King Richard, a hugely tear-jerking and crowd-pleasing drama about how the father of tennis legends Venus Williams and Serena Williams set them on their path to greatness, wowed the Galaxy Theatre audience at its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival on Thursday night. It strikes me as being bound for major awards recognition, first and foremost for lead actor Will Smith, who plays the eponymous Richard Williams, but quite possibly extending across-the-board and up to best picture (for which Smith, as a producer, is also eligible; the Williams sisters are executive producers).
Many people know the broad outlines of the story: a working-class husband and father who loved tennis, but had little personal experience playing it, guided two of his five daughters from the courts of Compton to the top of the sport by stubbornly sticking to a “plan” that he had mapped out before they were even born.
But the details of how he and his daughters defied the odds, to a truly mind-blowing degree (they are the two greatest players in the history of women’s tennis and are still going strong into their forties), are filled in and fleshed out — with ample measures of both humor and heartbreak — in a script by Zach Baylin (which was 2018’s #2 finisher on The Blacklist of the industry’s best unproduced scripts) and under the direction of Reinaldo Marcus Green (heretofore best known for 2018’s Monsters and Men, which won a special jury award for outstanding first feature at Sundance).
And what can one say about the performances? Smith transforms his look, posture and speech to emulate that of “King Richard,” and has several show-stopping scenes and monologues. Strong Smith performances have previously been Oscar-nominated (2001’s Ali and 2006’s The Pursuit of Happyness) and overlooked (2015’s Concussion), but I don’t think he has ever had a more Oscar-friendly role — or been better. It may well be his time. It’s hard to imagine many better performances coming along this season.
Also excellent, in support: Aunjanue Ellis, the twice Emmy-nominated actress, who has a couple of wonderful moments to shine as Oracene Price, the soft-spoken but fierce matriarch of the Williams family; Jon Bernthal, who totally captures the spirit of the high-priced and high-energy tennis coach Rick Macci; and Saniyya Sidney (Fences) and Demi Singleton, who are spot-on as young Venus and Serena, respectively, portraying them almost entirely before either turned pro — and somehow playing professional-looking tennis, as well, which has almost never been the case in a movie before.
And the below-the-line work is top-of-the-line, too, especially the heart-tugging score by Kris Bowers (Green Book); cinematography by Robert Elswit (an Oscar winner for There Will Be Blood); film editing by Pamela Martin (an Oscar nominee for The Fighter); and an original song by Beyonce, “Be Alive,” which plays over the end-credits, which themselves are must-see, featuring footnotes about and archival footage of the real Williamses.
If I may allow myself a personal point of privilege, I’d like to note that when I was in my teens I spent many summers as a ballkid at New Haven’s Pilot Pen International Tennis Tournament, which was held a week before the U.S. Open. Venus Williams was just starting out her professional career, and I got to work many of her matches, and also to not infrequently shoot the breeze with Mr. Williams, who was very kind to us ballkids. I don’t think the filmmakers could have nailed these two more than they did, which is perhaps part of why I found the film so moving — but my guess is that people who have never heard of the Williams family will have the same reaction.
Warner Bros. plans to release the $50 million film on Nov. 19.
Frank Oz, the iconic puppeteer and director, is persona non grata with Disney, he revealed in a recent interview with TheGuardian.
Known for his work on Muppets projects alongside the late, legendary Jim Henson, as well as for helming such classic films as LittleShopofHorrors and WhatAboutBob?, Oz said in an interview published Monday that he would love to work on another Muppets project, but Disney, which purchased the IP in 2004, won’t work with him.
“I’d love to do the Muppets again but Disney doesn’t want me, and Sesame Street hasn’t asked me for 10 years,” he said. “They don’t want me because I won’t follow orders and I won’t do the kind of Muppets they believe in.”
Oz voiced Fozzie Bear, Miss Piggy, Sam Eagle, Animal and Marvin Suggs for several Muppets film and TV projects. On Sesame Street, he voiced Bert, Grover and Cookie Monster.
Oz said he does not watch current Muppets or Sesame Street projects. And he doesn’t pull punches as to why. “The soul’s not there,” he said. “The soul is what makes things grow and be funny. But I miss them and love them.”
Oz is steadfast when he talks about how, in his opinion, the Disney acquisition forever changed The Muppets.
“There’s an inability for corporate America to understand the value of something they bought. They never understood, with us, it’s not just about the puppets, it’s about the performers who love each other and have worked together for many years,” he said.
Oz did work with Disney when he returned to voice Yoda in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Star Wars: The Last Jedi and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.
A Disney rep could not be immediately reached for comment.
James Corden was trending on both sides of the Atlantic this weekend and for all the wrong reasons as The Late Late Show host’s latest ostensibly harmless stunt divided opinion on social media.
A Twitter user uploaded a clip of Corden and his Cinderella co-stars Camila Cabello, Billy Porter and Idina Menzel performing what looked like a segment of “Crosswalk the Musical” from his late-night show. In the clip, which has been viewed over 17 million times, a fully committed Corden, dressed as a rat, can be seen thrusting his groin at the car while singing the chorus to Jennifer Lopez’s “Let’s Get Loud.”
Judging by the most liked tweets under the trending topic of James Corden, the reaction on Twitter has been overwhelmingly negative and reignited a debate about the multi-hyphenate’s popularity.
“We will not forgive the U.K. for James Corden,” wrote one Twitter user. “What did we, as a nation, do to James Corden that he will not let us be,” wrote another summing up the most SFW sentiments, although much of the reaction was firmly in the mean territory.
James corden always looks like he’s trying to prove he’s the most fun guy to be around but the darkness in his eyes betrays him
— Sarah Hagi (@KindaHagi) August 28, 2021
London-born Corden seems to be experiencing a similar backlash he faced in the U.K. before he left for the U.S. in 2012, first to star on Broadway (winning a Tony award for One Man, Two Guvnors) and then eventually securing The Late Late Show gig as Craig Ferguson’s replacement in 2015. At the time of his departure from his home country, Corden was regularly the source of social media derision partly down to his cocky persona but also because of overexposure.
At the end of the 2000s, Corden was everywhere on British TV. He co-wrote and co-starred in the phenomenally successful BBC comedy Gavin & Stacey, starred in hit shows like Doctor Who, hosted several comedy panel shows, was the go-to host of awards shows most notably The Brit Awards and was a regular star in ads for everything from cell phones to supermarkets.
Corden’s current absence on British TV has reduced the vitriol to some degree, but there are regular flare-ups, such as this weekend and a few weeks ago after the first trailer for Cinderella dropped and inspired this piece in The Independent with the headline, “‘Nobody Likes A Narcissist’: How Did America Fall In Love With James Corden?”
There was a more embarrassing reminder of his unpopularity in May 2019 when Corden and the “Carpool Karaoke” team agreed to do a Ask Me Anything Q&A session on Reddit. The session ended after 3 questions after Corden was sent 700+ negative comments about his career and alleged events.
It might be rash to call this the worst thing I’ve ever seen, but I’m trying to think of something worse and coming up dry https://t.co/HVIlXSBShY
— Guy Lodge (@GuyLodge) August 28, 2021
The ever-busy Corden has achieved a similar level of ubiquity in the U.S. Alongside hosting his popular late-night show, complete with viral sensation segments such as “Carpool Karaoke” and “Crosswalk the Musical,” and his outsized social media following where he regularly hob-nobs with famous friends like Harry Styles, Corden has hosted the Tonys and the Grammys on multiple occasions, hosted HBO Max’s Friends: The Reunion, executive produced three TV shows and built up a healthy list of big-screen credits, including Ocean’s 8, the Trolls franchise, the Peter Rabbit films and Yesterday.
Corden, a producer as well as a co-star in Amazon’s Cinderella which debuts on Sept. 3, has also become something of a regular in big-budget Hollywood musicals. Since appearing in Rob Marshall’s Into the Woods, he has had notable roles in Ryan Murphy’s The Prom and Tom Hooper’s widely panned Cats.
“go to hell” is basic “i hope james corden gets cast in the movie version of your favorite musical” is smart, it’s possible, and it’s terrifying
— ٭ ky ٭ (@MelanatedMuppet) August 29, 2021
In The Prom, Corden, a straight man, was the subject of some criticism for playing the flamboyantly gay character Barry Glickman. “Corden, whose limited range becomes more apparent with every screen role, is torn between trying too hard and not hard enough as Barry,” wrote The Hollywood Reporter‘s reviewer, adding, “Perhaps aware of the potential minefield for a straight actor playing a flaming gay stereotype, Corden channels the mannerisms without the joy.”
After The Prom and Cats and now the reaction to Cinderella, the portion of Twitter where fans of musicals congregate has long gone off the idea of Corden appearing in a project. Despite all of Corden’s success, the sentiments found so routinely on Musical Twitter is beginning to spread and with the eye-rolling reaction to hip-thrusting stunts like the one from this weekend, it could be said that he is in danger of facing the same kind of backlash he did in the U.K., only now he has nowhere bigger to escape to.
The mystery surrounding billionaire actress Zhao Wei and her whereabouts intensified over the weekend after unsubstantiated reports spread that she had fled China for France after she was blacklisted by Beijing authorities.
On Saturday, reports emerged on Chinese news sites that Zhao had fled the country on a private jet and was spotted at Bordeaux airport in France. Zhao and her husband Huang Youlong are the owners of Chateau Monlot, a vineyard located just outside Bourdeaux.
Seeking to dispel the rumors, and being banned from Chinese social media sites such as Weibo, Zhao posted three pictures to her Instagram account Sunday, despite that platform being blocked in China. Reports say Zhao claimed on Instagram that she was staying with her parents in Beijing and in reply to a commenter she denied she was in France. The Instagram post was later deleted.
Zhao Wei updated her Instagram, saying that she is with her mom and dad in Beijing, and then the post disappeared as wild rumors about her fleeing to France fly around. pic.twitter.com/zgLjFYgjJc
— Eddie Du (@EddieDu5) August 29, 2021
Last Thursday, upon orders from the government, all entries related to Zhao on Chinese social media platforms such as Weibo were removed, her name was scrubbed from the credits of films and TV shows, and all content featuring her — including film, TV, chat show appearances and more — was removed from major streaming sites like Tencent Video and iQiyi.
All discussion of Zhao on social media is also censored. No official explanation for the blacklisting was given but the Chinese government is in the midst of a crackdown on the entertainment industry and the excesses of celebrity fan culture.
Zhao, who is also known as Vicky or Vicki Zhao and notably starred in My Fair Princess, Shaolin Soccer and Lost in Hong Kong, is a popular star turned billionaire investor and is the face of Italian fashion house Fendi in China.
Chinese state newspaper The Global Times reported that no official reason had been given for the moves to erase Zhao’s presence and work from the Internet, but it did resurface historical allegations of financial impropriety and a number of other scandals. Most notably, in 2018, the Shanghai Stock Exchange banned Zhao and her husband Huang Youlong from acting as listed company executives for five years due to issues and irregularities related to a failed takeover bid in 2016.
A close friend of Alibaba founder Jack Ma, Zhao and her husband were early investors in Alibaba Pictures Group, buying a $400 million stake in 2015. Once China’s highest-profile billionaire, Ma’s star has dimmed after spectacularly falling out of favor with Beijing.
The unraveling of Theranos began with a 2015 article in the Wall Street Journal that revealed how the revolutionary technology promoted by the blood testing startup wasn’t exactly what it seemed.
Over the proceeding months, the reporter John Carreyrou exposed how the testing devices the Silicon Valley darling said could perform a variety of medical tests with just a drop of blood were not actually being used to perform most of the analyses. Investors and consumers, Carreyrou found, were being fooled.
Theranos dissolved in 2018 and its star founder, Elizabeth Holmes, will face trial in a San Jose courtroom next week.
Carreyrou’s book about the rise and fall of Theranos, meanwhile, became a bestseller and the author is hosting a new podcast, Bad Blood: the Final Chapter, as the trial begins.
He spoke with the Guardian about the lies Holmes pulled off and the larger questions about Silicon Valley culture that Theranos raised.
What do readers need to know about the particular moment in Silicon Valley culture when Theranos rose to prominence?
Theranos rose to prominence between 2013 and 2015, during the beginning of what I call the “unicorn boom” – Silicon Valley’s second enormous boom after the dotcom boom of the late 90s.
This boom started with the emergence of Facebook and Twitter and then metastasized with the appearance of these other big unicorns like Uber and Airbnb. Theranos at one point was worth even more and was the most valuable private startup in Silicon Valley back in 2014.
This was all before the backlash against big tech. People did not come down hard on Facebook until the 2016 election, when they realized the roles that Facebook and Twitter had played and the way those platforms were manipulated by Russian hackers. The disposition of the country and of the press towards Silicon Valley was still positive. When I broke the Theranos scandal, in a small way, it contributed to the backlash against tech that began to transpire.
Why do you think it was able to go unchecked for so long?
As Holmes herself has said, Theranos was in stealth mode in its first 10 years, so the company was not on anyone’s radar. It was really only in the limelight for two years before I wrote my first story on the scandal. You could argue that even that was too long because these unreliable and inaccurate blood tests were already available in Walgreens.
Sunny [Ramesh Balwani, former president of Theranos, who was also charged with fraud] and Elizabeth were very secretive – they managed that company like it was the CIA. The threat of litigation was always in the air, so employees were worried about speaking out.
It seems like the collection of high-profile people on the board, many of whom did not actually have scientific expertise, played into the hype. How was Holmes able to secure such supporters?
She very much did that in a calculated way. Early on, she started associating with these older men who could give her more credibility. It started out with Channing Robertson, the well-regarded Stanford engineering professor who would join her board, encouraging her and putting her in touch with people he knew around the Valley.
Then George Schultz was key in terms of being able to put together the last iteration of the board. He introduced her to all those luminaries; many of them were fellows at the Hoover Institution. And so she milked it. She was able to meet Gen Mattis, ex-cabinet members like Kissinger, and on and on.
The [Securities and Exchange Commission] has a term for this, and it’s affinity fraud. It’s associating yourself with people who are credible and well regarded by society to give yourself credibility. And that is a big part of the Theranos story.
Could you talk a little bit about the mythos surrounding Elizabeth Holmes and why people were attracted to that?
There are two parts to it. One is a myth that survives to this day, popularized by the incredible success of Steve Jobs, that Silicon Valley every few years can produce these young genius startup founders and that they can do no wrong.
[Holmes] served that myth, but there was also a gender component to it. She was going to be the first woman who reached billionaire status and join the pantheon of these tech leaders. People were really rooting for her – young girls were writing her letters.
A lot of people wanted to believe this fairytale, because it would have represented real progress in this very male-dominated world of Silicon Valley. Unfortunately, it was a fairytale that wasn’t true.
Ramesh ‘Sunny’ Balwani leaves court in San Jose, California, in 2019. Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Do you think that those myths around people or those personas still play a big role and who gets funding in Silicon Valley?
Yes, absolutely. To this day there is a willingness to worship geniuses in Silicon Valley. It is a very American phenomenon – I am half French and I think Europeans tend to be a little bit more cynical, but Americans are eternally optimistic, eternally willing to worship new heroes.
That is especially true in Silicon Valley, where there’s this magical thinking that some people are geniuses and just can’t be wrong. It may have been tempered in the past years because of Theranos, but I believe it still very much exists.
When you broke the story you were also based on the east coast – do you think coming from outside the bubble of Silicon Valley helped in your reporting?
That is part of it, but it’s also the fact that I’d been doing investigative reporting about healthcare for a decade before I stumbled on Theranos. Holmes framed herself as being part of a tech lineage when in fact her company was a healthcare company. So I had just the right background to see through it.
Given that the media played such a large role in building up the company, do you think tech media is doing any better now?
Especially after we learned the way Facebook and Twitter were exploited during the 2016 election and how these companies have become virtual monopolies, there’s a lot more skeptical and critical coverage nowadays than there was back then.
In terms of the culture of Silicon Valley itself changing, I still think it’s going to take a guilty verdict.
How do you think the outcome of the case will impact Silicon Valley and startup culture more broadly?
If she’s convicted and does significant prison time, it’s going to be a shot across the bow to venture capitalists and startup founders in the Valley that there are limits to how much bullshitting you can do, to how much exaggerating and hyping you can do and how many rules you can break.
There has long been a culture of faking it until you make it in Silicon Valley, and she is a product of that culture. To reform that, it is going to take a conviction and people realizing if you cross too many lines, you will end up in prison.
The flip side of that is that if she’s acquitted you’ll have young entrepreneurs running around Silicon Valley saying: “Yeah, I push the envelope but look at what Elizabeth Holmes got away with – she did worse than what I am doing and didn’t do a day in prison.”
Do you think she will testify?
If I had to bet, I think she will testify. Not just because of what I have said about her tolerance for risk and her confidence, but because it looks like her strategy is going to be to blame Sunny and say he was abusive.
If that is the strategy, I don’t think it will be enough to put psychologists on the stand. To convince the jurors, they will want to hear from her how Sunny abused her, what effect that had on her, and how it affected her judgment.
Maybe I will be proven wrong. In most criminal cases defense lawyers advise their clients not to testify because it is a huge gamble. It opens you up to cross-examination from the prosecution, which can backfire in a huge way. If she does testify, it will certainly go against the grain of what usually happens.
Given the defense that we’re kind of anticipating , what is your take on her relationship with Balwani?
He definitely was a bad influence – but the notion that he controlled her, to me, is laughable. They were in this together in a partnership of equals. If anything, when they disagreed, she had the final say.
I know this not only from the six years of reporting I have done on this, and all the people I have interviewed who saw them operate together up close, but I have perused five years of text messages between them that were exhibits in the SEC case [against Theranos].
You also have to remember the fact that she had 99.7% of the voting rights of this company. She was in full control. Was she living with him and were they consulting each other all the time? Yes. But I do not buy this notion that he was the puppeteer and she was the puppet.
This story has inspired a lot of movies, books and other media. Why do you think that it’s so compelling to people?
Scams are compelling in general, and US capitalism is really good at producing them.
In this case, people are fascinated with the psychology of Holmes. How did she rationalize behaving the way she did? How was she able to pull off these lies for so long? How was she able to manipulate people for so long? The way she deepened her voice at times, the clothes she wore – she is a real chameleon.
She’s also got this extraordinary tolerance for risk, because to pull off what she pulled off – going live with a blood testing device that didn’t work – that takes chutzpah. Even how she is handling the case now – most people would have pled out four years ago. She has chosen to take this trial to court, to roll the dice.
Matthew Mindler, a former child actor who played Emily Mortimer and Steve Coogan’s son in 2011’s Our Idiot Brother, has been reported missing according to a news release from Millersville University on Thursday.
Mindler was last seen at approximately 8:11 p.m. Tuesday evening, the alert stated. He was reported missing that night after not returning to his dorm room or answering calls from his family.
Millersville University police filed a report with the National Crime Information Center and notified local police departments. Those with information about Mindler’s whereabouts have been asked to step forward. Information can be reported confidentially via the University’s LiveSafe app.
“Police are asking for help in finding 20-year-old Matthew Mindler, a first-year student from Hellertown, PA, who has been missing since Tuesday evening August 24, 2021,” wrote the University via its official Twitter account. The tweets described his clothing in detail.
Mindler’s mother clarified to local newspaper The Morning Call that her son is 19, not 20 as the University tweets stated.
His credits include an episode of As the World Turns and the short film Frequency.Mindler’s most recent credit was in the 2016 TV movie: Chad: An American Boy.
The Hollywood Reporter has reached out to the Pennsylvania State Police.
room or return phone calls from his family. Matt was last seen walking from his residence hall, West Villages toward the Centennial Dr. parking lot area at 8:11 p.m. Tuesday night. He was wearing a white Millersville University hooded sweatshirt with black stripes on the arm pic.twitter.com/zwpH29MvVw
— Millersville University (@millersvilleu) August 26, 2021
Leading actresses Zhao Wei and Zheng Shuang are the latest victims of the Chinese government’s ongoing crackdown on the entertainment industry and the excesses of celebrity fan culture.
On Thursday, all entries related to Zhao on Chinese social media platforms such as Weibo were removed, her name was scrubbed from the credits of films and TV shows, and all content featuring her — including film, TV, chat show appearances and more — was removed from major streaming sites like Tencent Video and iQiyi.
All discussion of Zhao on social media was also censored.
Zhao, who is also known as Vicky or Vicki Zhao and notably starred in My Fair Princess, Shaolin Soccer and Lost in Hong Kong, is a popular star turned billionaire investor and is the face of Italian fashion house Fendi in China.
Chinese state newspaper The Global Times reported that no official reason had been given for the moves to erase Zhao’s presence and work from the Internet, but it did resurface historical allegations of financial impropriety and a number of other scandals. Most notably, in 2018, the Shanghai Stock Exchange banned Zhao and her husband Huang Youlong from acting as listed company executives for five years due to issues and irregularities related to a failed takeover bid in 2016.
A close friend of Alibaba founder Jack Ma, Zhao and her husband were early investors in Alibaba Pictures Group, buying a $400 million stake in 2015. Once China’s highest-profile billionaire, Ma’s star has dimmed after spectacularly falling out of favor with Beijing.
The downfall of Zhao comes a few weeks after a professional and business acquaintance of hers, the actor Zhang Zhehan was similarly banned and scrubbed from the Internet after pictures surfaced of him at Japan’s controversial Yasukuni Shrine to war dead.
On Friday, tax authorities in Shanghai fined actress Zheng Shuang $46.1 million for tax evasion.
Zheng, the star of the hit series Meteor Shower and a popular celebrity, was fined for failing to report income between 2019 and 2020 while filming a TV series.
The AFP reported that China’s state broadcasting regulator, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, reiterated it had a “zero tolerance” policy on tax evasion. The regulator pulled the show in question from streaming sites and asked production companies to not work with Zheng in the future.
In media news today, an NBC report blasts Biden’s ‘humiliating’ Afghanistan withdrawal, Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin gets accused of ‘running PR for the Taliban,’ and Andrew Cuomo gets stripped of his Emmy amid sexual harassment scandal
The White House cut off the audio feed for President Joe Biden after he was posed a question Wednesday on stranded Americans in Afghanistan.
As he wrapped up a meeting on cybersecurity in the State Dining Room, Biden dismissed the press as they continued to ask questions. However, he appeared to answer one reporter’s query before leaving.
NBC’s Peter Alexander asked, “If Americans are still in Afghanistan after the deadline what will you do?”
The White House then proceeded to cut off the audio feed from Biden’s response. It was unclear if the maneuver was coincidental or done to prevent feed viewers from hearing any off-the-cuff comments.
Alexander later confirmed the exchange and noted Biden answered, “You’ll be the first person I call.”
He tweeted “I asked President Biden what he will do if Americans are still in Afghanistan after the 8/31 deadline. His response: ‘You’ll be the first person I call.’ Took no questions.”
DOUGLAS MURRAY: ANYONE WHO SEES AFGHANISTAN AS AN AMERICAN TRIUMPH IS IN ‘ABSOLUTE LA-LA-LAND
Other reporters on the scene confirmed the exchange including Daily Caller correspondent Shelby Talcott, Breitbart correspondent Charlie Spiering, and Voice of America’s Steve Herman.
Republicans accused the White House of trying to protect the president.
Former Mitch McConnell chief of staff Josh Holmes tweeted, “The White House cuts the President’s microphone. Pretty remarkable.”
Republican communicator Matt Whitlock tweeted, “Oh my gosh they cut the President’s microphone so nobody could hear him answer. That’s how worried this White House is about Biden answering questions on Afghanistan.”
Others decried what seemed like a callous response from the president.
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Biden has faced intense criticism for the Taliban’s recent takeover of Afghanistan following his removal of U.S. troops, and he’s continually dodged questions regarding efforts to rescue stranded Americans in the country.
Eight months after Warner Bros. shook Hollywood with the announcement that its 2021 slate would debut day-and-date in theaters and on HBO Max, the studio used CinemaCon to reassure theater owners it was still very much in the theatrical movie business.
Warners showed off clips from its upcoming slate, including the first trailer from the newly titled The Matrix: Resurrections (Dec. 22) and closer looks at The Batman (March 4, 2022) and Dune (Oct. 22), as well as footage from James Wan’s Malignant, Clint Eastwood’s Cry Macho, TheSopranos prequel The Many Saints of Newark and the Will Smith starrer King Richard.
Jeff Goldstein, president of domestic distribution, and Andrew Cripps, president of international theatrical distribution, appeared in a pre-taped video for the presentation. Goldstein noted the studio has put out 13 new films in theaters during the pandemic era and praised theater owners for keeping audiences coming — and then introduced the studio’s upcoming films, perhaps most notably The Matrix: Resurrections.
Ahead of the presentation, little was known about the fourth The Matrix – not even the premise or the title. The film comes from original co-director Lana Wachowski and includes original trilogy stars Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss, who were both heavily featured in a trailer played for CinemaCon audiences but not released online.
The trailer began with Thomas Anderson (Reeves) in therapy, telling his therapist (Neil Patrick Harris), “I had dreams that weren’t just dreams. Am I crazy?” He senses something is not quite right with the world, but he has no memory of what The Matrix is. Later, he runs into a woman (Moss) at a coffee shop. They shake hands, and there seems to be something between them, but neither one remembers the other. Meanwhile, Reeves’ Thomas spends his days taking prescription blue pills, and wondering why everyone in his world is glued to their phones — looking around and realizing he’s the only one on a crowded elevator not looking at a device.
Eventually, Reeves’ Thomas runs into a man (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) who is reminiscent of Morpheus, the freedom fighter played by Laurence Fishburne in the original trilogy. This mysterious man hands Anderson a red pill, and soon we see footage of him with powers, seeing The Matrix for the fake reality that it is. The footage followed some similar beats of the original, including Neo (Reeves) fighting the Morpheus-like figure in a dojo, and an image of Anderson in an incubator. There’s also a shot of Neo looking in a mirror and seeing an older version of himself. Neo also seems to have a few new powers from the last time, with the trailer including a shot of what looks like him controlling a missile through telekinesis to prevent it from hitting him.
The original Matrix became a defining sci-fi action film with significant influence on the genre. It won four Oscars in the categories of visual effects, editing, sound editing and sound. The signature VFX — known as the “bullet time” effect — went on to be widely used in entertainment. The trailer shown at CinemaCon shows there will be a similar visual style to the original, as well as some fresh VFX trickery.
“From the moment I read the script, it absolutely brought back those memories,” said Goldstein, who worked on the first Matrix. “I was completely floored.”
The film, produced by Village Roadshow, also stars Jada Pinkett Smith and Jessica Henwick.
The studio also showed off The Batman with a sizzle reel. The footage of The Batman comes almost exactly one year to the day after the first trailer debuted for the Matt Reeves-directed comic book film, which stars Robert Pattinson as the Dark Knight. The film also includes Jeffrey Wright as Commissioner Gordon and Andy Serkis as Alfred, and villains such as Zoe Kravitz as Catwoman, Colin Farrell as The Penguin Paul Dano as The Riddler.
Reeves noted the film was partially inspired by Batman:Year One, the seminal work from writer Frank Miller, while Pattinson reflected on how this version of Batman is different than those seen onscreen before.
“He’s really working out this rage,” said Pattinson in a featurette. “All the fights seem very personal.”
The Warner Bros. presentation also signaled what appears will be a very big year for Oscar-nominated cinematographer Greig Fraser (Lion), who lensed both Dune and The Batman — creating distinctly different yet both epic looks for each.
CinemaCon comes as theater owners fret over the shattering of the theatrical window amid the coronavirus pandemic. Earlier presentations from Sony and MGM saw executives from those studios tout that their films did not go to streaming services and theaters simultaneously. In December, Warner Bros. roiled the industry with the announcement that its entire 2021 slate would debut day-and-date in theaters and on HBO Max, which like Warners, is owned by WarnerMedia. The move was met with backlash from theater owners and talent, including filmmaker Christopher Nolan, who had a long-time relationship with the studio, and Dune‘s Denis Villeneuve.
Warners will resume giving films an exclusive theatrical window next year, with its 2022 slate going into theaters for 45 days under a deal made public earlier this month. Meanwhile, the studio is developing films directly for HBO Max, including the upcoming DC titles Batgirl and Blue Beetle.
At the top of the presentation, Cripps spoke of the power of the movie theater, comparing it favorably to watching a film at home.
“Turns out size does matter,” quipped Cripps. “Watching Godzilla vs. Kong on your iPad doesn’t pack the same punch as going to the movies.”
Misha Green is reuniting with her Lovecraft Country co-star Jurnee Smollett for a DC movie project featuring heroine Black Canary, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed.
The project, which is in early development at HBO Max, is a spinoff from Warner Bros.’s 2020 DC movie Birds of Prey which featured characters Harley Quinn, the Huntress, and Cassandra Cain. Also in the cast of heroes was Canary, played by Smollett.
Green will write the script for the feature, with Smollett due to reprise her role. Sur Kroll, who produced Prey, will produce Canary.
Prey was not a strong performer at the box office — it grossed only $201.8 million worldwide when released in Feb. 5, 2020 — but did generate fan interest and had actors who were game to play.
No take on the story was revealed, however Canary is one of DC’s long-standing characters, having been created in the late 1940s. Since the 1960s, she has been associated mostly with Green Arrow and is known for her ear-splitting canary cry.
Canary now joins a growing stable of HBO Max movies centered on DC characters such as Batgirl and Blue Beetle, as well as a series focused on a Black Superman.
Green became one of the hottest creators in town thanks to Lovecraft, which became a buzzy and envelope-pushing series for HBO. When a second season was nixed, Green found plenty of other work, including The Mother, an action thriller starring Jennifer Lopez now in pre-production at Netflix, and significantly a Tomb Raider movie project that she will write and on which she make her feature directorial debut.
Cinelinx first reported the news of a Black Canary project.
