Latest news with #EleanorTheGreat
Yahoo
29-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Scarlett Johansson felt typecast as a sex symbol
Scarlett Johansson felt typecast as a sex symbol during her younger years. The 40-year-old actress is one of the biggest names in Hollywood, but Scarlett felt she was only valued for her "desirability" during her early days in the movie business. Speaking to The Sunday Times newspaper, Scarlett explained: "When I was younger, a lot of the roles I was offered, or I went for, had their ambitions or character arcs revolving around their own desirability, or the male gaze, or a male-centred story." Scarlett has overcome the issue by rejecting "unfulfilling" roles and patiently waiting for the right opportunities to come her way. The actress - who has Rose, ten, with Romain Dauriac, and Cosmo, three, with husband Colin Jost - said: "I just waited. "I had to become comfortable with the idea that it could take some time. Which is hard when you're a young actor, but at that time I didn't have any children." Scarlett recently made her directorial debut with Eleanor the Great, the drama movie that starred June Squibb. The actress subsequently revealed that she found directing to be a "really rewarding" experience. She told Extra: "I have a different perspective on just the process of, you know, pre-production and then what goes on after we all leave. I think, as an actor, you're hoping that the director sees kind of what you were doing and follows, you know, pulls the right thread and all of that stuff, but you don't know. "You have no, kind of, control over it and now, you know, having experienced the other side of it, it just gives you, I think, an interesting insight into how people, other directors make their choices and the process that they go through to, you know, make it all happen. "It's a lot of work, but it can be really rewarding." Scarlett premiered the movie at the Cannes Film Festival, and she relished walking the red carpet with the film's stars. She said: "Just being able to stand alongside Erin Kellyman and June Squibb after the film premiered and feel the warmth of the audience and the love from the audience for the film and for the incredible performances in it, it was such a moving moment."
Yahoo
14-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Scarlett Johansson Details Depths of Her ‘Jurassic Park' Fandom, From Pitching Herself to Steven Spielberg to Organizing Screening for Avengers Cast
Scarlett Johansson loves Jurassic Park so much that she had no issue pitching herself to franchise guru Steven Spielberg when she got word that a new installment was in the works. But she did have a dilemma: Play it cool or go full fangirl? 'I had a meeting with him and I don't actually know if he knew the depths of my Jurassic fandom, but I'm hoping that no one explained it to him too thoroughly because it maybe would've come off as being a little too much,' Johansson explained to The Hollywood Reporter during a recent interview about her Cannes Film Festival selection Eleanor the Great. 'Although knowing Steven now, he was excited when I shared with how much it would mean to me to play any part in Jurassic. I could've played it cooler and maybe I wouldn't have gotten it.' More from The Hollywood Reporter 'Music by John Williams' Doc Director on How Spielberg Convinced the Legendary Composer to Do the Film Scarlett Johansson's 'Eleanor the Great' Draws Cheers, Tears at Cannes Premiere 'Eleanor the Great' Review: June Squibb Steadies Scarlett Johansson's Wobbly Directorial Debut Got it she did, and audiences will soon have the chance to see the fangirl-turned-franchise star when Universal Pictures' Jurassic World Rebirth hits theaters on July 2. The entry marks a new era in the Jurassic Park universe and finds Johansson starring opposite a cast that includes Jonathan Bailey, Mahershala Ali, Rupert Friend, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Luna Blaise, David Iacono, Audrina Miranda, Philippine Velge, Bechir Sylvain and Ed Skrein. Directed by Gareth Edwards from a script by David Koepp, Jurassic World Rebirth picks up five years after the events of Jurassic World Dominion at a time when the planet's ecology has proven largely inhospitable to dinosaurs. Those remaining exist in isolated equatorial environments with climates resembling the one in which they once thrived. The three most colossal creatures across land, sea and air within that tropical biosphere hold, in their DNA, the key to a drug that will bring miraculous life-saving benefits to humankind. Johansson stars as Zora Bennett, a covert operations expert who is contracted to lead a skilled team on a top-secret mission to secure the genetic material. When Zora's operation intersects with a civilian family whose boating expedition was capsized by marauding aquatic dinos, they all find themselves stranded on a forbidden island that had once housed an undisclosed research facility for Jurassic Park. 'Unbelievable' is how Johansson describes the fact that she's in the new installment. 'I've been trying to get into a Jurassic movie for, I don't know, 15 years or something,' she continued. 'I was so stoked that it all came together.' Like most things in Hollywood, it all came down to timing. 'When I first heard that there was a new Jurassic movie coming, that it was written with a female lead who was the age that I could fit into, and that it was happening during a time period that I could shoot, it was particularly surreal,' Johansson said. 'I was actually in the middle of making Eleanor — we were filming it at the time — so there was a lot happening at the time. I had to compartmentalize my nervous excitement for the job in front of me while also focusing on making it work. I would have these really geeked out, fangirl moments and then be, like, 'OK, put that away for a second.'' Johansson's fandom dates back to the release of the original Jurassic Park in the summer of 1993. She was only 8 years old at the time, and on the verge of making her big screen debut in North. 'It was such a formative moviegoing experience for me. It was like nothing any of us had seen before. The effects were extraordinary. It was the perfect mix of CGI, puppetry, an incredible score, a mix of drama with some comedy, it was gory but not too gory, it was scary but not too scary. The kids were great in it. It hit every part of what makes a movie great in a theater, and it felt like everyone was having such a collective experience. It was so thrilling and has stayed with me forever. Those kinds of movies are rare, and I'm here for them. I'm here to be carried away, entertained and thrilled.' She's become such an obsessed fan that when the first Jurassic World film came out in 2015, she happened to be on a job with her Marvel Cinematic Universe colleagues so she organized a group outing. 'I love to go to these movies with total abandon, grab a huge bucket of popcorn and some Raisinets and just disappear into the film. I'm such a fan,' she said. 'When the new Jurassic World came out, we were in New Mexico filming one of the Avengers films, and I set up this weekend outing. We took a big group and ate chicken fingers and nachos and yelled at the screen. I was so pumped that there was a new generation of Jurassic. Now that I get to be in one, it's just crazy.' And she learned a lesson along the way: 'It taught me that if you are enthusiastic about a project, it is actually good to share your enthusiasm. You don't have to dumb it down or play it cool.'Best of The Hollywood Reporter 13 of Tom Cruise's Most Jaw-Dropping Stunts Hollywood Stars Who Are One Award Away From an EGOT 'The Goonies' Cast, Then and Now
Yahoo
14-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Former Black Widow star Scarlett Johansson might not have any plans to play her MCU role again, but she thinks it "would be fun" to direct a Marvel movie
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Yelena (Florence Pugh) can whistle as hard as she likes, but Scarlett Johansson has made it clear that she has no plans on putting the iconic Black Widow wristbands back on and reprising her role in the MCU. After her character sacrificed herself to save the universe in Avengers: Endgame, her little sister has now taken over as the new ex-assassin wanting to go straight, and has been allowed to do so just recently by becoming one of the New Avengers in Thunderbolts. That doesn't mean that Johansson is ruling out returning to the MCU in a different capacity, though, with the former Avenger revealing she'd consider directing a future film in the franchise, instead. While attending Cannes with her recent directorial effort, Eleanor the Great, Johannson spoke about the possibility of popping back to the MCU with Deadline, after parting ways with it in 2021 with Black Widow, which gave her character a fond farewell. 'I think the movies that I like that are big action movies that also have the human connectivity piece," she explained. "Even producing Black Widow and being a part of the production of that, and the development of the story, and the story between Natasha and Yelena… [there is] I think, a way of doing it, a way of maintaining the integrity of the idea of human connection, family, disappointment, all of the things that were themes in [Eleanor the Great], and doing it in a giant way in a giant universe — there's ways of doing that… So, yeah, definitely, it could be, it would be fun.' Her new film still has ties to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (although it's hard for any film not to nowadays). Former Flag-Smasher Erin Kellyman stars alongside June Squibb in this heartfelt story of a remarkable friendship. Squibb plays the titular Eleanor, who moves to New York and befriends a 19-year-old student (Kellyman). The film also stars Chiwetel Ejiofor and Jessica Hecht. While there's no release date just yet for a pivotal moment in the actor and now director's career, you can check out 50 other cool Scarlett Johansson moments here.
Yahoo
29-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Steven Spielberg's Shark Hits 50: Steven Soderbergh On Why ‘Jaws' Is The Most Disruptive Film Of Our Lives & Why Spielberg Is The GOAT
On its 50th anniversary, Steven Spielberg's Jaws can claim to be the most disruptive film of the last half-century, maybe even ever. While predecessors like The Godfather and The Exorcist drew theater lines around the block through word-of-mouth, Jaws was the one for which the term summer blockbuster was coined. Opening on a then-unheard-of 409 screens, the film caught the zeitgeist in an unprecedented manner, helped by marketing techniques that would center escapism as a staple of the summer movie season. Spielberg's film followed hard on the heels of Peter Benchley's bestselling 1974 novel, with screenwriter Carl Gottlieb throwing out the book's myriad subplots to focus on New England police chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) and the team he assembles to stop a great white shark that is terrorizing Amity Island: intellectual oceanographer Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) and salty, no-nonsense shark hunter Quint (Robert Shaw). More from Deadline Scarlett Johansson On Why The Script For Her Directorial Debut 'Eleanor The Great' Made Her Cry: 'It's About Forgiveness' – Cannes Cover Story Dakota Johnson Talks Romantic Experiments In Cannes Comedy 'Splitsville', Upcoming 'Materialists' And 'Juicy' Colleen Hoover Adaptation 'Verity' How Independent Animation Underdogs Like 'Flow' And 'Memoir Of A Snail' Are Disrupting The Awards Race: There's "Never Been A Better Time" In Spielberg's hands, Jaws was a lot more than a terrifying great white shark; the characters of Quint, Hooper and Brody are indelible, their grudging camaraderie bolstered by the film's centerpiece: the chilling tale of the USS Indianapolis. Devised by script doctor Howard Sackler and punched up in a later draft by John Milius (with some finessing from Shaw himself), Quint's gruesome monologue explained the fisherman's hatred for sharks, having been on board the ill-fated ship when it went down in shark-infested waters in July 1945 ('The ocean turns red, and despite all your poundin' and your hollerin' those sharks come in and they rip you to pieces'). An early admirer of the film was 12-year-old Steven Soderbergh, who came out of the screening with two questions: 'What does 'directed by' mean? And who is Steven Spielberg?' Spielberg's giant shark hooked Soderbergh not only enough to fuel his own disruptive filmmaking career, but also to start work on a long-gestating book that reconstructs each day of shooting what must have seemed like an impossible task: making a movie on open water with a mechanical shark that just would not work. (Amblin is producing Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story, to premiere on National Geographic this summer.) RELATED: 'Bono: Stories Of Surrender': On Irish Fathers & Sons, Processing Family Tragedy & How A Need To Be Heard Propelled A Dublin Kid To Become One Of The World's Biggest Rock Stars Here, Soderbergh reflects on his enduring admiration for the film. DEADLINE:Jaws Jaws STEVEN SODERBERGH: Overwhelmed, on a lot of levels. It was probably the moviest movie I'd ever seen at that point, this incredibly combustible combination of super-high concept and bravura filmmaking. But the thing that I think separates it from most movies before or since is the character work. And the clear understanding on the part of Spielberg of what Stanley Kubrick used to call the non-submersible units of narrative. When you look at how the narrative of the movie is built, what each scene or sequence is accomplishing, it's just a model of movie storytelling, combined with what was, at the time, unprecedented hype and expectation. And then, that expectation is not only met, it's exceeded, and he makes an instant classic, which nobody was anticipating. RELATED: Brazilian Comeback: How The Cannes 2025 Country Of Honor Is Following The Success Of 'I'm Still Here' It was already, at that point, a sort of legendarily difficult production. And until the first preview in Dallas, nobody knew what was going to happen. But you've got these forces that are smashing into each other — cultural and artistic forces — that result in this kind of nuclear detonation of popularity. But also, you've got a singular, multi-generational talent emerging with this film that everybody in the world is going to see. There was just so much fissionable material there to generate an explosion, and that's what happened. But what makes it unique even in retrospect is this: Let's say you look at the five movies nominated for [the Oscar] Best Picture that year: Barry Lyndon, Dog Day Afternoon, Jaws, Nashville and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. All of them are great. I would argue, though, that of the other four films that aren't Jaws, there are other filmmakers that could have made versions of those movies. They may not have been as good or distinctive, but they are possible to be made by other filmmakers. But there was no other director on the planet who could have survived and made Jaws. None of those other four directors could have made Jaws. Whereas I think Spielberg could have made a variation of any of those other films. It was just a totally unique property and a totally unique talent blowing up, and that's why I think it still resonates, and it just keeps getting better because it's all in camera. RELATED: DEADLINE: SODERBERGH: There's no C.G. They were out there in the middle of a f*cking ocean. There's a reason people don't do that. There is no technological advance that has happened since that would make it any easier to do what they were doing. That shark was just a pneumatic mechanical device, in the actual ocean. There's no shortcut to that, and nobody's been able to come up with an easier, better way to do it, which is why people have stopped doing it. DEADLINE: What was the most calamitous thing that those choices brought? SODERBERGH: Going through the production reports, there's a period of a few weeks where the shark's not working. And it's not working to an extent that they're beginning to confront the real possibility that what they're attempting to do just physically cannot be done. It's a testament to the studio, the producers and Spielberg, that they continued to shoot, and continued to believe that essentially, they would figure it out. But when they first got the thing in the water and tried to make it work, they were looking at the real possibility that they'd made a mistake. DEADLINE: SODERBERGH: From what I've read, it was obvious very early on, they would have to take the basic premise of the book, and those three characters, and just start over. It makes sense that in the course of talking about this story, somebody would say, 'Hey, why does Quint hate sharks so much?' And that they should try to answer that. My understanding, which could be wrong, is that Howard Sackler was the one who came up with the idea of him telling that story. RELATED: DEADLINE: SODERBERGH: As is well-documented, it went through many, many iterations. But the audacity of stopping the movie — for nine minutes — to have that scene! It starts out as a very funny scene and then morphs into something much darker. It is just still amazing to contemplate today. Can you imagine, in the middle of a Star Wars movie, a nine-minute dialogue scene? It's unthinkable. And so, again, the fact that Spielberg understood this. He's like, 'We've got to do it, and this is the time to do it. The night of day one when you need a breather — we're going to give you that breather, but then we're going to slip this other thing in there too, something that's going to make Quint an unforgettable character, through a story that is also unforgettable and true.' So, just the fact that, under enormous pressure, everybody continued to do their best work and to make the best version of that movie is, to me, a real clinic for a young filmmaker about the kinds of obstacles that you encounter. If you're going to make a movie, this is the most extreme example, but as a portrayal of the idea, 'never panic and never give up,' it's pretty hard to beat. DEADLINE: The ExorcistThe GodfatherJaws SODERBERGH: You have to attribute that to Universal, recognizing they had a rocket in their pocket and tripling down, quadrupling down, on this wide-release strategy. If it's not this movie by this filmmaker, it doesn't work. It just doesn't work. You can't just do it with any film. It was the beneficiary of a lot of different elements coming together in this one circumstance, and the studio saying, 'We should really weaponize this movie, because there's 100% awareness and 100% want to see. And the guy made a masterpiece. So, we throw everything at it.' That was the right call. Of course, when it works, everybody goes, 'OK, let's do that too.' The problem is, you've got to have a movie like Jaws to pull it off. RELATED: DEADLINE: Psycho SODERBERGH: Well, to your point, it's a huge idea. It's a really big hook, and everybody who came into contact with the novel knew it. It's a testament to how big the idea is that the novel was as big as it was, because it's not a great novel. It's just got this massive hook in it that keeps you reading. Those are rare, those high-concept horror movies that are applicable to experiences that you have in everyday life. Psycho was one of them. This is another, and whether they all have to involve water, I don't know. But it's the equivalent of finding a horror movie that makes people afraid to step off the curb, or something that they do multiple times a day and now they will never do without some amount of anxiety. Those are really hard to come by — and, believe me, there are lots of writers sitting around trying to come up with them. DEADLINE: JawsOrca Star WarsJaws SODERBERGH: The component that needs to be present for these two to become something other than single-use plastic is great storytelling. And so, two years later, Star Wars meets both those metrics and that's why it blew up in the same way Jaws did. But we're talking about a period of time when it was still conceivable that the most popular films of the year were also the best films of the year. And I don't know that that's been true for some time. DEADLINE: Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T. SODERBERGH: He's a singular talent who was going to emerge one way or another. He was unstoppable. A born filmmaker, and everybody that interacted with him knew it. The weird thing is, despite being the most successful director in history, I still think he's taken for granted. He has generated so much astonishing material, and some doesn't get its due because he's prolific and unpretentious in the way that he works and the things that he makes and the way that he talks about his work. There are things that he's done that if any other filmmaker had made them, these would be their career best. But he's done it so often that he gets taken for granted. I mean, there's no filmmaker that I'm aware of that can wrap their head around what he did on Ready Player One [2018]. You get any group of directors together, and they're like, 'I don't even understand how that's possible, what he did in that film.' And that's just one of two films he made back-to-back [after 2017's The Post]. Anybody else after any one of these things he'd done would be on bed rest for three years. DEADLINE: Jurassic ParkSchindler's List SODERBERGH: That's ridiculous. Either one of those would put another filmmaker in the hospital. So, for his facility and, like I said, his lack of pretension, I just still think he's taken for granted, strangely. Best of Deadline Every 'The Voice' Winner Since Season 1, Including 9 Team Blake Champions Everything We Know About 'Jurassic World: Rebirth' So Far 'Nine Perfect Strangers' Season 2 Release Schedule: When Do New Episodes Come Out?
Yahoo
29-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Scarlett Johansson Coordinates Her Orange Smoky Eye to Her Strapless Gown
"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." Some people go through life never knowing what color they look their best in—but not Scarlett Johansson. The actor looked positively radiant in head-to-toe orange as she attended the New York City premiere of The Phoenician Scheme at Jazz at Lincoln Center last. Her ensemble consisted of an elegant, strapless gown in a blood-orange hue. The piece was ruched at the neckline and featured a draping details that wrapped around her waist and cascaded down one side. ScarJo styled the dress with black square-toe sandals, small gold hoop earrings, and a striking open-ended gold necklace with large teardrop diamonds at each end. For her glam, Johansson chose a summery orange smoky eye that perfectly coordinated with her citrus-tone dress. Her blonde hair was down in easy waves. In The Phoenician Scheme, 'wealthy businessman Zsa-zsa Korda appoints his only daughter, a nun, as sole heir to his estate. As Korda embarks on a new enterprise, they soon become the target of scheming tycoons, foreign terrorists, and determined assassins,' per IMDb. Bill Murray, Tom Hanks, and Michael Cera are also in the Wes Anderson movie. The comedy-drama had its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this month. Johansson attended the glamorous festival alongside husband (and Saturday Night Live cast member) Colin Jost. She also promoted another project while there: her film Eleanor The Great, which she directed. ScarJo walked the Cannes red carpet for her directorial debut in a cool Prada skirt suit. You Might Also Like 4 Investment-Worthy Skincare Finds From Sephora The 17 Best Retinol Creams Worth Adding to Your Skin Care Routine
