by ·Comments Off on The Wild Robot – An epic animated adventure that follows the journey of a robot

For writer-director Chris Sanders, bringing The Wild Robot to the screen proved to be a profound personal and professional experience. “This project is one of the proudest achievements of my career. The artists have truly outdone themselves in giving life to a book, a story and characters that hold immense personal significance for me, the crew and hopefully, for all audiences. Like a life well-lived, The Wild Robot embraces tragedy, joy, failed plans and accidental triumphs.”

In a world where screens demand our attention and deadlines dictate our days, it’s easy to overlook the wonders of nature. We find ourselves constantly pursuing instant gratification, often missing the subtle beauty and wisdom around us. Yet, sometimes a literary marvel emerges—a story that transcends pages, carrying profound insights into nature’s unexplored beauty, connections waiting to be discovered and lessons yet to be learned. The Wild Robot is one such story—a tale initially crafted for young readers but swiftly recognized for its universal truths.

“The Wild Robot is a once-in-a-generation book,” says DreamWorks Animation President Margie Cohn. “It’s the kind of story that becomes a narrative and emotional touchstone for young readers and their parents, who then will share it with every subsequent generation to come. Not only is it a thrilling adventure tale with vivid, memorable characters, but it taps into something innate and unspoken about our sense of the world and our place in it. Once you’ve experienced it, it can’t be forgotten.”

The Wild Robot’s journey is not just one of survival but of self-discovery and unexpected connections with the island’s wildlife, including an orphaned gosling she nurtures as her own. Beyond its plot, the novel weaves invaluable lessons— emphasizing the importance and value of kindness in adversity, the resilience required for adaptation, the intricacies of parenthood, the emotional navigation of loss and the perpetual discourse between nature and technology. The Wild Robot celebrates diverse family structures, underscores the beauty of acceptance and belonging and offers a poignant reflection on what it means to be alive.

A powerful story about the discovery of self, a thrilling examination of the bridge between technology and nature and a moving exploration of what it means to be alive and connected to all living things, The Wild Robot is written and directed by three-time Oscar nominee Chris Sanders—the writer-director of DreamWorks Animation’s How to Train Your Dragon, The Croods, and Disney’s Lilo & Stitch, From DreamWorks Animation comes this eagerly anticipated adaptation of a literary sensation, Peter Brown’s beloved, award-winning, #1 New York Times bestseller, The Wild Robot.

Roz (Lupita Nyong’o) and Brightbill (Kit Connor) in DreamWorks Animation’s The Wild Robot, directed by Chris Sanders. © 2024 DreamWorks Animation. All Rights Reserved.

The epic adventure follows the journey of ROZZUM unit 7134 – Roz” for short – that is shipwrecked on an uninhabited island and must learn to adapt to the harsh surroundings, gradually building relationships with the animals on the island and becoming the adoptive parent of an orphaned gosling. Roz finds herself ill-suited for the wilderness, having been programmed for a modern, futuristic city life. Unaware of her predicament, Roz diligently pursues her primary objective: finding a person with a task she can fulfil. Instead of encountering humans, she meets animals, a realm entirely unfamiliar to her. Undeterred, Roz immerses herself in studying their behaviour, eventually learning to connect and communicate with them.

The Novel

Peter Brown’s The Wild Robot, an illustrated middle-grade novel first published in 2016, became a cultural phenomenon, rocketing to #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. The book has since inspired a trilogy that now includes The Wild Robot Escapes and The Wild Robot Protects. Brown’s work on the Wild Robot series and his other bestselling books have earned him a Caldecott Honor, a Horn Book Award, two E.B. White Awards, two E.B. White Honors, a Children’s Choice Award for Illustrator of the Year, two Irma Black Honors, a Golden Kite Award and a New York Times Best Illustrated Book Award.

Brown’s journey with The Wild Robot began through research into robotics, artificial intelligence and animal behavior. “As I was researching these subjects, it dawned on me that animal instincts are a lot like computer programs,” Brown says. “Animals have a large set of behaviors that they do automatically. Robotically. It turns out, robots and animals have quite a bit in common, and that realization inspired me to write and illustrate The Wild Robot.” The impact of The Wild Robot has cemented its place as a staple in classroom curriculums, while also resonating with parents and sparking discussions beyond its intended audience.

From Page To Screen

Writer-director Chris Sanders, the three-time Academy Award®-nominated director of DreamWorks Animation’s How to Train Your Dragon and The Croods, encountered the novel through his daughter’s school assignment. Sanders was captivated by the book’s depth and nuance and immediately envisioned the story’s cinematic potential. “What struck me most about the book was its deceptively simple yet profound emotional depth,” Sanders says. “I connected with its innocence and its earnestness. I’m drawn to stories with strong emotional undercurrents. While I appreciate big adventure stories, it’s the quieter, more intimate moments that truly resonate. These are the elements I prioritize as a filmmaker, and I thought The Wild Robot exemplified them beautifully.”

Writer-director Chris_Sanders. © Universal Pictures

Years later, during a meeting at DreamWorks Animation, Sanders rediscovered The Wild Robot on the studio’s development slate. “I couldn’t believe my eyes,” Sanders says. “I immediately picked it out as the next movie I wanted to write and direct. Tonally, it paired perfectly with my sensibilities.” Sanders discussed it with DreamWorks Animation President Margie Cohn. “It was a very different story than had ever been told at DreamWorks—one devoid of the traditional heroes or villains, but rich in depth—and I was thrilled when Margie explained that was exactly why they’d acquired it,” Sanders says. “Something I’ve always admired about DreamWorks is their versatility—they’re not confined to a single style or tone. My first project with DreamWorks was How to Train Your Dragon, which was a blend of drama and humor that focused on emotions, subtleties and nuanced storytelling. I see a lot of similarities between The Wild Robot and Dragon in terms of their DNA and thematic depth.”

DreamWorks saw it that way, too, and had reached out to Peter Brown about the film rights to the book before it was even published, believing that it both had the potential to be a landmark film and that DreamWorks was the ideal studio to adapt it for the big screen. “At DreamWorks, our goal is to transport audiences into immersive places that they’ve never experienced before, whether it’s the fairytale landscapes of Shrek and Puss in Boots, the fantastical prehistoric world of The Croods or the natural beauty of Kung Fu Panda and, of course, the How to Train Your Dragon films,” Cohn says. “But our films also explore the emotional terrain of what it means to be alive: to be lonely, to be afraid, to experience the thrill of the unknown, to find the brave places inside yourself that you may not have known existed, and, above all, to find your home, and your family, in whatever form that may be. We were thrilled that Peter trusted us with his story.”

Allowing any film studio to make a film of your creation is ultimately a leap of faith for any author, but Brown’s own background eased some of the anxiety that most author’s may feel about that decision. Before writing and illustrating children’s books, Brown had a passion for animation. His journey began at an animation camp as a child, continued through college where he studied animation and encompassed various roles at animation studios before he ultimately found his true calling in creating children’s literature. “When I heard that DreamWorks wanted to make a movie based on The Wild Robot, it felt like my life was coming full circle,” Brown says. “Books and movies are very different art forms, so it’s only natural for The Wild Robot movie to differ from the book, but I had numerous discussions with the filmmakers, and I knew their goal was to capture the spirit of the story that I had dreamed up years ago.”

As DreamWorks Animation approaches its 30th anniversary in fall 2024, the studio continues to reach for new levels of artistic excellence. “We’re always in search of stories that ignite the hearts and minds of audiences around the world, and no story embodies that mission more than The Wild Robot,” Cohn says. “Chris Sanders is a true auteur, and The Wild Robot is a distinctly visual story that needed a director who could bring it to the screen in all its cinematic beauty and delicacy. Chris’ expansive and expressive portfolio made him the ideal choice to direct this project, and we were ecstatic when he came on board.”

Jeff Hermann © Universal Pictures

Sanders set ambitious goals for the film, aiming to push the boundaries of narrative and artistic expression. Achieving this vision required the collaboration of a seasoned producer, and Jeff Hermann, who has worked on various DreamWorks Animation films, including The Boss Baby: Family Business and the Kung Fu Panda series, was a natural fit. Hermann also recognized the opportunity to pioneer new directions with the film. “From the start, we knew this story was exceptional,” Hermann says. “It encapsulates all of the best elements of movie storytelling—a mix of scope and intimacy, joy and sadness, humor and terror, excitement and discovery. It delves into fundamental human experiences through the lens of robots and animals, exploring themes of attachment, commitment, responsibility, love and the essence of emotion.”

In translating the book to the big screen, the filmmakers sought to adapt and refine the narrative while honouring the beloved elements that resonated with readers

Their objectives were clear: to celebrate the story’s bold, distinctive qualities; to push the visual boundaries of look and style; and to highlight the intricate emotions and themes interwoven throughout the narrative.

(from left) Fink (Pedro Pascal), Roz (Lupita N’yongo), and Pinktail (Catherine O’Hara) in DreamWorks Animation’s Wild Robot, directed by Chris Sanders.© 2024 DreamWorks Animation. All Rights Reserved

The filmmakers recognized the story’s potential as a perfect fit for animation, especially given that its characters are all nonhumans. “One of the unexpected joys in creating this film was portraying animals authentically,” Sanders says. “In animation, there’s often a tendency to anthropomorphize animals, giving them human traits like wearing clothes, driving cars and having jobs. While that can be enjoyable, there’s a unique admiration for stories depicting animals as they are in nature. What set this story apart is our creatures on the island being somewhat anthropomorphic in their ability to talk, but they behave authentically as real animals in all other aspects. We wanted to capture the essence of these creatures living in a harsh, unforgiving environment where the struggle for survival is palpable. The animators embraced this rare opportunity and infused warmth and authenticity into the animals’ movements and behaviors. Surprisingly, the absence of human-like elements led to a beautiful purity in the story.”

The filmmakers went beyond the storyline, committing themselves to pushing the visual boundaries of aesthetics and style. From the project’s inception, they were determined to create a uniquely sophisticated visual identity to complement the story.

The island setting offered an ideal canvas to showcase a distinctive, painterly animation style. “My dad once told me something I’ll never forget,” Sanders says. “He said, ‘There’s a limit to what you can build, but you can paint anything.’ That idea has always stuck with me. He also spoke about the lasting impact of paintings. He believed that while a photograph on a wall might fade into the background over time, a painting would always command attention and remain captivating. I’ve found that to be very true.”

(from left, centered) Roz (Lupita Nyong’o), Fink (Pedro Pascal), Brightbill (Kit Connor) and Longneck (Bill Nighy) in DreamWorks Animation’s The Wild Robot, directed by Chris Sanders.© 2024 DreamWorks Animation. All Rights Reserved.

Having started his career in the era of hand-drawn animation, Sanders deeply appreciates the artistry and craftsmanship involved. “While CG animation introduced exciting camera movements, it also sacrificed some of the intricate details and warmth of hand-drawn characters,” Sanders says. “Early on, I worried that traditional CG might limit us, so we opted for an illustrative, painterly appearance inspired by some of DreamWorks’ recent work in this style. We needed grace, power and poetry in our visuals, and this approach delivered that and more. It focused on painting with depth, emphasizing impressionistic details over exhaustive realism. This choice not only captivated me with its beauty but also gave the scenes a heightened sense of realism and emotion. We drew inspiration from the animal portrayals in early Disney classics like Bambi, and from the atmospheric forests of Hayao Miyazaki films. Leveraging DreamWorks’ technological advancements, we’ve created a film with a completely unique animation style. Imagine a Miyazaki forest brought to life through the work of Claude Monet.”

The process of refining the film’s visual style became a tremendous source of pride for the filmmakers. “Initially, as we discussed our aspirations and the capabilities of our tools, we envisioned a painting coming to life,” Hermann says. “Our entire team not only met but exceeded our expectations, delivering results far beyond what we thought possible.”

In addition to shaping the narrative and visuals, the filmmakers dedicated significant attention to exploring the film’s themes and emotional depth. Recognizing the wealth of ideas within The Wild Robot, they approached the task with mindful consideration. The result is a film that eloquently reminds us of our connection to the natural world and underscores the paramount importance of empathy. It encourages the audience to find beauty in unlikely places and emphasizes kindness above all else. “Animation has a unique ability to infuse non-human elements with humanity,” Hermann says. “This project allowed us to depart from a comedic tone and delve into emotional and substantive storytelling.”

For Sanders, bringing The Wild Robot to the screen proved to be a profound personal and professional experience. “This project is one of the proudest achievements of my career,” Sanders says. “The artists have truly outdone themselves in giving life to a book, a story and characters that hold immense personal significance for me, the crew and hopefully, for all audiences. Like a life well-lived, The Wild Robot embraces tragedy, joy, failed plans and accidental triumphs. It celebrates the everyday magic that weaves a life together, reflecting on the dynamics of parenthood, childhood, the essence of home, and, above all, learning to grow beyond our programmed boundaries.”

Roz (Lupita Nyong’o) in DreamWorks Animation’s The Wild Robot, directed by Chris Sanders. © 2024 DreamWorks Animation. All Rights Reserved.

Artistic vision & Visual innovation

  • Impressionist Visual Style: The film’s unique painterly, impressionist style draws inspiration from iconic sources like Bambi and artists like Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro, and the impressionistic paintings of Claude Monet, creating a visually rich and immersive world. The film is divided into 31 sequences, with each sequence representing either a key story moment, location or action scene in the film. A total of 269 paintings were created by a team of 15 artists for these sequences.
  • Animation Techniques: A blend of traditional animation and advanced digital techniques brings the film to life, capturing the essence of classical artistry with a modern twist.
  • Evolutionary Color Palette: The film’s color palette evolves to convey emotional shifts and narrative beats.
  • Collaborative Visual Development: Collaborative efforts between visual development artists, concept artists and animators result in a cohesive visual language that balances realism with artistic expression.
  • Artistic Influences: The world of The Wild Robot is set in the not-so-distant future, which is characterized through scenes involving Universal Dynamics, the company that created ROZZUM 7134. The work of the late American industrial designer Syd Mead (Blade Runner films, 1982’s Tron) heavily influenced the design of the human world in the film, characterized by clean, swooping and slick shapes, contrasting with the gritty and chaotic wilderness of the island. The team also drew inspiration from science fiction artists John Harris and John Berkey.
  • Designing Roz: The design of Roz is a testament to the collaboration and creativity of multiple departments. The design journey of Roz was an intricate process that involved balancing her robotic essence with organic elements, reflecting her emotional growth throughout the film. The goal was to create a character that would evoke empathy and fascination while maintaining a high level of functionality and visual appeal. Roz’s design evolves throughout the film to reflect her emotional growth. Her body transitions from clean, crisp shapes to having more organic buildup and scratches. As she begins to blend into her environment, she begins to look like the forest itself and her design begins to look more like the film’s painterly landscape.
  • Animating the animals: The character effects team pushed boundaries in simulating realistic movement for the film’s animals, studying reference footage and conducting motion-capture sessions. In total, the artists created 47 species of animals for the film.

© 2024 DreamWorks Animation. All Rights Reserved

© Universal Pictures

by ·Comments Off on From Page To Screen

About Us / Screenwriting Course / How To Write A Screenplay For Film or TV /  The Art and Craft of Writing Films / Script Editing / Filmmaking in South Africa / Retreat for Writers / Film Appreciation Course / Workshop for Writers / Visual Dynamics and Language of Film / 2024 Film Releases / 2023 Film Releases / Top Films Of 2024 / Film Reviews / TV Reviews / Live Theatre / Contact Us  

Cinema audiences and theatre lovers alike are treated to live theatre in cinemas. NT Live

Meet the screenwriters and filmmakers

For writer-director Chris Sanders, bringing The Wild Robot to the screen proved to be a profound personal and professional experience. “This project is one of the proudest achievements of my career. The artists have truly outdone themselves in giving life to a book, a story and characters that hold immense personal significance for me, the crew and hopefully, for all audiences. Like a life well-lived, The Wild Robot embraces tragedy, joy, failed plans and accidental triumphs.” Read more / In cinemas from 20 September

“When I started writing Lonesome, I was thinking about where our queer community is right now in Australia,” says writer-director Craig Boreham. “Our connections via social media are constant but the physical community spaces have begun to disappear and our big cities can be trickier places to navigate when you are searching for your people.” Read more / Now streaming

When he wrote Bros, screenwriter Billy Eichner knew from the beginning that he wanted to make a film about modern, urban gay male life that felt adult, authentic and relatable. “I wanted a movie that showed in a very funny, but realistic, way what happens when two adult gay men who both pride themselves on not needing a relationship fall in love for the first time.” Read more / Now streaming on Showmax

“In my head, Speak No Evil was always a psychological thriller with a horrific core,” says writer-director James Watkins. “This subtle distinction is important in terms of my approach. The tension hopefully blooms from the psychological exploration of each character and how they interact in a modern social setting.” Read more / In cinemas from 13 September

“Things happen to all of us as we get older and change—relationships, children—all those things. That was the nucleus of it for me that got me back interested in it. It was quite emotional for me to revisit the characters,” says creative visionary Tim Burton of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, the long-awaited sequel to Burton’s award-winning Beetlejuice. Read more / In cinemas

“In the pantheon of action cinema, revenge narratives hold a special place, tapping into the primal instincts of justice and retribution,” says screenwriter-producer Jean Pierre Magro. “Hounds of War elevates this tradition, intertwining the raw, visceral path of vengeance with a daringly ambitious plot. This film is not just an exploration of personal vendetta; it’s a high-octane journey of a brother’s relentless pursuit of justice for the murder of his sibling, culminating in the audacious plan to kidnap the most protected individual on the planet—the President of the United States.” Read more / In cinemas

“What makes this movie so unique and appealing‐ is its amalgamation of the crazy 30s, the world of insects, its Agatha Christie’s‐style of plot, ” says director & producer Julio Soto Gúrpide of the animated Inspector Sun and the Curse of the Black Widow, based on an original screenplay by Rocco Pucillo. Read more / In cinemas

When director and co-writer Zoë Kravitz’s was acting in a film in 2017, the seed was planted for what would ultimately become Blink Twice. The #MeToo movement had just begun but notable predators like Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein hadn’t yet been exposed yet. “Between things that I had seen, experienced, read, things that have happened to friends of mine, I just felt like there was such a lack of conversation about the dynamics between men and women,” Kravitz says. Read more / In cinemas

Director Rupert Sanders

William Schneider, who co-wrote the screenplay of The Crow with Zach Baylin, “fell in love with director Rupert Sanders’ completely new take on a modern reimagination of the original graphic novel by James O’Barr. “The way he took a tale of revenge and from it built an unforgettable love story was so inventive, imaginative, and challenging. I loved getting into that element.” Read more / In cinemas

Colleen Hoover and director Justin Baldoni.

“When I read Colleen Hoover bestseller, it was clear that there was so much more to it than just a romance. This is a book about the human experience,” says recalls director and actor Justin Baldoni. A strong adaptation starts, of course, with a strong script, and Baldoni found the perfect screenwriter in Christy Hall a New York City based playwright who also serves as a producer on It Ends With Us. Read more / In cinemas

With the blessing of Ridley Scott, director Fede Alvarez decided to go back to the basics when shooting Alien: Romulus from a screenplay he wrote with frequent collaborator Rodo Sayagues based on characters created by Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett. “I knew that I wanted to take this chapter back to the beginning, not only story-wise but in terms of visual style,” explains Alvarez. “I wanted to keep it simple and focus on a few characters you could get to know and love.” Read more / In cinemas

“We wanted to make a big-scope, sci-fi adventure that’s both fresh and authentic in spirit to the characters and their universe,” says writer-director Eli Roth of the action-adventure-comedy Borderlands, based on one of the best-selling videogame franchises of all time, made to be experienced on the big screen. “I wanted to create the best moviegoing experience possible. I want it to be an emotional ride and for audiences to cheer.” Read more / In cinemas

“When I first read the script for Widow Clicquot by Erin Dignam, what jumped out at me was the life of a unique woman, Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin Clicquot, told through a battle between the present and an invading army of memories,” says director Thomas Napper. “It’s about Barbe-Nicole’s transformative relationship with herself and her work (the vines), arriving into her own power, her own identity, and creating her own incredible legacy.” Read more / In cinemas

As a queer couple, director Joshua John Miller and screenwriter M.A. Fortin found it disturbing watching certain segments of the Christian faith go after LGBT folks and women. “While we acknowledge the church is a source of great joy and comfort to many, it’s also proven itself to be a blunt instrument of abuse and shame just as often— kind of like Hollywood. When we first started writing this movie, there was a lot of terrible behavior being unearthed in both institutions— wounded people inflicting wounds on those around them. Out of this “meta” stew, The Exorcism was born.” Read more / In cinemas

“I believe that the stories that have impacted me the most have happened in the movie theater,” says writer-director M. Night Shyamalan. “Trap is intended for the movie theater experience. My job within that experience is to provoke the audience and give them something original, something they’ve never seen before.” Read more / In cinemas

The initial spark for writer and director Jeff Nichols’ latest film, The Bikeriders, came to him nearly 20 years ago, when he was introduced to Danny Lyon’s seminal photographic and oral history of a Midwestern outlaw motorcycle gang by his older brother Ben. “It’s about our search for identity. It is very much about American, masculine identity, capturing a rebellious time in America when the culture and people were changing. ” says Nichols. Read more / In cinemas

“Deadpool & Wolverine unlocked creative freedom for us—not to shock or misbehave, but to help make the most authentic film possible,” says director Shawn Levy, who co-wrote the screenplay with Ryan Reynolds & Rhett Reese & Paul Wernick & Zeb Wells. Read more / In cinemas

“This genre will live forever if people take it seriously,” says writer-director Kevin Costner of Horizon: An American Saga, examining the American West and all the contradictions, which, at its core, is what the Western has always been trying to do — interrogate the myths upon which our country was founded. “This is not a last stab at keeping this genre alive,” he insists. “This genre will live forever if people take it seriously.” Read more / Streaming

“Fly Me To The Moon reveals two sides that make America an inspiring country for so many: that it believes it can achieve anything, and that it has to chutzpah to sell you on that belief, too,” says director Greg Berlanti. “The spirit of the nation at the time of NASA’s historic Apollo 11 moon landing was believing in the impossible.” Read more / In cinemas

Twisters began to swirl into existence in 2020 when filmmaker Joseph Kosinski teamed up with screenwriter Mark L. Smith to develop a story to that followed a new generation of adventurous storm-chasers, exploring the wild subculture of storm-chasing, populated by a mix of professional meteorologists, hard-core weather enthusiasts and thrill-seeking adventurers, ensuring that the screenplay was based in accurate, authentic science. Read more / In cinemas

What if a movie could feel like a nightmare? Not in the sense that it gives you nightmares, though Longlegs, the new feature from writer and director Osgood Perkins, will certainly do that. But what if a movie could replicate the all consuming but still somehow unplaceable feeling of being trapped in a prison of your darkest subconscious, where the elemental fears of childhood boogeymen blend terrifyingly together with the anxieties and responsibilities of adulthood. Read more / In cinemas

“I wanted to make something positive. I wanted to make a feel-good movie,” says Visionary French writer-director Jean Pierre Jeunet of Amélie, the inspiring story of a shy, introverted and quirky waitresswho decides to change the lives of those around her for the better while dealing with her own isolation. Read more

Like all great writers, Carrie Solomon indeed mined her own experiences when she wrote the script for A Family Affair when she was 24. Echoes of her career as a rising screenwriter ricochet through the film, which weaves together three coming-of-age stories for its lead characters, each one undergoing what director Richard Lagravenese likes to call a “second adulthood” at ages 24, 34, and 50. Read more / On Netflix

Despicable Me 4 is here! In the vast realm of animated entertainment, the Despicable Me franchise stands out as a titan, firmly cemented as the most successful animated franchise in cinematic history. At its core, the beloved saga captivates global audiences with its endearing characters, vibrant animation and a brand of humor that knows no bounds of language or culture. Read more / In cinemas

“The first two movies are about one family, so I expanded the world, but that was just incidental. The heart of it is making sure that the characters’ stories are front and center,” says writer-director Michael Sarnoski of A Quiet Place: Day One, a taut horror thriller with big screen action that honors the legacy of the blockbuster franchise and shows audiences what happened on the day the world went quiet. Read more / In cinemas

For German writer-director Julia von Heinz Treasure has been a journey many years in the making. “I wanted to talk about transgenerational trauma but also show that it can be healed if we start telling our history to each other,” says von Heinz of this father-daughter road trip set in 1990s Poland. Read more / In cinemas

Mixing comedy, romance and melodrama to tell a story set at a pivotal moment in movie history, French writer-director Michel Hazanavicius’s astounding The Artist is itself an example of the form it celebrates:  a black and white silent film that relies on images, actors and music to weave its singular spell. Read more

“I always had a very personal connection to this story”, says writer-director Simon Verhoeven of Girl You Know It’s True, bringing the success and scandal story of pop duo Milli Vanilli to the big screen, based on his own screenplay. “A story that starts in Munich and ends in Hollywood.” Read more / In cinemas

In 1950, Austrian-born filmmaker Billy Wilder released Sunset Boulevard an ironic and melancholic commentary on ex-stars once acclaimed as gods, only to be forgotten. Solidifying its status as one of the greatest classics in cinematic history, this golden classic celebrates the expressive power of the silent film era and blends reality and fiction seamlessly in a meta-cinematographic style. Read more

Inside Out (2015) was inspired by Oscar-winning director Pete Docter’s own life as he witnessed his own daughter Elie growing up. Inside Out 2 returns to the mind of newly minted teenager Riley just as Headquarters is undergoing a sudden demolion to make room for something entirely unexpected: new Emotions! Read more / In Cinemas

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’s theme of rebelliousness inside an oppressive, claustrophobic environment was an ideal topic for director Milos Forman, who had permanently left the Communist-ruled society of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and probably had his own personal perspective on large-scale social suppression of freedom. Read more

 Few films in history have articulated so simply and so poetically what it’s like to have a love affair with the movies. Italian director filmed Cinema Paradiso at the beginning of 1988 when he was 31 years-old. It won the 1990 Best Foreign Film Oscar after setting box office records the previous year all over the world. Paradiso had a rough journey on its road to glory. Read more

“When I was deciding what my first feature should be, I looked at lots of different sources for inspiration; I really wanted to play with combining fantasy and thriller elements,” says writer-director Ishana Night Shyamalan of The Watchers. A.M. Shine’s book was presented to me and I started to read… by page 70, I was like, “I have to make this movie.” Read more

Ezra started with a script by screenwriter and playwright Tony Spiridakis that was making the rounds.  The father of a son (now 24) on the autistic spectrum, Spiridakis had written a family drama deeply rooted in his own experiences—one charting the course of a father discovering how to stop banging his head against the wall and realize that his son’s neurodivergence isn’t something he needs to urgently “fix,” but something he can embrace, if only he can relax enough to connect. Read more / In cinemas

“His frustrations are universal,” says director Mark Dindal, who helms our lazy and sarcastic hero’s first fully animated big-screen adventure with The Garfield Movie. “He reminds people of their childhoods – reading him in the Sunday paper or seeing the specials.  The visual humor will always play. You can find Garfield comics from 15, 20, 30 years ago, and they don’t feel dated because they’re never really rooted in something specific to that time period.” Read more / In cinemas

Inspired by an unbelievable true story, Hit Man “is loosely based on a true crime article I read almost twenty years ago in the Texas Monthly,” says The film is attempting to hit a lot of notes—comedy, noir, thriller, psychological study—while examining most of all the concept of identity and how fixed our personalities may or may not be. Read more / In cinemas

“One of the things I’ve always been interested in exploring is that people are revealed by extreme situations,” says writer-director George Miller of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, the much-anticipated return to the iconic dystopian world he created more than 40 years ago with the seminal “Mad Max” films. An all-new original, standalone action adventure that will reveal the origins of the powerhouse character from Mad Max: Fury Road. Read more / In cinemas

Ryan Reynolds, left, and Director John Krasinski on the set of Paramount Pictures’ “IF.”

From early childhood we are enthralled by fairytales that transport us to another world. “I thought, wouldn’t it be amazing if you could bring all of that magic into your own real life?” says writer-director John Krasinski, whose inspiration for this enchanting Imaginary Friends was his own children. “If there’s one thing I want people to leave this movie with, it’s that believing in something bigger and more beautiful can actually get you through another day. That’s the kind of story I have always wanted to tell.” Read more

“While other kids watched cartoons and family adventures, my mother, a film buff, introduced me to the works of Hitchcock at a very young age,’ says director Renny Harlin, whose The Strangers ― Chapter 1, marks the chilling first entry of this upcoming horror feature-film series. Read more

“There’s something inherently scary about tarot cards and tarot readings,” says Anna Halberg, who with her writing and directing partner Spenser Cohen brings the fortune telling deck to life in terrifying ways in the horror film Tarot. Read more

Director Wes Ball on the set of 20th Century Studios’ KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES. Photo by Jasin Boland. © 2024 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

As a child, visionary filmmaker Wes Ball was given a VHS copy of 1968’s Planet of the Apes which he watched over and over for years and breathes new life into the global epic franchise with Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, following the success of the Planet of the Apes trilogy that was launched in 2011. “Story-wise, these films resonate with people because they have sci-fi concepts, and they tackle issues of humanity,” says Ball. “They hold a mirror up to society and compel us to look at problems we as humans face through the lens of this fantastical world.” Read more

Director Luca Guadagnino was inspired to helm Challengers when he read ‘A very brilliant script by Justin Kuritzkes that had a great voice — it was so humorous and piercing. And the premise of the story — people who are complicated and who never really want to put things in place but in fact make things more complicated for themselves — was even better.” Read more

“I think life is a comedy-drama,” says Scottish writer, actor and comedian Richard Gadd, who created and stars in the profoundly illuminating Netflix drama series Baby Reindeer, based on his one-man show and real-life experience. “Some of the darkest places I’ve been in, I’ve found giggles somehow. And some of the funniest places I’ve been in, including backstage at comedy clubs with other comedians, can be the most depressing places as well. I always think life is a mixture of light and shade. So I wanted Baby Reindeer to be a blend of them both.” Richard Gadd shares his complicated story with the world

From a screenplay by Drew Pearce, and based on the television series created by Glen A. Larson, The Fall Guy, is a love letter to action movies and the hard-working and under-appreciated crew of people who make them from former real life stunt man and director David Leitch. Crafting the storyline became a collaborative endeavor when Leitch enlisted Pearce to bring the story to life. Read more

Elements of state-of-the-art video games, Korean action movies, Japanese anime and classic horror- fantasy inspired the storyline of director Moritz Mohr’s spectacular dystopian action thriller Boy Kills World, “I’m a longtime gamer and I’ve tried to infuse the movie with that kind of craziness and fun,” says Mohr, who channels the hyper-kinetic thrill of classic video games in a visually dazzling, nonstop battle royale, from a script by Tyler Burton Smith. Read more

“Every good animated movie transports you to another world,” says writer-director Christopher Jenkins of 10 Lives, showing what happens when a pampered cat loses his ninth life and ffate steps in to set him on a transformative journey.“The question at the heart of the movie is, how would you live your life if you were given the chance to do it all again? And Beckett’s path is to learn that, when you live and love with all your heart, one life is truly enough.” Read more

Abigail was the brainchild of screenwriter Stephen Shields who first pitched the heist-meets-horror idea to Universal in 2019. “The inspiration for me was just the love of the two genres that I liked watching,” Shields says of this exciting new spin on classic vampire mythology. Read more

“As a storyteller, I am drawn to characters in crisis,” says director Adam Cooper of Sleeping Dogs, a razor-edge thriller about one man’s quest to reclaim his past. “The nature of that crisis can take on many forms– identity, mortality, faith – but at the centre, there’s always someone who is struggling to make sense of their life, someone who goes on a journey from a lost or fragmented state, to one where they can begin to restore themselves, ” says Cooper, who crafted the screenplay with frequent collaborator Bill Collage. Read more

“I was very adamant that Back To Black would be told through Amy Winehouse’s point of view,” says screenwriter Matt Greenhalgh who used Amy’s own words as a springboard into how to write her dialogue for the film. “This was Amy’s POV, so if Amy had said it herself, that’s all I needed to know. Highlighting Amy’s talent and charisma was paramount.” Read more

When Ivan Reitman passed away after the release of Afterlife, leaving an unmatched legacy of comedy and ghostbusting, Jason Reitman stepped into the Ghostbusters franchise. “The last story that I ever got to tell my dad was the story of Frozen Empire, a new adventure for the ghostbusters back in Manhattan,” says Jason, who co-wrote the screenplay of Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire with director Gil Kenan. Read more

Filmmaker Alex Garland began writing Civil War in 2020, months after the pandemic had begun, as the possible futures that seemed certain were blown apart and we were launched into a very different reality. The fears that spurred him to write the film at the time have, in the intervening years, only metastasized. “I wrote it out of a mixture of anger and anxiety, and then you go about the long process of making the film,” Garland says. “Whatever sense of frustration I had while originally writing the script, it did not diminish. It grew.” Read more

“As I was looking at the true story and looking at the real people, I felt like there was a responsibility and an obligation to tell their story in a way that honored their life,” says director Jon Gunn of Ordinary Angels, an inspiring tale of faith and everyday miracles. “My vision was to share—with honesty and integrity—the truth and the challenges and the pain of that true story in a way that was optimistic and uplifting.” Read more

When writer/director/producer Dev Patel was imagining the story of Monkey Man, little could he fathom that a tale inspired by childhood stories would become his directorial debut. READ MORE

“I’m really proud of The First Omen because I think we take a lot of big swings when it comes to horror,” says director/co-screenwriter Arkasha Stevenson. “And I do think that a lot of those are particular to the female experience and the female perspective, and the fact that we had a whole film production who was in support of that and ready to take that big jump with me is a really cool feeling.” READ MORE

“Making Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire gave me the confidence that you can let these monsters tell their own story, let them just be characters, says Director / Story Writer Adam Wingard. ‘I wanted to make not just another Monsterverse film, but a thrill ride like you’ve never seen before.” READ MORE

“I wanted to capture what I felt to be the real New York, with its incredible diversity, vivid texture, and incredible soundscapes. And also its relationship to both violence and hope,” says French filmmaker Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire. Furthering his examination of violence inside institutions and among close-knit groups, he turns his unflinching and inquisitive eye on his adopted hometown of New York City in all its ragged glory with Asphalt City. READ MORE / REVIEW

The Kung Fu Panda franchise launches into a new era with Kung Fu Panda 4, the narrative takes a compelling turn, guiding Po on an internal journey of growth and change. READ MORE

With the resounding success of The Gentlemen, filmmaker Guy Ritchie is back in the genre he made his own in films like Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. But this time, he extends his range by co-writing and producing the eight part series, while also directing the first two episodes. Watch on Netflix / READ MORE

Throughout history, there have been events so epic that they enter the realm of legend. Someone takes an all-or-nothing risk, and it defines the rest of their life. Epic tales of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table have exemplified heroism for centuries. That legend inspired elite professional athlete Mikael Lindnord to bestow the king’s name on a battered stray dog whose quiet dignity shook him to the core. Screenwriter Michael Brandt adapted Lindnord’s best-selling book, Arthur: The Dog Who Crossed the Jungle to Find a Home into the inspiring film Arthur And The King. READ MORE

“Nothing is scarier than what the audience imagines themselves,” says director and screenwriter Jeff Wadlow. ‘Imaginary puts that idea to the test. This is a movie about imagination, and one can imagine anything. You can imagine something fantastical that also seems very real. That is incredibly fertile ground for a horror movie because it lets us constantly play with the audience’s understanding of reality — which provides infinite possibilities to scare the hell out of them.” READ MORE /

“Frank Herbert wanted Dune to serve as a cautionary tale about imperialism and the allure of ‘saviors.’  Denis and I wanted to make sure this message rang out clearly in the film,” says screenwriter Jon Spaihts about Dune: Part Two, exploring themes both timeless and timely, from romantic love and maternal love to globalism, loyalty, revenge and catharsis.

The story behind the new South African buddy-comedy Frankie en Felipé is rooted in the shared dream of Bradley Olivier and Solomon Cupido, much like any actor aiming to create their own film. Their ultimate aspiration was to craft their own cinematic narrative and serves as a vehicle for people to connect with the characters through their struggles and dreams. READ MORE / South African Filmmaking

“Of my written work, Miller’s Girl is the first,” says writer-director Jade Halley Bartlett. “It began as a love letter to my dear friend and muse, Julianne, whose extraordinary talents as an actress inspired me to write a character who has become, to this day, a young woman from whom I am still learning.” READ MORE / In cinemas from 23 February

“Madame Web is unlike any other superhero,” says writer-director S.J. Clarkson, bringing to the screen one of Marvel’s most mysterious and inscrutable characters. Clarkson helms a standalone origin story for the character who uses the power of her mind to weave together the fates of everyone around her. “One of the themes of the movie is that you don’t have to be superhuman to have superpowers,” Clarkson continues. “Most superheroes’ powers come from strength and agility. With Madame Web, it’s all psychological.” READ MORE / Now in cinemas

By hewing to the darker, more existential tones of Italian author Carlo Collodi’s fairy tale Pinocchio than any previous adaptation, and pairing it with a style of animation that inherently draws a viewer into a state of wonder, writer-director Guillermo del del Toro has aimed to create a film that’s characteristically jubilant yet wistful, otherworldly but resonant. “One that’s meant for every kind of viewer — adults and children alike.” READ MORE/ Netflix

“When writing Land Of Bad, this bond was between the core characters, stuck in an impossible situation in an unforgiving landscape,” says writer-director William Eubank . ““When I arrived on set in Australia’s Gold Coast, I found that this bond transcended the page in two ways. It was forged between the actors, and is a key value of the country we filmed in. “It was this camaraderie – from researching and penning the screenplay with my co-writer and producer David Frigerio, to the stories we heard from real Delta Force soldiers, and what I experienced on set – that made Land Of Bad an unforgettable experience. READ MORE / In Cinemas

“David Hemingson had written a pilot script that took place in an all-boys prep school, and it was wonderful,” says director Alexander Payne, who called Hemingson and said, ‘I don’t want to make your pilot but would you consider writing a feature script based on a different idea?,” resulting in The Holdovers. Read More / Only in Cinemas

“I wanted to capture the contrast between somebody pouring a cup of coffee in their kitchen and somebody being murdered on the other side of the wall, the co-existence of those two extremes,” says 58-year-old writer-director Jonathan Glazer of The Zone Of Interest, in which the commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss, and his wife Hedwig, strive to build a dream life for their family in a house and garden next to the camp. Read More / Only in cinemas

Writing a globe-trotting espionage thriller while the world was in COVID lockdown allowed screenwriter Jason Fuchs an escape. I hadn’t written an original screenplay in a long time, so Argylle became my little passion project,” Fuchs says. “It was cathartic and allowed me to escape my apartment office and traverse the world with Argylle on a Greek island or explore Europe with the characers.”Read More / Now in Cinemas

“Music and magical realism helped to heighten the world of the story, and allowed us to get inside of Celie’s mind,” says poet, playwright, screenwriter Marcus Gardley of the reimagining of The Color Purple. “For me, the story came alive in a new way when I realized that Celie’s imagination was the heartbeat of the film.” Read More / Now in cinemas

Screenwriter Kurt Wimmer considers himself a regular moviegoer and he gravitates to things we all feel the same about.  “When people take advantage of old people,” he says, “that makes me really angry… around the world people are being defrauded with no recourse for justice.” He decided to solve the injustice in his fantasy world by writing the screenplay for The Beekeeper. “I want a white knight for people who need it, who really need it.” Read More / Now in cinemas /

 “I was interested in exploring the complexities of both familial and romantic love, but also the distinct experience of a specific generation of gay people growing up in the 80s,” says British filmmaker Andrew Haigh, who infused his screenplay for All Of Us Strangers with a contemporary and personal touch, placing the story in a world more recognizable to his own. Read More / Read the Screenplay / Now in cinemas

In the sexy romantic comedy Beautiful Disaster, college freshman Abby and bad-boy brawler “Mad Dog” Maddox fell in love after a bet. In Beautiful Wedding they wake up after a crazy night in Vegas as accidental newlyweds. Writer/director Roger Kumble says that while a sequel wasn’t originally planned, a fun end credits sequence set up the characters for another adventure. Read More / Now in cinemas

“It has been remarkable to watch screenwriter John Collee turn this thing into a television story, and he’s taken it to places that I never went, that I wished I’d had more space to explore,” says novelist Trent Dalton regarding the TV adaptation of his brilliant, semi-autobiographical and intensely evocative 2018 debut novel Boy Swallows Universe. Read More / Watch on Netflix.

“Balenciaga is an almost “secret” creator. His work is extraordinarily public, but he maintained absolute privacy about his person. He gave practically no interviews and lived in a highly media-driven, but almost clandestine, environment. That was the first challenge: who was Cristóbal Balenciaga?” says Lourdes Iglesias, creator of the series on Cristóbal Balenciaga, one of the first fiction series of Disney+ Spain. On Disney + / Read More

“Alasdair Gray’s novel is packed with ideas about gender, identity, and even Scottish nationalism, says screenwriter Tony McNamara, who wrote the screenplay of Poor Things. “You’re in this incredibly rich philosophical and political world, all while being tremendously funny.” Read More

With a new screenplay by Tina Fey, the iconic high school comedy Mean Girls returns as a classic tale retold in the era of social media. This new version, she says, uses the strengths of both the original film and the hit Broadway show as a springboard for an extravagant and contemporary movie. Read More

“I see the court as a place where our lives are fictionalized, where a story, a narrative, is put on our life,” says French writer-director Justine Triet about Anatomy of a Fall, which she co-wrote with her partner Arthur Harari, eschewing the traditional courtroom drama to explore familial relationships. Read More

“Like it or not, J. Robert Oppenheimer is the most important person who ever lived. He made the world we live in, for better or for worse. And his story must be seen to be believed,” says writer-director Christopher Nolan, who consciously broke traditional screenwriting rules by skillfully penning the script for Oppenheimer in the first-person, something that had a unique and positive effect on the story. Read More / Read the Screenplay

It sometimes can be challenging when someone has written 300 beautiful pages of prose and then they need to turn it into a screenplay. Taylor Jenkins Reid adapted her own story, One True Loves, working with her husband, Alex. Says Alex J. Reid, “I’ve been fortunate enough to have adapted several books. But usually, I don’t have the benefit of adapting a book with its author — who in this case is also my wife!” Read More

Screenwriter Michael Golamco’s inspiration for Please Stand By came from a NY Times article about young girls with autism. “That girl resonated with me. The article said girls with autism have problems connecting socially, but what sets them apart from boys is that girls really want to connect. ” Read More

Like Spike Lee and his seminal classic Do the Right Thing, screenwriter Lena Waithe was striving to encourage a discourse on race relations in America with Queen & Slim, in a multilayered story that also speaks to love, hate, fear and ultimately the human condition. “I want audiences to determine for themselves whether or not they think Queen and Slim are heroes,” Waithe says. “People will have different takes on it, and that’s what’s great about art. Rather than audiences looking to the artist for the answer, I prefer to let the art speak for itself, allowing the audience to look to themselves for the answer.” Read More

Good Grief marks Daniel Levy’s debut as a feature-film writer and director. “For me, writing is one of the most meaningful ways of exploring and understanding my own feelings,” says Levy. Levy deftly moves beyond his Emmy-winning work as an actor and writer on the hit TV series Schitt’s Creek. Now on Netflix. MORE

Acclaimed Spanish director-writer J.A.Bayona adapted Pablo Vierci’s book Society Of The Snow, to give a voice to the survivors and to those who didn’t make it out alive. The event, which took place 50 years ago last year, is well known around the world and has affected (and continues to affect) generations of people. MORE

“I wanted to explore Killers of the Flower Moon,” says director Martin Scorsese. “To start working with Eric Roth and see what kind of a movie we could make. From 2017 to 2020, while we were shooting “The Irishman,” we went through every aspect of that story. We came at the story from every possible angle, with Tom White as the main character.” MORE

“I was fascinated by their dynamic in the context of Diana’s crazy dream and her desire to do something so dangerous that she just knew in her bones she could do it. What does that do to a relationship? What does that do to the person who loves you more than anybody else in the world?” asks Nyad screenwriter Julia Cox. MORE

Visionary writer-director Terrence Malick masterfully shines the spotlight on humanity with A Hidden Life. It is his first biographical film based on real people whose descendants are still alive. MORE

With Nicholas Winton’s daughter’s blessing, screenwriters Lucinda Coxon and Nick Drake gained access to Winton’s archives and letters, as well as her book about her father, to craft One Life. MORE

“This is an incredibly timely story. Thematically it’s about finding light in times of darkness,” says screenwriter Steven Knight on the decision to adapt All the Light We Cannot See for television. “There’s just a very hopeful feeling about it, that hope will triumph over evil in the end.” MORE

When screenwriter Kennedy Martin passed away in 2009, filmmaker Michael Mann revisited his script and its themes and crafted Ferrari, a biographical drama for a new era. MORE

“Who among us has the inner strength and autonomy to live outside the churning new cell phone cycle and the amplified social chatter of our digital consumer society?” Debra Granik questions poignantly, who directed Leave No Trace from a screenplay she crafted with Anne Rosellini. MORE

Andrew Kevin Walker

“I liked the idea of exploring the inner psyche of somebody who kills for a living. And how he qualifies his notion of what he’s doing from what other people might ‘misperceive’ it as.” says director David Fincher of The Killer, who re-unites with screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker, with whom he created the indelible serial killer thriller Se7en. MORE

”What started out as a simple research assignment became a two-year odyssey as doors kept opening, allowing me more and more access into this violent world,” says writer-director Ric Roman Waugh, whose film Shot Caller takes us into the hardcore culture of prison gangsters. MORE

Well-experienced in adaptations, award-winning playwright and screenwriter Alice Birch knew how to take Novelist and Poet Megan Hunter Megan’s words and make them cinematic and wrote the screenplay for The End We Start From. MORE

“I think audiences want to see movies that are relevant, authentic, and cinematic – but most of all, fun,” says writer-director Will Gluck of the hilarious comedy Anyone But You. MORE

I’ve always loved an underdog story,” says writer, director, producer, and cinematographer Zack Snyder. Incarnations of his screenplay for Rebel Moon originated 20 years ago. MORE

When Oscar-winning Māori filmmaker Taika Waititi learned about the epic failure and the story of an underdog team whose dreams finally came true, he knew he had to make Next Goal Wins. “You’re always looking for inspiration, but with this one, it was all already there,” he says. MORE

Making his English-language debut, Oslo-born writer-director Kristoffer Borgli follows the rise and fall of one man’s fifteen minutes of fame with Dream Scenario, a mordantly funny and playfully twisted take on the collective consciousness of modern life where just about anyone can suddenly become a strange kind of celebrity. MORE

“Rumaan Alam’s novel drew me in because of its characters, first and foremost. They all seemed authentic and a true product of modern society. There was something about the way they clashed with each other in this near-apocalyptic setting that resonated with me,” says writer-director Sam Esmail of Leave the World Behind . MORE

What inspired action-movie specialist John Woo his return after an absence of 2-decades, is a riveting screenplay for Silent Night, crafted by Robert Archer Lynn, “Even though it had no dialogue, it had great drama and a very, very good story. The script is full of surprises. I enjoyed the script because I like challenges.” MORE

“I wanted to bring to the world a Wonka back when he was young and wide-eyed and full of hope and optimism,” says writer-director Paul King of Wonka. “What I wanted to show is the flowering of a genius in the most extraordinary way you can possibly imagine—a man who discovers who he is, but also finds a family.” MORE

“Writing something so close to home, yet fictional, was an interesting new challenge,” says screenwriter Gabe Gabriel who wrote and stars in Runs in the Family, directed by his father Ian Gabriel. “While based on my own complex, but positive relationship with my father as a young trans man coming into his own in South Africa, the story had to eventually separate itself from us and become its own magical thing in order to really take off.” MORE

“Writing the first draft of May December in 2019 was not very comfortable. Mostly because I was crammed into the coat closet of our old apartment: a 3-by-3 space that we had taken the rod out of and installed a folding tray-table that I used as a desk,” says screenwriter Samy Burch. MORE

Filmmaker Eli Roth’s ode to 80s slasher horror  Thanksgiving began in 2006 when he created a fake trailer that would appeal to the grindhouse crowd. 17 years later horror fans were still begging for the best horror movie never made. MORE

Screenwriter David Scarpa’s craft lies in writing material with psychological themes that lend themselves to a sweeping cinematic experience.  With Napoleon, he uses real-life characters as a vehicle to illuminate broader themes about the human condition. MORE

Writer-director James Napier Robertson is well-versed in dramatisations of real-life stories. “There’s always a pressure and responsibility when telling a story about a real person.  I believe ballet is a bridge between countries and cultures. It’s an international language, a way for people to meet and create and do things without words. It’s about beauty and celebrating something that is bigger than just the basic functions of being human.” MORE

“We knew it was an incredible story, the question was how do we tell it in a way that would be really interesting. That’s when we came up with the perspectives idea and, ultimately, the kind of the bait and switch, where you have two thirds of a movie with these two men only to discover that this woman is actually the hero of the whole story,” says Matt Damon, who co-wrote the screenplay of The Last Duel with Ben Affleck and Nicole Holofcener. MORE

“Knock At The Cabin is a modern-day biblical story,” says writer-director M. Night Shyamalan. “The idea of telling large-scale biblical stories, but in modern times and in modern settings, is resonating with me right now.” MORE

Jimmy Smallhorne says his inspiration for The Miracle Club came from his Mam and all other women who were the best multitaskers. “We all have our jobs to make our little piece better, and I think The Miracle Club is my attempt to make my patch a little better”. MORE

John Lee Hancock, directing and producing The Little Things from a script he wrote almost 30 years ago, wanted to approach the gritty nature of the job as a means of exploring both the intellectual and psychological sides of solving crimes. MORE

“I was just astounded by this incredible story,” says screenwriter Wells Tower after reading a New York Times article, The Pain Hustlers, “I found it mind-blowing that these people, who for the most part have no medical training, have so much influence over the medications we’re prescribed,” MORE

“I grew up surrounded by women. I think of all the female characters I’ve written and being inspired by these women and their stability to overcome anything. By their ability to fight and by their strength,” says Spanish writer-director Pedro Almodóvar of Parallel Mothers. MORE

“It just tapped into such a shared truth for women of every generation in terms of how they navigate through sexual politics,” says screenwriter Michelle Ashford of Cat Person, who had previously tackled sexual dynamics and politics in the television series Masters Of Sex. MORE

“There is nothing more haunted than a Venetian palazzo, the city just calls for mist and masks, and the creepy crawly, throw-a-body-in-the-river kind of feel, ” says screenwriter Michael Green of A Haunting In Venice, an adaptation of Agatha Christie’s novel Hallowe’en Party. MORE

Michael Green also crafted the screenplays for Murder On The Orient Express and Death On The Nile, both directed by Kenneth Branagh /

“I was very interested in a story about destiny and humanity,” says visionary storyteller Guillermo del Toro, who journeys into the most arrestingly dark, sweeping and realistic world – the cinematic world of film noir with Nightmare Alley, exploring the murky lines between illusion and reality, desperation and control, success, and tragedy. MORE

Crimson Peak is “the darkest of fairytales,” says filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, who brings to the screen a masterful and imaginative Gothic romance. MORE

“How do you make a film where the feeling you’re trying to evoke is ‘not knowing’?” questions writer-director Grant Singer. “Mysteries that are most resonant and lasting are the most hidden.  Reptile began with a desire to capture a feeling of being deceived. MORE

“It made sense for John to do some soul-searching in a way we haven’t seen before, ” says screenwriter Josh Stolberg, who co-wrote the screenplay of SAW X with Pete Goldfinger. MORE

Artificial Intelligence (AI), is one of today’s most hotly debated topics and is at the epicenter of The Creator, a science fiction thriller set in the near future. “The Timing of this film is surreal,” says director/co-writer Gareth Edwards. “Even though we’ve been developing this movie for years, it’s opening at a fascinating time when our world is wrestling with a lot of the issues and questions we wanted to address with the film.” MORE / AI FILMS

Almost 20 years ago writer-director Wes Anderson was inspired to adapt Roald Dahl’s story The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar. “ The story completely hooked me as a child, but if you take away his words, well, I guess, it’s not a movie I felt compelled to do. It’s a great Dahl story, but if I do it using his words, his descriptions, then maybe I know how to do it.” MORE

When writer-director Celine Song found herself sitting at a bar sandwiched between two men from vastly different parts of her life, it was there, sitting in this convergence of worlds, that Song, a mainstay in New York theater as a playwright, found the inspiration for what would become her filmmaking debut, PAST LIVES. MORE

“After really showcases an authentic romance and all of its beauty and all of its ugliness at the same time,” says writer-director Castille Landon, who directed After Ever Happy and After Everything of the After franchise. “It feels really real and relevant and I think we’re so exposed to this concept of a fairy tale romance that when you get into the real world, you find that’s not at all how things are.” MORE

“At the heart of our vision for Luma Animation and for Headspace, is the notion that everyone deserves to be the hero of their own story, not forgetting that, ultimately, we rely on the support of friends and collaborators to triumph,” Paul Meyer and Gerhard Painter, who directed this vibrant South African CGI Sci-Fi action-adventure from a screenplay they co-wrote with Daniel Buckland and Ronald Henry. South African Filmmaking / MORE

The inspiration for the high concept horror Talk To Me came from observing neighbourhood kids growing up and marks the debut feature film from Australian twins Danny and Michael Philippou, best known as online global sensations RACKARACKA, with more than 1.5 billion views on YouTube. MORE

by ·Comments Off on The Art & Craft Of Writing Films

MENU: About Us / Courses for Writers / 2024 Film Releases / 2023 Film Releases / Screenwriters / From Page To Screen / South African Filmmaking / Top Films of 2023 / Films On DVD / Film Reviews / TV Reviews / Golden Globes 2024 /Contact Us / Subscribe To Newsletter /

Film, like speech and writing, has a unique language. Film Is A Visual & Temporal Art. Writing, speech, and visual images all communicate within their own particular spheres. MORE

Film Appreciation & Evaluation Course. Designed for absolute beginners to budding cinephiles by Daniel Dercksen, a film journalist of 40 years, The Writing Studio’s film appreciation course will give you a thorough grounding in all things film. SEND US AN EMAIL

Click on Titles To Read Features

Action / Adventure

The Beekeeper / Silent Night

Adaptation

A Haunting In Venice / All The Light We Cannot See / A Man Called Otto / All Quiet On The Western Front / Alone In Berlin / The Art Of Racing In The Rain / Beautiful Disaster / The Black Phone / Blue Beetle / The Boogeyman / The Dark Tower / Dune / The Good House / Killers of the Flower Moon  / Lady Chatterley’s Lover / Lion / Mean Girls / Mrs. Harris Goes To Paris / One True Loves / Pain Hustlers / Papillon / Peter Pan & Wendy / The Secret Garden / Toorbos / The Whale / The Wonderful Story Of Henry Sugar

Addiction

Ben Is Back

Animation

The Amazing Maurice / Elemental / Epic Tails / Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio / Headspace / Ladybug & Cat Noir: The Movie / Migration / Rally Road Racers / Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken / Strange World

AI – Artificial Intelligence

The Creator / 100 Years Of AI

Animals

A Dog’s Purpose / The Art Of Racing In The Rain / Dog / Call Of The Wild

Classic Films / Vintage

Cinema Paradiso / One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest / Sunset Boulevard / The Artist / Amelie

Coming Of Age

Boy Swallows Universe

Creatures

65 / The Black Demon / Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile /

Crime

Bodies / The Killer / Killers of the Flower Moon / The Little Things / Reptile /

Dance

Joika

Documentary

Encounters

Espionage / Spy

Bridge Of Spies / The Exception

Faith Based Stories

Fatima / Miracle Club

Fantasy

Avatar / Avatar: The Way To The Water / Beau is Afraid / Crimson Peak / Dune / Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves / Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio / Peter Pan & Wendy / Poor Things / Rebel Moon Part One / Strange World / The Watchers

Female Diven Narratives

Blonde / Call Jane / Emily / The Estate / The Favourite / Good Luck To You, Leo Grande / Joy Ride / MA / May December / Mean Girls / The Mother / Miracle Club /Mrs. Harris Goes To Paris / Nanny / Parallel Mothers / Poor Things / She Said / Women Talking

Film Culture

The Greatest Films Of All Time / How to Read a Film: The Language of Film / Film – A Popular Art Form / Film Appreciation Course/ A steady diet of celluloid

Franchise

After / Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania / Creed III / Fast & Furious 10 / Halloween Ends / The Hunger Games: The Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes / Insidious /  Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny / Mission: Impossible –Dead Reckoning Part One / Missing / My Big Fat Wedding 3. / Searching / Transformers: Rise of the Beasts / Saw /

Games

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves / Five Nights at Freddy’s

Gangster

 Legend

Gay Themed

All Of Us Strangers / Green Book / Bros / Die Stropers (The Harvest) / Good Grief / The Ignorant Angels / Heartstopper / Inxeba: The Wound / The Inspection / Kanarie / Lonesome / Moffie / My Policeman / Nyad / Pain and Glory / Punch / Rafiki / Red, White & Royal Blue / The Whale

Gothic Romance

Crimson Peak

Heist /Hostage Stories

Money Monster

Holocaust

One Life / The Survivor

Horror

Knock At The Cabin / MA /  Malignant / Talk To Me / Thanksgiving / Saw X

Independent Filmmaking

The Gallows / Punch

Inspired By

Air / The Amazing Maurice / Babylon / Barbarian / Barbie / Cocaine Bear / C’mon C’mon / Death On The Nile / Dog / Empire of Light / Haunted Mansion / Murder On The Orient Express / No Hard Feelings / The Lost King / Notre-Dame on Fire / The Pale Blue Eye / The Pope’s Exorcist / Professor Marston & The Wonder Women / Renfield / Shotgun Wedding / Those Who Wish Me Dead / The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent

Interviews

Writer-director Gavin Hood talks about Oscar-winning Tsotsi / Tertius Kapp discusses the ecological horror fantasy Gaia / Johnny Breedt talks about Die Ontwaking / Christiaan Olwagen, talks about Poppie Nongena / Sallas de Jager on Dominie Tienie, Jonathan & Free State /Writer-director Gareth Edwards talks about what it takes to be a Filmmaker / Interviews with South African writers / Writer-director Etienne Kallos  / Producer Jason Blum talks about The Exorcist: Believer

Murder Mystery

A Haunting In Venice / Death On The Nile / Murder On The Orient Express /

Musicals

The Color Purple / Greatest Days / The Greatest Showman / The Little Mermaid / Mean Girls / West Side Story / Wonka

Origin Stories

The Last Voyage of the Demeter / Wonka

Original Stories

65 / Asteroid City / The Banshees of Inisherin / Barbie / Don’t Worry Darling / Emily / The Estate / Hypnotic / Joy Ride / The Little Things / Master Gardener / The Mother / Plane / Polite Society / Tár

Prejudice / Racism

The Color Purple / Killers of the Flower Moon /

Prison

Shot Caller

Reimagining History

Babylon / The King / The Lost King / Medieval / The Northman / Outlaw King / 1960 / The Woman King

Romance

 A Ghost Story / A Rainy Day In New York / Anyone But You / Beautiful Disaster / Good Luck To You, Leo Grande / Lady Chatterley’s Lover / The Last Duel / Master Gardener / Love Again / Past Lives / Redeeming Love / Titanic

Satire

Dream Scenario / El Conde / The Menu / Rock the Kasbah / Triangle Of Sadness

Sequels

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom / Black Panther: Wakanda Forever  / Book Club: The Next Chapter / Magic Mike’s Last Dance / Shazam! Fury of the Gods / Top Gun: Maverick

Serial Killers

The Killer / Midnight In The Switchgrass

Sexuality

Cat Person / Good Luck To You, Leo Grande / May December / No Hard Feelings / Poor Things

South African Filmmaking

Alison /Angeliena / Gaia / Headspace / Interviews with South African writers / Die Ontwaking / The Recce  / Toorbos / Die Verhaal Van Racheltjie de Beer / Sew The Winter To My Skin / Vaselinetjie / 1960

Sports

Big George Foreman / Next Goal Wins / The Survivor

Storytelling

James Cameron’s 3 Levels Of Storytelling

Superheroes

Andor / Black Adam / Black Panther / Black Panther: Wakanda Forever / The Flash / The Green Knight

Supernatural

A Ghost Story / A Haunting In Venice / All Of Us Strangers / Dear David / Encounters / The Exorcist: Believer / The Gallows / M3GAN / Nanny / A Quiet Place / The Pope’s Exorcist / Scouts vs Zombies

Survival / Disaster

The End We Start From / Leave No Trace / Leave No Trace / Leave The World Behind /  Notre-Dame on Fire / One Life / Society Of The Snow

Television Series / Teleplay

All The Light We Cannot See /Bodies / Cabinet of Curiosities / Justified: City Primeval /

Trilogies

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3.

True Life Stories

About My Father / A Hidden Life / Air / Belfast / Big George Foreman / Blonde / Breathe / Bridge Of Spies / Call Jane / Dear David /Empire of Light / The Fabelmans / The Favourite / Ferrari / Golda / Gran Turismo / The Inspection / I Wanna Dance With Somebody / Kandahar / Killers of the Flower Moon / Life (James Dean Story) / Legend / Lion / Loving Vincent / Money Monster / Napoleon / The Old Man & The Gun / Oppenheimer / Pain Hustlers / Punch / Professor Marston & The Wonder Women / Run Rabbit Run / She Said / Society Of The Snow / Sound Of Freedom / Spinning Gold / The Survivor / Till / The Walk

War

All Quiet On The Western Front / A Hidden Life / Bridge Of Spies / The Exception / Mile 22

Wild & Wacky

Bad Times at the El Royale / Beau is Afraid / Everything Everywhere All at Once / The Menu / Nightmare Alley / Run / Smile / The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent / Violent Night

Writers

Genius / Pain and Glory / Rebel In The Rye 

The WORLD of FILM

The WORLD of FILM

by ·Comments Off on 2024 Film Releases in South Africa

FROM PAGE TO SCREEN / THE ART AND CRAFT OF WRITING FILMS / SOUTH AFRICAN FILMS / ARCHIVE: 2014 / 2015 /2016 /2017 /2018 / 2019 / 2020 / 2021/ 2022 / 2023 / TOP 10 FILMS OF 2023 / MET OPERA / NT LIVE THEATRE / CLASSIC MOVIES / FACEBOOK

TOP FILMS OF 2024: ALL OF US STRANGERS, THE BIKERIDERS, BROS / CHALLENGERS, DUNE PART TWO, EZRA, FALL GUY , FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA , THE HOLDOVERS, HORIZON: CHAPTER 1, KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES , ONE LIFE, OPPENHEIMER, POOR THINGS, SOCIETY OF THE SNOW , THE ZONE OF INTEREST TOP SERIES OF 2024: BABY REINDEER , THE GENTLEMEN

2024 Film Releases – September

Scroll down for films released from January to August 2024. Click on title for more information about the film and exclusive features.

  • LONESOME – Casey (Josh Lavery), a country lad running from a small-town scandal, finds himself down and out in the big smoke of Sydney. When he meets Tib (Daniel Gabriel), a city boy, struggling with his own scars of isolation, both men find something they have been missing but neither of them knows quite how to negotiate it. Now streaming internationally
  • BROS – When he wrote Bros, screenwriter Billy Eichner knew from the beginning that he wanted to make a film about modern, urban gay male life that felt adult, authentic and relatable. “I wanted a movie that showed in a very funny, but realistic, way what happens when two adult gay men who both pride themselves on not needing a relationship fall in love for the first time.” Now streaming on Showmax
  • THE SHOWERHEAD (13/9) – This feature-length documentary explored the dramatic and eventful journey of fearless cartoonist Jonathan Shapiro, aka Zapiro, from anti-apartheid struggle-artist to freedom of expression champion. It also explores the origin, relevance and impact of an iconic feature Zapiro’s work. In cinemas from 13 Sept. TRAILER
  • SPEAK NO EVIL (13/9) – From Blumhouse, the producer of The Black Phone, Get Out and The Invisible Man, comes an intense suspense thriller for our modern age, starring BAFTA award-winner James Mcavoy (Split, Glass) in a riveting performance as the charismatic, alpha-male host whose untrammeled hospitality masks an unspeakable darkness when an American family is invited to spend the weekend at the idyllic farmhouse of a charming British family they befriended on vacation, what begins as a dream holiday soon warps into a snarled psychological nightmare. In cinemas from 13 September. TRAILER
  • THE FORGE – This faith-based film tells of Isaiah Wright who has some growing up to do. A year out of high school with no plans for his future, Isaiah is challenged by his single mom and a successful businessman to start charting a better course for his life. Through his mother’s prayers, a prayer warrior named Miss Clara, and biblical discipleship from his new mentor, Isaiah begins to discover that God’s purpose for his life is so much more than he could hope for or imagine. From the Kendrick Brothers, the creators of War Room. In cinemas from 13 Sept.
  • WILD ROBOT (20/9) – From DreamWorks Animation comes the eagerly anticipated adaptation of a literary sensation, Peter Brown’s beloved, award-winning, #1 New York Times bestseller. The epic adventure follows the journey of a robot—ROZZUM unit 7134, “Roz” for short — that is shipwrecked on an uninhabited island and must learn to adapt to the harsh surroundings, gradually building relationships with the animals on the island and becoming the adoptive parent of an orphaned gosling. A powerful story about the discovery of self, a thrilling examination of the bridge between technology and nature and a moving exploration of what it means to be alive and connected to all living things, The Wild Robot is written and directed by three-time Chris Sanders—the writer-director of DreamWorks Animation’s How to Train Your Dragon, The Croods, and Disney’s Lilo & Stitch In cinemas from 20 September. TRAILER
  • BAGMAN (20/9) In the dark horror film a family finds themselves ensnared in a nightmare as they are hunted by a malevolent, mythical creature. For centuries and across cultures, parents have warned their children of the legendary Bagman, who snatches innocent children and stuffs them into his vile, rotting bag—never to be seen again. Patrick McKee (Sam Claflin) narrowly escaped such an encounter as a boy, which left him with lasting scars throughout his adulthood. Now, Patrick’s childhood tormentor has returned, threatening the safety of his wife Karina (Antonia Thomas) and son Jake (Caréll Rhoden). Directed by Colm McCarthy, written by John Hulme. In cinemas from 20 September. TRAILER
  • BAD GENIUS (20/9) is a high-intensity thriller, which follows Lynn, a student who wins a full scholarship to a prestigious high school.  Here she joins her new friends in “helping” a few students with their exams. As their cheating ring grows, Lynn is presented with the opportunity of a lifetime: helping hundreds of kids cheat and giving the middle finger to the entire American education system.  Directed by J.C. Lee. With Benedict Wong, Taylor Hickson, Jabari Banks, Sarah-Jane Redmond. In cinemas from 20 September. TRAILER
  • LEE (27/9) – Oscar winner Kate Winslet stars in this fascinating portrait of the great American war correspondent Lee Miller, whose singular talent and ferocious tenacity gave us some of the 20th century’s most indelible images. After battling her way through the siege of Saint Malo, and subsequently photographing one of the first ever uses of Napalm, Lee joins forces with close friend and fellow photographer David E. Scherman (Andy Samberg). Lee has a profound understanding and empathy for women and for the voiceless victims of atrocious crimes, her images feature both the fragility and ferocity of the human ability to survive, exist, fight, defend and live. Using her wiles and whip smart patter, Scherman and Lee become a fierce team. Directed by renowned and award winning cinematographer Ellen Kuras, making her narrative feature directing debut, and written by Liz Hannah, John Collee and Marion Hume, Lee has a taut, transfixing pace, with striking detail throughout. In cinemas from 27 September. TRAILER
  • NEVER LET GO (27/9) When an unspeakable evil takes over the world, the only protection for a mother and her twin sons is their house and strong bond. Needing to stay connected at all times — even tethering themselves with ropes — they must cling to one another and never let go. However, when one of the boys questions if the evil is real, the ties that bind them together are severed, triggering a terrifying fight for survival. A Survival horror directed by Alexandre Aja and written by Kevin Coughlin and Ryan Grassby. The film stars Halle Berry, Percy Daggs IV, Anthony B. Jenkins, Matthew Kevin Anderson, Christin Park, and Stephanie Lavigne. In cinemas from 27 September. TRAILER
  • PANDA BEAR IN AFRICA (27/9) Young panda bear Ping’s best friend, Jielong the dragon, is kidnapped and brought to Africa. Ping follows her without question. After a dangerous ocean-crossing he reaches the faraway continent, totally unknown to pandas. There, our unlikely hero with a big heart, relying on his wits and some new found friends, needs to rescue Jielong from an evil lion and his henchman. In cinemas from 27 September. TRAILER
  • TRANSFORMERS ONE (27/9) – An animated origin story set on the planet Cybertron centering around the history of the Transformers race and the relationship between two Cybertronian workers named Orion Pax and D-16 as they go from brothers-in-arms to archenemies as Optimus Prime and Megatron. Based on Hasbro’s Transformers toy line. It was directed by Josh Cooley from a screenplay by Eric Pearson and the writing duo of Andrew Barrer and Gabriel Ferrari, based on a story by Barrer and Ferrari. The ensemble voice cast includes Chris Hemsworth, Brian Tyree Henry, Scarlett Johansson, Keegan-Michael Key, Steve Buscemi, Laurence Fishburne, and Jon Hamm. In cinemas from 27 September. TRAILER
  • VANYA – Andrew Scott (Fleabag) brings multiple characters to life in Simon Stephens’ (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time) radical new version of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. Hopes, dreams, and regrets are thrust into sharp focus in this one-man adaptation which explores the complexities of human emotions. Filmed live during its sold-out run in London’s West End, Vanya will be playing exclusively in cinemas on 28, 29 September & 2, 3 October.  Read more about the NT Live screenings

Cinema audiences and theatre lovers alike are treated to innovative productions filmed live, and opera lovers can idulge in the Met Opera’s operas. NT Live /

FILMS RELEASED IN 2024 (January to August)

(Listed Alphabetically / Click on Titles to Read Features)

  • 10 LIVES – Dr Rose Everhart comes across a stray kitten on the road, she decides to take him home after taking him to an animal shelter. They soon develop a close bond but one day, Beckett’s comes precariously close to losing his ninth life.
  • A QUIET PLACE: DAY ONE – The apocalyptic horror takes place before the first film, a woman named Sam must survive an invasion in New York City by bloodthirsty alien creatures with ultrasonic sound hearing. REVIEW
  • ABIGAIL – A group of kidnappers who capture and must watch over Abigail, the daughter of the most powerful underworld figure for the $50 million ransom, until they get more than what they bargain for when Abigail reveals her true nature as a vampire child, hunting them down one by one. In cinemas
  • ALIEN: ROMULUS – Set between the events of Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986), the story concerns a group of young space colonists who, while scavenging a derelict space station, come face to face with the most terrifying life form in space.
  • ARGYLE – The fictional and real world begins to blur for the reclusive author of a series of best-selling espionage novels in this reality-bending, globe-encircling spy thriller. In cinemas / REVIEW
  • ARTHUR THE KING –  The captain of an adventure racing team befriends a wounded stray dog named Arthur, who accompanies the team on a grueling 435-mile (700-km) endurance race through the Dominican Republic. In cinemas
  • ASPHALT CITY – In preparation for medical school, Ollie Cross joins veteran paramedic Gene Rutkovsky on a drive through New York City. The two are forced to face extreme violence during their shifts, from blood-soaked gunshot wounds to disturbing scenes of domestic violence and life-threatening pregnancies, forcing Ollie to confront his beliefs about life and death.
  • BACK TO BLACK – It delves into the life and career of Amy Winehouse, beginning with her early days in the early 2000’s as a North London jazz musician and culminating in her rise to fame as a Grammy-winning singer. In cinemas
  • THE BAD BISHOP follows the life of a young man who, with the gift of talking, is brought into the church to draw in crowds and boost the congregation. One day he decides to start his own church with a group of misfits with the sole purpose of getting rich fast through fake miracles. However, things start taking an unbelievable turn when their wealth starts to attract enemies far and wide. TRAILER
  • BAD BOYS RIDE OR DIE –The the fourth installment in the Bad Boys franchise. Detectives Mike Lowrey and Marcus Burnett investigate corruption within the Miami PD when their late Captain Conrad Howard is posthumously accused of being involved with the Romanian Mafia, but a setup turns them into fugitives, forcing them to work outside the law in order to solve the case. directed by Adil & Bilall and written by Chris Bremner and Will Beall – In cinemas
  • BEAUTIFUL WEDDING – In this sequel to Beautiful Disaster, Abby and Travis wake up after a crazy night in Vegas confused, hungover, and — to their shock — married! In cinemas
  • THE BEEKEEPER – Mr. Clay is a former operative of a clandestine organization called “Beekeepers”. After his friend and neighbor dies by suicide after falling for a phishing scam, Mr. Clay sets out to exact revenge against the company responsible. In cinemas
  • BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE – The long-awaited sequel to Tim Burton’s award-winning Beetlejuice. After an unexpected family tragedy, three generations of the Deetz family return home to Winter River. Still haunted by Beetlejuice, Lydia’s life is turned upside down when her rebellious teenage daughter, Astrid, discovers the mysterious model of the town in the attic and the portal to the Afterlife is accidentally opened. With trouble brewing in both realms, it’s only a matter of time until someone says Beetlejuice’s name three times and the mischievous demon returns to unleash his very own brand of mayhem. In cinemas TRAILER
  • BIG TRIP 3: RACE AROUND THE WORLD The heroes of the first part return and team up with the characters of the second part of the Big Trip franchise and have to go on the Biggest Trip across all continents to find the missing child. Trailer
  • THE BIKERIDERS – After a chance encounter at a local bar, strong-willed Kathy (Jodie Comer) is inextricably drawn to Benny (Austin Butler), the newest member of Midwestern motorcycle club, the Vandals led by the enigmatic Johnny (Tom Hardy). Much like the country around it, the club begins to evolve, transforming from a gathering place for local outsiders into a dangerous underworld of violence, forcing Benny to choose between Kathy and his loyalty to the club.
  • BLINK TWICE – A cocktail waitress becomes infatuated with a billionaire tech mogul and travels with him to his private island for a luxurious party, where things begin to go wrong after her friend vanishes. This thriller isdirected by Zoë Kravitz, in her directorial debut, from a script she co-wrote with E.T. Feigenbaum.
  • BLUE LOCK THE MOVIE: EPISODE NAGI – The film is part of the expanding Blue Lock franchise, initially revealed alongside the announcement of a second season for the Blue Lock anime series. It follows the dynamic relationship between Seishiro Nagi and Reo Mikage. Seishiro Nagi, a lazy high school sophomore whose catchphrase is “annoying,” is discovered to have a talent for soccer by his classmate Reo Mikage, who dreams of winning the World Cup, and is invited to start playing soccer. After demonstrating his overwhelming soccer talent, Seishiro receives an invitation to the Blue Lock Project. There, he meets strikers from all over the country, including Kiyoyoichi, Hachiraku Mawaru, and Itoshi Rin. Trailer
  • BOB MARLEY: ONE LOVE -This biographical musical drama is based on the life of reggae singer and songwriter Bob Marley, from his rise to fame up until his death in the early 1980s. REVIEW
  • BORDERLANDS Lilith, an infamous outlaw with a mysterious past, reluctantly returns to her home planet of Pandora to find the missing daughter of the universe’s most powerful S.O.B., Atlas.
  • THE BOY AND THE HERON – Mahito, a young 12-year-old boy, struggles to settle in a new town after his mother’s death. However, when a talking heron informs Mahito that his mother is still alive, he enters an abandoned tower in search of her, which takes him to another world. Japanese animated fantasy written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki. In cinemas
  • BOY KILLS WORLD – When his family is killed, a deaf man named Boy escapes to the jungle, where he is trained by a mysterious mentor to enact vengeance on the murderers. This action-thriller is directed by Moritz Mohr in his feature directorial debut, from a screenplay by Tyler Burton Smith and Arend Remmers, and a story by Remmers and Mohr. 
  • BOY SWALLOWS UNIVERSE An epic coming-of-age story set in 1980s Brisbane that  explores the crossroads where a boy becomes a man, good toys with evil, and the everyday meets the extraordinary. Netflix / REVIEW
  • BREATHE – The sci-fi action thriller is set in a world where oxygen levels on Earth have dropped making it impossible to live on the planet’s surface without specialised equipment. After a tipping point catastrophe, Earth is void of plants and global oxygen levels have dropped to 5%. Instead of communicating properly and working together, the survivors create artificial conflict and fight for an “oxygen generator”, killing each other and destroying the machine. The survivors move on to the next place with an oxygen generator.  It is directed by Stefon Bristol, written by Doug Simon.
  • THE BRICKLAYER – Someone is extorting the CIA. Their most brilliant – and rebellious – operative out of retirement forced to confront his checkered past while unravelling an international conspiracy. In cinemas.
  • THE BUSH KNIFE – In this South African Film William Singh is an average family man, but when he inadvertently crosses the local mafia boss, who goes under the name of, ‘The Skull,’ retribution is swift. The Skull murders William’s wife and sets the house on fire, with his daughters entombed within. South African Filmmaking
  • CABRINI – This biopic of the Patron Saint of Immigrants tells a story of resilience in the face of resistance. Francesca Cabrini fights against overt xenophobia to build an orphanage for impoverished Italian-Americans. In cinemas
  • CHIEF OF STATION -After learning that the death of his wife was not an accident, a former CIA officer and Station Chief is forced back into the espionage underworld, teaming up with an adversary to unravel a conspiracy that challenges everything he thought he knew. Written by George Mahaffey, directed by Jesse V. Johnson. – In cinemas
  • THE CHOSEN – Clashing kingdoms. Rival rulers. The enemies of Jesus close in while His followers struggle to keep up, leaving him to carry the burden alone.
  • CIVIL WAR – A dystopian-action film written and directed by Alex Garland. Its plot follows a team of journalists who travel across the United States during the rapidly escalating Second American Civil War, which has engulfed the entire nation. In cinemas
  • THE COLOR PURPLE – Torn apart from her sister Nettie and her children, Celie faces many hardships in her life, including an abusive husband simply called Mister. In cinemas
  • CRISTÓBAL BALENCIAGA – An original drama series is inspired by the life and legacy of the Spanish creator from Guetaria, Disney +
  • THE CROW Soulmates Eric Draven (Bill Skarsgård) and Shelly Webster (FKA twigs) are brutally murdered when the demons of her dark past catch up with them. Given the chance to save his true love by sacrificing himself, Eric sets out to seek merciless revenge on their killers, traversing the worlds of the living and the dead to put the wrong things right. A reboot of The Crow film series, it is the fifth film in the franchise and the second film adaptation of the 1989 comic book series of the same name by James O’Barr. Directed by Rupert Sanders from a screenplay by Zach Baylin and William Schneider.
  • DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE A sequel to Deadpool (2016) and Deadpool 2 (2018). The film is directed by Shawn Levy from a screenplay he wrote with Ryan Reynolds, Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, and Zeb Wells. Reynolds and Hugh Jackman star as Deadpool and Wolverine, respectively, alongside Emma Corrin and Matthew Macfadyen. In the film, the Time Variance Authority (TVA) pulls Deadpool from his quiet life and sets him on a mission with Wolverine that will change the history of the MCU. Six years after the events of Deadpool 2 (2018), Wade Wilson lives a quiet life, having left his time as the mercenary Deadpool behind him, until the Time Variance Authority (TVA)—a bureaucratic organization that exists outside of time and space and monitors the timeline—pulls him into a new mission. With his home universe facing an existential threat, Wilson reluctantly joins an even more reluctant Wolverine on a mission that will change the history of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU)
  • DEMON SLAYER: HASHIRA TRAINING – This anime feature features the conclusion to the fierce battle between Tanjiro and Upper Four, Hantengu, and Nezuko’s triumph over the sun. In cinemas
  • DESPICABLE ME 4 – Gru, the world’s favourite supervillain-turned-Anti-Villain League-agent, returns for an exciting, bold new era of Minions mayhem.
  • DOGS AT THE OPERA – New York street dogs who prevent a ballerina prima from failing during her performance of Carmen at the Met Opera the this animated adventure. In cinemas
  • DUNE: PART ONE – Set in the far distant future, the film follows Paul Atreides as his family, the noble House Atreides, is thrust into a war for the deadly and inhospitable desert planet Arrakis.
  • THE EXORCISM A supernatural horror. Russell Crowe as Anthony Miller, an actor whose deteriorating mental state on a horror movie set causes his daughter Lee (Ryan Simpkins) to suspect either his former addictions or a more sinister cause. It is directed by Joshua John Miller, from a script he co-wrote with M. A. Fortin. The film also stars Sam Worthington, Chloe Bailey, Adam Goldberg, Adrian Pasdar, and David Hyde Pierce. Trailer
  • THE FABULOUS FOUR Three friends travel to Key West, Florida, to be bridesmaids at a surprise wedding of their friend from college. Comedy directed by Jocelyn Moorhouse and written by Ann Marie Allison and Jenna Milly. It stars Susan Sarandon, Bette Midler, Megan Mullally, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Bruce Greenwood, Timothy V. Murphy, and Michael Bolton.
  • FACE DEEP – In this thriller Luna and her pensioner lover Noah’s dream life comes crashing down when Noah’s estranged daughter, Bonnie returns to reconcile with her father. Strange things come to light when old memories are revoked. Luna will do anything to keep her secrets in the past and won’t let anyone get in her way. Directed by Vuyani Bila, the film stars Lerato Walaza, Kgomotso Motsiane, and Phillip ‘Tipo’ Tindisa. Read more about South African Filmmaking
  • THE FIRST OMEN – An American woman sent to work at a church in Rome who uncovers a sinister conspiracy to bring about the birth of an Antichrist. This supernatural-horror is directed by Arkasha Stevenson, and written by Stevenson, Tim Smith and Keith Thomas, from a story by Ben Jacoby. It’s the prequel to The Omen (1976). READ MORE /REVIEW / In cinemas
  • FLY ME TO THE MOON During the 1960s Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union, a relationship develops between the NASA director in charge of the Apollo 11 launch and the marketing specialist brought in to fix NASA’s public image and stage a “back-up” fake Moon landing. This romantic comedy-drama is directed by Greg Berlanti from a screenplay by Rose Gilroy. The film stars Scarlett Johansson, Channing Tatum, Nick Dillenburg, Anna Garcia, Jim Rash, Noah Robbins, Colin Woodell, Christian Zuber, Donald Elise Watkins, Ray Romano, and Woody Harrelson.
  • FRANKIE AND FELIPÉ– Franklin Blaze and his biological halfbrother, Felipé Baadjies need money to pay a vicious loan shark. In cinemas REVIEW / South African Filmmaking
  • THE GARFIELD MOVIE – Garfield, the world-famous, Monday-hating, lasagna-loving indoor cat, is about to have a wild outdoor adventure! After an unexpected reunion with his long-lost father – scruffy street cat Vic, Garfield and his canine friend Odie are forced from their perfectly pampered life into joining Vic in a hilarious, high-stakes heist.Directed by Mark Dindal from a screenplay written by David Reynolds and the writing team of Paul A. Kaplan and Mark Torgove
  • GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE –  Years after averting a dimensional crossrip in Summerville, Oklahoma, the veteran Ghostbusters must join forces with their new recruits to save the world in New York City from a powerful death-chilling adversary who seeks to build a spectral army. In cinemas
  • GIRL YOU KNOW ITS TRUE – A biographical film about the controversial late-1980s/early-1990s music duo Milli Vanilli that caused one of the most infamous scandals in international pop music. Grammy Award-winning music act Milli Vanilli become the first act to have their prize stripped from them after they are exposed as a fake enterprise with the singers lip-syncing to pre-recorded tracks. The film follows the meteoric rise of European dancers Rob Pilatus (from Germany) and Fab Morvan (from France) as Milli Vanilli to become one of the most successful pop duos of the late 1980s and early 1990s Written and directed by German-Austrian filmmaker Simon Verhoeven. – In cinemas
  • GODZILLA X KONG:  THE NEW EMPIRE – Witness the rise of a new empire. The epic battle continues!
  • GOOD GRIEF is the kind of love story about friendship that we rarely see portrayed with such poignancy and pathos. Netflix.
  • HAIKYU: THE DUMPSTER BATTLE – Shoyo Hinata joins Karasuno High’s volleyball club to be like his idol, a former Karasuno player known as the “Little Giant.” But, Hinata soon finds that he must team up with his middle school nemesis, Tobio Kageyama. Their clashing styles turn into a surprising weapon, but can they beat their rival Nekoma High in the highly anticipated “Dumpster Battle,” the long-awaited ultimate showdown between two opposing underdog teams? It is directed and written by Susumu Mitsunaka who worked on the anime series.
  • HAROLD AND THE PURPLE CRAYON Inside of his book, adventurous Harold (Zachary Levi) can make anything come to life simply by drawing it. After he grows up and draws himself off the book’s pages and into the physical world, Harold finds he has a lot to learn about real life—and that his trusty purple crayon may set off more hilarious hijinks than he thought possible. When the power of unlimited imagination falls into the wrong hands, it will take all of Harold and his friends’ creativity to save both the real world and his own. Harold and the Purple Crayon is the first film adaptation of the beloved children’s classic that has captivated young readers for decades.  Directed by Carlos Saldanha it stars Zachary Levi, Lil Rel Howery, Benjamin Bottani, Jemaine Clement, Tanya Reynolds with Alfred Molina and Zooey Deschanel. The film’s screenplay is written by David Guion & Michael Handelman, based on the book by Crockett Johnson. Trailer
  • HE’S NOT READY– Thabo’s long- time girlfriend Zonke, gives him an ultimatum of either marrying her or letting her go. This sets Thabo on a journey of discovering whether or not he is ready to take the next step. To do this he decides he must undergo a personal journey of soul searching, preparation and testing to see if he can become husband/marriage material or call it quits. Along the way he encounters the advice and leanings of his friends and family but realizes that ultimately, he must make up his own mind
  • HIGHWAY SHEILA: RESURRECTION – After a family’s 40-year quest to find their daughter’s killer seems hopeless, a priest connects with her restless spirit on the highway where she died in 1983, setting in motion a chilling investigation aided by two determined detectives. – In cinemas
  • HIT MAN – In Richard Linklater’s jaunty action comedy an undercover Houston police officer poses as a reliable hitman to arrest those trying to hire him until he tries to save a woman in need.
  • HOUNDS OF WAR In the high-stakes world of covert operations, Ryder and his elite mercenary team represent the pinnacle of skill and ruthlessness. Sent into the volatile war zone of Libya under false pretenses, they face what they believe to be a mission of critical national interest. Instead, they walk into a meticulously orchestrated trap set by their own handler. Miraculously surviving this deadly encounter, Ryder, the indomitable leader of the group, finds himself fueled by a burning desire for vengeance.
  • IMAGINARY – In this supernatural horror a young girl forms a disturbing bond with a teddy bear that turns into something dark and disturbing. In cinemas
  • IMAGINARY FRIENDS – In the live-action /animated fantasy comedy a young girl named Bea, who has been going through a troubling experience in her life, unexpectedly gains the ability to see people’s imaginary friends (referred to as “IFs” for short) who have been abandoned by the kids they helped.
  • INSIDE OUT 2 – This sequel to Inside Out returns to the mind of newly minted teenager Riley just as headquarters is undergoing a sudden demolition to make room for something entirely unexpected: new Emotions! Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust, who’ve long been running a successful operation by all accounts, aren’t sure how to feel when Anxiety shows up. And it looks like she’s not alone. it is directed by Kelsey Mann (in his feature directorial debut) from a screenplay written by Meg LeFauve and Dave Holstein – Trailer / In cinemas
  • INSPECTOR SUN AND THE CURSE OF THE BLACK WIDOW This animated film follows anthropomorphic spider Inspector Sun in a mission against his foe, the Red Locust, with the mystery vis-à-vis the death of Dr. Spindelthorp as a backdrop.directed by Julio Soto Gúrpide and based on an original screenplay by Rocco Pucillo. Trailer
  • IT ENDS WITH US The compelling story of Lily Bloom (Blake Lively), a woman who overcomes a traumatic childhood to embark on a new life in Boston and chase a lifelong dream of opening her own business.
  • THE JUNGLE BUNCH 2: WORLD TOUR – French computer-animated superhero comedy. A vicious beaver blankets the jungle with a dangerous pink substance that explodes when coming into contact with water. With the rainy season approaching, the miscellaneous team of animals must hurry to find the antidote. Based on the animated series The Jungle Bunch, the film is a sequel to the 2017 film The Jungle Bunch. In cinemas
  • JUST NOW JEFFREY is a coming-of-age comedy set in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1989. While the world was radically changing around him, teenager Jeffrey Greenbaum (Julian Robinson) hardly noticed. He just needed to get laid. Jeffrey convinces his best pal Brad Berman (Dino Vavatzanidis), to help devise a strategy to lose their virginity before they finish high school.  But things don’t go as planned and Jeffrey and Brad soon become entangled in a crazy web of love, lust, videotape piracy, rugby violence, political protest, and pornography. Read more
  • KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES takes place 300 years after the events of War for the Planet of the Apes (2017). Ape civilizations have emerged from the oasis to which Caesar led his fellow apes, while humans have regressed into a feral, primitive state. It is directed by Wes Ball from a screenplay by Josh Friedman, Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver, and Patrick Aison, and produced by Joe Hartwick Jr., Jaffa, Silver, and Jason Reed. The film stars Owen Teague in the lead role alongside Freya Allan, Kevin Durand, Peter Macon, and William H. Macy.  This sequel to War for the Planet of the Apes is the fourth instalment in the Planet of the Apes reboot franchise.
  • KUNG FU PANDA 4 – Po, who is set to become the Spiritual Leader of the Valley of Peace, searches for his successor as the new Dragon Warrior while fighting a new foe called “The Chameleon”. This animated martial arts comedy is the fourth instalment in the Kung Fu Panda franchise, and the sequel to Kung Fu Panda 3  (2016). In cinemas
  • LA RONDINE -The Met: Live in HD, the Metropolitan Opera’s award-winning series of live high-definition cinema simulcasts, is into its 17th season exclusively at select Ster-Kinekor and Cinema Nouveau cinemas. Puccini’s bittersweet love story returns to cinemas, with soprano Angel Blue starring as the French courtesan Magda, opposite tenor Jonathan Tetelman as Ruggero, an idealistic young man who offers her an alternative to her life of excess. Maestro Speranza Scappucci conducts Nicolas Joël’s Art Deco–inspired staging, which transports audiences from the heart of Parisian nightlife to a dreamy vision of the French Riviera. Soprano Emily Pogorelc and tenor Bekhzod Davronov complete the sterling cast as Lisette and Prunier.
  • LAND OF BAD – A young JTAC officer attached to the Delta Force team finds himself part of an extraction team relying only on a USAF drone pilot’s support in this action thriller. In cinemas
  • LONG LEGS – In the 1990s, new FBI agent Lee Harker was assigned to an unsolved case involving the Satanic serial killer known as Longlegs. As the investigation becomes more complicated with occult evidence uncovered, Harker realizes a personal link to the killer and must act quickly to prevent another family murder. Written and directed by Osgood Perkins. It stars Maika Monroe, Nicolas Cage, Alicia Witt, Blair Underwood, and Kiernan Shipka.
  • #LOVEMYSELFIE – The Afrikaans comedy follows the antics of an acclaimed actress who campaigns to sell retirement units during a cruise on the MSC Sinfonia. Up-for-grabs is one of the retirement units valued at R7-million!
  • LUKAS – An 11-year-old boy finds himself on the street, where he meets and becomes involved with Samora and his gang. In cinema.
  • MADAME WEB – Cassandra “Cassie” Webb is forced to confront her past while trying to survive with three young women with powerful futures who are being hunted by a deadly adversary. In cinemas
  • MEAN GIRLS – From the comedic mind of Tina Fey comes a new twist on the modern classic. A new student must learn how to stay true to herself while navigating the most cutthroat jungle of all: high school. In cinemas. REVIEW
  • MILLER’S GIRL – Professor and protégé must confront their darkest selves while straining to preserve their individual sense of purpose and the things they hold most dear
  • MONKEY MAN – Kid, an anonymous young man working in an underground fight club, sets out to exact revenge against a group of corrupt leaders, who are responsible for his mother’s death and also taking advantage of the poor and powerless people. this action-thriller is directed by Dev Patel, in his feature directorial debut, from a screenplay he co-wrote with Paul Angunawela and John Collee. READ MORE / REVIEW / In cinemas
  • MOTHER’S INSTINCT Housewives Alice and Celine are best friends and neighbors who seem to have it all. However, when a tragic accident shatters the harmony of their lives, guilt, suspicion and paranoia begin to unravel their sisterly bond.  In cinemas
  • NOAH’S ARK – This musical adventure follows two mice: Vini, a charismatic poet with terrible stage fright, and Tito, a talented and charming guitarist. In cinemas.
  • ORDINARY ANGELS – A hairdresser rallies the community to help a widowed father save the life of his critically ill young daughter after Louisville is hit by a major snowstorm. The faith-based drama is directed by Jon Gunn and written by Meg Tilly and Kelly Fremon Craig, it is based on true events that transpired during the 1994 North American cold wave. READ MORE / In cinemas
  • OZI: VOICE OF THE FOREST – An animated film about Ozi, a tiny orangutan with an inquisitive mind, is about to make a big, big difference! In a world threatened by deforestation, a spirited young orphan orangutan named Ozi embarks on an epic adventure to save her forest home. When Ozi’s family falls victim to the destruction of their home, she sets out on a daring quest to reunite them, facing perilous challenges and forging unlikely friendships along the way. As Ozi’s journey unfolds, she discovers the true power of her voice and the extraordinary impact of speaking out for what she believes in. With tenacity, resilience, and a newfound sense of purpose, Ozi ignites a global movement to protect our world. In a captivating tale of courage, hope, and the indomitable human spirit, Ozi inspires audiences to join the fight for a sustainable future and embrace their potential to make a difference. In cinemas TRAILER
  • SLEEPING DOGS A former homicide detective suffering from memory loss and tries to solve a brutal murder that he can’t recall.
  • SNAKE – A thriller about land, truth and finding one’s voice. Ten-year-old Stella lives with her family as squatters on a farm. When a luminous stranger called Jerry arrives, Stella is thrilled that her father stays sober, and her mother begins to laugh again. However, her hope is shattered when she suspects Jerry of murdering a policeman. Jerry manipulates Stella into lying on his behalf and rewards her with a beautiful silver flute. Stella’s lie is a password to Jerry’s tragic past, for he burdens her with his boyhood trauma, which is slowly revealed to be closely connected to Stella’s family. When Stella defies Jerry’s order of silence, driving Jerry into deadly violence. Stella is left to fight for her family and her life – and eventually triumphs, her blazing truth overcoming Jerry’s insidious lies. Written and directed by Meg Rickards. Read more
  • STAR WARS: THE PHANTOM MENACE celebrates 25 years with a return to cinemas. The Phantom Menace, Episode I of the Star Wars saga and the first film in the prequel trilogy, originally arrived in cinemas on May 19, 1999, following tremendous hype. Written and directed by George Lucas, it introduced the world to young Anakin Skywalker, Padawan Obi-Wan Kenobi, Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn, Queen Padmé Amidala, and the evil Sith duo, Darth Sidious and Darth Maul. The Phantom Menace would be a landmark in the development of visual effects and become one of the highest-grossing movies of all time. Fans will also be treated to an exclusive look at The Acolyte, the upcoming Disney+ series, as part of The Phantom Menace screenings.
  • STRANGERS: THE CHAPTER 1 – Maya drives across the country with her longtime boyfriend, Ryan, as the pair begin a new life together in the Pacific Northwest. Along the way, their car breaks down in Venus, Oregon and they are forced to spend the night in an isolated Airbnb home. Through the night they are terrorized by three murderous masked strangers. Under the direction of Renny Harlin, with a screenplay by Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freeland, from a story by Bryan Bertino stars.
  • TAROT – In this supernatural horror a group of college friends start dying in ways that are related to their fortunes after having their tarot cards read. Before their time runs out, they have to work together to uncover the mystery. It is written and directed by Spenser Cohen and Anna Halberg (in their feature film directorial debut) and co-written by Nicholas Adams. It is based on a 1992 novel, Horrorscope, by Nicholas Adams. The film stars Harriet Slater, Adain Bradley, Avantika Vandanapu, Wolfgang Novogratz, Humberly González, Larsen Thompson, and Jacob Batalon.
  • TRAP– A psychological thriller film written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan. A serial killer dubbed “The Butcher” joins his teenage daughter at a concert for pop star Lady Raven, an event he realizes is a trap set by police to catch him. It stars Josh Hartnett, Ariel Donoghue, Saleka Shyamalan, Hayley Mills, and Alison Pill. Trailer
  • TREASURE – Set in 1990, it tells the story of an American journalist Ruth who travels to Poland with her father Edek to visit his childhood places. But Edek, a Holocaust survivor, resists reliving his trauma and sabotages the trip creating unintentionally funny situations. a tragi comedy directed by Julia von Heinz. Based on the 1999 novel Too Many Men by Lily Brett
  • TWISTERS – A group of storm chasers are tasked to control the biggest and most dangerous storm that could destroy their homelands. Disaster film directed by Lee Isaac Chung with a screenplay by Mark L. Smith from a story by Joseph Kosinski. It is a standalone sequel to the 1996 film Twister and stars Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell, and Anthony Ramos.
  • WATCHERS – A young artists is stranded in an expansive, untouched forest in western Ireland and is stalked by mysterious creatures each night. You can’t see them, but they see everything.
  • WIDOW CLICQUOT Based on the true story of the “Grande Dame of Champagne,” Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin who defied her critics and revolutionizes the champagne industry to become one of the world’s first great entrepreneurs.

by ·Comments Off on Lonesome – A poignant and timely Queer love story

“When I started writing Lonesome, I was thinking about where our queer community is right now in Australia,” says writer-director Craig Boreham. “Our connections via social media are constant but the physical community spaces have begun to disappear and our big cities can be trickier places to navigate when you are searching for your people.”

Lonesome is a new feature film by award-winning Australian director, Craig Boreham (Teenage Kicks), exploring sexuality, loneliness and isolation in a world that has never been more connected. 

Craig Boreham’s writing often delves into the complexities of how people relate to each other and what is hiding under the surface.

“A big theme that I was exploring in the writing of Lonesome was the erosion of community and the isolation that people can feel emotionally despite the world being more connected than ever before in any time in history,” says Craig.  “Each of the characters that appear along Casey’s journey are struggling with their own search for connection in their own ways. I am always fascinated by the way people present in their exterior versus what is bubbling under the surface, and I wanted to explore that idea in the characters who inhabit this world. Casey and Tib are both people who carry the scars of individual trauma and they have built their walls up hard and high. They have these deeply buried histories and neither of them is truly equipped to be open about them.  It really becomes the hurdle that they need to get over to be able to really see each other.”

©Lonesome Pty/Ltd.

“Lonesome is a poignant and timely queer love story, and one that emerges unexpectedly amid the transactional world of casual hook-up culture,” says producer Ben Ferris Craig’s talent as a director allows him a lightness of touch to find the comic in the tragic, while losing none of the authenticity and tenderness at the film’s heart. Dean Francis’ photography lends a cinematic grace to the basements and rooftops of a Sydney less frequently depicted on screen.”

“I’m excited about Craig’s vision and the great talent we have on board with Josh Lavery and Daniel Gabriel and the other supporting cast,” says producer Ulysses Oliver, “I can’t wait for people to experience this part of Sydney or Australian culture that maybe they haven’t seen before with real authenticity.”

Daniel Gabriel as Tib and Josh Lavery as Casey in Lonesome. ©Lonesome Pty/Ltd. Photo Credit: Dean Francis

Casey (Josh Lavery), a country lad running from a small-town scandal, finds himself down and out in the big smoke of Sydney. When he meets Tib (Daniel Gabriel), a city boy, struggling with his own scars of isolation, both men find something they have been missing but neither of them knows quite how to negotiate it.

It is available to rent on AppleTV, Amazon or YouTube movies in most territories and also on Netflix in Australia. In the US it is available on Dekkoo.

Statement from writer-director Craig Boreham

Writer-director Craig Boreham. ©Lonesome Pty/Ltd. Photo Credit: Dean Francis

Lonesome is ultimately a journey of connection between two souls who are both leaves blowing in the wind. Casey is lost after a country town scandal tore his world apart. Tib, rejected by his broken family, tumbles through the world without direction and any kind of support network. His only connections are formed through meaningless encounters with random men he finds on hook-up apps. When their worlds collide, both men find something they have been missing but neither of them knows quite how to negotiate it.

When I started writing Lonesome, I was thinking about where our queer community is right now in Australia. Our connections via social media are constant but the physical community spaces have begun to disappear and our big cities can be trickier places to navigate when you are searching for your people.

Independent filmmaking is a very collaborative form and I wanted to fill the cast with a mix of LGBTQI+ actors and people drawn from the community that the film explores to have many authentic perspectives informing the storyworld.

I wanted the film to be honest about the part sex plays in this navigation and the way gay men in particular use it. Whether it is in the pursuit of intimate connection or to purely to pass the time or to express rage or as a transaction, sex is a big part of our day to day but still so often hidden in our screen stories.

Josh Lavery as Casey and Daniel Gabriel as Tib in Lonesome. ©Lonesome Pty/Ltd. Photo Credit: Dean Francis

From Page to Screen

In 2021 producers Ben Ferris and Ulysses Oliver came together to create Breathless Films with the aim to produce a slate of low budget indie feature films from exciting directors who would embrace the indie model. Craig Boreham was one of the directors they approached to see what he was working on.

“It’s a crazy endeavor but here we are,” says Ulysses. “We did a big creational process and we looked at over 100 scripts and met with about 50 filmmakers which took about six months. We loved the story, Craig has an amazing track record, and we were looking for points of difference, which Lonesome has, but overall, it was the very strong arc and character story of Lonesome that was shining through. It’s very ambitious given the limitations we have. We are a big believer in the idea that it is about the story, and money isn’t the most important factor. Imposing limitations around resources and time makes you make strong creative decisions that will shine through.”

Craig enlisted longtime collaborator Dean Francis to the project to come on board as a producer and the Director of Photography. “Dean and I first met when we were attending the Berlinale Talent campus many years ago,” says Craig. “We have been creative sounding boards for each other ever since and have always wanted to work on a film together. I love Dean’s camera work. He really has a wonderful eye and his own film Drown, which he shot as well, is full of the bold richness that I wanted to bring to Lonesome. Having such a long creative relationship was a real asset to the filmmaking. We know what each other likes and there was a real ease to the working relationship.”

Dean says “Craig is one of my oldest friends and we’ve seen each other’s sensibilities develop over a long period of time. This meant we could work quickly from an intuitive shared understanding of the film’s vision. It was an advantage being a producer as well because I could really be in Craig’s corner when it came to protecting his vision from some of the practical challenges the production faced along the way.”

The filming off Lonesome took place over four weeks all around Sydney in July 2021 between Covid lockdowns. Craig and cinematographer Dean Francis had decided to embrace the light of the cooler months to give the film a cinematic quality that is harder to achieve in the summer months which of course came with its own challenges.

Casting

As a director, Craig has the utmost respect for the actor’s craft and was determined to pull together an ensemble cast who would be dedicated to the story world and bring the characters of Lonesome to life.

Lonesome is a story told with a very queer lens and Craig was very keen to cast actors who would understand the world they were creating. His plan was to fill the cast with a mix of queer actors and authentic people drawn from the community that the film explores.

This proved a more difficult task than anticipated using traditional casting methods and Craig took a more unconventional approach and began exploring social media and even gay hook-up apps like Grindr to find the perfect cast.

The story of Lonesome hangs firmly on the shoulders of Casey played by Josh Lavery.

Josh Lavery as Casey in Lonesome. ©Lonesome Pty/Ltd. Photo Credit: Dean Francis. Josh Lavery plays the lead role of Casey in Lonesome. Josh is an up-and-coming actor based in Melbourne Australia. He was the lead in Meaghan Palmer’s acclaimed ADG Award winning short Tasty and has been seen most recently in collaborations with Melbourne’s Sissy Screens queer filmmaking collective including Alex Cardy’s Bender. Lonesome is Josh’s first feature film lead role.

Casey is a country lad who has just arrived in Sydney after hitchhiking across the country fleeing from a small-town scandal. He carries a lot of guilt from his past and is struggling to find his feet in the big city. It’s a whole new world, and one that offers Casey an escape from his past if he can just manage to work out how to negotiate it.

A relative newcomer to screen acting Josh Lavery had previously acted in a couple of bold queer short films but it was a video confessional that caught director Craig Boreham’s attention. Josh had done a short online piece talking about his experience as a young gay kid isolated in the country but reaching out via webcam to older gay men to explore his sexuality. There were a lot of parallels between Josh’s own story and the character of Casey and Craig reached out to Josh via his popular Instagram profile.

When asked about his initial thoughts of the project, Josh says, “I was excited about the project from the moment I read it, especially given the script was so truthful and sexy and queer. Something I haven’t seen in a lot of other films.  So many queer films are watered down to be more palatable for a wider audience which I always find frustrating. I love movies and art that push against this kind of sanitized representation and conservative morality.  It’s something that drives the creative work I do and the work I want to keep doing.  Lonesome has an authenticity I really relate to as a queer person and have been craving from queer cinema.”

Director Craig Boreham says of Josh, “I knew he was right for the role from our first meeting. He really understood what Casey was going through and he brought a lot of insight to the role. Josh really jumped into it boots and all, it was important to him that Casey’s journey felt authentic, and he drew on a lot of his own experiences of coming to the city as a young gay kid from the country. I was constantly impressed by what a fearless actor he is and his dedication to telling the story was really impressive.”

When asked about his character Casey, Josh has this to say, “Casey is a bit lost, a bit naive, a bit sad, a bit wide eyed. It’s a really big journey he takes throughout the film. Through exploring his sexuality and a new city, looking for connections and love in a meaningful way. I grew up in the country as well. I didn’t really have any meaningful connections until I moved to the city and then when I did, I would latch on hard because it was so new. So, I understand Casey and related to what he was going through in that way.”

“You can be in a shity situation but changing your circumstances can point you in a new direction”, says Josh. “Growing up, I was the only gay in my town, and it was hard. But moving to the city I found a new world. I really hope queer audiences relate to the authenticity of Lonesome and hopefully it reaches out and lets someone in some tiny town know they aren’t so alone.”

Daniel Gabriel as Tib in Lonesome. ©Lonesome Pty/Ltd. Photo Credit: Dean Francis. Daniel Gabriel plays Tib in Lonesome. Daniel is a queer Sudanese/Egyptian performer based in Sydney. A graduate of Queensland University of Technology Acting degree, their repertoire includes the performance and study of classic texts and development of new and experimental works for stage including Belvoir, Queensland, and Griffin Theatre Companies. On television, Daniel has appeared in Stan’s The Other Guy. Lonesome is Daniel’s first feature film leading role.

Tib lives by himself in a large warehouse that he has set up as home. He has been on his own since he was young and is a survivor and a loner who prefers to steer clear of emotional entanglements. His only real connections come in the form of anonymous encounters with men he finds on hook-up apps. He makes his money doing odd jobs and is very focussed on saving cash for a visa for his mother who was deported some years ago. 

“Casting Daniel Gabriel in the role of Tib was a bit of a cosmic miracle”, says director Craig Boreham. “I really wanted to find an actor who understood the layers of the character and could bring that perfect mix of charisma and a guarded exterior, and I really wanted to find a queer actor. Turns out that is a lot harder than it sounds. We were hitting walls with agents who are still, in this day and age, reluctant to let queer performers take on queer roles. Some of them were downright hostile.”

“I started reaching out to people in the community via hook-up apps like Grindr and Scruff. We were in lockdown and a lot of people were online and there were a bunch of roles in the film that I was keen to cast with interesting people in the community. That’s where I bumped into Daniel. They had a great look and I sent them a message to ask if they had ever done any acting.”

Daniel was no newcomer to acting. They had completed a degree in performance Queensland University of Technology and since graduating had worked extensively in theatre on projects with Griffin theatre company, Belvoir, and Darlinghurst theatre as well as La Boite and Queensland Theatre in Brisbane.  The Corona virus put a two-year hold on a one person show they were slated to do with Campbelltown Arts Centre.

“They were understandably pretty skeptical of my initial message,” says Craig, “like ‘who the hell is this sketchy dude telling me he’s making a movie and hitting me up on Grindr?’ But I convinced them I was legit, and we met up for a coffee to talk about it.”

“I thought he was a spam account. Still do,” says Daniel, with a wink, of that first encounter. “What drew me to the project was how blatantly gay and how real it is. A lot of what we see, when we see gay characters, is either complete caricature and stereo-typed or if it’s sexual then it’s totally animalistic and primal and there is no human connection there. I think what this film does so well is that we see that animalistic side of it but that’s just sex, sex is primal, but there are those moments where we get to see soft, queer love. Which is terrific and it’s so pretty to watch. It’s a love story and I think that’s very important right now.”

Josh Lavery as Casey in Lonesome. ©Lonesome Pty/Ltd. Photo Credit: Dean Francis

To bring the raw sexuality of Lonesome to the screen, the cast worked with Intimacy Coordinator Leah Pellinkhof.

Being a lesbian herself, Leah was dedicated to making sure the representations of gay male sex on screen felt real and visceral. She consulted with Craig and the cast to reshape her usual process, that to date had been primarily focused on heterosexual sex scenes, and they developed a process that was consultative and safe but authentic.

Director Craig Boreham says of working with the Intimacy Coordinator, “Working with Leah was like magic. She creates a space where the actors are able to have fun and perform boldly while always feeling safe and heard. Her process embraces story but speaks to performers in ways they can use practically and authentically.”

Daniel Gabriel who plays Tib in Lonesome says of the process, “Intimate scenes are extremely delicate terrain, one thing can go wrong, and someone gets traumatised for the rest of their life. Leah created immaculate boundaries for us from day one to fall back on if something felt incorrect and gave us a universal language so that no wires were ever crossed. Her thoroughness and dedication to safety is so tactfully and empathetically implemented that it always felt like a friend was looking after us. She is a genius.”

Craig Boreham is an award-winning Sydney based writer and director. Boreham’s films have screened at over 200 international festivals: including the Berlin International Film Festival, Sydney Film Festival, Cannes, Palm Springs, Frameline and Outfest. He has received numerous awards and nominations including the Berlinale Teddy Award for his short film Transient and four nominations for the prestigious Iris Prize in Wales. Other awards include Best Film at My Queer Career (Drowning, Ostia La Notte Finale), Mardi Gras Film Festival, The City of Melbourne Best Short Film Award, Melbourne Queer Film Festival and National Film Sound Archive Orlando Award among others. In 2008 a retrospective of Craig’s work, Cinema of True Poison was presented by Fundacion Triangulo in Madrid.

Craig’s debut feature film Teenage Kicks premiered at the Sydney Film Festival in 2016 to critical acclaim. The Guardian, named Boreham as “a strong new voice in Australian Queer cinema”, and the film was runner up in the Sydney Film Festival Audience Awards. Teenage Kicks was nominated for Best Direction in a feature film at the Australian Directors Guild Awards, and for Best Feature at the Iris Prize Festival, where lead actor Miles Szanto won Best Male Performer. Other nominations include Best Original Score at the AACTA Awards. Craig made MTV’s list of hot Australian ‘filmmakers to watch’ and Teenage Kicks was billed as one not to be missed by Empire Magazine. A graduate of the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) and the Australian Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS), Craig is currently developing several new feature projects.

©Lonesome Pty/Ltd.

by ·Comments Off on Composition – The Ordering And Linking Of Scenes

Composition is the way a writer crafts words, sentences, and paragraphs to create a coherent work that best expresses the story’s theme.

Just like a musician and an artist, a writer sets the tone of a composition to his or her purpose, making decisions about what that tone should be to support the structure and plot of the story.

Composition sets in once the story has been conceptualised, the thematic intention and genre fully explored, characters defined and developed, and the story has been structured, plotted and outlined, with a rough first draft.

This is where the story gets written with serious intention and complete dedication.

There are four modes of composition:

  • A description, or descriptive writing makes a clear statement about its subject. A description doesn’t speculate or offer up opinions or interpretations. It simply states the facts. It’s a statement or account that describes something or someone, listing characteristic features and significant details to provide a reader with a portrayal in words. Descriptions are set in the concrete, in the reality, or solidity of an object as a representation of a person, place, or thing in time. They provide the look and feel of objects, a simultaneous whole, with as many details as you’d like.
  • Exposition or expository writing is an interpretation of the facts. It’s the act of expounding or explaining a person, place, thing, or eventIt expands on a description by introducing additional facts that shed light on how the subject fits into a larger discussion. It might explore related facts and what they imply and/or pivot to related topics through thoughtful transition sentences and extrapolation. It’s still grounded in fact; an exposition doesn’t include its author’s opinions on the subject.
  • Narration is the mode of writing that presents the author’s point of view. The writing is still about its subject rather than its author, but it discusses and explores the subject through the author’s description of their experience.
  • In an argumentation composition, the writer presents two or more positions on an issue and, through a logical exploration of each, demonstrates why one position is the best choice. an argumentation is basically an exercise in comparing and contrasting. It is the methodological presentation of both sides of an argument using logical or formal reasoning.

In The Write Journey course we explore the art of composition

  • Unity and variety: A story, even when expressing chaos, must be unified. Unity is critical. Within this unity we must induce as much variety as possible. You don’t want to hit the same note over and over again, so that every scene sounds like every other.
  • Pacing: The reader / audience has two desires: Serenity, harmony, peace , and relaxation & challenge, tension, danger, thrills. The writer must alternate between tension and relaxation.
  • Rhythm and tempo: In a well told story the progression of scenes and sequences accelerates pace. The writer takes advantage of rhythm and tempo to progressively shorten scenes while the activity in them becomes more and more brisk. You have to control rhythm and tempo.Rhythm is set by the length of the scenes. How long are we in the same time and the same place? Tempo is the level of activity within the scene via dialogue, action or a combination.
  • Progression: How will the reader sense when a story genuinely progresses?
    • Social progression widens the impact of character actions into society. As the story progresses the actions of the characters will spiral outwards into the world around them, touching and changing the lives of more and more people.
    • Personal progression: The action is found in intimate relationships and lives of the characters; the story will begin with a personal or inner conflict that seems relatively solvable; as the story progresses we delve deeper, working the story downward – emotionally, psychologically, and mentally – to the dark secrets, the unspoken truths.
    • Symbolic progression: Symbolism is very compelling and invades the unconscious mind, touching us deeply; the story will begin with actions, locations and roles that are familiar; as the story progresses, images gather greater meaning, until at the end of the story the characters, events and settings stand for universal ideas.
    • Ironic progression: It sees life in duality and plays with paradoxical existence; verbal irony is found in the discrepancy between words and their meaning; irony plays between actions and
      results; it is the primary source of story energy, between appearance and reality, the primary source of truth and emotion.
  • Reversals: A reversal is one of the most important tools a writer can use. It’s a ‘change of the actions to their opposite’. A reversal is when something good turns bad, something bad changes to good. As a result, it spins off the plot  into a new and often startling way. Because it’s unexpected, a strong reversal surprises the audience / readers. It helps keep them guessing about what will happen next as well as the outcome of the story. Since the reversal changes the direction of the action, the protagonist cannot go ahead as planned, instead must deal with the situation created by the reversal. A reversal always leads to new and unexpected development.
  • Turning Points: If you want to continuously move the story forward, and advance the dramatic line of development, you have to constantly keep on turning the story like a screw, tightening it to achieve maximum dramatic impact and value.
  • Transitional Values: A story without a sense of progression tends to stumble from one event to the next.  It has little continuity because nothing links its events. Transitions mark the passage of time and the link between scenes and sequences and have to be conceived visually; moving the action from one scene to the next requires a visual transition.

    How to structure Turning Points and the Impact of Turning Points, as well as how to implement Transitional Values in a story are fully explored in The Write Journey Course.

by ·Comments Off on Writer-director James Watkins talks about Speak No Evil

Written for the screen and directed by James Watkins, the writer-director of Eden Lake and the award-winning gothic ghost story The Woman in Black, Speak No Evil is based upon the screenplay of the 2022 Danish horror sensation Gæsterne, written by Christian Tafdrup and Mads Tafdrup.  

Read more about SPEAK NO EVIL

What was it about the original Danish movie this is based on that inspired you to write and direct Speak No Evil?

I just thought it was an incredibly well made and thought-provoking film. I loved the relatability of the story’s premise: ‘two couples meet on holiday…’ It’s almost like the first line of a joke! From a character point of view, I liked the idea of people on holiday questioning the direction of their lives and befriending a couple who they think might hold the answers. The film really hooked me with its grounded ‘social horror’: its exploration of how modern society shackles us with rules and how the horror in the movie plays on our social anxieties. I just thought it was a very well executed film that I could find my own way into.

What aspects of the story were you most interested in exploring?

I was excited to explore the horrors of everyday life and of social interaction. You know, the world is a complicated place, and as you get older you ask yourself questions like, “What are the rules? Am I playing by the right ones?” So, toying with those questions and anxieties was something I believed could be fun and relatable to an audience.

In relocating it to the UK and introducing Americans protagonists, I saw a way to make it more personal to me, and to bring a different cultural perspective. I think an American couple would react very differently to a Danish one! I wanted to explore Ben and Louise’s choices and agency when the dam of politeness finally breaks and conflict explodes into the open. When society’s rules become caveman rules, what then? In real life, very few of us are equipped with how to deal with conflict, with overt aggression. So how do normal people confront this abnormal situation? At what point do our primal needs overcome society’s shackles? And, in this cauldron, I wanted the notions of character that had been set up to be stress-tested. I wanted Ben to have to confront the false binary of masculinity—raw caveman strength versus modern “liberal” weakness—that Paddy thrusts upon him. I very deliberately wanted to challenge lazy gender stereotypes: for Louise to be more proactive in the final act, more ‘alpha’ than Ben. But I wanted to keep things chaotic and cack-handed and full of fear. I hate it when ‘normal people’ suddenly start acting like Navy Seal ninjas in the third act!

L to R: Director James Watkins and Mackenzie Davis (as Louise Dalton) on the set of SPEAK NO EVIL. © 2024 Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved

How would you describe Paddy, the main character of this story? And what do you believe Ben and Louise Dalton find so appealing about him and his wife Ciara? 

Paddy is a very exuberant and outgoing guy, sort of the life and soul of the party. He has fun, pushes boundaries and is very much an outdoorsman. So, I think when Ben—who is a slightly more closed character—sees him, he recognizes in Paddy a vehicle to show him a better way of living. Ben and Louise see how free and untethered Paddy and Ciara seem to be, possibly looking up to them a bit as role models. That’s when they visit them on their farm, where Paddy represents this promise of a simpler outdoor life, back to nature and uncluttered by all the rules of modernity. Unfortunately, it’s a false promise.

Paddy and Ciara have a son named Ant that suffers a speech impediment. What is their relationship like?

Well, in Tuscany they are presented as these loving and outgoing parents, but I believe that as the story develops you will see there is a much more complicated truth behind it all.

And who are the Daltons in your eyes?

The Daltons are an American expat couple living in London. They moved there for Ben’s job which fell through, but they stayed because they had a visa. He’s a middle-aged man who worries he’s on the scrapheap. He’s not sure how to negotiate the modern world and its new codes. And his relationship with his wife Louise is at risk of fracturing. And on top of that they have a daughter that suffers from anxiety and has this comfort bunny, Hoppy, who she probably should be growing out of (or at least that’s what Ben thinks). So, they’re sort of struggling through life a little bit locked in that relationship. Then, when they meet Paddy and Ciara and later get invited to their farmhouse, they almost see it as a kind of couples retreat or something they can go do to possibly help unlock themselves. But, obviously, it doesn’t turn out that way.

How did you construct the character of Paddy with James McAvoy?

When I started digging into it with James, we talked a lot about a modern crisis in identity, that sense of disenfranchisement that leaves people—mainly men—open to bad mentors like Paddy, who reject all the rules, who reject the packaged and the polite in favor of some notion of ‘authenticity’. We talked about demagogue politicians and brought up classic references, whether it’s Shakespeare’s Iago, Mephistopheles, or these other sorts of manipulative characters that get under people’s skin. I wanted the audience to slightly fall under Paddy’s spell in the way that Ben and Louise do and show how easy it is for a ‘normal’ man like Ben—who has fragilities but is by no means an extremist or an oddball—to buy into this dream and thus become complicit in the mess that it creates. As Paddy says, when Ben and Louise ask him why he’s doing what he’s doing to them: “Because you let us.”

And James is incredibly smart and really understood his role and how to walk that line, keeping the truth within the character. Paddy is a narcissistic sociopath, who ultimately likes to be the cleverest person in the room and push people’s buttons. But it was important to have him be as seductive as he is scary, with some truth in the stuff he says, like with demagogues—they get a little bit of truth and then they sprinkle it with a lot of bullshit. On top of that, he is fun, with this quirky sense of humor that make the Daltons, as Americans, wonder if this guy is saying the unsayable or just being a cheeky Brit. So, there’s always that social coding they’re negotiating with while trying to work out how he operates. Paddy plays on that, and James McAvoy is brilliant at portraying that kind of devilishness with micro gestures, almost smiling and smirking at the same time. Also, we were quite keen to develop Paddy’s relationship with Ciara that ultimately is abusive and controlling and coercive, even though they also share this weird and incredibly messed-up love. Funnily enough, in a way it’s the villainous characters that have love, whereas the sort of heroes of the story are struggling and trying to find it.

What did you enjoy about working with an actor of the caliber of McAvoy?

I wrote the part with James McAvoy in mind. Beyond his outrageous talent, he is 100% the most dedicated professional actor you could ever work with, always curious, committed, and laser focused. Paddy is the mercurial king of micro-aggressions: it takes a world class actor to map those tiny shifts and walk that line.

James McAvoy and director James Watkins on the set of Speak No Evil. © 2024 Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved

How does Louise Dalton, played by Mackenzie Davis, feel about Paddy and Ciara?

I think Louise isn’t buying into them in the same way her husband is. She has reservations, and she’s aware that this guy is pushing her buttons. So, she doesn’t quite have the sort of bromance I suppose that Ben has with Paddy, and I believe it irks her. But, at the same time, she’s carrying a bit of guilt about her past behavior and thinking, “Okay, well, let’s give it a go,” against her better judgement, perhaps. She is suppressing her instincts that tell her that something’s not right here, constantly trying to keep to the social contract and be polite, until the point where she can no longer hold it. I think Louise picks up on Paddy’s energy and his microaggressions and the sense that he is messing with her in a way that Ben doesn’t necessarily notice upfront—she’s ahead of the game. And Mackenzie Davis, who plays Louise, is someone I’ve always admired. She’s sharp and brilliant, and there’s a unique intelligence about her that you see on the screen. Mackenzie was so insightful in working with me to develop the character.

And how was your collaboration with Scoot McNairy to bring Ben to life?

I love Scoot McNairy as an actor. Here he was a good sport because, in a way, Ben is this kind of beta guy struggling with himself and a lot of actors don’t want to necessarily play that guy, but with Scoot there’s no vanity. So, Ben’s not always the most likeable character, but at the same time we understand him and the fact that here’s a man who’s a bit lost and doesn’t quite know what his place in the world is anymore. I think that is quite relatable, which is something Scoot recognized. I also love the understatement of Scoot’s acting: I thought that would help ground the film and create a really interesting tension against the performative aspects of Paddy’s character.

Aisling Franciosi is also outstanding as Paddy’s wife, Ciara.

Ciara is sort of Paddy’s secret weapon, and Aisling brought a unique softness and warmth to that role. When Paddy is a bit too laddish, she softens him. And so, they are a team; but she can be dangerous too, hiding in plain sight as this warm and nice person. I didn’t want them to just be villains, but to have this sense by which, when the other couple look at them, they look at something they might want to imitate. So, there’s a genuine warmth between Paddy and Ciara, as well as an unhealthy codependent love. There’s an interesting complexity to her character, where you are not sure if she is complicit or a victim, and that was something I wanted to explore with Aisling, who was so smart and considerate.

And the kids Agnes and Ant – portrayed by Alix West Lefler and newcomer Dan Hough respectively – play key roles too.

When we were casting the part of Agnes we looked at a lot of young actresses in America and Canada, and Alix West Lefler, who is incredibly talented, immediately stood out. She gave a great read, but it was much more than that, as we felt she understood the complexities of her character and, crucially, was always alive and responsive to what the other actors were doing.

And Dan was also a real find. Ant represents a real acting challenge: to communicate convincingly, non-verbally, without ever ‘acting.’ Dan has never acted professionally before – and never on camera. So in auditions, I ran a live camera test – because it’s one thing acting in a room with me and a casting director, and it’s something totally else acting with a big camera and thirty crew. When he screamed on that test, he gave us all the shivers. Because he brought an inner truth: he lived the moment, rather than tried to act it. He really went there. He couldn’t speak for three days afterwards. I’m so proud of him.

L to R: Alix West Lefler (as Agnes Dalton), Mackenzie Davis (as Louise Dalton), Scoot McNairy (as Ben Dalton), Director James Watkins and Aisling Franciosi (as Ciara) on the set of SPEAK NO EVIL. © 2024 Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved

The farmhouse is almost another character in the story.

It is definitely another character. And a real find by our production designer James Price who through his ingenuity enabled us to shoot the interior and the exterior of the farm in the same location, which is incredibly rare.

We always wanted an ambiguity about the house: is it charming or is it sinister? Is it shabby chic or shabby grim? This ambiguity starts from when the Dalton’s car first drives in: I liked how the farmyard buildings formed a courtyard enclosed on all four sides that made it feel almost as if you were trapped in a prison yard or a castle keep. It was both beautiful and terrifying, both protective and imprisoning.

Inside, the cottage-y rooms could feel rustic and charming and like something from The Hobbit. But equally the warren of small rooms, with their low ceiling beams, created a sense of enclosure and claustrophobia. The detailing of set decoration maintained this duality: antiques and knickknacks that might appear collectable and enticing; but in some of their detailing, disturbing elements, like the Dutch Delftware tiles in the kitchen with images of people beheaded or hanging from trees, or all the little figurines facing away from the centre of the room toward the wall, as if averting their eyes from the horrors of the house.

And the result is enhanced by the communal experience of watching the film in a theater, right?

Yes, and not just due to the size of the screen, but because of the audience and that collective environment too. Everything is amplified, as the collective is bigger than the individual and so is your experience, and you see it with all great movies. It’s almost as if there’s this buzz that goes through the room with an energy that you just can’t get at home. And if you have a film that can create that energy, then the energy feeds off itself, creating a feedback loop. So, if you watch Speak No Evil in a movie theater you will have two hours of a rollercoaster ride where you come out exhilarated and kind of exhausted. You will have had an experience and feel transported—which is what a film should do—that’s what I think merits being in the cinema.

© 2024 Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.

by ·Comments Off on Speak No Evil – Untrammeled hospitality masks an unspeakable darkness

“In my head, Speak No Evil was always a psychological thriller with a horrific core,” says writer-director James Watkins. “This subtle distinction is important in terms of my approach. The tension hopefully blooms from the psychological exploration of each character and how they interact in a modern social setting.”

From Blumhouse, the producer of The Black Phone, Get Out and The Invisible Man, comes an intense suspense thriller for our modern age. Written for the screen and directed by James Watkins, the writer-director of Eden Lake and the award-winning gothic ghost story The Woman in Black, Speak No Evil is based upon the screenplay of the 2022 Danish horror sensation Gæsterne, written by Christian Tafdrup and Mads Tafdrup.  

For almost two decades now, Blumhouse has thrilled audiences—and scared the hell out of them—with fresh takes on paranormal activity and every form of evil under the sun (and several full moons, too). But it has also expanded the boundaries of the horror genre with films that have turned the tensions and rituals of everyday life into provocative, topical, wickedly impish entertainment, from Get Out, Jordan Peele’s ingeniously freaky fable about racism in America, to the riotous social satire of The Purge franchise. Now, from writer-director James Watkins comes a twisted take on a British comedy of manners, in which one family’s trip into the countryside to visit some new friends goes horrifically awry, escalating from an awkward social ordeal that challenges their notions of politeness into a shocking nightmare in which they must abandon all civility and fight for their survival.

James McAvoy and director James Watkins on the set of Speak No Evil.Copyright Notice© 2024 Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved. INTERVIEW WITH JAMES WATKINS

It needed just the right filmmaker, though. Blum had been a huge fan of Watkins’ films Eden Lake and The Woman in Black and thought Watkins might be the ideal fit. He was right. When Watkins saw the Danish film, he immediately connected with the material and saw rich potential in an adaptation. “I loved the sly and relatable conceit: people on holiday questioning the direction of their lives and befriending a couple who they think might hold the answers,” Watkins says. “The film really hooked me on a thematic level: its exploration of how modern society shackles us with rules and how we struggle to negotiate them.”

It was exactly the kind of movie that stirs Watkins’s intellect and imagination.“I started my career with a horror-thriller called Eden Lake,” Watkins says. “You’d maybe call it a ‘social horror,’ exploring intergenerational conflict, class fears and cycles of violence in society. I wanted to get back to that intersection of genre and ideas, and this story afforded a chance to have that sort of intelligent fun.”

 Speak No Evil stars Mackenzie Davis (Terminator: Dark Fate, Halt and Catch Fire) and SAG award-winner Scoot Mcnairy (Argo, A Quiet Place Part II) as American couple Louise and Ben Dalton, who, along with their 11-year-old daughter Agnes (Alix West Lefler; The Good Nurse, Riverdale), accept the weekend-holiday invitation of Paddy (James Mcavoy), his wife Ciara (Aisling Franciosi; Game of Thrones, The Fall) and their furtive, mute son Ant (newcomer Dan Hough). What begins as a dream holiday at the idyllic farmhouse of a charming British family soon warps into a snarled psychological nightmare.

From Page To Screen

Watkins’ screenplay resonated with the film’s producers, on more than just a cinematic level, “James has a great sense of story and narrative,” says producer Paul Ritchie, who first worked with Watkins almost 20 years ago on Eden Lake. “He knows the characters inside and out and his impeccable sense of timing and his awareness of the audience experience make him perfectly suited for a film of this ilk.”

Watkins’ screenplay tapped into the universal, every-day relatability of the story’s premise. “James was the perfect choice to write and direct Speak No Evil because he excels at grounded horror, the horror that can happen to anyone,” says executive producer Beatriz Sequeira, who oversaw the production of Speak No Evil on behalf of Blumhouse. “We were all big fans of Eden Lake and so impressed with his ability to create relationships between characters and make even the most innocent of domestic scenes feel like the tensest situation you’ve ever been in your life. The first time I read James’s script, I remembered these friends that I met while I was on vacation in Fiji who were from New Zealand, where they lived on a cattle farm. I used to think it would be fun to visit them there and get to know them better. But the first thought I had after I had read the script was: ‘That’s not happening anymore.’ That’s how much it scared me.”

Watkins’s screenplay centers on Ben and Louise Dalton, Americans living in England, each grappling with identity crises, both growing distant from each other. Materially comfortable yet miserable, they persist in their struggling marriage to raise their daughter, Agnes, an anxious pre-teen who goes nowhere without the unofficial fourth member of the family, Hoppy, her stuffed animal “comfort bunny.”

L to R: Ant (Dan Hough), Ciara (Aisling Franciosi), and Paddy (James McAvoy) in Speak No Evil, directed by James Watkins. © Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.

The Daltons languishing life takes a  turn when they meet Paddy, an earthy, charismatic force of nature, his devoted wife, Ciara, and their son, Ant, while on holiday in Tuscany. Ben and Louise are charmed by Paddy’s gregarious personality and Ciara’s warmth. As camaraderie blooms between the families, the Daltons (and especially Ben) start to see their free-spirited new friends as possible role models to fix their marriage. So it goes that, weeks later, when Paddy and Ciara invite the Daltons to along weekend  on their farm in rural England, Ben talks Louise into accepting. In Ben’s mind, “this could be good for us,” he tells her. It could be a literal breath of fresh air,  with rugged country living – hunting, hiking, working the land – offering them a chance to reboot and reset. And it offers Ben a chance to be a different kind of person and indulge a certain kind of hyper-masculine, super-libertarian fantasy. But once they get to Paddy and Ciara’s remote, secluded farmstead, far away from anyone and everything they know, Ben, Louise and Agnes discover that who Paddy and Ciara and Ant are on holiday isn’t exactly who they are at home, and that Paddy’s interest in Ben, Louise and Agnes has never been friendly.

“The Daltons, particularly Ben, have been ground down by life, or at least, their lives don’t match up to the packaged perfect lives they are daily told they should be living by the feeds on their devices,” Watkins says. “‘Affluenza’ used to be the term – people who have lots of material things but are still struggling emotionally. Ben is particularly troubled. He feels that he’s past his prime, on the scrapheap. He’s not sure how to negotiate the modern world and its new codes. Paddy opens a door for Ben that makes him wonder: isthere a better way of living? But when they visit the farm so Ben can live out these fantasies of rural authenticity, things aren’t quite what they imagined. The film becomes a kind of ‘check your privilege’ morality tale: Be careful what you wish for when you are complacent about your security and comforts, when you’re feeling trapped by ‘social norms’ and when you want to loosen up and find your animal self. You may think you want danger. But when real danger comes, do you even know how to deal with it?”

(from left) Agnes Dalton (Alix West Lefler), Louise Dalton (Mackenzie Davis) and Ben Dalton (Scoot McNairy) in Speak No Evil, directed by James Watkins. © 2024 Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.

Ben captures many of the film’s conflicts regarding identity, but the captivating center of the story is the character who initially presents as the solution to them. In the character of Paddy, Watkins saw an opportunity to comment on the rise of toxic masculinity and personality-cult demagogues. “I wanted to explore a modern crisis in identity, that sense of disenfranchisement that leaves people—mainly men—open to bad mentors like Paddy, who reject all the rules, who promise to ‘take back control,’ who reject the packaged and the polite in favor of some notion of ‘authenticity’,” Watkins says. “I wanted the audience to slightly fall under Paddy’s spell in the way that Ben and Louise do and show how easy it is for a ‘normal’ man like Ben—who has fragilities but is by no means an extremist or an oddball—to buy into this dream and thus become complicit in the shitstorm that it creates. As Paddy says, when Ben and Louise ask him why he’s doing what he’s doing to them: Because you let us.”

While Speak No Evil builds on many of the themes of Gaesterne, it deviates from its inspiration in significant ways, starting with the cultural identities of its main characters. Instead of being Danish, the protagonists are Americans, and instead of being Dutch, the villains are English. “I didn’t want to do a rote American horror take,” Watkins says. “You know the type: fish-out-of-water New Yorkers visit their ‘unvarnished’ new friends in West Virginia …. I felt that there was a very British angle to the characterization and humor where I could bring more specificity and honesty, to mine things closer to home and give the satire more bite.”

L to R: Ben Dalton (Scoot McNairy) and Paddy (James McAvoy) in Speak No Evil, directed by James Watkins.© 2024 Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.

Creating a collision between this American couple from the big city with modern values and a British couple from the country with more traditional values allowed Watkins to heighten the tension and make the Daltons (and by extension, the audience) question their perceptions of Paddy and Ciara’s behavior. “The culture clash adds to the confusion at play in the film’s interest in manners, competing or changing norms, and how we read social signals,” Watkins says. “For Ben and Louise, are Paddy and Ciara weird or are they just quirky English eccentrics?! Is their house shabby chic or just shabby? There’s a further irony in that the movie inverts the stereotypes of Brits and Americans. Often, Brits are presented as repressed and Americans as more direct and plain-speaking. That’s always been a simplistic cliché; there’s always been a particular type of Brit like Paddy who is outspoken—and a particular type of American who is quite repressed—and a strain of British humor that revels in saying the unsayable, things Americans would never say. Regardless, I felt all these cross-national confusions would be a rich ingredient in the stew of social anxiety I wanted to cook.”

The other critical change that Watkins made was a new third act that resolves the conflict between Paddy and the Dalton family in a profoundly different way. “I loved the nihilist slap in the face in the third act of Christian’s movie, but I saw an opportunity to further explore the choices and agency of the main characters,” Watkins says. “When the veneer of politeness breaks, what do they do? Can the rules of society be shown as a strength as well as a weakness: could we turn from politeness-as-a-trap to politeness-as-a-means of escape? And when conflict explodes into the open, what then? In real life, very few of us are equipped with how to deal with conflict, with overt aggression. So how do normal people confront this abnormal situation? At what point do our primal needs overcome society’s shackles? At what point do Ben and Louise overcome their reticence and fight back or flee? Can Ben and Louise ultimately reject Paddy’s world view?”

Exploring these questions helped give the Daltons some options for action without subverting the film’s naturalistic grit and sociopolitical bite. “I wanted to give my characters more agency, but I didn’t want them suddenly to become action heroes,” Watkins says. “I hate it when ‘normal people’ suddenly start acting like Navy Seal ninjas in the third act. I want to keep things messy and chaotic and full of fear. I very deliberately wanted to challenge lazy gender stereotypes: for Louise to be more proactive in the final act, even more ‘alpha’ than Ben. And I wanted the notions of character that had been set up to track through and be stress-tested. I wanted Ben to have to confront the false binary of masculinity—raw caveman strength versus modern “liberal” weakness—that Paddy thrusts upon him, and I wanted to lean even further into the themes of toxic masculinity and how violence breeds violence through generations.’”

As Watkins fine-tuned his vision and entered production, he found further inspiration in the films of lauded filmmakers Michael Haneke and Ruben Östlund, and from Mike Nichols’ The Graduate, Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs, John Boorman’s Deliverance and Mike White’s Emmy-winning series The White Lotus. “In my head, Speak No Evil was always a psychological thriller with a horrific core,” Watkins says. “This subtle distinction is important in terms of my approach. The tension hopefully blooms from the psychological exploration of each character and how they interact in a modern social setting. All the films that informed this approach peel away the layers of ‘civilized’ life to revel in the power struggles of social interaction and explore the barely suppressed rage polite smiling people feel towards each other. White Lotus recently did this brilliantly, and I love the ‘dramedy’ of Mike White’s work, how his scenes veer between comedy and drama in the way they milk the horrors of every social interaction between the characters.”

With the screenplay completed, the production of Speak No Evil quickly kicked into high gear in 2023, as the SAG-AFTRA labor strike loomed on the horizon. “This was a fairly rapid start from reading the script to moving into production,” producer Paul Ritchie says. “James is a fantastic collaborator and listener; everyone feels part of the process. Over the years we’ve built up a great amount of trust, which is such a valuable commodity. We’ve been fortunate to work on projects where the chemistry of the teams we’ve put together has enhanced the show and created a successful platform for us to grow from. Our first discussions were centered on how we could breathe our style of filmmaking into the movie, with cast and locations being crucial to that vision.”

Writer-director James Watkins says that, other than casting, no creative choice was more important to the success of Speak No Evil than securing the right rural locale to play the role of Paddy and Ciara’s charming-on-the-outside/shabby-on-the-inside farmstead, situated near a small lake on a spread of Eden-esque English countryside. “There’s a constant push-pull in the script: for every warning sign about Paddy and Ciara, there’s a corresponding beat that is charming and potentially freeing: Red light, green light,” Watkins says. “Paddy’s farm and the landscape around it serves this idea and expresses it. It is life-affirming to wander through these beautiful valleys and enjoy Paddy’s woodcraft as he makes fire with his bare hands, even as other details, some quite subtle, are causes for anxiety if not alarm.”

James Mcavoy delivers a riveting performance as the charismatic, alpha-male host whose untrammeled hospitality masks an unspeakable darkness

Paddy (James McAvoy) in Speak No Evil, directed by James Watkins. © Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.

Paddy presents himself as a former big city physician and old-fashioned manly man with carnal appetites and strong opinions about everything. He rejects pretentiously “woke” liberalism and rat-race careerism for a simpler life, living free and unfettered in the wilds of rural England with his wife and young son. But Paddy’s iconoclastic individualism belies a dark undertow of resentment and covetousness that will eventually crash to the surface.

To play the psychologically subterranean Paddy, director James Watkins turned to James McAvoy, the acclaimed Scottish actor of stage and screen and famed for playing telepathic superhero Charlies Xavier in the X-Men film franchise and the mentally ill Kevin Wendell Crumb in the Blumhouse blockbusters Split and Glass. “Paddy must charm us even while being on the edge of horrifying us, and James knows how to walk that line,” Watkins says. “I watched him in the film Filth and was mesmerized: his character is horrible, but James somehow takes us with him. A lesser actor would have lost us. As well as a movie star, James is a brilliant stage actor. Exploring Paddy, he not only mines his own experience but taps into a deep well of classical resources: Iago, Richard III, Mephistopheles. I don’t think anyone else in the world could have played Paddy as well as James. His understanding of psychological and emotional space—of mapping tiny shifts on an emotional gradient—is second to none. He was the first and only actor I approached.”

Paddy (James McAvoy) in Speak No Evil, directed by James Watkins. © Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.

McAvoy was immediately intrigued. “Blumhouse has done so many kinds of movies, but they’re mostly known for the horror genre, and they’re exceptionally good at it,” says McAvoy. “But reading the script, what kept me going after page three was the fact that these characters felt like real people and that it was based on things that we can recognize in the real world. The film is constantly playing with what’s acceptable and what’s not acceptable and the dangers we risk when we choose to put up with degrading behavior or conditions because we don’t believe we deserve better, or don’t believe things can get better, or just don’t know how to think or talk about these things anymore.”

When it came to Paddy, McAvoy was fascinated by the character’s many meanings and layers, particularly his embodiment of retrograde masculinity. “Paddy holds to an older, traditionalist expression of manhood,” says McAvoy. “James Watkins and I really leaned into that aspect of him as we fleshed out who Paddy is and what he means to the story and to the culture, giving him some mythic heft with timely resonance. Here’s this man’s man, beholden to some ancient idea of masculinity, living in the countryside, living off the land, or so you think. It all seems so wholesome and earthy. And yet this is ancient England that we’re talking about, and there’s darkness in the land; there’s a history of violence and bloodshed and horrible things in that dirt, and so there’s evil in that earthy masculinity that he’s romanticizing and selling.”

Paddy (James McAvoy) and Ciara (Aisling Franciosi) in Speak No Evil, directed by James Watkins. © Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.

McAvoy discovered more dimensions in the part as he and co-star Aisling Franciosi worked with Watkins to create the relationship between Paddy and his wife, Ciara. “Paddy and Ciara are this crazy couple, perhaps literally, with unspeakable passions, and they are seen initially by the Daltons—Ben, and to a lesser degree Louise—as this beacon of hope and light in their lost lives and suffering marriage. This pointed to a kernel of truth about Paddy and Ciara that there’s in script, but we excavated even more in rehearsals and on set: Yes, they are despicable in so many ways. But they love each other, and their love is true and even wholesome. So, you’ve got these baddies who really love each other, and you’ve got these goodies who kind of don’t even know how to explore or express love anymore, for various reasons, because of issues in their relationship or because modern society has made them question how love is even supposed to work. Recognizing those themes and cultivating them made for rich relationships and conflict.”

Paddy’s provocative and powerful personality made him a fun character to play, says McAvoy, but he was always mindful of finding the proper tone for the character. “Paddy is incredibly entertaining and he’s always performing,” McAvoy says. “But you have to be careful playing a character like that, because then it can become a showy turn, and while that could be very effective for an audience, it doesn’t necessarily have a lot of truth to it. We were always working to ground the character in real history, motivation and desire, and to earn the revelations of his true nature. As much as Paddy is this likably mercurial, counter-cultural figure, there’s real darkness in him, and it’s always there for the audience to see. If there’s a way in which this movie is like a classic horror movie, it’s that part where the audience is yelling at the characters ‘Don’t go down that dark corridor!’ and yet they can’t stop going down it. The difference here is that the dark corridor isn’t literal.  It’s Paddy and Ciara.”

by ·Comments Off on Bros – A smart, swoony and heartfelt comedy about two gay men stumbling towards love

Screenwriter Billy Eichner knew from the beginning that he wanted to make a film about modern, urban gay male life that felt adult, authentic and relatable. “I wanted a movie that showed in a very funny, but realistic, way what happens when two adult gay men who both pride themselves on not needing a relationship fall in love for the first time. Men in general, and especially gay men, pride themselves on being strong and self-reliant. And in terms of the LGBTQ+ world, we’ve all had to be really strong on the outside. We want to be tough, and we don’t want to need anyone else. So, what happens when two men like that fall for each other?”

The romantic comedy is almost as old as movies themselves and includes everything from vintage classics such as 1934’s It Happened One Night and 1940’s His Girl Friday to modern ones such as When Harry Met Sally, Annie Hall and Moonstruck. But in almost a century of movies, and for all those hundreds of cinematic stories, no major film studio had ever released a romantic comedy about two gay men.

Nicholas Stoller

Billy Eichner didn’t think they ever would, even when director Nicholas Stoller reached out to him in the fall of 2017 to talk to Eichner about co-writing and starring in one. “I never believed for a second that a major studio would do it,” Billy Eichner says. “I told Nick that, and he kept saying, ‘I think they will.’ I said, ‘I’m telling you, I have been at this a long time, and they’re not going to do it.’ I was bringing 20 years of being told that I was ‘too gay’ to that conversation. But Nick was right.”

Aaron (Luke Macfarlane) and Bobby (Billy Eichner) in Bros, directed by Nicholas Stoller. © 2022 Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved. Photo Credit: Universal Pictures

Stoller had become one of the most successful comedy directors of his generation, with a string of hits that included the Neighbors films and Forgetting Sarah Marshall and the smash Netflix series Friends from College, which is where he first met Eichner. “Billy is one of the few people I know in the industry who is totally self-made,” Stoller says. “Everyone has mentors. His mentor was YouTube. He put his stuff on Funny or Die, and it became popular. He didn’t have someone. He really made it himself and to make it yourself when the entire industry for a long time was saying you’re not going to make it because of your
origin sexual orientation takes a lot of inner strength. So, I knew Billy was funny, but there was a scene in the first season of Friends From College, a very emotional scene, and he just was so good as an actor. And then the first episode we played in a movie theater, and every time he was on screen, he destroyed. And I was like, ‘Oh, he’s a movie star.’ I’d wanted to work on a romantic comedy about two gay men, but I can’t write it by myself. I’m not gay so it wouldn’t be honest. I emailed him and I was like, ‘Would you want to do this?’”

Eichner said yes, and the two launched into a collaboration that proved eye-opening for both of them. “I had never written a movie before and Nick didn’t really know much about gay culture, other than what the media tells us,” Eichner says. “So, I educated him on gay culture and he educated me on how to structure a screenplay for a major studio. The partnership was a funny, unique, surprising marriage of sorts, among cowriters. We were very much partners on everything. And that began what became a five-year process.”

BROS streams exclusively on SHOWMAX

From Page to Screen

Judd Apatow was the ideal producer for what would become Bros. Over his storied career, Apatow has elevated a series of promising young comedy talents to their first major big-screen performance, including Steve Carell, Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, Jason Segel, Kristen Wiig, Amy Schumer, Kumail Nanjiani and Pete Davidson. Bros had the potential to do the same for Eichner. “I’m a giant fan of Billy Eichner,” Apatow says. “Nick Stoller and I worked together on The Five-Year Engagement, Undeclared and Forgetting Sarah Marshall. We wrote Fun With Dick and Jane, so we like working together. We felt like this was the kind of movie that never gets made: a gay romcom by a major studio with a big budget. It seemed ridiculous that there hadn’t already been hundreds of tthem. So, we were all very excited to
try to make that happen.”

While everyone involved knew the film would be a watershed for LGBTQ+ representation, the paramount goal was to make the most hilarious, and heartfelt, comedy possible. “Generally, in the work of creativity, I just try to think of who’s talented, who’s funny, who has stories to tell,” Apatow says. “Sometimes if you think about the political aspect of creating projects, you can get into a place where you lose track of the imagination and the fun of it. But the truth is our business has neglected to represent so many different
types of people. I don’t like to start thinking that Bros will solve that; I just think I’d love to see this kind of movie because it doesn’t exist. We’re lucky that we’ve been able to put together something like this, which is so meaningful to so many people. But the most important thing is that it’s funny.”

The genesis of the film’s narrative came from a sketch Eichner had done on his series Billy on the Street years earlier called “The Bro Lightning Round” with Jason Sudeikis.

“It was one of the only times on Billy on the Street when I took on another persona,” Eichner says. “I turned myself into a bro and I wore khakis and a sports jersey and a backwards baseball cap. And I was going up to people and doing this bro voice and totally changed my demeanor. It went sort of viral, and people wrote all these think-pieces about how it was a commentary on masculinity. In real life, a good friend of mine — a gay friend of mine — saw me in the sketch and he was like, ‘You know, you’re really hot in that sketch.’ This is someone who’s been a good friend of mine for 20 years and has never, ever
hinted at any sort of attraction to me. And he literally said — without any irony or sarcasm — ‘You should dress like that, because you’re really hot in that mode.’ And I was like, ‘Do you know what you’re saying right now? So, you think I should completely alter my voice, body and everything about me in order to seem hot?’ I think he thought he was complimenting me. And I thought, there’s something to this, because it’s funny, and it’s also kind of messed up. And that inspired the whole movie.”

Billy Eichner on the set of Bros, directed by Nicholas Stoller. © 2022 Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved. Photo Credit: Nicole Rivelli/Universal Pictures

Among the many gay-culture aspects that the film affectionately satirizes—absurd workout crazes, Grindr hookups, thruples, intra-queer politics—Bros shines its brightest, most unflinching light on those elements of gay male cultural that elevate, emulate and eroticize stereotypical masculinity.

“This movie is all about masculinity and the inability for men — particularly in the gay community — to be vulnerable and to be comfortable in their own skin,” Stoller says. “I think these are issues that any man has dealt with in some way, but it’s specific to the gay community. And it is specifically Billy’s story.”

In fact, the first scene Eichner thought of for the film is one in which his character, Bobby, has just been dumped and decides to get in peak shape. “Bobby’s feeling very insecure about how he looks and his body and masculinity,” Eichner says. “So, he’s at the gym working out, and he sees a guy across the gym that he thinks is hot, and they’re making eyes at each other and Bobby walks over to the guy to flirt with him. But as he does, he makes a last-minute decision to change the way he’s walking. He turns his baseball cap around to seem more like a bro and he makes his voice much deeper than it normally is. And he changes his personality in order to seem more attractive.”

This is an ongoing issue among gay men who came of age in the ’90s and 2000s,Eichner says. “My friends and I, we didn’t struggle with being gay,” Eichner says. “I’m sure some people did. I never did. But where the struggle came was: ‘Well, I’m gay, and that’s cool. But I still want to be a man.’ The struggle was with masculine versus feminine or masculine versus flamboyant. Like, ‘I’m gay, but I still want to be a bro.’ I don’t feel this way anymore. But I certainly did. And it’s something that was ingrained in gay men in my
generation.”

It’s so pervasive, in fact, that Eichner himself doesn’t always realize when he’s slipping into bro-mode, even now. “All my agents are straight men, and my lawyers are straight men, and my manager is a straight man, and they’re all very lovely and wonderful,”

Eichner says “I had an assistant for a really long time who was a co-producer on Bros and she said to me, ‘Whenever they call you, your voice drops two octaves.’ And I didn’t even realize it. It’s very indicative of all the code switching that we’ve done over the years. It’s just a part of our lives that we have to constantly play that game of, ‘How should I behave in front of this straight person in order to not alienate them?’”

Ultimately, though, the film is about the herculean challenges of finding someone who doesn’t drive you crazy—and then finding the courage to let yourself love them.

“It’s the story of two men who fall for each other, but who, at the same time, for different reasons, are both intimidated by each other and a little scared of each other,” Eichner says.

The story is specific and authentic to gay men, but the emotions are universal. “We didn’t set out to make a niche movie that’s only for a specific community,” producer Josh Church says. “We want the movie to speak to the LGBTQ+ community, but this movie will have impact because it’s going to reach an audience of people who are just coming to see a romcom, and they’re going to see stories that they haven’t seen before. They’re going to see performers they’ve never seen before. They’re going to hear jokes they’ve never heard before. And hopefully, everybody comes away from it realizing that stories are stories, and
we should be looking for these stories through every part of society, from every person, from every group.”

Stoller and Apatow had an excellent built-in test audience for how the film would play to people outside the LGBTQ+ community: themselves.

“Everybody relates to wanting to be happy, wanting to feel connected, to be in love, to feel supported, to feel understood, and respected,” Apatow says. “So there really is nothing about a movie like this that isn’t
fully relatable and universal. I mean, everyone has this type of experience.” And Stoller was excited to be inviting straight audiences into the gay-male experience. “My goal was to make the most hysterical episode of Frontline of all time,” Stoller says. “So, you’re laughing and then you’re like, ‘That was interesting. I want to talk about that later with my spouse or friend.’ But right now I’m laughing and I don’t even know that I’m absorbing information.”

 Bobby (Billy Eichner) and Aaron (Luke Macfarlane) in Bros, directed by Nicholas Stoller. © 2022 Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved. Photo Credit: Universal Pictures

The Characters

For almost the entirety of Hollywood history, it was considered career suicide for a straight actor, particularly a straight male actor, to play a gay role. But after Tom Hanks won the Oscar for 1993’s Philadelphia, attitudes began to shift and, over the years, playing gay roles has become a fast track to awards recognition. Since 1993, more than 15 heterosexual men have been nominated for or have won Academy Awards for playing gay characters. It’s so common that it was parodied by Robert Downey Jr.’s movie-star character in Tropic Thunder, a role that Downey himself was nominated for. Notably,
however, no gay man, who was openly gay at the time, has ever won the Oscar for Best Actor. Still.

“For decades, Hollywood allowed straight actors to play the best-written, juiciest,
most multi-dimensional, high-profile LGBTQ+ roles, and they end up winning awards,” Billy
Eichner says. “And they use these roles to show people their range, and how ‘brave’ they
are and how serious they are as actors, which is all well and good. But it never works in the
opposite direction.”

So, when Nicholas Stoller, Eichner, and producers Judd Apatow and Josh Church began casting Bros, this idea was forefront in their minds. “The first decision made about casting was that my love interest would be played by another openly gay actor,” Eichner says. “Everyone felt very strongly about that. The studio felt strongly about that, to their credit. And then once we made that decision, I turned to Nick and said, ‘Everyone in the cast should be openly LGBTQ+.’ The movie itself was becoming, to a certain degree, about allowing queer people to tell our own stories, to control our own stories. It felt like we needed to use this as an opportunity to populate the movie with openly LGBTQ+ actors and actresses and trans people and non-binary people who simply have not had these opportunities before based solely on who they were in their personal lives, which makes no sense.

MacFarlane was thrilled to be part of an entirely LGBTQ+ cast. “I think every cast has a certain cohesiveness, but we all have a similar experience in the world,” MacFarlane says. “And I think that binds us together. If I had been able to see someone like myself on camera growing up, it would have changed the course of my life and the course of my happiness. That’s why this movie is important. It’s for the generation coming up, for them to just see people and say, ‘That’s also okay.’”

by ·Comments Off on Live Theatre On The Big Screen

Cinema audiences and theatre lovers alike are treated to innovative productions filmed live from some of Britain’s most exciting stages, screened in the cinema.

VANYA / 28, 29 September & 2, 3 October

Andrew Scott (Fleabag) brings multiple characters to life in Simon Stephens’ (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time) radical new version of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. Hopes, dreams, and regrets are thrust into sharp focus in this one-man adaptation which explores the complexities of human emotions. Filmed live during its sold-out run in London’s West End, Vanya will be playing exclusively in cinemas in 2024.

THE MOTIVE AND THE CUE / 26, 27, 30 & 31 October

Sam Mendes (The Lehman Trilogy) directs Mark Gatiss as John Gielgud and Johnny Flynn as Richard Burton in this fierce and funny new play. 1964: Richard Burton, newly married to Elizabeth Taylor, is to play the title role in an experimental new Broadway production of Hamlet under John Gielgud’s exacting direction. But as rehearsals progress, two ages of theatre collide and the collaboration between actor and director soon threatens to unravel. Written by Jack Thorne (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child) and designed by Es Devlin (The Crucible), the Evening Standard award-winning best new play was filmed live during a sold-out run at the National Theatre. 

NYE / 30 November & 1, 4, 5 December

Michael Sheen plays Nye Bevan in a surreal and spectacular journey through the life and legacy of the man who transformed Britain’s welfare state and created the NHS.  Confronted with death, Aneurin ‘Nye’ Bevan’s deepest memories lead him on a mind-bending journey back through his life; from childhood to mining underground, Parliament and fights with Churchill. Written by Tim Price and directed by Rufus Norris (Small Island), this epic new Welsh fantasia will be broadcast live from the National Theatre.

Don’t miss these world-class theatre productions at Cinema Nouveau and select Ster-Kinekor cinemas near you. Bookings are now open; screenings are limited and will be released at Rosebank Nouveau in Johannesburg, Ster-Kinekor Brooklyn in Pretoria, Ster-Kinekor Gateway in Umhlanga and Ster-Kinekor V&A Waterfront in Cape Town.

Book your tickets at www.sterkinekor.com or download the SK App on your smartphone. For news and updates, go to Facebook: Ster-Kinekor Theatres | follow Ster-Kinekor on Twitter: @Ster-Kinekor. For all queries, call Ticketline on 0861-Movies (668 437).

by ·Comments Off on Beetlejuice Beetlejuice – The mischievous demon returns to unleash his very own brand of mayhem

“Things happen to all of us as we get older and change—relationships, children—all those things. That was the nucleus of it for me that got me back interested in it. It was quite emotional for me to revisit the characters,” says creative visionary Tim Burton, a genre unto himself, who directs the long-awaited sequel to Burton’s award-winning Beetlejuice from a screenplay by Alfred Gough & Miles Millar, story by Gough & Millar and Seth Grahame-Smith, based on characters created by Michael McDowell & Larry Wilson.

“I still don’t understand it. [laughs] I think I’ve said this a thousand times, but it’s true: it is unique. And there’s no such thing as “really unique” or “very unique.” It’s something that’s either unique or not. And Beetlejuice is unique,” says Michael Keaton who returns to his iconic role. “And it’s just 100% original. I’ve always described it as a piece of art. You could almost grab the movie and, if you could, hang it somewhere. But it’s also kind of timeless and must touch things in people. And I just think people were drawn to this really unusual visual treat. Because a lot of it is the visuals and the visual jokes. It’s really interesting how much people react so positively to pure imagination from Tim. Just pure imagination. No one ever saw anything like that.”

‘I was nervous, really nervous, because the choice that I made, that was a big leap. It was a risky move that happened to have worked,” says Keaton. “So then, you think, “Oh geez, can I pull that off again after all these years?” I think there was way more pressure on this one—we didn’t really want to mess this up. I was very nervous about it and me. But we hope we got there. I think we did.

Catherine O’Hara as Delia, Jenna Ortega as Astrid, Winona Ryder as Lydia and Justin Theroux as Rory in Warner Bros. Pictures’ comedy, “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release.Copyright: © 2024 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved. Photo Credit: Parisa Taghizadeh.

After an unexpected family tragedy, three generations of the Deetz family return home to Winter River. Still haunted by Beetlejuice, Lydia’s life is turned upside down when her rebellious teenage daughter, Astrid, discovers the mysterious model of the town in the attic and the portal to the Afterlife is accidentally opened. With trouble brewing in both realms, it’s only a matter of time until someone says Beetlejuice’s name three times and the mischievous demon returns to unleash his very own brand of mayhem.

In conversation with screenwriters Alfred Gough & Miles Millar

Creating history…

ALFRED GOUGH, Screenplay/Story Writer: I think the character that Michael and Tim created, you had just not seen that person before. And what’s great about horror and comedy is that their rhythms are very close. And that’s something that Tim does particularly well. Even though Beetlejuice was technically his second movie, it was really kind of the foundational Tim Burton movie. You see the animation, the quirky characters, and Winona, who became his muse in those early productions.

MILES MILLAR, Screenplay/Story Writer: And I think we still haven’t seen anything like it. It’s so unique. And also, the production design, the stylistic elements. And even for us, the camera moves. It’s very, very Tim. It’s a filmmaker of his iconic status really finding himself in that movie and in this very particular kind of tone. The movie has lasted the test of time because it is so unique and original, and while it speaks to its time, it’s also timeless.

Genesis…

ALFRED GOUGH: We were on the set of Wednesday and we would meet with Tim every morning and basically go through the scenes. Then we got a call that he wanted to meet us after wrap one night, which was highly unusual. We were like, “Hope there’s nothing wrong.” We went into the trailer and Tim told us that he wanted to do a Beetlejuice sequel. It’s the movie that people come up and asked him about the most, and he felt like the time was right. That’s really how it came about. We met with him the following weekend and he gave us his ideas for what he wanted in the movie—we worked on the story, came back and pitched it and he loved it. Then, we wrote the movie. For us, it was an incredibly simple development process, because we were writing for an audience of one, which was Tim Burton.

MILES MILLAR: And the process from sitting in that trailer in the depths of Romania to actually getting the movie made was nothing in terms of Hollywood time. So, it was really an incredibly joyful experience. We watched the first movie probably three or four times as we worked on the story, so we could really honor the legacy of the first film—so, there’s a continuum. This is a very different movie, but there are so many Easter eggs and nods to the first one that I think fans will really enjoy the elements that we put in there. But obviously, it’s also incredibly accessible to a new audience and to people who haven’t seen Beetlejuice before. I think that’s something that was really exciting for us as writers and creators to bring to this movie.

Miles Millar, Alfred Gough, and Tim Burton

Resurrecting Beetlejuice…

ALFRED GOUGH: I think what keeps Beetlejuice interesting is that you never know what he’s going to do next. He is an agent of chaos and that is really his function in the movie. And the movie’s called Beetlejuice and it’s about Beetlejuice, but he comes in at very specific times to really make things harder, ratchet things up, throw a spanner in the works and to do these insane things. It was such a fun character to write, because he’s completely unhinged. He can say and do anything. That’s what made it. And to be honest, you’d never really seen Beetlejuice, but certainly today, it’s not a character that you see in movies.

MILES MILLAR: For us, he’s like a dark-hearted cartoon, really. He’s a Warner Bros. cartoon on acid. And what’s interesting—and Tim was very clear about—Beetlejuice is in the first movie for 11 minutes. And he really wanted to maximize his impact whenever he was onscreen, so it became about pulling back on Beetlejuice, like “Too much Beetlejuice” was always the note. So that was really interesting. But he’s such a fun character to write—just his lines and the visual gags you can do, along with his flexibility… you know, he does a lot of gross stuff. And as a writer, it’s really fun to stretch your imagination.

Michael Keaton as Beetlejuice with director Tim Burton during the filming of Warner Bros. Pictures’ comedy, “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Copyright: © 2024 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures

In conversation with director-producer Tim Burton

Returning to Beetlejuice…

TIM BURTON: After the first movie, there was lots of talk about maybe a sequel, and there have been different ideas over the years, but nothing for me really clicked. And so, all this time goes by, 35 years, and what really got me interested and excited is… life. It’s like, what happened to the Deetz family? You know, it’s 35 years later, what happened to Lydia, this interesting teenager? And so, for me, and you start to use your own life experience: you’re an interesting teenager. What happens when you become an adult? Do you have children? What are your relationships like? What have you become? Things happen to all of us as we get older and change—relationships, children—all those things. That was the nucleus of it for me that got me back interested in it—what happened to the Deetz family. It was quite emotional for me to revisit these characters.

Making the sequel with the same spirit…

TIM BURTON: I’ve worked with a lot of technologies and big movies, but I just recall that feeling. It happens to you when you first start out—with Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, I felt that. In your first early movies, there’s something about them that is just different, because you’re new to it. I’ve worked with different kinds of technology since, but working with live effects and puppets, makeup and sets… it just was part of the spirit of what that movie was. There’s an energy and a spontaneousness to it. And even though we were dealing with live effects, we were still kind of making it up as we went along in some cases. In life, sometimes, you’re surprised, and there are lots of pleasant surprises—and that was one of them. But since that’s what a surprise is, you can’t predict it, you don’t know, so… surprise.

Director Tim Burton during the filming of Warner Bros. Pictures’ comedy, “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Copyright: © 2024 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures

In camera…

TIM BURTON: We tried to do all effects as live as possible. We try to keep digital things to a minimum. And so, we wound up with this weird kind of thing where it felt like more of a performance art piece. So, for instance, introducing Monica’s character, Delores—we added a few digital things to it, but the main part of it was doing it live. Because that was an important thing for me—from effects to sets and everything—just across the board, no digital. Let’s just go back and make it, like we did in the past. So, it felt like a weird performance art piece and it took a little while. But, for me, it’s worth it.

Sketches / The Afterlife…

TIM BURTON: I did sketch some things on this one. And I had fun doing it. I’m lucky to work with people who can interpret what my sketches look like. I did a couple of characters here and there. Some characters are in the film. Some, I’ll have to save for the DVD extras, the grown-ups only content that didn’t make it into the film. It’s like doing an animation in a sense, in that everybody contributed. I did some drawings, [animatronic/special makeup effects supervisor] Neil Scanlan did all the effects, and his people did effects, so it was like a contest. It was fun to work that way.

It’s a kind of free for all. I had some ideas, I did some sketches, and then I threw it out to everybody—the art department, the makeup department, craft services—anybody. It’s pooling ideas together. And like I said, I did a few that maybe crossed the line that wouldn’t make it in, but everything else… it was like casting. You try to mix and match. I’d worked with Neil before. And he was like the actors. He fit right into the spirit of it, because we did a lot of live effects, but we did them quickly, and usually that kind of stuff can take forever. So, we just went with the spirit of doing it—like, instead of building this giant puppet, we cut up a doll, put some rods into it and made it work. It’s literally, “Let’s go to the toy store, buy something, rip it up and make something out of it.” All of those things went into coming up with and creating those Afterlife characters.

Theater-going experience growing up…

TIM BURTON: Oh, yeah. There was a theater in Burbank [California], the Cornell Theater—they’d show triple features for 50 cents. Absolutely, I’ll never forget those first theater experiences. I remember seeing Jason and the Argonauts as my first movie and I still remember it. So, those things can impact you—or they did to me—and I think they still can to some degree… and that’s amazing. A few years ago, there seemed to be a very polarized thing with cinema or TV, and it was like, “What’s it going to be?” And I think luckily what we’ve seen is that movies are important. Seeing something on a big screen… like this movie, we made it for the big screen. You make it to be felt in a cinema. You make it for the scope and the size and the sound, and all of that. So, it’s very important. And luckily, I think that polarization is diminishing a little bit, and people still realize how important and how beautiful an experience it is to go to a movie.

Copyright: © 2024 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved. 

Michael Keaton as Beetlejuice in Warner Bros. Pictures’ comedy, “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Copyright: © 2024 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures

TIM BURTON (Director / Producer), director and artist, is widely regarded as one of cinema’s most imaginative and visual filmmakers. Both his live-action and animated films have earned Academy Awards, Golden Globes, BAFTAs and many other industry accolades, cementing his status as one of the greatest film makers of our time.

He has a dedicated following, notably for classic features such as Beetlejuice (1988); Edward Scissorhands (1990); and Sweeny Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) as well as blockbuster hits Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992); Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005); and Alice in Wonderland (2010). He helped to reinvigorate the stop-motion industry with his 1993 creation and cult classic Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, followed by Corpse Bride (2005) and Frankenweenie (2012). Burton most recently produced and directed four episodes of the hit Netflix series, Wednesday (2022).

Long before becoming a director, Burton expressed himself through drawing, painting, poetry and photography, all of which have been documented in books The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories, The Napkin Art of Tim Burton and the 2009 release, The Art of Tim Burton, a 430-page volume comprising more than 40 years of his personal and professional artwork. Coinciding with the release of The Art of Tim Burton, the Museum of Modern Art opened an extensive exhibition of his work in New York, which went on to tour in Melbourne, Toronto, Los Angeles, Paris and Seoul. A second exhibition of his artwork, The World of Tim Burton, continues to tour internationally.

ALFRED GOUGH & MILES MILLAR (Screenplay by / Story by / Executive Producers) are prolific writers and producers in both TV and film. They are creative partners who first paired up while attending the Peter Stark Producing Program at USC. 

Most recently, they created and are showrunners of Netflix’s hit Wednesday. The show was viewed for over five billion minutes just two weeks after its premiere, smashing streaming records. The duo partnered with iconic director Tim Burton to bring the series to life. The show focuses on the teenage years of Wednesday Addams and stars Jenna Ortega. With over 250 million views worldwide, Wednesday has become Netflix’s number one English language series of all time.

Millar and Gough also created and served as showrunners of the critically acclaimed action-adventure television series Smallville. The show became the longest-running comic book-based series of all time and was the number one show in the history of the WB Television Network. They also created and executive produced AMC’s groundbreaking martial arts drama Into the Badlands, as well as MTV’s The Shannara Chronicles, starring Austin Butler.

Their feature film credits include Sam Raimi’s blockbuster Spider-Man 2, starring Tobey Maguire; the hit action-comedy Shanghai Noon and its sequel Shanghai Knights, both starring Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson; as well as Lethal Weapon 4, starring Mel Gibson and Danny Glover; and the global smash The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. The duo also produced the hit film Hannah Montana: The Movie, starring Miley Cyrus, which marked the first film produced under the Millar Gough Ink banner. Most recently, they collaborated with Tim Burton on the sequel to his classic film Beetlejuice, starring Michael Keaton, Winona Rider, Catherine O’Hara and Jenna Ortega.

SETH GRAHAME-SMITH (Story by) is a screenwriter, producer and New York Times bestselling author, who’s proud to have worked with Tim Burton on three films to date. As a writer and producer, Seth’s films have grossed more than two billion dollars at the box office, ranging from family fare like The Lego Batman Movie, to the highest-grossing horror movie of all time, Stephen King’s It. As an author, Seth is credited with creating the ‘mash-up’ literary genre with his bestselling novels Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, both of which were adapted into feature films. Along with his producing partner, David Katzenberg, Seth is the co-founder of KatzSmith Productions, a film and television company dedicated to telling elevated genre stories.

by ·Comments Off on Interviews with South African Filmmakers and Screenwriters

Daniel Dercksen talks to SAFTA-winning and Annie Award-nominated composer, screenwriter and producer Bruce Retief about his passion project 1960

Writer-producer Bruce Retief with director King Shaft during the filming of 1960.

Daniel Dercksen Talks To Veteran Filmmaker Jans Rautenbach

Legendary South African Filmmaker Koos Roets Talks About PawPaw Vir My Darling

Daniel Dercksen shares a few thoughts with Filmmaker Gavin Hood about screenwriting and filmmaking

2 Thirds of a Man – Writer-director Earl Kopeledi’s passionate “love letter to the Coloured community”

Writer-director Craig Gardner talks about My Father’s War

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is KAPP2.jpg

Screenwriter Tertius Kapp talks about writing Gaia

Celebrated Screenwriter Tertius Kapp talks about Griekwastad

Writer-director John Barker talks about Wonderboy For President

Daniel Dercksen in conversation with Sean Else

Johnny Breedt 2

Interview with Die Ontwaking producer, writer and director Johnny Breedt

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is JOHNY1-1024x428.jpg

Production Designer and filmmaker Johnny Breedt talks about Sergio and how the Corona Pandemic has severely impacted the entertainment industry.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is SUPERMAMA-INT.jpg

Writing Studio graduate Karen Van Schalkwyk talks about the 15-years of bringing The Adventures Of Supermama to the big screen

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is TheUnfamiliar_Unit_Stills_-60-002-1024x697.jpg

Henk Pretorius Talks About Modder en Bloed

Henk Pretorius talks about being a South African filmmaker in Hollywood/ UK

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is MASTER.jpg

Producer-writer-director Sallas de Jager talks about Dominee Tienie

Sallas De Jager Talks About Jonathan

Sallas De Jager Talks About Free State

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is IUvI3waQ-1024x681.jpeg

South-African director Michael Matthews talks about his breakthrough on Netflix with Love and Monsters and being a filmmaker. 

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is STROOP-3.jpg

Writer-director Etienne Kallos talks about Die Stropers (The Harvesters)

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is kanarie-film-bts-cv-06-002-1024x642.jpg

Musician, composer, writer, performer Charl-Johan Lingenfelder talks about writing the screenplay for Kanarie in collaboration with director Christiaan Olwagen

Writer-Director Johannes Ferdinand van Zyl talks about his astounding new South African Film The Recce

Screenwriter Emma Lungiswa de Wet talks about the South African Film Glasshouse

Interview with Klein Karoo 2 screenwriter Lize Vosloo

Writer-Director Ryan Kruger talks about his South African cult hit film Fried Barry

Writer-director Uga Carlini talks about her inspirational and life-affirming film Angeliena

Director Meg Rickards talks about her winning streak with Kaalgat Karel

Writer-director René van Rooyen talks about her magical South African film Toorbos

Writer-director Derick Muller talks about the extraordinary Wesens, a groundbreaking, first of its kind Afrikaans found-footage Sci-Fi film that subverts conventional rules and clichéd notions.

Director André Velts talks about Vergeet My Nie

Screenwriter Tarryn-Tanille Prinsloo talks about writing Vergeet My Nie

Celebrated filmmaker, screenwriter and playwright Christiaan Olwagen brings Poppie Nongena to life on film

Writer-director Nicola Hanekom talks about Cut-Out-Girls

Writer-Director Brett Michael Innes talks about his masterful adaptation of Fiela Se Kind

Writer- director Quentin Krog (Ballade vir ‘n Enkeling / Vir die Voëls) talks about the unconventional Ander Mens.

Producer- writer-director Judy Naidoo’s Kings of Mulberry Street brings together the rich and colourful world of the Indian community in the 80s as well as Bollywood cinema and songs from that era, in a tale that peers into the past through the prism of the present. Read Interview

Writer-director Eubulus Timothy talks about the surfing movie Deep End

Writer-director-actor Hendrik Cronje talks about his feature debut Liewe Lisa

Director and co-writer Gray Hofmeyr about Leon Schuster’s Frank And Fearless.

Ivan Botha and Donnalee Roberts talk about Vir Altyd


  • Amy Jephta talks about writing the screenplay for Ellen: The Ellen Pakkies Story
    Writer-director Ivan Botha talks about his directorial debut Stroomop.
    A few thoughts with the creative team behind the hilarious action comedy Thys & Trix: Writer-director Quentin C. Krog, screenwriter Frannie Van Der Walt, and actors/ husband-and wife team Leandie du Randt Bosch and Bouwer Bosch
  • 29-year-old writer-director Nosipho Dumisa makes her feature film debut with the South African crime-thriller Nommer 37. Set in Haven Mansions, a fictional block of apartments in Dumisa’s imagined suburb of the Cape Flats. The film looks through the eyes of a former petty criminal, who has been spat out by the very world he once thrived in and left to observe it from the outside. Read Interview
  • Meerkat Maantuig  is inspired by the youth novella Blinde Sambok by renowned South African author Riana Scheepers. Writer-director Hanneke Schutte, decided to use the book as a point of departure and turn it into a cinematic story set in the majestic forests of Magoebaskloof, South Africa. A fearful young hypochondriac with an overactive imagination, descends into darkness as she realises that she’s the only one left with a cursed family name. With the help of her new friend Bhubesi and his make-shift moonship, she’ll have to find the inner strength to face her fears in order to break the curse. Written and directed by Hanneke Schutte. In Afrikaans with English subtitles.  Trailer / Interview with Writer-director Hanneke Schutte
  • In the new Afrikaans romantic comedy Wonderlus, a wedding goes awry and the morning after, friends and foes need to piece together the puzzle of the night before. In search of answers, a groom (Edwin van der Walt) needs to pursue the love of his life, a bride (Mila Guy) has to untangle herself from the past and a waitress (Lea Vivier) tries to escape the present. Read interview with writer-director Johan Cronje
  • South African producer, writer, director and actor Frans Cronjé’s brand-new The Roar is about the life of Louise du Preez, a farm-girl dreaming about the fulfillment of her unique singing and dancing talent on the international stage. Firmly believing that if you dream it you really can do it, her life and dreams are shattered when the expectations of her fiancé André and her stubborn dad, Ranger turn out to be solid obstacles. It’s about a woman realising that willpower is the difference between success and the disaster of never start living your unique purpose.  Even the negativity of her fiancé and the stubbornness of her dad turn into stepping stones when life is left to God’s will and timing. Filmmaker Frans Cronje talks about The Roar, An Inspirational New South African Film  / Trailer  / Read more /
  • The powerful South African film Raaiselkind explores the unrelenting burden of autism on an average, loving family and shows the disintegration of the family as a result. It drives home the inescapable truth that society can be cruelly indifferent to whatever it perceives to be aberrant. Screenwriter Pieter Esterhuizen talks about writing the screenplay
  • Modder & Bloed is a dream come true for The Writing Studio graduate Henk Pretorius. Read more
  • Writer-director Sallas De Jager talks about his uproarious comedy Jonathan that deals with a dreamer and wannabe stand-up comedian who embarks on a roller coaster journey of self-discovery.
  • The Writing Studio’s proud graduate Sallas de Jager is winning the hearts of audiences worldwide with his sensational Free State, which he wrote-directed and produced, garnering the Best Director award and Special Jury award for scriptwriting at the Luxor African Film Festival in Egypt last month, as well as Best Cinematography at the Garden State Film Festival in New Jersey, New York.
  • Writer-director John Barker, a proud graduate of The Writing Studio, is turning politics inside out and upside down with his biting independent mockumentary Wonder Boy For President.
  • Safe Bet is a winner for The Writing Studio Graduates:  Director-producer Bonginhlanhla Ncube and screenwriter Carl Roddam
  • Daniel Dercksen Shares A Few Thoughts With Safe Bet Writer-Director-Producer Mr. B
  • “The Wound was born out of a desire to push back against clichéd stereotypes of black masculinity perpetuated inside and outside of African cinema,” says writer-director John Trengrove, whose critically acclaimed drama explores tradition and sexuality and is set amid the Xhosa rites of passage into manhood. “As a white man, representing marginalised blac