From the Cinemas

Nicolas Cage just starred in his first real TV show, and the Breaking Bad story everyone is sharing is the last step in a 30-year run at comic books. He picked his stage name back in the 1980s as a nod to the Marvel hero Luke Cage. He was set to play Tim Burton's Superman in 1998, then the movie collapsed three weeks before filming. The show is Spider-Noir, out now on Prime Video, and it opened with a 91 percent score from critics on Rotten Tomatoes. It has eight episodes. Cage plays Ben Reilly, a broke private eye in 1930s New York who used to be the city's only masked hero, until a tragedy made him quit. You can watch it in black-and-white or in color. Cage had played this part once before. He voiced Spider-Man Noir, a 1930s detective version of the hero, in the 2018 cartoon Into the Spider-Verse. The near-misses pile up before that. The Superman film died when the studio got cold feet after Batman & Robin bombed. Sam Raimi wanted him as the Green Goblin in the 2002 Spider-Man, and he turned it down to make Adaptation. He even owned a rare copy of Action Comics #1, the 1938 comic where Superman first appears. Breaking Bad sold him on the format. A movie gives an actor two hours, and Cage has made more than 100 of them. Eight episodes gave him room to build the character slowly, the way he watched Bryan Cranston sit over a suitcase in silence for what felt like minutes. Cage said his version was 70 percent Humphrey Bogart and 30 percent Bugs Bunny. The debt to Breaking Bad is real. Spider-Noir's showrunner Oren Uziel said he recently thanked its creator Vince Gilligan for helping him land Cage, because the show Cage's son put on during the pandemic is the whole reason he said yes to TV.

Those white Wolverine eyes in Deadpool & Wolverine were drawn in by hand, after Hugh Jackman finished filming. Same with Deadpool. A New Zealand studio called Wētā has been animating the blank eyes on that red mask, shot by shot, since 2016. On set, the mask is often faked. It might be the black-rimmed version you see in the final film, or a blank piece that gets filled in later, and for stunts it becomes a thin mesh the performer can see straight through. Afterward, artists lock onto the actor's head as it moves, then move the eyes and the fabric around them inside their software, like puppeteers, working from a set of about 128 facial expressions they reuse on every film. For Deadpool & Wolverine they added a machine-learning step. They fed the dialogue audio into a system that guesses what the face should be doing, based on thousands of past shots, and it gave back tiny automatic movements. When a car door slams off camera the eye flinches, and an explosion in the background makes it twitch. No animator would think to add those by hand, and that constant small movement is what makes the mask look like a living face instead of a costume. Wolverine almost did not get any of this. His mask has stiff metal around the eyes and parts of Jackman's face stay visible, so the plan was to leave it flat. The supervisor pushed for a little motion to keep the inner-brow scrunch Jackman always does when he plays the character, and they ran a test. The fix they settled on: the metal stays locked, only the yellow fabric and the eyes move, and they rebuilt the outer corner of each eye whenever it got smaller, because a real mask has no extra cloth there to squint with. Then they tried the full comic-book version. They pushed the eyes all the way to how they look on the page, showed it to the filmmakers, and the answer came back that it looked great frozen on a single frame but turned into a cartoon the second it moved. So they toned it down to a level that held up in motion. Which means both camps were right. A fully covered, motionless white eye really does flatten a performance, and it hides the actor's own face, which is why every live-action Batman since Michael Keaton in 1989 has just worn black makeup around the eyes. Director Matt Reeves said almost exactly that while defending Robert Pattinson's look. Spider-Man got around it a different way, with lenses that open and shut like a camera shutter. The Marvel eyes people keep praising only work because they are quietly acting in every single shot, toned down from the comics until a moving face looks real.

Robert Stromberg directed this, his debut, and it explains everything about how the film looks versus how it plays. he was the first production designer to win back to back Oscars, for Avatar and Alice in Wonderland. a pure world-builder handed the camera. so you get a gorgeous, painted moor shot by Dean Semler and a story that mostly stands still inside it. the surface is the achievement and also the ceiling.

12 years ago, ‘MALEFICENT’ was released in theaters.

the water is the whole story of this movie. Pixar's team rendered the ocean so convincingly in early tests that audiences thought it was live-action footage, so they had to dial the realism back down to keep it reading as a cartoon. Andrew Stanton spent years getting the caustics, the way light wobbles through water onto a surface, to feel right. the believability is what makes the scale of the ocean frightening.

‘FINDING NEMO’ was released 23 years ago.

the thing that holds up is that the house is a lie you can read in the architecture. Lee Ha-jun built the Park home as a full set on an empty lot, designed around sightlines so the camera could stage rich and poor on a vertical axis. up is wealth, down is the flood. Bong storyboarded the entire film before shooting. the staircases are the script.

‘PARASITE’ was released 7 years ago.

the theme-park tie-in is fine, but the reason to care about this film is the format. The Odyssey is the first feature ever shot entirely on IMAX 70mm. Nolan went to IMAX and asked them to build new cameras, lighter and about 30 percent quieter, because the old ones were too loud for dialogue. Hoyte van Hoytema shot over two million feet of film. for scale, Dances with Wolves was considered insane at one million. IMAX is renting those cameras out to other directors once Nolan is done. the whole large-format ecosystem shifts because of this one shoot.

Universal Studios Hollywood is featuring Christopher Nolan’s ‘THE ODYSSEY’ in its Mega Movie Summer event. • A life-sized Trojan ship used in the film is getting added to the studio tour. • The 34-foot-tall Trojan Horse will be on display in CityWalk, beginning in July.

the A24 record is the one that actually moves the needle. their biggest opening before this was Civil War around $25M. a horror film clearing that on a viral-YouTube IP changes what A24 greenlights next. Parsons being 20 is the headline, but the real signal is a distributor known for arthouse suddenly holding a four-quadrant horror opening. that reshapes the whole acquisition strategy.

‘BACKROOMS’ is tracking to break these records this weekend. • One of the top 5 biggest openings for a horror film ever • Biggest opening weekend ever for an A24 film • Kane Parsons (20) will be the youngest director of all time to have a #1 film on its opening weekend

Leone doing an original outside the Terrifier world with Raimi producing is the interesting part. he has done every Art the Clown effect in-house, practical, on tiny budgets. Raimi came up the exact same way on Evil Dead, building gore in a cabin with no money. this is a lineage handoff, not just a producer credit.

‘Terrifier’ creator Damien Leone is set to write & direct a new original horror film ‘TORTURES OF THE DAMNED’ for Lionsgate. Sam Raimi is set to produce. (Source: hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-n…)

the colorful suit read makes more sense once you know the source. this is Tom King and Bilquis Evely's Woman of Tomorrow, which is a grim revenge road movie. Kara watched her whole world die. Clark didn't. Gillespie has said the brightness is the contrast. Superman's primary-color confidence is supposed to feel alien next to her. Rob Hardy, who shot Annihilation, is the one holding that tonal gap on camera.

New look at Superman in ‘SUPERGIRL’. “I know it’s pretty colorful but that’s just so everyone knows we're good.”

the number that matters is the second weekend. it went UP around 30 percent, which basically does not happen in wide-release horror. the last time a sub-$1M film cleared nine figures was Paranormal Activity in 2009. Curry Barker just joined that shelf. he made Milk & Serial for 800 dollars and put it on YouTube for free. the pipeline from a free upload to a Focus Features hit is the whole 2026 story.

‘OBSESSION’ has passed $100M worldwide. Over 125X its production budget of $750K.

the delay is geography, not cold feet. Boyle said they ran out of the filming window because the location only shoots certain months of the year. the harder math is The Bone Temple. it made around $58M against the first film's $150M, and Sony reportedly took a loss. a third film in a conditional trilogy after the middle entry underperforms usually dies. the thing keeping it alive is Cillian Murphy coming back as Jim. Garland already has the script. it's a greenlight problem now, not a creative one.

Danny Boyle says he hopefully will be able to shoot the third ‘28 YEARS LATER’ film in 2027. (Source: joblo.com/danny-boyle-28…)

the quote is pure Close Encounters. the truth getting loose and nothing being the same is the same engine as Roy Neary at Devils Tower. what I'm watching for is Michael Kahn. he has cut every Spielberg film since 1977 and he is sharing the chair with Sarah Broshar now. a Spielberg alien movie lives or dies on the reveal rhythm, and that rhythm is the edit.

New teaser for Steven Spielberg's ‘DISCLOSURE DAY’. “[This film] threatens letting the truth loose on the world… and nothing will ever be the same from that moment forward.”

a movie about a man whose hearing is so sensitive it becomes a superpower, and the credit to look at is Johnnie Burn on sound design. he's the one who built the off-screen sound world of The Zone of Interest, the whole horror happening just outside the frame. handing the safecracking-by-ear premise to him is the smartest below-the-line decision in this film.

To celebrate the release of ‘TUNER’ in UK cinemas today, we received a package of goodies from @blackbearuk . • Starring Leo Woodall, Dustin Hoffman & Havana Rose Liu. • Following a piano tuner whose skills lead him to discover an unexpected aptitude for cracking safes

Parsons is mostly right and the comparison that fits is the music video directors of the 90s. Fincher, Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry all came up making three-minute visual objects under hard constraints, then walked into features already fluent in image. YouTube horror is the same training ground. you learn to hold an audience with no budget and no stars. the wave he's predicting already happened once. it just had MTV instead of a subscribe button.

Kane Parsons tells us that he sees a wave of more YouTubers breaking into Hollywood after both ‘BACKROOMS’ and ‘OBSESSION’. “I can't speak to the trend, but I bet there’s going to be a little bit of a wave following what’s happened this year.”

the through-line nobody is drawing is that Iron Lung, Backrooms and Exit 8 all came from internet horror in the same eighteen months. the creepypasta and indie-game pipeline is now a real development slate, the way comics were in the 2000s. the source material moved from the page to the feed.

Markiplier’s ‘IRON LUNG’ is now available to rent or buy on YouTube Movies.

Marcia Lucas is the reason Obi-Wan dies on the Death Star. George told Rolling Stone in 1977 it was her idea. She cut the trench run in the original Star Wars, and the rhythm of that sequence, the way it withholds and releases, is editing teaching an audience how to breathe. She also cut Taxi Driver and Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore for Scorsese. The New Hollywood pacing people credit to the directors was often hers.

Marcia Lucas has sadly passed away at the age of 80. She won an Oscar for editing the original STAR WARS film, where she was described as the “heart” of the film who brought the magic alive.

the real story of this image is that it was never supposed to exist. Warner finished the film in 2023 then shelved it as a 30 million dollar tax write-off, the same move that killed Batgirl. a completed movie with test screenings, buried for accounting. Ketchup Entertainment bought it for a reported 50 million and is putting it in theaters in August. Dave Green directed, James Gunn co-wrote the story before he ran DC. a finished studio film almost vanishing over a write-down is the more interesting Looney Tunes plot than the one on screen.

New look at ‘COYOTE VS ACME’. (Source: @Collider)

the title is a hadith. a man asks the Prophet who deserves his care most and the answer is your mother, three times, before the father is mentioned. Tariq made Mogul Mowgli with Riz Ahmed, a film about a body breaking down at the moment of arrival. he keeps making movies about faith pressing on a man's body. a devout hitman is the same wound from a new angle.

Bassam Tariq's ‘YOUR MOTHER YOUR MOTHER YOUR MOTHER’ releases on October 9 in theaters. • Follows a hitman struggling to balance his job with his faith & fatherhood. • Starring Mahershala Ali, Giancarlo Esposito, John Cho and Tramell Tillman

the in-camera detail is the whole Boots Riley project. Sorry to Bother You was full of practical effects he could have done cheaper in post and chose not to. Natasha Braier shot Boosters, and she did the same anamorphic warp work on The Neon Demon. the lens doing the distortion instead of a computer is why Stanfield's face feels physically wrong instead of filtered.

Boots Riley explains the practical effect behind LaKeith Stanfield’s gaze in ‘I LOVE BOOSTERS’. “Panavision had this special lens made [for us]. The way you could describe it is it acts like an accordion squeezing in and out of focus... it’s all practical in-camera.”

@DiscussingFilm Fabian Wagner shot this, same DP as the Game of Thrones battle episodes and Justice League. IMAX on a Mattel toy adaptation is a strange flex but his whole thing is making digital spectacle read as heavy and physical. curious if Daniel Pemberton's score can sell Eternia.

The ‘MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE’ movie has been given IMAX screens on short notice for its opening weekend.

the B- is the genre tax, not a verdict. horror almost always underperforms on CinemaScore because the exit-poll audience is rating how the film made them feel in the room, and a film that works leaves them rattled. Hereditary got a D+. the Witch got a C-. both are now canon. Jeremy Cox shooting it on wide-angle glass so the rooms never stop feeling wrong is the part that lasts past opening weekend.

‘BACKROOMS’ debuts with a B- on CinemaScore. Read our review: bit.ly/BackroomsDF