Melissa Viviane or Lizzo as she is fondly known, is an American rapper, singer and songwriter and Founder of Yitty, a shapewear brand. She is also a Grammy and Emmy winner. One of the main things to know about Lizzo, is that she is someone who never fails and never apologizes in being herself. Throughout her career, Lizzo has been subject to body shaming, due to her plus size. She is considered a role model and advocate for body positivity and self-confidence Which is something that her fans love very much about her, as she continues to inspire millions with her songs and her attitude towards bullies and self love. Lizzo’s profile is locked and she only has a certain amount of followers due to this very reason, but that doesnt stop her from being a target online.
Recently on May 31st, after a particular performance of her “Special” Tour, Lizzo took to social media to reveal that she had been bombarded with body shaming posts from trolls on the internet, the kinds of posts that she has to see everyday.
This is definitely not the first time, that this has happened to Lizzo, and whenever something like this this does, she usually finds an inspiring way to shut down the haters, but from the tweets that came next, you could tell these particular posts seemed to particularly affect our beloved Lizzo.
In heartbreaking fashion, Lizzo’s followers started to see a string of tweets, one after the other that clearly meant these posts, these terrible people who were attacking such an incredible human being like Lizzo were getting to her, and there it is, HUMAN BEING, sure she may be a star, she may be “Special”, but never forget that this talented individual is human too. The people attacking her for her body image will never understand. All they see when they look at her is body, but to quote Lizzo “Being fat isn’t my brand, being fat is what my body looks like.” If you can’t see that and still want to call yourself a fan, there’s the door. Lizzo is a body positivity advocate, yes but being fat is not who she is. Her music speaks for itself. Her brand is feel good music, championing all people and black girl liberation. She inspires all of us to be the best versions of ourselves.
After that Lizzo went on to talk about how she has always led with her talent. However
she says that when she released her hit “Good As Hell”, feel good and self love music was considered corny. “When I dropped Juice disco pop wasn’t “for them””. She goes on to to talk about how despite how she has been an ambassador of body positivity, it hasn’t always been easy, “when I was body positive in 2016 being body positive was “pandering””. Now everybody claims to be body positive themselves, everybody claims to support self love and yet Lizzo is still bullied for being who she is everyday. Everybody loves Lizzo’s latest hit “Special”, she has become somewhat of an icon for the plus sized community in the best possible ways, people praise her outgoing attitude and open nature. Then 3 years ago Lizzo formed her inclusive shapewear brand Yitty. Of course with all the good she was going came the haters, well let em say what they’re gonna say, cause Lizzo just takes it like a champ.
As for what happened recently, she stood up to the haters and on Twitter spoke her truth. In another post Lizzo simply wiped the skin off her back and used this as an opportunity to promote her incredible new line of Yitty clothing, check out her response here
Apart from being being an inspiring example of true body body positivity, self love, body image and self acceptance. Lizzo is also a shining example of someone who never lets fame get to her by remaining humble as you can see both through the person she is and through her music. Which is why we never continuously see her argue with narrow minded trolls on the internet, she always remains above the drama. This was one time we saw it really get to her, and she handled it with grace and sass as she always does.
Every camera manufacturer can now provide their own ProRes RAW processing pipeline.
As one of the two most popular universal RAW formats for video, ProRes RAW, has long been the holy grail for those looking to shoot and record digital video at the highest quality possible. While many cameras offer RAW recording in one form or another, this new innovation announced by Atomos promises to truly unlock Apple Pro RAW for all cameras everywhere.
Set to be released immediately, Atomos has announced support for Apple ProRes RAW plug-ins which should allow manufacturers the ability to create their own ProRes RAW processing pipelines to combine with the unique elements of their own cameras, sensors, lenses, etc.
With this new array of plug-ins, every camera manufacturer will be able to develop their own ProRes RAW plug-in to bring out the highest quality video recording from their own cameras, in theory eventually adding ProRes RAW to any camera which you currently own or plan to in the future.
Unlock the power of ProRes RAW with AtomosCredit: Atomos
ProRes RAW Recording
What’s cool about this news is that with ProRes RAW recording unlocked with Atomos, any ProRes RAW plug-ins should be fully supported in Final Cut Pro or any other editing apps or color grading software that licensed the ProRes RAW SDK. According to Atomos, getting set up with this new ProRes RAW plug-in should be easy for camera manufacturers, vendors, and eventually users in the future.
Canon is set to be the first brand to capitalize on this new innovationCredit: Atomos
Once released, you’ll be able to easily install a camera vendor’s ProRes RAW plug-in, and FCP will instantly be able to show all of the enhanced features of your supported camera—including all of the unique characteristics of your camera rig.
Also, using a ProRes RAW plug-in will unlock the ability to make camera-specific adjustments in your edit, like changing the white balance, adding noise reduction, fixing lens distortion, or even demosaicing footage, plus plenty of other controls in the future.
A New ProRes RAW Ecosystem
This is exciting news, of course, for any Atomos and Final Cut Pro users already, but it should also entice others to consider adopting either of these tools and workflows in the future or at least that’s what Atomos hopes comes out of this announcement.
“This new feature for the ProRes RAW ecosystem is absolutely going to change the way people think about recording ProRes RAW. For the first time the filmmaker literally gets the best of all worlds: shoot in ProRes RAW with the option to immediately apply camera-specific processing, use standard processing, or customise individual parameters to their own taste. You have to ask yourself: why wouldn’t you shoot in ProRes RAW?” — Trevor Elbourne, Atomos CEO.
As they were the first to the market with their 8K ProRes RAW compatible mirrorless camera with the Canon EOS R5, this is indeed another major step forward for the ProRes RAW format and unlocks tons of fun possibilities with high-end video recording and editing.
Try it Out with Canon Cameras
It also sounds like Canon is going to be the first camera manufacturer to deliver one of these new ProRes RAW plug-ins with capabilities already unlocked in the Canon EOS R5, the EOS R5 C, and the EOS R6 Mark II, which can now output RAW directly to an Atomos monitor-recorder. This ProRes RAW plug-in is in support of these aforementioned cameras and can be accessed in the latest firmware updates for the Atomos Ninja V, the Ninja V+, and the Shogun Connect immediately.
Is this a setup you’d like to use on your next project? Do you completely hate the idea?
Disney’s perennial hit “Frozen” is saying “let it go” to its spot as the second-biggest animated film in history. Over the weekend, Universal’s “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” hit $1.3 billion at the worldwide box office, enough to bump the original adventures of royal sisters Anna and Elsa ($1.28 billion) to the No. 3 spot.
But the kingdom of Arendelle still reigns supreme in terms of all things computer-generated. The sequel “Frozen II” was even bigger than the original and stands as the highest-grossing animated movie of all-time with a mighty $1.45 billion. (Disney’s 2019 remake of “The Lion King,” which earned a staggering $1.65 billion, is technically computer-generated, but the studio has categorized the movie as live-action. Thus, it doesn’t have a place on the list of top-animated movies.)
A collaboration between Universal, Illumination and Nintendo, “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” has resonated with audiences across the globe, generating $566 million domestically and $733.9 million internationally. So far, it’s the first and only movie of the year to cross the coveted $1 billion milestone. Outside of North America, top-earning territories include Mexico ($84 million), Japan ($80 million), the United Kingdom ($64 million) and France ($57 million).
When “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” opened in theaters on April 5, the film generated a towering $204 million in its first five days of release. With those ticket sales, it secured the largest opening weekend of the year and the second-biggest debut ever for an animated movie. Since its debut, “Mario” has become the highest-grossing movie domestically and globally of 2023, as well as the most successful video game adaptation of all-time. It’s also the biggest movie ever from Illumination, the animation empire behind “Despicable Me” and its “Minion” spinoffs, “Sing” and “The Grinch.”
Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic directed “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” which follows Brooklyn-based plumbers Mario and Luigi on a mythic quest through the Mushroom Kingdom as they prepare to stop the evil Bowser from total domination.
In the month to come, Netflix in the United States will bid farewell to an eclectic mixture of genre movies, sketch comedy, reality TV and romantic comedies, as well as a beloved family feature and a documentary exploration of a peculiar corner of the entertainment industry. (Dates indicate the final day a title is available.)
‘Bathtubs Over Broadway’ (June 8)
One of the most delightful documentaries of recent years, this 2018 charmer chronicles how the “Late Show With David Letterman” writer Steve Young stumbled onto the long-forgotten world of “industrial musical theater”: original musical productions, created specifically for corporate events and solely to inspire sales, that nevertheless provided steady paychecks and opportunities for performers, composers and designers for decades. What begins as an ironic fringe interest, discovered while sifting through vinyl oddities, becomes something of an obsession for Young, and the film evolves into a quiet love letter to ephemeral art.
One of Netflix most unexpected (but enjoyable) resurrection projects has been the reboot of the reality competition series “The Mole.” The streamer premiered its latest season, hosted by MSNBC’s Alex Wagner, last fall — 14 years after the show’s fifth and presumably final season aired on ABC. And for nostalgia’s sake, it also licensed the third and fourth of the original seasons. Those were the “Celebrity Mole” years, so viewers can enjoy the host Ahmad Rashad (the original host was Anderson Cooper) guiding viewers in the hunt for the saboteur among a group of decidedly mid-2000s celebs, including Stephen Baldwin, Angie Everhart, Kathy Griffin, Dennis Rodman and Frederique van der Wal.
The writer and director Frank Darabont’s third adaptation of Stephen King’s work was a far cry from his earlier, emotionally hefty, Oscar-courting films “The Shawshank Redemption” and “The Green Mile”; if those were not what we think of as a “Stephen King movie,” this 2007 take on King’s 1980 novella certainly was. Set primarily in the supermarket of a small Maine town enveloped in a mysterious murky fog, the story features supernatural forces, killer creatures and protagonists cracking under pressure. It also features stellar performances from a stacked ensemble (including Andre Braugher, Marcia Gay Harden, Laurie Holden, Thomas Jane and Toby Jones) and one of the bleakest endings to ever sneak its way into a mainstream movie.
Say what you will about his current preoccupations (and there is much to say), but there’s no denying the impact, power and sheer comic virtuosity of Dave Chappelle’s Comedy Central sketch series, which scorched cable airwaves for these two brief seasons, from 2003 to 2004. (Chappelle notoriously walked off the show during production of its third season, with only enough material for three episodes in the can.) But in that brief time, a handful of memorable characters and sketches — including Chappelle’s impersonations of Rick James and Lil’ Jon and sketches about a blind Black white supremacist and a celebrity “racial draft” — became immediate comic sensations and pop culture reference points.
There may have been better early-2000s romantic comedies, but this 2003 hit from Donald Petrie may be the most early-2000s romantic comedy. All of the conventions are present and accounted for: an impossibly gorgeous, opposites-attract central couple (Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey); a plotline centering on a secret wager; Kathryn Hahn stealing scenes as our heroine’s BFF. But what it lacks in originality it makes up for in verve, with Hudson and McConaughey creating considerable sparks and Petrie directing with the proper, light-as-air touch.
In retrospect, it was really kind of genius — artistically and commercially — of the writer and director Cameron Crowe to combine the most stereotypically “dude flick” (the sports movie) with the most stereotypically “chick flick” (the romantic comedy). Yet by doing so, he proved how simplistic and suffocating such labels could be. In telling the story of a high-powered sports agent (Tom Cruise) whose nervous romance with a single mom (Renée Zellweger) makes him a better agent and a better man, Crowe drafted an unlikely Venn diagram, in which the common concerns of family, integrity and loyalty are of equal weight and audiences can’t help but root for both the underdog team and the unlikely couple.
The “Shrek” movies made untold truckloads of money, but strangely, their most lasting cultural footprint seems to have come in the form of a side character who didn’t even appear until “Shrek 2.” Yet the suave, swashbuckling, Puss in Boots, voiced by Antonio Banderas, became not only one of the most popular characters in the series but also the star of his own delightful adventures. This 2011 treat offered the expected thrills and giggles for the little kids as well as some Easter eggs for their parents, including Banderas’s reunion with his “Desperado” co-star Salma Hayek and energetic voice performances by the likes of Guillermo del Toro, Zach Galifianakis, Amy Sedaris and Billy Bob Thornton.
The original 1974 film adaptation of the crime novel “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three” was so steeped in the specific circumstances of Fun City-era New York City that it was probably impossible for a remake to reanimate its specific, grimy thrills. But Tony Scott’s 2009 version offers up its own pleasures. Scott’s frequent leading man Denzel Washington brings tormented complexity to the grizzled hero, whose shift at M.T.A. dispatch is disrupted by a madman (John Travolta) whose crew takes over a subway car and holds its passengers hostage. And James Gandolfini is wonderful (and miles from Tony Soprano) as the city’s mayor.
Max Brooks’s 2006 novel about a zombie apocalypse was both a no-brainer for film adaptation (again, it details a zombie apocalypse) and a challenge, as so much of its power came from its epistolary-style, “oral history” structure. Those challenges made for something of a troubled production, and the stories of expensive reshoots and 11th-hour rewrites were so plentiful that it’s somewhat surprising the picture is as coherent as it is — well-crafted, tense and thrilling, alternating effective character beats with chilling set pieces.
In what has to be seen as a blow to solidarity with the writers who’ve been striking since the start of May 2023, the Directors Guild of America has reached a tentative agreement with the AMPTP that will avert a strike of its own.
The DGA’s new three-year collective bargaining agreement with the studios appears to satisfy the guild’s demands for appropriate compensation related to streaming residuals and the international distribution of their work, as well as offer new protections for creative rights (including against AI) and safety issues.
The deal still needs to be presented to the DGA’s National Board, but includes these highlights:
A 76 percent increase on international residuals for work created for the largest platforms, so that a one-hour episode will now pay out roughly $90,000 in residuals over the first three years.
A new parental leave benefit.
Terms and conditions set for directors (as well as associate directors and stage managers) on non-dramatic (variety and reality) programs made for streaming.
Acknowledgement that “AI is not a person” and generative AI cannot replace actual directors.
New terms and conditions for directors (and unit production managers and assistant directors) working for free streaming services such as Tubi, Freevee, and Roku.
Compensation for “soft prep” period for feature directors.
Episodic directors given one additional guaranteed shoot day for a one-hour program.
Ban of live ammunition on set, as well as new requirements for safety supervisors and training.
Reducing Assistant Director’s day by one hour.
“We have concluded a truly historic deal,” said Jon Avnet, chair of the DGA’s Negotiations Committee, in an official statement. “It provides significant improvements for every Director, Assistant Director, Unit Production Manager, Associate Director and Stage Manager in our Guild. In these negotiations we made advances on wages, streaming residuals, safety, creative rights and diversity, as well as securing essential protections for our members on new key issues like artificial intelligence – ensuring DGA members will not be replaced by technological advances. This deal would not have been possible without the unity of the DGA membership, and we are grateful for the strong support of union members across the industry.”
“This deal recognizes the future of our industry is global and respects the unique and essentialrole of directors and their teams as we move into that future,” said Lesli Linka Glatter, President of the DGA, in a statement. “As each new technology brings about major change, this deal ensures that each of the DGA’s 19,000 members can share in the success we all create together.”
When the DGA made a similar deal in January 2008, it was widely believed to be a move toward forcing the then striking Writers Guild of America to resolve its own demands to the studios in a less satisfactory way for its membership. However, SAG-AFTRA has not announced any agreement with the studios in its own collective bargaining agreement renegotiation, which will likely be more fraught than the DGA’s given the critical threat of AI to actors’ rights to their own image and performances. It’s possible then that the DGA deal won’t have the same effect on pushing the writers to accept a lesser deal.
A poster-wrapped window for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, which kicks off at State Farm Stadium on March 17 and 18, is shown next to one of the entrances to the stadium in Glendale, Ariz., on March 13, 2023. Entertainment Glendale Name Change
Taylor Swift is making the rounds with her Eras tour and each stop seems more extensive and better. Anyone who attends the concert always raves about how great it is.
Sadly, some fans such as myself weren’t able to snag tickets. That’s why I was happy to be able to look back into Taylor Swift’s discography and be able to look at her albums and their accompanying singles.
Moving onto the next round of this, we’re moving onto 1989. This is Taylor Swift’s 5th album and her first album that wasn’t known for being country. While some can argue when Taylor made the jump, it’s honestly a moot point as Taylor Swift doesn’t fit into one specific genre as evidenced by her long career.
1989 felt like the quintessential Taylor album though as it’s named after the year Taylor was born and felt like a reemerging of Taylor Swift. The album was released in 2014 and ended up having 7 singles during this era. Honestly, that’s a pretty hefty amount of songs so I don’t want to talk too much more so let’s not waste any more time and rank the singles from Taylor Swift’s 1989.
Let’s start this list off with an unexpected single featured on 1989.
7. “New Romantics”
To me, the most unexpected single from 1989 is easily “New Romantics.” Of all the songs that could have been chosen, that was the one. It still has me shaking my head considering it was the last single featured from the album. Even so, I can see why so many people loved it because it’s a really fun and catchy song. It’s a lot of fun and has some great lyrics, but I don’t feel like it had as much staying presence as a single or is even remembered as one.
NOW IN THEATERS! Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, directed by Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, and Justin K. Thompson, would be a great film if it weren’t so damn long. That said, it’s pretty good. Screenwriters Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, and Dave Callaham start the adventure a few years after Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) is now a senior in high school, and his future is daunting. Mainly because he’s never around due to all that crime fighting he does as Spider-Man. On a personal level, his parents, Jefferson (Brian Tyree Henry) and Rio (Luna Lauren Velez), are having a hard time letting their little genius go.
Meanwhile, the Spot (Jason Schwartzman) is causing havoc committing petty crimes through his dimensional portal powers given to him during the collider explosion in the first movie. The Spot is stopped thanks to the help of Spider-Gwen (Hailee Steinfeld), who can visit Miles’ dimension thanks to a technologically-advanced “watch” given to her by Spider-Man 2099 (Oscar Isaac).
Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld) and Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) in Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animations’ SPIDER-MAN™: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE.
“…an elite team of Spider-persons scours the Multiverse to plug up holes formed by dimensional jumping.”
Because of the events in Into the Spider-Verse, an elite team of Spider-persons scours the Multiverse to plug up holes formed by dimensional jumping. The team is led by Spider-Man 2099, Jessica Drew (Issa Rae), Gwen, Spider-Man India (Karan Soni), and Spider-Punk (Daniel Kaluuya). Miles wants to be part of the team to prove himself to his parents, but there’s no more room on the team. Still, Miles follows Gwen to the sanctuary of Spidey 2099 and all the Spider-people, literally every single Spidey. All the Spideys now shun Miles because he’s on the verge of collapsing the entire Multiverse and must be stopped.
There’s a lot more to the story of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, and I don’t have the word count or time to go through it all. Suffice it to say, the plot is dense and features all the 30-second backstories from one Spidey after the other. I’m OK with jam-packed, but there are storylines surrounding Miles and his parents that desperately needed to be tightened up, specifically the entire cake incident.
As a sequel, the art design picks up right from the first. The difference is instead of each Spider-character presented in their unique art style, the dimensions we jump to are in their unique art style. So, for example, Miles’ world resembles today’s high-quality comic book printing, while Gwen’s world is like an oil painting with dripping lines for effect. In other words, this is a visually dazzling delight.
Morris and Hurd met during a writing session for Tim McGraw’s song “Last Turn Home” in 2013.
“[Ryan’s] always been a creative collaborator in my life, that’s how we met,” Morris told Us Weekly exclusively in March 2019. “We were paired together six years ago to write a song. We didn’t know each other and it just kind of grew from there, so music has always been really intertwined in our love for each other, and now that we aren’t just songwriters, we’re artists.”
The duo were friends for two years before their relationship turned romantic. Hurd detailed their love story in his 2017 song “Love in a Bar.”
“We were just friends, just hanging / Just sitting ’round waiting for somebody to cross the line,” he sings. “And we’ve been saying it with our eyes the whole time / That you have my whole heart.”
After dating for nearly two years, Hurd proposed to Morris in July 2017. Less than a year later, the couple wed.
“I’ve learned so much from Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman,” Morris told Us about dealing with the long-distance relationship. “They’ve got the two-week rule; he’s got his kids out on the road. They just make it look so normal and it makes me and Ryan feel like this could be normal as well. We do a pretty good job at constantly keeping in contact, lots of FaceTime. We have the same manager now, so she helps our calendars really coalesce well and that’s helped it a good bit. Especially now that we’re married, it’s a little bit more important to us to see each other. We try to have a good balance.”
Morris and Hurd became parents in March 2020.
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Apple may have been at the top of the tech food chain a few years ago, but all of its big rivals have unleashed exciting innovations recently, from OLED displays to AI integrations and immersive stereoscopic 3D experiences to smart home solutions. There’s a lot riding on WWDC 2023 (June 5 through 9).
I’m not saying that Apple’s products are getting left behind, but it also needs to prove to the world that it is able to get out of its funk of rolling out derivative yet more expensive products and can indeed keep up with the new trends in tech. Because if we’re being honest, apart from its ARM-based SoC series, Apple’s technique these days seems to be to release pricier and better-powered versions of its already existing products, and most of those are unnecessary and inaccessible (price wise) for most users.
Not that I’m not excited at the prospect of a new iMac 2023 and the rumored Apple VR headset, but are they going to really change people’s lives in the way that Google is hoping to do by integrating AI in everything, for example? Or how Acer is evolving gaming experience with its SpatialLabs solutions? Or how companies such as Cooler Master and Thermalake are making computers fun again?
No, for Apple to drag itself back to the top, it needs to do a whole lot more.
AI as a part of the user experience
The AI race isn’t over just yet, but many would agree with the New York Times that Apple had already lost it. And it had the perfect opportunity to integrate it with its once-groundbreaking virtual assistant Siri, which now feels like it’s taken the mantle of the lamest of all the virtual assistants as a result of its buggy experience and slow responses.
Don’t get me wrong; Apple does use AI for features such as face detection and speech recognition; its own SoCs even have a neural engine chip that its developers can utilize. However, Apple doesn’t really have generative AI like ChatGPT, so it would be nice to see that arrive at WWDC, or maybe to have AI implemented into Siri and Safari at the very least. Apple could then follow that up later in the year by implementing it in other native apps in an end-user capacity.
The good news is, if we’re to go by some recent job postings, Apple is increasingly investing in generative AI, which means that it still plans on catching up and even getting ahead of everyone else, something it’s definitely done before. But will we see it at this year’s WWDC?
Make gaming a Mac thing
Apple’s attitude towards gaming is casual at best, focusing mostly on mobile games and leaving PC gaming to Microsoft. But it’s not because it doesn’t have the hardware for it, nor the infrastructure. On the contrary, the company makes a big deal about the sheer performance of its M chips, and it’s not as if it isn’t capable of implementing existing game APIs.
I think the problem is that Apple is just too wound up tight these days, and it’s forgotten to have fun – case in point, instead of rolling out vibrant MacBook Airs last year in different colors, it opted for that fingerprint-magnet Midnight shade that while elegant is also a bit of a snooze.
Let’s bring back the aughts, when Apple was the fun and adventurous brand, and bring PC gaming to the best Macs and MacBooks. There’s really no reason not to. You know what they all said about Jack.
Higher minimum specs
In this day and age, 8GB of RAM can feel sluggish, even when you’re just opening several browser tabs at the same time or doing casual photo editing. So, on an expensive device such as the MacBook Air or the iMac, it’s almost inexcusable to serve up a base model with 8GB of RAM to customers.
Both the current 13-inch MacBook Pro 2022 and the MacBook Air 2022 come with a base 8GB memory, plus only 256GB SSD of storage, which is ridiculous for how much you’re paying. That, combined with the lack of big innovations on its products, is making it harder and harder for Apple to justify the price.
If Apple hopes to keep its customers happy, it needs to either make its products more accessible, price-wise, or bring out the big guns, so to speak, to satisfy its audience.
WWDC 2023 gives it the perfect opportunity to do all of that – here’s hoping that it has a few exciting things in store for us.
When Kerry Washington signed on to play Paige Alexander, a therapist and single mother navigating her father Edwin’s release from prison and return to her life, she knew that she needed the perfect scene partner to pull off the complicated family dynamics.
So, she sent an email to Delroy Lindo, asking if he’d be interested in playing her dad.
“I have been a Delroy super fan forever. He’s one of my acting heroes,” Washington said, discussing the series with Lindo in Variety’s Streaming Room. “He also reminds me of somebody in my upbringing, one of my father figures, an uncle of mine who was really beloved.”
As an actor, Washington recognized that Lindo having “the essence of somebody that I already love” would help realize the story’s emotional stakes, and, as an executive producer, she recognized the role required top-notch acting chops.
“I knew that working with Delroy would bring out the best in me because I would want to meet him where he is which he’s up there. He is truly one of our greats,” Washington added. “What was required in this character was so complicated and so nuanced, we had to have one of our best.”
The father-daughter relationship is inspired by “UnPrisoned” creator Tracy McMillian’s experiences with her dad, Willie “Harold” McMillan, who was in and out of prison for an aggregate of 37 years.
“We had to have Delroy because I needed somebody who could be smart and charming and lovable, because when Tracy talks about her dad and the character of Edwin, she always said you wouldn’t know that he had gone to prison, you wouldn’t assume that,” Washington said. “When he walked in the room, everybody was like ‘He’s so charming and smart.’ So, we needed somebody who had all of those qualities, but who you also could believe might be a career criminal, and I felt like Delroy was capable of embodying that kind of complexity.”
“UnPrisoned” is the Onyx Collective’s most-watched Hulu premiere to date, but the real marker for the show’s success has been the response from audiences, who’ve connected to the family story at the heart of this dramedy. Since the show premiered, Washington and Lindo have been struck by the personal stories people have shared about their incarcerated family members.
“When we were in South by Southwest, we were interviewed by four sit-down journalists. … and three out of the four journalists that we talked to had a parent who was formerly incarcerated,” Washington recalled. “There’s no one in this country who hasn’t been touched by the criminal justice system, so for us to be able to engage with that segment or that part of who we are as a culture and as a society, it’s so gratifying to be able to tell a story that isn’t being told but that feels like it belongs to all of us.”
Lindo concurred, adding: “What moved me is the fact that they felt comfortable enough in a professional setting to divulge that about themselves. The fact that the work has impacted them in such a way that they felt moved to share that with us was also majorly significant. Gratifying, doesn’t begin to describe how moved one is, how rewarding that is.”
And it all stems from the vulnerability of “UnPrisoned’s” writers, Washington noted, crediting McMillan, showrunner Yvette Lee Bowser and the writing staff pouring their lives and experiences into the Alexander family’s story.
“It’s important to acknowledge at this time — especially right with what the Writers Guild is out there doing every day fighting for their ability to live and survive and be compensated fairly — that we would not be here having this conversation if it were not for the hard work and diligence and wisdom and insight and talent of our writers,” she said. “Everybody’s trauma was out there on the table in the writers room every day.”
In preparing for the show, Washington dissected McMillan’s memoir, while Lindo spent time with organizations that help formerly incarcerated individuals get back on their feet.
“There’s a theme throughout this work of generosity,” Lindo said of those who opened their lives to him and Washington to prepare. “They made themselves available. They sat and they talked to me generously, genuinely, authentically about their stuff, about their lives. And Tracy’s dad was the first — because when I signed on to do this, the first thing I said to Tracy was, ‘Can I meet your dad?’ and that was very quickly arranged.”
The series is dedicated to the memory of Harold, who died in January, a couple months before its Hulu debut. Shortly after learning the news, McMillan posted on social media.
“I created a show called ‘UnPrisoned’ to set myself free,” she wrote, going on to reveal that Pauline, the woman who raised her while her father was in prison, had also died the same day, hours and miles apart from her dad. “Now Harold and Pauline are helping me do that – all at once. I will always be grateful for everything they gave me. And forgive them everything they couldn’t.”
Being part of McMillan’s healing journey was particularly poignant for the show’s stars.
“One of the reasons why the title of the show ‘UnPrisoned’ is so powerful is because you think that it’s just related to this one character of Edwin, and that it’s just describing his physical existence,” Washington said. “What you come to realize when you watch the show is that it’s about everybody’s liberation and everybody’s freedom.”
While the idea of “freedom” is about breaking free of physical limitations and about fighting for equity in our culture, Washington explained, it’s also about divesting from “traumatic patterns of thinking and behaving that trap us in versions of ourselves that we no longer need to be.”
So, as a result of McMillan’s “walk toward freeing herself” with the show, “She’s told this story about a family freeing themselves. And we all get to get a little taste of what it might look like for ourselves or even just ask ourselves the question, ‘What would freedom look like for me?’”
Thanks to a post-NBC cancelation save from Netflix, Jeff Rake’s supernatural drama Manifest is making its final descent on its own terms. Flight 828’s passengers returned for Season 4, Part 1 in November 2022, and Season 4, Part 2 premiered on June 2, 2023 — a nod to the show’s dreaded Death Date, June 2, 2024. As noted in Decider’s full review, if you’ve been following Manifest‘s mysteries for four seasons, you’re not going to want to miss learning how “it’s all connected.” Manifest pulls out all the stops in its final hours to prove itself worthy of surviving its own Death Date back in 2021. Will the passengers figure out how to save their lifeboat — and the rest of the world — before it’s too late? Buckle up for Michaela (Melissa Roxburgh), Ben (Josh Dallas), Cal (Ty Doran), Saanvi (Parveen Kaur), Vance (Daryl Edwards), Olive (Luna Blaise), Jared (J.R. Ramirez), Angelina (Holly Taylor) — ugh! — and the rest of the passengers’ final chapter.
The union that represents thousands of movie and television directors reached a tentative agreement with the Hollywood studios on a three-year contract early Sunday morning, a deal that ensures labor peace with one major guild as the writers’ strike enters its sixth week.
The Directors Guild of America announced in a statement overnight that it had made “unprecedented gains,” including improvements in wages and streaming residuals (a type of royalty), as well as guardrails around artificial intelligence.
“We have concluded a truly historic deal,” Jon Avnet, the chair of the D.G.A.’s negotiating committee, said in the statement.“It provides significant improvements for every director, assistant director, unit production manager, associate director and stage manager in our guild.”
The deal prevents the doomsday Hollywood scenario of three major unions striking simultaneously. On Wednesday, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which bargains on behalf of the studios, will begin negotiations for a new contract with SAG-AFTRA, the guild that represents actors; their current agreement expires on June 30. SAG-AFTRA is in the process of collecting a strike authorization vote.
The entertainment industry will be looking closely at what the directors’ deal — and the actors’ negotiations — will mean for the Writers Guild of America, the union that represents the writers. More than 11,000 writers went on strike in early May, bringing many Hollywood productions to a halt.
Over the last month, the writers have enjoyed a wave of solidarity from other unions that W.G.A. leaders have said they have not seen in generations. Whether a directors’ deal — or a possible actors’ deal later this month — undercuts that solidarity is now an open question.
W.G.A. leaders had been signaling to writers late last week that a deal with the directors could be in the offing, a strategy that it said was part of the studio “playbook” to “divide and conquer.” The writers and the studios left the bargaining table on May 1 very far apart on the major issues, and have not resumed negotiations.
“They pretended they couldn’t negotiate with the W.G.A. in May because of negotiations with the D.G.A.,” the W.G.A. negotiating committee told writers in an email on Thursday. “That’s a lie. It’s a choice they made in hope of breathing life into the divide and conquer strategy. The essence of the strategy is to make deals with some unions and tell the rest that’s all there is. It’s gaslighting, and it only works if unions are divided.
“Our position is clear: To resolve the strike, the companies will have to negotiate with the W.G.A. on our full agenda,” the email continued.
Representatives for the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The writers and the directors shared some priorities, including wages, streaming residuals and concerns about artificial intelligence. W.G.A. leaders had said that the studios had offered little more than “annual meetings to discuss” artificial intelligence, and that they refused to bargain over guardrails. The D.G.A. said Sunday that it received a “groundbreaking agreement confirming that A.I. is not a person and that generative A.I. cannot replace the duties performed by members.”
Some of the writers’ demands, however, are more complex than those of the directors. W.G.A. leaders have described the dispute in urgent terms, calling this moment “existential,” and saying that the studios “are seemingly intent on continuing their efforts to destroy the profession of writing.”
Despite the explosion of television production over the last decade, writers have said that their wages have stagnated, and their working conditions have deteriorated. In addition to improvements on compensation, the writers are seeking greater job security, as well as staffing minimums in writers’ rooms.
The W.G.A. has vowed to fight on. The writers, who last went on strike 15 years ago for 100 days, have historically been united.
“We are girded by an alliance with our sister guilds and unions,” Chris Keyser, a chair of the W.G.A. bargaining committee, said in a video message to writers last week. “They give us strength. But we are strong enough. We have always been strong enough to get the deal we need using writer power alone.”
Thompson highlighted the way that Spider-Punk needed to serve Miles Morales’ journey as “the antithesis of all these authority figures in Miles’ way:”
“Spider-Punk is voiced amazingly by Daniel Kaluuya. From the beginning, we thought it would be so cool for Miles to meet somebody on this journey who could support his idea of ‘writing your own story’ and who’s the antithesis of all these authority figures in Miles’ way. We looked at all the Marvel comics and found that in Spider-Punk with his punk rock nature and rejection of norms, authority, and traditional ideas.”
Going off those themes, this led the team to go wild in animating Spider-Punk, referencing how “a lot of punk rock art is done” by cutting up and piecing together different pieces of experimental art:
“So we thought, ‘Let’s let his animation style represent that too, and let’s try all these crazy experiments.’ It was cool because that’s kind of how punk rock zines and punk rock posters are, they’re like experimental art projects. The way a lot of punk rock art is done, they’re hand cut, pasted, drawn, glued together, and then xeroxed as well.”
Thompson continued to reveal the way that “crazy technical tools” were developed to give Spider-Punk an incredibly customized look “based on classic punk rock posters,” all of which only came together at the very end of production:
“We just thought, ‘What if that was actually what the character looked like?’ So we developed all these crazy technical tools. They start with this traditional animation pass, and then the tools that we developed can adapt all the different parts of him to all these different custom looks we created that are based on classic punk rock posters. And we can assign all these body parts very distinct emotional beats wherever we wanted them to appear like sudden visual changes. I think that process probably took two or three years to develop, and we really only came together like right at the end.”
Dos Santos looked back to the first test animation that he did for the hero, which was actually done off of “an interview with Daniel.”
Powers noted that this test came long before Kaluuya was cast in the role, which led the team to only hope that he would actually play the role in the final cut of the sequel:
“Yeah, before we cast Daniel Kaluuya, we did an animation test set to his voice in an interview. One of the interesting things about Spider-Punk is that he’s in motion even when he’s standing still. His visuals are dynamically in motion even when he’s not moving, it’s like those punk rock posters are still swapping out when he’s not in motion. But I remember that first animation test when it was just a Daniel Kaluuya interview on TV. I was like, ‘Well, I really hope we can get Daniel Kaluuya to voice this character because now we’re really building this thing around him.'”
Dos Santos highlighted the animation on Spider-Punk’s jacket which was “animated at a different frame rate” than the other parts of his body – something that broke many of animation’s normal rules:
“I will say another amazing thing before we continue is just Spider-Punk’s jacket is animated at a different frame rate oftentimes from the rest of his body. So sometimes when the perspective shifts hard enough, his jacket will just be held and then it will quickly pop to the next perspective. But his body and his head are moving at a different frame rate too. That fact alone is breaking a lot of rules for an animated film.”
How Will Spider-Punk Play Into Spider-Verse 3?
Warning – the rest of this article contains spoilers for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.
While Oscar Isaac’s Spider-Man 2099 and Issa Rae’s Jessica Drew were hellbent on taking him down and forcing him to live out his “canon event,” Spider-Punk was the one who taught him new things about his powers and even helped him escape custody later in the movie.
Comedian and actor Pete Davidson became part of the show during a performance from David Blaine in Las Vegas on Friday night. During the show, Blaine called Davidson and his pal up from the crowd to the stage so they could serve as assistants for the next trick. Video footage of the entire trick has since been shared online by TMZ, and you can check it out below.
The trick begins with Blaine asking Davidson to choose from one of four cups to unveil the special object that would be used in the trick. He picks the third cup, which reveals a sharp ice pick underneath. After having the assistants confirm that the ice pick was sharp, with Davidson putting, “Yup, you’re nuts,” Blaine had duct tape placed over his eyes while the ice pick was placed underneath one of three cups. With Davidson placing one of his hand on top of Blaine’s, Blaine then crushed two of the cups. They fortunately avoided the one with ice pick, but it nevertheless made Davidson nervous..
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“Wow, holy sh*t,” Davidson reacted. “You’re f***ing crazy. You did it!”
“No, you did it,’ Blaine responded. “It’s crazy that you did that with me.”
“We’re gonna be best pals,” Davidson joked.
Blaine didn’t want to end things there. He then asked Davidson to stab him in the arm with the ice pick. The former Saturday Night Live star does so until the needle comes out of the other side. Blaine lets it dangle for a bit, prompting some cringing from the audience, before having a boy from the crowd come up to help pull the ice pick back out.
Davidson left Saturday Night Live last year, but oddly enough, he was set to make his return last month. The comedian was going to serve as guest host, but the episode was canceled as the writers strike began shortly before its scheduled air date. Davidson had previously served as a cast member for eight seasons and had become a fan favorite.
Since then, Davidson has launched his own series on Peacock. Called Bupkis, the dramedy series stars Davidson as himself alongside Edie Falco and Joe Pesci. The show also features special appearances from many of Davidson’s pals in the comedy world, including Ray Romano, Shane Gillis, Jon Stewart, Kenan Thompson, Charlie Day, Dave Attell, John Mulaney, and more.
Davidson also had recent cameos in the feature films Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and Fast X. He voices a Transformer in the upcoming franchise film Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, which premieres on June 9. Davidson also has a role in the upcoming film Dumb Money, which is about the true story of a group of Redditors causing the GameStop short squeeze. The film, from director Craig Gillespie, also features other big names like Paul Dano, Sebastian Stan, Seth Rogen, Shailene Woodley, America Ferrera, Vincent D’Onofrio, and Nick Offerman.
Dave writes: “Puzzle by Nikoli W Yajilin finds itself near the front of the puzzling peloton. Its not unique enough to be sprinting out front, but its so polished and friction-free that its the best of the following rest.”
Colourlab’s AI-powered color grading tool is also 100% free to use.
Believe it or not, AI is not an entirely new trend in the film and video space. Yes, since NAB 2023 there has been a flood of new AI tools, apps, and features sweeping into our industry—many of which are exciting, many of which are scary. But, in actuality, AI has been in film and video for some time and has been subtly changing different parts of the video production process for the better.
However, not to get lost in this sea of AI news flowing over the market, we also need to report on the launch of Colourlab’s new Freelab, a new color grading tool that can provide one-click color management and is 100% free to use.
Freelab could be a great gateway into more advanced color editingCredit: Colourlab Ai
Of course, after you check it out, you might want to dive into using the full Colourlab Ai software, so there’s the rub. Nevertheless, let’s take a look at Freelab from Colourlab Ai, and explore how this AI-powered color grading tool can make your work easier and faster.
Colourlab Ai Freelab
So, the basic offering of Freelab is pretty straightforward. Freelab is a color grading tool designed to make your color editing work faster and easier with the help of AI. It includes advanced features and is easy to use, and did we say it’s free? With Freelab, you’re set to get true one-click color management as the tool supports more than 40 cameras (plus other materials for different cameras) which can convert their image into REC709.
Freelab also includes a collection of free X01 files (with more being made available on the company’s Discord Server if you’re interested) which can help you generate your own unique X01 looks using Colourlab Ai or the Look Designer Plugin for Premiere Pro or DaVinci Resolve.
This Freelab also serves as a free version of the Colourlab Engine which can generate a look based on the same principles of analog film. With the help of their own proprietary subtractive color processing, this Freelab version can help provide filmmakers with some amazing control and flexibility over the design and look of the colors in the final outputs of your videos.
The Full Colourlab Software
If you’re at all interested in Freelab, you should absolutely just go ahead and check it out. From there, if this seems up your alley, you can look more in-depth at the full Colourlab Ai software, which is used by over 500 post-production houses and can connect directly with your favorite video editing NLE.
Plus, as its name implies Colourlab Ai is powered by some of the more formative artificial intelligence in the industry which can unleash all types of AI auto-color, AI timeline intelligence, and AI processing into your coloring and editing workflows.
There’s lots more to explore with Colourlab Ai as the app has really become a full suite in recent years. In particular, the unlimited LUTs unlocked with Colourlab Ai are worth writing home about as you can use their Look Designer tool to build a LUT from scratch, or simply browse LUTs like you would Instagram filters. With some Smart LUT controls and source image uploads, it’s really a dream (and a fun time suck) for anyone looking to hone in on their color designs.
What are you excited about in the world of color editing and AI though? Let us know if Freelab is something you might be interested in with your own projects in the comments below.
Welcome to What’s On, our weekly picks of must-watch shows. Here’s what you need to watch from Sunday, June 4, to Thursday, June 8. All times are Eastern. [Note: The weekend edition of What’s On drops on Fridays.]
The biggies
The Idol (HBO, Sunday, 9 p.m.)
THE IDOL Final Trailer (2023) Jennie Ruby Jane, Lily-Rose Depp, Drama Series
The Idolis here to take over Succession’s Sunday-night spot on HBO. In this new drama, Lily-Rose Depp plays Jocelyn, a former pop star whose tour is canceled after she has a nervous breakdown. To reclaim her career, she joins forces with a contemporary cult leader played by Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye. Dan Levy, Rachel Sennott, Jennie Kim, Hank Azaria, and Hari Nef co-star. The A.V. Club will recap the show weekly.
Based On A True Story (Peacock, Thursday, 3:01 a.m.)
Based On A True Story | Official Trailer | Peacock Original
Peacock jumps on the true-crime satire bandwagon, a la Only Murders In The Building, with Based On A True Story. The eight-episode first season follows married couple Ava (Kaley Cuoco) and Nathan (Chris Messina), who team up with their eccentric plumber, Matt (Tom Bateman), to start a podcast. The subject? The serial killer currently turning their L.A. neighborhood into his playground. The ensemble includes Natalia Dyer, Priscilla Quintana, Liana Liberato, Li Jun Li, and Alex Alomar Akpobome. Look out for The A.V. Club’s review next week.
Never Have I Ever season 4 (Netflix, Thursday, 3:01 a.m.)
Never Have I Ever – Final Season | Official Trailer | Netflix
Netflix’s Never Have I Everreturns for a last joyride. In season four of Mindy Kaling and Lang Fisher’s comedy, Devi Vishwakumar (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) is in her senior year and rapidly approaching graduation. Will she get into Princeton? Will she finally choose a love interest and will it be Ben (Jared Lewison)? The answers arrive in a 10-episode final season. The A.V. Club’s review of the show will drop next week.
Hidden gems
The Lazarus Project (TNT, Sunday, 9 p.m.)
The Lazarus Project | Official Trailer | TNT
TNT brings the British sci-fi drama The Lazarus Projectto the U.S. I May Destroy You’s Pappa Essiedu leads the show as George, who wakes up one morning to discover time has moved back six months, but no one else around him seems to notice, and then inadvertently stumbles across a secret organization working to save the world.
Burden Of Proof (HBO, Tuesday, 9 p.m.)
Burden of Proof | Official Trailer | HBO
Cynthia Hill’s documentary Burden Of Proofis about a real cold case but is presented with recreations to make it look like a fictional HBO series. It chronicles Stephen, who launches an investigation into his sister Jennifer’s disappearance in 1987. A complicated story emerges when he digs into what might’ve happened (she left only a handwritten note as a clue) and why American audiences are obsessed with true crime.
More good stuff
The Age Of Influence (Hulu, Monday, 12:01 a.m.)
‘The Age of Influence’ starts streaming on Hulu June 5
ABC News’ six-episode docuseries The Age Of Influence aims to examine the dark side of influencer culture by diving into some of the biggest social-media scandals of our time, from sweeping cons to viral cancellation campaigns, and looks at how people are caught up in controversies in their curated digital worlds.
Arnold (Netflix, Wednesday, 3:01 a.m.)
Arnold | Official Trailer | Netflix
Netflix really loves Arnold Schwarzenegger. The actor, who recently starred in Fubar, is now the subject of a three-part docuseries about his life as a movie star and politician. Arnold features never-before-seen footage and stories about his rise from rural Austria to the highest echelons of the U.S.
You know Tom Felton. The fan-favorite Slytherin has remained a constant in the Harry Potter fandom in the years following the release of the last movie. He even wrote a book Beyond The Wand that came out recently and shared intimate details about the making of the popular films. One detail I’d never realized had to do with the actor’s hair, which was apparently a gigantic ordeal to get right as the Harry Potter cast was coming together.
When I say gigantic ordeal, I’m not overselling. In fact, Felton wrote about the experience of becoming Draco in his memoir and compared the process of bleaching and tinting his hair to “fire ants” “nibbling” at his scalp. You have to remember at the time Felton was a pre-teen –-old enough to have a bit of personality and not be pleased about the ordeal, but young enough to not really have a say in what was happening to him.
Ahead of even landing the part of Draco Malfoy, producers decided to test him with blonde hair and see if Tom Felton would, in fact, be their Slytherin villain. Shortly after he called Emma Watson “an idiot” at the first audition for the role, the arduous hair-bleaching began.
You had to act the part, but more importantly you had to look the part. They decided that they needed to see what I looked like with white hair. It meant the first of many bleaching that would become a staple in my life for the next ten years. It took longer than expected to establish my first Malfoy hairdo. You can’t just go from one color to another, especially when going lighter. It’s a matter of applying layers of peroxide and then topping up with tint. The peroxide burned my scalp the first time around. It felt like fire ants were nibbling at your scalp. Agony.
Bleaching one’s hair is no small matter. In fact, to make a comparison to another fantasy franchise, Daenerys Targaryen herself Emilia Clarke actually tried bleaching her hair that white blonde color for Game of Thrones final season. Prior to that, she’d worn wigs to play the character. She ultimately ended up frying her naturally brown hair so badly she had to literally chop it all off. So, I’m just saying, going that blonde is not for the faint of heart.
Meanwhile, Tom Felton had no such luxury. In Beyond the Wand he revealed that it took “six or seven” rounds of the excruciating coloring to get Draco Malfoy to be looking pretty fly for a white guy on the big screen.
Then, they said they’d have to do it all again and I begged them not to. My plea fell on deaf ears: I was straight back in the hairdresser’s chair. It initially took six or seven rounds over a matter of days to achieve the color. It was important to the filmmakers that the coloring was just right. They needed to see how the Malfoy blonde looked next to the Weasley ginger or the Granger brown.
Not only was the experience not pleasant, but Felton also revealed he got teased at school for his light blonde locks. He was 12 at the time he auditioned for the role –around middle school aged – and also has said he was “bullied” for looking the way he did while Potter filmed, though he later got used to it. Meanwhile, his on-screen dad, played by his pal in real life Jason Isaacs, got to wear a wig to play Lucious Malfoy. (Though actually Isaacs had to “had to tip [his] head back” in order to keep the wig on straight, so problems all around.)
These days, Felton is back to his natural brown color, after revealing it would be one of his “greatest reliefs” to be done with the blonde hair processing before the final movie’s release. Yet, he also confessed that he couldn’t help having “grown quite oddly attached” to the look. He has said he’d be willing to reprise his Slytherin role, so I’m willing to bet there’s a part of him that misses his Draco look at least a little – just maybe not the “fire ant” part accompanying it.
Comedian Eric Andre is returning to Adult Swim for a sixth season of his absurdist talk show “The Eric Andre Show,” and he says his reasoning is partially financial. In an interview with the Associated Press, published Saturday, Andre said he would’ve called it quits earlier had his 2021 film “Bad Trip” been at all lucrative for him.
“I was going to end [‘The Eric Andre Show’] after five seasons and then I didn’t make any money on ‘Bad Trip,’” Andre said.
The film, which André co-wrote, produced and starred in, was never released in theaters due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The hidden camera comedy went through distribution issues before eventually being released on Netflix in 2021. In a recent interview with Howard Stern, André said the film took nearly a decade to make, but he only made around $17,000 from it.
Despite its delayed release, the film was at one point the No. 1 movie in the world on Netflix, and Andre said this streaming success opened the door for new, yet-to-be announced projects.
André added that in addition to a steady paycheck, he appreciates the autonomy of “The Eric Andre Show.” He hasn’t ruled out more seasons of the Adult Swim comedy following Season 6.
“Why permanently close the door on a show where I have full creative freedom?” he told AP.
“The Eric Andre Show” premieres its sixth season on Sunday on Adult Swim, with stars like Jon Hamm, Lil Nas X and Natasha Lyonne set to appear as guests.
The director and producer of 2022 Pixar flop Lightyear have both been laid off at Disney. According to Reuters, director Angus MacLane and producer Galyn Susman, veteran Pixar employees who’d been with the company since the Toy Story and A Bug’s Life days of the 1990s, were among 75 employees cut from Pixar in recent weeks, as Disney engages in staff reductions across the board.
It’s been nearly a decade since Pixar last got hit with staff reductions like this, also in the wake of a major flop—although 2015’s The Good Dinosauractually did a bit better at the box office than Lightyear, which made $226 million at the box office off of a $200 million budget, i.e., bupkis.
Disney is in a brutal cost-cutting phase at the moment; the company also announced that it’s taking a $1.5 billion impairment charge to try to improve its fiscal standing—which is a fancy way of saying they kicked a huge amount of content off of Disney+ so they wouldn’t have to count it as an asset they’d have to pay taxes on. The cuts were handed down back on May 23, as part of a $5.5 billion cost-reduction effort by CEO Bob Iger.
Following up his short Roadkill, writer-director Justin T. Malone’s Beware of Goat is an incisive and joyously sardonic look at rural life in the American South. It is a remarkably canny film with well-defined characters and as much escalating tension surrounding a single goat as could be hoped for.
The film wastes no time establishing its stakes by introducing two families, neighbors, midway through a long-simmering war of wits and words. The screenplay also wastes no time revealing its intelligence, as each character is presented in a situation that defines them. Not only is this a shrewd way to affirm the foundation of the tension, but it also subtly demarcates the prison that all these people find themselves in. Without ever saying it, this is a gentle but no less forceful consideration of poverty in rural areas and the factionalism accompanying it.
“…two families, neighbors, midway through a long-simmering war…”
The only drawback to the success of the set-up is the manner in which it concludes. The film’s structure mirrors a dialogue, with one family’s growing animosity answered by the other’s. Unfortunately, however, the finale cuts that conversation unceremoniously short, leaving the audience and the narrative wanting for some greater revelation.
Still, it is hard to censure Beware of Goat when considering all that it does well. It is a specifically undaunted portrait of Southern rural life and features some of the best acting one can find in an independent film. Add a streak of black humor to that formula, and the result is a thoughtful and totally entertaining experience.
B-boys and B-girls from 30 different countries across the world are in Montreal this weekend to battle it out for a chance to compete in the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Samuel Mass Cyr from Quebec is one of them.
“I started dancing 15 years ago when I was 12 years and now I’m competing around the world and I’m stoked, I’m happy!” Mass Cyr said.
Breaking, or breakdancing, will make its debut as an Olympic sport in Paris next August.
The Montreal qualifier event is the biggest Canada has ever hosted and the only one in North America.
Breakdancing set to turn heads as new Olympic sport
Berenice Dupuis sees the event as an opportunity for more girls to step into the sport.
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She’s been breaking for the past 20 years – breakdancing as well as breaking barriers.
“It was very difficult at the beginning even to participate in the battles because it was mostly crews of men,” said Dupuis, who is also known as B-Nice.
At the competition, B-boys and B-girls are battling it out side by side as equals.
It was only natural for Montreal to play host.
Breaking got its start in the 1970s in the Bronx and Montreal’s proximity to the American city facilitated exposure and ultimately, crowned Montreal as Canada’s hub for breaking, developing its own style.
“Canadian style is very dynamic, very creative and I would say very artistic,” said Taiyo Seo, a coach for Team Canada.
Throughout the years, the stages have evolved. What started out on the streets will soon blast onto the biggest sports stage in the world: the Olympics.
The 2024 Paris Summer Olympics will be hosting breaking as an official sport for the first time.
Dvir Rozen travelled from Israel to judge the Montreal competition. He has been a B-boy for 25 years.
“Now, a dancer, a B-girl a B-boy, can bring to their country a gold medal, this is unbelievable,” Rozen says.
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More than landing a spot on the Olympic team, both Dupuis and Cyr say they are eager for the chance to show off Canadian talent and to attract more B-boys and B-girls to the growing crew.
“It can be a good exposure for my art and my discipline. I think it can be good for people to see it, for new kids to get into,” said Cyr. “The more we are dancing, the more fun we’re going to have.”
The qualifiers will continue at Place des Arts until Sunday.
It’s showtime! Well, maybe not quite yet, but “Beetlejuice 2” is coming, and star Michael Keaton gave some preliminary insights into the care Tim Burton and the rest of the film’s creators are taking to ensure it feels just like the 1988 classic.
“Beetlejuice is the most f–kin’ fun you can have working,” Keaton told Empire Saturday. “It’s so fun, it’s so great. And you know what it is? We’re doing it exactly like we did the first movie. There’s a woman in the great waiting room for the afterlife literally with a fishing line — I want people to know this because I love it — tugging on the tail of a cat to make it move.”
The sequel, directed by Burton, is scheduled for release Sept, 6, 2024, with Keaton and Winona Ryder set to return. Joining them is newcomer Jenna Ortega, who worked with Burton on “Wednesday.” The creators of the Netflix “Addams Family” series, Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, are penning the screenplay for “Beetlejuice 2.”
Keaton is no stranger to revisiting old characters (he’s about to star as Batman once again in “The Flash,” if you hadn’t heard), and he made clear that when he does return to classic films, he wants them to be true to their predecessors.
“[Burton] and I were talking about it years and years ago, never telling anybody,” Keaton said to Empire. “We both agreed, if it happens, it has to be done as close to the way we made it the first time. Making stuff up, making stuff happen, improvising and riffing, but literally handmade stuff, like people creating things with their hands and building something. F–kin’ great. It’s the most fun I’ve had working on a movie in — I can’t tell you how long.”
Will the next James Bond be played by an actor of color? That debate on Chris Cuomo’s NewsNation show “Cuomo” Friday went completely off the rails when The Nation’s Elie Mystal went head to head with conservative commentator Scottie Nell Hughes.
Cuomo had pulled the duo who are on opposites of the political spectrum together to discuss a new report from Britain’s News Channel that, according to an industry insider, “the next James Bond won’t be white.” Ariel in the Disney remake “The Little Mermaid” was also mentioned as a white character who had been recast as nonwhite.
“And I thought that was a little bit more of an odd fit,” Cuomo went on. “But if you were going to play to the global palette, wouldn’t he, and if it’s for America, wouldn’t he be Latino? And if it’s for the world market, wouldn’t he probably come from Bollywood? I mean, why is there this expectation that he has to be a Black actor?”
“I don’t think there’s an expectation that he has to be a Black actor. The idea is that he has been White for six iterations and there is no problem in opening it up to other people,” Mystal responded. “The idea that you’ve just suggested that anybody who plays him is doomed to fail either tells me that you have not watched the Timothy Dalton James Bonds or that you did not watch ‘No Time to Die,’ the last James Bond, which was horrible, or you have not watched the amazing performances given by people like Regé-Jean Page…He has perfect diction. Like what? The idea that anybody Black is doomed to fail is the definition of why it’s about time somebody Black was James Bond. Just to prove you wrong.”
Hughes jumped in: “You’re totally misrepresenting what I said. I didn’t say anybody Black. I said anybody! And I’m an originalist. I like Sean Connery. I said, anybody. And we are only talking about Black characters. We’re not talking about any of the other actors to take this place. And every character that’s been replaced has been Black. So there’s a reason why people are saying that it’s going to be a Black person that is going to replace him.”
And that’s when the back-and-forth spat began, as the volumes went up and they started to talk over each other to drive home their points.
“Every character who has been replaced, has been Black like in global history?” Mystal said.
“Have you seen a Hispanic replace a White person in one of the recent films?” Hughes asked.
She answered, “What recent film are you talking about? Of course, we have so much more opportunities given to Hispanic actors. We’ve seen more opportunities given to. But once the I just saw Kenobi, which had one of its key persons be an AAPI actor like this is happening…”
Hughes cut her off. “But this is the placement of old original characters on diversity. It’s not diverse. It’s only one sector that is getting it…”
“Is the argument that there aren’t enough opportunities for White people in Hollywood?” Mystal asked pointedly. “Is that what you’re going with?”
Seeing that this debate was going downhill fast, Cuomo tried to calm them and finally decided to end it altogether. “I appreciate the points on both sides,” he said. “You’ve given plenty for the audience to chew on and let’s let them do that.”
Ana Vaz’s debut feature is a work of nocturnal ethnography — a documentary that invites us into a thicket of sound and darkling images so we may emerge with a fresh understanding of the world around us. “It Is Night in America” captures Brasília, Vaz’s hometown in Brazil, through two layers of obfuscation. The film is shot on grainy, expired 16-millimeter film stock, and with a blue tint that turns even daytime scenes into something out of a twilight zone. The camera’s subjects are the wildlife of the city — owls, capybaras, snakes, foxes and more — seen in the Brasília zoo and on the streets; the soundtrack is a viscous fog of ambient noise — crickets, wind, vehicle horns — interspersed with recordings of phone calls to forest officers to report sightings of animals. These dreamlike visions all accumulate into a parable about aggressive urbanization in the name of progress. What happens when our faunal kin are made invaders in their own homes? Vaz suggests that we learn to look not just ahead but also sideways, at the things that take refuge in the shadows, in the background and in the night.
This supremely clever feature by the Quebecois director Denis Côté wrings great comedy from a simple dissonance. On a grassy field in an unidentified locale, a petty thief, Antonin (Maxim Gaudette), is berated by a series of women — his sister, his wife, his mistress, a tax collector — in long, staged vignettes. The characters speak in dramatic, declamatory French, as if in a 19th-century play, and their costumes range from corseted dresses and shabby tailcoats to power suits and leather jackets. Yet the content of their conversations is contemporary and drably banal, dotted with references to Facebook, Volkswagens and discount mattresses.
Full of great quips (“I have so many debts, it’s like I have friends”), “Social Hygiene” milks these arch incongruities for an extended gag about the chasms between art and life. Though Antonin fashions himself as a tormented literary protagonist — a scrupled thief and a thwarted artist — he emerges as little more than a posturing, self-pitying millennial unwilling to take charge of his life. An air of phoniness looms over the characters, who appear like marionettes in Coté’s cool, distant tableaux. When we finally see them up-close, their faces fill the screen, but they seem even smaller — regular folks playing at being heroes and victims.
This gutting Kosovan film opens with a scene straight from the horror textbook: While leading a cow through the woods, Lume (Adriana Matoshi), a young, married woman living on a farm in the countryside, stumbles suddenly upon a bloodied bovine skull. As “Zana” unfolds, however, its genre stylings — austere visuals, blurred lines between nightmares and reality, pastoral gore and folklore — give way to the real historical terror pulsating underneath.
Lume, we learn, lost her 4-year-old daughter in the Kosovo War, which resulted in thousands of civilian casualties. She has been unable to conceive since, much to the chagrin of her mother-in-law, who drags her to healers and doctors, and threatens to find Lume’s husband a second wife. The director Antoneta Kastrati lost her own mother and sister in the war, and here she crafts a remarkable portrait of a community struggling to process unimaginable trauma. Lume’s crippling grief is dismissed as demonic possession by her in-laws and parents, who displace their own sense of loss into the desperate desire for a new generation. Matoshi turns in a formidable performance as a woman who has no words for the pain she so acutely feels, bearing the brunt of not just her own anguish, but everyone else’s, too.
In 2005, the ITAS machine parts factory in Croatia became the site for a monumental event. For decades, the institution had been state-funded but worker-managed, with employees owning shares and governing themselves democratically. When efforts were made to privatize the factory, the staff took over and insisted on continuing a system of joint and equitable ownership, in what became the first successful occupation of a European factory by its workers.
In the documentary “Factory to the Workers,” the director Srdjan Kovacevic visits ITAS 10 years after the takeover to capture its inner workings and outward challenges in a new, ruthlessly capitalist Europe. Assembling footage shot within the factory across five years, Kovacevic crafts a remarkable, fly-on-the-wall portrait of the workers’ labor, relationships and self-fashioned bureaucracy. Competition from corporations has shrunk the factory’s revenue, resulting in a vicious cycle of delayed salaries and lower morale, and culminating in a tumultuous leadership change. Unfolding like a thriller, the film is both cynical and galvanizing with its striking reminder that it takes a crowd — or rather, a collective — to make any kind of dent in this world.
This Argentine drama might seem, at first glance, to be another entry in a hackneyed, often misguided genre: films about fish-out-of-water teachers trying to make a difference in inner-city schools. But “The Substitute,” directed by Diego Lerman, adds new dimensions to a cinematic cliché.
Lucio (Juan Minujín), a prestigious novelist subbing as a literature teacher at a local school, is indeed miles apart in life circumstances from his teenage students. They are embroiled in the violent intrigues of drug lords and corrupt politicians; his main concern, on the other hand, is to get his 12-year-old daughter, who is dealing poorly with her parents’ divorce, into a fancy school.
But “The Substitute,” crucially, is not about Lucio’s pedagogic brilliance or the transformative power of books; the scenes of him lecturing in class are almost comically uninspired. Rather, Lucio slowly realizes that his real contribution to his students is in being an ally to them in life rather than in school — which means getting his hands dirty in ways he’s always sought to avoid. With a sensitive lead turn by Minujín, “The Substitute” remains elusive and prickly all the way through, mimicking the messiness of reality more so than the neat arcs of stories.
17 Easter Eggs And Foreshadowing Examples In Films
Making a movie is all about the details, even if we don’t always notice them the first time around. But it’s these bits of foreshadowing, Easter eggs, and world-building that really show the writers were paying attention.
So here are 17 fun and fascinating movie details:
1.
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
2.
Pulp Fiction – Kill Bill
9.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
10.
The Shawshank Redemption
11.
The Lord of the Rings
12.
Guardians of the Galaxy
14.
John Wick & John Wick 2
There are LOADS more fun details in movies, share your favourites in the comments below!
If you’re going to make a Barbie movie, make it pink — very pink — so pink that it will wipe out an entire company’s global supply of pink paint.
That’s exactly what happened during production of the new Warner Bros. “Barbie” film, according to the company that supplied set designers.
“They used as much paint as we had,” Lauren Proud — vice president of global marketing at Rosco, which is known for its deep ties with Hollywood’s film and television industries — said Friday in an interview with The Times.
She was referring specifically to its supply of fluorescent pink paint, which was used for creating the sets for the film’s Barbieland.
The film’s production designer, Sarah Greenwood, spoke to Architectural Digest earlier this week about the immense amounts of pink that were required for the set. During the interview Greenwood, a six-time Oscar nominee, claimed the film had caused an international shortage.
“The world ran out of pink,” she told the magazine.
However, Proud said it’s not that simple. During “Barbie’s” production in 2022, the COVID-19 pandemic was jamming the global supply chain on a host of products and goods, including Rosco’s paint.
The company was also still recovering from the deep freeze that blanketed Texas in early 2021 and damaged vital materials used to create the paint. In short, Rosco was already operating with less paint than it was used to.
“There was this shortage,” Proud said, “and then we gave them everything we could — I don’t know they can claim credit.”
Proud acknowledged, though, that, “They did clean us out on paint.”
Even so, there was just enough to continue production on the film, which was mostly shot at at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden in the United Kingdom.
In the Architectural Digest interview, “Barbie” director Greta Gerwig said the pink paint was important in “maintaining the ‘kid-ness’” of the film’s aesthetic.
“I wanted the pinks to be very bright, and everything to be almost too much,” Gerwig said, emphasizing that she didn’t want to “forget what made me love Barbie when I was a little girl.”
Greenwood obliged, as evidenced in images seen in the film’s first full-length trailer, which reveal dollhouse-like mansions adorned with beds, a closet full of clothing accessories, stylish couches, dining tables, and a slide, all colored pink.
The cars that characters drive, the roads and the lamp posts that illuminate the way — all pink. The floors they dance on are, you guessed it, pink.
Although the film’s plot had been somewhat mysterious in the months leading up to its July 21 release, a recent trailer shows Margot Robbie’s Barbie and Ryan Gosling’s Ken on an adventure out of Barbieland and into “the real world.”
The trailer shows Will Ferrell as what appears to be the head of Mattel and the film’s principal villain. “Barbie” commands a star-studded cast that also includes Simu Liu, Dua Lipa, Helen Mirren, Issa Rae, America Ferrera, Kate McKinnon, Michael Cera, Ariana Greenblatt, Rhea Perlman, Ana Cruz Kayne, Emma Mackey, Hari Nef, Alexandra Shipp, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Ncuti Gatwa, Scott Evans, Jamie Demetriou, Connor Swindells, Sharon Rooney, Nicola Coughlan and Ritu Arya.
As the ongoing Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike nears its second month, three MCU projects have been shut down because of the job action, with the potential for more on the way.
After months of deliberation, the WGA finally declared that its members would take strike action starting on May 2 as the Guild seeks a new deal with Hollywood studios.
Despite the strike, some MCU titles march on, with titles like Captain America: New World Order and Deadpool 3 both remaining in production without the presence of writers.
The Strike Hits Three MCU Projects
Thus far, three Marvel Studios titles have been put on ice because of the Hollywood writers’ strike, halting production/pre-production and shutting down work on the titles for the red brand.
After the rocky road the project has seen with changing directors, new writers, and production delays, this break may honestly be the best thing for Blade, it just may mean the film does not ultimately hit that September 6, 2024 release date.
2.) Thunderbolts
Marvel
After initially being planned to film sometime this summer, Thunderbolts production was put on hold because of the WGA strike. The current plan is for cameras to start rolling immediately following the end of the ongoing labor dispute.
With no end in sight for the strike, which could push filming for the comic book team-up later into the year, or (on the extreme end of things) potentially even into 2024. However, with the script for the film finished, the Thunderbolts team should be able to hit the ground running once the strike is finished.
Cretton took to social media revealing the project was going to take a break until the strike was over, remarking that he will be “Marching with [his] tribe,” referencing that he will stand with his fellow writers in their decision to strike.
Spider-Man 4
Most recently, Tom Holland disclosed in early June that development on Marvel Studios and Sony Pictures’ fourth MCU Spider-Man film has been put “on pause in solidarity with the writers.”Spider-Man 4’s script development is still in its early days, so, unlike the projects listed above, the strike’s impact on Spider-Man 4 doesn’t have an immediate impact on any physical production preparation.
What Else at Marvel Studios Could the Strike Impact?
Right now, there are only three MCU productions that have been completely shut down because of the ongoing writers’ strike, but that is not to say they will be the only ones.
Of course, those titles that are currently filming like Captain America 4 will feel the effects of not having writers on set. While audiences may never know the difference when they sit down in the theater to see the Star-Spangled blockbuster next year, surely, the cast and crew working on set have noticed the difference.
At the time of writing, the project most likely to have production halted that has not yet is Deadpool 3. One would think with cameras now officially rolling on the R-rated sequel it would be safe; however, that may not be the case.
This means that the film could get a few days or weeks into production and realize the herculean task of making a movie like Deadpool 3 without writers on the set, before ultimately revealing production has been put on hold.
Of course, at this point, it is hard to tell just how big an impact the WGA strike will have on the MCU and its upcoming slate. Progress on anything currently being written (ie Avengers: The Kang Dynasty, Fantastic Four, and Avengers: Secret Wars) should be slowed as writers are obligated to halt all union work.
The idea of solar energy being transmitted from space is not a new one. In 1968, a NASA engineer named Peter Glaser produced the first concept design for a solar-powered satellite. But only now, 55 years later, does it appear scientists have actually carried out a successful experiment. A team of researchers from Caltech announced on Thursday that their space-borne prototype, called the Space Solar Power Demonstrator (SSPD-1), had collected sunlight, converted it into electricity and beamed it to microwave receivers installed on a rooftop on Caltech’s Pasadena campus. The experiment also proves that the setup, which launched on January 3, is capable of surviving the trip to space, along with the harsh environment of space itself.
“To the best of our knowledge, no one has ever demonstrated wireless energy transfer in space even with expensive rigid structures. We are doing it with flexible lightweight structures and with our own integrated circuits. This is a first,” said Ali Hajimiri, professor of electrical engineering and medical engineering and co-director of Caltech’s Space Solar Power Project (SSPP), in a press release published on Thursday.
The experiment — known in full as Microwave Array for Power-transfer Low-orbit Experiment (or MAPLE for short) — is one of three research projects being carried out aboard the SSPD-1. The effort involved two separate receiver arrays and lightweight microwave transmitters with custom chips, according to Caltech. In its press release, the team added that the transmission setup was designed to minimize the amount of fuel needed to send them to space, and that the design also needed to be flexible enough so that the transmitters could be folded up onto a rocket.
Space-based solar power has long been something of a holy grail in the scientific community. Although expensive in its current form, the technology carries the promise of potentially unlimited renewable energy, with solar panels in space able to collect sunlight regardless of the time of day. The use of microwaves to transmit power would also mean that cloud cover wouldn’t pose an interference, as Nikkeinotes.
Caltech’s Space Solar Power Project (SSSP) is hardly the only team that has been attempting to make space-based solar power a reality. Late last month, a few days before Caltech’s announcement, Japan’s space agency, JAXA, announced a public-private partnership that aims to send solar power from space by 2025. The leader of that project, a Kyoto University professor, has been working on space-based solar power since 2009. Japan also had a breakthrough of its own nearly a decade ago in 2015, when JAXA scientists transmitted 1.8 kilowatts of power — about enough energy to power an electric kettle — more than 50 meters to a wireless receiver.
The Space Solar Power Project was founded back in 2011. In addition to MAPLE, the SSPD-1 is being used to assess what types of cells are the most effective in surviving the conditions of space. The third experiment is known as DOLCE (Deployable on-Orbit ultraLight Composite Experiment), a structure measuring six-by-six feet that “demonstrates the architecture, packaging scheme, and deployment mechanisms of the modular spacecraft,” according to Caltech. It has not yet been deployed.
We call it breaking in because it can feel like a heist.
I’ve been at this game for ten years and over that decade I feel like I’ve heard every single way people have achieved success. From rich parents to luck to bumping into someone who would later represent them, I’ve collected the stories and assembled them into things you can do that don’t involve as much luck as they do the legwork.
The film industry is notoriously difficult to penetrate. But if you have the passion, talent, and determination, there are multiple ways to break into Hollywood. Whether you’re an aspiring writer, director, or actor, this comprehensive guide will provide insights and advice on how you can kickstart your career as a filmmaker.
Here are the top ten ways to break into Hollywood, with detailed information on each route and valuable tips from industry insiders (and me).
Let’s dive in.
‘Power of the Dog’ director, Jane CampionCredit: Kirsty Griffin/Netflix
1. Gain Experience in Low-Level Productions
Start from the bottom and work your way up!
Find Opportunities in Student Projects and Low-Budget Films
One of the best ways to start in the film industry is to gain experience in low-level productions such as student-led projects or low-budget production companies. High-end TV and major film sets often require previous work experience, making low-level projects an excellent starting point for those lacking experience.
While these projects may not pay well, they provide valuable experience and networking opportunities.
Search for jobs on online application websites like Mandy and Backstage, join Facebook groups, or rely on word of mouth to find low-budget productions seeking assistance.
Some of my first jobs were just PA’ing commercials, but I made contacts who got me hired doing lots of other things along the way.
Be Prepared for Unglamorous Roles
I have gotten coffee for so many people. At one gig, I used to carry 17 coffees from the Starbucks at the bottom of the hill to LA Center Studios. The trick was using empty Amazon boxes to keep them steady.
When starting in the film industry, expect to work in unglamorous roles such as runners or production assistants. These roles may involve making tea and coffee, administrative work, or driving actors to set. Although these tasks may not be enjoyable, they are invaluable to production and serve as a great starting point for your career.
Learn from observing others on set and use these entry-level roles as a stepping stone to climb the ladder in the industry.
Plus, you never know when the people you work with will get promoted and take you with them.
Don’t try to be everything all at once. Focus on what you can do and for who. Build from there.
Find Your Area of Expertise
To break into Hollywood, it’s essential to specialize in a specific area within the film industry. Whether you’re interested in sound, lighting, post-production, writing, or directing, focus on developing your skills in a particular field.
This specialization will make it easier to find relevant jobs and projects, helping you stand out from the competition.
Can you be good at multiple things? Yes! But when breaking in, focus on one, and as you break down those doors, add others.
Again, this is advice, not rules!
Build Your Skill Set
Once you’ve identified your area of expertise, invest time in developing your skill set. Attend specialized courses, follow online tutorials, read books, and network with others in the industry. Continually improving your skills will increase your chances of finding work and growing your reputation within the industry.
Your reputation is everything. Protect it at all costs.
‘The Master’ behind the scenesCredit: The Weinstein Company
3. Network and Build Connections
Networking is the single most important way to break in. I cannot emphasize enough how much it will affect your career.
Attend Film Festivals and Industry Events
So how do you meet new people?
One of the most effective ways to break into the film industry is by networking. Attend film festivals, industry events, and workshops to meet other filmmakers, actors, producers, and agents. Building relationships with people in the industry can lead to job opportunities and collaborations.
The more people you meet, the more it pays off.
Utilize Social Media and Professional Platforms
We’re in the middle of a tech revolution, so why not use it to help yourself?
In addition to attending events, use social media and professional platforms like LinkedIn to connect with industry professionals. Reach out to individuals, share your work, and engage with others to build your network. Networking is crucial in the film industry, as many job opportunities arise through personal connections and recommendations.
Sundance FIlm Festival 2022 is going virtual once again. Credit: Arthur Mola/Invision/AP
4. Create a Portfolio or Showreel
I have a website, I know people who have reels on Vimeo, the point is, have your stuff available to check out.
Showcase Your Work and Skills
Building a portfolio or showreel is essential for showcasing your abilities and breaking into the film industry. Whether you’re a writer, director, cinematographer, or editor, ensure your portfolio highlights your area of expertise. Include previous work experience, independent projects, and any relevant achievements.
People want to see your work!
‘Dave’Credit: FX
5. Work on Other People’s Films
Collaboration is key to making your way through Hollywood. Helping others helps yourself.
Gain Valuable Experience and Connections
Even if your ultimate goal is to direct or produce your films, working on other people’s projects is an essential step in breaking into the industry. By being involved in various productions, you’ll gain valuable experience and build connections with talented crew members and like-minded individuals.
Plus, you can learn new techniques and new approaches from your friends.
Working on other people’s films allows you to observe different roles and processes within the industry. This hands-on experience will help you develop your skills and decide which area of filmmaking you’re most passionate about. Plus, being present on set increases your chances of being noticed and recommended for future opportunities.
6. Prepare for Long Hours and Sacrifices
Time in this industry is relative. It’s all about projects you finish. Get ready to put in the hours to hone your craft.
Expect Long Hours and Limited Personal Time
Breaking into the film industry often involves working long hours and sacrificing personal time. Be prepared for early mornings, late nights, and extended periods of work. Understand that a career in the film industry may require a different lifestyle than a traditional 9-to-5 job, and be ready to adapt.
You will work weekends. You will work long days. Hopefully, you avoid toxic environments. Never let anyone treat you poorly. But understand that some gigs will last well into the night.
Determine if the Lifestyle Suits You
Some people are not going to like working in Hollywood. I have so many friends who have left for this reason. That is okay!
Before pursuing a career in the film industry, consider whether the demands and lifestyle suit your personal needs and preferences. Balancing work and personal life can be challenging, so assess your priorities and ensure you’re prepared for the potential sacrifices.
Behind the scenes of ‘Blackkklansman’Credit: Focus Features
7. Create Your Own Opportunities
Stop waiting for other people to hand you things. Be the driving force behind your own opportunities.
Produce Your Own Content
Make your own things, even if you never show them around. Learn how to work and what works for you.
If you’re struggling to find opportunities in the film industry, consider creating your own projects. With the accessibility of technology and resources, producing your own content has never been easier. Write, direct, or act in your own films and share them on social media or submit them to film festivals.
Be Persistent and Adaptable
Breaking into the film industry requires persistence and adaptability. Don’t be discouraged by rejection or setbacks; instead, use them as learning experiences and motivation to improve your skills and increase your chances of success.
There is no one way to break in, try anything and be okay with failure. It happens to us all.
‘Nomadland’Credit: Searchlight
8. Explore Alternative Routes and Locations
Hollywood is awesome, but there are ways to break in from anywhere. I think they are harder and can limit networking, but anything is possible.
Consider Opportunities Outside of Hollywood
While Hollywood may be the epicenter of the film industry, there are numerous opportunities for filmmakers in other locations and industries.
Explore job openings in independent films, theatre, commercials, or even countries where English isn’t the native language. By broadening your horizons, you may find unique opportunities to develop your career.
And you might be able to fill jobs that other people there are not qualified to do.
Utilize Your Skills in Non-Entertainment Fields
At the end of the day, you need to make money to survive. Everyone needs a day job, so figure out what kind of day job might have overlapping skill sets.
Don’t limit yourself to traditional film industry roles. There are many jobs available in non-entertainment fields that require writing, directing, or acting skills, such as marketing, advertising, or corporate video production.
Pursuing these opportunities can help you gain valuable experience, build your network, and potentially transition into the film industry.
And they can keep you sharp for your heart’s work.
Don’t let bumps in the road dissuade you from what you want in life. Buckle up and push ahead.
Set Clear and Attainable Goals
Don’t make wild claims or goals that you could never achieve.
Rather than focusing on unattainable dreams, set clear and achievable goals for your career in the film industry. Identify the steps and milestones needed to reach your goals, and work consistently towards them.
Chloé Zhao on set of ‘Eternals’Credit: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
10. Be Patient and Persistent
Breaking into Hollywood takes time, patience, and persistence. Stay motivated, continue to develop your skills, and seize opportunities as they arise. With dedication and perseverance, your hard work will eventually pay off, and you’ll find success in the film industry.
By following these tips, focusing on your goals, and exploring alternative routes, you can build a successful career as a filmmaker. Remember, the key to success is persistence, adaptability, and a passion for your craft.
An experienced feature film Producer, Emmanuel Itier directed several pictures before completing in 2012 the Peace documentary ‘The Invocation’ narrated by Sharon Stone and staring Desmond Tutu, HH The Dalai Lama, Deepak Chopra as well as many worldwide peace activists. In 2013 Mr. Itier executive-produced a Drama filmed in Hong Kong: ‘Red Passage’ which won many Awards in the Festival circuit. Emmanuel Itier has also been a successful Music and Film journalist for both Rock Magazines, French TV networks and various websites for the last twenty five years. Finally Itier has been a buyer for many French and American Film distribution companies for the last twenty years. He was on the board of directors of the Santa Barbara Film Festival for a decade and he writes poetry. He is also very involved with charities and the political world. Mr. Itier seats on the board of Directors of ‘Darfur Women Action Group’ in an attempt to bring Peace to Darfur. He is also the founding President of the Rotary E-Club of World Peace ( www.RotaryEclubofWorldPeace.org ) and he is part of the U.N Association, Santa Barbara chapter. Lately he joined the World Council of Wisdom (https://thevisioneers.ca ) to bring Peace to the World.
Mr. Itier grew up in France and he moved in the USA thirty years ago. He resides in Santa Barbara, California with his wife and three sons. Emmanuel Itier released in 2014 another inspiring documentary Celebrating Women around the planet: ‘FEMME-Women healing the World.’ This Documentary earned over 20 Awards around the World.
Late 2017 Mr. Itier completed his third feature Documentary: ‘Shamanic Trekker’, about shamanism in Peru. Mr. Itier has just released two more documentaries in order to keep “Making Peace, One movie at a time.”
These films are part of a series called ‘The Oneness Collection: Documentaries for a conscious Humanity.’ The first one is called ‘The Cure: Healing The Mind, Healing The Body, Healing the Planet’ and the politically loaded Doc: ‘We The People: A Re-Evolution of Economics and Politics’, which is sure to shake the system!
Mr. Itier is a recipient of the ‘2018 Global Citizen Award’ from the prestigious United Nation Association and he was named President of The Year 2018 by the Rotary E-Club of World Peace.
In 2019, just before the beginning of the Covid pandemic, Mr. Itier went to film a drama about quantum physics in Germany and in German. The shooting was stopped by the crisis and he hopes to return by mid 2021 to complete this new endeavor.
In 2021 the impactful and very timely 6th documentary directed by Emmanuel will be released: ‘Guns, Bombs & War: A Love Story’.
Finally, Mr. Itier has formed a spiritual and political movement in France called ‘The French Victory’ (www.LaVicotireFrancaise.net ) with the ambition to run for President in 2022. His vision is: “I, The People – We, President.”
Forrest Gump lived a famously full life. Perhaps a little too full, if you ask Tom Hanks.
Appearing on a panel at The New Yorker Live this week, the actor recalled the extensive travel that was required for the role that won him his second Oscar. As Hanks remembers it, the grueling process of filming the montage of Forrest running across America made it difficult for him to show up for the film’s most important scenes.
“I was so exhausted because we had shot twenty-seven days straight,” Hanks said. “Remember how Forrest ran across the country? Well, there’s only one way to get those scenes, in those days. You had to fly to the goddamn place, put on the costume, run for an hour and a half, then go back, get on the plane, and then fly to, say, New Hampshire, and do it all over again. So I’m exhausted. I don’t know what’s going on. The scenes on the park bench have oceans of dialogue, and we shot them in a day and a half.”
Hanks revealed that he was seriously concerned about his ability to remember all of his monologues in his exhausted state.
“I said to Bob — the director, Robert Zemeckis — ‘Bob, my head is fragile, frazzled. We’re doing all these scenarios with different people, and every one of them has a page and a half of dialogue. I will never be able to keep this in my head.’”
Fortunately, his director had a plan. Hanks said that Zemeckis opted to shoot certain scenes in the style of a multi-camera sitcom, getting multiple angles at the same time and allowing Hanks to rely on cue cards, in order to speed things up for his leading man.
“‘Oh, don’t worry, Tom. We’ll shoot it like ‘I Love Lucy.’ We’ll have four cameras. We’ll put the words up on cards if you need it. You can just read ’em,’” Hanks recalled Zemeckis saying to him. “I said, ‘Oh, great, thank you. Let’s make this an even more artificial atmosphere!’”
Hanks’ concerns ended up being unfounded and “Forrest Gump” became one of his most recognizable roles (it presumably isn’t on the list of movies that he hates). While the actor said that he didn’t know if the film would be a hit while they worked on it, he admires Zemeckis for being willing to take creative risks on the film.
“And so Bob Zemeckis, God bless him — I’ve worked with him more than once — landed on the absolute truth of anybody who has gone forward and said, ‘We are going to commit something to film today,’” Hanks said. “You do not know if it is going to work out. You can only have faith.”
The Navigator Exotic in Destiny 2 is the most recent Trace Rifle that players can obtain following the release of the Season of the Deep and the Ghosts of the Deep dungeon. Trace Rifles are not the most popular weapon in Bungie’s online shooter, but they are a great source of Elemental damage against opponents. The recently introduced Navigator Trace Rifle, however, is not only an Exotic piece but also shoots Strand munitions, making it a reliable asset for Strand builds in Destiny 2.
SCREENRANT VIDEO OF THE DAYSCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT
Players who tend to occupy a more supporting role in a Fireteam will have an additional tool at their disposal if they choose to use The Navigator. This Exotic Trace Rifle in Destiny 2 has the Protective Weave perk, which allows the user to fire the weapon at an ally and, by doing so, grant Woven Mail to themselves and the target. Woven Mail is a powerful protective buff that serves as a Strand armor, so being able to apply it with a weapon can prove to be an excellent strategy for harder activities.
How To Unlock The Navigator Exotic In Destiny 2
However, before players can actively use The Navigator Exotic in Destiny 2, they must unlock it. Luckily, the method of obtaining it is quite straightforward. On the other hand, it is somewhat offset by a low drop rate that may require some grinding. To get the Exotic Trace Rifle, players must run the Ghosts of the Deep dungeon and, essentially, complete it. Unfortunately, the weapon is locked behind the last encounter in the activity; a boss called Simmumah ur-Nokru.
As calculated by Blueberries.gg, the drop rate for The Navigator in the Ghosts of the Deep Dungeon is estimated at around 5%. With such a low drop rate, players may have to run the dungeon multiple times before actually obtaining the Exotic Trace Rifle. To gain access to the Ghosts of the Deep Dungeon in Destiny 2, players need to have the Lightfall Dungeon Key, which can be acquired individually or as part of the Annual Pass edition of the expansion.
How To Obtain The Navigator’s Catalyst In Destiny 2
After players have obtained The Navigator Exotic in Destiny 2, they can consider getting the weapon’s Catalyst. This additional perk grants the weapon a special form of reload in which the next shot fired creates a Grapple Tangle. While this does not directly help with offensive firepower, it is yet another Strand support skill that can aid the rest of the Fireteam. Finally, as demonstrated by 360GameTV on YouTube, players need to run the Ghosts of the Deep dungeon and complete a few hidden side objectives.
The main goal is to collect Dead Ghosts and, with the Vestige of Light buff, find the Dormant Statues in Destiny 2‘s Ghosts of the Deep dungeon and activate them. These activations will spawn a shielded Lucent Hive mini-boss and three yellow bar enemies. Each yellow bar enemy has a Hive symbol near them, and defeating the correct ones in order and standing in the puddle they create will grant players the Piercing Light buff, which will allow the Lucent Hive mini-boss to be damaged. There are a total of three fights like these throughout the dungeon.
While each fight is held as an individual encounter, all the fights necessary to obtain The Navigator’s Catalyst are against the same opponent: Thul-Ar, Acolyte of Nokris.
The first encounter needed to obtain The Navigator’s Catalyst in Destiny 2 is near the starting point of the Ghosts of the Deep Dungeon and should be completed after the first boss is killed. Activating the second encounter requires players to pass through the underwater section, get the Dead Ghosts, and return to the previous room, going through the submerged section again.
This last Destiny 2 puzzle is in the main platforming session of the dungeon. The trick with it is that once the Dead Ghosts are collected, all the enemies in the area respawn, so getting to the Dormant Statue can be tricky. However, 360GameTV makes their way through a safe and straightforward path that can easily be done with the help of the Fireteam. After all three optional encounters are dealt with, The Navigator’s Catalyst will be rewarded to players who have not yet obtained it in Destiny 2.
Make sure to manually crush Thul-Ar’s Ghost in the third and last encounter of Ghosts of the Deep dungeon, otherwise, he will respawn with full health.
After gaining The Navigator’s Catalyst in Destiny 2, players need to level it up to unlock its extra perk. To do so, players must kill a certain number of opponents using the Exotic Trace Rifle. The estimate is around 400 and 500 opponents, as is the case with most Exotic weapon Catalysts. After this is done, the special reload will become available to equip The Navigator with, and Strand players in Destiny 2 can start using the Grapple Tangles in a new and creative way.
PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Microsoft Windows, Stadia
Released:
2017-09-08
Developer:
Bungie
Publisher:
Activision, Bungie
Genre:
Sci-Fi, Action
Multiplayer:
Online Co-Op, Online Multiplayer
ESRB:
T
Summary:
Destiny 2 is a multi-player, live-service, first-person shooter by the original creators of Halo, Bungie. Players will assume the role of a Guardian – an elite force of protectors of Earth that are bestowed with a power called Light to defend humanity from encroaching aliens and a threat known as the Darkness. The game has several expansions that flesh out the world and constantly change the core game’s world while introducing brand new challenging raid events for teams of players to take on.
How Long To Beat:
12h 17m
Expansion Packs :
Forsaken, Shadowkeep, Beyond Light, The Witch Queen, Light Fall
Hugo Speer, known for his role in 1997’s The Full Monty, is opening up about why he believes he was unfairly let go from the upcoming Disney+ television spinoff of the hit movie.
The actor starred as Guy in the 90s film that followed six unemployed steel workers as they form a male striptease act. Decades later, he was among several original castmembers set to reprise their roles in the series, which is set to premiere June 14.
But everything changed when Disney said Speer’s contract was terminated for “inappropriate conduct” during filming in Manchester, England. During a recent interview with the Daily Mail, Hugo claimed that a runner, with some on-set experience, knocked on his trailer when he was changing, and while he claims he told her to wait a minute, she opened the door anyway. The actor said he hid behind a wardrobe and was confused at why she didn’t leave when she realized he was changing.
A few days passed and that’s when Hugo said a producer pulled him aside while on set and told him, “There’s been a couple of complaints about you.”
Huge responded, “What?’ I’ve never, in 31 years, had a single complaint about my conduct.” The actor said the producer then proceeded to tell him, “You’ve been seen undressed in your trailer.”
After being “told I’d made members of the crew feel ‘uncomfortable,’” Hugo said he was left “shocked.”
“I tried to think back and remembered the runner, but she hadn’t said anything since she opened the door on me,” he added. “Not ‘that was a bit awkward.’ Nothing. We just carried on doing our jobs.”
He ended up being sent home for several weeks, hoping it would all be worked out, but Hugo said after an investigation, his character was written out of the rest of the series and he was terminated.
According to a copy of an investigation report that he received, Hugo said he was accused of being seen undressed in his trailer by a costume trainee, and she complained she had seen him walking naked by an open door in his trailer.
Since being let go from the project, Hugo said he hasn’t worked. “It was tragi-comic, but they didn’t realise how badly affected I was,” the actor told the outlet. “I went into massive, deep shock. As you can see, I’m still kind of there.”
After everything, Hugo said he also struggled with depression and his mental health. He added, “They’ve taken my job. They’ve taken my reputation. They’ve taken my money. They’ve taken my mental health.”
A Disney spokesperson said in a statement to the Daily Mail, saying, “Last year, we were made aware of allegations of inappropriate conduct by Hugo Speer on the set of The Full Monty. As is policy, an independent investigation was launched. Upon its completion, the decision was made to terminate his contract, with immediate effect.”
The Hollywood Reporter has reached out to Disney reps for comment.
One of the joys of being an independent film critic is witnessing the sheer breadth of creativity that enterprising, low-budget filmmakers use to bring their visions to life. Directors have made some truly stellar motion pictures with barely two cents and a lot of imagination. On the flip side, some flicks seem to be made to turn around a quick buck from unsuspecting viewers; yes, even in the indie realm, this exists. Enter director Dennis Devine and screenwriter Randy Oppenheimer’s comedic horror tale Fangs Out.
Fangs Out is about a group of friends seeking less-than-reputable plastic surgery. Alaina (Heidi Hemlock) pays for her college tuition by acting in porn. As such, she would like vaginal restoration surgery. Her beau, Quinn (Brian Easter Jr.), is an African-American student who wants a bigger c**k. Rallying the troops, so to speak, is Skyler (Marlene McCohen), who wants larger tits because…. Going along for moral support is Madison (Stacy Aung). Maybe it’s her Catholic school upbringing, or perhaps she truly loves her friends as they are; either way, Madison keeps trying to talk the others out of getting the surgery.
“…there is something sinister about the doctor and his nurses.”
The other three don’t listen, and after a long but scenic drive, the four friends wind up at a bookstore in a small town on the U.S. side of the border. There, they consult the pervy shopkeeper Tony (Keric Rivas), who draws a map of the path they must walk to cross the border to the plastic surgery center. While they arrive later than expected, Nurse Angela (Desiree Estrada) invites them without hesitation. Skyler and company are now introduced to the plastic surgeon Dr. Pavor (Samuel Code). Throughout their time there, Alaina, Quinn, Skyler, and Madison quickly realize that there is something sinister about the doctor and his nurses.
All the while, Detective Lee (Randy Oppenheimer) is searching for his daughter. She was another patient at this mysterious, under-the-table establishment. The detective’s quest for his offspring puts his life in great danger, as it turns out the surgery house is a harbor for vampires.
A car bomb killed at least one person on Friday night in Russian-occupied southern Ukraine, according to Ukrainian and Russian officials, highlighting the war’s reach far beyond the front lines as Ukrainian partisans aim to undermine their occupiers.
The blast occurred in Mykhailivka, a town in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region. The vehicle targeted was carrying “four supporters of the Kremlin,” said Ivan Fedorov, the Ukrainian mayor in exile of the Russian-occupied city of Melitopol, about 30 miles south, on the Telegram messaging app.
Vladimir Rogov, a Russian occupation official in the Zaporizhzhia region, confirmed the attack in a Telegram post, saying the bomb killed a “local businessman” named Sergei Didovoduk and injured two others. On Saturday, he said that the authorities had opened an investigation.
The attack comes as Ukrainian forces are preparing for a highly anticipated counteroffensive that analysts believe will take place in southern Ukraine. Kyiv’s troops will probably aim to sever the land routes that connect Russia to Crimea, which Moscow illegally annexed in 2014, according to analysts and Western officials.
“We are ready,” said President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal that was published on Saturday.
Much is riding on the coming counteroffensive, especially on the heels of Russia’s recent capture of the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut. In the meantime, partisan attacks like the one on Friday night have become a staple in occupied areas as Ukrainian insurgents target the Russian military and so-called Russian collaborators.
Mr. Rogov portrayed Mr. Didovoduk as a member of local civil society who “regularly fed neighbors in need in his cafe for free.” According to Mr. Rogov and unverified footage of the aftermath of the attack posted on social media, Mr. Didovoduk died in a Soviet-made Niva car, an unassuming sport utility vehicle.
Ukrainian officials suggested Mr. Didovoduk’s cafe, the Hetman, was frequented by Russian soldiers and occupation officials.
The cafe is named after the customary title of the head of the Cossack state that existed in Ukraine in the 17th and 18th centuries and played a major role in the foundation of modern Ukraine.
Mr. Didovoduk was registered to compete for Russia’s governing party in upcoming local elections, Mr. Rogov said. The Kremlin has pushed forward with plans to stage local elections in September in four Ukrainian regions that Russia illegally annexed last year, an attempt to legitimize the moves despite the constantly changing frontiers of the territory under Russian control.
Ukraine has denounced the elections in the annexed regions — Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Luhansk and Donetsk — as a sham.
The killing of Mr. Didovoduk also raises questions about the legality of partisan attacks under the internationally recognized law of war, including whether partisans are considered combatants.
Ukrainian partisans say they are civilians and the legal basis for their activity is regulated under Ukrainian law, not the laws of war that include prohibitions on a soldier targeting a civilian official. But under international laws, civilians become combatants when they start taking part in hostilities.
Here’s what else is happening in Ukraine:
Bomb Shelters: A nationwide inspection of bomb shelters across Ukraine found that 893 of more than 4,800 checked so far were “unsuitable for use,” the interior minister posted Saturday. Mr. Zelensky ordered inspections in response to accusations and questions raised by the deaths of three people who had been locked outside their neighborhood shelter at a children’s health clinic in Kyiv on Thursday.
Amid an ongoing criminal investigation, the clinic security guard was ordered held in custody on Saturday pending a trial, according to the Kyiv City prosecutor’s office. Three other people were placed under 24-hour house arrest, it added.
Belgorod Assaults: Attacks in the Russian border region of Belgorod, where some areas have become a new front line, continued on Saturday. Belgorod’s regional governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said hat the area of Shebekino, a town of 40,000 six miles from the border, had been coming under Ukrainian shelling since the morning. Two people were killed, he said, bringing to seven the number of people killed in recent days.
HARDIN, Mont. — Carly Ann Goddard, a 22-year-old stay-at-home mom, drives an hour past grazing cattle, sheep and horses to buy groceries, a testament to her isolation in a rural pocket of eastern Montana.
But when she uploads a short video to her TikTok account, which she does several times a week to chronicle life as a rancher’s wife, she reaches an audience of 99,000 — more people than inhabit nine of her state’s 10 largest cities and 660 times the population of the town where she lives.
That audience allows Goddard an opportunity that wouldn’t be available otherwise in her part of Montana. As an influencer on TikTok, she earns between $2,000 and $6,000 a month for endorsing the merchants who sell the items she talks about in her videos. She says she’s developed friendships and business partnerships that would have been impossible without the app.
“I feel like I have found my purpose,” Goddard said. “I wake up every morning, loving that I do this, loving that I get to stay home with my son. … It’s built my confidence.”
Now she worries all that could disappear. Montana last month became the first state to outlaw TikTok, citing concern that the app could allow the company’s Chinese owners to hoover up Americans’ personal data and become a font of anti-American propaganda — though Goddard’s videos of her son, her furniture and her favorite recipes are decidedly wholesome.
(Video: @carlygoddardd via TikTok)
The prospect has forced Goddard and her husband to put on hold plans of expanding their family and contemplate moving to Florida, where they met, though the ban doesn’t go into effect until next year and faces at least two legal challenges — including the lawsuit Goddard joined last month with four fellow TikTokers who say the ban violates their First Amendment rights.
Goddard considers herself apolitical; she’s never voted. But in standing up for her right to post to TikTok, she’s firmly taken a side in a heated debate that roils not just Montana but much of the rest of the country. While many TikTokers have sent supportive messages, she’s also gotten a deluge of hateful comments from strangers calling her a communist and accusing her of “ruining” Montana. The comments are so alarming that she insists on meeting a reporter far from her home.
(Video: @mt_guy via TikTok)
At first glance, Montana seems like an unlikely place for the TikTok drama to play out. Only a million people live here; the state is one of the nation’s largest by area and least densely populated. Its dominant industries — agriculture, forestry, mining, oil and gas extraction, tourism — are more rooted to the land than tethered to the cloud.
The latest technology is present but not ubiquitous: It’s possible to drive 800 miles and encounter only one Tesla on the highway. People aren’t noticeably filming videos or snapping selfies for social media in public, though each of the influencers suing Montana distinctly remembers the first time a fan recognized them on the street.
Still, technology is driving a lot of change in Montana, and not everyone is happy about it. During the pandemic, digital nomads from other states flocked to Missoula and Bozeman, the state’s second and fourth most populous cities, driving up property prices and infusing a big-city intensity and sense of anonymity into places that locals say not long ago felt like small towns.
Outsiders are even importing their water sports. On a recent Saturday, over a dozen people were surfing in the Clark Fork River in Missoula. And it didn’t take long to find a California transplant among them who’s troubled by the rightward current in Montana politics.
Montana was once solidly purple, frequently electing governors of one party while giving the other control of the state legislature. One of Montana’s two U.S. senators, Jon Tester, is a Democrat who’s been in office since 2006, though he’s up for reelection next year.
But lately, the state has grown more red. In 2020, Republicans gained control of the governor’s office and the state legislature, where GOP lawmakers outnumber Democrats 2-to-1. It’s only the second time in the past 75 years that the GOP has had such an across-the-board majority.
To some extent, the state’s divisions over politics and access to technology mirror those in the country at large: Conservatives are clustered in rural areas, where broadband access and cellphone reception can be spotty, and liberals are more likely to reside in cities, where it’s easier to get online and engage with the wider world. Last year, Gov. Greg Gianforte (R) announced a $309 million effort to expand Montanans’ access to reliable broadband.
TikTok is one of many national debates raging in Montana. Abortion remains legal here, though the governor recently signed new restrictions on the procedure. The legislature recently silenced its first openly transgender lawmaker, state Rep. Zooey Zephyr (D), after she spoke out against a bill aimed at banning gender-affirming care. And though the Montana constitution enshrines a right to a clean environment, Gianforte last month signed a bill barring the state from calculating the climate impacts of major projects such as coal mines and power plants.
Interviews with dozens of residents show that Montanans, like Americans at large, are divided on what to do about TikTok. According to a national Washington Post poll conducted in March, 41 percent of Americans support banning TikTok while 25 percent oppose a ban and 34 percent said they were unsure. Republicans were more likely than Democrats to support banning the Chinese-owned social media app; federal and state calls for a ban have largely been led by Republicans.
Goddard’s four co-plaintiffs live in or near the liberal college towns of Missoula and Bozeman. One of them, Heather DiRocco, 36, is a military veteran who said she felt compelled to speak up against the ban because she took an oath to protect people from foreign and domestic enemies — and she considers that oath to be everlasting.
“I served in the Marines because I believe in the freedoms we have in this country,” DiRocco said while sitting on a city bench in Bozeman. “I don’t believe we’re a communist country. I don’t believe that we are a fascist country. Do I see warning signs of it? Absolutely.”
(Video: @ladydredknot via TikTok)
Montana is among several states that have introduced bills this year seeking to restrict access to health care, sports and public accommodations by transgender people and bar them from changing their name or gender on a driver’s license or birth certificate. The Montana legislature exiled Zephyr from the House chamber during debate over one such bill, a move that free-speech proponents say bears troubling similarities to the TikTok ban.
Zephyr doesn’t make the connection herself. But she criticizes the ban for not meeting Montanans’ desire for data privacy. The last time voters amended the state constitution was to pass a 2022 amendment requiring a search warrant to access residents’ electronic data or communications.
One of Zephyr’s fellow Democrats proposed amending the TikTok bill so that it would apply to any social media company sharing user data with a foreign adversary, but the legislature rejected it. The governor suggested a similar amendment before signing the legislation into law, but the bill’s proponents shot it down.
The law’s failure to target any company but TikTok is a key issue in the company’s own legal challenge, which says the law violates the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition on bills of attainder, or laws that punish a specific business or person without a judicial proceeding.
The debate over TikTok exploded here after a Chinese spy balloon was spotted floating over the state in February. The bill’s lead sponsor, state Sen. Shelley Vance (R), argued that banning TikTok would put “an end to China’s surveillance operation in Montana.”
Vance didn’t respond to a request for comment. But at a grocery store in her district, voters voiced an array of views. Shayla Burch, 26, of Belgrade (Montana’s eighth largest city with a population of 13,500) called the ban “a breach of our freedom.”
“We should we able to express ourselves,” Burch said, adding that watching videos on TikTok makes her feel better when she’s sad. “It’s a coping thing. Please don’t take that away.”
Cheyanne Erickson, 23, said she’s “hardcore” in favor of the ban. “I do believe it’s something that’s used to watch over us, and it’s the most useless app ever.”
But Erickson said she doesn’t despise only TikTok: She got rid of all her social media accounts and is opposed to many technological advances. “I’d go back to paper and pen,” she said, adding that she’d “love to live in the 1950s.”
Hazel McKay, a 23-year-old painter, said he got rid of TikTok about a month ago after reading the app’s privacy policy and growing concerned about its ability to access his phone’s contacts and search history. But McKay said that he has friends who are upset about the ban and that he’s not interested in forcing his views on anyone else. He said he had experienced things like that at Montana State University, where professors pushed big-city politics onto small-town students like himself.
“I was hated for being a country kid instead of a city boy,” McKay said, adding that he’s seen Montana change immensely in his lifetime.
How much Montana has changed is another theme that surfaces in conversations about TikTok. McKay grew up in Bozeman, a city that some now derisively call “Bozeangeles” because it grew rapidly in recent years as remote workers arrived from California seeking more space and a laid-back lifestyle. McKay can’t afford to live there, he said, so he moved Belgrade, about 10 miles away.
When asked about TikTok, many Montana residents say they have stronger feelings about skyrocketing prices on everything including homes and lattes. According to a March analysis of home prices on Zillow by real estate firm Boulder Home Source, Montana home prices have increased 79 percent in the past five years, to an average of more than $430,000.
“The resentment toward outsiders has been around for quite awhile. But I think lately it has intensified,” said Mike Dennison, a longtime political reporter based in Helena, the state capital. Montana used to be a place where incomes weren’t great but the cost of living was low, Dennison said. “Now, you still don’t get paid that much, and it’s super expensive to live here.”
Outside Lynn’s Superfoods grocery store in Hardin, a town of about 4,000 in eastern Montana, truck driver Mike Hampton, 58, said he supports the ban because he has grandchildren who are glued to TikTok “to the point of distraction.” One was so absorbed by the app that she walked right into a tree in the backyard, he said.
Patti Medicinehorse, a critical-care paramedic in Big Horn County, said she, too, supports the ban because of her grandchildren. She worries that they’ll imitate one of those viral challenges where people do ill-advised things like cooking chicken soaked in NyQuil or gluing vampire fangs to their teeth.
“We try to teach them to think and to be responsible and respectful, and they get caught up in what everyone else is doing and they don’t think about the danger,” said Medicinehorse, 62.
Then there’s Goddard, who started experimenting with TikTok when she was feeling depressed and isolated as a stay-at-home mother in a small town. After seeing posts by a woman with a son the same age as hers, Goddard said she was inspired to try it herself.
Her short videos about life as a young mother and rancher’s wife quickly resonated with viewers from Texas to Britain.
“At first, obviously, I didn’t really know that I would impact people,” Goddard said as her son toddled outside a general store in Hardin, chasing his shadow in the morning sun. But people soon started telling her things like, “Oh, I hope that I can be the mom you are someday,” or “I can’t wait to be the wife that you are. I want to have that life.”
The social media platform has since become her lifeline to the outside world. In the summer, Goddard’s family relocates to the ranch where her husband works. Cell service is so spotty there that it’s easier to get on TikTok than make a phone call.
As her following grew, brands such as Caraway cookware and Baby Bjorn came calling. Before the brand deals, Goddard said her family could afford to go grocery shopping just once a month. Now, she said, “we can go whenever we want.”
“I’ve gotten so used to making this money,” Goddard added. “I don’t think I can go back to being just paycheck to paycheck.”
Miramax Presents The Film That Lit My Fuse is a Deadline video series that aims to provide an antidote to headlines about industry uncertainty by swinging the conversation back to the creative ambitions, formative influences and inspirations of some of today’s great screen artists.
Every installment asks the same five questions. Today’s subject is Jay Roach, the versatile director and producer who directed all eight of the first season of episodes of High Desert, the new Apple TV+ series that stars Patricia Arquette, Brad Garrett, Rupert Friend, Bernadette Peters and Matt Dillon.
Best known for directing the blockbuster comedy franchises Austin Powers and Meet the Fockers and producing the Sacha Baron Cohen subversive comedies Borat and Bruno, Roach has also directed a series of politically-charged dramas that include the Fox News Roger Ailes drama Bombshell, Recount, Game Change and All The Way, the Bryan Cranston-starrer Trumbo, the Will Ferrell-Zack Galifianakis-starrer The Campaign, Mystery, Alaska, Dinner for Schmucks and many others. How did Roach veer from earning an economics degree from Stanford to a four-time Emmy winner? A chance encounter with the David Lynch surreal film Eraserhead had a lot to do with the course change.
After less than a month of negotiations, the Directors Guild and Hollywood’s top studios and streamers have struck a tentative deal on a new three-year labor contract.
Details of the agreement between the union and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) include gains in wages and benefits, streaming residuals, AI protections and more. (Full details are below.) Union leaders will need to lay out what they perceive to be the gains and compromises in the contract to members in the coming days before members ultimately participate in a ratification vote. The ratification vote has been set for Tuesday.
The new deal arrives after the DGA and AMPTP spent all day Saturday at the negotiating table.
“We have concluded a truly historic deal,” said Jon Avnet, chair of the DGA’s Negotiations Committee. “It provides significant improvements for every Director, Assistant Director, Unit Production Manager, Associate Director and Stage Manager in our Guild. In these negotiations we made advances on wages, streaming residuals, safety, creative rights and diversity, as well as securing essential protections for our members on new key issues like artificial intelligence – ensuring DGA members will not be replaced by technological advances. This deal would not have been possible without the unity of the DGA membership, and we are grateful for the strong support of union members across the industry.”
“This deal recognizes the future of our industry is global and respects the unique and essential role of directors and their teams as we move into that future,” said Lesli Linka Glatter, President of the DGA. “As each new technology brings about major change, this deal ensures that each of the DGA’s 19,000 members can share in the success we all create together. The unprecedented gains in this deal are a credit to the excellent work, tenacity and preparation of our Negotiations Committee. I am so proud of the phenomenal leadership and dedication of Negotiations Chair Jon Avnet, Co-Chairs Karen Gaviola and Todd Holland and our Chief Negotiator, National Executive Director Russ Hollander, and our more than 80-member Negotiations Committee. I’m also incredibly grateful to the DGA staff, who worked tirelessly for the past year and a half to achieve this excellent deal.”
The DGA went into negotiations with an unusually grave tone on May 10. Beyond the fact that a writers’ strike had erupted before its leaders walked into the room, the labor group had been warning its 19,000 members for months that this round of talks with studios and streamers would be difficult, and strayed from its usual practice of negotiating far in advance of the contract’s expiration in the hopes that doing so would provide its negotiators with more leverage. The union also appeared to be preparing to mobilize its members quickly by creating an “outreach team” dedicated to handling internal communications and building unity.
“Every member of our union can be proud of the gains we’ve achieved across the board,” said Russell Hollander, National Executive Director of the DGA. “Significantly, and for the first time ever, global SVOD residuals will be paid based on the number of international subscribers. The result is an 76% increase in foreign residuals for the biggest services. As our industry becomes increasingly global, these gains are imperative to ensuring our members are valued and compensated for their incredible work.”
One of the DGA’s major pushes in these talks was to institute a streaming residual that reflects the growth of streaming platforms worldwide. The union argued that its Streaming Video On Demand (SVOD) residual is based primarily on the number of platform subscribers in North America, while the numbers of global subscribers count less, as employers pay a fraction of the domestic residuals rate to compensate for them.
The union was also looking to improve data transparency from studios and streamers, codify new safety and diversity, equity and inclusion measures, protect the union’s health and pension plan, raise wage floors and support contractual creative rights for members.
If the DGA made significant headway in areas such as streaming residuals and/or data transparency, its deal could have some minor ramifications for the ongoing writers’ strike. The Writers Guild of America went out on strike on May 2 after that union and the AMPTP could not reach an agreement on a slate of issues including residuals and data transparency. A DGA deal could offer a template to compromise on those particular points for the WGA. Still, the latter union largely has proposals (including many of its key asks) on the table that don’t have any overlap with the DGA’s demands and it remains unlikely that DGA progress on residuals and data transparency would change the game for writers.
In a letter to members June 1, the WGA re-asserted its position that the AMPTP “will have to negotiate with the WGA on our full agenda” no matter if one of the other unions — i.e. the DGA — agrees to a new contract.
On Wednesday, May 31, as the directors entered their last week of negotiations, a coalition of unions including the WGA, SAG-AFTRA, IATSE and the Teamsters said in a statement that they “stand alongside our sisters, brothers, and kin in the DGA in their pursuit of a fair contract.” The group added, “As eyes around the world again turn towards the negotiation table, we send a clear message to the AMPTP: Our solidarity is not to be underestimated. The Hollywood guilds and unions stand united, and we stand strong.”
DGA national executive director Russell Hollander led talks for the union, while AMPTP president Carol Lombardini led discussions for studios and streamers.
Here are details on the new contract:
· Wages and Benefits: Groundbreaking gains in wages and benefits including a 5% increase in the first year of the contract, 4% in the second year and 3.5% in the third year. Additional 0.5% to fund a new parental leave benefit.
· Global Streaming Residuals: Substantial increase in the residuals for dramatic programs made for SVOD by securing a new residual structure to pay foreign residuals. The result is a 76% increase in foreign residuals for the largest platforms so that residuals for a one-hour episode will now be roughly $90,000 for the first three exhibition years.
· Artificial Intelligence: Groundbreaking agreement confirming that AI is not a person and that generative AI cannot replace the duties performed by members.
· Non-Dramatic Programs: Established the industry’s first-ever terms and conditions for directors and their teams on non-dramatic (Variety and Reality) programs made for SVOD. Improved residuals and for the first time, Associate Directors and Stage Managers will now share in the residuals.
High Budget AVOD Terms and Conditions. Achieved the industry’s first-ever terms, creative rights protections, working conditions and residuals for scripted dramatic projects made for free to the consumer streaming services such as Freevee, Tubi and Roku. Unit Production Managers and Assistant Directors will share in the residuals.
Feature Directors: Historic first-time compensation for the months of “soft prep” Feature Directors currently perform for free prior to the start of the director’s official prep period.
· Episodic Directors: For Pay TV and SVOD, Episodic Directors won expanded paid post-production creative rights; and gained an additional guaranteed shoot day for one-hour programs – the first additional day added in more than 40 years.
· Reduction in Hours: Unprecedented reduction in the length of the Assistant Director’s day by one hour.
· Safety: Achieved concrete safety advancements including the first-ever pilot program to require the employment of dedicated safety supervisors; expanded safety training programs for both directors and their teams, and the ban of live ammunition on set.
Katrina Kaif once learnt a romantic Punjabi song for Vicky Kaushal.
Vicky Kaushal and Katrina Kaif got married on December 9, 2021 in Rajasthan.
Vicky Kaushal and Katrina Kaif are one of the most loved couples in BTown. The duo don’t shy away from expressing their love for each other with their thoughtful gestures. Having said that, Katrina had once tried to learn a romantic Punjabi song for Vicky, but ended up choosing the wrong song.
In an interview with ABP, Vicky revealed that he doesn’t remember which song his wife learned, but he shared that Katrina thought the song was romantic and wanted to sing it for him. “I don’t remember which song she sang but this one song she learnt, she thought it was a romantic song and wanted to sing that to me. But the actual meaning of the song was ‘mere se panga loge, toh main goli maar dunga (if you cross me, I’ll shoot you). I said, I’m finding this romantic, but please don’t sing this song in front of anyone else.”
When asked about his bonding with Katrina, the actor shared, “I think we connect on a human level more than anything else. Emotions are universal, so when you find that person when you feel that you can genuinely be your true self, then nothing else matters.”
Vicky also added that Katrina has started speaking a ‘little bit’ of Punjabi now. “She speaks a little bit of Punjabi now. If you ask her, ‘Ki haal chaal? (How are you?),’ she says, ‘Vadhiya hai (I am fine).’ Some time back she learned a Punjabi song. With me, it comes naturally to me. I listen to a lot of Punjabi songs, I don’t understand other songs, I don’t understand English songs.”
Earlier last year, in an interview with Filmfare, Vicky shared that his marriage with Katrina is ‘beautiful’. “Because it puts you in a peaceful, blissful state of mind that makes you feel loved all the time. And when you feel loved, you feel like giving love not just at home but outside the house as well. It just brings out the best version of yourself.” He also added how having Katrina as his companion for life is ‘just the most beautiful thing to happen.’
Vicky Kaushal and Katrina Kaif got married on December 9, 2021 in Rajasthan. The couple had an intimate wedding with only close friends and family members in attendance.
On the work front, Vicky Kaushal recently starred in Zara Hatke Zara Bachke with Sara Ali Khan. The film has been garnering positive responses from fans and critics and is doing well at the box office.
Aditi Giri, Senior Sub-Editor at News18. She is a Bollywood and Biryani enthusiast. She loves talking to your favourite BTown celebrities, and brings …Read More
Friday evening at the Fairmont Century Plaza had it all — and all for a good cause. “Housewives of Beverly Hills” stars danced on stage with Flo Rida, an Aston Martin was auctioned off for $240,000 and Cinq à Sept held a fashion show, all for the 30th annual Race to Erase MS Gala, a fundraising event dedicated to the treatment and hopeful cure of multiple sclerosis.
Nancy Davis founded Race to Erase in 1993, a year after she was diagnosed with MS.
“I was told 31 years ago I could never walk again and that life as I knew it was over,” Davis shared with Variety at the gala. But over the last three decades, funds raised at the gala have helped lead to 25 medications used to treat MS, raising $56 million for MS research.
“To be here tonight and have the whole Hollywood community behind us — they come every year — it’s so lovely,” Davis said. Later in celebration, she popped champagne on stage with Flo Rida, which made for a joyous evening finale.
Actor David Faustino was also in attendance. His former “Married… With Children” co-star, Christina Applegate, was diagnosed with MS in 2021, but his support began well before that. Of the 30 galas held over the years, Faustino says he has been to 29.
“Another very close friend was diagnosed this year with MS, so it’s becoming closer and closer to me,” said Faustino. “Before, this event was something I came to help make money and support the cause, and they’ve all become family and friends. But now it’s really close to home, so it makes me want to be here even more.”
Singer-songwriter Siedah Garret, backing vocals singer for legends like Michael Jackson and Donna Summer, performed during the evening. Back in 2017, Garret revealed her own MS diagnosis while performing at the Race to Erase Gala.
“It was very freeing and enlightening, and I haven’t looked back,” she told Variety. “I didn’t get the negative attitudes that I thought I would get. I thought I would be known as a ‘sick person,’ but I never got that. I’m here to show what living with MS can look like. And I’m here to make MS my bitch.”
“Housewives of Beverly Hills” star Crystal Kung Minkoff and her filmmaker husband Rob Minkoff attended the event as well. Crystal said she has known Davis for over 15 years and that the event is a constant testament to all of Davis’s hard work and commitment.
Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for Race to Erase MS
Crystal recently attended a celebration at the White House for Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. “I was on a cast trip, and I was so tired. I didn’t know if I wanted to go,” Crystal said.
Rob interjected. “She was, ‘Should we go?’ And I was like, ‘You don’t miss this, what’s wrong with you!’” he said. “And then she got in trouble for eating on the antique couch at the White House.”
The couple also shared that they were working together on a couple of projects coming out this year but weren’t ready to reveal any details. In addition to Crystal, “Beverly Housewives” stars Kathy Hilton and Denise Richards also showed their support at the gala.
“I know some of the girls are here, I’m excited to see all of them,” said Crystal.
Issa Rae, who plays a pregnant version of Spider-Woman in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, shared how playing the role changed one of her biggest beliefs.
Calling the role “a little intimidating,” Rae noted how challenging her role was after not having “gone through this experience yet” of being pregnant and highlighting how cool the Jessica Drew character was:
“Thank you so much for your kind words. It was a little intimidating, I’m not gonna lie. I haven’t gone through this experience yet, and to portray someone going through it and also kicking people’s ass was like ‘Whoa!’ And it was jarring to know that this was the version of Spider-Woman that they had chosen. And the more I read about her, the more I was able to become her, I was like ‘Oh, she’s so damn cool and she’s so sacrificial, in a way!'”
Rae described Jessica Drew as “the true essence of a superhero” thanks to her status as a crime-fighting future mother, even explaining that it “challenged her notion” and her beliefs regarding pregnant women being fragile:
“She is the true essence of a superhero in the fact that she is this mom fighting crime, and also, she’s superhuman in that way. So I love playing her, and I hope other moms appreciate her too. And, I have to say she challenged my notion – my sister and friends who have been pregnant over time. Sometimes I’m a bit too fragile with them, like ‘Oh, you can be doing this? Are you gonna be working up until this point?’ And they’re just like ‘Yes, I’m completely fine, I can still operate.'”
She even referenced tennis superstar Serena Williams “competing and playing tennis while she was pregnant,” highlighting women who accomplish feats like that and are taken for granted:
“And I think about Serena competing and playing tennis while she was pregnant and all the women who do the extraordinary while they’re pregnant and are sort of taken for granted in that way, and so I thought that that was nice commentary.”
Rae also discussed the toughest part of playing the role, mentioning the difficulties of “not having a sense of what the space was” when she was recording her lines in the studio:
“And I think for me it was just not having a sense of what the space was. I think it’s one thing to…you’re just using your voice to convey, but for me, so much of it is just like ‘Well, where am I? What exactly am I doing? Who’s to my right? Who’s to my left?’
And while it was tough for her without “the full picture” of what was happening, she looked back on her first time reading with Gwen Stacy star Hailee Steinfeld as one of the more fun parts of making the movie:
“Even in terms of comedy and improving, I just I’m like ‘Oh, I don’t necessarily have the full picture of what this character looks like to comment,’ and so I think when I did have the opportunity to like actually even read with Hailee [Steinfeld], that was so fun and so different, but it just challenges you in a way that I was absolutely up for, and it’s so fulfilling to see what comes out of all the sessions that we had because the filmmakers have such a clear picture in their mind, and it’s cool that they’re obviously adapting to what you give them, so this was a fun process.”
Rae also spoke with Screen Rant at the red carpet event for Spider-Verse 2, highlighting the “severe badassery” that fans will see from her character on the big screen:
“So, I have the distinct honor of playing Jessica Drew, AKA Spider-Woman, and you can expect to just see like severe badassery on-screen. When I first saw the drawing of my character, because, I knew who Jessica Drew was, you know, kind of traditionally, but who Lord and Miller made her be, what she looks like, how she is.”
Continuing to praise Jessica Drew, Rae pointed out how she’s the only web-slinger “who doesn’t wear a mask,” celebrating how cool the character is and how honored she felt to voice her:
“First of all, she’s the only Spider-Person who doesn’t wear a mask, so she’s out here fighting for the Spider-Verse exposed ,she’s not hiding from anything, and I think that’s so cool. She has a badass motorcycle that she kicks ass on, and she’s pregnant, which is an arc that kind of blew me initially, I was like ‘What?!’ and then, the more I kind of sat with it and played her, I just felt honored to take that on.”
Will Spider-Woman Return for Spider-Verse 3?
Warning – the rest of this article contains spoilers for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.
Issa Rae’s Jessica Drew wound up being a vital part of the Spider-Verse 2 plot, serving as one of the high-ranking members of the Spider Society seen on Oscar Isaac’s Earth-928.
And with her character being only one of countless Spider Variants to take the spotlight in this sequel, the big question now is whether fans should expect to see the expecting mother Jessica Drew back in action for the next go-round.
Considering how she was teetering on both sides of the emotional battle over Miles Morales from start to finish, there’s the possibility she could team up with Gwen again to fight alongisde story’s protagonists.
The future of the titular character of Blue Beetle is all but guaranteed after James Gunn’s DC reboot thanks to one upcoming TV project. Since James Gunn was announced as the new co-head of DC Studios alongside Peter Safran in October 2022, much talk has surrounded the lingering projects still expected to be part of the old DCEU. These films include The Flash, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, and most importantly, Blue Beetle.
SCREENRANT VIDEO OF THE DAYSCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT
With The Flash expected to reshape the DCEU into the new-look DCU, many were left wondering how a film like Blue Beetle would be impacted. Questions arose over how the film’s story would take shape as it is released after The Flash, but crucially whether Xolo Maridueña’s titular superhero would continue into James Gunn’s DCU Chapter One: Gods and Monsters. After Gunn’s announcement of his first DCU slate in January 2023, it became clear that one TV project all but confirms the continuation of Blue Beetle in the franchise after the release of his own solo film.
Booster Gold’s TV Show Surely Means Blue Beetle Will Return In The DC Universe
The project in question is Booster Gold, which James Gunn confirmed to be in development as a TV show in Chapter One: Gods and Monsters. Throughout DC Comics’ history, Booster Gold and Ted Kord – the Blue Beetle before Jaime Reyes – were best friends. They were initially introduced upon joining the Justice League, and have since been portrayed as near-inseparable across many comic iterations. This included their own comic series entitled “Blue & Gold”, which bodes well for Blue Beetle’s DCU continuation due to the character’s friendship with Booster Gold.
While it is worth pointing out that the upcoming Blue Beetle DC film will feature Jaime Reyes’ version of the character, not Ted Kord, the DCU could easily apply Ted and Booster Gold’s comic book relationship to Jaime and Booster. This would fit with James Gunn wanting younger iterations of characters for franchise longevity. While Blue Beetle’s DCU future is unclear, the inclusion of Booster Gold as a TV show provides ample opportunity to pair the two together in the future given the characters’ long comic history of being best friends.
Why Blue Beetle Should Be Part Of James Gunn’s DC Universe (Even Without Booster Gold)
Regardless of a Booster Gold TV show, there are several reasons why Blue Beetle should still be part of James Gunn’s DCU. Firstly, Blue Beetle is a lesser-known character from DC Comics. As is clear with a lot of Gunn’s announcements, the DCU will provide a healthy mix of DC A-list characters with the less popular heroes. Films like Superman: Legacy, the adaptation of “The Brave and the Bold” that will include Batman, and Wonder Woman as part of the Paradise Lost TV show provide the DCU with its flagship characters. However, Swamp Thing, Creature Commandos, The Authority, and even Booster Gold allow for lesser-known DC properties to shine.
Blue Beetle sequels would only further this, with the DCU focusing on another smaller character that has a wealth of intriguing stories and characters. Also, the decision to make Jaime Reyes the main live-action version of Blue Beetle is great for Latin American representation on film. Xolo Maridueña is a fantastic up-and-coming actor, and he should be able to explore the character beyond 2023’s Blue Beetle. All of this, combined with a potential Booster Gold crossover, means that Blue Beetle should not be the end of the character’s DC journey on film and the character will hopefully play an integral role in James Gunn’s new-look DC Universe.
