Moviefone Editorial

Tag: dustin-hoffman

  • ‘Kung Fu Panda 4’ in the Works

    2008's 'Kung Fu Panda.'
    2008’s ‘Kung Fu Panda.’

    If there’s one thing we know about DreamWorks Animation, it’s that the company is not one to let a successful franchise venture off into the sunset.

    We’re not surprised, then, to see that the ‘Kung Fu Panda’ movie series will be coming back – but not until 2024.

    So far, all we really know about the movie is the fact that it’ll be out on March 8th, 2024 as Universal and DWA stick a pin in that release date, which right now only has ‘A Quiet Place: Day One,’ and the new ‘Panda’ could well serve as family-friendly counterprogramming to the expansion of Paramount’s creature feature franchise.

    No director or even a confirmation of the voice cast has been revealed about the latest ‘Kung Fu Panda’, but since the studio was confident enough to announce a release date, we can reasonably assume that production is underway, even if it’s still at an early stage. These movies, after all, usually take between three to five years to make.

    We can reasonably predict that Jack Black will be back as Po, and since these job only involve turning up to a recording booth (or, in this pandemic world, setting yourself up in a closet or room of your home) a few times, the rest of the star cast are likely to be back alongside him.

    What will Po face this time? That’s still a mystery, but it’ll be something to test his bravery and skill as ever.

    The franchise, in terms of movies alone, has earned more than $1.8 billion since its launch in 2008.

    Jack Black in 2008's 'Kung Fu Panda.'
    Jack Black in 2008’s ‘Kung Fu Panda.’

    ‘Kung Fu Panda’, which was directed by Mark Osborne and John Stevenson, kicked off the story of Po (Black), a wide-eyed panda who is mostly known for being lazy and having a huge appetite. He’s also a massive fan of martial artists and dreams of fighting alongside the legendary Furious Five.

    No-one is more surprised than he, then, when he’s selected as the hero who can defend the Valley of Peace.

    Under the patient tutelage of Master Sifu (Dustin Hoffman), Po learns kung fu and meets the Five – Tigress (Angelina Jolie), Crane (David Cross), Monkey (Jackie Chan), Viper (Lucy Liu), and Mantis (Seth Rogen).

    He’ll need everything he’s learned and the help of those formidable warriors for help when the scheming snow leopard warrior Tai Lung (Ian McShane) escapes prison and wreaks havoc on the valley.

    Since then, Po and the Five have been on various adventures across the three movies and their stories have also spread to TV.

    Nickelodeon has ‘Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness’, which features a different voice cast, while Netflix’s ‘Kung Fu Panda: The Dragon Knight’ boasts the talents of Black, James Hong (as Po’s adoptive goose father, Mr. Ping) and Rita Ora.

    And they were just the tip of the iceberg, as Po and co. have been plastered over toys, video games, books and theme park attractions.

    2008's 'Kung Fu Panda.'
    2008’s ‘Kung Fu Panda.’
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  • Dianna Agron Talks ‘As They Made Us’

    Dianna Agron and Simon Helberg
    (L to R) Dianna Agron and Simon Helberg in ‘As They Made Us.’

    Opening in theaters and VOD/Digital on April 8th is the new comedy-drama ‘As They Made Us,’ which marks the directorial debut of ‘The Big Bang Theory’ actress Mayim Bialik.

    The film stars Dianna Agron (‘Glee’) as Abigail, a single mother who is forced to care for her dying father, Eugene (Dustin Hoffman). The experience brings out hidden emotions from her troubled childhood, including her resentment towards her abusive father and over bearing mother, Barbara (Candice Bergan).

    Now, with her father’s condition worsening, Abigail must locate her estranged brother Nathan (Simon Helberg), who turned his back on them years ago, in order to bring her family back together one last time.

    Actress and singer Dianna Agron first gained attention for her role as Quinn Fabray on ‘Glee,’ but has also been featured on other hit TV shows like ‘Veronica Mars,’ and ‘Heroes.’ On the big screen she has appeared in such popular films as ‘Burlesque,’ ‘I Am Number Four,’ ‘The Family’ and ‘Ralph Breaks the Internet.’

    Moviefone recently had the pleasure of speaking with Dianna Agron about her work on ‘As They Made Us.’ The popular actress discussed her new movie, her character, playing Dustin Hoffman’s daughter, reuniting with Candice Bergan, creating a brother/sister relationship with Simon Helberg, and being directed by Mayim Bialik.

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    You can read the full interview below, or watch a video of the interview in the player above.

    Moviefone: To begin with, can you talk about your character Abigail, and her unusual relationship to her family?

    Dianna Agron: Yeah, it’s a complex one. So, my character Abigail is kind of really enmeshed herself in all of her family’s pain and trauma and has centered herself in this world in which she takes it upon herself to try to fix so much of what is sometimes unfixable within her family structure.

    What this movie really is exploring is the issues with mental health and establishing boundaries, and grief, loss, and how that moves through a family, both singularly, your singular experience, and then the group experience and what that means and what that looks like.

    Moviefone: Can you talk about the experience Abigail has taking care of her dying father, and what was it like working on those scenes with the legendary Dustin Hoffman?

    DA: My father’s been unwell for more years of my life than he’s been well. So, there was a lot of personal truth I was able to bring to the character. It’s very hard to witness your parent’s cognitive and physical downfall, especially when you have experienced them in whatever way you’ve experienced them and that is not something that you want to be confronted with.

    Ultimately it just takes so much strength, and you deal with it as best as you can. So, I think having that experience myself, it definitely helped bring that sense to the character.

    Then working with somebody like Dustin is so incredible because he is on from the moment he steps in the room. I remember our first rehearsal, we were reading through something and tears were falling from his eyes, and I just thought, I’m really going to have to bring this. We are not playing around.

    I think being surrounded by such incredible actors that just really know how to draw all kinds of emotions out and surprise you in scenes is just the biggest gift. It was so wonderful to be working with Candice again. I had done a film with her about 10 years ago where she had also played my mother, so that was a really fun additional bonus in this film.

    Dianna Agron and Dustin Hoffman
    (L to R) Dianna Agron and Dustin Hoffman in ‘As They Made Us.’

    MF: Since you had experience playing Candice Bergan’s daughter in another movie, was it easy to recreate that dynamic with her on this project?

    DA: No, because I think 10 years is a really long time, and when I shot that other film where she played my mother, I was such a small part of that cast. So, I wouldn’t say that we had an enormous amount of time to really get into the weeds of a friendship. We were just making this indie film where everything was fast and furious. So, while I had such a great fondness for that experience and her, this movie was really our chance to get to know each other so much better.

    That was the other thing that I enjoyed so much, with both Candace and Dustin, their storytelling is just the most compelling thing. You can ask them about every aspect of their career and working on specific projects. We would ask about some of the discoveries that were made along the way that really left lasting impressions in all of our minds, and all of those characters and films. So, I really relished every day that I got to go to set and ask anything that I wanted to.

    MF: What was it like working with Simon Helberg on the unusual brother/sister relationship between your two characters?

    DA: I think it’s interesting. I have a brother and we are incredibly close, and yet there are times, just be it work, life, et cetera, where we will go surprisingly a few weeks without talking to each other. Those few weeks sometimes feel like a year depending on what is going on in our worlds. I think kind of pulling from that aspect of having my own sibling that I care so much about, we are so different, and how we move and pass each other in our own life experiences, that was helpful.

    Then Simon’s just such an incredible actor and we really, I think, trusted each other. I mean, speaking from my own experience, I really trusted him. So, I was so pleased to always play and see what that felt like. That friction always felt so monumental when it was there. The love felt so palpable when it was there.

    There’s one scene in particular that I think is one of the hardest scenes. It was one of the hardest scenes to shoot in the movie and one of the ones I’m most proud of, and it’s the scene with Simon. I have such love for this whole team and that experience. It was really rewarding.

    Simon Helberg, Candice Bergan, Dustin Hoffman, Mayim Bialik, and Dianna Agron on set
    (L to R) Simon Helberg, Candice Bergan, Dustin Hoffman, Mayim Bialik, and Dianna Agron on the set of ‘As They Made Us.’

    MF: Finally, can you talk about working with director Mayim Bialik and watching her execute her vision for this film?

    DA: We first met on a Zoom meeting, and she was very generous with her own personal stories and why this movie meant so much to her. We both shared in that way very deeply, and very quickly. That is just how she is. She comes to set and while she knew everything that she wanted to achieve in every scene, she’s very open and can really help you understand everything that needs to be achieved in those scenes and what was very meaningful to her.

    There were also moments that I really loved where we would set up the camera in a wider shot, and there was not going to be any cutting between the scene. In that sense, those experiences and those moments felt much more like stage work, which is incredible because you think, okay, I’m bringing this bag of tricks. I know what my character wants in the scene. I know what they’re trying to achieve. I know where the emotional core has to hit from.

    Then you really have to focus and access all those things and know that that take that you just shot might be the one take that’s used in that moment, and that’s really thrilling. I loved that she added that aspect of filmmaking into our project.

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  • 9 Unforgettable ’90s Disaster Movies, Ranked By Ridiculousness

    9 Unforgettable ’90s Disaster Movies, Ranked By Ridiculousness

  • 11 Things You Never Knew About ‘Midnight Cowboy’ on its 50th Anniversary

    11 Things You Never Knew About ‘Midnight Cowboy’ on its 50th Anniversary

    United Artists

    “Midnight Cowboy” is now half a century old, and it’s aged very gracefully. It’s still a career highlight for stars Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman and is regarded as one of the best and most important films of the 1960’s. Celebrate this big anniversary by learning more about the making of “Midnight Cowboy.”

    1. While he plays a Texan unfamiliar with life in New York City, Jon Voight is actually a native New Yorker. In fact, he had trouble getting a handle on his character’s southern accent and resorted to recording native Texans to use for research.

    2. Lee Majors was originally cast as Joe Buck before Voight, but Majors had to drop out due to his commitment to the TV series “The Big Valley.”

    United Artists

    3. Both Elvis Presley and Warren Beatty also voiced an interest in playing Joe Buck.

    4. According to Hoffman, the iconic line “I’m walking here!” was improvised and was the result of his genuine anger when a taxi cab interrupted an otherwise perfect take. Hoffman chose to stay in character even as he took out his anger at the driver.

    United Artists

    5. However, producer Jerome Hellman disputes Hoffman’s account, saying the line was included in one draft of the screenplay.

    6. Hoffman put pebbles in one of his shoes in order to ensure that Ratso’s distinctive limp remained consistent from scene to scene.

    7. Filming outdoors was complicated both by the lack of a permit to shoot on the city streets and because Hoffman was regularly mobbed by fans of 1967’s “The Graduate.”

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    8. Director Jon Schlesinger reportedly wanted to include a sex scene between Hoffman and Voight’s characters, but studio executives rejected the idea.

    9. Bob Dylan‘s “Lay Lady Lay” was written specifically for the”Midnight Cowboy” soundtrack, but Dylan wasn’t able to complete it in time.

    United Artists

    10. “Midnight Cowboy” is the only X-rated film ever to receive an Academy Award, though the MPAA later granted the film an R-rating upon its re-release in 1971.

    11. Both the movie and James Leo Herlihy’s original novel were initially banned in Ireland.

  • More Disturbing Allegations Surface Against Dustin Hoffman

    Dustin HoffmanSay goodbye to those warm fuzzy feelings you might have had about the star of “Rain Man” and “Tootsie.”

    More women are coming forward with allegations of sexual misconduct against Dustin Hoffman, including one who says he masturbated in front of her when she was only 15.

    The two-time Oscar winner, who just received a special tribute at the Gotham Awards, had previously been accused of harassment by Anna Graham Hunter when she was an intern on the set of the 1985 TV movie “Death of a Salesman.”

    THR shares the horrifying stories of more women (all of whom confided in friends or loved ones at the time) of the actor’s inappropriate behavior. Here are some of the lowlights:

    • Playwright Cori Thomas shared that in 1980, when she was 16, she was friends with Hoffman’s daughters. After dinner one night with the actor and one of his daughters, Hoffman arranged for her mother to pick her up at his hotel after sending his daughter over to her mother’s. Thomas says Hoffman disappeared into the bathroom to shower. “He came out naked,” she recalls. “He got into the bed. And he asked me to please massage his feet.” She said she was disgusted, but was too intimidated to refuse.
    • Kathryn Rossetter says that during a 1983 production of ‘Death of a Salesman,” Hoffman would put his hands up her skirt each night before she went on stage. One night, Hoffman began to “stick his fingers inside me,” she told THR.
    • Video editor Melissa Kester says Hoffman assaulted her at a recording studio in Malibu in 1985, when she was only 20 and her boyfriend was right outside the sound booth.
    • A woman named Pauline (who asked her last name be withheld) says that in 1973 when she was 15, Hoffman, a frequent client at the store where she worked, asked her back to his place on the pretense of showing her his daughter’s new puppy. Instead, after she realized no one else was there, he asked her, “Do you want to see something else?” and began masturbating in front of her.
    • Another woman recalls an incident at the Watergate Hotel in 1975 when Hoffman was shooting “All the President’s Men.” After revealing he’d done research into her family, she got creeped out and decided to leave. She claims Hoffman replied, “Go home? You don’t think you’re getting out of here without having sex, do you?” She says she was coerced into oral sex, then Hoffman handed her a $20 bill to take a cab.

    Hoffman has not responded to these new allegations, but he did issue a public apology of sorts to Hunter, in which he said, “I have the utmost respect for women and feel terrible that anything I might have done could have put her in an uncomfortable situation. I am sorry. It is not reflective of who I am.”

    The actor, who currently stars in “The Meyerowitz Stories,” was recently grilled by John Oliver over those allegations during a contentious Q&A at the Tribeca Film Festival.

    [Via THR]

  • Ben Stiller Slaps Adam Sandler in ‘The Meyerowitz Stories’ Teaser Trailer

    Another Adam Sandler movie is debuting on Netflix, but this one … well, looks promising.

    That’s because “The Meyerowitz Stories” comes from writer/director Noah Baumbach (“Frances Ha,” “The Squid and the Whale”). And like many of his other movies, this one is a family dramedy with nuanced, complicated relationships at the core.

    The movie follows three siblings — played by Sandler, Ben Stiller, and Elizabeth Marvel — and their cantankerous artist father (Dustin Hoffman). The teaser doesn’t reveal much about the movie’s plot, but shows some interesting dynamics, whether it’s Stiller slapping Sandler or the three siblings singing at a piano together.

    The movie was well-received when it debuted at the Cannes Film Festival, and Sandler himself got some of the best reviews of his career.

    “The Meyerowitz Stories” opens in select theaters and begins streaming on Netflix on October 13.

  • 16 Things You Didn’t Know About ‘Hook’

    A lot of Lost Boys and Girls have grown up and had kids of their own since the release of “Hook” 25 years ago this week, on December 11, 1991.

    Steven Spielberg‘s “Peter Pan” sequel, a fable for adults disguised as a kid’s movie, has scarcely left our consciousness since — thanks to the director’s overstuffed visuals and swashbuckling performances by Dustin Hoffman and Robin Williams as the older Captain Hook and Peter Pan.

    Still, as many times as you’ve revisited Spielberg’s Neverland, there’s plenty you may not know about “Hook,” from its secret cameos to its Michael Jackson connection. (You knew there had to be one, right?)
    1. Naturally, Spielberg had long been interested in making a “Peter Pan” movie. As far back as 1985, he already knew he wanted Hoffman as Hook. But then the director’s first son, Max, was born. Echoing the theme of the film, Spielberg decided he’d rather spend time with his son than go off to London and make a movie with other people’s kids. So he dropped out of the project.

    2. During the time of Spielberg’s initial interest, Michael Jackson was up for the part of Peter Pan. Years later, when Spielberg returned to the project, the king of Neverland Ranch again lobbied for the part. Spielberg explained to him that Peter was now an adult lawyer who’d forgotten he was ever Pan. The filmmaker told Entertainment Weekly that Jackson understood this was no longer a role he’d want, but Vanity Fair reported that the singer didn’t take the news well and tried to wreak vengeance upon Spielberg via a deadly voodoo curse.
    3. Had Jackson played Pan, the film would have been a musical. Indeed, Spielberg’s usual composer, John Williams, composed eight songs for that version. Only two of them made it into the finished film: “We Don’t Wanna Grow Up” and “When You’re Alone.”

    4. The words came from Leslie Bricusse, the lyricist behind “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” and many other stage and screen musicals.
    5. Screenwriter Jim V. Hart credited his little boy with coming up with the film’s basic premise: a Hook who’d escaped the crocodile, and a Peter Pan who’d grown up. “I realized that Peter did grow up, just like all of us baby boomers who are now in our forties,” Hart told Spielberg biographer Joseph McBride. “I patterned him after several of my friends on Wall Street, where the pirates wear three-piece suits and ride in limos.”

    6. The production hired John Bradshaw, the then-popular psychologist who specialized in helping stressed-out adults find their inner children, as a story advisor.
    7. Carrie Fisher, at the height of her script-doctoring career, did an uncredited rewrite of Hart’s script to give Julia Roberts‘ Tinker Bell better dialogue.

    8. Dodi Fayed, ill-fated future beau of Princess Diana, owned a piece of the “Pan” film rights. He sold them to the filmmakers in return for an executive producer credit.

    9. Roberts did not wear a wig to play Tinker Bell. Instead, she dyed her famous tresses and cropped them short.
    10. “Hook” is full of unusual cameos you might have missed. Fisher and her mentor, “Star Wars” creator and Spielberg’s “Indiana Jones” collaborator George Lucas, are both in the film. (They’re the couple kissing on the bridge who get fairy dust sprinkled over them.) That police detective is singer Phil Collins. And the pirates include singers David Crosby and Jimmy Buffett. And yes, that GIF above is indeed Glenn Close (in drag, rocking a beard).

    11. One walk-on actor you might have recognized is Gwyneth Paltrow, making her screen debut at 19 as the young Wendy. She’s also Spielberg’s goddaughter, and he recalled to Entertainment Weekly that he suddenly realized she was right for the part one night in his car after the Spielbergs and the Paltrows were returning from a screening of “The Silence of the Lambs.”
    12. Thanks in part to the elaborate production design, “Hook” is one of the very few movies by the usually efficient director that went over schedule and over budget. Set to run 76 days, the shoot ran 116 days instead, and the cost, which started out at $48 million, ballooned to somewhere between $60 and $80 million.

    13. Though considered a box office disappointment by Spielberg’s usual standards, “Hook” did gross $120 million in North America and a total of $301 million worldwide. Outside of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” films, it’s the most lucrative pirate-themed movie ever made.
    14. “Hook” earned five Oscar nominations: Best Production Design, Best Costume Design, Best Visual Effects, Best Makeup, and Best Song (“When You’re Alone”). It was shut out in all categories.

    15. Roberts was nominated for a Razzie for Worst Supporting Actress.
    16. Two decades after releasing “Hook,” Spielberg had mixed feelings about the movie.

    “There are parts of ‘Hook’ I love. I’m really proud of my work right up through Peter being hauled off in the parachute out the window, heading for Neverland,” he told Entertainment Weekly in 2011. “I’m a little less proud of the Neverland sequences, because I’m uncomfortable with that highly stylized world that today, of course, I would probably have done with live-action character work inside a completely digital set. But we didn’t have the technology to do it then, and my imagination only went as far as building physical sets and trying to paint trees blue and red.”

  • ‘All the President’s Men’: 10 Things You (Probably) Didn’t Know About the Watergate Classic

    all the presidents men facts, robert redfordWhen “Spotlight” won Best Picture in February, many observers recalled the Academy Awards race of four decades ago, when Watergate saga “All the President’s Men” was a top contender.

    Both movies made heroes out of the dogged reporters who had uncovered earth-shaking scandals, and both films made the often tedious process of journalism into gripping drama without distorting it much. Indeed, until “Spotlight” came along, “All the President’s Men” had been considered the best movie ever made about journalism throughout the 40 years since its release, on April 9, 1976.

    Today, “All the President’s Men” is remembered as one of the last landmark movies of Hollywood’s 1970s renaissance, and a highlight in the careers of stars Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman. To celebrate the film’s 40th anniversary, here are ten things you probably didn’t know about “ATPM.”
    1. Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were still busy investigating Watergate when Robert Redford first called them to ask about buying the movie rights to their story. The suspicious scribes dismissed the actor’s call because they assumed they were being pranked by a staffer on Richard Nixon’s Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP).

    2. Eventually, Redford did buy the rights, hired Alan J. Pakula to direct, and hired William Goldman to write the screenplay. No one much liked Goldman’s first draft, so Bernstein wrote his own screenplay with his then-girlfriend, fellow journalist Nora Ephron. That version was deemed even worse, and ultimately, it was a new Goldman rewrite that Pakula shot. Still, we have “All the President’s Men” to thank for launching Ephron’s career as a screenwriter and, ultimately, the director of such films as “Sleepless in Seattle” and “You’ve Got Mail.” (Of course, she also chronicled her disastrous marriage to Bernstein in the novel and movie “Heartburn.”)
    3. Indeed, the producers went to extreme lengths to make the movie feel authentic. The Post wouldn’t allow the production to film in its newsroom, which would have been disruptive, so the filmmakers spent $450,000 recreating the newsroom in a Hollywood soundstage. Art directors visited the real newsroom and took photos, measurements, and even a brick from the lobby. They replicated out-of-date DC phone books and bought desks from the same supplier the Post used. They even got Post reporters to send them boxes of their own trash, to make the fake newsroom look realistically messy.

    4. Frank Wills, the security guard who discovered the Watergate break-in, plays himself in “All the President’s Men.”
    5. The identity of Deep Throat, the key informant named after the then-popular porn movie, remained a secret known only to Woodward, Bernstein, and Post editor Ben Bradlee. (They kept the secret for 33 years, until former FBI deputy director W. Mark Felt outed himself in 2005.) Woodward did help the filmmakers cast Hal Holbrook (above), who bore some resemblance to Felt. Holbrook’s performance became legendary, even though he appears in only three scenes. He also uttered the movie’s most famous line, “Follow the money” — a sentence that appears nowhere in Woodward and Bernstein’s reporting and was apparently coined by screenwriter Goldman.

    6. That famous overhead shot of Redford and Hoffman as two tiny figures poring over vast stacks of records at the Library of Congress lasts for 30 seconds and cost $90,000 to shoot.
    7. The movie is so spare and documentary-like that David Shire’s musical score doesn’t kick in until about 28 minutes into the film.

    8. “ATPM” cost $8.5 million to make. It earned back $70.6 million in North America, making it the third highest-grossing film of 1976.
    9. The movie was nominated for eight Oscars, including Best Picture (which it lost to “Rocky“), Best Director, Best Editing, and Best Supporting Actress. It won for Best Sound, Best Art Direction, Best Adapted Screenplay (for Goldman), and Best Supporting Actor (for Jason Robards‘ performance as Bradlee, pictured).

    10. “What I took away from watching the movie six years ago,” Bernstein said in 2011, “was that most of the good work was done at night. I think, and there are certain exceptions, that you get the truth at night and lies during the day.”

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