A De-Aged Julia Roberts Was Considered for ‘Mission: Impossible 7’ Axed Cold Open: The VFX Bill ‘Would’ve Been as Expensive’ as the Train Stunt

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Sophia Nahli Allison, whose short film “A Love Song for Latasha” (2019) was nominated at the Oscars for best documentary short subject, revealed on her social media pages that she exited her role as the director of a Lizzo documentary in 2019 after only two weeks because she “was treated with such disrespect” by the Grammy-winning pop star. Allison’s post went live several hours after a trio of former dancers for Lizzo filed a lawsuit against the singer accusing her of sexual harassment and creating a hostile work environment. “I usually do not comment on anything pop culture related,” Allison wrote in her post.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Zack Snyder recently joined Letterboxd for an interview about “Sucker Punch,” his hugely divisive 2011 fantasy action movie that was a box office bomb for Warner Bros. with just $89 million grossed worldwide. The film, which was notable at the time for being Snyder’s first original concept, stars Emily Browning as Babydoll, a young woman committed to a mental institution whose fantastical imagination creates a dream heist for her to escape imprisonment.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Emma Corrin is joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the upcoming “Deadpool 3,” which features the highly anticipated pairing of Ryan Reynold’s Deadpool and Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine. While plot details for the film are being kept under wraps, fans do know these two heroes will be facing off against “The Crown” Emmy nominee. Corrin is playing the villain in “Deadpool 3,” and they told Empire magazine in an interview conducted before the strike they are thrilled about it.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Emma Corrin is joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the upcoming “Deadpool 3,” which features the highly anticipated pairing of Ryan Reynold’s Deadpool and Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine. While plot details for the film are being kept under wraps, fans do know these two heroes will be facing off against “The Crown” Emmy nominee. Corrin is playing the villain in “Deadpool 3,” and they recently told Empire magazine they are thrilled about it.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Joaquin Phoenix and Vanessa Kirby told Empire magazine they made a pact to shock each other while filming Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon” in order to ensure the film did not feel like a boring, overly-planned biopic. This agreement led Phoenix to slap Kirby during the filming of a heated divorce scene between their characters, Napoleon Bonaparte and Joséphine de Beauharnais, Empire reports. “We were using the real words from their divorce in the church,” Kirby said.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Elizabeth Banks recently told Rolling Stone that the media was behind the “gendered agenda” of “Charlie’s Angels,” her 2019 action-comedy starring Kristen Stewart, Naomi Scott and Ella Balinska that flopped at the box office. The director told The New York Times last year that she wished the film’s marketing “had not been presented as just for girls,” but now she told Rolling Stone that’s the only perspective the media was interested in perpetuating anyway. “So much of the story that the media wanted to tell about ‘Charlie’s Angels’ was that it was some feminist manifesto,” Banks said.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Ridley Scott told Empire magazine that Joaquin Phoenix felt clueless two weeks before cameras were set to start rolling on their historical epic “Napoleon.” The film marks a long-in-the-works reunion between the director and the Oscar-winning actor, who worked together over two decades ago on “Gladiator.” Phoenix is headlining the film as the French emperor opposite Venessa Kirby as his wife, Joséphine de Beauharnais. “He’ll come in, and you’re fucking two weeks’ out, and he’ll say, ‘I don’t know what to do’,” Scott said about Phoenix. “I’ll say, ‘What?!’ ‘I don’t know what to do.’ Oh God.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Judi Dench’s latest update on her deteriorating eyesight is that she can no longer see on film sets. She previously disclosed that her eyesight loss had made it near impossible to read film scripts. Speaking to the Sunday Mirror (via The Guardian), the Oscar winner said losing her ability to see has been “the most terrible shock to the system,” adding, “Ghastly.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Nicolas Cage finally sounded off to USA Today on his brief return as Superman in Warner Bros.’ “The Flash.” The Oscar winner made a surprise cameo appearance as the Man of Steel he never got to play back in the late 1990s, although he did not say any lines. “Well, I was glad I didn’t blink,” Cage said about his brief return. “For me, it was the feeling of being actualized.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Seth Rogen is bringing the “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” franchise back to life in the upcoming animated movie “Mutant Mayhem,” which he has a story credit on and produced through his Point Grey Pictures company. During an interview with Polygon ahead of the film’s release, Rogen was ask what has kept him “turned off” from joining other movie franchises like the Marvel and DC superhero films. “Honestly, probably fear,” Rogen said.

Tom Cruise's former love interest in "Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One" almost looked totally different. The movie features a brief flashback to 1989 for a scene that involves Cruise and his character's girlfriend.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director When Warner Bros. contacted “Charm City Kings” filmmaker Angel Manuel Soto about potentially directing a DC comic book tentpole, he geared up to pitch the studio on a much different movie. “I wanted to pitch ideas, and one of them was the Bane origin story,” Soto recently told Den of Geek magazine.

Director Christopher McQuarrie previously revealed that a flashback segment that would have de-aged Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One was briefly considered.

Jaden Thompson Cinespia has announced a handful of additional September screenings to round out their 22nd summer season at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. The latest additions include “The Devil Wears Prada” on Sept. 2, “The Goonies” on Sept.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director If you watched “Barbie” and thought it was missing a proper fart joke, then you might’ve loved one scene that Greta Gerwig and editor Nick Houy left on the cutting room floor. In a new IndieWire interview with the collaborators, it’s revealed that “Barbie” had a “fart opera” in the middle of its runtime that got cut because it wasn’t received as well as Gerwig hoped. “We’ve always tried to get in a proper fart joke and we’ve never done it,” Gerwig said.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director “Good Time” and “Uncut Gems” director Benny Safdie expands his acting career with a prominent supporting role in Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer.” He plays Edward Teller, the real-life theoretical physicist known as “the father of the hydrogen bomb.” Teller joined Oppenheimer to work on the atomic bomb in Los Alamos, N.M., focusing on nuclear implosion and uranium hydride research. He was born in Budapest, Austria-Hungary, and had a thick accent, which presented Safdie with one of his biggest acting challenges. “The accent was something I was so nervous about,” Safdie recently told Vulture.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Before Christian Bale landed the role of Batman/Bruce Wayne in Christopher Nolan’s “Dark Knight” trilogy, the filmmaker screen-tested his “Oppenheimer” star Cillian Murphy. Both men have since admitted that Murphy was never a real threat to steal the part from Bale, and Murphy told GQ Magazine UK in a recent interview that it “was for the best” that Bale won the coveted role over him anyway. “Yes, I think it was for the best because we got Christian Bale’s performance, which is a stunning interpretation of that role,” Murphy said.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Greta Gerwig told The New York Times that watching her “Barbie” movie become a historic comedy blockbuster has been “so amazing.” The film debuted to a whopping $162 million, breaking the opening weekend record for a female director. It then scored $26 million on its first Monday after release, setting a new Warner Bros. in-house record for the studio’s top Monday grosser.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Samantha Morton appeared on a new episode of “The Louis Theroux Podcast” and recalled her tumultuous history with Harvey Weinstein, who is currently imprisoned as a convicted rapist. The “Minority Report” actor said Weinstein blackballed her on his films such as 2005’s “The Brothers Grimm” after she turned down one of his movies years prior. That film was the 2000 romantic comedy “About Adam,” starring Kate Hudson, Stuart Townsend and Frances O’Connor.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Cillian Murphy is the star of Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer,” but is he ready to embrace the pink? Given the “Barbenheimer” craze that’s sweeping the nation, Murphy has naturally been asked a lot about Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie.” Cinéfilos even asked the “Oppenheimer” actor if he’d play a Ken in a potential sequel to Gerwig’s now historic comedy blockbuster. “Sure, yeah. Let’s read the script, let’s have a conversation,” Murphy responded about playing Ken.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director The search for the perfect Barbie and Ken actors in Greta Gerwig’s record-breaking blockbuster “Barbie” fell to casting directors Lucy Bevan and Allison Jones, who recently revealed to Vanity Fair that “Saturday Night Live” Emmy nominee Bowen Yang, “Schitt’s Creek” Emmy winner Dan Levy and “Dear Evan Hansen” Tony winner Ben Platt were all in the running to land roles as different variations of Ken. “They were definitely really different, but they had to feel like a cohesive group,” Bevan said about the search for the perfect Ken ensemble. “You wanted to cast people who were really going to get on and be great and enjoy it.” “Barbie” was shot in London under strict COVID protocols, which meant every cast member was required to spend three months in the city close to production.

Matt Donnelly Senior Film Writer There’s an old joke used in show business when events and gatherings lack major celebrity attendance: “Somebody punch me in the face so I can see some stars.” But it’s no joke when it comes to the picket lines of the SAG-AFTRA and Writers Guild of America strikes, according to some of the protesters on the ground and select industry players who spoke to Variety. There’s been a “palpable” lack of headliners, said one prominent SAG-AFTRA member, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “If our stars were all out there in force advocating for us, we’d know it,” they added. Meryl Streep, Jennifer Lawrence and Rami Malek all signed a June letter telling union leadership they were prepared to strike, but none of them have surfaced holding signs or chanting at studio gates. Leonardo DiCaprio posted an Instagram story saying he stood “in solidarity with my guild,” but has yet to stand for any in-person protest. On day one of the actor’s strike in mid-July, one protester straddled a median at the drive-on gate at Netflix headquarters holding a sign that read, “Where the fuck is Ben Affleck?” So far, no one’s seen him on the front lines.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Cillian Murphy is earning some of the best reviews of his career for leading Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer, but no praise might be higher than this rave from co-star Robert Downey Jr.: “I have never witnessed a greater sacrifice by a lead actor in my career,” the “Iron Man” star told People magazine about Murphy’s performance as J. Robert Oppenheimer. “He knew it was going to be a behemoth ask when Chris called him,” Downey Jr. added. “But I think he also had the humility that is required to survive playing a role like this. We’d be like, ‘Hey, we got a three-day weekend. Maybe we’ll go antiquing in Santa Fe. What are you going to do?’ ‘Oh, I have to learn 30,000 words of Dutch. Have a nice time.’ But that’s the nature of the ask.”

It seems like Gary Neville would be in favour of Manchester United making a move for Sofyan Amrabat after being impressed by the midfielder's World Cup exploits.

While Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One was a smash hit at the box office and among fans, there was one character missing from the movie.

Tom Cruise has confirmed that he is still planning to make a movie that will be filmed in space.The pioneering movie was announced back in 2020, confirming that Cruise had teamed up with Elon Musk and NASA to film a new movie in outer space, set to be directed by Edge of Tomorrow‘s Doug Liman.A trip to outer space to film the project was then set for 2021, but ended up being postponed.Despite this, Cruise has insisted that work on the project continues, and that he intends to still make the film.Asked about progress on the film at the Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One premiere, Cruise said (via Variety): “We’ve been working on it diligently and we’ll see where we go.”NASA confirmed their involvement in the project via Twitter, where administrator Jim Bridenstine tweeted: “NASA is excited to work with @TomCruise on a film aboard the @Space_Station!“We need popular media to inspire a new generation of engineers and scientists to make @NASA’s ambitious plans a reality.”The film, still untitled, was pitched to Universal via an “exuberant Zoom call” with Cruise, Liman, Christopher McQuarrie and PJ van Sandwijk.Liman is in the process of writing the film’s script, and the budget is estimated to be around $200 million. McQuarrie, who is the writer/director on the Mission: Impossible films, will act as story advisor and producer, alongside Cruise, Liman and van Sandwijk as producers.Elsewhere, Cruise has said that he plans to still be making Mission: Impossible films when he’s 80.“Harrison Ford is a legend; I hope to be still going.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Thirteen years later and Christopher Nolan is still being hounded with questions about the ending of “Inception,” his acclaimed 2010 action thriller about a group of criminals who pull off a dream heist. The ending is notorious. Leonardo DiCaprio’s Cobb has completed his task and returns home to his children, but the film lingers on his spinning totem top as it begins to wobble. Cut to black. If the top spins indefinitely, Cobb is still dreaming. If it falls, Cobb is awake in the real world. Moviegoers have spent over a decade debating whether or not Cobb is awake or dreaming at the end of “Inception,” but Nolan recently said on the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast that such debates are missing the ending’s real takeaway: Cobb doesn’t care.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” is now playing in theaters nationwide, but one if its most emotional scenes might not have made it to the big screen had the filmmaker not held her ground against studio executives. In several interviews before the comedy’s theatrical release, Gerwig revealed that it was suggested she cut out the scene where Barbie (Margot Robbie) meets an elderly woman on a bench and tells her she’s beautiful. “I love that scene so much,” Gerwig told Rolling Stone. “And the older woman on the bench is the costume designer Ann Roth. She’s a legend. It’s a cul-de-sac of a moment, in a way — it doesn’t lead anywhere. And in early cuts, looking at the movie, it was suggested, ‘Well, you could cut it. And actually, the story would move on just the same.’ And I said, ‘If I cut the scene, I don’t know what this movie is about.'”

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Lawrence Sher, the Oscar-nominated cinematography for “Joker,” revealed on “The Trenches Talk” podcast that he “never even met” Lady Gaga on the set of the sequel, “Joker: Folie à Deux,” because she was presumably in character the whole time (via IndieWire). Gaga stars opposite returning lead Joaquin Phoenix in the 2024 comic book movie, which casts her as Harley Quinn opposite Phoenix’s Joker. Sher said it wasn’t until he started calling Gaga by the name “Lee” (presumably a nod to Harley) that she even warmed up to him. “I didn’t know Stefani at all,” Sher said referring to Gaga’s real name, Stefani Germanotta. “Strangely, I felt like I never even met her, even during the makeup/hair tests. Maybe it was my philosophy of not trying to get in their space. And then I remember for a week, being like, ‘God, I feel like we are disconnecting. Not even connecting. We are like on opposites.’ And I would say to my crew, ‘Jesus, I can’t crack it. She either hates me or we hate each other. There’s something weird going on here.’”

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Samuel L. Jackson told The Times last year that he deserved to win the Oscar for best supporting actor over Martin Landau (“Ed Wood”) at the 1995 Academy Awards. In a new interview with Vulture, the actor said he was robbed of a second chance to win an Oscar just a couple years later with Joel Schumacher’s 1996 legal drama “A Time to Kill,” co-starring Matthew McConaughey and Sandra Bullock. The John Grisham adaptation starred Jackson as a man on trial in Mississippi for killing the two men who raped his daughter. “In ‘A Time to Kill,’ when I kill those guys, I kill them because my daughter needs to know that those guys are not on the planet anymore and they will never hurt her again — that I will do anything to protect her,” Jackson said. “That’s how I played that character throughout. And there were specific things we shot, things I did to make sure that she understood that, but in the editing process, they got taken out. And it looked like I killed those dudes and then planned every move to make sure that I was going to get away with it. When I saw it, I was sitting there like, ‘What the fuck?'”

Zack Sharf Digital News Director “Oppenheimer” marks several firsts for writer-director Christopher Nolan. It’s his first outright biopic, and the first movie to be shot on IMAX cameras using black-and-white film stock. It’s also the first Christopher Nolan movie to feature sex scenes. J. Robert Oppenheimer, played by Cillian Murphy, had a steamy romance with physician Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh) before his marriage to Katherine “Kitty” Oppenheimer. His romance to Tatlock continued despite the marriage. “Any time you’re challenging yourself to work in areas you haven’t worked in before, you should be appropriately nervous and appropriately careful and planned and prepared,” Nolan recently told Insider when asked about filming sex scenes for the first time.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director As a producer of “Barbie,” it was up to Margot Robbie to convince a studio that her vision for the film would lead to financial success. No wonder the Oscar nominee flat out said during pitch meetings that she believed a “Barbie” movie could bring in $1 billion at the worldwide box office. Such success depended on landing writer-director Greta Gerwig, Robbie stressed to execs. “I think my pitch in the green-light meeting was the studios have prospered so much when they’re brave enough to pair a big idea with a visionary director,” Robbie said in an interview with Collider. “And then I gave a series of examples like, ‘dinosaurs and [Steven] Spielberg’ – pretty much naming anything that’s been incredible and made a ton of money for the studios over the years. And I was like, ‘And now you’ve got Barbie and Greta Gerwig.’ And I think I told them that it’d make a billion dollars, which maybe I was overselling, but we had a movie to make, okay?”

**Spoilers below for “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part 1.” You’ve been warned…** The threat of death is an underlying aspect of every ‘Mission: Impossible’ film. Honestly, that threat doesn’t just apply to the characters and their gunfights and elaborate car chases.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director James Cameron has no intention of using artificial intelligence to write a film script. In a new interview with CTV News, the Oscar winner expressed doubt over AI bots being able to write “a good story.” According to Cameron: “I just don’t personally believe that a disembodied mind that’s just regurgitating what other embodied minds have said — about the life that they’ve had, about love, about lying, about fear, about mortality — and just put it all together into a word salad and then regurgitate it…I don’t believe that’s ever going to have something that’s going to move an audience. You have to be human to write that. I don’t know anyone that’s even thinking about having AI write a screenplay.”

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Sheryl Crow is one of the more high-profile names calling out country music star Jason Aldean after he dropped the controversial music video for his song “Try That in a Small Town.” Aldean shot the clip in front of a courthouse in Colombia, Tenn., where a Black man was lynched in the 1920s. The lyrics of the song have widely been accused of being pro-gun and pro-violence, but Aldean has denied those claims. “I’m from a small town. Even people in small towns are sick of violence,” Crow wrote on Twitter in a message aimed at Aldean’s account. “There’s nothing small-town or American about promoting violence. You should know that better than anyone having survived a mass shooting. This is not American or small town-like. It’s just lame.”

The adage of Hollywood and or pundits who closely follow Hollywood, writers, armchair analysts, etc., is that you should always have a plan and never just “make it up as you go.” Filmmaking is such a massive endeavor and a massively expensive endeavor, a plan to execute all the ambitious things you want to do is critical, and it’s why some big films feature massive and extensive pre-production periods: precisely to map out and work out how to pull all that stuff on in advance so on the day of shooting, no one is wasting money.