Tom Cruise is gearing up for a third mission as Pete “Maverick” Mitchell in Top Gun 3 for Paramount Pictures.
The news was first reported by Puck, which writes that Top Gun: Maverick co-writer Ehren Kruger is at work on a script for the third film in the franchise, with Maverick director Joe Kosinski returning to helm. Maverick stars Miles Teller and Glen Powell are also said to be returning.
This news comes only a few days after the news that Cruise had struck a deal with Warner Bros. Discovery to produce and star in movies for the studio, but the deal is non-exclusive, leaving Cruise the freedom to take to the skies with Paramount. Top Gun 3 has actually been quietly in development since late fall, which makes sense considering the colossal success of Maverick.
Maverick was one of the biggest stories in movies in 2022, sparking a post-pandemic return to the theaters for moviegoers, who went in droves to see Cruise return to the role that made him a global superstar in Tony Scott’s 1986 Top Gun. Maverick went on to earn a staggering $1.5 billion globally at a time when the industry was looking for just such a rousing win.
Top Gun 3 won’t be arriving soon, however, due to Cruise’s busy current schedule. He’s working on Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part Two right now, which will keep him busy until its May 2025 release. And given the time and care that Cruise, Kosinski, and the rest of the Maverick team took in bringing the franchise back, they will almost certainly be as meticulous for the third installment.
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HBO’s glorious tragicomedy Succession went on for four riveting seasons and finished at a creative zenith. The acerbic squabbling and venomous backstabbing amongst the narcissistic Roy family — led by savage patriarch and leader of the media giant, Waystar Royco, Logan Roy (Brian Cox) — culminated with the end game promised in the series title playing out in a most unexpected way. In the final season of creator/showrunner Jesse Armstrong’s powerhouse family drama, a potential merger with Norwegian tech giant GoJo is complicated by the merciless power struggle amongst Logan’s children: the forever-denied heir apparent, Kendall (Jeremy Strong), vulnerable and sadistic younger brother, Roman (Kieran Culkin), and their conniving, complicated sister Shiv (Sarah Snook).
Just like the rest of us, editor Ken Eluto – Emmy winner for NBC’s now iconic 30 Rock – was floored when a major character was eliminated early on in the final season. “The biggest surprise was seeing Logan killed off so early in the season. I didn’t know it was happening so early until I got the script for that episode,” he says of the shocking twist in the chaotic, heartbreaking third episode. That was before anyone knew that season 4 would be the last. “I was thinking, how are we going to do another season without Logan because he’s such a strong character? I was amazed that people were able to keep it a secret for so long before it aired. They were writing different names [code name: “Larry David”] into the script and having Brian Cox come on set to fake people out,” he continues. In an effort to keep the spoiler a secret, Cox showed up on location during the days when they were filming Logan’s funeral scenes at Manhattan’s Park Avenue landmark, the Church of St. Ignatius.
Once again, Succession leads this year’s Emmy nominations with a whopping 27 nods, including in the editing category for Eluto’s work (his third for the critically acclaimed series). The editor who has worked on the most episodes by far – editing 16 episodes across all four seasons – is very used to the visual palette and shooting style. “It’s shot very differently. Every episode is shot on 35mm film, which gives it a different look. It took two days to get the dailies,” he reveals of one of the few TV shows still shooting on film these days. “Adam McKay, who directed the pilot, shot on film, and everyone liked the look of it.”
Maintaining dramatic tension in a ferociously dialogue-heavy drama is harder than it looks, but thankfully, the show’s dynamic shooting style goes a long way in the edit bay. “They usually shoot on two cameras, all handheld and always moving, so it has a lot of vitality to it. You never know who or what the camera is going to land on, and it’s fine for a character to be off-camera at times,” Eluto says. In terms of establishing the tone of the show, “sometimes we would debate whether there should be more humor or less humor to a particular scene? But after the first season, we found the right balance,” he adds.
In the seventh episode entitled “Tailgate Party,” the growing animosity between Shiv and her estranged husband, obsequious social climber Tom (Matthew Macfadyen), erupts at a party in their penthouse when the couple has it out on the balcony. “There were six takes between the two of them, each lasting six to seven minutes. They shot it straight through with two cameras, but they couldn’t shoot opposite each other since the balcony was too small. So, they had a wide and a tight. Some takes were a little tighter than others. Their performances were just amazing – the fight has such a great build to it until they get angrier and angrier. Then, at the end, it has that sadness when the music comes in.”
Composer Nicholas Britell’s score (for which he won an Emmy) is crucial in sustaining momentum and tension. “I always put in some of Nick’s temp score while I’m working on the cut. The first season was more difficult because we obviously had less of his score to play with,” Eluto shares, referring to Britell’s score that has accompanied each of the 39 episodes throughout the series. “Sometimes Nick will give us a new cue for a section he is thinking about in advance, like the final scenes in the series finale or some of the scenes in Italy in Season 3. As we go through the director’s and/or producer’s cuts, the cues I use could change. Then, when the episode is almost locked, we have a music spotting session with Jesse and the music department to talk about the temp cues, which are eventually revised before we get final approval.”
The ever-changing loyalties among the three siblings can often feel vertiginous, with each one ready to sell out the others at any moment. But ever so rarely, there would also be moments of adorable, genuine kinship, as demonstrated in the “meal fit for a king” sequence in the series finale (which was two hours long before Eluto whittled it down to 88 minutes in the final cut). After prolonged negotiations, Shiv and Roman finally agree to support Kendall for CEO in order to stave off the sale to GoJo. To “anoint” their big brother’s ascendancy to the throne with a juvenile culinary experiment, they come up with a nasty concoction of a smoothie – throwing everything from whole eggs (with shell!), Shiv’s spit, and a ton of Tabasco sauce to frozen bread, cinnamon, milk, and pickles – into a blender.
“First, they were fighting, and then they’re in the kitchen and all kind of happy and having fun. That was actually the very last scene they shot for the whole series,” Eluto recalls of the emotional moment, adding that “It was very moving – the camera at the end panned over to Jesse and Mark [Mylod, director] hugging each other. It was pretty emotional.” With six takes of the sequence, each running anywhere from five to eleven minutes long, it was challenging to cut and match continuity. “It took me a couple of days to get through the first pass. With every take, their ad libs and what they were throwing into the blender were a little different. Continuity-wise, it was a real challenge to match up every take. Sometimes Jeremy would have his hat on, and sometimes he wouldn’t. But it was a great scene to show the dynamic between the kids.” The most intriguing question to viewers must surely be: did Strong actually drink that gnarly cocktail? “He drank whatever they were mixing! There was no camera cut at all.”
Perhaps the saddest takeaway from this family’s saga is that no one – not even the all-powerful Roys – can defeat fate. After four seasons of scheming, treachery, and heartbreak, a crestfallen Kendall is yet again defeated by his father’s Machiavellian machinations (Logan had crossed off Kendall’s name in an undated will naming him as the successor after dangling the prospect for years) and his sibling’s repeated betrayals (Shiv’s vote against Kendall ultimately cost him the throne). In the final scene, he is in the same place as when we first saw him in the pilot, desperate to finally sit at the helm of the Roy empire but never getting there.
In the final moments, we find him gazing aimlessly into the Hudson River, sitting on a bench in Battery Park. “I love the fact that he’s looking into the water, which reminds me of the Season One finale [when Kendall accidentally killed a waiter as his car crashed into a river] when he couldn’t rescue the waiter, which Shiv brings up now as a reason why he can’t be the CEO. So, it kind of reflects back to that for me.” Strong also tried another take of that ending, which took some people by surprise. “Jeremy always likes to try different things. He did a take where he tries to jump into the water, and Colin [the bodyguard] stops him. Jesse and I did consider that take, but we both thought the moment was better with him just sitting on the bench so that we’re all wondering what’s going to happen to him.”
Jeremy Strong in the “Succession” series finale. Photograph by Courtesy of HBO
You can stream all four seasons of Succession on Max.
Captain’s Log, Stardate January 11, 2024: It looks like Star Trek is coming back to the big screen.
Paramount has tapped Toby Haynes, director of half of Disney+’s crackling Star Wars series Andor, with writer Seth Grahame-Smith penning the script. What’s more, the new film will be set decades before the events of J.J. Abrams’ 2009 Star Trek and is being billed as an origin story. Abrams is on board as a producer through Bad Robot.
It’s not that we haven’t had Star Trek in our lives these past few years since Justin Lin’s 2016 film Star Trek Beyond—we’ve had Star Trek: Picard, Discovery, Strange New Worlds, and Lower Decks all streaming on Paramount+. What we’ve been missing, however, is a new feature film that either extends the story from Beyond or opens new vistas. That situation looks set to change.
As for the latest Star Trek films, they’ve starred Chris Pine as Captain Kirk, Zachary Quinto as Commander Spock, Karl Urban as Bones, Zoe Saldana as Lieutenant Uhura, Simon Pegg as Scotty, and John Cho as Sulu since 2009. The late Anton Yelchin starred as Chekov. Star Trek Beyond found our heroes battling with the dictator Krall (Idris Elba) after the USS Enterprise crash-landed on a dangerous planet. Paramount is still working on a fourth film to star this crew, with the script nearly complete.
L-f: Zachary Quinto is Spock and Chris-Pine is Kirk “Star Trek: Into Darkness.” Courtesy Paramount Pictures.
This new Trek would be Toby Haynes’ first feature film, yet it wouldn’t be his first time helming something decidedly Trek-ian—he directed one of Black Mirror‘s most beloved episodes, “USS Callister,” which was inspired by the legendary space franchise.
The first trailer for director Sam Taylor-Johnson’s (Nowhere Boy, 50 Shades of Grey) Amy Winehouse biopic Back to Black has arrived, giving us a look at rising star Marisa Abela’s (Industry) performance as the powerhouse, Grammy-winning British soul singer.
Back to Black is written by Nowhere Boy and Control screenwriter Matt Greenhalgh, and Taylor-Johnson’s film was given the crucial support of The Amy Winehouse Estate, Sony Music Publishing, and Universal Music Group. This means you’ll be hearing a bevy of Winehouse’s songs, including, of course, the title track. Winehouse’s life was cut short–she died on July 23, 2001, at the age of 27 of an accidental alcohol overdose—yet she’d already become a worldwide phenomenon, selling more than 30 million records across the globe.
“Painting a vivid, vibrant picture of the Camden streets she called home and capturing the struggles of global fame, Back to Black honors Amy’s artistry, wit, and honesty, as well as trying to understand her demons,” the film’s synopsis reads. “An unflinching look at the modern celebrity machine and a powerful tribute to a once-in-a-generation talent.”
Joining Abela in the cast are Jack O’Connell as Amy’s ex-husband, Blake Fielder-Civil, Eddie Marsan and Juliet Cowan as Amy’s parents, Mitch and Janis Winehouse, and Lesley Manville as Amy’s grandmother, Cynthia.
Check out the trailer below. Back to Black arrives in the U.S. on May 10.
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Featured image: Marisa Abela stars as Amy Winehouse in director Sam Taylor-Johnson’s BACK TO BLACK, a Focus Features release. Credit : Courtesy of Dean Rogers/Focus Features
Bradley Cooper’s Maestro follows the arc of Leonard Bernstein’s career, but his rise from a lucky break at Carnegie Hall to becoming a household name as a composer and conductor is secondary in the film to the development of his relationship with his actress wife, Felicia Montealegre. The couple had three children and split their time between the Upper West Side Manhattan, where they eventually settled in an apartment in the Dakota, and a country home in Fairfield, Connecticut. Throughout their marriage, Bernstein also maintained off-and-on relations with men, which the film portrays primarily in reference to how this affected his life with Felicia.
Given the significance of Lenny’s (as he’s mostly called throughout the film) personal life to the script, the couple’s home environments are among Maestro’s most significant locations. Cooper and his production designer, Kevin Thompson (Scenes From a Marriage, Birdman), were able to shoot in the Bernsteins’ Fairfield home, which is still owned by their children, and then built versions of the composer’s early Carnegie Hall studio and apartment, his first home with Felicia, and their apartment together in the Dakota. For Thompson, it was important for their domestic environments to be as authentic as possible “so that you could intimately feel the growth of the relationship,” he said. “We also wanted to lyrically move from period to period without stamping a date or saying, ‘we’re in a different decade.’”
Shooting Bernstein’s public life, meanwhile, was done on location and entailed bringing iconic venues like Carnegie Hall to period-correct glory. We had the chance to speak with Thompson about recreating Bernstein’s performance venues, building a seven-room Dakota-style apartment, and prepping for both black and white film stock and color.
How did you recreate the Bernsteins’ Dakota apartment?
When we got to the Dakota, it was a very heavy, emotional period of their life. The kids were grown and they were starting to have conflicts. Bradley and I went to the actual apartment, which is lived in by somebody else now. It’s been completely redecorated, but the architectural elements were all the same. Being a New Yorker and also a previous architect, it was very important for me to get this legendary feeling of this apartment and what was going on at the time they lived there, in terms of culture and the kinds of people they saw. Also, the detail of how they lived comfortably, but they had suddenly gotten more wealth, and they could afford this grander scale. We luckily got into the actual apartment, so Bradley and I could talk about the layout of the floor plan. We wanted to get it really close, but we also had to make it work for how we wanted to shoot the party scene, the Thanksgiving scene, and the big Snoopy fight in the bedroom. We wanted the authenticity of feeling like we were actually in the Bernstein apartment and on the Upper West Side for those people who would care or know about that. And Bradley was very specific about how he wanted to record sound. At the party, he wanted it to feel real. It was always many microphones and many people talking over one another.
We built 360 degrees around, and we also built that corridor where Felicia comes out and finds Lenny getting into the elevator with that young man. We actually painstakingly built this seven-room apartment with a full bedroom and hallways. The details of the moldings and the fireplaces and the windowsills and the heights of the windows were really specifically copied from the actual apartment. And then we decorated it in the style that Felicia was doing at that time, which was an eclectic mix of things layered with items from their previous apartments, but with a very lived-in, comfortable feeling at the same time. And then, because we were introducing color, I worked very closely with Mark Bridges, the costume designer, to say what decade we were in but somewhat quietly. We used a 70s palette and 70s design for the clothing, hair, makeup, and things like that, but it all needed to be woven together in terms of the colors of the apartment and the colors of the wardrobe.
What kind of archives and references did you use during this process?
There was a good article in Architectural Digest about the family and the apartment. There were photos and references that the family had, personal things. And the Bernstein children were available to us so we could ask questions about what they remember. It’s a very well-documented life because they were in the public world. It wasn’t hard to research the types of pianos they had at the Dakota. They had a harpsichord in the study. We copied light fixtures. In the middle of the study, there was a hanging fixture that had fringe on it that we recreated because it seemed like a touchstone people might be able to identify. Little Easter eggs like that, for people who might understand or remember the era of their parents or friends and what it felt like on the Upper West Side.
That first Carnegie Hall loft/music studio/apartment, where he wakes up and throws the curtains open—that was a scene that was one of the first things we talked about. It went through many incarnations because there were actual studios similar to that that were on the top of Carnegie Hall, and we wanted to reflect the authenticity of that space, but we also needed to do this very elaborate camera move, which was all with one big camera arm, taking him out of the apartment and into the hallway, and then cutting when we got to the door of the box of Carnegie Hall. So it went through many incarnations, trying to get the window size right, the height of the loft, sections of ceiling had to be taken out. In the end, I think it was one of the things we worked most on in terms of evolving the design and detailing so it would work for the shot. I find it really gratifying because it’s pretty much exactly what Bradley conceived at the beginning. It was a wonderful, interesting process for me to go through.
Shooting in the Bernsteins’ actual Fairfield, CT, home must have been another experience entirely.
We didn’t know what it was going to be like. When I first went there with Bradley, we saw the grounds and felt the ghosts of both Lenny and Felicia. Since their deaths, the family has kept it for themselves pretty much intact, so it was a valuable resource to understand the intimacy of the details of how they lived. It was really comfortable. It was bucolic. They had beautiful gardens and a functioning vegetable garden. But they also had recreation, with the pool. Lenny’s studio was a little cottage off the back barn that we recreated because that had been turned into an apartment. But a lot of the house had the original wallpaper that Felicia picked out. She was pretty interested in painting, and she was pretty prolific. She never thought of herself as a great painter, but it was how she fulfilled her creative needs, and a lot of that evidence was there. And then all the little personal things — the kids were still living the same way, and they had updated things, but all we really needed to do was curate how we wanted the layout of furniture, we added some things, we recovered some things to refreshen fabric colors, and we curated for the time period all the technology out. But architecturally, we didn’t have to change much to make it feel like it was authentic to the period. It was amazing.
Is it technically difficult to shoot in a historic family home like this one?
I think we were really sensitive, respectful, and grateful for the opportunity to be there. Everyone working on the film in my department knew what it meant to be at Leonard Bernstein’s house, to see the piano that his piano teacher gave him when he was a student, and to know where his studio was and how he got away from the family at certain points. It was a skeletal crew, partly because of coming out of Covid, but also, we really reduced the crew as much as we could so it wasn’t like the big circus came to town and we destroyed the property.
How did you approach key performance venues?
I always felt like we were bookending the movie with the authentic Carnegie Hall, which is where he got his start when Bruno Walter was ill that one day, and Ely Cathedral in the UK, which is where the big Mahler piece takes place. It was important for Bradley and me to have real spaces for those two things. For all the performance pieces, but both Ely and Carnegie Hall, we had obvious period things like backstage dressing, the chairs, the music stands, and the period music. All the performers had to be in period clothing, hair, and accessories. But we were fortunate that we were dealing with Carnegie Hall and Ely, which are both historic landmarks, so it wasn’t like there was a lot to remove. We had to architecturally deal with technology again, with exit signs and things like that. We wanted it to be period correct, but there was no question about how to design it because it was like, just bring it back to the way it was the day that concert took place.
How did having part of the film in black and white affect your approach to those scenes?
From the beginning, Bradley was committed to shooting on black and white film and color film and not doing digital. We tested film stock to find what we wanted to use, and then we tested fabrics and color charts to get an idea of how they reacted to the film stock. Some colors in the mid-tones would just all look alike. Any reds would just go to black. We had guides for anybody who was working with color on what to use, what not to use, and how they reacted to the film. It was really a fun exercise and also a great collaborative effort with wardrobe and the art department. And because so much of the film is in black and white, the color stands out more when you go to color. You have to be really careful choosing the palette for the decade and making it tell you where we are in time without stamping it ‘1970!’ We always wanted it to be in the background and have it be about the emotional core of the scene rather than the design.
One of the biggest upcoming series of the year has also been one of the most mysterious—Netflix’s 3 Body Problem, which comes from Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and Dan Weiss, as well as True Blood writer/producer Alexander Woo. The series is based on adapted from author Liu Cixin’s “Remembrance of Earth’s Past” trilogy, which is centered on how humanity preps for a coming alien invasion. Netflix revealed the new trailer at CES in Las Vegas.
“What we are hoping to do is to convey the experience — if not necessarily the exact details — of the novel onto the screen,” Woo said at CES. “What stayed, we hope, is the sense of wonderment and the sense of scope, of scale, where the problems are no longer just the problems of an individual or even a nation, but of an entire species.”
3 Body Problem is one of the most ambitious television series coming out in 2024, based as it is on Cixin’s sweeping epic and coming from Benioff and Weiss in their first drama since Game of Thrones concluded its eight-season run in 2019. 3 Body Problem is a meaty sci-fi adventure that offers Benioff and Weiss the largest palette they’ve had since GoT, with a fresh opportunity to adapt a world as richly imagined and emphatically explored as George R. R. Martin’s fantasy realm. They’ve both gone on record saying Cixin’s trilogy is the most ambitious science-fiction series they’ve ever read.
And once again, Benioff and Weiss have another stellar ensemble cast to work with, including Jovan Adepo, John Bradley, Rosalind Chao, Liam Cunningham, Eiza González, Jess Hong, Marlo Kelly, Alex Sharp, Sea Shimooka, Zine Tseng, Saamer Usmani, Benedict Wong and Jonathan Pryce.
Check out the trailer below. 3 Body Problem arrives on Netflix on March 21.
Here’s the official logline from Netflix:
A young woman’s fateful decision in 1960s China reverberates across space and time into the present day. When the laws of nature inexplicably unravel before their eyes, a close-knit group of brilliant scientists join forces with an unorthodox detective to confront the greatest threat in humanity’s history.
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Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is going to be smashing, stomping, and fire-breathing into theaters two weeks earlier than originally expected.
Legendary and Warner Bros. announced that director Adam Wingard’s upcoming film, the fifth in the MonsterVerse franchise, will now hit theaters on March 29 instead of April 12. The new spot was previously the premiere date for Oscar-winning director Bong Joon-Ho’s Mickey 17, his first film since his masterpiece Parasite, that is now being delayed by post-strike shifts. A new date for Mickey 17 is expected soon.
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire promises an extended look at what we only got for a few minutes during the climatic final battle in Godzilla vs. Kong, when the two legendary titans stopped battling each other and teamed up to take out Mechagodzilla. The human-created Mechagodzilla gave Godzilla and Kong a jolt of recognition—wait, maybe we’re not enemies, and in The New Empire, their newfound status as brothers-in-arms will be explored. In the first trailer for the follow-up, cinema’s two most iconic movie monsters are side-by-side again, this time against a mysterious foe that goes unnamed but is certain to be an even bigger challenge.
The new threat has been hidden beneath the surface of our world and is connected to the origins of both Godzilla and Kong, and Kong’s home, Skull Island. Godzilla vs Kong director Adam Wingard returns, along with stars Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry, 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).
Wingard is also once again working with Godzilla vs. Kong alums in cinematographer Ben Seresin, production designer Tom Hammock, editor Josh Schaeffer, and composers Tom Holkenborg and Antonio Di Iorio.
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Featured image: Caption: 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
Baby Yoda and his best buddy Mando are going big time.
A brand new Star Wars film centered on the two beloved besties is coming to the big screen from director Jon Favreau—The Mandalorian & Grogu–and production will begin before the year is up.
Favreau brought Mando and Grogu to the small screen with Disney+’s The Mandalorian, the first live-action Disney series ever. Favreau’s western-flavored Star Wars story followed the titular Mandalorian (Pedro Pascal), a brilliant bounty hunter who is tasked with retrieving some valuable cargo. That cargo turns out to be the baby alien that set the internet on fire, Grogu, also known as Baby Yoda, whom Mando ended up feeling both connected to and bound to protect. In turn, Grogu turned out to be an incredibly powerful, if curious and mischievous, little ally himself. Their bond became undeniable, and they’ve been having adventures ever since. There’s no word yet where on the timeline The Mandalorian & Grogu will be set and how it will pick up from the series, which has streamed for three seasons on Disney+.
“I have loved telling stories set in the rich world that George Lucas created,” Favreau said in a statement. “The prospect of bringing the Mandalorian and his apprentice Grogu to the big screen is extremely exciting.”
Favreau’s upcoming film is the first that will go into production since J.J. Abrams’ 2019 film Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker capped the most recent trilogy. There have been some new Star Wars films in development, but since The Rise of Skywalker, the action has really been on Disney+, where The Book of Boba Fett, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Andor, and Ahsoka have followed The Mandalorian. More series are in the works, including Skeleton Crew and The Acolyte.
The Mandalorian & Grogu will be produced by Favreau, Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy, and Ahsoka creator and Star Wars guru Dave Filoni.
“Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni have ushered into Star Wars two new and beloved characters, and this new story is a perfect fit for the big screen,” Kennedy said in a statement.
Favreau’s film will be the first of a few new Star Wars movies, which include films by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, which will center on a post-Rise of Skywalker Rey (Daisy Ridley), James Mangold’s mysterious film, and another film by Filoni.
There are Star Wars films slated for May 22, 2026, December 18, 2026, and December 17, 2027, although calendars are always subject to change.
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Marvel Studios’ Echo is officially reverberating across Disney+. The new series is now streaming, in its entirety, on Disney+, with two new looks at the series available for your viewing pleasure. The first is a clip from the series, which shows Maya Lopez (Alaqua Cox) unleashing her hand-to-hand combat skills on a roomful of men who can do little about it. The second is a refresher on the series’ main villain and one of the longstanding Marvel baddies of them all, Kingpin (Vincent D’Onofrio). The bruising behemoth has been a part of Maya’s life from the time she was a little girl, and their relationship will be a major through-line in the upcoming series.
Echo is directly connected to Marvel’s previous series, with Maya Lopez playing an ostensible villain in Hawkeye, which was centered on Jeremy Renner’s ace sharpshooter and his protegé, Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld). Yet Echo also represents a new approach to how Marvel will handle some of their upcoming series. Echo follows Maya, who is Native American and hearing impaired, after the events in Hawkeye and centers her reconnection to her Native American roots as she tries to chart a new path forward. It will be a dark path, as is evident in the first trailer, one that has been shaped from the time she was a little girl by the aforementioned Kingpin or Wilson Fisk if you want to use his civilian name. Kingpin was first introduced on-screen way back in Netflix’s Daredevil series, which was centered on Charlie Cox’s Matt Murdock/Daredevil, who will also be appearing in Echo.
Yet there’s something that will make Echo stand apart from all the Marvel shows that have bowed on Disney+ thus far—it will be the first series to fall under Marvel’s new Spotlight Banner, which won’t require viewers to possess previous MCU knowledge and which will be darker and grittier in tone and substance than previous Disney+ series. They will, in fact, be more in line with Marvel’s previous TV era on Netflix, specifically Daredevil and The Punisher, and will be geared directly towards a TV-MA audience.
Marvel Studios’ head of streaming, television, and animation, Brad Winderbaum, explained the approach on Marvel.com:
“Marvel Spotlight gives us a platform to bring more grounded, character-driven stories to the screen, and in the case of Echo, focusing on street-level stakes over larger MCU continuity. Just like comics fans didn’t need to read Avengers or Fantastic Four to enjoy a Ghost Rider Spotlight comic, our audience doesn’t need to have seen other Marvel series to understand what’s happening in Maya’s story.”
At a press screening of scenes from Echo, series director Sydney Freeland said that viewers can expect a very different tone, considering that, unlike previous Marvel TV installments on Disney+, Echo follows an ostensible villain.
“People on our show — they bleed. They die,” Freeland said. “They get killed, and there are real-world consequences.”
Check out the new teasers below. Echo is now streaming on Disney+.
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Bradley Cooper knew Maestro was going to be the next film he directed before the proverbial ink dried on A Star Is Born (2018), his feature debut, which he starred in alongside Lady Gaga about a troubled musician’s relationship with alcohol. The adaptation, deservingly so, went on to be nominated for eight Academy Awards and won Best Original Song for “Shallow.” This time, the multi-hyphenated actor trades in a guitar for a baton to embody Leonard Bernstein, the famed American conductor and composer who lived a double life as a married man and a promiscuous bi-sexual.
The dramatic biopic, which is receiving a number of accolades, unravels the complexities of a couple in love while also being an ode to the symphony. But Cooper caringly connects the two like lines in a poem, strengthening the emotional journey between Lenny and his wife Felicia (magnetically tuned by Carey Mulligan) through the music.
The height of their unequivocal admiration for each other plays out in back-to-back scenes after the pair have been separated for some time. Inside the backdrop of a gorgeous restaurant, Felicia, her daughter (Maya Hawke), and Lenny’s sister Shirley (Sarah Silverman) are having lunch. It’s here Felicia divulges about a fumbled date only to realize her feelings about Leonard. “Look at me now. Who’s the one who hasn’t been honest? I miss him… that child of mine.” The camera cuts from a close-up of her face to Leonard conducting the musical climax of the film: the London Symphony Orchestra in Mahler’s “Resurrection” at Ely Cathedral. To his surprise, Felicia stands among the spectators.
Sonically capturing the film on location was production sound mixer Steven Morrow, who worked with Cooper on A Star Is Born, a collaboration which Morrow admits has “gotten closer over the years,” allowing their shorthand “to get even shorter.” “The music you hear in the movie was played on set for each scene,” says Morrow, a three-time Oscar nominee. “Before we started shooting, we went page by page to map out the specific songs that would be played.” Doing so not only informed events aurally for actors but influenced the camera movement and lighting in scenes for cinematographer Matthew Libatique (A Star Is Born). “We’re there to support Bradley’s greater vision, and this allowed us to have these locked-in moments. But on the day if something didn’t feel right, Bradley’s flexible enough that he can change things on the spot and we would have everything ready.”
Jason Rudder (executive music producer and supervising music editor) oversaw music clearance during preproduction and sent Morrow the titles where the production mixer laid out a master Pro Tools session with shortcut keys. Some tracks needed to be trimmed down from their original length, which required additional clearance.
For the Ely Cathedral sequence, Cooper sought to recreate the moment using the London Symphony Orchestra and London Choir inside the actual location, a tremendously moving performance. “Bradley really wanted the scene to be live because you can’t create the same feeling in a studio,” says Morrow. “Because we were in Covid protocols at the time, the movie got delayed so we could sit the orchestra close together and play live as opposed to miming it.”
When filming commenced, the major moment required a large team to pull off the recording. The company Classic Sound in London was brought in to rig microphones inside the 900-year-old cathedral. Morrow, Ruder, and music producer Nick Baxter provided technical specs for Classic Sound during the rigging process, which took several days to complete. The expectation was to limit the number of microphones in the frame while still recording for Dolby Atmos. Rigs were placed above the ceiling, and any microphone that required being removed from the picture was later painted out by visual effects. Another challenge was the proximity of the orchestra.
“Modern orchestras don’t play as close as they used to because the sound levels can damage their hearing,” notes Morrow. “We convinced the London Symphony Orchestra to put everyone back in their original place, and we brought in instruments to measure the sound level that every player was receiving. We also had special earplugs for all the players so their decibel level could come down, so we wouldn’t be damaging their hearing. We aired on the side of protecting the player because it is the right thing to do.”
Also part of the performance are two opera singers (Rosa Feola and Isabel Leonard) who stand behind Leonard conducting the symphony. Historically accurate microphones were placed on stands in front of them to match the original 1973 version. “We put radio mics on them like we normally do, but the floor microphones were picking them up while they were singing,” says Morrow. “It was more about the ambiance of the church so they could be a little further away, and it would still sound very close.”
The scene was filmed over two nights, recording 62 tracks of microphones. The tracks were recorded into multiple machines for redundancy to make sure they had it. For Bradley’s performance, he was given an earpiece that allowed conducting consultant Yannick Nézet-Séguin to give the director any technical notes. “Bradley is a student of perfection, and he wants to get it right,” says Morrow. “He was training and practicing for months to get the technical things to look right. Then the flourishes and the emotional aspect of that journey that was all Bradley.”
One of the final shots in the scene is a tracking oner that angelically moves from the profile of Leonard to the back of Felicia’s head before cutting to a matching close-up of her face from the prior restaurant scene. Her look of despair is now a smile of loving hope. Moments later, Leonard rushes over and passionately embraces her. “Darling, why did you come?” Felicia whispers, “There is no hate… There is no hate in your heart.” To pull the precise moment off, Morrow sent dolly grip John Mang the song so he could practice the move and time it perfectly. “The style of the movie is not quick cuts. It’s long, wide takes. It’s a modern-day art film with not a lot of coverage,” says Morrow. “Bradley committed to this kind of visual story and he really becomes part of the crew during the process.”
Praise for Cooper’s performance has come in a number of award-season accolades. But probably his biggest approval comes from the musicians themselves. “Two people from the orchestra said they were there playing the song with Leonard back in the ‘70s and said Bradley was him tonight,” recalls Morrow. “That kind of praise is not normal.”
Ferrari raced into theaters this past Christmas, and thebright red color of the iconic racing cars featured in the film seemed perfectly timed for its holiday release. Based on the 1991 nonfiction book “Enzo Ferrari: The Man, The Car, The Races, The Machine,” and helmed by celebrated four-time Oscar nominee Michael Mann, Ferrari centers on the summer of 1957, a very difficult time for Enzo Ferrari (Adam Driver). He was facing potential bankruptcy, grieving the recent death of his son Dino from muscular dystrophy, and had marital strife that might have made the Gucci family blush. His wife Laura (Penélope Cruz) had just discovered the existence of his son Piero, the result of Enzo’s longtime relationship with Lina Lardi (Shailene Woodley). Meanwhile, he has to set all of this aside to focus on his cars winning an incredibly dangerous 1,000 mile race known as the Mille Miglia in order to save his business. Those who know 50s racing will recognize this particular race’s importance to history, a brutalizing race of endurance and skill that asked its drivers to accept the possibility of a gruesome death. More casual viewers will learn just how much the 1957 Mille Miglia impacted Enzo Ferrari’s life and future.
The Credits spoke to Ferrari production designer Maria Djurkovic about her work on the film. She discusses her collaborations with Michael Mann and DP Erik Messerschmidt, recreating real-life exteriors and interiors from 1957, and how they chose to leverage that dramatic, unmistakable Ferrari red.
You did a huge amount of research early in the production. In terms of pictures, what were some of the cornerstones or visual inspirations?
You need to see one of my art departments to understand how obsessive-compulsive my research is. It’s all about a complete collection of images. There is so much visual archival information available covering the races, the Mille Miglia, the pitstops, and the locations of the race. I think I probably got the job because I’m as obsessive-compulsive as Michael is. One of the things we have to be really careful of when doing a period film like this is clearance because there’s so much advertising involved, certainly around all the racing. If you’re absolutely true to the event, you will be cleared to use anything, whether it’s the Esso or Pirelli tires logo or whatever might be there. You’re cleared if you are completely accurate. However, not every image is, so it was like being a detective. If two images are of a particular race and both say it’s 1957 but are different, it takes a lot of research to determine what is actually true to the time.
Adam Driver as Enzo Ferrari. Photo Credit Lorenzo Sisti.
And what about elements that made it into the film?
In terms of inspiration or things to look for, there are some very striking images, like when they’re signing up for the Mille Miglia in Brescia, in the town square. They’re images of Ferrari standing on that particular Mussolini-built balcony. It’s a fantastic bit of Italian Fascist architecture. That was a really key image for Michael because he wanted to be able to shoot from the same angle as that particular image. There’s an image of the English driver Peter Collins, who Jack O’Connell plays, and he’s wearing this particularly fantastic woolly hat. They copied that, and it’s in the movie. We had to be a little bit more abstract about the home environments, but there were certain things that Michael was very specific about because he visited Piero Ferrari’s home, the little boy in the movie. They are friends, and he visited his home. The exterior of the Ferrari house is actually the real Ferrari house where he lived. There’s a rather amazing silk wall covering that we printed and hung over the walls in Laura Ferrari’s bedroom which Michael had photographed that was and still is in the house. He wanted to replicate it because, for him, it was absolutely key to representing Laura’s state of mind.
Penélope Cruz as Laura Ferrari Photo Credit Lorenzo Sisti.
How did the collecting of photos help in your collaboration with DP Erik Messerschmidt and other department heads in terms of articulating the aesthetic Michael Mann was after?
I loved working with Eric. There was an alchemy between the various heads of departments that worked incredibly well on this film, and I find it really interesting, not just on this movie, but on any movie, how the world we build on the walls is what you quite often see in the film. It’s a really good way of communicating clearly with the director, the DP, the costume designer, and the rest of the team. You can talk all day about aesthetics, but it’s actually images that do the job better than anything else. Whenever Michael wasn’t ready for a meeting with the cast, he’d send them down to the art department because there was plenty to look at. I think there’s something very lovely about being able to see the world you’re going to be creating long before the first bit of scenery has been painted or built. It’s a kind of language that you can share with everybody.
Patrick Dempsey as Piero Taruffi Photo Credit: Lorenzo Sisti.
The color palette of Ferrari is a very interesting mix of rustic Italian colors, a sort of monochrome, and that bright pop of red the cars create, cutting through the landscape.
The red is a gift, isn’t it? And for that personal side of the story, Michael wanted to find our version of monochrome, and Modena is extraordinary. It’s terracotta, ochre, and rich oranges everywhere. It’s got such a character. In Italy, you can travel an hour in one direction or the other and see something completely different because, historically, they were separate principalities, and they all have their own distinct character. Michael had been there quite a few times before we started this process, but my first day of prep was my first day in Modena. The look informs you from the moment you drive into it, and it’s unquestionable what the color palette of the film would be. It became our form of a monochrome, in contrast to that dramatic Ferrari red.
Adam Driver as Enzo Ferrari on set in Modena, Italy. Photo credit Lorenzo Sisti.
What was involved in recreating the Ferrari factory of the film?
We found loads of photos taken at the original place, and there’s this cleanness, this almost Bauhaus aesthetic, and that was such an important thing for Michael. He would never want us to do something that is aesthetically motivated. It always has to be motivated by character. I had no idea how we were going to achieve the sort of beautiful, clean lines that the actual original factory buildings had because we had very little time. There’s the very iconic gate that we were not going to find, and I accepted that. The courtyard of the factory was cobbled, which I really liked against the clean lines of all the facades. The location managers found this dairy factory built in the 60s. It was the wrong period, but had the shape that felt right, and it had the right cobblestones. The rest was either built in its entirety, like the whole of the Ferrari gateway, or we refaced it to be accurate. It was a red brick building, for example, and we faced it with wood and plaster and made it that creamy yellow color.
What keeps you moving forward and loving your job, project after project?
All the research, for me, is one of the keys to why I still really like doing my job. It’s never boring because you delve into a world that you’ve never thought about, whatever it is. I always tell kids who want to do the job that I do that they just have to be a visual sponge. If you’re not working, go to exhibitions and go to museums, that’s what’s going to keep you fresh, so you’re not just looking at a bunch of research and replicating it. It’s about having an understanding of history, and having an understanding of the world in which the film is set, and then working to say something with all those environments about the characters. That’s all at the same time as creating an aesthetic for the whole piece and finding a balance that makes it all work together.
Saltburnrising star Jacob Elordi has just joined the sensational cast for Guillermo del Toro’s upcoming Frankenstein, which the visionary director is putting together at Netflix, Deadline confirms. Elordi joins Oscar Isaac (playing Dr. Victor Frankenstein), Christoph Waltz, scream queen Mia Goth, David Bradley, Lars Mikkelsen, Christian Convery, Felix Kammerer, and more in Del Toro’s take on Mary Shelley’s iconic tale. Elordi takes over for Andrew Garfield, who had to bow out due to scheduling conflicts.
It’s hard to imagine a better pairing of material and filmmaker than Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” and Del Toro, who is writing, directing, and producing the film. Del Toro’s been developing his adaptation for a while, yet whether he’s going to keep the film rooted in the past or set it in modern times is unknown.
Elordi made a big splash in Emerald Fennell’s wickedly fun Saltburn, where he played the impossibly rich and impossibly handsome Felix Catton, the apple of the conniving Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan)’s eye. He also recently played Elvis in Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla.
Composer Kris Bowers didn’t have to read the script before saying yes to Blitz Bazawule’s emotionally captivating version of The Color Purple. He was already a fan of his work, particularly the director’s debut, The Burial of Kojo, and Beyoncé’s visual album Black is King.
For this collaboration, early discussions focused on “being innovative musically” and connecting themes to one of the two dozen plus songs featured in the heartfelt musical that sees actor Fantasia Barrino playing the role of Celie, a Black woman in the early 1900s destined to reinvent herself. Through its production design, cinematography, and costumes, the visual vernacular is immersed in a visceral vibrancy, the score of which had to both support the grounded realism of the rural South with the fantastical worlds of song and dance. To do so, Bowers blended layers of piano, cello, and banjo, among other instruments, in a melodic symphony that plots Celie’s journey as she pulls away from her demanding husband Mister (Colman Domingo) and reunites with her sister Nettie (Ciara).
Below, Bowers discusses working with the director, what went into writing Celie’s theme, and how Ghanaian instrumentation found its way into the score.
You’ve accomplished a lot in your budding career, but what did it mean working with Blitz on this particular film?
For him, this was sacred work, so you felt that in terms of his intention and his effort really early in the process. Before we even sat down for our first meeting, he had driven hours and hours by himself to do location scouting just because he needed to see the spaces to envision this world. He also hand drew over 1200 individual shots and cut together a version of the film with hired actors to do the dialog, sound design, and temp store. He even had footage of the choreography, so at our first meeting, there was already so much and that went well into our process.
Do we start demanding the “Blitz Bazawule pre-production cut”? Kidding, obviously, but I’m curious if that type of preparedness translated into anything unique while you previewed the score?
Into the scoring process, if I made a slight adjustment to a cue that he had already heard before he wanted to watch the whole reel just to see how that cue played in context. So, if the cue were a minute long, we would watch the 20-minute reel just to see how that one minute of music felt in the context of the whole reel. It was always that type of focus and dedication to detail for him.
That’s quite amazing. Your score delivers very unique notes and melodies. What type of instruments did you experiment with?
The banjo was something I wanted to find because of its importance to Mister’s character and the story. Banjo is one of those instruments that has so much character that it’s hard not to associate it with every other time you hear it, so it was a fun challenge figuring out how to have that beat in the score but feel different.
COLMAN DOMINGO as Mister in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
There are also a lot of jazz elements and cues that are more textural. Like when we first meet Shug there are these horns playing and improvising these fluttery textures. The upright bass was another one for when Mister kicks Nettie out and when Sofia [Danielle Brooks] goes to jail. I wanted to put that up against this bigger orchestral sound. Then piano-wise, I love to play around with different pianos for different reasons. An upright piano that has a little twang to it, a felted piano so it has a softer sound, and then there’s a clear grand piano.
Did you find yourself writing with a tempo or improvising with what was on screen?
It was a mix. For the first couple of themes, I wrote freely on the piano and then improvised them to picture. Then there were other cues that were more sound design-y and were shaped to picture. Like the moment Mister is kicking Nettie out of the house or when Sofia is being beaten by the gang of men. Those were moments where we followed what was happening on screen and then added layer after layer.
One of the more powerful pieces is “Celie’s Theme.” How did her journey impact the writing?
That was the first theme I wrote. I started seeing dailies and wrote it more to the tone and the way Celie felt to me at this stage of the story. A lot I was having the humble simplicity that Celie represents at the beginning of the film. In the first iteration, you hear it with strings, and then there are iterations that are just upright piano, a couple of solo instruments, and a detuned banjo. There’s an aspect that feels a little bit lonely, a little melancholy, but at the same time, there’s a bittersweetness to it and a slight hopefulness when the fuller strings come in.
The theme “Nettie’s Gone” has a heavy emotional weight to it, and we hear it when Mister forces her out of his home, leaving Celie behind. What was your approach there?
The emotion I was drawing from watching Colman’s depiction of Mister, and how much you fear him. There are a lot of textures, and everything is organic. There are a lot of layers of banjo in the beginning and then a chorus of celli and basses, which are detuned. And then it breaks out into this emotional outbreak. It definitely was the more emotional and darker emotions in the score. The movie has so much darkness, but the score is playing to the sense of hope.
There are several sequences where we see Africa through Celie’s imagination. How did you want to approach them?
What was exciting was that Blitz wanted to be specific towards the Asante tribe in Ghana and not a general African concept but a specific location, culture, and community. I worked with a Ghanaian percussionist to help me with the sound for the sequence when we see the Asante tribe being pushed off their land by the British. He told me that there just so happens to be a traditional percussion about the experience. He played it for me, and I showed him the piece of music I wrote and we worked to find a way to fit it in the context of the piece that I had written for the section. A moment like that I felt so thankful to have Blitz’s guidance to be that specific.
For the scene when Celie reunites with Nettie, we hear a wonderful musical piece called “My Family Home.” How did that come about?
That one is a culmination of the themes. It starts off with Celie and Nettie’s themes as Nettie arrives back. Then it breaks into their theme when they first embrace and then it transitions into Celie’s theme. A big part of that cue was trying to ride the emotional wave of what we are seeing on screen and reprise these themes we’ve been hearing. It’s always fun to me to have that be the concept in terms of building themes out in a film in hopes that they land in a really cathartic emotional way. It means so much when the themes we’ve been hearing up to this point come in and allow for an emotional release that they are all reunited.
For more on The Color Purple, check out these stories:
Featured image: Caption: (L-r) TARAJI P. HENSON as Shug Avery, FANTASIA BARRINO as Celie and DANIELLE BROOKS as Sophia in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
The 2024 Golden Globes took place on Sunday night, and Barbenheimer continued its historic run from last July, coming away with multiple awards. Barbenheimer is, of course, the two-headed cinematic phenomenon that is Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, with Barbiewinning the award for Best Cinematic and Box Office Achievement, while Oppenheimer was named Best Motion Picture, Drama, and Christopher Nolan took home the award for his directing work.
Meanwhile, Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things won the Globe for Best Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy, while Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall won for Best Non-English-Language Motion Picture. The legendary Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron won the Globe for best-animated film.
On the small screen, the two big winners were Jesse Armstrong’s HBO smash Succession, which won for Best Drama Series, and Christopher Storer’s buzzy, delicious FX show The Bear, which won Best TV Series, Musical or Comedy.
The acting award winners included Killers of the Flower Moon‘s Lily Gladstone, The Holdovers‘ Paul Giamatti and Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Oppenheimer‘s Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr., The Bear‘s Jeremy Allen White and Ayo Edebiri, Succession‘s Kieran Culkin, Sarah Snook and Matthew Macfadyen, Beef‘s Ali Wong and Steven Yeun, Poor Things’ Emma Stone, and The Crown‘s Elizabeth Debicki.
The new categories in this year’s Globes included the one Barbie took home for Best Cinematic and Box Office Achievement, which boasted eight nominees chosen from films that had a box office receipt total/gross of $150 million, “of which $100 million must come from the U.S. domestic box office, and/or obtain commensurate digital streaming viewership recognized by trusted industry sources,” the Globes explained when they announced the category. Another new category was for best performance in stand-up comedy on television, which featured six nominees. Ricky Gervais took home the award for Ricky Gervais: Armageddon.
This new look Globes, hosted by Jo Koy, was the first that was not associated with the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which was replaced by Dick Clark Productions and Eldridge, owned by Penske Media Eldridge. A new racially and ethnically diverse group of voters made up of 300 journalists from around the world, representing 76 countries, selected this year’s nominees and winners.
For a full list of this year’s nominees and winners, click here.
Featured image: BEVERLY HILLS, CALIFORNIA – JANUARY 07: Margot Robbie attends the 81st Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton on January 07, 2024 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Amy Sussman/Getty Images)
“The action evolves with the story — I’m not trying to invent action just to invent the next big stunt. It’s got to be emotionally engaging through action and fit the character,” says second unit director and stunt choreographer Wade Eastwood of Mission: Impossible’s brand of character-driven action choreography.
An accomplished fixed-wing and helicopter pilot, Eastwood is also a licensed skydiver, rescue scuba diver, black belt martial artist, master stunt driver, and Formula Racing competitive driver. “Growing up, I’ve always wanted to do everything that was exciting. That’s why I got into movies; it’s the perfect job,” shares the South African native. After completing compulsory military service at 19 years old, a local film crew was looking for “a few guys to jump out of a helicopter into this [crocodile-infested] river” in his hometown, Durban. Ever since then, he has been drifting, crashing, flying, and diving through a long list of actioners like Spectre, Edge of Tomorrow, and Men in Black: International.
The opening salvo to writer-director Christopher McQuarrie’s two-part finale, Dead Reckoning Part Onedigs deeper into Ethan Hunt’s (Tom Cruise) emotional psyche and backstory. “We live and die in the shadows for those we hold close and those we never meet,” the weary yet indomitable super-spy quietly utters his oath to unlock for-his-eyes-only orders after the latest global threat is unleashed.“Ethan Hunt is all about doing the right thing — looking after his team, saving his team and loved ones, and protecting the world from disaster,” says Eastwood, who has worked on four Mission films since 2015’s Rogue Nation.
Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One from Paramount Pictures and Skydance.
If Ethan has one weakness, it is his loyalty to his friends. As he tells a newcomer to the franchise, the sly thief-turned-ally, Grace (Hayley Atwell): “Your life will always matter more to me than my own.” And that’s why Eastwood thinks audiences around the world have connected with the IMF agent for almost three decades: “He would jump off a cliff to save someone and then figure out how to save himself. They respect and admire that.”
It also helps that Mission has always thrilled audiences with adrenaline-inducing action, setting a high bar in action cinema, particularly when it comes to capturing practical effects in-camera. To maximize audience engagement, Cruise famously performs just about every stunt in these films. We have seen him scale the 2,700-feet Burj Khalifa (Ghost Protocol), clutch onto the outside of a cargo plane mid-takeoff with his bare hands (Rogue Nation), and in 2018’s Fallout, he became the first actor to perform a HALO (High Altitude Low Open) jump on film.
Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt in MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – FALLOUT, from Paramount Pictures and Skydance. Courtesy Paramount
“Tom, McQ [McQuarrie], and I hash out the best way to do it. Ethan’s got to get from point A to point B; what’s the coolest way he can do that but also be practical? What can the audience relate to? If we jump into space, the audience can’t relate because no one’s really been to space. But people have ridden motorbikes and have been in the mountains. So, that’s relatable action,” Eastwood says, referring to the jaw-dropping sequence where Cruise jumps off a vertical cliff 3,900 feet above sea level in a motorbike. “And once they can relate, they’re on board with the character. Now, they’re invested.”
In Fallout, Eastwood helped cast stuntman and Wushu champion Liang Yang in the savage bathroom brawl against Ethan and Henry Cavill’s turncoat, August Walker. “We hadn’t done that style in a Mission fight before, but Wushu is one of my favorites. It’s like a dance, just mesmerizing, and Liang’s style is fluid and intensely beautiful. For that sequence, I wanted a hard, grungy fight but with traces of Wushu. Throwing that wildcard into the mix meant that August and Ethan had to adapt their fighting styles,” he remarks on one of the most popular Mission stunts. “Tom playing Ethan wasn’t scared to get his ass kicked a bit and not be the hero, which made it so brutal. You could put yourself in that fight and go ‘God, what would I do against such a powerful, talented fighter?’ You’re getting your ass kicked! Now, you’re engaged with the story.”
With a main lead performing all of his own stunts, the line between main unit and second unit is almost non-existent. “My second units have always had the actors; I like to shoot subjective action, which you need the actors for,” says Eastwood. “Tom does literally everything, so it works differently on Mission. We come up with a story together, and then I’ll work out the choreography with my fight coordinator, Ruda Vrba, assistant stunt coordinator Scott Armstrong, and my team. Then we’ll come back to show everyone and tweak it.”
After the vertiginous highs of Fallout, this latest installment has Ethan going up against the most uncannily topical adversary yet: a sentient AI dubbed “The Entity” has accessed all of the world’s digital data and targeting intelligence networks on a global scale. With governments and criminals alike clamoring for it, he has to locate a two-part bejeweled cruciform key to unlock and destroy the algorithm. The visually discernible villain — Esai Morales’ diabolical Gabriel — serves as the human proxy to the AI, with help from ice-cold henchwoman Paris (Pom Klementieff).
In one of the most bone-crunching assaults, Paris and Ethan punch, kick, slash, and pummel each other in an unbelievably narrow vicoletto in Venice, one that is literally shoulder-width. Desperate to get out and help romantic interest and rogue MI6 agent Ilsa (Rebecca Ferguson) and Grace — both are under attack at a nearby bridge — Ethan begins with defensive moves before shifting into high gear. “Ethan didn’t want to fight. He just wants to get out and save Grace and Ilsa. Having that as the background makes the audience watch it differently. You’re watching the moves and the style, sure, but you’re immersed in what he’s trying to do. So, you’ve got that emotional connection. Tom is a master at keeping that emotional storytelling alive.”
Pom Klementieff in Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One from Paramount Pictures and Skydance.
With three decades in the business, Eastwood has seen a lot in the evolution of action choreography, “but the biggest thing that’s helped us is technology, especially smaller cameras that we can get into better places to capture the action more intensely and subjectively,” he says, referring to the Zed miniature cameras. Small and flexible enough to capture kinetic chaos in tight spaces, it was used in the teeth-gnashing car chase through central Rome in a tiny, yellow Fiat 500 — with Ethan steering one-handed because he is handcuffed to Grace. “I love that car chase. We trained at racetracks in England, just like we did for Rogue Nation at Goodwood, Silverstone, Bedford. We set up cones to rehearse all the scenarios that we’d experience in Rome.”
When it came time to shoot, the team might only have access to a highly trafficked area for five minutes at a time, so everything had to run like clockwork. “Logistically, it’s a real challenge. Like in the Arc de Triomphe car chase in Fallout, we only had that for an hour with 70 cars going around and Tom weaving in and out of traffic on the motorbike. It was the same in Rome. I got my stunt drivers set up so that we could be in position within 30 seconds from the side streets. If we get a five-minute lockup, we can be in and out in two minutes filmed.”
The intense training Eastwood puts the actors through is no joke. “I set them up with drills and exercises with scenarios, like what to do if a pedestrian walks out when you’re mid-drift. We drill on all the what-ifs. I train them to the point where I wouldn’t put someone else in that car. We’ve trained them to be so competent and safe that we could safely shoot and put camera mounts all over.” He wants the audience to understand just how tough it is to perform these stunts at that level as an actor. “When I’m drifting a car or flying a helicopter, I’m doing it. But when Tom does it, he has to do it as Ethan while watching out for bogeys or what might go wrong. So, he can’t necessarily look where I would because he’s also got to find the lens and the light, playing to different emotions than what he might be feeling while drifting a car through a narrow street, hitting a wall, or bouncing off a car. To do it at that level requires unbelievable skill.”
Hayley Atwell and Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One from Paramount Pictures and Skydance.
For the much-hyped climactic set piece, Cruise drove his motorcycle off Norway’s Helsetkopen mountain and plunged 4,000 feet into the ravine below. The vertical rock face gave Eastwood everything he’d been looking for: it had sufficient height to film the plunge but with a near-vertical cliff face to minimize the risk of Cruise hitting it on the way down. “It gave us the danger and a terrain where we could make it look dangerous on-screen, even though it was so dangerous!”
Once Cruise leaves the mountain and detaches from the motorcycle, he only had six seconds to deploy his parachute, so there was no room for error. “Tom is already an accomplished skydiver, but we had to drill his tracking. If he tracked the wrong way from the bike, he wouldn’t track away from the mountain. If he opened his parachute and had a small twist, he’s going to turn and slam straight into the mountain, and it’s game over. We trained with my skydiver coordinator, Jon DeVore, who’s incredible. They would fly in a helicopter at the speed of the bike and just jump and track, jump and track.”
Tom Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie on the set of Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One from Paramount Pictures and Skydance.
After training for a year, Cruise had done over 500 skydives and 13,000 motocross jumps. “My motocross team was incredible. Tom did jump after jump to get his body position and rhythm right on the bike. I set up a mock version of the whole stunt in England where we had him on wires and jumped the motorcycle into 20,000 boxes, so it didn’t get damaged,” Eastwood explains. To intensify the visceral and nail-biting experience for the audience, Cruise would push it as far as he could. “Once the bike was airborne, he would try to hold onto the bike an extra half a second or a second to maximize drama, maximize jeopardy, and maximize audience participation. That’s what immerses the audience. What he did there was incredible. He put in the time and did the work, and that’s why it is the biggest stunt in cinema history.”
With Dead Reckoning, Part Two slated for summer 2025, Eastwood only has this to say for the nonstop cinematic thrill ride: “We’re still shooting, but what we’ve already done is absolutely scary. It’s breathtaking.” Unfortunately for Ethan Hunt, the battle against evil never ends, at least not for a man who would move mountains to protect those he holds close.
Dead Reckoning, Part One is streaming now and a nominee at this weekend’s 81st Golden Globe Awards.
Featured image: Base Jumping Coach John Devore, Tom Cruise, Prop Supervisor George Pugh, Christopher McQuarrie and Stunt Coordinator Wade Eastwood on the set of Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning – Part One from Paramount Pictures and Skydance.
What’s a girl to do when she’s separated from the boy she loves? Well, if she’s in the movies, she’s going to do whatever it takes, even when what’s separating them isn’t overprotective parents, rival romantic competition, or even unrequited love, but death itself. This is the conceit writer Diablo Cody and director Zelda Williams play with in Lisa Frankenstein, a new kind of coming-of-age story where young love requires a little more elbow grease—and perhaps, a new elbow—than your typical fare. The first trailer sets the stakes, and one wonders if, as in 1931’s Frankenstein, adapted from Mary Shelley’s deathless novel, if the neighbors might not be chasing Lisa’s new lover with stakes of their own. (Okay, in the movie, they were actually pitchforks.)
The trailer shows us what happens when Lisa (Kathryn Newton) manages to raise The Creature (Cole Sprouse) from the dead, just as she dreamed, only he comes back in unsurprisingly bad shape. How bad? Even his tears smell. (How can he still produce tears? Movie magic!) We see Lisa attempting to give The Creature a makeover as she struggles to reconcile her feelings for him with the fact that he is, well, a corpse. Then a solution arrives, one that decidedly pushes Lisa Frankenstein into comedy-horror territory in the form of a rude boy who might prove useful to Lisa and The Creature.
Lisa Frankenstein has Cody’s signature mischief and genre-melding, and the cast supporting our two death-crossed lovers is solid—they’re joined by Carla Gugino, Liza Soberano, Jenna Davis, Trina LaFargue, Paola Andino, Ray Gaspard, and more. The trailer is fun, and the movie, lurching into theaters right in time for Valentine’s Day, looks like an early year treat.
Check out the trailer below. Lisa Frankenstein hits theaters on February 9.
For more on Universal Pictures, Peacock, and Focus Features projects, check out these stories:
Like its heroine, Celie (Fantasia Barrino), The Color Purple is a story that continually grows in boldness and beauty over time. Director Blitz Bazawule’s musical version of Alice Walker’s classic tale of hope and sisterhood is a vivid interpretation for a new generation.
Makeup department head Carol Rasheed approached the film with a clear intention and steadfast goals. She exchanged vision boards, music, and more with Bazawule for nearly six months to prepare for the shoot. Their meticulous planning produced a natural and realistic depiction of the characters.
“A lot of the elements – in terms of the beauty that’s in the skin – came through,” she explained. “I made sure that my team and I did not over-makeup. You can still see the texture in the skin. You can see the oils bleeding through from the skin, just really making the melanin pop off the screen.”
Caption: (L-r) PHYLICIA PEARL MPASI as Young Celie and HALLE BAILEY as Young Nettie in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
Rasheed has gained a reputation as a “skin specialist” for her talent in matching any shade with precision. One of the most powerful elements affecting skin is time, and The Color Purple spans more than three decades. Rasheed ensured that the characters looked appropriate for each stage of their lives.
“[Bazawule] made it very clear very early on that he wanted our skin, Black skin, to age like Black people generally age,” she shared. “I think so often when you see Black people aged on screen in the past, they’re always over-aged. They look very, very old. With this, it wasn’t as dramatic. It was more of a subtle aging like how people age.”
(L-r) PHYLICIA PEARL MPASI as Young Celie and HALLE BAILEY as Young Nettie in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo by Eli Ade
Sisters Celie and Nettie are introduced as children, which called for two actresses to fill each role. Rasheed credits the casting team for the remarkable natural similarities between Fantasia Barrino and Phylicia Pearl Mpasi as Celie and Halle Bailey and Ciara as Nettie. To maintain consistency, Rasheed paid careful attention to their attributes and made special accommodations to carry features from one actor to the other.
Caption: (L-r) FANTASIA BARRINO and TARAJI P. HENSON on the set of Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Lynsey Weatherspoon
“One of the things with the Nettie character specifically, Halle Bailey, has a mole on her face,” she noted. “The decision was made when I talked to Blitz about it, ‘Let’s just leave that. That’s her natural look.’ I said, ‘OK, no problem.’ But what happened is, when the older Nettie came, which was played by Ciara, she didn’t have a mole up there, so we had to create a mole to go up there to tie in the two characters together.”
Unthinkable suffering takes hold of Celie early in her life. Rasheed muted the natural youthful blush of Phylicia Pearl Mpasi’s complexion to give her a more hardened appearance.
Caption: PHYLICIA PEARL MPASI as Young Celie in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
“She has beautiful, full, pink lips,” Rasheed observed. “Of course, the lips made her look really rosy and beautiful, so we had to take that color of rosiness out of her lips. We did that by darkening her natural color in her lip.”
Caption: (L-r) PHYLICIA PEARL MPASI as Young Celie and HALLE BAILEY as Young Nettie in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
Eventually, Celie finds someone who brings the color back to her world and her lips. She finds unexpected counsel in the glamorous and confident Shug Avery (Taraji P. Henson). Hoping to highlight the beauty in Celie that she had never recognized in herself, Shug shares her lipstick. Rasheed specially designed the lip color used for that scene and provided it for the props department.
“Celie supposedly goes and grabs her lipstick color to put it on Celie’s mouth, that is the only time where the color is similar,” Rasheed revealed. “I gave them that color to use that was close to what Taraji was going to wear.”
(L-r) FANTASIA BARRINO as Celie and TARAJI P. HENSON as Shug Avery in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo by Ser Baffo
Throughout the rest of the film, she ensured that each woman wore a unique tone of red that was reflective of their individuality. Rasheed experimented with endless blends to perfectly match the characters with the color that served them best.
“I had lipsticks from every shade. I had blue-reds, true reds, orange-reds, purple-reds, pink-reds,” Rasheed laughed. “My main focal point was to make sure I did not have any woman in the movie have the same shade of red.”
Caption: (L-r) TARAJI P. HENSON as Shug Avery, FANTASIA BARRINO as Celie and DANIELLE BROOKS as Sophia in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
After filming wrapped, Rasheed had a revelation that the palette she mixed would celebrate women offscreen as well. She developed the Evolution of Rouge lip line inspired by the ladies of The Color Purple. The smooth, rich, and vibrant formula comes in three bold shades that are now available to order.
“Women are all going to want a red and match these reds, so I came up with the Evolution of Rouge lipstick trio that is paying homage to the ladies of the movie,” Rasheed noted. “The colors are very similar. I did a blue-red, which is what Celie wore, and then I put affirming names with all of them. I AM Hope is very similar to what I used on Fantasia in the movie.”
I AM Resilient is a berry red derived from Sofia’s color (Danielle Brooks) and the First Lady of the Church (Tamela J. Mann), and Shug’s colors informed the red-orange I AM Inspiration.
Far removed from the beauty of the sisterhood the women share, hard living takes its toll on the film’s most troubled character, Mister (Colman Domingo).
“In the very beginning of the movie, when Mister comes out, he’s very handsome and he’s charming in his own way. His skin is looking perfectly melanated and poppin’,” Rasheed described. “As time went on, the meaner he got, the more I stripped away color out of his skin. I darkened under his eyes a little bit. I made everything more imperfect as the movie went on.”
Rasheed and her team hand-laid facial hair when Mister went a day and then a week without shaving. She credits The Color Purple for stretching her skillset with effects makeup from a bump on Harpo’s (Corey Hawkins) head to the injuries Sofia endures.
“I designed and ordered two different versions of an eye after [Sofia’s] beating that we had inserted to make her look like she had a bloodshot eye from the cut in her brow,” Rasheed relayed solemnly. “Giving her a bloody nose, giving her a bruised face – that all played a role into breaking that character down when she first was beat to the end of the movie when she’s sitting in prison. I had another eye designed for that look when she was cleaned up and healed. It was a whole work of progress in terms of following that character through each trauma that she experienced. We did that with makeup.”
Carol Rasheed and Colman Domingo on set of “The Color Purple.” Courtesy Warner Bros.
A dedication to the details was labor intensive throughout filming. The early 20th-century setting called for a clean slate, even across the many dancers and background actors.
“Supposedly, back in those times, nobody had their nose pierced. Nobody had tattoos on their necks and on their arms and on their legs and on their backs and chests. We had hundreds of tattoos to cover. I still have big nightmares about that,” Rasheed laughed.
A flashy musical number set on the water called for a glistening look. Rasheed applied oil to all the dancers.
(L-r) FANTASIA BARRINO and TARAJI P. HENSON on the set of Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo by Eli Ade.
“We shot that particular scene in the height of summer in Savannah, Georgia,” she recalled. “It was June and July, 100-degree weather. So, of course, we were using sunscreen to protect the skin, but it also gave the skin the shine we needed in addition to putting oil on the skin as well to give it that glow.”
She applauds cinematographer Dan Laustsen for the film’s lighting. “He’s a master of his craft. He understood how to light our skin properly. That goes a long way.”
Each department on set delivered making The Color Purple a worthy revival. “The movie is very inspiring,” Rasheed promised. “It’s not like the first Color Purple at all. There are some threads of it, which you could never lose the thread of TheColor Purple. This movie, I feel like it was happier. The music was phenomenal. Just the work the actors even put in. It’s just mind-blowing.”
The Color Purple is in theaters now.
For more on The Color Purple, check out these stories:
Featured image: TARAJI P. HENSON as Shug Avery in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release.Photo by Ser Baffo
It’s no accident that Maestro (on Netflix and in theaters) begins with Bradley Cooper’s elderly Leonard Bernstein reflecting on how much he misses his late wife Felicia, portrayed by Carey Mulligan. The biopic, of course, includes bits of Bernstein’s greatest hits as a composer and conductor, from West Side Story to Mahler’s 2nd Symphony. But the movie concentrates mainly on the complicated relationship between the bisexual Bernstein and the stylish actress who found herself living in the shadow of America’s most celebrated classical music talent.
Maestro star/co-writer/director/producer Cooper recruited two-time Oscar-winning costume designer Mark Bridges (The Artist, Phantom Thread) to chart the sartorial changes experienced by the man and his muse over the course of four decades. Drawing on his encyclopedic knowledge of 20th-century fashion, Bridges previously crafted costumes for period dramas by David O. Russell and Paul Thomas Anderson. Four years ago, he talked to The Credits about his Oscar-nominated contributions to Joker.
This time around, Bridges, speaking from Los Angeles, explains the inspirations behind the “costume plot” he designed for Maestro‘s charismatic leads, encompassing everything from underwear and Chanel dresses to turtleneck sweaters.
In 1943, when 25-year-oldBernstein gets the phone call to conduct the New York Philharmonic for the first time, he jumps up and down in his boxer shorts. Period perfect?
Yes, At one point, Bradley wasn’t going to have anything on, but we thought better of that, so we made boxer shorts that had this funny adjustable band with an adjustable V in the back. And it’s funny because in the early seventies, we see Lenny change his clothes at the country home, and he’s got his tighty whites on. So we’re doing the passage of time in this story right down to the skin.
Once he gets dressed, Bernstein wears a natty double-breasted suit. Typical of the period?
I imagined someone at 25 has one good suit. A double-breasted suit would be accessible to Bernstein, and in fact, that’s what he wore, along with the kind of wristwatch I imagine someone like him would get as a graduation gift. Throughout the forties, we also have various degrees of casual clothes and chunky jackets, which were very specific to the language of men at that time.
In 1955, Bernstein’s now a family man, married with two kids as seen on Edward Morrow’s Person to Person TV show. Were you able to reference the program itself?
We tried to duplicate that show, which is available on YouTube, but the taping is kind of blurry, so you become a bit of an archaeologist. Then your brain takes over: “Let’s use a fabric with a little more sheen that will read better in black and white for our film purposes but also gives us the flavor of that person at that time. That suit we made for Bradley is still very formal because it’s how you’d present yourself to guests at your house in the fifties — you’d wear a suit and a necktie. And for Lenny’s country clothes in the fifties, when he’s running around with the kids, you try to be as simple as possible so you don’t distract from the actors.
The sixties represent a new chapter in Bernstein’s life. What was his signature outfit?
Starting in the late sixties, you get the groovier look with the boots, and it’s also what I call Lenny’s turtleneck period. He’s aging, so it covers up the neck, and also, the kids are wearing turtlenecks. In movies from the late sixties, you’ll often see four male characters wearing them. Turtlenecks were really a thing.
In 1971, Bernstein, dressed in a slim-fit suit, meets soon-to-be-boyfriend Tommy Cothran. Inspiration?
There’s a photo of Lenny in that glen-plaid gray suit when he first meets Tommy. He’s such a movie star in that photograph, and I just had to use it because the suit’s so strong and beautiful.
In that same scene, someone compliments Bernstein on his pocket-handkerchief, and he credits Felicia for picking out his clothes.
That’s true. Felicia kind of kept Lenny in line, but when left to his own devices, he had questionable taste.
How did you arrive at Lenny’s look for the 1980s?
Lenny’s daughter Jamie invited a few of us to his house in Connecticut and showed me his closet, which had this red jacket Lenny wore well into his sixties. It looked like something a 25-year-old kid would wear without the guiding hand of Felica and the constraints of his professional life. I use it for when Lenny drives onto the lawn. He had this joie de vivre right to the end, and the jacket just felt right for that “You’re as old as you feel” idea.
In Maestro, Carey Mulligan as Bernstein’s wife, Felicia Montealegre, displays this sophisticated sense of style despite significant inner turmoil. Where did you start with Felicia?
The first time we see Felicia at a party in 1946 at [pianist] Claudio Arrau’s house. There were rules about what you wore in post-war America: a nice cocktail dress for women and men in tuxedos. I wanted to dress Felicia up a little bit, so I gave her dress beaded embellishments, and of course, her gloves match the shoes, which match the purse, which matches the hat, which matches your wrap.
Mid-fifties, Felicia’s at the family country home chatting with Bernstein’s sister Shirley (Sarah Silverman), and for the first time, she’s wearing pants. What did you have in mind with that change of pace?
I thought pants would mix things up and speak to Felicia’s sense of independence and also to the casualness of being at her own country home. Anytime Lucille Ball got ready to do some kind of hare-brained scheme, she’d be in trousers, so pants like these were certainly available at the time, mainly for resort wear on vacation or in the privacy of your own family.
Backstage in the fifties, Felicia’s wearing this gorgeous gown. Inspiration?
The shape of that skirt was inspired by a shot of the two of them backstage, very typical fifties. I don’t have to reinvent the wheel. This is the person, this is the life; why don’t we address the script with these clothes that would speak volumes about what’s going on?
Around 1969, Felicia’s wearing this striking green dress when she has her big argument with Lenny about his affairs. How did you decide on that piece?
That green dress was inspired by a photograph of Felicia when she and Lenny had their Black Panther party. That dress informed Felicia’s neckline and the jewelry. We found a double-knit wool jersey and dyed it that green color to make it feel autumnal. For Lenny, in that scene, we found what I call a “holiday houndstooth,” which was this green, maroon, harvest gold, and burnt orange jacket.
Felicia’s Chanel suit later in the film reflects her wealth and taste. How did that outfit come to be?
The Channel suit was written into the script. Chanel sent us prototypes from the period and gave us Chanel fabrics to choose from. We used materials blessed by Chanel, including the buttons, which were gold. I thought Chanel was a great idea: clothing as protection. You won’t get any bad news if you’re dressed well.
In 1974, Felicia’s diagnosed with cancer. How did you dress her for that era?
With Felicia’s sickness, we go to the blue dress. I was inspired by a period dress that had a great shape and was flattering on Carey, so I used that as a prototype. Then we had to think about what color it should be. Green didn’t feel emotionally right, red was too sexy, but blue felt right because there’s a coolness about a woman who’s Mrs. Maestro. And it wouldn’t have worked unless we used a stiff fabric, which was woolen silk. We had an amazing cutter. April McCoy, who made that dress. Then we accessorized it with beautiful pearls and, of course, matching shoes.
Felicia’s deathbed scene, which will likely earn Carey Mulligan an Oscar nomination, must have required a sensitive touch from you and your team. How did you fit the clothes to the occasion?
For Felicia’s final scene, I had this amazing Liberty of London floral robe that Carey wore in bed. The idea that Felicia should be in a field of flowers felt right to me because it’s pretty to look at even though something very devastating is happening.
You dressed Bradley Cooper as an actor when he was in Silver Linings Playbook and Licorice Pizza, but on Maestro, he’s also the director. What was that like?
It was interesting working with Bradley on Maestro at this other level. As an actor, he’d look at the costume, feel it, and make sure he could act in it. But then there’s always the quiet moment of reflection where he’s going through it in his mind: “Will this work for my shot and how I want to direct the scene?” I was kind of blown away by his focus.
The final trailer for Mean Girls has arrived, giving us a last look at Paramount’s upcoming movie musical, which was appropriately first glimpsed by audiences who went and saw Taylor Swift’s concert film in the theater. This musical version, from directors Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr., is adapted from the 2018 Broadway play, which itself was an adaptation of the hit 2004 film. The original film, the Broadway musical, and this cinematic adaptation of the musical were all written by Tina Fey and boasts a multitalented cast and music from composer Jeff Richmond (Fey’s husband) with music and lyrics written by Nell Benjamin, both of whom collaborated on the Broadway show. Star Reneé Rapp joined them to write new songs, too.
This new iteration of Mean Girls is centered on new student Cady Heron (Angourie Rice), who wins the coveted position of joining the most popular—and most ruthless—clique in school, the Plastics, led by their undisputed queen, Regina George (the aforementioned Rapp). The Plastics play rough, and Cady will find out soon enough that Regina rules with an iron fist, and Rice and Rapp will be singing their way into roles first made famous by Lindsay Lohan and Rachel McAdams.
The new trailer reveals a few key details, including a winter talent show that will give the cast a chance to show off their considerable chops. That cast also includes Auli’i Cravalho as Janis ‘Imi’ike, Jaquel Spivey as Damian Hubbard, Avantika as Karen Shetty, Bebe Wood as Gretchen Wieners, Christopher Briney as Aaron Samuels, Jenna Fischer as Ms. Heron, Busy Philipps as Mrs. George, Ashley Park as Madame Park, Tina Fey as Ms. Norbury, Tim Meadows as Mr. Duvall.
Check out the final trailer below. Mean Girls arrives in theaters on January 12:
For more films and series from Paramount and Paramount+, check out these stories:
Callum Turner plays Joe Rantz in The Boys in the Boat, based on the real-life story of the University of Washington rowing team that won a gold medal in the 1936 Olympics. George Clooney directed the film, adapted by Mark L. Smith from Daniel James Brown’s best-seller of the same title, and it’s a classic underdog story. Coach Al Ulbrickson, played by Joel Edgerton, took a big risk by taking the junior varsity team to the Olympics instead of the far more experienced varsity rowers. The Ivy League teams, made up of young men from wealthy families, were considered to be far better prospects than the Washington team, which included poor kids, some of whom were homeless, who began rowing because it was the only way to stay in school. The Boys in the Boat is the kind of irresistible David vs. Goliath tale that filmmakers have been flocking to since the medium was invented.
In an interview, Turner talked about the training he and the other actors had to undergo to portray world-class athletes, the exhilaration of finding a way to achieve the coordinated precision of a rowing team, and the advice he got from Oscar-winner Daniel Day-Lewis.
The rowing scenes look so beautiful. What was it like to be out on the water as the sun was coming up?
We shot mostly in Oxfordshire, near Swindon. I’m from central London, and being in the countryside is peaceful, elegant, relaxed, and calming. I’m so used to the hustle and bustle of central London and the city, and I’m only just acquiring a taste of country life. So, being up there was wonderful.
What was the set like?
George Clooney had his dog, and I had my dog. It was a harmonious set. The dogs would go for walks with each other, and we’d get videos from Nick, the driver, of them running through the river and having a really picturesque experience. Ours was a little tougher. I’d say the dogs had more fun than we did. We were making a movie and rowing, too. I kept joking that making the movie was a side hustle and that rowing was my primary job.
We hear the word “swing” used about rowing in the film. How would you define it?
Swing is the thing that you aim to achieve in the boat. It’s when the boat glides across the water, and it feels like it’s levitating. It’s when all eight of you are in sync, completely in tune. And it is the poetry of motion that George Pocock talks about and Coach Al Ulbrickson talks about, what you aim for. And you don’t always get it. Even on an hour row or two-hour row, you don’t get that sometimes. When it happens, it happens, and you have to enjoy it when you’re in the moment. We got it a few times. There’s something really elegant and spiritual about rowing that I, even whilst doing it, didn’t understand.
Was it harder to get into the swing of things on the boat than you expected?
Reading the book a couple of times before shooting, I thought, yeah, I get it. I understand teamwork. I understand being fit. I didn’t. Even whilst I was doing it, I was so in it and so present in trying to achieve the rows per minute and do a good job for the film that I didn’t understand. What your lungs have to do to stay in the boat and keep up with your teammates and what your mind has to do to remain concentrated and stay with your teammates. Because it’s all about your teammates, and losing your identity to become one is excruciatingly difficult. It was only in hindsight when I reread the book, and it was like a light bulb moment after light bulb moment. Only through rereading the book did I understand how incredible the experience was and how beautiful rowing is.
Is the awareness of the other people on the team anything like performing with other actors?
There are elements that are the same, but I think in terms of teamwork and awareness and concentration, it blows it out of the water because it is about losing your identity, whereas acting is about throwing your paint onto the canvas for the director. In rowing, you just really lose yourself. You have to. You’re so present whilst you’re doing it. Responsible in a different way. In other sports, you can have a star player that can score a goal or score a point in basketball or two points in basketball. With this, there’s none of that. It’s six and a half minutes of grueling pain.
You all must have worked very hard to be able to row at that level.
We were coached by Terry O’Neill, who won gold in Atlanta. I went to Mexico to lose weight and be as fit as possible before we started this boot camp because I knew this was going to be difficult. And I turned up, and I was still so unfit in comparison to what I had to achieve. Luckily, everyone else was, too. It’s funny; art imitates life a lot in this experience. We became a team, we got ready for it, even to the point where, you know, in the end of the film, with the photo finish, they say, “Did we do it? Who won, who lost?” We had a moment, the second to last day, when we achieved 45 strokes per minute, which was a target we set ourselves in February, the second or third day we started. And on the fourth day, I realized, no, that’s impossible, why would we say that, that’s ridiculous. The further along the process we went, the harder it felt to achieve.
What’s so beautiful, is we did it together. There’s no individual. It’s a team. It’s a pure team. And from thinking we were never going to be able to achieve it to achieving it — there was a euphoria in the boat that I hadn’t felt before.
What does George Clooney know as an actor that helps him be a good director?
A shorthand. He knows cutting the fat, getting to the point, and not beating around the bush. On Masters of the Air, I like to try as much as possible because my character my character is such a big, expressive person, completely different. The boundaries were wider, so I had to try everything before honing in on something. What we did on this was the idea that Joe’s grounded, he’s connected to the earth, he’s true, he’s from the countryside, he’s a lumberjack. His life has been so hard that the walls are up, the curtains are closed, and the doors are locked. It’s like Fort Knox inside of his brain. That basically just pulled the boundaries in. It allowed us to play within a certain space, which was freer, actually, because we knew where we were and that you could do different variations of a smaller thing. And that was George. He and I talked about that, and he just brought those boundaries in.
He’s a cinephile. He loves not only the industry, but he loves movies and he loves actors. And we were able to just lean into people like Spencer Tracy. I knew Spencer Tracy a little bit, but then I went on a deeper dive. And I brought the idea of Gary Cooper in High Noon, especially. Mr. Deeds Goes to Town is another favorite of mine. That stoicism, that masculinity of the time, was then a shorthand that we were able to build through our love of cinema and actors. And as a man, I learned a lot. George is a great leader of people. He really does it in a pure form. And there’s no ego or bullshit. It’s all pretty straightforward. To watch someone lead and be authentic to themselves, that’s always inspiring.
I think the chemistry made them special. They were all incredible individual rowers. And the fact that these guys had nothing is the thing that Ulbrickson saw. They were hungry, and they had holes in their shoes, and they were homeless, and they were on the edge. And I think that edge gave them the thing to drive on and beat everyone. They didn’t lose a race, these guys. I think these guys had a lot to aim for. And they learned to trust each other.
I’m very lucky because I got acting advice from Daniel Day-Lewis. We became buddies through BAFTA. We spent a lot of time talking and being competitive with each other about films we’ve watched. He texts me saying, “I’ve watched these four obscure French films from the 50s. And I’m like, “Ah!” So, I go and watch them. I say, “Oh yeah, I’ve seen those. And I’ve seen this obscure Romanian movie. It’s a documentary. I’ll send you the DVD if you like.” He told me, “Dance to the rhythm of your own beat. Find your rhythm and dance to it.” And that is actually the greatest bit of advice I’ve ever been given. Because there’s no right and there’s no wrong. If you want to be in musicals, that’s your thing. If you want to be in a soap opera, that’s your thing. There’s no right or wrong. Don’t judge anyone else. Just concentrate on yourself and follow your heart.
