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Tuesday, September 25, 2018 at 7:28AM 5 random things that happened on this day, Sept 25th, in showbiz history
1954 Exactly six months to the day after winning Best Actress for Roman Holiday, Audrey Hepburn marries fellow actor Mel Ferrer in Switzerland. They would divorce the year after her final nomination for Best Actress in Wait Until Dark (1967), her hit film that he produced...
Thursday, January 25, 2018 at 9:39AM by Nathaniel R
Margot Robbie recently shared this pic from "exactly a year ago" when she was training for I TONYA
Is Margot Robbie the first actress to ever be nominated playing an Olympic athlete? I legit don't know the answer but I can't think of any others. The only previous Oscar nominated performances that we could think of were men: Will Smith as Muhammad Ali (though the focus there wasn't on the Olympics) and Mark Ruffalo as David Schultz (thanks commenters for this one!)
If you think back over movies that revolved around the Olympics in some way they aren't usually acting showcases (Chariots of Fire) or aren't focused on the Olympians themselves (Munich) or they're films that were either aimed at wide audience crowd pleasing or just didn't connect with awards voters (The Cutting Edge, Personal Best, Running Brave, Prefontaine, Eddie the Eagle, Cool Runnings) or they're documentaries which by their nature can't score acting honors.
There have been Olympians with movie careers but I can't think of any actors except Margot and Will Smith (who coincidentally co-starred in Focus in 2015) who have been nominated for playing an Olympian. Can you? Am I forgetting something totally obvious?
Saturday, December 23, 2017 at 9:15AM by Ben Miller
Will Smith misses the good ole days. He has been trying to reclaim his blockbuster status since 2008’s Hancock. In between, Smith has been featured in a string of weird melodramatic dramas (Seven Pounds, Collateral Beauty), traditional action genre vehicles (Men in Black 3, After Earth, Suicide Squad) and films that sink or swim on the charisma of the stars (Focus, Concussion). None of these have worked.
Reuniting with Suicide Squad director David Ayer, Smith tries to make it work again in action/sci-fi with Netflix’s Bright. This also doesn’t really work...
Wednesday, July 26, 2017 at 9:00PM By Ben Miller
If you haven’t heard already, Netflix will continue their quest for world domination with a tentpole feature film, Bright, in December. Directed by David Ayer (End of Watch, Fury), the film stars Will Smith as a Los Angeles police officer who is teamed up with an orc cop (Joel Edgerton) to fight crime and try to make sense of whatever the hell is happening in the trailer. There are fairies, magic wands, elves, swords, Noomi Rapace, and all sorts of other fantastical elements involved.
Let’s talk money. Bright cost $90 million for Netflix to pick up. Half of that cost went in to the film to shoot, while the other half goes to the talent (mostly Smith, Ayer and screenwriter Max Landis). These days, $90 million seems pretty reasonable for a fantasy film starring an A-List “Movie Star”. Suicide Squad, the most recent Smith-Ayer fantasy foray, cost $175 million. [More...]
Tuesday, July 18, 2017 at 10:30PM by Nathaniel R
Will Smith has been booked as the genie for a fair bit but now Disney is really revving up for their live action remake of Aladdin, casting both their "Street Rat! Scoundrel!" and future prince in Mena Massoud (pictured above), and their Princess Jasmine in Naomi Scott, who just played the pink ranger in the film version of Power Rangers...
