“Stranger Things” Hair Designer Sarah Hindsgaul on Wigs, Grit, and Grounding Season 5’s Fantasy

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Almost ten years of the Stranger Things cultural phenomenon have drawn to a close, with a final, action-driven season that saw the Hawkins crew take on Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower) and the US military in one last, epic, desperate final battle. Despite the final nod to the game, the show’s young heroes have grown up considerably from the Dungeons & Dragons-loving tweens audiences first met nigh on a decade ago, while Nancy (Natalia Dyer) and Steve (Joe Keery) have shed all the trappings of adolescence. The final season sees Will’s (Noah Schnapp) powers revealed and Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) make the ultimate sacrifice, and it took almost a year of shooting to get there. For hair designer Sarah Hindsgaul, who’s been with Stranger Things since the very beginning, making the looks for Season 5 work entailed a multi-tiered department and plenty of wigs.

When the season begins, Hawkins is under lockdown. El, Hopper (David Harbour), and the rest of the crew are either on the run or dealing with the depredations of the military. Hair-wise, what started out neat and nostalgic back in Season 1 is now grounded by a very different reality. Hindsgaul’s department supported the storytelling with a no-nonsense look for El and a shift in hairstyles for many of the other 30-plus main characters, using wigs that could withstand multiple shooting conditions as needed. We spoke with Hindsgaul about juxtaposing the show’s signature 1980s looks with a new 1950s setting, helping characters come into their own, and keeping the show’s hair authentic.

 

How did you use wigs to make shooting work?

I think there’s a different story and reasoning behind each one of the wigs. Take Max [for example]—we were putting her through so much this year, and her hair is so wild, and there’s a lot of stuff to tame it down. That would cause humongous wear and tear on anybody’s hair, so that had to be a wig. To match that completely to her braids, we had to build that too, so it had the exact same texture, color, and length. To sell it, we used some of Sadie’s own hair at the very front and matched it to what her hair would do in the desert or with a lot of humidity in the air. We were shooting in a lot of different climates. We were shooting all of the episodes intertwined. That’s another reason we were using a wig—some days, we might start with a hospital scene, then go to the cave. On Stranger Things, what makes it a little bit different is that we have such a big cast and so much footage to shoot that we want to be able to turn from one look to another. We just have to be ready for all the looks all of the time, and wigs make that a lot more doable.

STRANGER THINGS: SEASON 5. (L to R) Linnea Berthelsen as Kali, Sadie Sink as Max Mayfield, and Millie Bobby Brown as Eleven in Stranger Things: Season 5. Cr. COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2025

What was your approach to Henry’s 1950s world?

The first thing we did was go all-in on wigs. A 1950s hairstyle takes many hours to get right. The 1950s are the polar opposite of our 1980s look. Combining those two, when you go down that hallway, is very jarring. It almost gives you this eerie feeling, where nothing is moving. I tried to really play with that. Henry Creel, his hair never moves. It’s very solid. For me, it seems dead. It gives you a sense of strangeness when you have movement and non-movement next to each other. Max and Holly, what is going on? Is Holly in a fairy tale? There’s something so clean about her at all times. Then Max has lived in this cave forever, and we really gritted her up.

STRANGER THINGS: SEASON 5. Jamie Campbell Bower as Henry Creel in Stranger Things: Season 5. Cr. COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2025
STRANGER THINGS: SEASON 5. Nell Fisher as Holly Wheeler in Stranger Things: Season 5. Cr. COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2025
STRANGER THINGS: SEASON 5. Sadie Sink as Max Mayfield in Stranger Things: Season 5. Cr. COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2025

Nancy’s look was a standout. How did that come about?

We’ve always styled her a lot. Nancy has always had an insecurity about what other people think of her and how she represents herself in the world. She wants to be taken seriously. Now she’s more okay with being who she is. So I wanted something a little more relaxed. At the end of the day, even though she’s Karen Wheeler’s daughter, I think she’s a no-nonsense kind of woman. She’s become that. There’s an independence that we see in her character, and that needed to reflect in the hair.

STRANGER THINGS: SEASON 5. Natalia Dyer as Nancy Wheeler in Stranger Things: Season 5. Cr. COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2025

And how did you approach Steve, who started off as a hair-first kind of guy but has also changed so much?

It’s a little bit the same. They’re a little bit older. I wanted the whole season to have a looser, grittier feel. The way we were shooting this season was very different. We went right into the action. They’ve been in lockdown, and I think the vanity has gone out of these people, even Steve. Normally, I do these very soft blow-drys on him, and it’s like a cloud with piece-y ends. This year, we went in and put wax into his wet hair so it would have a more gritty feel, and it looks a little bit wet. It’s less pretty.

STRANGER THINGS: SEASON 5. (L to R) Joe Keery as Steve Harrington and Gaten Matarazzo as Dustin Henderson in Stranger Things: Season 5. Cr. COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2025

For the actors who aren’t in wigs, is it complicated to keep things consistent over almost an entire year of shooting?

I’ve done these haircuts so many times, and my team can do these haircuts now, too. We needed everyone on the team to be able to do every single actor, in case you have to go to the second unit. It’s a very well-oiled machine, at this point, and the cast know exactly what they need for their parts, so they’re really helpful with everything. My main goal with doing hair is to get the best performance from the actor, to help them find it within themself, and I think it helps a lot when they look in the mirror and feel 100% like their character. That’s obviously very different now, when we’ve been with people for ten years. They know these characters so well.

Speaking of familiarity, how did you handle Will’s character?

For Will this year, that was a very important change that happened with his hair. I was scared of losing the Will that we know. You don’t want to see me having done something that takes you out of the story. We started talking about it months before, how can we get that Will feel in? The day we were testing, Noah did his own texture. I found that doing his own hair made him connect to it, and he knew exactly what he needed. That’s the thing about doing the hair for them this year: they know exactly where their character is going. It’s a dialogue. I have some ideas, but of course, they know their characters better than anybody.

STRANGER THINGS: SEASON 5. (L to R) Noah Schnapp as Will Byers and Winona Ryder as Joyce Byers in Stranger Things: Season 5. Cr. COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2025

What’s the story behind Dustin’s longer locks?

That was very fun. We were doing the Eddie cut on him. It’s his homage to his friend. He’s showing the world that Eddie’s not completely gone yet. I was really impressed with how he carried that and brought that character to life. That was not a wig. I matched the extensions to his curl pattern and built them in. I think it looked great. For me, hair is only good if it looks realistic and moves at the same time. My goal is always to achieve that. The grit, flaws, something out of place. In the morning, my team did such a beautiful job, and sometimes I go and mess it up a little bit. I’m like, I’m so sorry, but you’re too good, it’s too perfect. I grew up in Copenhagen, I grew up with Dogme [95 filmmaking], and I always need a little bit of that in there.

STRANGER THINGS: SEASON 5. (L to R) Joe Keery as Steve Harrington and Gaten Matarazzo as Dustin Henderson in Stranger Things: Season 5. Cr. COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2025

That suits the show. It feels like real memories of that era.

It’s an interesting combo, that we’re doing something so supernatural, it’s fantasy on all levels, but also, especially when you’re doing fantasy, you need to ground it. Otherwise, it feels plasticky.

Stranger Things season 5 is streaming in its entirety on Netflix.

Featured image: STRANGER THINGS: SEASON 5. (L to R) Caleb McLaughlin as Lucas Sinclair, Natalia Dyer as Nancy Wheeler, Gaten Matarazzo as Dustin Henderson, and Finn Wolfhard as Mike Wheeler in Stranger Things: Season 5. Cr. COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2025

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

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Denmark might be a country of only five million, but it has reached billions with decades of award-winning films and series, actors, and directors.

“It probably helps that we spend six months a year in darkness,” jokes Pilou Asbæk, the Danish star of Borgen and Game of Thrones, and the lead in Amazon Prime’s new series Snake Killer. “What makes this possible is a mix of things: a strong public funding system that allows risk-taking, good film schools, and a willingness to push boundaries,” Asbæk argues.

Inspired by real events surrounding the Uropatruljen, one of Denmark’s most controversial police units, Snake Killer marks the first Danish scripted original by Prime Video, in partnership with Nordisk Film Production. Created by Anders Ølholm, the series plunges into the moral grey zones of institutional power with an ambition that extends beyond the crime-thriller label.

Ølholm read a book about Copenhagen’s infamous narcotics police as a teenager, and the story stayed with him. “There’s this mythology around the Uropatruljen, I’ve always been fascinated by it,” he says. “A lot of Snake Killer comes down to what I’m fascinated by: films with true antiheroes, morally ambiguous characters, and endings that aren’t necessarily happy or reassuring.”

 

While the series blends and condenses characters and cases, Ølholm notes that audiences might be surprised by how much is rooted in real people and events. “It portrays a pocket of Danish society where crime has taken a strong hold. So there’s a balance you have to strike in terms of believability.” Laura Christensen, who stars in the series, agrees. “If you’re portraying stories or characters that are based on real-life experiences, I think it’s important to do it as truthfully and authentically as possible,” she adds.

Sourcing true crime material can be difficult because insiders are reluctant to share their experiences, Ølholm says. But when a former Uropatruljen officer reached out and offered to tell his story, what followed were hundreds of hours of conversations, cross-checked accounts, and meetings with former colleagues and informants. “That was when I knew I had reached a level of realism and nuance.”

On set, that commitment to realism was anchored by Ølholm’s approach as a writer-director. Both actors describe extensive conversations about perspective, intention, and moral consequence. Asbæk notes that “What Anders wrote is essentially what you see on screen. That tells you how strong his artistic vision was.”

Pilou Asbæk. Credit: Nikolaj Thaning Rentzmann/Prime

Asbæk brings Brian “Smiley” Petersen to life, a charismatic and deeply compromised policeman whose moral compass rarely aligns with the system he serves. Being from Copenhagen made it easier to relate to the world Ølholm had created. “I was raised around the areas depicted in the series. I knew these guys [from Uropatruljen],” he says.

What drew him to Smiley was not heroism, but contradiction. “He isn’t meant to be a role model; he’s meant to be a reflection of how people justify their actions when systems start to fail,” Asbæk explains. His character does “what he personally considers morally acceptable in a specific situation,” creating a persuasive and self-justifying internal logic that becomes Smiley’s defining trait.

Pilou Asbæk. Nikolaj Thaning Rentzmann/Prime

Portraying such figures, especially when inspired by real stories, is a challenging act. Asbæk is aware of the risk that such flawed characters might be glamorized by audiences. “Actors add layers, charisma. And suddenly you’re sympathizing with people you might not otherwise,” he says. For him, the ethical question is whether the end product serves a larger purpose. “It depends on how you present the material. The audience should feel wiser afterward, like they’ve gained something.”

That responsibility resonated strongly with Christensen, who plays Camilla, an escort whose relationship with Smiley deepens the series’ moral terrain. Christensen approached the role through direct engagement with lived experience, speaking with women who had worked in similar environments. “It felt necessary,” she says. “Camilla isn’t a real person, but I know there are a lot of ‘Camillas’ out there.”

 

For Christensen, authenticity is inseparable from respect. “When people open up and give you that information, you have the responsibility to portray it truthfully,” she explains. That research shaped a character who resists easy categorisation. “She’s not what you think she is. And that’s always interesting,” Christensen says.

Despite having to navigate the moral qualms of the themes in Snake Killer, Ølholm doesn’t see the series as a political act. “I see myself more as reporting back what I’ve seen and heard,” he explains. “In Denmark, many people have a very fixed idea of what these police officers were and what they represented. I hope the series complicates that image.”

Snake Killer has been released on Prime Video, initially in the Nordics region only. But the engines for international distribution are already running. Although it’s a Danish story based on local events, Ølholm believes its themes are universal. “It’s about people, about identity, and about coming to terms with who you are and what your role is,” he says, adding that across Europe, “criminal organizations are gaining a stronger foothold in society,” which makes a drug crime thriller feel relatable.

Lars Ranthe. Credit: Nikolaj Thaning Rentzmann/Prime

But is it only the universality of themes that makes films and series internationally successful? “People are genuinely interested in stories from other cultures,” Ølholm argues, pointing to global successes that retain strong local identities. Asbæk agrees. “The idea is that you start locally, then regionally, then internationally. The pie grows as the specificity holds,” he says. For Christensen, the equation is even simpler. “It’s a great story, so everybody can watch it.”

Snake Killer, then, has the chance to become yet another Danish international success. Pilou Asbæk is no stranger to global hits, but working so close to home is the best of both worlds. “I get to work on big international productions, and I also get to go home and do projects with my friends and family. I can be a tourist in Hollywood and a movie star in Denmark, and I love that balance.”

Featured image: Pilou Asbæk. Nikolaj Thaning Rentzmann/Prime

 

Editor Kirk Baxter on Syncing Three POVs Down to the Second in “A House of Dynamite” — Part 2

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In the first part of our conversation with A House of Dynamite editor Kirk Baxter, the two-time Oscar winner (The Social Network, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) talked about editing Kathryn Bigelow’s nerve-wracking nuclear thriller “A House of Dynamite.” Shot on three sound stages simultaneously to capture real-time reactions across multiple government locations, the film follows officials with only 20 minutes to stop a missile headed for a major U.S. city. Baxter revealed how he edited the film in story order for the first time in his career, maintained nail-biting tension without overwhelming viewers, and wove together three POVs down to the second.

Filmed primarily in New Jersey thanks to approximately $30 million in production incentives, Bigelow’s thriller A House of Dynamite is a raw and nerve-shredding commentary on the unthinkable threat of nuclear conflict. Major sets in the film include: the 49th Missile Defense Battalion in Fort Greely, Alaska, tasked with detecting and neutralizing incoming nuclear threats; US STRATCOM (Strategic Command) led by General Brady (Tracy Letts); the 24/7 intelligence center in the White House Situation Room; and the PEOC (Presidential Emergency Operations Center), a secured communications center underneath the White House in the event of catastrophic emergencies.

Here is the conclusion of our conversation with Baxer.

In any given interaction among these characters, did you have the option to show their reactions on the display screens rather than their actual performance in the room?

Yeah, the scene travels as we bounce back and forth. A good example is when General Brady (Tracy Letts) at STRATCOM is talking to the Deputy National Security Advisor (Gabriel Basso) as he was going through security to enter the White House. I paid attention to where Gabriel was moving inside the White House rooms, where he crossed from one side of the screen to the other and changed his screen direction with his body movements. I had coverage of Tracy Letts from the left and right, as well as wide shots. So, I was always dancing around with how I was showing Tracy compared to Gabriel because it was a conversation without facing each other. I packaged it, moving really quickly but also neatly in a traditional filmmaking sense, so that the audience can consume it really quickly. When you cut different locations together, they landed with intention, as if it was designed to be exactly that.

A House of Dynamite. (Featured L-R) Tracy Letts as General Anthony Brady and Gbenga Akinnagbe as Major General Steven Kyle in A House of Dynamite. Cr. Eros Hoagland/Netflix © 2025.

What about layering in sound from the other perspectives to match every frame on the screen?

The delivery of a line and the musicality of a voice, of how something is said, really lodges in your memory. So, I didn’t want to hear the same lines delivered differently in different acts, say, when we see a character on the display screens from a different take than when you’re with that person in the flesh later in the story. So, I changed out what was recorded live when they were acting with these live screens because I wanted everything to be from the same piece of audio.

What were some of the elements that you had to navigate due to the shooting style?

You also have to consider how long it takes to physically do things compared to just being talked about. A good example is when Jared Harris’ character (Secretary of Defense) jumps off the roof. The first time I put that scene together was in chapter two, where you only hear it happening. The amount of time for that to happen and then for General Brady to respond to it, where he tells everyone, “No, no, keep your seats. Keep your seats”—didn’t require the same length of time as it did to physically walk across the roof, leap off, and have everybody rush to the edge, going “Holy sh*t!” So, once I built that, it taught me to go back into chapter two and expand the silence and pauses to make sure we hear all of that “Holy shit!” coming through his (Brady’s) phone feed. The push and pull to use the exact data and timing affected how the information flowed between chapters. Sometimes I needed to shorten things to make them match, but other times I had to expand them; it was a constant push-and-pull. Kathryn’s fast rule was whatever is emotionally the best is the correct choice. I would rather be wrong about continuity and right about how the viewer would experience the moment.

Even though the same event unfolds three times over the course of the film, it never feels repetitive. How did you manage that?

I always referenced the countdown because it’s a repetition of the same piece of information sliced up three different ways. In the first act, there are many faces that we can cut to between Greeley and the White House Situation Room, and we play it without any music. Just listening to the countdown is super effective — it sucks all the oxygen out of the room, you feel that pressure, there’s a pace and massive tension to it without any music. Then, the second time around, we have that exact same audio as a metronome. You’ve now got everyone in the PEOC and STRATCOM to work with. We put score under that to give it an evolution of experiencing the same storyline again, but now, we’re building on it with new bits of dialog that we carry into the third chapter. So, the President and Secretary Baker are hearing twice as much audio data. But now I’ve only got two faces to work with. So instead of moving quickly between everybody, I’m mostly sitting on Jared for really long stretches of time, and his death stare as he’s focused on the loss of his child, who is in the city targeted by the inbound missile. So, it’s bringing that same level of tension but without all the editing. I loved dishing up three different ways to deliver the same information.

The way that Kathryn ended it is the epitome of “less is more”—we don’t see how it ends.

Yeah, it throws it back to the audience. This is a procedural based on reality to expose the insanity of having 20 minutes to make a decision that affects humankind and the insanity of these characters who find themselves in a situation where they’re just not going to be informed.  

A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE – Idris Elba as POTUS. Cr: Eros Hoagland © 2025 Netflix, Inc.

What do you make of the ambiguous ending? What do you want to leave the audience with?

When we were making the film, it was kind of terrifying — all the articles that Kathryn sent to educate me on what we were working on were really frightening. By design, the movie doesn’t show a baddie. The point isn’t about who sent the missile or what the President’s response is. The point is about nuclear war. I know some people want bloodlust for the ending, but if we had a baddie, that would become the focus, or if we had this president in charge, they would have done this or that. My takeaway is: nuclear war is bad, no matter which way you slice it. It doesn’t matter how this thing ends, because there’s no good ending.

 

A House of Dynamite is streaming on Netflix.

 

“A House of Dynamite” Editor Kirk Baxter on Sculpting Kathryn Bigelow’s Cinéma Vérité Nuclear Thriller

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In Kathryn Bigelow’s cortisol-triggering nuclear thriller, A House of Dynamite, various national security, military, and political officials in the highest levels of the U.S. government are blindsided when a nuclear missile is headed for a major American city. With only 20 minutes before impact, the story follows these officials as they scramble for a solution from various locations, including a missile defense battalion in Fort Greely, Alaska; General Brady’s (Tracy Letts) team at US STRATCOM (Strategic Command); the White House Situation Room’s 24/7 “Watch Floor” intelligence center; and the underground bunker at the White House, aka PEOC (Presidential Emergency Operations Center). To fully capture the urgency and panic of the unprovoked attack, the film was shot on three sound stages in New Jersey, simultaneously documenting everyone’s reactions as the same events are replayed from three POVs over the course of the film. Full-scale replicas of these locations were constructed with 360-degree access and operational telephones and telecommunication screens (which track the missile’s trajectory and time to impact) to allow the actors to interact with each other in real-time.

Two-time Oscar-winning editor for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Social Network, Kirk Baxter was thrilled to work with Bigelow’s cinema vérité style. “Knowing Kathryn’s body of work, I knew it was going to be extremely researched and presented like a documentary — it feels witnessed rather than forged or created. Her best work has that feeling about it. She likes loose camera work, handheld [cameras], long lenses, and lots of close-ups: it has that war correspondent feeling.”

Recently nominated for a Critics Choice Award for the film, Baxter spoke to The Credits about his first time cutting a film in the order of the story and what it took to maintain nail-biting tension without overwhelming the audience.

 

The film is so incredibly intense that after watching it, I immediately went for a beer!

[Laughs] We’ve had some screenings that ended in absolute silence; everyone’s just a bit devastated, and it takes a minute for them to collect themselves. Maybe we should have passed out some beers.

The shooting style is very unique — we see the same nail-biting 20 minutes from three POVs while everyone tries to navigate the impending nuclear catastrophe. What was your first impression after reading the script?

The script was incredibly exciting, and I’m always attracted to thrillers. Once I realized we were seeing the same story going through the layers of government, I knew how complex it was going to be. It was written in a way that really highlights the craft, so it’s a wonderful piece for a film editor.

 

This is the first time you have edited a movie in chronological order from beginning to end, which is particularly important for this film. How did that change your process?

It was a real gift to be able to edit it that way. Normally, you’re editing while they’re shooting, and you’re hopping all over the place. But due to my schedule, I couldn’t start while Kathryn was shooting. It was happenstance, and I think it really helped the final product. Having the ability to make one act at a time in story order really made it clean and systematic, but I still had to do a lot of back-and-forth. Once I finished with the on-camera performances, that affected what we heard in the previous scenes. The first pass was about the performance, the emotional landing of everything, and delivering on its pace as a thriller. Then, to make it feel witnessed, all the same bits of data needed to be used in an exacting way in terms of what’s heard and the time it takes for things to be said and acted upon across the three acts. For me, that was critical. There’s a lot of realism in that.

A House of Dynamite. (Featured L-R) Tracy Letts as General Anthony Brady and Gbenga Akinnagbe as Major General Steven Kyle in A House of Dynamite. Cr. Eros Hoagland/Netflix © 2025.

The subject matter naturally provides immense tension, but the way you pieced them together somehow made it even more nerve-wracking, without exhausting the audience. How did you maintain that level of tension?  

The ticking clock gives it that undercurrent of tension. Composer Volker Bertelmann’s score really helps with that as well, but it really comes down to the performances. The ability to jump between locations also pushes it along, making sure it’s constantly demanding your attention. Jumping between locations kept it very sharp, rather than having to jump-cut within the storyline. In terms of not overwhelming the audience, I think the actors provided that — they slow down when the reality dawns on them, the air gets sucked out of the room, it’s very still and silent during these devastating pauses. I was on the lookout for those beats.

 

Does the vérité shooting style make it harder for you to edit?

No. They’re trying to get the best possible performances from everybody, and that live reality, rather than a blue screen, I think, enhances the actors’ performances. They’re more in the moment, they feel it and believe it, and get lost in the moment. To me, it’s all about making sure we’ve got the best of everybody in those rooms because what’s on the display screen can always be updated later. It created a very fast-paced, believable situation in all of these locations as a baseline to work from.

A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE – Idris Elba as POTUS. Cr: Eros Hoagland © 2025 Netflix, Inc.

The playback team maneuvered all the screens in real time for every take, including the giant display screen in the White House Situation Room (which showed the missile’s real-time trajectory) and the Zoom conference calls in progress. How complicated was it to weave all those POVs together while matching every beat down to the second?

They had it all working live, so I could assemble it with how it was naturally performed on set. But when I needed to get more granular, I was adjusting performances across screens and response timing. The beauty of Kathryn’s choice to film it all live created very natural responses from everybody in the rooms and on these monitors. It really helped it flow like it would in a real situation. The ability to go into all these different locations and feature anyone at any point, like watch this on the big board as this person is talking, and then jump to that person’s location to see or hear them finishing that very sentence live. Having these choices might seem overwhelming at first, but they ultimately allowed me to put it together in an extremely thrilling way.

Check out part two of our conversation to find out how Baxter matched every beat with footage shot from different perspectives and locations, and his thoughts on that ambiguous ending.

 

A House of Dynamite is streaming on Netflix.

Featured image: A House of Dynamite. Rebecca Ferguson as Captain Olivia Walker in A House of Dynamite. Cr. Eros Hoagland/Netflix © 2025.

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

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The ultimate artifact hunter not named Indiana Jones is back, and this time, she’s going to be on your TV. Prime Video has released the first look at Sophie Turner as Lara Croft, the redoubtable adventurer who first appeared in the iconic video game franchise and was later portrayed by Angelina Jolie in two films. The series is currently in production, and comes from Fleabag creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who co-starred alongside Harrison Ford in his final adventure as Indy in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.

Turner is the third actress to take on the swashbuckling archaeologist—she was last portrayed by Alicia Vikander in 2018’s Tomb Raider. Turner is joined in the new Prime Video series by a cast that includes Martin Bobb-Semple, Sigourney Weaver, Jason Isaacs, Jack Bannon, John Heffernan, Bill Paterson, Paterson Joseph, Sasha Luss, Juliette Motamed, Celia Imrie, and August Wittgenstein.

“Tomb Raider” was a video game sensation after its release in 1996, turning Lara Croft into a heroine who would become as close to a household name as a video game character can. Two fresh games are slated for release—Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis and Tomb Raider: Catalyst are due to come out in 2026 and 2027.

Waller-Bridge also serves as co-showrunner, alongside Chad Hodge.

Check out the full look at Turner here:

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

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

Shocking Alien Doc “The Age of Disclosure” to Make Contact With Viewers on Prime Video

“After the Hunt” Production Designer Stefano Baisi on Creating Three Generations of History in One Apartment

Featured image: Sophie Turner is Lara Croft in “Tomb Raider” Courtesy Prime Video.

Co-Writer Emily Mortimer on Balancing Agony and Hilarity in Noah Baumbach’s “Jay Kelly”

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Emily Mortimer jokingly credits the quality time she spent with Noah Baumbach on the set of his 2022 film White Noise to “a kind of nepotism in reverse.” Her two children played Adam Driver’s kids in the movie, so Mortimer spent several months in Ohio as their chaperone. After getting to know each other during the shoot, Baumbach asked the Oxford-educated British actress/writer to help him write Jay Kelly, featuring George Clooney as a movie star as flawed as he is charismatic. The film (streaming on Netflix) co-stars Adam Sandler as long-suffering manager Ben (both were recent Golden Globe nominees for their work), with Laura Dern, Billy Crudup, and Jim Broadbent alongside Riley Keough and Grace Edwards as the famous actor’s estranged daughters.

Jay Kelly. (L-R) Director Noah Baumbach and writer/actor Emily Mortimer on the set of Jay Kelly. Cr. Peter Mountain/Netflix © 2025.

Mortimer, who acted in Hugo and The Newsroom before co-creating her own HBO series Doll & Em, followed by The Pursuit of Love, which she wrote, directed, and starred in, says she reveled in the chance to collaborate with Baumbach. “The way Noah depicts the world as this combination of agony and hilarity, showing the absurdity and pain of it all in equal measure—I’ve always held up as a kind of gold standard.”

Speaking from her home in Brooklyn, Mortimer talks about finding inspiration in a Paul Newman documentary and the lengthy talk-and-write process that eventually yielded their actor-bait screenplay.

 

You’ve written several scripts before on your own…

Yes, and it can be exhausting because you’re going to get it wrong day in, day out, for months, if not years, until you finally just hand something in. You have a much better time if there’s someone to talk to about the story, especially if that person is as brilliant, seasoned, and good a collaborator as Noah Bambach.

What did you learn from Noah Baumbach about screenwriting?

What Noah taught me was to be okay with not being good at the beginning because it’s gonna be a mess, and you just have to let yourself off the hook. Otherwise, you’ll be sorely disappointed, and you’ll never get anywhere.

Jay Kelly. (L-R) George Clooney as Jay Kelly, Adam Sandler as Ron Sukenick and Director Noah Baumbach on the set of Jay Kelly. Cr. Peter Mountain/Netflix © 2025.

Jay Kelly feels loose and sometimes chaotic, in the best sense, but the plot itself relies on a sturdy structure to propel the hero through his wild journey. How did you hash out the storyline?

We just let it unfold. This guy is running away from his present, only to be met by his past. We knew that much. But it could have been any number of memories, and in fact, we wrote a million more, a million ideas—maybe three screenplays full of paths the story nearly went down, or did go down, but then we changed it. I mean, there was a lot of hashing out, obviously, because in the end, we had to wrangle it into this unconventional sort of storyline.

Jay Kelly. (L-R) George Clooney as Jay Kelly and director Noah Baumbach on the set of Jay Kelly. Cr. Rob Harris/Netflix © 2025.

The film immediately establishes George Clooney’s world with a one-shot capturing the controlled chaos of a movie set. Then he learns of his mentor’s death, sparking a desire to reconnect with his daughters. When did you come up with that motivation?

Noah first came to me with one half of a scene where Peter, his old mentor, is making a pickle sandwich for Jay, who’d given him his start, and Jay decides to put himself before his friend. I was immediately enchanted by this world, this character, this kind of unsavory feeling, especially at a time in your life when there’s kind of a referendum on it all. You’ve got children who are probably leaving home or have left home, and they’re deciding whether or not you did a good job with them. If you’re lucky to have a parent or two who are still alive, you’re wondering how much they fucked you up and whether or not you were a good enough child to them, just as they’re about to shove off this mortal coil. And you’re old enough to understand all the mistakes you made, all the things you did as a feckless youth that you’ve tried not to think about too much. And now, all that’s starting to come back at you. For some reason, I got all of that feeling from this pickle sandwich scene.

Jay Kelly. Jim Broadbent as Peter Schneider in Jay Kelly. Cr. Netflix © 2025.

So Noah showed you this partial scene he’d written—where did things go from there?

It started with us just talking and talking and talking. He was in London shooting Barbie initially, and I was acting on various film sets and constantly pushing mascara out of my face to chat with Noah, walking around a car park somewhere. There were lots of chats, making each other laugh and also making each other think. And also, certainly, I wanted to entertain Noah. That was really my sole aim.

Do not bore the director.

Exactly. I had reams of notes on every sort of device, and finally, at a certain point, we started writing. But it’s one thing to be entertaining in conversation with somebody and quite another to send lines of dialogue on a page. I remember at first suddenly being like, “Oh, my God, this is terrifying.”

Jay Kelly. (Featured L-R) Laura Dern as Liz, George Clooney as Jay Kelly and Adam Sandler as Ron Sukenick in Jay Kelly. Cr. Peter Mountain/Netflix © 2025.

Back in Brooklyn now?

Yeah. For the last six months of the process, we were in the same city, together every day in a room, reading the script, changing things, turning it all around, going back home, writing more, coming back, writing in the room. And then finally, we had a script.

You and Noah mapped out a journey that takes place mostly in France and Italy, but parts of Jay Kelly were filmed in Los Angeles, right?

Yes, many of the L.A. exteriors were shot actually in L.A.

As a filmmaker living in the United States, what are your thoughts on the impact projects like Jay Kelly can have on the local filmmaking community?

It’s a massively important sort of public service, I think, filmmaking, and we need to support this industry here in America. If the money people and the decision makers were not so far removed from the people who are actually making the movies, I think it would be better for everybody, and certainly better for the film industry as a whole.

Jay Kelly. (L-R) George Clooney as Jay Kelly and Adam Sandler as Ron Sukenick on the set of Jay Kelly. Cr. Peter Mountain/Netflix © 2025.

In some ways, this feels like a love letter to movies in general and the craft of acting in particular– especially when Jay Kelly convinces his talented former classmate Timothy—Billy Crudup—to deliver a dramatic reading of a menu. Where did that idea come from?

I watched Ethan Hawke’s brilliant documentary about Paul Newman, so did Noah, and it really got us both talking about the business of performing. That inspired us to explore the feeling of what it means to come up with the goods and find an emotion.

Jay Kelly. Billy Crudup as Timothy in Jay Kelly. Cr. Netflix © 2025.

Which is very deep, but the comedic spin here is that “Timothy” gathers himself for a few moments of silence, then begins weeping, shedding real tears as he reads “Truffle parmesan fries. Brussels sprouts with balsamic honey glaze and bacon – twelve dollars.” It’s pretty hilarious.

Well, it is ridiculous, and at the same time it’s deadly serious. That’s the thing about acting: What is it that we’re even doing? In a way, it’s the same thing we did as kids, performing a play in the backyard for our parents, which is what the last penultimate scene of the movie is about. We’re just mucking around, really, but somehow acting is also deadly serious.

SPOILER ALERT

By the end of the movie, the entourage, both daughters, and cranky father have all parted ways with Jay. He sits in a darkened theater, watching a film festival’s greatest-hits tribute on the big screen. Then his manager, Adam Sandler’s Ben, shows up, and it’s such a heartfelt moment. Can you talk about this blur between professional and personal relationships?

It’s a really complicated thing in our profession. The people who help manage your career do become friends, and you rely on their love and support, you get to know them and their families, and they get to know yours. But of course, there’s also this professional relationship. In our story, Jay confronts a lot of uncomfortable truths, and the only thing he really works out is that he has a friend.

Jay Kelly. (L-R) Adam Sandler as Ron Sukenick and George Clooney as Jay Kelly in Jay Kelly. Cr. Netflix © 2025.

The theme being…?

Just one friend is enough. We had to give him a friend.

 

 

Featured image: Jay Kelly. George Clooney as Jay Kelly in Jay Kelly. Cr. Peter Mountain/Netflix © 2025.

“No Other Choice” Writer/Director Park Chan-wook on His Killer Instinct

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What lengths would you go to protect everything you hold near and dear to you? Would it be so far as to resort to murder? This is the intriguing premise behind Park Chan-wook’s latest film, No Other Choice. Taking his cues from Donald E. Westlake’s 1997 satirical thriller The Ax, the director of the acclaimed films Oldboy (2003) and Decision to Leave (2022) weaves a complex tale encompassing such themes as personal worth, family devotion, job identity, infidelity, and corporate callousness—and serves it all up with macabre comedy.

As No Other Choice opens, Man-su (Lee Byung-hun) believes he has achieved an idyllic life. He is an award-winning executive (Pulp Man of the Year!) for a Korean paper manufacturer. He has a loving wife, Miri (Son Ye-jin), a dutiful stepson, Si-one (Kim Woo-seung ), a daughter, Ri-one (Choi So-yul), a budding cello prodigy, and two frolicking dogs. The family lives in luxury in Man-su’s childhood home, which he bought and renovated to include a cavernous greenhouse for his passion for horticulture.

But soon, it all begins to collapse. Man-su’s company is bought by an American corporation, and he is fired as a result of the restructuring. Months of unemployment lead to drastic cuts in household expenses. Ri-one is unable to continue her costly music lessons. Man-su endures a painful toothache to avoid a dental bill. The dogs are shipped off to Miri’s parents. She takes a part-time job to make ends meet. As things get bleaker, the family is faced with selling their beloved home to survive.

Seeing his dignity slip away and fearing he is losing his family’s respect, Man-su hatches a dark plan. Eyeing an executive opening at another paper company, he concludes he’ll be a shoo-in for the job if he eliminates the competition. As his murderous plan to do just that unfolds, the question becomes — will it save or destroy his life and his family?

 

It’s a premise Park has been pondering for over a decade. No Other Choice began life in 2009 when the director initially discovered Westlake’s novel and announced his intention to turn it into a film.

“The brilliant irony of this plot captivated me,” Park said in a recent Zoom conversation through interpreter Jiwon Lee. “So that when I was adapting this, I didn’t necessarily take the dialogue from the novel, but I really tried to capture that same sense of irony in the movie.”

It turned out Park wasn’t the only one who had realized the novel’s cinematic potential. Greek/French filmmaker Costa-Gavras had adapted it in 2005 for the French film Le Couperet. The two filmmakers became friends, and Costa-Gavras, who owned the rights, agreed to let Park take a stab at his own interpretation. In a tribute to his fellow creative, Park dedicated No Other Choice to Costa-Gavras.

Park Chan-wook on the set of “No Other Choice.” Courtesy Neon.

Park originally wanted to make the project his American film debut and joined forces with Canadian filmmaker Don McKellar to develop a screenplay. But as other projects arose, such as Stoker (2013), Bitter Sweet Seoul (2014), and The Little Drummer Girl (2018), No Other Choice got put on the back burner.

But it was never forgotten. And as Park continued to revisit the idea, he began to realize the themes he wanted to incorporate were perhaps as relevant to his country’s sensibilities. As the project evolved, Lee Kyoung-Mi and Jahye Lee joined in on the scripting duties and are credited, along with Park and McKellar, as screenwriters.

Park Chan-wook on the set of “No Other Choice.” Courtesy Neon.

“My culture influences the issue of masculinity that Man-su goes through,” Park continues. “The idea of this person’s responsibility as a man, a husband, and a father, and that he’ll do whatever it takes to not lose that responsibility. That very sense of masculinity is very prejudiced…stuck in a box influenced by our culture. Korean society still has stronger traces of Confucian patriarchy. I was able to emphasize this with a Korean version.”

Even so, Park was confident that these beliefs would transcend borders. “At the end of the day, all of these elements came from the original novel, and since that was an American novel, this is present in other countries as well, he observes. “It could be relatable to audiences around the world.”

Lee Byung-hun in “No Other Choice.” Courtesy Neon.

Park’s instincts were correct. No Other Choice has been critically hailed. It was nominated for three Golden Globes, including Musical or Comedy Motion Picture, Foreign Language Film, and an Actor in a Musical or Comedy nod for Lee. The film is also in the running for a Best International Film Oscar nomination.

One part of the story that Park wanted to build upon was the character of Miri. Initially, she comes off as a bit immature, self-absorbed and only concerned with material pursuits. As adversity hit, the writers made sure she rose to the occasion, ultimately playing a surprising role in the final outcome.

“When she’s faced with these difficulties, the audience is surprised to see her strength, her independence, wisdom and decisiveness. These were always within her,” explains Park. “And Son Ye-jin did a great job portraying all of these moments. It was a very hard task to achieve. Unlike the character of Man-su, Miri doesn’t get into big conflicts with the other characters. She only has a limited pool of expressions. Ye-jin delicately used the facial expressions that I wanted for the character. It was extremely helpful for the movie.”

L-r: Choi So-yul and Son Ye-jin in “No Other Choice.” Courtesy Neon.

Though the story contains the darker aspects one has come to expect from the filmmaker, No Other Choice also presented Park the opportunity to tackle a film with comedic elements. Realizing how important humor was in the original novel, the director knew he had to layer in a lighter side to balance out the darkness.

“This is a story about someone who is fired and a story about a man who has lost his authority within his family,” says Park. “If you only focus on his sadness, or, since he was unjustly fired, his rage, I believed this would not provide a comprehensive view of the film or the character as well. You need to be able to portray how foolish and ridiculous these actions are to the audience. Only when you do will the audience feel a stronger sense of sympathy for the character.”

Lee Byung-hun in “No Other Choice.” Courtesy Neon.

Park believes Lee was key to striking the right tone needed to make Man-su relatable. “He made me wonder how one individual could do so many facial expressions and keep the emotion hidden at the same time,” says Park. “Watching him do these quick changes of emotions, that varied in every moment, really added rich layers to the character that far exceeded my expectations.”

As an example, Park mentions one of his favorite scenes, where Man-su confronts Sun-chul (Park Hee-soon), a business colleague visiting his home, intending to kill him. As the two converse, they form a bond. Man-su’s plan is to get Sun-chul drunk, as it will be easier to murder him. A recovering alcoholic, Man-su tosses off the liquor in his glass as his new friend downs drink after drink. But as the revelry escalates, Sun-chul insists the two do bomb shots — a drink Man-su can’t discard. He realizes his sobriety must end if he wants to go through with the murder.

“He’s placed under very brutal circumstances,” says Park. “And the actors did a great job of portraying this difficult relationship. When Man-su drinks the bomb shot, he has potent feelings within him. He doesn’t want to go back to his past self as an alcoholic, while all this time, he’s craving the excitement of the alcohol he used to enjoy. So there are these paradoxical emotions of both guilt and freedom. Because this scene included all of those elements, it was very rich to me.”

 

No Other Choice is in select theaters now.

 

Featured image: Lee Byung-hun in “No Other Choice.” Courtesy Neon.

“Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere” Production Designer Stefania Cella on Her New Jersey Dream Tour

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Avoiding the familiar cradle-to-grave music biopics, writer-director Scott Cooper’s dramatic interpretation of rock icon Bruce Springsteen wisely focuses on one pivotal year in his life. Following Springsteen (a soulful and heartbreaking performance by The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White) from the fall of 1981 to 1982, Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere chronicles the painful process behind his famed 1982 album, Nebraska. As he says early on in the film, recording music is “not much about capturing sounds but capturing the ideas.” As he digs deep to tear down the demons that have long haunted him — thanks to residual childhood trauma stemming from his mercurial father, Doug (Stephen Graham) ­— he mostly holes up in a rental house in Colts Neck, New Jersey, to carve out the album.

Since Springsteen’s legacy is intertwined with his home state of New Jersey, most of the 20th Century Studios film was shot at historically accurate locations across 14 municipalities within the state, spending almost $42 million on 500 cast and crew members over 31 shoot days. Authentic locations in the film include the famed Power Station recording studio (where “Born in the U.S.A.” was recorded in 1982), the Stone Pony concert venue, and the boardwalk and convention hall in Asbury Park.

Production designer Stefania Cella obtained unprecedented access to Springsteen during prep, including his vault, where she scanned the original notebook he used to write Nebraska and other music from that era. As a personal fan of the musician, she could not believe that she was looking at his scribbled notes and original writings that accompanied the lyrics of “I’m on Fire.” She recently talked to The Credits about sourcing a vintage carousel from an antique dealer in Pennsylvania and constructing the bare bedroom in the rental house to hone in on Springsteen’s emotional struggles.

 

How big is your team, and are they mostly based in the Tri-State area?

My team was medium-sized for a feature like this, mostly people based in NY, and the set decorator, Kris Moran, is from Asbury Park, which was very important to me. Kris grew up in the shadow of the Stone Pony and her family DNA comes from that world. I also had a small crew of 6 or 7 people in California for the driving sequence and the diner.

Approximately how many people were on set construction for the centerpiece location of the Colts Neck rental house and other sets?

Construction generally has a core of 10 people between carpenters and painters; it fluctuates when we have a set built and a location, which increases to 40 or 50 people. We worked locally in New York and also transferred to New Jersey.

Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen in 20th Century Studios’ SPRINGSTEEN: DELIVER ME FROM NOWHERE. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios. © 2025 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved

As a fan of Springsteen yourself, what was it like to have access to his personal vault for research? Were you able to talk to him during prep?

Yes, I am a big fan of Bruce. I was fortunate enough to go around with him in Colts Neck, Asbury Park, his hometown, and Freehold.

Can you talk about sourcing the vintage carousel for Asbury Park and refurbishing it?

You might not believe it, but there are a lot of collectors around the U.S. who have old fair games, including carousels. The hardest thing was to find one that matched the original in style and feel. It took a lot of searching and a bit of time, but we found one that fits our film.

Why was the landscape outside the Colts Neck rental house important to reveal Bruce’s emotional psyche?

The landscape was a mirror for his state of mind and feeling. We needed it as a connection for Bruce to nature, solitude, and the lake, which inspired him to write the album.

Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen in 20th Century Studios’ DELIVER ME FROM NOWHERE. Photo by Macall Polay © 2025 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

What was done to dress the interior of the rental house? How did that connect to Bruce’s psyche and writing/recording process during that period?

We wanted the feel of an impersonal space, so we had nothing from his own home, just a blank wall and impersonal furniture. Bruce needed a break from himself and his life at that point, so it needed to feel like a ghost home. I wanted to find a house with a strong architectural personality that could stand on its own when seen on screen. It needed to be solid in order to express that lonely feeling.

Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen in 20th Century Studios’ SPRINGSTEEN: DELIVER ME FROM NOWHERE. Photo by Macall Polay. © 2025 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

What about the bedroom where he writes and records the “Nebraska” album?

The bedroom was built on the sound stage, with an LED screen outside and pre-shot plates to make it feel real, and it does feel real. I added a flowering wallpaper from Bruce’s previous photoshoot for “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” meant as an homage.

(L-R) Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen and Paul Walter Hauser as Mike Batlan in 20th Century Studios’ SPRINGSTEEN: DELIVER ME FROM NOWHERE. Photo by Macall Polay. © 2025 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

For the exterior scenes set in the streets of Manhattan and Jersey City, how did you make them look like 1981 (aside from the VFX alterations)?

We shot the main scene with Bruce and [longtime friend and manager] Jon Landau (another powerhouse performance by Succession’s Jeremy Strong) in Jersey City, where we redressed 200 yards of stores and lights with period cars and fake subway entrances. The rest of it was picked up by VFX. We also dressed downtown Freehold for the 1950’s, when his mother (Gaby Hoffmann) drives young Bruce (Matthew Pellicano Jr.) to pick up his father, and later in the 1980s, when Bruce drives through the same intersection.

(L-R) Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen and Jeremy Strong as Jon Landau in 20th Century Studios’ SPRINGSTEEN: DELIVER ME FROM NOWHERE. Photo by Macall Polay. © 2025 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved

What was done to dress Bruce’s childhood home? What did you want to reflect on from his turbulent childhood in that house?

We found a condemned house that was perfect. It needed some safety checks in order for us to work in it, but we redid the wallpaper, flooring, and the entire interior since it was from the 1980s [and Bruce’s childhood era was the 1950s and 60s]. It was perfect for the exterior, but there was a lot to do inside. We had photos of the original home, and Bruce’s memoirs guided us to replicate his past.

What was the process to build the sets for the live performance sequences?

We chose the oldest arena in NJ, the Meadowlands, which is perfect for big concerts, and carefully reconstructed the stage and lighting from Bruce’s concerts, as well as the changing rooms. For Stone Pony, it was a redress inside to make it look like the old days. Bruce gave us the original backdrop with the horse stuck on black cotton. It was great to have that item for the set.

 

Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere is streaming now.

Featured image: Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen in 20th Century Studios’ DELIVER ME FROM NOWHERE. Photo by Macall Polay © 2025 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

How “Predator: Badlands” Director Dan Trachtenberg Embraced Fear For His Franchise-Best Vision

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Director Dan Trachtenberg credits fear, responsibility, and a crack team of contributors with enabling him to realize his vision for Predator: Badlands.

Audiences embraced his bold new chapter with even greater enthusiasm than they did his previous entries, Prey and Predator: Killer of Killers, making Predator: Badlands the highest-grossing entry in the iconic franchise.

The first PG-13 entry in the 38-year history, Predator: Badlands follows Dek, a young predator outcast (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) who travels to a deadly planet to track an apparently invincible beast, proving his worth as a warrior. There, he meets Thia (Elle Fanning), a sentient Weyland-Yutani synthetic android, and they form an unlikely alliance.

Now that Predator: Badlands is available to stream, Trachtenberg explains why he was worried he might be making his own Howard the Duck, discusses the dream team of creatives he assembles in LA and New Zealand, and what filmmakers need to do to help protect the future of movie theaters. 

Predator: Badlands is officially the highest-grossing entry in the franchise and received rave reviews. What are your thoughts on that?

It’s a relief. I was blindly excited when we had the idea, we started figuring it out, and 20th Century Studios said yes to making it. I was really invigorated because this is what other people and I wanted, and we had things we hadn’t seen before. We started making it, and all the doubts crept in. I started to worry, like, ‘We could be making Howard the Duck.’ When they were making Howard the Duck, they built these incredible, tactile duck suits that were state-of-the-art for the time; they had ILM working on visual effects, and they were thinking, ‘This is a crazy movie, but Star Wars was crazy and that worked out.’ The warm reception is just like, ‘Thank God I’m not crazy, and the hard work everyone put in has been seen and validated.’ It feels exceptional.

Dan Trachtenberg on the set of 20th Century Studios’ PREDATOR: BADLANDS film. Photo by Nicola Dove. © 2024 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

You’ve made three Predator movies now, so you’re effectively the new custodian of the franchise. Like with Fede Álvarez, who directed Alien: Romulus, the people pushing these franchises forward are the filmmakers who grew up with them.

It’s true. I remember being a kid and a little frustrated. Why was everything that Steven Spielberg did, like Back to the Future, set in 50s? It was when he was growing up. I was born in 1981, so when I was a ten-year-old in the 90s, I was like, ‘Why can’t there be a movie set in the 80s now?’ I had a meeting recently with an incredible actor who is a generation ahead of me, and all their references were—and why they got into the industry—were the movies of the 70s. As we get older, we are recapturing the things that first lit all of our fires. It makes perfect sense that people like Fede and I are making these movies from when we grew up. It feels right to bring them back and rejuvenate them. With Alien, he did it in the style, not of what was currently happening with Aliens, but in the vein of what he grew up adoring.

(L-R) Thia (Elle Fanning) and Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) in 20th Century Studios’ PREDATOR: BADLANDS film. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios. © 2025 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

You have discussed extensively the films that inspired you as you put this together. One I haven’t seen you mention but wondered about is Enemy Mine.

I love Enemy Mine. It absolutely came up quite a bit in our creative discussions, although structurally it isn’t quite the same. That could be a movie that could come back around. I think this is the right time for that. I have referenced Enemy Mine on a few different projects. It’s a creative touchstone for something that we don’t see very often. It’s a great movie.

 

For Predator: Badlands, you reunited with creatives you’ve worked with on previous projects. For instance, you worked with your DP, Jeff Cutter, on Prey.

Jeff is one of the few DPs that I’ve worked with. I started working with him on 10 Cloverfield Lane, and we did The Boys pilot and Prey together. It wasn’t necessarily that we should have the same DP as Prey; it was more about Badlands being made with a creative collaborator that I trust wholeheartedly. Jeff is a huge part of my ideation process. We don’t just talk about the images; we talk about the story all day long. Whether he‘s pitching an awesome idea for an action sequence or a moment inside the film, he’s great to bounce off. If I’m thinking, ‘This is ridiculous?’ He’ll be like, ‘Yes, that’s ridiculous,’ or, ‘Dude, that’s awesome. Don’t throw that idea away. Keep going there.’ Jeff is just one of my most cherished collaborators, and he also knows how to shoot a real tasteful, elegant, muscular motion picture.

Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi on the set of 20th Century Studios’ PREDATOR: BADLANDS film. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios. © 2025 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

Do you try to use the same core creative team? You shot this in New Zealand, which has an incredible pool of local talent.

There are certain collaborators I must have with me, and one of those is my producing partner, Ben Rosenblatt. Again, he has been with me since 10 Cloverfield Lane, and he is incredible. We produced two movies during the three years it took to make Badlands, the other being Predator: Killer of Killers. That was only possible because of Ben leading the charge. We had an incredible crew in New Zealand, including Jacob Tomuri, our stunt coordinator, who concocted some incredible action sequences. He and I formed a great friendship and creative collaboration, and then there’s Ra Vincent, our production designer. We had the best of both worlds. Olivier Dumont, our VFX supervisor, joined us from LA, but Ngila Dickson, our costume designer, is based in New Zealand and has worked on The Lord of the Rings movies. On the post side, our editor and producer, Stefan Grube, has also been with me since 10 Cloverfield Lane and is always challenging me to find the heart of a story. There are people I’ve done some projects with who have been great, but there are also some where I’m like, ‘I want to grab onto your reins and have you take me further than I’ve ever gone before with each movie.’ I accumulate more and more of those folks, and I’ve always dreamed of having that.

 

How many VFX shots were there in this, and how does that compare to the kind of previous things that you’ve done?

There are maybe 1,450 VFX shots, which means there are about 1,470 shots in the whole movie. In a movie like Star Wars, you’d have the crazy VFX sequence, and then Luke and Han or Rey and Finn in the cockpit talking to each other. You shoot that against the set, and you’re cool. In our movie, our main character is a visual effect. His friend [Elle Fanning’s character] is a visual effect. Their walks and talks, or the sitting by the campfire conversations, still have the severed body with rigs to have her raised up. There was no break. That’s why I started to feel like, ‘Oh my God, is this Howard the Duck?’ It took forever to feel what the movie was really going to be once we had more effects.

(L-R) Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) and Thia (Elle Fanning) in 20th Century Studios’ PREDATOR: BADLANDS film. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios. © 2025 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

How do you find the Predator’s look for this in the timeline and the species’ evolution?

In terms of the actual facial designs, I don’t think of that in terms of timeline. I think of that in terms of the ecology of a planet, and the way that all of us humans look quite different from one another. In terms of the wardrobe, armory, and weaponry, that does factor into the timeline. With Prey and Killer of Killers, I did two movies that were set in the past, and it’s always challenging to figure out how something meets the promise of the premise and be far more advanced, but at the same time, it has to feel prior to what we’ve seen before. Predator: Badlands was a wonderful release for me to finally make a movie that is furthest into the future. I could embrace all of the advanced technology for a limited period of time, because at some point, he loses it.

 

As a filmmaker, what are your hopes and aspirations for the industry in 2026?

It used to be that we were all going to the movies, and it was just a matter of which film you would see. Every weekend, the whole world was going to the theater, but that is not the case anymore. Now it is our duty as filmmakers to make something that grabs people away from the couch. Every bad movie is exponentially worse than it ever was before. Every time we fall short of that duty, it really hurts because it’s like, ‘I’ll catch it when it comes on streaming.’ Again, it’s why I was so freaked out that I was making Howard the Duck. I love that movie, but I do know what it represents in cinema history. We can’t control the zeitgeist, we can’t control the mood, we can’t control the quality of the theater experience or the concessions, but we’ve got to hold up our end of the bargain and make sure that what they’re going to see is kick ass.

Predator: Badlands is now streaming.

 

Featured image: A scene from 20th Century Studios’ PREDATOR: BADLANDS film. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios. © 2025 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

The Wakandans Meet The Fantastic Four in New “Avengers: Doomsday” Teaser

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Shuri (Letitia Wright) is ready to rumble in the new teaser for the Russo Brothers’ Avengers: Doomsday. Considering all that Shuri lost the last time we saw her (in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever), it makes sense that this teaser opens on a somber note. Her brother, T’Challa (the late, great Chadwick Boseman), and her mother, Ramonda (Angela Bassett), are both gone. In the teaser, we see not only her and her formidable fellow Wakandan, M’Baku (Winston Duke), but also the person responsible for her mother’s death, the immensely powerful Namor (Tenoch Huerta), whom Shuri ultimately got the better of at the end of Wakanda Forever, only to spare his life.

It seems like a good thing she did that, given both the size of Namor’s army and what’s in store for the entire planet, both above and beneath the oceans, in Doomsday. The team is going to need all the help they can get. And more help is on the way as the teaser ends with an introduction between two big, strong guys who are both very good, the aforementioned M’Baku and Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), also known as the Thing. When the two men meet, the Wakandan introduces himself as “King M’Baku, of Wakanda.” Ben’s reply? “Ben, ah, Yancy Street, between Broome and Grand.”

Doomsday will likely surpass Avengers: Endgame for the number of combatants involved. Joining the Wakandans, the Fantastic Four, and Namor and his fellow Talokan warriors are a who’s who of MCU legends. We already know that Chris Evans’ Steve Rogers is returning, as is Chris Hemsworth’s Thor. The list also includes Paul Rudd’s Ant-Man, Anthony Mackie’s Captain America (complicating Steve Rogers’ return, one assumes), Sebastian Stan’s Winter Soldier, Simu Liu’s Shang-Chi, Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova, and Tom Hiddleston’s Loki. There’s more—the retro X-Men and the rest of the New Avengers* (really, the Thunderbolts, which includes Pugh’s Belova, Hannah John-Kamen’s Ghost, and David Harbour’s Alexei Shostakov) will be on hand.

All of these worthy warriors are joining forces to stop Dr. Doom, played by returning MCU OG Robert Downey Jr. It’s no doubt going to be one of the biggest movie events of the year.

Check out the teaser below. Avengers: Doomsday will hit theaters on December 18, 2026.

Featured image: Letitia Wright as Shuri in Marvel Studios’ BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER. Photo by Annette Brown. © 2022 MARVEL.

“Song Sung Blue” Writer/Director Craig Brewer on Touring Kate Hudson & Hugh Jackman Through America’s Heartland

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Song Sung Blue is a story of working-class America, made by working-class America. Writer/director Craig Brewer, best known for helming Hustle & Flow and Dolemite Is My Name, even carried that through to the film’s innovative marketing, taking it on a tour of middle America.

The biographical musical drama, based on the 2008 documentary film of the same name, stars Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson as Mike and Claire Sardina, a couple who performed as Lightning & Thunder, a Neil Diamond tribute band. As they’re about to hit the big time, their lives are turned upside down by a freak accident. The ensemble cast also includes Michael Imperioli, Fisher Stevens, and Jim Belushi.

Buoyed by two stellar performances from its leads, Song Sung Blue is heartwarming in a way that earns your trust, eschewing mere sentimentality for something deeper. Brewer pays homage to two entertainers who have some talent, yes, but whose impact goes beyond their musical chops, and whose lives are every bit as hard as the people they’re entertaining.

Here, Brewer, who also produced the film, explains why his grassroots approach to storytelling was more important than ever and what the industry can learn from old Hollywood, and his respect for Jackman’s optimism on the road and Hudson’s raw, wonderful performance.

Like a band, you took “Song Sung Blue” on a tour across the US, in a way we don’t publicize movies these days. Why was it essential?

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my years in the business, it’s that there is a methodology to how movies and awards campaigns are sold. It usually filters through the coasts, and it’s an LA and New York thing. They hope that the flyover states will eventually catch up, or they won’t, but they don’t care. From a very early stage in this movie, Hugh and I, and Kate in particular, believed we wanted to make a movie for the country and about people in middle America. It’s a real working-class movie. Not only did we want to make a movie that celebrates those values and attitude, but we also wanted to come to that audience very respectfully and say, “You’re the most important to us.” Hugh, in particular, and I don’t know if it’s his Aussie spirit, believes it, and he was like, “We’re definitely going to Milwaukee.” A couple of thousand people waited for three hours in 40-degree cold and snow. We were only supposed to do about 100 photos, but Hugh wanted to take a picture with every single person.

(L to R) Hugh Jackman as Mike Sardina and Kate Hudson as Claire Stengl in director Craig Brewer’s SONG SUNG BLUE, a Focus Features release. Credit: Courtesy of Focus Features © 2025 All Rights Reserved.

It sounds very personal.

What we kept on hearing from some of the reporters in these places was, “Back in the day, stars would go on tour through America and sell their movie. They don’t do that anymore.” They do junkets, they’re in one hotel, and then you could fly in there, but what is special about a black wall that has the picture of your movie in front of it? Nothing. What’s special is Hugh Jackman serving 1,000 people frozen custard, taking pictures with people and their babies, and making memories. I have pictures of my family when Gone with the Wind played in Atlanta. Clark Gable was there, and they took pictures with him. It meant something to them.

GREENFIELD, WISCONSIN – DECEMBER 02: Hugh Jackman promotes “Song Sung Blue” at Kopp’s Frozen Custard on December 02, 2025 in Greenfield, Wisconsin. (Photo by Joshua Applegate/Getty Images)

You live in Memphis. You are in your community, involved in grassroots filmmaking organizations, and even your daughter’s school productions.

That was a big commitment. My daughter said, “You’re probably going to go make that Snoop Dogg movie next year [a biopic from Universal is in the works, with Brewer attached to direct], and you’re going to miss my graduation. I would like you to direct my high school play.” It was three hours every day, Monday through Friday, but I was so proud to do it. The movie’s spirit embraces that, too. We’ve messed up our view of what success is. It usually means that you get big, you get famous, and then you move to LA, New York, or Atlanta, and I really think it is killing our local art scene a bit. Memphis teaches me this. So many great artists and creatives live in Memphis. They all have families. They’re the parents of the kids that I was directing in the play of 12 Angry Jurors. There’s another way to view fame and fortune. Fame could be recognition of your passion. Fortune could also be interpreted as: “I want to be able to pay my bills, and if I’ve got a toothache, maybe I can do something about it.” It’s tough to be that in this country. A lot of people feel that artistry is something that you can grow out of, and you need to be a doctor or a plumber, or the reason that you don’t have health insurance is your own fault. All artists are trying to do is elevate the human experience and entertain people.

 

Song Sung Blue is set in Milwaukee, but you filmed it in several locations, including Chicago, Los Angeles, and New Jersey. Why was that?

It was primarily New Jersey because it not only had a strong tax credit program but also a fantastic crew base in the boroughs of New York and New Jersey. It also had really great locations. This is my first time filming in New Jersey, and it was a fantastic experience.

Did you hire local crews?

That’s the essential part of the process. We’re talking in Los Angeles right now, and even though it’s still the leader in film production, there’s a great deal of concern about the quantity of work in Hollywood. We’re all living in too much of a bubble. I don’t think that we’re fighting just for Los Angeles. We’re fighting for this country. If we were making this film a year from now, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we were doing it in London. As we try to fight to keep these productions here, I remind everybody that it’s not about the stars. It’s about the local community, electricians, drivers, hotels, the catering services, and so on. That’s where the incentive is granted. I remember my daughter and I driving up to set and seeing the hundreds of crew members and saying, “Just so you know, honey, when you sit down in front of that screen, like when I’m trying to bang out a script, know that a lot of people are going to be able to buy Christmas gifts because of that. Don’t think that just because we’re on a movie set, people don’t have bills and issues.” Everyone wants to come to America and be part of American entertainment and storytelling. A big part of being an American storyteller and filmmaker is working-class jobs. The people who drive the trucks work much harder than I do. When you start putting it in those terms, a lot of American voters start going like, “I thought this was all about whether or not Tom Cruise was going to get a check.” Even stars like Tom Cruise are fighting for people’s jobs.

Kate Hudson is generating a lot of award buzz, with talk of a potential Oscar nomination.

I definitely hope so because she really deserves it. I would love nothing better, especially given the movie’s theme, if Kate Hudson, the underdog of the conversation, could rise up and be part of it. She’s absolutely amazing in the film. It’s a performance where you get to fall in love with her like we did when she was Penny Lane in Almost Famous. I really hope the people who vote take the time to see her performance in this. I don’t want anybody thinking this is a movie is a joyful confection. We go to some tough places, and Kate is leading the charge.

(L to R) Jim Belushi as Tom D’Amato, Ella Anderson as Rachel, Michael Imperioli as Mark Shurilla, King Princess as Angelina, Kate Hudson as Claire Stengl, and Hugh Jackman as Mike Sardina in director Craig Brewer’s SONG SUNG BLUE, a Focus Features release. Credit: Courtesy of Focus Features © 2025 All Rights Reserved.

There is a massive tonal shift halfway through the movie. Was it a challenge to get it to hit hard without losing the audience?

It was. It’s something that I remember struggling with early on. How do I do it? Where I landed with it was first of all to recognize that this is the way life works. I’ve had people in my family who’ve had terminal illness, and while you’re dealing with that, your auntie makes a joke, and everybody’s laughing. Life is moving forward without you having to choose between misery and light-hearted humor, but it is a delicate balance. But what is too much? I tried to think of it in two levels. Firstly, try to be respectful of the subjects, treat them as real people, and take some of the cynicism out of myself and the world a little bit in this movie. Secondly, and more importantly, examine what true love is. True love in your 50s is different than what you think true love is when you’re in your early 20s, and you see that person across the bar, and there are fireworks. True love is actually when that lightning bolt comes out of nowhere and changes your world. What I decided to do was say, “Let’s get everybody in love with them, then let’s kick them in the gut and see if we can get through it together.”

 

Song Sung Blue is in theaters now, and available to stream.

Featured image: (L to R) Hugh Jackman as Mike Sardina and Kate Hudson as Claire Stengl in director Craig Brewer’s SONG SUNG BLUE, a Focus Features release. Credit: Courtesy of Focus Features © 2025 All Rights Reserved.

Producer Vanridee Pongsittisak on Driving Thai Film & TV’s Global Breakthrough

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The past few years have marked a period of remarkable momentum for Thai producer Vanridee Pongsittisak.

While the foundations of her career were built over more than a decade, supported by the Bangkok-based GTH and GDH 559 studios, Vanridee has recently led the charge as Thai filmmakers expand their international horizons.

Most visibly, this mission has played out in real time through the runaway success of the Pat Boonnitipat-directed comedy-drama How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies.

A surprise box-office hit in cinemas at home and across Asia on its 2024 release, this tale of a greedy grandson who comes to appreciate family bonds and love was picked up for international streaming by Netflix and quickly rose to the top of its charts. By the end of its theatrical run, the film had grossed over US$73 million, and Netflix’s global reach meant the movie had found—and charmed—an audience of millions worldwide.

The film presents universal themes with distinctive Thai flavors and reflects Vanridee’s influences, which trace back to a childhood immersed in both local and global cinema.

Vanridee Pongsittisak

How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies also coincided with unprecedented investment in the Thai film industry. Fueled by government incentives and the country’s development as a global production hub, MPA member studios spent an estimated US$395 million in the country from 2022 to 2024, relying heavily on Thai crews and leveraging the country’s diverse and striking locations. Hit series like HBO’s The White Lotus, which filmed in Thailand, are prime examples.

Those topics – and more – were the focus of a joint MPA-Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) “Thailand’s Success Stories” seminar in Bangkok in October, where the spotlight fell on Vanridee and the story of her recent work, which has also included the multi-award-winning Netflix series Mad Unicorn, set in and around the frantic world of Thai start-ups.

The time ahead will see Vanridee continue to expand her international reach. While she won’t give much away about her next project, next year should see her reunited with director Baz Poonpiriya, with whom she produced the international box office hit Bad Genius (box office gross of $45 million).

Vanridee recently joined The Credits to share her career story and reflect on the state of Thai cinema.

 

Let’s start with How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies and its success. Did you feel you were onto something big with this film?

When we work, we are searching for magic, and while working on this project, we felt that magic happening. There is a universality of themes, but the actual global reach was something unexpected. When we screened it in-house, everyone loved it, and everyone cried, and a lot of people had to redo their makeup or whatever. But then, there were still doubts about whether it would have the same effect on real audiences in cinemas in Thailand.

Was that because of the genre?

The worry was whether a tear-jerker would be attractive to a wide audience. But it appeared at the right time. It turned out that tear-jerkers are in demand. It’s a new phenomenon for Thai audiences: coming together physically in cinemas to share this experience. It quickly became a kind of communal experience. Everyone went into the theater, started sharing tissues, and afterward shared their own experiences and personal memories, and how they relate to the movie.

Handing out tissues before screenings of How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies was among several promotional initiatives that went viral. How important have such campaigns become?

It’s actually a very interesting thing because, during our marketing and promotion meetings, we discussed whether we should shoot videos showing audiences going into the cinemas and coming out crying. But then that idea was never officially implemented as a strategy because Thai people are very skeptical when the media tries to tell them what to do. So, we wanted things to be more organic. We never told our international distributors, you know, you have to hand out tissues. It just happened. Also, you have to think of Thai audiences now as creators. They create their own content, and you hope that what they make will catch on, and it becomes an organic thing.

Okay, let’s track back a bit. Can we talk about what—or who—led you into film?

I have loved watching movies ever since I was a child, and then decided to study this path as a 13-year-old. I decided to study film, and the films that influenced my generation were those of the 90s. We would watch the classics, but the international films from the 90s were the influence. There were three kinds that screened here: Thai films, Hollywood, and Hong Kong.  But the world map of movies is bigger than that. It’s filled with films from other nations, and when we started to watch them it felt like the world had opened up to us.

Vanridee Pongsittisak at work.

In Thai cinema, what did you find initially when you started, and how has it evolved in the years since?

When I first started working in the industry, Thai cinema was kind of at its low point. We were only getting about 10 per cent of the box office each year. So, at that time, it was less about going global but more about reclaiming or regaining trust from the audience. It became so bad that Thai movies were almost considered tasteless among Thai audiences. For me, it was about rebuilding the industry, rebuilding talent, and re-educating the audience. And then, a decade later, it became more about growth. It became more about preparing for international opportunities that might follow after all that hard work.

 

How have you gone about developing the work being done at GDH?

We developed a broader vision following our work in Thailand, and we know this market well. That doesn’t mean we will succeed in everything we do here, but we know it. We also wanted a new challenge – to go out and work in a more international way, meeting new people, working with new people. I have loved the international film realm since childhood, and this has probably driven my vision. We are now walking this path.

What do you think is unique in terms of Thai cinema – is it the style, the storytelling, or a combination?

We are a mixed culture, and that has an impact in terms of media consumption. Thai people themselves are diverse in their economic backgrounds; they are not characterized by a single trait of “being Thai.” Their preference is for a mix of things, and I think that shows in our filmmaking. We combine a lot of influences, a lot of ideas.

Mad Unicorn. เจนเย่ จีรนรภัทร (Janeyeh Jiranorraphat) as เสี่ยวหยู (Xiaoyu) and ธรรศภาคย์ ซี (Thassapak Hsu) as เลียม (Liam) in Mad Unicorn. Cr. Sasidis Sasisakulporn/NETFLIX © 2025

How much of a threat is piracy to your business, and what more can be done to protect Thailand’s valuable film and television IP?

The most difficult thing about piracy in Thailand, I think, is that the general public doesn’t see it as a significant problem or as a crime. There has not been an awareness that has been encouraged so that people do something about it, or that they’ll be punished. There’s not yet a general awareness that this should be taken seriously. And piracy always changes its form. You used to have counterfeit CDs, illegal websites, and now you have illegal content on TikTok. It’s either that the law hasn’t kept up with the evolution of piracy, or there’s a lack of public awareness of piracy’s criminality. These are the two things we need to change.

What role are international streamers now playing in Thai cinema, with regard to both funding and broadcast opportunities?

It’s affecting the Thai film industry. It’s good that we have global platforms investing in the local industry, investing in local talent, and bringing revenue via OTT channels to the studios. But at the same time, these changes have disrupted the cinema-going culture. There are a lot of different debates going on—there are pros and cons —but we have to keep up with these changes. We can’t fight against them.

 

For more interviews with filmmakers and producers taking big swings in Asia, check out these interviews:

Busan 2025: How Locations Shape Asian Productions, From “The Dark Knight” to “K-Pop Demon Hunters”

600 Languages, One Vision: How Producer Reza Servia Bridges Indonesia’s Diversity for Netflix’s Global Audience

From Teenage Pirate Hunter to Global Anti-Piracy Leader: Rajkumar Akella’s Mission to Protect Creative Content

Featured image: Mad Unicorn. เจนเย่ จีรนรภัทร (Janeyeh Jiranorraphat) as เสี่ยวหยู (Xiaoyu) and ธรรศภาคย์ ซี (Thassapak Hsu) as เลียม (Liam) in Mad Unicorn. Cr. Sasidis Sasisakulporn/NETFLIX © 2025 

The Architect of the Upside Down: Inside “Stranger Things” Production Designer Chris Trujillo’s Epic Season 5 Builds

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We’ve come a long way from a group of boys playing Dungeons & Dragons in a basement, and their chance encounter with a shy girl with massive powers shivering in the rain. With Season 5, Matt and Ross Duffer’s Stranger Things came to a close, but not without leaving audiences emotionally spent and deeply satisfied. The production of the closing chapter was wildly ambitious. The first table read took place in December 2023 under the codename “Cedar Lodge,” before shooting for 237 days, including 6,725 setups and 630 hours of footage (1 petabyte of data) from the main unit alone, and wrapping in December 2024. The result? An eight-episode saga packed with unforgettable moments: an epic fight at the Mac-Z gate, Will’s sorcery (and coming out), Max’s escape from Creel’s mind prison, and, of course, a final battle against Vecna and the Mind Flayer. Production designer Chris Trujillo has been there from the start, working on all 42 series episodes alongside set decorator Jess Royal. The majority of production took place in Georgia, with stops in New Mexico and Lithuania (for Hopper’s S4 prison scenes).

“It was home for me,” says Trujillo of The Peach State. “That first season was amazing. Our resources were limited because we were this little weird upstart show and nobody expected anything out of it. We all felt like we were making something really special and I was lucky enough that Jess happened to be Atlanta based when we first started shopping for a location to shoot Stranger Things, which, at the time, wasn’t even called Stranger Things. We contemplated Long Island, North Carolina, and then ultimately went with Atlanta because it had this burgeoning film community, there were resources, and a crew base. Everything just kind of fell into place once we started looking at Atlanta.”

 

For Season 1, practical locations in Jackson, Douglasville, and Stockbridge stood in for the fictional town of Hawkins, the children’s school, and Sheriff Hopper’s (David Harbour) police station. A former mental health institute at Emory University Briarcliff (scheduled to be demolished) was transformed into Hawkins National Laboratory, while studio sets were built at EUE/Screen Gems Studios in Atlanta (bought by Cinespace in 2023). Trujillo’s team recreated 1980s Americana, from wood-paneled basements and cluttered suburban homes to fluorescent-lit schools and grocery stores. The warm, period textures of Hawkins sharply contrast the cold, industrial nature of the eerie lab, creating an atmosphere of everyday detail and creeping otherworldliness. The look earned Trujillo, Royal, and art director William Davis (Sean Brennan served as art director S2-S5) their first Emmy nomination.

 

Ever since, they’ve expanded the world, matching a growing storyline while keeping to their nostalgic roots. Season 2 brought in The Palace Arcade (shot in Douglasville), where the boys discover a new, mysterious high-scorer named “MADMAX” (Max Mayfield) on their favorite game, Dig Dug. Another challenge was mapping the Upside Down’s tunnel system as Will (Noah Schnapp) begins to channel the Shadow Monster. Season 3 saw the takeover of the Gwinnett Place Mall in Duluth, Georgia, where production recreated the ‘80s mall charm, complete with a giant food court. Scoops Ahoy, anyone?

 

Following those events, the Byers family and Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) moved to Lenora Hills, California, for a fresh start. Trujillo found new backdrops in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and surrounding locations to fill in for SoCal. Larger S4 designs included expanding the Upside Down and the Creel family home, a practical location in Rome, Georgia. For the final season, Trujillo staged a military zone battle, gave us a look inside Dr. Brennan’s office, created a radio station for characters to hatch their plan, demolished Hawkins, showed us new corners of the Upside Down, and opened the gates to The Abyss, a.k.a. Dimension X.

STRANGER THINGS: SEASON 5. (L to R) Joe Keery as Steve Harrington, Finn Wolfhard as Mike Wheeler, Charlie Heaton as Jonathan Byers, Caleb McLaughlin as Lucas Sinclair, Natalia Dyer as Nancy Wheeler, Maya Hawke as Robin Buckley, and Gaten Matarazzo as Dustin Henderson in Stranger Things: Season 5. Cr. COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2025

Radio Station

WSQK 94.5 FM, “The Squawk,” is home to Robin (Maya Hawke) and Steve’s (Joe Keery) radio show, through which they secretly relay information to take down Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower). Design inspiration came from a practical station located in North Carolina built during the 1940s.

“It was a serendipitous thing, where the look book I put together, one of the specific images really spoke to the Duffers. They were like, ‘that’s literally the radio station that we grew up seeing.’ So it was just this really lovely bit of coincidence that that radio station was still operating as a transmission facility and we were able to go there and physically survey it and get the nitty gritty detail of this old historic facility,” says Trujillo. “We took those details and directly translated it into a set build. Obviously, we embellished it, changing the interior architecture into something that would shoot nicely and be very Stranger Things.”

 

The design also required a secret staircase leading to a basement – all constructed on stages in Georgia. “The basement was such a lucky thing. It needed to accommodate all this action and I was worried we’d have to do something totally unrealistic. It just so happened that the radio station we surveyed had a basement and the dimensions, the really high ceilings, the really cool curved walls were all used in the stage build. It was really great for me and my team because everybody is really preoccupied with realism. For us to feel good about a set, it really needs to be founded in some kind of reality.”

The Abyss

The otherworldly realm home to the Mind Flayer, demogorgons, and creepy vines infecting the Upside Down is finally unmasked as a yellowish, barren wasteland. The look of it influenced by the landscapes of Plaza Blanca in Abiquiu, New Mexico. “The Abyss was directly inspired by that,” notes the production designer. “In fact, we spent a lot of time there and were on the verge of shooting it practically but because of weather circumstances and logistics, it didn’t work with our schedule. So we had to figure out a way to bring some or all of that work to Georgia.” The team flirted with the idea of shooting in a volume for Dimension X but pivoted to traditional shooting methods.  

STRANGER THINGS: SEASON 5. Cr. COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2025

“We went out to a quarry in Georgia and we set up a giant blue screen and then we sculpted all of the foreground rock elements based on what we liked about that place in New Mexico,” says Trujillo. “Anything you see kind of immediately around the characters in the foreground, those are all sculpted elements. Then we ended up creating [vfx] plates based on the [New Mexico] location and those ended up being the physical, vista view that’s around the characters in the distance.”

Pain Tree

The final battle against the Mind Flayer in the Abyss is an epic clash. El tears an opening in its chest, jumping inside to fight Vecna while others fight from the ground – the creature’s inside becoming an enormous set build. “There was so much creative discussion about conceiving it. One of the concerns was how are the characters going to interact with something so huge. It needed to be big enough that you believe there’s this cavernous, almost cathedral-like abdomen space that the characters are in. And of course, it wanted to be proportioned similarly to the Mind Flayer,” explains Trujillo.

STRANGER THINGS: SEASON 5. (L to R) Joe Keery as Steve Harrington, Finn Wolfhard as Mike Wheeler, Charlie Heaton as Jonathan Byers, Caleb McLaughlin as Lucas Sinclair, Natalia Dyer as Nancy Wheeler, Maya Hawke as Robin Buckley, and Gaten Matarazzo as Dustin Henderson in Stranger Things: Season 5. Cr. COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2025

Initial ideas came from concept artist Michael Maher and were turned into a practical set built from metal infrastructure and foam sculptures. “We had a really fabulous sculpture department headed by Alex Sherrod that brought a new toolbox of potential. So it ended up being this giant sculpture essentially of organic shapes, organic matter, and large-scale elements,” Trujillo says. Adding to the creepiness were massive, almost tissue-like columns that trapped the children inside the Mind Flayer. “We ended up getting custom-made dummies that matched pretty closely to all of the child actors. We didn’t want to subject the kids to being in an awkward position for hours at a time, so for background elements, oftentimes those are just the dummies,” notes the production designer.

STRANGER THINGS: SEASON 5. Jamie Campbell Bower as Vecna in Stranger Things: Season 5. Cr. COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2025
STRANGER THINGS: SEASON 5. (L to R) Gaten Matarazzo as Dustin Henderson and Joe Keery as Steve Harrington in Stranger Things: Season 5. Cr. COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2025

Another important collaboration was with supervising stunt coordinator Hiro Koda. “If we know an actor is going to take a hard fall, no matter what the surface is, we are prepared to create basically a neoprene version of the area. Then our paint department matches it so that it feels relatively seamless. And then ultimately, VFX will have to do a little bit of cleanup around the edge of a stunt mat or something to help tie it in,” says Trujillo.

STRANGER THINGS: SEASON 5. Millie Bobby Brown as Eleven in Stranger Things: Season 5. Cr. COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2025

Beyond Strange

The impact of the series has been a massive hit for the industry. Netflix reports that Stranger Things created over 8,000 production jobs across the country and over $1.4 billion for the U.S. economy. During its five seasons, 3,800 local vendors provided services, while Georgia benefited the most, generating over $650 million for the state; 2,000 vendors also had a hand in production. Fans can even see Trujillo’s work up close by visiting the newly opened Netflix House venues in Philadelphia and Dallas (Las Vegas in 2027) through immersive experiences. In Dallas, guests can go on a search-and-rescue mission to save missing citizens of Hawkins, exploring Hawkins High, the Creel House, and the Upside Down while trying to escape Vecna.

Looking back, Trujillo says he felt lucky to be part of Stranger Things. “It is very few and far between where you get the opportunity to build giant, supernatural sets,” he says. “I think the more volume technology becomes widely used, I think the less you’re going to see physical sets filling up soundstages.” One moment he won’t forget? The final day of shooting. “It was really special that they made the effort to shoot the final scenes on the final day. As you can imagine, it was very emotional.”

STRANGER THINGS: SEASON 5. (L to R) Finn Wolfhard as Mike Wheeler, Natalia Dyer as Nancy Wheeler, Charlie Heaton as Jonathan Byers, Caleb McLaughlin as Lucas Sinclair, and Maya Hawke as Robin Buckley in Stranger Things: Season 5. Cr. COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2025

All seasons of Stranger Things are now streaming on Netflix.

 

 

 

 

 Featured image: STRANGER THINGS: SEASON 5. (L to R) Joe Keery as Steve Harrington, Charlie Heaton as Jonathan Byers, Gaten Matarazzo as Dustin Henderson, Finn Wolfhard as Mike Wheeler, Caleb McLaughlin as Lucas Sinclair, and Maya Hawke as Robin Buckley in Stranger Things: Season 5. Cr. COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2025

Golden Globes: One More Big Night for Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another”

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The 83rd annual Golden Globes were held on Sunday night, and it was once again a victorious evening for writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another. Anderson’s twitchy, relentless thriller (which, incidentally, was in the best motion picture, comedy or musical category) took home one of the night’s two top film awards, capping a pre-Oscars run that has the film well positioned to take top honors then. Chloé Zhao’s haunting Hamnet took home the best motion picture, drama, with the film’s star, Jessie Buckley, winning for best actress. This is already her second award of 2026, having just taken home a Critics Choice Award for her performance.

Sticking with One Battle for a second, one of the film’s two breakout stars, Teyana Taylor, won for best female actor in a supporting role. Her fellow breakout co-star, Chase Infiniti, was nominated for best female actor in a movie, comedy, or musical, but was edged out by Rose Byrne for her turn in Mary Bronstein’s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You. Meanwhile, Anderson also won for best director and best screenplay. Neither Anderson nor his film could have more momentum heading into the Academy Awards.

Timothée Chalamet followed his Critics Choice Award win with a win on Sunday night for best actor in a comedy or musical for his work in Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme. Wagner Moura took home the award for best actor in a drama for his work in Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent, becoming the first Brazilian to do so. Stellan Skarsgard, who has delivered major performances across decades, won the award for best supporting actor for his performance in Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value.

There were more repeat winners from last weekend’s Critics Choice Awards. Composer Ludwig Göransson once again won best score for his stellar work in Ryan Coogler‘s Sinners, while KPop Demon Hunters’ song “Golden” was named best original song. The track was written by composer Mark Sonnenblick and K-pop singer/songwriter and producer EJAE. Sinners also won for cinematic and box office achievement. 

On the TV side of the equation, there were more repeat customers from the Critics Choice Awards. Once again, The Pitt was named best drama series, with star and producer Noah Wyle winning best actor in a drama. Adolescence won the Globe for best limited series, with stars Owen Cooper, Stephen Graham, and Erin Doherty winning awards for their roles.

Rhea Seehorn took home best actress in a drama for the mind-bending Pluribus. Seth Rogen enjoyed another great night, with The Studio winning best series, musical or comedy, and Rogen winning best actor for his role. Jean Smart once again took home another award for her work in Hacks. 

Nikki Glaser hosted the evening. For your complete list of winners, look no further:

Best Motion Picture – Drama

Frankenstein (Netflix)
Hamnet (Focus Features) (WINNER)
It Was Just an Accident (Neon)
The Secret Agent (Neon)
Sentimental Value (Neon)
Sinners (Warner Bros. Pictures)

Steven Spielberg, Chloé Zhao at the 83rd Annual Golden Globes held at The Beverly Hilton on January 11, 2026 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Rich Polk/2026GG/Penske Media via Getty Images)

Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy

Blue Moon (Sony Pictures Classics)
Bugonia (Focus Features)
Marty Supreme (A24)
No Other Choice (Neon)
Nouvelle Vague (Netflix)
One Battle After Another (Warner Bros. Pictures) (WINNER)

Best Motion Picture – Animated

Arco (Neon)
Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba Infinity Castle (Aniplex, Crunchyroll, Sony Pictures Entertainment)
Elio (Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)
KPop Demon Hunters (Netflix) (WINNER)
Little Amélie or the Character of Rain (Gkids)
Zootopia 2 (Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)

Cinematic and Box Office Achievement

Avatar: Fire and Ash (Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)
F1 (Apple Original Films)
KPop Demon Hunters (Netflix)
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (Paramount Pictures)
Sinners (Warner Bros. Pictures) (WINNER)
Weapons (Warner Bros. Pictures, New Line Cinema)
Wicked: For Good (Universal Pictures)
Zootopia 2 (Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)

Best Motion Picture – Non-English Language

It Was Just an Accident (Neon) — France
No Other Choice (Neon) — South Korea
The Secret Agent (Neon) — Brazil (WINNER)
Sentimental Value (Neon) — Norway
Sirat (Neon) — Spain
The Voice of Hind Rajab (Willa) — Tunisia

Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama 

Jessie Buckley (Hamnet) (WINNER)
Jennifer Lawrence (Die My Love)
Renate Reinsve (Sentimental Value)
Julia Roberts (After the Hunt)
Tessa Thompson (Hedda)
Eva Victor (Sorry, Baby)

Jessie Buckley at the 83rd Annual Golden Globes held at The Beverly Hilton on January 11, 2026 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Christopher Polk/2026GG/Penske Media via Getty Images)

Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama

Joel Edgerton (Train Dreams)
Oscar Isaac (Frankenstein)
Dwayne Johnson (The Smashing Machine)
Michael B. Jordan (Sinners)
Wagner Moura (The Secret Agent) (WINNER)
Jeremy Allen White (Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere)

Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy 

Rose Byrne (If I Had Legs I’d Kick You) (WINNER)
Cynthia Erivo (Wicked: For Good)
Kate Hudson (Song Sung Blue)
Chase Infiniti (One Battle After Another)
Amanda Seyfried (The Testament of Ann Lee)
Emma Stone (Bugonia)

Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy 

Timothée Chalamet (Marty Supreme) (WINNER)
George Clooney (Jay Kelly)
Leonardo DiCaprio (One Battle After Another)
Ethan Hawke (Blue Moon)
Lee Byung-Hun (No Other Choice)
Jesse Plemons (Bugonia)

Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role in Any Motion Picture

Emily Blunt (The Smashing Machine)
Elle Fanning (Sentimental Value)
Ariana Grande (Wicked: For Good)
Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas (Sentimental Value)
Amy Madigan (Weapons)
Teyana Taylor (One Battle After Another) (WINNER)

US actress Teyana Taylor poses in the press room with the Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture award for “One Battle After Another” during the 83rd annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton hotel in Beverly Hills, California, on January 11, 2026. (Photo by Etienne Laurent / AFP) / — IMAGE RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE – STRICTLY NO COMMERCIAL USE —

Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role in Any Motion Picture 

Benicio Del Toro (One Battle After Another)
Jacob Elordi (Frankenstein)
Paul Mescal (Hamnet)
Sean Penn (One Battle After Another)
Adam Sandler (Jay Kelly)
Stellan Skarsgard (Sentimental Value) (WINNER)

Best Director – Motion Picture

Paul Thomas Anderson (One Battle After Another) (WINNER)
Ryan Coogler (Sinners)
Guillermo del Toro (Frankenstein)
Jafar Panahi (It Was Just an Accident)
Joachim Trier (Sentimental Value)
Chloé Zhao (Hamnet)

Paul Thomas Anderson at the 83rd Annual Golden Globes held at The Beverly Hilton on January 11, 2026 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Michael Buckner/2026GG/Variety via Getty Images)

Best Screenplay – Motion Picture

Paul Thomas Anderson (One Battle After Another) (WINNER)
Ronald Bronstein, Josh Safdie (Marty Supreme)
Ryan Coogler (Sinners)
Jafar Panahi (It Was Just an Accident)
Eskil Vogt, Joachim Trier (Sentimental Value)
Chloé Zhao, Maggie O’Farrell (Hamnet)

Best Original Score – Motion Picture 

Alexandre Desplat (Frankenstein)
Ludwig Göransson (Sinners) (WINNER)
Jonny Greenwood (One Battle After Another)
Kangding Ray (Sirat)
Max Richter (Hamnet)
Hans Zimmer (F1)

Best Original Song – Motion Picture

“Dream as One” — Avatar: Fire and Ash
Music By: Miley Cyrus, Andrew Wyatt, Mark Ronson, Simon Franglen
Lyrics By: Miley Cyrus, Andrew Wyatt, Mark Ronson, Simon Franglen

“Golden” — KPop Demon Hunters (WINNER)
Music By: Joong Gyu Kwak, Yu Han Lee, Hee Dong Nam, Jeong Hoon Seo, Park Hong Jun
Lyrics By: Kim Eun-Jae (Ejae), Mark Sonnenblick

“I Lied to You” — Sinners
Music By: Raphael Saadiq, Ludwig Göransson
Lyrics By: Raphael Saadiq, Ludwig Göransson

“No Place Like Home” — Wicked: For Good
Music By: Stephen Schwartz
Lyrics By: Stephen Schwartz

“The Girl in the Bubble” — Wicked: For Good
Music By: Stephen Schwartz
Lyrics By: Stephen Schwartz

“Train Dreams” — Train Dreams
Music By: Nick Cave, Bryce Dessner
Lyrics By: Nick Cave

Best Television Series – Drama 

The Diplomat (Netflix)
The Pitt (HBO Max) (WINNER)
Pluribus (Apple TV)
Severance (Apple TV)
Slow Horses (Apple TV)
The White Lotus (HBO Max)

Best Television Series – Musical or Comedy

Abbott Elementary (ABC)
The Bear (FX on Hulu)
Hacks (HBO Max)
Nobody Wants This (Netflix)
Only Murders in the Building (Hulu)
The Studio (Apple TV) (WINNER)

Best Television Limited Series, Anthology Series or Motion Picture Made for Television

Adolescence (Netflix) (WINNER)
All Her Fault (Peacock)
The Beast in Me (Netflix)
Black Mirror (Netflix)
Dying for Sex (FX on Hulu)
The Girlfriend (Prime Video)

Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Television Series – Drama 

Kathy Bates (Matlock)
Britt Lower (Severance)
Helen Mirren (Mobland)
Bella Ramsey (The Last of Us)
Keri Russell (The Diplomat)
Rhea Seehorn (Pluribus) (WINNER)

Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Television Series – Drama 

Sterling K. Brown (Paradise)
Diego Luna (Andor)
Gary Oldman (Slow Horses)
Mark Ruffalo (Task)
Adam Scott (Severance)
Noah Wyle (The Pitt) (WINNER)

Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Television Series – Musical or Comedy 

Kristen Bell (Nobody Wants This)
Ayo Edebiri (The Bear)
Selena Gomez (Only Murders in the Building)
Natasha Lyonne (Poker Face)
Jenna Ortega (Wednesday)
Jean Smart (Hacks) (WINNER)

Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Television Series – Musical or Comedy 

Adam Brody (Nobody Wants This)
Steve Martin (Only Murders in the Building)
Glen Powell (Chad Powers)
Seth Rogen (The Studio) (WINNER)
Martin Short (Only Murders in the Building)
Jeremy Allen White (The Bear)

Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Limited Series, Anthology Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television 

Claire Danes (The Beast in Me)
Rashida Jones (Black Mirror)
Amanda Seyfried (Long Bright River)
Sarah Snook (All Her Fault)
Michelle Williams (Dying for Sex) (WINNER)
Robin Wright (The Girlfriend)

Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Limited Series, Anthology Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television 

Jacob Elordi (The Narrow Road to the Deep North)
Paul Giamatti (Black Mirror)
Stephen Graham (Adolescence) (WINNER)
Charlie Hunnam (Monster: The Ed Gein Story)
Jude Law (Black Rabbit)
Matthew Rhys (The Beast in Me)

Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role on Television 

Carrie Coon (The White Lotus)
Erin Doherty (Adolescence) (WINNER)
Hannah Einbinder (Hacks)
Catherine O’Hara (The Studio)
Parker Posey (The White Lotus)
Aimee Lou Wood (The White Lotus)

Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role on Television 

Owen Cooper (Adolescence) (WINNER)
Billy Crudup (The Morning Show)
Walton Goggins (The White Lotus)
Jason Isaacs (The White Lotus)
Tramell Tillman (Severance)
Ashley Walters (Adolescence)

Best Performance in Stand-Up Comedy on Television

Bill Maher (Bill Maher: Is Anyone Else Seeing This?)
Brett Goldstein (Brett Goldstein: The Second Best Night of Your Life)
Kevin Hart (Kevin Hart: Acting My Age)
Kumail Nanjiani (Kumail Nanjiani: Night Thoughts)
Ricky Gervais (Ricky Gervais: Mortality) (WINNER)
Sarah Silverman (Sarah Silverman: Postmortem)

Best Podcast

Armchair Expert With Dax Shepard (Wondery)
Call Her Daddy (SiriusXM)
Good Hang With Amy Poehler (Spotify) (WINNER)
The Mel Robbins Podcast (SiriusXM)
SmartLess (SiriusXM)
Up First (NPR)

Featured image: Teyana Taylor at the 83rd Annual Golden Globes held at The Beverly Hilton on January 11, 2026 in Beverly Hills, California.

How Costume Designer Deborah L. Scott Dressed the Wind Traders and Ash People for “Avatar: Fire and Ash”

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Four decades ago, Deborah L. Scott was on a plane to the middle of nowhere, Alaska, to design costumes for Carroll Ballard’s Never Cry Wolf (1983). The decision changed her career.

“As scared as I was, as ridiculous and unprepared as I probably looked, it was a good idea,” she shares with The Credits. “It’s ok to be unprepared, and stepping out of your comfort zone is good as an artist.” The project introduced her to Steven Spielberg and opened the door to E.T. She followed Elliot’s famous red hoodie with another unforgettable red look: Marty’s vest in Back to the Future. Great Scott! After designing for Hoffa, Legends of the Fall, and Heat, she joined forces with James Cameron on Titanic (1997), which brought her both an Academy Award and a BAFTA. Ten years later, the two met again on Avatar (2009).  She would spend the next two decades with the director, working on Avatar: The Way of Water and Avatar: Fire and Ash.

“When I came in on Avatar, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, which made Avatar: Way of Water much more comforting because I almost knew what I was doing. But at the time, we had [producer] Jon Landau, who was such a huge cheerleader for everything. He brought so much excitement to each and every day in his own work and therefore in ours,” she says. [Landau passed away in July 2024 at the age of 63].  “And in some ways, it made the job easier because we had such a mammoth amount of things to learn on Avatar: Way of Water. The technology was completely different. Jim had written a very complex script and wanted to try new things like shooting underwater. It was really hard at first, and then as you settled in and got your footing, it became easier except when things would come up, of course.”

Tuk (Trinity Bliss) in 20th Century Studios' AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios. © 2022 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.
Tuk (Trinity Bliss) in 20th Century Studios’ AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios. © 2022 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

For The Way of Water, costumes created over 2,000 garments and introduced the ocean-friendly Metkayina. The third installment introduces new clans: the air-traveling Wind Traders and the Ash people, whose land was destroyed by a volcanic eruption. Their look is unmistakable – ash body paint and fiery red hues stand in contrast to the blue tones of other Na’vi clans. Below, the costume designer shares the inspiration behind both newcomers and the trick that streamlined collaboration with visual effects.

 

How did the filming technology of Way of Water and Fire and Ash affect costume design? 

Working with the VFX team was an incredible opportunity to learn a lot about their craft, but I don’t draw on the computer or build things in a virtual space. So being with them was a wonderful opportunity to ask a bunch of questions, and also to chart your own course. So when I was making something with my textile artists, I would say, could it be a little longer? It doesn’t look quite right. It’s not moving quite right. So that ability to remake things, you’re doing it with your communication skills. So I had to really up my game, and I learned ways to get a better outcome for my costumes.

Varang, the leader of the Ash people. CORAL – Costumes. Photo by Mark Fellman. © 2025 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

Were there any workflow breakthroughs while designing? 

One thing I finally got to implement halfway through Fire and Ash was what I called the “lending library.” The VFX team does everything virtually, and they would get a huge packet of information from me, but they’d be looking at photograph samples. At one point, I was like what if we made things available for the effects company to check out. So we’d send the physical costume to the artists responsible for building and drawing them virtually, so they could see it in person, hold it in their hands, and digest what the costume was. Then they would send it back and get something else. We didn’t do it at the beginning because there was a little more security around stuff, but it became a huge breakthrough. I got an email from one of the supervisors saying it was a big deal to their artists.

A new clan in Fire and Ash is the Wind Traders (Tlalim clan). What informed their look?

There is a lot about the Wind Traders that holds the concepts and ideas. They weave, even if it’s rudimentary, they weave. These people were able to make cloth. So we made cloth, we wove cloth. And because it’s cold up there, right, they had to be well-covered, and that was different. Then, the quality and the way they worked on the ship had a lot of influence on the costumes.

 

How did you approach Wind Trader chief Peylak (David Thewlis)?

My first designs for the cloak were a lot more rustic. It wasn’t nearly as decorative as this one. But when we got further into production, Jim and I were looking at the performance. I said, oh my God, he stands with such grandeur. The way he inherits the part and acts with his body really influenced me to go back and say this guy deserves better.

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

How so?

I started with materials that I knew they used, and basically let myself go crazy. How can I make this guy look amazing? The colors are very vibrant in this clan. The motifs of the swirl really speak to a couple of different pieces of research that I did. One way I looked at aerial photography books over Earth, and you can see how strange shapes become. And the idea of looking up at the sky and seeing wisps of cloud.  So, as I’ve gone on in the movies, I’ve really designed with the motion of the costume in mind… that the capes need to ripple in the wind. That you look at this motif and you feel movement. You feel his collar swirling around his neck. It was really fun to rise to the occasion of his performance.

Peylak (David Thewlis) in 20th Century Studios’ AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios. © 2025 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

How did you decide on Peylak’s color palette?

The colors took a lot of consideration because, when you see the cloak in the movie, you can see the color change from his shoulders to the hem, and it’ll look like a sunset or sunrise. It changes colors, and you can see the swirls shift as they move through the cloak. And that was all, a lot of hours of standing there going, no, darker purple, no lighter purple…this is where it transitions. When you make a costume like this, it’s almost like making a painting.

What went into designing the looks for the Mangkwan clan, aka the Ash People?

Our first pass at designing happened really early on, way before we started shooting. And it was important to show Jim what that world might look like, so we did some broad passes. The Ash people started off incredibly minimal, like barely a costume, no particular accessories, very, very, very rudimentary and simple. And then, as we got further down the pipeline, it became apparent that the whole clan needed much more interest visually.

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

Where did the visual inspiration come from?

I always look to the environments from where they come from, and they live in a kind of volcanic wasteland. And so you had very rudimentary materials. You had clay, dirt, and stone, so we concentrated on those. Leather was part of the palette but almost opposite from the other people. So that was kind of fun. And then as we sort of developed them more, we realized they made things with their hands, and even though they have minimal materials, they’re very decorative people. Their body becomes the landscape.

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

How did the body painting develop among the Ash People?

That was the first thing Jim wanted. The paint, the ash that made the scarification patterns. They did it in ways in which people who live minimally still around the world decorate with body art for a reason, right? They’re showing stature in the clan. They’re showing their clanhood, their ideas in general. So we did a lot of work on that, a lot of work on piercings. They were, by Jim’s words, a very kind of sadomasochistic clan. They liked it. They didn’t mind piercing. So we did a really deep dive into that, and we had to pull back a teeny bit because it was getting pretty gruesome.

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

Avatar: Fire and Ash is in theaters now. 

 

Featured image: The Ash people. CORAL – Costumes. Photo by Mark Fellman. © 2025 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

“Wicked: For Good” Choreographer Christopher Scott on Conjuring Magical Moves With Cynthia Erivo & Ariana Grande

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Christopher Scott was in theater camp when Wicked first rocked the Broadway world. As an aspiring artist, Scott was swept away by the show. Around 20 years later, the circle was complete when Scott became the choreographer for the Jon M. Chu-helmed film adaptation.

Wicked: For Good also completes a long-haul assignment for Scott, who spent 13 months developing the original, grand-scale musical numbers for the two-parter. Although Wicked: For Good is the darker chapter of the two, it’s not without its foot-tapping dance numbers – including the show-stopping tunes “Thank Goodness/I Couldn’t Be Happier” and “Wonderful.”

They are two of the many musical numbers that sing character-driven set pieces, similar to Scott’s rich work on In the Heights. When the choreographer spoke with The Credits, there was no sadness about his farewell to Wicked, only gratitude for his time spent in Oz with Glinda (Ariana Grande), Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo), and the rest of this magical cast and crew.

Christopher Scott and director Jon M. Chu on set. Courtesy Universal Pictures.

Wicked: For Good’s introduction to Glinda, her and her crew dancing, plays as old-school Hollywood. What were your inspirations for her intro? 

I’m very inspired by Bob Fosse. I’m a tap dancer, so the Nicholas Brothers inspired me, so there’s a lot of rhythm in there. I always try to remember my roots as a tap dancer and my musicality, because there are beats that you want to hit, but then there are also the sounds in between the music that not everybody hears. Our job can make people hear the music in a very specific way.

Glinda and the dancers all seemingly become one in that dance number. How do you and an ensemble of dancers pull off that sense of oneness? 

A lot of repetition. It is a huge testament to how incredible dancers are. My process is not the easiest. I change things a lot. I feel something and I’m like, “Wait, let’s try this.” Those dancers have to stay with me. And then I’m like, “Okay, can we try it again?” And then you want to see it as the choreographer to know if it’s going to be good. I would sometimes be like, “Oh, there’s no way that they’re going to hit this right now. I just showed them what I’m thinking and I forgot immediately. I wouldn’t be able to hit those damn steps.” They do it, and they kill it.

How much does conflict drive your choreography? For example, in “Wonderful,” there’s a push and pull between the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum), Glinda, and Elphaba.

It’s all driven by the conflict because that’s what this movie was about. It was really interesting to get inside that number, to really think: Who is the Wizard? He really is this façade, but how much of this does he actually believe? How much does he love what he does? This number was built on the idea that his character holds this belief about what people consider “wonderful.” So when we were doing this dance, every little piece of the puzzle was all being driven by that. I’m so grateful to have worked with Jeff and see him find honesty in a performance like that.

What makes for an honest, authentic dance number?

Those are the moments that make us believe that they happened, because people think musicals aren’t real. They think nobody sings and dances through life. That’s not true. People do. I’ve been to places where you’re feeling romantic, and somebody grabs somebody on the street and starts to dance with them because they hear a little music. That’s a real moment. Obviously, we go a little further than most, but it does happen. When wars end, people go out on the street, and they dance. I love it  when actors carry that through for you because that’s not us. We can’t, as choreographers, make that happen. Actors have to do it and make it believable.

Jeff Goldblum is The Wizard of Oz in WICKED FOR GOOD, directed by Jon M. Chu.

Jeff Goldblum, being a jazzman and pianist, did you see his musicality influence how he prepared for “Wonderful”?

All the time. One of my favorite moments in this movie was when I played some Frank Sinatra and Jeff and I tap-danced together, back-freestyling. I wanted to see how he moves and how he embodies music in a physical form. I watched him get lost in the music and tap dancing, and that’s vulnerable for a lot of actors on day one. It was the first day I was with Jeff. It opened up a whole bunch of doors, and I was like, “Oh, yeah, he’s me. He’s like me. He’s a tap dancer. We’ll find the nuance in the music and see what we get.”

How about finding nuances with Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo? With their arcs over the course of the films, how’d you all want the choreography to tell their stories?

They are so tapped into those characters, so it made it easy. As a movie, it has tons of ingredients, but as a dance, as a piece, as a musical number, we have a lot of little ingredients. One of the first things I try to throw into the pot is the actors’ intentions — the way they see the scene, the way they feel their character. I’ll have choreography started, but before I work with them at all, I talk to them about how they see their characters. We were always choreographing with that in mind.

When you first started this process with Cynthia, she said to you, “Go hard on me.” What doors does that request open up as a choreographer?

When she was like, “Go hard on me,” I took it to mean she was going to give this the time it deserves to uphold the level we want to achieve. She goes hard. That woman goes hard. I asked a lot out of her. For “The Wizard and I,” for example, I asked Cynthia to run through this maze that we had created for her and sing the song for me four or five times. That song is not easy to sing. There are actors who are just like, “Okay, I’ll do it once.”

 

When an actor like Cynthia performs a piece like “The Wizard and I” several times in pre-production, what qualities are you looking for?

I’m learning. I’m taking it all in. It’s helping me create and prepare for the real staging of it, the real moments that we’re going to build together. It’s all that work, man. It was a very intimate process, and we’re going over and over again. It’s repetition. She was like, “You can tell me again because it’s not good enough.” The fear is, sometimes you don’t want to push an actor too far.

How so?

They get a lot of pressure, and you don’t want to break an actor. It happens all the time, and it’s not their fault — it’s just a hard thing to do, period. So I knew when Cynthia said that to me, I knew who she was. I know we’re going to get through this. I don’t need to really worry about her. She’ll tell me. Every time you’re like, “Can you do it again?” “Yep, let’s do it.”

Wicked: For Good is in theaters everywhere.

Featured image: L to R: Cynthia Erivo is Elphaba, Ariana Grande is Glinda, and Jeff Goldblum is The Wizard of Oz in WICKED FOR GOOD, directed by Jon M. Chu.

How Simon Franglen Brought Punk Energy and Mongolian Instruments to “Avatar: Fire and Ash”

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The audible experience of an Avatar film is as ambitious as the groundbreaking visuals. With both familiar and otherworldly cues, composer Simon Franglen develops textured cues and themes that draw audiences into the story. Together with the sound effects, Franglen, his orchestra, and collaborators deliver another transportive score in James Cameron’s Avatar: Fire and Ash.

As vast as the world of Pandora is, the experience for Franglen scoring these mammoth spectacles is counterintuitively intimate. “There is a thing that Jim [Cameron] and I called the sh** art boundary—which is everything up to 99% is shit, and then there is art,” Franglen told The Credits. “And that’s the requirement for writing music for this. I have to hit 100%. The great thing about it is that I literally only have two people to please. First, I have to please myself—I will not play something for Jim until I’m happy. He wants it when it’s right. Once I’m happy, then I play it for Jim.”

The composer wrote over 2,000 pages of music to hit that 100% for the latest epic, which sees Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), and the Metkayina clan facing off against a new threat — the Mangkwan Clan, the ash people led by Varang (a terrific Oona Chaplin). To make them a ferocious force, Franglen tapped into his love of punk rock and conjured a vast yet personal score that moves viewers in subtle, emotionally resonant ways.

Franglen takes us inside his process for scoring the third film in Cameron’s sui generis franchise.

When you scored Avatar: The Way of Water, you said you planted seeds for what we’d hear in Avatar: Fire and Ash. How did they grow?

For instance, an echo of the war theme — what we call the Eywa theme — which is now not just an echo you hear in the background. There’s a point where Kiri (Sigourney Weaver) in Way of Water says, “Yes, I could feel it.” And we said, “What does Eywa sound like? It sounds mighty.” 

In Avatar: Fire and Asht, that becomes a central thing, which is that you actually hear a chant, “Ma Eywa,” which becomes a distant part of this. I wanted the idea of this being something that is the sound — that there is almost Eywa’s ringtone, shall we say — and that is there, and that becomes an evolution. We have discovered a binding between Kiri and Eywa. We just start to see it, and then in Fire and Ash, it’s an important part of that story.

As Kiri grows, how does her theme grow along with her?

This one is a much more sophisticated thing I use with a solo violin, played beautifully by Alyssa Park. Initially, we hear it early in the film: a longer, more sophisticated Kiri theme that evolves into a more orchestral one. Kiri has an arc, and the theme needs to flow. There’s a point where she jumps in the water, for instance, that involves Kiri’s theme in its full orchestral majesty. Those are the sorts of evolutions that I thought about when I was doing two that come into three. There are easter eggs I have planted in two that won’t pay off till five.

Neytiri’s arc asks a crucial thematic question: Will she, like Varang (Oona Chaplin), turn her grief into fire and ash? Given her new arc, how’d her theme evolve?

The last track on the album is called “The Future in the Past,” sung by Zoe Saldaña. It was in the film, but it was discarded at some point because there is only so much time. It was her singing. When I wrote it in, I found a file I wrote in April or May of 2018. I always loved this theme, based around a melody and a lyric that I’d written for Zoe to sing in 2018, which is actually a memory of what’s going on in the family about the future and the past and so on. I wanted that theme to be the film’s core. Even though it isn’t in the movie, there’s an exquisite performance that Zoe does. What you hear is a single live one-take. I used it because I needed to expand the language to cover everything the family’s going through, since we’re dealing with loss.

 

How’d you develop a new theme for the Ash people, Mangkwan Clan?

I had been to Inner Mongolia in 2014, and I’d come across this instrument called the morin khuur. Two strings that could be played with a real visceral bite. I wanted something that was almost punk. Now, when I was a kid, punk was my music.

Punk music influenced Avatar: Fire and Ash’s score?

Yeah. When “New Rose” by The Damned came out, and when I heard the band Neurosis, that transformed my life. I used to go around and see The Damned all the time. I am not someone who went to The 100 Club to see the Sex Pistols play, but I did see The Clash. I did see The Stranglers. And there is an energy to that.

And you wanted that energy for the Mangkwan Clan?

The Ash are chaos agents wanting to tear the world down. I needed an instrument that was definitely the Ash. I took a hybrid of the morin khuur and a bit of electric cello, going through a fuzz box. We also tested some things with violas, played with two bows, incredibly aggressively. I’m very proud of this texture because I think you know immediately that it’s not quite orchestral, it’s not quite guitar, but it’s different. It has a bite. 

How’d you expand on it from there? 

There’s a bass thing that starts the opening of that cue, “The Mangkwan Attack,” with this big slide. I went back to my old day job of building synthesizers for other people and built this enormous synthesizer patch, which is the gnarliest bass thing I could possibly come up with. Then I went to my fabulous orchestra and said to Jacob and Mike, the leaders of my cellos and basses, “I want you to play this molto martelé on cellos and basses. Any attempt at training has to disappear out the window.” We went and ground away like crazy to get the texture I wanted for it.

 

Once you got that sound, you moved on to Varang’s theme. What was the key to unlocking her sound? 

Oona asked, “Did you really call her theme ‘A Girl Falling in Love with a Gun’?” And I said, “No, actually the true title is ‘I’m Just a Girl Standing in Front of a Gun Saying Love Me.’” There is a scene when she first sees the gun, and I said, “This is about a girl, this is about the wrong understanding of the power of the gun, that the gun gives her something that she’s never had before.” Suddenly, there is this symbol of power in front of her. For me, that was it. She’s obviously a seductress, and there is an element of that that I wanted to have. I wanted to have that sense of snake-charming, almost.

 

Like when Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) enters her home, goes on a big drug trip, and hears her backstory. How’d you want the cue to express an altered state?

You want that sense of his perception. So the music at that point is meant to be his perception, not that of, “Well, I’m not playing score; I’m playing how he feels.” He’s looking around, and there are things going on that get amplified and stretched. I was time-dilating echoes so they went boom, boom, boom, boom with pitch. They pitch-shift down, and then the thing completely changes.

 

There is so much story to tell in that sequence. How’d you want to pace it?

Over six minutes, Varang tells her story. This is probably the cue I’m most proud of. We go from this enormously weird orchestral thing to just the flutes playing her theme, and she starts telling the story of the Ash and so on. You can hear the morin khuur in the background, a rhythm like that gradually builds up, and you think you know where you’re going to go until it turns again, hard left.

(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.

You switch between her theme and Quartich there, too, right?

There’s a perception shift. Now we move to Quaritch’s theme. We’ve gone from this visceral Ash motif to the military man, to him now telling a story about what power changes. And then there is the point where she says, “I see you.” And he goes, “Damn right, you do.” And there’s a kick drum, and the kick drum is somewhat loud. Everything you think you know about the music of Avatar changes at that point, because suddenly there’s this almost acid bass that I’ve built, and then this enormously loud kick that’s just in your face.

And then you keep going. How’d you want that combining of those two themes to pay off? 

I gradually do this thing where the Ash motifs start to build again, but on the full orchestra. Underneath it is Quaritch’s theme. Quaritch is being played on the brass and so on. And then the strings play more of her theme. Gradually, this thing builds and builds. Still, at this time, there is this hard, biting, single drum right in the face. And then it explodes. It is a journey across six minutes. It took a while to get it, but when I got it, it was so satisfying.

 

Avatar: Fire and Ash is in theaters now.

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

Shaken & Stirred: “The Testament of Ann Lee” DP William Rexer on Capturing Amanda Seyfried’s Fearless Performance

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Intimate and uninhibited, director Mona Fastvold’s (co-writer, executive producer, and 2nd unit director of The Brutalist) The Testament of Ann Lee is a devoted biopic about the unusual founder of the Shaker movement, Mother Ann Lee (Amanda Seyfried). Considered a representative of God, Lee guided her offshoot of the Quakers into existence during a period of English Evangelical revival, but the group’s unrestrained dancing, curtailed sexual relations, and encouragement of gender equality were unique even within the broader religious resurgence. Unsurprisingly, these attributes together made the Shakers unpopular with Manchester’s 19th-century authorities, and religious persecution led Lee and her followers to emigrate to the New World. After a few years in New York, they settled near Albany, and their proselytizing efforts across the Eastern Seaboard swelled their ranks to a peak of around 4,000 in the mid-19th century.

Fastvold’s film follows Lee’s life from her early childhood until her death, making sense of the religious leader’s fervor through a depiction of her youthful aversion to sexuality, followed, devastatingly painfully, by the loss of all four of her children in infancy. In Manchester, both Lee’s life and her surroundings appear tightly limited, with cinematographer William Rexer’s camera work allowing the movement and the signature design it produced to open up as the Shakers flourished in America. Rexer also lensed Fastvold’s The Long Bright River and The Crowded Room, with Seyfried starring in both series. The Testament of Ann Lee is a fearless film and, as Rexer told us, would not have been possible without the trio’s trust in one another, built on their previous projects. We had the chance to speak with the cinematographer about Seyfried’s performance, the choreography, and the atmosphere on set, which all helped make this such an unparalleled project.  

How did you convey such a natural sense of lighting?

Mona and I talked at the beginning about creating a look that did not feel filmic, inspired by painting rather than traditional television looks. We wanted to make sure that everything felt justified, whether it was by a candle, a sun source, or a moon source. That was really critical to us because we wanted the audience to truly be transported to a different time. While you thought that was a candle and that was natural, quite often we were creating those environments and consistent sun or consistent moon [lighting]. We had a lot of tungsten fixtures hidden to emulate candles. Our references were Baroque paintings—Mona and I spent a lot of time looking through paintings.

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

Once Ann and her followers arrived in the New World, did your inspiration change?

Yes, because the New World was much more open. Their architecture was much more open and had much more light. But it’s still source-motivated. We went up to Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and walked through those spaces, and felt what they felt like with real light coming through. That took over as inspiration, really. So the early work was definitely Baroque, and then later on, it got inspired by the real thing.

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

How did you subsequently use the cinematography to separate Manchester and North America?

There are a lot of different things that are going on there. Some of it is the light, some of it is the architecture, some of it is how closed things were. We worked with Sam Bader, the [production] designer, to make those Manchester places feel tight, cramped, and small. But also, some of it is the psychology we played. At the beginning of the film, you are observing them, and you’re in those painterly compositions. As you get onto the ship and later, the cinematography takes on the persona of a believer, someone who’s joining the dance, someone who’s trying to follow her, someone who’s getting more and more inspired by her. The camera becomes much more of an active participant. The style of camera work changes.

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

One both sides of the ocean, though, the characters feel close to the elements. How did you convey that in camera?

I began in natural history filmmaking, and Mona grew up on a farm. The connection to place is very important to both of us. We get possessed by a place, and we really try to make that place a major character. It’s always integral to what we do.

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

How did you handle the scenes in which Ann gives birth?

Amanda, Mona, and I had worked on three projects together, so we trust each other. I did those sequences handheld myself, cleared the room, and made sure there was nobody else. Amanda was willing to make herself that vulnerable, and I wanted to make sure that I respected that. We just had this trust. I don’t think it would have been possible if we hadn’t worked together. Mona creates an environment where everyone on set is so respected. And Amanda creates an environment where everybody feels heard. It’s a very safe place to work, and because of that, people make themselves very vulnerable. I wanted that intimacy, I wanted that closeness. I’m a father, I have two kids, I’ve witnessed birth with my wife, and I have five sisters who’ve all given birth. It was really important to me that that be told honestly.

Amanda Seyfried in THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE. Photo courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2025 Searchlight Pictures All Rights Reserved.
Cinematographer William Rexer and Viola Prettejohn on the set of THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE. Photo courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2025 Searchlight Pictures All Rights Reserved.

The shaking scenes are also so intimate. How did you use the camera to bring the audience into those moments?

They were from the point of view of an observer at the beginning, who wants to join and then does join. The camera really does lose itself in every one of those moments. Possessed is the wrong word, but it is sort of possessed by the power of what’s going on. Celia Rowlson-Hall, the choreographer, created these beautiful structures to work with, and I wanted to make sure we respected those and captured enough for the audience to see the shapes and story that she was telling within the dance. And I wanted the audience to feel like one of the people, so [the camera] had to become an active participant.

 

What kind of equipment were you using on this project?

We were shooting on 35mm motion picture film. We considered shooting Vistavision, but the cameras were just too loud. Because we had so much singing and breathing, we wanted to capture those live performances. And we really wanted to be close. We chose the aspect ratio of 2.35:1 because while we were doing rehearsals with Celia, when we tried to be less wide, we were always missing something [in the dance structures]. The wide aspect ratio really captured it beautifully. We looked at over ten sets of lenses to find ones that could be that intimate and still let us use candles without weird out-of-focus areas. We chose these Sigma lenses that looked gorgeous and really enabled us to achieve close focus, with candles that looked very natural when they were out of focus. We didn’t want the lensing to be distracting.

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

The result is one of the most beautifully unique films of the year.

This was the most unique experience I’ve had on a project, one, because of Mona, and two, because of Amanda. Their style is to lead by inspiration. It’s very similar to what Ann Lee did. Even in prep, they came with an open heart, ready to listen to everybody’s contributions, but with a huge amount of focus and commitment that made everybody on set do their A-game. This film, on our budget, is fundamentally not possible. But somehow it was possible, because everybody wanted it to succeed.

 The Testament of Ann Lee is in theaters now.

 

 

 

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

Netflix Unveils 2026 Slate Includes “Beef” Season 2, Greta Gerwig’s “Narnia,” Charlize Theron-led “Apex”

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Netflix has unveiled its 2026 film slate, including a peek at one of the streamer’s homegrown superstars, Millie Bobby Brown, first post-Stranger Things project, the third installment of the series Enola Holmes. 

Also featured in the four-minute-plus look at their 2026 slate is the Ben Affleck/Matt Damon-led film The Rip, in which Affleck and Damon play two Miami police officers who lead the squad that works “the dope game,” which includes seizing money. When they get a tip that a stash house is holding $300,000 in drug money, they go investigate. They find a smidge more than that—to the tune of $20 million—the kind of money that can change lives—or destroy them.

For Peaky Blinders fans, 2026 will be a very interesting year, with the Cillian Murphy-led series making the leap to feature films with The Immortal Man, which will run in select theaters on March 6 before streaming on Netflix on March 20. Murphy returns as the brilliant gangster Tommy Shelby, who returns from his self-imposed exile during the chaos of WWII to face the future of his family and his country.

Also debuting on March 6 is Reacher star Alan Ritchson’s War Machine, co-starring Jai Courtney, Dennis Quaid, and Stephen James. A month later, on April 16, Netflix will release the hotly-anticipated second season of Lee Sung Jin’s Beef, the zeitgeist-capturing hit from 2023 that starred Steven Yeun and Ali Wong as a pair of cosmically affronted strangers whose literal run-in in a parking lot led to a life-changing tet-a-tet that brought them both to the brink of madness. Season two will star a brand new cast that includes Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan, Charles Melton, and Cailee Spaeny.

The star-studded thriller Here Comes the Flood will also premiere next year, which includes Denzel Washington, Robert Pattinson, Daisy Edgar-Jones, and Sean Harris. Director Baltasar Kormákur, who knows his way around a thriller, has his next film, Apex, coming out on April 24, starring Charlize Theron as an adrenaline junkie who sets out to conquer a raging river only to find that the rapids might be the least of her problems.

And then, of course, there’s writer/director Greta Gerwig’s first film since Barbie, a fresh adaptation of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia, set for a December 19 release.

More returning series include The Gentlemen, Bridgerton, Emily in Paris, and Lupin.  There’s more. A lot more. Check out Netflix’s 2026 film and TV slate here:

For more big titles on Netflix, check these out:

Inside “Stranger Things” Season 5: DP Caleb Heymann on Will’s Visions, Vecna’s Mind-Maze, & Demogorgon Drones

“Wake Up Dead Man” Costume Designer Jenny Eagan on Priestly Fashion and Daniel Craig’s ’70s-Inspired Suits

“Wake Up Dead Man” Composer Nathan Johnson: From Beauty to Darkness in Benoit Blanc’s Latest Mystery

Featured image: APEX. Charlize Theron as Sasha in APEX. Cr. Kane Skennar/Netflix © 2026

“Marty Supreme” Composer Daniel Lopatin on Blending Synths & Orchestra for Timothée Chalamet’s Ultra Ambitious Striver

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Oscar-shortlisted composer Daniel Lopatin earned a reputation amongst electronic music fans for his steady stream of experimental solo albums recorded under the name OneOhTrix Point Never. But it’s Lopatin’s pulsating score for Marty Supreme that will surely expose his synth-driven compositions to a broader audience.

Filmed in New York City and set in 1952, writer-director Josh Safdie’s fact-based movie stars Timothée Chalamet as ping-pong hustler Marty Mauser, who’s hell-bent on achieving fame and fortune against all odds. Lopatin previously scored Uncut Gems and Good Times, both directed by Josh and his brother Benny. This time around, Lopatin sounds especially psyched about his collaboration with Josh Safdie. “As an artist, you’re signing up for this weird thing, which is ‘What’s your point of view?’ You need to spend a lot of time refining it. To then fuse your point of view with somebody else’s, that could be a recipe for disaster. Or, the way it turned out with Josh and me, it turned out pretty incredible, seeing him reach the zenith with Marty Supreme.”

Speaking from his home somewhere in the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut Tri-State Area, Lopatin breaks down his pulsating blend of electronic and acoustic sounds, explains how he cranked up the intensity for the film’s European recording sessions, and describes the “adversarial” challenges of brainstorming music ideas with Safdie in a windowless Manhattan cubicle nicknamed The Fishbowl.

 

One of the exciting things about your Marty Supreme score is the way you blend synthesizer elements with acoustic instruments and human voices. Can you talk about the musical language you put together for this film that takes place mainly in 1952?

I see Marty Mauser as a hot knife slicing through the old world, and he’s the new world. He’s the future. Marty is the Fairlight [synthesizer] and the world is the orchestra and the choir. They’re like this labyrinth of rules and regulations and stodgy people telling you that you’re not gonna amount to sh**, stay in your lane, you’d be a perfectly great shoe salesman, and all that kind of stuff. It’s the young versus the old, which is why we have those organic textures in place. It’s interesting how many people pick up on the anachronistic aspects of the ’80s-era soundtrack, but not as many people realize that they’re heavily in play with these organic aspects. I appreciate you bringing that up.

 

At one point, this mournful trumpet solo enters the mix – very analog.

And we’ve got sax, we have tons of flute, we have zither, and percussion played by [New Age multi-instrumentalist] Laraaji. We have a children’s choir. We have an adult choir, we have strings, we have harpsichords, organs, fretless bass, all kinds of mallet-based [instruments] digitally sampled, pulsing away, so, yeah, there’s a whole bunch of stuff.

 

Tell me about the “Fishbowl.”

It’s a studio cubicle in Midtown [Manhattan] with all of these weird little editing suites. We called it the Fishbowl because it had sliding doors so you could see into everybody’s sh**. We were surrounded by people making podcasts about weed and stuff while we were trying to do this serious thing.

How’d you wind up there?

We needed to be close to Josh’s office and home because his wife, Sarah [Rossein], one of the producers on the film, was pregnant with their second child. I live outside the city in the sticks. I would have loved to have worked on the score here.

 

“The sticks” being upstate New York?

I’m in the Tri-State Area.

Okay.

So I say, “Josh, come up here and work with me, get away from it all. And he was like, “I just can’t. Sarah’s pregnant, so let’s find somewhere close to the office.” But there’s nothing near the office, unless we were rich beyond compare. And Josh says, “No, let’s go the other way. Let’s just find some destitute hole in the wall.” And I’m like, “You want to bring us back ten years in the past to how we started?” Because we used to work across from a matzah factory in Bushwick, with rats running up and down the hallway. Literally. So now we’re one slight level above that. It was kind of adversarial in the same way that Josh is pitting Marty against the world. I guess he didn’t mind, in his mischievous way, doing that to the music department as well.

(L-R) Josh Safdie, Timothée Chalamet. Credit: Atsushi Nishijima

Less than ideal.

But after a while, it’s kind of like Stockholm Syndrome – it’s home! We plastered the walls with these gigantic black and white prints of the real people who inspired the characters in the film, so there are all these strangers on the wall, like a parallel universe.

(L-R) Tyler Okonma, Timothée Chalamet. Credit: Courtesy of A24

In the Fishbowl, you’d go through the roughcut with Josh, figuring out what each scene needed in terms of music?

Yeah. I’d write parts, and then Josh and I would sit there and discuss various things—whether it’s a decrescendo or “How do we connect these two parts?” or “This thing is chock full of harmony; there’s no more harmony left to add, so what do we do here?” “How do we break up this chord into different sections of the choir?” I work with all the parts of the buffalo, but it’s my buffalo. I’ve never worked on a film where you make your little part of it, and then it goes on the factory conveyor belt over to some other place and comes back sounding prim and proper. I’d feel borderline suicidal if I heard my music demonstrated that way.

 

You develop your themes on the keyboard, then expand them into full-blown arrangements. How did that come about?

My score producer is also a conductor, Joshua Eustis. He conducted the orchestra and the choir in Vienna and Prague, respectively.

Classy!

The cool thing is, Joshua really gets my writing, so it wasn’t about “Let’s slap a big Hollywood score on top of this thing, like a f****** casserole.” No! Everything has to come from the heart, made to measure.

 

Before the sessions in Europe, I imagine you’d made demos, but what was it like when you actually got to hear your melodies being sung by a live choir?

Not good.

Oh, really?

Well, here’s the thing. I’m in Joshua’s earpiece while he’s conducting the choir. He’s my surrogate, and I’m Josh Safdie’s surrogate, so if the choir is just going through the motions or doing a polite thing, that’s never gonna cut it. It’s a Josh Safdie picture! I had to get in there and coax a little bit of a feral thing from the choir.

Not prim and proper.

And funnily enough, I was not present for the children’s choir because I was working on the final cues, but Josh went there with Joshua Eustis and did the exact same thing. It was too tight, so he loosens the air in the room, shakes things up, makes the kids laugh a little bit—he can be a goofball so he’s able to get people to be on his frequency.

 

Josh Safdie’s films are always packed with tension. What’s he like to collaborate with?

He’s like Marty Mauser, in a way—really driven. Nothing casual. Every inch of the movie is mapped out in his head.

How do you connect with such a specific vision?

Josh is open to negotiating but you have to beat his idea, and you have to beat his idea to a pulp. Largely, he’s not open [to suggestions]. He’s got his thing, and we, meaning his collaborators, appreciate that because it creates a kind of unity to the work.

(L-R) Timothée Chalamet, Josh Safdie. Credit: Atsushi Nishijima

Before you started scoring movies, you released several solo albums under the name OneOhTrix Point Never. How did you adjust to the task of making music that served the picture instead of your own muse?

The biggest adjustment is somebody else saying, “This is what I want.” You’re not the only cook in the kitchen anymore. For someone [like me] who’s a lone wolf-y kind of guy, that takes a little bit of adjustment. But I think my heart was really longing for it.

That’s interesting, given that you once said, maybe half joking, that you were too much of a megalomaniac to play in a band. Now you’ve become very adept at collaborating.

You just kind of get your reps in and then suddenly, you’ve arrived. And that’s cool. It’s really cool.

Marty Supreme is in theaters now.

 

Featured image: Timothée Chalamet. Credit: Courtesy of A24