“Horizon” Costume Designer Lisa Lovaas on Dressing Kevin Costner’s Epic Western

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“I like big,” says costume designer Lisa Lovaas, and that’s exactly what she got by signing up for Kevin Costner’s new mega-Western. Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1, in theaters now, runs three hours, and its sequel, two hours and 44 minutes long, hits in August. Production on Chapter 3 is now in progress. Filmed in Utah, Chapter 1 follows white settlers battling Native Americans in and around the frontier town of Horizon, Arizona, in the 1860s. Multiple storylines feature dozens of characters, including pioneers portrayed by Costner, Sienna Miller, Sam Worthington, and Luke Wilson in opposition to Owen Crow Shoe and Tatanka Means’ Indigenous leaders and their followers.

Speaking from her home in Los Angeles, Lovaas, whose credits include four Transformers movies, Black Widow and The Amazing Spider-Man 2, describes Horizon‘s sun-baked location shoot, explains why her Native American wardrobe eschews buckskin stereotypes, and details what it was like to collaborate with director/producer/co-writer/star Costner.

 

In Horizon, white men wear woolen clothes just as they did in the 1860s. Shooting outside beneath the broiling Utah sun, did the actors have any issues wearing heavy clothes?

Not one actor complained about the heat when they put on wool pants, wool jackets, wool pants, and wool vests. Even if they’re walking in from this ridiculous heat, nobody said “Oh, this is going to be really warm.” They just looked at themselves in the mirror and saw the character they were looking for. We had little ice packs that we could put into somebody’s pull point at the back of their neck because it was 120 degrees a lot of the time, but I’ve never been on a movie before where everyone’s been so happy to work so hard and be so dirty.

Caption: (L to r) ISABELLE FUHRMAN as Diamond, WILL PATTON as Owen in New Line Cinema’s Western drama “Horizon: An American Saga” Chapter One, a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Richard Foreman

Dirty?

Because we were filthy! When the wind picks up, you have to remember to close your mouth. I’m lucky I wear glasses because [of] the amount of eye drops people were using day to day. We had a slogan on this movie, “I can’t wait to get home and take a shower tonight.”

Let’s break down the look for key Horizon characters, starting with Sienna Miller as pioneer homemaker Frances.

SPOILER ALERT

The first time we see Frances, she’s at a dance that turns into a massacre. I had to be careful with the fabric I chose so that when Sienna’s [hiding] in the tunnel, her clothes could get dirty and stay dirty. That sounds weirdly technical, but if I had done Sienna in a solid dress, you would have seen every mark [of dirt], and the takes would not match.

Caption: (L to r) SIENNA MILLER as Frances, GEORGIA MACPHAIL as Elizabeth “Lizzie” and MICHAEL ROOKER as Sgt. Mjr. Thomas Riordan in New Line Cinema’s Western drama “Horizon: An American Saga” Chapter One, a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Richard Foreman

So you put Frances in a patterned dress?

Yes. She has a house on the hill and a little extra money, so I wanted to establish her as a mom and a pioneer woman. That’s how we ended up with that dress made for us by Dale Wibben, a master of period women’s clothes. The inside of the dress was just as exquisite as the outside, with all the stitching.

SIENNA MILLER as Francesin New Line Cinema’s Western drama “Horizon: An American Saga” Chapter One, a Warner Bros. Pictures release.

How did you research the fabrics and silhouettes for this period?

We looked all over the world trying to get fabric swatches that would be appropriate for 1862. I went to [Los Angeles-based] Western Costume and American Costume to see vintage dresses from the period. I’d take photographs or put a dress on the Xerox machine and have that fabric printed. With Frances, a swatch came in from England, originally made in India, and it was perfect, so that’s what we used.

Caption: KEVIN COSTNER as Hayes Ellison in New Line Cinema’s Western drama “Horizon: An American Saga” Chapter One, a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Richard Foreman

Kevin Costner shows up as this mysterious gunslinger Hayes Ellison. Nearly all the men in this picture wear neckerchiefs or scarves and so does Hayes, but his scarf somehow looks more elegant than the others. Was that deliberate?

He is mysterious. People won’t really know who Hayes is until Horizon 3, but I wanted to dress him with a unique strength of character, which is where the scarf comes in. We block-printed the scarf.

Block print?

It’s this very traditional wood block-on-cotton technique that’s been done for hundreds of years because it was a fairly common, inexpensive way to decorate a fabric. Then we over-dyed it and reworked the scarf to show the audience that this character has a sensitivity that will be revealed at some point. Kevin loved the austere look, which also showed some softness in the scarf.

Native American characters like Owen Crow Shoe’s Pionsenay and Tatanka Means’ Taklishim defy Hollywood stereotypes by avoiding buckskin in favor of cream-white cotton trousers. How did you arrive at that look?

Kevin didn’t want buckskin. He wrote in the script that these characters were White Mountain Apaches from the southern part of the country, so he wanted to show the Spanish influence. That’s why we have Pionsenay wearing that poncho. The white and cotton also come from the Spanish influence. There were enough images and illustrations in the historical record for me to design the costumes we put on screen.

Caption: (Center) OWEN CROW SHOE as Pionsenay and (right) TATANKA MEANS as Taklishim in New Line Cinema’s Western drama “Horizon: An American Saga” Chapter One, a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Richard Foreman

Another storyline follows a wagon train that includes this fancy English couple, Hugh and Juliette, played by Tom Payne and Ella Hunt. How did you distinguish them from the others?

Because they’re supposed to be outsiders, I wanted Juliette to wear something that stood out so I screen-printed a unique piece where all of the stripes met at the waist in gold and yellow. There was so much gold and yellow in the landscape that dress just came alive and looked exquisite on Ella. In Horizon 2, you’ll see a big evolution in her character so I wanted to go very bold with Juliette.

Caption: (L to r) TOM PAYNE as Hughes and ELLA HUNT as Juliette in New Line Cinema’s Western drama “Horizon: An American Saga” Chapter One, a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Richard Foreman

Luke Wilson plays Matthew, the wagon train leader. What references did you consider for his costume?

Kevin looked at this one painting I’d shown him by [western artist Fredric] Remington and said, “That’s Luke.” I sent the image to Luke and said, “This is what Kevin likes for you.” Luke says, “There are four guys in that painting!” But for Luke in Horizon 3, his look comes from pieces of this painting that Kevin loved. It was so clear to Kevin, and that made it easy for me.

Luke Wilson in “Horizon: An American Saga” Chapter One, a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Richard Foreman

Most pioneers in this movie wore hats but they don’t really look like cowboy hats. Why is that?

Cowboy hats, with the curl-up, came a little later. I tried to keep the hats practical — sun, rain, wind — so that meant bigger brims. Each dude had a strong idea when he was trying on hats, which is great because that’s also where men put most of their effort during this period. A couple of characters from the wagon train would try on four different hats, and you go, “Ugh, this isn’t going well.” Then, by the fifth hat, you immediately get this feeling: “It’s perfect.”

Caption: MICHAEL ROOKER as Sgt. Mjr. Thomas Riordan in New Line Cinema’s Western drama “Horizon: An American Saga” Chapter One, a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

You’ve costume-designed action movies like Transformers: Age of Extinction and Black Widow, but you’d never teamed with Costner before or made a Western. How did you get the Horizon gig?

This man I’d worked with on the Transformers series called me and said, “Kevin needs somebody like you who knows how to do big shows.” So Kevin and I had a nice conversation. I sent him 120 pages of images. Then….nothing. I was like, “Oops. What happened?” Come to find out that Kevin was working on Yellowstone, and the thing I’d sent was so big he had to send somebody to town to download the file. When Kevin finally saw the images, he was very happy because everything had been researched and was real.

And that’s when he hired you?

Well, I also told Kevin about my grandfather, who worked at the Tuba City Navajo reservation in Arizona. He’d wear all white — white shirt, white hat, white suit — so I wanted to do an homage to him in Horizon because there’s a scene with a doctor in this camp. And Kevin said, “Absolutely!” He liked the story of my grandfather working with the Navajo. I think that’s what sealed the deal!

“House of the Dragon” Season 2’s Most Intriguing New Power Couple

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While calling them a “power couple” is certainly a stretch, in the second episode of season 2, “Rhaenyra the Cruel,” the embattled Princess Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) found herself an unlikely ally in Mysaria (Sonoya Mizuno), a whisperer of the Red Keep with secrets aplenty known as the White Worm.

Rhaenyra was rocked in episode 2 by twin revelations—her desire to see Aemond Targaryen (Ewan Mitchell) executed for murdering her son Lucerys (Elliot Grihault) had been botched, horrifically so, when two assassins instead dispatched King Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney)’s son, the baby Jaehaerys. What’s worse, the plot was initiated by her one and only Daemon (Matt Smith), who, while claiming innocence—it was the assassins’ fault for the screwup—was neither sorry nor contrite when confronted by Rhaenyra.

In this beautifully performed duet between two enraged lovers, Rhaenyra finally comes to terms with Daemon’s inherent dishonesty and core delusion, namely, that his now-dead brother, the former King Viserys (Paddy Considine), had kept Daemon from the throne because he feared him and his power. Damon insists it was for this reason only that King Viserys named Rhaenyra his heir, a cruel contention in the face of his supposed lover’s confusion and grief.

Matt Smith and Emma D’Aarcy were phenomenal in the sequence, and you could sense the growing chasm between Daemon and Rhaenyra, especially the latter’s realization that she will never, ever be able to trust him. Rhaenyra needs a true ally in these troubled times, with the war between the Greens (ostensibly led by King Aegon) and the Blacks (led by Rhaenyra herself) growing more obvious and potentially lethal by the hour.

So, who is Rhaenyra to turn to? Surely not Mysaria, Daemon’s former lover and the woman who, admittedly reluctantly, helped Daemon source two potential assassins at the Red Keep. Mysaria is a prisoner in Dragonstone, and Rhaenyra summons her after her vicious spat with Daemon to find out what she knows about the murder of the child in King’s Landing. Their unexpected parlay might not be the warmest moment between two characters, but something undeniably crucial occurs—Rhaenyra sees that Mysaria, and perhaps Mysaria alone, understands Daemon’s true nature. And Mysaria sees a highborn woman in Rhaenyra who is still not so different from herself—someone who has to constantly prove herself to men; the stronger she becomes, the more there is to prove.

Rhaenyra doesn’t yet agree to release Mysaria, calling the possible act a foolish loss of an asset that could lead to a fatal betrayal. Yet she’s clearly intrigued by her. Before Mysraia is sent back to her cell, Rhaenyra notices the scar on her neck, a vivid imprint from a hard life. Eventually, Rhaenyra chooses to honor Daemon’s promise to Mysaria and sets her free. It’s the honorable thing to do, sure, but it also shows that Rhaenyra is choosing to believe Mysaria, and, importantly, she asks for nothing in the bargain, likely the first time anyone has paid Mysaria a kindness without expectation of something in return.

This turns out to be Rhaenyra’s most fateful decision in the episode and could count among one of the most fateful she’s made yet in her life. As Mysaria is being led to a ship departing Dragonstone, she passes a familiar face, Arryk Cargyll (Luke Tittenso), a knight of Kingsuard sent by Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel) to assassinate Rhaenyra by impersonating his twin brother, Erryk Cargyll (Elliot Tittensor) and slipping into Rhaenyra’s quarters. Mysaria senses something amiss and alerts her escort. This quick thinking led to the episode’s most shocking sequence, the fatal clash between the twins at Rhaenyra’s bedside.

Luke Tittensor, Elliot Tittensor. Photograph by Theo Whiteman/HBO

Mysaria’s decision to halt her progress toward freedom and follow her instinct saves Rhaenyra’s life. But it’s not just survival instincts and keen intelligence that Mysaria possesses that Rhaenrya could desperately use; it’s also a connection to the smallfolk, the support Rhaenyra will need if she hopes to defeat the Greens. While Daemon is a headstrong, often brutal chess piece that Rhaenyra has, on occasion, been able to successfully move into place, he’s unstable and far from truly loyal. The White Worm, however, possesses skills Daemon has none of, most notably a strategic mind and an ability to elicit secrets from those in every position in society. In short, she has knowledge. And knowledge, in Westeros at least, still holds tremendous power.

For more on House of the Dragon, check out these stories:

“House of the Dragon” Cast & Crew Discuss That Brutal Funeral in Episode 2

Featured image: Sonoya Mizuno, Emma D’Aarcy. Photograph by Theo Whiteman/HBO

Writer/Director Andrew Haigh Revisits His Career at the Provincetown International Film Festival

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Each June for 26 years, the Provincetown International Film Festival (PIFF) unspools a singular mix of first-rate features, documentaries, and shorts; in-person filmmakers; and an unpretentious vibe that’s uniquely Provincetown.

A highlight this year was British writer-director Andrew Haigh, who was feted with the PIFF’s highest honor, the annual Filmmaker on the Edge Award. Haigh traveled from London to appear at the historic Town Hall to accept the award and converse with director John Waters, who, since PIFF’s inception, has served as its chief interviewer, raconteur, and general man about town. Waters characterized Haigh as the rare indie director who makes “edgy movies that get good reviews.”

“Not [from New Yorker critic] Richard Brody,” Haigh retorted. “He always gives me a bad review.”

L-r: Andrew Haigh and John Waters. Courtesy PIFF.

Many in the Town Hall audience remembered Haigh’s breakout second feature, Weekend (2011), about a one-night stand that became something more, which screened at PIFF that year. Haigh shifted gears for his third film, 45 Years (2015), a study of a longtime marriage starring British screen legends Tom Courtenay and Charlotte Rampling, who earned an Oscar nomination for her role.

But his biggest crucial and commercial success so far came with last year’s All of Us Strangers, Haigh’s melancholy romance/ghost story that’s now streaming on Hulu. All of Us Strangers is about a middle-aged gay man (Andrew Scott) in the early stages of a relationship with a mysterious neighbor (played by Paul Mescal) in his near-empty London high-rise. It’s at this moment that he’s reunited with his long-dead parents, who are living in his childhood home. This was a very personal film, Haigh told Waters in their freewheeling conversation.

Jamie Bell, Andrew Scott and Claire Foy in ALL OF US STRANGERS. Photo Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2023 Searchlight Pictures All Rights Reserved.

“It was a tough film to make. I had cast two actors [in] Jamie Bell, who’s a bit like my dad, and Claire Foy is a bit like my mum in terms of character, temperament, and even looks,” he said. “So it was a strange thing. She’s seen the film ten times in the cinema. If people are crying at the end, she goes up to them and hugs them and says, ‘that’s my son’s film’ which I think is just weird.”

Claire Foy and Andrew Scott in ALL OF US STRANGERS. Photo Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2023 Searchlight Pictures All Rights Reserved.

His parents “split up when I was eight or nine, and I lived with my dad and then my mum. So it’s a complicated film for my mum to watch. I made a film where the character gets to have difficult conversations with his parents, but I still can’t have those conversations with my parents. I can make a film about it, though,” said Haigh with a laugh.

Despite several indie hits to his credit, financing and distribution were far from certain for All of Us Strangers. “Searchlight Pictures came on board, which surprised me because when I wrote the script, which was loosely based on based on [Taichi Yamada’s 1987] novel, I thought, ‘no one is going to make it; it’s not going to get financed.’”

 

Waters asked about Haigh’s little-seen-stateside 2009 debut, the docudrama Greek Pete about a rent boy. “It cost about five thousand dollars. I was tired of not getting funding for anything, and I just wanted to make a film. I thought, I’ll make it on weekends while I’m working, and I’ll make it about hustlers. It got tiny distribution. It came out on DVD without sex, which meant it was two minutes long,” said Haigh.

His follow-up, Weekend, had much higher production values but “still cost less than $100,000. I still tried to get funding; there is public funding in the UK.” It wasn’t easy to attract distributors with a script, said Haigh, that some said was “too gay” and others said “wasn’t gay enough.”

In response to an audience question about his candid depiction of intimacy between two men in Weekend, Haigh said his films are not meant to represent the scope of gay life. “It’s about what feels true to me, what feels true in relationships. I try to be really honest, to dig deep inside myself to see what I am angry about or sad about. I take time to develop the characters so the audience can get to know them. I will always make queer-themed films; it’s a mission of sorts,” he said. “I feel proud and lucky to make these films.”

 

But the festival awards and critical attention for Weekend didn’t make it easier to get 45 Years made, Haigh told Waters. There was some expectation that he’d follow his success with another queer romance.

“They said, ‘what’s your next gay thing?’ and said, well, I want to do something about two 80 year-olds. I don’t want to do the same thing.” Haigh recounted his trip to Paris to meet with Charlotte Rampling to discuss her starring role in 45 Years. “I was terrified because she has a reputation for being, well, terrifying. I went to her apartment, which has an art studio, with all her paintings, and she was lovely, kind, and open. She was great.”

45Years_Still91.jpg
Tom Courtenay and Charlotte Rampling in “45 Years.”

Waters expressed his admiration for 45 Years as well as the three projects that followed, each representing a departure for Haigh: Lean on Pete (2017), the HBO series  Looking (2014 to 2016), and the five-part BBC miniseries The North Water (2021) starring Jack O’Connell, Colin Farrell, and Tom Courtenay.

Haigh noted that his passion for each project doesn’t always translate into conventional success.

“Lean on Pete came out and disappeared. Sometimes a film breaks through, and people at least have heard of it, but that can’t happen with everyone, and I’m starting to understand that,” he said. “Even if it’s good, it doesn’t mean people are going to see it. I could tell with Strangers that I needed for it to be successful. People want to know it’s going to make money or that people are talking about it.”

Haigh has written every script he’s directed. Although all his films are personal, he said, none are entirely autobiographical. “It’s not my life completely, but anyone who knows me, or knows anything about me, knows that so much of myself goes into all the films, even the ones that don’t seem like they’re about me [such as] 45 Years or Lean on Pete. I can’t make a film unless it feels like it is expressing something that’s deep to me.”

 

 

Featured image: Andrew Haigh, Andrew Scott, and Paul Mescal in ALL OF US STRANGERS. Photo by Chris Harris, Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2024 Searchlight Pictures All Rights Reserved.

 

 

 

 

 

How Hugh Jackman Saved “Deadpool 3”

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While it might seem like Ryan Reynolds and his team have an endless stream of ideas, one-liners, plot twists, and lunatic sequences for their Deadpool franchise, it turns out that Reynolds and co. were having some trouble finding the story for Deadpool 3. He knew he already wanted to work with his The Adam Project and Free Guy director Shawn Levy on the project, and they were just trying to figure out the right story to tell.

Speaking with Vanity Fair, Reynolds, Levy, and Hugh Jackman revealed how Deadpool 3 eventually became Deadpool & Wolverine, a plot twist not even Reynolds could have predicted.

Reynolds and Levy worked for months with Deadpool and Deadpool 2 scribes Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese, as well as Zeb Wells, looking for a fresh new adventure for Reynolds’ Wade Wilson and his motley crew of pals and X-men B-teamers. Weekly meetings with Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige were a part of the process. They were determined not to commit unless they knew they had something special and nothing special was forthcoming.

“Ryan and I were right at the edge of saying to Kevin [Feige], ‘You know what? Maybe now is not the right moment because we’re not coming up with a story.’ And that is the moment when Ryan’s phone rang, and it was Hugh calling from his car,” director Shawn Levy told Vanity Fair.

It was August 15, 2022, and Jackman was on a beach taking a break from his two-year stint leading The Music Man on Broadway, thinking about what would come next. That’s when he thought, “Deadpool/Wolverine. I want do that movie,” Jackman recalled to VF.

Of course, there was the little issue of Wolverine’s death in James Mangold’s 2017 Logan, a beloved film that beautifully, brutally gave Jackman’s be-clawed mutant a hero’s exit. It was enough of a concern that even Kevin Feige wasn’t so sure Jackman should consider messing with it.

Yet Reynolds was enthused, and in a Zoom call with Feige right after Jackman’s surprise ring from the beach, he leaped to the point.

“On the Zoom with Kevin, we just cut right to the f**king chase,” Reynolds told Vanity Fair. “We said, ‘Look, this call just came in. I feel like we’d be idiots to look this gift horse in the mouth and ignore it. This is a one-in-a-billion chance. I really feel like this is what we’ve been looking for.’”

Jackman told VF that he was certain that Deadpool would allow him to explore a new side of Wolverine.

“And I’d be sharing it with Ryan and Shawn, who are two of my best friends,” Jackman said. “The three of us together are like the Three Amigos. There was not a day where I wasn’t in tears laughing. I felt so rejuvenated playing the part. I mean, I’m 25 years in, man, and it feels better than ever.”

While the Three Amigos didn’t reveal much about the storyline, Reynolds did find a way to verbalize what connects Deadpool and Wolverine.

“If you’re looking at the Venn diagram or the overlap of these two characters, as vastly different as they are, the thing they have most in common is shame,” Reynolds told VF. “They both live in this violent shame cycle. Deadpool’s a very verbose character. He’s very feminine and kind of open and childlike. And putting that next to a character whose archetype is very Clint Eastwood creates something pretty interesting.”

The dynamic duo and their disparate coping mechanisms arrive in less than a month. Deadpool & Wolverine slashes its way into theaters on July 26.

For more on Deadpool & Wolverine, check out these stories:

Killer Pairing: First “Gladiator II” Trailer to Debut in Theaters Ahead of “Deadpool & Wolverine”

“Deadpool & Wolverine” Director Shawn Levy Eyed for Next “Avengers” Film

“Deadpool & Wolverine” Reveal Popcorn Bucket Set to Rival Infamous “Dune: Part Two” Offering

New “Deadpool & Wolverine” Teaser & Images Signal Start of Ticket Sales

Featured image: (L-R): Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool/Wade Wilson and Hugh Jackman as Wolverine/Logan in 20th Century Studios/Marvel Studios’ DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE. Photo by Jay Maidment. © 2024 20th Century Studios / © and ™ 2024 MARVEL.

Kevin Feige Confirms That “The Fantastic Four” is Set in the 1960s

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It’s finally official—Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige has confirmed what many have long suspected, especially after Marvel’s Valentine’s Day post on Instagram—The Fantastic Four is definitively a period piece set in the 1960s.

Feige appeared on the new Official Marvel Podcast, revealing that The Fantastic Four will begin production late this summer, the day after San Diego’s Comic Con wraps—you know they’ll have a few things to reveal about the film there. The reboot is led by director Matt Shakman, and the cast includes Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards (aka Mr. Fantastic), Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm (aka the Invisible Woman), Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm (aka the Human Torch), and Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Ben Grimm (aka the Thing). Then there’s Julia Garner as the Silver Surfer and Ralph Ineson as the supervillain Galactus, joined by Natasha Lyonne, Paul Walter-Hauser, and John Malkovich in unspecified roles.

Once Marvel revealed that illustrated image of the Four looking positively 60s, the internet sleuths did their work. They paid special attention to Ben Grimm reading a December 1963 issue of Life Magazine. Considering this was Marvel Studios’ first crack at re-assembling this superteam since acquiring 21st Century Fox in 2019, and it’s arguably the biggest film they’ve worked on since Avengers: Endgame, the interest has been intense. Feige finally confirmed the ongoing suspicion. 

“Yes, yes, very much so. It is a period,” Feige said on Marvel’s podcast. “There were a lot of smart people, who noticed that that cityscape didn’t look exactly like the New York that we know, or that existed in the ’60s in our world. Those are smart observations, I’ll say.”

By the time Shakman’s The Fantastic Four premieres, it will be the first iteration of the superfamily in a decade. Fox produced three films—Fantastic Four (2005), Fantastic Four: The Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007), and a reboot, Fantastic Four (2015). Feige also emphasized how big a fan of the Fantastic Four he is and how crucial it is to return Marvel’s First Family to the big screen. 

“I’m extremely excited by it because I think those characters are mainstays, are legendary pillars of the Marvel Universe that we’ve never gotten to play with or explore in a significant way outside of Doctor Strange: Multiverse of Madness and a few fun teases before, in the way that we’re doing it in that film. So I’m extremely excited for that.”

He’s got the right director in Shakman, who did incredible period work on Marvel’s first Disney+ series, WandaVision. Shakman directs from a script by Jeff Kaplan, Eric Pearson, Ian Springer, and Josh Friedman. The Fantastic Four is set for a July 25, 2025 release.

For more on The Fantastic Four, check out these stories:

“The Fantastic Four” Adds Natasha Lyonne to Cast

“The Fantastic Four” Casts Ralph Ineson as Supervillain Galactus

“Fantastic Four” Cast Adds Paul Walter Hauser

Marvel’s “The Fantastic Four” Casts Julia Garner as Silver Surfer

Featured image: THE FANTASTIC FOUR. © 2024 20th Century Studios / © and ™ 2024 MARVEL.

Ryan Gosling and Amazon MGM Set to Sink Teeth Into Zombie Comedy “I Used to Eat Brains, Now I Eat Kale”

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Ryan Gosling is set to produce a zombie comedy film with an unbeatable title—I Used to Eat Brains, Now I Eat Kale—based on a short story by the twins Adam and Daniel Cooper that they’ll now adapt. Amazon MGM gobbled up the project, which will track a story about former zombies trying to adapt to a changed world.

Gosling will produce alongside Jessie Henderson, his partner at their production company General Admission, which launched earlier this year. I Used to Eat Brains, Now I Eat Kale is part of their first-look deal with Amazon.

The Cooper’s unpublished story was 42 pages long, but plot specifics are being kept secret save for the nugget that their story is set in a “post-post-apocalyptic world” where reformed, former zombies face the challenge of reintegrating into the world. Going from brains to kale would certainly qualify as an attempt at reintegration. Officially known as the Cooper Twins, they’ve written and directed shorts that have hit the festival circuit and won Clios and Golden Trailer awards for directing and editing trailers for Warner Bros, Disney, Apple, and Netflix.

Currently, Gosling is not set to star in the film, which will still need to name a director. Gosling recently completed his press tour for David Leitch’s The Fall Guy and is set to shoot Amazon MGM’s Project Hail Mary from Spider-Verse creators Phil Lord and Chris Miller, who are directing.

For more on Amazon Prime Video, check out these stories:

Nicolas Cage set to Star in Live-Action Spider-Man Noir Series

“Blade Runner 2099” Adds Michelle Yeoh to Cast in Leading Role

Who is The Ghoul? Watch Walton Goggins Become the Gritty Gunslinger in Prime Video’s “Fallout”

“Road House” Trailer Reveals Jake Gyllenhaal vs Conor McGregor in Ferocious Remake

Featured image: BERLIN, GERMANY – APRIL 19: Ryan Gosling attends the Berlin premiere of “The Fall Guy” at UCI Luxe Mercedes Platz on April 19, 2024 in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by Gerald Matzka/Getty Images)

“Green Lantern” Series a Go at HBO as DC Studios Locks in First Live-Action Show

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At long last, the Green Lanterns will light a path on TV.

James Gunn and Peter Safran’s DC Studios has successfully gotten their first live-action series a pick-up at HBO, which has grabbed Lanterns for a straight-to-series order for an eight-episode opener. Lanterns will be led by showrunner Chris Mundy (True Detective: Night Country, Ozark).

Lanterns also boasts Watchmen and The Leftovers creator Damon Lindelof and Tom King (Supergirl) as executive producers and co-writers alongside Mundy. Warner Bros. TV, DC Studios, and HBO are producing, based on DC’s “Green Lantern” comic.

We’ve previously learned that Lanterns will follow two members of the Green Lantern Corps, Hal Jordan and John Stewart, in a story that finds these two intergalactic lawmen “drawn into a dark, earth-based mystery as they investigate a murder in the American heartland,” per the logline. This is precisely the type of two-hander that Safran had suggested when he described the series as similar in tone to HBO’s twisty noir detective series True Detective. Lanterns will be the first live-action series from Gunn and Safran’s initial slate, “Chapter 1: Gods and Monsters,” and will follow the animated series Creature Commandos, which is due in late 2024, and then the second season of Peacemaker, which Gunn created before he took over at DC Studios.

 “We are elated to be reuniting with both Chris Mundy and Damon Lindelof as they partner with Tom for this fresh take on DC’s Green Lantern,” said Casey Bloys, chairman/CEO of HBO and Max Content. “As part of James and Peter’s vision for the DC Universe, this first new live-action series will mark an exciting new era.”

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen Hal Jordan on screen—he was portrayed by Ryan Reynolds in the 2011 film Green Lantern. In the comics, Jordan’s a test pilot, while Stewart is a military veteran and one of DC’s first Black superheroes.

Gunn has already recruited a Green Lantern for the big screen—Nathan Fillion plays the Lantern Guy Gardner in Gunn’s upcoming Superman, which premieres on July 11, 2025.

“We’re thrilled to bring this seminal DC title to HBO with Chris, Damon, and Tom at the helm,” Gunn and Safran said in a joint statement. “John Stewart and Hal Jordan are two of DC’s most compelling characters, and Lanterns brings them to life in an original detective story that is a foundational part of the unified DCU we’re launching next summer with Superman.”

For more on all things DC Studios, check out these stories:

James Gunn Reveals Another New “Superman” Image

James Gunn’s “Superman” Brings “Saturday Night Live” Alum Beck Bennett Aboard

James Gunn Taps “Watchmen” Creator Damon Lindelof to Join Green Lanterns Series for DC Studios

James Gunn’s “Superman” Coming to IMAX Next Summer

Featured image: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – AUGUST 02: James Gunn attends the Warner Bros. premiere of “The Suicide Squad” at Regency Village Theatre on August 02, 2021 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images)

Final “A Quiet Place: Day One” Trailer Finds Frodo the Cat in Danger

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The final trailer for Paramount’s prequel A Quiet Place: Day One combines new footage with quotes from critics, many of whom were blown away by director Michael Sarnoski’s prequel. The final peek also reveals the lengths people will go to for a beloved cat, in this case, Frodo (played by two kitties, Nico and Schnitzel). We see both Lupita Nyong’o’s Sam and Joseph Quinn’s Eric do their level best to protect the kitty from the alien hunters who have arrived, sans invitation, in New York City.

The early reactions to Day One indicate that Sarnoski and his cast and crew have created a properly satisfying lens-widener on the sci-fi horror franchise created by John Krasinski. Krasinski first established the after-effects of a world dominated by blind but exquisitely lethal aliens who hunt by sound in A Quiet Place (2018) and then broadened the picture in A Quiet Place: Part II (2020). Those films were set more than a year and a half after the blind, sound-hunting aliens arrived on Earth—now, we finally get to see what the world was right as the alien invasion was underway. 

“A Quiet Place: Day One might be my favorite of the series. The city setting brings new thrills and nail-biting suspense,” Discussing Film‘s Andrew Salazar wrote on Twitter. “But what truly sets this apart is Lupita Nyong’o and director Michael Sarnoski telling a poignant story about finding inner peace, even during the apocalypse.”

Check out the final trailer below. A Quiet Place: Day One hits theaters on June 28.

For more on A Quiet Place: Day One, check out these stories:

“A Quiet Place: Day One” First Reactions: A Thrilling Prequel Led By Lupita Nyong’o, Joseph Quinn, and Frodo the Cat

Devastation & Determination in a New “A Quiet Place: Day One” Featurette

“A Quiet Place: Day One” Trailer Unleashes the Alien Scourge on an Unsuspecting NYC

First Trailer for “A Quiet Place: Day One” Reveals the Lupita Nyong’o-led Prequel

Featured image: Lupita Nyong’o as “Samira” in A Quiet Place: Day One from Paramount Pictures.

Killer Pairing: First “Gladiator II” Trailer to Debut in Theaters Ahead of “Deadpool & Wolverine”

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Talk about a killer pairing. Collider learned that the first trailer for Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II will unsheathe its sword in theaters ahead of Shawn Levy’s Deadpool & Wolverine, the only Marvel Studios film releasing in 2024. These are easily two of the most hotly anticipated films of the year, and pairing them together is one heck of a mid-summer treat.

Scott’s Gladiator II is the long-awaited follow-up to his 2001 Best Picture Oscar winner, which followed the brutal journey of former general Maximus Decimus Meridius (Russell Crowe), who went from a life of honor and sacrifice to ruin and rage after his might on the battlefield was viewed as a threat by the fragile, self-appointed emperor of Rome, Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix.) Commodus went to despicable lengths to neutralize Maximus, brutally killing his wife and children and selling him into slavery—a mistake, it would turn out. Maximus ends up being forced into the ring as a gladiator, and the man’s a natural. Gladiator tracked his bloody path of vengeance toward Commodus, in which the former general turned beloved “Spainard” of the Colosseum gets ever closer to exacting his revenge against the petulant, sociopathic emperor.

The first footage was released at CinemaCon and wowed the crowd in Vegas. It included a clip in which Gladiator II star Paul Mescal, playing a young man named Lucius, says, “I remember that day. I never forgot it. That a slave could take revenge against an emperor. That a slave could get justice in the arena.”

Gladiator II boasts an incredible cast, including Connie Nielsen, reprising her role as Lucilla from the original, and newcomers Denzel Washington, Pedro Pascal, Joseph Quinn, Rory McCann, and Fred Hechinger.

Deadpool & Wolverine will also deliver something fans have been clamoring for forever—the pairing of Ryan Reynolds’ Merc with the Mouth and Hugh Jackman‘s Wolverine. Jackman will be playing a different version of the character than he did in James Mangold’s 2017 epic Logan, which saw the grizzled, beloved Canadian berserker sacrifice himself for a young mutant under his protection.

Deadpool & Wolverine slashes its way into theaters on July 26.

For more on Deadpool & Wolverine, check out these stories:

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For more on Gladiator 2, check these out:

First Footage of Ridley Scott’s “Gladiator 2” Conquers CinemaCo

Ridley Scott Reveals Creation of Massive “Gladiator 2” Battle Scene in Behind-the-Scenes Video

Featured image: Hugh Jackman as Wolverine/Logan in 20th Century Studios/Marvel Studios’ DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios/Marvel Studios. © 2024 20th Century Studios / © and ™ 2024 MARVEL.

Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis Are Officially Reunited for “Freaky Friday 2”

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Disney has released the first behind-the-scenes look at Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis’s long-awaited reunion for Freaky Friday 2. Lohan and Curtis are back at it as Anna and Tess Coleman, respectively, as filming is underway.

Their first go-round as a stressed out, overworked mom and rebellious daughter who can’t see eye to eye on anything dropped in 2003 from director Mark Waters, based on Mary Rodgers’s novel and adapted by screenwriters Heather Hach and Leslie Dixon. The catch, of course, was that stressed Tess and rebellious Anna switched bodies, forcing each of them to understand what it was like to live each other’s lives. Talk about getting a dose of perspective and empathy the hard way.

The sequel is directed by Nisha Ganatara (she directed Mindy Kaling and Emma Thompson in Late Night) from a script by Jordan Weiss. Lohan and Curtis are joined by returning Freaky Friday alums Chad Michael Murray, Mark Harmon, Christina Vidal Mitchell, Haley Hudson, Rosalind Chao, Lucille Soong, and Stephen Tobolowsky. Manny Jacinto, Julia Butters, Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, and Sophia Hammons are new to the franchise.

Curtis told The View back in 2022 that she’d written to Disney personally about her desire to make a sequel. She’s now producing alongside original Freaky Friday producer Andrew Gunn, alongside Kristin Burr.

Freaky Friday 2 is slated to hit theaters in 2025.

For more stories on 20th Century Studios, Searchlight Pictures, Marvel Studios and what’s streaming or coming to

Disney+, check these out:

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Featured image: UNIVERSAL CITY, CA – AUGUST 2: Actress Jamie Lee Curtis (L) and Lindsay Lohan presenting at The 2003 Teen Choice Awards held at Universal Amphitheater on August 2, 2003 in Universal City, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

“Nosferatu” Trailer Unleashes the Iconic Vampire in Robert Eggers’ Latest

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The official teaser trailer for writer/director Robert Eggers’ Nosefratu has arrived, putting a bit more meat on the bone for one of the most intriguing films slated for the end of the year. The last peek at Eggers’ latest was during this year’s CineamCon, where the audience in Vegas was properly jolted by the auteur’s take on the iconic tale, so this longer look is as welcome as a sharp stake when a vampire comes calling.

Eggers is a notoriously meticulous filmmaker—his work in The Northman, The Lighthouse,  and The Witch proved that—so there’s little doubt he’s brought that level of attention to detail to this tale of gothic obsession between the titular vampire and the haunted young woman he’s fixated on, Ellen Hunter (Lily-Rose Depp). The teaser opens with Ellen begging for the arrival of Nosferatu—is it a dream, or is this a snippet from when Ellen and her vampire paramour are deep into their deadly romance? We’re next at Ellen’s bedside as she asks Professor Albin Eberhart Von Franz (Willem Dafoe) if evil is an entity that comes from within a person or if it finds its way inside. That’s followed by a refrain—”he is coming”—repeated by a series of seemingly demented individuals, as we see a shot of Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult) coming upon the castle of Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård) for the first time.

Few directors are more suited to a deep gothic adaptation of the deathless story first created by Bram Stoker in “Dracula” than Eggers. The teaser does more than enough to whet our appetite for what he’s done with the material, and with a stellar cast and Eggers’ go-to collaborators like cinematographer Jarin Blaschke, editor Louise Ford, and production designer Craig Lathrop, Nosferatu will definitely have teeth.

Nosferatu is set to rise on December 25. Check out the teaser trailer below.

 

For more on Universal Pictures, Peacock, and Focus Features projects, check out these stories:

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Featured image: Lily-Rose Depp stars as Ellen Hutter in director Robert Eggers’ NOSFERATU, a Focus Features release. Credit: Courtesy of Focus Features / © 2023 FOCUS FEATURES LLC

“House of the Dragon” Cast & Crew Discuss That Brutal Funeral in Episode 2

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Child murder is nothing new to the world of Game of Thrones, and so it must go for House of the Dragon. The first Game of Thrones spinoff to make it to air, House of the Dragon has proven itself a satisfying slow burn that metes out its corporeal punishments judiciously, but when they come, they’re all the more brutal for it. In the season 2 premiere, the scheming, impatient Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) wanted to exact revenge against Prince Aemond Targaryen (Ewan Mitchell) for killing Prince Lucerys Velaryon (Elliot Grihault) at the end of season 1, so he accomplishes this by paying two assassins to murder King Aegon II (Tom Glynn-Carney)’s successor, his baby son Jaehaerys Targaryen.

Daemon’s lethal decision is yet another bloody move in the increasingly brutal war between two former friends, Princess Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) and Alicent (Olivia Cooke), and their respective families and allies. The would-be queen Rhaenyra and Queen Alicent have consistently believed they could outmaneuver one another without resorting to the wholesale slaughter that usually arises when two or more men squabble for the Iron Throne. Yet their respective families and allies, like Daemon and Aemond, are not the patient types. There will be blood, to put it mildly.

The scene of the baby Jaehaerys’ murder in the season 2 premiere was thankfully handled off-screen (although we can hear the assassin’s foul work)—episode 2 includes the funeral, one of the most common gatherings for characters in the world George R. R. Martin built considering all the untimely deaths. HBO released a Behind the Scenes look at the creation of the royal funeral in episode 2, which unsurprisingly took a massive amount of detailed work to craft a proper funeral for a young royal and heir to the throne. The pomp and circumstance, the barely sublimated rage coursing beneath the gathering, and the long processional through King’s Landing managed to simultaneously remind us how well we’ve come to know the world of Westeros, yet how subtly different it was during the Targaryen reign 200 years before the events of Game of Thrones. The funeral also shifted the focus firmly on Queen Alicent, an intimate portrayal of her grief set against the very public backdrop of King’s Landing.

It was a moody way to open episode 2 and a reminder of just how much bloodier this war between Rhaenyra and Alicent is going to get. The Greens, aligned with Alicent and Aegon II, are now more likely to wage total war against the Rhaenyra and the Blacks. While they’ve got plenty of men whispering—or demanding—they prosecute this war in the most brutal, expeditious manner possible, these two women aren’t easily bullied or cajoled. Yet, as we learned time and time again on Game of Thrones, even the most meticulous plans made with the intention of causing the least amount of harm have a way of devolving into carnage.

Check out the Behind the Scenes Video here. House of the Dragon season 2, episode 3 arrives on Sunday, June 30, on HBO. The first two episodes are streaming now on HBO Max.

For more on House of the Dragon, check out these stories:

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“House of the Dragon” Season 2 Timeline Revealed

Featured image: L-r: Olivia Cooke, Phia Saban. Photograph by Theo Whitman/HBO

“A Quiet Place: Day One” First Reactions: A Thrilling Prequel Led By Lupita Nyong’o, Joseph Quinn, and Frodo the Cat

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The first reactions are pouring in (or are they purring in?) for Paramount’s prequel A Quiet Place: Day One, indicating that writer/director Michael Sarnoski has pulled off a properly satisfying lens-widener on the sci-fi horror franchise created by John Krasinski. Krasinski established the after-effects of a world dominated by blind but exquisitely lethal aliens who hunt by sound in A Quiet Place (2018) and A Quiet Place: Part II (2020). Those films captured the reign of the blind, sound-hunting aliens 472 days and more after their arrival on Earth—now, we finally get to see what the world was right as the alien invasion was underway. It’s not pretty.

Led by Lupita Nyong’o and starring Joseph Quinn, Djimon Hounsou, Alex Wolff, and a cat named Frodo—played by two kitties, Nico and Schnitzel—Day One expands the scope of the franchise even further than Krasinski’s killer follow-up, Part II, did. In Part II, Evelyn Abbott (Emily Blunt) and her children meet other survivors of the alien scourge. In Day One, we’ll see how New York City reacted to their arrival, with Nyong’o’s Sam and Quinn’s Eric coming together under the most insane of circumstances in attempt to survive in the explicable and very sudden alien attack. 

“A Quiet Place: Day One is extraordinarily raw exploring the resilience and underestimation of simple human interaction,” writes Critic Carla Renata. “Once again I could hear a pin drop in the theater because everyone was so invested in what would happen to Lupita Nyong’o, Joseph Quinn, and the cat,” writes Collider‘s Steven Weintraub.

Let’s have a peek at what the critics are saying. A Quiet Place: Day One is in theaters on June 28.

For more on A Quiet Place: Day One, check out these stories:

Devastation & Determination in a New “A Quiet Place: Day One” Featurette

“A Quiet Place: Day One” Trailer Unleashes the Alien Scourge on an Unsuspecting NYC

First Trailer for “A Quiet Place: Day One” Reveals the Lupita Nyong’o-led Prequel

Featured image: Djimon Hounsou as “Henri” and Lupita Nyong’o as “Samira” in A Quiet Place: Day One from Paramount Pictures.

“Ahsoka” Composer Kevin Kiner on Scoring Jedis, Sith Lords, and Space Whales

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There are few people alive with more Star Wars experience than composer Kevin Kiner. While Kiner would be the first to point out that the legendary John Williams has him beat, when it comes to the number of minutes—and hours—of music composed for a galaxy far, far away, Kiner is a proper Jedi. For more than a decade, Kiner has been working with George Lucas and Dave Filoni to score every season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars and has added to his endless Star Wars credits scroll Star Wars: Rebels, Star Wars: The Bad Batch, and Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi.

Which brings us to Kiner’s work on Filoni’s critically acclaimed Ahsoka on Disney+, the first live-action Star Wars show to spring from one of the franchise’s animated series (Star Wars: Rebels). Ahsoka follows its titular heroine, the rebel Jedi Ahsoka Tano (Rosario Dawson), dealing with the rumored return of a terrifically powerful adversary, Grand Admiral Thrawn, played by Lars Mikkelsen (who also voiced him in Rebels). The series is set in the aftermath of the fall of the Galactic Empire, and Ahsoka, a loner by nature, still has a few allies she can rely on. They include her former padawan Sabine Wren (Natasha Liu Bordizzo), a capable, if wayward, warrior who Ahsoka worries about and tries to push away in equal measure. Then there’s her trusty droid Huyang (voiced by David Tennant) and General Hera Syndulla (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), two steadfast companions in a dangerous world. Along with Thrawn, her chief antagonists are the formidable Baylan Skoll (the late Ray Stevenson), his protege Shin Hati (Ivanna Sakhno), and an assortment of galactic ghouls, including ferocious droids and would-be assassins, all working in concert to aid the return of Thrawn.

We spoke to Kiner about taking on the assignment of a lifetime, his hard-to-describe process, and scoring the thrilling arrival of Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen, reprising his role), who’s featured prominently in episode 5, “Shadow Warrior,” as he and Ahsoka plunge into a deeply satisfying trip down memory lane.

What was it like jumping from the animated Star Wars world into live-action?

I co-wrote with my two children, Sean and Dina, and they were a big help in putting together. First, we put together a playlist of stuff we liked, from Max Richter to John Williams. We gave those to Dave [Filoni] and then started thinking, what does a mature Ahsoka sound like? It took a while. It started with Tales of the Jedi. We came up with this samurai vibe. The first three episodes of Tales of the Jedi are about Ahsoka’s birth and growing up. We wound up slowing that groove down quite a lot and then taking her melody, which is a very simple melody, and stretching it out. I guess you could say it’s a level of sophistication, a Ronin samurai vibe that we kept. Funny enough, when I wrote the first cue in the theme for the first time, I wrote it for shakuhachi, a Japanese flute.

 

Were you inspired by any scores from other live-action Star Wars shows?

I thought what Ludwig Göransson had done with The Mandalorian was super groundbreaking. We’d been experimenting quite a lot with not being John Williams all the time, and I’ve written more music than anyone on Earth for Star Wars, starting with Clone Wars and then going through Rebels and then The Bad Batch and Tales of the Jedi. So when you write that much, you don’t want the music to get stale. So, we started using synthesizers and textures that are not what you would not find in a John Williams score. Star Wars always stays grounded in a way to the Williams legacy because there’s richness, there’s grandness, and there’s a willingness to be very, very broad. I mean, think about “The Imperial March”–that is broad as heck. I saw an interview with John about when he played the Jaws theme to Steven Spielberg, and Spielberg thought it was a joke. And John’s like, no, this is really it. But John Williams can pull that off. 

And Ludwig went a different way.

Ludwig took it in a new direction. He set the bar for what we call “main on ends,” which is the end credits theme, because everybody listens to that and knows that’s the theme. That was a big challenge for us—we wanted our theme to be equally iconic.

 

What’s it like for you as the composer shaping Ahsoka’s emotional journey? We learn how she became a rebel Jedi, her connection to Anakin Skywalker, and her fear of having a Padawan—it’s very emotional.

That’s kind of Scoring 101 because Rosario gave it to us, and Dave Filoni gave it to us in his writing. We flashback to young Ahsoka, and that actress [Ariana Greenblatt] is absolutely perfect and wonderful. The whole job of the score is to inform the audience in a musical way of what is going on, and that information can be about very deep things that you don’t necessarily see or hear in the dialogue. Ahsoka is a young girl in that flashback. She’s tired of life as a warrior; that’s all she has known. Then, further on in that episode, you can see that the older Ahsoka is very conflicted about having a Padawan in Sabine, and she’s conflicted about what she’s going to become because her Master became Darth Vader. There’s a saying that “talking about music is like dancing about architecture,” and it’s very difficult for me to elucidate exactly how I do it. Writing music for me is a very emotional thing; it’s kind of like jazz. You just jam with the feelings, and Dave Filoni arms me with really good information about the characters, and I have to just go through what I’m feeling and try to communicate that.

 

Let’s discuss the episode you’re talking about, episode 5, “Shadow Warrior,” in which we travel back to a young Ahsoka and her master, Anakin Skywalker.

I was proud of a couple of places in that episode. There’s a spot where Anakin is at the end of the siege of Mandalore, and young Ahsoka is saying, “I don’t want to do this,” and then he says, “Then you will die. She keeps reiterating, “I’m going to stop,” and he’s like, “Wrong answer.” It’s just before they go back to the world between worlds. We do this build with French horns and trombones, which I was very satisfied to hear. With the way the cue works when Ahsoka’s lightsaber is at Anakin’s neck—Dave and I worked on that particular moment for a very long time because he wasn’t positive if he was going to use the sound of the lightsaber for her; he wanted the audience to feel like she was about to chop his head off.

 

What about your music for the space whales scene?

You talk about the fine line of Star Wars; I mean, space whales that could have gone really wrong, right? And to pull that off, to have the cojones to go for that—I feel like the music helped support the magic of these marvelous creatures. I’m a very ocean-centric person, I’m always surfing and things like that, going out and looking at the whales when they’re around. When Ahsoka has her arms out and she’s commuting with that giant creature, I was very satisfied with how that cue turned out.

 

What’s it like being a part of the Star Wars family?

You just gave me goosebumps, I swear to God. If you had told me in 1977 when I was in that theater in Westwood that I’d be a part of the Star Wars family—holy crap.

Featured image: (L-R): Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) and Ahsoka Tano (Rosario Dawson) in Lucasfilm’s STAR WARS: AHSOKA, exclusively on Disney+. ©2023 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.

“The Bikeriders” Costume Designer Erin Benach’s Vintage Vibes for Rough Riders

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They never achieved the notoriety of the Hell’s Angels, but during the 1960s, when the California biker gang became infamous outlaws, the Vandals were wreaking their own brand of hog-riding havoc in Chicago. The Bikeriders (in theaters June 21) dramatizes the rise and fall of the Midwest club led by Tom Hardy’s “Johnny” and his violent right-hand man Benny (Austin Butler), as observed through the often-astonished eyes of Benny’s wife Kathy (Jodie Comer).

Writer/director Jeff Nichols’s film, shot in Ohio and based on photojournalist Danny Lyon’s “The Bikeriders” book, evokes the Vandals’ 1965-1973 heyday through the expert curation of period motorcycles and music as well as vintage biker outfits from Nichols’ go-to costume designer Erin Benach. The graphic designer turned costumer, whose most recent projects include Birds of Prey and A Star is Born, outfitted some 200 actors in well-worn jeans and biker jackets.

Speaking from her home in Los Angeles, Erin tells The Credits about sourcing all that vintage gear, explains how she costumed Austin Butler’s “I don’t care” character, and reveals her trick for aging the jeans worn by “Vandals” like Zipco (Michael Shannon), Corky (Karl Glusman) and Wahoo (Beau Knapp).

 

In the movie’s big set piece, 200 bikers gather for a rowdy picnic, all looking period-perfect grungy. How did you pull that off?

It’s probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my career. We sourced a ton of vintage, hand-made 200 [denim vest] cuts, and also made the [Vandals] patches.

The Vandals wear blue jeans that look very broken in—nothing crisp or new. How did you make the pants look old?

It was really important that everything was aged down, so we over-dyed all the denim with this blue-green tint to make the jeans feel road-weary. Nothing went to camera without going through my ager-dyer Troy David, who’s a real artisan. We looked at the dirt they’d be driving over and made this paint. Troy used a spray bottle and sprayed it on everything so it looked like it was covered in dust from the road. Sometimes, we’d use a brush to paint on the dirt and mud. That way, you can wash the jeans, and it won’t wash away, so you don’t have to worry about continuity issues. 

Norman Reedus as Funny Sonny in director Jeff Nichols’ THE BIKERIDERS, a Focus Features release. Credit: Kyle Kaplan/Focus Features. © 2024 Focus Features. All Rights Reserved.

Where’d you get all those 1960s-era leather jackets?

We were in London for many of the fittings, so I started to poke around in Camden Market and talked to the guy who owns a shop with a lot of denim, “I’m doing this movie. Do you know anyone?” “Oh yeah, I know this guy who has a warehouse with a bunch of leather jackets, maybe you should call him,” and then you get in a van and drive two hours outside the city and go to this warehouse, and suddenly there’s this person who’s been hoarding leather jackets for like a hundred years and you don’t know why but it was for you really. [laughing]. It was just for me!

Austin Butler as Benny in director Jeff Nichols’ THE BIKERIDERS, a Focus Features release. Credit: Courtesy of Focus Features. © 2024 Focus Features. All Rights Reserved.

Anywhere else besides that warehouse?

Of course, there are all the wonderful costume houses, like Western Costume, American Costume, Warner Brothers, Disney, and CRC.

Austin Butler stars in Bikerider. He’s a photogenic fellow.

And just as good-looking in person!

(L to R) Emory Cohen as Cockroach, Jodie Comer as Kathy and Austin Butler as Benny in director Jeff Nichols’ THE BIKERIDERS, a Focus Features release. Credit: Kyle Kaplan/Focus Features. © 2024 Focus Features, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

How did you dress his character Benny?

Benny’s as nonchalant as you can get: “I don’t care, I don’t want to look like I care.” So we wanted the jacket and the cut [vest] to be like it fell onto his body or that he just rolled out of bed with it on. His clothes are stripped down and basic because it was important that Benny didn’t have too many details, that he wasn’t over-designed, and that he wasn’t too fitted, so you feel his ambivalence of even being there. For me as a designer, it was actually about holding back with Benny. Less is more.

Austin Butler stars as Benny in director Jeff Nichols’ THE BIKERIDERS. Credit: Courtesy of Focus Features. © 2024 Focus Features, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Danny Lyon’s picture book “The Bikeriders” inspired director Jeff Nichols to make this film. Did you also use that book as a reference?

Absolutely. Some things were a complete lift. That sleeveless black T-shirt on Benny standing by the pool table was a complete replica, but even that has its own challenges. Is it sweatshirt material? How do you get the shirt to lie right and not be flat black and feel dirty?

The movie opens with Benny in a bar refusing to take off his Vandals jacket, saying “You’ll have to kill me to get my coat off.” The denim jacket with cut-off sleeves…

The denim pieces that go over the jackets, we call them cuts.

Austin Butler stars as Benny in director Jeff Nichols’ THE BIKERIDERS, a Focus Features release. Credit: Kyle Kaplan/Focus Features. © 2024 Focus Features, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

The gang “colors” — the Vandals patch — seem to play an important role in these characters’ identity.

The cut was kind of a character unto itself. The [Vandals] logo was an embroidered patch chain-stitched onto the jackets. Some [bikers] would cut out the patch close to the letters and stitch that on, and some, like Benny, would just keep the square patch straight off the embroiderer: “Yeah, I’ll throw that thing on,” and tack it in the corners.

Tom Hardy plays the Vandal’s leader, Johnny. In the movie, Jodie Comer’s character Kathy says she heard that Johnny started the biker gang after seeing Marlon Brando in The Wild Bunch on TV. Did Brando’s famous black leather jacket inspire your look for Johnny?

I was definitely influenced by Marlon Brando’s silhouette, which is actually very similar to Johnny’s silhouette, the jeans, the boots, the belts, the jacket — very much an influence. 

And the jacket?

Johnny actually wore a classic leather jacket style from the forties. I stuck with silhouettes and styles for Johnny that were specific to the forties and fifties, a little earlier than the sixties, as my way to differentiate him. The zipper thing [on the sleeves] was functional because it allowed bikers to get their gloves underneath it. And for Johnny, we did a deep pocket leather jacket that first appeared in the late thirties so bikers could keep their maps in that pocket. 

 

Did you make Johnny’s jacket from scratch, or was that a vintage piece you sourced in London?

Secret. I will not tell. I built several of the lead characters’ leather jackets, and I sourced several of the lead character jackets if we were able to find multiple.

The Bikeriders story is told mainly from the perspective of Benny’s wife, Kathy, portrayed by Jodie Comer as a no-nonsense working-class Chicago woman. How did you express Kathy’s attitude through her clothes?

Kathy was very strong. We wanted her to not change a ton [after she meets Benny]. For us, it was important that Kathy didn’t turn into a biker chick.

(L to R) Jodie Comer as Kathy and Austin Butler as Benny in director Jeff Nichols’ THE BIKERIDERS, a Focus Features release. Credit: Kyle Kaplan/Focus Features. © 2024 Focus Features. All Rights Reserved.

So, how did you design Kathy’s look?

At her fittings, Jodie would sort of put her hips forward, place her hands or arms in a certain position – that’s when you start to feel her character. I put shirts on her and tank tops and sweaters and knit wears and denims. At times, she’d wear this black western-style shirt with the white piping and snaps because that was actually in the reference material. Kathy is the feminine energy of the whole film and represents the experience of being a woman in this culture. It was important that she maintain who she was throughout all these experiences. 

(L to R) Emory Cohen as Cockroach, Jodie Comer as Kathy and Austin Butler as Benny in director Jeff Nichols’ THE BIKERIDERS, a Focus Features release. Credit: Kyle Kaplan/Focus Features. © 2024 Focus Features, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Jodie Comer stars as Kathy in Jeff Nichols’ THE BIKERIDERS, a Focus Features release. Credit: Courtesy of Focus Features ©2024 All Rights Reserved.

The Bikeriders is the third movie you’ve costume-designed for Jeff Nichols after Midnight Special and Loving. How did you two first get together?

I watched Jeff’s [2011 drama] Take Shelter and said to my agent I want to work with that guy. The movie blew me away — the tone, the sci-fi, the amount of detail, the psychology of the characters. So I went after him. Jeff’s really good at sharing with me everything about the characters, and that enables me to do my job of interpreting their personalities.

(L to R) Director Jeff Nichols and actor Austin Butler on the set of THE BIKERIDERS, a Focus Features release. Credit: Kyle Kaplan/Focus Features. © 2024 Focus Features, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

The Bikeriders is in theaters now.

Featured image: Austin Butler stars as Benny in director Jeff Nichols’ THE BIKERIDERS, a Focus Features release. Credit: Courtesy of Focus Features. © 2024 Focus Features, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Callum Turner on Accents, B-17s, and Crew Glue in “Masters of the Air”

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Based on Donald L. Miller’s 2007 book of the same name, Masters of the Air on Apple TV+ has been praised as theatrical television that’s both true to history and beautiful to watch. Created by John Shiban and John Orloff, the show marries vast set builds with painstakingly correct CGI to depict the tragedies and heroics of the 100th Bomb Group, which flew over 300 combat missions and received two Distinguished Unit Citations but also suffered heavy losses of 177 aircraft during World War II.

Navigator Harry Crosby (Anthony Boyle) narrates Masters of the Air, but the show frequently hinges on the 100th’s star pilots, Major John “Bucky” Egan (Callum Turner) and Major Gale “Buck” Cleven (Austin Butler). The pair are best friends but temperamental opposites — Cleven is reserved and serious, committed to his fiancée at home, and doesn’t drink, while Egan is a joker spoiling for a fight, at least when he first arrives at the base in England. Butler and Egan originally auditioned for each other’s roles, but then switched.

Austin Butler and Callum Turner in “Masters of the Air,” now streaming on Apple TV+.

Butler’s breakout role was as Elvis in Baz Luhrmann’s 2022 biopic, and he brings similar elements of a country boy who’s done good to his role as Cleven. Turner, who grew up in London, is spot on in terms of both Egan’s Wisconsin-meets-New York accent and the waggish demeanor the pilot never quite loses, even after months in a German POW camp. But we also see Egan suffer immensely, both mentally and physically, which Turner portrays in a way that builds from episode to episode, as the major internalizes the danger he faces up in the air and in turn, the destruction he is causing to civilians below.

Adam Long, Matt Gavan, Callum Turner and Austin Butler in “Masters of the Air,” now streaming on Apple TV+.

By the time we reach a tragicomic moment in which Egan tries to organize a group of his fellow POWs into “home” and “away” teams in a game of prison yard baseball, the major’s transformation is complete, even if there is still a glimpse of the boy he was when he first came to fight. We had the opportunity to speak with Turner about getting the reality of Egan’s arc right, leading his crew with Butler, and the friendship that defined the real major’s time at war.

 

The friendship Egan and Cleven share is integral to each of their characters. How did you and Austin Butler develop your rapport to achieve that?

First off, we just fell in love with each other as human beings and respect each other enormously as actors. We committed to the idea of being best friends and spent as much time with each other as possible, and got to know each other on a deeper level than is probably usual. The actual way these two operated was yin and yang, and I think that yin and yangness really helps their cadence with each other and their friendship. They were the two best pilots of B-17s at the time. They’d both joined up before Pearl Harbor had happened, they both wanted to fight the good fight, and realized they were the leaders in a pack of men and had to stand together and stand proudly. That was their connective tissue. Once they’re bound by trust and this truth and this togetherness, you can do anything. I love the fact that they don’t spend all their time with each other. Their ways of blowing off steam are completely different. Cleven likes to relax, take it easy, and be quiet; Egan is the opposite. That balance was really fun to play with.

Callum Turner and Austin Butler in “Masters of the Air,” now streaming on Apple TV+.

What was your training process like?

We started off with two weeks of boot camp with Dale Dye. He [advised on and played a role in] Platoon and has done pretty much every war epic since. What that was really about was creating what the real guys had, which was crew glue. Crew glue was the thing that kept everybody together, the ideology that kept everyone alive, that it’s not about you, it’s about the man next to you. That’s who you’re fighting for. You’re not fighting for yourself. There were really beautiful moments of togetherness. I think what we all realized very early on was the magnitude of what we were all involved in and how special it was for so many reasons — the fact that it’s legacy television and we’re in the same family as Band of Brothers and The Pacific, and people like Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks. We’re also representing people who, as far as I’m concerned, saved the world. We all realized what we were up against and what we were doing this for. Everyone was a great bunch.

 

Did you do any sort of accent training to get Egan’s unusual Wisconsin accent down?

About two months before we shot, I met up with Brett Tyne, who was one of two dialect coaches—the other was Helen Ashton. I said to her, I want to stay in the accent the whole time, and I need to see you for two hours a day for two months. We really worked hard on that voice and trying to find that Wisconsin thing, but also, Egan was obsessed with New York. He was a huge fan of the Yankees, and he was obsessed with Damon Runyon. “Guys and Dolls” was a book I read over and over while we shot the show. He had this offbeat way of talking, this almost New York thing he was putting on. He was a really interesting character to find. Once we started shooting, we’d do an hour a day before work just to get that in the right place. Poor Brett.

 

How did you start researching the role?

There’s an abundance of information out there. I found this photo of a Russian soldier from World War I. It’s a before and after. Before, he’s fresh faced, he’s proud and ready to go and serve his country. He somehow survived, and he’s come back, but he’s a shell of a man. You can see the veins in his face and the wrinkles, the sunken eyes. That was something I recognized in Egan’s journey, and which he talked about himself. His arc was coming into the war with a naivety, thinking it’s going to be over in a year, and after seven months, he doesn’t recognize who he is anymore. He realized he had no one at home to support and no one to be supported by. He was dropping bombs on people and doing something that made him question what he was doing there. That was the fascinating journey for Egan, this journey into darkness. My grandad went to war, and he would never talk about it. I think that was the question: what did these people see that makes them never want to talk about it again? That was Egan’s journey, and by the end of it, he’s changed in a way that he never really recovered, I don’t think, to anywhere near a level that was okay for him again.

Callum Turner in “Masters of the Air,” now streaming on Apple TV+.

Was there particular media that also helped in your research?

There’s a film collection by Frank Capra and John Huston, amongst others, who went to World War II and filmed. I think John Huston did one in a hospital afterward, when soldiers would come back, and he would show what was happening to these men, what we would now call PTSD. And there were so many books. There was a book about an English pilot who went down over Holland and tried to escape. I just tried to take on as much information before we started trying to build this human being, this character.

You also did flight training, right?

We didn’t have any real B-17s, but we had replicas that would move. We had Taigh [Ramey, the WWII aviation advisor and B17 technical advisor], who would train us. We had to know every button on the dashboard, what it meant, and how to use it. He’d put us in the cockpit, and say, okay, this is happening, what do you need to do? The funny thing about working with 200 young men is everyone’s really competitive. No one wanted to be the one who was left behind, so we were all very on it with that.

Callum Turner and Austin Butler in “Masters of the Air,” now streaming on Apple TV+.

How did you fare?

I think I was probably top three. Our ranks were important. Austin and I definitely felt that we had to lead from the front. There was a lot of responsibility in that. It was our job to set the tone for these guys to follow. If I was number 11, that wouldn’t have been good.

Was there a sense of responsibility going into this role, playing a real person? Did you approach the role differently than you would a fictional character?

I don’t know if I would approach it differently, but I definitely felt the pressure. Honor is a word these men had, and that’s what we were trying to do — honor them. That’s what I love about this show; we do honor them in a way that’s truthful and honest. We don’t glamorize war and glorify them in a way that I don’t think they would want. We really look at the effects of war and what happens to these men, not just fighting against the Germans, watching their friends being blown up and falling to the ground from 25,000 feet, but also dropping bombs on people — what that does to your soul and psyche. We really show, back on the ground, how that affects their behavior and how that changes them as men. That’s one of the many things I’m really proud of about the show: that we don’t glorify this horrific moment in our history.

Masters of the Air is streaming on Apple TV+.

For more stories on Apple TV+ series and films, check these out:

“Silo” Creator Graham Yost Unseals the Secrets of Season 1

How the Latest VFX Techniques Immersed the “Masters of the Air” Actors in Battle

“Shakespeare but with football”: Director Matthew Hamachek Unpacks “The Dynasty: New England Patriots”

Featured image: Callum Turner in “Masters of the Air,” now streaming on Apple TV+.

 

“Silo” Creator Graham Yost Unseals the Secrets of Season 1

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Graham Yost had his work cut out for him when he set out to tackle author Hugh Howey’s apocalyptic sci-fi trilogy series “Silo,” all of which are set in the titular structure (none of Howey’s books are actually titled “Silo”) and deal with the society that lives within it’s 144 heavily monitored floors. The denizens of the Silo live in a claustrophobic brutalist tower outfitted with retrofuturistic touches that include clunky computers, a large screen in the cafeteria showing what appears to be a denuded, toxic world outside, and, suspiciously, not a single elevator. The Silo houses a society that cannot leave the premises unless they want to “clean,” a process in which they willingly step outside the Silo, take a rag to the single, dirty window facing the outside world, and promptly keel over and die. Nearly all of them choose to stay indoors and spend their entire lives there, living in the aftermath of a cataclysm that went unrecorded. To live in the Silo is to live in a blank historical slate, and to live in the Silo is to schlep everywhere, all under the watchful eye of the Watchers.

Common in “Silo,” now streaming on Apple TV+.

It’s rich material to turn into a series, and Yost and his crack team of writers, directors (including Morten Tyldum), cast, and crew pulled it off. Yost led the effort to tease out deeper stories from Howey’s cast of characters, especially a gifted if emotionally guarded engineer named Juliet (a fantastic Rebecca Ferguson) who feels compelled to accept the position of sheriff—Silo successfully melds sci-fi, western, and mystery elements—to investigate the murder of her boyfriend, George (Ferdinand Kingsley).

We spoke to Yost about what it took to bring Howey’s trilogy to life, how in the world he built out the Silo’s ingenious sets, and more.

What were your initial thoughts when you got to work to adapt Hugh Howey’s book series?

Me and the writers had the books that we could refer to, so we knew where we were headed long term, we just had to make sure that we didn’t burn through it too fast or too slowly. So that’s the calibration process. I will say this: We did a lot of work in season one, setting up the world and setting up the characters. We don’t have to do that so much in season 2, so we’ve got a little more room for more story and more stuff happening. 

Did it make it easier or harder that the series is exclusively set in this giant Silo?

The hard part was everything had to be built, and there’s limited stage space in England right now, which means you have to design the production around when you’re building what sets. And so there are certain big circular sets that become IT bullpen, which becomes the marketplace, which becomes any other big circular set. So it’s this big logistical nightmare of figuring out how to film the thing. On the other hand, it’s all indoors, there’s no night shooting, and barely any locations.

 

I’m curious how you paced out the season to the satisfyingly shocking finale. Spoiler alert.

We had a question of when we would find out that the world was really dead outside, because in the books, we’re in Holston’s point of view, and when he takes off his helmet, he sees that the world really is dead. It was Max Aronson at Apple who said, “Hey, what if we didn’t reveal that until the end, so that’s a mystery, too?” And I was like, “That’s a really good idea. Let it be Juliet who takes the audience into that.” So, once we had the ending, we knew that we wanted to start with the Sheriff and his wife, which we knew was a risky move. But we also knew that the first two episodes would be released together, and people would hopefully get hooked into the Juliette story when she shows up.

Rashida Jones and David Oyelowo in “Silo,” now streaming on Apple TV+.
Rebecca Ferguson and Chinaza Uche in “Silo,” now streaming on Apple TV+.

One of the fascinating surprises for the viewer, especially for those who didn’t read the book, was when Juliette went from being an engineer to the sheriff. The show became a bit of a police procedural as she tried to figure out who killed her boyfriend, George.

When we had the beginning and the end, we knew we had to build out something for the middle. We needed to figure out Juliette’s story because she doesn’t spend that much time as sheriff in the book, so we knew we wanted to make more of a meal of that. That’s where we ended on, “Well, she wants to find out what happened to her boyfriend.” Let’s make it that.

Rebecca Ferguson and Chinaza Uche in “Silo,” now streaming on Apple TV+.

Can you tell me a bit about how you managed to meld various genres so well—it’s a little bit Western, a little bit of detective story, a little bit conspiracy thriller, and a whole lot of sci-fi.

We wanted it to feel as grounded as possible so that all the bits of world-building would stand out. Like Sheriff Holston [David Oyelowo] and Allison [Rashida Jones] are a married couple who love each other, and they get into squabbles and have workplace and home life conflicts, and all this stuff. They want to have a baby, that’s very understandable. And then we start putting the spin on it. Juliette becomes the new sheriff in town, and there’s something that’s almost noir, like in Hitchcock, where you would get the amateur detective. Someone who’s not a detective, not a cop, but who’s trying to figure out what the hell is going on. I just watched Foreign Correspondent again recently, and Joel McCrea is trying to figure out what the hell’s happening, but he’s not a law enforcement guy. And Juliet is technically a law enforcement person, but she’s really an engineer, so we figured that is a wonderful engine to pull people through.

 

How much of Juliette’s investigation are you pulling from the book versus how much of that is you in the writers’ room, kind of figuring out the puzzles puzzle pieces?

You know, it’s really both. I was part of a Sony attempt to get the rights eight years ago or more nine years ago, and then I got a second chance with Apple. What hooked me about the books was that it’s an unconventional mystery story, and the mystery is, “Why the hell are they in an asylum? Who built the asylum? What happened? There’s something wrong. It’s not an open society. What’s the hell is going on?” So that’s fun. And then I love the way Hugh slowly revealed that without it being programmatic in any way. It evolves over the three books, so that appealed to me. It felt like there was enough stuff that you could do multiple seasons and have more revealed along the way without it being something where we’d be stretching where we should have found this out in Episode 4, but instead, you’re finding out in Episode 8.

 

Yet you created a lot of Juliette’s story yourselves? Spoiler alert.

There’s not a lot in the first half of the first book for Juliet to do after she becomes sheriff—it’s not long before she’s sent out the clean in the book. So we built more of a story for her, trying to find out what happened to her boyfriend, which also just gave up a nice engine for that character and something personal because I love the idea that Juliet never, ever set out to be the hero of the silo. That was preposterous to her. All she wanted to find out is what happened to her boyfriend. 

Rebecca Ferguson in “Silo,” now streaming on Apple TV+.

Silo is currently streaming on Apple TV.

For more stories on Apple TV+ series and films, check these out:

How the Latest VFX Techniques Immersed the “Masters of the Air” Actors in Battle

“Shakespeare but with football”: Director Matthew Hamachek Unpacks “The Dynasty: New England Patriots”

Brad Pitt and George Clooney Finally Reunite in First “Wolfs” Teaser

Featured image: Rebecca Ferguson in “Silo,” now streaming on Apple TV+.

The “Shōgun” Sound Team on Recreating 17th-Century Japan One Katana Clash at a Time

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Praised for its authenticity, beauty, and sensitive storytelling, FX’s Shōgun has just been renewed for two more seasons. Created by Justin Marks and Rachel Kondo, the show follows the plot of James Clavell’s 1975 novel, set in Japan in 1600. English pilot John Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis) and his ship’s crew run aground in a Japanese fishing village, and after a brief imprisonment, Blackthorne is taken on by Lord Yoshii Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada, also one of the series’ producers) to share his knowledge on European warfare and the Portuguese merchants and priests insinuating themselves into Japanese society. As Blackthorne comes to embrace the country where he finds himself indefinitely marooned, he also gets into a power struggle with the Catholic Church-backed Portuguese and falls quietly in love with his translator, Lady Toda Mariko (Anna Sawai), a married noblewoman and Catholic convert. But these tribulations are secondary to those of the lord Blackthorne comes to serve. Toranaga rules over the country’s Kanto region, but is increasingly isolated by his fellow council of regents, over whom Ishido (Takehiro Hira) is attempting to consolidate power. Blackthorne’s presence becomes key to Toranaga’s own machinations, to not only escape but emerge triumphant from an otherwise dire fate.

 

Whether in the courtyards of Osaka Castle, outdoors in the hot springs of a small fishing village, or sequestered in hushed, tatami-mat-lined rooms, Shōgun’s acute attention to detail encompasses not just its visuals but its sound. “Authenticity is what the creators were looking for from top to bottom,” said sound supervisor Brian Armstrong. “That was our guiding post, to take what we typically do and really focus it on the specificity of everything, from the dishes to the nature.”

 

The sound team was given a handbook, which “almost puts the original text of Shōgun to shame, with how much information was contained in this thing,” Armstrong joked. Outside a few heightened scenes like a cannon attack, which the team set about making sound extra “ghoulish,” or slow-motion, theatrical moments in which Mariko’s husband, Buntaro (Shinnosuke Abe), deliberately fires an arrow a hair past his wife’s nose, for Armstrong and re-recording mixers Steve Pederson and Greg P. Russell, faithfulness to both history and the natural world drove their process. “We found scientific recordings of birds that had a time of year and location. Jim Gallivan, one of our sound designers, would research the migrational patterns of the birds just so that all of that was accurate,” Armstrong said.

Sourcing recordings of the natural world wasn’t easy — many had either technological noises foreign to the 17th century or voices that were too modern, given that the show’s Japanese dialogue is period language akin to Shakespeare. Yet unlike so much dialogue in contemporary television, every syllable in Shōgun is crisply audible, a meticulous undertaking, even though none of the sound team speaks Japanese.

 

“We talked very early on that we were never going to use the subtitles as a crutch. We’re going to treat this as if they weren’t there. Because clarity is king,” Armstrong said. He handed Pederson a challenge, sometimes cutting in a single syllable of ADR or using the first part of a word from ADR and the last half from production, in an effort to be “surgical and precise about what we’re trying to fix while keeping as much of the original performance as possible.” Producers Hiroyuki Sanada and Eriko Miyagawa were in every single group session, making sure the cast of villagers’ lines suited the time and place. “These little things, a syllable or an inflection that the production determined to be incorrect — we had to correct it in post, and audiences would not have gotten that, especially if it’s in Japanese. But the filmmakers were aware, and it just points out their zeal to be as authentic as possible. And it was our challenge to help them get there and match the beautiful visuals,” Pederson said.

 

An intense level of collaboration permeated the process. “Had we not had the Japanese film editors and their input, we would have attacked this entire thing as us, and it would have been different,” Russell said. “The notes that we got back, the tailoring to their taste and for authenticity, and respecting the culture, really shaped how we went about our job. We made a lot of changes.” Even the sound of the samurais’ swords had to be updated to sound right, having started off life too bright and overly Westernized when what they needed to be expressed correctly was a sense of heaviness. 

 

The show’s spare, period-correct interiors were also a focal point for the team’s efforts. No detail was too small — they discussed whether paper sounded too thick or too thin with creator Justin Marks, who “even talked about how the tatami mats have a weave pattern, that if you’re going one way across them, sounds different than if you’re going the opposite way,” Armstrong pointed out. The show’s score, by Atticus Ross, Leopold Ross, and Nick Chuba, followed a similar pattern, with a Japanese arranger in Tokyo recording period-correct instruments according to a 17th-century style of music called gagaku. The composers took these recordings, distorted them, and incorporated them into their score. “You’re thinking, is that done on a synth? And you find out, no, it’s actually a meditation bowl,” Pederson said.

Indoors, restrained but revealing discussions complement the vastness of the natural world outside. Mariko explains early on to Blackthorne that Japan is at the mercy of the elements, and its people conduct their lives and build their homes accordingly. When an earthquake comes, the destruction is a measured, realistic shock. “That’s a sequence near and dear to our hearts,” Armstrong said, to which he and his team took an approach of addition by subtraction. The sound of horses, a distant army, and music disappear one by one, “and all we’re left with are these winds and this eerie silence that Toranaga picks up on as he’s standing on the cliff. And then there’s practically nothing before that big flock of birds comes up that signifies something big is coming.” Toranaga’s near-death in the landslide that results is terrifyingly real. “I think it might have been Justin who said, can we can we see if there’s a way to lose the music? Let’s put the audience on a mountain with an earthquake,” Pederson recalled. The event becomes an arc rather than a blow, with a bigger sense of sound saved for the post-quake landslide and Toranaga’s rescue, followed by the painful calls at varying distances from villagers who survived.

 

An auditory sense of distance also drives home the terror of another moment: Ishido’s hired assassins who come to Osaka Palace to murder Toranaga’s supporters, eventually penning Mariko, Blackthorne, and several others in a store room. We hardly see them and we hardly hear them, either, given that the Shinobi work silently, yet there’s an auditory sense of their approach. “There’s stuff close up that’s right outside the door. Then there’s stuff, 80 feet, 100 feet back. All of those relationships give you a sense of the scale of the threat,” Russell said. Well-placed footsteps and hushed voices portray the Shinobi surrounding them until Mariko and Blackthorne realize there is no escape, leading to one of the series’ most painfully iconic moments.

But in Shōgun, those sorts of big moments are on an equal footing in terms of their importance to the story with scenes where much less happens, whether it’s a convoy leaving Osaka Castle or a conversation between Blackthorne and one of his vassals on a mountaintop. “When you look at the beauty of these shots, and the space and the scale of things, even small intimate moments have this very rich look,” Russell said. “And we needed to marry that — we needed to sonically be as pretty, as delicate, and as rich.” The result is a show that not only looks completely different from anything else currently on television but possesses its own unique sense of sound, too.

Shōgun is currently streaming on Hulu.

For more on Shōgun, check out these interviews with editors Aika Miyake and Maria Gonzalez, the lush costume design by Carlos Rosario, the high-tech take on ancient gagaku instrumentation from composers Atticus and Leo Ross and sound engineer Nick Chuba, and the fatally stylish, no-moves-wasted samurai swordplay created by stunt coordinator Lauro David Chartrand-DelValle.

Featured image: “SHOGUN” — “Tomorrow is Tomorrow” — Episode 3 (Airs March 5) Pictured: Hiroyuki Sanada as Yoshii Toranaga. CR: Katie Yu/FX

“Inside Out 2” Writer Meg LeFauve on the Power of Adolescent Anxiety

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Inside Out earned its co-writer Meg LeFauve a Best Screenplay Oscar nomination en route to becoming 2015’s seventh-highest-grossing movie. Last weekend, Inside Out 2 hit the box office jackpot again. Directed by Kelsey Mann, the Pixar sequel opened with $295 million worldwide by animating the emotional roller coaster experienced by 13-year-old Riley (voiced by Kensington Tallman) when she enters puberty amid an avalanche of new feelings. Joy (Amy Poehler) tries to maintain a semblance of normality with her sidekicks: Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Anger (Lewis Black), Fear (Tony Hale), and Disgust (Liza Lapira). But when Riley goes to hockey camp and gets the chance to hang with older, cooler girls led by Valentina (Lilimar Hernandez), she becomes overwhelmed by Anxiety (Maya Hawke), Ennui (Adèle Exarchopoulos), Envy (Ayo Edebiri) and Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser).

Speaking from her Studio City home in Los Angeles, LeFauve, who co-wrote the sequel with Dave Holstein, de-constructs the big emotions that wreak havoc on Inside Out 2’s heroine and pulls back the curtain on Pixar’s famously meticulous story-building process.

 

It was a stroke of high-strung genius to introduce Anxiety as Inside Out 2‘s lead disrupter. It’s a feeling well-suited to adolescence in particular and, more generally, to the times we’re living in right now. How did Anxiety emerge as the dominant emotion once Riley hits puberty?

Our director Kelsey Mann pitched [executive producer] Pete Docter the idea to bring in Anxiety and make Riley thirteen. Kelsey had a very personal connection to that [emotion] in terms of his own childhood, and Pete really liked the idea. Then I came on, and we did a ton of research about anxiety. The script changed many times, but Anxiety was always going to be predominant.

 

Besides all the research, did you also draw on your own experiences as a teenager?

My dad used to call me Moody Meg. I was a very emotional child, and I was really bad at hiding it. What I didn’t understand at the time is that when I started coming online as an artist and writer, imagination land was getting bigger: The tap is turned on, but what do you do with it? Well, anxiety says, “I know what to do: let’s just tap into that imagination and start projecting what could possibly go wrong!” So I became very good at that. I was a worry wart. My grandfather used to say, “You have early grey hair. You worry so much.” But it’s just because your imagination is being funneled through anxiety. You want to feel safe because everything feels so disjointed. “What’s happening to me?!”

MEET ANXIETY — Disney and Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” returns to the mind of newly minted teenager Riley just as a new Emotion shows up unexpectedly. And Anxiety, voiced by Maya Hawke, isn’t the type of Emotion who will take a back seat either. Directed by Kelsey Mann and produced by Mark Nielsen, “Inside Out 2” releases only in theaters Summer 2024. © 2023 Disney/Pixar. All Rights Reserved.

The movie opens with Riley as a happy 12-year-old. Then she falls asleep, and literally overnight, Riley wakes up yelling at her mom and acting like a cranky teenager now that the frizzy-haired Anxiety has taken over her brain.

Anxiety comes on pretty hard, and it sure feels like it happens overnight both when you are that [teenager] person and again when you have a kid: “Wait a minute, who just walked down for breakfast today? Holy smokes!”

Do you have kids?

Two boys, twenty and eighteen now, but they were teenagers when I was writing the script. It’s that time in your life when your parents, brothers, and sisters recede in importance. Your sense of self starts moving into friend groups. You become self-conscious. It’s a very intense time, and we wanted to capture that.

 

When Anxiety takes over Riley’s brain, she’s accompanied by Ennui, Envy, and Embarrassment. How did you connect with these new emotions of adolescence?

Well, I mostly relate to ennui when raising teenagers because—the eye-rolling! I’m sure I did a lot of eye-rolling when I was a teenager, but boy, when you’re a parent, you really feel that one.

 

Then there’s Envy. 

The truth is that Envy tells you what you want. It’s good to tap into that because it’s a way of knowing yourself and being aware of yourself.

INSIDE OUT 2 – FEELING ENVY – In Disney and Pixar’s “Inside Out 2,” Envy may be small, but she sure knows what she wants. She’s perpetually jealous of everything everyone else has, and she’s not afraid to pine over it. Envy’s wishful thinking and fascination with the newest, coolest thing pulls her attention in all directions and longs for what Riley doesn’t have. Featuring Ayo Edebiri as the voice of Envy, “Inside Out 2” releases only in theaters June 14, 2024. © 2024 Disney/Pixar. All Rights Reserved.

And Embarrassment?

Come on! If Embarrassment is the biggest emotion, just like he is on the screen. And the idea that Embarrassment doesn’t talk because…he’s embarrassed. He was fun to write.

NEW EMOTIONS — Disney and Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” returns to the mind of newly minted teenager Riley just as new Emotions show up. Embarrassment (voice of Paul Walter Hauser), Anxiety (voice of Maya Hawke), Envy (voice of Ayo Edebiri) and Ennui (voice of Adèle Exarchopoulos) are ready to take a turn at the console. Directed by Kelsey Mann and produced by Mark Nielsen, “Inside Out 2” releases only in theaters June 14, 2024. © 2024 Disney/Pixar. All Rights Reserved.

SPOILER

The original Inside Out established the basic architecture of Riley’s brain—spheres of memory, pneumatic tubes to transport long-term memories, and the control board where emotions gather. This time, Joy and her gang encounter The Vault, Mount Crushmore, and other new features. How did you approach the new design elements?

I loved Kelsey’s idea of the wrecking ball, that [puberty] can feel like you’re going to pieces. And it was tremendous fun to work with Pixar artists throwing all these wonderful ideas about where we could go. My job as the writer was to make sure it all fits into Joy’s journey because her character movement creates the structure, everything she realizes about herself and, therefore, about Riley and her relationship with Anxiety.

BELIEF SYSTEM – Sadness (voice of Phyllis Smith) and Joy (voice of Amy Poehler) deliver key memories to this formative land. “Inside Out 2” releases only in theaters June 14, 2024. © 2024 Disney/Pixar. All Rights Reserved.

In Riley’s inner world, all roads lead to Joy?

There were days when I wondered, “Who came up with this rule that we have to follow?” Oh, right, don’t worry—that was me. We could always go into fun worlds, but I need to know why we’re there for Joy. The other emotions have moments that help Joy see something because her belief system is changing.

JOY AND ANXIETY — Featuring the voices of Amy Poehler as Joy and Maya Hawke as Anxiety, “Inside Out 2” releases only in theaters Summer 2024.© 2023 Disney/Pixar. All Rights Reserved.

Meanwhile, in Riley’s world, all the kids are pretty nice. Did you want to avoid mean-girl villains?

Kelsey clearly didn’t want to do Mean Girls—by the way, I love that movie—but we worked very hard to ensure there were no mean girls here. And I love the idea of the girl crush.

SPOILER

With Riley idolizing the older hockey star Valentina. . .

I think that’s a real thing because you want to be that girl. Yet Val cares a lot about Riley; she’s the one reaching out and telling her friends, “Come on, give her a break.” That was very intentional.

Toward the end of the big hockey game, Riley scores goals, but she’s haunted by this inner voice saying, “I’m not good enough.” What’s that about?

The thinking was that anxiety can drive you to do things that look like success to the outside world. You can get the goal, you can get the money, and you can get the big job title. But [at this point in the movie] Riley’s not playing hockey for the joy of it; she’s playing hockey to impress other people. It’s not about, “I love this,” but “Will they accept me?” That does happen in adolescence, and trust me, there were moments at Pixar [meetings] where I was like, “Wait a minute, feel your feet, Meg, because your sense of self is moving outside of yourself. Go back to the story. Get back to your body.” It’s normal to want other people to view you a certain way, but it’s important to remember joy and self-compassion. 

You mention Pixar, which is well known for rigorous story-building methods. Did you enjoy being part of that process?

You get a lot of notes. You get a lot of hard questions. But everybody knows it’s all in service of the story because Pixar is about iterations, about letting go, and allowing things to blow up, especially in the early stages, about being brave and starting over. Our executive producer, Pete Docter, is a genius who created all of this [the Inside Out universe] to begin with, so if you want new emotions, you go to Pete and ask why these emotions, where they come from, how they help the journey of the characters. So yes, there’s that rigor. At the same time, Pixar wants you on the edge, trying things and learning from failure. For example, we had Shame in the movie for a long time as an antagonist, but it just didn’t feel right to Kelsey. As much as Shame gave us, it took too much away. So we went back to just Anxiety as the center.

You had to address feedback not just from Pixar creatives but also from a group of nine teenagers called Riley’s Crew, who watched early versions of the film. What was it like getting notes from a 14-year-old?

It was amazing! First of all, they came so prepared. They brought notes, and they wanted to talk about what they liked, which people always forget to do. They were really direct about what didn’t work, which was incredibly helpful.

You started working on Inside Out 2 in pre-pandemic 2020 and attended the red carpet premiere just a few days ago. How do you look back on this deep immersion in the world of teen emotions?

It’s been a privilege to be part of these movies that have rippled into the world. Having people talk to you about how they see themselves and how they see their kids so that we don’t feel so alone—to me, that’s what storytelling is all about.

 Inside Out 2 is in theaters now.

 

For more stories on 20th Century Studios, Searchlight Pictures, Marvel Studios, and what’s streaming or coming to Disney+, check these out:

Ke Huy Quan Talks Drawing from Personal Experience to Play “Loki” Season 2 Standout Ouroboros

“Inside Out 2” Screenwriter Dave Holstein on Anxiety Taking Center Stage

Giving the “Abbott Elementary” Teachers a Glow Up With the Hair & Makeup Maestros Moira Frazier and Constance Foe

Featured image: EXPANDED HEADQUARTERS — Disney and Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” returns to the mind of newly minted teenager Riley, where headquarters expands to make room for new Emotions. Pictured from L-R: Joy (voice of Amy Poehler), Embarrassment (voice of Paul Walter Hauser), Envy (voice of Ayo Edebiri), Anxiety (voice of Maya Hawke), Disgust (voice of Liza Lapira), Anger (voice of Lewis Black), Fear (voice of Tony Hale) and Sadness (voice of Phyllis Smith). Directed by Kelsey Mann and produced by Mark Nielsen, “Inside Out 2” releases only in theaters June 14, 2024. © 2024 Disney/Pixar. All Rights Reserved.

How “SNL” Costume Designer Tom Broecker Recreated Barbenheimer for Ryan Gosling’s Sensational Monologue

Posted on by babrams

It’s the week of April 13th and on the call sheet to host the 17th episode of SNL’s 49th season is Ryan Gosling, an actor who’s been capturing the hearts of hopeless romantics since The Notebook. The Canadian’s filmography is a treasure trove of unforgettable performances, from Blue Valentine, Drive, The Big Short, La La Land, and Blade Runner 2049; Gosling has pretty much established his own Hollywood Walk of Fame. But for obvious reasons, let’s not overlook Barbie, where his magnetic charm captured a new generation of fans (and critics) with a supporting role that bagged him his third Oscar nomination.

(L-R) RYAN GOSLING as Ken and MARGOT ROBBIE as Barbie in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “BARBIE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures

Hosting for a third time since 2015, Gosling was at 30 Rockefeller Plaza promoting the action-comedy The Fall Guy, where during the hour-long episode, he would perform a showstopping monologue, appear in six hilarious live sketches as well as a digital exclusive dubbed Papyrus 2 that cleverly calls back a season 43 sketch where his character Steven has a pathological disdain for the Avatar title font.

 

Dressing Gosling for what would become a standout episode of the season was costume designer Tom Broecker and his wardrobe team, including co-costume designers Cristina Natividad and Ashley Dudek. Wednesday kicked off the strenuous week for the tight-knit behind-the-scenes crew, where a table read of roughly forty sketches is dwindled down to about fifteen. “The reading is normally divided into two sessions where we will do the first half, take a little break, and then do the second half,” notes Broecker, who has been part of SNL since 1994. “The show then gets chosen, and everyone scatters to break into their individual groups before we all come back and start talking about specific things. Like what the writer’s hopes, wishes, desires, and dreams are in terms of hair, makeup, and wardrobe.”

Broecker’s early focus was on the musical monologue that recreated the Barbenheimer phenomenon in glorious song and dance. The performance has Gosling playing piano before breaking out into an extravagant song and dance number that’s interrupted by The Fall Guy co-star Emily Blunt, who played the wife of the Atomic Bomb mastermind in Christopher Nolan’s biopic. The costume designer had to pin down the visuals of the sketch, which had cameos from Oppenheimer, Albert Einstein, and multiple background dancers.

 

“It just so happens that Ellen Mirojnick [costume designer on Oppenheimer] is a friend of mine, so the research on Oppenheimer was easy,” he says. “She gave the name of the person from whom she got that hat, which was in Los Angeles. We also talked to Universal, who has the Oppenheimer suit, and they were able to send us some really amazing pictures. And because it needed to be so specifically Oppenheimer, we ended up having a tailor in the city make the suits.”

The costume team sourced suits for the female dancers and another for Mikey Day, who filled in for Cillian Murphy’s Oppenheimer. Hats were also custom-made, boots hand-painted, and the smallest detail was not overlooked. “We were never going to find his belt buckle anywhere,” he says. “And our makeup artist Louie [Zakarian] has been 3D printing a lot of things we can’t find, so we gave him a picture of the buckle and the dimensions to 3D print them. Then Ashley [Dudek] and my other crew went in and painted them to look exactly like the Oppenheimer buckle.”

SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE — Episode 1861 — Pictured: (l-r) Surprise guest Emily Blunt and host Ryan Gosling during the Monologue on Saturday, April 13, 2024 — (Photo by: Will Heath/NBC)

For the Barbie portion, the costume department found the exact pink and white checkered fabric and made dresses from it featuring a bow on the front. They also hand-painted and hand-dyed the pink shoes.

Another highlight moment of Gosling’s monologue is when he’s given his iconic Barbie coat to wear after playing the piano. “We did ask Universal if they had it, but it’s in a case somewhere, so we ended up having to make the coat. And in fact, we even made the Barbie lining on the inside,” says Broecker. To do so, the lining fabric was printed at a fabric shop to match the lining in the movie. Costumes also shaved part of the fur and highlighted it to give it a similar feel. Topping off the look, they also found the exact Saint Laurent sunglasses. “I feel like my team does such an amazing job recreating things to make it look exactly how it’s supposed to. I think so many times people think we just went out and bought it, but everything except for Ryan’s suit and Emily’s outfit was basically made,” Broecker continues. “My team knew that this was going to be such a big, big moment, and so they worked their asses off. And we do it all in about 36 hours.”

Episode 1861 — Pictured: Host Ryan Gosling during the Monologue on Saturday, April 13, 2024 — (Photo by: Will Heath/NBC)

Other costumes created for the episode included an alien-probing cold open that sees the return of Kate McKinnon wearing a quintessential mom outfit, replicating the cartoon misfits Beavis (Gosling) and Butt-Head (Mikey Day) set in a town hall backdrop, a medical procedure gone wrong with two high-fashion doctors, and a deleted scene from Erin Brockovich with Gosling and Chloe Fineman playing the entangled neighbors.

 

The mantra for costumes is that if it’s not part of their existing stock, they try to make it. Such is the case for Bowen Yang’s white leather trench coat that was made by a tailor in twelve hours for the doctor sketch. The same goes for Gosling’s leather scrubs that are covered in blood. “The thing about SNL, which is great, is there’s such collaboration between the actors and different departments. You can’t really separate the hair and the makeup from the costume. It’s all a unified whole.”

 

Saturday Night Live will air its 50th Anniversary season later this year. When asked if Broecker can share anything about it, he says, “I wish there were something to talk about. We are still in the abstract planning of the whole thing. And all I know and all I can really say is I think it’s going to be epic and amazing and interesting and incredibly hard to figure out how to distill 50 years of a TV program into 3.5 hours.”

 

Featured image: Ryan Gosling on “SNL.” Courtesy NBC.