In today’s episode, Brent Lang, Variety’s executive editor, breaks down an impressive week 4 box office performance for “Weapons” and a less-than-impressive industry-wide B.O. haul for the summer frame. Peter Debruge, chief film critic for Variety, details the reaction to Bruce Springsteen biopic “Deliver Me From Nowhere” at the Telluride Film Festival, and why this particular high-altitude gathering is a movie lover’s dream.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome to Daily Variety, your daily dose of news and
analysis for entertainment industry insiders. It's Tuesday, September two, twenty
twenty five. I'm your host, Cynthia Littleton. I am co
editor in chief of Variety alongside Ramin Setuda. I'm in
LA He's in New York, and Variety has reporters around
the world covering the business of entertainment. In today's episode,
(00:29):
we'll talk with Brent Lang, Variety's executive editor, as the
curtain falls on another summer box office season, and Variety
Chief film critic Peter de Bruges weighs in from nine
thousand feet at the close of the Telluride Film Festival.
He talks about the early reaction to Bruce biopic Deliver
Me from Nowhere and other titles making waves in the
(00:50):
Colorado Mountains. Before we get to that, here are a
few headlines just in this morning that you need to know.
Call of Duty is coming to the big screen. Paramount
has struck a mega deal with Microsoft's Activision to develop
the video game franchise as a movie. Paramount CEO David
Ellison says in the release that he is quote a
(01:11):
lifelong fan of call of duty quote. It's a new
era for the Melrose lot. The Television Academy will honor
the Corporation for Public Broadcasting with its annual Governor's Award
this year. This is the equivalent of giving an Emmy
nomination to a show that just got canceled. Please look
up my interview with former CPB chair Bruce Raymer last
(01:34):
month for a look at what the end of the
CPB will mean for PBS, NPR and other public media.
Director Catherine Biggielow has a lot to say about the
need for nuclear disarmament. It may seem like a quaint
Cold War era concern, but she aims to sound the
alarm about this ongoing issue with her new movie, A
(01:56):
House of Dynamite. She spoke about it in Venice on Monday.
You can find all of those stories and so much
more on Variety dot com. Right now, now we turn
to conversations with Variety journalists about news and trends in
show business. If it's Monday, we're talking box office. Brent
(02:17):
Lang joins us to explain the summer long box office tallly.
This year's haul is on par with Summer twenty twenty four,
and that's not a great thing because this year's slate
was so much more robust, and we talk about why
Weapons was the sleeper of the summer. Brent Lang putting
the labor in labor day, thank you so much for
(02:38):
joining us and doing box office.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Thanks for having me well.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
As the curtain comes down on another summer box office season,
it's been an eventful year. A lot of swings, a
lot of new titles, old franchises being revisited, the few
sleeper hits. I want to talk about the summer total
box office tally, but first let's talk about this weekend.
The summer sleeper has been Weapons, the Warner Brothers horror
(03:05):
thriller movie that rocketed back up to the number one
spot this week.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Absolutely and its fourth weekend of release, it made twelve
point eight million. It's made over two hundred million dollars globally,
which is a pretty phenomenal return on a movie that
costs thirty eight million going into the summer. I don't
think a lot of people knew much about this movie.
Something is happening with the horror genre, which has been
a very dependable one for Hollywood. You're seeing some taste
(03:33):
change a little bit because Blumhouse, which had been kind
of the taste maker. They did a sequel to Megan
two point zero that really bombed, and I think they're
having some difficulty figuring out whether or not their low
budget model is working as well at a time when
stuff like Weapons and Sinners which are a little bit
(03:54):
higher budget and a little more prestigee, With casts like
Julia Garner and Josh Brolin and Michael B. Jordan starring
in these movies, I think that people are looking maybe
for something that's a little more autori or something.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
It's an interesting point that horror has become so popular
that you are seeing bigger names come into the genre.
And it's also interesting to see this in Week four
come back to number one. That is as hard as
evidence as you can find that there's word of mouth
on this movie. People wanted to check it out.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
That's definitely true. Unfortunately, the counter to that argument is
that there's also not as much competition and not as
much compelling stuff out there. And when you look at
this weekend, you had two new films, The Roses and
Cod Stealing, and they ended up falling short of the
fiftieth anniversary re release of Jaws, that's not really a
(04:48):
sign of a very healthy marketplace.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
With dark still has some serious bite. Sorry, I couldn't
physical Scott myself from making that judge, but Brent certainly
for cod stealing. It was not for lack of try
from star Austin Butler. He was everywhere. He did his
part to sell this movie for director Darren Aronofski and
Sony Pictures. Were there any glimmers of hope, any regional
(05:11):
pockets of strength for this movie?
Speaker 2 (05:13):
I think this is somewhat of a disappointment. Under Tom Rothman,
Sony has done a pretty good job of still taking
bets on original films, but while they do that, they
have been very conservative with their budgets. So Caught Stealing
costs about forty million dollars. I can't imagine it's going
(05:34):
to make up profit theatrically, but that's not a ton
of money on something like this, And I.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Would imagine too the Austin Butler factor of it. He
has such a fandom that as this hit streaming, it
could be the kind of thing that didn't do much
at the box office but played on cable forever, the
modern equivalent of that.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
There was some hope that he had been such a
phenomenon in Elvis and did the Dune sequel, that this
would spill over and that his above the title would
be enough to get people to turn out and force
the roses.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Obviously, the reviews weren't pretty tepid. What do you think
went wrong here?
Speaker 2 (06:11):
It was a property that didn't have the kind of
affection that people thought. It's based on a novel which
then inspired a nineteen eighty nine film with Kathleen Turner
and Michael Douglas and Dinny DeVito, and for something like
this to work, you need the reviews to be great,
and the reviews were meh. And frankly, I love being
in a Cumberbacher. We did a cover story on him,
(06:32):
and he's a fantastic actor and Olivia Coleman's a great actress.
It just didn't look like something that people had to
go out and see on opening weekend. That's a real
issue again, the same thing with Codd stealing. But there's
a lot of stuff on streaming that's available and have
to have a need to see, and it didn't have it.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
So let's talk summer overall. Where does Summer twenty five land?
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Do you think, well, Unfortunately, it's basically flat with Summer
twenty twenty four, and that's at about three point six
seven billion dollars, and that's pretty disappointing because going into
the summer, there was an expectation that the slate was
very strong, that there were a lot of returning franchises.
You had two Marvel movies, you had Superman, you had
(07:16):
a Jurassic World film, and that you would actually be
able to hit or even eclipse four billion. And the
last time we did that was twenty three, where you
had Barbenheimer. What's happening is that Hollywood has seen a
declining interest in some of its more venerable franchises, and
that's a problem. You're seeing some tastes that are really
(07:38):
shifting heading into this summer. The idea that Leelo and
Stitch would be the year's biggest hit, or that Weapons
would be a big hit, or that Jurassic World would
end up outgrossing Superman and Fantastic four, I don't think
anybody would have predicted that. So that indicates to me
that the comic book genre in particular is really fading
(08:03):
in popularity. They still get a certain level of audience,
and they still have a very core group of passionate fans,
but it's not performing like five years ago.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
I know that the Vox office experts such as Rebecca Rubin,
who you are once again substituting for, is she's busy
on the leado and cover and the heck out of
the Venezula. I know that you all study these numbers.
There's a lot to be learned from the summer. Brent,
thank you for taking the time to talk through all this.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
And now here's Peter de Bruges to set the scene
and the mood at the Telluride Film Festival this year,
Bruce Springsteen competing Hamlet Movies, Another Your Ghost Lanthemos, Emma
Stone collaboration and e Gen Carrol Telly Ride had a
little something for everyone this year. Peter de Bruges, Variety's
chief film critic, coming to us from nearly nine thousand
(08:57):
feet in Telluride, Colorado.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
Thanks for joining me, Thanks Cynthia. This is my favorite
festival in the state.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Listeners, I wish you could see his smile. Peter is
in his happy place with smart people talking about interesting movies,
narrative movies, documentary movies. This is a heady festival, and
I always enjoy reading our coverage over Labor Date Weekend.
Tell Me what's the mood, what's the vibe of Tell
You Ride? This year?
Speaker 3 (09:24):
Well, in general, tell You writes a special place because
it really is this elitist little bubble. It takes a
lot of money to come here, and the people who
do aren't necessarily film professionals. They're people who make Tell
You Writing their cultural weekend for the year. They binge
on movies that are going to be the best of
the year. Tell You Ride has a much smaller, very
(09:45):
carefully curated program from other festivals, maybe forty major movies
with some tinier things on the side, and so you
can rest assured that almost everything here is going to
be good well because they don't have to do the
thing at a festival like Berlin or Toronto does. With
nearly two under titles, They're the best of can They're
the best of Berlin. Their world premieeres. They share some
(10:05):
movies with the Venice Film Festival, where the movie might
world premiere a day before and then show up for
its very next stop.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
One of the movies that Tellyride making a lot of
headlines is the documentary about Egen Carroll, the writer who
has been through an odyssey with President Donald Trump. And
this movie is also at Teller Ride shopping for distribution
because it's an extremely controversial topic.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
By colleague Matt Donnelly found out in his interview with
Egene Carroll. It sounds like this movie may have been
available for several months to other festivals, and Tell Your
Rides the first one had the nerve to premiere it,
and we'll see whether distribution follows. It'll take a gutsy
company to stand behind this, but it's interesting here in general,
(10:50):
there's been a transition in recent years from Tom Luddy,
who is one of the founders of Tell Your Ride,
to his successor, Julie Huntsinger. Julie's really embraced documentaries and
nonfiction storytelling, and I really think that's reflective of a
transition we're seeing in the world right now where audiences
are too.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
It's best of times, worst of times for documentaries right
now because there has been such a boom. The streamers
came in with a lot of money, a lot of commissions,
but documentary industry insiders who gathered at variety in Rolling Stones,
truth seekers event in New York just a couple of
weeks ago, were very much sounding the alarm. The gusher
of money that fueled so many careers and so many
(11:30):
projects has really slowed down. Let's get to the big
narrative titles that everybody was watching. From my perspective, the
biggest had to be the Bruce Springsteen biopick Deliver Me
from Nowhere Jeremy Allen White twentieth Century Studios. What did
you think?
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Music?
Speaker 3 (11:47):
Biopicks are my least favorite genres, and I always joke
that it's the same story always. This Blessedly is not
that narrative. Scott Cooper, the director, has taken a book
that's very specifically a out the making of the Nebraska album.
This was a really key moment in Bruce Springsteen's career.
I think people are really focused on whether Jeremy Allen
(12:09):
White can do such an iconic performance. That's what really
interests people about portraits of musicians. He's really terrific. It's
tricky because Springsteen doesn't seem like such a hard person
to capture. He's kind of so all American. You feel
like there are probably twenty actors who could play him.
But is there a single one besides Jeremy Allen White
who could sing the songs where I thought I was
(12:30):
listening to Springsteen.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
Well, I can tell you this. I am old enough
to remember when that album came out. It was a
big deal because you had one of the biggest rock
stars who was about to hit the stratosphere with Born
in the USA just a few years later. It was very,
very critical of the Reagan Revolution. It was just a
couple years in and Ronald Reagan could not have been
more popular as a president. And here was Bruce Springsteen saying, Hey,
(12:56):
some of the things that are happening in our farmland
and in the heartland of America is not so cool.
Another title that had a premiere Pogonia from Yorgos Lanthomos.
Once again oscar talk for Emma Stone. I know his
movies are very hard to describe. Is this going to
be a mainstream breakthrough film for Lanthomos?
Speaker 3 (13:16):
Well, Lanthemos is a real provocateur. He's the director who
brought us Poor Things and the favorite the Lobster, et cetera.
This is a remake of a Korean movie called Save
the Green Planet. Here you have Emma Stone playing the
CEO of a major chemical company who's kidnapped by two
Cretans from Middle America. They believe she's from an alien
planet and they're trying to torture her into a confession.
(13:39):
It's very disturbing, but it also has a texture, you know,
Cynthia of it. I just came back from Little Rock, Arkansas.
I grew up in Waco, Texas. I know the type
of people that we're seeing depicted here. And to have
a Greek director nail something that so steldom I see
captured by Hollywood, I thought it was part of the
thing that made so powerful.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Right now, we need our provocateurs. And then, as I
understand Peter, you had a surfeit of Hamlet movies that
Telly Ride this year.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
It's a funny thing that film festival programmers do. They
seem to like it when the movie titles rhyme. There
were two movies called Dreams and Competition at Berlin year.
There are three Hamlet movies that Tell Your Ride. One
is a straight up adaptation contemporary starring Riz Ahmed. There's
another movie that Chloe Jao, who brought us the writer
(14:28):
in Nomadland. She reached into the deepest part of her
soul and pulled out this movie. The movie's about the
loss of Shakespeare's son named Hamnet and the impact that
that has on the parents. Jesse Buckley is just astonishing.
It really is a cathartic experience for the audience to watch,
like I'm giving myself goosebumps remembering what it felt like
(14:51):
to be in that room. The third one is a
very tiny documentary with Oscar Isaac, who is here for
Gierma del Toro's Frankenstein. Kind of a sneak peek. He
also played Hamlet on stage and at the same time
in his private life was experiencing profound tragedy. In the
park where they did these conversations, they had all the
Hamlets on stage, including Ethan Hawk, who played in Michael
(15:11):
Amorta's Hamlet years ago, comparing trading notes on what it
was like to play the Danish prints.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
It's tell your Ride spin on Shakespeare in the Park.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
Peter.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
Thank you for being our reporter, our critic, for posting
all those reviews and being our guide here to what
Telly Ride is all about. Safe travels to you down
the mountain.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
Thank you, Cynthia. This is really the starting pistol for
an exciting season that's ahead.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
As we close out today's episode, here's a few things
we're watching for. Variety is busy producing extra print and
digital editions at the Venice Film Festival, which runs through Saturday,
September six, and we'll be all over the Toronto Film
Festival starting Thursday, also with dedicated digital and print dailies.
If that wasn't an enough, we're also doing digital dailies
(16:01):
this week out of Lajavre, France for the Rendezvous des
Unifrance market for French movies and TV shows. It's the
start of Prestige fall film season, and there's also a
boatload of new TV series coming soon. Thursday brings the
highly anticipated spin off NCIS Tony and ZeVA to Paramount Plus,
(16:22):
and The Paper premieres on Peacock before we go. Congrats
to Megan Colligan. She's joined roe Que Entertainment, a new
theatrical distribution label backed by Media Capital Technologies. Callagan was
previously president of Imax Entertainment and president of Worldwide Marketing
and Distribution of Paramount Pictures. Brent Lang had the scoop
(16:42):
on this new venture last week. Thanks for Listening. This
episode was written and reported by me Cynthia Littleton, with
contributions from Brent Lang and Peter De Bruce. It was
edited by Aaron Greenwald Styx Nix hick Picks. Please leave
us a review at the podcast platform Review Choice, and
please tune in tomorrow for another episode of Daily Variety
Welcome to Daily Variety, your daily dose of news and
analysis for entertainment industry insiders. It's Tuesday, September two, twenty
twenty five. I'm your host, Cynthia Littleton. I am co
editor in chief of Variety alongside Ramin Setuda. I'm in
LA He's in New York, and Variety has reporters around
the world covering the business of entertainment. In today's episode,
(00:29):
we'll talk with Brent Lang, Variety's executive editor, as the
curtain falls on another summer box office season, and Variety
Chief film critic Peter de Bruges weighs in from nine
thousand feet at the close of the Telluride Film Festival.
He talks about the early reaction to Bruce biopic Deliver
Me from Nowhere and other titles making waves in the
(00:50):
Colorado Mountains. Before we get to that, here are a
few headlines just in this morning that you need to know.
Call of Duty is coming to the big screen. Paramount
has struck a mega deal with Microsoft's Activision to develop
the video game franchise as a movie. Paramount CEO David
Ellison says in the release that he is quote a
(01:11):
lifelong fan of call of duty quote. It's a new
era for the Melrose lot. The Television Academy will honor
the Corporation for Public Broadcasting with its annual Governor's Award
this year. This is the equivalent of giving an Emmy
nomination to a show that just got canceled. Please look
up my interview with former CPB chair Bruce Raymer last
(01:34):
month for a look at what the end of the
CPB will mean for PBS, NPR and other public media.
Director Catherine Biggielow has a lot to say about the
need for nuclear disarmament. It may seem like a quaint
Cold War era concern, but she aims to sound the
alarm about this ongoing issue with her new movie, A
(01:56):
House of Dynamite. She spoke about it in Venice on Monday.
You can find all of those stories and so much
more on Variety dot com. Right now, now we turn
to conversations with Variety journalists about news and trends in
show business. If it's Monday, we're talking box office. Brent
(02:17):
Lang joins us to explain the summer long box office tallly.
This year's haul is on par with Summer twenty twenty four,
and that's not a great thing because this year's slate
was so much more robust, and we talk about why
Weapons was the sleeper of the summer. Brent Lang putting
the labor in labor day, thank you so much for
(02:38):
joining us and doing box office.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Thanks for having me well.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
As the curtain comes down on another summer box office season,
it's been an eventful year. A lot of swings, a
lot of new titles, old franchises being revisited, the few
sleeper hits. I want to talk about the summer total
box office tally, but first let's talk about this weekend.
The summer sleeper has been Weapons, the Warner Brothers horror
(03:05):
thriller movie that rocketed back up to the number one
spot this week.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Absolutely and its fourth weekend of release, it made twelve
point eight million. It's made over two hundred million dollars globally,
which is a pretty phenomenal return on a movie that
costs thirty eight million going into the summer. I don't
think a lot of people knew much about this movie.
Something is happening with the horror genre, which has been
a very dependable one for Hollywood. You're seeing some taste
(03:33):
change a little bit because Blumhouse, which had been kind
of the taste maker. They did a sequel to Megan
two point zero that really bombed, and I think they're
having some difficulty figuring out whether or not their low
budget model is working as well at a time when
stuff like Weapons and Sinners which are a little bit
(03:54):
higher budget and a little more prestigee, With casts like
Julia Garner and Josh Brolin and Michael B. Jordan starring
in these movies, I think that people are looking maybe
for something that's a little more autori or something.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
It's an interesting point that horror has become so popular
that you are seeing bigger names come into the genre.
And it's also interesting to see this in Week four
come back to number one. That is as hard as
evidence as you can find that there's word of mouth
on this movie. People wanted to check it out.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
That's definitely true. Unfortunately, the counter to that argument is
that there's also not as much competition and not as
much compelling stuff out there. And when you look at
this weekend, you had two new films, The Roses and
Cod Stealing, and they ended up falling short of the
fiftieth anniversary re release of Jaws, that's not really a
(04:48):
sign of a very healthy marketplace.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
With dark still has some serious bite. Sorry, I couldn't
physical Scott myself from making that judge, but Brent certainly
for cod stealing. It was not for lack of try
from star Austin Butler. He was everywhere. He did his
part to sell this movie for director Darren Aronofski and
Sony Pictures. Were there any glimmers of hope, any regional
(05:11):
pockets of strength for this movie?
Speaker 2 (05:13):
I think this is somewhat of a disappointment. Under Tom Rothman,
Sony has done a pretty good job of still taking
bets on original films, but while they do that, they
have been very conservative with their budgets. So Caught Stealing
costs about forty million dollars. I can't imagine it's going
(05:34):
to make up profit theatrically, but that's not a ton
of money on something like this, And I.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Would imagine too the Austin Butler factor of it. He
has such a fandom that as this hit streaming, it
could be the kind of thing that didn't do much
at the box office but played on cable forever, the
modern equivalent of that.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
There was some hope that he had been such a
phenomenon in Elvis and did the Dune sequel, that this
would spill over and that his above the title would
be enough to get people to turn out and force
the roses.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Obviously, the reviews weren't pretty tepid. What do you think
went wrong here?
Speaker 2 (06:11):
It was a property that didn't have the kind of
affection that people thought. It's based on a novel which
then inspired a nineteen eighty nine film with Kathleen Turner
and Michael Douglas and Dinny DeVito, and for something like
this to work, you need the reviews to be great,
and the reviews were meh. And frankly, I love being
in a Cumberbacher. We did a cover story on him,
(06:32):
and he's a fantastic actor and Olivia Coleman's a great actress.
It just didn't look like something that people had to
go out and see on opening weekend. That's a real
issue again, the same thing with Codd stealing. But there's
a lot of stuff on streaming that's available and have
to have a need to see, and it didn't have it.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
So let's talk summer overall. Where does Summer twenty five land?
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Do you think, well, Unfortunately, it's basically flat with Summer
twenty twenty four, and that's at about three point six
seven billion dollars, and that's pretty disappointing because going into
the summer, there was an expectation that the slate was
very strong, that there were a lot of returning franchises.
You had two Marvel movies, you had Superman, you had
(07:16):
a Jurassic World film, and that you would actually be
able to hit or even eclipse four billion. And the
last time we did that was twenty three, where you
had Barbenheimer. What's happening is that Hollywood has seen a
declining interest in some of its more venerable franchises, and
that's a problem. You're seeing some tastes that are really
(07:38):
shifting heading into this summer. The idea that Leelo and
Stitch would be the year's biggest hit, or that Weapons
would be a big hit, or that Jurassic World would
end up outgrossing Superman and Fantastic four, I don't think
anybody would have predicted that. So that indicates to me
that the comic book genre in particular is really fading
(08:03):
in popularity. They still get a certain level of audience,
and they still have a very core group of passionate fans,
but it's not performing like five years ago.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
I know that the Vox office experts such as Rebecca Rubin,
who you are once again substituting for, is she's busy
on the leado and cover and the heck out of
the Venezula. I know that you all study these numbers.
There's a lot to be learned from the summer. Brent,
thank you for taking the time to talk through all this.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
And now here's Peter de Bruges to set the scene
and the mood at the Telluride Film Festival this year,
Bruce Springsteen competing Hamlet Movies, Another Your Ghost Lanthemos, Emma
Stone collaboration and e Gen Carrol Telly Ride had a
little something for everyone this year. Peter de Bruges, Variety's
chief film critic, coming to us from nearly nine thousand
(08:57):
feet in Telluride, Colorado.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
Thanks for joining me, Thanks Cynthia. This is my favorite
festival in the state.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Listeners, I wish you could see his smile. Peter is
in his happy place with smart people talking about interesting movies,
narrative movies, documentary movies. This is a heady festival, and
I always enjoy reading our coverage over Labor Date Weekend.
Tell Me what's the mood, what's the vibe of Tell
You Ride? This year?
Speaker 3 (09:24):
Well, in general, tell You writes a special place because
it really is this elitist little bubble. It takes a
lot of money to come here, and the people who
do aren't necessarily film professionals. They're people who make Tell
You Writing their cultural weekend for the year. They binge
on movies that are going to be the best of
the year. Tell You Ride has a much smaller, very
(09:45):
carefully curated program from other festivals, maybe forty major movies
with some tinier things on the side, and so you
can rest assured that almost everything here is going to
be good well because they don't have to do the
thing at a festival like Berlin or Toronto does. With
nearly two under titles, They're the best of can They're
the best of Berlin. Their world premieeres. They share some
(10:05):
movies with the Venice Film Festival, where the movie might
world premiere a day before and then show up for
its very next stop.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
One of the movies that Tellyride making a lot of
headlines is the documentary about Egen Carroll, the writer who
has been through an odyssey with President Donald Trump. And
this movie is also at Teller Ride shopping for distribution
because it's an extremely controversial topic.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
By colleague Matt Donnelly found out in his interview with
Egene Carroll. It sounds like this movie may have been
available for several months to other festivals, and Tell Your
Rides the first one had the nerve to premiere it,
and we'll see whether distribution follows. It'll take a gutsy
company to stand behind this, but it's interesting here in general,
(10:50):
there's been a transition in recent years from Tom Luddy,
who is one of the founders of Tell Your Ride,
to his successor, Julie Huntsinger. Julie's really embraced documentaries and
nonfiction storytelling, and I really think that's reflective of a
transition we're seeing in the world right now where audiences
are too.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
It's best of times, worst of times for documentaries right
now because there has been such a boom. The streamers
came in with a lot of money, a lot of commissions,
but documentary industry insiders who gathered at variety in Rolling Stones,
truth seekers event in New York just a couple of
weeks ago, were very much sounding the alarm. The gusher
of money that fueled so many careers and so many
(11:30):
projects has really slowed down. Let's get to the big
narrative titles that everybody was watching. From my perspective, the
biggest had to be the Bruce Springsteen biopick Deliver Me
from Nowhere Jeremy Allen White twentieth Century Studios. What did
you think?
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Music?
Speaker 3 (11:47):
Biopicks are my least favorite genres, and I always joke
that it's the same story always. This Blessedly is not
that narrative. Scott Cooper, the director, has taken a book
that's very specifically a out the making of the Nebraska album.
This was a really key moment in Bruce Springsteen's career.
I think people are really focused on whether Jeremy Allen
(12:09):
White can do such an iconic performance. That's what really
interests people about portraits of musicians. He's really terrific. It's
tricky because Springsteen doesn't seem like such a hard person
to capture. He's kind of so all American. You feel
like there are probably twenty actors who could play him.
But is there a single one besides Jeremy Allen White
who could sing the songs where I thought I was
(12:30):
listening to Springsteen.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
Well, I can tell you this. I am old enough
to remember when that album came out. It was a
big deal because you had one of the biggest rock
stars who was about to hit the stratosphere with Born
in the USA just a few years later. It was very,
very critical of the Reagan Revolution. It was just a
couple years in and Ronald Reagan could not have been
more popular as a president. And here was Bruce Springsteen saying, Hey,
(12:56):
some of the things that are happening in our farmland
and in the heartland of America is not so cool.
Another title that had a premiere Pogonia from Yorgos Lanthomos.
Once again oscar talk for Emma Stone. I know his
movies are very hard to describe. Is this going to
be a mainstream breakthrough film for Lanthomos?
Speaker 3 (13:16):
Well, Lanthemos is a real provocateur. He's the director who
brought us Poor Things and the favorite the Lobster, et cetera.
This is a remake of a Korean movie called Save
the Green Planet. Here you have Emma Stone playing the
CEO of a major chemical company who's kidnapped by two
Cretans from Middle America. They believe she's from an alien
planet and they're trying to torture her into a confession.
(13:39):
It's very disturbing, but it also has a texture, you know,
Cynthia of it. I just came back from Little Rock, Arkansas.
I grew up in Waco, Texas. I know the type
of people that we're seeing depicted here. And to have
a Greek director nail something that so steldom I see
captured by Hollywood, I thought it was part of the
thing that made so powerful.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Right now, we need our provocateurs. And then, as I
understand Peter, you had a surfeit of Hamlet movies that
Telly Ride this year.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
It's a funny thing that film festival programmers do. They
seem to like it when the movie titles rhyme. There
were two movies called Dreams and Competition at Berlin year.
There are three Hamlet movies that Tell Your Ride. One
is a straight up adaptation contemporary starring Riz Ahmed. There's
another movie that Chloe Jao, who brought us the writer
(14:28):
in Nomadland. She reached into the deepest part of her
soul and pulled out this movie. The movie's about the
loss of Shakespeare's son named Hamnet and the impact that
that has on the parents. Jesse Buckley is just astonishing.
It really is a cathartic experience for the audience to watch,
like I'm giving myself goosebumps remembering what it felt like
(14:51):
to be in that room. The third one is a
very tiny documentary with Oscar Isaac, who is here for
Gierma del Toro's Frankenstein. Kind of a sneak peek. He
also played Hamlet on stage and at the same time
in his private life was experiencing profound tragedy. In the
park where they did these conversations, they had all the
Hamlets on stage, including Ethan Hawk, who played in Michael
(15:11):
Amorta's Hamlet years ago, comparing trading notes on what it
was like to play the Danish prints.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
It's tell your Ride spin on Shakespeare in the Park.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
Peter.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
Thank you for being our reporter, our critic, for posting
all those reviews and being our guide here to what
Telly Ride is all about. Safe travels to you down
the mountain.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
Thank you, Cynthia. This is really the starting pistol for
an exciting season that's ahead.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
As we close out today's episode, here's a few things
we're watching for. Variety is busy producing extra print and
digital editions at the Venice Film Festival, which runs through Saturday,
September six, and we'll be all over the Toronto Film
Festival starting Thursday, also with dedicated digital and print dailies.
If that wasn't an enough, we're also doing digital dailies
(16:01):
this week out of Lajavre, France for the Rendezvous des
Unifrance market for French movies and TV shows. It's the
start of Prestige fall film season, and there's also a
boatload of new TV series coming soon. Thursday brings the
highly anticipated spin off NCIS Tony and ZeVA to Paramount Plus,
(16:22):
and The Paper premieres on Peacock before we go. Congrats
to Megan Colligan. She's joined roe Que Entertainment, a new
theatrical distribution label backed by Media Capital Technologies. Callagan was
previously president of Imax Entertainment and president of Worldwide Marketing
and Distribution of Paramount Pictures. Brent Lang had the scoop
(16:42):
on this new venture last week. Thanks for Listening. This
episode was written and reported by me Cynthia Littleton, with
contributions from Brent Lang and Peter De Bruce. It was
edited by Aaron Greenwald Styx Nix hick Picks. Please leave
us a review at the podcast platform Review Choice, and
please tune in tomorrow for another episode of Daily Variety
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