The final trailer for easily one of the biggest upcoming series of the year has arrived. Netflix’s 3 Body Problem makes first contact in a mere three weeks, the first new series from Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and Dan Weiss since their HBO juggernaut ended in 2019. Benioff, Weiss, and True Blood writer/producer Alexander Woo have adapted their hugely ambitious series from author Liu Cixin’s “Remembrance of Earth’s Past” trilogy centered on how humanity preps for a coming alien invasion.
“What we are hoping to do is to convey the experience — if not necessarily the exact details — of the novel onto the screen,” Woo said at CES in Las Vegas this past January. “What stayed, we hope, is the sense of wonderment and the sense of scope, of scale, where the problems are no longer just the problems of an individual or even a nation, but of an entire species.”
3 Body Problem is centered on the momentous decision made by a young woman in 1960s China that echoes across time. In the present day, a group of scientists and a detective with unusual methods will band together to try to unpuzzle what is happening when the laws of physics crumble and humanity is facing a potential extinction-level event.
This sweeping sci-fi adventure offers Benioff and Weiss another immense world conceived with brilliant detail, trading in George R. R. Martin’s fantasy realm for Cixin’s expansive sci-fi world.
And once again, Benioff and Weiss have another stellar ensemble cast to work with, including former Game of Thrones alums Liam Cunningham, Jonathan Pryce, and John Bradley, along with Jovan Adepo, Rosalind Chao, Eiza González, Jess Hong, Marlo Kelly, Alex Sharp, Sea Shimooka, Zine Tseng, Saamer Usmani, and Benedict Wong.
Check out the final trailer below. 3 Body Problem arrives on Netflix on March 21.
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After sweeping this awards season with trophies at the BAFTAs, France’s César Awards, Critics Choice, and the recent Spirit Awards, writer-director Justine Triet and co-writer Arthur Harari’s cerebral courtroom drama is headed for the home stretch, with five Academy Award nominations on the line. Anatomy of a Fall is a masterclass of filmmaking across the board, and that surely includes the surgical work done by editor Laurent Sénéchal (C’est ça l’amour, Sybil), who not only notched his first César Award but his first Oscar nomination, too.
The slow-burn thriller centers around successful novelist Sandra (played by Sandra Hüller, also nominated for an Oscar), who is accused of murdering her husband and struggling writer, Samuel (Samuel Theis) after he falls from the attic of their three-story chalet in the French Alps. As the trial drags on, the fissures in their marriage are painstakingly unraveled in the courtroom, culminating with an intense, long quarrel that happened to be recorded on his phone. All this while, the only person who could exonerate—or condemn—Sandra is the couple’s visually impaired 11-year-old son, Daniel (Milo Machado-Graner).
Speaking to The Credits from France on the eve of this weekend’s 96th Oscars, Sénéchal explains the film’s unique sonic palette—without the use of a music score—and how language plays a crucial and intricate role in the dramatic stakes.
Were you editing on set during most of the shoot? How long did it take?
It took 38 weeks. No, I wasn’t on set, but I watched the dailies and had calls with Justine maybe once a week. We decided to start editing only once filming was done. It’s faster that way because she has to be there when choices are done. The starting point is important because acting is the main thing for her, to find where the performances are vivid. She doesn’t focus on the meaning at the beginning—she needs to see what’s good. What is she feeling? Is there truth in the performance? Is it deep? Justine is really into acting. It’s like her door into directing.
ANATOMY OF A FALL_LaurentAndJustinePicPhoto CreditCynthiaArra copy
Justine asked for your advice on the script before filming. What were some of your suggestions?
I asked her to pay more attention to transitions. For the fight, in the script, it was like a cut, which is realistic, but it was tricky for me because it’s nobody’s point of view. If she needed a flashback there, I asked her to shoot long shots of Sandra and the audience in the courtroom. She also had some close-ups on the TVs [in the courtroom], where the dialogue was translated for the jury. It was a way for me to enter and leave the flashback. After reading the script, I suggested being clearer about the couple’s money problems. This is a story about two writers with upper-class problems, and I wanted them to have problems that many people can relate to so the viewers can project themselves onto these characters.
This story is unique in that it makes language itself one of the points of contention between the couple. Did the bilingual nature of the story affect how you had to edit?
Not at all. It’s one more layer to manage. It was great because it was in the heart of their fight. They’re arguing over using English instead of French with their son; she says that’s their meeting point. This was an issue even in the courtroom. When it gets too hard for Sandra to be precise [in French], and when she has an emotional moment, she switches to English. In the script, it was hard to imagine that it was going to work, but in editing, it became another leverage we could use to shape this character.
The movie starts when a student interviews Sandra on the chalet’s first floor while Samuel keeps increasing the volume of a cover version of 50 Cent’s P.I.M.P. upstairs. What does this scene tell us about their marriage?
This scene launches everything. Samuel uses that music to show his anger, to not allow this flirtation downstairs and this lightness [between Sandra and the student]. He can’t hear what they’re talking about but could hear her laughter. As soon as he hears that, he increases the volume of the music. It was our way to create tension at the beginning of this thriller. Sandra is trying to be light, but she’s not; you can feel that. Then we hear Sandra asking the student, “What do you want to know? What is fiction versus reality?” These are themes [explored] in the trial as well. It’s called Anatomy of a Fall, but it could be called Anatomy of the Opening Scene.
The opening credits come after Samuel fell to his death, showing us snippets of their lives before everything falls apart. Talk about weaving those photographs to paint a vague picture of this family.
Using the photographs came really late in the editing process. At first, it was supposed to be a very long shot following the lawyer’s car driving to the chalet. It worked, but was a bit academic. Then Justine told me, maybe we can hear the piano here as the start of Daniel’s piano journey. I thought it was great, like twisting the shot on the car, because we were already in that intimate climate with the agitating piano music.
And it gives us a chance to have another look at Samuel.
But it was really important to see Samuel come to life at that point because we’re not going to see him again until the argument. So, the photos were a great way to show who these characters are. Most of them were done with VFX. We put the boy in some of the two actors’ pictures with VFX. In some pictures, it’s the face of Samuel but Arthur Harari’s body. The little boy playing the piano at the end of the credit was actually a girl; it was Justine’s daughter. The script was really great, and with editing, we tried to make it even better so that we could invite the audience with us and guide them through the story.
It was a deliberate choice to do without any musical score, and there isn’t much ambient sound in the film, except for when Daniel plays the piano. What was the reasoning behind this?
The challenge was to start like a thriller movie, but not like a normal thriller. It was a way to increase the tension and intensify the diegetic music in the movie, such as Daniel’s piano and P.I.M.P., the music the father plays at the beginning. It was even more realistic. With no score, you’re really listening to every sound. The movie is really about sound, and it starts when we hear Sandra asking, “What do you want to know?” It’s like she’s talking to the audience. “What do you want to know about me?” And this question is going to resonate for two and a half hours. In the first scene, the music is really loud; it’s like we’re avoiding the voices and paying attention to every sound. That’s what we wanted. If we had some score music, I think it would have been less original.
Sandra Hüller is Sandra in “Anatomy Of A Fall.” Courtesy Neon.
For the big fight between Sandra and Samuel—we hear the audio for a few beats first before going into the visual. Why was that?
I had the idea to stay long enough with audio for the viewer—once the audience starts to get complacent, it was possible to go into images and surprise the audience. Otherwise, I was pretty sure it would be hard for the audience if we cut right into the fight.
How much of that fight was originally scripted vs improvisation between Hüller and Theis?
Most of it was scripted; there was no improv. The way they played it was really rich, so I had great options. For Samuel, it was better to have him a bit weak, but with some shots where we can feel that he is surprised by the violence of Sandra’s words. We had to balance it because Sandra was really powerful, and we wanted him to not to be destroyed too early in the scene. It’s like a boxing scene.
How did you sustain the suspense during that fight without revealing whether Sandra played any part in Samuel’s death?
At first, we thought we would need intense and calm moments, but it didn’t work out like that. It was quite linear. We had two or three moments of calm when they were drinking around the kitchen table, and she said, “I love you.” With Sandra being that harsh and violent with him with words, we imagined it was going to be a slight move in this balance. He was vulnerable here; he could have committed suicide, maybe. But she’s so hard with him that, maybe not directly, but she’s guilty in some way. In the editing process, we were looking for a more balanced ending for that scene. We could not have a weak scene here—it was better to have a vulnerable Samuel than to have a weak scene here because the whole movie would fall [apart].
What were some of your favorite scenes to work on?
I’m really proud of the opening scene. It was a hard sequence to shape, so I’m happy to have done that. The moment that was really moving for me is when Daniel plays the piano before he testifies a second time. We can see that he’s made up his mind. He’s playing the Chopin on the piano with one hand, it’s the same piece that he was playing with Sandra previously. When he starts playing with both hands, we see him upstairs, where his father was before he fell. That scene was simple and quiet. Without words, you’re really captivated by him, and he brings us into his mind. You don’t know exactly what he’s going to do [at tomorrow’s testimony], so there’s suspense. It’s very emotional because he’s making up his mind and determined. You’re physically and emotionally with him. It’s great when you can feel that as an audience. At the end, when Sandra returns to him at the chalet for the first time after the trial, they don’t talk very much, but you understand how complex and really emotional it is.
Milo Machado-Graner is Daniel in “Anatomy of a Fall.” Courtesy Neon.
How challenging was it to cut the long courtroom sequences?
The very long scene after we see Sandra and Samuel’s fight, where the prosecutor and the lawyers go back and forth for about 20 minutes. At one point, they discuss literature, and the prosecutor reads excerpts from one of Sandra’s novels. That’s a great moment because it goes further than the affair. It’s talking about an issue of our time, how what you may have written years ago can be used against you. It’s very interesting. It’s artistic, playing with reality, and really clever. So, in this way, I think the movie is bigger than itself.
Anatomy of a Fall is nominated for five Academy Awards at this Sunday’s 96th Oscars.
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Nicholas Hoult has revealed a bit about what it was like to audition for James Gunn’s upcoming Superman, the first movie to be released by Gunn and Peter Safran’s new DC Studios.
Hoult initially auditioned for the role of Superman himself, becoming one of the last three actors on Gunn’s list, alongside Tom Brittney and David Corenswet. The role ultimately went to Corenswet, who will star alongside Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane. Hoult eventually nabbed the role of iconic Superman nemesis Lex Luthor, which might actually be more fun to play (aren’t the villains always more fun to play?) While Gunn has been keeping us posted about Superman with steady updates (including the fact that, on day one of filming, he revealed he’d changed the film’s title to Superman from Superman: Legacy), the performers haven’t revealed all that much about the audition process—untill now.
Hoult went on the Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum podcast to discuss his career and revealed some good tidbits about auditioning for Superman. One of the first things Hoult mentioned was that it was actually Rosenbaum, not Gene Hackman, who he first saw playing Luthor. Rosenbaum played the legendary villain in WB’s Smallville for a whopping 154 episodes; that was the Luthor that Hoult grew up with.
“The first ever Lex I saw was you. Yeah, I grew up, Smallville was on,” Hoult said. “That was the show I would watch and see my first iterations of Superman and Lex and all those stories. I’ve since seen Richard Donner’s movies and all the other ones and kind of seen some of the other performances but you’re like the one…it’s the best.”
The Richard Donner movies, beginning with 1978’s game-changing Superman, cemented Christopher Reeve, who played Clark Kent/Superman, as a star. It also burnished Gene Hackman’s already robust legend thanks to his stellar performance as the shameless, ruthless Luthor.
When Hoult auditioned for Gunn, he said the writer/director created a lively space.
“[He has the] ability to keep things fun and alive and try things in the moment and be like, just shouting out from the monitors, ‘Say this line. Do this! Do that!’ And that’s something that I really enjoy,” Hoult said. “That’s the whole process of prep for me is like, be prepared as possible so when you get there you can throw it all away and do whatever you want in the moment.”
And while it’s Superman who’s the Man of Steel, Hoult said his Lex Luthor will be no slouch in the strength department.
“There’s that bit in “All-Star Superman” [a comic book series] where he talks about his muscles being real and hard work and all that,” Hoult said. “I kind of took that as a little bit of fuel for the fire.”
We won’t see what kind of fire Hoult’s Luthor brings to Superman for a bit—the film is slated for theaters on July 11, 2025.
Featured image: LONDON, ENGLAND – NOVEMBER 09: Nicholas Hoult attends “The Menu” UK Premiere at BFI Southbank on November 09, 2022 in London, England. (Photo by Stuart C. Wilson/Getty Images)
Richard King, one of Hollywood’s most successful sound designers, is known for creating increasingly complex aural environments that help achieve a director’s vision, giving the movie its own rhythm and texture. Over the past two decades, he’s won four Academy Awards. And at this year’s Oscars, he’s nominated for two more for his contributions to Bradley Cooper’s Leonard Bernstein biopic Maestro and Christopher Nolan’sOppenheimer, an R-rated historical drama about the first atomic bomb, which means King will be competing against himself for another Best Sound Oscar. Let’s call this one the great “Bernsteinheimer” matchup.
King has collaborated with A-list directors on huge tentpoles, including Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds (2005) and Peter Weir’s high-seas adventure Master and Commander (2003), which earned King his first Oscar. With Maestro, which Cooper directed and starred in, King wanted the sound to function like a symphony orchestra, a combination of peacefulness and intensity. Maestro is a look at Bernstein at his peak, as both a composer and conductor (On the Town, Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony No. 2), as well as a study of his fatalistic romance with actress Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan). The sound is always with the characters; there is no score, and sometimes, all you hear is a tiny rustle in the trees as they lie in the grass at Tanglewood. There’s no music at all over the scenes where the couple is separated.
Oppenheimer bears a heavier weight, and its sound design can be more visceral and terrifying. The title character is the genius nuclear physicist (Cillian Murphy) overseeing the Manhattan Project. Because writer/director Christopher Nolan wanted to filter the story through the perception of Oppenheimer – a bafflingly complex man who sports a big-brimmed porkpie hat – much of its emotional intensity is expressed through the use of sound. There are aspects of Abstract Expressionism, like when we see Oppenheimer’s vision of a subatomic universe, which King punches up with edgy, staticky noise impressions of dark matter. Then there’s the eerie rhythmic thumping Oppenheimer hears growing louder and more oppressive throughout the film. You could practically feel the floorboards shake.
“The stamping feet is a motif Chris wanted to use several times before the dropping of the bomb,” said King, who works out of Warner Bros. Studios. “It’s a device to convey Oppenheimer’s growing panic about what the creation of this weapon meant to the world.” He and Nolan have done eight movies together, including The Dark Knight (2008), Inception (2010), and Dunkirk (2017), all of which won best sound Oscars.
Even when he’s not sitting at a mixing board, he remains a vigilant listener. “My work has programmed me to keep my ears open,” said King, who studied painting in college and then began his career in New York in low-budget genre films. An early adopter of digital sound technology, he described his work as painting with sound and said he is heavily influenced by Vermeer and Ingres for their heightened reality and the works of de Kooning, Pollack, and Picasso. “The way sound was used in old movies was almost like a stage cue in a play,” said King, whose most recent credit is the critical and commercial smash Dune: Part Two. “It wasn’t possible to get elaborate with the existing technology. But it’s evolved to the point you’re only limited by your imagination.”
The following conversation has been edited and condensed.
Now that you have eight Academy Award nominations, we wonder, when you go to the annual Oscars luncheon, does somebody ask if you want your regular table?
[Laughs] There are people there who have had many more nominations. In fact, my co-nominee, Kevin O’Connell, has 22. He’s the sound mixer on Oppenheimer. But the lunch is fun. It’s the most relaxed of all these events and, for that reason, the most enjoyable.
Okay, seriously, film sound is somewhat of a mystery for people. When members of the sound branch vote, what is it they listen for in movies?
Several things: the shape of the mix from beginning to end, the ebb and flow, the dynamics of the mix, which is invisible to the audience, but you feel it when it’s off-kilter somehow. I think film sound is a mystery because it’s not meant to be noticed by the audience, as much as it is a conduit, a way to draw audiences into the film.
This is a labor-intensive process. How does it work?
The sound recorded on set is maybe 3% of what’s in the film. It’s an important 3% because it contains the dialogue and a lot of sync movement that grounds the picture. But we create the world around that dialogue, all the background sounds and effects, explosions, machinery, and footsteps. They are recorded or created, placed in sync with the picture and layered with other sounds during post-production to create the sonic world the characters inhabit. That’s sound design. All of this takes months of diligent, creative work by the sound team.
What were you trying to accomplish with Maestro?
We attempted to be musical in the presentation of sound. We used rhythm and texture to underscore the characters’ emotions and smooth the transitions. Quite often in films, there’s a distinct sound contrast when you cut from one location or scene to another. You immediately tell the audience, I’m in a different place. With Maestro, all those transitions are seamless. The movie just flows from scene to scene, unrolling like a piece of music.
What did you think the first time you read the script for Oppenheimer, the bulk of which was written in the first person, and what did you circle on the page?
It’s an amazing script, and I loved the way Chris created a kaleidoscopic overview of Oppenheimer’s predicament, the enormous events shaping the world at the time, and his emotional journey through them. After reading it, we had a general conversation before he went off to shoot the film. He wanted me to think about the quantum particle scenes. We were going for unique sounds that convey the power of the objects and events Oppenheimer saw in his imagination. The other thing was how to treat Oppenheimer’s more subjective moments. He was such an enigma. There are moments, though, where you are in his head. You sense his [moral dilemma] about working on the Manhattan Project.
When did you begin coming up with the sounds for Oppenheimer?
Chris invited me to the last day of dailies. They had shot part of the security clearance hearing. It was Oppenheimer in the Gray Commission room when the background behind him starts to vibrate as the lawyer’s yelling in his face, saying he wanted to do this experiment, and yet he regrets having done it. That’s the gist of his dilemma, and Chris wanted to sense him feeling somehow unmoored from the experience, trying to reconcile it. When I saw those images, I started getting ideas about how to deal with his [complicated feelings sonically]. It’s hard for me to respond to words on the page. I need images; that’s just the way my brain works.
L to R: Emily Blunt is Kitty Oppenheimer and Cillian Murphy is J. Robert Oppenheimer in OPPENHEIMER, written, produced, and directed by Christopher Nolan.
Large sections of the movie are split between the Los Alamos desert and a shabby conference room, where the Atomic Energy Commission interrogates Oppenheimer. How did you convey the sense of isolation the team of scientists felt working in secret on the bomb and the claustrophobia of that government hearing?
We gave each location a unique character. The wide-open spaces of New Mexico allowed us to use wind, rain, thunder, and wildlife sounds to accentuate the distances. For instance, placing a bird call or coyote howl far away and adding a lot of reverb. The Gray Commission room is oppressive, without much sense of what’s going on outside. We added a low, airy rumble to add to the oppressiveness.
Take us inside Fuller Lodge, where an excitable crowd has packed into the bleachers to hear Oppenheimer speak about the bomb being dropped in Japan, and we hear the sound of dozens of feet stamping rhythmically.
It’s another scene where his surroundings begin to glitch, a brilliantly executed practical effect that was done in-camera. The shots, to me, convey Oppenheimer’s emotional distress. He doesn’t quite know how to feel about the audience, half of whom are cheering and high-fiving and drinking. It’s a celebration. The other half are weeping and puking. The scene reflects the nightmarish feelings he must have experienced.
Cillian Murphy is J. Robert Oppenheimer in OPPENHEIMER, written, produced, and directed by Christopher Nolan.
You studied painting in school. How did you end up working in sound?
As a kid, I wanted to be in movies. My friends and I would make Super 8 movies with ridiculous plots, sometimes using stop motion. But growing up in Florida, I had zero connection to the film business. It wasn’t until my mid-20s when I moved to New York, and said I’m going to get into this business. One of the doors I knocked on was basically a one-man shop. He made industrial films – the latest sheep dip or cattle worming medicine – documentaries, commercials. He’d let me edit some sequences and give me feedback. He was more interested in shooting than editing. He had pretty much zero interest in the sound. So he gave me a primer on cutting sound effects and music to picture, then said, here’s this film. Why don’t you put sound in it? I worked on a documentary about the building of the dam in South America, so there were lots of explosions and big, Earth-moving equipment, cool 8-year-old boy stuff I could sink my teeth into. I wrote a list of sounds and went to a sound effects house, which meant I sat in a room full of quarter-inch tapes and previewed sounds. Then I made an order list, had them transfer the sounds to 16mm film, picked out music that would be appropriate, brought it all back, and cut it myself. And it was great. A new world opened up to me.
You went on to work for Cannon Films, which became a hot little studio at one point whose specialty was American-style action movies for overseas markets, like Allan Quartermain and the Lost City of Gold.
[Laughs] My first film as a sound supervisor. I’d been a sound editor on one movie, then asked to supervise sound on a movie, and they gave me Allan Quartermain, a massive movie. Richard Chamberlain was in it. It was one of Sharon Stone’s first films. It was an Indiana Jones rip-off. But it was shot in Africa and had these crazy Raiders of the Lost-type predicaments, big set pieces, and action scenes. It was a gold mine of sound opportunities, and at the time, I didn’t have a sound library, so we recorded everything. At that point, I was completely fixed on that route to creating sound for film. The movies I worked on were low-budget, so even getting the story to make sense felt like a magician’s trick. When I edited picture, I found the quality of the footage limited me, but when it came to sound, there were no limitations. I had a blank canvas, so sound has become my paint.
HBO’s going to send you back to Westeros this summer.
House of the Dragon season 2 will be premiering this June, a dragon egg-sized nugget revealed by Warner Bros. Discovery streaming and gaming chief J.B. Perrette during an interview on Monday.
The first season of House of the Dragon, the first Game of Thrones spinoff to make it to air, managed the tricky feat of giving GoT fans a heaping helping of the palace intrigue, dragon fire, and power-obsessed family squabbles that made the original show such a hit, yet was decidedly its own thing. With a bit of a tighter focus than its sprawling predecessor, Dragon focused on House Targaryen, a family with more than enough drama to fuel an entire series. Set 200 years before the events in GoT, Dragon dropped us into a united Seven Kingdoms, thanks to the dragon-lord Targyens, but peace is hardly the default setting in Westeros.
When we spoke to showrunner Ryan Condal, he teased how much more dragon-centric season 2 would be.
“We’ll definitely introduce more of them as we go along. I think that’s part of the fun of doing the show. They are characters, and in season two, they’re needed for their most famous purpose, which is to decimate and cause death and destruction.”
Condal also discussed how they worked on differentiating the dragons in House of the Dragon from the beasts fans got to know and love in Game of Thrones.
“In season one, the dragons were designed over the course of a year, where we did a lot of early concepting on basic things like how our dragons are different from what you saw in the original series and honoring what they did with Drogon, Rhaegal, and Viserion,” Condall said. “Then it was figuring out, during a time when there were many more dragons, was there just one breed? We came up with these three different genotypes of them, where they’re all the same species but have different breeds with different shapes, colors, and sizes.”
The returning cast for season 2 includes Matt Smith, Olivia Cooke, Emma D’Arcy, Eve Best, Steve Toussaint, Fabien Frankel, Ewan Mitchell, Tom Glynn-Carney, Sonoya Mizuno, Rhys Ifans, Harry Collett, Bethany Antonia, Phoebe Campbell, Phia Saban, Jefferson Hall and Matthew Needham. Dragon newcomers are Abubakar Salim as Alyn of Hull, Gayle Rankin as Alys Rivers, Freddie Fox as Ser Gwayne Hightower, and Simon Russell Beale as Ser Simon Strong.
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When she was five years old, Kasia Walicka Maimone started making her own clothes. “Growing up in Poland, a lot of people had that skill,” she says. “My grandmother made clothes. My mother, a doctor, made clothes. And I did clothes for my musician friends without giving it a thought. I was like, ‘What’s the big deal?'”
As it turned out, Maimone’s talent for costuming became quite a big deal. After studying English in Warsaw, moving to New York City, and enrolling at the Fashion Institute of Technology, Maimone designed outfits for dance, theater, and indie films before teaming up in 2012 with Wes Anderson on his acclaimed Moonrise Kingdom. She went on to costume-design Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies and Ready Player One before crafting the spectacular turn-of-the-century fashions recently showcased in The Gilded Age series. Last year, Maimone returned to the Wes Anderson fold and designed the outfits for his Oscar-nominated short film The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar.
Shot on 16-millimeter film on a London soundstage, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, based on British writer Roald Dahl’s 1973 story, casts Ralph Fiennes as the author, with Benedict Cumberbatch portraying the upper-class title character who trains himself to see through blackjack cards by studying the memoir of an Indian mystic showman, played by Ben Kingsley.
Speaking from New York City, Maimone likens her collaborative back and forth with Wes Anderson to ping pong and explains how she uses “real clothes” as the foundation for the writer-director’s theatrically elevated narratives.
You first immersed yourself in the Wes Anderson Method when you worked on Moonrise Kingdom. He’s famously meticulous so I imagine that must have been an intense experience.
That’s an interesting way to refer to define it, the Wes Anderson “method.” I call it the Wes Anderson world. His vision is so precise that whatever the influences are, they get transformed. On Moonrise Kingdom, I learned his [filmmaking] language very quickly. You do a lot of research and then get immediate responses from him to your ideas. It’s like playing ping pong on an Olympic level because he shoots his ideas very fast, and you cannot fall off.
What was it like to reunite with Wes Anderson on Henry Sugar. ?
It was a blast and a fun challenge for me because I had been doing TheGilded Age, which is a completely different kind of grand scale. With Wes, it’s like you have to re-train your eye for this element of extraordinary precision. [Laughing]. I also blame the miniatures [in the stop-motion animated movie Fantastic Mr. Fox], where he developed a whole other level of precision. Once he experienced that miniature scale, Wes came back on a grand scale, but he’d sharpened all his skills.
Before you generated ideas for Henry Sugar, what was Wes Anderson’s creative brief to you?
It’s funny because Wes and I don’t actually talk that much. We just send each other visuals. There were a lot of specific descriptions in the Henry Sugar script, so I prepared a presentation of characters. From there, I did rough sketches, he’d send back images, and we kept communicating like that until, after a few weeks, the vision for each character became sharper and sharper. Wes also made a short film that portrays the story in sketches.
Ralph Fiennes introduces the story as author Roald Dahl, and he looks relaxed and elegant, just as you might imagine a successful English writer from that period would look.
Much of that outfit was inspired by the real Roald Dahl, except we manipulated the color for the purpose of Wes’ movie. Ralph wears a terry cloth polo shirt like the real author wore, vintage polyester pants, and a camel-color sweater made of wool mixed with cashmere.
Yeah, the colors are so warm — you use one shade of red for the shirt and a slightly different shade for the pants.
We like to use unexpected combinations of colors to create this world of strategized randomness.
Strategized randomness?
It’s a very controlled, heightened world, and sometimes, there are no words to describe how we do it. It’s about the dynamics of color and how they play with each other. With Ralph, I’d gather a bunch of pieces, sketch, do the first fitting, see what works, build on top of that for the second fitting, third fitting, and we’re done.
Benedict Cumberbatch goes through a lot of costume changes as Henry Sugar, starting with his origins as an entitled English gentleman.
Henry’s look was very much driven by the culture of bespoke Saville Road tailoring and the quiet elegance of the British aristocracy. We had a tailor from Saville Road who understood that language.
Later on, there’s a fun montage where Henry tries on a bunch of different disguises in rapid succession.
Those fittings were fun because we got to watch this spectacle of Benedict morphing from one person to another. It’s not just about him wearing the clothes; it’s him embodying the character on the page. When Benedict is dressed as a tourist, it’s a completely different body language from when he emanates being a priest. The clothes I provided were just a level of skin that Benedict transforms into, using his craft, skill, talent, and inner chameleon.
Ben Kingsley’s character from India introduces a meditative vibe to the story. How did you conceptualize his clothing?
We got all of Ben’s pieces from India. They had to be real so we worked with a bunch of people there. We also had an extraordinary German tailor with us in London. I always try to go to the real place for the source. British textiles for the British gentlemen; for Ben, we go to India; and for Roald Dahl, it’s just what he would be really wearing [from our research]. There’s always a mix of construction and real garments because Wes’ movies are deep with cultural references. When the pieces come from the real world, even if they get transformed, they resonate, and audiences respond to the colors and the textures. It’s coded in a way like a cultural response machine.
Your color choices coordinate so well with the production design palette devised by Adam Stockhausen. You two must collaborate well together?
We’ve done a bunch of movies together—Moonrise, Bridge of Spies, Ready Player One,and now Henry Sugar—and we don’t really have to think about it. Adam and I share information constantly, so I know exactly what he’s doing, he knows what I’m doing, and we bounce off each other. Of course, Wes knows exactly what he’s looking for, so it’s like we’re continuously putting this puzzle together.
Color in Wes Anderson’s films often operates on a whole other level in the ways these unusual hues clash or harmonize to evoke different moods.
That’s one thousand percent deliberate. The color creates the rhythm, driven by the characters and the mood. It’s like asking a musician how she plays music: We play color in exactly the same way as if we’re playing an orchestral piece that is kind of wild but that also breaks apart. Wes’ work is very theatrical and highly controlled. I come from theater, so I think that training comes through.
What was your gut reaction the first time you saw The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar in a movie theater?
It was magical. There’s so much suffering in the world now, and I feel proud to be an entertainer and to be part of a business that brings people joy. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, like The Gilde Age—these pieces bring joy.
Henry Sugardefinitely has an uplifting message that you don’t always find in arthouse films.
There are tons of dark ones, which I’m also very proud of, but this is not that. Particularly this year, we need uplift as a society. I also love Henry Sugar because it’s about the discipline of the mind. I think we all need to exercise that, like, big time.
There’s a scene in Dune: Part Two where Chani (Zendaya) tells Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet), “You’ll never lose me as long as you stay who you are.” Editor Joe Walker, who won an Academy Award for his work on Dune: Part One, allowed the foretelling moment to breathe. “There’s quite a pause after that line,” he shares with The Credits about the tragedy to come. The chemistry between Paul and Chani was just one of several storylines in the second installment of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune saga Walker navigated with ambition and care.
“It’s a lot more challenging to have a large cast and doubly so with a book that’s rich,” Walker says of the film, which had its initial November 2023 release moved to March 2024 due to industry labor strikes. The extra time allowed the editor to “chisel away” at the project, perfecting storylines and steering new characters and plot points. “What I think we did well in part one was disguise how much setting up there was for this second film. It meant many of the characters had limited screen time in the first film, but with Part Two, they are given a little bit more space for the drama to unfold.”
Three of the narratives consuming Part Two are Paul’s romance with Chani, a psychotic killer named Feyd-Rautha (Austin Butler), and Paul becoming the leader of the Fremen. Below, Walker shares how he threaded those story puzzle pieces together for thecritically acclaimed sequel.
The Love
Caption: (L-r) TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET as Paul Atreides and ZENDAYA as Chani in Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE: PART TWO,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Niko Tavernise
The first film ends with Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) meeting Chani (Zendaya), who, along with fellow Fremen, take Paul and his Bene Gesserit mother, Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), into hiding. In Part Two, the relationship between Paul and Chani blossoms. Walker intertwined their arc with tender playfulness, blending intimacy with the practicality of Paul learning his new desert way of life.
Joe Walker: “Their relationship was the most important thing to get right in the film. We are leaning into action adventure and dazzling sequences, but if the heart isn’t in the right place, then it’s not going to work. We spent a lot of time taking care of that relationship. It’s almost like an Alexander Calder sculpture. They’re delicate, and if you lean too heavily into one piece, then the whole thing collapses.”
Caption: ZENDAYA as Chani in Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE: PART TWO,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
“Denis didn’t want Paul to automatically gain Chani’s hand. She doesn’t pay him serious attention until he’s proven himself. And boy, does he ever prove himself to be a fearless and brave man who reassures her that he’s going to be an equal in some way.”
Caption: (L-r) ZENDAYA as Chani and TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET as Paul Atreides. in Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE: PART TWO,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
“It was also allowing it to be romantic. The scene on the dune where Paul talks about where he comes from – the world of castles and water – and how it’s not like that for her, that entire scene was charged. It was so clear from the dailies that it was going to be one of those rare, beautiful moments. Putting that scene together happened so quickly. It was one where we said let’s get the best out of Hans [Zimmer]. Later, Chani says in the film, “The world has made choices for us.” And that’s really how it plays out in this drama, making it all the more tragic.
The Villain
Caption: AUSTIN BUTLER as Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen in Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE: PART TWO,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
Portrayed by Austin Butler, Feyd-Rautha is the ruthless nephew of Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård), a character director Denis Villeneuve says “is motivated by power and ambition” and has “no moral boundaries.” His pale white skin, hairless body, and chiseled physique are a temple of Harkonnen blood. His deadening stare pierces the soul. Traits the Bene Gesserit strategically groomed to be the next potential Emperor. We first witness Feyd’s merciless strength in fighting against three captured Atreides soldiers, including Lieutenant Lanville (Roger Yuan), inside a massive coliseum of cheering Harkonnen. The bloodthirsty bout is a gift from Baron Harkonnen on Feyd’s birthday.
Caption: AUSTIN BUTLER as Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen in Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE: PART TWO,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
Joe Walker: “Some of the very first material I received was from the gladiatorial arena. Feyd is a terrifying character, and I couldn’t have dreamt of him looking the way he did. Denis and Austin found something tremendous together for his character, and when we first meet Feyd, he is kind of a rock star living a life of massive corruption and self-serving violence surrounded by his ladies.”
Caption: (L-r) AUSTIN BUTLER as Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen and LÉA SEYDOUX as Lady Margot Fenring in Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE: PART TWO,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Niko Tavernise
“What was fun cutting that sequence was creating a world not just visually, but in sound terms, something that doesn’t sound like a 21st Century sports event but has its own unique flavor. We spent a long time developing layers upon layers of different Harkonnen sounds. It was also uncompromising filmmaking in many ways, as it was shot in high infrared. Denis had this concept that the sun on Giedi Prime would suck the color out of the world. It’s this stark black and white but peculiar in the way that makes you very aware of the vein structure of peoples’ eyes and the thinness of their skin. That look was all baked into the image, and it was a bold touch from the production team.”
Caption: (L-r) AUSTIN BUTLER, Director/Writer/Producer DENIS VILLENEUVE and DAVE BAUTISTA on the set of Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE: PART TWO,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Niko Tavernise
“We also wanted to show the fight was a breeze for Feyd and there was nothing challenging about it. But right at the end of the fight, there’s a nice implication of masochism—that Feyd has been in control and has been the more powerful person all the way long. He’s just entertaining life at the edge of a blade. Lady Margot Fenring [Léa Seydoux] says at one point, “He loves pain.”
The One
Caption: TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET as Paul Atreides in Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE: PART TWO,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Niko Tavernise
As Part Two unfolds, Paul becomes part of the Fremen culture. We see him train in the desert, ransack spice harvesters, and ride sandworms. His rise among the Fremen people is fueled by the whispers of Lady Jessica, who has become their Reverend Mother. A fiery speech held in southern Arrakis transforms Paul from a fatherless boy into a worshiped messiah – The One.
Joe Walker: “I felt like it would shortchange the story completely if we didn’t lean into the Fremen culture. I feel it would be sidelining something very important not only in the film but in the book. Paul is passionate about the Fremen culture, and I always feel that’s something Timothée carries off well. You have this sense that if it weren’t for blood, he would be content to be a Fremen for the rest of his days.”
Caption: (L-r) Director/Writer/Producer DENIS VILLENEUVE and TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET on the set of Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE: PART TWO,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Niko Tavernise
“It’s interesting to see how Paul must transform from a young adult who, when we first meet him, is a guy dreaming about a girl who doesn’t want to practice with his mother at the breakfast table. But through the course of it, it becomes, first of all, a man, and then this superpower in a way.”
Caption: (L-r) TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET as Paul Atreides and AUSTIN BUTLER as Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen in Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE: PART TWO,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Niko Tavernise
“With Feyd-Rautha, there’s a lot of complicated stuff going on and how much of a flipside to Paul he is. It’s an important piece of architecture you establish that Feyd is a profoundly dangerous opponent, so he becomes this politically, emotionally, and physically way to match Paul.”
The Experience
Caption: A scene from Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE: PART TWO,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
Dune: Part Two is a treasure trove of visceral imagery and immersive sound that should be experienced in theaters. Walker agrees.
Joe Walker: “I think it’s essential. It’s been completely designed for large-screen entertainment. Not just to see it but to hear it. Denis and I share a great love of sound together, and we invest so much time on a dense, layered soundtrack working with geniuses like Richard King, Doug Hemphill, Ron Bartlett, and Hans Zimmer, of course. It’s kind of the pinnacle of people being engaged in making something that’s spectacular to sit in front of. And you’re in the world, completely scooped up by the experience because it’s been designed as a very compelling cinematic experience.
Dune: Part Two is in theaters now.
For more on Dune: Part Two, check out these stories:
Featured image: Caption: (L-r) TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET as Paul Atreides and AUSTIN BUTLER as Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen in Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE: PART TWO,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Niko Tavernise
The vast expanse and harsh conditions of space can impose solitude or offer a fresh perspective. As astronaut Jakub Prochazka (Adam Sandler) is nearing the climax of a six-month interplanetary investigation, he sails farther from the problems he left behind on Earth in director Johan Renck’sSpaceman. With four young children, Renck understands the forces that pull at a working parent – especially a career that requires long stretches of separation.
“Our vocation, our job, whatever we do is important for several reasons, of course, but life is what happens when you’re busy doing other things,” Renck reflected. “It becomes evident. You grow up, wise up, and understand that you must make some choices.”
As Jakub investigates a Milky Way mystery, his wife (Carey Mulligan) reckons with his absence and the aftershocks of their personal turmoil. Just when their connection fails, an unexpected visitor boards Jakub’s craft. The creature has fearsome features that resemble Earth spiders and octopi, but they have a soulful connection.
“It’s kind of beautiful to take the naïve and slightly pure ideal of the human meeting this sage-like creature who has this full-on understanding about boiling down the universe as it should be,” Renck said. “A lot of the things we as humans tend to worry about or get upset about that kind of goes down to one thing – it is what it is, and it is what it should be in any given situation.”
Jakub comes to address the ancient alien as Hanus (Paul Dano). Through their discussions, Jakub’s noble aspirations begin to tarnish in the light of wisdom. His selfless contributions to mankind seemingly derive from more personal motives.
“This very ethereal creature from the earliest universe encounters a human and becomes deprived of a lot of the tools that he has at his disposal because he’s dealing with an imbecile basically, which is us, humans,” Renck explained. “In terms of how we treat the planet, and we look upon ourselves and the priorities we make and our narcissism and egoism and all those sorts of primitive animalistic things that we are.”
But is the encounter even real? The Earth-based crew never receives transmissions with proof of Hanus, and they begin questioning Jakub’s erratic behavior. Does the lonely astronaut’s guilty conscience produce hallucinatory visions of intelligent extraterrestrials? Renck answers a resounding no and points to the sneeze that proves it.
“I wanted a proper nonnegotiable moment with Hanus that solidifies [his existence],” Renck declared. “There’s no other way that he could get mucous on the visor of the helmet. There’s not some malfunctioning device in the spaceship that’s going to spray him. The residue of that moment is in the whole film on that space helmet. It’s very important that Hanus is 100% real for sure.”
The script was adapted by Colby Day from the novel “Spaceman of Bohemia” by Czech author Jaroslav Kalfař. Although produced for an English-speaking audience, Renck resisted changing the characters’ nationality.
“For me, part of the specificity of this book and how we developed it into a script is there is an Eastern European trajectory,” Renck explained. “It’s subtly noted in the film how Jakub’s father was an informant for the party, and Jakub had a bit of inherited guilt there. I felt that the specificity of keeping it Czech is going to be way better than trying to translate it into some American or English landscape. There’s such specificity to the plight and trials and tribulations. The thing with being an informant in the Soviet Union was it’s either that or a bullet to your head. There’s no in-between.”
Don’t expect Sandler and Mulligan to flex their Czech accents, though. Renck is fiercely opposed to the practice.
“I hate accents in film. It’s the dumbest thing on the planet,” he humorously objected. “All we need to do is believe in how people talk to each other to some extent. For me, if we would have a film of all these people speaking with a Czech accent, number one, what does that even mean? If you’re Czech, you don’t have an accent if you’re speaking Czech.”
Renck’s work is consistently rooted in the human condition, yet technology has been central to his career in both subject matter and the tools he uses to tell stories. He took home the Emmy for directing Chernobylabout the 1986 nuclear disaster and has been driving trends in music videos for decades. Renck even served as executive producer of the buzzy virtual ABBA concert, ABBA Voyage. For Spaceman, he blended style and science to create an emotional space fantasy.
“It’s kind of retro-futuristic kind of thing,” Renck explained. “On one end, it’s very analog, but at the same time, we’ve invented this kind of technology for them to communicate. Because otherwise, if you’re speaking from Jupiter to Earth, it’s gonna take like several hours for that signal to reach Earth and several hours for the answer to come back, so we just devised this Czech Connect quantum technology because it’s theoretically possible to communicate at the near speed of light.”
On the practical side, Jakub spends the majority of the film floating in the spacecraft, and the visuals for Hanus were only realized in post-production. Sandler had to act the scenes alone under challenging conditions to appear as if he was floating and sharing the cabin with the alien.
“I would say that Adam’s performance, given the fact that he was hanging in painful wires, subjected to the weight of your own body cutting in everywhere, acting a whole movie to a tennis ball because we didn’t have Hanus there, of course, I would say that his performance is pretty incredible based on that,” Renck praised. “But zero gravity is really tricky. You have to use everything. There are wires, there are various rigs, and there’s even CGI involved in terms of making that as believable as you can. It’s really tricky.”
Shooting the scenes on board the ship were so slow and painstaking that Renck felt Carey Mulligan’s Earth scenes were “too easy” at times. As for the challenge of zero gravity, Renck says he had enough.
“I’m never doing that again,” he laughed. “It’s terrible for everybody involved.”
Renck surprisingly proclaimed that he is “useless with computers” and praised the smart crews he has surrounded himself with. He remembers sleeping at the postproduction houses early in his career to learn about the software.
“I’m tremendously interested in [tech] because, for me, various aspects of this is something that is used for my benefit in the job that I have,” he said. “I am really intrigued by anything that scares me. My favorite place to be is where I have no idea what I’m doing. I like to put myself in a situation where I’m working with stuff that’s daunting or overwhelming. That’s when I function at its best.”
Ultimately, all of the cutting-edge technology works to serve the story. Spaceman is an emotional reflection on our brief existence, albeit one in a stunning interplanetary setting.
“I just want people to plunge into the world and be embraced by it. Allow it to take you wherever it takes you without having to abide by some very pragmatic, boring rules. It’s a fantasy. That’s what it is. That’s the fun of making movies, isn’t it?”
Spaceman is now showing in select theaters and streaming on Netflix.
The beloved Wendell Pierce—the kind of actor who elevates every scene he’s in—will now be making a trip to Metropolis in James Gunn’s Superman, The Hollywood Reporter scoops. Pierce will be playing Perry White, the Editor-in-chief of “The Daily Planet,” the paper where Clark Kent (David Corenswet) and Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) work.
Clark and Lois’s new boss will have all the gravitas necessary in Pierce, best known for his stellar performance as Detective William “Bunk” Moreland on HBO’s sensational The Wire. Pierce will deploy his skills to keep young reporter Clark Kent and his more seasoned and fearless colleague Lois Lane in line. Just how this version of Perry White will handle his cub reporters is an open question.
Perry White first came on the scene not in the comics but in a Superman radio serial in 1940. White’s approach to leading “The Daily Planet” and dealing with Clark Kent and Lois Lane has differed over the years, from rough and tumble to being more of a mentor. He’s been portrayed on the big screen by Jackie Cooper in Richard Donner’s seminal 1978 film Superman and the rest of the Christopher Reeve-led films, Frank Langella in 2006’s Superman Returns, and Laurence Fishburne in Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel and his Synderverse films in the 2010s.
There’s been a lot happening with Gunn’s upcoming film, the first feature set to roll out of his new-look DC Studios, which he’s running alongside Peter Safran. Superman—recently titled Superman: Legacy until Gunn decided to tighten it up—will kick off the new DC Studios’ first phase of films and series and is titled Chapter 1: Gods and Monsters. This first phase includes a TV series set on Wonder Woman’s home island of Themyscira called Paradise Lost, the introduction of a new Batman in The Brave and the Bold, the film Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow starring Milly Alcock, and Swamp Thing, in development with director James Mangold, which will return the infamous monster to the big screen.
Rounding out the Superman cast are Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor, 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.
For more on Superman—previously titled Superman: Legacy—check out these stories:
Featured image: NEW YORK, NEW YORK – JANUARY 11: Wendell Pierce attends the National Board Of Review 2024 Awards Gala at Cipriani 42nd Street on January 11, 2024 in New York City. (Photo by Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images for National Board of Review)
If you’ve seen any notable film in the past 40-something years, chances are you’ve heard Hans Zimmer’s work.
From his two Academy awards (The Lion King in 1994 and Dune: Part One in 2021) to his three Golden Globes, four Grammys, a BAFTA, and various other accolades — his resume extends beyond any category, label or genre and becomes almost a style all on its own.
“The real thing about it is it’s not an orchestral score,” Zimmer explains of his latest work on Denis Villeneuve’s sweeping, enormously impressive Dune: Part Two. “One of the precocious, horrible, nasty, full of hubris thoughts I was having as a teenager whenever I watched a science fiction movie like Alien or whatever was — why am I hearing a European orchestra? Why am I hearing strings? Why am I hearing French horn? This is all supposed to be in space and thousands of years from now — shouldn’t we have reinvented instruments? Shouldn’t we be listening to a completely different sonic landscape?”
The adult Zimmer has emphatically answered his own question. For Villeneuve’s ambitious adaptation of Frank Herbert’s iconic 1965 novel, Zimmer was so determined to create a new, futuristic sound for the film that he and his team often built their own instruments to satisfy this challenge.
“‘I wrote something that was unplayable,” he laughed. “So often, we had to go to Home Depot where we shopped for pipes and built instruments, and we created a 3,000 or 4,000-year-old Armenian instrument out of PVC piping.”
Caption: (L-r) TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET as Paul Atreides and ZENDAYA as Chani in Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE: PART TWO,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Niko Tavernise
Like the first film, drums and other percussion instruments play a large role in Dune: Part Two’s dramatic setting — which finds Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) and his mother, Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) relying on the native inhabitants of the desert planet Arrakis, the Fremen, to keep them alive in the aftermath of the massacre of House Atreides that Villeneuve, Zimmer and the rest of the team captured in Part One. But beyond the sound of drums, Zimmer says, “the only instrument you will identify is the human voice.” As Paul’s journey unfolds and he accepts his role as the Lisan al Gaib — the prophetic hero meant to liberate the Fremen and help them defeat the colonizers who keep returning to Arrakis to harvest Spice, the score begins almost to mirror Paul’s unraveling. It becomes bolder, more chaotic, and increasingly unnerving. We begin to hear more of Loire Cotler’s reverberating vocals piercing through the accompanying sounds.
Zimmer feels strongly that “the strength of the movie is the female characters,” hence the emphasis on the through line between both films being Cotler’s voice.
Caption: (L-r) ZENDAYA as Chani and REBECCA FERGUSON as Lady Jessica in Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE: PART TWO,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
While creating a second award-winning score on the heels of the first film’s success may sound daunting, for Zimmer, he’s never really stopped working on Villeneuve’s saga.
“When we finished the first movie, I just continued on writing because I didn’t want to leave the world,” Zimmer said. “And I came up with the theme, which is now very much the theme for this movie.”
Zimmer initially signed onto Dune: Part One after Villeneuve asked if he’d ever heard “of a book called Dune.” As a fan of the books in his teenage years, Zimmer knew that the first film, adapted from Herbert’s novel by Villeneuve and Jon Spaihts, only went to about “page 156” of Herbert’s book. So, undertaking the task of composing for a novel series he grew up loving felt like an obvious choice.
“You know those sort of dogs that get really excited?” Zimmer joked. “I became one of those. He [Denis] never let me read the script because he wanted me to stay pure. He wanted one person who was like, I know the book, I know what this is all about, I know what the complications are as well of telling this story.”
There were complications and challenges aplenty, yet the result is a two-part sci-fi epic that will stand the test of time. Villeneuve’s Dune franchise is one of the best in the genre’s history, and with the success of Part Two this weekend, we may yet see Villeneuve’s third and final film, based on Herbert’s second book, “Dune: Messiah,” and hear what wild new sounds Zimmer will create to capture these strange new worlds.
Check out our full interview with the legendary composer here:
Featured image: Caption: JAVIER BARDEM as Stilgar in Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE: PART TWO,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
The 74th annual Berlin International Film Festival just drew to a close. Per tradition, the entertainment law firm Morrison & Foerster and the Motion Picture Association gathered some of the festival’s notable attendees for a topical annual panel discussion. This year, co-hosts Christiane Stuetzle, a partner at Morrison & Foerster, and Sabine Henssler, Vice President of Communications for the Motion Picture Association Europe, spoke to a diverse group of young actors and filmmakers for a discussion entitled Next Gen Rising Stars & Skills for Tomorrow.
In his opening remarks, MPA Chairman and CEO Charles H. Rivkin noted that the rising stars on stage were part of a long tradition in filmmaking, calling for and working at the vanguard of change. He cited the 91-year-old filmmaker Edgar Reitz, recipient of this year’s Berlinale Camera award, who was a signatory in 1962 to the Oberhausen Manifesto, a call to arms for a new film culture. “These young artists did something profound. They asked — actually, they didn’t ask, they demanded — the creative community take a really hard look in the mirror and reimagine what cinema could actually be as these moments, these inflection points come around,” Rivkin said.
Photo by: Photo: Tina Merkau. Copyright: Morrison Foerster
For the panelists, there were two main contemporary inflection points — community and the new innovative technologies. These topics may seem at odds, but as the discussion revealed, each has a key bearing on the other. As Wolf Plesmann, Managing Director of the German Film and Television Academy Berlin (DFFB), who gave the panel’s impulse statement, pointed out, technology is a component of what students learn at the DFFB, but in doing so, they’re also advised to proceed with caution, keeping in mind the importance of storytelling. In terms of where AI fits in, Plesmann struck a balance — he hopes “that we will all look in the future to see how AI as a tool can help us to do good films, perhaps more efficiently, but still keep the human touch to it alive.”
In her opening remarks, the U.S. Embassy Berlin’s Cultural Attaché, Cherrie S. Daniels, concurred. “So the movies go, so goes the world. Film production has long been a driver, also of technological innovation,” she said, and to that end, “innovative technology, including augmented and virtual reality, and other forms, belong to the skills for tomorrow’s toolkit that filmmakers and all those involved in the creative industries are already using today.” Jonathan Yunger, President of Millennium Films, was enthusiastic about the possibilities for AI in filmmaking. “I wasn’t a fan of AI,” he said, but “after shooting a demon character practically (for a film called The Offering) that didn’t look great, he turned to AI to come up with a new design, on a platform he built himself. “I was able to make 3000 creature designs in an hour. So now I can start to cherry-pick and edit those and then send it to visual effects,” he said.
Yunger stressed that he doesn’t believe AI will replace people — rather, people who use AI will replace those who don’t. “And that’s why I think it’s important for places like film schools to start to learn how to use these tools and these new technologies to further storytelling. The emotion of a human being will never be replaced,” he said.
Other panelists concurred that the human touch remains as important as it ever was. Tamara Denić, a writer and director who won a Student Academy Award in 2023, pointed out that to make it in the industry, “sometimes, even if your inner voice is getting very quiet, it’s important to keep listening to it. Having a job as a director isn’t a job; it’s a passion.” To Denić, two things seem key to get somewhere with that passion: grit and support. “I think one of the most important things in the film industry, and maybe especially as a director and actor — okay, maybe for everyone — is persistence,” she said, alongside support from family and friends and mentors and a professional network. For the latter two, she gave a nod to Armin Schneider, who was also on stage. Schneider, the former Head of European Publicity for Warner Bros., told the audience how, while walking in Berlin’s Tiergarten park during Covid lockdowns, he began thinking about something meaningful he could do for Germany’s filmmaking industry. He went on to found the Young Talent Foundation Berlin, the country’s first privately funded talent foundation, which supports gap financing for fledgling filmmakers and offers scholarships to film students.
Whether private or in connection with the government, organizations like the YTF Berlin were important to everyone on stage. Rabeah Rahimi, who came to Germany from Afghanistan in the 1990s and is now a film director as well as Managing Director of RAR Film GmbH, said that she hopes to be a role model for women in Afghanistan or Iran, and she also believes it would be helpful if the government would go to refugee camps and speak with the girls there. “I wish that there was a stipend for refugee girls,” she said. Marcus Anthony Thomas, a writer and director of the upcoming Space Plug, talked about the impact a mentorship program on the House of the Dragon set had on him. Far beyond an internship, mentees had access to showrunners and directors, had full access to all departments, and “if you wanted to ask VFX a question, you went and spoke to VFX. There wasn’t a meeting we weren’t allowed in,” he said.
“House of the Dragon.” Photograph Courtesy HBO
On the programming side, Gabriella Kramer-Khan, a creative consultant for Universal Pictures’ Global Talent Development & Inclusion department, explained how the company’s initiative works with young screenwriters not just on writing but the infrastructure around it. “We’re not just developing their screenwriting skills and core skills,” Kramer-Khan said, “but also supporting them in building a support network for themselves throughout the program so that regardless of what the outcome is, and what they do afterward, they’ve always got people and relationships that they can fall back on.” During the panel’s opening remarks, Rivkin noted the MPA’s member studios’ efforts to cultivate new talent, from over 100 creator programs launched across EMEA this year by Netflix to a million-dollar effort by Warner Bros./Discovery/HBO in France to train young workers for jobs in the European television industry.
What industry newcomers experience from one another is just as important as what they learn in training and development programs. In addition to speaking on the MoFo/MPA panel, actress Katharina Stark was one of this year’s Berlinale Shooting Stars, an initiative that gathers a select group of up-and-coming actors to meet with producers and casting directors, take part in workshops, and see films together. Asked what she recommends to fellow young actors, Stark recommended getting advice, mentors, and training, watching films from around the world, and really getting into conversation with industry peers. “I’ve learned so much from all of the others this week,” she said. Stark’s emphasis on watching a global slate of films reflected the importance Rivkin placed on the MPA’s member studios’ efforts to recruit and train young talent from all over to ensure that “the next wave of rising stars reflects the diversity of the world that we actually inhabit together, and to amplify the voices of populations that are largely unseen, unheard, and underrepresented, for way, way too long.”
Correction: A previous version of this article misstated that Jonathan Yunger, President of Millennium Films, turned to AI to create a demon character for the film Hellboy. That film was The Offering.
Featured image: Photo by Tina Merkau. Copyright: Morrison Foerster
This is how the star of the upcoming Tron: Ares shared the first image from the film on Instagram, revealing Leto’s Ares, a computer program that makes the leap from the digital realm to the real world in order to make a groundbreaking, game-changing introduction—humanity, meet artificial intelligence.
Tron: Ares comes from director Joachim Rønning and includes stars Greta Lee, Hasan Minhaj, Evan Peters, Jodie Turner-Smith, Cameron Monaghan, Gillian Anderson, and Arturo Castro. The film is currently filming in Vancouver, with Disney eyeing a 2025 release.
Tron: Ares follows the 1982 classic Tron, which starred a young Jeff Bridges, and the 2010 sequel Tron: Legacy. The original film was centered on Bridges’ video game designer Kevin Flynn who managed to step inside his own game, while Legacy followed his son, Sam (Garrett Hedlund), who followed in his old man’s footsteps. Ares might flip the script, so to speak, and focus on the wild transition of a digital being entering the real world. This crossover is the locus of the tension, as humanity is not ready for what Ares has to offer.
“I’m excited to be part of the Tron franchise and bring this new film to fans around the world. Tron: Ares builds upon the legacy of cutting-edge design, technology and storytelling. Now more than ever, it feels like the right time to return to the Grid,” director Rønning said in a statement.
For Tron fans, that excitement is shared.
For more stories on 20th Century Studios, Searchlight Pictures, Marvel Studios and what’s streaming or coming to Disney+, check these out:
James Gunn revealed on day one of filming that his new movie about the Man of Steel will now simply be called Superman. “When I finished the first draft of the script, I called the film Superman: Legacy. By the time I locked the final draft, it was clear the title was SUPERMAN. Making our way to you July 2025,” Gunn wrote in the caption.
Gunn didn’t just reveal the new title; he also shared an image of the Superman logo—or is that Superman’s suit itself?—which shows a healthy coating of snow. This seems to be an obvious nod to Superman’s mythic man cave, the Fortress of Solitude.
The last time we had a film simply called Superman? Richard Donner’s iconic 1978 original starring Christopher Reeve as Clark Kent. David Corenswet has stepped into the role of Superman, replacing the most recent son of Krypton, Henry Cavill, who played the character in Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and the two Justice League iterations (one was, of course, Zack Synder’s Justice League). Corenswet is joined by Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane, Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor, 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.
Gunn’s Superman will be the first feature to roll out of his and Peter Safran’s new DC Studios, kickstarting Chapter 1: Gods and Monsters. The film is slated for a July 11, 2025 release. Chapter 1 includes a film series set on Wonder Woman’s home island of Themyscira called Paradise Lost, the introduction of a new Batman in The Brave and the Bold, Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow starring Milly Alcock, and Swamp Thing, in development with director James Mangold, which will return the infamous monster to the big screen. Also in the mix is Matt Reeves’ The Batman Part II, which will find Robert Pattinson returning to his version of Batman in a film that will exist outside the Gods and Monsters timeline.
For more on Superman: Legacy, er, just Superman, as well as DC Studios, check out these stories:
Featured image: SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA – APRIL 18: Director James Gunn attends the press conference for “Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol.3” at the Conrad Hotel on April 18, 2023 in Seoul, South Korea. (Photo by Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images)
Naked Gun is ready for a reboot at Paramount, and a venerable action star known for playing ruthlessly efficient types is ready to become a bumbling detective prone to hilarious catastrophes.
The studio confirmed that the goofball police comedy that starred Leslie Nielsen as the absurdly incompetent detective Frank Drebin is getting rebooted, with none other than Liam Neeson set to play Frank Drebin Jr., is headed to theaters in 2025. The film comes from director Akiva Schaffer, a longtime Saturday Night Live writer and director of the Andy Samberg-led Pop Star: Never Stop Never Stopping. Seth McFarlane is on board as a producer. Putting Neeson through his absurdist paces as Drebin Jr. alone will be worth the price of admission.
The new Naked Gun joins a slew of upcoming titles Paramount announced. A new film action film from directors Robert Olsen and Dan Berk called Novocaine, starring Jack Quaid and Amber Midthunder, is coming to theaters on March 14, 2025. The film is centered on Quaid’s bank executive, who has the unusual ability to feel no pain, a bug that becomes a feature when his bank is robbed. Then there’s Vicious, set for an August 8, 2025 release, directed by Bryan Bertino and starring Dakota Fanning as a woman who fights for her life over the course of a single night after receiving a strange gift. The musical Better Man, starring British singer Robbie Williams as himself and directed by Michael Gracey, has a limited release set for Christmas Day this year and then goes wide on January 17, 2025. Then there’s a new PAW Patrol heading to theaters on July 31, 2026, followed by director Jeff Rowe’s sequel, TMNT2, which is slated for an October 9, 2026 release
For more films and series from Paramount and Paramount+, check out these stories:
Featured image: Leslie Nielsen is seduced by Anna Nicole Smith in a scene from the film ‘Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult’, 1994. (Photo by Paramount/Getty Images)
All five of the Oscar-nominated songs will be performed live at this year’s Academy Awards.
The Dolby Stage will not only be home to the 96th Oscars ceremony but will also serve as a major concert venue this Sunday, with Jon Batiste, Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell, Becky G, Scott George and the Osage Singers, and Ryan Gosling and Mark Ronson will all perform their Oscar-nominated numbers.
This news follows an update on who some of the presenters at this year’s Oscars will be, which include Zendaya, Nicolas Cage, Al Pacino, and Michelle Pfeiffer.
As for the original songs you’ll be hearing during the show, here are the song nominees and the performers: “It Never Went Away” from “American Symphony” (performed by Jon Batiste, music and lyric by Jon Batiste and Dan Wilson), “I’m Just Ken” from “Barbie” (performed by Ryan Gosling and Mark Ronson, music and lyric by Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt), “The Fire Inside” from “Flamin’ Hot” (performed by Becky G, music and lyric by Diane Warren),“Wahzhazhe (A Song For My People)” from “Killers of the Flower Moon” (performed by Scott George and the Osage Singers, music and lyric by Scott George) and “What Was I Made For?” from “Barbie” (performed by Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell, music and lyric by Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell).
Caption: RYAN GOSLING on the set of Warner Bros. Pictures’ “BARBIE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release.
Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer leads all films this year with a whopping 13 nominations, followed closely Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things with 11 and Martin Scorseose’s Killers of the Flower Moon notching 10. Your other Best Picture nominees are Cord Jefferson’s American Fiction, Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall, Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers, Bradley Cooper’s Maestro, and Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest.
Check out the video here for a refresher on what made “I’m Just Ken” such a phenomenon.
Featured image: L-r: KINGSLEY BEN-ADIR and RYAN GOSLING on the set of Warner Bros. Pictures’ “BARBIE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Jaap Buitendijk
The first trailer for Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow reveals the Sundance hit that defied easy categorization and yet mesmerized critics.
Schoenbrunn’s film follows two teenagers caught in that nightmarish unreality known colloquially as the suburbs. It’s the 1990s, and Owen (Justice Smith) is the type of kid who feels world-weary already, alienated by his shyness and sense that he’s not entirely himself.
Yet Owen’s life changes when he meets a cool older girl named Maddy (Bridgett Lundy-Paine), who introduces him to the TV show The Pink Opaque, a sci-fi show that airs late on Saturday nights and is centered on two teen girls with a cosmic connection and a duty to fight against evils. Although these two girls live on the other side of the country, they’re able to sense each other through the glowing pink tattoos on the backs of their necks. There’s confident Tara (Lindsay Jordan) and shy Isabel (Helena Howard), and together, their power is formidable. Owen’s hooked.
Owen and Maddy’s friendship mirrors that of Tara and Isabel, with Maddy trying to get Owen to come out of his shell and embrace his true self. Through The Pink Opaque and Maddy’s friendship, Owen has found at least a small foothold on happiness, but trouble is brewing. Soon enough, the reality of Owen’s suburban life and the drama of The Pink Opaque begin to bleed together. What becomes apparent is that who Owen really wants to be is Isabel, the girl from the TV show he loves.
“I Saw the TV Glow is the rare (and precious) sophomore feature that resoundingly expands on debut promise, that confirms its filmmaker as a mighty talent whose creative engine is churning into motion,” wrote Vanity Fair’s Richard Lawson after its Sundance screening.“A layered and authentic portrait of identity and dysphoria, wrapped in ’90s nostalgia and surreal imagery that embeds itself deep into your psyche,” wrote Bloody Disgusting’s Meagan Navarro.
Check out the trailer below. I Saw the TV Glow hits theaters on May 3.
For more stories on upcoming films and in-depth interviews with filmmakers, check these out:
Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two is rumbling towards theaters this weekend with the thunderous power of a sandworm. The second part of Villeneuve’s possibly three-part epic (he’s currently working on the script for Part Three, which has yet to be confirmed, and would be based on “Dune Messiah,” Frank Herbert’s sequel to his original book) was delayed from releasing this past fall due to the actor’s strike. This has meant that with this weekend’s release, the film’s stars have been out in full force to promote the film, including Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Florence Pugh, and Austin Butler. Now that Part Two‘s premiere is upon us, ticket sales are flying faster than the Spice off the desert of Arrakis, positioning Villeneuve’s latest as the year’s biggest film thus far. (We do and do not apologize for the Dune puns.)
The projections vary, from a more modest but still healthy $65 million opening weekend to a haul nearing $90 million. Still, the consistent takeaway is that Dune: Part Two is tracking for a very big premiere weekend domestically, boosted by a major splash at the international market, which will add another $80-90 million from around 70 markets.
The excitement surrounding Part Two is extra sweet, considering how Part One debuted. Villeneuve’s first installment was critically acclaimed, a sweeping, magisterial introduction to the world Frank Herbert created in his now iconic 1965 novel, the first proper adaptation of Herbert’s book since David Lynch’s 1984 film. Villeneuve decided to break Herbert’s tome into two parts, a bold choice given he and co-writer Jon Spaihtsleft major characters (like Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, played in Part Two by Austin Butler) and major action set pieces for a second film that hadn’t yet been greenlit. Yet the first film, despite opening simultaneously in theaters and on HBO Max during the peak COVID era, was not just a critical hit—it ended up doing well commercially, notching $402 million worldwide. Part Two, on the contrary, is opening wide and benefits from being the sole big release this weekend, giving it a huge number of IMAX and Dolby screens, the premium large format that is the preferred choice for sci-fi fans, Villeneuve fans, and Villeneuve himself (as well as fellow filmmakers like Christopher Nolan).
Part Two picks up where the first Dune left off (here’s a video refresher), with Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) and his mother, Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), now under the protection of the Fremen, the native inhabitants of Arrakis. Their desert planet has been the source of intergalactic power-grabbing for years due to the abundance of Spice, which functions as fuel for intergalactic travel and a whole lot more. Part Two is centered on the end game after the evil Houe Harkonnen’s decapitation of House Atreides in Part One, which included the assassination of Paul’s father, Duke (Oscar Isaac), and Paul’s increasingly fervent belief that he was chosen to lead the remnants of his House and the Fremen in a battle royale against House Harkonnen and the forces that backed them up, including the galaxy’s prime mover, Emperor Shaddam IV (Christopher Walken).
Along with the aforementioned cast, Dune Part Two includes returning members Javier Bardem as the Fremen Stilgar, Josh Brolin as Atreides’ ally Gurney Halleck, and Dave Bautista as Beast Rabban. Newcomers joining Butler, Pugh (who plays Princess Irulan) are Léa Seydoux as Lady Margot and Souheila Yacoub as Shishakli.
Dune: Part Two opens on March 1.
For more on Dune: Part Two, check out these stories:
Featured image: Caption: A scene from Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE: PART TWO,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
Ethan Coen’s solo directorial debut, Drive-Away Dolls, stars Margaret Qualley as Jamie, an unhindered Texan attached at the hip to her best friend and human hand-brake, Marian, played by Geraldine Viswanathan. The only trait these two twenty-somethings seemingly share is that they are both lesbians, but when an impromptu road trip to Tallahassee turns into a game of cat and mouse involving a couple of hired goons, Arliss (Joey Slotnick) and Flint (C.J. Wilson), the girls’ bond gets even closer, with the fun bonus of their transformation into skilled accomplices.
(L to R) Margaret Qualley as “Jamie” and Geraldine Viswanathan as “Marian” in director Ethan Coen’s DRIVE-AWAY DOLLS, a Focus Features release. Credit: Wilson Webb / Working Title / Focus Features
That Marian and Jamie ended up at all with a suitcase of highly coveted contents is an unfortunate coincidence set in motion by Curlie (Bill Camp), the short-worded proprietor of a rundown Philadelphia drive-away service. Hearing he needs to send a particular car to Tallahassee, he hands the keys to the first Tallahassee-bound clients who walk into the shambles of an office. For Jamie and Marian, now the unwitting conveyors of precious cargo, Curly’s is just the first stop on a road trip’s worth of grungy locations, all evocative of an American time that has passed by.
The film is set in 1999 at the end of the year, but “Ethan didn’t care that much about the time,” said Yong Ok Lee, the film’s production designer. Drive-Away Dolls is set in the Y2K era, but she focused less on period and more on the character of each location. For Curly’s dumpy office, for example, “nobody notices this place even exists,” she said, and “texture was more important than other considerations,” so she layered the room with wood, water stains, and bales of paperwork, the last of which doubled as a comedic prop for one of the film’s most memorable action scenes.
Bill Camp stars as “Curlie” in director Ethan Coen’s DRIVE-AWAY DOLLS, a Focus Features release. Credit: Wilson Webb / Working Title / Focus Features
Staying one step ahead of Arliss and Flint, Marian and Jamie stay at cheap motels and amuse themselves at a series of dive bars. Shooting locations frequently doubled for more than one set, so Lee focused on what the viewer would see inside and out to create the illusion of distinct venues.
“My main focus was how I could achieve making Pittsburgh everywhere, from Philadelphia to Florida,” she said. “The signage was really important for this movie,” and Lee and her team worked with Advision Signs, a local Pittsburgh sign-maker, to create signs for every dive and roadside motel the girls enter. Building a juke joint to which the hired goons are misdirected by a women’s college soccer team with whom Marian and Jamie quickly bond, “we unexpectedly used a lot of recycled material,” primarily from Construction Junction, Lee said, in order to build the juke joint as it would have been in reality, a DIY project using cinder blocks and reused metal and plastic.
Production Designer Yong Ok Lee on the set of director Ethan Coen’s DRIVE-AWAY DOLLS, a Focus Features release. Credit: Wilson Webb / Working Title / Focus Features(L to R) Geraldine Viswanathan as “Marian”, Margaret Qualley as “Jamie” and Beanie Feldstein as “Sukie” in director Ethan Coen’s DRIVE-AWAY DOLLS, a Focus Features release. Credit: Wilson Webb / Working Title / Focus Features
Home environments, like Marian’s apartment and that of Sukie (Beanie Feldstein), Jamie’s blood-curdling cop ex-girlfriend, were simpler to create, highlighting just what the viewer needs. “I wanted these to be a little loose, design-wise. It’s about character, not about their places. We even let [Sukie’s] place be a little empty so that we could focus on the dildo decoration,” Lee said, of an odd bit of wall decor foreshadowing what’s to come.
Most aesthetically significant are the bars where the film begins and ends, similar long, narrow spaces with high-backed booths reminiscent of classic dives easily found all over the country. In one [spoiler alert], the Collector (Pedro Pascal) loses the story’s precious cargo, as well as his head. In another, Marian and Jamie triumph. Lee built the interior of each bar to mirror the other, using the same layout so that the spaces functioned like “a head and a tail” to this bawdy romp down the Eastern Seaboard.
Pedro Pascal stars as “The Collector” in director Ethan Coen’s DRIVE-AWAY DOLLS, a Focus Features release. Credit: Wilson Webb / Working Title / Focus Features(L to R) Actor Geraldine Viswanathan, actor Margaret Qualley and director/writer/producer Ethan Coen on the set of DRIVE-AWAY DOLLS, a Focus Features release. Credit: Wilson Webb / Working Title / Focus Features
Drive Away Dolls is in theaters now.
For more on Universal Pictures, Peacock, and Focus Features projects, check out these stories:
Featured image: (L to R) Margaret Qualley as “Jamie” and Geraldine Viswanathan as “Marian” in director Ethan Coen’s DRIVE-AWAY DOLLS, a Focus Features release. Credit: Courtesy of Working Title / Focus Features
Throughout her career, Emmy-winning documentarian Alex Stapleton has spotlighted such colorful characters as baseball legend Reggie Jackson and movie maverick Roger Corman. She’s examined the role athletes play in the cultural and political conversation in Shut up and Dribble and investigated the struggle for LGBTQ rights in Pride. But the HBO series God Save Texas presented Stapleton an opportunity to document a subject unlike any she had captured before — herself.
Inspired by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Lawrence Wright’s 2019 book of the same name, God Save Texas explores three timely subjects through the eyes of Texas-based filmmakers. Richard Linklater kicks it off with Hometown Prison, an insightful look at the prison industry in Huntsville. In La Frontera, Iliana Sosa offers an emotional exploration of the country’s border policies framed around the 2019 mass shooting in El Paso.
Stapleton’s segment, The Price of Oil,sees her returning to her hometown of Houston to explore how its dominant industry has impacted the Black community. Through interviews with aunts, uncles, and cousins, she details how not only have they failed to reap any economic benefits from oil but also that they are suffering from the environmental impact of unregulated refinery expansion that has put both their health and Pleasantville, their Houston community, at risk.
In a candid conversation, the producer/director discusses taking on big oil, delving into family history, and defining her role as a Black female documentarian.
How did you get involved with God Save Texas?
Larry Wright and (filmmaker) Alex Gibney had partnered on many iconic docs, so they got together with Texas filmmakers to bring the book to life. HBO came in, and the search began. Richard Linklater is an old friend of Larry’s, so it made sense to call him first. Icame on second, and Iliana Sosa became the third director.
What led to your theme of choosing the oil industry in Houston?
There wasn’t a premeditated plan. They wanted these stories to feel authentic and personal. It so happened that I was from Houston, and Larry wanted an oil story. What’s interesting is how my family was left out of the wealth created. So we went with that and started filming.
Houston, Texas. “God Save Texas.” Courtesy HBO.
What surprised you as the story came together?
I’ve been making docs for twenty years. Most of the time, you never know where you’re going to end up because you’re following real life. I had an idea, but thiswas unchartered territory for me.
In what way?
I have never turned the camera on myself and my family. Larry calls mea Texan in exile for over 20 years. I was coming home and learning about my own history. My mother had told me our family had been in Texas for a really long time. But then you see, “Oh my God, seven generations!” My enslaved ancestors, my family’s contributions to the state — I hadn’t put the pieces together.
Director Alex Stapleton’s cousin Dennis Chachere (center) in “God Save Texas.” Courtesy HBO.
What was the filmmaking process like?
We shot during COVID. I had to figure out how to tell a story as the world was shutting down. Texas is a state that’s in denial about a lot of things. The rodeo was starting, and the city shut it down. It’s a big deal when Houston shuts down the rodeo.
How did you adjust?
I was in lockdown with my mom for about six weeks and just kept prepping. I was able to go through the material because we had a lot of time to kill. In a weird way, it became a deeper story because of the pandemic.
Did that impact filming?
There were things I wanted to shoot that I couldn’t. The biggest thing was going back to the plantations. People tour these places and think they’re these great landmarks. How can you show this history and totally ignore what my family was doing there? I wanted to show the flip side but couldn’t during COVID. It made the filmmaker in me sad.
How did your family react when they learned you wanted to film them?
For the first time, they understand what I do. When I came home, I had to get their permission. They said yes and thought I was going to show up with my cell phone and ask questions. Then I got there with my wonderful DP, Arlene Nelson, and my producer, Meghan O’Hara. We weren’t a giant crew, but my family thought our equipment was really cool. They were like, ‘Oh, wow! This is how docs are made!” I think they were proud of me. It was a special moment. I’ve never mixed the two worlds before. I could show them it’s because of my family that I’ve been allowed to have this career.
L-r: Marcus Washington and director Alex Stapleton. Courtesy HBO.
A particularly emotional moment was watching your great aunt’s house torn down because of the damage from Hurricane Harvey.
When I started, I had no idea that was going to happen. I knew my aunt and her daughters were working to get the funds to make fixes. But I didn’t know that tearing it down and building a new one was an option. None of us thought that would happen because this home is like a monument to us. My family called me and I ran there and shot it on my cell phone. I get emotional thinking about it. She passed away not too long after and didn’t see the new house. I lost two family members to COVID. That was the biggest impact the pandemic had on me.
Director Alex Stapleton’s great aunt Lela Johnson in “God Save Texas.” Courtesy HBO
What else does this project mean to you?
I feel lucky to be able to tell a story that’s been overlooked for so long. I love Texas for that village that raised me and the people I know. But I do see the problems. I don’t agree with our politicians’ mission to ban books, erase whole groups of people, and reimagine history. I’m so grateful to Larry for writing this book and Alex Gibney and HBO for bringing me on board. No matter what, this film exists. The history of enslaved people in Texas was not taught in school. I hope that Texans watch this series and understand that it’s up to us to preserve our stories and fight to get them out there.
God Save Texas premiering during Black History Month is especially poignant.
I feel so immensely proud to be from a lineage that endured and survived. I’m part of a rich and vibrant culture. My grandfather was a real cowboy! We grew up celebrating Juneteenth. It’s always been a big holiday in Texas. So it was cool when it went national. I can’t believe that John Thomas, enslaved by Michel Menard, founder of Galveston, is mygreat-great-uncle and part of turning Juneteenth into a holiday.
Why did you choose to make documentaries?
I kind of fell into it. I knew I wanted to work in film and went to New York right out of high school. I wanted to direct scripted projects. I didn’t go to film school. I worked my way up from the bottom, from intern to assistant. It washard to be a woman, especially a Black woman, and say, “I want to be a director” — and have people take you seriously. The doc community was different.I produced my first documentary when I was 24. It premiered at the first Tribeca Film Festival. I enjoyed the fact that I could produce something, take the reins, and be a part of crafting the story. I guess I got bit by the bug on that film. Then, I directed my first film a few years later, and it never left.
God Saves Texas airs on February 27 & 28 at 9 p.m. ET on HBO.
Featured image: Houston, Texas. “God Save Texas.” Courtesy HBO.
The Creator‘s Oscar-nominated supervising sound editors, Erik Aadahl and Ethan Van der Ryn, had a dream experience creating the soundscape for director Gareth Edwards‘ vision of a nightmarish future. The timing of the film couldn’t have been better—The Creator is set at a point in human history where there’s an outright war between humanity and artificial intelligence, a classic sci-fi set-up that felt alarmingly less fictive given the rapid expansion of AI in our real world. Yet The Creator puts a human face on the algorithms of doom, namely that of a young girl named Alphie (Madeleine Yuna Voyles), who is believed to be an artificial agent of doom by the militant humans in command. John David Washington’s Joshua, an ex-special forces agent grieving his wife’s disappearance (Gemma Chan), is recruited to take Alphie out, but complications arise when he’s confronted with the increasingly obvious reality that it’s human beings, not machines, that are rushing the world towards oblivion.
The Creator benefits immensely from the fact it was shot on location across multiple countries, including Nepal, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, grounding the high-concept technology in lush, lived-in reality, achieving a retro-futurism that stands apart from most sci-fi films you’ve seen. “Sound is so powerful in terms of evoking sort of these subliminal emotions,” Aadahl says. “It was either Walter Murch or Randy Thom who said that while images come in through the front door, sound comes in through the back door.”
The Creator‘s sound achieves this level of subconscious potency. We spoke to the Oscar nominees about their process, what makes Gareth Edwards a sound designer’s dream, and what it takes to design a new kind of sci-fi sound.
Let’s first dig into the naturalism of The Creator. You can really feel that it was filmed in real environments—how are you blending in those natural sounds with the advanced technology depicted?
Ethan: Gareth’s whole idea of the movie was as if James Cameron and Terrence Malick had a baby. Creating the physical reality and believability is so crucial in a film like this, which has this high-concept future technology. In order to make it all believable, we have to make the audience believe in this whole world, which starts with the natural world. We recorded real sounds in real places with real people and then brought these sounds back into the studio. And in reality, this is what we’re always doing with our work. But this film just created this incredible opportunity because we’re not used to seeing these big movies that are shot in real places with real people. We felt an extra responsibility to really make it sing with the sound design.
On location for “The Creator.” Courtesy 20th Century Studios
The Creator deals with fundamental sci-fi concepts and themes, yet there’s something really different about the way these robots and artificially intelligent androids sound. What was the approach to differentiating how The Creator’s non-human world sounded from other sci-fi films?
Erik: Gareth’s vision of the future is that not everything is the most high-tech thing you can imagine. Just look at now—we have the iPhone, but we also have normal telephones, we have advanced computers, but then we’ve got gas-powered cars. We have a whole mix of technologies, and why would the future be any different? So, not every robot is going to be like the most advanced new iPhone; there’s going to be what Gareth called the Sony Walkman version of robots. So yes, we have super high-concept sci-fi, but we also have something we called retro-futurism, and this was something Gareth really loved playing with. The police robots, for example, or the bomb robots. These were the Sony Walkman versions of technology. This is such a high-tech movie, but it feels like it could have been made in the 70s, and that’s really unique.
Ethan: I’ll add that in regards to referencing other sci-fi films, there were a couple of clear references, including THX-1138 [George Lucas’s first sci-fi film], and then there were references like Apocalypse Now, which influenced the jet helicopters, and we definitely wanted that sort of retro vibe fused with a technology vibe. But then the other side of it was there was the direction to come up with sounds that haven’t been heard before in any other movies. We need to come up with something completely fresh. That kind of direction we love, but it also creates a massive challenge.
Did Gareth ever give you specific notes on how he wanted a particular robot or ship to sound?
Erik: The way that Gareth directs with sound is by not saying, ‘Make it sound like this movie,’ but rather it’s more of a feeling. For example, there’s the Nomad, the orbital space station that goes across the globe and emits these blue beams that are used to track and target AI bases and locations and then bomb them. When Gareth was describing what he wanted to evoke with those blue beams, he didn’t reference a particular sound, instead he said that it should sound like it would give you cancer if you put your hand in the beam for too long. To me that’s the best kind of direction you can get. What he means is it’s volatile, it’s dangerous, it’s radioactive, and then we reverse engineer those feelings sonically.
Ethan: What makes Gareth such an amazing director for sound designers is that one of his credos is that in every moment, we have a series of choices we can make, and I want us as a team to make the unexpected choice, the more dangerous choice. That’s unbelievable to get that kind of direction. Intead of recreating what’s already been done, we’re creating something brand new.
What’s so interesting is that sci-fi, probably more so than any other genre, has iconic sounds that are a part of our collective consciousness, whether it’s the whoosh of a lightsaber or the scream of a TIE Fighter or even HAL 9000’s eerily calm voice in 2001: A Space Odyssey. So, how do you approach trying to create something totally new?
Erik: The very first sequence that Gareth sent us was the floating village tank battle. We got it in, and it was a 15-minute sequence with no temp music and no visual effects. There was gorgeous, David Lean-style photography, though. And the battle starts, and there was just this font that came across the screen that read tank. Working without image is challenging, but it’s also very freeing because you can start to experiment and dance around with ideas and free associate. We wanted a sound that you could close your eyes, and it had a tank-like quality. We played with all sorts of different synthetic sounds. One of my favorite things about sound design is that moments of serendipity happen. We had a weekend off, and I went skiing, and I was driving back down on Sunday evening. My car veered a little bit into the road meridian where there’s the serrated edge that wakes up a driver, and the whole car resonated with this crazy, powerful sound. So I pulled over, pulled out my recording rig, and went to town recording every variation and speed of that sound. We brought that back into the studio, and that became the sound of those tanks.
Ethan: Another example is the helicopter, where we’re fusing the familiar sound of a helicopter’s thwop-thwop with future jet technology. Fusing those two together creates something new. We’re filming in the Himalayas with Tibetan monks, but the monks are robots. That’s fusing two different ideas together, so sound-wise, when we apply that, we’re almost guaranteed to come up with new sounds. That’s the brilliance of the movie, combining all these disparate ideas, visuals, and sounds and putting them together in new ways.
Erik: When we first started seeing this imagery, like robot Tibetan monks, made us start asking ourselves questions like, ‘Can AI be spiritual? What does that mean?’ Alphie is such an interesting character because she has these incredible powers, but she’s also learning in a new way and becoming more human than many of the humans in the film. For example, that moment when meets the bomb robot that’s sent out to destroy her, and it kneels before her. I remember when we first saw that, we were like, this is powerful, so what do we do sound-wise? During our first passes, we took out all the sounds of the battle and decided to go internal, and we got the chills. So then, as she starts using her power on this bomb robot, we made a conscious decision that we didn’t want her power based on something synthetic, a computer-created sound, so we wound up using the sound of an Aboriginal didgeridoo, which has a spiritual quality to it. I can’t think of many other films where we can take such disparate ideas and combine them.
