Tag: The French Dispatch

  • Bill Murray reveals he will appear in Marvel’s ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’

    Murray pressed on, explaining that despite the Marvel Cinematic Universe not really being his normal thing, he was wooed to join the movie by director Peyton Reed.

  • Tony Revolori joins cast of Wes Anderson’s next feature

    By Express News Service

    Tony Revolori, best-known for playing Zero in Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, has joined the cast of the filmmaker’s next.

    The development makes him the latest addition to the cast, which includes the likes of A-listers such as Adrien Brody, Bill Murray, Margot Robbie, Tom Hanks, Jason Schwartzman, Tilda Swinton, Rupert Friend, Scarlett Johansson, Bryan Cranston, Hope Davis, Jeffrey Wright, and Liev Schreiber.

    ALSO READ: Scarlett Johansson joins cast of Wes Anderson’s next film

    The yet-to-be-titled project is currently filming in Spain and further details are currently under tight wraps. Interestingly, this will be the third collaboration between Revolori and Anderson, with the former appearing in the filmmaker’s latest film, The French Dispatch, which recently premiered at Cannes, and slated for release on October 22.  Revolori will also be seen in Spider-Man: No Way Home.

  • Actor Adrien Brody joins director Wes Anderson’s next movie

    By PTI
    LOS ANGELES: Filmmaker Wes Anderson has roped in frequent collaborator Adrien Brody for the cast of his next feature film.

    The new film will be the fifth project that the duo have worked together on after “The Darjeeling Limited”, “Grand Budapest Hotel”, “The Fantastic Mr. Fox” and Anderson’s latest “The French Dispatch”.

    Brody joins Bill Murray and Tilda Swinton in the untitled project, which is set in Spain, according to Deadline.

    Anderson will be writing and directing the movie.

    The filmmaker’s latest, “The French Dispatch” recently had its world premiere at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival.

    The movie, which comes from Disney-owned Searchlight Pictures, features an ensemble cast of Benicio del Toro, Lea Seydoux, Frances McDormand, Timothee Chalamet, Lyna Khoudri, Jeffrey Wright, Mathieu Amalric, Steve Park, Owen Wilson, Murray, Brody and Swinton.

    Brody has a busy slate going forward as the Oscar winner will star in two HBO shows — “Succession” season three and the untitled Los Angeles Lakers limited series.

    The actor will also feature in Epix series “Chapelwaite”.

    On the film front, Brody will star in Netflix movie “Blonde”, which is being headlined by Ana de Armas, and Searchlight’s untitled murder mystery, starring Sam Rockwell.

  • Bill Murray reunites with Wes Anderson, Tilda Swinton for new project

    By ANI
    WASHINGTON: Bill Murray is among the cast of Wes Anderson’s new project that will begin production in Spain in August.

    As per Variety, sources close to the project have confirmed Murray’s casting. The actor has appeared in nine of Anderson’s movies to date, excluding the new picture.

    The as-yet-untitled film also stars Tilda Swinton, as she revealed exclusively to Variety in June. Though the film is shooting in Spain, “it’s not about Spain,” Swinton had hinted.

    Meanwhile Anderson had said he’s “not ready to share any details” about the new film.

    Murray and Swinton co-star in Anderson’s ‘The French Dispatch’, which recently had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival.

    Murray is an old Anderson hand. Besides the Spain project and ‘The French Dispatch’, the duo have also worked together on ‘Isle of Dogs’, ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’, ‘Moonrise Kingdom’, ‘Fantastic Mr Fox’, ‘The Darjeeling Limited’, ‘The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou’, ‘The Royal Tenenbaums’ and ‘Rushmore’.

    The project is believed to have originally planned to shoot in Rome, but moved to Spain earlier this year.

    Sets resembling a desert landscape have been going up in Chinchon, a small town located southeast of Madrid, over the last two months, as reported by Spanish outlet El Pais. However, the film isn’t believed to necessarily be a western.

    Murray has another film at Cannes: music documentary ‘New Worlds: The Cradle of Civilization’. In the documentary, shot on stage at the historic Acropolis in Athens, Greece, in 2018, Murray joins famous cellist Jan Vogler on stage for a night of timeless poetry and music, captured on film by director Andrew Muscato.

    Spanning from Bach to Van Morrison, Walt Whitman to ‘West Side Story’, ‘New Worlds: The Cradle of Civilization’ showcases the range of art that has influenced American and European culture and helped to bridge the gap between the two.

    It captures the final performance of Murray and Vogler’s European ‘New Worlds’ tour. Murray also serves as a producer on the film.

  • Wes Anderson’s ‘The French Dispatch’ receives nine-minute standing ovation at Cannes

    By ANI
    WASHINGTON: Wes Anderson’s film, ‘The French Dispatch’, had its long-awaited premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on Monday and earned one of the biggest standing ovations so far at the 74th edition of the event.

    As per Variety, the applause continued for nine minutes for Anderson and his cast in attendance, which included Timothee Chalamet, Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Tilda Swinton, Adrien Brody, Stephen Park, and Benicio Del Toro.

    But one actor couldn’t make the trip. Lea Seydoux was absent from the movie premiere, as she is quarantining in Paris after testing positive for COVID-19.

    As the event began, there were signs that this wasn’t going to be a regular Cannes premiere. Instead of a black car, the cast, along with composer Alexandre Desplat, arrived together in a giant gold party bus, escorted by French motorcycle police. Murray took off his mask (which had an imprint of a chin on it), basking in the flashing lights.

    Anderson stopped his ensemble at the bottom of the carpet to take a group photo. Many of the actors also seemed to be doing their own camera work. Wilson filmed the crowds at the bottom of the carpet, and Brody pulled in Chalamet for a selfie at the top of the stairs (violating the festival’s no-selfie rule, although none of the ushers tackled his phone — as they do with regular attendees attempting the same).

    Swinton, who has five movies playing at Cannes, wore a pink gown with shimmering gold sequin-covered sleeves. Chalamet leaned his head on her shoulder.

    Once Anderson entered the theater, the Cannes crowd welcomed him with a rapturous standing ovation. Chalamet and Swinton held hands walking down the aisle, and he mouthed “Queens baby!” to the cameras as he clapped along.

    After the lights went back up, Murray walked from seat to seat hugging every person in the cast. Swinton was caught playing a hilarious prank on co-star Chalamet as the audience gave the film a standing ovation.

    A video of the comical incident shows Swinton sneakily sticking a “Tilda Swinton” sign on Chalamet’s back while pretending to hug him.

    The Searchlight film follows a weekly magazine that covers global politics, culture, art, and food in a special interest section of a daily newspaper from Kansas. Murray plays a devout editor to a gang of expatriate writers who must package their final collection of stories.

    Through the feature write-ups, comic strips, and pictorials, Anderson weaves several vignettes and plot threads.

    The film is a love letter to journalism, although ironically Anderson declined to hold a press conference with his cast or conduct any interviews with reporters in Cannes.

    The end credits are dedicated to a list of editors and writers that inspired the film, among them The New Yorker’s Harold Ross, William Shawn, Lillian Ross and Janet Flanner; James Baldwin; Ved Mehta, and more.

    ‘The French Dispatch’ was acquired by Searchlight in September 2019 and was meant to play Cannes 2020, which was scrapped as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The release date was pushed to October 2020 only to be delayed again.

    The movie is now scheduled to open in theaters in the United States on October 22.

  • Netflix yet to discover a great film director: Cannes Film Festival chief

    By AFP
    CANNES: Netflix and the other streaming giants have yet to discover one great director, the head of the Cannes Film Festival said Monday.

    Thierry Fremaux threw petrol on the simmering feud between the French festival– the world’s biggest — and the US platform when he challenged reporters to “name me a director who has been discovered by a platform” on the eve of Cannes’ opening.

    “Not yet, even after 10 years…”, Fremaux added archly as journalists struggled to come up with a name.Netflix has effectively boycotted Cannes since 2018 after being told it had to show its films on the big screen in France if it wanted them to compete for its Palme d’Or top prize.

    While Fremaux praised Netflix — which began streaming in 2007 — for their”extraordinary work”, he was quick to turn the knife in his defence of the magic of the big screen.

    ALSO READ: Excitement as Cannes Film Festival reopens after pandemic hiatus

    “We just celebrated the 125th anniversary of the invention of cinema. Let us see if in 100 years we will celebrate the birthday of the platforms. “I don’t think Netflix or the others can skip the Cannes film festival,” he warned. “Youwillseethe names of the future in our line-up…,” he added. “That is why the dialogue must be opened.”Relations between Cannes and the Californian tech giant began to turn sour in 2017 after French cinema owners protested over the inclusion of two of the streamer’s movies in the main competition.

    ‘A bigger situation’The following year Cannes changed its rules requiring a French release for films competing for the Palme d’Or, but allowing streaming-only movies out of competition.

    Netflix retaliated by withdrawing three films from Cannes at the last minute in a move that seemed to be timed to cause maximum chaos.

    With the cinema world aghast, and Cannes cast as the defender of the big screen and traditional cinema, Netflix’s CEO Reed Hastings later admitted that they had gone too far.

    “Sometimes we make mistakes. We got into a bigger situation with Cannes than we meant to,” he said.

    In public, both sides have seemed keen to kiss and make up. Fremaux said Monday that they were “friends… We talk all the time”.

    Yet three years on, Netflix is still giving Cannes Film Festival the cold shoulder while rival Amazon is happy to play by the rules.

    Amazon has two movies at Cannes this year, including the opening film”Annette” starring Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard.

    While Netflix insists a French law stopping streamers showing movies there for three years after their release is too restrictive, Fremaux’s patience appears to be wearing thin.

    The French law was already being reviewed, he said, and Cannes’ own rule” is not that tough…”But Netflix does not want to abide by even that, nor does it want to bring films that are not in competition.” 

  • Timothee Chalamet-starrer ‘Dune’ delayed again, new release date revealed

    By ANI
    WASHINGTON: The wait for ‘Dune’ just got a bit longer. Warner Bros. has shifted the much-awaited sci-fi film to three weeks later, putting it at October 22, 2021.

    As per Variety, it was previously set to release on October 1. The move was part of a larger release date shuffle by Warner Bros. recently.

    ‘The Many Saints of Newark’ was pushed back one week, taking the original spot held by ‘Dune’. The ‘Sopranos’ prequel will now debut on October 1, a week later than its previous date of September 24.

    The shuffle also affected Clint Eastwood’s upcoming film ‘Cry Macho’, which was bumped up one month after ‘Dune’ took its previous spot. ‘Cry Macho’ will now release on September 17, three weeks ahead of its prior date of October 22.

    This is the latest delay for ‘Dune’, helmed by Denis Villeneuve. The hotly-anticipated film was originally set for December 18, 2020, before being punted nearly a year to 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

    The film’s cast includes Timothee Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin, Stellan Skarsgard, Dave Bautista, Zendaya, Jason Momoa and Javier Bardem.

    The upcoming movie tells the story of Paul Atreides, a brilliant and gifted young man born into a great destiny beyond his understanding, who must travel to the most dangerous planet in the universe to ensure the future of his family and his people.

    The movie, which will have its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, is based on Frank Herbert’s seminal science fiction bestseller.

    Coincidentally, ‘Dune’s’ new release date falls on the same day as ‘The French Dispatch’, both films star Chalamet. That’s a double treat for all the Chalamet fans.

    In late 2020, Warner Bros. made the bombshell decision to release its entire 2021 slate of films simultaneously in theatres and on HBO Max for a limited time.

    These films, including upcoming releases like ‘The Suicide Squad’ and ‘The Matrix 4’ are still expected to follow that release plan.