“We love Indiana Jones because we love movies,” director James Mangold says at the top of this new featurette for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Mangold is the first man to ever helm an Indiana Jones film not named Steven Spielberg, so the stakes were high, but what helped Mangold’s cause was his genuine love of the franchise. “We love the cause and effect, the tripwire of events. All these pieces fit together to make the lightning in a bottle of an Indiana Jones film. But also, it just fits Harrison like a glove.”
Lucasfilm President and Indiana Jones producer Kathleen Kennedy says that Harrison Ford loves the character of Indiana Jones as much as the audience does, so the question, when they were set on making the fifth film in the franchise, went from what could the adventure be to what could the last adventure be. And that’s what gives Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny its charge; we’re seeing Harrison Ford in one of his most iconic roles for the last time.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny will offer viewers a final, thrilling adventure and a chance to glimpse a key moment from the past. The film finds Indy in his present day (1969) as the world has changed around him. Indy’s finally retiring as a professor, but there’s one more adventure waiting for him and it’s connected to his past. His goddaughter, Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), knows that Indy was once on a train where a very important relic, the Dial of Destiny, was being transported. Helena aims to find that Dial and her dangerous mission to locate and secure it will become Indy’s last adventure.
Ford and Waller-Bridge are joined by the great Mads Mikkelsen as the villain Jürgen Voller, Boyd Holbrook as his henchman Klaber, Antonio Banderas as Indy ally Renaldo, Thomas Kretschmann as Colonel Weber, Toby Jones as Basil (Helena’s father), and John Rhys-Davies as Sallah.
The Dial of Destiny is the fifth film in the franchise, following Spielberg’s four previous Indiana Jones films; Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), The Temple of Doom (1984), The Last Crusade (1989), and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008).
Check out the new featurette below. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny whips into theaters on June 30:
For more on Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, check out these stories:
The premise of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse continues the multidimensional mayhem established in the 2018 Oscar-winning original, introducing Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) to a slew of Spider-People from across multiple dimensions and across multiple globes. One of those Spider-People is Pavitr Prabhakar (voiced by Karan Soni), India’s one and only Spider-Man, who makes a grand entrance in this brand-new Across the Spider-Verse teaser. Pavitr’s Spider-Man is the man that the citizens of Mumbattan rely on. If you’re wondering where (and what) Mumbattan is, imagine a hybrid of Mumbai and Manhattan. Pavitr introduces the huge, traffic-clogged metropolis to Miles and Spider-Gwen (Hailee Steinfeld) as he enthuses about how easy being Spider-Man is, which must come as a shock to Miles. “I fight a few bad guys, quick break for a chai with my auntie…,” and this is where Miles breaks in, enthusing about his love for chai tea. Pavitr is confused…chai means tea. “You’re saying tea tea!” he exclaims.
The teaser captures the visual splendor and warmth of the franchise, which has greatly expanded the idea of who can be Spider-Man, introducing us not only to India’s Spider-Man but Spider-People, be they boys, girls, women or men (or pigs, as Spider-Ham proved), from all over the place. In Across the Spider-Verse, Miles will come into contact with an elite group of Spider-People, founded and led by Miguel O’Hara (voiced by Oscar Isaac), also known as Spider-Man 2099. Miles’ problems multiply along with the Spider-People he meets, and while he’s got trusted allies in Gwen and Peter B. Parker (Jake Johnson), plenty more of these Spider-People will come to suspect that Miles can’t live up to their code.
Joining Isaac and Soni as newcomers to the franchise are Issa Rae as Jessica Drew/Spider-Woman, Daniel Kaluuya as Hobart ‘Hobie’ Brown/Spider-Punk, Jason Schwartzman as Spot, and Jorma Taccone as Adrian Toomes/The Vulture.
Across the Spider-Verse is directed by the trio of Kemp Powers, Justin K. Thompson, and Joaquim Dos Santos, with a script by returning writer/producers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller and David Callaham. It’s the second film in the planned trilogy, with Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse set for a March 29, 2024 release.
Meet Pravitr in the teaser below. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse swings into theaters on June 2:
For more on Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, check out these stories:
Featured image: 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 Manhattan for Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animations’ SPIDER-MAN™: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE.
At long last, the first teaser trailer for Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon is here.
Scorsese’s film, adapted from investigative journalist David Grann’s best-selling 2017 book of the same name, is having its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on Saturday, May 20, and Apple TV has now given the rest of the world this sneak peek. The story involves a series of brutal murders in Oklahoma on the Osage Nation during the turn of the 20th Century. The Osage had recently become some of the wealthiest people on the planet thanks to the discovery of oil on their land. As the teaser makes evocatively clear, their sudden wealth brought the wolves to their doorstep, as white interlopers, in various guises, descended upon Osage land to pry their newfound wealth from them in any way they could, whether it be through marriage or murder.
While Grann’s book was centered on Tom White, a former Texas Ranger who came to Oklahoma to investigate the murders (he’s played in the film by Jesse Plemmons), Scorsese and his screenwriter Eric Roth altered the focus of their story. The film is no longer centered on the law-abiding white man who comes to Osage Nation to solve the crime but instead shifts the focus to the relationship between Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his uncle, William Hale (Robert De Niro). Ernest married a member of the Osage Nation, Mollie (Lily Gladstone), who is ailing, and he stands to inherit a fortune. Both Ernest and William, despite claiming to love and respect the Osage people, might just be the wolves that DiCaprio’s Ernest is talking about in the teaser. Did he marry Mollie (they have three children together) solely for the money? Are he and William connected to the murders?
Speaking with Deadline, De Niro explained that as excellent as Grann’s book is, the movie needed to shift its focus from Tom White to the murkier motives of Ernest and William.
“It made the most sense to show what’s going on in that world, the dynamic between the nephew and the uncle,” De Niro told Deadline. “I don’t know if you would call it the banality of evil or just evil, corrupt entitlement, but we’ve seen it in other societies, including the Nazis before WWII. That is, a depressing realization of human nature that leaves people capable of doing terrible things. [Hale] believed he loved them and felt they loved him. But within that, he felt he had the right to behave the way he did.”
Killers of the Flower Moon is easily one of the most eagerly anticipated films of the year and arrives in theaters in October. Check out the teaser below:
Here’s the official synopsis for Killers of the Flower Moon:
At the turn of the 20th century, oil brought a fortune to the Osage Nation, who became some of the richest people in the world overnight. The wealth of these Native Americans immediately attracted white interlopers, who manipulated, extorted, and stole as much Osage money as they could before resorting to murder. Based on a true story and told through the improbable romance of Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Mollie Kyle (Lily Gladstone), “Killers of the Flower Moon” is an epic western crime saga, where real love crosses paths with unspeakable betrayal. Also starring Robert De Niro and Jesse Plemons, “Killers of the Flower Moon” is directed by Academy Award winner Martin Scorsese from a screenplay by Eric Roth and Martin Scorsese, based on David Grann’s best-selling book.
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Production designer Beth Mickle got on the Hollywood radar for her work on Nicolas Winding Refn’s ultra-cool indie Drive and worked her way into the blockbuster realm when her first collaboration with James Gunn, The Suicide Squad, was embraced by both critics and DC fans. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is her third project with Gunn—who has now moved on to co-run DC Studios—and her second in the Guardians universe, after working on The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special in 2022.
For the final film in Gunn’s trilogy, the last that will star the original Guardians, Mickle took on Gunn’s challenge—to build practical sets for the majority of the scenes and help create a tactile world rarely built on this scale for most sci-fi epics or superhero films. With The Bowie, for example, Mickle designed and built the largest spaceship in Marvel history for the film’s heart and soul, Rocket Racoon (voiced by Bradley Cooper). She also expanded Knowhere, a spaceport on the edge of the known universe, to include 20 separate buildings and feel more like a whole city, taking up almost 40,000 square feet.
The key was to bring reality to the emotionally poignant story of Rocket’s tragic personal history, which is the heart and soul of Gunn’s bittersweet finale. The Credits got the details on Mickle meeting Gunn’s ambitious challenge, as she explains how the production design was integral to giving the film its bruised but resolutely unbroken heart.
James Gunn wanted a realistic core to his third and final Guardians film. What did that mean to you in terms of balancing the very diverse environments visually and keeping the look, as a whole, grounded?
The way we approached the design was to keep them grounded in a way so just about everything that you see and every set that we land in where we’re at eye level we built so that it actually feels tangible. These are materials that are vaguely familiar, like the Orgoscope, which is flesh and bone. It’s still an otherworldly, outlandish, and heightened realism because we’re creating a planet, but it’s made of these materials you wouldn’t normally think of in that capacity.
The sprawling spaceport Knowhere is one example of those gorgeous practical sets, and it took up almost 40,000 square feet. How did you build that world using what you guys dubbed “Space Deco”?
We filled a 40,000 square-foot stage and built up to four stories high, and then there are absolutely beautiful visual effects extensions added on. So, when you’re looking up at the sky or when you’re looking at those few cracks between buildings, the effects team did a beautiful job extending the sets. But when you’re spinning around that whole opening tracking shot with Rocket, when you’re at eye level, just about everything that you’re seeing is a real built surface. We built the Boot of Jemiah, the bar where Rocket finds Quill, and the armory, all of which were connected to that big main street that we built. We wanted the walls and spaces to be textured and layered, keeping it in the vein of the Guardians’ aesthetic. If you look at Guardians 1 and 2, there are just beautiful layers and graphic textures, all on top of one another, so how could we do that but also still not completely blow our budget?
We became really resourceful and went to hardware stores and sourced whatever we could, including from Home Depot, including air conditioning vents, big hoses, and strange geometric plating for floors and garages. We brought all of it into the art office to figure out how we could arrange things, multiply them out, and give them a good paint finish. Suddenly, it started to feel like something that could be from another world. And you’d be amazed when you pile enough of these things on top of each other and give them wild finishes, whether it’s wild colors or rust, how quickly you get to a layered surface that starts to feel like something otherworldly.
The new Guardians spaceship, The Bowie, was built with 3 floors and has the largest cockpit in MCU history. What was the inspiration for the interior, and what were some of the challenges of that build?
The interior was very much drawn from the lines of our exterior. Because Rocket built it, I wanted to reference something that felt heavy and muscular, like a power tool, so we pulled a bunch of power tool shapes. I sat with our wonderful concept artist, Fausto De Martini, and looked at which shapes could work best, and we ended up coming up with the circular saw. If you look at the body of the exterior, you can actually really see it’s a circular saw. It had this great pointed front to give it that nose where the cockpit is, and the rest was very much drawn from the circ-saw.
What about the medical bay, which is such an integral part of the story?
The med bay, where we spend most of our time with Rocket, is a big, beautiful circular space. The machinery and the medical equipment around him are all big, beautiful, concentric circular pieces. You go out into the central core where they spend a lot of time, a lot of choreography, and that’s a big circular core with spiral staircases. The hallways are all circular. That really helped to steer what the interior was going to be. The massive challenge for us was that it ended up needing to be ready on day one of the shoot, which only gave us 16 weeks to build it from start to finish—it really should have been a 22 or 24-week build. Our amazing construction crew, led by Chris Snyder and scenics by Damon Bowden, literally did 50 or 60 days straight to get it done. We were literally putting finishing graphics onto the cockpit at 6 am on the morning of day one of shooting. It was enormously challenging for that reason.
In the flashback scenes with Teefs, Lylla, Floor, and Rocket, what were some of the directives for that environment?
I don’t know how much of this is known, but James did cast actors for each of the baby animals, and we actually built a proxy cage to human scale that we had on our motion capture stage. We figured out exactly what the scale would be for humans, and it was four times the size of what we built onset for the baby animals, so we could have each of those characters in their mo-cap suits lay in the cages, in the same configuration that the animals do for all of those scenes. A lot of what drove the layout and design of that was James’s storyboards. He really saw that scene in his head many months before we shot it. It’s pretty amazing to see the visionary gifts that a director like James has. He can be so specific and say, “The lock on the door needs to be on the left side because that’s where I want Rocket to swipe the door, and I want him to open it left to right so that the door lands on the right side, so we see the High Evolutionary behind him.” It’s phenomenal the specificity of the choreography he knows in his head.
The first trailer for Gareth Edwards’ The Creator has arrived, a fresh look at a growing concern that you can read and hear about just about every day, whether it’s in major newspapers, magazines, on Reddit threads, podcasts, or in research papers. We’re talking about artificial intelligence, once the concern mainly of scientists, futurists, and Hollywood execs looking for the next Terminator, but now on everybody’s radar thanks to the advent of ChatGPT, an AI language model developed by OpenAI, which can generate human-like text and engage in conversational interactions. Heck, if we’re being honest, it could even write a piece on The Creator‘s trailer, but we’re not giving in that easily.
The Creator stars John David Washington as Joshua, an ex-special forces agent recruited to hunt down and kill the titular creator, the architect of the AI that dropped a nuke on Los Angeles and is planning on destroying humanity. The trailer reveals that once Joshua gets behind the enemy’s lines and finds the creator, the all-powerful and elusive mastermind behind the nefarious AI turns out to be a child. Well, not a human child, but an AI in the form of a human-like child that Joshua will learn is not at all what it seems.
Joining Washington are a stellar cast, including Gemma Chan (Eternals), Ken Watanabe (Inception), Allison Janey (I, Tonya), Sturgill Simpson (Dog), and newcomer Madeleine Yuna Voyles as the child/Creator. Edwards directs from a script he co-wrote with Chris Weitz, his collaborator from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.
Humanity versus an AI run amok? Yeah, this is a classic sci-fi trope, but something tells us that Edwards and his cast and crew could be onto something fresh. Besides, they’re releasing the film into a world in which AI is no longer speculative, and concerns about it possibly taking out humanity are front-page news.
Check out the trailer below. The Creator arrives in theaters on September 29.
For more stories on Century Studios, Searchlight Pictures, Marvel Studios, and what’s streaming or coming to Disney+, check these out:
Sony Pictures has just revealed a new clip from Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse revealing Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) and Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld) enjoying the bounty of their youth and superpowers. Miles is, of course, Brooklyn’s one and only Spider-Man, and Gwen Stacy is the one and only Spider-Gwen, and together they might quite the pair. The clip finds the two swinging through New York while Gwen lets Miles in on a little secret; there’s a super-group of Spider-People, led by a “Ninja/Vampire Spider-Man, but a good guy,” as Gwen explains. Miles is, of course, intrigued, and his intrigue will eventually lead him to meet this super-group. That’s when a fresh round of troubles will start for Brooklyn’s one and only Spider-Man.
Across the Spider-Verse will center on Miles meeting this elite crew of the best Spider-People, led by that Ninja/Vampire that Gwen was talking about, founder Miguel O’Hara (voiced by Oscar Isaac), also known as Spider-Man 2099. Miles’ problems multiply along with the Spider-People he meets, and although he’s got allies like Gwen and Peter B. Parker (Jake Johnson), not everyone he meets will be rooting for him—and that will eventually include Spider-Man 2099.
Joining Isaac as newcomers to the franchise are Issa Rae as Jessica Drew/Spider-Woman, Daniel Kaluuya as Hobart ‘Hobie’ Brown/Spider-Punk, Jason Schwartzman as Spot, Jorma Taccone as Adrian Toomes/The Vulture, and Karan Soni as Spider-Man India.
Across the Spider-Verse is directed by the trio of Kemp Powers, Justin K. Thompson, and Joaquim Dos Santos. Powers, who wrote Regina King’s excellent 2020 film One Night In Miami and co-directed Pixar’s Soul, has said the sequel will continue Miles’ emotional journey as he matures, both as a young man and as Spider-Man. Phil Lord and Christopher Miller return as producers and as writers, co-writing alongside David Callaham.
“It’s been over a year since the events of the first movie, and he’s still trying to learn to be a superhero,” Moore said of Miles Morales when he introduced 14 minutes of the film at CinemaCon. He also offered a line that sounds ready for prime time (perhaps it’s straight from the movie); “How you wear the mask is what makes you a hero.”
Across the Spider-Verse is the second film in the planned trilogy, with Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse set for a March 29, 2024 release.
Check out the clip below. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse swings into theaters on June 2:
For more on Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, check out these stories:
Featured image: Spider-Man (Shameik Moore) and Spider-Gwen (Hailee Steinfeld) in Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animation’s SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE.
Tom Cruise’s final mission as Ethan Hunt is upon us. The official trailer for Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One has arrived, revealing Ethan Hunt’s deadliest mission yet. Sure, they’re all deadly, but this is a franchise that has consistently upped the stakes, both within the confines of the story and on a practical filmmaking level. If the Academy ever gets around to honoring the work of stunt coordinators and performers, it would be well served by going back and giving a slew to the folks who have been working on Mission: Impossible.
The trailer opens with a simple yet highly effective visual—Hunt, on one of his trusty motorcycles, speeds to the edge of a cliff and stops with about a half-inch to spare. That’s followed by one of the most classic of all Tom Cruise movie moments—the long sprint—as Ethan runs for his life (or to protect someone else’s) while a narrator reminds us we cannot escape our past. Point taken. Ethan’s past has been haunting him for years, and with this final, two-part conclusion to his decades-long journey, Cruise and writer/director Christopher McQuarrie have set us up for the most epic of all sendoffs.
The new trailer only hints at the specifics of the plot, which seems to suggest that the all-powerful weapon Ethan’s enemies are hoping to utilize is artificial intelligence. It’s a guess, but a fairly educated one considering the sci-fi-esque images of what appears to be a quantum computer and the mentions by Ethan’s adversaries that his fate has already been decoded. More fodder for our A.I. theory is the film’s synopsis, which promises that Ethan and the IMF team are tracking down “a terrifying new weapon that threatens all of humanity before it falls into the wrong hands,” a weapon that will give control of the future and the fate of the world to whoever possesses it. This sounds similar to the darkest concerns over A.I. that you can read about just about every day of the week now. Or, you can ask ChatGPT about it.
McQuarrie co-wrote the script with Erik Jendresen, and alongside Cruise, he directs returning stars Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, and Vanessa Kirby. The cast also includes Esai Morales, Pom Klementieff, Mariela Garriga, Henry Czerny, Shea Whigham, Greg Tarzan Davis, Charles Parnell, Frederick Schmidt, Cary Elwes, Mark Gatiss, Indira Varma, and Rob Delaney.
Check out the trailer below. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One hits theaters on July 12:
For more on Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Parts 1 & 2, check out these stories:
The God of Mischief and the Native American assassin will be seeing you this fall on Disney+.
Marvel has revealed that the second season of Loki will premiere on October 6, and then a month and change later, the Hawkeye spinoff Echo will premiere on November 29. What’s more, Echo will be the first Marvel Studios show to release all its episodes at once.
Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige made the announcements during the Disney Upfront on Tuesday. Loki is the first Marvel Studios series on Disney+ to receive a second season, which will continue the story of Tom Hiddleston’s mercurial, time-hopping rogue and his adventures with his new pals, like Owen Wilson’s Mobius and Sophia Di Martino’s Sylvie. Feige also confirmed that season two will boast newly minted Everything Everywhere All At Once Oscar winner Ke Huy Quan, fresh from his historic win for Best Supporting Actor. Rick and Morty writer Eric Martin returns to pen all the episodes for season two, with Moon Knightdirectors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorehead helming the series.
As for Echo, the series is centered on Maya Lopez (Alaqua Cox), the deaf Native American assassin from Marvel’s 2021 Disney+ series Hawkeye. Feige was enthusiastic about the series, which hails from an “incredible team of indigenous writers, directors, and cast members.” Joining Cox are stars Zahn McClarnon (Reservation Dogs), Graham Greene (Dances With Wolves), Chaske Spencer (Wild Indian), Tantoo Cardinal (Killers of the Flower Moon), Docy Lighthing (Hey, Viktor!), and Devery Jacobs (Reservation Dogs). Also making appearances in the series are Vincent D’Onofrio, reprising his role as Hawkeye villain Wilson Fisk, a.k.a. Kingpin, and Charlie Cox, reprising his role as Matt Murdock, a.k.a. Daredevil. Those two did battle on the Netflix series Daredevil and will be locking horns again when Daredevil: Born Again arrives on Disney+. Echo was helmed by Sydney Freeland (Reservation Dogs, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds) and Catriona McKenzie (The Walking Dead, Shining Vale).
Marvel also has the Samuel L. Jackson and Ben Mendelsohn-led Secret Invasionarriving on June 21, while Black Panther: Wakanda Forever spinoff Ironheart and the WandaVision spinoff Agatha: Coven of Chaos moving back to 2024 release dates.
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If you weren’t afraid of animatronic bears before, the fine folks at Blumhouse would like to have a word with you.
Universal has unveiled the first look at Five Nights at Freddy’s, their Blumhouse horror flick that adapts a very popular horror survivor game in which players have to survive an attack by homicidal animatronic animals that come to life inside Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza restaurant. The video game series was created in 2014 by Scott Cawthorn, who helped director Emma Tammi (The Wind, Blood Moon) co-write the adaptation alongside Seth Cuddeback.
Five Nights at Freddy’s follows a new security guard at the pizza joint, Mike Schmidt (Josh Hutcherson from The Hunger Games)—we’re guessing no relation to the Philadelphia Phillies Hall of Fame third baseman—who finds out the hard way on his first night at the job that Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza restaurant is not at all the goofy, kid-friendly place he’d imagined. Cue the murderous animatronic animals (created by Jim Henson’s creature shop, no less), and Mike’s going to have to have to get clever, fast, to survive the night.
Joining Hutcherson are Elizabeth Lail (You, Mack & Rita), Piper Rubio (Holly & Ivy, Unstable), Kat Conner Sterling (We Have a Ghost, 9-1-1), Mary Stuart Masterson (Blindspot, Fried Green Tomatoes) and Matthew Lillard (Good Girls, Scream).
Check out the teaser below. Five Nights at Freddy’s hits theaters and streams on Peacock on October 27:
FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY’S, from Universal Pictures and Blumhouse in association with Striker Entertainment.
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There was never really a question of whether Tyler Rake (Chris Hemsworth) was going to survive his seemingly fatal fall at the end of Extraction—the question was, and remains, what his survival would mean for his future. In the official trailer for Extraction 2, this question is posed to Rake as he reappears on the scene in a hail of gunfire, doing his level best to get a family out of the crosshairs of some seriously sinister individuals. The film finds Hemsworth and director Sam Hargrave returning to double down on the epic action they ginned up in the original. Also back is Hemsworth’s longtime collaborator Joe Russo (you know him, he co-directed a few little Avengers films), who wrote the script. Rake is back, and he’s got some new people to protect, although the reasons for his survival remain opaque.
The trailer offers a few thrilling set pieces, including an epic fight on a train and some very nifty combat skills—you’ll note Rake’s cleverness when it comes to setting up booby traps. Rake’s got a new mission. somehow more dangerous than the last; rescue the family of a notorious Georgian gangster. As we learned in the original Extraction, as ruthless and skilled as he is, Rake has a heart. He will go above and beyond his job duties; the man’s a mercenary, after all, to save the lives of the people put in his charge. That very often means risking his own against insane odds.
Hemsworth is joined by Golshifteh Farahani (reprising her role from the original film), Adam Bessa, Olga Kurylenko, Daniel Bernhardt, and Tinatin Dalakishvili.
Check out the trailer below. Extraction 2 hits Netflix on June 16:
Here’s the synopsis for Extraction 2:
Chris Hemsworth returns as Tyler Rake in EXTRACTION 2, the sequel to Netflix’s blockbuster action film EXTRACTION. After barely surviving the events of the first movie, Rake is back as the Australian black ops mercenary, tasked with another deadly mission: rescuing the battered family of a ruthless Georgian gangster from the prison where they are being held.
Hemsworth reunites with director Sam Hargrave, with Joe and Anthony Russo’s AGBO producing and Joe Russo writing. Golshifteh Farahani reprises her role from the first film, with Adam Bessa, Olga Kurylenko, Daniel Bernhardt and Tinatin Dalakishvili also co-starring.
This is a sequel to the first film that was based on the graphic novel ‘Ciudad’ by Ande Parks, from a story by Ande Parks, Joe Russo & Anthony Russo, with illustrations by Fernando León González. EXTRACTION 2 is produced by Anthony Russo, Joe Russo, Mike Larocca, Angela Russo-Otstot, Chris Hemsworth, Patrick Newall and Sam Hargrave, with Jake Aust, Benjamin Grayson, Steven Scavelli, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely as executive producers.
Ali Greer has been so focused on editing the fourth season of Barry that it didn’t truly dawn on her that the hit HBO comedy about the master assassin/would-be actor was coming to a close.
“Tomorrow will be my last day. We have our final sound mix on the series finale… tomorrow… yes,” Greer says during a recent Zoom call. “This is the first time I’ve thought about it. You’re always putting your head down and working.”
Greer, whose credits include Portlandia and Hacks, joined Barry in Season 3. She and Franky Guttman, an assistant editor on the first two seasons, cut all of Seasons 3 and 4.
Greer was thrilled at the opportunity.She thought Barry’s oddball world matched her editing sensibilities perfectly. “Seeing previous seasons was helpful,” Greer continues. “Liking the style of a show and making sure I’m a good fit is important — that — and honoring what’s been done, trying to build on it, and finding new ways of pushing the story forward.”
Greer admits she was nervous about meeting Bill Hader. A big fan of SNL growing up, she wasn’t sure how she’d react. Hader quickly put her fears to rest with his disarming demeanor. “We didn’t even talk about the show,” she adds. “We talked about the movies we liked and things we found funny.”
Bill Hader in “Barry.” Photograph by Merrick Morton/HBO
The two bonded over their quirky cinematic tastes. Greer likes foreign comedies — Swedish director Ruben Östlund’s Force Majeure (2014),The Square(2017) and Triangle of Sadness (2002) and Toni Erdmannfrom German director Maren Ade.
Greer sees how these films impact her choices. She references Force Majeure’s lingering wide shots and elongated comic commentary. “That’s a very Barry thing to do. Letting it play out wide. Letting the comedy happen in the background,” she explains. “Or downplaying the violence by hiding it.”
Stephen Root. Photograph by Merrick Morton/HBO
Believing many of today’s comedies tend to race to the punchline, Greer compares Barry’s rhythm to that of a 1970s movie. Its sly humor doesn’t need to be rushed. She was thrilled when Hader agreed with her.
“Once I realized that Bill was comfortable with a slower pace, that allowed me to relax,” Greer says. “Not specifically “cutty” — but making sure the jokes hit. It’s okay if every piece of dialogue is not on camera. It’s okay if whole scenes go by and you don’t see the other characters. Having that freedom is something that I absolutely love.”
The more comfortable Greer got, the more she felt she could take bigger swings. Her favorite was Season 3’s “all the sauces” sequence when Sally attends the premiere for Joplin.
“I made it kind of weird, magical, not very specific. It doesn’t follow a straight trajectory,” says Greer. “I was worried people would think that’s not this show. There’s been no scene like it. But when I showed everybody the episode, that’s the part that worked best. They gave me the freedom to express myself and have fun. And that led to things I find funny, cool, and interesting.”
Elsie Fisher, Sarah Goldberg. Photograph by Merrick Morton/HBO
There’s another reason Barry is unique from Greer’s previous editing experiences. “It’s the only show I’ve ever worked on where the director and the other editor are in the room while I’m cutting,” she says. “When I was doing Episode 1, Franky was on the couch and Bill was hanging out making suggestions. And then we switched. I’m on the couch while Franky’s editing. We each know the entire season intimately because we’ve been through all the footage. Whether it’s my name or Franky’s name on it, we’re both active in the process.”
Having three sets of eyes can come in handy. When there’s not consensus, majority rules. “Happily, there’s a tiebreaker,” laughs Greer. “But I would say it’s making sure that it’s the funniest take. If there’s a toss-up, it’s usually little things — the way their lip does this or the lighting.”
Zachary Golinger, Bill Hader. Photograph by Merrick Morton/HBO
Greer offers a unique perspective on the latter. Her mother was a commercial photographer. During high school, Greer would help her on shoots. “There was always talk about imagery and lighting and stuff like that,” she says. “A certain amount of that is ingrained in the way I think about images.”
Even when directing, editing is in the back of Hader’s mind. Greer often finds notes he’s recorded to her during filming. “He’ll just talk on the footage — ‘Ali, this last one…,’” she says. “Once we’re in the edit, he is focused on making sure all the characters feel authentic. That’s really important to him.”
Hader does have an Achilles heel. He’s uncomfortable watching himself. “There are instances where he’ll say, ‘I don’t like when I did that,’ and we’ll say, ‘No, that works,’” Greer says. “He trusts us to let it play the way we think.”
Barry also allowed Greer to utilize her unique talent for sounds. In “all the sauces,” Noho Hank hires Barry to blow up the Bolivian gang’s house. Greer thought it would be funny to have the bomb talk in foreign phrases. When Barry moves it, a voice in Korean proclaims, “You’ve picked up a bomb.” The second time it moves, the warning is in Japanese. But that’s not Greer’s only sound contribution in the episode. That’s her on the phone as the customer service rep who assists Barry when the bomb’s detonation app malfunctions.
Bill Hader carrying a bomb in “all the sauces.” Photograph by Merrick Morton/HBO
The Season 3 finale, starting now, presented Greer with another unique audio challenge. Captured by the Bolivian cartel, Hank finds himself in a stark concrete room handcuffed to a radiator. Suddenly, he hears what sounds like a ferocious beast (it’s never seen) being released into the adjoining room. Horrified, he listens as his fellow captives are torn to bits.
“It’s such an incredible scene. The footage is just a wall and Hank reacting,” says Greer. “My assistant DeAndre (Vidale) and I spent a week figuring out what’s happening on the other side. We worked so hard to get the sounds right. It’s getting a puzzle, and none of the pieces have anything on them.”
Anthony Carrigan. Photograph by Merrick Morton/ HBO
The effort on that episode rewarded Greer in a way she never anticipated — an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Single-Camera Picture Editing for a Comedy Series. Greer learned of the nomination when a friend texted.
“It’s crazy. I think I forget that the work is seen by other people,” Greer admits. “I hit ‘save’ and think, ‘Okay, that looks good.’ I’ll hear people are viewing it. ‘Oh, That’s great. I’m happy they like it.’”
She describes the honor as “surreal,” especially when it was announced that she won. “I was so convinced I wouldn’t. I was utterly shocked,” she recalls. “Our table was next to the stage. I had no time to gather myself. I stood up. I was on stage. I’m not used to speaking publicly, so I left kind of a voicemail – ‘Hello. Nice to meet you all. Thank you. Okay, bye.’ I forgot to thank a lot of important people. I forgot to thank my husband… all the classics.”
When I joke her speech could be fixed in post, Greer reveals the ultimate irony of her Emmy win. “They cut it,” she continues. “My award got cut from the Creative Emmys broadcast. Some editor edited out the editors.”
A twist even Barry couldn’t have scripted.
The Barry finale airs on May 28 on HBO.
Featured image: Sarah Goldberg, Zachary Golinger, Bill Hader. Photograph by Merrick Morton/HBO
Fast X races into theaters in just a few days, and to hype the tenth installment in the venerable gearhead-turned-hyper action thriller, Universal has revealed one of the major sequences in the film—a fight between Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) and Cipher (Charlize Theron). Their hand-to-hand combat comes inside a medical ward in a black site prison at night. We can give you these details because the new video even offers a glimpse at the script page, which includes this bit of Michael Buffer-level fight night hype:
INT. MEDICAL WARD – AGENCY BLACK SITE PRISON – NIGHT
WHAM! Letty attacks! She CRACKS Cipher across the face with a surprise punch and then pops her up in the stomach!
Here we go!
It’s LETTY V. CIPHER
A battle royale between two of the biggest bad-asses in our franchise.
Director Louis Leterrier explains that the goal was simple; to make this the best fight in the Fast & Furious franchise. That’s quite a tall order considering the number of brawls that have been created in all these years. Fight coordinator Patrick Vo explains that in the scene, Cipher doesn’t really want to fight, but Letty does and is ready to kill her. Their fighting styles are also highly different; Letty is a street fighter who brawls with the reckless abandon of someone passionately furious, whereas Cipher’s a technically lethal fighter who breaks her opponent down.
Check out the making of the Battle Royale between Letty and Cipher below:
So what is Fast X about? The Family will face their fiercest, most lethal challenge yet in the form of Dante (Jason Momoa), a man with a major vendetta against Dom (Vin Diesel) and the family that began during the events of Fast Five (2011). That was when Dom and the crew took down the Brazilian drug kingpin Hernan Reyes (Joaquim de Almeida) in Rio de Janeiro. That kingpin was Dante’s father, and he watched his father get killed. This is what turned him into the fearless, ferocious lunatic he is today, and he’s spent the past dozen years planning his revenge on Dom.
Joining Jason Momoa, Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, and Charlize Theron are Tyrese Gibson’s Roman, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges’s Tej, Jordana Brewster’s Mia, and Sung Kang’s Han. Old friends of the family like Nathalie Emmanuel’s Ramsey, Jason Statham’s Deckard Shaw, and John Cena’s Jakob will get involved. There’s more—Scott Eastwood’s Little Nobody and Helen Mirren’s are all on hand.
The biggest newcomers are Momoa’s Dante and Brie Larson’s Tess, who turns out to be the daughter of Kurt Russell’s Mr. Nobody. Also onboard are Alan Richtson as Aimes, the new head of the Agency; Daniela Melchior as a Brazilian street racer connected to Dom’s past; and the icon Rita Moreno as Dom and Mia’s Abuelita Toretto.
Already renewed for a second season, the Rian Johnson-created series Poker Face garnered universally enthusiastic reviews and built a passionate following ever since its first episode dropped in late January. Johnson has said Poker Face was built in the tradition of the great crime series of the 70s and 80s, including Columbo and Quantum Leap. As such, each episode is constructed to stand as its own “How Dunnit” (a twist on the “Whodunnit”), with guest stars playing roles central to each story, but with one character, Charlie Cale (Natasha Lyonne), acting as the through-line for the series as a whole. Charlie is a drifter on the run from folks set on killing her, and she has learned how to live below the radar by taking odd jobs in a series of forgettable small towns. Her uncanny skill at telling lies from the truth involves her in solving the unconnected murders taking place around her.
The Credits spoke to Poker Face production designer Judy Rhee about the hand she played in pulling this delicious new series off. An artist with decades of experience, she excels at creating environments that further the story and offer small revelations about character. The devil, as always, is in the details, and Judy Rhee’s a master of choosing just the right ones.
How did the fact that Poker Face was inspired by shows like Colombo influence your choices as the production designer?
With this series, we knew each episode was going to be its own individual story, and the only thread was Charlie’s character, with Cliff [Benjamin Bratt] occasionally showing up here and there. As a result, we had the opportunity and also the challenge of creating ten specific worlds. The fun part is experiencing parts of the country most people don’t get to encounter, so for the production design, it was about creating places with distinct personalities. Rian and I talked about it feeling more timeless, even though it takes place in the present day. When you travel, you often find places where time has stood still in varying periods, so you may see hints from the 60s through the 90s. Most people don’t upgrade or renovate regularly outside of more affluent metropolitan areas of the country, and people aren’t necessarily buying new stuff all the time, which helps to show the history.
Can you give me an example?
In Episode Two, the aesthetic choices we made for the convenience store were to reflect how it may have been recently acquired by a family with a specific background. Maybe it’s been newly painted on the surface, but the building has been there for some time. In contrast, the garage across the street has been owned by the same man for many years, and he’s made very few changes, so that’s going to have a different look, feel, and texture altogether.
POKER FACE — “The Night Shift” Episode 102 — Pictured: Jaswant Shrestha as Arvind — (Photo by: Evans Vestal Ward/Peacock)
How did you approach designing for episode five, “Time of the Monkey,” which features Judith Light and S. Epatha Merkerson as 60s radicals?
In that particular episode, there’s an overall general aesthetic of a retirement home, which is manicured and impersonal. It’s slightly sterile but also attempts to be homey. Their individual living space, though, has been personalized to show a bit of their history from the 60s and all the things they’ve collected throughout their lives, including their political beliefs, musical tastes, and all that, without being too obvious and hitting people over the head. So, when those flashbacks happen, it makes sense why those posters, or that macramé, or that particular piece of textile is in their home. Then there’s that quick moment where we see a neighbor’s kitchen that has the exact same cookie-cutter layout but is decorated in a less colorful way to reflect her different history. I think it’s important for the design to always visually support the story whenever possible and show how the characters occupy and move through their surroundings.
POKER FACE — “Time of the Monkey” Episode 105 — Pictured: (l-r) S. Epatha Merkerson as Joyce Harris, Judith Light as Irene Smothers — (Photo by: Peacock)
Did you find a place you could use for the stage and backstage in Episode Six, “Exit Stage Death,” or was it built?
That was created. We built almost everything. We started with the obvious of scouting for an existing theater or stage that we could modify and dress. Rian wanted it to feel like a small-town dinner theater, so it had to feel intimate but spacious enough to accommodate tables and chairs, not theater seats or risers. We scouted every possibility without going too far out of our hub, but couldn’t find the right configuration to create what was needed. Then we realized it had to be separated into different parts. The catwalk we built on our stage in Newburgh, the stage of the theater, the theatrical set onstage, and the dressing rooms were all constructed at a nearby abandoned event space. That’s also where we created all our interior casino floors and bar, crow’s nest, and Sterling Jr’s office in Episode One. The theater kitchen was modified at the same location, with connecting hallways and doorways. There were a lot of specific camera angles that needed to work with each set, so everything was designed and fabricated with that in mind, like her climbing up to the catwalk and looking down from there, the feather falling, the trapdoor, the backstage, and the wings of the stage. All these elements required close coordination with the DP, lighting, and the art and set decorating departments to achieve what was written and how it was shot. I don’t think this would have worked in an actual theater location.
POKER FACE — “Exit Stage Death” Episode 106 — Pictured: (l-r) Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale, Audrey Corsa as Rebecca — (Photo by: Sara Shatz/Peacock)
In Episode Eight, “The Orpheus Syndrome,” Nick Nolte plays old special effects artist Arthur Liptin, inspired by special effects pioneer Phil Tippett. Arthur’s workshop is full of pieces representing his entire career. What were your collaborations in pulling that together?
We knew early on in the schedule that Arthur’s barn was going to be a big endeavor. The art and set decoration departments worked together in reaching out to various special effects makeup teams, model makers, sculptors, and puppeteers to ensure we had the quantity and variety we needed to represent Arthur’s years of work. We also had our incredible scenic department fabricate what they could to supplement our rentals. In terms of working with the legendary Phil Tippett, I mean, what an honor and a dream. After a few discussions and feedback with Rian and Natasha, Phil and his team created the “Orpheus Syndrome” stop-motion creatures, as well as the miniature tabletop set. After it was shipped from California, our art department did some augmentation to it for practical shooting purposes. Because Phil and Rian had previously worked together, they trusted us enough to send some of their other existing models for Arthur’s barn and his museum exhibit. After several months, we rented and made enough to represent Arthur’s career and fill his barn. It worked in our favor that it was originally empty and open, except for a few columns, so we could design and lay everything out to be what we wanted it to be. It took a lot of time. Thankfully, we had a great crew to execute it with believability.
All episodes of Poker Face are currently streaming on Peacock.
For more on Universal Pictures, Peacock, and Focus Features projects, check out these stories:
“It felt, to me, that this might be the most important of the Guardians for James [Gunn],” says Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 composer John Murphy after reading the script. “What struck me was how much darker the story was compared to the first two films. When I say darker, I mean emotionally within the characters. It became obvious the story descended upon Rocket [voiced by Bradley Cooper] and it was fascinating to have all this backstory revealed and to find out how Rocket came to be and what shaped the character.”
Exploring Rocket’s emotional roots became the North Star for Murphy in composing the score for Gunn’s third andreported final installment to the space saga. Now in its second week in theaters, the film has grossed over $145 million domestically ($365 worldwide), placing it in the domestic top 10 widest openings for a PG-13 movie. Those numbers are for a good reason—Gunn has helmed a stirring tale that caps a trilogy he’s poured his heart and soul into. “There is so much hope in this movie,” says Murphy. “You can’t help but feel for Rocket and Lylla the otter [voiced by Linda Cardellini] because what they represent is vulnerable people. You see that in these animals.”
The “animals” Murphy is referencing are part of Rocket’s origin story. It’s revealed in Vol. 3 the wise-cracking genius was part of an experiment to produce a perfect society of innocent creatures. The villainous face behind it all is The High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji), who repeatedly fails until Rocket fixes his animal-generating machine. Living in a cage during his younger years, Rocket befriends three furry friends: Floor, a white rabbit; Teefs, a chunky walrus; and Lylla, an otter – all with genetically modified bodies. Rocket develops deep feelings for Lylla during their time together.
The emotional depth pushed Murphy to dig into the story to shape the score. “James and I had some long conversations and it was clear that he did not want to sugarcoat this,” says the composer. “He [Gunn] wanted it to be very raw, very grounded. He wanted people to feel what Rocket went through.” What became clear for Murphy was the importance of each cue and a conscious understanding that the score would be “very emotionally dynamic.” “I think this is some of the most violent music I’ve ever written for a movie, but then in a heartbeat, it’s some of the most tender pieces of music I’ve written,” he says.
Murphy stepped into the composer role for Vol. 3 taking over duties from Tyler Bates to deliver 26 pieces of original music – all of which can be listened to online. But the Liverpool native already established shorthand with writer-director Gunn, having collaborated on Suicide Squad and the Guardians Holiday Special.To give Vol. 3 a distinct musical palette, Murphy experimented with two unique instruments: a tongue drum, which is a plate-sized metal drum that looks like a UFO, and the GuitarViol, which has six strings and 24 frets, similar to a guitar but it can be played with a bow or plucked.
“A tongue drum is almost like a xylophone but it’s much softer, deeper, and is quite mournful,” says Murphy. “It has a bit of innocence to it but also this sadness, almost ghostly sound. I ended up having a man in Hungary make six or so of them in different keys.” The tongue drum is played throughout the film, especially during the darker, more traumatic moments. “The very first sound heard in the score is the tongue drum at its most innocent and pure. Then the GuitarViol comes in. It’s just two instruments but it has this innocence,” says Murphy. “They’re two instruments I’ve never heard in a movie before.”
Another idea Murphy experimented with takes when the Guardians infiltrate the Orgoscope, a highly secured jelly-like place that houses the greatest ideas of the galaxy. “The world is very organic but there’s a real metallic element to the whole environment,” says Murphy. “We went to the hardware store and brought back armfuls of different bits of metal to get sound out of them because we didn’t want to use the same ‘ole percussion everyone uses. The best percussion came from this immersion heater tray. For whatever reason, when you hit it, it had this beautiful natural reverberation. And it was dark and loaded harmonically. Bit by bit, we experimented with different things.”
Guardians has become known for its needle-drop moments. Bowie’s “Moonage Daydream,” Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain,” Electric Light Orchestra’s “Mr. Blue Sky,” and George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord,” to name a few. In Vol. 3, Quill (Chris Pratt) has a Zune MP3 Player containing hundreds of songs that were given to him by Yondu (Michael Rooker) at the end of Vol. 2. The opening song in Vol. 3 is an acoustic version of “Creep” by Radiohead playing over an intimate sequence with Rocket which helped to set the tone for Murphy’s score.
The composer was also conscious that he was composing for a Marvel movie and, when needed, created a familiar score found in the MCU. “Nothing beats a big choir, brass, and big strings when you want to go there. We found some sounds that I hope made the score unique,” he says. “A lot of the violence was done with distorted bass guitars that were built up and layered to have a wall of grunge. We mixed it with an old analog synth and a guitar pedal that gave it some depth and muscle.”Murphy also found moments to place score by Tyler Bates from the first films into Vol. 3. “I felt a big responsibility to not just do it in a way that James wanted but in a way that would work for Guardian fans,” he says. “If I’m a fan and I went to see the film, I would expect to hear the original theme in some places. Hopefully, we put them in the right places.”
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is playing in theaters now.
For more on the Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, check out these stories:
For a healthy portion of Succession’s viewing audience last night, the antepenultimate episode, “America Decides,” was not an easy watch. The episode shone a bright, pitiless light on old wounds and deep scars from the 2016 American presidential election when a seemingly improbable, far-right fantasy became an inescapable and very real living nightmare.
The episode centered on Election Night in the United States, playing out across voting districts from Milwaukee to Maricopa County in Arizona, yet we more or less never left the Roy children at ATN headquarters, where the kids played kingmakers. America was choosing between the Democrat candidate Daniel Jimenez (Elliot Villar) and the far-right Republican Jeryd Mencken (Justin Kirk). Oh, yeah, and Connor Roy (Alan Ruck), who finally conceded his hapless candidacy halfway through the episode will a chillingly out-of-touch concession speech that still managed to capture, in its pure Connorian delusion, something close to poetry— “Alas, Kentucky. Alas, vanity.” Alas, Connor Roy.
While a fire rages in Milwaukee—likely set by far-right accelerationists looking to purge potential democratic votes—the power players behind ATN’s news coverage start to get impatient. Roman (Kieran Culkin) is rooting for Mencken to win thanks, in large part, to Mencken’s promise to scotch the Waystar/GoJo deal so that the kids can keep Daddy’s company rather than sell it to the charmless Swede Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgård). Kendall (Jeremy Strong) nominally wants Jimenez to win, you know, for the sake of his children, but he’s trying to imagine what his dad would do and spends most of the episode waffling. Shiv (Sarah Snook) is fully pulling for Jimenez and trying to keep Tom (Matthew Macfaydan) from doing Roman’s bidding and calling Wisconsin for Mencken and, eventually, the entire election for him. She is also simultaneously working with Lukas Mattson behind the scenes to keep the potential deal afloat. Oh, and she’s pregnant with Tom’s child, the very man she obliterated in a feral fight at the end of episode 7 and was, in turn, annihilated by herself. He told her she wasn’t fit to have children.
Directed by Andrij Parker and written by creator Jesse Armstrong, the episode is almost exclusively set inside the ATN offices and offered a chilling portrait of how a single media empire, and really, just a few people within that empire, can warp the entire country’s perspective to the degree that a crime by followers of one camp (the far right) becomes a false flag operation by those in the other (supporters of Jimenez). Up is down, left is right, and the white supremacist is named the next President of the United States by a media company run by children trying to prove they’re just as cutthroat as their late father.
In an “Inside the Episode” video, Armstrong reveals that he utilized political advisors to help craft the episode, making sure that the dark, extremely tense situations he was creating were plausible. “Sometimes, we’d talk about it in the room, like ‘Does this feel real?’” Armstrongsays. “Then in 1960, the year 2000, and 2016 these unbelievably close election moments kept on coming in the U.S., and it felt legitimate to have another one.”
“I think to Roman, it really doesn’t matter to him who the president is—the president is the president, who cares. What’s best for us?” Kieran Culkin says in the video. “It’s really nice for me when I show up to work and have to play the character, and Roman has one clear objective and focus. This is how it is; just call it. That was a lot of fun to play.”
Shiv, meanwhile, spends the episode in an increasing state of alarm. While no Roman child has ever been a proper proxy for the audience—who among us grew up grotesquely wealthy—in “America Decides,” she’s as close as liberal America has to one. What’s happening all around her is a nightmare she almost has the power to stop, but only if she can convince Kendall to side with her against Roman. But Shiv makes a tactical error when she lies and tells her brothers that Jimenez has expressed an openness, should he win the election, of potentially tanking the Waystar/GoJo deal as well. When Kendall discovers this isn’t the case, he also uncovers Shiv’s backdoor dealings with Lukas, and it’s this revelation that pushes him firmly into Roman’s camp. He instructs Tom to call Wisconsin for Mencken and then, when Mencken wins Arizona, to call the entire race. “America Decides” goes from political thriller to straight up horror.
“Yes, Shiv is being clandestine about her intentions,” Sarah Snook says. “But at the same time, that’s exactly what he [Roman] is doing. He’s like, ‘I want Mencken to win so I can be top dog, I can be CEO, I can have the power.’ I’m like, that’s cool, that’s fun, but it’s Mencken. It’s Jaryd Mencken. It’s convenient it’s an altruistic side to her,” Snook says of Shiv’s stance during the episode. “Let’s remember; she’s not an altruist. But she does believe in democracy and, you know, a dictator not being president.”
The episode ends with an expression of peak cynicism from Roman, whose awfulness has always been more front and center Kendall and Shiv, who prefer to operate in the shadows and present themselves as reasonable and righteous in the light.
“We just made a night of good TV,” Roman says at the episode’s close. “Nothing happened.”
“Things do happen,” Shiv says, arms folded in a defensive position, standing at the door as if she wants to flee. And she likely does. We all do by then. And the scary thing is we know Shiv’s right. Things do happen. Bad things. And people like Roman make those bad things far more possible.
Go “Inside the Episode” with HBO Max’s video here:
James Gunn has revealed that his hotly-anticipated Superman: Legacy will begin filming in January 2024. In a conversation with Wired, Gunn answered a slew of questions about the future of DC Studios, which he co-heads along with Peter Safran, and the sweeping changes they’ve made in an effort to create a completely unified DCU. Superman: Legacy will be the first feature released from their new DC Studios, which Gunn wrote and will direct. It’ll boast a new actor in the role of Clark Kent and a new future for the character and the studio.
Gunn recently announced that Superman: Legacy had already begun pre-production, so the January 2024 start date for production means that, as Gunn promised, the new DCU will move at a pace conducive to putting the best possible movie together rather than rushing to make pre-determined release dates (although Superman: Legacy currently does have a release date pegged for July 11, 2025). The idea he and Safran are pursuing is to make sure every new film and series in their unified DCU puts the script first, and then, when that’s in order, the march toward production begins.
It’s an interesting time at DC Studios, not just because we’re witnessing a major seachange in leadership and the way they’re approaching building a new unified universe but also because there are still three films pending release that were produced before Gunn and Safran came on board. The first and the one people are already extremely enthused about (including Gunn himself) is The Flash, which bows on June 23. After that, there’s Blue Beetle (August 18) and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (December 20). Once Jason Momoa’s Arthur Curry has made his second big splash, DC fans will be waiting for Superman: Legacy to begin the new era of DC Studios.
It’s been a long time since we’ve seen Clark Kent in his own movie. Superman: Legacy will be the first new stand-alone Superman film since Zack Snyder’s 2013 Man of Steel, which, of course, starred Henry Cavill, who went on to portray Superman in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) and Justice League (2017) and had a brief cameo in Black Adam (2022).
Although Gunn is well-known for his offbeat sensibility and love of the oddball superhero—his Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy and The Suicide Squad film as prime examples—Superman: Legacy will find him playing it straight. Here’s how his co-chief Peter Safran described Superman: Legacy after he and Gunn unveiled the first part of their DC Studios slate: “It focuses on Superman balancing his Kryptonian heritage with his human upbringing. He is the embodiment of truth, justice, and the American way. He is kindness in a world that thinks that kindness is old-fashioned.”
A James Gunn film centered on kindness and a character who, despite being an alien, is also an earnest and soulful young man trying to do good in the world? Yeah, that’ll be wild.
Featured image: SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA – APRIL 18: Director James Gunn attends the press conference for “Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol.3” at the Conrad Hotel on April 18, 2023 in Seoul, South Korea. (Photo by Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images)
Rebel Rodriguez knew about Hypnotic even before the screenplay was written. The composer is one of the sons of its writer-director Robert Rodriguez, the famed helmer behind countless cult classics like From Dusk Till Dawn, the neo-noir stylized Sin City, Planet Terror, and the blood thirst avenge tour Machete. “This idea has been gestating for like 20 years,” says Rebel of Hypnotic, which stars Ben Affleck as a detective attempting to piece together clues to a string of mysterious bank heists. “Throughout my whole life, I heard about this story. My dad would tell us about the one [film] that was on the cusp of being made. It was like this mythical movie to me. To finally hear it was moving forward, I was excited to be part of it.”
Now 24, Rebel is a trained pianist and first scored the short The Limit (2018), followed by the features Red 11 (2018) and We Can Be Heroes (2020), all Robert Rodriquez projects. With Red 11, Rebel, along with co-composer Elia Cmiral, created a pulsing score using only a synthesizer. We Can Be Heroes was tuned entirely with orchestral music. For Hypnotic, the composer combined the two approaches to musically layer the psychological thriller that has a number of twists and turns.
Being on the inside track of Hypnotic’s development, which first began in 2002, allowed Rebel to ripen the score well before production. He wrote the main theme in pre-production a year prior to finishing the rest of the score. “Robert has always approached his films thinking about the whole process. How he would shoot it, edit it, the music, the sound effects. It makes more sense when the music is part of the conversation from the very beginning because we can conceptualize things while he’s writing the script,” says Rebel.
The score, as well as the story, was inspired by Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958). “This idea started with Robert saying that he wanted to make a Hitchcock film. He thought about what if Hitchcock’s career continued, what would be his next title,” recalls Rebel. “Hitchcock always had great one-word titles. Psycho, Spellbound, Vertigo. Hypnotic immediately came to him. It was a cool idea for a title; now he [Robert] had to figure out what it means.”
On its surface, Hypnotic is a good versus evil story where detective Danny Rourke (Affleck) is trying to catch a man, in this case, Dellrayne, a suit-wearing bank robber played devilishly well by William Fichtner. But the antagonist has more up his sleeve than firearms and explosives to enter vaults; he has the ability to control people with his mind. Dellrayne is Yoda on steroids, using “hypnotics” to reshape reality. He can manipulate others to do his bidding, have chasing police officers turn on each other, or physically “construct” a different world around him. The film is rife with action and perfect shots that rival Heat (1995) or Baby Driver (2017), but there’s a story about family and hope simmering underneath.
In the opening scene, Danny (Affleck) sits across from a therapist (Nikki Dixon), and the two are talking about his missing daughter. An airy synth sound accompanied by strings swells in the background as a sound effect of a tapping pen beats like a drum to heighten the moment. There’s a mysterious aspect to the score that subliminally lulls you into each scene. Something feels off but you can’t quite place it. “Hypnotic has a dizzying sound similar to Vertigo,” notes Rebel. “With Vertigo, the first title song has an almost mesmerizing sound but then it has a really tragic love theme. Hypnotic has that dizzying sound but with a heavy driving pulse for the action. And instead of a love theme, it has a family theme. It has this feeling that something is broken, and it has to be pieced back together. It feels more hopeful.”
As the story unfolds, we learn Danny’s missing daughter might have a connection to Dellrayne. Rebel says he approached writing for Fichtner’s character differently than the rest of the film. “When I write scenes, I am paying attention to the pacing, the editing, the sound, and the actors’ performances. His performance instantly makes you write differently. You see his character and he’s really scary. There is this air to him that I wouldn’t have captured unless I’d seen the performance. It needed to have more of that creepy, psycho sound to him.”
For moments when Dellrayne physically “constructs” a new reality that makes people believe they are somewhere they’re not, music took a backseat to sound effects. “We talked about these scenes throughout the entire production. Originally, there was going to be a lot more music, but it felt jarring to shift to the music that much,” says Rebel. The high-concept sequences were met with a unique visual cue; an almost blurring warp effect accompanied by sound effects. “This allowed the music to tell the storyline straighter.”
As Danny’s fight for his family intensifies, so does the score. In a climactic scene, drums drive the action while a string orchestra brings out the emotion. “It’s not just a heroic story. It’s about how much a person can endure physically and psychologically for the people they love. What are they willing to go through? It’s the victory of perseverance and endurance while holding on to hope. That’s what was always resonating throughout the whole process of making this film.”
Even though It Ain’t Over is about Yogi Berra, one of baseball’s preeminent figures during his 18 seasons as catcher with the New York Yankees and a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame, director Sean Mullin says the “last thing I wanted to do was make a sports movie.” Instead, Mullin took as inspiration the Oscar-winning 1955 film Marty starring Ernest Borgnine as an Italian-American butcher from the Bronx.
“It’s one of my all-time favorite films and a beautiful love story,” says Mullin. “Marty was a war veteran who came back and was looking for love. The emotional core of [It Ain’t Over] is the love story between Yogi and Carmen [his wife of 65 years]. I wanted to make a movie about a life well lived.”
That’s just what Lindsay Berra, Yogi Berra’s granddaughter, and the documentary’s executive producer, had in mind. Even though Lindsay Berra has an impressive sports journalism background — she was a national correspondent at MLB.com and a senior writer at ESPN Magazine — she understood that her grandfather, who died in 2015 at age 90, had a legacy that extended well beyond baseball.
“He was a microcosm of the American Dream,” she says, citing Berra’s status as the son of immigrants and a United States Navy veteran awarded the Purple Heart for his role in D-Day during World War II. “There’s more than baseball in his story and we wanted that to resonate,” she says.
There’s another film that proved a major influence in getting Lindsay Berra to participate. “When I was at ESPN magazine and MLB, folks would ask me if I was going to write a book about grandpa. I’d shared so much already, and I wanted to keep some stories just for us. I had not thought about a documentary until, in 2018, producer Peter Sobiloff brought the idea to my uncles Tim and Dale after seeing the Mister Rogers documentary [Won’t You Be My Neighbor?]. He asked them why there wasn’t a Mister Rogers documentary about their father. Peter had done a film with Sean, so we met, and I was glad once I realized I didn’t have to write the book. This was a better way to do it.”
One of the threads running through the film is that Berra, at 5’7 with a squat frame and infectious personality, became better known over the years as a colorful character dispensing his “Yogi-isms” — “It ain’t over ’til it’s over,” among many more — than for his considerable skills and baseball acumen.
Berra was one of the premier hitters of his time and one of the greatest catchers in baseball history. He was a three-time AL MVP winner, a 10-time World Series champion with New York Yankees, and holds numerous regular and Worlds Series records.
“I’ll be honest, I knew he was this lovable, goofy guy; I knew he was a tough, Italian immigrant kid … I knew he was a good ballplayer but I didn’t know how great he was,” said Mullin. “It’s unbelievable that he caught both ends of a doubleheader 145 times in his career. But my favorite stat is that he finished in the top four of MVP voting seven years in a row. Only two players have done that: Yogi and Mike Trout.”
The filmmakers assembled an impressive roster of former players, managers, baseball writers, and broadcasters to talk about Berra’s on-the-field skills and his later influence as a coach and manager with both the Yankees and New York Mets.
“From the moment I met Sean, I [said] ‘Vin Scully, Vin Scully.’ He was not a young man at the time. He had been the Dodgers announcer for pretty much all my grandfather’s career and had seen him play, so he was number one and the first interview we traveled to do in June 2019,” Lindsay Berra says. “I had a list of people who’d seen grandpa play or played with him: Tony Kubek, Bobby Richardson, Hector Lopez. We started with the older folks for practical purposes and then [interviewed] as many as possible who were tied to the Yankee legacy.”
Vin Scully in IT AIN’T OVER. Photo credit: Daniel Vecchione. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.
There’s also actor and lifelong baseball fan Billy Crystal who calls Berra “the most overlooked superstar in the history of baseball.”
“There was so much material,” says Mullin, who will tackle another American icon in astronaut Buzz Aldrin for an upcoming documentary. “Billy Crystal’s interview alone was ninety minutes and all I had to do was say, ‘Yogi’ and then shut up. We had Derek Jeter for just thirty minutes but I was able to get him to open up. Lindsay and I are talking about doing a podcast with outtakes because there were so many stories could not get in.”
Billy Crystal in IT AIN’T OVER. Photo credit: Daniel Vecchione. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.
One that did make it in was Yogi’s feud with Yankees owner George Steinbrenner after he fired Berra as Yankees manager just 16 games into the 1985 season. What upset Berra was that Steinbrenner didn’t deliver the news himself but handed the task to assistant Clyde King.
The slight kept Berra from Yankee Stadium for years. “It wasn’t something he talked about,” says Lindsay Berra. “I remember a friend had tickets to a Yankees game, and I asked, ‘Am I allowed to go?’ He said, ‘Why not? You ain’t got no beef with George.’”
It took nearly 15 years, but as soon as Steinbrenner personally apologized to Berra, the feud was over. Berra returned to the Yankees and began coaching young players starting in 1999.
“He worked with catcher Jorge Posada; he was close to Mariano Rivera; Paul O’Neill; Bernie Williams; Nick Swisher, all those players,” says Lindsay Berra. “Being back at the ballpark where he belonged brought him so much joy and added a decade to his life.”
It Ain’t Over from Sony Pictures Classics opens May 12 in New York and Los Angeles and everywhere on May 19.
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Emma Stone and filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos have reunited, and the world is a better place for it. After their delicious collaboration in Lanthimos’s excellent 2018 film The Favourite, Stone and Lanthimos are back with Poor Things, which is centered on Bella Baxter (Stone), a young woman given a second shot at life after she’s brought back from the dead by the brilliant Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe). Lanthimos has made a string of unforgettable films, some of which have been deeply unsettling—Dogtooth (2009) and The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)—and some of which have been hilarious and off-kilter—The Lobster (2015) and The Favourite. Where will Poor Things fall?
The first teaser, just released by Searchlight Pictures, gives off more of a comedic vibe, with Stone’s Bella Baxter something of a Frankenstein’s monster, brought back to a world she is eager to learn more about. The way Bella will satiate that hunger is by running off with a debauched lawyer named Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), who takes her on a global adventure that highlights for the restored Bella just how inequitable and grotesque the world she is. Thus, Bella becomes an undead champion for liberation and equality.
It’s been five years since The Favourite, so we’ve been long overdue for a Lanthimos film. With a stellar cast led by Stone, Poor Things will be one of the most eagerly anticipated films when it premieres on September 8.
Check out the teaser below.
Here’s the official synopsis for Poor Things:
From filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos and producer Emma Stone comes the incredible tale and fantastical evolution of Bella Baxter (Stone), a young woman brought back to life by the brilliant and unorthodox scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe). Under Baxter’s protection, Bella is eager to learn. Hungry for the worldliness she is lacking, Bella runs off with Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), a slick and debauched lawyer, on a whirlwind adventure across the continents. Free from the prejudices of her times, Bella grows steadfast in her purpose to stand for equality and liberation.
Natalie Auxier, the Manager of Collection & Outreach at NBCUniversal Archives & Collections, has something of a photographic memory. Given the rigors of her job, this ability makes sense, as does her passion for the collection she oversees.
“I think all of us archivists have a passion for this field. We love knowledge, and we go into this for the information,” Auxier says. “I would say this is across the board with all archivists—we love to do a deep dive into the collection. Everything we see, we retain. It’s just kind of how our brains work.”
The collection Auxier oversees includes some of the most iconic props and costumes in cinematic history, from Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park to brand new additions, including Jordan Peele’s sensational 2022 sci-fi epic Nope and the highly anticipated next installment of the Fast and Furious franchise, Fast X
We spoke to Auxier about her job’s (joyful) demands, how her team collects assets they think will stand the test of time, and whether or not she’s willing to pick just one item as her favorite.
Steven Yeun’s outfit as Ricky “Jupe” Park in Jordan Peele’s “Nope” was one of the items preserved by the Archives department. It is currently on loan to the Motion Picture Association. Courtesy Universal Pictures.
Let’s start with the basics–can you describe your role?
My role is overseeing the Archives, collections, policies, and process procedures. I’m also the spokesperson for the Archives, so whenever there are interviews like this, I’ll talk about the wonderful things we do at the NBCUniversal Archives & Collections. We’re the central reference source for historical information about NBCUniversal and all of our productions. We fulfill this mission by collecting, preserving, and exhibiting all of the historical assets of the company and our productions. So overall, the day-to-day job mostly consists of acquiring, cataloging, loaning, and exhibiting the assets – all in an effort to support the many businesses of NBCUniversal.
Considering the vast catalog of films and series that fall under the NBCUniversal umbrella, the breadth of potential archival material seems like it would be almost infinite.
The archive started in the 90s. Prior to that, everything was kind of scattered all over the lot. Beginning in the 1990s, we pulled from various storage areas, the prop department, and the wardrobe department, and found all these treasures and brought them all together. It was quite a Herculean effort. And we just keep that going today. In addition to props and costumes, we keep models, clay maquettes, and continuity storyboards. We love movies and television and want to show that whole history and process. We also collect from our theme park. We’ll bring in the most memorable items as the park evolves.
Do you have a favorite asset in the collection?
We love all of our children the same, but one asset I want to highlight is we have the original board of directors meeting minutes that document the formation of the company on April 30, 1912. So literally, within our collection is the first piece of paper that says Universal Film Manufacturing Company on it. That’s the document that started the whole thing. That’s why we’re all here.
When people think of archives, they think of the past, but a part of your job is providing assets to current productions. I was hoping you could explain that aspect of your work a bit.
As you know, Fast & Furious is one of our biggest franchises of all time. We also have the Jurassic Park and Jurassic World universe and the Bourne movies. The franchise filmmakers will reach out to us, and we’ll loan the set plans from previous movies if they’re recreating a set. We’ll loan them some props or costumes if they need that. Fast & Furious is very big on their continuity. They do a lot of flashbacks and winks and nods to their previous films. We’re there to help them keep that continuity. I do think fans really appreciate that attention to detail. As you mentioned, we always think of archives as the past. While yes, preserving the past is part of the work, we’re also all about the future and helping keep Universal’s legacy going and in people’s minds.
How do you and your team decide what props and costumes from a current production are worthy of the archive and will stand the test of time?
There are some obvious choices, like iconic props or costumes that a character wears throughout the film, or it’s the prop that everybody in the film is chasing. Our archivists are trained and well-versed in the production. They’re watching the films, and they’re reading the scripts. Sometimes, they go to screenings to get a sneak peek. Then they’ll make a selection. We make a judgment call on what we think will be historically significant and what best describes a character’s arc and a story’s arc.
Let’s touch upon a few of the most iconic films in Universal’s history, Jurassic Park. Do you have a favorite asset from Spielberg’s game-changing film, and how is it stored?
Let me highlight one thing we have from the original Jurassic Park—the Barbasol can with the dinosaur DNA. It’s one of the most iconic pieces in all of cinema, if I may be so bold. As for how we store these items, we keep everything in a climate-controlled environment with high-level security. We strive to store everything in acid-free archival boxes. Our Manager of Archive Operations, Eric Chin, does an amazing job keeping the archive safe, secure and up-to-date.
The Barbasol can from 1993’s “Jurassic Park.” Courtesy NBCUniversal Archives & Collections
Totally agree that the Barbasol can is one of the most iconic props of all time. What about Battlestar Galactica?
The original or the new one?
Both?
We have items from both, including uniforms and props. One asset that’s been on display before is Tricia Helfer [she played the mysterious Cylon model Number Six]’s iconic red Cylon dress from the newest iteration.
Another aspect of your work is some of the pieces in your archives go on the road. Can you talk about that?
We do loan out to various museums and institutions, such as the MPA, and we partner with a lot of internal NBCU groups because that’s who we’re here to serve first and foremost. To prepare for a loan, we create condition reports for the objects, archivally pack them, and work with fine art shippers to transport the items. Our loan agreement describes how the items need to be stored and protected.
How has your role evolved alongside the evolution of filmmaking technology?
For the businesses and divisions within the company that deals directly with the digital world, we provide them with the physical photography to scan and help them with the metadata because we have all that information.
For our non-tech-savvy readers (including myself here), can you explain what metadata is?
It’s all the information that surrounds a digital image. It describes who is in the image, who the photographer is, and what film or television show it’s from, all of which will help a future user be able to find that information or find the image by using those search terms. We’re creating the keywords in the search terms for that one image.
Okay, I’m going to make you pick another favorite child again. Any other props you love?
It’s really hard to pick. It’s so massive, the breadth of what’s in the collection, it’s so difficult to choose.
So diplomatic. Okay, how about one final aspect of your job that delights you the most?
I’m always surprised and delighted by the craftsmanship that goes into a costume or prop. For example, we have the Book of the Dead from the 1999 version of The Mummy in the Archives. It’s an actual practical prop, so when you turn the round disc on the cover where the key goes, it releases the hinges and the book pops open. That’s exactly what happens in the movie. To see that craftsmanship up close is so exciting.
The Book of the Dead from 1999’s “The Mummy.” Courtesy NBCUniversal Archives & Collections.NBCUniversal Archives & Collections
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