After A Gripping Finale, “The Last of Us” Creators Tease Season 2 & Beyond

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After the horror of “When We Are in Need,”  the eighth episode of The Last of Us, which found Ellie (Bella Ramsey) fighting off a sadistic cannibal preacher she’s forced to stab, repeatedly, in a fit of sorrow and rage, one hoped that the season finale, “Look for the Light,” would give the resilient but battered teenager a well-deserved break from carnage and horror. And, in a sense, that’s what Ellie got, but only because she’d been anesthetized into a deep sleep for an operation she was both unaware of and would never wake up from. It’s not easy being “The Cure” in a zombie-infested hellscape.

Enter Joel (Pedro Pascal), who had finally embraced Ellie as his family at the bloody, brutal end of “When We Are in Need” and was going to stop at nothing to save her life, even if it meant demolishing humanity’s last hope for a cure to the Cordyceps plague, which it turns out to exist not in Ellie’s blood but in her brain. The contingent of Fireflies who promised a way to safely transfer Ellie’s immunity to the plague to the world at large, the very people who Joel and Ellie spent all season moving towards, at great personal cost, to give humanity a fighting chance against the zombie plague, could only perform their miracle by killing Ellie in the process. It was a sacrifice Joel wasn’t willing to make and one Ellie was never given a say in.

And so, after Ellie survived the horror of the preacher’s cannibal community, there she was, drugged into her final slumber with Joel being marched out of the Salt Lake City hospital at gunpoint, powerless to stop it. But having already survived his daughter’s murder, which he never stopped blaming himself for, and after having nearly given up on himself as being capable protecting of Ellie, nothing, nothing was going to stop Joel from getting her out of that hospital. So Joel goes on a killing spree, dispatching every single armed combatant in the place, plus a doctor who was stupid enough to grab a scalpel, leaving only two terrified nurses (more on them in a second) alive and spirits Ellie out of Salt Lake City to take her back to his brother’s compound in Wyoming.

Then Ellie finally comes to in the SUV Joel took from the Fireflies and asks him what happened; he spins her a tale about how it turns out she’s not that special, that there are dozens of other people who have the same immunity to Cordyceps that she does, and, that the Fireflies realized there was no way to transfer that immunity to anybody else. Then, accounting for the need to escape the hospital, Joel tells her that some raiders attacked, and he was lucky to get them both out alive.

The season ends with Joel and Ellie finally making it back to his brother Tommy (Gabriel Luna)’s Wyoming compound. They’re safe at last, but their entire mission was for naught, and something is just not sitting right with Ellie. In the season’s final seconds, she asks him one last time to tell her the truth about what happened when she was unconscious—was the place really attacked by raiders, did the Fireflies really reveal that Ellie’s blood couldn’t help them, and was there really no hope for a cure? Joel looks like he’s about to waver; a moment’s hesitation and a flicker of heartbreak pass on his face, but then he lies to her and says that yes, that’s precisely what happened, even if we see the gleam in Ellie’s eye that she knows he’s lying. It was a hugely bittersweet finale, with Joel and Ellie alive but at such a terrible cost, and the hint of discord to come when Ellie inevitably finds out what really happened. 

Creators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann have revealed that they’ll be lifting storylines from the original video game’s sequel, The Last of Us: Part II, to tell a much larger story going forward, one that will take more than just one season. The second installment in the video game arrived on PlayStation 4 in 2020, seven years after the original, and boasts characters, more flashbacks, bigger action set pieces, and more infected. Speaking with GQ, Mazin and Druckmann confirmed that adapting Part II will require multiple seasons, but they wouldn’t share just how many it would take. 

Part II of the video game includes some of the core characters from the original game, most crucially Joel, Ellie, Tommy, and Maria (Rutina Wesley). It was also revealed that one of the actors from Part II, Laura Bailey, who plays a character named Abby, was one of the nurses in the operating room where Ellie is being prepped for surgery. Might Abby ultimately reveal what Joel did at the Salt Lake City hospital, a story that will get back to Ellie?

Season two will likely be a bloodier affair, too. Not that season one didn’t have its moments (see above), but Mazin and Druckmann teased that in future seasons, viewers can expect a lot more infected on the screen, and different kinds, too. Considering many of us are still having nightmares about the clickers, this is both a blessing and a curse.

For more on The Last of Us, check out these stories:

“The Last of Us” Finale Draws Huge Ratings as Season One Bests “House of the Dragon”

“The Last of Us” Production Designer John Paino on Building a World in Ruins

“The Last of Us” Cinematographer Eben Bolter on Episode 4 & More

How “The Last Of Us” Episode 3 Departed From The Game in a Beautiful, Heartbreaking Way

Reviews for HBO’s “The Last Of Us” Call it an Astonishing Adaptation on Every Level

Featured image: Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey. Photograph by Liane Hentscher/HBO

“The Last of Us” Finale Draws Huge Ratings as Season One Bests “House of the Dragon”

Posted on by babrams

Now that the first season of The Last of Us has wrapped up, we can take a step back and marvel at not only the robust viewership numbers but what was the greatest video game adaptation (by a wide margin) and one of the most compelling new dramas on TV. Oh, and not for nothing, The Last of Us can make a credible claim for joining the pantheon of the greatest zombie stories ever put on the screen, thanks, in large part, to focusing so passionately on the relationship between its still human characters, specifically hardened smuggler Joel (Pedro Pascal) and his “cargo,” the teenage Ellie (Bella Ramsey). Their journey and the complexity of their relationship as it slowly, painfully began to grow over the course of the season turned The Last of Us into one of the most satisfying new series of this year and years previous.

Now let’s take a quick peek at those viewership numbers. The season finale set another benchmark for the series, drawing a series high 8.2 million viewers across HBO Max and linear telecasts, based on Nielsen and first-party data, the largest of the season (the premiere drew 4.7 million viewers in January). This makes Sunday night’s finale audience a 75% increase in debut night viewing compared to the premiere. The premiere, by the way, was hardly a slouch. 

The first six episodes of the series even bested another major new release for HBO, topping the Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon. The first six episodes of The Last of Us averaged 30.4 million viewers since the January 15 premiere, and there’s every reason to expect that once the final numbers are tallied, the last three episodes will not diminish those numbers. At 30.4 million viewers, that’s a touch more than the 29 million that House of the Dragon averaged in cross-platform viewers over its run in the late summer and fall of 2022.

The Last of Us‘s cumulative audience is the biggest for any HBO series since—you guessed it—the final season of Game of Thrones in 2019, which averaged more than 44 million viewers. Needless to say, The Last of Us has been a critical and commercial smash, and you can expect not just a second season but likely multiple seasons more.

For more on The Last of Us, check out these stories:

“The Last of Us” Production Designer John Paino on Building a World in Ruins

“The Last of Us” Cinematographer Eben Bolter on Episode 4 & More

How “The Last Of Us” Episode 3 Departed From The Game in a Beautiful, Heartbreaking Way

HBO’s “The Last Of Us” Delivers Astonishing Second Ep For Largest-Ever Viewership Growth

Reviews for HBO’s “The Last Of Us” Call it an Astonishing Adaptation on Every Level

Featured image: Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey. Photograph by Liane Hentscher/HBO

“Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One” Poster Reveals Tom Cruise’s Craziest Stunt

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We have our first look at the official poster for Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, and it teases what is arguably the most insane stunt Tom Cruise has done in the entire franchise.

This is a statement neither Paramount nor we would make lightly, considering the history of lunacy Cruise and the Mission: Impossible stunt team has compiled. The poster captures the moment after Cruise’s Ethan Hunt has ridden a motorcycle off a cliff—in order to BASE jump. “This is far and away the most dangerous thing we’ve ever attempted,” Cruise said in a behind-the-scenes video that captured the stunt. You heard it from the man himself.

Here’s the official poster capturing Cruise’s gonzo bike-to-BASE jump stunt:

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is the first in the final two-part conclusion to Cruise’s career as Ethan Hunt. The film’s plot has been kept pretty tightly under wraps, and that’s even despite the release of the first trailer. Dead Reckoning Part One finds writer/director Christopher McQuarrie back at the helm, guiding Cruise’s Ethan Hunt and many of his longtime allies, including Rebecca Ferguson as Isla Faust, Simon Pegg as Benji Dunn, and Ving Rhames as Luther Stickell. Vanesa Kirby also returns as the White Widow, and the cast gets a boost with newcomers Pom Klementieff, Hayley Atwell, Shea Whigham, Indira Varma, and Cary Elwes. The trailer doesn’t give us much more of the plot than showing us Hunt being aggressively put out to pasture (good luck with that), but it does give us glimpses of the action, which has become the hallmark of the franchise, including another stunt, this one involving a train plunging off a cliff that McQuarrie has mentioned as one of the most insane in the franchise’s history. Add it to the list.

The practical stunts depicted in the franchise, many done by Cruise himself and guided by veteran stunt coordinator Wade Eastwood, have become the stuff of legend. For the motorcycle off a cliff into a BASE jump stunt, Eastwood explained in the video (embedded below) that it required a year of BASE training, advanced skydive training, canopy control, and a slew of other skills. While Cruise is the center of attention, the video shows how it takes a team of experts to deliver a stunt like this while keeping everyone safe.

Here’s a look at the BASE jump stunt. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One arrives in theaters on July 14:

For more on Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One & Two, check out these stories:

“Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 2” Adds “Ted Lasso” Star Hannah Waddingham

Tom Cruise Filming Part of “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part Two ” On U.S. Aircraft Carrier off Italian Coast

Tom Cruise Returns as Ethan Hunt in “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One” Trailer

Watch Tom Cruise Perform the Most Insane Stunt in “Mission: Impossible” History

“Mission: Impossible 8” Will Be Tom Cruise’s Last (and Craziest)

Featured image: The official poster for Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One. Courtesy Paramount Pictures.

Ke Huy Quan & Harrison Ford’s Oscars Hug, Ruth E. Carter’s Historic Win & More

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The vibes were very, very good at the 95th Academy Awards last night, and one of the moments that was most emblematic of the evening’s warmth was the reunion between newly minted Oscar winner Ke Huy Quan and his Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom co-star, a gentleman by the name of Harrison Ford.

The two performers embraced on the Dolby Theater Stage after Ford presented the Best Picture category, which Everything Everywhere All At Once won. It was a moment of pure joy and catharsis in a night filled with them, capping off an evening that saw EEAAO win seven awards (the most by a Best Picture winner since 2008’s Slumdog Millionaire), including Michelle Yeoh’s historic win for Best Actress and Jamie Lee Curtis’s career-defining win for Best Supporting Actress. Both Yeoh and Curtis delivered moving speeches, as did Quan, whose heartfelt, emotional acceptance speech for his Best Supporting Actor win set the tone for the entire night. By the time Quan bounded on stage alongside the rest of the EEAAO cast, writer/directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, and producer Jonathan Wang for the night’s final award, everything had gone right for him and the film, and the embrace with his former co-star seemed like the Hollywood-style ending the night deserved.

HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA – MARCH 12: Ke Huy Quan (R) accepts the award for Best Picture for “Everything Everywhere All at Once” from Harrison Ford onstage during the 95th Annual Academy Awards at Dolby Theatre on March 12, 2023 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

Forty years after starring together in Temple of Doom, Quan cheered as Ford took the stage to present the Best Picture category. Once Ford revealed that EEAAO had taken the night’s final award, the duo was locked in a warm hug moments later. In Temple of Doom, Quan played Wan Li, a young pickpocket in Shanghai nicknamed Short Round, who settles on Indiana Jones as his next target. Although Quan would also co-star in another iconic film from the 1980s, The Goonies, his career didn’t take off until decades later, when he was cast as Waymand Wang in the Daniels now historic sci-fi indie film. While every single person in the building and millions more at home were overjoyed for Quan, you have to imagine Ford was especially happy to be on hand to witness Quan’s big night.

It was one glorious moment in a night that seemed lit from within by warmth. Another such moment was Ruth E. Carter’s historic second Academy Award after winning Best Costume Design for her work in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, four years after winning the same award for the first Black Panther film back in 2019. The second award made Carter the first Black woman to win multiple Oscars, and she dedicated the award to her mom, who recently passed away at the age of 101. “This past week, Mable Carter became an ancestor. This film prepared me for this moment. Chadwick, please take care of Mom,” Carter said during her acceptance speech, referring, of course, to the late Chadwick Boseman, star of the first Black Panther, who tragically passed away in August of 2020 before he could get to work on the sequel.

It was, in sum, an uplifting, emotional evening, a far cry from last year’s telecast. This year’s Oscars will be remembered for moments as moving as Carter’s speech and as joyous as Quan and Ford’s reunion on stage. Love and acceptance, two of the foundational themes that powered Everything Everywhere All At Once to its historic night, also felt like the guiding principles of the entire evening.

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

Michelle Yeoh Makes History & “Everything Everywhere All At Once” Wins Big

“Everything Everywhere All At Once” Hair & Makeup Team on Creating Looks For Every Dimension

“Everything Everywhere All At Once” Actress Stephanie Hsu on Landing the Role of a Lifetime

Oscar Nominee Brendan Fraser on his Deep Dive into “The Whale”

“The Whale” Oscar-Nominated Prosthetics Artist Adrien Morot Breaks the Mold

Featured image: HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA – MARCH 12: Ke Huy Quan (R) accepts the award for Best Picture for “Everything Everywhere All at Once” from Harrison Ford onstage during the 95th Annual Academy Awards at Dolby Theatre on March 12, 2023 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

Watch Optimus Prime & Optimus Primal Rise at SXSW Ahead of “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts” World Tour

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Paramount has revealed that Optimus Prime and his more feral cousin, Optimal Primal, are in Austin, Texas.

Ahead of the studios’ release of Transformers: Rise of the Beasts this summer, Paramount is setting up shop, so to speak, in Austin for the SXSW Festival, with massive Optimus Prime and Optimus Primal statues unveiled by some of the film’s cast and crew. Stars Anthony Ramos, Dominique Fishback, and Tobe Nwigwe were in Austin for the unveiling, alongside director Steven Caple Jr. and producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura. The stars and Autobot statues will be rolling into cities across the world, including Mexico City, New York, Sydney, Berlin, Madrid, and Tokyo.

We learned a bit about the seventh installment of the Transformers franchise when the trailer dropped, boasting snippets of a Biggie Smalls classic while it revealed the beastly Transformers that will be a major part of the film. Rise of the Beasts is inspired by the ’90s Beast Wars cartoon and also boasts a fresh new cast, led by aforementioned stars Anthony Ramos and Dominique Fishback, with new transformers voiced by none other than Michelle Yeoh (!!) and Pete Davidson.

Director Steven Caple Jr steers this new Transformers story from the streets of Brooklyn to Machu Picchu, Peru. The action is set after 2018’s spinoff Bumblebee and introduces the Maximals and Predacons, who, you’ve probably guessed, take the form of colossal metal animals. The film will explore not only these new factions in the larger war between the Autobots and Decepticons but the origins of the Autobots’ connection to Earth. Rise of the Beasts also includes the introduction of the Terrorcons, a sub-group of the Decepticons that transform into metallic monsters.

Rise of the Beasts is set before the action of all of Michael Bay’s Transformers films, so you don’t need to know the history of these warring metal aliens to enjoy the spectacle.

The cast also includes Peter Cullen, returning as Optimus Prime, Tobe Nwigwe, Ron Perlman, Peter Dinklage, Liza Koshy, John DiMaggio, David Sobolov, Michaela Jaé Rodriguez, and Cristo Fernández. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts roars into theaters on June 9, 2023.

Check out the creation of the Optimus Prime and Primal statues at SXSW here:

Here’s the official synopsis for Transformers: Rise of the Beasts:

Transformers: Rise of the Beasts will take audiences on a ‘90s globetrotting adventure with the Autobots and introduce a whole new breed of Transformer – the Maximals – to the existing battle on earth between Autobots and Decepticons. Directed by Steven Caple Jr. and starring Anthony Ramos and Dominique Fishback, the film arrives in theatres June 9, 2023.

For more on the Transformers franchise, check out these stories:

“Transformers: Rise of the Beasts” Trailer Reveals the Maximals, Predacons, & Terrorcons

For more films and series from Paramount and Paramount+, check out these stories:

“Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 2” Adds “Ted Lasso” Star Hannah Waddingham

“Scream VI” Review Round-Up: A Clever, Homicidal Shell Game in the Big City

Seth Rogen’s “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem” Delivers a Delightful First Trailer

Featured image: Optimus Prime teaser image. Courtesy Paramount Pictures.

“The Little Mermaid” Official Trailer Makes a Splash During the Oscars

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The Little Mermaid stars Halle Bailey and Melissa McCarthy were on hand at last night’s 95th Academy Awards to reveal the official trailer for their highly-anticipated film, and the trailer didn’t disappoint. With Disney celebrating their centennial and ABC hosting the Academy Awards telecast, it was the perfect time to unveil the longest look yet at director Rob Marshall’s upcoming film.

Bailey stars as Ariel in the iconic story of a young mermaid, the youngest daughter of King Triton (Javier Bardem) and the most defiant, who harbors a desire to learn more about the world beyond the sea. Ariel’s curiosity leads to her visiting the surface and falling in love with Prince Eric (Jonah Hauer-King) after saving him from a shipwreck. This is a massive no-no; in the world in which Ariel lives, mermaids are not allowed to interact with humans, let alone fall in love with them. So, Ariel makes a choice that will change all their fates when she strikes a deal with the evil sea witch Ursula (Melissa McCarthy), which will allow Ariel to experience life on land, but which will also throw her father’s kingdom into jeopardy. 

The trailer revealed the full bounty of Marshall’s vision and the most diverse cast to ever perform in an iteration of the film, which is based on the legendary short story by Hans Christian Andersen, and was written by two-time Oscar nominee David Magee (Life of Pi, Finding Neverland).

Joining Bailey, McCarthy, Bardem, and Hauer-King are Jude Akuwudike as Grimsby, Daveed Diggs as Sebastian, Jacob Tremblay as Flounder, Awkwafina as Scuttle, Lorena Andrea as Perla, and Kasja Mohammar as Karina. These latter two characters are new additions created for this film.   

Check out the trailer below. The Little Mermaid hits theaters on May 26:

For more on The Little Mermaid, check out these stories:

“The Little Mermaid” Teaser Reveals Fresh Look at the Live-Action Remake Starring Halle Bailey

For more on the Oscars, check this out:

Michelle Yeoh Makes History & “Everything Everywhere All At Once” Wins Big

Featured image: Halle Bailey as Ariel in Disney’s live-action THE LITTLE MERMAID. Photo courtesy of Disney. © 2023 Disney Enterprises, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Michelle Yeoh Makes History & “Everything Everywhere All At Once” Wins Big

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In what was one of the smoothest, most genuinely pleasant Oscars telecasts in recent memory, Michelle Yeoh made history, Everything Everywhere All At Once won just about everything everywhere, and the 95th Academy Awards rolled into the history books with nary a bump in the road and backed by a gentle breeze.

Yeoh became the first Asian person to win an Academy Award in the lead actress or actor category, taking home her first Oscar for Best Actress for her astonishing performance in Everything Everywhere All At Once. The multiversal drama from the directing duo the Daniels (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert) is centered on Yeoh’s Evelyn Wang, a laundromat owner under duress as the target of an overzealous IRS agent (played by newly minted Oscar-winner Jamie Lee Curtis) and a fraying relationship with her daughter, Joy (a phenomenal, Oscar-nominated Stephanie Hsu). Evelyn ultimately settles all her accounts by zipping through parallel universes, patching up her relationship with her daughter, and preventing a cataclysm in the joyous, emotionally abundant sci-fi romp.

“For all the little boys and girls who look like me watching tonight, this is a beacon of hope and possibilities,” Yeoh said from the stage. “This is proof that dreams do come true. And ladies, don’t let anybody tell you that you are ever past your prime. Never give up.”

 

The film earned not only Yeoh an Oscar but also scooped up two more in the acting characters, with Ke Huy Quan’s emotional win for Best Supporting Actor for playing Waymond Wang, Evelyn’s husband, and Jamie Lee Curtis’s win for playing the IRS agent Deirdre Beabeirdre. Quan, a child actor who flourished in Goonies and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, had a long hiatus from acting, which he described in his emotional, moving acceptance speech that set the tone for the entire night.

“My journey started on a boat. I spent a year in a refugee camp, and somehow, I ended up here on Hollywood’s biggest stage,” Quan said through tears, while even presenter Ariana DeBose, standing behind him, was visibly emotional herself. For a relentlessly inventive sci-fi romp, Everything Everywhere All At Once struck a chord with audiences and the Academy because its central messages and most enduring themes were about acceptance and love. These were messages that came across loud and clear in Quan’s beautiful acceptance speech and were mentioned by the people we spoke to who worked on the film, from Stephanie Hsu to the film’s hair and makeup department heads. 

 

The Daniels took home the Oscar for Best Director (the first duo to share the award since Joel and Ethan Coen won for No Country for Old Men in 2008), shared the Best Picture win along with producer Jonathan Wang, and won Best Original Screenplay. Joining them, Yeoh, Quan, and Curtis was editor Paul Rogers, who won for what he revealed was only his second feature film. Everything Everywhere All At Once ended the evening with seven wins (out of its 11 nominations), the most wins or nominations for a film co-directed by an Asian man and featuring a cast that was almost entirely Asian.

There were plenty of emotional moments that didn’t directly involve Everything—Brendan Fraser’s emotional acceptance speech for his Best Oscar win for The Whale stood out. As did the night’s more low-key winners, each of whom brought a genuine warmth to the stage, perhaps exemplified in its purest form when the Oscar-winning filmmakers Tom Berkely and Ross White, the duo behind An Irish Goodbye, which won in the Short Film (Live Action) category, cut their own speeches short to sing “Happy Birthday” to the film’s star, James Martin.

It was a very good night for Hollywood, especially after last year’s Oscars, which was shadowed during and after by Will Smith slapping Chris Rock. Host Jimmy Kimmel kept things light, and performances from Rihanna, Lady Gaga, David Byrne and Stephanie Hsu, and Lenny Kravitz injected the night with some short but potent bursts of beauty, and the award winners, to a man and woman, seemed to exude genuine joy and love for not only their fellow nominees and colleagues, but all the people not present at Hollywood’s biggest night who make it possible for them to be there in the first place. “I owe everything to the love of my life, my wife Echo,” Ke Huy Quan said during his speech. “Who, month after month, year after year for 20 years, told me that one day my time will come.”

Echo was right.

For the full list of winners, click here.

For more stories and interviews with Oscar nominees, check out these stories:

“Everything Everywhere All At Once” Hair & Makeup Team on Creating Looks For Every Dimension

“Everything Everywhere All At Once” Actress Stephanie Hsu on Landing the Role of a Lifetime

Oscar Nominee Brendan Fraser on his Deep Dive into “The Whale”

“The Whale” Oscar-Nominated Prosthetics Artist Adrien Morot Breaks the Mold

Featured image: HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA – MARCH 12: Michelle Yeoh accepts the Best Actress award for “Everything Everywhere All at Once” onstage during the 95th Annual Academy Awards at Dolby Theatre on March 12, 2023 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

“Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 2” Adds “Ted Lasso” Star Hannah Waddingham

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Ted Lasso star Hannah Waddingham is going from the front office of the fictional AFC Richmond squad to the high-octane world of international espionage. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 2 writer/director Christopher McQuarrie has revealed that Waddingham will be in the final installment of his Tom Cruise-led franchise via Instagram.

We’d only recently learned that McQuarrie, Cruise, and the rest of the Mission: Impossible team are filming scenes for Dead Reckoning Part 2 on the U.S.S. George H.W Bush; now, McQuarrie has revealed that Waddingham is on board the vessel—or we should say a vessel, it’s not 100% clear if it’s the warship—in an undisclosed role.

Here’s McQuarrie’s post:

Little is known about the plot for Dead Reckoning Part 2—we’ve only seen the trailer for Part One (embedded below)—but we do know both films will feature the customary gonzo stunts and that Part 2 will be Tom Cruise’s final Mission.

Waddingham was one of our favorite interview subjects from 2021. She’s a multi-talented performer, gifted with the comedic chops required to spar with Jason Sudeikis and the rest of the Lasso squad, the singing voice to star in West End productions in London of iconic plays like Spamalot, Into the Woods, and The Wizard of Oz, and the gravitas to transform into one of Game of Thrones more terrifying characters, Septa Unella, a tormentor of Cersei Lannister. There’s no doubt she’ll be a great addition to one of the greatest action franchises of all time.

Check out the trailer for Dead Reckoning Part One below, which hits theaters on July 14, 2023. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 2 arrives on June 28, 2024:

For more on the Mission: Impossible series, check out these stories:

Tom Cruise Filming Part of “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part Two ” On U.S. Aircraft Carrier off Italian Coast

Watch Tom Cruise Perform the Most Insane Stunt in “Mission: Impossible” History

“Mission: Impossible 8” Will Be Tom Cruise’s Last (and Craziest)

“Mission: Impossible – 7” Team Celebrate First Assistant Director Mary Boulding

Featured image: Hannah Waddingham in “Ted Lasso” season two, now streaming on Apple TV+.

“Wednesday” Star Jenna Ortega in Talks to Star in Tim Burton’s “Beetlejuice 2”

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Jenna Ortega and Tim Burton are becoming quite the potent duo. The Wednesday star is circling Burton’s Beetlejuice 2, the long-awaited sequel to his 1988 comedy that starred Michael Keaton as a malicious spirit trying to help a pair of recently deceased husband and wife (played by Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis) and scare some people out of their former house.

The Hollywood Reporter scoops that multiple sources have confirmed that Ortega is looking seriously at a role in the film. This news comes as Ortega is set to have a huge weekend, first, with her returning role as Tara Carpenter in Scream VI and then with her debut hosting performance on Saturday Night Live. 

Beetlejuice 2 is expected to find both Burton and Keaton returning, with a production beginning in late May or early June and set to film in London. THR says that Ortega would be playing the daughter of Lydia, the moody but un-spookable teen that Winona Ryder played in the 1988 original.

The potential sequel has been bandied about for years, with Burton himself unsure if he’d return to direct or even be involved in the film. Yet now, on the heels of his smashing success with Ortega in Netflix’s Wednesday, which Burton directed, the time is apparently ripe. And Ortega is a star on the rise who clearly relishes her opportunity to work with Burton.

Here’s hoping we get to see Ortega in Beetlejuice 2, and, if we’re allowed to be greedy, that Winona Ryder returns and the two get to share the screen together as mother and daughter.

For more on Wednesday, check out these stories:

“Wednesday” Breaks “Stranger Things 4” Record For Most Hours Viewed in a Week

Why Jenna Ortega (And More) Has Us So Excited For “Wednesday”

“Wednesday” Trailer Reveals Tim Burton’s “The Addams Family” Reboot

Featured image: Jenna Ortega (“Tara”) stars in Paramount Pictures and Spyglass Media Group’s “Scream.” Photo by Brownie Harris.

Michael Shannon’s Return as General Zod in “The Flash” Surprised…Michael Shannon

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Now that details about director Andy Muschietti’s The Flash are coming to light—a film the new DC Studios co-chief James Gunn has called one of the best superhero movies he’s ever seen—we know that Michael Keaton’s return as Batman isn’t the only Michael reprising a role in the film. Michael Shannon also returns as the Superman nemesis General Zod, and the news surprised not just everyone who saw Zod die in Man of Steel but Shannon himself.

Speaking with Looper, Shannon revealed a little confusion when he was first approached. “I was a little confused,” Shannon told Looper. “I said, ‘As memory serves me, I think I died in Man of Steel. Are they sure they got the right guy?’ But then they explained to me the whole multiverse phenomenon, which I was a little behind the times on that. I can’t say that I’m a huge consumer of this genre of films — not that I have anything against them. If I’m going to watch a movie, the odds are it’s not going to be one of those, but I sure love making them.”

The “whole multiverse phenomenon” that Shannon is referring to is, of course, the way both DC Studios and Marvel have been playing with the conceit of a multiverse, one deployed by comic book writers for decades, in which a character might have died in one universe, but can be alive and well in another. For The Flash, Barry Allen (Ezra Miller), better known as the Flash, will use his super speed to race back in time to try and change the course of history and save his mother’s life. In doing so, however, Barry will wind up in an alternate universe in which Zod is very much alive and determined to wipe out Barry and anyone else standing in his way. Oh, also, in this universe, there are no other meta-humans (that is, superheroes like Superman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, etc.) which is why Barry has to recruit the only other superhero around who happens to be decidedly human and non-meta—Michael Keaton’s aging Batman.

Shannon’s reprising his role, but he’s not playing the same General Zod from Man of Steel. This is the nature of the multiverse and why there can be multiple Batmen (Ben Affleck also appears as Bruce Wayne in the film) and multiple Spider-Men over in Sony/Marvel’s Spider-Man: No Way Home. Here’s what Shannon said about the role to Looper:

“I tried to get back into his skin,” Shannon said. “He’s a little different in this film. He’s a little more…I don’t know how to put it. You don’t spend as much time with him, so you don’t really get to know as much about what he’s thinking. It’s not necessarily his movie. That’s the thing with these multiverse movies — you get a little bit of this and a little bit of that. But it’s really Ezra [Miller’s] movie.”

For more on The Flash, check out these stories:

“The Flash” Will Premiere at CinemaCon 2023

“The Flash” Posters Reveal Michael Keaton’s Batman in Iconic Cape & Cowl

“The Flash” Trailer Reveals Michael Keaton’s Batman, Supergirl, & So Much More

Featured image: DEAUVILLE, FRANCE – SEPTEMBER 11: Michael Shannon poses during the unveiling of his dedicated beach locker room on the Promenade des Planches during the 47th Deauville American Film Festival on September 11, 2021 in Deauville, France. (Photo by Francois Durand/Getty Images)

Daniel Brühl Will Play Karl Lagerfeld in Disney+’s “Kaiser Karl” Series

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Daniel Brühl is a chameleon, able to disappear into roles, and now he’ll be stepping into the polished boots and high, starched collar of the larger-than-life fashion icon Karl Lagerfeld.

Brühl is set to star in Disney+’s Kaiser Karl, a new series that will focus on the fashion icon’s life in Paris in the 1970s, before he was an icon, when he was first trying to break into the fashion world. The series is based on Raphaëlle Bacqué’s eponymous biography of Lagerfeld, and was adapted for the screen by Bacqué, Isaure Pisani-Ferry (Kaboul Kitchen), and Jennifer Have (The Red Band Society). Pisani-Ferry led the writing team and is credited as co-writer on all the scripts with Have, Dominique Baumard (The Bureau—one of the best spy series ever, by the way), and Nathalie Hertzberg (Farewell, De Gaulle, Farewell).

Lagerfeld was born in Germany and ultimately went on to become one of the most recognizable figures in the fashion world for decades. His signature look—white hair, black sunglasses, and those high, starched collars—was a part of the fashion firmament. His highest profile job was as creative director for the French fashion house Chanel, which he held from 1983 until his death in 2019.

Brühl will be sharing the screen with performers playing some of the most crucial and formative people in Lagerfeld’s life and the fashion world in general. Arnaud Valois will play Yves Saint Laurent, and Alex Lutz will play Pierre Bergé, two of Lagerfeld’s rivals. Théodore Pellerin is playing Lagerfeld’s romantic partner Jacques de Bascher. And Agnés Jaoui is playing Gaby Aghion, founder of the Chloé fashion brand, credited with being one of the first people to see major potential in the then-unknown fashion designer.

The six-part series will be produced by Gaumont and Jour Premier for Disney+ France, with Jérôme Salle (Totems) and Audrey Estrougo (upcoming Disney+ series Tout va bien), and is currently shooting in France, Monaco, and Italy.

For more stories on Century Studios, Searchlight Pictures, Marvel Studios and what’s streaming or coming to

Disney+, check these out:

Jon Bernthal Returning as the Punisher in Marvel’s “Daredevil: Born Again”

First Trailer for Jeremy Renner’s “Rennervations” Will Roll Directly Into Your Heart

Hugh Jackman Reveals his Meal Plan for Bulking Up to Play Wolverine in “Deadpool 3”

Hugh Jackman Teases “Double Role” for Wolverine in “Deadpool 3”

Featured image: ZURICH, SWITZERLAND – SEPTEMBER 23: Daniel Brühl attends the premiere of “Im Westen nichts Neues” during the 18th Zurich Film Festival at Kongresshaus on September 23, 2022 in Zurich, Switzerland. (Photo by Thomas Lohnes/Getty Images for ZFF)

“Champions” Star Kaitlin Olson on Doing Improv With Woody, Her Bond With Her On-Screen Brother & More

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Releasing in theaters March 10th, the heartwarming and acerbic dramedy Champions, directed by Bobby Farrelly, comes just in time to cheer those sick of winter and in the need for a little spring in their step. Based on the 2018 Spanish film Campeones, which won top awards and was the biggest hit of the year in that country, Champions stars Woody Harrelson and Kaitlin Olson and features an ensemble cast that includes ten performers with developmental disabilities. 

Harrelson plays short-fused basketball coach Marcus, who is sentenced to community service coaching a Special Olympics basketball team called The Friends after a DUI. At first, he just wants to get through his experience as quickly and uneventfully as possible, but working with these players proves transformational. Olson is Alex, Marcus’s love interest, a funny, straight-talking Shakespearean actress living with and caring for her brother Johnny (Kevin Iannucci). Johnny has Down Syndrome and is a member of the close-knit and committed Friends team. 

In a chat with The Credits, Kaitlin Olson, who has a strong background in improvisation, talks about using improv with Woody Harrelson, which came really easily for the Disabled performers playing members of The Friends, the need for strong, multi-dimensional female leads over 40 in film, and more. 

 

What was the first scene you shot, and how did that help set the tone for the rest of the shoot?

The first scene I shot was an incredibly emotional breakup scene with Woody, in which I was supposed to be very upset and teary, and afterward, all the producers came up and were like, “We are so sorry we threw you right into the deep end with that one.” But it was great because I remember Woody walking away and saying to Bobby, “Oh, my God, she’s giving it 100%, and she’s so good!” It was so lovely to overhear. I know that he didn’t mean for me to hear that, and it just made me feel really good. I think it was just nice to be a part of something where everybody was appreciative that you were there. It was a hard scene, and when the camera was just on me and not on Woody, he was still there, fully engaged and giving me 100%. He didn’t have to do that. Not everyone does that. It was a lovely way to be welcomed because I came after they started shooting, so they had all been working together for about a week by the time I got there.

In our introduction to Alex and in several of her subsequent conversations with Marcus, she reveals some of the challenges of being a 40-something woman in our world. Can you talk a bit about that aspect of Alex and the importance of characters like her existing onscreen?

Inclusivity is important, and I think that that goes for unmarried women in their 40s who are living at home. This is just a woman who has given her life over to taking care of her brother, and so what ended up happening is that she has sort of given up a lot of what she would have done if she were being selfish. There’s something very selfless and beautiful about that because she doesn’t consider herself a martyr. She’s doing it because she feels like it’s the right thing to do.

(L to R) Kevin Iannucci as Johnathan, Kaitlin Olson as Alex, James Day Keith as Benny, and Woody Harrelson as Marcus in director Bobby Farrelly’s CHAMPIONS, a Focus Features release. Credit : Shauna Townley/Focus Features

There aren’t enough of those kinds of female characters on-screen. She’s very complicated. She’s not wholly good or bad but mixed, like most of the real women in the world. 

I love that she unapologetically explained her situation and what was going on. This is what it is, I don’t feel sorry for myself, but we don’t have a lot of time to mess around. Do you want this to happen or not? It was very bold. And, you know, she wasn’t waiting around for him to ask her back out on another date. She was just like, “This is what we’re doing. Let’s do it or don’t. Get out or stay in.” 

You’ve mentioned working with Woody is a very collaborative and balanced experience. Can you point to a few ways in which that collaboration showed up onscreen?

I think Woody gets a little bit scared when you start improvising, and so it was fun to do things that would make him laugh and then make him loosen up and sort of give him the freedom to start playing around back with me. He’s just such a talented person that he can deliver what is on the paper so beautifully, and then going off script was also a really amazing experience, and I think maybe even surprised him a little bit. I don’t think he’s used to that.

(L to R) Matt Cook as Sonny, Kaitlin Olson as Alex, Woody Harrelson as Marcus, and Cheech Marin as Julio in director Bobby Farrelly’s CHAMPIONS, a Focus Features release. Credit : Courtesy of Focus Features

You come from an improvisational background, and there was a lot of improvisation and thinking on your feet in the film. Can you give some examples of moments made better by that or things that wound up on screen that were improvised?

A lot of the stuff with The Friends was improvised. We had cameras rolling all the time, so we were capturing just everything that was being said, so there was a lot that wasn’t scripted that ended up in there, which was really fun to see. But there was a scene with Woody, an intimate scene where we were kissing, and we stop and have a conversation, and a lot of that was improvised. It was just fun because the scene is supposed to be awkward, and it was kind of awkward because I was changing what I was saying, and he was saying something different. That was particularly fun. It’s also just fun to intimidate Woody.

Alex is a Shakespeare geek, and she performs it and drives a Shakespeare van. What’s your connection to the bard?

I showed up and saw that van was like, “This is so amazing.” She basically lives there. It’s her heaven. She’s probably the most comfortable in her van, and it definitely went along with the wardrobe. I was a theater major in school, and my school specialized in theater and Shakespeare. I wasn’t a huge Shakespeare fan, but I went to the University of Oregon. It’s very close to Ashland, Oregon, which is just like Shakespeare city. You had to pretend that you were interested in Shakespeare to get the head of the program to like you, so I did, and I did a lot of it. I felt very, very grateful for my accidental Shakespeare background shooting this movie.

Kevin Iannucci was wonderful as Johnny, Alex’s brother. How did you come to the authenticity needed as brother and sister, and how was it bouncing off each other in your scenes together? 

I really wanted to meet Kevin before we were working together, and on the day that I was going to fly up there, Bobby called and said that Kevin wanted to meet with me before we worked together. And I was like, “Oh, that’s great.” So I met him with him and his mother, who is amazing, and we just spent some time together. You fall in love with Kevin the second that you meet him. It’s impossible not to. He is a gem. He is kind, and he is so funny. He’s up for anything. We fell in love instantly. He’s a good friend. We text. We FaceTimed on Christmas. We’ve become very close. It wasn’t hard to have a bond with him instantly. And also, he was nervous sometimes. He had big scenes. So, just as a more seasoned actor, I felt very protective of him. All of that came very easily and very naturally. 

 

 

Champions, from Focus Features, is in theaters nationwide on March 10th. 

 

 

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

“The Fabelmans” Oscar-Nominated Production Designer Rick Carter Gets Personal With Steven Spielberg

“Cocaine Bear” VFX Supervisor Robin Hollander on Creating an Ursine Junkie

Go Deep “Inside” With Willem Dafoe in Curated Look at his New Art Thief Thriller

Featured image: Kaitlin Olson stars as Alex in director Bobby Farrelly’s CHAMPIONS, released by Focus Features. Credit : Shauna Townley/Focus Features

 

 

“House of the Dragon” Showrunner Teases Five New Dragons For Season 2

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House of the Dragon showrunner and co-creator Ryan Condal has promised a five-pack of new dragons for season two of HBO’s hit Game of Thrones spinoff.

Condal appeared at an FYC event on Tuesday alongside George R.R. Martin and stars of the series and revealed this white-hot little nugget for fans. “You’re going to meet five new dragons,” Condal said at the event in Los Angeles. He also revealed that season two was going to begin filming soon.

Joining Condal and Martin at the event were House of the Dragon stars Matt Smith (Daemon Targaryen), Olivia Cooke (Alicent Hightower), Paddy Considine (King Viserys/Targaryen), Eve Best (Rhaenys Targaryen), Rhys Ifans (Otto Hightower), Steve Toussaint (Corlys Velaryon), Fabien Frankel (Criston Cole), and Emily Carey (young Alicent Hightower). They screened the eighth episode of season one, “Lord of the Tides,” and Condal, Martin, and the stars joined Josh Gad for a panel discussion. 

Martin told the crowd that “Lord of the Tides” was a favorite episode for him. “I thought it was really powerful. This guy [Condal] has an amazing writing staff,” Martin told the audience. “Because if you read my book Fire & Blood, which you should, it’s a fake history. So there’s a lot of the details that are in this that are absolutely wonderful and moving that are not in the book. They added stuff, and they added good stuff, which is important.”

Martin also joked about his long (long) simmering final installment in his “A Song of Ice and Fire” novel series, which he’s been working on for years. There was, undoubtedly, a tremendous amount of pressure on the House of the Dragon team to come up with a worthy follow-up to the record-smashing Game of Thrones, but Martin said it paled in comparison to what he’s dealing with on the novel side.

“The pressure of trying to follow the original series is nothing compared to the pressure of trying to finish the novel,” Martin joked. “That has me sleepless at nights. The show? That’s Ryan’s problem.”

For more on House of the Dragon, check out these stories:

House of the Dragon” Season 2 Coming to HBO in 2024

“House of the Dragon” Co-Creator & Co-Showrunner Ryan Condal on Season One & Beyond

“House of the Dragon” Costume Designer Jany Temime’s Deadly Elegance

Inside “The House of the Dragon” Episode 8: Farewell to the King

Featured image: Matt Smith in “House of the Dragon.” Photograph by Courtesy HBO

“Scream VI” Review Round-Up: A Clever, Homicidal Shell Game in the Big City

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The Radio Silence team that brought you last year’s Scream (the fifth installment in the franchise, although it lacked a number in the title) are back, and it seems they’ve delivered an even nastier, naughtier, more tightly-wound slasher with Scream VI. With reviews no longer under embargo, critics have begun weighing in on what the first film in the franchise to be set outside of Woodsboro, California, delivers now that the action has moved to New York City.

The directing team of Tyler Gillett and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin have made the most of their decision to bring Ghostface to the Big Apple, and they sic him on some familiar faces. Gayle Weathers (Courtney Cox) returns alongside sisters Sam Carpenter (Melissa Barrera) and Tara Carpenter (Jenna Ortega), who moved to New York to rebuild their lives after the horrific events back in Woodsboro, as well as Mindy Meeks-Martin (Jasmin Savoy Brown) and Chad Meeks-Martin (Mason Gooding). And then there’s the glorious return of Kirby Reed (Hayden Panettiere), back after surviving the bloodbath in Scream 4 (2011) and her Easter egg appearance, via a photograph, in the last Scream. 

Newcomers include Jack Champion, Henry Czerny, Liana Liberato, Dermot Mulroney, Devyn Nekoda, Tony Revolori, Josh Segarra, and Samara Weaving. All of them have their hands full with a seemingly even more sadistic and unhinged Ghostface as the franchise, now firmly in meta mode and helmed by two Scream superfans who know what they’re doing, put all these characters through the wringer.

The Independent‘s Clarisse Loughrey writes that the sequel is “wholly satisfying and ridiculously fun.” Staying on the far side of the pond, the London Evening Standard‘s Charlotte O’Sullivan writes, “Bloody hell. Number 6 in the post-modern horror Scream series is gory… as well as hot-under-the-arms tense and properly funny.”

Stateside, the Chicago Sun-Times Richard Roeper says that Scream VI is a “gruesome and wickedly funny horror film that still hits all the right notes we’ve come to expect from the franchise.” IndieWire‘s Christian Zilko says, “If they keep making ’em like Scream VI, the future is as bright as it is bloody.”

Now let’s take a quick peek at what some critics are Tweeting:

Scream VI hits theaters on March 10.

For more on the Scream franchise, check out these stories:

Paramount Reveals “Scream VI” Super Bowl Spot

“Scream VI” Trailer Finds Hayden Panettiere Back Fighting Ghostface in NYC

How the “Scream” Team Created The Best Film in the Franchise Since The Original

Featured image: Ghostface in Paramount Pictures and Spyglass Media Group’s “Scream VI.”

“Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” Writer Jeff Loveness Spotlights Marvel’s Wackiest Characters

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Honey, I Shrunk the Baddest Supervillain in the Multiverse might have been the alternate title for Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Evil things come in little packages – but with big punchlines – in the pivotal first entry in Marvel’s Phase 5.

Screenwriter Jeff Loveness was tasked with introducing a new supervillain into the MCU that has to top Thanos, but don’t expect him to do it with a straight face. He takes tons of detours to give the most eccentric creatures in the Quantum Realm their moment in the sun.

We drop in on a regular-sized Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) with an inflated ego after his role in thwarting the big snap, but his biggest challenge yet is about to suck him back into the fray.

“[Scott Lang] thinks he’s won. He thinks he’s doing pretty well, and he gets pulled back into it, and he just doesn’t want to lose any more time,” Loveness explained. “It just felt like a great way to make him grow and be compelling as a character. I think if we had done the same thing where he’s fighting on top of a pencil eraser – yeah, maybe people would have liked it, but it would not have been new or interesting or divisive. I’m glad that we got to put the smallest Avenger, quite literally, in an Avengers movie by himself being tortured by this top-tier villain with his daughter there.”

(L-R): Kathryn Newton as Cassandra “Cassie” Lang and Paul Rudd as Scott Lang/Ant-Man in Marvel Studios’ ANT-MAN AND THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA. Photo by Jay Maidment. © 2022 MARVEL.

Since Iron Man kicked off the modern era of Marvel films fifteen years ago, it had all been leading to a showdown with Thanos. With the Infinity Stone collector finally vanquished in Avengers: Endgame, Loveness had to find a way to escalate the threat to our heroes.

Enter Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors), who has a secret history with Janet van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer) and a brooding plot to dominate, well, everything ever. Loveness turned from brawn to brain, giving us an unsettling, conversational introduction to Kang.

Jonathan Majors as Kang The Conqueror in Marvel Studios' ANT-MAN AND THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. © 2023 MARVEL.
Jonathan Majors as Kang The Conqueror in Marvel Studios’ ANT-MAN AND THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. © 2023 MARVEL.

“There’s going to be plenty of time in Avenger movies for time travel and blue face and lasers and variants and all that fun multiverse stuff,” Loveness promised. “I thought that it would be really important just to showcase him as a vulnerable human man. Thanos is fantastic, but he is a big motion-captured purple CGI space alien. I think the way to beat that is to do the opposite of it and really focus on the human face and really focus on the humanity of this guy.”

 

That means getting a good deal of face time with the character. Kang strikes an instantly iconic pose on a makeshift throne inside his marooned ship of an exasperated but intellectual threat lying in wait. Always plotting, we see his manipulative tactics unfold.

Jonathan Majors as Kang The Conqueror in Marvel Studios' ANT-MAN AND THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA. Photo by Jay Maidment. © 2022 MARVEL.
Jonathan Majors as Kang The Conqueror in Marvel Studios’ ANT-MAN AND THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA. Photo by Jay Maidment. © 2022 MARVEL.

“I love that so much of the movie, he gets to actually talk to Michelle Pfeiffer for a while and he actually gets to talk to Scott Lang for a while,” Loveness observed. “He has almost that Faust energy to him. He can really pull you in. You’ve got Jonathan Majors, who is just the most electric actor working right now, so I felt like I was just super lucky.”

Loveness was discovered in college via a viral video that showcased his ability to match an established comic character with a quirky tone. When it was announced that he would also pen Avengers: The Kang Dynasty, he tweeted a link to the skit saying, “Make that thing with your friends. You never know.”  

Wise words as he now stands poised to shape the trajectory of the Avengers’ collision course with Kang.

“At the time I wrote [Quantumania], I didn’t have Avengers, so you are kind of building railroad tracks. You don’t know where that train is going, but I did have a general idea for what I thought it should be and where I thought it should go,” Loveness explained. “So, when the Avengers pitch came around, and they offered me the chance to go for it, I was able to pick up from there and take it where I thought the Kang story should go. But I really just tried to focus on this guy right here and what’s going on, and you lay in some mystery. He’s such a nonlinear character. It seemed really fun to do.”

Paul Rudd as Scott Lang/Ant-Man and Jonathan Majors as Kang the Conqueror in Marvel Studios' ANT-MAN AND THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA. Photo by Jay Maidment. © 2022 MARVEL.
Paul Rudd as Scott Lang/Ant-Man and Jonathan Majors as Kang the Conqueror in Marvel Studios’ ANT-MAN AND THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA. Photo by Jay Maidment. © 2022 MARVEL.

The Rick and Morty and Jimmy Kimmel Live! alum started writing Marvel comics nearly a decade ago. While there are plenty of classic characters in the film that started on the page, Loveness injected the script with a few originals that have the undeniable stamp of his style.

The most wholesome – and hole obsessed – is a goop guy named Veb (David Dastmalchian). His ritualistic chant turns out to be an earnest urging to help Scott and Cassie (Kathryn Newton) speak his language.

“It was the potential of the Quantum Realm. If this is a place of limitless biology and limitless evolution, what are other life forms, and what would that mean? I got to really dive into that. Also, I was just really high,” Loveness laughed. “I think I was really high when I came up with that, so maybe that shows.”

Veb (David Dastmalchian). ANT-MAN AND THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA. © 2023 MARVEL.

Veb’s fellow freedom fighter, Quaz, is an empath with an attitude. His special ability proves useful but causes him some personal grievance.

“I am just such a huge X-Men fan, so that’s what led to the William Jackson Harper character because if you actually could read the minds of everyone around you, you would not be as calm and serene as Patrick Stewart I don’t think,” Loveness joked. “You would hate everybody. You would be annoyed. I’m so glad [director] Peyton [Reed] and Marvel was down to make a goofy road trip comedy in a way.”

William Jackson Harper as Quaz in Marvel Studios' ANT-MAN AND THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA. Photo by Jay Maidment. © 2022 MARVEL.
William Jackson Harper as Quaz in Marvel Studios’ ANT-MAN AND THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA. Photo by Jay Maidment. © 2022 MARVEL.

Quantumania is an ensemble film with three generations of Pym particle experts taking their best shots at Kang. It’s good that they all took an interest in the superpowered technology because this fight is all hands on deck.

“Ant-Man and The Wasp (Evangeline Lilly) are fighting for their lives. Cassie tries to help. None of them can beat this guy dead on,” Loveness noted. “Oh, but it turns out those ants we forgot about, they have a fighting chance. They come in with Hank (Michael Douglas), the guy who’s been kind of comic relief the whole movie – and the whole trilogy, really. The whole trilogy is making fun of ants and discounting them. What if you’re in a place where the ants are really big, almost Starship Trooper ants mixed with a Lord of the Rings cavalry charge, but even that’s not enough to beat him because he still has his forcefield and he’s still very powerful.”

(L-R): Paul Rudd as Scott Lang/Ant-Man, Kathryn Newton as Cassandra “Cassie” Lang, Evangeline Lilly as Hope Van Dyne/Wasp in Marvel Studios’ ANT-MAN AND THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. © 2022 MARVEL.

Hank still can’t resist pausing mid-battle to dive into his passionate observations about ant colonies and their social structure.

“I would go to the mat for those socialist ants,” Loveness asserted. “I don’t care what the internet says. They’re great.”

In the end, Scott and his family will need help from the inside to claim victory. Loveness was nearly deliriously joyful to write the bizarre character M.O.D.O.K. (Corey Stoll) – an acronym for Mechanized Organism Designed Only for Killing. From the name, you might expect a ruthless, unstoppable android, but instead, we find the inflated face of a dejected and bitter Darren Cross. He uses more emotional jabs than firepower to attack Scott, but in the end, there’s an opportunity for him to rise a hero.

“Cassie Lang just finally broke into M.O.D.O.K.’s dumb head like, ‘Hey, don’t be such a fucking dick, man.’ She just finally got to give him that pitiful intervention,” Loveness explained. “Because he has Kang technology that we’ve set up, he’s able to just for a brief second blow open his shield, and that’s what allows them to rush him. That, to me, felt really fun and something you can only do in an Ant-Man movie. Even then, [Kang] still gets up and just beats Scott’s ass. It’s basically his own hubris and his own overconfidence.”

No one commits to a dark, gruesome, prolonged joke quite like Loveness. When M.O.D.O.K falls, he falls hard, rife with unresolved jealousies and unfulfilled dreams. Bruised and sputtering bile, he still lobbies for acceptance. It’s a moment of black – and bleak – comedy that shines.

“[Scott has] got everything Darren would ever want, and Darren is just a big head, and he just feels shitty about himself,” Loveness recognized. “I thought it would be very funny to do really the tightrope walk of it’s so sad, no one can say the truth, so they have to throw him a bone. This guy is so desperate for any connection. They have to give it to him. My favorite part is Darren keeps asking for more. Then he assumes he’s an Avenger. They’re like, ‘Yeah, you’re in.’”

Perhaps, in the end, that’s enough. “He is an Avenger now, right?” I asked. “Maybe we should give it to him?”

“I won’t. No. He’s not. They lied. They lied to a dying big head,” Loveness refuted.

Sorry, Darren. I tried. R.I.P. M.O.D.O.K.

 

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is blasting onto the big screen in theaters now.

For more on Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania, check out these stories:

“Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania” Composer Christophe Beck on Kang, the Langs, & Depeche Mode

“Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania” Offers Two Great Villains: One Pure Charisma, the Other Pure Lunacy

“Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania” Early Reactions: Jonathan Majors Excels as Supervillain Kang

Featured image: (L-R): Paul Rudd as Scott Lang/Ant-Man in Marvel Studios’ ANT-MAN AND THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. © 2022 MARVEL.

Jon Bernthal Returning as the Punisher in Marvel’s “Daredevil: Born Again”

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Jon Bernthal’s ready to mete out some punishment in the MCU.

The multi-talented Bernthal is reprising his role as the Punisher, only now, he’ll be doing it for Marvel Studios in their upcoming Disney+ series Daredevil: Born Again. Bernthal’s brutal antihero will be mixing it up with Charlie Cox’s Matt Murdock/Daredevil and Vince D’Onofrio’s Wilson Fisk/Kingpin, The Hollywood Reporter confirms.

Bernthal first appeared as Frank Castle, better known as the Punisher, in Netflix’s Daredevil during its second season in 2016, and then went on to star in Netflix’s stand-alone series The Punisher for two seasons, from 2017 to 2019. Back then, Marvel TV and the Marvel Cinematic Universe were not integrated, so series like Daredevil, The Punisher, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, and Iron Fist existed outside the MCU. Once Netflix canceled those series ahead of the launch of Disney+, it seemed possible we’d not see Bernthal, Cox, and D’Onofrio (who co-starred in Daredevil) again in those roles.

Then, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige revealed he very much felt these characters had a future on the new streamer and within the MCU. Cox then appeared in both Spider-Man: No Way Home and She-Hulk, while D’Onofrio had a key role in Hawkeye. Now, all three will be featured in the new series.

Daredevil: Born Again begins shooting in New York this month and is planned for an astonishing 18-episode arc, meaning there’s plenty of runway for writers and executive producers Chris Ord and Matt Corman to explore Matt Murdock, Frank Castle, and Wilson Fisk’s intersecting storylines. The title Born Again is derived from a “Daredevil” comic book storyline from the legendary writer Frank Miller and artist David Mazzuchelli, although the series will not follow Miller’s plot exactly. For example, Frank Castle wasn’t in that storyline, but you can be certain he’ll have a big role to play here.

Daredevil: Born Again is slated for a 2024 release.

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

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Hugh Jackman Teases “Double Role” for Wolverine in “Deadpool 3”

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Steven Yeun Joins the Cast of Marvel’s “Thunderbolts”

Featured image: HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA – NOVEMBER 14: Jon Bernthal attends the 2021 AFI Fest Closing Night Premiere of Warner Bros. “King Richard” at TCL Chinese Theatre on November 14, 2021 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Jon Kopaloff/Getty Images)

First Trailer for Jeremy Renner’s “Rennervations” Will Roll Directly Into Your Heart

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Our first look at the four-part docuseries Rennervations is here, revealing a heartwarming glimpse at Jeremy Renner’s long-standing passion project. The trailer arrives a mere two months after Renner’s deeply scary New Year’s Day snowplow accident and comes rumbling in with a whole lot of good vibes considering Renner’s recovery and the subject matter of the series.

Rennervations features Renner and his hand-picked crew of fabricators, mechanics, construction veterans, and more traveling the world to reimagine and reconfigure vehicles that will roll into communities across the globe to serve their specific needs.

From Renner’s hometown of Reno, Nevada, to Rajasthan, India—with stops in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, and Chicago, Illinois—Rennervations is centered on Renner and his team of experts turning decommissioned vehicles into everything from water treatment facilities to a mobile music studio to a community center complete with a basketball hoop. Working with his partner and friend Rory Millikin, lead fabricator Rob “Bender” Park, lead mechanic Corey Wardleigh, and build crew members Merri Oswald, Justin Self, Roxy Bonilla, Merri Oswald, Akamu “AK” Whatley, Skiland “Ski” Judd, Ryan Gunter and Nick Socha, Renner’s docuseries is the culmination of a passion for community building and retrofitting vehicle’s he’s been exploring for years.

“I’ve been on this journey for many years, and I started in my community by building vehicles for people in need,” Renner said in a statement announcing the show. “But a few years ago, I thought: How can I plus this up and create a bigger impact on a whole community? And that’s what this show does. This is one of my biggest passions, and it’s a driving force in my recovery, and I can’t wait for the world to see it.”

Rennervations includes some familiar faces from Renner’s other career as a movie star—the series features four guest stars: his Marvel partner Anthony Mackie, Vanessa Hudgens, Anil Kapoor (Mission Impossible), and Sebastián Yatra (Encanto). The joy is palpable in the trailer, the cause is righteous, and as Renner continues to recovery from the New Year’s Day accident, on imagines the release of Rennervations will serve as a turning point moment for him this year.

Check out the trailer below. Rennervations arrives on Disney+ on April 12.

For more stories on Century Studios, Searchlight Pictures, Marvel Studios and what’s streaming or coming to

Disney+, check these out:

Hugh Jackman Reveals his Meal Plan for Bulking Up to Play Wolverine in “Deadpool 3”

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Featured image: NEW YORK, NEW YORK – NOVEMBER 22: Jeremy Renner attends the “Hawkeye” Special Screening at AMC Lincoln Square Theater on November 22, 2021 in New York City. (Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images)

Hugh Jackman Reveals his Meal Plan for Bulking Up to Play Wolverine in “Deadpool 3”

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What does it take to become Wolverine? Hugh Jackman revealed the menu he’s working with in order to bulk up to become the adamantium-clawed mutant for Deadpool 3. The photo Jackman shared of his meal plan (which he credits to Chef Mario) is, of course, only part of his process of recapturing the fully jacked physique of arguably the toughest member of the X-Men. You can’t just eat your way to a six-pack and jacked biceps, but if you want to become Wolverine, you’ll need to eat. A lot.

Jackman’s putting away Patagonia salmon (2,100 calories), black bass (2,000 calories), two chicken burgers (roughly 1,000 calories each), and two grass-fed sirloins (1,100 calories each)—a day. That totals 8,000 calories every 24 hours for Jackman, which is a lot. As Variety helpfully pointed out, Jonathan Majors bulked up for his turn as an obsessive bodybuilder for the Sundance hit Magazine Dreams by consuming 6,000 calories a day for four months. Obviously, both Jackman and Majors are able to consume this amount of calories because they’re turning a huge percentage of those calories into muscle by working out, hard, for hours a day.

Here’s Jackman’s tweet:

Jackman’s reprisal of his most iconic role was massive news in the Marvel Cinematic Universe world. This will be the first time he’s played Wolverine for Marvel, a character he brought to the big screen back in 2000 in the very first X-Men film, and then played in multiple X-Men film, and, for what was billed as his final turn, in James Mangold’s 2017 Logan. Jackman’s Wolverine died in that film, yet that didn’t stop his longtime buddy Ryan Reynolds from lobbying Jackman repeatedly to reprise the role in a Deadpool movie.

In Deadpool 3, Jackman will be sharing the screen with Reynolds in their respective roles as Wolverine and Deadpool, but not for the first time. The pair appeared briefly together in X-Men Origins: Wolverine as these characters, but that version of Wade Wilson (Deadpool’s civilian name) was decidedly not the version Reynolds re-launched in 2016. Now, the duo will be wise-cracking and superhero’ing in an R-rated film (like the previous two Deadpool installments) in a franchise that has become legendary for it’s humor, it’s hardcore action, and Deadpool’s relentless riffing and joking.

Jackman will be buffed and ready to handle whatever lunacy Reynolds and the Deadpool 3 brain trust—director Shawn Levy and screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick—have cooked up for him. The man can clearly absorb just about everything.

For more on Deadpool 3, check out these stories:

Hugh Jackman Teases “Double Role” for Wolverine in “Deadpool 3”

“Deadpool 3” Adds Emma Corrin to Cast Alongside Ryan Reynolds & Hugh Jackman

Hugh Jackman to Academy: Please Don’t Give Ryan Reynolds an Oscar Nom

Featured image: Hugh Jackman in Logan. Courtesy 20th Century Fox/Walt Disney Studios.

Seth Rogen’s “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem” Delivers a Delightful First Trailer

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When Seth Rogen revealed the star-studded cast helping bring the heroes in a half shell back to the big screen, even those not intimately connected to the 1980s cartoon (or the previous film adaptations thereafter, or the new, more recent animated series) had to pause. Rogen revealed that along with the central cast, all appropriately voiced by teens, the supporting stars included Rose Byrne, Jackie Chan, Ice Cube, John Cena, Paul Rudd, Maya Rudolph, Hannibal Buress, and more. All this star power for a movie about teenage turtles with mutant superpowers mucking it up in New York City? Yup.

Then Paramount Pictures dropped this delicious first trailer, and even for the uninitiated, perhaps, the excitement makes more sense. The film was conjured into life by “permanent teenager” Seth Rogen, as the opening credits reveal, and the animation has a texture and playfulness to it that would be impossible to recreate in a live-action version. Mutant Mayhem will tell a brand new story about the Turtle Brothers emerging from the sewers of the Big Apple to fight crime and have a blast doing it while explaining to the world just how they came to be (baby turtles meet “mystery goo” and voila—they’re buff superhero turtles extremely capable with throwing stars). The Turtle Brothers act precisely like normal teenagers act, only, you know, with shockingly awesome ninja skills and, again, they’re talking turtles. The trailer begins with our heroes filming each other doing ninja stuff on their phones with the goofy, giddy energy that is sacrosanct to teen life.

Mutant Mayhem is the second CG animated Turtles movie (2007’s TMNT was the first), but it looks better than any we’ve seen before, and it’s the first outing for our half-shelled heroes since Michael Bay’s 2016 live-action film Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows. This new film was originally supposed to be the third installment in Bay’s live-action TMNT trilogy, but then Seth Rogen picked it up in 2018, and the rest is turtle history. The new film is, thankfully, a fully CG-animated romp. Jeff Rowe and Kyle Spears direct from a script by Brendan O’Brien, and the trio seem to have captured the spirit of the original cartoon, the lunacy of the central conceit, and the love that flows between these mutant turtles.

The film’s four Turtle Brothers are played by Micah Abbey (Donatello), Nicolas Cantu (Leonardo), Shamon Brown Jr. (Michaelangelo), and Brady Noon (Raphael). The turtle’s mentor Splinter is voiced by Jackie Chan. Rogen stars as the villain Bebop, while John Cena plays Rocksteady, Bebop’s best bud. Paul Rudd plays Mondo Gecko, Rose Bryne is Leatherhead, Maya Rudolph voices Cynthia Utrom, Ice Cube is Superfly, Ayo Edebiri is April O’Neil, Hannibal Buress plays Genghis Frog, Giancarlo Esposito is Baxter Stockman, Natasia Demetriou is Wingnut, and Post Malone is Ray Fillet.

Check out the trailer below. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem hits theaters on August 4.

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Featured image:

“The Fabelmans” Oscar-Nominated Production Designer Rick Carter Gets Personal With Steven Spielberg

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Veteran production designer Rick Carter art-directed the first Avatar, won an Oscar for his work on Forrest Gump, designed two Star Wars films, and collaborated with Steven Spielberg on ten movies ranging from Jurassic Park to Lincoln. Last month, Carter earned his fifth Oscar nomination for designing Spielberg’s autobiographically inspired The Fabelmans.

In contrast with much of his previous work, this sixties-era coming-of-age drama, nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, unfolds on an intimate scale, with Paul Dano and Michelle Williams featured as the quarreling parents of Spielberg’s alter ego Sammy (Gabriel LaBelle). “It’s pretty subtle,” Carter says. “There’s almost an invisibility to the production design so you can feel the movie, but it’s not very showy.”

Carter, speaking from his home in Los Angeles, explained how he tracked Sammy’s journey from New Jersey to Phoenix to Hollywood without once leaving southern California.

 

How did you approach the design for what is arguably Steven Spielberg’s most personal movie?

It’s a fable about Steven’s growing up, so there’s a three-act structure oriented to the three houses that the Fabelmans inhabit. We show a progression starting with their post-war house on the East Coast with the grandparents — the New Jersey house. Then they move to Phoenix in the desert for the middle section, and then we get to the “Promised Land,” the West Coast, where things don’t turn out the way they wanted, and the family splits up.

(from left) Burt Fabelman (Paul Dano), Younger Sammy Fabelman (Mateo Zoryan Francis-DeFord) and Mitzi Fabelman (Michelle Williams) in The Fabelmans, co-written, produced and directed by Steven Spielberg. Courtesy Universal Pictures.

You filmed The Fabelmans during the pandemic. How did that constraint impact your design strategy?

It became absolutely necessary to shoot the exteriors in Los Angeles, basically within a 30-mile range. Also, we wanted to make the movie as inexpensively as we could, which meant not traveling great distances and putting people in hotels. But Steven and I share this background of working in TV and movies during the early seventies when you had to stay local and make it work. I think that limitation was helpful in the way it rooted Steven and myself to this era when you were expected to convey locations from all around the world using Los Angeles environments and with the minimal amount of building

So the “New Jersey” house was, in fact, shot where?

We needed a simple two-story plan that would have been built right after the War for a young family starting life on the east coast. Where do you find that in Los Angeles? We found it in [suburban] Chatsworth on a cul de sac with a lot of houses that seemed to fit that period. It was funny to be out there in the middle of the summer, 100 degrees, laying down all these white snow blankets to make it look cold. Then you look around at people [in the crew] wearing shorts and tank tops.

(from left background) Producer Kristie Macosko Krieger, co-writer/producer/director Steven Spielberg, Seth Rogen, Julia Butters, co-writer/producer Tony Kushner, Keeley Karsten and Sophia Kopera on the set of The Fabelmans.
(from left background) Producer Kristie Macosko Krieger, co-writer/producer/director Steven Spielberg, Seth Rogen, Julia Butters, co-writer/producer Tony Kushner, Keeley Karsten and Sophia Kopera on the set of The Fabelmans. Courtesy Universal Pictures.

How did Spielberg guide you in terms of the home’s interior?

Steven did little drawings of the New Jersey floor plan with a staircase near the center, a living room on the right, a dining room on the left, and the kitchen behind that. We made sure our interior allowed for this bifurcation. To the right is [Sammy’s father] Burt’s side of the house, and then the warmer place — dining room and kitchen area — that’s for [Sammy’s mother] Mitzi. Almost by osmosis, these visual cues set up a duality between the two parents having problems in this traditional house.

Next, the Fabelman family moves to Phoenix, and it’s a whole new mid-century modern look. Where did you locate the Phoenix ranch house stand-in?

We found a house in Simi Valley, painted the wood, and made all the tones reflect the desert.

Did you have references to work from?

Yes. Steven had photographs of the Phoenix house and some home movies as well so we could see what the exterior cladding looked like. For the interior, the round dining room table and chairs are space-age sixties, very much like the ones he had. Steven also had pictures showing where the sink and refrigerator were located, and we knew where the baby grand went. None of it was as photogenic as we made it look. [laughing]

 

How did this ranch house interior reflect growing tensions within the family?

By the middle of the movie, we’re getting into the metaphoric level of art versus family and the toll that takes. The Fabelmans now live in this mid-century, one-story ranch, elongated from the kitchen all the way to where Sammy has his bedroom. You’re seeing this division that happens between Sammy and his family as he turns to cinema and art.

In the “Phoenix” chapter, Seth Rogen’s Uncle Bennie character encourages Sammy outside a camera shop that seems very authentic to the period. How did those shots come together?

What anchored that scene was this old-style camera shop that our spectacular location manager Leann Emmert found in Whittier, California. It stocked many old cameras, so simply by pulling things away that were more modern, we had all the bones of an old camera shop. The shop was actually located in a modern mall, but luckily there was a street two blocks away that fit the period, so we didn’t have to do a lot for the exterior. We digitally added a Cinerama sign and mountains in the background to make it look like [Phoenix-area landmark] Camelback Mountain. Then we combined that exterior with the camera store interior.

Gabriel LaBelle as Sammy Fabelman in The Fabelmans, co-written, produced and directed by Steven Spielberg. Courtesy Universal Pictures.

It almost looks like a vintage snapshot of Main Street USA circa 1965.

I’m nearly 73, Steven’s 75, and because we were of the era, it’s almost like we were doing it as a memory. We didn’t feel any need to fetishize the period.

You’ve worked on many fantastical spectacles like Avatar and Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens. By contrast, the environments in The Fabelmans seem familiar rather than exotic. Did that kind of naturalism call for a different mindset than you would bring to a world-building epic?

Most movies that get recognized for honors like this [Oscar nomination] are what I would call horizontal movies. They expand out to an epic level, and designers fill that in. The Fabelmans is more of what I would call a vertical movie. You only have the three-act structure plus an epilogue, so everything goes vertical in terms of how deep you can go. We’re showing splits within the characters, and we’re showing [Sammy’s home] movies within the movie where a few frames can have as much impact as a big battle sequence.

Gabriel LaBelle as Sammy Fabelman in The Fabelmans, co-written, produced and directed by Steven Spielberg. Courtesy Universal Pictures.

So little details can play a bigger role in the storytelling?

Which is why the set dressing becomes so important. We relied heavily on set decorator Karen O’Hara and the art department and the props. For example, When Sammy goes into his girlfriend’s room for the first time, we see posters of Jesus and rock stars; then we pan over to this crucifix surrounded by a heart and pink light. People laugh, seeing what Sammy’s gotten himself into. The set décor is telling you stuff without words being spoken.

(from left) Monica Sherwood (Chloe East) and Sammy Fabelman (Gabriel LaBelle) in The Fabelmans, co-written, produced and directed by Steven Spielberg. Courtesy Universal Pictures.

For Sammy’s senior year of high school, the Fabelmans move to central California. Then we jump ahead a few months, and Sammy’s in Hollywood, where finds himself unexpectedly in the office of John Ford, played by David Lynch, the gruff director responsible for The Searchers and other classic westerns. What was your design focus for that sequence?

When Sammy meets John Ford, we had to replicate paintings or come up with paintings to demonstrate what Ford tells Sammy about the low horizon and high horizon. It’s Ford’s way of saying that all the drama and all the confusion that Sammy feels can make him a good director if he can put it into an interesting form. Not in the middle, but in this case, raising or lowering the horizon. We’re literally putting exposition into the set dressing.

At the end, Sammy saunters through an old-school studio lot surrounded by giant soundstages. Where did you film that final scene?

Paramount Studios. Damien Chazelle was shooting Babylon there, but he very graciously let us use the location for an afternoon. That scene shows this kid entering into a world that already has a structure to it. It’s the way many young people feel when they first get to town. To be right there when the visuals are being created, you realize as a production designer, “Oh, I’m making it!” It’s not so much “I’ve made it.” It’s about the making of the thing and creating an illusion that might become iconographic in the future. You just have to get in there, create images that go along the discovery of the story, and hope you get lucky.

 

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Featured image: (from left) Sammy Fabelman (Gabriel LaBelle), Mitzi Fabelman (Michelle Williams), Burt Fabelman (Paul Dano), Natalie Fabelman (Keeley Karsten), Reggie Fabelman (Julia Butters) and Lisa Fabelman (Sophia Kopera) in The Fabelmans, co-written, produced and directed by Steven Spielberg. Courtesy Universal Pictures.