Following his exit from the Doctor Strange sequel, Scott Derrickson has found himself a new gig. What’s interesting about this one, the long-developing film Bermuda, is that it connects him with fellow Marvel vet Chris Evans. It also has ties to another who just entered the MCU to replace Derrickson.
Evans is reportedly in talks for the lead in Bermuda, which Derrickson will direct and co-write with Sinister collaborator C. Robert Cargill. The action-adventure film is being kept a total mystery by Skydance. What we know is that it’ll involve the Bermuda Triangle, a place infamous for mysterious paranormal circumstances considered to be myth and conspiracy theory.
So Evans and Derrickson will get to work together. It only took for both to leave Marvel for it to happen. What’s interesting is Bermuda was to be directed by Sam Raimi, who took over for Derrickson on Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Hollywood, it’s a small world after all.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one: an astronaut must cope with the emotional stresses of an important mission to outer space. We’ve been seeing a lot of films tackling some version of this story lately, and the new film Proxima gives Eva Green her chance at heading to the stars.
Directed by Alice Winocour (Disorder, award-winning Mustang writer), the film stars Green as an astronaut chosen for a trailblazing voyage to Mars. It requires a year of intense training, which puts pressure on her home life. Green is joined by Matt Dillion, Lars Eidinger, Sandra Hüller, and Zélie Boulant.
Reviews have been solid since debuting at TIFF. It’ll continue to make the festival circuit a while longer before an eventual release later this year.
SYNOPSIS: Sarah (Eva Green), an astronaut living in Cologne, is selected for a yearlong spaceflight to help pave the way for future voyages to Mars. Before liftoff, she must spend a grueling year at a training facility in Moscow, which separates her from her young daughter (Zélie Boulant), left in the care of her ex-husband (Clouds of Sils Maria’s Lars Eidinger). Highly aware that she’s the only woman involved in the mission, Sarah tries to stay focused and stoic, suppressing any weaknesses that her condescending captain (Matt Dillon) might notice, and trying to soothe her daughter’s newfound loneliness from afar. Set to an atmospheric score from Ryuichi Sakamoto, the third feature from Alice Winocour (Disorder, Rendez-Vous 2016) wrestles poignantly with the earthly loose ends and internal pressures of space travel.
There’s mystery, and then there’s what Lionsgate is doing with Antebellum. The southern thriller is being extremely close to the chest, and after a pair of trailers it’s hard to tell what the Hell is happening to Janelle Monae’s character.
So little is willing to be revealed that this latest trailer, the full official one, clocks in at just 42 seconds. Monae plays a writer who somehow finds herself sent back a couple hundred years to the antebellum south. But why did it happen, how did it happen, and did it happen at all? She seems to be a woman on the edge of a breakdown, so there’s bound to be a deeper secret.
The film comes from the producers of Get Out and directors Gerard Bush and Christoper Renz. Joining Monae in the cast are Jena Malone, Kiersey Clemons, Gabourey Sidibe, Eric Lange, and Jack Huston.
Seven years ago, Benh Zeitlin burst onto the independent film scene with his breakout Sundance hit Beasts of the Southern Wild. Capturing childhood and magical realism in ways not seen before by modern audiences, the film received great acclaim and Zeitlin was noted as a director to watch. And watch we did. As we waited, Zeitlin was busy creating his next piece, rooted in childhood trauma and focusing on the relationships that anchor us and keep us whole. The result is Wendy, a modern retelling of the Peter Pan story through Wendy’s eyes, rooted in Americana.
Shot in New Orleans, Antigua, Mexico, and parts of the Caribbean, Zeitlin once again incorporated non-actors into his casting process, allowing the characters, actors, and locations to inform the story. I sat down with Zeitlin to talk about the film’s writing and directing process and ended up having an enlightened conversation on the trauma of growing up.
It’s been seven years since Beasts of the Southern Wild came out and was a smash hit. It was nominated for four Oscars, but then you kind of took some time away and disappeared into the background. I’ve been waiting for you with bated breath. I know the film world has been waiting for you with bated breath, but you come back with this film, Wendy. Can you talk to me a little bit about the inception of this idea? I know it kind of overlapped a little bit with Beasts but where it all fall in the timeline?
Yeah, I mean the story had been with me and my sister Eliza forever. This was like our dream project from when we were little kids and, you know, we never really thought we were going to be able to make it honestly, because it was by so far the most difficult film I could ever conceive attempting to make. But then on the heels of Beasts, a couple of things happened. One was really, I got really, really reinterested in it because as I was doing exactly this [a press tour], seven, eight years ago with Quvenzhané Wallis, watching her go from…it’s like a really interesting transition when children go from around six years old to around nine years old cause they go from totally just doing whatever they want, whenever they want to and totally not caring what anybody thinks about them to suddenly realizing like the eyes of the world and who people expect them to be and getting judged and like it’s a really different feeling that changes you at that age. And I felt like I was going through a similar process honestly because I had always been making films in like just complete obscurity with my friends and family, never expecting anybody to ever see them. And that was all changing for me. I got really, really interested in this story for that reason. Specifically the story of Wendy, who’s the one that goes to Neverland but then has to leave and like how do you not allow that change to break you? And how do you not lose what makes you free and makes you wild as that happens. But really it was right at Sundance when I decided that we were going to make this film. And as soon as we finished doing a lot of press, I was wanting nothing more than to get back to work. I got home, I very quickly wrote the first draft of the script and that got me scouting. When I went out to find a volcano, basically that is when the film started to really transform. So we ended up really just on a journey where we were out in the most remote parts of this region in the Caribbean finding places to shoot. I was rewriting the script each time I find a place. We were finding actors, rewriting characters, just like taking the story apart, putting it back together. Once we had the actors, you know, they were very, very young. The kid who played Peter was five years old when we found them. Wendy was seven years old. They had never acted before. There were kids who didn’t know how to swim.
Kids who didn’t know how to read.
Yeah! All those things and we really had to start developing all these things, figure out how we were going to make a film in these places where no one had ever made a film before and it’s almost impossible to do it. Um, And all those things along with the kids’ ages all had to come together at the exact right point for us to actually shoot the film. And that turned out to be around 2017 so, when we shot it, that took around six months on and off and then writing the music, post production, editing, the effects, all that is what takes us to now.
You mentioned that all your actors there were non-actors. Devin France plays Wendy and Yashua Mack plays Peter, brilliantly. Talk to me a little bit about your process of finding actors. Are you just sort of in these places and as you’re a location scouting, you’re also looking for humans? Tell me a little bit about that process for you.
(Laughs) Well there were two sort of different processes. Most of the cast comes from South Louisiana. I live in New Orleans and we have an amazing casting team. Our Casting director, Jesy Rae Buhl, also our producers, Nathan Harrison and Michael Gottwald sort of led up an operation that was very similar to Beasts. It’s based on how you get out the vote honestly, but you do it with kids. So you’re just canvassing in places. What’s really different about how we’re doing it is we’re not, oftentimes we’re looking for actors in places where there’s absolutely no access to acting classes, theater arts, like those aren’t parts of the curriculum in schools oftentimes. And so we’re just going to schools and we’re talking at each class of the age range that we want trying to get every kid possible to come out. And we have an audition process that lends itself to sort of figuring out if a kid likes to act and if they have any talent at it. And then more importantly we’re looking for who they are and we’re trying to find people and kids whose spirit connects to the spirit of the film. For this one in particular, it’s like a sense of spontaneity, sense of adventure, bravery-
If Peter came through their window, would they go.
Exactly. So that was sort of the Louisiana part of it. In the islands it was much different and much more complicated, because there often wasn’teven really a structure to what we had been doing. We were there in the summer so there was no school, so we, me and Nathan Harrison who was out there, we literally go door to door, knocking on doors, seeing kids that wanted to come out and audition right in front of their houses. We ended up getting a tip actually to, um, to go to this Rosta camp. Yasha is part of a Nyabinghi Rastafari community in Antigua. And we went into the community and talked to the elders, got permission to work with the kids and then auditioned all the kids in this community and found him, when he was five.
You also have twins in this film, Gavin and Gage Naquin. And you wrote the film with your sister. I mean, obviously motherhood and family is a big part of the story, but we haven’t really seen an adaption focusing on sibling-hood. Talk to me a little bit about, first of all, writing something with your sibling and then also how those themes made their way into the script.
The film, like you were saying, is very focused on family and a lot of it is about the tension between freedom and family. You know, to be totally free is often to be totally alone. I’ve experienced that and when I go start working on a film, I just go somewhere by myself and I’m there until I figure it out. I’ve got no friends, I’ve got no family, and there’s an incredible thrill in that. But this film is also about how to sort of continue to find that freedom within caring, within particularly loving your mother, your family, your siblings and all that. It’s a big part of it. I think that, you know for me and my sister growing up was always like this terror. For her, she’s told me that every year when she blew out the candles on her cake, she wished never to grow another year, secretly and never told anybody. We played so closely as kids and also we’re making plays, we were writing things constantly as kids. It’s a really tragic moment and really traumatic moment, I think probably for every kid, especially the youngest one, when their older sibling starts to move out of the phase of childhood that they’re in and become a teenager and they stop to want to imagine and stop to want to play and then you’re left behind. And so I think that was one thing we wanted to explore within Wendy. In our film this doesn’t happen when someone goes through puberty, to age and our film happens incredibly rapidly. So the loss of someone who’s still there but is no longer who they were, you know? And I think that happens among siblings. And it was a big inspiration for me and the film in general, because living in a community of artists when you’re young, when you’re 18 through 25 years old and everyone’s just living with reckless abandon and then that starts to change and it’s like people that you know who you thought were going to be your partners and your teammates and your artists forever suddenly change. Suddenly their priorities change, they move somewhere else, they get married, whatever it is, it fundamentally changes priorities and that feeling of “you’re still here but you’re not still here.” And then what that feels like and how you overcome that with something is something we wanted to explore.
I think it’s safe to say that you definitely have a fascination with childhood. You’ve done a couple of short films that also focused on this idea and obviously, Beasts did and now Wendy. Talk to me a little bit about what draws you to this time.
I look up to children and I really respect children and I think we have an enormous amount to learn as adults from them. I think there’s like a coping mechanism in adults where we decide that children are less than us and we tell them this constantly and we tell them, “Grow up.” We tell them, “Be realistic.”
“You don’t understand. You’ll get it when you’re older.”
Exactly. But like actually that just means, “You’re going to compromise and give up on your dreams,” when we’re telling people that. And that’s a terrible thing to tell someone. And I think often, children think more freely. They believe more passionately. Like their faith is more pure, their love is more pure and they have not learned to compromise in the way that we are continually told to in order to go from being children to being adults. And so when I’m telling stories that are about imagination, about bravery and courage and endless possibility, when I, when I go to work with kids, I’m learning and remembering how to think in a way that’s more liberated than had been told to as an adult. For me, that was hugely thematic to the film and also the message of the movie. And just on a personal level in my life, like spending that kind of time with kids continues to connect me to the idea that anything is possible and to not curb myself and to continue to kind of live for the cause, live for joy, live for freedom. And those things I find, keep my life being wonderful. So that’s a reason to just hang with kids, man, and forget all these grown-ups! (Laughs).
(Laughs) What’s the thing you learned? I know this is really cliché, but teachers say it all the time, “They learn stuff from me, but I really learn from my students.” What’s one thing you learned from the kids on Wendy?
I think particularly within the character of Wendy, that character was, you know, you’re always kind of writing from yourself and Wendy is someone that I want to be. When I started this film, kind of like raging not to grow up and find every loophole I could get to not engage with like things grownups do, which I haven’t totally given up (laughs) Peter refuses to compromise in one way. Like he’s not going obey anyone and he’s going to not accept structure and limitation. For Wendy, her defiance is almost more powerful because she refuses. Because Peter accepts the fact that in order to be totally free, he has to be totally unconnected and if a friend of his is going to challenge his ideology, they are going to be cast off and grow up and then he’s just going to have to find a new one. Wendy refuses to accept that sacrifice and she is going to keep her love for her family and her brothers and she’s going to care and she’s going to take care of people and she’s going to not just live for herself, but she’s also going to learn and experience that freedom and wildness that Peter has. To not make that compromise and to try to find that type of liberty and freedom within love and care and family is something that I sort of set out to try to figure out on this film. I’ve learned about it from the character Wendy but also from Devin France, who so much embodies that. She’s just the craziest kid who also has the biggest heart and those two things aren’t a contradiction for her. She would never question that. And when I met her, I was like, “I gotta learn what this girl knows.”
I, like most people, obviously grew up with the ‘Wendy’ from the Disney film who was very prim and proper and really mother-like to the Lost Boys. This is such an interesting adoption because your Wendy is very feisty and oftentimes she’s the first one to do something and the first one to run down the Hill, the first one to like interact with the volcano. She also really, really cares, as you mentioned to me before. Talk to me a little bit about how you as a male director, find such a strong female voice in your films.
First of all, I should credit my sister who I wrote it with and who in many ways understands better than I do. Also, Beasts was written with Lucy Alibar, so part of it is not to my credit for sure.
But I feel like very few male directors, not just with the writing, I can think of two other people, maybe like Jason Reitman and Bo Burnham, have gotten young women right.
I mean it was a huge priority for the story because Wendy is just such a gash in the myth of Peter Pan because she’s just such a docile character. Her role in this story is to just kind of have a crush on Peter and fix his clothes and I think the essential thing for us, for me and Eliza in this film, was that we really wanted to make a story that was like an ode to motherhood in particular. The way that Wendy has been framed in Peter Pan, she’s the mother of the lost boys. That means that she doesn’t get to go on the adventure. Essentially, she waits for them to come back and you know, wanting to sort of empower that, not just take Wendy and make her one of the lost boys, not just give her a sword and let her fight like the boys. But to sort of take the power of care, the power of motherhood, and the qualities of her that are stereotypically feminine and not make those weaknesses, make those the essential power that has the ability to save her, to save her family, to save her friends. That was a central way that we felt we had to revise this myth in order to retell it. Then in terms of just getting characters right, to me a huge part of the art form is just, is getting to know people that are not like you and taking the time to listen and to understand and to be flexible enough. You know, the, the way our script is never set solid. Every time we meet someone, we have to let them inform who their character is and it’s a collaboration. Honestly, for each character, whether they’re a boy or girl, I spend months and months getting to know them and working on the script. And if they tell me that they wouldn’t say something in that way or they would not do this, I’m going to change that. And so it’s really about listening and it’s about responding to the amazing places and people and things that end up being part of your world as you make a film.
Playstation and Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us, is finally getting its adaption. One of the highest selling game of all time centers on a fungus-induced zombie-esque apocalypse where the world has gone to chaos due to a viral infection. The 2013 video game was downright cinematic in his storyline as smuggler Joel is tasked with sneaking 14-year-old Ellie out of a quarantine zone as she may be the key to immunity and survival from the plague that turns everyone into mindless monsters, and of course, there are human monsters to contend with as well. As everyone played the almost 12-hour long game, one wondered, “wouldn’t this make a great movie?”
Sony has been trying to get a The Last of Us film adaption off the ground for quite some time. Even Sam Rami was involved at one point. Many fans of the games have been wondering if this movie will ever get made. Well, it looks like, no, but we get something better. According to THR, HBO will adapt The Last of Us as a series. Craig Mazin, creator, and producer of the Emmy-winning Chernobyl series is working with Neil Druckmann (the actual writer and creative director of the game, isn’t it a great idea to have a person like that involved?) Both will write and produce the HBO adaptation of the popular game.
“Neil Druckmann is without question the finest storyteller working in the video game medium, and The Last of Us is his magnum opus. Getting a chance to adapt this breathtaking work of art has been a dream of mine for years, and I’m so honored to do it in partnership with Neil” said Mazin.
The series will also be produced under Sony’s Playstation Productions studio, which is also producing another Naughty Dog game Uncharted, due to come out in 2021 as well as a Twisted Metal TV series adaptation. It looks like the age of good video game adaptations is upon us.
Now, who is gonna play Joel and Ellie? Perhaps Game of Thrones vet Massie Williams (who was rumored back when it was a movie) for Ellie? With it being HBO, she could fit right in.
SCOOB! is no ordinary Scooby-Doo movie. The first to go theatrical since the live-action films of 2002 and 2004, it not only serves as an origin story for the Mystery Machine crew, but the star-studded cast is part of a possible cinematic universe of Hanna-Barbera characters. So when you see Blue Falcon, Dyno-Mutt, and Dick Dastardly, don’t be confused.
Featuring the voices of longtime Scooby-Doo actor Frank Welker, along with Zac Efron, Will Forte, Gina Rodriguez, Amanda Seyfried, McKenna Grace, Mark Wahlberg, Ken Jeong, Tracy Morgan, Kiersey Clemons, Jason Isaacs, and Iain Armitage, there’s a lot of star power driving this Scooby-Doo mystery. When Shaggy and Scoob find themselves kidnapped by a mysterious new villain with impressive technological skills, it’s up to their meddling friends to solve the case.
SYNOPSIS: “SCOOB!” reveals how lifelong friends Scooby and Shaggy first met and how they joined with young detectives Fred, Velma and Daphne to form the famous Mystery Inc. Now, with hundreds of cases solved and adventures shared, Scooby and the gang face their biggest, most challenging mystery ever: a plot to unleash the ghost dog Cerberus upon the world. As they race to stop this global “dogpocalypse,” the gang discovers that Scooby has a secret legacy and an epic destiny greater than anyone imagined.
There’s nothing more terrifying then knowing there’s something you can’t see hunting you down, it’s a pretty standard horror movie trope The Invisible Man which is currently enjoying a #1 box office spot proved how effective it is. Taking that scenario out of the fantasy world of sci-fi/horror and dropping it into the real world instances of that actually happening is seriously a genius move. Hanks plays a newly installed Naval officer on his first trip to England with a ship under his command. Part of the way through the voyage they are set upon by “The Wolfpack” a notorius group of German U-boats that have been decimating ships crossing the Atlantic. MAN does this look good. I never really thought about how anxiety inducing it must have been to be on a Navy ship during WWII knowing that at any point a submarine could relocate you to the bottom of the ocean. The trailer does a great job of highlighting the tension, playing like Jaws but where German submarines play the part of the shark. The marriage of Hanks and World War II material has yet to produce a dud, and from the looks of it Greyhound will not be breaking the streak.
Netflix announced via Twitter this morning that Jojo Rabbit and Thor: Love and Thunder director Taika Waititi will soon step into a world of pure imagination. The recent Oscar winner will write, direct, and executive produce two animated series based on the Roald Dahl classic Charlie and The Chocolate Factory. The first series will be a more true adaption of the classic tale while the the second show will dive deep into the world of Oompa-Loompas, the mysterious creatures that live and work in Mr. Wonka’s chocolate factory.
Taika Waititi will write, direct, & EP two animated series based on the works of Roald Dahl.
The first is based on the world and characters of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
The second is a wholly original take on the Oompa-Loompas, that builds out their world pic.twitter.com/TqIzxTlRSf
In late 2018, Netflix announced its plan for the animated series along with other Dahl adaptions including The BFG, Matilda and The Twits. Waititi is no stranger to quirky and unusual on screen, winning his Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for Jojo Rabbit, a satire where he played HitlerHe is also accredited for bringing new life into the Thor franchise. Here’s hoping he can do the same for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
As if answering critics of his sleepy-eyed performance in The Last Thing He Wanted, Ben Affleck makes one Hell of a rebound with The Way Back. The sobering (literally) drama is unlike anything the actor has ever done before. Gone is the cocksure attitude that accompanied his good looks, in favor of a quiet, understated portrayal that we all know hit him close to home. Affleck’s personal demons that inform his heartfelt turn are always lingering in the background, but he puts in the work and elevates a redemption story that is familiar and yet completely its own.
From the moment we’re introduced to Jack Cunningham (Affleck), it’s clear this is a guy on the ropes. A construction worker hidden behind thick sunglasses and a heavy beard, he keeps to himself mostly. That’s probably to hide the alcohol he keeps in his coffee mug, which was preceded by the beers he had at breakfast, or the one he had in the shower. At nights, he keeps ice cold brews on standby in the freezer, swapping them out with well-practiced ease. This is when he bothers to even be at home, and not at the nearby bar tossing them back with the other regulars.
A lean yet powerful drama, The Way Back doesn’t cut any corners or short-shrift on Jack’s anguish. Nor does the script by Brad Inglesby (Out of the Furnace) do much dawdling; within minutes Jack is asked by Father Devine (John Aylward) back to his alma mater, the parochial Bishop Hayes high school, to fill-in as head coach for their struggling basketball squad. The team has fallen on hard times since Jack’s championship days, and nobody expects a miracle, ironic considering the presence of underrated Miracle director Gavin O’Connor. After a full case of beer, a lot of attempted refusals, and some soul-searching, Jack gives in.
You can probably guess where the story goes from here, but the story beats aren’t what we typically expect from sports dramas and redemption stories. The team is, predictably, quite awful and a bunch of knuckleheads. They have talent but no ability to work as a unit. Jack steps in and immediately overturns the apple cart. He’s stuck with the team’s mousey but loyal assistant/algebra teacher (Al Madrigal, low-key great), who is willing to let Jack’s abrasive language and methods slide because he’s a proven champ. When players get out of line, Jack is quick to punish, but he also instills in them a toughness they never had.
The team’s successful turnaround is key, but never overpowers the arc Jack truly needs. That’s not something we’re ever led to believe he’ll find by winning a big game. “You have to chip away at it”, he tells the team as they claw back from a possible blowout. But that might as well be a metaphor for Jack’s life, which we later learn has been racked by unbearable tragedy. The arrival of ex-wife Angela (Janina Gavankar, terrific as always) reveals the depth of the misfortune both have suffered. It drives Jack’s self-destructive tendencies but is never framed as an excuse for them.
We’re seeing the emergence of Affleck and O’Connor as one of those star/director duos that work better together than with anybody else. Having previously collaborated on the hitman savant film The Accountant, they instinctively know when to let the other take charge. Sometimes that means letting Affleck fully drop his guard, perhaps pulling from his own personal reservoir of regrets, to express Jack’s sorrow over past mistakes. O’Connor plays fast and loose with the basketball scenes, although they have the authentically-messy feel of high school competition. He often chooses to skip past the embarrassing losses, all in service of getting back to Jack’s story away from the court. It’s a decision some will find frustrating, but this isn’t a basketball movie. It’s a life movie, with basketball as just another component. The players’ individual struggles don’t really resonate as a result, although many are teased. Jack’s story, while always compelling in a “When will he hit rock bottom?” way, could’ve used some pairing down. The question lingers as to why his basketball career ended, but the reveal is forced and unsatisfying. It’s enough to know that it was derailed, we don’t need the specifics to sympathize with him.
The Way Back constantly upends genre expectations, taking a full-court view of what it means to win at the game of life. Affleck, who has made no secret of the impact making this movie had on him, is deserving of whatever praise comes his way. His career isn’t hurting and he’s in no need of a comeback, but it’s good to see him making movies again that he is truly invested in. That is a victory in itself.
The long-awaited (by some) Hocus Pocus sequel finally has a director, and it’s someone who is both familiar with Disney sequels and family-friendly comedies. Adam Shankman has taken over the followup to 1995’s cult-favorite witch comedy that starred Sarah Jessica Parker, Kathy Najimy, and Bette Midler.
Shankman’s addition to Hocus Pocus 2 assures this will be a major release for Disney+, which has quickly become home for Disney’s lighter fare. The original film centered on a trio of witches cursed since the Salem Witch trials, who are accidentally resurrected in the 20th-century. In the present, they discover Halloween is a holiday and not something to be feared. The film has become an annual favorite and demand for a sequel has been ongoing for years. Workaholics writer Jen D’Angelo is on the screenplay.
Disney knows what they’re getting in Shankman, who is currently working on Disenchanted, a sequel to Disney’s 2007 fantasy-comedy Enchanted. He’s worked with the Mouse House previously on The Pacifier and Bedtime Stories, which helped turn Vin Diesel and Adam Sandler into PG-rated stars. His string of successful films includes Hairspray, Bringing Down the House, and Cheaper by the Dozen 2.
Disney hopes the original cast can be convinced to reprise their roles, as a true sequel is preferable to a fresh start. With Shankman’s musical background, an updated version of Midler’s “I Put a Spell on You” might be in order.
You also have twins in this film, Gavin and Gage Naquin. And you wrote the film with your sister. I mean, obviously motherhood and family is a big part of the story, but we haven’t really seen an adaption focusing on sibling-hood. Talk to me a little bit about, first of all, writing something with your sibling and then also how those themes made their way into the script.
