Latest news with #PaulWalterHauser
Geek Tyrant
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Geek Tyrant
Trailer For Sydney Sweeney's Upcoming Comedy Film AMERICANA — GeekTyrant
Lionsgate has released the trailer for an indie ensemble comedy film titled Americana , which stars Sydney Sweeney as a shy waitress and Paul Walter Hauser as a military vet. In the film, 'A gallery of dynamic characters clash over the possession of a rare Native American artifact in this wildly entertaining modern-day western. 'After the artifact falls onto the black market, a shy waitress with big dreams (Sweeney) teams up with a lovelorn military veteran (Hauser) to gain possession of it, putting them in the crosshairs of a ruthless criminal working on behalf of a Western antiquities dealer. 'Bloodshed ensues when others join the battle, including the leader of an indigenous group and a desperate woman fleeing her mysterious past.' It looks like an interesting an quirky little movie, but it's been sitting on the shelf for two years, so that's not a good sign. The film's cast also includes Halsey, Simon Rex as an antiquities dealer, Eric Dane as a ruthless criminal, and Zahn McClarnon as the leader of an indigenous group. Americana is written and directed by Tony Tost, making his feature directorial debut and it will be released in theaters on August 22nd, 2025.
Time of India
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time of India
'Americana' trailer: Sydney Sweeney, Paul Walter Hauser starrer promises a gritty western thriller
(Picture Courtesy: Facebook) Makers have released the official trailer for 'Americana', a modern-day Western thriller that delves into the dark underworld of artefact trafficking , with an ensemble cast led by Sydney Sweeney and Paul Walter Hauser . The film is slated for theatrical release on August 22, 2025. Directed and written by Tony Tost, 'Americana' brings a contemporary edge to the Western genre. The plot centres around a rare Native American artefact that enters the black market, triggering a chaotic chase across the American Southwest. As various groups vie for the item, tensions rise and violence erupts. Sydney Sweeney stars as a shy but ambitious waitress who partners with a battle-scarred military veteran, played by Paul Walter Hauser, hoping to retrieve the valuable artefact. Their unlikely alliance puts them at odds with a cold-blooded enforcer hired by a corrupt antiquities dealer. The story expands to include a fierce Indigenous leader, a mysterious woman on the run, and a host of morally ambiguous characters, all drawn into a web of greed, history, and survival. The cast also features Halsey, Simon Rex, Eric Dane, and Zahn McClarnon, as per Deadline. Produced by BRON Studios and Saks Picture Company in partnership with Rhea Films and Hercules Film Fund / Creative Wealth Media, 'Americana' boasts executive producers Aaron L. Gilbert, Steven Thibault, Alison-Jane Roney, Paris Kassidokostas-Latsis, Terry Dougas, and Jean-Luc de Fanti. Although the film initially premiered at SXSW in 2023, its commercial rollout was delayed. According to Deadline, Lionsgate later acquired the distribution rights, and the trailer's release this week coincides with the buzz of the Cannes Film Festival, giving the project visibility among global industry audiences. Americana aims to challenge conventional genre boundaries by blending Western aesthetics with modern sociopolitical themes, including cultural heritage, exploitation, and the legacy of colonialism. Check out our list of the latest Hindi , English , Tamil , Telugu , Malayalam , and Kannada movies . Don't miss our picks for the best Hindi movies , best Tamil movies, and best Telugu films .
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Colombia Is Thriving, But Locals Worry About Tariffs
For Juan Pablo Solano and his production company Jaguar Bite, making movies like the Paul Walter Hauser starrer The Luckiest Man in America, directed by Bogotá native Samir Oliveros, or TV series like the Don Cheadle-directed The Big Cigar in Colombia is a way of life. However, proposed U.S. tariffs on audiovisual content could drastically affect the industry that helped cultivate his career. 'Jaguar Bite lives through the international productions that come into the country. Eighty to 90 percent of them are from the U.S.,' he says of his company, founded in 2018. 'When I heard about the tariffs, I thought about those movies that probably won't be made anymore. We make certain films that in the U.S. would be impossible to make because the cost doesn't allow them to exist — independent films that need to find alternatives on where to shoot.' More from The Hollywood Reporter Luke Evans Joins Noomi Rapace in Thriller 'Traction' 'Left-Handed Girl' Review: Striking, Sean Baker-Penned Drama Sketches Compelling Portrait of Mothers and Daughters in Taiwan Erin Kellyman and June Squibb Formed a Real Friendship While Working on Scarlett Johansson's Cannes Movie One such film is 2023's The Long Game with Dennis Quaid, shot in Texas and Colombia. It's based on a true story about a group of Mexican-American youths in the 1950s who were golf caddies at an all-white country club in Del Rio, Texas — where they were not allowed to play — and became the 1957 state champions playing for their all-Latino school team. 'Making that movie here and in the U.S. allowed it to hit the needed budget to come out in theaters, and later on, on Netflix. These movies would disappear because I don't see how you can make them in the U.S,' he says. Solano has Proimágenes Colombia and the local incentives to thank for productions like The Long Game. The non-profit promotes Colombian cinema internationally and acts as the National Film Commission to attract international producers to film in the country. Proimágenes, founded in 1998, administers The Film Development Fund (FDC), which began in 2003 and provides financial incentives and cash rebates to productions. Colombia offers two types of film incentives. The FFC (Colombia Film Fund, established in 2013) is a cash rebate equivalent to 40 percent of the audiovisual services expenses and 20 percent of the logistical services expenses (hotel, food and transportation) available to films produced or postproduced in Colombia. The FFC's resources are allocated each year in the national Colombian budget. The most popular is the CINA, Certificates of Audiovisual Investment in Colombia (established in 2020), which are tax credits equivalent to 35 percent of the expenses of foreign audiovisual production, including films, series, reality shows, video clips, video games and commercials for audiovisual services and logistical services contracted with Colombian individuals or legal entities. The CINA is transferable to Colombian income-tax filers and functions as an income tax discount. Silvia Echeverri, head of the Colombian Film Commission at Proimágenes Colombia, has worked alongside director Claudia Triana since the beginning. She says that before 1998, only one or two films were produced in Colombia yearly, and there was no governmental support. 'The incentive system has been very successful and has put Colombia on the international map.' Solano credits the incentives and Proimágenes' work over the years for helping him build a career. 'When the 814 film law was created in 2003, many people started working in filmmaking. Our first films came from the benefit of that incentive. I went to Argentina to attend film school. Then I went to the U.K. to do a master's in business, thanks also to some benefits of that film incentive law that paid a good portion of my scholarship.' Part of Echeverri's job for the past 27 years has been attracting productions to the country through a promotion plan that includes visiting Los Angeles annually to meet with studio and independent production companies to educate them on the incentive program. 'We tell them about our crews, we tell them about our incentives, about our locations and all the ways the Film Commission works with the Ministry of Culture to support the audiovisual productions,' Echeverri says. The Commission also visits content markets in Miami, Cancun, Gamescom — as the incentive also covers video games — and co-organizes the Bogotá Audiovisual Market (BAM). They also hosts familiarization trips to showcase the country's best asset, its landscape diversity. 'We bring executives from different companies around the world to visit Colombia, and we take them to Bogotá, Medellin, Cartagena … they also experience Colombia's infrastructure. We have a coast on the Pacific and a coast on the Atlantic Ocean, and there are many different altitudes with different climates all year long,' Echeverri says. 'Bogotá is a city that's 2,600 meters above sea level, so the trees you see are pine and eucalyptus, and it's a very cold weather city. But if you travel for an hour or 45 minutes to the outskirts, it's completely different scenery, a vibrant green, jungle-like location.' Proimágenes Colombia shows off the rental houses and production companies. 'Now, we have all the equipment needed for a production offered by those rental houses. And the post-production and VFX in the country have also grown. We have a studio partially owned by a company in Canada called Folks,' Echeverri says. She points out that you can also be incentivized if you shoot elsewhere but do post-production in Colombia. Narcos kicked off the Colombian content boom in 2015, and while the show could not qualify for the tax credit at that time because it didn't exist for TV, Colombia was very much part of the series' fabric. (The first two episodes did receive an incentive as a film.) 'I had been an independent producer and someone who has shot in a lot of countries around the world,' says producer Carol Trussell (True Blood, Roswell). 'I went to work as head of production for Gaumont and they were producing Narcos. I decided to go down and look at Colombia. I came back and said to Netflix, 'I think this is where we should shoot the project.' And that was agreed, and we were there for three years. It was a great experience.' Solano created Jaguar Bite with several film industry colleagues to strengthen the services for international productions coming to Colombia. 'We started with Running with the Devil starring Nicolas Cage and Laurence Fishburne. Since then, we haven't stopped. We are fortunate to work with independent producers from the U.S. and around the globe, as well as the studios.' Jaguar Bite finds locations with Colombia standing in for countries such as Vietnam, Brazil, Uganda, Mexico and Cuba; gears up a full bilingual crew; and manages the incentive application, which Solano calls one of the most reliable in the region. 'We request the necessary documents, complete the application and submit it,' he says. 'We submit all the accounting and what the film commission needs after an audit company checks that we've made the payments according to law and what the incentive requires. The Colombian incentives are reliable, and they are the ones people trust. It has never failed.' Jaguar Bite is also developing Spanish-language content for streamers and employs 35 people in Colombia and two in Mexico City. Paramount and Netflix also have offices in Colombia and are creating original programming. 'Several production companies in Colombia have started offering their services worldwide and creating their own content. We have won prizes and have been recognized in major festivals,' Echeverri says. 'We have a Colombian film on the official selection at Cannes that we're very proud of, Un Poeta,' The Poet. The film commission touts 100 Years of Solitude, which Netflix produced with Colombian company Dynamo, as its biggest success to date. Recent projects filmed in Colombia include the feature Shadow Force, with Omar Sy and Kerry Washington, from Lionsgate and Dynamo (made with a CINA in 2022) and the horror film Rosario from Jaguar Bite, which made use of the FFC in 2023. Of course, all this could change with the looming threat of tariffs, but Solano says they are business as usual for now. 'We're waiting to see what's happening, how this could be implemented and what it would mean. There is very little information. Certain movies cannot be shot in the U.S. Some will travel because of the locations and the cultural aspects needed from different places. Right now, we are looking at how we strengthen our benefits for local production so that we are not too dependent on international production.' Best of The Hollywood Reporter 'The Goonies' Cast, Then and Now "A Nutless Monkey Could Do Your Job": From Abusive to Angst-Ridden, 16 Memorable Studio Exec Portrayals in Film and TV The 10 Best Baseball Movies of All Time, Ranked
Perth Now
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Perth Now
Paul Walter Hauser and Lili Reinhart to lead comedy thriller The Very Best People
Paul Walter Hauser and Lili Reinhart are to star in the comedy thriller 'The Very Best People'. The 38-year-old actor and the 'Riverdale' star, 28, will lead Brian Swibel's upcoming film in what will be his directorial debut alongside Tim Roth, Jake Lacey, Jai Courtney and Kerry Bishe. While plot details are being kept under wraps, Deadline reports 'The Very Best People' will be based on John Lavelle's stage play of the same name, and is due to enter production in New York on 22 May. Set in a Staten Island pub, 'The Very Best People' follows two childhood friends who, after the mysterious shooting of a disgraced NYPD detective, embark on a misguided mission for redemption. Armed with conspiracy theories and a warped sense of patriotism, they plot to confront the so-called 'Deep State', leading to a series of absurd and violent events, including a light-hearted kidnapping. Lavelle is also due to write the movie's script alongside 'Blades of Glory' scribe Craig Cox. 'The Very Best People' will be produced by Brent Emery, Justin Klosky, Alex Peace-Power, Tara Smith and Bita Khorrami for Swibel's Triptyk Studios alongside Bonnie Timmermann. Meanwhile, Hauser, Reinhart, Dan Reardon and Lisa Wolofsky will serve as executive producers. Hauser will be seen in this summer's Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) blockbuster 'The Fantastic Four: First Steps', where he will star opposite Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn and Ebon Moss-Bachrach in an undisclosed role. The 'Black Bird' star previously teased the superhero film would usher in 'a new tide of successful storytelling' in the MCU. Speaking with TheDirect, he said: 'So I think our movie, 'The Fantastic Four: First Steps', to me, only speaking from my opinion, everything I witnessed and took part in, everything I felt while in the presence of the creatives on the film, I believe we are the Marvel movie of the year. 'I believe we are the one to watch.' The actor added 'The Fantastic Four: First Steps' would 'hit', and compared it to previous successful Marvel movies like 'Guardians of the Galaxy' and 'Black Panther'. He said: 'I believe that this will go down in history as one of the ones that started a new tide of successful storytelling for the company. 'Sort of in the same way the 'Guardians of the Galaxy' and 'Black Panther' hit. They both hit in a certain way. I believe we are about to hit.' Hauser also teased 'Fantastic Four: The First Steps' was 'a smart, chic Marvel movie' that revolves around the family element of the titular team. During an appearance on Sam Roberts' show on SiriusXM, he said: 'I don't think I'm speaking out of school, and I think, from what I've seen, and obviously I can't say much about it, but I will say the short time I was on set, dude, they're making a cool movie, man. 'This is a smart, chic Marvel movie that really focuses on family as part of the theme. And you really kind of fall in love with those characters, I think.'
Forbes
03-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Paul Walter Hauser On Keeping It Real As ‘The Luckiest Man In America'
Paul Walter Hauser in Samir Oliveros' 'The Luckiest Man In America.' Emmy-winning actor Paul Walter Hauser, the lead of game show drama The Luckiest Man in America, came close to life imitating art and being a contestant himself. It was just one of the things he did to try to get by before making it in Hollywood. "I did so much stupid stuff for money back in the day," he recalls as we chat over Zoom. "I took a job once in my hometown dressing up as Chester Cheetah, the icon from the Frito Lay snack and walked around a Walmart handing out stickers or tattoos to kids to promote Cheetos. I got an offer to go on a game show at one point, and I was going to do it, but then they found out I didn't live in LA, and they rescinded the offer, even though I was willing to travel to go." "I remember I told my buddy Brian Huskey that I needed a place to crash in LA. He said, 'I wish I could help you out, but I can't have guests right now,' however he said, 'Let me ask some of my friends.' Ed Helms got back to him and said, 'Yeah, your buddy can stay at my place. I'm shooting The Hangover 2,' or whatever it was. It was crazy that Ed Helms didn't even know me but was willing to let me crash at his place because I was friends with Brian, who is very funny, by the way." Set in the 1980s, The Luckiest Man in America, which lands in theaters on Friday, April 4, 2025, is based on the true story of Michael Larson, an unemployed ice cream truck driver who appeared on Press Your Luck after working out how to game the system. Hauser plays Larson and heads an ensemble cast that boasts The White Lotus' Walton Goggins, Sneakers' David Strathairn, and Game of Thrones' Maisie Williams, to name a few. "David is very much slept on by Hollywood," the Black Bird actor says in awe. "The guy is incredible, but I think he gets overlooked because he's selfless. David's not a showy, 'look at me' guy. He's a workhorse actor who's as good as any of them, and when you give them a lead role, like in Good Night and Good Luck, you see him at his highest potential. His greatest powers are unleashed. We were lucky to have those guys drop in and do this. It felt like we got so many wins, with people saying yes to this. Maybe it was because it was during the strike, and we were one of the ones that caught the SAG waiver, but I look at the cast on the poster right now, and I'm like, 'How did we get all these people?' No pun intended; they were game for it, wanted to play, were hungry to act, and knew this was the cool piece to be in. It really elevated the film." David Strathairn in 'The Luckiest Man in America.' Hauser, who will be seen in The Naked Gun reboot with Liam Neeson and The Fantastic Four: First Steps this summer, relished playing quirky con man Larson and made the most of the opportunity to focus his performance on one 48-hour period of the contestant's life. "It was nice because we couldn't distill it to where he was at that exact time without knowing the full chronology of his lifetime. I knew more about the scandal and some of the tactics that went into it, but I didn't know a lot about his personal life," the actor says. "We definitely echo truth in that he had a daughter who had a birthday around that time. He was not totally in the kids' lives, and he eventually wound up with three different children from three different women and was not very accountable to them all. We took some liberties, and added some drama to the story by having it be a little more pressing in the moment and putting him in a predicament while he's trying to pull off this grift, as it were. I clung to the story, but the Game Show Network documentary on the topic was very influential for me and the rest of the cast members to dive in and get the inside track on some of the folks who were there that day." Hauser leans into Larson's almost cartoony persona and physicality, saying it was "less of a choice and more of something I noticed in the actual footage." "There are moments where the hands look wild, and he looks almost unhinged because he's so undignified in his celebrations. I thought that was interesting. How does he sit in the chair? Is he making eye contact with anybody? You try to find the little things, and hopefully, they can be indicative of greater truths." Paul Walter Hauser in 'The Luckiest Man in America.' Hauser, also known for star turns in Cruella and Cobra Kai, considers the film's production team to be "a top two best crew" that he has worked with in his 15 years in the industry. "Their enthusiasm and their artistry was unparalleled," he enthuses. "They all had the same vision as the director. Usually, you see the crew talk about the director behind his back and say, 'He wants to do this, but I want to do this.' This was everybody full bore with our director Samir Oliveros' vision because he really knew what he wanted. When I watch the film, I almost get distracted, and I'm worried less about my performance because I'm just looking at and marveling at the art design and the wardrobe. How did we get the period on the budget? We really stretched the dollar and got creative, and then it feels like a great time capsule piece that people will go back to." Most of the film's action occurs at the legendary CBS Studios lot in Los Angeles. However, the film wasn't shot in Hollywood, which makes the set even more impressive. "Some people really thought it was the CBS Television studio lot, but we recreated all of that on a soundstage in Bogota, Colombia," Hauser reveals. "It's a testament to the brilliant crew and the fact that they made it work on the budget we had. We priced this movie out in Los Angeles, Greece, and looked at a few locations, both typical and non-typical, but we found that our money could go way further there. They had some infrastructure from local Colombian television shows and soap operas. We loved the experience, the food, and the people. I would go back there and shoot in a heartbeat." (Left to right) Brian Geraghty, Paul Walter Hauser, and Patti Harrison in 'The Luckiest Man In ... More America.' The Luckiest Man in America also marks Hauser's first feature credit as a producer. It won't be his last. "I'm attached to several projects that I'm a producer on, like the Chris Farley movie, but this is the first time I've produced in the sense of a greater-sized project, and I've really enjoyed it," he concludes. "I saw Margot Robbie produce, I, Tonya, and her support, spirit, and choices she was making, being a part of the bigger decisions, inspired me. I've always wanted to produce and be a bigger part of it. In this case, it had more to do with casting. I brought in some of my buddies for a few different parts and had to oversee some of that. It was a really great experience."
