A.I. pioneer Fei-Fei Li is lending her support to Simile’s effort to simulate human behavior at scale. John Nacion/Variety via Getty Images
Every three months, public companies brace for analyst questions during quarterly earnings calls. But what if firms could predict these queries in advance and rehearse their responses? That’s one of the capabilities touted by Simile, a new A.I. startup spun out of Stanford and backed by acclaimed researcher Fei-Fei Li and OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy.
Simile emerged from stealth yesterday (Feb. 12) with $100 million in funding from a round led by Index Ventures. Alongside Li and Karpathy, the startup—which hasn’t disclosed its valuation—also counts investors including Quora co-founder Adam D’Angelo and Scott Belsky, a partner at A24 Films.
Li and Karpathy both have close ties to Simile’s founding team, which includes Stanford researchers Joon Park, Percy Liang and Michael Bernstein. Li is the co-director of Stanford’s Human-Centered A.I. Institute and advised Karpathy during his Ph.D. study at the university. She is widely known for foundational work such as ImageNet, a large-scale image database that helped drive major breakthroughs in computer vision. Karpathy and Bernstein also contributed to that project.
Simile’s mission of using A.I. to reflect and model societal behavior taps into an underexplored research area, according to Karpathy, who previously worked at OpenAI and Tesla before launching his own education-focused A.I. startup. While large language models typically present a single, cohesive personality, Karpathy argues they are actually trained on data drawn from vast numbers of people. “Why not lean into that statistical power: Why simulate one ‘person’ when you could try to simulate a population?” he wrote in a post on X.
That idea underpins Simile’s broader goal. The Palo Alto-based startup aims to simulate the real-world effects of major decisions, from public policy to product launches, across virtual populations that mirror human behavior. The team has already tested this concept on a smaller scale through projects like Smallville, a 2023 Stanford experiment in which 25 autonomous A.I. agents interacted in a virtual environment.
Now, Simile is scaling the approach for business use. After spending the past seven months developing its model, the company is already working with clients on applications ranging from product development to litigation forecasting. CVS Health Corporation, for example, uses Simile to create simulated focus groups, while Gallup uses the platform to build digital polling panels. For earning calls, Simile can predict about 80 percent of the questions that analysts ultimately ask, said Park, the startup’s CEO, during a recent appearance on TBPN.
At present, Simile’s models are based on data from hundreds of thousands of people who have signed up for its studies. Over time, the company hopes to expand that to simulations representing the world’s entire population of roughly 8 billion people.
Simile joins a growing wave of A.I. companies focused on using simulation to model real-world scenarios. Much of the existing research in this space has centered on physical systems, such as robotics and autonomous vehicles, through “world model” platforms developed by firms like Google and Nvidia.
A24 has secured the rights to the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise following a competitive bidding process. It is launching its plans with a television series, with a feature film already in early development. There are no release dates or streaming platform details announced at this time. The strategy reflects an effort to balance reverence for the original film with modern long-form storytelling, supported by veteran producers and emerging creative voices.
JT Mollner is attached as writer and director for the first A24 project in the franchise and is developing the television series. Glen Powell is serving as an executive producer and is also a producer on the project. Powell has described the collaboration as a dream team focused on honoring the franchise’s legacy while opening new avenues for storytelling rooted in Texas identity and horror tradition.
In a statement, Mollner said, ”I’ve said publicly that I’m not interested in remaking perfect films, and the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a perfect film. Tobe Hooper and Kim Henkel created something bold, transgressive, and truly seminal that holds up even today as the gold standard for horror. When the opportunity for a long-form exploration into this world arose, I saw it as a fresh way in, as well as a way to honor the existing folklore. I can’t imagine better partners for this approach than A24. This is truly an honor.”
“The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is one of my favorite films,” said Powell. “It defined a generation of horror films and over half a century after its release, it remains one of the definitive movies of my home state.”
“It was a difficult decision, but A24’s embrace of boundary-testing genre film, and its record of working with artists who are inclined to test boundaries made them a compelling choice,” said Henkel.
Kim Henkel and Tobe Hooper co-wrote the original 1974 film, and the franchise has since expanded to eight sequels, a novel, a comic series, and three video games. The TV series executive producers include Roy Lee, Steven Schneider, Stuart Manashil, Image Nation’s Ben Ross, Barnstorm’s Glen Powell and Dan Cohen, and Exurbia Films’ Kim Henkel. Verve led the deal, with Exurbia Films helping protect the franchise legacy, alongside coordinated efforts involving CAA, UTA, and other partners.
(CNN) — Moviegoers flocked to theaters for Disney’s “Avatar: Fire and Ash” on the last weekend of the year, solidifying the sci-fi adventure film’s place as one of the biggest blockbusters of 2025.
The third installment of director James Cameron’s “Avatar” films raked in another $64 million domestically Friday through Sunday, and roughly $181.2 million internationally, bringing its worldwide total to $760.4 million.
“Fire and Ash” is the No. 6 highest-grossing film worldwide this year, having overtaken popular releases like Warner Bros. Discovery’s “Superman” and Sony Pictures’ “Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle” in just 10 days.
Warner Bros. Discovery is the parent company of CNN.
The big-budget “Avatar” franchise, which includes films from 2009 and 2022, has proved it can still draw large audiences to theaters with its spectacular visual effects.“Fire and Ash” has earned $96 million globally on IMAX and is expected to become IMAX’s biggest Hollywood release of the year, according to Disney.
“Premium formats (are) a huge factor for ‘Avatar: Fire and Ash,’ despite the fact that consumers are price-sensitive,” said Paul Dergarabedian, head of marketplace trends at Comscore.
Audiences were also drawn to a diverse slate of movies this weekend. Disney’s “Zootopia 2,” which opened on Thanksgiving, finished No. 2 at the box office with $20 million, a 35% jump from last weekend, according to Comscore. “Zootopia 2” has grossed $1.4 billion worldwide — the second-highest-grossing movie of the year.
“(‘Zootopia 2’) gets the Most Valuable Player award for the holiday season,” said Dergarabedian, who noted that PG-rated movies earned $2.87 billion this year, while outperformingPG-13 movies.
At No. 3 was A24’s “Marty Supreme” — the sports comedy-drama starring Timothée Chalamet — which grossed $17.5 million amid a surge of attention on social media. It was driven by a male-dominated “Marty Army,” according to A24, with one-third of the movie’s audience being under 25 years old.
A24’s “Marty Supreme,” a ping-pong sports drama, attracted young audiences to theaters. Credit: A24 via CNN Newsource
After opening in six theaters last weekend in New York City and Los Angeles, “Marty Supreme” rode a wave of Oscar and online buzz to propel it to box office success in over 2,600 theaters, according to Shawn Robbins, director of movie analytics at Fandango and owner of Box Office Theory.
“(A24) catered to the old and new mindsets of marketing a movie like this around the holidays, knowing that it would be an award season player,” he said.
Lionsgate Films’ “The Housemaid,” which opened last weekend, was No. 4 this weekend at $15.4 million. It was followed by Sony Pictures’ “Anaconda” ($14.5 million), a reboot of the 1997 movie.
Angel Studios’ “David” ($12.69 million) finished sixth, ahead of Paramount’s “The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants” ($11 million). Focus Features’ “Song Sung Blue” opened this weekend at No. 8 with $7.6 million.
This was the best Christmas week for the box office since 2020, according to Robbins.
“To have most of these seven major releases opening around Christmas do relatively well, and you either meet or exceed expectations — that has not happened very much in the post-Covid era,” Robbins said.
Sony’s “Anaconda,” a comedic remake of the 1997 horror flick, finished fifth overall. Credit: Matt Grace / Sony Pictures Entertainment via CNN Newsource
The overall domestic box office has grossed $8.76 billion in earnings in 2025, according to Comscore data. That’s up 1.56% from last year but still behind 2023, the only post-pandemic year to boast $9 billion in earnings.
Box office numbers are still well behind 2019, when domestic earnings totaled more than $11 billion.
But successful December films could carry over into a strong start for 2026, according to Dergarabedian, who estimates another $100 million can be added by the end of the year.
Dergarabedian said a strong release slate for movies next year could give theaters their best year since the pandemic.
Some of next year’s biggest movies include Universal Pictures’ “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” (April 3) and “Disclosure Day” (June 12), as well as Disney’s “Toy Story 5” (June 19). “Avengers: Doomsday” and Warner Bros. Pictures’ “Dune: Part Three” are both slated for December 18.
For his breakout role in 2017’s Call Me by Your Name, Timothée Chalamet learned Italian and how to play piano and guitar. To portray Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown last year, he picked up the guitar again, learned harmonica and took vocal lessons. Both roles earned Chalamet Oscar nominations.
Now, in addition to rapping, he’s seeking his third Oscar nod for A24’s Marty Supreme, in which he plays a ping-pong hustler dreaming big. This time, Chalamet’s preparation — training to perform the sport at its highest level — was once again extensive.
“He was singularly dedicated to getting this to be the same quality as the rest of the movie,” says Diego Schaaf, the film’s table tennis instructor. Schaaf grew up playing the sport in Switzerland but never competed professionally.
Chalamet’s preparation began long before Schaaf entered the picture. He secretly trained for years while working on projects like The French Dispatch, Wonka, and Dune: Part Two. So when he arrived for rehearsals for Marty Supreme, his skill level impressed Schaaf, an expert who previously worked on Forrest Gump (1994), Balls of Fury (2007) and an episode of NBC’s Friends. Schaaf’s wife, Wei Wang — a U.S. Olympian — also helped elevate Chalamet’s performance.
“We really dove into it last summer,” Schaaf says. “We had to bring the mechanics of the strokes to a world-class level from the 1950s, which is distinctly different from how the sport is played today.”
Because the film, directed by Josh Safdie, is set in that era, Chalamet had to unlearn modern technique. “Timothée being a dancer, he understood immediately how he needed to move,” Schaaf explains. “But we had to make that work within the context of relatively fast play.”
Wang worked closely with Chalamet to nail the period-specific techniques. “Different styles have very different strokes, and he understood all of it,” Schaaf says. “He wasn’t interested in doing the minimum. Even when he got it right, he’d say, ‘Let’s do it again.’”
Timothée Chalamet in Marty Supreme.
A24
That commitment came with challenges — especially since, as Schaaf notes, Chalamet performed all of his table tennis sequences himself, instead of using a stunt double.
“We considered finding a double,” Schaaf admits, “but it was hard to find someone who matched his physique and could play. From the beginning, I told Josh we needed the best possible players, because they can perform under pressure.”
Most Olympic-level table tennis players start training between the ages of 4 and 8, Schaaf explains. “So we knew there was a limit to how far we could go,” he says. “But Timothée understood the sport well enough to know how difficult a shot would be — and then how it should look if you actually made it.” Some of the difficult trick shots were missed but fixed in post-production.
That understanding was crucial when choreographing matches. “In recreational table tennis, you barely move,” Schaaf says. “This was very athletically demanding. He memorized every point, every movement, every shot. Timing was critical — some shots float, others travel fast — and he understood that immediately. He performed unbelievably well.”
Another high-profile name in the film, Tyler, the Creator, also trained with Schaaf and Wang at their club in Los Angeles, the Westside Table Tennis Center. Unlike Chalamet, Tyler had never played table tennis before.
“It’s rare to find someone who’s literally never hit a ball,” Schaaf says. “He loved it. One time he came straight from the airport, ran into the club and said, ‘I’m going to buy myself a table!’”
But Tyler’s skill level in the film was intentionally much lower than Chalamet’s. “In the bowling alley scene, he’s not supposed to be a high-level player,” Schaaf explains. “But after just one or two sessions, he was already returning 10 or 12 balls, which isn’t easy. He was an absolute sweetheart — smiling the whole time.”
Tyler, the Creator and Timothée Chalamet in Marty Supreme.
A24
While the training took place in Los Angeles, Marty Supreme is set in 1950s Lower East Side Manhattan. Since both Safdie and Chalamet are from New York, capturing the city’s ping-pong culture was another priority.
“I don’t play in New York, but I’ve met a lot of New York players,” Schaaf says. “It felt very accurate. There’s more gambling, more of an underground vibe. When New York players come out West, it’s a different kind of energy.”
Though the film follows Marty’s hunger for success in table tennis, the fast-paced, anxiety-fueled intensity that the Safdie brothers’ films like Good Time (2017) and Uncut Gems (2019) are known for, remains front and center — even as Marty Supreme marks Safdie’s first solo feature without his brother Benny.
“I watched the movie and almost forgot there was table tennis in it,” Schaaf says with a laugh. “It was so enthralling. Then the first tournament scene comes up and I thought, ‘Oh right — here we go.’ Josh did a great job cutting it so you really feel the tension.”
Schaaf also makes a cameo in the film as the final match’s umpire — a last-minute surprise. “The night before, I get a text asking if I want to do it,” he says. “I figured I’d be there anyway. I had no idea that was going to happen.”
Chalamet’s dedication to the role didn’t come without risk. At the film’s New York City premiere earlier this month, Safdie said that the actor “almost lost an eye” during filming. While details weren’t shared, Chalamet has previously said he wore contacts to “mess up” his vision so he could wear real glasses for Marty’s signature look — which ultimately led to an “nasty” eye infection.
Chalamet mirroring Marty’s high ambition has put a spotlight on table tennis.
“I really hope this gives the sport the breakthrough it’s deserved,” Schaaf says. “People don’t realize how many levels there are. You think you’re close to the top, and there are 30 levels in between. The better you get, the more you realize how little you know.”
He pauses, then laughs. “It takes a specific person — like Marty. Someone who says, ‘No matter how hard this is, I’m going to do this.’ Hopefully we’ll get more of those.”
October brims with high-stakes thrillers, intimate documentaries and buzzy biopics
Dwayne Johnson in The Smashing MachineCredit: Eric Zachanowich
From the big screen to streaming, film premieres excite with the return of Daniel Day-Lewis, Dwayne Johnson’s foray into Oscar territory, Emma Stone teaming up with Yorgos Lanthimos again and more. Read on for the best movies arriving in October.
Anemone
Credit: Courtesy of Focus Features
Oct. 3
In his feature directorial debut, Ronan Day-Lewis pulls his dad, Daniel Day-Lewis, out of retirement for an examination of the complex ties among brothers, fathers and sons. Focus Features
The Lost Bus
Credit: Apple TV+
Oct. 3
Inspired by a true story during the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history, this gripping tale stars Matthew McConaughey as a school bus driver and America Ferrera as a teacher who must save 22 children from an encroaching blaze. Apple TV+
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The Smashing Machine
Credit: Ken-Hirama
Oct. 3
Dwayne Johnson brings the muscle to his portrayal of mixed martial arts and UFC fighter Mark Kerr in this biopic written and directed by Benny Safdie and co-starring Emily Blunt. A24
If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
Credit: Logan White
Oct. 10
Rose Byrne finesses the space between comedy and drama as a woman whose life is crumbling — navigating her child’s mysterious illness, an absent husband, a missing person and an antagonistic therapist. The cast includes Conan O’Brien, Christian Slater, A$AP Rocky and Danielle Macdonald. A24
Produced by Ryan Reynolds and directed by Colin Hanks, this documentary looks at the life of comedian and actor John Candy. Amazon MGM Studios
Kiss of the Spider Woman
Credit: Roadside Attractions
Oct. 10
Following the film’s Sundance debut, writer-director Bill Condon’s adaptation of Terrence McNally’s Tony-winning musical (based on the 1976 novel by Argentine author Manuel Puig, which inspired the 1985 film starring William Hurt and Rual Julia) arrives on the big screen featuring Diego Luna, Jennifer Lopez and L.A. actor Tonatiuh. Roadside Attractions
Roofman
Channing Tatum and Kirsten Dunst star in Paramount Pictures’ “ROOFMAN.”Credit: Davi Russo/ Paramount Pictures
Oct. 10
Escaped prisoner and accomplished burglar Jeffrey Manchester (Channing Tatum) hides out in a Toys R Us while plotting his next move – but gets distracted when he starts to fall for a divorced mother (Kirsten Dunst). The cast includes Juno Temple, Uzo Aduba, LaKeith Stanfield and Peter Dinklage. Paramount Pictures
Tron: Ares
Credit: Disney
Oct. 10
Invigorated by a score from Oscar-winning duo Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, the third installment in the Tron film franchise follows a super AI program’s encounter with the human world. Stars include Jared Leto, Greta Lee, Evan Peters, Hasan Minhaj, Jodie Turner-Smith, Gillian Anderson and Jeff Bridges. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
The Woman in Cabin 10
Credit: Parisa Taghizadeh/Netflix
Oct. 10
Joined by Hannah Waddingham and Guy Pearce, Keira Knightley stars as a travel writer whose assignment to cover the first voyage of a luxury yacht is compromised when she sees a woman fall to her death and no one believes her. Netflix
The Mastermind
Rich Fury/Getty Images
Oct. 17
Kelly Reichardt’s Cannes competition film sees Josh O’Connor balance a double life as a stunted suburban family man and art thief in the 1970s. Gabby Hoffmann and Alana Haim also star. Mubi
Stiller & Meara: Nothing is Lost
Credit: Apple TV+
Oct. 17
Ben Stiller explores the lives and impact on pop culture of his parents, comedy legends Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara. Apple TV+
Hedda
Credit: Matt Towers/ Prime
Oct. 22
Writer-director Nia DaCosta reimagines Henrik Ibsen’s 1891 play with Tessa Thompson in the title role as a woman torn between a stifling marriage and temptations from the past. Amazon MGM Studios
Blue Moon
Richard LinklaterCredit: Jason Mendez/Getty Images for Netflix
Oct. 24
Director Richard Linklater reteams with Ethan Hawke, this time for a snapshot of lyricist Lorenz Hart as he grapples with the successful premiere of Oklahoma! by his former collaborator Richard Rodgers (Andrew Scott) and new lyricist Oscar Hammerstein. The cast includes Bobby Cannavale and Margaret Qualley. Sony Pictures Classics
Bugonia
Credit: Focus Features
Oct. 24
Director Yorgos Lanthimos and stars Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons stir up another storm together in a black sci-fi comedy that sees two men kidnap a powerful CEO they suspect is an alien intent on destroying Earth. Focus Features
A House of Dynamite
Credit: Eros Hoagland/Netflix
Oct. 24
Oscar winner Kathryn Bigelow directs a star-studded cast in a political thriller that focuses on White House staffers racing to save the U.S. from an unattributed missile strike. The ensemble includes Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson, Anthony Ramos, Tracy Letts and Greta Lee. Netflix
Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere
Credit: Focus Features
Oct. 24
Alongside a cast with Jeremy Strong and Marc Maron, Jeremy Allen White does his best Bruce Springsteen impression during the singer-songwriter’s Nebraska era. 20th Century Studios
Ballad of a Small Player
Credit: Netflix
Oct. 29
Colin Farrell stars as an alcoholic gambler whose untrustworthy perception of reality complicates his chance at salvation as a private investigator closes in on him. Netflix
Nouvelle Vague
Credit: Netflix
Oct. 31
Linklater closes October with one more release — a love letter to the French New Wave in this comedy-drama starring Guillaume Marbeck as Jean-Luc Godard as he makes 1960’s Breathless. The cast includes Zoey Deutch and Aubry Dullin. Netflix
Kerr hadn’t seen the finished film about his life until watching with the audience at this summer’s Venice Film Festival, where it received a rapturous response. Emily Blunt co-stars as Kerr’s then-girlfriend Dawn Staples in writer-director Benny Safdie‘s feature that hits theaters Friday and details Kerr’s fighting career and opioid addiction. The project is based on the 2002 documentary The Smashing Machine: The Life and Times of Extreme Fighter Mark Kerr.
“The last scene was gut-wrenching, just the intensity of what was going on,” Kerr tells The Hollywood Reporter about The Smashing Machine. “DJ [Johnson] is sitting on my left and patting my leg. Benny’s on my right and patting my leg, and I ended up holding his hand for the last half-hour of the movie. I have so many emotions running through me, and the way that I’m releasing them is tapping my legs and my arm back and forth. Benny’s like, ‘Hey, it’s going to be OK,’ and I just hold onto him. It’s just really amazing what they were able to capture and put on screen.”
A key point of discussion surrounding the film has been the extensive facial prosthetics that Johnson wore to portray Kerr. As it turns out, Kerr was initially unaware that Johnson’s look would so closely mirror his own.
Dwayne Johnson as Mark Kerr in The Smashing Machine.
A24
“Nobody told me,” Kerr admits. “I had this idea and image that, ‘He’s just going to be DJ. He’s going to put a wig on,’ or something like that. The first time I saw him at prosthetics, I cussed at him for a minute. I’m looking at him, [and] he’s a doppelganger. He’s a mirror image of me. I’m looking at myself in front of me.”
One of Kerr’s agents, Mark Fenlon, tells THR that he sees the former fighter as a good fit for brand endorsements, speaking engagements, live sports broadcasting and potentially some acting gigs. “We expanded into the sports space somewhat recently, and we have had an eye on him for a while,” Fenlon says. “We’re really excited for this film to bring his personal journey to the masses. The film is an incredible tribute to Mark, his career and the struggles he’s overcome in life.”
Kerr agrees that the partnership with the agency feels like a timely fit. “They want to have a bigger footprint in taking retired athletes and making opportunities for them,” he explains. “I have a book that I’m working on right now [about my life], and that just fills in a lot of the spaces that are missing in this.”
He also feels continued support from Johnson as his onscreen counterpart: “Every single text or voice message that he’s ever left me, he’s left it with, ‘If you need anything, please call me.’ He’s a good person to have at your back.”
Kerr hopes that viewers of The Smashing Machine will appreciate that his addiction was exacerbated by “the shame and my inability to ask for help.” He adds, “Where I am now, [with] my ability to connect with another human being and ask for that help — it’s not a weakness, it’s a strength. So hopefully, [audiences] can watch it and understand what was going on with me at the time, [that I could] absolutely face-plant, dust myself off and move forward in my life. That’s the hope that anybody could have.”
What did it look like at the end of a hard day for you?
The hardest parts are the night shoots, because I’m useless after a certain hour anyway. I’m not a night owl. Everybody’s a different beast. But they were really the true night shoots, where we’d see the sun come up, and you’d sleep all day—I’d come home to my little hotel room. At one point they said, “Do you want to stay at the hotel where we’re filming?” Because that’s where Mary was staying. And I was like, “I’m good.” Church and state. But I would usually text Mary at some point later, going, “I think I screwed this up. Did you get enough of this? I’m sorry if I didn’t get that.” I’d go through a series of thoughts in my head of what I could have done better, what we missed, how we’ll fix it—just neurotic actress things.
Mary mentioned to me that she wouldn’t run a lot of takes.
She didn’t. It’s a tiny movie—it’s not like a Kubrick film where you can do a hundred takes. Or allegedly, those sorts of things you hear about. [Laughs] This was four weeks. It was like doing a play. I just stepped onto the set, but before I knew it, I was off the set. The adrenaline of it got me through all of that.
Did it take a toll—physically, emotionally, all the above?
It’s funny—having small children, they just couldn’t care less if it’s taking a toll on you or not, whether it be work or something else. That’s always very grounding. But I felt sad it was over. It was such a gift to be able to do it.
Because the camera was so close, it was a very technical exercise as well a lot of the time. And my scene partner, you never see. There’s twists in the filmmaking that people will hopefully recognize, but that was wild, going, “How’s that going to work? How’s this story going to be told?” It’s just all from the perspective of Linda, in a way that I’ve not experienced for a while in the cinema—watching it, just like, “Oh, you are inside this person’s eyeballs.”
Do you remember what state of mind you were in when you finished filming?
Whew. I have an Australian kind of relaxed, laid-back quality that I know is culturally similar, but I am peddling fast underneath a little bit. I was just like, “Is this okay? Did I fuck it up?” I didn’t want it to be over. When Mary and I talked again later, I was having separation anxiety from the character—and from Mary, and Mary as part of the character, and our friendship. I felt a little of that when I was coming away from it. And I felt pretty wrecked, physically.
There’s the physical toll I was asking about!
[Laughs] I admit, I looked busted.
You play another intense role in the film Tow, which premiered to strong reviews in Tribeca. But it still hasn’t found distribution, correct?
A24 will officially re-open the Cherry Lane Theatre, a historic off-Broadway venue in New York’s West Village, with a week’s worth of events hosted by Spike Lee, Sofia Coppola, Jodie Foster and others.
Starting on Sept. 8, the Cherry Lane Theatre will host one-night-only special performances including a screening of “25th Hour” and Q&A with Lee; a staged reading of “True West” featuring Michael Shannon; a night of comedy with Jerrod Carmichael and a “Foxes” screening and Q&A with Coppola and Foster. The week will conclude on Sept. 14 with a block party along the theater’s Commerce Street block in Greenwich Village for the public at 3 p.m.
Later in September, the Cherry Lane’s first long-running show, Natalie Palamides’ one-woman comedy “Weer,” will open. Previews begin on Sept. 20 ahead of opening night on Sept. 28. It has already sold out its initial run and extended through Nov. 9.
A24, the independent film studio behind “Lady Bird,” “Uncut Gems,” “Moonlight” and “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” purchased the 166-seat Cherry Lane Theatre in 2023. The venue has since been extensively renovation with updates to the technical equipment, new seating, a newly installed film projector and screen, and an upgraded lobby. A24 also partnered with the team behind Frenchette to open a new restaurant in the space.
See below for the full week of events: Monday, September 8th – a film screening of 25th Hour and Q&A with Spike Lee Tuesday, September 9th – staged reading of True West featuring Michael Shannon, Paul Sparks, Marylouise Burke, and directed by Lila Neugebauer Wednesday, September 10th – a night of comedy with Jerrod Carmichael Thursday, September 11th – Malcolm Gladwell and Brandi Carlile in conversation Sunday, September 14th – ‘Sundays with Sofia’ film screening of Foxes and Q&A with Sofia Coppola and Jodie Foster
Ne Zha II, the animated sequel film produced by Chinese studio Beijing Enlight Media, is already breaking records as the highest-grossing animated film of all time, and will be re-released by A24 on August 22. To further boost the film’s dub rerelease, A24 tapped Everything Everywhere All at OnceAcademy Award winner Michelle Yeoh to add to its must-watch factor for audiences experiencing the film for the first time in English.
Ahead of its theatrical rerelease, io9 spoke with Yeoh about taking on the role as Ne Zha’s mother, Lady Yin, the power of animation as a cultural exchange, and what starring in the film means to her as the latest emotionally resonant milestone in her illustrious career.
Isaiah Colbert, io9: What first drew you to the world of Ne Zha II? Was there something about Lady Yin—or the myth itself—that felt like it was calling to you?
Michelle Yeoh: Oh, hell yes. Ne Zha is a mythological character that I’ve known since I was a kid. This fiery, rebellious young child. I think, as a kid, I sort of related to it. Everybody wants to fight back and be the one who can go out there and beat up demons and things like that. I saw the movie in its original form first, and I remember thinking, “This is such a cinematic gem.” The animation pushes all the boundaries; it’s spectacular. It’s so rich, it’s like a tapestry that just keeps evolving. All those stunning action sequences. Even I was totally blown away trying to imagine how the heck did they think of all these different realms: the heaven, the Earth, the underground, and the dragons in chains. It was just amazing.
I felt I wanted to not read subtitles because my Chinese is not so good that I can understand in Mandarin all the way through. So I have to go down and understand “Who’s this? Ao Bing. Okay, Ne Zha. This is the dragon.” I think this was the one time I went, “I don’t want to take my eyes off the screen. I just want to watch the whole thing, but I need to understand what was going on.” I felt I needed to hear it, and my first language is English, thinking, “If only they could translate it well, that would be perfect.”
When I was given the opportunity to voice the mother of Ne Zha, it was like, she embodies the most amazing woman. She’s a warrior. She defends her city together with her husband, the general. She is the most loving mother, so it was a no-brainer ’cause it’s like my wish came true. I thought this is such a beautiful, great bridge from the Eastern world to the Western world, where the children who love Spirited Away, Coco, or Moana can come into our world. This will transcend boundaries. We’ll come and be able to embrace this crazy little demon god called Ne Zha and maybe relate to him in many ways. And then there’s Ao Bing.
To be given that opportunity, I felt that I was presented with the prize of the year to voice this woman. When you’re doing an animation, you do it from scratch. You are working your way through all the different nuances. But here, the director and his team, who painstakingly worked five years on this incredible movie, had already laid out the nuances, wit, humor, anger, and the fierceness of this woman and her husband. How she protects the child, defends him, when she’s gentle with him, when she’s the ferocious warrior, and then to the heartbreaking part where they have to say goodbye.
io9: You’ve voiced characters across wildly different worlds—from Minions and Transformers to Kung Fu Panda 2 and Ark. In the first film, Lady Yin was voiced by Stephanie Sheh, known for her role as Sailor Moon. Her performance carried the same quiet strength and maternal depth that I found in your performance. Did you draw inspiration from her interpretation, or did you find your own emotional entry point to carry the baton forward?
Yeoh: The most important thing is you have to find your own, even though there’s already an amazing interpretation, because you cannot mimic somebody else’s great performance. At the end of the day, it’s your own personal journey with the other characters. When you watch, you can hear [it]. There’s just no denying the realism or the actual emotion that you hear, which will help you to feel. It’s very superficial when you try and just copy what someone else has done.
[Beijing Enlight Media has] done an amazing job giving me a great palette to work with. I work with the director, and he will, once again, go through with me the journey of this mother, of how she carried the baby for three years, the frustration. “Just get it out of me!” But, I think the one thing I wanted [was] to make her more charming at the beginning. You would hear a mother’s voice, ’cause I have quite a bass voice. My voice is kind of low and I so I want to bring her up a bit so I don’t sound like a man, or else I’ll be doing the general, too.
As all actors do, we have to discover our journey with the character and bring to it, emotions that you see, you feel, and push the boundaries. And then under the guidance of the director who’s worked on it for like five years—they know it so well—the nuances will come when you understand the story that they are trying to tell.
io9: We’ve talked about the emotionality. But as we mentioned earlier, Ne Zha II is a visually impeccable film but it’s also a film that doesn’t hold back when it comes to its fierce action and devastating emotional beats. In my IMAX screening, adults, including myself, swore under our breaths in awe of the film. As a performer—especially when it comes to the action being pretty brutal—did you see that kind of raw intensity as part of what makes the film transcend its “children’s movie” label?
Yeoh: That’s a very good question. Nowadays, especially when the children of the world [see] action, violence or whatever with video games and with so many things like that, they understand this is all magic. This is all mythical. There’s a monster that’s charging at me with eight tentacles. It’s like, “Yeah, I’m gonna chop it off,” you know. They bring that sense of fantastical to do it so it’s not like two humans brutally fighting with each other. These [fights] are with swords, with magic, with all these kinds of things. It is a different world. Nothing in that world is real.
When you bring it in a sense of animation, it gives them a boundary where [kids] can sit back and go, “This is all pretend. This is funny and fun.” I think you sort of get away with it. I don’t want to use the word but then they’re so immune to it because they mix it with the humor. Even I am, like you say, swearing under my breath or going, “Whoa, how can that even happen?” The beauty of it is mind-blowing.
We know our dragons to be the gods of the skies. [I] never imagined they would be all tied, chained up. The whole crowd of beautiful mythical creatures, all chained up underground like that. That whole scene of them when they surge out is breathtaking. Even though it’s very tragic, you go, “Wow, this is so beautiful to look at.” In that way, you are transported. Even as a child, I’m sure there must be some moments where they go, “Ah, it’s scary.” But then after that, you go, “Oh, wow, it’s kind of cool.” If you keep them in that mindset, then it’s a very different kind of magical world.
io9: I wanted to take a moment to give you your flowers. You stand alongside icons like Bruce Lee, Jet Li, and Jackie Chan—in what I’d call kung fu cinema’s Mount Rushmore—not just for your artistry, but for the way you’ve championed Asian representation on the global stage. How do you see Ne Zha II contributing to the growing recognition that Chinese animation isn’t some new arrival, but a long-standing force that’s been evolving in parallel with Western animation and Japanese anime?
Yeoh: Thank you for that. How do you convince… You can’t talk and say, “This is what we can do.” Now you can see exactly what it is. I hope now that you go back and watch Ne Zha I. There are so many more animations coming from my part of the world that deserve recognition. Don’t take my word for it. Go and watch it yourself. Then tell me, were you blown away or were you disappointed? Then you can say it.
We have been waiting for an opportunity. It’s not as if you can demand that your audience likes it or not. Sometimes magic happens, and I truly believe Ne Zha II will be that magic ingredient so that they will be able to say, “Whoa, this was an all-Chinese effort.” Kudos to director Jiao Zi and his team, who painstakingly worked for five years to make a labor of love. They were like Ne Zha, saying, “We will not back down. We’ll keep going. We will keep demonstrating this is our self-worth. We can do this.”
Anyone who does animation will understand the amount of time and effort that goes into it. And anyone who loves animation will be able to see that in Ne Zha II—everything that was poured into it. I hope that with the English voiceover, young children will be able to enjoy it as much as their parents or their uncles, aunties, grandmothers, and grandfathers.
io9: That ties beautifully with my last question for you. At my screening, the theater was filled with Asian families—mothers, fathers, aunties, uncles—passing snacks, fresh from school pickups, turning rows of seats into something like a comfy living room. If you could speak directly to the young viewers watching Ne Zha II—especially those seeing themselves in Ao Bing and Ne Zha—what would you want them to carry with them after the credits roll?
Yeoh: Was your audience mainly Asian?
io9: A vast majority.
Yeoh: That’s a very interesting thing. Honestly, I hope Ne Zha II will go out to the non-Asian society, especially the non-Asian society. But, having said that, a lot of our—what we call ABCs (American-born Chinese), the young children who were born in America don’t really know the mythology or the folklore that came from the East. For them, I hope this is an eye opener to be able to understand more of their own culture that’s been here for such a long time. And for them to be blown away by what they can offer to their friends as well. They embrace the Moanas and the Cocos when they watch it with their American friends, but I think this is a great opportunity for the exchange to be on equal terms.
It’s like “show me yours and I’ll show you mine” sort of thing, which I think is very important in this day and age where we are embracing diversity. Not so much difference in cultures, but the similarities. I think the core message here is self-discovery, the journey with your loved ones and family, and standing up for yourself. I hope little kids, when they watch it, see the love their parents have for them and what parents will do for them. You know, when you’re young, you don’t really see it. You just get petulant when they don’t give you your iPad or your phone, or something like that. But when you watch Ne Zha II, you can see that whatever you do, your parents will always be there for you.
Ne Zha II returns to theaters and IMAX on August 22.
Ne Zha 2‘s visuals blend modern effects with traditional Chinese aesthetics. Courtesy A24
Americans with K-pop fans at home might think Netflix’s KPop Demon Hunters is the hottest story in animation right now. The musical, about a fictional girl group that moonlights as demon fighters, has dominated Netflix’s charts since June. But when it hits theaters this weekend, it will face an unlikely challenger: Ne Zha 2, a mythological fantasy from China arriving in the U.S. through a partnership between A24 and China’s CMC Pictures. Most U.S. audiences have never heard of it, yet the film has already grossed more than $2 billion (almost entirely from China), making it the highest-grossing animated movie of all time. Its Aug. 22 release sets up a fascinating box office showdown between two very different kinds of animated hits.
Ne Zha 2 is the sequel to the 2019 smash Ne Zha, which earned $720 million and is now available in the U.S. via on-demand platforms like Apple TV. The new film had a limited American run in February, including a screening at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. Thanks to the A24-CMC partnership, it’s now poised for a much wider release.
A beloved mythological figure turned big-screen hero
The story centers on a rebellious boy born with destructive powers who must confront an ancient force bent on destroying humanity. The English-language version features Oscar-winner Michelle Yeoh, who has said she was drawn to the film’s universal themes of identity and resilience.
The scale of the production is staggering: more than 4,000 artists from 138 studios worked for five years to complete nearly 2,400 animation shots and 2,000 visual effects shots. Set pieces like the Battle of Chentang Pass—where magma splits the earth as monsters pour into the battlefield—were designed specifically for IMAX and 3D. As the press notes put it, “it’s not much of an exaggeration to say the entire Chinese animation industry had a hand in the making of Ne Zha 2.”
Audiences have responded in kind. The film currently holds a near-perfect 99 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, making it not just the top-rated animated release of 2025 but one of the year’s highest-rated films overall. Its U.S. rollout includes regular, IMAX and 3D formats, with a fresh English dub likely to broaden its appeal.
A24’s quiet ambition beyond its indie roots
While A24 typically keeps quiet about its strategy, the studio told Observer it backed Ne Zha 2 to champion bold, distinctive films and spark conversation around a global hit that had gone largely unnoticed stateside. This isn’t the studio’s first foray into global cinema; In 2023, A24 distributed The Zone of Interest in the U.S., a Holocaust drama that went on to win the Oscar for Best International Feature Film.
The figure of Ne Zha has deep cultural roots. In Chinese mythology, he is a rebellious warrior who defies the gods in pursuit of his destiny—a household name embodying both the search for identity and resistance to authority. The Ne Zha films are the first time this folklore has been told on a blockbuster scale and exported around the world.
That makes Ne Zha 2 an ideal project for A24, which is expanding beyond its indie-film roots into a global distribution role. Known for edgy, auteur-driven work like Moonlight and HBO’s Euphoria, A24 has built a reputation as a tastemaker while growing through smart partnerships. The Ne Zha 2 release lets it expand its reach without abandoning the offbeat, distinctive style that defines the brand.
The film’s cultural impact also lies in its art. Its visuals blend modern effects with traditional Chinese aesthetics: ink-wash landscapes, jade palaces inspired by Han Dynasty architecture, and monsters modeled on ancient bronzeware. Combined with large-scale battle scenes, the result is a visual spectacle built for the biggest screens possible.
Modern-horror cinema’s most heterodox event took place on Saturday night, when two blonde Whitneys and A24 hosted dueling screenings at a multiplex within the southernmost border of Salt Lake City proper. The film was Heretic, directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, about two Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints missionaries, Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East), who knock on the door of a suburban Colorado house one inclement afternoon hoping to baptize the homeowner, Mr. Reed (Hugh Grant), into their faith.
Within a makeshift chapel behind locked doors, Mr. Reed lectures the missionaries on Radiohead’s litigious copywriting strategy; Monopoly and its unsung predecessor, The Landlord’s Game; and bird-headed deities until coercing the young women to choose their escape from his house of escalating horrors either through a door marked “DISBELIEF” or one alongside it marked “BELIEF.” (Spoiler: Neither presents an easy egress.)
Inside this packed cineplex, the screening’s snaking line was filled with only the truest disciples of horror film and/or Utah-based reality television. Some people I spoke to had been invited to the event by A24 directly, including members of the Lost & Found Club, a women- and genderqueer-led 501(c)(3) that aims to bring community to people who have left the LDS church in young adulthood. But most people waiting in the standby line for tickets had to rely on faith alone that they’d make it to that celestial kingdom of a screening room and experience the rapture of an A24 film presented by a woman named Whitney (with a complimentary free small popcorn and small fountain drink).
The event’s whole shtick played off the confrontational, dueling doors that have been the centerpiece of the film’s marketing: If an attendee was handed a DISBELIEF ticket, they attended the screening hosted by Whitney Rose, the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City cast member who was raised in the church but has since left it. If they got a BELIEF ticket, then they went to the screening hosted by Whitney Leavitt, a practicing Mormon and cast member of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.
The LDS church has expressed concern about Heretic as its November 8 release nears, which is also the date on which the film takes place. In a statement provided to the Mormon-run newspaper Deseret News, church spokesperson Doug Anderson said, “Heretic portrays the graphically violent treatment of women, including people of faith, and those who provide volunteer service to their communities. Any narrative that promotes violence against women because of their faith or undermines the contributions of volunteers runs counter to the safety and well-being of our communities.”
I hear what the church is saying about violence against women — Heretic has a scene involving an elderly woman’s arthritic fingers and a blueberry pie that is, while slightly less depraved than Call Me by Your Name’s sequence with Timmy Chalamet and a peach, far more psychically scarring than the hand scene in A24’s Talk to Me. For what it’s worth, I didn’t find Heretic anti-Mormon. If anything,the filmwas overwhelmingly anti-smug British guy.
Rose, who later told me that she was channeling her “inner missionary, Sister Rose,” wore a gray tweed short skirt/long jacket combo with a sheer turtleneck; a “Sword of the Spirit” necklace from her jewelry line, Prism, and a pair of Louboutins. Leavitt, who was one-week postpartum, wore a 1980s Jessica McClintock–inspired minidress from Asos. Her teeny-tiny, adorable one-week-old son, Billy Gene, and her husband/at-home scene partner, Conner Leavitt, watched her admiringly from across the room.
Each woman had a designated theater to introduce the film, and right before, Rose invited me and my plus-one to join her for a shot of tequila to calm her nerves. (It was Casamigos, not her co-star/usual rival Lisa Barlow’s Vida brand, and I love drama more than I hate heartburn.) Before we knocked it back, Rose called out for Leavitt and anyone else interested to join us for a toast. Leavitt waved Rose off, but did spend time with her Mormon Wives co-star/fellow saint Jennifer Affleck and her husband, Zac, had showed up in the spare theater being used as a greenroom, and they were busy cooing over the new baby. Later, the internet told me that most of Leavitt’s castmates had been at a Sabrina Carpenter concert that night without her.
In a joint interview before the screening, I spoke to both Whitneys about their reactions to the film and the proliferation of content about Utah women in the last few years. BELIEF and DISBELIEF embodied with bobs, sitting right next to each other in reclining theater chairs.
So, first of all, I just want to know how your involvement with this event came to be. Online, on Reddit, and elsewhere, this screening became a must-attend event shrouded in secrecy.
Whitney Leavitt: Did it really?
Yes. People didn’t even know how to get tickets and were apparently calling the movie theater, getting nowhere. How did it all come together?
Whitney Rose: I just got a call from a friend who said, “Can I have a friend reach out to your agent? Someone at A24 is a big fan of Real Housewives of Salt Lake City and Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. It was intense because I posted about the screening and shared the tag from A24, and all of a sudden, my DMs, my text messages, and my emails were blowing up with everyone wanting tickets.
There’s something happening nationally right now where Utah is blowing up — not as a state but as a concept. And there’s something A24-ish about our fascination. Why are people looking at women in Utah with such fascination?
Leavitt: I think it’s a lot of things besides our religion that happens culturally in Utah. Like, we’ve got our soda drinks. Yeah, we’ve got our “Utah Curl.” I don’t know if you’ve heard about it.
Rose: And I love all of your castmates a lot, but I despise the Utah Curl. You gotta curl your hair to the end.
Leavitt: Or get a bob!
I’ll say this. I couldn’t tell any of your Mormon Wives castmates on the show apart until about four episodes in. Besides you, Whitney. Because they all had that same hair. All gorgeous women, to be sure, of course …
Leavitt: It’s a very trendy look. I think people were fascinated that we all looked a certain way, dressed a certain way, ate a certain way, and drank a certain way. But then, obviously, people were fascinated by the religion side of it too. And I also do appreciate both of our shows presenting a different perspective of the Mormon religion. Because I just feel like, worldwide, everyone thinks of Mormons in a certain way, right? But then you get to see a different side.
Rose: I echo everything Whitney says. When you hear about Mormonism, your mind instantly goes to all of the things that they practiced in the past, like polygamy and multiple wives. Mormonism in and of itself, from the outside, looks strange. But when I was living in it, I didn’t view it that way. It’s just so normal to us, especially growing up here in Utah, right? Whitney and I grew up in what’s called “the bubble” of Utah County, and it’s just that everyone is the same. We all think the same, act the same, and have the same friends. All the moms drive the same cars. I mean, Mormon Wives shows that. They all have the same hair, except for Whit.
Leavitt: The Utah Curl.
Rose: Yeah, and I’m so glad that Whitney is paving the way there with her bob. It’s just fascinating when you have such a dense population of one religion and one culture. What people don’t realize is that there are so many different iterations and subcultures within that culture.
Heretic has gotten a lot of pushback from the Mormon church. What is it so afraid of?
Leavitt: Maybe they’re afraid of the filmmakers putting out false speculation or false doctrines. But when I watched, there’s nothing doctrinal about the church in it. Of course, there are Mormon missionaries, but I appreciated Hugh Grant’s character just giving a perspective of religion in general.
Rose: I think the fear is that there are a lot of things that we don’t talk about or are told not to talk about within the church, whether they be sacred or things that were once true in the past but are no longer true in modern revelation. They’re scared of what’s going to be in it and what that means for their members.
For me, this is easier to talk about because I’m not a member. I’ve removed my name from the church records. It’s just exposure. It’s fear of the unknown; it’s lack of control over one’s own narrative. It’s the same fear I have being on reality TV: We just show up and watch our edits.
It’s fascinating to see you two here together like this, talking about the same faith from such different perspectives. I consider RHSLC to be the wackiest comedy on TV. And some of the relationship plotlines on Mormon Wives are the most depressing television I’ve ever seen. It was often hard for me to watch. And now, I’m about to see a whole different take on the Mormon genre within a horror film.
Rose: The writers and directors are brilliant with their use of horror and psychological thrill. It’s a cat-and-mouse game of: What do I believe? Do I really not? Am I just doing this because I was told to? It’s fascinating. I watched it last night on my laptop, and I was like this the whole time:
[Rose mimics raising her paws up to her chest height expectantly, the laying-in-bed-watching-movies equivalent of being on the edge of her seat.]
I was going, “Oh my God, I relate to this!”
You didn’t serve a mission, correct?
Rose: No, I didn’t, but I channeled my inner missionary with my look tonight.
There’s a saints-sinners binary going on at this event, which was also a big part of Mormon Wives. Growing up Mormon in Utah County, did you feel confined to that binary of either being a saint or a sinner? Organized religion leaves very little room for dabbling in 60 percent of one thing and 40 percent of the other.
Rose: From my perspective, the black-and-white was really hard. By design, religion in Utah is the culture. I was raised here, and people would know if you weren’t wearing your garments, people saw you at Starbucks, and people would know if I was drinking a glass of wine at dinner. By design, I didn’t feel I could live in a gray area. Now, this was 17 years ago. A lot has changed. Even us just sitting here together with such polar-opposite perspectives — I think Utah has evolved. You can interpret religion with your relationship to God versus the institution of religion.
You’ve explored this on your show for years. I’m sure you’re aware of the memes. I talked to a Brigham Young University linguist about your “hilling” journeyand the “fill/feel” merger present in the speech of millennial women in Utah, and I’ve never gotten such a response from people before about anything I’ve written.
Rose: That was like my top moment of a Housewife. I’m no longer LDS, but I come from a long line of Mormon pioneers. My family trekked across the entire United States to get here. I get so bad with words.
When the linguist at BYU [David Ellingson Eddington, professor emeritus of Linguistics] talked to you for that article, I was so proud. I was so validated. I feel so seen. Someone understands my dialect and the way I talk.
The British star has done it all: shooting webs, making musicals — you name it. Over the last few years, however, he’s felt it right to take a break from the spotlight. Now, with We Live in Timeset to close the San Sebastian Film Festival on Saturday, the Oscar nominee makes his grand return to the screen.
Garfield has dabbled in recent years with, for example, TV miniseries Under the Banner of Heaven in 2022. And who could forget his iconic appearance in Spider-Man: No Way Home?
This year, the star confirms to The Hollywood Reporter that he is ready to make a comeback. “I feel looser, I feel less precious, I feel more joyful,” the 41-year-old says. He has been surfing and eating his way around the Spanish coastal town over the last week, spending time with old high-school friends: “I’ve been a proper tourist.”
On Saturday, he won’t be a tourist. He’ll be on the red carpet with hundreds of cameras pointed at him, Florence Pugh on his arm. The two lead John Crowley’s We Live in Time, a south London-set romantic drama about an up-and-coming chef and a recent divorcée who fall in love. As they meander their way through life — and even welcome a child — they learn to cherish their time together when a late-stage cancer diagnosis rocks the happy home they’ve built.
The film is penned by Nick Payne, who Garfield admits was a big draw for him boarding the project. The actor found the “Hugh Grant, Richard Curtis vibrational archetype” of the movie rather charming. It also, he says, has been something of a healing experience after losing his own mother to cancer in 2019. “Every species of every living thing on this earth has lost a mother. Young dinosaurs were losing their mothers,” he says. “So in terms of my own personal experience, yeah, it felt like a very simple act of healing for myself, and hopefully healing for an audience.”
It isn’t the only feature Garfield’s been working on. The Magic Faraway Tree, with Claire Foy and Nicola Coughlan, is on his schedule, and Luca Guadagnino‘s After the Hunt, alongside Julia Roberts and Ayo Edebiri, is also set to mark a huge moment in his career.
Garfield spoke to THR about why it felt like the right time to come back into the film fold with We Live in Time, what audiences might be surprised to know about his co-star Pugh and the 28 — yes, twenty-eight — actors he named when asked who he would love to work with next: “I did a screen test with Ryan Gosling 20 years ago and ever since then, I wanted to do something with him. He’s very inspiring to me.”
What came first with We Live in Time? Was it Nick’s script? Was it John, or Florence?
It was all very, very hot on the heels of each other. I guess it was John first, in a way, because John was the the script bearer and I wanted to work with John again, since Boy A (2007), for a long time. And then when I saw it was Nick Payne as the writer of the script, that was an immediate, exciting prospect. I love his writing. I think he writes so sensitively and full of humor and heart, an amazing balance of things. I think it’s a hard needle to thread. And then it was me reading that with John’s directing in mind, and going, “Oh yeah, this could really be something quite beautiful.”
And then it was Florence, which was kind of a vital ingredient. Any two actors that did Constellations (2012) for Nick or this film, it would require a certain courage. Obviously Florence is just very inherently right for the part. It requires a level of depth, a level of rawness, vulnerability, and, I don’t know, a lightness of touch — but also an ability to go to the depths of the soul of the character. And very few actors can do that.
So it was all of those things, which kind of annoyingly brought me out of my sabbatical that I was taking but in fact, I’m realizing as I speak about it 1727545989, it felt very much part of my little break I was taking. It felt like I could continue the sabbatical while making the film. So this was just a wonderfully timed thing where I read the script and was like, “Oh, this is the inside of my heart right now.” And what a gift to be able to actually put all that to good use and create out of it.
Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield in ‘We Live in Time’.
Courtesy of TIFF
Why did this rom-com-drama feel like the right moment in your career to re-enter the spotlight?
I wasn’t looking for a romantic drama. I wasn’t really looking for anything and it just kind of arrived. It was just the right themes, the right expression of where I am at, personally, being kind of midlife at 41. Whenever I say that to people, they’re like, ‘No! It’s not midlife.’ But I think that’s just death denialism. I’d be lucky if I lived to 80. I’d be so grateful to live that long. So I feel this moment of standing in the middle of my life — looking back, looking forward, looking at where I am — and trying to identify and feel what actually matters, where I want to be, how I want to be, where I want to put my diminishing time and energy. To make sure I can get to the end of my life and say, “Well, I did my best with what I was given.”
It just happened to be a romantic drama. And of course, a romantic drama is going to have life and death and love and risk-taking and courage and terror and mortality and dread and joy and exuberance and longing. This film is so full of longing. I watched it with an audience for the first time in Toronto [at the film fesitval], and it was a few quiet moments that really struck me about it quite beautifully and profoundly. It was like, “Oh, these are just two people that want to live.” It’s very simple. They want to live. They’re not asking for a lot. They’re not asking for the most extraordinary life. They’re not asking for anything unreasonable. They are simply asking, like all of us, to survive and to be here and to be able to be together while being here and try to make meaning out of their lives. That’s all I think any of us can can hope to ask for.
Are you firmly out of your sabbatical now?
[Laughs.] I think so. Yeah, I think I’m excited to work again in a different way. I feel looser, I feel less precious. I feel more joyful. I feel more aware. I feel established enough as a person in the world, as an actor within myself and within the world. I know myself well enough now to feel more enjoyment… I’m still a headcase — when I’m on a set, I’m like a dog with a bone and get taken over by some weird spirit that is never satisfied — but that’s never going to change, and I don’t want it to, but within that, I can feel a lot more pleasure and a lot more enjoyment, play and freedom.
I know that you and Florence have both spoken quite candidly about this film and how it ties quite intimately to your own experiences of grief and cancer. I don’t know if you’d be comfortable talking about why it was important to portray this on the big screen.
Thank you for asking sensitively. I appreciate that. Yeah, I’m not special in that regard. It’s garden variety in a way. And in my processing of my grief, one of the most healing and reassuring, soothing moments I’ve had, is realizing that this has been the way it’s been since time immemorial. Sons have been losing their mothers, daughters have been losing their mothers [since the beginning of time]. We’re lucky if it’s that way around, rather than the other. And of course, countless parents lose their children in one way or another too, I can’t even imagine what that must feel like. But I don’t have to imagine what the other way feels like. And it’s so wonderful to know how how ordinary the experience is in terms of how universal it is, while it is still so very, very truly, uniquely extraordinary to the individual.
So there’s something beautiful [about it]. There’s just lots of grace. And maybe I seek grace out. I don’t know. I naturally tend to. The only way to true joy, actually, is through terrible loss and acceptance of reality as it is, not as we think it should be. There’s so many moments, of course, that I’ve had in the last five years of saying, “Well, she shouldn’t have died. My mother shouldn’t have died so young, and she shouldn’t have died in suffering, and she shouldn’t, she shouldn’t, shouldn’t, shouldn’t.” It’s so arrogant of me. It’s so egotistical of me when I’m in those moments. And it’s human. I’m not shaming myself for it. It’s a human response, because it it doesn’t make sense, it feels unjust, it feels unfair. And then you take all those troubles to the ocean or the moon or the woods. And I believe that the moon, the ocean and the woods would all say the same thing, which is, “Yeah, I get it, dude.” Every species of every living thing on this earth has lost a mother. Young dinosaurs were losing their mothers. So in terms of my own personal experience, yeah, it felt like a very simple act of healing for myself, and hopefully healing for an audience.
Is that something that you want audiences to feel, coming away from watching We Live in Time?
I know it’s saying the most obvious thing, but when we go to a concert altogether or when we go to the theater, something about the collective experience helps us to feel less alone in our pain and less alone in our joys and less alone in our lives generally. So it felt like, “Oh no, this is part of what I’m on this earth to do. I love working with a group of people on something that matters. I love working with a group of people where we all get to bring our own woundedness to it and our own fragility to it, and see each other in our fragility and our woundedness, and say: “Me too.” Healing collectively is a privilege.
I don’t get to comment on how people respond, or how I want them to respond. I guess what I would want is for them to come in open hearted. Because I think we, as a culture, have been conditioned and led towards a more calcified, hardened state. And it makes sense, because the world is so divided and uncertain and full of trepidation and fear right now, and violence and ugliness. And we have such access to it at the drop of a hat. Right? We’re all terrified of being open hearted. We’re all terrified of saying the wrong thing. We’re all terrified of feeling the wrong thing, thinking the wrong thing, being inherently wrong in some way. But I think people that come and see this will, on some level, whether it’s conscious or unconscious, want that calcification to be cracked open.
I also want to talk about the Britishness of this film.
Very British, yeah. In the sex, in the food…
It feels very Richard Curtis. Can you speak to being on a London set and acting with a fellow Brit?
It was joyful. I haven’t had a chance to do it very often. Just being able to stay at my house is so nice and Florence being able to go for a run around Battersea before work. It’s heavenly. All these liminal spaces of locations that we were shooting on — petrol stations, NHS hospital waiting areas. You know, turnpikes, A-roads, traffic jams — like heaven. It’s the text we live in every day. To be able to honor that, and to live in that as these characters was really, really joyful. And the snacks, the Celebrations, the Jaffa Cakes and the digestives and the tea in the bath. To be able to lean into that Hugh Grant, Richard Curtis as you say, vibration archetype was just … yeah. And one of my favorite of his films is About Time with Domhnall [Gleeson] and Rachel [McAdams]. That film holds a very special place in my heart for multiple reasons. So when this came along, I was like, it’s About Time, but maybe a little more dramatic. They’re kind of related in some way.
Do you have a favourite pub in Herne Hill?
[Laughs.] Herne Hill is not my hood.
What is your hood?
I’m not revealing that! It’s northwest London.
Do you have any recommendations there?
There’s The Stag [pub] which is great, by Hampstead train station. Primrose Hill has the best bagel shop in London right now — It’s Bagels.
I’ve been. It’s really good.
It’s a little hyped up right now, but it lives up to the hype. It’s really good. Like, I have their merch and everything. I really, really love bagels.
Before we digress further, let’s talk about Florence. Had you met her before this project? What was it like building a rapport that so effortlessly translates into onscreen chemistry?
We had never met. I had been a long admirer of her work, since Lady Macbeth (2016). When John and I were talking about ideas for Almut [Pugh’s character] — because I came on first — Florence was top of the list. I’d been wanting to work with her for a long time, and it turned out she had also wanted to work with me, and it was fortuitous that our schedules matched up. And she was dying to make a film like this as well.
But obviously starting out with a mutual respect for each other as actors was good. But then there’s a whole big question mark of: are we going to enjoy each other’s company? Are we going to even like each other? Are we going to dislike each other? Are we going to find each other problematic in any way? With a script like this, we have to travel to the most intimate places. At one point, I have to have my head right by her backside while she’s on all fours in a petrol station, naked. That’s scary for anyone to do, let alone the woman in that scenario. And that’s just one example of the kind of the intimacy that we would have to feel safe going to with each other. And it wouldn’t be possible if we didn’t feel safe.
It was very, very easy to do that with Florence, and I think she would say the same with me. I’m so grateful for that, because I don’t think we would have a film that works without that.
Florence Pugh, Andrew Garfield
Is there anything that surprised you about Florence, or can you share some sort of insight into her inner workings that maybe people wouldn’t know?
Oh, that’s a good question. I mean, a surprise I’m not sure, because I didn’t have any expectations. I was very, very pleasantly, like, grateful about how much of a professional she is in terms of the basic stuff — a lot of people don’t see as the basic stuff, like being on time, being ready, being prepared.
She’s someone who wants everyone to feel included. Whether you’re on set with the crew or on a night out or at a dinner party, she wants everyone to feel like they’re part of the gang. She doesn’t want anyone to feel left out. She’s very, very aware of people’s feelings around a table. And I think that was something that I found really touching and moving about her. And she really, really cares about the work. She really, really is devoted to her work as an actor.
You’ve done so much in your career. You’ve done the period pieces, you’ve done the rom-coms, you’ve done Spider-Man, the superhero stuff. You’ve done a biopic with Tick, Tick… Boom! I know you have The Magic Faraway Tree coming up and After the Hunt with Luca Guadagnino. What can you tell us about what’s on the horizon?
I’d like to get back to the kind of origins of making home movies with my dad, or making home movies with my high school friends, who were just in San Sebastian with me. We were reminiscing about the [fact] we had a production company called Budget Productions, which is “budget” but in a French pronunciation, like boo-shay. And, led by our friends Ben and David Morris, we would make genre films. Like we would just do handy cam, stop and start editing, in-camera, James Bond rip-offs when we were very drunk and very high, when we were 15 or 16. In between skateboarding sessions.
So it’s coming back a little bit to to that first impulse of like, we’re playing and we’re making something that is just joyful and fun. I was able to bring that to Tick, Tick… Boom! for sure. And then these last two [The Magic Faraway Tree and After the Hunt], even though they’re very, very different tonally and process-wise — one’s a big, sweet family fantasy film, and the other is a very serious, grown-up drama — it was still very, very playful. Luca is a very playful director. Luca’s like pure imagination and freedom. His creativity is this free, radical, sublime thing. And then Ben Gregor, our director on Faraway Tree, and everyone involved in that process, including Simon Farnaby, the writer, and all the actors, it was just this very playful experience. I’m really excited about both of them being in the world. I feel reinvigorated towards that feeling of putting on plays with my cousins and our best friends for our families over Christmas time or whatever. That’s what it feels like again.
I want to see a Budget Production.
[Laughs.] Let me see if I can… I don’t know. They’re definitely out there. I don’t know whether they’re suitable for public consumption.
It’s great to hear that it was fun working with Luca. Have you seen Queer?
He’s been trying to get me in for a screening. He’s only shown me one blowjob scene, which I thought was so genuinely beautiful, like it was such a beautiful love scene between Daniel [Craig] and Drew [Starkey] and it’s just so tender and full of longing. And obviously, graphic in certain ways. But I just thought, “Oh, I’m gonna love this film.” He’s such a sensualist and a humanist and in touch with his own longing.
Is there a genre of film or TV Show that you haven’t done that really appeals to you?
I’m considering all these things right now. I would love to make a film or a show or something that has the feeling of the stuff that I was brought up on, like ’90s, early 2000s. Amblin Entertainment, adventure, swashbuckling, Indiana Jones-style. Humorous, dramatic, romantic — a big crowd-pleasing epic adventure. That would be really, really fun to do. I was [also] thinking about great like films of Fatal Attraction, Unfaithful, Adrian Lyne. Like an erotic thriller.
Like Queer?
Kind of like Queer. Or Babygirl. But from what I understand young people want less sex on their screens! It probably makes sense because they’ve been exposed to so much insane, graphic pornography, accessible at the click of a switch that they’re like: “No more.” So eroticism has been killed somehow, because of the overtaking of pornography. Anyway, I don’t know. I want to go do theater again, do something on stage again. I don’t know. I’m very, very grateful. I also want to help. I think maybe the focus is more as well towards helping others get to where they want to get to. I don’t know what that looks like exactly, but I feel like I’m in a position that I can be a mentor to other actors and filmmakers and assist in that way. That feels like a good way to spend my time. It’s all up for grabs. Midlife is not so bad.
Midlife sounds great. Okay, who would you love to work with or act alongside next?
My God. Where do I begin? Jesus Christ. Older generation actors like Meryl [Streep]. I’ve been in a film with Meryl, but I’ve never worked with Meryl. Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, Daniel Day Lewis, if he ever decides to work again. Robert Duval, Gene Hackman. I got the opportunity to work with Robert Redford and Philip Seymour Hoffman and Vincent D’Onofrio, Linda Emond, Sally Field. These are the people that I feel are the custodians of that deep dive of acting. There are other people, of course, in my generation and younger. I just saw Colman Domingo in Sing Sing — one of my favorite films of all time at this point.
I got to work with Zendaya [in Spider-Man: No Way Home], who is just wonderful. I would love to work with her again. I want to work with my friends. I’ve never worked with Eddie Redmayne or Charlie Cox or Tom Sturridge. Cillian [Murphy]. I did a screen test with Cillian once and Ben Whishaw, which was very exciting. There are certain people in the younger generation that I find really exciting as well. Obviously, Timothee Chalamet is just incredible. And Austin Butler is great. I’d love to work again with my friend Laura Dern. It’s really, really endless. I was so happy to get to work briefly with Ayo [Edebiri in After the Hunt], who I love, and got to do some real work with Julia [Roberts], which was a heavenly thing.
And Tom Hanks. That’s part of my dream as well. I would love to work with Will Ferrell, who I got to meet recently. Steve Carell. Ryan Gosling I would love to work with. I did a screen test with Ryan 20 years ago and ever since then, I wanted to do something with him. He’s very inspiring to me.
And how is it closing San Sebastian with We Live in Time?
It’s such a gorgeous festival, and it’s such a nice time. I came out at the beginning of the festival and, because I had a break, I brought two friends out from high school. I had always wanted to come and eat here and surf, so that’s what I did. I came out early and I ate and I surfed, and I was hanging with my old buddies, and we were just rambling around and cycling about and and eating our way through this city and drinking a little bit too. It was really, really beautiful. I managed to see three films. I saw Anora and and I saw Hard Truths which was incredible. I’ve really enjoyed being here with the backdrop of the festival. It’s a beautiful city, and I got to go to Bilbao yesterday, to the Guggenheim — holy shit. So I’ve been a proper tourist. I love being a tourist. I love a city break and and just walking, getting lost and finding the nooks and crannies of a place. So yeah, it’s been a beautiful time, and the reception from people has been really lovely. I’m excited to see how people respond to the film tomorrow.
A super quick question to end on. Did you know your TikTok fans absolutely love that scene from The Social Network? Where you smash the laptop and say: “Sorry, my Prada’s at the cleaners! Along with my hoodie and my fuck you flip-flops, you pretentious douchebag.”
[Laughs] It’s passion. It’s justice. I guess people on TikTok like justice, and they like outraged, righteous indignation and someone searching for justice — where Eduardo Saverin is in that moment. And I think they probably subliminally like seeing technology being smashed too.
We Live in Time closes the San Sebastian Film Festival on Sept. 28 and releases in U.S. theaters on Oct. 11.
Zendaya and Robert Pattinson are eyeing a new feature from filmmaker Kristoffer Borgli, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed.
A24 is set to finance and produce writer-director Borgli’s movie The Drama, which hails from Ari Aster and Lars Knudsen’s production company Square Peg. The stars are in early talks for the lead roles in the film from Borgli, who previously wrote and directed A24’s 2023 feature Dream Scenario that starred Nicolas Cage.
Plot details have not been shared, but The Drama is said to involve a couple whose romance changes dramatically before their big day. Aster, Knudsen and Tyler Campellone serve as producers for Square Peg.
Other collaborations between A24 and Square Peg include the forthcoming films Death of a Unicorne, starring Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega, and the Aster-directed Eddington that includes Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Emma Stone and Austin Butler. The two companies were also behind Dream Scenario, Hereditary and Midsommar.
Zendaya is a two-time Emmy winner for her role on HBO’s Euphoria. She has seen her star power continue to grow in recent months with the 2024 features Challengers and Dune: Part Two.
Pattinson, who played the title role in 2022 superhero movie The Batman, stars alongside Steven Yeun and Mark Ruffalo in Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17, hitting theaters early next year. He is also set to star in director Parker Finn’s remake of the 1981 horror flick Possession.
Borgli’s Dream Scenario hit theaters in November and garnered a Golden Globe nomination for Cage. The dark comedy also starred Julianne Nicholson, Michael Cera and Tim Meadows.
Deadline was first to report the news of Zendaya and Pattinson circling The Drama.
Animation continue to the be hero of the summer office thanks to Despicable Me 4 andInside Out 2, but Neon‘s Longlegs can rightly take a bow after scoring the biggest opening for an independent horror pic in a decade with $22.6 million in ticket sales.
From Illumination and Universal, DM4 easily stayed atop the domestic box office chart in its second weekend with $44.7 million from 4,449 theaters as it jumped the $200 million mark to finish Sunday with a North American tally of $211.1 million. Overseas, Gru and the mischievous Minions also continued to stir up strong sales, earning $88 million from 78 markets for a foreign tally of $226.7 million and $437.8 million globally.
In a notable milestone, the Despicable Me/Minions franchise has crossed $5 billion mark in global ticket sales, a feat no animated franchise has achieved before. (Earlier this week, Illumination announced that a Minions 3 is in the works.)
The big surprise of the weekend is the better-than-expected performance of writer-director Osgood Perkins Longlegs, a serial killer chiller starring Maika Monroe and Nicolas Cage. The tense FBI procedural, playing in 2,510 cinemas, is the biggest opening ever for Tom Quinn‘s Oscar-winning specialty production and distribution outfit Neon, home of Parasite.
Among other records, it’s Cage’s biggest opening since National Treasure: Book of Secrets almost twenty years ago in 2007. It’s also the top R-rated opening of 2024 to date. And it is the only indie horror film of the past decade to open to $20 million or more (this excludes one of the Insidious movies from Focus Features/Universal).
Going back as far as 25 years, Neon also notes that very few indie films have crossed the $20 million threshold in their debut. For purposes of context, however, many indie titles — including Neon releases — only open a few theaters, versus rolling out nationwide from the get-go as Longlegs did.
The well-reviewed movie earned $10 million on Friday alone, including previews, and wasn’t hampered by a C+ Cinemascore, since it’s common for the horror genre to land a grade in the C range. Fun fact: More than 70 percent of ticket buyers were between ages 18 and 34.
The record-shattering Inside Out 2 — which has a shot at becoming the top-grossing animated film of all time — finished Sunday with a global cume of $1.35 billion. It’s already become the top-grossing Pixar title of all time and the third biggest animated title, not adjusted for inflation. The film has helped propel Disney become the first major studio to cross the $2 billion mark in 2024 global ticket sales.
In North America, Inside Out 2 came in third in its fifth weekend with $20.8 million for a domestic tally of $572.6 million. Overseas, it earned another $50.2 million from 47 markets for a foreign cume of $777.5 million. It has yet to open in Japan, where it could do sizeable business.
Paramount’s holdover A Quiet Place: Day One continues to entice moviegoers and placed fourth despite the entry of Longlegs. The prequel scared up another $11.8 million this weekend from 3,378 theaters for a domestic total of $116.2 million through Sunday.
Apple Original Films‘ continues its theatrical ambitions with the release of director Greg Berlanti’s Fly Me to the Moon, a romantic comedy starring Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum. The period space-age movie, distributed by Sony on behalf of Apple, opened to a subdued $10 million from 3,356 sites to place No. 5. The number isn’t a surprise considering the film was fueled by older adults; more than half of ticket buyers were 45 or older, including 32 percent over the age of 55.
The movie has earned meh reviews, but audiences were kinder in bestowing the older-skewing film an A- CinemaScore. Reviews matter more to older moviegoers, upon whom Berlanti’s film is relying, but Apple and Sony believe the film will have long legs, similar to Ticket to Paradise, which opened to $16.5 million domestically on its way to topping out at $68 million, and Where the Crawdads Sing, which opened to $17.7 million and topped out at $90 million domestic.
At the specialty box office, new offerings include A24‘s Sing Sing, which is on course to score a solid per-theater average of $34,280 or thereabouts from four theaters in Los Angeles and New York. The film, from director Greg Kwedar, chronicles an arts program at the infamous Sing Sing prison.
July 14, 7:45 a.m. Updated with revised estimates.
This story was originally published July 13 at 10:16 a.m.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice andBluey fever join horror classics and spooky lore-inspired collections at major home decor retailers and seasonal pop-up giants Spirit Halloween and Party City.
Halloween’s niche in horror fandom has expanded way beyond October 31, so it makes sense that home decor and goods inspired by scary movies, classic monsters, and supernatural legends are becoming more and more a staple of everyday life. Hey—if the comic book and sci-fi nerds do it all year, so can the spooky season folks. What’s so shocking, however, is that Halloween teases are now dropping so soon after July 4. In previous years, anticipation for stores to fill their shelves with orange-and-black delights got more of a chance to build, at least until back-to-school aisles were cleared. And while some retailers are apparently still checking the calendar—including Target, which has thus far kept its Halloween collection under wraps—if you visit the sites or even locations for the Disney Store, Lowe’s, Spirit Halloween, Home Depot, Party City, Michaels, At Home, and Joann, you can start shopping pumpkins, ghosts, skeletons, and more.
You’ll have to be quick though! Early-bird horror fiends are already raiding the aisles—as are re-sellers intent on snatching up any items with the potential to go viral and become the Halloween must-haves for 2024. That’s why so many are sold out in the middle of summer—though most will be re-stocked, so if you see something you can’t live without, get on those alerts so you’ll be first in line when it returns. And keep in mind what’s been dropped so far isn’t everything; there’ll be more as we get closer to fall. The Disney Store just started its release schedule with The Haunted Mansion collection but has more planned in the coming weeks. And Beetlejuice stuff has begun to trickle out to retailers like Spirit Halloween—witness this giant inflatable at Party City of the circus carousel ghost with the most—but it’s worth noting that so far it’s only been product from the iconic first film. We have yet to see anything from Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, but it’s definitely coming. Tim Burton fans will be happy to learn that The Corpse Bride will be a huge feature at Spirit Halloween as will slashers like Scream and John Carpenter’s Halloween franchise. Home Depot will feature the Universal Monsters, the not-so-scary (but clear-cut kid favorite) Bluey, and more Nightmare Before Christmas with that 13-foot Jack Skellington animated statue (which we hope comes with a Sandy Claws outfit for Christmas).
But what if you don’t need pop culture splattered all over your seasonal decor? Fans of supernatural folklore, witchy classic literature, kooky familiars, sentient pumpkins, and paranormal specters aren’t getting left behind either. Michaels, At Home, and Joann Fabrics have some deeply aesthetic collections of their own out to shop that aren’t IP at all but will make your abode feel supremely haunted. We particularly love the Midnight Moon and Haunted Forest collections at Michaels that harken to some classic monster and A24 atmospheric vibes. Then for those into astrology, traditional Halloween, and graveyard goth, definitely look into the drops at Joann and At Home (but shout out to these awesome Jack Skellington pieces). And lets not forget Lowe’s truly epic aquatic horror line. There’s a huge front yard Kraken that’s already hard to get your hands on, because who doesn’t want to release the Kraken for Halloween?
There’s already something for everyone and picking a theme is going to be so hard this year! Let us know if you’ve managed to secure anything already or if you’re going to wait and show up only to find Christmas aisles in September. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.
A24 and IMAX unite to screen an extended but of ‘Midsommar’
Psychological-horror thrillers will put you on the edge of your seat in regular movie theaters, so just imagine those creepy-crawlies on IMAX! A24 and IMAX team up to bring a director’s cut of Midsommar to theaters for the first time, bigger than before — expect the IMAX format to deliver all the frights on a gargantuan scale.
Starring Florence Pugh, this movie tells the eerie story of an American couple who visit a rural region of Sweden for what they thought would be a traditional midsummer festival — but is so much gruesomely more. The film “simmers with dread, an unnerving spellbinder that dodges the usual terror tropes to plumb the violence of the mind,” raved Peter Travers in Rolling Stone.
The director’s cut promises an extra 24 minutes of footage, and in case you didn’t immediately notice, the screening date is — yes — Summer Solstice.
Thursday, June 20, IMAX theaters, imax.com, $18.21-$21.40.
The cast of A24‘s upcoming film The Smashing Machine has grown, with Heavyweight Boxing Champion Oleksandr Usyk officially signing onto the film.
Usyk will join an already star-studded cast that includes Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt, in the biopic that is written and directed by Benny Safdie. The project tells the story of the life of legendary MMA fighter Mark Kerr. No other casting information is available as of now.
Usyk is coming off of the biggest week of his boxing career. This past weekend, he defeated Tyson Fury to become the newly crowned Undisputed Heavyweight Boxing Champion. As a professional boxer, Usyk holds a record of 22-0.
What do we know about The Smashing Machine?
In December 2023, A24 announced that Johnson and Safdie were collaborating on The Smashing Machine. Along with directing the movie, Safdie — known for co-directing 2017’s Good Time and 2019’s Uncut Gems alongside his brother, Josh Safdie — also wrote the screenplay.
“The Smashing Machine is a drama based on the story of Mark Kerr, the legendary MMA fighter from the no-holds-barred era of the UFC at the peak of his career,” reads the film’s description. “He struggles with addiction, winning, love, and friendship in the year 2000.”
Kerr is a former wrestler and mixed martial artist. He was previously the subject of the 2003 HBO documentary that was also called The Smashing Machine.
A release date for The Smashing Machine has not yet been announced by A24.
It would seem lesbianism is “in the air” of late. At least in mainstream pop culture—something that hasn’t happened much since the days of t.A.T.u. and Madonna kissing Britney and Christina at the VMAs. Oh yeah, and then there were a few blips in the movie world with offerings such as Carol, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Disobedience, Blue Is the Warmest Color and The Handmaiden (though most of these likely weren’t seen outside of an “arthouse cinema” audience), plus some play on “TV” with Orange Is the New Black. But, by and large, it’s been a gay man’s world when it comes to the Midwest and the South—a.k.a. the benchmarks for pop culture fully saturating the mainstream—embracing “homo things” (namely, Drag Race…and, more recently, perhaps even Challengers). But lesbians are “chic” again if we’re to go by Love Lies Bleeding, Drive-Away Dolls and Billie Eilish announcing, “I’ve been in love with girls for my whole life, but I just didn’t understand—until, last year, I realized I wanted my face in a vagina.” That’s certainly one way to announce a sexual preference.
With Rose Glass’ second feature (following Saint Maud) in particular, the pivot back to the “divine lesbian” in pop culture is complete. Of course, Kristen Stewart, who stars as “reclusive gym manager” Lou (short for Louise), has long been open about her own bisexuality (and, currently, she is engaged to a woman—Dylan Meyer). One might say the first and second half of her famous life has been bifurcated, in fact: in the first half, dating men and, in the second, dating women. Thus, she was fully prepared to inhabit a character like Lou, who sets her sights on Jackie (Katy O’Brian, who looks like a cross between Alia Shawkat and Ilana Glazer), an aspiring bodybuilder that shows up in her gym. A gym called “Crater” (which sounds very close to “cooter” if you think about it). Where, in true 80s fashion, “motivational” signs populate the room with sayings like, “No Pain No Gain,” “Pain Is Weakness Leaving The Body” and “Only Losers Quit.” It’s all very in keeping with the capitalist/baby boomer philosophy of life, despite the fact that baby boomers experienced their youth at the height of a time in America when things actually were easier (in terms of achieving “success”) because there were fewer regulations/red tape-related hurdles and far less surveillance.
Lou herself is the “beneficiary” of “good fortune” in that her psychotic father, Lou Sr. (Ed Harris, in his creepiest role to date), owns the gym, hence Lou’s position as its manager. Of course, a role in management is hardly all glitz and glamor, as we see when Lou unclogs a disgusting toilet (that tends to be perennially clogged) in the bathroom. Worse still, she has to do it while Daisy (Anna Baryshnikov), a woman who is clearly obsessed with her (and likely the only other lesbian in town), hovers over her and tries to get her to come out for a drink. Lou “politely” declines. From there, Glass gives us the “Miss Congeniality treatment” in terms of showing how Lou is a lonely single woman, returning home to her apartment to have a beer, make a microwave meal for one and feed her cat…all of which are things that we see Grace Hart (Sandra Bullock) do at the beginning of Miss Congeniality (to be sure, Grace was giving off major “dyke energy” for the 2000s). Except, in the depiction of Lou’s lonely existence, we get to see her masturbate on her couch, too.
As for Jackie’s life of loneliness, it’s slightly less noticeable because her primary focus is on basic survival. And yes, that includes fucking randos in exchange for things like job leads. Only the “rando” in question is actually Lou’s shithead, wife-beating brother-in-law, J.J. (Dave Franco, who probably shouldn’t embrace such parts considering who his brother is). Of course, Jackie doesn’t know that at the time, nor does she meet Lou until the following day after accepting a job as a waitress at a restaurant on a gun range (a sentence that you could only say in America)—unfortunately, also owned by Lou’s father. Her life of transiency has, needless to say, made her very resourceful and very impervious to fucked-up situations. Like sleeping on the street. Indeed, it is while she brushes her teeth after having slept outside for the night that she’s placed in the foreground of a looming billboard that reads, “Follow Your Dream.” Another satirical mise-en-scène from Glass, who clearly sees the irony of the U.S. being a place where people are told that “anyone” can succeed, even though the fine print to that false advertising makes it so that only certain kinds of people can. And people like Lou and Jackie (*cough cough* “freaks and weirdos” a.k.a. the non-herteronormative) aren’t generally among them.
And so, when these two women’s paths cross, it is as though each sees the same wound in the other. The same type of rejection, the same feeling of worthlessness. In fact, Jackie’s amazed when Lou doesn’t automatically mock her plan to go to Las Vegas and compete in a bodybuilding competition. So “supportive” is Lou of Jackie’s dream that she even gives her some steroids to try for the first time. Despite Jackie telling Lou she’s “all naturale, baby,” she can’t resist getting “poked” by Lou when offered (especially after being told that Lou will give her “the stuff” for free). The poking quickly leads to sucking and, soon enough, Jackie has found herself a place to stay in Lou’s abode (the term “U-Haul lesbian” definitely comes to mind) at the “Mi Casa Apartments” (which appears to only house one apartment, and it’s Lou’s). Not to mention a steady supplier of steroids, her newfound addiction. So really, Lou can’t blame Jackie when she starts to “hulk out” (in truth, O’Brian would have been a better casting choice for She-Hulk) and lose all self-regulating control of her emotions—for she was the one who technically “made” Jackie this way by introducing her to the substance.
It is after becoming hopped up on the steroids that Jackie bears witness to Lou’s pain over having to stand by helplessly in the hospital room where her sister, Beth (Jena Malone), lies unconscious thanks to another beating from J.J. And in this moment of “clarity,” the steroids kick in to tell her exactly what to do to make Lou’s pain disappear: kill that fucker. Ah, the things one must do for love.
Alas, things get pretty raw for Jackie during the comedown, after she realizes the full weight of what she’s done. And when Lou finds her sitting in the bathtub of J.J. and Beth’s house (after happening to see her car, which she lent to Jackie, parked outside of it), it’s obvious there’s some remorse on her part…even if Jackie insists, “I made it right” and both of them are fundamentally glad that the world has been cleansed of a man like J.J.
If the two weren’t bonded before by their love, ostracism and general contempt for the “normies,” they certainly are after disposing of J.J.’s body together. Lou even feels comfortable enough to take Jackie to her dad’s “secret spot.” The same place the film opens on, wielding the shot so that it amounts to what looks like a “gash” (sexual indeed), a crevice, a “long opening.” It’s the place, viewers find out, where Lou’s father kills and disposes of all the people who get in his way.
As the tension and “thriller-y” nature of Love Lies Bleeding intensifies (there are many instances when the film smacks of something out of the Nicolas Winding Refn canon) in the wake of J.J.’s murder, Lou and Jackie’s love is put to the test (a lyric, incidentally, that shows up in a major song from 1989 [the year Love Lies Bleeding takes place]: “Express Yourself”). In ways that most “ordinary” couples would never have to endure. So it is that Jackie ends up spouting some tortured pretty phrases (sorry, Taylor, you ain’t the only “tortured poet”), like, “Don’t ever fall in love, okay?” and “I wish I’d never met you!” Except that, without Lou, Jackie knows she’d be far more miserable. Such is the “curse” of being in love (or, as Britney Spears once phrased it, “Can’t live with ‘em, can’t live without ‘em”).
Glass’ decision to set the narrative in 1989 seems to stem not only from female bodybuilding and gym membership-based fitness in general becoming more of “a thing” at that time, but also to punctuate the utter seediness of the so-called American dream as it continued to decay in the Reagan era. A “dream” rendered even more incongruous and insidious in Love Lies Bleeding because, in the background of the narrative, there are reports not only of the crack epidemic, but also of the Berlin Wall’s dismantlement, with more and more East Germans being funneled into the West (and its pro-capitalist lifestyle) so that they can be “liberated.” And yet, two women who simply like eating pussy aren’t even really “free” to do that (not without much ridicule and judgment anyway) in the “Land of the Free.” Or, as Lena Katina of t.A.T.u. once said (despite ultimately revealing that she and bandmate Julia Volkova were not actually lesbians), “We wanted people to understand them and not judge them. That they are as free as anyone else.”
But no, not really…and not in Love Lies Bleeding. Instead, they have to be on the run like a lesbian Thelma and Louise. Granted, committing murder doesn’t quite help one’s cause in terms of feeling “unshackled.” It does, in this case though, prove just how much someone really loves you if they’re willing to look past your occasional murderous tendencies as spurred by ‘roid rage.
Alex Garland’s Civil War, about reporters covering a conflict in the United States at some unspecified future date, might be the most controversial movie of the year. From the moment the film’s first teaser dropped, Garland, an English writer turned director, was criticized as politically clueless for envisioning a scenario in which a rogue president would be targeted by a coalition of Texas and California (which have nothing in common when they vote in national elections), and also for releasing a film on that subject in the first place during an election year with the same presidential candidates as 2020, one of whom tried to nullify the other’s victory. The discord surrounding the movie increased after its premiere at the South by Southwest Film Festival, where Garland said in interviews that Civil War avoided political specifics on purpose in order to start “a conversation” while refusing to speculate on details the movie didn’t include; instead, he said that it was mainly a love letter to journalists, war reporters in particular. There were also gripes that the film was more violent, slick, and loud than substantive, and perhaps represented an “Emperor’s New Clothes” moment for the director of Ex Machina, Annihilation, and Men, all of which were hotly discussed by genre fans but have yet to form a critical consensus.
Garland spoke to Vulture for an hour in Los Angeles recently, elaborating on his decision to avoid political specifics and what responsibility he has to the 2024 American electorate, and digging into more nebulous questions about the relationships between screenwriting and directing, a movie and its audience, and artists and the eras in which they make art. Garland clarified his decision to step away from — though not, as has been previously reported, entirely quit — directing, saying that it was not driven by criticism of him or his latest film, but in fact dated back to the filming of Civil War two years ago.
How are you feeling right now? Or is that a trick question? It’s a fair question. It’s weird. Selling movies, which is basically what I’m doing, is not normal human interaction. It just isn’t. It’s always a little bit odd. This movie is particularly odd, so it amplifies the weirdness. I can normally relax slightly more when I’m doing interviews, and I’m more guarded, more careful, choosing words more precisely — or attempting to.
I do need to ask you — You can ask whatever you want.
Why would you want to stop directing? It’s a complicated thing. What I said was “for the foreseeable future,” and I mean that in a literal sense. I’m working on four — in a way, five — film projects at the moment, none of which are for me to direct. They’re for other people. So I’m working hard, and I consider screenwriting to be a form of filmmaking. Prior to directing, I functioned as a screenwriter, and I don’t think it’s lesser. I just think it’s other. It has different obligations.
You have a family, yes? Yeah, two kids. I shot a bunch of stuff really back-to-back. I was away a lot, away from home a lot, away from life a lot. That is a contributing factor to the decision. But also I think temperamentally I’m a writer who opted to direct, rather than someone who always had a burning desire to direct. The first film I directed, Ex Machina, I did to protect certain scenes, to not leave them open to discussion.
Alicia Vikander and Domhnall Gleeson in Ex Machina. Photo: Universal Pictures
Protect them from whom? From whoever the director might be. I just wanted to remove that voice for a period of time. And that would have been true with this movie as well. Like, there would be certain scenes in the way they’re unfolding that I would have found impossible to watch if they weren’t unfolding in the right way.
Which scenes in Ex Machina were you concerned about being mishandled or misinterpreted if someone else had directed the movie? It would have had to do with the specificity of some of the dialogue. On the day, in the moment, there might be an actor who suddenly doesn’t feel like a line is fitting in their mouth, and they say, “Hey, can I say it like this?” And the director, who may not understand the exact reason a particular construction of sentences is in there, might say “sure” and then it’s gone and something is lost. There would be many moments in Ex Machina to do with a specific way something is being described.
Did your concerns have to do with the story’s sexual aspects? Absolutely, yeah. It’s a thought experiment I often have: I’ll think of a script and I’ll imagine, What if X directed it? What if Y directed it? What would happen? And in Ex Machina, there was just some stuff that was close to a line and that could not go over a line. It isn’t always the case, but I’ve had a few experiences where stuff in a screenplay was getting changed in a way I couldn’t stomach. Sometimes I would then turn into a kind of pit bull, which I don’t like doing and I don’t want to be. And sometimes I would just have to shrug.
Was it a case where you felt the intent or the quality of the writing had been compromised or mangled? Or was it simply “That’s not how I would have done it”? On occasion, it might be “That’s not how I would have done it.” But often it wasn’t to do with — this is going to sound like a contradiction with what I just said — the exact words; it would be to do with the exact meaning behind the words. You could actually change the dialogue and hold on to the meaning. That would be completely unproblematic. I’ve never cared about that. But the meaning of a scene can completely change, and the role of a scene within a story can completely change.
Can you give me an example? I’d rather not.
Maybe later? Privately, I could do them easily! I could reel them off! But then also you get confronted with another weird thing, right, which is: So the film is not as you intended, but who cares? Does it actually matter? Film is collegial.
In theory! In theory. I think the way I work is pretty collegial! But what will happen is, there will be some things I care about massively, and it has to be that way on that thing. But in and around that thing, there’s enormous latitude to change things, and I’m actually looking for other people to elevate it past the point that I would have been able to consider.
So these four or five new projects you have in the works are all things where you’d be okay with saying, in effect, “Fly little bird, leave the nest, whatever happens is okay”? Correct. It’s to do with … to me, it feels like my last four films as a director are a sequence of films which are following a sequence of thoughts. Civil War, I think, as far as I can tell, ends that sequence.
What is the sequence? Is it “the science-fiction sequence”? “The speculative-fiction sequence”? I probably lean towards science fiction. Fiction is almost by definition speculative —but speculative to degrees, and sci-fi is definitely at the far end of one of those degrees. I also think sci-fi sort of allows for or even encourages big ideas, which is nice. You don’t have to feel embarrassed of them, actually. Sci-fi audiences kind of dig them.
But no, to answer your question, it has more to do with a set of thoughts I had about how to present arguments within a film as conversation. I’m not saying I’m always successful at that, only that it’s a private set of thoughts that I’m following through on.
By “arguments,” do you mean not making a case for or against a thing but rather a dialectical exchange of ideas? Exactly, and a kind of inclusive one. Bear in mind, I’m not saying I always manage to do that. One of the things I have to do is be careful about what I say because that would disrupt the conversation between the film and the audience, you know? I recently watched All That Jazz, which I hadn’t seen for a really, really long time. And while I was watching, I was having what I felt was an intensely personal conversation, I guess, with many people but also with Bob Fosse’s psyche. Would that conversation be helped by Bob Fosse giving me a memo in addition to the film he made? I don’t think it would have helped. I think the film would have been diminished, you know?
I wondered if the reception to Civil War at South by Southwest, as well as the negative or critical reaction to some of your comments in interviews, played into your announcement that you didn’t want to direct anymore. No, no, no, no. The decision predated that. In fact, it located itself in my mind in a clear way while I was shooting Civil War. That’s when I started stating it sometimes to people I work with, just to give them a heads-up: “Hey, I’m gonna be taking some time out for a while, right after this.”
Time out to write? Well, no. It’s slightly more complicated than that because I’m about to do a film with one of the crew from Civil War, a guy called Ray Mendoza, who was our military adviser. In postproduction on Civil War, Ray and I started discussing a film, and I said, “You should direct this because a portion of what directors do is have answers to questions. It’s not the only thing a director does, but it’s a very important part of what a director does.” And in the case of this particular story, the person who has the answers to those questions is Ray, not me. As soon as Ray takes the position of a director, a particular authority is conferred that is then useful for the execution of what he’s talking about. But I also knew there would be some areas that it wouldn’t be fair to expect Ray to have to answer, like, “Why is the camera moving? Should this be a close-up? Should it be a developing shot? Now should we pop out to a wide shot?” So I said, “Let’s share this responsibility.” It’s not directing in the terms I myself would think of as directing.
So a Ray question would be something like “What’s the military objective in this scene, and why are they using this particular type of formation?” Oh, it’s more than that. That would be a Ray question, but it would go well beyond that. This is, in a very profound way, Ray’s story.
What can you tell me about the film? The film is an account of a real event. That’s basically what it is.
An event for which Ray Mendoza was present? Absolutely. Notionally, in a credited way, it’s a co-written script. But really, on my part, it’s an act of transcription and organization rather than what I would normally think of as screenwriting. That will also be true with the directing. Actually, in a way, the writing of the script is an echo of the way I suspect the film will get made.
Let’s return to Civil War for a second. What year is the movie set in, more or less? It’s not, like, five years from now, is it? In my mind, there were some things I was very specific about as a background sequence of events.
I ask because Jesse and Lee have a conversation where Jesse is talking — —about a massacre, and there hasn’t been a massacre in the movie.
Right. She says Lee took famous photos of something called “the antifa massacre.” We don’t know if it was a massacre by antifa or of, but it seems clear that it happened a long time ago, when Jesse was a child or even before her birth. That would mean this story has to be set at least 20 or 25 years from now, right? Yeah. But as for the vehicles, the phones, the sort of textural stuff of real life — a vehicle which is seven years old now is probably not going to be around 25 years from now, right? And there are a lot of vehicles in the film. In that respect, you couldn’t date this story. What you could do is apply a logical sequence of events that are alluded to within the film, which, to my mind, would allow for the situation we see depicted. But you can’t say, “Starting in 2024, here’s what happens: A, B, C, D.” The way in which some people can create huge graphs for a fantasy epic with multiple parts and figure out the laws and the timelines would be a wasted exercise on this movie!
Cailee Spaeny and Kirsten Dunst in Civil War. Photo: A24
All that being said, I don’t know that anything depicted in Civil War is inherently more far-fetched than the 2019 Los Angeles of Blade Runner or Anthony Burgess’s future England in A Clockwork Orange, which, according to the author’s notes for an early draft, was set in 1980. No, it’s certainly not inherently more far-fetched than either of those stories.
It’s interesting: Blade Runner is drifting towards something that is more closely related to our reality because of changes in artificial intelligence. And Clockwork Orange was always closer to reality because it was talking about the haves and have-nots, the Establishment’s fear of violent delinquency, what measures might be taken, whether those measures would work, whether they’d be reactionary or whatever. And that argument, I think, probably belongs to that period. It clearly scared the hell out of Stanley Kubrick at the point when he released the film and thought, Hang on, this is folding into reality quicker and more seriously than I thought possible.
When I rewatched A Clockwork Orange recently I was startled by how much of the grammar of that film has inserted itself into film grammar generally. Kubrick was a freakishly influential filmmaker.
The equivalent of one of those novelists or playwrights who is actually adding words to the language. Is AClockwork Orange the first film where you have a group of young men walking towards the camera in slow motion and then, within the slow motion, a moment of violence floating out? I’m just curious.
One thing we can say for sure is it’s the scene that made a lot of other directors go, “That was cool — I want to do that in my movie.” And they did do it. Scorsese, especially. Let’s go back to Civil War again, though! No, no, I wanna stick with A Clockwork Orange because when I was talking about Civil War being an extension of a sequence of films and something I’ve been working through, bringing in A Clockwork Orange speaks directly to the thing — which is that there’s a disconnect between the intention of a filmmaker and the way a narrative is received. Not only is there a disconnect; it’s a good thing that there’s a disconnect because it involves the imaginative life and it’s built into the terms of conversation. Everything I say to you and you say to me, just in our talking, may not be fully understood either way. Conversation is in some respects impressionistic. It’s connected but impressionistic. And film is a really good exercise in demonstrating that. Clockwork Orange, for example, should mean either slightly or very different things to different people, and that is in no way problematic.
Speaking of problematic: There were complaints after the trailers and after the South by Southwest premiere that it was unrealistic to think California and Texas could be allied against the president because California votes Democratic in national elections and Texas votes Republican. I explained it to myself as, well, there are large numbers of Republicans in California who hate the rest of the state and want to secede; maybe they’ve seceded or taken over by that point in history, and that’s why California is allied with Texas. But maybe I’m wrong? One of the reasons the film does not specify the reasons behind Texas and California is to consciously, deliberately leave that space as a source of engagement.
So my speculative interpretation — Is as valid as mine.
And it’s not necessarily wrong? It is explicitly not necessarily wrong. What I would say is that all the thoughts put together, I hope — whatever disagreements you and I might have — a consensus would arrive from those things. Which, because I’m a fucking science nerd, I’m going to demonstrate to you now. [Garland takes out his phone and calls up the screenshot below.]
Photo: Galton Board App
Okay, what are we looking at here? What we’re looking at is a Galton Board. It’s a series of ball bearings falling and it’s a random 50-50 on which sides of each of these shapes they bounce. But a consensus appears as a product of the accumulated states. That orange line shows the state of the consensus.
So if you applied this to an audience’s reaction to a film, could this Galton Board perhaps represent the fullness of time rendering a consensus verdict? This is how I’m feeling watching All That Jazz. Bob Fosse might be there [points to the left side of the board], I might be there [points to the right side of the board], but this is the shape [points to the peak in the middle].
What do you make of the obsession with “solving” ambiguous endings and filling in every last bit of imaginative negative space in a story with explanations, backstory, and lore? Seems anti-art to me. I totally agree, but it’s worth pointing out that even if you do attempt to fill every single gap in a narrative, you will still not get this perfect, harmonious, unified response to every single moment and every single beat. It just never appears! The quest is quixotic, you know? I think most mainstream movies do exactly what you said, and they are open to less interpretation than the other kind. But I suspect if you go on any film website, you’ll see fans angrily arguing over the meaning in a movie that already explains everything.
Refusing to explain everything is not a flaw. But it sure does make people mad! The most satisfying film I saw last year was Anatomy of a Fall. It really does not answer one of its own central questions, and that in no way bothered me. In fact, I liked it even more for not answering it. But then there’ll be other people who walk out and throw their hands up in disgust going, “What the fuck? Did she do it or not?”
That’s funny because there are people who will insist that the film does in fact give you an answer, just as there are people who insist Zodiac gives you a clear idea of who the Zodiac killer was. That would be another subjective response. Here’s another thing that’s interesting: I just don’t really care what the filmmakers say, personally. But what if the filmmakers say, “No, no, we gave an answer — it’s there, it’s this,” but I didn’t see it? Does that mean I saw the film incorrectly? I don’t think so.
I don’t know. But I do know that sometimes my misreadings of a film are as interesting to me as what the film is actually saying, because of what it reveals to me about myself. Exactly. My whole journey over this sequence of films was a playing out of exactly what you just said. I felt with Civil War, this is as good as I will ever be able to do.
Are you comfortable saying what the film is about in a very general way? What I can say is that Civil War is about a state. I don’t mean a state like a country; I mean a state of thinking, which is divided and contains a path to forms of extremism so there is something of the real world located within it.
Every science-fiction film is about the time in which it was made. For sure. That’s one of the reasons I love sci-fi.
Therefore, Civil War is about our time too? Yeah, I hope so — and I hope so in a kind of thoughtful and conversational manner.
What would you say to somebody who accuses you of being irresponsible for making a film like Civil War and releasing it during an election year? The truest thing I’d say about that is I honestly don’t know whether it’s responsible or irresponsible because I would need to know too many things I don’t know in order to be able to answer that question. But what I do think is that there’s a converse, a counter to that, which is “What’s the consequence of not saying things? What’s the consequence of silence? Of silencing oneself or silencing other people?”
What is the film warning us about? Two things. If I was going to be reductive in a way, and I’m not inclined to be reductive, I would say that — paradoxically, considering the subject matter — the film is about journalism. It’s about the importance of journalism.It’s about reporting. The film attempts to function like old-fashioned reporters. That’s thing No. 1.
What’s the other thing? Just a simple acknowledgment that this country, my country, many European countries, countries in the Middle East, Asia, South America, all have populist, polarized politics which are causing and magnifying extreme divisions, and the end state of populism is extremism and then fascism.
That relates back again to journalists because you have governments with checks and balances, but you need this other thing, which is the press — free, fair, but also trusted. And at the moment, the dominant voices in the press are not trusted. They’re trusted to a degree by the choir they’re preaching to but not by the other choirs. I’m in my 50s. When I was a kid, if in what the old days was called a “broadsheet newspaper” ran a story about a corrupt or lying politician, it didn’t matter whether you were a reader of that newspaper or not, the impact would be enormous and very likely would end that person’s career. That world has gone.
It’s funny because so many movies still end with a video or audio recording being played publicly to prove that someone is corrupt, and the implication is that the bad person was fired or sent to prison. It worked perfectly in a 1970s paranoid conspiracy thriller because the heroes got the story out, and the sinister government course or the sinister corporate course was screwed by the story having come out.
Why is that kind of ending hard to accept now? It’s a consequence of three things. One is powerful external forces: politicians who deliberately undermine trust in the media for their own ends because it’s useful for them to have the media be distrusted. Social media creates an enormous amount of noise and counternarratives and theories that just create a kind of static over all of the information; it has a tonal quality which is often akin to shouting. And then also, very large, very powerful media organizations, which found themselves driven less ideologically than by advertising, needing to target audiences and hold on to those audiences. That became more important than unbiased news reporting.
It’s easier to get people to listen to your message if it’s one they already agree with? Yes, and that works very well. But it doesn’t work well for everyone who sits outside of that audience.
How does this relate back to the mentality of the journalists you depict in Civil War? They’re reporters. They’re reporters. The era I grew up in was an era of reporters in news journalism.
It doesn’t seem to matter to the reporters in Civil War if they’re embedded with the good guys or the bad guys. Why would it? They’re reporters.I think we need those kinds of people because we need for journalists to be trusted because they are the people that hold governments to account. And governments will, at times, regularly, predictably become corrupt.
What was the influence of your father, who was an editorial cartoonist, not just on this movie but on who you are? Huge. In two really significant ways. Every night Dad would watch the nine o’clock news because he’d be looking for a story that he’d do a cartoon about the next day. All of — not all, but the vast majority of — his close friends were journalists. My godfather was a foreign correspondent; my brother’s godfather was a different foreign correspondent. They were around the kitchen table; they were sometimes living in the house. I grew up listening to them. Like the journalists in this movie, they could be spiky, they could be difficult, they could be compromised or conflicted, but there was a kind of purity in this one aspect of their work that they were deadly serious about.
The other thing is Dad was a cartoonist, so I grew up around drawing, and I grew up around comic books. Comic books are sequences of images, and that’s, basically, even as a screenwriter, I am offering up sequences of images and editorial decisions. The scene ends here, and this image contrasts with the thing you just saw, and that carries its own implicit meaning or complication.
It’s so interesting hearing you talk about your father’s influence and journalism because, now that I think about it, your films feel reported. Like you’re going, “Here are the characters, here are the issues they have conflicts over, here is the story, here is the ending. Whatever you make of all this is up to you because I’m on to the next thing.” That’s exactly it. And I am aware that the attitude pisses some people off because they want the reassurance of knowing where the filmmaker stands with regard to various issues.
I remember when Ex Machina came out, I had arguments with people about the ending, where Ava leaves Caleb trapped. Some people wanted her to take him along or at least free him. How do you feel about that? Her point of empathy was the robot played by Sonoya Mizuno. Those two empathize with each other. They were in the same boat. She was in a prison; she was trying to get out. Kyoto, Sonoya’s character, empathizes with Ava. That would be my answer. But I find it interesting that people said it was cruel or non-empathetic, that it proves AIs don’t have empathy. I was like, “Empathy with who?”
It’s astonishing to me that Ex Machina came out ten years ago. You have a sequence where the creator, Nathan, takes Caleb into the laboratory and talks about how he used his power as a tech billionaire to basically eavesdrop on every communication in the world to create this AI. That’s what’s in the news now, that very thing: the scraping of information without consent or compensation to create an agglomeration that machines plug into. I always felt a real skepticism with these tech leaders. Because they work in tech, we make an assumption that they’re geniuses, and they’re very quick to also make that assumption about themselves. And I sort of think, Eh, you’re entrepreneurs. It just so happens that you’re not in milk production; you’re making social media or whatever the hell it is. That doesn’t confer on you any special status at all. And as the years roll by, that’s the other thing that’s been demonstrated — they’re really not geniuses. They’re just people with a lot of money and a lot of power. That in itself doesn’t make a genius.
Was Ex Machina a warning? I definitely thought about it in those terms. It was actually in the TV show Devs that I really went further down that line. In fact, one of the characters in Devs, one of the computer programmers, says he’s not a genius, he’s an entrepreneur.
Do you ever read the news and think, Yeah, I called it? I never think my stuff is prescient. I know there’s a big conversation happening about these issues at exactly the same time that I write things, so I know it’s not prescient; it’s more sort of factual. I think people are very, very good at correctly anticipating problems. They’re just terrible at doing something about it. They just don’t act.
I organized two screenings of Annihilation, and afterward, the audience had an astounding number of different interpretations of the film: that it was about the uncertainty principle, that it was about grief, that it was a metaphor for cancer. There were assorted theological readings. I wondered if you had a specific reason for making that movie. If I was going to be very reductive about Annihilation, it would probably be about self-destruction, that that could include cancer or behavior or any number of things. But this is true of all the films I make: It’s not one goal, one thing; it’s a set of thoughts. Ex Machina is that too, explicitly. It’s just easier for me to talk about the things that are explicit, like machine sentience, rather than the things I hope will float out, such as gender — where gender resides, whether it’s conferred or taken, that kind of thing.
Another thing I noticed about your movies, as both writer and writer-director, is that they are filled with people choosing to place themselves in harm’s way, whether they’re Ava trying to escape the complex, or the journalists in Civil War, or the crew in Sunshine trying to plant a bomb that will reawaken the Sun. That’s quite interesting.I’ll refrain from talking too much about that and getting a bit autobiographical, but I do sometimes think there’s a part of me that is thoughtful and there’s a part of me that is delinquent. And I can see the delinquency.
What do you mean? Delinquent in the “potential droog” sense, or in some other sense? Holistic.
Holistically delinquent? In some respects. You know, people have different sides to their personality and character. I can see it clearly in Civil War. It’s thoughtful and it’s conversational, and I think it would be fair to say it’s also highly aggressive. The two things are just right next to each other. In these films, there’s something very restrained and also something unrestrained.
That’s also true of 28 Days Later. Danny Boyle and I like working on a long-term sequel to that. He’s in prep now, and it starts shooting pretty soon.
What a shitshow it must be in that world 28 years later! Well, in some ways yes, but in some ways no. We had a kind of deal between us, which was to not be cynical, and I think both of us are sticking pretty hard to that principle.
You called yourself a science geek earlier, and you obviously enjoy getting philosophical, but you’re not much for explanations, are you? I don’t have any explanations! The larger the searchlight, the larger the circumference of the unknown.
Titled Warfare, the film is rumored to be a dramatization of events that occurred during the Iraq War in 2006 and that earned Mendoza, a former Seal Team 6 member, a Silver Star “for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action against the enemy.” The cast includes Noah Centineo, Taylor John Smith, Adain Bradley, Michael Gandolfini, Henrique Zaga, and Evan Holtzman.
Alex Garland’s Civil Warisn’t shy about its premise. It’s right there in the title. It’s about a United States of America that’s no longer united, with various sections engaged in a civil war. But while many would assume it’s some kind of easy-to-understand red state, blue state thing, A24 has released an image that shows it’s anything but.
How Conspiracy Theories and Disinformation Spiral Out of Control on the Internet | TechModo
Civil War is scheduled for release April 12. In it, Kirsten Dunst and Wagner Moura play journalists attempting to travel from New York to Washington, D.C. Along the way, they pick up a young, aspiring photo journalist played by Cailee Spaeny who is about to get a baptism of fire traveling through the country.
But what does the country these characters exist in look like? Over on social media, A24 released the below image to show exactly where the divisions are in the nation and, as you’ll see, there’s a lot to discuss.
The (not so) United States of Civil War.Image: A24
A few things jump out here. The first, of course, are the “Western Forces,” which include exactly one Western state—California—along with Texas. In reality, few states are as fundamentally different as California and Texas, but therein lies Garland’s point: Civil War isn’t about our 2024 reality. It’s an alternate version inspired by ours that comments on the potential consequences of our actions. And, it doesn’t really take a side or explain anything. Are the Western Forces more politically aligned with California or Texas? We never find out, and that’s the point.
This map also doesn’t make it clear who are the good guys and bad guys in the movie. Which, again, is the point. Who are the Loyalist States loyal to? Why is the Northwest a “New People?” And the Florida Alliance… well, that one actually kind of makes sense.
Having seen Civil War I can reveal that not all of these questions are answered, but seeing this map and thinking about it will begin to prepare you for the unexpected nature of the film. Tickets are on sale now.
