The gambling scandal surrounding LA Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani’s interpreter is already getting the TV series treatment.
Lionsgate Television is in early development on a series focused on the scandal. No writer or network is currently attached to the project, but Scott Delman and Albert Chen are both attached to produce. Executive Max Elins is overseeing the project for Lionsgate Television, while Bryan Weiser negotiated the deal.
Ohtani made headlines the world over when he signed a 10-year, $700 million contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers. The star pitcher and designated hitter had for years been working with interpreter Ippei Mizuhara, but just one day into the 2024 MLB season, it was revealed that Mizuhara had stolen nearly $17 million from Ohtani to cover gambling debts. He was immediately fired and later turned himself in to federal authorities. It was just reported that he has plead guilty to bank and tax fraud charges.
Lionsgate Television is in early development on a series focused on the scandal. No writer or network is currently attached to the project, but Scott Delman and Albert Chen are both attached to produce. Executive Max Elins is overseeing the project for Lionsgate Television, while Bryan Weiser negotiated the deal.
Ohtani made headlines the world over when he signed a 10-year, $700 million contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers. The star pitcher and designated hitter had for years been working with interpreter Ippei Mizuhara, but just one day into the 2024 MLB season, it was revealed that Mizuhara had stolen nearly $17 million from Ohtani to cover gambling debts. He was immediately fired and later turned himself in to federal authorities. It was just reported that he has plead guilty to bank and tax fraud charges.
- 5/9/2024
- by Joe Otterson
- Variety Film + TV
Since their inception, the directing categories at the Tony Awards have mostly been a boys’ club. Not only are the vast majority of winners men, but so are most of the nominees. But the 2024 ceremony could upend these statistics as more women are helming Broadway shows than ever before. This could finally be the year where they make up the majority of directing nominees.
This season there are 13 women directors on Broadway. Four of them will contend for Best Director of a Play: Lila Neugebauer (“Appropriate” and “Uncle Vanya”), Anne Kauffman (“Mary Jane”), Tina Landau (“Mother Play”), and Whitney White (“Jaja’s African Hair Braiding”). Another nine women will vie for Best Director of a Musical: Sammi Canold (“How to Dance in Ohio”), Rachel Chavkin (“Lempicka”), Rebecca Frecknall (“Cabaret”), Maria Friedman (“Merrily We Roll Along“), Mari Madrid, Leigh Silverman (“Suffs”), Jessica Stone (“Water for Elephants”), Danya Taymor (“The Outsiders”), and...
This season there are 13 women directors on Broadway. Four of them will contend for Best Director of a Play: Lila Neugebauer (“Appropriate” and “Uncle Vanya”), Anne Kauffman (“Mary Jane”), Tina Landau (“Mother Play”), and Whitney White (“Jaja’s African Hair Braiding”). Another nine women will vie for Best Director of a Musical: Sammi Canold (“How to Dance in Ohio”), Rachel Chavkin (“Lempicka”), Rebecca Frecknall (“Cabaret”), Maria Friedman (“Merrily We Roll Along“), Mari Madrid, Leigh Silverman (“Suffs”), Jessica Stone (“Water for Elephants”), Danya Taymor (“The Outsiders”), and...
- 3/11/2024
- by Sam Eckmann
- Gold Derby
Thomas Vinterberg, the Oscar-winning director of Another Round, is turning to television for his next project, signing on to adapt the fantasy novel The Brothers Lionheart as a limited event series for The Morning Show producers Media Res.
Vinterberg will adapt the beloved children’s book, from Pippi Longstocking author Astrid Lindgren together with Tony and Olivier Award-winning British playwright Simon Stephens (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime). Both will executive produce the series together with Michael Ellenberg, Lars Blomgren and Lindsey Springer of Media Res, alongside The Astrid Lindgren Company.
While not as well known outside internationally as Pippi Longstocking, Lindgren’s coming-of-age tale of two brothers, Karl and Jonathan Lion, in the mythical land of Nangiyala, and their battle against the evil tyrant Tengil, is a family classic in Scandinavia and has been translated into some 50 languages worldwide.
“The Brothers Lionheart is possibly the most...
Vinterberg will adapt the beloved children’s book, from Pippi Longstocking author Astrid Lindgren together with Tony and Olivier Award-winning British playwright Simon Stephens (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime). Both will executive produce the series together with Michael Ellenberg, Lars Blomgren and Lindsey Springer of Media Res, alongside The Astrid Lindgren Company.
While not as well known outside internationally as Pippi Longstocking, Lindgren’s coming-of-age tale of two brothers, Karl and Jonathan Lion, in the mythical land of Nangiyala, and their battle against the evil tyrant Tengil, is a family classic in Scandinavia and has been translated into some 50 languages worldwide.
“The Brothers Lionheart is possibly the most...
- 3/7/2024
- by Scott Roxborough
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Exclusive: Lionsgate Television has optioned Liza Mundy’s nonfiction book The Sisterhood: The Secret History of Women at the CIA to develop as a scripted series, with Tony winner Scott Delman attached to executive produce.
The series revolves around a newly trained female CIA officer who is sent on a counter-terrorism operation. She winds up enlisting the help of legendary female predecessors and learns about a “sisterhood” of unsung female spies who’ve spent decades safeguarding the free world by fighting communism, terrorism and the toxic culture of their own renowned spy agency.
Thirteen-time Tony Award winner Delman will executive produce the project. Delman served as executive producer on HBO Max’s Emmy-nominated post-apocalyptic limited series Station Eleven. He has also earned six Olivier Awards and served as a producer on several major Broadway hits, including The Book of Mormon, Death of a Salesman, All The Way, Raisin in the Sun,...
The series revolves around a newly trained female CIA officer who is sent on a counter-terrorism operation. She winds up enlisting the help of legendary female predecessors and learns about a “sisterhood” of unsung female spies who’ve spent decades safeguarding the free world by fighting communism, terrorism and the toxic culture of their own renowned spy agency.
Thirteen-time Tony Award winner Delman will executive produce the project. Delman served as executive producer on HBO Max’s Emmy-nominated post-apocalyptic limited series Station Eleven. He has also earned six Olivier Awards and served as a producer on several major Broadway hits, including The Book of Mormon, Death of a Salesman, All The Way, Raisin in the Sun,...
- 3/5/2024
- by Denise Petski
- Deadline Film + TV
Cara Delevingne is taking on a big role for her West End debut. She will play Sally Bowles in Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club.
She will replace rapper and performer Self Esteem (aka Rebecca Lucy Taylor), who is set to play her final performance on March 9.
“There are no words to explain the excitement I have to return home to make my stage debut in such an iconic role. I am so inspired by the brilliant actors who have played Sally in past productions around the world and in this one in the West End. I cannot wait to be a part of this brilliant cast and production.”
Joining her is Luke Treadaway, who will replace Scissor Sisters singer Jake Shears as the Emcee.
The pair will join Michael Ahomka-Lindsay, who plays Cliff Bradshaw in the production Beverley Klein (Fraulein Schneider) and Teddy Kempner (Herr Schultz). Nic Myers plays...
She will replace rapper and performer Self Esteem (aka Rebecca Lucy Taylor), who is set to play her final performance on March 9.
“There are no words to explain the excitement I have to return home to make my stage debut in such an iconic role. I am so inspired by the brilliant actors who have played Sally in past productions around the world and in this one in the West End. I cannot wait to be a part of this brilliant cast and production.”
Joining her is Luke Treadaway, who will replace Scissor Sisters singer Jake Shears as the Emcee.
The pair will join Michael Ahomka-Lindsay, who plays Cliff Bradshaw in the production Beverley Klein (Fraulein Schneider) and Teddy Kempner (Herr Schultz). Nic Myers plays...
- 2/5/2024
- by Jesse Whittock
- Deadline Film + TV
“Le Freaks” will come out at night starting July 27 as Spiegelworld transforms 3535 Las Vegas Blvd. (The Linq hotel-casino) into the epicenter of four-on-the-floor beats and mirror balls with the debut of Discoshow.
More than four years in the making, Discoshow is the latest spectacle from the Las Vegas show producer that characterizes its style of entertainment as “human circus,” led by wizard of “Oz” Ross Mollison. It joins a compendium of Spiegelworld productions, including Absinthe at Caesars, Atomic Saloon in Venetian and The Hook at Caesars Atlantic City, along with bi-coastal versions of psychedelic Italian-American restaurant Superfrico at The Cosmopolitan and Caesars Atlantic City.
Mollison believes that Las Vegas audiences will love disco, even if they don’t know it yet. “We’re wired for disco. It goes through into our soul. People also want an excuse to go out and party. So much of what is produced now is so serious,...
More than four years in the making, Discoshow is the latest spectacle from the Las Vegas show producer that characterizes its style of entertainment as “human circus,” led by wizard of “Oz” Ross Mollison. It joins a compendium of Spiegelworld productions, including Absinthe at Caesars, Atomic Saloon in Venetian and The Hook at Caesars Atlantic City, along with bi-coastal versions of psychedelic Italian-American restaurant Superfrico at The Cosmopolitan and Caesars Atlantic City.
Mollison believes that Las Vegas audiences will love disco, even if they don’t know it yet. “We’re wired for disco. It goes through into our soul. People also want an excuse to go out and party. So much of what is produced now is so serious,...
- 1/30/2024
- by Melinda Sheckells
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
The new sci-fi drama from the creators of Game of Thrones now has a premiere date: 3 Body Problem will launch on Netflix on March 21, 2024. The streamer also released a video with some new footage from the series, which is adapted from Liu Cixin’s Hugo Award-winning trilogy.
There’s also a new, more specific description of the anticipated show: “A young woman’s fateful decision in 1960s China reverberates across space and time into the present day. When the laws of nature inexplicably unravel before their eyes, a close-knit group of brilliant scientists join forces with an unflinching detective to confront the greatest threat in humanity’s history.”
In the below clip, Jack Rooney (John Bradley) and Jin Cheng (Jess Hong) explore a rather unique VR helmet.
For a longer look at the show, here’s the previous teaser trailer from June.
3 Body Problem is from Emmy-winning Thrones...
There’s also a new, more specific description of the anticipated show: “A young woman’s fateful decision in 1960s China reverberates across space and time into the present day. When the laws of nature inexplicably unravel before their eyes, a close-knit group of brilliant scientists join forces with an unflinching detective to confront the greatest threat in humanity’s history.”
In the below clip, Jack Rooney (John Bradley) and Jin Cheng (Jess Hong) explore a rather unique VR helmet.
For a longer look at the show, here’s the previous teaser trailer from June.
3 Body Problem is from Emmy-winning Thrones...
- 11/10/2023
- by James Hibberd
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Exclusive: Ted Lasso star James Lance and Hermione Norris have joined Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs in the feature adaptation of Raynor Winn’s inspirational bestselling memoir The Salt Path.
The film marks the screen directing debut of Marianne Elliott, the Olivier- and Tony Award-winning director of stage hits War Horse, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Company and Death of a Salesman, as Deadline revealed in May.
The Salt Path follows married couple Raynor and Moth Winn, portrayed by Anderson and Isaacs, who, after being evicted from their farm, embark on a long and winding trek along the South West Coast path in UK’s picturesque Devon and Cornwall.
Lance has been cast as Grant, one of a handful of the disparate characters who cross paths with Raynor and Moth during their year long journey.
Norris has signed on as Polly,...
The film marks the screen directing debut of Marianne Elliott, the Olivier- and Tony Award-winning director of stage hits War Horse, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Company and Death of a Salesman, as Deadline revealed in May.
The Salt Path follows married couple Raynor and Moth Winn, portrayed by Anderson and Isaacs, who, after being evicted from their farm, embark on a long and winding trek along the South West Coast path in UK’s picturesque Devon and Cornwall.
Lance has been cast as Grant, one of a handful of the disparate characters who cross paths with Raynor and Moth during their year long journey.
Norris has signed on as Polly,...
- 7/11/2023
- by Baz Bamigboye
- Deadline Film + TV
The first trailer is here for the Game of Thrones creators’ long-awaited follow-up series.
Netflix released the teaser trailer for 3 Body Problem from showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss along with Alexander Woo. The sci-fi epic is adapted from Liu Cixin’s Hugo Award-winning trilogy.
3 Body Problem is an ambitious tale about what happens when humanity discovers that we are not alone in the universe. The trailer was revealed at Netflix’s Tudum live fan event in Brazil on Saturday.
The sprawling cast also includes Jovan Adepo (Watchmen), Rosalind Chao (Better Things), Eiza González (Baby Driver), Jess Hong (Inked), Marlo Kelly (Dare Me), Jonathan Pryce (The Crown), Eve Ridley (Peppa Pig), Ben Schnetzer (Y: The Last Man), Alex Sharp (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time), Sea Shimooka (Pink Skies Ahead), Zine Tseng (series debut), Saamer Usmani (Succession) and Benedict Wong (Dr. Strange in the Multiverse...
Netflix released the teaser trailer for 3 Body Problem from showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss along with Alexander Woo. The sci-fi epic is adapted from Liu Cixin’s Hugo Award-winning trilogy.
3 Body Problem is an ambitious tale about what happens when humanity discovers that we are not alone in the universe. The trailer was revealed at Netflix’s Tudum live fan event in Brazil on Saturday.
The sprawling cast also includes Jovan Adepo (Watchmen), Rosalind Chao (Better Things), Eiza González (Baby Driver), Jess Hong (Inked), Marlo Kelly (Dare Me), Jonathan Pryce (The Crown), Eve Ridley (Peppa Pig), Ben Schnetzer (Y: The Last Man), Alex Sharp (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time), Sea Shimooka (Pink Skies Ahead), Zine Tseng (series debut), Saamer Usmani (Succession) and Benedict Wong (Dr. Strange in the Multiverse...
- 6/17/2023
- by James Hibberd
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Jodie Comer has become the 100th performer to win a Tony Award for their Broadway debut for her performance in the play, “Prima Facie.”
She won Best Actress in a Play for portraying Tess, a lawyer who concentrates in providing legal defense for men who are accused of sexual assault but soon has the unthinkable happen to her. She is the 11th person to win the category for her first outing on a Broadway stage. She joins:
SEE2023 Tony Awards: Every winner (and nominee) in all 26 competitive categories
Martita Hunt, “The Madwoman of Chaillot” (1949)
Beryl Reid, “The Killing of Sister George” (1967)
Phyllis Frelich, “Children of a Lesser God” (1980)
Jane Lapotaire, “Piaf” (1981)
Joan Allen, “Burn This” (1988)
Pauline Collins, “Shirley Valentine” (1989)
Janet McTeer, “A Doll’s House” (1997)
Marie Mullen, “The Beauty Queen of Leeane” (1998)
Jennifer Ehle, “The Real Thing” (2000)
Deanna Dunagan, “August: Osage County” (2008)
Below are the Broadway debuts in the seven other...
She won Best Actress in a Play for portraying Tess, a lawyer who concentrates in providing legal defense for men who are accused of sexual assault but soon has the unthinkable happen to her. She is the 11th person to win the category for her first outing on a Broadway stage. She joins:
SEE2023 Tony Awards: Every winner (and nominee) in all 26 competitive categories
Martita Hunt, “The Madwoman of Chaillot” (1949)
Beryl Reid, “The Killing of Sister George” (1967)
Phyllis Frelich, “Children of a Lesser God” (1980)
Jane Lapotaire, “Piaf” (1981)
Joan Allen, “Burn This” (1988)
Pauline Collins, “Shirley Valentine” (1989)
Janet McTeer, “A Doll’s House” (1997)
Marie Mullen, “The Beauty Queen of Leeane” (1998)
Jennifer Ehle, “The Real Thing” (2000)
Deanna Dunagan, “August: Osage County” (2008)
Below are the Broadway debuts in the seven other...
- 6/12/2023
- by Charles Bright
- Gold Derby
Andrew Scott, the hot priest in Fleabag and Bond villain in Spectre, will dominate the West End in the fall by playing all the roles in Vanya, a new adaptation of Chekhov’s masterpiece Uncle Vanya.
Playwright Simon Stephens, who won major awards for his stage interpretation of Mark Haddon’s best-selling book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, which played in London and New York, was tasked with shaping Vanya by producers Benjamin Lowy and Emily Vaughan-Barratt of production house Wessex Grove.
Scott will perform the four leading characters: Vanya; his late sister’s husband, Serebryakov, and his new wife, Yelena; and Sonya, who is Serebryakov’s daughter from his first marriage. There are five other roles –three supporting and two smaller featured parts.
Scott told Deadline that he’s “utterly thrilled” to be returning to the theater for the first time since he did Noel Coward...
Playwright Simon Stephens, who won major awards for his stage interpretation of Mark Haddon’s best-selling book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, which played in London and New York, was tasked with shaping Vanya by producers Benjamin Lowy and Emily Vaughan-Barratt of production house Wessex Grove.
Scott will perform the four leading characters: Vanya; his late sister’s husband, Serebryakov, and his new wife, Yelena; and Sonya, who is Serebryakov’s daughter from his first marriage. There are five other roles –three supporting and two smaller featured parts.
Scott told Deadline that he’s “utterly thrilled” to be returning to the theater for the first time since he did Noel Coward...
- 6/8/2023
- by Baz Bamigboye
- Deadline Film + TV
Exclusive: Gillian Anderson and Jason Issacs will star in the film adaptation of Raynor Winn’s bestselling memoir The Salt Path. Marianne Elliott, the Tony Award and Olivier Award winning theater artist, is to make her screen directing debut on the project which will be a nice one in the Cannes market for Rocket Science. Black Bear has already snapped up UK rights.
Winn’s memoir is about a couple who lose their home and days later discover the husband has been diagnosed with a terminal illness as they embark on a year long coastal trek. The book spent a whopping 85 weeks on the London Sunday Times book chart.
Elliott, best known for theater work, directed War Horse and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and the seminal revivals of Angels In America, Company and Death of a Salesman in London and on Broadway. The Salt Path is her filmmaking debut.
Winn’s memoir is about a couple who lose their home and days later discover the husband has been diagnosed with a terminal illness as they embark on a year long coastal trek. The book spent a whopping 85 weeks on the London Sunday Times book chart.
Elliott, best known for theater work, directed War Horse and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and the seminal revivals of Angels In America, Company and Death of a Salesman in London and on Broadway. The Salt Path is her filmmaking debut.
- 5/16/2023
- by Baz Bamigboye
- Deadline Film + TV
Six top TV composers and songwriters will reveal secrets behind their projects when they join Gold Derby’s special “Meet the Experts” Q&a event with 2022 Emmy Awards nominees. They will participate in two video discussions to premiere on Thursday, August 4, at 6:00 p.m. Pt; 9:00 p.m. Et. We’ll have a one-on-one with our senior editor Joyce Eng and a roundtable chat with all of the group together.
RSVP today to our entire ongoing Emmy contenders panel series by clicking here to book your free reservation. We’ll send you a reminder a few minutes before the start of the show.
This “Meet the Experts” panel welcomes the following 2022 nominees:
1883 (Paramount+)
Synopsis: Follows the Dutton family on a journey west through the Great Plains toward the last bastion of uncolonized America.
Bio: Brian Tyler has two previous Emmy nominations for “Last Call” and “Sleepy Hollow,” plus one in 2022 for “1883.
RSVP today to our entire ongoing Emmy contenders panel series by clicking here to book your free reservation. We’ll send you a reminder a few minutes before the start of the show.
This “Meet the Experts” panel welcomes the following 2022 nominees:
1883 (Paramount+)
Synopsis: Follows the Dutton family on a journey west through the Great Plains toward the last bastion of uncolonized America.
Bio: Brian Tyler has two previous Emmy nominations for “Last Call” and “Sleepy Hollow,” plus one in 2022 for “1883.
- 7/28/2022
- by Chris Beachum and Joyce Eng
- Gold Derby
Exclusive: A major new Ivo van Hove stage adaptation of Stephen King’s horror classic The Shining is in the works for a 2023 West End debut, with an A-list creative team in place and Ben Stiller in talks to play the role of the crazed, haunted dad Jack Torrance.
Rehearsals are set to begin in the fall, with London performances targeted for January 2023. An eventual move to Broadway is expected.
Sources tell Deadline that director van Hove, last seen on Broadway pre-pandemic with the reworked West Side Story, will lead the creative team, with Tony winner Simon Stephens adapting the King novel.
Deadline first reported about a planned stage adaptation in 2017, and plans for a West End...
Rehearsals are set to begin in the fall, with London performances targeted for January 2023. An eventual move to Broadway is expected.
Sources tell Deadline that director van Hove, last seen on Broadway pre-pandemic with the reworked West Side Story, will lead the creative team, with Tony winner Simon Stephens adapting the King novel.
Deadline first reported about a planned stage adaptation in 2017, and plans for a West End...
- 3/21/2022
- by Greg Evans
- Deadline Film + TV
Over fifty years after its debut on Broadway in 1970, Stephen Sondheim’s genre-redefining musical “Company” has returned in a reimagined production by Tony Award-winning director Marianne Elliott. The classic musical is a series of vignettes that coalesce around its protagonist Bobby on the occasion of his thirty-fifth birthday, but in this revival the main character is now a female Bobbie. “Company” opened at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre on Dec. 9.
Tony winner Katrina Lenk steps into the role of Bobbie, previously played on Broadway by the likes of Dean Jones, Larry Kert, Boyd Gaines, and Raúl Esparza. Her Joanne – the character known for singing the sardonic Sondheim showstopper “The Ladies Who Lunch” – is two-time Tony winner Patti LuPone. The ensemble boasts a number of Broadway staples, including Nikki Renée Daniels, Matt Doyle, Tony nominees Christopher Fitzgerald, Christopher Sieber, and Jennifer Simard, plus others. George Furth contributed the original book.
See 2022 Tony Awards eligibility rulings,...
Tony winner Katrina Lenk steps into the role of Bobbie, previously played on Broadway by the likes of Dean Jones, Larry Kert, Boyd Gaines, and Raúl Esparza. Her Joanne – the character known for singing the sardonic Sondheim showstopper “The Ladies Who Lunch” – is two-time Tony winner Patti LuPone. The ensemble boasts a number of Broadway staples, including Nikki Renée Daniels, Matt Doyle, Tony nominees Christopher Fitzgerald, Christopher Sieber, and Jennifer Simard, plus others. George Furth contributed the original book.
See 2022 Tony Awards eligibility rulings,...
- 12/11/2021
- by David Buchanan
- Gold Derby
An understated study of female aging, Morning Sun, by buzzy playwright Simon Stephens (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time) opened at the Manhattan Theatre Club on Wednesday. The play offers memorable performances by three leading actresses – Edie Falco, Marin Ireland and Blair Brown. Charley (Falco) on her deathbed recalls formative moments […]
The post ‘Morning Sun’ Theater Review: Edie Falco Shows The Heroism Of Everywoman appeared first on uInterview.
The post ‘Morning Sun’ Theater Review: Edie Falco Shows The Heroism Of Everywoman appeared first on uInterview.
- 11/9/2021
- by Erik Meers
- Uinterview
Blair BrownCopenhagen, 'Orange Is the New Black',Edie Falco'The Sopranos,'Frankie and Johnny..., andMarin IrelandReasons to Be Pretty form a powerhouse trio of stars in this deeply felt, gorgeously imagined new play by Tony winnerSimon StephensHeisenberg,The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. In Greenwich Village a generation or so ago, the city is alive.
- 11/3/2021
- by Stephi Wild
- BroadwayWorld.com
“The 3-Body Problem” series at Netflix has officially added a dozen cast members, Variety has learned.
The cast now includes: Jovan Adepo, John Bradley, Tsai Chin, Liam Cunningham, Eiza González, Jess Hong, Marlo Kelly (“Dare Me”), Alex Sharp (“The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time”), Sea Shimooka, Zine Tseng, Saamer Usmani, and Benedict Wong.
News of the castings comes a little over a year after the series was first announced in September 2020. It is based on the award-winning Chinese book series of the same name, with the series order covering all three books — “The Three-Body Problem,” “The Dark Forest,” and “Death’s End.” All three books were written by Liu Cixin. They tell the story of humanity’s first contact with an alien civilization
“Game of Thrones” creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss co-created the series under their Netflix overall deal. They will also serve as co-showrunners and executive producers.
The cast now includes: Jovan Adepo, John Bradley, Tsai Chin, Liam Cunningham, Eiza González, Jess Hong, Marlo Kelly (“Dare Me”), Alex Sharp (“The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time”), Sea Shimooka, Zine Tseng, Saamer Usmani, and Benedict Wong.
News of the castings comes a little over a year after the series was first announced in September 2020. It is based on the award-winning Chinese book series of the same name, with the series order covering all three books — “The Three-Body Problem,” “The Dark Forest,” and “Death’s End.” All three books were written by Liu Cixin. They tell the story of humanity’s first contact with an alien civilization
“Game of Thrones” creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss co-created the series under their Netflix overall deal. They will also serve as co-showrunners and executive producers.
- 10/29/2021
- by Joe Otterson
- Variety Film + TV
Netflix’s 3 Body Problem, a series adaptation of Liu Cixin’s sci-fi trilogy, has set a cast of 12 actors including Benedict Wong (Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness), Tsai Chin (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings), and Game of Thrones alums John Bradley and Liam Cunningham. The series hails from Game of Thrones‘ David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, who serve as showrunners and executive producers under their overall deal with Netflix. Alexander Woo co-created the series with the GoT duo and will serve as executive producer and writer under his deal with Netflix.
Also joining the cast are Jovan Adepo (When They See Us), Eiza Gonzalez (Baby Driver), Jess Hong (Inked: The Brokenwood Mysteries), Marlo Kelly (Dare Me), Alex Sharp (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time), Sea Shimooka (Arrow), Zine Tseng and Saamer Usmani (The Mauritanian).
3 Body Problem is a dramatic series inspired by...
Also joining the cast are Jovan Adepo (When They See Us), Eiza Gonzalez (Baby Driver), Jess Hong (Inked: The Brokenwood Mysteries), Marlo Kelly (Dare Me), Alex Sharp (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time), Sea Shimooka (Arrow), Zine Tseng and Saamer Usmani (The Mauritanian).
3 Body Problem is a dramatic series inspired by...
- 10/29/2021
- by Alexandra Del Rosario
- Deadline Film + TV
Netflix’s upcoming sci-fi drama 3 Body Problem has announced its first castmembers.
The series from Emmy-winning showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss (Game of Thrones) revealed 12 actors who have signed on for key roles.
Here they are in alphabetical order:
Jovan Adepo (Watchmen; When They See Us; Fences)
John Bradley (Game of Thrones; upcoming Moonfall; Marry Me)
Tsai Chin (Lucky Grandma; Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings)
Liam Cunningham (The Last Voyage of the Demeter; Game of Thrones; Hunger)
Eiza González (Baby Driver; I Care A Lot; Ambulance)
Jess Hong (Inked; The Brokenwood Mysteries)
Marlo Kelly (Dare Me)
Alex Sharp (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time)
Sea Shimooka (Pink Skies Ahead; Arrow; Berlin)
Zine Tseng (Her series ...
The series from Emmy-winning showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss (Game of Thrones) revealed 12 actors who have signed on for key roles.
Here they are in alphabetical order:
Jovan Adepo (Watchmen; When They See Us; Fences)
John Bradley (Game of Thrones; upcoming Moonfall; Marry Me)
Tsai Chin (Lucky Grandma; Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings)
Liam Cunningham (The Last Voyage of the Demeter; Game of Thrones; Hunger)
Eiza González (Baby Driver; I Care A Lot; Ambulance)
Jess Hong (Inked; The Brokenwood Mysteries)
Marlo Kelly (Dare Me)
Alex Sharp (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time)
Sea Shimooka (Pink Skies Ahead; Arrow; Berlin)
Zine Tseng (Her series ...
- 10/28/2021
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Netflix’s upcoming sci-fi drama 3 Body Problem has announced its first cast members.
The series from Emmy-winning showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss (Game of Thrones) revealed 12 actors that have signed on for key roles.
Here they are in alphabetical order:
Jovan Adepo (Watchmen; When They See Us; Fences)
John Bradley (Game of Thrones; upcoming Moonfall; Marry Me)
Tsai Chin (Lucky Grandma; Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings)
Liam Cunningham (The Last Voyage of the Demeter; Game of Thrones; Hunger)
Eiza González (Baby Driver; I Care A Lot; Ambulance)
Jess Hong (Inked; The Brokenwood Mysteries)
Marlo Kelly (Dare Me)
Alex Sharp (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time)
Sea Shimooka (Pink Skies Ahead; Arrow; Berlin)
Zine Tseng (Her ...
The series from Emmy-winning showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss (Game of Thrones) revealed 12 actors that have signed on for key roles.
Here they are in alphabetical order:
Jovan Adepo (Watchmen; When They See Us; Fences)
John Bradley (Game of Thrones; upcoming Moonfall; Marry Me)
Tsai Chin (Lucky Grandma; Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings)
Liam Cunningham (The Last Voyage of the Demeter; Game of Thrones; Hunger)
Eiza González (Baby Driver; I Care A Lot; Ambulance)
Jess Hong (Inked; The Brokenwood Mysteries)
Marlo Kelly (Dare Me)
Alex Sharp (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time)
Sea Shimooka (Pink Skies Ahead; Arrow; Berlin)
Zine Tseng (Her ...
- 10/28/2021
- The Hollywood Reporter - Film + TV
“Slave Play” made history back in October when it received 12 Tony Awards nominations, the most ever for a play. Five of those citations recognize members of its stellar ensemble, including a bid in Actress, two in Featured Actor, and two in Featured Actress. While “Slave Play” is the frontrunner for Best Play according to our exclusive Tony Awards predictions, none of its cast will take home trophies. But could an upset be looming?
Though it seems counterintuitive that Tony voters would award a play the top honor without recognizing at least one of its performers, it has happened six times in the past 20 years, including the two most recent. In 2019, Jez Butterworth’s “The Ferryman,” an expansive family drama about The Troubles in Ireland, won the top prize and trophies for Director (Sam Mendes), Scenic Design, and Costume Design, but didn’t pick up awards for its three nominated performers: actor Paddy Considine,...
Though it seems counterintuitive that Tony voters would award a play the top honor without recognizing at least one of its performers, it has happened six times in the past 20 years, including the two most recent. In 2019, Jez Butterworth’s “The Ferryman,” an expansive family drama about The Troubles in Ireland, won the top prize and trophies for Director (Sam Mendes), Scenic Design, and Costume Design, but didn’t pick up awards for its three nominated performers: actor Paddy Considine,...
- 9/22/2021
- by David Buchanan
- Gold Derby
Kate Horton, who previously ran the Royal Court Theatre in London and has held executive roles also at the Royal Shakespeare Company and National Theatre, will take over for Scott Rudin as executive producer of The Music Man, the upcoming Broadway revival starring Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster.
With the hire, The Music Man confirms what has been expected since Rudin announced in April, amidst accusations of workplace abuse and bullying, that he would step back from his Broadway responsibilities. Other formerly Rudin-produced shows, including The Lehman Trilogy, The Book of Mormon and To Kill a Mockingbird, have announced their Rudin-less returns. West Side Story has not yet set a return date.
Tickets for The Music Man, which begins previews at the Winter Garden Theatre on Monday, Dec. 20, with an opening night set for Thursday, Feb. 10, go on sale today.
Producers Barry Diller and David Geffen announced the start of...
With the hire, The Music Man confirms what has been expected since Rudin announced in April, amidst accusations of workplace abuse and bullying, that he would step back from his Broadway responsibilities. Other formerly Rudin-produced shows, including The Lehman Trilogy, The Book of Mormon and To Kill a Mockingbird, have announced their Rudin-less returns. West Side Story has not yet set a return date.
Tickets for The Music Man, which begins previews at the Winter Garden Theatre on Monday, Dec. 20, with an opening night set for Thursday, Feb. 10, go on sale today.
Producers Barry Diller and David Geffen announced the start of...
- 6/22/2021
- by Greg Evans
- Deadline Film + TV
Theatre
The U.K.’s National Theatre has revealed a robust return to normal programming services with a host of plays and films scheduled through 2022, as the country limps back to normalcy post-pandemic.
Highlights include National Theatre director Rufus Norris’ new musical “Hex,” based on “Sleeping Beauty” which opens this Christmas in the Olivier Theatre, and The Lyttelton Theatre’s reopening in October with Ayub Khan Din’s “East Is East.” Anupama Chandrasekhar’s “The Father and the Assassin,” about Gandhi and his assassin, opens at the property’s Olivier Theatre in early 2022.
There are returns to Broadway for the acclaimed “The Lehman Trilogy” and tours across the U.K. and Ireland for “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” and “The Ocean at the End of the Lane.”
Clint Dyer directs and co-writes “Death of England: Face to Face” with Roy Williams, an original feature film from the Lyttelton Theatre,...
The U.K.’s National Theatre has revealed a robust return to normal programming services with a host of plays and films scheduled through 2022, as the country limps back to normalcy post-pandemic.
Highlights include National Theatre director Rufus Norris’ new musical “Hex,” based on “Sleeping Beauty” which opens this Christmas in the Olivier Theatre, and The Lyttelton Theatre’s reopening in October with Ayub Khan Din’s “East Is East.” Anupama Chandrasekhar’s “The Father and the Assassin,” about Gandhi and his assassin, opens at the property’s Olivier Theatre in early 2022.
There are returns to Broadway for the acclaimed “The Lehman Trilogy” and tours across the U.K. and Ireland for “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” and “The Ocean at the End of the Lane.”
Clint Dyer directs and co-writes “Death of England: Face to Face” with Roy Williams, an original feature film from the Lyttelton Theatre,...
- 6/4/2021
- by Jamie Lang
- Variety Film + TV
New York theater is tiptoeing its way through the dark with tonight’s Off Broadway opening of the actor-free technological and storytelling marvel Blindness, a sound-and-light excursion into the dystopian hellscape of Nobel Prize-winner José Saramago’s great allegory of humanity in lockdown.
With (masked) audience members scattered in socially distanced, arranged-just-so pairs of seats across the otherwise empty floor of the Daryl Roth Theatre, Saramago’s thriller, adapted for this Donmar Warehouse production by Tony Award-winning playwright Simon Stephens (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time) and directed by Walter Meierjohann, slides up beside you like a whisper and, when necessary, a scream.
The hyper-realistic story-soundscape is relayed through what must be the most effective noise-canceling headphones this side of NASA. The play is not so much narrated as performed by Olivier Award winning actress Juliet Stevenson, who guides the listening audience – a significant portion of the...
With (masked) audience members scattered in socially distanced, arranged-just-so pairs of seats across the otherwise empty floor of the Daryl Roth Theatre, Saramago’s thriller, adapted for this Donmar Warehouse production by Tony Award-winning playwright Simon Stephens (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time) and directed by Walter Meierjohann, slides up beside you like a whisper and, when necessary, a scream.
The hyper-realistic story-soundscape is relayed through what must be the most effective noise-canceling headphones this side of NASA. The play is not so much narrated as performed by Olivier Award winning actress Juliet Stevenson, who guides the listening audience – a significant portion of the...
- 4/7/2021
- by Greg Evans
- Deadline Film + TV
Paul Ritter, a British actor best known to American audiences for his roles in HBO’s “Chernobyl” and “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” has died of a brain tumor. He was 54.
Representatives for Ritter, whose other notable credits include starring on U.K. series “Friday Night Dinner” and appearing in the James Bond film “Quantum of Solace,” confirmed his death to TheWrap Tuesday.
“It is with great sadness we can confirm that Paul Ritter passed away last night,” Ritter’s agent said in a statement. “He died peacefully at home with his wife Polly and sons Frank and Noah by his side. He was 54 and had been suffering from a brain tumor. Paul was an exceptionally talented actor playing an enormous variety of roles on stage and screen with extraordinary skill. He was fiercely intelligent, kind and very funny. We will miss him greatly.”
“We are so saddened to...
Representatives for Ritter, whose other notable credits include starring on U.K. series “Friday Night Dinner” and appearing in the James Bond film “Quantum of Solace,” confirmed his death to TheWrap Tuesday.
“It is with great sadness we can confirm that Paul Ritter passed away last night,” Ritter’s agent said in a statement. “He died peacefully at home with his wife Polly and sons Frank and Noah by his side. He was 54 and had been suffering from a brain tumor. Paul was an exceptionally talented actor playing an enormous variety of roles on stage and screen with extraordinary skill. He was fiercely intelligent, kind and very funny. We will miss him greatly.”
“We are so saddened to...
- 4/6/2021
- by Jennifer Maas
- The Wrap
“Am I crazy or is this really happening?” is by now a fairly familiar hook for thrillers. But Castille Landon’s “Fear of Rain” gets some fresh mileage from it by embedding us in the perspective of a teenager diagnosed with schizophrenia — and whose worries are thus dismissed as delusional when she decides a next-door neighbor is up to something nefarious.
Middling at best in terms of suspense mechanics, and not the most perceptive treatment of mental illness you’ll ever see, this nonetheless compels interest as a well-acted drama-cum-mystery whose heroine (like the kid in “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time”) has some unique challenges to her amateur sleuthing. Lionsgate is releasing the feature to available theaters and on demand Feb. 12.
Hopes are not raised particularly high by the opening, that stock horror trope of a panicked, barefoot young woman being chased through woods by some...
Middling at best in terms of suspense mechanics, and not the most perceptive treatment of mental illness you’ll ever see, this nonetheless compels interest as a well-acted drama-cum-mystery whose heroine (like the kid in “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time”) has some unique challenges to her amateur sleuthing. Lionsgate is releasing the feature to available theaters and on demand Feb. 12.
Hopes are not raised particularly high by the opening, that stock horror trope of a panicked, barefoot young woman being chased through woods by some...
- 2/12/2021
- by Dennis Harvey
- Variety Film + TV
Audiences moved to tears – actually, moved to sobs – were commonplace throughout last year’s nine-week Broadway run of Sea Wall/A Life, the pair of solo one-act plays starring, respectively, Tom Sturridge and Jake Gyllenhaal. Directed by Carrie Cracknell, the plays – unconnected except by themes of unthinkable grief and the thin, piano-wire possibility of hope – combined for a powerful evening of theater, winning critical raves and full houses, recouping its $2.8 million investment just two months after its August 2019 opening at the Hudson Theater.
No small part of the production’s success, commercially and artistically, was the casting. Two actors with Hollywood names and Broadway know-how, Gyllenhaal and Sturridge, under Cracknell’s eloquent, immaculately detailed direction, gave performances that cut to the bone.
Sturridge took the stage first, climbing the “sea wall” platform that provides the title. Written by playwright Simon Stephens, the play spotlights Sturridge as Alex, a sweet-natured British twentysomething staggered by the loss of his beloved young daughter and what might or might not be the collapse of his marriage.
Next up was Gyllenhaal in Nick Payne’s A Life. Speaking directly to the audience, as Sturridge had before him, Gyllenhaal played Abe, a man caught between grief over his recently deceased father and awe at his newborn daughter. Both prospects – life without him, life with her – terrify Abe before they fortify him.
In the year since Sea Wall/A Life ended its run last October, much – everything – has changed. Deadline recently asked Gyllenhaal, Sturridge and Cracknell to reflect on their show – one of 18 Broadway productions eligible for the upcoming Tony Award nominations – and what it offered audiences then, and to imagine what it could say to audiences in this grievous time. They shared what they miss most about theater, and what each hopes yet to do, perhaps sooner than you’d think.
This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
Deadline: Sea Wall/A Life has been over for a year now. What stands out as the most prominent memory each of you have of the production?
Carrie Cracknell: With the pandemic, we haven’t been able to gather together at all and I keep thinking back to this sort of profound connection we had in the room. There was something about the directness with which Jake and Tom could speak to the audience, and the feeling of community that we somehow captured every night because of the openness that feels, now, in my memory, so oddly transgressive or just so alive and opposite to my current experience of being in these tiny, tiny groups all the time. That’s the thing that keeps playing through my mind, just how quietly radical it was to have hundreds and hundreds of people joined together in one conversation every night. It feels so very far from where we are.
Tom Sturridge: I don’t know I could say it better. The key thing that haunts me is that direct relationship with the audience. I would literally walk into the theater alongside them, we couldn’t have been more connected, and to think of these buildings and these spaces being dark right now is so bizarre. It’s scary.
Deadline: Jake, you actually had two new productions on Broadway last year – you were a producer on Slave Play. Usually you’d have a chance to reconnect with everyone in the spring because of the Tony Awards and all the craziness and parties that go with them. How disappointing has it been this year?
Jake Gyllenhaal: I think it was just so prolonged. Everyone on Broadway is a fighter so everyone was ready to keep going and to continue until we got pulled back and forced to stop. I don’t know any other business that works as hard and continues to work through almost anything, and it’s really only been stopped by this pandemic. So to me there’s always been this [forward] momentum on Broadway to not pay attention to what once was, and now we’re left without anything we could confidently say is in the future. So we’re looking back and we’re nostalgic. There’s a lot to be missed about the gathering and the people, be it parties for the Tony Awards or the performances, and that is what I miss so deeply.
Sturridge: I very specifically remember it feeling like a forum for healing, and what’s been so frustrating about this period is that we don’t have that forum any more at a time when it’s most vital and needed, a space where we can all come together and think together and exchange consciousness of what we’ve just experienced and been a part of.
Gyllenhaal: There have been numerous times during this period where I felt so grateful to be an artist, so grateful to have storytelling as a job, even though it’s not possible to do right now. I never felt so grateful to have it as my job and to understand its power because of the lack of the opportunity to do it. I will also say, I think there’s a time now where there’s all this development and artists are coming together. There are people who I’ve wanted to speak to that I would never have been able to, but everybody’s talking, you know? Ideas are being exchanged and new things are happening and things I thought I really wanted to do have fallen by the wayside and new things have emerged that actually feel much deeper and closer to my heart.
Cracknell: The thing that strikes me almost daily is that there is no national story, there’s so little narrative in a way that is meaningful, that it doesn’t give people an opportunity to understand the pandemic in any kind of connective way. We’re all isolated, we’re trying to understand it through media but we can’t share or communicate stories around what’s happening. I think more than ever we’re going to go back to making work and ask better questions about why we’re telling the stories we’re telling.
Deadline: Is it possible to have real connection over Zoom?
Sturridge: We definitely lose a lot but at the same time I think one of the extraordinary things about theater is it’s a problem-solving medium, like you have to figure out a way in a small, black space to create Venice with a table and three chairs, and in the same way we now have to figure out ways to create Venice with a laptop. It’s a testament to the ingenuity and creativity and force of personality of the people involved who have to do that while these restrictions are in place.
Gyllenhaal: I think the more you value those interactions the more you’ll fight for them, and the fight really comes from trying to practice patience and trying to fit in a space where that feels right to hold off, because if you really value the theater I think it’s worth waiting for. Any philosophy of theater [holds] that it’s not just the experience of watching the show, it’s the following week, it’s the week before, it’s the experience of buying the tickets, the entire thing. I think the catharsis that we’ll feel, the pride we’ll feel, the excitement we’ll feel will be tenfold because of the amount that audiences have waited for this experience. Speaking for myself, my experience of theater is still happening as I wait for it.
Deadline: Carrie, how difficult is it now to plan what you’re going to do next, especially in theater?
Cracknell: I looked at my slate the other day and I think I have nine projects and none have dates. Normally as a director you might have that many but they all slot into a timeframe, say between say now and 2025 or something, and so you know where to focus your energy and which part of the process you’re on for each project. Obviously at the moment what’s happening is everybody’s just trying to generate things that they love, that feel interesting. What we’re trying to do now is kind of pull together teams, so it’s like who’s the writer I want to work with on this, and get to the point where the piece is ready so that when the theaters reopen we have options. We’re starting to feel a small amount of optimism that we might be able to actually fit projects in the beginning of next year, but it’s so hard to tell, just as it is for every industry. We’re all trying to cook things without too much pressure.
Gyllenhaal: I was headed to London [when the shutdown hit] to do Sunday in the Park with George in the West End and we had to postpone the show, so that is postponed a year and we have every intention of doing it. And then I have coming up some really fun stuff that I can’t really talk about but hopefully will happen just past the new year, and it would be done safely. As much as I talk about patience I still have to work on it and I’m trying to put things up hopefully in February/March, but safely. So there are plans to do a certain type of live performance, is the best way I could say it.
Sturridge: I’m actually doing my first reading of a play tomorrow. It’s quite literally my first theatrical experience since we stepped off stage last year, and I’m really excited about it.
Gyllenhaal: I don’t know if I’m going to be okay with that – doing a show with anybody else but us.
Cracknell: It’s not allowed.
Sturridge: [Laughing] The point being that as we wait for these buildings to open again in a safe way, we’re preparing and we’re going to be ready.
Deadline: Are there any plans for the three of you to work together again? I know you did an Audible book for Sea Wall/A Life, but has there been any talk about filming it or performing it again?
Cracknell: I think something kind of happened at the Hudson Theatre which felt really perfect, like it felt we had made the perfect version. I don’t mean the show was perfect, obviously that would be a ridiculous thing to say, but our experience and the relationship we had with the audience in that room felt so magical that I think we have to come down off that in a way before we think about what the next step is. So I’m sure there will be, and I think we all would love to do something, but we just maybe haven’t worked out yet what that is.
Gyllenhaal: It was such an unlikely combination of people, of words, and it came together in this serendipitous way that was, for lack of a better word, magical. I don’t think we feel like we’ve run out of that and I think there’s something special and I’m sorry to speak for all of us but my observation is that we’re all pretty much down for anything. I would do anything with this group again, including Sea Wall/A Life, which maybe will show itself in a different incarnation. And if it somehow never happens again I think we’d all be, like, okay, that’s the way it’s supposed to happen. But I refuse to not work with these two ever again.
Deadline: So you’d all be amenable to a film version?
Cracknell: I’m really surprised by how moving the Audible version is, like you’re having this very intimate conversation, so I guess if we were going to try and develop it for film that would be the spirit of it. Like, how do we make it feel so interior and direct and open that it would become something really special rather than a sort of filmed theater production. I think the hybrid form is really developing and lots of people are thinking about it at the moment.
Gyllenhaal: If we were going to do this it’d be interesting to see what this material inspires in the authors and the way Carrie sees it and to see if maybe it elicits a whole new idea from what it was, and maybe not even just the thing itself but a new creation, almost like a sequel of sorts or something. I mean, I long for that. I feel like it’s probably terrible for me to say but during this time I’ve longed to find recordings of productions that that closed before I could see them, you know? To hear those voices singing, and see some of those performances, even if they were captured poorly. Not everyone can go to the Lincoln Center archives all at once, you know? I really, truly wish we could continue to show Slave Play right now. I wish people could experience it because it’s so prescient and I think so important. Sea Wall/A Life is too. Just thematically, it’s about grief and about communication and about being open and vulnerable in times when we’re terrified, and how hard it is to love and to be alive.
No small part of the production’s success, commercially and artistically, was the casting. Two actors with Hollywood names and Broadway know-how, Gyllenhaal and Sturridge, under Cracknell’s eloquent, immaculately detailed direction, gave performances that cut to the bone.
Sturridge took the stage first, climbing the “sea wall” platform that provides the title. Written by playwright Simon Stephens, the play spotlights Sturridge as Alex, a sweet-natured British twentysomething staggered by the loss of his beloved young daughter and what might or might not be the collapse of his marriage.
Next up was Gyllenhaal in Nick Payne’s A Life. Speaking directly to the audience, as Sturridge had before him, Gyllenhaal played Abe, a man caught between grief over his recently deceased father and awe at his newborn daughter. Both prospects – life without him, life with her – terrify Abe before they fortify him.
In the year since Sea Wall/A Life ended its run last October, much – everything – has changed. Deadline recently asked Gyllenhaal, Sturridge and Cracknell to reflect on their show – one of 18 Broadway productions eligible for the upcoming Tony Award nominations – and what it offered audiences then, and to imagine what it could say to audiences in this grievous time. They shared what they miss most about theater, and what each hopes yet to do, perhaps sooner than you’d think.
This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
Deadline: Sea Wall/A Life has been over for a year now. What stands out as the most prominent memory each of you have of the production?
Carrie Cracknell: With the pandemic, we haven’t been able to gather together at all and I keep thinking back to this sort of profound connection we had in the room. There was something about the directness with which Jake and Tom could speak to the audience, and the feeling of community that we somehow captured every night because of the openness that feels, now, in my memory, so oddly transgressive or just so alive and opposite to my current experience of being in these tiny, tiny groups all the time. That’s the thing that keeps playing through my mind, just how quietly radical it was to have hundreds and hundreds of people joined together in one conversation every night. It feels so very far from where we are.
Tom Sturridge: I don’t know I could say it better. The key thing that haunts me is that direct relationship with the audience. I would literally walk into the theater alongside them, we couldn’t have been more connected, and to think of these buildings and these spaces being dark right now is so bizarre. It’s scary.
Deadline: Jake, you actually had two new productions on Broadway last year – you were a producer on Slave Play. Usually you’d have a chance to reconnect with everyone in the spring because of the Tony Awards and all the craziness and parties that go with them. How disappointing has it been this year?
Jake Gyllenhaal: I think it was just so prolonged. Everyone on Broadway is a fighter so everyone was ready to keep going and to continue until we got pulled back and forced to stop. I don’t know any other business that works as hard and continues to work through almost anything, and it’s really only been stopped by this pandemic. So to me there’s always been this [forward] momentum on Broadway to not pay attention to what once was, and now we’re left without anything we could confidently say is in the future. So we’re looking back and we’re nostalgic. There’s a lot to be missed about the gathering and the people, be it parties for the Tony Awards or the performances, and that is what I miss so deeply.
Sturridge: I very specifically remember it feeling like a forum for healing, and what’s been so frustrating about this period is that we don’t have that forum any more at a time when it’s most vital and needed, a space where we can all come together and think together and exchange consciousness of what we’ve just experienced and been a part of.
Gyllenhaal: There have been numerous times during this period where I felt so grateful to be an artist, so grateful to have storytelling as a job, even though it’s not possible to do right now. I never felt so grateful to have it as my job and to understand its power because of the lack of the opportunity to do it. I will also say, I think there’s a time now where there’s all this development and artists are coming together. There are people who I’ve wanted to speak to that I would never have been able to, but everybody’s talking, you know? Ideas are being exchanged and new things are happening and things I thought I really wanted to do have fallen by the wayside and new things have emerged that actually feel much deeper and closer to my heart.
Cracknell: The thing that strikes me almost daily is that there is no national story, there’s so little narrative in a way that is meaningful, that it doesn’t give people an opportunity to understand the pandemic in any kind of connective way. We’re all isolated, we’re trying to understand it through media but we can’t share or communicate stories around what’s happening. I think more than ever we’re going to go back to making work and ask better questions about why we’re telling the stories we’re telling.
Deadline: Is it possible to have real connection over Zoom?
Sturridge: We definitely lose a lot but at the same time I think one of the extraordinary things about theater is it’s a problem-solving medium, like you have to figure out a way in a small, black space to create Venice with a table and three chairs, and in the same way we now have to figure out ways to create Venice with a laptop. It’s a testament to the ingenuity and creativity and force of personality of the people involved who have to do that while these restrictions are in place.
Gyllenhaal: I think the more you value those interactions the more you’ll fight for them, and the fight really comes from trying to practice patience and trying to fit in a space where that feels right to hold off, because if you really value the theater I think it’s worth waiting for. Any philosophy of theater [holds] that it’s not just the experience of watching the show, it’s the following week, it’s the week before, it’s the experience of buying the tickets, the entire thing. I think the catharsis that we’ll feel, the pride we’ll feel, the excitement we’ll feel will be tenfold because of the amount that audiences have waited for this experience. Speaking for myself, my experience of theater is still happening as I wait for it.
Deadline: Carrie, how difficult is it now to plan what you’re going to do next, especially in theater?
Cracknell: I looked at my slate the other day and I think I have nine projects and none have dates. Normally as a director you might have that many but they all slot into a timeframe, say between say now and 2025 or something, and so you know where to focus your energy and which part of the process you’re on for each project. Obviously at the moment what’s happening is everybody’s just trying to generate things that they love, that feel interesting. What we’re trying to do now is kind of pull together teams, so it’s like who’s the writer I want to work with on this, and get to the point where the piece is ready so that when the theaters reopen we have options. We’re starting to feel a small amount of optimism that we might be able to actually fit projects in the beginning of next year, but it’s so hard to tell, just as it is for every industry. We’re all trying to cook things without too much pressure.
Gyllenhaal: I was headed to London [when the shutdown hit] to do Sunday in the Park with George in the West End and we had to postpone the show, so that is postponed a year and we have every intention of doing it. And then I have coming up some really fun stuff that I can’t really talk about but hopefully will happen just past the new year, and it would be done safely. As much as I talk about patience I still have to work on it and I’m trying to put things up hopefully in February/March, but safely. So there are plans to do a certain type of live performance, is the best way I could say it.
Sturridge: I’m actually doing my first reading of a play tomorrow. It’s quite literally my first theatrical experience since we stepped off stage last year, and I’m really excited about it.
Gyllenhaal: I don’t know if I’m going to be okay with that – doing a show with anybody else but us.
Cracknell: It’s not allowed.
Sturridge: [Laughing] The point being that as we wait for these buildings to open again in a safe way, we’re preparing and we’re going to be ready.
Deadline: Are there any plans for the three of you to work together again? I know you did an Audible book for Sea Wall/A Life, but has there been any talk about filming it or performing it again?
Cracknell: I think something kind of happened at the Hudson Theatre which felt really perfect, like it felt we had made the perfect version. I don’t mean the show was perfect, obviously that would be a ridiculous thing to say, but our experience and the relationship we had with the audience in that room felt so magical that I think we have to come down off that in a way before we think about what the next step is. So I’m sure there will be, and I think we all would love to do something, but we just maybe haven’t worked out yet what that is.
Gyllenhaal: It was such an unlikely combination of people, of words, and it came together in this serendipitous way that was, for lack of a better word, magical. I don’t think we feel like we’ve run out of that and I think there’s something special and I’m sorry to speak for all of us but my observation is that we’re all pretty much down for anything. I would do anything with this group again, including Sea Wall/A Life, which maybe will show itself in a different incarnation. And if it somehow never happens again I think we’d all be, like, okay, that’s the way it’s supposed to happen. But I refuse to not work with these two ever again.
Deadline: So you’d all be amenable to a film version?
Cracknell: I’m really surprised by how moving the Audible version is, like you’re having this very intimate conversation, so I guess if we were going to try and develop it for film that would be the spirit of it. Like, how do we make it feel so interior and direct and open that it would become something really special rather than a sort of filmed theater production. I think the hybrid form is really developing and lots of people are thinking about it at the moment.
Gyllenhaal: If we were going to do this it’d be interesting to see what this material inspires in the authors and the way Carrie sees it and to see if maybe it elicits a whole new idea from what it was, and maybe not even just the thing itself but a new creation, almost like a sequel of sorts or something. I mean, I long for that. I feel like it’s probably terrible for me to say but during this time I’ve longed to find recordings of productions that that closed before I could see them, you know? To hear those voices singing, and see some of those performances, even if they were captured poorly. Not everyone can go to the Lincoln Center archives all at once, you know? I really, truly wish we could continue to show Slave Play right now. I wish people could experience it because it’s so prescient and I think so important. Sea Wall/A Life is too. Just thematically, it’s about grief and about communication and about being open and vulnerable in times when we’re terrified, and how hard it is to love and to be alive.
- 10/9/2020
- by Greg Evans
- Deadline Film + TV
Philip J. Smith, Chairman and Co-CEO of The Shubert Organization, has announced his retirement, effective June 30, after 63 years with Broadway’s largest theater owner and producer.
A major force on the theatrical landscape for decades, Smith will also resign his duties as Chairman of The Shubert Foundation, the nation’s largest private foundation dedicated to not-for-profit theater and dance company funding.
Smith will be succeeded at both Shubert and the Shubert Foundation by Shubert’s current President and Co-CEO Robert E. Wankel. Smith will become Chairman Emeritus.
In a statement, Smith said, “The decision to retire feels exactly right at this time in my life. The current Covid-19 crisis has pushed the business of Broadway into uncharted territory. It seems an appropriate time for me to step down and turn over my leadership responsibilities to my friend and colleague, Bob Wankel.”
The many Shubert hits during Smith’s years at the company include Cats,...
A major force on the theatrical landscape for decades, Smith will also resign his duties as Chairman of The Shubert Foundation, the nation’s largest private foundation dedicated to not-for-profit theater and dance company funding.
Smith will be succeeded at both Shubert and the Shubert Foundation by Shubert’s current President and Co-CEO Robert E. Wankel. Smith will become Chairman Emeritus.
In a statement, Smith said, “The decision to retire feels exactly right at this time in my life. The current Covid-19 crisis has pushed the business of Broadway into uncharted territory. It seems an appropriate time for me to step down and turn over my leadership responsibilities to my friend and colleague, Bob Wankel.”
The many Shubert hits during Smith’s years at the company include Cats,...
- 6/19/2020
- by Greg Evans
- Deadline Film + TV
Downton Abbey‘s Dan Stevens and Game of Thrones‘ Mark Addy will head up the Broadway production of Martin McDonagh’s dark comedy Hangmen, arriving at the Golden Theatre Friday, Feb. 28, for a limited 20-week engagement and an opening night of Thursday, March 19.
Stevens will play Mooney, a mysterious newcomer to the Northern England pub where Harry holds court as one of England’s last executioners.
The production will be Stevens’ first on Broadway since his debut in 2013’s The Heiress, opposite Jessica Chastain.
Joining Stevens and Addy will be:
Two-time Olivier Award winner Tracie Bennett (End of the Rainbow) as Alice; Ewen Bremner (Trainspotting) as Syd; Owen Campbell (Indian Summer) as Clegg; Gaby French (Military Wives) as Shirley; Olivier Award nominee John Hodgkinson (The Ferryman) as Pierrepoint; Richard Hollis (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time...
Stevens will play Mooney, a mysterious newcomer to the Northern England pub where Harry holds court as one of England’s last executioners.
The production will be Stevens’ first on Broadway since his debut in 2013’s The Heiress, opposite Jessica Chastain.
Joining Stevens and Addy will be:
Two-time Olivier Award winner Tracie Bennett (End of the Rainbow) as Alice; Ewen Bremner (Trainspotting) as Syd; Owen Campbell (Indian Summer) as Clegg; Gaby French (Military Wives) as Shirley; Olivier Award nominee John Hodgkinson (The Ferryman) as Pierrepoint; Richard Hollis (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time...
- 12/4/2019
- by Greg Evans
- Deadline Film + TV
This past Sunday (September 29), the Broadway production of “Sea Wall/A Life” concluded its run at the Hudson Theatre. The new play, which consists of two separate, thematically connected monologues, starred Tom Sturridge in “Sea Wall,” written by Tony-winner Simon Stephens (“The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time”), and Jake Gyllenhaal in “A Life,” penned by Nick Payne, whose 2015 play “Constellations” brought the actor to Broadway for the first time.
Directed by Carrie Cracknell in her Broadway debut, this limited engagement of “Sea Wall/A Life” followed an earlier, successful run with the same cast at the Public Theater. The two monologues both grapple with family, love, and loss: in “Sea Wall,” Alex (Sturridge) describes the tragedy that befalls him while in the south of France; in “A Life,” Abe (Gyllenhaal) describes the death of his father and the birth of his daughter.
Sign Up for Gold Derby...
Directed by Carrie Cracknell in her Broadway debut, this limited engagement of “Sea Wall/A Life” followed an earlier, successful run with the same cast at the Public Theater. The two monologues both grapple with family, love, and loss: in “Sea Wall,” Alex (Sturridge) describes the tragedy that befalls him while in the south of France; in “A Life,” Abe (Gyllenhaal) describes the death of his father and the birth of his daughter.
Sign Up for Gold Derby...
- 9/30/2019
- by David Buchanan
- Gold Derby
Director Sam Mendes’ hit London staging of The Lehman Trilogy is heading to Broadway, with previews beginning Saturday, March 7, 2020 at the Nederlander Theatre. Opening night is Thursday, March 26, 2020.
The widely expected engagement of the acclaimed production was announced today by producers The National Theatre, Neal Street Productions, and Scott Rudin/Barry Diller/David Geffen.
Written by Italian playwright Stefano Massini and adapted into English by Ben Power, The Lehman Trilogy will play a strictly limited 16-week engagement featuring original cast of Simon Russell Beale, Adam Godley and Ben Miles. The sold-out West End production scored five Olivier Award nominations.
The epic play weaves together nearly two centuries of family history, charting “the humble beginnings, outrageous successes, and devastating failure of the financial institution that would ultimately bring the global economy to its knees.”
Today’s announcement describes the play as “the quintessential story of western capitalism, rendered through the lens of a single immigrant family.
The widely expected engagement of the acclaimed production was announced today by producers The National Theatre, Neal Street Productions, and Scott Rudin/Barry Diller/David Geffen.
Written by Italian playwright Stefano Massini and adapted into English by Ben Power, The Lehman Trilogy will play a strictly limited 16-week engagement featuring original cast of Simon Russell Beale, Adam Godley and Ben Miles. The sold-out West End production scored five Olivier Award nominations.
The epic play weaves together nearly two centuries of family history, charting “the humble beginnings, outrageous successes, and devastating failure of the financial institution that would ultimately bring the global economy to its knees.”
Today’s announcement describes the play as “the quintessential story of western capitalism, rendered through the lens of a single immigrant family.
- 9/3/2019
- by Greg Evans
- Deadline Film + TV
A revival of Stephen Sondheim’s 1970 musical Company that played London’s West End has announced its Broadway opening on March 22, 2020, with a cast headed by Patti LuPone and Katrina Lenk.
Opening night at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre will coincide with Sondheim’s 90th birthday. The show tipped the Broadway run in a tweet Friday morning (see it below).
A Tony winner for her performance in The Band’s Visit, Lenk will be playing the character of Bobbie in the new version in a gender twist. Dean Jones originated the role of Bobby on Broadway, playing the 35-year-old single main character whose bachelor status elicits a range of emotions from those around him.
The concept musical, composed of a series of vignettes, is known for numbers like Side By Side, Being Alive, The Little Things You Do Together and Sorry-Grateful.
Lupone will reprise her West End performance as Joanne,...
Opening night at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre will coincide with Sondheim’s 90th birthday. The show tipped the Broadway run in a tweet Friday morning (see it below).
A Tony winner for her performance in The Band’s Visit, Lenk will be playing the character of Bobbie in the new version in a gender twist. Dean Jones originated the role of Bobby on Broadway, playing the 35-year-old single main character whose bachelor status elicits a range of emotions from those around him.
The concept musical, composed of a series of vignettes, is known for numbers like Side By Side, Being Alive, The Little Things You Do Together and Sorry-Grateful.
Lupone will reprise her West End performance as Joanne,...
- 8/30/2019
- by Dade Hayes
- Deadline Film + TV
The wrenching (and slyly funny) Jake Gyllenhaal and Tom Sturridge double-bill of one-act plays, Sea Wall/A Life, has lost none of its intimate power in the move from Off Broadway to Broadway’s Hudson Theater, where it opens tonight.
Aside from a late-in-the-show visual flourish involving the projection of a many-windowed building facade, the production has few noticeable alterations. That projection, though, is a nice touch, suggesting that the very personal pain experienced by each of these characters could be happening behind each and every pane of glass.
When I reviewed the production in February during its Public Theatre engagement, I was struck by the emotional impact of the performances, the writing and Carrie Cracknell’s direction. All of that stands, but seeing it again, this time in the larger Broadway venue, I noticed the many moments of...
Aside from a late-in-the-show visual flourish involving the projection of a many-windowed building facade, the production has few noticeable alterations. That projection, though, is a nice touch, suggesting that the very personal pain experienced by each of these characters could be happening behind each and every pane of glass.
When I reviewed the production in February during its Public Theatre engagement, I was struck by the emotional impact of the performances, the writing and Carrie Cracknell’s direction. All of that stands, but seeing it again, this time in the larger Broadway venue, I noticed the many moments of...
- 8/9/2019
- by Greg Evans
- Deadline Film + TV
The past month came with many announcements regardingstage-to-screen news In casting news, The Little Mermaid casting continues to go underway, with reports that Javier Bardem will play King Triton. Not only do we have the film to look forward to, but it was also announced that ABC will air The Little Mermaid Live with Auli'i Cravalho and Queen Latifah.The highly-anticipated Cats film trailer was released, and a film adaptationof The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time was announced...
- 8/7/2019
- by TV News Desk
- BroadwayWorld.com
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.