Latest news with #WorkingTitle


Express Tribune
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Express Tribune
‘Sense and Sensibility' remake already dividing fans after new cast additions announced
A fresh take on Sense and Sensibility has barely started filming, yet it's already igniting fierce debate among Jane Austen fans. The remake, led by Daisy Edgar-Jones and Esme Creed-Miles as Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, has divided audiences after its full cast announcement sparked heated reactions online. The film, produced by Focus Features and Working Title, boasts a high-profile ensemble. George MacKay is stepping into the role of Edward Ferrars, Caitríona Balfe is playing Mrs. Dashwood, and Fiona Shaw will portray the chatty London socialite Mrs. Jennings. Frank Dillane, known for more brooding roles, is cast as the infamous John Willoughby, while Herbert Nordrum and Bodhi Rae Breathnach complete the core lineup as Colonel Brandon and Margaret Dashwood, respectively. Despite the star power, many Austen purists are voicing concern. Critics on social media argue the casting choices feel 'too modern' and claim the production is shaping up to be another overly stylized period drama rather than a faithful adaptation. 'It looks like they're going for edgy instead of elegant,' one Austen fan wrote on X, while others fear the chemistry between the leads might not hold up to the legacy of the beloved 1995 version. Adding to the skepticism is the creative team. While director Georgia Oakley has earned praise for Blue Jean, and screenwriter Diana Reid is a bestselling author, fans are still wary of how much creative liberty they might take. The internet discourse has been especially unforgiving, with 'Elinor' and 'Willoughby' trending across multiple platforms as fans dissect every casting detail. The film is only in production, but the court of public opinion is already in session. Whether the final product will win over skeptics or deepen the divide remains to be seen.


Atlantic
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Atlantic
This Is Love for Precarious Times
The first time I watched Too Much, Lena Dunham's return to scripted television after a seven-year hiatus, it felt impossibly disappointing—visually flat, almost defiantly unfunny, more cringeworthy in its reliance on Anglo-American culture clashes for charm than Mary-Kate and Ashley trying to get a royal guard to crack a smile. The premise: Jess (played by Hacks ' Megan Stalter) is a New Yorker working in advertising production who's offered the chance to move to London when her relationship catastrophically implodes. (Dunham, as ever daring us to try to like her characters, has Jess, in the first episode, breaking into her ex's apartment and terrorizing his new influencer girlfriend while brandishing a garden gnome.) Arriving in London, Jess has a chance encounter with Felix (Will Sharpe), a broke musician, in a particularly vile pub toilet. Both are hapless in different but complementary ways—Jess tells Felix how to wash his hands, Felix helps Jess get home when she accidentally orders her Uber to Heathrow. These are hard times to be a romantic, especially on Netflix. Two years ago, on a New Yorker podcast lamenting the modern state of the rom-com, Alexandra Schwartz noted that the most crucial quality for any romance is this: 'You have to believe that these two people want to be together, and you have to buy in.' On this front, Too Much barely even tries. Stalter is wackily endearing as Jess, and Sharpe adds brooding complexity to Felix's offhand charm. But as screen lovers, the pair have almost negative chemistry, coming together with a shrug and staying together out of what feels like inertia. Initially, this set my teeth on edge—two characters with seemingly little interest in each other being paired off with the chaotic insistence of a child making her soft toys kiss. But the more I've come back to the show, the more its slack, unromantic approach to love looks intentional. Jess and Felix couple up not because they're giddy with feeling, drunk on proximity and intimacy and connection, but because each offers something specific that the other person needs. Too Much is co-produced by Working Title, and the names of its episodes nod to some gooier rom-coms served up by the company in bygone days: Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill. But in the place where the show's heart should be is instead pure pragmatism: This is love for a cold climate. If you compare Too Much with Celine Song's recent film, Materialists, in which every character sizes up romantic prospects with the agenda of a hiring manager, you can sense a theme. Can we afford to actually fall in love now? In this economy? Dunham presents infatuation as nonsensical, or even destructive: The best episode of Too Much is one that details the breakdown of Jess's seven-year relationship with Zev (Michael Zegen), a wannabe music writer who appears like a white knight in a bar one night when she's lost her friends and her pizza (nobly, he secures another slice) and immediately dazzles Jess into submission, charming her family, devising kissing rituals scored to songs, even massaging her grandmother's feet. Quickly, though, he sours. When she moves in with him, he's outraged by the fact that so much of her stuff is pink. He sneers at her love for Miley Cyrus power ballads and mocks her need for affection. 'I swear you dress as a fuck you to people sometimes, Jess,' he tells her, when she puts on a sailor smock to go out. The longer she loves him, the more contemptuous he becomes. Felix, by contrast, is cool from the start. No one is better than Dunham at writing sympathetic fuckboys, men in varying stages of arrested development who are unpleasant in uniquely beguiling ways. At the pub, Felix treats Jess like a kind of curiosity (she is, in fact, wearing the very same sailor smock that we later learn Zev had been so cruel about). It isn't until he sees the coziness of Jess's rental apartment that something seems to click in his mind in an enticing way, like a modern-day Elizabeth Bennet reconsidering her feelings for Mr. Darcy after she first visits Pemberley. Jess, somewhat randomly, tries to kiss Felix; Felix, perturbed, admits that he has a girlfriend and leaves. He walks around for a bit listening to Fiona Apple and smoking, then goes back to Jess's place, where he finds her being hosed down in the shower by a baby-faced paramedic after having accidentally set her nightgown on fire. Somewhat incredibly, he stays. Too Much gestures at the rom-com, but it seems more enamored with the sitcom, particularly the low-fi, edgy, slightly manic mode of British comedies on BBC Three: Fleabag, Pulling, Coupling. Compared with Dunham's Girls, whose direction and cinematography specifically emulated Woody Allen and Mike Mills, it's a strangely unprepossessing show, the kind that more typically gets pulled together cheaply on the British taxpayer's dime. In a bottle-ish episode early on, Jess and Felix stay up all night in her apartment, having sex, eating takeout pho, and ignoring each other's emotional cues. (He tells her about being grossed out by an ex when he once saw her eating cold Chinese food with a look of blank desperation; later, in secret, Jess shovels cold noodles into her mouth with the same vacancy.) The characters do antic, no-stakes things that require little explanation and often defy logic. Felix goes to claim unemployment, telling the officer assessing him that if he gets a job, he won't have time to write music. Jess goes location scouting with a hotshot director, almost has sex with him in a firelit four-poster bed, then shows up outside Felix's window, begging him to move in with her. Late in the series, Jennifer Saunders appears playing a character identical to Absolutely Fabulous 's Edina, down to the selfsame styling and vocal delivery. But with help from flashback episodes, the show also starts to lay out why Felix and Jess might be drawn to each other. Jess, still devastated from her breakup and friendless in London, finds instant stability in Felix as someone who'll care for her, even if, subliminally at least, she seems to see through him. Like so many Dunham heroines, Jess is a perplexing mix of intuition and delusion; she offers Felix a joint bank account after they've been together barely a week, but also correctly identifies that his total lack of ambition fits awkwardly with her pride in her work. If, as an actor, Stalter sometimes seems less convincing than Dunham was at pulling the combination off, it's because it's an exceedingly difficult register to play in. Walking up to a guest at a wedding, Jess introduces herself by saying, 'Wearing neutrals is like a way of saying you've given up, right?'—a line so thoughtlessly rude that even Hannah Horvath might blanch. Felix, whose childhood is revealed to have been unloving and unstable, seems to see in Jess something like instant security: not just a warm person with a home that's much more welcoming than his chaotic squat full of eco-warriors, but an insta-family. If their relationship skips the heady, obsessive crush phase to get straight into a comfortable, stolid, domestic mode, maybe it's because that's what both of them are really yearning for. Initially, something about Too Much 's insistence on citing rom-coms in its episode titles while so stubbornly resisting romance felt galling to me. The quality that draws us to, say, the tortured off-on dynamic of Connell and Marianne on Normal People or the unbreakable bond between Nora and Hae Sung in Past Lives is the idea that love is somehow transcendent, that it elevates humans above the level of mere existence. But realistically, what is love if not care and attention? And what are care and attention if not expressions of tenderness and regard? Dunham buries clues throughout Too Much that seem to suggest what she thinks about men and women: Matrimony, Felix's father tells his wife late in the show, comes from the Latin words mater, meaning 'mother,' and monia, meaning 'activity'—it's about preparing a girl to be a mother, and in many ways, a maternal dynamic is exactly what both Felix and Jess are craving. 'You're like this alien,' Jess tells him in the final episode, 'but you also feel like home.'


Express Tribune
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Express Tribune
Aaron Taylor-Johnson leads Robert Eggers' 'Werwulf' as Lily-Rose Depp eyes possible reunion in cast
Aaron Taylor-Johnson is set to star in Werwulf, the upcoming werewolf horror film from director Robert Eggers. The project marks a reunion for the actor and director following their collaboration on the gothic vampire feature Nosferatu. Lily-Rose Depp, who also starred in Nosferatu, is currently in discussions to join the cast of Werwulf. The film is scheduled for a Christmas Day 2026 release in North America. Eggers co-wrote the script with longtime collaborator Sjón, following their previous work on The Northman. Werwulf will continue Eggers' exploration of folklore and myth through a stylised horror lens. The project is being produced by Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner of Working Title, alongside Eggers and Sjón. Chris and Eleanor Columbus of Maiden Voyage are on board as executive producers. Eggers has built a consistent partnership with Focus Features, which backed his earlier titles including The Witch, The Lighthouse, The Northman, and Nosferatu. The latter, a reimagining of the 1922 silent film, featured Depp as a young woman pursued by vampire Count Orlok, portrayed by Bill Skarsgård. Taylor-Johnson played Friedrich Harding, a sceptic of the vampire myth. The film earned $40 million in its opening weekend and grossed over $181 million worldwide. Taylor-Johnson recently appeared in 28 Years Later, with prior roles in Kraven the Hunter, Bullet Train, Tenet, and Godzilla. Depp's previous credits include The Idol, Wolf, Silent Night, and Voyagers.
Yahoo
15-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Esmé Creed-Miles Joins Daisy Edgar-Jones In ‘Sense And Sensibility'
Esmé Creed-Miles has joined Daisy Edgar-Jones in the new adaptation of Sense and Sensibility from Focus Features and Working Title Films. Miles will portray Marianne Dashwood, previously portrayed by Kate Winslet in the 1995 film directed by Ang Lee. The actress posted photos with the novel as a subtle announcement that she had gotten the co-lead part. Edgar-Jones will star as Elinor Dashwood. More from Deadline Daisy Edgar-Jones To Topline Adaptation Of Jane Austen's 'Sense And Sensibility' For Focus Features & Working Title Filmmaker Alexandra McGuinness Sets 'Lucia' As Next Project; 'Hanna's Esmé Creed-Miles To Star In Drama About James Joyce's Daughter Universal Pictures Promotes Niels Swinkels To Focus Features International Distribution President Georgia Oakley will direct the remake of Lee's film from a script by bestselling author Diana Reid. Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner of Working Title will produce alongside India Flint of November Pictures and Jo Wallett. The project marks another collaboration between Focus and Working Title on a piece of Austen's work following their collaboration on the Oscar-winning Pride & Prejudice (2005) starring Keira Knightley, Matthew Macfadyen, Rosamund Pike, Donald Sutherland, Carey Mulligan, Jena Malone, Kelly Reilly and many more, as well as the 2020 adaptation of Austen's Emma starring Anya Taylor-Joy, Johnny Flynn, Mia Goth, Josh O'Connor and Callum Turner. Originally published anonymously with the byline reading 'By A Lady,' Austen's Sense and Sensibility follows sisters Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, opposites in their emotional approach, as they navigate love, loss and financial uncertainty amid the societal expectations of 18th century England. Austen's 1811 debut novel established her as a literary force and remains a cornerstone of English literature. Find Miles' post below: Best of Deadline 'The Buccaneers' Season 2 Release Schedule: When Do New Episodes Come Out? 'The Buccaneers' Season 2 Soundtrack: From Griff To Sabrina Carpenter 2025 TV Series Renewals: Photo Gallery


Cosmopolitan
15-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Cosmopolitan
‘Anonymity is a cloak of power': Slutty Cheff on restaurants' dark sides, dating IRL and her audacious persona
It's been a whirlwind couple of years for anonymous 20-something writer and cook Slutty Cheff. In early 2023, she launched an Instagram account that posted fairly unappealing photos of food with lengthy, sexually-explicit captions (one shared alongside a photo of a beef sandwich, for example, opens: 'I remember this girl at school who used to be very ashamed of her long labia'). Today, Slutty has tens of thousands of followers, a column in British Vogue, and is about to publish her debut book, TART: Misadventures of an Anonymous Chef, a memoir, of sorts, that she's already adapting for TV with romcom heavyweights Working Title. Safe to say: it's been a lot. 'I'm feeling quite anxious and stressed,' she says when we speak a week before TART's publication day (it's out on 17th July via Bloomsbury). 'My opinion changes every day. Sometimes I'm like, 'Oh it's gonna be great', and then other times I disassociate a bit and get scared of people being mean online.' There's little chance of that, I think. TART is a funny, frenetic journey through almost two years of Slutty's life; cheffing, dating, and partying in London. We follow her through several — often very stressful — restaurant jobs, where she hones her cooking skills, faces misogyny in male-dominated kitchens, and meets friends and lovers, with whom she forms intense but usually temporary bonds (such is the nature of working 'anti-social' hours). Her trademark tongue-in-cheek humour and overt eroticisation abound, complemented by striking frankness, droll self-depreciation, and beautiful, intricate descriptions of the food she makes — notably Rick Stein's fish soup, made methodically and cathartically as a way of reconnecting with herself and her love of cooking. Like Lena Dunham, whose endorsement says she 'devoured' the book, I inhaled TART in less than a week. For those, like me, who spent their 20s finding their feet and partying too hard in a big city, it's an intoxicating, familiar read — and one that either sparks (rose-tinted) nostalgia or begets a full-body cringe. Which is it for Slutty? 'I still have a lot of the same qualities in terms of being erratic and not necessarily making the best choices to, you know, avoid things that might disturb my mental health,' she says. 'But looking back, I'm not like, 'Oh you fucking idiot, why are you doing that?' because I think it's important to make mistakes and learn from them.' More than anything, she adds, it just makes her miss the kitchen. 'Which is nice. It's like a sentimental, romantic thing. It's not just this unveiling of the toxic, horrendous side of a professional kitchen, it talks about the beauty in it as well.' Although it's pegged as a memoir, Slutty (a nickname even her friends now call her) describes TART as 'an amalgamation of fact and fiction'. She continues: 'Some parts are incredibly true and accurate, and others have been juiced up.' One bit that is depressingly true is Slutty's encounters with a chef colleague she calls Victor, who unwelcomely tries to flirt, always stands uncomfortably close, and even gropes her. 'I didn't say anything until a younger female chef joined and he did similar things with her and she spoke up,' says Slutty. '[In some ways] it was really great because it showed that even with just five years difference in generation, women are feeling less ashamed to call things out. I was really proud of her.' Throughout TART, Slutty makes no bones about the challenges of working as a woman in kitchens, especially as she's often the lone female chef (in fact, it was a now-notorious post mocking TikTok chef Thomas Straker's all-male, all-white kitchen staff that really skyrocketed her follower count). Slutty says she 'had a hard time' expressing anything about the misogyny in the kitchens she worked in because of 'not wanting to appear 'weak' because I'm a girl; I didn't want to showcase the stereotype of being emotional'. Does she think restaurants are moving more slowly when it comes to attitudes around gender equality? 'Probably yeah,' she says. 'But I think that's to do with the fact that running a restaurant is an incredibly hard feat, whether that's paying the bills, retaining the staff, or the labour of the job. There's so much going on, and there's so little money in it, that I think it's easier for a corporate office that has some crazy worldwide parent holding company and millions of pounds in their HR department to investigate these new ways of working. It probably is getting better as well. Each kitchen is different.' Although she's understandably fairly tight-lipped about her background (which, she tells me matter-of-factly, is 'middle class, nuclear family, older protective brother, younger frail sister with mental health issues, nice life, privilege, no real struggle, blah, blah, blah'), Slutty does know a thing or two about working in a corporate office, having left a marketing role for cooking school and then kitchens. 'I was bored of my office job,' she explains. 'I was sort of having a mental breakdown, so trying to be a chef was almost like, 'I'll just fucking give it a stab as a last resort, and if it goes bad, I'll go back to my job'.' It took a lot of hard work, but the risk paid off: despite the long, exhausting, and often blood pressure-raising hours, she loved being a chef — a fact that's effusively evident throughout TART. Slutty even continued working in restaurants after her Instagram took off and she'd scored her book deal, grafting in restaurants for much of the six months that it took her to write TART — which was no easy feat. 'I was writing every hour I had off work and became a shell of a human,' she previously revealed on Instagram. So, she took a break from working in restaurants to finish it, and is yet to go back full-time — with new writing opportunities in TV now taking up her time instead. Oh, and the chefs she used to work with do know about her Slutty alter ego. 'They were like, 'What the fuck?',' she recalls. 'Because I'm not very audacious as a person. The way that I write on Instagram is like the way you speak when you're out at night drunk, talking with a friend, and the next day you're like, 'Oh fuck, what did I say last night?'. It's inhibitions set free; having a laugh. It's the way I would speak to my closest, oldest girlfriends. Naturally when I was working in kitchens, I was just focused on doing a good job and being as good as the boys, so I didn't show that side of myself.' Her anonymity has emboldened Slutty to embrace this gutsy, cheeky, and sexed-up side without the usual fears or repercussions that come with being famous, and sexual, online, especially as a woman. 'Being anonymous gives me a secret cloak of power and ego that's always tongue-in-cheek,' she tells me, adding that it was an 'impulsive decision' to hide her identity — which she usually does so with a burger emoji, knitted burger mask, or carefully-placed accessories (edible and otherwise). 'I think the character [of Slutty Cheff] is wholly me, but it's a bit of me that I only show to people who I'm comfortable with and love.' Slutty doesn't hide everything about her non-alter ego life. We know she now has a boyfriend, after being single for nearly a decade, because she's written about him and posted mysterious hand/leg/back-of-head shots of him on Instagram — kind of a soft launch, except we'll never get the hard stuff. As someone whose newfound career centres on writing about her sex and dating escapades, how has being in a relationship influenced her work? 'Initially it was a real boner killer because, I don't know, you feel like you don't want to just report on someone else all the time,' she says. 'But I think I've escaped that now. There's a million stories to tell, whether you're in a relationship or not, and it can be equally as interesting [to look back]. I also don't want to bang on about being in a relationship because when I was single, someone talking about the trials and tribulations of being in love was just like, 'Oh fuck off'.' As she tries to figure out the perfect balance between boyfriend and non-boyfriend content, Slutty is also working on the TV adaptation of TART — 'there's no details to say because I'm being really shit at it while I'm so focused on the book stuff' — and will soon be getting started on book number two (again, no details for now). With all this fame and fortune, could she ever be tempted to reveal her identity? As it stands, she's committed to a 'face reveal' at one million followers. Will she stick to it? 'There's not a chance I'll ever get to a million followers because you have to do all of this dirty social media tomfoolery to get there, like short form videos, brand deals, and showing your ass,' she says. 'So I can't get to one million. But if I do, then I'll just delete one follower all the time. Maybe if someone outs me, then I'll crack on and show my face, but then who will give a fuck? It's all about the anonymity — that's the mystique.' Read on for an exclusive extract, adapted from TART: Misadventures of an Anonymous Chef by Slutty Cheff (Bloomsbury, £16.99). Spring is in the air. There are cocks everywhere: the forced rhubarb unveils its great erection from beneath the covers, courgettes showcase their bendy phallic form with pride, and girthy leeks pull back their skin. And all I can think about is sex. It's April now, a month since I cycled past that strange hot man smoking in the dark. It was Luca. And it was him who called me, trying to get me round for a booty call. I picked up while I was cycling, but I politely declined and explained to him I'd just ended things with a guy. I'd also just worked a double shift and I didn't feel all that sexy, with deep-fryer hair, a sweaty body and puffy tear-stained cheeks. But I didn't mention that to him; even in a state of wretched sadness I still think about impressing boys. Since that night, Luca has been persistent in helping me move past my heartbreak, not with sympathy and kindness, but with straight up sexting. We've texted every day since. He's a menace and I fancy him a lot. He's audacious and cocky, but my God is he hot. And after my recent failed attempt at real love, I fancy myself some short-lived lust. During the last month, he's hit me up for many a booty call, but it was only yesterday when I finally conceded. Although, I suppose a booty call is usually at night, whereas this was in broad daylight. 24 hours later and I'm back in the kitchen, but all I can think about is yesterday morning's sex. Sex flashbacks can be better than the real thing. They are like the Hollywood-produced trailer of your feature-length fornication; the bumpy bits are forgotten and the artful bits come to the forefront; the climax, the tit grab, the cock clasp, the tongue twirl. 'You've got a bit of a spring in your step today, don't you,' senior sous chef George says to me. It's been a gruelling month getting over my heartbreak, despite having Luca's sexts to keep me entertained, but as of yesterday, I have an effective distraction: Luca, the handsome gazelle. All day I've been thinking about him, and me, naked. 'Of course I'm happy,' I respond. 'I'm making staff food an hour after I was supposed to go home after my morning shift; that's just how much I love being here.' I'm making mac and cheese for the chefs, my silly boys. I lob a chunk of butter and a sprinkling of flour into a pan to make the roux for béchamel. Once it sizzles and starts smelling of biscuits, I pour in a little milk. I take a big spoon and use my motherly arms to stir my sauce, so the mix doesn't stick to the bottom of the pan. As I add more, it gets a little sleepier and starts moving slower. The boys don't realise their mother's glowing because she got laid last night, not because she loves them. TART: Misadventures of an Anonymous Chef by Slutty Cheff will be published via Bloomsbury on 17th July