“Wuthering Heights” First Reactions: Margot Robbie & Jacob Elordi Have Incandescent Chemistry in Emerald Fennell’s Scorcher

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Raise your hand if you thought that Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi just might have some chemistry in writer/director Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of Emily Brontë’s iconic novel “Wuthering Heights”? Yeah, us too. And so, too, the members of the press who caught the advanced screening ahead of the film’s February 13 release. The first reactions to Fennell’s latest film are pouring in online, and they’re centered on Robbie and Elordi’s abundant chemistry and the bold choices that Fennell, her cast, and crew made in adapting Brontë’s eternal tale of lust and madness set on the Yorkshire moors.

Variety senior artisans editor Jazz Tangacy also praised the film on X. She called Wuthering Heights a “scorching hot twisted tale” and lauded the chemistry between stars Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi as “a whole other level of HOT!”

Writer Courtney Howard shares on X that the film “…expertly captures the breathtaking ache & essence of desire.”

Robbie stars as Catherine Earnshaw, who embarks on a massively intense, deeply destructive relationship with Elordi’s Heathcliff. The film explores the forbidden passion between the two and the dark, sweltering descent into lust and madness they take together. Joining Robbie and Elordi in the cast are Oscar nominee Hong Chau as Nelly (the chief narrator of Brontë’s novel), Shazad Latif as Edgar Linton, Alison Oliver as Isabella Linton, Edgar’s sister and Heathcliff’s wife, BAFTA winner Martin Clunes as Mr. Earnshaw, the man who brought the orphan Heathcliff to live at Wuthering Heights, and Ewan Mitchell as Joseph, the fanatically religious servant at Wuthering Heights.

Fennell worked again with longtime collaborators, including her go-to cinematographer, the Oscar- and BAFTA-winning Linus Sandgren; the Oscar- and BAFTA-nominated production designer Suzie Davies; editor Victoria Boydell; casting director Kharmel Cochrane; and composer Anthony Willis. The costumes come from the heralded Jacqueline Durran. Original songs by Charli XCX.

Let’s take a quick look at what some of the critics are saying:

Featured image: Caption: (L-r) JACOB ELORDI as Heathcliff and Actor, Producer MARGOT ROBBIE as Catherine Earnshaw in “Wuthering Heights,” a Warner Bros. Pictures Release. Photo Credit: Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures

Writer/Director Kleber Mendonça Filho & Best Actor Nominee Wagner Moura on Their Oscar-Nominated Thriller “The Secret Agent”

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The Secret Agent’s four Oscar nominations (Best Picture, Best International Feature Film, Best Actor for Wagner Moura, and Best Casting) may have surprised some Oscar prognosticators. But the film’s writer/director, Kleber Mendonça Filho, Brazil’s leading filmmaker, has been on the edge of Oscar attention for years, after his critically acclaimed features Neighboring Sounds, Aquarius, Bacarau, and his personal documentary Pictures of Ghosts.

Boding well for the film’s success at the Oscars is that The Secret Agent follows Brazil’s strong Oscar showing last year when Walter Salles’ acclaimed drama I’m Still Here was named Best International Feature. If The Secret Agent wins that category, it will mark the first time in 37 years that a country has won it back-to-back. Denmark earned consecutive victories in 1987 and 1988.  

The Secret Agent is set in Mendonça Filho’s hometown of Recife in 1977 during Brazil’s two-decade military dictatorship. Moura, a film star in Brazil who is best known in the U.S. for Narcos, plays Armando, a research scientist and widowed father forced to change his identity while on the run from regime authorities for reasons he and the audience don’t quite understand. Mendonça Filho, a former film critic and renowned cinephile, boldly blends a 1970s Hollywood-style political thriller with his own personal memories, especially of the movies he saw growing up.

 

“I was nine years old in 1977 and [at that age] you are like a sponge observing things that make an impression … I remember colors and smells and the emotional punch of being introduced to the downtown area of Recife which at the time was very bustling, when all the movie palaces played a strong part in the area,” said Mendonça Filho in a Zoom interview.

“My mother went through a health crisis, which put a time stamp on the years 1977 and ’78. Because of that, my uncle Ronald took my brother and me to the cinema many times. In those months, we must have been 20 times. I remember films I saw and the films on posters I never got to see. Each cinema had its own way of presenting coming attractions, so all that was strong for me. All of this atmosphere is something that made me feel emotionally connected to this project, which I always wanted to make with Wagner. It was always going to be something set in the 1970s with Wagner Moura.”

L-r: Kleber Mendonça Filho and Wagner Moura. Courtesy Neon.

The Secret Agent looks at life during the brutal military regime through a lens of personal and collective memory — two young women in the present are tasked with transcribing interviews that took place under the dictatorship — as it blends action with surreal comedy. Among the memorable scenes are those set in a Recife theater — the same 1950s-era cinema featured in Pictures of Ghosts — where Armando’s father-in-law works as a projectionist and where we see glimpses of The Omen and Jaws, the movie Armando’s young son is eager to see. There are also glimpses of movie posters such as Dona Flor and her Two Husbands starring Brazilian screen legend Sonia Braga, who also starred in Aquarius and Bacarau.

Wagner Moura in “The Secret Agent.” Courtesy Neon.

“I believe cinema puts a time stamp on our lives, like music does,” said Mendonça Filho. “In a period piece, I use these cultural time stamps. Hollywood had a strong reverberation around the world. Brazilian time stamps were telenovelas, musicals of that era. In the ‘70s, Jaws was a phenomenon in Brazil. Recife is a coastal city with a real shark problem, so combining the two is fascinating. It’s like bacon and eggs — how could I avoid using the shark element in the film? Cinema is part of Brazilian life. As a cinephile, it was important to use those references. The Omen was a big hit in Brazil; being a Catholic country, all those Catholic horrors [were popular]. Like music, films are period-specific but universal.”

Wagner Moura in “The Secret Agent.” Courtesy Neon.

One of the film’s visual metaphors is its most absurdist: the hairy leg, an appendage that haunts nighttime Recife. “The hairy leg is an urban legend in Recife in the ‘70s,” said Mendonça Filho. “The city was transgressive in terms of film, music, literature, theater, and had to deal with censorship at a time when you could find police waiting to take you for ‘a ride.’ [Residents] came up with the term “hairy leg,” which was code for the military police. [People would say] ‘the hairy leg attacked last night,’ which means police beat people up in the park, often in the gay community. It’s so absurd that it became a phenomenon in Recife, with cartoons in the paper and talk on a radio show. I always wanted to use it in a film, and this was the right film; it gave me the chance to work with stop-motion animation.”

Wagner Moura in “The Secret Agent.” Courtesy Neon.

Moura said he’s long admired and wanted to work with Mendonça Filho. The Secret Agent represents a true collaboration, he said.

“We met 20 years ago at the Cannes film festival. He was a critic covering it at the time, and I was there with a film, and we hit it off because we are from the same region, the northeast of the country. When I went back to Brazil, I watched his short films. Then in 2012, I saw Neighboring Sounds, his first feature, and I thought it was the greatest film I’d ever seen in my life. From then on, I was obsessed with working with him. From 2018 to 2022, Brazil was under a criminal fascist government. We were both vocal and suffered the consequences. The genesis of this film was how we can react as artists and citizens in Brazil? Armando is just trying to stick to his values when everything around him is saying the opposite.”

L-r: Kleber Mendonça Filho and Wagner Moura. Courtesy Neon.

Mendonça Filho noted that The Secret Agent has resonated with audiences in Brazil and around the world because of its relevance to the precarious state of democracy in many places, including the United States.

“In Brazil, we made this because we were under [former president Jair] Bolsonaro. Now we are in a democratic moment for the first time, and Bolsonaro is going to jail,” he said. “This film is about a man who sticks to his values. In Spain, there’s been a strong reaction. Franco died of old age, not in prison, and Spain never dealt with what happened. Same in Chile with Pinochet. We are in a positive moment for democracy, which Brazil does not take for granted anymore because we know how fragile it can be. We treated the coup [plot in 2022-2023] differently than America did because we know how bad it can get. Democracy is not a given; you have to fight for it.”

The Secret Agent is in select theaters now.

Featured image: L-r: Kleber Mendonça Filho and Wagner Moura. Courtesy Neon.

“Michael” Trailer Reveals Jaafar Jackson’s Transformation Into the King of Pop

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We now have the first full trailer for Antoine Fuqua’s Michael Jackson biopic, and it’s a doozy. The trailer makes one thing immediately clear: Fuqua’s film will explore the complicated, explosive relationship Jackson (played by Michael’s real-life nephew, Jaafar Jackson) had with his father, Joe (an unrecognizable Colman Domingo, save for his best-in-class voice), the domineering mastermind behind the Jackson Five. At one point in the trailer, at a stage of Michael’s career when his ambitions were starting to strain his supposed place within the larger family, he tells his father he needs to think. Joe’s confused by this desire for autonomy, and replies, “I told you what to think.” If anything could sum up their relationship better than that, I’m not sure what it is.

Michael tracks the titular icon’s fateful decision to strike out on his own and, without hyperbole, become one of the biggest pop stars in history. We’ll get the songs, too, including “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough,” the first single from his 1979 album “Off the Wall,” and one of the early hits that made it clear that this former member of the Jackson Five was going to be a mega-star as a solo musician. In fact, it was the second single from “Off the Wall” to reach number one on the Billboard Hot 100, and led to Jackson earning his first solo Grammy Award. Not for nothing, “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” is widely considered one of the greatest disco songs of all time.

There’s a moment in the trailer where we see Michael sitting in a living room with a pet chimpanzee. That’s it: a single, decidedly odd moment in a life filled with extraordinary ones and some very dark ones, too, as we know all too well.

The trailer gives us bits of “Billie Jean” and a glimpse at Jackson’s immortal “Thriller” video; we get peeks at Jackson’s relationship with one of the great musical minds of all time, Quincy Jones (Kendrick Sampson), and looks at other important figures from his life; Miles Teller as John Branca, Michael’s long-time attorney and business advisor; Kat Graham as Diana Ross; Jessica Sula as La Toya Jackson, and Laura Harrier as Suzanne de Passe, a music executive who was instrumental in his early career.

“The film tells the story of Michael Jackson’s life beyond the music, tracing his journey from the discovery of his extraordinary talent as the lead of the Jackson Five, to the visionary artist whose creative ambition fueled a relentless pursuit to become the biggest entertainer in the world,” the synopsis reads. “Highlighting both his life off-stage and some of the most iconic performances from his early solo career, the film gives audiences a front-row seat to Michael Jackson as never before. This is where his story begins.”

Check out the teaser trailer below. Michael moonwalks into theaters on April 24.

 

Featured image: Jaafar Jackson as Michael Jackson in Michael. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Lionsgate

Oscar-Nominated “Hamnet” Co-Screenwriter Maggie O’Farrell on Adapting Her Novel with Chloé Zhao

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With eight Oscar nominations and a string of trophies thus far, writer-director Chloé Zhao’s historical fiction Hamnet anchors the story of what inspired one of the greatest works ever written, William Shakespeare’s (Paul Mescal) deathless play “Hamlet,” not in the bard’s brilliance, but in the story of his luminous wife, Agnes (a devastatingly raw performance by Jessie Buckley), an herbalist. The story takes off when their son, Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe), dies, and the couple spirals down a vortex of grief and depression just as William’s playwright career blossoms in London. Newly minted Oscar nominee, co-screenwriter Maggie O’Farrell, was thrilled when she was offered the opportunity to adapt her 2020 novel with Zhao. “When I heard that Chloé wanted to write the screenplay with me, I wasn’t going to say ‘Yes’ at first.” But Zhao ended up changing her mind: “I remember her holding up the book saying, ‘I want to make a film of the book.’ I thought, ‘Why the hell not?’ And who would say no to Chloé Zhao? So, I thought I’ll give it a go. I’ve learned an awful lot. By the end of our first conversation, I agreed to write the first pass and sent it to her in two months.”

O’Farrell spoke to The Credits about her screenwriting debut, what drove her to write the historical fiction novel in the first place, and why art is crucial to understanding humanity and ourselves.

 

What were some of the elements that brought you and Chloé together on this project?

We both really love Terence Malick films — she talked about Terence as an influence for this film. We also love the films of Wong Kar-Wai; Chungking Express is one of our favorite films. Chloe and I have very different skills that are quite complementary, which was a strength in our collaboration. She loves voice notes – I live in Scotland, and she was mostly in California — so this screenplay was forged by voice notes. I often woke up to 12 or 13 voice notes, each a couple of minutes long. One of the longest that I recall was 58 minutes. She talks through her thought process, whereas I always have to work things out by writing them down.

Since Hamnet was your first screen adaptation, how did you find the process?

It was really fascinating. The first job was to somehow reduce the 350-page book down to a 90-odd page screenplay. There’s a lot of just distilling and distilling, but I learned a lot about cinematic language from Chloé. The things that work on the page don’t really work on the screen.

What are some of the material changes in the movie?

Probably the biggest change is the chronology. The book begins on the day the twins get ill and moves back and forth – it goes back to the time when William and Agnes meet. That works fine on the page, but can be a bit jarring to a cinema audience. So, we had to disassemble the story and put it back together chronologically. There’s a bit more about Agnes and Will’s parents in the book; quite a lot of it was filmed, but it didn’t make it.

In the opening scene, Agnes lies down in a fetal position embracing the tree, which cements her deep connection to nature. Why was it important to start with that scene in the film?

Novels are interior; the reader is a party to the innermost thoughts and emotions of the characters. But obviously, you can’t do that for cinema, so you have to find another way of communicating it. In the novel, when Agnes goes to see “Hamlet,” she goes into the theater on her own, and her brother stays outside. But in the screenplay, we brought him in so that she could talk about what she was feeling. Another way Chloé does it is by sublimating. If you have a character who is feeling a lot but doesn’t express it, you can sublimate it into the environment. In that scene, you see Agnes’ contentment and turmoil. The sound in the film is so good that with the shots of the forest, you can see what she’s feeling without really realizing that you’re seeing it.

 

In the final sequence of Will’s stage play, the reaction shots were quite raw as he stood in the wings, watching Agnes react onstage. Is that from the book?

Yes, but in the book, it’s very telescoped, mostly because you can’t have a massive speech and expect your readers to stay with that. So it’s much shorter, but basically the same scene, just a bit more fleshed out in the film. That’s one of the joys of the film for me: that scene is expanded so you see a lot more of the play—you get that physical proximity to the players [stage actors] that the audience had in those days. And then you see that glance between the two of them. It’s contracted in the novel and leaps forward to them leaving the theater together before coming back to the final line in the book, “Remember me” from the ghost speech. Cinema enabled us to make that a lot longer, which is a real joy. If I had a time machine, I would absolutely go back to The Globe to watch that first performance of “Hamlet.” And in a way, now I have!

Noah Jupe stars as Hamlet, Jessie Buckley as Agnes and Joe Alwyn as Bartholomew in director Chloé Zhao’s HAMNET, a Focus Features release. Credit: Courtesy of Focus Features / © 2025 FOCUS FEATURES LLC

Did anything surprise you in terms of how that climactic sequence turned out compared to how it unfurled in the book?

I think it’s beautifully done in the film. We did a lot of rehearsals with the players. There was a day when we brought Jessie and Joe [Alwyn, who plays Agnes’ brother, Bartholomew] to the audience with the players on stage, and that was incredibly exciting. It almost felt as it would have a long time ago, that you create this thing and suddenly there’s an audience who didn’t know the story of Hamlet. They had no idea there would be a swordfight and that someone would die at the end, as we now know. But it would have been deeply shocking when the ghost appears, or when Hamlet dies at the end.

Jessie Buckley stars as Agnes and Joe Alwyn as Bartholomew in director Chloé Zhao’s HAMNET, a Focus Features release. Credit: Agata Grzybowska / © 2025 FOCUS FEATURES LLC

What prompted you to write a story about Shakespeare that centers on his relationship with Agnes?

One of the reasons I wrote the book was that I’ve always felt that Agnes, or Anne Hathaway as she’s more commonly known, has been treated badly by history. People for years have wanted to give them a retrospective divorce: they’ve said terrible things about her, none of which have any basis in fact or evidence. They claimed she was illiterate and stupid, that he hated her and trapped him into marriage. People have been trying to denigrate her for 500 years. With the book, I wanted to encourage people to forget everything they think they know about them and their marriage, and open themselves up to a new interpretation. Maybe they really loved each other and were very much a couple right to the end of their life. When he retired from the stage and left London, he could’ve lived anywhere in the world, but he went back to Stratford to live with his wife for the final years of his life, which I think is hugely significant. There’s not a lot known about her — there’s no record even of her birth. We know they got married, she had three children, one of them died, and they moved houses. She also ran a malting business at one point from the back of the house. People in those days didn’t drink water because it wasn’t safe, so they used to drink ale.

Jessie Buckley stars as Agnes in director Chloé Zhao’s HAMNET, a Focus Features release.
Credit: Agata Grzybowska / © 2025 FOCUS FEATURES LLC

Did that come up in your research for the book? 

Yes. There’s no shortage of books about Shakespeare, so I read as many as I could, but there was also a lot of research. I went to Stratford, where you can see the house they lived in; it’s extraordinary that it’s still there. You can walk through the house where Shakespeare once lived, stand in the room where he was born, and in the dining table where he used to dine. The Hathaway farm is still there. I also learned how to fly a hawk and planted my own Elizabethan medicinal garden, which I still have at the back of my house. Since the women’s lives in the book are not well documented, getting my hands dirty was the only way to gain a better understanding. I learned how to make medicines and made bread from a Tudor recipe! 

Jessie Buckley stars as Agnes in director Chloé Zhao’s HAMNET, a Focus Features release. Credit: Agata Grzybowska / © 2025 FOCUS FEATURES LLC

How did the bread turn out?

My children ate it all up! 

What would you like the audience to take away from the film?

The book is about where art comes from and why we need it. I’ve always felt that there’s a very significant link between “Hamlet” the play and his son Hamnet. If you look at the play through the lens of Hamnet’s death, you can briefly see Shakespeare becoming visible as a human being, as a grieving father, and the play is a message from a father in one realm to his son in another. That’s why we need art, to be able to understand these things and to see ourselves in it.

 

Hamnet is playing in theaters now.

Featured image: Director Chloé Zhao with actors Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley with on the set of their film HAMNET, a Focus Features release.
Credit: Agata Grzybowska / © 2025 FOCUS FEATURES LLC

The Incomparable Catherine O’Hara Has Passed On

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If Catherine O’Hara was in a scene, even acting among other comedic geniuses (as she often was), you felt drawn to her. Her comedy chops are the stuff of legend, but she was no lightweight when it came to drama, either (she recently earned an Emmy nomination for her brief role in season 2 of The Last of Us). The year 2026 has gotten to a very, shall we say, glum start, and this was the news that nobody needed. But here we are.

O’Hara’s reps at CAA confirmed that she has passed away at her home in Los Angeles after a brief illness. She was 71.

O’Hara’s plentiful gifts received their share of accolades—she’s a two-time Emmy winner—but had her charms and abilities been requisitely rewarded, she’d have passed on with a ballroom’s worth of trophies. The Toronto native came of age alongside peers who would also go on to have brilliant careers. As part of SCTV, O’Hara shined in an ensemble that included John Candy, her longtime screen partner Eugene Levy, and Rick Moranis. Before launching her career, she was an understudy to another legend, SNL‘s iconic Gilda Radner, whom O’Hara joined at Second City in Toronto when she was 20.

When Second City launched the sketch comedy show SCTV in 1976, O’Hara’s career took off. Alongside Candy, the late, great Harold Ramis, Andrea Martin, Joe Flaherty, and eventually Martin Short and Moranis, the show aired on Canada’s Global network before being picked up by NBC to run in the U.S.

For those of us who came of age in the 1980s in America, O’Hara burst into our collective consciousness in Tim Burton’s 1988 classic Beetlejuice, playing Delia Deetz, the eccentric sculptor and second wife of Charles Deetz, and the foil to Winona Ryder’s Lydia. In a cast that also included Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis as the deceased occupants of the home the Deetz’s have moved into, and of course Michael Keaton as the chaos-loving spirit Beetlejuice, O’Hara still managed to stand out. “If you don’t let me gut this house and make it my own, I will go insane, and I will take you with me!” she screams. We believe her. She’s as scary as Beetlejuice. She was just as excellent in the sequel.

What made O’Hara a household name is arguably her role in Chris Columbus’s 1990’s Home Alone, playing Kate McCallister, the mother of Macaulay Culkin’s Kevin. While Kevin was, indeed, left all by his lonesome in a big suburban house, with two bumbling but still potentially dangerous burglars lurking in Joe Pesci’s Harry and Daniel Stern’s Marv, pour out a glass of Château Lafite Rothschild for poor Kate, who has to rush home from Paris when she realizes Kevin’s gone. If only she knew how fine Kevin would be (save for the aftershave bit).

Yet for O’Hara connoisseurs, it’s likely collaboration with Christopher Guest that stands apart. As excellent as Guest and his cast are, it’s hard to imagine these films singing as they do without her—Waiting for Guffman (1996), Best in Show (2000), A Mighty Wind (2003), and For Your Consideration (2006).

O’Hara re-teamed with Eugene Levy in the beloved Schitt’s Creek, which swept the comedy categories at the 2020 Emmys, in which she won for her acting. Most recently, O’Hara was stellar in Seth Rogen’s The Studio, playing the deposed studio head Patty Leigh, who, despite her bitterness, still helps her replacement, Rogen’s Matt Remick, as she struggles to run the studio she shepherded (she gets her cut, of course). She was set to co-star in the second season, which just began filming.

O’Hara is survived by her husband, Bo Welch; her sons, Matthew and Luke; and her siblings, Michael, Mary, Marcus, Tom O’Hara, Maureen Jolley, and Patricia Wallace.

It’s a huge loss. She led a huge life. She will not be forgotten.

Featured image: The Hollywood Reporter’s 7th Annual Nominees Night – Arrivals BEVERLY HILLS, CALIFORNIA – FEBRUARY 04: Catherine O’Hara attends The Hollywood Reporter 2019 Oscar Nominee Party at CUT on February 04, 2019, in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Amy Sussman/Getty Images)

“The White Lotus” Season 4 Cast Adds Helena Bonham Carter, Chris Messina, & Marissa Long

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A trio of talented performers has booked their reservations at the White Lotus for season 4, rounding out another stellar cast for Mike White’s scorching satire. Helena Bonham Carter, Chris Messina, and Marissa Long are joining the previously announced cast of Steve Coogan, Caleb Jonte Edwards, Alexander Ludwig, and AJ Michalka.

Season 4 is heading to France, with stops in Paris and various spots along the French Riviera. This follows season 3’s Thailand location, where production took place at the Four Seasons Resort Koh Samui and the Anantara Mai Khao Phuket Villas. Filming also occurred in Bangkok, Phuket, and Koh Samui. Season 2 was set in Sicily and was primarily filmed at the Four Seasons San Domenico Palace in Taormina, with additional scenes shot in Palermo, Noto, and Cefalú. The inaugural season of White’s series was shot in Hawaii, at the Four Seasons Resort Maui at Wailea.

The White Lotus season 4’s plot is, of course, under wraps, so we don’t know anything about who any of the performers are playing. We can count on the guests to be escaping something even a luxury resort can’t cure. We can also tell you this will mark Marissa Long’s television debut. Bonham Carter hardly needs an introduction as a two-time Oscar nominee and nine-time Golden Globe nominee. From killer roles in everything from Fight Club to her iconic portrayal of Bellatrix Lestrange in the Harry Potter franchise to The King’s Speech, Sweeney Todd, Howard’s End, A Room With a View, and a slew of roles in Tim Burton’s films.

Helena Bonham Carter is Princess Margaret in 'The Crown.' Photo by Sophie Mutevelian. Courtesy Netflix.
Helena Bonham Carter is Princess Margaret in ‘The Crown.’ Photo by Sophie Mutevelian. Courtesy Netflix.

Messina has starred in films like Ben Affleck’s recent Air and his Oscar-winning Argo, Cathy Yan’s Birds of Prey, and several TV series, including HBO’s Sharp Objects, as well as in his popular turn in The Mindy Project. 

Photo Credit: Claudette Barius/ & © DC Comics
Caption: (L-r) EWAN McGREGOR as Roman Sionis, JURNEE SMOLLETT-BELL as Black Canary and CHRIS MESSINA as Victor Zsasz in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “BIRDS OF PREY (AND THE FANTABULOUS EMANCIPATION OF ONE HARLEY QUINN),” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Claudette Barius/ & © DC Comics

For more on The White Lotus, check out these stories:

C’est La Vie: “The White Lotus” Season 4 Is Going to France

Dressing Despair in Paradise With “The White Lotus” Costume Designer Alex Bovaird

A Greek Tragedy in Thailand:  Mike White on “The White Lotus” Season 3 Finale’s Explosive Ending

Featured image: Princess Margaret (HELENA BONHAM CARTER). Photo by Des Willie

Sam Mendes’ Four-Film Beatles Biopic Reveals First Look at the Fab Four

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We have a new peek at director Sam Mendes’s first-of-its-kind quartet of films about each member of the Beatles. Sony Pictures, the studio behind Mendes’ films, has revealed four printed postcards that show each one of the cast members—Paul Mescal as Paul McCartney, Harris Dickinson as John Lennon, Joseph Quinn as George Harrison, and Barry Keoghan as Ringo Starr—that were hidden throughout the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts for students to find.

The approach Mendes and Sony are taking to this four-film biopic is certainly bold: all four films will be released in April 2028. Production has, of course, begun, given that release date, and the star power doesn’t end with Mendes and his four Beatles; Saoirse Ronan is set to play Linda McCartney, Shõgun breakout star Anna Sawai is playing Yoko Ono, and The White Lotus breakout star Aimee Lou Wood is playing Pattie Boyd.

“We intend this to be a uniquely thrilling, and epic cinematic experience: four films, told from four different perspectives which tell a single story about the most celebrated band of all time,” said one of the film’s producers, Pippa Harris, in a statement at the time of the initial announcement. “To have The Beatles’ and Apple Corps’ blessing to do this is an immense privilege.”

Crucially, Mendes also has the support of the Beatles label Apple Corps, marking the first time they’ve backed a scripted film based on their lives. Recently, Peter Jackson’s epic The Beatles: Get Back detailed the lead-up to their iconic live performance atop their Saville Row studio.

When describing Sony’s approach to Mendes’s biopics, Sony film boss Tom Rothman told The Hollywood Reporter, “You have to match the boldness of the idea with a bold release strategy. There hasn’t been an enterprise like this before, and you can’t think about it in traditional releasing terms.”

Featured image: LAS VEGAS, NEVADA – MARCH 31: (L-R) Paul Mescal, Joseph Quinn, Barry Keoghan and Harris Dickinson are introduced onstage to promote four upcoming biopics about The Beatles at the Sony Pictures Entertainment presentation during CinemaCon, the official convention of Cinema United, at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace on March 31, 2025 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

For more upcoming films from Sony Pictures, check out these stories:

Cillian Murphy in Talks to Return in “28 Years Later III” as Sony Greenlights Third Film in New Trilogy

First Reactions to “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple” Praise Nia DaCosta’s Brutal, Bold, & Brilliant Sequel

How “SISU: Road to Revenge” Writer/Director Jalmari Helander Crafted Seven Chapters of Unrelenting Chaos

“Ghosts” Hair and Makeup Heads on Keeping the Beloved Show’s Spirits Looking Timeless

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A New York couple inherits a rural estate, but there’s a catch—not only is the house falling apart, but it’s also home to a passel of ghosts, both spiritually and emotionally bound to the property. A bad fall down Woodstone Manor’s staircase gives wife Sam (Rose McIver) the ability to see and hear the motley band of spirits living in her new home, and in turn, she, her husband, Jay (Utkarsh Ambudkar), and the upstairs ghosts wind up making the best of their unusual household. Adapted by showrunners Joe Port and Joe Wiseman from the British series of the same name, Ghosts has been a hit for CBS, with the show well into its fifth season and renewed for a sixth.

Whether they’re stuck on the property for eternity or merely passing through on the way to another spiritual realm, the through line for all of Ghosts’ ghosts is that they died where Woodstone Manor now stands. Thor (Devan Chandler Long), a Viking who came to explore present-day North America and was left behind by his shipmates a millennium ago, is the oldest of the core group stuck on the property. The newest is Trevor (Asher Grodman), a stockbroker who died from a drug-induced heart attack. Between the two, there’s a Lenape storyteller, a Continental Army officer, a Jazz Age lounge singer, a hippie, and Hetty (Rebecca Wisocky), Sam’s 19th-century ancestor and the first owner of Woodstone.

While other people die at Woodstone, turn into ghosts, and move on, and living visitors come and go as Jay and Sam try to transform the estate into a B&B and restaurant, the show’s core ghosts remain the same—and it’s imperative that they stay consistent from season to season. But the series pilot was shot in Los Angeles, which meant the show’s Canada-based crew (production for the series is set in and around Montreal) inherited the main characters’ general appearance. Makeup department head Gillian Chandler (Midway, John Wick: Chapter 2) and hair department head Jean Scarabin (The Bold Type, Clouds) were able to subtly update the show’s recurrent spirits as well as work with costume designer Carmen Alie to develop looks for the ghosts during flashback scenes to their days among the living.

We got to speak with Chandler and Scarabin about keeping the show’s ghosts not only consistent but also major-network-friendly, researching, working around period looks, and adjusting their processes for the Canadian winter.

 

With the pilot shot in Los Angeles, were you able to make many changes to the primary ghosts’ hair and makeup when production moved to Canada?

Gillian Chandler: When it came to Montreal, we made it much better. I created a much stronger look for Rebecca [Hetty]. I did the same for Flower [played by Sheila Carrasco]. She got a really nice hippie look. In the pilot, it wasn’t there. I kept her scar, which was there. Isaac [Brandon Scott Jones] has a lot of makeup on, which he didn’t have on in the pilot. All the characters, I thought, should have a specific look. I was quite strict about that from the beginning.

 

Jean Scarabin: Over time, we made some slight adjustments to make it look better and to make it easier on the actors, because it’s such a long run. It can’t take an hour and a half every morning. I have an amazing team that helps me a lot. We have between four and five hairdressers every day.

With the ghosts’ looks set, how do you then ensure they stay consistent from season to season?

JS: We use a lot of wigs. And one month before the season starts every year, I remind the actors, ” Don’t cut your hair, please, because I need some length. What we do is color the hair, because actors are aging as well, so there’s some gray coming out. It’s like a big machine that works well. We have schedules for colors and haircuts, and we cut hair every week. Wigs help a lot, of course.

GC: I have to be quite careful about that, but I have a very good team. As for maintaining the makeup, it’s always been a very strict look from the beginning. Each ghost has a specific bag with their makeup in it. Each ghost has their own recipe, and that’s the way I try and keep it. I think it works. Between the hair and the costume, it’s amazing how it all comes alive.

 

Jean, is there anyone not wearing a wig who’d surprise us?

JS: It’s Hetty. What you see on screen is her hair. What’s inside is different. But basically, her hair covers a structure we build every day. It’s a surprise to see how it’s done because it’s not a wig. It’s very big, it’s called a Gibson hairstyle—it’s a 40-minute process every day.

What are some challenges in terms of making sure the ghosts subtly look like ghosts?

GC: The thing that’s hard to control is that they can’t sweat, so when we shoot in the summertime, we have to be super careful that we don’t see any shine or sweat. Secondly, when we shoot exteriors, and it gets colder, we can’t see their breath, because they’re dead. I have to give them ice chips every time before they speak, otherwise we’d see steam coming out of their mouth. I’m careful about them crying, too. There have been some episodes where they want them to cry—I let them well up, and then it goes back down again.

Pictured (L-R): Sheila Carrasco as Flower, Richie Moriarty as Pete, Asher Grodman as Trevor, Román Zaragoza as Sasappis, and Brandon Scott Jones as Isaac. Photo: Bertrand Calmeau/CBS ©2025 CBS Broadcasting, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

How do you make new characters fit in with the original group?

JS: If it’s a period character, we discuss the hairstyles from that time, and sometimes we adjust or cheat a little bit. The problem with period hair is that it sometimes makes people look very old, so we have to tweak it a bit to make it more modern and fit with the rest of the cast. Usually, I meet the actors two to three days before they shoot, so that’s challenging for me, because what if a wig doesn’t fit, what if the style doesn’t work on them? We have meetings with showrunners, costume designers, makeup artists—Gillian—and we make it happen all together. We’re really proud of how it looks.

GC: A little trick I did was for all the men who come from the Woodstone mansion, I always give them a mustache.  I think that’s my personal secret nobody’s really noticed. But Hetty’s son and the cousins always have red mustaches. Because Hetty is so red, I continue that through the line of the Woodstones.

Pictured (L-R): Matt Walsh as Elias Woodstone. Photo: Bertrand Calmeau/CBS ©2025 CBS Broadcasting, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Is there an aspect of the ghosts that’s a departure from what we think of as typical ghost media tropes?

GC: Because children do watch the show, I don’t want it to look graphic and gory. Jessica [Nichole Sakura], who died in a car accident, had on her forehead a cut, blood, and I stuck a big piece of glass there, but it’s comedy, so you’re not scared of it. Stephanie [Odessa A’zion], the prom girl who got killed with a chainsaw, I made her gash over the top. I try to make it look more comedic than serious because I know the audience is diverse in age.

Pictured (L-R): Roman Zaragoza as Sasappis and Nichole Sakura as Jessica. Photo: Bertrand Calmeau/CBS ©2022 CBS Broadcasting, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Pictured (L-R): Odessa A’zion as Stephanie. Photo: Jonathan Wenk/CBS ©2022 CBS Broadcasting, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

How is shooting in Canada?

JS: When we reach winter, it gets difficult, especially for the actors, since some of them have a very light wardrobe. They built a set inside the studio for the front of house, so we can at least do some exterior shots there. For the hair, it’s difficult because the actors have to walk from their trailer to the inside. Production built dressing rooms inside the studio, and our trailers are placed there as well, so actors don’t have to go out. But we’re used to it.

Do you work with local crew?

GC: It’s almost the same crew for five years, which is pretty amazing. We’re like family. There’s a very nice feeling of camaraderie on [set]. We put it together almost without trying, because we’ve been together for so long. It’s like a recipe. It just happens, and it’s kind of magical.

JS: All I can mention is that we have an incredible cast. They’re super nice. I’ve never worked with a team that was so easy to work with, so fun, so creative. Some of the actors are very involved in their hairstyles. Rebecca, who plays Hetty, we really have a collaboration every morning. It’s interesting because we do period stuff, and it’s so fun to see the actors transforming every day into their characters. I won’t say it’s easy, because sometimes it’s challenging, because we don’t have much time to prepare everything, but it’s really the most fun show ever. Rose McIver, who plays Sam, is the best. As soon as we started shooting, she set the tone for everyone on set.

Pictured L to R: Devan Chandler Long as Thorfinn and Rebecca Wisocky as Hetty. Photo: Bertrand Calmeau/CBS ©2025 CBS Broadcasting, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Pictured L to R: Rose McIver as Samantha, Brandon Scott Jones as Isaac, Devan Chandler Long as Thorfinn. Photo: Bertrand Calmeau/CBS ©2025 CBS Broadcasting, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Ghosts is streaming on Paramount+. Season 5, episode 11 will air on February 26 on CBS.

Featured image: Pictured L to R: Richie Moriarty as Pete, Brandon Scott Jones as Isaac, Rose McIver as Samantha, Utkarsh Ambudkar as Jay, Devan Chandler Long as Thorfinn, Rebecca Wisocky as Hetty. Photo: Bertrand Calmeau/CBS ©2025 CBS Broadcasting, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

 

 

“Sinners” Oscar-Nominated Sound Mixer Chris Welcker on Rigging Michael B. Jordan’s Twin Conversations

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Ryan Coogler‘s Academy Award Best Picture contender Sinners—which made history with its 16 nominations—was shot entirely in Louisiana as a backdrop for its Depression-era story about the Moore twins (both portrayed by Michael B. Jordan) and their vampire-attracting juke joint. Writer/director Ryan Coogler employed a crack team of artisans (now nearly all of them are Oscar nominees), including his Oscar-nominated quartet of cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw, production designer Hannah Beachler, costume designer Ruth E. Carter, and composer, Ludwig Göransson. Newly minted nominee Chris Welcker, a New Orleans native, served as the production sound mixer for Sinners. He spent about five months, mainly in rural Louisiana, recording the dialogue and music that dramatize Black experience in the deep South as fictionalized by Coogler and his team.  

Welcker, whose credits include Emmy-winning contributions to the seventies-rock series Daisy Jones & the Six, talks to The Credits about designing conversations between two twin brothers, Smoke and Stack, played by another Oscar nominee, Michael B. Jordan, who seem to be on screen at the same time. He also explains how he tamed noisy IMAX cameras and recounts the heat, rain, and bugs that made Sinners, on the ground, a visceral experience for everyone involved.

 

Sinners’ twin sequences are technical marvels. How did you make it look like Michael B. Jordan was talking to Michael B. Jordan, as Smoke, was talking to Michael B. Jordan, as Stack?

We would do the first take, where you have Michael B. Jordan playing the dominant twin. And Percy Bell played the actor double, so Michael had somebody physical he could look at and interact with. We would shoot the scene until everybody was happy. Then we’d send Michael B. Jordan back to costumes and makeup, where he’d become the other twin. During that [break] time, we’d take the video footage, drop it into our Pro Tools playback system, and edit out any dialogue that Percy delivered to make space for Michael, so he could interject his other twin’s dialogue. 

 

Timing must have been critical?

After we pulled out Percy’s audio, we’d put in ADR beeps, a series of four beeps that signify when a handoff needs to take place. Michael would hear beep, beep, beep, and the fourth beep signaled when, for example, the cigarette needed to be handed off from one twin to the other, so even for non-verbal behavior, based on the previous takes. A lot of technical collaboration went into selling the idea that Smoke and Stack are two individual characters.

Caption: MICHAEL B. JORDAN as Smoke and as Stack, in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “SINNERS,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

A lot of scenes were filmed on IMAX cameras, which can be noisy, right?

Very noisy, yeah. I watched behind-the-scenes footage from the movie Nope and saw that the IMAX camera they used sounded like a little lawn mower, right next to the actors.

How did you guys address that?

One thing that helped was that our post-production editorial team had just come off Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, which used IMAX quite a bit. They told us their approach was to shoot wide shots, record the take until you’re happy, and then do a sound-only recording.

 

Almost like a stage play, full intensity performance, but no cameras rolling?

Yeah. The actors do the scene immediately afterwards, while their performances are still locked in their heads, so they can deliver the lines exactly as they did before. And then the post-production sound team used a couple of programs: iZotope RX and Hush Audio, which are really good at removing noise. Once I got my hands on those programs, I’d use them on set to assess whether what we got during these noisy camera takes would be usable.

Music plays such an important role in Sinners, especially in the now-famous Juke Joint sequence. How did you get the voices and the acoustic instruments to sound so good without any visible mics?

When I worked on Daisy Jones & the Six, that was basically rock concert stuff in the ’70s, so we had microphones on stage right in front of their mouth and amplified instruments. In this situation, we had to record acoustic string performances, as well as the vocals, without the benefits of having microphones right in front of their faces.

 

Miles Caton’s Sammie character, for example, strums his acoustic guitar and fills the room with his voice, no mics in sight. How?

Sammy’s guitar is an authentic 1930s Dobro Resonator, so we couldn’t cut the body of this thing open to put a transmitter inside. It’s a relic! And when Miles grabs his guitar, he spins it so you see all the angles of the thing. That meant I couldn’t even tape a transmitter and microphone to the back of the guitar.

Caption: MILES CATON as Sammie Moore in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “SINNERS,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures

So what did you do?

Watching Miles strum the guitar in rehearsal, I noticed that his wrist didn’t move a whole lot, so I asked our costume department to sew one of our lavalier microphones into the cuff of Miles’ shirt.

Aha!

And for Sammy’s voice, we used a lapel mic, plus a boom above the frame for his voice, plus one down below for guitar, so four mics in all.

Caption: MILES CATON as Sammie Moore in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “SINNERS,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

You grew up in New Orleans and really know your way around music because that’s what you studied at the University of Louisiana. How did you get into the movie business?

After college, I found a job at a local video production house doing custom scores for about a year and a half. But then Hurricane Katrina happened, so I moved back to New Orleans in case there was anything my friends and family needed. And I also remember my grandmother sending me newspaper clippings by mail, saying that the film industry in Louisiana and New Orleans was really taking off and needed people to do all kinds of work on film sets. I thought I might as well give it a shot.

How’d you get started?

I worked as an office P.A. One day, I went to a film set, and I watched the grips, electrics, and camera people doing their work. I spotted this guy holding a microphone at the end of a pole, and I was like, “That looks like my world!” So, I became a boom operator.

Then what?

I worked with [Oscar-winning] sound mixer Kirk Francis. When he retired, Kirk gave me his equipment. I put myself out there as a production mixer on the Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele comedy Keanu and just went from there.

Looking around at your friends, neighbors, and the folks on your crew, have you seen them benefit from the strength of Louisiana’s filmmaking community?

Absolutely. I have a bunch of friends who work in the industry, and I know people who have bought property to house specialty equipment the camera can use to get cool shots—drones, electric cars, things like that. And then there are all the restaurants and hotels that benefit. Maybe it’s not the peak [tourism] season, but if a film all of a sudden comes to town putting up 100 people in a hotel– that can really make the difference for them in any given year.

Caption: (L to r) DELROY LINDO, MICHAEL B. JORDAN and director RYAN COOGLER in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “SINNERS a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures

What was it like shooting Sinners in rural Louisiana?

A lot of it took place in sugarcane fields between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, which we dressed to look more like cotton. These were big, wide open pieces of land, a lot of dirt, a lot of bugs, cicadas, mosquitoes, the heat, the rain. Especially in the summertime, the rain can be brutal. You could see a storm coming in, and the locals would say, ” We’d better start getting the equipment and the crew to safety.

L to r) MICHAEL B. JORDAN and director RYAN COOGLER in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “SINNERS a Warner Bros. Pictures release.© 2025 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Where was Juke Joint filmed?

The exterior of the juke joint was built and shot in this town called Braithwaite. It was extremely hot. Our music editor was accustomed to life in the studios, so it was fun to watch him come outside and tell him, “Put on your bug spray, don’t forget the sunscreen, and you should really consider getting a pair of shorts because you’re going to die out here in your jeans all day.” But that’s where he drew the line. He’s like, “I’m not wearing shorts.”

Caption: Warner Bros. Pictures’ “SINNERS,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

Looking back on the production, what sticks with you as being a quintessential Louisiana moment?

The second post-credits scene, where Sammy’s playing “This Little Light of Mine” for his father. They ended up not processing the sound, as far as giving it the full treatment, so it’s just the raw recording. You can hear the cicadas coming in through the open church windows, you can hear all the noise just like it really happened, you can see Miles really playing and singing, no edits. The scene shows what we did on set on the day. To me, there’s something really special about that.

 Sinners is now streaming on Max.

 

 

 Featured image: Caption: MICHAEL B. JORDAN as Smoke and as Stack, in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “SINNERS,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

“Shrinking” Star & Producer Jason Segel on Season 3’s Love Letter to Los Angeles

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The third season of the acclaimed, hugely popular comedy-drama series Shrinking hits differently. Days before filming was due to start in January 2025, wildfires swept through Altadena and Pasadena, the Los Angeles communities where the show is shot. Not only were sets lost, but the blazes turned the lives of local cast and crew upside down, with some losing their homes and everything they owned.

Executive producer, co-creator, and star Jason Segel was one of those who would not let disaster derail the show that deals with loss, tragedy, and seemingly insurmountable challenges that life can throw your way. Segel, who lives in Pasadena, witnessed the disaster bring Los Angeles’ creative communities, still suffering the effects of the strikes and the pandemic, and the communities that support them, growing closer than ever.

The comedian, known for Forgetting Sarah Marshall and The Muppets, plays Jimmy, a grieving therapist who ignores his training and tells his clients what he really thinks, much to the chagrin of his boss, played by Oscar-nominee and Hollywood legend, Harrison Ford. The third season of Shrinking premieres on Apple TV on Wednesday, January 28.

Here Segel reveals why the show did whatever it took to keep production in Pasadena, how the fires impacted filming, and the importance of Hollywood’s heritage backlots.

 

People often think of LA as a single, stereotypical character, but Shrinking highlights communities that frequently get overlooked. Why is that really important to the show?

We chose Pasadena specifically because it’s a little bit out of Los Angeles proper, and it takes away whatever association Los Angeles has with any industry, because once you pass the 5 Freeway, you’re in a different zone. I live in Pasadena, and I love it. It’s a love letter to where I live. It’s calm and friendly here, and socio-economically, between here and Altadena and the surrounding areas, you’ve got all different walks of life. Right as we were starting season three, the fires rolled through Altadena. We had castmates lose their houses, so a couple of us got close. Some of our sets were lost, and the community that had welcomed us for years burned down. For us, it was really important to be good members of our community and to make sure we got out there and shot as much on location as we could, to whatever degree that was helpful. I love my city.

Jason Segel, Lukita Maxwell and Luke Tennie in “Shrinking,” premiering January 28, 2026 on Apple TV.

With the damaged sets, how did you work with that?

We held all the exterior filming until we could shoot again, so for the first few months, we only shot the interiors of episodes, and then we went back and redid all the exteriors. We shot half of the episodes, and then went back and shot them all. It was a really strange experience. For me, and this is so unique, but it requires you to stay the same weight, which is not my strong suit. You’re second-guessing every hamburger. It was important to us, even though it might have been inconvenient, that we do all that. Like I say, our cast and crew are a family. When the Emmy nominations came out, and Shrinking‘s sound department was nominated for an award, the cheer for them was as big as the cheer for Harrison Ford getting his. I think that says it all.

Jason Segel and Harrison Ford in “Shrinking,” premiering January 28, 2026 on Apple TV.

Being a show about dealing with life and tragedy, did that impact Shrinking’s third season in a meta way?

When we did season one, Covid had just happened, and there was a similar feeling in Los Angeles, after the fires. It felt like something totally beyond your control had swept through, and people were going through grief. Our show embodies that in the idea of my character’s wife dying in a drunk-driving accident. It’s no fault of their own. They are hit and taken from you, and life changes. Those are examples that sometimes life throws a thing at you, and all of a sudden, everything is different, so the tone of it was very much in the fabric of our show, like, “Okay, what do we do?” You turn to your friends, and you say, “Oh, my God, this happened. This sucks. I’m feeling this way. What do I do now?” and your friends say, “We do it together.” That’s what our show is all about.

Brett Goldstein and Jason Segel in “Shrinking,” premiering January 28, 2026 on Apple TV.

Shrinking is an excellent example of how much production contributes to the local economy and community, especially at a time when many businesses were suffering. There have been five years in LA where it has been punch after punch, and almost every company in LA is connected to the industry, doing well.

I’m shooting a movie here this month (January) that I wrote. As much as we can do here, I’m going to do. It means a lot.

It was impossible not to be touched by the video from the last day of shooting this season, where Harrison was almost in tears talking to the crew.

I am mercifully not on the internet, so I don’t know the specifics of the video; this is actually the first time I’m hearing of it. What I will say is that Harrison has been doing this longer than I have, and I’ve been doing it for a weirdly long time now. I started when I was 18, and I’m suddenly 45, so it has really crept up on me, but Harrison and I will both say, honestly, that there hasn’t been a better job. When Harrison says it, I’m like, “You know you were Indiana Jones, right?” I can’t quite believe him, but he seems to really mean it. The difference is that when you are Indiana Jones, you are Indiana Jones, and it is a potentially, I can imagine, even an isolating experience. You have a lot of weight on your shoulders. On our show, everyone is coming in together, and it’s a team. That’s the simplest way to put it. I was watching the Oklahoma City Thunder play last night, and it’s like a hive mind. It’s this effortless thing where they’re making no-look passes, and they know their job is not to let their defender get by them, because it’ll burden their teammate to come over and help. I feel that way about our show. Everyone is coming in super prepared, with choices made, and to destroy scenes. That makes it a joy. Even hard days are a joy.

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As well as filming around Altadena and Pasadena, you film a lot on the Warner Bros. backlot in Burbank. How important is it to utilize backlots here in LA and keep them active?

I can’t speak to that much, because I don’t know the literal importance of it, but I grew up in Los Angeles. I was seen in a high school play and asked to start acting at 16. The consequence was that I had to stop in my junior year of high school, quit the basketball team, and make other tough decisions. There’s a lot of pathos, but I remember going and sitting outside the Paramount Studios gates in my car and falling asleep. When I woke up, the sun was rising, and I had made my decision. I was like, “I want to do this job. I want to live my life working on these lots.” I feel the same way when I drive onto the Warner Bros. lot from all these movies that I loved, from that logo that would come up in front of them, “Oh my God. I’m at the place. I have a pass.” It’s not lost on me.

Featured image: Jason Segel in “Shrinking,” premiering January 28, 2026 on Apple TV.

From “Dune” to “The Last of Us”: How Formosa Group Elevates Storytelling through Sound

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Robert Bresson, a legendary figure in French cinema, once said, “The eye sees better when the sound is great.” Since 2013, Formosa Group has brought sound to life on thousands of film, television, and music projects, creating immersive storytelling that deepens emotional impact through craft and innovation. Industry vet Bob Rosenthal established the postproduction facility, conceiving it as “a singular destination for artists to render their inspiring work within a collaborative and supportive home.”

Today, Formosa has locations in Los Angeles and New York and is home to a talented list of sound supervisors, sound designers, rerecording mixers, ADR mixers, and field recordists whose work has earned Oscars, Emmys, BAFTAs, MPSE Golden Reel Awards, and Cinema Audio Society honors. Among its credits are Sean Baker’s Anora, Denis Villeneuve’s Dune, the John Wick franchise (including Ana De Armas’ Ballerina spinoff), HBO’s The Last of Us, Game of Thrones, and Apple’s Masters of the Air.

As part of its parent company, Streamland Media – home to Picture Shop, Ghost VFX, Picture Head, and Ingenuity Studios – Formosa continues to impact the entertainment industry through aural storytelling while also supporting job creation, local economies, and the global creative ecosystem. The Credits sat down with COO Matt Dubin, who’s been with Formosa since the start, to discuss growth, the influence of sound, and the state of the industry.

 

Formosa Group has long been a foundational name in sound. How has your strategy evolved over the years to remain relevant and influential in the industry?

It’s a 13-year story, and in the beginning, it was a handful of us just rolling up our sleeves to build the business. I think our approach is to maintain an entrepreneurial perspective throughout. Some of the growth has been through acquisition, but most of it was guided by growing organically, by building what was needed, whether it is a new division or location to service the needs of our clients. Trying to maintain that organic perspective has been a guiding principle for both Bob [Rosenthal] and I, and other leaders at Formosa Group like Jackie Jones, who leads Broadcast and Leigh Kotkin, who runs Music editorial.

Formosa Group’s Hollywood Mix Stage.

At the heart of the work are the creators and the stories you help tell. How does Formosa nurture long-standing relationships while continuing to seek out and support new voices?

The strategy, and this has been from the beginning, is with our talent. Many of our sound artists are at the peak of their careers or are highly sought after, and they already have relationships with filmmakers. So, we help to make sure they are plugged in and are attached to those relationships. But we’re also building and fostering expansiveness for them. We are always looking to build relationships with new filmmakers, and we focus on developing new talent and building teams with generational, gender, and racial diversity. It’s about matching the right people internally and externally.

What impact did Streamland Media’s 2021 acquisition of Technicolor Post have on Formosa Group’s structure, strategy, or direction?

Technicolor shifted from being a competitor to becoming a challenge we had to solve—specifically, how to absorb that infrastructure, integrate it into our own, and make it successful. More broadly, the industry remains in a fragile state—not just sound, but the entire post-production process. After COVID, demand surged to the point where capacity was maxed out, and talent was hard to find. Then strikes disrupted that momentum, and the industry is still recovering. We’ve adjusted our footprint as needed to continue our success in the business.

Now that California’s film tax incentive has been extended through 2030, are you starting to feel its impact on productions or client decisions?

It’s a significant piece of legislation that people worked really hard on. Fortunately, and for all the right reasons, I think the legislators got it right. It’s why Formosa Group wanted to be part of the California Production Coalition. I went to Sacramento to help and joined meetings in Los Angeles. It really is meaningful and helps level California production. We have locations elsewhere, but our largest infrastructure and the majority of our workforce are here in Los Angeles. We were really excited and happy for the community, as it’s very important to keep pace with Georgia, New York, and the many other destinations with strong incentive programs.  And while the new legislation has not yet trickled down to post sound, we are seeing them start to hit productions. Local productions are picking up, which is great news and will unquestionably help.

What advice would you offer on the importance of sound in storytelling, and how working with a team like Formosa Group can enhance a project?

I’m still a fan of quoting George Lucas, who said sound is 50% of the film. And obviously we believe that. Emotionally, if you take sound out, you realize its importance. And that’s what we always try to stress to our clients or prospective clients. At Formosa Group, we treat sound as a storytelling tool, not a final step. We use sound to shape emotion, perspective, and immersion—helping filmmakers tell richer, more impactful stories than visuals alone can achieve.

 

Formosa Group has collaborated on countless film and television projects over the years. Are there particular works that helped define the company’s culture or philosophy around sound?

I recently came across our awards stats and learned that we’ve had 65 Emmy nominations in the last 5 years, and 5 Oscar nominations in 7 years.  As remarkable as that is, our greatest measure of success is the lasting relationships we build with filmmakers who keep coming back.  Among them are the John Wick and Fast & Furious franchises. We are also quite proud of Masters of the Air, The Last of Us series, Dune, The Pitt, and Only Murders in the Building, among others.

 

 

This article is part of an ongoing series that raises awareness about businesses in the film and television community. Formosa Group is a member of the California Production Coalition. The series includes:

Inside Camtec: The Boutique Camera House Behind Films From Damien Chazelle, Denis Villeneuve, Bradley Cooper & More

From “Barbie” to “Bridgerton”: Entertainment Partners is the Secret Sauce Behind Many of the Films & Shows You Love

The Studio Giant You’ve Never Heard Of: How MBS Group Powers James Cameron and Some of Hollywood’s Biggest Productions

 

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 Featured image: Zendaya is Chain in “Dune: Part Two.” Courtesy Warner Bros.

BAFTA Film Award Nominations: “One Battle After Another” & “Sinners” Lead the Pack Again

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The British Academy has now weighed in and released its 2026 BAFTA Film Award Nominations in London on Tuesday, setting up what will be a very intriguing showdown of the year’s best films. Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another topped all films with 14 nominations, followed closely by Ryan Coogler‘s Sinners, which sank its teeth into 13.

This follows last week’s Oscar nominations, in which Coogler’s original period vampire thriller made history by capturing 16 nominations, followed by Anderson’s political thriller with 13.

Chloé Zhao’s luminous drama Hamnet and Josh Safdie’s breakneck table tennis epic Marty Supreme each tied with 11 BAFTA noms. They were followed by Guillermo del Toro’s gothic Frankenstein and Joachim Trier’s drama Sentimental Value, which each earned 8 a piece. Yorgos Lanthimos’ paranoid black comedy Bugonia and Kirk Jones’ dramedy I Swear nabbed five noms apiece.

One Battle After Another, Sinners, Hamnet, Marty Supreme, and Sentimental Value will vie for Best Film. Coogler and Safdie are first-time nominees in the Best Director category with Sinners and Marty Supreme, respectively. They’ll compete with Lanthimos (Bugonia), Anderson (One Battle After Another), Zhao (Hamnet), and Trier (Sentimental Value).

In the Outstanding British Film category, 28 Years Later, The Ballad of Wallis Island, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, Die My Life, H is For Hawk, I Swear, Mr. Burton, Pillion, and Steve will contend.

Jon M. Chu’s Wicked: For Good, which was shut out of the Oscars, was nominated for two BAFTA Awards—for Paul Tazewell’s costume design, and for the hair & make up work of Frances Hannon, Laura Blount, Mark Coulier, and Sarah Nuth.

This year’s BAFTA film awards ceremony will take place on Sunday, February 22, at London’s Royal Festival Hall, and will be led by Scottish actor and writer Alan Cumming.

Check out the full list here:

Best Film
HAMNET Liza Marshall, Pippa Harris, Nicolas Gonda, Steven Spielberg, Sam Mendes 
MARTY SUPREME Timothée Chalamet, Anthony Katagas, Eli Bush, Ronald Bronstein, Josh Safdie 
ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER Adam Somner, Sara Murphy, Paul Thomas Anderson 
SENTIMENTAL VALUE Maria Ekerhovd, Andrea Berentsen Ottmar 
SINNERS Zinzi Coogler, Sev Ohanian, Ryan Coogler 

Outstanding British Film
28 YEARS LATER Danny Boyle, Andrew Macdonald, Peter Rice, Bernard Bellew, Alex Garland 
THE BALLAD OF WALLIS ISLAND James Griffiths, Rupert Majendie, Tom Basden, Tim Key  
BRIDGET JONES: MAD ABOUT THE BOY Michael Morris, Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Jo Wallett, Helen Fielding, Dan Mazer, Abi Morgan 
DIE MY LOVE Lynne Ramsay, Martin Scorsese, Jennifer Lawrence, Justine Cirrocchi, Andrea Calderwood, Enda Walsh, Alice Birch 
H IS FOR HAWK Philippa Lowthorpe, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Emma Donoghue 
HAMNET Chloé Zhao, Liza Marshall, Pippa Harris, Nicolas Gonda, Steven Spielberg, Sam Mendes, Maggie O’Farrell 
I SWEAR Kirk Jones, Georgia Bayliff, Piers Tempest 
MR BURTON Marc Evans, Ed Talfan, Josh Hyams, Hannah Thomas, Trevor Matthews, Tom Bullough 
PILLION Harry Lighton, Emma Norton, Lee Groombridge, Ed Guiney, Andrew Lowe 
STEVE Tim Mielants, Alan Moloney, Cillian Murphy, Max Porter 

Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer  
THE CEREMONY Jack King (Director, Writer), Hollie Bryan (Producer), Lucy Meer (Producer) 
MY FATHER’S SHADOW Akinola Davies Jr. (Director), Wale Davies (Writer) 
PILLION Harry Lighton (Director, Writer)  
A WANT IN HER Myrid Carten (Director) 
WASTEMAN Cal McMau (Director), Hunter Andrews (Writer), Eoin Doran (Writer) 
 
Film Not in the English Language 
IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT Jafar Panahi, Philippe Martin  
THE SECRET AGENT Kleber Mendonça Filho, Emilie Lesclaux 
SENTIMENTAL VALUE Joachim Trier, Maria Ekerhovd, Andrea Berentsen Ottmar 
SIRĀT Oliver Laxe, Domingo Corral 
THE VOICE OF HIND RAJAB Kaouther Ben Hania, Nadim Cheikhrouha 
 
Documentary
2000 METERS TO ANDRIIVKA Mstyslav Chernov, Michelle Mizner, Raney Aronson-Rath 
APOCALYPSE IN THE TROPICS Petra Costa, Alessandra Orofino 
COVER-UP Laura Poitras, Mark Obenhaus, Olivia Streisand, Yoni Golijev 
MR. NOBODY AGAINST PUTIN David Borenstein, Helle Faber, Radovan Síbrt, Alžběta Karásková 
THE PERFECT NEIGHBOR Geeta Gandbhir, Alisa Payne, Nikon Kwantu, Sam Bisbee 
 
Animated Film
ELIO Madeline Sharafian, Domee Shi, Adrian Molina, Mary Alice Drumm 
LITTLE AMÉLIE Mailys Vallade, Liane-Cho Han, Nidia Santiago, Edwina Liard, Claire Le Combe, Henri Magalon 
ZOOTROPOLIS 2 Jared Bush, Byron Howard, Yvett Merino 
 
Children’s & Family Film 
ARCO Ugo Bienvenu, Félix De Givry, Sophie Mas, Natalie Portman 
BOONG Lakshmipriya Devi, Ritesh Sidhwani 
LILO & STITCH Dean Fleischer Camp, Jonathan Eirich 
ZOOTROPOLIS 2 Jared Bush, Byron Howard, Yvett Merino

Director
BUGONIA Yorgos Lanthimos 
HAMNET Chloé Zhao 
MARTY SUPREME Josh Safdie 
ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER Paul Thomas Anderson 
SENTIMENTAL VALUE Joachim Trier 
SINNERS Ryan Coogler 

Original Screenplay 
I SWEAR Kirk Jones 
MARTY SUPREME Ronald Bronstein, Josh Safdie 
THE SECRET AGENT Kleber Mendonça Filho  
SENTIMENTAL VALUE Eskil Vogt, Joachim Trier 
SINNERS Ryan Coogler 

Adapted Screenplay 
THE BALLAD OF WALLIS ISLAND Tom Basden, Tim Key 
BUGONIA Will Tracy 
HAMNET Chloé Zhao, Maggie O’Farrell 
ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER Paul Thomas Anderson 
PILLION Harry Lighton 
 
Leading Actress 
JESSIE BUCKLEY Hamnet 
ROSE BYRNE If I Had Legs I’d Kick You 
KATE HUDSON Song Sung Blue 
CHASE INFINITI One Battle After Another 
RENATE REINSVE Sentimental Value 
EMMA STONE Bugonia 
 
Leading Actor 
ROBERT ARAMAYO I Swear 
TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET Marty Supreme 
LEONARDO DICAPRIO One Battle After Another 
ETHAN HAWKE Blue Moon 
MICHAEL B. JORDAN Sinners 
JESSE PLEMONS Bugonia 
 
Supporting Actress
ODESSA A’ZION Marty Supreme 
INGA IBSDOTTER LILLEAAS Sentimental Value 
WUNMI MOSAKU Sinners 
CAREY MULLIGAN The Ballad of Wallis Island 
TEYANA TAYLOR One Battle After Another 
EMILY WATSON Hamnet 
 
Supporting Actor 
BENICIO DEL TORO One Battle After Another 
JACOB ELORDI Frankenstein 
PAUL MESCAL Hamnet 
PETER MULLAN I Swear 
SEAN PENN One Battle After Another 
STELLAN SKARSGÅRD Sentimental Value 

Casting
I SWEAR Lauren Evans 
MARTY SUPREME Jennifer Venditti 
ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER Cassandra Kulukundis 
SENTIMENTAL VALUE Yngvill Kolset Haga, Avy Kaufman 
SINNERS Francine Maisler 
 
Cinematography  
FRANKENSTEIN Dan Laustsen 
MARTY SUPREME Darius Khondji 
ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER Michael Bauman 
SINNERS Autumn Durald Arkapaw 
TRAIN DREAMS Adolpho Veloso 
 
Editing 
F1 Stephen Mirrione 
A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE Kirk Baxter 
MARTY SUPREME Ronald Bronstein, Josh Safdie 
ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER Andy Jurgensen 
SINNERS Michael P. Shawver 
 
Costume Design 
FRANKENSTEIN Kate Hawley 
HAMNET Malgosia Turzanska 
MARTY SUPREME Miyako Bellizzi 
SINNERS Ruth E. Carter 
WICKED: FOR GOOD Paul Tazewell 
 
Make up & Hair
FRANKENSTEIN Jordan Samuel, Cliona Furey, Mike Hill, Megan Many 
HAMNET Nicole Stafford 
MARTY SUPREME Kyra Panchenko, Kay Georgiou, Mike Fontaine 
SINNERS Siân Richards, Shunika Terry, Ken Diaz, Mike Fontaine 
WICKED: FOR GOOD Frances Hannon, Laura Blount, Mark Coulier, Sarah Nuth 
 
Original Score
BUGONIA Jerskin Fendrix 
FRANKENSTEIN Alexandre Desplat 
HAMNET Max Richter 
ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER Jonny Greenwood 
SINNERS Ludwig Göransson 
 
Production Design 
FRANKENSTEIN Tamara Deverell, Shane Vieau 
HAMNET Fiona Crombie, Alice Felton 
MARTY SUPREME Jack Fisk, Adam Willis  
ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER Florencia Martin, Anthony Carlino 
SINNERS Hannah Beachler, Monique Champagne 
 
Sound
F1 Gareth John, Al Nelson, Gwendolyn Yates Whittle, Gary A. Rizzo, Juan Peralta 
FRANKENSTEIN Greg Chapman, Nathan Robitallie, Nelson Ferreira, Christian Cooke, Brad Zoem 
ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER Jose Antonio Garcia, Christopher Scarabosio, Tony Villaflor 
SINNERS Chris Welcker, Benny Burtt, Brandon Proctor, Steve Boeddeker, Felipe Pacheco  
WARFARE Mitch Low, Ben Barker, Howard Bargroff, Richard Spooner 

Special Visual Effects
AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH Joe Letteri, Richard Baneham, Daniel Barrett, Eric Saindon  
F1 Ryan Tudhope, Keith Alfred Dawson, Nicolas Chevallier, Robert Harrington 
FRANKENSTEIN Dennis Berardi, Ayo Burgess, Ivan Busquets, José Granell 
HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON Christian Mänz, Francois Lambert, Glen McIntosh, Terry Palmer 
THE LOST BUS Charlie Noble, Brandon K. McLaughlin, David Zaretti 
 
British Short Animation
CARDBOARD J.P. Vine, Michaela Manas Malina 
SOLSTICE Luke Angus 
TWO BLACK BOYS IN PARADISE Baz Sells, Dean Atta, Ben Jackson  
 
British Short Film 
MAGID / ZAFAR Luis Hindman, Sufiyaan Salam, Aidan Robert Brooks 
NOSTALGIE Kathryn Ferguson, Stacey Gregg, Marc Robinson, Kath Mattock 
TERENCE Edem Kelman, Noah Reich 
THIS IS ENDOMETRIOSIS Georgie Wileman, Matt Houghton, Harriette Wright 
WELCOME HOME FRECKLES Huiju Park, Nathan Hendren 
 
EE Rising Star Award (voted for by the public)  
ROBERT ARAMAYO 
MILES CATON 
CHASE INFINITI 
ARCHIE MADEKWE 
POSY STERLING 
 

Featured image: Caption: (L-r) LEONARDO DI CAPRIO as Bob Ferguson and BENICIO DEL TORO as Sensei St. Carlos in “One Battle After Another.” A Warner Bros. Pictures Release. Photo Credit: Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures; Caption: MICHAEL B. JORDAN as Smoke and as Stack, in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “SINNERS,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

“28 Years Later: The Bone Temple”: How VFX Bloodied the Jimmys and Brought Samson to Life

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Directed by Nia DaCosta, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple continues the story of 28 Years Later, where Spike (Alfie Williams), a young boy living in a community isolated from the infected, risks everything to find a cure for his ailing mother. Now fighting for his survival, he’s forced into a group of Satan-worshiping hooligans led by Sir Jimmy Crystal (Jack O’Connell), where “charity” means offering the living to Old Nick through grotesque and twisted rituals.

Jack O’Connell and Maiya Eastmond in “The Bone Temple.” Courtesy Sony Pictures

For production, it meant developing in-camera techniques using special effects, prosthetic makeup, and stunts to keep the surreal violence tactile and believable – all before visual effects provided the finishing touches. “Nia’s approach to the visual effects was for us to be a supporting role and to help facilitate things they were unable to shoot,” says VFX supervisor Dean Koonjul of Union VFX, the same post house behind the flesh-eating expansion of Danny Boyle’s reboot. With The Bone Temple, the VFX work went far beyond adding more gore to the bloodbath. The team expanded the bleak world, cast the infected in a new light, and ignited infernos at nearly every turn.

 

DaCosta crafted her own look and tone, which was photographed by Sean Bobbit (12 Years a Slave), not on iPhones like its predecessor – framed by Anthony Dod Mantle – but on the Arri Alexa 35 with anamorphic lenses. “We did a lot of long takes where we would shoot whole sequences or whole beats of action in one go,” notes Koonjul about the film’s shooting style. “We didn’t want to interrupt the flow by resetting, so we had an approach where we would do a pass without VFX and then a pass for VFX.”

Depending on the scene, the VFX team would place tracking markers on actors or collaborate with the special effects and prosthetics department to plan what would be finalized in post. “Our methods were really just to try and get the best out of the performances,” Koonjul says. “So in certain sequences, there might be shots with no VFX because it was all done in-camera, or shots where there was no in-camera work. We had it all, but it also meant we had a lot of good references to match to, and hopefully the results were fairly seamless.”

 

One scene involves Spike’s initiation into Jimmy’s cult, a group of blonde-wigged, tracksuit-wearing blokes all named Jimmy. Spike is made to fight another member to the death, or be killed if he refuses. Shot at an abandoned leisure center, the visual effects were designed to be invisible. “Because of the confined space, there’s a lot of circling and spiraling to the camera work around the action and the actors. So we just allowed those performances to play out to not disrupt the actors,” Koonjul notes. Special effects designed a rig that squirted blood for its climactic moment, which visual effects embellished in post. 

Jack O’Connell in “The Bone Temple.” Courtesy Sony Pictures

Another was a barn sequence that ended up in flames. “The special effects team rigged that whole barn. One full side of it was completely covered in scaffolds they had rigged to burn. And we did burn it. The only question was how we could help to make it as safe as possible,” Koonjul expresses. “So we added extra fire to certain places so that it’s encroaching further and enhancing what was there.” Instead of relying solely on computer-simulated fire, visual effects filmed practical fire elements during shoot days and layered them onto the burning barn. “The aim was to try and avoid going down an FX simulation route and adding CG fire,” he says. The results make the fire feel strikingly real.  

Erin Kellyman and Jack O’Connell in “The Bone Temple.” Courtesy Sony Pictures.

Also returning is Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes), the enigmatic doctor who tried to save Spike’s mother, and the Alpha (Chi Lewis-Parry), the faster, stronger (more intelligent) variation of the infected. Kelson’s relationship with the Alpha, which he names Samson, has evolved. He’s trying to find a cure, or at least alleviate some of the pain Samson experiences through sedatives. DaCosta brings viewers into the Alpha’s psyche, framing distinct close-ups revealing his emotional state. “The first time we meet Samson, we see him across a field from Kelson. He is in his sort of full Alpha berserker look at that point. And then, as the film progresses, and he gets more humanized, his wounds start to heal. He’s looking more and more naturalistic,” says the VFX supervisor. “They had four stages to him with multiple contacts and makeup to show that transition that was combined with effects work. There was also more work pushing Kelson to be a bit more vibrant, and that sort of iodine, Satan look. So, in that first scene between them, there’s that contrast. Then, as we go, their skin tones start to resemble each other.”

Chi Lewis-Parry and Ralph Fiennes in “The Bone Temple. “Courtesy Sony Pictures

“Our work was really driven by the performances and what worked better in terms of the actors,” says Koonjul about the overall approach to the film. “As a sequel to Danny’s film, we had to find fairly pragmatic ways of solving problems and getting the most out of the budget and the actual resources that add on this show. It’s a much smaller project. We had a smaller team, and it’s a smaller shot count. But I don’t think the quality of the work we did was any less.”

Ralph Fiennes in “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple.” Courtesy Sony Pictures.

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is in theaters now. 

Featured image: Chi Lewis-Parry in “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple.” Courtesy Sony Pictures.

How “The Rip” Writer/Director Joe Carnahan Turned a Real Heist Into his Gripping Ben Affleck/Matt Damon Caper

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There’s a moment in The Rip, the newest direct-to-Netflix release, written and directed by Joe Carnahan, that is quiet, devastating, and profoundly human, when everything else seems to fall away. The gunfire, the paranoia, the ticking-clock tension of a crime thriller suddenly recede, leaving only grief, memory, and connection. It’s a scene that lingers long after the film ends, and it encapsulates what makes Joe Carnahan’s latest film feel so distinctive: visceral yet intimate, brutal yet tender, propulsive yet deeply reflective.

When I sat down with Carnahan to discuss his experience directing The Rip, I began where any viewer who’s seen the film likely would: with admiration. The movie is undeniably dark, but it never pushes the audience away. Instead, it draws us closer, keeping us engaged even as it explores loss, betrayal, and moral compromise. “I think the key is to always involve an audience,” Carnahan told me. “They’ve got to care about the people they’re watching. They have to have a rooting interest in the people on screen.”

That philosophy is the backbone of The Rip, and it begins with a story that is far more personal than its crime-thriller exterior might suggest.

 

A Story Born From Grief

At its core, The Rip originated from a real-life story Carnahan heard years ago from a close friend, one of the people involved in the actual heist that inspired the film. “He was part of the actual rip,” Carnahan explained. “In the real world, it was an older Colombian guy, and a lot of that stuff [included in the narrative] is still close to the truth, as authentically as we could.” But Carnahan didn’t stop at adapting a crime story. He made a pivotal choice to weave in something far more intimate: his friend’s devastating loss of a child. Matt Damon’s character, Dane, carries that grief throughout the film, and Carnahan was deeply conscious of the responsibility that came with fictionalizing such pain. “I think part of me was looking to help my friend, as clumsily as it may have appeared, through his grief,” he said. “Or give him a totem in some way…something that would live on.”

THE RIP. Matt Damon as Lieutenant Dane Dumars in The Rip. Cr. Claire Folger/Netflix © 2025.

Crucially, Carnahan sought his friend’s blessing before moving forward. “I didn’t want to exploit the memory of his child,” he emphasized. “I wanted to give him something to pour that into, if it was possible.” That intention shaped the emotional texture of the film. While The Rip operates in shadowy moral territory, it is also suffused with empathy and a quiet sense of hope. “It came from the best parts of us,” Carnahan reflected. “The parts of us that grieve, the parts of us that hurt, the parts of us that agonize. And, yeah, there’s darkness to it, but there’s also this great undercurrent of hope.”

THE RIP. (L to R) Steven Yeun as Detective Mike Ro and Writer/Director Joe Carnahan and Matt Damon as Lieutenant Dane Dumars on the set of The Rip. Cr. Claire Folger/Netflix © 2025.

Finding the Film’s Tone

Balancing that emotional depth with the mechanics of a high-stakes thriller was one of Carnahan’s central challenges. For him, tone is not something imposed through style alone. It grows organically from character. “To me, the interpersonal was always the engine underneath it all,” he said. “Once you do that, the rest of those building blocks are really technical screenwriting.”

Carnahan described the film’s tonal architecture as a kind of genre mosaic. “Now it’s this Hitchcockian thing. Now it’s an Agatha Christie thing. Now it’s a Michael Mann thing,” he said, laughing. “Once we got through the structural aspect, the actual writing of the screenplay took me about five weeks.” By the time production began, Carnahan knew these characters intimately. “I knew their voices,” he said. “I knew what they were about.” That clarity carried through post-production as well, thanks in large part to his longtime collaborator and editor Kevin Hale. “Kev’s always like, ‘I’m looking for the heart of a scene,’” Carnahan said. “There’s a thesis to every scene.”

THE RIP. (L to R) Ben Affleck as Det Sergeant JD Byrne and Writer/Director Joe Carnahan on the set of The Rip.Cr. Claire Folger/Netflix © 2025.

Casting Without Preconceptions

Despite working with some of the biggest names in film, Carnahan insists he never writes with specific actors in mind. “I’m a big believer in just writing the character,” he said. “The right actor will come along and plug themselves in and make it better.” That openness paid off. The ensemble chemistry in The Rip feels lived-in and authentic, something Carnahan believes audiences instinctively recognize. “You felt the team spirit,” he said. “And that’s the best trick you can play, is getting the audience to invest in the people on screen.”

When I jokingly referenced the promising careers of the film’s “young actors,” Carnahan deadpanned, “Yeah, whatever. Matt Affleck and Ben Damon. You may hear from them.”

THE RIP. (L to R) Steven Yeun as Detective Mike Ro, Matt Damon as Lieutenant Dane Dumars, Ben Affleck as Detective Sergeant J.D. Byrne and Kyle Chandler as DEA Agent Mateo ‘Matty’ Nix in The Rip. Cr. Claire Folger/Netflix © 2025.

Turning Limitations Into Strengths

One of the film’s most striking qualities is how much tension it generates within confined spaces. Large portions of The Rip unfold in tight interiors like vans, houses, and garages, settings that might intimidate some filmmakers. “It never scared me,” Carnahan said. “If it’s compelling, it doesn’t matter where the hell you are. I could shoot this at a landfill, and it’s going to be interesting.” Rather than treating those constraints as obstacles, Carnahan embraced them. “If you approach it glass half empty, it’s a problem,” he explained. “Glass half full? We can do some really cool shit here.” The result is a claustrophobic intimacy that heightens paranoia and suspense. “There’s an intimacy to it,” he said. “And in that intimacy is the paranoia, the fear, all intertwined.”

THE RIP. (L to R) Ben Affleck as Det Sergeant JD Byrne and Matt Damon as Lieutenant Dane Dumars in The Rip. Cr. Warrick Page/Netflix © 2025.

Playing with Perception

One standout sequence, an unbearably tense street encounter, embodies Carnahan’s minimalist approach to suspense. “It’s not elaborate,” he noted. “That’s literally five camera setups.” What elevates the scene is performance and audience expectation, particularly when it comes to Matt Damon. “Now you’re trading on Matt Damon, the movie star,” Carnahan said. “He wouldn’t do something like this…what’s going on?” That tension between character and cultural perception becomes a tool. “There’s a lot of little points on that voodoo doll that you can poke at,” he said, “that elicit a response from the audience.”

Carnahan is quick to downplay his own directorial authority, insisting that much of his direction happens on the page. “A lot of my directing is in the screenwriting,” he said. Sometimes, a single note is enough. He recalled one moment when he told Damon to simply look back at a house. “And he understood, this is the ‘is anybody gonna see me if I shoot this guy?’ moment.”

THE RIP. (L to R) Matt Damon as Lieutenant Dane Dumars and Ben Affleck as Det Sergeant J.D. Byrne in The Rip. Cr. Warrick Page/Netflix © 2025.

Collaboration and Craft

Carnahan’s collaboration with cinematographer Juan Miguel Asperoz and editor Kevin Hale is rooted in decades of friendship. “We’re all in our 50’s,” he said. “And yet we still approach it with this childlike enthusiasm.” They talk about movies, about their kids, about life, and those conversations inform the film’s visual language. “We’re committing to shooting the movie a certain way,” Carnahan said. “And not going off of that.” That commitment allows for discovery rather than chaos. “It’s through that process of being really thorough that allows for exploration,” he explained. “As opposed to just free-wheeling it.”

THE RIP. (L to R) Scott Adkins as FBI Agent Del Byrne, Ben Affleck as Detective Sergeant J.D. Byrne, Catalina Sandino Moreno as Detective ‘Lolo’ Salazar and Teyana Taylor as Detective Numa Baptiste and Daisuke Tsuji as FBI Agent Logan Casiano in The Rip. Cr. Claire Folger/Netflix © 2025.

The Beach, the Ending, and What Lingers

When I asked which moment was most rewarding, Carnahan immediately pointed to the final scene of the beach. “That was a real joy,” he said. Originally longer, the scene evolved into something quieter and more profound. “You just rely on the unspoken,” he said. “I knew that would be a big moment, these two old friends of 40 years sitting on a beach together.”

The child in that scene, Jackie, carries personal significance. “That’s my son,” Carnahan revealed. “Those personal touches are important to me.” For Carnahan, that fusion of personal truth and collaborative craft is where films find their power. “When it comes from the interpersonal,” he said, “it’s always better. It’s always more powerful.”

Making the Movie the Right Way

Unlike many of his earlier, more precarious independent productions, The Rip benefited from studio support that allowed the film to be made properly, but not extravagantly. “We had the means and the resources to make this movie the way it should be made,” Carnahan said. “But it was never an extravagance.” The shoot lasted 36 days, a pace Carnahan prefers. “I like that natural propulsion,” he said, “I’ll never do a 100-day movie. You lose momentum.”

Everything that was built was used. “The asks were never over the top. We built the set, we built the stash house set, we built the garage in Jersey. Exteriors were in Harbor City, in Long Beach, California. We did a little bit in Miami. It was perfect. It was exactly what it needed. Everything we built, we shot. There was no excess.”

THE RIP. (L to R) Steven Yeun as Detective Mike Ro and Teyana Taylor as Detective Numa Baptiste in The Rip. Cr. Warrick Page/Netflix © 2025.

On the final cut of the film, Carnahan expressed his delight that the studio shared his vision. “It’s rare that you get a moment like this, where all of us, Ben and Matt, Artists Equity, Netflix, and I, we all got our favorite version of the movie. I think we all had that wonderful symmetry of agreement…It’s like, okay, great, this is the best version of the film.”

What He Hopes Audiences Take Away

Carnahan’s hopes for audiences are refreshingly simple. “I just want them to see something that they love,” he said. “I want them to go, ‘I want to watch it again because I want to see how much I missed.” The film is dense with subtle cues and quiet signposts, rewarding close attention. But above all, Carnahan wants viewers to feel their time was well spent. “We gave them two hours of their time well spent,” he said. “That’s really the goal.”

THE RIP. (L to R) Ben Affleck as Det Sergeant JD Byrne and Matt Damon as Lieutenant Dane Dumars in The Rip. Cr. Claire Folger/Netflix © 2025.

In an era dominated by noise and excess, The Rip stands out for its restraint and emotional honesty. Beneath the crime and tension lies something deeper: a meditation on grief, loyalty, and the fragile bonds that hold people together. It’s a film that doesn’t just entertain, it remembers.

 

Watch The Rip streaming now on Netflix.

 

 

 Featured image: RIP. (L to R) Matt Damon as Lieutenant Dane Dumars and Ben Affleck as Det Sergeant JD Byrne in RIP. Cr. Claire Folger/Netflix © 2024.

 

“Masters of the Universe” Trailer Finds Nicholas Galitzine’s He-Man Battling Jared Leto’s Skeletor

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The first teaser for director Travis Knight‘s Masters of the Universe finds Nicholas Galitzine’s He-Man describing a pretty fantastical world—talking tigers, spaceships, and magic swords that can make a man as mighty as a god—a world that we know He-Man himself inhabits. The catch? Galitzine’s reading this story while sitting on a bed, wearing a shirt and tie, no less, decidedly not on the planet Eternia.

We learn that He-Man, aka Prince Adam of Eternia, was sent away to Earth by his mother, Queen Marlena (Charlotte Riley), to keep him safe. Now, instead of wielding the Sword of Grayskull to transform him into He-Man, Adam Glenn, as he’s now known, is toiling away in a cubicle in corporate America. That is, until he gets a text that reads “I found your sword.”

The found sword (held in a toy store by a giant plastic He-Man-like mannequin) leads Adam back to Eternia, where danger awaits. And so do friends, including Duncan/Man-At-Arms (Idris Elba), Roboto (voiced by Kristen Wiig), Cringer/Battle Cat (He-Man’s loyal house cat that turns into a mighty tiger), and Teela (Camila Mendes). He-Man will need all the help he can get when he sees who he’ll be facing—the skull-faced sorcerer Skeletor (Jared Leto) and his forces.

Jared Leto stars as ‘Skeletor’ in MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE.

Knight is adapting from one of the most beloved if brief running cartoons of the 1980s, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, which ran for two seasons of 65 episodes each, spawning two films; a 1987 live-action Masters of the Universe, directed by Gary Goddard and starring Dolph Lundgren as He-Man, Frank Langella as Skeletor, and Meg Foster as Evil-Lyn, and He-Man and She-Ra: The Secret of the Sword, which then spawned the spinoff series She-Ra: Princess of Power.

The cast also includes Alison Brie as Evil-Lynn, James Purefoy as King Randor, Morena Baccarin as The Sorceress, and Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson as Malcolm/Fisto. 

Check out the new trailer here. Masters of the Universe hits theaters on June 5.

Featured image: (l-r): Roboto (Kristen Wiig), Man At Arms (Idris Elba), Adam (Nicholas Galitzine), Teela (Camila Mendes) and Cringer in MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE.

“Sinners” Makes Oscars History as Full 2026 Nominations Are Announced

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Your 2026 Oscar nominations are here, presented in the wee hours on Thursday morning by Oscar-nominated actress Danielle Brooks and Thunderbolts* star Lewis Pullman at the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater.

Ryan Coogler‘s Sinners continued its stellar awards-season run, topping all films with an astonishing 16 nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor for Michael B. Jordan, Best Supporting Actress for Wunmi Mosaku, Best Original Screenplay for Coogler, and Best Cinematography for Autumn Durald Arkapaw.

As expected, writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another (Warner Bros.) had another victorious performance this morning, landing 13 nominations, including for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor for Leonardo DiCaprio, Best Supporting Actress for Teyana Taylor, and Best Supporting Actor for both Benicio Del Toro and Sean Penn.

Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value(Neon) also fared extremely well, nabbing nine noms, including for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress in a Leading Role for Renate Reinsve, Actor in a Supporting Role for Stellan Skarsgård, and Supporting Actress for both Elle Fanning and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas.

This year’s Oscars will also be the first to include (at long last!) casting directors, and in the inaugural nominees in this category are Francine Maisler for Sinners, Gabriel Domingues for The Secret Agent, Cassandra Kulukundis for One Battle After Another, Jennifer Venditti for Marty Supreme, and Nina Gold forHamnet.

And in another bit of interesting history, Focus Features became the first studio in the modern era to land three Best Actress noms in a single year, for Jessie Buckley (Hamnet), Emma Stone (Bugonia), and Kate Hudson (Song Sung Blue).

Check out the full list of nominees below. This year’s Oscars will be hosted by Conan O’Brien for the second year in a row, and will air live on ABC and Hulu from the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles on Sunday, March 15, beginning at 4 p.m. PT.

Best Picture

Bugonia
F1
Frankenstein
Hamnet
Marty Supreme
One Battle After Another
The Secret Agent
Sentimental Value
Sinners
Train Dreams

Best Director

Chloé Zhao, Hamnet
Josh Safdie, Marty Supreme
Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another
Joachim Trier, Sentimental Value
Ryan Coogler, Sinners

Actor in a Leading Role

Timothée Chalamet, Marty Supreme
Leonardo DiCaprio, One Battle After Another
Ethan Hawke, Blue Moon
Michael B. Jordan, Sinners
Wagner Moura, The Secret Agent

Actress in a Leading Role

Jessie Buckley, Hamnet
Rose Byrne, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
Kate Hudson, Song Sung Blue
Renate Reinsve, Sentimental Value
Emma Stone, Bugonia

Actor in a Supporting Role

Benicio Del Toro, One Battle After Another
Jacob Elordi, Frankenstein
Delroy Lindo, Sinners
Sean Penn, One Battle After Another
Stellan Skarsgård, Sentimental Value

Actress in a Supporting Role

Elle Fanning, Sentimental Value
Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, Sentimental Value
Amy Madigan, Weapons
Wunmi Mosaku, Sinners
Teyana Taylor, One Battle After Another

Adapted Screenplay

Bugonia, Will Tracy
Frankenstein, Guillermo del Toro
Hamnet, Chloé Zhao & Maggie O’Farrell
One Battle After Another, Paul Thomas Anderson
Train Dreams, Clint Bentley & Greg Kwedar

Original Screenplay

Blue Moon, Robert Kaplow
It Was Just an Accident, Jafar Panahi & Script Collaborators
Marty Supreme, Ronald Bronstein & Josh Safdie
Sentimental Value, Joachim Trier & Eskil Vogt
Sinners, Ryan Coogler

Animated Short Film

Butterfly
Forevergreen
The Girl Who Cried Pearls
Retirement Plan
The Three Sisters

Costume Design

Deborah L. Scott, Avatar: Fire and Ash
Kate Hawley, Frankenstein
Malgosia Turzanska, Hamnet
Miyako Bellizzi, Marty Supreme
Ruth E. Carter, Sinners

Achievement in Casting

Nina Gold, Hamnet
Jennifer Venditti, Marty Supreme
Cassandra Kulukundis, One Battle After Another
Gabriel Domingues, The Secret Agent
Francine Maisler, Sinners

Live Action Short Film

Butcher’s Stain
A Friend of Dorothy
Jane Austen’s Period Drama
The Singers
Two People Exchanging Saliva

Makeup and Hairstyling

Frankenstein
Kokuho
Sinners
The Smashing Machine
The Ugly Stepsister

Original Score

Jerskin Fendrix, Bugonia
Alexandre Desplat, Frankenstein
Max Richter, Hamnet
Jonny Greenwood, One Battle After Another
Ludwig Göransson, Sinners

Animated Feature Film

Butterfly
Forevergreen
The Girl Who Cried Pearls
Retirement Plan
The Three Sisters

Cinematography

Dan Lausten, Frankenstein
Michael Bauman, One Battle After Another
Darius Khondji, Marty Supreme
Autumn Durald Arkapaw, Sinners
Adolpho Veloso, Train Dreams

Documentary Feature Film

The Alabama Solution
Come See Me in the Good Light
Cutting Through Rocks
Mr. Nobody Against Putin
The Perfect Neighbor

Documentary Short Film

All the Empty Rooms
Armed Only With a Camera: The Life and Death of Brent Renaud
Children No More: “Were and Are Gone”
The Devil Is Busy
Perfectly a Strangeness

Film Editing

F1, Stephen Mirrione
Marty Supreme, Ronald Bronstein & Josh Safdie
One Battle After Another, Andy Jurgensen
Sentimental Value, Olivier Bugge Coutté
Sinners, Michael P. Shawver

International Feature Film

Brazil, The Secret Agent
France, It Was Just an Accident
Norway, Sentimental Value
Spain, Sirât
Tunisia, The Voice of Hind Rajab

Original Song

“Dear Me” from Diane Warren: Relentless
“Golden” from KPop Demon Hunters
“Highest 2 Lowest” from Highest 2 Lowest
“I Lied To You” from Sinners
“Sweet Dreams of Joy” from Viva Verdi!
“Train Dreams” from Train Dreams

Production Design

Frankenstein, Tamara Deverell
Hamnet, Fiona Crombie
Marty Supreme, Jack Fisk
One Battle After Another, Florencia Martin
Sinners, Hannah Beachler; Set Decoration: Monique Champagne

Sound

F1
Frankenstein
One Battle After Another
Sinners
Sirât
Train Dreams

Visual Effects

Avatar: Fire and Ash
F1
Jurassic World Rebirth
The Lost Bus
Sinners

Featured image: L-r; MICHAEL B. JORDAN as Smoke and as Stack, in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “SINNERS,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures; Jessie Buckley stars as Agnes in director Chloé Zhao’s HAMNET, a Focus Features release.
Credit: Agata Grzybowska / © 2025 FOCUS FEATURES LLC; LEONARDO DI CAPRIO as Bob Ferguson in “One Battle After Another.” A Warner Bros. Pictures Release. Photo Credit: Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures; TEYANA TAYLOR as Perfidia in “One Battle After Another.” A Warner Bros. Pictures Release. Photo Credit: Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures

First “Masters of The Universe” Teaser Reveals Nicholas Galitzine as He-Man

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Over a cleverly retrofitted old MGM logo (the roaring lion remains, but beneath him is written “An Amazon Company”) on an old TV, a narrator welcomes to the first teaser for director Travis Knight’s Masters of the Universe. We see an old cartridge being pushed into a console while the narrator intones, “Not long ago, when times were simpler…this was a healthy breakfast.” Cut to what appears to be a bowl of Fruit Loops, certainly one of this writer’s favorite ways to start the day in the 1980s, and certainly terrible for my health. We then see what passed for a healthy workout in the 80s (jogging, jazzercise), and then, at last, we’re shown what a hero used to be—He-Man, the be-muscled, bowl-cutted warrior who was the centerpiece of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, one of the most popular cartoons on TV, running for two seasons of 65 episodes each, spawning two films; a 1987 live-action Masters of the Universe, directed by Gary Goddard and starring Dolph Lundgren as He-Man, Frank Langella as Skeletor, and Meg Foster as Evil-Lyn, and He-Man and She-Ra: The Secret of the Sword, which then spawned the spinoff series She-Ra: Princess of Power.

Now, Knight, a veteran animation director, has helmed his own live-action take starring Nicholas Galitzine as He-Man, aka Prince Adam of Eternia. While Prince Adam is exiled to Earth for years, his homeland is now being ruled by one of the great villains of the 1980s animated world, the skull-faced sorcerer Skeletor (Jared Leto).

So, He-Man plans to return to his world and save it, and he’ll need his pals to do that. Enter Man-At-Arms (Idris Elba), Teela (Camila Mendes), the Sorceress (Morena Baccarin), Fisto (Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson), Ram-Man (Jon Xue Zhang), Roboto (Kristen Wiig) and Adam’s parents, King Randor (James Purefoy), and Queen Marlena (Charlotte Riley). Opposing them are the fearsome forces of Skeletor, including Evil-Lyn (Alison Brie), Trap Jaw (Sam C. Wilson), Goat Man (Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson), and Tri-Klops (Kojo Attah).

You won’t learn any of this in the teaser below, but the full trailer arrives tomorrow, giving us a much deeper look at Knight’s adaptation.

Masters of the Universe arrives in theaters on June 5.

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

Pilou Asbæk on Playing a Morally Compromised Cop in Prime Video’s “Snake Killer”

Prime Video Reveals First Look at Sophie Turner in Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s “Tomb Raider” Series

“Hedda” Production Designer Cara Brower on Transforming a Stunning Estate for Tessa Thompson’s Rogue Heroine

Featured image: NEW YORK, NEW YORK – APRIL 29: Nicholas Galitzine attends the Prime Video’s “The Idea Of You” New York premiere at Jazz at Lincoln Center on April 29, 2024 in New York City. (Photo by Manoli Figetakis/WireImage)

How Weta FX Brought the Villainous Ash People to Life in James Cameron’s “Avatar: Fire and Ash”

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Over a three-year period, Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) and Avatar: Fire and Ash (2025) were filmed simultaneously in New Zealand and California, beginning in September 2017 and wrapping in late 2020. While reshoots followed, the back-to-back production provided a consistent look for character appearances, specifically Spider (Jack Champion), a teenage “pinkskin” living on Pandora. With a compressed timeline, the visual effects department leaned on established tools and workflows to complete over 3,000 VFX shots for the third installment of director James Cameron’s franchise.

Fire and Ash picks up where Way of Water left off. The Sully family is in hiding, living with the Metakyina while dealing with the loss of Neteyam (Jamie Flatters). After deciding to take Spider back to the Omatikaya village, they are attacked by the Mangkwan clan, aka the Ash People, led by Varang (Oona Chaplin), a group of raiders who lost everything to a volcano. The fallout triggers old foes working with new enemies as the Sullys and Metakyina fight again for survival.

Below, senior visual effects supervisor Joe Letteri, visual effects supervisor Richard Baneham, Weta FX senior visual effects supervisor Eric Saindon, and Weta FX senior animation supervisor Daniel Barrett unpack how the villainous Ash People were brought to screen.

 

New facial animation technology introduced in The Way of Water improved the nuances of performance capture. Did the team find things to tweak for Fire and Ash?

Joe Letteri: It was pretty minimal, and the reason was that we were pretty happy with the way it worked out on Avatar 2. We didn’t want to kind of break what we already had. But for Varang, we were able to roll out a few user-side updates rather than the engine itself, making it easier for the artists to interpret and edit the facial.

Daniel Barrett: As Joe says, there were things that helped with usability, so the tool was the same. The interface was a little bit different, which were welcomed tweaks as far as the team was concerned.

Richard Baneham: The other thing is that when we have a rhythm, we don’t want to mess with it. You very rarely get to make the same movie again. We have to extend the movie. We were at full steam when we finished Avatar 2, so the system we had in place allowed us to carry the rhythm into the third film, which is phenomenal.

Varang (Oona Chaplin) in 20th Century Studios’ AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios. © 2025 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

Since you mentioned Varang, what went into creating her character and the Ash people?

Joe Letteri: Early on, it was a lot of broad strokes, like the headdress and what kind of makeup we were going to go with. These things were happening on the stage too.

Richard Baneham: That’s right. We were trying to dial in the color palette, working with the art department and getting the balance of the look of the costume, even if only a crude representation. We wanted to know if it was a uniform color, if the ash turned into a matted mess, the oiliness of the reds, and the look of her headdress.

CORAL – Costumes. Photo by Mark Fellman. © 2025 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

Joe Letteri: Then Eric dealt with a lot of the real details with Jim, like dialing in the skin texture.

Eric Saindon: We actually got models and painted them up and put them in similar costumes, because once you actually see the makeup on a person in proper lighting, sometimes the different materials act differently in the light. And they actually give you a different look on her face. What’s great is that once we got the performance on her model and Jim started seeing it come through, it all just plugged together for him. She just became this amazing character that everyone loved.

Director James Cameron and Oona Chaplin on the set of 20th Century Studios’ AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH. Photo by Mark Fellman. © 2025 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

Daniel Barrett: It was pretty amazing to show Jim Varang for the first time and get the kind of response that we got. To see Oona’s [Chaplin] performance sort of drop fully formed the first time out was a buzz for him and a real buzz for us to see his response.

 

Varang flies on a large aerial predator called a Nightwraith. What went into developing the creature?

Richard Baneham: With [lead creature designer] Zach Berge we designed a riff on a tetrapteron but we wanted her to have something unique. The primary difference was the engagement of the multiple veins and the steering mechanism and how it initiates is slightly different. Then obviously getting off the ground, she’s got slightly different legs so she can propel herself quite well. She has great talons. She makes for a great fighting creature. So the language really came from that sort of design and the need to tell the story to make it a wicked character for Neytiri to have to stand up to.

 

What inspired the look of the Ash clan’s barren village?

Eric Saindon: Jim actually had reference footage from a film he shot after the volcano went off in Vanuatu. He went there and shot a documentary, and it’s a very similar look to Ash village. He had video of kids playing in the ash, kicking it up, and walking around, and everything was just decimated. It was all white. I mean, it was terrible, but also beautiful in a weird way. That was definitely his inspiration for a lot of that whole Ash area.

Richard Baneham: We always harken back to a terrestrial reference. It’s one of the things that helps ground the audience in the visuals. So whilst it looks alien, it also looks incredibly real or credible. There are a couple of things about the village that are really interesting. Varang’s yurt. If you look at the yurt design, it’s very unusual. The next time you look at it, take a good look at the opening and see what you recognize.

(L-R) Varang (Oona Chaplin) and Quaritch (Stephen Lang) in 20th Century Studios’ AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios. © 2025 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

What do you think audiences will take away from this third film?

Richard Baneham: The intention is to really have people hopefully feel like if they didn’t pay for a movie, they’d pay for an experience. There’s something in there for everyone. It’s not a one-size-fits-all kind of movie. Broadening that demographic is always very hard, but I think Jim has always had the master touch of including everybody.

Joe Letteri: You’ve got multiple cultures, and then within each culture, except for the Ash People, you have multiple generations. So you kind of get it in two different dimensions, and he manages to keep all those moving nicely.

Eric Saindon: My four kids are from 12 to 21, and they all got something different out of the film. Some of them are dark, some are fun and exciting. It was interesting to see what impacted all of them a little bit differently.

Avatar: Fire and Ash is currently in theaters.

 

 

Featured image: Oona Chaplin as Varang in 20th Century Studios’ AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios. © 2025 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

Shaker Style: Małgorzata Karpiuk on Designing Amanda Seyfried’s Dance-Ready Wardrobe for “The Testament of Ann Lee” in 6 Weeks

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In Mona Fastvold’s newest film, The Testament of Ann Lee, the story of the Shaker movement’s origins in the 18th century is told through the unique lens of a mystical, at times even absurd, musical.

With Amanda Seyfried playing the titular role, the film follows Ann Lee as she has multiple traumatic birthing experiences that result in her children dying in infancy. Turning to religion to seek answers, Ann has a spiritual awakening and begins to claim that Jesus Christ is within her. Ann dedicates her life to converting the general public to the Shaker way, choosing celibacy and taking her religious gospel to colonial America.

Like the Oscar-winning The Brutalist, which was directed by Brady Corbet and co-written by Fastvold, The Testament of Ann Lee is a huge historical epic told on a tiny budget (estimated at just around $10-$11 million). For the below-the-line artisans, including costume designer Małgorzata Karpiuk, this required extra practical consideration to bring this ambitious tale to life.

While most of the shooting took place in Budapest, Hungary, filming also occurred in Sweden and the United States. Karpiuk spoke to The Credits about collaborating with Fastvold to bring this original take on the Shaker movement to life, how she navigated budget constraints, and the unique methods she used to design period-accurate costumes that the actors could still comfortably dance in. This interview has been edited and condensed.

 

When you first read Mona Fastvold and Brady Corbet’s script and came on board, what was your overall vision and approach for this story?

My first thought, of course, was to draw inspiration mostly from the paintings. I didn’t want to watch other movies made by different costume designers and directors because I knew from the beginning that we would tell our own story. There’s a great book about Shakers that helped me understand this community. We had access to the museum as well, and the movie ended with the real museum, with its furniture and everything. In my opinion, it helped me understand how brilliant and modern they were. It was really important for me to understand their philosophy.

And what about the film’s inimitable style? 

We knew it would be shot in this raw, wild documentary style, so the details were really important — the fabric’s structure and pattern, the colors. Sometimes when you’re doing a musical, you’re thinking it can be this kind of fairy tale. But we really wanted to combine the fairy tale with the natural world, so this was a big challenge for us.

From L to R: Amanda Seyfried, Thomasin McKenzie, Stacy Martin, Lewis Pullman, Scott Handy, and Matthew Beard in THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE. Photo courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2025 Searchlight Pictures All Rights Reserved.

How much time did you have in pre-production to actually prepare the costumes? I know the film had very few shooting days relative to its scale.

I will ask you, how much time do you think I had?

Maybe a couple of months?

The story is that I had six weeks to make everything! From the moment I got the script, I immediately flew to the rental house to check what was there and what wasn’t available. Then we decided, “Okay, let’s make what we need.” The whole process for me was a crazy, amazing six weeks, and then we were shooting for 34 days. But sometimes we had two camera units, so we packed as much as we could into the regular schedule. And with the additional second-unit days, we were working on the details and special scenes.

From L to R: Stacy Martin, Scott Handy, Viola Prettejohn, Lewis Pullman, Amanda Seyfried, Matthew Beard, and Thomasin McKenzie in THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE. Photo courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2025 Searchlight Pictures All Rights Reserved.

Since this film is a musical, can you speak to how you designed these outfits with movement and practicality in mind?

I got some rehearsal videos from New York when Amanda Seyfried was practicing. I started to imagine what was most important in these moves. Which movement will be the most characteristic for us? It was really helpful to understand how modern the dancing will be, and how flexible the costumes should be. I then saw the videos of the rest of the dancers and background actors.

 

Not all the costumes from the rental houses were made for dance because they didn’t allow people to move their arms, or they were too uncomfortable, or we couldn’t cover or hide the knee pads. After one week, I decided we needed to do as much as we could. My great cutter helped me design the dresses for the Shakers with this special sleeve cut that looks natural, but allows the actors to do everything. The dresses were made to be easy to put on the actors and very comfortable. We painted all the dresses to build this palette. For the men, most of the trousers were a bit longer and had a special elastic to hide the knee pads and make them feel comfortable. All of the costumes were designed [by hand] for the main characters.

From L to R: Matthew Beard, Amanda Seyfried, Scott Handy, Thomasin McKenzie, Jeremy Wheeler, Stacy Martin, and Lewis Pullman in THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE. Photo courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2025 Searchlight Pictures All Rights Reserved.

That’s really impressive. Similar to Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist, I know the budget for The Testament of Ann Lee was incredibly low, considering just how massive the scale is. How did working on a smaller budget impact your workflow?

To do this kind of movie, you have to think about the logistics. What do you need to have, and where? The most important thing was to make a list of priorities. When I finished the priorities, and we could start shooting, I saw what we saved to fulfill the rest of my needs. But you need to think about the crew and be clever to know what will [actually] be seen in the film. So, where are you gonna see the money that you have?

Amanda Seyfried in THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE. Photo courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2025 Searchlight Pictures All Rights Reserved.

You need to love cinema. You should just give your heart to the process and to the project, and then everything is possible. I have the feeling that if you love the project, there is no limit — time is no limit, budget is no limit. And when you have good collaboration, you are going with the flow. From the beginning, when we were facing budget and timing issues, we were talking and trying to figure out what we could do to have more. I never wanted Mona to feel limited.

How did you design the look of the main character, Ann Lee, to represent the radical transformation she undergoes?

We see her through almost 40 years. From the script, Ann definitely thinks that in the future, she will live in celibacy. But in general, when she was young, she was really attractive and searching for a sense of life. She thought she would live a normal life. I wanted to build a normal teenager at that time, drawing my inspiration from the paintings. I tried to understand the circumstances and what these characters should look like.

Amanda Seyfried in THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE. Photo courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2025 Searchlight Pictures All Rights Reserved.

A very important moment was when she lost her children during the song “Beautiful Treasures.” At each stage of the song, I wanted to show her emotional state and how her body was changing — starting as a pregnant woman, then in mourning, then once again pregnant. At the end, she’s almost destroyed, just dancing with her own feet, thinking this is her child. I said to Mona that she could be without the bonnet and barefoot, emotionally naked, because it was so tragic. So, from this moment when she was in prison, she wanted to be less attractive because she just started to figure out her future path. Slowly, her costumes were changing as she hid her chest. The bonnet got bigger, so we started covering her hair. Ultimately, the final Shaker look proved to be the most challenging costume. I know the Shakers, I know their history, I know the colors from the book, but somehow we wanted to do our own vision of them. So we took some creative license to build this final look. To be 100% sure, we spent a couple of meetings together to decide on the sky palette and colors — almost like heaven.

Amanda Seyfried in THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE. Photo courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2025 Searchlight Pictures All Rights Reserved.

Speaking of challenges, what was it like filming the dance scene on the ship? With the changes in weather and amount of extras, I imagine that must have been difficult too.

Oh yes, the ship was definitely challenging. The biggest part was in Sweden because we found a great ship there, so the exteriors and some interiors were filmed there. Of course, I’m always optimistic, so I thought, “OK, there will be snow, rain, they’re gonna dance in the sun. Easy!” Then it was almost like a storm for me — everything was wet and impossible to wear the next day. But I had a really great Swedish crew who supported me with the background actors. We shipped all the costumes and the doubles, and we were filming in almost a guerrilla style. I love this song; the whole sequence and editing are so beautiful, but it was challenging because we were shooting one full song, then changing costumes for the second, third, and fourth [takes]. The rain was really heavy, and Amanda was almost unable to dance because of the heavy coat I gave her. But she did it!

 

She’s so amazing in this.

And of course, the interiors were difficult too because everything was wet. But it was fun as well. I like this kind of challenge!

Finally, you previously worked on The Zone of Interest and Quo Vadis, Aida?, which were both Oscar-nominated. Like Ann Lee, they are also unique historical dramas with unexpected elements. How did those creative experiences shape your approach? How have you developed as an artist through these projects?

Thank you for this question. I have to say that The Zone of Interest was an absolutely unique experience for me because of the method. We were shooting simultaneously, sometimes with 10 cameras, and the set wasn’t exactly the same because we acted like the crew preparing everything. But when the actors entered the set, there were none of us. There were challenging moments for us, as well as with the subject matter and script. Working with Jonathan Glazer, an amazing director, helped me understand the different processes involved in making films. It’s a totally unique experience that’s probably never going to happen [again] because you just need to immerse and switch your brain to a totally different way of working. It’s really helped me to be brave.

 

Quo Vadis, Aida?, the movie I did about the Srebrenica genocide, was also challenging. We were working with a not-so-big budget, but everyone was so involved because the subject was so important. In total, we had more than 4,000 extras. That helped me understand another process, another way of making films. Each director and each film was my teacher. Ann Lee was also different. For us, Mona was a mother because of how she created a special community. She had this dream, which was probably impossible to realize with such a big film in such difficult circumstances. I’m from Poland, she’s based in New York, and we had never heard of each other. It’s a miracle we found each other.

 

The Testament of Ann Lee releases in theaters on December 25.

Featured image: Amanda Seyfried and ensemble in THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE. Photo courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2025 Searchlight Pictures All Rights Reserved.

“The Testament of Ann Lee” Composer Daniel Blumberg on Collaborating with Amanda Seyfried for a Transcendent Score

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On a Sunday afternoon in October, two months before the theatrical release of The Testament of Ann Lee, composer Daniel Blumberg and Amanda Seyfried performed renditions of its soundtrack inside a packed cafe in London. It would be another month until Searchlight, which scooped up distribution rights following its festival run, released an official teaser for writer-director Mona Fastvold’s interpretation of the life of Ann Lee (Seyfried), the religious leader of the Shaker movement during 18th-century America. The unconventional marketing approach (deliberate or not) earmarked the score as essential listening.

“I worked on this music and had been recording with Amanda for ages, and it felt natural to do a live show,” Blumberg tells The Credits. “So we sort of performed these songs improvising around the structure, so it was a bit more freeing.”

Blumberg got involved with Ann Lee while on The Brutalist, the indie darling that Fastvold produced and co-wrote with her partner and director, Brady Corbet. Its stark, minimalist score, industrial textures, and restrained emotion reflect themes of ambition, isolation, and modernism, which earned Blumberg an Academy Award. “This was different from The Brutalist because I had to be there the whole time. I was with Mona before preproduction, then on the shoot, but I was also trying to schedule recording sessions. It was really an independent film,” he says.

Fastvold’s retelling of Lee’s story is charted in three parts: her harsh childhood in Manchester, her journey to America, and the growth of her Christian sect, where she would go on to become “Mother Ann” until her death. The score, songs, and sound in each chapter intertwine in a type of rhythmic dance where one cannot live without the other. Inspiration derived from researching Shaker hymns and adapting traditional melodies for a contemporary voice. The composer also wrote original songs, including “Clothed by the Sun,” a duet from Blumberg and Seyfried heard during the end credits. Shakers often spoke in tongues, trembling, and falling to the floor. To capture the intensity, Blumberg tapped dozens of background singers and vocal improvisers, Maggie Nicols and Shelley Hirsch (as well as his sister), to create an energetic palette.

 

Movement influenced his work, as he collaborated with choreographer Celia Rowlson-Hall to define moments of Shaker worship. “Initially, I had to write demos for Celia so she could start building the dance sequences. Then I would go to the dance rehearsal and get excited about how she was using shapes from drawings or images of the Shakers,” Blumberg notes. “It sort of freed me up because we were finding the balance of how much to draw upon from the Shakers material, but also knowing that it’s not a documentary about the Shakers.”

Instrument choice was guided by the era, but with an added twist. “Shaker settlements had bells, so I started with those sounds. But because I write on the keyboard a lot, there’s an instrument known as the bell piano or a celeste, where the hammers hit these metal plates, essentially like a whole keyboard of bells. So it was always like, how do we push these ideas?” says the composer, who incorporated hand bells, church bells, and electric guitar as part of the score. Songs with Seyfried were prerecorded with the actor performing live on set. “We really wanted it to be in the room, like raw, so you could hear the live quality of the voice,” says Blumberg. “’Hunger and Thirst’ is a song that felt like she was just having some amazing epiphany, so we used that more ethereal vocal sound.”

The production’s independent spirit allowed Blumberg to tweak things through the final mix with sound supervisor Steve Single and sound designer Andy Neil. “Mona kept it really open till the end, so I had a double bassist come in and do some last-minute double bass stuff, my sister came and did backing vocals on the last day. It was always open so that if something changed with the sound, we could always keep it really integrated,” he says. “I sort of keep saying it was the most experimental project I’ve ever done. And I mean that in the essence of the word, we were literally experimenting.”

The Testament of Ann Lee is in theaters now.

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Featured image: Amanda Seyfried in THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE. Photo courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2025 Searchlight Pictures All Rights Reserved.