Tag: HollywoodReporter

Don Iwerks, the Disney legend who spearheaded various camera and projection systems for the company’s parks and films, has died. He was 96.

Disney announced Iwerks died Thursday evening.

“It is with great sadness that we report that Disney Legend Don Iwerks has passed away at the age of 96,” reads a statement shared on Disney D23’s Instagram. “Iwerks was an innovator whose work brought The Walt Disney Company to new technological heights, aiding in perfecting the sodium vapor process used in 1964’s Academy Award®-winning Mary Poppins, developing the 360-degree Circle-Vision camera used to film America the Beautiful for Disney Parks, and implementing the projection system for the fan-favorite Star Tours attraction, among numerous other advancements. The achievements of Don Iwerks and his family have shaped Disney’s creative ethos and will forever be part of the company’s history.”

Born on July 24, 1929, Iwerks was the son of fellow Disney Legend Ub Iwerks, co-creator of Mickey Mouse (alongside Walt Disney himself). Iwerks began at Walt Disney Productions in 1950, when he was a special photographic processes laboratory technician. He was drafted into the Korean War but upon his return two years later returned to Disney.

Iwerks took on his role as a camera technician position in 1953, when he worked on his first feature 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. He went on to lead the machine shop department, camera service department and technical engineering and manufacturing division.

The executive is particularly known for developing the 360-degree Circle-Vision camera; alongside Ub, he also helped develop the sodium vapor process.

After 35 years with Disney, he founded Iwerks Entertainment Inc. in 1986. The company was acquired by SimEx Inc. in 2001.

In 1997, Iwerks received the Gordon E. Sawyer Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Board of Governors, then named a Disney legend in 2009.

“Don embodied that rare combination of heart, ingenuity and passion that has always defined Disney,” Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro said in a statement. “Through his innovative contributions to some of our most iconic films and attractions, he helped create experiences that have delighted generations of fans around the world. All of us at The Walt Disney Company will miss him deeply, and we send our most heartfelt condolences to his family, whose enduring connection to Disney has helped shape its legacy for over a century.”

Barbara Ling, the production designer who turned back time and won an Oscar for re-creating 1969 Los Angeles for Quentin Tarantino’s acclaimed Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, has died. She was 73.

Ling died Thursday in Santa Barbara after a battle with cancer, a spokesperson for WME announced.

A Los Angeles native, Ling also tooled around her hometown for the present-day, Michael Douglas-starring Falling Down (1993), then reteamed with director Joel Schumacher to set up the fictional Gotham City for Batman Forever (1995) and Batman & Robin (1997).

In a career that spanned more than four decades, Ling served as the production designer on two 1991 classics, Oliver Stone’s The Doors and Jon Avnet’s Fried Green Tomatoes, on which she also was an associate producer.

She also teamed with director Scott Hicks on Hearts in Atlantis (2001), No Reservations (2007), The Lucky One (2012) and Fallen (2016).

Most recently, she worked on Marc Forster’s A Man Called Otto (2022), starring Tom Hanks, and on the blockbuster biopic Michael (2026), directed by Antoine Fuqua.

On Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019), Ling shared the Oscar for best production design with set decorator Nancy Haigh; the two had worked together once before, on the 1988 film Checking Out.

Tarantino’s “main thing from the moment we sat down was, ‘I want this to be real. I want to see. I want to smell and I feel that Hollywood. I don’t want to do green screen over here or have the digital interpretation. Let’s really change the billboards, and let’s put the real facades back on,’” Ling said in a 2019 interview.

“That is, to me, very exciting. It’s something we don’t do much of anymore. I knew that what he wanted was to encompass himself and the actors into an environment that you could feel is real. You’re not just staring at something that’s a piece of green screen where we piece together later. That was the starting ground of this.

“I had to go out and figure out where I could attach real things to. It was quite an engineering feat to do, particularly on Hollywood Boulevard, to say, ‘I want the Pussycat Theater back.’ To build those marquees, it’s added weight. These are old and fragile buildings that we were working with. We had to also work with engineers to make sure we weren’t going to pull the facade off once we rebuilt the old signs. It was laborious but well worth it.

“The night of the first shoot when all the neon lit up and the period cars came out and [Arianne Phillips’] costumes were out there, you absolutely believed you were in 1969 because everything was real. It was a movie filming a real street. We pretty much carried that theme through Westwood [to re-create the Bruin Theater] and everywhere we shot.”

After winning her Oscar, Ling lamented to reporters backstage that “L.A. is not a preservation city, never has been. Now there’s been a nonstop movement of apartment building and glass towers. … What we did will be impossible to do next year. It’s unfortunate. We hope this will bring some nostalgia back and stop things from being torn down.”

Born in August 1952, Barbara Claire Ling began her career designing sets and lighting for more than 200 theater, opera and musical productions. Among her early efforts was the 1981 HBO special The Pee-Wee Herman Show, taped at the Roxy in West Hollywood.

She made the leap to filmmaking when David Byrne enlisted her to design his directorial debut, True Stories (1986).

Her credits also included Heaven (1987), Less Than Zero (1987), V.I. Warshawski (1991), With Honors (1994) and Sydney Pollack’s Random Hearts (1999), among the films that demonstrated she was equally comfortable with period authenticity, contemporary realism and stylized fantasy.

Survivors include her wife, Lindsay, and their sons, Clay and Will. 

Christopher Nolan is the latest major filmmaker to praise the breakout horror hits Obsession and Backrooms.

In a new interview with The Telegraph promoting his upcoming epic The Odyssey, Nolan reflected on the lengths he went to in order to make the film feel authentic, including traveling the world and assembling a “cast of thousands.”

“I think cinema is vital and essential and continues to transform itself,” the Oscar winner said. “We’ve got all these great new young voices in movies, making the medium their own and moving it forward.”

The article states that Nolan pointed to Curry Barker and Kane Parsons — the filmmakers behind Obsession and Backrooms — as evidence that “things are on the right track.” Both horror films have made history at the box office.

Barker’s Obsession, released May 15, has grossed more than $400 million globally on a $750,000 budget. The film became the highest-grossing festival acquisition of all time after premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival and is now Focus Features’ highest-grossing release ever.

Meanwhile, Parsons’ Backrooms has surpassed $350 million globally and is A24’s highest-grossing film in a number of countries. Parsons, 21, also became the youngest director to top the domestic box office.

“This is why I never bought into the arguments that young audiences’ attention spans are too fried to enjoy a three-hour Greek epic,” Nolan said. “Those films are so mysterious and ruminative. I mean, parts of Backrooms are like David Lynch at his most obscure. And yet young people can’t get enough of them.”

The Oppenheimer director continued: “I’ve never seen a more rapid wholesale dismissal of a supposedly foundational jump in technology in my lifetime. So much energy has been expended on bringing in AI, but if you look at that generation’s reaction, they’re utterly rejecting it.”

Nolan also cited his children, who are in their late teens and early 20s, as examples.

“Their judgment of AI slop has been immediate and harsh. They see it for what it is very quickly — and it’s much easier for them to identify it, because it grew out of an online world they know really well,” he explained. “While that doesn’t mean that every aspect of the technology is useless or meaningless, in filmmaking it’s hitting at exactly the wrong time. After years of driving towards heavily virtual environments, we’re seeing a renewed interest in more tactile, more real forms of storytelling.”

That sentiment was echoed when The Hollywood Reporter spoke with Gen Z moviegoers about the rise of younger filmmakers like Barker and Parsons.

“Audiences in general, but especially audiences my age, are getting so overwhelmed by all of the CGI movies — the Marvel epidemic. It really deterred a lot of people from wanting to go and see these big-budget movies,” one moviegoer said.

Nolan isn’t the only legendary filmmaker championing the next generation of talent. Steven Spielberg also recently praised Obsession, saying he “loved” the film and applauded Barker for making it on a budget of less than $1 million. 

As far as Nolan’s next film, The Odyssey tells the story of Odysseus’ long, torturous trip back to Ithaca after the Trojan War to save his wife Penelope and son Telemachus. Its star-studded cast includes Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Tom Holland, Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Jon Bernthal, Travis Scott, Elliot Page, Lupita Nyong’o and more.

Check out all of The Hollywood Reporter‘s Obsession coverage here and Backrooms coverage here.

Peter Van Norden, the actor who appeared in the Police Academy and Naked Gun films, has died. He was 75.

Van Norden’s son, Robert, announced that his father died on Thursday.

“Peter passed away peacefully last night with his wife, Wendy, at his side,” Robert wrote in an Instagram post. “He was a terrific father, husband, friend, and a greatly respected member of the theater community. He will be missed.”

Born Dec. 16, 1950, Van Norden earned his first acting credit in the late 1970s in the comedy Squeeze Play. He went on to appear in numerous film projects, including the 1985 Police Academy follow-up, entitled Their First Assignment. There, Van Norden portrayed policeman Vinnie Schtulman, the first partner of Steve Guttenberg’s Carey Mahoney.

Another sequel, he acted in the second Naked Gun movie in 1991, where he took on the role of John Sununu, President George H. W. Bush’s former White House chief of staff.

On the small screen, he has acted in Three’s A Crowd (1985); an episode of Silver Spoons; a 1991 episode of Matlock; L.A. Law (1990-1992); The Stand; Murder, She Wrote (1989-1996); two 2004 episodes of Days of Our Lives; and 9-1-1 (2019).

Van Norden’s film credits include The Accused; An Innocent Man; Love Hurts; Hunky Dory; and West Virginia, among others.

Outside film and TV, Van Norden had an extensive stage career, appearing in various Broadway, off-Broadway and regional productions. His Broadway stints included features in St. Joan, Macbeth, Little Johnny Jones, Romeo and Juliet and The Inspector General. He performed his final stage role last year in Corktown ’39 at Los Angeles’ Matrix Theatre.

Van Norden was also part of The Rehearsal Room actors workshop, which “help[s] actors and artists grow their careers through challenging material.” Last August, he partook in breaking down Shakespeare’s Richard III.

He is survived by his wife, Wendy, and their son, Robert.