#greenlight hollywood

[kkoongie]

I don’t understand how a Minecraft movie even got made lol

[thelifeofchuckmovie]

When it comes to ending the world, Stephen King is a repeat offender. He has brought life as we know it to a brutal conclusion several times over the decades, usually highlighting the cruelty and desperation that erupts among the last to go. But his 2020 story “The Life of Chuck” uses doomsday to evoke some unlikely sentiments: Wistfulness. Gratitude. Even joy.

The idea of creating an apocalyptic version of It’s a Wonderful Life is what led filmmaker Mike Flanagan to call dibs on the rights to the novella more than four years ago. The breakdown of society, extinction-level natural disasters, and the disintegration of reality itself is explored through the lens of one relatively meek and mild accountant, played by Tom Hiddleston, whose memories and choices are mysteriously connected to these tribulations. Retirement posters congratulating him on “39 great years” pop up everywhere. But who is this guy? What job does he do (or did he used to do)? And why does it matter so much to the fate of the world? This apparent nobody named Chuck Krantz has lived larger than anyone thought possible.

Having explored King country before in 2017’s Gerald’s Game and 2019’s The Shining sequel Doctor Sleep, Flanagan got involved after reading an early copy of “Chuck” before it was published in the collection If It Bleeds. The Haunting of Hill House and Fall of the House of Usher creator produced the film independently, believing it might be too offbeat for risk-averse studios to greenlight. He even secured a waiver from the striking Hollywood guilds last year to move forward with the shoot while the rest of the industry was stuck in the work stoppage. Now he and Hiddleston are ready to reveal the finished version of The Life of Chuck as it heads to the upcoming Toronto International Film Festival, where it will screen for potential distributors.

Among the skeptics about this adaptation was King himself, according to Flanagan. “His initial responses to me were a little like, ‘Oh, okay. Yeah. If you think that’s a movie…,’” he says. “He did say several times that he thought it would be a challenge to get it supported through traditional means.”

King has now seen the finished movie and no longer has doubts. He described it to Vanity Fair as “a happiness machine.”

“Well, he’s written something very tender and very wise,” Hiddleston says. “I think there is a great wisdom in the soul of the story, which is that it takes courage to hold on to what is good in a world that feels like it’s falling apart.”

Flanagan hopes others see it that way too, although the overpowering dread that begins the story may be more immediately relatable. “I’ve heard it said that every generation feels a little like the world is ending at some point, [but] I still feel like it’s different for us,” the 46-year-old filmmaker says with a mordant laugh. “Institutions we took for granted as propping up our society are failing left and right. Our politics have degraded spectacularly. The sense that it’s breaking down, that the world is moving on, has been increasingly palpable. When I talk to my parents or members of older generations who have been through their own turbulent times, the thing that strikes me is that they’re like, ‘Oh yeah, this is really bad.’”

But…it’s not entirely bad. And that’s the underlying message of The Life of Chuck as its various mysteries play out. “There’s no sense of terror in the way that King drew it,” Flanagan says. “Even as the world feels as though it’s ending, people become introspective, they reach into their past for loves that have left their lives for one reason or another. Strangers engage in open and fearless communication.”

It’s an indie-film variation on the big-budget cataclysm story. “A disaster movie has people meeting the end while running from tidal waves, and this story has people sitting quietly holding hands looking at the stars,” Flanagan says.

The key to it all is Chuck himself, although he doesn’t turn up onscreen until the second segment of the three-act story, which plays out in reverse chronological order.

The beginning is actually the end, as the whole world circles the drain. Caught in this spiral is Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave), a school teacher trying to apply logic to the planet’s troubles; Karen Gillan (Guardians of the Galaxy) is his ex, a hospital worker determined to save everyone she can; Matthew Lillard (Scream) is a construction worker neighbor who finds zen amid the chaos; and Carl Lumbly (Alias), plays a funeral director who has dedicated his life to easing people through death.

The end of the movie is actually the beginning, showing young Chuck (Benjamin Pajak) when he was a boy being raised by his grandparents (Mia Sara of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Mark Hamill). The insight of these two—coupled with the otherworldly revelations he finds in an eerie room tucked into the peak of their Victorian home—help him learn to seek out bright spots when life is marred by sorrow and darkness.

In elementary school, young Chuck discovers some important things about himself thanks to guidance from a brusque dance instructor (Samantha Sloyan), and a kindhearted English teacher, played by Kate Siegel, who gives the boy (not to mention the audience) some important information that serves as a code breaker for the story's more cosmic puzzles.

As for the middle of the film: It’s a dance number. That’s when Hiddleston steps in.

Compounding the peculiarity of The Life of Chuck is the question: Why is this song and dance sequence so important? The answer is for the movie to reveal, but it matters a lot. “The life of every human being is a constellation, as expressed in this film,” Hiddleston says. “There are certain moments which will burn most brightly as individual stars. Sometimes it feels like the world is going to hell in a handcart, and it’s full of pain and suffering, and it is—but there are moments of deep joy and deep connection.”

Hiddleston shows the audience this single moment in the life of a buttoned-up fellow who somehow controls the destiny of the world. It’s not necessarily the most important day in his life, but it’s a memorable one involving a street drummer (Taylor Gordon), a lovely stranger (played by Annalise Basso), and a fateful decision to cast aside caution and cut a rug. “It’s a reminder to do whatever it is that expresses whatever gives you that feeling of being alive,” Hiddleston says. “Whether it’s music or dancing or math or writing or creativity—do it. Do it now. Those moments are what you’ll remember.”

Flanagan considered casting a relative unknown as Chuck to “give the audience the experience of ‘Who the hell is this person?’” as the peculiar retirement signs begin to appear in the midst of the apocalypse. But he felt the promise of the Loki star would build more curiosity as the world falls apart. “You grow an enormous amount of anticipation to finally spend time with an actor like Tom, who can be a literal god in one story, and then an everyman in another,” Flanagan says.

A TikTok video of Hiddleston getting his groove on sealed the deal. “He had a completely unfiltered joy on his face,” Flanagan says. “He was a good dancer, but that wasn’t what struck me. I wasn’t amazed by the technique so much as the degree of happiness that was radiating off of him. The look on his face made me smile the same way I smiled reading that particular portion of the book.”

The resulting scene was created in a month-long collaboration between Flanagan, Hiddleston, Basso, choreographer Mandy Moore (So You Think You Can Dance, and La La Land), and Gordon, a real-life percussionist who performs under the name the Pocket Queen. “Taylor was there for all of the dance choreography. She wrote that piece of music for that performance. They built it together,” Flanagan says.

Hiddleston rattles off the lists of influences: “I had to learn in six weeks the full regime of any dance training. We did jazz, swing, salsa, cha-cha, the Charleston, bossa nova, polka, quickstep, samba. We were trying to tip our hat to anything that might have influenced Chuck. It might’ve had a bit of Gene Kelly or Fred and Ginger. Certainly moonwalking—Stephen King is very specific about the moonwalk.”

Precision was not the goal, exuberance was what they sought. “We need to always bear in mind that this man is an accountant. We needed this to be an earnest, escalating explosion of joy, and a remembrance of who he was,” Flanagan says. “It’s a chance to step back into the skin of his younger self, not caring that his feet are going to kill him the next day, not caring that he’s going to wake up with a horribly stiff neck.”

A surprising thing happened while shooting the scene over the course of several sweltering afternoons in the deep South. “I burned holes in my shoes,” Hiddleston says. “I was dancing out on the asphalt in Alabama, and by the time we’d finished, you could see my socks through the soles.”

The sequence begins awkwardly: Chuck is self-conscious as he first hears the busker’s rhythm while walking back from a banking conference. That feeling quickly gets shaken off. “Tom was very committed,” Flanagan says. “He was like, ‘If I look silly, that’s fine. As long as I look happy.’”

Flanagan remembers being in a bad place when he first discovered “The Life of Chuck.” Then again, everybody was.

His copy of the manuscript arrived in March 2020. “That was just as the world shut down for COVID,” he says. “We had been a week away from starting principal photography on Midnight Mass in Vancouver and had fled across the border before it closed to make it back to the States. We were hunkered down in our homes and had no idea if this was going to last for two weeks or if this was going to last forever.”

With everything halted as the lockdown set in, Flanagan had plenty of time to do nothing but read. The new King book seemed like the perfect escape. Except…

“The first third of ‘The Life of Chuck’ just rattled me,” he recalls. “There’s no way he wrote this before the world ground to this bizarre halt—but he did. And the feeling of anxiety, and uncertainty, and that everything was falling apart came roaring out at me. I wasn’t sure I could finish it. It just felt too close to the anxiety I was feeling.” But he kept turning the pages. “By the end of it, I was in tears, and incredibly uplifted, and convinced I’d read maybe the best thing that he’d written in a decade. I just was floored by the thing,” Flanagan says. “So I fired off an email to him right away saying how much I loved the story, how incredible I thought it was, how meaningful, and important, and how it had really tattooed itself on my heart and said, ‘It’s the movie I want to make so that it’ll exist in the world for my kids.’”

King’s response: Not so fast. Flanagan and his producing partner, Trevor Macy, had at that point secured the rights to King’s fantasy saga The Dark Tower through their company, Intrepid Pictures. The eight-book series is threaded throughout King’s other works, and adapting it was a massive undertaking that Flanagan is still working to make happen. Other filmmakers had either abandoned the project, were canceled midway through, or bombed miserably. The author didn’t want him to be distracted. “He doesn’t like to give the same filmmaker more than one thing, because it typically means one thing is not advancing at all,” Flanagan says. “He said, ‘Well, let’s focus on The Tower and I’ll try to keep this one available for you for later.’”

The quest to The Dark Tower remains a priority for Flanagan, but a number of disruptions to that epic undertaking led him to reapproach King last year about Chuck. Intrepid’s deal with Netflix, where they had created Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manor, and other shows, had come to a close, and Intrepid signed a new development agreement with Amazon. That meant starting over on The Dark Tower. Meanwhile, the threat of a double-barreled strike by writers and actors was on the horizon, stalling nearly every major new project. The industry plunged into another production-halting lockdown, this time over contract impasses rather than a virus.

Since The Dark Tower was suddenly further off on the horizon, Flanagan saw a chance to make The Life of Chuck happen in the short term. “It’s so rare that I get to approach any project that just has not an ounce of cynicism to it. I just really believed in this thing,” he says. “But it was also clear that we would have an incredibly uphill battle bringing the story to any major studio. They would try to make it as familiar as possible, instead of leaning into what makes it so different.”

King gave Flanagan his blessing to proceed. “I was off like a shot,” the filmmaker says. “I think I turned in the draft to him before he got around to sending the formal agreement.”

For everyone involved, The Life of Chuck became a bright spot in an otherwise dismal time, which matches the theme of the film. “There is a profound optimism in this story,” Hiddleston says. “As the world is spinning off its axis, there are moments of magic.”

[littledigits]

What is your take on the current animation industry and the way its heading for AI and job hiring? Ngl its looking a little bleak and I would love to hear your insight!

HOO. This is going to be a long one, but good question. Please keep in mind I am but one person with my one opinion.

I'm going to give you a little context to what was leading up to the job bust, the shit reality, and the hopeful conclusion.

Its always been a completive industry and unfortunately it will more-so for the next little while, even compared to when I graduated. The reality is, the animation industry GREW SO MUCH over the streaming services greenlighting projects to a point where I was like . WHERE ARE ALL THESE CARTOONS GOING. It felt like we went from nothing to a ton and was amazing that so much work was going around (looking back we see why it was too good to be true) A lot of schools and studios responded to this by growing as well. This means while it may recover, I dont see a way that it could reach the highs we had in the 2015-2021 period - because that wasn't representative of a sustainable model or a model they were planning on sticking with forever.

So the streaming bubble popped, and a lot of the reason why it popped was because streaming wasn't as lucrative when everyone joins in. This is the reality of working under the umbrella of Hollywood companies. Mergers happened, projects got pulled - and it probably wouldn't have seemed as big if we didn't have THE MOST JOBS EVER like, just a year before. It was a big rug pull. With the huge growth came a steep fall and all of it because of bad investments and choices of the people with the money. aka, we all wanted to chase someone elses idea thats making money for them and it didnt pay off - which leads me to AI.

While AI is scary and will do/is doing damage, it will not last forever. The industry only looks like its heading this way because the people who like AI are desperate to make it work, so they're pushing at it from all angles despite no AI company being profitable. ( once companies see that its not going to make them money they will drop it ) Its really nothing but a glorified pattern and predictive text machine that of course looks impressive when you feed it oodles of data. People who live on linked in and drink management courses like its water think that sort of shit is impressive, but they dont actually know how it works and just buy into the tech industry hype cycle . What we're seeing is them trying to make fetch happen, and it wont. (some useful bits will stay around but it doesnt 'think', a lot of this is just pure fakery)

You can trace a lot of things that lost jobs to bad investments from people higher up, who just jump around to different jobs when they make a mistake, or just simply get a bonus.

Its a symptom of the greater issue which is the monopoly of people in media and tech, which have been merging over the years with digital streaming. Lack of regulation in industries since the 80s has lead to a lot of the shit you see all around you, and it starts to be controlled by people who only want numbers goup. Overall , I think the animation industry in north America is entirely too controlled by the major studios and broadcasters, and that's going to be a tricky thing to navigate since they're very mask off about what their intentions are at this point. Its a growth-at-all-cost mindset that leads to things like AI, so while im confidant that what we see as 'ai' will die , we do have to realize as artists that as long as these people are in charge they will always try to find a way to cut the bottom line and not invest in the industry.

Its totally reasonable to feel bleak, but that's the intent. They want people to have to settle for less, and they want them to forget a time that it was better. Demoralization is part of the tactics, and 'starving' people out of jobs so they're easier to negotiate with is extremely common and pretty much what is happening right now. And this is exactly why you're seeing more union push from lots of industries because we're ALL being taken advantage of here. While it feels hopeless, this actually puts us much more in line with the artists and storytellers before us. They were up against the same people fighting the same fight, they were just called communists haha. Different words, same tactics, but the history of moments like this in the entertainment industry is more common then the shiny package we tend to grow up idolizing . ( its good to admire but we do often put these products up on a pedestal to our detriment )

The industry will survive, and it will change into something different which is GOOD. Because what it is right now, while workable and still full of things I enjoy - is NOT sustainable. And if we want to keep the skills of 2d animation, stop motion or any sort of creative trade to continue, we NEED sustainability. This is why collective action is so important, and so is diversity in the amounts of media we have! For example

YOUTUBE INDIE ANIMATION IS KICKING BROADCASTERS ASSES RIGHT NOW AND THEY NOTICE IT.

And while there are ups and downs regardless if you work in a small studio or a large one, I am hopeful that the conversations I've been seeing will spark change. Because as sucky as it is , compared to the rest of my time in the industry ( i think im on like 16 or 17 years now ) , I've never seen so much engagement or even discussion on the topic which says a lot. I think as artists we are always up for putting a lot of hard work into our skills, I think if enough of us point that passion into our community and collective action, we can start building an industry that does not have such a power imbalance, and that starts with community, education and engagement ! ( learning about the history of unions/animation/hollywood/workers rights,and then sharing that stuff! just through convo like this !) I hope this gives you some perspective, its something we're going to have to work at, but not something that is impossible. A lot of how the animation industry functions is not great, but what matters is that we work to make it better and the people who HAVE been doing that work are the ones that you want to find. They are the people with the proactive solutions to show you how to take power back. It helps fight the bleak feeling <3 tldr :

the solution is that as much as it sucks we try to make it better for those who come after us - and you can be involved in that job or not ! even just by supporting or being aware. This isnt animation is all careers, we're all effected by the same thing.

never forget.

[skinnybritishdudes]

My sister works at a film studio in Hollywood that contracts with Netflix. While at brunch today I was helplessly babbling about my hyperfixation as you do, and mentioned the frustrating situation with not knowing whether it’s been renewed and not understanding why it’s taking so long. She said “you want the inside info?” Their Netflix stages have been dark almost all the time since covid, between that and the various strikes, and that they haven’t been greenlighting ANYTHING until all labor issues have been resolved. She said the Teamsters just signed their deal a couple weeks ago and it’s her understanding things will start moving again soon. She didn’t seem to think there was much chance that a decision had been made and they were keeping it secret, it’s just that everything’s been on hold.

For whatever that’s worth!

[cultofsappho]

maybe if the rwrb movie does well, they might greenlight a one last stop movie?

🥺 hello big director straight ppl in Hollywood the lesbians would like a turn when you have a second pls ty

[gaykarstaagforever]

The 1999 Mystery Men movie is now free on YouTube, I guess because Universal finally realized that if no one paid to see it when it came out and so no one remembers it, no one is going to pay $3 to rent it.

Which is a shame (for the people who made the movie, who gives a shit about Universal), because it's good. Based loosely on the Flaming Carrot / Mysterymen indie comics of the 1980s (I'm only familiar Cerberus the Aardvark, which the same company published around the same time), it is meta superhero parody in the style of Gunn's Suicide Squad / Peacemaker, just 20 years before any mainstream American audience would give a crap.

This is a universe where there is one real superhero, who is so effective that crime is basically non-existent, so that the sole superhero himself is getting bored. When he comes up with a scheme to give himself something to do, it goes badly, unleashing a notorious supervillain on Champion City. When the Mystery Men, obnoxious wannabe heroes with virtually no powers, try to help, they typically fail, but so badly this time that now they are the city's only hope. Will they put petty grievances aside and learn to work together before Cassanova Frankenstein destroys the entire city?

Well, of course they will. It's a superhero movie. The point is watching fun wacky characters bounce off each-other for 2 hours, and this certainly delivers on that. The cast is a who's-who of 1999 charisma, with notable turns by Geoffrey Rush as the scene-chewing, disco-themed Frankenstein, Wes Studi doing Batman if Batman was doing Yoda, and Tom Waits as a benevolent mad scientist with a grandma fetish. Paul Reubens doing a lisp and Kel Mitchell in blonde Sisqo hair are especially fun as a team within a team, farting and getting naked on their path to victory.

Ben Stiller is the lead, playing a typical Ben Stiller-is-the-lead character, the kind of well-intentioned but self-absorbed incompetent that is charming when Ben Stiller plays him in movies, but everyone would despise in real life. And if you are a person who also isn't a fan of him doing this in movies, you'll also not like it, here. I like Ben Stiller doing this, but Roy here really is a useless pain in the ass until the very end.

There are lots of Gunn-type sitcom jokes about superhero tropes and general goofiness, and similar tonal shifts between slapstick comedy and people being slowly melted. Fans of The Boys will enjoy Greg Kinnear as a G-rated Homelander, complete with product placement on his costume.

It is about 20 minutes too long at 2 hours, and has way too many annoying closeup 90s fight scenes with mediocre choreography. More scenes of just the cast improving should have replaced a lot of this, because this is what the movie is really about. And there is some amazing 1998 CG that is used well, but man. It looks like what it is, certainly.

Props on someone greenlighting a superhero parody movie in a world where the only things to make fun of were the Schumacher Batman movies (Blade, the first "real" Marvel movie, came out the same year as Mystery Men). But it is obvious that only hardcore comic book nerds were going to connect with this, and there were not enough of them, outside of the big mainline "event" comic speculator market of the 90s, to make up for a $68 million budget.

This was made specifically for a movie-going public that has fallen in love with good superhero movies, then gotten sick of them, and appreciates someone making fun of them in a smart way. That is a thing we barely have now, in 2024. Mystery Men the big budget movie really is a thing that was just 20+ years ahead of its time. Watching it feels like watching an episode of Peacemaker that is intentionally aping the style and production design of Batman Forever. I suppose it is worth seeing, just for that.

Also the 90s Hollywood cameos. Dane Cook shows up, unfortunately. No, he isn't funny. He is a "superhero" who burns people with a waffle iron. I realize that may sound funny, but believe me, it isn't when Dane Cook does it.

See for yourself. That scene is in the original Smashmouth video for "All Star". Because that song being from the Mystery Men soundtrack before Shrek is literally all most people know about this movie.

And that's not fair to it. Go watch it.

[fagbatman]

i think hollywood is fucking allergic to making another batman and robin movie after they have shown time and time again that theyd greenlight anything except a genuine adaptation because they are so deeply ashamed of the schumacher films and the 66 show even though the latter is beloved esp in recent years

[gracie-bird]

R.I.P JAY KANTER (December 12, 1926 – August 6, 2024) agent of Grace Kelly during her career as an actress in Hollywood and, in 1987, produced, the biographical documentary "Grace Kelly: The American Princess".

He got the relative newcomer Grace Kelly $750 a week for a guaranteed six weeks of work in 1951 on High Noon - according to Donald Spoto’s 2010 book, "High Society: The Life of Grace Kelly" - and repped her when she signed a seven-year deal with MGM in 1952.

Moreover, Kanter married Judith Balaban from 1953 to 1961, one of Grace Kelly's bridesmaids and author of the bestselling book "The Bridesmaids: Grace Kelly and Six Intimate Friends".

[leighlew3]

Seems there's some potential progress in SAG-AFTRA strike negotiations...

Fingers crossed for a resolution this week, or early next week max.

Actors need to go back to work ASAP, they're hurting. Teamsters/crews especially desperately need to get back to work, as many of them are literally losing everything.

Even us writers, while we're 'back to work' -- development is very hard right now given that projects can't be attaching actors again yet which is a vital part of the process for packaging and sales and greenlights and more...

So please keep the positive energies flowing for SAG-AFTRA to get a fair deal ASAP and Hollywood as a whole get back to it.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

This day in history

TOMORROW (May 14), I'm on a livecast about AI AND ENSHITTIFICATION with TIM O'REILLY; on WEDNESDAY (May 15), I'm in NORTH HOLLYWOOD with HARRY SHEARER for a screening of STEPHANIE KELTON'S FINDING THE MONEY; FRIDAY (May 17), I'm at the INTERNET ARCHIVE in SAN FRANCISCO to keynote the 10th anniversary of the AUTHORS ALLIANCE.

#20yrsago Open source games from 1978 https://www.atariarchives.org/basicgames/

#15yrsago Why RIAA lawsuits matter to the Free Software Foundation https://torrentfreak.com/the-war-on-sharing-why-the-fsf-cares-about-riaa-lawsuits-090513/

#10yrsago Clapper’s ban on talking about leaks makes life difficult for crypto profs with cleared students https://twitter.com/mattblaze/status/464841668391624705

#10yrsago Ukip councillor sends cops to activist’s house, ask him to delete critical tweet https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/may/12/police-ask-blogger-remove-legitimate-tweet-ukip

#10yrsago Bletchley Park Trust erects “Berlin Wall” to cut off on-site computer history museum https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/12/bletchley-park-national-museum-computing-berlin-wall-restored-colossus-codebreaking

#5yrsago Vancouver’s housing bubble was driven by billions in laundered criminal proceeds https://www.seattletimes.com/business/billions-in-dirty-cash-helped-fuel-vancouver-b-c-s-housing-boom/

#5yrsago Supreme Court greenlights Apple customers’ lawsuit over App Store price-fixing https://www.wired.com/story/supreme-court-apple-decision-antitrust/

#5yrsago Amazon’s monopsony power: the other antitrust white meat https://www.promarket.org/2019/02/15/is-amazon-violating-the-sherman-act/

#5yrsago Trump supporters astonished to learn that the man they gave $20m to “build the wall” has nothing to show for it https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/05/11/group-raised-more-than-million-build-wall-now-some-supporters-want-answers/

#1yrsago Revenge of the Linkdumps https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/13/four-bar-linkage/#linkspittle

[saijspellhart]

Hey guys, Fiction can be Effed up and thats ok.

for all you creatives out ther worrying about how outraged people will be if you write the effed up story you want to write. Please remember. Without effed up stories we wouldnt have the entire horror genre.

And i dont know about you but the entire horror genre is a literal work of visual and storytelling art. One of the absolute last bastions of sandboxes for original ideas.

The rest of hollywood is hell bent on remakes and adaptations of preexisting media. But Horror always has a HUGE amount of entries every year from low budget and indy creators who are making glorious original content. With original ideas. And even film studios frequently greenlight original horror more often than other genres.

So when you are out there writing your original stories with the most depraved dead dove content imaginable. And you are scared people will hate it. Please know that there is an entire genre that celebrates the creativity of that content.

And that effed up creativity doesnt need to stay contained in the horror genre either. But without that freedom of creativity there wouldnt be a horror genre at all.

Purity culture would purge the horror genre.

So please keep creating your dead dove content.

Fake people and fake stories are not a reflection of real life. You can make a Saw franchise without wanting to commit torture pron in real life.

[ottermatopoeia]

Hollywood stop remaking everything and actually greenlight original ideas, do THAT challenge

[onenettvchannel]

THIS JUST IN: Wakfu Season 5 is reportedly in development, greenlighted and confirmed -- says Ankama Animations and France Televisions [#K5NewsFMExclusive]

(Written by Rhayniel Saldasal Calimpong / Freelanced News Writer, Online Media Reporter and News Presenter of OneNETnews)

ROUBAIX, FRANCE -- French entertainment company & public broadcaster 'Ankama Animations' and 'France Televisions' revealed on Wednesday night (June 12th, 2024 -- France local time) on social media that the most highly anticipated and popular animated series 'Wakfu' officially greenlighted, and is in development for Season 5, which supposedly the 4th and final season pushed back to one more season within the next several years to come.

In an exclusive visual poster photo on Instagram (part of Meta Platforms Inc. [MPi]), per first obtained by K5 News FM: Dumaguete… Mr. Yugo Sharm, who was the adult Eliatrope individual, and recently married with Princess Amalia Sheran Sharm, where portals open to seek what was happening in his next story-driven adventure, sometimes his life after a steamy married couple (YuMalia) in Sadida Kingdom.

Show creators themselves at 'Ankama Animations', citing from the American news magazine 'Variety' and 'Deadline Hollywood' that the aforementioned French entertainment company acquires a minority stake with 'INTHEBOX'. While the anime-inspired independent animation company 'Studio Unagi' eyes with larger development slate of projects ramp up its production volume.

Yet, a 'Wakfu' franchise spin-off, revealing a brand new free-to-play roleplay gaming 'Waven' of 'Ankama Games' may soon have a potential adaptation under the same name as a French animated series or a movie, if all goes into the plan. The old and familiar faces are a different account, aside from a televised French animated production of the main protagonist charter of the franchise for Mr. Yugo Sharm.

As you may remember in context, some months ago this year in 2024, at the end of Season 4 finale episode… A momentous occasion between 'Yugo' the Eliatrope and Princess Amalia Sheran Sharm, the beloved main protagonist character couples of the series are now finally united in marriage at the majestic Sadida Kingdom. The union of Mr. Yugo Sharm and Prncs. Amalia Sheran Sharm marked a significant milestone in their journey together for all these years. A beautiful sunset over the kingdom as its warm orange-like glow fell upon the newlyweds via portals. The kissing ended in cliffhanger to wrap last new episodes.

Things are in dark turn for lovemaking after marriage as a French cartoon show for mature audiences as a follow-up, per the latest manga webtoon comic sequel of 'Wakfu: The Great Wave' - Chapter 1, which is way too dark to sell for public broadcasters on a French kids and teens programming block 'Okoo' for France 4, since this webtoon manga chapter is no longer animated, and in part for the renewal development of Season 5 in production at 'Ankama Animations'.

Case in point, edited versions in most of its episodes for targeted demographic of kids and teens may be possible on national TV aside the sex scenes from the start in manga webtoon comic sequel, while the potential uncensored bits was subject for the approval to the public French broadcaster, if later fitted for the mature-rated content to 'France TV Slash'. Along the way, the Season 4 finale of Wakfu not only left fans in awe of the beautiful union between Mr. Yugo and Prncs. Amalia, but also set the stage for new adventures and challenges in the upcoming 5th Season.

Meanwhile, the news of the 5th Season of Wakfu comes as a joyful surprise to its fans worldwide, especially in the Philippines, United States of America (U.S.A.), Canada and across the globe. The show lovers among us are up for another fantastic new season from creators at 'Ankama Animations' and 'INTHEBOX'.

With the previous seasons having left traditional and online streaming viewers at suspense, this upcoming season is bound to create even more excitement, fantasy and thrillers that will be made on large screens on television and online.

You can relive the excitement of 'Wakfu', streaming now on the 'Okoo' app and on 'France TV' website, while you wait for potentially extra final 5th Season. Netflix is also available globally for you to stream at your own time.

POSTER PHOTO COURTESY: Ankama Animations via IG PHOTO BACKGROUND PROVIDED BY: Tegna

SOURCE: *https://www.instagram.com/p/C8H4_7sC1XZ/ [Referenced IG Captioned Photo via Okoo] *https://variety.com/2024/tv/global/wakfu-creator-ankama-inthebox-1236033393/ [Referenced News Article via Variety] and *https://deadline.com/2024/05/ankama-studio-unagi-launch-montreal-1235943352/ [Referenced News Article via Deadline Hollywood]

-- OneNETnews Online Publication Team

[mattnben-bennmatt]

Matt Damon (& Co.)'s interview w/ GQ (18 July 2016)

The Encyclopedia of Matt Damon

As Matt Damon returns to the Bourne franchise, we decided to assemble this handy guide to the habits, quirks, and inner life of an honest-to-God screen legend, as told by George Clooney, Martin Scorsese, Ben Affleck, and the other titans who know him best

By The Editors of GQ | Photography by Sebastian Kim | Illustration by Joe Mckendry

Matt Damon is, scientifically, the most liked man in Hollywood. He is serious, and he is funny. He is approachable-seeming and often jacked. He has been in six of your ten favorite movies in the past 20 years, and he's met a bunch of people along the way who like him a whole lot. But for all his familiarity, he's still elusive (which is how he likes it). So instead of asking Matt Damon dumb questions about the new Jason Bourne movie (out this month!), we got Damon and those people who like him a lot*—George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Tina Fey, Ben Affleck, Martin Scorsese, and Co.—to tell all the stories about him that you haven't heard.

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Accent, Boston

Matt Damon: I was sitting at George Clooney's pool in Lake Como, and Brad Pitt walked in, sat down next to me, and said, “Do you want to do a Martin Scorsese movie in Boston?” [Brad] was a producer on The Departed, and he felt like he had gotten too old for those roles. It's one of the most absurd things that's ever happened in my life.

[Marty] said to me early on [in production], “I don't know Boston. This is your town.” So I would show up with stuff that I'd write and give it to Bill [Monahan, the screenwriter]. and say, "Do you like any of this?" The first time I rehearsed with Jack Nicholson, he went over to get some coffee, and he turned around [and said], “You know, I never would have made it this long if I wasn’t a great fucking writer.”

Martin Scorsese (director, ‘The Departed’): He comes from Boston; he's familiar with that world. When we were cutting The Departed, my editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, used a term to describe Matt's presence on-screen that's stayed with me: He's seated as an actor. He enters a movie grounded and at ease in his character and in the world of the story.

Bill Simmons (Bostonian; host, ‘Any Given Wednesday’): [Jimmy Kimmel] had this Super Bowl party, and Damon was there. He was like, “I'm readin' ya book! It's fahckin' ahsome.” [Matt's Good Will Hunting accent] is the greatest Boston accent that's ever been captured in a movie by an actual actor. The Departed is a catastrophe of bad Boston accents. Leo just gives up halfway through.

Sarah Silverman (co-star, “I'm Fucking Matt Damon”): We are all Boston-area people. I don't know how Matt talks so pretty.

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Artist, The

Julia Stiles (co-star, ‘Bourne’ films): After The Bourne Ultimatum came out, there was a premiere in London. Prince actually came to it, then got tickets for the cast to come see him [perform]. We were summoned into a room to meet him [after the show]. Matt said, “So you live in Minnesota? I hear you live in Minnesota.”

Damon: Prince said, “I live inside my own heart, Matt Damon.”

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Career Precedent

Damon: I always thought the goal was William Holden. To just be in a lot of good movies.

Harvey Weinstein (producer, ‘Good Will Hunting,’ ‘Dogma,’ ‘All the Pretty Horses,’ ‘The Talented Mr. Ripley,’ ‘Rounders,’ ‘Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back,’ ‘Project Greenlight,’ ‘The Brothers Grimm’): Matt Damon is the closest thing we have to James Stewart. Matt can be funny, Matt can be charming, but there's an idealism in Matt, like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington or It's a Wonderful Life. But Jimmy Stewart also did those very tough Westerns. He wasn't Bourne, but you get the idea he flew 40 missions over Germany as an Air Force commander. [He's] that kind of great man with tremendous integrity.

Michael Douglas (co-star, ‘Behind the Candelabra’): [Matt] reminds me of me a lot, in terms of the kind of range of parts and things that he does. He always looks to what's the best script, what's going to make the best movie, and what isn't. He has a real sense of what it takes to make a good movie. Having the best part in a bad movie doesn't help you.

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Face, Matt's

Scarlett Johansson (co-star, ‘We Bought a Zoo’): The most amazing gift about Matt's physical appearance is that he can walk into the hair-and-makeup trailer looking like someone who slept directly on his face for seven hours and emerge a bona fide movie star. He has a great makeup artist.

George Clooney (co-star, ‘Ocean’s Eleven,’ ‘Twelve,’ and ‘Thirteen’; director, ‘Syriana,’ ‘Confessions of a Dangerous Mind,’ ‘The Monuments Men’): He looks swell in a Speedo.

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Face, Pitt's

Damon: I don't look like Marlon Brando. I remember Ben and I having a realization early on. Like, we were watching Brad [Pitt] in a movie, and one of us turned to the other and said, “I haven't heard a thing that guy said in five minutes. I'm just looking at him.” And we realized there's a good and a bad [that comes with that]. It'll mask one of your lesser performances, but it also detracts from your best performances. Because Brad has been legitimately brilliant in some of the things he's done, and he doesn't get the credit as an actor that I think he deserves. I never had to carry that water.

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Friend, Best

Tina Fey (creator, ‘30 Rock’): People would be like, “[Matt and Ben] are so cute!” And I'd be like, “They're J.Crew sweaters. When you see all the colors next to each other, they look cute, but when you get one home, you're like, ‘Damn, I just got an orange sweater.’ ” But now that is withdrawn. In person, Matt holds up.

Damon: Ben is the orange sweater.

Ben Affleck (co-writer, ‘Good Will Hunting’; best friend): The quality that has allowed Matt to maintain the illusion that he is Mr. Nice Guy is that he found a young TV actor who was just a pretty face and made friends with him so he would always look good by comparison. Matt is very media-savvy and manipulative in that way. He's like a mix of [O. J. Simpson defense-team members] Bob Shapiro and Alan Dershowitz.

Kevin Smith (writer and director, ‘Dogma,’ ‘Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back’; co-executive producer, ‘Good Will Hunting’): Matt made pretty thoughtful choices about what roles he wanted to play and the directors he wanted to work with after Good Will Hunting, which made Ben's more commercial choices easier to put down for some folks. The assignation was that Matt chose to be a serious actor in films, while Ben chose to star in movies. That script flipped when Matt was Bourne and Ben became a filmmaker.

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Friend, Brother of Best

Damon: Casey moved in with us [when he was 19]. He would walk in the room, and I'm like, “Is that my shirt?” It got so bad with the Affleck brothers that I was at the point where I wanted to label all of my stuff, 'cause it would just fucking show up in Casey's drawer. And if it's there long enough, then it's like some version of squatters' rights, where suddenly he's like, “No, dude, this is mine. You saw me. I've been wearing this since December.” Like, that doesn't mean it's yours! Just because you washed it doesn't mean it's yours.

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Good Will

Billy Bob Thornton (director, ‘All the Pretty Horses’): I did Armageddon with Ben, and I knew 'em before they made Good Will Hunting. They talked to me about it: “Hey, we got this script.” And I'm like, “Yeah, yeah, whatever.” Wish I hadn't have said that.

Steven Soderbergh (director, ‘The Informant!’; ‘Ocean's Eleven,’ ‘Twelve,’ and ‘Thirteen’; ‘Contagion’; ‘Behind the Candelabra’): I was looking for rewrite work, and one of the open assignments was for Good Will Hunting. I said, “What's it about?” And they said, “Math.” And I said, “Well, I'm terrible at math, so I'm the wrong guy.” Let's put it this way: Word was out on Reservoir Dogs at the script stage—I remember hearing, “There's this fucking great script out there written by this guy.” There wasn't that kind of thing about [Good Will Hunting].

Damon: Harvey [Weinstein] hadn't seen it—somebody lower down the ladder [at Miramax] had passed. And we were fucked. We had made a deal with Castle Rock where we had to sell it for a million dollars and whoever we sold it to had to allow us to star in it. If we didn't, it was gonna go back to Castle Rock and we were out of the movie. We asked [Kevin Smith] to direct it, and Kevin wouldn't. He goes, “I'm not a good enough director.”

Smith: I asked Ben to FedEx a copy of the script and hit it in the bathroom, intending to read a few pages while on the bowl. Two hours later, I came out of the bathroom crying [because] it was so good. [Co-executive producer] Scott Mosier said, “You were in the bathroom for two hours, and now you're crying. Should I call an ambulance?” I said, “No. We gotta call Harvey.” And we gave it to Harvey and said, “Remember when you picked up the Pulp Fiction script from TriStar in turnaround? This is like that. Especially the Oscars part.”

Weinstein: Kevin Smith gave it to Jon Gordon in my office. Jon Gordon gave it to me. I loved it.

Damon: Every Oscar weekend, the three big agencies host parties. In 1998, [the year we won an Oscar for Good Will Hunting], the CAA party was given in our name. Like, “Ben Affleck and Matt Damon invite you to the CAA party.” We called it “our party.” It was incredible. I talked to Tom Cruise. Even a movie like Cocktail, which the critics didn't particularly dig, was a hit. An agent said to me, “There's no career that's ever been like this. Everyone has ups and downs. This guy's never had a down.” He was the movie star's movie star. And I remember the way he talked about the business: He was not owed anything or could count on anything. And I was like, “Oh, my God. It's an insecure business for Tom Cruise!”

Simmons: I was dating this girl who moved to Chicago, and I was living in Boston. I was making, like, $200 a week writing a column and bartending, and it cost somewhere between $300 and $450 to fly to Chicago. So I went to see Good Will Hunting in Cambridge by myself. And at the end, he goes to see about a girl, and I was like, “You know what? I like her, but I don't know if I'd go to see about a girl.” We broke up within 12 hours. And my next girlfriend was my wife. That's why I always defend Matt Damon.

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Grimm, Brothers

Brian Koppelman (co-writer, ‘Rounders,’ ‘Ocean's Thirteen’): The nose [in Ocean's Thirteen] originated because we had heard this rumor that Matt had wanted to wear a weird nose in Brothers Grimm. He wasn't able to, so we decided we were going to give him an even bigger, uglier nose.

Terry Gilliam (director, ‘The Brothers Grimm,’ ‘The Zero Theorem’): He's got that cute little retroussé nose and a big bony head, and I thought his head needed something stronger. So we put the bump on, and he suddenly became like Marlon Brando—he was sexy, he walked different. And then we had a huge fight with the Weinsteins and they threatened to close the movie down if I put that bump on his nose.

Weinstein: Oh, my God. Matt and Heath Ledger, may he rest in peace, just on bended knees said, “Can you finance this movie?” And my brother said, “It's Terry Gilliam—let's just do it.”

Damon: I remember the night that Terry shattered a wineglass in his hand because he was in an argument with one of the producers. He said, “I'm not gonna fucking…,” and snapped the wineglass in his hand, and then went storming out. And Heath [Ledger] and I just immediately got up to follow our fearless leader. Terry goes, “I think that went well! Where are we going for dinner?”

He was deciding whether to refuse to shoot over the nose issue. And he came into the makeup room at five in the morning and said, “They gave me the money that I need to make the movie, but we have to not do the nose. What do you think?” And Chrissie Beveridge, who still does my makeup, pulled out the nose and put it on the table. And we literally looked at it and just started laughing.

Chrissie Beveridge (makeup artist): Terry [said], “Would you talk to Bob Weinstein?” I didn't.

Damon: It was a $3 million nose.

Weinstein: Ironically, it's Terry Gilliam's highest-grossing movie he ever had in the United States. [Editors' note: Actually, ‘12 Monkeys’ is.]

Soderbergh: So on [Ocean's Thirteen], I was like, “Dude, we can do it. Like, we can give you the nose.”

Damon: And in Invictus, I ended up wearing the actual [Brothers Grimm] nose.

Beveridge: It was a slightly different nose.

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Ledger, Heath

Gilliam: Matt is mathematical at times, and that's both a strength and sometimes… I think that's what it maybe was between him and Heath. Because [Heath's] heart was on his sleeve, and that opened up a lot in Matt.

Damon: He was too bright for this world. Coming off [The Brothers Grimm, I was] telling everybody that I just worked with the best actor I've ever seen. And people were like, “What are you talking about? The guy from A Knight's Tale?” And I was like, “You just wait. And wait until you see what kind of a director he's gonna be.”

There were things that he did where I couldn't have got there in three lifetimes. And there were ways in which he was like a puppy dog. You wanted to protect him.

[His death was] just fucking pointless. I called Terry when I found out, and he was like, “I'm sitting here in Vancouver. I'm looking out the window, and it's a beautiful sunny day, and the lights are turning red, and the lights are turning green, and cars are stopping, and cars are driving. I am surrounded by mediocrity. And he's gone.”

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Maaaaaatt Daaaaamon

Damon: The most common head shot that I'm asked to sign is pictures of that fucking puppet [from Team America: World Police]. And they always say, “Will you write ‘Maaaaaatt Daaaaamon’?” I'm like, “Okay. Matt, with, like, 16 *a'*s in it.” [Trey Parker and Matt Stone] are legitimate geniuses. But when that came out, I thought, Wow, is that what people think of me? That I'm really dumb? So I remember asking friends of mine, and they all told me that it didn't really make sense that I was dumb. I was like, “Are you just saying that?” And then [my wife] Lucy heard an interview with [Matt and Trey] where they said the puppet showed up the day before they were supposed to shoot with it, and it looked like it had special needs, and they didn't have time to change it with the budget. I don't know if they made that up subsequently.

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“Matt Damon, I'm F#©%ing”

In 2008, Sarah Silverman and Damon starred in a music video called “I'm Fucking Matt Damon” to “inform” Silverman's then boyfriend, Jimmy Kimmel, that she was “sleeping with” Damon.

Jimmy Kimmel (host, ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’; nemesis): [The video “I'm Fucking Matt Damon”] was supposed to be a present for my 40th birthday. Just to make sure the punch in the stomach hit a kidney.

Silverman: [When the show premiered,] Jimmy was literally getting guests like the man with the longest arm hair. So as a joke, he would say at the end of the night, “Sorry, Matt Damon. We ran out of time,” because Matt Damon was the biggest movie star he could think of.

Damon: We had done The Bourne Ultimatum [spoof] with [Kimmel sidekick] Guillermo [as Jason Bourne]. Like, now Jimmy's kicking me out of my own movies? And we all were just like, “How do we keep this thing alive?” And the guy who directed that called with this idea that Sarah had given him.

Silverman: Matt came in, learned the song in a closet of the hotel we had, and then we had three hours with him to shoot because he had his daughter's Halloween pageant at noon.

Damon: It happened really fast, and then suddenly I was in the car. I was like, “Holy fuck, I'm going to a parent-teacher conference. I can't do shit like this anymore.”

Ben Affleck: As soon as I saw “I'm Fucking Matt Damon,” I knew I would be doing “I'm Fucking Ben Affleck.” So I called Jimmy, and they were already putting it together. Having Josh Groban yelling out, “I'm fucking Beeeeen. I'm fucking Ben Affleck!” remains a high point of my career and life.

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Mojo

Soderbergh: When [Matt] hit us on the Ocean's set, he said, “I really feel like I've kind of lost my mojo.” He'd just come off a couple movies that didn't work commercially [All the Pretty Horses and The Legend of Bagger Vance], and they were not finished with Bourne—they were gonna go back and reshoot more after we wrapped. And I remember George [Clooney] and I saying, “We can do that with this. You're going to have a blast.”

Damon: I showed up like a drowned rat and just stumbled into the room [with Steven] and George. Steven says, “This is the movie where you're gonna get your mojo back.” And they had a big party because it was the “We have arrived in Chicago” party. They rented out a bar with the whole crew. And then we shot the next day, and then they rented out a bar and had a huge “We're leaving Chicago” party. And I'm like, “Wow, maybe I am gonna get my mojo back on this shoot.”

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Parenting, Matt's

Fey: Some people are lying when they say they want to go be with their families, but I think Matt actually really does like his family—his lovely wife and his 26 daughters.

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Parenting, Matt's Mother's

Soderbergh: One of the first thoughts I had when I met Matt was, Okay. This guy was very well raised. I don't mean that in a pejorative sense. I was just like, “He's a good kid.” Like, “They raised a good kid.” Which is what you would want anybody to say about your child.

Julia Roberts (co-star, ‘Ocean's Eleven’ and ‘Twelve’): Matty's a good boy.

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Pilot, Carol the

In 2010, Damon began a four-episode guest arc on the NBC sitcom ‘30 Rock’ as Liz Lemon's boyfriend, pilot Carol Burnett.

Damon: Lucy and I started watching on the first episode and were like, “This is our favorite thing.” I literally went up to [Tina Fey] at the SAG Awards and said, “Look, your show is so great, and if you ever have anything on it, I would love to do a guest spot.”

Fey: [Matt] was like, “I wanna be on the show! I wanna be on the show!” We immediately flew back the next day and called WME, and the agent was like, “He's not doing this!” And we're like, “No, no, he told us he wanted to do it.” And you could tell his agent was like, “Faaaaaaahhhhhhck. He's too good for this!”

Damon: Yeah, that was one that Patrick was like, “What the fuck? What are you doing?”

Patrick Whitesell (Matt's agent): I wasn't opposed to Matt doing it. I thought it would be a fun thing. The only thing was I wanted it limited in the number of episodes.

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Scheduling Conflict

Douglas: [When I first heard about Behind the Candelabra,] I was recovering from a Stage IV cancer bout and was so unbelievably fortunate to look at this Richard LaGravenese script and go, “My God.” And Soderbergh's involved, and then Matt, who wanted to do the other part. And then when we were getting ready to go do it, both of them—both Steven and Matt individually—said, “You know, we've got conflicting schedules right now. So let's put this off for a year.” And my heart sunk. I thought, Oh shit, it ain't ever going to happen. The truth be told, I was so happy to be alive that I didn't recognize the fact of just how underweight I was. And I think both of them looked at me and said, “He's not ready to do Liberace.” And rather than in any way make me feel like it was a problem, they simply lied and said, “We have other projects,” and waited a year, until I got back on my feet and my strength was there.

Damon: I'll take it, but I did have a scheduling conflict. I think that Steven certainly knew that more time on the mend would not hurt at all. They replaced Michael from the neck down with a concert pianist, but Michael's arms had to be at the right place at all times or it didn't work. The amount of hours [that took], I don't even know. It was this virtuoso performance. And he said to me the last night [of shooting], “I couldn't have done this last year.”

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Sweating

Koppelman: We write [Rounders] on spec, and Harvey Weinstein buys it. Then we get a call that he wants to show us ten minutes of this film [Good Will Hunting] with this guy Matt Damon, who [they thought] should star in [our movie]. We immediately love the idea.

So we happened to be down at [the L.A. casino] Hollywood Park, and we started talking to these guys and mentioned that we'd written this poker movie. They go, “Matt Damon's our best friend.” And I said, “Oh, really? Matt Damon's your best friend?” Twenty-five minutes later, Matt and Ben come storming in. Neither guy had played casino poker. Matt was immediately like, “Tell me stuff I need to know.” So we got a table and [co-writer] David [Levien] showed Matt how to riffle chips. Within 10, 15 minutes, he's sitting at the table riffling like he's an old pro.

David Levien (co-writer, ‘Rounders,’ ‘Ocean's Thirteen’): He took poker very, very seriously then, and obviously Ben got bit by the bug. We said, “If you really want to learn about this, come to New York.”

Damon: I started getting in and sweating the games, which means sitting behind a player who agrees to show you their hole cards so you can watch how they play the hand. And these were rounders, the people who were making basically ten bucks an hour sitting there with no health benefits, just hoping that somebody new would come in so they could chop him up.

Edward Norton (co-star, ‘Rounders’): Matt and I got coaching from top poker pros, but also from some guys in the underground poker scene who were experts in working a game as partners with coded signals, because that was something our characters did in the film. We decided we'd see if we could actually pull it off in a game, and we cut it apart. Then we walked down Sixth Avenue a few blocks and chopped up our collective winnings. We agreed that our commitment to the craft of acting justifiably forced our ethical standards into the backseat. And most of the money we clipped came off Harvey and Bob Weinstein, so we agreed that was good for humanity.

Alicia Vikander (co-star, ‘Jason Bourne’): We were shooting [Jason Bourne] in Vegas, and I learned to play craps [the night we wrapped]. I asked Matt [for advice] because of course he and Ben are kind of known for that. I said that I was going to bed, and then I said that I was just going to have one drink. It happened to be quite a few.

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Sweating (More)

Damon: I've sweat some great directors for the last 20 years. When Ben was doing Gone Girl, I went over and visited the set and sat behind David [Fincher] while he was directing. There was a scene where Ben and Rosamund [Pike] walk into a bookstore and end up coming towards the camera through one of the aisles and kissing each other. So before the door opens and they come in, an extra walks by at the end of the line of books. David instantly starts monologuing: “Who fucking walks like that? Are you fucking… Am I wrong? Like, who fucking walks like that? It's ridiculous. I mean, he fucking looks like an extra in a movie. What the fuck?” Meanwhile, Ben and Rosamund are acting their hearts out, and I know they're gonna go again, no matter what they do, because this person fucking blew it. So David goes over and gives them notes, and they get ready to do it again, and Rosamund's makeup artist comes walking in to touch her up. David's looking at his monitor, and he goes, “Now, that's how you walk.”

Joshua Donen (David Fincher's manager): David denies that this ever took place, but out of respect for the talents of Mr. Damon, he has decided not to take legal action.

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Teeth

Roberts: He does have nice teeth.

Kimmel: I mean, they can't be real, right? They're so perfect. They're obviously something that some Hollywood witch doctor put into his head somewhere along the line, possibly on one of his jaunts to China where he disappears for six months and suddenly has a whole new look. One day he's Jason Bourne. The next day he's Liberace's fiancé.

Damon: True.

Larry Rosenthal, D.D.S., declined to respond to multiple requests for comment.

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Thing, Best I've Ever Been a Part Of

Damon: [The 2000 Cormac McCarthy novel adaptation All the Pretty Horses] failed the critics and failed to find the audience. I'm not over it 18 years later or whatever it is, so I'm just clearly never gonna get over it. It really fucking depresses me. I only saw Billy [Bob Thornton]'s cut once, and I just remember feeling like, “Oh, my God, this is the best thing I've ever been a part of.” It was Daniel Lanois's music that did it—it was all Daniel on this old guitar.

Thornton: The studio made us take Dan's score out.

Weinstein: It's great, but there were studio executives who fell asleep during the screening. The movie cost $48 million. You [ask], “Am I going to put a four-hour movie out?”

Damon: I was in Paris working on The Bourne Identity, and every night after work, I'd come home and I'd have a conference call with Harvey and Billy Bob. I would pace in this living room in this apartment I'd rented as I was talking to them. Billy's heart was fucking breaking. [When] he relented, he said, “Harvey, I have a chance to do four, maybe five great things before I die. And what I'm hearing you say to me is this isn't gonna be one of them.” And my knees literally buckled.

Thornton: You live with it. They did offer us the opportunity to put [my cut] out on DVD with the original music. But Dan felt like, “If my music wasn't good enough for them to put in the movie, then I don't know if I wanna put it in there on the DVD,” so I stood by him. I'm not gonna ever go side against an artist.

Weinstein: I've said to Matt, “I'll put up a million dollars any day of the week to restore it. I don't even care if I get the money back.” And I'm happy to sit down with Matt and Billy and do that. We've tried to resurrect that on a number of occasions, but the composer didn't want to let us do it, and he has strong rights. I understand. But time softens everyone. It's time to re-approach him.

Thornton: I think maybe one of these days I'm gonna just have a party over at my house to show it to 20 or 30 people.

Damon: I would love it if he did.

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Wife, Krasinski's

John Krasinski (co-writer, ‘Promised Land’): The day I met him was the scene in The Adjustment Bureau where he kisses my wife [Emily Blunt] in a very big way. And so when I went up to him, he turned to me, and the first thing he ever said to me was, “Hey, man. I was just totally tonguing your girl.” And I went, “Oh, okay. Cool.” And he saw my face and he just cratered. He said, “Oh, my God. I am so sorry. I am so sorry.”

Damon: A reason to do that movie was to meet those two. They're just the best.

Emily Blunt : I have never played a board game with the Damons. The four of us hang out constantly and drink way too much together. Red wine for the three of us, and John's allergic to red wine, so he has to take down the bottle of white by himself. Which is not an issue.

Damon: That allergy is recent. He used to not be allergic to red wine, so we were perfect dinner companions. Now everything is off.

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Worship

Chris Hemsworth (friend; Norse god): [I was going to be on the cover of GQ, and] I was like, “Shit, what do we do [for the story]?” Matt goes, “You should go bike riding! You can use mine.” So the next morning, I didn't want to bring the writer [into Matt's home because] I didn't want Matt to be uncomfortable. And Matt was like, “No, bring him in!” Matt's cooking pancakes and telling all kinds of interesting stories and quoting all sorts of interesting people. And I was sitting there going, “I just lost myself the cover. I can just see the cover turning into Matt's cover. This is the worst thing I could have done with this thing, introduce the writer to Matt.” I felt like I had a new girlfriend and I had introduced her to my cooler friend or something.

Blunt: It's almost sickening, actually. He's like the most universally loved person I've ever met.

Jessica Chastain (co-star, ‘Interstellar,’ ‘The Martian’): When I was going to go work on The Martian, everyone was going on and on about what a great person he was. You always wonder, like, “Okay, is the reputation accurate?” And with him, it was.

Jeff Schaffer (executive producer, ‘Seinfeld,’ ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’; co-creator, ‘The League’; Harvard classmate): “Great” gets thrown around a lot. Like, if you hate a movie, you go, “It was great!” In L.A., “great” means it's shit. So I have to drop down one to “good.” He's a good man.

Matthew McConaughey (co-star, ‘Interstellar’): I remember a late night in Laurel Canyon after A Time to Kill came out. Matt shared a genuine excitement for the success the film and I were having. He's always been like that, as far as I know—confident and self-assured enough to appreciate a peer's success while still paving his own path.

Krasinski: You look at him and think, Wow. You've maintained staying grounded with a career like this. For people who don't have even half the career of you, if we're not as grounded as you, we're just jackasses.

Paul Greengrass (director, ‘The Bourne Supremacy,’ ‘The Bourne Ultimatum’; director and co-writer, ‘Jason Bourne’): He is a really superb, aggressive, fast driver. Somewhere deep in that soul there must be a Jason Bourne lurking.

Simmons: If you're at a party and somebody's like, “You know who I fucking hate? Matt Damon,” people would be like, “What? Why do you hate Matt Damon? Did he fuck your girlfriend?”

Kimmel: He had sex with my girlfriend and then made a song about it. I think he's more devious than [his character in The Talented Mr. Ripley]. More diabolical. Matt Damon in real life is more of a pure evil.

Soderbergh: You could walk around town with a checkbook offering to pay people a million dollars to say something bad about Matt, feeling secure you'd never have to write a check.

Reported by Zach Baron, Lauren Larson, Anna Peele, Clay Skipper, and Caity Weaver.

[whatsupspaceman]

the new wave of hollywood queerphobia is greenlighting queer shows to champion how diverse your streaming service is, then not advertising them, & finally axing them after one season (maybe even 2 if we’re lucky!) and saying it’s because of profits or “too niche audiences”

[mariacallous]

Forty-seven years ago today, everything changed. True believers might already know what it was: On May 25, 1977, Star Wars hit movie theaters and irrevocably altered nearly everything pertaining to the act of moviegoing. Lines around the block, overly excited nerds, an appetite for action figures. Star Wars taught Hollywood that certain genres—sci-fi, fantasy, anything that percolated in the offbeat TV shows, books, and comics of the 1950s and ’60s—had fans, and those fandoms would show up. Star Wars made a meager $1.6 million in the US in its opening weekend. But people kept coming back, and by the end of its initial run it had made more than $300 million. Hollywood’s Next Big Thing had arrived.

Common wisdom dictates that Jaws, which came out in 1975 and made some $260 million, was the first summer blockbuster. That’s true, but it was Star Wars that shifted the idea of what kind of film future popcorn flicks tried to be. In the years after its release, a trove of sci-fi and genre films landed in theaters: Blade Runner, Alien, E.T., the Mad Max sequel The Road Warrior. By the ’90s, the summer movie energy had shifted to action fare—Twister, Speed, Jurassic Park, Independence Day—but nerd stuff still ruled. For every Forrest Gump there was a Batman Returns or Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

Then came a little juggernaut called Marvel. By the time Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man movies started clearing nine-figure opening weekends in the aughts, it was obvious that comic book heroes’ true superpowers involved making your money disappear. The Avengers opened in early May 2012 and nearly recouped its $200-million-plus production budget in three days. Suddenly, there were at least two superhero movies every year, if not every summer, and some new Star Wars flicks at the holidays.

The one-two punch of Covid-19 theater closures and streaming pretty much kneecapped this entire process. The summer of 2020 had virtually no blockbusters, and by the time moviegoers returned to multiplexes in 2021 and 2022, there had been a vibe shift. Movies like Black Widow and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness did well, but they weren’t events. Rushing to Fandango for tickets didn’t feel as urgent as it once did. Last summer, Barbenheimer was the buzziest thing in movies. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 made money, but they still got beat by Barbie’s might.

Overall, this year could be a wake-up call for studios that superhero fatigue has fully set in, says Chris Nashawaty, author of The Future Was Now, a new book out in July about how the movies of 1982—Blade Runner, E.T., Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, among others—ushered in the current blockbuster era. That epoch, he says, “was always going to be something that couldn’t last forever; I’m frankly surprised that it lasted as long as it did.”

Nashawaty says the success of Barbenheimer—both movies—indicates that audiences are hungry for smart films, but Hollywood’s risk aversion likely means studios will greenlight more projects based on toys and games like Monopoly rather than movies about physicists. “This is a real existential moment in Hollywood right now,” he adds, and studios need to be bold to stay relevant.

Summer 2024, which unofficially begins this weekend, promises a move away from the formula that has been in play for decades. There are only a handful of big popcorn-ready movies coming, and they’re decidedly less family-friendly than the blockbusters of yore. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, which dropped on Friday, is a teeth-chatteringly gritty prequel about a kidnapped woman (Anya Taylor-Joy playing the younger version of Charlize Theron’s character from Mad Max: Fury Road) who ends up in a war between two overlords and has to fight her way out. Deadpool & Wolverine is a Marvel movie, yes, but it’s apparently a paean to pegging and cocaine so hard-R that Ryan Reynolds won’t shut up about it.

The series of weird indies coming in the next few months—the thriller Cuckoo, Ti West’s latest horror flick MaXXXine, a new collab from Poor Things pals Emma Stone and Yorgos Lanthimos called Kinds of Kindness—finally have some room to get into the summer movie conversation.

Make no mistake: I am typing these things with glee and admiration. Glossy family movies have their place, but they’ve grown awfully predictable. Safe—not necessarily in their plots, but in their substance. No matter how fun last year’s barn-burner The Super Mario Bros. Movie was, you can’t say anything about it was surprising, much less new. No one walked into the theater for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and walked out as gobsmacked as they were when they saw Star Wars, or even Speed.

This is not a “Hollywood is so homogenized” argument. Rather, it’s a reminder that Tinseltown wasn’t always this way. Its influence used to introduce people to the future. What’s happening now has the potential to mark a return to the kind of startlingly original movies that used to be hits. Between the pandemic, streaming, and the Hollywood strikes of last summer, a lot of old habits got broken, and there’s a sense that a renaissance is afoot.

This revitalization won’t come easy, if it comes at all. Summer 2024 still has its share of redos and sequels—a new Inside Out movie, reboots of ’90s summer staples The Crow and Twister. (The latter is the aptly-named Twisters; there are more tornadoes this time, apparently.) But even those movies at least feel like they’re grasping for the prefranchise days, even if they’re birthing franchises in the process.

Furiosa is currently projected to bring in more than $40 million at the US box office this weekend, a figure that would bring it close to Fury Road’s tally but may not convince Hollywood execs that it should bankroll more R-rated, original shockbusters. It would, presumably, best The Garfield Movie, which is also out this weekend and has the makings of a more surefire hit: well-known IP, animated, PG-rated. (For the record, though: Critics seem to think it sucks.) Early ticket sales for Deadpool & Wolverine are already breaking records for an R-rated movie. Should it dominate the conversation for a couple weeks while also raking in money, that embrace of a very not-Disney Disney movie—coupled with Furiosa and Hot Barbenheimer Summer—could signal a tipping point.

Look, nothing will ever completely derail Hollywood’s reliance on sure things. Video game adaptations remain poised to take the crown long held by superhero flicks. (Borderlands, starring Cate Blanchett, is coming to theaters this August.) But if this summer’s ever-sprawling slate turns up just enough weird hits, maybe we’ll once again know the feeling of walking out of Star Wars for the first time.