Category: News

During last night’s Oscars ceremony, FX dropped a full first teaser for The Bear, which makes sense, given that the pressure-cooker show became a sleeper hit with people clamoring for Season 2 (now arriving in June). However, the network also did back up to provide a preview sizzle reel of sorts, which means that we received a brief glimpse of footage for Justified: City Primeval, the revival that will bring back Timothy Olyphant as Elmore Leonard’s extralegal-happy lawman Raylan Givens.

If you were worried about whether this revival could nail the vibe, well, I cannot appease your fears yet. However, HBO delivered the crescendo-and-expletive-laden goods with another Olyphant-starring revival for Deadwood: The Movie, so there’s plenty of reason to believe that FX will treat your other baby properly. Catch a glimpse, now, of Olyphant back in action.

Raylan Givens can spar like no other with the bad dudes. Let’s hope he whips out more fried chicken. And granted, this footage barely shows anything, yet it’s an effective teaser in every sense of the word.

Previously, Olyphant told Conan O’Brien about the “insane” real-life shootout on the City Primeval set. Actually, that’s a fantastic story to behold, but so is nearly every other meeting between Olyphant and O’Brien. While we’re waiting for this new Justified series to arrive, rewatching a few of those talk-show moments would be a delightful way to pass the time.

Justified: City Primeval should arrive sometime in Summer 2023.

The Oscars have been a lot of fun these past few years, but only because of the disasters. Warren Beatty mixed up the cards for La La Land and Moonlight, Will Smith slapped Chris Rock and gave an unhinged speech — those unscripted moments are what we remember, which is a good thing, because before The Slap, last year’s ceremony might’ve been its dullest, most irrelevant ever.

A lot of that came down to the palpable sense that the Academy was trying so hard to be relevant, culminating with the addition of the “fan favorite moment” award, chosen by social media. Which ended up being “The Flash entering the speed force” in the Snyder Cut of Justice League, a moment remembered and beloved by at least 14 guys with anime character avatars. It was embarrassing. The Oscars are designed to be embarrassing, but not like that.

The past six or seven years of Oscar ceremonies have all felt to some extent like apologies, like the Oscars were sorry that they were the Oscars and would try hard to be something else. They’d nominate more populist movies (which was part of the push to expand Best Picture to 10 nominees), shorten the ceremony, include less pageantry, all in the desperate hopes of becoming “more relevant” or less of a punchline, as if having more punchlines was somehow a bad thing (the world needs punchlines!). It made sense in the larger context of culture a couple years ago, when three out of every five Super Bowl commercials were corporations apologizing for something and promising to do better.

While it may have lacked a big conversation piece moment, this year’s Oscars felt like they finally stopped trying so hard to be something else. Jimmy Kimmel was an affable host* with a few decent barbs (I enjoyed him encouraging people to take bets on whether Robert Blake would be included in the In Memoriam montage), who seemed like he was doing the jokes that would’ve been weird not to do (he did also reference Scientology, in a fairly gentle way) without going full Gervais “Oh did I offend you?” mode. Mostly he did a lot of trivia about who was nominated and what milestones they represented, so that we at home could turn to each other and say things like “Did you know Judd Hirsch was 88? Gosh!” “Two guys from Encino Man nominated in the same year? How about that!”

(*Jimmy Kimmel is a lot like sports announcer Joe Buck in the sense that lots of people I know seem to loudly hate them, and while I support the concept of someone who just shits you for no particular reason, neither of these particular guys particularly shit me.)

That helped steer the focus away from who actually “deserved” to win and why, and more towards whose win would make for the best story. Which seems like both a more enjoyable way to watch the Oscars and a more accurate predictor of who will end up winning. Don’t ask me which actress actually had the best lead performance this year, but if you ask me whose speech I most wanted to watch it was definitely going to be Michelle Yeoh. A few of the presenters were charming and funny, most were kind of self-serious, and Harrison Ford looked like he was trying to read what was on the prompter as dryly as possible so he could go back to his nap. Bring him back every year!

This year’s Oscars seemed content to let the format itself do the heavy lifting, and it was the right move. For my generation, I think a large part of our conception of what the Oscars is and could be was formed by Naked Gun 33 and 1/3rd, whose finale took place at the Oscars telecast. Frank Drebin and his wife Jane, if you’ll remember, sneak into the ceremony when the crowd is too distracted by the arrival of Weird Al Yankovic and Vanna White.

This is a moment that’s stuck in my head for 30 years, and it’s still funny now, because it speaks to the comedy inherent in the event. That there’s going to be absurdist pairings of celebrities, like a parody song accordionist and the lady known for turning letters on a game show, and they’re going to be performing wildly over-scripted monologues about the bravery of doing make-believe. There were plenty of moments like that in this year’s ceremony, like Lady Gaga coming out in casual black jeans to announce, “I wrote this song with my friend BloodPop and it’s very personal for me,” before singing a song from Top Gun 2.

There was also, naturally, an Oscar-nominated artist (Tems) wearing an outfit so elaborate that no one seated behind her could see the stage:

…the existence of which naturally led to competing allegations of “YAAAS QWEEEN” and “this rude woman should be in prison!”

John Travolta cried while introducing the In Memoriam segment, which snubbed a bunch of dead people (a thread) as is tradition, but more importantly was set to a live song sung by, who else, Lenny Kravitz. My friend Joe texted me, “If Rachel dies I will also have Lenny Kravitz sing. I want the guy with a dick ring to serenade my dead wife.”

Hugh Grant got probably the biggest laugh of the night coming onstage with his Four Weddings And A Funeral co-star Andie McDowell, comparing McDowell (“still stunning”) to himself (“basically a human scrotum”) in a moment that was either unscripted or played so well by McDowell that we could’ve believed it to be.

And even that was arguably not as funny as the red carpet interview Grant gave earlier in the evening (which I’m only just seeing this morning). Red carpet reporter Ashley Graham was trying to do the usual fluff interview where she asks actors about parties and designers, and Hugh Grant was trying to perform a slightly pompous, very British act of self-effacement calling the event “a vanity fair.” Which Graham immediately misinterpreted as a reference to the famous Oscars after-party hosted by the magazine Vanity Fair. “Oh yeah, that’s where we let loose and have a little fun,” she riffed.

Things sort of spiraled from there, with Graham not really getting it, Grant refusing to “yes and” and both of them not quite understanding each other like two well-coiffed ships passing in the night. Meanwhile, the graphics department superimposed them in front of live shots of Rooney Mara looking incredibly bored. It was straight out of a rom-com, complete with Hugh Grant’s annoyed side eye at the end, the perfect button to the scene.

That’s the Oscars, baby! It’s where the pomposity of artists and the vacuity of entertainment reporters collides, and we can all be happy that a fourth-generation celebrity was finally recognized by their peers.

That’s what makes it great. It was never fun because it recognized the best movies, or because it was important to the common man, or represented an accurate cross-section of America. It’s a fun, silly, escape from reality that allows people of all stripes to come together to both worship and make fun of celebrities. We can get choked up by Harrison Ford presenting an Oscar to Ke Huy Quan, which is touching solely because we saw them eat fake monkey brains in a movie together when we were 11. That’s so dumb! And that’s okay.

Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can read more of his reviews here.

Even though the Academy Awards had a ceremony free of any physical violence this year, that doesn’t mean that there weren’t some major slip-ups. As many fans have noted, the annual In Memoriam segment was drastically cut short this year, presumably to make room for more awards to be televised. But in doing so, many names were left out of the segment, causing a lot of backlash from fans and celebrities alike.

Paul Sorvino, who passed away last July, was one of the many iconic actors to be axed from the tribute, which was accompanied by Lenny Kravitz on piano. Also missing from the tribute was Triangle of Sadness’ breakout star Charlbi Dean, Anne Heche, and Leslie Jordan. Obviously, this was not well-received.

Sorvino’s wife Dee Dee released a statement to Entertainment Tonight, expressing her disappointment and frustration with the Academy for allowing the segment to be cut back. “Paul Sorvino was one of the greatest actors in cinematic history in Hollywood,” she began, adding that they should have never cut any of the In Memorium feature for time. “It is unconscionable that he would be left out of the In Memoriam segment of the Oscars. It’s a three-hour show, they can’t give a couple more minutes to get it right? Paul Sorvino gave decades to this industry and was loved by all.”

To make matters even messier, the tribute was accompanied by a QR code that was intended to be scanned by viewers who wanted to see the entire segment online, but that idea did not go over well with fans. Sorvino continued, asking for the Academy to address the issue. “Paul was not the only deserving soul left out, and a QR Code is not acceptable. The Academy needs to issue an apology, admit the mistake and do better. Paul Sorvino deserves better, the audience deserves better, is the Academy so jaded they forget people who are loved, who have given their hearts to this industry? Shame on the Academy if this is not corrected. Mistakes are made, this was a big one. Please do something to make it right.”

The Academy has yet to respond to the criticism, though many fans have taken it upon themselves to share their own memorials for those who were not mentioned on the broadcast.

Maybe next year, the ceremony will go down without controversy, but that’s some wishful thinking.

(Via Entertainment Weekly)

The Las Vegas Raiders came into this offseason knowing they would need a new quarterback after releasing Derek Carr (who has since signed with the Saints).

Vegas holds the 7th overall pick on this year’s Draft and was expected to be one of the teams in play for a top-4 quarterback in this class — Bryce Young, CJ Stroud, Anthony Richardson, and Will Levis. However, after Carolina jumped them to move up to No. 1, they became the fourth team in the top 10 expected to pursue a QB, which means they’d have to want whoever is leftover.

As free agency opened, word began circulating that they would be looking at Jimmy Garoppolo as a potential signing, and two hours into free agency after seeing Jarrett Stidham walk to Denver, they landed their guy on a three-year deal.

After country star Morgan Wallen was filmed using a racial slur back in 2021, there was some backlash. He was banned from that year’s AMAs (despite being nominated), many of his country peers spoke out against him, and he lost his record deal. Broadly, though, it didn’t feel like he was outright canceled across the board, and he actually had a more prosperous 2021 than just about any other musician: Dangerous: The Double Album was the most-streamed album of the year.

Earlier this month, he released a massive 36-track album, One Thing At A Time, and that one is also doing remarkably well.

It was revealed yesterday (March 12) that the album, Wallen’s third, is No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart dated March 18. It had 501,000 equivalent album units earned in the US during the week ending March 9, which is the biggest week for an album so far this year. The album racked up 498.28 million on-demand official streams in the US, the biggest week ever for a country album and the fifth-biggest of all time across all genres.

The success continued today: On the new Hot 100 chart dated March 18, Wallen’s single “Last Night” is No. 1, making it his first Hot 100 chart-topper. That’s not where his Hot 100 presence ends, though. In fact, he has five top-10 singles this week, with spots 7 through 10 occupied by “Thought You Should Know,” “You Proof,” “Thinkin’ Bout Me,” and “One Thing At A Time.”

Wallen certainly has a supporter in Lil Durk, who put him on last year’s 7220 album.

Billie Eilish fans want new music, and they want it now. Last week, one tweeter called Finneas a liar for teasing the follow-up to Happier Than Ever back in December 2021. “Great things take time,” Finneas responded.

If Eilish’s eager fans are also sneakerheads, they’re about to receive a solid consolation prize.

Today, March 13, Eilish and Nike announced jointly announced her next Air Force 1 silhouette — “low in white” — will arrive March 22 on Eilish’s website before hitting the SNKRS app and select retail stores on March 23.

Nike shared an Instagram video of Eilish modeling the shoes alongside the caption, “The latest @billieeilish x Nike Air Force 1 Low combines the timeless white on white colorway with the familiar patchwork upper, creating a future favorite with infinite styling options.”

Eilish has been working with Nike since 2021. First, she designed two Air Jordan silhouettes — both 100-percent vegan — that September, followed by the Air Force 1 Billie “Mushroom” last April.

Whether haggling for new music or reacting to new sneakers, fans’ social media feedback likely won’t reach Eilish. She and Finneas chatted with Conan O’Brien for an upcoming episode of Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend and revealed, “I don’t look at it anymore. I deleted it all off my phone, which is such a huge deal for me.”

On Sunday, Brendan Fraser took home a Best Actor Oscar for Darren Aronofsky‘s The Whale. Now, coming only two days later, Aronofsky wants to take you all the way back to 1998 to relive his first film (or, maybe more likely, watch it for the first time), back in theaters for one day with a newly remastered print, Pi.

It’s actually a very unique story. Back in 1998, with absolutely no leverage to do so, Aronofsky brokered a deal that would return the rights to Pi back to him after 25 years. What seemed like an eternity back then to a young filmmaker has, now, come to fruition. The rights for Pi returned to Aronofsky and he turned around and sold it again to A24, who are now putting it back in theaters for “Pi Day” on March 14th.

It’s interesting watching Pi today. It feels like a movie pulsating with every topic Aronofsky would explore with later films. As the protagonist, Max, becomes obsessed with numbers, it does feel like there’s a numerical formula from this film to follow that lays out Aronofsky’s entire career. When I mentioned I can draw a direct line from Pi to The Whale, at first Aronofsky poo-poos this notion, before actually conceding I may have a point.

Ahead, Aronofsky tells us how he negotiated this pretty unusual deal, and what it’s like trying to get back in the head of the filmmaker he was in his 20s.

You took a break from your never-ending press tour for The Whale to do press for a different movie.

[Laughs] I mean, it’s kind of slowed down, The Whale stuff. I haven’t been doing that much for a while. Just moderating a few Q&As with Brendan and Hong and the makeup department. But otherwise, just been getting ready for the next thing.

Is this more fun? Talking about a 25-year-old movie? As opposed to having to try and sell something new?

Sure. I mean, I’m happy to do this. I’m pretty happy to do the press at the beginning. It’s just that when you’re up to your 400th interview, it’s a lot. But this is one day of press and it’s happy to bring back the memories. This whole thing’s been kind of just a gas and a lot of fun the whole time.

So I re-watched this a couple of days ago. By the way, after this I realized I hadn’t seen The Fountain in a long time either. Both are around 90 minutes, which made that pretty easy.

I like the 90-minute movie! Pi is 79 minutes. I love that length.

So here’s what went through my head while watching Pi. This is my theory. It is like watching your Big Bang, everything condensed about what you make in movies just crammed into this first thing and then it explodes and informs all your other movies. The spiral from Pi is all your other movies coming out of Pi to this day.

Yeah, I don’t know… There are some original ideas that show up, but I can’t account for them. I just sort of follow what I’m interested in and have been lucky enough to make those types of movies. So that’s exciting.

I can make direct comparisons between Pi and The Whale.

Sure.

Two people who are both obsessed, addicted…

They’re both about two shut-ins.

And then someone offering religion shows up.

That’s true.

There are some parallels here. And that surprised me.

Yeah, no, well, you just surprised me. I never thought about it. Oh, yeah, the religion pushes through the doors and starts to try to make him more religious and stuff. So that’s funny.

How do you feel when you go back and watch something you made in your 20s?

I was happy after I watched it. Because we did this arduous task of going back to the original film. So, basically, the same film that passed through the camera is this film called Black and White Reversal…

Yeah, I was reading about that.

Yeah, it gets developed and it’s like a Polaroid thing and I had never seen that ever projected, because we treated that like our negative. And then when we cut it together, we actually cut those positives, and then we had to shoot it with 35-millimeter negative and then we had to print off that negative. So the only thing I ever saw was a third generation down. So, for me, it was so interesting because there was so many more details and the whole look of it was different when we went back and scanned it all at 8K. The IMAX people were like, “We’ve never seen anything like this. Most people want to get rid of the grain and they want to get rid of the texture.” They were nervous to show it to me. And I was like, “No, I love it.”

I am a fan of grain.

So finally, when I did watch it all together for the first time, I was like, “Oh, there’s some totally crazy ludicrous ideas in this.” But ultimately, it’s pretty nonstop interesting. And so I think it could play. People will actually enjoy it. It constantly keeps your attention.

I remember in the ’90s thinking it was a weird movie. It doesn’t seem as weird now.

It was weirder at the moment. It’s just the world has gotten really, really weird.

Maybe that’s it.

I think the world’s gotten more weird. But I think back then, people weren’t really doing sci-fi in independent films. And working in black-and-white reversal was kind of a fresh idea. So I think it was different to what was out there in the landscape. But anyway, just how it played out.

I read that a lot of the cost of this movie just went into buying the film. Are you envious of filmmakers in their 20s now that can just go out on their phone and start doing stuff and don’t have to worry about that?

Back then, there was no way to make a film except if you actually bought film and filmed something and cut it together. And then there was no way to distribute film unless you got a distribution deal. There was nothing to do. It’s so exciting right now. If I was a young filmmaker, I would definitely be using my smartphone and just going out in the streets and telling stories with that and trying to figure out how to use the different tools that are available now, which are expanding so quickly in such a crazy way at this moment. It’s a great time to be a storyteller.

Pi aged well. I completely forgot it takes place in the 90s except when a floppy disk shows up.

And the rotary phone.

Oh and that.

The thing is, there were at the time of course touchpad phones or whatever they call them, but I chose to go rotary to kind of confuse the time and the aesthetic a little bit.

It’s not a movie filled with cultural references that are dated.

There are none. And it’s set in Chinatown, which hasn’t changed at all. Actually, I had dinner last night on the corner where we shot a scene where Max comes out of the train station. I was like, “Oh, that’s weird to be right back here again 25 years later, or 26 years later.” But yeah, I think the ideas, they still work. I mean, even predicting the stock market and all those ideas and people looking for patterns and stuff, it’s all kind of still in culture here and now.

And the prediction that a recession was coming. You nailed that one. It came.

Well, you always know that’s going to happen.

I’m fascinated by this contract. So how did this work? Why did you get the movie rights back? What contract did you have where you all of a sudden own the movie again and you can sell it to A24?

Not me, but all the filmmakers. It happened because, it was very much like this socialist pact amongst the filmmakers where I, as the director, had the same amount of ownership as anyone who worked on the film for that length of time. So when we went to Sundance, I was really in awe of Jim Jarmusch, who always basically got his films back after seven years. He would finance them out of Japan in places and then just licensed them for under a decade. And so when we started making the contract, I was like, nope, we’ve got to get it back. We’ve got to get it back. And I was so annoying about it. Eventually, the head of the studio was like, “Fine, give it back to him in 25 years.” And so it was always in back of my head. So it was just that.

Well, yeah, but as your first movie, that’s a lot of…

Chutzpah?

Yeah, that’s exactly the word. You probably weren’t in much of a position to be making demands and yet you did.

I was in no position. No position. We only had one company, Artisan was bidding on it at the time. There was no one else that was bidding on it. So we didn’t really have any leverage. But it was just an important point. There were a few important points that we wanted to make sure would happen and we kind of stuck to our gun and we were lucky that they decided to honor them.

Is this the only movie you had that deal with?

Unfortunately, that’s correct.

So you don’t get Noah back in 15 years or anything?

No, I think once they start spending real money, there’s no way in hell you’re getting it back.

So you get the rights back, was the plan always to resell it?

Well, that’s why I teamed up with A24. We had such a great run with The Whale.

I didn’t know if there were other options before that.

Yeah, it’s all been very quick. We got the rights back in January. January 21st. And then we made the deal. We were already making the deal. I knew it was coming up and the one thing I really wanted to do was an IMAX screening because I thought it would just be a lot of fun to do it.

On Pi Day.

Yeah. I’m hoping that this becomes a yearly tradition where people can go check out the film at IMAX on Pi Day as a way of celebrating mathematics.

This makes me think you had a very nice experience with The Whale, working with A24.

Oh, they’re amazing people and they’re very honest. They’re very straightforward and it was a great journey with them. So I’m happy to be in business with them. The other thing I like about it is that they’re such a youth brand. There are so many young people who love them and I’m hoping that they can help introduce Pi to that younger audience.

I’ve wanted to ask you, especially after watching these two movies back to back, Pi and The Fountain: why do most of your movies have these pretty deeply religious themes? But you’ve never been pigeonholed as a director who only directs about religious themes, but yet they’re present a lot.

I don’t know… I think that the mythology… I’m more interested in religion, not for spiritual reasons, but I love the mythology of it. I love how they take on larger meanings because they are these stories that are so integral to our culture and to our reality that they affect people in lots of ways. So it’s like, I just think there’s a lot of power in story. And using the oldest stories we know to reinvent them and reinterpreted them is been always something I’ve been interested in.

You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.

Over the past year or so, elder millennials have been dismayed to learn that the 15-year sample cycle has finally gotten to some of our high school classics. Ice Spice, the rap it-girl of the moment, snatched a sample of Diddy’s “I Need A Girl, Part 2” for one of her latest viral favorite singles, “Gangsta Boo” with Lil Tjay, and now, another pair of rappers from the opposite end of the spectrum have hijacked the sample for their own use.

Jpegmafia, who is pretty well known for his love of unusual sounds and contrarian approaches to popular hip-hop, teams up with Danny Brown for “Lean Beef Patty,” a chaotic track that speeds up the 2002 hit and combines it with a pounding, electronic synth to truly unsettling effect. The self-produced track is set to appear on Jpeg and Danny’s upcoming joint project, Scaring The Hoes, Vol. 1, which is named after a popular meme about playing unusual rap music at parties and “scaring the hoes.” Both rappers know a thing or two about this sort of unfair characterization.

But if unconventional rap music is your thing, you could do worse than a joint album featuring the two hip-hop mischief makers. You can pre-order Scaring The Hoes here.

In the days leading up to the release of Black Adam, and in the weeks that followed, The Rock talked a very big game about bringing back Henry Cavill as Superman and building up to a film where the Man of Steel would go toe-to-toe with The Rock’s Black Adam. It certainly helped that Cavill announced he was back following his barely secret cameo in Black Adam, and The Rock made it a point to note that he personally fought Warner Bros. to make Cavill’s return happen.

And then it all fell apart.

A few weeks after Cavill touted his return, incoming DC Studios chief James Gunn announced that he’s moving forward with a new Superman movie. That film, now known as Superman: Legacy, would star a younger actor (a.k.a. not Henry Cavill), and just like that, it was over. Gunn would also meet with The Rock and the two would release cordial statements saying Black Adam 2 is still a possibility, but just not in Gunn’s Chapter 1 of the DC Universe.

Since then, The Rock has been quiet on the matter, but while attending Sunday’s night Oscar, he opened up about watching Cavill’s return as Superman fall apart despite the Black Adam star’s best efforts. Via Variety:

“All that I can do, and all that we could do when we were making ‘Black Adam,’ was to put our best foot forward and surround ourselves with the best people and deliver the best movie we could,” Johnson said. “Our audience score was in the 90s. Critics took a couple shots, but that’s just the business of it.”

“It’s almost like when you have a pro football team and your quarterback wins championships and your head coach wins championships and then a new owner comes in and says, ‘Not my coach, not my quarterback. I’m going to go with somebody new.’”

To his credit, Gunn has been candid about the Cavill situation, which he blamed on studio execs and possibly even The Rock himself.

“I like Henry, I think he’s a great guy,” Gunn said during the press event for his DC Universe Chapter 1 plans. “I think he’s getting dicked around by a lot of people, including the former regime at this company. But this Superman is not Henry, for a number of reasons.”

(Via Variety)

Shazam: Fury of the Gods director David Sandberg seems like he’s in limbo like the rest of us on the future of the Shazam movies. On one hand, that’s not that unusual. Even most superhero movie sequels aren’t announced until well after its predecessor’s release date. Though it’s just kind of assumed at this point any successful superhero movie will be getting additional installments. And the first Shazam was successful, both at the box office and with critics – a feat not achieved all that often with these DC movies. But since the production of Shazam: Fury of the Gods, James Gunn has taken over and Sandberg said there’s been no direct discussions about Shazam’s (and Sandberg’s) future at DC one way or another. In a video shared on social media, the only clue Gunn has given was he said the world of Shazam is kind of its own thing and that this new film can fit into the direction Gunn is taking the DC universe, but nothing about Shazam’s fate after that.

In Shazam: Fury of the Gods, as we left off in the last film, young Billy Batson (Asher Angel plays the young version; Zachery Levi plays the super-powered version, Shazam) and his adopted all now have the ability to turn into muscular, adult superhero versions of themselves. They are tested early on during a bridge collapse and … sort of spectacularly fail and become the laughingstocks of the greater Philadelphia area. Complicating things, three gods (Helen Miran, Lucy Liu, Rachel Zegler) have come to Earth in search of an ancient staff that will bring them immortal powers, while stealing the powers away from Billy’s family and capturing his foster brother, Freddy Freeman (Jack Dylan Grazer, who is again terrific). And now Billy, as Shazam, needs to broker peace with the gods or try to destroy them.

Ahead, as stated earlier, Sandberg tries to tell us what he knows and what he doesn’t know about the future of these movies – and, frankly, after directing two of them if he even wants to do another. (At the very least, he does seem to want the time to do a small horror movie.) And he explains the tricky dynamic of having four actors play the two lead characters and having to use the plot to make sure Jack Dylan Grazer’s Freddy Freeman is on the screen a lot. Also, kind of surprisingly, the name Captain Marvel is actually mentioned during the course of Shazam: Fury of the Gods. Which is Shazam’s original character name from the comics, but is now an very tricky legal issue with Marvel’s character of the same name. Sandberg explains how that all happened.

How are you doing?

Doing good. Just starting the whole press thing and, yeah, finally getting the movie out there and getting people to see it.

So the name Captain Marvel is actually spoken in this movie, kind of as a joke. But with the whole issue with Marvel’s version, does that have to run through the legal department?

Well, I actually didn’t think we were going to be allowed to say it. When we were shooting that scene, he actually had a different line. But I was like, well, let’s do a take where you call him Captain Marvel. We’re not going to be able to use it, but let’s just get it. And then I was talking to the guys at DC and I was like, can we put it in the movie? Is that okay? And they were like, “Well, yeah, I mean, Marvel mentioned Superman and Batman, or whatever, in Eternals and different movies.

They do mention Superman in that, yes.

Yeah. So it’s like, why not? They can’t say anything.

That would be a funny lawsuit. I would enjoy it at least. I don’t think you would, but it would be entertaining.

Well, it wouldn’t affect me. I’d enjoy it too.

I was disappointed, once again, no Captain Hill-Billy.

Actually, at one point when we were figuring out what the story would be for this one, we actually had a version where Tawky Tawny would be in it, the talking tiger.

Wait really?

Yeah. There was a way. But that story didn’t really work, so we had to go with this story instead. And then there was no organic way to get him in there. Because you can’t just have a talking tiger show up and be a part of the gang without people going like, “Wait, how does that work?”

Don’t even explain it.

He’s just there.

Okay so Shazam is Captain Marvel in the books, but it works just calling him Shazam in the movie. But it doesn’t work for Captain Marvel Jr. And in this movie, he’s referred to as “Captain Every Power” a lot. Where did that come from?

Well, that was another thing because we were like, oh, he should make up some dumb name for himself. We had a lot of versions of Captain and some word or the thing. And what we found out was that they were all taken.

Really?

There are too many superheroes! Because it’s like there are thousands of them out there that you never hear of, but they’re still trademarked and copyrighted. So it’s like finally we got it down to just like, well, there’s no one called Captain Every Power, so let’s just use that. It was a real struggle to finding a captain or something that wasn’t taken.

That would be a funny headline. “The director of the Shazam movies: There are just too many superheroes.”

Yeah.

I know before the first Shazam there was talk of using Black Adam. Was that ever a plan for the second movie, before he got his own movie?

No, because we knew that they were doing a separate Black Adam. We knew that he wasn’t going to be a big part of the movie. So we got Helen Mirren instead.

She looks like she’s having a lot of fun. I hope that’s the case.

Definitely. I mean, she doing her own stunts and breaking fingers and stuff.

I didn’t know she did her own stunts.

She did a lot of stuff. We put her on wires and when she gets picked up by Zach and stuff like that, that’s actually her. That’s why we did an angle from the top. So we need to see your face so people see that we really did it. There were certain stunts that we had to tell her, no, you can’t do that. We need to do it with a stunt person.

So, with the new management at DC, have you talked to James Gunn? In his announcement, he said the Shazam movies worked because they are their own thing. Have you had conversations with him? Do these get to continue?

I haven’t had a big conversation with him and Peter [Safran] yet. He’s been a part of little marketing meetings and stuff, but no further conversations yet. He’s been pretty busy I think, for both of us.

I’m just trying to get into your head a bit. You finally cracked Shazam, made a movie that a lot of people liked. And now everything’s being redone. But I don’t know what you’ve heard or what you haven’t heard or what you can even tell me…

I don’t know what the exact plans are. I mean, for me, I take it just one movie at a time. When we did the first one, I didn’t expect to do a second one, but that still happened. So we’ll see. I mean, for right now, I’m just like I just want to make a little horror movie or something now. I just did two Shazams in a row. But, I mean, if they want to do more, hey, I’m open to it. Let’s talk. But we’ll see.

I didn’t even think about that aspect of it, that a lot of directors don’t want to do more than a couple of these because they take up so much time and energy.

Yeah, they’re very exhausting. It just takes a very long time. And it’s scary, putting all your sort of eggs into one basket. You work three years and then what if it doesn’t work? And it’s like, Oh. So, horror movies are nice because you can do one a year and get them out there.

The dynamic in the Shazam movies seems tricky, because you have four actors who play two characters. In the first movie, what worked so well was Zachary Levi and Jack Dylan Grazer. But now they both have powers. It did seem like the movie looks for plot excuses to have these two together.

Yeah. I mean, especially with Jack.

Yeah, he’s great in this.

You want to see him. So you kind of have to take his powers away. Because otherwise, he’d be a superhero all the time and you want to see Jack. And I think what worked out really well is the dynamic with him and the Wizard, to have Djimon Hounsou as the straight man and pair the two of them up.

Like Jack’s line in the dungeon, “Is this a tooth? There’s a tooth in here.”

That’s Jack. That’s what he wanted.

Oh, he did that?

Yeah, because I mean, the production designers, when they made that dungeon and everything, they put clothes, bones and teeth in there. But that’s genuine, him going, “What? Is this a tooth in here?” He actually picks one up and that’s like perfect. And that’s why it’s so great to work with people like Jack or Zach. They don’t stick to the scripts all the time, but it’s great because they come up with such fun stuff.

Asher Angel is really great as young Billy, but we’re going to see a lot more of Zachary in this movie than we do him. Is it weird to be like, “Hey, you’re really good, but it’s not going to be as big a part this time”?

Yeah, I mean, it is unfortunate. I mean, we try to balance this as much as we can. But, I mean, it makes sense that a lot of the movie they are in danger and they are fighting. So, of course, he would be in his superhero form. So it’s a tricky balance, but I think the cast was all okay with it and to do their different sizes of parts.

I know you said there haven’t been any meetings, and that you want to do a horror movie next, but what are you feeling with the future of Shazam?

There’s certainly much more you can do. I mean with the Shazam and the family. And there’s a lot of great villains from the Shazam universe as well. I’d love to see more with Mr. Mind, not just because I do the voice for him. But I mean, he’s just such a unique character because it’s silly in one way because he’s just a little worm. But he is really intelligent and dangerous and he has other forms as well. He can Hyperfly form and things like that in the comics.

So in the version I saw, there were no end credit scenes, but I was told they’re just not ready yet. But I can’t help but think, does that mean they had to be redone because of the new regime?

No.

Okay.

No. I mean, they exist. I think it’s more like wanting to save something for the fans on opening day and all that stuff.

I see, okay.

So it doesn’t all get out there.

Okay, I was wondering if there was a Black Adam tease that’s pretty obviously not happening now.

No. They’re mostly just fun little scenes. It’s not like, “Here’s the new Superman.” I can’t spoil too much, but you get to see some characters that are fun to see.

Shazam! Fury of the Gods opens in theaters everywhere on March 17th. You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.