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.
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The first reactions for director Shawn Levy’s Deadpool & Wolverine have arrived, and critics and everyone else with a press screening and social media account are weighing in. The overall sentiment appears to be LFG. The long-awaited pairing of Ryan Reynolds’ Merc with the Mouth and Hugh Jackman’s mutant berserker and iconic X-Man has been high on the MCU fan wishlist, and it seems like they’ve delivered. And while sure, the two faced off 15 years ago in 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine, as far as fans are concerned, that portion of Wolverine’s timeline isn’t as important as the one we’ll be faced with in Deadpool & Wolverine, which marks the true first, proper mash-up of the “new” Deadpool, lovingly created by Reynolds and the Deadpool creative team (including writers Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese), and Jackman’s legendary bruiser. Now, the Deadpool brain trust are back, with Levy directing the franchise for the first time and Zeb Wells joining Wernick and Reese on scripting duties, and the result is a new two-hander that posits a world in which Deadpool recruits a very different Wolverine from the hero who died tragically but heroically in James Mangold’s 2017 banger Logan to try and help him save the people he loves.
Monday night marked the first chance critics got a look at the movie, and with their reactions pouring in online and full reviews coming later today, tet’s have a glance at what the folks are saying so far. Deadpool & Wolverine slashes into theaters on July 26.
LFG! Absolutely loved #DeadpoolAndWolverine – yes the cameos and surprises are epic, and the humor, action, blood-soaked fights and needle drops are tremendous, too… but it’s the respect and love for the characters that win you over.
Deadpool and Wolverine is a game changer for the MCU as it is the biggest, boldest, and most badass MCU film since Infinity War and Endgame. Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman are the ultimate duo we’ve all been waiting for! #DeadpoolAndWolverine@MarvelStudiospic.twitter.com/p5wrNqD4rk
Deadpool and Wolverine is a game changer for the MCU as it is the biggest, boldest, and most badass MCU film since Infinity War and Endgame. Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman are the ultimate duo we’ve all been waiting for! #DeadpoolAndWolverine@MarvelStudiospic.twitter.com/p5wrNqD4rk
DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE feels miraculous. A high energy ode to superhero cinema past that goes beyond nostalgia into kid in a candy store madness, the Ryan Reynolds/Hugh Jackman is everything you wanted and more, despite some grating toilet humor.
DEADPOOL AND WOLVERINE is the best Marvel film in many years. It’s funny, violent as hell, and has a really big heart. The scene where Hugh Jackman looks to the camera and says, “LOGAN was never good to begin with” elicited gasps from my audience. Cannot recommend this enough. pic.twitter.com/GGzD766I8x
LETS F**KING GO!!!!#DeadpoolAndWolverine WAS A BLAST!! The chemistry between Hugh and Ryan is DYNAMITE! Exquisite action sequences, undeniable comedy and cameos that enhanced the story!
The movie is absolutely perfect, a masterfully crafted, action-packed spectacle that exceeds all expectations. It’s a return to form for Marvel, filled with surprises. The casting and performances are exceptional, delivering a truly mind-blowing experience! pic.twitter.com/IUSKvqaHyN
— Deadpool And Wolverine (@CineMundoUS) July 23, 2024
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First, we got this brief but potent teaser that offered a fresh, deeply unnerving glimpse at the return of Joquin Phoenix’s sad sack comedian turned killer clown Arthur Fleck crying/laughing (or laughing/crying) in the rain. Next, we got the first full trailer, which revealed Lady Gaga’s Harley Quinn and the first cinematic portrayal of the most demented romance in comics history since Margot Robbie and Jared Leto played the demonic pair in David Ayer’s 2016 Suicide Squad. Now comes the second trailer, revealing more of director Todd Phillips’s sequel, which has taken the bold step of leaping from the overwhelming successful formula of the original Joker, which was a realist, decidedly dark, R-rated psychological portrait of a man succumbing to his own madness by offering up something entirely new; a jukebox musical.
Joker: Folie à Deux unites Oscar winners Phoenix and Gaga in one of the year’s most must-see releases. In the official trailer, we’re back with Arthur as the police are escorting him through a Gotham he helped set on fire in the first film. We’re quickly taken to Arkham Asylum, one of the most iconic locations in all of Gotham, where Gaga’s Harley Quinn describes her reaction to first seeing Joker. “For once in my life, I didn’t feel so alone anymore,” she says. Uh oh.
What follows are firey images of a romance brewing in madness (which brings us back to the film’s title, a medical reference for two or more people suffering the same mental malady). The film’s promise of a jukebox musical begins, and the music starts. Arthur finds himself softly singing a tune, and soon, we see the Joker and Harley dancing in the moonlight and the Joker defending himself in clown paint in his trial.
The trailer gets dark, diabolical, and decidedly action-packed as it reaches its conclusion, the most fulsome look yet at the movie everybody will be talking about this fall.
Check out the trailer below. Joker: Folie à Deux arrives on October 4:
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Director Lee Isaac Chung’s Twisters blew into theaters this past weekend and dazzled audiences, spinning up a big box office along with rave critical reviews and audience scores. Filming entirely on location in Oklahoma, Twisters is centered on storm chasers Kate Carter (Daisy Edgar-Jones), Tyler Owens (Glen Powell), Javi (Anthony Ramos), and more who track a series of increasingly dangerous tornadoes across the state. The production was a boon for local businesses—Chung, a native Arkansasan whose last film, the Oscar-nominated Minari, compassionately depicted farm life in his home state, knew it was crucial to ground Twisters in the state where the original was set and where devastating storms like the ones depicted in the film are a real-life occurrence.
(from left) Daisy Edgar-Jones and director Lee Isaac Chung on the set of Twisters.
To that end, Twisters didn’t just film in Oklahoma and craft a winning sequel to the beloved 1996 original; it also partnered with the American Red Cross to increase awareness of the need for blood donors after a sharp decrease in donations since late Spring. That included this past weekend’s premiere, where guests were able to round up their box office concessions and purchases at Regal theaters, which went to support American Red Cross Disaster Relief.
While Chung and his talented team were able to whip up massive storefronts and terrifying tornadoes without actually bending a blade of grass, the threat of tornadoes and the damage they do in communities across states like Oklahoma are very real. The Red Cross’s crucial mission is to help prevent and alleviate suffering from a range of destructive disasters, including hurricanes, wildfires, floods, and more. Unfortunately, these disasters are becoming more common as the effects of global warming intensify them. In recent months, swarms of tornadoes and extreme flooding have taken lives and destroyed entire communities. We have also endured one of the longest-lasting and strongest heat waves in years, which has included large portions of the Midwest. We’ve also recently endured the second most active tornado season on record.
As for the kinds of superstorms that Twisters depict, the Red Cross responded to 20 tornado-related disasters across 13 states in just the first five months of 2024. Meteorologists don’t see this letting up; they expect more powerful and destructive storms to continue in the months to come as the effects of the climate crisis continue. This continues a trend of more frequent and intense climate disasters in recent years, so keeping the Red Cross’s work in the public spotlight is key.
“The Red Cross is grateful to have partners like Universal Pictures who are not only lending this support to encourage blood donations during this critical time of year but have also generously donated to help support disaster relief,” said Jennifer Pipa, vice president of Disaster Programs for the Red Cross, in a statement. “Because of the climate crisis, the Red Cross is now launching twice as many relief operations for major disasters than we did a decade ago. And disasters are straining not only our relief operations but also our ability to collect lifesaving blood donations. So far this year, we have collected 20,000 fewer blood donations due to severe weather.”
This is precisely why it’s so important for a beloved film franchise to lend its reach and star power toward helping the American Red Cross make up that gap. If you want to help keep lifesaving blood products stocked on hospital shelves and book a time to give blood or platelets, you can do that via RedCrossBlood.org, calling 1-800-RED CROSS, or using the Red Cross Blood Donor App. Anyone who gives blood or platelets through July 31 will get a Fandango Movie Ticket by email.
For editor Terilyn A. Shropshire, Twisters was a homecoming. Director Lee Isaac Chung shot the satisfying popcorn picture on 35mm, and Shropshire, who cut her teeth on 8mm, 16mm, and 35mm, was thrilled to see flash frames again on Twisters. Most of the excitement came in color timing and seeing the end results, but still, the texture alone of the footage shot by cinematographer Dan Mindel, was a thrill to cut.
Twisters is a long-awaited sequel that prioritizes character-driven spectacle over familiar nostalgia. In it, storm chasers in Oklahoma, namely Kate Carter (Daisy Edgar-Jones), Tyler Owens (Glen Powell), and Javi (Anthony Ramos), track a series of increasingly dangerous tornadoes. The characters are grounded heroes seeking to not only track tornadoes but also prevent disasters in small towns.
The well-rounded characters were well-protected by Shropshire, known for Eve’s Bayou, Love & Basketball, and The Woman King. Recently, she told The Credits how she made the action feel both personal and visceral.
The opening shots are so Spielbergian. You all say a lot with a few shots of silence of Kate in the field. What did you want those opening moments to establish?
It was important for Isaac to shoot this film in Oklahoma. As someone who grew up in Arkansas and grew up in that type of world of the farm and broad expanse, I think that’s how he wanted to bring you into the film. I had never really been to Oklahoma before, and I swear I’ll never look at the sky the same way again. So, it was very important to him to have that scope from the very beginning so that you could see the world in which Kate grew up and that she truly loved this place, this space. And so, with Dan Mindel, the decision to shoot it on film, the decision to shoot it anamorphic was a product of wanting to be viscerally immersive as far as the country, the sky and the landscape of the environment.
Daisy Edgar-Jones as Kate in Twisters, directed by Lee Isaac Chung.
Tell me if I misread this, but Isaac filmed drone photography of tornadoes, and they found their way into the movie. Is that true?
Oh yeah. Basically, we had first, second, and C units, but there were also stormchasers who were literally out in the field. Some of the photography they were doing would come back to us, and there had been an agreement, I guess, to license certain things. What was great is we had what we had shot, but we also had material that they had shot. We had resources, whether it was for just references for visual effects or whether it was something that ultimately we thought that we could use within the film.
Where’d you use that storm chasers’ footage in the film?
Actually, when you see Kate and when the first team goes out. The character Addy (Kiernan Shipka) has her head out the window and is like, whoa, taking photographs. There’s literally a passing shot there. It wasn’t a drone shot, but it was a shot that was from one of the storm chasers. Then there’s the drone stuff that was shot. Basically, when you saw a lot of the windmill photography, that was drone photography, and some of it was helicopter photography, so we had both going. We had all kinds of things flying in the air.
You were on set, cutting the film. When Isaac was shooting, what key questions did you have for each other?
Basically, maybe the second unit had to have shot something first, and then the first unit came in after them, and Isaac might want to come in and see something the second unit shot or vice versa. Sometimes, it was something where the main unit shot first, and the second unit fell behind in getting additional photography. And so, to the degree that I could, I kept everybody aware of continuity and consistency. Isaac would just come sit on the couch, maybe look at dailies. If it was for a scene he was about to shoot, sometimes it was just looking at what preceded it. If I had what preceded it or what followed it, he’d sometimes come in and take a look.
(from left) Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and Tyler (Glen Powell) in Twisters, directed by Lee Isaac Chung.
One shot people are talking about already is Tyler Owens walking outside in the rain, stoic with his cowboy hat. It’s a great movie star moment, but you also feel the weight on the character’s shoulders. How’d you want to pace that shot just right?
What’s great about it is that I got to be one of the first audiences to see the film in its raw form. When I watch dailies for the first time, unless I’m under some crazy time constraint, I try not to pick up a pen and literally sit there—I’m in a theater watching it. So, you see dailies come in like that, and you’re like, “Damn, it’s good.” It just said so much about who this guy was. One of my favorite moments is literally when he looks to the window, obviously after he and Kate have had a bit of an argument. It’s just so beautiful because Tyler, he’s got this bravura, but you get to see him evolve and see his vulnerabilities and see his fear.
Glen Powell as Tyler in Twisters, directed by Lee Isaac Chung.
You let the moment breathe.
That’s one of those moments when, for me as an audience member, I really started to fall in love with this character. It is when you see the other side of someone, something that they may not initially show you. You feel like you have a little private moment with them with, of course, 200 other people in the theater. This is what’s great about being in a movie theater and sharing these intimate moments privately but collectively. So, for that moment, let him walk all the way and not cut… I mean, that’s the thing as an editor: sometimes it’s not about when you’re cutting, but when you’re not cutting and letting a moment like that happen.
There is so much character growth and chaos in the final act. With all the moving pieces, what did you hope to accomplish with the third act in Twisters?
I want you not to think. I want you to live in the moment. Sometimes, when we’re watching a film, we try to be ahead of the filmmaker. You’re trying to jump ahead; oh, this will be so predictable. When you get to that point in the film, I want you to be with Kate. I want you to be with all of them. By the time you get to that final moment, I want you to have imprinted on every single person that is either in that truck or in that theater and really be feeling all the feels, the anxiousness, the anxiety, the hope, the fear, all of it, the excitement, that sense of this woman overcoming the one fear that she had. She’s facing her fear in a heroic way. At the end of it, I want people to have this big sigh and sense that they went through something immersive, visceral, and exciting. That’s why we go to the movies, right? We just want to be taken to someplace and not know how we got there.
(from left) Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and Tyler (Glen Powell) in Twisters, directed by Lee Isaac Chung.
For those who haven’t watched House of the Dragon since its debut in 2022, the show is based on George R.R. Martin’s book Fire and Blood. The story chronicles the early days of the Targaryen dynasty in the time of Aegon the Conqueror, a forefather to the much-beloved Game of Thrones heroine Daenerys. The new series has developed its own enthusiastic fandom, one that was thrilled to see the premiere of new weekly episodes as of June 16th of this year.
Season two is bigger, bloodier, and more bombastic as it explores the Dance of the Dragons, a civil war that promises to leave a wide swath of both dead dragons and humans in its wake. Following the departure of the show’s co-creator, Miguel Sapochnik, the reins are now held by sole showrunner Ryan Condal. Condal is known for his encyclopedic knowledge and love of Martin’s world of epic battles, Shakespearean and incestuous families, and deadly dragons.
The Credits spoke to Condal about the powerful women of House of the Dragon in front of and behind the camera. Be advised that spoilers are ahead for those who haven’t watched through the fifth episode of this season.
House of the Dragon interrogates misogyny and patriarchy through several main characters, especially regarding power given and denied. You made the decision early on to have powerful women represented in front of and behind the camera. Can you talk a bit about how that is specifically at play as we move closer to the end of Season 2?
Strong women existing in a heavily patriarchal, monarchical society is, I think, one of the key things that sets House of the Dragon apart from Game of Thrones. Not that there weren’t strong women in Game of Thrones, but it was not about a war that was kicked off to deny a woman absolute power in the form of being the sovereign, the person that actually wears the crown and sits on the throne, and this war is very much about that. You could debate who deserves to sit on the throne more and who would become a better sovereign, but none of that matters in a medieval society. It was always about primogeniture and who was meant to sit on the throne by the gods or God. In this case, there’s a split decision in the sense that half the realm believes it should have been who Viserys decreed, and half believes that it should be as it always was, which was that a male sits on the throne. So one of the many things we wanted to do in this series is interrogate what it is like to live as powerful women, specifically through the eyes of two of the very most powerful women in this story, against this overwhelming tradition and societal structure of keeping men in power and keeping women in their place. That’s not to say that women don’t have power. You can have a certain amount of power, but you can’t have THE power.
Photograph by Liam Daniel/HBO
You certainly expand on that in season two.
Season two continues to explore the fallout of what happens in season one because now we’re witnessing a war being fought over this disagreement. It’s gonna be very bloody, and it’s a nuclear conflict because we have dragons on either side of it, which is also unique when you hold it up to the original series. On one side, you have a woman who is the Commander in Chief in Rhaenyra [Emma D’Arcy], who is prosecuting her side of the war. As you’ve seen, it has been difficult for her to get her point across and be a good democratic sovereign the way she learned to be from Viserys [Paddy Considine], studying as his cupbearer. Viserys always listened to the counselors around him. You see how much Rhaenyra struggles with that, and part of her arc this season as it continues to unfold is how she starts to really run against that particular grain as that methodology continues to fail for her.
Harry Collett, Emma D’Aarcy. Photograph by Theo Whiteman/HBO
We are seeing her trying to be a good queen.
Yes. That’s definitely a theme that Viserys struggled with, and we’ll see Rhaenyra and the Greens, Aegon, and his side struggle with it. Can you be a great king or queen, a great sovereign and leader, and be a good person at the same time? One of the things this hyper-patriarchal and feudal society teaches us is this world wants and demands of these people that they become ruthless autocrats because that’s the only really effective way to win, stay alive, and stay in power. That’s a theme of the series that goes for both the men and the women, but we always really liked the idea of dramatizing it through the eyes of a woman and seeing what those societal pressures would do to a woman like Rhaenyra, who is intelligent, independent, powerful, but also very flawed.
Clare Kilner directed Episodes 2 and 5 this season. What were some of her creative choices that point to her aesthetic? Do you have a specific example from Episode 5?
Clare’s fantastic. Women directed half of our episodes this season, which we’re very proud of. Four of the eight were directed by female hands. With five total, Clare has directed more episodes of this show than anybody else and will be directing more. For example, this really fantastic shot wasn’t expressly in the script in that great scene at the council table after we realize that Aegon is fighting for his life and indisposed after the battle of Rook’s Rest. There’s a need to put a regent in place to at least carry forward power and rule in Aegon’s absence and possibly to take over if he either passes away or cannot return to the throne or council table. Alcient [Olivia Cooke]’s saying, “It should be me, and let Aemond be the sword and dragon rider in the field.” The idea of that scene was always to watch as Alicent presents herself, and then one by one, the men around the table betray her, ending with Larys and then finally with Criston Cole. They all push their chips over to the side with Aemond. Larys says this devastating thing, “After we started this war over not wanting Rhaenyra to sit on the throne, what would it say now if we raised up a woman of our own?” It’s a very cold and calculating line, and then Criston Cole turns against Alicent himself. It’s Cole’s betrayal of her that is ultimately what the scene is really about. It’s about this sudden and massive transfer of power, as Aemond goes from being the rider of the biggest dragon in the world and possibly having mortally injured his brother to getting to sit in the biggest, most important seat in the realm. Our idea going into the scene and the way we toned it was always that once it’s decided that it’s Aemond, he simply gets up from his seat at the foot of the table, walks around, grabs the king’s ball, sits in the king’s chair and puts the ball in place, then immediately begins making edicts. We wanted to watch this sudden and almost banal transfer of power happen through Aemond.
And how did Clare shift that scene?
She did this really interesting thing when she was shooting it. From the moment Cole says it must be Aemond, Alicent goes into this fugue state. She sits back in her chair and realizes, “All of this stuff that I’ve done to put my son on the throne, all the moral compromises I’ve made, the way I gave up my body and everything along the years to see my line rise, this is where it’s led me, to be thrown out the back door as soon as I’m inconvenient to anybody.” Clare just did this great shot that’s just a very slow push in on Alicent, so from the moment that Aemond sits down and starts making his proclamations as essentially the new king, you cut away from all of that. There’s this whole conversation that happens around Alicent and you hear it happening around her, but the camera is just pushing it on her. And this wonderful performance that Olivia Cooke gives, which is very subtle, where you just see her breaking inside, that was the thing that Clare brought. She shot that shot. She brought it to the scene. We loved it, and decided to cut the the rest of the scene around it. So it goes from being a scene about this massive transfer of power to Aemond, and yes, that happens, but then the second half of the scene is this great character moment for Alicent, as you see her just completely stripped of every other remaining reason that she would have had to continue as she was, trying to hold this very fractured Green side of the kingdom together.
Olivia Cooke. Courtesy. HBO.
New episodes of House of the Dragon air Sundays on MAX.
Featured image: Olivia Cook, Emma D’Aarcy in “House of the Dragon.” Courtesy HBO
Is Wade Wilson getting emo on us? In the final trailer for Deadpool & Wolverine, Ryan Reynolds’ notoriously childish superhero is feeling the emotions as he looks on at his new partner-in-crime, Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), and tearfully tells him, “I’ve been waiting a long time for this team-up.”Wade goes on to tell Wolverine that, regardless of what he thinks about himself in his world, in the world Wade comes from, he’s not just a highly regarded member of the X-Men; he’s the X-man. However, this isn’t quite what this particular Wolverine believes because this isn’t the same version of the character we saw die a hero in James Mangold’s stellar 2017 film Logan. In fact, his reply is as curt as possible: “Yeah, well…he ain’t sh*t in mine.”
We’re now a week away from the long-awaited team-up of Reynolds’ Merc with the Mouth and Hugh Jackman’s mutant berserker. (Re-pairing, if you want to be technical about it—they appeared in character in 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine, but it was a very different version of Reynolds’ Wade Wilson). The final trailer includes some new footage and a major cameo from Dafne Keen’s Laura, the little girl who was molded in Wolverine’s image in Logan and who he died protecting. This reveals that Shawn Levy’s upcoming Deadpool & Wolverine will, in fact, deal directly with Logan and keep its nearly flawless narrative intact.
This final look also includes a few glimpses at Wade’s own iterations—Lady Deadpool and Cowboy Deadpool specifically. All this time-hopping is connected to the Time Variance Authority, introduced in Loki, and embodied here by Matthew MacFayden’s Mr. Paradox.
It’s a stellar final glimpse at what will likely be one of summer’s big hits. The excitement is real and the emotions, even for notorious joker Wade Wilson, are running high.
Check out the final trailer below. Deadpool & Wolverine arrives on July 26
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“You wish to serve the great houses and shape the flow of power; you first must exert power over yourself.”
This is how the second teaser for HBO’s Dune: Prophecy begins, with Emily Watson’s Valya Harkonnen explaining the power dynamics of a time 10,000 years before the events depicted in Denis Villeneuve’s Dune films before the Great Houses were influenced by the Bene Gesserit, a powerful, secretive sisterhood that factored so hugely in Frank Herbert’s original novel and Villeneuve’s films. Prophecy will track how the Bene Gesserit came to be and eventually went on to become the whispering power that shaped so much of the intergalactic world order.
Dune: Prophecy is centered on two Harkonnen sisters, Valya and Tula (Olivia Williams), who go on to found the Bene Gesserit, two later members of which were played so vividly by Rebecca Ferguson and Charlotte Rampling in Villeneuve’s films. Prophecy is based on the work of Frank Herbert’s son, Brian Herbert, and his co-author, Kevin J. Anderson, in their book “Sisterhood of Dune.”Prophecy will give the many fans of Villeneuve’s films a look at how the imploding intergalactic community setting itself up for a massive war during the time of Paul Atreides (played in the films, of course, by Timothée Chalamet) was shaped eons ago by the likes of women like Valya and Tula.
Watson and Williams are joined by Travis Fimmel, Jodhi May, Mark Strong, Sarah-Sofie Boussnina, Josh Heuston, Chloe Lea, Jade Anouka, Faoileann Cunningham, Edward Davis, Aoife Hinds, Chris Mason, Shalom Brune-Franklin, Jihae, Tabu, Charithra Chandran, Jessica Barden, Emma Canning, and Yerin Ha.
The series hails from showrunner and executive producer Alison Schapker. Anna Foerster directed multiple episodes, including the all-important pilot, and serves as executive producer. Jordan Goldberg, Mark Tobey, John Cameron, Matthew King, Scott Z. Burns, and Dune and Dune: Part Two screenwriter Jon Spaihts executive produce alongside Brian Herbert. Byron Merritt and Kim Herbert are executive producers for the Frank Herbert estate.
Check out the teaser below. Dune: Prophecy arrives on HBO in November—a specific date will be announced later.
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“It was really about getting out of your own way and allowing these men’s story to come to the forefront,” cinematographer Pat Scola tells The Credits about the emotionally stirring film Sing Sing from director Greg Kwedar, which shines a delicate light on the arts rehabilitation program at Sing Sing Correctional Facility. “Greg was the one who led from the front on this, and we were there to help tell the story without putting our hands all over it,” Scola says. “That was a huge goal of ours, and it was a really humbling reminder to just step out of the way. I felt privileged to be there to craft a way to capture it.”
The film stars Colman Domingo (recently nominated for an Oscar for Rustin) as someone who’s been wrongfully convicted of a crime but finds his path in a theater group, acting alongside other men who have been incarcerated. The screenplay is a true story written by Kwedar and Clint Bentley, who capture a powerful story of grace and goodwill that is equally exquisite in its imagery. Scola curated a near documentary feel to the frame that follows the characters, including formerly incarcerated actors, breathing life into their journeys with a cinematic touch of a bygone era.
Part of crafting the visual language was the decision to shoot on Super 16 paired with Super Speed lenses to capture the intimacy of the characters and the spaces. “The experience that we’re trying to tell about these men is about finding their humanity and being humans inside this oppressive place. That was something that we wanted to lift up,” mentions Scola, who also photographed AQuiet Place: Day One the same year.
Below, read how the cinematographer found his purpose in the harrowing, heartfelt story.
This is your first time collaborating with director Greg Kwedar. How did you get involved in the project?
Greg and Clint were doing another film that didn’t end up getting made and they were shopping around looking at some cinematographers. I had just been in that Variety article they do every year, ten cinematographers to watch. I was in it for Pig. I think they saw that, and that’s how they ended up getting in touch with my agent.
How did knowing that this was based on a true story influence your decision making?
When Greg first pitched it to me, I wanted to be part of this story, and I don’t think I had read the script yet. What I got first was this wealth of Zoom videos that Greg was having with the cast, like Clarence [Maclin], Dino [Johnson], and everyone else. And many of those things that came out of those Zooms are generally in the film.
Coleman Domingo stars in “Sing Sing.” Courtesy A24.
Any examples?
Someone was talking about wearing a watch on the inside. It’s a status symbol which is a big thing in prison in terms of how you assert your level of status. But they said they wore this watch but the time was always wrong. That hit me pretty hard because of how tragic that is. But it kind of launched something for how the film wanted to look a little bit.
How so?
There are very few tells in the film when the movie takes place and over how long. And time functions differently for the men inside in a big way. You’re fighting time. The sort of look that was birthed out of that was that I wanted it to feel a bit out of time. I wanted it to feel like you don’t really know when you’re looking. I was trying to make it feel old. That’s what led us to shoot on Super 16.
Coleman Domingo stars in “Sing Sing.” Courtesy A24.
What was the shooting schedule for Sing Sing?
It was 19 days in total, but it was only 14 with Colman [Domingo].
How did the short schedule influence the photography?
We were clever about what we could do without Colman. Sometimes, we shot one side of conversations and then returned for them, which is not super ideal, but we did it. And we did it in ways that wouldn’t affect the other actors’ performances. We had to be intentional with everything and understand how it would be edited. There was very little of us just hosing it down with coverage.
What’s so joyous about Sing Sing is how the emotional gravity of the film pulsates through characters and onto the screen. Did you want to express the relationship between Colman and Clarence Maclin any differently visually?
I don’t think the camera treats them differently than any of the other characters. And that’s certainly a conscious choice in the film, in many ways, just in the way it was made. The way we made it as a community and told these guys stories, we wanted everybody to be as front and center and lifted up as possible. And I feel like we never made a lensing choice or something that treated Colman or Clarence differently from anybody else because this is all their stories.
How did you approach lighting the locations?
The film is split between three major locations. There’s Downstate Correctional Facility, Mid-Orange Correctional Facility, and then the Beacon High School in upstate New York. When we scouted Downstate, one of the things that I found the most oppressive about it was the number of windows. Outside those windows are these walls that keep them in, and you’re getting all this daylight, and you can’t touch it. That led us down this path of this being not your normal prison movie. We’re not trying to exploit it and have it gritty, lit with fluorescents, or a dark aesthetic. Instead, it’s warm.
That’s certainly very different from how most films set in prisons are shot.
We allowed the spaces to light themselves and speak to the visual story we were looking to tell. We were very smart and subtractive with our lighting techniques. We didn’t have big lights, and we didn’t have lots of money, so we took away light. But again, it worked for the story we were trying to tell.
How did you want to frame the theater sequences compared to the prison scenes? The former has an airier feeling.
I think a couple of things are happening there that create that feeling. You can see from the first shot where you enter the theater, the very first moment you get to see it in this long roaming one shot that basically shows all of the characters, explores the backstage and ends up on Colman at the end. You get to see everybody in this element. And there’s definitely an aspect that they’re free in this place. And I think we wanted to reflect that a little bit with the camera without being too overt about it, and so, the camera does have this traveling and floating around feeling to it.
Coleman Domingo stars in “Sing Sing.” Courtesy A24.
Is there something you want audiences to take away from the film?
I would like them to see the wealth of humans that exist behind the walls of these places. The men we worked with are particularly wonderful human beings. I just hope that their perception is open to being changed about what happens to the people who can exist inside prison.
Sing Sing is in select theaters now.
Featured image: Divine G (Colman Domingo), imprisoned at Sing Sing for a crime he didn’t commit, finds purpose by acting in a theatre group alongside other incarcerated men, including wary newcomer (Clarence Maclin). Courtesy A24.
James Gunn is close to wrapping principal photography on Superman, the first marquee feature from his new DC Studios, which he heads alongside co-chief Peter Safran.
The writer/director shared the update that Superman is “getting close” on Threads, where he spread some love to Cleveland for being such a great host city for six weeks of the production.
“#Cleveland – today we are leaving you after six amazing weeks of shooting,” Gunn wrote. “From the moment we first came here on a scout a tad less than a year ago and Terminal Tower was lit up with the colors of Superman, I knew you were a special place. I would walk down your streets and someone would stop me and tell me how grateful they were we were shooting in their city — not once, not twice but dozens of times.”
Gunn wasn’t done enthusing about how special a place Cleveland was to film Superman and how the city was central to the creation of the most iconic superhero of them all—with apologies to Batman.
“The wonderful background actors on the film were always so fun and funny and they clapped after takes, something that reminded us Hollywood cynics why we make movies in the first place. The pride you feel in being where Jerry [Siegel] and Joe [Shuster] first created Superman was invigorating. You exemplify his spirit. But just as much it’s the pride you have in your community, your hometown, your radio stations and restaurants and gathering places that touched me.”
Gunn responded to a fan’s question about whether the film was finished shooting by writing they still had a couple of weeks left, but the end was in sight. “It’s a long shoot…but we’re getting close!”
David Corenswet stars as Clark Kent/Superman, the first reboot of the character since Henry Cavill’s turn in the cape during Zack Snyder’s run of films for DC/Warner Bros. Rachel Brosnahan stars as Lois Lane, and Nicholas Hoult joins them 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.
Superman is set to fly into theaters on July 11, 2025
We’re now less than ten days away from Deadpool & Wolverine, the long-awaited pairing of Ryan Reynolds’ Merc with the Mouth and Hugh Jackman’s mutant berserker. (Re-pairing, if you want to be technical about it—they appeared in character in 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine, but it was a very different version of Reynolds’ Wade Wilson). Marvel has understandably been flooding the zone with promotional material (Deadpool & Wolverine is their only 2024 release), feeding the excitement that folks already have in spades to see Reynolds and Jackman yuk it up and fight it out on screen together. Marvel will also bring the film to San Diego’s Comic-Con next week, no doubt with new material to share. Ahead of the Con, we’ve now got a new trailer, which gives us a tantalizing glimpse at some of Deadpool’s variants, including Lady Deadpool (briefly shown in a previous trailer), who is revealed right up until the point that we see her face, as well as a decent amount of new footage.
The glimpse at Lady Deadpool begins at the 12-second mark, which is followed by a look at another Wade Wilson variant, Cowboy Deadpool—you’ll notice the spurs and side holster—which speaks to how Deadpool & Wolverine will make the most of the Time Variance Authority and their ability to traverse the multiverse. Matthew MacFayden’s Mr. Paradox will have a lot to do on that front, and the TVA’s time-hopping is how Wolverine is pulled into the action in the first place—this isn’t the same version of the character we saw die in James Mangold’s stellar 2017 film Logan.
The new trailer also includes some familiar faces in Yukio (Shioli Kutsuna), the Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand), and the utterly non-superheroic yet undeniably charming Peter (Rob Delaney), who comes upon Deadpool and Wolverine in a parking lot after the dynamic duo makes a graceless entrance.
As for the new cache of photos, we’ve got fresh looks at the villain Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin), Professor X’s very powerful, very bad twin. In the comics, Cassandra’s backstory is extremely gothic—while she and her twin, Charles Xavier, were gestating in the womb, Charles recognized her evil presence and killed her before she could do the same to him. But Cassandra’s mind lived on, and years later, she formed a new body and swore revenge on her twin brother. Her powers are immense.
There’s little doubt that Deadpool & Wolverine is going to be a hit, and with the premiere date clawing its way toward us, we’ll also be hearing from critics soon, after their advanced screenings and the social media embargo, and eventual review embargo, are lifted. Marvel fans, as well as Reynolds and Jackman fans, are ready for action.
Deadpool & Wolverine slashes its way into theaters on July 26:
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Roland Emmerich knows how to destroy worlds. The multi-hyphenate is behind some of the biggest disaster movies in film history, including Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, 2012, and Moonfall. But instead of depicting a cataclysm for his latest effort, he’s building an empire for the Peacock series Those About to Die (streaming on July 18), which takes place during Rome’s Flavian dynasty just as the Coliseum is receiving its finishing touches.
The 10-episode action drama has one of the greatest actors of a generation, Anthony Hopkins, as Emperor Vespasian, who ruled from 69-79 AD and decided to gift the now historic arena to the Roman people rather than the city’s political factions. Based on a book written by Daniel P Mannix, Emmerich unpacks a deliberately paced story following the charioteers who race inside the Circus Maximus and its seedy underbelly, perfectly cast with Iwan Rheon (Game of Thrones) as Tenax, the man at the center of the action. When the series does step into the gladiator area, we are emotionally attached to a dynamic ensemble cast manipulating the power strings of rule.
To bring the painterly imagery to screen, the director tapped longtime collaborator Peter Travers, who served as visual effects supervisor alongside visual effects producer Tricia Mulgrew, a team that relied on virtual production techniques to pull off the immersive period piece. “I think we started in April and finished in October, and out of that, there were 100 shooting days on a virtual production stage,” says the BAFTA-nominated Travers. “This wouldn’t have worked if we didn’t have somebody like Roland, who has been pushing the latest technology during his whole career. He pushed the virtual production wall to its breaking point every day, which broke on some days. He would just then pull back a little bit to where it worked, and then he’d get the shot.”
Pushing the boundaries was just part of the visual effects work of Those About to Die. Below, Travers details how they conjured the ancient city, crashed racing chariots, and tamed ferocious lions.
You worked with Emmerich on Moonfall. Did you begin this project right after?
We knew this was on Roland’s list of future potential projects when we were doing Moonfall, but when I was on that project, I couldn’t think of a lick about it because I was knee-deep in the moon. But when Those About to Die surfaced, it was like, okay, Ancient Rome, here we go.
The series is based on a Daniel P Mannix novel. Did that become reference material for the visual language?
Yeah, it’s all heavily influenced. Rome is so well documented and some of the buildings are still here today. If we can try to capture the magic of it as much as we can, then that’s good.
How did Roland describe the overall aesthetic?
We were trying to capture an active city, not a museum. People are alive, and they’re trying to make their way in ancient Rome. The city was a melting pot of cultures, so it was a culturally rich environment. But more importantly, it was an active environment.
THOSE ABOUT TO DIE — Episode 101 — Pictured: Iwan Rheon as Tenax— (Photo by: Reiner Bajo/Peacock)
An engaging aspect of the series is this idea of sport. How did that influence you creatively?
The show’s main center is around sport. It’s evident the more we read about Rome, people haven’t changed. One of the reasons why sport is so popular today is because of the Circus Maximus games, the horse racing, and the gladiator stuff is a direct thing from an ancient past that is so relatable to the NFL, basketball, UFC fighting, and all those kinds of things. Human beings still have this kind of innate response to sport. That’s what the show is primarily about, and that’s why sports matters even today. There’s our human identity with our history; a lot of it comes through athletics, sports, and the Olympics.
THOSE ABOUT TO DIE — Episode 101 — Pictured: (l-r) Pepe Barroso as Fonsoa, Eneko Sagardoy as Andria, — (Photo by: Reiner Bajo/Peacock)
VFX producer Tricia Mulgrew worked with you on Moonfall. Did Tricia’s role change for the small screen?
Both of our jobs were that much harder on this show, in particular, because of the virtual production. It completely reorganizes the schedule, making it that much more challenging. On a typical movie, you have one deadline, which is the very end before the movie comes out. On this, we had ten deadlines with our ten episodes.
The series takes place in Rome among different regions, houses, and ports that are woven into the storytelling. What was the first step in creating the city map?
We acquired a virtual Rome model to use in Unreal Engine that we thought was the most complete, and then we started building upon it. When I first got it, I brought it to Roland, and we sat down in Unreal on my computer. We were flying around Rome, and he was like, ‘Oh my god, this totally changes everything.’ We were like, oh, look at this area, look at this area, and all that kind of stuff. It was beautiful. And it gave us a head start at being able to do virtual production.
How did virtual production affect the pipeline for other departments?
The trick to the show is that we became like this digital backbone for virtual production and visual effects. The entire show, the costumes, production design, and everything else were non-linear and broadband. It even affected scouting and where we did location scouting. With our production designer, Johannes Muecke, we were everyday working for hours going, okay, what about this model? Can you use this? And then Johannes would say, ” Okay, I talked to Roland, and we want columns that look like this. Then I would say, well, if you’re going to build those columns, then we need to scan and get them into our Unreal file. So things happened in both directions constantly.
THOSE ABOUT TO DIE — Episode 105 — Pictured: Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson as Viggo, Moe Hashim as Kwame — (Photo by: Reiner Bajo/Peacock)
What was the virtual production environment setup?
It was broken up into five nodes. I think there were ten machines in total that were synced together with the end display in Unreal. So imagine a wall with ten big TVs, all synced together and displaying a 16K image. It is multiple computers doing the work. It all had to happen in real time because we were camera tracking. So we’re building this 3D Unreal environment on the wall. And then when the camera moves parallax, the stage is on a big rotation platform, so we can rotate it. DNEG also had to bring a lot of their artists to the location because it was easier than transporting terabytes of data from the mothership in London.
THOSE ABOUT TO DIE — Episode 110 — Pictured: (l-r) Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson as Viggo, Moe Hashim as Kwame — (Photo by: Reiner Bajo/Peacock)
One of the visual stars is the Circus Maximus, the racetrack that holds the chariot racing. How did you recreate the historic location?
There was a Circus Maximus in Unreal with the right dimensions, but we rebuilt it because the things fit together because of what we shot. We had what we called the Emperor’s Balcony, where they viewed the horse racing. Production design designed a practical Emperor’s Balcony, and then we matched it virtually and fit it into the full Circus Maximus for all the virtual shots. Then, we had to have a smaller practical version of the Circus Maximus for when we used the practical horses in the photography. It’s as if we had to do a set extension, which happens quite a bit in the show. That way, we could put full crowds behind real horses around the bend. And those are some of my favorite shots because they look great. It’s real horses going around the real Circus Maximus.
THOSE ABOUT TO DIE — Episode 101 — Pictured: Dimitri Leonidas as Scorpus — (Photo by: Reiner Bajo/Peacock)
How did you approach the chariot races and consequential crashes that happen inside the Circus Maximus?
We pre-viz every shot, even the reaction shots and all the close-ups of the charioteers; all of that’s pre-viz. If you have a director that embraces previs for what it actually is, which is a preparatory tool, then you can really map it out. Then, when it came time to do the action unit stuff, I was the action unit director, so I directed all the horses going around the track. I sat down with the AD and mapped out all the sequences. I think there are eight chariot races across all ten episodes. We did block shooting, so it was like this big decoder, a spreadsheet of all the shots. And with our previs, we could bring up the shot with all the camera guys, the horse trainers, and everyone and know what we needed to do.
We also get to see the construction of the Colosseum. What steps took place to model the landmark?
We had a Colosseum model in Unreal and the general layout of the Piazza around the Colosseum. That ends up being just as important as the interior because a lot of our shots and a lot of our scenes take place outside the Colosseum when they’re building it. There was also an incredible amount of set decoration in the Colosseum. That whole environment ended up being completely designed by the production. Like the cranes and scaffolding, what stages of the marble are needed? We had to keep all of this in mind to show the different levels of construction. And it goes from, I would say, 50% completed at the beginning to 100% completed for the opening games that are in episode nine. So it was a ton of work, and we took some liberties, admittedly, because that area transformed quite a bit.
THOSE ABOUT TO DIE — Episode 103 — Pictured: Sara Martins as Cala— (Photo by: Reiner Bajo/Peacock)
We also visit Northern Africa in the pilot, where the story of Cala [Sara Martins] and her family begins. Her son Kwame [Moe Hashim] is introduced with a lion hunt that is captured. On set, there was an actor playing the lion in a suit. How did that performance help translate the visual effects?
I would think many visual effects teams and supervisors probably have their own flair with that stuff. I wouldn’t say that mine is abnormal, but my philosophy is to get the plate, not be so intrusive with the visual effects, with tracking markers and things like that, but get the performance right. Then, hopefully, most of the photography is good to go, so you’re doing less repair work. So I prefer, especially when you’re replacing a performance of a human with a CG character of some kind, with as little footprint as possible.
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Featured image: THOSE ABOUT TO DIE — Episode 103 — Pictured: (l-r) Dimitri Leonidas as Scorpus, Eneko Sagardoy as Andria — (Photo by: Reiner Bajo/Peacock)
Spoiler first: At the end of director James Mangold’s 2017 Logan, Logan died. Better known as Wolverine and synonymous with the actor who has played him many times, Hugh Jackman, the character returns on July 26th in Marvel/Disney’s Deadpool & Wolverine. The decision was Jackman’s, and apparently even Marvel boss Kevin Feige was skeptical, but thanks to the multiverse, this Logan supposedly isn’t that Logan, the one who made the ultimate sacrifice to save a young mutant, Laura (Dafne Keen), and went out in a noble, fan-approved fashion.
The X-Men can fly and miraculously heal themselves and bend metal with their minds, so someone dying and coming back to life is hardly the imaginative leap it would be in a more somber film series. Nevertheless, Wolverine’s particular timeline has perplexed Marvel super-fans and novices (raises hand) alike for some time. With all the speculation and Wolverine returning to theaters, why not try to make sense of it? Or at least lay it out in one confusing sequence:
It’s the year 2000. Director Bryan Singer’s X-Men is a critical and box-office success. The movie paves the way for one of the biggest franchises ever. Logan is an adult in the present day. He successfully destroys a mutation-inducing machine created and powered by Magneto (Ian McKellen), a complicated and sympathetic foe.
X2, also directed by Singer, was released in 2003. Logan is searching for clues to the past that have made him into the self-regenerating, adamantium-filled weapon he is. He doesn’t find much, but villain Colonel William Stryker (Brian Cox) seems to know something.
Three years later, sequel X-Men: The Last Stand, directed by Brett Ratner, premieres at Cannes. Logan kills Jean Grey (Famke Janssen), who, on the topic of death and rebirth, had presumably died in the previous film. She is resurrected as a dark alternative personality, the Phoenix. But vis à vis Logan, we are still progressing in time in a linear fashion.
In 2009, Logan gets his star turn. Directed by Gavin Hood, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, gets going in 1845. A boy named James (Troye Sivan) becomes aware of his mutation after watching the man he thinks is his father being killed by another man, Thomas Logan. James uses his newly discovered bone claws to kill Thomas, who tells him he is, in fact, James’s father. James and his half-brother Victor (Liev Schreiber), who is also a self-regenerating mutant with built-in bone weapons, become soldiers fighting in major wars through the 20th century. Victor is an evil half-brother and gets both of them executed by firing squad during the Vietnam War, an experience which, of course, the pair survive. Major William Stryker invites the brothers to join mutant Team X. Six years on, which puts us in the late 1970s/early 1980s territory, Wolverine gets into an-all out war with the amoral Team X after Victor, who’s allegedly gone rogue, also allegedly kills Logan’s girlfriend, Kayla (Lynn Collins). Stryker offers Logan the pivotal operation that sees his skeleton fused with adamantium, and tries and fails to conceal the memory of this from Logan. He winds up inadvertently wiping the memory later on when he shoots Wolverine in the head with adamantium bullets.
X-Men: First Class, directed by Matthew Vaughn, comes out in 2011 and takes place in 1962. All we see of Logan/Wolverine is a brief cameo in a bar, in which he responds to then-partners in mutandom Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and Lehnsherr/Magneto to “go f*** yourself” when they try to recruit him. Given that we know from the previous film that Logan can exist in his adult form, seemingly in perpetuity, this dot on the timeline doesn’t seem too weird.
James Mangold’s The Wolverine, which premiered in 2013, takes place a few years after X-Men: The Last Stand, from 2006. We revisit August 1945 and watch Wolverine, a Japanese POW, save a Japanese officer, Ichirō Yashida (Ken Yamamura), from the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, then cut to the present. A dying Ichirō (Hal Yamanouchi) has mutant Yukio (Rila Fukushima) bring Logan to Japan, only to fake his own death and, as the Silver Samurai, sever Wolverine’s adamantium claws and rob him of his ability to self-heal. (Wolverine regenerates his original bone claws and uses those to kill Ichirō.) In a bonus credits scene set two years later, Xavier and Lehnsherr once again approach Logan about mutant-related issues. This time, he does not tell them to “go f*** yourself.”
It’s 2014. Bryan Singer is back to direct X-Men: Days of Future Past, which takes place in 2023. Robots called Sentinels are killing mutants and any recessive-mutant-gene possessing humans. The solution is to time travel to 1973 to prevent the assassination of the Sentinels’ creator, Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage). Logan volunteers to go in Xavier’s stead, and his present-day brain inhabits his 1970s body, which does not seem to be fighting in the Vietnam War in this movie, even though it was doing that around this time in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Nothing goes to plan, and the Sentinels wind up activated in the past (it’s Richard Nixon’s fault), as well as killing mutants back in 2023. But the X-Men prevail, and Logan returns to a peaceful, Sentinel-free 2023. Back in 1973, however, after almost drowning, he gets picked up by Stryker, who is actually Raven, the mutant who originally assassinated Trask. Speaking of timelines, Jean Grey seems to be doing well, which is nice, given what happened in 2006’s The Last Stand.
2016’s X-Men: Apocalypse opens in 3600 B.C., then fast-forwards to 1983. We only see Wolverine during a Hugh Jackman cameo, trapped in Stryker’s Weapon X experimentation facility. This seems to be the movie where everyone gets most confused about Wolverine’s general dance card. Also, who put Logan in that facility — Stryker? Raven (Jennifer Lawrence) disguised as Stryker? It is simpler to write off clarity on Wolverine’s whereabouts in the 1970s through the early 1980s and instead accept that this was a pivotal period for a gruff Canadian logger who was a child in 1845. It’s a lot for an almost 150-year-old guy, even one who can self-regenerate.
Which brings us to 2017’s Logan and his death. It’s 2029, Wolverine’s healing abilities are failing him, Xavier has dementia, and Logan technically has a sudden adopted daughter, Laura, created from his DNA by a biotechnology company called Transigen, which now wants to kill off all the mutant children it produced. The company’s most effective means of enforcement is X-24, a Wolverine clone. Fighting to save Laura and the other children, Logan is killed by his clone and dies in his daughter’s arms. She then kills X-24 with an adamantium bullet. In terms of the timeline, no notes.
Featured image: Hugh Jackman in ‘Logan.’ Courtesy 20th Century Fox.
This summer’s Deadpool & Wolverine, directed by Shawn Levy, doesn’t necessarily fall outside Wolverine’s timeline. The movie is a sequel to 2018’s Deadpool 2, so if it takes place six years on, he hasn’t yet reached the dystopia of 2029. But that may not matter, anyway. Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) is being brought out of retirement for a mission by the Time Variance Authority, so there will be multiverse hopping either way. On top of that, Marvel head Kevin Feige has indicated that this movie’s Logan is a Variant we haven’t seen before. Here’s hoping that will be further explained, but what seems most salient is Jackman’s enthusiasm to bring the character back for this specific arm of the franchise — Variant or original, Wolverine’s return, alongside Deadpool for the first time, should be worth some suspension of disbelief.
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When the disaster thriller Twister was released in 1996, the film turned out to be one of the summer’s biggest blockbusters and the second-highest-grossing movie of the year (the first was Independence Day). Helen Hunt starred as Jo, a meteorologist who was out to revolutionize tornado alert systems through a small, censor-filled device named Dorothy, conceived by her almost ex-husband, weatherman Bill (Bill Paxton). Almost thirty years later, a sequel is on the way: Twisters, directed by Lee Isaac Chung (Minari), due in theaters July 19th.
Hunt is not reprising her earlier role, and Paxton passed away in 2017. Starring Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell, and Anthony Ramos and written by Mark L. Smith, Twisters is a standalone film, confirmed by Powell in an interview with Vogue. However, like its predecessor, the sequel takes place in Oklahoma, where it was also filmed. The original movie, set during an unusually violent tornado spell, was unique at the time for its shooting locations, a decision driven by director Jan De Bont, who, according to Vulture, insisted on taking the production to the state instead of California and the UK. Now, Twisters has followed suit.
Twister was filmed in towns like Wakita, which was also a location in the movie itself, and Fairfax, which also recently saw the production of Killers of the Flower Moon come to town. The newer film was likewise shot around the state, in locations including Chickasha, Okarche, El Reno, Spencer, and Cashion. And both Twister and Twisters relied on filming in Oklahoma City, with the crew on the latest film working with around 500 local vendors and setting up shop across ten of the city’s hotels, according to The Oklahoman, as well as spending 40 days on set at Prairie Surf Studios.
Shooting in the state where both movies take place doesn’t just give each film a credible layer of reality but has led to a few curious cases of life imitating art. A 2010 tornado tragically destroyed much of the Fairfax farm where several Twister scenes had been filmed, The Oklahomanreported (fortunately, the family who owned the farm was unhurt). Even stranger, that particular tornado blew in on the 14th anniversary of the movie’s U.S. release.
The original movie also apparently spurred real-life interest in the study of meteorology; enrollment in the meteorology department at the University of Oklahoma almost doubled after Twister’s release, and Universal Studios gave the school a grant for a mobile radar. That interest seems to have been prescient — there’s now even more to study, as tornado behavior appears to be changing. This phenomenon may be caused by climate change, which, coming full circle, Twisters screenwriter Smith wound up incorporating into the plot of the latest film, he told Collider.
Of course, it doesn’t just make sense to shoot the setting for tornadoes in locations where they’re best known to touch down. Oklahoma is also beautiful, which might be easy to forget watching a disaster thriller, but it is abundantly apparent in another Twisters connection to the state. This is director Chung’s second time shooting here. His heartbreaking, Oscar-nominated drama Minari is set in Arkansas but was filmed in and around Tulsa, and for sightseers curious to check out that film’s scenic settings for themselves, Visit Tulsa has a comprehensive list of visitable shooting locations.
But if you can’t make it to Oklahoma in person, there’s Twisters. The new film once again follows the path of committed storm chasers, both local and dropping in from out of state. Residents at least get alerts on their cell phones now, but the overall premise hasn’t changed — one of the most electrifying forces of nature out there, when it comes to tornadoes, we humans still have much to learn.
Twisters is in theaters on July 19.
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