Big-budget studio features like “The Batman” or enormous Netflix series are able to self-insure against COVID and manage to shoot during the pandemic, even when cast or crew do test positive. But how are indies managing to cope with all the new union and various local safety protocols? Without liability protection, COVID insurance coverage or confident investors, it’s difficult to get a bond or secure bank financing. For any film in the $1 million-$10 million range, this can be an intractable situation right now. Ironically, movies made for well-under $1 million — the true microbudget indies — are having a little easier time of it. I know, because I just shot one.

Last spring, I started shooting my new film, “18½,” a ’70s-era Watergate thriller/dark comedy in Greenport, N.Y., which is on the far northeastern tip of Long Island. Our cast and crew were all staying at a remote 30-acre motel and cottage complex on the beach. Production was going smoothly until it came to a screeching halt in mid-March. We took our “pandemic pause” with about 80% of the film in the can, but still had four days left to shoot. Our amazing cast on-set included Willa Fitzgerald, John Magaro, Cathy Curtin and the legendary Vondie Curtis-Hall. They would have been joined by the likes of Richard Kind, Sullivan Jones and Lloyd Kaufman for our final days. Meanwhile, we had an impressive lineup of voice actors waiting in the wings for post-production to record the prominent 18½-minute tape in the movie, including Jon Cryer, Ted Raimi and Bruce Campbell as President Nixon.

For six months during lockdown, we worked on editing, voice-actor recording and got a head start on our original music score and soundtrack. In mid-September, we opened a window of opportunity to shoot our four remaining pickup days on location, with all our cast and crew available and unanimously eager to film. By then, the DGA, SAG-AFTRA and New York State all had protocols in place, and a few other shoots had already started.

But it wasn’t easy and definitely wasn’t cheap to shoot during the pandemic. Luckily, most of the cast and crew were based in New York — I was the only one coming in from California, so I packed up my sourdough starter and spent a 14-day quarantine locked in a cabin.

The guilds’ COVID rules require PCR lab-based testing for everyone on the cast and crew, once every 72 hours. The quickie 15-minute antigen tests don’t cut it, and this was at a time when normal test results in New York were taking upward of seven to 10 days. Between our budget and our remote location, an expensive Netflix-esque boutique lab or testing service wasn’t going to be feasible. Fortunately, we were able to work directly with Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan before we shot, as well as the local hospital in Greenport during the shoot, which both had their own in-house labs with 24-hour (or so) turnaround times. We had to bring actors out to our location via individual COVID-safe car services. We rigorously sanitized everyone’s rooms, catered individual meals, hired an on-set health safety supervisor and abided by strict social distancing and PPE requirements. Luckily for us, we’d already shot our kissing, dancing and fighting scenes (and like most small indies, never had any crowd scenes anyway), so unlike some productions, we didn’t have to do major rewrites or resort to using blow-up dolls or CGI extras.

As for COVID liability, the biggest and only protection was just to be as safety conscious and conscientious as possible: Don’t do anything stupid, and have contingency plans and built-in redundancy in case anyone did test positive. (Or, as was more likely the case, test results came back late and delayed the shoot by hours or days.)

For us, we planned that if our lead actors couldn’t come to set, we’d shoot those scenes as POVs and add voiceover remotely. If a supporting character dropped out, we’d give their lines to a different character, or recast using crew members already tested and on site. We also made sure that every single person on the crew had at least one backup in case we had to send them home or quarantine them until their tests came back. So, the
1st AC became our backup cinematographer; the 1st AD became my backup director; and I was the backup sound recordist and DIT. Thankfully we never had to act on these plans, but it did give us peace of mind knowing that the show would go on no matter what.

“COVID increased our budget about 20%,” says my writing-producing partner Daniel Moya, echoing what many other productions are finding. “There is no question that it is a serious budget consideration, on top of the challenges of shooting an indie ensemble period film on location. That said, we absolutely wouldn’t have shot if we didn’t feel we could pull it off without sacrificing anything safety-related.”

Most productions don’t have the same protocols for everyone on crew, breaking them into Zones A, B and C. But with a crew of barely 20 people, it made sense to test everyone. “Because of our unique set-up, everyone was Zone A. We stayed on location, so the motel itself became
a kind of set,” adds Moya. “As soon as you left your individual room, you were masking up.”

What struck me were the little changes and nuances that made shooting in these circumstances so different. On a normal production, if you’re directing, you can and should have discreet, whispered conversations with actors between takes, and with your cinematographer, 1st AC or script supervisor even in the middle of a take. But between social-distancing rules, masks, face shields and ventilation fans running between takes, it’s impossible to whisper anything. You wind up shouting direction across the room to actors.

In the middle of takes, someone would shout “Boom in the shot!” or I’d yell at my DP, “Zoom in now!!” or from a disembodied voice halfway through a shot I’d hear, “Have we started rolling yet!?!” All the subtle, quiet nuances you normally have on-set to keep things running smoothly and without bruising egos are yelled out loud for everyone to hear. And because the face shields bounce sound waves from behind, I was constantly turning around wondering who was talking to me. It’s a complete recipe for paranoia and dysfunction on a set. The upside? I was able to find time enough during all our COVID-mandated breaks to bake individual sourdough buns and cinnamon rolls for the cast and crew.

We were far from the only small indie shooting this fall. Producer Avril Speaks (“Jinn”) had a similar “pandemic pause” on her new Adam Saunders film “Dotty and Soul.” They shot in Oklahoma City last spring, and picked up part of the remainder of the film in September. “Indie filmmakers already know what it’s like to work with local communities to help find solutions to problems,” she says. “And because we have smaller crews and infrastructure, we’re able to be nimble and flexible when it comes to making the necessary adjustments for shooting in this COVID world.”

Her production wound up working closely with an Oklahoma State University lab for PCR testing for the cast and crew. “In order to keep our cast and crew safe, we’ve had to come up with clever ways to shoot actors out of certain scenes because we didn’t have the luxury of throwing money at the problem.”

In central Minnesota, the indie film “Paulie Go” similarly worked with local clinic Essentia Health on a shoot where the cast and crew stayed at a self-quarantined lakeside resort. Some productions are using mail-in PCR tests, which the guilds allow for all but the first COVID test of a shoot.

“18½” is the type of low-budget indie that raised its financing through a combination of private equity investors, donations and crowd-funding. Individuals around the world came together to finance the film based on the concept, my own track record and the level of cast and crew
we were getting along the way. Yes, famous actors were important to get the film financed, and ultimately to get it into festivals and secure distribution, but at this level, it doesn’t matter as much which famous actors we get: Indies like ours can set a start date and shoot the movie. Which also means even in non-COVID years, we don’t typically get cast insurance. (Of course, we get workers comp and production insurance, but it’s the basic kind with limited coverage that isn’t covering COVID.) Because the financing isn’t based on the pre-sales/bank/bond/cast insurance paradigm, that means the whole shoot doesn’t shut down if an actor drops out for COVID or any other reasons.

Bigger-budget indies are running into much different challenges. “The insurance companies are bleeding so hard, so they’re restricting coverage and charging a lot more than they ever did. It’s a terrible combination,” says New York-based Peter Marshall, managing director at DeWitt Stern/Risk Strategies, which brokers film insurance.

Marshall adds that even if your financing is entirely from equity sources, the insurance companies are requiring far more information about where that money’s actually coming from, and if it’ll still be there if you have to shut down. “They don’t want a show to fall apart and invent a reason for a claim.”
He adds that the real problem is for the $1 million-$5 million films. “Over $5 million, you’ve got more money to throw at safety and schedule. There’s not a whole lot of banks that want to lend on small movies now.”

Finding equity investors isn’t exactly easy now either. “The wealthy people have all left New York and L.A.!” exclaims veteran indie producer Isen Robbins (“Tesla”). “They’re all hiding out in compounds and enclaves.”

And even if you’ve got the money, it doesn’t mean you can get name actors to commit to filming. “They’re very uncomfortable to shoot right now. Everybody is ‘available,’ but agents don’t want to tie them up either,” adds Robbins. “It’s harder than ever to get actors to leave their house, and there are some actors who’ve just stopped working.”

It’s not easy or cheap to shoot during the pandemic. At least for us — and for many other indie filmmakers — we got our footage in the can, maintained creative integrity and everyone walked away safe and sound. Now I can relax and get back to the normal stresses of post-production, ongoing fundraising, festivals and distribution. The good news is if social distancing and quarantine have taught us anything this year, filmed entertainment is a unique and vital art form.

If we can keep making movies safely, then we should.

Director-producer-writer Dan Mirvish is the co-founder of the Slamdance Film Festival. His latest film is “18½.” He is also the author of “The Cheerful Subversive’s Guide to Independent Filmmaking” (Focal Press/Routledge).

Article by: Dan Mirvish for Variety

In today’s Global Bulletin, Raindance announces its winners, Göteborg goes hybrid, Movistar Plus announces a new climate change docuseries, and Dopamine hires Maria Garcia-Castrillon to lead the company’s international business. 

FESTIVALS

Raindance Film Festival’s virtual awards ceremony unspooled on Thursday, live streamed from the Leicester Square Theater, where Giorgos Georgopoulos’ dark comedy “Not to Be Unpleasant But We Need to Have a Serious Talk” was declared Film of the Festival and Finnish feature “Force of Habit,” seven stories from seven directors about the normality of sexual harassment and abuse in private and society at large, won best international feature and best screenplay.

Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe’s “He Dreams of Giants” and “The State of Texas vs. Melissa” from director Sabrina Van Tassel won best U.K. feature and best documentary feature respectively. In the former, Fulton and Pepe track Terry Gilliam’s long-fought battle to film his most recent feature, “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote,” while Van Tassel’s documentary examines the life of Texas’ first Hispanic woman sentenced to death.

New this year, the best music documentary prize went to “TOPOWA! – Never Give Up,” from directors Philip Sansom and Inigo Gilmore. Milcho Manchevski won best director for his medieval period drama “Willow,” while actor Johnny Flynn (“Stardust”) took best performance as a young David Bowie.

Cambodian-set short film “A Fallen Fruit” from director Amit Dubey won best short of the festival, which automatically qualifies the film for consideration in the short film category at the Academy Awards.

*****

Next year’s 44^th edition of the Göteborg Film Festival and its industry sidebar are going hybrid resulting from uncertainties raised by the COVID-19 crisis.

The festival proper will run Jan. 29 to Feb. 8, with the TV Drama Vision industry event unspooling Feb. 3 to 4 and the Nordic Film Market, one of the region’s largest and most important cinematic events, running Feb. 4 to 6. Both events will have a strong digital element as well as limited on-site possibilities for interested attendees.

This year, the festival will host Focus: Social Distances, a curated section of works focusing on social distancing in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Highlights include “Sweat” from Swedish director Magnus von Horn and documentary “Molecules” from Andrea Segre, a Venice out of competition player.

Accreditation will open in early December, with a strictly limited number of on-site accreditations to be released in January. The festival’s full program is scheduled for release on Jan. 12.

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GoteborgCredit: Goteborg International Film Festival

DOCUMENTARY

Spain’s Movistar Plus has commissioned a new docuseries, “Porvenir,” about the effects of global climate change, to be produced in collaboration with La Caña Brothers.

Hosted by one of Spain’s most trusted journalists, Iñaki Gabilondo, the series will be split into three episodes – “Earth,” “Sea” and “Air.” It will also be split in terms of narrative, with half of the series featuring interviews and documentary footage taken from around Spain, and the other half unspooling as a fictional production starring popular actors Roberto Alamo, Marian Alvarez and Víctor Clavijo.

The series is scheduled to premiere on Movistar Plus and its digital platforms in December 2021.

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“Porvenir”Credit: Movistar Plus

HIRING

Grupo Salinas’ production wing Dopamine has hired Madrid-based TV executive and educator Maria Garcia-Castrillon as its chief of international business development.

Garcia-Castrillon boasts an impressive resume in the field of international scripted co-productions. She has headed projects and developed strategies in the U.S., Europe and Asia, and has worked for major players such as Continental, Latido and Markab.

In Madrid, she also works in education and is the coordinator of the executive producer master’s program at the prestigious ECAM film school.

Article by: Jamie Lang for Variety 

Johnny Depp will no longer portray the dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald in the “Fantastic Beasts” film franchise, the actor announced Friday.

“I wish to let you know that I have been asked to resign by Warner Bros. from my role as Grindelwald in ‘Fantastic Beasts’ and I have respected and agreed to that request,” he wrote Friday on Instagram.

Depp’s exit from the “Harry Potter” spinoff series comes days after he lost his libel case against The Sun, a British tabloid that published an article in 2018 alleging he was a “wife beater.” Depp said he plans to appeal the ruling.

Warner Bros. confirmed Depp’s departure and announced his role will be recast before the third installment opens in theaters. The studio also pushed back the release date for the upcoming entry, which was originally set for November 2021. It will now premiere in the summer of 2022.

“Johnny Depp will depart the ‘Fantastic Beasts’ franchise. We thank Johnny for his work on the films to date,” a Warner Bros. spokesperson said. “‘Fantastic Beasts 3’ is currently in production, and the role of Gellert Grindelwald will be recast. The film will debut in theaters worldwide in the summer of 2022.”

The prequel series, set decades before the adventures of everyone’s favorite bespectacled boy wizard, is intended to be a five-film franchise. Depp, who briefly appeared at end of 2016’s “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,” returned in a more prominent role for 2018’s “Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald.” Depp’s casting has been controversial from the start due to domestic violence allegations that his ex-wife Amber Heard leveled against the star. Despite public outcry from fans, author J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros. vehemently defended the decision to stick with Depp at the time.

“Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” was commercial successful, generating more than $800 million at the global box office. Yet the series appears to already be experiencing diminishing returns. The sequel grossed $654 million worldwide, the lowest ticket sales for a movie based on Rowling’s wizard lore.

In Friday’s statement, Depp thanked fans for their “support and loyalty.” “I have been humbled and moved by your many messages of love and concern, particularly over the last few days,” he said.

“The surreal judgement of the court in the U.K. will not change my fight to tell the truth and I confirm that I plan to appeal,” he concluded. “My resolve remains strong and I intend to prove that the allegations against me are false. My life and career will not be defined by this moment in time.”

In a deal that alters the global visual effects and postproduction landscape, London-headquartered Framestore — the visual effects house whose work on Gravity and Blade Runner 2049 won VFX Oscars — in partnership with Aleph Capital and Crestview Partners, announced the acquisition of postproduction banner Company 3, VFX business Method and their sister companies.

Combined, they aim to form what the companies described as a "global creative services studio working across every part of the creative and production process." Terms of the deal and additional details were not immediately available.

"Our vision for the future of our industry is storytelling across all the media of content delivery — from mobile to Imax; and headset to theme parks,” Sir William Sargent, co-founder and CEO of Framestore, said in a statement. “Stories originated in one medium need to be able to travel across all of these and be adapted creatively and technically for each."

Added Company 3/Method president and leading colorist Stefan Sonnenfeld in a released statement: "The partnership represents the combining of two great teams, both bringing world-class expertise from our respective fields. What we have achieved as individual companies sets the tone for what we can deliver as a united force."

Founded in 1986, Framestore's work has included VFX for franchises including Avengers, Harry Potter, Guardians of the Galaxy and Fantastic Beasts; shows for streaming services, Netflix and Disney+; as well as interactive media and theme park experiences. It maintains facilities in London, Mumbai, Montreal, New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. Recent and upcoming VFX work includes Wonder Woman 1984, No Time to Die, Jingle Jangle, The Midnight Sky and Fantastic Beasts 3. In 2016, it became majority-owned by China's Cultural Investment Holdings with several members of the management team, including Sargent, retaining minority stakes.

Company 3 and Method were Deluxe brands until last summer, when Deluxe Entertainment Services, sans its creative businesses, were acquired by Platinum Equity. Company 3 is best known for color grading, with recent grading work including Wonder Woman 1984, Zack Snyder's Justice League and Top Gun: Maverick, as well as TV and commercial projects. VFX business Method's recent VFX work includes Top Gun: Maverick and Ad Astra. Following last summer's split from Deluxe, Company 3 and Method, along with former Deluxe creative services businesses EFILM, Encore, Encore VFX, Level 3 and Stereo D, began operating as an independent entity, C3M, under the continued leadership of Sonnenfeld.

In recent months, the EFILM and Encore Hollywood (Encore VFX remains unchanged) names were retired and those businesses were renamed Company 3. Those companies, as well as Company 3, were among Hollywood's most recognizable postproduction brands. EFILM was a pioneering digital intermediate company founded in 1989, whose recent work included Blade Runner 2049 and 1917, working with a frequent client, Oscar-winning cinematographer Roger Deakins. Encore had been a leading Hollywood post house in the TV business since 1985. Former Deluxe-branded post businesses such as Deluxe Toronto now also use the name Company 3.

With that rebranding, Company 3's reach grew with facilities in Hollywood, Santa Monica, New York, Atlanata, London, Toronto and Vancouver. VFX business Method has bases in Los Angeles, Atlanta, Toronto, Vancouver, Pune and Melbourne. Additionally, in 2018, Method grew with the acquisition of Robert Zemeckis' go-to VFX shop, Atomic Fiction, which at the time was rebranded as Method at its Montreal and San Francisco facilities.

Article by: Carolyn Giardina for The Hollywood Reporter

Malaysia has selected art-house horror film “Soul” (aka “Roh”) as its contender in the Academy Awards best international feature film section.

Set in an indeterminate period in the past, the film tells the story of the arrival a small girl who brings ominous predictions and strange incidents to a poor family living in a forest.

The selection was made by a special committee arranged by the National Film Development Corporation (FINAS) and was announced on Wednesday. “The selection went through a detailed evaluation process based on filming criteria like direction, storyline, cinematography, screenplay, acting, music score, artistic elements and editing apart from adhering to the rules set by the organizers of the Oscars,” it said.

A first feature by Emir Ezwan, the film had its world premiere at the Singapore International Film Festival and then the Jogja-Netpac Asian Film Festival, both this time last year. In summer 2020, it also played as part of the Fear East Film Festival in Udine, Italy.

Ezwan had previously directed the short film RM10 in 2016 and supervised the special effects for Namron’s “Crossroads: One Two Jaga” in 2018.

The film makes use of only six characters, three children and three adults, and works from a minimal budget, but makes necessity the mother of an inventive plot and clever delivery. “The skillful and careful execution in the staging, composition, editing and excellent photography, elevates the story to a level of contemporary cinema that places ‘Soul’ in a different category from any of its Malaysian contemporaries seen for years,” wrote Udine festival consultant Paolo Bertolin. “It is not only the discovery of a major directing talent, but also a gamble that has paid off for Kuman Pictures.”

The film was produced by Elise Shick, Shizreen Saleh and Amir Muhammad. The cast includes: Farah Ahmad, Mhia Farhana, Harith Haziq, June Lojong, Namron, and Putri Qaseh as the little girl.

Malaysia has intermittently submitted films for Oscars consideration since 2004. To date, none have been nominated.

Article by: Patrick Frater for Variety

Article by: Zoe Hewitt for Variety

Looks like something is still wrong with Esther.

Isabelle Fuhrman, who broke out in Hollywood as the lead of the disturbing 2009 hit “Orphan,” will reprise her role in an upcoming prequel to the film.

Fuhrman played Esther, an Eastern European child adopted by parents (played by Peter Sarsgaard and Vera Farmiga) overcoming an unspeakable loss of their own. It earned $80 million worldwide on a reported $20 million budget.

While the movie received mixed reviews, it was largely credited with delivering a twist that broke new ground in the sub-genre of disturbed little kids — Esther was not a child at all, but an adult woman with primordial dwarfism masquerading as a nine-year-old. This made her attempts to split up her parents and eliminate her siblings all the more sinister and unforgettable.

While the prequel’s plot is under wraps, Fuhrman will return as star and associate producer on the project. William Brent Bell (“The Boy,” “The Devil Inside”) will direct the pic from a script by David Coggeshall. Dark Castle Entertainment and Entertainment One will mount production, which is imminently underway.

Dark Castle’s Alex Mace, Hal Sadoff and Ethan Erwin are producing with James Tomlinson. The original film’s screenwriter, David Leslie Johnson, will serve as an executive producer with Jen Gorton. Josie Liang will oversee the movie for Entertainment One.

Fuhrman’s additional credits include “The Hunger Games” and the acclaimed Showtime series “Masters of Sex.” She will next star in “Escape Room 2” from Sony Pictures, set to release in January 2021.

She is repped by UTA and Gang, Tyre, Ramer, Brown & Passman.

"Miss Navajo" director Billy Luther recommends films made by Native and Indigenous filmmakers

For too long, the stories of Native and Indigenous people have been told by Hollywood through the eyes of everyone but us. It’s an exciting time in film and television, with more Natives writing, directing, and developing content. We’re challenging images and stereotypes and wiping the war paint off the lens.

These are the films, shorts, and documentaries that Native storytellers have shared with us in the past 20 years. A celebration of diverse voices within our community — as you’ll see, our tribes and experiences are all different from each other.

For Native American Heritage month, here is a selection of films, documentaries and shorts to seek out.

“Four Sheets to the Wind”(2007) –  by Sterlin Harjo (Seminole/Muscogee)

This coming-of-age-film by Sterlin Harjo follows a young American Indian, Cufe, played by Cody Lightning, who leaves the reservation after his father dies. His father’s death prompts Cufe to seek life beyond the reservation and explore this life outside.

Watch “Four Sheets to the Wind” on Prime Video

“Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner” (2001) by Zacharias Kunuk (Inuit)

This film was historic in so many ways. It’s the first feature film to ever be written and acted in the Inuktitut language. It also features an almost entirely Intuit cast. This film is based on ancient myth. Set in the Canadian arctic, the epic drama tells a story of love, crime, murder and ultimately family and justice.

This film blew me away. And as a storyteller, Kunuk’s filmmaking and authenticity of capturing the Intuit people had a huge impact on the Native and Indigenous communities.

Watch “”Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner” on iTunes

“Trudell”  (2005) – By Heather Rae

“Trudell” follows the extraordinary life of Native American poet and activist John Trudell. This documentary from Heather Rae traces Trudell’s impoverished childhood in Omaha to his leadership in the American Indian Movement (AIM).

Rae captures the tragedy that followed after Trudell burned the American flag at the FBI headquarters when his pregnant wife, children and mother-in-law were killed in an arson attack on the reservation.

Rae uses old Super 8 film, video footage and 16mm to paint this portrait of a man whose spirit never waned and a man who rose as an acclaimed musician and spoken word poet.

John Trudell is a fascinating and complex political artist. This is a revealing look into his life and story as an Indian in America. His story resonates especially today.

Watch “Trudell” on Prime Video

“Halpate” (2020) by co-directors Adam Piron (Kiowa/Mohawk) and Adam Khalil (Ojibway)

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“Halpate”courtesy of co-directors Adam Piron & Adam Khalil

Filmmakers Adam Piron and Adam Khalil’s short is currently on the festival circuit.

The two Adams created something so visual and unique — the Seminole tribe’s relationship to alligators. People need to see the exciting work coming out of Native country and Piron has a style and vision that makes his work so fresh and captivating. “Halpate” provides a unique insight and view into this spectacle from the side of the people who depend on it for survival.

“Shimisani”  (2009) by Blackhorse Lowe (Dine/Navajo)

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“Shimisani”Smokey Nelson

Shot in gorgeous black and white, this elegiac period piece set in 1934 captures a moment of decision for two restless Navajo sisters living with their grandmother on the reservation. One must choose to either stay at home or leave to go to boarding school.

The majority of Americans have never heard of the boarding/residential schools many Native Americans and First Nations were forced into. Lowe crafts a moving and brilliant story by Blackhorse Lowe, who continues to explore reservation life in his own unique voice. His films are unapologetic, raw – check out his features too.

Watch “Shimisani” on Vimeo

“Sweetheart Dancers” (2019) – By Ben-Alex Dupris (Miniconjou Lakota)

“Sweetheart Dancers” is a story about Sean and Adrian, a Two-Spirit couple determined to rewrite the rules of Native American culture through their participation in the “Sweetheart Dance.” This celebratory contest is held at powwows across the country primarily for men and women couples. Sean and Adrian’s story is different — they are a gay couple living Native life on the powwow trail.

Dupris provides a fresh and engaging look – one that captures the vibrancy of this centuries-old tradition and how it continues today in modern America. Dupri’s access takes us into their world, it’s refreshing.

Watch “Sweetheart Dancers” on Vimeo

“Merata: How Mum Decolonized the Screen” (2018) By Heperi Mita (of Māori Ngāti Pikiao and Ngāi Te Rangi)

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“Merata: How Mum Decolonized the Screen”New Zealand Herald

“Merata” resonates deeply because she is and was a mentor to so many Native and Indigenous filmmakers — Taika Waititi, Sterlin Harjo, Blackhorse Lowe, and Chelsea Winstanley.

The documentary is an intimate tribute from a son about his mother that delves into the life of the first woman from an Indigenous Nation to solely direct a film anywhere in the world. Known as the grandmother of Indigenous cinema, Merata’s independent political documentaries of the ‘70s and ‘80s highlighted injustices for Māori people, and often divided the country. Mita was fearless in her life, her activism and her art.

Chronicling the director’s journey to decolonize the film and television screens of New Zealand and the world, the film documents her work, her early struggles with her family and her drive for social justice that often proved personally dangerous.

Merata had a huge impact on my life when I was developing my first film “Miss Navajo.” (Streaming on WOW TV) and continues to inspire me in my writing and film work.

Billy Luther’s (Navajo, Hopi, and Laguna Pueblo Tribes) previous credits include the documentary “Miss Navajo” and the 2018 reality TV series “Alter-Native.” Luther’s narrative feature “Frybread Face and Me” was selected as part of the 2020 Sundance Institute/Film Independent Directors and Screenwriters Labs. Taika Waititi is on board to executive produce.

Article by: Billy Luther for Variety 

[This story contains spoilers for The Mandalorian season two premiere, "Chapter 9, The Marshall."]

The Mandalorian is back, and already there’s the promise of this new season being much larger in scale than the last as the story and spectacle of the Mandalorian aka Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and Baby Yoda aka the child’s journey unfolds across the galaxy.

The season two premiere of the Disney+ series picks up shortly after the season one finale with Mando searching for leads that will point him to fellow Mandalorians who can aide him on his quest to bring the child back to his own people. The information he receives, through necessarily violent means, leads him back to Tatooine where he meets a man in possession of Mandalorian armor, a man who might be familiar to Star Wars fans, but not the character one might immediately think of upon hearing about that armor.

In “The Marshall” written and directed by creator Jon Favreau, Djarin and the child find their way to Mos Pelgo, a small mining town on Tatooine. There they meet the town’s marshal, Cobb Vanth (Timothy Olyphant) who has struggled to hold the town together after attacks by Tusken Raiders and a massive krayt dragon.

While The Mandalorian marks Vanth’s first onscreen appearance, the character made his debut in Chuck Wendig’s novel Star Wars: Aftermath (2015). In the events of that novel, Vanth finds himself in an argument with Red Key criminal Adwin Charu who wants Vanth’s Mandalorian armor, which previously belonged to the bounty hunter, Boba Fett, for himself. Vanth is forced to kill Charu and further establishes himself as protector of Mos Pelgo against the threats of the Red Key Raiders and Tusken Raiders. A former slave on Tatooine who rose to become a hero, Cobb Vanth follows in the grand tradition of Star Wars heroes born into poverty on Tatooine who eventually fight against the galaxy’s abuse of power.

While Chapter 9 of The Mandalorian initially seems to set Djarin and Vanth on the path to become adversaries they quicky establish a partnership and then friendship by the end of their battle against the krayt dragon. Keeping his word, Vanth gives Djarin his armor as repayment for uniting Mos Pelgo and the Tusken Raiders against the krayt dragon. Vanth tells Djarin that he hopes their paths will cross again, and given the episode’s end, it seems safe to bet that a reunion will happen before the seasons’ end.

While Djarin and Vanth were focused on the krayt dragon, a shadowy figure clad in black had been watching them. That figure is none other than the original owner of Vanth’s armor, Boba Fett (Temuera Morrison).

Just as he had in previous expanded universe stories, now dubbed Star Wars Legends in their out of continuity status, Boba Fett survived the Sarlaac following his seeming demise in Return of the Jedi (1983). Fans have been expecting Fett to show up in The Mandalorian since the first season and Djarin’s earlier trip to Tatooine in episode 5, “The Gunslinger.” Some fans deeply entrenched in the Star Wars mythos were even already betting the spurred boot heels that approached Fennec Shand (Ming-Na Wen) belonged to Vanth rather than Fett. And in a way, they were right. Vanth did have Fett’s armor, but it seems that it was Fett who approached Shand.

Scarred and angry as ever, Boba Fett undoubtedly has revenge on his mind, and might be building a roster of bounty hunters to aide him. While Djarin and the child may be a curiosity at this point, if he’s not already working for Grand Moff Gideon (Giancarlo Esposito) that is, Fett does have reason to take personal grievance with Vanth for wearing his armor and giving it a new association.

Fett will undoubtedly be on Djarin’s tail before too long but Vanth may get caught in the cross-fire and become a casualty of Fett’s ruthlessness. Is too early to start making bets on the season’s death toll? Maybe. But Vanth is a character with established history who has proven to be immediately likeable, thanks in no small part to the charm of Olyphant’s performance. If he meets his demise, it would surely hurt, and Star Wars is a franchise no stranger to delivering hurt through the death of likeable characters. And if we’re being real here, Boba Fett has never really done much within continuity, outside of The Clone Wars, to establish himself as a threat or earn the kind of fandom that he’s acquired over the decades. Djarin and Vanth’s budding friendship, put to an end all too quickly, might be just the move that finally establishes Boba Fett as a villain worthy of all this attention.

Article by: Richard Newby for The Hollywood Reporter

The director also says the final scene in which Connery reappears as a fireman only came about because of the actor's "tax problems" and a trip back to England to meet his accountant.

Among Sean Connery’s handful of decidedly un-James Bond performances, playing ancient Greek King Agamemnon in Terry Gilliam’s hit 1981 fantasy comedy Time Bandits has to be up there.

But the actor — who’d long since completed his first run of five 007 films and had moved onto serious roles with the likes of The Man Who Would Be King, Robin and Marian and A Bridge Too Far — was only ever written into the script as a joke.

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Gilliam explains that he and co-writer Michael Palin were working on the scene in which Agamemnon defeats a Minotaur in battle and victoriously pulls off his mask, with the two jokingly adding that he "reveals himself to be none other than Sean Connery or an actor of equal or cheaper stature."

Naturally, this was only really supposed to be a bit of fun among the filmmakers and he had little hope of actually casting Connery. Yet Denis O’Brien — George Harrison’s manager, who had recently co-founded The Beatle’s groundbreaking HandMade Films production banner — just so happened to be playing golf with the actor.

"He mentioned the possibility of being in this film, and Sean liked the idea. I guess he was a [Monty] Python fan," says Gilliam, who also claims Agamemnon’s role in the film as an adoptive parent (briefly to the central, time-traveling character Kevin), was also appealing.

"I'm convinced the reason he said yes was that he was having some guilt feelings about having been an absent father," Gilliam says. "And here was a chance to be a surrogate father."

On the first day of the shoot in Morocco, which Connery knew well having shot The Man Who Would Be King there several years earlier, Gilliam says the star’s presence proved critical.

"He literally saved my ass," he says.

In extreme heat, with pages and pages of storyboard to get through, and with Time Bandit’s central 10-year-old child star Craig Warnock, in his movie debut and now standing opposite James Bond, having frozen, Connery stepped in.

"Sean looked at my storyboards, and says, 'Forget about that, you’ve not gonna get this done, kid,' " claims Gilliam. "So I started throwing pages out. Anything he said, it was ‘Yes, sir.' I suddenly felt like I was in the hands of an incredible actor with great experience. And we got through that first day thanks to his pragmatism and not my ambition."

One of the elements Connery insisted be removed was the moment, after defeating the Minotaur, where he was due to mount his horse. But this time it was more about saving face than saving time.

"He said, no, I’m gonna look like shit. Here’s what I’ll give you: I’m going to be standing in the stirrups and I’ll sit down," Gilliam laughs. "I just think he didn’t think it’d be elegant."

At the end of Time Bandits, as part of a Gilliam-style "it was all a dream, or was it" final scene, Connery reappears briefly as a fireman. The moment appears perfectly planned, but the filmmaker admits it was a last-minute addition that only came about as a result of "Sean’s tax problems."

Having run out of time with Connery in Morocco, the intended reappearance of Agamemnon leading a team of archers into a battle royal (alongside knights and cowboys) had to be scrapped.

"But Sean said something when we were first talking about the part, and he’d said, 'Oh, it'd be so great to come back as a fireman at the end.' And luckily, I remembered that moment," says Gilliam, who grabbed Connery during a brief trip back to the U.K. as the production was drawing to a close.

"He was back in England for, I think, a day meeting his accountant. And I managed to get him to come out the middle of nowhere to just put on a fireman's helmet, wink and get in the truck and go, and that was it. And it ended up this brilliant ending that wouldn't have been there if it hadn't been for Sean and his tax problems."

Gilliam — who says he was a huge Bond and Connery fan long before landing the icon for Time Bandits (his favorite films being The Hill and The Offence) — last saw the actor on the London set of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

"[Steven] Spielberg’s doing his stuff and I’m just taking to Sean. And the thing that Sean was talking about was how proud he was that he was the first and only actor at that time who got his money directly from the studio," he says.

"Whereas normally it goes to the agent, they take 10 percent and then pass it on, Sean got the money directly. And he was really proud. He was always still a working class guy. And he was Scots and you know, always feeling he’s being fucked by the English."

Article by: Alex Ritman for The Hollywood Reporter 

Kamala Avila-Salmon will introduce programs to ensure global diversity for the studio's film and home entertainment product.

Lionsgate has named Kamala Avila-Salmon to lead inclusion and diversity efforts at the Hollywood studio's Motion Picture Group.

In her role as the movie division's first head of inclusive content, Avila-Salmon will work to ensure the studio's movie and home entertainment product reflects global diversity. Her hire comes as the major Hollywood studios are looking to change traditional practices amid an industry-wide reckoning with systemic racism.

"Lionsgate is committed to making films and telling stories that reflect the broader world around us. As a senior leader in the Motion Picture Group, Kamala will have the authority and support to help us better serve our audiences. Her expertise and leadership will be vital, but the work toward progress does not rest on her shoulders alone – it will require everyone at this studio to be dedicated in joining in her mandate, and we renew that dedication today,” Jen Hollingsworth, COO for Motion Picture Group, said in a statement.

Avila-Salmon, reporting to Hollingsworth, will work alongside Lionsgate's chief diversity officer Jamila Daniel and have a hand in the movie division's greenlight process, content development, production, casting, marketing, and international sales efforts.

She joins Lionsgate from Facebook, where she helped lead the social media platform's diversity and inclusion campaigns.

“Storytelling is the lifeblood of our society and the stories we see on the big screen shape how we see ourselves and others. Inclusive stories have the power to change our world and I am honored and humbled to partner with the amazing team at Lionsgate in the mission to get more of these stories into the world,” said Avila-Salmon in her own statement.

Before Facebook, Avila-Salmon worked in marketing at RCA Records and NBC Entertainment.
Born in Kingston, Jamaica, she immigrated to New York as a child with her parents.

Avila-Salmon is a graduate cum laude of Harvard University and holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School.

Article by: Etan Vlessing for The Hollywood Reporter

Awkwafina and Oh will also produce, along with Jessica Elbaum and Will Ferrell.

Awkwafina and Sandra Oh will play sisters in an upcoming comedy for Netflix.

The untitled feature was written by Jen D’Angelo, and follows a lonely recluse has her life is upended when her train wreck of a sister vows to mend their relationship by helping her fulfill her lifelong dream: to be a contestant on her favorite game show.

Awkwafina and Oh will also produce, along with Jessica Elbaum and Will Ferrell for Gloria Sanchez, which works with the streamer on series Dead to Me. Artists First's Itay Reiss and Maggie Haskins will also produce, along with D’Angelo.

D’Angelo also penned the upcoming Hocus Pocus sequel, with previous credits on series Solar Opposites, Workaholics and Cougar Town.

Awkwafina, repped by UTA, Artists First and Schreck Rose, has a slate of upcoming projects, including Breaking News in Yuba County, Marvel feature Shang Chi and The Little Mermaid, in which she will voice Scuttle.

Oh, repped by UTA, Principal and Hansen Jacobson, is working with Netflix on dramedy series The Chair, starring opposite Jay Duplass. She is set for the fourth season of Killing Eve, which has earned her a Golden Globe award and several Emmy nominations.

Article by: Mia Galuppo for The Hollywood Reporter

ue out in 2021, the movies— 'The Manor,' 'Black as Night,' 'Madres' and 'Bingo' — will all be released on the Prime video service.
Following the release of the first four titles in their Welcome to the Blumhouse film series, Amazon Studios and Jason Blum's Blumhouse Television have announced the next four titles in the series.

Due out in 2021, the movies— The Manor, Black as Night, Madres and Bingo — will all be released on the Prime Video service.

For years, witchcraft has had a traditional look in popular entertainment — pointy hats, broomsticks, spells and potions — and usually white. Aside from a few supporting character examples, Black witchcraft has remained a blind spot in this witchy narrative. There’s no version of “Sabrina the Teenage Witch” for Black witches. So we asked the real members of this varied spiritual practice today how Hollywood can do better for Black witchcraft.

N’ganga Makhosi has been practicing hoodoo in Los Angeles her entire life, a tradition she learned from her grandmother, but says she’s never felt her practice was accurately represented in the media.

“It’s always either someone using curses, sacrificial animals, or calling on evil spirits,” she says.

Hoodoo, also known as conjuring or rootwork, is a cultural tradition practiced largely in the southern United States with ties to Yoruba religious spirits and deities, similar to voodoo and Santeria. As someone who’s active in community and spiritual healing, Makhosi finds a number of flaws in her culture’s presentation on the big and small screens.

“I would like to see more community” she tells Variety. “The [characters] are always a lone wolf, plotting somewhere in silence. I wish they would show the doctors, the teachers, the preachers. I wish there were more involvement from Black witches in the creation of these shows.”

When speaking specifically about Black witches being shown alongside white counterparts, Makhosi doesn’t mince words when she echoes a decades-long critique: Black witches are usually shown with evil tendencies and rarely get happy endings. She cites multiple examples — “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina’s” Rosalind Walker, “The Vampire Diaries’” Bonnie Bennett, “American Horror Story: Coven’s” Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau and Queenie — all of whom were left without a happy ending or whose storyline was wrought with racist plot lines. Even the CW’s “Charmed” reboot, which now follows the story of three Latinx sisters, falls short of the progressive light it aimed for, as Macy Vaughn (Madeleine Mantock) becomes an evil witch.

One film that serves as a slight reprieve from the racist storylines is Paramount Pictures’ “Spell.” Featuring a predominantly Black cast, the thriller still showcases Black witchcraft but without demonizing hoodoo as a whole. While it’s hoodoo that traps the main character Marquis Woods (Omari Hardwick) in a centuries-old attic of a witch (played by Loretta Devine), the hoodoo lessons he learned from his father as a child help save him and his family.

Nevertheless — even in fictional stories — Hollywood’s minority witch characters are unable to escape the grasp of racism and its many branches. The characters are either expected to rise above racist microaggressions and attacks or demonized for seeking retribution. Black witches have a tendency to fall into two categories — supportive friends to the more powerful and popular protagonist or a witch with some malevolent quality.

“It’s almost like Black women have to give up their power no matter what,” Makhosi says.

Historically speaking, today’s representations are a continuation of the stereotypical black characters: Zip Coon and Jim Crow, according to UCLA’s Professor of Culture and Performance Donald Cosentino. As the editor and chief writer of “The Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou,” he’s worked on a number of shows as a consultant to help create characters that dabble in the complicated religion, most recently on Marvel’s “Cloak & Dagger.”

“If you think back to America and the minstrel shows, you’ve either got the gullible, subservient, kind or else you’ve got the brilliant and malign…. One is just laughable and the other scares the s–t out of you,” he says. “Either this magic is real and you just better get out of the way or it’s just all childish and you should just laugh. Those are the extremes, but they’re real and they continue.”

New Orleans voodoo and American hoodoo are both derived from Haitian vodou, which is being represented more often on TV of late. But unlike its representations, Professor Cosentino explains there’s really not much evil to these sacred religions.

“It goes back to the Haitian revolution,” he tells Variety. “Which actually scared the s–t out of America because it was the first and only successful national slave revolution in world history. And of course, what America saw was that the vast slave population in the United States could do this too and so there was the immediate beginning of this degradation of Haiti and of Haiti’s religion, which is vodou.”

One reason why vodou is portrayed as evil is because of zombie movies. A zombie craze was sparked in the 1980s after Harvard scientist Wade Davis traveled to Haiti to investigate two documented cases of zombies and wrote about his experience with vodou in “The Serpent and the Rainbow,” which inspired the 1988 film. Coincidentally, the United States also experienced a large migration of Black Cubans into the U.S. around the same time, Cosentino says, “making this religion, not just an artifact of history, but something which is becoming more and more visible in the streets of the big cities.”

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Already aware of the many issues in Black witch stories, writer Moon Ferguson found a solution with her web series, “JuJu.” Available on Amazon Prime Video, the series follows three friends (a nod to the original “Charmed”)  who, after realizing they suddenly have witchy powers tied to Santeria and voodoo, must learn to juggle their mundane millennial issues as well as their new magical ones.

After a 10-year journey from concept to full product, Ferguson says she was surprised when she found strong interest on social media in her vision that was so different from the typical witch stories.

“I don’t know if I was blind to it or ignorant to it, but I just started to see a lot of tweets and Facebook posts like, ‘Oh my God, when are we going to get a show about Black witches?’ So I just took that as a sign,” she says.

And from many tweets to the spirits’ ears, the show took flight on YouTube. Its first season currently sits with over 100,000 views. But she never foresaw the overflowing support she would receive when she began to write. Ferguson’s lifetime interest in the supernatural elements of these religions due to her West Indian/Cuban upbringing, along with her own disappointment surrounding various witch characters, inspired her to birth the series.

A sci-fi and fantasy fan, Ferguson had done her fair share of research to also know that the genre didn’t typically tell stories from a minority perspective. Along with taking a risk as a new filmmaker and concerns over production costs, she took yet another risk: She chose to right a Hollywood wrong by using authentic casting and telling her tale through a predominantly Black cast

“It’s so Black. Even in the little roles, like being an extra in the restaurant or the work best friend like Jama in Episode 2. She’s the work best friend, but it’s not like she’s the token Black girl, best friend to boost and uplift her white coworker. It’s literally just a sisterhood within the workplace.”

When asked why she would choose to bet on telling this story from a Black perspective, she says, “My hope was ‘they’re gonna see the Black people, Hispanic people, Latinx people and they’re going to see that we like this genre too and we can make it our own.”

In Sony Pictures Classics' Nine Days, Winston Duke portrays Will, a man whose job it is to evaluate souls to be born, then watches lives unfold through small screens while sequestered in a desert home.

It's an experience he figured would be over once the film wrapped. "I thought I would be able to shed that character and go back to regular life. Six months later, we were back at it," he said on Sunday during AFI Fest's Indie Contenders panel moderated by The Hollywood Reporter's Scott Feinberg.

Now the task, he said, is to avoid the traps and fatigue of these turbulent times while also processing the horrors of seeing men like George Floyd die as well as close friends. (Duke’s Black Panther co-star Chadwick Boseman passed away from cancer Aug. 28.) "In the past nine months, I've watched a man die in seven minutes being choked onscreen and watched it over and over and over again. I've suffered losses in family and close friends and still try to ground myself in the fact that it's really beautiful to just be alive."

Winston, joined on the panel by Elisabeth Moss, Riz Ahmed, Julia Garner, Carey Mulligan, Andy Samberg, Rachel Brosnahan and Vanessa Kirby, said he's found beauty in walks, bike rides, beach sunsets, sleeping and waking up. "Finding love for the moment and the love for being present without it hurting too much," he explains. "Because being able to be hurt is also the pleasure of being here."

The 'Jane the Virgin' actor, who co-founded Wayfarer Studios discusses his new film's journey to Disney+ and his push to have more creative control: "To have a real say is to have ownership."

In March, the first L.A. screening of Justin Baldoni's Clouds took place at Warner Bros.' screening room 5. It would be the last day the studio lot was open. "Tom Hanks had just gotten COVID, the lot was empty, and no one knew if we should even be in the same room together," the director recalls. Eight months later, Clouds now can be found on another studio's streaming service after a transition that could only have happened in an industry-shifting pandemic.

Based on the true story of the late Zach Sobiech — a high schooler with osteosarcoma (a type of bone cancer) who began a music career in his final year of life — Clouds is the sophomore feature for Baldoni, 36, who is best known for his role as the love interest on The CW's Jane the Virgin. Baldoni, who grew up in Oregon, previously told Sobiech's story in the 2013 digital docuseries My Last Days, which follows people living with terminal illnesses. After working bit parts for the better part of a decade, a mid-20s Baldoni became disillusioned with acting and opted to travel the country to film My Last Days. Returning to L.A. intent on making a full transition into filmmaking, Baldoni began auditioning as an actor "just to keep the muscle warm," he says, which is when he landed Jane.

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Courtesy of DISNEY+

Baldoni (center) on the set of 'Clouds' with stars (from left) Sabrina Carpenter, Fin Argus and Madison Iseman.

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Not long after, he got his chance to direct his first feature, CBS Films' Five Feet Apart, a hospital-set love story about two teens with cystic fibrosis. The movie, which cost $7 million, grossed $91.5 million, considered one of the largest box office anomalies of 2019. Still, Baldoni looks back on the success with some regrets, having had to make creative concessions and limit shooting days because of costs. Directors, he says, "are still beholden to the studio. The only way to have a real say is to have ownership of the movie."

It was this desire to have more creative control that prompted Baldoni to launch Wayfarer Studios with the help of a $30 million initial investment from his now-business partner Steve Sarowitz, co-founder of payroll company Paylocity. Wayfarer fronted 50 percent of the budget for Clouds with Warner Bros. "That was important to me because I could make decisions I thought were best for the film," says Baldoni.

Clouds went into the pandemic without a committed theatrical release date and, as a low-budget YA movie, it was a likely candidate for a streaming release. But the filmmakers didn't think Warners' sister service, HBO Max, was the right fit given its skew toward older audiences. So, in an audacious move, the fledgling Wayfarer bought out Warners' half of the film, allowing the producers to take Clouds elsewhere.

With the help of Endeavor Content, Clouds made its way to Disney+'s acquisition team. Less than 24 hours later, Baldoni got an email from Walt Disney executive chairman Bob Iger. "He said, 'We believe in this. We can't believe we didn't make it,' " says Baldoni, who has plans to frame the exchange. Clouds, which premiered Oct. 16, is the first-ever narrative acquisition for Disney+.

With the movie going to streaming, Wayfarer forfeited any potential theatrical profit. But the director is unbothered. "I believe in the double bottom line. Sure, we have to make money because we are a business, but the value that we have at our studio is that we want to touch hearts," says the married father of two young kids. "There are going to be some projects we make to just touch hearts that we know are going to lose money. But we will never make a project just to make money."

Article by: Mia Galuppo for The  Hollywood Reporter

A director’s chair folds from side to side, holding the full weight of the user. Not just their body, but the dreams of a career in cinema that is about to be realized before the world. What’s even more profound: how many of those chairs are occupied by women of color this year, many in their feature debuts.

Regina King has been at the forefront of the discussion with her first feature, “One Night in Miami,” from Amazon Studios. She’s looking to become the seventh Black director nominated for an Oscar, following in the footsteps of the late John Singleton (“Boyz n the Hood”), Barry Jenkins (“Moonlight”) and Spike Lee (“BlacKkKlansman”), who is also in the conversation for “Da 5 Bloods.” After winning her fourth Emmy, for HBO’s “Watchmen” — making her the second-most-awarded Black woman in Emmy history — King is one of the top contenders in the director race and the front-runner for the DGA Award for first-time feature.

No Black woman has ever been nominated in the director category at the Oscars. This year that could change. Just look at the encouraging number of films that are set to qualify. 

Liesl Tommy is transitioning from the stage to the screen with the Aretha Franklin biopic “Respect,” starring Oscar-winner Jennifer Hudson (“Dreamgirls”) in the lead role. 

Radha Blank is impeccably savvy and brilliant in Netflix’s “The 40-Year-Old Version,” which she wrote, directed and stars in — and she could be a dark-horse contender for original screenplay. More projects could be coming Blank’s way. 

Channing Godfrey Peoples helmed the marvelous “Miss Juneteenth,” which stars Nicole Beharie and delivers the story of the Black American dream with attentiveness and appreciation. With George Floyd and Black Lives Matter still on the minds of Americans, Oscar voters could respond — if enough of them get to the film on the Academy streaming platform.

On the outside looking in at the moment are Gina Prince-Bythewood, who elevates the action genre with “The Old Guard” and Stella Meghie, who infuses Universal Pictures’ “The Photograph” with sensitivity and romance. And “Farewell Amor,” from Ekwa Msangi, has been making the regional festival rounds following Sundance and could gain momentum. 

The COVID-19 pandemic presented various challenges for filmmakers who debuted their movies at the Sundance Film Festival but still needed to finish tasks like coloring or sound mixing, or just needed to finish their films, period. Chloé Zhao, who produced, adapted and directed “Nomadland,” also had to edit and complete the film during lockdown. The Searchlight Pictures release has received outstanding reviews at the fall festivals, including the Toronto International Film Festival, where it won the People’s Choice Award. Zhao could be the first Asian woman to receive a director nomination if things continue to go her way. 

Zhao isn’t the only Asian filmmaker in the awards conversation. Lee Isaac Chung’s beautifully intimate “Minari” from A24 is a touching tribute to his family and could hit a sweet spot with audiences and voters. The film also presents an opportunity for star Steven Yeun to be nominated, making him just the third actor of Asian descent to be tapped in the lead category, following Oscar winners Yul Brynner (“The King and I”) and Ben Kingsley (“Gandhi,” though he was also nominated for “House of Sand and Fog”).

With so many strong contenders this year, it’s a real possibility that the Oscars’ director category could include at least two female nominees — a first in the 93-year history of the Academy Awards. A record number of Black filmmakers might even make the lineup, including George C. Wolfe for “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” and Shaka King for “Judas and the Black Messiah.”

The DGA’s first-time feature category is a litmus test for debut filmmakers perhaps breaking into the best picture and director races. The guild introduced the award in 2015 and has previously recognized Alex Garland (“Ex Machina”), Garth Davis (“Lion”), Jordan Peele (“Get Out”), Bo Burnham (“Eighth Grade”) and most recently Alma Har’el (“Honey Boy”), the first woman to win the prize. Peele is the only one to have crossed over to the Academy’s director race; though he lost, he walked away with an original screenplay statuette, in addition to being nominated as a producer. What happens in this DGA category could serve as a telling sign for one of the year’s female auteurs. 

Visit THE AWARDS HUB to see the full list of contenders by category.

Academy Awards Predictions (All Categories)

• 2021 Oscar Predictions: Best Picture
• 2021 Oscar Predictions: Best Director
• 2021 Oscar Predictions: Best Actor
• 2021 Oscar Predictions: Best Actress
• 2021 Oscar Predictions: Best Supporting Actor
• 2021 Oscar Predictions: Best Supporting Actress
• 2021 Oscar Predictions: Best Original Screenplay
• 2021 Oscar Predictions: Best Adapted Screenplay
• 2021 Oscar Predictions: Best Animated Feature
• 2021 Oscar Predictions: Best Production Design
• 2021 Oscar Predictions: Best Cinematography
• 2021 Oscar Predictions: Best Costume Design
• 2021 Oscar Predictions: Best Film Editing
• 2021 Oscar Predictions: Best Makeup and Hairstyling
• 2021 Oscar Predictions: Best Sound
• 2021 Oscar Predictions: Best Visual Effects
• 2021 Oscar Predictions: Best Original Score
• 2021 Oscar Predictions: Best Original Song
• 2021 Oscar Predictions: Best Documentary Feature

Article by: Clayton Davis for Variety

When Lulu Wang read the announcement that Ron Howard would direct legendary Chinese pianist Lang Lang’s Hollywood-produced biopic, she took to Twitter to raise the question, “Have we learned nothing from ‘Mulan?'”

In a series of tweets, the writer-director of “The Farewell” questioned the move, challenging the creative team’s limited understanding of both Chinese cultural history and the specificities of the pianist (and Wang’s) birthplace, Northeast China.

Wang used a metaphor to compare Hollywood’s efforts to produce stories about people of color and finding good American Chinese food at a restaurant: “Does this mean no one else can make this food? Of course not. I happen to love orange chicken. But isn’t it time we all expect more than orange chicken?”

“I really wish this wasn’t such a divisive issue,” Wang tells Variety, explaining that her comments have been misconstrued by the media and misinterpreted by many as meaning that only a Chinese person should write and direct this film.

“I think it’s wildly dangerous for journalists to publish false headlines,” she says. “That’s not what I said. What I said was ‘Can we be more thoughtful? Can [the filmmaker] be somebody who has an intimate understanding of the history and these cultural ramifications?'”

Wang continues, “Just because someone else tells the story doesn’t mean that Ron Howard will never work again. There’s room for all of the perspectives, but we have to just be careful of the one that is always dominating the airwaves.”

She maintains that the power to reimagine Asian stories in America largely remains in the hands of white filmmakers and executives and, as a result, their specificities and nuances often go missing in the process. While making “The Farewell,” Wang says she had to constantly make sure her voice was heard.

Authentic stories cannot be created in a vacuum. Historically, the industry relies on cultural consultants to advise on the screenplays. “Mulan,” for example, was directed by Niki Caro, a white woman from New Zealand, and written by Amanda Silver who told Variety at the film’s premiere that she conducted extensive research in order to accurately portray the film’s specifically Chinese themes.

But Asian American audiences are no longer settling for onscreen representation through a Western lens, according to sociologist Nancy Wang Yuen. Historically when white people attempted to tell stories involving people of color, she says, it has always been to their detriment. “So how do we trust someone who is of white culture? The fear is that they will not be self-reflective enough to be able to tell an authentic story that doesn’t follow stereotypes and tropes.”

Speaking to Wang’s comment about learning nothing from “Mulan,” Yuen adds that the movie failed to prove audience’s skepticism wrong, with another major studio project that renders a Chinese folktale in reductive details. “People of color want to see creatives of color tell stories about them. It’s time to let them do it, so they can point out the problems. All those holes in authenticity would   hypothetically could've been addressed by an Asian or Asian American director.

With Hollywood’s appetite for Asian-inspired content growing, the pressure is now on studio executives to realize the importance of hiring the right voices. Producer Peilin Chou demonstrated that representation in the writers’ room indeed makes a difference on “Over the Moon,” the recent animated feature from DreamWorks and Pearl Studios that’s now on Netflix.

Chou, who also produced “Kung Fu Panda 3” and “Abominable,” explains that having Chinese American, Chinese and Asian American collaborators behind-the-scenes allowed the team to gut-check their work. “There’s a lot that you can research, visiting it and living it, but some of us have it in our DNA and who we are.”

Taking the responsibility of representation seriously, Chou believes, is another benefit of hiring Asian American creatives to tell their own stories. On “Over the Moon,” she was adamant that every animated character in the film must be voiced by Asian actors and that the production would include these voices department-wide, from songwriting to animation. Sharing the room with these collaborators, Chou explains, allowed the film’s director, Glen Keane, and screenwriter, the late Audrey Wells, to raise honest questions when “something didn’t feel right.”

Yet opportunities for women of color to write personal stories remain infrequent, and even those in the room, writer-producer Adele Lim says, are often treated as “soy sauce” to pepper a pre-existing script with cultural specificities.

Lim, who was hired by Jon M. Chu to pen the screenplay of “Crazy Rich Asians,” turned down the sequel due to pay disparity with her co-writer Peter Chiarelli. The Malaysian-born screenwriter says her decision to exit the sequel had nothing to do with her personal relationship with Chu and Chiarelli, who even offered to share a portion of his pay with her.

“Being paid this way makes you feel that this is how much your contributions are worth,” Lim says of the situation. “It wasn’t about the money; it was about the industry and the system. What I make shouldn’t be dependent on the generosity of another white writer.”

She adds that it is difficult for Asian American Hollywood to be outwardly critical of its content, because it may limit future projects from being picked up. “It’s such a small community that most of us are friends with people who’ve either created them or act in them, and we don’t want to tear down something that is already fragile. So that limits us in terms of being able to give true creative criticism on a project,” says Lim.

“In my opinion, writers of color aren’t given the equal opportunities to fail,” she continues. “When an Asian American show doesn’t do well, often the studio’s reaction would be ‘Oh well, it didn’t do well, because it was about Asians and people don’t care about them.’ White shows fail all the time, but their whiteness is never considered their reason for failure.”

Wang agrees it’s not easy to speak up in these situations, but she ultimately hopes to course-correct the industry that she feels continues to take a wrong turn. “I am never the person who’s going to contribute my voice to taking down a project that’s already been made, but when a project hasn’t been made, there is still room to be thoughtful, to have critical conversations on why something might be wrong or hurtful,” she says.

“There’s one school that’s like ‘Isn’t it great that certain stories are being told, period, regardless of who’s telling them.’ Being grateful has never moved the needle forward. I think it’s time to stop being so damn grateful for being thrown a crumb when we could have the entire loaf of bread.

Article by:  Janet W. Lee for Variety

Terri Taylor has been the in-house casting director for Jason Blum’s Blumhouse Prods. since 2013, a job that’s unusual at the studio level. Blum and Taylor have built a language and relationship that goes back even further, to the studio’s 2010 “Paranormal Activity 2.”

When she’s not working on casting Blumhouse productions, Taylor invests her time in mentoring other casting directors within the Blumhouse world. “She is my mentor,” casting director John McAlary says. The two first met in 2007 when he first worked as an assistant. “She oversaw the process on “Welcome to Blumhouse.” He adds.

With “The Craft: Legacy,” the reboot of Andrew Fleming’s 1996 classic, debuting on-demand on Oct. 28, Taylor talks with Variety about the type of actors the studio is looking for, and shares her process for matching talent to story. 

You and Jason Blum go back almost 10 years. How has the relationship grown?

I met Jason in 2010 when I was at Paramount and the first “Paranormal Activity” had been released, and we started talking about the second one. That was our first collaboration. Between 2011 and early 2014, I cast six movies for Jason. That time was about building trust and getting to know his take, helping to build the Blumhouse model and helping to educate agents and actors on how we wanted to make scary, low-budget movies for wide release. By late 2013, Blumhouse had grown and Jason needed someone in-house to cast all of the Blumhouse films and oversee television.

For me, it was an exciting and incredibly rich opportunity to deepen my relationship with Jason and to have this position that none of my colleagues are doing in the audition space — and having a voice at the conference table in an executive capacity and as a department head.

Were you always a fan of horror, psychological thrillers and paranormal films?

I wasn’t. I could probably name five movies that I bought tickets to see in the theater, including “Cape Fear” and “The Sixth Sense.” I had so much to learn about the genre and its history. The Blumhouse stories are relatable because we see the family. The stories are about families in jeopardy, or families dealing with extraordinary circumstances. We search for actors who can approach the role from a human level, not some sort of overarching broad performance, but bring real human emotions and fear.

Applying that [persona] to scary movies has been very successful for us in keeping things human and relatable. We’re approaching “Paranormal 7” in 2021.

How do you tackle casting a franchise movie that has had so much success?

Casting a “Paranormal Activity” film is different than anything else we do. All auditions are improvised. We don’t have a screenplay, and we don’t provide slides. We just provide a fictional character description that says, ‘You are a coach, a father; you have two kids.’ We build upon that and pair actors together. There are times when we can see a [bigger] opportunity. An example of that was “The Craft.” We wanted to build that cast thinking it could be a franchise. “The Craft” is a cult classic.

There is a fair amount of pressure. You never want to lose sight of how beloved the title is. We were faithful to the story the director and screenwriter of the reboot, Zoe Lister-Jones, wanted to tell — all while trying to meet or exceed the high bar set by the first film. There were major challenges because those characters are so specific and not necessarily ones we’ve seen before. We did a major search for Zoey Luna, who plays a transgender young woman. She fit so perfectly with the other girls, and that chemistry is hard to capture. We work hard to make sure we achieve that in our casting process with more than one chemistry read.

Article by: Jazz Tangcay for Variety