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
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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.
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CNN
23 minutes ago
- CNN
Wes Anderson on the secrets and struggles behind his impeccably stylish men
Wes Anderson has a message for London's finest tailors: he'd love a Savile Row suit — if someone will give him a discount. 'Hopefully if we put this out there someone will contact me,' he said on a call from New York. '(They're) quite a lot of money, but it will see you out, as they say.' This would be a radical move for the sartorially-minded director. Anderson is loyal to New York tailoring institution Mr. Ned for his custom-made clothes, he said, though has been known to stray to legendary Italian atelier Battistoni when in Rome. But he would be willing to give a London tailor a shot. After all, if they're good enough for his characters, they should be good enough for him. Anderson's latest film, 'The Phoenician Scheme,' is bulging at the seams with suits, some crafted by Taillour Ltd., a bespoke tailoring label in East London, founded by Fred Nieddu and Lee Rekert. The movie centers on 1950s business magnate Zsa-zsa Korda (Benicio del Toro), who wheels and deals his way around a fictionalized Middle Eastern country while fending off assassination attempts. In tow is his heir, a novice nun called Leisl (Mia Threapleton), who's out to save his soul, and bumbling tutor Bjorn (Michael Cera), along for the ride with his employer and his crush. Together they bring an odd thrupple dynamic to what might otherwise have been a series of business meetings with deep-pocketed characters played by Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Riz Ahmed, Jeffrey Wright, Benedict Cumberbatch, and more. A crime caper with a smattering of existential angst, it's the director's most accessible work in a while. It's also, even by Anderson's standards, a showcase for fine tailoring — marking a new high point for the director whose films often feature impeccable menswear. When Anderson was young, he used to play dress up. 'There were so many costumes in movies when I was a child that I tried to imitate,' he shared. How characters presented themselves through their clothes was something he was always conscious of. 'From the first moment of the first short film I made, I thought of that,' Anderson recalled. Making that short film, 'Bottle Rocket' (1993), which Anderson turned into his feature debut in 1996, he remembered debating actor Owen Wilson over a shirt. 'We'd written it together, and he knew exactly how to inhabit this person,' Anderson said. 'But the visual part of the character… I had to sort of coax (Wilson) into something he would never wear.' Five years and a bigger budget later, Anderson was making 'Rushmore' (1998). Jason Schwartzman's character, the preppy student Max Fischer, dresses beyond his years. Anderson, Schwartzman and the film's costume designer Karen Patch commissioned a tailor in the director's native Houston, Texas, to reflect that in the form of a perfectly cut, blue school blazer. 'That's the first time there was a costume that I thought, 'Let's make this from scratch. We can make it exactly, 100% right,'' Anderson said. Then came 'The Royal Tenenbaums' (2001) — also costumed by Patch — whose sartorial ripples continue to spread today. Anderson turned to Mr. Ned for help with tailoring and liked what they came up with. Years later, he sat for an interview with the New York Times wearing the exact jacket worn by Bill Murray in the film, he told the reporter. However you look at it, Anderson never stopped playing dress up — including having his characters wear his inspirations on their sleeves. When conceiving the look for Korda in 'The Phoenician Scheme,' Anderson said he had in mind the businessmen played by Hollywood's Golden Age actors William Powell ('The Thin Man') and Herbert Marshall ('Trouble in Paradise'). Meanwhile, Threapleton's nun was styled in green tights as a twisted nod to the titular Irma, a sex worker played by Shirley MacLaine, in Billy Wilder's 'Irma la Douce' (1963). 'I think it is probably quite a generous gesture by Wes to be so conspicuous with some of his references,' said Adam Woodward, editor-at-large of Little White Lies magazine and author of 'The Worlds of Wes Anderson.' 'That has been the case throughout his career,' Woodward continued, speaking on a video call. 'I think he's adding new layers to that as he continues, and I suppose as he enters this middle period of his career, his work for me feels like it's getting maybe more mature. He's hitting a really interesting groove now.' 'The Phoenician Scheme' saw Anderson reteam with Italian costume designer Milena Canonero, a four-time Oscar winner who has worked on most of his films since 2004's 'The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.' Theirs is the kind of longstanding collaboration that allows for creative disagreement, which was the case when creating the backbone of 'The Phoenician Scheme's' wardrobe: its suits. 'My suggestion in our script is that all the businessmen wear double-breasted gray chalk stripe (or) pinstripe suits in the classic tycoon look,' Anderson recounted. 'And Milena's suggestion is, 'That's a terrible idea,' and 'Why would we have everyone wearing the same thing? It's been done a thousand times before and it's a cliché.'' But Anderson had his reasons: One being that a good piece of clothing, such as tailoring, takes on a protective quality. 'If you don't like what you're wearing or you've got a bad haircut, you don't feel as strong, you know. It's all armor,' he said. Korda (Benicio del Toro's character), he added, 'wants all the armor he can have, because someone's going to try to kill him at any moment, and he wants to kill them back.' While Korda's wardrobe is dominated by gray pinstripes, there's room for a safari suit and a thobe. The impression is that whether behind a desk or the wheel of a plummeting airplane, Korda is a worldly man of action. In a video interview with CNN, Del Toro described the film's costuming as '50% of my performance,' heaping praise on 'legend' Canonero. 'She does your character from the bottom up,' he added. 'She's super specific. The shoes are from the period, even the underwear.' Anderson said he felt strongly about giving all the other businessmen suits too because 'these tycoons, these very rich men with tremendous ambition, they have symbols of power that they adorn their offices and their residences and their bodies with,' he explained. 'This is part of how they say, 'We're in the same club, we rule the world, and we are the ones in power.' The genius of Canonero, the director said, was 'how to make the American (suits) a little different from the European ones and how to give them each their own personality — because it is a lot of gray pinstripe suits in one movie.' Take Hanks and Cranston's West Coast railroad men: They may be holding a Coca-Cola and a Hershey's bar, but to tell they're American, one need only look at their sack suits. There's also a subtle narrative thread running through the pinstripes and chalk stripes. (As consensus builds among the businessmen who come aboard Korda's scheme, if they weren't already, they begin wearing stripes.) Once again, Anderson is playing with the idea of uniform and visual coding; it rears its head in everything from 'The Grand Budapest Hotel's' concierges to 'Bottle Rocket's' boiler-suited robbers and Steve Zissou's red beanie-sporting explorers. In 'The Phoenician Scheme,' by the time we meet Cumberbatch's character Uncle Nubar, who's wearing a running stitch-like stripe, his tailoring marks him out as different, even before his nefarious intent is revealed. This use of costuming is par for the course for the director, said Woodward: 'It's always in service of the story, it is never frivolous.' Naturally, fashion is not there for window dressing; it advances the plot. Just like Richie Tenenbaum's sweatband doesn't just signal his arrested development but signposts his forbidden love for his adopted sister in 'The Royal Tenenbaums'; M. Gustave's Society of the Crossed Keys badge foreshadows his ace-in-the-hole network of concierges when he's in a pinch in 'The Grand Budapest Hotel'; and Mr. Fox's severed tail, worn by the evil Mr. Bean as a necktie, becomes motivation for a heist in 'Fantastic Mr. Fox.' 'Everything is about storytelling,' said Anderson. 'Movies, as much as they are dialog, and as much as it is all about emotion and energy, the main thing you do with a movie is watch it,' the director said of building his visual language. 'The movie is how do we take all this information, all these ideas, these characters, these observations from lives and bits of imagination, and order them into the shape of a thing we think of as a story,' he continued. 'It's very much a rational, orderly process.' 'The Phoenician Scheme' is currently in US and UK theaters.
Yahoo
27 minutes ago
- 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
29 minutes ago
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Zara Larsson Doesn't Want Summer to End on New Song ‘Midnight Sun'
Swedish pop singer Zara Larsson has shared a new song, 'Midnight Sun,' which will serve as the title track from her upcoming fourth album, out Sept. 26. 'Midnight Sun' teeters the between ebullient and delirious, with production that nods to frenetic house breakbeats, serene trance synths, and big tent EDM build-ups. Larsson's vocals and lyrics, meanwhile, give the track pop gem of the summer potential: 'It's the midnight sun, kissed skin under the red sky,' she sings on the chorus, 'Laying on your chest like this/Hold me like the pebbles in your hand, initials in the sand/Summer isn't over yet.' More from Rolling Stone Zara Larsson Gets Glammed Up to Get Down and Dirty in 'Pretty Ugly' Video Tate McRae Prepares for Massive 2025 With Album, Tour Announcement How Dolphin Memes Revived a 7-Year-Old Zara Larsson, Clean Bandit Classic In a statement, Larsson said 'Midnight Sun' was inspired by the long summer days in Sweden where 'the sun never goes down.' She added, 'I wanted the whole album to feel like it's a summer night and it never ends. And it doesn't matter if it's December: the summer night will be there for you. It's waiting for you, it will come back for you, and you will come back for it.' This is the second song Larsson has shared from Midnight Sun, following 'Pretty Ugly,' which arrived back in April. Larsson recorded her new album over the lat year working with frequent collaborator MNEK, along with producers Margo XS and Zhone. Of the album, Larsson added, 'Throughout Midnight Sun, I get to just capture that total Scandinavian vibe, which is something that I have grown up with — it's a huge part of me, my happiest memories and my saddest ones, too. A part of my soul is a Swedish summer night. This record encompasses that, how life is so beautiful it makes you cry. It just feels like me—knowing myself, this album is just really, really me. And also. No one can do me the way I can.' Midnight Sun will follow Larsson's 2024 album, Venus. She's set to hit the road later this summer, providing support for Tate McRae on her headlining tour, which kicks off Aug. 4 in Vancouver and wraps Sept. 27 in Los Angeles. After that, Larsson will embark on a headlining European run of her own in October. Best of Rolling Stone Sly and the Family Stone: 20 Essential Songs The 50 Greatest Eminem Songs All 274 of Taylor Swift's Songs, Ranked
