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Ryan Gosling faces the music

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Good morning: In today’s edition of The Industry, we look at:

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Adam Driver on the edge, Hugh Jackman in tights, Elizabeth Debicki is an alien, Titane to Alpha, and a lot of tomorrows.
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Let’s go!

THE ART OF THE FILM SCORE

Film music is a foundational cinematic art form.

It has to support the narrative, and it has to enhance the movie. It’s really not about the notes; it’s about the emotion.

One person who has understood this fundamentally is Sean McMahon, who worked as an orchestrator for:

  • The Grudge (2004)
  • Ghost Rider (2007)
  • Spider-Man 3 (2007)

McMahon is the chair of the Film Scoring department at Berklee College of Music in Boston. He also teaches courses with Berklee Online, the extension school.

He wrote a ​Composing the Orchestral Film Score​ course that emulates a real-world scoring experience.

Halfway through the course—just one of ​many film scoring ​options available through Berklee Online—students work remotely with the Budapest Scoring Orchestra, who, for 15 minutes, will play your original piece.

Students get to watch and listen to more than 60 musicians performing and recording multiple takes of their composition, and give them direction in between takes.

McMahon stated:

“The first goal was to give the students a flagship piece for their demo, like a calling card. Secondly, I wanted them to have a great experience, where they’d say, ‘that was awesome, and I’m going to tell my friends about this, and I’m going to post it on SoundCloud and tell the whole world that I did this.”

He continued:

“And the third thing was to give them confidence, so if they have a big opportunity with something else like this in their careers, they’ve already done it before.”

The feedback was instantaneous from the very first time the students worked with the orchestra. Brett McCoy, a software engineer in Germantown, Maryland, was part of the first cohort.

He fondly recalls one of the more rewarding moments of the session:

“I was looking at the cello players because my piece has a lot of low strings doing very rhythmic stuff and one of the cellists was headbanging.”

Take this Berklee Online course, and get your score recorded by a world-class orchestra.

For More:

Download Berklee Online’s Free Music for Film, TV & Games Handbook ​here​.

Sign Up for the Composing the Orchestral Film Score Course ​here​.

Learn More About Berklee Online’s Master of Music in Film Scoring Degree ​here​.

THE INDUSTRY NEWS

Adam Driver teeters on the ledge of extinction in Francis Ford Coppola’s first look of Megalopolis. Watch the clip ​here​.

Here’s a short description of the film:

An entire civilization teetering on a similarly precarious ledge, devouring itself in a whirl of unchecked greed, self-absorption, and political propaganda, while a few bold dreamers push against the tide, striving to usher in a new dawn… MEGALOPOLIS isn’t a movie about the end of the world as we know it, it is the end of the world as we know it.

Coppola famously offered a similar description of Apocalypse Now (1979) (isn’t a movie about the Vietnam War, it is the Vietnam War.)

Let’s hope Megalopolis can achieve at least some of Apocalypse Now’s brilliance.

Weekend Box Office. Here are the domestic grosses:​

  • $28.5 M The Fall Guy (Universal Pictures)
    • $65.4 M worldwide
    • $150M budget
    • Underperformed
    • Opened $1.5 M lower than the director’s previous film, Bullet Train (2022), which had a budget of $90M and grossed $240M.
    • ​Trailer​
  • $7.6 M Challengers (US: Amazon MGM Studios, International: Warner Bros.)
  • $6.5 M Tarot (Sony)
  • $116K – I Saw The TV Glow (A24)

General talks are in progress after IATSE and AMPTP secured tentative agreements for all 13 trade guilds.

Core issues:

  • Health and Pension
  • Working Conditions
  • Wage Increase
  • AI Regulations

The recent lack of work due to the double strike, pandemic, and contraction of the film industry is leading to a ​$670M deficit​ in Health and Pension plans.

Mike Miller, international VP of IATSE, stated:

“If the funding is relying totally or significantly on hourly contributions, when the hourly contributions dry up that has a negative impact on the plans.”

IATSE will seek residuals from streaming platforms (similar to what the actors and writers received in their talks with AMPTP) to cover the deficit.

Negotiations continue this week. The contract expires July 31st.

​Leonardo DiCaprio​ is a wolf. He will EP, ​Howl​, along with ​Jane Goodall​, the world’s leading expert on Chimpanzees.

Here’s the synopsis:

A family dog left at home during an extreme winter after his owners die in a car crash. It goes through a rollercoaster survival ride, eventually meeting an orphaned wolf-cub with whom he learns to cooperate and collaborate.

The director, E. Elias Merhige states:

“Howl will not only be an enjoyable and entertaining experience but will also help change perceptions of the ‘big bad wolf,’ which has been hunted to extinction in many areas of the world.”

DiCaprio and Goodall have a long-standing friendship and teamed up for the project due to their passion for the film’s message.

The film will wrap in 2026.

Tidbit:

The next John Wick is ​Button Man​. Fifth Season (Severance, Tokyo Vice) is adapting the graphic novel Button Man into a TV series for David Leitch (dir: Fall Guy).

Here’s a snippet of the official synopsis:

A former elite soldier who is brought into a covert life and death game that involves other elite killers battling each other.

The team is currently looking for a writer.

The Boys Season 4 ​trailer​. The monsters are more monstrous; the humans are more human.

THE ACTOR SPOTLIGHT

Hugh Jackman in tights. Jackman will ​star as Robin Hood​ in the upcoming The Death of Robin Hood (Dir: Michael Sarnoski, Pig, A Quiet Place: Day One). He stars along with Jodie Comer (The Last Duel).

Here’s the official synopsis:

A dark reimagining of the classic Robin Hood tale. Set in its time, the film will see the title character grappling with his past after a life of crime and murder, a battleworn loner who finds himself gravely injured and in the hands of a mysterious woman who offers him a chance at salvation.

Jackman’s characterization of the broken hero in Logan (​trailer​) is a great comp for this role. He should absolutely nail this.

The project is launching at the Cannes Market.

Yul Vazquez ​hops on​ to Paul Greengrass’s The Lost Bus, joining its co-stars Matthew McConaughey and America Ferrera. The film is based on the novel Paradise: One Town’s Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire, which is based on the deadly Camp Fire in California in 2018. Vazquez’s character has not yet been announced, but Paul Greengrass is rumored to have a cameo.

Vazquez was Ruben The Cuban in The Sopranos (​clip​) and Natasha Lyonne’s ex in her Russian Doll series. Most recently, he put on an incredible performance in Apple+’s Severance. He played Petey Mark’s (Adam Scott) best friend, whom he forgot about – due to the chip in his brain malfunctioning. Vazquez gives an unhinged tragic performance that is the prime disruptor that flips the series from techno-utopia to dystopia. His character’s journey has become a hot-button topic in an already theory-laden show.

Here’s a clip from Severance, but it’s a ​slight spoiler​.

The Lost Bus is still in pre-production but is expected to start shooting this summer.

Elizabeth Debicki is an alien. She will star as an alien who tries to seduce Zazie Beetz (The Joker, Atlanta) back to her home planet in ​This Blue is Mine​.

Debicki has been excellent in:

  • The Crown (2016-2023)
  • Widows (2018)
    • After her husband dies, her mother tries to get her a sugar daddy (​clip​)
  • Tenet (2020)

Gabrielle Stewart, CEO of HanWay, who is the sales rep, stated:

“Elizabeth Debicki is an actor born to play an ethereal beautiful creature from another planet.”

Debicki’s best roles seem to embody the deepest elements of alienation. It only makes sense that she would eventually play an alien.

Tidbit:

​Clara McGregor​’s (daughter of Ewan) insane trials. McGregor played opposite her dad in the deeply felt detox road trip film Bleeding Love (​trailer​). In this role, she communicates pain with a wild intensity.

Her next role is Noon.

Here’s the official synopsis:

Kidnapped in a shroud of mystery after an attempted sexual assault, Sasha (McGregor) winds up killing her assailant. She comes to as a prisoner in an abandoned village built on volcanic land. At first alone, she soon encounters four young European strangers, and all become victims of a perverse game in which they are confronted with their fears and demons in a series of insane trials.

No word on the production start date.

Andrew Garfield (The Amazing Spider-Man, The Social Network, ​Red Riding​) is set to star in the children’s series ​The Magic Faraway Tree​ alongside Claire Foy (All of Us Strangers, 2023). The children’s book series features trees reaching the clouds and gnomes stealing from elves and chocolate houses.

FESTIVALS

Nishta Jain’s documentary Farming the Revolution won Best International Feature Documentary Hot Docs. The film is about Indian farmers opposing new laws. This victory makes it eligible for the Academy Awards’ Best Documentary category.

Also announced at Hot Docs is a new ​$200K fund​ to supply independent distributors with grants of anywhere from $5K to $50K to boost audience growth through innovative distribution strategies.

Applications launch in August. We’ll have more on that later.

INDIE FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT

Siân Heder (dir: CODA)’s new project, ​Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow​, shows a character flourishing despite their disability.

Here’s the official synopsis:

Two children meet in a hospital gaming room and forge a friendship that is over far too soon. After a few years of separation, they meet again and begin creating video games together. What follows is a story of love, joy, pain, and grief.

One of the characters in that hospital is Sam, whose foot is crushed following a car crash that kills his mom. Much of the subplot revolves around the extensive physical and emotional pain this causes.

Heder is adept at navigating this territory without becoming overly preachy, as evidenced in her Best-Picutre winning CODA (​trailer​). The film centers on the beautifully specific scenario of a high schooler caught between her deaf family and her high school teacher, an advisor for Berklee College of Music, who encourages her to pursue her core passion: singing.

Cannes Palme d’Or winning director Julia Ducournau’s (Titane) 3rd feature, ​Alpha, is headed to the Cannes Market​.

Here’s what we know from the film’s international sales rep FilmNation Entertainment (Spencer, Promising Young Woman):

“Alpha is Julia’s most personal, profound work yet, and we are looking forward to a global audience discovering the story with as much excitement as we did.”

This is exciting, as Titane (2021) was a cinematic shocker. Indicative of Cronerberg’s Crash (1996), it tracks a child who has a traumatic car accident and becomes intimate with automotives as they escape to form an incestuous child-father bond.

There’s a body-horror brutality that’s hard to watch and hard to look away.

Alpha already has its leads set:

We can’t wait to see what Ducournau has in store.

Tidbit:

​Mike Flanagan​, who directed Oculus (2013) to Doctor Sleep (2019, The Shining prequel), has ​taken over The Exorcist​ franchise. He is set to direct the next two films in the series.

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

Paolo Sorrentino is a master of mesmerizing, ethereal, and thoughtful cinema. A24 has just ​acquired​ his latest, Parthenope, an official selection at Cannes for distribution.

Sorrentino had directed:

Parthenope stars Gary Oldman and is a film noir set in Capri, Italy, about a young woman who is a siren or myth.

Here’s a ​first look​ image of Oldman.

ON THIS DAY

1915. Orson Welles (dir/star: Citizen Kane), was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

See you Tuesday!

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Written by Gabriel Miller and Spencer Carter.

Editor: ​Gabriel Miller​.

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