Movies
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The Hunger Games films are no stranger to haunting musical moments that produce real-life hits, with six singles from four movies hitting the Billboard Hot 100 — including top 20 hits for Taylor Swift and even Jennifer Lawrence. When the prequel The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes hits theaters on Nov. 17, a batch of new songs will take center stage thanks to Rachel Zegler, who delivers a nuanced portrayal of a nomadic balladeer thrown into a dystopian fight to the death.
Almost two years after winning a Golden Globe for Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story remake, Zegler is preparing to show audiences she can deliver gritty country-folk just as deftly as Broadway classics. To ensure the music of the film convincingly conjured her character’s Appalachia-esque milieu, Lionsgate tapped Nashville mainstay Dave Cobb to put melodies to lyrics penned by franchise author Suzanne Collins. Cobb, a nine-time Grammy Award winner, is primarily known for working with country artists including Brandi Carlile and Chris Stapleton. But he has produced music for major films along the way such as A Star Is Born and Elvis — and his latest Hollywood project presented a new challenge.
What about this opportunity made you say yes?
One of the things that was so attractive about working on this film [is that] I don’t think I’ve ever talked to a more intelligent person in my life than Suzanne Collins. She’s an absolute genius. Suzanne telling me the impetus of the story had me captivated. I’m a history buff — I would teach history if I wasn’t in music — and everything in this film, everything she has written for Hunger Games, is derived from real history. She sent me the lyrics, and I had to make them feel like turn-of-the-century, timeless classics. That’s a very hard thing to do.
The songs have a lived-in rawness to them. How did you achieve that?
The big thing for me was to get the ability to be completely unorthodox. We had this crazy idea to come down to my hometown of Savannah, Ga., and rent an old mansion and record in that. So we went to this 200-plus-year-old house, and the sound is very Alan Lomax. Lomax, whom I’m very influenced by, used to go around and capture people on their front porch. It was the real, genuine, authentic article of whatever he was [recording], so we went for that. With all the creaks in the walls, you can hear the history in the recording — it wasn’t like a clinical studio. The old microphones we used looked like they’d been under a bed for 75 years.
Dave Cobb
Becky Fluke
And what about the band?
I brought in ringers who I thought were great musicians. Molly Tuttle played a big part — she played the guitar of [Zegler’s character] Lucy Gray. I found this ’30s Gibson that I brought down, and she played on that. I showed it to [director] Francis [Lawrence], and he used it in the film: It’s the one she’s actually playing in the film. It wasn’t just a regular acoustic guitar — it has character. That was a big part of making this come to life. There’s bleed between the bass going into the fiddle going into the banjo. It’s just absolute chaos in a way that makes things dangerous.
Did you work closely with Zegler, coaching her on how to approach the material?
I made the music before the film was made, and Rachel is such an incredible talent that she ended up singing everything live, which we were hoping she would do. She’s so naturally gifted — it was effortless for her. She can sing anything.
Do you have a favorite musical moment in the film?
There’s a song on [the soundtrack] I love called “Pure As the Driven Snow.” Rachel has this beautiful, almost ’30s American voice. The way she sings the last line of that song is so stunning.
This story originally appeared in the Oct. 7, 2023, issue of Billboard.
In a preview of an upcoming primetime special, Jada Pinkett Smith reveals that she and husband Will Smith have been separated since 2016 after the couple became “exhausted with trying” to keep their marriage together. The interview with Hoda Kotb, “Jada’s Story — An NBC News Special” will air on Friday (Oct. 13) at 8 p.m ET on NBC.
Pinkett Smith is doing press to promote her upcoming memoir, Worthy (out Oct. 17), in which she describes the couple’s split for the first time, writing that they have been living “completely separate lives” for more than seven years. Jada told Kotb that it was not a divorce “on paper,” but it was definitely a divorce in their minds, even as the couple continued to present a united public front.
The actress how said she considers herself a “straight talker,” told Kotb that the couple were just “not ready yet” to share their secret. “Still trying to figure out between the two of us how to be in partnership,” she said in an excerpt of the interview released by NBC. “In regards to how do we present that to people? We hadn’t figured that out.”
Walking through her Baltimore home town, Pinkett Smith said the relationship broke down for a lot of reasons. “I think by the time we got to 2016, we were just exhausted with trying,” she said. “I think we were both kind of just still stuck in our fantasy of what we thought the other person should be.” Though Pinkett Smith said she considered a legal divorce, she could never go through with it because she made a promise that there would never be a reason for the couple to split.
“‘We will work through whatever,’” she told herself. “And I just haven’t been able to break that promise.”
Jada and Will were married in 1997, with son Jaden born a year later, followed by daughter Willow in 2000. Pinkett Smith said they are still living apart and at present do not plan on getting divorced.
The couple has been dogged by rumors for years, including a persistent one that they were in an “open marriage,” a topic Pinkett Smith addressed in 2013 during a HuffPo Live event when she said, “I’ve always told Will, ‘You can do whatever you want as long as you can look at yourself in the mirror and be okay.’ Because at the end of the day, Will is his own man. I’m here as his partner, but he is his own man. He has to decide who he wants to be and that’s not for me to do for him. Or vice versa.”
After backlash, Pinkett Smith responded in a Facebook post in which she said, “Will and I BOTH can do WHATEVER we want, because we TRUST each other to do so. This does NOT mean we have an open relationship… this means we have a GROWN one.” Those persistent rumors popped up again in 2020 when Pinkett Smith, 52, invited singer and family friend August Alsina on to her “Red Table Talk” show to discuss what she dubbed as a romantic “entanglement” that occurred while she and Smith were briefly separated.
The shocking revelation of the Smith’s separation has added heft in light of her Oscar-winning estranged husband storming the stage at the 2022 Oscars and violently smacking Chris Rock across the face after the comedian made a joke about Pinkett Smith’s bald hairstyle; the actress suffers from alopecia, an autoimmune disease that causes hair loss.
Smith famously yelled “keep my wife’s name out your f–in’ mouth!” during an incident that got the star banned from all Academy events for 10 years after he collected a best actor Oscar later in the night for his work in King Richard.
In a People magazine interview promoting the book, Pinkett Smith said she hasn’t talked to Rock since the March 27, 2022 incident. “[Do I have] any desire to talk to Chris? Here’s my desire: I just hope that all the misunderstanding around this can be cleared up and that there can be peace,” she told the magazine.
“I talk about this in the book, I think that there might be some misunderstanding between Chris and I as far as the 2016 Oscars,” she said of Jada’s support for the 2016 #OscarsSoWhite protest that called for a boycott of the show over the lack of Black representation in its nominations that year; Pinkett Smith lent her support after Will was not nominated for his role in the football drama Concussion. “I that he might’ve taken offense, which I meant no harm in offending. That wasn’t my intention. But I do think that there’s a big misunderstanding there.”
Host Rock made some jokes about Pinkett Smith in his monologue that year and in his Selective Outrage stand-up special earlier this year he said that she had suggested back then that he should give up the hosting slot out of solidarity with the movement. She now says she may not have recognized the “level of pressure [Chris] might’ve been under” back then and that she should have called him to see how he was feeling.
Pinkett Smith said Rock later called her to apologize, which allowed her to say she was sorry to him as well. “So I actually thought that we were good, that the hatchet was buried between us. And we hadn’t talked since then, until 2022 came,” she said, revealing that right after the slap Rock came down to the front of the stage during a pause in the broadcast and tried to apologize to her. Pinkett Smith also told People that at first she thought the stage slap was “a skit” before realizing that the violence was real.
“He said, ‘I didn’t mean you any harm.’ I said, ‘I can’t talk about this now, Chris. This is some old s—,’” she recalled of what Rock said to her after the attack. “I thought this was [about] the Oscar 2016 and … their stuff that they had before I even came into the picture in the late ‘80s. I’ve got to leave that to Will and Chris to talk about, but they got their stuff for sure.”
From where Pinkett Smith was sitting, she said she couldn’t tell if 6’2″ Smith had struck the comedian, “because, number one, I’d seen Will in the boxing ring with pro fighters — Will’s a heavy-hitter. So when Chris moved, it looked like he ducked or he missed the shot. And when he continued to stand, and then when he continued to walk down to the end of the stage, I was like, ‘There’s no way. There’s no way that Will hit him.’”
It wasn’t until later, she said, that she realized the smack was real. “I was in as much of a fog as anybody else in that room that night,” she said.
Adding even more drama to the story, Pinkett Smith dropped yet another bombshell, saying that Rock once asked her out on a date during a period when there were reports that she and Will were getting divorced.
“And this particular summer, Chris, he thought that we were getting a divorce,” she said of the nearly annual reports of trouble in the Smith marriage. “So he called me and basically he was like, ‘I’d love to take you out.’ And I was like, ‘What do you mean?’ He was like, ‘Well, aren’t you and Will getting a divorce?’ I was like, ‘No. Chris, those are just rumors.’ He was appalled. And he profusely apologized and that was that.”
The Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour concert movie is on track to open as the top-grossing music concert film ever. The movie chronicling the singer’s sold-out, career-spanning 2023 stadium tour doesn’t open until Oct. 13, but according to The Hollywood Reporter, it has already racked up advance ticket sales of $100 million a week before […]
Beyoncé is going to the movies. The singer debuted the trailer for her upcoming concert documentary, Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé, on Sunday night (Oct. 1) during the final stop on her Renaissance World Tour in Kansas City, MO.
“When I am performing, I am nothing but free,” Bey says in voiceover at the outset of the two-minute trailer. The clip opens with the singer casually walking to stage while flashing a peace sign, stretching pre-show with her kids — including rehearsing with back up dancer/eldest daughter Blue Ivy Carter — and having a cocktail in the green room.
The two hour and thirty minute unrated film is due to hit screens in the U.S., Canada and Mexico on Dec. 1, with more global dates to be announced later. The singer captioned an Instagram post featuring the trailer with the cheeky warning, “Be careful what you ask for, ’cause I just might comply.”
The official description of the movie says that it: “accentuates the journey of RENAISSANCE WORLD TOUR,, from its inception, to the opening in Stockholm, Sweden, to the finale in Kansas City, Missouri. It is about Beyoncé’s intention, hard work, involvement in every aspect of the production, her creative mind and purpose to create her legacy, and master her craft. Received with extraordinary acclaim by International and U.S. media alike, Beyoncé’s outstanding performance during Renaissance World Tour created a sanctuary for freedom, acceptance, and shared joy. Its maximalist production welcomed more than 2.7 million fans from around the world, who travelled across oceans to enjoy Club Renaissance. Now, millions of moviegoers will get caught up in the Joy Parade, the monumental dance party that celebrates everyone’s right to be themselves, close to home.”
The trailer hints at the joy, hard work and glamour of life on the road with Bey, from shots of her wearing a surgical mask while looking ill, to one in which the singer struts in a leather designer outfit to a waiting helicopter while explaining, “my goal for this tour was to create a place where everyone is free… and no one is judged.” Husband and No. 1 fan, Jay-Z, makes a cameo as well, pumping his fist and smiling from the crowd amid glimpses of the massive stage production, mind-bending costume and lighting effects and the couple’s twins, Rumi and Sir.
The Renaissance tour is Beyoncé’s biggest to date, with grosses expected to cross the $550 million mark. Tickets for the movie — priced at $22 — are on sale now, with Deadline reporting that AMC is releasing the film in partnership with Beyoncé’s film production company and record label, Parkwood Entertainment. Like Taylor Swift’s upcoming Eras Tour concert film, AMC will run the Renaissance movie on the weekends (Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday) for at least four weeks.
Bey’s movie follows on the heels of her 2019 Netflix doc Homecoming, which chronicled the singer’s 2018 Coachella headlining set, as well as her 2013 HBO movie, Life Is But a Dream, a hybrid live performance and video diary project, and her 2009 I Am… Yours: An Intimate Performance at Wynn Las Vegas.
Watch the trailer below.
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Taylor Swift is taking the Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour concert movie across the planet. The singer announced on Tuesday morning (Sept. 26) in an Instagram post that the doc about her record-setting Eras Tour will screen in more than 100 countries around the world.
“The tour isn’t the only thing we’re taking worldwide…….” Swift wrote alongside a globe emoji. “Been so excited to tell you all that The Eras Tour concert film is now officially coming to theaters WORLDWIDE on Oct 13! Tickets available now at www.TSTheErasTourFilm.com or on your local theaters website!”
The extensive list of countries slated to screen the film beginning on Oct. 13 includes: Albania, Argentina, Austria, Bolivia, Bermuda, Colombia, Cyprus, Ecuador, Fiji, Gibraltar, Iceland, Italy, Kosovo, Luxembourg, Malta, Mauritius, Moldova, Nicaragua, Peru, Poland, Serbia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Ukraine, Venezuela and Zambia, among many others; the film is also slated to hit Brazil, Bulgaria, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Macau, Romania, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Turkey and Vietnam on Nov. 3. Tickets for most of the international screenings outside N. America will go on sale on Sept. 26.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, AMC Theatres, which is handling the release in the U.S., is also serving as the international distributor of the movie, with AMC and partners working on agreements with movie theater operators who represent more than 7,500 cinemas around the world.
Swift announced earlier this month that the 2 hour and 45 minute concert film will open in the U.S., Canada and Mexico beginning Oct. 13, with the movie expected to play in more than 4,000 theaters in the three territories The initial roll-out, of course, set one-day sales records for AMC with $26 million in the first 24 hours of on-sale and early projections suggest that it could open to $75 million or more, which would instantly make it the top-grossing music concert film ever.
To accommodate the demand, every U.S. AMC Theatre will run the Eras movie at least four times per day on Thursdays, Friday, Saturdays and Sunday. In an Easter egg reference to Swift’s favorite numbers, tickets for the film are priced at $19.89 plus tax for adults and $13.13 for children and seniors plus tax (except for AMC’s branded premium large-format screens.) The film will be available in AMC theaters in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, with tickets on sale now here and here. Super Swifties can also splurge to book a private screening of the movie.
See Swift’s announcement below.
Britney Spears is coming to a big screen near you. Trafalgar Releasing, Sony Music Entertainment and RCA Records announced on Thursday (Sept. 21) that Spears’ 2002 coming-of-age film Crossroads will return to screens around the world on Oct. 23 and Oct. 25 in support of the pop star’s upcoming tell-all memoir, The Woman in Me (Oct. 24).
The dramedy written by Shonda Rhimes (Scandal, Grey’s Anatomy) and directed by Tamra Davis (CB4, 13) will be back with bonus features never before seen in theaters — including a sing-along to two of Spears’ songs from the film. In the midst of the ongoing Hollywood strike by actors and writers that has stunted the roll-out and promotion of films, TV and streaming shows, the Spears re-release will flood 875 screens in 24 countries just two weeks after Taylor Swift’s anticipated Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour live concert film hits thousands of theaters across North America.
Crossroads – based on a story idea from Spears — also co-stars stars Zoe Saldaña, Taryn Manning, Kim Cattrall and Dan Aykroyd in a tale of three estranged childhood friends (Spears, Manning, Saldaña) who reunite on the night of their high school graduation to dig up their “wish box” and set off on an adventure-filled, cross-country road trip that rekindles their friendship.
“I recently rewatched Crossroads and was so enthralled with the time capsule of nostalgia that this incredible ensemble cast brings to the screen,” director Davis said in a statement. “Britney is absolutely breathtaking to watch, and Shonda is showing us her early expertise in writing complicated female characters.
The movie was former Mickey Mouse Club star Spears’ first feature film role and it initially rolled into theaters when Spears was at the peak of her pop powers, following on the heels of her 2001 Britney album, which spawned the hits “I’m a Slave 4 U” and “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman.” Though critics dismissed the film while praising Spears’ performance, the $12 million film was considered a success at the time thanks to $61.1 million in box office receipts; tickets for the Crossroads re-release will go on sale on Sept. 28.
The Hollywood Reporter also said that in addition to a new line of merch featuring shirts, sweats, jackets and pieces inspired by the film’s wardrobe, RCA Records will release a Crossroads: Special Edition of the soundtrack, with three new Spears remixes: “Overprotected” (Richi Lopez Remix), “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman” (Snakehips Remix) and “I Love Rock ‘N Roll” (Frank Walker Remix).
Watch the Crossroads trailer below.
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Sean Penn likes to get straight to the meat of the matter. And the actor/director does just that in a new Variety interview in which he calls 100% b.s. on the reaction to Will Smith‘s infamous slap of Chris Rock at the 2022 Academy Awards, which was held just weeks after Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
Penn, whose documentary on his friend Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Superpower, is due out on Monday (Sept. 18), gets “f—ing furious,” in fact, when telling reporter Stephen Rodrick, “the Oscars producer thought, ‘Oh, he’s not light-hearted enough?’ Well, guess what you got instead? Will Smith.”
Fully aware that his perennial pugnaciousness has often made it hard to appreciate him, a red-faced Penn laid out his exact feelings about the refusal to give former-sitcom-star-turned-heroic-wartime-president Zelenskyy a moment to speak during the ceremony; Smith — who would win a best actor Oscar later in the night for his starring role in the Williams family tennis biopic King Richard — stormed the stage and assaulted Chris Rock after the comedian made a joke about wife Jada Pinkett Smith’s hair.
“I don’t know Will Smith. I met him once,” Penn said. “He seemed very nice when I met him. He was so f–king good in King Richard… So why the f–k did you just spit on yourself and everybody else with this stupid f–king thing? Why did I go to f–king jail for what you just did? And you’re still sitting there? Why are you guys standing and applauding his worst moment as a person?”
Penn, 63, spent 33 days in county jail in June 1987 for punching an extra on a movie set and for reckless driving and received a 90-day suspended sentence and $50 fine for two charges of assaulting two journalists who were attempting to photograph him and then-wife Madonna, as well as three years of probation and 300 hours of community service in 2010 after another run-in with a photographer.
“This f–king bulls–t wouldn’t have happened with Zelenskyy,” Penn fumed. “Will Smith would never have left that chair to be part of stupid violence. It never would have happened.”
On the night of the incident, Smith jumped up from his seat and slapped Rock hard across the face after the comedian made a joke about Pinkett Smith’s shaved head, which, Rock later said, he was not aware was a result of the singer/actress’ struggle with alopecia, an autoimmune disorder that can cause hair loss and balding.
During his Oscars acceptance speech, Smith issued a mea culpa of sorts for his actions earlier in the night — without mentioning Rock — with the comedian later declining to press charges. After a more formal apology, Smith resigned from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which banned him from attending any Academy events for 10 years.
Penn, who has won two best actor Oscars for Mystic River (2003) and Milk (2008), also told the magazine that his only option was to destroy his statues. “I thought, well, f–k, you know? I’ll give them to Ukraine,” he said. “They can be melted down to bullets they can shoot at the Russians.”
Cinemark just seriously upped the game for the upcoming roll-out of the Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour concert doc. The chain announced on Wednesday (Sept. 13) that it is offering Swifties an exclusive audience with the superstar in the form of Private Swiftie Parties. Swifties can reserve an entire auditorium for themselves and their friends […]