Latest news with #FiftyShades'
India Today
07-07-2025
- Entertainment
- India Today
Dakota Johnson on directing her first feature film: It's really close to my heart
Actor Dakota Johnson, renowned for her roles in films like the 'Fifty Shades' series, recently shared her plans to direct her first feature film. The announcement was made at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, where she expressed her interest in directing a project close to her 35-year-old said, "I think I will direct a feature, a very small one, hopefully soon. And it's really close to my heart and very close to 'TeaTime'. We're making it with Vanessa Burghardt, who played my daughter in 'Cha Cha Real Smooth'. She's an incredible autistic actor," Johnson shared. As per a Hollywood Reporter report, the script of the film is by admitted that she always felt unprepared to direct a feature. However, her connection with Burghardt inspired her to take on this new challenge. "I've always felt that I'm not ready to direct a feature. I don't have the confidence. But with her, I feel very protective, and I know her very well, and I just won't let anybody else do it," she 'Materialists' actor also discussed her approach to projects under her production banner. She emphasised a preference for works that are "either visually or emotionally provocative"."Usually, it's something that is either visually or emotionally provocative. And I don't mean that in a sexual way. I mean it in the sense that it provokes something that is different from what you see on TV right now or on streaming platforms. A lot of them are also female characters. So it's female-centric films where the woman is different from what you see, and complex and nuanced, and maybe an anti-hero that you love," she previously dabbled in directing, with credits including Coldplay's music video 'Cry Cry Cry' and the short film 'Loser Baby'.On the film front, she was recently seen in 'Materialists', which released on June 13. She featured alongside Chris Evans and Pedro Pascal in the story. Her performance in the film received positive feedback, further solidifying her standing in the industry.- EndsMust Watch
Mint
06-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Mint
Dakota Johnson to make directorial debut with feature film starring Vanessa Burghardt, calls it deeply personal
Actor and producer Dakota Johnson has revealed new details about her feature directorial debut, calling the project 'very close to her heart.' Speaking with Variety at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, Johnson shared that the film will be a collaboration with her 'Cha Cha Real Smooth' co-star Vanessa Burghardt, whom she described as 'an incredible autistic actress.' Johnson admitted that stepping behind the camera for the first time was not a decision she took lightly. 'I've always felt that I'm not ready to direct a feature,' she said. 'I don't have the confidence, but, with her, I feel very protective and I know her very well. I can see this world, so I just won't let anybody else do it. That's the real answer.' Her passion for the project is deeply tied to her creative relationship with Burghardt, highlighting Johnson's growing focus on authenticity, representation, and collaborative storytelling. Beyond her directorial ambitions, Johnson also reflected on the importance of fostering healthy working environments in the film industry. When asked what makes a film set 'toxic,' the 'Fifty Shades' actor pointed to a lack of kindness and collaboration. 'I don't want to face anybody who's mean or condescending or unkind,' she said. 'And then there are obvious things. We all know what a toxic set is by now. We're artists, so there's room for expansive personalities, and we're working with emotions. I love a healthy argument on a set, and I also believe that the most excellent idea wins. It's not a fight. It's not a race. It's a collaboration.' Johnson, who has increasingly taken on production responsibilities in recent years, said she has become more empowered to shape her own projects. 'I think now, just being in the position of being a producer and developing my own films, I can choose all the people who are in it, and that makes a huge difference,' she added. As anticipation grows around her directorial debut, Johnson's emphasis on inclusion, emotional intelligence, and creative partnership signals a strong and thoughtful approach to her next chapter as a filmmaker.
Los Angeles Times
12-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
‘Materialists' is a smart and funny all-star love triangle with its own commitment issues
Dakota Johnson is my favorite seductress, a femme fatale of a flavor that didn't exist until she invented it. A third-generation celebrity, she toys with interviewers who come on too strongly (especially about the 'Fifty Shades' movies, her trilogy of BSDM blockbusters), coyly enticing them to trip over their own tongues. Onscreen, she excels at playing skeptics who are privately amused by the shenanigans of attaching yourself to another person. She shrugs to conquer. Which makes Johnson the perfect avatar for a time when it's hard to commit or keep swiping right. 'Materialists,' Celine Song's follow-up to her Oscar-nominated debut 'Past Lives,' casts Johnson perfectly as an advertisement for taking the romance out of love. When her Lucy gets checked out on the street, she hands the guy a card introducing herself as a professional Manhattan matchmaker. She can peg a person's height at a glance and sum up their prospects in a pitiless snap judgment. Hearing that a friend of a friend is getting serious with a nude webcam model, she says coolly: 'He's a 5-foot-7 depressed novelist who's never been published — he couldn't do better.' Lucy likens her job to being a mortician or life insurance broker. She can reduce someone to a few simple stats: height, weight, education, parentage and bank balance. And you should hear the terrible things she says about herself. 'If anything, I have a negative dowry,' Lucy admits, insisting that she has zero intention to wed herself unless the groom is very rich. But she's also a marriage-minded mercenary who can pitch one potential client on soppy platitudes about till death do you part, and immediately pivot to assuring a bride that it's just a business deal. We're infatuated with this minx. So are two suitors from opposite sides of the tracks: Harry (Pedro Pascal), a private equity Prince Charming, and John (Chris Evans), a cash-strapped actor and cater-waiter whom Lucy already dumped for being poor. The way Song phrases their breakup is insightful: Hating his poverty makes Lucy hate herself. Meanwhile, when Harry invites Lucy up for a nightcap, she kisses him with her eyes open so she can appraise his $12-million loft. Will Lucy choose either man or neither? Once again, Song uses a love triangle plot to explore her ideas about self-actualization. 'Past Lives,' her lightly autobiographical breakthrough, tasked a writer to choose between her South Korean childhood beau and her hapless and less successful American husband — that is, to decide whether to keep chasing youthful dreams or settle for adult reality. I liked chunks of the film, but it rankled me that she framed the spouse as such a consolation-prize loser to make her heroine come off as sacrificial. Let her be selfish; it's more interesting. Here, Lucy is weighing comfort versus struggle. For good measure, Song has also saddled Evans with the worst haircut and scruff of his career. But tilt 'Materialists' at an angle and it's the same film as 'Past Lives,' only bolder and funnier. Really, Song wants to know whether a sensible girl can justify shackling herself to a broke creative. Song doesn't merely fold money into the mix. She's made it so intrinsic to her plot, for so many believable reasons, that it's also the icing and the cherry on the wedding cake. The script lets Lucy say and do all the crass things that usually belong to the rom-com villainess — the shallow snob who is supposed to lose out to a sweeter heroine — telling Harry that her favorite thing about him is how confidentially he picks up the check. (I gasped to see her walk out of a bar, tactlessly ordering him to cover the tab.) Nearly every line in the film's ferociously hilarious first hour is like Jane Austen reborn as a shock jock, until Song runs out of material and starts repeating herself. Love should be simple, 'Materialists' believes. It opens (and closes) with an ideal couple: two cave people who pledge their commitment with a fistful of daisies. Unknown millennia later, you'll spot dried daisies on Lucy's dresser, along with more exotic blossoms and puffs and powders that show how overly elaborate courtship has become. Those primitive sweethearts couldn't imagine the need for a shepherd to steer every step of their relationship. What are they, troglodytes? Well, Lucy's 21st century clients are. The requirements they foist on her are superficial and soul-crushing (and the bit players who deliver them are hilarious). New York City, with its high concentration of Wall Street finance bros, is a perfect setting to caricature people who score their dates on a spreadsheet. No wonder Lucy eventually snaps and spits out a venomous monologue straight to the camera. (The cinematographer Shabier Kirchner knows when to hold still and when to sashay around a room.) Even Lucy's favorite customer, Sophie (Zoe Winters), isn't that noble. Upon learning her last match isn't interested, she hisses, 'He's balding!' Lucy tries to mark up her clients' value to each other, next selling Sophie on a strapping 5-foot-11 bachelor while leaving out that her personal assessment of him is that he's charmless and boring. She maintains that opposites don't attract. Harry counters that she might be comparing the wrong data points. Yes, she's poor and he's rich, but they're both hustlers — one way he flirts is telling Lucy he sees potential in her intangibles. It's impossible not to be won over by the way Pascal gives Lucy a tiny smile as he kisses her knuckles. For balance, there's also a scene where Lucy and John stand so close to each other without touching that their chemistry is suffocating. A friend recently gave me a book of the first-ever newspaper advice columns from the 1690s. One questioner asked, 'Are most marriages in this age made for money?' The response was curt: 'Both in this age and in all others.' Fair enough, but in our age, it's refreshing to hear someone admit it. Which makes it a shame when Song feels compelled to slap on a happy ending that you simply don't think she believes. Two films into her career, she still writes scenes better than full scripts. For the sake of one great moment, she'll ask us to forget all the other ones it obliterates. Here, she literally follows up an argument about the impossibility of finding parking in Manhattan by cutting to a shot of the same people in the same car magically pulling up to a spot in front of Lucy's apartment. That's a silly example, but a more pointed one would give away the plot. The final stretch is so absurd that I turned into a jilted lover who kept score of every minor sin to vindicate why the film had broken my trust. I even got ticked off at the clothes Lucy packs for a trip to Iceland. Maybe on her third film, Song will tell us what she really thinks for the full running time. I respect how she writes women who fear that their hearts run too cold to ever feel truly fulfilled. As Pascal's Harry might say, her blunt and brutal parts have a special appeal. Exiting the film, I had the same surge of feeling I did after 'Past Lives.' I wanted to drag Song straight to a couple's therapist and say: I want to commit, but she cheats.
Yahoo
10-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Dakota Johnson and Pedro Pascal Absolutely Lose It Over Her Surprising ‘Fifty Shades of Grey' Injury
'Materialists' stars Pedro Pascal and Dakota Johnson have been delivering one charming interview after the next in the lead up to their new romance film's debut. Naturally, Vogue had the bright idea to let the pair interview each other, and the result is about as enjoyable and entertaining as you'd expect, especially when they got to talking about on-set injuries. The duo is all laughs throughout the chat, but the hysterics truly broke out when Johnson asked the question 'Have you ever had any accidents while filming?' 'Yes, I have. I've gotten hurt for real,' Pascal answered, leading Johnson to share her own story: 'I got whiplash from 'Fifty Shades,'' the actress replied through giggles, leading them both to absolutely lose it, dissolving into a fit of silent laughter, while Pascal got up from his chair to take a beat and compose himself. If you're wondering how Johnson sustained such an injury, it was from being thrown down on the bed a few too many times. For the unfamiliar, the steamy 'Fifty Shades' series starred Johnson as Anastasia Steele, a college student who falls for the handsome, ultra-rich Christian Grey (played by Jamie Dornan) — who also has some particular proclivities he introduces her to in his Red Room of Pain. But the pain got a little too real for Johnson. 'Jamie (Dornan) was throwing me on a bed,' she told Yahoo Movies UK about the incident back in 2015. 'We did 17 takes so my head just snapped back all day and when I woke up I couldn't move my neck. Which was really terrible.' At least the injury led to some hysterics among friends, 10 years later. 'That's my favorite thing,' Pascal replied to her behind-the-scenes tale, red-faced from cracking up. 'It's all meaningless after that.' Check out the full interview in the video above, or skip right to the 'Fifty Shades' crack up around the 7-minute mark. The post Dakota Johnson and Pedro Pascal Absolutely Lose It Over Her Surprising 'Fifty Shades of Grey' Injury appeared first on TheWrap.
Yahoo
04-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Dakota Johnson and director Celine Song rethink the rom-com with 'Materialists'
The new film 'Materialists' is something of a bargain: essentially two films in one. It's very much a sparkling romantic comedy in which a young woman finds herself torn between a wealthy man who can offer her a life of comfort and ease versus another much poorer man who nonetheless understands the deepest, truest parts of her inner self. It is also filled with long, thoughtful conversations on the very nature of why love and relationships matter so much, the parts they play in people's lives and effects on an individual's sense of identity. The movie is both a thing and spends a lot of time considering the nature of that very thing, almost an essay about itself. And it does so with a stylish, romantic sophistication and ease. Written and directed by playwright turned filmmaker Celine Song, "Materialists" is the follow-up to the wistfully melancholic 'Past Lives,' her 2023 feature debut that was nominated for best picture and original screenplay Oscars. The new film is in conversation with classic rom-coms by the likes of Nora Ephron, James L. Brooks and Billy Wilder, while also grappling with of-the-moment concerns such as ambition and achievement. 'We're not just showing up here to be in love and beautiful and get to be in a rom-com," says Song. "We're also going to take this opportunity to talk about something. Because that's the power of the genre. Our favorite rom-coms are the ones where we get to start a conversation about something.' Read more: The 18 summer movies we're most excited about Song, 36, is sipping tea at a sunny corner table in the restaurant of a West Hollywood hotel along alongside the film's star, Dakota Johnson. In the film Johnson plays Lucy, who works as a professional matchmaker in New York City, helping affluent clients fulfill their impossible criteria of looks, physique, occupation, education, income, background, lifestyle and anything else that might impact a prospective partner's value in the marketplace of eligible singles. When Lucy meets Harry (Pedro Pascal), a tall, handsome and very wealthy private equity manager, she initially tries to wrangle him as a possible match for any of the many female clients who would want him. But he plans to pursue Lucy instead across a series of impressively expensive dinners. Meanwhile, Lucy has also reconnected with John (Chris Evans), a former boyfriend who is still a struggling actor making ends meet as a cater waiter years after they broke up. Lucy finds herself torn between the cynicism and mathematical practicality her job has hardened in her and a yearning romanticism she wishes she could be open to. Depending on how one finds the erotic absurdities of the young-woman-in-the-big-city storylines of the 'Fifty Shades' films that rocketed her to stardom, Johnson has rarely done a conventional rom-com (there's only 2016's 'How to Be Single'). Which is not to say she hasn't been offered such vehicles. She's just declined to be in them. 'They're not good,' Johnson, 35, says, chuckling lightly at her own bluntness. 'Sorry.' 'I think a lot of what I read these days is void of soul and heart," she continues. "And Celine is all soul and heart. I really love a rom-com if it feels like I can connect to the people in it. And I think I've found it hard to connect to the people in some of the ones that I've been offered.' What made 'Materialists' feel different for her? 'The complexities of all of the characters," Johnson answers. "The paradox. Everyone being confused about what the f— they're supposed to do with their hearts. And what's the right move? I found that very honest and I found it just so relatable." Johnson, who is in a relationship with musician Chris Martin, continues, "For a long time we've all been so quick to judge relationships or how they should happen, how they should exist in the world. When people should get married. Divorce is bad. All these things that actually, if you think about it, why is divorce bad? Why do people have to get married or at a certain age or only once? Why? It doesn't matter.' First thoughts for the project began around 10 years ago, when Song worked for a professional matchmaking service for about six months. It's very much a client-facing job, and she found the interactions she had with people to be bracing in their candor and vulnerability, as well as the ways in which the work demanded management of people's feelings of desirability or lovability — as well as rejection or worthlessness. 'To a matchmaker, everybody's very honest about what they're looking for," says Song, herself married to "Challengers" and "Queer" screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes. "Even at that time, I always thought, I just know I'm going to write something about it.' Ever since the film's first trailer dropped, people online have commented on an unusual drink order placed by Lucy. More specifically, a drink that is placed in front of her before she really even has a chance to order it, by someone who already knows that her preferred beverage was once, indeed, Coke and beer, with space left in a glass to pour the two together. 'To me what was important is that this was a drink that is so strange that you can't guess,' explains Song. 'And that only somebody who knows you very well, who knew you in college, who knew you when you were really just at your heart your pure self, [knows] your drink order. So all I did was I Googled 'weird drinks.'' Though the drink is apparently popular in Germany, as for how it actually tastes, Johnson notes, 'It's just very effervescent and kind of gross. Not for me.' Song and Johnson have formed an apparent bond in the time spent working together. (They met during a period when the attention around 'Past Lives' meant that Song could get general meetings, not even for a specific project, with many top stars.) They both mention how by the time they were shooting, Song could often communicate ideas to Johnson with just a look or a gesture rather than an involved explanation. "She'd come in and be like, 'Um ...' and I'd be like, 'Yes,'" says Johnson. Johnson in particular has the unbothered savvy of someone who has spent their entire life in some proximity to the spotlight (her parents are actors Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson) and has now been steadily working since appearing in "The Social Network" in 2010. In conversation, Johnson and Song share a casual, relaxed energy between them. Yet at the mere mention of "Madame Web," the 2024 Marvel adaptation starring Johnson that was a box-office bomb and subject of intense media scrutiny, Johnson's eyes narrow and her posture tightens. 'Go on,' Johnson says with a feigned seriousness. Will Johnson now stick to indie films at the scale of 'Materialists' or the projects produced by her company TeaTime Pictures, such as 2023's 'Daddio' or the upcoming 'Splitsville,' which recently premiered at the Cannes Film Festival? 'It wasn't my fault,' Johnson says, laughing slightly while maintaining her focus. 'There's this thing that happens now where a lot of creative decisions are made by committee. Or made by people who don't have a creative bone in their body. And it's really hard to make art that way. Or to make something entertaining that way. And I think unfortunately with 'Madame Web,' it started out as something and turned into something else. And I was just sort of along for the ride at that point. But that happens. Bigger-budget movies fail all the time. 'I don't have a Band-Aid over it,' she adds. 'There's no part of me that's like, 'Oh, I'll never do that again' to anything. I've done even tiny movies that didn't do well. Who cares?' Having now been an active producer on a number of projects — including one to be directed by 93-year-old comedy legend Elaine May that Johnson says she hopes could be shooting in the fall — has made it different for her when, on a film like 'Materialists,' she is an actor only. 'I think that sometimes I'm like, 'Oh, I know how to fix it,' or I know what to do, I want to help,' says Johnson. 'And there's some things where I have to just not say things. Sometimes I love just showing up, especially on our movie, it was just so much fun for me to only be acting. Because I was in so much of it, I felt like I was in such good hands, I could just relax into that role.' The film uses a fable-like framing story about two prehistoric cave dwellers who may very well be the first married couple. (They also pop up for sharp-eyed viewers in another scene as well.) 'To me, the whole movie is in those pieces,' says Song. 'Because all of what we are living through is also going to be ancient too. We know that certain stone tools were passed over to the other, but we do not know about the flowers that were exchanged. Because there are some things like sentiment and feeling and love that are intangible and ephemeral. There's a very real and tangible and material record of stone tools and things being traded. But what passed between them in their heart is not. It's not on record.' Leaping forward in time to depict contemporary worries and desires, 'Materialists' attempts to capture the specifics of a cultural moment, calculating cost-benefit analysis against a perceived ticking clock while also often dodging abusive predators. 'In present time, the dating world because of social media is so different — everything is aspirational," says Johnson. 'You want to live the life that all these other people have on your phone, thinking that that's what you're supposed to be doing. It looks good, but it's not authentic because it's manufactured, it's filtered, it's ridiculous. So everything that a woman or a man is looking for in a partner, when they get to a certain age, whenever that is, it's all material things. It's height, it's income, it's hair, body, physique. It's things that have nothing to do with a soul connection.' Unafraid to grapple with tough conversations and moments of internal crisis, "Materialists" exudes a chic glamour as it interrogates the tough choices, motivations and consequences of modern romance. At one point in the film, Lucy and Harry go to see John perform in a way-off-Broadway production of Song's play 'Tom & Eliza.' (Song's name appears onscreen on a poster.) At drinks after, John says something dismissive about Lucy's work as a matchmaker and she sarcastically retorts that it's just 'girl s—.' This line was Song's own purposeful rebuke of the dismissive attitudes toward writing about love. 'I so often experience a general sentiment that love as a topic of conversation and study is dismissable as unserious, unimportant, 'lighter fare,' 'girl s—,'' writes Song in a follow-up email. 'People call romantic films 'chick flicks' as a way to diminish them, which I find unspeakably sad, not just for the way it excludes 'chicks' from the realm of 'serious people,' but also for the way it excludes 'serious people' from the realm of romance and love. 'That line of Lucy's is intended to be a sharp reproach of that dismissal,' adds Song. 'I believe that love is the greatest mystery in everyone's lives, and therefore it is one of the most important themes in cinema. Love is the one drama we all experience, and it deserves the utmost respect.' Sign up for Indie Focus, a weekly newsletter about movies and what's going on in the wild world of cinema. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
