Tickets are now on sale for Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two, easily one of the biggest releases of the year. Warner Bros. has dropped two new teasers, titled “Heart” and “Rise,” to tease your opportunity to scoop up seats, and each gives us a very brief refresher on where we left off in the original and braces us for the war to come. And that war, and all the breathless action it will entail, promises that Part Two will trade in the magisterial world-building and slow-burn thrills of the first film for something far meaner and more relentless.
When we spoke to Dune: Part One and Two co-writer Jon Spaihts a year ago, he revealed that he and Villeneuve had left much of the most thrilling action from Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel for the second installment, choosing to focus Part One on the treachery and galactic scheming that led the galaxy to the brink of all-out war. Part One was centered on a young Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet), who moves, along with his father, Duke (Oscar Isaac), the leader of House Atreides, his mother, Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), and nearly all of House Atreides’ soldiers, scientists, and advisors to the invaluable but dangerous desert planet Arrakis to help manage the crucial manufacture and distribution of Spice, the native element rich on that planet that makes interstellar travel possible. They do this by galactic decree (an unseen Emperor Shaddam IV has sent them—we will meet him in Part Two), and at the start of Part One, Paul convinces himself that even if his noble family is involved in the extraction of a precious resource from a planet not their own from a people they try very hard to ignore, what they’re doing is ultimately right.
Paul learns the hard way all is not what it seems. The major narrative thrust of the first film is the plot that unfolds against House Atreides, schemed up by the unseen Emperor and carried out by the ruthless, warmongering House Harkonnen, which led to the assassination of Duke Atreides and an assault on an unprepared House Atreidesby House Harkonnen.
Part One ended with Paul and his mother, Lady Jessica, escaping to the vast dunelands of Arrakis, where Chani (Zendaya) and the native Fremen, led by Stilgar (Javier Bardem), agreed to help them escape and plot their revenge. Part Two will focus on what happens when House Harkonnen and their vast intergalactic armies try to wipe out what’s left of House Atreides and the native Fremen entirely. Major characters from Herbert’s book now make their entrance, including Emperor Shaddam IV (Christopher Walken), Princess Irulan Corrino (Florence Pugh), Lady Margot (Léa Seydoux), and the psychotic Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen (Austin Butler), the man who features in one of the book’s most iconic sequences.
Check out the two new teasers below. Dune: Part Two arrives in theaters on March 1:
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From the cockpit of Top Gun: Maverick and the laboratories in Lessons in Chemistry to the Marvel Cinematic Universe—Lewis Pullman is having quite the ride.
The rising star is now Marvel Studios’ top choice to replace Steven Yeun in the role of the antihero Sentry in their upcoming antihero film Thunderbolts. Pullman would be joining a starry cast that includes Florence Pugh, reprising her role as the Black Widow Yelena Belova, Sebastian Stan returning to the MCU as Bucky Barnes, Julia Louis-Dreyfus returning to her role of Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, Wyatt Russell returning as the failed Captain America John Walker, David Harbour returning as Alexei Shostakov/The Red Guardian, Olga Kurylenko returning as Taskmaster, Hannah John-Kamen reprising her role as Ava Starr/Ghost, and Harrison Ford stepping into the late William Hurt’s role of Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross. The film is being directed by Jake Schreier.
Yeun had been attached to the project since February of 2023, but after delays due to the writers and actors strike last year, the film was pushed a full year to July 25, 2025.
Pullman charmed in Top Gun: Maverick as Lt. Robert “Bob” Floyd, the rare ego-less pilot in the Top Gun program. He recently starred opposite Brie Larson in Lessons in Chemistry, playing fellow chemist Calvin Evans, her love interest. He’s the son of the actor Bill Pullman,
Journalist Daniel Richtman was the first to report that Marvel was circling Pullman for the role. The character Sentry is a relatively recent Marvel addition, created by Paul Jenkins, Jae Lee, and Rick Veitch in 2000. He’s a Superman clone with many of the same abilities, but in the comics, his alter ego, The Void, becoming the kind of Jekyll & Hyde antihero that both Bruce Banner and Wanda Maximoff have been.
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Featured image: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – JANUARY 14: Lewis Pullman attends The BAFTA Tea Party presented by Delta Air Lines and Virgin Atlantic at Four Seasons Hotel Los Angeles at Beverly Hills on January 14, 2023 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for BAFTA)
Creating any animated feature film is an awesome commitment of time, talent, and resources. But the animated films of the Poland-based husband-and-wife directing team of Hugh Welchman (who is British) and D.K. Welchman (who is Polish) go well beyond the common description of “labor of love.” For their groundbreaking debut in 2017, the Oscar-nominated animated feature Loving Vincent, the team used a hand-painted animation technique to bring the paintings of Vincent Van Gogh to life.
The Welchmans’ second feature, The Peasants, opening January 26 from Sony Pictures Classics, is even more epic and ambitious. The film is a stunning achievement in hand-painted animation that was “born of trauma and conflict,” said Hugh Welchman.
Directors Hugh Welchman and DK Welchman. Photo Credit: Norman Wong. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.
The Peasants is based on Nobel laureate Wladislaw Reymont’s 1,000-page novel that spans the course of four seasons in its sweeping depiction of early 20th-century Polish rural life. The film centers on a radiant, headstrong young woman, Jagna (Kamila Urzędowska), who is forced into marriage to an older widower, the rich landowner Boryna (Miroslaw Baka). But Jagna secretly continues to see Antek (Robert Gulaczyk), her husband’s tempestuous married son, as she struggles to maintain her own identity and independence in a small village where roles are rigidly defined by tradition and deep-rooted patriarchy.
The Peasants. Photo credit: Vladimir Vinkic Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.
“We chose it because the book is like a moving painting being described before your eyes. It’s heightened and impressionistic,” said Welchman. “We wanted to bring the prose to life like a painting. If you’re going to work with the slowest form of filmmaking ever invented, you have to have a really good reason to do it in that style rather than computer or live action, which are much easier processes.”
The filmmakers shot a live-action feature film on a sound stage with the actors against green screen backdrops. A team of more than 90 animators, led by head of animation Piotr Dominiak, working in studios in Poland, Lithuania, Serbia, and Ukraine, then hand-painted the footage onto canvas using oils to duplicate 40,000 frames from the live-action shoot, said Welchman. The artists were inspired by realist and pre-Impressionist paintings, particularly the Young Poland movement, a modernist period roughly spanning the years from 1890-1918, which included art and literature of that period, such as Reymont’s novel.
The novel and its lusty characters and larger-than-life descriptions of landscapes also provided direct inspiration. The Peasants is required reading in schools in Poland, said Welchman. But few outside Poland know about it. “My wife gave it to me. I’ve never read anything like it,” says Welchman. “The level of description—it gives you the gamut of human relations and problems. I grew up in rural Britain in the 1980s and I could relate. It felt universal. It won the Nobel Prize in 1924 over Thomas Mann, Thomas Hardy and Maxim Gorky.”
THE PEASANTS key frame painted by Julia Spiwakowa. Photo credit: Julia Spiwakowa. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.
The Welchmans’ script was completed in 2019, but the COVID epidemic delayed production. Then, with production finally underway, Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. There were some 25 Ukrainian artists working in the Kyiv studio, which “was operational for one month before the Russians invaded and we had to close down,” said Welchman. “But out of all that, we knew a good film was emerging. We would have gone bankrupt, so we could not give up.”
The Peasants. Photo credit: Magdalena Wolf. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.
Since men of military age were required to fight, the directors arranged for the women painters to travel to their homes and studios in Poland. “They turned up with their kids, their elderly mothers; we had to find them places. They were a positive injection into our studio because we were all feeling miserable,” Welchman said. “There was 20 percent inflation in Poland because of COVID, and everyone was depressed. If it was computer animation, you could have people working remotely, but we needed to have people physically looking at a canvas under lights in a room full of paints. We were feeling raw and disorientated, and a bunch of women turned up after they’d just been bombed and separated from their families, and they were like, “This is amazing! It’s great we are here!’ You expect refugees to be depressed, but they were so positive; they lifted all of us up. We could not complain once they turned up with backpacks and suitcases — the contents of their whole lives.
They became an important part of the family.”
The Peasants. Courtesy Sony Pictures Classics.
The Kyiv studio re-opened after four months. “We wanted to give jobs to male painters there. But there were power cuts,” said Welchman. “Our film [cost] $7 million, which is not a small budget, but we never had any surplus to buy the generator we needed. So we [launched] a Kickstarter campaign and sold some paintings that had been created for Loving Vincent.”
All these hardships give an urgency to The Peasants and underscore its relevance to the present, he said. Besides political divisions, the sexism and scapegoating in the film, particularly the brutal scene in which male and female villagers violently turn on Jagna, resonates today, said Welchman. “How much have we moved on from nineteenth-century peasants?” he said. Going forward, the filmmakers will have to “choose out subject matter more carefully. Our lives and the subject matter are too closely linked.”
For more upcoming films from Sony Pictures, check out these stories:
Road House is now open for business, but fair warning—don’t mess with the bouncer.
Jake Gyllenhaal stars in Amazon MGM Studios’ remake of the 1989 classic that starred Patrick Swayze as the bouncer Dalton, an impossibly tough fella—imbued with Swayze’s singular charm and grace—who was hired as a bouncer at a rough Florida bar to tame the unruly. Things got a lot more complicated than your average bar brawl, however, and that’s precisely what will happen in director Doug Liman’s new take. Gyllenhaal takes on the Swayze role as Dalton, an ex-UFC fighter who washes up in the Florida Keys with not a whole lot going for him when the owner of a local roadhouse offers him a chance to turn his fortunes around while helping her clean up her bar.
That owner is played by Jessica Williams, who reveals in the trailer that she’s grown a little tired of a new breed of nasty clientele coming to her establishment. That’s why she asks Dalton to step in and step up, deploying his skills as a fighter to keep the riff-raff at bay. He’s got that part handled in spades, but when the real heavies come in with a plan to bulldoze the roadhouse in favor of a new property, they deploy a man with the ability to take Dalton to the very limit. The person playing that man is MMA legend Conor McGregor, making his acting debut.
Joining Gyllenhaal, Williams, and McGregor in the cast are Billy Magnussen, Daniela Melchior, Gbemisola Ikumelo, Lukas Gage, Hannah Love Lanier, Arturo Castro, Dominique Columbus, Travis Van Winkle, and B.K. Cannon.
Check out the trailer below. Road House arrives on Prime Video on march 21.
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The casting process for DC Studio’s next Supergirl is heating up and narrowing down as the search for the Kryptonian reaches its final phases.
Supergirl will play a huge part in James Gunn and Peter Safran’s new-look DC Studios, appearing in Gunn’s upcoming Superman: Legacyand then starring in her own standalone Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow.
The latest scoop from The Hollywood Reporter is that Milly Alcock and Meg Donnelly have recently taken screen tests in Atlanta for the role and stand as the two finalists. Alcock recently starred as Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen in HBO’s House of the Dragon, their Game of Thrones prequel centered on the twisted, tumultuous Targaryen family. Donnelly starred in Disney Channel’s musical franchise Zombies, and she’s got a personal connection to the Supergirl character already, having voiced her in DC’s animated Legion of Super-Heroes and Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths – Part One.
While Gunn’s Superman: Legacy is well into pre-production (with David Corenswet playing Superman), Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow comes from a script being penned by Ana Nogueria and will be based on Tom King’s miniseries published in 2021 and 2022 that took Supergirl out of Superman’s shadow and gave her a rich interior life and a bit more fire than her iconic cousin. This will be a different version of the Supergirl that Sasha Calle played in 2023’s The Flash.
“Superman is a guy sent to Earth and raised by loving parents, where Supergirl in this story, she is a character raised on a chunk of Krypton,” Gunn explained on Twitter after he and Safran announced the upcoming slate DC Studios. “She watched everybody around her perish in some terrible way, so she’s a much more jaded character.”
Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow doesn’t yet have a director attached. One imagines that once Gunn and Safran settle on who their Supergirl is, that news won’t follow too far behind.
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Featured image: L-r: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – JANUARY 15: Milly Alcock attends the 28th Annual Critics Choice Awards at Fairmont Century Plaza on January 15, 2023 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images). NEW YORK, NEW YORK – NOVEMBER 15: Meg Donnelly attends the GHOSTBUSTERS: AFTERLIFE World Premiere on November 15, 2021 in New York City. (Photo by Theo Wargo/Getty Images for Sony Pictures)
Tran Thi Bich Ngoc is an established Vietnamese film producer with a long track record of success and an eye for great stories. Among her latest projects are Bui Thac Chuyen’s Glorious Ashes, Vietnam’s submission to the 2024 Academy Awards for the best international feature film category.
In 2022, the rural drama received its world premiere as the first Vietnamese film selected for the main competition of the Tokyo International Film Festival. One year later, Ngoc returned to the festival as a jury for the same main competition, which was chaired by German director Wim Wenders.
While Ngoc has made a name for herself as a successful producer, we wanted to talk to her about what it’s like making movies in an emerging film market like Vietnam, where local talent, filmmakers with a great story to tell, and an audience hungry for local films are all helping fuel the industry. Yet there’s another side to the story that we wanted to ask Ngoc about, where issues, including piracy, remain an enduring challenge, and awareness about the problem and sensible tweaks to both cultural norms and the laws could make a huge difference to create the thriving industry Vietnam is capable of.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
We last spoke in 2021 during Covid. You talked about Vietnam’s emerging talent and censorship regulations. What changes has the Vietnamese film industry seen since then?
The Vietnamese film industry has recovered well after Covid. Just the top five local films in 2023 have reached over $40.8m (VND1,000 billion) at the box office, compared to the total box office of local films at $36.7m (VND900 billion) in pre-Covid 2019. This positive sign is again evidence that local films are still the audience’s favorites. But looking at the number of local films produced, it has dropped to only 27 titles this year from 42 before Covid.
What can you tell us about the current Vietnamese film industry? How is it contributing to the global creative community?
On the international scale, Vietnam has gained much recognition in 2023 through Pham Thien An’s Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell, which won the Camera d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and the documentary Children of the Mist by Ha Le Diem, which was shortlisted for the Oscars.
There were also some important changes to the law?
2023 was also the first year when the amended cinema law was implemented, which led to some positive developments. The first Danang Asian Film Festival took place last May and will have its second edition in July 2024. There is also the new Ho Chi Minh International Film Festival that is expected to take place in April 2024. Such exciting news is made possible by the cinema law amendment that allows cities to hold their own international film festival. Vietnam has continued to be an attractive movie market, with a growth rate of 20% year-on-year at the local box office. It also has a crop of young, talented filmmakers. But to continue the steady growth, a lot still needs to be done, such as providing strong training and education for film students, easing the foreign investment procedure in film production, and emphasizing the importance of copyright and content protection.
From your perspective, how big a threat is digital piracy to Vietnam’s creative marketplace and the overall Vietnamese film industry?
According to Akamai Technologies, Vietnam ranks eighth in the world for access to illegal websites, while the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) puts Vietnam on the priority watch list for IP violations. To build an industry based on creativity, copyright is a serious issue. IP protection needs to be seen as the foundation for the industry to grow. So much needs to be done.
Tran Thi Bich Ngoc scouting in Vietnam.
What is being done in Vietnam to address digital piracy? And what more do you think should be done to close the gaps?
The pastdecade saw some positive improvements from the government. The law on intellectual property was also passed in the latest amendment and became effective in 2022. Since its launch in 2005, the intellectual law has gone through three updates to comply with international law and all the international organization regulations that Vietnam is a member of. However, effective implementation requires the collaboration of all sectors: society, the movie community, and legal implementation.
Can you explain how that collaboration might work?
Most people still favor “xem chùa” (Vietnamese for free watching). Filmmakers and producers have spoken out, but mainly only when their own products are leaked. Their voices are still fragmented, and they are not strongly unified. As a result, there is a lack of pressure and motivation for the law enforcer. Penalties are in place for violators who might even be charged with a criminal offense, but there’s a lack of motivation to follow up each case to the fullest. Besides, the definition is not clear on commercial loss for film studios to claim their IP violation case.
A still from “Glorious Ashes,” the film Ngoc produced and premiered at the Tokyo International Film Festival in 2022.
Have you experienced copyright infringement? What actions could you take if that happens?
That was my fear when I released my film Glorious Ashes last year. Since we are independent filmmakers, we don’t have much finance and resources to take action if that happens. The “notice and takedown” procedure in Vietnam does not exist. If the film gets leaked, it takes a while to get to the authorities because of all the procedures and paperwork. The process will be repeated if another illegal website screens the film. The right holder cannot claim directly to the internet service providerso it’s best to protect ourselves first. I took cautious action with the protected link and the KDM for DCP, but the fear still loomed.
How can the Vietnamese film industry prepare its creators for new threats to copyright?
There are quite a lot of IP conferences going on nowadays for creators. This is a good sign in a way to educate creators on how to value and protect their IP. This is productive, but these activities need to reach out to the community to change their perception of IP gradually. IP violation nowadays means dealing with digital platforms over internet service providers, so the need to include these ISPs in the campaign is crucial.
What about changing people’s mindset around piracy?
The need to change people’s behavior on free watching is significant. This takes time and money, but it must be done through educational campaigns in schools and universities over a long period of time. The procedure for claiming IP also needs to be simplified, where “notice & take down” should be implemented, as the spreading of materials on the internet is so fast nowadays. If the IP claiming procedure needs to go through many approval levels, it cannot help producers when a violation happens. IP protection will need to be considered as a foundation for the creative industry. It cannot be done by any sector alone but by a strong and tight collaboration among them.
This interview is the first in a series we’ll be conducting with filmmakers in the Asia Pacific region on their work with a focus on content protection and safeguarding their work and livelihoods.
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The Merc with the Mouth and the be-clawed Canadian mutant have done the deed.
That is, Deadpool 3, after a robust delay caused by SAG-AFTRA strike, has wrapped filming. Deadpool himself, Ryan Reynolds, announced the news on Instagram on Wednesday, thanking the cast, crew, and director Shawn Levy. He also took up some space in his caption, as you know he’s wont to do, to have a little fun with co-star Hugh Jackman, who Reynolds has long been courting to join him in a Deadpool film while maintaining a very spirited public bantering that has seen countless potshots leveled by both of them.
In a different world, Deadpool 3 was slated to arrive in theaters on May 3, 2024, but now you can expect it on July 26. This is the first Deadpool film to fall under the official Marvel Cinematic Universe banner, yet everyone involved, including Marvel president Kevin Feige, has promised the franchise will retain its raunch and irreverence.
Reynolds and Jackman have played these roles in the same film before, but to say that 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine is nothing like what Deadpool 3 will be is a massive understatement. In that previous film, Reynolds’ Merc with the Mouth couldn’t even speak—his lips were sewn shut—so to have him in his fully chatty form spewing words at the iconically gruff Wolverine is what fans have been waiting for. In fact, this pairing has been so sought after it even brought Jackman back into the fold for a character he thought he said goodbye to, given that Wolverine died in James Mangold’s stellar 2017 film Logan.
But death, in the MCU, is not often a dealbreaker, especially when it’s all that stands between Reynolds and Jackman sharing the screen together.
The longtime host of The Daily Show is returning to host on Mondays through the 2024 election, with the rest of the week led by the correspondents. This new approach will begin on February 12, with Stewart returning to the chair that made him a star to kick off each week, setting the table for the rest of The Daily Show team, which will likely include Desi Lydic, Jordan Klepper, Michael Kosta, Ronny Chieng, and Dulcé Sloan.
Stewart turned The Daily Show into a juggernaut for Comedy Central, hosting 16 awards-laden seasons. He’s not only returning as host but will also take on executive producing responsibilities. Stewart’s most recent show was his Apple TV+ series The Problem, which he recently left due to creative differences. The Problem was a markedly different show than what Stewart did every weekday night on The Daily Show, with the former giving him the chance to drill down on a single issue per episode rather than tackling the broader themes shaping America in a given week.
Stewart’s new role on The Daily Show offers him the chance to tackle the looming election without plunging back into the grind of hosting every night. Taking the Monday show means that Stewart will set the agenda for the week, and it will also give him the chance to work with new and rising talent, something he did so successfully during his initial run. (The list of people Stewart helped along the way includes the likes of Samantha Bee, Stephen Colbert, Michael Che, John Oliver, and his successor, Trevor Noah.) Returning to The Daily Show lets Stewart weigh in on a range of topics and will once again thrust him into the spotlight in the middle of an election year, one that promises to be bruising.
“Jon Stewart is the voice of our generation, and we are honored to have him return to Comedy Central’s The Daily Show to help us all make sense of the insanity and division roiling the country as we enter the election season,” said Chris McCarthy, President/CEO of Showtime/MTV Entertainment Studios. “In our age of staggering hypocrisy and performative politics, Jon is the perfect person to puncture the empty rhetoric and provide much-needed clarity with his brilliant wit.”
The move comes after Trevor Noah officially signed off in December 2022, after which the show saw a rotation of celebrity guest hosts beginning in January 2023. Those hosts included Leslie Jones, Sarah Silverman, and Chelsea Handler. For a while, it looked as if beloved Roy Wood Jr. might take the new top spot, but he eventually exited the show. Both Stewart and Noah have been open about the challenge of hosting The Daily Show, being plugged into the news that deeply, that consistently, and trying to do right by all the people in the building who work so hard for the host to succeed. Now, with this new template, Stewart has found his way back to the show that he made a sensation, and right as the 2024 election is heating up, but with a format that should keep him fresh during the long, grueling election season to come.
Featured image: NEW YORK, NY – AUGUST 06: Jon Stewart hosts “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” #JonVoyage on August 6, 2015 in New York City. (Photo by Brad Barket/Getty Images for Comedy Central)
Thirty-five years ago, in January of 1989, Steven Soderbergh brought an edgy drama to Sundance that ended up changing the film business. His now iconic sex, lies, & videotape was sold for $1 million and went on to win the Palme d’Or at Cannes, and ultimately grossed $25 million at the box office. It is the movie that has a credible claim for lighting a fire under the independent film community, turning it into a real business and its filmmakers into future stars.
Cut to Sundance 2024—while Soderbergh is no longer 26 years old, he’s still passionately making films, and his latest, Presence, is being acquired by Neon, Deadlinereports. Soderbergh directed Presence from a script by Davie Koepp (who is currently working on a new Jurassic Worldscreenplay), with Deadline reporting there were about ten bidders vying for a film that got strong reviews at the festival.
Presence is centered on a family’s troubles after moving into what they’re convinced is a possessed home, with a ghostly presence especially interested in their daughter.
It was shot entirely at a single location, and knowing Soderbergh was being edited as it was being shot, given the speed and surefootedness of his approach. (Soderbergh famously often serves as his own editor and cinematographer, which he does again here). Koepp’s razor-sharp script and Soderbergh’s minimalist approach turn the haunted house story on its head, with the camera itself acting as the presence. As Entertainment Weekly‘s Dave Coggan writes, “…his camera is the action, watching and influencing the Payne family like a particularly nosy roommate.”
The cast includes Lucy Liu, Chris Sullivan, Callina Liang, Julia Fox, Eddy Maday, and West Mulholland. Neon scooping Soderbergh’s latest, 35 years after his original triumph at the festival, must feel good for a studio that just saw another of its films, Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall, scoop up five Oscar nominations, including Best Picture.
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Featured image: PARK CITY, UTAH – JANUARY 19: (L-R) Eddy Maday, Callina Liang, Steven Soderbergh and West Mulholland attend the “Presence” Premiere during the 2024 Sundance Film Festival at Library Center Theatre on January 19, 2024 in Park City, Utah. (Photo by Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images)
Would you watch a reality show where someone is actively being hunted for a million-dollar prize? Morally, the answer is no. In Jake Johnson’s directorial debut, Self Reliance (streaming on Hulu), he believes the answer is yes. The concept for Johnson’s new film is one he developed years ago after watching a Japanese reality show (Susunu! Denpa Shōnen) where contestants were placed in bizarre situations and filmed.
“And then in the middle of the night, members of the production would sneak in and replace batteries,” he laughed.
That bizarre contrast between behind-the-scenes production and what viewers are actually shown on screen was such an intriguing aspect to him that Johnson incorporated it into his own film.
Johnson wrote, directed, and stars in the film. He plays Tommy, a man who finds himself courted by Andy Samberg (playing himself) to participate in the biggest reality show on the dark web. It’s as ominous as it sounds. Tommy is told from the jump that there will be people trying to kill him, but only if he’s alone. So long as he has someone, anyone, by his side, and he keeps them there for a month, he’ll win a million bucks.
Johnson said he’s been working on screenwriting since he was 17 (“as dorky as it sounds”) and so a lot of the ideas in this film were similar to earlier versions he’d created as a teenager. Directing is a feat in itself, but launching your directorial debut in a film you’re also starring in was “trickier” than Johnson imagined.
“It’s not something I would jump back into because it’s manic,” he explained. “And as you’re directing, everybody that I was in a scene with — it’s my job to give them notes. It would have been better if I had been, like, fifth lead,” he laughed. “I should have been Eduardo Franco [who plays the P.A. Ninja in his film], and Eduardo Franco should have been Tommy.”
L-r: Maddy (Anna Kendrick) Charlie (GaTa) and Tommy (Jake Johnson), shown. (Photo: Courtesy of Hulu)
Johnson said he was fortunate to have “allies” surrounding him on production that he could lean on for guidance.
“Anna Borden, the AD [assistant director] of the movie, she directed episodes of Minx, so she came on and did me a favor to AD [this film], so I really leaned on her direction,” he said. “Ali Bell, our producer, she’s the executive from The Lonely Island, I leaned on her creatively. And Adam Silver, our DP, [director of photography]…I could say to him after a take, ‘How’s it looking?’”
Much like the film’s concept, Johnson said the characters morphed and evolved along with the individuals playing them. The cast is stacked with comedy heavyweights like Samberg and Anna Kendrick, but Johnson said it was Biff Wiff’s unhoused character, James, that was a casting dealbreaker for him.
“He was the first person we locked in because if we couldn’t find the right guy for that, I didn’t want to make the movie,” Johnson said. “The glory of the performance is Biff Wiff. Because if you get the wrong actor to do that, it’s too heavy. It’s sad.”
James/Walter (Biff Wiff), shown. (Photo: Courtesy of Hulu)
James’s character also reminded him of another character from his past.
“I see a big connection between James in [Self Reliance] and Tran in New Girl,” he said.
For the family dynamic in Self Reliance, however, Johnson based it on “the feeling” he got around a lot of families in Chicago — the no-nonsense attitude.
“Where they just say really honest, kind of in your face — a midwestern family that’s not into whatever phase you’re going through,” he joked.
Self Reliance was shot in only 17 days, but Johnson said the post-production was more difficult than he anticipated
“Putting the puzzle together while dealing with notes from all the different people,” he explained.
Johnson said he’s an actor first and foremost, so while he’s not eager to jump back into directing film any time soon, he’s open to directing other projects.
“I would love to direct a pilot of television, and I’d love to do a commercial,” he said. “I love being a director in terms of a crew, but a film is such a beast. It’s not something you casually jump into. Some of my most fun acting jobs, I’ve casually jumped into.”
Self Reliance is streaming now on Hulu. Check out our full video interview here:
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Featured image: Self Reliance — When a middle-aged man (Jake Johnson) is invited into a limo by famous actor Andy Samberg, his dull life takes a thrilling turn. Johnson is offered a chance to win a million dollars in a dark web reality TV show, where assassins from all over the world attempt to kill him for 30 days. The catch? He can’t be killed if he’s not entirely alone, leading him to recruit an unlikely team to help him survive. Tommy (Jake Johnson), shown. (Photo: Courtesy of Hulu)
The official trailer for Netflix’s live-action series Avatar: The Last Airbender has arrived with a gust of wind and a burst of fire.
Showrunner Albert Kim’s ambitious new series follows the young Avatar Aaang (Gordon Cormier), as he faces the challenge of mastering the four elements in an effort to harmonize the world in the face of a grave threat from the Fire Nation and the Fire Lord Ozai (Daniel Dae Kim). Aang will rely not only on his own skills, as he sets to master earth, wind, fire and water, but on his new friends Sokka (Ian Ousley) and Katara (Kiawentiio).
The trailer unveils the sweeping vistas, stunning creatures, and wall-to-wall magic that made Nickelodeon’s original animated series so beloved. The new series will consist of eight hour-long episodes,
The cast also includes Dallas Liu as Zuko, Paul Sun-Hyung Lee as General Iroh, Casey Camp-Horinek as Gran Gran, Arden Cho as June, Maria Zhang as Suki, Sebastien Amoruso as Jet, Utkarsh Ambudkar as King Bumi and Danny Pudi as The Mechanist.
Check out the trailer below. Avatar: The Last Airbender arrives on Netflix on February 22::
Here’s the official synopsis from Netflix:
Water. Earth. Fire. Air. The four nations once lived in harmony, with the Avatar, master of all four elements, keeping peace between them. But everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked and wiped out the Air Nomads, the first step taken by the firebenders towards conquering the world. With the current incarnation of the Avatar yet to emerge, the world has lost hope. But like a light in the darkness, hope springs forth when Aang (Gordon Cormier), a young Air Nomad — and the last of his kind — reawakens to take his rightful place as the next Avatar. Alongside his newfound friends Sokka (Ian Ousley) and Katara (Kiawentiio), siblings and members of the Southern Water Tribe, Aang embarks on a fantastical, action-packed quest to save the world and fight back against the fearsome onslaught of Fire Lord Ozai (Daniel Dae Kim). But with a driven Crown Prince Zuko (Dallas Liu) determined to capture them, it won’t be an easy task. They’ll need the help of the many allies and colorful characters they meet along the way. AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER is a live-action reimagining of the award-winning and beloved Nickelodeon animated series. Albert Kim (Sleepy Hollow, Nikita) serves as showrunner, executive producer, and writer. Jabbar Raisani (Lost in Space, Stranger Things) and Michael Goi are executive producers and directors alongside directors Roseanne Liang (also a co-executive producer) and Jet Wilkinson. Dan Lin (The Lego Movie, Aladdin) and Lindsey Liberatore (Walker) serve as executive producers from Rideback.
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The 2024 Oscar nominations have been announced. The two-headed Goliath that is Barbenheimeris well represented, with both Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer nominated for Best Picture, among a slew of other nominations each film received. Nolan’s Oppenheimer leads all movies with 13 nominations, followed by Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things with 11, Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon with 10, and Gerwig’s Barbie with 8.
However, Gerwig was not nominated for Best Directing, one of the first surprises. Joining Gerwig’s Barbie and Nolan’s Oppenheimer in the Best Picture category are Cord Jefferson‘s American Fiction, Justin Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall, Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers, Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, Bradley Cooper’s Maestro, Celine Song’s Past Lives, Lanthimos’s Poor Things, and Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest. Gerwig, Triet, and Song, each having their films nominated for Best Picture, sets a record for most nominations by female directors in Oscars’ history.
In the directing category, Christopher Nolan is joined by Jonathan Glazer, Martin Scorsese, Justine Triet, and Yorgos Lanthimos.
Here’s the complete list:
Best Picture
American Fiction Anatomy of a Fall Barbie The Holdovers Killers of the Flower Moon Maestro Oppenheimer Past Lives Poor Things The Zone of Interest
Best Directing
Jonathan Glazer (The Zone of Interest) Yorgos Lanthimos (Poor Things) Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer) Martin Scorsese (Killers of the Flower Moon) Justine Triet (Anatomy of a Fall)
Best Cinematography
El Conde (Edward Lachman) Killers of the Flower Moon (Rodrigo Prieto) Maestro (Matthew Libatique) Oppenheimer (Hoyte van Hoytema) Poor Things (Robbie Ryan)
Best Actress in a Leading Role
Annette Bening (Nyad) Lily Gladstone (Killers of the Flower Moon) Sandra Hüller (Anatomy of a Fall) Carey Mulligan (Maestro) Emma Stone (Poor Things)
Best Actor in a Leading Role
Bradley Cooper (Maestro)
Colman Domingo (Rustin)
Paul Giamatti (The Holdovers)
Cillian Murphy (Oppenheimer)
Jeffrey Wright (American Fiction)
Best Actor in a Supporting Role
Sterling K. Brown (American Fiction) Robert De Niro (Killers of the Flower Moon) Robert Downey Jr. (Oppenheimer) Ryan Gosling (Barbie) Mark Ruffalo (Poor Things)
Best Costume Design
Barbie (Jacqueline Durran) Killers of the Flower Moon (Jacqueline West) Napoleon (David Crossman & Janty Yates) Oppenheimer (Ellen Mirojnick) Poor Things (Holly Waddington)
Best Makeup and Hairstyling
Golda Maestro Oppenheimer Poor Things Society of the Snow
Best Animated Short Film
Letter to a Pig Ninety-Five Senses Our Uniform Pachyderme War Is Over! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko
Best Live-Action Short Film
The After Invincible Knight of Fortune Red, White and Blue The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay)
American Fiction (Cord Jefferson) Barbie (Noah Baumbach & Greta Gerwig) Oppenheimer (Christopher Nolan) Poor Things (Tony McNamara) The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer)
Best Writing (Original Screenplay)
Anatomy of a Fall (Arthur Harari & Justine Triet) The Holdovers (David Hemingson) Maestro (Bradley Cooper & Josh Singer) May December (Samy Burch & Alex Mechanik) Past Lives (Celine Song)
Best Actress in a Supporting Role
Emily Blunt (Oppenheimer) Danielle Brooks (The Color Purple) America Ferrera (Barbie) Jodie Foster (Nyad) Da’Vine Joy Randolph (The Holdovers)
Best Original Song
“The Fire Inside” (Flamin’ Hot) “I’m Just Ken” (Barbie) “It Never Went Away” (American Symphony) “Wahzhazhe (A Song For My People)” (Killers of the Flower Moon) “What Was I Made For?” (Barbie)
Best Original Score
American Fiction (Laura Karpman) Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (John Williams) Killers of the Flower Moon (Robbie Robertson) Oppenheimer (Ludwig Göransson) Poor Things (Jerskin Fendrix)
Best Documentary Feature Film
Bobi Wine: The People’s President The Eternal Memory Four Daughters To Kill a Tiger 20 Days in Mariupol
Best Documentary Short Film
The ABCs of Book Banning The Barber of Little Rock Island in Between The Last Repair Shop Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó
Best International Feature Film
Io Capitano (Italy) Perfect Days (Japan) Society of the Snow (Spain) The Teacher’s Lounge (Germany) The Zone of Interest (United Kingdom)
Best Animated Feature
The Boy and the Heron Elemental Nimona Robot Dreams Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Best Production Design
Barbie Killers of the Flower Moon Napoleon Oppenheimer Poor Things
Best Film Editing
Anatomy of a Fall The Holdovers Killers of the Flower Moon Oppenheimer Poor Things
Best Production Design
Barbie Killers of the Flower Moon Napoleon Oppenheimer Poor Things
Best Sound
The Creator Maestro Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One Oppenheimer The Zone of Interest
Best Visual Effects
The Creator Godzilla: Minus One Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning, Part One Napoleon
Featured image: NEW YORK – FEBRUARY 25: Overview of Oscar statues on display at “Meet the Oscars” at the Time Warner Center on February 25, 2010 in New York City. (Photo by Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images)
A dinosaur-sized piece of news dropped yesterday when it was revealed that Jurassic Park and The Lost World: Jurassic Park writer David Koepp will be penning a new addition to the franchise.
The last film in the franchise was director Colin Trevvorow’s Jurassic World: Dominion, presumably the third and final film in the trilogy that began with 2015’s Jurassic World. Yet while that particular storyline, starring Chris Pratt’s Owen Grady and Bryce Dallas Howard’s Claire Dearing, might have roared its last, the talented Koepp is back in the saddle, penning a brand new film. His screenplay for Steven Spielberg’s 1993 original was a practically flawless piece of writing.
Koepp’s script will usher in a new era of the Jurassic era, various outlets report, with a brand new storyline. That means that not only is it unlikely that Pratt or Howard would return, but original stars and Jurassic World: Dominion returnees Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, and Sam Neill will also not be involved in this adventure. Because it’s being billed as a Jurassic World film rather than Jurassic Park, it’s also likely the story will take place in the present-day or in the future, opening up a wide vista of possibilities that a period piece would not.
Koepp has been quietly working on the script for long enough that Universal Pictures believes they might even be able to make it a 2025 release. Returning to the franchise are Jurassic World producers, Frank Marshall and Patrick Crowley, with Spielberg executive producing.
Koepp knows his way around a blockbuster, having also penned the first Mission: Impossible (1996), the first Spider-Man (2002), and last year’s Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.
Koepp also made a splash at this year’s Sundance, writing Steven Soderbergh’s ghost movie Presence, with another Soderbergh collaboration on the way, Black Bag, a spy thriller set to star Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender.
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Director Blitz Bazawule’s The Color Purple, which builds on the legacy of Alice Walker’s original 1982 novel, Steven Spielberg’s 1985 drama, and the more recent Broadway musical, had the second-highest domestic opening of all time for a film released on Christmas day.
Celebrating resilience in the face of trauma, racism, and tragedy, The Color Purple follows Celie Harris (Fantasia Barrino), a woman who faces many years of difficulty in her search for belonging and happiness. First, Celie and her sister Nettie (Ciara) struggle through a violent childhood. Then after being raped repeatedly by her father, he removes Celie’s two resulting children, forcing her to marry local farmer Mister (Colman Domingo). When Mister tries to molest Nettie, she leaves and travels to Africa, but the years of letters she writes to Celie are intercepted by Mister and never reach her. The story spans decades in which Celie must learn to find her own power, in part through her relationship with headstrong jazz singer Shug Avery (Tara P. Henson) and by seeing female family and friends, for better or worse, stand up to their oppressors.
Hair Department Head Lawrence Davis played an integral part in bringing this musical reimagining of The Color Purple to life. The Credits spoke to Davis about his role as a collaborator with Bazawule in bringing this new spin on a classic story to a whole new audience. Maintaining the authenticity of the eras represented and capturing the specificity of characters known by fans as far back as 1982 was, for him, most important and top of mind.
In this new iteration of The Color Purple, we see Celie’s character arc in part through her hairstyles.
Absolutely. We see an evolution. Celie’s character starts with a very troubled childhood, being abused and a single parent at an early age, to an elegant entrepreneur at the end of the movie, and that is expressed in her look from head to toe.
Caption: (L-r) PHYLICIA PEARL MPASI as Young Celie and HALLE BAILEY as Young Nettie in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
What were some of the beats you used to make those shifts?
First, she starts out as a little girl with the plaits; then, she becomes a more mature woman who is sure of herself after she frees herself from Mister. She develops into a woman who grooms herself and takes pride in her looks. One of the big shifts comes when she is complimented by Shug Avery (Taraji P. Henson). It takes Shug’s friendship and their relationship to bring her out of her shell. She takes her power back, and you see that in her attire, the makeup she starts applying, and, of course, in her hair.
(L-r) FANTASIA BARRINO as Celie and TARAJI P. HENSON as Shug Avery in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo by Ser Baffo
The fantasy where she sings with Shug is definitely a high point in terms of her style.
Yes. In the scene when she has her fantasy with Shug, coming down the stairs with the orchestra playing, that’s when we see her in straighter hair, weighed and curled. It’s something we hadn’t seen in the original movie or in the play. For that, I wanted to tap into styles in classic films. I especially looked at Lena Horne in Swing Fever from 1943. Celie is a designer, and she definitely has that sense of style. It’s not where we, as the audience, might see Celie, but her imagination takes her there.
(L-r) FANTASIA BARRINO and TARAJI P. HENSON on the set of Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo by Eli Ade.
Can you talk about the specifics of your choices and what you did with Celie’s hair during that number?
Once we got her in the chair and I had seen what the dress and the headpiece were, I knew she had to be this beautiful, glamorous flapper and knew exactly what hairdo I wanted to do. I took the original kinky wig, and I pressed it out with a pressing comb, then I just curled that hair into figure-eight curls all over and brushed that hair out. Then I put finger waves in it, sculpted them, and froze them in place.
Caption: (L-r) TARAJI P. HENSON as Shug Avery, FANTASIA BARRINO as Celie and DANIELLE BROOKS as Sophia in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
The last scene in the film is Celie as a grandmother, and she has a very classic style.
At the end of the movie, It’s the 1940s, and she has this beautiful era-appropriate updo. I wanted a controlled look, but I didn’t want to go too straight with it because they were at a Sunday picnic in Georgia, so I put a snood on Celie’s hair in the back. I wanted a controlled look to give her a sense of having it all together.
The choreography in the jukejoint had to be a concern when designing the hair for that scene. How does that impact your choices?
Anytime you have dancers, you have to figure out how to keep their look consistent throughout the scene. I need something that’s not going to move but is period-appropriate, something I can actually anchor pins and hats into because they’re going to be dancing and get flipped upside down. I want nothing to fly off. Our method is we have wig caps, and we pin the wig down, of course, but then we also pin the hat into the wig and the wig cap. It’s tedious, but it’s the way to create a strong anchor. Even with the men, to keep their hats on, we have pantyhose under their hats that we tie around the head, pull really tight, and anchor the hats into the hose so they don’t come off. It’s a little strategic thing to do that we’ve mastered.
TARAJI P. HENSON as Shug Avery in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release.Photo by Ser Baffo
What was an example of something that required a lot of trial and error in terms of getting the hair right?
One challenge was finding the right look for Danielle Brooks as Sofia when she was coming out of jail. She hasn’t been groomed in a while, and it’s been eight years. We wanted to add some gray, but not too much. We went back and forth on it because people gray differently or faster. Did being in jail give her more gray? It had to look natural, of course, and there were different lighting situations that would make it look different, so we tested it in natural light, inside, and in lots of other environments to get it just right.
The scenes in Africa use a lot of traditional tribal dress and had to have hair designs appropriate to the tribes represented. How did you proceed?
Blitz was instrumental in that because he’s from Africa, so he schooled us because we did not know. The problem was, though, that a good 50% of the people sent from casting had dreadlocks, and that’s not what they wore. We sent a message letting casting know that dreads are not what Africans wore, but we also worked on the problem. We had to strategically take those who had dreads and condense them as close to the head as possible. And then we took packaged hair in kinky form and created what was pretty much a hair hat over the dreads. It was one very time-consuming because Blitz wanted to have an authenticity reflecting the look of the tribes. Then, for a lot of folks, we had a headpiece on top of that as well. It was definitely one of the hardest and the most transformative things we did in the film. I think we used about a million pins.
There are still so few people who know how to handle hair for people of color in Hollywood. What do you think needs to be done in terms of making sure all performers get taken care of in the chair?
I think there should be a revamp of the basic cosmetology book. It doesn’t give enough information on ethnic hair. It doesn’t give us enough information on naturally curly hair, whether it’s a person of color or not. Curly hair needs to be taken care of a certain way. I also think that my union should offer more courses on natural hair. I saw a video today of an interview with Diahann Carroll from 1968, saying she was going to do a movie, and she asked the producer/director if someone could handle her hair when they were on location. He said, “What do you mean?” She said, “I’m going to be working in the elements, and my hair is going to swell. Can you have somebody there for me who can handle kinky hair?” He said he would, and of course, when they got there, the stylist, who was supposedly the best in the business, could not do her hair. So it’s been an issue for years and years, and I still think it’s an issue. That needs to change.
The Color Purple is in theaters nationwide.
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Featured image: PHYLICIA PEARL MPASI as Young Celie in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
Netflix has just released the first official teaser for Richard Linklater’s Hit Man, which stars Glen Powell in a wild story that actually happened. This is not the first time the talented Linklater has poached an incredible true story and turned it into a cinematic feast, and, in fact, Linklater is once again riffing on the investigative work of Texas Monthly journalist Skip Hollandsworth, whose journalism first inspired Linklater to write his 2011 film Bernie, starring Jack Black as a caretaker who turns into a killer.
Hit Man is centered on Gary Johnson (Powell), a part-time teacher who works as a tech consultant for the New Orleans Police Department, helping them record sting operations. Without a nary a minute of training, Gary’s tasked with a last-minute assignment by the NOPD: go undercover and impersonate a contract killer. Let’s just say that Gary takes to the role. He’s good at pretending to be a killer. Too good? Perhaps. Soon, Gary becomes the NOPD’s go-to guy when it comes to impersonating the type of man who will kill for money. The desk jockey becomes an undercover agent, a dream many a dweeb can relate to.
Linklater’s film is based on a 2001 Texas Monthly article by the aforementioned Hollandsworth. With Powell, he’s got a rising star (and a standout in Top Gun: Maverick as the cocksure pilot Hangman), credibly playing a dorky guy who begins to live out his wildest fantasies without ever actually having to hurt anybody. The reviews coming out of Venice were very positive. When Gary meets Madison (Adria Arjona), a beautiful, bereft young woman who wants to off her abusive husband, things take a turn for the complicated. Gary plays the kind of man who can help Madison, but he’s not that guy, right?
Check out the trailer below. Hit Man arrives on Netflix on June 7.
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Netflix has revealed the first teaser for their upcoming series Ripley, led by rising star Andrew Scott (currently in Andrew Haigh’s heartbreaking All of Us Strangers) as the titular Tom Ripley, a grifter in 1960s New York who’s tapped by a rich man to head to Italy to retrieve his wayward son. This leads Ripley, a talented cipher with flexible morals, into a world of wealth and privilege that’s all too ripe for his specific skill set.
The name Tom Ripley should probably ring a bell—he’s the killer chameleon invented by novelist Patricia Highsmith in her Tom Ripley novels and was memorably played by Matt Damon in Anthony Minghella’s excellent 1999 film The Talented Mr.Ripley—an irresistibly conniving character that Scott has no doubt sunk his teeth into.
Joining Scott in the cast is Dakota Fanning as Marge Sherwood and Johnny Flynn as Dickie Greenleaf, played, respectively, by Gwyneth Paltrow and Jude Law in Minghella’s film. The new series comes from writer/director Steven Zaillian (The Night Of), who serves as showrunner and executive producer, and who wrote and directed all eight episodes.
The teaser reveals a black-and-white noir vibe and shots of the stunning Italian coast as Ripley is plunged into a world of intrigue and, eventually, a whole lot worse as he heads to Italy to retrieve the vagabond son.
Check out the teaser below. Ripley arrives on Netflix on April 4:
Here’s the official synopsis from Netflix: Tom Ripley, a grifter scraping by in early 1960s New York, is hired by a wealthy man to travel to Italy to try to convince his vagabond son to return home. Tom’s acceptance of the job is the first step into a complex life of deceit, fraud and murder. The limited series drama is based on Patricia Highsmith’s bestselling Tom Ripley novels.
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Marvel Studios hit the ground running—and punching and kicking—this year with the positive reaction to its new crime series Echo. Echo is a darker, more street-level story than Marvel’s previous Disney+ series, centered on Maya Lopez (Alaqua Cox), an indigenous deaf anti-heroine with some serious combat skills and a tragic backstory that was only hinted at in Hawkeye, the series that introduced her character. Echo has benefited from its darker tone and a central figure that’s hard to root against, even when what’s doing to survive is clearly wrong. Now, after the success of Echo, Marvel has restarted production on Daredevil: Born Again, which stars Charlie Cox as the titular blind superhero. Cox had a cameo in Echo, as well as She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, and of course, starred in the original Daredevil, which ran on Netflix from 2015 to 2018.
The tone of Born Again has shifted thanks to Marvel’s new Spotlight Banner (under which Echo falls), which won’t require viewers to possess previous MCU knowledge and which will be darker and grittier in tone and substance than the previous Disney+ series. The original Daredevil was gritty and often brutal, and in keeping with this change in tone (at first, the new Disney+ series was going to be more of a legal procedural), Marvel has brought on fight and stunt coordinator Philip Silvera, a veteran of the original Netflix series, who will act as both stunt coordinator and second unit director for the new series.
Daredevil: Born Again was well into production in New York when the dual strikes shut it down. The Punisher writer Dario Scardapane was brought in to help steer the series into a new, more punishing direction, and Loki directors Aaron Moorehead and Justin Benson were brought in to guide the show.
Joining Charlie Cox in the series is Vincent D’Onofrio as Kingpin/Wilson Fisk, the heavy in Echo as well as in the original Daredevil. What’s more, Jon Bernthal is also returning as the ruthless, relentless vigilante the Punisher.
With the success of Echo and the arrival of a new star in Alaqua Cox, Marvel is reinvesting in stories that put the focus on street-level heroes and anti-heroes, and heroines who can’t rely on superpowers to get them out of a jam.
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The movie based on the musical based on the 2004 movie Mean Girls is here, with Angourie Rice taking Lindsey Lohan’s place as Cady, the homeschooled teenager plunged into the catty horror of American public high school social politics. Written by Tina Fey and directed by Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr., in this musical Gen Z update, everyone has smartphones now, but the movie stays true to the original’s most beloved beats. Cady’s motivation to join the popular girls, the Plastics, crystalizes at a Halloween house party. Her place within the set changes after a disastrous Christmas talent show. And she’s egged on by the same fun, artsy weirdos, Janis (Auli’i Cravalho) and Damian (Jaquel Spivey).
Having just landed in the Chicago suburbs from Kenya, Gen Z Cady doesn’t look all that different from her Millennial predecessor in a loose plaid shirt and a non-specific cut of jeans. Regina (Renée Rapp), the school’s feared and admired queen bee, takes on a tougher look today, in black leather and bright tones, all the better to pop in an Instagram reel. Her sidekicks, Gretchen (Bebe Wood) and Karen (Avantika), are consistent with their original selves, in goofily risqué looks true to clumsy adolescent attempts at sexiness.
For costume designer Tom Broecker, who’s been the costume designer for Saturday Night Live since 1993, in addition to working with Tina Fey designing seven seasons of 30 Rock, what was important to get right in this contemporary update to Mean Girls was making sure the movie’s high school students actually look like they shop the way real teenagers do. Luckily, Broecker lives next door to a New York University freshman dorm, so he had ample inspiration right outside his front door.
He spoke with us about what had to be kept from the original film, dressing Janis and Damian as self-actualized outsiders, and Cady’s slower rise, fashion-wise, from homeschooled newbie to Plastic queen.
Let’s start with the Plastics. How did you incorporate designer gear into their still very adolescent looks?
I dressed them in terms of high-low more than in terms of designer-designer. The directors and I thought it was very important to have that mix of street wear, and no one wears high-high from head to toe, particularly young teenagers. In terms of this story, Regina comes from the wealthiest family. We didn’t want them all to be rich girls, so Karen and Gretchen are subsequently lesser than in that sort of way. In terms of designers, there’s Versace, Isabel Marant, Valentino, Kurt Geiger, and Stuart Weitzman, but all of that is mixed with American Eagle and Cider. We used a lot of TikTok-endorsed fashions, really trying to get into the mind of the teenager, because teenagers shop very differently than someone over the age of 30. In this, too, we used a lot of secondhand and consignment stuff, mainly because it was a way to get individuality in their characters. Teenagers like the idea of standing out a little bit, but at the same time, being part of the group. Each day is a new version of what you feel like — who am I today?
Cady’s fashion arc, as she becomes a Plastic, is subtler than the 2004 film. How did you approach that?
It’s a little more subtle because it happens gradually, then it happens, then it’s over. This is a movie musical, and it’s a little shorter than the original. She becomes the true Plastic in the cafeteria, where she’s wearing her own version of Regina’s necklace, with her own C, then she fully becomes the black widow in the party scene, where she truly steps into Regina’s shoes, the pink shoes Regina gave her at the very beginning. As she comes out, she literally falls on her face and can’t handle it because that’s not her true nature. The next scene, she’s done.
That party outfit was such a teenager thing to wear, a black strapless dress with a completely visible bra.
It was a takeoff on three things — the Jennifer Aniston little black dress, the Olivia Rodrigo little black dress, and referencing a little bit of the original Lindsay Lohan party dress. And then it is just such a bad adolescent thing. The strapless dress is super hard to pull off.
Someone who consistently pulls off his looks is Damian, like the cape he wears during the Revenge Party scene. What was your inspiration for him?
This movie is clearly framed now from the perspective of Damian and Janice. So part of it is also how they see Regina, how they see all the other kids in school. In the Revenge Party song, it’s their version of the most candy-coated, fabulous version of themselves. In addition, he’s a sort of magician. It’s a take-off on a gay Andre Leon Talley magician. He’s the person sawing Regina in half.
He and Janice each have a distinct perspective that sets them apart from the Plastics and the rest of the student body.
So many people want to talk about the Plastics, but the characters who are truly actualized are Janice and Damian, because it’s their story and they’re telling it. They’re played by two amazing actors. We talked all about representation. There’s a reality to them, an aliveness to them and their performances, and we keep going back and finding out more and more about who they are. The texture of Janice’s craft and how she’s always doing her needlework — it was important to have that texture telling her story. Then Damian is the amazing, gorgeous theater geek guy who’s not afraid to be himself. They’re not like other high school students in that way of having to try new outfits on every day to become other people, because they know who they are.
For all the other high school students, did you wind up shopping for them where teenagers shop?
Correct. We had an approved list of TikTok fashions, Instagram fashions. I live next to a freshman NYU dorm, so it’s all I get every morning, a nice visual of what they’re wearing today. Particularly with teenagers, they wear their pajamas as outerwear. They have their UGGs and their backpacks and their pajama bottoms with an oversize hoodie, and they go to work-slash-school.
For those of us who’ve managed to resist downloading TikTok so far, what’s a TikTok-approved fashion?
Just in terms of TikTok branding, it’s a weird thing on TikTok where there’s this whole world of influencers who wear monochromatic outfits. And then TikTok brands are more like ASOS, Cider, Princess Polly.
Getting back to the original, how did you decide what you wanted to keep from the 2004 film?
Part of that was what was written. Halloween is still a big plot point in both films. In our musical version, we changed some of the looks. We didn’t think Regina should be a Playboy Bunny anymore, so we made her a golden vulture. We changed Karen’s look a little bit. She’s still a mouse, but we didn’t want to put her in black. And then Cady is still an ex-wife bride of Frankenstein zombie. Those were things we tried to update. The sexy Santa looks they do for the talent contest were the same in terms of writing. But in this film, the directors were influenced by the Ariana Grande video, so there’s a little more sparkle. Then there were Easter egg moments we wanted to put in, like Tina’s last polka dot blouse references the first polka dot blouse. Tina and I would talk about whether we should reference or not. Most of the time, it’s fun for the audience.
You’ve worked with Tina Fey for a long time. Is she pretty involved when it comes to costume design?
She is. It’s a really good collaborative relationship. I love that she writes visually. Our job is to help make a visual reference and visual support to the comedy. It’s great to figure out how to make whatever she’s writing visually work.
Mean Girls is in theaters now.
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The Hollywood Reporterscoops that the dynamic duo behind Coogler’s big breakout hit, Fruitvale Station, as well as Black Panther, Creed (and its subsequent installments), and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever has a new feature film in the works. The new, untitled movie is the first spec script from writer/director Coogler through his production company, Proximity Media. Yet Coogler’s no stranger to writing on spec, however—Fruitvale Station was conceived the same way. Only now, he’s at a point in his career where people come to him when he puts pen to page.
So what is this new film about? The conceit and everything else about the upcoming feature are being kept in Namor’s underwater kingdom (a Wakanda Forever reference for the uninitiated), but THR was able to find out that it’s a genre film, it’s an original idea from Coogler, and that executives and potential buyers had to head to the Beverly Hills office of WME to get a look at Coogler’s script. This all happened last week.
We don’t even know what genre Coogler is working in—will it be science-fiction, which both of his Black Panther films capably incorporated into the larger narrative? Will it be a thriller? Fantasy? Horror? There’s supposedly a period element to it, but no one knows for sure.
Coogler more than warrants this level of secrecy, let alone interest from potential partners, at this point in his career. He’s proven again and again he can take nearly any genre, from the heartbreaking drama of Fruitvale Station to the sweeping superhero Afrofuturism of Black Panther to reviving a beloved sports franchise in Creed and make it sing. And in Jordan, he’s found a compelling lead who can embody a hero or, as he so memorably did in the two Black Panther films, a riveting villain.
We’ll share more when we know more.
Featured image: Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan on the set of “Creed.” Courtesy Warner Bros.
Issa López loves to challenge herself. The writer/director, best known for the mystical 2017 feature Tigers Are Not Afraid, believes your comfort zone is the last place to find stories worth telling.
“If you’re not terrified, you’re not doing it right,” López says during a recent Zoom interview. “There are massive fears that you face as a filmmaker. You need to just do it. With the right team, you can go out and do anything.”
Perhaps nothing proves this better than True Detective: Night Country, López’s latest effort. As the writer/director of the acclaimed HBO crime anthology’s fourth season, López crafts a story that is both literally and physically chilling.
Issa López on the set of “True Detective: Night Country.” Courtesy HBO.
Set in the fictional Alaskan town of Ennis, Night Country takes place during December when the sun goes into hiding and darkness fills the days. The eerie mystery with haunting overtones begins when a team of research scientists vanishes without a trace from their isolated, hi-tech facility. An investigation by Chief of Police Elizabeth Danvers (Jodie Foster) soon finds the men in the desolate tundra, naked and frozen to death in a giant ball of ice.
Photograph by Michele K. Short/HBO
A cryptic clue leads Danvers to believe these deaths are linked to the recent unsolved murder of an indigenous townswoman. The discovery prompts Danvers to reunite with her former partner, Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis). Navarro’s obsession with finding the young woman’s killer led to her demotion from detective to patrolwoman, causing a rift between the two women. Now, Danvers and Navarro must put aside their differences to unravel the new mystery as they also confront their own personal demons.
Kali Reis, Jodie Foster. Photograph by Michele K. Short/HBO
True Detective: Night Country first took root during the pandemic. Inspired by the puzzle craze that was sweeping the nation, López decided to create her own puzzle. And that raised fear number one.
“I had never written a WhoDunit, but I love, love them,” says López. “It always felt that they were beyond my capabilities. I felt I needed training to do its very strange structure. But I decided to challenge myself. I thought that good noir is about where it happens. I thought about the Arctic. What would happen if the WhoDunit is in the ice and the environment of a small town?”
Issa Lopez and Jodie Foster. Photograph by Michele K. Short.
Serendipitously, while López was deep in noir thought, a call came from HBO. The True Detective team was curious as to how she might approach the series’ fourth season.
“I said, ‘Funny you should ask,’” López remembers. “It was the perfect joining of two worlds. What makes True Detective so impactful is two very complex characters with a backdrop of a corner of America that itself becomes the third character. My idea was evolving towards a True Detective story.”
Having spent most of her career in the feature realm, López relished the opportunity to work within a six-episode structure. It allowed her to explore multiple subjects wrapped around a True Detective-worthy mystery.
“I am the type of filmmaker that puts in a lot of things. Sometimes it’s a lot for a movie to carry,” continues López. “But when you have six hours to expand your world, you can really layer it up. You can talk about the Arctic, about small-town America, about being a woman in a male world, about loss and loneliness. You can explore indigenous voices. Seventy percent of the population is indigenous. You can’t create a story and not deal with it. So I started putting it all together and let it brew.”
Isabella Star LeBlanc. Photograph by Michele K. Short / HBO
Crafting the script was only one obstacle. Directing Night Country presented a challenge all its own.
“It was freezing,” exclaims López regarding the shoot that took place in Iceland over 120 days, including 49 consecutive nights of filming. “Some nights we would be shooting in -23 Celsius…conditions that I never imagined being out in — forget about shooting a show.”
Wisely, López took to heart the advice of her Icelandic hosts when they told her there wasn’t bad weather, just bad clothing. Everyone dressed accordingly. Though she jokingly cursed the writer who put them in these frigid conditions, she knew her instincts were right.
“I wouldn’t change it for anything,” explains López. “The way that the cold, the wind, the snow in our lashes informed the series. The actor’s breath, the spirit, the taste, everything about it – we would have never been able to make you feel cold in your living room if we hadn’t shot there. It was so worth it.”
Jodie Foster. Photograph by Michele K. Short / HBO
Determined to take full advantage of the location, López and Night Country cinematographer Florian Hoffmeister (who received an Academy Award nomination for Tár while filming) decided that rather than fight the dark, they would pinpoint the exact images of a scene and envelop them in darkness. The idea was to have the viewer inhabit the experience.
“You would watch this, and it would feel eerie — that there is more than what you can see,” explains López. “Which is the whole point of the darkness. It holds things you can’t see.”
As an example, López cites a scene where Navarro is wandering through a snowstorm searching for a suspect. The only light is the beam illuminating from the flashlight on her forehead. “You cannot see anything but a little bit of her eyes under the headlight and wherever it falls,” she adds. “Navarro throws an orange away, and then it comes back from the dark. It was so nice to see it happen.”
An added bonus was the natural lighting nature provided. “We had the northern lights every week,” says López. “I’ll remember that forever.”
Another plus was the depth that Foster and Reis brought to their characters. Foster’s character was initially written as a woman struggling to keep it together. Foster loved Night Country but didn’t feel a connection to Danvers. She suggested a more world-weary police chief. What if she were a wiseass with a short fuse and no patience for those around her?
“I listened to her, and I said, ‘Okay, so if I’m hearing correctly, you want me to make her into an asshole,’” López remembers. “She laughed and said, ‘Yeah.’ And I said, ‘I can do that. I love that.’”
Jodie Foster, Kali Reis, Finn Bennet. Photograph by Michele K. Short / HBO
López envisioned Navarro as a tough kickass. She thought Reis, a professional boxer, would embody this. But upon meeting the actress, she sensed an opportunity for a kinder and more heartfelt Navarro. “She really became the opposite of Danvers. She feels and acts frontally and with honesty,” says the director.
Aka Niviâna, Kali Reis. Photograph by Michele K. Short/HBO
López reveledin taking the script’s initial ideas to another level during filming. Without giving away spoilers, she reveals a pivotal twist that came about exactly this way.
“There’s a crucial scene where a massive surprise happens,” says López. “I had rewritten it many times, and we had rehearsed it many times. And then we got to set, and Jodie said, “I don’t know if she would…’ And I was like, “Okay…” We threw the scene away, gathered the rest of the actors, and came up with such a strong, absolutely explosive scene. It happened right there, and it was intoxicating.”
López couldn’t be happier with True Detective: Night Country. But that said, it’s quite possible that she may choose a less taxing climate for her next project. As evidence, López points out that the coffee mug Danvers drinks from in the last scene sports a “Hawaii” logo. “It’s an inside joke about where my soul wants it to be,” she says with a laugh.
New episodes of True Detective: Night Country arrive on Max on Sunday evenings at 9 p.m. E.T.
