The past year has been a challenging time for the business, and our journalists are taking this moment to reflect on the stories that defined 2024. The industry has been rocked by layoffs and questions about the viability of streaming. Box office is down by 4.8% from 2023 — although the strong showing of “Moana 2” and “Wicked” has given theater owners a reason to feel holiday cheer.
Yes, there have been staggering successes, such as Taylor Swift’s $2 billion “Eras Tour” — which buoyed global economies by fueling tourism — and the $1.7 billion in global receipts for “Inside Out 2.” But as ABC News settled a $15 million defamation lawsuit with President-elect Donald Trump over the weekend, much uncertainty lies ahead. There are questions about what Trump’s second term will mean for the future of news — and journalism.
At Variety, over the course of our esteemed 119-year-history, we have been devoted to covering the business of entertainment. And as we look forward to our 120th birthday, our team is ready to double down and do what we do best — break news, offer definitive analysis and make sense of what’s happening in our town. We appreciate this industry for supporting us, and we thank our readers for embracing our vital journalism in print as well as online, on video and through social media.
This final issue of 2024 features a look at some of the biggest visionary storytellers in entertainment in our Directors on Directors franchise; our annual Dealmakers list of M&A movers and shakers; and a guest essay from Keith Olbermann about what he hopes the future holds for his former home of MSNBC. Artistry, power and commentary you can’t find anywhere else: It’s the perfect mix that defines the sensibility of our brand. We thank you for inviting Variety into your homes all year round. Happy holidays.
Araya Doheny (4); Littleton: Photograph by Dan Doperalski; Setoodeh: Photograph by Alexi Lubomirski
It can take just a generation for a family name to go from Oscar darling to Razzie frontrunner.
Case in point: Jake Kasdan’s Christmas-themed “Red One” landed in theaters on Nov. 15 with a thud louder than Santa’s sleigh hitting a rooftop. The Dwayne Johnson-Chris Evans pairing, which chronicles the bid to rescue Old Saint Nick after he is kidnapped from the North Pole on Christmas Eve, has mustered just $175 million worldwide to date despite a colossal $250 million budget. For Kasdan, the son of four-time Oscar nominee Lawrence Kasdan (“The Big Chill,” “Body Heat”), the “Red One” reviews were even harsher than the box office, with the film receiving a 30% score on Rotten Tomatoes.
Kasdan — whose track record outside “Red One” was enviable, with $2.5 billion in box office from the recent “Jumanji” films and others — was far from alone this year. The past 12 months have featured a procession of underperformers and downright embarrassments hailing from nepo baby filmmakers and executives with names like Spielberg and Shyamalan. In fact, 2024 may go down as the year of the nepo bust.
“The first inclination is to say, ‘I want as much money for my budget and as many shooting days as possible.’ But you may come to regret that because in many ways you’re setting yourself up for failure and scrutiny,” says Peter Newman, head of the MBA/MFA graduate dual degree program at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. “People should be encouraged to be cautious about what they say yes to and not ask for this and that even if someone’s willing to give it to them.”
And someone often is willing to give the spawn of Hollywood’s A-list more than needed. For her feature directorial debut, Ishana Night Shyamalan, the daughter of Oscar nominee M. Night Shyamalan, secured a $30 million budget for the supernatural horror movie “The Watchers” — an extraordinary sum for a first-timer. Despite a release from New Line Cinema-Warner Bros. in the summer corridor, the Dakota Fanning-starrer pulled in just $33 million worldwide, with a disastrous C- CinemaScore.
A similar scenario played out for Zelda Williams, daughter of the late comedy icon Robin Williams, with her first movie, the rom-com-horror hybrid “Lisa Frankenstein.” The Focus Features film cost $13 million, well above the going rate for a novice. Its global haul topped off at just under $10 million after it opened in February.
And though Destry Allyn Spielberg worked with a budget closer to standard for her feature debut, “Please Don’t Feed the Children,” the film was plagued by negative headlines. Variety previously reported that vendors complained that they still hadn’t been paid six months after the New Mexico production wrapped in November 2023. (The vendors were paid after the production — which cost at least $4.4 million, according to the state’s tax incentive program spending — received a cash infusion from a pair of investors.)
Next-gen film flameouts have long been a staple in the Hollywood ecosystem. There was Breck Eisner (son of former Disney CEO Michael Eisner), who was given a $160 million budget for the 2005 Paramount tentpole “Sahara,” only to see it take in less than $120 million worldwide. And Jennifer Lynch (daughter of David Lynch) was enmeshed a decade earlier in a lawsuit with Kim Basinger after the actress dropped out of “Boxing Helena” before production. But 2024 saw a steady clip of nepo baby stumbles, including Jason Reitman (son of Ivan Reitman) finding little box office traction for “Saturday Night,” his ode to the sketch comedy show, despite positive reviews. The Sony film earned less than $10 million against a $30 million budget.
On a different spectrum of embarrassment, mini-mogul Casey Wasserman, the ultimate nepo baby as the grandson of legendary agent Lew Wasserman, was accused of having “serial” affairs with junior employees that stretched back years. Amid the fallout, Billie Eilish exited his Wasserman Music for WME.
Yet the news wasn’t all bad for nepo baby directors and executives in 2024. Zoë Kravitz, the daughter of Lisa Bonet and Lenny Kravitz, scored a hit with the psychological thriller “Blink Twice.” The $20 million Amazon movie, which opened in August and marked her first turn behind the camera, finished its run with $46 million worldwide. And Gia Coppola, the latest member of the Coppola film dynasty, hasn’t fully tested the box office waters with her drama “The Last Showgirl.” The film about cast-aside Vegas dancers nabbed $50,300 on one screen in its Oscar-qualifying first weekend, marking the fifth-best per-screen opening of the year for the Roadside Attractions film. Perhaps its biggest coup is that it has entered the awards-season conversation, with star Pamela Anderson landing a Golden Globe nomination in the drama category. And the supporting cast, led by nepo babies Jamie Lee Curtis and Billie Lourd, have earned raves for their moving performances.
Some would argue that even “Red One” isn’t the box office equivalent of a lump of coal. Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore, says the film continues to stick around in the top 10 after bowing on Dec. 5 on Prime, where it amassed a staggering 50 million streams in its first weekend.
“‘Red One’ was meant to be a straight streaming play, and they made the decision to go theatrical,” he says. “This definitely isn’t a movie made for critics, but it could be a Christmas season perennial for Amazon and stream for years and years to come.”
After all, it might take a few decades for a prestige name to lose its cachet — or a maligned film could become a classic overnight.
Generation Gap
Creatives who stumbled in their famous parents’ footsteps in 2024
Lawrence Kasdan (left), Jake Kasdan: Red One
Ivan Reitman (left), Jason Reitman: Saturday Night
M. Night Shyamalan (left), Ishana Night Shyamalan: The Watchers
Steven Spielberg (left), Destry Allyn Spielberg: Please Don’t Feed the Children
Lew Wasserman (left); Casey Wasserman: Wasserman Music
Robin Williams (left); Zelda Williams: Lisa Frankenstein
Everett Collection (2); Gregg DeGuire/FilmMagic/Getty Images; Vivien Killilea/Getty Images; Gilbert Flores/VVariety; Cesc Maymo/Getty Images; Ethan Miller/Getty Images; Alberto Rodriguez/Variety/Getty Images; Mike Egerton/PA Images/Getty Images; Bill Nation/Sygma/Getty Images; John Phillips/Getty Images; John Nacion/Getty Images; Dia Dipasupil/WireImage/Getty Images; Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic/Getty Images
What does MSNBC do now? After Trump accomplished the Undead thing and retook the White House? After Comcast announced plans to spin off the network (along with others) in such haste that its new company was named “SpinCo”? After Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski went on their show and welcomed our new insect overlords? After its audience vanished?
Nothing.
Stay the course. The audience is exhausted and needs a break. It’ll be back — and Resistier than ever. Suffer the ratings trough. I mean, obviously you have to fire Mr. and Mrs. Scared-Bro. However: Continue their banal but largely benign political coffee klatch show without them and their insistence we all join their MSNVichy. Nobody will remember they were ever there.
Plus, the next money is coming from more fervent opposition to MAGA, not less. Wasn’t the Scarborough disaster (60% of the demo audience gone in three days) instructive enough? Did you not notice CNN going from fact-based criticism of Trump’s madness to hours of cacophonous shouting, and sinking to whatever is the next level down from irrelevance? Did the quarter of a million canceled Washington Post subscriptions not tell you something? Or the exodus from Twitter/X?
What do you think happened to all these news consumers? That they were raptured?
They’re all still there waiting to spend their time and money at the only liberal candy store still open: yours. These other supposed bastions of journalism have left you a near monopoly. And MSNBC only exists today because the last time NBC was handed a near monopoly, your management ancestors said, “A hundred million in profits from Olbermann’s liberal show? I guess we’ll take it. If we have to.”
In the early years of this century, the great minds at GE (then NBC’s parent) were trying to go to the right of Fox by putting on Tucker Carlson, Michael Savage and Laura Ingraham. They were thus too busy to notice that I was putting on Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O’Donnell and Chris Hayes. While they were trying to steal Bill O’Reilly away from Fox or, failing that, to transform MSNBC into a literal prison-documentary channel, I kept Rachel from jumping to CNN by giving her $437 out of my own pocket. And the next thing the corporate masters knew, we’d spun them all off into their own shows and MSNBC was profiting a billion a year.
BTW, I’d like the $437 reimbursed, please.
Generation after generation of NBC Executive Idiots viewed politics as nothing more than a soda brand and believed there was some additional audience — undecided or right wing — that they could add to the present one if only they also offered a different flavor called “New MSNBC.” The new flavor invariably turns out to be turnip. Besides, that right wing ruled you out in 1996. Pursuing it results in only one thing: the Scarborough-ing of your present audience.
That doesn’t mean you can’t tweak stuff. Your primetime audience doesn’t want new faces; it wants comfort food — so refresh the menu and decor. Scuttle those daytime shows (which always existed solely to give NBC News execs something to stare at while they pretended to work) and replace them with the morning formula, only with different sets and different titles. Try outsider, big personality hosts like Elie Mystal and Pablo Torre. You could even try for a truce with your prodigal anchor so he’ll be inside the tent peeing out for a change. And now you can finally do something I first suggested in 1998: Change the damn name of the network! Use the acronym “N.E.W.S.” Or “American News Network.” Or how about a nice, self-explanatory “F Trump TV”?
What all this will get you (besides the kind of profits only a monopoly can provide) are non-cash virtues like moral force and ethics and journalism and patriotism and liberty. You may now be the last line of defense for the free press and thus the future of representative government in this country. The bullies don’t stop hitting you because you’re nice to them. They stop hitting you when you knock them out cold.
Put that on MSNBC, and all will be well.
Keith Olbermann anchored MSNBC’s “Countdown” and breaking news and political coverage from 2003 to 2011. “Countdown,” produced with iHeartMedia, is now his daily news and commentary podcast.
When “Hacks” won the Emmy earlier this year for outstanding comedy, it shocked pundits who had expected another victory for “The Bear.” Even the “Hacks” producers were gobsmacked, jaws agape as they reached the stage. But for the execs at Universal Television, which produces “Hacks” for Max, that stunning moment came with a little vindication.
“‘Gratifying’ is an understatement,” says Universal TV president Erin Underhill. “This was not a show buyers were looking for. Everyone passed on it.”
The “Hacks” win was not only a shot in the arm for the comedy genre — which is experiencing a bit of a renaissance this fall — but also another notch in the belt for Universal’s comedy division, which is also seeing an uptick in its output.
“I think we feel a lot of responsibility working at a place that has done well for so long,” says Jim Donnelly, Universal TV comedy development exec VP, referencing the company’s contemporary comedy library — including “The Office,” “Parks and Recreation,” “Will & Grace,” “30 Rock,” “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” and “The Good Place.” “If there’s anything that ties it all together, I do think that all our comedies share an underlying positivity. Our shows tend not to be caustic.”
An example of that is the new Ted Danson series “A Man on the Inside,” from Michael Schur. The comedy about the friendships inside a retirement home recently rocketed to the top of Netflix’s viewership top 10. Universal is also finding early success this season with the new NBC half-hours “St. Denis Medical” (from some of the “Superstore” producers) and “Happy’s Place” (led by Reba McEntire). Up next: Peacock’s Stephanie Hsu-starrer “Laid,” adapted by Nahnatchka Khan and Sally Bradford McKenna from an Australian format, launches Dec. 19.
“Laid” is a comedy with an unusual conceit: All of Hsu’s lovers are mysteriously dying, one by one. “The fact that Universal wanted to do a show like this and not shy away from the tonal blend and the dark comedy of it all, I was really happy to have that experience with them,” Khan says.
Heading into 2025, Universal is behind the Netflix take on “The Four Seasons,” starring the dream team of Tina Fey and Steve Carell, as well as a new comedy set in the world of “The Office,” from Greg Daniels and Michael Korman. And Variety can exclusively report that Universal is developing “Local Heroes,” about a group of comic book store regulars who band together to solve crimes in their hometown. The show is based on director Kevin Smith’s actual comic book store — and he’s a co-EP and writer, along with “30 Rock” alums Josh Siegal and Dylan Morgan. The project, being developed for NBC, also comes from Hazy Mills’ Sean Hayes and Todd Milliner, as well as Jordan Cerf.
“We pride ourselves on facilitating collaborations,” Donnelly says. “Sean Hayes’ company has been here for a long time. Josh and Dylan are overall deal writers who have worked in Mike Schur’s and Tina Fey’s camps. And Kevin Smith is a hero of mine and has his finger on the pulse of the genre world. This murder mystery show in a comic book store really fits into NBC’s single-camera workplace, large-ensemble shows.”
With the stable of talent inside Universal having cut its teeth on “Saturday Night Live,” the NBC late-night shows or the studio’s landmark comedies, Schur compares it to a “repertory company.”
“The economics of comedy have been painful over the last decade, and so the company making them just has to be really committed to it,” he says. “It has to be part of the DNA of the company to say, ‘We are making these; we’re committed to this. This is a part of our history, and it’s a part of our legacy.’ It helps when you’re working at a place that has now going on 50 years of dominating the space in town for comedy. Not every year, certainly not even every decade, but going all the way back to ‘Must See TV,’ there’s just an association — at least for people my age — that this is a good place to try and make comedies.”
Netflix
Is Christmas really the saddest day of the year? There’s a whole history of holiday music that explores what it’s like to be down-and-out during the season. Are you mourning absent family members? Resenting the ex who ghosted you for Xmas? Or just wondering why, in 2024, everybody else is celebrating the holly instead of the melancholy? Take heart: We’ve got the unmerry miserabilists for you.
Sad Christmas music is practically a genre unto itself. One good starting point, if you can find it, is Rhino’s long-out-of-print “Bummed Out Christmas” CD. But we’ve got our own playlist of classics and obscurities to help you turn that fake holiday smile upside down.
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
Judy Garland
Most performers sing the version with the happy lyrics that Frank Sinatra made popular in the ’50s. But the superior version is the more ominous original, as sung in “Meet Me in St. Louis” by Garland. Her attempt to soothe Margaret O’Brien with it instead causes the girl to sob and immediately murder a snowman.
River
Joni Mitchell
Mitchell’s Christmas-set ballad was just another “Blue” album track for decades; now it’s the one everybody covers on their holiday albums as their token downbeat number. While most other sad seasonal songs are about getting dumped for the holidays, Mitchell is guilt-racked because she made a dude cry.
If We Make It Through December
Merle Haggard
In this slab of Christmas neo-realism, the kids’ gifts may not be so great this year, because Daddy “got laid off down at the factory.” But Haggard suggests next year will be better if they move to California. Or maybe not? Substitute “got laid off by a major media company,” and you have an anthem for Hollywood in 2024.
Santa Claus Is Coming Back to Town
Reba McEntire
Some listings render the title as “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.” Happily, this is a pretty unhappy, entirely different tune. The “Santa” here is the narrator’s ex-husband, who wants to come over for Christmas and see the kids. The usually sassy McEntire probably never sounded more ambivalent before or since.
Not This Year
Aly & A.J.
There is nothing acoustic about this rocking tune that closes the sisters’ 2006 holiday collection, “Acoustic Hearts of Winter,” on a note of furious depression. If Taylor Swift had been going through an indie rock phase when she recorded her Christmas record, it would’ve sounded like this.
I’ll Be Home for Christmas
Bing Crosby
Though Crosby is rarely accused of playing a trick on anyone, this is a stellar example of the “gotcha” song — seeming to promise home and hearth, until we get to that “only in my dreams” line and realize the singer is probably stuck on a WWII battlefield. (Or somewhere else irretrievable, if we’re not in the 1940s.)
Christmas Eve Can Kill You
The Everly Brothers
The weather outside is frightful, and the belief in humanity runs just as cold in this soaring but remarkably despondent ballad. A forlorn hitchhiker wards off frostbite on a snowy roadside as cars speed by … even as he admits that if he had a family waiting, he’d pass himself up too.
Same Auld Lang Syne
Dan Fogelberg
When the Waitresses head to the A&P on Christmas Eve in “Christmas Wrapping,” a meet-cute ensues. But when Fogelberg goes out for last-minute groceries, he runs into an ex, and they crack open a six-pack in his car as she details her loveless marriage. Then the snow turns to rain, because of course it does.
Nothing Left to Do (Let’s Make This Christmas Blue)
The Both
Aimee Mann has a few terrific melancholy Christmas tunes. The catchiest might be this collaboration with Ted Leo as the superduo the Both. The duet partners resign themselves to a lonesome night of radio carols and doing without an ex for Xmas — but, in a coda with a twinge of hope, they add, “The door is open.”
All Alone on Christmas
Darlene Love
Backed by the E Street Band on this unofficial sequel to “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home),” Love sings out for all the souls who don’t have a baby to even long for. But it’s always OK to have no one to cuddle up with at Christmas when you’ve got Love’s voice to keep you warm.
RECOMMENDED FURTHER LISTENING
Christmas Will Break Your Heart LCD Soundsystem • On Grafton Street Nanci Griffith • The Christmas Blues Jo Stafford Hating You for Christmas Everclear • Christmas Makes Me Cry Kacey Musgraves • For Christ’s Sake, Pick Up the Phone! Jaymay • Merry Christmas Emily Cracker
Will “Challengers” nab a best picture nomination at this year’s Academy Awards? The question might seem trivial to anyone who’s not a “Challengers” superfan — and, full disclosure, I am one, having chosen it as my No. 1 movie of the year. But I assure you that I’m not merely asking this out of some defensive personal passion for Luca Guadagnino’s supremely tricky and immersive tennis love-triangle movie. I’m asking it because the kind of movie that “Challengers” is makes this a larger question.
Remember the shrewdly crafted, seductively entertaining, unabashedly accessible mid-budget drama for adults? (The thing we used to call … a movie?) It’s become a fading form. But it was once the meat and potatoes, the bread and butter, the hallowed centerpiece of the Oscars. Movies. For adults (and maybe teenagers too). That audiences showed up for in impressive numbers. Are we willing to say that that’s now a ghost of awards seasons past?
There are a host of reasons why “Challengers” deserves a best picture nomination (and other nominations besides). The film is cunningly written, hypnotically structured, brilliantly directed, dazzlingly shot and features some of the finest acting of the year. It’s a film with romance and mystery and excitement and heart. And it’s one that connected decisively, earning $50 million at the domestic box office (a beyond-solid figure for a mid-budget adult drama these days). If the Oscars don’t have room for this movie, then it’s worth asking: What movies do they have room for?
We know the answer. “The Brutalist.” “Anora.” “Emilia Pérez.” “Nickel Boys.” “A Real Pain.” “A Different Man.” “September 5.” By the time the nominations are announced on Jan. 17, we’ll be able to say with metaphysical certitude that some people will have actually seen some of those movies. But not many people.
I’m not saying that the films themselves aren’t worthy. I love “A Real Pain,” and genuinely like a few of the others. But a number of them, I’m sorry, have been overpraised. The way that these films are now anointed as “Oscar movies“ from the moment they premiere at festivals, only to get released three to six months later and find their way to very small audiences (since “Emilia Pérez” is playing in the Bermuda Triangle that is Netflix, we’ll never know how many people aren’t quite watching it), lends the movies a certain chosen-by-the-Star-Chamber quality. It all adds up to this year’s boutique bubble of cinema. And what I’m saying is that this system, now firmly in place, acts almost as a conspiracy to make fewer and fewer people care about the Oscars or feel that essential addictive connection to them.
The films listed above could easily be the best picture slate of the Independent Spirit Awards. Why isn’t “Challengers,” despite its Golden Globe nominations, among them? Because it possesses a quality that’s increasingly anathema to the new art-conscious Oscar-industrial complex.
“Challengers,” in a word, is fun. And that is now close to the Oscar kiss of death.
Ah, you say, but what about “Barbie”? That was fun, and it was nominated. “Wicked” is fun, and it will surely be nominated. So where’s the problem? The problem is that that those lavish mega-blockbusters, one or two of them a year, have become the exception that proves the rule. “Barbie,” like “Oppenheimer,” had an aura of being too big to ignore, and so does “Wicked.” You could say that “Dune: Part Two” will claim the “Lord of the Rings” slot. No objection; all fine.
But what of the once-revered middle? There has to be room at the Oscars for something between large-scale mostly fantasy spectacle and the kind of precious self-serious art parable that fewer than a million people will actually go to see in a movie theater.
Let’s assume that “Challengers” doesn’t receive a best picture nomination. Why does it matter? The film has been successful; a lot of people love it; it has made its mark. But that’s not good enough. One of the key purposes of the Academy Awards is to define and honor what is of value to the film industry. “Challengers” is exactly the kind of movie — a smart crowd-pleaser with soul — that Hollywood should be making more of in order to save its future. The film incarnates the art of movies every bit as much — I would argue more so — than a dourly engrossing, self-consciously allegorical ersatz masterpiece like “The Brutalist.” Yet if a movie like “Challengers” is nudged aside by the Oscars, then that becomes a way of devaluing it. “Oh, a dazzlingly fun movie that was popular? That’s not up to our standards.”
Over the years, the Oscars have been accused of many things, from vulgarity to irrelevance. The last thing the Oscars should leave themselves open to being accused of is snobbery.
Executive Shuffle
Kristina Shepard has joined NBCUniversal as executive VP of streaming and performance sales and partnerships. She comes from Roku, where she served as VP of global ad sales and partnerships.
Ben Kim has been promoted to head of development and acquisitions for Dean Devlin’s Electric Entertainment. Kim has been with Electric for a decade, signing on as VP of production.
Jacqueline Castro has joined Telemundo Studios as VP of production. She most recently served as executive director of unscripted content and production for Sony Pictures Entertainment.
Juliana Janes has joined Walden Media as executive VP of development and production. She had been executive VP overseeing film and TV for Bron Studios.
Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures; Courtesy of Shepard; Courtesy of Kim; Courtesy of Castro; Courtesy of Janes
Rachel Morrison — the first woman to earn an Oscar nomination for cinematography — often picked up a camera and entered the ring to do handheld shots while making “The Fire Inside.” But this wasn’t a typical production for Morrison — she was the director on the inspirational drama about boxer Claressa Shields.
And Morrison isn’t alone. “The Fire Inside” is one of a trio of movies marking the feature directorial debuts of some of the movie business’s most distinguished artisans. Oscar-winning editor William Goldenberg stepped behind the camera for “Unstoppable,” and Academy Award-nominated cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto took the reins on “Pedro Páramo.”
Although the confluence of below-the-line talent calling the shots is notable, there’s a long history of filmmakers who got their start editing, shooting or performing other jobs on set. There’s Robert Wise, who edited “Citizen Kane” before directing classics such as “West Side Story,” and Barry Sonnenfeld, who was a DP for the Coen brothers prior to directing the “Men in Black” movies.
“We’re all storytellers,” Goldenberg says. “We’re trying to tell the best story in the most efficient and most exciting way possible, the most emotional way possible.” Often, the skills these artisans honed on other movies helped prepare them for the leap to directing.
“I know what good performance is. I know how to cover things,” says Goldenberg (who won an Oscar for “Argo” from Ben Affleck, a producer on “Unstoppable”). “It only took about 30 years of editing to get it to be instinctual, but what was new to me was working with actors.
“In a way, directors are trying to get a performance out of me as an editor. They’re trying to encapsulate what they want and how, and it’s up to me to carry that out,” he continues. In turn, he had long conversations with his actors “about the tone and what we were trying to do with the characters.”
Morrison’s and Prieto’s backgrounds also gave them greater confidence. “I have been on set with a camera in my hand for the better part of 20 years, which makes so much second nature to me, so I can literally just focus on my actors,” Morrison says.
All three hit up their past collaborators for tips. “I’ve learned so much from the directors I worked with,” says Prieto, whose credits include Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon.” He adds that one lesson from the venerable director is “sometimes the simplest approach is the best. … Sometimes the performance is a spectacle, is what grabs you. So it’s better not to move the camera in those cases.” Prieto even screened his movie for Scorsese during the editing process to get his input.
For Morrison, it was critical to find the right person to fill her former job. She selected Rina Yang to be her DP, though she was known more for her commercial shoots than for narrative feature work. “I didn’t want a studio sensibility,” Morrison says.
For the cinematography of “Pedro Páramo,” Prieto made the uncommon decision to share the responsibilities with DP Nico Aguilar, who shot second unit on “Killers of the Flower Moon.” “I saw he could match my sensitivity,” Prieto says.
To cut “Unstoppable,” Goldenberg turned to editor Brett M. Reed, who had been his first assistant for more than a decade. “I wanted to hit the ground running with somebody who was going to be completely honest with me,” he says.
Goldenberg is now editing Paul Greengrass’ “The Lost Bus,” but plans to direct again, saying, “They are two wonderful ways to tell stories.”
Prieto is on tap to shoot Scorsese’s next movie, while also developing a project to direct. “I don’t want to stop being a DP,” he says. “I love it too much.”
Morrison, however, has turned her focus to directing (both features and episodic work). “It’s not for the faint of heart,” she says, “but it’s worth it. A story is out in the world because I fought for it.”
Amazon MGM Studios; Netflix; Amazon MGM Studios
It’s hard out there for iconoclasts hoping to be Oscar contenders. Hollywood’s state of flux goes beyond labor disputes and political tensions — it also extends to how the industry evaluates its own output. As Oscar contenders come into focus, will the Academy reward big-budget spectacles or indie studio mavericks?
“This year was shit,” a voting member of the Academy told Variety, describing the overall quality of the film slate. Another voter offered a starkly different take: “An extraordinary year for movies, and there’s more I still need to see.”
Indeed, 2024 has been a time of soul-searching. Last year’s strikes upended production schedules and sparked debates over fair compensation. Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s reelection ignited fresh discussions about cultural identity and artistic resistance. Against this backdrop, many of the year’s finest films wrestled with themes of power, identity and survival — art imitating life in a deeply fractured moment.
Consider Mike Leigh’s “Hard Truths,” an undeniably affecting drama about a British Jamaican woman navigating a torrent of emotional duress. The 81-year-old auteur, known for his improvisational style, and for getting financiers to fund his vision without reading a single word of a script, defied conventional production practices to bring his project to life. “Hard Truths” is nearly universally praised and boasts a 97% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, cementing its status as one of the year’s most lauded dramas.
But it’s not just indie filmmakers who are overcoming the odds. Smaller studios are doing what they can to stay on par with streaming companies.
Even for a studio as cool as A24, known for championing auteur-driven work, the year was an uphill battle, with films like the romantic drama “We Live in Time” struggling to reap box office returns. Where the studio has gained Oscar attention, it’s been with acquired titles like the Colman Domingo-led “Sing Sing,” Brady Corbet’s $6 million historical epic “The Brutalist” and Luca Guadagnino’s period drama “Queer.” Even those acclaimed films weren’t box office winners in a market that often overlooks character-driven narratives.
Take Alessandra Lacorazza Samudio’s “In the Summers”: The Sundance darling won the Grand Jury Prize and showcases a cast of breakout talent, including star René Pérez. Yet it struggled to secure U.S. distribution, sitting in limbo for six months before Music Box Films stepped in. The boutique studio gave the film a limited theatrical release, followed by VOD — a modest rollout for what should have been a slam dunk on the awards circuit.
How can David conquer Goliath in today’s market? For every headline-grabbing flop like the $200 million “Joker: Folie à Deux,” there sits in the shadows a daring project like “Nickel Boys.” The $23 million adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s novel has been embraced by critics. And then there’s Sean Baker’s “Anora,” the $6 million Cannes sensation about a stripper’s entanglement with a Russian oligarch’s son. It won the Palme d’Or and is a frontrunner for Oscar best picture.
Filmmakers like Leigh, Ross and Baker — and many others fighting to tell stories that matter — prove that creativity is not easily silenced. In turbulent times, art continues to thrive.
Exposure
Awkwafina and Kristen Bell
Selena Gomez and Ariana Grande
Amy Adams, Gal Gadot and Mila Kunis
Ava DuVernay, Sarah Paulson and Regina King
Ariana Grande asked to be seated next to Selena Gomez at the annual soirée. The day before, the two sent each other voice messages after earning supporting actress Golden Globe nominations for “Wicked” and “Emilia Pérez,” respectively. “I respect her so much, and I’ve always adored her,” Grande said of her fellow former child star. “I was really happy for her to see us on that list together. It was very special.” Gomez delivered the keynote speech at the event, which was presented by Chanel. “I know firsthand how isolating this industry could feel at times, but moments like this, in rooms like this, and talking with all these amazing women,” she said, gesturing toward Grande, “it reminds me that I am not alone.”
Barry Jenkins and Lulu Wang
Disney’s Bob Iger with Tiffany Boone
Beyoncé and Blue Ivy Carter
Kelvin Harrison Jr., Theo Somolu, Braelyn Rankins and Aaron Pierre
In 2020, “Mufasa” star Aaron Pierre got a text from director Barry Jenkins. “He said, ‘Can you sing?’ and I replied, ‘We’ll see’ — and here we are,” Pierre, who voices the title character, told Variety. The premiere marked a full-circle moment for Jenkins, whose last time at the venue was the night “Moonlight” memorably won the Oscar for best picture. The realization made him emotional while introducing his new film: “I think about my life before I started making movies and all the rooms it invited me into and the life it created for me.”
Aaron Taylor-Johnson with Sam Taylor-Johnson and her daughters Angelica Jopling and Jessie Phoenix Jopling
Ariana DeBose
Kraven may be a Spider-Man villain, but the web slinger doesn’t appear in the Sony-Marvel movie. Ariana DeBose, who plays Calypso in “Kraven,” is hoping for a future battle between the two. “This is meant to be a standalone film and an origin story, but I do think Kraven deserves that epic showdown with Spider-Man,” DeBose told Variety. “There’s literally a whole comic about it. Give the people what they want.”
Harris Dickinson
Nicole Kidman and Halina Reijn
The A24 erotic thriller not only features holiday scenes but is being released on Dec. 25. So does that make the R-rated film a Christmas movie? “Let’s hope so,” Nicole Kidman, who plays a tech company CEO having a kink-filled affair with an intern (Harris Dickinson), told Variety with a laugh. “A24 is very subversive. They seem to go against the grain always, so maybe [Christmas] is the right time.” Dickinson weighed in: “It’s absolutely a Christmas movie. I didn’t know it was going to be, but it turned out to be, so I’m going with it.”
Timothée Chalamet
Scoot McNairy and James Mangold
Shauna Robertson and Edward Norton
Monica Barbaro and Boyd Holbrook
Timothée Chalamet may be earning rave reviews for his guitar playing and singing in the Bob Dylan biopic, but the Oscar nominee insists he’s not itching to release an album of his own. “Never,” he told Variety, laughing. Chalamet credited co-star Edward Norton for pushing him to sing live during filming. “He was always the devil in my ear telling me to do these songs live,” he said. “We had these prerecords, but Edward was always sort of the counterweight to the 99 other voices that were saying not to.” Monica Barbaro, who plays Joan Baez, recalled singing for the first time with Chalamet during rehearsals. “It was also the first time we met,” she told Variety. “I had sung along with his recordings in the studio, but being in real time, in real life, harmonizing and listening to our guitars, it was magical.”
Lee Jung-jae, Hwang Dong-hyuk, Lee Byung-hun and Im Si-wan
Reagan To
Yang Dong-geun and Kang Ae-sim
The Netflix series was only supposed to have one season, but after it became one of the streamer’s biggest successes, show creator and director Hwang Dong-hyuk signed on for two more installments. “I do feel a huge amount of pressure, and that’s the pressure of wanting to do the best,” he told Variety. “That pressure was a lot to digest, to be honest.” Hwang previously revealed he lost several teeth due to the stress of filming Season 1. “I haven’t lost anymore yet, but I think it’s coming because I have a toothache right here,” he said, pointing to the left side of his jaw. “I think I’m going to pull out a couple more.”
Cynthia Erivo, Pattie Gonia and Out’s Tracy E. Gilchrist
Gabrielle Union, Zaya Wade and Dwyane Wade
Chris Perfetti, Sheryl Lee Ralph and Lisa Ann Walter
Marissa Bode
While accepting the Icon of the Year award, Cynthia Erivo paid homage to her and Ariana Grande’s viral “holding space” interview with the magazine’s Tracy E. Gilchrist. “According to queer media, I have been all over your social media,” Erivo said to the crowd, adding, “I don’t want you to grow too tired of me. There’s a [‘Wicked’] part two on the way, and we really need to hold space for that and feel the power in that.” Sheryl Lee Ralph delivered an emotional speech when presented with the Advocate of the Year award. “I am a believer in the power of unity,” the “Abbott Elementary” star said. “The world may try to divide us, but our strength has always been in our ability to stand together, to lift one another and to remind each other that love — at its core — is unstoppable.”
Dana Pleasant/A.M.P.A.S.; Stefanie Keenan/WireImage/Getty images; Roger Kisby/WWD(2); Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images/Disney; Glibert Flores/Variety (2); Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images/Disney; Gilbert Flores/Variety; John Nacion/Variety (2); Jeff Kravitz/Getty Images/Searchlight Pictures; Michael Buckner/Variety; Todd Williamson/January; Images; Jeff Kravitz/Getty Images/Searchlight Pictures; Gilbert Flores/Variety Michael Buckner/Variety (3); Presley Ann/Getty Images/Out.com (4)
Denis Villeneuve and Luca Guadagnino have been linked for years by their shared taste in actors. After Villeneuve, 57, saw Timothée Chalamet in Guadagnino’s 2017 romance “Call Me by Your Name,” he cast him as Paul Atreides, the callow princeling turned desert messiah, in his adaptation of Frank Herbert’s sci-fi novel “Dune.” And before Zendaya shot “Dune: Part Two” she appeared in the 53-year-old Guadagnino’s erotically charged tennis drama “Challengers” as one side of a spiky love triangle with Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist. That film opened last spring, followed this fall by Guadagnino’s adaptation of William S. Burroughs’ feverish period romance “Queer” with Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey — his most complex and ambitious film to date, much as “Dune: Part Two” has been for Villeneuve. The directors, who know each other’s work intimately but have never really met, sit down in Los Angeles to discuss their appreciation for many of the same performers, as well as their different approaches to moviemaking.
Luca Guadagnino: We don’t know each other, but I hope we will become friends in time.
Denis Villeneuve: You’re sweet. I would love to.
Guadagnino: There is something parallel between the two of us. We both are filmmakers who are working in English, but we’re foreign in the language. You are French Canadian, and I’m Italian. We both nurtured projects in our minds since we were kids. You notoriously read “Dune” at the age of 13 and you said, “I’m going to make it.” And I read “Queer” at the age of 17 and I said, “I’m going to make it.”
So when I heard that we were working with the same stars in the leading roles of our movies, I felt like, “Yeah. There is a companionship there.” I came to show “Challengers” to Z in Budapest, and while she was looking at the movie, I was walking in your sets [for “Dune: Part Two”]. It was a Sunday; it was empty. It was a great moment.
Villeneuve: I wish I had been there; I would have loved to walk with you. It would have been an honor for me. But I have to thank you because seeing Timothée’s performance in “Call Me by Your Name” is one of the main driving forces [for me] to think about Paul Atreides. There was something about that intelligence that I saw in his eyes and the maturity in that youth that you captured that I said, “Oh my God, maybe it could be him.”
Guadagnino: Do you agree with me that sometimes the movies we make are also a documentary on the actors?
Villeneuve: It’s true. When I started to work with him on “Dune: Part One,” I did feel very quickly that he was not used to a movie of that size. I mean, he was a young adult; his identity was not solidified. Outside the camera, I felt he needed to be protected and taken care of. When he came back on “Part Two,” he had worked with you again on [“Bones and All”], and I felt how he grew up between both. He was really a leading man. He was more assured; he knew his limits, how to focus. It was very moving for me to have that privilege to see him growing in front of the camera.
Now, about Zendaya. When I saw “Challengers,” I was, in a great way, destabilized and surprised — how she revealed another side of herself.
Guadagnino: Yeah, she pulled a wonderful, almost Preston Sturges kind of sense of humor, like an old Hollywood classic cinema leading lady. Zendaya is not scared at all to play with the unlikability of the character, but then she conquers you completely.
Villeneuve: She’s very playful, but I was really happy and excited to watch her revealing a side that I have not seen. I don’t know if it does that to you when you look at your actors in other movies, that feeling of pride.
Guadagnino: Yeah, I’m very proud, like a dad.
Villeneuve: When I watch your movies, you try to break the form or you try to push forward the language, but “Challengers” and “Queer” are so different. Are you trying to make a different movie every time?
Guadagnino: I do. I try to find a way to speak the different possibilities of the language of cinema that I learned watching great movies.
Villeneuve: “Challengers,” I was floored by the way it was shot. First of all, I absolutely believe that the three of them were pro tennis players. I don’t know how you achieved that. Do you storyboard a lot?
Guadagnino: Usually, I never do storyboards. I don’t do even a shot list. I just go there with the actors and we block. Once we have an idea of what the blocking is, then I understand how to shoot it. But in “Challengers,” because I didn’t know anything about tennis, I had to go through a lot of planning. Eventually, two, three weeks before shooting, we storyboarded all the tennis. I thought storyboarding meant a little bit of airless filmmaking. In fact, it was actually a good tool. If I hadn’t storyboarded, I would’ve died because the geometry of the court was too important not to [depict].
Villeneuve: It took me a while before finding, let’s say, my voice as a filmmaker. It took me a couple of movies. Some filmmakers, probably most of them, find their voice with their first feature. There’s a lot of people that are born with a very strong voice. Not me.
Guadagnino:: Me neither, by the way.
Villeneuve: There were too many voices in my head, too many influences, too many directors. With my fourth feature, “Incendies,” I finally felt that I was able to make shots that belonged to me. It was very still. There was not a lot of camera movement. I remember when I did “Blade Runner 2049,” Ridley Scott saying, “Your camera is really still. Should you do more movement?” Maybe he was right, but there’s something about stillness that really appeals to me deeply. It doesn’t mean that I don’t admire people that work, like you, with incredible camera movements, like in “Challengers.”
Guadagnino: I agree with you. The idea of movement for the sake of it is really insufferable in cinema. Because if everything can be done — you can flip the camera like this in every way — then nothing is real.
Villeneuve: We are both from the same generation. We were raised with cinema before computers. There’s something about the limitations that define the way we perceive movies. When I do visual effects, I use those limitations. I will not put a camera between the flying objects. I will keep a distance, like if it was real. But the young generation who are used to those crazy, absolutely free camera movements that are doing the impossible things that you’re talking about — I wonder if they will have the same references in their mind. You understand what I mean? I wonder if I’m a dinosaur.
Guadagnino: No, we are not. I am a bit grumpy, but I think they should go back to the great movies and learn.
Villeneuve: I love the way you approach the vulnerability of humans. It’s very difficult to represent sexuality on-screen. You feel the realism of it; you feel the tension of it, the vulnerability. How do you approach it with your actors?
Guadagnino: The important thing is to let them feel completely free, not self-conscious. They shouldn’t think about their public image or any of that. To get that intimacy, you have to make sure that they know that you are investing yourself into it completely. I can show them what we should do. Keep it light. Make it fun and ridiculous. But then when you start rolling …
When we were doing “Call Me by Your Name” and Elio [Chalamet] has masturbated on the peach, then he is falling asleep, and then Oliver [Armie Hammer] shows up and it’s a bit salacious. Oliver eats the peach with the come. It seems to be another heightened moment of sex, then both of them confess to each other that they’re really desperate that summer is ending, and Elio starts to cry. We were in an attic in the villa where we were shooting. When we cut, I look into the corner and there was Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, the director of photography, sobbing. He was really desperate because the summer of Elio and Oliver was coming to an end. That is the miracle of cinema.
Villeneuve: In “Queer,” when both men were making love and their hands were going under their skin, I thought it was so sensual and beautiful and nightmarish at the same time. Did you shoot them caressing themselves and then do the visual effects on top of that?
Guadagnino: The first thing was to invite these two incredible choreographers, Sol Léon and Paul Lightfoot, to choreograph that. They worked with Daniel and Drew for a couple of months before, which was a great way of breaking the ice, because they were in underwear rehearsing this thing forever.
Villeneuve: That’s brilliant. So they were used to the smell of each other. They were used to the proximity of the skin.
Guadagnino: Every time they were touching, we had to create the illusion that the hands were going inside [their bodies]. It was almost a year of work. That was a very long process, which I’m sure the same can be said of the incredible sequence of the arena of the Harkonnen [in “Dune: Part Two”], right?
Villeneuve: There was this idea to create another planet where the only manifestation from nature was the light. It’s an industrial planet, Giedi Prime, the Harkonnen [home world], and I came with this idea where the sunlight will kill the colors. If your own sun destroyed colors, politically it’s a very fascist world.
Guadagnino: Was it X-ray film stock?
Villeneuve: We shot with infrared cameras. I said to my cinematographer, Greig Fraser, “I would love to find an alien black and white. I would love to feel that it’s coming from another sun, from another reality. ”
Guadagnino: What is the part of the process that you are most like, “I wish it could be faster”?
Villeneuve: Honestly, writing. When you talk about the fact that “Queer” was written in a month and a half or something like that, I’m floored. I’m envious. It takes time to make the adaptation of both “Dunes.” I’m always struggling with the ambition of it and the limitation of budget and because those movies, people say, “Oh, those are big, huge.” But they are made from a fraction of the budget of a “Star Wars” movie.
Guadagnino: For what the movie is in terms of the story and the emotions, I’m very happy with what we had in our hands to work with, particularly the cast. I love my actors. Do you love your actors?
Villeneuve: I love my actors. There was no rest time between both movies, so when I started “Part Two,” I was already, honestly, tired. The thing that kept me alive through the shoot were the actors. I’m talking on a daily basis, waking up tired in the morning but going on set and being fired up, excited and finding my energy from the performances. I owe them everything.
Guadagnino: What are your ambitions for your filmmaking future?
Villeneuve: I would love to be able to bring something with less dialogue that is more cinematic.
Guadagnino: I feel that I’m very lucky to be able to do what I do. When I wake up and say, “OK, I can do another movie,” it’s like, what a privilege.
Villeneuve: It’s a privilege and it’s a responsibility too. Every time I finish a movie, I ask myself, “Should I go on? Is the flame still there?” I take the liberty to choose cinema after each movie and feeling deep inside me if I still have that fire. The day I don’t feel the fire, I stop.
Guadagnino: I am terrified of being in a place where I’m doing something and I don’t want to do it. So our task for the future will be to really understand when we don’t have the fire anymore.
Jason Hetherington; Michael Buckner; Warner Bros.; A24
Jon M. Chu has photographic evidence. Before he directed “Wicked,” the hit adaptation of the Broadway musical about a pair of witchy BFFs, Chu was an extra on “The Secret World of Alex Mack.” And that Nickelodeon series, part of the TV diet for anyone growing up in the 1990s, marked the directorial debut of Shawn Levy, who would go on to make “Stranger Things,” “Free Guy” and last summer’s “Deadpool & Wolverine.” The two are meeting in New York to discuss their journeys to the top of Hollywood’s A-list, as well as their talent for making unabashedly commercial movies, featuring heroes and heroines with extraordinary abilities, that are also deeply personal. But before they get to that, Chu shares a screen grab of his fleeting moment being directed by Levy.
Levy is stunned, then reflective about those early days. “I remember thinking, ‘It’s happening,’” he says. “‘All my dreams are coming true.’ Then you realize there’s no straight lines in these careers. It’s ebbs and flows that take you to surprising places.”
The two directors are enjoying professional peaks, having made the highest-grossing films of their careers. Yet they’re more interested in discussing the detours and hurdles they’ve faced, and their love for making movies that are empathetic and hopeful at a time when those things are in short supply.
Shawn Levy: Why did you become a director?
Jon M. Chu: I grew up loving movies. I would look at behind-the-scenes footage of “Hook” and see Spielberg there and the kids jumping in the water. I’m like, “I want to play all day like that.”
Levy: Wasn’t Spielberg an early supporter of yours?
Chu: My student film somehow got to Spielberg. We set up a script with Dream-Works. My first pitch was with Steven. It was like “Moulin Rouge!” We brought in a chest with wigs and hats and acted out the whole thing. And they bought it. But I didn’t make my first movie until five years later. I freaked out when I couldn’t get a movie made. For years, I asked, “Do I even deserve to be here?”
Levy: I just saw “Wicked” and loved it. That theme that you articulated of “Do I deserve to be here?” is what Elphaba is struggling with too.
Chu: That character spoke to me. We all want to be Elphaba. You want to see her burst into her power. When you started, how insecure were you?
Levy: I finished shooting my last scene after a decade of “Stranger Things.” I flew back last night, thinking about that show. With “Stranger Things,” it’s about a group of people who question their value, who find each other, and who find superpowers in connection. I grew up in a divorced household with an alcoholic mom, and it was like, “I want to build the life I wish I was living.” I see now a lot of the work I’ve done is aspirational and about attaining this dream.
Chu: Definitely. “Wizard of Oz” means so much to my parents, who were immigrants. There’s the Yellow Brick Road — this was the American dream. I was going to USC at the time I saw “Wicked.” I flew back to San Francisco and went with them. Watching it blew my mind.
I love that we’re talking about our journeys, because I don’t talk to people about the expectations that are placed on you as a director. Part of my self-consciousness was I wanted to be a director, not an Asian director. And I love to make joyful movies that take you to another place and that have love. At film school it was like you’re not artsy if you’re not talking about blood and guts, murder and drugs. Your movies, Spielberg’s movies, were this light in the horizon saying, “You can put this into the universe.”
Levy: “Wicked” and “Deadpool & Wolverine” are both of our biggest movies to date as far as complexity, scale, expectation, budget. How did you navigate the pressure?
Chu: Part of that was protecting the things that I already loved about “Wicked.” I knew if I found those two women ... First of all, if you didn’t find them, you don’t make the movie.
Levy: Did you audition unknowns as well as famous people like Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande?
Chu: We did. I thought that’s the way we were going to go first. I was like, “We don’t need name people,” but the reality is those songs are very hard. It takes a professional. For “Deadpool & Wolverine,” was the pressure enormous?
Levy: People assumed the pressure would be “Oh, it’s my first Marvel movie, and the MCU needs a big hit.” It had been years since “Endgame,” and when we were prepping, “Quantumania” came out. I expected Marvel was going to be intense. It wasn’t. We worked for months to come up with “Deadpool 3.” We did not crack it. Every idea felt either too big and bombastic for “Deadpool” or too small for Marvel. We failed. We scheduled a Zoom to tell Kevin Feige, “Let’s come back to this in a year or two.” On that day, Hugh [Jackman] called and said, “I had an epiphany. I want to be with Deadpool.” He had no idea the movie was going to evaporate. From the minute Hugh called, I knew what it would be. It’s a friendship-redemption-road trip movie like “Midnight Run” or “48 Hrs.”
Chu: What I loved about the movie is it’s saying the most current things.
Levy: We’re shooting a scene, and Ryan [Reynolds] starts: “Can we be done with the multiverse thing? It’s not great.” Then he goes, “It’s just been miss after miss.” I’m at the monitor going, “Oh, shit. I can’t believe it.” But Marvel backed us.
Can I give you a compliment? I have not seen a musical adaptation employ the tools of cinema in a way that felt this additive. Your visual humor was fucking impressive.
Chu: When I did “Crazy Rich Asians,” I got to take all those lessons of comedy and camerawork and put it in this thing that’s personal to me. When that works out, it changes the way I feel about myself and what I have to say.
Levy: With “Wicked” and “Crazy Rich Asians” you took ownership of making movies that inspire delight. You want to take people out of the real world into this dark theater. You want to give them a feeling. A great movie becomes, if you’re lucky, a life memory.
Chu: When it’s released theatrically is it different?
Levy: Yeah. Look, [the Netflix film] “The Adam Project” is one of the best filmmaking experiences I’ve ever had. It’s one of the best movies I’ve made. I’ll keep working in streaming, but theatrical penetrates culture differently. It sticks with people because they’ve made that choice to leave home and get babysitters. They’re there with an intention to connect with that story.
Chu: I felt the same making “Wicked.” This is our opportunity to show why cinema should exist. It was like, “This is Oz.” One of the most iconic cinematic palettes of color, shape, form, and we get to go dance in it.
Levy: I’ve not seen a person of color play Elphaba. I don’t know if that choice was controversial. I’m sure some people embraced it and others were shitty. But it changed the dimensions. The casting choice brought out themes that are innate in the show, but never overtly so.
Chu: That’s Cynthia. When she came in and she sang words I’ve heard a million times — “Something has changed within me, something’s not the same” — all the context changed.
Levy: Were the vocals recorded live on set?
Chu: It’s 99% recorded on set. We had a live pianist every day. The power of singing live was they didn’t have to be on tempo. They could take all the breath in the world, the wind could kick up, they could feel it and then they could go into the next phrase.
Talking about tone, how did you decide when Wolverine or Logan would hear the joke that Deadpool was saying at any point? It’s like the divorce line [referencing Jackman’s recent divorce]. He didn’t hear it. You didn’t see the reaction. It just existed.
Levy: The first day Hugh shot, he spoke to the camera. Ryan was like, “Oh, no, buddy. Only Deadpool breaks the fourth wall.” The rule tends to be if Deadpool is addressing the camera, the other characters don’t notice. There’s a joke where we go, this is Logan. He’s normally shirtless, but he let himself go after the divorce. Deadpool is an equal-opportunity offender, but we cleared that with Hugh before we laid it out in front of the crew and the world.
Chu: I love at the end of “Deadpool” when Logan is asked: “Where are you going to go?” He’s like, “I don’t know, but I’ll figure it out.” That’s me when I make a movie.
Levy: We both are lucky that we get to tell stories that both entertain and provide hope.
Sophy Holland for Universal; Guy Aroch
Pedro Almodóvar and Halina Reijn have a lot in common. They’re linked by Jean Cocteau’s 1930 play “The Human Voice,” which Almodóvar adapted into a short film (starring Tilda Swinton) as his first English-language production, while actor-turned-director Reijn starred in a touring production of the solo show. This year, the Spanish auteur and the Dutch filmmaker worked outside their native languages to make movies about transgressive topics: Almodóvar’s “The Room Next Door” intertwines a narrative about the intimacy of friendship (led by Swinton and Julianne Moore) with the hot-button subject of euthanasia. Reijn’s “Babygirl” stars Nicole Kidman as a high-powered CEO grappling with suppressed sexual desires. And as they made these movies about sex and death, they found themselves moved to tears on set.
“Sometimes I cry — can you believe it? There was one moment when I had to hide myself in the restroom,” Almodóvar tells Reijn, who does believe it, since she welled up on the set of her film too. “I would not show it, of course, but I would be behind the monitor ...” Reijn replies, covering her face.
It’s tough because, as Almodóvar explains, directors are expected to be everything to their actors — “the father, the mother, the lover, the brother and also the enemy.” But they’re also only human. Over the course of their open-ended conversation, Almodóvar and Reijn bond over their shared passion for creating art that is provocative and revealing.
Pedro Almodóvar: After making “The Human Voice,” I was hooked by Tilda and wanted to make something else with her. I wrote the script thinking about her. But the other character, I wanted someone completely different, so I thought of Julianne because I love her acting. She’s quite unique. I was very lucky to work with them because everything was quicker than I thought.
Halina Reijn: What did you expect?
Almodóvar: I’m a very heady director in Spanish. Sometimes I think I talk too much to the actors, and I rehearse a lot. We start rehearsing during the preproduction, but we rehearsed less than when I’m talking in Spanish because [Tilda and Julianne] didn’t need it. In this movie, I made less takes than in my Spanish movies. In my Spanish movies, I can take from 10 to 20 times. And with them, I made from two to four.
Reijn: Do you think the limitation of the language brought you something positive in that sense?
Almodóvar: I think so. There is a type of actress that needs to make one [take] and then 10 times is much better, and [after] 15 times it is amazing, so I do all 15 takes. But with them, the first take was very good. So just to be sure, I make the second one and the third one.
Reijn: Are you afraid of death yourself?
Almodóvar: Absolutely. This is something that I added to Julianne’s character, Ingrid, and this is exactly the way that I feel. I don’t accept [death]. I don’t understand it. After the body is finished, I’m sure that the spirit is somewhere. I don’t think that people end with death. But that is a mystery for me.
Reijn: Because your movie is about death, and about sickness and saying goodbye, I was afraid to watch it. But I was pleasantly surprised that the movie was so warm. I felt somehow more at ease with death after.
Almodóvar: I didn’t want to make a dark movie, or sordid, or gory. The movie represents the vitality of Martha’s [Swinton] character. In this case, death is something that she decided, so she’s the owner of her life, but also the owner of her death. And I think this is a human right that we have.
How did you start writing [“Babygirl”]?
Reijn: Basically, the question is “Is the beast inside us or outside of us?” That is my main theme: Are we beasts or are we civilized?
Almodóvar: Or we are both?
Reijn: We are both — exactly. But I’m often surprised by my own behavior where I think, “I’m smart. I read books,” and then I do something that I know is bad for me. So I had this question around my own rage, my own sexual desire, all the things that I’m embarrassed about. I was like, “Is it possible to love all the parts of myself? Is it possible to love my darkness?” That’s why I wanted to write that movie.
Almodóvar: I found it very interesting that now, in this moment, you make a movie where the protagonist wants to be dominated.
Reijn: She wants to be submissive, and she wants to be dominated by this young man.
Almodóvar: I don’t know what the feminists think about that, but I think that she’s empowered because she’s the one that decides to be in that position.
Reijn: True feminism is that we can be all those things. I was always in the wings watching men play Richard III and Macbeth and all these characters that were corrupt and that had all these desires, and I, as a female, had to do Ophelia — who has five scenes, and starts as a virgin, and then before you know it, commits suicide. So I wanted to create a part for a woman that would be all those things — that would be a wonderful mother and a wife, but also a lover who’s crawling around on her hands and knees.
Almodóvar: Do you think that she was repressed in the marriage?
Reijn: Yes. If Antonio Banderas and Nicole Kidman’s characters would’ve sat down before the movie, and she would’ve been radically honest with her husband, the movie wouldn’t have to take place.
She has this idea that she has to be perfect. That’s why she sits in the ice baths, does Botox, does therapy. She thinks, “As long as I can erase all my imperfections, then I will be loved, then I will be happy.” But she doesn’t truly let her beast come out. Not with her husband, who’s not even asking her to hide the beast in the cupboard. She’s making the beast fall asleep all the time until she can’t anymore, and it wakes up and it comes. It’s a cautionary tale about suppression.
Almodóvar: What about the end, after she explained everything? Is their relationship going to change?
Reijn: Of course, my movie is a fable and a fairy tale. It’s not a documentary, but it’s a hope that they meet each other where they are.
Almodóvar: There was one moment with #MeToo that I thought, as a writer, as a man and as a director, that we’re not allowed to talk about passion, that you are seducing someone. This is an aggression to look at someone with desire.
Reijn: The #MeToo movement has been incredibly important — having been an actress, having experienced a lot of these things that you don’t want to experience. But, at the same time, it’s just incredibly important — whether we make theater, or paintings, or write books, or talk to each other — to keep being open and radically honest about these things that are darker inside us. Because the moment you bring them to the light and you dare to discuss them, it’s healing. But when you suppress them and say, “No, it doesn’t exist,” that is when I become very, very scared and I feel isolated.
I also made my movie as a conversation starter. We have these Q&As after the screenings, and sometimes they go very extreme, especially for women to talk about the orgasm gap.
Almodóvar: You talk about that in the Q&As?
Reijn: We do! It’s wonderful. Women don’t even necessarily want to talk about the movie. They want to talk about what they went through or what they hope for. And this is such a taboo, even [with] other women.
Almodóvar: The movie is quite explicit. One of the keys is that Nicole is completely fearless and ready to do everything. Now, the more explicit movies about sex are directed by women. I think it’s good because in my movies, there is a lot of sexual scenes, but male directors and writers wouldn’t know completely what is female pleasure. So it’s a natural female gaze.
Reijn: True.
Almodóvar: I got the feeling, being two women, that the conversations that you have with Nicole [about] the things you want to do in the lovemaking scenes are different than if Nicole talks about that with a man.
Reijn: You’re absolutely right. Part of her journey in the movie is that she has to liberate herself from the idea of “I only want to be what you want me to be.” She says to her husband, “I want to be the woman you like. I just want to be normal.” That is how we are still programmed. It’s very important that we liberate ourselves. Now we get a little more space as female directors or female storytellers. It is a very interesting time.
Vivien Killilea/Getty Images; © Nico Bustos
Any independent filmmaker will tell you that getting a movie financed, produced and released is akin to summiting a mountain. Rockslides, however, are less common.
Brady Corbet had to brace for one nonetheless, to complete his ambitious and impressively inexpensive “The Brutalist” — a three-hour-and-change epic made for a measly $10 million. The expansive story of a Hungarian architect and his haughty patron required Corbet and team to shoot in the marble quarries of northern Tuscany — where rockslides constantly shift the landscape.
“Mother Nature is pissed,” Corbet exclaims to his friend Sean Baker, the writer-director of this year’s Palme d’Or winner “Anora.” Baker is used to outsmarting forces of nature to deliver his microbudget indies (like “Tangerine,” “The Florida Project” and “Red Rocket”) to the world. For “Anora,” the tale of a hopeful sex worker’s unhinged affair with the son of a Russian oligarch, he found himself “making, borrowing and stealing” whatever he could to get the project across the finish line. This included casting civilians with no prior acting credits in key roles, raiding the diners of Coney Island and shooting guerrilla footage of New Yorkers in their element.
The two indie veterans compare battle scars from the years spent getting passion projects onto the screen during a recent sit-down in Los Angeles.
Sean Baker: Brady, you said “The Brutalist” was harder for you than your previous feature film, “Vox Lux,” but you had a bigger budget.
Brady Corbet: “Vox” was made in a very American, standard way. What’s funny is that even though those two films had roughly the same gross budget, we had a lot more money to spend on “The Brutalist” because it was a much healthier financial structure.
Baker: I eventually have to get out of this country. It’s very expensive to shoot here. It’s really, really difficult.
Corbet: I know.
Baker: The way I was able to shoot in New York this time around was to do it tiny and under the radar. Use all the guerrilla indie techniques. To put all the money on the screen by making, borrowing and stealing. But I don’t know how much longer I can do that. It’s taxing on everybody.
Corbet: We already had a draft of “The Brutalist” by the time I finished “Vox.” I said to my wife, “There’s no way in hell we’re going to shoot this in the U.S.” I saw so much money being spent on the wrong things [on “Vox”]. “Brutalist” is set in Philadelphia in the late 1940s. … I needed a place that could pass for [the neighborhood] Kensington, which has a lot of smokestacks and warehouses. There’s something about Hungary — great texture everywhere. There’s cobblestone, and the paint is peeling off.
Baker: It feels stuck in time.
Corbet: And the crews are fantastic. There are also two film labs, and the appeal of shooting in Budapest for us is that you have two to choose from and it makes it feasible to shoot on celluloid — you’re not shipping your negative across the border.
Baker: Where did you shoot the marble sequence?
Corbet: That was Carrara, where all the white marble comes from. We shot in the quarry where Michelangelo carved the Pietà. It’s an insane place. Mother Nature is, of course, pretty pissed off, so it’s very dangerous. There are constant rockslides. So much of “The Brutalist” is about possessing that which cannot be possessed. A patron [Guy Pearce] is trying to possess an artist [Adrien Brody] by collecting not just his work, but also collecting him. Something about Carrara and its materials should not be possessed, yet we’re using it to line our bathrooms and kitchens. We shot there for two or three days.
Baker: I knew going into “Anora” that it was going to be [a run time of] 2:20. Two weeks out from production, we had to make a presale for everything to work and for us to move forward.
Corbet: An international presale?
Baker: Yes. I had to sign a contract saying I would deliver the film at 2:10. That killed me, because I knew I was lying when I signed the contract. It’s not cool, because I lived with that stress for over a year. I got to the point where it was two hours long, and I knew there’s no way I’m wrapping this film up in 10 minutes. They said, “Oh, just make a good movie, and if it’s good enough, no problem.”
Corbet: By what metric?
Baker: Never, ever again. I would rather not make that film than deal with the stress.
Corbet: I find sometimes, the reactions from a general audience [feel] very corporate. People are talking about a film’s box office receipts versus whether it was a great movie. I find that really strange. When I was growing up, I didn’t know how much something was making at the box office. It was irrelevant. There are many films I’ve loved over the course of my life that were not big hits. They were culturally impactful movies that have stood the test of time.
Baker: It’s quite capitalist. “Hooray! Let’s cheer for the big box office win and shame the bomb.”
Corbet: It’s just like the president-elect talking about how many butts he’s put in seats at the stadium or whatever.
Baker: Exactly. I feel for younger filmmakers coming up. They have a harder battle. I got my foot in the door as it was slamming shut. If I had to navigate the current climate trying to get my film seen? It seems really tough because there’s so much more competition. When filmmakers ask me for advice — I hate giving it; I haven’t really figured out my life — but I say if you’re making good stuff you will eventually get recognized. It may take 20 years, but keep that persistence and faith that you’re making something good enough to be recognized. I was introduced to you as an actor. You were going from being an incredible actor to an incredible director. You’ve worked with Lars von Trier and Michael Haneke and Gregg Araki. Did you know you were going to become a filmmaker when you were on those sets?
Corbet: It’s a long story about how I fell into this. I had a single mother, and I was an only child living in a small town — which happened to be one of those hubs for national casting calls. Prior to Windows 95 and the dawn of the internet, there were 12 to 13 hubs where they would look for someone to play young Ethan Hawke or something. Places like Tallahassee or Dallas or, in my case, a town called Glenwood Springs, Colo. I grew up with all these child actors, like a young woman named Hanna Hall who was the little girl that screams, “Run, Forrest, run!” in “Forrest Gump.” I was happy to come in and say, “Would you like fries with that?” if it was on a project that I really cared about. I didn’t make my first film, “Childhood of a Leader,” until I was 24, and I realized when I was setting it up that the only way to get that movie done was to focus on that one thing. I now know well this is not a job that you can do part time.
Baker: 100%. I can’t creatively juggle.
Corbet: I want to know about the way you cast movies.
Baker: I cast with my wife, Samantha Kwan. It’s not just casting on the street anymore. I have access to agents that I can call directly. I’m always keeping that cap on. Suzanna Son [“Red Rocket”] was found because we were at the ArcLight. We were leaving a movie, and she was across the lobby. There were 50 people there, but she was a bright light. We said, “We have to go and talk to her right now.” And it’s gotten easier with my films because now I can say I’ve made “The Florida Project.”
Corbet: Totally. You’re not like a creeper anymore.
Baker: Yeah.
Corbet: I remember when I was casting “Childhood of a Leader,” I kept walking up to parents saying, “You have a beautiful little boy. He’d be perfect for my movie.” Not the best opener.
Baker: Exactly. I’ve [also] been in situations with supporting cast where they just walked away. We have somebody in “Florida Project” that we shot with for a day, and then she disappeared. She had more scenes. I had to make her character smaller, but she made the trailer of the movie.
Corbet: We could do this forever.
Baker: I love “The Brutalist” so much, and I can’t wait to see it again.
Corbet: Congratulations to you and the entire cast. “Anora” is really something to be proud of, and I mean it.
Dominik Bindl/Getty Images; Victoria Stevens
When Zoë Kravitz first met Matt Reeves about playing Selina Kyle, aka Catwoman, opposite Robert Pattinson in “The Batman,” she was two years into writing what would become her feature directorial debut. Born from Kravitz’s “rage towards men in power,” “Blink Twice” — renamed from the original “Pussy Island,” for obvious reasons — follows Frida (Naomi Ackie) as she falls into the orbit of tech billionaire Slater King (Channing Tatum) and is whisked away to his private island, where the opulent, never-ending party atmosphere belies a far more menacing reality. A few months after the film’s summer release, Reeves sits down with Kravitz, armed with questions for the actor turned filmmaker about her experience behind the camera. Kravitz also gets her once and future director talking about his process — and sharing updates on “The Batman Part II” and the future of the HBO spinoff “The Penguin,” which Reeves executive produced.
Zoë Kravitz: I remember when we first met. I came to your office, and you talked to me about “The Batman.” You had instructed me to not read the script yet, because you wanted to pitch me the world, show me visuals and talk to me about your references.
Matt Reeves: Wait, but we met again, is that right? Because I don’t remember the first meeting. In the second meeting, you came in with all of these amazing ideas — that’s what I remember.
Kravitz: I did. I then read the script, and it was very helpful to know what you were going for beforehand.
Reeves: You were talking about the idea of her collecting strays. I was like, “I do love that idea, but I don’t know how we’ll ever get that line in.” And you go, “Oh, that’s so easy. You just have him look down at the cats and go, ‘Got a lot of cats.’” It is one of my favorite moments in the movie. So it’s not surprising to me that you’ve done such an incredible job with your first film, because the ideas that you were coming in with were just smart. Did you always know that you wanted to direct?
Kravitz: No. I don’t think I even allowed myself to admit that that was something I wanted to do. Especially as a woman, when you love film, you’re told, “Oh, cute, you should be an actress.” No one says, “Little girl, you love movies? You should be a director.” But when I’m on set, I’m always watching and learning.
Reeves: That’s what I remember. We were both in the pursuit of this thing — you were someone who I could say to, “Let’s look at the monitor. Let’s search for the moment.”
Kravitz: You actually rocked my world with that idea. You invited me into the process. You’re an incredibly meticulous filmmaker. I just asked you how it’s going with writing [“Part II”] and you said, “Slow,” and I think that’s a wonderful quality, because you care so much.
Reeves: It’s wonderful, except for the speed of getting something done. The metaphor that I use when I’m talking to my partners is that writing and filmmaking is like being in a dark room. Everything you need is in the room, but there are no lights, and you’re on hands and knees. And when something connects, you go, “Oh, that’s something.”
Kravitz: Yes! And it leads to something else.
Reeves: I did an episode of “Homicide: Life on the Streets.” I was about to do “Felicity,” and I was like, “I better figure out how to do TV.” On day three, I thought, “I don’t think I can have a career if I use this much energy watching.” I put so much energy into “Is this good yet? Is that working?” I realized I can not know the answer, but just know that’s not it yet.
Kravitz: How do you feel about casting? Especially when you’re doing a superhero film where there’s been so many other versions.
Reeves: I had to find a personal way into Batman and then think about how somebody could bring something personal to me. You’re always looking for an internal life that’s going to take what this story is and make us feel like you’re getting a glimpse into what this person’s struggle is. It’s weird: To be totally honest, when I was writing, I was thinking of Rob.
Kravitz: It just popped into your head?
Reeves: Well, I just started thinking about the children of Princess Diana, and the idea of being this orphaned prince. For some reason, I don’t know why, that made a connection to Kurt Cobain for me. And then somewhere in there, someone told me to watch [the 2017 Robert Pattinson movie] “Good Time.” And I was like, “That’s the only person I could imagine as this Batman. I don’t think that I know what it is if it’s not him.” It was weirdly fated, because it turned out that he was obsessed with Batman.
How did you arrive at your cast?
Kravitz: Channing was the first person I thought of for Slater King, and I don’t know where that came from, similar to you. I knew that the character needed to be somebody who we think we trust, especially because you don’t believe Naomi is getting on that plane if it’s someone who is immediately insidious. I wanted to weaponize his charisma. We’ve never seen him do something like that.
And then with Naomi, I knew I needed someone’s face to be so expressive, because so much about that character is about her face saying one thing and her eyes saying another, and that’s a hard thing to do. We had a meeting. I had seen enough of her work where I just knew that she was capable. She understood on a fundamental level what the movie was.
Reeves: I think of the shooting period as a hunting-gathering period, and when you’re done, you rewrite again in the editing. What was editing like for you?
Kravitz: Oh my God, I was in edit for almost two years. I was warned, you watch your assembly and you are just ready to ...
Reeves: You want to kill yourself.
Kravitz: I wanted to put myself in the trash. It was really rough. It did not work for a very long time.
Reeves: What struck you about what didn’t work?
Kravitz: The story felt all over the place. There was a lack of tension. Because I have so many characters, you don’t know who to be connected to and who you are following. I realized the more you try to control a film and make it what you think it was, the worse it will be. It’s like having a child and saying, “You’re going to be straight, a doctor and live in Connecticut.” You have to allow it to show you what it wants to be. Once I let that go and listened to it, it really fell into place. But you have to let your idea die.
I also had this incredible blessing that everyone’s wearing the same thing every day. So I realized this is like documentary footage. I can just rip this apart, and I did.
Reeves: How did you start to rebuild it?
Kravitz: There were many different versions of it. I got very lucky, because we had finished the film — it still wasn’t working, but it was time to stop — and then the strike happened. So I had this break, and I realized that I had completely lost perspective. I took a step back and watched some of my favorite films and kind of let go for a second. I said to my editor, “Don’t tell the studio, but I’m going to restructure the entire movie.”
Reeves: You want to keep doing this, obviously. What do you think is next?
Kravitz: I do. I love it. Thrillers have always been what I was interested in, but then part of me is like, “I should just do a rom-com and see what happens.” And you’re writing [“The Batman Part II”] right now?
Reeves: Yeah, we’re finishing the script. We’re going to be shooting next year.
Kravitz: And more of these shows? Everyone’s freaking out over “The Penguin.”
Reeves: Yeah, we’re talking to [showrunner] Lauren [LeFranc] about doing another season. That was a special experience. I just feel really fortunate. These characters don’t belong to me; they belong to the world. It comes down to whether you can approach them in a way that expresses something personal.
Kravitz: I think that’s why the marriage between you and Batman right now is such an incredible combination. You have this skill at working with heightened ideas. They all feel so human and so grounded. And it’s a very difficult thing to do.
Alexi Lubomirski; Tolga Akmen/AFP/Getty Images
Perhaps no one in the filmmaking ecosphere understands and appreciates the accomplishments of filmmakers better than their peers. And no one articulates the wonders and achievements in more rewarding or greater detail. Here are some of global cinema’s finest directors explaining why they’re in awe of what this year’s top auteurs hath wrought.
All We Imagine as Light
The biggest achievement of Payal Kapadia’s film “All We Imagine as Light” is that it stays with you long after you have left the theater. It’s one of those movies that seeps into your skin, and becomes part of you. Payal is a true artist and has a deft hand with her characters. It’s not like she is taking us through a plot or a story as much as she is exploring this world together with us. There’s a sense of play in the film, and an awe and beauty about the splendor of life. The splendor of people carving out their very own singular existence out of cards they are dealt, or the corners they are put in. All the seemingly heavy things are treated not as obstacles but things of wonder; it’s like the baggage of life is a thing of beauty. And if you don’t realize that, this movie will tell you in the most patient and beautiful way. No one overcomes anything in this movie — it is much too sophisticated for that — and yet it is so full of wonder.
I loved the gentle pacing and the turns in the story, each one well-earned and totally unexpected, and the truth in every scene that is priceless. The movie has a strong sense of place and a grounding, but it is also ethereal. The atmosphere is absolutely intoxicating, both the city and the rural landscapes. And the whole time, Payal is not documenting these places, as much as she is showing us the inner lives of these characters through them. They are not living in the city as much as living through it. Every image takes us deeper into the characters. The wides, especially so. And every choice, even the way text exchanges are shown on screen, or bigger choices like taking the characters into a rural landscape just when we thought this is a story of a city. Lest critics start saying the city is a character, it’s not; the city is a tool, a probe, there is a whole universe inside every one of these characters. It’s hard to describe this movie; calling it poetic would be a cliche. Truly, the work is unflinching and it elevates itself because it relies on not one trick. It’s an exploration. We truly don’t know where she is taking us next, and it’s hard to refuse an invitation from this gifted storyteller. She has formed a compact with us in that opening sequence that carries through the end — I will never lie to you, I will always take you somewhere deeper, there is something extraordinary in these seemingly ordinary lives. And you know it’s true; how could it not be? When I tell you this movie has all the splendor and awe of deep space exploration, believe me. It has a feeling of being up there in outer space, and yet we are on the Earth the whole time in the city or in the village, but always inside these characters.
Ritesh Batra’s films include “The Lunchbox” and “Photograph.”
BIitz
Steve McQueen’s “Blitz” is a revelation. As ever, McQueen’s direction is a bravura display of the epic and intimate, from the thrilling opening as firefighters struggle to control unruly firehoses in a burning, war-torn London to his tender and authentic depiction of family life. It is clear from every frame that McQueen and his collaborators have taken meticulous care re-creating London during the Blitz, from the realism of Adam Stockhausen’s stunning sets and Jacqueline Durran’s exquisite costumes, to the inquisitive cinematography from Yorick Le Saux, finding transcendent beauty amidst the desperate chaos. While borne out of factual research, McQueen deftly brings us an entirely fresh perspective by focusing on lives seldom seen in a film within this genre. In doing so, he finds a searing honesty that is reflected in the graceful performances, notably the love, bond and playfulness between Saoirse Ronan’s Rita, a young single mother, and her bi-racial son George, played so naturally by outstanding newcomer Elliott Heffernan. We see women given center stage, the true backbone of society in Britain during WWII as men went to fight and women held together their families and worked in munitions factories. McQueen also delights in working with music, choreography and movement, from the opulent before and after shots of Café de Paris to the more intimate yet equally vibrant club scene, highlighting both the cosmopolitan London of the time and the disparity between working class and affluent Londoners. In many ways, McQueen defines what it means to be British, and all within a heartfelt epic for everyone.
Andrew Haigh has directed such films as “All of Us Strangers,” Lean on Pete,” “45 Years” and TV series “Looking.”
Conclave
Recently I’d been watching a bunch of artsyfartsy stuff when I saw “Conclave” — yes, projected — and within the first five minutes I thought, oh good, a movie. A real, old-fashioned movie-movie like Grandma used to make. Classy too. We don’t get enough of those anymore, and when we do, I’m excited.
Sure, I’d admired “All Quiet on the Western Front” plenty, even if it didn’t exactly have a whole lot of laughs. But it was also a good movie, and it had made me think, who is this Edward Berger guy? How does he know how to do all this fancy stuff, plus cast so many great actors and direct them so well? I make movies myself occasionally, but I wouldn’t have the slightest idea how to blow people up or the guts to ask the art department to dig all those trenches and make all those big puddles.
Then he makes “Conclave” and takes the same imagination and meticulousness that he put into the big war movie and focuses it like a surgeon on a contained story about the intrigues and schemes behind the scenes when a pope dies. You just can’t believe how riveting it is — funny and suspenseful and so well-cast and well- acted. Berger has the miraculous quality of making something you never forget is a movie, but at the same time, it’s as though you’re actually there.
They’re very different movies, but they share a consistent theme. They’re both about unmasking powerful institutions and revealing the massive egos calling the shots for the masses — egos alternately noble and ignoble, mostly the latter.
What joy that Edward Berger walks among us. I miss the movies we used to have — healthy-budgeted human dramas and comedies with great movie stars and visual scope, movies like we used to get from Pollack, Forman, Minghella and Pakula — you know, good movies.
If this Berger mug plays his cards right, he’s well on his way to standing right beside them.
Director Alexander Payne has made eight feature films including “Election,” “Sideways,” “The Descendants,” “About Schmidt,” “Nebraska” and “The Holdovers,” and has been nominated for seven Academy Awards, including two wins for adapted screenplay.
Emilia Perez
When I introduced Jacques Audiard and his cast at the Hollywood premiere of “Emilia Pérez” back in October at the American French Film Festival, I began my list of superlatives with: “This film could never have been made by AI.” The spontaneous applause that followed attested to the audience’s understanding that this film is a consummate explosion of A Brilliant Director’s original Vision. Audiard utilizes every tool in his cinematic arsenal to illustrate this tale of one human being’s amazing journey of self-discovery. Incorporating elements of film noir and melodrama, expressed operatically through passionate color, music and dance, “Emilia Pérez” defies categorization.
Audiard’s leading lady, Karla Sofía Gascón, creates one of the most indelible heroines I’ve ever seen on screen. And his other two female stars, Zoe Saldaña and Selena Gomez, pulsate with their own riotous ambitions and desires. Their ultimate tribute came last May when the Cannes Festival Jury awarded them all the best actress award.
Although his powerful vision is palpable, Audiard is an ultimate collaborator — challenging every member of his creative team to work at the height of their powers in service to this daring film. What a privilege it must have been to work with a director who inspires such a level of ingenuity and brilliance.
“Emilia Pérez” is a revelation!!!
Taylor Hackford has directed such features as “Ray,” “Dolores Claiborne,” “Against All Odds” and “An Officer and a Gentleman.”
The Fire Inside
I met Rachel Morrison on the set of my film “Dope,” which she DP’ed. She is a fearless artist and a tenacious filmmaker with a discerning eye for honesty in whomever or whatever she shoots, whether as one of the preeminent cinematographers in Hollywood or now in her feature directorial debut.
It’s fitting that Rachel is at the helm of a film about a fighter and barrier breaker because that is exactly who she is. The story of Olympic boxer Claressa Shields is one Rachel has been burning to tell for several years. I watched as she fought to bring her vision for this movie to life through the challenging crosswinds of an evolving business and a global pandemic. My friend got knocked down and resiliently got back up.
Rachel ensures the film confronts hard truths, addressing the socioeconomic challenges of life in Flint and the biases that undermine female athletes. By combating familiar tropes, she crafts a layered narrative that is full of heart, humanity, passion and inspiration.
Her direction is visionary, and you can understand her empathy and collaboration in every frame of this film. She doesn’t just want you to watch; she wants you to feel — and she does that in the most stunning way. This debut is a bold statement on breaking barriers and reimagining the stories we tell.
“The Fire Inside” grabbed me from its opening frame. I knew I was in the hands of a confident and inspired filmmaker and the comfortable embrace of my friend.
Rick Famuyiwa helmed “Dope,” episodes of “The Mandalorian” “Ahsoka” and “They Call Me Magic.”
Gladiator II
In Ridley Scott’s first “Gladiator,” Maximus asks us, “Are you not entertained?” and we’re confronted with the truth of why we’d visit the Colosseum through a movie. Scott knows we’re not there for insights into Roman culture; we’re there to see our own dark desires at a comfortable remove. But he’s far too experienced a director to get caught making parallels with our time. He lets the world of “Gladiator II” speak for itself, once again showing us who we are simply by inviting us to enjoy the crazy inflationary ride. Why are there sharks in the coliseum? Because we demand them, and Scott masterfully gives them to us. As he reveals how the games are used to manipulate public opinion, we can’t help but see shadows of our own public arena projected onto the sand.
Like the best long-awaited sequels, “Gladiator II” must be a remake and sequel in one, and it’s testament to Scott’s brilliance that he manages to balance the individual pathos of the original with the expansionist demands of the sequel’s central theme, bringing a lifetime of experience in controlling tone. Scott raises the game with the staging of his action — his incredible, hyper-observant, multi-camera mise-en-scène (so different to the original) masterfully wrestles the action into clear and jaw-dropping sequence after sequence. The effect is not just to entertain, but to drive us towards awareness of the movie’s themes. Few filmmakers have ever worked so invisibly on multiple levels. In films from “Blade Runner” to “Thelma and Louise” to “Gladiator II,” the visual density of Scott’s art serves as foil for his underlying thematic clarity.
Despite all his success, Scott’s contribution to the evolution of cinematic storytelling has never been properly acknowledged. Visual innovations he and fellow directors from the British adland of the 1970s brought to cinema were often dismissed as superficial, but critics of the time missed the point — the lavish photography and meticulous design brought new depth to the visual language of movies, mise-en-scène that could tell us what the worlds they portrayed might feel like. This has never been as clear as in the masterful opening shot of “Gladiator II,” where Paul Mescal’s hand gently cradles the grain harvested from the original movie’s swaying wheat.
Oscar-winner Christopher Nolan has directed such features as “Oppenheimer,” “Interstellar,” “Inception,” “The Prestige,” “Memento” and the Batman trilogy: “Batman Begins,” “The Dark Knight” and “The Dark Knight Rises.”
I’m till Here
Rio de Janeiro, 1971. Eunice Pavia blissfully floats in the warm waters of the Atlantic Ocean when her peace is disrupted by the rotors of a military helicopter that, like an ominous cloud, flies across the Rio de Janeiro bay.
On the beach, a stray dog invades the court, where her teen daughter, Veroca, plays volleyball. Marcelo, her 11-year-old son, takes the dog and rushes home across the street, where we meet his other siblings. There, he asks his father, Rubens Paiva, if they can adopt the scruffy stray.
And as we are guided through the spaces where the family lives, we are invited to share their intimacy and their dreams with an immediacy that is almost palpable. Through their story, we witness the shattering of harmony when Rubens is taken from his home by armed forces, and we follow Eunice’s determined struggle to bring him back.
Watching a Walter Salles film is to be embraced in generosity, is like experiencing a gravitational pull, both lifting and grounding us at the same time with an invisible yet undeniable force.
With “I’m Still Here,” this effect is even more compelling. Walter, who was close to the Pavia family, not only chronicles a real-life story of terror, resilience and acceptance, but also delivers a personal and collective memory — a cautionary tale that is an eerie mirror of fraught political times past and present. Above all, Walter envelops us in a meditation on the passage of time and our own impermanence, leaving love as the only force that endures.
Oscar-winner Alfonso Cuarón’s latest project is Apple TV+’s “Disclaimer.”
Inside Out
I’ve always believed that there is no greater accomplishment for a film than to impact us with such strength that it forever changes how we experience our lives. The first “Inside Out” taught us the importance of sometimes allowing sadness into our kids’ hearts, as well as our own, in a way that stays with me till this day.
So when I sat down to watch “Inside Out 2,” these thoughts and expectations were surely on my mind. But as I waited for a powerful new life lesson, I quickly surrendered to the mesmerizing story. I was lost in the sound of my kids’ laughter, the result of the pitch-perfect work of director Kelsey Mann, who masterfully takes us through the misadventures of the main character Riley during her first days as a teenager, as well as the witty inner workings of her newfound emotions. Every single story beat is effortless and inevitable.
While witnessing Riley’s inner journey, I was inevitably revisiting my own struggles as a teenager, and how hopelessly lost I was at that time. Soon enough, sadness was asking to come in. And I welcomed her. Maybe because this time I knew tears were going to be followed by a warm embrace. One that comes with learning that all those teen experiences we might think were so unique to our existence, are actually shared by so many of us.
“Inside Out 2” reminded me of the true power of a great film. It’s funny, engaging, moving and Pixar at its best.
Fede Álvarez’s credits include “The Evil Dead,” “Don’t Breathe” and “Alien: Romulus.”
My OId Ass
I was walking out of the theater, through the lobby, when I first saw the poster. My eye caught the line, “What would you ask your older self?” Hmm. Intriguing. Then I saw the title. “My Old Ass.” My hope deflated. I thought, “Here we go again. Another cheesy R-Rated coming of age comedy.” But a few weeks later, I reluctantly went to see the film. And boy, was I wrong. The picture was a total delight, completely original and unexpected, the work of a true visionary filmmaker. Megan Park has created a razor sharp, emotionally complex film that features stunning performances from Maisy Stella, Aubrey Plaza, Percy Hynes White and a cast of brilliant supporting actors. Throughout its 89-minute running time, the movie briskly builds to one of the most heart wrenching climaxes I’ve ever seen. I was moved to tears. Not phony Old Yeller tears, but honest, hard earned tears. “My Old Ass” is an instant classic, this generation’s “It’s A Wonderful Life.” Over the past decade, I’ve witnessed a handful of young filmmakers with this kind of extraordinary promise. Megan, along with directors like Ryan Coogler and Robert Eggers, is a crucial component of our cinematic future. Yet she expertly acknowledges the inspiration of our celluloid past, proudly walking in the footsteps of Billy Wilder, Elaine May and John Hughes.
Chris Columbus is known for “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets,” “Home Alone” and many other films and TV projects.
Nickel Boys
In his wonderful book “In the Blink of an Eye,” Walter Murch states that in cinema, the eyes are the window into the soul, that in granting the audience access to the actors’ unblinking eyes through fewer edits, the soul he speaks of creates an unshakable link between audience and character. What then when the audience inhabits the very eyes of those characters?
In his revolutionary adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s “The Nickel Boys,” RaMell Ross takes up Murch’s thesis and carries it to the stratosphere, actualizing the old saying of walking a mile in another person’s shoes. In the case of Elwood and Turner, the dual leads of RaMell’s remarkable first narrative feature, those shoes don’t travel very far, trapped as they are in a stultifying home for wayward boys. And yet for this director and his bold POV gaze, the journey we accompany these Nickel boys on is monumental.
The images this director conjures consistently astound: an altar cross sparking asphalt on a cold back road, a boy’s image reflected back at himself in his mother’s clothing iron, mesmeric halos of light and … all those eyes. Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor’s deep, yearning and shattering eyes; eyes brightening and dimming, the soul coming and going and, despite it all, coming back again in this beautifully weighted procession of eyes; Elwood and Turner staring at one another and, in a powerful wielding of form, all those boys staring at us.
This is medium-defining work — aesthetically, spiritually — a rich and overwhelming cinema where the camera is always curious and what it finds is always arresting. In a time where there are more ways to make a film than ever (and yet less variation in the look, the feel, the shape of those films than in any other point in the medium’s history) RaMell has given us a new way of seeing. It is a thing to make one both humbled… and filled with gratitude.
Barry Jenkins is an Oscar nominee for “Moonlight,” and his films include “If Beale Street Could Talk,” “The Underground Railroad” and “Mufasa: The Lion King.”
Nosferatu
When I was 8 years old, I read a review of “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” in which the critic suggested he could practically hear Steven Spielberg laughing, just off-camera. Naif that I was, I went to the cinema expecting to actually hear this laughter. I didn’t, of course, but in the years since, when I go to the movies, I listen for it. That implicit authorial glee has become something of a barometer for me, and reader, I heard it loud and clear when I watched Robert Eggers’ “Nosferatu.” Now, make no mistake, the film he’s made is macabre and dreadful, and what smiles we see on screen are, at their happiest, pained and wan. But Robert has been dreaming of this movie for the better part of his life, and while it may seem that what he’s wrought from those dreams is cold and grim, I found that the film runs hot with a very particular strain of delight: the sort that comes from inviting audiences to peer deeper into the shadows; from promising something awful and delivering something far worse; from orchestrating gouts of blood, gore and Jungian subtext; from capturing the perfectly calibrated gleam in Willem Dafoe’s eyes as he declares that Count Orlok must be vanquished before “the crow of the cock”; from actually writing lines like “the crow of the cock” and knowing that Dafoe is going to be the one delivering them! Robert has made a vampire film steeped in woe, but I can only imagine how utterly overjoyed he was to be making it. Who knows if he was actually laughing behind the camera, but it’s pretty hard not to hear him all the same — and this joy, imagined or not, is vicarious.
David Lowery directed “An Almost Christmas Story,” “The Green Knight,” “The Old Man & the Gun” and “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints,” among other projects.
The Piano Lesson
Cinema, at its best, is an inheritance — a transference of memory, of voice, of soul. Malcolm Washington’s “The Piano Lesson” is such a work, built on the weight of what is passed down: sorrows and desires, dreams and pain, a history etched into flesh and blood. The titular piano is not a mere prop; it is a threshold, a link between the living and the dead, a reminder that inheritance is both a gift and a burden.
Washington’s film carries the spirit of August Wilson’s play like a pianist interprets a composer — a fidelity to form, yes, but also enough improvisation, nuance and personal inflection to call it his own. His voice is unmistakably present, even as the weight of Wilson and his own lineage looms large. Danielle Deadwyler delivers a performance so luminous, so textured, that it feels as though she inhabits not just her character but the history the piano itself holds. She embodies the film’s heartbeat, reminding us that cinema, like the piano, must be felt, not simply observed.
To set a story in 1936 is to honor what came before, and Washington does so with care and precision. Yet cinema is also the art of the possible, and this adaptation feels like the beginning of a larger conversation. If inheritance connects us to the past, then what might it look like to break free, to create something unbound by its origins? Malcolm Washington, the latest heir to a dynasty fit for Hollywood royalty, isn’t making grand pronouncements about the future of cinema here — and perhaps that’s why the film resonates. It hums with the quiet assurance of something well-crafted, something lived-in. Like an old song played on a family heirloom, it knows exactly where it comes from — and that knowledge is its charm, its strength and its soul.
Kahlil Joseph is an artist, writer and filmmaker best-known for his large-scale video installations. His work includes “Flying Lotus: Until the Quiet Comes,” “The Reflektor Tapes” and “Lemonade.”
Saturday Night
Being funny in a movie is hard, but PORTRAYING people being funny in a movie might be one of the hardest things there is. Because … as the audience, you know they’re TRYING to be funny — and nothing makes something less funny than that. In “Saturday Night” you KNOW you’re watching a movie about funny people. Not just any funny people — some of the most iconic funny people in history. What Jason Reitman pulls off in “Saturday Night” is nothing short of miraculous — not only did he find a way to portray comedy and the people who perform it, he found a way to revel in it. To have it be stressful, emotional, insightful and, above all, hilarious.
It’s a film that reveres comedy and those who bring it to life — a film that asserts comedy as not only something relevant, it’s something that prevails. The same ideology that brought this film to life is the one that brought “SNL” to life 50 years ago — comedy IS important — it is worth fighting for and worth bending over backwards to achieve — and if you do, it could create something that lasts forever.
There’s a moment in the film when all seems lost — the suits don’t believe in the show, they don’t understand the point of it all, they don’t understand why introducing a new generation of comedic talents is important — the show might not air, or EVER air … But then, Andy Kaufman takes the stage with his small record player, puts the needle on the record cuing the theme to Mighty Mouse. If you’re a comedy fan like myself, you know exactly what’s coming, as you’ve probably seen it countless times studying Kaufman’s every move … And, in the film, as Andy lip syncs along with the song — everyone starts to laugh. Even the suits. Suddenly all the questions of the validity of a comedic showcase go out the window. All the attempts to explain WHY a show like this matters, what a show like this IS… they go out the window too. Because when you see something funny and new and original… none of that matters. It just works. The fact that Jason narratively pulled off a brilliant comedic moment ACTUALLY saving the day while Kaufman is literally singing “HERE I COME TO SAVE THE DAYYYYY!!!” is a cinematic accomplishment that impresses and delights me to no end. Comedy saves the day, and Jason makes us all see how much that matters.
Seth Rogen’s credits include “This Is the End” and “The Interview”
September 5
When I first saw “September 5,” what struck me was its absolute sense of authenticity — in costumes, behavior, ’70s broadcasting equipment, everything. It’s a film made with an attention to veracity which is rarely attempted and even more rarely achieved.
A quarter of a century ago I spent almost two years looking at every available piece of archive footage and photograph of the Munich Olympic massacre when I made my documentary “One Day in September.” So this is material that I know really well. And yet there were moments in Tim Fehlbaum’s film where I couldn’t tell if I was watching archive footage or a meticulous re-enactment.
But let’s go back to that ’70s broadcasting equipment. You don’t have to be an analogue tech geek to get a thrill out of seeing how they made on-screen captions in those days — they filmed white plastic letters clipped to a black board?! — or to watch a cameraman run in to the lab with his recently shot 16mm rushes and watching as it is developed. This is a film which luxuriates in this stuff — and I loved it.
On a second viewing, my admiration for the craft of the film was heightened — particularly its outstandingly moody, sculpted cinematography by Markus Förderer — but I was also more aware of the subtlety of the human drama. Yes, it’s about the national sense of guilt felt by Germans, and the trauma of Jews coming to Germany for the first time since the war — but it is also one of the best films I have seen about the moral ambiguity at the heart of the journalistic profession. When is it OK, the movie asks, to use people’s painful real-life experiences, to create “the news,” which can be such a queasy combination of fact and entertainment?
At a time when most “news” seems to exist way outside of any journalistic regulation, it’s painful to be reminded of a time when journalistic integrity and moral choices in the newsroom were such weighty affairs.
Kevin Macdonald’s latest film is “One to One: John & Yoko,” and he won an Oscar for “One Day in September.”
Transformers One
There’s the old adage, “write what you know,” and then there is the effortlessly cool directing that comes from a filmmaker with an intuitive understanding of the nuances of animation. Josh Cooley’s “Transformers One” delivers a masterclass in animation storytelling, balancing respect for a beloved franchise with bold creative innovation. With a background honed at Pixar, Cooley proves his fluency in animation’s specific demands.
There are limitations in live action that both inhibit and protect the filmmaker. In animation, the limitless potential can lead to chaos, and yet, Cooley directs with expert economy — every action sequence is epically choreographed without ever becoming extraneous.
With all the temptation to fill the frame with swarms of machinery, Cooley instead offers space for the emotional core to shine. He elevates an ensemble of iconic characters, blending breathtaking action with introspective drama. By focusing on the relationship between Optimus Prime and Megatron, Cooley crafts a narrative that humanizes the inhuman. Their ideological clash becomes the beating heart of the story, grounding high-stakes conflict in deeply personal struggles. Cooley avoids simplistic good-versus-evil dichotomies, instead presenting both leaders as flawed beings shaped by circumstance and ideology.
This is what stands out most: his ability to balance the demands of franchise storytelling with his own unique cinematic sensibilities, offering us a new installment to the universe that not only transforms but transcends.
“The Greatest Showman” helmer Michael Gracey’s latest film is “A Better Man.”
UnstoppabIe
From the first scene Billy Goldenberg ever cut for me in 1995’s “Heat,” as the junior editor behind Dov Hoenig and Tom Rolf, I knew that Billy could transform his emotional understanding of what a scene should be into a captivating, internalizing flow that brought you into the beating heart of the scene’s intention. I sensed from the promise of that first scene what his future work might be, and I was right.
Stepping behind the camera in his directorial debut, Billy’s film “Unstoppable” evokes the heart of Anthony Robles (portrayed beautifully by Jharrel Jerome), as a powerful and authentic evocation of a life. At cursory glance, “Unstoppable” appears as an often-told story: the indomitable spirit of an athlete with a disability. What’s strikingly different and original in “Unstoppable” is the authority of so many moments of true life accumulating throughout to create a quiet monumentality. It’s that which generates our unique empathy with the human struggles, desires and Anthony’s search for his place in this world. Through simplicity and honed nuance, the edges of these real lives soar into sharp focus. It’s human experience unfolding captivatingly in front of us. From Jharrel’s amazingly personal and physically demanding performance to the excellent work of Jennifer Lopez as his harried mother, Judy Robles, Bobby Cannavale and power-through-understating presence of Don Cheadle as coach Shawn Charles.
In classical theory, montage is the convergence and collision of pieces into story. Billy Goldenberg’s editorial work in my films, “Heat,” “Ali,” “Miami Vice” and “The Insider” is unique. It’s emotional storytelling as flow we’re subsumed within, whether key parts of “Heat” or the Rumble in the Jungle in “Ali.” Billy is a born filmmaker. He builds in imagination a scene’s emotional gestalt before he cuts. And, now, it’s before he shoots. That’s evident in the quiet majesty of “Unstoppable.” His direction brings lives into contact with us genuinely and movingly. The story of this extraordinary athlete stays with you long after the end of “Unstoppable.” It’s a life you will not forget. It’s real human experience unfolding in front of you.
Oscar-nominee Michael Mann’s credits include “Ferarri,” “Heat,” “The Last of the Mohicans” and many more.
The Wild Robot
I’ve known Chris Sanders since 1994. He was the head of the story department on Disney Animation’s “Mulan” when I joined the team as a rookie storyboard artist. Since then, we’ve grown as collaborators in a shared love of story, memorable characters, quirky humor and earned emotion. There is no creative opinion I value more. Even as we have embarked on solo projects, we continue to share a rare simpatico when it comes to the movies we love and those we aspire to make.
Watching Chris take on “The Wild Robot” and infuse it with his unique sensibilities has been such a gratifying experience. Peter Brown’s emotional novel and Chris’ intuitive grasp of character and world building made for the perfect marriage. Chris and his team brought so much wonder to the screen, with dazzling and inventive style. I knew from the start that Chris would be the perfect director for this production because several of his own stories feature elements and themes akin to those at play in “The Wild Robot” — namely his original story for “Lilo & Stitch,” which in its first incarnation told the story of a marooned creature of unknown origin, lost in a great northern forest among animals that has shunned it for being an outsider. A perfect marriage indeed.
“The Wild Robot” is remarkable in its ability to evoke emotion with the poetry of pantomime, jaw-dropping production design, and beautifully crafted dialogue that never overstays its welcome — but instead makes room for Kris Bowers’ stirring score. It’s nothing short of a masterwork and I continue to learn from Chris’ shining example.
He’s a filmmaker at the height of his immense ability and I’m glad that I am around to witness it.
Dean Deblois directed the “How to Train Your Dragon” trilogy and has the live action “How to Train Your Dragon” on deck.
Young Woman and the sea
What strikes me most about “Young Woman and the Sea,” beyond its incredible true story and its wonderful humor and heart, is just how utterly unlikely a film it is. In today’s cinematic landscape, getting any movie made is something of a miracle — especially by a major studio with a theatrical release. But a period biopic, even with a story as powerful and moving as Trudy Ederle’s, is something of an endangered species.
This is why it’s so heartening to see a passion project like this — one that filmmakers spent nearly a decade trying to bring to life — finally grace the big screen. The film’s director and champion, Joachim Rønning, skillfully navigates the challenges of this genre, beautifully balancing intimate, personal moments with the broader, inspiring context of Ederle’s achievements. Trudy is not presented as a distant historical figure but as a deeply human individual, flawed and determined, someone you root for because you see yourself in her.
Of course, it helps to have a lead actress as wildly talented and committed as Daisy Ridley. In her remarkable turn here, Ederle is brought to life as a fully realized character, one imbued with thoughtfulness, strength, and imperfections. Ridley’s performance, under Rønning’s direction, places you squarely in Ederle’s shoes, making her triumphs and struggles feel personal and immediate.
Rønning’s deft directorial touch enhances the film’s sweeping, sometimes thrilling narrative without overshadowing its emotional core — and all this on a limited budget. The result is a biopic that avoids the traps of overly sentimentalizing or excessive mythologizing. Instead, it’s a film that celebrates not just what Ederle accomplished but who she was. In a world where stories like this are so rarely told, “Young Woman and the Sea” stands as both a tribute to an extraordinary woman and a testament to the enduring power of good old-fashioned storytelling.
J.J. Abrams directed “Lost,” “Super 8,” “Star Trek,” “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” and “Star Wars: the Rise of Skywalker” among others.
Courtesy of Batra; Bryan Bedder/Variety/Getty Images; Michael Buckner/Variety/Getty Images; Michael Buckner/Variety/Getty Images; Rob Latour/Variety; Michael Buckner/Variety (2); Peru Williams/Variety/Getty Images; Gilbert Flores/Variety; Gilbert Flores/Variety; Elisabetta A. Villa/Getty Images; Miikka Skaffari/Getty Images; Amy Sussman/WireImage/Getty Images; Gilbert Flores/Variety; Steve Granitz/FilmMagic/Getty Images; Michael Buckner/Variety (2)
Media and entertainment giants have been in a near constant cycle of mergers and acquisitions since the turn of the century. However, 2024, will be remembered for the deals that didn’t happen.
In July, Paramount Global reached a historic agreement for an $8 billion sale to David Ellison’s Skydance Media after almost a year of fitful negotiations. There’s little doubt that more studio-network conglomerates — think Warner Bros. Discovery and NBCUniversal — would have been involved in serious M&A negotiations (possibly even for Paramount) if the regulatory environment had been more hospitable.
But by the fourth year of the Biden administration, key antitrust regulators at the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission had sent a clear message to the business community: Curb your urge to merge.
“This is a regime that was ideologically motivated to say big business is inherently suspect and that large companies present risks economically, politically and socially,” says Mark Whitener, a senior policy fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Business & Public Policy. He previously worked for the FTC under the George H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations.
The DOJ and FTC have taken tough positions that are a departure from decades of past practice for weighing the potential harm to consumers. Their harder stance on antitrust concerns has led regulators to come out swinging against proposed mergers such as JetBlue’s move to acquire Spirit Airlines or grocery giant Kroger Co.’s attempted takeover of Albertsons. In 2021, the DOJ fired a warning shot to Hollywood when it blocked Paramount’s sale of Simon & Schuster to Penguin Random House. Private equity giant KKR wound up scooping up the storied publisher for $1.6 billion.
As always, the numbers tell the tale. For the first half of 2024, the dollar value of M&A activity across all sectors rose by 5% compared with the first half of 2023, to $1.3 trillion, according to research by PwC. But overall transaction volume fell by 25%, marking the third year of a downtrend.
For Hollywood, the dilemma of the Biden years has been that the hammer on big-dollar dealmaking came down just as the legacy studios really needed a lifeline, putting more pressure on companies that were already struggling in the face of technological disruption, earnings erosion and, in some cases, heavy debt loads. This turmoil has led plenty of industry insiders who identify as liberal Democrats to question the reflexive hostility toward big business (especially Big Media and Big Tech) expressed by far-lefties such as senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.
“While they bow down to progressive doctrine, we’re drowning,” says a senior leader at one of the industry’s largest studios. “It’s amazing that they can’t see the reality.”
As Donald Trump prepares for a return to power next month, there is heightened anticipation for signals from his emerging administration about its regulatory philosophy. Traditionally, Republicans have been more amenable to the needs of business, but their behavior is less predictable at a time when populism is winning votes. What’s more, the dynamics for Big Media and Big Tech are complicated by the fact that Trump has had a contentious relationship with major players in both sectors. There’s no doubt that Trump’s fury at CNN contributed to the DOJ’s ultimately unsuccessful effort to block the marriage between its parent company Time Warner and AT&T.
On Dec. 10, Trump disclosed his plan to appoint Andrew Ferguson to succeed Lina Khan as chair of the FTC. Ferguson, already a member of the commission, has been critical of Khan for what he describes as waging “a regulatory assault on American business.” That suggests that the commission will take a different approach under his leadership.
As the new year approaches, Hollywood’s fortunes are slowly but surely improving. Jon Miller, a veteran investor who is CEO of Integrated Media, says that 2024 was the year that legacy studios such as Disney and Comcast’s NBCUniversal took the hard steps to address the declining fortunes of their linear cable channels. At the same time, streaming platforms are starting to eke out real profits. That means conditions are even riper for discussions of intriguing new combinations.
“You have [cable] that has supported the business for 30 years hitting a real inflection point. And you have your growth area hitting a positive inflection point,” says Miller. “The table has been set for significant M&A in the next 12 to 24 months — and not just all-out sales but also deals to reconfigure the portfolios and assets of entertainment companies.”
Georgetown’s Whitener says there is genuine debate in legal and policy circles that regulatory agencies — which are supposed to be removed from hardcore partisanship — are becoming yet another political battleground. Whitener notes that in the past, the FTC and DOJ would suggest remedies or concessions to a transaction that would allow companies to move forward with a merger. But those kinds of compromises have fallen out of favor.
“Antitrust enforcement moved from four decades of consensus and rational thinking that was bipartisan and predictable,” Whitener says. “When you move to a more ideological-driven populist approach, then you risk all kinds of unexpected outcomes.”
Over the last several years, the entertainment industry has been rocked by a succession of body blows. It came out of a global pandemic only to be hit with dual strikes (WGA and SAG-AFTRA) that caused historically long labor stoppages, which were followed by a work slowdown brought on by a deflation of the streaming bubble, exacerbated by the threat of strikes by below-the-line unions.
Through it all, the honorees on Variety’s 2024 Dealmakers report continued to work on behalf of their clients. On the whole, the deals weren’t as plentiful or as rich, but, necessity being the mother of invention, often more innovative. They approach the coming new year with a mix of optimism and uncertainty, as they navigate the threat and the promise of artificial intelligence — perhaps the most disruptive of technological innovations to date — while cautiously anticipating the incoming administration in Washington, D.C., which is seen as more friendly to corporate mergers and acquisitions, but hostile to Hollywood, in spite of its leader’s past ties to show business.
Tony Khan
CEO
All Elite Wrestling (AEW)
In October, five years to the week after Khan launched professional wrestling promotion AEW as a direct competitor to Vince McMahon’s long-dominant WWE, he closed a multi-year media rights deal with Warner Bros. Discovery, worth a reported $185 million a year, that calls for AEW’s shows and events to be broadcast on TBS and TNT and stream on Max. The company is now valued at more than $2 billion, making it the third-most-valuable combat sports company in the world.
Ain’t bragging if it’s true “Our new arrangement signifies that AEW will make history as the first professional wrestling promotion to simulcast events weekly on top cable channels and a top streaming platform,” says Khan.
Chris Spicer
Marissa Román
Griffith Alissa Miller
Vanessa Roman
Partners
Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld
The Akin team closed more than $3.5 billion in deals in the past year, spanning media, entertainment and sports. Recently, it repped CAT5, an action film label backed by Fifth Season, in its initial project, “Levon’s Trade” (Black Bear Pictures), written by Sylvester Stallone, and advised HarbourView Equity Partners on its investment in Mucho Mas Media, producers of the films “Rosario” and “The Long Game.”
Be open-minded “AI will obviously have an impact on all facets of the media and entertainment industry, but how much and to what extent is still TBD,” says the group in a joint statement. “Our advice for anyone in the industry, be it legal, financial, creative, etc., is to learn how to use the technology to be more efficient and better at your job as opposed to be scared of it. Embrace the change and look for ways to use it to your advantage.”
Lisa Alter
Katie Baron
Partners
Alter Kendrick & Baron
Alter and Baron closed almost $1 billion worth of music publishing and master recording catalog acquisitions and sales in the past year, representing Primary Wave Music Publishing (Neil Sedaka), BMG Rights Management (Peter Frampton), Reservoir Media Management (Louis Prima), Iconic Artists Group (Rod Stewart) and Influence Media Partners (Enrique Iglesias).
Spotlight shining brighter on NIL deals “There are a number of buyers that are — if not getting exclusive rights in that area, because it’s hard to value, particularly if those kinds of rights haven’t been historically exploited — at least getting the opportunity to bring things to the table,” says Alter. “Some sellers are looking for partners to help them make the biopic they’ve always wanted to make or the Broadway jukebox musical they’ve always wanted to do.”
Pat Shah
Global head of content acquisition, strategy & partnerships
Rhonda Adams Medina
Head of business affairs
Kristin Lang
Senior director of content acquisition
Audible
If there was doubt that Audible isn’t just about audiobooks and podcasts anymore, it was put to rest when Shah’s team cut a deal for the company’s first musical, “Dead Outlaw,” which premiered Off-Broadway and won a Drama Desk Award. They also negotiated pacts with MGM Studios to develop TV adaptations of original Audible audio titles and Imagine Entertainment to produce a fictional audio series exploring unsolved murders through the lens of church confessions, as well as traditional audiobook deals, including the acquisitions of multi-language audio rights to Andy Weir’s next novel and Matt Dinniman’s “Dungeon Crawler Carl” series.
Hear the possibilities “Audio is a distinct and differentiated way to expand the canvas of what’s possible storytelling-wise, [and] the creative community is eager to explore how to connect with audiences both new and existing through this format,” says Shah.
Robyn Polashuk
Partner; co-chair, entertainment and media industry group
Adrian Perry
Partner; co-chair, entertainment and media industry group and music industry group
David Lefebvre
Mike Hill
Special counsel
Covington & Burling
Calling Covington & Burling’s Perry, Polashuk, Lefebvre and Hill a dream team could be an understatement, given the multi-billion-dollar impact of the deals they structure. They represented the Walt Disney Co. in the media licensing aspects of its agreement to merge Disney Star India’s $8.5 billion with Reliance’s Viacom 18, and advised Paramount Global on network distribution matters involved on its proposed $8 billion merger with Skydance Media. On the sports side, Hill advised the NBA on an 11-year, $76 billion media rights agreement with the Walt Disney Co. (ABC/ESPN), NBCUniversal and Amazon.
Better dealmaking through science “This year is marked by the acceleration of training, deployment and adoption of AI technologies, which has opened up a new content licensing and monetization market for media and other clients,” says Polashuk.
Brad Miller
Elizabeth Zee
Cheryl Wei
Diana Palacios
Partners
Davis Wright Tremaine
The Davis Wright Tremaine quartet had a busy year, handling everything from talent deals to litigation. Miller advised on above-the-line contracts, tax incentives and production services on Seasons 2 and 3 of Amazon MGM Studios’ “The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power.” Zee handled more than 60 development deals for ITV Studios America’s partnerships with Tomorrow Studios and Bedrock Entertainment. Wei tackled unique production legal issues, including the vetting of “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver’s” offer to give Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas $1 million a year and a new RV in exchange for his resignation from the Supreme Court. Palacios advised on numerous documentaries for studios including Imagine Entertainment and Netflix and is lead defense counsel for the Cinemart in a defamation suit arising from its docuseries “Bug Out.”
Pre-strike greenlights turned to red “Talent hoped they would immediately go into production, but so many months had passed during the strike period that the studios started to take a second look at those projects, and in some cases scrapped them and started over,” says Miller.
Abel Lezcano
Gordon Bobb
Ethan Cohan
Lily Tillers
Partners
Del Shaw Moonves Tanaka Finkelstein Lezcano Bobb & Dang
These Del Shaw Moonves legal eagles span the entertainment spectrum from film, TV and docs to the legit stage. In the past year, Bobb cut deals for talent ranging from director Malcolm D. Lee (Blumhouse/Universal thriller “Help”) to actor David Oyelowo (starring role in National Theatre production of Shakespeare’s “Coriolanus”). A major player in the unscripted space, Cohan grew his sports-related business, cutting deals for Box to Box Films, Vox Media Studios, Pro Shop and the NFL, while repping stars like French chef and chocolatier Amaury Guichon and journalists Soledad O’Brien and Antonia Hylton. Lezcano negotiated Sterlin Harjo’s overall pact with FX, which spawned the pilot “The Sensitive Kind,” starring Ethan Hawke, and producer Gareth Neame’s deal for a third “Downton Abbey” film and his new multi-year deal to continue as chairman of Carnival Television. In addition to regularly handling deals for top entertainment execs, Tillers set Quinta Brunson to write, produce and star in the Universal comedy feature “Par for the Course” (with founding partner Nina Shaw), and Becky Hartman Edwards’ showrunner deal for Netflix’s “One Tree Hill” reboot.
Relaxing talent holding deals “The overall compensation package is not as lucrative as it used to be, nor are they ordering as many episodes as they did traditionally, so they have to be a little bit more lenient,” says Bobb.
Nina Shaw
Founding partner
Del Shaw Moonves Tanaka Finkelstein Lezcano Bobb & Dang
A longstanding leader in the entertainment law community, Shaw had another year of big deals, including pacts for Lupita Nyong’o to join the all-star cast in Christopher Nolan’s next movie, Quinta Brunson to co-write, produce and star in the Universal feature comedy “Par for the Course” (with partner Lily Tillers), Ayo Edebiri to co-star in Luca Guadagnino’s “After the Hunt,” Victoria Mahoney to direct the Amazon MGM rom-com “Clean Air” and Jurnee Smollett to star in the Apple TV+ series “Firebug.”
No profit participation for you! “We always had really tough definitions of payouts, but a lot of people still got paid,” Shaw says. “Now, more and more, we see this concept that people don’t actually deserve to participate in the upside.”
Tom Ara
Partner; global co-chair, media, sport & entertainment
DLA Piper
Ara had a busy year repping Caryn Mandabach Prods. in its sale to Banijay U.K., animation studio Titmouse (“Big Mouth”) in an eight-figure renewal of its first-look pact with Netflix and Korean streaming service Coupang Play in its deal with Major League Baseball for the Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Diego Padres to face off in a pair of preseason games in Seoul in March 2024.
Laying fresh revenue pipelines “While new dealmaking opportunities in music have emerged from the securitization of royalty income streams, financiers are increasingly exploring broader sector opportunities,” he says. “This includes consolidating legacy assets and ensuring steady cash flows in an industry that is constantly evolving.”
Benjamin Mulcahy
Partner; chair of national advertising team
DLA Piper
Mulcahy has been at the center of many of the biggest transactions at the intersection of sports and entertainment. Most notably, he repped Amazon Prime Video in its 11-year, $21 billion global media rights deal with the National Basketball Assn. for an exclusive package of NBA and WNBA games, running through the 2035-2036 season. The deal, which closed in July, marks the league’s first streaming-only media rights agreement.
Package it up “Live sports is rapidly migrating to digital media channels and is getting more expensive to acquire and exploit. So in an effort to build the scale needed to cover those costs, we’re seeing competitors team up to bundle their products and services and go to market together,” says Mulcahy.
Stacy Marcus
Katherine Imp
Michael Isselin
Partners
David Markman
Partner; co-chair, entertainment transactions practice
DLA Piper
This DLA Piper team has been a key player in matters that have widespread impact on the industry, most notably negotiations for SAG-AFTRA’s commercials contract, where Marcus serves as chief negotiator for the Joint Policy Committee representing the advertising industry, assisted by Isselin as legal counsel. Imp’s responsibilities include serving as lead outside counsel for iHeartMedia’s podcast slate with Shondaland and repping Lego Group in the negotiation of content production and distribution arrangements with studios including Disney and Netflix, while Markman handles all aspects of Jeanie Buss and David McLane’s all-female wrestling promotion Women of Wrestling, including the negotiation of its multi-year distribution deal with Paramount/CBS Studios.
See AI from both sides now “AI is an umbrella and there are many really great uses for it that can improve creativity and efficiencies,” says Marcus, whether the users are brands, film and TV producers, creators or performers, as long as they have proper protections.
Robert J. Sherman
Partner; co-chair, entertainment finance practice
Richard Petretti
Claire Hall
Partners
DLA Piper
Sherman and Hall are at the glowing center of the red-hot music catalog marketplace. In March, the duo secured approximately $500 million in financing for client HarbourView Equity Partners, backed by its music royalty catalog, which includes titles by artists including Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo, Fleetwood Mac’s Christine McVie, Wiz Khalifa and Brad Paisley. They also repped leading independent music company Concord in its issuance of $850 million in asset-backed notes, which will be used for additional music acquisitions. Meanwhile, Petretti served as administrative agent on JPMorgan’s amendment of its $675 million term loan and revolving credit facility (expandable to $875 million) for Arnon Milchan’s Regency/Monarchy Entertainment group of companies.
Business is good “We see a maturing of the market for music securitizations and believe that music acquisition platforms sponsored by institutional investors and other sophisticated capital providers will continue to access and grow this subsector of the esoteric ABS [asset-backed securities] market,” says Sherman.
Francisco Arias
General counsel and head of business & legal affairs
Fifth Season
Arias assisted in securing a $225 million strategic investment from Toho, Japan’s largest film studio, which empowered Fifth Season to continue expanding its premium content slate. He’s provided ongoing oversight of business and legal practices for Emmy-nominated Apple TV+ series “Severance” and Max’s “Tokyo Vice,” and on the film side overseen the thriller “She Rides Shotgun,” starring Taron Egerton, and the comedies “Friendship,” starring Tim Robinson, and “Nonnas,” starring Vince Vaughn.
Election impact on dealmaking “We could see an easing of regulation on M&A in the media business, which could lead to more consolidation, while possibly boosting companies that have faced challenges being competitive, which is very good for the industry,” Arias says.
Darrell Miller
Partner; founding chair, entertainment & sports law department
Fox Rothschild
Miller repped husband and wife clients Angela Bassett and Courtney B. Vance in numerous matters, including pacts for her to return for “Mission Impossible — The Final Reckoning” and for him to take over the role of Zeus in Season 2 of the Disney+ series “Percy Jackson and the Olympians,” as well as a first-look deal for the couple’s production company with 20th Television. He also closed deals for Chris “Ludacris” Bridges (2024 Super Bowl Halftime Show performance), Da’Vine Joy Randolph (starring roles in A24 rom-com “Eternity” and Michel Gondry’s Universal musical “Golden”) and comedian/host Taylor Tomlinson (Netflix special “Have It All”).
One door opens and … “I see a paradigm shift breaking up the monopolies, creating more ways to make money and an opportunity for those nimble enough to find a new model and create their niche and build their audience,” Miller says.
Cynthia Katz
Heidy Vaquerano
Partners
Fox Rothschild
Katz and Vaquerano have been working with HarbourView Equity Partners since its founding in 2021, handling all stages of negotiations — from due diligence to post-closing — on more than a billion dollars-worth of deals. This year, they were instrumental in securing $500 million in financing for Harbour-View, backed by its music royalties catalog, which includes titles by artists such as Fleetwood Mac’s Christine McVie, Wiz Khalifa, Brad Paisley and James Fauntleroy. The bicoastal duo (Katz is in New York; Vaquerano in Los Angeles) also recently represented Merch Collective in its $25 million-plus majority interest sale to Sony Music Entertainment.
Thinking globally “There is heightened interest in deals relating to rights originating outside of the United States,” says Katz. “We need to be sure we are helping our clients to appropriately analyze the risk vs. reward tradeoff from exploring unfamiliar jurisdictions.”
Marc Simon
Partner; chair of entertainment & sports law department
Fox Rothschild
Simon is a force in the nonfiction space, closing deals for clients such as Oscar-winning director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy (Hulu’s Diane von Furstenberg doc “Woman in Charge”), Alex Stapleton’s House of Nonfiction Prods. (Netflix docuseries about Sean “Diddy” Combs, produced with 50 Cent), longtime AMC Network exec Josh Sapan (overall deal with IFC Films), the Obamas’ Higher Ground Prods. and Bloomberg Media. .
Streaming for the future The continued championing of new talent is something that Simon feels is vitally important to the marketplace. “I would like to see the emergence of a strong, consolidated and commercially viable SVOD platform for the smart and bold independent voices of our time and those to come,” he says.
J. Eugene (Gene) Salomon Jr.
Managing partner
Donald S. Passman
Ethan Schiffres
Daniel S. Passman
Partners
Gang, Tyre, Ramer, Brown & Passman
The Gang, Tyre quartet has a roster of superstar music, film and television clients ranging from Taylor Swift and Stevie Wonder to Timothée Chalamet, Zac Efron and Heidi Klum. In the past year, they amplified their reputation as headliners in the music arena, cutting deals for Green Day’s “Saviors” album and subsequent stadium tour, P!nk’s $693.8 million-grossing Summer Carnival World Tour and the sale of Randy Newman’s recorded music and publishing rights to Litmus Music. On the film and TV side, they brokered Emma Corrin’s appearance in the Marvel blockbuster “Deadpool & Wolverine” and Ridley Scott’s producer and director deal for the upcoming Bee Gees biopic “You Should Be Dancing.”
More cross-cultural opportunities “You’ve got artists from different parts of the world making an impact,” says Salomon. “It used to be that Anglo-American repertoire dominated what was popular everywhere. That’s becoming less of the case and you’re seeing much more diversity.”
Kevin Masuda
Partner; co-chair, media, entertainment and technology practice group
Benyamin (Ben) Ross
Partner and co-chair, media, entertainment and technology practice group
Steve Tsoneff
Sarah Graham
Partners
Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher
The Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher quartet advised Iconic Artists Group, co-founded by longtime Eagles manager Irving Azoff, in its strategic investment from HPS Investment Partners, giving Iconic access to $1 billion to further build out its portfolio. It also repped RedBird Capital Partners in its investment in Charles Barkley’s Round Mound Media and its acquisition of indie TV production and distribution company All-3Media, and advised on the launch of Gin & Juice by Dre and Snoop Dogg, an alcoholic beverage company founded by Dr. Dre, Snoop, Jimmy Iovine and Main Street Advisors.
Who says deal flow is slow? “Private equity involvement in M&A in the entertainment industry has accelerated, with a particular focus on catalogs, production companies, content libraries and talent-driven businesses like talent agencies, management firms and talent-founded consumer brands,” said the team in a statement.
Matt Galsor
Sally James
Alla Savranskaia
Mark Muir
Partners
Greenberg Glusker Fields Claman & Machtinger
The Greenberg Glusker team worked collaboratively to cut a wealth of headline-grabbing deals, such as Tom Cruise’s strategic partnership with Warner Bros. Discovery and a subsequent pact to make an Alejandro G. Iñárritu film for the studio, both of which were handled by Galsor and Muir. The quartet’s clients also include actors Tom Hanks, Chris Hemsworth, Vin Diesel and Alice Braga, filmmakers Joe and Anthony Russo, James Cameron and David Fincher, authors J.K. Rowling and Jocko Willink, Silent House Prods., costume designer Colleen Atwood, Ubisoft Entertainment, Riot Games, the estates of J.R.R. Tolkien and Ray Bradbury, and Togethxr, (founded by female athletes Alex Morgan, Chloe Kim, Simone Manuel and Sue Bird).
Fair compensation for streaming success “Nobody has the right formula, and I think the formulas that people are discussing are not going to be the ones that are going to be adopted long-term, because they just don’t work,” says Galsor.
Sherrese Clarke Soares
Founder & CEO
HarbourView Equity Partners
Launched in 2021, Soares’ Harbour-View Equity Partners has established itself as one of the hottest investment firms in the entertainment, sports and media markets, with roughly $1.5 billion in assets currently under its management. Recently, Soares invested in two media production companies focused on inclusive storytelling, Charles D. King’s Macro (“Judas and the Black Messiah,” “Mudbound”) and Mucho Mas Media (“The Long Game, “Rosario”).
Growth creates opportunities “I’ve been consistently focused on high-quality IP, while bringing a big focus on ROI and using data as currency in terms of who is watching and how often, which will help to empower all creative voices,” she says.
Matthew Johnson
Partner
Johnson Shapiro Slewett & Kole
Johnson has secured over $1 billion in production commitments for Tyler Perry Studios, including Netflix deals that closed in 2024 — a multi-year, first-look series pact and an agreement to produce multiple faith-based films — adding to a deal he made with the streamer in October 2023, calling for eight films over four years. He also handled Perry’s BET series producing agreement and the launch of two free ad-supported streaming channels featuring all of Perry’s BET output. Johnson’s non-Perry work included a joint-venture agreement between Andy and Barbara Muschietti and Skydance to create horror division Nocturna.
Gaming the deflating production bubble “Platforms are being more discerning in what they are investing in, so we need to work harder to show the value proposition to secure long-term, multi-part deals,” he says.
Seth Traxler
Partner
Kirkland & Ellis
Traxler was at the center of two of the year’s biggest music catalog deals, repping Blackstone in its $1.6 billion purchase of Hipgnosis Songs Fund in April and Universal Music Group in its acquisition of a 25.8% stake in Chord Music Partners for a reported $240 million in February.
Music catalog market comeback “Most every client I’m in contact with about acquisitions feels that as interest rates hopefully continue to come down and economic conditions improve in different countries, opportunities will re-emerge to acquire catalogs,” he says. “There are still plenty of interesting catalogs at all sizes and all levels to attract different kinds of music companies. We need to work harder to show the value proposition to secure long-term, multi-part deals.”
Nancy Bruington
Kendall Johnson
Liliana Paparelli Ranger
Jonathan West
Partners
Latham & Watkins
As partners in Latham & Watkin’s entertainment, sports and media group, Bruington specializes in debt financing transactions and West handles music catalog acquisitions and represents talent in IP joint ventures and brand sponsorship deals, while Johnson and Ranger are transactional generalists. In the past year, they helped Blumhouse acquire Atomic Monster and buy out ITV’s equity interests in Blumhouse Television; advised Skydance Media in its merger with Paramount; negotiated KKR’s sale of Chord Music Partners; and represented Brittney Griner in an exclusive life rights and producing agreement with ESPN and ABC.
Turbulent times stir up opportunities “The big way it’s played out is that private capital has become a lot more nimble in the entertainment [space],” says Ranger. “There are new and more investors, and they’re increasingly open to deploying capital across a variety of investment strategies, rather than traditional equity, traditional debt deals.”
Joshua Grode
CEO
Legendary Entertainment
Grode led Legendary’s buyback of Beijing-based Wanda Group’s remaining equity interest in the studio in October, putting its ownership solely in the hands of its management and private equity investment firm Apollo Global Asset Management. Grode says it gives them the freedom to pursue M&A opportunities “without the augmented regulatory risk that comes from having a foreign owner in our business.” Legendary was able to do it with cash on hand, thanks to back-to-back blockbusters “Dune: Part Two” and “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire,” which grossed a combined $1.2 billion worldwide.
AI can localize social media posts “It’s proving to be very efficient in getting adjustments out the door quickly and at a good price point,” he says.
James Feldman
Managing partner
Stephen Clark
Melissa Rogal
Jonathan Shikora
Partners
Lichter, Grossman, Nichols, Feldman, Rogal, Shikora & Clark
Feldman cut feature deals for, among others, brothers Benny Safdie (write/direct “The Smashing Machine”) and Josh Safdie (co-write/direct “Marty Supreme”). Feldman and Rogal set Viola Davis for the HBO series “Waller,” while Rogal and Shikora negotiated a multi-script development deal at Amazon for “Poker Face” showrunners Lilla and Nora Zuckerman. Clark serviced clients including Rian Johnson and Ram Bergman (Will Ferrell golf comedy series for Netflix) and “Shōgun” creators Justin Marks and Rachel Kondo.
Why streamers are now providing viewer data According to Feldman, it’s not just about WGA and SAG-AFTRA contract demands. “It’s also largely driven by the fact that all the streamers are trying to sell ads now, and these advertisers have a lot more leverage than the writers did to demand the equivalent of ratings,” he says.
Christopher Chatham
Partner
Manatt, Phelps & Phillips
Chatham repped Dr. Phil (McGraw) in the April launch of his television network Merit Street Media, which is available to more than 80 million homes via partnerships with a mix of broadcast, cable, satellite and FAST channel platforms. Other clients include Logan Paul, Gabriel Macht, Demi Moore and Gabrielle Reece.
Products placed just-so “Now we’re negotiating deals where content, commerce and community blur together,” he says. “Our clients are building robust first-party data operations through their content, then leveraging that to launch everything from spirits, sports drinks, condiments and lifestyle brands. The content is essentially a marketing catalyst for their broader business empire.”
John Meller
Partner
Manatt, Phelps & Phillips
Meller led the Manatt team that advised Chord Music Partners on its sale, in which KKR’s majority stake was bought by a consortium consisting of Universal Music Group and Dundee Partners for $240 million, resulting in a valuation of $1.85 billion after the deal closed in February.
Building Out Business “The music industry continues to trend toward artists and songwriters owning and exploiting their own copyrights and relying less on companies and gatekeepers,” he says. “Artists can set their own destiny. We help songwriter clients self-administer and get the most value from their works. Building brands outside of the traditional entertainment industry is also a critical element to an artist’s long-term financial success.”
Eric Custer
Partner
Manatt, Phelps & Phillips
Over the past year, Custer handled 23 multi-million-dollar music catalog deals, 21 of which were on the buyer side. Among those were 13 for Reservoir Media Management (including publishing assets of Tupac Shakur producer Big D Evans) and six for Seeker Music (including royalties for B.o.B.). On the seller side, he closed major deals for Pat Benatar and Jay Gruska. He also serves as general counsel for artists including Neil Young and the Pixies.
These are the good ol’ days It’s been a rocky road for the music industry since Custer launched his career in 1997, but he’s happy where it is today. “Now with the ascendency of streaming, touring and music asset sales transactions, there is never a dull day,” he says.
Beau Stapleton
Partner
Manatt, Phelps & Phillips
Stapleton advised Pophouse Entertainment on its $300 million acquisition of the catalog, brand name and IP of rock band Kiss and its purchase of a majority share of Cyndi Lauper’s publishing and recording revenue. He also serves as counsel for Jack White’s Third Man Records, recording artists Em Beihold and La Lom, and Emmy-winning director-producer Jeff Zimbalist (“Skywalkers: A Love Story”).
Wolf at the door, thy name is AI “Performers and songwriters have been fighting for well over a decade to get their fair share of streaming revenues,” he says. “Now, with AI technologies boosting the occurrence of streaming fraud and flooding DSPs with authorless music, artists are facing a new threat to their hard-won share of the streaming ecosystem.”
Navid Mahmoodzadegan
Co-founder & co-president
Carlos Jimenez
Global head of media, sports & entertainment
Moelis & Co.
Mahmoodzadegan and Jimenez were at the center of Hollywood’s biggest deal of the year, advising Skydance Media on its $8 billion merger with Paramount, which closed in July. “There are lot of transactions that are roller coaster rides,” says Jimenez. “This one was probably the steepest.”
Prospects for the “New Paramount” “It’s a business that, in totality, obviously has some of its challenges ahead of it,” says Jimenez. “But I’m very bullish about [Skydance’s] David Ellison and the RedBird [Capital Partners] team that they’ve assembled. If anybody’s going to turn the Titanic, I think they will.”
Eric Greenspan
Steven Arnst
Partners
Myman Greenspan Fox Rosenberg Mobasser Younger & Light
Before Dead & Company grossed more than $130 million with their 30-day residency at the Sphere in Las Vegas this past summer, Greenspan and Arnst negotiated all-encompassing agreements involving the innovative venue, including ones that secured various rights and clearances for merch and visual IP incorporated into the concert. Greenspan also repped Red Hot Chili Peppers singer Anthony Kiedis in Universal’s option of the movie rights to his autobiography “Scar Tissue” and chef and TV personality Giada De Laurentiis in her spokesperson pact with Oceania Vista cruise ships.
Old school still rules “There was a moment a few years ago that everybody was chasing TikTok artists and it was almost like TikTok replaced the A&R department,” says Greenspan. If you want to build a long and sustained career, “get out on the road, play your songs, deal with people individually, let them know who you are.”
Mark Marshall
Chairman, global advertising & partnerships
NBCUniversal
Marshall oversaw the team that secured a record $1.25 billion in advertising revenue for NBC’s Summer 2024 Olympics and Paralympics coverage. Seventy percent of the advertisers were Olympics first-timers, contributing $500 million to the final tally, thanks in part to Marshall’s efforts the help smaller marketers break into the once-exclusive television arena via programmatic ad buys.
Trend spotter “In measuring the impact of advertising, we are evolving from proxies to a certified measurement ecosystem proving the true impact of a client’s media objectives,” he says. “As the feedback loop has strengthened, it is indisputable that the most impactful advertising campaigns are in premium video that is running across linear and streaming.”
Amy Siegel
Partner; co-chair of the entertainment, sports and media group
Matthew Syrkin
Partner; co-chair of the media tech group
Lindsay Conner
Silvia Vannini
Partners
O’Melveny & Meyers
In response to lingering challenges from 2023’s strikes, this O’Melveny & Meyers quartet got creative to help clients adapt and thrive. With Siegel in the lead, the team repped Fifth Season in the sale of a 25% stake to Japanese studio Toho for $225 million and advised High-Point Media Advisors in connection with Shamrock Content Strategy’s acquisition of a media portfolio of more than 550 feature films, 2,000 hours of TV programming and 450 songs. With Cooper running point, they handled several transactions for ITV, including the sell-back of the 45% stake in Blumhouse Television it bought from Blumhouse in 2017 and its co-production agreement with Amazon MGM Studios for the television series “The Better Sister.”
AI drawing industry deeper into uncharted territory “It’s changing how content is created and how Hollywood does business, creating both opportunities and potential liabilities for our clients,” says Siegel “We are closely following the legal landscape around AI as it continues to evolve.”
Josh Love
Partner, entertainment & media group
Reed Smith
Love’s focus on the intersection of music, digital media and emerging technologies makes him a trusted representative for emerging and established musical artists, songwriters, music companies and institutional investors. Whether acting as outside counsel to investment collective PleasrDAO, representing South Korea’s YG Entertainment, nu metal band Korn and jazz legend Thelonious Monk’s estate in transactional music matters or serving as Concord Music Group’s lead music attorney on its $468.8 million acquisition of Round Hill Music Fund, Love knows his success depends on his clients’ success.
Doing good works “We’ve worked on well over $1 billion in music catalog transactions this year, but helping Kesha to establish Kesha Records and seeing her thrive as a fully independent artist is my proudest moment,” says Love.
Steve Sessa
Partner; co-chair, entertainment & media industry group
Reed Smith
Sessa spent a large part of the past year handling major music acquisition deals for clients including Concord, Sony, Lyric, Kobalt, Hipgnosis, Litmus, Shamrock, Seeker, Pophouse and Flexpoint. Other highlights include advising the Smashing Pumpkins on a stadium tour with Green Day and Bon Jovi on various issues (including his Hulu docuseries “Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story”) and assisting Kesha in launching her new record label.
Another record year for music catalog sales predicted “Simply stated, music rights are a bankable asset class for the financial industry,” he says. “The model works so you will continue to see more buyers enter the space.”
Leif Cervantes de Reinstein
Shaun Clark
Aerin Snow
Partners
Joseph Ireland
Associate
Sheppard, Mullin, Richter and Hampton
Cervantes de Reinstein and Snow closed high-profile deals for clients including Lionsgate ($375 million acquisition of indie content platform eOne from Hasbro), while serving as outside corporate counsel handling equity financing transactions and joint ventures for 101 Studios (home to Taylor Sheridan’s “Landman,” “Tulsa King” and the “Yellowstone” franchise), including a strategic deal with Paramount Global for multiple series from A-list executive producers including Antoine Fuqua and George Clooney. Clark and Ireland were equally busy, repping Creative Wealth Media Lending in its acquisition of Bron Studios and Sony Pictures in its purchase of Alamo Drafthouse Cinema. Other clients include studios Legendary Pictures and Fremantle and iconic brands such as Peloton, Mazda, QVC and the Hershey Co.
Optimistic about the coming year “[We] expect that we will continue to see strategic collaborations between companies in different industries, [including] tech companies working with content providers, brands collaborating with celebrities, sports leagues collaborating with entertainers, and networks attempting to find new ways to generate revenue,” says Clark. “The M&A marketplace also looks more bullish.”
Robert A. Darwell
Senior partner; head of global media
Ramela Ohanian
Partner
Nicolas Urdinola
Senior associate
Tiago Aquino
Associate
Sheppard, Mullin, Richter and Hampton
The multilingual team led by Darwell has been busy handling the development, production and rights agreements on a slew of international projects for companies including Meta, Paramount, TelevisaUnivi- sion, Gaumont, Globo and, most significantly, Amazon MGM Studios. As the outside counsel for the latter, they recently worked on deals for the Spanish feature “La Virgen Roja,” the Mexican series “Cada Minuto Cuenta,” the Colombian film “Pimpinero,” starring Medellín-born rock star Juanes, and an eight-part limited series adaptation of Chilean-American author Isabel Allende’s novel “House of Spirits,” which is Amazon’s highest-budget Latin American production to date. For Meta, they assisted its in-house legal team in negotiating the talent agreements for a series of AI chatbots embodying public figures such as Tom Brady, Kendall Jenner and Naomi Osaka.
Look for more experiential entertainment “It’s bringing new ways for audiences to connect with one another and, on the business side, there’s ancillary revenue streams for both studios and talent,” says Ohanian.
Matthew C. Thompson
Partner; co-leader, global entertainment, sports and media practice
Sidley Austin
If Dwayne Johnson were Thompson’s only client, he’d still be a very busy man. In the past year, the attorney handled the launch of the massively muscled multi-hyphenate’s Papatui line of personal care products, the merger of the XFL (which Johnson bought out of bankruptcy in 2020 with ex-wife Dany Garcia and other investors) with the USFL to create the United Football League in partnership with ESPN and Fox, and a deal for him to join the board of WWE parent company TKO Group Holdings, re-enter the ring and take full ownership of his nom de wrestling “The Rock.”
Placing more bets on original IP “While that might not be the wisest move from a pure economics standpoint, with a more diverse landscape of bold new content, it will increase competition for people’s eyes and ears,” says Thompson, who also repped “Call Her Daddy” podcast host Alex Cooper in her new $125 million deal with SiriusXM.
Simran A. Singh
Managing Partner
Singh, Singh & Trauben
A onetime in-house lawyer for Universal Music, Singh occasionally moonlights as a producer, most recently with the 2024 Peacock docuseries “Reggaeton: The Sound that Conquered the World,” which he exec produced with client Daddy Yankee. But his day job is cutting deals for the likes of Missy Elliott (“Out of This World” tour), Latin music star Ozuna (publishing catalog sale to Kobalt/KMR Holdings), Flow La Movie (catalog sale to Cinq Music), FloyyMenor (deal with UnitedMasters) and Grupo Firme (new distribution agreement with Virgin and publishing deal with Universal).
The power of music catalog sales “This trend has reshaped how legacy artists, songwriters and producers approach their long-term financial strategies,” he says.
David Eisman
Partner; head of media and entertainment group
Glen Mastroberte
Partner, media and entertainment group
Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom
M&A specialists in the entertainment sector, Eisman and Mastroberte kept busy working on transactions spanning film, television, music, gaming and sports as the industry recovered from last year’s strikes. They’ve helped indie music labels like Drake’s OVO Sound and DJ Khaled’s We the Best Music strike major deals, and represented Parkwood Ventures in Beyoncé’s joint venture with Moët Hennessy and the development, marketing and launch of her SirDavis whisky brand.
Proudest moment in 2024 For Eisman, it was handling UTA’s acquisition of top European soccer agency Roof. “That was the largest deal that UTA has ever done in its history,” he says.
Justin Hamill
Partner; global co-chair, mergers & acquisitions and private equity practice
Rick Offsay
Partner; global co-chair, entertainment, sports & media practice
Hamill and Offsay tackle complex strategic transactions, like advising Skydance Media in a merger with Paramount and an investor group in a $8 billion-plus investment in Paramount Global and the acquisition of National Amusements. Separately, Offsay advised Carlyle in providing an $800 million asset-backed credit facility to Park County (“South Park”), while Hamill advised Endeavor in a $25 billion take-private acquisition of the company by Silver Lake.
Staying ahead of the curve “Comcast’s recent spin out of its cable networks, and Warner Brothers — [which has gone] through a number of transactions, including with Discovery — now needs to figure something else out,” says Offsay. “All of these legacy media companies are trying to figure out the next thing.”
Maria Anguelova
Exec VP, global head of corporate
Sony Pictures Entertainment
Anguelova played a key role in securing Sony Pictures Entertainment’s acquisition of the dine-in theater chain Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, marking the first time a major studio has re-entered the theatrical exhibition business since the 1948 Paramount Consent Decrees were lifted in 2020. The studio plans to harness Alamo’s four million loyalty club members to “eventize” its IP, including content from anime-centric subscription VOD streamer Crunchyroll.
Managing the downturn “Certainly, our offer structures are adapting and becoming more nuanced to be reflective of the new realities of the market, and to align with both seller and buyer interests,” says Anguelova. “The market is showing resilience for premium companies despite current challenges, as evidenced by recent high-profile transactions like the All3Media sale to RedBird.”
Greg Akselrud
Partner; chair of internet, digital media and entertainment practice
Cathleen Green
Senior counsel
Stubbs Alderton & Markiles
Influential Network could’ve used a big white shoe law firm to handle its $500 million acquisition by Publicis Groupe. Ex-Disney exec Ben Sherwood and former Hearst chief content officer Joanna Coles could’ve done the same when they took the editorial reins at the Daily Beast in a deal that gave the duo close to a 50% equity interest in the publication. Instead, they called on mid-size Sherman Oaks-based Stubbs Alderton & Markiles. According to Akselrud, it’s because not only are they well-versed in the issues, they also have the ability to see the blind spots in a deal and “think around the corner.”
Can’t sell a new product on stars power alone “You need to have a celebrity with a relatively decent following to launch the brand, but then you really must have marketing dollars to facilitate the growth,” says Akselrud.
Ole Obermann
Global head of music business development
TikTok
Obermann played a key role in bringing Universal Music Group catalog back to TikTok in May 2024 with a new licensing agreement featuring enhanced AI protections. He’s also provided promotional and creative support for the platform’s partnerships with artists including Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, Sabrina Carpenter and Post Malone
No need to panic about AI “A year and a half ago, the feeling in the music industry was the sky might be falling because AI is coming at us in a fast and furious way, and we don’t know if we have the right guardrails,” he says. “We had ‘Fake Drake’ [in April 2023] and a couple of other cultural moments with AI in music, but it’s gone pretty quiet, if you think about it.”
Justin Connolly
President, platform distribution
The Walt Disney Company
Disney’s roster of networks (including ABC, Disney-branded channels, ESPN, FX and National Geographic) had been dark on DirecTV for nearly two weeks in September before Connolly, serving as chief negotiator, hammered out an agreement. The multi-billion-dollar deal he facilitated covered carriage of the Mouse House’s linear channel portfolio, as well the option for consumers to subscribe to its streaming services (Disney+, Hulu, ESPN+) via select DirecTV packages or on an a la carte basis.
The upside to bad times According to Connolly, the production downturn “has created greater demand for content in the marketplace and more opportunities for us to strategically license our best-in-class, non-branded library content to third parties.”
Adam Glick
Exec VP, business operations, Warner Bros. Television
Matt Matzkin
Exec VP, operations, Warner Bros. Unscripted Television and Warner Bros. Animation
Shannon Muir
Senior VP, legal, Warner Bros. Television Group — Animation Warner Bros. Television Group
Collectively, this Warner Bros. trio handled the dealmaking for just under 90 series for a multitude of platforms. Glick cut straight-to-series deals for an untitled HBO comedy from Bill Lawrence starring Steve Carell and the John Wells’ medical drama “The Pitt.” On the unscripted side, Matzkin launched the Food Network’s “Harry Potter: Wizards of Baking,” Max’s “Fast Friends” and the syndicated “True Crime News” and secured renewals for “Extra” and “The Jennifer Hudson Show.” Muir negotiated three new Cartoon Network series orders for “Foster’s Funtime for Imaginary Friends,” “Adventure Time Side Quests” and an untitled “Regular Show” project.
Dealing digital supplements “We have a number of podcasts that we produce on our own, and we’re also collaborating with other podcasts that are not produced by us, and trying to get our talent on to them,” says Matkzin.
Shaun Gordon
Partner
Weintraub Tobin
Gordon negotiated several headline deals for “Call Her Daddy” host and executive producer Alex Cooper, including a new multi-year $125 million pact with SiriusXM that will bring Cooper’s Unwell Network family of podcasts to the platform beginning in 2025. Other clients include actors Diane Lane and Zosia Mamet, podcasters Guy Raz and Caleb Pressley, novelist/screenwriter Maria Semple, dancer/singer/social media personality Niana Guerrero and actress/writer/comedian Jenny Lorenzo.
Added visuals mean bigger bucks “Video podcasts continue to gain popularity, and video has therefore become a key element, not only in driving audience engagement, but also providing great opportunity for promotion via clips on social media,” he says.
Ariel Emanuel
CEO, TKO
Nick Khan
President, WWE
Mark Shapiro
President & chief operating officer, TKO
Andrew Schleimer
Chief financial officer, TKO
WWE
Last year, Endeavor merged Ultimate Fighting Championship with World Wrestling Entertainment under the TKO Group Holdings banner. In January 2024, TKO’s leadership quadrumvirate closed a $5.2 billion, 10-year deal to make Netflix the exclusive home of WWE’s flagship show “Raw” in the U.S., Canada, U.K., Latin America and other territories beginning in January 2025. As part of the pact, Netflix will be the home for all WWE shows and specials outside the U.S. from that date forward, giving roughly 80% of international territories immediate access to 100% its content, with the rest of the globe filling out their WWE lineups as outstanding deals expire.
Added value with Netflix “While the money is extraordinarily important, the downstream impact and ancillary benefits to being with the distributor and just south of 300 million homes globally was something that got us very excited,” says Schleimer.
Kevin Yorn
Co-founder & managing partner
Yorn Levine Barnes Krintzman Rubenstein Kohner Endlich Goodell & Gellman
Yorn kept his 29-year-old firm at the front of the entertainment law pack in 2024, cutting deals for clients including Scarlett Johansson (starring role in “Jurassic World Rebirth”), Ellen DeGeneres ($20 million pact for Netflix comedy special), Zoe Saldaña (Golden Globe-nominated role in “Emilia Pérez”), Jonah Hill (write, produce and act in Apple TV+ movie “Outcome”) and Matthew McConaughey (Apple TV+ series “Brother From Another Mother”).
Belt and suspenders treatment for AI “We try to make sure that we add extra protection on top of what SAG has achieved with respect to studio deals for film and television,” he says. “We try for a zero-use policy across the board but are always open to see if AI can be beneficial for all concerned.”
Stephen Barnes
Partner
Yorn Levine Barnes Krintzman Rubenstein Kohner Endlich Goodell & Gellman
Barnes has been in the Snoop Dogg business for more than a quarter of a century, and business was very good this year, with the attorney closing deals for the rapper’s high-profile role in NBC’s Summer Olympics coverage and his judge gig on the network’s singing competition show “The Voice.” He did that while simultaneously helping set up his premium spirits company Still G.I.N., launched in partnership with Dr. Dre.
Buckle up for Trump 2.0 “There may be an initial chilling effect on diverse hiring and productions,” he says. “And with such a vast ideological divide within the entertainment industry and beyond, some may be denied employment or access to capital based on their views.”
Jeff Endlich
Partner
Yorn Levine Barnes Krintzman Rubenstein Kohner Endlich Goodell & Gellman
Endlich recently negotiated comedian Bert Kreischer’s deal for two upcoming Netflix stand-up specials, and director/producer pacts for Taika Waititi’s Sony feature adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel “Klara and the Sun,” starring Amy Adams, and Jaume Collet-Serra’s Netflix thriller “Carry On,” starring Taron Egerton. He also set D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai to star in A24’s “Warfare.”
World domination has its benefits “Given the global reach of the major streaming platforms, there’s greater opportunity to work with international clients and make innovative deals with foreign production companies that have partnered with the streamers to produce programs for both a U.S. and worldwide audience,” he says.
John Branca
Partner
Ziffren Brittenham
As the co-executor and manager of Michael Jackson’s estate, Branca engineered a 50% sale of the late superstar’s music publishing and record masters to Sony Music worth a reported $600 million, while retaining control for the estate, which to date has yielded $2 billion from productions including the Tony-winning “MJ: The Musical.”
Disruption on endless rotation “When you trace the effect of technology in the industry, whether it went from piano rolls to wax discs to albums, and 45s to free download to streaming, it keeps changing the industry,” Branca says. “The most important thing that content owners are doing is trying to protect their IP rights from being basically taken for free while somebody else creates a new asset.”
AEW; Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld (4); Alter Kendrick & Baron (2); Winslow Townson/Getty Images; From left: Audible (3); Covington & Burling (4) Davis Wright Tremaine (4); Del Shaw Moonves Tanaka Finkelstein Lezcano Bobb & Dang (5); Daniel Shirey/MLB Photos/Getty Images; DLA Piper (9); Gang, Tyre, Ramer, Brown & Passman (4); Fox Rothschild; Fifth Season; Fox Rothschild (3); Dunn & Crutcher (4); Greenburg Glusker Fields Claman Machtinger (4); Harbourview Equity Partners; Johnson Shapiro Slewett & Kole; Gilbert Flores/Variety; Kirkland & Ellis; FX; Latham & Watkins (4); Legendary Entertainment; Lichter, Grossman, Nichols, Feldman, Rogal, Shikora & Clark (4); Tom Weller/VOIGT/GettyImages; Paramount Pictures and Sega of America; Inc.; Manatt, Phelps & Phillips; Moelis & Co. (2); Manatt, Phelps & Phillips (3); Myman Greenspan Fox Rosenberg Mobasser Younger & Light (2); NBCUnviersal; Paramount; Sheppard, Mullin, Richter and Hampton (4); Reed Smith (2); O’Melveny & Meyers (4); Sheppard, Mullin, Richter and Hampton (4); Antony Jones/Getty Images; Kevin Mazur/WireImage for Parkwood/Getty Images; Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom (2); Singh, Singh & Trauben; Sidley Austin; Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom (2); Stubbs Alderton & Markiles (2); TikTok; The Walt Disney Company; Emma McIntyre/TAS24/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management; Warner Bros. Television Group (3); From left: Weintraub Tobin; TKO WWE (4) Yorn Levine Barnes Krintzman Rubenstein Kohner Endlich Goodell & Gellman (3); Ziffren Brittenham;
IT STARTS IN THE GIFT SHOP.
“Squid Game: The Experience,” an immersive entertainment installation that opened in October in a shuttered shopping mall near Madison Square Garden, brings its participants slowly into the dark, dystopian world of the South Korean drama series that exploded into a massive hit for Netflix in 2021.
Players begin the journey in a room styled as a night market stocked with icons from the series and South Korean pop culture, including a ramen vending machine and a bar setup featuring the “Squid Game”-branded Johnnie Walker whisky tie-in. Participants who have shelled out $29 to $45 for the visit are given a green-gel wrist band; then they have their picture snapped and are assigned a player number, just like in the series. Once their time slot is called, groupings of 24 players move into the next room. And that’s when things get freaky.
“You watch the show, and you can’t help but start to wonder — how would I react if I were put in one of these situations,” says Josh Simon, Netflix’s VP of consumer products and live experiences. “The games in the series and the unscripted show are based on simple, well-known games that people play growing up, so the rules aren’t super complicated. It’s more about the pressure of that environment.”
“Squid Game: The Experience” is but one piece of an intricate puzzle of merchandise, contests, promotions and PR stunts that Netflix has unleashed in recent weeks to prepare viewers for the dawn of “Squid Game” Season 2 on Dec. 26.
The stakes are high. In 2021, the South Korea-produced drama became a global juggernaut for the streamer. But it took three years to get Season 2 in the can. That’s a long gap by any measure, especially at a time when there is no shortage of high-end shows vying for viewers’ attention. So Netflix has hit the gas on unusual and eye-catching promotions that befit the show, which revolves around the desperation of debt-ridden people who take part in a deadly elimination-style competition in hopes of winning the big cash prize. In addition to the one in New York, “Squid Game: The Experience” installations are running in Madrid and Sydney. Seoul will have its own early next year.
After “Squid Game” took off, Netflix predictably asked series creator Hwang Dong-hyuk to craft another season. During the wait for Hwang to produce new scripts, Netflix tried to keep the cephalopod gold flowing with the 2023 competition series “Squid Game: The Challenge,” which didn’t match the buzz generated by the mother ship. On Dec. 17, Netflix launched the multiplayer mobile game “Squid Game: Unleashed.” There’s also the VR adventure “Squid Game: Virtuals” and a raft of consumer products and brand partnerships — everything from a large Mattel doll based on the show’s iconic mechanical girl overlord (named Young-Hee, as we learned in Season 1) in the orange jumper and yellow Peter Pan collar to over-the-top Christmas sweaters emblazoned with “Squid Game” motifs.
The gigantic Young-Hee is among the first things players see when their number is called. If they land at the top of the scoreboard, savvy players might find themselves at a table set for two in the center of a dark room, surrounded by the dozens of competitors who have figuratively died up to that point.
Following challenges including the Red Light, Green Light competition steered by Young-Hee and the Glass Bridge walk, a player could come out on top and have just one round to go before following in the footsteps of series star Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) as the sole survivor of the deadly game.
As with the show, “Squid Game: The Experience” is not for the faint of heart. And no one is more surprised to see what “Squid Game” has wrought than Hwang.
“I had no intention of doing a second season, because the overall process of writing, producing and directing the series was so challenging. I didn’t think to do another one,” says Hwang. The writer-producer famously claims to have lost eight or nine teeth during production on the first season due to stress. Hwang says he only went through with a second season (which turned into Season 3 as well) because the “immense success” of Season 1 “gave me the courage and motivation” to add more.
As of early November, “Squid Game” Season 1 has drawn 330 million viewers and more than 2.8 billion hours viewed since its release on Sept. 17, 2021. Netflix touts the show as its most anticipated title of the year (despite its Dec. 26 debut being just days away from year’s end) and cites a 60% spike in Season 1 viewership following the release of the first Season 2 teaser on Oct. 31. Season 1 nabbed six Emmy Awards, including the best lead drama actor trophy for Lee.
Minyoung Kim, Netflix’s head of content for the Asia Pacific region, recalls that executives initially thought there was “a bug in our system” when the series started gaining traction around the world. The engagement numbers “were just going up and up and up,” she says.
“We had always expected ‘Squid Game’ to be one of the biggest shows in Korea and in Asia. It took about 10 days for it to start exploding elsewhere,” Kim says. “The right adjective that actually describes it is ‘surreal.’ And director Hwang was on the internet all the time; he would capture everything on any kind of dashboard that he sees, to see how many countries it’s going to be No. 1 in. We were all obsessed with a lot of those metrics, until we finally realized, ‘Oh, this is the biggest show in the world.’”
Although Season 1 was the definition of a sleeper hit, Netflix leaders in the U.S. also noticed early on that they had something with “Squid Game.” Simon was shocked in late 2021 when he spotted bootleg “Squid Game” merchandise for sale at a shopping center in Glendale, Calif.
“We had opened a ‘Stranger Things’ retail store [in Glendale], and across from our store, there was one of those mall kiosks that sells plush collectibles. All of a sudden, I saw a row of ‘Squid Game’ characters in track suits made of plush that were unauthorized by us,” Simon says. “The show had just come out, and we hadn’t started creating them yet.”
This time around, Netflix was not going to let anyone else lead the charge on helping “Squid Game” viewers “live out that fandom in real life,” says Simon. With the company’s increased focus on events and in-person activations — notably, it is building permanent entertainment venues in Dallas and King of Prussia, Pa. — one of Simon’s biggest priorities ahead of Season 2 was getting “Squid Game: The Experience” up and running.
Simon and his team tested more than 100 games before landing on the “Squid Game: The Experience” lineup, which varies based on territory. Hwang was looped in on these ideas, as well as the unscripted series, the video game and the numerous product tie-ins Netflix is rolling out, but says he’s more focused on finishing the original show out strong. He is also consulting on ideas for expanding the franchise on-screen.
“There are certain projects that are currently being made where they ask for my opinion a little bit more actively,” Hwang says. “So as far as I know, going forward, there’s going to be even more creative projects that come from the ‘Squid Game’ universe, some of which I will be more involved in.”
Seasons 2 and 3 of “Squid Game” were written and shot back-to-back. That filming schedule will allow for Netflix to release Season 3 next year. Star Lee Jung-jae says he wants the final chapter to debut as soon as possible.
“The ending is something you really cannot expect,” Lee teases. “I am looking forward to what kind of interpretations viewers have.”
Internally, Netflix is already preparing its campaign for the series finale across divisions. The scripts for Season 3 were shared with the team behind video game “Squid Game: Unleashed,” which debuted Dec. 17, early in the development process so they could get a jump on updates to the game both for post-Season 2 launch and for when Season 3 arrives.
Of course, there is no shortage of interest within Netflix around whether Season 2 can come close to the heights of the show’s maiden voyage. Kim says she feels the pressure that is weighing on Hwang, though she promises that Netflix made sure “he did not lose any teeth” during the filming of Seasons 2 and 3. And once he’s done with postproduction work on Season 3, Hwang is ready for a long break from the cutthroat and compelling game that sprang from his imagination. It’s not easy to immerse yourself in a dystopian vision of modern society — which might be a handy warning for those considering a voluntary visit to “Squid Game: The Experience.”
“I’m so exhausted. I’m so tired. In a way, I have to say, I’m so sick of ‘Squid Game,’” Hwang says in a moment of candor. “I’m so sick of my life making something, promoting something. So I’m not thinking about my next project right now. I’m just thinking about going to some remote island and having my own free time without any phone calls from Netflix.”
Hwang is quick to clarify: “Not the ‘Squid Game’ island.”
Netflix (2)
Inspiring or irritating, empowering or exploitative, maternal or manipulative — with many shades of gray in between — female mentorship is a common dynamic in many of 2024’s most affecting stories.
In films as diverse as “All We Imagine as Light,” “Babygirl,” “Emilia Pérez,” “The Girl With the Needle,” “Inside Out 2” “The Last Showgirl,” “My Old Ass” and “The Substance,” women develop relationships with one another that alternately risk harm as much as they mean to be helpful, forge camaraderie out of competition or simply provide a mirror reflecting — frequently uncomfortably — who they once were or may one day become.
Inspired by its writer-director’s curiosity about multi-generational friendship, Payal Kapadia’s “All We Imagine as Light” tells the stories of three nurses — Prabha (Kani Kusruti), Anu (Divya Prabha) and Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam) — navigating the sociopolitical complexities of Mumbai. “When there is a lot of difference in the generations, there is a sort of conflict that, for me, brings about a change in both people,” Kapadia says.
While Parvaty boldly aspires to live on her own (“Being alone as a woman in India is complicated, not like in the West,” Kapadia notes), Prabha pines for the absent husband from her arranged marriage (“she’s dying to have a family”), even as Anu maintains an affair with a man she knows her family wouldn’t approve of. All three give and receive advice and inspiration, much of it simply by witnessing each other’s choices. “[Anu] could make the choice that Prabha couldn’t, and there’s a lot of envy in that, and a hint of admiration,” Kapadia says.
“I thought about it as one chronology of one life — that we are meeting, let’s say, this person when she was like Anu, or then she became like Prabha, or then Parvaty.”
Co-written by Line Langebek and its director, Magnus von Horn, “The Girl With the Needle” loosely filters the real-life story of Danish serial killer Dagmar Overbye (Trine Dyrholm) through the journey of a willful young factory worker, Karoline (Vic Carmen Sonne), who’s determined to live by her own rules in patriarchal post-WWII Copenhagen. Dyrholm and Sonne worked closely to develop the codependency between the two women that allows Dagmar to deceive Karoline even as they grow increasingly close.
“When she meets Karoline for the first time, Dagmar’s trying to help her, but I think that she needs Karoline to share the burden of what she’s doing,” says Dyrholm. “It’s a complex kind of mirroring that’s happening with these two women... in the beginning, Karoline needs Dagmar, but then it becomes the opposite thing — Dagmar needs Karoline.”
Sonne suggests Karoline feels protected, even empowered by Dagmar, even as she’s shocked by the crimes she’s unwittingly led to participate in. “It was both this sort of Faustian shadow of something that Karoline holds within herself,” says Sonne, “and then on the opposite side, [Dagmar] had this sort of autonomy and anarchist way of doing things that Karoline could sort of leap into and copy and be under the wings of and be helped.”
Meanwhile in “The Last Showgirl,” Pamela Anderson plays Shelly, a veteran dancer who finds herself at a crossroads when the Vegas revue she performs in abruptly closes after 30 years, just as her estranged biological daughter Hannah (Billie Lourd) re-enters her life. Working from a script by Kate Gersten, director Gia Coppola contrasts Shelly’s potential future with those of her much younger counterparts Jodie (Kiernan Shipka) and Mary-Anne (Brenda Song), whom she alternately competes with for jobs and serves as a surrogate mother. “Kate’s script was so well executed in depicting how it can happen where you foster your work family more so than your blood relationships,” Coppola says.
“I think that there’s a lot of guilt and shame that kind of creeps up on her when she realizes she’s not their mother, and she has a daughter,” says Anderson of her character. “Shelly wears her heart on her sleeve, and there’s only so much you can give and then you hit a wall and you’re the enemy.” Adds Coppola, “[Shelly] is a flawed character, and I just liked that contradiction and that humanness.”
With her first narrative feature “Santosh,” writer-director Sandhya Suri traces the relationship between the title character (Shahana Goswami), an Indian widow who takes over her husband’s job as a constable, and Geeta (Sunita Rajwar), a senior officer. As two women in a heavily male-dominated police force, their relationship is already highly charged, even before Geeta orders Santosh to help investigate the murder of a young girl.
Suri says that the distantly romantic chemistry that develops between Santosh and Geeta “doesn’t necessarily need a label,” but its ambiguity further complicates their partnership when Santosh is implicated in an act of police brutality, and Geeta is forced to choose whether or not to protect her from punishment. “That at the end of the film she makes a sacrifice for Santosh seemed a bit naive that she would do this just out of goodness of her mentorship,” she says. “So that’s why I felt that it must have come for a deep love for Santosh at some level, and the strength of her feeling for her would come as a surprise.”
Written and directed by Megan Park, “My Old Ass” introduces 18-year-old Elliot (Maisy Stella) to her 39-year-old self (Aubrey Plaza) for some cryptic and mostly unwanted advice after the younger version of the character takes hallucinogenic mushrooms. Though she’s closer in age to the “elder” Elliot, Park says “exploring this idea through this lens of this ‘idiot’ 18-year-old who is really naive and in her own head as we all are at that age is such a more interesting [point of view]. The audience just gets to be reminded of what it’s like through a very modern-day young person, but through the setting and the tone, we really tried to make the film feel nostalgic and evergreen.”
Twenty-year-old Stella, who makes her film debut as the younger Elliot, credits her older sister for guiding her into her real-life adulthood, but displays more humility and self-awareness than the know-it-all character she plays. “Me and Megan always joke that when I read the script, I read it from the Old Ass’s perspective, but I’m very much the Young Ass that’s very much learning and figuring everything out.”
Though “Inside Out 2” co-screenwriter Meg LeFauve insists that she never thought about the film series’ anthropomorphized emotions as explicitly gendered characters, Amy Poehler and Maya Hawke forge a uniquely contentious relationship as (respectively) seasoned cheerleader Joy and frantic young strategist Anxiety, who draw battle lines across 13-year-old Riley’s expanding landscape of feelings. “They really do love Riley and they’re trying to help her,” LeFauve says. “They’re just doing it in ways that aren’t helpful.”
Both Poehler and Hawke insist that the two characters share more in common than one might initially think. “Anxiety has a lot to learn in terms of living in the moment, but Joy has a lot to learn in terms of realizing that every moment can’t be the best one,” Poehler says. “Without joy, anxiety is a miserable place to live,” adds Hawke. “So I always saw them as partners in crime, and every good crime partnership has to have a rocky beginning.” LeFauve suggests that what the characters teach each other doubles as an important lesson for Riley — and many other women — to learn.
“For me, what Joy really learns through interacting with Anxiety is self-compassion,” LeFauve says. “You need to love all of yourself, or at least accept everything that’s there.”
Amazon Studios/Prime Video; Roadside Attractions; The Girl With the Needle: Mubi; Inside Out 2: Disney/Pixar
The news is full of stories about people fighting back at attempted restrictions and limitations to women’s bodies. In Hollywood, the same can be said for some of the films in this year’s awards race.
Director and co-writer Pedro Almodóvar’s brilliantly colored “The Room Next Door” stars Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton as estranged friends who reconnect when the latter’s character opts for euthanasia instead of slowly and painfully succumbing to cancer. Director-writer Marielle Heller’s metaphoric black comedy-horror “Nightbitch” is an adaptation of Rachel Yoder’s novel about motherhood, in which a harried yet loving mom (Amy Adams) transforms into a dog as she increasingly loses her own identity while raising her young son. Writer-director Halina Reijn’s sexy psychological drama “Babygirl,” which stars Nicole Kidman, goes into the power of being the submissive one in a sexual relationship. Writer-director Coralie Fargeat’s dark comedy “The Substance,” which stars Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley, discusses the double standards of youth and beauty. And writer-director Caroline Lindy’s horror rom-com “Your Monster,” which stars Melissa Barrera, puts a face (and body) to the secret, simmering rage that women are taught to suppress.
“A lot of [these] things you’re told to keep inside, to not show, to be ashamed of, to dissimulate, to hide,” Fargeat says. “I wanted to do the exact opposite; to let everything out in a very brutal and obvious way because I think that’s what we need right now.”
She prefers to describe her movie, about an aging actor who is given access to a mysterious injectable that will transform her into a younger woman for a few days, as a genre film instead of horror. “Horror, for me, is more something that is scary,” she says, adding that calling it “genre” still allows her to discuss topics like the societal and professional pressures for women to behave and be polite “without having to be delicate” about it.
Interestingly, it’s not a woman who tells Moore’s Elisabeth Sparkle about the secret organization giving out the substance; it’s a man. Fargeat says she didn’t realize she’d made this editorial decision while writing the script but that it makes sense because the neon-green formula turns you into “the version [of yourself] that men want you to look like.”
The film’s climax sees Moore’s Elisabeth become almost what would happen if Pablo Picasso had been charged with creating a real-life rendition of Dr. Frankenstein’s monster. Her body, now frail and brittle, is also contorted and rearranged. The parts that were once sexualized by the male gaze are warped and placed on the head. But also on display are cellulite, wrinkles and other things that women are taught to keep hidden.
Reijn’s “Babygirl” also comments on the changing views of sex, sexism and even sex workers. Kidman’s Romy is a high-ranking corporate executive who has never felt sexually fulfilled in her marriage to her otherwise awesome husband, Jacob (Antonio Banderas). She submits to a consensual affair with an intern (Harris Dickinson), in part because of the danger this presents to her career and reputation.
“We are talking in this movie about topics like shame, power, sexuality and the workplace, so it was very important to me that all the discussions that I had with myself in my own household would also be in the movie,” Reijn says. “I don’t provide any answers. I’m just trying to make a tribute to female liberation. But it was very important to have all the different point of views and to see that some women are drawn to a sexual game of being humiliated because they are afraid to enjoy themselves. It’s kind of like they’re saying, ‘When a man is dominant, it’s not my fault that I enjoy sexuality.’”
Making the “Babygirl” male leads contrasting ages also allows Reijn to look at generation-based stigmas. Toward the end of the film, Banderas’ character remarks that women’s interests in sadomasochism aren’t real and are simply a male construct.
Meanwhile, Dickinson’s character represents a more Gen Z view that female submission is both very much a thing and can be very liberating. Reijn also acknowledges that this character’s costumes, hair and makeup don’t make him conventionally attractive but rather have him styled in a way of the so-called “hot rodent man” aesthetic associated with younger Hollywood It Guys like Jeremy Allen White, Barry Keoghan and Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist from “Challengers” — another film released this year that mixes the worlds of sex and power and with its own domineering and flawed heroine (Zendaya’s Tashi Duncan).
“I also really wanted to make a movie about masculinity and about the confusion that especially younger men might have about — ‘What am I supposed to be? How am I supposed to behave?’” Reijn says. “What I love about this new generation of men is that they have a gentleness that I really am intrigued by. And they grew up in a world in which consent is way more normal than when I was young … We didn’t make him an archetypical dom. We really tried to make him also vulnerable and exploring things and trying to ask himself the question ‘Who am I as a man?’”
“Your Monster” filmmaker Lindy didn’t have to delve too deep to hit the source material for her story; she really did get both dumped and a cancer diagnosis soon after she graduated college. Unlike Barrera’s Laura, however, she didn’t also lose the lead role in her ex’s new musical and return to her childhood bedroom to find that there’s a monster living (and, in fact, has always lived) in her closet.
“Over the course of my 20s, when I started thinking about this idea, it was really a moment where I developed a strong relationship with my anger and I started to love that side of myself that had been dormant up until that point,” she says during a Zoom interview that, fittingly, happens when she’s in her childhood bedroom. “Instead of feeling shame about my rage … it transformed me in a way and it made me the person I am today.”
“Your Monster” is also a love story, albeit a unique one. “The character of Monster is a manifestation of her inner rage,” says Lindy, an avowed rom-com fan. “I was taking those classic rom-com tropes where it’s like the jerky guy, as Monster was initially, and playing into that classic character stereotype. But it’s really this part of herself that she doesn’t really like; that she doesn’t know very well.”
And Monster is also kind of handsome, as far as monsters go. Lindy and her team, which included Oscar-winning makeup artist David Anderson, were inspired by all three of the friends Dorothy Gale meets on her journey down the yellow-brick road in “The Wizard of Oz” as well as the Beast in both the animated Disney film “Beauty and the Beast” and its Broadway adaptation.
And how did the #MeToo movement affect their stories? Reijn says she “felt so liberated, and, literally, felt so much safer” after the #MeToo movement. She describes her film as “almost a comedy of manners, if you will; a fable about these themes.” Meanwhile, Fargeat says she wasn’t motivated as much by that movement as she was the backlash to it. Lindy says that though she began writing “Your Monster” around 2018, she didn’t consciously connect her screenplay to the #MeToo movement until now, because hers isn’t a story of sexual assault or objectification. Rather, she says, it’s a reminder that when “women come together, being angry and saying we’re sick of this, [you should] be scared. When we come together, we can kill you.”
Well, not everyone, she clarifies. Just the evil ex-boyfriends who deserve it.
Warner Bros.; Mubi
As the year comes to a close, it’s a time for reflection. And that includes many magical moments inside the cinema that made us laugh, cry and cheer — sometimes all at once. Variety writers took a moment to highlight some of their favorite scenes from the year’s best picture contenders. Obviously, spoilers to follow!
Anora
NEON
To call sex worker Ani’s romance with the wealthy Vanya a “whirlwind” is an understatement, but that chaos comes to an end after the two young lovers are flown to Vegas for an annulment. It’s there that Ani realizes that even as a transaction, her relationship is not going to reap her monetary rewards, much less emotional fulfillment — and neither Vanya’s parents nor Vanya himself are capable of recognizing her intelligence, strength or autonomy. (Her would-be captor Igor does and sticks up for her when no one else will.) But it’s Ani who gets the last laugh when after Vanya’s mother calls her a prostitute, she throws the insult back by noting that Vanya hates his mother enough to marry one. It’s a withering, out-the-door response that sums up their complicated family relationship. —Todd Gilchrist
Blitz
APPLE ORIGINAL FILMS
In Steve McQueen’s film, 9-year-old George (Elliott Heffernan) is evacuated to the English countryside after London comes under attack. However, George doesn’t want to leave and heads back home. It’s hard not to feel scared for the boy as George finds himself in constant danger — escaping floods, narrowly escaping a blitz bombing of a bridge and encountering baddies who exploit him. But it’s a quiet moment that stands out when he encounters Black solider Ife (Benjamin Clementine), who shows him kindness. Up to this point, George has denied his heritage. But as Ife says good night, George says to the soldier, “I am Black.” It’s a simple, beautiful moment that speaks volumes. —Jazz Tangcay
The Brutalist
A24
Immediately prior to receiving his commission to build an ambitious community center, László Tóth (Adrien Brody) participates in a “stimulating” conversation with his future benefactor, industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce), where via personal anecdotes, the two men inadvertently lay out their competing but somehow complementary world views. For László, the endurance of his designs in the midst of unimaginable loss is a defiant testament to the perseverance of the human spirit; for Van Buren, a sniveling request from estranged relatives offers him an opportunity to showcase his success and punish those he considers insufficiently impressed by it. Together, they’re opposite sides of the same coin — which is precisely why they ultimately cannot see each other accurately. —T.G.
A Complete Unknown
SEARCHLIGHT
James Mangold’s film follows Timothée Chalamet as the young Bob Dylan, who comes to New York in 1961 and rises to fame on the folk music scene. While some of the greatest scenes are the quiet ones, the very best is the ending, when Dylan decides to go electric, much to the chagrin of his folk music audience. It’s a scene that defies traditional cliches of a musician winning his audience over. Refusing to back down in the face of anger and even violence, it’s understandable why Dylan became the icon he is today. —J.T.
Conclave
FOCUS
Few films this year fail the Bechdel test — that famous if unscientific yardstick of female representation on screen — as blatantly as “Conclave,” which is not, in this case, a failing of the film itself. As an examination of the corrupting effects of institutional misogyny in the Catholic Church, Edward Berger’s papal drama (which could as easily have been titled “Men Talking”) makes a virtue of its oppressive male energy. Which is why it’s such a jolt to the heart of the film when a woman is finally given the floor: “Although we sisters are supposed to be invisible, God has nevertheless given us eyes and ears,” says Isabella Rossellini’s hitherto quietly watchful Sister Agnes, launching an excoriating speech that makes it clear no cardinal sin goes entirely unnoticed. —Guy Lodge
Dune: Part Two
WARNER BROS.
What moment in “Dune: Part Two” is more thrilling than the one when Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) first manages to successfully ride a sandworm? The young man’s humility in exploring the culture of the Fremen had bred ambition, but Paul’s excitement is tempered with nervousness after his thumper attracts one of the planet’s biggest worms to the surface. After a dune collapses beneath him, Paul is dropped right on top of the beast, and the resulting wake of wind and sand threatens to impede him from achieving his goal. But what becomes more mesmerizing than his eventual success is its impact on the Fremen, who view the ride as fulfillment of prophecy as Chani (Zendaya) questions his ultimate role on her world. —T.G.
Emilia Pérez
NETFLIX
Zoe Saldaña plays Rita, a lawyer helping drug cartel kingpin Manitas leave the life and transition into Emilia — her true identity. Emilia (Karla Sofía Gascón) eventually becomes a powerful force in helping families of cartel victims find the bodies of their loved ones through a nonprofit, with Rita running it. But it’s at a gala fundraiser in which Rita (and director Jaques Audiard, who co-wrote the film with Thomas Bidegain) delivers a devastating song, tearing away the facade of respectability in Mexican society that underwrites the cartel violence, whether covertly or overtly. It’s an almost surreal, Buñel-esque scene, with the corrupt swells of society sipping champagne as Emilia delivers a speech and Rita raps (the chorus is quite catchy), dancing around the ballroom and on tables, exposing the hypocrisy on display with righteous anger, clad in a gorgeous, blood-red velvet suit. —Carole Horst
Gladiator II
PARAMOUNT
Denzel Washington is easily the highlight of “Gladiator II.” The gold earring, the flowing toga and that glint in his eye, it’s Washington at his finest. At first, it’s hard to tell if his Macrinus — a wealthy trader who buys Paul Mescal’s Lucius to be a gladiator — is a good guy or bad guy. As it turns out, Macrinus eyes the highest seat in the senate and wants to be emperor. Except the emperor twins Geta and Caracalla — superbly played by Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger — stand in his way. So, he turns them against one another and callously beheads Emperor Geta before presenting it in front of the senate. It’s a brilliant moment outside of the wild action sequences that include a rhino fight and shark-infested naval battle. —J.T.
Nickel Boys
AMAZON
Much of Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor’s shattering performance in “Nickel Boys” plays in a register of wearily protective stoicism. As Hattie, a tragedy-burdened woman raising her grandson alone in 1960s Jim Crow Florida, she’s the pillar on whom others come to rely. But in the most wrenching scene of RaMell Ross’ radical adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s novel, she’s finally flooded with feeling and need, with no one to lean on. Denied a visit to her grandson at the abusive reform school where he’s been unjustly imprisoned, she gives the hug she had for him to another inmate, channeling a loved one’s body through that of a stranger. It’s the most seismic surge of emotion in a film that never veers toward the sentimental — an uncontrolled explosion of love in a world of hate. —G.L.
A Real Pain
SEARCHLIGHT
Jesse Eisenberg’s road trip pic explores familial bonds as well as generational pain and personal demons, laced with humor and standout performances by Kieran Culkin, Eisenberg and superb supporting cast. Culkin’s Benji is a charming, charismatic, bright man who’s also lost and has been unable to fulfill any expectations he or his family had for him. Eisenberg’s David is loving, professionally successful, but uptight. The cousins take a group trip through Poland, discovering their Polish-Jewish roots with the goal to visit their Holocaust survivor grandmother’s house. At a group dinner, Benji begins acting up and acting out, eventually storming away — only to be heard playing the piano in the next room, and beautifully. David is left to make excuses, which spins into a story in which he describes the Benji he knew growing up — the young man poised for greatness only to be sideswiped by mental pain — and is overcome with emotion as well. It’s a breathtaking mix of anger, sorrow and poignancy. —C.H.
September 5
PARAMOUNT
The tension of “September 5” lies not just in the unfolding events of the Israeli hostage situation at the 1972 Olympic Games, but in constantly examining — and re-examining — the appropriate way for ABC Sports to cover it. At a crucial moment when German authorities are moving into position to try and wrest control from the Palestinian guerillas, ABC opts to film the locations where those troops are setting up vantage points. As the news team lampoons the local authorities for their dubious competence, they only slowly realize that they’re compromising their efforts by broadcasting them onto TVs accessible by the Palestinians, leading to a tense confrontation that underscores how even the most dutiful news reporting can still cause harm. —T.G.
Sing Sing
A24
Greg Kwedar’s incredible true story focuses on the Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) program in Sing Sing correctional facility, where inmates create theater. For most of the film, John “Divine G” Whitfield (Colman Domingo) is a pillar of the community — there for everyone, with encouragement or a wise word. When he learns his parole has been denied yet again, he has an outburst and quits the program. Later, he is approached in the prison yard by the Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin (playing a version of himself), a man he has mentored and advocated for. The usually loquacious Divine G is quiet as Divine Eye points out his flaw — “as many brothers as you helped, you won’t extend your hand.” Divine G simply says: “I fucked up.” He then learns that the troupe took a vote and unanimously wants him back. It comes with a humorous cost — Divine G has to admit that Divine Eye was an amazing Hamlet. —J.R.
The Substance
MUBI
For Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) — the 50-year-old at the center of “The Substance” struggling with career obsolescence, anxieties about her appearance and her youthful, narcissistic splinter self (Margaret Qualley) — her bathroom isn’t a sanctuary. It’s a place of violent self-scrutiny. All of Elisabeth’s unspoken fears about unattainable beauty standards morph into abject frustration as she prepares for her date with a dorky former classmate. Makeup, initially applied judiciously, becomes a heavily layered shellac, an attempt to gain confidence through cosmetics. Rather than flaunt her red dress’ low neckline, she adds a scarf to cover her décolletage. Feminine insecurities are delicate things to capture with as much introspective complexity as Moore and filmmaker Coralie Fargeat do during this tragic sequence. It culminates with Elisabeth unable to leave her apartment, paralyzed by self-loathing. The raw honesty is a walloping gut-punch for the character — and for every woman in the audience who can relate. —Courtney Howard
Wicked
UNIVERSAL
Of “Wicked’s” many incredible moments, perhaps the finest scene takes place in the Ozdust Ballroom. How many times have you walked into a room, feeling awkward and that people are staring? We all feel for Cynthia Erivo’s Elphaba when she walks down the stairs with that new, hideous hat from Glinda, believing it was a gift of friendship and not one of ridicule. What truly hits is when Elphaba take that hat off and, rather than leave, holds space and starts a silent dance with everyone watching. When Glinda joins her and they lock eyes and touch hands, it marks the beginning of their friendship, but also a moment of acceptance for Elphaba. We all cried with her when Erivo’s tears fall, and we all rejoiced when her fellow students at Shiz U. join in the dance. —J.T.
Warner Bros.; Nickel Boys: Amazon MGM Studios; A Real Pain, A Complete Unknown: Searchlight Pictures (2); September 5: Paramount Pictures; Wicked: Universal Pictures; The Substance: Mubi
James Mangold’s “A Complete Unknown” follows the rise of Bob Dylan, played by Timothée Chalamet, as a young musician who moves to New York in 1961, and it culminates with the 1965 Newport Folk Festival and his move to electric guitar.
Mangold is no stranger to the period (his “Ford v Ferrari” was mostly set in that same era), and he wanted to take a snapshot of Dylan’s career. He chose this window because not only was there change happening in culture, but it also marked the arrival of a new post-war generation. “We have enough distance from this period to see it for what it is,” he says.
To build this world, Mangold called on his go-to artisans: production designer François Audouy, costume designer Arianne Phillips, hair department head Jaime Leigh McIntosh and cinematographer Phedon Papamichael.
Audouy had an enormous challenge ahead of him, as the landscape change and the rise of corporations meant that this world didn’t exist anymore. “I wanted to capture what it felt like to walk down Greenwich Village,” Audouy says. In particular, MacDougal Street.
Jersey City became the production’s home with Audouy re-creating the city blocks and building clubs, bars and coffee shops.
A park in Westfield, N.J., was large enough for Audouy and his team to re-create the stages for the music festivals in the film, including the key 1965 Newport Folk Festival. “Francois did his best to build a replica of what Newport looked like, and we did our best to create an artistic, lit vision of how it feels,” Mangold says.
Dylan’s story was divided into three main beats: 1961-62, 1963-64 and 1965. Those beats became the throughline across all departments.
Makeup department head Stacey Panepinto addressed the three different periods with a “less is more” approach.
Through research, Panepinto noticed how in 1961, Dylan had a round babyface. She used subtle nose prosthetics on Chalamet throughout the film, but internal cheek plumpers helped her with his early look. “We put them in every day,” Panepinto says. “We had them on top and bottom, like a retainer to give him that roundness that we wanted to achieve in the early part of our story.”
As for Dylan’s distinctive hair, MacIntosh mused on what would work best for Chalamet’s own hair. “We didn’t know whether we would wig Timothée’s short hair and use his own hair for the longer, later period, or whether we would do it vice versa.” But there were also conversations with Chalamet and “whether he would be OK with wearing a wig or want his natural hair.”
In the end, it came down to the wire, days before shooting. “We cut his hair shorter and used his hair for the earlier Bob Dylan stuff,” she says. “We adjusted the styling depending on the time.”
MacIntosh observed that Dylan’s hair never looked the same in his photos. “I felt there was room to move because he doesn’t need to have the same hair in every single scene because it was its own beast.”
Costumes were a beast of their own. On the final count, Phillips created 67 costume changes for Chalamet, with denim the essential thread for Dylan’s wardrobe evolution.
From the sketch, left, to screen with Chalamet as Dylan in a bold shirt, right
Phillips had worked with Levi’s before and says, “ I called them to help me identify a lot of denim that I was seeing on Bob. Initially, when we meet him, he’s this kid who’s modeling himself after Woody Guthrie, and he’s wearing kind of worker-like carpenter jeans, which were the style of that time.”
She adds, “Denim was really only worn, at that time, on a construction site or recreationally when someone went fishing.” But through denim, Phillips could tell a story. “Initially you see the worker jeans. In the mid-’60s, you see more of the traditional Levi’s 501.”
She also leaned into his black leather jacket look. “The denim, the boots and the hair was really the thread, the through-line of what you see today with Bob,” says Phillips.
Once that all came together, it was up to Papamichael to get into the character’s head. “It’s about making the audience really understand what makes that character tick,” he says.
After years of collaborating with Mangold, Papamichael sought to emulate the street photography of the era, so he created texture charts. He also looked at the meaning of each scene and moved forward to capture its essence. “We do that by a combination of creating the world, but also, more importantly, having the close ups and the interactions between the characters.”
While the film features performances, Papamichael found power in the intimate scenes and wanted the viewer to feel physically present. “My job as a photographer is to put the camera in the right place at the right time and then allow [the actor] to give us these gifts and give us these moments and just not get in their way.”
Searchlight Pictures (4)
Awards Circuit: Artisans Look Book
Gear Heads ‘Transformers One’ robots designed to project human emotions
To make Paramount and Hasbro’s first fully CG-animated Transformers movie, Academy Award-winning director Josh Cooley (“Toy Story 4”) turned to Industrial Light & Magic, the visual effects studio behind the franchise’s live-action movies.
The first challenge to making “Transformers One” was defining the overall look, which in this case involved a design philosophy that was more rooted in the original “Generation One” cartoon than the live-action series.
VFX supervisor Frazer Churchill elaborates that it’s a “more simplistic look than the Transformers live-action movies, like humanoid faces and simpler lines. … Somewhere between animation and live action.” He adds that working with Cooley and production designer Jason Scheier, they coupled this with a “cinematic” look — for instance, with shallow depth of field and backlighting. “We [leaned] into the sort of live-action techniques for lighting and camera,” he explains.
Set on Cybertron, “Transformers One” is the origin story of how Optimus Prime (voiced by Chris Hemsworth) and Megatron (Brian Tyree Henry) go from the closest friends to sworn enemies. That meant that the bots needed to show a range of emotions. “It was very important to Josh that they were able to emote and have that human emotion ability even though they are robots. And it’s important to him for the audience to be able to connect with them on that level,” says animation supervisor Stephen King. “We really spent a lot of time working on the animation so that the audience connects with them.” That included non-verbal acting, he adds, “that sort of acting that isn’t on the page, so that you can really feel them think and process things that are happening to them in great detail.”
While both lead characters evolve during the course of the story, in the early part of the film, King aimed to bring a more “youthful naivety” to the performances. “They aren’t weighed down by thousands of years of war and conflict and hate like the characters that we know from other iterations. There’s still a level of optimism. We really tried to capture that in their movements and just how they interact with each other.”
Of course, they also needed to transform. Lead character designer Amy Beth Christenson relates that the team meticulously crafted this in 3D, “making sure that the scale and the parts between them being robots and their vehicle designs [matched].”
The bots also had to believably live on the planet of Cybertron, which also had to be designed. That includes the vast metropolis Iacon and the planet’s rugged surface.
Iacon, Frazier relates, has various influences, from art deco for a sort of “retro futurism” to the architectural photography of Hugh Ferriss. “There’s a number of different influences that came to bear on that, but then it had to feel like we lit it in a way that made it feel happy and hopeful.”
Sections of the city included the slightly grungy miners district for which they gave textural detail “to make it feel worn and used and kind of old in that slightly sort of ‘Blade Runner’-esque way.”
Cybertron is made of metal, so the team leaned into various types of metal to create the rough surface. “One of the first jobs was to design a materials library to construct everything from and to have lots of different styles and types of metal,” Frazier says. The world-building also included fine touches such as vegetation, “which, in the lore of Transformers, arrived on some kind of meteor,” he says.
Paramount Pictures (2)
Angelina Jolie sports three looks from “Maria.”
Angelina Jolie completely transforms into opera superstar Maria Callas in Pablo Larraín’s “Maria” through the hands of the Oscar winner’s personal makeup and hair team, Adruitha Lee and Pamela Goldammer.
While subtlety was key to the transformation, Lee and Goldammer worked to establish what that specific look needed to be. “You do have to look at the whole of [Callas] to understand her, or how she was adapting,” Jolie explains of the team’s process.
Callas was never without makeup, and her hair perfectly groomed. With a large scope of resources available, one photo in particular struck Jolie in which Callas is hunched over. “You can see her hair, she has her big glasses on, and she looks like she was caught.”
The thick glasses that Callas wore also caught Jolie’s attention. “That said a lot about her,” says Jolie.
Lee also surrounded herself with photos when considering hairstyling and noted Callas’ natural wave. Wanting the hair Jolie sports to look natural, Lee tried different methods. Traditional curling and flat irons and rollers didn’t work, but she found a solution. “I made rollers out of paper towels and rolled it up at nighttime, and we took it down the next day,” Lee reveals. “That was the curl, the natural look that I felt emulated what her hair naturally was.”
Jolie and Lee also discussed Callas’ gray. “She colored her hair to a certain point, and then she didn’t color her hair,” says Lee. With that in mind, Lee would adjust the coloring of the wigs to reflect the different stages and where they were in the storytelling. “At one point, I even added a few more gray hairs to the wig, and it was so pretty.”
Goldammer didn’t want Jolie’s makeup it to be distracting. Her biggest challenge was navigating the multiple makeup changes and switches throughout the day. With the film capturing Callas’ operatic highlights and private moments, sometimes Goldammer had to build seven looks in any single day. “We were jumping between decades, stage looks, glamor and opera looks,” Goldammer says.
But it wasn’t as simple as creating those looks — a prosthetic nose was made for Jolie by makeup artist Arjen Tuiten, who was nominated for an Oscar for his work with her on “Maleficent: Mistress of Evil.” Says Goldammer, “I had to apply a prosthetic nose in 17 minutes, and beauty makeup in 30.”
The film’s black-and-white sequences depicting when Callas meets Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis, proved to be a different kind of challenge. To find the makeup colors that read the shades of gray they were looking for on camera, numerous camera tests were conducted.
“We tested 20 or 30 different lipsticks, and we stuck to specific shades,” she says, explaining her process. “But I remember drawing out like 50 different shades and printing it in black and white to see the effect. But in general, we stuck to colors of the time.”
For those same sequences, Lee had to make color adjustments to give Callas’ hair texture. “I didn’t want it to look solid, so there were different shades in the wig, so that it looked like it was one color, but it really wasn’t,” Lee says.
Netflix (3)
Production designer Nathan Crowley has been waiting his entire career for a film in which he could build an entire fantasy world. He found that with “Wicked.”
When director Jon M. Chu called on him to work on the film adaption of the Broadway musical, Crowley’s dream came true. “Jon wanted it to be fantastical. He wanted it to be joyous. He wanted it to be happy, and the Emerald City had to be this magical myth of the place that everyone wanted to get the ticket to,” he says.
Shiz University is where much of the action takes place. The theory behind it was that Shiz — like Oxford, Cambridge, Ivy League universities and even Hogwarts — is an ancient institution, one that few were fated to attend. Crowley needed it to feel timeless and magical. “I had to find a new look that isn’t just dark stone,” says Crowley.
His other challenge was answering the question of, how does one get to Shiz? “We can’t go by train; that’s the wizard’s technology and it belongs to him. We can’t go by balloon, and we can’t go by car because cars don’t exist,” explains Crowley.
The solution? Water. Water was also a factor in the Wicked Witch of the West’s story — remember, “I’m melting!” — so it was fitting. Crowley built the waterway using tanks and the grand archway leading up to Shiz. The boats were made in Prague and brought to the U.K., where the film was shot.
Shiz was a combination of exteriors such as the water tank, arrival docks and the entrance to the university. He used different materials such as stone and wood and mixed architectural languages, with Shiz’s courtyard paying particular homage to American architecture. “The big arch is there because it’s an American fairy tale. I used the White City of Chicago [from the 1893 World’s Fair] as inspiration.”
Those exteriors were seamlessly combined with the interior sets that had been constructed on soundstages. The dorm room shared by Elphaba and Glinda, for example, needed to feel intimate yet big enough for a dance number.
The domes in the room were inspired by the Brighton Pavilion in the south of England, a fanciful palace built in 1787 by George, Prince of Wales, who later became King George IV. Crowley enhanced the room with wood varnish and murals that were over-detailed. “You don’t feel it because you’re interested in the character,” he says.
Special effects and set dressing teams also came in to fill the room with hat boxes and shoe boxes that sprung open. “There’s an enormous amount of mechanics under the floor,” says Crowley.
One thing that wasn’t scripted was the hallway in which Glinda dances at the end of her big number “Popular.” So he built one. “Glinda comes running down the hallway at the end, and it’s a beautiful moment.” As simple as it looks, Crowley knew it was still a big dance number with lots of movement. So he worked closely with the film’s choreographer, Christopher Scott, to lay out the set. “We looked on the space and action and how we could tell the story within ‘Popular,’ and what would happen within this confined space.”
Shiz Library was another accomplishment for Crowley. It was a giant space for the students, with rotating bookcases that spin and giant wooden arches. The set was pivotal to Fiyero’s (Jonathan Bailey) entrance. “He’s supposed to be the coolest guy ever. Everyone’s in love with him. We’re going to dance through life with him, and he’s going to sweep people off their feet, so we have to give him a place that architecturally keeps up with him,” he says.
Crowley thought about “Royal Wedding” and Fred Astaire fampusly dancing around a rotating room in that film.
“I want Fiyero to dance in that,” he thought. So he built a miniature model with the help of special effects to show everyone what he was envisioning. “I thought, ‘They’re never going to go for it.’ [But] Jon loved it. I said to Jon, ‘If they all spin individually, and he’s dancing and jumping and spinning, why couldn’t the Oz bookshelves be round?’”
Crowley points out, “When the ladders line up because they spin independently, you get an O and a Z.”
Universal Pictures (6)
Whether a “Housewives” addict, a Bachelor Nation romantic or a “Dancing With the Stars” voter, there’s enough reality TV to go around. Luckily, Variety watches it all — we like to spread the love — and we can’t keep our eyes off the women who are taking control. Below, we share the 30 most influential women on reality TV in the last 12 months.
Guerdy Abraira
“The Real Housewives of Miami,” Bravo
Throughout Season 6 of the show, Abraira faced the unimaginable, having been diagnosed with breast cancer. It would have been a good excuse to quit, actually, but Abraira persisted with grace, elevating the season to greatness.
Lisa Barlow
“The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City,” Bravo
Hello, baby gorgeous! Barlow manages to fight with seemingly all of her castmates, all while keeping a smile on her face. . We’re, in fact, shaking, we’re physically shaking. (It’s hard not to quote Lisa when writing about Lisa.)
Shannon Storms Beador
“The Real Housewives of Orange County,” Bravo
After getting a DUI in fall 2023, Beador’s employment on Bravo was tenuous. But not only did she return for Season 18 of “Orange County,” she went on to have her best season ever, and squared off against friends (her erstwhile BFF Tamra Judge) and foes (Alexis Bellino, her ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend) alike.
Garcelle Beauvais
“The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills,” Bravo
If being on the “Housewives” can cause cast members to occasionally lose their dignity, Beauvais defies that axiom. Now in her fifth season on the show, Beauvais manages to both stir the pot and rise above it — a rare skill. She’s also used the Bravo platform to establish a partnership with Lifetime as a producer and actor.
Gizelle Bryant
“The Real Housewives of Potomac,” Bravo
After an off year, “Potomac” is back, baby — and Bryant understood her part of the assignment to bring back the shade in order to restore this corner of the “Real Housewives” universe to its former glory. An activated Bryant is something to see, and fellow castmate Mia Thornton has been setting her off, to the delight of viewers.
Trishelle Cannatella
“The Traitors,” Peacock
It’s been more than two decades since Cannatella made her debut on 2002’s “The Real World: Las Vegas,” then went on to compete on multiple seasons of “The Challenge.” But this year, she proved she had exactly the right amount of conniving to take home the win on Season 2 of “The Traitors.”
Brittany Cartwright
“The Valley,” Bravo
If you had told us during Cartwright’s “Vanderpump Rules” days that we’d be singing her praises, we would have called you a liar. Yet here we are, saying that Cartwright standing up to her toxic husband Jax Taylor, whom she’s now divorcing, has us cheering her on from the sidelines. Go, Brittany, go!
Dolores Catania
“The Real Housewives New Jersey,” Bravo
In truth, the “New Jersey” portion of the Bravoverse is in shambles, and Bravo will be retooling the series. But Catania somehow emerged triumphant out of the Meadowlands swamp once again, using her preternatural charm to be friendly with all her castmates. How does she do it!?
Kelli Finglass
“America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders,” Netflix
The current director of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, Finglass was one of many breakout women on “America’s Sweethearts,” as the mentor and coach to some of the hardest working athletes in the business. Finglass managed to be supportive in a cutthroat environment.
Julia Fox
“OMG Fashun,” E!
Known for her downtown style — as well as her breakout performance in “Uncut Gems” — Fox managed to turn her glamorous, winking social media presence into “OMG Fashun.” On the reality competition, Fox appeared as both host and judge, alongside Law Roach, and contestants used unconventional materials (like trash!) to design clothes.
Yolanda Gampp
“Crime Scene Kitchen,” Fox
Serving as a judge for all three seasons of Fox’s “Crime Scene Kitchen,” the star cake artist had founded the “How to Cake It” YouTube channel in 2014, showcasing how to make cakes that look like different objects. This year, she also served as a judge on Buddy Valastro’s “CakeToppers” on Hulu.
Marissa George
“Love Is Blind,” Netflix
During Season 7 of the Kinetic Contentproduced reality sensation, George made headlines by putting herself 100% into her relationship, having honest conversations about her military history and her feelings around birth control. Her journey ended in heartbreak after she was blindsided with a breakup days before the wedding.
Sammi Giancola
“Jersey Shore: Family Vacation,” MTV
“Sammi Sweetheart,” the only original “Jersey Shore” cast member to skip the 2018 revival, finally returned to “Family Vacation,” reuniting with her co-stars for the MTV series and coming face-to-face with estranged boyfriend, Ronnie Ortiz-Magro. She was a complete trooper when her cast-mates went all in with the jokes about the infamous “note,” too.
Alison Hammond
“The Great British Baking Show,” Netflix
Since joining the show in 2023, Hammond has shone with the combination of her warm demeanor and authenticity. Connecting to both contestants and viewers, it’s no surprise she also became the presenter for “For the Love of Dogs” this year following Paul O’Grady’s death.
Allison Holker
“So You Think You Can Dance,” Fox
The professional dancer, who got her start on “So You Think You Can Dance” in 2002, has been a mainstay on reality TV for two decades. This year, following the death of Holker’s husband and “SYTYCD” main judge, Stephen “tWitch” Boss, she joined the show as a judge.
Lindsay Hubbard
“Summer House,” Bravo
Watching Hubbard’s turbulent, doomed relationship with her (now ex-) fiancé Carl Radke made Season 8 of “Summer House” must-see-TV earlier this year. Then, after Carl broke up with her on camera in the finale, what did she do? She found a new man, got pregnant and filmed over the summer for the show’s upcoming ninth season.
Lyndsay Lamb and Leslie Davis
“Rock the Block,” HGTV
The twins, the hosts and design experts behind HGTV’s “Unsellable Houses” since 2019, won Season 5 of “Rock the Block,” beating out three returning teams fighting for redemption. Their secret: knowing that solar panels may not add curb appeal but definitely add value. Twin win!
Kristen Kish
“Top Chef,” Bravo
Former “Top Chef” winner Kish had big shoes to fill when she became the host of Bravo’s Emmy-winning cooking competition after Padma Lakshmi decided to step down before its 21st season. But in this year’s “Top Chef: Wisconsin,” Kish fit in seamlessly with judges Tom Colicchio and Gail Simmons, and we’ll soon see the group exploring fine dining in Canada.
Ariana Madix
“Vanderpump Rules”/“Love Island” Bravo/Peacock
Now that Bravo has decided to start over with “Vanderpump Rules,” recasting the show from scratch for an eventual 12th season, it’s become clear who the winners among the show’s OG cast were — and no one won more than Madix. Her turn as the “Love Island” host propelled the dating show to become a viral sensation over the summer.
Kandy Muse
“House of Villains,” E!
A two-time runner-up from “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” Muse has won the hearts of “House of Villains” viewers with her charisma and fearless messiness. Her talents have found the exact right medium here, and to Kandy we say, “Sashay, you stay.”
Rita Ora
“The Masked Singer,” Fox
After five seasons as a panelist for the U.K. version of “The Masked Singer,” Ora joined the U.S. version for Seasons 11 and 12. Plus, she sometimes hopped on stage to perform herself. Ora was previously a coach on “The Voice U.K.” and “The Voice Australia.”
Phaedra Parks
“The Traitors,” Peacock
Parks may not have won “The Traitors,” but... she won “The Traitors.” A cast member on Bravo’s “Married to Medicine” for the last two seasons, she also competed on “Dancing With the Stars” this year. Plus, she just filmed Season 16 of “Real Housewives of Atlanta,” her first season since her 2017 ouster.
Taylor Frankie Paul
“The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” Hulu
These chaotic, Utah-based momfluencers — who knew what joy they could bring us? Central to the mess was Paul, who was arrested for domestic violence in an incident with her boyfriend, then spent the rest of the season pregnant with his baby.
Kenzie Petty
“Survivor,” CBS
While her strategy at tribal council shocked many — she told the jury, “I’m not going to say I drove a vote” — Petty proved that kindness went a long way and was named the sole survivor of Season 46. In fact, she only received one vote all season long.
Rachel Robinson
“The Challenge,” MTV
One of the strongest ever to play the game, the “Road Rules” alumni returned to the flagship series for her first “Challenge” since 2012. Now a mother of two, Robinson became the final player standing on her team of “Eras 1” — and outlasted most of her competition — on the historic 40th season.
Chrishell Stause
“Selling Sunset,” Netflix
Stause has been a “Selling Sunset” staple since joining the Oppenheim Group in Season 1 in 2019. Season 8 brought a great deal of drama, which only continued when the season wrapped. In addition to creating fun TV, Stause always has BFF Emma Hernan’s back, even when it seems no one else does.
Jenn Tran
“The Bachelor,” “The Bachelorette,” “Dancing With the Stars”
In January 2024, Tran was the breakout star of Season 28 of “The Bachelor.” Then she became “The Bachelorette” and was briefly engaged; hours after a very public split on “After the Final Rose,” she flew to New York and joined “Dancing With the Stars,” becoming a Season 33 fan favorite.
Joan Vassos
“The Golden Bachelorette,” ABC
One of the most beloved women on “The Golden Bachelor,” Vassos had to leave for a family emergency. This year, she received her well-deserved spotlight on the first season of the spinoff, “The Golden Bachelorette.” She also got her happy ending, getting engaged to Chock Chapple during the finale.
Dr. Simone Whitmore
“Married to Medicine,” Bravo
Now in Season 11, the Georgia-based doctors of “Married to Medicine” have inadvertently ended up at the center of the war on abortion. And OBGYN Dr. Sim-one — a cast member since the show’s beginning — has taken on that responsibility fearlessly.
Captain Sandy Yawn
“Below Deck Mediterranean,” Bravo
The yacht captain on “Mediterranean” since Season 2, Yawn is known for her perfectionism. In the show’s Season 9 finale, Captain Sandy proposed to her girlfriend, gospel singer (!!!) Leah Shafer, whom she married in May.
Real Housewives of Potomac: Shannon Finney/Bravo; The Valley: Casey Durkin/Bravo; Real Housewives of Miami: Peacock Barlow: Koury Angelo/Bravo; Bryant: Phylicia Munn/Bravo; The Traitors: Euan Cherry/Peacock; Fox: Olivia Wong/FilmMagic/Getty Images; Great British Bake Off: Netflix Rock the Block, Lamb, Davis: HGTV (3); Ora: Rosie Matheson; Kish: Courtesy of Gabriel Jeffrey; Paul: Disney/Pamela Littky; Petty: Robert Voets/CBS; Vassos: Disney/Brian Bowen Smith; Tran: Disney/Ramona Rosales; Capt. Sandy: Jagueneau/Bravo
Mufasa: The Lion King Director Barry Jenkins Screenplay Jeff Nathanson Cast Aaron Pierre, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Tiffany Boon Distributor Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Early in “The Lion King,” the adorable yet spoiled African prince Simba goes gallivanting around his father Mufasa’s lands, taunting his future subjects with the song “I Just Can’t Wait to Be King.”
Flash forward to “Mufasa: The Lion King” — or rewind, since “Moonlight” director Barry Jenkins’ emotionally satisfying contribution to the Disney canon is a prequel to one of the studio’s most beloved franchises — and we find Mufasa in a very different mindset. If this once and future ruler had a solo, it might be called “Being King Is the Last Thing I Want,” which turns out to be the quality that will make him such a good one when the time comes.
Presented in a more stylized — but in no way “cartoony” — approach than director Jon Favreau’s 2019 “Lion King” remake, Jenkins’ “Mufasa” deepens our understanding of and appreciation for the noble father figure. Here, Mufasa is embodied by Braelyn Rankins as a cub, later followed by Aaron Pierre in juvenile form. Neither voice can really compete with James Earl Jones’, but how could we expect them to? Mufasa is hardly the sage old leader at this point, as Jenkins and returning screenwriter Jeff Nathanson imagine him in a more humble — yet instinctively heroic — mold.
Rather than fix what ain’t broke, the film opens with another “Circle of Life”-style sequence, as dozens of species gather to celebrate the presentation of Simba’s firstborn, Kiara (Blue Ivy Carter), who will almost surely get a feature of her own one day. In that sense, “Mufasa” is doing double duty, providing rich emotional context for the original story while paving the way for future sequels.
Starting in the present allows Jenkins to bring back Timon (Billy Eichner) and Pumbaa (Seth Rogen), while simian shaman Rafiki serves as narrator. The all-knowing, vaguely Yoda-like mandrill’s tale begins in the distant past, long before he meets Mufasa.
The framing device feels like a mistake, serving to delay and interrupt the main attraction, which is Mufasa’s origin story. Before losing his parents, Mufasa learns of a paradise called Malele, which will become the destination of a cross-continental journey to find a new home. But first, he must win over a whole bunch of characters, starting with a cub his age named Taka (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), who’s next in line to be king in the land where he washes ashore.
Moments after they meet, Taka saves Mufasa’s life, digging his claws into the endangered whelp’s paws and tossing him to safety, thereby earning a pledge of eternal loyalty from the outsider. Meanwhile, Taka’s father, Obasi (Lennie James), looks upon Mufasa with suspicion, ordering him to live among the lionesses — a setback to the two cubs, who see one another as the siblings they never had. Cue the song “I Always Wanted a Brother.”
That’s a very different dynamic from only-child Simba’s upbringing, and one that lends “Mufasa” a fresh dimension to explore. Although the plot of “Mufasa” functions on its own merits, Nathanson cleverly connects this new narrative to characters and details from the original movie.
Full of inside references, the script introduces Simba’s mother, Sarabi (Tiffany Boone), as a gifted huntress, reveals baobab-dwelling Rafiki’s roots and even goes so far as to show the formation of Pride Rock. As with “Wicked,” each connection tickles audiences — the more surprising, the better.
Whereas some Disney films have sought to find alternatives to traditional villains — even doing away with them altogether in “Encanto” — “Mufasa” follows the lead set by Scar, introducing the vicious Kiros (Mads Mikkelsen), head of the pack of outsider “white lions” on whom Obasi’s fears were based. Jenkins’ film can be alarmingly violent at times, although the PG rating presumably explains why every death occurs off-screen.
“Mufasa” makes for an unlikely follow-up to Jenkins’ past work, and yet, the helmer’s creative and cultural integrity remains clear in nearly every choice. Jenkins has not sold out; rather, the studio bought into his vision, which respects the 1994 film and recognizes the significance that its role models and life lessons have served for young audiences.
And yet, it’s hard not to watch the technically impressive but uncannily computer-animated characters without wishing that Jenkins had insisted upon using the hand-drawn technique that made the original so appealing, rather than refining Favreau’s faux-live-action approach. Jenkins calls for far more expressivity in the virtual animals’ facial performances, which helps us identify with their emotions, even as it pushes the characters toward the uncanny valley — especially when they open their mouths to sing.
Whereas Elton John’s music translated brilliantly to Broadway, the studio has since moved away from traditional show tunes in favor of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s motormouthed lyricism. Still, Miranda’s talents remain an odd match for Disney, leaving Lebo M — a vocalist from the first movie — to elevate the soundtrack once again.
The best song is an ensemble number, “We Go Together,” drawn from a supposed African aphorism: “If you want to go fast, go alone; but if you want to go far ...” Mufasa’s challenges mirror those Simba must later overcome, but the movie doesn’t celebrate Mufasa’s might so much as his modesty. Where his believe-in-yourself wisdom powered the original, now he preaches a timely new lesson: strength in numbers and respect for one’s subjects.
Disney
Laid Platform Peacock Premiere date Dec. 19 Episodes 8 Creators Nahnatchka Khan, Sally Bradford McKenna Cast Stephanie Hsu, Zosia Mamet, Michael Angarano, Tommy Martinez
Ruby Yao (Stephanie Hsu), the protagonist of the Peacock comedy “Laid,” is variously described as “selfish,” “a nightmare,” “the worst person I have ever met” and belonging “in jail.” Hsu’s performance and Ruby’s characterization as a whole are indeed intensely off-putting, in ways both intentional and not. But Ruby’s karmic comeuppance in this series, adapted by sitcom veterans Nahnatchka Khan (“Fresh off the Boat”) and Sally Bradford McKenna (“The Goldbergs”) from an Australian show of the same name, doesn’t affect her directly. Instead, everyone she’s ever slept with starts to die — often in outlandish ways, always in the order she had sex with them.
This morbid premise evokes the late, great “Lovesick.” But unlike that British series, in which the hero’s STI leads him to revisit past relationships, the heightened stakes of “Laid” present a tonal hurdle the eight-episode season proves unable to surmount. “Laid” is breezily casual about Ruby’s (literal) body count without fully embracing the horror or bleak, slapstick comedy of its implications. In teaching Ruby a lesson about her narcissism, “Laid” ends up only reinforcing it by communicating that no actual life, or even more than a dozen in the aggregate, matters as much as Ruby’s inner one. The problems with “Laid,” much like those in Ruby’s own affairs, largely stem from Ruby herself.
“Laid” marks a series lead debut for Hsu, an Academy Award nominee for her breakout role in “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” Hsu had no problem playing an out-and-out villain for long stretches of that film, but her Ruby is more of an oblivious blabbermouth prone to shocking bouts of callousness, like failing to remember the names of people she’s inadvertently condemned to die. She’s neither foul enough for her sheer monstrosity to be the joke, like the Dubek siblings in “The Other Two,” nor sweet enough for her inevitable redemption to feel even slightly earned. Instead, she’s just annoying. In a redundant illustration of her overall obnoxiousness, Ruby is a superfan of musicals in general and “The Greatest Showman” in particular.
If Ruby fails to compel in the moment, “Laid” also struggles in its efforts to explicate the roots of her romantic dysfunction. This is mostly done not through organic interactions, but through Ruby’s therapist (Elizabeth Bowen) explaining her problems — from abandonment issues to fixating on a kind of love that only exists in popular culture — to her face. As professional practice and compelling television, the tactic is equally deficient.
“Laid” perks up a bit when Ruby partners with Richie (Michael Angarano), an ex with an obvious incentive to figure out what’s going on. Richie’s low opinion of Ruby makes him a qualified sparring partner and sorely needed foil; he’s better suited to the part than either AJ (Zosia Mamet), Ruby’s roommate and best friend, or Isaac (Tommy Martinez), her latest event-planning client and potential love interest. Sadly, Richie is late to the party, depriving “Laid” of its own sharpest tool and indicating a broader issue with pacing. Ruby’s co-worker Brad (Ryan Pinkston) turns out to play a pivotal role in the plot, but it’s not clear she even has a co-worker until several episodes in.
There are moments when a snider, sillier version of “Laid” peeks through; a scene where John Early plays himself is, per usual for the comedian, sublime. The season nonetheless ends on a cliffhanger, leaving its central mystery and its own identity unresolved. In the end, “Laid” lacks a perspective on Ruby’s affliction. Is it a metaphor for how she treats her exes, or just a chance to make comedy from the sheer agglomeration of tragedy? Whichever metric one uses, “Laid” ultimately falls short.
James Dittiger/Peacock
Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life” is as synonymous with Christmas as Santa Claus, eggnog and candy canes. Yet the film is far darker than its title suggests. George Bailey, the small-town bank manager played by Jimmy Stewart, is a man at the end of his rope. After a deposit is misplaced on Christmas Eve, George becomes convinced his business will fail. He gets drunk and grows suicidal. It’s only then that a guardian angel intercedes to show him how much he has improved his community.
Released in 1946, “It’s a Wonderful Life” was made in the shadow of World War II. The undercurrents of despair and regret that course through the film reflect the feelings of many Americans at the time. The country may have triumphed, but countless lives had been lost in that brutal conflict.
Both Capra and Stewart were veterans who had been out of the industry for years. Before the war, they had been wildly popular. After, they worried they wouldn’t be able to recapture their status. The hope was that “It’s a Wonderful Life” would be the kind of morally uplifting hit that Capra and Stewart enjoyed with “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” But when the Christmas movie debuted, it was seen as too downbeat, and audiences steered clear.
It wouldn’t catch on until television networks, searching for cheaper programming, started rerunning “It’s a Wonderful Life” in the 1970s. Only then did the brilliance of the film’s message become clear. Success isn’t measured in money or material things, but in the connections you forge with the people around you. Or as George comes to find, “no man is a failure who has friends.”
— Brent Lang
Everett Collection
