“The world is still processing the loss of Chad,” Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige told Empire about the death of Chadwick Boseman, who passed away at 43 in August of 2020. Boseman’s death was a shock at a time of shocks, the loss of not only a rising star at the peak of his powers but a beloved husband, friend, and colleague. For the Black Panther family, Boseman was their North Star, along with co-writer/director Ryan Coogler. His loss meant that work on Black Panther 2 (now officially Black Panther: Wakanda Forever) would have to be completely rethought. A Black Panther sequel without its Black Panther would require some difficult choices. The notion of recasting Boseman’s character was one choice the filmmakers made early on. It wasn’t going to happen. Not yet.
In an interview with Empire, Feige says that recasting T’Challa, the proper name of Boseman’s character, was not in the cards at that point. “It just felt like it was much too soon to recast,” Feige told Empire. “Stan Lee always said that Marvel represents the world outside your window. And we had talked about how, as extraordinary and fantastical as our characters and stories are, there’s a relatable and human element to everything we do. The world is still processing the loss of Chad. And Ryan poured that into the story.”
When Boseman passed away, Feige, Coogler, and the filmmaking team had to imagine a world, and a Wakanda, without Boseman.
“The conversations were entirely about, yes, ‘What do we do next? And how could the legacy of Chadwick — and what he had done to help Wakanda and the Black Panther become these incredible, aspirational, iconic ideas — continue?’ That’s what it was all about,” Feige said to Empire.
The first trailer for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever managed to strike the almost impossible perfect note, somber and mournful and grief-stricken in the beginning, subtly shifting towards the epic action that Marvel Studios is known for when Wakanda is forced to face a new threat, in the form of Tenoch Huerta’s Namor the Submariner, as they are all still grieving. The remaining heroes of Wakanda—Lupita Nyong’o’s Nakia, Winston Duke’s M’Baku, Danai Gurira’s Okoye, Angela Bassett’s Ramonda, and Letitia Wright’s Shuri—must once again come together and fight for their futures, as well as for the memory of their fallen leader.
How Coogler, his co-writer Joe Robert Cole, and the rest of the Marvel team figured out a way to re-write the sequel to honor Boseman’s passing and to look to the future will be revealed soon. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever hits theaters on November 11.
For more on Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, check out these stories:
At long last, we’ve got our best look yet at The Last of Us, HBO Max’s highly-anticipated adaptation of the popular video game series. The deliciously moody teaser trailer reveals creator Craig Mazin (Chernobyl)’s series, which follows Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) as they journey across a devastated American landscape in a post-apocalyptic world.
The teaser is a thing of bleak beauty, set to Hank Williams’ haunting ballad “Alone and Foresaken,” which is precisely how Joel and Bella must feel as they try to survive in a world that seems hellbent on death. The post-apocalyptic series is a massively ambitious undertaking and one of the big swings that HBO is taking in 2023, yet they’ve kept details very under wraps (including the precise release date).
The teaser at last gives us a sense of the series’ aesthetics while keeping plot specifics to a minimum. In fact, there are only a few lines spoken throughout the entire teaser, including the final words, spoken in voiceover: “Save who you can save.” There’s also a brief, legitimately terrifying look at one of the afflicted, his (or her, it’s hard to tell) face utterly transformed into a monstrous disfiguration. It happens at the 1:16 mark if you want to prepare yourself.
The series is set 20 years after civilization has fallen, with Joel trying to smuggle Ellie out of the dangerous quarantine zone. Joining Pascal and Ramsey are a great cast that includes Nick Offerman, Gabriel Luna, Storm Reid, Merle Dandridge, Nico Parker, Murray Bartlett, Ashley Johnson, Graham Greene, Anna Torv, Lamar Johnson, Keivonn Woodard, and Troy Baker. In fact, Dandridge, Baker, and Johnson all did voice work on the original video game series.
Mazin co-created the series alongside the video game’s writer and creative director, Neil Druckmann.
We’re still waiting on an exact release date for The Last of Us, but we know it arrives sometime in 2023 and will consist of 10 episodes.
Check out the chilling teaser below.
Featured image: Pedro Pascal, Bella Ramsey. Photo courtesy HBO.
Andor isn’t quite like any of the Star Wars live-action series we’ve seen thus far on Disney+. Compared to The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, and Obi-Wan Kenobi, Andor is almost heroically unconcerned with the legends of the larger Star Wars galaxy, be they Boba Fett, Darth Vader, or Obi-Wan Kenobi himself. The show is a street-level view of regular people, most of whom living on the margins of society, reacting and rebelling against the Galactic Empire’s increasingly autocratic regime. In fact, creator Tony Gilroy, who came in to help get Rogue One, the best Star Wars prequel film ever made (in our humble opinion), into shape, had some intriguing advice for his Andor creative team. The gist? Don’t worry about Star Wars. “You’re here because we want you to be real,” Gilroy said, as The Hollywood Reporterdetails.
When Gilroy joined the Rogue One production, along with his considerable skills as a storyteller (this is the man who wrote and directed the nearly perfect film Michael Clayton, for starters), he brought one highly unusual skill to the franchise—he wasn’t a big Star Wars fan. This gave him the critical distance he needed to push Rogue One into some genuinely new territory for a Star Wars film, including the film’s shocking conclusion. Considering Andor would star one of Rogue One‘s main characters, Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), Gilroy was the logical choice to lead the series—but it would take a long time for Gilroy to officially become Andor‘s man for Disney+.
Once he was finally on board, Gilroy noticed something early on during Andor‘s production—his creative team, including his performers, were changing the way they might go about their work because of their reverence for, and connection to, Star Wars. This was when Gilroy gave them some freeing advice; let go of their fondness as much as they could.
“In every department, we’ve had all kinds of people come in, and they know it’s Star Wars, so they change their behavior,” Gilroy told THR. “They change their attitude. They change their thing. And you go, ‘Wait, no. Do your thing. You’re here because we want you to be real.’ So it’s a testament to the potent power of Star Wars. It really gets into people’s heads, but to change the lane and do it this way, it takes a little effort.”
Gilroy gives THR a lot more about his creative vision for Andor, including the manifesto about the series he wrote for Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy that eventually won her over and got him into the driver’s seat. The road to Gilroy running Andor was a long and winding path, but the end result has been a Star Wars series unlike any that have come before, and that, it turns out, is exactly what we’ve been waiting for.
For more on Andor and all things Star Wars, check out these stories:
It’s a bit of a miracle that director Brett Morgen survived creating Moonage Daydream, his kaleidoscopic deep dive into David Bowie’s unique sound and vision.
Morgen was six months into editing the film, the first project that had the full cooperation of Bowie’s estate. But assembling the massive volume of footage, some of it never before seen, was taking its toll on the filmmaker.
“It was traumatic because we’d run out of funding, and I was the only producer, and I’d signed a contract. I could not afford to hire an editor or any consultants. I had to work my way out a rabbit hole, and that pressure got intense,” said Morgen.
“Then the pandemic hit, and I was working in total isolation and, because of security concerns, we could not send a link out to anyone. I had no idea if [the edited footage] made any sense. It was as if I showed you something in Mandarin and you don’t speak Mandarin. It’s not going to make sense. It was at that level.”
David Bowie in “Moonage Daydream.” Courtesy Neon.
Morgen was about to leave Los Angeles to go to another location to edit when he asked his wife, Debra Eisenstadt, who is also his executive producer, “to come and look at what I had assembled. I told her, I just need you to tell me if it’s sensible in any shape or form,” said Morgen.
“I turn around to press play, and she has her back to me, and I just start shaking and crying. I felt like I was about to get exposed. I was crazy. I was Jack Torrance, and she was going to read, ‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.’ I mean, I was totally convinced that was going to happen. When it was over, she said, ‘keep going … there may be a diamond in the raw there. Keep doing what you’re doing. You’ll get there.’ That was an empowering moment because at that point, I didn’t have any idea it would resonate.”
David Bowie in “Moonage Daydream.” Courtesy Neon.
Morgen had been down the fully immersive documentary road before. He’d crafted memorable films from footage of Hollywood producer Robert Evans for The Kid Stays in the Picture; musician Kurt Cobain for Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck; and another about the renowned primatologist Jane Goodall for Jane, his 2017 film compiled from hours of film footage shot by Hugo van Lawick that was rediscovered in 2014.
“Jane took three weeks to screen the material. I had put aside four months to screen Bowie owing to how large the inventory list was,” Morgen said. “It ended up taking two years just to screen the material and a year to get it ready to be looked at. I was not prepared for this, budgetary or emotionally or physically. I was overwhelmed with images and media all sort of chained together.”
David Bowie in “Moonage Daydream.” Courtesy Neon.
His quest from the start was to create a non-biographical narrative about Bowie, which was likely why Morgen earned the trust of Bowie’s estate. “That became the kind of unicorn; to write a story without leaning entirely on the biographical chain of events,” said Morgen.
“The film is essentially rooted in Bowie’s ideas of transience on a philosophical level. On a physical level, that manifests itself in a set of challenges he sets to try to get himself into environments that are foreign to him so he can put himself through the fire. He found that was when he could create, in these extreme environments, until he met [his wife] Iman, after which he found a way to create without having to put himself in the fire.”
David Bowie in “Moonage Daydream.” Courtesy Neon.
But Morgen wasn’t at all convinced that his kaleidoscopic approach to Bowie would resonate with audiences until the film opened in theaters.
“I thought no one was going to get it, and I was going to spend the weekend reading a bunch of social media posts from people saying it’s awful, it’s boring, I walked out, and it doesn’t make sense,” said Morgen. Instead, “to see people have life-affirming experiences [watching] a music documentary in Lima, Peru, in Melbourne, all over the globe, it’s like we needed this. It’s one thing at Cannes where the response is from European film critics. But when we opened globally, to see that it’s registering with people, that in and of itself is a miracle. It is, as David would say, a heroic act.”
Morgen is also heartened by the cross-section of audiences drawn to Moonage Daydream. “I’ve been going around Los Angeles this week to see the film in Burbank, in Century City, and it has an unusual audience of any film out there. The over-50s that you just don’t see at movies too much are next to a 17-year-old kid with pink hair and 32-year-olds totally rocking out.”
David Bowie in “Moonage Daydream.” Courtesy Neon.
Immersing himself in Bowie’s creative transformations triggered Morgen’s own, he said. “It changed everything about how I want to proceed with my life and how I want to proceed with my career and what type of art I want to make. To not take a radical change, to me, would be to betray the last seven years of work.
“It demands that I take these lessons to heart. I’m eagerly looking forward in the next few months to restoring some physical balance to my life. But in terms of my feelings as an artist, I feel both fully satiated and at the same time inspired.”
Featured image: David Bowie in “Moonage Daydream.” Courtesy Neon.
Episode 6 of House of the Dragon takes us on a major jump forward in time, a leap in years that also includes the switch-over for the actresses playing two of the main roles. Out are the great Milly Alcock as Princess Rhaenyra and Emily Carey as Queen Alicent, and in are Emma D’Arcy and Olivia Cooke, playing the Princess and the Queen, respectively. As episode 6 gets underway, Princess Rhaenrya is giving birth (a relatively mild birth scene by Game of Thrones standards), and the baby is not even a minute old before she’s told she and her new son are being summoned by the Queen. So soon? It turns out that there’s been no refreshed love between Rhaenyra and Alicent over the years, and episode six explores their frosty relationship and the implications that will be felt realm-wide because of it.
This ten-year jump and major recasting of a series halfway through its first season run is no easy feat. Yet we quickly come to accept D’Arcy and Cooke as Rhaenyra and Alicent as they immediately set upon each other. In fairness, it’s Queen Alicent who makes the first move. After summoning the Princess and her Prince, Ser Laenor Velaryon (John Macmillan), she tells Ser Laenor not to worry; one of these times, he’ll get a child that looks like him. The implication, explicit and cruel, is that the Queen is well aware that the children don’t belong to Laenor but Princess Rhaenyra’s true paramour, her sworn defender, Ser Harwin “Breakbones” Strong.
L-r: Ryan Corr, Leo Hart, Harvey Sadler. Photograph by Gary Moyes / HBO
And what about Rhaenyra’s old sworn protector, Criston Cole? He’s found a new purpose by protecting Alicent. “His loyalties have shifted completely because Alicent was the one who pulled him out at the moment at which he was at his lowest, and now he’s sworn his vows to her,” says Fabien Frankel, the man who plays Criston, in a new “Inside the Episode” released by HBO.
In fact, Criston Cole takes it upon himself to publicly imply that Ser Harwin Strong is the true father to Princess Rhaenyra’s children, suggesting his devotion to one of the prince’s training is odd and would only be as fierce if the child were related to Ser Harwin, especially if he were his son. Ser Harwin takes this poorly and beats Ser Criston down. This is precisely what Ser Criston wanted. Stirring the pot and making life miserable for Princess Rhaenyra, with Queen Alicent’s approval, of course, now seems to be a part of Ser Criston’s charge.
“Criston Cole’s rationale is if I can goad this guy into a fight, it proves the point,” the episode’s director Miguel Sapochnik says. “This has been percolating for a long time. The pressure that Rhaenyra is under. It seems that finally, she has reached a point where the lie is too much to bear.”
“She’s living multiple lies at once, believing she’s getting away with it, and ultimately nobody’s buying it,” Emma D’Arcy says about the Princess. “When King Viserys named her air, that comes with an understanding that she’ll have to change.” Yet the Princess hasn’t changed enough for the members of the King’s court, especially his Queen. So Princess Rhaenyra strikes her most conciliatory tone yet—she suggests that her son, the heir to the throne once Rhaenyra herself is gone, should marry the Queen’s daughter. It’s a gesture of humility; here is Rhaenyra admitting she’s erred and offering a way to align her house with the Queen’s and strengthen all of them in the process. Unfortunately, Queen Alicent is in no mood for such gestures. She promises she’ll consider it, along with the King, but it’s clear Alicent has grown in power and impatience in the past ten years, and her view of Rhaenyra is dim, perhaps even cruel.
There was more in episode 6, quite a bit more, including another doomed marriage for Prince Daemon (Matt Smith), this time with Princess Laena Velayron (Nanna Blondell). We get yet another brutal birthing scene, only in this instance, Lady Laena decides to take matters into her own hands. Daemon finds himself faced with the same decision his brother Viserys was in the pilot, whether to kill his wife in order to save the baby. Daemon doesn’t do it, but Laena, as a dragon rider, wants to die a dragon rider’s death, so she instructs her dragon Vhagar, the biggest in the fleet, mind you, to finish her off. Vhagar hesitates at first, but before Daemon can get to his young wife, the colossal dragon finally takes the order, and Laena is killed in a blast of fire.
Matthew Needham. Photograph by Ollie Upton / HBO
And finally, before we turn you over to the “Inside the Episode” video, a word on one of House of the Dragons’ true villains coming fully into view, Larys Strong (Matthew Needham), the man who has been gently pushing Queen Alicent into an ever colder, darker place of paranoia and revenge. “He’s a player, and he’s looking into the future and seeing what she’s going to be,” says writer Sara Hess, who co-wrote the episode with showrunner Ryan J. Condal. “He’s sort of placed his chips, and he’ll wait for that to come home for him.” Larys’ maneuvers to get the Queen’s father, Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans), back as King Viserys’ hand. How does he suggest they do this? By having his own father, the current hand, killed. Despite Larys’ physical weakness, he is perhaps House of the Dragon‘s most ruthless schemer.
Check out the “Inside the Episode” for episode 6 of House of the Dragon here:
For more on House of the Dragon, check out these stories:
Before Amazon Prime’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power debuted on the streamer on September 1, much of the talk surrounding the series was just how big of a swing it was. It was being hailed as the most expensive show of all time, a massive investment of time, money, and talent to create a series worthy of J.R.R. Tolkien’s creative vision and the six Peter Jackson films that have become popular culture touchstones and the defining adaptations of Tolkien’s work. It feels safe to say that after 4 episodes (with a second season already guaranteed), The Rings of Power has delivered.
A good showcase of how the series has lived up to the hype is the below scene, now made available by Amazon, which shows the elf Arondir (Ismael Cruz Cordova) going toe-to-claw with one of the orc’s gnarly beasts. Arondir had been captured by the orcs and enslaved, along with many fellow elves and humans, too, and forced to help Sauron’s minions dig a trench through the Southlands. An escape plan is hatched by Arondir and a few others, but it doesn’t go quite to plan. The orcs can’t handle direct sunlight, but their beast can, so they unleash the monster to put down the rebellion before it’s had a chance to start.
Check out the clip here:
For those of you who still haven’t checked out the series but are wizard-and-elf curious, you’ve got some highly absorbing binge-watching in your future. Plus, you don’t have to be a Tolkien stan or have seen every minute of Peter Jackson’s films to get into the action. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power differs from Peter Jackson’s two trilogies (The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit) as the storyline does not come from a specific Tolkien novel. Instead, the thrust of the action comes from the rich mythology Tolkien created around his stories to give them weight, history, and texture. The series is centered on the young Galadriel (Morfydd Clark), who is convinced the evil Sauron has returned and it’s only a matter of time before he has replenished his forces enough to destroy Middle-earth for good. The series is set thousands of years before the events in Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings” and follows the young heroine on a quest to wake the slumbering realms up to the fact that a great evil has returned.
And, even if you aren’t the biggest LOTR fan or even much of a fantasy person, there’s still much to enjoy here. The series is as epic as promised and stands well enough on its own to warrant potential interest even from those not already deeply vested in Tolkien’s mythology. It’s absorbing, it’s beautifully shot and performed, and it is, as promised, epic.
For more on The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, check out these stories:
Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul creator Vince Gilligan is taking his talents to Apple. Not only that, but Gilligan’s next series, which has already gotten a two-season straight-to-series order at Apple, will star Better Call Saul‘s Rhea Seehorn. This is terrific news for all of us mourning the end of Better Call Saul‘s 6-season run, which just aired its finale this past August.
While details of the series are being kept under wraps, what we do know is Gilligan created it and will serve as showrunner and executive producer. The series comes from Gilligan’s longtime partners at Sony Pictures Television, which produced both Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul.
There’s history between Gilligan and the folks at Apple, too. As Varietyreports, the heads of worldwide video at Apple are Zack Van Amburg and Jamie Erlicht, the former co-presidents of Sony Pictures Television. Gilligan’s new series at Apple also reunites him with former Sony TV co-president Chris Parnell, who now has a senior programming role at Apple.
“After fifteen years, I figured it was time to take a break from writing antiheroes… and who’s more heroic than the brilliant Rhea Seehorn?” Gilligan said in a statement. “It’s long past time she had her own show, and I feel lucky to get to work on it with her. And what nice symmetry to be reunited with Zack Van Amburg, Jamie Erlicht, and Chris Parnell! Jamie and Zack were the first two people to say yes to Breaking Bad all those years ago. They’ve built a great team at Apple, and my wonderful, long-time partners at Sony Pictures Television and I are excited to be in business with them.”
Rhea Seehorn attends the AMC Summit at Public Hotel on June 20, 2018 in New York City.
Seehorn was key to Better Call Saul‘s success, playing Kim Wexler, a fellow lawyer and one of the few consistent bright lights in Saul’s life. Seehorn is definitely deserving of her own series, and she and her old scene partner, Bob Odenkirk (Saul, of course) will now be leading their own series on different networks. Odenkirk will head up the new series Straight Man for AMC.
For more on Better Call Saul, check out this interview:
You won’t see a more sumptuous, surreal trailer than Bardo anytime soon. This look at director Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s new feature, his first since his masterful 2015 epic The Revenant, received a six-minute standing ovation after its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival. That screening latest three hours, but the new trailer reflects a trimmed-down version of the film (Iñárritu cut 22 minutes) that will be released theatrically in Mexico on October 27, followed by a limited theatrical release in the U.S., Spain, and Argentina on November 4, before moving to Netflix on December 16.
Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths follows Silverio (Daniel Giménez Cacho), a well-respected Mexican journalist and documentary filmmaker living in Los Angeles. Silverio finally has a good reason to return to his native Mexico—he’s been named the recipient of a prestigious international award—yet this trip will prove far more meaningful than a mere ego boost. What follows is a journey into Silverio’s heart and soul, a realm of memory and fears that begin to invade his waking life. His trip home becomes a trip within himself as Iñárritu’s film grapples with life’s biggest questions. Who is Silverio, really? What has his life meant? What does his family mean to him? What does it mean to be a human being, alive today, when everything feels so desperately unsteady?
Such heady material is hardly a departure for Iñárritu, one of the most daring filmmakers of his generation. Working with cinematographer Darius Khondji (Amour, Se7en) and written by Iñárritu and his Birdman co-writer Nicolás Giacobone.
Check out the trailer here:
Here’s the official synopsis for Bardo:
Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths is an epic, visually stunning and immersive experience set against the intimate and moving journey of Silverio, a renowned Mexican journalist and documentary filmmaker living in Los Angeles, who, after being named the recipient of a prestigious international award, is compelled to return to his native country, unaware that this simple trip will push him to an existential limit. The folly of his memories and fears have decided to pierce through to the present, filling his everyday life with a sense of bewilderment and wonder.
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Featured image: Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths (2022). (L-R) Daniel GimÈnez Cacho as Silverio and Ximena Lamadrid as Camila. Cr. Limbo Films, S. De R.L. de C.V. Courtesy of Netflix
A knock at a cabin door is never just a neighbor asking for some sugar in an M. Night Shymalan movie. So, when that first knock arrives in the trailer for his aptly titled Knock at the Cabin, it brings with it a tremor of precognition. Things are about to get very, very bad.
The first look at Shymalan’s latest reveals that the trouble starts even before that fateful knock. Leonard (Dave Bautista), a man who looks almost comically out of place taking a midday walk through a beautiful forest, comes upon Wen (Kristen Cui), the young daughter of Andrew (Jonathan Groff) and Eric (Ben Aldridge), the family renting the cabin in the woods. “Why are you here?” Wen asks Leonard. “I suppose I’m here to make friends with you. Your dads, too.” But then Leonard gives away the game when he tells Wen that his heart is broken. When she asks him why, he says, “Because of what I have to do today.” A classic Shymalan line, filled with the pathos of a man who feels he has no choice but to do the unthinkable. That’s when Wen sees more people coming through the woods towards the cabin. Talk about a ruined vacation.
It gets more unsettling from there. Leonard and three accomplices—played by Nikki Amuka-Bird, Abby Quinn, and Rupert Grint—break into the cabin and tie the family up. They come not to rob or murder (well, we’ll see about the latter) but on a solemn mission, they say, to prevent the apocalypse. Leonard informs them that their family “has been chosen to make a horrible decision.” What’s more, “If you fail to choose,” he says, “the world will end.”
And what is the choice they need to make? The trailer isn’t telling, but we’re guessing it has to do with Andrew and Eric being forced to pick a sacrifice among themselves. Yet, this being Shymalan, a master trickster, we’re also guessing it’s not so simple.
Knock at the Cabin will be an intriguing early 2023 film, hitting theaters on February 3.
Check out the trailer below:
Here’s the official synopsis for Knock at the Cabin Door:
While vacationing at a remote cabin, a young girl and her parents are taken hostage by four armed strangers who demand that the family make an unthinkable choice to avert the apocalypse. With limited access to the outside world, the family must decide what they believe before all is lost.
From visionary filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan, Knock at the Cabin stars Dave Bautista (Dune, Guardians of the Galaxy franchise), Tony award and Emmy nominee Jonathan Groff (Hamilton, Mindhunter), Ben Aldridge (Pennyworth, Fleabag), BAFTA nominee Nikki Amuka-Bird (Persuasion, Old), newcomer Kristen Cui, Abby Quinn (Little Women, Landline) and Rupert Grint (Servant, Harry Potter franchise).
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Marvel Studios’ Fantastic Four now has three of its most important pieces in place.
After naming WandaVision director Matt Shakman as the man helming the upcoming reboot of Fantastic Four at Disney’s D23 Expo, Deadlinereports that Marvel Studios has tapped Jeff Kaplan and Ian Springer to write the script. The duo is new to Marvel, but they’ve recently had a hot streak, including selling their script Disaster Wedding to Warner Bros, which Palm Springs director Max Barbakow will direct.
Kaplan and Springer have actually been working on Fantastic Four since before Shakman was officially named director, helping outline how the film will fit into the MCU with Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige. Deadline writes that now that all three have been named officially, they’ll join forces in earnest to shape the future of this super-group.
Shakman comes to the project having proven himself a deft Marvel hand with his ace handling of Marvel’s first Disney+ series, WandaVision. Now that Shakman, Kaplan, and Springer will be teaming up to shape the story, the next big piece—or pieces—of the puzzle will be put together, and that’s casting.
Fantastic Four—along with X-Men and Deadpool—was one of the most intriguing properties that Disney absorbed when it acquired Fox and its film assets. Made up of Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic, Susan Storm/the Invisible Woman, Johnny Storm/the Human Torch, and Ben Grimm/Thing, they have been a massive part of the Marvel comics world, debuting in 1961, as well on the big screen. The three major Fantastic Four films were Tim Story’s 2005 Fantastic Four, his 2007 film Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, and Josh Trank’s 2015 reboot Fantastic Four. Now, the iconic characters will be getting the full Marvel treatment as they’re slotted into the massive, mega-popular MCU.
In fact, one member of the Fantastic Four already appeared in an MCU film. In Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, an alternate version of Reed Richards, played by John Krasinski, appeared as a council member on the Illuminati.
Feige finally confirmed that Fantastic Four was officially happening at this year’s Comic-Con in San Diego when he revealed that it would be the movie that would start the MCU’s Phase 6 when it was released on November 8, 2024. Fantastic Four will kickstart a three-pack of epic Marvel movies, with the two Avengers films following it, Avengers: Kang Dynasty on May 2, 2025, and Avengers: Secret Wars six months after that.
For our interview with Matt Shakman, check this out:
The new Black Adam teaser, titled “Legacy,” makes it case plainly from the start. That case is made by none other than Amanda Waller (Viola Davis), the black-ops antihero who led the other antiheroes of The Suicide Squad into battle (twice). “Before a world of heroes and villains, one power ruled it all.” As we hear Waller’s voiceover, what we’re seeing are glimpses of those heroes and villains—Batman’s throwing stars (known as Batarangs), Superman’s iconic red and blue suit, Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), Aquaman (Jason Momoa), and even Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie). These are the most recognizable DCEU characters of them all (missing a Joker here, a Flash there), but they’re actually predated, as far as the superhero lore goes, by Dwayne Johnson’s Black Adam.
The new teaser offers a few glimpses of fresh footage while reminding us of the core details of Black Adam’s backstory. Born a slave, executed, and resurrected by his son’s sacrifice, Black Adam has been asleep for 5,000 years, until now. He’ll come into contact with the Justice Society, who initially (and misguidedly) attempt to negotiate his “peaceful surrender.” Good luck with that. As the man says himself, he’s not peaceful, and he doesn’t surrender. The Justice Society, comprised of Hawkman (Aldis Hodge), Doctor Fate (Pierce Brosnan), Cyclone (Quintessa Swindell), and Atom Smasher (Noah Centineo), will learn that while Black Adam doesn’t negotiate, he might just be the ally they need.
The teaser also reinforces how much of a burden Black Adam’s powers are. They were not bestowed through lineage or legacy or, in Batman’s case, via an unlimited supply of money and technological brilliance. They’re a curse, and Black Adam wields them with an incandescent rage at the evil and evil-adjacent alike. Just how he’ll fit into the larger DCEU (and his inevitable showdown with Shazam) remains to be seen. But we’ll find out soon enough—Black Adam finally hits theaters on October 21.
Featured image: Caption: DWAYNE JOHNSON as Black Adam in New Line Cinema’s action adventure “BLACK ADAM,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
There’s a reason that the battle sequences in The Woman King look so authentic. The actors, from star Viola Davis on down, worked for months to get into physical shape to play an army of women warriors. They learned all the right moves from a team of expert trainers that included fight choreographer Jénel Stevens.
A New York-based personal trainer with an extensive martial arts background, Stevens made the transition to movie stunt performer in 2015. Since then, her resume has grown steadily to include high profile big screen projects such as Black Panther and The Gray Man, along with television mini-series including Ms. Marvel and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.
L-r: Viola Davis, Jenel Stevens, Lashana Lynch, and Sheila Atim. Courtesy Sony Pictures.
Stunt and fight coordinator Daniel Hernandez, who’d worked on The Woman King director Gina Prince-Bythewood’s 2020 action adventure The Old Guard, tapped Stevens for the job. “Danny had been trying to get me on this project for a year before it had even started. I worked on The Gray Man with him, and he kept talking about this movie,” said Stevens over Zoom from Colombia, where she’s on location with a new film. “He knows I have an extensive martial arts background, as does [fight coordinator] Johnny Gao. There were so many moving parts; a lot of people had to be in a lot of different places.”
Training was underway for months before Prince-Blythewood shot a single frame of The Woman King, which is about the real-life Agojie, an all-women army of warriors who protected the African Kingdom of Dahomey in the 1800s. They are led by General Nanisca [Davis], who issues the command that the Agojie “train hard. Fight harder.”
“Viola and Thuso [Mbedu, who plays Nawi, an orphan mentored by Nanisca] trained starting in April and May,” with Davis’s personal trainer Gabriela Mclain, said Stevens. Stevens came on board in September and worked extensively in drilling the cast on how to handle the machetes and knives that the warriors wield.
Jenel Stevens on set of “The Woman King.” Courtesy Sony Pictures
“It was their mindset that got them to look so badass on camera,” said Stevens. “They came in earlier than their call time for training, and they did not want to leave, probably because the next step was Gabby [Mclain], and they wanted to stay in weapons training. They worked their butts off. Their mentality showed they were willing to put in the work to get where they needed to be.”
Jenel Stevens and Viola Davis on set. Courtesy Sony Pictures.
Stevens taught the actors basic fight techniques that would allow the Agojie to battle male opponents. “Being in the same lineage of martial arts that Danny is in, we were like-minded. We did basic strikes. The martial arts we have all trained in comes from centuries ago, so being able to incorporate that in its basic form lends itself easily to choreography in a movie,” she said. “It’s not anything crazy or fancy, but it’s pretty cool.”
The fight coordinators “were all over the place. There was a lot of hands-on deck because there were a lot of people to train,” said Stevens. “Johnny [Gao] might have an hour to teach some stuff; then Mackensi [Emory], another stunt performer, might be doing something else, and then I’d come in and do machete, knives, blades. Many things didn’t even make it to camera, but I trained them in the basic moves of everything so that they were adept at wielding a basic weapon if they needed to do that. We drilled and drilled.”
She said it was not difficult to teach the actors because they were so attentive and determined. “It was very important to them to be able to look the way they needed to look on camera — like a warrior who’d been doing this for decades,” Stevens said.
Once on location in South Africa, the rigorous training continued. Stevens was one of just four stunt coordinators, including Hernandez, Gao, and assistant stunt coordinator Alex Benevent, who made the trip. She earned Prince-Blythewood’s trust during the filming of the action scenes.
Viola Davis stars in THE WOMAN KING. Courtesy Sony Pictures.
“I had intense communication with Gina, especially once we started filming. She trusted me enough to be in video village with her, especially when we’d be watching Viola going through takes with weapons and fighting. It blew me away one time after a take when she asked, ‘Are you happy with that?’ I said, ‘Well…’ and Gina immediately said, ‘Nope. Cut. Go again’ because of my reaction. Not until we were satisfied on all ends did we go to the next take.”
Although Stevens is credited as Davis’s stunt double, Stevens says that the Oscar winner “did 95 to 98 percent of her own work.”
“She did everything other than falling on her face. That was me,” laughs Stevens. “But the fighting, all that, was all her. We trained her up to a certain point, and she was very determined to make it look the way she wanted it to look. She’d see me do the choreography in rehearsals, and she took it and ran with it. I would learn the choreography and show it to her, and she tried to emulate not just using the machete but the root of how I moved. She studied my body mechanics and then added her own spice to it. My hat goes off to her. To do all that plus say her lines and show emotion, it’s a lot to deal with, but she nailed it in true Viola Davis fashion.”
Viola Davis and Lashana Lynch with young recruits in THE WOMAN KING.
The experience of shooting The Woman King with a cast and crew of mostly women and particularly Black women was a profound one, said Stevens. “We have not seen women, especially dark-skinned women in droves, being able to do something like this on screen and even on set. That scene in the grass [when the warriors rise in unison] gave us all goosebumps. There were people who cried on set, I’m not gonna lie. It was very empowering, and it was important to be there. I feel very proud to be part of showing the world that these women existed. They were real. I’m so happy I was able to be part of that.”
Andor is a major departure from the first three live-action Star Wars series that have aired on Disney+. This is one of the major through-lines of the initial, very positive reviews of the show, which follows Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) as he becomes a key player in the Rebel Alliance’s stand against the Galactic Empire. Unlike The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, and Obi-Wan Kenobi before it, Andor is a darker, grittier affair, a slow burn that pays off big time for those looking for a Star Wars series unlike any that have come before.
Andor comes to us as a prequel to the 2016 Star Wars spinoff film Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, a film that had a boldness and originality that surprised many (and upset some people, too). Rogue One introduced us to Luna’s thief-turned-Rebel Alliance intelligence agent as he was part of a team that was attempting to steal the Death Star plans. Not only was Rogue One the grungiest, most street-level Star Wars film ever made, but it also delivered the most bittersweet ending in the entire franchise. While The Empire Strikes Back famously ended on a downbeat (Han Solo frozen in carbonite, Darth Vader close to crushing the rebellion for good), Rogue One ended in a sacrificial victory that still seems shocking today. Spoiler alert, all of its heroes, including Andor, died, but not before they managed to deliver the Death Star plans to Princes Leia. These little-known heroes helped save the entire galaxy.
Another striking thing about both Rogue One and now Andor—despite the fact we now know who Cassian Andor is—is the fact that it deals with a large number of regular people within the galaxy. This means it’s not relying on the iconic names within the Star Wars franchise to lure viewers and satisfy that seemingly insatiable collective desire to get fresh angles on old friends and enemies within the galaxy. “Where The Mandalorian, Boba Fett, and Obi-Wan Kenobi wove their biggest reveals into the larger fabric of the Lucasfilm universe, Andor doesn’t rush toward those moments that might make fans gasp out of pure recognition,” writes Variety‘s Caroline Framke. “Instead, it does something more surprising still: it tells the story of people who have nothing to do with Solos, Skywalkers, or Palpatines, but whose lives matter nonetheless.”
Andor takes us back to the first initial sparks of that rebellion and the people who led the way. Created by Tony Gilroy, the man who helped land Rogue One (the initial director of that film was Gareth Edwards), Andor largely eschews the usual Star Wars aesthetics—bizarre aliens, vast exotic vistas, space opera vibes—for a sci-fi world that owes as much of its influence to Blade Runner as it does to Return of the Jedi or The Mandalorian.
“And the good news about Andor is that the new look and feel are rendered meticulously and evocatively; a lot of effort, led by the creator and showrunner Tony Gilroy, has been spent on giving the show a gritty and realistic texture,” says The New York Times Mike Hale. “Moment to moment, it’s easy to just relax and enjoy the change. The opening scene, a Blade Runner homage that leads into a dark, seamy version of the typical Star Wars cantina, is a witty example of the show’s method.”
That method means keeping the action firmly focused on the growing rebellion and the increasingly brutal Empire as these two forces inch ever closer to all-out war. Andor is set roughly four years after the events in Obi-Wan Kenobi, long before the original Star Wars, when Luke and Leia become the Galaxy’s shining beacons of hope.
“The comforting nostalgia of the most recent Star Wars series, Obi-Wan Kenobi, has been replaced with something gnarlier,” writes The Guardian‘s Jack Seal. “This has more dirt under its nails and colder blood in its veins. Those first two episodes are almost all atmosphere, but they evoke a convincingly shadowy dystopia.”
With the first three episodes of Andor now available on Disney+, viewers can, if they like, absorb the slow-burn early episodes until things really catch fire in episode three. This approach, unique to the Star Wars world, is a good thing.
“The first four episodes of Andor present a story that is unlike any Star Wars series that has come before it,” writes Collider‘s Maggie Lovitt. “It opts to approach its protagonist from a distance, giving its story the chance to organically evolve as the world at large starts to come into focus. While series like The Mandalorian chose to go in guns blazing, Andor leans into the uneasiness of a slow-burning story thread that is unraveling at both ends.”
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“It’s a movie about a final reckoning,” Jamie Lee Curtis says at the top of this new look at Halloween Ends, the final film (presumably) that will feature her indomitable Laurie Strode facing off against the seemingly unkillable Michael Myers. “Michael Myers, in that mask, represents pure evil,” Curtis continues, “there is no rhyme or reason.”
That lack of a rhyme or reason is one of the aspects of Myers that has made the character such a potent fixture in our imaginations—the dude is just awful. It’s also one of the reasons why Halloween and its various iterations and sequels have continued on years after John Carpenter’s 1978 original. You can project anything onto The Shape, as he lacks the personality of other iconic movie monsters and instead presents as both an unstoppable force and an immovable object. He’s an unkillable killing machine.
Writer/director David Gordon Green breathed new life into the franchise with the first film in his soon-to-be-complete trilogy, 2018’s Halloween, followed by 2021’s Halloween Kills and now, the final film—and possibly the final say—in the decades-long battle between Laurie and Michael.
The new teaser connects Curtis’s first outing, in the 1978 original, to these last three films she’s appeared in. “It will be difficult to say goodbye to Laurie Strode,” Curtis says, but what we can be assured of is that goodbye is going to be bloody, brutal, and possibly (one can hope) cathartic.
Halloween Ends picks up four years after the events of last year’s Halloween Kills, with Laurie living with her granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) and putting the finishing touches on her memoir. Michael Myers hasn’t been seen in those four years, and Laurie is trying, at long last, to move on. That’s when things get grim. A young man named Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell) is accused of killing a boy he was babysitting, which begins a process Laurie knows only too well—the return of the killing machine that is Michael Myers.
Check out the new teaser here. Halloween Ends hits theaters on October 14.
Here’s the official synopsis for Halloween Ends:
This is Laurie Strode’s last stand.
After 45 years, the most acclaimed, revered horror franchise in film history reaches its epic, terrifying conclusion as Laurie Strode faces off for the last time against the embodiment of evil, Michael Myers, in a final confrontation unlike any captured on-screen before. Only one of them will survive.
Icon Jamie Lee Curtis returns for the last time as Laurie Strode, horror’s first “final girl” and the role that launched Curtis’ career. Curtis has portrayed Laurie for more than four decades now, one of the longest actor-character pairings in cinema history. When the franchise relaunched in 2018, Halloween shattered box office records, becoming the franchise’s highest-grossing chapter and set a new record for the biggest opening weekend for a horror film starring a woman.
Four years after the events of last year’s Halloween Kills, Laurie is living with her granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) and is finishing writing her memoir. Michael Myers hasn’t been seen since. Laurie, after allowing the specter of Michael to determine and drive her reality for decades, has decided to liberate herself from fear and rage and embrace life. But when a young man, Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell; The Hardy Boys, Virgin River), is accused of killing a boy he was babysitting, it ignites a cascade of violence and terror that will force Laurie to finally confront the evil she can’t control, once and for all.
Halloween Ends co-stars returning cast Will Patton as Officer Frank Hawkins, Kyle Richards as Lindsey Wallace and James Jude Courtney as The Shape.
From the creative team that relaunched the franchise with 2018’s Halloween and Halloween Kills, the film is directed by David Gordon Green from a screenplay by Paul Brad Logan (Manglehorn), Chris Bernier (The Driver series), Danny McBride and David Gordon Green, based on characters created by John Carpenter and Debra Hill. Halloween Ends is produced by Malek Akkad, Jason Blum and Bill Block. The executive producers are John Carpenter, Jamie Lee Curtis, Danny McBride, David Gordon Green, Ryan Freimann, Ryan Turek, Andrew Golov, Thom Zadra and Christopher H. Warner.
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Netflix has a new horror series coming just in time for Halloween.
Doctor Sleep and The Haunting of Hill House director Mike Flanagan’s The Midnight Club will bring 10 episodes worth of supernatural creepiness to the streamer in early October. The series, based on a novel of the same name by Christopher Pike, is centered on a group of terminally ill patients at the Rotterdam Home who comes together—at midnight, of course—to swap scary stories. Adding a deeper component to the group’s storytelling ritual is a promise they make to one another; if one of the dies, they’ll contact the others from beyond the grave.
The first trailer reveals the terrifying diagnosis that Annarah Cymone’s character gets, which sends her on her path to the Rotterdam House. Cymone is joined by Adia, Igby Rigney, Ruth Codd, Aya Furukawa, William Chris Sumpter, Sauriyan Sapkota, and Heather Langenkamp.
Flannagan created the series alongside writer Leah Fong (The Haunting of Bly Manor), both of whom bring a successful track record in the horror genre with them.
Check out the trailer below. The Midnight Club streams on Netflix on October 7.
Here’s the official synopsis for The Midnight Club:
At a hospice for terminally ill young adults, eight patients come together every night at midnight to tell each other stories — and make a pact that the next of them to die will give the group a sign from the beyond. Based on the 1994 novel of the same name as well as other works by Christopher Pike.
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A beautiful, somber new poster has arrived for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.
The new poster pays tribute to Chadwick Boseman, who passed away at the age of 43 in August of 2020, cutting off a spectacularly bright career. Boseman, of course, was Black Panther, playing T’Challa in Ryan Coogler’s game-changing 2018 smash hit Black Panther. The new poster reveals T’Challa’s iconic Black Panther mask and claw necklace, set against a dark black background, in an understated yet sublime tribute to the fallen hero.
Check out the full poster here:
BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER. New theatrical poster. Courtesy Marvel Studios/Walt Disney Studios.
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever will find the remaining heroes of Wakanda, including his mother Ramonda (Angela Bassett), his sister Shuri (Letitia Wright), Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o), and M’Baku (Winston Duke) facing an uncertain future now that their king and leader is gone. We learned about the threat they’ll face in that first trailer, revealing Namor (Tenoch Huerta) and his people, the Atlanteans, moving in on a wounded, grieving nation. A new image released by Marvel Studios reveals a few of Namor’s allies, but before we get to it, a brief bit of background on who this new threat is.
While Namor might not be a household name—yet—the character is one of the most storied antiheroes in the Marvel canon, first appearing on the pages of a comic back in 1941. In the comics, Namor the Submariner is a half-human, half-Atlantean ruler of the undersea kingdom of Atlantis. Possessing superhuman strength, Namor can fly through both the ocean and the air, he can speak telepathically to marine animals, and has a history of being both friend and foe of nearly every major Marvel hero, from the X-Men to the Fantastic Four to the Avengers, as well as some pretty ferocious battles with Black Panther and the Wakandans. He might sound like Aquaman to you, but Namor predates Aquaman by three years. He’s a force to be reckoned, and in his new MCU iteration, his backstory and culture will be richer and more specific. In Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Namor’s influences will include Mayan and Aztec cultures, and Huerta, who broke out in Narcos, is of Aztec and Purépecha origin.
The new image shows us a few of Namor’s Atlantean warriors, led by Attuma (Alex Livinalli) and Namora (Mabel Cadena). The MCU version of Namor and his fellow Atlanteans will focus not only on what separates them and makes them antagonists of the Wakandans but also on how their own rich cultural heritage informs their decisions. As Huerta said at Disney’s D23 expo, Namor and the Atlanteans have much in common with the Wakandans.
“You will see them in a light of … confrontation. We don’t get along. But, it’s funny, in the end, they have too much in common,” Huerta said. “It portrays what is happening here in the States, from my perspective, between the minorities of this country. I think at some point we need to join together and create that different thing.”
Needless to say, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is one of the most eagerly-anticipated films of the year, and it’s right around the corner—it hits theaters on November 11.
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Being pegged as the main suspect in a murder may sound worrisome, but some cinematic shooting, scenic locales, and Jon Hamm’s charm can make such a predicament seem seductive, and Confess, Fletch both resurrects and modernizes the classic crime caper. Pulled from the pages of Gregory Mcdonald’s 1970s novels, Fletch now carries a smartphone, but still inhabits an atmospheric world of suspense and adventure.
Cinematographer Sam Levy strikes a noir tone with contemporary clarity. He cites filmmaking techniques from Alfred Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief, Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye, and The Godfather cinematographer Gordon Willis’ work as inspiration.“We used a set of lenses that were manufactured in the late 70s, but we captured the movie with a very modern 4K digital camera. It was sort of making a cinematic collage of a lot of these concepts, just trying to render Greg [Mottola]’s script in a simple and elegant way.”
Pairing a cutting-edge Alexa LF camera with retro Canon K35 lenses gives the movie its moody sensibility. Modern audiences accustomed to hyper-sharp HD will register the softer edges as vintage, but at one time, the lenses Levy used were the height of technology.
“They’re very old. They’re very soft. When they’re in focus, they are not as highly resolved as lenses that are manufactured today,” Levy acknowledged. “Actually, the lenses we used were used for the original Alien movie. The funny thing is, at that time, these were very what they called high-performing lenses. Very sharp. Very vivid. Used with film and the photochemical process, which can really soften images up, especially if you’re watching it big in a drive-thru. These were sort of standard for sharp lenses. Now, they’re popular because they’re very soft and round, and they work in concert really well with these high-resolution cameras.”
Confess, Fletch drops in on investigative reporter Irwin ‘Fletch’ Fletcher probing an art theft that takes a deadly turn. Hamm’s performance has the suave and humorous sensibility of Cary Grant in similar comedy suspense roles. The project appealed to Levy when creative conversations made it clear that the jokes wouldn’t be too heavy-handed.
“It was very much [Greg Mottola] and Jon Hamm who just didn’t want something broad or bright or too high key,” Levy said. “So, that really got my attention. That plus the fact that there’s a significant thriller and mystery aspect to the story. At the end of the day, it’s also a comedy, but they really didn’t want me to think about it being a comedy too much in terms of how it looks. Or ‘lighting a joke’ as some people will say.”
Despite the script’s levity and comedic beats, Levy grounds the film in subdued, moody tones. Dealing in the criminal underworld, Fletch often finds himself moving through shadowy spaces. Levy recalls working with The Black Phone second unit cinematographer David Feeney-Mosier on previous projects and discovering a lensing phenomenon that helped them sharpen up dark scenes.
“We were shooting a different movie, and we were testing some lenses and were playing with underexposure. [Feeney-Mosier’s] comment about the lenses, which he did not like, was, ‘These have no teeth to them.’” Levy remembered. “What he meant was they’re not grabbing silhouettes. They’re not grabbing faces and edges and lines in the shadow area. I immediately knew what he meant. When the lenses were technically in focus and sharp, they were just a little murky and blurry and just not very present.”
With trouble trailing him and marked with suspicion, Fletch is driven into dark corners to try to clear his name. Although he must do some of his most critical snooping after sundown, the audience couldn’t stare at a black screen for the bulk of the film. Clarity in low lighting was critical.
“I think I’m very drawn to a really strong silhouetted image. There’s a good amount of that in this movie. Usually, it occurs when the subject, like Jon Hamm, is very deeply in shadow, but there’s light behind him and maybe a brightly lit wall behind. Then the silhouette is really sharply carved out. You can see someone’s profile or just even their body moving.”
The movie’s climax had one unplanned element to contend with – a driving rainstorm. Rather than lose a day of filming, the crew capitalized on the atmosphere that ultimately added to the mood of the scene. Rain is notoriously elusive to capture on screen, but professional experience and a little luck made it an asset. The action was captured by an intricate steady cam shot following Hamm sneaking around at night.
“The rain scene was completely real,” Levy noted. “Usually, when real rain falls, it doesn’t read on camera, but it was so dense that it absolutely read. It looks like we planned it and had a million rain towers, but the fact is, we didn’t. We just shot this whole sequence very quickly before the sun came up, and it just never stopped raining. It’s just one of those brutal nights for the entire crew. By the time the sun came up, we had just gotten done. It rained pretty consistently throughout, so it cuts together. The rain was not planned, but the mapping out to shoot the sequence was very carefully planned over months.”
The production team shot in both Levy’s hometown of Boston, where inclement weather is routine, and sunny Rome with help from local crews. Filming is popular in Boston, Levy noted, but the book was actually set there. The spirit of each city is well represented. Production designer Alex DiGerlando helped parse out the vibe that they both exude. Although usually on location, Boston did stand in for Rome in some interior scenes.
DP Sam Levy on the set of “Confess, Fletch.” Courtesy Paramount Pictures.
“It was fascinating to listen to Alex discuss the anthropology of Rome and what needed to happen for us to be able to capture just like a bedroom that we were shooting in Boston and what it had to have in it, what it had to look like for it to believably play for Rome,” Levy said. “The truth is when you go to Rome, and you work with an amazing crew like we did, Rome is Rome. It’s amazing. It has an effervescence.”
Not every day was a freewheeling romp around the city. The crew still had to maneuver in tight, restrictive spaces and work through challenges.
“There’s a significant part of the movie that takes place in a yacht club, inside a sailboat. A rich person’s sailboat, but a sailboat is only so big when you’re in the bowels shooting inside of it. Just figuring out the logistics of that stuff presented itself on screen in a subdued way,” Levy noted. “Rome had the electricity and giddiness of a bunch of outsiders gallivanting around and shooting Jon Hamm riding a Vespa. It’s at the beginning of the movie, and his character has lightness and levity. The murder hasn’t yet happened when he’s in Rome. You’re not burdened with all that weight yet in the Roman part of the movie.”
Don’t settle too comfortably into the beautiful European scenery and captivating art world. There’s an adventure about to unfold, and it hits quickly.
Levy has one piece of advice for audiences. “Try and see it in the theater if you can.”
Confess, Fletch is now open in theaters and on demand.
Featured image: Jon Hamm in “Confess, Fletch.” Courtesy of Showtime.
The upcoming 6th episode of House of the Dragon will propel us a few years into the future after the grim wedding between Princess Rhaenrya Targaryen (Milly Alcock) and Ser Laenor Velaryon (Theo Nate) that anchored episode 5. That episode also hinted at the growing discord between the princess and her lifelong friend, Queen Alicent Hightower (Emily Carey), and now a new trailer for episode 6 introduces the adult versions of these two powerful young women. The roles now belong to Emma D’Arcy, playing the adult Rhaenrya, and Olivia Cooke, as the adult Queen Alicent, and reveals just how dangerous things are about to get for both women as King Viserys (Paddy Considine) tries, in failing health, to hold the realm together.
Let’s pause for a moment to appreciate the work that Milly Alcock and Emily Carey did in the first five episodes of House of the Dragon. The series, the first Game of Thrones prequel, was always going to draw a ton of critical attention, as well as millions of viewers, and Alcock and Carey were asked to do a lot of work in the first five episodes. These two young performers were being tasked with not only carrying a large percentage of the narrative focus, representing the potential future of House Targaryen and the hopes of House Hightower, but they sharing the screen with some very seasoned performers, including the aforementioned Paddy Considine, Rhys Ifans as Otto Hightower, Matt Smith as Prince Daemon Targaryen, and Steve Toussaint as Lord Corlys Velaryon. They succeeded. The strength of House of the Dragon thus far has been its tighter focus on the intrigue within House Targaryen and the succession battle over the Iron Throne rather than the more sprawling, realm-traversing drama of its predecessor, and Alcock and Carey have been critical to its success thus far. You cared about their friendship, about Princess Rhaenrya’s ambitions, to Queen Alicent’s initial restraint and, later, her decision to pick a side (it wasn’t, alas, Rhaenrya’s).
Emily Carey, Milly Alcock. Photograph by Ollie Upton/HBO.
The bloody banner will now be carried by D’Arcy and Cooke, two very talented actresses who will no doubt meet the challenge. These two former friends will have to make some very tough decisions in the five episodes remaining in the season, as King Viserys’ health continues to decline and the fight for who sits next on the Iron Throne becomes more pitched. That the series has drawn so many viewers is not surprising considering what a cultural juggernaut Game of Thrones was, but the fact that it’s been satisfying thus far is due, in large part, to Milly Alcock and Emily Carey’s performances.
Check out the trailer for episode 6 below.
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Talk about reading the room: actress-producer Maria Bello pitched The Woman King directly to Viola Davis in 2015 while standing at the podium to present her with a Women Making History Award. Davis immediately embraced the fact-based story about General Nanisca, who, in the 1820s, led an army of fierce 19th-century women warriors from the West African kingdom of Dahomey (now Benin). On September 16, The Woman King opened with Davis in the title role alongside co-stars Thuso Mbedu, Lashana Lynch, and Sheila Atim as machete-wielding “Agojie” soldiers. The movie features rip-roaring fight sequences courtesy of director Gina Prince-Bythewood (The Old Guard), stunt/fight coordinator Daniel Hernandez, and lead cast trainer/nutritionist Gabriela Mclain.
“Everything is real,” says Mclain, who started working as Davis’ personal trainer about four years ago and now organizes her operations through her website. “It’s not CGI. We’re not trying to trick anybody. The actors put in so much dedication and heart and soul. To me, that makes them real superheroes.”
Speaking from her studio in Los Angeles, Mclain talks about DNA testing, on-set “pump-up” sessions, and the five-meal-a-day regimen that got The Woman King cast into fighting shape.
Gabriela Mclain and Viola Davis training during “The Woman King.” Courtesy Sony Pictures.
It’s startling to see Viola Davis in The Woman King as this muscular action hero not long after she portrayed blues singer Ma Rainey in a 300-pound fat suit. Now here she is swinging machetes in the jungles of West Africa. First of all, how did you help Viola with Ma Rainey, and secondly, how did you prepare her for The Woman King?
Well, I didn’t have to help Viola with Ma Rainey. It was just telling her to eat eat eat, let’s not work out too hard, let’s not burn too many calories. But after Ma Rainey, we wanted to get her body back to shape and lose that weight because she was about 40 pounds over.
MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM(2020) Viola Davis as Ma Rainey. Cr. David Lee/NETFLIXViola Davis stars in THE WOMAN KING. Courtesy Sony Pictures.
How did you do that?
Six days a week, it was morning sprints for an hour and a half. Then she’d go to martial arts with Danny Hernandez, who created the choreography. Then she’d come back to me for two hours of strength training with heavy weights.
Viola Davis in “The Woman King.” Courtesy Sony Pictures.
You’re a nutritionist as well as a trainer. What kind of diet did you create for Viola?
I designed a plan, five meals a day. For breakfast, an egg, maybe sausage. Then she’d have a snack: vegetables or little chicken strips. Then lunch: quinoa and salmon. Then another snack like the previous one, or a protein shake to protect her muscles. And then dinner was similar to lunch. Also, Viola was forced to drink one gallon of water a day.
Forced?
[Laughing]. She was forced. I’d go, “Viola, did you drink your water?” [impersonating weary-voiced Davis]: “Yes Gabi, I did.” You have to flush the body and keep it balanced! I also did DNA testing with Viola to get the blueprint of her body. I found out she has more fat-rich muscles, meaning doing cardio would be a waste of time, and I learned how long it takes for her to process carbs and fats.
Viola Davis stars in THE WOMAN KING. Courtesy Sony Pictures.
Back up a minute: you say you got Viola Davis’ DNA profile?
Yes, I got her DNA test, which lets you find out how to get the best out of an athlete. I’m a big fan of DNA [profiles] because we’re all unique. Each body functions differently, so you want to know: what are the triggers, like, for bloating out? DNA helps you figure out those triggers.
You initially worked just with Viola Davis, but then the filmmakers expanded your responsibilities?
Yes, I signed up only to take care of Viola. A week later, they asked me to take Thuso, and then I got assigned Lashana Lynch, Sheila Atim, and Adrienne Warren as well. When Viola first talked to me about The Woman King four years ago, it was so close to my heart and something I needed to be part of. Little did I know I’d be training the whole cast!
Like Viola, Thuso Mbedu made a dramatic transformation. Coming from The Underground Railroad, she did a great job playing a runaway slave but didn’t get to do much fighting.
Thuso could barely pick up two and a half pounds, and she didn’t like to work out. We had to turn that mindset.
Viola Davis and Thuso Mbedu star in The Woman King.
There’s a real contrast in body types when you see Thuso and Viola in scenes together.
Well, that was the goal, to make each character different. Viola’s actually small, but since she’s the Woman King, I tried to make her look mighty. Thuso’s tiny, and because her character Nawi has just joined the army, she can’t be in super-awesome shape at the beginning. Sheila’s long and skinny, so she has a different body structure from Lashana, who’s this powerhouse. I did DNA tests for all the actors assigned to me as well as Gina, the director. I told her, “You need to hold it together because you’re the pillar.”
You traveled to South Africa with the entire cast to film The Woman King. Was that always part of the plan?
Originally I wasn’t supposed to go to Africa, but once I got the actors into shape, then it was “Who’s going to keep them in shape?”
You supervised the meals on set. How did that go?
The meal structure was pretty much the same as before, five meals a day. The actors ate every three hours, even if they didn’t want to. You can’t power through the movie twelve hours a day doing fight scenes on just 1300 calories. You’d collapse or have a tantrum. We needed to keep the calorie intake high to keep their energy up.
How did you sustain the training once shooting began?
We called it “The pump-up.” Before every take, I’d show up with light weights on my shoulders, and we’d say, “It’s pump-up time!” We’d do these pump-ups to bring the blood to the actor’s body for two reasons. You can see it when the veins pop up in the body, and also, you feel it. The energy changes. It’s like if you do ten pushups, you’re going to carry yourself differently. We wanted to bring the blood up and change the actor’s mindset: “You are a badass, and you’re going to kill it.”
Lashana Lynch stars in THE WOMAN KING.
Before working on The Woman King, you went through quite a journey yourself: Sports school in The Czech Republic, dancing, moving to L.A. at age 22, starting your career as a personal trainer…but then you hit a hurdle?
I found out I had an auto-immune problem. For a year after my daughter was born, I could barely get off the couch. It was frustrating when you feel so tired you can barely hold your child or walk from the kitchen to the living room. But I saw this rheumatologist, and he said, “Drink water, don’t eat anything with more than three ingredients, meditate, and try to be happy.” I’m able to keep it at bay now. And having gone through this struggle, the auto-immune issue has helped make me the trainer I am.
You trained The Woman King stars for three months in L.A. and another month during pre-production in South Africa. How did it feel to finally see all that preparation pay off?
We all got teary-eyed. We’ve been talking about this story for so long, and at this point, Viola Davis is like a big sister to me. When I saw her in action, knowing what she went through and all the pain and hard work, it was extremely emotional. I’m proud of all the actors who worked so hard to push this forward. To me, The Woman King is not just a movie; I think it’s a movement. It’s going to shift things. I have a daughter. She’s bi-racial. It means a lot to see these heroes, these women of color, doing all this without men having to be their saviors. It’s very empowering. In fact, I have a new program on my website called “How to Train Like a Woman King.”
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The only thing more dangerous than a war during an episode of Game of Thrones? A wedding. In last night’s fifth episode of House of the Dragon, the first GoT prequel kept up its end of the bargain with yet another bloody celebration, and while the body count wasn’t as high as GoT‘s infamous “Red Wedding,” the results were still gruesome and grim.
“Every Game of Thrones season needs its wedding that doesn’t quite go right in the end,” says showrunner and executive producer Ryan Condal in a new “Inside the Episode” video for episode 5. The wedding in question was between Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen, heir to the Iron Throne, and Ser Laenor Velaryon. The mood was already fraught, thanks to a late arrival by the uninvited Prince Daemon (fresh from killing his wife, Lady Rhea, in the Vale) and an even later one by Queen Alicent, both unnerving the ailing, failing King Viserys.
As Milly Alcock, who plays the young Princess Rhaenrya, says in the new video, this is to be a marriage of convenience. Princess Rhaenyra wants to keep cavorting with her sworn protector Ser Criston Cole, while Ser Laenor will get to stay romantically committed to Joffrey (a bad name to have for a Game of Thrones character). Yet Joffrey makes a fatal mistake, mentioning the arrangement to Sir Criston at the rehearsal dinner. This leads to one of the most gruesome scenes yet in the new series, with Ser Criston literally beating Joffrey to death in a fit of rage.
L-r: Theo Nate, Solly McLeod. Photograph by Ollie Upton/HBO.
All of this misery was predicted by the banished former hand, Otto Hightower, who warned his daughter, Queen Alicent, that the only possible outcome from the wedding and Princess Rhaenyra remaining her father’s heir was bloodshed. Otto told his daughter that her friend Rhaenrya would have no choice but to murder Alicent’s child, Aegon Targaryen, and any other of her offspring to prove herself the sole and worthy heir to the Iron Throne.
Alicent’s thunderstruck by these words, but it’s not until Larys Strong whispers into her ear in the royal garden that the queen’s transformation begins. Larys Strong tells the Queen that Rhaenrya was visited by the Grand Maester himself with some special tea, and at last Alicent starts seeing the forest for the trees. This clues her into the fact that Rhaenrya lied to her—she had, in fact, coupled with someone on that infamous night she slipped away with Prince Daemon to Old Town—and then Ser Criston reveals to her that he slept with the Princess that very night, and begs for her to simply have him killed. She declines, but she’s no longer the meek Queen and hopeful friend we’ve seen up until now. Episode 5 saw the birth of a new Queen Alicent, one who will make her allegiances known as she looks to a future without King Viserys by her side.
“Sometimes that’s what it takes, anger and betrayal, and then people rise out of the ashes of that and know who they are,” says the episode’s director, Clare Kilner. “Alicent doesn’t like to be observed. She’s the observer. But she comes in, and she holds the room. For once, she looks like the queen,”
“She doesn’t need to come in and shout and scream at Rhaenrya. Because of the dress that’s she wearing, that says enough,” says Emily Carey, Queen Alicent herself. “She’s a Hightower through and through, she’s representing her father, and this is her saying, ‘screw all of you, I know the truth, and I know where I stand.”
Emily Carey. Photograph by Ollie Upton / HBO
The grand wedding that King Viserys had planned comes undone right before his eyes. His Queen is now in rebellion against his daughter and heir. Ser Crispon has murdered a member of the Velaryon party, and his brother, Prince Daemon, has openly flouted his command to stay away from King’s Landing and is once again stirring up trouble. All the King can do is call for a shotgun wedding to get his daughter married quickly before things get worse.
Then they do. The King collapses. The wedding is over. Another royal wedding has been soaked in blood, and House Targaryen teeters on the edge.
Check out the “Inside the Episode” video below.
For more on House of the Dragon, check out these stories:
Featured image: Matt Smith, Gavin Spokes, Emily Carey, Paddy Considine, Milly Alcock, Theo Nate, Steve Toussaint, Eve Best, Wil Johnson, Savannah Steyn. Photograph by Ollie Upton / HBO
