Stranger Things actor Finn Wolfhard, his father Eric Wolfhard, and producer Rich Peete are working on a biopic about the Replacements, reports Variety. The three are adapting Bob Mehr’s best-selling biography Trouble Boys: The True Story of the Replacements for the big screen, with the Wolfhards co-writing the screenplay and Peete producing under his Neighborhood Watch banner.
Published in 2016, Trouble Boys takes a definitive approach to how it chronicles the history of the Replacements, from their early days as a Minneapolis punk band to their lasting influence on American alt-rock. Mehr shared some of his biggest takeaways from writing that book in an interview with Pitchfork’s Jeremy Gordon that same year.
In a Variety cover story, Wolfhard revealed he was working with his dad on a music-themed project, but kept the details a secret. “I’ve been writing a lot of music and writing this movie with my dad, which has been really amazing,” Wolfhard said. “It’s about a band that I think weirdly I have a lot in common with, a lot of the members. I can’t really talk about the actual band because I don’t have the rights officially yet.”
Finn Wolfhard and Rich Peete recently worked together on A24’s The Legend of Ochi, which premiered at Sundance earlier this year. Wolfhard also co-directed, co-wrote, and co-produced the recent horror film Hell of a Summer alongside Billy Bryk. The fifth and final season of Stranger Things hits Netflix on November 26 and will roll out incrementally afterwards.
Celebrated for decades as Hollywood royalty, Jane Fonda could easily be living a comfortable life of extravagance and leisure.
Instead, the 87-year-old actor and Vietnam War-era provocateur is as likely to be seen knocking on voters’ doors in Phoenix on a balmy summer afternoon as sashaying down a red carpet at a glitzy movie premiere.
Politically active for more than a half-century, Fonda is now focusing her energy, celebrity, connections and resources on fighting climate change and combating the “existential crises” created by President Trump.
Calling fossil fuels a threat to humanity, Fonda created JanePAC, a political action committee that has spent millions on candidates at the forefront of that fight.
“Nature has always been in my bones, in my cells,” Fonda said in a recent interview, describing herself as an environmentalist since her tomboy youth. “And then, about 10 years ago … I started reading more, and I realized what we’re doing to the climate, which means what we’re doing to us, what we’re doing to the future, to our grandchildren and our children.
“Our existence is being challenged all because an industry, the fossil-fuel industry, wants to make more money,” she said. “I mean, I try to understand what, what must they think when they go to sleep at night? These men, they’re destroying everything.”
Rather than hosting fancy political fundraisers or headlining presidential campaign rallies, Fonda devotes her efforts to electing like-minded state legislators, city council members, utility board officials and candidates in other less flashy but critical races.
Fonda said her organization took its cue from successful GOP tactics.
“I hate to say this, but you know, in terms of playing the long game, the Republicans have been better than the Democrats,” she said. “They started to work down ballot, and they took over state legislatures. They took over governorships and mayors and city councils, boards of supervisors, and before we knew what had happened, they had power on the grassroots level.”
Fonda said her PAC selects candidates to back based on their climate-change record and viability. The beneficiaries include candidates running for state legislature and city council. Some of the races are often obscure, such as the Silver River Project board (an Arizona utility), the Port of Bellingham commission in Washington and the Lane Community College board in Oregon.
“Down ballot, if you come in, especially for primaries, you can really make a difference. You know, not all Democrats are the same,” she said. “We want candidates who have shown public courage in standing up to fossil fuels. We want candidates who can win. We’re not a protest PAC. We’re in it to win it.”
Since her birth, Fonda’s life has been infused by political activism.
Her father, the late actor Henry Fonda, witnessed the lynching of a Black man during the 1919 Omaha race riots when he was 14, casting him into becoming a lifelong liberal.
Though such matters were not discussed at the dinner table, Fonda’s father raised money for Democratic candidates and starred in politically imbued films such as “The Grapes of Wrath,” about the exploitation of migrant workers during the Dust Bowl, and “12 Angry Men,” which focused on prejudice, groupthink and the importance of due process during the McCarthy era.
But his daughter Jane did not become politically active until her early 30s.
“Before then, I kind of led a life of ignorance, somewhat hedonistic,” she said. “Maybe deep down, I knew that once I know something, I can’t turn away.”
In “Prime Time,” Fonda’s 2011 memoir, she describes the final chapter of her life as a time of “coming to fruition rather than simply a period of marking time, or the absence of youth.”
“Unlike during childhood, Act III is a quiet ripening. It takes time and experience, and yes, perhaps the inevitable slowing down,” she wrote. “You have to learn to sort out what’s fundamentally important to you from what’s irrelevant.”
In 1972, Fonda appeared in Jean-Luc Godard’s film “Tout Va Bien,” about workers’ rights in the aftermath of widespread street protests in France four years earlier. It was her first role in a political movie and coincided with her off-screen move into activism.
Fonda’s most noteworthy and reviled political moment occurred the same year, when she was photographed by the North Vietnamese sitting atop an antiaircraft gun.
Actor and political activist Jane Fonda at a news conference in New York City on July 28, 1972. Fonda spoke about her trip to North Vietnam and interviews with American prisoners in Hanoi, Vietnam.
(Marty Lederhandler / Associated Press)
The images led to Fonda being tarred as “Hanoi Jane” and a traitor to the United States, which had deployed millions of American soldiers to Southeast Asia, many of whom never returned. Fonda says it is something she “will regret to my dying day.”
“It is possible that it was a setup, that the Vietnamese had it all planned,” Fonda wrote in 2011. “I will never know. But if they did, I can’t blame them. The buck stops here. If I was used, I allowed it to happen. It was my mistake.”
Fonda’s political beliefs have been a through line in her Hollywood career.
In 1979, she played a reporter in “The China Syndrome,” a film about a fictional meltdown at a nuclear power plant near Los Angeles. The movie’s theatrical release occurred less than two weeks before the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania.
The 1980 movie “9 to 5,” starring Fonda, Lily Tomlin and Dolly Parton, was a biting comedy that highlighted the treatment of women in the workplace and income inequality long before such issues were routinely discussed in workplaces.
Dolly Parton, left, Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda are harassed office workers in the 1980 movie “9 to 5.”
(20th Century Fox)
Two years later, as home VCRs grew popular, Fonda created exercise videos that shattered sales records.
She urged women to “feel the burn,” and revenue from the videos funded the Campaign for Economic Democracy, a political action committee founded by Fonda and Hayden.
This year, Fonda offered signed copies to donors to JanePAC, which she created in 2022.
“I’m still in shock that those leg warmers and leotards caught on the way they did,” Fonda wrote to supporters in April. “If you’ve ever done one of my leg lifts, or even thought about doing one, now’s your chance to own a piece of that history.”
UCLA lecturer Jim Newton, a veteran Los Angeles Times political journalist and historian of the state’s politics, described Fonda as confrontational, controversial and unapologetic.
“She’s remarkable, utterly admirable, a principled person who has devoted her life to fighting for what she believes in,” said Newton, who quotes Fonda in his new book, “Here Beside the Rising Tide: Jerry Garcia, the Grateful Dead, and an American Awakening.”
Newton added that Fonda’s outspoken nature certainly harmed her career.
“I’m sure that there are directors, producers, whatnot, especially in the ‘70s and ‘80s, who passed on chances to work with her because of her politics,” he said. “And I’m sure she knew that, right? She did it. It’s not been without sacrifice. She’s true to herself, like very few people.”
A year after Fonda and Hayden divorced in 1990, she married CNN founder and philanthropist Ted Turner, who she once described as “my favorite ex-husband.” Though Fonda largely paused her acting career during their decade-long marriage, she remained politically active.
In 1995, Fonda founded a Georgia effort dedicated to reducing teenage pregnancy. Five years later, she launched the Jane Fonda Center for Reproductive Health at Emory University.
After Fonda and Turner divorced, she worked with Tomlin on raising the minimum wage in Michigan and then launched Fire Drill Fridays — acts of civil disobedience — with Greenpeace in 2019.
Jane Fonda speaks during a rally before a march from the U.S. Capitol to the White House as part of her “Fire Drill Fridays” rally protesting against climate change on Nov. 8, 2019.
(Alex Wong / Getty Images)
Fonda said she decided to create her political action committee after facing headwinds persuading Gov. Gavin Newsom to create setbacks for oil wells in 2020.
“He wasn’t moving on it, and somebody very high up in his campaign said to us, ‘You can have millions of people in your organization all over California, but you don’t have a big enough carrot or stick to move the governor. … You don’t have an electoral strategy,’” Fonda recalled. “Since we’ve started the PAC, it’s interesting how politicians deal with us differently. They know that we’ve got money. They know that we have tens of thousands of volunteers all over the country.”
Initially concentrated on climate change, JanePAC has expanded its focus since Trump was reelected in November.
“We’re facing two existential crises, climate and democracy, and it’s now or never for both,” Fonda said. “We can’t have a stable democracy with an unstable climate, and we can’t have a stable climate unless we have a democracy, And so we have to fight both together.”
Fonda’s PAC has raised more than $9 million since its creation through June 30, according to the Federal Election Commission.
In 2024, JanePAC supported 154 campaigns and won 96 of those races. The committee gave nearly $700,000 directly to campaigns and helped raise more than $1.1 million for their endorsed candidates and ballot measures. In 2025, they have endorsed 63 campaigns and plan to soon launch get-out-the-vote efforts in support of Proposition 50, Newsom’s ballot measure to redraw California’s congressional districts that will appear on the November ballot.
Arizona state Rep. Oscar De Los Santos, the minority leader in the state’s House of Representatives, recalled Fonda’s support during the 2024 election, not only for his reelection bid but also a broader effort to try to win Democratic control of the state Legislature.
In addition to raising $500,000 at a Phoenix event for candidates, De Los Santos recalled the actor spending days knocking on Arizona voters’ doors.
“It is a moral validator to have Jane Fonda support your campaigns, especially at a time when corporate interests have more money and more power than ever, having somebody in your corner who’s been on the right side of history for decades,” said De Los Santos, who represents a south Phoenix district deeply affected by environmental justice issues.
Voters are often stunned when Fonda shows up on their doorstep.
“I’ve had people walking out of their laundry room and dropping all the laundry,” Fonda said with a laugh.
But others don’t know who she is and Fonda doesn’t tell them.
Jane Fonda
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
“It’s amazing. You wouldn’t think that in just a few minutes on someone’s doorstep, you can really find out a lot,” Fonda said, recalling discovering her love of canvassing when she was married to Hayden.”I loved talking to people and finding out what they care about and what they’re scared of and what they’re angry about.”
Fonda does not walk in lockstep with the Democratic party. In 2023, she joined other climate-change activists protesting a big-money Joe Biden fundraiser. They argued that the then-president had strayed from the environmental promises he made when he ran for election, such as by approving a massive oil drilling project on the North Slope of Alaska.
Fonda said she supported Biden’s 2024 reelection despite disagreeing with some of his policies because of the threat she believed Trump poses.
“When you see what the choice was, of course you’re going to vote,” she said. “I get so mad at people who say, you know, ‘I don’t like him, so I’m not going to vote.’ [A] young person said to me, we already have fascism. They don’t know history. You know, we don’t teach civics anymore, so they don’t understand that what’s happening now is leading to fascism. I mean, this is real tyranny.”
But she also faulted Biden and then-Vice President Kamala Harris after she became the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee, as well as 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, for failing to speak to the economic pain being experienced by Americans who backed Trump.
“They’re not all MAGA,” she said.
Many were just angry and hurting, she said, because they couldn’t afford groceries or pay medical bills. Fonda believes many now have buyer’s remorse.
Fonda reflected on the parallels between the turmoil in the 1960s and today. In the interview, which took place before the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, she argued that today’s political climate is more perilous.
“I’m not sure that what we have right now in the U.S. is a democracy,” she said. “It’s far graver. Far, far graver now than it was.”
Fonda said she remains driven, not by blind optimism, but by immersing herself in work that she believes makes a difference.
“This is what I’m going to be doing for the rest of my life,” she said.
CBS News correspondent Adam Yamaguchi joins “CBS Mornings Plus” to discuss “Boys to Men: Why America’s Sons Are Struggling,” a new documentary exploring the pressures young men face today, from education gaps to rising mental health challenges.
SUPERSTAR KOA OKUI. THIS WILL BE THE LAST PLAY BEFORE THE TWO MINUTE TIMEOUT THROWN DOWNFIELD. IT’S PICKED OFF AND IT’S. KOHAKU AGAIN. HIS THIRD OF THE SEASON AND HIS FIFTH TURNOVER. HE’S RESPONSIBLE FOR IN 2025. HE WORKED IN THE DARK FOR A LOT OF YEARS AND NOW YOU KNOW HIS IT’S COMING TO LIGHT. IT’S BEEN A BREAKOUT YEAR FOR SACRAMENTO STATE’S JUNIOR SAFETY KOA OKUI. IN ORDER TO EXCEED OR MAKE IT TO THE NEXT LEVEL, I GOT TO PUT IN MORE THAN WHATEVER IT IS LIKE, I KNOW, LIKE WE ALL A TEAM, BUT AT THE END OF THE DAY, WE COMPETING, YOU KNOW? AND WITH THAT, I’M COMPETING WITH THE WHOLE COUNTRY. SO I’M TRYING TO MAKE IT TO THE NEXT LEVEL. THE FORMER WALK ON FROM HAWAII HAS CERTAINLY LEVELED UP HIS GAME WITH FIVE TAKEAWAYS IN FOUR GAMES, INCLUDING A FORCED FUMBLE, A FUMBLE RECOVERY AND THREE INTERCEPTIONS. READING THE FIELD WATCHING FILM, PUTTING IN WORK TO SEE WHAT THE OFFENSE IS DOING. I THINK THAT REALLY SLOWED DOWN THE GAME FOR ME, JUST READING THE QUARTERBACKS, READING THE ROUTES, SEEING THE CONCEPTS WE BROUGHT IN A LOT OF PLAYERS HERE THAT WERE FOUR STARS. FIVE STARS STARTED AT THIS SCHOOL AND HE BEAT THEM ALL OUT AND HE BEAT THEM EVERY DAY IN WORKOUTS, AND HE BEAT THEM IN THE FILM ROOM. WORK ETHIC IS STILL A TALENT, AND WHILE HIS SKILLS STAND OUT ON THE FIELD, HIS SOFT SPOKEN VOICE OFF THE FIELD IS BEING PUT TO THE TEST THIS SEASON AS HE’S BEEN NAMED A CAPTAIN. YOU KNOW, I’M NOT REALLY A GUY WITH, LIKE, THE VOICE, IF THAT MAKES SENSE. YOU KNOW, I’M MORE OF LIKE LEAD BY EXAMPLE. BUT THESE COACHES HAVE TRIED TO PUSH ME MORE TO USE MY VOICE AND STUFF, AND I’VE JUST BEEN, YOU KNOW, REPORTING TO THE JOB. I GUESS THAT’S MY GUY. I AIN’T GONNA LIE. HE A BALL HAWK. HE DEFINITELY. HE WORK HARD. THAT’S ONE THING I CAN SAY. I FEEL LIKE HE WORK HARDER THAN ANYBODY I EVER SAW. OF COURSE HE’S MY BROTHER FOR LIFE. YOU SEE THIS CORE? YOU KNOW WHAT IT IS IN SACRAMENTO MICHELLE DAPPER KCRA 3 NEWS KOA AND THE HORNETS HOST CAL POLY THIS WEEKEND WITH HOPES
Sacramento State’s Koa Akui shines on and off the football field
Sacramento State junior safety Koa Akui is having a breakout year, emerging from years of hard work to become a standout football player and team captain.”In order to exceed or make it to the next level, I got to put in more than whatever it is,” Akui said. “I know we’re all a team, but at the end of the day, we compete, you know? And with that, I’m familiar with the whole country, so I’m trying to make it to the next level.”The former walk-on from Hawaii has significantly elevated his game, recording five takeaways in four games, including a forced fumble, a fumble recovery, and three interceptions. His dedication to reading the field, watching film, and understanding offensive strategies has helped slow down the game for him. “Reading the field, watching film, putting in like work to see what the offense is doing. And I think that really slowed down the game for me, just reading the quarterbacks, reading the routes, seeing the concepts,” Akui said.Sacramento State has brought in many highly rated players, but Akui has consistently outperformed them in workouts and the film room. “We brought in a lot of players here that were four stars, five stars, started at this school, and he beat them all out. And he beat them every day in workouts, and he beat them in the film room. Work ethic is still a talent,” head coach Brennan Marion said.While Akui’s skills are evident on the field, his leadership is being tested off the field as he takes on the role of team captain. “I’m not really a guy with, like, the voice, if that makes sense. You know, I’m more of, like, lead by example. But these coaches have tried to push me more to use my voice and stuff, and I’ve just been, you know, reporting to the job,” Akui said.His teammate expressed admiration for Akui’s work ethic and dedication. “I feel like he work harder than anybody I ever saw,” Rodney Hammond Jr. said. “That’s my brother for life.”See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel
Sacramento State junior safety Koa Akui is having a breakout year, emerging from years of hard work to become a standout football player and team captain.
“In order to exceed or make it to the next level, I got to put in more than whatever it is,” Akui said. “I know we’re all a team, but at the end of the day, we compete, you know? And with that, I’m familiar with the whole country, so I’m trying to make it to the next level.”
The former walk-on from Hawaii has significantly elevated his game, recording five takeaways in four games, including a forced fumble, a fumble recovery, and three interceptions.
His dedication to reading the field, watching film, and understanding offensive strategies has helped slow down the game for him.
“Reading the field, watching film, putting in like work to see what the offense is doing. And I think that really slowed down the game for me, just reading the quarterbacks, reading the routes, seeing the concepts,” Akui said.
Sacramento State has brought in many highly rated players, but Akui has consistently outperformed them in workouts and the film room.
“We brought in a lot of players here that were four stars, five stars, started at this school, and he beat them all out. And he beat them every day in workouts, and he beat them in the film room. Work ethic is still a talent,” head coach Brennan Marion said.
While Akui’s skills are evident on the field, his leadership is being tested off the field as he takes on the role of team captain.
“I’m not really a guy with, like, the voice, if that makes sense. You know, I’m more of, like, lead by example. But these coaches have tried to push me more to use my voice and stuff, and I’ve just been, you know, reporting to the job,” Akui said.
His teammate expressed admiration for Akui’s work ethic and dedication.
“I feel like he work harder than anybody I ever saw,” Rodney Hammond Jr. said. “That’s my brother for life.”
The new documentary “Bodyguard of Lies” from See It Now Studios looks back at America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan, featuring testimony from government insiders and newly released footage. John Sopko, the former Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, joins “CBS Mornings Plus” for more.
It’s the last Best Bets of September, and the arts are in full swing around Houston. To close out the month, we’ve got an epic of a stage production, a celebration of Latin American and Hispanic composers, and a collection of the best short films you can find. Keep reading for these and everything else that makes our picks for the best of the week.
When Alex Thompson’s short film Em & Selma Go Griffin Hunting screened at Sundance, the first frame, with its “so-real-you-can-touch-it CG image” of two griffins, “elicited gasps of amazement.” You can join film lovers from around the world to view and vote on the shorts featured in the 28th Annual Manhattan Short Film Festival – including Thompson’s – at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, on Thursday, September 25, at 7 p.m. Audience ballots will determine the winners of Best Film and Best Actor from the ten curated films, which come from seven different countries. The films will screen again at 7 p.m. Friday, September 26, and 2 p.m. Saturday, September 27, and Sunday, September 28. Tickets can be purchased here for $8 to $10, and get your tickets in advance; some screenings are likely to sell out.
A string arrangement of Benjamin Britten’s 1932 Double Concerto for Violin and Viola, the sketch of which was only discovered more than 20 years after his death in 1976, will be the centerpiece of Kinetic’s season-opening concert, Notes Unspoken, at the MATCH on Friday, September 26, at 7:30 p.m. The conductor-less ensemble will tackle Britten alongside Michael Torke‘s December, Libby Larsen’s String Symphony, and the world premiere of Rice University graduate Alex Berko’s Unstrung for string orchestration. Berko, who originally composed Unstrung for the Louisville Orchestra in 2024, has said the piece, “a deconstructed bluegrass tune,” was his attempt “as a new Kentucky resident and admirer of” the genre “to pay homage to the art form.” Tickets to the performance can be purchased here for $15 to $35.
ROCO returns to Miller Outdoor Theatre to open their season on Friday.
Photo by Rolando Ramon
Four world premieres and a not-oft-heard symphony make up ROCO’s season-opening program, Feels Like Home, which you can hear on Friday, September 26, at 7:30 p.m. when the chamber orchestra visits Miller Outdoor Theatre. The premieres, which will be performed alongside Emilie Mayer’s 1847 Symphony No. 4 in B minor, draw from various sources of inspiration, including husky rescues and a ROCO member’s work in hospice care. The performance is free, and you can reserve a ticket here starting at 10 a.m. today, September 25. Or, as always, you can sit on the Hill – no ticket required. The concert will be performed a second time at The Church of St. John the Divine on Saturday, September 27, at 5 p.m.Tickets are pay-what-you-wish here with a suggested price of $35 and a minimum of $0.
“A percussive pulse drives the lover’s declarations in ‘And now you’re mine,’” one of five sonnets written by Chilean poet Pablo Neruda and set to music by American composer Peter Lieberson in Neruda Songs, which you can hear at Jones Hall on Friday, September 26, at 7:30 p.m. during the Fiesta Sinfónica. Conductor Gonzalo Farias will lead the Houston Symphony and special guest mezzo-soprano Josefina Maldonado in the orchestra’s annual celebration of Latin American and Hispanic composers. This year, audiences can expect musical selections like “I Feel Pretty” and “Somewhere” from Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story, the Habanera from Georges Bizet’s Carmen, Albert Gonzales’s arrangements of Rafael Hernández Marín’s “El Cumbanchero” and Daniel Alomía Robles’s “El cóndor pasa,” and more. This concert is free, but ticket reservations are required here.
She’s gonna do it. (Make Barry Keoghan Mr. Tumnus.) Photo: James Devaney/GC Images
Greta Gerwig has already made Barbieland, historical Massachusetts, and 2001 Sacramento feel real. All that’s left is Narnia. Gerwig is current filming her adaptation of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew, which she had already started writing a draft of before even beginning filming Barbie. The project was first revealed in July 2023, confirming Gerwig would make at least two movies in the series. Slowly but surely, details about the new franchise are hitting the page, including the extremely famous actors being cast. Plus, Gerwig has convinced Netflix to show the film on Imax screens. It’s always good to have a resurrected lion Jesus — especially one played by Meryl Streep — on your side. Below, the latest cast and production updates.
Mark Ronson, the Barbie soundtrackringleader, will score the upcoming Narnia film, Variety confirmed on September 23. Notably, the film stars his fellow former Gerwigcollaborator and mother-in-law, Meryl Streep. We knew it meant something when they presented together at the Grammys. Ronson’s involvement, as he’s a pop-music producer used to working with stars like Bruno Mars, Amy Winehouse, and Miley Cyrus, implies that the film might be a little less stately than previous Narnia adaptations. Does this mean we get to hear some pop stars on this soundtrack like we did for Barbie? Charli XCX might not have ended up in the role of the White Witch, despite initial rumors, but that doesn’t mean she can’t drop a banger about snow. In our wildest dreams, the whole score is a collaboration between Ronson and his “True Blue” collaborator Angel Olsen. Burn your Turkish delight for no witness.
Gerwig may be chronicling Narnia, but there’s a lot of lore in that world, and two movies wouldn’t come close to covering the whole series. Gerwig is tackling The Magician’s Nephew, the sixth book to be released in the series. That book covers the origins of the iconic White Witch and Aslan’s battle that rages on in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, focusing on two young children, Digory and Polly, who are sent to Narnia by their uncle Andrew. There is much debate in the Narnia community about what book to read first, between The Magician’s Nephew and TLTWTW, because the original series’ release pattern eschewed chronological order. Lewis first put out TLTWTW in 1950, continued the series for three chronological installments in 1951 to 1953, put out two separate prequels, The Horse and His Boy (1954) and The Magician’s Nephew (1955), and then ended the series with The Last Battle in 1956. It looks like Gerwig has chosen a side.
The Disney- and Fox-released film series in the 2000s only made three movies, never getting to the planned adaptation of the fourth-released book, The Silver Chair, despite a 2014 fan contest to name the film’s antagonist. Those films avoided the prequels altogether, as did the 1988–90 BBC series. In November 2023, Scott Stuber, the then–film chief of Netflix, told Variety that, while The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is the “preeminent” book, Gerwig was working on how to “break the whole arc of all of [the series].”
Gerwig told Time that she was drawn to the “paradox of the worlds that Lewis created,” through the combination of mythologies like Greek fauns, Father Christmas, and the British Empire. Ted Sarandos, meanwhile, told the magazine that Gerwig’s version of the story will be “bigger and bolder” than what audiences imagine. Lewis’s version of the story is deeply associated with Christianity to the point where “Talking Narnia to Your Neighbors” is a real 2005 headline from the Evangelizing website Today’s Christian Woman. In terms of adaptation, Stuber confirmed to Variety in his November interview that Gerwig’s version is “rooted in faith.” Previous examples of Gerwig’s work being informed by Christianity include Lady Bird eating non-blessed communion wafers, Lady Bird getting suspended for sassing a pro-life activist, and Barbie killing God.
Daniel Craig will be playing Andrew, that dastardly fellow. He’ll be joined by Carrie Mulligan as Digory’s sick mother. At least one Barbie is joining the cast, because the White Witch will be played by Barbie and Sex Education star Emma Mackey. According to the The Hollywood Reporter, she beat out Margaret Qualley and multiple other actresses who were interested in the role (Deadline previously reported that Charli XCX could potentially trade her brat green to play the White Witch.) Meanwhile, Meryl Streep will be playing Aslan. Yes, the lion. Notably, there is no official casting for the purported leads of the film, Digory and Polly.
Principal photography began on the film on August 11, per Far Out. Early videos coming out from set look like they are set in the mid-1950s, rather than the original Victorian era.
Gerwig’s first movie is set to hit Imax screens on Thanksgiving 2026 after a big win in negotiations with Netflix. That means it won’t be available on streaming until Christmas, but some things just feel right.
“What I am trying to show is that, despite the changes of the times, the essential value of ‘going to the cinema’ never changes,” says the Korean director.
Ozzy: No Escape From Now, a new Ozzy Osbourne documentary filmed in the lateBlack Sabbath legend’s final months, will premiere on October 7. Today, Paramount+ has shared the official trailer. Watch Osbourne and his friends and family discuss his final years, the 2019 accident that led him to cancel his farewell tour, and the subsequent one-off Black Sabbath concert in Birmingham, England, below.
Tania Alexander directed the film in collaboration with the Osbourne family. Contributors include Tony Iommi, Duff McKagan, Slash, James Hetfield, Tom Morello, and Billy Corgan, among others.
A different documentary, Ozzy Osbourne: Coming Home, was recently pulled, last-minute, from BBC schedules, at the family’s request. That one is now due to air on October 2.
Actor Robert Redford as the Sundance Kid in the 1969 comic-drama, “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”
In addition to being an Oscar-winning director and producer, Redford (who died on Sept. 16, 2025 at age 89), was also head of the nonprofit Sundance Institute, whose internationally-recognized festival has helped promote independent filmmaking, while fostering new generations of writers and directors.
Click through the gallery to see highlights from Redford’s illustrious career.
TV Fixture
CBS News
Born in Santa Monica, Calif., in 1936, Robert Redford studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City.
He became a familiar presence on TV in the early 60s, appearing on such programs as “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” (left), “The Twilight Zone” (upper right), and “The Naked City” (lower right), as well as “Playhouse 90,” “Perry Mason,” “The Untouchables,” “Route 66,” “Dr Kildare,” “The Virginian,” and a TV production of “The Iceman Cometh.”
On Broadway
Friedman-Abeles/copyright New York Public Library
Robert Redford made his Broadway debut in 1959 as a replacement in the comedy “Tall Story.” Subsequent appearances included Dore Schary’s “The Highest Tree,” “Little Moon of Alban,” and “Sunday in New York.”
In 1963 Redford and Elizabeth Ashley starred in the Broadway premiere of Neil Simon’s “Barefoot in the Park” (left), about young newlyweds in a New York City brownstone. Mike Nichols won the Tony Award for Best Director.
“War Hunt”
United Artists
Redford’s first feature credit was in the 1962 film, “War Hunt,” about soldiers on the front lines of the Korean War.
Among the cast was actor Sydney Pollack (who would go on to a prestigious directing career, and who would direct seven films starring Redford), and Tom Skerritt (who would star in the Redford-directed “A River Runs Through It”).
“Situation Hopeless … But Not Serious”
Paramount Pictures
In the 1965 comedy “Situation Hopeless … But Not Serious,” Mike Connors and Robert Redford are two U.S. airmen who are kept safely hidden in a German’s cellar, not knowing that their protector (played by Alec Guinness) continued to withhold the news that the war had long since ended.
“The Chase”
Columbia Pictures
In Arthur Penn’s “The Chase” (1966), Robert Redford played a prison escapee being sought by sheriff Marlon Brando. Jane Fonda, Angie Dickinson and E.G. Marshall co-starred.
“This Property Is Condemned”
Paramount Pictures
Robert Redford and Natalie Wood with director Sydney Pollack on the set of “This Property Is Condemned” (1966), based on the play by Tennessee Williams.
“Barefoot in the Park”
Paramount Pictures
Redford recreated his Broadway performance in Gene Saks’ film version of “Barefoot in the Park” (1967), opposite Jane Fonda.
“Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”
20th Century Fox
Redford was raised to superstar status when he teamed with Paul Newman in George Roy Hill’s “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” (1969).
“Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”
20th Century Fox
Newman and Redford’s easy chemistry made the outlaws extremely likable, and laid the blueprint for a later collaboration with director George Roy Hill.
“Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here”
Universal Pictures
Abraham Polonsky, once blacklisted by Hollywood, returned to direct “Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here” (1969), starring Robert Redford as a lawman hunting a Paiute Indian outlaw (Robert Blake) and his lover (“Butch Cassidy” costar Katharine Ross). With Barry Sullivan and Susan Clark.
“Downhill Racer”
Paramount Pictures
An artful poster for one of the most acclaimed sports movies, Michael Ritchie’s “Downhill Racer” (1969), in which Robert Redford played an Olympic skier whose competitiveness extends beyond the slopes.
“Little Fauss and Big Halsy”
Paramount Pictures
Robert Redford and Michael J. Pollard played motorcycle racers in “Little Fauss and Big Halsy” (1970).
“The Hot Rock”
20th Century Fox
Robert Redford and George Segal try to break Paul Sands out of a NYC correctional facility in the delightful comic heist film, “The Hot Rock” (1972). Script by “Butch Cassidy” screenwriter William Goldman, based on Donald E. Westlake’s novel.
“The Candidate”
Warner Brothers
Michael Ritchie (“Downhill Racer”) directed the political satire, “The Candidate” (1972), in which Robert Redford played an idealistic lawyer, who – having shunned the political world of his father, a former Senator – is convinced to run a campaign against a supposedly unbeatable incumbent Senator. What at first becomes an excuse to speak unspeakable truths to the masses becomes a test of the young Bill McKay’s ethics once he realizes that clouding his vision may actually improve his chances.
Screenwriter Jeremy Larner won an Oscar for his original script.
“Jeremiah Johnson”
Warner Brothers
Robert Redford starred in the Sydney Pollack-directed western, “Jeremiah Johnson” (1972), about a former soldier who takes up the hard life of a mountain man in the Rockies. The film, shot in Utah, co-starred Will Geer.
“The Way We Were”
Columbia Pictures
Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford in “The Way We Were” (1973), a romantic drama in which its two stars – former college classmates – fall in love, marry and have a child, despite their differences in background and political leanings.
“The Sting”
Universal Pictures
Robert Redford earned his first Oscar nomination for Best Actor for his performance as Hooker, a small-time con man who teams up with a card sharp (Paul Newman) to play a major con against a notorious crime boss (Robert Shaw) in George Roy Hill’s comic drama, “The Sting” (1973).
A major box office hit, the film won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and for Marvin Hamlisch’s sprightly adaptation of Scott Joplin’s ragtime music.
“The Great Gatsby”
Paramount Pictures
Robert Redford played Jay Gatsby, with Mia Farrow as Daisy Buchanan, in Jack Clayton’s 1974 adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby.” Screenplay by Francis Ford Coppola.
“The Great Waldo Pepper”
Universal Pictures
A poster for “The Great Waldo Pepper” (1975), director George Roy Hill’s tale of the early days of barnstorming pilots.
“Three Days of the Condor”
Paramount Pictures
In the espionage thriller “Three Days of the Condor” (1975), Robert Redford played a CIA analyst who narrowly escapes hit men at his office, and who hides out in the Brooklyn home of a woman he takes prisoner (Faye Dunaway). Based on a novel by James Grady, “Condor” was directed by Sydney Pollack and costarred Cliff Robertson and Max von Sydow.
“All the President’s Men”
Warner Brothers
“Follow the money.”
Alan J. Pakula’s “All the President’s Men” (1976) recounted the investigation of the Watergate break-in by two intrepid Washington Post reporters, Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman). Despite their antipathy and natural competitiveness towards one another, the two collaborate and dig deep into a political dirty tricks operation, ultimately helping to bring down the presidency of Richard Nixon.
The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards and won four, including Best Adapted Screenplay (William Goldman) and Best Supporting Actor (Jason Robards as Post editor Ben Bradlee).
“A Bridge Too Far”
United Artists
Robert Redford was one of a constellation of big-screen stars in Richard Attenborough’s World War II action epic, “A Bridge Too Far” (1977), about the Allies’ attempt to take a succession of German-held bridges during Operation Market Garden.
“The Electric Horseman”
Columbia Pictures
Robert Redford and Jane Fonda, who were teamed in “Barefoot in the Park” and “The Chase,” starred in Sydney Pollack’s romantic adventure, “The Electric Horseman” (1979), about an ex-rodeo champion who kidnaps a prized race horse that is being abused. Fonda played a TV reporter who goes after the story, and gets Redford.
“Brubaker”
20th Century Fox
In “Brubaker” (1980), Robert Redford is a reform-minded warden who is incarcerated at an Arkansas jail in order to uncover rampant corruption and abuse on the part of prison officials. Directed by Stuart Rosenberg (“Cool Hand Luke”).
“Ordinary People”
Paramount Pictures
Robert Redford’s first film as a director, “Ordinary People” (1980), told the story of an upper-middle-class family torn by the death of one son and the attempted suicide of another. Timothy Hutton and Elizabeth McGovern (left, with Redford) starred with Donald Sutherland, Mary Tyler Moore and Judd Hirsch.
The film won four Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director for Redford.
Sundance Institute
Evan Agostini/Getty Images
Founded in 1981 by Robert Redford, the Sundance Institute, based in Utah, fosters independence and new voices in American film. Emerging filmmakers work with top directors, writers and actors to develop independent projects, and each year the Sundance Film Festival exposes audiences to vital new filmmaking talent from around the world, in both fiction and documentaries.
“The Natural”
TriStar Pictures
Bernard Malamud’s baseball novel was the inspiration for Barry Levinson’s “The Natural” (1984), starring Robert Redford as a middle-aged rookie who brings an almost fantastic ability as a hitter to a struggling team.
“Out of Africa”
Universal Pictures
Robert Redford played big game hunter Denys Finch Hatton, whose affair with Danish baroness and plantation owner Karen Blixen (Meryl Streep) inspired her 1937 memoir, “Out of Africa.”
The film won seven Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Picture (Sydney Pollack).
“Legal Eagles”
Universal Pictures
Debra Winger played the attorney of a woman accused of art theft, who enlists the aid of an Assistant D.A. (Robert Redford) to help clear her client, in the romantic comedy/thriller “Legal Eagles” (1986).
Oh, and does it turn out that Daryl Hannah is guilty or innocent? Depends on which version of the film pops up on TV.
“The Milagro Beanfield War”
Universal Pictures
Robert Redford directed “The Milagro Beanfield War” (1988), based on John Nichols’ novel, about a poor New Mexican farmer seeking to defend his illegally-irrigated plot against powerful political and business interests.
“Havana”
Universal Pictures
Robert Redford and Lena Olin on the set of “Havana” (1990), about a professional gambler in Cuba on the eve of the revolution.
It was Redford’s seventh collaboration with director Sydney Pollack.
“Quiz Show”
Hollywood Pictures
Robert Redford directed the 1994 drama, “Quiz Show,” which recounted the TV game show scandals of the 1950s, as well as the role of contestant Charles Van Doren (Ralph Fiennes) in a rigged game. The film was nominated for four Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Supporting Actor (Paul Scofield).
“A River Runs Through It”
Columbia Pictures
“Long ago, when I was a young man, my father said to me, ‘Norman, you like to write stories.’ And I said, ‘Yes, I do.’ Then he said, ‘Someday, when you’re ready, you might tell our family story. Only then will you understand what happened and why.’”
Redford directed “A River Runs Through It,” based on Norman Maclean’s semi-autobiographical collection of stories about his family in early 20th century Montana where, he writes, “there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing.”
The film starred Brad Pitt, Tom Skerrit, Craig Sheffer, Brenda Blethyn and Emily Lloyd, and was narrated by Redford. It was nominated for three Oscars, and won one, for Best Cinematography.
“Sneakers”
Universal Pictures
River Phoenix, Robert Redford, Dan Aykroyd and Sidney Poitier were among the cast of “Sneakers” (1992), about computer hackers, rogue agents, and an encryption device that could (in the wrong hands) bring down the world’s economy.
“Indecent Proposal”
Paramount Pictures
In director Adrian Lyne’s “Indecent Proposal” (1993), Demi Moore is offered one million dollars by a billionaire (Robert Redford) to spend one night with her. Trouble is, she’s married to Woody Harrelson. Will she accept the offer? Well, it IS Robert Redford …
“Up Close and Personal”
Touchstone Pictures
Michelle Pfeiffer plays a young broadcast reporter taken under the wing of a TV news director (Robert Redford) in the romantic drama, “Up Close and Personal” (1996).
“The Horse Whisperer”
Touchstone Pictures
Robert Redford directed himself for the first time in the film version of Nicholas Evans’ bestselling novel, “The Horse Whisperer” (1998), about a horse trainer with a unique gift. The film costarred a young Scarlett Johansson, Kristin Scott Thomas, Sam Neill, Dianne Wiest and Chris Cooper.
“The Legend of Bagger Vance”
20th Century Fox
In the Redford-directed “The Legend of Bagger Vance” (2000), a mysterious young man (Will Smith) appears to serve as the caddie of a struggling pro golfer (Matt Damon). His positive influence guides the tormented war veteran in an almost mystical way.
“The Last Castle”
Dreamworks
In “The Last Castle” (2001), James Gandolfini played the commandant of a military prison engaged in a battle of wills with an incarcerated Lt. General (Robert Redford), who effectively leads his fellow inmates in revolt.
“Spy Game”
Universal Pictures
Robert Redford was back in the espionage game, co-starring with Brad Pitt in the 2001 thriller “Spy Game,” about CIA agents in China.
Honorary Oscar
AMPAS
At the 74th Academy Awards Robert Redford was named recipient of an Honorary Oscar for his roles as an actor, director, producer, the creator of the Sundance Institute, “and an inspiration to independent and innovative filmmakers everywhere.”
He posed with presenter Barbra Streisand on March 24, 2002.
“The Clearing”
Fox Searchlight
Robert Redford became the target of a kidnapping plot in “The Clearing” (2004), costarring Willem Dafoe and Helen Mirren.
“An Unfinished Life”
Miramax
Swedish director Lasse Hallström’s “An Unfinished Life” (2005) starred Robert Redford as a rancher trying to restore his relationship with his daughter-in-law (played by Jennifer Lopez). The film costarred Morgan Freeman and Damian Lewis.
“Lions for Lambs”
MGM
Director-star Robert Redford is pictured with Meryl Streep and Tom Cruise on the set of “Lions for Lambs” (2007), a film with multiple political and military storylines connected to the war in Afghanistan.
“The Conspirator”
Lionsgate
Robin Wright starred as Mary Surratt, one of a group accused in the plot to murder President Lincoln, in the historical drama, “The Conspirator” (2010), directed by Robert Redford.
“The Company You Keep”
Sony Pictures Classics
In “The Company You Keep” (2012), director Robert Redford played a former member of the Weather Underground whose identity is discovered by a young reporter. Costarring Richard Jenkins, Shia LaBeouf, Julie Christie, Susan Sarandon, Nick Nolte and Brit Marling.
“All Is Lost”
Lionsgate
In J. C. Chandor’s “All Is Lost” (2013), Robert Redford gave a bravura performance as a solo sailor whose yacht is crippled on the high seas, and who struggles to remain afloat after a series of increasingly devastating events.
“All Is Lost”
Lionsgate
Redford (who had never sailed before) performed most all of his own stunts, and suffered partial hearing loss in one ear during the shoot.
“Captain America: The Winter Soldier”
Marvel Studios
Robert Redford joined the Marvel Universe in “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” (2014), playing Alexander Pierce, a senior leader of S.H.I.E.L.D who might be harboring some spoiler-ish secrets.
“A Walk In the Woods”
Broad Green Pictures
Robert Redford and Nick Nolte starred in the 2015 comedy “A Walk in the Woods,” based on Bill Bryson’s memoir.
“Truth”
Sony Pictures Classics
Robert Redford as CBS newsman Dan Rather and Cate Blanchett as news producer Mary Mapes, in the docudrama, “Truth” (2015), about the controversy surrounding documents, central to a 2004 “60 Minutes” story, that questioned President George W. Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard – documents that were later found not to have been independently verified. The film is based on a memoir by Mapes, one of several people booted by the network following the broadcast.
Film Society of Lincoln Center
Grant Lamos IV/Getty Images
Honoree Robert Redford attends the 42nd Chaplin Award Gala at Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center on April 27, 2015 in New York City.
Redford told the audience that returning to New York City for the honor held a special meaning for him: “I think it has a lot to do with the fact that this is where my career started, in New York City, in the theater, and because that’s the root of my beginnings.”
Chaplin Award
Michael Loccisano/Getty Images
From left: Jane Fonda, honoree Robert Redford, Barbra Streisand, Elisabeth Moss, John Turturro and documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras speak onstage at the 42nd Chaplin Award Gala at Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center on April 27, 2015 in New York City.
In accepting the lifetime achievement award. Redford said, “To me, not taking a risk is taking a risk. For me, [winning is] really the climb up the mountain, not so much standing at the top. Because at that point, there’s nowhere to go.”
“Our Souls at Night”
Netflix
Robert Redford and Jane Fonda in “Our Souls at Night.” In their fourth pairings on screen, they played neighbors who combat loneliness by spending evenings together, which only gets the gossip mills churning.
“The Old Man & the Gun”
Eric Zachanowich/20th Century Fox
In “The Old Man & the Gun” (2018), Robert Redford starred in the true story of Forrest Tucker, a lifelong outlaw who escaped from nearly every prison he was confined to, continuing to rob banks well into his late 70s.
He told CBS News’ Lee Cowan that his performance in the film marked his retirement from acting, but not from work; he would still produce, and champion the cause of independent films at his Sundance Institute.
“I really don’t think of retirement, because to me retirement means stopping something or quitting something. Why would I quit? There’s this life to lead. Why not live it as much as you can as long as you can?”
David Morgan is senior producer for CBSNews.com and the Emmy Award-winning “CBS News Sunday Morning.” He writes about film, music and the arts. He is author of the books “Monty Python Speaks” and “Knowing the Score,” and editor of “Sundancing,” about the Sundance Film Festival.
Film icon Robert Redford died on Sept. 16 at the age of 89, according to a statement from his publicist. Redford was not only one of the most beloved movie stars of all time, but one of the few titans of Hollywood who used his fame and accolades for the force of good…
Vinnie Favorito was once touted in Las Vegas as the next Don Rickles
In addition to being a hard-working comic, Favorito was also a hardcore gambler known for hitting up his audience members for money
A new documentary shines a spotlight on Favorito’s career and gambling addiction
In the days of the Rat Pack, if a cocktail server needed financial help for a family emergency, Frank Sinatra would gladly tip her a hundy. In the early 2000s, it was the reverse — at least for some who attended the thousands of Las Vegas Strip performances by comic Vinnie Favorito.
Vinnie Favorito poses in 2006, when he was at the top of his career game and the bottom of his craps one. (Image: Getty)
The former Strip headliner would ask pretty much anyone he perceived as having money to loan him some of it.
“Vinnie Plays Vegas: The Con Man of Comedy,” now streaming on Amazon Prime and Apple TV, is a documentary exploring the rise and downfall of an entertainer who preyed on gullible audience members to fund his gambling addiction.
“I wanted to pay everybody back,” Favorito came clean to director Brian Burkhardt, his friend and fellow comedian, in the film, “but you get deeper and deeper and deeper like a drug, and you’re lying. You’re lying all the time.”
The promotional art for a new Amazon Prime documentary about Favorito. (Image: Amazon Prime)
An insult comic once touted as the next Don Rickles, Favorito has always leaned heavily into crowd work. That’s when you ask audience members where they’re from and what they do for a living before crafting appropriate zingers.
But unlike Rickles, Favorito was fishing for marks as well as comedy material.
After his shows, he approached the audience members who identified themselves as having six-figure jobs and hit them up. They were usually good for $1,000 to $15K each.
“It’s kind of [the] same skill,” said Mike Weatherford, a co-writer of the film, who documented Favorito’s exploits during his time as the entertainment reporter for the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “The guy who was a doctor was the one he’d made sure to shake hands with after the show and, say, ‘Hey, why don’t we play golf?’”
Favorito performed this act (and con) at venues including Binion’s, O’Shea’s, the Flamingo, and the Westgate for nearly 20 years.
Even after the Flamingo fired him for borrowing from one of their waitresses, he continued. Some of the victims who spoke in the documentary recalled giving him money on multiple occasions.
“I’m not trying to make an excuse,” Favorito added. “But when you’re trying to chase the money and make that easy shortcut, everything goes south, and you don’t realize how deep you get. Now I’m so behind with people, and you’re trying to keep track of your own story … I’ve got to play the carnival game that you can hit a jackpot hand on. But the dream never came.”
Comic Relief
In September 2016, Favorito declared Chapter 7 bankruptcy to give himself a fresh start. More than 60 creditors jockeyed for pennies on the more than a million dollars he officially owed. There’s no telling how much more he owed to friends, co-workers, and fans unofficially.
How many people out there have a credit card that they couldn’t pay, years ago or now?” Favorito asked. “It’s kind of the same thing. You’re borrowing money, you know you don’t have the money to pay it, and later on, you’re going to end up trying to get out of the card.”
Weatherford told Casino.org that he doesn’t feel that merely coming clean about his addiction will be adequate to restore Favorito’s reputation — “unless he’s doing an apology tour and raising money for Gamblers Anonymous.”
And Favorito doesn’t seem to disagree.
“I’m the biggest piece of shit in the world for what I did,” he told Burkhardt. “I’ll always be looked at as the gambler. Don’t lend Vinnie money. You can’t escape that.”
Favorito still performs in Vegas. His show is at the 170-seat Robin Leach Lounge at the Notoriety Live theater downtown.
Pack your bags, Dallas cinephiles, because we’re heading down I-35 to the cinematic circus that is Fantastic Fest, running September 18-25. This year, the Austin-based genre film festival celebrates its 20th anniversary, and it’s pulling out all the stops to remind us why it’s the most unhinged, unpredictable and unforgettable film festival in the world…
“Nebraska is where Bruce chose truth over expectation—a choice that still reverberates through everything he’s written since,” director Scott Cooper said in a press statement accompanying the trailer. “At that crossroads, he could have chased the bright lights and the roar of arenas, but instead he turned inward, armed only with silence, a four-track recorder, and the courage to confront himself. For him to trust me with telling that story—the most vulnerable chapter of his life—is the greatest honor I’ve ever had as a filmmaker.”
Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere hits theaters on October 24. The film, which follows Springseen during the creation of Nebraska, also stars Marc Maron as producer Chuck Plotkin; Johnny Cannizzaro as Steven Van Zandt; Paul Walter Hauser as guitar tech Mike Batlan; Stephen Graham as Bruce Springsteen’s father, Doug; Odessa Young as a love interest name Faye; Gaby Hoffman as Springsteen’s mother, Adele; and David Krumholtz as Columbia Records executive Al Teller.
In other words, the film forces us—beautifully, uncomfortably—to face what we’d rather deny: that a writer, equal parts truth and fiction teller, could imagine a future that now feels like our present. Our self-portrait is stitched not just from Orwell’s sly warnings about power, but from the nightmare we still insist is only fiction.
“They flood you with information, with lies, action, arresting people in the streets, make you afraid,” adds Peck. “They terrorize, and you know, it’s working. That’s an incredible assault.”
Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk
Where Orwell: 2+2=5 warns us about the apathy toward authoritarianism, Farsi’s Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk forces us to confront the daily realities of living under military control—specifically, in Gaza.
In early 2024, Iranian-born director Sepideh Farsi arrived in Cairo, notebooks of intention in hand, only to find Gaza’s gates closed to her. A Palestinian refugee suggests she call Fatma Hassouna, a 24-year-old photographer in Gaza. Through her camera and voice, Farsi discovered the only window she could open.
“I have never had such a deep relationship with someone whom I’ve never met … this feeling of being blocked in a country you cannot leave,” Farsi tells WIRED. “Then it’s just the magic of encounter, the human alchemy, and her smile was contagious.”
Put Your Soul plays out as more than a record of someone’s life during the course of a brutal military siege; the war and the persistence of a single life are one and the same. It purports that genocide, and all that enables it, always seeks one thing: erasure. But Hassouna’s smile, threading its way entirely through video calls and fractured connections over the course of 112 minutes, renders that goal impossible.
The opening shots of Hassouna and Farsi introducing themselves anchor the film in this perspective, which not only feels personal but very social. There are talks of dreams, of travelling to fashion shows, her hopes of the war ending, while Farsi occasionally interrupts and muses to Hassouna about the wanderings of her own household cat.
Through the film, Hassouna comes alive not just as a photographer but as a witness to life insisting itself into being. She sings, writes, and frames the world in small, stubborn flashes of beauty—sunsets, gestures, moments that flicker and hold. Israel’s weight presses in, but in her eyes, and in her lens, you feel resilience not as heroism, but as a relentless survival.
Their conversations flicker in and out—bad connections, cut-offs, pixelated resolutions. Farsi embraced the glitches as part of the film’s life, letting audiences feel her frustration and the strangeness of connecting with Gaza. “By keeping these pauses and disconnections, I’m conveying something very strange about the way we connect to Gaza, because Gaza is not reachable, and yet it is. It’s like another planet.”
Making the film for Farsi was much like living in two worlds at once: recording Hassouna from afar, sure, but also being closely present as a friend, witness, and human being. “We were both in the process of filming and being filmed, kind of,” she reflects. “I had to remain natural, but also somehow controlled as a filmmaker. Because, of course, I needed to be able to react in the right way to her.”
High school can really get under your skin, as Emile Hirsch is discovering in this exclusive first look image from the horror-comedy Lice.
Hirsch stars in the film, which is in post-production, as a burned-out science teacher, Mr. Shanker, whose school is thrown into chaos when a parasite begins infecting the student body, turning the teenagers into maniacs. The uninfected students and staff are left to reign in the chaos and get to the bottom of the illness — a possible government experiment gone wrong. And, in a first look at the film, Hirsch’s Mr. Shanker is clearly not having a good time.
Elsewhere in the movie, from director Jonathan Bensimon, are the overwhelmed and over-imbibing Principal Van (Justin Long) and Detective Sikorski (Kevin Connolly), who is working outside the school grounds to contain the outbreak before it consumes the entire town.
Connelly is pulling double duty, producing under Connolly’s ActionPark Productions banner, with Jeremy Alter and Gary Goldman also acting as producers.
Anthony Musella and Lizze Gordo wrote the screenplay for Lice, which is for sale out of the Toronto Film Festival with Highland Film Group handling international sales.
Guillermo Del Toro is renowned for a lot of things, but deeply devoted collector might not have been the first title you thought of. The director, who won Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Feature for The Shape of Water (2017) and Best Animated Feature for Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio (2022), has curated a private museum of film ephemera that he calls Bleak House…
The 2025 Toronto Film Festival is in full swing, and while the red carpets and premieres dominate the headlines, the talk at the halfway point has shifted to next year and TIFF’s plans to launch its first official content market.
For decades, Toronto has thrived with a bustling but informal market, primarily for finished films (unlike L.A’s American Film Market in November, where the biggest deals are for film packages seeking financing). But TIFF has never had an official marketplace, where buyers and sellers could set up shop to peddle movies under one roof.
That will change in 2026 with the launch of TIFF: The Market, a seven-day event scheduled for Sept. 10-16. Bankrolled by a $16 million (CAD $23 million) investment from the Canadian government, the new initiative aims to make TIFF a hub for all things content, not just a film market but also a one-stop shop for television, gaming and immersive formats, a co-production forum and a works-in-progress showcase.
Among industry veterans, TIFF’s market plans have sparked equal parts curiosity and skepticism. The biggest concern is timing. TIFF falls just three months after Cannes, too early for many projects to be fully packaged, and weeks before AFM, traditionally the fall market for putting deals together.
“It will be much harder to get packages together over the summer after Cannes,” says Mongrel Media co-president Andrew Frank. “Even at AFM, you see how packages only come together at the last moment, and Toronto is even earlier.”
Frank also questions the economics. “With costs going up, will people come to two markets — Toronto and AFM? They have to figure out what their delta is, what makes Toronto a unique proposition. I don’t know what that is yet.”
Notes Cornerstone Films co-founder Mark Gooder: “They have a big pot of money to spend. It depends on how they spend it. Will the money be used to support sellers as well as buyers to come here?”
Not that AFM is in great shape. After last year’s poorly received stint in Las Vegas, the market will return to Los Angeles this November at a new, untested venue — the Fairmont Century Plaza in Century City. Adding to the uncertainty, Jean Prewitt, head of the Independent Film & Television Alliance, which runs the American Film Market, will step down at year’s end.
AFM’s current weakness could provide an opening for TIFF, particularly for Europeans who don’t want, or can’t afford, to make two costly trips to North America.
“AFM is not a market we attend, so [after Cannes] our next one is Berlin [in February],” explains Samuel Blanc of French sales group The Party Film Sales. “It would be really useful to have a fall market for art house films, because the AFM doesn’t fill that role. If they do it right, it could re-dynamize that time of the year.”
TIFF has been careful to stress that the new initiative will not simply replicate other markets. “It is a content market, not a film market,” notes TIFF’s chief programming officer Anita Lee. In addition to film, the new TIFF market will include television and gaming as well as XR and immersive content. But those ambitions raise other questions about the industry calendar. Gamescom, the world’s largest gaming expo, takes place in Cologne just two weeks earlier. MIPCOM, the top TV market, comes to Cannes a month later. TIFF could risk diluting its impact by trying to be all things to all people.
But at a time of general industry disruption — “the business model for independent film is gone and we haven’t found a new one yet,” says Gooder — most industry players are willing to give TIFF a chance. Many see Toronto as a natural bridge between the U.S. and international industries and a logical hub for international financing and co-production.
“With changing production financing and distribution models, a Toronto-based marketplace builds on TIFF’s international prestige and represents a logical next step,” says Jim Sternberg, a partner at Make Good, a Toronto-based consultancy for film financing and business affairs.
“We’re seeing more and more producers look to co-production to navigate the complex financial landscape,” adds Charles Auty, chief commercial officer at debt financing group Elevate Production Finance. “Establishing those producer relationships early can be a useful aid to support the proper development of projects.”
Then there is the Trump factor.
“A lot of buyers, particularly from Europe, are concerned about traveling to the U.S. right now, given the current political climate,” notes Gooder. “They’d be much happier with a trip to Toronto than with dealing with Homeland Security.”
It wouldn’t be an overstatement to say that Taylor Sheridan is one of the most productive and powerful creators in the entertainment industry today. As the showrunner behind a half-dozen popular streaming programs and an Academy Award nomination for screenwriting, Sheridan has developed a unique sub-genre of smart, entertaining neo-westerns that have captured an active audience…
