Latest news with #TheCovenant
Time of India
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time of India
Guy Ritchie, Jake Gyllenhaal team up for 'Road House 2'
Picture Credit: X English filmmaker Guy Ritchie is once again joining forces with actor Jake Gyllenhaal as he is set to direct the sequel to 'Road House'. Jake Gyllenhaal will reprise his lead role as ex-UFC fighter Dalton in the film, reports 'Variety'. ' Road House 2 ' marks the third collaboration between Ritchie and Gyllenhaal and their second for Amazon MGM Studios following 'Guy Ritchie's The Covenant'. The filmmaker and the Oscar and Tony-nominated actor also collaborated on the forthcoming action thriller 'In the Grey'. Will Beall ('Bad Boys: Ride or Die', 'Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F') is writing the script for the sequel, plot details for which are being kept under wraps. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Google Brain Co-Founder Andrew Ng, Recommends: Read These 5 Books And Turn Your Life Around Blinkist: Andrew Ng's Reading List Undo As per 'Variety', producers include Atlas Entertainment's Charles Roven and Alex Gartner, as well as Gyllenhaal for his Nine Stories Productions with Josh McLaughlin. Ivan Atkinson will executive produce. 'Road House' is a reboot of the 1989 classic starring Patrick Swayze, and followed Gyllenhaal as a former UFC fighter struggling to make ends meet. After the owner of a Florida Keys roadhouse finds him sleeping in his car, Dalton becomes the bar's bouncer and finds himself roped into a war of outlaws and bikers (including real-life mixed martial artist and first-time actor, Conor McGregor) and a developer determined to build a lavish resort for "rich a*******". The movie was viewed as a success for Amazon MGM and the studio announced a sequel was in development last summer during its inaugural Upfronts presentation. The film launched on Prime Video last March and broke records for the streamer - attracting nearly 80 million worldwide viewers in its first eight weeks to become the studio's "most-watched produced film debut ever on a worldwide basis," per then-studio chief Jennifer Salke. Ritchie's prolific filmography includes high points like 2019's 'Aladdin', the Disney live-action adaptation grossed over $1 billion worldwide, which is his box office pinnacle - and the British gangster comedy 'The Gentlemen', which spawned a successful spinoff series at Netflix with a second season going into production this spring.
Newsweek
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Newsweek
Jake Gyllenhaal's 'Road House 2' to be Helmed by Fan-Favorite Director
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Entertainment gossip and news from Newsweek's network of contributors A whole bunch of diehard Patrick Swayze fans will ask you if the first remake should've ever been made, but that didn't stop millions from tuning in to watch Amazon's "Road House" remake starring Jake Gyllenhaal. Doug Liman directed that film, and now with "Road House 2" on the way, the director has been found for the sequel. Variety reports that Guy Ritchie will helm "Road House 2". Read More: 'Now You See Me 3' Releases Star-Studded Trailer It's not that much of a surprise that Liman won't be back for the sequel. The director wasn't silent about his frustrations with the release of "Road House". He said the film was initially meant for a theatrical release, which was changed after Amazon acquired MGM, at which point Liman's compensation reportedly shrank. Jake Gyllenhaal in promotional material for "Road House". Jake Gyllenhaal in promotional material for "Road House". Amazon Studios "Road House 2" will mark the third collaboration between Ritchie and Gyllenhaal. The latter starred in 2023's "The Covenant" and will star in the upcoming action thriller "In the Grey" alongside Henry Cavill. The "Road House" remake premiered on Amazon Prime last March and became a streaming hit, with close to 80 million viewers streaming it worldwide in its first eight weeks. According to then-Amazon MGM Studios head Jennifer Salke, that made it Amazon's "most-watched produced film debut ever on a worldwide basis." Gyllenhaal's Elwood Dalton is in desperate straits when we meet him in "Road House". An ex-UFC fighter living in his car and contemplating suicide, he's hired as a bouncer but finds himself facing a lot more than just drunks. Over the years, Ritchie has proven himself to be not only a prolific director but also one who enjoys working with the same actors in different projects. Along with Gyllenhaal, frequent collaborators with Guy Ritchie include Henry Cavill and Jason Statham. Ironically, even though Ritchie is known for action-heavy thrillers, financially his most successful film was the live-action remake of "Aladdin," which cracked the $1 billion mark. For a time, Ritchie was attached to a sequel, but that follow-up seems to have settled down in development limbo. Ritchie seems busier now than ever. Tom Hardy, Helen Mirren, and Pierce Brosnan star in his organized crime series "MobLand" on Paramount+. John Krasinski, Natalie Portman, and Eiza González star in his adventure film "Fountain of Youth," which premieres May 23 on Apple TV+. More Movies: 'Weapons' Trailer Reveals Terrifying First Look at Horror Epic Dwayne Johnson Transforms Into UFC Legend in 'Smashing Machine' Trailer
Yahoo
02-04-2025
- Yahoo
Covenant School trans shooter plotted Nashville attack for years, kept notebooks with plans: final report
FIRST ON FOX: Nashville police have released their final report on the Covenant School massacre – a targeted March 2023 attack on a Christian school by a transgender shooter who killed three third-graders and three adults. Rather than a highly anticipated manifesto, the report found that killer Audrey Hale left behind numerous notebooks, art books and computer documents about her plans to commit the attack and gain notoriety, partly inspired by the Columbine school shooting in 1999. Hale, the 28-year-old attacker and biological female, began "fantasizing" about and researching mass shootings as far back as 2017, according to investigators. A year later, she wrote "detailed fantasies" about shooting up the Isaac T. Creswell Middle Magnet School for the Arts, killing her father and killing her psychiatrist. Nashville School Shooting Manifesto: Why Killers Write About Motives "In this case, a manifesto didn't exist," the document reads. "Hale never left behind a single document explaining why she committed the attack, why she specifically targeted The Covenant, and what she hoped to gain, if anything, with the attack." Instead, her motivations were scattered across those many notebooks and other writings, investigators found. They included an image showing more than two-dozen notebooks seized from Hale's car and bedroom. They also said she left a suicide note addressed to her parents. Read On The Fox News App Read the Nashville police report: "In short, the motive determined over the course of the investigation was notoriety," according to investigators. "Even though numerous disappointments in relationships, career aspirations, and independence fueled her depression, and even though this depression made her highly suicidal, this doesn't explain the attack. As Hale wrote on several occasions, if suicide was her goal then she would have simply killed herself." Hale wanted people to remember her after her death, according to the document, and was partly inspired by books and documentaries on the Columbine killers. She wanted similar records of her own life and expected her guns, artwork and journals to be preserved in museums around the world. "Most disturbingly, she wanted the things she left behind to be shared with the world so she could inspire and teach others who were 'mentally disordered' like her to plan and commit an attack of their own," investigators wrote. Nashville School Shooter Manifesto: Police Group Sides With School In Lawsuit Over Release Because of Hale's consistent diaries over a period of years, police said they were able to collect far more information about her than in a typical investigation. They found no evidence of accomplices and said she wanted to prove her "superiority." The Covenant School was attached to a church that Hale once attended, and she chose the target because of her connection to it, because children wouldn't put up a fight, and because she wanted to obtain infamy, according to police. She killed three 9-year-olds: the pastor's daughter Hallie Scruggs, Evelyn Dieckhaus and William Kinney. The three adults she killed were 60-year-old Head of School Katherine Koonce, Cynthia Peak, 61, and Mike Hill, 61. Her biggest fear in the attack, at 5 feet, 2 inches tall and 120 pounds, was running into a "hero" who could physically overpower her and force her to be captured alive. So she settled on an elementary school that she described as the setting for her "happiest" childhood memories. "She never remarked of being bullied and ostracized there; on the contrary, she remarked on a couple of occasions how she established friendships, which included play-dates at the homes of other children and a sense of acceptance," police revealed. "She gave no examples of how anyone at the school belittled her or harmed her, as she did in other places she attended school. Because of this, Hale felt The Covenant was the perfect place to commit an attack, as it was the perfect setting for her death." Nashville School Shooter Audrey Hale: Who Is 28-Year-old Transgender Former Student Who Opened Fire At School The killer also had plans for "B" and "C" targets – the Opry Mills Mall and a stretch of Belmont Boulevard near Belmont University campus in Nashville. If her parents discovered her plans, she decided she would kill them and attack the Belmont target, according to investigators. She spent months practicing at the firing range and painted the phrase "Dark Abyss" on her clothes and guns. That was the name she had given to her depression. But the attack was delayed multiple times, including once after the death of a close friend in a car crash. Hale, who began using the name "Aiden Williams" in the years before her death, was killed by responding officers in harrowing bodycam video. "Hale felt she would be a failure if she killed less than 10 people during the attack. In that respect, she did fail, in no small part due to the actions of the faculty and staff at The Covenant," police wrote. "But she managed to attain the notoriety she craved simply by self-documenting her life and actions in a way no other mass killer has done before." This is a breaking news story. Check back for article source: Covenant School trans shooter plotted Nashville attack for years, kept notebooks with plans: final report
Fox News
02-04-2025
- Fox News
Covenant School trans shooter plotted Nashville attack for years, kept notebooks with plans: final report
FIRST ON FOX: Nashville police have released their final report on the Covenant School massacre – a targeted March 2023 attack on a Christian school by a transgender shooter who killed three third-graders and three adults. Rather than a highly anticipated manifesto, the report found that killer Audrey Hale left behind numerous notebooks, art books and computer documents about her plans to commit the attack and gain notoriety, partly inspired by the Columbine school shooting in 1999. Hale, the 28-year-old attacker and biological female, began "fantasizing" about and researching mass shootings as far back as 2017, according to investigators. A year later, she wrote "detailed fantasies" about shooting up the Isaac T. Creswell Middle Magnet School for the Arts, killing her father and killing her psychiatrist. "In this case, a manifesto didn't exist," the document reads. "Hale never left behind a single document explaining why she committed the attack, why she specifically targeted The Covenant, and what she hoped to gain, if anything, with the attack." Instead, her motives were scattered across those many notebooks and other writings, investigators found. They included an image showing more than two-dozen notebooks seized from Hale's car and bedroom. They also said she left a suicide note addressed to her parents. Because of Hale's consistent diaries over a period of years, police said they were able to collect far more information about her than in a typical investigation. The Covenant School was attached to a church that Hale once attended. The 9-year-old victims included the pastor's daughter Hallie Scruggs, Evelyn Dieckhaus and William Kinney. Police identified the adults as 60-year-old Head of School Katherine Koonce, Cynthia Peak, 61, and Mike Hill, 61. The killer also had plans for "B" and "C" targets – the Opry Mills Mall and a stretch of Belmont Boulevard near Belmont University campus in Nashville. If her parents discovered her plans, she decided she would kill them and attack the Belmont target, according to investigators. She spent months practicing at the firing range and painted the phrase "Dark Abyss" on her clothes and guns. That was the name she had given to her depression. But the attack was delayed multiple times, including once after the death of a close friend in a car crash. Hale, who began using the name "Aiden Williams" in the years before her death, was killed by responding officers in harrowing bodycam video. This is a breaking news story. Check back for updates.
Washington Post
31-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
Jake Gyllenhaal is the inner-demon actor of his generation
NEW YORK Jake Gyllenhaal could do absolutely anything next. Asked over lunch about his reading of a famed line in 'Othello' — Iago's seething 'I hate the Moor' — the 44-year-old actor furrows his brow, runs his hands through his buzzed hair and ponders the performance I attended. 'I'm trying to think about yesterday's matinee, because it changes,' he says. 'I've not made any sort of definitive choice.' Soft-spoken and gently smiling, Gyllenhaal later summons the wide-eyed mania of his zanier characters — think his drunken 'Okja' zoologist or Mr. Music of 'John Mulaney & the Sack Lunch Bunch' — when the topic shifts to his eclectic body of work. 'I'm just kind of random,' the Oscar nominee exclaims. 'I guess as focused and intense as I can be, I also have a sense of, like, 'That sounds fun. Oh, that scares me — I'll give that a shot.'' Then there's the matter of what I should order at Via Carota, the trendy West Village osteria Gyllenhaal picked for our mid-March meetup. Having narrowed my options to the cacio e pepe and the lemon risotto, I ask Gyllenhaal for his recommendation. 'You want to get both?' he gleefully responds. 'You've got to do it. Do both. Get both!' In the spirit of impulsivity, I embrace the idea. 'I mean, you're working — you should have some joy,' Gyllenhaal says. 'We have to leave you carbed up. You have a lot of typing to do.' That carpe diem approach helped steer Gyllenhaal toward 'Othello,' the blockbuster Shakespeare revival now on Broadway. Gyllenhaal was shooting 'Guy Ritchie's The Covenant' on the Spanish island of Tenerife when he fielded the offer to star as Iago opposite Denzel Washington's titular general in the Kenny Leon-directed tragedy. A Shakespeare novice, Gyllenhaal asked to read the play and promptly bumped against Iago's first monologue. 'I read it through twice, and I went, 'I don't know,'' Gyllenhaal recalls. 'There were bits I understood, and I sat in this purgatory of, 'Can I do this?'' Still, Gyllenhaal thought about how his and Washington's paths had run parallel for years. Gyllenhaal worked with director Antoine Fuqua, Washington's frequent collaborator, on the films 'Southpaw' and 'The Guilty.' When prepping for 'Southpaw's' boxing sequences, Gyllenhaal connected with Terry Claybon, Washington's longtime trainer, and worked out at the same gym as his fellow A-lister. Having floated in Washington's orbit without colliding, Gyllenhaal was eager to connect with an acting icon he had revered for decades. A pre-pandemic New York theater regular, Gyllenhaal also hadn't starred in a play since his Tony-nominated turn in 2019's 'Sea Wall/A Life' and found himself itching to fine-tune his technique onstage. 'Am I going to forever say Kenny Leon and Denzel Washington asked me to play Iago and I said, 'Thank you, but no'?' Gyllenhaal asks. 'Also, I think it was at a time [when I was] just finding a moment to be reinspired by what it is that I do.' Thus Gyllenhaal signed on for the production, which runs through June 8 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, and spent the better part of a year becoming fluent in Shakespeare. As he studied with Columbia professor James Shapiro and vocal coach Jeannette Nelson, Gyllenhaal navigated the byzantine text and found a way into Iago's troubled headspace. That part is nothing new — whether he's playing a hallucinating teen in 'Donnie Darko,' a tragically repressed sheepherder in 'Brokeback Mountain' or a ruthlessly opportunistic videographer in 'Nightcrawler,' Gyllenhaal has a knack for shining light on the mind's darkest recesses. As much as 'fearless' gets thrown around acting circles with abandon, Gyllenhaal earns the moniker. Picking projects that traverse in torment, he's not afraid to bring a character's inner demons to the surface. Brawny-to-scrawny transformations, vocal affectations, physical tics and trembles — Gyllenhaal stuns by fusing intense preparation with in-the-moment inspiration. 'There's an ambition to be at his best and to push the boundaries of acting, and to try to create something that has not been seen before,' says Denis Villeneuve, who directed Gyllenhaal in the surrealist drama 'Enemy' and the child-abduction thriller 'Prisoners.' 'He wants to try to re-create the chaos of life.' Speaking between sips of mint tea, Gyllenhaal is not so chaotic. Mostly, he's cordial and considered, with dashes of self-deprecation to offset the earnestness. Clocking my empty plate, Gyllenhaal serves me a helping of insalata verde between name-checking Danny Kaye, Paul Newman and Washington as his acting idols and hailing the performances of Cole Escola in 'Oh, Mary!' and Audra McDonald in 'Gypsy' this Broadway season. The son of accomplished screenwriter Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal and prolific TV director Stephen Gyllenhaal, he grew up in Los Angeles' Hancock Park neighborhood immersed in show business. As a child watching his now-Oscar-nominated older sister, Maggie, perform onstage, he instinctively wanted to emulate her. After appearing in a pair of student productions when he was 10 or 11 — playing the Pharaoh in 'Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat' and the Scarecrow in 'The Wizard of Oz' — Gyllenhaal discovered comfort in the theater. 'The oddity, I think, of performance is that it's so unnatural,' Gyllenhaal observes. 'But I remember something feeling right about that.' As Gyllenhaal found his way to Hollywood — making his screen debut as Billy Crystal's son in 'City Slickers' at age 10 and breaking out as NASA engineer Homer Hickam in 'October Sky' at 18 — he leaned on a lesson instilled by his industrious parents: 'Freedom is on the other side of discipline.' Looking back, Gyllenhaal credits his filmmaker father with gifting him a sense of cinematic wonder and his wordsmith mother with fostering his appreciation for storytelling. 'They gave me a world — I think some of it was conscious and some was unconscious — saying, 'Look at this sacred space where you can put up all these feelings and let them out,'' Gyllenhaal says. Actor Peter Sarsgaard had just started dating Maggie Gyllenhaal when he met Jake at a bar in the East Village more than two decades ago. Gyllenhaal naturally had questions — Sarsgaard was the guy seeing his sister, after all. Yet over the years, Gyllenhaal's now-brother-in-law has seen that inquisitive streak endure. 'If he finds something there, then his curiosity won't let up,' says Sarsgaard, who went on to work with Gyllenhaal on the 2005 Gulf War drama 'Jarhead' and the 2024 courtroom drama series 'Presumed Innocent,' among other projects. 'Many good actors are people that are fervent. Onstage, you're going back over the same thing over and over, and you have to be curious in order not to be bored out of your mind. On film, it just goes on for ages. So it really requires an unrelenting attitude.' Boasting both leading man charm and character actor eccentricity, Gyllenhaal has often gravitated toward the obsessive. Lou Bloom, the unnervingly mannered stringer he played in 2014's 'Nightcrawler,' is a man of unhinged ambition. Georges Seurat, the post-impressionist painter Gyllenhaal portrayed in the 2017 Broadway revival of 'Sunday in the Park With George,' is all about artistic perfection. In David Fincher's 2007 fact-based procedural 'Zodiac,' he played a cartoonist consumed by his pursuit of a serial killer. Gyllenhaal's twitchy detective in 2013's 'Prisoners' is similarly driven by justice. They're all focused characters inhabited by a focused actor. But consider Gyllenhaal's performances in the apocalyptic blockbuster 'The Day After Tomorrow,' the $100 million rom-com 'Love & Other Drugs' and the Marvel romp 'Spider-Man: Far From Home,' and it's clear he can also have a good time in a box office darling. Amid such widely seen projects — not to mention feverish public interest in his dating history — Gyllenhaal adopted a mantra of keeping his personal life personal. 'Being a famous person has, obviously, its great pros, but it also has its great cons,' says Andrew Burnap, the Tony winner who plays Cassio in 'Othello.' 'I think he, in his life, is very aware of that, and his commitment is to just being a great artist.' That dedication to craft extends to playing the guitar, honing his photography and learning French. ('Jake constantly mocked me about the way I speak English,' Villeneuve says with a laugh, 'and he took the risk of trying to learn French.') A passionate cook, he tends to take charge of the Gyllenhaal-Sarsgaard household's Thanksgiving feast. ('He's just coming over with hot plates and things through the door,' Sarsgaard says. 'It's wonderful.') Last fall, Gyllenhaal and Sarsgaard met with celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall at his River Cottage estate in Devon, England; Gyllenhaal calls it 'probably the highlight of my year.' 'I like the practice of cooking because it's a constant discovery and experience,' Gyllenhaal says. 'Maybe it's the love of interpretation.' Gyllenhaal's interpretation of Iago, the Machiavellian underling previously played by the likes of Kenneth Branagh, Daniel Craig, Mark Rylance, Christopher Walken and Ian McKellen, earned raves when reviews for 'Othello' dropped Sunday night. Although the overall production drew a mixed critical reception, its $2.8 million week during previews was the highest-grossing for a play in Broadway history, not accounting for inflation. (Last week, the George Clooney-starring 'Good Night and Good Luck' bested that mark.) Described by Washington Post theater critic Naveen Kumar as 'the production's indisputable anchor,' Gyllenhaal stalks the stage with the air of a men's-rights provocateur in Leon's 2028-set revival. Soon after Iago spits 'Be a man!' to one pawn, Gyllenhaal lays bare the pain of a villain whose famously inscrutable motivations seem to veer, in this iteration, toward feeling underappreciated by Othello. 'Jake is special because he's in pursuit of truth, and he does it on such a deep level,' says the director Leon. 'It's not someone twirling their mustache, and it's not somebody playing an evil guy. This is somebody who has found the humanity in the most obvious of villains.' Before Iago undoes Othello, the antagonist reveals his deceitful intentions during a celebrated soliloquy. It was during this speech — at the March 19 matinee, at least — that Gyllenhaal delivered the line 'I hate the Moor' not with the cold calculation of many an Iago before but tortured conflict. 'It's the age-old story,' explains Gyllenhaal, whose commitment to the character included a Venetian makeover of his dressing room. 'It's Steinbeck-ian. It's siblings. It's family. It's being human. It's the voice in our head that tells us 'you can't do that' or 'don't do that' or 'you're not capable of that.' I think Iago is also hurt, and you can't forget that. 'The argument he makes to himself is laying groundwork for something he needs to be true. Because I think he loves the Moor. When he says, 'My lord, you know I love you,' I don't think that's some manipulative thing in my choice. And I do love Denzel, so I can't not play that.' It's a zig when the audience might expect a zag from an actor who showcased a sly, cunning side as the Spider-Man baddie Mysterio and that stealthily monstrous 'Nightcrawler' character. Having read Martha Stout's 'The Sociopath Next Door' when preparing for 'Nightcrawler,' Gyllenhaal decided against portraying Iago with comparable callousness. Still, finding his Iago's empathetic tenor was a process that spilled well into previews. 'I was playing it pretty aggressively early on,' Gyllenhaal says. 'The words themselves, if you enunciate them sometimes too much, if you don't go back and give them speed and also space and grace, they become very evil.' More than once, Gyllenhaal cuts himself off and cautions that he could ramble all day about his onstage process. For all of his on-screen successes, his fixated mind takes particular pleasure in finding ways to intrigue, unsettle or enchant a theater audience. 'Sometimes people come from a career in TV and film and it takes a minute for them to navigate a different medium,' says Annaleigh Ashford, Gyllenhaal's 'Sunday in the Park' co-star. 'But it's part of his marrow. He's so at home onstage. He is so gifted at the give-and-take with the audience, the communion that you share with the living, breathing people that are sitting there watching you.' While Gyllenhaal has booked his next two starring roles — a supernatural M. Night Shyamalan flick and a sequel to 2024's 'Road House' remake — he's already kicking around ideas for a return to the theater. 'The feeling I get before I go out every night is no different from the kid in high school on that stage,' he says. 'The wings still look the same. The intensity is still the same. It may be Broadway, but the joy is the same.' When I bring up the idea of an overarching trajectory, he chuckles, circles back to spontaneity and answers the question with one of his own: 'Have you discovered that I clearly have no idea?'
