners, but they were also creating a documentary about a negligent, deceitful practice that’s still ongoing in Michigan. The stakes were incredibly high for Lessner and Hibbard, and their duties weren’t only to create the best possible docu-series but also to honor the victims and paint a vivid, damning portrait of the two people responsible for so much pain and suffering who are still at large.
Helmed by visionary director Kenji Kamiyama (Blade Runner: Black Lotus and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex), The War of the Rohirrim is based on a brief portion, included in the appendices, no less, of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings.” The story is centered on Hèra (voiced by Gaia Wise), the daughter of the legendary Helm Hammerhand (Brian Cox), a mighty king of Rohan, and tracks the Hammerhand family’s attempts to protect their lands from the Dunlendings. The action takes place some 183 years before the events depicted in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, with the trailer splicing in some footage from Jackson’s original trilogy. This live-action footage makes the switch to Kamiyama’s anime vision so stark. It also vividly depicts how well LOTR lends itself to the medium.
“All Midde-earth knows the tale of the war of the ring, but 200 years before that, there was an older tale,” Hèra says at the top of the new trailer. We’re then shown a fateful offer of marriage, proposed by the Dunlendings, meant to strengthen Rohan’s position and forge an alliance. But Hèra resists the marriage proposal, and Helm Hammerhand ultimately sees it as a power-seeking grab by his rivals and ends the discussion with a right hook that will change the fate of Middle-earth. Talk about a potent punch.
The action heats up after that, with giant eagles and war-ready elephants in action and Hèra offering to help her father put down the aggressors. The aggressors are led by Wulf (voiced by Luke Pasqualino), a ruthless Dunlending lord seeking vengeance for the death of his father, which forces Helm and his people to make a last stand in the ancient stronghold of the Hornburg—the mighty fortress that we’ll come to know later in the LOTR trilogy as Helm’s Deep.
“We did not want to make an animated version of a Peter Jackson film,” Serkis said at Annecy. “We wanted to make a Kenji Kamiyama anime feature film that lives within that world. And that’s a difficult, difficult task that requires a lot of delicate balancing between two types of filmmaking that haven’t really collided like this before.”
Cox and Wise are joined in the cast by Miranda Otto, who voices Eowyn, and Shaun Dooley, who voices Freca, among others.
Kamiyama directs from a story by Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews, with the script penned by Phoebe Gittins and Arty Papageorgiou.
Check out the trailer below. The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim arrives on December 13.
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Featured image: Caption: (L-r) WULF voiced by LUKE PASQUALINO and HÉRA voiced by GAIA WISE in New Line Cinema’s and Warner Bros. Animation’s epic anime adventure “THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE WAR OF THE ROHIRRIM,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
As the first five episodes of season four of the hit series Emily in Paris dropped on Netflix on August 15, fans were eager to delve back into the world of Emily (Lily Collins) and Mindy (Ashley Park) as they navigate messy relationships, major career changes, and general adulthood woes, in Paris.
At the conclusion of season three, Mindy was dating her former high school crush (and real-life boyfriend) Nicolas (Paul Forman) and also found out she had been accepted to the Eurovision competition with her former boyfriend, Benoît (Kevin Dias). Emily accidentally crashed Camille (Camille Razat) and Gabriel’s (Lucas Bravo) wedding, admitted she was still in love with Gabriel, and then found out Camille was pregnant with his child.
Emily in Paris has no shortage of sex and scandal, but the core friendship between Mindy and Emily has remained the through line at the heart of the series. While Collins’ titular character is the show’s lead, Park’s portrayal of former heiress turned quippy best friend has captured the hearts of many.
“It feels like the stakes are a little bit higher,” says Park of Mindy and Emily’s journeys this season. “They just delve a little bit deeper with each other and you really see them be there for each other in ways that are hard.”
Park describes the onscreen relationship between Emily and Mindy as very “meta” to her real-life friendship with Collins.
“We’re really helping each other through our lives in finding the women that we are simultaneously with these characters,” Park says. “I think a beautiful thing about them is they’re incredibly honest with each other.”
The women’s love and respect for each other offscreen plays into their onscreen chemistry.
“It’s unconditional support and love,” she says. “Really good friendships are the ones that are unconditional, low stakes, and you’d be each other’s emergency contacts.”
Much like how Collins and Park’s real-life friendship influenced the writing of their characters, Park’s former Broadway experience led Emily in Paris creator Darren Star to redirect Mindy’s entire journey. The role of Mindy wasn’t originally written as a singing role. But when casting a Broadway star, why not use all of their talents?
“I thought she was going to like, sing at a karaoke bar, or sing ‘Happy Birthday’ once,” Park laughs of the initial conversation on introducing song into the show. “Darren Starr very kindly called me towards the beginning when we were filming season one, and he had seen me in Mean Girls and shows on Broadway, and he was very thoughtful in asking.”
“I had no idea that the singing would be a way for her to open up into her own vulnerability and emotional path,” she adds.
As the show grows in popularity, the frequency of the musical element has increased, which means more covers, more costumes and more singing in French.
In terms of filming, Park says the performance scenes are definitely the most “challenging part” because of the “technicality.”
“Sometimes I don’t find out the song until the day I have to record it,” Park says. “My biggest thing is, how do I make these songs that are endeared by the public or that have been known for a while — how do I make it Mindy’s?”
On the show, Park has covered a variety of popular songs and artists ranging from Dua Lipa to Lady Gaga. In season three, Mindy sang “Mon Soleil,” an original song written for the show by Freddy Wexler, who Park says has returned for another original in season four.
“This one is a little bit more soulful in a different way,” she says.
Park comes from “the world of theater,” having performed in the Broadway ensemble of Mamma Mia!, to a starring role as Gretchen Wieners in Mean Girls.
“Figuring out ways to incorporate the songs in a storytelling way and also in a way that feels good to perform, but for different cameras, has been such a fun challenge,” she says.
This season, the stakes are higher — in all aspects.
“There’s song and dance in a way that we haven’t seen from Mindy yet,” she says.
Check out our full interview here:
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Last year’s Emmy winner for Best Talk Series, The Daily Show’s director David Paul Meyer snagged four nods this year, including directing the much-heralded episode, “Jon Stewart Returns to The Daily Show,” when Stewart returned to the show this February to cover this especially tumultuous Presidential election season. Starting his stint at the beginning of Trevor Noah’s reign as host in 2015, Meyer’s relationship with him goes back to 2008, a few years before he would produce and direct his USC thesis film, You Laugh But It’s True. The documentary about the South African comedian examined the emerging stand-up comedy scene in that country at the time. Since then, the duo has worked together on a slew of Noah’s comedy specials before they both landed at The Daily Show.
Ahead of this week’s Democratic National Convention coverage in Chicago, Meyer talked to us about what it’s like to pull together a live-to-tape show four times a week that hinges entirely on the frenetic pace of the 24/7 news cycle.
I was a fan of Trevor Noah years before he became the host on The Daily Show. One of my favorites is his “Attention All Passengers” segment in the Crazy Normal comedy special, which you also directed.
That’s awesome! That’s from way back.
Since I speak Mandarin, I was impressed with his intonation when he pretended to speak Mandarin. It was actually quite spot on!
He’s always been one to really study so that he can as authentic as possible.
It was a real delight when he landed the job as the host.
It was very exciting, and that must been cool for you as a fan.
How did you discover Trevor?
For my Master’s Degree thesis film at USC, I did the documentary on Trevor, You Laugh But It’s True. I met him in August 2008 when he was performing at comedy festivals. I only knew one person in South Africa who was in the comedy scene, and there wasn’t really any of Trevor’s material online. The idea was to do a documentary about the emerging stand-up comedy in South Africa. That was only 10-12 years after the fall of apartheid, so I was interested in telling that story. During my first week there, I met a bunch of comedians, and Trevor immediately stood out. He was performing at a jazz club. At the time, they didn’t have any comedy clubs. Music clubs on their off nights would loan their space to these comedians. When I saw Trevor perform, I thought he was very compelling and could be a great focus for the documentary.
Did you start on The Daily Show with Trevor in 2015?
Yes, he gave me the job. I actually started a few weeks earlier, during the last two or three weeks of Jon’s run.
Can you break downwhat your day is like, especially now with the news going on hyper speed almost every day?
We tape Monday through Thursday. In the morning, we talk about different stories in the news with most of the writers, producers, and staff; we watch clips, and people throw jokes out. I have an “upstairs and a downstairs” part of the job. I’m upstairs with the producers and writers as they discuss stories we want to cover and some of the comedic takes, and the producers also work on visual elements that will be on that day’s show. I collaborate with the producer who oversees graphics, Brittany [Radocha], and with [Senior Producer] Jeff Gussow, who manages the footage that we have or if we want to shoot a chat with a correspondent in-studio on a green screen. I’m always talking to our showrunner, Jen Flanz, about any visual elements we need. Sometimes, it’s a little more complex if we need a stunt coordinator for a comedic stunt on stage. So, that’s the pre-production planning phase with the producers and the writers.
David Paul Meyer and Jordan Klepper behind-the-scenes of “The Daily Show.” Photo by Matt Wilson. Courtesy Comedy Central.David Paul Meyer on Jen Flanz on the set of “The Daily Show.” Photo by Matt Wilson. Courtesy Comedy Central.
Most of the show really comes together on the day?
Yes, for act one, where we’re going through the headlines at the desk. Depending on the day, we may have something they started writing earlier, but for the most part, that’s all done on that day. For today’s show, both acts one and two are in-studio. So, my day encompasses anything that’s in-studio.
What’s the rehearsal process like?
Around midday, when the crew comes, I brief them in the studio downstairs. We start rehearsing and blocking out the shot sequences, framing, lighting or audio effects, and rehearsing with just crew and stand-ins. We’ll run through the script with all the elements, graphics, roles, clips, etc. After the rehearsal, we’ll do notes, and the writers rewrite it with the host, which is actually happening right now as we speak [for tonight’s show]. An hour before the show, I’ll get the final script and mark it up one last time. Then, we tape, usually around 6 pm, with the audience as if we were live—sometimes, we really are live on the air. I’m calling the show live, even though it’s live-to-tape. Every graphic change, clip, whatever I’m calling, is all live on the fly. Ideally, we have close to something that could air live if needed. After taping, we’ll have a post-mortem with the showrunner, host, and head writers to discuss any changes. Once I sign off on any edits, the show is finished and fed out for broadcast.
Filming an episode of “The Daily Show.” Photo by Matt Wilson. Courtesy Comedy Central.
What about the rest of the segments?
We usually do three or four acts per show. Another department does the pre-taped segments, where our correspondents go out and interview people for field reports. That’s where I started before becoming the director. Usually, these are for Act Two. Sometimes Act Two may be another in-studio segment, sometimes it’s pre-taped. Act Three is almost always a guest interview in the studio, and Act Four is Our Moment of Zen, where we toss to one last news clip for the day.
Congratulations on your Emmy nominations this year! The episode for which you are nominated for Outstanding Directing is where Jon returns as host for the first time since 2015. Only about two weeks were between the surprise announcement and the episode airing. How did you prepare for that?
It was a big surprise for us too—we found out maybe a little bit earlier on the same day as the rest of the world, which was very exciting. We had a couple of weeks to acclimate to the new format, with Jon on Mondays and the other correspondents hosting the rest of the week. That first episode back took a little more work because we wanted to feature Jon engaging with all of our correspondents. So, we had a multi-location report with all of them in-studio, on stage with a green screen. We had limited cameras and a limited green screen with six or seven correspondents in addition to Jon needing to move through the studio and everyone doing their lines. It was very much like theater, with all the traffic of multiple people on camera and multiple cameras.
Was it different writing that episode because it was Jon’s big comeback episode?
There was a little more work. We had meetings with Jon to discuss what he wanted to do.
How was it working closely with Jon for the first time?
It was really exciting. I have a long history with Trevor on the show, but that was my first time directing with Jon. It was a real thrill seeing how he performs and operates with the script. He has an inner commentary and connection to the audience in the studio and those at home. You can tell he’s managing all that. Seeing him go from performing the script to improvising something that he feels needs to be there in the moment was really exciting and fun. I’ve been learning his comedic rhythm and timing these past few months. With Trevor, it was day in and day out for seven years, so you get used to it. But now, it’s Jon on Mondays with a very specific performance style and rhythm, and then each correspondent with their own style. Learning that and being able to execute the show has been a fun challenge.
Jon Stewart and David Paul Meyer on the set of “The Daily Show.” Photo by Photo by Matt Wilson. Courtesy Comedy Central.
How about covering the Democratic National Convention in Chicago?
A lot of stuff is still up in the air. We’ll have our full news team out there. I think you’ll see the same as what we did for past conventions. We’ll be at Chicago’s Athenaeum Center for Thought and Culture, which is a great classic theater that seats 900 people. So, we’ll have a bigger audience. We’ve got an all-new set that we’re going to be debuting for that since we’ll be on the road in Chicago. It’s going to be very exciting and fun. We’ll have our news team coverage, some great guests, definitely worth tuning in for!
The 76th Primetime Emmy Awards will be broadcast on ABC on September 15th and available on streaming via Hulu the following day.
Featured image: L-r: Jon Stewart and David Paul Meyer on the set of “The Daily Show.” Photo by Matt Wilson. Courtesy Comedy Central.
The first thing you might notice in Season 2 of Christopher Storer’s hit drama The Bear is how well you can hear chef-owner Carmen (Jeremy Allen White) and his team of kitchen underdogs as they set to work reopening their Chicago restaurant. Restaurant kitchens, especially those still under construction, as the Bear’s is for most of the season, are not quiet places. But no matter how prevalent the sledgehammers and steel cookware may be on screen, yelled or barely muttered, the interpersonal dynamics between the show’s lovable characters always comes through.
“THE BEAR” — “Honeydew” — Season 2, Episode 4 (Airs Thursday, June 22nd) Pictured: Jeremy Allen White as Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto, Abby Elliott as Natalie “Sugar” Berzatto. CR: Chuck Hodes/FX. . CR: Chuck Hodes/FX.
“Fifty-six percent of people watch [streaming] with subtitles on by default, and I take that personally,” Steve Giammaria, the show’s supervising sound editor, joked. He and his Emmy-nominated team, dialogue editor Evan Benjamin and production mixer Scott Smith, prioritized the series’ emotional side with clear dialogue viewers don’t have to strain to understand. “We try, when I’m mixing, to be dialogue-forward because there are a lot of words in The Bear, and they’re happening very quickly and very energetically,” Giammaria said.
Yet Giammaria and his team do so without leaning much on ADR, which neither showrunner Storer nor the sound team are fans of. Instead, to get across every word of a kitchen battle between Carmen and Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) or a subdued heart-to-heart chef Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) has with her father, dialogue editor Benjamin relies on old-fashioned alts from other takes. “If you hear a giant bang on the end of a line, and you can just fix that one word, the whole scene seems to make more sense. You do that 10, 15, 20 times a show, and all of a sudden, the thing feels much more legible,” Benjamin said.
But the soundscape of The Bear alsoeschews wall-to-wall dialogue. The series’ acute attention to food detail, the sounds of which Giammaria credits to the lead Foley artist, Leslie Bloome at Alchemy Post Sound, sets the stage for the sonic tenor of the season’s different restaurants. Whether in Copenhagen or Chicago, the show’s sound team focused on creating distinct intensities for the various kitchens where Carmen’s staff go off for additional training. Marcus travels to Denmark to work under Luca (Will Poulter), a quiet, nearly Zen-like experience, compared to Carmen’s chaos. Richie spends a week against his will at an established high-end Chicago restaurant, Ever, which is run with a military-level precision Richie is totally unused to but comes to embrace. “It’s a very measured intensity,” at Ever, Giammaria said, “so having those two worlds collide sonically is fun.”
“Forks,” the episode during which Richie does his Ever stage, is one of the most emotional of the season. It’s also one of the quietest. Feeling adrift in the Bear’s back-of-house lineup and taking it out on Natalie (Abby Elliott), Richie has an epiphany about his life and his place in the kitchen while peeling mushrooms with Ever’s head chef, Terry (Olivia Coleman). Terry tells him about her background; the pristine kitchen is otherwise silent. Benjamin intentionally removed any body noises and almost all another sound around the pair, rendering the moment as still as possible. “It’s remarkable what you can do to the emotion of a scene if you do something as simple as getting rid of all that kind of stuff,” he said.
At the other end of the emotional spectrum, the season travels back in time about five years to Christmas dinner at the dysfunctional Berzatto household. Carmen’s brother Michael is still alive and chucking forks at his mother’s boyfriend, Lee, in retaliation for Lee’s condescension. Donna (Jamie Lee Curtis), their mother, is preparing a Feast of the Seven Fishes and having a meltdown. She eventually drives her car into the house, a climactic moment made less dramatic by the sheer amount of fighting and griping that precedes it. Marked by anger, shame, and tension, “I think that dinner scene is probably the hardest thing I’ve ever tried to edit,” Benjamin said.
“You’re trying to get each one of those arguments, and sometimes those arguments are colliding with each other in a way where they’ve layered multiple takes on top of each other. So you have to pull out one voice from a tangle of voices. It’s very hard to do.” The process started with Smith, who “recorded things on the sly” on set in order to get as much material as possible, including background effects and dialogue cadged from rehearsals. “The dynamics of that scene, as it ended up on the screen, were more or less the dynamics when it was shot,” Smith said. He and Benjamin established the episode’s unusual sonic landscape, while Giammaria worked with producer David Woods to settle on how Michael’s final, climactic fork throw should sound. “We went a little understated. When the table flip happens, all hell breaks loose. We [thought], let’s dial this moment back because it’s the last straw before the dam explodes,” Giammaria said.
Back in the present day, at the restaurant-in-progress, aligning what’s happening between the characters with what would realistically be underway at any given time of day is a priority, though “emotion always wins,” Giammaria said. If Richie and Natalie are arguing during busy prep time, the sound team might play the background noise a little more quietly to avoid overshadowing the dialogue—but the makeup of those sounds is still carefully considered. “We get as granular as, hey, there are too many forks and not enough dishes,” the supervising sound editor said, with different objects influencing the show’s tenor on a case-by-case basis. “Things that are a little more vertical tend to cause chaos, as opposed to just a running sink, a boiling pot,” he added.
The Bear feels tangible, not just for its close attention to the food, but because what we see on screen is what we’re actually getting. “In season two, they’re really knocking those walls down. There really are sledgehammers flying. Those pilot lights are turning on. There’s something there, and we’ll just enhance it. We’re building on this foundation that Scott makes and Evan keeps in there, and then we’ll pepper it up with effects,” Giammaria explained. But even more important to the final sound is that on The Bear, its significance is accounted for from the very beginning. “You can’t just wedge in good sound after the fact,” he added. It’s given the scaffolding it needs early on, “which is evident in the final product—they actually leave room for some sound design and, and the ebb and flow of chaos.” When Carmen and his team finally open their doors to friends and family, the door between the kitchen and dining room acts as an almost magical sonic buffer between the two worlds, which makes the relatively soigné nature of the dining room all the more appreciable to viewers who understand what it took to get there.
Featured image: THE BEAR — “Omelette” — Season 2, Episode 9 (Airs Thursday, June 22nd) Pictured: (l-r) Lionel Boyce as Marcus, Jeremy Allen White as Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto. CR: Chuck Hodes/FX.
When it was revealed during this past July’s Comic-Con that Robert Downey Jr. was returning to the MCU as the iconic villain Doctor Doom in Avengers: Doomsday, it was legitimately one of the most shocking pieces of news made at a Con ever. This is because Downey, the face of the MCU for a decade as Tony Stark/Iron Man (alongside Chris Evans’s Steve Rogers/Captain America), had his swan song in 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, with Tony Stark dying a heroe’s death. So to see Downey back up on stage at Hall H in San Diego was cause for some instantaneous confusion until it was clear that the mask he was holding in his hand didn’t belong to one of Tony Stark’s Iron Man suits but rather the iron shroud worn by Victor von Doom aka Doctor Doom.
In a recent conversation on The Hollywood Reporter‘s Awards Chatter Podcast, Downey spoke more openly about his return to the MCU. It turns out that there was never any talk of having him reprise his most famous role. Here’s what he said:
“So, probably a year ago…cause, you know, [Kevin] Feige and I have kept in touch. We’re pals. Favreau, Feige, and I have kept in touch. I’m close with the Russo Brothers; we have other business we’re doing. So, there’s this little group of fellow travelers, and I had this instinct that I wanted to go to Bob Iger, and I had an idea outside of the Cinematic Universe for how I could be of service to what’s going on in the Parks and all their location-based entertainment…Susan and I were sitting down with Feige at one point, and he said, ‘It just keeps occurring to me that if you were to come back…’ and Susan was like, ‘Wait, wait, come back as what?’ Then we both realized over time that it was another thing that just disproves any doubt anyone could ever have about that guy, a very sophisticated creative thinker, about how can we not go backward, how can we not disappoint expectations, how can we continue to beat expectations? And he brought up Victor Von Doom. I looked up this character and I was like, ‘Wow.’ Later, Kevin goes, ‘Let’s get Victor Von Doom right. Let’s get that right.'”
So what did Downey do next? He went to Bob Iger’s house to chat about returning as Doom. Iger liked the idea and told him to come by Disney’s Imagineering Campus. So, Downey and Feige went there, and this was what Downey had to say:
“Feige and I go to the Imagineering Campus and you want to talk about two guys that are not easy to have their minds blown, let alone at the same time…I can’t say too much, but what is going on there right now is so beyond my expectation of what was possible.”
Marvel has not rushed the process of figuring out how to get Downey back as Doom. They’ve had a year to wrestle with the idea that Jonathan Majors was out as Kang the Conquerer, and they were going to make sure that if they brought Doom back—he’s been seen on the big screen before in previous pre-Disney Marvel iterations—it was crucial to get arguably the most legendary Marvel villain right.
As Downey said in San Diego, the stakes are incredibly high, and once again he’ll again have to help carry the Marvel franchise forward.
“New mask. Same task,” Downey told the Comic-Con crowd. “Boy, I tell you, I like playing complicated characters.”
Avengers: Doomsday is set to start filming in 2025 for a 2026 release date.
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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)
Bada bing—the first trailer for Oscar-winning director Alex Gibney’s two-part documentary Wise Guy: David Chase and The Sopranos has arrived.
Gibney, the director behind previous stellar HBO docs Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief and The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley, sets his sights on one of the most beloved television series of all time, a bonafide cultural phenomenon that ushered in a new era of darker, hugely ambitious television. David Chase and the Sopranos arrives 25 years after the series debuted on HBO and centers on the creator and mastermind behind the series, looking to shed light on Chase’s methods, how he and his writer’s room were able to unlock a mafia story unlike any before, and what drove Chase to explore the wounded psyche of Tony Soprano (the late, great James Gandolfini) in a portrayal that made both men superstars.
The trailer touches upon Chase’s relationship with his mother (The Sopranosfeatures one of the all-time great dysfunctional mother/son relationships between Tony and his mom, Livia, played by a ferocious Nancy Marchand) and the series’ unblinking look into the darkest aspects of the human psyche.
“The Sopranos really redefined what people are willing and what people want to watch at home,” says Michael Imperioli, one of the series’ many breakout stars. The doc features interviews with other stars from the series, including Lorraine Bracco, Edie Falco, Drea de Matteo, and Steven Van Zandt, as well as writers and producers. The trailer reveals some of the cast’s early audition videos—including Imperioli and de Matteo, behind-the-scenes footage, and more.
It’s a great marriage of a top-flight documentarian and sensational material, with a central figure in Chase who is as compelling as the many characters he helped bring to the screen and, in the process, changed the television landscape forever.
Check out the trailer below. Wise Guy: David Chase and The Sopranos premieres on HBO on September 7.
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Featured image: The Sopranos (P621) “Made In America” 03-22-2007. Director: David Chase DP: Alik Sakharov. Scene 61-63-65-67 (int) Holsten’s Diner. “The gang shows up for family dinner” James Gandolfini (Tony Soprano), Edie Falco (Carmela), Robert Iler (Anthony Jr.): Photo Credit: Will Hart / HBO
