Paul Dano to Write and Direct Comedy For Universal Pictures and The Daniels — GeekTyrant
Almost a decade ago, actor Paul Dano ( Little Miss Sunshine , There Will Be Blood , Love & Mercy ) and filmmakers Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert blew away Sundance Film Festival attendees with Swiss Army Man , but now the trio now looks ready to reunite on Dano's next director outing. Deadline reports that Dano is set to write and is in talks to direct a new untitled comedy for Universal Pictures, with Kwan, Scheinert and their partner Jonathan Wang producing through their Playgrounds banner. Dano is also in talks to produce.
Plot details are being kept under wraps other then it being a high-concept, original comedy. The Daniels have a first-look deal at the studio and, while they are still deep in development on a follow-up to their Oscar Best Picture winner Everything Everywhere All at Once, this film would mark one of the first major projects they are solely producing under the deal.
Dano just completed shooting the Olivier Assayas film The Wizard of the Kremlin in which he plays the title character amongst a cast that includes Jude Law, Alicia Vikander and Jeffrey Wright.
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Los Angeles Times
an hour ago
- Los Angeles Times
In new indie flick ‘Ponyboi,' River Gallo sheds light on an intersex experience
'How the f— does this baby know if she loves her father?' asked River Gallo one day at Walmart, maybe 10 years ago, when they saw an infant sucking on a pacifier emblazoned with the words 'I love my daddy.' 'That started the ball rolling about my own issues with my father and with this compulsory love that we have with our families, specifically with our parents, specifically in this instance with my father, her father, our fathers, and with masculinity in general,' says a radiant Gallo during a recent video interview. The spontaneous moment of introspection planted the seed for what became a 10-minute performance piece while studying acting at NYU — then their USC thesis-turned-short film 'Ponyboi,' released in 2017, which Gallo wrote, starred in, and co-directed with Sadé Clacken Joseph. That project ultimately evolved into 'Ponyboi' the feature, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2024, became the first film produced under Fox Entertainment Studios' indie label, Tideline, and was released June 27 in theaters across the United States. A consummate multihyphenate, Gallo again wrote the screenplay, served as producer and stars as the titular character: an intersex, Latine sex worker in New Jersey who is desperate to escape their pimp (played by Dylan O'Brien) and the world of crime and violence that surrounds them. Flashbacks to Ponyboi's childhood, made difficult due to the medical procedures forced on them and the temperament of their classically macho Latino father, fill in the viewer on the protagonist's past. Meanwhile, dreamy sequences with a handsome, cowboy hat-wearing stranger named Bruce (Murray Bartlett), an idealized embodiment of a positive masculinity, construct a rich world both visually and thematically in Ponyboi's present. '[At] face value, 'Ponyboi' can seem like, 'Oh, it's just a person-on-the-run kind of movie,' but upon a closer look, it's about someone finding freedom in the acceptance of their past and the possibility that, through transcending their own beliefs about themselves, perhaps their future could be a little brighter,' Gallo explains. Gallo is the child of Salvadoran immigrants who escaped their country's civil war in 1980 and lived undocumented in the U.S. Gallo grew up in New Jersey and showed interest in acting from an early age. It was a strict teacher's unexpected encouragement, after Gallo appeared in a musical during their sophomore year of high school, that convinced them to pursue a life in art. 'My biology teacher, Mrs. Lagatol, came to see my musical, and the next day I was waiting for her to say something to me, and she didn't say anything,' Gallo recalls. 'Then she gave me back a test, and on the test was a little Post-it that said: 'If you had been the only one on stage, it would've been worth the price of admission. Bravo.'' Gallo still keeps that Post-it note framed. Though their parents were supportive, Gallo admits feeling frustration in recent years that their family has not fully understood the magnitude of what they've accomplished as a marginalized person in entertainment: an intersex individual and a first-generation Latine. 'Not to toot my own horn, but for a graduate of any film program, getting your first feature to Sundance is the biggest deal in the world,' says Gallo. 'There hasn't been a person like me to do what I'm doing. There's no precedent or pioneer in my specific identities.' This desire for a more informed validation is even stronger in relation to their father. 'I don't think my dad has seen any of my films. My mom has; she was at the premiere at Sundance, which was really beautiful, and so was my sister,' Gallo says. 'But I wouldn't be surprised if my dad never sees my movies. That's hard, but he's supportive in other ways.' Halfway through our conversation, Gallo realizes they are wearing a Bruce Springsteen T-shirt. That's no coincidence, since 'The Boss,' a fellow New Jerseyan, influenced multiple aspects of 'Ponyboi.' As they wrote the screenplay for the short version, Gallo was also reading Springsteen's autobiography, 'Born to Run,' and that seeped into their work. 'I remember taking a trip to the Jersey Shore that summer and then looking up at the Stone Pony, the venue where [Springsteen] had his first big performance, and just being like, 'Stone pony, stone pony, pony, pony, pony boy, ponyboi. That's a good name.' And then that was just what I decided to name the character' For Gallo, the emblematic American singer-songwriter represents 'the idea of being working class,' which Gallo thinks 'transcends political ideology.' As a child of immigrants, Springsteen's work speaks to Gallo profoundly. 'My dad, who is more dark-skinned than me, was an electrician, and he was a union guy who experienced all this racism in New York unions,' Gallo says. 'There's so much of what I see in Bruce Springsteen in my father and also just in how Bruce Springsteen describes his relationship with his dad, who was also a man who couldn't express his emotions.' For the feature, Gallo enlisted Esteban Arango, a Colombian-born, L.A.-based filmmaker whose debut feature, 'Blast Beat,' premiered at Sundance in 2020. But while Gallo believes Arango understood the nuances of the narrative, it admittedly pained them to relinquish the director's chair. But it was a necessary sacrifice in order to focus on the performance and move the project along. 'It was difficult because I went to school for directing,' Gallo explains. 'But I just don't think the movie would've happened on this timeline if I had wanted to direct it. It would've taken much longer, and we needed the film at this moment in time.' Arango brought his own 'abrasive' edge to the narrative. 'I felt the story needed more darkness,' the director explains via Zoom from his home in Los Angeles. 'The hypermasculine world of New Jersey is constantly trying to oppress and reject Ponyboi, because they have a much softer, feminine energy they want to project.' The contrast between the tenderness of Ponyboi's interiority and the harshness of their reality is what Arango focused on. Though Arango hesitated to take on the film, given that he is not queer, his personal history as an immigrant functioned as an entry point into this tale of shifting, complex identities. Still, throughout the entire process, Arango was clear that, first and foremost, 'Ponyboi' was a story centering intersex people — and all those who don't fit into the rigid gender binary. 'Their plight should be our plight, because they are at the forefront of what it means to be free,' he says. 'When somebody attacks them or doesn't understand why they present themselves as they are, it's really an attack on all of us, and it's a reflection of our misunderstanding of ourselves.' Back in 2023, Gallo was one of three subjects in Julie Cohen's incisive documentary 'Every Body,' about the intersex experience, including the ways the medical industry performs unnecessary procedures in order to 'normalize' intersex people. Gallo confesses that for a long time they thought being intersex was something they would never feel comfortable talking about — something they even would take 'to the grave,' as they put it. 'There's no other way that I can explain the fact that now I've made so much work reflecting on my identity other than it being an act of God,' Gallo says. 'Because I just had the feeling that the world needed it now, and also that I needed it now. I'm glad that 'Ponyboi' taught me about the agency that I have over my art and myself and my life.' Anti-trans legislation, Gallo explains, includes loopholes enabling doctors to 'normalize' intersex bodies and continue the medically unnecessary, and at times nonconsensual surgeries on intersex youth. 'The intersex narrative in [trans legislation] is invisible and not spoken about enough,' they say. 'These are also anti-intersex bills.' To fully understand Gallo as a person and an artist, one should watch both 'Every Body' and 'Ponyboi.' The doc shows the bones of what made Gallo who they are without symbols, just the raw facts of how their intersex identity shaped them. 'Ponyboi,' on the other hand, exposes their interior life with the poetry that the cinematic medium allows for. However, what happens with 'Ponyboi' now isn't as important to Gallo as the fact that the movie exists as a testament of their totality as a creative force. 'Love my movie, hate my movie, I don't care, because my movie healed something deep inside of me that I was waiting a lifetime to be healed from,' Gallo states fervently. 'Intersex people are still invisible in this culture, but I can at least say that I don't feel invisible to myself anymore. And it was all worth it for that.'
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Everything We Really Know About Cardi B's ‘Am I the Drama?'
After teasing her sophomore album nearly every year since her groundbreaking 2018 debut, Invasion of Privacy, Cardi B finally announced that it will drop on Sept. 19. This week, she revealed the cover art for her next body of work, aptly titled Am I the Drama?, after serving as high-profile gossip fodder for just about as long as she's been making hits (to be fair, she did get her mainstream start on VH1's reality TV drama factory, Love & Hip-Hop). Surrounded by foreboding ravens on the ominous album artwork she shared, Cardi B is happy to play the villain this time around – she's even selling merch that says so. (Avian fun fact: A rep for Cardi B confirms to Rolling Stone that those birds are in fact ravens, not crows, as has been erroneously reported.) In anticipation of Am I the Drama?, we're running down everything we know about this album and the long road that led to it. For her June 2024 Rolling Stone cover story, Cardi B let us watch her work on the long-anticipated album in studios across the country, including Glenwood Place Studios in Burbank, California, and New York's iconic Jungle City Studios. She was anxious – and, in New York, feeling sick – but relentless about making the best music she could. 'I take my music so fucking seriously that that's why I don't put it out,' she told us at the time. 'Because if it's not perfect to my ear, if every fucking word doesn't sound like it's pronounced right, if the beat is overpowering the words or the words is overpowering the beat, I don't want to put it out.' More from Rolling Stone Loyle Carner on How Fatherhood and Guitars Opened Up His Musical World Cardi B Finally Announces New Album 'Am I the Drama?,' Shares Release Date and Cover Art Karol G, Cardi B, Lorde, and All the Songs You Need to Know This Week It seems that was true for her latest single, 'Outside,' the first new song of Cardi's set to be featured on Am I the Drama? per an incomplete tracklist on Apple Music. It's both a celebration of her independence and a no-holds-barred diss where she says, 'Next time you see your mama, tell her how she raised a bitch.' On Instagram Live, she admitted that she didn't want to release the song after it leaked around the top of the month, but fans clamored for it and her label, Atlantic Records, implored her to put it out. She publicly apologized to Atlantic for being 'very bratty, very mean, very nasty' about this – via a since-deleted post on X, she had even threatened to put the label on blast before the song came out. Here's what else we know: Since the wait for this album has now stretched on for nearly seven years, let's just focus on the last 12 months or so, shall we? Last March on Instagram, Cardi B promised that her sophomore album would be released sometime in 2024, but by mid-May, she backpedaled in a heated online exchange with her followers. 'Anyway NO album this year I don't care I'm relaxing,' she wrote on X. Soon after, she deleted the post and her rep confirmed to Rolling Stone that an album in 2024 was still the plan. Atlantic even reposted Cardi's Rolling Stone cover on X, writing, 'Cardi B's upcoming album is one of the most anticipated this year. We can't wait [to] put it out, even if we have to sneak into her studio and take it! 👀' Meanwhile, Cardi did let us know she was dealing with real-life changes and challenges, though it's not clear what impact those may have had on her shifting release date. Unbeknownst to the public, Cardi was pregnant with her third child with her husband Offset, a daughter named Blossom, whose birth she announced last September. That spring, her marriage was on the rocks, with Cardi telling us she wasn't sure about the future. 'I think it through,' she said. 'We think it through, because we do love each other. It's not even about love. We're best friends. And it's like, 'OK. Well, there was a time that I didn't have a best friend, or I didn't have a support system.' It's not even about 'How do you leave a partner?' How do you stop talking to your best friend?' However, by the end of July, Cardi filed for divorce — which she had done before in 2020 — and the couple appear to still be deeply estranged amidst the proceedings. Working hard while pregnant or with a newborn on her hip isn't new to Cardi, nor is pushing her career forward in the midst of romantic turmoil. If you remember, Cardi's first daughter, Kulture, was born just months after the release of Invasion of Privacy. By May of this year, Cardi was claiming that her album would have been ready if not for delayed features from her collaborators. 'I really need these fucking features,' Cardi said on Instagram Live. 'I'm not really trying to press or go crazy on these artists because I love them down. But it's like come on now, I need that. I need that right now. Y'all don't want to miss this opportunity.' Well, that, we don't know for sure. She had previously teased that the album would have both new and old faces, and she told Rolling Stone the guests would run the gamut of both rappers and singers. One person she told us she's been obsessed with lately is fellow Bronxite Cash Cobain, whose star as both a producer and a rapper has been rising in the horny, laid-back movement known as sexy drill. In March 2024, Cash played Cardi about 30 tracks he had produced, many of which she loved. 'I was like, 'Damn, now I got to make a lot of choices because I don't want my whole album to sound like this,'' she said. After Cardi announced Am I the Drama?, SZA took to her Instagram comments to say, 'Lemme send this verse chile,' foreshadowing a feature on the album. Cardi has collaborated with SZA several times before, like on 'I Do,' from Invasion of Privacy, Flo Milli's 'Never Lose Me' remix, and Summer Walker's extended version of 'No Love.' Since 'WAP' is featured on the new album's 23-song tracklist, Megan Thee Stallion is already a guaranteed feature, but the rest are toss-ups. Rap veteran Busta Rhymes did make a public plea for Cardi B to call on him to collaborate, so it'll be interesting to see if that worked out for him here. Last year, Cardi told us that she was weighing how much of her personal life to share on the album. 'I really want to talk about the life changes that I've been dealing with the past six, seven years,' she said. 'But then it's just like, I feel like people don't deserve to know because people use my pain against me.' She did seem to channel some of that pain into 'Outside,' sharing on Instagram that 'I made this song a few months ago when I was very, very angry…I had to change some bars because I was angry, honey.' In the middle of recording last year (and in between our two interviews), Cardi B began therapy to help her cope with the life stressors that were distracting her. 'It was just too much going on,' Cardi said when I asked about her change of heart, as she had expressed skepticism about therapy prior. 'And when there's too much going on, it fucks up my work.' Her longtime recording engineer Evan LaRay Brunson told us making music involves a 'roller coaster of emotions' for Cardi. 'When we good, we knocking them out. Verse after verse, hook, ad-libs. I'm like, 'You're done quick. You sure?' But when she's going through it, it's going to be a long day.' At the time, she wanted the album to reflect every part of her. 'I'm a different person every single day,' she said. 'When I'm in a good mood and I'm with my friends, [I'm] like, 'Damn, I want my shit to be played in this club.' But then I might be mad with my man, so it's like now I want to do this song. But then I want to do a pop record. I want to do my sing-y shit.' While anything is possible, especially with songs as established as 'Up' and 'WAP' on the album, Cardi did play us some of the music she was hoping to include — just the beats, though. There was a sensual Afro-Caribbean number. There was a track she called 'Better Than You' which was reminiscent of UGK and OutKast's 'Int'l Players Anthem (I Choose You),' with a pitched-up vocal sample, rich, violin-like synths, and rolling Southern drums. Cardi noted that its sound — courtesy of the producer Vinylz, whom she's known since her days as a dancer — was brand-new for her. 'I feel like the beat is not a beat you could get rowdy on,' she said. 'It's a real calm beat. And I had two choices, I could do more of an inspirational type of record — 'I used to grind all my life' — but then I decided to be like, 'No, I'm going to shit on you bitches.' ' She played a beat for a song she called 'Pick It Up,' 'meant for pop radio, with high-femme twinkles and chimes and keys that were distorted like a fun-house mirror. Then she played a drill beat in the sexy style of Cash Cobain, but produced by her regular collaborator SwanQo. It was called 'Don't Do Too Much,' and was glittery and animated, with a playful whistle as its through line. Cardi said she gets some jokes off on that track. 'If it was up to me,' she said, 'my whole album would sound like drill.' According to her interviews last year, yes. She was adamant that touring is how she learned to leave an impact on her fans since her mixtape days. At the time, she said she wasn't performing live as much, simply because she didn't have new music. 'If I was doing things for money,' she said, 'I would put out music every month because nothing pays me more than shows. But I care about how my music sound. I care about my quality. I care about giving something special every single time.' 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
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Selena Gomez Returning To ‘Wizards Beyond Waverly Place' As Season 2 Guest Star
Fans haven't seen the last of Alex Russo in Wizards Beyond Waverly Place. Selena Gomez will return to guest star in Season 2 of the Disney Channel sequel series, the star announced on social media Friday. More from Deadline 'Zombies 4: Dawn Of The Vampires' Trailer Sees Zed & Addison Diffusing Yet Another Monster Rivalry 'Zombies 4: Dawn Of The Vampires' Disney Channel Movie Gets Premiere Date & First Trailer 'Phineas And Ferb' Revival Gets Premiere Date At Disney Channel & Disney+; First Trailer Unveiled 'Just feels right…' she wrote in her post, which features her sitting on the iconic set holding a wand. Gomez is an executive producer on Wizards Beyond Waverly Place and she made a few guest appearances in the first season, introducing her brother Justin Russo (David Henrie) and his family to Billie (Janice LeAnn Brown), a wayward wizard-in-training who needs his help safeguarding the future of the Wizard World. The only problem? Justin has chosen to lead a normal, mortal life with his family, Giada, Roman and Milo. Billie's arrival makes Justin realize he'll need to dust off his magical skills and get to mentoring. The first episode of Wizards Beyond Waverly Place became Disney Channel's most-watched series premiere ever on Disney+ with 3.2M global views in the first 12 days. In addition to Henrie, Wizards Beyond Waverly Place stars Janice LeAnn Brown (as Billie), Alkaio Thiele (as Roman Russo), Max Matenko (as Milo Russo), Taylor Cora (as Winter) and Mimi Gianopulos (as Giada Russo). Jed Elinoff and Scott Thomas serve as writers and executive producers, along with executive producers Gary Marsh, Jonas Agin, Selena Gomez and Henrie. Wizards of Waverly Place was created by Todd Greenwald. Best of Deadline 2025 TV Series Renewals: Photo Gallery 2025 TV Cancellations: Photo Gallery 'The Buccaneers' Season 2 Soundtrack: From Griff To Sabrina Carpenter
