(Left) Michelle Williams as Molly in ‘Dying for Sex’. Photo: Sarah Shatz/FX. (Right) Director Damien Chazelle on the set of ‘Babylon’ from Paramount Pictures.
Preview:
Michelle Williams is joining the cast of Damien Chazelle’s new movie.
The as-yet-untitled film is reportedly set in a prison.
Paramount is backing the project.
The last we heard of ‘La La Land’ and ‘Babylon’ filmmaker Damien Chazelle mysterious next project –– a big vote of confidence from Paramount after ‘Babylon’ didn’t perform at the box office –– he had Daniel Craig and Cillian Murphy circling the lead roles.
That’s among the big questions for the new movie –– neither Chazelle nor studio backers Paramount Pictures have revealed anything official about the storyline.
There have been reports that it’s set within the walls of a prison (an ironic coincidence given that ‘Babylon’s performance nearly saw Chazelle thrown into director jail), that it’ll be more of a two-hander (so the new potential casting makes sense) and that it’ll have “action elements,” so read into that what you will.
More concretely, Chazelle will also produce the movie alongside Olivia Hamilton under their Wild Chickens Productions banner.
Where else can we see Michelle Williams?
Michelle Williams as Mitzi Fabelman in ‘The Fabelmans,’ co-written, produced and directed by Steven Spielberg.
Aside from ‘Dying for Sex,’ which has been making the awards rounds in recent months, with Williams receiving plenty of kudos and a new dramatic legal thriller movie called ‘A Place in Hell,’ she mostly has projects in development at this point.
Perhaps not so coincidentally, Williams has been attached to the other project that Chazelle has been considering, ‘Evel Knievel on Tour,’ which has Leonardo DiCaprio considering the lead role, but due to scheduling issues is still idling on the side of the production canyon. It might still rev up, but for now Chazelle is focused on the prison pic.
There are also movies including ‘This is Jane’ and ‘Fever,’ one about singer Peggy Lee, but they’re both still floating.
When will Damien Chazelle’s new movie arrive on screens?
With the casting starting to come together, Chazelle is looking to kick off filming later this year, so we can likely expect its release in 2027.
Cillian Murphy and Daniel Craig may star in Damian Chazelle’s new movie.
The as-yet-untitled film is reportedly set in a prison.
Paramount is backing the project.
While his most recent movie, the star-studded dipped into early Hollywood territory that was ‘Babylon’ singularly failed to set the box office alight, writer/director Damien Chazelle clearly hasn’t lost too much of his pull.
The filmmaker, who also brought us the Oscar-winning likes of ‘Whiplash’ and ‘La La Land,’ is busy developing an untitled new project and he’s got his eye on two big name talents to star.
That’s among the big questions for the new movie –– neither Chazelle nor studio backers Paramount Pictures have revealed anything official about the storyline.
There have been reports that it’s set within the walls of a prison (an ironic coincidence given that ‘Babylon’s performance nearly saw Chazelle thrown into director jail), that it’ll be more of a two-hander (so the new potential casting makes sense) and that it’ll have “action elements,” so read into that what you will.
More concretely, Chazelle will also produce the movie alongside Olivia Hamilton under their Wild Chickens Productions banner.
What else is Damien Chazelle working on?
Leonardo DiCaprio at CinemaCon 2025. Photo: Warner Bros.
The untitled project appears to have leapfrogged ahead of another starry movie that the director had cooking up.
Until recently, Chazelle’s main focus was on an Evel Knievel biopic that was to star Leonardo DiCaprio. Yet despite the director and actor developing that film, the latter has decided to pivot instead to work again with Martin Scorsese on his Hawaii-set gangster movie.
In an interesting note, DiCaprio was also interested in the prison pic, and the pair worked towards that one before switching to focus on the Knievel movie, which is back to idling its creative engine now that the actor has headed elsewhere.
Still, that one might yet get its motor running again in future.
Chazelle is clearly looking to put ‘Babylon’ behind him and dive into something new. He admitted on the Talking Pictures podcast to some trepidation about whether he’d get to make something on that scale again:
“I’ve been head in the sand. I’ve been sort of busy writing. So I’ll get a real taste of how it’s changed or not once I get to finish this script and try to actually get it made. I’m in a sort of trepidatious state of mind, but I have no illusions. I won’t get a budget of ‘Babylon’ size any time soon, or at least not on this next one.”
And purely as a producer, Chazelle is attached to his ‘Babylon’ star Brad Pitt‘s new movie, action effort ‘Heart of the Beast,’ which has David Ayer in the director’s chair.
Murphy was an in-demand performer even before he won his Best Actor Oscar for ‘Oppenheimer.’
The movie marked just the latest collaboration with writer/director Christopher Nolan, though interestingly, the filmmaker’s latest movie, ‘The Odyssey’ doesn’t seem to feature the actor (at least, that we know of!) despite starring half of Hollywood.
It’s not like Murphy is hurting for work. He was most recently seen in indie title ‘Small Things Like These,’ which itself is drawing some awards attention.
By order of the Peaky Blinders… Tommy Shelby (Cillian Murphy) is back. Production officially starts on the upcoming Netflix film.
He will be back on our screens in the ‘Peaky Blinders’ movie for Netflix, reprising the role of crime boss Tommy Shelby. The film has yet to confirm a launch date, but we do know it’s currently called ‘The Immortal Man.’
Then there’s comedy drama ‘Steve,’ in which he plays the titular headteacher who is battling for his reform college’s survival while managing his mental health.
Finally, Murphy’s attached to star in based-on-truth crime/mining drama ‘Blood Runs Coal.’
And on the behind-the-scenes side of things, Murphy is a producer on this year’s ‘28 Years Later,’ which makes sense, since 2002’s horror thriller ‘28 Days Later’ was one of his breakout early roles.
What has Daniel Craig worked on?
Daniel Craig as James Bond in 2012’s ‘Skyfall.’
Craig might be best known to a wider audience for his role as secret agent James Bond, a role he first played in 2006’s ‘Casino Royale.’
More recently, he appeared in Luca Guadagnino’s ‘Queer’ and has so far made two movies as ace sleuth Benoit Blanc in the ‘Knives Out’ franchise written and directed by Rian Johnson, with a third, ‘Wake Up Dead Man’ due later this year via Netflix.
Finally, the actor is attached to Justin Lin’s action movie ‘Two for the Money’ and will be playing a role in Greta Gerwig’s planned first ‘Narnia’ adaptation.
When will Damien Chazelle’s new movie arrive on screens?
Assuming the casting comes together, Chazelle is looking to kick off filming this year, so the new movie could conceivably be in theaters in 2026.
Director Damien Chazelle on the set of ‘Babylon’ from Paramount Pictures.
Brad Pitt will star in and produce ‘Heart of the Beast.’
It marks a reunion with his ‘Fury’ director David Ayer.
The story will see him as a soldier trying to survive after a plane crash.
Back in 2014, David Ayer wrote and directed ‘Fury,’ a World War II action movie about a grizzled tank commander who must make tough decisions as he and his crew fight their way across Germany in April 1945.
Clearly, Pitt had enough of a good time working with Ayer that the two are now teaming back up –– albeit 11 years later –– for a new movie, this time a survival drama called ‘Heart of the Beast,’ to which Ayer has been attached since last year.
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According to Deadline, Paramount has snagged Pitt’s services to both star and co-produce the movie via his Plan B company.
What’s the story of ‘Heart of the Beast’?
Brad Pitt in ‘Fury’. Photo: Sony Pictures Releasing.
Written by Cameron Alexander (who is more known as a music video director), ‘Heart of the Beast’ follows a former Army Special Forces Soldier and his retired combat dog who battle for survival after a plane crash deep in the unforgiving Alaskan wilderness.
Also on the behind-the-scenes team for the movie is ‘La La Land’ and ‘Babylon’ director Damien Chazelle, who signed a first-look deal with Paramount last year and will produce through his Wild Chickens banner, which he runs with wife and fellow filmmaker Olivia Hamilton.
What else is David Ayer working on?
Director David Ayer talks ‘The Beekeeper.’
Ayer, who has been campaigning for years to get his director’s cut of 2016 superhero outing ‘Suicide Squad’ out into the world, has otherwise been keeping busy directing the likes of ‘Bright,’ ‘The Tax Collector’ and last year’s surprisingly successful ‘The Beekeeper,’ which starred Jason Statham as a former member of a shadowy group known as the Beekeepers, who are brought in for extraordinary missions.
Ayer and Statham have already teamed back up for a new offering, ‘A Working Man,’ which will see the actor playing a retired counter-terrorism expert who now works in construction, but who calls upon his particular set of skills when a local girl goes missing.
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That movie will be in theaters on March 28th.
What else is Brad Pitt involved with?
Brad Pitt in ‘F1’. Photo: Warner Bros. Pictures.
Pitt was most recently seen in Apple TV+ movie ‘Wolfs’ opposite old friend George Clooney. Directed by Jon Watts, the film saw Pitt and Clooney as two lone-wolf fixers who are forced to team up on the same job.
The film was controversially given an extremely limited one-week cinema release before showing up on the company’s streaming service, and despite performing well there, the rumored follow-up has quietly gone away.
Despite that, he’ll be back on screens this June in ‘F1,’ the Joseph Kosinski-directed movie about a Formula 1 racing driver who comes out of retirement to coach a younger driver –– only to get back behind the wheel himself.
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That movie boasts a giant $300 million budget and has been shooting at various Formula 1 races around the world. It should be in cinemas for a little bit longer than ‘Wolfs’…
The actor is also aboard Jeff Nichols’ next film, ‘Land of Opportunity’ and has a wealth of other potential projects on his to-do list.
(L to R) Brad Pitt and Ziggy Marley attend the Los Angeles Premiere of “Bob Marley: One Love” at the Regency Village Theatre in Los Angeles, CA on Tuesday, February 6th, 2024. Photo: Alex J. Berliner/ABImages.
Outside of his acting work, Pitt, though his company, was an executive producer on recent cinematic titles including ‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’ and ‘Bob Marley: One Love,’ as well as RaMell Ross’s ‘Nickel Boys,’ adapted by Amazon from the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Colson Whitehead, which yesterday landed Academy Award nominations for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay.
Coming up, he’ll also carry the same producer title on Bong Joon-ho’s ‘Mickey 17,’ which releases on March 7th following a Berlin Film Festival premiere, as well as the upcoming ‘Hedda,’ Nia DaCosta’s feature take on the Henrik Ibsen play for Orion.
When will ‘Heart of the Beast’ be in theaters?
With filming yet to start, Paramount hasn’t handed out a release date for ‘Heart of the Beast’ just yet. It may well depend on Pitt’s schedule as for when it’s ready to head to theaters.
Director David Ayer on the set of Netflix’s ‘Bright.’ Photo: Matt Kennedy.
(Left) Leonardo DiCaprio attends the ‘Don’t Look Up’ World Premiere at Jazz at Lincoln Center on December 05, 2021 in New York City. Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for Netflix. (Right) Evel Knievel in ‘Being Evel ‘.
Preview:
Leonardo DiCaprio may play Evel Knievel in a new movie.
Damien Chazelle is reportedly developing the film.
It would chronicle the stunt driving daredevil.
With his most recent movie, the chronicle of careers rising and falling among the glitz and glamor of 1920s Hollywood that was ‘Babylon,’ director Damien Chazelle saw his own glittering career fall to somewhat of an unfortunate low.
The film, which boasted the star power of Margot Robbie and Brad Pitt among others, was a resounding flop with critics and audiences (though it still has its defenders), costing Paramount $80 million and only making $64.9 million at the box office.
Licking his wounds, Chazelle began to write his next film, though he admitted on the Talking Pictures podcast to some trepidation about whether he’d get to make something on that scale again:
“I’ve been head in the sand. I’ve been sort of busy writing. So I’ll get a real taste of how it’s changed or not once I get to finish this script and try to actually get it made. I’m in a sort of trepidatious state of mind, but I have no illusions. I won’t get a budget of ‘Babylon’ size any time soon, or at least not on this next one.”
Yet Paramount showed some continuing faith in the man who also made the much better received ‘Whiplash’ and ‘La La Land’ (both of which won Oscars), announcing at its CinemaCon presentation this year that it would be backing his next movie.
Evel Knievel in ‘I Am Evel Knievel’. Photo: Network Entertainment.
Robert Craig Knievel, who was known professionally as Evel Knievel, was a stunt performer and entertainer. Throughout his career, he attempted more than 75 ramp-to-ramp motorcycle jumps. Knievel was inducted into the Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 1999.
Born in Montana, he became known for a series of big stunts, some of which were successful, the others… less so. On September 8, 1974, he attempted to jump across the Snake River Canyon in Idaho using a rocket-powered cycle called the Skycycle X-2. The jump failed after the parachute deployed prematurely, but Knievel survived with minor injuries. An attempt to jump the Caesar’s Palace fountain in Las Vegas resulted in some severe injuries.
Knievel sought to profit from his image through endorsements and marketing deals. American Eagle Motorcycles signed him, and his popularity grew with young boys. From 1972 to 1977, Ideal Toy Company sold over $125 million worth of Knievel toys.
Knievel’s fame led to TV appearances and partnerships with companies like AMF and Harley-Davidson. However, after an assault conviction and jail time, he lost endorsements and declared bankruptcy. Despite a decline in his daredevil career, Knievel made a marketing comeback in the 1990s and continued to be involved in various ventures. He died in 2007 from diabetes and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.
“I really wanted to fly through the air,” he said shortly before his death. “I was a daredevil, a performer. I loved the thrill, the money, the whole macho thing. All those things made me Evel Knievel. Sure, I was scared. You gotta be an ass not to be scared.”
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If Chazelle really is planning a Knievel movie, it wouldn’t be the first; there have been various movies and TV movies about him; one a 1971 effort called ‘Evel Knievel’ that starred George Hamilton, the other 1977’s ‘Viva Knievel!’ which featured Evel himself in the lead.
And there was movement in 2004 on a McG-directed biopic called ‘Pure Evel’, but it stalled in development.
More recently, Darren Aronofsky was considering an Evel pic, with Channing Tatum starring. That has presumably also fallen by the wayside since Aronofsky has moved on to crime thriller ‘Caught Stealing.’
Richtman’s report mentions that William Monahan is attached to write the script for the film, and he has a link to DiCaprio via ‘The Departed.’
But as of right now, this is all a rumor until either Chazelle or Paramount chooses to make an official announcement.
What else is DiCaprio working on?
(L to R) Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio in ‘Killers of the Flower Moon,’ coming soon to Apple TV+.
We’ll have to wait and see whether this one comes to fruition or whether it sails off into a canyon. But if Chazelle really does land DiCaprio, that would certainly go some way to helping matters.
J.K. Simmons in ‘Little Brother’. Photo: Gravitas Ventures.
Moviefone recently had the pleasure of speaking with J.K. Simmons about his work on ‘Little Brother’, how he got involved in the project, the subject matter, approaching his role, phone acting and why he likes working with young filmmakers like Sheridan O’Donnell, as well as his reuniting with director Jason Reitman on ‘Saturday Night’ and portraying comedy legend Milton Berle.
You can read the full interview below or click on the video player above to watch our interviews with Simmons, Daniel Diemer, Philip Ettinger and director Sheridan O’Donnell.
J.K. Simmons in ‘Little Brother’. Photo: Gravitas Ventures.
Moviefone: To begin with, I understand that director Sheridan O’Donnell first contacted you to be an executive producer on the project and you replied, “I just act,” so he offered you the role of Warren Duffy. Is that your recollection of how you got involved in this project?
JK Simmons: Well, yeah, that’s my recollection of my response when anybody asks me to do any kind of grownup job, producing, writing, directing at any of the above. It seems like I should have segued into that by now, being an elder statesman in this business. But I don’t have the tools for anything other than the one thing that I’ve been working on for 50 years now, trying to get better at pretending to be other people. So, a mutual friend, Greg Lavoie had introduced us and sent me this screenplay, and obviously I connected with it. I’d forgotten that we had that discussion at all, but I think it was one of those, he wanted me to be the voice of the father and be an executive producer on the film. Then at the time, the father was just a disembodied voice on the phone, which was an interesting concept because it created a sense of distance between father and sons. But then as he developed, Sheridan, I think expressed this well, and I’m going to fumble at it, but he created the characters and then found himself following them on their journey. I think as that journey was developing, he decided that he wanted to see the father and get at least a little bit of the perspective from the dad’s point of view.
MF: What was your first reaction to the screenplay and the way Sheridan handled the subject matter?
Simmons: Well, I was profoundly impacted by it. I think unfortunately in the 2020s, most of us have been affected by suicide, by mental health issues with friends and loved ones. It’s unfortunately a very relatable story in that way, and certainly came organically from Sheridan in a way that he wanted to pay tribute to a friend that he lost to suicide. Then it’s always interesting to me, and this is how you know that you’re destined to be a filmmaker and a writer and director, and why I know that I am not, for someone as young as Sheridan to be able to write a character of this father. Obviously, the movie is about the two brothers and the road trip and their constantly shifting dynamic. It’s brilliantly done as we see them struggle with everything they’re struggling with, with each other and themselves, and we see them revert to age nine and eleven at times. But for him to have the sort of maturity and insight to write from the parents’ point of view, and we also see Polly Draper as the mom, is to me, a task, a feat, a talent that I marvel at.
MF: Can you talk about your approach to playing Warren and could you relate to the character as a father yourself?
Simmons: I mean, it was 100% straightforward because, well, as I said, Sheridan understands family dynamics and knew how to portray it or how to put it on paper for us to portray it. I’m in between generations, between the stoicism of the greatest generation and my kids’ generation where everyone is constantly talking about their feeling’s ad nauseam. I certainly feel that dichotomy within myself, and I think most of my friends who are of my generation feel a similar thing. So that dynamic I find interesting. When later in the film, I’m having one of the phone calls with Daniel Diemer, who by the way, was on the phone for all those calls, which is so helpful in playing all those scenes rather than having an AD off camera. That was huge. Thank you again, Dan, for doing that. It was the scene later where he confesses to his youngest son something that he probably has never voiced to anybody, that he’s lost. He’s supposed to be able to fix it and he can’t. Any dad knows what that’s like, whether it’s obviously on a smaller scale or on a dramatic scale.
(L to R) Daniel Diemer and Philip Ettinger in ‘Little Brother’. Photo: Gravitas Ventures.
MF: Marlon Brando once said that “phone acting” is the hardest type of acting someone can do on film. Do you agree with that and was it helpful to have Dan on set for those scenes?
Simmons: Well, 90% of the challenge was overcome by Sheridan and Dan just saying, let’s get Dan for the day and have him stand by on the phone. I mean, Marlon Brando was a pretty decent actor and a pretty insightful guy. One of the very first movies I did was a movie called ‘The Mexican‘ with Brad Pitt. Despite the fact that 60% of my stuff was cut from the movie, one of the things that we did in that film, I was at home in New York, they were shooting in the middle of nowhere in Mexico, and they asked me to set aside a day to be the voice on the other end of a phone call because Brad was shooting a scene at a payphone on the side of the road. I hadn’t been doing films for that long. I thought, well, yeah, of course that makes all the sense in the world, and we did it. Then God bless Brad, two months later we’re doing my side of the phone call, and Brad came in for the day and did his end of the phone call live because I mean, it’s so elementary and so helpful, and just makes a better movie. So, in the 22 or three years in between there, I don’t think I’ve ever done that on a phone call. So, to be able to do that again, have the phone call happen live was very helpful and I suggest that to all directors.
MF: You’ve worked with quite a few young directors in the past including Jason Reitman and Damien Chazelle. What do you like about working with young directors and what was your experience like collaborating with Sheridan O’Donnell?
Simmons: Well, I mean, of course everybody’s a young director now except Clint Eastwood, who I also recently got to work with (‘Juror No. 2‘). But the thing is, at least from my perspective, because I’m not a film buff or a cinephile, I did theater for 20 years and segued, and so I respond to what’s on the page. I had no idea when we were doing ‘Whiplash’ or when I was doing ‘Thank You for Smoking’ or when I was doing this film, ‘Little Brother’ with Sheridan. I don’t know if they can bring it from the page to the stage or not. I just know that they’re wonderful writers and I’ve maybe had a conversation or two with them, and I know they understand these characters and of the human condition and of life, and I just hope that they know how to put it together. Then I hope that some studio doesn’t step in and edit it badly. I’ve been fortunate in many cases with that, and less fortunate in some cases with things that haven’t gotten lifted off the page in the way that I personally envisioned them or hoped that they would be. But this is, it’s wonderful and visually fantastic, but more importantly to me, it’s a character movie. It’s all about these two brothers, and I come in and add my little complications a few times. But it’s just a beautiful, mature, harrowing and at times funny movie about real life stuff that unfortunately far too many of us are finding ourselves dealing with.
J.K. Simmons as Milton Berle in ‘Saturday Night’. Photo: Sony Pictures.
MF: Finally, ‘Saturday Night’ just premiered at the Toronto Film Festival. What was it like reuniting with Jason Reitman and how did you approach playing legendary comedian Milton Berle?
Simmons: Well, reuniting with Jason is always a treat. Since the first couple of films, it’s mostly been a cameo here and there. He was again, referring to ‘Whiplash’, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary. He’s the reason I ended up doing ‘Whiplash’ because he and Helen were producing and suggested me to Damien (Chazelle) for that. As far as ‘Saturday night’, and I’ve said this before, it’s not a question of Jason offering me something. It’s a question of Jason assigning me something in most of his films, and it’s always fun. In this case, it was inordinately intimidating playing a real person and an iconic guy. I was relieved when I started expressing that my fear of the whole thing, because anybody like 10 years younger than me or more, was like, “Wait, who now? Who are you? Milton, who? Never heard of the guy.” If they had heard of the guy, they were like, “I couldn’t pick him out of a lineup”. That combined with Jason, and it was a similar thing in a way, with Aaron Sorkin on ‘Being the Ricardos’. They both kept preaching in slightly different ways. “Please don’t try and be an impressionist. We’re not looking for that. We’re not looking for Rich Little. Find the core of who this person is based on what’s on the page there”. Of course, all of us, and all the younger actors who were playing iconic characters of a younger generation that everybody does know, did lots of research. I learned things about Milton Berle that I didn’t know, and they plopped a wig on my head, and I tried to find that sweet spot in between getting a flavor of the guy without trying to do some sort of slavish impersonation.
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What is the plot of ‘Little Brother’?
After his most recent suicide attempt, Pete (Philip Ettinger), a neurodivergent man, reluctantly travels back home with his younger brother Jake (Daniel Diemer). As they drive across the American West, they attempt to reconcile past traumas and forge a new bond.
‘Babylon’ follows the rise and fall of a group of characters during Hollywood’s transition from silent film to talkies in the 1920s.
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Who is in the cast of ‘Babylon?’
‘Babylon’ stars Brad Pitt as movie star Jack Conrad, Margot Robbie as young actress Nellie LaRoy, Diego Calva as assistant turned producer Manny Torres, Jean Smart as journalist Elinor St. John, Jovan Adepo as musician Sidney Palmer, Li Jun Li as performer Lady Fay Zhu, and Tobey Maguire as gangster James McKay.
How many 2023 Academy Award nominations did ‘Babylon’ receive?
‘Babylon’ has received three 2023 Academy Award nominations including Best Costume Design, Best Production Design, and Best Original Score for composer Justin Hurwitz.
Moviefone recently had the pleasure of speaking with two-time Academy Award winning composer Justin Hurwitz about his Oscar nominated work on ‘Babylon,’ collaborating with his friend director Damien Chazelle, watching dailies and creating music for the elephant.
‘Babylon’ Composer Justin Hurwitz.
You can read the full interview below or click on the video player above to watch the interview.
Moviefone: To begin with, can you talk about your first reaction to Damien Chazelle’s screenplay for ‘Babylon’ and the themes that you wanted to explore with the score?
Justin Hurwitz: So I got the draft in fall of 2019, and I was just so entertained by it. I mean, my jaw was kind of on the floor for a lot of these scenes, and there were great monologues and really beautifully written emotional scenes as well. So it was just such a great read. The first thing I thought was, “Oh, my God, there’s going to be a lot of music in this movie.” So Damien and I started talking about it.
Of course it’s set in old Hollywood, but what got me excited about it was right off the bat, Damien said he didn’t want the music to sound like 1920s jazz. He didn’t want it to sound like old movie music. He wanted to do something very different than that. So that got me excited, because I was thinking the same thing as I was reading the script. I was thinking super entertaining movie, but I don’t want to have to write period music, and luckily he didn’t want to do that either.
Director Damien Chazelle on the set of ‘Babylon’ from Paramount Pictures.
MF: You’ve composed all of director Damien Chazelle’s previous movies. Can you talk about collaborating with him, your working relationship, and how the process of scoring one of his films works?
JH: Well, so much of it feels exactly like it did when we were 20-years old working on the ‘Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench,’ which was our student film that kind of ballooned into a small feature. Just the process of sitting at the piano, coming up with ideas, making voice notes, sending idea, after idea to Damien getting, “No, no, no, maybe, no, no, no,” before you finally get, “Yes, I love it, that’s the one.” I rely on him so much to help steer me into my best ideas, and that has never changed. Even the process of sitting at the piano and making little MP3s hasn’t changed. But we’ve gotten more efficient over the years at certain things.
I love the way we have sort of developed it in post-production where we get offices next to each other so he can cut the movie with (editor) Tom Cross for a year or so, and I can be there the entire time, literally sharing a door. We have a suite with a shared door, so I can be in their room all the time and Damien’s coming into my room. We’re just going back and forth working on picture and music. That’s a process we’ve kind of refined over the years, and I love it. Probably my favorite time is when we’re in post, and we’re all under one roof, and we can finish the movie together, and the score can really take shape and come together. So that’s something that we learned from the past couple of movies, and we’ve sort of fallen into those practices.
Damien is full-time with Tom Cross, the editor, so they’re working together, and then Damien’s full-time with me, really. So that’s why we have these shared offices. So he can be very hands-on with the editing and very hands on with the score. What’s great about Damien is he has such a specific vision, and he’s such a specific filmmaker. He knows what he wants visually, sonically, everything, but he also lets creative people do what we do.
So it’s this very tricky balance and I think he’s found the right balance. He does it very well, and you don’t want to work with a filmmaker that doesn’t know what they want. It’s good to work with filmmakers that are very specific, and very hands on, but they need to give the latitude to the collaborators to come up with their own ideas, and explore, and be creative people of our own. So Damien does both of those things very well.
(L to R) Margot Robbie plays Nellie LaRoy and Diego Calva plays Manny Torres in ‘Babylon’ from Paramount Pictures.
MF: Do you watch dailies and take inspiration from the actor’s performances for the score?
JH: Absolutely. There were kind of two phases of scoring this movie. We had to create about an hour of music in pre-production before we could even shoot the movie. So I was doing tons and tons of demos. We were building that for about a year and a half. We were in the studio recording that. All of that was before the movie was shot. I was going off of the script, and I was going off of Damien’s storyboards. He makes literally thousands of pages of hand-drawn storyboards, and he cuts animatics and we build to that.
Then the movie’s shot, and I’m on set. So I’m there experiencing the feeling of the shoot and the scene. The performance is actually live in front of the camera. Then we have post-production and I made about another hour of music in post-production. At that point, that’s more of the traditional film scoring approach, where I’m watching the dailies, the cuts, the scenes, and then the entire cuts.
For that last hour of score, these are the scenes that you have to just watch, and you have to just respond to what’s in the scenes. So the Manny/Nellie cues, those relationship cues, you just have to watch and respond to the rhythms of the dialogue, and the feeling of it, and the way it’s cut, and what you’re seeing in the design of it all. There were plenty of cues of that sort. So there is really kind of two totally different approaches to this movie. The hour of music we did before it was shot, and then the hour of music we did after it was shot, and it’s about two hours of score in total.
I mean, it’s so well planned because like I said, Damien has storyboarded this thing down to the fraction of a second. While I’ve been building the demos, he’s been building the storyboards. He’s like, “Give me two more seconds here, cut a half second from there.” It’s like we are refining this. Of course things change, and that becomes part of my job. I said, an hour of music is created beforehand. I’m still rebuilding that music through post-production as well, because as the cut comes together, we are lengthening, or shortening, or rebuilding, and moving things around. Things are always changing. But I don’t think there were any pieces of music that we recorded that just got cut from the movie or anything that was that drastically rethought when it comes to those pre-recorded tracks.
MF: Finally, what was it like scoring the scenes with the elephant?
JH: Well, I wasn’t on set for the actual defecation scene. But the elephant does burst into the party a little bit later. That was fun because the track “Voodoo Mama” is the track that’s going on, and that’s where Nellie, Margot Robbie’s character is dancing, crowd surfing, and completely owning this room. It’s a real fun jazz band meets rock and roll, meets dance music sort of track. That track, as soon as the elephant bursts through the door, takes a big turn into circus music. So we have kazoos and slide whistles, and the band starts playing almost like a circus band in with all these crash symbols and circus sort of music. So the track takes a big turn there, and that was a very fun genre to play in.
We actually use circus sounds throughout the score. We bring a lot of those sounds back even during some of those really intimate Manny/Nellie cues. Those cues are kind of this mixture of three pianos that have this very fragile, broken, half out of tune quality. But in those cues, sometimes we pull in little circus sounds as well because their relationship is a bit of a circus, and it’s just sort of a motif in this movie. So we had a lot of fun with many different colors in this score, including circus colors.
Margot Robbie plays Nellie LaRoy in ‘Babylon’ from Paramount Pictures.
‘Babylon’ is produced by Paramount, Marc Platt Production, Material Pictures, C2 Motion Picture Group, Wild Chickens and Organism Pictures. ‘Babylon’ debuts on digital and streaming January 31st, and will be available on Blu-ray and DVD beginning March 21st.
Margot Robbie plays Nellie LaRoy in ‘Babylon’ from Paramount Pictures.
Debuting in theaters on December 23rd, ‘Babylon’ is the latest film from Damien Chazelle, the writer-director of ‘Whiplash’ and ‘La La Land’. Unfortunately, it is also his weakest effort, though not for lack of ambition and scale.
Starting, perhaps as it means to go on with a desire for shock and even a metaphor for what happens to many of the characters in the movie, ‘Babylon’ features an elephant defecating noisily and filthily across an unfortunate man helping to push the truck it is riding in up a hill, the result also splattering the camera.
The animal is on its way to be the star attraction a lavish Hollywood bash being held in the hills, and one of the people helping to get it there is Manny Torres (Diego Calva), who fortunately avoids being covered in Proboscidea poop.
He ends up hired to help out at the party and has his first experience of roaring ‘20s Hollywood––or at least its decadent, wild excessive side––where sweaty, near-naked crowds writhe in time to jazz music. Drugs and booze are in free supply, all thanks to the host, veteran actor Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt) who shows up with his latest soon-to-be-ex-wife, played in a brief scene by Olivia Wilde.
(L to R) Brad Pitt plays Jack Conrad and Diego Calva plays Manny Torres in ‘Babylon’ from Paramount Pictures.
Looking to gatecrash is Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie), an ambitious young woman convinced she has untapped star power, and who ends up scoring a lucky break, setting her star on the rise as Jack starts to see his own begin to fall.
Manny––who befriends Nellie––is captivated by the idea of working in Hollywood, and sees his own prospects enhanced when one of Jack’s team asks him to make sure the sozzled actor gets home safely. From there, Manny works his way up the ranks, his good ideas for movies helping boost his career in the fictional film studio of the story.
‘Babylon’ is primarily the story of Manny, Nellie and Jack, with some attention paid to jazz musician Sidney Palmer (Jovan Adepo), who will carve his own path out in the entertainment industry, performer Lady Fay Zhu (Li Jun Li), and gossip columnist Elinor St. John (Jean Smart).
The characters’ arcs weave in and out of each other, as Nellie becomes more and more famous (while her gambling habits and other addictions catch up to her) and Chazelle roams from party to party, interspersed by scenes where movies are made.
Jovan Adepo plays Sidney Palmer in ‘Babylon’ from Paramount Pictures.
Around them, Hollywood begins to evolve from the silent era to the age of talkies, and from rough-and-ready shooting in the desert to cavernous soundstages.
Robbie is particularly vibrant in the film, finding different layers to her character as she moves through the business, and is convincing at every step. Whether she’s conniving to get her name in lights, or overhearing people talking her down, this is further proof that she’s one of the best working at the moment. Pitt, meanwhile, commits to the easy charm of Conrad, whose career is on the wane as audiences don’t warm to him once talking pictures come along.
Calva, who is probably best known to American audiences from ‘Narcos: Mexico’, is something of a revelation, a soulful presence in the movie who worries that his soul is tainted as he climbs the executive ranks and then has to help Nellie out of her money problems.
Smart, whose gossip hound flits in and out of the story, is particularly strong, though she’s not often on screen for more than a minute or so. But her big scene with Jack, where she explains his downward slide, is a highlight. Li, meanwhile, who is also largely on the sidelines, makes the most of her role.
Margot Robbie plays Nellie LaRoy in ‘Babylon’ from Paramount Pictures.
And there are certainly elements to recommend here: in some scenes, ‘Babylon’ has a pleasing level of comedy, especially when director Ruth Adler (Olivia Hamilton) and Nellie are trying to shoot a scene in the early sound era, where mic positions, concerns over volume and particularly an overheating cameraman, provide memorable laughs.
Chazelle unfortunately loses focuses when it comes to the theme of the film, though. Certainly, there is plenty to be mined from the idea of Hollywood and this time, but ‘Babylon’, for all its length and intertwined stories, merely scrapes the surface. The concept that the entertainment industry is a place for excess and fraught with problems for those who seek stardom is hardly a fresh one, and the movie has little to say that is new or interesting.
This is much bigger than his previous efforts, but it soon becomes ungainly, and is loaded down with flabby scenes that add little. Even a crazed moment for Calva, where he’s seeking financial help from the distinctly dodgy James McKay, played by Tobey Maguire, which takes in freaks, torture implements and an alligator, feels like it could easily be lost in the service of reducing the movie’s overinflated running time.
Tobey Maguire plays James McKay in ‘Babylon’ from Paramount Pictures.
The less said about the final montage that wraps up the movie, the better, to be honest. It’s meant to celebrate the movies but ends up an embarrassingly amateur example, cramming in easy highpoints and coming across as something out of a film school offering.
Given that he’s been planning and writing the movie in his head for around 15 years, we’re sorry to report that Chazelle has fumbled this one. ‘Babylon’ is not without its charms and some diversion, but beyond the main cast’s appeal, it is a lot of sound and fury, signifying––not nothing––but not much.
‘Babylon’ receives 2.5 out of 5 stars.
(L to R) Margot Robbie plays Nellie LaRoy and Diego Calva plays Manny Torres in ‘Babylon’ from Paramount Pictures.
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Moviefone recently had the pleasure of sitting down in-person with writer and director Damien Chazelle to talk about his work on ‘Babylon,’ what audiences can expect from the new movie, why he was interested in this point in Hollywood’s history, casting Pitt and Robbie, and the importance of music in his films.
‘Babylon’ writer and director Damien Chazelle.
You can read the full interview below or click on the video player above to watch our interviews with Chazelle, as well as actors Jovan Adepo and Li Jun Li.
Moviefone: To begin with, what would you say to moviegoers getting ready to sit down and watch this film to prepare them for the experience they’re about to have?
Damien Chazelle: That’s a good question. I would say just to prepare yourself for a wild ride. It’s not the kind of movie about older Hollywood that I think anyone is expecting. It’s shocking, it’s wild, it’s crazy, it’s a roller coaster ride, it’s an adventure, and it’s a party. I would say to go in with that in mind.
But beyond that, I don’t know, I wouldn’t say much. I think ultimately I made this movie for audiences, for them to have an experience. I think whatever mindset you’re in when you sit down in the theater for this movie, it will sweep you up and it’s going to take you for a ride whether you want to or not.
MF: What was it about this era in Hollywood’s history, the period moving from silent films to talkies, that really fascinated you and what were some of the themes you wanted to explore with this movie?
DC: Well, a lot of it had to do with just how unhinged the society was at that time. I just hadn’t realized the extent to which people at that time partied, how hard they lived, how hard they worked, and how recklessly and transgressively they operated. It was this circus atmosphere that I think in many ways got lost once Hollywood became a little more sanitized and regulated, and became more of a corporate industry.
The Hollywood in this movie is right before that. It’s the last gasp of the wild West of early Hollywood when it was still unregulated. It was like people pitching a tent in the desert and making their movies, and doing them the way they wanted to. There was just this manic, hysterical atmosphere where anything went. That was key to try to capture that and take that as far as it went.
Brad Pitt plays Jack Conrad in ‘Babylon’ from Paramount Pictures.
MF: Can you talk about casting and working with Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie?
DC: It was amazing. As a director, it’s a dream come true. They’re such seasoned actors so, yes, on the one hand, you’re getting these larger-than-life movie stars, and they’re playing larger-than-life movie stars in the movie, so that’s kind of perfect. But they’re also just real thespians.
They deliver. They know how to craft performances that move you and make you laugh and cry and break your heart. They take you on a ride. I think they help ground this movie and make it human, so that even at its most excessive, larger-than-life, outrageous, shocking moments, you still feel a beating heart underneath. That’s thanks to them, I think, and the rest of the cast.
MF: Margot has a scene in the movie where her character has to cry on cue. Did she actually do that on set, or did you have to enhance it in post?
DC: That is Margot! Otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to shoot it. You can’t CG that!
Margot Robbie plays Nellie LaRoy in ‘Babylon’ from Paramount Pictures.
MF: Finally, can you talk about Justin Hurwitz’s music for the film and the importance of music in all your movies?
DC: Music comes early on for me. I work with the same composer, Justin Hurwitz, for all my movies. We’ve worked together since college. We have a shorthand at this point. As soon as I have a script, I hand it to him, and he starts working on the music.
By the time I’m shooting, I’ve got a lot of the music already in place. We can play it on set and we can set the mood with it. We can have the actors dancing to it and thinking about it, and just letting it seep into their body. You get a sense of what the tone is right away. That’s really important to me, and especially with this movie. I knew I needed a very specific tone and a specific kind of energy and pulse, and that’s what the music provides.
Director Damien Chazelle on the set of ‘Babylon’ from Paramount Pictures.
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But for ‘Babylon’, Chazelle is thinking even bigger. He’s got Hollywood on his mind, and more specifically the 1920s, a pivotal time for both the movie industry and the city most identified with it.
At this point, Los Angeles is expanding rapidly, an infusion of money and people arriving, the latter on the hunt for wealth and fame.
Movies, and the performers who star in them, are making the difficult transition from the silent era to talkies, with some careers on the rise and some on the wane. It’s an idea that Chazelle – who won the Best Director Oscar for ‘La La Land’, but saw Best Picture go instead to ‘Moonlight’ during one of the biggest Oscar night surprise moments back in 2017 – has been percolating in his head for at least 15 years, ever since he moved to Los Angeles with his own dreams of success.
“The basic idea was just to do a big, epic, multi-character movie, set in these early days of Los Angeles and Hollywood, when both of these things were coming into what we now think of them as,” he tells Vanity Fair. “I kept putting it off, because it was just a little too massive.”
But with the likes of ‘Whiplash’, ‘La La Land’ and ‘First Man’ under his belt, he finally felt ready to tackle the giant movie he’d been making in his brain for years.
Brad Pitt plays Jack Conrad in ‘Babylon’ from Paramount Pictures.
For the most part, the cast are playing fictional folk, albeit based on real movie stars of the time. Minghella is one of the exceptions, playing powerhouse producer Irving Thalberg.
Pitt’s hard-partying Jack Conrad, for example, has echoes of Clark Gable, and Douglas Fairbanks. “He’s reaching a point in his life in his career where he’s starting to look back and starting to wonder what’s ahead,” says Chazelle of the character.
Robbie, meanwhile, is Nellie LaRoy, burning with ambition and energy, who is the Clara Bow or Joan Crawford of the story. And Chazelle sees her as a good fit for the person playing her: “Margot as a person has this— it’s a very Australian sort of thing—brash, bold, hungry kind of edge to her that she was really able to tap into and do a lot of really fun things with.”
And then there’s Calva, playing Manny Torres, a Mexican immigrant who is a wide-eyed newcomer to the world and serves as the audience’s POV.
We’re promised wild, lavish parties, scandals and more when ‘Babylon’ opens in theaters on December 25th.
(L to R) Brad Pitt plays Jack Conrad and Diego Calva plays Manny Torres in ‘Babylon’ from Paramount Pictures.(L to R) Diego Calva plays Manny Torres and Jean Smart plays Elinor St. John in ‘Babylon’ from Paramount Pictures.Margot Robbie plays Nellie LaRoy in ‘Babylon’ from Paramount Pictures.Margot Robbie plays Nellie LaRoy in ‘Babylon’ from Paramount Pictures.Li Jun Li plays Lady Fay Zhu in ‘Babylon’ from Paramount Pictures.(L to R) Lukas Haas plays George Munn and Diego Calva plays Manny Torres in ‘Babylon’ from Paramount Pictures.Tobey Maguire plays James McKay in ‘Babylon’ from Paramount Pictures.Director Damien Chazelle on the set of ‘Babylon’ from Paramount Pictures.
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The story takes place in early Hollywood, and it will reportedly incorporate real industry figures as well as fictional characters. That’s similar to “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” Pitt’s latest film, which is due out on July 26. However, the latter is set in late 1960s Hollywood, decades after “Babylon” would take place.
There’s no word yet on what character Pitt would play. Little is known about the plot, but it is said to take place as the movie industry moved from silent films to “talkies.” Stone is reportedly being considered to play Clara Bow, a film star in both the silent and sound eras.
Multiple studios are vying for “Babylon,” per Deadline’s sources, even without Pitt or Stone having signed on. Of course, Chazelle is a draw in his own right; he wrote the script and will direct, as he did with his Oscar-winning “La La Land.” The film will be produced by Olivia Hamilton, Marc Platt, Matt Plouffe, and Tobey Maguire.
