Earlier this week, we learned that Apple was going to release Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon smack dab in the middle of prime prestige film season next fall. Now we know when Scorsese’s star-studded crime drama will be making its world premiere—at the Cannes Film Festival this May.
Scorsese’s western crime drama, adapted by the director and screenwriter Eric Roth from investigative journalist David Grann’s bestselling 2017 nonfiction book, is centered on an investigation into a series of murders of members of the Osage people in Oklahoma in the early 1920s after massive oil deposits were discovered beneath their land. Scorsese re-teamed with longtime collaborators Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro, while the cast is rounded out by a slew of excellent performers, including Jesse Plemmons, Lily Gladstone, John Lithgow, Brendan Fraser, Tantoo Cardinal, Cara Jade Myers, Scott Shepherd, and Janae Collins.
This will mark Scorsese’s first film to screen at Cannes in generations. His last was After Hours, which played at the fest way back in 1986 and which won the legendary director best director honor. Previously, his iconic film Taxi Driver won the Palme d’Or for best film in 1976. Scorsese also headed the Cannes jury in 1998.
Cannes hasn’t yet announced whether Killers of the Flower Moon will be running in competition or out, with the announcement of the official program coming at the press conference in mid-April when the full competition line-up is revealed.
After its Cannes premiere, Scorsese’s hotly-anticipated western crime drama will have a limited opening on Friday, October 6, and then go wide on Friday, October 20, after which it will stream on Apple TV+. Scorsese’s writing partner Eric Roth believes Killers of the Flower Moon might end up being the last true Western ever made.
“I know Marty’s trying to make a movie that’s probably the last Western that would be made like this, and yet, with this incredible social document underneath it, and the violence and the environment. I think it’ll be like nothing we’ve ever seen, in a way. And so this one is, to me, one for the ages,” Roth told Collider.
DiCaprio plays Ernest Burkhart, the nephew of cattleman William Hale (Robert De Niro). Lily Gladstone, who is of Blackfeet and Nimíipuu heritage, plays Mollie Kyle, an Osage woman who has inherited an oil fortune. Jesse Plemons plays Tom White, a former Texas Ranger investigating the murders.
Here’s the synopsis for the film:
Based on David Grann’s broadly lauded best-selling book, “Killers of the Flower Moon” is set in 1920s Oklahoma and depicts the serial murder of members of the oil-wealthy Osage Nation, a string of brutal crimes that came to be known as the Reign of Terror.
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Costume designer Tere Duncan leaped into the fray of Zach Braff’s A Good Person with the challenge of crafting the looks for a character in crisis without relying on the usual tropes—baggy sweatpants, mismatched socks, visible stains. That woman, Allison (a fantastic Florence Pugh), is facing multiple horrors at once, grieving the loss of her would-be sister and brother-in-law in a horrific car accident she bears responsibility for—a split-second loss of focus while driving them on the New Jersey Turnpike turns fatal. The accident plunges Allison into a realm dominated by guilt and numbed by opioids, and soon enough, she’s addicted and hits rock bottom.
Allison’s life is set on a new course in an unexpected way after she bumps into a man she probably hoped she’d never have to face again—a retired detective named Daniel (Morgan Freeman) whose son Nathan (Chinaza Uche) she was going to marry, and whose daughter died in the accident. Daniel’s a recovering alcoholic whose own life was thrown into turmoil by the accident; he’s now raising his granddaughter on his own, and his anger at his daughter’s loss has been firmly focused on Allison. The fragile bond that Allison and Daniel forge is the molten core of the film and is buoyed by two tremendous performances from Pugh and Freeman.
Despite the potential for melodrama with the conceit, Duncan made sure that Allison never looked like your typical trainwreck. Guided by input from Braff, Pugh’s own insights, and her own long career, Duncan created a wardrobe for a woman who, while sunk in the darkness, never looked like your typical basketcase.
What was your first reaction to the script?
One thing I really liked about the script is, yes, it’s about Allison having this drug problem, but it wasn’t a recovery movie. It was focused more on relationships and how you get yourself out of that emotionally and that it takes other people. That appealed to me.
Allison doesn’t present as the typical woman in crisis we’re used to seeing on screen.
When I met with Zach, we were very much on the same page because one of the first things he said was that he didn’t like when you watch films [about addiction and depression], and all of a sudden they’re in grey sweats and a grey flannel. It’s like you went shopping for your drug addiction. You see pieces of who she was. We didn’t go drab in her costumes. And she does wear sweats, but it’s not completely drab, like, ‘oh, you found that in the dumpster?’ [laughs].
Let’s go through the main characters and how you approached their looks, starting with Florence’s character Allison.
She’s had success selling pharmaceuticals. There’s a scene at the beginning where she’s talking to Nathan [Chinaza Uche], and you get the fact that she’s not really in love with that job. She’s a creative, it turns out that she plays piano and writes music, so I wanted to play more into that. She’s not a businesswoman. That was just her job at that time. That’s who she was before. I broke it down with a before and after.
For the bulk of the movie, as Zach has said, we didn’t want her dressed drab, so I made her a little more colorful and did some mixed prints. I threw stuff together as if she was not thinking about it. Florence had this really good idea about how sometimes you’re like, ‘I’m going to work out today,’ so you put your workout clothes on, then never get to it. You’ve got the leggings and you’ve got the sports bra, but it never happens. So sometimes that’s what she’s wearing. She has these good intentions every morning, but because she’s addicted, she ends up on the couch buying things on Amazon. I add the color and the mixed prints to speak to the confusion of her life. It’s not calm, it doesn’t make sense, and then at the end, I took away a lot of the colors and the patterns as she gets calmer and in recovery.
Alison’s most significant relationship in the film is with Morgan Freeman’s Daniel, who she’s linked to in the most terrible way. Can you walk us through his looks?
He’s a former cop, and Zach had mentioned wanting him to be very put together. We didn’t want to go retired or sloppy. In many scenes, he looks slightly more casual but if you added a tie, he could be a detective still. He’s in recovery and has been there for a while, but it’s a more in-control version. With the mayhem in his past that he’s gotten over, he’s very in control now. Of course, what’s happened is now he has this granddaughter to deal with, but that’s the way he keeps it together; he gets dressed every day in a kind of uniform to keep everything nipped and tucked. This is his way of putting on his armor in the morning.
Molly Shannon plays Allison’s mother, Diane. How did you capture Shannon’s verve and spirit in the role through her looks?
For Molly [Shannon], when I was first showing Zach my tear sheets, he thought it seemed too put together, too dressy for Molly’s character. So my assistant and I went to a Walmart in New Jersey and took a bunch of pictures of people while we were there, and when I showed him those pictures, he was like, ‘Yes, this is what I mean.’ One photo showed a woman with a tee shirt that read ‘Live, Laugh, Love,’ and Zach wanted that. We ended up printing something in different fonts and ironed it on a shirt, and she does wear it in the film, but it’s under a robe. He wanted the realness of her as someone struggling to pay the bills, but she’s also Alison’s cheerleader as her mom, trying to give her daughter some buoyancy. There’s something very hopeful about Diane.
I’ve spoken with costume designers in the past who have told me that they found a perfect item for a character to wear in their own closet. Has that ever happened for you?
In my jewelry kit, I had this fortune cookie necklace, I don’t even know where I got it, but it was so perfect for Diane. Her attitude is, ‘We’re going to get through this. What’s your fortune? It’s going to be good.’ So she swears my necklace throughout the film. I don’t know if anybody would ever notice that’s what it is, but I think it adds to the film when you do things like that.
I love this. Is anyone else in the cast wearing an original Tere Duncan?
Actually, Florence wears one of my sweatshirts throughout a lot of the movie. It’s a hoodie and has this Hawaii logo on it, and there are paint stains and holes. I’ve had it for like 15 years or so. Luckily the company still exists, so we were able to get clearance on it to use it. And there’s only one of those [laughs]. We’re an indie, so we didn’t have money for multiples. And that sweater had these holes where you can stick your thumbs through, and Florence was like, ‘Can I use these holes?’ I said, ‘Of course you can!’ So when you see the movie, you see her thumbs going through the holes. That was aged by me, naturally, through the years.
With a name like Ellis Dragon, you know the man is going to have some personality. Netflix’s new comedy Unstable is now streaming, and it stars Rob Lowe as the aforementioned Ellis Dragon, a brilliant, deeply weird, “narcissist-adjacent” (as described in the series’ synopsis) biotech entrepreneur who really and truly believes he can make the world a better place. What saves Ellis Dragon from being as ridiculous as his name is he really is a genius, and he really is trying to improve the world. His innovations include sugar-cane-based plastic, carbon-capturing concrete, and a bruiseless avocado (okay, this one isn’t exactly solving global warming, but still, we want one!)
The problem for Ellis is he’s lost his mojo, and his antics are starting to worry the board of his company. What he needs is fresh inspiration and a steady hand, and for that, he turns to his son, Jackson (John Owen Lowe, his actual son), who has lived his life in his father’s shadow. Jackson Dragon is everything his father is not—humble, low-key, and prone to second-guessing himself. Yet he also just might be what Ellis, his company, and the world need.
Unstable comes from the Lowe father-and-son team and Victor Fresco (Santa Clarita Diet) and is already coming in for some excellent reviews. The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, The Los Angeles Times,The Chicago-Sun Times,and more are buzzing about what the Lowe family and Fresco have cooked up. THR‘s Angie Han gets at the heart of why Unstable should probably be added to your queue, comparing it to one of Fresco’s previous (and very funny) series, Better of Ted: “Unstable does, however, share with Better Off Ted its single most appealing quality — namely the fact that it’s very, very funny, thanks to a crackling combination of sharp writing, lovably eccentric characters, and snappy comedic timing.
Sounds like a very stable decision to check out the two Lowes and the rest of the stellar cast, which includes Sian Clifford, Aaron Branch, Emma Ferreira, and Rachel Marsh.
Unstable is streaming now on Netflix. Check out the trailer here:
Here’s the synopsis for Unstable:
Ellis Dragon is a universally admired, eccentric, narcissist-adjacent biotech entrepreneur working to make the world a better place. He’s also in emotional free-fall. His son Jackson Dragon is… none of those things. Can Jackson save Ellis and his company and salvage their estranged relationship while also doing what may actually be impossible: escaping the shadow of his larger-than-life father?
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The next film in Marvel’s Phase 5 is right around the corner, with James Gunn’s third and final Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 nearing its May 5 release date. A big batch of images reveals our heroes all grown up (well, sort of), with Groot finally filling out after his heroic regression to babyhood to save the gang in the very first Guardians. The images also reveal an extended role to play for Kraglin (Sean Gunn), the introduction of Cosmo (voiced by Maria Bakalova), and a shot of one of the film’s main villains, The High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji), who is connected to Rocket’s heartbreaking backstory.
So what has Gunn cooked up for his in his trilogy capping finale? We know that Vol. 3 will give us some closure on the deeply dramatic love affair between Star-Lord (Chris Pratt) and the woman he fell in love with, Gamora (Zoe Saldana). As we know, the Gamora in Vol. 3 isn’t the same woman he met in Vol. 1—she died (thanks to Thanos), and the current Gamora is from a different timeline. The most recent trailer even hinted at a budding romance between Star-Lord and Gamora’s sister, Nebula (Karen Gillan), although we’re guessing that’s a fakeout.
It’s going to be a bittersweet final adventure knowing that the Guardians are going their separate ways. Writer/director James Gunn has, of course, moved on to DC Studios, where he’s now the new boss, along with producer Peter Safran, of the entire DC Studios slate. Along with Star-Lord, Gamora, and Nebula, the core crew returns for Vol. 3—Drax (Dave Bautista), Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel), Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper), and Mantis (Pom Klementieff). Their new mission will pit them against Adam Warlock (Will Poulter), who is going to be quite a lot to handle.
Vol 3. will also, at long last, reveal Rocket’s tragic backstory, which is connected to the aforementioned High Evolutionary and his demented mission to create a perfect society. In the most recent trailer, Rocket explained how the High Evolutionary’s real motivation wasn’t perfection but hating the universe as it was. It was The High Evolutionary who experimented on Rocket and turned him into a talking, weapons-loving raccoon. Rocket’s been fighting against his own nature, which was grotesquely violated by The High Evolutionary, and seeing how he handles a showdown after all this time is one of Vol. 3‘s most intriguing plots.
What has made the Guardians films so enjoyable has been the goofball camaraderie between these mismatched but undoubtedly loyal mavericks. They’ve plunged into adventure after adventure with truly reckless abandon and brought a sense of mischief and oddball verve to the MCU. There’s freedom in saying goodbye, too, and one imagines that Gunn has delivered their most ambitious, weirdest, and heartfelt story yet.
Check out the images below. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 hits theaters on May 5:
One of life’s certainties, along with death and taxes, is that a Wes Anderson movie will boast a phenomenal cast. It’s been the case with Anderson over his long, perfectly framed career, as stars have aligned again and again to follow him wherever his latest whimsy has taken him. Such is the case with Asteroid City, a gorgeous-looking retro sci-fi film that boasts Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Jason Schwartzman, Jeffrey Wright, Tilda Swinton, Adrien Brody— catch your breath, there’s a lot more— Hong Chau, Margot Robbie, Willem Dafoe, Bryan Cranston, Steve Carell, Ed Norton, Jeff Goldblum, Tony Revolori, Liev Schreiber, Maya Hawke, Matt Dillon, and Hope Davis.
It’ll be interesting to see Anderson channel his immense gifts toward a sci-fi film. Asteroid City is set in the titular fictional desert town in 1955 and finds Hanks as the grandfather to Schwartzman’s four kids, the latter of whom is stuck in Asteroid City after their car broke down. The family is coming off a tragedy—the loss of Hanks’s daughter and Schwartzman’s wife—and as they end jup Asteroid City, weird happenings start taking place. We’re talking aliens, of course.
The trailer reveals a brief glimpse of an intricately designed alien craft that could have only been conceived by Anderson. Schwartzman’s widower got a look at the creature and didn’t like the way it looked back. “Like we’re doomed,” he says. Uh oh.
The official synopsis for Asteroid City gives us a barebones assessment of what’s going on here: “The itinerary of a Junior Stargazer/Space Cadet convention — organized to bring together students and parents from across the country for fellowship and scholarly competition — is spectacularly disrupted by world-changing events.”
The trailer is short on plot specifics and long on Andersonian atmospherics. With a cast this good and Anderson’s legendary attention to detail, Asteroid City is definitely on our must-see list for 2023.
Check out the trailer below. Asteroid City lands in theaters on June 16 (limited), with a wide release on June 23.
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Featured image: Scarlett Johansson in director Wes Anderson’s ASTEROID CITY, a Focus Features release. Credit: Courtesy of Pop. 87 Productions/Focus Features
Shrinking is that rare hybrid; a laugh-out-loud comedy that turns on a dime into a lump-in-your-throat drama. Created by star Jason Segel, Ted Lasso co-creator Bill Lawrence, and writer (and Ted Lasso star) Brett Goldstein, Shrinking follows Segel’s therapist Jimmy the year after his wife, Tia (Lilan Bowden), has tragically died. Because Jimmy is played by Segel, he’s naturally funny, but we also find him in a personal and professional tailspin, failing his daughter, Alice (Lukita Maxwell), at home and infuriating his colleague, Paul [Harrison Ford], at the office.
Shrinking is also rare in how it lovingly depicts Pasadena, a bucolic city in Los Angeles County that is rarely allowed to be itself on film. As production designer Cabot McMullen explains, it was the mix of comedy and drama and the fronting of the pretty but oft-overlooked Pasadena that drew him to the project.
“The pilot had everything that I loved about Billy [Lawrence]’s work in terms of balancing the comedic aspect and the drama,” McMullen says. “And I loved that it was also a story about Pasadena. Most people shoot in Pasadena as someplace else, but we had an opportunity to create a new character called Pasadena. Our location manager, David Flannery, who’s just brilliant, grew up there, and his nickname is Mr. Pasadena.”
We spoke to McMullen about crafting a series that’s not afraid to pivot from laughter to tears, doing Mr. Pasadena proud in the city’s depiction, and how he helped capture one wounded man’s slow journey into the light.
You’ve worked with a lot of the Shrinking team for years—can you walk us through your history with co-creator Bill Lawrence and the rest?
The real draw for me with Shrinking was the team. I go back with [co-creator and writer] Bill Lawrence and [director] Randall Keenan Winston and a lot of these creatives for almost 30 years now. We all met in New York on Spin City. After a hundred episodes of Spin City, we took a break. Then I was invited to come out to California to work on Scrubs with them, which we did for nine seasons. I was itching to get back to this very special genre that Billy’s created—comedic drama. It’s a very unique balancing act that he does where you’re watching a scene, and you’re laughing your head off, and then suddenly you turn the corner, and you’ve got a lump in your throat, and you’re crying. Randall called and said we’re doing this project with Apple. After Ted Lasso, Billy had a lot of momentum at Apple, and they were hungry for whatever he was going to come up with next, and I wanted to be a part of that.
How did you approach designing the world of Jason Segel’s therapist Jimmy, whose life imploded a year before with the death of his wife?
They really wanted to tell a story about a man in grief who isn’t taking care of himself and isn’t taking care of his daughter. It’s really a story about a guy who’s in the darkness and then emerges from that darkness over ten episodes. So we looked at it like we were planning a five-hour feature film that we’d film in 10 installments. We had a bunch of conversations between Jason, who was an executive producer on it, [director] James Ponsoldt, Neil Goldman, the lead writer, and Billy, and right from the start, I could feel like we were working on something really special here.
Jason Segel and Jessica Williams in “Shrinking,” now streaming on Apple TV+.
You get to play with an interesting juxtaposition here in that the Pasadena of Shrinking is sunny and pretty, while Jimmy’s life has become dark and sad. How did you speak to his inner turmoil with the production design?
There were references that we talked about, like in American Beauty, where there’s this underbelly going on, a small town/big problems sort of thing. But it was really all about Jimmy’s character. We focused on him as the center of the story. In terms of visual clues and hooks, we made a very conscious choice to keep the drapes drawn in his house and keep everything close and dark in the beginning. The other thing is if you watch the pilot episode, we made a conscious choice to leave half the frame empty with most of the shots of Jimmy, so you always felt like his wife Tia had left. It was also about the color palette, creating window treatments we could control light with. You’ll also note that all the plants in his house and his office are dying. He’s just not taking care of himself. We don’t hit you over the head, but it starts to seep in and permeate your consciousness a little.
The drapes are always drawn in the early episodes at Jimmy’s house. Courtesy Apple TV.
Yet his house and his world are objectively beautiful, which is counter to what kind of environments you usually see on film or on television for people in freefall depression.
We didn’t want him living in squalor where there are wine bottles all over the place, that cliche ‘man in distress’ sort of thing.
Yet you get the stark difference between Jimmy and his daughter Alice’s house and their neighbor, Liz [Christa Miller], whose house is spotless.
In Liz’s case, she’s tough as nails on the outside, but on the inside, she’s really vulnerable and somewhat needy. So we made this choice to make it feel like she’s living in a Nancy Meyers movie, where everything is just perfect. If you look at the interior of her house, it’s the room from It’s Complicated. It’s Meryl Streep’s interior with the French country kitchen. Andrea Fenton, who’s our set decorator, actually worked on those movies, so we have the right person.
Derek (Ted McGinley) and Liz (Christa Miller) in her Nancy Meyers-like kitchen. Courtesy Apple TV
You’re filming primarily on sets, right?
Ninety percent are stage sets, and we shoot exteriors on location maybe two or three days a month. But everything is done on stage four and stage six at Warner Bros. If you look at the exterior of Jimmy’s house, it’s actually right on the county line between Altadena and Pasadena. We found a house that was literally 50 yards from Pasadena. We knew Jimmy’s house wanted to be a craftsman, and then we thought a mid-century vernacular would be great for the office building.
Jimmy (Jason Segel) and Alice’s house in “Shrinking.” Credit: Courtesy of Apple
Let’s talk about the office where Jimmy, Paul [Harrison Ford], and Gaby [Jessica Williams] run their therapy practice.
For the office, when I first heard the pitch for this, I was told it was going to be a workplace comedy, like Spin City or Scrubs. But it’s really closer to Bill’s series Cougar Town, which I also worked on, which is kind of a cul-de-sac story about neighbors who are very supportive and love and annoy each other each day. So for the office, I had thought it was going to be the central hub of the show, so we looked for that. What you usually like to do is find the building first and then reverse engineer it and build the interior on a stage to match the exterior. Pasadena has incredible craftsman architecture and mid-century architecture. It’s got great warmth and character. The thing about Paul [Ford], I’m not sure you know this, but Harrison Ford’s character is based on Phil Stutz, a very celebrated therapist that Jonah Hill just did a documentary about [Stutz]. Harrison actually went and met with him at his office, and he had some very specific ideas about his character. We found the office building we loved, where Colorado and the 210 met right near the big Eagle Rock there. There’s a great pocket of mid-century commercial buildings there.
An exterior McMullen and his team found that they loved, and then matched by building an interior on set at Warner Bros. Courtesy Apple TV.
So you find the perfect exterior, and then you build a set to match it?
We built an interior that spoke to the exterior, but it was really our own design. All the rooms and the way they’re laid out in the hallway were very specific for the action of the show because it’s always great to have a lot of entrances for people to come and go and get some good comedic action going. So we created a hallway on one side and a balcony on the other side, so people are always kind of running around and missing each other or finding each other. The strategy was to create something that was visually interesting and functioned for the camera well.
The interior of the office that McMullen and his team built. Courtesy Apple TV.
It’s also such an idyllic place for patients to come and talk about their problems, which this show explores with both humor and great warmth.
After scouting a bunch of properties in Pasadena, we came upon this one that was on the second floor, and it looked into the tops of all these trees, so you had this huge green canopy outside. I got the idea that this would be a great backdrop for therapy offices because it’s kind of like walking into an oasis where everything’s calm. So we built a bunch of trees and put them outside the office windows.
Gaby (Jessica Williams) and Paul (Harrison Ford) in Paul’s office. Courtesy Apple TV.
Shrinking is now streaming on Apple TV.
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In what could be a delicious addition to his flourishing career, Ryan Coogler is developing a new version of The X-Files.
Original X-Files creator Chris Carter revealed the news during an interview with On The Coast with Gloria Macarenko while celebrating the 30th anniversary of the iconic sci-fi series. Here was what Carter said when he dropped the huge news: “I just spoke to a young man, Ryan Coogler, who is going to remount The X-Files with a diverse cast. So he’s got his work cut out for him because we covered so much territory.”
The original X-Files was a landmark sci-fi series, airing from 1993 to 2001, where it made leads David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson stars. (The show was revived for two seasons in 2016 and 2018.) The series followed the work of Fox Mulder (Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Anderson), a believer and a skeptic, respectively, as they investigated unexplained and often terrifying phenomena while shadowy forces moved against them.
There’s very little known about the details of the plan, but there’s speculation that a Coogler-led X-Files could land on Hulu. The original series came from 20th Television and aired on Fox, but now that 20th TV and Fox aren’t part of the same company after Disney’s acquisition of 21st Century Fox, revivals of Fox shows (like Futurama) have streamed on Hulu.
Coogler has a five-year overall deal with Walt Disney Television, which 20th TV is now a part of, and that’s how he’d likely develop his X-Files series. He’s already delivered two massive blockbusters with 2018’s Black Panther and last year’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and it would be thrilling to see what he’d do with material as rich and varied as The X-Files.
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LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – MARCH 09: Ryan Coogler attends the 2023 ESSENCE Black Women In Hollywood Awards at Fairmont Century Plaza on March 09, 2023 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Arnold Turner/Getty Images for ESSENCE)
Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman are getting one of the best character actors around for their long-awaited Marvel team-up in Deadpool 3.
Successionstar Matthew Macfadyen, who plays the scheming if oft overmatched Tom Wambsgans, will be trading sparring partners like Brian Cox’s Logan Roy and Sarah Snook’s Shiv Roy for the Merc with the Mouth and Wolverine, Deadline reports. Macfadyen joins fellow newcomer Emma Corrin (The Crown), who was recently announced to be playing the film’s villain.
It’s not yet known what Macfadyen’s role will be role, but The Hollywood Reporternotes that Deadpool 3 director Shawn Levy has been searching for a character described as Deadpool and Wolverine’s third wheel. Macfadyen has all but perfected playing the type with his Succession role, where he was often bulldozed by his wife, Shiv, or bullied by her brothers Kendall (Jeremy Strong) and Roman (Kiernan Culkin), or simply ignored (until he became useful) by her father Logan. Macfadyen is a terrific performer and recently won a BAFTA and an Emmy in 2022 for his work on the series.
Deadpool 3 will find Jackman reprising the role of Wolverine—yes, despite Wolverine dying in James Mangold’s excellent 2017 film Logan—and finally crossing paths with Reynold’s Deadpool in a proper team-up. (They briefly starred opposite each other as these characters in 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine, but this was years before the 2016 version of Wade Wilson/Deadpool that Reynolds rebooted to great success). The script comes from longtime Deadpool scribes Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick—Lizzie Molyneux-Logelin and Wendy Molyneux wrote a previous draft.
A fun fact—in 2003’s X2: X-Men United, another Succession star, Brian Cox, played William Stryker, the man who first did experiments on Wolverine and turned him into the adamantium-clawed beast that he became.
Deadpool 3 is the first film in the franchise to fall directly under the Marvel Studios banner.
Featured image: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – SEPTEMBER 12: Matthew Macfadyen, winner of the Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series award for ‘Succession,’ poses in the press room during the 74th Primetime Emmys at Microsoft Theater on September 12, 2022 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)
Pixar has dropped the official trailer for their upcoming feature Elemental, which is inspired by big cities around the globe and the very elements that make up our world, all of which combine for a purely Pixarian tale.
The film is centered on a firey wit named Ember (she is literally fire and voiced by Leah Lewis) who is most comfortable in her home of Firetown. Ember’s always believed her life would burn brightest close to home, where she’d eventually inherit her father’s business.
Yet, like all good adventures, Elemental requires Ember to venture out of her comfort zone and into the larger world of Element City, where she encounters astonishments left and right. Those wonders include the tornado-shaped arena Cyclone Stadium, waterfall skyscrapers, and buildings shaped like colossal pine trees. Also, a huge stew of elements, living and working together.
Elemental comes from director Peter Sohn (The Good Dinosaur) and was inspired by his upbringing in New York. “My parents emigrated from Korea in the early 1970s and built a bustling grocery store in the Bronx,” he said in a statement. “We were among many families who ventured to a new land with hopes and dreams—all of us mixing into one big salad bowl of cultures, languages, and beautiful little neighborhoods. That’s what led me to Elemental. Our story is based on the classic elements—fire, water, land, and air. Some elements mix with each other, and some don’t. What if these elements were alive?”
The elements in Elemental are very much alive, and they’ll mix, despite the fact that, as the trailer reveals, all the elements in Elemental live by one simple rule—elements cannot mix. When Ember meets the watery Wade (he’s a go-with-the-flow type of guy, and he’s voiced by Mamoudou Athie), adventures await. Ember has lived her whole life trying to fill her father’s shoes, but Elemental will explore what happens when this young flame decides to burn brightly on her own.
Joining Leah Lewis and Mamoudou Athie in the cast are Ronnie del Carmen as Ember’s soon-to-be-retired dad, Bernie; Shila Ommi as Ember’s love-seeking mom, Cinder; Wendi McLendon-Covey as Wade’s stormy and Air-Ball-loving boss, Gale; Catherine O’Hara as Wade’s welcoming mom, Brook; Mason Wertheimer as Ember’s admiring earth neighbor, Clod; and Joe Pera as an overgrown city bureaucrat, Fern.
Elemental is due in theaters on June 16, 2023. Check out the trailer below:
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Mike White’s deliciously devilish satire The White Lotus is headed to Thailand, Variety reports. Following the first season’s luxe tropical setting in Hawaii (shot at the Four Seasons) and season two’s decadent, Old World beauty in Sicily (also shot at the Four Seasons), there’s a good chance that season three will take advantage of the luxury hotel’s properties in Thailand. The country offers no shortage of jaw-dropping beauty, including lush jungles, bustling city streets, and pristine beaches.
As Variety notes, there are Four Seasons in Bangkok, Chiang Mai, the Golden Triangle, and Koh Samui. This gives White and his team the option of shooting on the beach, in the big city, or in the jungle. Perhaps he’ll create a mega-White Lotus that encompasses multiple locations. Or, as he did in season two, send a couple of his characters off on a day trip.
We’ve known since season two’s shocking finale that White was eyeing Asia as the setting for the third season. White himself had hinted that season three could take place somewhere that practices Eastern religion in a clip revealed after the season two finale.
“The first season kind of highlighted money, and then the second season is sex,” White said in the clip. “I think the third season would be maybe a satirical and funny look at death and Eastern religion and spirituality. It feels like it could be a rich tapestry to do another round at White Lotus.”
Executive producer David Bernard did more than merely hint that Asia was a prime choice. “We’ve tried to work in Asia a lot, and hopefully, season three will be our chance to make something happen there,” he said.
Variety reports that White has been in Thailand looking at locations. There are no details yet on casting. Season two had an almost entirely new cast, save for Jennifer Coolidge’s Tanya and Jon Gries’ scheming Greg Hunt. Considering the show’s success, the bounty of rich material White provides for his performers, and the joy of spending months in a beautiful location on an award-winning show, there aren’t many performers in the business who wouldn’t leap at the chance to be a part of season three.
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Harrison Ford has traveled the globe as Indiana Jones, so a stop in the south of France seems like an appropriate place to kick off his fifth and final mission as the adventurous archeologist.
The Hollywood Reporterscoops that Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is eyeing a premiere at the Cannes Film Festival this May. The upcoming film from director James Mangold (the first Indy film to be helmed by someone other than Steven Spielberg) is looking at debuting at the festival in the first few days. Cannes runs from May 16 – 27 this year. It was fifteen years ago that the last film in the franchise, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, had its premiere at the fest. Last year, Tom Cruise’s Top Gun: Maverick screened at Cannes, and you might have heard that it went on to have a rather good theatrical run.
Ford reprises one of his most iconic roles alongside newcomers like Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who plays Indy’s goddaughter Helena. Mads Mikkelsen plays Jürgen Voller (presumably the film’s villain), Antonio Banderas plays Renaldo, Boyd Holbrook plays Klaber, and Thomas Kretschmann plays Colonel Weber. Returning stars include Toby Jones as Basil and John Rhys-Davies as Sallah.
The film finds Indy dealing with decline (he’s 70 in the film), not just of his body but, as Mangold told THR, his soul. “It’s more than just his bones might ache, it’s that his soul might ache,” Mangold said. Yet this being Indy, he’s swept back into one more adventure. Mangold and his team used de-aging technology for at least one scene, reportedly set in 1944, roughly 8 years after the events in Raiders of the Lost Ark. The rest of the film takes place in 1969.
The Dial of Destiny is the fifth film in the franchise, following Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), The Temple of Doom (1984), The Last Crusade (1989), and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008). Mangold has proven himself a fantastic director, and there are high hopes he’s going to serve up something special here for Ford’s final turn as Indy.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny whips into theaters on June 30.
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Apple has wisely chosen to release Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon this fall, right when the abundance of prestige films with award aspirations pour into theaters. Scorsese’s western crime drama, like any Scorsese film, frankly, has major award expectations, with the legendary director leading his longtime collaborators Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro, along with a stellar cast that includes Jesse Plemmons, Lily Gladstone, John Lithgow, Brendan Fraser, Tantoo Cardinal, Cara Jade Myers, Scott Shepherd, and Janae Collins.
Scorsese and screenwriter Eric Roth adapted the film from investigative journalist David Grann’s bestselling 2017 nonfiction book. Apple is distributing the film alongside Paramount Pictures. The movie will have a limited opening on Friday, October 6, and then go wide on Friday, October 20, after which it will stream on Apple TV+.
Killers of the Flower Moon is centered on an investigation into a series of murders of members of the Osage people in Oklahoma in the early 1920s after massive oil deposits were discovered beneath their land. The investigation into the crime helped establish the FBI and was considered a turning point for the country in shedding its frontier past. This isn’t the first book of Grann’s to be adapted for the big screen—his riveting tale of adventure and catastrophe in the Amazon, The Lost City of Z, was turned into a quietly powerful movie by James Gray. According to Eric Roth, Scorsese’s film could end up being the last true Western ever made.
“I know Marty’s trying to make a movie that’s probably the last Western that would be made like this, and yet, with this incredible social document underneath it, and the violence and the environment. I think it’ll be like nothing we’ve ever seen, in a way. And so this one is, to me, one for the ages,” Roth told Collider.
DiCaprio plays Ernest Burkhart, the nephew of cattleman William Hale (Robert De Niro). Lily Gladstone, who is of Blackfeet and Nimíipuu heritage, plays Mollie Kyle, an Osage woman who has inherited an oil fortune. Jesse Plemons plays Tom White, a former Texas Ranger investigating the murders.
Here’s the synopsis for the film:
Based on David Grann’s broadly lauded best-selling book, “Killers of the Flower Moon” is set in 1920s Oklahoma and depicts the serial murder of members of the oil-wealthy Osage Nation, a string of brutal crimes that came to be known as the Reign of Terror.
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We now know exactly who Brie Larson is playing in the upcoming tenth film in the franchise, Fast X. Larson revealed to Total Filmthat she’s playing Tess, the daughter of Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell). Russell’s character, a covert agent, has appeared in several films in the franchise, including Fast & Furious 7, The Fate of the Furious, and most recently, F9. In F9, it was revealed that Mr. Nobody helped Han (Sung Kang) fake his death.
“Tess is Mr. Nobody’s daughter,” Larson revealed to Total Film. “She is technically Agency, but she’s kind of a bridge, in a way. She doesn’t go along with the way that the Agency’s headed now that her father isn’t there. She believes in the legacy that her father set up, which is standing with Dom and standing with the Toretto family, and is fighting for that. Dom knows that she has a strong mind and definitely respects that she’s gone out of her way to talk to him and wants to build trust. What he asks of Tess is a test. Like, if it’s an impossible task, and she can get it done, then that’s family for life.”
Mr. Nobody’s fate was left an open question after his plane crashed at the start of F9. It seems reasonable to assume we’ll learn more about his status from Tess, who Larson says is “a little bit of a mystery.”
“She is part of the Agency, but she also goes rogue and edges more towards the family side, but that means she has a lot to prove,” Larson told Total Film. “When Dom gives her an impossible task that’s going to require a lot of thought and effort and also is putting herself at risk, she doesn’t question it. I think that shows who she is, that she’s willing to go to those lengths. She agrees to do it because she wants to show up for this family the way that her father did. She’s also really intelligent. Tess plays the game well. She’s not afraid of going on her own mission to do what she feels is right in her heart.”
Larson joins Jason Momoa as two of the biggest new stars to get behind the wheel of a new Fast film. Fast X will focus on Momoa’s villain Dante and his long-standing beef with Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel). The trailer revealed that Dante’s vendetta against Dom and the family began way back during the events of Fast Five (2011) 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 the entire thing go down. He’s spent the past dozen years planning his revenge on Dom, and in Fast X, he’ll be looking to finally get his payback. Larson’s Tess will have some say in the matter, of course.
Fast X was directed by Louis Leterrier. Returning stars include Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, Nathalie Emmanuel, Jordana Brewster, Sung Kang, Jason Statham, John Cena, Scott Eastwood, Helen Mirren, and Charlize Theron. Newcomers joining Larson and Momoa are Alan Richtson (Reacher) 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.
Fast X races into theaters on May 19.
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Batman: The Doom that Came to Gotham submerges Bruce Wayne (David Giuntoli) in a world of magic, myths, and monsters. Set a century ago in the roaring 20s, the glamour and grandeur of Gotham glimmer beneath an evil awakening set to consume the city. The edgy animated style based on the 2000-2001 comic book miniseries by Mike Mignola and Richard Pace is appropriately avant-garde and calls for an epic, atmospheric score. Composer Stefan L. Smith seems uniquely poised to carry the weight of the project.
“Right off the bat, it’s a film unlike any other. It’s pretty dark,” Smith admitted. “I was heavily influenced by the Lovecraftian style, and so that influenced my writing. To be honest with you, it was so dark that sometimes I felt myself being lost in it, because you’re days on end working and watching it over and over and over. I felt like the music just started finding its voice over time because I was immersed in this dark world. By the end of it, it felt like I was emerging out of this really dark place in a good way. Visually, it definitely influenced my writing.”
An image from “Batman: The Doom that Came to Gotham.” Courtesy Warner Bros. Animation and Warner Bros. Home Entertainment”
A lot of music has been written to accompany the Dark Knight’s adventures. Smith is a fan of his predecessors, including the works of Shirley Walker, Danny Elfman, and Elliot Goldenthal. Yet this script evokes a fresh spirit that requires a new sound. There’s a fearlessness in the way Smith shapes a scene.
“There is definitely a major Batman theme that comes in its most bombastic form to a very dark, solemn form to a very introspective form,” Smith observed. “Then there’s themes of the entire supernatural world of Talia (Emily O’Brien) and all of the demons and characters that are introduced.”
The villains are the flavor of any Batman story, and this one is particularly savory. From zombies to age-old enemies, the Caped Crusader has his hands full in The Doom That Came to Gotham. To ground the packed plot, Smith masterfully marries leitmotifs with the film’s otherworldly events.
“I was surrounded by a lot of traditional classical music. The music of Wagner and Vaughan Williams and Respighi. These epic classical composers have the cinematic sound that really used motifs to the max,” Smith explained. “What I noticed about them is that everything followed the similar form and structure of how many bars there were in general, but stacked together could work in tandem, basically bouncing off of one another. My main goal was to find the juxtaposition between the heroic theme and use elements of that to distort it for the darker supernatural stuff. So there are a lot of elements between the themes that feel related. It sounds like it could be an element of the Batman theme, but it gets dark and changes.”
An image from “Batman: The Doom that Came to Gotham.” Courtesy Warner Bros. Animation and Warner Bros. Home Entertainment”
From encountering an ancient evil on an arctic adventure to a dangerous dalliance with dark magic in a tomb, Batman is on the move. Smith drops auditory clues throughout to orient viewers while blending the music into his comprehensive vision for the score.
“Establishing location sonically is important just so the audience can connect to where we are. There are elements that I did use to exploit that a little more, but I feel like as a composer, you really have to decide what your themes are so the audience can connect to know exactly who is being presented at that time,” Smith explained. “Even changing the theme where at one point it’s major and somewhat heroic and then all of a sudden it turns minor, or there’s something that you start augmenting intervals to make it eerier. I think keeping that cohesion just developing all those themes and making sure that they work together.”
An image from “Batman: The Doom that Came to Gotham.” Courtesy Warner Bros. Animation and Warner Bros. Home Entertainment”
A violist with a performance and composition degree from DePaul University and graduate studies work at USC, Smith gravitated toward a full orchestral sound. Yet, when it came to recording, a single musician—Smith himself—performed every part. The score supports nearly every second of the film, meaning he wrote and digitally generated nearly ninety minutes of music.
“The entire score was played and performed by me using my sample libraries and programming. I programmed everything in it. It was hard,” Smith reflected. “Being in the orchestra for so long, you just know what the sound is. So, when you’re working with samples, you know how to adjust the attack of the beginnings of every instrument. The releases of every instrument and making sure that it sounds as realistic as possible.”
Just because he can do it all doesn’t mean he always wants to. Smith is a team player, constantly lobbing compliments and credit to other musicians. He made certain that at least one of the film’s cues include writing from assistants Christa Marie Duggan and Jaimee Jimin Park.
“I really felt like I needed people who could know how to do this who needed a little more experience on a bigger level, but also were very good composers themselves, just in case there were situations where if I have to continue writing other cues, they could handle other things,” Smith explained. “I’m very hands-on when it comes to writing so I wanted to make sure the score sounded homogenous and that if someone else was coming on to write, it didn’t break the established sound world. I think they did a great job.”
An image from “Batman: The Doom that Came to Gotham.” Courtesy Warner Bros. Animation and Warner Bros. Home Entertainment”
Smith gravitated toward movie scoring while studying in undergrad. When a filmmaker approached his class about composing for a short, Smith was the only one to raise his hand. The experience led to his first feature, Bloom, when he was only a sophomore. Smith wrote in his dorm room and gathered classmates to play the tracks.
“I bought everyone pizza and beer and had a sixty-piece orchestra,” Smith laughed. “They were all my friends and we conducted everything in my college classroom. From there, I kept focusing on scoring things that drew me in instead of just anything that came my way because it was hard to balance playing and writing.”
The call to make The Doom That Came to Gotham came not over the Bat-Phone but through a conversation app, Clubhouse. During the pandemic, Smith started exploring and engaging in conversations.
“They had subjects every day about different things in the industry, and I basically put my virtual hand up, went onstage, and just talked from the perspective of opening up the door to composers who don’t really get the chance,” Smith said. “Specifically diversity and inclusion in the scoring space. In recent years we’ve seen that with Kris Bowers, Michael Abels, Jermaine Stegall, and now Jongnic Bontemps. These composers are now rising up the ranks because people are actually giving people chances to do these things. I feel honored to even be able to contribute to the DC Universe being a black, gay composer. It would be unheard of five years ago.”
An image from “Batman: The Doom that Came to Gotham.” Courtesy Warner Bros. Animation and Warner Bros. Home Entertainment”
Smith’s words struck co-director Sam Liu who reached out with the offer.
“If it wasn’t for that app and getting rid of those gatekeepers in the way who control that stuff, this may have never happened,” Smith admitted. “It happened because I made a conscious decision to focus on my writing more than playing, because I can always play and I can record, but this is something I really want to do and have really wanted to do since I was very young. So I said, ‘You know what? Let’s do it.’ What better credit to get as your first studio film?”
As a violist, Smith has credits playing on some of the biggest soundstages, including Avatar: The Way of Water, Creed III, and Nope.
“Being on the stage is like a real-time masterclass every time I show up,” Smith observed. “It’s invaluable to composers, and most composers don’t even get the opportunity to be in those rooms to see what works and doesn’t work. So I just take it in as a performer enjoying the music there and learning. Everything from the inside out. How an orchestra responds to things when you put a cue in front of them that’s insane and how efficiently they play it.”
For every door of opportunity that Smith opens, he is looking for another to knock on. Working with Ava DuVernay, Alfonso Cuarón, James Cameron, and Barry Jenkins are on his bucket list and likely on the horizon.
“It just feels kind of like a dream. There are not many places you can live in the world where you can do this as a musician,” Smith said. “The versatility of being a musician, a performer, a composer. You can’t do it in many places like this and actually make a living. I don’t take it for granted. I just love to be in the room. I’m excited about anything I’m a part of because so many people would love to be there, so I’m just happy to be there.”
Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham will be available on Digital, 4K Ultra HD, and Blu-ray on March 28.
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It shouldn’t be all that surprising that Logan Roy (Brian Cox) would be a dour birthday boy. Succession’s fourth season premiere began with the big guy taking center stage in a birthday celebration at his house. He was less than cheerful. The reason why was clear, even if he’d never admit it.
A house party, however, is a perfect way for Succession creator Jesse Armstrong and director Mark Mylod to get a bunch of the show’s most important characters together in a single room as everyone tries to avoid Logan’s wrath and close a deal (of course Logan’s working on a deal during his birthday party) with a hated former rival. There’s just one catch—his children are going to rain on his parade in every way they can. Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, three of Logan’s kids are having a fine old time thousands of miles from Logan and his bummer birthday bash. Shiv (Sarah Snook), Roman (Kiernan Culkin), and Kendall (Jeremy Strong) are gathering for their own kind of party as they’re about to pitch their new media venture, TheHundred, to some deep-pocketed potential investors. This is before they see an opening to ruin their father’s big day with even more panache than their mere absence.
The disparity in moods at these gatherings was stark. At Logan’s birthday, the overall vibe was uncomfortable tension as the partygoers walked on eggshells around the moody lion. In California, however, the Roy siblings are…getting along? Yes, quite well, actually, and while they still let fly the barbs that are one of Succession‘s hallmarks and the lingua franca of the Roy family, there’s a warmth and a unity here that’s been unusual for this oft-squabbling siblings.
“Their manner of interrelating is harsh jokes,” creator Jesse Armstrong confirms in a new “Inside the Episode” featurette from HBO. Yet there’s something surprisingly loving happening between the kids, too.”Though there has been a ton of conflict between them in this show…when the three of them get together, they can find those moments of connection.”
“They’re so rare, those moments of unity, aren’t they?” says the episode’s director, Mark Mylod. “When we find them, they do tend to be memorable.” Mylod goes on to say one of the things he loved about season four’s premiere is that for Kendal, Shiv, and Roman, there was “a sense of them having a second childhood.”
According to the man himself, the absence of his own kids at his birthday party is the source of Logan’s sour mood. “I think he thought his children would be there; it’s that simple,” Cox told The Hollywood Reporter. “He wanted the party to happen. But that’s Logan’s problem: He loves his kids. He’d be a lot happier if he didn’t love these kids, if he actually just really treated them with the contempt that I think at times they deserve, and he doesn’t do that.
“He’s obviously in a bad place with three of his kids, and if he was asked if he cared, he’d say no, but his every gesture suggests otherwise,” says Armstrong in the video.
The premiere pivots around the Roy kids’ realization that their father, only 48 hours from his company WayStar being bought by the tech behemoth GoJo, is about to purchase Pierce Media. The Roy children have a natural in with the Pierce matriarch, and they set up a meeting to try and buy the company right out from under their father. Once again, it’s a battle between Logan Roy and his increasingly confident offspring. It results in a swiftly moving seventy minutes of delicious drama, and provides the rarest of treats—it seems like the kids have the upperhand on their dear old dad. Yet we know that Logan Roy has been unbeatable when it comes to the long game.
It’s also the beginning of the end as we inch closer to the finale of one of the best series on television. Check out the “Inside the Episode” here:
John Wick: Chapter 4 is the wildest, most brilliantly constructed film in the franchise—we interviewed a slew of the filmmakers behind the movie, including director Chad Stahelski—and it’s now also the opening box office champion. The Keanu Reeves-led action thriller had a franchise-best start in North America, bringing in a massive $73.5 million domestically and another $64 million globally, totaling $137.5 million worldwide. All of these numbers represent records for the franchise.
Chapter 4 knocked out the last Wick feature, Chapter 3 – Parabellum, which pulled in $56.8 million in 2019. Chapter 4‘s ferocious opening is Lionsgate’s largest of the pandemic era, and one of the best openings of 2023. Chapter 4 is also the rare film to set such records with its fourth installment, as the world of Wick found itself at a creative and emotional zenith with this last movie.
Not only were audiences eager to watch Reeves as the title character, aka Baba Yaga, dispatch a series of highly-trained assassins in his long, arduous quest for peace, but many also wanted to do so on the largest screen possible. Chapter 4 did extremely well on Imax and premium large format screens, drawing 38% of its total gross from them.
The excellent critical reception for Chapter 4 helped fuel what was already a very eager, loyal core base of Wick fans. The ace directing from Stahelski, the incredible work by Reeves, his fellow stars like Donnie Yen, and the stunt teams, and the way all involved harmonized the mayhem and harnessed the violence into a brutal ballet of fists and kicks helped Chapter 4 reach a fevered majesty. If you’ve seen it and are eager to learn how in the world they pulled it off, we’ve got a bunch of interviews with those involved below. Or if you haven’t seen it yet and want a nudge, those same interviews will likely pique your interest.
John Wick: Chapter 4 is playing in a theater near you.
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If you’re looking for a wonderful, feel-good movie to cozy up to, The Magician’s Elephant on Netflix is a beautiful story whose animation springs to life an ensemble cast of characters you’d want to befriend. The film is a re-imagination of a novel by Newbery award-winning author Kate DiCamillo and follows a young boy named Peter (Noah Jupe) and his search for his long-lost sister Adele (Pixie Davies).
As the title suggests, there is a magician (Benedict Wong) and a very adorable elephant involved, but to not spoil the plot any further if you haven’t read the book or know the story (though the screenplay from Martin Hynes does (ad)-venture from the source material), the warm-fuzzies come from the movie’s empathy, hopefulness, and imaginative characters who ask: “what if…”
The narrative weaves a magnetic group of eleven characters that includes a mysterious Fortune Teller (Natasia Demetriou), Peter’s war-veteran guardian Vilna (Mandy Patinkin), curious and helpful neighbor named Leo (Brian Tyree Henry), and a grandiose King (Aasif Mandvi), who challenges Peter to achieve three impossible tasks.
Making her directorial debut, Wendy Rogers tapped production designer Max Boas (Abominable), art director Iuri Lioi (How to Train Your Dragon trilogy), previs lead Gary H. Lee (Kung Fu Panda), and the animation company Animal Logic to stylize the heartfelt adventure.
The characters and their emotional arcs make the film a joy to watch. To ground those throughlines, the character designs called for a level of believability. Inspiration came from French artist Rebecca Dautremer and gouache texturing, which has a smooth, opaque finish. Human characters were stylized with long legs, large eyes, and defined angular shapes, while the movement was more anthropomorphic than the exaggerated squash and stretch animation you’d find in a Tom and Jerry cartoon. Micro-level details were considered in each character down to the realism of how clothing wrinkles moved and the hair of Vilna’s beard (which has 316,224 individual strands). The life-like refinement allowed them to emote on subtle levels, and thus, hopefully, connecting on a deeper level emotionally with the audience.
“Wendy had a real clarity about how she wanted the characters to act from the beginning. We didn’t want the expressions or postures to be too extreme. We wanted to use the bone structures of the characters to support the muscles on top to make it as realistic as possible,” art director Iuri Lioi. “Our character designer Brittany Myers did an amazing job bringing all our different ideas together to create these amazing characters.” In all 133 unique characters appear in the film, including the elephant that reignites the imagination of a town smattered with endless cloudy days.
Character design by Brittany Myers. Courtesy Netflix.
Metaphorically, Lioi says the clouds represent the loss of hope in the town. “Conceptually, the clouds needed to be this oppressive thing that is constantly hanging over everybody’s head, but at the same time, we didn’t want it to feel depressing.” The design of the clouds came from real Mammatus clouds, which have a bubble-like appearance and form before thunderstorms. But the visual team took it one step further and stylized them to look like tapioca balls in boba tea. The white “boba clouds” carry a surreal, almost magical feeling to them.
“The Magician’s Elephant.” Cr. Netflix.
For color and light, color studies shaped the time of day and moods of the environment, turning what would be a dull, monochromatic look into a town with hints of vibrancy. “With the clouds, one of the challenges is that the lighting would always be very diffused and soft,” Loi says. “We had to make sure the shapes in the town maintained a strong and interesting silhouette that would work well under soft lighting because we weren’t going to be able to use light and shadow to help us define compositions for the final shot.”
The town itself is ambiguous in location but borrows aesthetics from Southern Europe. “We wanted it to feel timeless. To make it a multi-layered place and would support a diverse cast of characters,” notes Lioi. It’s scaled with 280 buildings layered in architecture covering multiple centuries. Buildings are painted in muted pastels with shades of beige, purple, pink, and blue leading the way. “I think there was so much of the characters used in the town and so much of the design of the town that was reverse-engineered into each of the characters.”
Bringing the cinematic story to life started in preproduction with previs lead Gary H. Lee. “In all our scout sessions, Wendy would ask, ‘Do the characters feel right in their environment?” notes Lee. “This desire led to the formation of our cinematic guide for the film, which breaks down shooting scenes between Peter and Vilna to be more flat, oppositional, and restricted, while scenes between Leo and Gloria [Leo’s wife voiced by Sian Clifford] are more casual, dynamic, and include dirty over-the-shoulder shots for the inclusiveness.” The previs team, which included Morgan Kelly, Brian Magner, and Don Reich, ended up creating a shooting plan for nearly all the lead and hero environments in the film.
Concept art for “The Magician’s Elephant.” Courtesy Netflix.
Another key element to the previs work included correctly scaling the characters and town in the film’s 2.39 aspect ratio. “We adjusted the size of the water fountain to ensure it was neither too small for the elephant nor too big for Peter. We removed buildings so Vilna could have a clear view from his window of the town’s Cathedral to serve a particular story point. Much of this involved problem solving, ultimately leading to greater composition and framing,” explains Lee.
For Peter’s three tasks, conveying jeopardy was crucial. “Since the audience knows that the characters are not real, it becomes harder to create a sense of danger,” says Lee. “I remember working on Kung Fu Panda, where Spielberg provided feedback on our in-production projects. He emphasized the importance of ensuring that our animated characters “get hurt.” Once we see that our characters can experience pain, their journey becomes more relatable to the viewers.”
Concept art for “The Magician’s Elephant.” Courtesy Netflix.
A similar idea carried over for Peter, where the team found ways for the character to get hurt, fail, and be put in dangerous situations. Like when Peter has to face the king’s strongest soldier, Desmedt, they show Peter stumbling as he runs away. Or when Peter is asked to fly, a combination of close-up shots of his feet near the edge of a rooftop adds suspense, while another shot from his perspective explores the vertigo he’s feeling from the ground far below – all these adding to the humanizing qualities of Peter’s character.
One of Peter’s more humanizing moments for Lioi is Peter’s realization that the elephant should be reunited with its family. “For me, that really illustrates what the movie is about. It doesn’t matter that Peter’s not going to find his sister anymore. He cares about this elephant finding its family. That shift in Peter becoming aware is very beautiful. It happens in a very unexpected way, and I think that’s what makes this movie special and different.”
One of the most beloved, critically acclaimed films of all time is getting a remake.
Paramount Pictures is working on a remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s iconic 1958 psychological thriller Vertigo, and Robert Downey Jr. is circling the lead role played by James Stewart in the original. Downey Jr. is producing the film alongside his wife, Susan Downey, with John Davis and John Fox onboard as their producing partners. What’s more, the remake will be written by Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight, marking the second time this week the talented scribe has been in the news—he’s also been tapped by Lucasfilm to pen an upcoming Star Wars feature.
Downey Jr. hasn’t been seeking the spotlight much since he starred in 2019’s mammoth blockbuster Avengers: Endgame, followed by 2020’s Dolittle. He does have one big role in one of the year’s most hotly-anticipated upcoming films, Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, but other than that, he’s been fairly quiet for a superstar.
Hitchcock’s Vertigo was inspired by the French novel “D’entre les Morts” (“The Living Dead”) by Boileau-Narcejac, the pen name of the writing duo Pierre Boileau and Pierre Ayraud. Hitchcock moved the action from Paris to San Francisco and, crucially, changed the ending, and the result is one of the most enduring films ever made.
The film followed the story of San Francisco police detective John “Scottie” Ferguson (Stewart), who was forced to retire from the force due to his phobia of heights, which he acquired after a vicious bout of the titular case of vertigo. Scottie is hired to tail Madeline (Kim Novak), the wife of a man he knows, initiating a deepening obsession that will threaten to drive the former detective insane. Scottie’s phobia, however, keeps him from following her up the stairs of a Spanish Mission, where she falls to her death. It’s here that Vertigo really begins to toy with the viewer’s mind, and its twists and turns, as well as Hitchcock’s brilliant framing and the stellar performances from the cast, are big reasons why the film is routinely ranked one of the best ever made. In short, it’s a tough act to follow, but the talent involved is clearly up for the challenge.
Paramount’s Vertigo will follow a few high-profile remakes of Hitchcock’s films, including Gus Van Sant’s obsessively reconstructed 1998 remake of Psycho, in which he did a shot-for-shot remake of Hitchcock’s 1960 classic. And while Vertigo has inspired numerous filmmakers, from David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive to Brian De Palma’s Body Double, no American studio has attempted a straight remake of the film.
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Featured image: HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA – NOVEMBER 04: Robert Downey Jr. attends the special screening of “Sr.” during the 2022 AFI Fest at TCL Chinese Theatre on November 04, 2022 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images)
The original Power Rangers and their nemesis Rita are back in the first trailer for Netflix’s Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once & Always. The anniversary special arrives 30 years after the original series on Fox and sees many of the original cast returning. They include Walter E. Jones as Black Ranger/Zack Taylor, David Yost as Blue Ranger/Billy Cranston, Catherine Sutherland as Pink Ranger/Kat Hillard, and Steve Cardenas as Red Ranger/Rocky DeSantos. Also returning are Barbara Goodson as the aforementioned villain Rita Repulsa, Karan Ashley as the second Yellow Ranger/Aisha Campbell, Johnny Yong Bosch as the second Black Ranger/Adam Park, and Richard Steven Horvitz as Alpha 5.
The trailer reveals that the Power Rangers will also see some new faces, including Charlie Kersh’s Minh Kwan, the daughter of Yellow Ranger Trini Kwan. The original Yellow Ranger, Thuy Trang, died tragically in a car accident in 2001, and creators Becca Barens and Alwyn Dale decided to write in Trini’s death as part of the series; her daughter Minh Kwan reveals that she was killed by Rita Repulsa. Another original Power Ranger, Jason David Frank, who played the Green-turned-White Ranger, passed away in November 2022. How or if the new anniversary series will address his passing is unclear.
Here’s a brief synopsis from Netflix:
The Rangers come face-to-face with a familiar threat from the past. In the midst of a global crisis, they are called on once again to be the heroes the world needs. A mighty morphin reunion 30 years in the making, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once & Always arrives on Netflix on April 19!
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Lucasfilm has tapped one of the sharpest writers in the business to take on one of their upcoming Star Wars films.
Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight will be stepping in to pen the upcoming feature, which is set to be directed by Ms. Marvel director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy. Knight will be taking over for Damon Lindelof and Justin Britt-Gibson, who had originally been working on the script. Lindelof had started working on the story for the new film in July 2022 with a secret, two-week session with a writer’s room, then he and Britt-Gibson took it from there to write the full script. The Hollywood Reporterscoops that the story is set after the events depicted in J.J. Abrams trilogy-capping Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, which was the final film in the 9-part Skywalker Saga that began with George Lucas’s original 1977 film Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope.
Knight steps into a new kind of galaxy for Lucasfilm and Star Wars, with the now-thriving world of live-action Star Wars series playing out on Disney+. The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Andor have all streamed, with more series to follow.
There’s no current release date set for Knight and Obaid-Chinoy’s upcoming film, yet THR notes that Disney has held December 19, 2025, for a Star Wars film. We will most likely learn a bit more about this project, and a lot more besides, at the Star Wars Celebration in London next month.
For an interview with Knight about his critically acclaimed series Peaky Blinders, check out this story:
Featured image: BIRMINGHAM, ENGLAND – JANUARY 17: Steven Knight, creator of Peaky Blinders, during the press launch of a Rambert Dance production entitled “Peaky Blinders: The Redemption of Thomas Shelby”, inspired by the “Peaky Blinders” television series, at Dance Hub Birmingham on January 17, 2022 in Birmingham, England. (Photo by Anthony Devlin/Getty Images)
