Charles Melton is in close talks to play Kakashi Hatake in Destin Daniel Cretton’s upcoming “Naruto” movie, Variety has learned.
The news comes amid speculation at D23 that Melton would join the “X-Men” cast. The global casting search for “Naruto” began last month to find the live action versions of Naruto, Sasuke and Sakura. The manga follows an adolescent ninja Naruto, who dreams of becoming his community’s protector and leader known as the village ninja.
Variety has reached out to Lionsgate for comment.
Melton was recently Emmy nominated for his role in “Beef” alongside Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan and Cailee Spaeny. He received critical acclaim for his work in Todd Haynes’ “May December,” which released in 2023, and is also known for starring in “Her Private Hell,” “Warfare” and “Riverdale.”
Cretton is coming off of his box office smash hit “Spider-Man: Brand New Day,” which has grossed over $800 million domestically, becoming the fastest film to ever hit the milestone.
The “Naruto” director got his start working in the indie film space with “Short Term 12,” which released in 2013 and starred Brie Larson, LaKeith Stanfield, Rami Malek and Kaitlyn Dever. After directing “The Glass Castle” and “Just Mercy,” he made the leap to big-budget studio films with “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,” which released in 2021.
Avi Arad, Ari Arad and Emmy Yu will produce for Arad Productions with Jeremy Latcham. Cretton is producing alongside Jeyun Munford through his company, Hisako. Back in 2014, there was an attempt to get a “Naruto” movie off the ground with Michael Gracey attached as director.
The Kinéo Awards will toast a milestone 25th anniversary next month in Venice, Italy.
There ceremony is set to honor legendary Hollywood star and Oscar winner Faye Dunaway with a lifetime achievement award for her decades of work and a resumé that includes Bonnie and Clyde, Network, Chinatown, Mommie Dearest and more. Nicola Peltz Beckham has been plucked to receive a rising star award for her work as an actress, producer and budding filmmaker.
The honoree program unities Beckham and Dunaway once again after having worked together on the upcoming independent feature Prima, which marks the feature directorial debut of brothers Alessandro Morelli and Luca Morelli. Beckham wrote, directed and starred in Lola. Her resumé, which dates back 20 years, includes roles in The Last Airbender, Transformers: Age of Extinction, Bates Motel, Holidate, Welcome to Chippendales and The Beauty.
The ceremony — set to take place at Casa Cinema Giovani with a private dinner to follow at Hotel Ca’ Sagredoon Sept. 5 — was conceived by Kinéo Cultural Association president Rosetta Sannelli and launched in 2002. It is presented in partnership with the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and will take place during the Venice Film Festival, though it has no direct ties to the international gathering.
Drafted to host the affar are actress Tatiana Luter and Marcello Foti, the latter of whom serves as director of Centro Sperimentale delle Arti Contemporanee and Head of Communications at CSC – International Student Film Festival. The program will spotlight fashion designer Eleonora Lastrucci who will debut a surprise tribute to a film star through one of her haute couture creations. Helping to support the ceremony are WAMI, Consorzio di Tutela della DOC Prosecco and Venetian hair care brand My.Organics.
The Best Supporting Actress Award goes to Maria Gifuni, while the Best Actress Award honors Chiara Francini, one of the most beloved and versatile performers on the Italian scene. For the section dedicated to television and streaming series, the award goes to Raniero Monaco di Lapio, while Sara Lazzaro receives the Best Series Actress Award for her performance in Call My Agent Italia 3, following another successful season with La legge di Lidia Poët 3.
Other honorees include Paul Thomas Anderson’s Oscar winning One Battle After Another as best international film, Chiara Francini for best actress, Maria Gifuni for best supporting actress, Raniero Monaco di Lapio for best series actor, Sara Lazzaro for best series actress, Paolo Calvano for best child star, and Dinner with Dante for best short film. The Kinéo Awards will also shine a stronger light on international cinema by welcoming Turkish star Alp Navruz and Oka Giner from Mexico.
“On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Kinéo Award, established in 2002 at the MiBAC, we want to celebrate not only an important milestone, but also the continuity of a journey that has seen us grow alongside cinema and the audiovisual sector,” Sannelli said in a statement.
The Sussexes are coming home. In a shock announcement on Wednesday, it was revealed that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are moving back to the U.K. for an “extended period” with their two young children after six years of living in California.
But after the pair’s dramatic exit from royal life in 2020, will England — and the rest of their family — welcome them back with open arms?
According to the BBC, Harry and Meghan’s decision to move back was made relatively recently, with King Charles only being informed of the news on Sunday. Their visit to the U.K. in July was a turning point, royal watchers believe, as they spent time with the King and also the family of Harry’s late mother Princess Diana, some of whom 7-year-old Archie and 5-year-old Lilibet met for the first time.
“I think they had a really good trip here in the summer,” Sky News royal reporter, Laura Bundock, tells Variety. “Harry isn’t homesick, but I certainly think he wants his kids to understand more about British history and his homeland.”
Their children’s education has also been a consideration for the move. The BBC said that Archie and Lilibet have both been enrolled in school in the U.K., and as most new terms start by mid-September, it’s expected that the family will settle in over the next couple of weeks.
Though the King has welcomed the move to spend more time with Harry and his family, the BBC reported that it was a surprise to him and he had no involvement in the decision. King Charles was diagnosed with cancer in 2024, and though his treatment is said to be going well, Harry admitted in a BBC interview last year that he wanted to reconcile with him, saying: “I don’t know how much longer my father has.”
Harry’s brother, Prince William, is a different story. The two’s relationship has been said to be severely damaged following the 2023 publication of Harry’s memoir, “Spare,” and the bombshell 2021 interview he and Meghan did with Oprah Winfrey in which they leveled allegations of racism and mistreatment against unnamed members of the royal family. “Their friendship circles and acquaintances overlap to some extent,” says Bundock. “But I think to say that this is a moment of great reconciliation between those feuding brothers is far from reality.”
Harry and Meghan’s announcement on Wednesday also made it clear that they will not be returning to their royal duties in any capacity now that they will be living in the U.K. They will live as private citizens — likely outside of London, according to the BBC — and continue their endeavors in production with Archewell as well as Meghan’s lifestyle brand As Ever. It’s possible they could expand these operations outside of the U.S., but they will stay headquartered in America. They also will not be selling their Montecito home, leaving the door open for an eventual return.
But as Bundock points out, when Harry is carrying out philanthropic endeavours in the U.K., it may not always be obvious to the casual observer that he is not technically there in a royal capacity. “When you’re looking at Harry, for example, on an Invictus [Games] engagement, it looks, to all intents and purposes, like a royal engagement. He is still a member of the royal family. He’s just not a working royal.” It’s a situation that may well cause tension within the royal households, particularly as the senior royals coordinate their diaries behind the scenes (to ensure no one steals the limelight from each other) in deference to the King.
While Harry and Meghan’s Hollywood ambitions were said to be a key reason behind their original move to California, Archewell Productions and its deal with Netflix has been the subject of scrutiny in recent years. Though the pact remains in tact, sources told Variety in a story about the couple’s deal with the streamer: “The mood in the building is, ‘We’re done.’” (In March, it was announced that the duo is developing a film adaptation of the Afghan war memoir “No Way Out: The Searing True Story of Men Under Siege” for Netflix.) Other lucrative opportunities have also fallen by the wayside, including a deal with Spotify reported to be worth $20 million that yielded just one show.
Then there’s the issue of security and privacy for the Sussexes while in the U.K. It has long been a sore spot for Harry that while in the country, he has not been given the official police protection afforded to working royals (Harry’s cousins do not get protection). In California, the family hired their own private security team.
Last year, Harry lost a legal battle for higher security protections in the U.K., and told the BBC: “I can’t see a world in which I would bring my wife and children back to the U.K. at this point.” Perhaps something has now changed, although U.K. Prime Minister Andy Burnham said on Thursday that he hasn’t been made privy to any decision on security matters — nor would he be as that is decided by the Royal and VIP Executive Committee, an independent body. “It’s a matter for Harry and for Meghan, and we wish them well in the move that they are making,” Burnham said (via BBC).
The couple’s move is also somewhat surprising as just last month Harry lost his long-running privacy case against Associated Newspapers, the publisher of the tabloid Daily Mail. He was among a group of high-profile figures, including Elton John and Elizabeth Hurley, who accused the publication of unlawful information gathering, including phone-hacking. Associated Newspapers strongly denied this, and ultimately a judge ruled that the plaintiffs failed to prove their claims. Along with the other claimants, he’s expected to have to pay a hefty sum, which will be decided at a hearing on a later date.
It’s one of several privacy lawsuits Harry brought against tabloids over the past few years concerning his treatment in the media, and with the couple back on U.K. soil, it’s possible that this could become an issue once again.
Bundock points out that the couple have not always helped themselves by airing their many grievances in public, whether it was their Oprah interview, their six-part Netflix series “Harry & Meghan” or Harry’s memoir, all of which contained deeply intimate details about life within the royal family, who for the most part remain beloved — or at least respected — in the U.K. “The way they’ve aired these very personal grievances so publicly caused absolutely catastrophic problems and created such suspicion and mistrust, not just within the family but within the wider public as well,” she says. “So they’ve got work to do, winning over everyone.”
“Naruto” fans will have access to the popular anime franchise’s first-ever digital card game with Thursday’s worldwide launch of the officially licensed “Naruto Ninja Cards.”
Described as “a gamified card-collecting experience,” “Naruto Ninja Cards” lets app users collect the series’ most iconic characters in card form, uncover exclusive artworks, and enjoy real-time strategic activities with friends.
While the offering, the only free-to-play “Naruto” app on the App Store and Google Play, may seem like a small-scale project, the game has been five years in the making for Paris and Tokyo-based indie studio Sekai.
After launching as an anime-focused startup in 2021 and a few rounds of brainstorming and development talks, the initial four-person Sekai team set out to land the rights to make a “Naruto” app from Japanese broadcaster TV Tokyo. (There have been many unofficial “Naruto” apps and projects launched over the years, but few approved by the IP owner.) The network not only ended up partnering with Sekai, but also invested in the studio, marking its first investment in a Western company since it backed Crunchyroll.
“We spent a year and a half in Japan convincing the IP’s owners to trust us, and became the first foreign studio ever licensed to build this,” Samy Therain, cofounder and CEO of Sekai, says. “We’re giving our soul to this project. Half a million fans felt it, and showed up before we ever asked. Today’s launch is theirs.”
TV Tokyo/Sekai
“The Sekai team’s genuine passion for ‘Naruto’ is what truly resonates with fans worldwide,” TV Tokyo head of global distribution Hiroaki Saiki says. “I trust that their care, patience, and deep understanding of the series’ core spirit will drive the success of this product!”
Sekai’s investors also include Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park (a band whose music is closely tied to the “Naruto” fan-edit community), NBA All-Star Rudy Gobert, Skycatcher, Makers Fund and Alexis Ohanian’s fund 776.
According to Sekai, since “Naruto Ninja Cards” soft launched Feb. 5 the app has seen 500,000 downloads, 93% of which it says is from organic search. The team credits its early success to “never-before-seen hand-drawn artworks, Easter eggs hidden for those who know the series by heart, and updates shaped by fan feedback since day one.”
Though today is the worldwide launch for “Naruto Ninja Cards,” just a few years ago the Sekai team was mourning the project before it even got off the ground.
After months of grinding at licensing expos and networking events, a chain-reaction of high-profile introductions (including meetings with Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian, Crunchyroll founder Kun Gao and former Toei Animation boss Kanji Kazahaya) Therain says Sekai had its first sit-down with the TV Tokyo team in January 2022. Over the course of a year and a half living in Japan and months of discussion and negotiations and relationship-building with TV Tokyo, Therain says Sekai was “ghosted” by the network and didn’t know why.
TV Tokyo/Sekai
From here, Sekai plans to not only grow the “Naruto Ninja Cards” app, but also expand into additional anime-inspired AAA games and even live events.
“When they don’t reply to one email, you know something is wrong, and so that’s what happened. And for a month, we had no news,” Therain tells Variety. “So that’s why I flew. I flew again to Japan, and I wanted to get a chance to go to them. That’s why my hotel room was across the street from their office because I knew, when I’m there, I need to be available if they want to talk to me. I’m right across the street, and so we went there with two of my co-founders and we waited a bit.”
The rain says the Sekai team received guidance from industry insiders that this turn of events likely meant the deal was going to “fade away.” Then they learned “Naruto” author Masashi Kishimoto had not signed off on the project.
Sekai leadership team/Courtesy Sekai
“And then I get a call telling me it’s over,” Therain says. “Then I’m like, what can we do? It’s either we start with another IP from the ground up, and so it’s going to take a lot more time, or I don’t know — find something, do something.”
The Sekai team was at a loss, and Therain recalls calling his wife crying in the lobby of a hotel in Tokyo.
“The dream is over. It’s over. It’s just over. And she’s like, ‘What? Why? What happened?’ So I tell her, ‘The author said no,’” Therain says. “And you can’t talk to the author. You can’t get an audience with him. Once he says no, goodbye. And she’s like, ‘That’s great news!’ I’m like, ‘What didn’t you understand? The author said no.’ And she reminded me that the entire adventure was under the, let’s say the protection of Naruto, and our motto as a company was ‘Live your own shonen adventure’ or ‘Live like a shonen,’ which literally means when something goes bad, just fight for it.’”
The rain says his wife inspired him to keep trying and “so I just went home, and I wrote a letter to the author of ‘Naruto,’ not knowing if he would get it or read it or anything, I just put it on paper.”
“Because that’s what Naruto does. Naruto is famous for what we call talk no jutsu, which is literally the power of words,” Therain says. “And so, whenever he beats an enemy, it’s never with his fists. It’s after they exhausted all the weaponry and the magic and all this stuff. That’s when they start talking, and he turns the bad guy into a good guy because in ‘Naruto,’ no bad guy is bad entirely. You can turn anything into anything else. So I wrote on paper what ‘Naruto’ meant to me, every reason why I loved him, and how he changed my life, how he was there all the time, every time. And I ended it with [a part] which was exactly like Naruto: “I don’t know if you’re going to say like ‘Sorry, yeah,’ but no matter what happens, basically I will try again and again and again. Akiramenai, I will never give up because this is my ninja way. And this is what you taught me with ‘Naruto,’ Sensei.’”
The rain says he can’t disclose what exactly happened from there, but notes that after he sent the letter to TV Tokyo, the deal was approved by “Naruto” author Masashi Kishimoto.
“It was a beautiful loop, in a way, because I was in this moment where everything seemed lost, and I felt like Naruto, and I was listening to the music and I was crying because I was like, this is just reality matching with the dream,” Therain says. “So after that, the dream came true, basically.”
“Until the end of this year, it’s mainly two things: product iterations, to bringing more and more and more. On Discord, we have almost 1,410 people, and we’re known to reply to everyone to take into account what they ask for, to steer the product into the direction of what people really want, so there’s a lot of product shipping,” Therain says. “Obviously, we’re shipping a new set of cards every three months, and that’s a lot of work. So shipping more cards so that more people see their favorite characters that they can have, and they and they are happy about that. And then communication.”
The next part of the plan is “doing more stuff around ‘Naruto’ because our IP deal covers more.”
“So one of them is live events in stadiums like no one has ever seen before, and so we’re already working on that with people from Hollywood and backers,” Therain says. “But we really want to create events that will feel to people after they participated in these events that they can’t go to any other type of event ever again. We call that the ‘Super Bowl of Anime.’ So we really, really want to bring the epicness that we feel when we watch a Naruto fight to a real live stage, and that obviously involves pyrotechnic effects, holograms, and things like that. That’s very important to us.”
The Paw Patrol litter is gonna need a scientist dogs. Maybe a poodle — they’re smart.
Colossal Biosciences, a de-extinction company trying to bring back the Woolly Mammoth, has enlisted the beloved pups in its efforts to save endangered species. Paramount, Spin Master and Colossal have teamed to “teach children that real animals don’t always have the Paw Patrol to rescue them. The group playing God even got Godzilla: King of the Monsters writer/director Michael Dougherty — and the dude who voices firedog Marshall (Carter Young) — to put together a call-to-action video for the little tablet-wielders.
The campaign teaches the kiddos that mayors in purple tails and top hats are not always the big bads to the animal kingdom. Usually it’s disease; often it’s us.
“The next generation of protectors, that’s us. Together, we can become a real-life Paw Patrol for our planet,” the campaign tells them.
Yes, it’s a real Mission PAW situation. Watch the video:
Thus far, Colossal has de-extincted Red Wolves, the most endangered species of wolf with only 14 left in the wild — the company used the same tech that was deployed to bring back Dire Wolves. The nerds at Colossal have also used “AI-enabled bioacoustic sensors” to decode their howls, the company says.
Colossal is very tech-forward, and is presently “working with indigenous tribes and other partners on more than 25 AI & biotechnology-enabled conservation projects” aimed at saving rhinos and amphibians as well.
If this all sounds familiar, well, it’s basically the plot of Jurassic Park. And Paw Patrol: The Dino Movie is… also basically the plot of Jurassic Park — just, you know, for preschoolers.
“After their ship gets caught in a mysterious storm, the Paw Patrol pups crash land on an uncharted tropical island filled with dinosaurs. They meet Rex, a pup who has been stranded on the island for years and has become an expert in all things dino-related,” the Dino Movie logline reads. “When the Paw Patrol’s archrival, Mayor Humdinger, begins recklessly mining in hopes of exploiting the island for its natural resources, he inadvertently causes a huge, dormant volcano to erupt.”
The pups are soon “thrown into a series of high-stakes, dino-sized rescues bigger than anything they’ve done before,” it continues, “as they must stop Humdinger before everything on the island goes extinct.
Director Ilya Khrzhanovsky is defending his upcoming film DAU against attacks by the government of Ukraine that it represents Russian propaganda and should not be screened at the Venice Film Festival next month.
Khrzhanovsky took to Facebook on Thursday to post a point-by-point rebuttal of the criticism of his film and claims linking him, the film’s financiers, and DAU actor Teodor Currentzis to Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
“DAU is not a Russian film and does not represent Russia at the Venice Film Festival,” Khrzhanovsky writes, noting that he is “not a citizen of the Russian Federation” having renounced his Russian citizenship “in protest against the state policy of the Russian Federation and its war against Ukraine.”
His film, Khrzhanovsky said, “is not an instrument of Russian state cultural policy. It is an artistic statement about the nature of totalitarian evil.”
The 3-hour DAU film is the latest in a series of movies, art installations and video projects created by Khrzhanovsky using material filmed over three years from 2008 to 2011 on a closed set in Kharkiv, Ukraine.
Earlier this week, the Ukraine Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Culture, and the Ukrainian Embassy in Italy issued a joint statement criticizing the Venice festival for including DAU in its line-up.
“At the time when Russia is continuing its war of aggression against Ukraine, systematically destroying cities, cultural heritage and national identity,” the statement reads, “offering one of the world’s most prestigious cultural platforms to a project linked to the Russian state and its networks of influence sends a deeply worrying signal.”
The statement goes on to list the film’s alleged connections to Putin’s Russia, including Khrzhanovsky’s citizenship, and that of DAU lead actor Teodor Currentzis, and its connection to Sergei Adoniev, a Russian business man who has been sanctioned by Ukraine and the U.S.
Venice Film Festival artistic director Alberto Barbera took to Instagram on Wednesday to clap back at those allegations and to defend his decision to include DAU at this year’s festival. In his post, Barbera describes Khrzhanovsky as “a Russian dissident who ended up on the regime’s blacklist as a terrorist and enemy of the state — a director who, from the very beginning, has taken a stand against the Russian invasion of Ukraine”. He called the attacks on DAU an “inexplicable smear campaign against a film that its accusers have evidently not even seen yet.”
The DAU project, initially conceived as a biopic of the Nobel Prize-winning Soviet scientist Lev Landau (nicknamed Dau), became a massive immersive installation. Hundreds of cast members, actors and non-actors, lived on the closed set, in costume and in character, isolated from the outside world during filming. From the hundreds of hours of footage shot, Khrzhanovsky has produced several feature films. DAU. Natasha, screened at the Berlin Film Festival in 2020, winning a Silver Bear for outstanding artistic contribution for cinematographer Jürgen Jürges.
In his Facebook post, Khrzhanovsky refutes or qualifies the various accusations made against him and his film. Adoniev, he says, was a financier of the broader artistic 𝘋𝘈𝘜 project but “his financing ended completely in 2019 and he has had no financial relationship with the project since then. He did not finance the completion of the film selected for the competition of the Venice Film Festival.” Adoniev’s involvement, the director adds, was prior to his being sanctioned by the U.S. or Ukraine government.
The filming of the DAU project in Ukraine, writes Khrzhanovsky, took place before the Russian invasion of the country. His own position on Russia’s war against Ukraine “has been and remains unequivocal,” he writes. “I publicly supported Ukraine long before the full-scale invasion. Following the annexation of Crimea in March 2014, I signed an open letter by Russian filmmakers in support of Ukraine.”
A stickier point is DAU lead actor Theodor Currentzis. A well-known Greek conductor, Currentzis took on Russian citizenship in 2014. Currentzis has never publicly supported Russia’s war against Ukraine, but he has not publicly condemned it either.
“However one may judge his decision not to make such statements [against the war], judging a person on the basis of the citizenship they hold — and, even more so, using citizenship acquired years after most of the filming as evidence of the film’s current connection to the Russian state — is not justified,” writes Khrzhanovsky.
Given what he characterized as his long and enduring support for Ukraine, Khrzhanovsky said the attempt to frame him and his film as supporting the Russian state or its war against Ukraine was “especially painful for me.” He said he understood the need, “during wartime, to scrutinize the sources of financing of cultural projects, political connections, and possible instruments of Russian influence. [But] that is precisely why standards of factual accuracy must be particularly high.”
His movie, he said, “should not be prematurely judged on the basis of false associations, distorted chronology, or assumptions that contradict the documented history of the project. I have been and remain opposed to Russia’s war against Ukraine and to the political system that made this war possible. Opposing totalitarianism also means defending factual truth.”
DAU will screen in competition at the 2026 Venice Film Festival, which runs Sept. 2-12.
Paramount+ has unveiled the trailer for “Golden Axe,” a new adult animated comedy series based on Sega’s classic 1989 beat-em-up video game.
According to the official logline, “Golden Axe” follows “warriors Ax Battler, Tyris Flare and Gilius Thunderhead as they reunite to save Yuria from the evil giant Death Adder, who just won’t seem to stay dead. Their quest is complicated by Hampton Squib, an inexperienced and wildly underprepared adventurer whose dream of heroism far exceeds his abilities. Forced to work together despite their flaws, they must find a way to stop Death Adder once and for all.”
Matthew Rhys stars as Gilius Thunderhead, “a grumpy battle dwarf with exceptionally poor hygiene and a chip on his shoulder.” Other cast members include Danny Pudi as Hampton Squib, Lisa Gilroy as Tyris Flare, Liam McIntyre as Ax Battler and Carl Tart as Chronos “Evil” Lait.
In the trailer, we see our three heroes talking strategy before they head into battle. “To defeat Death Adder, we need an actual plan,” Gilius says. A confident Tyris then chimes in, delivering a meta punchline: “We’re going to do what we do best: Face a series of progressively harder enemies until we have a big final battle with Death Adder.”
Mike McMahan and showrunner Joe Chandler co-created the series. They also co-wrote the first episode and served as executive producers. Other executive producers include Haruki Satomi, Shuji Utsumi and Toru Nakahara for Sega, and Neal H. Moritz, Pavun Shetty and Toby Ascher for Original Film. Titmouse serves as the animation studio for the series, with Chris Prynoski, Shannon Prynoski, Antonio Canobbio and Ben Kalina serving as executive producers. “Golden Axe” is produced by CBS’ Eye Animation Productions, CBS Studios’ animation arm, Sony Pictures Television and Original Film.
“Golden Axe” arrives on Paramount+ on Sept. 16. Check out the trailer below.
Steven Yeun is set for the lead role in the upcoming Netflix supernatural drama “Pagans,” Variety has confirmed.
The show was originally announced with a straight-to-series order last year in a competitive situation. The logline states that it “follows a man (Yeun) who becomes the sole caretaker of his two children after the tragic loss of his wife. While his son is typical, his daughter, Alice, is anything but. What starts as a strained father-daughter relationship soon evolves into something far more sinister.”
The show hails from “Say Nothing” creator Joshua Zetumer, who also serves as showrunner and executive producer. Drew Goddard and Sarah Esberg executive produce via Goddard Textiles, with Jonathan van Tulleken and Erica Kay also executive producing. Yeun and Christina Oh executive produce for Celadon Pictures.
The role brings Yeun back to Netflix, where he previously starred in the hit first season of “Beef” alongside Ali Wong.
[This story contains major spoilers for Lucky’s series finale, “All Good Things.”]
With the dust now settled on Lucky, Anya Taylor-Joy believes her eponymous character is finally living up to her nickname.
The British-Argentine actor’s point has less to do with her conflicted con artist cheating death numerous times and besting her mobster in-laws, as well as the FBI. Instead, it’s more about the bittersweet fact that, despite losing her husband Cary (Drew Starkey) in a fatal car chase — and ultimately severing ties with her father, John (Timothy Olyphant), a con man whose devotion to the hustle proved utterly incurable — she’s at long last able to chart her own course.
In the final moments of Apple TV’s latest well-received limited series, John comes to terms that his familial protege outmaneuvered his final play for the $10 million he originally skimmed from Cary’s parents, Annette Bening’s Priscilla and William Fichtner’s Wayne. Cary re-stole the money temporarily from Lucky and John, only to leave it for his wife to handle as she sees fit, something Priscilla co-signed after killing Wayne, the sadistic driving force behind the season-long attempt to recover it.
Lucky could’ve easily started a whole new life with the ill-gotten gains, but she opted to take her first steps toward a life free of crime by returning the repeatedly stolen taxpayer dollars to the Feds. The final images of the show find Lucky quietly fulfilling the promise her dad spent a lifetime breaking — that one day they would abandon their thieving ways, dig their toes into the sand and stare out at the Pacific.
“Either personally or through somebody close to us, we all know what it is to love somebody that’s not good for us. It’s a lesson that has to be learned individually, and the heartbreak of it all is so relatable to me,” Taylor-Joy tells The Hollywood Reporter. “You still feel that heartbreak because Timothy is so charming, and you so want him to do the right thing. But where we leave Lucky, she, for the first time, isn’t being told who she is; she’s telling other people who she is.”
Now that Lucky has been fully released, Taylor-Joy still has Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Threecoming out in December. Lead actor Timothée Chalamet recently showered her performance as Paul Atreides’s sister, Alia, with adjectives including “breathtaking, unbelievable, terrifying and amazing.” Taylor-Joy laid the groundwork for her trilogy-capping role by filming an Alia cameo in Dune: Part Two (2024) shortly after wrapping George Miller’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.
Her Furiosa experience proved to be a frustrating one, and while she shared some of her struggles during her recent THR cover story, she has made clear she will keep the full, gory details private for decades. By contrast, her expectations for Dune: Part Three were wildly exceeded.
“Dune was everything that I hoped it would be. I cannot say more wonderful things about Denis [Villeneuve]. It was so deeply inspiring to be in these really harsh elements and know that every person is doing their absolute best work because they believe, trust and adore the person that’s leading the ship,” Taylor-Joy says. “In the future, I hope that I never get jaded and that I still have that childlike exuberance. When I look at Denis, I’m like, Oh, it’s possible.”
Below, during a conversation with THR, Taylor-Joy also discusses key changes made to Jonathan Tropper’s adaptation of Marissa Stapley’s novel Lucky, before revealing what made her first day on set acutely emotional.
***
As a graduate of Shyamalan Film School, you’ve always had an interest in the behind the scenes of it all, but what made Lucky the right time to actually venture into producing?
First and foremost, it was my first real opportunity. I’m so grateful to Reese [Witherspoon] and the whole Hello Sunshine team for that. It was her who read the book, reached out to me and said, “Hey, I would love to co-produce this with you if you’d be interested.” Then, upon reading the book, I really felt like I had something to offer and to contribute. So it just felt like the perfect storm.
Anya Taylor-Joy as Lucky in Lucky.
Courtesy of Apple TV
Marissa Stapley wrote the book with you in mind. Did she get the ball rolling on your casting? Or were Reese and co. simultaneously thinking about you?
Apparently, it was simultaneous. Marissa told me about her manifestation during one of my last days on set, and I was just like, “Well done! Good witchery.”
You went from producers Reese Witherspoon and Lauren Neustadter on Lucky to Mary Parent and Tanya Lapointe on Dune: Part Three. Did you pocket as much as you could from them, especially now that you have a production company (LadyKiller)?
I always have curiosity and genuine interest. They are the most important things for me, and luckily, I don’t have to try to force it. If you’re genuinely interested in what’s going on, you learn so much by osmosis just because you’re present. People talk a lot about waiting around on set, but I love the waiting around because that’s just an opportunity for a side quest to learn something.
Lucky pockets anything and everything in a different way. When she walks in a room, she instantly clocks all the angles and identifies anything she can grab, be it keys, cash, clothes, whatever. She’s like Margot from The Menu in that respect.
Yeah.
Has your job made you pretty adept at reading a room since you always have to account for camera angles, blocking and your scene partners?
[M.] Night [Shyamalan] once described me as a raw nerve that has no skin. I’m very sensitive to energies, so I can read if somebody is having a bad day or if somebody needs reassurance in some way. I’m happy about that because I’d always rather see it than not see it.
Lucky’s con-man father, John (Timothy Olyphant), raised her to be his partner-in-crime, and she eventually surpassed his mastery. For curiosity’s sake, if you had to pull a confidence game in real life, do you think your acting chops would translate successfully?
The act of being a confidence artist requires a level of cynicism that I just do not have. I have interest in fun pranks where nobody really gets hurt, but I detest the idea of ever winning because of somebody else’s misfortune.
Lucky spends the first few episodes tracking down her husband Cary (Drew Starkey) after he made off with the $10 million that her dad originally stole from Cary’s gangster mother (Annette Bening) and estranged gangster father (William Fichtner). Eventually, she learns from Cary that he ditched her in order to protect her from his vengeful mother. Years earlier, Lucky worked with the Feds to put her in prison. Cary then dies from a gunshot wound during a car case, and that swerve was not a part of the source material. Do you remember the conversation around that choice?
Absolutely. We really wanted to center in on this relationship and why she goes to the ends of the earth to find him. The reality is both Cary and Lucky have inadvertently ended up with people that are slightly like their parents, and they feel like nobody else will understand. Cary commits such a treacherous act that we knew we needed an actor that was going to be intensely likable to be able to even hear him out. Then we thought, What’s the best possible lesson for Lucky to learn from this? Cary’s got to go. So it was quite ruthless, to be honest with you.
Drew Starkey’s Cary and Anya Taylor-Joy’s Lucky in Lucky.
Courtesy of Apple TV
You and Drew Starkey probably didn’t work together that long, but you had a full relationship arc in that accelerated amount of time: the honeymoon phase, the breakup, the reconciliation and death.
Absolutely. Anytime Drew was on set, I joked that I was having the best time because I was clean and usually doing a flashback. Those flashbacks were happy, light-filled and joyful. And then the second he would leave, I would be bloody, running for my life and getting shot at. (Laughs.) So it was very dramatic whether Drew was there or not there. But he’s very easy, and we get along really well. He’s somebody that I wanted for the role immediately. Overall, I’m really proud to say that we got our first choice for each one of the roles.
Regarding the sleazy real estate agent character in episode three, I didn’t realize that your husband, Malcolm McRae, has been acting off and on since he was a kid. But given the icky place where the sequence ends up, did you partially want to cast someone who could make that uncomfortable dynamic more comfortable?
We cast all of our guest stars on the fly. We had all of our main cast, and then, as the episodes were going on, we opened casting for the other wonderful characters that we have in our show. Malcolm was doing a lot of self-tapes at the time. And if you’re receiving a Malcolm McRae self-tape, the voice at the other end of it is me, obviously. So I was just watching him one day, and I said, “Damn, you could be really good for this. Would you mind taping for it?” And he did. Afterwards I was like, “Wait a second, this really works out for me. Instead of having a stranger slobber all over me, I’d much rather it be the man that I’m in love with.”
Timothy Olyphant’s John and Anya Taylor-Joy’s Lucky in Lucky.
Courtesy of Apple TV
In the end, Lucky, alongside her dad, manages to circumvent the FBI and the mob to walk away with the $10 million in crypto.
She’s a busy girl.
Granted, Priscilla did her a solid by honoring her deceased son’s wishes. And while Lucky fully anticipates her dad’s attempt to re-steal the money, it still hurts to see him choose the hustle over her yet again. But it’s a blessing in disguise, isn’t it? It needed to happen.
Either personally or through somebody close to us, we all know what it is to love somebody that’s not good for us. It’s a lesson that has to be learned individually. Somebody can’t tell you about it. You have to figure it out on your own, and the heartbreak of it all is so relatable to me. And you’re right, you still feel that heartbreak because Timothy is so charming and you so want him to do the right thing. But where we leave Lucky, she, for the first time, isn’t being told who she is; she’s telling other people who she is.
In episode four, she and a random guy at a bar toast over their bad luck. Ultimately, do you consider her lucky even though she’s completely alone and without the two people who loved her?
Anytime you have the opportunity to make your own fate, you’re pretty lucky. And she made it out alive. That’s pretty unbelievable [after all her brushes with death].
She says at one point in episode six that Lucky isn’t her real name. In the book, her real name is Julia Mann, because John is not her biological father in the book. But I think he is her biological father on the show, as he references the death of her mother and being left with this tiny human. So what does she mean when she says Lucky isn’t her real name? Is she just saying that Luciana is technically her real name? Or is there something more there like in the book?
No, I think it’s just that Luciana is her given birth name. Her father then gave her the nickname “Lucky,” both as a promise, but also selfishly. I really enjoyed playing that, because parent-children relationships are so deep and so treacherous and so beautiful all at the same time. There’s a huge element of Lucky that really wants to make her father proud, but the thing that makes him proud of her is the thing that she most dislikes about herself.
She returns the $10 million to the Feds. It was stolen from taxpayers in the first place. It’s admirable that she truly wants a clean break from her life of crime. But was there ever talk of having her repay some of her victims, such as the family out in the desert or the woman whose car accident she helped cause?
We had conversations very, very early on in the writers room. There’s this wonderful character in the book, Lucky’s childhood friend [Steph]. We loved her, and we really tried to bring her with us. But it ended up not really servicing the story in the way that we needed. [Writer’s Note: John and 10-year-old Lucky defraud Steph and her mother by claiming that Lucky is terminally ill, so I assume Taylor-Joyis alluding to a potential storyline in which Steph and/or her mother would’ve been made whole.]
So we thought about restitution, and then we just decided that the biggest score that she has to settle is with Aunjanue [Ellis-Taylor’s] FBI agent character, Rand.
Your THR cover story detailed some of the challenges you faced on Furiosa, so I’m not going to belabor that subject any further.
Thank you.
All I want to know is whether Dune: Part Three was everything you hoped it would be. Will you not have to wait 20 years to fully talk about it à la Furiosa?
(Laughs.) Dune: Part Three was everything that I hoped it would be. I cannot say more wonderful things about Denis [Villeneuve]. I learnt so much. I just wanted to be a sponge on that set and pick up everything in terms of the atmosphere and what it is to lead from a place of love. It was so deeply inspiring to be in these really harsh elements and know that every person is doing their absolute best work because they believe, trust and adore the person that’s leading the ship. He deeply loves it.
All of Denis’ actors strive to get him to say his catchphrase of, “I deeply love it,” after a take. Did you catch on to that game pretty quickly?
(Laughs.) Immediately, yeah. I have so much love and passion for this art form and this beautiful thing that I get to do. And when I think about myself in the future, I hope that I never get jaded and that I still have that childlike exuberance. So when I look at Denis, I’m like, Oh, it’s possible. You can get to this ultimate place and still just be a kid who wants to create these beautiful worlds and do it at such an amazing level of quality.
Are you about to head off to shoot The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum?
I am leaving relatively soon for that side of the world [New Zealand], and I’m very excited about it. [This chat took place July 15.]
Lastly, you quoted Night earlier, and I still think about his famous note to you: “Don’t cry your tears, cry the character’s tears.” Did you ever catch yourself on Lucky crying your tears instead of Lucky’s tears?
Ooh, interesting. [Such crying] didn’t happen in front of the camera, but my dog passed away on our first day of filming, so that was hard. We were shooting all night long from 11:00 PM to 11:00 AM. And I think a big part of grief is being able to sleep through it. So it was such an interesting lesson of, Okay, you’re going to be awake. Your body is going to be pumping adrenaline the whole time. You have to find a way of making this okay and being a leader here because you can’t fall apart. And I’m actually really grateful for that experience.
*** Lucky is now streaming in its entirety on Apple TV.Read more of THR’s finale coverage.
Chris Pratt is back battling unknown global terrorist conspiracies seeking to upend the world order in the first trailer for The Terminal List season 2, which Prime Video dropped on Thursday.
But Pratt, as a traumatized and now fugitive former Navy SEAL James Reece, finds newfound purpose after being offered immunity if he helps the U.S. government pursue a former Iraqi commando to unravel a geopolitical plot involving a traitorous CIA officer and an assassination scheme.
Newcomer Gabriel Luna as former SEAL team member Freddy Strain offers Reece a path to violent redemption. “The president’s willing to grant you a full pardon for your crimes. We’re ready to give you your life back,” he tells Reece at one point in the trailer.
The Terminal List season 2 adapts True Believer, the second in Jack Carr’s five novels built around the character of Reece. A high-octane roller-coaster race against time follows amid much gunfire and explosions as Reece looks to turn the shadowy Iraqi terrorist against his masters.
The starry second season of eight new episodes to debut Oct. 21 on Prime Video — and returning four years after the rookie season rolled out — includes returning cast members like Tom Hopper, Constance Wu, Dar Salim, Luke Hemsworth, Gabriel Luna, Costa Ronin, Olga Kurylenko, Yul Vazquez, Martin Sensmeier, Arnold Vosloo and Shiraz Tzarfati.
The Terminal List season 2 is executive produced by Pratt, Antoine Fuqua (who directed the original pilot for the series), showrunner David DiGilio, Carr, Kat Samick, Max Adams and Jared Shaw. The series is produced by Amazon MGM Studios, MRC and Civic Center Media.
