Colman Domingo as Joe Jackson in ‘Michael’. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Lionsgate.
Per the official blurb: “The film tells the story of Michael Jackson’s life beyond the music, tracing his journey from the discovery of his extraordinary talent as the lead of the Jackson Five, to the visionary artist whose creative ambition fueled a relentless pursuit to become the biggest entertainer in the world. Highlighting both his life off-stage and some of the most iconic performances from his early solo career, the film gives audiences a front-row seat to Michael Jackson as never before.”
(L to R) Judah Edwards as Young Tito, Jaylen Hunter as Young Marlon, Juliano Krue Valdi as Young MJ, Nathaniel McIntyre as Young Jackie and Jayden Harville as Young Jermaine in ‘Michael’. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Lionsgate.Nia Long as Katherine Jackson in ‘Michael’. Photo Credit: Glen Wilson/Lionsgate.Jaafar Jackson as Michael Jackson in ‘Michael’. Photo Credit: Glen Wilson/Lionsgate.
(L to R) Edward Norton and Monica Barbaro star in ‘A Complete Unknown’.
Moviefone recently had the pleasure of sitting down in-person with Edward Norton and Monica Barbaro to talk about their work on ‘A Complete Unknown’, playing Pete Seeger and Joan Baez respectively, learning to sing and play instruments like their characters, Seeger and Baez’s relationships with Dylan, working with Timothée Chalamet, and what audiences will learn about Dylan’s legacy.
You can read the full interviews below or click on the video player above to watch our interviews.
Moviefone: To begin with, Edward, can you talk about your approach to playing Pete Seeger and how challenging was it to learn how to play his instruments the same way he played them?
Edward Norton: The music, and fortunately this enormous body of recorded music and a lot of what Pete Seeger did, he did live, and so you get to hear his music, but you also get to hear, he talked to the crowd a lot and his vocal demeanor, his kind of odd formalism, and it was a great access point and there is an amazing amount of footage of him. That was a good place to start, there’s an abundant, recorded visual and auditory library of Pete. I think until you start trying to unpack what he’s doing musically; you don’t realize how much virtuosity he had as a banjo and a guitar player. He’s a monster of a musician, and I’ve played guitar a long time, but I realized in many ways that it was going to be very difficult on the banjo because there’s a lot of modern professional banjo players who don’t even play in the style that Pete Seeger played in. He had this special long-necked, you wouldn’t call it a baritone banjo, but it was a long neck banjo, and he played a picking style that’s very old-fashioned and not a lot of people do anymore. It was an interesting process to navigate the music with our great music supervisor, and James (Mangold) and teachers that I had. It was a challenge is the short answer. That was probably the thing I felt the most. Not anxious, but you really want to get that right. You don’t want to not do justice to what amazing musicians these people were.
Monica Barbaro attends Searchlight Pictures’ ‘A Complete Unknown’ World Premiere on Dec 10, 2024 in Los Angeles.
MF: Monica, I understand you had an opportunity to talk to Joan Baez before you began shooting. How did that help inform your performance and did it put you at ease about portraying her on screen?
Monica Barbaro: Well, I was at a place, we had already started filming, and I just kept having dreams about her. It’d be specifically dreams where we were hanging out, and we kept having a great time. I’d wake up in a good mood, and so I was like, “I think subconsciously something’s telling me that it’s going to be okay, and you should reach out.” I knew at that point that Ed had spoken to her, he knows her, and all I’ve heard is that she’s a very creatively generous person, and so I felt emboldened to reach out. I felt like, if it were Joan, she would reach out. So, I was like, “Okay, this is an exercise also in preparing for the bit of confidence that I think she has.” We just had a beautiful conversation, and she was very generous with her time, and she answered my questions, and I can safely say her memoirs and her documentaries are all very honest. There was nothing that I felt like she was withholding. So that was just wonderful to confirm that the research I had been doing was on the right path, and what she had offered up was true to her experience.
MF: Monica, can you talk about the challenges of learning and preparing for all the musical sequences and really matching the sound of your voice to hers?
MB: I think I’ve studied her so intensely that all I hear are the differences. I got to work with a lovely vocal coach and what we talked about was really trying to capture some of the more iconic qualities of her voice, the things that everyone says when they describe her voice, like she has this beautiful, tight vibrato, this sort of angelic sound, which I think comes also from singing in high keys, that I at the time couldn’t sing in. So just getting to the point of having comfortability with those qualities was the thing that I felt like would at least sell that believability early on. I didn’t play guitar either, so I had a great guitar teacher who just doubled down on teaching me her finger picking style. We just tried to formulate some version of Joan with tons of hours of training.
MF: Monica, can you talk about how Baez and Dylan’s relationship is depicted in the film and what it was like working on that with Timothée Chalamet?
MB: I mean, I’m such a fan of his work. I am an even bigger fan now. He’s an incredible actor, and knowing he was a part of this project was a part of what made me want to do it. Also, James Mangold, of course, and the subject matter. But I had complete trust in him. I mean, I had heard some of his recordings as we were preparing, and so I had even duetted with his voice as Bob. But when we met up and had a music rehearsal, I just was completely blown away. He’s an incredible actor, he worked so hard, and to me, he really got a lot of that Bob Dylan essence, and we could just, I think, kind of trust each other’s work, and we could show up as our characters and sort of let the scene unfold. We didn’t spend a lot of time sitting down and figuring out who we thought they were or what we thought this meant. We took our sort of siloed processes and bridged them in the moment in the scenes that you see. James was an incredible advocate for us and leader in that process, and it was just a beautiful, very present experience.
MF: Finally, Edward, can you talk about how Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan’s friendship is depicted in the film and what you hope audiences learn about both of their legacies?
EN: I think in a funny way, I never want to impose an idea. I think an audience should get to have their own relationship with it. Here’s my point. A great filmmaker will leave people with a lot to resolve for themselves and not instruct emotionally, morally or anything. I think James’ done something quite beautiful in this, in that he lets Dylan be Dylan and Pete be Pete, and they have different kinds of integrity. Joan Baez has her own. I think he gives you this portrait of the different types of integrity that a person can have, and he lets them collide with each other. Different people are going to feel very different ways about it all and then go through the prism of their own experiences and their own mentors and their own people they think they did something for. If you get that right, it transcends the fact that these people were musicians. It can be about teachers or anyone who had a mentor or anyone who had an ally who they went sideways with. I think it’s the paradox of people being able to love each other and admire each other and get into cross-purposes with each other that makes it kind of interesting. I think that there was a moment that the film depicts that a lot of people who have great talent and great passion kind of collided with each other. This thing came up and out in the Zeitgeist through Dylan, and then it changed. You know what I mean? I love the way the film sort of almost, it’s like the Beatles breaking up. Everything can’t last. Maybe if anything, it’s like, it’s just the observation of that fact that is poignant.
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What is the plot of ‘A Complete Unknown’?
Set in the influential New York music scene of the early 60s, ‘A Complete Unknown follows 19-year-old Minnesota musician Bob Dylan’s (Timothée Chalamet) meteoric rise as a folk singer to concert halls and the top of the charts – his songs and mystique becoming a worldwide sensation – culminating in his groundbreaking electric rock and roll performance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965.
(Left) Director Sam Mendes from ‘Empire of the Light.’ (Right) George Harrison, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and John Lennon in ‘The Beatles: Eight Days a Week – The Touring Years.’
Preview:
Sam Mendes has a biopic plan for The Beatles.
He’ll make one film about each member’s time in the iconic band.
Apple Corps and the band have granted full life rights.
Everything about The Beatles these days seems to be outsized. You have their legendary status, their record-breaking chart accomplishments and, more recently, Peter Jackson’s epic documentary limited series ‘The Beatles: Get Back’, released on Disney+ in 2021 and running for an astonishing 468 minutes.
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Do you want to know a secret? Now ‘1917’ and ‘American Beauty’ director Sam Mendes has a plan for something that challenges that in terms of scope and ambition.
While music biopics are all the rage at the moment (the most recent release, ‘Bob Marley: One Love’ has done decent business at the box office, and there’s a film about British singer Amy Winehouse due in May), Mendes is developing something that goes beyond the norm.
(L to R) Ringo Starr, George Harrison, Paul McCartney, and John Lennon in ‘The Beatles: Eight Days a Week – The Touring Years.’
With the backing of Sony Pictures Classics –– not to mention being granted full life story and music rights by Beatles holding company Apple Corps Ltd. (not the iPhone gang), surviving members McCartney and Starr and the families of deceased colleagues Lennon and Harrison –– Mendes will make four different biopics, covering each Beatles’ experiences during the band’s rise to massive popularity.
Though a strict time period for what the movies will cover has yet to be announced, the idea is for the stories to (naturally intersect), looking to get a fuller, clearer picture of their time than any one movie could hope to accomplish.
Here’s what Mendes had to say about the project:
“I’m honored to be telling the story of the greatest rock band of all time, and excited to challenge the notion of what constitutes a trip to the movies.”
And this is the statement from Mendes’ Neal Street Productions partner Pippa Harris:
“We intend this to be a uniquely thrilling, and epic cinematic experience: four films, told from four different perspectives which tell a single story about the most celebrated band of all time. To have The Beatles’ and Apple Corps’ blessing to do this is an immense privilege. From our first meeting with [Sony execs] Tom Rothman and Elizabeth Gabler, it was clear that they shared both our passion and ambition for this project, and we can’t think of a more perfect home than Sony Pictures.”
Given the scope of the movies, the current aim is to have the movies in theaters by 2027, with the plan for their release dates still to be announced. Will we see them release a month apart? Spread out across the years? Will they come together? Any way it happens, we’ll dig it.
(L to R) Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and John Lennon in ‘The Beatles: Get Back – The Rooftop Concert.’
Jaafar Jackson as Michael Jackson in ‘Michael.’ Photo Credit: Kevin Mazur
Preview:
The first picture from ‘Michael’ is online.
Jaafar Jackson plays his famous uncle in the biopic.
Antoine Fuqua is in the director’s chair for the movie.
While the story of Michael Jackson’s life has been brought to screens in TV movies and specials, the somewhat controversial pop icon has yet to get the full big screen treatment.
That changes next year when the biopic simply titled ‘Michael’ arrives on our screens. Directed by Antoine Fuqua, it’ll follow the life of the King of Pop and features Jaafar Jackson –– nephew of the late star –– playing his uncle for most of the running time.
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We have our first look at Jackson in the role, performing “Man in the Mirror” from the 1992-1993 “Dangerous” Tour.
Producer Graham King had this to say about the casting choice:
“With Jaafar, every look, every note, every dance move is Michael. He embodies Michael in a way that no other actor could.”
What’s the story of ‘Michael’?
Michael Jackson in ‘Michael Jackson’s This Is It.’ Photo: Sony Pictures Releasing.
Written by John Logan and produced by ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’s King, ‘Michael’ follows the complicated man who becomes the King of Pop, from triumphs to tragedies, from his human side and personal struggles to his creative genius.
We’re promised an “honest” portrayal of the man, but given the close family connections, that’s always a complicated issue. The current Bob Marley biopic ‘One Love’ has been accused of shaving off some of the music legend’s rougher images.
Who else is in the movie?
Oscar-nominated actor Colman Domingo to portray Jackson Family Patriarch Joe Jackson in Lionsgate and Universal Pictures International’s Michael Jackson biopic ‘Michael.’
Alongside Jaafar Jackson, Colman Domingo is playing his father Joe with Nia Long as his mother, Katherine. Juliano Valdi will be the younger Michael, Miles Teller has scored the role of powerful entertainment lawyer John Branca, who shepherded Jackson’s career as he transitioned from a singing sensation in a boy band to world-renowned mega star.
We’re sure there will be more casting announcements to come, but with the film not due until next year, expect them to arrive in drip feed fashion.
Here’s what director Antoine Fuqua said about the casting choice:
“We have assembled an incredible team of artists for this project –– hair & makeup, costumes, cinematography, choreography, lighting, everything –– and some who knew and worked with Michael are reuniting for this film. But most importantly, it’s Jaafar who embodies Michael. It goes beyond the physical resemblance. It’s Michael’s spirit that comes through in a magical way. You have to experience it to believe it.”
When will ‘Michael’ be in theaters?
‘Michael’ is going to be released on April 18th, 2025.
Michael Jackson in ‘Moonwalker.’ Photo: Warner Bros.
(Left) Selena Gomez as Mabel on Hulu’s ‘Only Murders In The Building.’ Photo: Craig Blankenhorn/Hulu. (Right) Linda Ronstadt in the documentary ‘Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice.’ Photo: Greenwich Entertainment.
Preview:
Selena Gomez in playing Linda Ronstadt in a new film.
David O. Russell is aboard to direct.
Ronstadt retired from singing in 2012 after a Parkinson’s diagnosis.
While the genre is an evergreen one, there have been a number of musical biopics in recent years that saw mixed fortunes. While ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ (about Freddie Mercury and Queen) scored an Oscar and box office success, others have been met with more muted responses (‘Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody’ among them).
Linda Ronstadt in the documentary ‘Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice.’ Photo: Greenwich Entertainment.
In case you’re somehow not aware of her, Ronstadt was the pre-eminent female pop star of the 1970s into the 80s. She took control of her career and her life, having dozens of hits while dating the likes of George Lucas and California governor Jerry Brown. She was supported by The Eagles, who played behind her, toured with Jackson Browne, and sung on Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold.”
Selena Gomez as Mabel on Hulu’s ‘Only Murders In The Building.’ Photo: Craig Blankenhorn/Hulu.
Last year, Showbiz 411 reported that singer Gomez, who has found acting acclaim with ‘Only Murders in the Building’ would be playing 1970s and 1980s music icon Ronstadt in a new movie.
James Keach, who produced the award winning documentary, ‘The Sound of My Voice,’ about Ronstadt, has a script together and has officially landed Gomez’ services to star.
David O. Russell boards the Ronstadt film
Linda Ronstadt in the documentary ‘Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice.’ Photo: Greenwich Entertainment.
Things have moved on since then and now, once again reported by Showbiz 411, David O. Russell is aboard to direct the film.
Russell, of course, is the Oscar-winning filmmaker behind the likes of ‘Silver Linings Playbook’, and ‘American Hustle’ who last made flop comedy ‘Amsterdam’ (which featured an acting gig by Gomez’ friend and musical superstar Taylor Swift).
He’s also been wreathed in controversy for outbursts on sets and rumors of bad behavior in his personal life, so he seems like a surprising choice to work with Gomez.
When will the Ronstadt movie hit theaters?
There are no release date details for the movie, which is still in development –– it’s likely Russell might want to work on the script himself or bring in another writer, and it’ll all depend on Gomez’ schedule. She has another season of ‘Only Murders’ to shoot and while she’s looking to focus on acting rather than singing now, she has said she wants to make one more album.
