The first trailer for Disney+’s Percy Jackson and The Olympians has arrived, revealing Rick Riordan and Jonathan E. Steinberg’s upcoming series about the titular demigod Percy Jackson (Walker Scobell) and his tempestuous connection to the Gods of Mt. Olympus. Those connections include the mighty and mightily peeved Zeus (the late Lance Reddick), who accuses Percy of stealing his master lightning bolt. Yikes.
Being on Zeus’s bad side is not the only thing troubling Percy. He is just a 12-year-old kid in the modern world, after all, dealing with poor grades, bullies, and the weight of feeling like nobody could possibly understand what he’s going through. Luckily for Percy, though, there are people who understand, including some clutch friends like Grover (Aryan Simhadri), who’s not just your average kid, either, and Annabeth (Leah Sava Jeffries). This trio will embark on a wild adventure as Percy tries to find the master lightning bolt and bring the madness on Mt. Olympus to a halt.
Percy Jackson and The Olympians boasts a terrific cast that includes Megan Mullally as Alecto/Mrs. Dodds, Jessica Parker Kennedy as Medusa, Timothy Omundson as Hephaestus, Jelena Milinkovic as Nereid, Jason Gray-Stanford as Maron, Lin Manuel-Miranda as Hermes, Toby Stephens as Poseidon, Glynn Turman as Chiron/Mr. Brunner, Adam Copeland as Ares, and Virginia Kull as Sally Jackson.
Check out the trailer below. Percy Jackson and The Olympians premieres on Disney+ on December 20:
Here’s the official synopsis:
Based on Disney Hyperion’s best-selling book series by award-winning author Rick Riordan, “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” tells the fantastical story of a 12-year-old modern demigod, Percy Jackson, who’s just coming to terms with his newfound divine powers when the sky god Zeus accuses him of stealing his master lightning bolt. With help from his friends Grover and Annabeth, Percy must embark on an adventure of a lifetime to find it and restore order to Olympus.
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There are certain roles that seem so tailor-made for a specific performer that you simply couldn’t imagine anyone else in them. This has been true for Nicolas Cage, a singular presence, to say the least, in a number of his films, most notably Moonstruck, Raising Arizona,Leaving Las Vegas, and Adaptation. These four films helped establish Cage as one of the most intriguing performers of his generation, and now, with writer/director Kristoffer Borgli‘s Dream Scenario, Cage has found another role that fits him like a glove. Or, in this case, like a dream.
Cage plays Paul Matthews, an unassuming, decidedly uncool family man who suddenly finds himself starring in the dreams of millions of people. Well, “starring” might be too strong a word, more like “appearing.” Paul goes from being the type of guy nobody notices in real life to a man everyone keeps seeing when they close their eyes. His dream appearances make Paul famous, and, as the trailer reveals, Paul’s life feels more exciting and filled with more potential than ever before.
But where there are dreams, there are also nightmares, and Paul’s waking life becomes one when he starts misbehaving in people’s dreams. Suddenly, Paul’s fame turns to infamy, and his life begins to unravel in short order.
“Is this a fantasy? A fable? A new kind of horror movie? Actually, Dream Scenario is all of the above and then some…” wrote Peter Debruge in Variety after the film had its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival. “Cage is comedy gold in one of the year’s sharpest comedies yet,” wrote The Hollywood Reporter’s Michael Rechsthaffen.
Check out the trailer below. Dream Scenario hits theaters on November 10.
Here’s the official synopsis:
Hapless family man Paul Matthews (Nicolas Cage) finds his life turned upside down when millions of strangers suddenly start seeing him in their dreams. But when his nighttime appearances take a nightmarish turn, Paul is forced to navigate his newfound stardom, in this wickedly entertaining comedy from writer-director Kristoffer Borgli (Sick of Myself) and producer Ari Aster.
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Making a movie is a lot of work. It can be a grueling (if rewarding) experience for everyone, yet it’s safe to say that the level of exhaustion Keanu Reeves feels after filming a John Wick installment is profound. Reeves notoriously pours his heart and soul into filming the action-heavy franchise, which included performing one of the series’ most massively intricate fight scenes in the original 2014 John Wick with a 103-degree temperature (revealed by co-directors David Leitch and Chad Stahelski in the director’s commentary for the film.) “We were pretty dialed in that it was gonna be Keanu [performing the action],” Stahelski said. “He actually had the flu and about a 103-degree fever. He had it rough, all the days to be ill. You couldn’t even get him to sit down. He just did take after take. You can’t film sequences like this unless you’ve got a cast member who goes through so much training, and that’s Keanu. Best guy in the business for that.”
Yet by the time 2023’s John Wick: Chapter 4 rolled around, Reeves was ready to put in one more final momentous performance and call it a day. Speaking with Collider, John Wick producer Basil Iwanyk revealed that Reeves was ready for Wick to be retired—permanently—via a noble death at the end of Chapter 4.
“After the second, third, and fourth movie, making these films is so exhausting, and it destroys Keanu, physically and emotionally,” Iwanyk told Collider. “By the end, he’s always like, ‘I can’t do this again,’ and we agree with him. The guy is just a shell of himself because he just goes off and goes for it. He was like, ‘I wanna be definitively killed at the end of this movie. We were like, ‘You know, we’ll leave a 10% little opening,” Iwanyk said.
John Wick: Chapter 4 ended with what appeared to be a very noble death, and even some peace, for the hardest-working semi-retired assassin in the business. Wick faced off against Donnie Yen’s Caine in a duel; the winner would be freed forever from the clutches of the High Table. In the third round of the duel, Wick is seemingly fatally wounded, and after one final coup de grace against Bill Skarsgård’s insipid Marquis, he apparently dies on the steps of the Sacré Coeur in Paris, expiring while seeing a vision of his late wife, Helen. The film ends with his old friends Winston (Ian McShane) and the Bowery King (Laurence Fishburne) standing by his graveside.
Director Chad Stahelski had already revealed to Empirethat they’d tested an alternate ending in which Wick survived the duel, but audiences preferred the ambiguous ending that included John’s grave.
So, Reeves asked for Wick to be really and truly killed, and his team obliged with a beautiful but ambiguous ending, leaving open more than enough wiggle room to start exploring John Wick: Chapter 5. Reeves himself has revised his original desire for Wick to definitively be killed by telling Entertainment Weeklyhe’s somewhat open to the idea of returning, with caveats.
“I don’t know, I guess I’m going to have to lean on ‘never say never,’” Reeves told EW. “I mean, I wouldn’t do a John Wick film without [director] Chad Stahelski. We’d have to see what that looked like. For me, it feels really right that John Wick finds peace.”
Perhaps he’ll find peace, for real this time, at the end of Chapter 5.
It sounds as if writer/director Gareth Edwards (Godzilla, RogueOne) has pulled it off. Delivering a huge, original sci-fi blockbuster is a hard thing to do in the best of times, and especially hard in a climate that prefers its blockbusters to have built-in IP, yet the first reactions to his latest film, The Creator, suggest he’s done just that. “Masterful,” “soulful,” “visually stunning and emotional,” and “absolutely radical” are a few of the descriptions being bandied about. The full reviews are embargoed for now, but these initial reactions are sure to whet the appetite of sci-fi fans everywhere.
With The Creator, Edwards turns his attention to our growing unease with the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence in a film that puts a human face on the algorithms of doom. The film is centered on John David Washington’s Joshua, an ex-special forces agent grieving his wife’s disappearance (Gemma Chan) who is recruited to take out a weapon created by the architect of a robot rebellion against humanity that began with a nuclear detonation in Los Angeles and has led to an outright war between humanity and the robot world. Yet when Joshua finally makes contact with the weapon, he finds out it’s a small girl named Alphie (Madeleine Yuna Voyles), who is far from your average elementary school student. Alphie is a humanoid robot powered by artificial intelligence that is believed to be the ultimate weapon of mass destruction.
Joining Washington, Voyles, and Chan is a top-notch cast that includes Ken Watanabe (Inception), Allison Janey (I, Tonya), and Sturgill Simpson (Dog). Edwards directs from a script he co-wrote with Chris Weitz, his collaborator from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.
Check out the early reactions here. The Creator hits theaters on September 29:
#TheCreator is a MASTERFUL piece of original sci-fi. Gareth Edwards is one of our GREAT filmmakers. A soulful, nuanced, Lucas-like interrogation of human beliefs/biases & our insecurity in the face of something greater. Spectacle & heart to the highest order. Pure cinema baby! pic.twitter.com/XPi6jEp2xb
Though it pulls from identifiable inspirations, #TheCreator is 1 of the best original sci-fi epics in years. Massively entertaining, enthralling & profound on every level. Gareth Edwards constructs an immersive world & fills it with compelling characters. Absolutely radical. pic.twitter.com/fjAwuB0VtR
#TheCreator is an ambitious sci-fi odyssey with a profound take on humanity, acceptance & freedom at its core. John David Washington gives a career best performance, while Madeleine Yuna Voyles proves she’s a young actor to watch. The third act surprised me, this film WENT THERE! pic.twitter.com/2UODyqmt15
Gareth Edwards doesn’t miss with The Creator. The movie takes place alongside Terminator 2, Alien, and Star Wars as absolute smashing examples of how sci-fi can parallel our world. It’s easily among the best films of the year. #TheCreatorMovie#TheCreatorpic.twitter.com/bWUDxwIhbH
Visually #TheCreator is PHENOMENAL. If you want a cinematographer on the rise to keep your eye on, it’s Oren Soffer. This movie is one stunning frame after the next. pic.twitter.com/s1swupvGfN
#TheCreator is a masterpiece & one of the year’s best movies. It hits on so many levels with AI being such a hot topic. Gareth Edwards does a masterful job of keeping the audience engaged every step of the way. Madeleine Yuna Voyles has to be in the conversations for The Oscars pic.twitter.com/n8XSTiNqcm
I’m so impressed with what #GarethEdwards pulled off on #thecreator. He’s made an original sci-fi movie in a time where making original movies on this scale is next to impossible and the film delivers on so many levels. Seek this one out and absolutely see it in a movie theater. pic.twitter.com/sQGSGqImG1
Not only is The Creator visually stunning, the story is really emotional, too. I was completely captivated pretty early on. Alphie is adorable! I totally fell in love with her! Love the important underlying themes of accepting those who are different from you. #TheCreatorpic.twitter.com/jnnuMn3teO
#TheCreator is a masterpiece of an #AI story. It had me in tears. Watching a film without knowing how it would play out was such a joy. Gareth Edwards shot a beautiful film. John David Washington deserves to be recognized during awards season. Still thinking about it days later pic.twitter.com/ZH0lbrDBr3
“I’m excited to be back at the TVA” says Loki himself, Tom Hiddleston, at the top of this new behind-the-scenes featurette for season two. The TVA is the Time Variance Authority, the bureaucracy that rules the many temporal threads of the multiverse and where Loki ended up after his many crimes. “The stakes are huge,” promises Sophia Di Martino, who plays Sylvie, one of Loki’s alter egos, his romantic interest, and a rising star in the MCU in her own right.
Executive producer Kevin R. Wright goes on to explain that Loki season 2 introduces “a whole new corner” to the MCU with new characters, one of whom is played by recent Oscar-winner Ke Huy Quan.
“I’ve been a fan of the Marvel universe for a long time,” Quan says, “I’m so grateful to be a part of this amazing series.”
Wright also promises that Loki will be dealing with the consequences from season one with his surprising partner in, well, not crime, exactly, more like a partner in trying to save the multiverse, Mobius (Owen Wilson). Mobius has been nudging the usually villainous Loki towards the angels of his better nature. Part of season 2, Wright says, is about Loki exploring his more heroic side.
“He’s found a new family,” Hiddleston says of his trickster God, “there’s a new capacity to make connection. You realize that those connections are all that matter in the end.”
Check out the new featurette below. Loki season two arrives on Disney+ on October 6.
Here’s the official synopsis from Disney+:
“Loki” Season 2 picks up in the aftermath of the shocking season finale when Loki finds himself in a battle for the soul of the Time Variance Authority. Along with Mobius, Hunter B-15 and a team of new and returning characters, Loki navigates an ever-expanding and increasingly dangerous multiverse in search of Sylvie, Judge Renslayer, Miss Minutes and the truth of what it means to possess free will and glorious purpose.
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The father of the atomic bomb has surpassed Freddie Mercury.
Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer has now overtaken 2018’s Bohemian Rhapsody as the highest-grossing biopic ever as it nears the billion-dollar mark at the global box office. Bohemian Rhapsody, which covered the rise of Freddie Mercury (Rami Malek) and his supergroup Queen, brought in $910.8 million at the global box office—from an estimated budget of $55 million. Nolan’s biopic about J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) has brought in $912.7. million since it premiered, simultaneously with Greta Gerwig’s record-smashing Barbie, on July 21 in what now all refer to as Barbenheimer.
Oppenheimer has been a revelation. A meaty historical epic that covers the morally thorny and scientifically dense story of Robert Oppenheimer’s work as the director of the Manhattan Project was not expected to be this big of a hit, even if it came with the imprimatur of being a Christoper Nolan film. And yet, both Nolan stans and movie lovers in general have thrilled to Nolan’s nuanced, narratively ingenious film, one that builds to a genuinely astonishing set piece (the iconic Trinity Test) and a riveting conclusion with the various threads Nolan has teased out coming together, capturing not only Oppenheimer’s life but that of his chief rival, Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.) and the people they had in common, which included Albert Einstein (Tom Conti.)
L to R: Robert Downey Jr is Lewis Strauss and Cillian Murphy is J. Robert Oppenheimer in OPPENHEIMER, written, produced, and directed by Christopher Nolan.
As always with a Nolan film, the rest of the cast is excellent and includes Emily Blunt as Robert’s wife, Kitty Oppenheimer, Josh Hartnett as fellow scientist Ernest Lawrence, Florence Pugh as Oppenheimer’s former lover Jean Tatlock, and Matt Damon as Leslie Groves, the military man who put the Manhattan Project into motion.
Oh, there was another big name in Oppenheimer—Bohemian Rhapsody star Rami Malek—who has a couple of crucial small scenes in the film as scientist David Hill. We won’t spoil his role in case you haven’t seen the film yet, but Malek makes the most out of his screen time, something he got a lot more of in his thrilling turn as Freddie Mercury.
Rami Malek is David Hill in OPPENHEIMER, written, produced, and directed by Christopher Nolan.
Featured image: L to R: Cillian Murphy (as J. Robert Oppenheimer) and writer, director, and producer Christopher Nolan on the set of OPPENHEIMER. Photo by Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures.
Kenneth Branagh is back as director and star with his latest Agatha Christie film adaptation, A Haunting in Venice, based on Christie’s novel “Hallowe’en Party.” As with his other adaptations, A Haunting in Venice is a who-done-it in which a great cast joins Branagh’s twisted tale, which in the latest installment includes Tina Fey, Michelle Yeoh, Jamie Dornan, and Kelly Reilly.
Branagh once again plays famed Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, but the audience meets a different sleuth in this post-World War II story. He isn’t his usual inquisitive, inspired, confident self. Shaken by the horrors of war, he has decamped to Venice and is retired and living in self-imposed exile. His old friend, mystery writer Ariadne Oliver (Fey), begs him to attend a seance to debunk the medium in charge (Yeoh). It takes place in a decayingand potentially haunted palazzo owned by famous opera singer Rowena Drake (Reilly). When someone at the seance is murdered, Poirot and all those present must remain through the stormy Halloween night until the murderer is revealed. He is compelled to dig in and put aside his own inner demons to solve the crime.
Editing plays a very important part in creating the atmosphere of dread and building the suspense essential to this film’s success. The Credits sat down with A Haunting in Venice’s editor, Lucy Donaldson, to discuss how she so finely calibrated the spooky tension. She speaks of the power of silence and of the real-life Venetian palazzo used as inspiration, which even the locals warned the production should avoid at all costs due to its tortured history.
You’ve worked on a number of projects in the horror genre, like The Midnight Club, Ma, and Happy Death Day, or with horror elements, like Midnight Mass. For this film, director Kenneth Branagh referenced The Old Dark House and Black Narcissus, but what were some of the touchstones of that genre that you referenced in this film?
The Old Dark House is definitely one that we talked about and went back to watch because it’s so well set up. A more modern film would be The Others, which has a lot of parallels to our film. Beyond those more obvious ones, I was thinking about Don’t Look Now, which is obviously set in Venice, but it’s a very different Venice, where water is the threat, and the place, which is often represented as beautiful, is very different. The other one that I referenced was The Father, which is about a patriarch with dementia who does not really know what’s real. That also has parallels because it’s a different Poirot that we meet at the start of this film. Normally, we as an audience are just following along, and he’s super confident, but not here. Everything in this film is on a tilt. It’s true I’ve done a lot of genre work in the past, so using that experience in an Agatha Christie film was just a dream come true.
You talk about everything being on a tilt, and that’s articulated in the film’s visual language. The camera work includes many topsy-turvy shots, a lot of shadows, and focused lighting. What kinds of conversations were there with DP Haris Zambarloukos and Kenneth Branagh about that?
Since I work in post-production, I came on at the start of the shoot, so much of the setup had already been done with Ken and Haris, but obviously, I was getting all of this lovely material, an embarrassment of riches, really, and it was my job to take us from wide Venice into this very narrow world that we then become trapped in. With Ken, it’s all very much about clear, precise storytelling. We put so many things in, and then we did a lot of work to step back and commit to what served the story as a whole.
How did you proceed?
We were keen to set up this house as a special place where strange things go on. The way the house is first presented, where they’re on the gondolas coming up to the Palazzo, was a moment we worked on a lot because it’s the place of legends. The inspiration for that setting is a real mansion in Venice called Ca’ Dario, which has a history of owners meeting an untimely death, and apparently, the locals in Venice warned us absolutely not to shoot there. Supposedly intelligent, logical people said, “Shoot anywhere but there.” Reading the history, I can now see why they’d say that. There’s this already existing spooky side of Venice, which I wasn’t aware of but was very much a part of our film.
The palazzo is essentially another character in the film and was created in Pinewood Studios with exacting detail, including intricate ceiling frescoes. There’s also the real Venice and the model of the palazzo. How did you work between those three to build the story?
Yes, we had three elements: the interiors and a couple of exteriors from Pinewood, the model shoot, and Venice. We tried to use all three in one scene and found we could create a seamless presentation. Maxime’s arrival is real Venice; then we have some of the model shoot in there, and then we go into the Pinewood set. We did a lot of work to make sure it was all integrated. The sets of the house itself, a beautiful job by production designer John Paul Kelly, was a place we wanted to present as somewhere with secrets, memories, and an atmosphere.
John Paul Kelly’s concept of the Boathouse. Courtesy John Paul Kelly/Walt Disney Studios.
So, how did you build up that atmosphere?
We weren’t afraid to use silence or really push that theme of listening. We wanted to have Poirot be, at times, in that space on his own, listening to this house because Poirot is Mr. Logic. He prizes fact, order, and method above all, and this house is a contrast to that. We cut without music for a long time because we wanted the story to develop its own pace. We all knew the music was going to elevate it, but for our discipline and practice, Ken had me cut without music. If it can stand on its own without music, then we’re in a good space, but it was also to have that silence and listening. Are there ghosts in this house? Another theme is that Poirot’s confidence is knocked, so we play around with that. Is there a supernatural? Is Poirot in control, or is he not? We really wanted to walk that line.
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Everybody’s favorite zombie slayer, Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus), finally has his own show. The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon premiered on September 11, the second spin-off from the flagship series that concluded its run in late 2022. Daryl Dixon episode one is now available for your viewing pleasure, for free, on YouTube.
Daryl Dixon catches up with the crossbow-wielding survivor after his departure from The Commonwealth. Daryl has washed ashore on a new continent and eventually finds himself in Paris, where he quickly makes enemies among the power players of a budding autocratic movement in the City of Lights. In the premiere, Daryl meets Laurent (Louis Puech Scigliuzzi), a young boy whom a group called the Union believes is the Messiah. It’s a lot for a young man to take on, and Daryl is thought to be the messenger fated to deliver Laurent to the Union in Paris. He’s not enthused by the idea.
The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon comes from creator David Zabel, and it’s more of a slow-burn zombie thriller compared to The Walking Dead. Joining Reed and Scigliuzzi are Clémence Poésy as Isabelle, Laïka Blanc-Francard as Sylvie, Anne Charrier as Genet, Romain Levi as Codron, Adam Nagaitis as Quinn along with Eriq Ebouaney as Fallou and Paloma as Coco.
If you were a fan of the original, or, even just a fan of the lovable outsider Daryl, the new series is sure to delight. For newcomers who loved HBO’s The Last Of Us and want to keep feeding their insatiable hunger for zombies, Daryl Dixon is for you.
Check out the full episode below. You can watch new episodes of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon every Sunday on AMC and AMC+.
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We were enthused when we heard Donald Glover would be hopping back in the Millennium Falcon as Lando Calrissian. The news broke in late July that Donald and his brother Stephen Glover were penning a new script based on the former’s turn as the young Lando Calrissian in 2018’s Star Wars spinoff Solo: A Star Wars Story. The notion was that the Glovers were going to create a new series about Lando’s adventures as a young man for Disney+. Now, The Hollywood Reporterconfirms that the project will be a feature film instead.
Stephen Glover appeared on the Pablo Torres Finds Outpodcast, posted yesterday, revealing that the current plans are to make a movie for Lucasfilm. These plans are currently frozen in carbonite due to the dual writer and actors strike, but one hopes that they’ll finish the script once the strike is—fingers crossed—resolved sooner than later.
Previously, Disney announced that a Lando series was in the works in December of 2020, with Haunted Mansion and Dear White People director Justin Simien attached to develop it. Simien exited before the Glover brothers took on the script, and as they worked on it, the TV series became a feature film.
As we wrote previously when the initial story of the Glovers’ involvement was revealed, Donald Glover’s portrayal of the young Lando Calrissian, played by Billy Dee Williams in the original Star Wars trilogy, as well as 2019’s Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, was the rare case of a performer sliding perfectly into a role made iconic by somebody else before. He has the charisma and sense of mischief that made Billy Dee Williams a breath of fresh air when he made his first appearance as Han Solo’s brother-in-smuggling in The Empire Strikes Back.
Glover had this to say back in April to GQ: “I’m not interested in doing anything that is going to be a waste of my time or just a paycheck. I would much rather spend time with people I enjoy. It just has to be the right thing, which I think it could be. Lando is definitely somebody I’d like to hang out with. We’re talking about it. That’s as much as I can say.”
When Donald Glover met Williams before filming on Solo began, he told THRthe charming story of what happens when exuberance meets cool:
“I was like, ‘I’ve always felt like this character could do this, and he represents this, and I kind of feel like he comes from here, and it’s very obvious he has a lot of taste, so maybe he grew up seeing that from afar? Because I’m like that. Maybe he saw it from other planets and was like, ‘I want to be that. He just let me ramble on and on, and then finally I was like, ‘So, what do you think?’ And he goes, ‘Yeah, I don’t know about all that. Just be charming.’“
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The first trailer for director James Wan’s upcoming Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom has arrived, unleashing an ocean’s worth of action, an even more jacked Black Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), and a changed Arthur Curry (Jason Momoa). Arthur, who you might remember is also Aquaman, was a self-described “wanderer” before the events in the first film. He had no home, no real responsibilities, and due to his immense abilities inherited from his mother, Atlanna (Nicole Kidman), the man could finish a bottle of whiskey and still jump into a swelling ocean and go save some otherwise doomed sailors. Life was…good?
But now, Arthur has responsibilities, including a family and a kingdom to protect, which means he’s got way more to lose. The first full trailer for the long-awaited sequel paints a sharper picture on the man who aims to take all that away from him—Black Manta—still seething from not only being bested by Aquaman in the first film, but because he blames Aquaman for his father’s death.
Now that Arthur’s the King of Atlantis, Black Manta’s revenge plans include not only wiping out his whole family but the entire kingdom and everything it holds together. Vowing to burn Atlantis to ash, Manta’s vengeance needs to be met head-on. So Arthur recruits somebody he thinks might be able to help, somebody who knows a thing or two about what it’s like to have a burning desire to take him out—his brother, Orm (Patrick Wilson), the villain of the first film who ended up imprisoned after his attempt to claim the throne for himself. And they’ll need all the help they can get now that Manta is bigger, badder, and stronger, with a much more powerful weapon, the Black Trident.
Joining Momoa, Abdul-Mateen II, and Wilson are Amber Heard as Mera, Nicole Kidman as Atlanna, Temuera Morrison as Tom Curry, Dolph Lundgren as King Nereus, Jani Zhao as Stingray, Vincent Regan as Atlan, and Randall Park as Dr. Stephen Shin.
Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom will be the last film to bow for DC Studios that doesn’t carry the direct imprimatur of new bosses James Gunn and Peter Safran.
Check out the trailer below. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom hits theaters on December 20:
Here’s the official synopsis:
Having failed to defeat Aquaman the first time, Black Manta, still driven by the need to avenge his father’s death, will stop at nothing to take Aquaman down once and for all. This time Black Manta is more formidable than ever before, wielding the power of the mythic Black Trident, which unleashes an ancient and malevolent force. To defeat him, Aquaman will turn to his imprisoned brother Orm, the former King of Atlantis, to forge an unlikely alliance. Together, they must set aside their differences in order to protect their kingdom and save Aquaman’s family, and the world, from irreversible destruction.
All returning to the roles they originated, Jason Momoa plays Arthur Curry/Aquaman, now balancing his duties as both the King of Atlantis and a new father; Patrick Wilson is Orm, Aquaman’s half-brother and his nemesis, who must now step into a new role as his brother’s reluctant ally; Amber Heard is Mera, Atlantis’ Queen and mother of the heir to the throne; Yahya Abdul-Mateen II is Black Manta, committed more than ever to avenge his father’s death by destroying Aquaman, his family and Atlantis; and Nicole Kidman as Atlanna, a fierce leader and mother with the heart of a warrior. Also reprising their roles are Dolph Lundgren as King Nereus and Randall Park as Dr. Stephen Shin.
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Netflix has unveiled the first trailer for Wes Anderson’s The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, the auteur’s adaptation of a Roald Dahl short story that recently had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival and is premiering on the streamer at the end of the month. As usual in any of his films, Anderson’s short film has a sensational cast, including his longtime collaborator Ralph Fiennes, alongside Benedict Cumberbatch, Sir Ben Kingsley, Dev Patel, and Richard Ayoade.
This is Anderson’s second adaptation of a Dahl story; his first was his rapturously received 2009 stop-motion film Fantastic Mr. Fox. And for Anderson fans, who are legion, the news gets better—not only will Netflix be releasing The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar in late September, but it’ll mark the beginning of a series, with one new short film premiering every day for four days. The Swan, The Ratcatcher, and Poison will follow, all based on Dahl’s short stories.
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar is concerned with the story of Henry (Cumberbatch), a compulsive gambler who learns about a guru in India who can see without using his eyes. Henry believes if he can learn this skill, he’ll be able to cheat at gambling and never lose a hand for the rest of his life. Needless to say, things don’t get exactly according to Henry’s initial plan.
The trailer is a bounty of Andersonian detail, every frame exquisitely calibrated, every shot a work of art. There is probably nobody more aesthetically suited to adapting the work of the legendary Dahl, and it’s extra sweet that The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar is only the first in a series.
Check out the trailer below. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar premieres on Netflix on September 27.
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This is how Elizabeth Zott (Brie Larson) looks at her skill in the kitchen, not as a chore or a duty or even an art form, but as, well, a lesson in chemistry. Elizabeth is a lab tech, a talented one, who is on the cusp of a scientific breakthrough when she’s summarily fired. The problem for Elizabeth is this is the 1950s, and young women are not the types of people her male bosses want, or think they need, achieving scientific success. With her dreams dashed, Elizabeth is left to try to piece together a way to do what she loves, science, while keeping a roof over her head. That’s when she receives a very strange offer—does she want to host a cooking show?
Lessons in Chemistry tracks Elizabeth’s journey from budding scientist to initially reluctant host of “Supper at Six,” where she teaches a country of maligned, overworked housewives about more than just how to create the perfect soufflé. Elizabeth’s stealth mission is to school all the women watching, and eventually, the men, too, in lessons on science and on the perils of devaluing half of society based on their gender.
In her first TV role in a decade, Larson is joined by Lewis Pullman (Top Gun: Maverick) as her former colleague (and potential romantic partner) Calvin Evans, one man who values her intellect and sees her as an equal. They’re joined by Aja Naomi King, Stephanie Koenig, Kevin Sussman, Patrick Walker, and Thomas Mann. Seven-time Emmy nominee Lee Eisenberg serves as showrunner.
The series is based on Bonnie Garmus’s novel of the same name. Check out the trailer below. Lessons in Chemistry arrives on Apple TV+ on October 13.
Here’s the official synopsis from Apple TV+:
Set in the early 1950s, “Lessons in Chemistry” follows Elizabeth Zott (played by Larson), whose dream of being a scientist is put on hold in a patriarchal society. When Elizabeth finds herself fired from her lab, she accepts a job as a host on a TV cooking show, and sets out to teach a nation of overlooked housewives — and the men who are suddenly listening — a lot more than recipes.
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Do not travel with us to a galaxy far, far away if you haven’t watched episode five of Ahsoka.
Okay, now that we got that bit of galactic business over with, let’s take a quick look at the major moments in Ahsoka’s fifth episode. The conflict between the titular rebel Jedi (Rosario Dawson) and Baylan Skoll (Ray Stevenson), Shin Hati (Ivanna Sakhno), and their fellow malcontents was put on the back burner as our hero took a heady trip into the past. After tangling with Baylan at the climactic end of episode four and coming out on the losing end of a lightsaber duel, Ahsoka was sent tumbling into the frigid, heaving ocean, presumably left for dead (of course, we knew better). Meanwhile, her former padawan Sabine Wren (Natasha Liu Bordizzo), in an attempt first to save Ahsoka’s life and then to find their long lost friend Ezra Bridger (Eman Esfandi), gave Baylan the navigation tech he needed to find the dangerous Grand Admiral Thrawn. The end of episode four revealed the return of Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) standing before Ahsoka. They appeared to be reuniting in the World Between Worlds.
Episode five was written and directed by series creator Dave Filoni, and it picked up right where episode four left off, with Anakin standing before Ahsoka in the World Between Worlds, donning the all-black look he wore during Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, the same age as he was then. What was evident the longer we got a look at this version of Anakin was that this wasn’t his Force ghost, those bluish, hazy figures we’ve seen when Obi-Wan Kenobi or Yoda have returned to impart wisdom. The reasons Anakin looked whole are unclear, but it seems safe to assume it has to do with their location. The World Between Worlds is a hub, so to speak, made up of the Force, which connects every moment of space and time together. It’s where someone schooled in the ways of the Force can move back and forth through time.
As is the case in more or less every time travel story ever told, the ability to travel into the past comes with a huge, bright red warning label, and that’s as true for Jedis as it is for Marty McFly (or Loki); if you alter things that happened in the past, you can and will mess up a bunch of things in the present and future. Ahsoka is understandably confused as to why her former master is standing there, and he tells her that he’s returned to complete her training. He breaks the news that she lost her lightsaber duel with Baylan Skoll. Although she doesn’t want to fight him, Anakin forces his former padawan’s hand by telling her she’s got a simple choice: “Live or die.” They start to duel.
Back in the real world, Hera (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), her son Jacen (Evan Whitten), and their team are searching for Ahsoka and Sabine. Jacen is Force-sensitive and can hear something in the waves—a lightsaber duel.
Back in the World Between Worlds, it almost looks as if Ahsoka has the upper hand on Anakin, but then he teaches her a fresh lesson. Anakin obliterates the starry bridge she’s standing on, and Ahsoka falls into her past. She’s just a young girl (played by Barbie‘s Ariana Greenblatt) caught up in the Clone Wars, fighting beside Anakin in one of her first missions during the Battle of Ryloth. This is the most direct, vivid link yet to another animated Star Wars classic, Clone Wars, bringing these two characters together in live-action.
Young Ahsoka is confused and horrified by what she sees around her. She doesn’t want to keep fighting, but Anakin isn’t having it. He tells her either she learns to be a soldier or she dies. Ahsoka starts to see the thin veil that separates Anakin from the grotesque Sith Lord he would become begin to slip.
In her next time jump, Ahsoka’s a few years older, a much better fighter, and is now at the Siege of Mandalore, leading a mission to take the planet back from Darth Maul. She’s got her iconic double white lightsabers going, and she’s officially a rebel now, having left the Jedi order and her training under Anakin. In a brief moment, we get one of the episode’s big cameos when Temuera Morrison returns. He played Jango Fett in the Star Wars prequels and later became Boba Fett in the Disney+ miniseries The Book of Boba Fett—here, he’s playing the clone Captain Rex, Ahsoka’s friend during the animated Clone Wars.
Anakin returns, and they argue some more about her legacy. Anakin wants her to see that every Jedi carries the knowledge and wisdom that was passed onto them from their master, and so and so forth, through time. But to Ahsoka, her legacy is one of perpetual death and war.
“You’re more than that,” Anakin tells her. “Because I’m more than that.”
“You are more, Anakin,” young Ahsoka says, “but more powerful and dangerous than anyone realized.”
These words unleash the red-eyed Anakin, the Sith side of his personality. He unsheathes his red lightsaber and goes after Ahsoka again.
They continue fighting, now with Ahsoka returned to her present-day form. There’s a brief moment where her eyes glow yellow, like a Sith, as she crosses over to the Dark Side to conquer Anakin. Yet when she finally gets the best of him and has the opportunity to strike him down, she pulls back. She returns to herself. So does Anakin.
“There’s hope for you yet,” he tells her, then vanishes.
Back in the regular world, Jacen has helped locate Ahsoka, and she’s pulled out of the water. Therefore, the mission to find Sabine, Ezra Bridger, and Grand Admiral Thrawn continues. Yet Anakin’s final lesson remains shrouded in mystery, fitting for that most mysterious of Jedis. Anakin seemed pleased that Ahsoka conjured her anger and hurt and almost, but not quite, went over to the Dark Side completely to defeat him. But, she spared him and returned to herself, and proved that she was more than her past, that she could make new and better decisions in her present. That’s a luxury Anakin no longer has, but he is a man who can appreciate a person not wanting to be defined by their worst deeds and the darkest parts of their past.
Check out a taste of Ahsoka’s battle with and against Anakin Skywalker here:
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Writer/director Gareth Edwards (Godzilla, Rogue One) is as comfortable with massive stakes as he is with heady sci-fi stories populated with complex characters. With The Creator, he’s tackling both as he turns his attention to our growing unease with the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence in a film that puts a human face on the algorithms of doom.
The final trailer for The Creator introduces us to the owner of that face, a little girl named Alphie (Madeleine Yuna Voyles), who is far from your average elementary school student. Alphie is a humanoid robot powered by artificial intelligence that is believed to be the ultimate weapon of mass destruction. She was created by the architect of a robot rebellion against humanity that began with a nuclear detonation in Los Angeles and has led to an outright war between humanity and the robot world.
Joshua (John David Washington), an ex-special forces agent grieving his wife’s disappearance (Gemma Chan), is recruited to take Alphie out. Joshua leads a team across enemy lines into AI-controlled territory to destroy the weapon and end the war. That’s when he meets Alphie, and his mission becomes desperately muddled by the realization she is, in essence, only a child.
Joining Washington, Voyles, and Chan is a top-notch cast that includes Ken Watanabe (Inception), Allison Janey (I, Tonya), and Sturgill Simpson (Dog). Edwards directs from a script he co-wrote with Chris Weitz, his collaborator from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.
Check out the final trailer here. The Creator hits theaters on September 29:
“You made a good choice coming back here,” William Hale (Robert De Niro) says to his nephew, Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio), at the start of the second trailer for Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon. “The Osage are the finest, wealthiest, and most beautiful people on God’s earth.”
Hale refers to the fact that the Osage Nation in Oklahoma were the lawful landowners of property that contained massive oil reserves discovered during the turn of the 20th Century. This made the Osage fabulously wealthy, and it also made them the targets of legions of people like Hale, who wanted, by whatever means necessary, to pry that oil money from them. When Hale called them the finest, wealthiest, and most beautiful people on God’s earth, only one portion of that statement really mattered to him.
The new trailer reveals the outline of Hale’s plan, which includes his nephew. He asks Ernest if he likes women, and Ernest tells him it’s his weakness. “We mix these families together, and that estate money flows in the right direction,” Hale says. “It’ll come to us.”
We know, however, that marrying into the Osage Nation isn’t the only way white people like Hale will try to chisel the oil money from them. Scorsese’s film, adapted from investigative journalist David Grann’s best-selling 2017 book of the same name, tracks a series of brutal murders of Osage Nation members. The new trailer reveals the extent of the wanton killing and the horrific toll it takes on the Osage people. While Grann’s book was centered on Tom White, a former Texas Ranger who came to Oklahoma to investigate the murders (he’s played in the film by Jesse Plemmons), Scorsese and his screenwriter Eric Roth altered the focus of their story from the virtuous White, coming to Osage Nation to solve a crime, to both the perpetrators of the crime and on the Osage themselves.
The focus is centered on the relationship between Ernest and Mollie (Lily Gladstone), a member of the Osage Nation whom Ernest eventually marries. The love between the two complicates the larger scheme afoot and pits Ernest’s heart against his Uncle’s mercilessness.
Lily Gladstone and Leonardo DiCaprio in “Killers of the Flower Moon,” coming soon to Apple TV+.
Speaking with Deadline, De Niro explained how the shift in focus helped bring his character into sharper focus:
“It made the most sense to show what’s going on in that world, the dynamic between the nephew and the uncle,” De Niro told Deadline. “I don’t know if you would call it the banality of evil or just evil, corrupt entitlement, but we’ve seen it in other societies, including the Nazis before WWII. That is, a depressing realization of human nature that leaves people capable of doing terrible things. [Hale] believed he loved them and felt they loved him. But within that, he felt he had the right to behave the way he did.”
Check out the new trailer here. Killers of the Flower Moon arrives in theaters on October 20:
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There’s a chilling haunt in Kenneth Branagh’s latest Agatha Christie adaptation of famed detective Hercule Poirot that will make the hair on the back of your neck tingle.
Following the success ofMurder on the Orient Express andDeath on the Nile, this third whodunit sinks into darker waters and unravels a tale along the canals of Venice where the crime solver is asked by friend and author Ardiane Oliver (Tina Fey) to attend a séance with her to prove that the medium (Michelle Yeoh) performing the spiritual ritual is a fake. The disturbing events that follow inside the palazzo owned by Rowena Drake (Kelly Reilly), who tragically lost her daughter Alicia (Rowan Robinson) to an unexplained death, become a puzzle only Poirot can piece together.
Tasked with bringing the cryptic aura of A Haunting in Venice to life was production designer John Paul Kelly (The Theory of Everything). The test was creating an authentic palazzo in marvelous albeit sinister detail that would take center stage for the moody story set in post-World War II Italy.
In reading the script (written by Michael Green and based on Christie’s “Hallowe’en Party”), Kelly tells The Credits there was an undeniable horror-filled tone – one that’s partially shaped by the palazzo. “There’s a prominence to the palazzo on screen and its relevance to the story,” Kelly says. “It becomes a character and almost sits alongside the actors as a potential culprit. That was massively exciting and challenging as well.”
Early on, Branagh and Kelly scouted the slumbering waterways of Venice, stepping into many of the enchanting palazzos in the small city. Their eyes set on filming in one (or more) of them, but complex script elements pushed them to build their own at Pinewood Studios outside of London. In conceptualizing the set builds, Kelly meticulously tuned into the historical style. “There’s a consistent layout with the palazzos. There’s the boathouse, or cabana, where you bring in the gondola on the lower floor, and then upstairs is the piano nobile where all the impressive stuff happens, then a living floor above that,” he explains. “We added a few dimensions – secret passages and long corridors – and embellished it a bit, but we stayed true to the Venice architecture.”
Since the film takes place in almost one location, Kelly created spaces that showed variations in color palette, texture, and mood. Each room required layers and layers of history on its walls. Fresco paintings were overlaid onto decaying plaster, which revealed bricks and dampness behind them. The sets were elaborate and painstaking, but the decoration avoided clutter. “Celia Bobak has been Ken’s set decorator for decades, so she knows him well, which was a huge advantage,” says Kelly. “Like me, Celia is really into historical accuracy, and she was determined that the world we created was believable. We started with a much fuller world and then stripped it back gradually, bit by bit. We ended up with a full environment but minimally dressed.”
Extra attention was given to Alicia’s bedroom, which was left alone after her death. It’s decorated with delicate touches of tables, lamps, chairs, a bed, and a large stone fireplace. Unique to the space are the darkly painted trees on the walls. “One of the early photographic references that Ken really liked was this bird trapped in a cage,” notes Kelly. “That led to the idea of an enchanted forest. This kind of confusing space where the child was not quite sure what was real and what was in her imagination. The design evolved gradually, but it became clear that it would feel like a very different environment.”
Originally, the séance Hercule attends along with the ensemble cast of suspects that includes actors Kyle Allen, Camille Cottin, Jamie Dornan, Jude Hill, Ali Khan, Emma Laird, and Riccardo Scamarcio, was supposed to be shot inside Alicia’s bedroom. In a happy accident, it was swapped for the corridor leading to the room. The corridor design has a white and burnt orange checkered tile floor and steely color palette walls – a mix of teals and grays that create an almost underwater color scheme. “Ken liked the corridors, and he came up with his idea to create a cruciform séance with Mrs. Reynolds (Michelle Yeoh) in the middle. We were always trying to challenge the rule of what horror should be and hopefully find an original slant on it. This was one of those moments.”
If you’re going to see Brie Larson’s return as Captain Marvel, why not see it on the biggest screen possible? The new IMAX spot for The Marvels poses that exact question, teasing Larson’s return as arguably the mightiest of all the Avengers in director Nia DaCosta’s upcoming film. Only in The Marvels, Carol Danvers, a.k.a. Captain Marvel (Larson, of course), will no longer be a solo act (no offense to Nick Fury, who has certainly been on her side from the beginning)…now, thanks to some strange cosmic voodoo that happens when the good Captain goes to explore an anomalous wormhole, her powers get mixed up with two other formidable young women. When one woman unleashes her power, she immediately switches places with one of the others. It’s a tricky bit of business, and it’ll give The Marvels a unique twist.
Those young women, you might have learned in previous trailers, are her estranged Niece, S.A.B.E.R. astronaut Captain Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Harris), and a young girl from Jersey City named Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani, reprising her role from Disney+’s Ms. Marvel). These three very different but equally courageous women will need to join forces to take on a Kree revolutionary named Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton), who has a bone to pick with Captain Marvel. They’re going to have to learn to be a team, which is made doubly difficult by the little snafu that zaps them hither and tither anytime they use their powers.
Samuel L. Jackson returns as Nick Fury, and he’s joined by Park Seo-joon, Zenobia Shroff, Saagar Shaikh, Mohan Kapur, Jessica Zhou, and Caroline Simonnet.
Higher. Further. Faster. These three words have long been the motto of Captain Marvel, but now that she’s part of a super-team, she’s added another—together.
Check out the new IMAX spot below. The Marvels soars into theaters on November 10.
Another weekend, another major milestone passed. Greta Gerwig’s Barbie has danced past Rian Johnson’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi in its eighth weekend at the box office, yet another incredible feat for the movie that can seemingly do it all. Barbie is no longer winning the box office belt every weekend (this past weekend, that honor went to The Nun II), but its most recent haul pushed it up to $620.27 million domestically, which edges out The Last Jedi, which brought in $620.18 million at the domestic box office.
And now, for the few people around the country who didn’t watch Margot Robbie become the iconic Mattel doll with a sudden case of existential dread, you’ll be able to catch Barbie at home. While the film is still in theaters, it’s now officially available on streaming services as of 12 a.m. ET on Tuesday, September 12. You’ll be able to stream the movie for a 48-hour rental at $24.99, or you can own it for $29.99 on participating platforms.
It goes without saying now that Barbie is a legitimate cultural phenomenon, the kind of movie that seems like such an implausible mega-blockbuster until it seems like its success was inevitable. Opening on the same day as Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer and thus bringing Barbenheimer into the cultural lexicon, both films proved that audiences are hungry—very hungry—for original films by passionate, daring filmmakers. Barbie has become the highest-grossing film in Warner Bros.’s 100-year history, to name just one massive record. Nolan’s Oppenheimer has done remarkably well, obliterating expectations, especially considering it’s a three-hour biopic about the father of the Atomic bomb. (The streaming date for Oppenheimer hasn’t been locked down yet, but you can expect to wait a bit longer for it).
Whether you’ve seen Barbie in the theaters once, twice, or more, you can now track her journey with Ken from Barbie Land to the real world (and back again) from the comfort of your own home. Or, catch it in theaters one last time while it’s still there.
Featured image: Caption: (L-r) RYAN GOSLING, MARGOT ROBBIE and Director/Writer GRETA GERWIG on the set of Warner Bros. Pictures’ “BARBIE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Jaap Buitendijk
A Los Angeles native and longtime Lakers fan, production designer Richard Toyon had a good idea of how the HBO series Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty should look. After all, he was there when it originally happened.
Opening in 1979, season 1 saw Jerry Buss (John C. Reilly) buyingthe Lakers and drafting rookie sensation Earvin “Magic” Johnson (Quincy Isaiah) in the quest for a championship.Season 2 coversthe turbulent years following the 1980 win, delving into Magic’s clash with coach Paul Westhead (Jason Segel), the growing rivalry between the Lakers and the Boston Celtics, and its rising star Larry Bird (Sean Patrick Small).
As the series wraps up this Sunday (September 17), The Credits chatted with Toyon to discuss design challenges, the secrets to capturing the 1980s, and the day Jeanie Buss visited the set.
What was your focus heading intoseason 2?
We knew that some sets had to evolve and enlarge. We knew Pickfair was on the horizon and going to be an endeavor. Fortunately, most of our department heads returned. There were many moving parts, but it was very satisfying to recreate that era. Even though you know the Lakers’ record — who was going to win, who was going to lose — the challenge was to immerse the viewer into that space.
Quincy Isaiah. Photograph by Warrick Page/HBO
What adjustments were made?
In the first season, the big question was how we were going to reproduce the Forum. We didn’t have access. The stages available at Los Angeles Center Studios were all the same size. The question was, can one fit a natural NBA floor and have stands around it? My first order of business was to figure that out. You could — albeit not as big as you might want.
Solomon Hughes, Quincy Isaiah. Photograph by Warrick Page/HBO
That changed in season 2?
We moved to Warner Bros. for season 2. The stage was maybe fifteen to twenty percent larger. It gave us the ability to curve stands around the sides and create a tunnel system with direct interaction with the court. That was key to making the basketball work for the directors.
Jason Segel. Photograph by Warrick Page/HBO
Did you make any other changes to how you built the court?
We used a company that specializes in creating NBA and NCAA floors. We graphically laid it out, and they built the floor. We had all the colors of the real Forum floor. But that’s all we had. We had to build new stands, a whole new tunnel system, and all that surrounds it. It took about ninety days to construct.
Adrien Brody. Photograph by Warrick Page/HBO
You mentioned Pickfair. (Jerry Buss bought the estate in 1980.) Talk about recreating that.
Pickfair was this fabled structure in Beverly Hills. It started as a hunting lodge, and then Douglas Fairbanks bought it for Mary Pickford after they married. They upgraded and renovated it. In all, it had about forty-three rooms. Obviously, we couldn’t build forty-three rooms. I had to boil down the script’s actionand design the essence of Pickfair. I create a layout with a certain largeness that we’d be able to build. That was also at Warner Bros. It took a number of people a long time to create.
L-r: Quincy Isaiah, John C. Reilly, DeVaughn Nixon. Photograph by Warrick Page/HBO
How did you set about recreating this legendary estate?
We went to a number of architectural archival sources and found maybe twenty to twenty-five photos. The architect of record who renovated Pickfair had created a white paper. Some of those photographs were available. But there were not a whole lot, and certainly none from the Buss era. Jerry Buss was all about stylizing himself as a second coming of Hugh Hefner. The Pickfair game room was a homage to his attempt to create that persona. But we only had a description and some video snippets of what it was like. From that, we created this masculine environment. We also built a living room, a dining room, and a kitchen. We had this long hallway. The stairway that led up to the bedrooms was very specific. Because we had such tall actors, the camera was always looking up. The ceilings became important. Whenever you’re looking at the Pickfair scenes, you see a lot of ceilings. Thank goodness we paid attention to this.
John C. Reilly. Photograph by Warrick Page/HBO
Did you consider filming at Pickfair?
Jerry Buss sold the estate to Pia Zadora and her husband. In short order, they ended up razing it. The only thing that’s left is the gates. In episode four, Paul Westhead goes to meet Jack McKinney (Tracy Letts) at the Hamburger Hamlet. The restaurant used to have actors’ photographs on the walls. We placed Pia Zadora’s behind Jack McKinney. That’s one of our Easter eggs.
How did you give season 2 that 1980s feel?
We go from 1980 to 1984. Los Angeles’s design was changing so much. The 80s were always kind of searching for its true self. There were a lot of outlandish colors, a dissolution of graphic standards, and even a change in architecture to postmodernism. We wanted to make sure we didn’t blow our wad in the first scene. You saw a progression – our colors becoming brighter, more Miami Vice — turquoise, peaches, magentas. We took into account what our costume designer (Emma Potter) was putting on our actors so they weren’t contrasting with the background or falling into it. Light sources were important. I worked with the director of photography (Todd Banhazl) to figure that out. When you see the Forum Club for the last time, it’s completely changed. That set has all built-in lighting. In season two, we were able to expand the design — really push things. You see Chasen’s restaurant in the first season. That was the last gasp of the red leather restaurant, where you would get a good steak and a stiff drink. The 80s began pulling that idea apart. Those longtime institutions were going away. New things were coming on. In season two, we went to a roller rink.
John C. Reilly and Solomon Hughes. Photograph by Warrick Page/HBO
What stands out most about your Winning Time efforts?
We have a great team. We knew season onewould be difficult. All the department heads were talking to each other, collaborating to create this world. In season two, it felt like we were firing on all eight cylinders — costume, props, production design, cinematography — all working together. You felt it. There’s an old saying that a designer’s job is to hold up every frame of film, and the second your fingertips go into the frame, you’ve done too much. When I’m watching Winning Time, I feel we stayed just below the frame.
Is there an ethos to the way the show is constructed? You’re capturing these larger-than-life figures, many of whom are still alive.
The entire series is done with great reverence towards that period of time, the team, those players, and Jerry Buss. It was never intended to deride anybody. It’s intended to tell the story. It’s a pivotal time in the NBA and in Los Angeles. I get comments on Instagram and Facebook like, “Man, this show is fantastic, and I’m not even a Lakers fan,” which is great because this is who you want to hook. To see that they are coming along on this journey is really gratifying. In the beginning, we didn’t have the Lakers support. Eventually, they came around, and Jeanie Buss herself visited our Pickfair set. She choked up as she walked through. She said the game room furnishings were exactly how her dad had it. She thought the stairway was lovely. She told us, “I sat at the bottom of that stairway many times, waiting for my dad to talk to him.” That, I think, was my favorite moment. It was validation.
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The first teaser for director James Wan’s upcoming Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom gives us a glimpse at one of the chief antagonists looking to take out Arthur Curry (Jason Momoa). That would be David Kane (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), better known as Black Manta, the former rogue special forces officer who Aquaman left for dead—after killing his father, no less—in the first Aquaman. Black Manta survived his encounter with Aquaman, barely, and has been building himself and his high-tech suit into ferocious fighting form ever since. He’s got a new weapon to help him on his quest for vengeance, the Black Trident, which will make him an even more formidable adversary.
“I’m going to kill Aquaman and destroy everything he holds dear,” Manta promises in the new teaser. The man certainly means what he says. The Lost Kingdom will find Aquaman looking for help from another powerful individual who was determined to kill him, his brother Orm (Patrick Wilson), who ended the first film imprisoned after his failed attempt to crush Aquaman and claim the throne of Atlantis. The two brothers will have to join forces to take on Black Mantha and the terrific force that the Black Trident unleashes.
Joining Momoa, Abdul-Mateen II, and Wilson are Amber Heard as Mera, Nicole Kidman as Atlanna, Temuera Morrison as Tom Curry, Dolph Lundgren as King Nereus, Jani Zhao as Stingray, Vincent Regan as Atlan, and Randall Park as Dr. Stephen Shin.
Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom will be the last film to bow for DC Studios that doesn’t carry the direct imprimatur of new bosses James Gunn and Peter Safran.
Check out the teaser here. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom hits theaters on December 20.
Here’s the official synopsis:
Having failed to defeat Aquaman the first time, Black Manta, still driven by the need to avenge his father’s death, will stop at nothing to take Aquaman down once and for all. This time Black Manta is more formidable than ever before, wielding the power of the mythic Black Trident, which unleashes an ancient and malevolent force. To defeat him, Aquaman will turn to his imprisoned brother Orm, the former King of Atlantis, to forge an unlikely alliance. Together, they must set aside their differences in order to protect their kingdom and save Aquaman’s family, and the world, from irreversible destruction.
All returning to the roles they originated, Jason Momoa plays Arthur Curry/Aquaman, now balancing his duties as both the King of Atlantis and a new father; Patrick Wilson is Orm, Aquaman’s half-brother and his nemesis, who must now step into a new role as his brother’s reluctant ally; Amber Heard is Mera, Atlantis’ Queen and mother of the heir to the throne; Yahya Abdul-Mateen II is Black Manta, committed more than ever to avenge his father’s death by destroying Aquaman, his family and Atlantis; and Nicole Kidman as Atlanna, a fierce leader and mother with the heart of a warrior. Also reprising their roles are Dolph Lundgren as King Nereus and Randall Park as Dr. Stephen Shin.
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