“Dune: Part Two” Review Round-Up: A Breathtaking, Cosmically Scaled Sci-Fi Masterpiece

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The review embargo for Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two has been lifted as if by a fleet of ornithopters (the jet-powered, flapping-winged aircraft introduced in the original film), and the overwhelming critical response can be summed up by a single word: wow. The continuation of Villeneuve’s epic (“continuation” is his preferred description rather than calling it a sequel) possesses all the things you want in a sci-fi epic—astonishing visuals, visceral action set pieces, stellar performances—while also managing the even trickier feat of charging full-force into the complexity at the heart of Frank Herbert’s original source material.

“Villeneuve has made a serious, stately opus, and while he doesn’t have a pop bone in his body, he knows how to put on a show as he fans a timely argument about who gets to play the hero now,” writes the New York Times Manhola Dargis. “This is a real epic, and it is exhilarating to find a filmmaker thinking as big as this,” says the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw. “Dune: Part Two is a robust piece of filmmaking, a reminder that this kind of broad-scale blockbuster can be done with artistry and flair,” adds RogerEbert.com‘s Brian Tallerico.

Picking up where the first Dune left off (here’s a video refresher, too), Part Two finds Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) and his mother, Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), now under the protection of the native inhabitants of Arrakis, the Fremen, whose desert planet has been the source of intergalactic power-grabbing for years. This continuation includes all the action and a slew of major characters that Villeneuve and co-writer Jon Spaihts wisely left out of the original film so that they could focus Part One on the tragedy of the Atreides family without overstuffing it with Herbert’s hugely populated, vast world. The Atreides’ tragic flaws, arguably hubris and honor in a dishonorable galaxy, led to patriarch Duke Atreides’ (Oscar Isaac) assassination by House Harkonnen after Duke and the entire Atreides clan, including their advisors, soldiers, and various apparatchiks had moved to Arrakis to oversee the manufacture and production of Spice, the abundant natural resource on the planet that galactic forces have been exploiting for generations. This left Paul and Lady Jessica in the wind—or, more accurately, in the dunes.

Part Two is centered on the end game after the Harkonnen’s decapitation of House Atreides and Paul’s increasingly fervent belief that he was chosen to lead the remnants of his House and the Fremen in a battle royale against House Harkonnen and the forces that backed them up, including the galaxy’s prime mover, Emperor Shaddam IV (Christopher Walken). Key players include Chani (Zendaya), a Fremen whom Paul first met in his dreams and who has a much larger role in the sequel, as well as newcomers like Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen (Austin Butler), Paul’s rival and combatant in one of the original book’s most memorable set pieces.

The cast also includes returning cast members Javier Bardem as the Fremen Stilgar, Josh Brolin as Atreides’ ally Gurney Halleck, and Dave Bautista as Beast Rabban. Newcomers joining Walken and Butler are Florence Pugh as Princess Irulan, Léa Seydoux as Lady Margot, and Souheila Yacoub as Shishakli.

Let’s have a quick tour of what the critics are saying. Dune: Part Two opens on March 1.

Featured image: Caption: (L-r) TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET as Paul Atreides and AUSTIN BUTLER as Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen in Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE: PART TWO,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Niko Tavernise

Director Sam Mende’s Ambitious Plans to Direct Four Separate Beatles Movies

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Paul, John, George, and Ringo are each getting their own biopic in director Sam Mendes’ hugely ambitious project. Considering it the Beatles-verse, a chance to get inside arguably the most iconic band of all time and view it from the perspective of each of its members.

Mendes seems like a great fit to tackle a one-of-a-kind approach to giving each member of the Beatles their cinematic due. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s taken on British royalty, so to speak—Mendes directed the James Bond films Skyfall and Spectre—and he’s got a long track record of great films besides those.

“I’m honored to be telling the story of the greatest rock band of all time and excited to challenge the notion of what constitutes a trip to the movies,” Mendes said in a statement.

The four films will be under the Sony Pictures banner, and all four are slated for a 2027 release. It’s an intriguing strategy, one that’s never been before, nor has a filmmaker ever created a film for each member of a band. The Beatles’ popularity seems to never wane, and given the success of recent musician biopics and music films, from Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis to Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour to Reinaldo Marcus Green‘s Bob Marley: One Love, the genre is thriving.

Mendes’ upcoming quartet of films will be joining yet more major features pegged to musical legends set for release. Director Sam Taylor-Johnson’s Amy Winehouse biopic Back to Black is coming to theaters this May 10, while director Antoine Fuqua’s Michael Jackson biopic Michael is slated for an April 18, 2025 release.

Mendes also has something else major going for him—the support of the Beatles—marking the first time they’ve backed a scripted film based on their lives. Recently, Peter Jackson’s epic The Beatles: Get Back detailed the lead-up to their iconic live performance atop their Seville Row studio.

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

Deadline first broke this story.

Featured image: LONDON – 1964: Rock and roll band ‘The Beatles’ perform onstage in a still from their movie ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ which was released in 1964. (L-R) Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, George Harrison and John Lennon. (Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)

New “Jurassic World” Director Will Be “Rogue One” and “The Creator” Filmmaker Gareth Edwards

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For a moment there, it looked as if the next installment of Jurassic World was going to be directed by David Leitch. However, now Gareth Edwards, helmer of the critically acclaimed Star Wars spinoff Rogue One and the recent sci-fi epic The Creator is taking his blockbuster chops to the land of dinosaurs.

The upcoming film is going to be set apart from the recent Jurassic World trilogy, meaning that Chris Pratt’s Owen Brady, Bryce Dallas Award’s Claire Dearborn, and the original Jurassic Park trio of Laura Dern, Sam Neill, and Jeff Goldblum are not in the new film. However, this next trip into the jaws of a T-Rex was written by screenwriter David Koepp, the man who penned Steven Spielberg’s 1993 original Jurassic Park and the follow-up, Jurassic Park: New World. 

The upcoming Universal Pictures film is set for a July 2, 2025 release, and with that fast timeline in mind and with Leitch and Universal parting ways, Universal and Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment needed someone with blockbuster experience and who could be ready to roll quickly, as production is slated to begin this June. Edwards rose to the top of their lists.

Edwards knows a thing or two about colossal lizards—he also directed 2014’s Godzilla, which launched Lengedary’s Monsterverse and re-introduced the King of the Monsters as a misunderstood, if no less destructive, force of nature. He’s proven again and again, with Rogue One and The Creator, that he can create fully realized worlds that pop with memorable characters and lived-in environments, both crucial elements to the Jurassic World franchise.

The new film is being executive produced by Spielberg through Amblin, alongside longtime Jurassic producers Frank Marshall and Patrick Crowley.

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

“Lisa Frankenstein” Production Designer Mark Worthington on Reimagining 1980s Horror Comedy

First “Wicked” Trailer Finds Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo Getting Witchy With It

Official “Twisters” Trailer Finds Glen Powell & Daisy Edgar-Jones in Harm’s Way

“Lisa Frankenstein” Costume Designer Meagan McLaughlin Luster on Dressing a Muse and a Monster

Featured image: (from left) A Pyroraptor, Kayla Watts (DeWanda Wise) and Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) in Jurassic World Dominion, co-written and directed by Colin Trevorrow.

Everything You Need to Know Before Seeing “Dune: Part Two”

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Warner Bros. has released a new video that will help those of you with a few burning questions ahead of the Dune: Part Two premiere to go into the film feeling properly educated. It might also even entice those Dune holdouts into seeing the first film so they can enjoy director Denis Villeneuve’s critically acclaimed two-part adaptation of Frank Herbert’s iconic 1965 novel.

If there were one major Cliff’s Notes version of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune, it would be that, at its core, it’s a story about warring families. On one side, you’ve got House Atreides, which were led by Duke (Oscar Isaac) and Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) in the first film, with their promising son Paul (Timothée Chalamet) showing skills derived from both his parents. Yet when House Atreides was asked by Emperor Shaddam IV (played in Part Two by Christopher Walken, unseen in the first film) to go to the desert planet of Arrakis to help take over the massive manufacturing hub of the planet’s natural resource, Spice, trouble was in the air. Enter the bad family, House Harkonnen, led by Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård), who attacked the Atreides in the first film, killing Duke and sending Paul and Lady Jessica on the run in the desert.

The desert of Arrakis is home to a powerful band of people known as the Fremen, led by Stilgar (Javier Bardem) and including Chani (Zendaya), the young woman Paul kept seeing in his dreams. In Part Two, Paul and Lady Jessica will be deeply embedded within Fremen society as Paul plots his revenge against the Harkonnen, his rage and his growing belief that he’s the chosen one sure to have galactic implications. Chani will have a much larger role to play as Paul’s determination to defeat his enemies and lead the Fremen to control their planet will become dangerous itself. Part Two will introduce a slew of characters who were all crucial in Herbert’s original book, including Walken as the aforementioned Emperor Shaddam IV, Austin Butler as Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, Paul’s direct challenger, Florence Pugh as Princess Irrulan Corrino, and Léa Seydoux as Lady Margot.

The fight between Paul Atreides and Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen is one of the most thrilling moments in Frank Herbert’s original book, a ferocious clash with galactic implications. When we spoke to Dune: Part One and Two co-writer Jon Spaihts about the first film, he explained that he and Villeneuve had left much of the most thrilling action from Herbert’s 1965 novel for the second installment, choosing to focus Part One on the treachery and galactic scheming that led the galaxy to the brink of all-out war. Part Two, however, will feature many of the major set pieces from Herbert’s book and the war that’s been brewing. 

For a proper catch-up via video, check out the below. Dune: Part Two opens in theaters on March 1:

For more on Dune: Part Two, check out these stories:

“Dune: Part Two” Reactions: A Modern Day Sci-Fi Masterpiece

Timothée Chalamet and Austin Butler Tease Ferocious “Dune: Part Two” Fight

Two New “Dune: Part Two” Teasers Arrive as Tickets Go on Sale

New “Dune: Part Two” Images Unleash Austin Butler’s Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen

Featured image: Caption: (L-r) TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET as Paul Atreides and JOSH BROLIN as Gurney Halleck in Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE: PART TWO,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Niko Tavernise

“Lisa Frankenstein” Production Designer Mark Worthington on Reimagining 1980s Horror Comedy

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In a send-up of 1980s slasher flicks, Lisa (Kathryn Newton), the anti-heroine of writer Diablo Cody’s and director Zelda Williams’s Lisa Frankenstein, spends too much time in an abandoned cemetery and accidentally calls up a deceased 18th-century hottie (Cole Sprouse) from the dead. Since Lisa is already in love with a living boy, Michael Trent (Henry Eikenberry), and her undead admirer is missing a hand and can’t speak, the high schooler finds herself at the center of a love triangle she’s ill-equipped to handle. But Lisa’s romantic complications are secondary, anyway, to two more pressure issues: finding and reanimating her undead pal’s missing body parts at any cost and warding off her new stepmother, Janet (Carla Gugino), a malevolent psych ward nurse.

The secret to helping the Creature become whole again lies in Lisa’s stepsister Taffy’s  (Liza Soberano) tanning bed, an electrically faulty device housed in a backyard shed that doubles as a shrine to Taffy’s many accomplishments, like being a cheerleader. Taffy is a kind and bubbly foil to Lisa’s embrace of the macabre, offset by her popular stepsister and the bright and pastel surroundings concocted by production designer Mark Worthington (WandaVision, American Horror Story). Worthington rewatched original scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis’s early movies before going into Lisa Frankenstein to create a visual pastiche of 1980s horror comedy. We spoke with the production designer about recalling the era’s design tropes, building an abandoned cemetery, and working with his “creative crush,” Diablo Cody.

 

How did you decide what direction to take in terms of making Lisa’s home environment contrast her personal style?

Because it’s stylized horror, you can really lean into some of the cliches or tropes of the 1980s. Pink and sea-foam green are classic colors. Interestingly enough, there was simple, realistic research from the period that was not far off from what we ended up with. That house is Janet. The pastels and round forms of the 80s played really well, especially in contrast to Lisa’s character and where she ends up. She just really stands out in that environment as a foreigner and unwelcome. And it’s fun — it plays into the comedy.

Director Zelda Williams and screenwriter Diablo Cody on the set of their film LISA FRANKENSTEIN, a Focus Features release. Credit: Mason Novick / ©Mason Novick

The houses we see are so architecturally reminiscent of the 1980s. Were those all locations?

Janet’s house interior we built on stage, just because there are a lot of scenes. The exterior house was a gift. We did a little painting, but that house exists pretty much as you see it, which is amazing. The party house was a location. The boyfriend’s house, that’s a location. We spent a lot of time carefully curating those choices to ensure they fit within the period idea, and we also made some alterations to them.

 

How did you approach Bachelor’s Grove cemetery? Was any of that real?

That was really fun. It’s based on a real cemetery outside of Chicago, which actually doesn’t look anything like what we ended up doing. It’s abandoned, Bachelor’s Grove. We took a lot of license because we’re in Louisiana and found a park on the West Bank that has all those tall skinny trees you see in that scene. The ground was completely covered in vines, as you see it. We just thought it was so beautiful, with shafts of light and the graphic quality of those trees and those beautiful vines. The gravestones, the gate, all of that we made and brought in. His stone, of course, was custom.

Did you primarily work with Louisiana businesses while shooting on location?

It’s going to be tough to call up all the names. We worked with a ton of local businesses. We were buying everything down there. I don’t think we really went out of state or out of the New Orleans area for anything. We pretty much-sourced everything in town. And obviously, we had a local crew, which was great. I had experience with that; I did two seasons of American Horror Story in New Orleans.

Cole Sprouse stars as The Creature and Kathryn Newton as Lisa Swallows in LISA FRANKENSTEIN, a Focus Features release.
Credit: Michele K. Short / © 2024 FOCUS FEATURES LLC

Taffy’s backyard home tanning salon/cheerleading trophy showcase, commandeered by Lisa for her own dark ends, is too funny. Was that on the page as such?

That was originally written for a garage. Then, looking at that location, there was a little shed in the back already there. And we just felt that there was something about the focus of that, how tiny it was, and how it was a separate space for Taffy, that really felt better and more graphic for those scenes. That was also a gift. We could have done it in a garage, but how do we make it private without the neighbors seeing? Putting it back there was really useful for us because they could be in their own world. That tanning bed barely fit in there, which was kind of perfect.

Cole Sprouse stars as The Creature and Kathryn Newton as Lisa Swallows in LISA FRANKENSTEIN, a Focus Features release. Credit: Michele K. Short / © 2024 FOCUS FEATURES LLC

Was Diablo Cody involved on set?

She was there. She’s great. You never know, when you have a creative crush on people, how they’re going to be. There’s always that fear — are they going to be terrible and a nightmare? And she’s incredibly funny, sardonic, the way you’d expect given her writing, and really insightful and just lovely. It’s funny; my agent sent me the script and said, I’ve got this Diablo Cody thing, and some people have their own opinions about it. I said, are you kidding? I love her. And it’s the best thing I’ve read in a very long time. I love genre anyway, so I was all in.

 

 

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

First “Wicked” Trailer Finds Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo Getting Witchy With It

Official “Twisters” Trailer Finds Glen Powell & Daisy Edgar-Jones in Harm’s Way

“Lisa Frankenstein” Costume Designer Meagan McLaughlin Luster on Dressing a Muse and a Monster

Featured image: Cole Sprouse stars as The Creature and Kathryn Newton as Lisa Swallows in LISA FRANKENSTEIN, a Focus Features release.
Credit: Michele K. Short / © 2024 FOCUS FEATURES LLC

 

“Bob Marley: One Love” Co-writer/Director Reinaldo Marcus Green on Capturing a Legend’s Spirit

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Bob Marley’s family has been trying to create and release a narrative that celebrates the beloved Jamaican performer’s life and music for decades. Only recently did the producers, including Rita, Bob’s wife, and her children Ziggy and Cedella Marley, feel like all the pieces had come together to create a story worthy of Bob’s legacy. The perfect blend of talent to bring Bob’s story to the big screen included casting Kingsley Ben-Adir and Lashana Lynch as Bob and Rita Marley and hiring Reinaldo Marcus Green, director of the Oscar-winning film King Richard, to be at the helm. 

There were other factors important to not just the producers but to the cast and director. The locations of the film that represent seminal moments in Bob’s life had to take place in Jamaica, and Jamaicans had to be represented in the cast and crew. As a result, the finished film Bob Marley: One Love features over 250 Jamaican artists, experts, tradespeople, and performers. 

One Love focuses on the period between 1976 and 1978, a time in which Bob recorded the album Exodus and performed two historic concerts, Smile Jamaica and the One Love Peace Concert, amidst political turmoil and great danger to him personally. 

Since One Love tells the story of one of the biggest heroes in Jamaican history, co-writer and director Reinaldo Marcus Green felt the weight of the endeavor. He has succeeded with the finished movie, as it is being embraced by Bob Marley fans around the world. The Credits spoke to Green about being entrusted with this very important musical hero’s legacy through Bob Marley: One Love. 

 

Kingsley Ben-Adir was great in the role, right down to capturing Bob’s Nine Mile patois.  It’s not a dialect, it’s a language. Can you talk about his work with Fae Ellington to perfect that, as well as her role in the accurate portrayal of Jamaican culture in the film?

Fae was instrumental. She was a friend of Bob’s and a friend of the family. She also grew up when she saw the evolution of patois, the words they used back then, and what was historically accurate. We were incredibly lucky to have a historian like her involved. She was instrumental to us in so many ways, especially with language. One Love is a foreign language film, and it is important when people hear it they try to understand what we’re saying. Given how Bob spoke, we knew that was a challenge in this film. For Kingsley, the process of transcribing the language was probably one of the most difficult challenges of the role because he’s not a native patois speaker. So if we had a rewrite, that would have to get transcribed into patois, but then it would have to get another layer, which would be “Bob speak.” Then, it would have to be written out phonetically for Kingsley to study so that he could not just say the words but understand what he was saying. With that process, you can only imagine how challenging it was.  

Kingsley Ben-Adir as “Bob Marley” and Director Reinaldo Marcus Green in Bob Marley: One Love from Paramount Pictures.

You shot for 26 days in Jamaica. What locations did you feel were essential, and what can fans look for that are authentic to Bob’s life?

Well, Trench Town is a character in the film, really. It’s where Bob grew up. It’s where he played football, and where his friends were, and so we wanted to capture the streets of Trench Town. You see him running, we went to Second Street, where Bob was from. For anybody who has never been to Jamaica, we went to the area that Bob was from, which was key. Fifty Six Hope Road is now a museum. A lot of that original architecture changed, so we actually built a house that was closer to the real Hope Road than the one that currently exists. We wanted to capture the energy of that space, and that was pretty fantastic. 

“Antonio ‘Gillie’ Gilbert”, Stefan Wade as “Seeco Patterson”, Sheldon Shepherd as “Neville Garrick”, and Kingsley Ben-Adir as “Bob Marley” in Bob Marley: One Love from Paramount Pictures.

And the concerts were filmed in the place they were originally held? 

Yes. Smile Jamaica, and the One Love Peace Concert we shot at National Heroes Park. It felt like we were on sacred ground. We were in the same exact location that Bob was when he performed.  To go back, to recreate the stage, that was really special. Everything was a bit lo-fi there, which was kind of great. No fancy lighting. We tried to capture a little bit of that, in a cinematic way, just how lo-fi it was back then. So everything you see in Jamaica is real, and what we built there, we built for accuracy. 

Stefan Wade as “Seeco Patterson”, Lashana Lynch as “Rita Marley”, Aston Barrett Jr. as “Family Man Barrett”, Tosin Cole as “Tyrone Downie”, Kingsley Ben-Adir as “Bob Marley”, Hector ‘Roots’ Lewis as “Carly Barrett”, “Antonio ‘Gillie’ Gilbert”, Anna-Sharé Blake as “Judy Mowatt”, Sheldon Shepherd as “Neville Garrick” and Andrae Simpson as “Don Kinsey” in Bob Marley: One Love from Paramount Pictures.

The concerts had to be quite an undertaking, especially working for the right feeling, but you had real musicians and Kingsley, who had rehearsed Bob’s dancing almost to perfection. 

We were very fortunate to have Neville Garrick who was Bob’s artistic director. He designed the Exodus album cover and did all the lighting for their shows. We had him there to tell us what the lighting was, and remind us of the lights and the colors he chose, and how he always backlit Bob and gave him a spotlight. Those details helped to make that real. 

Kingsley Ben-Adir as “Bob Marley”, Anna-Sharé Blake as “Judy Mowatt”, Lashana Lynch as “Rita Marley”, and Naomi Cowan as “Marcia Griffiths” in Bob Marley: One Love from Paramount Pictures.

Rita’s story is Bob’s story. How did it shift in the process of the production, and what elements of her part of the story did you feel were essential? How did Lashana, who is of Jamaican descent, uniquely bring that to life? 

I read Rita’s book when I was in prep, and it changed everything for me because it was a unique perspective. It was raw, hard, and heavy. It wasn’t reflected in the early drafts, so  I knew there was an important perspective there. To me, one of the single most important things that I learned was that Rita taught Bob about Rastafarianism. That was a monumental gift. It changed his life forever. It’s what he sang about and what gave him his spiritual guidance. Rita was responsible for that. She was not just the mother to his children and other children; she was also a band member, so it just gave her this unique perspective, and for our production, a unique perspective into Bob’s life. That became the spine of our film. And then Lashana, being of Jamaican descent, had that pridefulness and ferocity as an actress and was protective of the culture and of the dimensionality we were trying to create with our story. She demanded excellence and wanted to honor his legacy, as we all did.

Lashana Lynch as “Rita Marley” and Kingsley Ben-Adir as “Bob Marley” in Bob Marley: One Love from Paramount Pictures.

There is a spiritual aspect to the story. You can’t extricate Bob Marley from the Rastafarian religion. 

Spirituality was in everything that Bob did, and it was important that we reflected that Bob was operating on a different plane, a deeper consciousness. To reflect that, we wanted to show visions in conjunction with the flashbacks. How can we visually capture that Bob saw and predicted things? For example, apparently, he had predicted the shooting before it happened. He had seen it in a vision, which was interesting to know about Bob. Our film takes on a slightly different shape because the story we were trying to tell was a little bit of “Redemption Song.” It’s Bob redeeming himself from the demons of his past. Oftentimes, it’s young kids who feel like they carry the burden of their parents, and I think Bob carried that burden of an absent father. He was running from that part of his life for a long time, and his spirituality saved him and lifted him up. I wanted the visions in the film to reflect that. There’s a transcendence that his music has. In Rastafarian culture, you don’t die. He may have left the physical world, but spiritually, he’s here, and his music and message are still here, and that’s a beautiful thing.

Bob Marley: One Love is in theaters nationwide. 

 

 

 

Featured image: Kingsley Ben-Adir as “Bob Marley” in Bob Marley: One Love from Paramount Pictures.

“Say It Loud” Director Deborah Riley Draper on Telling the Complex James Brown Story

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It doesn’t take much to get filmmaker Deborah Riley Draper going when it comes to the topic of James Brown. Her new documentary James Brown: Say It Loud (airing Feb. 19 and Feb. 20 on A&E) chronicles the music titan’s remarkable journey from his 1933 birth in a South Carolina shack through his early days as a “buck dancer,” his imprisonment at age 16, the 1956 breakthrough hit Please Please Please, his legendary 1964 TAMI Show appearance, his emergence as a Black Power champion following Martin Luther King’s death and the lasting impact of his extraordinary backup band the JBs, whose taut Afro-Funk rhythms laid the foundation for hip hop and made Brown the most sampled recording artist in the world.

A perfectionist on stage — a bassist wryly recalls in the documentary how Brown fined him and other players $50 each time they hit a bum note — Brown offstage led a highly imperfect life beset by domestic violence, drug use and a second prison term in 1988 followed by a reputational renaissance in the years before his death on Christmas day 2006.

It’s a lot to take in.

But the Georgia-based Draper came well prepared to render James Brown in all his complexity: It turns out that her fascination with the showman ran in the family. “Before I was born, my mother took the train from Savannah to New York City just to see James Brown at the Apollo Theater with her sister,” Draper says. “She loved ‘Get on the Good Foot.’ And my uncle Ed had a little club on a dirt road where they played his music all the time. I thought, ‘Wow, what a magnetic pull this man had on the men in my family and the women in my family! I wanted to understand that.”

The documentary interweaves archival performance footage with interviews featuring Brown’s children. Bootsy Collins, LL Cool J, Chuck D, Jimmy Jam, and Terry Lewis, along with executive producers Mick Jagger and Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson.

Draper, whose previous films include The Legacy of Black Wall Street about the prosperous Black community destroyed in the 1921 Tulsa riots, spoke from Los Angeles about Brown’s artistry, his flaws, and his activism, which included a little-known trading stamp program bearing Brown’s likeness.

 

Dealing with a man as famous as James Brown, you must have gone through tons of archival material.

I watched hundreds upon hundreds of hours of archival [footage] and listened to so much music. I was trying to hear clues about his life experience, like when we hear [King Records owner] Syd Nathan in the studio telling James Brown how to sing.                              

It’s crazy! Where did you locate the audio?

Harry Wagner at Universal Music Group is kind of the vault custodian. We’d spend Friday afternoons on Zoom; I’d say, “Harry, I know there must be some studio chatter in that vault; go find it!” and he was able to find six or seven-second snippets where you get to hear the interaction and the dynamic. For me, making this documentary was an exercise in listening but also an exercise in finding the most primary source material that we could so we could get an unvarnished look at the man.

How did you decide to structure James Brown’s life story into four distinct chapters?

It’s funny because last week, I looked back at the treatment I submitted [to get the job of director], and it’s so close to what the film ended up being because I knew exactly what I wanted to do in every episode to understand the making of James Brown. What constituted this young child who was born dead? How did he understand his own ability to entertain? That led me to buck dancing and the connection to enslaved people using their talent to entertain white people as a means to economic survival. And then I wanted to look at the part of his life where James Brown was considered an influential civil rights activist, the man who wrote “Say It Loud” on the back of a napkin in his private jet. I wanted to understand his voice before that was written, and his voice after that was written, and how he interacted with his masculinity with his blackness, with his politics, with the cultural currency that he gained and lost and gained and lost throughout his life.

 

So many comebacks. Prison. Endorsing Richard Nixon. Tax problems. Death of his third wife. Drugs. Prison again. How do you account for James Brown’s tenacity? 

There were so many comebacks; to do that you have to have talent, sure, but you also be confident. No matter where you come into his life, James Brown had the work ethic and resilience that could never be taken away from him. 

To depict James Brown’s early years, you blend audio interviews with evocative black and white archival footage portraying the Jim Crow South of the thirties and forties when James Brown came of age.  What was your source material?

We used archive houses at HBCUs [Historically Black Colleges and Universities] and also used Children’s Games and Logging, which were shot on a 16-millimeter film in 1928 by Zora Neale Hurston, one of the first black female directors. Almost 100 years later, I got to use her footage to help the audience understand what the South looked like and felt like authentically.

In 1964, James Brown delivered this now-legendary “T.A.M.I. Show” performance right before the Rolling Stones took the stage. Did you want to present that gig as a pivotal moment?

It was important to show young James Brown tearing the roof of the joint on the same stage as Smokey Robinson and Mick Jagger. It was great to sit down and talk to Mick Jagger about the moment when he saw what James Brown unleashed on stage. You look at the audience in that tape, they were mesmerized, regardless of race, regardless of gender – – mesmerized.

Jagger talks to you about the thrill of standing backstage and watching James Brown in action.  

James Brown had that kind of impact on everybody who saw him. Talking to QuestLove or Bootsy Collins or LL Cool J or Chuck D or Jimmy Jam or Terry Lewis, there’s a direct line from James Brown as a performer and entertainer and how he managed himself. His life is a lesson, and I hope Say It Loud, the documentary, is a lesson to all of us to own our voices, to say it loudly so people hear you and speak for the people who couldn’t speak before you and speak loud enough for the people who come behind you so they can take it and run with it. Like hip hop did with [1970 single] “Funky Drummer” – – they took it and ran with it!

 

Your documentary captures James Brown in all his complexity, including the fact that the man who preached love in his music sometimes engaged in domestic violence. How did you approach that aspect of his private life?

I addressed that [violence] by talking to the people who were in the house – – his daughters, Deanna and Yamma. I wanted to understand it from their perspective and get as close to the experience as I could. I thought it was important to look at the entirety of James Brown on stage but also off stage and look at who was his father? Who was his mother? What did that house look like?

James Brown’s father beat his mother. She abandoned him when he was three years old.

That’s why we have Dr. David Wall Rice and Deanna Brown, Black trauma specialists who can unpack Black identity. We know through science that trauma is trans-generational and inter-generational. Trauma doesn’t go anywhere if it isn’t treated. It comes back, and you may not be able to control when it comes back or how it comes back. So I wanted to let his daughters talk to help the audience understand that we’re dealing with a human who had his trauma, who had his demons, and who was both a creative genius and flawed.  

James Brown was very tuned in to the Black community from a business standpoint. In making Say It Loud, were you mindful of how your project could economically impact the local communities where you filmed?

Absolutely. We shot in Augusta, Atlanta, and Savannah, Georgia, so all of those people were local hires in terms of crafts services, in terms of transportation, and even our motion graphics team is based in Atlanta. We impacted every economy where we worked because we hired from the locations in which we were shooting. Side story: Doctor Deanna Brown Thomas’ husband owns a seafood restaurant in Augusta, so when we shot there, we ate there. It was important to me that we supported black restaurants wherever we could.

What was the most surprising thing you learned about James Brown during the making of this film?

Trading stamps.

Not many people know about Brown’s 1969 experiment.

It took me by surprise. An attorney for the Black Panthers, a football player [Art Powell], and James Brown came up with these Black and Brown trading stamps that could be used in Black businesses [in Oakland, California]. They were a strange triumvirate, creating what was almost like cryptocurrency for its time. They tried to establish a pattern of empowerment and entrepreneurship, which was extraordinary even though it was short-lived.

Do any of these James Brown trading stamps still exist?

The University of Virginia has some in its special collection, and I have a copy of the stamp. I bought it on eBay.

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

“X-Men: 97” Trailer Reveals Marvel’s New Mutant-Powered Animated Disney+ Series

What Does “The Fantastic Four” Retro Illustration Suggest About Marvel’s Big Announcement?

Marvel Reveals “The Fantastic Four” Cast Including Pedro Pascal & Vanessa Kirby

Featured image: “James Brown: Say it Loud.” Courtesy A&E Networks.

Christopher Nolan Wants to Make a Horror Movie

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You know who also wants Christopher Nolan to make a horror movie? More or less everyone.

Nolan revealed his desire to make a horror film at the British Film Institute on Thursday, which would give him another genre to master. Nolan has already put his stamp on superheroes (The Dark Knight trilogy), sci-fi (Inception, Interstellar, Tenet), and the biopic (his massively lauded Oppenheimer), and he seems well-equipped to put his distinctive spin on horror, too.

“I think horror films are very interesting because they depend on very cinematic devices,” he said during his conversation at BFI. “It’s really about [provoking] a visceral response to things. So, at some point, I’d love to make a horror film. But I think a really good horror film requires a really exceptional idea — and those are few and far between. So, I haven’t found the story that lends itself to that. But I think it’s a very interesting genre from a cinematic point of view. It’s also one of the few genres where — the studios make a lot of these films — and they’re films that have a lot of bleakness, a lot of abstraction. They have a lot of qualities that Hollywood is generally very resistant to putting into films, but that’s a genre where it’s allowable.”

Nolan went on to say that there’s certainly a case to be made that Oppenheimer functioned, in part, as a horror movie. But it was also multi-genre, something he took advantage of.

“Certainly Oppenheimer has elements of horror — which I definitely think is appropriate for the subject matter,” he said. “The middle of the film is very heavily based on the heist genre, and the third act of the film is the courtroom drama. And, the reason I settled on those two genres for those sections, is they are mainstream genres in which dialogue and people talking is inherently tense and interesting to an audience. That’s the fun thing with genre — you get to play with a lot of different areas, whereas in different type of film, you really wouldn’t be allowed to.”

There are plenty of auteurs who have put their personal stamp on the horror genre, perhaps nobody in recent years as emphatically as Jordan Peele, whose Get Out and Us were horror films that could have only been made by him. (Peele then created a delicious horror/sci-fi hybrid with Nope.) Nolan is another filmmaker with the ability to mold any genre and make it his own. There’s little doubt that a Nolan horror movie would be distinctly, definitively a film only he could have made. Here’s hoping we get to see it.

For more on Nolan’s last film, the Oscar-nominated (many times over) Oppenheimer, check out these stories:

Christopher Nolan on What Draws Him to Crafting Large-Scale Movies

“Oppenheimer” Has Reached Another Milestone for Christopher Nolan

“Oppenheimer” Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema on Making History With Christopher Nolan

“Oppenheimer” Production Designer Ruth De Jong on Helping Christopher Nolan Build the Bomb

Featured image: L to R: Cillian Murphy (as J. Robert Oppenheimer) and writer, director, and producer Christopher Nolan on the set of OPPENHEIMER.

“Dune: Part Two” Reactions: A Modern-Day Sci-Fi Masterpiece

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The first reactions for Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two are swelling across the internet from critics like so many sandworms across the country. The overall gist? Dune: Part Two delivers in a major way.

Villeneuve and his co-writer Jon Spaihts had boldly decided way back when they were working on the first film to break Frank Herbert’s colossal, iconic source material into two parts. That meant they left a lot of meat on the bone and many of Herbert’s most thrilling set pieces and action sequences for the second film. Now that critics have seen the film and are able to share their reactions online, it looks as if the tactic has paid off.

The second installment picks up where Villeneuve’s first film left off, with Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) and his mother, Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), relying on the desert-dwelling Fremen to help them survive the brutal dunelands of Arrakis and help them plot their revenge against their enemies, which include House Harkonnen and, possibly the leader of the entire galaxy, Emperor Saddam IV (Christopher Walken, a new addition).

After a long wait, Dune: Part Two is finally upon us, coming to theaters on March 1, with its stars, including Chalamet, Zendaya, and newcomers Florence Pugh and Austin Butler, finally able to promote the film. The cast also includes returning stars Javier Bardem as Stilgar, Josh Brolin as Gurney Halleck, Stellan Skarsgard as Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, Dave Bautista as Rabban Harkonnen, and Charlotte Rampling as Reverend Mother Mohiam. Newcomers joining Walken, Pugh, and Butler include Léa Seydoux as Lady Margot and Souheila Yacoub as Shishakli.

Let’s take a quick peek at what some critics say. Dune: Part Two arrives in theaters everywhere on March 1:

Featured image: Caption: (L-r) TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET as Paul Atreides and AUSTIN BUTLER as Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen in Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE: PART TWO,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Niko Tavernise

“X-Men: 97” Trailer Reveals Marvel’s New Mutant-Powered Animated Disney+ Series

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Marvel has dropped the official trailer for X-Men: 97, a revival of the beloved animated series from the mid-90s that spawned an entire generation of fans, both for the mutants and for those unbeatable costumes (Wolverine’s banana yellow suit is so iconic that Hugh Jackman dons it in the upcoming Deadpool & Wolverine).

Beau DeMayo (The Witcher) is the series’ head writer, and he picks up the story from the classic cartoon, which ran from 1992 to 1997, providing fans of the former show and new viewers alike a reason to tune in. X-Men: 97 will follow the former series’ finale, “Graduation Day,” in which (super belated spoiler alert!) Professor X dies. The trailer unveils the mutant A-team—the aforementioned Wolverine, Storm, Cyclops, Rogue, Beast, Gambit, Jubilee, Bishop, Morph, and more, all trying to carry on Professor X’s legacy.

Doing right by Professor X has been a central point of tension in the X-Men universe, from the animated series to the feature films. Members of the X-Men differ widely in their approach to protecting both their fellow mutants and humanity, a task that’s made all the more difficult by the latter’s often hostile, even violent response to mutant existence. Cyclops, for example, has always favored the noble,  straightforward approach. His foil and tormentor has long been Wolverine, the gruffiest, roughest of the X-Men. That dynamic looks like it will continue in X-Men: 97.

So, too, will the X-Men’s longstanding adversaries, including the ever-powerful Magento, the ying to Professor X’s yang. The cast includes Ray Chase as Cyclops, Jennifer Hale as Jean Grey, Alison Sealy-Smith as Storm, Cal Dodd as Wolverine, JP Karliak as Morph, Lenore Zann as Rogue, George Buza as Beast, AJ LoCascio as Gambit, Holly Chou as Jubilee, Isaac Robinson-Smith as Bishop, Matthew Waterson as Magneto and Adrian Hough as Nightcrawler.

Check out the trailer below. X-Men: 97 arrives on Disney+ on March 20:

“Deadpool & Wolverine” Makes History as Most Watched Trailer Ever

First “Deadpool & Wolverine” Images Tease the Start of a Beautiful Relationship

Marvel Reveals “The Fantastic Four” Cast Including Pedro Pascal & Vanessa Kirby

What Does “The Fantastic Four” Retro Illustration Suggest About Marvel’s Big Announcement?

Featured image: Marvel’s “X-Men ’97” is coming to Disney+. Courtesy Disney+.

What Does “The Fantastic Four” Retro Illustration Suggest About Marvel’s Big Announcement?

Posted on by babrams

Yesterday, Marvel made major headlines (and filled the hearts of many fans on Valentine’s Day) by revealing the cast of their upcoming, long-awaited reboot of The Fantastic Four.

As expected—but until yesterday unconfirmed—Pedro Pascal has indeed been cast as Reed Richards, aka Mr. Fantastic, and he’ll be joined by Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm/The Invisible Woman, Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm/The Human Torch, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Ben Grimm/the Thing. It’s major news, as the Fantastic Four are literally Marvel’s First Family, the very first superheroes created by the legends Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.

The reboot has been a long time coming. Marvel Studios finally got the rights to Fantastic Four in 2019 when Disney acquired 21st Century Fox, and they’ve been taking their time on how to reintroduce such legendary characters who, if all goes well, might finally make up for the loss of Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man, Chris Evan’s Captain America, and Scarlett Johannson’s Black Widow, all of whom said goodbye in various ways during Avengers: Endgame. Marvel will also make sure their new-look Four will differ in tone, substance, and style from the three films Fox produced—Fantastic Four (2005), Fantastic Four: The Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007), and a reboot, Fantastic Four (2015).

That style and tone might have been hinted at (let’s be honest, definitely was hinted at) in a new illustration Marvel revealed with the announcement—a snazzy illustration depicting the four stars, with Moss-Bachrach’s Ben Grimm fully in Thing mode. 

Here’s the art for The Fantastic Four that Marvel shared on Instagram:

It’s a great illustration, yet it also offers some potential clues as to how Marvel and director Matt Shakman are approaching re-introducing one of the most iconic super-teams in the canon. In the comics, the Fantastic Four’s abilities stemmed from exposure to cosmic rays while on a mission in their role as astronauts. This exposure is what gave the foursome their awesome abilities, from Reed Richard’s super elasticity to Sue Storm’s invisibility. The script for the new film comes from Josh Friedman, Jeff Kaplan, and Ian Springer.

The illustration offers a few clues. The most obvious is the overall aesthetic, with the retro title, the mid-century modern costumes and furniture. More interestingly, look at the magazine Ben Grimm is reading—it’s an issue of Life from December 1963. That makes it a fairly safe assumption that The Fantastic Four will be a period piece set in the 60s, which is something Shakman proved so capable of capturing with his stellar period work in WandaVision.

If The Fantastic Four is indeed set in the 1960s, that means it’ll exist apart from what’s going on right now in the major MCU timelines, possibly in a parallel world, considering we haven’t heard about them in any of the MCU films (you think someone like Nick Fury would have mentioned them by now). This will offer Marvel and Shakman something of a blank canvas, manna from heaven for filmmakers and performers looking to make the film their own. Sure, Marvel will connect The Fantastic Four to the broader MCU, with 2027’s Avengers: Secret Wars as the most likely convergence point for the Fantastic Four to merge with the rest of the franchise if they follow the storyline from the “Secret Wars” comics run from 2015. Yet, for now, setting the film in the 1960s and giving the characters the literal time and space to do their own thing sounds like a great plan for Marvel.

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

First “Deadpool & Wolverine” Trailer Reveals the MCU’s Version of a Super Bowl Showdown, Complete With Claws

Mark Ruffalo Not Returning as Hulk in “Captain America: Brave New World”

“Deadpool & Wolverine” Makes History as Most Watched Trailer Ever

First “Deadpool & Wolverine” Images Tease the Start of a Beautiful Relationship

Featured image: Logo art for The Fantastic Four.

New “Joker: Folie à Deux” Images Tease a Twisted Romance And a Famous Dance

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Yesterday was Valentine’s Day, which means Joker: Folie à Deux co-writer/director Todd Phillips was duty bound to share a few new photos of the most twisted romantic partners in the game.

Phillips took to Instagram to share three new photos of DC’s most murderous lovebirds, Joker (Joaquin Phoenix) and his main squeeze, Harley Quinn (Lady Gaga). The photos include the moody, featured image, a shot from what appears to be Arkham Asylum (or prison), and a third shot of the two all dressed up and dancing on a rooftop, an homage to a famous image created by artist Alex Ross, “Tango With Evil.” They offer a little guidance, but not much, as to what Phillips, Phoenix, Gaga, and the Joker crew are cooking up in their upcoming sequel.

What we do know is Folie à Deux 2019’s Joker, the first live-action theatrical film within the Batman umbrella to receive an R-rating, and had its premiere at the Venice Film Festival, where it took home the top prize, the Golden Lion. From there, it conquered the box office and became a lightning rod of conversation within the film world and the broader culture. Joker was a film you couldn’t ignore, and Phoenix’s performance was unlike anything we’d seen in a superhero movie, or in this case, a supervillain movie. He went on to win an Oscar for Best Actor. So those are fairly big clown shoes to fill. 

The last time we left Arthur at the end of Joker, he’d just gone on a killing spree in Gotham and, in the process, became a folk hero to the downtrodden, poverty-stricken denizens of the crime-ridden, perpetually gloomy metropolis. Having taken on the alter ego of the Joker, Arthur capped off his rampage with an appearance on Murray Franklin’s (Robert De Niro) TV show and shot the man dead on live TV. Gotham responded with an orgy of violence, which included the murders of two of its most prominent citizens, Thomas (Brett Cullen) and Martha Wayne (Carrie Louise Putrello)—they left behind a young son, wouldn’t you know. The film ends with Arthur locked up in a mental asylum, and there’s an insinuation there that he kills the psychiatrist working with him—it’s not shown, but he has bloody footprints as he leaves a session with her, and we see him being chased shortly thereafter.

How Phillips and his co-writer Scott Silver advance the story from here is anybody’s guess, but we know that Folie à Deux will make the most out of Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn. We also know that the title Folie à Deux refers to a medical term for two or more people suffering from the same or similar mental disorder; presumably, this would be Arthur and Harley. We also know the film has been teased as a musical and includes the return of Zazie Beetz as Sophie Dumond and the arrival of powerhouse performers like Brendan Gleeson and Catherine Keener. The rest is pure speculation, with the script locked up in Arkham Asylum for the foreseeable future.

Joker: Folie à Deux hits theaters on October 4, 2024.

Check out Phillips’ Instagram images here:

For more on Joker: Folie a Deux, check out these stories:

New “Joker: Folie à Deux” Image Finds Joaquin Phoenix Soaked But Serene

First Look at Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn in “Joker: Folie à Deux” Revealed

“Joker 2” Director Todd Phillips Shares Photos of Lady Gaga & Joaquin Phoenix as Sequel Wraps shared madness.

First “Joker 2” Image Reveals Return of Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck

Featured image: Lady Gaga is Harley Quinn and Joaquin Phoenix is the Joker in “Joker: Folie á Deux.” Courtesy Todd Phillips/Warner Bros.

“Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” Drops a Titan-Sized New Trailer

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A brand new trailer for Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire has stomped into view, fleshing out more of the story in director Adam Wingard’s follow-up to Godzilla vs. Kong. 

The new look gives us some background on the balance that existed between the greatest of apes in Kong, the king of the Titans in Godzilla, and the rest of the world. Godzilla was a protector of nature; Kong was a protector of humanity—but now that balance is about to be obliterated. Kong, Godzilla, and the young girl Jia (Kaylee Hottle) can sense something is coming. “Something even they’re afraid of,” Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall) explains.

The new threat is so great, in fact, that once again, as they ultimately did in Godzilla vs. Kong to take down Mecha-Godzilla, these two legendary beasts will have to team up to take on the new threat. The new trailer reveals a Kong-like colossal ape who doesn’t appear to have any of Kong’s empathy, as well as a creature that’s even more of a challenge than Mecha-Godzilla was.

So where has this challenger been all this time? It turns out, the problems have been hidden beneath the surface of our world and are connected to the origins of both Godzilla and Kong. Brian Tyree Henry joins returning Godzilla vs. Kong stars Rebecca Hall and Kaylee Hottle. Newcomers include Dan Stevens, Alex Ferns, and Fala Chen. Wingard directs from a script by Godzilla vs. Kong scribe Terry Rossio, Simon Barrett (You’re Next), and Jeremy Slater (Moon Knight), and works once again wth Godzilla vs. Kong alums cinematographer Ben Seresin, production designer Tom Hammock, editor Josh Schaeffer, and composers Tom Holkenborg and Antonio Di Iorio.

Check out the new trailer here. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire arrives on March 29.

For more on Warner Bros., Max, and more, check out these stories:

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Kate Winslet Reigns Supreme in First “The Regime” Trailer

Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan’s Mysterious Movie Headed to Warner Bros.

Timothée Chalamet and Austin Butler Tease Ferocious “Dune: Part Two” Fight

Featured image: Caption: (L to r) GODZILLA and KONG in Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “GODZILLA x KONG: THE NEW EMPIRE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

Marvel Reveals “The Fantastic Four” Cast Including Pedro Pascal & Vanessa Kirby

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Marvel Studios has found its Fantastic Four. 

Pedro Pascal has indeed been cast as Reed Richards, aka Mr. Fantastic, and he’s joined by Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm/The Invisible Woman, Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm/The Human Torch, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Ben Grimm/the Thing.

The news arrives along with new release dates for upcoming Marvel Studios films. It looks like 2025 is going to be a big year for the MCU, with Captain America: Brave New World slated for a February release, the antihero team-up film Thunderbolts now set for a May 2 premiere, followed by The Fantastic Four on July 25 and then the new Blade in November. For 2024, the only MCU film set to release is Deadpool & Wolverine, which just broke records months before it’s July 26 premiere.

WandaVision director Matt Shakman is directing The Fantastic Four, but how Marvel is going to approach re-introducing one of the most iconic super-teams in the canon, the very first superheroes created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, is unknown. In the comics, the Fantastic Four were astronauts-turned-superheroes after they were exposed to cosmic rays, giving them wild abilities like Reed Richard’s super elasticity and Sue Storm’s invisibility. The script for the new film comes from Josh Friedman, Jeff Kaplan, and Ian Springer.

Marvel Studios finally got the rights to Fantastic Four in 2019 when Disney acquired 21st Century Fox. Fox produced three films based on Marvel’s first family—Fantastic Four (2005), Fantastic Four: The Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007), and a reboot, Fantastic Four (2015). In that 2005 film, a future MCU star, Chris Evans, played Johnny Storm. In the 2015 reboot, another MCU star, Michael B. Jordan, played the same role.

There was a nod to Reed Richards in a recent MCU film, however—in 2022’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, John Krasinski appears as an alternate-universe version of the character.  However, this poor version of Reed was annihilated by the Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), whose powers of destruction are a touch greater than his bendy abilities.

Pascal’s star has been rising for some time, especially after HBO’s stellar zombie series The Last of Us. Kirby starred in The Crown as Princess Margaret, earned an Oscar nomination for her astonishing performance in Pieces of a Woman, and has been in the past few Mission: Impossible films. Quinn broke out in season 4 of Stranger Things as the beloved Eddie Munson, while Moss-Bachrach is coming off an Emmy win for his turn as Richie Jerimovich in FX’s The Bear.

For more on all things Marvel, check out these stories:

Mark Ruffalo Not Returning as Hulk in “Captain America: Brave New World”

“Deadpool & Wolverine” Makes History as Most Watched Trailer Ever

First “Deadpool & Wolverine” Images Tease the Start of a Beautiful Relationship

First “Deadpool & Wolverine” Trailer Reveals the MCU’s Version of a Super Bowl Showdown, Complete With Claws

Featured image: L-r: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – JANUARY 19: Pedro Pascal attends the 26th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards at The Shrine Auditorium on January 19, 2020 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Rich Fury/Getty Images). LONDON, ENGLAND – NOVEMBER 16: (EDITORS NOTE: This image has been converted to black and white.) Vanessa Kirby attends the “Napoleon” UK Premiere at Odeon Luxe Leicester Square on November 16, 2023 in London, England. (Photo by Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images)

First “Deadpool & Wolverine” Images Tease the Start of a Beautiful Relationship

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The first cache of images from director Shawn Levy’s Deadpool & Wolverine are here, giving us just a bit more information about the long-awaited third film in the raunchy trilogy. The third film comes with some major changes, of course, beginning with the fact that it’s the first movie in the franchise to fall under the Marvel Studios banner. The second, an even larger addition, is that it arrives boasting a certain Canadian mutant with adamantium claws named Wolverine, played by an up-and-coming Australian named Hugh Jackman. The long lead-up to the release has given us plenty of time to speculate just what kind of relationship these two star-crossed superheroes will have, and while we suspect a team-up, the trailer didn’t give any bromance vibes just yet.

The interest in the newly titled Deadpool & Wolverine is so intense that Marvel and Disney call the first trailer the most-watched in cinematic history. It’s not all that surprising given the immense interest in seeing Reynolds and Jackman team up after years of banter, ribbing, and hijinx on social media. The new images tease a bit of what we learned in the trailer, which wasn’t all that much, really. We saw Reynolds’ Wade Wilson celebrate his birthday with his besties, including his girlfriend, Vanessa (Morena Baccarin), whom Wade was able to reconnect with in Deadpool 2, despite her death, thanks to some time-traveling with his new buddy Cable (Josh Brolin). Wade makes a wish, blows out the candles on his birthday cake, and voila—the hopes and dreams of a huge legion of MCU fans is swiftly brought to pass when Wade’s hauled before the Time Variance Authority and ends up, through their remit, brought face-to-claws with Wolverine.

The new images include two shots from Wade’s birthday party, where he celebrates with Vanessa, pal Blind Al (Leslie Uggams), and Dopinder (Karan Soni). There’s that shot we mentioned from the trailer, where a prone Deadpool looks up at his new bestie, Wolverine, and another of Deadpool in a snowy environment, looking a little out of place. While the trailer broke records, they’re still keeping the specifics of Deadpool & Wolverine under wraps, including how Emma Corrin’s Cassandra Nova factors in, as well as the return of Jennifer Garner as Elektra.

But we’ll take what we can get, and this is more than we’ve gotten from Reynolds and Jackman since their banter began all those years ago.

Check out the new images below. Deadpool & Wolverine slashes its way into theaters on July 26:

Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool/Wade Wilson in Marvel Studios’ DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. © 2024 20th Century Studios / © and ™ 2024 MARVEL.
Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool/Wade Wilson in Marvel Studios’ DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. © 2024 20th Century Studios / © and ™ 2024 MARVEL.
(L-R): Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool/Wade Wilson, Leslie Uggams as Blind Al, and Randall Reeder as Buck in Marvel Studios’ DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. © 2024 20th Century Studios / © and ™ 2024 MARVEL.
(L-R): Morena Baccarin as Vanessa and Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool/Wade Wilson in Marvel Studios’ DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. © 2024 20th Century Studios / © and ™ 2024 MARVEL.
Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool/Wade Wilson in Marvel Studios’ DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. © 2024 20th Century Studios / © and ™ 2024 MARVEL.
Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool/Wade Wilson in Marvel Studios’ DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. © 2024 20th Century Studios / © and ™ 2024 MARVEL.

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

“Deadpool & Wolverine” Makes History as Most Watched Trailer Ever

Mark Ruffalo Not Returning as Hulk in “Captain America: Brave New World”

First “Deadpool & Wolverine” Trailer Reveals the MCU’s Version of a Super Bowl Showdown, Complete With Claws

Featured image: L-r: Ryan Reynolds is Wade Wilson/Deadpool and Hugh Jackman is Logan/Wolverine in “Deadpool 3.” Courtesy Ryan Reynolds/Marvel Studios

“Deadpool & Wolverine” Makes History as Most Watched Trailer Ever

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The Merc with the Mouth and the Mutant with the Claws sure are a popular pair.

In news that’s not all that surprising given the excitement surrounding their long-awaited pairing, the first trailer for the newly titled Deadpool & Wolverine, featuring Ryan Reynolds’ titular potty-mouthed superhero and the return of Hugh Jackman to the role that made him a global superstar, has made history. Marvel Studios dropped the trailer for their latest during the Super Bowl, and it racked up an astonishing 365 million views in the first 24 hours. According to both Marvel and Disney, this makes Deadpool & Wolverine the most-watched trailer in movie history.

It didn’t hurt that the first glimpse at what Reynolds, Jackman, and director Shawn Levy have been cooking came in the middle of the most-watched Super Bowl game ever, which drew 123 million viewers. The trailer gave us our first hint at what Deadpool & Wolverine is all about, with the black-and-red suited superhero being hauled before the Time Variance Authority (introduced during Marvel’s Loki on Disney+), where he’s asked if he wants to finally become a proper hero. Yet his training eventually leads him into a confrontation with the mighty mutant, Wolverine, with the trailer ending on the be-clawed Canadian’s silhouette standing over a prone Deadpool.

Deadpool & Wolverine is the first film in the Deadpool franchise to be properly bannered beneath the Marvel Cinematic Universe (the previous films were produced by 20th Century Fox), and will be the first R-rated film in MCU history. Marvel boss Kevin Feige has promised that Deadpool & Wolverine will feature all the raunch, hijinx, and impropriety that has made Reynolds’ and the Deadpool films such a hit. By the reaction to the first trailer, that looks like a very wise move.

Here’s that trailer again for your viewing pleasure. Deadpool & Wolverine arrives on July 26:

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

Mark Ruffalo Not Returning as Hulk in “Captain America: Brave New World”

First “Deadpool & Wolverine” Trailer Reveals the MCU’s Version of a Super Bowl Showdown, Complete With Claws

Marvel Studios’ “Thunderbolts” Eyeing “Top Gun: Maverick” Star Lewis Pullman for Big Role

“Deadpool 3” Wraps Filming

Featured image: Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool/Wade Wilson in Marvel Studios’ DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. © 2024 20th Century Studios / © and ™ 2024 MARVEL.

Mark Ruffalo Not Returning as Hulk in “Captain America: Brave New World”

Posted on by babrams

For a brief moment in time, the Hulk was returning to the MCU.

A bit of confusion during a Q&A with Mark Ruffalo and moderator Anne Thompson at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival on Sunday set the Marvel-watching world afire when it seemed like Ruffalo was confirming his return as Bruce Banner in the upcoming Captain America: Brave New World. Thompson had asked Ruffalo if he was appearing in director Julius Onah’s upcoming feature, starring Anthony Mackie as the newly minted Cap. Variety reported that Ruffalo had nodded and said, “Yeah,” and replied to Thompson’s follow-up about whether he was allowed to discuss it with, “Yeah, it’s going to be great!”

And for a while there, the MCU fans on the internet were enthused.

But Variety has subsequently learned that Ruffalo will not be in Brave New World. He thought he was agreeing with Thompson that the film is one of Marvel’s upcoming tentpoles. Dream deferred. This news seemed so right for MCU watchers because Harrison Ford, who has stepped into the late William Hurt’s role, playing President Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross, might also be turning into Thunderbolt’s alter ego, Red Hulk. (Ford has denied that this is happening in the most Ford way possible, by saying “What is Red Hulk” when asked about it.)

Ruffalo has built a robust legend for his MCU-related gaffes, including accidentally giving away the ending of Avengers: Infinity War on Good Morning America, one of the all-time great accidental spoilers. Then he did it again for Avengers: Endgame. (Granted, his Endgame spoiler wasn’t quite as definitive as his Infinity War moment.)

Ruffalo is as beloved as an actor can be, yet he’s never had a chance to play the brilliant, conflicted Bruce Banner in a standalone movie. Maybe now that the reaction was so strong to the news he was going to be in Brave New World, Kevin Feige will open the door to a standalone Hulk movie. If not, the Hulk can always just smash through it.

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

First “Deadpool & Wolverine” Trailer Reveals the MCU’s Version of a Super Bowl Showdown, Complete With Claws

Marvel Studios’ “Thunderbolts” Eyeing “Top Gun: Maverick” Star Lewis Pullman for Big Role

“Deadpool 3” Wraps Filming

Marvel Studios Restarts Production of “Daredevil: Born Again”

Featured image: (L-R): Mark Ruffalo as Smart Hulk / Bruce Banner and Tatiana Maslany as Jennifer “Jen” Walters/She-Hulk in Marvel Studios’ She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. © 2022 MARVEL.

The Oscar-Nominated Hair & Makeup Team on Turning Helen Mirren Into “Golda”

Posted on by babrams

In 2023, Oscar-winning director Guy Nattiv helmed Golda, a biographical drama about Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir set during the 19 days of the Yom Kippur War in 1973.  As usual, Dame Helen Mirren is masterful in the title role. One key to the believability of her portrayal was visually melding Mirren and Meir together through costume, makeup, and hair. 

The Academy has recognized all the attention to detail and artistry used to achieve Golda’s finished look with an Oscar nomination for best achievement in makeup and hair styling. That honor goes to hair and makeup supervisor Karen Hartley Thomas, prosthetics designer and founder of Red Girl makeup effects studio Suzi Battersby, and prosthetic makeup artist Ashra Kelly-Blue.

The Credits spoke to the newly minted Oscar nominees about how they collaborated with Nattiv and Mirren to bring such an important historical figure to life.  

 

Karen, can you start by talking about the most important aspects of research that aided you in building Helen’s look in terms of photographs and reference materials? 

Karen: When I got the job, I immediately went fully into it. We had amazing research available to us from production. I worked very closely with Sinéad Kidao, the film’s costume designer, and we also were incredibly lucky to have access to Golda’s grandson, Gideon Meir, and he gave us very insightful information about Golda, like the fact that she had a manicure every week with clear nail varnish, but she was a heavy smoker, and so had nicotine fingers. He talked about the texture of her hair and that she would wash it and leave it to dry into a massive corkscrew curl. We were incredibly lucky to have all that information, and Guy had lots and lots of pictures to show us, so there was a wealth of information right from the beginning. 

L-r: Camille Cottin and Helen Mirren in Bleecker Street/ShivHans Pictures’ GOLDA Credit: Sean Gleason, Courtesy of Bleecker Street/ShivHans Pictures

How did you proceed?

Karen: We didn’t have a massive amount of time, and I had worked with Helen before, so I spoke to her and Sinéad on Zoom. Helen wasn’t so keen on having prosthetics. She thought maybe we should have just a wig or a combination of wig and eyebrows. I said to Helen, “Let’s just get everything.” So we had contact lenses, prosthetics, a wig, eyebrows, teeth, although we didn’t use the teeth, and we got together and tried it all. We really always wanted to show the essence of Golda rather than put Golda’s face onto Helen. You’ve got two massively iconic women there, so there’s a balance to be achieved. Suzi started on the prosthetics, we started on the wig, everything was made, and then it came together a week before shooting, and we did a test. It was really a matter of putting it all on, seeing what worked, and taking off what we didn’t like. 

Helen Mirren in Bleecker Street/ShivHans Pictures’ GOLDA Credit: Sean Gleason, Courtesy of Bleecker Street/ShivHans Pictures

With so little wiggle room, time-wise, it was a good thing it worked!

Karen: Yes! We didn’t have the luxury of two or three tests to make many changes, although we did change the wig a little bit, and Suzi adapted the prosthetic sculpt. It was really putting it together, having a look, and seeing what Helen thought, and she loved it. We all wanted to achieve the same thing, obviously.  Everyone, including Suzi and Alex Rouse, Helen’s wig maker, complemented each other in terms of collaboration, and I think the timescale probably helped us because you make decisions quickly. When you do have to focus on it so sharply, the best work comes out of it.

Suzi, in terms of the prosthetics, what were some of the keys to Golda’s look, and what were some of the technical elements used to create them?

Suzi: Our job is problem-solving. Ultimately, across all filmmaking, you’re given a brief; the job is to figure out how to make it happen. It was partly about designing a prosthetic look that we knew our actor would go for because Helen hasn’t had extensive experience with prosthetic makeup like that before, so we had to do something that wouldn’t overwhelm her face, create that essence, and bring these two women together. Helen was cast initially because Golda’s family saw her in Helen, just as she is. That inner energy that Helen Mirren has, we didn’t want to cover all that up with prosthetics. It was definitely about finding a balance in designing and sculpting it. 

Helen Mirren in Bleecker Street/ShivHans Pictures’ GOLDA Credit: Sean Gleason, Courtesy of Bleecker Street/ShivHans Pictures

How was that achieved?

Suzi: We deliberately made pieces that didn’t cover her whole face. We had six pieces. We had two eye bags, a nose piece, two jowls, and the front half of the neck. By doing that, it meant that we had enough of Helen’s actual face on show, which is really important for the sake of expression, and to make sure we don’t lose our actor. It meant a huge challenge for me, Ashra, and the rest of my team, in terms of how we made the pieces, because we had to create pieces that were going to be very exposed. We had a lot of exposed edges, so our plastic had to be incredibly thin. We also had pieces that were exceptionally soft. 

 

How are pieces that soft created? 

Suzi: There’s a product called deadener that you can add to silicone, and we were really pushing the limits of the deadener that we were using to 300%, which is very, very high, but it did mean that it moved beautifully. You want mature skin to move like that, especially necks. You want to have that beautiful movement that makes you think of your grandma. To get that look, I wanted to push our workshop team to try and see what we could achieve, and they managed it brilliantly at that level. 

Ashra, can you talk a bit about some problem-solving to get to that look? 

Ashra: With the pieces being run at 300%, with LV (low viscosity), it just meant the pieces were going to be so much more malleable than normal, which is why, on camera, it looks just like real skin. In the workshop, touching it felt like old skin, which is why it moves so well. When it came to application, working on mature skin such as Helen’s, we just had to be really careful and super delicate because the plastic was so thin and soft. We just had to take our time, making sure we didn’t tug or pull any bit of her otherwise that would read on camera. We were meticulous when putting the neck on, going as softly as we possibly could with our fingers, making sure not to move anything or disrupt her skin. It was something we had to be mindful of every single application, and we applied that makeup for six weeks, so 30 applications. In total, we made over 200 pieces.  

L-r: Rotem Keinan and Helen Mirren in Bleecker Street/ShivHans Pictures’ GOLDA Credit: Sean Gleason, Courtesy of Bleecker Street/ShivHans Pictures

Getting Golda’s hair exactly right is one of the keys to capturing her. Karen, how did you get to what we see onscreen?

Karen: As you say, she had very particular hair. It had to be right. Beyond her grandson’s help, which was essential, we studied hours and hours of footage to decide on colors and texture. We had real hair and mohair around the hairline. When I found out we had such a short time scale, I called Alex Rouse, Helen’s wig maker, who always makes her wigs, and asked if she could do a wig in four weeks. She said no, and I said, “I have three little words. Dame Helen Mirren.” And she said, “I’ll have to do it, won’t I?” because she loves Helen. And so it was just one of the elements that brought Golda and Helen together, with the prosthetics, the eyebrows, the brown contact lenses, and the wig, it really was all the components coming together perfectly through great collaborations. Helen was very happy with it. 

 

Golda is streaming and available on demand now. 

 

 

 

 Featured image: Helen Mirren in Bleecker Street/ShivHans Pictures’ GOLDA Credit: Sean Gleason, Courtesy of Bleecker Street/ShivHans Pictures

“The Last Repair Shop” Co-Composer & Co-Director Kris Bowers on his Perfectly Tuned Oscar-Nominated Doc

Posted on by babrams

Composer Kris Bowers has emerged as one of Hollywood’s most versatile film scorers with a stunning list of credits, including Ava DuVernay’s Origin, The Color Purple, and the upcoming Bob Marley: One Love. But Bowers is also the Oscar-nominated co-director of this year’s documentary short The Last Repair Shop, which spotlighted a story right in Bowers’s backyard.

The Los Angeles native graduated from the Los Angeles Unified School District (LA) prior to earning degrees from the Juilliard School. The Last Repair Shop, now streaming on Disney+ and Hulu, profiles four dedicated craftspeople in a downtown Los Angeles warehouse that, since 1959, has kept more than 80,000 instruments — tubas, violins, pianos, guitars, flutes — in working condition for the students of the LAUSD. Los Angeles is the largest US city providing free instrument repairs to public schoolchildren and one of the last remaining cities to offer this service.

“I didn’t know about it at all. It’s amazing to get to know these people and point a spotlight on them and what they do,” says Bowers. Profiled in the film are Steve Bagmanyan and his three musical instrument technician colleagues, Paty Moreno (brass), Duane Michaels (woodwinds), and Dana Atkinson (strings), along with several current LAUSD students whose lives have been enhanced and transformed by playing their instruments. It was Bagmanyan who tuned the LAUSD pianos that were so pivotal to Bowers’s own musical development.

“He was assigned to my elementary and middle schools, so it was amazing to be able to say thank you to him,” Bowers says.

Bowers re-teamed with Ben Proudfoot, the Oscar-winning director of the 2021 documentary The Queen of Basketball. Bowers and Proudfoot co-directed A Concerto is a Conversation in 2020, which was nominated for a Best Short Documentary Oscar. They became good friends and developed a “natural partnership,” says Bowers, that is reflected in the film’s interviewers with the four craftspeople at the shop who share their personal journeys of struggle and healing. It was Bowers’s idea to include interviews with several young LAUSD music students.

“When I watched [early] footage, I knew the kids needed to be represented,” he says. “It surprised me that these individuals who do this work with so much passion and with the kids in mind never get to hear from the kids about how much it means to them. It’s the other side of the conversation and also because I was one of those kids. I wanted to encourage them to contemplate how these instruments are repaired and taken care of.  For me, it was surprising and heartwarming how much they are able to articulate what their instrument means to them.”

The personal testimony shared by Bagmanyan, Moreno, Michaels and Atkinson shaped the film’s theme of repair and restoration.

“It’s always nice when what the person’s doing becomes an externalization of what’s happening with them internally,” says Bowers. “Repair is such a beautiful metaphor for those experiences.”

That metaphor is particularly moving as the film documents the careful cleaning and fixing of the many instruments, a precise process requiring experience and knowledge. Such care seems a quaint throwback in our disposable culture.  “Musical instruments actually sound better the older they get, if they’ve been played and worn in. If they’re taken care of and repaired in the right way, it ends up a richer sounding instrument,” Bowers says.

The film’s powerful finale, a performance of a Bowers composition by LAUSD students and alumni ranging in age from 7 to 70 and joined by the four craftspeople who’ve been maintaining their instruments, was a “mad dash” to complete, Bowers says.

“We submitted the film to Telluride without that ending; it was just a credit roll. We had a short window between the time [of acceptance] to when the festival was happening to do add it so we reached out to every contact we could. Peter Rotter, who is one of our executive producers, went to LAUSD and he said he could get for us LSUSD musicians working in LA who’ve been touched by this repair shop that’s been around for 65 years. Ben and I worked over several days where I wrote the score, then made adjustments as we visualized shooting it. We had three hours to record the music with everyone seeing [the score] for the first time which shows you what amazing musicians there are in this city.”

Bowers described the day long shoot of the performance as akin to a “family reunion.”

“Seeing all these people come into this space — an older musician who played on ‘Jaws’ talking to a younger one because they went to same school decades apart — that type of energy was really beautiful to be around. All the musicians said they didn’t want to be paid; they just wanted to give back to the repair shop and say thank you. There was such an outpouring of love in so many ways that day.”

 

Bowers sees music composition and filmmaking as twin parts of his creativity. “Everything is storytelling for me; everything I do is driven by emotion and story, so filmmaking is an extension of that,” he says. “My second language is music. Sometimes, I’m more fluent in music than verbally and I think my wife would agree with that. I love documentaries; I love animation. When I was a kid, I wanted to be an animator even more than a musician for a while, so I’d love to play with animation at some point.”

The March 10 Oscar ceremony will be Bowers’ third time at the event. He was part of the team for 2018 Best Picture winner Green Book even though his score wasn’t nominated, then came his successive nominations for the two short documentaries. This year is particularly exciting, Bowers says because he will be sharing the night with longtime friends who are also Oscar-nominated. “Danielle Brooks and Jon Batiste I’ve known since college. I can go to the Super Bowl of our industry and not only be there myself but also see the familiar faces of people I know who have put in the time and work. To know what’s transpired between then and now is an added bonus.”

Featured image: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – DECEMBER 09: Kris Bowers performs during an event for the music from “The Color Purple”and Ava DuVernay’s “Origin” Panel at GRAMMY Museum L.A. Live on December 09, 2023 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Unique Nicole/Getty Images for The Recording Academy)

 

“Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” Big Game Trailer Finds Rivals Vying for Supremacy

Posted on by babrams

The Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers weren’t the only formidable foes battling it out last night. During the Super Bowl, 20th Century Studios revealed the official trailer for Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, which is set hundreds of years after the events in Matt Reeves’ 2017 War for the Planet of the Apes. The apes reign supreme in this latest franchise installment, with humanity reduced to a feral existence on the margins.

Another thing the trailer reinforces is that in Kingdom, the apes talk. Sure, the apes also spoke in War for the Planet of the Apes, but in director Wes Ball’s new film, they’re fluent and speak with a clarity that surpasses the humans they’ve displaced at the top of the food chain.

The new, heroic ape to root for in Kingdom is Cornelius (Owen Teague), a young ape whose quest will force him to look afresh at the ape kingdom he lives in. Cornelius’s journey will mirror, in a way, the hero of the previous trilogy, the chimpanzee Caesar (Andy Serkis), who strived to create a peaceful balance between the rising ape world and the humans. In Kingdom, the apes have built a complex society, with the cities of man now overgrown (and perhaps more beautiful because of it), and human beings have barely survived on the margins. A ferocious new leader is building a formidable empire in which compassion and kindness towards humans are signs of weakness to be crushed.

There’s a young human plays a crucial part in Ball’s new film—The Witcher‘s Freya Allan. The film’s cast also boasts William H.  Macy, Dichen Lachman, Kevin Durand, Peter Macon, Sara Wiseman, and Neil Sandilands in the cast. Director Wes Ball made his name with The Maze Runner series, and he’ll bring his abilities with action set pieces and emotional stakes to bear on the new film.

Check out the trailer here. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes arrives in theaters on May 24, 2024:

 

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

First “Deadpool & Wolverine” Trailer Reveals the MCU’s Version of a Super Bowl Showdown, Complete With Claws

“Moana 2” Gets a Surprise 2024 Release Date & a First-Look Teaser

The Fittingly Frankenstein Creations of “Poor Things” Poster Designer Vasilis Marmatakis

Marvel Studios’ “Thunderbolts” Eyeing “Top Gun: Maverick” Star Lewis Pullman for Big Role

Featured image: Proximus Caesar (played by Kevin Durand) in 20th Century Studios’ KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios. © 2023 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.