HATCHING PLANS AT PARTIES: David Oyelowo says it was a conversation with Angelina Jolie at Tom Cruise's birthday party that led to her role in #ComeAway. pic.twitter.com/curX9E3Euh
There's no telling where your imagination can take you. #ComeAwayMovie, starring David Oyelowo, Anna Chancellor and Angelina Jolie, comes to theatres and at home On Demand Friday. pic.twitter.com/gexibX7nSZ
Angelina Jolie and Christoph Waltz are in talks to star in “Every Note Played,” an adaptation of Lisa Genova’s contemporary romance novel. STX Films has acquired global rights to the movie.
Jolie will play Karina, the ex-wife of an accomplished concert pianist named Richard (portrayed by Waltz). He has suffered many losses, including the estrangement of his daughter, when he gets diagnosed with ALS in his hands. As the disease worsens and Richard can no longer play the piano or live on his own, Karina reluctantly steps in to be his caregiver.
Michael Sucsy, whose resume includes “13 Reasons Why” and “The Vow” starring Rachel McAdams and Channing Tatum, is set to direct. Richard Barton Lewis is producing “Every Note Played,” along with Gabrielle Jerou-Tabak and Monet Clayton of Southpaw Entertainment.
“We’re thrilled to be bringing this exceptional filmmaking team together for this emotional, powerful, and ultimately uplifting story,” said STXfilms Motion Picture Group chairman Adam Fogelson.
Up next for Jolie is “The Eternals,” Marvel’s superhero epic with Richard Madden, Gemma Chan and Kumail Nanjiani. The comic-book adventure about a super-powered alien race has been delayed multiple times due to the pandemic. Jolie will also appear alongside David Oyelowo in “Come Away,” a fantastical drama based on characters from “Alice in Wonderland” and Peter Pan.”
Waltz, who won Oscars for “Inglourious Basterds” and “Django Unchained,” is starring next in Wes Anderson’s “The French Dispatch” and will reprise his role as Blofeld in the James Bond sequel “No Time to Die.”
UTA and ICM represented the financing and arranged the distribution deal. Jolie is represented by WME and Waltz is represented by ICM.
From Amazon
From neuroscientist and New York Times bestselling author of Still Alice comes a powerful exploration of regret, forgiveness, freedom, and what it means to be alive.
An accomplished concert pianist, Richard received standing ovations from audiences all over the world in awe of his rare combination of emotional resonance and flawless technique. Every finger of his hands was a finely calibrated instrument, dancing across the keys and striking each note with exacting precision. That was eight months ago.
Richard now has ALS, and his entire right arm is paralyzed. His fingers are impotent, still, devoid of possibility. The loss of his hand feels like a death, a loss of true love, a divorce—his divorce.
He knows his left arm will go next.
Three years ago, Karina removed their framed wedding picture from the living room wall and hung a mirror there instead. But she still hasn’t moved on. Karina is paralyzed by excuses and fear, stuck in an unfulfilling life as a piano teacher, afraid to pursue the path she abandoned as a young woman, blaming Richard and their failed marriage for all of it.
When Richard becomes increasingly paralyzed and is no longer able to live on his own, Karina becomes his reluctant caretaker. As Richard’s muscles, voice, and breath fade, both he and Karina try to reconcile their past before it’s too late.
Poignant and powerful, Every Note Played is a masterful exploration of redemption and what it means to find peace inside of forgiveness.
Come Away is the first commercial release for the new Relativity Media.
Why choose the Angelina Jolie and David Oyelowo-starrer as your first title brought to market?
We first looked at Come Away at Sundance. It plays right into one of our big differentiators at Relativity, as a company. We focus on people, we focus on principles and we focus on our partners. And with that we attempt to solve complicated problems with creative solutions. And with Come Away, we have great relationships and they had some needs that were a little bit complicated and we were able to be flexible -- on top of really liking the film.
Words like "complicated" and "being flexible" suggests you were looking for a wider theatrical release initially for Come Away, but the pandemic led you to a hybrid film launch, with a day and date indie theatrical and premium $19.99 VOD launch. How did that release strategy evolve?
We recognize that the world is changing. It's always changing, we're just feeling it more today because the pace of change is so magnified by COVID and social distancing and things we can do and can't do. We had to be flexible. This takes us back to our core culture. We have our relationships, our principles and our spirit of partnership. And we solved a complicated problem by getting this into the world on as many screens as we could. We can't predict as normally as we could how many people will show up at theaters. There just isn't enough data. But we have a terrific set of partners for the premium VOD release and we're going to have as successful campaign with this film had we been theatrical.
The simultaneous theatrical-PVOD release for Come Away means your exhibition and online partners will share in the movie's revenues, so it's a win-win for all involved?
We have partners and constituents. In this case, it's our shareholders, it's our partners in the film, Come Away. And it's our distribution partners, whether they be exhibitors or online platforms. And we will make this available to as many theaters as we can. Theatrical releases are a big part of our business plan going forward. But given the world we're in, there's a lot of uncertainty around that. We want to make sure we've got good partners all round. We don't think we're harming anyone's economics. We think it's a win-win all round.
Come Away is a family-friendly film. And by going both theatrically and to online platforms, you're confident you'll get as broad an audience as possible beyond the local multiplex?
We think Come Away is a terrific family film. It's the origin story of Alice and Peter. And today there's not a lot that's new that's geared towards families. We love the talent in the film. And we want to make it as accessible as we could to everyone. Regardless of whether someone wants to sit in a theater, or not, we wanted to make it accessible and everybody will have their own feelings about that.
Part of rebuilding Relativity Media was monetizing its content library. Tell us about that revenue-generating effort.
We haven't just put our library on sale. When we made the Relativity acquisition, one of the key assets of the company was the film library. It has 40-plus titles, and we're up to around 100 now as we've acquired another 30 titles in the last couple months to represent. We're not just walking in and saying will you buy some of this, please. It's working closely with the buyers and the programmers to make sure that we have product that they need and product that they want, and we're in constant conversation to ensure we're relevant to them.
A big question for the industry is whether streaming giants can continue releasing content, given the production disruption caused by the global pandemic. How do you see Hollywood's content market shaping up into next year and beyond?
Like everybody in the industry, we're watching closely what the largest players are doing -- whether it's Comcast or Disney or Netflix or Hulu, which is some combination of the above. They're going to shape the future of the industry, and we want to make sure that we're not chasing the puck around the ice. We want to skate to where we believe the puck will be. Everybody in the industry is being very attentive and observant, and to some extent we're very analytical people. We don't have all the answers today, but we have great relationships across the board, and that positions us well to be terrific partners to everybody in the industry in five years.
Friday, January 24, 2020
Come Away had its world premiere in Sundance but there was no formal red carpet with cast and filmmakers. Contrary to earlier reports, Angelina is not listed as a producer of the film. With a director making her live-action debut and a writer making her feature film debut, this was the biggest question mark in her 2020 slate. Given the mixed to negative early response (50% on RT from just 6), David Oyelowo owes her a big one. He can play Conall's long lost brother in Maleficent 3.
She was last photographed out and about Jan. 6 at Universal.
Directed in her live action debut by Oscar-winning animation superstar
Brenda Chapman, the film stars David Oyelowo and Angelina Jolie. While
Oyelowo is unable to be in Sundance because he is in London shooting for
Netflix the George Clooney-directed adaptation of Good Morning Midnight,
he ducked Clooney for a moment between takes to tell Deadline why the
film means so much to him, and how he cleverly got Jolie to take the
leap with him as they play parents of children who respond to a family
tragedy by becoming Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland, fusing elements
from both places into the narrative. OYELOWO: Audiences always gravitate to the familiar,
that’s coming at them in a fresh way. Like having Peter Pan and Alice
from Alice in Wonderland and the world of Neverland and Wonderland
combined in a way that is both grounded and yet feels fantastical. And
also the fact they approached me to play the father of both Alice and
Peter, which means you are getting to see it in a different way than
you’ve seen before, with a different kind of Alice and a different kind
of Peter. Fresh, though familiar. Having four children myself, I have
watched how sophisticated they are in relation to how they deal with
grief, the difficult sides of life, and how they use their imaginations
not just for play but as a coping mechanism. Marissa Kate Goodhill’s
script did such a good job of capturing that.
That’s how Angie’s involvement came about. We’ve been friends for a
long time, not really because we had worked together as actors, but
because we share this thing of having lots of children. I have four and
she has six, and we’ve had moments where our kids have gotten together
and it’s something with ten kids running around. We’ve also had
conversations about being a good parent while being a busy parent and
how we cope and how our kids cope in what at times are rarefied
circumstances. Angie would see me do independent films over the years
and after one in particular, Nightingale which she saw and
liked, she told me, ‘my goodness, I just never get offered anything like
that.’ And I said, ‘shut up. That’s not true!’ She said, ‘no one ever
comes to me with that kind of film.’ So when Come Away came my
way, I thought, I’m going to call her bluff. I said, ‘I’ve got one for
you, and not only is it an independent film, you get to play a mother,
which you say you never get to play on screen.’ To be fair, within four
days she was on board.
David Oyelowo and Angelina Jolie play the parents of Peter Pan and Wonderland's Alice in the first live-action feature by 'Brave' director Brenda Chapman. Read the review of 'Come Away': https://t.co/Wjsb8zItb3#Sundance
An airless film about childhood fantasies that comes to life only fitfully, Brenda Chapman's Come Away is
aimed at children but so pickled in grown-up grief that few kids are
likely to connect with it. Making her live-action debut after directing
the 2012 Pixar hit Brave, Chapman finds some charming ways to
visualize her young heroes' imaginings, but is less successful at
connecting with the characters as flesh-and-blood children. A wealth of
familiar storybook material and a cast including Angelina Jolie and
David Oyelowo will draw attention, but a handsome production and
beautiful cast aren't enough to get this fantasy off the ground.
The film's conceit is that Peter Pan (Jordan Nash) and the Alice who
explored Wonderland (Keira Chansa) were brother and sister, who once
lived an idyllic life in the English countryside with their brother
David (Reece Yates) and parents Rose and Jack Littleton (Jolie and
Oyelowo). The siblings frolic constantly in the woods, and Chapman's
camera sees the elements of their make-believe (bows and arrows, pirate
ships) as vividly as they do. Indoors, the scene is so gentle and loving
it seems encased in amber, except for those occasions when Rose's sour
sister Eleanor (Anna Chancellor) comes around, full of opinions about
how girls like Alice should properly be raised.
From the start, Chapman and screenwriter Marissa Kate Goodhill fill
the frame with objects that allude to the worlds Lewis Carroll and J. M.
Barrie created. Stuffed white rabbits and looking glasses, pocket
watches and lifelike shadows fill the Littletons' world, and on occasion
the film makes a big deal about it: A very pleased-with-herself Rose
sits Alice down to give her a tiny bell she had a tinker make, and when
the child isn't impressed, she spins a tale about how it's the earthly
form of Alice's very own personal fairy. It's one of the sweeter moments
in a film that sometimes, as with recurring talk of the "dream dust"
that grants access to the fantasy world, lays things on a little thick.
Then, as Peter and David are off near a lake fighting imaginary
swordsmen, the sky darkens and thunder rumbles. We don't need an
additional shot of hundreds of black birds taking flight to know
something horrible is about to happen, but we get it. Suddenly David is
dead, and the Littleton home will never be cheerful again.
Loss is a staple of children's tales, of course. But Come Away spends
most of its long-feeling running time exploring the shadow of this
event. Rose begins to drink, goes maybe slightly mad, is distant with
her surviving children; Jack returns to a London underworld he had given
up for Rose, attracting the attention of villainous creditors. Aunt
Eleanor plants seeds of snobbery in Alice. And poor Peter, feeling
responsible for his brother's death, imagines that his life is
elsewhere, off with some band of Lost Boys. When he hatches a plan to
get their dad out of debt, it's so wrong-headed there's no way to enjoy
its fantasy elements. (Though an encounter with a top-hat wearing
oddball played by Clarke Peters contains more mystery in its brief
minutes than most of the rest of the film.)
A framing device finds a grown-up Alice (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) recounting
parts of this story to her own children — Wendy, Michael and John — and
the film does intend to tie itself up nicely into the stories as we know
them. But that presents hard emotional work for the viewer: How are we
to connect the dots between this birth of Peter Pan and the wonders
he'll later show to Wendy and her brothers, without just feeling sad for
the boy who never grew up, and for a family that lost not one but two
sons in that fateful lightning storm?
Venue: Sundance Film Festival (Kids)
Production company: Fred Films
Cast: Jordan Nash, Keira Chansa, Reece Yates, David Oyelowo, Angelina
Jolie, Anna Chancellor, Michael Caine, Clarke Peters, David Gyasi, Gugu
Mbatha-Raw
Director: Brenda Chapman
Screenwriter: Marissa Kate Goodhill
Producers: Leesa Kahn, James Spring, David Oyelowo, Steve Richards, Andrea Keir
Director of photography: Jules O'Loughlin
Production designer: Luciana Arrighi
Costume designer: Louise Stjernsward
Editor: Dody Dorn
Composer: John Debney
Casting directors: Reg Poerscout-Edgerton, Lillie Jeffrey 94 minutes
Does it get there?It’s certainly an odd message for a
film, given that it ultimately seems to conclude (as Gilliam repeatedly
has) that fantasy utterly trumps reality, and that there’s no downside
to refusing to grow up. And the fantasy Come Away is selling often feels overripe and forced. Oyelowo gives a tense, complex performance, but Jolie feels like she’s still playing Maleficent,
with a lot less camp and facial prosthetics. And the kids’ performances
are broad, brash, and artificial, in a way that sometimes keeps the
audience at a distance.
But if nothing else, the production design and
cinematography are striking. Chapman’s color palette is rich and
vibrant, and John Debney’s tinkly, transportive music-box score
punctuates the sense that the whole movie is taking place inside a
nursery well-stocked with terrific toys. Audiences may resist the moral
of this movie, but they’re likely to get caught up in the execution.
The most meme-able moment: At one point
in the movie, Rose is so distraught over recent events that she turns to
alcohol for relief. When Alice catches Rose knocking one back, she
decides her mother’s special drink is a magic potion, maybe because it’s
stored in a fancy crystal decanter. When Alice has her own emotional
crisis, she steals the decanter and says, “Magic potion, please take me
away from here!” before knocking back the booze. It’s a “Same, girl!”
gif waiting to happen.
When can we see it?Come Away is an independent production that premiered at Sundance, and it’s currently seeking distribution.
John Debney (The Passion of the Christ, Iron Man 2, Elf, The Jungle Book) is currently scoring the upcoming fantasy drama Come Away. The film marks the live-action of debut of director Brenda Chapman (Brave, The Prince of Egypt) and stars Angelina Jolie, David Oyelowo, Keira Chansa, Jordan Nash, Reece Yates, Michael Caine, Gugu Mbatha-Raw and David Gyasi. The movie follows the brother and sister who became the protagonists of Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan as they seek to help their parents overcome the death of their eldest son and are then forced to choose between home and imagination. Marissa Kate Goodhill wrote the screenplay. Oyelowo and Jolie are also producing the project with Leesa Kahn, James Spring (Finding Your Feet, Patrick) and Andrea Keir. Come Away is currently in post-production and is expected to be released in 2020.
Debney’s recent projects also include Dora and the Lost City of Gold and Brian Banks, both of which are currently playing in theaters. The composer is also expected to return to score multiple episodes of the third season of Seth MacFarlane’s The Orville, which will debut in 2020 on Hulu.
Cutting Edge Group has signed a slate financing deal with Steve
Richards’ Endurance Media for music rights on Endurance’s next three
films, starting with Angelina Jolie’s “Come Away.”
...The partnership, unveiled at the Berlin Film Festival,
involves CEG providing music services including music supervision, song
clearances, score supervision and other music admin services and
acquiring the music publishing rights of the film.
The film is currently in post-production and scheduled for a wide US release in 2019.
“This is a wonderful, dramatic, heart-breaking and uplifting
adventure that unites elements from two of the most amazing stories ever
told. Audiences are going to love this and I’m immensely proud that we
will be bringing this movie to the Philippines,” said Rafaella Films
vice president Eric Yabut.
Saturday, October 13, 2018
Come Away wrapped today on schedule after a quick 3-week shoot in L.A.
Angelina was last seen on set Oct. 2. She was on hand today for David Oyelowo's wrap selfie.
Her character in Oyelowo's photo is in black. They may have just filmed the scenes after their son David died.
Oyelowo was asked, “What have you learned from working with Angelina?????”
He replied, “excellence never sleeps”
Caption: Actress Angelina Jolie is seen at the
studio in a blonde wig and black dress costume as she gets ready to film
more scenes for her latest film 'Come Away.' Jolie could later be seen
in a big white dress for the role of Queen of Hearts from Alice in
Wonderland. Angelina's co-star David Oyelowo could also seen arriving on
set. The fantasy film, directed by Brenda Chapman, is a prequel to the
stories of Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland.
legion
****
The last time any of the kids was photographed was on Sept. 29 when
Maddox and Pax were seen crossing the street.
They may have all been out of town for a few days.
****
Below,
Brad in Seattle "a few months ago." Based on his short hair and pale
complexion, likely very early this year, months before the Breitling
commercial.
Two different outfits in one day of filming. Same apron but different blouse and skirt. They will be shooting for 3 weeks in Los Angeles after 7 weeks in the U.K. Given the schedule and the film's synopsis, it's a small role that she is doing to support Oyelowo and the film. Security is more lax than it was for Maleficent II since we have set photos and she can see the paps. In general, their security has been more discreet lately. Whether here, on the set of OUATIH or out and about, their bodyguards have stayed out of the frame.
Caption: Actress Angelina Jolie is seen in full
costume and wig as Rose on the set of her latest film 'Come Away' at a
studio lot in Hollywood. Angelina's co-stars on the project, David
Oyelowo and Jordan A. Nash, who plays her son Peter, were also seen arriving
on set. *Shot on September 24,
2018*
Plot summary: Before Alice went to Wonderland, and before Peter became Pan, they were
brother and sister. When their eldest brother David dies in a tragic accident,
they each seek to save their parents (Jolie and Oyelowo) from their downward spirals of
despair until finally they are forced to choose between home and
imagination, setting the stage for their iconic journeys into Wonderland
and Neverland.
Kate Hudson and her partner were seen exiting the gate that leads to Valley Oak Drive. Further down Valley Oak Dive is the densely shaded entrance to a long driveway that leads to Brad's compound. None of it is not visible to the paps waiting on Canyon Drive across the street from the gate. Whether Hudson & co. actually visited Brad's compound is at best a hopeful guess but making the claim makes the photos more saleable. The compound's official
address is on Briarcliff Drive. There is no part of the main compound on this flat stretch of Valley Oak Drive. Valley Oak curves upwards and Brad has properties further up the hill that form the back of the compound.
The paps waiting outside the gates of Valley Oak Drive and Laughlin Park have evidently not been able to get a shot of any member of the family entering or leaving.
Caption:09/23/2018
EXCLUSIVE: Kate Hudson and Danny Fujikawa pay a visit to Brad Pitt's
house and then head off to the Groundlings Theatre in Los Angeles. The
39 year old pregnant actress wore an animal print dress and a pair of
sandals.
Angelina Jolie is filming something on my street. I’m looking forward to seeing how they cover up the Pizza Express in this costume drama pic.twitter.com/zP7m8bcoj9
