Both members of Massive Attack have been permanently barred from re-entering Singapore after unfurling a Palestinian flag during the British trip-hop group’s concert in the city-state, according to a joint statement from the Singapore Police Force and the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA).
The statement said police investigated both band members for “their actions of support for a political cause and unfurling of a foreign flag” during the show at The Star Theatre on July 29. Following the investigation, and in consultation with the Attorney-General’s Chambers, police administered stern warnings to both men for offences under Section 3 of the Foreign National Emblems (Control of Display) Act 1949 and Section 16 of the Public Order Act.
“Both men will also be banned from re-entering Singapore,” the statement said.
According to the statement, the event organizer had acknowledged the licensing conditions attached to the concert beforehand, but both band members held up a “foreign flag” onstage during the performance, with one shouting “Free Palestine.” The IMDA said it is investigating a possible breach of several licence conditions, including one barring performers from displaying flags tied to any cause, and will act once that inquiry concludes. The regulator added it will not approve any future application for the band to perform in Singapore given the entry ban.
The concert was the band’s only scheduled Singapore date on its current tour, with video of the flag display circulating widely online alongside footage of the crowd joining in chants of “Free Palestine.” The two men are Massive Attack’s founding members, Robert “3D” Del Naja and Grant “Daddy G” Marshall, who make up its current touring lineup; authorities did not name them in the statement.
Singapore maintains strict rules on the public display of foreign flags and emblems without a permit, framing the laws as necessary to protect the country’s racial and religious harmony. The joint statement reiterated that position, with authorities saying they “take a serious view of acts which could potentially harm the racial and religious harmony in Singapore” and urging the public, including foreigners, “to refrain from importing foreign politics” into the country.
“The peace and harmony between different races and religions in Singapore should not be taken for granted, and we must not let external events affect our society,” the statement said.
Massive Attack has been among the more vocal acts in music in its support for Palestinian causes. Del Naja was arrested earlier this year during a demonstration in London tied to Palestine Action, a group proscribed in the U.K.
Variety has reached out to Massive Attack’s representation for comment.
Indian producer and entrepreneur Viccky Jain has launched a new production banner, VJ Frames, timed to coincide with his birthday.
The company’s debut project is an action franchise directed by Remo D’Souza, starring Tiger Shroff, Abhishek Banerjee and Elvish Yadav.
VJ Frames is positioned as a home for large-scale cinematic stories and commercial entertainers aimed at audiences across the India. The action franchise, developed through a creative collaboration between Jain and D’Souza, is described as combining high-octane action with dramatic storytelling.
Jain, best known for his stint on “Bigg Boss 17,” is making his debut as a film producer with VJ Frames. Shroff was most recently seen in “Baaghi 4,” while Banerjee’s recent credits include “Thamma” and “Toaster.” D’Souza’s last directorial credit was “Be Happy,” starring Abhishek Bachchan.
“Launching VJ Frames is a dream that has been years in the making, and I couldn’t have asked for a better occasion than my birthday to begin this journey,” Jain said. “Cinema has always inspired me, and with VJ Frames, I hope to create stories that entertain, connect with audiences, and leave a lasting impact. Beginning this journey with an ambitious action franchise alongside Remo and an incredible cast makes it even more special. This is just the beginning, and I’m excited for everything that lies ahead.”
D’Souza added, “I’m really happy to be directing the first film from VJ Frames. Viccky has come on board with a clear vision and a genuine passion for cinema, and it’s exciting to be part of this journey with him. We’ve got a fantastic cast in Tiger Shroff, Abhishek Banerjee and Elvish Yadav, and I’m looking forward to creating something that’s entertaining, action-packed and enjoyable for audiences.”
Gianni Infantino, the embattled president of soccer’s governing body FIFA, has abandoned his controversial plan to create a $20 billion company, FIFA Forward Enterprise, that would control the commercial rights to its events, principally the World Cup.
In a statement released late Friday, Infantino said it had “become clear that the project has created divisions of a nature that, regardless of the level of support, are no longer in the interest of the objective set out in the first place.”
The survival of Infantino, who is up for re-election for a fourth term as president at the FIFA Congress in March, is now in doubt.
Infantino said, “Our purpose has always been – and will always be – to unite and improve. Moving forward, my intent is to bring all interested parties back together in the coming days and weeks in the spirit of shared interest in our game.”
The climbdown by Infantino follows a threat by European countries, represented by the continent’s soccer governing body UEFA, to boycott all FIFA events, including the World Cup, if the plan moved forward.
Opposition to Infantino’s plan had also come from Concacaf, which governs soccer in North, Central America and the Caribbean, and the sport’s governing body in Asia, the Asian Football Confederation.
Resistance to the plan had also come from within FIFA. Carlos Cordeiro, Infantino’s senior adviser on global strategy and governance, resigned over the issue, saying the proposal was “a bad deal” for soccer and would “mortgage” its future.
Then on Friday, the organization’s chief operating officer Kevin Lamour said its own administration had been “deceived” about the project. Lamour described the plan as “the project of one person,” and said, “the time has now come for [soccer’s] political leaders to ask themselves the right questions and make the right decisions.”
Lamour added that he had a duty of loyalty to “certain values” and supporting his colleagues. “If that means I lose my job, then so be it. I will understand and respect that decision. At least I’ll sleep well tonight.”
Under Infantino’s proposal, each FIFA member country would have received an initial payment of $20 million and a doubling of their annual stipend to $5 million. This would have been partially funded by the sale of a roughly 20% stake in FIFA Forward Enterprise to an investor group led by Thrive Eternal. Thrive Eternal is run by Joshua Kushner, whose brother Jared Kushner is married to President Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka.
While Marvel fans are expected to turn out in droves to see “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” in theaters this weekend, a high-quality bootleg of the film leaked on X, with millions of people having viewed it.
Posted by an account named Fredrick Bryan at 6:05 a.m. PT, the leaked video reached 5.9 million accounts and counting, with over 143,000 people liking the post and 10,000 people resharing before it was taken down around 3:25 p.m. PT.
Several other X accounts also posted copies, though most didn’t last long on the platform. Studios typically send infringement notices to those posting unauthorized copies, though it can be difficult to keep ahead of the volume of posting for the most popular new films.
Sony had no comment.
“Brand New Day” is far from the first big-budget film to leak online. Last week, Christopher Nolan’s tentpole “The Odyssey” leaked on X with its own high-quality bootleg. It reached 2.1 million views within two and a half hours and was eventually taken down with a notice. The account itself was suspended as well.
Addressing “The Odyssey” leak, Universal issued a statement to Variety on Sunday: “We became aware of the unauthorized posting of the film and immediately initiated takedown protocols. We take copyright infringement seriously and will pursue all appropriate remedies to protect our content and intellectual property rights.”
Regardless of the leak, “Brand New Day” is already doing exceptional business at the box office. It made a record-breaking $72 million in previews, including Tuesday early access screenings — the most of any movie in history. That placed it above “Avengers: Endgame,” which grossed $60 million in Thursday previews.
“Brand New Day” sees the return of Tom Holland as the famous web-slinger, with Emmy-winner Zendaya returning as MJ. The cast also includes Sadie Sink in a mystery role, Jon Bernthal and Jacob Batalon.
In 2007, Javier Bardem delivered one of the century’s most chilling performances as Anton Chigurh in “No Country for Old Men.” Nearly two decades later, he’s proved once again he could convincingly play a sociopath, reimagining the vengeful murderer Max Cady on Apple TV+’s hit summer series “Cape Fear.”
Cady was previously played by Robert Mitchum in 1962 and Robert De Niro in 1991, but the brilliance of Bardem’s performance lies in the long stretches of perceived stillness, heightening the tension of the cat-and-mouse game he plays with the Bowden family, which star Lily Collias described as “a lot of fun” but “sometimes very jarring.”
“We’re playing cat and mouse, and then the cameras turn off, and I still feel like a mouse,” Collias told Variety at the “Cape Fear” finale screening in New York. “And he still feels like Tom from ‘Tom and Jerry.’”
Collias plays Natalie Bowden, the daughter of Anna (Amy Adams) and Tom (Patrick Wilson), two lawyers who Bardem’s Cady blames for his incarceration. After 10 episodes of buildup, the series finale depicts an epic battle in which Cady invades the Bowden’s home, placing Anna and Tom on “trial” for colluding against him and threatening their children.
“[Episode] 10 felt almost like a play,” Collias said. “It was just the family and him in the house, and we were doing the most insane things and laughing so hard off camera. It felt like such a joy that it was actually a beautiful time.”
Before filming one violent sequence in which Cady grabs Natalie by the hair, Collias says Bardem politely apologized in advance and made sure she felt comfortable with the physicality.
“We would go through such weird circumstances, it’s little things that make me still giggle to this day,” Collias said. “In Episode 10, there’s one point where he has to grab me by my hair, and before the scene, he’s like, ‘I’m so sorry, my love. Is it OK if I just — I’m going to grab you like that?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, that’s fine.’ Then we start rolling and I see this thing coming up to me and I’m like, ‘What the fuck?! Well, OK, that’s your job!’”
When asked about filming the intense finale scenes, Bardem smirked, explaining how he’s learned to lean into the “play” involved with acting as he’s gotten older.
“For me, it’s more about a game,” Bardem said. “You use your imagination to jump in and step out of it. I respect everybody’s process, as long as those processes respect other people’s processes. For me, the fun part is to really be part of a group of people that imagine things that don’t exist, and they create it together based on the fact that it’s all a big lie.”
Cooper Hoffman had never filmed a sex scene before signing on to Gregg Araki’s erotic thriller “I Want Your Sex.” So when he arrived on set for the first time and found himself surrounded by ball gags, stilettos, whips, chains, dildos and strap-ons, a few first-day jitters were understandable.
“Even if you’re nervous to do it, you’re gonna do it,” Hoffman told Variety at the film’s Los Angeles premiere on Tuesday night. “Because there’s no reason to not do anything in this life just because you’re scared.”
Still, how does an actor prepare to strip naked, slip into a maid’s outfit and get spanked with a leather whip? This is just one of many, many kinky situations Hoffman encounters as Elliot, a meek, wide-eyed college graduate who enters into a sadomasochistic relationship with gallery owner Erika Tracey (Olivia Wilde).
Increasingly, the answer comes in the form of an intimacy coordinator — a role that Araki, long known for embracing provocative themes, employed for the first time on this project. The profession, which officially unionized with SAG-AFTRA in 2024, has become an increasingly standard presence on film and television sets.
Intimacy coordinator Yehuda Duenyas likens the job to that of a choreographer or stunt coordinator. “If someone is going to get their head blown off, people are like, ‘Go grab the goo gun, get the exploding head with the squibs in it, press the button and boom.’ No one really bats an eye about violence,” he says. “But when it comes to intimacy, everyone gets kind of squishy and weird.”
“There are so many things to look after with intimacy scenes that no one really sees,” he continues. “It’s the same way that, with a stunt, you’re not seeing the padding or the fake hits. It just looks real, but you know there’s a lot of movie magic happening behind the scenes.”
That movie magic is put to work throughout the film, which uses high-intensity montages to establish the pair’s dom-sub dynamic: Elliot crawling across the floor in pink silk lingerie, taking a spanking in a maid’s outfit, standing fully nude as a hot-pink dildo is lubed up overhead and, during a threesome-gone-wrong, getting handcuffed to a St. Andrew’s cross with a towel stuffed in his mouth.
“He might have been terrified, but it wasn’t, ‘I’m terrified, I don’t want to do this.’ It was, ‘I’m terrified, and I do want to do this,’” Duenyas says of Hoffman. “He was more like, ‘Yeah, yeah, it’s the scariest thing I’ve ever done. Let’s do it.’”
Below, Duenyas talks about how he prepared Wilde and Hoffman for their most intense on-screen moments, the most challenging scenes to shoot and the film’s overall messaging on sex and experimentation:
There are multiple high-intensity montages that establish the nature of Olivia and Cooper’s dom-sub sexual relationship. What would surprise people about what goes into shooting scenes like that?
With those montages specifically, we had moments where we would say, “Okay, I’m hitting you this hard. What is that on a scale of one to 10?” Cooper would say, “That’s a zero.” She’d say, “Really?” Then she would go harder, and he’d say, “Okay, that’s a two. That’s a three. That’s a five.”
Olivia realized, “I can hit you really hard, and it’s only registering as a seven or an eight.” We had a bunch of little things like that so they could, number one, have a language for communicating about the physicality and, number two, feel like they could talk about what was happening while also making it look good.
Gregg told Variety that Olivia came onto the set with much more experience doing nude scenes, while Cooper was “terrified.” What was your process for making him more comfortable from the beginning?
If you’ve ever gone skydiving, you might be terrified, but you really want to go skydiving. You’re there to do it. Or, if you’ve ever jumped off a cliff into water or stood on a high diving board, you’re on top of that thing to do it, even though you’re scared. So, yeah, he might have been terrified, but it wasn’t, “I’m terrified, I don’t want to do this.” It was, “I’m terrified, and I do want to do this.”
Is someone terrified because they’re thinking, “This is a no for me. This is a hard boundary, but I’m involved in this thing and I already said yes, so what am I going to do?” Are they biting their nails or is it, “I’m fucking terrified. Let’s do this really well. How are we going to do this?”
That was Cooper’s stance. I wouldn’t say he was terrified. If you’ve ever talked to him, he’s super cool and very together. He was more like, “Yeah, yeah, it’s the scariest thing I’ve ever done. Let’s do it.” It was very matter-of-fact. He approaches almost everything he does by diving headfirst into it in this really beautiful way. He’s an incredible performer.
How did the dom-sub type of sex scenes differ from the more traditional sex scenes you’re used to working on?
Sure, there are differences, but in terms of the way we approach intimacy coordination as a craft, it’s not that different. Olivia had also done a lot of research. Everyone brought what they knew and the type of story they wanted to tell. Gregg obviously did as well.
In this particular film, we’re dealing with these very specific, blurry and complicated power dynamics. That’s the story. The story shows up in their relationship, their work lives and their sexual lives together. What was so fun was finding the character of their intimacy together.
Every intimate scene we work on has a different type of character, and that was the character for this one. Is it different? Yes. BDSM and these kinds of lifestyle scenes, if you want to call them that, are different from something like a “Heated Rivalry” scene. It’s a different type of intimacy, but we approach it the way we would approach anything else.
I’m guessing one of the main differences is how many props are involved. What was the most challenging scene to work on?
The threesome scene, from a blocking and camera-angle perspective, took a minute to figure out. When I say “a minute,” we had a really compressed shooting schedule. We shot all the intimacy within the first five days. We did all of that stuff upfront.
Also from an intensity perspective, that scene required a lot. There was a lot to work out. It wasn’t, “Oh my God, this is so hard.” It was a puzzle to put together in terms of the traffic patterns, the handcuffing and how to get out of the handcuffs quickly. Are we fiddling with keys, or are we just getting out of them? There are a lot of little details. Which details are you going to skip for the sake of the story, and which details are you going to keep in to maintain the flavor and the vibe of the story?
All of the restraint scenes needed a little more care. Getting an actor into restraints on the St. Andrew’s cross wasn’t that complicated of a scene. But when you have to shoot it from three angles in three different ways, and an actor is strapped to a St. Andrew’s cross, can they get out easily if they need to pee?
Gregg recently talked to Variety about Gen Z’s attitude towards sex and what he hoped to accomplish with this film. What are your thoughts on this mission statement?
Gregg wants people to go out and argue. He really wants people to argue about it and say, “Well, I thought it was this,” or, “I thought it was that,” or, “I think that’s bullshit,” or, “I think that’s true.” He wants those conversations.
I love Gregg, and I’ve loved his work over the years. He has contributed so much. I learned about intimacy through watching Gregg Araki films as a young person. I feel like we owe him for his contribution to intimacy in cinema. He has contributed so much to the film canon. Where would we be without those pieces he has made and the work he has put in?
I can’t speak for Gen Z, and I don’t know whether Gen Z is having less or more sex. But I hope people see this film and want to take a chance on love, take a chance on experimentation, take a chance on feeling something and allow themselves to be taken to a place they haven’t been before.
SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for “The Executioners,” the finale of “Cape Fear,” now streaming on Apple TV.
In the final moments of “Cape Fear,” Anna Bowden realizes that she’ll never truly be free of the man who’s been stalking her family.
The Bowden family has defeated Max Cady (Javier Bardem), the ex-convict who blames Anna (Amy Adams) and her husband Tom (Patrick Wilson) for his incarceration, in an epic battle during which he invaded their home, placed Anna and Tom on “trial” for colluding against him and threatened their children Natalie and Zack (Lily Collias and Joe Anders).
During that intense confrontation, Anna stunned Max with evidence she obtained at his family’s houseboat that his sister Crystal (Juliette Lewis, who also starred as a different character in the 1991 film version of this story) actually committed the murder for which Max was convicted, having killed Max’s pregnant wife, ripping the unborn fetus from her body. Max’s child actually lived, growing nearly into adulthood while Max spent his life mourning him; in a bitter irony, Max killed him in the chaos that ensued at the Cady family boat at the start of the finale. It’s our definitive proof, too, that Max never did what Tom, as prosecutor, put him away for, and Anna, as defense attorney, didn’t block. For all his crimes against the Bowdens, Max began his legal journey as an innocent man.
Javier Bardem in ‘Cape Fear.’ (Apple TV)
By the time he’s defeated, Max seems utterly broken; the last we see of this seemingly invulnerable agent of chaos is his sputtering out water on the Bowdens’ deck, ready to be apprehended by the authorities. But the family’s victory is only conditional. After Anna declares, “Let him die in a cage,” sparing Max’s life, we jump ahead in time to a backyard barbecue, echoing the one that, in happier times, opened the series. Back then, the Bowdens were surrounded by friends, but here, it’s only the four family members, trapped in their fortress. We see Natalie watching a true-crime influencer’s video shot just outside their front door before she joins the rest.
As Tom prepares their meal, he glances nervously over his shoulder, toward the pool where he nearly died; Zack sits in eerie silence while his parents force bonhomie, joking about keeping the secret of how good his cheeseburgers are. After Tom refers to Anna as a “psychopath” for ordering her burger without cheese, lettuce, or bun, she declares, “Guilty” — and the verbal reminder of just what they’ve suffered through, and how similar they may be to the guilty psychopath they defeated, overcomes Anna’s defenses. She looks over her shoulder, her face beginning to twist in agony and fear, as the film suddenly shifts to a bright-red filter: End of series, though not of Anna’s psychological journey.
Nick Antosca created this version of “Cape Fear” — the third onscreen adaptation of John D. MacDonald’s novel “The Executioners,” following big-screen takes in 1962 and 1991 — and co-wrote the finale. He spoke to Variety via Zoom about that shocking final sequence, the revelation of Max’s innocence and what lies ahead for all the Bowdens, including the daughter who may very well be the product of Anna and Max’s years-ago coupling when they were lawyer and client.
I was genuinely struck by the final scene of the series, in which the family is speaking in a sort of coded language that they understand implicitly — and we see just how haunted Anna is. Will the family always be haunted, do you think?
The Bowden family will always be haunted by Max Cady and the memory of what happened during this story. The 1991 movie has always struck me in terms of its ending narration, where Juliette’s [Lewis’ character] goes, “And then we never spoke of it again,” basically. You’re just like, Yeah, but I bet you thought about it — still thinking about it today. I wanted our version of that energy. That moment when Tom looks over his shoulder — there’s no sound in the mix motivating that. They’re just going to be looking; they’re going to be hearing things.
Lily Collias in ‘Cape Fear.’ (Apple TV)
Before Natalie joins the family, she’s fiddling with an envelope from a DNA-testing service that she hasn’t opened yet. One wonders, will she ever open it?
One does wonder that. She’s also — very intentionally, it’s barely seen, there’s no close-up of it — wearing an ankle bracelet, too. They’re all going to be dealing with the aftermath of stuff that’s gone on, and they’re probably going to have to sell that house, because I don’t know that they’re going to be allowed to practice law in Georgia in the immediate future. I always imagined that coda — that they would be trying to recreate the first scene, where they’re by their pool and having a barbecue, and things are safe and good.
The fact that the series ends with Natalie’s parentage still unresolved feels like a real conversation-starter. Do you have in your mind an answer to the question of who Natalie’s father is?
Yes, I do.
And you wrote with that in mind.
Yes.
As a viewer I could go either way!
I’m glad.
It’s interesting that the finale takes place in the Bowden family home, as opposed to, as in the films, on the boat. In a way, Cady’s intrusion into the home feels even more charged.
A lot of people asked as we were getting the last scripts in, or even before, “Is the climax of the show going to be a fight on the storm in the houseboat?” I always felt that we needed to go to the houseboat. But it felt like the conclusion of this version of the Bowden story belonged in the domestic space, so we were to bring the storm to them, and put the trial in their own home. That’s what it felt like it needed to be — and that fight in the pool should feel elemental and primal. We’re in the middle of a hurricane, but it’s their home.
Amy Adams in ‘Cape Fear.’ (Apple TV)
The violence is really gnarly in the final confrontation. I think of myself as pretty strong-stomached, and I really couldn’t watch the scene where Max convinces a drugged Zack to almost bite his own tongue off.
That was one of many shots where we spent a lot of time in the editing room being like, “How many frames of this should we show? How much is too much?” That and the head-smash within the prison in Episode 2. One of the more fun experiences I’ve had in the editing room was being in the edit on that with Martin Scorsese on FaceTime with me, going over it, saying, “Yeah, roll the cut a couple frames, right before the head starts to explode.” Just calibrating, you know, to the exact frame, like how we were going to smash that skinhead’s head.
I’m curious about the decision to have the Bowden family spare Max’s life. It’s a departure from the 1991 version.
In the 1962 version, he lets him live. We were deciding between those two potential endings. In that moment, the Bowdens are clinging to a last shred of social order and moral order that they believe themselves to be part of. They don’t want to kill a man in front of their children. You could argue that, of all the terrible decisions the Bowdens make throughout this season of television, not killing Max is one of the worst decisions that they could make.
From a sheerly pragmatic point of view, they will, of course, always wonder if he’s found his way out of prison and is just around the corner!
He’s almost certainly going to prison for a long, long time; he has done a lot of verifiably bad stuff. But if somebody else made the show and I’m watching it, I’m going, “Kill him! Please!”
Amy Adams and Patrick Wilson in ‘Cape Fear.’ (Apple TV)
The previous versions depicted a Max who maybe should not have been found guilty of their crimes due to mitigating circumstances, but were not literally innocent. This Max, we realize, simply did not do the crime for which he was convicted. It flips the story on its head.
So he was wrongly convicted of this murder, but he was a really bad guy in general, and prison narrowed and sharpened that darkness within him. It’s all directed right toward the people he blames. It’s interesting that you talk about the evolution of previous Maxes. In the book, he’s not even the client. He’s just a guy Sam saw committing a crime and testified against him — that’s it. Once you get to the ‘91 version, he was his actual client. That was [screenwriter] Wesley Strick’s innovation, which I think is really brilliant. Each innovation takes the moral complexity to a different level.
Early in the episode, Anna provokes Max into choking her in public by declaring that he killed his wife and showing compromising videos of his communications with a past mistress. He’s giving a press conference, and she says just the right things to enrage him. It felt in that moment as if she had an intuitive sense of what buttons to push to get him to drop the facade of control. Can you talk about odd bond and mutual understanding they share?
They had a bond, to some degree, in the past, and she’s had to hold herself back for most of the series. Once all is lost for her — at the end of Episode 8, where all of her family is scattered to the winds and locked away, and she’s started drinking again, there is a kind of freedom in that. She goes on her adventure in Episode 9, she gets the information, and then she’s able to use that as ammunition at the beginning of Episode 10. It’s because she has nothing to lose anymore, so she’s able to let loose and press all of his buttons. Before that, she still has the veneer of civility holding her back.
Having known my share of attorneys, I also recognized in her a desire to use logic and reason to puzzle her way out of Max stalking her. It seemed to me she triumphed when she started playing according to Max’s own terms.
The Bowdens are frustrating for a while, because they want to believe that they’ve got it under control. But I think it’s the case that — like, in your own life, you don’t want to believe things are as bad as they are. Would you move right away? Would you uproot your family and get out? I don’t think you would do that instantly. It’s hard to make big moves in life, sometimes, until it’s too late.
Moving is really hard!
At the beginning of Episode 3, there’s a scene where random people come into their backyard, and Tom just goes out to talk to them. When we were writing that episode, we were thinking “What are the things that make it feel like your space is permeable? Like you’re under threat?” Around that time, I was at my house, and I walked out into my backyard, and there were some people there. It was just like the show, although I don’t have a castle in Georgia. I was like, “What are you doing here?” and we had this crazy conversation.
Later, when the police came, they were like, “Why did you just go up and talk to people who were in your yard hanging out? When that happens, call the police.” But I don’t know. You don’t necessarily think about your own life in the way you would if you were watching characters on TV. You don’t take action that way sometimes until you’re like, Oh, yeah, I guess that really was a threat.
I think among the most powerful elements of the series is that the Bowdens are slow to take action in part because they think of themselves as fundamentally good, despite some lapses in the past. Max thrusting his perspective at them forces them to consider how different they really are from Max — that’s very potent.
There’s an energy of collective guilt and “No, no, I’m a good person” that feels like part of the culture of modern-day America. That came by osmosis into the show.
Do you think the Bowdens are bad people?
I think they’re complicated people. They’re very flawed people.
When “The Devil’s Mouth” director Jeff Wadlow met the cast of his bloody shark movie, he made one thing clear.
“‘Listen, this is going to be the most physically demanding job you’ve ever had. Not just because of the stunt work and all the underwater work, but the fact that when you have a simple dialogue scene, you’re going to be treading water,’” Wadlow recalls telling Kathryn Newton, Lana Condor and the rest of the ensemble.
Written by Aja Gabel and Myung Joh Wesner, “The Devil’s Mouth” was named to the Black List back in 2019. Newton and Condor lead the cast as Sara and Max, two best friends whose friendship is tested after they get trapped in a freshwater cave — along with the rest of their college buddies, played by Gavin Casalegno and Tommi Rose — while taking a trip to Thailand.
Of course, things get complicated when a bull shark enters the scene. In order to prep for the intensive shoot, the actors spent two weeks treading water, doing breath holds and training with real kayaks. Besides one stunt where Newton’s character had to hop off a 35-foot cliff into a shallow pool of water, all the actors were game to do their own stunts — safely, of course.
“All the rock climbing, diving, underwater work, breath holds, getting dragged around on winches, that was all them,” Wadlow says.
Known for helming lower-budget horror films for Blumhouse like “Imaginary,” “Fantasy Island” and “Truth or Dare,” Wadlow was first approached about directing the film during a meeting in which he was laser-focused on pitching his dream “G.I. Joe” trilogy.
He had some hesitations when, instead, the words “shark movie” were mentioned.
“I said, ‘I really don’t want to just do a shark movie unless there’s something new,’” Wadlow recalls. Then when he heard about the one-location aspect of the film, his creative juices began flowing, and he did a rewrite on the script.
“Now we’re talking about an intersection between the shark movie genre and the claustrophobic horror movie,” he says. “I was blown away by how good it was because the character dynamics were complex and interesting. There’s a really nuanced investigation of female friendship.”
Below, Wadlow breaks down casting Newton and Condor against usual type, how his team built 13 sets on two soundstages to pull off the illusion of an endless cave in Thailand, and why “The Devil’s Mouth” is “the hardest movie” he’s made to date.
Talking about casting this friend group, what made Kathryn and Lana perfect for this central dynamic?
What’s funny about casting this film is both Kathryn and Lana thought they should be playing the other part. And you can kind of see it! Having made the movie, I only see Kathryn as Sara, and I only see Lana as Max. But on the page, the characters were sort of similar to characters that they had played before. I ultimately think that made the movie so much more interesting because it forced Kathryn to stretch and grow and define a quieter character to play. She normally plays really out-there dynamic characters, and Sara’s got an internal journey; Lana usually plays like the good girl, this was a chance for her to play someone with a little more bite. They both really rose to the challenge and did it together. They became best friends while we were making the movie. We shot this whole thing in Thailand. Thailand is so far away from America that if you leave from the East Coast, you go through the Middle East, and if you leave from the West Coast, you go through Japan. It’s literally on the opposite side of the planet, and so there were no long weekends going home. Once we were there, we were all there, and it was a Thai movie. There were about less than a dozen Westerners working on it.
How did you go about finding the cave? What were the biggest logistical challenges to filming inside?
It’s the hardest movie I’ve ever had to make. I mean, in 85% of the movie, the characters are swimming in water. Movie cameras in water do not get along, as we all know! And just like casting this movie, I had this crazy curveball at the last minute where it was written for Mexico and we were going to shoot in the Dominican Republic. I was 10 days away from leaving and the studio calls me up and says, “Hey, some sound stages and a crew just became available in Bangkok. Can you shoot Thailand for Mexico?” And I was like, “Well, that’s bonkers. What are you guys talking about? That would be so challenging and I don’t really see the point.” And on top of that, I’m allergic to peanuts! I can’t go and spend six months in Thailand, I will probably die. I’m being serious, I go into anaphylactic shock, and they’re like, “We’ll get you a second assistant whose only job will be to feed you, make you dinner reservations, keep you alive and get your driver, in addition to your U.S. assistant!”
I started thinking about the soccer team that got lost in the flooded cave system in Thailand, and how that was in our collective consciousness at the time in the zeitgeist. And I started doing some more research on freshwater cave systems in Thailand, and it started to feel a little bit more dangerous — a little bit more off the beaten path, a little bit more exotic, and I thought that would increase the credibility of what transpired. If it was just a system that tourists went to all the time in Mexico, for them to have gotten into this kind of trouble seemed a little less plausible. It also seemed like help would be there a lot sooner. But suddenly, you start setting it in a remote part of Thailand, it just feels further, more out the realm of these characters’ normal worlds.
How did you approach filming the caves and meet the challenge of this one location?
I wanted there to be this increasing sense of claustrophobia, so I started really wide and big. I wanted to make the trip look awesome and fun, and the location seem beautiful and appealing. I didn’t want the audience to ever go like, “Why are these people on this trip? This seems like a bad idea.” I wanted it to be obvious why they’re on the trip. It’s an amazing place to visit. Then I wanted to go into real caves that were mysterious and beautiful and not foreboding at all. I wanted the audience on the adventure, so I found real freshwater caves where rescue divers train. And then once they go around the corner, I went on a soundstage because shooting this movie in a real cave would be impossible. Forget just the lighting — the stunt work and safety issues would be massive. So once they’re in the cave system, we’re on a soundstage. We built a 120-foot long, 70-foot wide cave set and flooded it with five feet of water. We had one other set that was like 60-by-70 feet that had 15 feet of water. Between those two sets, I shot every cave. So we had 13 sets on two stages.
It was just about turning them over and being really creative. Alec Hammond, my production designer, is just a mad scientist. We figured out how to shoot every square foot of every rock and make it look like it’s a different cave just by using lighting tricks and key set-pieces that we would turn or rotate. It was really difficult. There are multiple scenes where they swim off the set and they just swim back onto the same set.
What were some of the biggest considerations for filming and lighting the underwater sequences?
The lighting was really challenging because you want it to feel dark, but it can’t be darkness, right? We wanted to use the headlamps to motivate light, but you couldn’t really use them because if you tilted them down or got them anywhere near the lens, the lens would just flare out. We did a lot of experimentation with the headlamps. James Kniest, my director of photography, is also very good at his job. We ended up building these custom headlamps where we can control the luminance. But also we could angle them. And we would often yell from monitor like, “Hey, Lana, two clicks up!” And the cast knew that meant tilt it up, two clicks. And if you really study the movie, most of the time their headlamps are not pointed anywhere useful. But you see the light glowing, and in your mind it kind of motivates a general fill — that allowed us to come in with movie lights and get an exposure. I do think it works. I mean, if you study it, it falls apart pretty quickly.
Ultimately, it was a digital system. It was much more about all the stuff that went around the cameras — the underwater housing, the HydroFlex, all those systems that we were using. That was another massive challenge with this film because I couldn’t use a dolly, couldn’t use a steadicam. I couldn’t even do handheld shots because when the camera is in water, even at water level, it has to be in the HydroFlex underwater housing. That weighs 120 pounds alone. You’re not doing a handheld shot, you got to use buoyancy to keep it up. I basically had to learn an entirely new cinematic language. I couldn’t use long lenses.
I brought in Pete McCaffrey, who’s this legendary New Zealand camera operator, and he was just on the technocrane all day everyday. That was the only way I could really get the camera in and do some more traditional moves. But even those are impossible because you can’t drop marks in the water! How do the actors know where to go?
In addition to getting to work with the local crew, what were some of the biggest benefits of filming in Thailand?
As far as the actual economic incentives, the cost of living is much lower over there. We got a lot more bang for our buck. At a certain point, the cost of living can price a movie out of an area. If you’re having to pay a certain wage so people can live in that area, the studios only want to invest a certain amount of money in a movie. You can’t just physically make the movie there. And so sometimes, I thought a little bit about, “Alright, well we’re paying less than we would elsewhere. How do I feel about that?” And it was explained to me that this was a film industry hungry for projects. These were outstanding wages given the cost of living in that area and they were thrilled to have the work. So that’s how I wrapped my head around it.
I really embraced Thailand as a character in the film and tried to make it feel like we couldn’t have shot the movie anywhere else. It wasn’t just about economic incentives or labor costs or equipment costs.
The industry is really excited right now about the success of films like “Obsession” and “Backrooms” from younger directors. What do you make of these conversations happening in horror spaces?
I mean, it’s just hard. It’s always going to be hard to get movies made. It’s not like Disney made “Obsession,” or Netflix made “Backrooms.” It’s not like major studios are embracing this kind of filmmaking. These are filmmakers that fought like hell to get their movies made, and I’m so happy that they’re enjoying this kind of success. I don’t think it’s going to make it any easier, though, to make movies. It might make it a little bit easier for Curry Barker to make his movie, obviously. But that’s the exception. That’s not the rule. I don’t think you’re going to see major studios chasing down young filmmakers who have had success with a couple YouTube shorts to make wide releases. Maybe I’m cynical, but I just don’t see that happening. I think it’s still going to be hard. It’s almost always going to be hard, and it’s hard for a reason because it tests you, and for that reason, only people who can really do it are able to keep doing it.
“The Devil’s Mouth” is now streaming on Prime Video.
Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” and Italy have special ties that are generating rich returns.
The Greek epic was partly shot on the island of Favignana off the west coast of Sicily — which stood in for Ithaca, home to Penelope, her son Telemachus and its legendary, long-lost king Odysseus. The largest of the three Egadi Islands, Favignana is where Nolan and set designer Ruth De Jong found Ithaca’s perfect palace: the 15th century Castello di Santa Caterina, perched atop Monte Santa Caterina, a tall, craggy hill with a stunning view of the countryside and the Mediterranean Sea.
“It was just the most epic landscape, where you could see the water everywhere you were and the ships [used for filming] could pull up,” De Jong says in the film’s press notes.
View of Castello di Santa Caterina from below Monte Santa Caterina.
LightRocket via Getty Images
It’s also where De Jong and her team built the secluded pig farm and humble hut inhabited by the loyal swineherd Eumaeus (played by John Leguizamo), where Odysseus first goes when he finally comes home, disguised as a beggar to plot against Penelope’s suitors. Nolan also shot in the coves and beaches surrounding Favignana’s coastline and in the nearby tiny islet of Preveto.
After “The Odyssey” trailer dropped in May — two months before the epic hit theaters — Favignana started being heavily promoted and targeted as a tourist destination, including in Airbnb ads offering accommodations well-positioned “to explore the locations that inspired the film’s atmosphere,” as one listing puts it.
A photo from an Airbnb listing in Favignana.
Courtesy Noesis
“I’m expecting a significant increase in international tourism, especially from the U.S.,” Sicilia Film Commission chief Nicola Tarantino tells Variety, noting that this also happened recently with HBO’s “The White Lotus” Season 2, shot in 2022 in the Sicilian resort town of Taormina.
But the “Nolan effect,” as it’s being dubbed by the Italian press, is expected to have a much greater impact.
While, according to estimates cited by newspaper La Repubblica, “White Lotus” has so far resulted in a €138 million ($158 million) tourism revenue windfall for Taormina, “The Odyssey” could generate more than twice that amount in Favignana. There, tourists inspired by the blockbuster are now expected to bring in a roughly $287 million haul over the next three years, according to initial estimates, and more than $500 million in the long run.
Incidentally, Dua Lipa and Callum Turner’s June wedding in Palermo, which went viral worldwide, generated an immediate economic return of $17 million for the Sicilian capital and an estimated roughly $300 million in total revenue stemming from visibility and valuation of the Palermo brand, according to tourism consultancy JFC.
According to scholars, Sicily was a location for Odysseus’ wanderings in the epic composed by Homer around 8th century BCE. And the fact that Nolan chose to shoot in “authentic locations that, in and of themselves, told the story, is hugely important,” Tarantino underlined.
The Sicily Film Commission chief added: “We are very proud that Sicily is a real protagonist of this film,” pointing out that “through Nolan’s vision, these locations are entering the imagination of millions of spectators around the world, giving new value to a unique landscape and cultural heritage.”
Speaking of cultural heritage, an unusually high portion of “The Odyssey” spectators are Italian.
Italy currently ranks as the fourth top grossing territory in the world for “The Odyssey,” having scored a $35.6 million intake in Italian cinemas to date, according to figures from NBCUniversal. That box office result is preceded only by France ($37.9 million), U.K./Ireland ($56 million) and U.S./Canada ($334 million).
“It’s an extraordinary film that is part of our life and our culture, even though we may not realize it. It’s been part of the canon that we grew up with,” Massimo Proietti, general manager, Italy, for Universal Pictures International, told the “Cineguru” podcast.
Now, “The Odyssey” is also turning into a driver for the Italian economy.
Created by Daniel Fajemisin-Duncan and Marlon Smith and executive produced by Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, “Fightland,” is a stimulating crime drama that puts audiences directly in the boxing arena. Set in London, “Fightland” follows Maduka “Duke” Kilroy (Howard Charles), a disgraced former Heavyweight Champion who returns to his hometown seeking vengeance on the man who destroyed his life. Dynamic, bloody and engrossing, the show is an engaging account of revenge, fractured family dynamics and unbridled ego.
“Fightland” opens in Las Vegas, eight years ago. Duke is flying high in the final rounds of the match that will make him the heavyweight champion of the world. His brother Calvin (Jurell Carter) and best friend Jay (Tyler Conti) are his cornermen, helping him navigate the ring. Seated front row in the audience are Duke’s promoter Kingsley Marshall (a thrilling Nicholas Pinnock), owner of Marshall Promotions, and his children, Ezekiel “Zeke” Marshall (Charles Babalola) and Cebella “Cece” Marshall (Anita-Joy Uwajeh), who aid their father in his boxing and criminal enterprises. What begins as one of the greatest nights in Duke’s life ends in devastating, violent chaos, shattering everything he worked so hard to attain.
Nearly a decade later, viewers meet Duke again. Hardened and withdrawn, he is not the shining star he once was. Newly released from prison, he returns home to the U.K. determined to take Kingsley down. But when Duke touches down in London, Kingsley is nowhere to be found. Neither his children nor his wife, Joy (Deborah Ayorinde), know where he’s vanished to, or why. Kingsley’s absence doesn’t stop Duke from infiltrating the Marshalls’ business ventures, determined to dismantle everything they hold near and dear and force Kingsley to resurface.
The eight-episode season (critics received six episodes for review) moves swiftly, almost at a dizzying pace. Though “Fightland” is a totally different story, those familiar with Starz’s “Power” Universe will see similarities in the expansive narrative and characters woven in and around this world. Fajemisin-Duncan, Smith and Jackson have mastered the ability to keep audiences engaged. There are gun battles and knife fights (this is the U.K., after all), yet no character goes to waste. A character may initially appear inconsequential, but they often turn out to be integral to the overall plot. As a result, even though the show leans into the gimmicky aspects of the crime genre, stunning reveals and cliffhangers keep viewers drawn in across the episodes.
This is a revenge tale at its core. Yet, “Fightland” thrives because of its characters. Duke is in the driver’s seat, but the show pulses to a new level when the camera is trained on either Cebella or Kingsley. Cool and calculated to a fault, in direct contrast to her hot-headed brother Zeke, Uwajeh brings a mesmerizing, lethal ferocity to Cebella. And she is no one-dimensional figure. As the show continues, it becomes clear there is much more to this woman than her cut-throat decision-making. Pinnock’s Kingsley is also towering. He is absent for nearly half of the season, which creates a void. Still, when he is on screen, he exudes an ominous viciousness, elevating the series beyond the run-of-the-mill tale of a conniving kingpin.
“Fightland” as a whole is certainly entertaining, but Episode 6, “There Is a War Coming,” is a standout. Stuffed full of jaw-dropping revelations, thrilling twists and some sinister chess moves, the episode pulls every loose string from earlier moments in the series together. The result is a sensational tapestry of transgressions and secrets that Duke doesn’t see coming. Pinnock, in particular, is at his best here, showcasing a diabolical cruelty and terrifying manipulation, elevating the story and the show to a different level.
There is no shortage of crime dramas on television networks and streaming platforms. However, in offering viewers a distinct backdrop — Black Londoners with boxing at the core — “Fightland” proves family dynamics, criminality and retribution have endless depths to explore. Though the show isn’t exactly breaking new ground, it succeeds because it’s willing to put a new spin on the genre while offering a crop of new villains and anti-heroes their chance to shine.
“Fightland” debuts July 31 on Starz, with the remaining episodes airing weekly on Fridays.
