*It’s our annual “Best of Summer” look back at some (not all) of our favorite interviews from the past few months. This non-comprehensive look back includes the Barbenheimer phenomenon and the wonderful interviews that followed those two history-making films, chats with the talented folks behind Mission: Impossible, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, our profile of MPA Creator Award Recipient and filmmaker extraordinaire Gina Prince-Bythewood and more.
Since its release last month, Greta Gerwig’s Barbie has been hailed as a marvel of a balancing act between sincerity and hilarity. On top of the nuanced script, Barbieland is populated by a Barbie and Ken of every stripe, for every type, despite dozens of characters who share a mere two first names (plus the singular Allan). Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie) and her dependent Ken (Ryan Gosling) were early commitments to the Warner Bros. project, but for co-casting directors Allison Jones (Curb Your Enthusiasm, Lady Bird) and Lucy Bevan (The Batman, Belfast), casting the wild melange of supporting doll roles meant combing through audition tapes of a who’s-who roster of actors thrilled at the chance to be immortalized as two of pop culture’s most iconic plastic figures.
aption: (L-r) MARGOT ROBBIE as Barbie, ALEXANDRA SHIPP as Barbie, MICHAEL CERA as Allan, ARIANA GREENBLATT as Sasha and AMERICA FERRERA as Gloria in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “BARBIE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
The actors needed to be funny, of course. But what set apart the audition tapes (more on that anachronism in a moment) was a pure and well-rounded earnestness. “The thing that Greta did always stress was that none of these people were sarcastic or winking at the camera. They were really Kens and Barbies,” Jones explained. In addition to being able to land a comedy beat, the actors needed to be sincere, truthful, and guileless. “There were certain scenes we used to audition, and the fine line between the comedy and sincerity of those characters is a difficult balance,” Bevan said.
Because casting took place during Covid, Jones and Bevan reverted back to the use of taped auditions. “Huge actors went on tape with only seeing a few pages of dialogue,” Jones said, and since “everybody was Barbie in the script,” the pair wound up working in reverse, sending the tapes they liked on to Gerwig, who then identified particular talent for different Barbies and Kens. “She really made the characters for who she liked best in different auditions,” Jones said, designating Issa Rae as President Barbie, for example, and looking for Ken’s arch-rival Ken by seeking out the actor who would be best to “beach off” with Gosling’s character.
Caption: (L-r) EMMA MACKEY as Barbie, NCUTI GATWA as Ken, SIMU LIU as Ken, MARGOT ROBBIE as Barbie, RYAN GOSLING as Ken and KINGSLEY BEN-ADIR as Ken in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “BARBIE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. PicturesCaption: ISSA RAE as Barbie in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “BARBIE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
Before it became a go-to quote in the Barbie fandom lexicon, rival Ken’s challenge — “I’ll beach you off any day, Ken” — was one of the film’s audition lines. “Those scenes were fun to audition,” said Bevan. “Some of the Kens would take off their t-shirts, and we were like, no, no, you don’t need to take off your t-shirt. But Simu [Liu] just nailed that [line] in the film.” Allan required some demystifying. Jones used pictures of different Allan dolls owned by a Barbie collector friend, sending them out to agents to shed light on this previously unknown resident of Barbieland, now immortalized by Michael Cera. “I’m so happy that in perpetuity now he’s like an icon for being Allan,” Jones joked.
Caption: (L-r) ISSA RAE as Barbie, SCOTT EVANS as Ken, SIMU LIU as Ken, EMMA MACKEY as Barbie and NCUTI GATWA as Ken in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “BARBIE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
Since the film’s release, the internet has teemed with anecdotes of beloved comedic actors who wanted to be in Barbie butaren’t. It’s not because they aren’t funny enough. “It’s rather a boring reason, actually,” Bevan said. “On a movie like this, it was a hugely ambitious shoot and a complicated schedule, and you can have brilliant ideas, and people’s availability either does or doesn’t work.” Thanks to strict Covid rules in the UK, where most of the film was shot, and the scale of the project, even smaller roles required a three-month commitment. So, no gossip there.
Caption: (L-r) RYAN GOSLING, MARGOT ROBBIE and Director/Writer GRETA GERWIG on the set of Warner Bros. Pictures’ “BARBIE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Jaap Buitendijk
Even auditioning was a commitment, given Barbie‘s closely-guarded script. Bevan and Jones got to read it in its entirety, of course, but were limited to sending the actors’ sides (short script excerpts). “And now you have to send things through websites where you have to go through layers of passwords to get to the sides,” said Jones, of the effort actors went through to tape themselves. “So it was very secretive. I don’t think anybody knew quite how good it was,” she added. But just as Gerwig has become a name who can draw in movie-goers no matter the project, so too is the director for the actors themselves.“We weren’t allowed to send the script to anybody. So people did a lot of it on faith,” Jones said. “Everybody wanted to work with Greta, for good reason.”
Featured image: Caption: (L-r) ANA CRUZ KAYNE as Barbie, SHARON ROONEY as Barbie, ALEXANDRA SHIPP as Barbie, MARGOT ROBBIE as Barbie, HARI NEF as Barbie and EMMA MACKEY as Barbie in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “BARBIE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
*It’s our annual “Best of Summer” look back at some (not all) of our favorite interviews from the past few months. This non-comprehensive look back includes the Barbenheimer phenomenon and the wonderful interviews that followed those two history-making films, chats with the talented folks behind Mission: Impossible, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, our profile of MPA Creator Award Recipient and filmmaker extraordinaire Gina Prince-Bythewood and more.
Not bad for a sequel. Following on its 2018 Oscar-winning predecessor, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse ranks as the best-reviewed wide-release movie of the year, boasting a 96 percent approved rating on Rotten Tomatoes while grossing $390 million worldwide since its release earlier this month (at the time of publication). Critics have hailed the film’s ability to stitch together a dizzying array of looks informed by comic books, action painting, Brutalist architecture, and more.
Master-minded by writer-producers Phil Lord and Chris Miller, Across the Spider-Verse required three directors and more than three years to make. Some 1,000 animation artists (including a 14-year whiz kid) contributed to the story of Brooklyn’s one and only Spider-Man, Miles Morales (Shameik Moore), and Spider-Gwen (Hailee Steinfeld) as they journey through alternate universes populated with previously unknown Spider-People. One of those people is actually a T-Rex.
Look of Picture Supervisor Bret St. Clair helped fine-tune the movie’s array of painterly styles. Raised in Tennessee and schooled in animation at Dallas Institute of Art, St. Clair, a self-described “jack of all trades,” initially worked in video games before taking on Hollywood blockbusters like Matrix Reloaded to Haunted Transylvania. At the start of the Pandemic, St. Clair began work on Across the Spider-Verse, rarely leaving his home office in South Pasadena. Speaking from a parked car outside his house, St. Clair talks about digitized paint brushes, Indian comic books, and Blade Runner production designer Syd Mead as inspirations for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.
You’re not the production designer, you’re not the VFX supervisor, you’re the “Look of Picture Supervisor.” What exactly does that mean?
My job is to develop the tools and techniques to match all the various styles in the rendering and compositing stages. The title is unique to these films, and it’s actually listed as “Spider-Verse Look Supervisor” in the credits.
Can you give an example of what that entails?
A lot of it has to do with creating techniques for brush strokes or various kinds of line work.
Miles Morales as Spider-Man (Shameik Moore) in Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animation’s SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE.
How many of these techniques did you repurpose from the first Spider-Verse movie, or did start from scratch?
For Miles’ world, we maybe added a couple of new tools for brushing on his face. For every other world, we had to go back to the well and figure out new ways to do things.
Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld) and Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) in Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animations’ SPIDER-MAN™: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE.
Can you deconstruct each of these new worlds starting with the movie’s opening set piece that takes place on “Earth 65,” home to Gwen Stacy?
Gwen’s world was based on comic book art by Jason Latour. Jason’s art is beautiful, but it’s also loose and subjective, so sometimes it’s hard to tell what’s represented by a particular brush stroke. There were all these visual things we had to dissect and interpret. Earth-65 was the most intensive of any of the worlds we worked on. It was really about writing tools to create brushes that exist in 3-D space while also moving in ways that look good.
Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld) in Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animation’s SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE.
JasonLatour applies ink on paper with a brush. You created that same kind of texture with digital tools. How did you do that?
I bought a scanner and bought a lot of paint and during the first month of the film, I spent my weekends painting and scanning and building up a library of things so we could test out different ideas. And a lot of those ended up being used in the film. We studied the way paint diffuses, how paint rubs, the way a brush picks up different colors and smears them together.
After spending time in Miles Morales’ “Earth 1610” world, the story moves on to a futuristic Mumbai AKA Mumbattan, Earth-50101, home to Pavitr Prabhakar/Spider-Man India.
The Mumbattan style was based on Indrajal Comics from the seventies. It’s a very simplified style in India created by artists who didn’t have a lot of time working for a publisher who didn’t have much budget. The artists worked under incredible constraints. In art school, you learn that it’s through limitations that great artists innovate and create unique things, so it was really fun that the directors want to pay homage to that look. For example, a background in Mumbattan would dissolve into a very simple representation with a heavy reliance on outlines because [in the Indrajal era] the artist wouldn’t have had time to hand paint the building.
Spider-Man India (Karan Soni) in Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animations’ SPIDER-MAN™: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE.
Then we’ve got Miguel O’Hara’s “Nueva York,” Earth-928, populated with hundreds of Spider-people.
That style was based on Syd Mead, the designer famous for Blade Runner. It was exciting to look at his art and dissect it. The unique thing is that Earth-928 was less about paint strokes and more about markers.
Miguel O’ Hara (Oscar Isaac) clashes with Vulture (Jorma Taccone) in Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animations’ SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE.
Markers, as in felt-tipped “Magic Markers?”
Yeah. Markers are transparent, so they have to be layered in a very certain way. If you put one marker stroke on a piece of white paper and then put a second marker stroke on top of that, [the image] becomes darker where the two things overlap. Because our rendered markers are transparent, we can’t add too many layers before we hit a dark value, so it becomes really important to control the placement of the marker stroke so it won’t become too dark and opaque.
Along the way we meet Spider-Punk with his cool Mohawk haircut. He embodies the DIY punk rock aesthetic famous for its cheap Xeroxed graphics. How did you approach Spider-Punk?
Early on, I worked with the artists who developed Spider-Punk, and we did a lot of exploration, playing with things like the question of should the layers of collage cast shadows? Should we be using little pieces of tape that would be included in the Xerox or staples? A lot of it had to do with taking traditional renders and then coming up with treatments aimed at emulating different styles of printing or copying that reflect posters from that era.
Spider-Punk (Daniel Kaluuya) in Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animations’ SPIDER-MAN™: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE.
Animated features often have two directors, but Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, like its predecessor Into the Spider-Verse, has three. How did you deal with three different people steering the ship along with writer-producers Phil Lord and Chris Miller?
On the previous film, you might get comments from all the directors at once, and sometimes they didn’t agree. This was much more streamlined. Justin Thompson had been the production designer on Into the Spider-Verse, and here, he was promoted to director, so Justin was the one we interacted with. Obviously, Chris and Phil also had very specific artistic ideas. Occasionally we’d get comments from Phil to change something.
The visuals for Across the Spider-Verse are so dense and rich, it must have been a very labor-intensive project. When did you start work on the show, and when did you finish?
I came on in early 2020 when we went home for the lockdown — maybe a week after that — and I’ve been working on Across the Spider-Verse until a few weeks ago. I went into the office twice and did pretty much everything from home. We wrote the tools, and then we rewrote the tools to make them faster, and then we rewrote the tools again to make them even faster. Knowing we had to deliver so many shots was stressful. The way to deal with that stress was to make sure our tools were as fast as they could possibly be so that we could hit our target.
A visual development image featuring Pavitr Prabhakar, aka Spider-Man India, Gwen Stacy and Miles Morales fighting The Spot in the city of Mumbattan on Earth-50101 – a kaleidoscopic hybrid of Mumbai and Manhattanfor Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animations’ SPIDER-MAN™: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE.
You spent many months watching Across the Spider-Verse scenes in bits and pieces on your computer monitor. Last month, you finally got to see the whole thing on a big screen at the world premiere in Westwood. What was that experience like?
It’s hard to be objective about the visuals, but having spent years looking at this stuff from my tiny little room in my house, to see everything together on a giant screen, with the music and the sound effects? That was pretty impressive. But the biggest part for me was hearing the audience’s response. When you’re trapped in your room working, you don’t really know what people will think. You worry, “Are people going to get it? Are they going to understand this little corner frame that we put so much effort into?” But people have responded so well to the artistry, it makes me proud. This is the kind of movie you want to make every chance you get. It’s the reason I got into the industry.
For more on Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, check out these stories:
House of the Dragon cinematographer Catherine Goldschmidt stepped back into Westerosi history in the Game of Thrones prequel and into Emmys history when she was nominated for an Emmy for her work in the 8th episode of season one, “The Lord of the Tides.” In that episode, Goldschmidt was tasked with subtly taking viewers six years into the future as two bloody succession battles are taking place. The immediate quarrel is over who will succeed Lord Corlys Velaryon (Steve Toussaint) on the Driftwood Throne, with a fight brewing over the chosen heir, Corlys’ grandson Lucerys (Elliot Grihault) and his brother, Ser Vaemond Velaryon (Wil Johnson). Meanwhile, an ailing King Viserys (Paddy Considine), wants to bring his entire family together one last time and make clear his own chosen successor, his daughter Princess Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy), will rule. Yet her former best friend (and father’s current wife), Queen Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke), has other ideas, and the two are moving closer to open war with one another.
“The Lord of the Tides” was one of the most thrilling episodes of the season, a family saga for the ages, a cauldron of resentment and familial rage finally boiling over. Goldschmidt brought it off beautifully and, in the process, is now the only woman nominated in the Outstanding Cinematography For A Series (One Hour) category this year and only the fourth woman ever nominated in the 67 years this award has been given. If she wins, she’ll be the first woman ever to do so.
We spoke to Goldschmidt about the differences between the shooting styles of Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon, capturing a family at war with itself, and the subtle changes to iconic locations that turned this prequel series into a historical epic.
Catherine Goldschmidt. Courtesy HBO/Max.
Can you describe how you modified your approach to shooting this series compared to how Game of Thrones was filmed?
Although House of the Dragon is a prequel to Game of Thrones, it is a brand-new show with a brand-new look. We shot on Alexa 65 and Alexa LF cameras with Arri DNA lensing, which was a completely different choice from the original show. The color palette of GoT was constantly shifting to define the different worlds, but House of the Dragon Season One is about one family in one place, so the palette could be more connected to character and story than to location. I think the biggest way we were consistent with GoT was in how we moved the camera – classic dolly and crane moves and very little handheld. We did use Steadicam more than the original series, however.
How did you capture the world of Westeros in episode 8, “The Lord of the Tides”? There are so many beautiful little details that let a viewer fall into this fantasy realm while keeping the characters and their motivations front and central?
It’s definitely a team effort as far as the overall tone goes, and also the attention to detail in terms of the world-building. I’ll give you a specific example from “The Lord of the Tides” that will give you a taste of how the collaboration works. Towards the beginning of the episode, we have a small, dialogue-free scene in which we see Daemon collecting some dragon eggs. So, we all know what dragon eggs look like from Game of Thrones, but as far as where he would find them, how he would find them, what tools he would use to find them…this was all new, and we had to work together with the props team, with production design, with VFX and SFX, under the direction of our showrunners Ryan [Condal] and Miguel [Sapochnik], as well as my director Geeta Patel, to figure out exactly what this scene would look like, and what it would entail.
What were you hoping to get across in this scene?
We wanted to create a sense of mystery with the sequence, and for me, that meant using shadow and silhouette as well as camera movement to reveal Daemon in this strange environment eventually. The scene takes place down a crevice of Dragonmount, and we discussed everything from how deep this crevice is to how Daemon gets down it to how the dragons get down it…everything had to make logical sense, even though we’re dealing with fantasy creatures. And that kind of reality-based logic also informed my lighting choices- where would the light come from if you’re down such a crevice? I had the art department make cracks in the rock ceiling of the set so that daylight could stream down in certain key places.
How would you describe the main emotional beats of “The Lord of the Tides” that you wanted to capture?
There’s a lot going on in this episode. All the characters are coming back together one last time before they break apart for the rest of the season. They all want something, and they’re all having a hard time getting it. Viserys wants to see his family reunited before he goes, and he wants to have everyone recognize Rhaenyra as his true heir. Rhaenyra wants to be the heir, and her succession is being challenged. Alicent is one of the key people challenging Rhaenyra’s succession because she wants her son Aegon [Tom Glynn-Carney] to rule instead. Alicent and Rhaenyra, once the closest of friends, are now enemies, and Viserys wants them to reconcile. The emotional spectrum of the episode ranges from love on the one hand to betrayal on the other.
Olivia Cooke and Emma D’Arcy. Photograph by Ollie Upton / HBO
What was your collaboration like with director Geeta Patel and the great ensemble cast?
Collaborating with Geeta was and is (we’re doing Season Two together as we speak!) one of the greatest creative collaborations of my career so far. Geeta is incredibly generous as far as always wanting to hear my thoughts, always considering my perspective, and always being open to new ideas. She is like this with everyone on the crew and in the cast. She knows exactly what she wants and has a strong vision for the show, but at the same time, she really absorbs and synthesizes what everyone is bringing to the table. I love working with Geeta, and so does the entire cast and crew. My collaboration with the cast is definitely via Geeta. Geeta and I will discuss how we think a scene should be blocked, but then in rehearsal- she’ll always pose this as a suggestion rather than a mandate to the cast. They’re happy to oblige, but sometimes they’ll have new thoughts and ideas, which we always accommodate.
Matt Smith, Harry Collett, Emma D’Arcy, Phoebe Campbell. Photograph by Liam Daniel/ HBO
Can you describe the conversations you had with showrunners Ryan Condal and Miguel Sapochnik before you filmed a single frame on what the most important aspects of The House of the Dragon were to reveal to audiences?
We discussed the overall tone and that House of the Dragon is more of a historical epic than a fantasy show. We also discussed in great detail how “The Lord of the Tides” happens six years after the previous episode, and now that Alicent is in charge of the Red Keep, it is a colder, more austere place than it was under Viserys. We spoke a lot about Viserys’ look and how his illness would present in its most advanced state in our episode. Defining how this would work practically across all departments, including VFX, SFX, prosthetics, hair and makeup, costume, and cinematography, was very important to Ryan, Miguel, and Geeta.
Paddy Considine in “House of the Dragon.” Photograph by Ollie Upton / HBO
What was the approach to the scenes between Emma D’Arcy’s Princess Rhaenyra and Eve Best’s Princess Rhaenys, considering the latter believed the former murdered her son?
We have a key scene between Rhaenyra and Rhaenys in the Godswood where Rhaenyra essentially begs Rhaenys to take her side and back her succession claim. This is complicated for Rhaenys not only because of her son but also because, as a woman, she herself was passed over for succession, and the kingdom voted for a man to lead instead. The dynamics are fascinatingly complex between these two women, and Geeta and I both drew lots of parallels to our own experiences of being women in leadership roles traditionally held by men. Because of where the scene falls in the episode – in the very next scene, Rhaenyra comes to her father’s bedside at night to beg for his help also – we saw it tonally as “ a storm is coming.” Although we shot on a very sunny day, we wanted the scene to feel like the end of the day and with a storm coming also, so we added lots of wind from SFX, and I blocked out the sun as much as humanly possible.
Bethany Antonia, Eve Best. Photograph by Ollie Upton / HBO
Do any particular moments or sequences from this episode stand out to you as singularly special for you?
I love the moment when Viserys enters the throne room. It’s such a major event in our big Throne room scene and in the episode in general, and we spent a lot of time planning all the angles we wanted to shoot it from. Chiefly, we wanted to be in Viserys’ POV- leading him, following him, and showing what he sees. It’s an incredibly emotional moment for him as well as everyone else in that room, and Paddy performed the walk so well. The moment when Viserys’ crown falls off wasn’t scripted, but as soon as it happened once, everyone felt that it was exactly right for the scene, and we kept shooting it this way – pure kismet!
King Visery’s view: Matt Smith, Emma D’Arcy, Phoebe Campbell, Elliot Grihault, Eve Best. Photograph by Ollie Upton / HBO
The Red Keep looks a bit different, a bit more forbidding, in House of the Dragon. Can you describe how you capture the Gothic appeal of it?
Ryan and Miguel both impressed upon Geeta and me how different the Red Keep should feel to Rhaenyra, who is coming back for the first time in six years to find she doesn’t recognize it. We worked with Production Designer Jim Clay and Set Decorator Claire Richards to strip the Red Keep back in terms of furniture, decoration, and lighting. I went for colder, harsher, more wintery light with more contrast. Jim designed this very imposing Star of the Seven for the Great Hall, and we shot Rhaenyra dwarfed below it to show Alicent’s power over her at the start of the episode.
Olivia Cooke, Emma D’Arcy. Photograph by Ollie Upton/HBO.
Can you tell me about the “Hero Triangle” and how that idea was conceived and executed?
The “hero triangle” is how we referred to the relationship dynamics between Viserys at the apex, Rhaenyra on one side, and Alicent on the other. This triangle informed all of our blocking, lighting, and lensing decisions. For example, in the dinner scene, we placed Viserys right in the middle of the table, putting Alicent and her family on one side of him and Rhaenyra and her family on the other. In this way, we visualized the drama: even though Viserys is desperately trying to bring both sides together, he is also the reason why they are apart.
Ewan Mitchell, Rhys, Ifans, Olivia Cooke, Paddy Consdine, Emma D’Arcy. Photograph by Ollie Upton / HBO
Congratulations, by the way, on your nomination. It’s a historic one — you’re the only the fourth woman nominated in the Outstanding Cinematography for a Series in the one-hour category in the show’s 67 years — how does that feel?
Thank you! I’m very honored to be nominated alongside so many great cinematographers who have all done incredible work. It’s true I am the only woman to be nominated this year; however, I do want to acknowledge the women who have been nominated in this category before me: Autumn Durald, Zoe White, and Anette Haellmigk, who was nominated twice for her fantastic work on Game of Thrones! It’s sadly true that no woman has ever won the Emmy award in this category, but who knows- maybe this is the year!
For more on House of the Dragon, check out these stories:
*It’s our annual “Best of Summer” look back at some (not all) of our favorite interviews from the past few months. This non-comprehensive look back includes the Barbenheimer phenomenon and the wonderful interviews that followed those two history-making films, chats with the talented folks behind Mission: Impossible, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, our profile of MPA Creator Award Recipient and filmmaker extraordinaire Gina Prince-Bythewood and more.
Editors’ Note: This story contains mild spoilers.
The action in Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One rolls out like a conveyor belt ofdelicious candy, leaving you wanting more. And director Christopher McQuarrie delivers those highs again and again. The global affair treks from Abu Dhabi for a swirling desert shootout and on to Rome for a goosebumps-inducing car chase, in, of course, an adorable yellow FIAT. It then lands in Norway for that epic, very realmotorcycle stunt that everyone, including your mother, is talking about. Tom Cruise repeated the death-defying stunt that has him jumping off a 4,000-foot cliff into a ravine before opening a parachute to land atop a moving train seven times. Yes, seven. If the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences is still wondering why it should award an Oscar for stunts, these are seven reasons to make this a reality.
Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One from Paramount Pictures and Skydance.Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One from Paramount Pictures and Skydance.Tom Cruise plays Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning – Part One from Paramount Pictures and Skydance.
The story that ignites this edge-of-your-seat thrill ride is a tale of high-stakes espionage reminiscent of the very first Mission Impossible (1996). McQuarrie even puts in his own version of the infamous bridge scene from the original film that sees Jim Phelps (Jon Voigt) fake his own death—this time with different results. The twisty plot has Ethan Hunt (Cruise) in search of a key that unlocks the power of an artificial intelligence that’s gone rogue. Seemingly everyone Hunt crosses paths with also wants it, including Grace (Hayley Atwell), a master thief, former MI6 intelligence officer Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) from Rogue Nation, a new deadly adversary in Gabriel (Esai Morales), The White Widow (Vanessa Kirby), and Kittridge (Henry Czerny), who is now acting CIA director.
Tom Cruise and Rebecca Ferguson in Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning – Part One from Paramount Pictures and Skydance.
Lensing Dead Reckoning Part One was cinematographer Fraser Taggart, who shot Rogue Nation and Fallout as the 2nd unit cinematographer. (Part Two is in production with Taggart on board.) “When I was growing up, which is a long time ago now, movies gave you escapism. They took me to different places in the world, and I adored that as a kid,” says Taggart. “We very much wanted to make this movie feel the same way. To give the audience that escapism to other countries.”
Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One from Paramount Pictures and Skydance.
Taggart furnished each location with a distinct look. In Abu Dhabi, he referenced Lawrence of Arabia. Rome brought a rich color palette and higher contrast. In Norway, a slightly cooler aesthetic. It’s here where a climactic action-packed train sequence unfolds. This is a sequence that manages to contain the very soul of the franchise—Ethan Hunt pushed to his absolute limits, which, it turns out, are incredibly flexible. Whatever it takes, Hunt will adapt and stretch himself to the challenge.
Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One from Paramount Pictures and Skydance.Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One from Paramount Pictures and Skydance.
In preparation for actual shooting days, the team found a location in England to practice. Taggart researched and tested all the camera angles and shots that would be used to record the action, whether it was a drone, helicopter, or mounted camera. In capturing a fight sequence between Ethan and Gabriel atop the speeding train, handheld cameras were used to give it “energy and life” but in a controlled way.
The biggest “oh my” moment is when the train runs out of track and is about to fall hundreds of feet below into a quarry. Ethan and Grace (Hayley Atwell) are in the train car that’s about to go over and have to climb up to save themselves. Practical train cars were built and placed on huge hydraulic rigs constructed by the special effects department. These rigs could lift the carriage around 80 feet into the air and tilt it 30 degrees. “The scene has the train moving like a caterpillar whereas the weight goes over into the falling edge, it lifts the carriage behind and slams it down in a sort of zero-g moment,” explains Taggart. “All the physical effects were quite incredible.”
Tom Cruise and Hayley Atwell in Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One from Paramount Pictures and Skydance.
Stunt doubles rehearsed the sequence first to choreograph the precise action before Cruise and Atwell stepped in. “Hayley amazed me the first time she did the run with Tom,” says Taggart. “We’re on safety wires, but we are 80 feet in the air with them. She and Tom have to trust everyone around them. She went for it on the first take, and it was brilliant.”
When the train finally does fall over, production physically crashed a train on location in England. “We dropped a real carriage, so that’s all used in the movie,” says Taggart. “For me, you want to feel like you’re on the train with them. You want to feel like another character in the movie stuck on the train. It’s a very important part of these movies. It’s a challenge, but it works very well.”
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is in theaters now.
For more on Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, check out these stories:
Calgary-based hairstylist Chris Harrison-Glimsdale happily pursued the apocalypse and lived to tell the tale. In fact, she’s got an Emmy nomination for her efforts, alongside her colleagues Penny Thompson and Courtney Ullrich, for shaping the locks of the survivors and their undead pursuers who populated HBO’s critically acclaimed series The Last Of Us.
Co-created by Craig Mazin (Chernobyl) and Neil Druckmann (creator of the critical and commercial smash hit video game that the series is based on), The Last Of Us is focused on two survivors of a fungi-based plague, Joel (Pedro Pascal) and his charge, Ellie (Bella Ramsey), who venture across a devastated American landscape that’s been turned into the world’s worst salad—the plague is the result of the Cordyceps genus (it includes some 600 species) run amok, which has turned a huge percentage of the global population into a garden variety of zombies nearly as variable as the fungus kingdom itself (there are an estimated 2.2 to 3.8 million species, but nobody knows for sure—only 148,000 have been identified).
Hair department head Harrison-Glimsdale and her team—which at certain points included 35 additional stylists to help handle the hordes of infected—were key to helping Mazin and Druckmann build their beautifully grotesque hellscape. We spoke to the Emmy nominee about creating a world in which a shower is mostly a thing of the past, a zombie might retain a remnant of their old hairstyle, and mushrooms reign supreme.
Tell me a bit about your team and how you tackled the huge number of actors that needed to be styled.
We were four people full-time. It was me, Penny Thompson, Judy Durbacz, and Eva Baulackey. We also had Pedro [Pascal]’s stylist, Courtney Ullrich, who came in after the first episode. They were everything to me. They kept me in line and in order and were there to help me process the main cast, as well as help me work on the infected with the Gowers [Barrie and Sarah Gower, the prosthetics designers]. We’d create the look for the character after consulting with Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann, achieving the right level of grittiness dimension, and depth for where each character went. I also had a team of thirty-five hairstylists that came and did a boot camp where I taught everyone how to lay hair because it’s not something we do all the time.
Chris Harrison-Glimsdale (left) on set. Courtesy HBO/Max.
What is laying hair?
Laying hair is adding the lace pieces into the prosthetics. So we’d go in and lay single strands of hair into the cordyceps in collaboration with the effects team. We’d teach them how to lay the hair, so it looked like the hair was coming out of the cordyceps instead of laying flat. It had to look like the mushrooms were growing through the hair. That was a really important thing to explain. And then we had to teach them how it should look as the infected were moving and getting into fight sequences.
How long did it take to turn someone into one of the infected?
To apply the cordyceps and the hair was a five to six-hour process for each actor or stunt person. It was a pretty in-depth procedure, and so much fun to get in there and work with them. So when it was just the main cast, we had the four of us, but when we had the really big days with the infected, we had thirty-five people working with me and my team. We had a very organized with the Gowers; it was a very smooth machine. Also with wardrobe, because their clothes had cordyceps on them, too, everyone was so great at collaborating.
One of the infected in “The Last of Us.” Courtesy Max.
And because the infected are in various stages of infection, that must have added a degree of difficulty to your work.
Every single infected was different. We had to recreate hairlines of the different levels of the infected, that was the best part. We got to go from lots of hair to no hair, going in and adding full or partial wigs—it was just so creative on our end of it.
Did the Clickers have hair?
They did have hair. Very sparse, usually long and jagged. So when we did the Clickers, I’d apply the lace piece between the cordyceps and then cut it to where we needed each character. Each Clicker had to look different; they each had their own characteristics and their own story. Whether it was shorter hair or longer hair, it was always very thin and processed because it had fallen out as the cordyceps grew.
Samuel Hoeksema in “The Last Of Us.” Photograph by Liane Hentscher/HBO
One thing that stuck with me from a previous The Last of Us interview was the idea that the infected were people, and there was a real commitment to bring that across in the series. Yes, they’re terrifying, but there was a person there beneath the cordyceps.
We thought about that. We had to create their backstory to understand how to create their hair. Finding out what they’re wearing helped us figure out the mold of their hair and the style. If they’re in a nurse’s uniform, did they have their hair tied back? Those questions came into play. They weren’t just wild creatures. It was haunting to look into the infected’s eyes and see the real person there. Even when the Clickers were attacking Ellie and Joel in the museum, it was real; those actors were those Clickers, and you actually got chills because you could feel that they were human.
One of the most haunting scenes is in the first episode, when Joel’s daughter Sarah (Nico Parker) is in the foreground, and the old woman, their neighbor, is becoming infected behind her.
We had a big part in that. We created that woman’s look with the Gowers. Her sparse hair was a wig we’d created with Nair. We took it apart and gave her the hollowness and bedhead. She had the look of someone who had been taken care of as a granny at home where someone had brushed her hair, but she still had the bedhead. She was still coherent but not really there. Everything worked well together between the wardrobe and the Gowers going through and modeling her face with [makeup department head] Connie Parker and [key makeup artist] Joanna Mireau. Then, adding the wig and the nightdress gave you that realism of someone switching over. The faintness of her twitches—that all came together, and you could really feel it.
Nico Parker in “The Last of Us.” Courtesy Max.
We’re obviously dealing with an apocalyptic landscape, so bathing isn’t the most important thing for the survivors. How did you make people look credibly unshowered?
We really did our research, going through photos of people in the backcountry, tribes, and people when there were not a lot of resources for washing. The texture and dimension of their hair and how it looked. Also, not making them look crazy. Even when you don’t have those things, you still pat down your hair and style it.We tried to use a lot of natural oils and conditioners and then used real dirt so that we could mix it in with the product. We also got things in at the very root instead of piling it on top. Get in there and make it real. We did a lot of rubbing every day, so you’d go, you look perfect. Even when a performer didn’t wash their hair, we’d say,great! Let’s manipulate that a little bit. And using natural fibers to tie their hair because they didn’t always have elastics or anything like that. So, we’d cover strips of fabric in dirt and break it down a bit. But still, a woman wouldn’t always want hair in their face, so they’d tie it back.
Bella Ramsey. Photograph by Liane Hentscher/HBO
And for the main characters?
For Ellie, we kept it very simple and plain. We used a fabric tie to tie her ponytail back. We also gave her all that breakage around her face, which was us going in and cutting it up to keep it like that. Also, she has a natural curl, so with the sweat in it, it would kind of move really naturally. We thought of it like this: imagine you were working outside all day. If you had long hair, you’d tie it back and have all that fuzziness and broken-down bits. I had my team looking at construction workers, farmers, wranglers, and even crew members. People who are doing physical things all day. So, for the background actors, that’s how I wanted them to look: not contrived, not perfect, just natural.
Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey. Photograph by Liane Hentscher/HBO
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The life of a hired hitman may seem mysterious and exotic, but Barry has a blunt message for us all. No one is immune to insecurities, mundane moments, or our own very bad ideas. The series’ final season freed the characters to face their fates, be they heroic, humble, or humorous. Barry ended with tight and tense action where no one was able to outrun their past and step out into the light.
“I think what makes Barry interesting – and what I’m often compelled to when it comes to the stories that I personally like – is it reflects the real world,” cinematographer Carl Herse noted. “The world can be both tragic and silly all at once. The universe is kind of indifferent to that. Whether you’re having the best day of your life or the worst day of your life, that’s how your experience is, but the people around you their experience is not that. That was, for me, the perspective I wanted with the camera, and something Bill [Hader] and I talked about was taking these very objective points of view, and then you develop them into something that’s deeply subjective.”
Bill Hader in “Barry” season 4. Courtesy Max.
Herse jumped onto the project in season 3 and served as director of photography for all eight episodes of the final season of Barry. Co-creator and star Bill Hader directed the entirety of season 4. Although a hefty undertaking, Herse felt that the consistency of their collaboration made the process easier. “He and I got along so well, and [we] were just immediately on the same page about what the show should be, so we did it as one. Really, we treated the whole thing like a big movie. Instead of dealing with it episodically, we treated it like one big story.”
Herse is nominated for an Emmy for his work on the pivotal episode “Tricky Legacies,” which drops in on the fallout of Barry and Sally (Sarah Goldberg) going on the run. Eight years after they make a romantic pact to escape and live in hiding together, routine stresses, old habits, and the weight of their secret have taken a toll. They live cloistered lives with a son who doesn’t understand their fringe existence.
Sarah Goldberg, Zachary Golinger, Bill Hader. Photograph by Merrick Morton/HBO
“We wanted darkness to feel tangible in the show,” Herse explained. “For ‘Tricky Legacies,’ I love that whole sequence with Barry and Sally where they’re sitting in the living room at the beginning because it’s this observational wide shot, but they each have these black windows right over their heads, so you feel this oppressive blackness hovering over them. Then the sequence of Bill hearing the knock and walking out the door is all told very much from his perspective. It’s all about what he can’t see that is so scary.”
An eerie and alien flatland plagues Barry’s visions throughout the season. In “Tricky Legacies,” that desolate spot is revealed to be the family’s hiding place. Despite the empty expanse around them, Barry and Sally grow paranoid that old enemies are closing in. Herse’s lighting becomes a threatening force.
Bill Hader and Zachary Goling in episode 5, “Tricky Legacies.” Courtesy Max.
“When [Barry’s] standing out there at the edge of the yard, he’s facing down the darkness,” Herse said. “The goal that Bill and I talked about is [typically] when you shoot a big field at night, you would have cranes for a mile to light up trees or the landscape. We wanted it to feel like there was almost a wall. The darkness was at his doorstep, and he was staring it down, and even he couldn’t see ten feet in front of him. I love this episode because the whole thing feels like this gothic thriller. It almost feels like a supernatural thriller. There’s almost this ominous sense of uncertainty that hovers over the whole thing.”
Barry and Sally have tried to put their tumultuous past behind them. Now living quiet, domestic lives, they each cope with a crutch. For Barry, it is zealous religion while Sally turns to alcohol.
“Bill and I will watch something like Paris, Texas and fawn over how they could have shot a scene in such a magical sunset. Then when we scouted the shot of Sally walking at the gas station while she’s on the phone with Barry and drinking after work, we didn’t know we’d get a sunset like that, but you just design everything so that if you happen to get something interesting, it’s there,” Herse revealed. “It’s that preparation meets luck, and that’s what happened, and it just worked out beautifully. We could have shot that another 45 minutes because the sunset just kept getting better and better, but we knew we had it.”
Sarah Goldberg. Photograph by Merrick Morton/HBO.
By stark contrast, the most talked about scene of the season takes place in an interrogation room with no windows. While Barry negotiates for his safety, a less-than-competent hitman played by Fred Armisen fumbles the job. During Barry’s incarceration, many scenes were filmed in a real maximum-security prison, but the botched assassination attempt was moved to a soundstage. Herse cites cinematographer Robby Müller’s work for inspiring him to feel free to mix lighting sources and qualities when striving for realism.
“A lot of times when you’re designing a set, everyone gets too hung up in the symmetry of the set, and when you walk into a real environment, no one is thinking about – especially if you’re designing a prison – how it would look through a camera,” Herse explained. “Just putting things up a little haphazardly, the lighting goes up in a weird way, the shadows are weird, and it’s really about trying to fight your urge to make things look perfect and symmetrical or the light to look beautiful. We purposely used mixed colored bulbs even within fixtures so that if you saw through the fixture, you’d see a warm fluorescent and a cool fluorescent because whoever the maintenance person would be in a real environment would not really pay attention to what color tubes would be going into that kind of stuff. Those are ways to create a sense of expression and also realism.”
David Warshofsky, Bill Hader, Cornell Womack. hotograph by Merrick Morton/HBO
The most unnerving action of Barry is sometimes just off-screen. Early in the season, a guard attacks Barry in a stunning shot that Herse captured in a brilliant way. “Tricky Legacies” follows Sally into an anxious moment with a coworker in the bathroom. Herse explained how manipulating the camera’s perspective can shift the meaning of a scene.
“We oftentimes try to start with something that feels more objective like the indifferent universe, and then you start slowly pushing in and realizing what the scene is about and trying to express the tension that is building throughout that scene,” he said. “I think that scene with Sally is a perfect example because it starts as a wide observational two shot that is slowly pushing in. Normally, something like that would end with something we call a 50/50, which is two people in a tight profile shot. But the way it was blocked, it becomes very much over Sally onto Bevel (Spenser Granese). Now you’re telling this story that it’s this cat-and-mouse game where she’s in total control. That is all told as one shot, which we found to be very interesting.”
Sally’s fall is punctuated by the success of her rival, Natalie (D’Arcy Carden). Sally obsessively follows Natalie’s career, watching her hit show Just Desserts, even tuning in for bonus material. Herse filmed those clips as well, even though they are wildly different in tone than Barry. “It was nice because there was a lot of heaviness that had to be shot in the final few episodes. The comedy was there, and Bill is so funny, and everyone is so friendly with one another. It was fun to end the show in an upbeat way with these silly stories that didn’t match our film language. It was fun to flex different muscles. I would be terrified to shoot a 3-camera sitcom because I’ve never done it. That was a whole conversation between Bill and me. As people who have never done it before, how close do we need to be to what it would be?”
D’Arcy Carden. Photograph by Merrick Morton/HBO
The final season was saturated with interesting framing, lighting, and perspectives, but Herse stands by “Tricky Legacies” as some of his best work. “I chose this episode in particular because I felt like we were able to use the camera to really inform the audience in a way that you always try to do, but Bill and I both came out of this episode thinking we had a tone in mind, a vision in mind, and we felt like we pulled it off for the most part. It was something we were really excited to share with people.”
A slew of new images for Zack Snyder’s space opera Rebel Moon have landed here on Earth. They follow the meaty official trailer, which offered our most expansive look yet at what Snyder and his cast and crew have been cooking up. The images give us a closer look at the characters who are thrust into the trailer’s relentless action, which reveals the crux of the story Snyder and his team are telling. In Rebel Moon, a peaceful galaxy is set upon by the armies of a tyrannical lunatic, and their only hope is a mysterious woman who lives quietly among them. She steps up to help raise enough fighters to defend and avenge them, an effort that seems like certain death against the vast, brutal armies prepared to lay them to waste. In the trailer, we hear Anthony Hopkins’ voice as he narrates the central myth of Rebel Moon (a story about a young girl born to bring peace to the galaxy), but we don’t realize that Hopkins’ character, Jimmy, is actually a robot in the film. We see him in two of the images below.
The images include fresh looks Rebel Moon‘s central figure, Sofia Boutella’s Kora, that mysterious figure living among the peaceful villages makes it her mission to recruit enough fighters to make a stand. Kora’s rag-tag army will include outsiders, peasants, insurgents, and orphans of war from various worlds, all brought together under the banner of resisting tyranny and avenging the wrongs of men like Admiral Noble (Ed Skrein), the pitiless tyrant who claims all that he sees as his own.
We also get looks at Ray Fisher as Darien Bloodaxe, Bae Doona as the arachnid-like Nemesis, Jena Malone as Harmada, Staz Nair as Tarak, Charlie Hunnam as Kai, Cleopatra Coleman as Devra Bloodaxe, E. Duffy as Milius, Charlotte Maggi as Sam, and Michiel Huisman as Gunnar. We even get a new look at Snyder on set.
Rebel Moon is a film that Znyder’s been dreaming about for years (it began as a potential Star Wars spinoff more than a decade ago) and is based on a script he wrote with his Army of the Dead co-writer Shay Hatten and his 300 co-writer Kurt Johnstad.
Check out the photos below. Rebel Moon Part 1: A Child of Fire arrives on Netflix on December 22, while Part 2: The Scargiver lands on April 19, 2024:
The first official trailer for Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon is here, revealing the sci-fi epic he’s been dreaming about for years. The trailer abounds in action, with the thrust of the story—a peaceful galaxy is set upon by the armies of a tyrannical lunatic and must count upon one woman to help lead them to victory against this madman—is mostly left to the visuals to do the explaining. Helpfully, we also have narration from none other than Anthony Hopkins (he plays a man named Jimmy in Snyder’s film), who relates a myth about a young girl who was supposed to bring peace to the galaxy. It’s a peace that, as of yet, seems incredibly elusive. He’s never seen it, or the girl, in his long life.
That young girl, it seems, turns out to be Sofia Boutella’s Kora, a mysterious figure living among the peaceful villages who must recruit enough fighters to make a stand. Kora’s rag-tag army will include outsiders, peasants, insurgents, and orphans of war from various worlds, all brought together under the banner of resisting tyranny and avenging the wrongs of men like Admiral Noble (Ed Skrein), the pitiless tyrant who claims all that he sees as his own.
Rebel Moon will arrive in two parts. Part 1: A Child of Fire arrives first, on December 22, while Part 2: The Scargiver lands on April 19, 2024. It’s a film that Znyder’s been dreaming about for years (it began as a potential Star Wars spinoff more than a decade ago) and is based on a script he wrote with his Army of the Dead co-writer Shay Hatten and his 300 co-writer Kurt Johnstad.
Joining Boutella and Hopkins are Djimon Hounso, Carey Elwes, Charlie Hunnam, Corey Stoll, Michiel Huisman, Alfonso Herrera, Doona Bae, Ray Fisher, Rupert Friend, and Stuart Martin.
Check out the teaser trailer below. Rebel Moon arrives on Netflix on December 22:
Here’s the official synopsis for Rebel Moon:
From Zack Snyder, the filmmaker behind 300, Man of Steel, and Army of the Dead, comes REBEL MOON, an epic science-fantasy event decades in the making. When a peaceful colony on the edge of a galaxy finds itself threatened by the armies of a tyrannical ruling force, Kora (Sofia Boutella), a mysterious stranger living among the villagers, becomes their best hope for survival. Tasked with finding trained fighters who will unite with her in making an impossible stand against the Mother World, Kora assembles a small band of warriors — outsiders, insurgents, peasants and orphans of war from different worlds who share a common need for redemption and revenge. As the shadow of an entire Realm bears down on the unlikeliest of moons, a battle over the fate of a galaxy is waged, and in the process, a new army of heroes is formed.
An epic team-up for the ages will take place when Jason Momoa and Dave Bautista join forces to star in Ángel Manuel Soto’s Wrecking Crew. Warrior creator Jonathan Tropper has penned the script, which Soto, fresh from helming DC Studios’ Blue Beetle, will direct. The Hollywood Reporterhas the scoop that both Bautista and Momoa were in talks to co-star in the film before the actors’ strike began, while Tropper’s script came in and his deal closed before the writer’s strike began in June.
Details about The Wrecking Crew are slight—THR reports it’s a buddy comedy, which makes sense given the charisma of both Momoa and Bautista. Momoa is coming off playing Dante in Fast X, the charismatic antagonist trying to take down Vin Diesel and his crew, and has Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom coming out this December. Bautista recently put in his final performance as Drax in James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, the franchise that made him a star.
Soto’s Blue Beetle was the first live-action superhero film to be centered on a Latino character and the first to be created by Latino talent. His breakout hit was Charm City Kings, which we had the chance to chat with him about when it debuted on HBO Max in 2020. The Wrapwas the first to report that Soto would be directing The Wrecking Crew.
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Featured image: L-r: AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND – MAY 13: Jason Momoa attends a FAST X Special New Zealand Fan Screening, hosted by Jason Momoa on May 13, 2023 in Auckland, New Zealand. (Photo by Fiona Goodall/Getty Images for Universal Pictures); NEW YORK, NEW YORK – JANUARY 30: Dave Bautista attends Universal Pictures’ “Knock At The Cabin” World Premiere at Jazz at Lincoln Center on January 30, 2023 in New York City. (Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images)
It’s long been evident that Ryan Gosling has the chops for comedy. His timing and line delivery are spot on, evident in films like The Nice Guys and his stellar performance on Saturday Night Live, specifically that now iconic digital short Papyrus. Yet in Barbie, Gosling proved he’s got dance moves and a singing voice to boot, as he absolutely crushed his performance in belting out “I’m Just Ken.” Now, Atlantic Records has provided us a video of Gosling rehearsing the pop hit alongside a pair of other Kens, played by Simu Liu and Ncuti Gatwa.
The new video reveals what it was like on set filming Barbie—there’s a reason so many of the behind-the-scenes images Warner Bros. has made available show co-writer/director Greta Gerwig laughing while filming. In fact, Gerwig loses it when Gosling rips off his fur coat. The featurette shows us the rehearsal process (which looked like a lot of fun) and footage from the film itself.
Gosling sings, dances, and plays the drums. The other Kens provide backup vocals, while Guns N’ Roses legendary guitarist Slash rips off a guitar solo.
“I’m Just Ken” has given Gosling a career first; the song has landed him on the Billboard charts, with “I’m Just Ken” debuting at 87 on the Hot 100, number 4 on Hot Rock Songs, and number 5 on Hot Rock & Alternative Songs. It became a phenomenon on TikTok and mopped up 5.2 million streams in the U.S. in its first week.
And then there’s the phenomenon of Barbie itself, which now stands as the highest-grossing domestic release in Warner Bros. history and is poised to overtake Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 as the highest-grossing release ever.
It’s a Barbie world, and we’re just living in it—alongside Ken.
Featured image: Caption: (L-r) KINGSLEY BEN-ADIR and RYAN GOSLING on the set of Warner Bros. Pictures’ “BARBIE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Jaap Buitendijk
Netflix has revealed the first trailer for director Grant Singer’s new thriller Reptile, from a script he co-wrote with Benjamin Brewer and star Benicio Del Toro. Del Toro plays Nichols, a detective dealing with a nightmare of a case. The murder of a young real estate agent leads Nichols down a dangerous rabbit hole where nothing is what it seems, and his own life, and the illusions he labors under, will unravel with the case.
“He’s a man of destiny,” Del Toro told Netflix’s Tudum about his Reptile character. “He’s a man who gets a second chance, but then something happens and a reckoning occurs.
Reptile marks the first time the Oscar-winning Del Toro has earned a screenwriting credit.
“The collaboration was a lot of fun,” Del Toro told Tudum about working on the script. “Once we knew where we needed the story to land, then the question becomes, ‘How do we get there? How do we make it interesting?’ We did research and tried to make it as real as possible. We talked about movies and storytelling with certain films as references. One that comes to mind is In Cold Blood.”
Del Toro is always a compelling screen presence, and he’s joined here by a very strong cast that includes Alicia Silverstone as Judy, Detective Nichols’ wife, and Justin Timberlake as Will, the husband of the victim.
Del Toro and Silverstone worked together way back in 1997’s Excess Baggage.
“It was great reconnecting with her. She’s smart, and she had great ideas,” Del Toro told Tudum. “Alicia brought everything we wanted for the character and more.”
“There’s a deep mutual respect and appreciation, so that makes it work well,” Silverstone added. “I was honored that they asked me to do it and that he wanted to work with me again.”
The cast also includes Frances Fisher, Michael Pitt, Ato Essandoh, Domenick Lombardozzi, Owen Teague, Eric Bogosian, and Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz.
Check out the trailer below. Reptile streams on Netflix on October 6:
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With James Gunn’s Superman: Legacy in pre-production—it won’t begin filming until the SAG-AFTRA strike is reconciled—fans are understandably enthused about what is a major reboot for DC’s most iconic superhero, arguably the most iconic superhero of them all. Gunn cast David Corenswet as his new Clark Kent, taking over for Henry Cavill, the man who played the most recent iteration of Superman, starting in Zack Snyder’s 2013 film Man of Steel and then again in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Justice League. Gunn had previously stated that his Superman: Legacy, the first film release for his new look DC Studios, which he now runs alongside Peter Safran, would focus on an earlier part of Superman’s life.
Corenswet is 30 years old (Cavill is 40, by the way), and when a fan asked Gunn on Threads if his “young Superman movie” is set in the past, Gunn clarified some things for the fan and for the rest of the world: “I was never making a ‘young Superman’ movie, just a Superman movie!”
Superman: Legacy will give us a fresh version of the legendary story of the alien who was raised on our humble little planet and went on to become our greatest superhero. Corenswet stars alongside Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane and, as Gunn has stated previously, will focus on Superman’s earlier years as he tries to figure out how to balance his life as a Daily Planet reporter in goofy glasses alongside being the most powerful person on the planet.
The two stars are joined by a growing cast that includes Nathan Fillion as Guy Gardner, Isabela Merced as Hawkgirl, Edi Gathegi as Mister Terrific, and Anthony Carrigan as Rex Mason/Metamorpho. We’re still waiting on word to hear who will play Lex Luthor and the superheroes who make up The Authority.
Superman: Legacy is set for a July 11, 2025 release date.
For more on Superman: Legacy, check out these stories:
Featured image: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – AUGUST 02: James Gunn attends the Warner Bros. premiere of “The Suicide Squad” at Regency Village Theatre on August 02, 2021 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images)
Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer has now exploded to over $700 million at the global box office. This makes Nolan’s epic biopic about J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) the fourth-biggest film in his career, with yet more time for it to climb even higher. With a current haul of $718 million, Oppenheimer has surpassed Nolan’s 2014 cosmic epic Interstellar ($715 million) and trails only his two final Batman films, The Dark Knight ($1.06 billion) and The Dark Knight Rises ($1.08 billion) and his mind-trip heist movie Inception ($837 million). Oppenheimer is the highest-grossing release in Nolan’s career, however, in more than 50 overseas markets, including Brazil, Germany, and India.
The intricate, deftly woven, and meticulously shot Oppenheimer has also been a massive draw in IMAX, boasting $146.4 million from the large format screens. (You can read our interviews with Nolan himself and cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema on how they utilized IMAX’s 70mm format to capture both the big moments and the small ones.) That makes it the fifth-highest-grossing IMAX movie of all time. The four films that brought in more on IMAX screens are also four of the most successful films of all time; James Cameron’s two Avatar films, the Russo Brothers’ Avengers: Endgame, and J.J. Abrams’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
Oppenheimer has now bested a slew of big 2023 hits—it’s raced past Fast X and swung past Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, and trails only The Super Mario Bros. Movie ($1.35 billion), Greta Gerwig’s historic Barbie ($1.279 billion), and James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 ($845 million). In North America, Nolan’s film is the highest-grossing R-rated film of 2023, besting John Wick: Chapter 4.
Joining Murphy in the stellar Oppenheimer cast are Emily Blunt, Robert Downey Jr., Matt Damon, Florence Pugh, Alden Ehrenreich, Benny Safdie, Jason Clarke, Tony Goldwyn, and more.
Featured image: L to R: Benny Safdie is Edward Teller and Cillian Murphy is J. Robert Oppenheimer in OPPENHEIMER, written, produced, and directed by Christopher Nolan.
The first reactions to Ahsoka, the latest live-action Star Wars series coming to Disney+, have arrived in under twelve parsecs (Star Wars nerd alert!). It’s good news for those eager for some more Star Wars action and even better news for fans of the animated series Star Wars: Rebels, which debuted in 2014 and is the source from which this Rosario Dawson-led series draws many of its characters and narrative drive.
Dawson plays the titular Jedi rebel operating in a galaxy after the fall of the Empire (the series set after the events of Return of the Jedi), sussing out an emerging threat in a vulnerable time. Dawson is coming in for major praise for her performance, as is Natasha Liu Bordizzo, who plays her protogé, Sabine Wren. Many of the critics who have gotten a peek at the first two episodes are saying that creator Dave Filoni (the man behind Star Wars: Rebels) has crafted an appropriately epic story, one that even casual fans will be able to follow and that Rebels fans will love.
Ahsoka features a slew of characters from the hit animated series, including Hera Syndulla (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), Ezra Bridger (Eman Esfandi), and the main villain, Grand Admiral Thrawn (Lars Mikkelsen). Newcomers include Baylan Skoll (the late Ray Stevenson) and Shin Hati (Ivanna Sakhno). Then there’s Darth Vader himself, at least the version played by Hayden Christensen, who returns here after playing a major role in Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Let’s take a peek at what some of the critics are saying. Ahsoka arrives on Disney+ on August 23.
Initial #Ahsoka thoughts: Dave Filoni lovingly brings his rebels to life in a story that embraces mythology, magic, and lore in a way that could turn off, say, ANDOR fans. Slower paced than expected but still enthralling for this Rebels fan. Natasha Liu Bordizzo is my early MVP. pic.twitter.com/fK9lZY4eqo
First two #Ahsoka episodes are really good! Fans of Rebels are in for a treat as this is Filoni’s Star Wars in the best way possible.
Loving Natasha Liu Bordizzo’s Sabine, as well as Ray Stevenson’s Baylan Skoll. Some great lightsaber action throughout too, which I LOVED. pic.twitter.com/3ajk3fP5VE
#Ahsoka episodes 1 & 2 are tremendous. As expected, #SabineWren steals every single scene she’s in. The villains are tremendous, so very interesting, with so much potential. There’s a pace to the story that’s really enjoyable, and the character dynamics are fun. pic.twitter.com/SLJQ7aKIDS
The first 2 eps of #Ahsoka hooked me. Definitely a continuation of Rebels and it’s worth brushing up when we last saw everyone. I cant take my eyes off Ivanna Sakhno whenever she’s on screen and I’m so intrigued by her character. Would like a Loth-cat to cuddle this evening. pic.twitter.com/SKdMSfdjoZ
A promising start for #Ahsoka with many cool story elements that expand the #StarWars universe and feel different from Mando. Ep 1 has some slow moments involving a MacGuffin but Ep 2 really gels. Sabine is a standout. I think those meeting her for first time will really dig her. pic.twitter.com/Jzt6GFqkAt
First two episodes of #Ahsoka are really good. Even if you’ve never seen #Rebels or #clonewars it’s super easy to follow. Impressed with the action & how it’s all story. No side missions or filler. Can’t wait to see episode 3. Wish I could watch future episodes on a movie screen. pic.twitter.com/x1aEi0DRZ5
#Ahsoka is a DREAM COME TRUE for Star Wars Rebels fans and an exciting reunion for my fav characters in the galaxy. I’ve seen the first 2 episodes and while it trades whimsy for more serious tone, the performances & action are STELLAR. #Sabine is perfect. A VERY promising start! pic.twitter.com/IBZ4lzFBqi
— Daniel Baptista • The Movie Podcast (@dbapz) August 18, 2023
I think #Ahsoka has a lot of potential. As a Rebels fan, I felt a connection to it that was truly special. And yet it’s hugely epic at some times & oddly flat at others. Sabine is the standout through & by Ep 2 I was fully sucked in. It could go south but I don’t think it will 🤞 pic.twitter.com/9BKgNcgXuR
#Ahsoka is epic! It’s got those classic Star Wars vibes while also feeling very fresh. The first episodes set the scene vividly, with intriguing villains, a complex bond between Ahsoka and Sabine, and some awesome lightsaber duels already – I really think we’re in for a treat 🧡 pic.twitter.com/oFslCUzqFL
I just watched the first two episodes of the #Ahsoka series! It’s a true visual spectacle. Rosario Dawson is phenomenal as the titular star. The fight scenes are epic and heart pounding. The story has a rich history and great themes about second chances and female empowerment.
I enjoyed the first two episodes of #Ahsoka, and the best part about it is that it’s focused on telling one grand story.
I’ve never watched the animated shows, so I don’t know the ins and outs of these characters’ backstories, but their dynamics are clear. pic.twitter.com/L6iwc8eoMB
Sure, Greta Gerwig’s longtime collaborators Timothée Chalamet and Saoirse Ronan might not have been able to snag roles in Barbie (scheduling conflicts, unfortunately), but one actor who made sure he was available to get a plum part was Michael Cera. In fact, Certa, who plays the lonely, singular Allan, a doll introduced as Ken’s pal that was ultimately neglected and discontinued, managed to get his role at the last possible second.
“It was a kind of very last-minute casting,” Cera said in a video interview with GQ that was conducted before the actors’ strike. “My manager got a call checking on my availability for it, and he called me, and he said, ‘I got a call about this movie. It’s the Barbie movie. Greta Gerwig’s directing it, and it’s filming in London for four months of something, so I told them you probably wouldn’t want to do it because you probably don’t want to go to London.’”
Cera wanted to go to London. The seasoned actor wisely understood that you don’t pass up on a Greta Gerwig movie unless you absolutely cannot make it work in your schedule.
“I was like, ‘What! Call them back!’ He didn’t like blow it or anything, but he’s like, ‘I managed their expectations that you might not want to do it.’ I was like, ‘How can I not do it? I need to do it!’” Cera said to GQ.
Instead of waiting for the situation to be handled on his behalf, Cera got Gerwig’s email and asked her point blank if he could do the part.
“And she was like, ‘Let’s get on a Zoom right now. Here’s a Zoom link; I’ll be on there for the next hour,'” he told GQ. “So she was just hanging out on the Zoom, like, ‘Click the link whenever you’re ready.’ And then we talked about it, and it just all happened really fast from there.”
The Allan doll, according to Cera, was discontinued by Mattel because it wasn’t selling, and “the world just didn’t need for Ken to have a friend.” While there is a bounty of various Barbies in the world, Cera says that for Ken, Mattel decided, “We don’t need to go deeper in that direction. So Allan fell by the wayside a little bit.”
In Barbie, however, Allan gets his moment, and Cera is hilarious. Barbie itself, of course, is getting the last laugh. It’s already Warner Bros. highest-grossing domestic film of all time, and, if momentum holds, it will likely become the highest-grossing film, period, in Warners Bros. history.
Featured image: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – JUNE 25: Michael Cera attends the press junket and photo call For “Barbie” at Four Seasons Hotel Los Angeles at Beverly Hills on June 25, 2023 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Jon Kopaloff/Getty Images)
Apple TV+ has revealed the first look at their upcoming series Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, which will continue the epic story of the Titans and Monarch, the shadowy organization that tracks them. The Titans, cinema’s most iconic beasts, are epitomized by the king of them all, Godzilla, who will be a part of the new series.
The reveal includes a good look at good old Godzilla, as well as the father and son duo of Kurt and Wyatt Russell, both starring here. The story will span three generations and center on two siblings who are following in their father’s footsteps to unearth their family’s connection to the Monarch organization, that secretive cabal that has been tracking the various Titans—be they Godzilla, King Kong, Mothra, King Ghidorah, or any of the other beasts who have appeared in Legendary’s Monsterverse films.
Eventually, the siblings sleuthing leads them to an Army officer named Lee Shaw, who is played by Wyatt Russell as a young man in the 1950s and then by Kurt Russell in the show’s present, which is set after the events in 2014’s Godzilla. Shaw is the key individual who holds secrets that are a major threat to Monarch.
Joining the Russells are Anna Sawai, Kiersey Clemons, Ren Watabe, Mari Yamamoto, Anders Holm, Joe Tippett, and Eliza Lasowski.
Monarch: Legacy of Monsters was co-developed by Matt Fraction (Hawkeye) and Chris Black (Outcast, Star Trek: Enterprise), with Matt Shakman (WandaVision) helming the first two episodes.
No streaming date details have been provided yet.
Check out the images here:
Episode 1. Wyatt Russell in “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters,” coming soon to Apple TV+.Episode 2. Anna Sawai in “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters,” coming soon to Apple TV+.Episode 3. Kurt Russell in “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters,” coming soon to Apple TV+.
Here’s the official synopsis:
Following the thunderous battle between Godzilla and the Titans that leveled San Francisco and the shocking revelation that monsters are real, “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters” tracks two siblings following in their father’s footsteps to uncover their family’s connection to the secretive organization known as Monarch. Clues lead them into the world of monsters and ultimately down the rabbit hole to Army officer Lee Shaw (played by Kurt Russell and Wyatt Russell), taking place in the 1950s and half a century later where Monarch is threatened by what Shaw knows. The dramatic saga — spanning three generations — reveals buried secrets and the ways that epic, earth-shattering events can reverberate through our lives.
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The news broke this week that Greta Gerwig’s Barbie just surpassed Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight as the highest-grossing film at the domestic box office in Warner Bros. history. You likely also know that Gerwig and Nolan have been sharing the spotlight this entire summer, thanks to the simultaneous July 21 release of Barbie and Nolan’s Oppenheimer, his three-hour epic about J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) that has wowed audiences across the globe. While Gerwig’s phenomenal Barbie has been breaking records left-and-right (it took a mere 17 days to reach the billion-dollar benchmark, the fastest of any Warner Bros. film ever, to name just one), Nolan’s Oppenheimer has had a remarkable run in its own right, and now, it’s poised to reach an unusual, yet somehow wonderful, milestone. Oppenheimer is about to become the highest-grossing U.S. movie never to hit the top spot at the box office.
Previously, this unusual achievement belonged to the animated 2016 hit Sing, which was a critical and commercial success that still never managed to be number one at the box office due to Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and Hidden Figures. Oppenheimer has pulled in more than $270 million in four weeks, with some folks driving across state lines to see it in 70mm IMAX. Sing ultimately ended up with $634.2 million worldwide, a figure that Oppenheimer will pass.
And what about becoming the highest-grossing film worldwide never to hit the top spot? To claim that title, Oppenheimer would have to make more than $902 million to surpass the Chinese hit The Battle at Lake Changjin.
It should probably go without saying that these records are not the reason why Nolan makes his films, but what he does want, what he’s always strived for, is to create the kind of viewing experience that audiences can only get in the theater. What’s more, he’s been the most ardent user and supporter of the IMAX format, and his passion for filmmaking on the grandest possible scale has resonated with audiences all across the United States and the globe. The odd records like “highest-grossing domestic film to never hit the top spot” are surely not Nolan’s bag, but giving as many people as possible the best moviegoing experience he can, is Nolan’s bag.
We laughed when Barbie casting directors Allison Jones and Lucy Bevan described eager actors auditioning for the role of Ken removing their shirts unnecessarily while they read their lines for a scene where two Kens challenge each other. “Those scenes were fun to audition,” Bevan told us. “Some of the Kens would take off their t-shirts, and we were like, no, no, you don’t need to take off your t-shirt.” The role of this one particularly challenging Ken (facing off against Ryan Gosling’s version) ultimately went to Simu Liu.
Such was the eagerness to join Greta Gerwig on her journey to turn the iconic Mattel doll (and her male sidekick, Ken) into flesh-and-blood characters that performers, many of them major stars, were ready to disrobe to be a part of it. Not all of those performers would have been auditioning; they just needed to make Barbie‘s shooting schedule work with their own schedules. One of those was Timothée Chalamet.
Gerwig revealed in an interview with Hollywood First Look that Chalamet had visited the film’s London set and was bummed he wasn’t able to be a part of the action. Chalamet was in Gerwig’s first two (excellent) directorial efforts, Lady Bird and Little Women. She told Cinemablendthat she wanted both Chalamet and her other longtime collaborator and muse, Saoirse Ronan, to have cameos in Barbie, but neither could do it due to scheduling conflicts.
When Gerwig spoke with Hollywood First Look about the situation, she said, “I tried to get them both in it. They both couldn’t do it. Although Timothée did come by the set and then said, ‘I should have been in this,’ And I was like, ‘I know! Why aren’t you in this?’”
Ronan was working on filming and producing The Outrun, adapted from a memoir from the Scottish journalist and author Amy Liptrot.
Citing their scheduling conflicts, Gerwig admitted she was frustrated she couldn’t deploy her two go-to performers in her now historic film. “Both of them couldn’t do it, and I was so annoyed. But I love them so much. But it felt like doing something without my children. I mean, I’m not their mom, but I sort of feel like their mom.”
So, Chalamet and Ronan joined an illustrious list of big stars who wanted—but couldn’t—snag a role in Barbie. That list includes SNL star Bowen Yang, Schitt’s Creek Emmy winner Dan Levy, and Dear Evan Hansen Tony winner Ben Platt were all vying to play versions of Ken, but they, too, were foiled by scheduling conflicts. Before Michael Cera landed the plum role of playing Ken’s down-on-his-luck pal Allan, Jonathan Groff was interested.
You could easily imagine all these stellar actors in the film, and yet, the Barbie we got feels perfectly calibrated and cast. Gerwig’s Barbie is already the highest-grossing domestic release in Warners Bros. history and has a real shot at becoming their biggest release, period, ever. All those actors who thought, “Greta Gerwig is doing Barbie? I want in!” were right to trust their instincts.
Featured image: NEW YORK, NEW YORK – DECEMBER 07: Director Greta Gerwig and actor Timothée Chalamet attend the “Little Women” World Premiere at Museum of Modern Art on December 07, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images)
Greta Gerwig’s take on Mattel’s iconic doll has now become the highest-grossing domestic release in Warner Bros. history as Barbie has officially passed Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. Barbie crossed the $537.5 million mark at the domestic box office, topping Nolan’s The Dark Knight‘s $536 million haul. The Margot Robbie-led look at what happens when Barbie starts questioning her reality has struck a major chord with audiences, which benefited from an incredible marketing campaign, excellent word-of-mouth, rave reviews, and a starry cast that went all-in.
Gerwig’s historic film is only going to smash more records in the coming days as it’s poised to overtake The Super Mario Bros. Movie‘s $574 million and become 2023’s biggest domestic hit. Barbie has already hit $1.2 billion globally, so surpassing Mario Bros.’ $1.35 billion global haul is very much within reach.
Barbie has been a pink-hued juggernaut since it was released on July 21, half of the Barbenheimer phenomenon in which Gerwig’s historic film premiered the same day as Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. Nolan’s epic biopic has exceeded all expectations as well, once again uniting the two filmmakers. It only took Barbie a mere 17 days to hit the billion-dollar threshold, the fastest film in Warner Bros. history to do so. If Barbie passes $1.34 billion globally, it will best Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 as the highest-grossing global film in Warner Bros. history.
It goes without saying that we’re living in Barbie‘s world at this point.
Featured image: Caption: MARGOT ROBBIE as Barbie in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “BARBIE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
Scott Pilgrim is back in a form that would no doubt suit the flesh-and-blood character from Edgar Wright’s 2010 hit Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Making the transition from Wright’s live-action film to the new Netflix anime series all the smoother is the fact that the original Scott Pilgrim himself, Michael Cera, voices Scott Pilgrim, and he’s joined by a ton of stars from Wright’s film, including Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Aubrey Plaza, Anna Kendrick, Alison Pill, Kiernan Culkin, Chris Evans, Jason Schwartzman, Brie Larson, Ellen Wong and more. It’s a family affair with the Scott Pilgrim cast, Wright explained.
“Luckily, the Scott Pilgrim cast became a close-knit family, and friendships were forged for life,” Wright said in Netflix’s Tudumlast March. “There is still a group email with the entire cast on it that’s been going since 2010. I was happy to be able to reach out to everyone with the news that we had finally come up with a way to continue the adventure. Seeing (and hearing) everyone come back to their roles has been a true pleasure.”
The new series follows the events in Wright’s film, which itself was based on Bryan Lee O’Malley’s graphic novel series. Scott Pilgrim Takes Off runs eight episodes long and comes from the animation studio Science Saru. The new series is written by O’Malley and BenDavid Grabinski, who are also the showrunners.
Check out the teaser below. Scott Pilgrim Takes Off streams on Netflix on November 17.
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